Does a Mother's Denial = a Daughter's Death?
Nick Gillespie | October 3, 2005, 11:04am
On September 24, the LA Times ran a story titled "A Mother's Denial, a Daughter's Death," which detailed a controversy surrounding the death this spring of the daughter of the prominent "AIDS dissident" Christine Maggiore. (AIDS dissidents question the link between HIV and AIDS, arguing that the former is not necessarily the cause--and certainly not the sole cause--of the latter.)
Despite its news format, the Times' story essentially argued that three-year-old child, Eliza Jane Scovill, not only died of "AIDS-related pneumonia" but that Maggiore acted negligently as a parent. She had not had the child tested for HIV, reported the Times, and various doctors had not been as conscientious as they should have been in treating the girl; the LAPD is investigating Maggiore and her husband for "possible child endangerment." However, some new information from the mother raises questions about the Times' account.
From the Times' story:
Mainstream AIDS organizations, medical experts and ethicists, long confounded and distressed by this small but outspoken dissident movement, say Eliza Jane's death crystallizes their fears. The dissenters' message, they say, is not just wrong, it's deadly.
"This was a preventable death," said Dr. James Oleske, a New Jersey physician who never examined Eliza Jane but has treated hundreds of HIV-positive children. "I can tell you without any doubt that, at the outset of her illness, if she was appropriately evaluated, she would have been appropriately treated. She would not have died.
"You can't write a more sad and tragic story," Oleske said.
Whole thing here.
Maggiore, who has been HIV positive since 1992, is the founder of Alive and Well, a dissident group. She famously has refused to take any sort of anti-HIV drugs; both her husband, Robin Scovill, and her other child (a 7-year-old boy) have consistently tested negative for HIV. The daughter's HIV status is apparently unknown. Maggiore never had her tested and the LA Times doesn't mention it (though one would assume it would be part of the coroner's special report, which was released on September 15 and was the newshook for the story).
At the science blog Dean's World, Maggiore has posted two letters. The first is a short letter to the Times (conforming to the paper's limit of 150 words); the second is a longer version. According to Maggiore, her daughter did not have pneumonia and an autopsy performed in May resulted in a finding of "no apparent cause of death." From one of the letters:
On her last doctor visit, Eliza-Jane had no cough or respiratory congestion. After collapsing the next day following antibiotic administration, ER doctors performed a series of chest Xrays that revealed nothing. After careful examination of her lungs during a May autopsy, the coroner found no apparent cause of death.
One month and no cause later, the coroner's office called her pediatrician demanding to know if he knew about my book and HIV status. Despite their discovery, it took three more months for the coroner to decide my daughter died of AIDS-pneumonia.
Is Eliza-Jane's a diagnosis by association? Unlike her father and brother, did she actually test HIV positive?...
More here. Given the way the Times' story is framed, you would have thought that'd be one of the first things the paper reported. Maggiore is apparently pursuing an independent pathology report, which should at least settle that very basic question. And, depending on the results, may create more interest in the debate over whether HIV causes AIDS.
Two recent books of interest on this general topic: When AIDS Began: San Francisco and the Making of an Epidemic, by Michelle Cochrane. It's a cultural studies examination of the very first cases of what became known as AIDS and is a fascinating account of how medicine and politics interact in the codification of new diseases. And Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, by Harvey Bialy. Bialy, founder of the journal Nature Biotechnology and a well-known researcher in his own right, is one of the leading AIDS dissidents and he has written a strange but interesting book about the cancer researcher Duesberg, whose research career pretty much flatlined after he began arguing that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. The interesting thing is that Duesberg's rep is making a comeback in cancer research.
Back in 1994, in an article cowritten by, among others, a Nobel Prize winning chemist (Kary Mullis) and an Intelligent Design-promoting law prof (Phillip Johnson), Reason asked "What Causes AIDS?" That story is online here; and voluminous responses to it are here.
Leo | October 3, 2005, 1:31pm | #
Mr. Lapite,
It is you who should be ashamed of yourself.
What kind of libertarian is incapable of examining facts, or would condemn another for posting facts as they emerge in a developing story? All you have done is to create a new embarassing low for your ilk, and demonstrate that your mind shuts down when you are confronted by facts that mitigate your blind hatred of HIV skeptics. Instead you wave a pitchfork at Nick Gillespie for acting as a journalist should.
Mr. Gillspie's relayed Ms. Maggiore's first hand information about the facts that are known and those that are not known about her daughter's cause of death. To wit: ELIZA JANE SCOVILL WHO COLLAPSED FOLLOWING ANTIBIOTIC ADMINSITRATION, SHOWED CLEAR LUNGS THROUGHOUT HER EXAMINATIONS BY THREE DOCTORS AND THE CORONOER OF THE FIRST AUTOPSY FOUND "NO APPARENT CAUSE OF DEATH."
Four months later, a second coroner puts "AIDS related pneumonia," as the cause of death, which is an impossibility with clear lungs. If he meant PCP pneumonia, that is a disease that takes a long time to manifest and cannot occur in the presence of clear lungs.
On May 29, Robin Scovill was told that the "common," and "obvious" had been ruled out as causes of death and that they would now have to turn to investigations of chemical, toxins, or poisons. The symptoms of "AIDS," Scovill was told, would absolutely have fallen under "obvious," because they "are so obvious."
Robin and Charlie (Eliza Jane's brother) are HIV negative. There is no evidence as yet suggesting that Eliza Jane was HIV positive. This information has not been revealed. Maggiore's letter asks: "Unlike her father and brother, did she actually test HIV positive?" and alluded to having to "wait for the conclusion of an independent investigation."
If you don't think all of this merits journalistic scrutiny of any kind than you are an ideological blind man.
Nick Gillespie is a journalist and editor. In this country we don't tend to attack journalists and editors for doing their job--probing stories.
He said nothing about what the "truth" might be but only REPORTED a recent development in which the mother spoke, having already been tried and sentenced by the LA Times. The mother speaking apparently was too much for you. That you have no empathy or decency is clear. That you know nothing about the word "liberty" is also clear. And what you think a good "libertarian" might be is something too frightening to contemplate.
"Better to carve suns and moons on the joints of crosses," as the Czeslaw Milosz poem says, "...to implore protection against the mute and treacherous might, than to proclaim, as you did, an inhuman thing."
Leo | October 3, 2005, 5:04pm | #
DEAR AML:
It is true that xrays can be deceptive with PCP but the illness is virtually always diagnosably with lung biopsy. More germaine here is the fact that PCP is symptomatic and not asymptomatic. It has clear signs. The text below is cut and pasted from none other than GMHC's website:
Who is at risk for PCP?
Although PCP is largely preventable and treatable, it remains one of the leading causes of illness and death in people with HIV. Because some people with HIV are more at risk of developing PCP than others, it is strongly recommended that the following people with HIV take medication to prevent PCP:
People who have T-cell counts below 200;
People who have oral thrush or unexplained fevers lasting more than two weeks, whether or not their T-cell counts below 200;
People who have had PCP before, no matter their current T-cell count.
What are the signs and symptoms of PCP?
In people with HIV, it is common for the symptoms of PCP to develop slowly, so that you may not realize something is wrong until you are quite sick. Also, many of the symptoms of PCP can be mistaken for many other infections.
Fever, chest tightness, shortness of breath, lack of energy, dry cough and weight loss are all possible signs of PCP. Weakness may be the only symptom if you are taking medication to prevent PCP. Talk to your doctor right away if you have any of these symptoms.
(Note: Eliza Jane apparently had none of these symptoms, but rather, a runny nose, and an ear infection. Nor did she have the blue lips always associated with pneumonia.)
Back to GMHC text:
How does a doctor tell if I have PCP?
The doctor will usually order a chest x-ray if she suspects that you have PCP. However, it is common for people with HIV to have PCP but not have it show up on their chest x-ray, especially when the illness is caught early.
In order to make a definitive diagnosis of PCP, your doctor needs to find P. carinii in the lungs and examine it under a microscope. This can be done by (1) taking a sputum sample (thick fluid from deep in the lungs); (2) doing a procedure called a bronchoscopy that looks at the lung area with a lens attached to a tube; or (3) doing a procedure called a lung biopsy which takes a sample of the tissue in the lungs to test for infection.
--
According to her mother, Eliza Jane showed no clear signs of pneumonia and certainly not advanced pneumonia. I don't know what she died of and neither do you. The LA Times omitted the crystal of questions and mysteries around her death and presented it as fact that she died of "AIDS related pneumonia," when in fact the original coroner's report found nothing of the kind. Does the ghost manifestation of AIDS related pneumonia extend its invisibility to include no damage to the lungs at autopsy?
I repeat here a line from Maggiore's letter:
"After being transported to a nearby hospital by ambulance, emergency room doctors took a series of chest x-rays that revealed nothing to account for her dire condition. ...During an autopsy performed on May 18, my daughters lungs were carefully examined, weighed and measured. The coroner released her body to a mortuary the following day having found no apparent cause of death."
The point is that questions remain. Is it your contention that there are no legitimate questions here?
Leo | October 3, 2005, 7:52pm | #
There is no argument that "AIDS is fake," Dave, but rather that is is grossly mis-characterized and the statistical projections for it hallucinatory.
The trouble is that dozens of clinical symptoms of illness and/or immune suppression were assigned to "AIDS" (post 1984) in the presence of proteins said to be strictly associated with a novel retrovirus. (HIV positive)
On the land continent of Africa, the population has grown by 164 million since the mid 1980s.
There have continued to be mass deaths also on the continent of Africa. Many of the diseases formerly called by other names have been called "AIDS" in Africa since the phenomenon of post-modern AIDS epidemiology. No HIV test is required for a diagnosis of AIDS in Africa but rather a defintion that is indistinguishable from most tropical disease definitions, such as malaria, TB etc. The defintion for "AIDS" in Africa, established in Bangui in the 1980s, is merely this: Diarrhea, fever, vomiting, weight loss, abdominal pain.
The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that proper death statistics are non existent or scant in most African countries. It is then further compounded by the fact that most African nations are ruled by despotic governments, prone to corruption and all too willing to open their coffers to "AIDS" and pharmaceutical funding, and to render their people subject to the exploding market of human experimentation.
If you wish to abide by the racist, unfounded and even preposterous idea that African sex somehow (via "dry sex" etc) produces an epidemic spread of HIV, which has not been seen in any industrialized nation, you are welcome to it.
Western data (Padian and others) states that it takes on average 1000 unprotected sexual encounters for a single transmission of HIV to occur--this despite the fact that in Padian's famous study, in fact, NO transmission occurred, despite unprotected sex over a period of 10 years, in 175 discordant couples.
Since you seem to feel you know so much about Africa, can you shed light on how such a discrepancy is possible?
South African writer Rian Malan began his inquiry standing firmly in your ill informed spot, and spent a year investigating the many questions raised by Thabo Mbeki's AIDS panel. His story in Rolling Stone, in 2001, wound up incredulously, nervously, but firmly on the side of the "skeptics." He is a very good and very honest reporter. He found death and he found old diseases but he found no NEW inexplicable rise in death in South Africa due to "AIDS." Among other revelations, coffin makers were complaining of having no business.
If I were you I would steer clear of Africa, because you are likely to get blown out of the water by people who have actually investigated the matter.
Paul | October 3, 2005, 8:05pm | #
Is There Evidence AIDS is Sexually Transmitted?
David Rasnick, Visiting Scientist, UC Berkeley
rasnick@mindspring.com
January 20, 2003
I challenge [doctors] to come up with the names, even one will do, of the persons documented to have shown that AIDS or HIV is sexually transmitted. I know of no such study.
In fact, the scientific, medical literature is full of evidence that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted. It is only assumed that they are.
The results of the world's best scientific study that attempted to measure the efficiency of heterosexual transmission of antibodies to HIV was conducted by Nancy Padian and her colleagues (Padian NS, et al. 1997: Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus in northern California: results from a ten-year study. Am J Epidemiol 146: 350-7).
The most striking result of the ten-year study is that Padian et al. did not observe any HIV-negative sex partners becoming
HIV-positive from years of unprotected sexual intercourse with their HIV-positive partners. I repeat?NOT ONE HIV-negative sex partner became positive during the 10- year study. Therefore, the observed transmission efficiency was ZERO.
However, to avoid reporting a zero efficiency for the sexual transmission of HIV, Padian and colleagues assumed that the
HIV-positive sex partners in their study must have become positive through sexual intercourse before entering the study. Using that assumption, they estimated that an HIV-negative woman would have to have sexual intercourse 1,000
times with HIV-positive men before becoming HIV-positive herself. Even more astounding, HIV-negative men would have to have 8000 sexual contacts before becoming HIV-positive.
Virtually identical figures have been reported by others (Gisselquist, D., et al., HIV infections in sub- Saharan Africa not explained by sexual or vertical transmission. Int J STD AIDS, 2002. 13: p. 657-666; Jacquez, J.A., et al., Role of the primary infection in epidemics of HIV infection in gay cohorts. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr, 1994. 7: p.1169-1184).
Given these figures and that the US Centers for Disease Control estimates that one million Americans have antibodies to HIV raises an enormous problem for sexually transmitted HIV. Since there are around 280 million men and women in the USA, that means that on average an HIV-negative woman would have to have random sexual intercourse 140,000 times?and a man eight times that number?in order to become HIV-positive (assuming equal distribution of HIV between the sexes).
Below are additional examples in the literature that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted.
- None of the husbands of HIV positive women became antibody positive to HIV over a three-year period. (Lancet ii: 581 (1985), Stewart et al.}
- No transmission of HIV was observed between couples in which all of the women were HIV positive and in which at least 100 sexual contacts occurred. (JAMA 259: 3037 (1988), Padian et al.)
- After a mean of 3-1/2 years of unprotected intercourse, with an average of 50 sexual encounters per year, only one hemophiliac wife became HIV positive. (American Journal of Medicine 85: 472 (1988), Kim et al.)
- No transmission of T-cell abnormalities from hemophiliacs with AIDS to their spouses. (JAMA 251: 1450 (1984), Kreiss et al.)
- "The number of American and European heterosexuals who have had sexual relations with a prostitute, who have no other
admitted risk factors (such as drug abuse), and who have subsequently developed antibody to HIV can be
counted on the fingers of one hand. Sex with a prostitute is not even listed as a risk category by the American CDC." (Rethinking AIDS, Root-Bernstein, 1993)
- "Non-drug abusing prostitutes have no higher risk of AIDS than other women." (AIDS: the second decade, report from the
National Academy of Sciences USA, 1990)
The same is true for prostitutes in Germany, Zurich, Vienna, London, Paris, Pardenone (Italy), and Athens. (Klinische
Wochenschrift 65: 287 (1987), Luthy et al.; Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 98: 697 (1986), Kopp & Dangl-Erlach; Lancet ii: 1424 (1985), Brenky-Fandeux & Fribourg-Blanc; British Medical Journal 297: 1585 (1988), Day et al.; Scand J Infect Dis 21: 353 (1988), Hyams et al.)
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Recommend Message 3 of 19 in Discussion
From: Paul King Sent: 3/24/2004 8:37 PM
If AIDS is sexually transmitted how can one explain these figures: -
AIDS CASES IN 2001
http://www.avert.org/eurosum.htm
France 1528
Holland (legal prostitution) 45
Sweden (legal prostitution/very sexually liberated) 42
Denmark (as above) 74
These current statistics hardly suggest a link between AIDS and sexual activity.
....so does that mean that people in France are less likely to use condoms than in Holland, Denmark and Sweden?
Actually the EXACT REVERSE IS TRUE.
Durex study: -
[url]http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/10198/96961[/url]
"The number 2 country in the Durex survey (amount of sexual activity) is the Netherlands, where people say they have sex 158 times a year, followed by Denmark at 152. The average among all the countries is 139, with the USA falling just short at 138.
While people are still underprotecting themselves from sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancies, according to the Durex Global Sex Survey, the French are the least likely to have had unprotected sex. Just 22 percent said they have not used protection, compared to 61 percent in Sweden who did not...(and so on and so forth)
George Quasha | October 3, 2005, 11:51pm | #
The following review of Bialy's book,
Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg, appears on Amazon. I believe it is worth a wider audience.
-------------------------------------------
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
Duesberg's Huxley, September 10, 2004
Reviewer: William Breeze (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
Bialy does for Duesberg what T.H. Huxley did for Darwin, by taking up the cudgels for a fellow scientist and his thinking. Employing deft characterizations and a mordant wit (to which he occasionally gives free rein with delightful effect), he provides an incisive understanding of the scientific and social issues behind cancer genetics and AIDS research. Written from the unique vantages of a longtime friend and colleague, and from within the hallowed precincts of the world's oldest continually published scientific periodical, Nature, the book gives a real "inside analysis" of biomedical science since the advent of the modern biotechnologies. The book is elegantly composed and has an overall sonata allegro form, with the first and last chapters developing the various themes of cancer genetics and the middle three featuring the story of HIV and its relationship to AIDS. The first person style, and the clear but rigorous scientific history that it relates, make it both accessible and enjoyable to the general reader. It is guaranteed to provoke a few smiles and many grimaces from the stalwarts of HIV and oncogene (cancer gene) theory.
Bialy is a molecular biologist who was involved in the genesis of biotechnology as the founding scientific editor of the most prominent journal in the field (Nature Biotechnology). His literary talent allows him to guide the reader through a gradual exposition of the scientific issues while telling the cautionary tale of Duesberg's courageous struggle to restore objectivity, fairness and intellectual integrity to cancer and AIDS research. It shows just how vulnerable the great tradition of hypothesis, experiment, proof, peer review and publication can be to manipulation by vested interests, media, and government institutions with public health party lines. When these close ranks they wield a formidable, monolithic power that can dictate the way science is allowed to proceed. Pit against this a scientist at the top of his field who commits the unforgivable 'sin' of challenging an orthodoxy he himself was critical in establishing, and the predictable outcome is marginalization, ridicule and out-of-hand dismissal. Duesberg suffered all of this. Yet he continued, in an amazingly dogged way as the reader learns, to apply the high standards of scientific proof that had made him so famous, feared and respected in the intellectual salad days of molecular biology. These are the elements of a classic heroic tale, but rather than portray Duesberg as a white knight, Bialy more interestingly and accurately doesn't portray him at all. Instead he presents the unadulterated thinking of this immensely reasonable, patient and persistent scientist, who is if anything an anti-hero. The plot, accordingly, is not that of an epic but of a dark mystery -- the central one, left unsolved and for the astonished reader to ponder, being "why?" The book reveals "how," "what" and "who" in a way that I found irresistible.
Whilst Peter Duesberg's rethinking of AIDS dogma has not as yet become even semi-respectable (although this book could help change that if enough people actually read it), the book's final chapters show how his two decades of criticism of qualitative oncogene theory led him to his now well-recognized quantitative aneuploidy (numerical chromosomal abnormalities) theory of cancer causation.
CML | October 3, 2005, 11:51pm | #
Wow, the nutcases (aka Paul and Leo) are out in force tonight. Certainly I had thought that the transmission of the HIV virus through sexual contact was as well established as, say, evolutionary theory.
But it seems that there are nuts in every tree, evolutionary or otherwise. I was a little surprised to see Nancy Padian of UCSF in Rasnick's above list of quoted papers, considering how much work she's done in the field of male/female transmission of HIV and the prevention thereof. Obviously, if she'd read her own work, she would realize that she was wasting her time.
Looking more closely at the reference, though, I found no mention of her name on the paper. Rather, it was by JA Levy and called "The transmission of AIDS: the case of the infected cell." That's Jay A Levy. The man who in a a recent interview called the cervix a "hot spot" for HIV infection, and initially proposed the idea of using diaphragmns to prevent infection in women back in 1989. Obviously, he, too, needs a refresher on his own work. Or, at least, on the art of selective quotation.
I don't have access to the medical library from home, but so far, his references aren't looking very well-cited or convincing.
Then there's all this schtick about how HIV is defined differently in Africa, can't prove it's actually HIV, could just be diarrhea from eating a bad oyster, blah blah blah.
Of course diseases are diagnosed differently in different circumstances. HIV antibody testing and CD4 counts aren't commonly available or affordable in many places, so a syndrome with a high probability of being HIV is diagnosded instead. This is an acceptable practice here in the US as well. If I see a seven year old kid with dew-drop on a rose-petal lesions on his skin than began on his trunk and spread to his extremities, I don't need to check his serum for Varicella Zoster to diagnose the chicken pox.
Likewise, a young man with unexplained weight loss, night sweats, shortness of breath, rectal condyloma, diarrhea and a rash on his foot that looks like a peach soaked onto brown paper has AIDS. The CD4 counts simply confirms the finding.
I'm certain that there are misdiagnoses in Africa. Hodgkin's lymphoma, for example, might be a mimic, as might other infections. But properly applied, a syndromic diagnosis is extremely effective, and in the case of Africa, is well-supported by serological evidence.
Not that I'm going to convince anyone determined to deny our modern viral holocaust, or fixated with the religion of the Almighty Conspiracy, but there are certain absurdities that must be challenged. Lives, quite literally, depend on them.
So, back under your rocks, mon cher wackos. This is, after all, _Reason_.
Chris | October 4, 2005, 10:25pm | #
Dear Over the Rainbow (and all ather interested parties),
In February 1999 I was diagnosed HIV+. I poisoned myself twice a day with toxic "medication" for 22 months until I decided to stop. I subsequently began reading up on the proper science that had been hidden from me by the mainstream media and medical world. It was Christine Maggiore's book "What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong" that initially got my attention, but I promise you I didn't stop there. After all, who wants to be wrong about something like that. Even staring at all this factual information contained in these "dissident" books and websites, acutely aware the whole time of how they legitimately chipped away at the validity of the mainstream info I'd believed for years, was no immediate match for the deep programming I'd experienced. It took me three years before I was able to completely renounce my life-threatening and debilitating fear that I was living with a wildly replicating viral monster in my blood. Those of us who have lived through this very unique kind of psychological terrorism, spawned by a grievous combination of greed and mass hysteria, are eternally grateful to those who have been brave enough to support us, Christine Maggiore among them.
But I am also grateful to people like you who provided me with comfort when I was completely immersed in my terror and didn't know where to turn. All of you people that walked or ran or biked or sang or danced for AIDS awareness, or who volunteered in any capacity. I thank you. It was not in vain. You showed the world compassion for an ostracized community and offered love and support to people stricken with shame and fear.
This "dissident" movement is only asking everyone to become a little more well-informed. There is so much information out there that once absorbed will cause you to question what you've been told to believe. All you have to do is read it. A great place to start is www.aliveandwell.org. From there you will find all kinds of links.
It's been 6 1/2 years since my HIV diagnosis and I'm healthier than I've ever been with no meds. But there are many others who live as I do who were diagnosed 10, 15, 20+ years ago. We're all over the world. We're living proof. Hear what we have to say. We're not making anything up.
"...in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation." - Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"
Sheikh Somali | October 4, 2005, 11:58pm | #
Wayne may claim to be a South African, but his hysterical bombaste reveals his woeful ignorance of his country's own recent history
Whenever we discuss AIDS cases or "AIDS deaths" in South Africa, let's remember that any comparative statistical analysis designed to show which illnesses now afflict South Africans and which ones formerly were the causes of death must be acutely sensitive to how the definition of what constituted "South Africa" dramatically changed between 1989 and 1999.
Do you recall that, right Wayne?
You see, in 1989, South Africa was said, according to the official terminology, to have a total population of about 21 million.
But this figure consciously excluded the 6.1 million Africans who lived in the so-called TBVC states (Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei), which comprised 100,000 square kilometers.
Furthermore, "South Africa" as defined in 1989 excluded another 8.2 million people who lived in the six "self-governing territories" (SGTs) that comprised a further 67,000 square kilometers.
The overwhelming majority of these 14.3 million Africans living in those fragmented territories were the most obvious victims of apartheid.
The huge rural slums of the TBVC countries were "urban" with respect to population density but "rural" with regard to the absence of proper infrastructure or services, especially in terms of public health.
The famous 1989 study by Wilson and Ramphele, *Uprooting Poverty: The South African Challenge* analyzed the depths of poverty which were caused by "insufficient labor, insufficient capital and the high risk of much toil yielding little fruit."
In many cases, they explained that Africans were "too poor to farm; they cannot afford protective fencing or even to buy seed and fertilizer. Tractors may be too expensive to hire and oxen to weak to plough."
The statistical reporting for any aspect of health, employment and living conditions among those 14.3 million Africans was fragmented and systematically evasive.
No one disputes that mortality and morbidity rates were far higher in the TBVC countries and the SGTs than in the rest of "South Africa."
People in those areas suffered from much greater rates of protein anemia, malaria, tuberculosis, cholera and dysentery, and life expectancy was much lower there than in the rest of "South Africa," as defined in 1989.
Can you see what happened when the vital statistics on those 14.3 million people (who now number at least 17 million) were added for inclusion in post-apartheid, unitary South Africa?
Today, the impoverished inhabitants of those former rural slums are citizens of a single South Africa. Still following the thread, Wayne?
Their inclusion in public health statistics reveals much about the harmful living conditions that long prevailed in the TBVC and SGT areas under the apartheid regime, without any regard for the transmissibility of some mutant retrovirus from the Congolese rainforest or the aberrant or risky sexual behavior of truck drivers, prostitutes, or anyone else for that matter in South Africa.
As a frequent visitor and field researcher in northern Somalia (Somaliland), central Ethiopia, Swaziland, and all over South Africa, I can assure Wayne that the most sexual active and most overtly promiscuous people I ever saw in the continent were the trendy, upscale white folks at Camps Bay, Seapoint, and Umhlanga.
And those are the very LAST places one ever sees any cases of so-called AIDS.
Ever wonder why Wayne? Pssst.......I'll let you (and you alone) in on a little secret......... AIDS cases have nothing whatsoever to do with sexual activity. Mum's the word, Wayne. Don't tell a soul.
You'll destabilize an entire cottage industry if you do.
Barbar | October 5, 2005, 1:41am | #
It's not the people who question "any facet" of the HIV paradigm.
Read Wayne's post above, and then note Leo's ridiculous reply, which essentially is an acknowledgment that he is incapable of having a discussion, but he's pretty sure that somebody else could. Strong words coming from someone who had earlier said:
"If I were you I would steer clear of Africa, because you are likely to get blown out of the water by people who have actually investigated the matter."
Then enter Sheikh Somali, who cuts and pastes from the link I provided above, adding a few spontaneous twists like changing "The 1989 study" to "The famous 1989 study," wording which in itself indicates a steaming load of crap is coming. Not that I'm accusing Sheikh Somali of plagiarism; he may very well be "three-time Fulbright scholar" Charles Geshekter (sorry, I was looking for a CV but all I could find was repeated references to the three Fulbright scholarships for this PhD at Cal State University).
Sheikh Somali's post just reeks of BS; its total informational content is "here are big numbers and famous studies and are you smart enough to keep up I hope you are."
So what did I mean by "F-ing nutjobs"? I mean the people for whom being "skeptical" and "dissident" mean never being convinced by any argument presented towards you (in fact, never showing any inclination to take such arguments seriously) while being wholly convinced by any "argument" that seems to support your main idea, no matter how flimsy. You know, stuff like "Well I don't know anything about science, but it's quite apparent to me that CD4 tests are just a ridiculous fiction perpetrated by the medical community, and I just know the numerous references available on the Internet that refute that idea must be fraudulent." This is nutjob behavior, and it seriously distresses me that so many people are taken in by it.
It's good to be skeptical. The scientific consensus is sometimes wrong.
But if you don't listen to and engage with the replies to your skeptical questions, I'm sorry, this is not "brave," this is "stupid."
And it can cap itself off in a woman REFUSING to have her daughter tested for HIV in the name of skepticism. Does that make any sense? She didn't question SOME FACET of the HIV-AIDS paradigm; she refused to think that any of it could be true, and her child wound up dead.
Leo | October 5, 2005, 6:26am | #
Wayne,
I am delighted that you wrote in, and will do my best to address your pyramid of arguments one brick at a time, but wanted to first hear from native South Africans.
There are many statements you made that do not make sense to me, but let me begin with what I can decipher:
1. I do not live in South Africa and you do. This is correct. I have however traveled extensively in West, central, east, and south Africa and collected perspectives from many people working directly with HIV/AIDS. I stay in touch with South African sources on an almost daily basis to keep my information up to date.
2. Your first point is: "...deaths in hospitals reported from secondary infections have spiked. The South African law allows families to refuse to disclose the real cause of death (to prevent intimidation and discrimination) and they choose to do so with AIDS."
3. What do you mean? Infections secondary to what? Are you saying these are "AIDS" deaths or are you saying these are deaths from non-AIDS infections?
The latter part of your point here seems to support what I said: You are providing yet another scenario whereby the clinical definition of AIDS in South Africa, in this case post-mortem, is obscured. This is exactly my point. That people are dying is not in question. What of?
Deaths from what is now called AIDS were epidemic indeed during Apartheid.
How about this, from the Archives of Race Relations in Johannesburg:
"In the years 1964-65, 50% of black babies were dead before the age of five." The causes are poverty: Fever, diarrhea, pneumonia, and so forth.
FIFTY PERCENT BEFORE THE AGE OF FIVE.
You state that Rian Malan "is a crackpot," that he is "not respected whatsoever here," and that he "lines up with nutters who believe the Earth is hollow.."
I will try to contact Mr. Malan and see if it is true that he believes the earth is hollow, and/or has friends or sources who believe that. If he has not gone on record with this, then you owe this forum a retraction and Mr. Malan an apology. You should take greater care with your statements and your words if you wish to be taken seriously.
I will have to scan the South African literary and journalistic landscape to check the veracity of your statement that Malan--one of South Africa's most famous writers, has no credibility left due to his trenchant pieces analysing wild and wooly South African AIDS figures.
Can we agree that accuracy is a positive and not a negative? Even in HIV/AIDS figures?
As for "large numbers of companies," "trying" to provide ARVs to their collapsing workforces--I can scarcely imagine what your point is. Has Thabo Mbeki thwarted this benevolent gesture too? I know as well as you do that ARVs are available to any South African that WANTS to take them. I have a recent figure, from a study, that would give you pause if anything gave you pause: Guess what number of South Africans (in this study) who were told offered ARVs, actually wanted them?
0.6 %
Would you like the citation?
Lastly, the accusation that I personally have caused an increase in death and a decrease to South African "economic growth" due to my inquiries on this REASON thread, speaks for itself. It speaks to the hysterical, zombified, wild-eyed quality of all South African AIDS professionals who would like to persuade the world that there are no real questions here, only brain fungus, madness, flat-earthism, and homicidal intentions. It won't fly anymore. Nobody believes your posture anymore. We'd like to hear from some black South Africans, as a matter of fact--those who re-elected President Mbeki and comprise as you are well aware about 90% of your nation's population.
Do you really think I need a "moral justification" to analyze death statistics from South Africa? From who, from you?
Your most telling line was the one about the spike in suicide rates among those you have deprived of all hope to live, with your AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, death-drums. You have deprived black, poor South Africans of any hope of survival, as well as saddled them, on no evidence, with the guilt of their sickness. You have had the nerve to tell them that they are dying because they had sex. Or is it "dry" sex, or "rough" sex, or perhaps just "too much" sex.
Have you no sense of decency?
Lastly, what IS your explanation for the lack of HIV's spread in any Western nation vs its supposed wildwire spread across the sexes in South Afica? I'd love to hear it.
Anthony Brink | October 5, 2005, 6:27am | #
I refer to the frothy post of one Wayne, who I’m embarrassed to see is a fellow South African. He appears to be an uneducated person.
I can confirm, however, that his sort of talk is fairly typical of white South Africans whose opinions are derived from what they see on television and read in the newspapers.
He talks of ‘people infected with the HIV virus’. Does he mean HIV-positive? Because oddly enough none of the antibody test kit manufacturers suggest the one means the other.
Would it be a lucky guess, that in referring to ‘people infected with the HIV virus’, Wayne is referring to black people? I also live in South Africa, and believe me, when people like Wayne wring their hands over AIDS everywhere, they always mean disease-ridden blacks. Who got themselves sick because they screw around more than whites. (Not because of their miserable living conditions, in hopeless rural backwaters or peri-urban slums.) Indeed, one of our country’s top ‘AIDS experts’, Professor Jerry Coovadia (a South African Indian) said this out loud on 24 June 2003 in his acceptance speech at the University of the Witwatersrand on being awarded an honorary doctorate for being such a clever ‘AIDS expert’: ‘As we stagger under the massive weight of AIDS’, it is the ‘unbridled sexuality ... of newly independent people ... especially the promiscuity of men’ that has led to ‘AIDS ... ripping through millions of our people’. (In the parlance of South African ‘AIDS experts’ ‘our people’ is always a sympathetic reference to blacks.) Supreme Court of Appeal judge Edwin Cameron thinks and talks the same way. In an interview published in the Daily Dispatch on 13 November 2001, he was asked how he managed ‘as a white gay person [to] confront the issue of risk behaviour among heterosexuals [sex without a condom] without being accused of bias’. He replied evasively: ‘It’s the one issue I can’t tackle directly.’ But then he blurted it out: ‘Instead I talk about how promiscuity in the gay community contributed to its spread [a baseless canard] and that gives me the opening to ask, ‘Do you think sexual practice among African men has contributed?’
Bar a handful of gay men, who’ve bought into the scam for an array of psychological reasons that I examine in my book in depth, since these guys drive the AIDS hysteria in our country, there is no AIDS among whites, South African Indians or ‘coloured’ people – certainly none to be seen on any scale worth mentioning. In South Africa, the AIDS industry locates ‘AIDS’ among blacks. It’s blacks who are spreading AIDS. It’s blacks who have to be helped. (By Wayne’s ‘relatives’.)
What I find interesting is that whites seeing scary sexually transmitted diseases among blacks is nothing new. I’ve performed a close study of ‘syphilis’ in Africa, which I’ve written up for my new book, and the parallels are striking. Especially the need to burn it out with strong chemicals.
What’s ‘full-blown AIDS’? It’s a dramatic expression that rolls nicely off the tongue, but it’s perfectly vacant. As Luc Montagnier, the alleged discoverer of ‘the HIV virus’, no less, has pointed out: ‘AIDS has no particular symptoms’.
As for the effect of ‘AIDS’ on industry in South Africa, Minister of Trade and Industry Alec Irwin confirmed on the morning radio show AM Live on 19 April 2002: ‘There is no definite concrete evidence’ that AIDS is having any impact on industry at all. Commenting on statistics just released predicting a massive reduction in the workforce, Irwin pointed out, quite correctly, that the numbers were just ‘projections based on models’. Asked after the weekend on the same show for his response, Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi, was full of talk about the ‘epidemic’ and the spectre of everyone dropping down dead as the ‘AIDS experts’ were predicting, but had to agree: ‘There is no indication that there is a large number of workers dying.’
From his agitated, indignant tone, I suggest that what Wayne needs to do is pour a nice brandy and coke and go off and relax with a copy of You magazine. There he can read Pieter Dirk Uys calling President Mbeki a murderer.
He wouldn’t want to go anywhere near Rian Malan’s timeless investigation of the white South African psyche, My Traitor’s Heart. That would be a too ‘nuanced’.
ANTHONY BRINK
www.tig.org.za
Wayne | October 5, 2005, 10:18am | #
First off, Anthony Brink, why don't you bother to visit the Treatment Action Campagin's webiste at http://www.tac.org.za/ and explain why your site and your claims conflict so badly with their reported statistics. Further, please explain why the construction industry is reporting the high absenteeism rates it is and why Anglo American, Goldfields and other mining companies are specifically offering free ARV's.
Secondly, if you're ashamed to be a fellow South African with me while spouting your stance - Good! I'm not the one whose stance will cause millions to die.
Thirdly, your opinions mirror that exactly of the South African Libertarian Society dissidents, and whom I have disagreed vehemently with despite my own libertarian stances. Indeed, what I'm picking up are allusions that trade unions are evil and because COSATU is involved it's all lies. Rubbish - if you really are on the path of truth you would realise that that involves consideration of all views.
If your accusation is that I'm then an idiotic YOU magazine reader when measured against my visits to the Jo'burg Hospital, the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital along with a brother, sister and two cousins who practice in the medical profession then why don't you and the others above drop the Strawman arguments. It is utterly unbelievable that you actively flout your connection to the disgraced Rath Foundation who was the same one who delayed the rollout of ARV's and other medication by influecing Thabo Mbeki and Manto-Tshabala Msimang.
And didn't you neglect to mention some Leo. Namely that the South African Government's provisional budget for ARV's is only R6 billion and that can only support roughly 50,000 to 60,000 people who require ARV's - hence where you get your bogus 0.6% figure. They can't have it because there's none available! Hospitals and pharmacies are repeatedly reporting stockouts of such drugs even while state hospitals are enduring substantial thefts of such drugs that are then sold at premiums on the black markets.
It's hugely ironic then that where libertarians regard the free market as the indicator of real values you are also so intent on ignoring that factor as well. The high premium on such drugs even in the face of legislation to try limit the prices thereon is a pivotal indicator of real South African feelings. White South Africans may be able to afford the premium but blacks can't. Who's the racist now?
Sheikh Somali, PSST, here's a little secret of my own you should consider- what the hell do sixteen plus year old statistics and tomfoolary about the Bantustans have to do with this when one can strip their effect out and still get the same result?
I know fully well that they were reincorporated into RSA and their mention proves nothing. The trend data showing declines in average lifespans to under fifty since 1994, population growth rates that have turned negative even while there has been a decade of real increases in spending on health by the central and provicial governments. Why then do the stats for the former Bantustans also show declining lifespans and population growth over the same period?
Further still, how dare you try play the race card? The majority of racist white South Africans actually actively support your stance because they want black South Africans to die and they know your HIV-denial stance is blatantly wrong. They regularly remark at dinner parties "Oh, good. That means there will be less blacks around and it'll be better for us (whites)." It is amusing that your tacit supporters include the AWB and far right groups who view AIDS as 'the way the Lord will purge Africa'. Sleep well with that knowledge in your head, unless you already do.
As for secondary infection, well Leo. How about you consider your little claim about TB above and thank you for proving my case. That is exactly an example firstly of what most victims families prefer the death certificates to say as the cause of the death. Further, many rural clinics are not sufficiently resourced or staffed with skilled nurses to be able to properly assess the cause of death. The result supplied is usually the apparent or secondary infection is what is written on the death certificates - leading to botched and bogus statistics.
This has created untold quandries for doctors where an abusive male partner dies of AIDS and his family legally bar his wife from being told of the cause. Several months later the wife is dead from another opportunist disease and the children orphaned. I'm amazed that no one here is even prepared to contemplate the paternalistic patterns locally that prejudice women rights and encourage discrimination of those infected with AIDS - hence the masking of true statistics as many hide their HIV+ status.
Speaking of those children, please explain why we now have over a million AIDS orphans who, if they are lucky, are cared for by struggling grandparents? If so called poverty or poor conditions are the real cause of AIDS why are the vast majority of deaths in the 'physically and medically strong' 20 to 40 year old age group while the 'weaker' young and elderly or decrepit are the ones that survive or mysteriously linger on when the so-called airy fairy notion of poverty or disease should claim them? This also comes when clinics in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal alone are reporting sometimes near 50% infection rates amongst pregnant mothers at the same time of rising death rates and infant mortality. Why is there such a strong correlation?
Indeed, why was the average lifespan of South Africans rising and then took a turn for the worse at the arrival of HIV and AIDS locally even while electrification and the supply of water to the poor has been undertaken on such a massive scale. Projects that are meant to be linked to increasing lifespans and reductions in poverty.
So Leo, how about this for an explanation. It is spread through unprotected sexual contact, the use of drugs and such implements as needles, the transmission of infected blood and the late Apartheid Government's own rubbish medical literature tempering into the AIDS dissident endorsed views of Manto-Tshabala Msimang and Thabo Mbeki. All of which have to do with lack of education and rubbish religious conservative views of abstinence instead of protection. It is ironic then that when spending on AIDS, ARV's, condoms and education has increased lately the rate of infection has slowed. The failure of South Africa is the fruit of your own stance, not the mainstream.
In conclusion I don't expect to convince the bunch of you denialists otherwise but I am incredibly disgusted by your poor conclusions and your Chomsky like reasoning. You spout your views when most of you merely sit behind a computer or book and readily page to that text which supports your views without any proper consulation, consideration or interrogation of the facts that suggest otherwise. This comes from a 'an important person most people don't know or care about and who has not real qualifications said so therefore it's true', 'a 1989 statistics said x therefore abc is true', etc.
I'm pretty sure most of you are actually psychologically predisposed to believing that what you are writing or advocating is true or just and that the other side is wrong, but then so did Stalin. As he also famously remarked 'when one person dies it is a tragedy, when one dies it is a statistic'. Ironically it is your love of such statistics of body counts that is the main rational for supporting your views in your own heads.
And let me add that if I have merely distracted you long enough from spouting or propogating your rubbish elsewhere or I've convinced one person here otherwise and maybe affirmed another reader's sane view on AIDS I feel I've done my job. I can't convince you but others should see the facts that need to be stacked up against yours and they can make up their minds independently.
Sheikh Somali | October 5, 2005, 10:36am | #
The edgy, name-calling villifications from Wayne's World merely confirm anew the seething, raging angst that infests AIDS dogmatists like him.
They are the true fanatics who won't change their minds and they won't change the subject.
One only has to read the accounts by British historian Richard Evans about the London trial of Holocaust Denier David Irving to see how perfectly the Church of AIDS Orthodoxy uses and accepts the methods of the real denialists.
While the AIDS Orthodoxy bitterly demonizes its critics as “Holocaust Deniers,” the work of Cambridge University historian Richard Evans has made it clear that the faux methods, distortions of evidence, and numerous anomalies in the AIDS orthodoxy’s method so closely and eerily resemble that of the Holocaust deniers [cited in D.D. Guttenpan, “The Holocaust on Trial,” Atlantic, February 2000, pp. 64-65]
Listen up Wayne.......
“Penetrating beneath the confident surface of his [David Irving] prose quickly revealed a mass of distortion and manipulation….a simple knotted web of distortions, suppressions and manipulations became evident in every single instance which we have examined….I was not prepared for the sheer depths of duplicity….this dishonesty permeated his entire spoken and written output….it is as all-pervasive….his numerous mistakes and egregious errors are not, therefore, due to mere ignorance or sloppiness: on the contrary, it is obvious that they are calculated and deliberate. That is precisely why they are so shocking….Irving has relied in the past, and continues to rely in the present, on the fact that his readers and listeners, reviewers and interviewers lack either the time, or the expertise, to probe deeply enough into the sources he uses for his work to uncover the distortions, suppressions and manipulations to which he has subjected them.”
You are vexed and infuriated Wayne, because people like Brink, Leo, and others have taken the time to investigate the flaws, anomalies, errors, faux predictions, and inconsistencies in the anti-science of AIDS Orthodoxy and are now rubbing your true believer's nose in it.
If I were you (God forbid!), I would be enraged and flabbergasted too.
So your flailings and bombastic charges have a certain, uh, charm to them......rather like those in the medical profession who, 25 years ago, reacted furiously to the calm, reasonable suggestions of Aussies Barry Marshall and Robin Warren.........
Remember them?
Hanna | October 6, 2005, 3:52pm | #
The chances of Christine Maggiore conceding that her daughter had HIV, PCP or AIDS is EXACTLY ZERO.
The position of the denialist is one of blind obstinacy. It doesn't matter how many ostensibly healthy young men and women land in the hospital with a fatal illness that only presents to severely immune compromised individuals, they'll offer a hundred alternative ideas about how it happened.
Alison Gertz is a classic example of HIV=AIDS. At the age of 23, the affluent young woman (who was not a drug user) experiences fever and a tightness in her chest and after a lung biopsy, PCP was found. I CHALLENGE ANYONE to come up with a young HIV negative individual not taking immunosuppressive drugs (organ recipients) or suffering from cancer who has developed PCP, PML, CMV Retinitis. But I won't hold my breath!
Two things are exceedingly telling of Christine Maggiore's story. #1 - she was supposedly a loving, caring parent who raised her children with whole, organic foods, without vaccinations and without the use of those "evil" antibiotics. Meanwhile, the child winds up dead from PCP. Hmm.....
#2 - Maggiore has endlessly repeated that western medicine is toxic and that her children are raised in a healthy atmosphere, where they're not exposed to such things as antibiotics. So what in the hell would ever make her give such a "toxin" like Amoxicillin to her child? I mean, she's a pretty tough chick who doesn't take any shit from anyone and never caved to the pressure of taking antivirals during pregnancy or bottle feeding to avoid passing on HIV to her children BUT we're expected to believe that Eliza Jane had a runny nose and some fluid in her ear and that caused Maggiore to feed her child what she considers to be poison?!
Come on folks! Smell the coffee already! The reason she caved in and fed Eliza Jane antibiotics is because Eliza Jane was a hell of a lot more ill than Christine lets on. This was an illness she knew she wasn't just going to hum away during yoga and meditation.
And lastly, one very ironic aspect of Maggiore's utter and complete bullshit is how she picks and choses scientific facts, according to what's most beneficial at any given time. Maggiore's every other word is Duesberg (Dr. Duesberg) regarding HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Yet Maggiore also states - ad nauseam - that HIV has never been proven to exist in the first place. Meanwhile, Duesberg states emphatically THAT HIV DOES EXIST. He believes it's a harmless retrovirus but he states that the evidence for HIV is actually better than the evidence for almost every single retrovirus ever discovered. Duesberg states that HIV has been cloned and isolated, photographed and documented - and its existence is absolutely irrefutable. (feel free to visit his website where he goes into this at length)
So, I don't know why it matters what the coroner said. Every single physician on the planet could state that Eliza Jane died from PCP and Maggiore's God could land on her doorstep telling her that Eliza Jane's HIV infection caused her immunodeficiency and her death and Maggiore would STILL deny it.
That's who Christine is - a lying, twisting, ignorant, self-righteous, murdering denier. To expect closure after the death of Eliza Jane on this matter is to expect a level of humility not worthy of her.
AL | October 7, 2005, 2:12am | #
Well, Hanna, that series of insults seems a little excessive, and it spoils what is otherwise an excellent virtue of your post, which is that it shows a working mind, which is somewhat rare on the side you are supporting.
Why don't you grant Christine Maggiore her due, which is that she developed her position from challenging claptrap and thinking for herself, which is exactly what you are doing on the opposite side? In this you both share the same rare virtue, the ability to think for yourself!
However, if you will allow me to say so without flying into a furious attack on my motivations, character, intelligence etc, you and the people on your side suffer from a certain handicap here, which is that you are not yet fully informed as to the best material on the other side of the argument.
I am not saying this is in any way your fault, even though I doubt that you have looked into it very far, given your impressive confidence in the status quo. The other side is not one which is typically aired in the magazines, newspapers and even medical and scientific journals dealing with AIDS.
In fact, just reading through this comment thread it is easy to see that virtually no one here who supports HIV=AIDS as an unquestionable truth is familiar with even the existence of the now very substantial, intensely peer reviewed scientific literature beginning in 1987 which says that the idea is a crock, to use a blunt term.
The fact is that the series of very finely argued and fully referenced (using mainstream journal papers) review articles by Peter Duesberg and other very good scientists in the leading journals in science (Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academy, etc) utterly refute this theory and damn it as pure nonsense.
They do this on the "overwhelming" evidence that the supporters provide (never including any paper proving or even explaining how it happens that HIV caues AIDS, by the way), and they have continued since 1987 without interruption dealing with the supposed new evidence and claims as they come up without ever being refuted in the same journals.
That's right, the articles reviewing and rejecting the idea that HIV causes AIDS in the top literature have never been answered in the same journals in peer-reviewed articles, as would happen if there was anything scientifically valid to be said in its defense.
Think about this for a minute. Peer review, meaning the testing of a submitted article by handing it over for criticism to scientists of good standing in the field, is the gold standard of science. If an article passes peer review then it can be published as valid by the editors of a journal. In the case of Duesberg's articles, it was even a more severe test than normal. The number of reviewers chosen was often more than usual, and they were always stalwart supporters of the theory he was exploding, and naturally hostile to what he wrote and extremely determined to find fault with it and reject it.
The editors, also, were extremely anxious to cover their own backsides and make sure they were not accused of printing articles which could later be attacked as faulty and perhaps "dangerous", in that they might mislead people into sex without condoms, a favorite reason defenders like to use as argument why criticism of HIV=AIDS should be banned. (Ever asked yourself why people argue that a scientific claim that is valid shouldn't be examined?)
Thus, the fact that the very hostile expert reviewers were unable to prove these many anti-HIV articles were faulty and prevent their publication tells you something. These reviews which reject HIV=AIDS are therefore in fact the best scientific literature on the topic, and THEY are the establishment opinion in science, NOT the theory HIV=AIDS, which misrepresents what is going on in true science by claiming in public, ie outside the reach of peer review, the exact opposite.
The last one was published in 2003 in the Journal of Biosciences of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and is definitive in its answer to every single question raised in this thread. It can esily be found at http://www.duesberg.com and anyone interested can read it for themslves.
The only reason we have this wrong and a false impression rules, is that the error and the scientists who promote it have the enthusiastic support of the politicians, science reporters (rarely do they question any source in high position), health officials, medical authorities, ex-presidents, Hollywood actors, ordinary scientists and doctors, AIDS activists, drug companies and everybody else who never reads the review literature and trusts what the few scientists at the top of AIDS have led them to believe. In other words, politics supports it, not science.
These scientists have their own peer-reviewed literature of course, tens of thousands of AIDS papers which have been reviewed uncritically by friendly peers and all of which just assume HIV leads to AIDS, as a premise.
Not one of them addresses the question with research (try getting funds for that!), not one proves it or even explains how it could possibly happen that a virus type (retrovirus) that has never otherwise caused any problem for humans (pace Bob Gallo!) is suddenly killing them.
To fathom all this you just have to stop reading newspapers while assuming that their reports are soundly based and they interpret events correctly. You have to go and check out the scientific literature, or at least find out what is going on behind the scenes by reading books such as Peter Duesberg's "Inventing the AIDS Virus", Harvey Bialy's "Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: The Life and Times of Peter Duesberg", Serge Lang's "Challenges" and Gordon Moran's "Silencing Scientists and Other Scholars".
Duesberg's book is the easiest to read, though Bialy's and Lang's are the most stunning in their factual revelations of misbehavior by scientists who use politics to push unwanted reviews like Duesberg's under the carpet. Criticizing a scientist's theory is like insulting his wife. He is unlikely to invite you home to dinner.
Given the fact that you are such a perceptive critic of some of the human weaknesses shown in poor Christine's performance, including inconsistency in choosing establishment medicine when she had so long rejected it for her child, perhaps in panic or simply because administering amoxicillin is such standard practice in child ear infections, you are probably already instinctively familiar with some of the things you will find out.
You know them already, if you are a thinker. One is that scientists are like other humans, and tend to be driven by self interest, money and fame if they are not the strictly vocational type. And so are those officials, activists etc, who are not truly the idealists they profess to be.
In other words, like anyone else in the academy, scientists on top of the hill tend to try and kick back down the hill anyone who is trying to overturn them and the pet theory that they have long taught and in which they have invested their pride and career.
But you knew that, right? It applies of course to everyone in the field who has long believed and taught the error that HIV = AIDS, over the 21 years where that idea has escaped the continuing peer review that lies unread in the top scientific literature, and which condemns it as scientific nonsense.
That the press has been so misled by the top scientists in AIDS and by the officials that partner them only shows how incompetent reporters are at even thinking of challenging what scientists tell them. Indeed in the familiar modern manner of sucking up to their sources reporters and editors actively join them in bullying reviewers like Duesberg who threaten the status quo. Just as their followers on this thread bully and insult the questioners.
These underresearched and uncritical journalists are the people who are most to blame for misleading people like yourself, intelligent readers, into thinking that HIV=AIDS "denialists" are "lying, twisting, ignorant, self-righteous, murdering deniers" as you put it, rather than people who are simply questioning it and following the guidance of the best scientific literature on the topic.
The important point is that NO ONE READS THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. Even most scientists just ask their colleague Bill in the field of AIDS what he thinks, and if Bill says the challenge is poppycock, and of course HIV causes AIDS, that's enough for him.
Let me give you an example, which can be read in full at a newsblog I am writing which ridicules this behavior (http://www.newaidsreview.com/). Recently I checked out the scientific literature on the sexual transmission of HIV, and found that the mainstream journals contain at least 20 easily found articles which state that it is 1 in a 1000. In other words, it takes an average of 1000 copulations for man to transfer HIV positivity to a woman.
In other words, papers clearly visible in recent mainstream journals on AIDS state that the rate of heterosexual transmission of HIV is so extraordinarily low that a heterosexual epidemic, let alone a global pandemic, is utterly impossible. Yet billions are to be poured into sending drugs into underdeveloped countries on this premise.
Maybe the editors of the New York Times should be forced to read the scientific review literature, or at least one or two of the books mentioned above, before they indulge their happy and comfortable confidence in their fellow elites in science and medicine and repeat their AIDS mantra in every piece they publish, "HIV, the virus that causes AIDS".
And maybe we should be grateful to the few journalists such as Rian Malan, the South African novelist who merely told the truth as he saw it with his own eyes (and found that South Africa death statistics utterly failed to show any untoward bulge reflecting any new AIDS epidemic), and Celia Farber of New York City who does likewise in spite of being trashed endlessly by the HIV activists that she has now proved are overwhelmingly funded by the drug companies with a stake in the current belief.
But most of all we should be grateful to the lay people such as Christine Maggiore who somehow manage to think for themselves despite the huge pressure of their doctors' opinions, and the whole weight of the medical and scientific establishment, against them. Especially in their most vulnerable moment, when they are tested supposedly positive for HIV (did you know that HIV proponents have spent years denying that she really was HIV positive, to account for the fact that she is healthy?).
Come to think of it, we should thank people like science editor Harvey Bialy, who see fit to write about the scientific truth and what is in the literature even though they are editing a very establishment journal (Nature Biotechnology), and then write a book exposing what has really happened in science politics to send the whole vast world of AIDS rushing down a dead end where patients get killed instead of cured (check out the actual results achieved by the new cocktails).
What is saddest in all of this is that people such as yourself should use their sharp wits to defend a belief which has been exploded in the scientific literature for 19 years, but which you have been misled by bad reporting and unscrupulous authorities into believing is a pillar of modern science.
As I say, I have been writing a blog review of the news in this area of science and related topics at http://www.NewAIDSreview.com which ridicules the scientists in AIDS and their unfounded nonsense since April, and I find the most discouraging thing is this very tendency of sharp witted people such as yourself to defend the conventional wisdom too quickly.
This seems odd to me, even though I know that part of it is a faith in good established science and medicine. I would have thought that it was at least obvious that honesty and truth would tend to be on the side of the questioners of a paradigm who persevere with such a vast weight of reflex scorn directed against them and who are made to suffer so for their different opinion. Certainly all the money and power flows to those who support HIV=AIDS, and none that I know of goes to those who point out it has been rejected by science. No one has made any money questioning HIV/AIDS, to my knowledge. Countless people have made their careers going along with it.
I am sad to say that I think this is what accounts for the lack of curiosity on the part of editors and journalists in this matter. I hope that Nick Gillespie's natural skepticism follows up on this thread, rather than fades away under the distasteful influence of the shouts of "I am cancelling my subscription" (no truthseekers there!). If there is any arena where reason and skepticism of government influence should be applied, it is this.
Reporters in medicine and science know what side their bread is buttered. You don't get Pulitzers for showing that HIV=AIDS is science derailed, in fact, you are lucky if you get a review of any kind. Look at Bialy's bombshell of a book, which is languishing ignored even though it is the science book of the year for truthseekers in science. For $20 you can find out precisely what is going on offstage in science, if you can survive the very expert scientific discussion to enjoy the political stories.
But maybe the underresearched journalists and reporters who don't take the lid of HIV/AIDS science are just dumb. After all, there is nothing more ignorant and foolish than the Los Angeles Time's coverage which Nick Gillespie pointed to at the top of this thread. Ear infection is a most common ailment of small children and it is commonly treated with amoxicillin, and in "rare" cases (five per cent or more) as the American Academy of Pediatricians says as quietly as it can, there is a strong and sometimes fatal reaction.
Obviously poor Eliza Jane was killed by just such a reaction, and nothing to do with HIV-AIDS, which even according to the conventional wisdom doesn't kill overnight. Any kind of pneumonia is ruled out immediately by the facts they reported. Can't they or their editors see that? To report the stupidity of the coroner without some balancing comment by pediatricians who know their stuff is unprofessional, as is the whole tilt of their article against a skeptic of mainstream medicine.
They are professionally incompetent if they don't know that the whole episode smacks of the habit of the medical professionals we trust helping the drug companies cover up adverse reactions to drugs. But that is the power of the HIV/AIDS superstition. Even worldly and seasoned LA Times staff are beguiled into a kind of social religion.
Why don't you demand that the reporters question the conclusions of the coroner and the doctors who comment as much as they do Maggiore, who is after the mother, closest to the symptoms of her child and who is infinitely concerned about her life?
It is not as if establishment medicine has any right to claim infallibility. The evidence-based medicine research of the past fifteen years, which has steadily checked standard beliefs of ordinary physicians against actual research, has found all too many myths at work.
This movement (evidence-based medicine) is establishment medicine checking itself and finding mistakes to correct, just as establishment science has to do, as part of its progress. To treat any biological or medical belief as sacrosanct and Biblical is spitting into the wind of progress.
The whole point is this. The case of HIV/AIDS is a case of the establishment trying to correct itself, not one of ignorant New Agey critics saying the medical establishment is always wrong. If you want to support the best of established science, then you should support the reviewers effort to assert the best literature and its conclusions, not support those who have hijacked science and driven it over a cliff.
moonchild | October 7, 2005, 10:41am | #
I can't understand how a woman who started out thinking she would die of AIDS and came to the realization that it was all a crock could be expected to have her children tested by a very faulty nonspecific test. To this day we don't know what this test measures, which could explain why Christine tested positive, negative and indeterminate at different times. There is no gold standard, and the disclaimers in the test packages admit that they cannot diagnose infection with HIV.
Christine had more than adequate reason to believe
testing was not only useless but possibly harmful, considering a positive test might result in being forced to give toxic drugs to a young child. AZT is a DNA chain terminator which was developed in the '60's as a cancer chemo drug but was never approved due to excessive toxicity. And we should give this to our children?
Trust me, Eliza Jane would have been far more likely to die from the drug than from any phantom disease. I know what PCP looks like--I had it. Or at least they tell me I did. I've come to believe I tested positive from a bad bout of the flu. You are all aware that as many as 70 conditions (pregnancy, flu and flu shots included) can result in a positive test? So with positive test in hand, bingo, I had PCP and AIDS. Apparently, PCP is quite difficult to differentiate from other pneumonias in the absence of tissue from an autopsy.
I will never get back the four years spent on those awful drugs. I will never be able to donate blood. I will never be able to get insurance and say that I "never" tested positive, because once you're marked, you're marked for life. And all this because Robert Gallo jumped the gun and announce a "probable" cause for AIDS at a restaurant and concurrently and conveniently had a test for this "virus" that made him millions.
And it's too late to go back now--too many jobs at stake, too many billions thrown away, too much invested by Big Pharma in useless drugs and vaccines that willnever work because the test doesn't measure virus, it measures antibodies, which up till now were a good thing.
Don't call me a denialist. I don't mind dissident, but I'm not denying anything. I'm reading and studying and rethinking. And that's all we ask. Go back to the beginning. Look at how all this came about. Read some of the works by the stellar scientists who insist that HIV simply cannot be the cause of AIDS. dont assume that the powers that be have our best interests at heart--nothing could be further from the truth. Follow the money.
AL | October 7, 2005, 12:22pm | #
Well, Hanna, that series of insults re Christine Maggiore seems a little excessive, and it spoils what is otherwise an excellent virtue of your post, which is that it shows a working mind, which is somewhat rare on the side you are supporting.
Why don't you grant Christine Maggiore her due, which is that she developed her position from challenging claptrap and thinking for herself, which is exactly what you are doing on the opposite side? In this you both share the same rare virtue, the ability to think for yourself!
However, if you will allow me to say so without flying into a furious attack on my motivations, character, intelligence etc, you and the people on your side suffer from a certain handicap here, which is that you are not yet fully informed as to the best material on the other side of the argument.
I am not saying this is in any way your fault, even though I doubt that you have looked into it very far, given your impressive confidence in the status quo. The other side is not one which is typically aired in the magazines, newspapers and even medical and scientific journals dealing with AIDS.
In fact, just reading through this comment thread it is easy to see that virtually no one here who supports HIV=AIDS as an unquestionable truth is familiar with even the existence of the now very substantial, intensely peer reviewed scientific literature beginning in 1987 which says that the idea is a crock, to use a blunt term.
The fact is that the series of very finely argued and fully referenced (using mainstream journal papers) review articles by Peter Duesberg and other very good scientists in the leading journals in science (Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academy, etc) utterly refute this theory and damn it as pure nonsense.
They do this on the "overwhelming" evidence that the supporters provide (never including any paper proving or even explaining how it happens that HIV caues AIDS, by the way), and they have continued since 1987 without interruption dealing with the supposed new evidence and claims as they come up without ever being refuted in the same journals.
That's right, the articles reviewing and rejecting the idea that HIV causes AIDS in the top literature have never been answered in the same journals in peer-reviewed articles, as would happen if there was anything scientifically valid to be said in its defense.
Think about this for a minute. Peer review, meaning the testing of a submitted article by handing it over for criticism to scientists of good standing in the field, is the gold standard of science. If an article passes peer review then it can be published as valid by the editors of a journal. In the case of Duesberg's articles, it was even a more severe test than normal. The number of reviewers chosen was often more than usual, and they were always stalwart supporters of the theory he was exploding, and naturally hostile to what he wrote and extremely determined to find fault with it and reject it.
The editors, also, were extremely anxious to cover their own backsides and make sure they were not accused of printing articles which could later be attacked as faulty and perhaps "dangerous", in that they might mislead people into sex without condoms, a favorite reason defenders like to use as argument why criticism of HIV=AIDS should be banned. (Ever asked yourself why people argue that a scientific claim that is valid shouldn't be examined?)
Thus, the fact that the very hostile expert reviewers were unable to prove these many anti-HIV articles were faulty and prevent their publication tells you something. These reviews which reject HIV=AIDS are therefore in fact the best scientific literature on the topic, and THEY are the establishment opinion in science, NOT the theory HIV=AIDS, which misrepresents what is going on in true science by claiming in public, ie outside the reach of peer review, the exact opposite.
The last one was published in 2003 in the Journal of Biosciences of the Indian Academy of Sciences, and is definitive in its answer to every single question raised in this thread. It can esily be found at http://www.duesberg.com and anyone interested can read it for themslves.
The only reason we have this wrong and a false impression rules, is that the error and the scientists who promote it have the enthusiastic support of the politicians, science reporters (rarely do they question any source in high position), health officials, medical authorities, ex-presidents, Hollywood actors, ordinary scientists and doctors, AIDS activists, drug companies and everybody else who never reads the review literature and trusts what the few scientists at the top of AIDS have led them to believe. In other words, politics supports it, not science.
These scientists have their own peer-reviewed literature of course, tens of thousands of AIDS papers which have been reviewed uncritically by friendly peers and all of which just assume HIV leads to AIDS, as a premise.
Not one of them addresses the question with research (try getting funds for that!), not one proves it or even explains how it could possibly happen that a virus type (retrovirus) that has never otherwise caused any problem for humans (pace Bob Gallo!) is suddenly killing them.
To fathom all this you just have to stop reading newspapers while assuming that their reports are soundly based and they interpret events correctly. You have to go and check out the scientific literature, or at least find out what is going on behind the scenes by reading books such as Peter Duesberg's "Inventing the AIDS Virus", Harvey Bialy's "Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: The Life and Times of Peter Duesberg", Serge Lang's "Challenges" and Gordon Moran's "Silencing Scientists and Other Scholars".
Duesberg's book is the easiest to read, though Bialy's and Lang's are the most stunning in their factual revelations of misbehavior by scientists who use politics to push unwanted reviews like Duesberg's under the carpet. Criticizing a scientist's theory is like insulting his wife. He is unlikely to invite you home to dinner.
Given the fact that you are such a perceptive critic of some of the human weaknesses shown in poor Christine's performance, including inconsistency in choosing establishment medicine when she had so long rejected it for her child, perhaps in panic or simply because administering amoxicillin is such standard practice in child ear infections, you are probably already instinctively familiar with some of the things you will find out.
You know them already, if you are a thinker. One is that scientists are like other humans, and tend to be driven by self interest, money and fame if they are not the strictly vocational type. And so are those officials, activists etc, who are not truly the idealists they profess to be.
In other words, like anyone else in the academy, scientists on top of the hill tend to try and kick back down the hill anyone who is trying to overturn them and the pet theory that they have long taught and in which they have invested their pride and career.
But you knew that, right? It applies of course to everyone in the field who has long believed and taught the error that HIV = AIDS, over the 21 years where that idea has escaped the continuing peer review that lies unread in the top scientific literature, and which condemns it as scientific nonsense.
That the press has been so misled by the top scientists in AIDS and by the officials that partner them only shows how incompetent reporters are at even thinking of challenging what scientists tell them. Indeed in the familiar modern manner of sucking up to their sources reporters and editors actively join them in bullying reviewers like Duesberg who threaten the status quo. Just as their followers on this thread bully and insult the questioners.
These underresearched and uncritical journalists are the people who are most to blame for misleading people like yourself, intelligent readers, into thinking that HIV=AIDS "denialists" are "lying, twisting, ignorant, self-righteous, murdering deniers" as you put it, rather than people who are simply questioning it and following the guidance of the best scientific literature on the topic.
AL | October 7, 2005, 1:39pm | #
(cont.)
The important point is that NO ONE READS THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. Even most scientists just ask their colleague Bill in the field of AIDS what he thinks, and if Bill says the challenge is poppycock, and of course HIV causes AIDS, that's enough for him.
Let me give you an example, which can be read in full at a newsblog I am writing which ridicules this behavior (http://www.newaidsreview.com/). Recently I checked out the scientific literature on the sexual transmission of HIV, and found that the mainstream journals contain at least 20 easily found articles which state that it is 1 in a 1000. In other words, it takes an average of 1000 copulations for man to transfer HIV positivity to a woman.
In other words, papers clearly visible in recent mainstream journals on AIDS state that the rate of heterosexual transmission of HIV is so extraordinarily low that a heterosexual epidemic, let alone a global pandemic, is utterly impossible. Yet billions are to be poured into sending drugs into underdeveloped countries on this premise.
Maybe the editors of the New York Times should be forced to read the scientific review literature, or at least one or two of the books mentioned above, before they indulge their happy and comfortable confidence in their fellow elites in science and medicine and repeat their AIDS mantra in every piece they publish, "HIV, the virus that causes AIDS".
And maybe we should be grateful to the few journalists such as Rian Malan, the South African novelist who merely told the truth as he saw it with his own eyes (and found that South Africa death statistics utterly failed to show any untoward bulge reflecting any new AIDS epidemic), and Celia Farber of New York City who does likewise in spite of being trashed endlessly by the HIV activists that she has now proved are overwhelmingly funded by the drug companies with a stake in the current belief.
But most of all we should be grateful to the lay people such as Christine Maggiore who somehow manage to think for themselves despite the huge pressure of their doctors' opinions, and the whole weight of the medical and scientific establishment, against them. Especially in their most vulnerable moment, when they are tested supposedly positive for HIV (did you know that HIV proponents have spent years denying that she really was HIV positive, to account for the fact that she is healthy?).
Come to think of it, we should thank people like science editor Harvey Bialy, who see fit to write about the scientific truth and what is in the literature even though they are editing a very establishment journal (Nature Biotechnology), and then write a book exposing what has really happened in science politics to send the whole vast world of AIDS rushing down a dead end where patients get killed instead of cured (check out the actual results achieved by the new cocktails).
What is saddest in all of this is that people such as yourself should use their sharp wits to defend a belief which has been exploded in the scientific literature for 19 years, but which you have been misled by bad reporting and unscrupulous authorities into believing is a pillar of modern science.
As I say, I have been writing a blog review of the news in this area of science and related topics at http://www.NewAIDSreview.com which ridicules the scientists in AIDS and their unfounded nonsense since April, and I find the most discouraging thing is this very tendency of sharp witted people such as yourself to defend the conventional wisdom too quickly.
This seems odd to me, even though I know that part of it is a faith in good established science and medicine. I would have thought that it was at least obvious that honesty and truth would tend to be on the side of the questioners of a paradigm who persevere with such a vast weight of reflex scorn directed against them and who are made to suffer so for their different opinion. Certainly all the money and power flows to those who support HIV=AIDS, and none that I know of goes to those who point out it has been rejected by science. No one has made any money questioning HIV/AIDS, to my knowledge. Countless people have made their careers going along with it.
AL1 | October 7, 2005, 1:40pm | #
(cont.)
The important point is that NO ONE READS THE SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. Even most scientists just ask their colleague Bill in the field of AIDS what he thinks, and if Bill says the challenge is poppycock, and of course HIV causes AIDS, that's enough for him.
Let me give you an example, which can be read in full at a newsblog I am writing which ridicules this behavior (http://www.newaidsreview.com/). Recently I checked out the scientific literature on the sexual transmission of HIV, and found that the mainstream journals contain at least 20 easily found articles which state that it is 1 in a 1000. In other words, it takes an average of 1000 copulations for man to transfer HIV positivity to a woman.
In other words, papers clearly visible in recent mainstream journals on AIDS state that the rate of heterosexual transmission of HIV is so extraordinarily low that a heterosexual epidemic, let alone a global pandemic, is utterly impossible. Yet billions are to be poured into sending drugs into underdeveloped countries on this premise.
Maybe the editors of the New York Times should be forced to read the scientific review literature, or at least one or two of the books mentioned above, before they indulge their happy and comfortable confidence in their fellow elites in science and medicine and repeat their AIDS mantra in every piece they publish, "HIV, the virus that causes AIDS".
And maybe we should be grateful to the few journalists such as Rian Malan, the South African novelist who merely told the truth as he saw it with his own eyes (and found that South Africa death statistics utterly failed to show any untoward bulge reflecting any new AIDS epidemic), and Celia Farber of New York City who does likewise in spite of being trashed endlessly by the HIV activists that she has now proved are overwhelmingly funded by the drug companies with a stake in the current belief.
But most of all we should be grateful to the lay people such as Christine Maggiore who somehow manage to think for themselves despite the huge pressure of their doctors' opinions, and the whole weight of the medical and scientific establishment, against them. Especially in their most vulnerable moment, when they are tested supposedly positive for HIV (did you know that HIV proponents have spent years denying that she really was HIV positive, to account for the fact that she is healthy?).
Come to think of it, we should thank people like science editor Harvey Bialy, who see fit to write about the scientific truth and what is in the literature even though they are editing a very establishment journal (Nature Biotechnology), and then write a book exposing what has really happened in science politics to send the whole vast world of AIDS rushing down a dead end where patients get killed instead of cured (check out the actual results achieved by the new cocktails).
What is saddest in all of this is that people such as yourself should use their sharp wits to defend a belief which has been exploded in the scientific literature for 19 years, but which you have been misled by bad reporting and unscrupulous authorities into believing is a pillar of modern science.
As I say, I have been writing a blog review of the news in this area of science and related topics at http://www.NewAIDSreview.com which ridicules the scientists in AIDS and their unfounded nonsense since April, and I find the most discouraging thing is this very tendency of sharp witted people such as yourself to defend the conventional wisdom too quickly.
This seems odd to me, even though I know that part of it is a faith in good established science and medicine. I would have thought that it was at least obvious that honesty and truth would tend to be on the side of the questioners of a paradigm who persevere with such a vast weight of reflex scorn directed against them and who are made to suffer so for their different opinion. Certainly all the money and power flows to those who support HIV=AIDS, and none that I know of goes to those who point out it has been rejected by science. No one has made any money questioning HIV/AIDS, to my knowledge. Countless people have made their careers going along with it.
AL | October 7, 2005, 1:44pm | #
(cont. - had to divide into two to avoid software glitch on this site)
I am sad to say that I think this is what accounts for the lack of curiosity on the part of editors and journalists in this matter. I hope that Nick Gillespie's natural skepticism follows up on this thread, rather than fades away under the distasteful influence of the shouts of "I am cancelling my subscription" (no truthseekers there!). If there is any arena where reason and skepticism of government influence should be applied, it is this.
Reporters in medicine and science know what side their bread is buttered. You don't get Pulitzers for showing that HIV=AIDS is science derailed, in fact, you are lucky if you get a review of any kind. Look at Bialy's bombshell of a book, which is languishing ignored even though it is the science book of the year for truthseekers in science. For $20 you can find out precisely what is going on offstage in science, if you can survive the very expert scientific discussion to enjoy the political stories.
But maybe the underresearched journalists and reporters who don't take the lid of HIV/AIDS science are just dumb. After all, there is nothing more ignorant and foolish than the Los Angeles Time's coverage which Nick Gillespie pointed to at the top of this thread. Ear infection is a most common ailment of small children and it is commonly treated with amoxicillin, and in "rare" cases (five per cent or more) as the American Academy of Pediatricians says as quietly as it can, there is a strong and sometimes fatal reaction.
Obviously if the facts out to date are correct poor Eliza Jane was killed by just such a reaction, and nothing to do with HIV-AIDS, which even according to the conventional wisdom doesn't kill overnight. Any kind of pneumonia is ruled out immediately by the facts they reported. Can't they or their editors see that? To report the stupidity of the coroner without some balancing comment by pediatricians who know their stuff is unprofessional, as is the whole tilt of their article against a skeptic of mainstream medicine.
They are professionally incompetent if they don't know that the whole episode smacks of the habit of the medical professionals we trust helping the drug companies cover up adverse reactions to drugs. But that is the power of the HIV/AIDS superstition. Even worldly and seasoned LA Times staff are beguiled into a kind of social religion.
Why don't you demand that the reporters question the conclusions of the coroner and the doctors who comment as much as they do Maggiore, who is after the mother, closest to the symptoms of her child and who is infinitely concerned about her life?
It is not as if establishment medicine has any right to claim infallibility. The evidence-based medicine research of the past fifteen years, which has steadily checked standard beliefs of ordinary physicians against actual research, has found all too many myths at work.
This movement (evidence-based medicine) is establishment medicine checking itself and finding mistakes to correct, just as establishment science has to do, as part of its progress. To treat any biological or medical belief as sacrosanct and Biblical is spitting into the wind of progress.
The whole point is this. The case of HIV/AIDS is a case of the establishment trying to correct itself, not one of ignorant New Agey critics saying the medical establishment is always wrong. If you want to support the best of established science, then you should support the reviewers effort to assert the best literature and its conclusions, not support those who have hijacked science and driven it over a cliff.
Robin Scovill | October 7, 2005, 2:40pm | #
I know it’s a waste of time getting into a pissing contest with someone who has never met me or my family, but claims to know everything about us, but I have a few minutes between denialist meetings and feel the need to address Hanna who is obviously an angry, misinformed person:
Hanna, there’s a difference between rigorous evaluation of information and blind obstinacy. You can’t know that all people who question AIDS science are blindly obstinate. That sounds like stereotyping and doesn’t cast you in a very intelligent light.
The only way to properly evaluate Alison Gertz’s situation is to go to the medical literature where her case has been published, if indeed it has. Surely you realize that the very reason for the existence of the scientific and medical literature is so that people like you can’t run around treating anecdotal information as peer reviewed fact.
All I can say at this time about Eliza Jane’s diagnosis of PCP is that it’s undergoing evaluation and appears inconsistent with what we her parents, her three pediatricians, the ER doctors, the X-rays taken, and the initial examination of my daughter’s lungs in an autopsy would support. To say more before an independent evaluation is completed, would be speculative and premature.
Regarding your speculation about our antibiotic use, please note that like many thinking people around the world, antibiotics simply aren’t our first choice of treatment. I haven’t had one since I was a kid, and the same is true for Christine. Our son took one for a tooth infection a couple of years ago, not because he was dying as you so foolishly assume was the case with our daughter, but because it hurt like hell. It wasn’t death that compelled us to utilize that treatment, but pain, and the recommendation of a trusted dentist.
You also spout off that my wife has endlessly repeated that HIV doesn’t exist. If she’s done so ad naseam as you point out, then please direct me and the readers of this blog to any reference where she has done so. Since nearly everything she has said is publicly archived, surely you should be able to provide this proof. If not, than I propose that it is you that is full of the bullshit that you’ve attributed to her.
Lastly in response to your potty-mouthed name calling, Hanna, I offer this: if your convictions about us are so strong that you would open yourself up to slandering someone whom I assume you’ve never met, then I invite you to come and say it to our face instead of hiding on some blog. I’ll guarantee you the same verbal thrashing that you've recieved here, but in person it won’t be nearly as pleasant for you.
Until we all see your references to Christine’s alleged claims, I bid you good afternoon.
Sincerely,
Hanna | October 7, 2005, 3:18pm | #
Let's be clear on Christine Maggiore. She has been staunchly against western medicine, antibiotics, vaccines and passionately committed to whole, organic foods and natural remedies. Nothing she's ever stated in a public format would dispute that notion. In fact, Maggiore's hateful attitude towards antibiotics is so extreme that it would not be an overstatement to note that Amoxicillan, HIV antivirals and cyanide are all equal in her mind. Maggiore underwent two deliveries in her home with a midwife in the most organic setting possible. She has chosen 3 physicians for her children who are of the same naturopathic mindset as she (against antibiotic use, HIV antivirals and vaccines and/or unconvinced of the HIV=AIDS science). In fact, when Christine Maggiore was told she had an abnormal Pap test result (Grade 3) for cervical cancer, she declined her OB/GYN's advice of a colposcopy and, instead, chose "colon hydrotherapy, digestive enzymes, daily juicing, food combining, some new supplements, and regular exercise" (from Maggiore's article - "My Bout with So-Called AIDS").
And despite the massive public and scientific pressure against every single HIV tidbit that comes out of her mouth, she has remained firm in her resolve. Irrefutably, Maggiore is a very strong individual who is unyielding.
Does the woman who chose "naturopathic" remedies for potential cervical cancer sound like someone who would "panic" over her child's runny nose and an ear infection and treat her with Amoxicillan (i.e., poison to her)? Process that for a moment and how utterly ridiculous that notion is!
A mere modicum of common sense illustrates a very sinister picture of what really happened to Eliza Jane at the hands of an arrogant, neglectful parent. Did Maggiore "panic?" Yes, she probably did. But not over a runny nose and an ear infection (that wouldn't "panic" someone who'd faced a cervical cancer prediction with "daily juicing"). Christine Maggiore panicked because Eliza Jane was clearly in great distress and dying. Only then did Maggiore relent and try the "evil" antibiotics, hoping that would help her. Well, oral Amoxicillan isn't the course of treatment for PCP - rather it's IV Bactrim. (Note: it's always curious how many denialists resort to the "evil" HIV antivirals when their condition becomes so dire and foreseeable death undeniable - it's often then too late).
But like I said earlier, Maggiore is so obstinately committed to her position that HIV doesn't exist and, if it does, it's harmless (she vacillates between the two fantasies) that she is incapable of considering - even for a moment - that her inadequacy as a scientific intellectual, a pragmatic woman and a functional parent caused the senseless death of an innocent child. My heart goes out very sincerely to Eliza Jane - who deserved a mother more committed to her well being than to her ridiculous and ill-equipped ideas about science and medicine.
By the way, as I predicted, no one's bothered yet to offer a case study of ANYONE under the age of 50 on the planet who is HIV negative, not taking immunosuppressive drugs or diagnosed with cancer who has EVER developed PCP, PML, CMV Retinitis.
PS: "Moonchild" you sound an awful lot like Kim Bannon (or you "borrow" much of her language). As for the "trust me" nonsense about a child being far more likely to die of the "drugs" than any phantom disease (I'm assuming you mean an AIDS-related disease), do you have any science to back that up in the realm of a peer-reviewed study or is that just some more UFO conspiracy nonsense you're expecting complete strangers to "trust" you about?
Celia Farber | October 7, 2005, 5:30pm | #
The following letter documents Christine Maggiore's recent ordeal with the censors at the LA Times. It was sent to myself and Dean Esmay. As a member of the media, I am appalled by the LA Times, and grateful for the liberties of the Internet, which we all must take care not to abuse, by writing things that are not true, not accurate, not fair, and or not human. There has been alot of that here on this thread.
--Celia Farber
CHRISTINE MAGGIORE'S NEW LETTER TO THE LA TIMES:
Since your post of my unpublished letter to the Los Angeles Times, a number
of people have contacted me with requests for replies to questions or to
charges leveled by detractors. As much as I would love to respond, I am
under strict advisement from my attorney to wait for the completion of the
independent review of my daughter's autopsy report before speaking
publically on the topic of her tragic death.
In the meantime, I thought you might be interested to know something of my
on-going negotiations with the LA Times over my 150 word letter to the
editor.
The Times declined to publish the short letter posted earlier this week for
a variety of seemingly ever-changing reasons. First, they wanted me to
strike the opening sentence which states "medical records show my daughter
did not exhibit symptoms consistent with pneumonia." Even though none of the
doctors wrote of any suspicion of pneumonia in her charts, and the Times'
article mentions her breathing measured normal on an oxygen test, the Times
says that her cough and runny nose are included among the symptoms of
pneumonia, therefore I cannot write she did not exhibit symptoms of
pneumonia.
Instead of arguing that a cough and runny nose are also symptoms of anything
from a cold to allergies--and as common among three year-olds as scuffed
shoes and temper tantrums--I accepted their ruling and changed my sentence
to read that she did not exhibit symptoms consistent with "advanced
pnemonia." No go said the Times. So I tried "life-threatening pneumonia." No
way. They claim that this statement still contradicts her medical records,
records which the Times does not, or at least according to privacy laws,
should not have in its possession (not that there's anything to hide). So I
changed the sentence again to read, "She did not present with the chest pain
or blue lips and nail beds indicative of life-threatening pneumonia...," and
am waiting to hear if this will be allowed.
Following this semantic wrestling match, we engaged in debate over the
standard definition vs the LA Times definition of a fact. Qualifying what
counts as fact is important since (suddenly) according to one of the
reporters, "the Letters to the Editor page is for facts, not opinions."
Although that rule didn't seem to apply to Nora Castillo of Whittier
California whose rather harsh opinions about me were published last week, I
agreed. Let's all stick to the facts. But then I learn that, in the case of
my letter anyway, a fact is only a fact if: 1) it is in concordance with
what the Times' reporters have in their notes; 2) appears in the autopsy
report (which includes only select citations from my daughter's medical
records; or 3) refers to an event that occurred in the presence of LA Times
reporters or a third party witness. Given these three
letters-to-the-editor-laws, I was told I must delete my reference to what ER
doctors said about seeing nothing in my daughter's chest X-rays to explain
her dire condition.
I can't say their three-point qualification rule feels particularly fair or
reasonable (was I supposed to call the LA Times before I dialed 911?), but
since we happen to have a third party witness to our ER experience, OK, let
the Times' ruling stand. I then explained how a neighbor followed us to the
hospital that night, how he was there when the attending physician at the ER
told us Eliza Jane was dying and that none of the many tests and X-rays
revealed why. And just in case that's not enough, I also have the hospital
report which states that after all the tests and X-rays, there was no
apparent cause of death. Hopefully given these facts, they'll allow my
sentence about the ER to stand.
We then moved on to a truly perplexing discussion: according to the LA
Times, the coroner's office has a policy that prohibits disclosure of
autopsy information by telephone. This means that my letter can't mention
how the medical examiner, Dr Changstri, called our home the week of May 23
and spoke with my husband. But if it's true the coroner's office doesn't
disclose autopsy information by phone, (and in our grief and devastation we
somehow imagined this conversation), how did the LA Times learn of the
findings in my daughter's autopsy report before it was finished being
transcribed and printed? And what about the call to our home from the
coroner's office on the morning of September 13 in which they disclosed by
phone the alleged cause of her death? We're we dreaming?
Since it seems that any letter from me is unlikely to be approved for
publication by the LA Times, please feel free to share the newly revised
letter below along with my correspondence with the paper's Readers' Rep that
follows.
With thanks for your interest in another side of the story,
Christine Maggiore
===
Revised letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times
In response to your article "A Mother's Denial," medical records from three
separate pediatricians state my daughter had clear lungs. She did not
present with the chest pain or blue lips and nail beds indicative of
life-threatening pneumonia at any doctor visit. Records from her last
medical exam on May 14 show Eliza Jane had no cough or respiratory
congestion. A series of chest Xrays taken in the ER did not reveal why she
was dying. After careful examination of her lungs during a May 18 autopsy,
the coroner could not determine a cause of death.
One month and no determined cause later, the coroner's office called her
primary pediatrician, Dr Paul Fleiss, demanding to know if he knew about my
book and HIV status. Even after discovering my testing history and
controversial work, it took 12 more weeks for the coroner to decide my
daughter died of AIDs-related pneumonia.
We have questions and concerns about the coroner's findings and hope to
clarify these via an independent investigation due in three weeks.
Interested readers may follow the unfolding story at www.ejlovetour.com
Christine Maggiore
===
My end of recent correspondence with LA Times Readers' Rep Jamie Gold
(surely one of the most patient individuals on earth):
Hi Jamie,
Below please find a new revision of my letter. I've used a few more words to
clarify the statements about my daughter's medical records and our
experiences at the ER. To make up for this, I've cut out other sentences.
With regard to our conversation yesterday about the content of my daughter's
medical records, could you please let me know if the Times actually has
copies of these records? From my understanding, her records are not public
information and the Times reporters cite from the autopsy report and
interviews with her pediatricians. I think it's important to note that the
coroner's office does not have my daughter's complete medical records. They
never requested records from her last two doctor visits, and as such, this
information is not included the autopsy report.
With regard to the Time's requirement of third party witnesses to events not
attended by reporters, as I mentioned during our phone conversation
yesterday, a neighbor who followed us to the ER can substantiate the
experiences referred to in my letter. This man stayed there with me and my
husband for several hours, including the awful moment when the attending
physician at the ER apologetically stated they could not determine from
x-rays, a spinal tap, CAT scans or other tests why our daughter was dying.
That and the following statement from the hospital report may be enough to
settle our disagreement on whether the ER found no cause of death after
examining a series of chest Xrays. The attending physician wrote: "I feel
that [there] may be [a] rather high likelihood that the patient may have
Haemophilus Influenza. Nevertheless, it is just speculation on my part at
this point and the case will need to be referred to the coroner's office to
help determine the cause of death."
If you will provide me with a fax number, I will send you my daughter's
medical records from the pediatrician visits mentioned in the autopsy report
along with the summary statement of the attending physician at the ER.
I would also appreciate knowing if either reporter disputing my account of
events at the hospital ever interviewed the ER doctor before going to press.
The timing of any interview concerns me as I doubt it would be possible to
get an unbiased account of what happened that night with our story having
been told from one perspective on the front page of the Times.
Regarding the Time's claim that the coroner's office does not disclose
information by telephone, as I reiterated yesterday, Dr Changstri very
kindly called my husband the week of our daughter's memorial in reply to his
request for an update and explained that they still had not determined a
cause of death for Eliza Jane. She also outlined what steps they were taking
to investigate further. Her remarks about investigating poisions and
chemical toxins as a potential cause was so disturbing to me, I immediately
phoned a friend who works in law enforcement and told him what Dr Changstri
said. He is available to verify our conversation about Dr Changstri's
remarks if needed to substantiate the sentence summarizing this event.
Again with regard to the assertion the coroner's office does not share
information by phone, Denise Bertone called our home on the morning of
Tuesday September 13 and disclosed the coroner's determination of death to
my husband. When I got the news from my devastated husband, I phoned our
lawyer and reported what Denise had told us. I'm sure our attorney recalls
this conversation.
Jamie, if the Times still wishes to disregard our experiences at the ER
after considering the above mentioned information, will you please let me
know as soon as possible? I'd also appreciate knowing if the Times still
stands by the claim that the coroner's policy is no disclosure by phone. If
so, can you help me understand how your reporters managed to write an
article that included the coroner's determination of death before my
daughter's autopsy report was finished? As I recall, Dan Costello contacted
me for comment on his completed article Thursday September 15. Following his
call, I phoned my attorney who spoke with him that same day. The autopsy
report was not ready until Friday September 16; Denise Bertone called to
confirm it was finally available as of that Friday morning. When I asked Dan
if he had a copy of the autopsy report during our first contact, he said he
did not, and stated the same again the week of September 19.
With heartfelt thanks for your patience and help (and kindness under
duress),
Christine Maggiore
_________________________________________________________________
Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
15-years-with-HIV-and-well | October 7, 2005, 6:39pm | #
TO.: Hannah
Dear Hannah,
reading your reply only demonstrates your ignorant attitude and your obvious inability to ask very simple questions. Such as WHERE IS THE PROOF?
To me it is not important whether HIV is a harmless retrovirus as stated by Peter Duesberg or if HIV does not exist. Fact is, that we do not know whether or not HIV is the cause of AIDS.
I do not deny the existence of AIDS. But based on my own experiences as a HIV+ patient and after careful consideration of all available information, I have come to the conclusion that HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS.
Who are you to force mothers who test HIV+ to take AZT, knowing that AZT is so toxic that when it was invented as a tool in the battle against cancer, it was quickly banned because it not only kills cancer, but the patient as well?
I am not dodging any bullet, other than the ones fired upon me from so called HIV-doctors and scientists.
Here is a little anecdote:
Last year I developed an abscess on my right hip due to a mosquito bite. When I presented this to the doctor at the K&C hospital in London, I revealed my status.
Instead of simply prescribing some anti-biotics and a painkiller and then open the abscess with an incision to drain it, he called the HIV-doctor on duty from the Kobler centre.
She wanted me to stay overnight, doubled the dose of antibiotics and ran every possible blood-test she could get her fingers on. I hadn't been ill or at the K&C hospital for a long time and definitely did not want to stay overnight. Especially since I had to travel to Berlin the next day to give a couple of lectures.
So I left London the next day, pumped full of antibiotics.
The abscess though became more painful, and upon arrival in Berlin I went to see the doctors at the Urbanstrasse Krankenhaus.
This time I did not reveal my status. The doctors in Berlin looked at the antibiotics prescribed to me by the HIV-doctor in London and started laughing. They kept me in hospital straight away, by now the abscess needed to be operated urgently.
The Berlin doctor told me that he did not understand why that abscess had not been operated in London just the evening before. He thought his London collegues were clearly incompotent.
What does that tell you about HIV-doctors? What does that tell you about HIV? Which treatment was obviously the better one? Which did cure me? The one recommended by the HIV-doctor? Or the one administered by doctors who were unaware of my status?
I am as healthy as one can be and a proud father of a 2 year old boy. And there are many more like me. And we all have a few things in common: we stay away from HIV-science and do not take ARV-medication, live a normal and healthy life.
During all this time the worst thing was never this so-called virus. It was the AIDS establishment and the multi-billion dollar industry that needs HIV to be the cause of AIDS to justify its useless existence.
And obviously you are part of that. Well, good luck to you Hannah. With such a great deal of blind ignorance you will need it some day.
Leo | October 8, 2005, 12:15am | #
Posted from Gary Null's Website:
Testimonies About Small Children and HIV
"In October 1990, we adopted a little girl born in Romania when she was just a few days old. When we brought her to America two months later, Lilly was a happy, healthy baby We took her for a complete medical exam that included an HIV test. The result was positive, and although she had no symptom of illness, she was immediately put on AZT syrup and Septra, a powerful antibiotic. We investigated and discovered that her birth mother tested HIV negative. This information seemed not to matter, we were told Lilly had the 'AIDS virus.' For close to a year, we gave her AZT and other drugs, until by the grace of God, we determined that the drugs were making her very ill.
"During her first 18 months on the drugs, Lilly's health declined. She was hyperactive, almost as though she didn't feel comfortable in her body She didn't eat properly and suffered nausea and diarrhea and fell behind in growth rate. Doctors attributed her problems to HIV and increased the dosage. A few months later, her doctor began pressuring us to add ddl to our daughter's drug regimen. She praised Lilly's progress at each visit even though by then Lilly had completely stopped growing and her T cells were dropping. Then for three months in 1992, Lilly woke up in the middle of the night grabbing her knees and screaming in pain. We took her to the University of Minnesota after the screaming bouts started. The doctor barely acknowledged what we were saying and left us with the impression 'Well what do you expect? This kid is dying of AIDS.'
"In desperation, we turned to Dr. Peter Duesberg, a source we had previously discounted. We had read a couple articles about Duesberg but never gave his views serious consideration; now we wrote to him at UC Berkeley asking for advice. He responded promptly with a package of literature and we started researching for ourselves.
"Almost immediately we understood our daughter's problem was not an immune deficiency, but the side‑effects of drugs. We took her off them and have not looked back since. Two days after we stopped the AZT, her leg cramps stopped. She started sleeping much better and began eating two to three times as much as she had ever eaten before. We found a doctor who uses a holistic approach to disease that puts a big emphasis on nutrition. After two months of nutritional therapy, she started gaining weight. By 2 7 months of age, she was back in the I Oth percentile of growth.
"When we tried to discuss our decision to stop AZT with the MD at the university and put Lilly's real progress in perspective, we were verbally attacked and treated as if we were children. We didn't tell the doctor that Lilly was off the drugs that day Instead, we sent a letter. Her response was to threaten to have Lilly removed from our home. She said that taking her off AZT would hasten her decline and death, and that there are foster homes for children whose parents don't go along with the medical community
"Seven years later, Lilly is a perfectly healthy little girl. She does well in school, has lots of friends, enjoys riding her bike and is an avid swimmer."
Scott and Cathy Norton, Minneapotis, Minnesota
Heather Knolls Morgan | October 8, 2005, 11:24am | #
To "Robin Scovill" who wrote earlier to poster Hannah:
"You also spout off that my wife has endlessly repeated that HIV doesn?t exist. If she?s done so ad naseam as you point out, then please direct me and the readers of this blog to any reference where she has done so.....If not, than [SIC] I propose that it is you that is full of the bullshit that you?ve attributed to her"
Please refer to the following (Maggiore's own website).
-www.aliveandwell.org
-FAQ
-A Closer Look at HIV
-Does HIV Exist?
In the final paragraph Maggiore announces agreement with the referenced pathologist who writes that he doesn't believe that HIV exists.
"Robin," I sure do hope you take some time to understand your wife's positions in the future. Alas, the "bullshit" appears to remain in your camp.
By the way "Robin," your wife has also been quoted saying your lawyer's gagged you both until the investigation is complete (perhaps you don't know this either; do you guys talk?). I'm utterly perplexed why you continually pay for expert advice (medical, legal) that you just ignore anyway. I don't get that.
This is what the National Institutes of Health provides as evidence of HIV=AIDS, with numerous cited studies. http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm
As the mother of four healthy children who have NEVER experienced an AIDS defining illness, I'm in a state of incredulity to understand how a parent can stand next to their dying child in a hospital room and withhold information that could save the child's life.
Christine Maggiore is largely responsible for the death of her daughter (her doctors and husband bare some fault as well). She refused temporary medication that could have eliminated any cogent risk of HIV transmission during delivery, she breastfed her daughter knowing the risks of HIV transmission and she then ignored her terminally ill child, even when the doctors sought desperately to find what was wrong with her. It was a sick game and her daughter paid the ultimate price. I hope she will be just as resolute when she's faced with an AIDS related illness and not submit to the fear and take the western drugs. The death of a flagrantly abusive mother is never a tragedy for this planet.
Christine Maggiore is a narcissistic sociopath(even crazed David Pasquerelli caved in and took the prescribed medication when he developed illnesses that none of his HIV negative cohorts had ever faced).
Thankfully she's reached an age where producing another child is impossible. Things could have been worse. This murderer could have given birth to many more children and been at a loss to explain why such a large percentage of them dropped like flies. Rather, she'd say it was air pollution, stress caused by toxic television, the school's juice boxes. Denial is so ugly!
To Robin and Christine: I am rather confident that the LA Police Department and the prosecutors office will find that you're both culpable in the death of your child by willful neglect. No one has a right to harm their child because they decide they know more than hundreds of thousands of scientists and physicians with volumes of studies and clinical experience as evidence.
Your child is six feet under. Happy now?
Fondoo | October 8, 2005, 2:51pm | #
Funny thing about having an HIV+ test for 15 years is that your more interested than the average Joe that seems to think the six oh clock news is a good source for information.
I used to think the same way about established views because "How could the majority of scientists be wrong"
That all changed when my HIV+ wife had our baby. I didn't question doctors before that time. But they started to recommend/demand things that defied common sense.
It did not help when I realized they base there protocols on studies that 80% of the moms studied are IV drug addicts. How the hell does that relate to my goody too shoo wife that never used drugs (besides grass in high school) had 2 b/f's (used condoms) and 1 husband (no condoms guy is hiv- to this day) Dirty toilet seat AIDS case I guess.
Anyway I realized that the Docs protocols make practicing medicine possible but are not necessarily the best for each individual patient and the Doc does not have the time to do his homework like I do on the reasoning behind a given protocol. A good doc will listen to my reasoning and verify or advise against my opinion. A poor Doc will get high and mighty and dismiss my views out of hand.
My rights as a father to decide the wisdom of very toxic drugs would evaporate if my daughter received a positive test even when the doctors admit there is a high chance of a false positive. They have decreed that the chance of HIV ravaging her body is to great to risk not hitting it hard and early. They recommend DNA chain terminators for babies and there proof of effectiveness is based on studies of IV drug using moms.
A baby can be exposed to these cancer chemo drugs er "life saving AIDS drugs" for as long as 18 months before they will accept that the baby was a false positive. Does anyone realize the severe effects of giving Chemotherapy to babies? The doctors don't, and its well documented that they lack phase three trials in this field. Think chemo babies chemo babies duh.
Do I need to be an MD to know that this is a very severe class of drugs only to be used when the most dire health risk is "PROVEN" in my babies body? Should the fact that the studies are based on 80% IV drug using moms who's babies are born with health problems without the need of a virus?
I have read the papers of dissident Nobel prize winning scientists, I have followed there advice and took note what is missing in the mountains of mainstream data and what even today they refuse to study.
One thing about the AIDS dissident I am finding we have in common is that we are well read on both sides and most of the hostile mainstream defenders are not even well read on there own side.
Linda Steiner | October 8, 2005, 4:51pm | #
Fondoo,
I agree completely. In fact, I almost believe that to have a valid opinion on this subject (unless you are a scientist involved in it or a journalist who has researched it) you have to have, as they say, "a dog in this fight." By which I mean it has to have personally touched your life.
My diagnosis is only a bit over 4 years old. Being a middle-aged female who never did drugs,the "logical" assumption was I contracted the "virus" through heterosexual contact.
And I was not merely testing positive--I was presenting with our old friend PCP. So with the wonderful circular definitions, I had AIDS. Now, considering I had been in a monogamous relationship (with someone who repeatedly tested negative) for about 6 years, I would have to have contracted this some time before that. I will admit to possibly having been foolish more than a few times, but have been able to find no one in my past who tested positive.
So, orthodox believers, what gives? Do you want to know what I now think? I'll tell you anyway. I had a few nasty bouts with bad colds or flu (which can make you test positive) and got progressively worse over as much as five months. My appetite pretty much disappeared. I dragged myself around, getting less and less able to breathe until I had to ask a friend to take me to the emergency room.
Was I really sick? Oh, yeah? Was I immunosuppressed? Without a doubt. I had PCP, if indeed that was what it was, and thrush. Classic case, I guess. Well, they put me on all the standards--Bactrim and prednisone, and about 5 days into my hospital stay I regained my appetite, and we have not been parted since.
My biggest regret is accepting all they told me. I was in too debilitated a state to question at the time. So I got on a recently concluded clinical trial and was lucky to suffer no serious side effects, which doesn't mean there was no damage done.
At about the time I developed a mysterious rash and felt my body was saying "enough!" to the drugs, I happened upon virusmyth.com. I visited it skeptically, but found well-reasoned arguments and explanations for all of my "Yeah, but what about..." questions.
I have been totally converted and I am angry. Angry that I was never told that there might be other explanations. Angry at how this will probably always affect my life. But I also feel empowered that nowmy life is my own again and so is my health care. The choices are mine and I will never again blindly accept what I am told. I will do research and make upmy own mind.
So there's antoher testimony. Make what you will of it. I am healthy and happy off the drugs.
Chris | October 9, 2005, 2:26am | #
To Hanna & Heather and those who agree with you:
I want you to know something. And that is, I feel your pain.
As someone who had to live with the repercussions of being told my blood was polluted with millions of copies of an immune-suppressing virus that could only be kept in check with highly toxic daily medication which would offer no promise of a cure, I feel your pain.
Because before I was able to embrace the science that had been withheld from me, I had to come to the shocking realization that I'd been lied to. In my estimation, withholding important information on which one or many would base a big decision is a form of lying - a rather widely accepted form of lying, but lying nonethless.
I believe the doctor that gave me the diagnosis believed he was acting dutifully and in my best interest, but I also believe that he had been lied to - that is, important information on which he would have based a big decision had been withheld from him - and so he passed on those lies to me.
The impact of these lies on my well-being nearly caused my suicide.
The impact of discovering the truth drove me into a rage. For in that moment I realized that I had been unwittingly victimized, tricked, duped into believing to be true something that was a lie and not the truth at all - not by a longshot. How could I have been so stupid?
I did not want to believe that I'd been lied to, that I lived in a world where I could no longer believe what I heard on the news, or read in the paper, or what my doctor told me. But after absorbing all of the withheld information, it was quite clear that my exploitation and near demise - and the more tragic fates of countless others - were ultimately for the benefit of inhumane powers. I hated knowing I lived in a world where that could even begin to take place.
And so, yes, I was in denial about that world.
But not anymore. Now I know the truth. It's a sad, sad truth, and it hurts to know it, but I've decided it's no less true for that fact.
And it's whole, and complete, with no important information withheld. Because, in case you forgot, withholding important information on which I base a big decision would be a form of lying, albeit a widely accepted form of lying, but I refuse to do that to myself any longer.
It wasn't easy. I feel your pain.
Hanna | October 11, 2005, 7:49pm | #
Linda, again, I find agreement with you on one single point. Every single AIDS-defining, opportunistic infection HAS appeared in HIV negative people. No HIV scientist has ever claimed otherwise. Yes, they're all known diseases.
And if you leave it at that then you have truly mastered the denialist's smoke-and-mirror show.
This is what's called a strawman argument Linda. You have misstated the position of HIV scientists, suggesting they've claimed the presentations of HIV disease have never been seen in HIV negative individuals when it's NOT ever what's been said. And you conveniently leave out the critical contingencies to that statement.
HIV scientists have always claimed that the ONLY role of HIV is to cripple the immune system, thereby causing individuals to develop diseases that DO NOT EVER APPEAR in normal immune systems (no small feat).
I would relish reading a paper on one single human being under the age of 60 who has EVER suffered from CMV Retinitis, PCP, PML. These are conditions (the latter being potentially fatal) that can appear in HIV negative people who are taking immune suppressants, high-dose steroids or suffer from a couple of very specific cancers/leukemias - and even then, IT IS RARE. But in an otherwise healthy person - NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER!
Suddenly HIV comes on the scene and thousands of human beings were coming down with diseases that had only afflicted severely compromised immune systems. And, the friends/families/drug buddies/sex partners of these people who were HIV negative didn't develop any of these lethal conditions. (and that's, somehow, irrelevant to you?)
It's easy to twist scientific fact. For example, it is a fact that 95% of women who contract the sexually transmitted disease, HPV (human papillomavirus), never go onto develop cervical cancer. So an "HPV denialist" could claim that the whole thing is a farce - HPV is harmless. But they don't tell you that 90% of cervical cancer cases appear in women who've tested positive for HPV. So there is a very strong link between women who develop cervical cancer and HPV - but it's easy to twist the numbers around and make HPV seem completely benign. And if you're naive, you might buy into it.
As for the PCR issue, that's one of the points of pseudoscience that's presented - along with some huge sins of ommission.
"Dr Mullis' objections do not apply to the unrelated bDNA and quantitative microculture techniques. Modern bDNA tests produce very similar viral load counts to modern PCR tests." (http://www.avert.org/evidence.htm)
So you're led to believe that the one guy who developed this test (PCR) questions the use of the test for HIV counts, yet you're never told that PCR is only one of three tests used to detect HIV. Do Christine Johnson and Paul Philpott explain bDNA and quantitative microculture techniquest away too? (No, they don't)
Chris | October 11, 2005, 9:39pm | #
Hanna,
First, I must address the fact that my last post was in response to someone who'd posted a little further up in the blog. Pardon the incongruity.
Second, you continually overlook the fact that the more people that take the test, the more people will get a positive result. Unfortunately, the antibody test is not and never has been HIV-specific. In that case, it is diabolically partial to automatically blame the illnesses you listed on the presence of HIV.
To see the chart that accompanies the following factual information, you can go to www.aliveandwell.org.
Is the "AIDS Test" Accurate?
Many people are surprised to learn that there is no such thing as a test for AIDS. The tests popularly referred to as "AIDS tests" do not identify or diagnose AIDS and cannot detect HIV, the virus claimed to cause AIDS. The ELISA and Western Blot tests commonly used to diagnose HIV infection detect only interactions between proteins and antibodies thought to be specific for HIV -- they do not detect HIV itself. And contrary to popular belief, newer "viral load" tests do not measure levels of actual virus in the blood.
All HIV antibody tests are highly inaccurate. One reason for the tests' tremendous inaccuracy is that a variety of viruses, bacteria and other antigens can cause the immune system to make antibodies that also react with HIV. When the antibodies produced in response to these other infections and antigens react with HIV proteins, a positive result is registered. Many antibodies found in normal, healthy, HIV-free people can cause a positive reading on HIV antibody tests. (23) Since the antibody production generated by a number of common viral infections can continue for years after the immune system has defeated a virus -- and even for an entire lifetime -- people never exposed to HIV can have consistent false positive reactions on HIV tests for years or for their entire lives.
The accuracy of an antibody test can be established only by verifying that positive results are found in people who actually have the virus. This standard for determining accuracy was not met in 1984 when the HIV antibody test was first created. Instead, to this day, positive ELISAs are verified by a second antibody test of unknown accuracy, the HIV Western Blot. Since the accuracy for HIV antibody tests has never been properly established, it is not possible to claim that a positive test indicates a current, active HIV infection or even to know what it may indicate. (24) In one study that investigated positive results confirmed by Western Blot, 80 people with two positive ELISAs that were "verified" by a positive Western Blot tested negative on their next Western Blot. (25)
Antibodies produced in response to simple infections like a cold or the flu can cause a positive reaction on an HIV antibody test. A flu shot and other immunizations can also create positive HIV ELISA and Western Blot results. Having or having had herpes or hepatitis may produce a positive test, as can vaccination for hepatitis B. Exposure to microbes such as those that cause tuberculosis and malaria commonly cause false positive results, as do the presence of tapeworms and other parasites. Conditions such as alcoholism or liver disease and blood that is altered through drug use may elicit the production of antibodies that react on HIV antibody tests. Pregnancy and prior pregnancy can also cause a positive response. The antibodies produced to act against infection with mycobacterium and yeast, infections which are found in 90% of AIDS patients, cause false positive HIV test results. (26) In one study, 13% of Amazonian Indians who do not have AIDS and who have no contact with people outside their own tribe tested HIV positive. (26) In another report, 50% of blood samples from healthy dogs reacted positively on HIV antibody tests. (27)
Prior to the notion that HIV causes AIDS, viral antibodies were considered a normal, healthy response to infection and an indication of immunity. Antibodies alone were not used to diagnose disease or predict illness. Before HIV, only ELISA and Western Blot tests that had been shown to correspond with the finding of actual virus were used to diagnose viral infections. There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest that these rules should be disregarded to accommodate HIV.
In addition to being inaccurate, HIV antibody tests are not standardized. This means that there is no nationally or internationally accepted criteria for what constitutes a positive result. Standards also vary from lab to lab within the same country or state, and can even differ from day to day at the same lab. (28) As HIV test kit manufacturers acknowledge, "At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 and HIV-2 in human blood." (29)
The following chart illustrates just some of the varying criteria for what is considered a positive HIV Western Blot, and shows how someone could actually switch from positive to negative simply by changing countries. The differing standards for positive HIV tests are not limited to the locations and agencies mentioned here -- criteria vary from lab to lab and results are open to interpretation. An inconclusive test can become positive or negative based on an individual's sexual preference, health history, zip code or other survey data.
The various proteins used in HIV Western Blot tests are arranged into bands that are divided into three sections. These three sections are represented by the abbreviations ENV, POL and GAG. Proteins in the ENV section correspond to the outer membrane or "envelope" of a virus; POL refers to proteins common to all retroviruses which include polymerase and other enzymes; GAG stands for "group specific antigen" and includes proteins that form the inner core of a virus. The protein bands in each section are indicated by the letter "p" and are followed by a number which describes the molecular weight of that protein measured in daltons. For example, p160 is an ENV protein that weighs 160 daltons.
It is important to note that none of the proteins used in HIV antibody tests are particular to HIV, and none of the antigens said to be specific to HIV are found only in persons who test HIV positive. In fact, many people diagnosed HIV positive do not have these "HIV antigens" in their blood.
As mentioned previously, newer HIV "viral load" tests do not isolate or measure actual virus. The tests' manufacturers clearly state that viral load "is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection." (31) In fact, viral load tests have not been approved by the FDA for diagnostic purposes and have not been verified by virus isolation. For more information on viral load tests, please see What's Up With Viral Load? on page 36. Of course, the most outstanding problem with any HIV test is that HIV has never been demonstrated to cause AIDS.
Hanna | October 11, 2005, 10:23pm | #
Chris:
This sentence from you: "An inconclusive test can become positive or negative based on an individual's sexual preference, health history, zip code or other survey data."
Do you have any scientific evidence to support that or is your entire game plan only to parrot the absolute and utter twisted pseudoscience spewed by Christine-Denailist-Maggiore?
Furthermore, I'm always puzzled at why HIV denialists care about whether or not HIV antibody tests are accurate when HIV is harmless, right? But, having said that, an Elisa with a Western Blot as confirmation is absolutely accurate and supported by PCR, bDNA and quantitative microculture findings of HIV virus in the blood (now if you're going to tell me HIV doesn't exist either, you'll have to refer to Duesberg and duke it out with him since even he states that it absolutely does).
And, despite your claim (another without a scientific reference) that "many people diagnosed HIV positive do not have these "HIV antigens" in their blood," refer to my statement in previous paragraph - the science doesn't support your allegation Chris, it just doesn't.
And what do you mean by saying "the more people that take the test, the more people will get a positive result?" READ THAT OVER AND THINK LONG AND HARD ABOUT THAT RIDICULOUS STATEMENT.
Of course that's true Chris!!! That is true of any test that's taken. The more people who take a math test, the more that will pass (or fail). The more people who take a driving test, the more that will pass. The more women who take a pregnancy test, the more who will be positive on them. If 1 Million women took a pregnancy test, you would find far more positive results than if only 100 women took the test.
Chris, seriously, be concerned - be VERY concerned. You are missing basic logic - Logic 101, if you will. I don't know how you even make the statements you do and don't realize how circular they are. But I suppose that's the old adage, "if you're crazy, do you know you're crazy?"
Here's a tip. If you're ever in a big city and a guy tells you he'll give you $20 to figure out which shell the pea is under, don't do it - it's a trick. Even if he tells you he has a list of people who have won, he's LYING.
KLL | October 12, 2005, 12:19am | #
Hi All,
I wanted to introduce myself to the group. My name is KLL and I live in Boston, Massachusetts USA.
I am a HIV-Negative AIDS patient.
I am a link in a chain of sexually-connected sick 'heterosexual' people. We all went through acute 'retroviral' syndromes. We all went through 'dormancies' only to eventually lead to symptomatic 'AIDS-like' demises. I have what textbooks would consider 'AIDS-defining' opportunistic infections.
My blood has been flown to the CDC-Atlanta, GA USA twice this year. I have been tested for HIV strains: a,b,c,d,e,o,and 2. I have tested negative to HIV RNA viral load tests. I have tested negative via Western Blot. I have tested negative for every viral pathogen that has a commercially-available diagnostic test (EBV, CMV, HHV6, HTLV, HSV, VZV, mycoplasmas, and countless others). I have tested negative for every other disease/pathogen you can think of. I am officially an 'idiopathic', immunosuppressed, lymphocyte-deficient walking medical mystery.
I know many others Bostonians both related to my cluster of sexually partners (and not), who are diagnosed ICL (idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia).
http://www.autoimmune.com/Non-HIVAIDSGen.html
I know many others in the United States and across the world who also believe they are destined to be HIV-Negative AIDS patients.
I am carrying an undiagnosed viral pathogen that has lead to my acquired immune deficiency (and Opportunistic Infections)--which I acquired from a sexual exposure.
I believe that the definition of AIDS is flawed, short-sighted, and ill-defined. But, if HIV is not the cause of AIDS, I do not agree that nothing is. I know that there are many pathogens (HIAP2, HTLV3&4, HHV6A(&B) and HPV-16/18 to name a few) that lead to immune deficiencies.
Many believe it is the pathogen HHV6 that is the true cause of AIDS, CFS, ME, Fibromylgia, MS and autism (to name a few)
http://www.lightconnectiononline.com/Archive/nov04_colums.htm
I believe I could be living proof that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
My case, in its entirety can be found here:
lemonfoundation.blogspot.com.
I would love to hear your thoughts on my plight and its place in the "HIV is not the cause of AIDS" debate.
Take Care, K :) {still smiling despite it all}
15-years-with-hiv-and-in-perfect-healh | October 12, 2005, 5:40am | #
Hannah:
I entirely agree with Chris. You are not here to reason or engage in a rational argument. You are simply trying to invalidate our arguments with inflammatory remarks which have nothing to do with a structured argument.
In a previous post you stated that HIV is the most photographed retrovirus there is and you claim that to be proof of HIV isolation.
Please, please, please provide a SINGLE link to any page or document that shows that HIV has been isolated according to Robert Koch's postulates, which are applied to any other infecetious agent BUT HIV.
I have seen the photographs that you mention: none of them show HIV in an isolated environemt, some of them are computer generated. But surely you would have noticed that, wouldn't you!?
And yes it is relevent whether or not HIV tests are accurate as among dissidents some argue that HIV exists, others argue it doesn't. But both dissident parties agree that CURRENTLY AVAILABLE EVIDENCE AND DATA does not support the thesis HIV=AIDS.
Dissidents also do not deny the fact that AIDS exists, but vehemently argue against orthodox theories regarding cause.
To eradicate AIDS we do not need AZT or any other ARV combo therapy BUT mankind needs to combat poverty, poor living conditions and starvation. Then AIDS will be eradicated too.
Unfortunately if you were to steer us through this crisis, such an outcome would never be achieved. Instead the pharma industry would rake in billions of our taxes for research and development into useless ARV's.
Did you know that in Europe twice as much money is being spend on hairloss-research than malaria and TB? In the case of Malaria and TB the infectious agent can be isolated according to Koch's postulates peer review confirmed the existence of these agents! Sadly though bald people are clients that are able to pay for a cure regarding baldness, where most TB and Malaria patients can afford to pay anything.
Obviously you cannot engage in a serious, rational and factual argument. there are numerous posts on this board which provide links to solid data regarding dissidents arguments, yet you choose to ignore them and continue with your hate campaign.
haven't you got anything better to do?
Hanna | October 12, 2005, 10:00am | #
It's really no wonder that 99.9% of virologists completely ignore the antics of HIV denialists. They're in a complete state of denial. Despite believing they have no immune suppression and that their HIV is "harmless," they are at a loss to explain why they're hospitalized with potentially fatal illnesses their cohorts NEVER develop. (oh yeah, it?s stress and cocaine ? meanwhile millions of highly stressed cocaine and heroin addicts NEVER develop these OI?s)
It's like a train wreck in slow motion. The denialists are dropping like flies and they're still convinced it's not HIV. The science that HIV=AIDS is overwhelming, by way of hundreds of peer-reviewed papers (not a couple of random studies carefully selected to raise doubt).
Like I said previously, do what you will. I wonder how many more of you will continue to bury your young children from illnesses never seen in their HIV negative friends. (Hey, if 97% of children who grow green hair developed these fatal diseases never seen in children without green hair - you'd think the answer was obvious to most people, even before the scientific evidence was in)
Ironically, the denialists are a pathetic bunch who are the most frightened by HIV. Their extreme fear of this virus has caused a brain block. If they deny, deny, deny it won?t happen. Yeah! Good luck on that one.
Karen: You know what a case study is, don't you? You think I'm going to take your word for you having PML? (maybe it really has destroyed your brain!) By the way, Tysabri is a drug that SUPPRESSES T-Cells Karen - which is why the drug has been linked to PML. And THANK YOU for proving my point about opportunistic infections (hence, their name).
Lastly, I've said it a thousand times - I have no clue whatsoever why denialists give a damn about HIV anyway. It's harmless, right? I sure couldn't imagine wasting my time on a blog where a bunch of people were claiming my antibodies to last year's flu shot would produce fatal results one day. I wouldn't be debating the tests for the antibodies because I'm wholly confident they're harmless and I wouldn't really care what some crazies think.
Why the denialists care what "crazies" like Hanna believe when they're convinced that HIV is "harmless" is indicative of the complete lack of conviction of that statement.
Adios my little terminal malcontents.
Linda Steiner | October 12, 2005, 11:52am | #
Hmmm...another diatribe. I, too, have no interest in providing further facts or references for those who will not see.
Why do we care if the hiv test is accurate? Because current society brands us as lepers once we test positive. Because it turns our lives upside down and keeps us from things to which we have a right.
I never said "healthy" people get opportunist infections--that's why they call them opportunistic. But given that one can test antibody positive for having any one (or more) of 70 conditions certainly calls into question its accuracy.
If one's habits and sexual preference were not a factor in determining status, why do the "counselors" ask all those questions? Could it be that the results are very subjective and could be read either way? I'll answer that one--YES!!
Do I know of specific people who have tested positive when they said they were gay and negative when they denied it? Again, yes.
Has it occurred to anyone of the orthodox persuasion that perhaps the immune suppression (for whatever reason, and there are many) could come first and the antibodies known as hiv might follow? And could that be the reason why antibodies are found in people with such ridiculously disparate conditions?
Hey, I'm asking questions here. Don't get defensive.
And what about the fact that no virus has ever been found in even a deathly ill aids patient? And antibodies in only a fraction of them? What do you make of that?
Food for thought--at least for anyone willing to think. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Go look at your peer-reviewed papaers and see how many times you see words like "presumed". You can't tell me that's good science.
Celia Farber | October 12, 2005, 2:19pm | #
We have almost infinite constellations of realities here: People who are HIV positive and healthy for 10-15 years now, without HIV drugs, is one of them. Are these people being asked to believe categorically that they will develop AIDS eventually? If they do not, then they are in "denial?"
No microbe with the possible exception of rabies kills every carrier. Disease causation has for centuries been rooted in explorations of germ vs host, and surely you know what Pasteur is rumored to have said on his deathbed. Could one of you voices from orthodox side possibly explain to me why it angers you so much when people do something as natural as placing faith in life, health, the capacity of their bodies to defeat microbrial and or toxic threats? Leave aside your rage about what you are certain killed Eliza Jane, and just tell me why people who are healthy and HIV positive for a long time are "in denial" whereas a breast cancer patient, for example, who believes she will beat the illness is heroic?
These are real flesh and blood people writing in here! How can they be in denial of their very existence? How many would it take, Hanna, to mitigate this gothic, murderous, HIV-Kills-All mindset of yours? Clearly HIV does not "cause" AIDS in every person expressing antibodies. But now you are demonstrating that you refuse to accept even the first hand testimonies of real people who have failed get AIDS from HIV in over a decade. How can we possibly carry on here under such primitive conditions?
If you were open to truth in all its complexity you would welcome every testimony from every long term HIV positive person. You would say: There's something I don't know about. Tell me more.
Why do you think you know all there is to know?
How can you allow your convictions, whatever they are, to permit such cruelty as you have expressed toward Christine Maggiore and Robin Scovill?
Don't you see that when you call Christine Maggiore a "sociopath" you are describing yourselves? A sociopath is one who cannot feel empathy. That is a figure who should frighten all of us more than anything, more than any scientific or medical positions under the sun.
Hanna | October 12, 2005, 7:31pm | #
Celia:
Are you accusing the L.A. county coroner's office of outright lying? Or making up an AIDS-related diagnosis where one didn't exist? Because that is not merely a clinical diagnosis, it must be supported by lab findings.
So it's easier to believe that the coroner, pharmaceuticals, nearly every virologist on the planet, the FDA, the NIH, the government, clinicians...all of these people are not only wrong, they're lying? They're conspiring with one another to share from the big pot of HIV antiviral gold - that's it! (isn't it more profitable to convince everyone to take antivirals to ward off HIV - I mean, this conspiracy is BIG, right?)
Secondly, if a woman has Stage III Ovarian Cancer and she believes she's going to eliminate it from her body by organic living, meditation and eastern medicine - I say, good luck to her. Is she in denial? You bet. Do I think chemo should be forced upon her? Absolutely not. Furthermore, there are a good many people who refuse to spend the end of their lives ingesting potent chemicals, even if it could save their lives. And, yes, I do think that's inspirational. But they don't go around saying cancer is a big fat farce and that a huge chunk of the planet is in on it to make money off of them - what pretentious paranoia!
If an HIV+ individual decides the potential side effects from antivirals aren't worth it, I respect that - wholeheartedly. It?s the elaborate conspiracies they whip off that are reprehensible. And even if I just chuckled at their dangerous propaganda, I would remain steadfast that putting your child?s well being on the line over your own elaborate conspiracy fantasies is criminal.
Celia, you created a strawman argument. NO ONE - not me, not any orthodox virologist - claims that HIV causes immune destruction in 100% of individuals. On the contrary, the "party line" has long been that a very small percentage of people have maintained an excellent immune system after 25 years. Presumably, they will never be affected by the virus - which is wonderful. (and NO ONE believes ANYONE with a normal immune system should be taking antivirals)
Your understanding of the principles of science is disturbing. If the science demonstrates that Eliza Jane was HIV positive and died from PCP, you resort to:
1) HIV is harmless
2) She didn't have PCP - the coroner lied
Science must, by nature, be testable and falsifiable. But the denialists have no mechanism in place to falsify their outcome. The ONLY answer at the end of the experiment is that Eliza Jane died from something other than HIV/AIDS. So I?m not really sure why any of you care what this coroner or any other would say ? the one thing you will never accept is scientific evidence that Eliza Jane died of PCP brought on by immune system destruction.
This is eerily the same as the "Intelligent Design" claim that the universe is no more than 10,000 years old. When you point to evidence about red shifts, forming stars, the speed of light - they tell you that "God made it appear as though the universe was billions of years old" when it's really not. So, the ONLY answer is that their God created the universe.
It's intellectually destructive and sad.
PS: Linda, so what if you believe society considers the HIV+ a "leper" (which is ridiculous and untrue, perhaps it's how you feel)? Do you know what kind of guts it takes to hold your delusional view in light of the overwhelming evidence against it? I'd say your good qualities are certainly inner fortitude and rebellious conviction. (why you care about this entire topic remains a mystery)
Celia Farber | October 12, 2005, 9:07pm | #
Hanna,
You have misundertstood me.
You wrote:
Your understanding of the principles of science is disturbing. If the science demonstrates that Eliza Jane was HIV positive and died from PCP, you resort to:
1) HIV is harmless
2) She didn't have PCP - the coroner lied
NO NO NO.
I have said that I have seen no reportage on whether Eliza Jane was HIV positive, because it was omitted from the LA Times article.
I have NOT accused the coroner of "lying."
I HAVE MERELY STRESSED THE SOLID FACT THAT THERE ARE THUS FAR TWO CONFLICTING CORONER'S REPORTS AND WE ARE AWAITING AN ADDITIONAL PATHOLOGY REPORT WHICH CHRISTINE MAGGIORE HAS CITED IN HER COMMUNICATIONS TO THE LA TIMES. I AM NOT CASTING ANY JUDGEMENT ON ANY OF THESE REPORTS, ONLY SAYING THAT WE SHOULD ALL KEEP AN OPEN MIND.
Please acknowledge that I have said that I am not accusing anybody of lying nor am I weaving conspiracy theories. I am insisting here only on the careful weighing of ALL inormation before people come charging after Christine Maggiore with accusations of murder.
Get back to me please even if you are leaving this thread and at least acknowledge the dictinction.
I am not qualified to KNOW what causes AIDS and doesn't but I am qualified to sift through the ethics of asking questions, reporting on anamolies, allowing the many many questions to be ASKED.
My "understanding of the principles of science," is basically rooted in the Einstein dictum: "The most important thing is to never stop questioning." The same dictum applies to journalism, though of course I concede that there are limits to "questioning." I don't think these questions are unreasonable, or have transgressed those limits.
Linda Steiner | October 13, 2005, 1:42pm | #
One last word to Hanna-who-will-not-be-posting-here-anymore:
You find my views "delusional" in the face of overwhelming "evidence"? I submit that your evidence is based, from the beginning, on a faulty premise. Things snowballed from there until we got to a point where there appears to be no going back. There is now way too much at stake for way too many people and companies for them to be willing to consider other possibilities.
The way proponents of alternate theories were not given equal time and space to explain their theories is science at its worst. I've said all this before, so I won't belabor the point.
I find it astounding that you can find no reason for my interest in this subject. I would think that would be obvious. Aside from my own case, I see this largely as a human rights issue.
I have read with horror of the many cases in which parents were forced to give toxic drugs to children who were obviously made very ill by them--children who bounded back almost immediately when removed from the drugs. I've read of the ones whowere forced to stay on the drugs and subsequently died. How do you think those parents feel, being unwilling accessories in their own child's murder?
It may interest you to know that I am off drugs with medical approval. My "numbers" were so good that the ID doc had no objection. I realize he thinks I'll be going back on at some point, but oh well! I have not inquired about my latest batch of numbers. I'm a bit ambivalent about whether it's better to know or not to.
No, personally I do not feel like a leper. But I am highly distressed that the state could have me arrested if I chose to have sex with someone without informing him of my status. I am not saying this is something I would do, but it certainly limits romantic possibilites! (Consider that the man I lived with for about 6 years immediately prior to my diagnosis and had sex with when I was quite ill is in perfect health.)
And, lastly, you have my sympathy, Hanna, on the loss of your friends. I understand a little better now where you're coming from. I can't state categorically that the drugs did not help at all in the beginning--it's possible they did. But I can say now that my immune system appears healed and I was beginning to have a reaction that concerned me. After all, what are potent drugs supposed to act on if you have a great CD-4 count and no "viral load"?
So I beg everyone to consider that not everyone who goes through all this comes from the same place. Maybe some people's immune systems have been destroyed beyond repair. I have no knowledge as to how these things work. I do know that an "hiv positive" label changes the way you are treated by the medical community--they're so busy trying to eradicate the "virus" that they may fail to treat the immediate problem. I often wonder if I would have recovered sooner if I were merely treated for PCP and thrush. We will never know, but I will continue my search and read everything I can. If nothing else, I will be damn well informed.
Celia Farber | October 14, 2005, 3:02pm | #
Linda,
Would you like to co-moderate this with me? I too think it is critical that stories get followed through. This thread began with the howls of HIV dissident haters who drew on a presumption that
a) Anti-retroviral medication during pregnancy is step one in being a responsible HIV positive mother. This is a development from earlier howls I can recall which called for such women to abort their babies. (This is a paradox, of course.)
b) Mothers who endure antiretroviral regimens during pregnancy, or for some portion of it, greatly increase their chances of having an HIV negative baby. The logic follows, further, that HIV status is the sine qua non predictor of health and survival in the baby.
c) If a woman nonetheless winds up with an HIV positive baby, she should put the child on a regimen of anti-HIV drugs, and
d) this will "save" the child's life. By this we presumably mean extend the child's life.
e) Breastfeeding increases the rates of transmission from mother to child. (I said "rates," deliberately, because "risk" is a near worthless measure in this context.)
f) If follows naturally that not only must all of this be accurate, but we add to the equation the statement that pediatric anti-retroviral regimens have never been documented to kill a child, else this risk would be factored in and would mitigate the howls against the supposed "narcissistic," "sociopathic," homicidal mother.
I offer to locate and document here, (or better yet, let them speak for themselves,) people who have been through this labyrinth, beginning with an HIV positive antibody test in the mother, and shattering out into many different scenarios from that starting point. What happened to them? What choices did they make? How did their children fare?
First though, I would like a show of hands to see who is still with us. If those who believe all departures from orthodox HIV advice is "nuts," "denialist,"deranged," etc have left the room then there is little point. I am interested here in the trajectory of information. I also feel that Christine Maggiore has been gravely libeled here, by extremists who are very angry, very destructive, and who don't even have the courage of their convictions to identify themselves with their real names. I therefore call for two things immediately:
1. Would all people who have attacked Christine Maggiore and the dissidents on this thread be willing to tell us their real names? I note that "Katy," who claimed to know the family, crumbled when Robin Scovill asked who she was. I ask again that "Katy" identify herself.
2. Which of the following participants still with us?:
XMAS
Abiola Lapite
Phil
Akira McKenzie
Jennifer
Dave
Shecky
CMC
Wayne
Barbar
Hanna
Katy
Heather Knolls Morgan
Joannie
Died of AIDS Last Year
Dr. Jekyll
p
Of those still partaking, who will identify themselves, and if not, why not?
Of those that remain, will you take full responsibility for every word you have posted here, and concede error if you have been proven erroneous by the end of this discussion?
If you simply do not reply, you lose by default.
I will also alert Nick Gillespie and other editors at REASON that I have requested this upgrading and formalizing of the "debate," to elevate it from a tomato throw to a true inquiry about a series of complex realities.
Who's in?
Celia Farber | October 14, 2005, 9:10pm | #
Another fake name, more sarcasm, and a link to a mediocre surgeon blogger's blog, where disdain for AIDS dissidents runs wild. "lariene," dear, nobody thinks Christine Maggiore is a "God." Our point here in part is to argue that she is also not Satan.
Yet again, a vaporous person with a fake name has posted something vaporous and useless in answer to people trying to revert to HARD FACT and HARD DATA. Most astonishing is that this vaporous Besservisser (German for "better knower") has had the temerity to accuse real people using their real names and telling their real stories about "living with HIV," of HALLUCINATING.
I can't deal with denialism this gangrenous. I have to take a break.
"lariene," I'll make a deal with you: I will not close eyes or ears to ANYTHING regarding these cases being discussed here if you won't either.
Was I hallucinating when I stood on the grave, the mass grave, of children who DIED FROM HAART TRATMENT WHILE PARTAKING IN NIH EXPERIMENTS? This does NOT mean that EJ did not die of whatever you want to insist, but it DOES mean that AIDS DRUGS CAN, I SAID CAN, KILL. A 2004 study showed greater rates of deaths from HAART than from AIDS. No?
No?
Ok, then I will send you the paper. The entire paper. What is your address?
Don't you dare show your masked face here unless and until you are man enough or woman enough, to face DATA. If you don't write back and say you are willing to read and absorb any data I might produce then you lose by default. And you can go back to your over-the-rainbow blog pasture where it's nice and safe to attack those who question HIV as the singular cause of AIDS, because all of you think alike and already agree with each other and have found ways to dismiss ALL of the parents whose children have been vaccine damaged and ALL people who have come to question HIV, and ALL people who have any issues with ANY vaccine or ANY public health agendas. I doubt you would have the courage to spout your anti-scientific, anti-humanist dogma in front of people who know first hand what they are talking about.
Celia Farber | October 15, 2005, 10:50am | #
Marcel,
Let's call it Girodian's postulate. I agree with you completely about the need to factor this in as one tries to make distinctions. I hope I didn't name call last night but I probably did because the condescension got so overwhelming. How to manage anger is a real problem, at times.
Your postulate lies at the root of this and many other tragic histories of totalitarianism. The first step is to shame the instinct to oppose it so profoundly that the overwhelming majority of people will back down immediately. For the best book I have read, perhaps ever, on the human psyche in a totalitarian state, I recommend "Stasiland," by Anna Funder.
(An aside: In for former GDR, sex was a major threat, as it was of course in Orwell's 1984. Sex is freedom (from the state.) In Stasiland you will find the hilarious and pathetic story of how the East German culture minister and his cronies invented and promoted a sexless dance, a dance in which the hips remain absolutely stationary. It was the anti-Western, anti-Elvis dance. It was called "The Lipsi," and it was supposed to redress and replace East German yearning for anything Western. If anybody has any footage of this for any reason in their archives, I will pay dearly for it.)
In any case, as Marcel says, know them by their reflexive uses of disdain, condemnation, sarcasm, censoriousness...their pride in a culture in which people do not read, but rather forbid, crush, censor, control, demonize, penalize, fire, humiliate, sue, withdraw X,Y, or Z (advertising, subscription, business, etc) When all else fails they will start honking about murder. They even equate reading, thinking, and reporting with murder. There is not one 'dissident' who has not been through the destroying carwash, except those they don't know about yet. Let me let one of them speak for himself. This is from a press release, about some rubbish, but here is what Canadian AIDS honcho Mark Weinberg has proposed to do with AIDS dissidents: (First the opening graph of the press release, then the pertinent graph:)
NEWS RELEASE
Release: No.00-EV/12
Date Mailed: Sept. 9, 2000
For Immediate Release
Contact: Contessa Morton‹208/265-2575; 800/336-9266
AIDS "Dissident" Travels to Kenya on "Forgiveness Mission"
Says Vaccines Helped Trigger Pandemic
Sandpoint, ID From the Office of the President of Kenya, one of the highest ranking military officials has arranged a series of lectures by a leading HIV/AIDS "dissident" scientist who is expected to present compelling new evidence that the pandemic was initiated by early hepatitis B (HB) vaccine trials conducted on gay men in New York City and Blacks in Central Africa during the early to mid 1970s. According to mission organizers, the documented studies, and their alarming implications, demand scientific and political reconciliation conducted in a climate of "forgiveness" in order to turn the tide on a raging pandemic currently striking as many as sixty percent of the people in many areas of Kenya.
PERTINENT GRAPH:
" These disclosures come at a time of heightened concern regarding the risks posed by HIV/AIDS to U.S. national security and international finance. On April 29, 2000, the CIA issued a report declaring that global HIV/AIDS was a U.S. "national security threat," prompting President Clinton to place all of AIDS science, and the agencies conducting it, under CIA oversight. Immediate calls for the arrest of HIV/AIDS "dissident scientists" were made by officials representing consensus interests. Dr. Mark Wainberg, for instance, affiliated with McGill University in Montreal, and the president of the International AIDS Society, called for the immediate incarceration of "scientific dissidents" who proposed alternative explanations of AIDS, its origin, and treatment. These actions closely followed the highly publicized decision of South African President Thabo Mbeki to include the testimonies of "dissident" scientists in a review of HIV/AIDS. Synchronously, President Clinton approved the National Intelligence Council's (NIC) CIA-sponsored formal declaration of AIDS as a "national security threat."
Wainberg sits on at least one governing panel of a "science" magazine where an insider told me he has dictated that if the magazine were
to write about Peter Duesberg it would be imperative that he be "depicted as a psychopath," (else, guess what, as per Girodian's Postulate, he removes his money, power, influence, great name or whatever.)
Wainberg and his allies would have to build many prisons in many nations to accomodate all people who 'question' HIV, (or rather, question people like him,) at this point.
Chris | October 15, 2005, 5:42pm | #
To Ari Keefe,
You wrote, " rule number one of journalism is to at least present two sides."
If only the LA Times had done that in the first place, this blog probably wouldn't even be happening. But thanks to the astuteness of the Reason staff, it is.
Secondly, how dare you call me a fool. How dare you.
But perhaps I was one, early on, when I accepted the bogus science of the "HIV" test without question and allowed my life to be derailed based on a non-specific non-standardized antibody reaction which has been proven to be unreliable time and time again.
As a reminder, pre-test deaths were associated with Gay Related Immune Disorder that was invariably linked to hard-living gays (who do not represent the entire gay population) and IV drug users.
Once the hypothesis that HIV was the "PROBABLE cause of AIDS" was prematurely presumed to be fact, the media then presented HIV as the CAUSE of AIDS, and the antibody test was immediately patented. What was that you wrote? Oh yes, "rule number one of journalism is to at least present two sides." I'm so glad you reminded me.
Regarding the hastily patented test, I refuse to call it an HIV test, since there are disclaimers in the instructions stating that it is not to be used as a diagnostic tool to reveal the absolute presence of something called HIV.
Based on this information alone, how can you possibly say there is no doubt whatsoever that HIV causes AIDS? Even scientists on your side of the fence have conceded to the test's gross unreliability.
Once the test was patented, even those that were not the hard-living souls previously mentioned, felt pressured to take it. Based on the hype associated with the hypothesis, they truly believed their time might be limited. And if they were unfortunate enough to get a positive result that was NOT SPECIFIC TO ANYTHING WHATSOEVER, then from that point on they lived their lives quite differently. They lived lives absent of hope, believing whole-heartedly that they could begin disintegrating at any moment, and so many of them agreed to swallow toxic medication to prevent that from happening, or evolved into individuals who abandoned all rational concern for their own well-being, until they died.
That's the unpleasant music we have to face. And for obvious reasons, most people don't want to.
So all it is, is Ms. Farber's clever way with words that may persuade?
No. It's the sudden presentation of pure logic which is consistently masked, contorted, and adulterated by stubborn name-callers such as yourself.
I am not a fool. How dare you. Really, how dare you.
Celia Farber | October 15, 2005, 5:56pm | #
Harvey Bialy has introduced a more important matter, namely a turning point in cancer theory, (with the predicted erasure of Duesberg.) I don't want to bore people with an elaborate defense of my journalistic ethos, but "ariand keefe" has now attacked my "reputation" so malevolently, that I must respond in some detail, in an attempt to set the record straight. This speaks to the ISSUES, not just to my "reputation." It also makes clear that you, sir, cannot read.
In response to the charge that I "deny" the "plummeting" AIDS death rates in recent years, and keefe's charge that I claim "aids meds are indiscriminately deadly,"
he has not read my work accurately, and this is a gross mis-characterization. In 2000, I wrote a 10,000 word story on David Ho, the (affluent, gay) culture of cocktail mania, and the mathematical model that it was predicated upon. Here is an outtake. I don't think this is journalism that lacks objectivity, or nuance, personally:
From "Science Fiction" (GEAR, 2000)
"There are facts and figures, studies and counter-studies, a virtual blizzard of data that could be arranged to show any number of things. The new AIDS drugs have saved people's lives: that's one piece of truth. The new AIDS drugs have killed people: that's another. The new AIDS drugs have damaged and deformed some people so badly that although they are alive, they wish they were dead."
....
Example #2, from same article, which I submit as proof that I quote people from the mainstream perspective, as well as "dissidents:"
***
"There is absolutely no question whatsoever that protease inhibitors have helped people," says veteran AIDS doctor Joseph Sonnabend, co-founder of AmFAR, now practicing in New York's Greenwich Village. "But they've probably hurt more people than they've helped. That's why it's complicated. The people for whom benefit has been proven beyond a doubt are really sick people who would have died without them three years ago. But the target population for the drug companies are the healthy people, and those people will almost certainly have their lives shortened by these drugs."
It was precisely those healthy people who were the primary target of David Ho's eradication campaign. Time enthusiastically exhorted: "HIV-positive patients would have to start taking the drugs immediately after infection, before they realize they're sick." Ho's mantra, "Hit hard, hit early," ushered in a new machismo in AIDS treatment, where people seemed to measure their own self-worth by how long they could endure the devastating drugs.
"I have personally seen what was being called the Lazarus effect [where chronically ill people rise off their deathbeds]," says Dr. Michael Lange, chief of infectious diseases at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. "But I would also say that many, many people are being badly harmed by them. Also, the regimens are so complex and hard to stick with."
"In my experience, I have seen that those who do not take any of these AIDS drugs are the ones who remain healthy and survive," says German physician Claus Koehnlein, who recently testified this past December at the trial of a Montreal woman who refused to give her HIV-positive children cocktail therapy, and then in a chilling Orwellian scenario, had them taken from her and placed in a foster home where they are being forced to take the drugs.
"I treat the individual symptoms -- the whole person, not just the virus. I treat them for whatever they are suffering from, and that's that. I have not lost a single patient in seven years and I've never used cocktail therapy."
Precisely what it means for a life to be "saved" is complicated, especially when the patient was not sick to begin with. As Koehnlein wryly commented, "If you treat completely healthy people you can claim great therapeutic success."
"The vast majority -- about 75 percent -- of people who go on these drugs are completely healthy," says Dr. Steven Miles, AIDS researcher and doctor at UCLA Medical Center.
"Large numbers of people are being inappropriately treated with drugs they don't need. And their lives are probably being shortened, yes."
At Lemuel Shattuck Hospital, Massachusetts, a review was done on every HIV-positive patient who died at the hospital between May 1998 and April 1999, and compared to a group of patients who died in 1991, before drug cocktails were available.
Of the 22 "post-cocktail" deaths, half died of liver toxicity from the drugs, and two more had liver toxicity listed as a secondary cause. The study concluded that liver toxicity was "now the leading cause of death among HIV-positive patients at our institution."
In other words, allegedly life-saving AIDS drugs are killing AIDS patients at this particular hospital.
Hospitals around the country are reporting radical increases in heart attacks, strokes, diabetes and other complications caused primarily by the drug's interference with the body's natural ability to metabolize fat. This is also causing the fat redistribution that leads to humpbacks and huge torso in men, and gigantic breasts in women. At the same time, fat disappears from the face, arms and legs, rendering patients stick-like.
Holly Melroe, a Registered Nurse at Regions Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota, wrote last year in the Journal of the Association of Nurses in AIDS Care that the drug therapies "may have a greater life-threatening potential than the disease itself."
I spoke to Melroe to see if she would confirm that statement.
"Oh definitely," she said. "We are hospitalizing more people now for the side effects of the drugs, than we are for the infections of AIDS. It's a very complicated situation."
Up to 80 percent of those patients were found to have dangerously high cholesterol levels, which have led to heart attacks in many cases.
...The death rate, Melroe claims, has declined by 80 percent in Minnesota over the last four years.
Mr Keefe: Where in that do you find, as a conaisseur of good journalism, "malicious propaganda?"
I cite stats, studies, experts on varying parts of the scale of positivity/negaitiviy about the drugs, and I narrate candidly what remains unclear, still not known, and "complicated."
I was asked to return to the loaded subject this year, by the editors of New York Press. Here is an outtake from that article, "Drugs, Disease, Denial":
Outtake:
Let me say, first, that I have been told and have reported and have imprinted upon my soul that for some people, at some stages of immune collapse, these drugs have helped, and maybe even prevented a slide into death. Roberto Giraldo, a doctor and expert in infectious and tropical diseases who crosses the world treating AIDS, tells me this is probably due to their anti-oxidant, anti-viral and anti-microbial properties. He also tells me that in his experience, severe immune deficiency—which may be a more useful term than “AIDS”—occurs only where severe depletion of vital nutrients has occurred; reversing the illness starts with restoring those nutrients.
“Biochemically speaking, people who are malnourished, whether because they are poor, or because they are drug addicts, suffer from oxidization, and lack vitamins A, B, E, zinc and selenium. This is true of all AIDS patients I have ever seen,” he said via telephone. “We cannot say that protease inhibitors are useless. In 1996 when they started to use protease inhibitors, there is no doubt that there was a change. Before 1996, all the people who used AZT, they were killed. There was no benefit there. Protease inhibitors—they are also very toxic—but they have benefits—they are antioxidants. No doubt they are poison and in the long run they kill the person, but you need proteases in the process of oxidation. Besides that, these drugs are also antibiotics.” Giraldo believes that AIDS is a disease “of poverty,” primarily, meaning of extreme depletion of the cells, and that those who have been middle- or upper-class, who have gotten sick, depleted their bodies through drug use and prolonged exposure to toxins. “HIV by itself causes nothing,” he says.
Giraldo has written and published voluminously on how to reverse the condition of severe immune suppression through intensive nutritional supplementation and orthomolecular medicine, combined with modified antibiotic and other targeted drug regimens. I am well aware of how scorned these ideas are among those who feel that they and they alone know what AIDS is, and how to “fight” it, i.e., the orthodoxy and the pro-drug activists. Since 1986, when I began reporting on AIDS, I have compensated for this scorn, ridicule and censure by quoting the Roberto Giraldos of this world—not because I know these voices are “right,” but because I feel they must be represented against the relentless chorus of the new-and-better-drugs-into-all-bodies-in-all-nations crowd. I am not a doctor and have never treated an AIDS patient. I’ve known dozens if not hundreds of people though, in my 20 years studying this and listening to people, who have been HIV-antibody positive and stayed healthy for up to 20 years and probably more. I wish somebody was counting them, listening to them, logging them in the official history. Nobody is; they are not supposed to exist.
Each of the 26 anti-HIV drugs currently on the market, combined in infinite combinations, or “cocktails,” is, by admission of the manufacturers, potentially lethal. One of the unexpected effects of Protease Inhibitors, or so-called HAART therapy (Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy) seen in recent years was a disruption of the body’s fat-distribution mechanisms. This in turn (in addition to the fatty deposits on the upper neck and various parts of the body) has caused strokes and heart attacks in many patients, at the very moment when the drugs were theoretically ‘working,” meaning so-called surrogate markers (cd4 cells and viral load) were going the right way. The other significant danger of HAART proved to be liver and kidney failure, which, according to a study done at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, “surpassed deaths due to advanced HIV,” in 2002. In 2005 the Wall Street Journal reported that, according to a Danish study, AIDS drug cocktails “may double the risk of heart attacks.” In 2004, the journal AIDS reported, with characteristic lack of alarm, “All 4 classes of antiretrovirals (ARVs) and all 19 FDA approved ARVs have been directly or indirectly associated with life-threatening events and death.” The paper was titled “Grade 4 Events Are as Important as AIDS Events in the Era of HAART,” and “grade 4 events” referred to “serious or life-threatening events.”
The conclusion: More than twice as many people (675) had a drug-related (grade 4) life-threatening event as an “AIDS event” (332). The most common causes of grade 4 events (drug toxicities) were “liver related.” The greatest risk of death was not an AIDS “event” but a drug event—heart attacks (“cardiovascular events”). The authors wrote: “Our finding is that the rate of grade 4 events is greater than the rate of AIDS events, and that the risk of death associated with these grade 4 events was very high for many events. Thus the incidence of AIDS fails to capture most of the morbidity experienced by patients with HIV infection prescribed HAART.” (Italics mine) In plain English, AIDS drugs cause AIDS and death far more effectively than “AIDS” itself.
Any triumph or victory claimed by the AIDS lobby for these drugs must be measured against a phenomenon they continue to deny exists, namely the untold number of people who are, to use their language, “living with HIV.” This includes those invisible, uncounted, unloved people who are HIV-antibody positive, taking no drugs, not getting sick, not dying at a faster rate than HIV negatives. This begs the question of whether HIV causes AIDS. Currently, we have one camp—which I will call the “orthodoxy”—that argues that although current HIV drugs have frightful side effects and are difficult to take, they have nonetheless reversed a tide of death, which was seen throughout the 1980s and into the mid 1990s in people who were diagnosed with severe immune dysfunction. This camp, since it views AIDS as “HIV disease,” meaning caused singularly by HIV, concentrates its efforts to “fight AIDS,” on high tech drugs that in various ways are meant to disable HIV in the blood. They are extremely mechanistic in their view of the human body and the immune system. It’s all numbers.
The much-maligned contraries camp, which I will call the “dissidents,” have argued since the early 1980s that AIDS has multiple causes, and that its resolution should be rooted in a direct address to all these root causes. These include a cessation of recreational drug use, avoidance (when possible) of the most toxic anti-HIV drugs, a strong focus on reversing malnutrition, (particularly in Africa) and a treatment approach that treats the specific opportunistic infection a person manifests, with the state of the art treatment for that infection.
PCP pneumonia, for example, is utterly treatable, yet thousands of people died in the 1980s of it. Why? Because fighting AIDS meant “attacking” HIV, period. Never the specific diseases; never the underlying causes—only the virus. David Ho, Time’s Person of the Year, sported a button at a conference that summed up this ideology. The button said, “It’s the virus, stupid.”
How that came to be the dominant scientific religion is a subject of infinite complexity and tragedy. The virus (which is actually a retrovirus, of a class that was never thought to be pathogenic prior to 1984, and which we all harbor shards of in our germline) provided an absolute measure, a clear delineation, a battleground, and above all, a focus for a gigantic industry, as well as an international corporation called AIDS Inc. The natural and true history of AIDS is only beginning to be told, or rather, retold. When AIDS Began: San Francisco and The Making of An Epidemic (Routledge) by Michelle Cochrane traces the earliest intersection between what was being observed, those who were doing the observing, and how the “truth” fared in the process. Cochrane weaves a rigorously detailed semantic, medical, and sociological examination of the first cases as they were charted and described by the San Francisco Department of Public Health in 1981. She explodes the myth of the first cases of AIDS having appeared, as the New York Times famously phrased it, in “previously healthy,” and even upwardly mobile, gay men, and shows that quite the contrary, the first nine cases were in men who had a range of immune assaults. All were recreational drug users, many were IV drug users, and some were even homeless. They suffered from diseases that had been seen in IV drug users since the 1930s, primarily fungal infections and lung diseases. That they were “gay,” was perhaps the least significant detail. Because the federal research effort ($36 billion so far) has been 100 percent HIV-centric, and because AIDS was presumed to be sexually transmitted as opposed to “acquired,” we are essentially 20 years behind in our intelligence gathering on AIDS. One of the most astonishing things about the politics of AIDS is the way in which the left repudiated any explanations of disease causation that could be predicted by poverty and social marginalization.
One of the hallmarks of the AIDS orthodoxy’s language is that coiled within each word and phrase is the answer, as well as the shaming of the question itself. George Orwell (in 1984) described the orthodox style as, “…at once military and pedantic,” characterized by a trick of “…asking questions and then promptly answering them.” Anti-HIV drugs, for example, are always called “life-saving drugs.” Why not just call them “drugs” and allow their merits to be debated? Because at the root of the AIDS orthodoxy is a relentless urge to control all thought on AIDS.
All people who question any facet of orthodox AIDS theory are “murderously irresponsible,” and dripping with the psychic blood of millions. In this gladiatorial atmosphere, it is a wonder anybody speaks out at all. If only we could agree that most people are not, by nature, homicidal, and that dissenting views are productive to a search for truth, we might get somewhere. But I know, as surely as I know anything, that my opponent in these pages will have characterized my position as “denialist.” I am not denying anything. People have died of AIDS and the matter at hand is what they died from. A retroviral infection? A host of immuno-compromising factors? An absence of AIDS drugs—or indeed, the AIDS drugs themselves?
In 1984, when the US government announced at a press conference that one of its scientists—Robert Gallo—had found the “probable cause of AIDS,” the official theory held that HIV caused AIDS by eating CD4 cells at a rapid clip. HIV was said to cause AIDS in a year or two, at best. Today, this theory has morphed into a range of possibilities; HIV causes AIDS in 10 to 15 years, in most people, but a small minority, so-called “long-term non-progressors,” might be spared due to a genetic fluke.
To my mind, if we are to stick to the orthodoxy’s own measure, one cannot begin to speak of “saving” life until one has surpassed these ten or fifteen years. In the 1980s, AZT was claimed, with the same high dudgeon by the same orthodoxy, to “save” lives, yet few survived for more than a year on the earliest AZT regimens. The word “denial” comes to mind.
When people make dramatic claims for current drug regimens, the death rates they are actually comparing are not drugs vs. no drugs, but rather extremely toxic drugs of the early years compared to less toxic drugs of today. The earliest AIDS cases, marked by Kaposi’s Sarcoma, were treated with chemotherapy (1981 to 1986) followed by AZT monotherapy in doses ranging from 1800 milligrams to 500 milligrams (1986 to 1989) followed by combinations of AZT, ddi, ddc and d4t (1989 to 1996) followed by protease inhibitors in various combinations, from 1996 to the present day. The one era I have no question resulted in deaths from the treatment itself, is the early AZT era, (circa 1986 to 1989) particularly when the common dosage was 1200 to 1800 milligrams. A German AIDS physician named Klaus Koehnlein told me in 2000, “We killed a whole generation of AIDS patients with AZT.”
My friend Richard Berkowitz, author of Stayin Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex, A Personal History (Westview), said: “Every friend I had that went on AZT in those early years is dead.” He says that they lasted on average nine months on the drug. HIV positive since the early 1980s, Berkowitz credits his survival to two things: 1) having avoided AZT, and 2) safe sex.
What he means by “safe sex,” a concept and term he himself developed and coined, together with the late activist Michael Callen, is far more complex than mere condom use. Drawing on the pioneering observations and warnings of Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, it involves an avoidance of many STDs and parasitic infections, coupled with a belief in life rather than a belief in the death sentence of HIV. Berkowitz has also mitigated my repudiation of cocktail therapy by stressing that a moderate regimen pulled him back from the brink of death a few years ago.
End out outtake.
Death rates from AIDS have indeed gone down dramatically. A few wrinkles:
1. Throughout 1996, the year cocktail therapy was declared an enormous victory for stemming the tide of death, etc, CDC reported that fewer than 20% of HIV positives actually held prescriptions for HAART.
2. No scientific studies for any protease inhibitor has shown proven clinical benefits for patients being compared to a similar group of HIV positive people who do not take drugs.
3. 'ariand keefe' wrote: "isn't the net result of saved lives what counts?"
He accuses me of not even grasping that penicillin saved millions of lives while it killed some people. That is a disingenuous argument. There are not hundreds of variables there-- infections, clearly measured and manifested, a very effective drug, and some allergic/fatal reactions. You won't trap me into condemning penicillin. But YOU TELL ME, what to conclude from this final conclusion in a comprehensive 2002 study. The study is titled "Trends In Causes of Death among Persons with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in the Era of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, San Francisco, 1994-1998" (Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2002)
"As others have reported, we found a decline in the rate of HIV or AIDS related deaths from 1995 through 1998. The relatively stable rate seen between 1997 and 1998 likely reflects a plateau and subsequent leveling off of the beneficial effects of HAART in this population. Also consistent with other studies, we found an increasing proportion of deaths from 1994 through 1998 associated with non-AIDS defining malignancies and other chronic diseases....
IN CONCLUSION (CAPS MINE), ALTHOUGH THE MORTALITY RATE DUE TO MANY HIV OR AIDS RELATED CONDITIONS HAS DECLINED, THE MORTALITY RATE DUE TO NON-AIDS DEFINING MALIGNANCIES (ED NOTE: AND THESE ARE CAUSED BY DRUGS,)CHRONIC DISEASES, AND COMPLICATIONS OF INJECTION DRUG USE HAS REMAINED STABLE, ALTHOUGH THESE CAUSES NOW MAKE UP A HIGHER PROPORTION OF OVERALL DEATHS AMONG PERSONS WITH AIDS. THE SMALL BUT INCREASING TREND FOR DEATHS DUE TO PANCREATITIS SUGGEST THAT ADVERSE EFFECTS FROM HAART MAY BE CONTRIBUTING TO INCREASED MORTALITY."
So what does all of that mean? As I made clear in my two articles: The drugs are killing people, saving people, and also NOT saving people (distinct from "killing" people.) This is not MY journalism. Mainstream AIDS journalism and medical literature ITSELF has voluminously documented this paradox. All I have done is to describe it. Do you think I make up the quotes from the AIDS-treating physicians I quote?
About journalism you know nothing. About my supposed destroyed "reputation," you are in the grip of wishful thinking. My reputation has been bolstered by the fact that my name was not attached to the following abysmal shams, to use your word:
1. The heterosexual AIDS epidemic
2. The uncritical trumpeting of the deadly drug AZT
3. Uncritical promotion of cocktail regimens
4. Insane statistical projections and racist rubbish about AIDS in Africa or other developing nations.
My record is all the more intact for my early alarmist writings about the corrosive effects of Political Correctness on our culture, particularly the rise of exploitative, disingenuous sexual harassment lawsuits.
I took hard paths but I have no regrets, as each path of questioning I took has proven valid, fruitful, complex, important. My "job" is not to clock people on the head with my certainties, but to lift questions out of the descending propagandas of the time (again to use your word.)
You are not the judge, in any case. History is the judge.
I don't blame you for not wanting to use your real name here because your descendants could google you and realize that you sided with hysteria and inaccuracy in the AIDS era.
As for my parents, my father is a broadcaster and journalist himself, and it was his dictum that gave me my initial inspiration in the field. I asked his advice on good journalism, at about the age of 19, and he said, "I can sum it up in only three words."
"Three words? What are they?"
"Penetrate the ostensible," he said.
My mother unfortunately isn't here anymore to bolster my spirits when spiteful, destructive ad homeneim attacks like yours come down the pike. But yes, she would be proud, I think.
Fondoo | October 16, 2005, 4:32am | #
Lol ok it seems I had this site mixed up with another so I have actually not posted my story here.
I am 8 years sober and was tested positive to HIV 15 years ago. I was diagnosed with AIDS 12 years ago with a T-Cell count of 180.
My wife was diagnosed AIDS 10 years ago with 3 T-Cells.
Our daughter is 6 months old and the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I did not question medical science until the doctors in charge of my daughters care started to suggest/demand things that defied common sense, I began to read....
After reading I realized I had placed my doctor in the position of Shepard and myself and family as sheep, which has changed...
I have found the current theory/treatment behind HIV/AIDS suspect...
I am now the Shepard of my family and a doctor is at best an honored advisor.
I have always had a very dependable inner wisdom when I am willing to listen. I stopped using ARV's 18 months ago based on that inner wisdom. I did not study data first or even plan it out ARV's just became "not right for me". I am now not surprised about the data I have uncovered in 100+ hours of study.
Do I have an existing health risk based on a positive HIV test? Quite possibly. Do I feel chemotherapy is going to help “my” body resist a "slow virus" *cough* or promote healing? I do not.
My inner wisdom tells me traditional Chinese medicine and naturopathic medicine is the better path to maintaining health and blood testing for oxidative stress is the better path for monitoring AIDS risk.
I tell my story because If I had just tested positive I would want to hear it. I feel the marketing of AIDS drugs as our only hope is criminal
Chris | October 16, 2005, 1:06pm | #
Hey . . . "Balance"
I took the liberty of posting the FULL QUOTE, and not just the FIRST HALF OF IT. Both halves, incidentally are found on this very blog in the same post, in the same paragraph. Now do make sure you read the second half this time. I'd put it all in caps, but I don't want to insult your intelligence. Here it is:
"I have personally seen what was being called the Lazarus effect [where chronically ill people rise off their deathbeds]," says Dr. Michael Lange, chief of infectious diseases at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital in New York. "But I would also say that many, many people are being badly harmed by them. Also, the regimens are so complex and hard to stick with."
And another thing, it was David Ho's dictum "Hit it hard, hit it early," that inspired my doctor to put me on a toxic HAART therapy while I was feeling great. After 22 months, I decided to stop. I never trusted them so I did what you did, Fondoo. My doctor surprisingly supported my decision to take a break, but, you see, that was the new trend. Apparently, David Ho's proclamation was losing some steam and credibility. "They sure have come full circle, haven't they," my doctor told me. He even seemed a little embarrassed when he said it, kind of avoiding eye contact with me. I'd sue him, but as I said earlier in this blog (which I'm not altogether convinced you've actually read) I believe he belived he was doing the right thing.
The HAART therapy was supported by David Ho's own convoluted mathematical equations that confounded even some of the greatest mathematicians, many of whom openly discredited Ho's formulas. HAART was rushed onto the scene on a hypothetical cloud in the same hasty and unproven way that the original non-specific non-standardized antibody reaction test was.
I really wish you guys would read before you post.
15-years-and-on | October 17, 2005, 4:08pm | #
what is interesting to observe is that when i suffer from as much as the occasional cold, those around me who are aware of my hiv-status, immediately inquiry if 'all' is well, as if i were to die tomorrow.
yet those who are not aware of my status don't give a shit as ANY ONE will get a cold some time. in fact most people around me seem to have a cold more often than i do.
so it does not surprise me to find the LA times stating that leroy whitfield died of 'aids-complications', yet the 'cause of death' apparantly has not yet been determined.
if leroy whitfield had not disclosed his status, if he had not been a HIV-celebrity, what would be find on the death certificate instead?
leroy denied ARV's. he also survived without ARV's for some 15 years. so have i. and i am still very healthy indeed and a father.
if i die tomorrow of the common influenza, it could be construed as an aids complication by those who are aware of my status. others unaware of my status won't and be done with it.
i ask you this: if christine maggiore was not known as an HIV dissident, if her doctors had been unaware of her HIV status, if the coroner had not known about christine, what would we find on eliza's death certificate? cause of death unknown? anaphylactic shock to antibiotics?
my sons pediatrican is not aware of my HIV status. and i will keep it that way. to keep him out of harms way and ARV's. to keep him far away from HIV science and culture. to ensure that when he eventually becomes ill, his diagnosis remains as impartial as possible and he receives appropriate treatment. to ascertain he does not become a guinea pig.
Celia Farber | October 17, 2005, 11:48pm | #
"...IT IS COMMON KNOWLEDGE IN THE GAY COMMUNITY THAT AZT WAS AN UNMITIGATED DISASTER..." (An uncensored, honest exchange.)
Cut and pasted from www.deanesmay.com, where a different, more congenial conversation has been going on for some time...
From "jonny"
Celia, I'm sure I'm not the only one who respects your work and appreciates your entry into Dean's World. Your earlier post about AZT was spot-on. It has become conventional wisdom in the gay community, after much reflection, of course, that AZT was an unmitigated disaster. Imagine the shame and regret that come with realizing that the very medicine you lobbied so hard to get only added to your community's death toll. Elizabeth, although I respect your competing interpretation of the AZT data, I simply can't abide your argument that AZT was the best treatment available at the time--and that it only killed those who were already quite sick, who, in short, were going to die anyway. That drug killed healthy and unhealthy people. It turned healthy people into sickly people who required regular blood transfusions and who were capable of little else than lying in bed. Desperation does not justify using a formerly shelved medicine--shelved because it was excessively toxic--to treat sick people. Duesberg encourages us to consider what might have happened if doctors, instead of prescribing AZT, had instead urged their patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle--to eat better, get more sleep, take vitamins, exit the party circuit, ceased drinking, opiate, nitrate consumption and so forth. Might more lives have been spared? Not enough thought went into AZT, period.
But, at the same time, I think Celia's reliance on first-hand narratives begs an obvious question. What about the conventional wisdom, now ascendant in the gay community, that HAART is a brilliant success, that it has saved many lives and brought many people back from the threshold of death? Real gay men have witnessed other real gay men bounce back from chronic illness and infectious diseases after going on the medicines. They're not symptom free, to be sure, but they sure as hell beat the alternative. The success of HAART, in my view, is the strongest evidence against Duesberg and his allies. If the medicine isn't combating HIV, then what is it doing? Why is it so beneficial? And before concluding, let me first preempt the objection that nevirapine has killed babies and mothers and that HAART causes lipodystrophy and other bodily deformities. To the first point, I agree that no medicine should be foisted onto unwitting patients who are desperate for help (that was the AZT problem); to the second point, yes, the medicine isn't perfect, but if you ask gay men whether the side-effects are worth it, particularly those who have been sick with pcp, cmv, and so on, they will almost uniformly reply yes. It's not enough to say that these medicines have harmful side effects; so do medicines treating alzheimer's, parkinson's disease and so on. You must take the next step and show that these medicines are worse than the illness, or that they're more responsible for the illness than other alleged causes. And I don't think the HIV skeptics have established this.
AIDS patients are now far more likely to die of heart disease than they are of pcp, cmv or kaposi's. And it's true that the medicines contribute to these deaths by raising cholestorol to unhealthy levels. But that doesn't mean that the medicines are doing more harm than good; it simply means that we need to develop meds with fewer side effects.
(link)Elizabeth Reid:
Elizabeth, although I respect your competing interpretation of the AZT data, I simply can't abide your argument that AZT was the best treatment available at the time--and that it only killed those who were already quite sick, who, in short, were going to die anyway. That drug killed healthy and unhealthy people. It turned healthy people into sickly people who required regular blood transfusions and who were capable of little else than lying in bed. Desperation does not justify using a formerly shelved medicine--shelved because it was excessively toxic--to treat sick people.
Jonny,
I don't think I'm the one that said that AZT was the best treatment that was available at the time and that it killed only the sick - I think that was Dale.
I'm on somewhat thin ice when it comes to the specific effects of AZT because I haven't done one tenth the reading Celia has, I'm sure, or possibly you for that matter. From my quick research, even AIDS-skeptic reviews of the Concorde trial seem to be saying that after the first three years, the death rates were the same in the early treatment/deferred treatment groups. This isn't supportive of the notion that AZT was a quick and inevitable death sentence or that AIDS didn't occur in the absence of AZT. (I didn't get the actual articles from the Lancet so if I need factual correction on this let me know. If I have to I'll pony up the online access feels again or get to the med school library.)
However, the fact that the death rates *were* the same, and post three years greater in the AZT group, obviously means that it shouldn't have been used in this way, and it was, on lots of people. I disagree that very toxic drugs should never be used on sick people - sometimes they are the only hope - but these were very toxic dugs being used on well people, and the justification wasn't ultimately there.
So I don't know enough about AZT to either defend or globally disparage it, but this particular use of it sure sounds harmful to me. The results don't seem to me to be supportive of a lack of relationship between HIV and AIDS though.
10.17.2005 6:47pm
(link)jonny (mail):
"The results don't seem to me to be supportive of a lack of relationship between HIV and AIDS though."
(link)Celia Farber:
Jonny,
I have to thank you very sincerely for what you wrote. In 21 years, nobody has ever quite phrased it that way, and I feel a strange grief inside. AZT is... at ONE level...what this war is about, what haunts the battle the most, and I will explain why. I may have to do so over a few posts. This is rather emotional, and not a blizzard of facts. Let me re-post what you said about AZT, and later on I will address the rest of your points about HAART etc, all well taken.
Jonny wrote:
Celia, I'm sure I'm not the only one who respects your work and appreciates your entry into Dean's World. Your earlier post about AZT was spot-on. It has become conventional wisdom in the gay community, after much reflection, of course, that AZT was an unmitigated disaster. Imagine the shame and regret that come with realizing that the very medicine you lobbied so hard to get only added to your community's death toll. Elizabeth, although I respect your competing interpretation of the AZT data, I simply can't abide your argument that AZT was the best treatment available at the time--and that it only killed those who were already quite sick, who, in short, were going to die anyway. That drug killed healthy and unhealthy people. It turned healthy people into sickly people who required regular blood transfusions and who were capable of little else than lying in bed. Desperation does not justify using a formerly shelved medicine--shelved because it was excessively toxic--to treat sick people. Duesberg encourages us to consider what might have happened if doctors, instead of prescribing AZT, had instead urged their patients to adopt a healthier lifestyle--to eat better, get more sleep, take vitamins, exit the party circuit, ceased drinking, opiate, nitrate consumption and so forth. Might more lives have been spared? Not enough thought went into AZT, period.
What I would like to say Jonny, is that you are quite brave to say this. It is the truth and it is a very painful truth. I don't know who you are but I would like also to reassure you that the AZT denialism should not weigh on your conscience. It should weigh, first, on the consciences of those in power--the Sam Broders, the Tony Faucis, the Martin Delaneys, the Peter Staleys... Those people (among many others) were the architects not only of the AZT craze, but of the systemic campaign of censoring, punishing, maligning, and even removing from professional circulation all those who dared critisize AZT, of which I was one. (Doug Ireland at the Village Voice labeled us, disgustedly, "AZT refusniks.")
I can tell you that in those early years, from 1987 clear through 1993-94, the so-called dissident battle was virtually ALL about AZT. And within that time frame, the REAL battle was the early years, until about 1990, when the dosages of AZT were so high as to be acutely toxic (1800-1200 milligrams.)
What I would ask you to recognize, and I think you do, is that those who fought against AZT--like the New York Native, like SPIN, like Meditel, like Michael Callen, Nick Regush, Peter Duesberg, and others, were attacked and blighted to such a degree that few would believe it. The New York Native was boycotted by Act Up, for their AZT coverage specifically, and the paper went out of business. SPIN was sued in Federal Court(this is a long story) and the AIDS column was the central target. (Glaxo Wellcome, like a conquering army, bought three pages of ad space in the VERY FIRST issue of SPIN after the lawsuit, after it was sold, and the column torpedoed. For Combivir (which includes AZT.) Right there in what was once the pages of the AIDS column.
Meditel was taken to the highest courts in the UK by Glaxo (then Burroughs Wellcome) and every single journalist who touched this story, in short, was stripped of a future career, more or less.
Then Concorde came out and in a flash it was all over. AZT fell.
The AIDS community very rapidly "moved on" from "mono-therapy" to "combination therapy," and we were just... roadkill. This is not about pity or credit or anything--it is about the past, and something tragic that transpired for 100 reasons, and was never addressed, never admitted. Nobody who fought on the right side was ever made aware that they had done something right--only that they were STILL the enemy, the hated, the "irresponsible," the "murderous," the easily maligned.
All of AIDS discourse became irrevocably putrid and dishonest. The dissidents dug their heels in; the orthodoxy went from being vicious to being...even more vicious, even more vindictive and punitive. The truth COULD have been dealt with, a truce could have been arrived at, but nobody in the orthodoxy could admit they were wrong. (I speak strictly about AZT here, and in particular high dose AZT.)
This did indeed NOT mean that HIV did not cause AIDS, nor did it mean that cocktail therapy could never work, but it DID mean that a standard of decency and truth was destroyed, and AIDS culture became fundamentalist and increasingly violent.
It split the culture like an axe, and it is from this original wound that I believe we are still reacting, reeling, in many ways.
Greek and Shakespearean tragedy teaches us that an unresolved truth grows and leads to terrible consequences, and I believe that is what happened here.
If it is indeed "common knowledge" among gay men that AZT was an "unmitigated disaster," then can you tell me...why nobody ever stood up and insisted, for example, that The New York Native be apologized to, or that the boycott be lifted retroactively (from the now sunk newspaper?) Then we could have had something like a STANDARD, for admitting what was happening, what had happened.
I think that it cheapened the lives of all those who were poisoned by AZT that nobody ever grieved or admitted those deaths. Yet you point out, very poignantly, that this involves great shame and regret.
Well, turn it on the leadership, those who had the faith of the gay community at that time. Make them look at it. If they look at it squarely, and admit it, history can move forward. As it is, everything is a defensive, hysteria-ridden muddle.
Somebody (I'm not sure who) said: "After AZT, anything."
We are still in its long cast shadow. Nothing has been sane or decent since.
This is already very long so I will have to come back in my next post to address HAART and the the HIV causation questions you raise, but this is simply about the CULTURE OF INFORMATION AND REALITY IN THE AGE OF AIDS.
People like YOU can rescue it from hopeless dishonesty, set it right. But you have to believe that truth matters and that people should not be punished permanently for fighting for an unpopular truth because it renders all of medicine, science, all of media, all of "AIDS activism," and AIDS "awareness"...a vast chaotic slum.
People should have spoken up.
People really should have spoken up.
The gay community deserved much better;
Humanity deserved much better.
I know this is getting rather melodramatic, and this is a science oriented discussion, but THIS part of the history is , as you said, quite emotional, and perhaps I may be forgiven for suggesting that we need to heal from it, before any of us can even hear each other, about everything else.
Thank you for saying you respect my work. I respect yours too.
10.17.2005 8:17pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
btw jonny,
i made the same offer to daf9/Dale in the Duesberg-CD discussion and he replied that "he sucked at book reviews in high school" and so declined. he did say, however, that he read chapter 3, that is available here online, and enjoyed my prose. (he was a very different daf9/Dale in that discussion than he has been in this one.)
10.17.2005 8:19pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
once more the gap between compose and send...
indeed, celia's prose is exactly appropriate to this thread which is not at all in any form a scientific discussion but instead something much more interesting, at least to me, a wild free for all for many unsaid things about hiv/aids, peer review, drugs, etc to get said in a really open forum.
afterall look at what this discussion is ostensibly about...basically nothing since the TORRENT speaks for itself, and only the first few posts form people saying thanks really pertain to it. the rest just got wild. for which i repeat, i am very glad
now that i know you are a grad student jonny. i am sure that you will benefit a lot from using the cd. remember in 1992 HIV was proved beyond any doubt to be the cause of AIDS. so if the 1992 CD in fact destorys the hypothesis as it was then, which many contend it does, then the 2004 version must of necessity be a load of crappola.
if you are not so wired as to download the torrent, send another email to dean with your address and we will send you one gratis.
10.17.2005 8:30pm
(link)daf9 (www):
Harvey,
As well you know, nothing in science is ever proved beyond any doubt. But in 1992 HIV causes AIDS was the hypothesis best supported by the available data. Still is.
Dale
10.17.2005 9:01pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
As well you know, nothing in science is ever proved beyond any doubt. really?
But in 1992 HIV causes AIDS was the hypothesis best supported by the available data. Still is how would "you" know?
but ok, i ammend my sentence:
the contents of the cd demolish what was the hypohteis CLAIMED to be best supported by the data.
and once more correction daf...in 1992 the nih/cdc and all the world health organizations and major medical and scientific journals declared that the evidence in favor of the hiv/aids hypothesis was so overwhelming that no more questions need be asked.
aren't facts uncomfortable things to deal with daffy?
10.17.2005 9:20pm
(link)daf9 (www):
Harvey,
So I did a PubMed search of HIV and AIDS. 1992 and before - ~40,000 articles. 1993 to the present ~ 55000 articles. So I am compelled to ask ... if all the world health organizations and major medical and scientific journals declared the evidence was so overwhelming in 1992 that no more questions need be asked ... if that was rEALLY the case, then why did eveyone keep asking questions?
Dale
10.17.2005 9:47pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
jonny,
i believe you (and celia) agreed above that the efficacy of azt was not relevant to questions of etiology.
i beg to differ somewhat. because at the time azt was introduced, it was claimed to be a way of satisfying koch's third postulate. the reasoning went from the establishment that if you introduced what was claimed to be a vrius-specific drug and the patients improved then that was pretty good evidence that the microbe the drug was aimed at was the cause of the infirmity.
whether or not you agree with the premises, it is clear that the medical claims for the efficacy of azt were 100% falso.
this becomes even more relevant to the present situation because the haart cocktails are claimed for exactly the same reason to be 'proof' of the virus hypothesis. i will wait until celia posts her promised essay on the wonders of these, absolutely nonspecific, poisons...the reason btw for the brief lazarus effects that were seen in bed-ridden multiply infected patients...the protease inhibibitors are POTENT general anitmicrobials, and before they start socking it to the liver enzymes, they do knock out a lot of antibiotic resistant infections.
gotta run...z. calls for dinner and i have no time even to proofread this once.
10.17.2005 9:48pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
just saw daffy's great question...z. is going to kill me, but this is quick
daffy: these papers do not ask questions that addresss the validity of the hypothesis, they are all bells and whistles by the scientists etc who are making their livings from it.
the sheer number of papers on hiv and aids should tell you something!
check the number against cancer!
howq many dead from each yearly int he us?
damn it man...read my book...you know so little it is really impossible to write anything to you
10.17.2005 9:52pm
(link)jonny (mail):
Celia,
I look forward to reading your HAART post whenever you have the opportunity to compose it. And I'm glad you appreciate the praise that you're very much due. As to why individuals like you haven't received apologies, and why individuals like Fauci haven't delivered them, I can only speculate that everyone involved thought they were doing their best and have retoractively decided--if they haven't completely disavowed the past-- that good intentions justify bad, and hastily made, decisions. To understand the phenomenon, we need to analyze each group separately. Gay men, although they would now never take the doses of AZT that their less fortunate friends did in the 80s and early 90s, cultivated a morbid mentality long before the AIDS epidemic began. Having witnessed their peers commit suicide or die at the hands of homophobic attackers, and having already felt the sting of social death at the hands of a world unwilling, or incapable, to acknowledge the existence of queer people and queer desires, gay men have lived in much closer proximity to death and violence than their heterosexual counterparts have.
I'm not the first to point this out, of course; countless columnists and queer theorists have hypothesized that HIV prevention has failed in large part because gay men are impelled by a death drive that knows no fear or limits. Recall the stories about bug-chasing in Rolling Stone and the constant lamentations over barebacking in the gay popular press. Bear in mind also that queer culture, at least as it was organized in the 70s, when HIV purportedly appeared, promoted an ephemeral lifestyle of drug-induced highs and lows, anonymous encounters, interminable nights, endless orgies, and so on. For years gay men have courted death--and I'm defining death not simply as physical expiration but also as living at the limits of life, at the edges of what other humans find intelligible, livable--and thus when AIDS appeared, and people began dying, the reaction in the gay community was as frequently fatalistic as it was hysteric.
What no one in the popular press will admit, however, is that the very mentality that drove men back to the baths and back onto unprotected dicks also drove them to the pharmacist to procure more AZT even though its side effects were practically unbearable. For a first hand account of this phenonenon, see Paul Monette's AIDS memoir, "Borrowed Time." Monette, hardly an AIDS skeptic, writes of his emotional highs and lows as AZT's initially salubrious effect gives way to his partner's chronic anemia and, before long, untimely death.
I'm not certain how gay men ever got it in their heads that AZT was the magic bullet; but for a time, they did. And they demanded, energetically and persistently, that anything less than full availability of the drug was a genocidal conspiracy to eradicate homosexuals from the population. That they now recognize how toxic the drug was but refuse to acknowledge their complicity in its lethality, testifies to the rampant denial (AIDS denialists takes on a whole new meaning here) in the gay community. But it's difficult to fault people who were watching their friends--let's be honest, their families--die every day, who were taught from day one that the lives they wished to lead and the loves they wished to enjoy were unlivable and unlovable, who well before the "epidemic" lived astride death, pain and suffering.
It's true that life is much easier for gays today. But the structures of feeling--shame, despair, etc.--that pervaded earlier generations remain operative today, which perhaps explains why we still can't come to terms with what happened and why.
10.17.2005 10:03pm
(link)Harvey Bialy (www):
my last post in this discussion...i know many of you are overjoyed.
i stop now because of the following reasons, in no particular order
1. z. says i am spending too much time at the computer typing instead of making beautiful images
2. the sole thing i wished to accomplish, namely the launch of what i call the wmd cd of truth has been accomplished now for several days. DW is not the only or even the major way the CD has been launched. o no. emails containing the text and hyperlinks of my original brief essay entitled "tools for finding the truth abouth hiv andf aids" have begun circulating to the entire 35,000 membership of the faseb, and a number of other lists of important scientific societies and journals, as well as the private lists of more than 100 well respected biologists around the world. this cd is not a blog event, although dw is the place and the medium that made it possible, especially in its torrential form.
3. all my pedagogical tricks have been exhausted for the moment, and insulting daf9/Dale is no longer even slightly enjoyable
4. jonny and celia have taken these discussions to an entirely new and really high level that do not need to be interrupted by me at all
5. elizabeth will still review my book, and i can look forward (as can you) to another weblog first (and reasonably soon i hope). maybe even jonny will join in with a review of his own..but the offer does not depend on that. (jonny...you wrote some really stunning prose above...only one little thing with which i would take any issue at all...you wrote "also drove them to the pharmacist to procure more AZT even though its side effects were practically unbearable." those are not side effects, those are THE effects.)
so i wish everyone who uses the cd profitable use, and thank dean as always for his more than gracious hosting of me, and bid this thread a fond and final adios.
10.17.2005 11:13pm
(link)Celia Farber:
Jonny,
I can't improve on your description of the psychology of the AZT years (and the years prior to it) but can say that I have heard a very similar description/lament, from close friends who are gay and lived through the AZT years, (Michael Callen, Richard Berkowitz and others) and I feel only an overwhelming urge to say: "I am so very sorry for what happened."
It would require quite a bit of trust on your part, to believe me when I say that I don't revel in having been correct about early dosage AZT; I only feel that I wish it could have been different. And as for "praise"--the truth is that yes, it is a welcome respite from the usual battering, but a re-adjustment of the scale of accuracy/truth is even more welcome, because as I said, it means that we can start to GET somewhere.
I feel that perhaps people feel that to concede AZT (the part of history we have been discussing here) is to throw away the entire paradigm. It is not.
It is to throw away denial. Just that.
Celia Farber | October 18, 2005, 12:12am | #
As this dynamic uncensored web discussion continues to flower unexpectedly, I would like to introduce a remarkable product for truth junkies and data fiends. It is from Harvey Bialy, Peter Duesberg's scientific biographer and founding editor of Nature Bio/Technology. His introductory text speaks for itself:
------------
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
Celia Farber | October 18, 2005, 12:31am | #
A very exciting new release, from Harvey Bialy, who needs no introduction...(Duesberg's scientific biographer and founding editor of Nature Bio/Technology.
------------
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
Leo | October 18, 2005, 12:34am | #
From Harvey Bialy, Duesberg's scientific biographer and founding editor of Nature Bio/Technology. Very hot.
------------
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
Celia Farber | October 18, 2005, 12:43am | #
Harvey Bialy is Peter Duesberg's scientific biographer; This is a very exciting monograph he has created, which speaks for itself:
------------
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
balance | October 18, 2005, 7:41am | #
linda, this comment you made regarding LeRoy: "His T-cells declined to 40 and his viral load increased to 230,000 by the August, 2004 article. One can only assume things continued to worsen as time went on."
it is confusing. why would you "assume things continued to worsen as time went by" when you have made references to viral count as viral load of crap? you believe hiv is harmless anyway, making a viral load test inconsequential to you presumably.
LeRoy did accept the hiv/aids link completely. what he questioned was the benefit of avr's over liver toxicity. his torment towards the end appeared to be related to which was worse. and he had a right to make that decision. i wish it would have gone the other way for him, a very good guy.
where does your assumption that he would have died from liver toxicity by now come from? he could have yes. but there are huge quantities of people who began avr's in the mid 90's who are still fine, take the drugs and tout their benefits. i think the number of people who have died from toxicity is tiny compared to those who have not gone on the avr's after linda, this comment you made regarding LeRoy: "His T-cells declined to 40 and his viral load increased to 230,000 by the August, 2004 article. One can only assume things continued to worsen as time went on."
it is confusing. why would you "assume things continued to worsen as time went by" when you have made references to viral count as viral load of crap? you believe hiv is harmless anyway, making a viral load test inconsequential to you presumably.
LeRoy did accept the hiv/aids link completely. what he questioned was the benefit of avr's over liver toxicity. his torment towards the end appeared to be related to which was worse. and he had a right to make that decision. i wish it would have gone the other way for him, a very good guy.
where does your assumption that he would have died from liver toxicity by now come from? he could have yes. but there are huge quantities of people who began avr's in the mid 90's who are still fine, take the drugs and tout their benefits. i think the number of people who have died from toxicity is tiny compared to those who have not gone on the avr's after
CF | October 18, 2005, 8:45am | #
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.comments.shtml
Above is a link to a very productive and high level discussion at Dean's World. This thread by initiated by the dissemination of a reference paper monograph (described below,) from Peter Duesberg's scientific biographer, Harvey Bialy, founding editor of Nature Bio/Technology. (I highly highly recommend, btw, Bialy's 2004 book: "Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg," to those who wish for a truly clear, penetrating portrait of Duesberg's scientific legacy.)
From Harvey Bialy, via Dean's World, an offer:
------------
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
CF | October 18, 2005, 11:59am | #
In my enthusiasms last night, I neglected to include in my last post the url for the discusssion at DW http://deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml
and more importantly the little essay by Dr. Bialy below. Instead his writings, which came attached to the other material I had cut and pasted, were de-contextualized and made no sense. I have known the crazy but super smart doctor for a long time, and should note that he often adopts different typing styles to portray different persona, much as an actor might. In the Dean's World discussion, he had been conducting an ongoing seminar, complete with lacerating outbursts, chalk thrown at the board, and countless other unusual, colorful, and instructive communicational techniques. I would describe Bialy as a classical scientist cast in the persona of a Randian-Beat poet, (if you, as REASON readers, can accomodate such a mixed metaphor.)
To wit:
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature". Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation, impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website (http://bialystocker.net/files /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
bialy@ibt.unam.mx
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas ( http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi). To obtain a copy click here. (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml )
Click here (http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here ( http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml).
Celia Farber | October 18, 2005, 12:03pm | #
In my enthusiasms last night, I neglected to include in my last post the url
for the discusssion at DW _http://deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml_
(http://deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml)
and more importantly the little essay by Dr. Bialy below. Instead his
writings, which came attached to the other material I had cut and pasted, were
de-contextualized and made no sense. I have known the crazy but super smart
doctor for a long time, and should note that he often adopts different typing
styles to portray different persona, much as an actor might. In the Dean's World
discussion, he had been conducting an ongoing seminar, complete with
lacerating outbursts, chalk thrown at the board, and countless other unusual,
colorful, and instructive communicational techniques. I would describe Bialy as a
classical scientist cast in the persona of a Randian-Beat poet, (if you, as
REASON readers, can accomodate such a mixed metaphor.)
To wit:
Tools for Finding the Truth about HIV and AIDS
Of all the accusations that have been leveled against my friend, Peter
Duesberg, over the many years he has been challenging conventional wisdom in
cancer genetics and 'deadly'- disease etiology, the one that is most frequently
heard in scientific circles, and one that is impossible to counter except by
extended debate, either at a scientific forum or in the journals (something that
for some reason has never occurred) is that "Peter abuses the literature".
Either he cites so many papers that no one can read them all, or, and much
worse, he misquotes and draws inferences that are not appropriate from the data
in the papers he cites. The latter, as I said, has been a damning accusation,
impossible to refute -- until now.
In 1992, Duesberg published an extensive and updated review in Pharmacology
& Therapeutics (55: 201-277) (_http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html_
(http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html) ) of the state of HIV/AIDS research. The
article is typical of his reasoning and contains the usual number of abundant
citations.
Between 1994 and 1996, thanks to the generous financial support of Seth Ian
Goldberg, MD, I was able to compile a CD that contains the complete text of
this monograph, with hyperlinks to approximately 85% of the hundreds of
references.
I would now like to make it widely available to all serious scientists as
the ultimate tool for deciding, for themselves, the questions of what the
literature actually says, and what proper inferences may be drawn from the data in
the scientific papers.
Also available here is the NIH/NIAID Official website
(_http://bialystocker.net/files_ (http://bialystocker.net/files) /NIHONAID.PDF) from 1995 that
represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is
contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD.
Whether the HIV/AIDS hypothesis rests on ever-changing quicksand or solid
scientific bases is another contentious issue that has been bandied back and
forth but never resolved. I think that a careful comparison between this
document and the one currently available is useful in the resolution of this
conundrum as well.
Harvey Bialy
_bialy@ibt.unam.mx_ (mailto:bialy@ibt.unam.mx)
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of
Biotechnology for the Americas ( _http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi_
(http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi) ). To obtain a copy click here.
(_http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml_ (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml)
)
Click here (_http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf_
(http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf) ) for a sample.
For those with more slightly more advanced computer skills, a 100% free
Bitorrent stream of the CD is available here (
_http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml_ (http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml) ).
Linda Steiner | October 18, 2005, 2:02pm | #
Well,Balance, to answer your question about why I assumed things continued to get worse...the man is dead, so obviously something got worse.
I would like a little credit here for bringing this whole subject into the light when obviously it does not further my cause. I really am searching for the truth here. And I'm not sure everybody's truth is necessarily the same. With regard to the surrogate numbers, I quoted them because they were there. I do believe it's a "viral load of crap", which, I think, does not preclude a vast change possibly having some meaning.
Do I believe the ARVs (please note it is arv, not avr) are basically useless drugs that have probably never helped and definitely harmed many people? You betcha! Do I deny that they have temporary benefits by being antibacterial and killing just about everything? No,I don't. I just don't know enough to say.
With regard to the PIs--even Roberto Giraldo, one of the leading dissident doctors, allows that they have antibacterial, antioxidant and perhaps antiviral properties. He still thinks they're bad drugs, and very likely to cause liver damage. It was a leap on my part to suggest LeRoy might have died of liver toxicity--just another possibility.
Do you know a lot of people who have been on different combinations of these drugs for very long periods, with no breaks, who are still healthy? I'd like details. Im trying to learn here. I want to know the real truth, not the truth of trumped-up studies funded by big pharma.
I'll admit that people are different, and possibly people within the hiv/aids group are there for very different reasons. I have no doubt that people who did heavy duty drugs and exposed them- selves to many partners with many diseases ended up with worse immune systems than I have. I think my experience was more or less a fluke and I believe my immune system to be healed. Only time will tell.
As to hiv causing aids--I just don't see it. I don't see causation. I don't see real proof. I've been studying this daily for over 5 months now, and while not convinced Duesberg is totally right, I think he's very close. The only thing I dispute is that there must be drugs involved, but if you allow, as he does, for malnutrition, I think my own case can be explained. So maybe I do agree, after all.
I'm just somebody out there who believes a major fraud is being perpetrated on the people of the world. I don't think it was intentional in the beginning, but it has gone far enough. Nobody's saying "believe as I believe"--we're saying go back and look at how all this unfolded. Examine all the evidence dispassionately. See where the science is very bad. Then draw your conclusions.
Harvey Bialy | October 18, 2005, 5:25pm | #
Chris,
You are most welcome, and believe me ( and I use that word correctly) that I have a great deal of compassion for your situation, and every other man or woman walking around with the modern day equivalent of a star of david on their arms.
I tried to post the clarifying urls document below a while ago, but the server refused me passage.
Maybe this one will go through.
I hope so.
--
I notice that the links in Celia's repost are not all that clear, and one is not quite correct.
I give them again below in what I hope is an easier form to use.
The Duesberg monograph from Pharmacology & Therapeutics (55: 201-277), is available here: http://duesberg.com/papers/ch62.html
The NIH/NIAID Official website from 1995 that
represents the orthodox, scientific community's position on HIV/AIDS that is contemporaneous with the Duesberg monograph on the CD is available here: http://bialystocker.net/files/NIHONAID.PDF
The CD is being offered under the auspices of The Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas
(http://www.ibt.unam.mx/virtual.cgi).
You can obtain a copy here: http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1128695388.shtml
A sample is available here: http://bialystocker.net/files/Sample.pdf
The Bittorrent is available here: http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1129083829.shtml
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