Allow me to elaborate on my earlier comment (#52), for my reasoning there was a trifle elliptical, a besetting sin.
(1) Mikovits et al. have claimed that XMRV is detectable -- presumably as a cause -- in various clinical groups including but not limited to CFS, prostate cancer and autism.
(2) There is no epidemiology for these groups. There is no risky behaviour placing them at special exposure to a causative agent (other than "getting old" in the case of prostate cancer); no chain of contagion going from Patient 0 to Patient 1 to Patient 2.
(3) We conclude that exposure to XMRV must be widespread, with some additional, unknown conditions (environmental or innate or whatever) to explain why some people succumb to it while others don't. So far this is simple "excluding the impossible while leaving the improbable" reasoning, with the corollary that immunodeficient people should be especially susceptible to XMRV.
But Mikowits et al. have also sounded tocsins and alarums about XMRV in the blood supply 'breaking out' into the wider population and leading to an AIDS-like epidemic -- the implication being that people are *not* exposed to it at present. This contradicts point (3). This is why I've been saying right from the start to anyone who will listen -- undeterred by my ignorance about endoretrovirology -- that Mikowits et al are full of shit.
Posted by: herr doktor bimler | June 5, 2011 6:13 AM
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