I repeat, this is a forum for evidence-based discussion of virology-related topics – and in this case, the virology and epidemiology of XMRV.

It is NOT a forum for parading conspiracy theories and making personal attacks on people who are reputable professionals.

SO don’t bother to post such things, because I will delete them out of hand.

“No researcher who registered for CROI before the deadline was
forbidden to attend. Of the more than 4000 participants at CROI,
less than 100 were invited to speak, and none of the speakers on XMRV
was invited. All the XMRV talks were selected from submitted
abstracts.
Submitted abstracts are confidential, as is their review, so I cannot
discuss any specifics of the process, except to note that only about
half of them were accepted for presentation this year.”

Ed

Firstly, were the authors of the Lombardi paper excluded from the conference?

Generally, to present results at a scientific conference, you submit a resumé of the work you are going to talk about, then the organizing committee chooses which of the submitted abstracts are presented, either as posters or orally. The CROI works like this, and as Ed pointed out, anyone can apply to attend the conference (although preference is given to applicants who have an accepted abstract).

So I guess, the question is, did the organizing committee exclude an abstract from the Mikovits group? I will contact John Coffin (who was president of the organizing committe, and has a particular interest in the XMRV story) and try to get an answer from him. I will come back here with his comments.

Secondly, are all the negative studies (that is, the majority of the work carried out on this virus) part of a big cover-up?

As far as I know, none of the scientists who found negative results have any particular axe to grind with respect to CFS/ME, and as far as I can tell, they all started their work with an open mind on the question. Nobody went out to find a negative result on purpose. The objective was to test whether the association reported initially by Lombardi and colleagues was reproducible. If it had been then Lombardi et al. would have made an important discovery, that could have led to effective treatment and prevention of CFS/ME. However, when the vast majority of results come out negative, then you just have to accept that the CFS/XMRV connection just does not stand up to scutiny, then go on looking for another cause for the disease.

This is not a conspiracy, it is just the way science works. Sticking to an idea (ie. that CFS is related to XMRV infection) that has been rigorously tested, and found to be incorrect does not help anybody.

Finally, with respect to ignorance of previous work, there are two points worth making.

Firstly, this is not the first time that a virus infection has been postulated as the cause of CFS/ME. Many different viruses have been proposed as causative agents over the last 20 years or so. In all cases, the initial findings were not replicated, and no real causal link was found. This track record alone is a good reason to be very cautious whenever anyone claims to have found that a virus is responsible for CFS/ME.

Secondly, other retroviruses, closely related to XMRV, have previously been linked to human disease, only for those studies to turn out (after a lot of independent testing by other labs) to have been due to false positives. A good explanation of why this happens is given by Robin Weiss in this open access article:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/8/124

Once again, the track record should teach us to be cautious when anyone claims that a strange mouse retrovirus is related to a human disease. That is not to say that such an idea is patently ridiculous or impossible – just that such claims need to be validated carefully by independent groups before they are accepted as correct.

DMc

More details at http://www.nyas.org/BloodSupply

If you had actually read the series of articles that Dorian McIlroy wrote, and especially the first one, you will have seen that they are guest blogs.

That is, they are not written by me. So that barb flew astray rather, didn’t it? Dorian, does the tag fit you, or are you not in fact so ignorant?

Second, I have actually read a number of papers and commentaries on XMRV, and as a reasonably well-informed professional virologist, I have to say that the evidence is not overwhelmingly in favour of it being causatively involved in any human disease. Are you a virologist, Vickie? If you are not, I could tell you that I can find you “evidence” for the complete fabrication of all evidence for the existence of Hepatitis C virus; evidence that HIV does not exist, or if it does, does not cause disease; that ME is caused by parvoviruses, and so on. Of course, I could also find you a lot of better evidence, possibly less accessible to the layperson, that proves the opposite.

So no, Vickie, there is no bias involved here – simple assessment of the evidence on offer.

Why did they simply not apply to come, like 99% of the other delegates? Really, really…!