By Laurence Swift (retired vet):
Using several different techniques, the WPI have found XMRV in 98 or 99% of their ME patients – how can the pyschs & other deniers deny a “link”?
The WPI have never claimed a causal relationship – in writing – but that firm link indicates there may be, to anyone of modest intelligence.
Anyone who has read the obligatory tome “Osler’s Web” will know the facts. Dr Paul Cheney, around 1985, took some of his ME patients’ MR scans to an MRI expert, who showed him a set of identical scans – from AIDS patients. (see the videos on YouTube). Maybe they hadn’t sorted out the retroviral origin of AIDS at that time, but the penny will have dropped later.
So we then knew a retrovirus was involved.
Then in 1991 the Wistar Institute researcher Elaine DeFreitas actually found a retrovirus in her ME patients, even showed electron-micrographs of the virus inside mitochondria where they disrupt the mitochondrial function of producing energy in the cell – hence the weakness or fatigue felt by patients. She couldn’t continue with the research as her funding was promptly withdrawn.
Also, just ask any freshly-infected M.E. patient what happened at the beginning? Most will describe a virus-like acute onset, thinking it to be merely flu or an Epstein-Barr relapse. They don't know that a retroviral infection can recruit and invade most of our NK (natural killer) blood cells and use them to multiply very rapidly before spreading everywhere in the body and especially in the brain.
With all the government institutions turning their back on the biomedical cause of M.E., it was left to the “private sector” to fill the deficit.
The Whittemore family, with their daughter Andrea an M.E. patient, engaged retrovirology experts including Judy Mikovits and established a private research centre, the Whittemore-Peterson Institute (WPI). Judy already suspected a retrovirus was involved and set out to prove it to the high standards of Science magazine.
The rest is history. Several ME patients have started on ART’s (anti-retroviral therapies) and are blogging about their experiences – most are improving. The drugs are based on those developed for treating AIDS patients.
However XMRV is not the same as HIV and it may be possible to develop special drugs for XMRV which will be more effective – if the drugs companies remove their collective skulls from their colons and get on with the job.
With perhaps seventeen million people worldwide affected, this could be very profitable.
— Laurence Swift (retired vet).
4 comments:
Actually, the reported positive rate of 98%-99% looks very bad to me. The 67% first reported looked way better, IMO.
You can't really get a cohort of 100% ME/CFS patients. With a syndrome like this, without reliable diagnostic tests, there will always be a significant amount of people that are misdiagnosed, no matter how good the physician was.
On the other hand, when your samples, reagents, cell lines and/or lab is/are contaminated with barely traceable amounts, you will find that enough retesting will get you to the 'desired' 98&-99%.
This is not conclusive evidence of contamination occurring, but it is the parsimonious explanation.
i do not believe in xmrv and until confirmation is completely replicated science that says it is i will continue on www.watercure.com www.watercure2.org also i will continue to donate blood as 'i feel great' after donations...i will not stop giving blood...they can all burn in hell with their c.b.t. and g.e.t. bullshit...if there is an infection in my blood then i hope and pray the c.b.t. and g.e.t. camps get it...i wish them all of constant suffering day in and day out and may everyone of them be handcuffed to a treadmill turned on full blast...i think the time has come for every c.f.s./m.e.patient to donate blood every 2 weeks around the world and if any of you are near death donate every organ of yours to the organ banks...i cannot wait for another 2 weeks to give another bag of blood....'all in our heads eh!' this is the only way we will get any action done and that is to spread the disease further...next time you go to these useless health agencies take a huge lick of all the door handles and start a massive world wide lick a stamp campaign...they can all burn in hell...enough is enough!! i even run up a couple of flights of stairs before i donate blood and that way i activate the poisons/toxins in my blood...'i feel great' sincerely aidan walsh southampton, u.k. p.s. anyone want some blood and my future organs, 'you can have them'....
I disagree with both Comments. For RRM - yes it is possible to get a patient cohort of 100% M.E. patients, if you screen very carefully, and preferably using a long-term ME patient as an interviewer who will be able to recognise genuine patients quite easily. You could use the Canadian Criteria as well. So if you have all genuine patients in your survey, they will all carry XMRV, and you ought to be able to find it with intensive techniques - serology, 45 days culture, nested PCR. You can tweak your techniques for maximum sensitivity. Of course you have to be conscious of potential contamination. And because this virus affects different people to different degrees, there will be some mildy-affected people who show few signs, and others who may be symptomless, yet are positive for XMRV. So you need to find "controls" from a symptomless community.
Yes Aidan, we all needed that accurate replication trial a year ago - but it hasn't been done yet - just think, why not? It is also highly irresponsible even if you only suspect that you have or carry a nasty disease, whatever it may be - HIV, XMRV, Syphilis, TB, etc - to go throwing it around in the blood supply. Of course you can donate it, and your organs, for use only in other patients with the same disease already - but that would mean separate blood and organ banks, and the powers-that-be haven't got that far in their thinking - yet.
Ever been tested for Haemochromatosis genes Aiden? If drawing out a heap of blood makes really makes you feel better it would fit & the iron studies might miss the signs if you are donating blood all the time.
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