"XMRV has never replicated outside of the laboratory setting."

XMRV has never replicated outside of the laboratory setting.

The association of XMRV with prostate cancer has now been thoroughly refuted.

So Silvermann does the right thing and tells us that there isn't XMRV in prostate cancer either – so this case is closed as well.

XMRV was from the beginning an dead end – no matter how much misinformation Mikovits and her acolytes have spread, with daily changing sock-puppets. Don't expect an apology from Mikovits, or Gerwyn/V99 and his army of sockpuppets, for chasing the ME/CFS community down an dead end.

The one thing that remains lacking is an truthful explanation by Mikovits and Ruscetti as to their "amazing" lab-results – what has been presented so far in the way of explanations remains inadequate.

The WPI did PCR for all samples – Silverman did PCR only for a few samples

Response to Comments on "Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome"
Mikovits and Ruscetti
Science 328, 825-d (2010); DOI: 10.1126/science.1184548

"Investigators at NCI received 100 samples from individuals without knowing their health status; furthermore, the samples were sent to NCI directly without passing through the WPI laboratory space."

What ever went wrong with the results at Ruscetti's lab, they can't blame the WPI - or else this sentence would be a lie.

"The WPI has examined all 218 control and 101 patient samples by both PCR and serological methods for the presence of XMRV nucleic acid and antibodies. In addition, NCI used plasma from all 100 samples they received in infection experiments with LNCaP cells."

And this makes it look like the WPI did most of the serology. Plus, this can be read as both PCR and serology were done for all samples by the WPI. But serology was not done for all samples!
(I have no idea why I would think that, but I get the feeling they intentionally obfuscate things.)

Update:

BTW these were the 15 samples that Silverman had, six of which were positive:

1104 +
1106 +
1109 -
1115 +
1118 -
1125 +
1129 -
1134 -
1159 -
1168 -
1174 -
1175 -
1178 +
1179 +
1199 -
From figure 4

Plus:
1124 is in the table 2 in the Silverman retraction, but missing in the original figure 4, and 1129 only in figure 4 and missing in table 2? Maybe a typo and mixup between 1124 and 1129? But then again 1129 is negative and 1124 is positive.

Dr. Mikovits and the WPI published only VP62 sequences – even without Silverman

These are all the 27 sequences reported by Dr. Mikovits and the WPI since October 2009:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore?term=Whittemore%20AND%20Peterson

These are the 6 sequences reported between October 2009 and November 2009:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore?term=Mikovits

These are the 21 sequences reported by the WPI in June 2011 and August 2011:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore?term=Khaiboullina

These 21 sequences were done without the involvement of Dr. Silverman or his lab.

Go run BLAST on these 21 sequences for yourself:
http://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi?PAGE=Nucleotides&PROGRAM=blastn&QUERY=JF907634.1%0DJF950033.1%0DJF950034.1%0DJF950032.1%0DJF907648.1%0DJF907642.1%0DJF907639.1%0DJF907637.1%0DJF907635.1%0DJF907631.1%0DJF907647.1%0DJF907640.1%0DJF907638.1%0DJF907636.1%0DJF907632.1%0DJF907646.1%0DJF907644.1%0DJF907641.1%0DJF907633.1%0DJF907645.1%0DJF907643.1&DATABASE=nr&MEGABLAST=on&BLAST_PROGRAMS=megaBlast&LINK_LOC=nuccore&PAGE_TYPE=BlastSearch

For all practical purposes, these 21 sequences are identical both to VP62 and anything else reported by the WPI since October 2009.

There is no HGRV.

Even without Silverman, the WPI only published VP62.

A Short History of XMRV VP62 Plasmid

• XMRV was created by a chance contamination/recombination of two MLV-like retroviruses (preXMRV-1 and preXMRV-2). This happened in human cell lines that were cultured using mouse tissues, which expressed the MLVs as ERVs. This lead to the infection of the 22Rv1 cell line with XMRV (This created a virus capable of infecting human cell lines).
• 22Rv1, being a prostate cancer cell line, ended up in labs of people working on prostate cancer
• Somehow, the virus jumped from the 22Rv1 cell line to prostate cancer biopsy samples (Contamination of lab equipment?) in the Urisman et al. 2006 study
• Silverman's lab sequenced the viruses for Urisman et al. 2006. One sequence was VP62, which came from patient sample 62 (hence the name for "Virus from Patient sample 62").
• For research, Silverman's lab sequenced some of viruses (VP62, VP35, VP42) and turned VP62 into a plasmid, so people could work with it for research
• In March 2008 Silverman send XMRV VP62 plasmid to Dr. Mikovits at the WPI lab
• VP62 plasmid was used in Lombardi 2009 as a control
• Besides that, what else the XMRV VP62 plasmid was used for at the WPI remains unknown
• In the study Lombardi et al. 2009 (with Dr. Mikovits being the principal investigator of that study) XMRV was reported to have been found preferentially in patient samples
• For Lombardi et al. 2009 Dr. Silverman did test a few samples by PCR, while most of the PCR was done at WPI
• Only sequences closely related to VP62 were reported by the WPI both in Lombardi et al. 2009 and afterwards
• In September 2011 Silverman reported doing new tests and finding XMRV plasmid in the few samples he got from WPI for Lombardi et al. 2009

As a note: The sequence diversity reported by Urisman et al. 2006 (VP62, VP35, VP42) – for what is likely a lab contamination from cell lines – is far higher than the sequence diversity reported by Lombardi et al. 2009.

Cui Bono?

The following people have a patent on "DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OF DISEASES OR DISORDERS ASSOCIATED WITH XENOTROPIC MURINE LEUKEMIA VIRUS":

Mikovits, Judy A.
Lombardi, Vincent C.
Ruscetti, Sandra K.
Ruscetti, Francis W.

Please do note that the following person is not included:

Robert H. Silverman

And please note that the following people wrote the addendum, with the last person being the PI:

Judy A. Mikovits
Vincent C. Lombardi
…
Francis W. Ruscetti

Please do note that the following person is not included again:

Robert H. Silverman 

(via)

A prediction for 2012: Mikovits will try to throw Lipkin under the bus

She is just that kind of fun person.

Just look at who she has thrown under the bus: A post-doc at the WPI went under the bus for Judy, so did Robert Silverman, Vincent Lombardi and Annette Whittemore. Basically she threw the whole WPI under the bus. And that is just the people she directly worked with (and I am most certainly forgetting some). Not finding XMRV in your study? Under the bus you go! Suggesting that Dr. Mikovits checks for contamination? Under the bus you go!

And I do want to note that Konnie Knox was fired while Dr. Judy Mikovits was working on her XMRV VP62 plasmid thingy. And that Dr. Daniel Peterson left the WPI after Dr. Judy Mikovits has done the major part of her "research".

Update:

Judy Mikovits also asked me to go to the Applied Research Facility ("ARF" Building) and get all files, papers and documents on Dr. Dan Peterson. Dr. Mikovits stated that she believed Peterson had committed Medicare Fraud.

http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/268454/exh-2-reply-iso-motion-for-preliminary-injunction.pdf (via)

XMRV VP62 Mikovits Infographic

This is the most recent claim by Jamie Tunnel-Vision Confirmation-Bias Deckoff-Jones MD (a self identified friend of Dr. Judy Mikovits, whose old blog's comment section on occasion was a publication outlet of Dr. Mikovits):

We clearly are not treating one specific XMRV, at least not the chimera created in Dr. Silverman's lab in the process of looking for the one specific virus. From the studies to date, it does seem clear that VP62 or anything very close to that is not our problem.

It is unfortunate that Dr. Judy Mikovits does not publish these claims herself, so we will have to do with what Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD has to say in that matter.

And again, this is what the Lombardi et al study had to say, where Dr. Judy Mikovits was principal:

In all positive cases, the XMRV gag and env sequences were more than 99% similar to those previously reported for prostate tumor–associated strains of XMRV (VP62, VP35, and VP42) (fig. S1)

So to dispel any confusion, I created a little infographic, explaning the current Mikovits/XMRV/VP62 defense, as used by Jamie Deckoff-Jones MD:

So when the WPI published sequences in June and August 2011 without Silverman's involvement, they turned up to be still VP62 – go run BLAST on them for yourself.

Hope this clears up things a bit.