As you may know, the Lipkin study is supposed to be the last word on HGRV research. There are serious concerns about this study, not least that a large amount of our miniscule research budget is to be spent on it. Now it seems that Judy M is excluded, and Frank Ruscetti is also not involved, the two scientists who actually know how to find the virus.
Also consider that we also know, due to the accidental infection of children with X-SCID, (see page 8 and page 10 -11, section VII and VIII) that it is accepted that HGRVs cause disease in humans. And that the paper Paprotka et al. did not in any way present an argument in support of an impossible recombination event in a cell line.
The letter below explains many of the issues as to why this study is superfluous and only a hinder to scientific progress.
Please help in allowing science to progress without interference by sending this letter.
?
Some contact details are below.
If anyone has a better idea of who to send to please post it. It may be good to send to all of them if people can. Obviously the higher ups are more important.
Francis Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. Email: francis.collins@nih.gov
Contact NIH
E-mail ?NIHinfo@od.nih.gov
Phone? 301-496-4000, ?TTY 301-402-9612 (?Health Info Lines ?Media Contacts)
Mail ?National Institutes of Health? 9000 Rockville Pike ?Bethesda, Maryland 20892
?Addresses for the Institutes and Centers
kathleen.sebelius@hhs.gov
francis.collins@nih.gov
toni.scarpa@nih.gov
hoshawb@csr.nih.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
President Obamas Science Advisor, John Holdren, at AskDrH@ostp.gov
Thank you.
Also consider that we also know, due to the accidental infection of children with X-SCID, (see page 8 and page 10 -11, section VII and VIII) that it is accepted that HGRVs cause disease in humans. And that the paper Paprotka et al. did not in any way present an argument in support of an impossible recombination event in a cell line.
The letter below explains many of the issues as to why this study is superfluous and only a hinder to scientific progress.
Please help in allowing science to progress without interference by sending this letter.
?
Dear ..........
I am writing this letter to demand a halt to the multi lab study headed by Ian Lipkin as I believe it is unscientific and will hinder the natural course of scientific enquiry.
This study was set up by NIH director Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in an attempt to get to the bottom of this curious situation with the discrepancy of results.
http://blogs.wsj.com/health/2010/09/08/world-class-virus-hunter-to-head-up-the-latest-xmrv-study/
The labs taking part have all recently demonstrated that their assays are unvalidated. Vincent Lombardi at ViPDx and now the WPI, the FDA under Shyh-Ching Lo and the CDC under William Switzer, all proved in the Blood XMRV working group to be using assays that are unreliably for detecting the viruses.
Those scientist that do use clinically validated assays, Dr Judy Mikovits and Dr Frank Ruscetti, will not be participating in this study and therefore there is no possible result other than failure to confirm the findings in Lombardi et al.
Furthermore the discrepant results from studies examining those with ME/cfs have recently been explained. It is now apparent that the viruses discovered in Lombardi et al. are not the prostate cancer synthetic VP-62/XRMV reference.
As the 3 full-length sequences that Bob Silverman at the Cleveland clinic sequenced for Lombardi et al. were in fact VP62 plasmid contamination that was present in his lab samples and not the viruses isolated by the Mikovits and Ruscetti labs.
The same samples in the WPI/NCI labs have been proven to be free from VP-62 plasmid contamination by an independent lab and in fact the VP-62 plasmid had never been in the Ruscetti/NCI or Mikovits/WPI labs. Consequently all studies that have used VP-62 to optimize their assays have been searching for the wrong viruses.
Although the wrong target does by itself explain the discrepancy of results there is also the issue that these studies have also failed to clinically validate these assays, as they have not at any time provided evidence that they were capable of detecting integrated human gamma retroviruses (HGRVs). They have only proved that they could find a free-floating synthetic virus.
Quote
In my view the CDC paper should not have been published without a proper positive control, eg patient samples known to contain XMRV. If I had reviewed the CDC paper thats what I would have asked for. Professor Vincent Racaniello
http://www.forums.aboutmecfs.org/content.php?187-Dr-Mikovits-and-Dr-Racaniello-on-XMRV
Quote
Its just not sufficient to show that something can detect something in a plasmid template. Its hard to know if its going to detect something in a matrix thats as complicated as blood or cellular DNA. So I think thats probably one of the biggest reasons for why people find different results.. Dr Ila Singh
http://www.twiv.tv/2010/08/08/twiv-94-xmrv-with-dr-ila-singh/
Therefore the question that this single study was intended to answer has already been discovered and its continuation is problematic considering that only those using clinically unvalidated assays are now taking part.
I therefore demand a halt to the Lipkin study and request that science be allowed to continue unhindered by those who think answers can be gleamed from a single study that allows participants to use clinically unvaliated assays.
Yours etc.
Some contact details are below.
If anyone has a better idea of who to send to please post it. It may be good to send to all of them if people can. Obviously the higher ups are more important.
Francis Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA. Email: francis.collins@nih.gov
Contact NIH
E-mail ?NIHinfo@od.nih.gov
Phone? 301-496-4000, ?TTY 301-402-9612 (?Health Info Lines ?Media Contacts)
Mail ?National Institutes of Health? 9000 Rockville Pike ?Bethesda, Maryland 20892
?Addresses for the Institutes and Centers
kathleen.sebelius@hhs.gov
francis.collins@nih.gov
toni.scarpa@nih.gov
hoshawb@csr.nih.gov
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
President Obamas Science Advisor, John Holdren, at AskDrH@ostp.gov
Thank you.