Unsupported conclusions by the Wellcome Trust

Annette Whittemore, President, Whittemore Peterson Institute:

The recent proclamation that “XMRV is not the cause of CFS,” came from an individual who did laboratory experiments to show how PCR experiments can become contaminated.

These results have nothing to do with the reality of a disease or the methods used by those who have detected XMRV in the blood and tissue of patients found to be infected.

The positive studies, which cannot be explained away by PCR experiments, are those which have used multiple methods to show that XMRV is a live replicating gamma retrovirus in human blood and tissue samples using the gold standard methods of viral isolation and antibody testing, in addition to PCR.

Unsupported conclusions, such as the one offered by the Wellcome Trust spokesman, often create sensational headlines but do little to move science forward. Authors of the positive XMRV studies have been extremely careful not to claim causality, realizing that more scientific research is required to make such a statement.

However, ... Read more>>