We have to make sure the HIV-story is not repeated.
The European Society for ME:
Since October 2009, the retroviral story has become a big international issue and a matter of great discussion in the scientific community. Conflicting results and conflicts of interest have emerged and several negative studies have been the subject of great controversy.
The current XMRV-story is very similar to the early days of HIV/AIDS-research - a disease which also involves a retrovirus. After the discovery of HIV, there were many conflicting results and the field was messed upby bad science, politics and conflicts of interest.
Many top scientists involved in HIV-research are clear regarding the new XMRV-story: "We have to make sure the HIV-story is not repeated."
That is why it is so important that the ME/CFS field has top-notch research that cannot be disputed. Until now, some of ME/CFS research has not been done in a reliable systematic way so the results have been inconsistent.
The XMRV-story has shown us that in order for ME/CFS to be taken seriously, every step in the process needs to be reliable and professional - from the way the patient group is defined, to how samples are gathered and processed, to the way they are transported and tested.
It is also very important that scientists and specialists work with top-quality, certified labs. Only when all of these things are in place will the results be accepted by respected scientific journals and the disbelievers will be shut down.
The research from Drs. Alter, Mikovits and colleagues is so important because they did all of these things right and they set the standard for quality research in the ME/CFS field.
Since the Science and PNASpublication we have for the first time: ... Read more>>
No comments:
Post a Comment