Biotech Values

[bladerunner1717]

re: GERN

With all due respect jq1234 (and I mean that sincerely), it's you (and Feuerstein and Clark) who have mis-read the abstract. You may know the science, but you could use a course in reading comprehension.

When the abstract says The four (22%) CR patients experienced reversal of BM fibrosis and recovery of normal megakaryocyte morphology. , Feuerstein and you and Clark have made the (erroneous) assumption that these were the only criteria for concluding that there was a CR. In fact, that is clearly not the intent of the passage, although I will readily admit that it could and should have written in much clearer language. I believe that what Tefferi is saying is that there were four CR's that met ALL of the IWG requirements to be referred to as CR's. Once he used the term CR, it should have been clear--I had to re-read about a dozen times, so it obviously wasn't clear, because "close readings" are my specialty--that he was using the term CR to indicate that ALL the criteria laid by by his working group had been met. He then goes on to remind readers that two of those criteria are, in fact, "reversal of BM fibrosis and recovery of normal megakaryocyte morphology." At no point in the abstract does he state or even imply that those were the only two criteria for the CR's. He assumes that the reader knows that by calling the responses CR's, the reader knows that all the requirements to be called a CR, according to standards Tefferi wrote himself, have been met. Feuerstein erroneously assumes, in his zeal to trash the abstract for whatever reason, that the clinical response criteria, since they were not explicitly enumerated, have not been met. You and Clark picked up on Feuerstein and have repeated Feuerstein's mis-reading of the abstract.

Try reading the abstract again from the perspective that I have laid out and you'll see what I mean. Or maybe you won't, but that would be your problem.

If my interpretation is wrong, then you have to assume that Tefferi is deliberately misleading people. I choose not to believe that.

Bladerunner