Thanks to those who've clarified that this seems to be a case of "chinese whispers". My first guess is that whatever De Meirleir said probably got a bit mangled along the way. I can easily imagine that in any doctor-patient conversation about this subject, there are several points to be made, for and against getting tested. I often have this experience myself, of giving my opinion on a subject, talking for a while and presenting both sides of an argument, and then later hearing myself quoted back as if I hold the exact opposite opinion to what I actually believe. It always seems to indicate that the person I was talking to was somehow predisposed to only hear the half of what I had to say that confirmed whatever they already assumed about me. When one talks - or writes - a lot of people only hear or read a small fraction of the words you say. Communication between humans can be very inaccurate sometimes...
De Meirleir reported XMRV test results recently, and presented his poster at the XMRV conference too, with analysis of his XMRV+ patients' results, so the only way this rumour can make any sense to me would be if he's of the opinion that the test should be for research purposes only at this stage, and that there's little benefit to patients getting the test done, for certain individuals at least. To be honest, there's a reasonable case to be made there; the benefit of getting a confirmed positive test isn't always obvious, especially since one can assume that an improved test will become available through other routes by the time there are any treatments available with solid evidence behind them. However pro-WPI a physician might be, I think it would be irresponsible of them not to explain that angle to a patient asking about testing, so my guess is that he was just presenting a realistic appraisal, suitable to the patient, which has got lost in translation.
"Refused", for example, can often be putting things strongly; in my professional capacity I'm sometimes accused of "refusing" to do something when actually I've just put up an argument against it and the other person didn't then argue back, and the matter was dropped - whereas in fact I didn't "refuse" to do it; I would have been open to doing it if they convinced me it was a good idea, but what seemed to me to happen was that they were persuaded by my argument against it. Similarly the comments about making money could easily have been de Meirleir quoting somebody else's point of view - maybe the patient asked why some people are distrustful of the WPI.
I appreciate the sentiments about posting of second-hand information but I'm not one who says that people shouldn't do so. So long as you make it clear where the info comes from, it's up to the reader to put it in context, and we get so much good second-hand information on PR that I guess you have to just take the rough with the smooth. It would be really nice to have some open channels to some of these top researchers and physicians though, to consolidate our questions and get answers on key issues from them in a way that hopefully saves them time (from answering lots of emails asking the same questions) rather than taking up their time.
