Movie Monday 6/6

Well, I am finally coming up for air after 10 days spent completely incapacitated.  Whew, this was a bad one.  As always with this particular type of crash, I ended up with a bad case of bronchitis.  I finally started to feel better this morning.  My oldest son, Jamie, says he is feeling a little better, too - he's been in bad shape for weeks now, probably a reaction to his Lyme/bartonella treatment.  So, we've had a rough time here.

My dad and his wife came to visit this weekend, but we were pretty dull!  Jamie and I were both stuck lying on the couch (we took turns), and we watched a lot of TV.  We did see a couple of movies to break the monotony:

• Saturday night, we all watched The Green Hornet.  I expected a typical superhero movie, but this was more of a comedy (Craig told me I should have known that since Seth Rogen is the star).  It was very silly and actually pretty funny.  Since laughs were just what we needed, we all enjoyed it.
• Craig went to the pool with a friend Sunday, and Jamie and I were still feeling awful, so we browsed through the On-Demand movie choices and watched The X-Files Movie with Jamie.  Ken and I have seen it (maybe twice) before - we were big X-Files fans - but Jamie has never seen the show or the movies.  We explained it was about two FBI agents investigating paranormal stuff, and his eyes lit up!  He liked it very much and is now looking forward to watching the old TV episodes this summer.
• With school winding down, the boys don't have as much work to do in the evenings (well, Jamie just hasn't had the energy for much work), so went back to the On-Demand movie menu last night and ended up watching Get Shorty with the boys.  Ken and I saw it years ago, but we enjoyed watching it again with the boys.  Craig thought it was a bit too complicated (which it is!), but Jamie loved it.  John Travolta is just so good in that role.  We'll have to rent Pulp Fiction for Jamie, too.  

Well, we probably won't be watching any more movies for a while.  The boys have final exams this week, and I need to make up for those 10 days spent in bed and on the couch.  We have very little time now to get ready for our upcoming vacation.  Busy, busy!  Of course, I will have to be careful not to get too active too soon.

Have you seen any good movies lately?

Science Requests Retraction of Original XMRV Paper

XMRV and CFS are once again being splashed across all the major news media this week, though this time it's a big step backward.

The editors of the magazine Science, which published the seminal XMRV paper in October 2009, have issued a request to the paper's authors that they retract the paper, in light of the negative XMRV studies that have been published lately.  This news, with a strong negative spin, has been reported in all the major news media, from NPR to the Wall Street Journal to Scientific American, plus in many local papers and news shows and as far away as Australia.  Here's a short summary from the New York Times.

Of course, Dr. Mikovitz of the Whittemore-Peterson Institute issued a response.  You can read it at the WPI website (click on the two documents posted on May 31, 2011).  She once again defends their original research, points out flaws in the contamination theories, and states that this action is premature.

I try to stay away from all the various conspiracy theories that tend to circulate around ME/CFS, but this request from Science is so ludicrous, so premature that it's hard not to think that someone really is out to get us.  Most  knowledgeable scientists (other than one or two on the fringe) agree that this subject is far from closed and that more research is needed.  In fact, a couple of huge, government-sponsored, multi-center studies are in progress right now.  Why on earth would anyone try to cut off debate right in the middle of all this?  It goes against all principles of scientific study.

Let's just hope that logic and science prevail, so we can get more data and more information before jumping to any conclusions.  Unfortunately, though, no matter what happens going forward, the damage has already been done with all of this negative media coverage, and we are once again in the position of defending ourselves and our right to full scientific investigation.