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Anthony Fauci was "surprised and disappointed" by last week's ruling against the mask mandate for travelers issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "This is a CDC issue," President Joe Biden's top medical adviser told CNN. "It should not have been a court issue." Fauci, who objects to federalism as well as judicial review, embodies the mild-mannered arrogance of technocrats who assume their scientific expertise trumps the rule of law. Because they believe they know what is best for us, they are dismayed by any attempt to limit their influence or restrain their power. Fauci did vaguely criticize...

First hydroxychloroquine, now ivermectin, is the hated deadly drug de jour, castigated by the medical establishment and regulatory authorities. Both drugs have been around for a long time as FDA-approved prescription medications. Yet now we are told they are as deadly as arsenic. As a physician, I am certainly aware of ivermectin but don’t recall ever writing a prescription for it in my 30+ years’ medical career. Ivermectin is an anthelmintic, meaning it cures parasitic infections. In my world of ophthalmology, it is used on occasion for rare parasitic or worm infections in the eye. Ivermectin was FDA approved in...

One whole endogenous retrovirus genome -- and bits of 17 others -- were spotted in a study of 2,500 human genomes... Nineteen new pieces of DNA -- left by viruses that first infected our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years ago -- have just been found, lurking between our own genes. And one stretch of newfound DNA, found in about 50 of the 2,500 people studied, contains an intact, full genetic recipe for an entire virus, say the scientists who published their findings today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Whether or not it can replicate, or...

A multi-center research team is now searching for evidence of murine gamma retroviruses or other viral involvement in 150 well-defined, geographically diverse chronic fatigue syndrome patient samples. The study, led by Columbia University’s “virus hunter,” Ian Lipkin, and sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) expects to have results some time in 2012. As Dr. Lipkin has suggested, CFS “smells like a viral disease,” and his lab will be using “next generation” genetic sequencing in the CFS study. (According to him, this technology has allowed identification of 500 new viruses so far.) Meanwhile, Both the Lo-Alter...

Dashing the hopes of many people with chronic fatigue syndrome, an eagerly awaited study coordinated by government health agencies has not confirmed a link between the illness and a virus called XMRV or others from the same class of mouse leukemia viruses. Two research groups had earlier reported an association between chronic fatigue syndrome and the group of viruses, known as murine leukemia viruses, or M.L.V.’s, raising hopes that a treatment or cure could be found. But later studies did not substantiate the link, and many researchers suggested that that the initial findings were the result of contamination of laboratory...

Molecular structure of retrovirus enzyme solved, doors open to new AIDS drug designGamers have solved the structure of a retrovirus enzyme whose configuration had stumped scientists for more than a decade. The gamers achieved their discovery by playing Foldit, an online game that allows players to collaborate and compete in predicting the structure of protein molecules. After scientists repeatedly failed to piece together the structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus, they called in the Foldit players. The scientists challenged the gamers to produce an accurate model of the enzyme. They did it in only three weeks. This...

Yesterday the Chicago Tribune published my reaction to the four papers on the retrovirus XMRV published this week in the journal Retrovirology. I was quoted as saying ”These four papers are probably the beginning of the end of XMRV and CFS”. I wish to retract this statement and explain my reasons for doing so. Upon re-reading three of the four Retrovirology papers it became clear to me that they show that identification of XMRV can be fraught with contamination problems, but they do not imply that previously published studies are compromised by these findings. Clearly any new studies done on...

Four papers published today in the journal Retrovirology—and a fifth one commenting on the papers—demonstrated how easy it is for mouse contamination to skew lab experiments involving the virus XMRV. But they are unlikely to resolve the debate over whether XMRV is linked to diseases like chronic fatigue syndrome or prostate cancer, especially since the authors of the papers disagree on the interpretation of their data. Greg J. Towers from University College London, a senior author of one of the papers, told the Health Blog that his group’s findings indicate that ”XMRV is not a human pathogen.” But John M....

An advisory committee to the federal Food and Drug Administration is recommending that people with chronic fatigue syndrome be barred from donating blood, amid concerns a retrovirus may be linked to the disease. The recommendation by the panel must now be reviewed by the FDA, which typically follows the advice of such panels but is not required to do so. An FDA spokeswoman said there was no timetable yet on a final decision. Judy Mikovits, who led the team of researchers that published the study in Science linking XMRV to chronic fatigue syndrome, said Tuesday's decision is a victory for...

Since a group of researchers published a paper in Science last year suggesting the retrovirus XMRV is linked to chronic fatigue syndrome, scientists have been debating the accuracy of that finding. Now a study designed to address that issue once and for all is moving forward. Clinicians who treat CFS patients, scientists and others convened recently in New York, where virus hunter Ian Lipkin is based. Lipkin was asked by NIH and NIAID to head up the study. At least three labs have agreed to test fresh blood samples for XMRV. Two labs, at FDA/NIH and the Whittemore-Peterson Institute, have...

Evolutionists have used shared mistakes in ‘junk DNA’ as ‘proof’ that humans and chimps have a common ancestor. However, if the similar sequences are functional, which they are progressively proving to be, their argument evaporates...

SUNY-Albany biologist Caro-Beth Stewart and NYU anthropologist Todd R. Disotell have proposed... that the ancestor of humans and the living African apes evolved in Eurasia, not Africa. This controversial new model for the evolution of humans and apes is the cover story of the July 30th issue of Current Biology. Stewart and Disotell describe their theory in an article entitled "Primate evolution -- in and out of Africa." ...The fossil record indicates that apes were present in Europe and Western Asia during the Miocene Era, from about 8 to 17 million years ago. Ancestors of these ape species must have...

Science Daily — Retroviruses have been around longer than humanity itself. In fact, the best-known family member, HIV, is a relative youngster, with its first known human infections occurring sometime in the mid-20th century. But although many retroviruses went extinct hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago, researchers studying the pathogens don’t use the traditional tools of paleontologists: They need look only as far as our own DNA. Retroviruses infect cells and replicate by inserting their DNA into their host cell’s genome. If that cell happens to be a germ cell, such as a sperm, an egg or their...

In a controversial study, researchers have resurrected a retrovirus that infected our ancestors millions of years ago and now sits frozen in the human genome. Published online by Genome Research this week, the study may shed new light on the history of these genomic intruders, as well as their role in tumors. Although this particular virus, dubbed Phoenix, is a wimpy one, some argue that resuscitating any ancient virus is inherently risky and that the study should have undergone stricter reviews. Retroviruses have the ability to make DNA copies of their RNA genomes and incorporate these into the host's genome....

BOSTON, Feb. 25 - American scientists said Friday that they had discovered two new human viruses in Africa that belong to the same family, retroviruses, as the virus that causes AIDS. So far, the scientists said, the new viruses have not been linked to any disease, but they are being monitored out of concern that they or similar retroviruses might conceivably spawn another epidemic. The viruses, found in rural Cameroon among people who hunt monkeys and other primates, were probably transmitted from the animals through blood from bites and scratches received in hunting, butchering and keeping the primates as pets,...

ATHENS, Ga. — Scientists in the past decade have discovered that remnants of ancient germ line infections called human endogenous retroviruses make up a substantial part of the human genome. Once thought to be merely "junk" DNA and inactive, many of these elements, in fact, perform functions in human cells.