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A comment from a reader of my post, "Three Million Dollars," about the NIH's financial committment to XAND included this reference to her blog post, "Horror Statistics from the U.S. Government."

Howard Temin and David Baltimore received the 1975 Nobel Prize for discovery of reverse transcriptase, the enzyme that gives retroviruses their name. The reverse transcriptase assay is simple to perform and was widely known by microbiologists in 1985. So when Tahoe physicians called the CDC about an outbreak, the most reasonable response would have been to look for this enzyme in patient samples, if only because it makes this category of pathogen potentially the easiest to find.

After a quarter century of open ridicule we now learn that we may be the most abundant source of XMRV, and investigation of Tahoe samples was the best hope of early detection of this agent. (more…)

Was anyone else, like me, wondering how the little agency in Atlanta would handle the news on October 9, 2009 that revealed it to be both criminally incompetent and scientifically irrelevant?

For the moment, I’m using the word “criminal” informally; I don’t think we or they yet know for certain what is and is not prosecutable. I have no doubt it will be sorted out, and sooner rather than later. I’m guessing counsel for both CDC and NIH have been working overtime; the flop-sweat might actually be visible on some of those government brows in Washington next Thurdsay and Friday.

As for CDC, I think we can all agree how correct and perfectly appropriate—and smart—it would have been had the people responsible for the most horrific scientific gaffe of the century graciously retreated. Said NOTHING. Kept their heads down.

We might have savored the spectral silence of the lizard in retreat.

Not a chance. (more…)

For all those whose lives have been turned into living hell by their disability insurers; who have been "pauperized" by legal and medical costs as a result of fighting losing battles with disability insurers; who lost their health, then lost their house, trying to win disability benefits; who have felt their footing in life slipping away while their disability insurer waged war on them--take heart.

Something made stockholders start dumping UNUM shares at about 3 pm Wednesday afternoon. (more…)

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

Our Vietnam war is over. Our Guantanamo has closed. The world has flipped. It took one human generation, but it turned right side up today.

If you know what happened this afternoon, read on. If you don’t know, here is the link. Then, if you want to talk about it—if you are not too busy crying or screaming or calling your best friend or praying to your God or simply struck numb—come back here. (more…)

First, I must thank you from the bottom of my heart for all of the work you have done in the face of this illness (and continue to do). Your articulate, passionate
voice is one that can only resonate the way it does from the heart of experiencing this illness.

I just watched your speech from the recent conference in London for the second time. You set a wonderful context and template for the big question that has
underlain the whole "controversy" from day one: infectiousness.

I fell ill with this disease in 1988. I remember very well the discussions within my support group about how ME/CFS seemed to fit, like hand in glove, with the AIDS
epidemic unfolding at the same time. The specter of being treated in the barbarous manner that we witnessed early AIDS patients enduring frightened all of
us, a lot. I personally experienced a mother pulling her child away from me when I revealed that I had CFS. It was a horrible feeling - one of doubt and fear and rejection that I
will never forget. (more…)