I am merely trying to point out that perspective matters, and being on the outside looking in may be different from living something as an active participant.
Hi @duncan, I am having trouble understanding what you are referring to here. Do you mean you were directly involved in carrying out some of the research into XMRV? You seem to be hinting at some sort of insider knowledge that others here are not privy to and therefore not getting the full picture. Was some of your own research dismissed or misunderstood?
Did you bother to look at my previous post? You might very well carry a whole circus of animal retroviruses, including hybrids. some quotes putting the findings linked above into perspective: "Looking at the excipient list of vaccines, we can quickly see that every vaccine may be contaminated with at least one animal retrovirus family, all of which have been associated with cancers, chronic liver disease, AIDS, ALS, ME/CFS and autism. As just one example among hundreds of retrovirus contamination of vaccines, take a look at the history of the rotavirus vaccine. In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened a panel of experts to review findings that rotavirus vaccines given to infants in the U.S., Rotateq, produced by Merck Pharmaceuticals and Rotarix produced by Glaxo Smith Kline, are contaminated with pig viruses. Rotarix, an orally administered rotavirus vaccine, contained nucleic acids from porcine circovirus-1 (PCV1) virus and RotaTeq has been shown to contain nucleic acids from both PCV1 and PCV2, a pathogen in pigs that is associated with wasting and immunodeficiency. While acknowledging that the entire short and long-term risks from the porcine circoviruses PCV1 and PCV2 are as yet unknown, the advisory panel decided that “the benefits of the vaccine trumps its risks.” [...] In the past two decades, my research team and others have identified viral sequences proteins and isolated viruses similar to mouse leukemia viruses, mouse mammary tumor viruses, bovine leukemia viruses, simian immunodeficiency viruses, gibbon ape leukemia viruses from human blood, saliva, cells, and cell lines. [...] We extend Dr. Tenpenny’s alarming questions with knowledge of another family of exogenous human retroviruses, the murine related retroviruses which have now been confirmed in more than 6% of Americans and most likely entered humans via vaccines, and a contaminated blood supply causing the very diseases Dr. Stuart hypothesized. We ask, “Can the MMR vaccine containing avian/chicken retroviruses recombine with mouse sequences passed down from our parents (found in their polio vaccines) to produce a hybrid retrovirus or hybrid sequences?"
quote from that link: "3. XMRV doesnt even want anything to do with primates. Certainly not humans." Really? Let's look at the abstract of the paper: "Nevertheless, XMRV is a retrovirus of undefined pathogenic potential that is able to replicate in human cells." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22238316 Then certainly this previous finding is totally uninteresting: "To examine the infection potential, kinetics, and tissue distribution of XMRV in an animal model, we inoculated five macaques with XMRV intravenously. XMRV established a persistent, chronic disseminated infection, with low transient viremia and provirus in blood lymphocytes during acute infection. Although undetectable in blood after about a month, XMRV viremia was reactivated at 9 months, confirming the chronicity of the infection." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325416 So, did Abbie Smith even bother to look at anything related post 2012? Like at Mikovits' account of events published in "Plague" in 2015, for instance? It would seem no one has tried to sue her over the contents, why wouldn't they if they're implicated in one way or another? Maybe what she has been saying is right after all?
Dear @YaS, these quotes do not provide any perspective. They do not belong in science. They appear to be written by someone with an obsession with an idea and little understanding of the field they are discussing. One of the things that surprised me most when I first started coming to ME science meetings was that anyone took the retrovirus story seriously at all. I was quite surprised that colleagues in London thought it was even worth investigating. Competent scientists do not write like those quotes of yours because they know they will look stupid - and not be motivated to talk like that anyway. The fact that other labs initially reported confirming the results rang alarm bells because it seemed a pretty clear indication that the researchers perceived as the 'main players' by the patient community actually had no idea what they were doing either. Poor quality science is everywhere now but at least in breast cancer research anyone claiming to have replicated what turns out to be the result of incompetent handling would have difficulty getting any more grants. In a sense the XMRV story spurred me on to get interested in ME research because it hit me that if research into an illness by the 'top labs' is THIS BAD then the patients deserve something better.
Frankly, what surprises me is how you avoid answering relevant basic questions, yet go on repeating "bad science" not actually addressing any of the points brought up in references. Ad hominem arguments and those relying on form, not content are not quite what I would hope to find here.
No. Although I have been involved in several studies, and have been fortunate to pick the brains of some leading researchers directly - including sitting and talking with Mikovits for a couple of hours - it has always been as a patient. But thanks for asking. I swore I would not get involved with retrovirus stuff anymore. There was so much rancor. I get enough of that from Lyme. And I had enough when the XMRV thing happened. I put it poorly to @Melanie. What I was trying to ask, and I screwed it up, was had Melanie actually experienced the almost daily back and forth when XMRV hit. Someone mentioned Defreitis' concern that the CDC wasn't really replicating her methods. It seems like yesterday that many of us worried that all those XMRV replication studies suffered from the same deficit. The tenor of the efforts - I know that might sound weird to some - but there was a sense of panic to those efforts that had many of us concerned. So, I wondered out loud if @Melanie had been thrust into the million big and little particulars of those crazy days. Had she, then perhaps she would have remembered how Smith might stand out for some, not so much the science, but for how she appeared to approach our community. Seeing Smith quoted as a reference was strange for me; not because of her science, but because of how I interpreted and remembered her attitude. I hope this helps.
When? Geez, back in 2010 or so? 2011? 2012? I've loss track of the time. What was with her? I suppose I found her to come across as....less than nice? She wasn't alone by any means. It was a raucous wild-west on behalf of many. Lots of bitterness and mayhem. I do not miss those days. I miss the hope, though.
