CFS patients have been told for years that we should not give blood because the cause of the illness is unknown and any transmission concerns are still not answered. When the XMRV reports came out in October, CFS patients were given some hope that maybe, finally, the answer to our illness would be solved. But other XMRV studies have not shown to be present in CFS patients in other areas of the world through studies and now we are back to where we were before – still not knowing why we are so sick.
The Wall Street Journal has published an article on their website – Potential Risk to Blood Supply Probed – and it brings CFS back into the spotlight once again. Here is an excerpt from the article:
An infectious virus linked to two diseases is drawing the attention of public-health officials, who are investigating the potential threat to the nation’s blood supply. It isn’t clear if the virus, known as XMRV, poses a danger, and public-health officials say there isn’t evidence of spreading infection. But because of concern over the potential for widespread infection and preliminary evidence that XMRV is transmitted similarly to HIV, officials are quickly trying to determine if action is needed to protect the blood supply.
XMRV was discovered in 2006 when it was found in tumor samples from men with a rare form of familial prostate cancer. Research has also linked the virus to chronic fatigue syndrome and found it in measurable levels in the blood of healthy people. But the evidence isn’t conclusive, as several other studies failed to find XMRV in the blood of people with chronic fatigue syndrome, and it isn’t known how prevalent the virus is or whether it causes disease.
Groups funded by the NIH, FDA, CDC, Prevention, blood banks, academic institutes and advocacy groups are working on ways to develop effective tests for XMRV and determine the prevalence of the virus.
To read the entire article, click the source link below.
There are letters in the public from decades ago written by William Reeves of the CDC/CFS program telling patients NOT to donate blood as it is contaminated. Reeves KNEW there was someting in the blood and that it would contaminate the blood supply. Yet, for whatever reasons, he took the stance that CFS was a mental illness – but Reeves is a virologist NOT a psychiatrist. He even paid Emory Uni Mind-Body program to gin up studies showing that theose sick with CFS were mentally ill. Meanwhile, other studies done by major researchers (far better than those at the CDC) showed that those with CFS actually had less mental problems and were more adaptive than the rest of the population. Why has Reeves and the CDC damned the CFS sick by saying they are crazy? So that there would be no more funding for real physical research on CFS. Why? What is the CDC and US Federal health organizations hiding from the American Publlic? Time to find out.