With HIV and AIDS, they applied "Koch's Postulates":
- Epidemiological association: the suspected cause must be strongly associated with the disease.
- Isolation: the suspected pathogen can be isolated - and propagated - outside the host.
- Transmission pathogenesis: transfer of the suspected pathogen to an uninfected host, man or animal, produces the disease in that host.
The NIH has a webpage giving the evidence that HIV causes AIDS (probably to counter the AID denialists). It gives you an idea of the kind of evidence they look for. Although they announced they had discovered the cause (HIV) in 1984, you'll notice that the evidence accumulated over quite a long time. The studies continued until about 1999.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/HIVAIDS/Understanding/howHIVCausesAIDS/pages/hivcausesaids.aspx
Hi ixchelkali,
Actually, that was the point I was trying to make. The amount of uncertainty in HIV-AIDS research alone makes the idea that "one can ONLY say cause is PROVEN when treatment is PROVEN" untenable. I note only 3 of Koch's postulates are fulfilled in the example you gave - there are four?- and that even achieving this took YEARS, as you say.
However, people suspected to have such were not left for years and year to rot while the alleged super-duper- beyond- any- doubt- PROOF of causation was established BEYOND DOUBT. And even now there are HIV + people who have not yet developed AIDS, whether due to prophylactic treatment or other reasons (and this is similar to XMRV+ 'normals', is it not?): indicating PROOF BEYOND DOUBT is not yet forthcoming, even in the HIV-AIDS connection. But this has not stopped people getting treatment and care and being taken seriously, instead of being told to think themselves better.
Ironically, the derogatory term 'denialist' - whereby people who doubt the HIV/AIDS link are castigated- could, technically, apply to those denying the XMRV/CFS connection now, yet it is not. Why not? (Rhetorical question)
Now I'm certainly not an AIDS 'denialist'. However, there will have been people who DID legitimately ('scientifically'?) question the causation certainly at the beginning of the 'epidemic'. At what point did rational scepticism become 'denialism', at least in the eyes of others? At what point will this happen with the XMRV-CFS connection, if ever?
I'm saying this not because I truly believe XMRV is THE causative agent of 'CFS' (there are so many other issues involved, not least other possible micro-organisms let alone the discrepant criteria of 'CFS), but because of how a HIGHLY uncertain, mostly implausible, default psychogenic explanation for uncertain somatic illnesses has become accepted uncritically by medics and the state while we wait for the 'science' to sort out the issue of XMRV.
And don't even get me started on the wasteful loss of animal life, and slowing down of progress, while scientists try to compare penguins and ostriches on 'animal models' of 'CFS': they can't even agree a decent RESEARCH criteria of HUMAN 'CFS' (if we take various excuses about not using the Canadian criteria in research at face value). Some scientists claim to establish animal models of chronic fatigue/CFS by exhausting mice! HOW are they going to establish a diagnosis of 'CFS' in some poor monkey? Why don't they just work on what they've got in human populations?
Sorry- rant over. I just find some of the appeals to 'science' and its presumed authority problematic. We've got serious abuse of science going on, and patients are being left to rot. I hope the latest news is positive. I just don't think the facts are going to get in the way of continuing ideologically informed mistreatment of a vulnerable population, while pious platitudes about waiting for the SCIENCE and PROOF (I'm not talking about forum members - just the whole reporting thing, blogs, certain other 'scientists' pronouncements etc.) which may never be quite enough (because in 'science' things rarely are).
