Phoenix Rising: XMRV at the Tipping Point - A Tale of Two Conferences

[Cort Johnson]

Alot has happened since the last newsletter; the International XMRV Workshop -attended by none other than the NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins - who, apparently never does that. occurred. The XMRV news there was mixed - despite the presence (finally) of several positive studies, Dr. Coffin called the field a 'zone of chaos". A couple of weeks later Dr. Weiss published a paper suggesting that XMRV was just another of a long string of 'rumor viruses' that first appeared to be there and then they didn't.  The Weiss paper appears to have triggered a public discussion of the dangers of contamination - which ended being highlighted at the CFSAC research day. A couple of days later Dr. Mikovits put in a strong presentation pooh poohing any talk of contamination and quelling many fears.

So where are we now? God knows really but one place we actually are is, despite the chaos, is ever closer to the answer. In fact it could come sooner than we think with the Blood Working Group finishing up a good portion of its work shortly which should disentangle the tangled thread that has become XMRV.

Check all that out in  XMRV at the Tipping Point - A Tale of Two Conferences

There's more. A quite a bit of advocacy went on  in tandem with the CFSAC meeting in late Oct in Washington DC

• The Time for Action Campaign Update - The Next Step for the Patient Initiated Advocacy Campaign
• Business as Usual or TIme for a Change: the CFSAC Meeting Begins - The hopes for the federal advisory meeting on CFS
• Compadres in Scarcity: the Bottom of the Barrel at the NIH - check out our partners at the bottom of the barrel of the NIH

Of course there's always more XMRV

• Batter Up: the XMRV/MLV Debate - Alter/Lo Take on the Britsin a public battle over their paper
  
• What's Next for XMRV - looking ahead after the XMRV Workshop
• The XMRV Workshop: Lots of Questions and One Big Answer? - the big workshop, what did and didn't happen?
  

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Cort Johnson

Phoenix Rising  - An ME/CFS Website at http://aboutmecfs.org.
www.iGive.com/PhoenixRising

--
Cort Johnson

Phoenix Rising  - An ME/CFS Website at http://aboutmecfs.org.
www.iGive.com/PhoenixRising