Regarding Lerner can someone confirm what exactly he did I don t have access to the full text so this analysis might be flawed but bear with me Searching on pubmed for cfs Valacyclovir brings up 2 results PMID 18019402 and PMID 12582420 One is an initial study and the other is a follow up Assuming they are talking about the same study which might be incorrect as I can t tell for sure it looks like Lerner has a very odd idea what placebo control means If you read the initial study you ll see that both the treatment AND control group received the treatment the difference was simply that one group had different infections It doesn t say it was double blind so presumably the patients were told which infections they had and this certainly can influence the results In the initial study he just talks about controls but in the follow up he says the study was blinded random placebo controlled trial You certainly couldn t call a study placebo controlled if you give the treatment to both groups So are these different studies Does anyone have the full text