In one of the most bruising science debacles of the decade, researchers hoped to track down the cause of chronic fatigue syndrome—but ended up studying an artifact created in the lab.
"ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS MIKOVITS DID was to employ a microarray—a small tray seeded with DNA from nearly every known virus—to flag viral DNA in human white blood cells. When Mikovits used the microarray to study CFS patients, she “saw all these infections—lots of chronic, active infections—cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, human herpes six,” she says. It looked like an acquired immune deficiency syndrome, “like an AIDS patient,” with a weakened immune system enabling opportunistic infections to take root. The question was, why did they have chronic immune dysfunction?"
http://discovermagazine.com/
