I'm a Dr. Racaniello fan, but I would make the constructive criticism that the TWiV's where he's talked about CFS have been marred by a lack of knowledge on the part of the panel about the disease itself - clinical presentation, biomarkers, etc. This was especially frustrating in the first TWiV where they talked about the Science paper and kept stopping to ask each other what seemed to be very basic questions about CFS, as if puzzled about what it entails besides "fatigue".
I think the situation has improved somewhat, in that Dr. R. now seems to have a better understanding that CFS is very serious and debilitating and has picked up some facts about it here and there. But I *wish* the next panel in which they discuss XMRV/MLVs would include someone with lots of *clinical* expertise in the disease. Dr. R has so much expertise about virology and viral diseases that he's one of the people best situated to "connect the dots" between what we know about other viral diseases and what we see in ME/CFS.
I did pick up the broad hint that the 100th episode will have a "very special guest" and it seemed pretty clear from context that it would be on an XMRV/MLV related topic. Judy Mikovits would be great, but my guess is that maybe he got Harvey Alter. THAT WOULD BE AWESOME.
Not gonna listen to the McClure interview now, I'm too aggravated about other stuff this week. As for Alan Dove, I'm disappointed that he never came back to this board to continue the discussion. I asked him some very serious questions and would like to hear his answers. I subscribed to his blog, to see what he's all about, but a lot of it seems to consist of fairly lightweight, snarky posts or pointers to TWiV episodes.
If he takes the position that a "psychosocial" explanation of CFS should still be on the table as a plausible explanation for the disease, then I'd like to hear that he's thoroughly reviewed the literature on both sides - the psych papers and then the papers showing biomarkers, abnormal exercise physiology, etc. - and based on that, say whether hypotheses about either a biological or a psychological explanation of CFS should both still be given equal weight.
