You all might remember, Judy Mikovits and Age of Autism contributor Ken Heckenlively, were releasing a book on 'their side' of the XMRV fiasco (the scientific side of the XMRV fiasco).
Plague: One Scientist’s Intrepid Search for the Truth about Human Retroviruses and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Autism, and Other Diseases
Yes, that is really the title.
Stop laughing.
*snicker*
Anyway, that book was supposed to be released May 6th, 2014. But that date got pushed back to the summer. And then to September. And now the date is October 7th.
I positively cannot take the anticipation.
Thankfully, they have released a couple of audio and video trailers:
Scroll down for audio-- PLAGUE: An Alliance of the Free Peoples of Middle Earth
Scroll down for audio-- PLAGUE: Tsunami Judy and the Liberation of Scientists.
Yes, those are really the titles of those audio files.
Yes, Kent and Judy compared themselves to Galileo and Darwin.
Ah, good ol 'Tsunami Judy'!
*rollseyes*
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Sad.
Especially in the damage done to research in the disease family loosely described as CFS, which seems to be a red-headed region in research.
Working with the vaccine phobia quackiverse is both a sign of mental illness and a contemptible thing for someone with actual knowledge of biology.
What would cause someone to go off the shallow end like that?
Spectator:
What would cause someone to go off the shallow end like that?
"I can't believe you like money too. We should hang out"
Just a natural meeting of minds I'd guess.
Amazing. I thought it was all over.
The bigger the fall, the bigger the cognitive dissonance.
Could of said sorry , made a mistake, but eventually the denial / embarrassing feedback loop creates almost a new reality for it all to make sense - a potentially career destroying negative becomes a new vocational positive - the entry into cranksville.
The effect on the CFS research scene on balance has been positive. It exposed and shut up some crazies - and also made some people turn and look at what was behind all this, and pulled some sensible people into the debate.
Quackery only thrives on genuine distress and ignorance - you meet an autistic child and it's obvious something is seriously amiss, and as a scientist you can't left the madness surrounding vaccines or even parental 'opinion ' cloud judgment. Same with CFS - quite a few objective people able to see past the quackiverse asked 'just who are these people ?''
I guess a major error in Nature is as bad as it can get - i'm sorry if that's the deep seated motivator. Or maybe as Aj says, you still gotta eat now though right !?
She's Back!!
Can't keep a discredited scientist down for long. It's like playing Whac-A-Mole!
https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=522…
Goddammit, Dan.
:-|
That 'Nova Publishers' looks rather infamous in its own right!
Whac-A-Mole, Whac-A-Mole!!
http://www.mecfsforums.com/index.php/topic,21221.30.html?PHPSESSID=sie9…
It is clear from the Phoenix rising posts of Prof Edwards that he has misunderstood the data and the review article. It saddens me that Phoenix Rising and the scientific community continue to harm the patient community not because of bad since but because of conflicts of interest and bias that prevents an open and honest look at all of the data. It is clear that Professor Edwards upon perusal of the review misunderstood the data
The use of the SFFV Env antibody biomarker of this patient population adds clarity to an extremely heterogeneous diagnosis. This monoclonal antibody assay is based on the reactivity of sera/plasma from humans to the envelope protein of spleen focus forming virus (SFFV). This assay was extensively characterized over two decades and reactivity was specifically competed by the monoclonal antibody 7C10 in a dose responsive manner as published in several studies, all reference in the review article. This antibody detects all know polytropic and xenotropic gamma retroviruses and does not detect beta retroviruses including HERVK.
This assay was used is at least five cohorts and more than 800 patients and controls: in the original XMRV paper published in Science, in prostate cancer patients, in patients from the BEll, Cheney, Gordon, Montoya, Kamaroff, Lo/Alter, Hemispherx, and Silverman/Klein prostate studies. The assay was validated in the Lipkin multi-center study to detect a reactivity which was clearly not XMRV Silverman/DeRisi as XMRV Silverman/Derisi was clearly shown not to have a natural history of infection in man (or any animal so far). We discussed in detail what that reactivity might be and suggested further study
Dr Goetz thesis project was to characterize the immune responses in all of the studies described. We did all of the profiling on the attached overview of my program, including: the viral microarrays, KIR/NK genotypes, (Dr Kerr was to do his gene expression profile), multiplex cytokine profiling in all samples over more than five years
All of the numbers are detailed in the more than one hundred references..
It is also clear from the extreme dysregulation of the innate immune response and the response of study participants to various therapies discussed in the review article that using this biomarker in order to personalize medicine for not only the ME/CFS community but across, diseases such as CLL, prostate cancer, breast cancer, Chronic Lyme disease and CRIS due to mold (in collaboration with Dr Shoemaker)
We know from decades of work in Cancer, HIV/AIDS and HTLV-1 associated neurodegenerative diseases and cancer the importance of stratifying heterogeneous patient populations
Dr Goetz work in a significant advance in our understanding of a subset of at least 30% of all patients with a diagnosis of ME/CFS and the most aggressive forms of prostate cancer
The work even suggests simple and inexpensive experiments for Investigators to conduct in the rituximab study. Not every patient with CLL, MCL or multiple myeloma is a candidate for Rituximab so way should anyone thing anyone with a diagnosis of exclusion would respond to any single therapy. Cancer and AIDS patients use cocktails
Like you, I want all patients to get the best diagnoses and treatments possible..these data give ME/CFS patients several avenues for safe and effective treatments and all should be lauding Drs Goetz, Deckoff-Jones and Ruscetti for their persistence in publishing these data. More than five years worth of work which otherwise would have been lost to the ME/CFS (and other patient communities) because of the mistake in the original XMRV prostate cancer research. So much knowledge was learned in those studies. I am proud of my association with these people of integrity, who at great personal expense honored their commitments to the public health.
I will post to the MAR consulting website all data and powerpoints we have presented in my studies of ME/CFS and would be happy as always to explain in detail any further question you may have