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.
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