Our Vietnam war is over. Our Guantanamo has closed. The world has flipped. It took one human generation, but it turned right side up today.
A nova has appeared in the constellation. We knew it would appear some day—but in our lifetimes? Many of us, having given up on recovery, had merely hoped we might live long enough to understand the scientific basis of our suffering. Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of us didn’t make it, or simply gave up. Between the time Dr. Judy Mikovits of the Whittemore Peterson Institute and her collaborators at the National Cancer Institute and the Cleveland Clinic submitted their paper to Science and today, we know at least one woman, the British citizen Pamela Weston, chose assisted suicide rather than go on; in the note she left behind she wrote that she hoped her choice would, in some part, move the UK medical research forward. Might Weston have hung on had she known about XMRV? We grieve for those who couldn't wait, couldn't hang on, and acknowledge their bravery. For the rest of us, this is a day to celebrate.
We don’t know for certain what is going to happen next. We only know—we must understand now—that some great piece of our suffering has ended.
A generation of quacks and sub-par investigators will be in retreat, as well. Let them pursue their study of "chronic fatigue sydnrome."
The real scientists have arrived and they'll be studying XMRV-associated neuro-immune disease, a.k.a., XAND.
Very cool name! Wonder how it's pronounced ...
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