First, there was this article from the WSJ on April 4th, which got through my 'has merit to post' filter. It discussed the isues surrounding blood safety and XMRV, and at the end, it discusses major objectives of the XMRV working group:
"The federal working group's project has three phases. First, labs at six participants—including the FDA, the National Cancer Institute, the CDC, and the Whittemore Peterson lab—are using a panel of blood samples to try to establish which of the labs' tests are sensitive and reliable enough to find XMRV in the blood. Results are expected in a few weeks.
In the second phase, also launched, a panel of around 350 different blood samples developed by Dr. Busch's team will be sent to four different labs. Some of the samples are from chronic fatigue patients known to have XMRV. Others from healthy donors have been spiked with the virus or have tested negative. All the samples are blinded, and the study will see whether the different labs can agree on XMRV positive status for chronic fatigue patients.
"There is a balance to what we are doing," says Simone A. Glynn, branch chief of transfusion medicine and cellular therapies at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute and chairperson of the XMRV working group. "You do not want to transfuse an infectious agent that causes problems. But you do not want to take blood out of the system that is not causing any problems."
A third phase may be launched later, using frozen specimens in federal repositories dating to the 1970s. These repositories link donors to recipients and will allow researchers to see if XMRV was transferred in transfusions and help determine prevalence in the past as well as today, as well as geographical clusters or associations with age and gender.
Now, there is this article from Cort of Phoenix Rising from April 9th:
XMRV’s Big Test Has Begun: The Fed Study Ramps Up
He details what is involved in those phases.
Halleluiah.
˙·٠•●♥ ƹ̵̡ӝ̵̨̄ʒ ♥●•٠·˙
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