Whittemore Peterson Institute
Throwing Down The Gauntlet
The rumor mill surrounding the XMRV pseudo-replication
studies can finally be put to rest.
Any further speculation
regarding the cohort used in the original studies, the methodology used
in replication attempts, and the efforts made by the WPI to supply
reagents and positive patient samples (which went unused) is pointless.
The line in the sand has been drawn.
Once
again, we need to support the science. Please take a moment and make
whatever donation you can to the WPI
Institute.
April 12,
2010
Dear Dr. McClure:
On behalf of the
Whittemore Peterson Institute in Reno, Nevada (“WPI”), I am writing you
today to ensure that there is direct communication between WPI and your
research team.
You may share this letter with others that you deem
appropriate, and I will do the same by sharing this letter with other
interested parties in both the United States and the United
Kingdom.
On January 6, 2010, you reported in PloS One that
you failed to detect xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus
(“XMRV”) in ME/CFS patient samples.
In that publication you reported
the following conclusion, “based on our molecular data, we do not share
the conviction that XMRV may be a contributory factor in the pathogenesis of
ME/CFS, at least in the U.K.”
You subsequently made the following
statement in your commentary regarding the Netherlands study in the BMJ,
“….van Kuppeveld and colleagues provide the additional information reported
at a conference last year that the patients in question came from an
outbreak of chronic fatigue syndrome at Incline Village on the northern
border of Lake Tahoe in the mid-1980s.”
This statement about the
origin of the 101 patient samples is untrue. The patients in the Science
study were well defined in the paper as having CFS by the Fukuda and
Canadian consensus definitions of ME/CFS.
More importantly the
patient samples did not come from the “Lake Tahoe outbreak” as you assert,
but rather from patients who had become ill while living in various
parts of the United States.
We would also like to report that WPI
researchers have previously detected XMRV in patient samples from both
Dr. Kerr’s and Dr. van Kuppeveld’s cohorts prior to the completion of their
own studies, as they requested.
We have email communication that
confirms both doctors were aware of these findings before publishing
their negative papers.
In addition, Dr. van Kuppeveld asked for and
received reagents and a positive patient sample to determine if his
testing procedures could in fact detect XMRV in a positive blood sample
before he published his paper. We wonder why these materials were not
used in his study which also failed to detect XMRV.
One might
begin to suspect that the discrepancy between our findings of XMRV in our
patient population and patients outside of the United States, from
several separate laboratories, are in part due to technical aspects of the
testing procedures.
To help identify the possible reasons for the
discrepancies in detection of XMRV, WPI would like to send you known
positive patient samples with controls, from the United States in an
appropriate number, along with WPI reagents, so that we can help you
determine whether your testing methodologies will accurately detect XMRV in
a clinical sample of blood.
In addition, WPI would be willing to
test a like number of samples from your patient cohort to see if our
researchers can detect XMRV in those samples.
This critical exercise
would help resolve the question of whether you are using all of the
appropriate techniques necessary to detect XMRV in a patient’s sample.
If your tests are able to detect XMRV correctly in the known
positives, then the debate can appropriately center on whether we can
identify the differences in the patient cohorts which have been the subject
of various studies.
It is in this systematic manner that we
all may help to move the science forward; instead of continuing to
debate whether or not ME/CFS patients in Europe are infected with
XMRV.
It is also important to note that our initial study was not
intended to prove causality of ME/CFS, but to report a significant
association between patients who had been diagnosed with ME/CFS and
XMRV.
We believe that there exists compelling evidence to
spur additional scientific review, especially in light of the fact that
our team of researchers also discovered XMRV in the blood of 3.7% of our non
contact controls.
I look forward to your timely
reply.
Sincerely,
Annette Whittemore
Founder and CEO
Whittemore Peterson
Institute