I enjoyed the pictures very much (looked like a birthday party for XMRV!) and the first part, before "First, do no Pharma", especially this blurb of how DeFreitas was taken out:
"Getting rid of DeFreitas in the early 90's, in fact, didn't take much hazing at all, but it did take a script that reads like a frat boy's excuse to show up late for his second semester classes. In fact, as Dr. Paul Cheney recounted on his blog, what it took to stop DeFreitas was about equal to the cost of two unpurchased plane tickets.
"Here's how Dr. Cheney told the story: after studying many ME/CFS patients in the 1980s, he had noticed unusual immune disturbances and contacted Elaine DeFreitas at the Wistar Institute, and she subsequently found retrovirus genes associated with ME/CFS. Her work was attacked by the CDC who failed to replicate her findings. DeFreitas felt they had manipulated the magnesium concentration and changed the primer stringency of her original study, thus skewing their results, and she suggested flying CDC scientists to Philadelphia to run assays alongside her in her lab so that they could make sure the procedure was done accurately. As Dr. Cheney's reported, the CDC rejected the offer due to “lack of funds to buy plane tickets” for a trip from Atlanta to Philly."
I'm reading Osler's Web - wish I had read it before. I started it once several years ago, did not get very far, and restarted a few days ago and can't put it down.
I do agree we've got to be vigilant = if those guys can ignore hard evidence for 20 years, there's nothing to stop them from keeping on doing it --
Mary
