This quote is from a recent USA Govt meeting

ME patients should have the same freedom to try medications that AIDS patients had in the early days. The AIDS patients became their own advocates because there was no one advocating for them. The same holds true for ME patients now. Patients are gravely ill, and they have the right to treatment. To say that they don’t—that’s what is medically indefensible

http://www.cfscentral.com/

Sadly, the author seems to be unaware of the substantial literature linking M.E. and CFS to viral infections. Many cases begn with a case of re-activated EBV. All three of the beta herpesviruses have been shown to be related to CFS (Fukuda, 1994) - see, for example, the work of Jose Montoya at Stanford. (That would be HHV-6, Variant A; HHV-7; and cytomegalovirus.) Both longstanding research on M.E. in the UK, and more recent research by John Chia in L.A., have found evidence of active Coxsackie B infections (a polio-related virus). There is also evidence of immune defects (for example, very low natural killer cell function and the presence of the defective 37kDa Rnase-L). Some patients have improved on Valcyte (oral gancyclovir) or Vistide; others have not. Many have documented improvement on the experimental immune modulator Ampligen. So while anti-retrovirals may not be the answer (at the moment), there is absolutely no excuse for there not being active efforts to find antivirals and immune drugs that can tackle the documented biomedical abnormalities in clearly defined subsets of patients with M.E. (Ramsay and WHO); CFS (Fukuda 1994), or ME/CFS (Canadian 2003).

I feel as though this article should be marked with 'this wiki entry is a stub'. It's so devoid of useful detail one wonders why it was written?

The picture is so much bigger - with so much science now focused on other likely potential viral and biological causes (mono, postpolio, lyme) couldn't the writer at least widen his lens and give the reader just a little more to enrich the debate?

Oh, yes, I forgot. It's not really a serious disease, it's 'just feeling a bit tired'. It couldn't possibly be in the blood supply.

No need to worry then.

Just a few points I'd like to clarify.

1. My scepticism isn't aimed at a possible viral cause for ME per se. I am reporting on the controversy surrounding the Mikovits study. Several other groups have concluded that XMRV does not correlate with ME and is therefore not responsible for the disease. (see, for an exampe, the weblink posted by Bryan above)

2. ME therefore remains a disease of unknown etiology (i.e. a cause is not known). Whether it would be ethical to conduct controlled clinical trials for anti-retroviral effect in light of the lack of evidence that it is a retrovirus that causes ME is debatable. It might be under debate by Ethics committees in one or more places even now, and sufferers might be enthusiastic to sign up for such trials. However, antiretrovirals can have side effects (see for example http://www.avert.org/aids-drug-side-effects.htm), so if ME has no relationship to a retroviral infection should sufferers be exposed to such a risk?

3. The point is that when we do not know the causes of a disease we are prone to speculate and risk taking actions that are not going to help. We need to find actual causes of disease. Sometimes it is not easy and the current controversy around XMRV demonstrates the challenges in identifying causes.

M.E. actually means "Inflammation of the brain". That is, in plain English, the meaning of Myalgic Encephalomyeltis.
Why therefore do newspapers (and the New Stateman) always say "chronic fatigue syndrome" as if it's a valid, alternative name for M.E? It isn't. CFS ( or CFS-forward slash-ME) is the term psychiatrists have made up to promote an imaginary illness which has nothing do with M.E.