Or let me put it this way....
Is this virus unusual in replication and prevalence after infection?
Mikovitz says yes.
Do you have to take unusual steps to find it?
Mikovitz says yes.
Does it go dormant, thus hiding?
Mikovitz says yes.
Given these facts, does it stand to reason it is harder to find?
yes
If it is harder to find than other viruses, then does it stand to reason it will take more research and more years to find it?
yes.
Tina
The most pertinent logical fallacy that you have here is this: "does it take more years to find it?"
When there is a genuine attempt to find it, and if money and desire (political will and direction) are there, it only takes about A YEAR to find it, as demonstrated by WPI. They started with all the problems you've mentioned above yet were able to find it, working under less than perfect conditions, in a year.
It is well illustrated in "Osler's Web" by Hillary Johnson, that the cause(s) of CFS could have been tackled during the same years that HIV/AIDS was, if the politics had been there for doing it, instead of denying it.
To put it into another perspective, if Andrea Whittemore were my age and her wealthy parents had put their money into CFS research when I was a young woman, we would have already explored the XMRV possibility and confirmed it or moved on to the other possibilities that are also being researched in 10 other projects at WPI at this moment.
Instead, our national resources of money, power and minds were squandered on a policy of not finding the organic cause(s) of CFS during all those years, TWENTY EIGHT YEARS, that I have had this illness, despite the very real evidence that has been there from the very beginning, of the very real possibility of viral cause or contribution. The same, or worse, has been done in UK.
I paid taxes for 20 years before becoming disabled by CFS. I was around (was it 1991?) when the CDC took the tax money we sufferers worked so hard to get out of Congress for CFS research and spent it on polio, measles and equipment for other labs, plus disappearing several millions of dollars they just couldn't account for. Almost NOTHING for the purpose for which the money was appropriated. A friggin' telephone survey in Wichita KS!! And the CDC's good 'ole boys have been doing the same thing, right up to the present year, as has the psych gang in UK.
So, the fact that a private research lab, operating under less than ideal conditions of funding, was able to find XMRV in association with CFS, in around a year's time put the LIE to the contention that they (the medical establishment) just haven't had time to find out what causes CFS. Now those who having been lying to us for decades are scrambling to counter any real research into the organic causes of CFS, so to question their motives in these rushed studies is appropriate and wise if we want to avoid another 2 or 3 decades of waiting for them to 'have enough time' to find the solutions we need in order to once again have a life. Even if a cause/cure had not been found then, we would have had some treatment of the symptoms that we don't have access to now, because everything is 'experimental' and not covered by insurance. To be aware that the insurance industry drives the anti-organic cause campaign is not unprofessional. To pretend that scientific research is pure and without politics and egos is not helpful and I applaud anyone who will stop pretending and tell it like it is.
Another 2 or 3 decades is not acceptable to me at age 62. These lies have already wasted what should have been the best years of my life. As it is, any solutions that might come from this research may still be out of reach for me, as I am barely surviving, below poverty level and getting poorer each year, while 'the band plays on'. About the only thing that is different this time around is the internet. Those of us who have no energy for the struggle to be treated fairly can now find solidarity with others and not let them get away with it this time.
