Vested interests in ME/CFS and the BMJ

Heather Goodwin, consultant:
Published 24 December 2010

It is sad to see the BMJ appears to have fallen victim to the politically-motivated PR campaign waged by the vested interests in ME/CFS which dominate medical research and treatment in the UK.

Further checking would have revealed that this 'interpretation' of four studies is simply an elaborate attempt to debunk the research of a number of laboratories worldwide which have used multiple testing methodologies - not just PCR - to establish the existence and replication of XMRV in humans.

As the readers of this Journal are well aware, it is impossible for humans to develop an immune response to a contaminant, yet the Whittemore Peterson Institute (Lombardi 2009) did exactly this:

http://www.wpinstitute.org/news/docs/WPIResponseToRetrovirology122010.pdf

Further reading for those interested can be found at:

http://www.virology.ws/2010/12/22/xmrv-and-cfs-its-not-the-end/

http://mcwpa.org/resources/research-studies/

Competing interests: None declared

Source: http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c7358.extract/reply#bmj_el_246903