Last week I attended the 30th annual meeting of the American Society for Virology in Minneapolis, Minnesota. During the morning symposia, which consist of formal 35-minute talks, I decided to post ongoing summaries of each talk on Twitter, a process known as ‘live tweeting’ or ‘live blogging’. Some individuals were skeptical about this activity, because …
What would you conclude if you read the following headlines: Man sexually transmits insect-borne disease to wife (Fox News); Zika virus: First insect borne STD? (HuffPo); Scientist gives insect-borne disease to wife during sex (New York Magazine), and A scientist contracts a mosquito-borne virus and gives it to his wife as std (Time). What would …
The press concludes that arboviruses can be sexually transmitted Read More »
Yesterday the Chicago Tribune published my reaction to the four papers on the retrovirus XMRV published this week in the journal Retrovirology. I was quoted as saying “These four papers are probably the beginning of the end of XMRV and CFS”. I wish to retract this statement and explain my reasons for doing so. Early Monday a …
Readers of this blog know that I embrace social media for teaching virology. My experience with two types of social media, blogging and podcasting, has been published as an Opinions piece by PLoS Pathogens (read the full text or download the pdf file). In this article I discuss how social media is becoming an increasingly …
John Coffin, Professor of Genetics and Molecular Microbiology at Tufts University, studies the molecular biology and evolution of retroviruses. He wrote a commentary (A new virus for old diseases?) that accompanied the publication by Lombardi and colleagues of the finding of the new retrovirus XMRV in patients with chronic fatigue syndrome, and has spoken widely …
How XMRV, the new human retrovirus associated with prostate cancer and chronic fatigue syndrome, might be transmitted among humans is unknown. The finding that the virus can be detected in prostate cancer cells, and in prostatic secretions of men with prostate cancer suggests that it could be sexually transmitted. To address this question, the presence …
