Professor Wessely, beware if you got a cat

Jo Best:

My cat brought yet another mouse home last night. When I dispose of them always wash my hands thoroughly afterwards because of germs and such. So imagine my horror at learning I might be ingesting mouse DNA with almost every breath - and DNA with XMRV sequences in it as well. This stuff, is apparently absolutely everywhere according to some virologists.

And it gets worse. I've got CFS - which means my blood is 60-70% more likely to attract the stuff than healthy people. It's like being some kind of mouse DNA magnet.

There is hope though. It seems like there are some lab workers who are kind of negatively charged and repel the veritable cloud of XMRV that surrounds everyone else; because even when they are looking for it, not a speck of XMRV is to be found in hundreds of samples.

Sounds a bit barmy to me, but what do I know about viruses? Anyway, I've sent the WPI $100 because it seems to me that they do know about viruses and they know about CFS. I've always thought CFS was going to turn out to be caused by something very difficult to detect that will need dedicated and open-minded scientists to thoroughly investigate. WPI gets my vote for that task.

Peter Kemp