Unfinished Blog-Post: To Pull A Gallo

A long time ago I started some blog-posts, but never found the time nor energy to finish them. Now I have long lost interest in the matter and will publish them all "as is" – maybe someone will find these raw thoughts helpful.

BTW: It is this post I most regred not finishing – it is mainly missing one table in the middle, listing some parallels between the story of "Fictional Gallo" and those who brought us the XMRV fraud. However the so inclined readers might be able to find parallels by themselves.

Unfinished Blog-Post: Team Gallo

A long time ago I started some blog-posts, but never found the time nor energy to finish them. Now I have long lost interest in the matter and will publish them all "as is" – maybe someone will find these raw thoughts helpful.

Publish shoddy study in PNAS, dupe patients, get access to NIH-funds!

CFS Advisory Committee, October 3-4, 2012:
… Dr. Susan Maier (NIH) reported that several new members were added to the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group, including Dr. Harvey Alter. It’s very good news that Dr. Alter is staying involved in CFS despite the end of XMRV. …
(via CO-CURE maillist)

Oh isn't it simply great news that our beloved Harvey Alter, after pushing the shoddy Lo/Alter/XMRV study into PNAS, gets money from the NIH to continue his fabulous work? Dandy, indeed. Simply splendid. A great scientific addition, indeed.

In that spirit, I nominate Marc Hauser, Scott Reuben and Diederik Stapel as new members for the Trans-NIH ME/CFS Working Group – with such outstanding scientists we will know for sure how the NIH-money will be accounted for!

On Lo/Alter

Once they saw it, many researchers concluded that the Lo-Alter data didn't confirm the Lombardi paper at all. They had found that 86.5% of samples from CFS patients harbored DNA from mouse retroviruses as did 6.8% of healthy controls, but it was not XMRV; the sequences were more closely related to a different, well-known group, the murine leukemia viruses (MLVs). It was as if a new suspect suddenly had been nabbed. Miller says the findings actually argued against Lombardi et al. “If XMRV is everywhere and these guys are doing the same experiment, why didn't they find XMRV?” he asks. Alter now says he regrets asserting that the paper confirmed the XMRV results and that it was “naïve” to show the slide in Zagreb. “That is something I shouldn't have said because we really hadn't found it,” he says. “I somehow got to be the spokesperson for this. I had no idea what it would mean.” Lo agrees that the team didn't find the virus that Mikovits and Lombardi had reported.

XMRV is not a human pathogen

Our attempts, through collaborations, to demonstrate antibody in affected patients, to isolate the virus by culture, or to show integration sites in the human genome have failed to support the initial findings.

XMRV as a human pathogen is dead as doornail. I repeat: XMRV does not cause ME/CFS.