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November 11, 2009
A Big Splash From an Upstart Medical Center
A Big Splash From an Upstart Medical Center

In the spring of 2006, they met Dr. Judy A. Mikovits, a virus expert who had spent 22 years working at the National Cancer Institute. She had left the institute in 2001 to get married and move to California, where she went to work for a drug development company that failed. She was tending bar at a yacht club when a patron said her constant talk about viruses reminded him of someone he knew in Nevada. That person was a friend of Annette Whittemore’s. Dr. Mikovits soon found herself at a conference on chronic fatigue syndrome.
“I knew how serious a retrovirus is,” Mrs. Whittemore said. “I was very concerned, knowing there would be serious implications. My second thought was, of course it was going to be something serious like that. Look at my daughter and how ill she is. Why would we expect it to be something simple? I also felt like the weight of world was on my shoulders. We would have to be telling people some very bad news.”
AMONG those expected to try to replicate the XMRV findings is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Dr. William C. Reeves, who directs the agency’s research on the syndrome, has said that he does not expect to find the virus in blood samples from patients. He said that no other studies had ever proved a virus to be the cause, and that stress and a history of sexual and emotional abuse were more likely to play a role in many cases. “I blame the C.D.C. for most of this mess,” Mrs. Whittemore said, adding that thinking like Dr. Reeves’s was what drove her to start her own research center.
Thanks to misskoji who posted this on the Media Links thread“She is just really very, very sick,” Mrs. Whittemore said. “She’s had this for a long time. We’ve got to get something for her as soon as possible. That is the driver for the speed on this. I don’t want to lose her. I can’t lose my daughter. I don’t want to win this battle and lose the war.”