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| July/August 2008 |
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"Gallo's Egg", A New Report by LA Police Investigator, Reveals Flaws in HIV Theory and Threats by AIDS Experts Opposed to Debate Clark Baker, a 28 year veteran investigator for the Los Angeles Police Department, recently looked into charges by AIDS activists that Professor Peter Duesberg and journalist Celia Farber are guilty of mass murder for questioning the role of HIV in AIDS causation. Baker began his investigation as an unbiased party with no particular interest in AIDS and no idea of the raging international debate about HIV. Through the process of discovery, however, he became not only a staunch proponent of the need to question current beliefs about HIV, but a target for activist threats and harassments. In producing this report, Baker identified Brian Foley, head of the HIV genome project at the U.S. government's Los Alamos National Laboratory, as one of the sources of harassing emails. Another vociferous and well connected opponent of open dialogue on AIDS turned out to be a student expelled from medical school for plagiarism. He also documents Cornell AIDS researcher John P. Moore’s infamous warning to AIDS rethinkers, "When you’re in a war, there are no rules. This IS a war, there ARE no rules, and we WILL crush you, one at a time, completely and utterly!" Says Baker, "After having investigated thousands of crimes and arrested hundreds of criminal gang members and other assorted predators, I know a criminal enterprise when I see one. HIV/AIDS makes Enron look like a neighborhood poker game." Check out a PDF version of Gallo’s Egg at www.rethinkingaids.com or read it online at exlibhollywood.blogspot.com
Audio Commentary on "Gallo’s Egg"
Cracking the Egg Further: Podcasts with Farber and Duesberg on the Baker Report
Award Winner Celia Farber Attacked by AIDS Activists (Again) Listings for New Podcast Program "How Positive Are You?"
Podcast #4:
Dismantling AIDS News, Rethinking AIDS in Africa
Podcast #3:
What is AIDS? plus Steve’s Adventures in HIV Land
Podcast #2:
The Racial Bias in AIDS and HIV Testing
Podcast #1:
How Positive Are You? The Adventure Begins AIDS Orthodoxy Accidentally Confirms Drug-AIDS Connection, Finds Risk of "AIDS Diseases" More Likely Among Crack Users Women with HIV positive test results who regularly use crack are three times more likely to develop AIDS diseases and die—despite adherence to anti-HIV drug treatment—according to a US survey of 1,686 positive testing women who take pharmaceutical antiretroviral treatment. The survey found that the 29% of participants who regularly or intermittently used crack cocaine were nearly 60% more likely to develop an AIDS-defining illness, and the 3.2% who used it persistently were three times more likely to die, despite adherence to anti-AIDS drug regimens. Raising the question of what "viral load" actually measures (we know it’s not whole, infectious HIV), the study found that persistent crack users began the survey with "viral loads" that were on average three times higher than intermittent or non-users of crack, and that their "loads" remained higher even when figures were adjusted for reported adherence to treatment regimens. The survey also found a high death rate among crack using participants with a total of 419 deaths during the study period. Of these 419 deaths, 197 (44%) were attributed to AIDS-related causes, 138 (33%) were officially declared non-AIDS related, while the cause of the remaining 84 deaths were not determined. In other words, 222 of the 419 deaths were not related to HIV or AIDS. Another finding that strains for explanation within the HIV causes AIDS paradigm: Persistent crack use was more likely to predict a high "viral load" than high adherence to anti-HIV regimens was to predict a low "viral load." Reporting on the new survey, mainstream AIDS activist/journalist Gus Cairns asks: "Are the study findings due to direct effects of crack on immune status…? Previous studies have shown that cocaine causes immune alterations in T-cells, inhibits the functions of other immune cells like macrophages and neutrophils, suppresses cell-signaling chemicals (cytokines)..and recent studies have also found that cocaine increases the permeability of the blood-brain barrier...and that crack users develop chronic lung disease because of inhaling crack contaminants. [In this study], there was a predominance of respiratory diseases in the women who developed AIDS-defining conditions: 18% developed bacterial pneumonia, 10% PCP and 4% TB." Read Cairns’ entire article at www.aidsmap.com Higher Mortality Among HIV Positives? Mainstream Claims Under Scrutiny At his blog site hivskeptic.wordpress.com, Professor Henry Bauer points out some of the problems behind claims made in the recently published study "Changes in the Risk of Death After HIV Seroconversion Compared With Mortality in the General Population" One significant problem he notes with the study is that researchers cannot accurately determine dates of sero-conversion among participants or validly estimate when sero-conversion may have occurred. There were very few instances where people included in the study were tested at frequent intervals before so-called sero-conversion, making an approximate date for change in sero-status anyone’s guess. Another problem with the study is that it does not compare like to like. The multitude of health risk factors documented to be commonly found among HIV positives are not commonly found in the comparison group from general population, a factor which can only skew results. Even the study’s authors admit that there are striking differences between people who test positive and their control group of healthy HIV negatives culled from non-risk groups: "Although we matched by age, sex, calendar time, and country, it is likely that HIV [positive] individuals in our study differ from the general population in other ways [besides HIV status]. Rates of smoking have been shown to be high…other risk behaviors, socioeconomic factors, and race/ethnicity are also likely to differ among [positive testing] persons. Those [who identify as] IDUs in particular are likely to be at higher risk of mortality than the general population regardless of HIV [status]…" Bauer vigorously questions the study’s round-about endorsement of AIDS drug therapy offered in this statement: "We found that the gap in mortality rates between HIV-infected individuals in our study and the general population narrowed in every calendar period from 1996 onward." In reply to the above, Bauer explains, "Everybody familiar with HIV science will recognize the standard ploy used here to guarantee the conclusion that deaths have decreased due to drug therapies. In fact, the AIDS Era is by arbitrary convention divided into a Pre-HAART Era (pre-1996) and a HAART Era (post-1996), and this naming-and-dating-technique allows researchers to disregard all other factors, such as changing the definition of AIDS to include clinically healthy HIV positives, the increased number of clinically healthy persons given AIDS diagnoses in those years, or the fact that the dramatic decrease in AIDS deaths started before HAART came into general use. "These omissions leave the conclusion that, since there are fewer deaths in the period known as the HAART Era than in the Pre-HAART Era period, HAART must be the direct cause of the lower number of deaths. This ‘unassailable basic premise’ shields the researchers from all alternative explanations to the numerous contradictions they encounter — that is, if it allows them to detect contradictions at all — and unfailingly allows them to reach unwarranted pseudo-conclusions. For example, the authors of this paper conclude that ‘mortality rates for HIV-infected persons have become much closer to general mortality rates since the introduction of highly active anti-retroviral therapy.’ But this is not a scientifically established conclusion; it is simply the premise restated. "The article’s unjustified take-home message is articulated by lead author Porter who claims in a an accompanying interview that ‘the study underscores the importance that people are identified and treated early.’" Other commentary on the problems with the new study and its conclusions:
For more information and commentary on this and other topics related to HIV and AIDS, please visit hivskeptic.wordpress.com
AIDS Critics Among Many Censored Scientists "Viruses and Vaccines, HIV and AIDS: An Investigative Journey into a Reckless and Contaminated Medical Industry" This latest publication by investigative journalist Janine Roberts highlights dubious activity by "HIV co-discover" Dr Robert Gallo, offering proof of his scientific misdeeds in the form of documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. These documents include facsimile copies of Gallo’s last minute alterations to the most important HIV paper ever published showing the many handwritten changes that hid the fact that his team had not isolated HIV or proved any virus to cause AIDS. Robert’s research also shows that Gallo sent off non-specific proteins mischaracterized as HIV proteins to be used to create the first so-called HIV test and did so before doing the experiments claimed today as proving a virus caused AIDS. He then used the same non-specific material for the first PCR probes. Roberts also shows that "illogical virology does not affect only AIDS. HIV is not the only virus claimed to cause disease that was never properly isolated and proved to cause illness. Many childhood vaccines are based on a nightmare of bad science and illogical presumptions about the nature of viruses and the relationship between cells and viruses. The information here may well help parents whose children have become autistic after receiving vaccinations." With over 600 footnotes, a scientific glossary and index, Roberts says, "I am hoping this book might eventually help to forge an alliance between the many parent groups worried about vaccines and people worried about HIV." In an unusual move, Roberts invites critics and skeptics to point out errors in her work. "If any of the science in my book can be shown wrong, I am prepared to produce new editions with corrections. If you see anything questionable in this book, let me know!" Roberts’ new book can be found at Amazon.com
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| June 2008 |
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From the UK, Officials Say AIDS Pandemic is Cancelled
India Asks, “Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?”
New Radio Shows and Podcasts with AIDS Rethinkers
The latest news in AIDS is at least two decades old, but 20 years ago—and as recently as last month—UNAIDS and the World Health Organization continued to deny it, squelching data that showed AIDS was not affecting the general public around the globe. Back in 1987, Rethinking AIDS board member Gordon Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Public Health at the University of Glasgow, tried unsuccessfully to point out that AIDS predictions didn’t add up and that the notion of a global AIDS epidemic among heterosexual populations was at best a huge mistake, or at worst, a dishonest marketing scheme. Now, hundreds of billions of dollars later, the recklessly ignored facts are coming to light as the top AIDS official at the World Health Organization finally admits there is no evidence that the world at large is--or ever was--at risk for AIDS, and UNAIDS comes under fire for promoting unfounded fear and squandering precious healthcare dollars on a problem that didn’t exist. The new official word on AIDS is the old word: Everyone is not at risk; AIDS is confined to distinct high-risk groups such as injection drug users and men having sex with men…except if you live in certain parts of Africa. According to the new version of orthodox AIDS-think, unlike other people in other parts of the world, heterosexual Black Africans still remain at high risk for AIDS. Dr. James Chin, former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, claims this is because 20% to 40% of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa participates in "multiple concurrent overlapping relationships” involving sexual intercourse with several different people and several changing partners every few weeks. The startling concept of African AIDS epidemics due to wildly promiscuous Blacks and the remarkable admission that 20 years of global AIDS policy followed a false premise have yet to be reported by any major US media.
Excerpted from the June 12, 2008 UK Guardian “The AIDS scare was one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the last 30 years…” Finally we have a high-level admission that there is no threat of a global AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals. After 25 years of official scaremongering about western societies being ravaged by the disease – with salacious, tombstone-illustrated government propaganda warning people to wear a condom or "die of ignorance" – the head of the World Health Organization's HIV/AIDS department says there is no need for heterosexuals to fret. Kevin de Cock, who has headed the global battle against AIDS said that outside very poor African countries, AIDS is confined to "high-risk groups,” and even in these communities it remains quite rare. In other words, all that hysterical fear mongering about AIDS spreading among sexed-up western youth was a pack of lies. Much of the media has treated Dr. De Cock's admission as a startling revelation when in truth, experts have known for many years that in the vast majority of the world, AIDS has little impact on the "general population.” In her new book The Wisdom of Whores, Elizabeth Pisani – who worked for 10 years in what she refers to as "the AIDS bureaucracy" – admits that by 1998 it was clear that "HIV wasn't going to rage through the billions in the 'general population', and we knew it.” And it isn't the case that the heterosexual pandemic failed to materialize because officialdom's omnipresent pro-condom propaganda was a success. According to James Chin, a clinical professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the new book The AIDS Pandemic, it was always a "glorious myth" that there would be an "HIV epidemic in general populations." That myth was the product of "misunderstanding or deliberate distortions of HIV epidemiology" by UNAIDS and other AIDS activists, says Chin. It is time to recognize that the AIDS scare was one of the most distorted, duplicitous and cynical public health panics of the past 30 years. Instead of being treated as a sexually transmitted disease that affected certain high-risk communities, the "war against AIDS" was turned into moral crusade. Governments exploited the disease to create a new moral framework for society. Through baseless fear mongering, officials sought to police and regulate the behavior of the public. No longer able to appeal to outdated Victorian ideals of chastity or restraint, the powers-that-be used the specter of an AIDS calamity to terrify us into behaving "responsibly" in sexual and social matters. They were aided and abetted by the radical left. Gay rights campaigners, feminists and left-leaning health and social workers stood shoulder-to-shoulder in spreading the "glorious myth" of a possible future AIDS pandemic. An unholy alliance of old-style, prudish conservatives and post-radical, lifestyle-obsessed leftists latched on to AIDS as a disease that might provide them with a sense of moral purpose. And they ruthlessly sought to silence anyone who questioned them. Those who challenged the idea that AIDS would devour sexually promiscuous young people and transform once-civilized western societies into diseased dystopias were denounced as "AIDS deniers" and "heretics." Anyone who suggested that homosexuals were at greater risk than heterosexuals was denounced as homophobic. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the glorious moral effort to make everyone submit to the sexual and moral conformism of the AIDS crusaders. Even in Africa, the international focus on AIDS has been motivated more by pernicious moralism than straightforward charity. Diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis are bigger killers than AIDS. Yet focusing on AIDS allows western governments and NGOs to lecture Africans about their morality and personal behavior. The relentless politicization and moralization of AIDS has not only distorted public understanding of the disease and generated unnecessary fear and angst – it has also potentially cost lives. James Chin estimates that UNAIDS wastes around $1billion a year in activities such as "raising awareness" about AIDS in communities that are at little risk. How many lives could that kind of money save?
Excerpted from Guerilla News Network It’s official: AIDS is not explicable by sexual transmission, at least not outside of Sub-Saharan Africans, gay men, intravenous drug users and prostitutes. For the rest of us, there is no heterosexual AIDS pandemic, and further, there will be no heterosexual AIDS pandemic. “Threat of world AIDS pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits,” The Independent announced on Sunday, June 8, 2008 (mimicking what I have been reporting for years and what some of my colleagues have been reporting for decades). But take it from someone you trust, Dr. Kevin de Cock of the World Health Organization (WHO): “[T]here will be no generalized epidemic of AIDS in the heterosexual population outside Africa.” The authorities explain that they misled the entire world, for decades, because admitting the grandeur of their farce would have encouraged their critics: “Any revision of the threat was liable to be seized on by those who rejected HIV as the cause of the disease.” Of course! We’ve got to protect flawed science from criticism! But, regardless of past and current performance (and admissions of outright massive fraud), the authorities at the WHO and UNAIDS still want you to believe them when they talk about AIDS, Bird Flu, SARS, and other advertised but not achieved super-pandemics. Such a weak defense might encourage a curious mind to wonder at the other flaws in their paradigm. For example, are we now to believe that there is a virus that causes a fatal disease, but only in Africans, (wherever in the world they may be), gay men and drug addicts? But not the entirety of the human population that is sexually active? The answer to the riddle may be found in the actual cause of “HIV” – namely, “HIV testing.” Figure out who is tested, how the tests work (or, more to the point, how they don’t work), and who the tests are said to be accurate for, and you’ll get an understanding of how the “AIDS” diagnosis – now, no better than a brand name applied to poverty and drug addiction – actually works. “HIV tests” come up as “false positives” in numbers far exceeding “true positives”: “Sir, In the May 9 issue of The Lancet, Round the World correspondents discussed AIDS-associated problems in former Eastern bloc countries…I would like to emphasize another alarming concern – namely, the rapid growth in false-positive HIV tests in the former USSR, and in Russia especially. In 1990, of 20.2 million HIV tests done in Russia only 12 were confirmed and about 20,000 were false positives. 1991 saw some 30,000 false positives out of 29.4 million tests, with only 66 confirmations.” (The Lancet, June 1992) They have no ability to determine if someone has or does not have the antibodies they think they’re looking for; the interpretation of “HIV positive” is subjective and not consistent: “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 and HIV-2 in human blood.” (Abbott labs HIV-1/2 test, 1986 to the present). They don’t produce singular or diagnostically specific results – they cross-react all over the map: “Heterophile antibodies are a well-recognized cause of erroneous results in immunoassays. We describe here a 22-month-old child with heterophile antibodies reactive with bovine [Cow] serum albumin and caprine [Goat] proteins causing false-positive results to human immunodeficiency virus [HIV] type 1 and other infectious serology testing. (CLINICAL AND DIAGNOSTIC LABORATORY IMMUNOLOGY, July 1999) “False-positive ELISA test results can be caused by alloantibodies resulting from transfusions, transplantation, or pregnancy, autoimmune disorders, malignancies, alcoholic liver disease, or for reasons that are unclear.” (Doran, et al. False-Positive and Indeterminate Human Immunodeficiency Virus Test Results in Pregnant Women. Arch Family Medicine, 2000) The secondary tests that are sometimes used to give a sense of validity to an initial test are either reformulations of the same material (the Western Blot), or are synthetic genetic probes (PCR Viral Load) that likewise cross-react and give no diagnostically specific reaction (and these tests are rarely to never used when you’re talking about “AIDS in Africa”): “Persons at risk of HIV-1 infection have been classified incorrectly as HIV infected because of Western blot results, but the frequency of false-positive Western blot results is unknown.” (JAMA. 1998; 280: 1080-1085) “The HIV-1 PCR assay was designed to monitor HIV therapy, not to diagnose HIV infection…In patients (like ours) with a low prior probability of disease, almost all positive test results are false positive.” (False Positive HIV Diagnosis b HIV-1 Plasma Viral Load Testing. Ann Intern Med, 1999.) “Helminth (parasitic worm) “load“ is correlated to HIV plasma Viral Load, and successful deworming is associated with a significant decrease in HIV plasma Viral Load.” (Treatment of intestinal worms is associated with decreased HIV plasma viral load. J.AIDS, September, 2002) AIDS in Africa is and has always been a clinical diagnosis. Essentially, the test is dispensed with and “AIDS” is diagnosed based on the symptoms of hunger, TB and malaria – in other words, poverty: “Our attention is now focused on the considerably large number of the seronegative group (135/227, 59%) who were clinically diagnosed as having AIDS. All the patients had three major signs: weight loss, prolonged diarrhoea, and chronic fever. Many of them also had other AIDS-associated signs, such as lymphadenopathy, tuberculosis, dermatological diseases, and neurological disorders.” (Hishida O et al. Clinically diagnosed AIDS cases without evident association with HIV type 1 and 2 infections in Ghana Lancet. 1992 Oct 17). The numbers that have been reported are also entirely fabricated based on exponential projections from one small group to entire populations. Very recently, these numbers have been revised to such a massive degree so as to drive the AIDS prognosticators to painful public redaction: In Swaziland this year, the rate of HIV infection among young women decreased remarkably, from 32.5 to 6 percent. A drop of 81% – overnight. UNICEF’s Swaziland representative, Dr. Alan Brody, told the press “The problems is that all the sero-surveillance data came from pregnant women, and estimates for other demographics was based on that.” (August, 2004, IRIN News) Who are the tests considered “accurate” for? The tests are only considered to be “accurate” for certain groups. Those considered to be at “high risk” are much more likely to be tested, and to have their tests interpreted as either a “true positive,” or, as you can see below, a “false negative.” In other words, if they want you for the “AIDS” diagnosis, they’ll get you: “Suppose, for example, a single rapid test that has 99.4% specificity is administered to 1,000 people, meaning six will test false-positive. That error rate won’t matter much in areas with a high prevalence of HIV, because in all probability the people testing false-positive will have the disease... “But if the same test was performed on 1,000 white, affluent suburban housewives – a low-prevalence population – in all likelihood all positive results will be false, and positive predictive values plummet to zero. (Coming to Your Clinic – Candidates for Rapid Tests. AIDS Alert, 1998) Here, from the Independent, is the new philosophy of AIDS, and it’s quite a shift: “Whereas once it was seen as a risk to populations everywhere, it was now recognized that, outside sub-Saharan Africa, it was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.” So how did we get to, “It’s only gay men, Africans, drug addicts and prostitutes,“ from the version advertised for 25 years: “Everyone is at equal risk to contract HIV and to develop AIDS.” What happened to the theory of sexual transmission? The 10-year 1997 study by Dr. Nancy Padian had a lot to do with its downfall. The study took 175 “mixed” heterosexual couples (that is, one partner testing “positive” and one “negative”) who practiced vaginal and anal sex [for the latter – 37.9% at the commencement of the study, decreasing to 8.1% by the end], both with and without condoms [32.2% condom use at the beginning, increasing to 74% at the end]. But no matter how these folks did it, nobody who was negative became positive: “We followed up 175 HIV-discordant couples [one partner tests positive, one negative] over time, for a total of approximately 282 couple-years of follow up… No transmission [of HIV] occurred among the 25% of couples who did not use their condoms consistently, nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up…We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study [nobody became HIV positive]…This evidence argues for low infectivity in the absence of either needle sharing and/or other cofactors.”“ Padian determined that outside of intravenous drug use, this was not a very transmissible “sexually-transmissible disease.” But there is a contention made by Dr. de Cock that some sort of special sexual activity in Sub-Saharan Africa must (but is not evidenced to) explain the differences in “HIV prevalence.” It’s worth looking at studies of sex and “HIV positivity” for comparison. Does sex correlate with “HIV positivity” more than I.V. drug addiction? In West Africa, these women, all prostitutes, have remained negative for more than five years: “[This study involved] a group of repeatedly exposed but persistently seronegative female prostitutes in The Gambia, West Africa…have worked as prostitutes for more than five years, use condoms infrequently with clients and only rarely with their regular partners and have a high incidence of other sexually transmitted diseases” (Rowland-Jones S et al. HIV-specific cytotoxic T-cells in HIV-exposed but uninfected Gambian women. Nat Med. 1995 Jan) In sum, lots of STDs, lots of exposure to HIV positive persons, and no HIV. Here, as reported on PBS’s “RX for Survival” (2005) a group of prostitutes refuses to get sick: “In Nairobi, a group of prostitutes appear to have natural immunity against HIV…because they have an abnormally large number of killer T-cells.” (New York Times, 2005. Author: ANITA GATES) In this study in Tel Aviv, girl and boy prostitutes don’t turn “positive,” unless they’re injection drug users: “Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevalence was studied in an unselected group of 216 female and transsexual prostitutes … All 128 females who did not admit to drug abuse were seronegative; 2 of the 52 females (3.8%) who admitted to intravenous drug abuse were seropositive. “ (Modan B et al. Prevalence of HIV antibodies in transsexual and female prostitutes. Am J Public Health. 1992 Apr) In Tijuana, among a group of hundreds of prostitutes, condoms were used by a slight majority, but then, they said, for less than half the time: “In order to determine whether prostitutes operating outside of areas of high drug abuse have equally elevated rates of infection, 354 prostitutes were surveyed in Tijuana, Mexico… None of the 354 [blood] samples…was positive for HIV-1 or HIV-2. Condoms were used by 59% of prostitutes but for less than half of their sexual contacts. ... Infection with HIV was not found in this prostitute population despite the close proximity to neighboring San Diego, CA, which has a high incidence of diagnosed cases of AIDS, and to Los Angeles, which has a reported 4% prevalence of HIV infection in prostitutes.” (Hyams KC et al. HIV infection in a non-drug abusing prostitute population. Scand J Infect Dis. 1989) No condoms, no drug use – zero positivity. The same is found in the US and throughout Europe. Injection drug use, not sex, equals “HIV positivity.” “HIV infection in non-drug using prostitutes tends to be low or absent, implying that sexual activity does not place them at high risk, while prostitutes who use intravenous drugs are far more likely to be infected with HIV. Other prostitute studies tend to be small but similarly emphasize the central role of drug use as a major risk factor: in New York City, 50 per cent of 12 drug users were positive, compared with 7 per cent of 65 nonusers; in Italy, 59 per cent of 22 drug users were positive, whereas none of the nonusers were. None of the 50 prostitutes tested in London, 56 in Paris, or 399 in Nuremberg were seropositive.” (Rosenberg MJ, Weiner JM. Prostitutes and AIDS: a health department priority?. Am J Public Health. 1988 Apr) That doesn’t sound like much of an STD. So, do you still believe the WHO, and the medical authorities when they talk about AIDS? Despite their incredible, world-changing lies and deceptions, advertising campaigns and persecution of dissenting scientists, do you still believe them when they say that AIDS is still a sex-disease, but now, only if you’re Black, gay or poor? Talk Radio Tackles AIDS with Professor Henry Bauer and Christine Maggiore AM Talk Radio Host Jeff Farias invited Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Science Studies and Dean Emeritus of Arts and Sciences at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Henry Bauer, and Alive & Well founder Christine Maggiore to chat about AIDS rethinking on his popular AM radio program last week. Topics covered in the show include the racial bias in HIV testing, the real data on sexual transmission of HIV, the fact that so-called HIV tests have never been validated by purification of the virus from HIV positives, and that testing HIV positive does not signify infection with HIV. Listen to the broadcast minus commercial interruption by clicking here: www.rethinkingaids.com The Failure of HIV Testing to Explain AIDS and Racial Bias in Results Professor Henry Bauer offers surprising facts about HIV and HIV testing that couldn’t make it into the radio broadcast: My studies complement what Christine point out on the radio. I've analyzed the accumulated data from so-called HIV tests and have shown that what these tests detect is not something infectious, because the prevalence of it—the rate at which people test positive—has not changed during a quarter of a century, whereas infections, epidemics, show increases followed by decreases. "HIV" varies in a regular fashion with age, race, sex, and geography whereas infectious agents do not discriminate in this way by race, and they strike in different geographic regions at different times. Globally, "HIV" has remained restricted largely to southern Africa and the Caribbean. In developed countries, it has remained restricted largely to people with TB, drug addicts, and groups of gay men. Careful analysis of a multitude of studies show:
And when two things are not correlated, one cannot be the prime cause of the other. As Christine has pointed out, the criteria for a positive “HIV test” vary from lab to lab and country to country, but there is no disease for which tests in different locations deliver different verdicts. One of the central tenets of HIV/AIDS theory is that following “HIV infection,” there is an asymptomatic latent period, lasting on average 10 years, before any symptoms of illness appear. Yet all the HIV-test data show that the greatest risk for testing positive is among adults of around 40 years of age, while the data for deaths in the United States show that the highest rates of death from "HIV disease" are also among adults of around 40 years of age. This means there is no latent period. Furthermore, no infectious disease kills people aged around 40 while sparing the very young and the old; infectious diseases are most dangerous for babies and seniors. "HIV disease" is obviously not an infectious disease. AZT, the first antiretroviral drug approved to treat AIDS, was introduced in 1987. Later it was also used also for prophylaxis against AIDS (given to asymptomatic HIV positive testing people). In the mid-1990s, combination therapy or HAART (Highly Active AntiRetroviral Treatment) was introduced, and immediately described as "life-saving." Because of HAART, it is said that AIDS is no longer fatal, it’s described instead as a chronic, manageable condition. If that is the case, then the ages at which HIV positive testing people die should have increased steadily since 1987, particularly after the mid-1990s when HAART was introduced. However, death statistics show that the age at which the risk of dying is greatest has remained at around age 40 from 1987 until at least 2004 (the last year for which such data appears to be available). In other words, there is no sign of any life-extending effect of antiretroviral treatment. Instead, it has become increasingly clear that antiretroviral treatment harms, rather than helps when used as directed. The latest version of the official US guidelines for administering anti-HIV drugs states: "In the era of combination antiretroviral therapy, several large observational studies have indicated that the risk of several non-AIDS-defining conditions, including cardiovascular diseases, liver-related events, renal disease, and certain non-AIDS malignancies is greater than the risk for AIDS in persons with CD4 T-cell counts >200 cells/mm3; the risk for these events increases progressively as the CD4 T-cell count decreases from 350 to 200 cells/mm3." In other words, more HIV positive testing people are dying from liver, heart, and kidney failure which are typical effects of AIDS drugs than are dying from AIDS illnesses. The mistaken view that testing positive for "HIV" denotes fatal infection by a virus has led to the unnecessary, iatrogenic, deaths of innumerable people because of drugs that were known from the very beginning to be highly toxic. These unnecessary deaths will continue as long as this mistake is not corrected. Those people who characteristically tend to test HIV positive most frequently are under the greatest danger: Africans, African-Americans, and people of African ancestry in other parts of the world. There is a profound racial bias in the tendency to test HIV positive. In the USA, the latest figures are that black men test positive 7 times as often as white men, and black women 21 times as often as white women. Similar racial disparities are reported from Europe and from South Africa. Under the HIV/AIDS dogma, this must come about because of the particular sexual behavior of black people. That behavior, according to James Chin, former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, is that 20% to 40% of the adult population in sub-Saharan Africa participates in "multiple concurrent overlapping" sexual relationships: intercourse with several people over the space of a few weeks, and changing partners every few weeks. Now that "HIV/AIDS" in the USA is acknowledged as a problem primarily for black communities, analogous sexual behavior is alleged for them. On the other hand, no actual observations or studies have found any marked difference in sexual behavior between black people and others. The willingness to believe in this "otherness" of Africans and African-Americans in this respect reflects long-held---even if suppressed or subconscious---racist prejudices. The tendency to test positive varies by race because of differences in immune response. Asian Americans always test positive 30-60% less frequently than white Americans. Native Americans test positive not much more often than white Americans. Hispanics on the west coast, who are largely of Native American stock, test positive not much more often than white west coasters, but Hispanics on the east coast, who are largely of Caribbean-African stock, test positive nearly as often as African Americans. In South Africa, "coloreds" test positive at rates between those of black and white South Africans. All the data on racial differences in testing HIV positive demonstrate that testing positive does not reflect an infection, and indicting black people for this difference reveals deep-seated if unacknowledged racist stereotypes.
“How Positive Are You?” Christine Maggiore and David Crowe launched a new podcast program that reports the other side of AIDS news. You can listen to the first episode, essentially a test run, at iTunes (phobos.apple.com) or through either of the below links: Duesberg Debate on Radio On May 23, Professor Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley debated Len Horowitz, an AIDS conspiracy theorists who believes HIV is a man-made virus created by the US government, on the George Whithurst Berry show. The discussion includes the origin of HIV (natural or a bio-weapon), whether it has a role in AIDS, and the part that drugs like AZT play in the development of disease. Listen up at the link below: Duesberg in Conversation with Robert Scott Bell Those interested in a friendly discussion of the facts according to Dr. Duesberg will enjoy the following interview with Talk Radio Network host Robert Scott Bell: Here’s more from Duesberg and RS Bell in the form of an internet podcast: Daily New Analysis of India Asks the Big Question, Quotes Big Names in AIDS Rethinking The below article appeared last week as a full page, full color article in DNA, a national Indian newspaper: Is HIV the cause of AIDS? The failure of a much sought-after vaccine against the virus has re-ignited an old debate. Mayank Tiwari explores the spectacular science controversy. Last September, AIDS researchers were dealt a heavy blow when clinical trials of the most promising candidate for an HIV vaccine were stopped after it turned out to be a dud. The clinical trials showed that the vaccine might have put the people who received it at greater risk of infection rather than preventing HIV or reducing its effect. A survey of top AIDS scientists conducted by The Independent showed most believed a vaccine was nowhere near, with some even believing that effective immunization against HIV may never be possible. “Nearly a billion dollars is spent globally on AIDS research annually, and yet the sobering reality is that at present there are no promising candidates for an HIV vaccine,” wrote Harvard Medical School’s Bruce Walker in the journal Science, summing up the failure of the expensive effort. The development has strengthened the position of a vocal minority of scientists who argue that HIV is a harmless passenger virus (found in diseased tissue, but not contributing to the cause of the disease). This community of scientists includes Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, David Rasnick, a prominent American biochemist, and Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, another American biochemist, and enjoys the support of South African President Thabo Mbeki. They have from the very beginning of the AIDS era—supposed to be 1984 when US biomedical researcher Robert Gallo published a series of papers arguing that HIV was the cause of AIDS—questioned the “causal link” between the virus and the disease. Other developments, too, have strengthened the position of the AIDS dissidents. Among these are: periodic revisions of the number of people suffering from AIDS; the demographic factor, which is against the nature of infectious viruses to spread regardless of identity clusters; and AIDS symptoms like tuberculosis and cancer being common results of lifestyle conditions. Duesberg even says that it is AIDS drugs, such as AZT, that cause the disease owing to their high toxicity. The dissenters also cite data showing HIV+ individuals tend to get AIDS when they take AZT and get better if they stop taking the drug. Among the main reasons dissenters cite in favour of their movement is skewed health funding, especially in developing countries. On May 10, the British Medical Journal carried an article calling for UNAIDS to be shut down as it distorts health funding. In it, Roger England, who heads a Grenada-based think tank, Health Systems Workshop, argued that too much is being spent on HIV compared to other diseases which kill more people. “It is no longer heresy to point out that far too much is spent on HIV relative to other needs and that this is damaging health systems. Although HIV causes 3.7% of mortality, it receives 25% of international healthcare aid and a big chunk of domestic expenditure. HIV aid often exceeds total domestic health budgets themselves.” Purushottam Muloli, a New Delhi-based member of Rethinking AIDS, a loose group of scientists and policy makers who do not agree with the prevalent HIV/AIDS theory, says he has been questioning the Indian health ministry and UNAIDS about the scientific evidence behind labeling sections of the population, such as homosexuals, high-risk groups. “The health policy of the country is being controlled by international donors. Can you believe that the entire health budget of India is less than the amount of international funding the country receives on HIV?” Rethinking AIDS president David Crowe says the AIDS “dogma” persists because doctors are trained to obey their superiors. “There are many examples of bad medical advice becoming dogma due to the power of senior medical people. The dogma of AIDS has resulted in hopelessness and despair caused by the stigma of HIV positive status. ”
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| May 2008 |
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Call for End to UNAIDS in British Medical Journal "Why a UN agency for HIV and not for pneumonia or diabetes, which both kill more people? UNAIDS mandate is wrong and harmful." Writing in the May 2008 British Medical Journal, health management expert Roger England asserts that the joint United Nations program on HIV and AIDS should be "closed down rapidly." England is chairman of Health Systems Workshop, an independent advisory group on health management in poor countries. According to England,"UNAIDS should be disbanded as its mandate is wrong and harmful." Launched in 1996, UNAIDS is based in Switzerland and works in more than 80 countries worldwide against the alleged spread of HIV and AIDS. England says the UNAIDS agency was set up on the argument that "AIDS and its impact are exceptional" and need more attention, effort and funding than all other health threats faced by the world today. England says AIDS is "a major problem in southern Africa, but it is not a global catastrophe." He also asserts that language from a top UNAIDS official that describes AIDS as "one of the make-or-break forces of this century ... a potential threat to the survival and well-being of people worldwide," is "sensationalist." "Worldwide," he states, "the number of deaths from HIV each year is about the same as that among children aged under five years in India." England argues that "far too much is spent on HIV relative to other needs and that this is damaging health systems. HIV causes 3.7% of global mortality but receives 25% international healthcare aid and a big chunk of domestic expenditure." "HIV exceptionalism is dead," he says, "and the writing is on the wall for UNAIDS. Why a UN agency for AIDS and not for pneumonia or diabetes, which both kill more people?" "UNAIDS should be closed down rapidly, not because it has performed badly given its mandate, but because its mandate is wrong and harmful. Its technical functions should be refitted into [the World Health Organization], to be balanced with those for other diseases." Source: www.inthenews.co.uk AIDS Maverick Peter Duesberg Profiled in Discover Magazine The June 2008 issue of Discover, currently available on newsstands, features a lengthy, sympathetic and very interesting profile of University of California at Berkeley professor Peter Duesberg, an expert in retroviruses and the first scientist to openly question the role of HIV in AIDS causation in a paper published in the medical journal "Cancer Research" in 1987. Summarizing the original reason for Duesberg's skepticism of the HIV hypothesis, Discover says, "He knew that HIV is a retrovirus --- the subject of his own heralded research --- and that retroviruses don't kill the host cells they infect. If anything, the make them proliferate. That is the opposite of what happens with AIDS where special immune cells are knocked off. The more Duesberg looked for answers, the more he came to believe that the original hypothesis of top AIDS researchers --- that, at least in the US, AIDS was brought on by drug use and other immune suppressing causes --- was correct...By 1986, after more than two years of research, Duesberg was so convinced that the HIV theory was dead wrong that he spent nine months writing his paper on HIV for Cancer Research." The article poses bold questions, "Could it be, as Duesberg suggests, that the antiretroviral drugs used to attack HIV actually do more harm than good, contrary to the common assumption that they have dramatically reduced AIDS deaths?" and includes a summary of his alternative hypothesis of AIDS causation along with an update on his innovative cancer research. Anticipating that AIDS activists will attack author Jeanne Lenzer and Discover for daring to give coverage and credibility to Dr. Duesberg and the AIDS debate, please consider taking a stand for open dialogue by sending a supportive email to the magazine at editorial@discovermagazine.com Skeptical Scientist and Whistle Blowing Journalist Honored for Exposing AIDS Fraud Rethinking AIDS, an international group of more than 2,500 scientists, doctors, journalists, health advocates and others, announced that a prominent research scientist and a well-known AIDS journalist will accept "Clean Hands" awards as part of events on May 13-14 in Washington, D.C. The awards, given by the Alliance for Patient Safety and Semmelweis Society International, recognize public health "whistleblowers" -- in their case, for their work in exposing fraud in AIDS research. University of California at Berkeley microbiologist Peter Duesberg, Ph.D. (a board member of RA) and journalist Celia Farber will be two of 19 individuals to accept the awards at a ceremony Tuesday, May 13, at the Library of Congress in Washington (see event details below). On Wednesday, May 14, Dr. Duesberg and Ms. Farber will testify before a "No FEAR Tribunal" to inform members of Congress and the public of the dangers to all when whistleblowers are silenced. The awards are presented as part of the second annual "Whistleblower Week in Washington." Whistleblower Week is sponsored by a coalition of organizations led by the No FEAR Institute, a group supporting government employees seeking fair treatment and employment protection for those who expose corruption. Since May 2002, when the federal No FEAR Act (Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act) passed, the Institute has sought even stronger guarantees for whistleblowers. These historic events honor those taking a stand for integrity and courage in public affairs and the abuses of the public trust endemic to AIDS research. EVENT SCHEDULE: (No reserved admission; arrive early) Presentation of "Clean Hands" Awards, Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Members' Room, Thomas Jefferson Building, The Library of Congress, First Street S.E., between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street, Washington Screening of film "The Constant Gardener", Introduction by Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber; discussion following, Tuesday, May 13, 2008, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., Location to be announced "No FEAR Tribunal", Wednesday, May 14, 2008, , 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. - House of Representatives Testimony, Room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Independence Avenue, South Capitol Street, First Street, and C Street S.W., Washington, , 1:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. - Senate Testimony, Room 215, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Constitution Avenue, C Street, First Street, and Second Street N.E., Washington MEDIA CONTACTS: David Crowe, President, Calgary , Alberta , Canada (Mountain time zone), 1-403-289-6609 (office), 1-403-861-2225 (mobile), david.crowe@aras.ab.ca Elizabeth Ely, Public Relations Chairperson, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. (Eastern time zone), 1-718-704-9672 (mobile), publicrelations@rethinkingaids.com Rethinking AIDS: The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis ("RA" or "the Group") was formed in 1991 to express the concerns of a growing number of renowned scientists and medical doctors about HIV research and the resulting human rights abuses. In 1995, by a letter published in Science, the Group called for a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against the HIV/AIDS hypothesis and recommended that critical epidemiological studies be undertaken., , Among RA's founders and key members are University of Toronto professor emeritus and former cancer researcher Dr. Etienne de Harven; Harvard microbiologist Dr. Charles Thomas; 1993 Nobel laureate for chemistry Dr. Kary Mullis; Nature/Biotechnology co-founder Dr. Harvey Bialy; University of California at Berkeley molecular biologist Dr. Peter Duesberg and the late Yale mathematician Dr. Serge Lang, both members of the National Academy of Sciences; professor of medical physics at the Royal Perth Hospital in Western Australia Dr. Eleni Papadopulos; and Glasgow University professor emeritus of public health and World Health Organization consultant Dr. Gordon Stewart.
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| April 2008 |
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Alive & Well is back in operation after an extensive IRS audit involving a five year review of our fiscal records, board meeting notes, newsletters, meeting agendas and educational materials. We are happy to report having passed this inspection with flying colors and to let you know that our non-profit status is officially reconfirmed. We will resume posting news on a quarterly basis beginning in May. In the meantime, please visit the following web sites for current news and information:
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| December 2007 Part Two |
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• $2.5 Million Award Over False HIV Positive False Positive Woman Wins $2.5 Million Victory, Story Gains International Attention A lawsuit involving a false positive HIV diagnosis ended in a legal and moral victory for Audrey Serrano who suffered multiple ailments and permanent physical damage from the anti-HIV drug treatments her doctor ordered despite Serrano’s persistent questions about her diagnosis. Nine years after her original positive diagnosis, follow up testing proved Serrano was HIV negative. The case is the first lawsuit in US history involving a false positive HIV diagnosis not to settle quietly out of court without public disclosure of the facts. Instead, since original reports on Serrano’s trial began appearing on the AP wire service earlier this month, the case has been making international news. Below please find an AP report filed prior to the verdict and a follow up story from Indy Media that gives details about the case that raise serious questions about the accuracy and reliability of so-called HIV tests. A fact worth noting in the AP report to anyone who believes low T cell counts happened only to those testing positive: The HIV negative Serrano had counts low enough to put her in the AIDS category. As her doctor stated, “I believed she had HIV from…the fact that her blood had abnormal amounts of cells used to fight infections.” Another piece of information brought up in news reports that conflicts with mainstream claims about HIV transmission: Serrano tests negative despite having had a partner diagnosed with AIDS.
Hearing Resumes in HIV Misdiagnosis Suit
WORCESTER, Mass. (AP) — Audrey Serrano received HIV treatments for almost nine years before receiving a stunning diagnosis: She never actually had the virus that causes AIDS. Now Serrano is suing a doctor who treated her, saying the powerful combination of drugs she took triggered a string of ailments, including depression, chronic fatigue, loss of weight and appetite and inflammation of the intestine. "Today, it's still hard. One minute you think you have it, the next minute you don't," Serrano, the divorced mother of a 17-year-old girl, said Tuesday during a break in proceedings at Worcester Superior Court. "And your mind plays tricks on you, and you still live as if you have HIV, even though you don't." Serrano, 45, is seeking unspecified damages in the lawsuit she filed in 2003. The original lawsuit named several medical providers but was amended to include just Dr. Kwan Lai, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester's HIV clinic. Serrano's ordeal began in 1994 after an anonymous test at a clinic in Fitchburg showed that she was HIV positive. Serrano and her attorney, David Angueira, say they are unsure whether the initial test was a false positive, or if it was a record mix-up. A doctor at the clinic in Fitchburg put Serrano on medication intended to contain the virus without conducting separate tests to confirm the diagnosis, said Angueira. Serrano was referred to the clinic in Worcester, where Lai began treating her, the attorney said. Lai repeatedly failed to order definitive tests even after efforts to monitor how Serrano was responding to treatment did not show the presence of HIV in her blood, Angueira said. Lai testified Tuesday that she had no reason to question Serrano's original diagnosis because Serrano convinced her she had the virus that causes AIDS. "She convinced me that she was HIV (positive)," Lai told the court, saying Serrano told her that she had worked as a prostitute, her partner also had AIDS and that she had suffered three bouts of a type of pneumonia that was typically associated with those infected by the virus. "I have never been a prostitute or a hooker, I've got too much respect for myself for that," Serrano said after the proceedings. She confirmed that her former boyfriend indeed tested positive for HIV/AIDS, but disputed the claim that she told the doctor that she had suffered bouts of Pneumocystis pneumonia. "I believed she had HIV from the detailed history we took" and the fact that her blood had abnormal amounts of cells used to fight infections, Lai said. Under cross examination, Lai said she never saw a document that proved conclusively that Serrano was HIV positive. Serrano refused to permit her to contact her former physician directly for more information and never signed a form that would allow other doctors to release medical records to her, Lai said. Lai and her attorney, Joannie Gulliford Hoban, declined to comment outside the courtroom. The medical center has denied wrongdoing in the case. The hearing started Monday and is expected to conclude next week.
Verdict of $2.5 Million Over False-Positive HIV Diagnosis Brings up Basic CHICAGO, Dec. 12, 2007--A lawsuit decided today against a medical doctor at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center over consequences of an allegedly false-positive HIV antibody test exposes basic problems with the test and treatments for all persons taking them, according to a high-ranking medical researcher who has advised the plaintiff's lawyer on the case. The verdict, issued today, awarded $2.5 million to the plaintiff. The complaint by Audrey Serrano, 45, in court hearings this week in Worcester, Mass., focuses on the absence of a “confirmatory” Western Blot test in her records. However, Andrew Maniotis, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Pathology, University of Illinois-Chicago School of Medicine, contends that, though the reliability of all HIV testing is not on trial in court here, the case history opens questions about it. And, because Serrano developed illnesses commonly defined as “AIDS-related conditions” only after taking HIV medications known as “highly active antiretroviral therapy” (HAART), the drugs themselves appear to have caused “AIDS.” Rethinking AIDS (RA) has been asking such questions since its founding in 1991. Etienne de Harven, M.D., president of RA, says, “It is urgent that we open a public debate on the highly suspect reliability of all HIV testing. Moreover, I fully share Dr. Maniotis' concern about the safety of HIV drugs.” Further resources are online at the group’s Web site, www.rethinkingaids.com. Rodney Richards, Ph.D., worked on the development of antibody (ELISA) and genetic “viral load” tests for Amgen and holds some related patents. “The diagnosis of being HIV positive is based on arbitrary combinations of tests, none of which are approved for diagnosing HIV,” he says. “In fact there is no test for HIV. It’s just an illusion.” Raising issues of informed consent for all persons submitting to HIV antibody testing, the test kits themselves contain disclaimers that doctors rarely, if ever, share with patients. For example, Abbott Laboratories’ ELISA test kit, typically used as a preliminary test, warns: “ELISA testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS.” Confirmation of an ELISA result with a Western Blot test is currently required as a “standard of care.” Epitope’s Western Blot package insert reads: “Do not use this kit as the sole basis for HIV infection.” “This is somewhat more concerning, since the Western Blot is supposed to be a highly accurate test, used to confirm that an ELISA is not a false positive,” says Dr. Maniotis. “Moreover, the peer-reviewed literature gives substantial evidence that the virus ‘HIV’ has never been isolated in purified form free of contaminating cellular debris in order to generate the so-called ‘specific viral antigens’ used in the test kits.” Serrano, now acknowledged to have always tested HIV negative and therefore not to have been at risk for developing AIDS, nevertheless suffered from several AIDS-defining illnesses, including wasting, herpes, and oral thrush, while taking HAART. She also suffered from other health problems, including constant diarrhea (AIDS-defining under the African definition), muscle wasting, profound fatigue, non-specific skin lesions, oral thrush, herpes outbreaks, severe nosebleeds, constant gynecological bleeding and pain from ovarian cysts, fibrocystic breast lesions, hyperplastic pituitary lesions, and severe heart and respiratory difficulties. Labels for HAART drugs actually list these conditions as possible side effects, suggesting that the drugs themselves cause AIDS-related conditions, Maniotis says. Serrano’s experience is, sadly, not unique. Dr. Maniotis chose to investigate her case because, he says, “it is typical of many cases reviewed and, as it illustrates so clearly the development of AIDS-related conditions in a woman testing HIV negative who was healthy before she took HAART, strongly suggests that profound paradigm shifts are urgently needed to avoid more human rights violations.” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Questions AIDS Questioning HIV/AIDS: Morally Reprehensible or Scientifically Warranted? is the title of a new article by Henry Bauer, PhD, published this month in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Winter 2007, Volume 12, Number 4). Click here to download the article in PDF format. HIV Positive Journalist Stops Meds, Recovers Health and Speaks Out by David Crowe Maria Papagiannidou is a well known Greek journalist. What was not known was that for 12 years she was hiding the fact that she was HIV-positive, suffering greatly from drug-induced side effects. Recently she rejected the HIV=AIDS paradigm and has stopped all AIDS drugs, and has regained her health -- her AIDS-defining illnesses which only started with the drugs, have now ceased. Maria is also recently married to the Canadian AIDS dissident and peace activist Gilles St-Pierre (http://peaceandlove.ca) who discovered her through her website, http://hivwave.gr (parts in English). In a Google video she is interviewed on Greek Channel ET3 in Greek with English subtitles by Vassilis Vasilikos who is described by wikipedia as a "prolific Greek writer and diplomat.” See the interview at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5241692678156821662 Maria is the author of "How I Conquered AIDS: A wonderful adventure with the HIV virus" which was written under a pseudonym before she revealed her HIV status and "The Game of Love in the time of AIDS. Both books were written before she became a full AIDS dissident. She is now planning a third book to describe her new views and their impact on people labelled HIV-positive. Some quotes from Maria in the video: "[After stopping the drugs] I now feel like the sleeping beauty who was awakened with a kiss…I have been an AIDS patient, had developed full AIDS...a series of illnesses...which came over me since I started the AIDS therapy...I have suffered encephalopathy, it was due to a cocktail of drugs…Things [the drugs] cause, they attribute to the virus." And some comments from Vassili in reply to her statements: "It sounds like a conspiracy among the big pharma…As I understand from your books, there is a growing group of people who question AIDS…" Pope Listens to Poor Africans, Calls for Food to Fight AIDS In a story carried across the AP wire on World AIDS Day under the title “Pope Calls for New Efforts to Fight AIDS,” the top man at the Vatican echoes the cries of poor Africans across the continent who say food is their number one need over AIDS drugs, condoms and safe sex education in the fight against AIDS. "Food is often cited by people living with and affected by HIV/AIDS as their greatest and most important need," said Elizabeth Mataka, the U.N.'s special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. Other quotes of interest from the article: “A U.N. food agency said that reducing hunger in poor countries was key to fighting AIDS and other infectious diseases. Hunger and disease create a vicious cycle, as famished people are more likely to fall victim to infectious and chronic diseases, which then reduce their ability to provide food for themselves and their family, the Rome-based World Food Program said in a report.” “Malnutrition also makes recovery more difficult even when proper drugs are available, so the international community must take care to couple medical help with food aid, the agency said in its World Hunger Series report for 2007.” The Other Side of World AIDS Day by Shazia Islam “We need to start questioning the establishment, and look for the other side of this and other issues. We need to take charge of our health, and not look to the ‘authorities’ for all the answers…” December 1st marks World AIDS Day. To show their support for the cause and to remember those who have died, people don the customary red ribbon, and attend a number of charity fundraisers, raising money for AIDS research and treatment programs, with the possibility of meeting a celebrity or two. On the guest list? Leading AIDS crusader, Bono and his Product Red consorts, the shining faces of pop culture and their children. We can’t give Bono all the credit. Celebrities have been endorsing the fight-against-AIDS initiatives since the late Princess Diana sat on the bedside of a dying AIDS patient and held his hand. Today, the AIDS cause is a multi-billion dollar industry with funds going into the research, manufacturing and distribution of AIDS drugs, celebrity endorsements, marketing and advertising, the promotion and sale of condoms, edutainment events, world-wide conferences, and more. With so much money flowing, mostly into the coffers of drug companies, AIDS has now become a disease to be maintained, not cured. But rather go on about the evils of AIDS, Inc., I’m going to write about my personal journey into the heart of the current AIDS debate. About two and a half years ago, I auditioned for a role in an original rock opera. The open call ad had a Lennon-ish air to it, and I thought this might be my chance to redeem myself in light of all my other failed attempts at attaining my fifteen minutes of fame. What can I say? The audition was hideous at best, and I had no inclination to cling onto even the slightest bit of hope. Imagine my surprise when I received a call from the writer himself offering me a part. I thought the gods must really be crazy, but I thanked them for the small mercies they send us ‘little’ people every now and then. To make a long story short, we performed the first act of the rock opera as a workshop in Vancouver. Svend Robinson and Libby Davies attended the closing night. The electrifying show was still pulsating as guests mingled, scanning the information tables bedecked with glossy-paged reading material on HIV and AIDS. The story itself was an autobiographical account of how the writer contracted hiv through a non-consensual relationship with a trusted and much older mentor. The first act reveals the nature of their relationship, and the subsequent discovery by the writer of his positive status. While the first act appears to support the prevailing belief that hiv causes AIDS, a look into the full story reveals that the writer was actually challenging this belief. I hadn’t realized the weight of the issue until a friendship developed between myself and the writer. I gained more insight about hiv and AIDS through talking to him about his experience and doing my own research into the area. Having lost a close relative from AIDS in the 80s and not really understanding the condition at the time, my curiosity grew. I discovered that Robert Gallo, the researcher who identified hiv as the cause of AIDS in 1984 (much to the chagrin of a group of French scientists challenging his copyright), published his findings without any solid evidence to back his claims. The U.S. government was very quick to stand up and tell the rest of the world that the cause of AIDS had been found, a victory over the French. There is a lot of information at the public’s disposal supporting the ‘dissident’ view that hiv does not cause AIDS, that AIDS, a conglomeration of various illnesses, is just that, many different unrelated illnesses that might have something in common, a weakened immune system, caused by an extremely tiny virus that has never been isolated, its identification and measurement defying scientific method. Or from many factors - chemo-therapy AIDS drugs, street drugs, to famine, dirty water, malaria, and the no-cebo (placebo backwards) effect. The documentary film “The Other Side of AIDS” by Robin Scovill, made in 2004, further reveals the inaccuracy of hiv testing, the life-threatening effects of AIDS drugs, and the untold suffering of millions caused by the labeling of hiv as a killer virus. Through a series of interviews with research scientists, medical professionals, activists, and victims of the label, a lot of what we believe to be true about hiv and AIDS because the medical establishment and the government say so is perhaps a well-thought out plan of action to keep the greenbacks rolling and the billion-dollar pharmaceutical industry moving. The tragedy in this would make Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” look like a romantic-comedy. What is the tragedy? The tragedy is that millions of people are being tested for a condition that might not exist. Those who are labeled are told they don’t have long to live unless they take the drugs. They are then ostracized from their communities, and in some parts of the world like Papua New Guinea, even buried alive. Furthermore, by revealing their ‘condition’ to others, they are denied the very thing we need the most, love. True, they might get our charity through a cheque and a hug, but how about the real, touchy feely, real kind of love? Back to my writer friend. He was told that without the drugs, he’d have five years to live, and with the drugs, possibly ten. After experiencing damaging side effects, he stopped taking the drugs. He’s still going strong to this day due to the strength of his will and belief that hiv does not equal death, eleven years later. There are many people with the label who have been living long, healthy lives. Of course, then there’s the ‘recent’ popular idea that what we think matters being given greater focus with scientists, writers, filmmakers, shamans and even ordinary people supporting the view that we have the power to shape our reality. We need to start questioning the establishment, step outside of our boxes, and look for the other side of this and other issues. We need to take charge of our health, and not look to the ‘authorities’ for all the answers. We’ve given up so much control, not only to clipboard-toting doctors who have a pill for every ailment imaginable, to politicians preaching why we need ‘them’ to protect ‘us’ – but to the glamorous deities of pop stardom who wear red ribbons like chic Gucci accessories, to government programs that take babies away from their mothers when they refuse AIDS drug treatments, and to the courts of law that put everyday people behind bars simply because they lied to hide a lie. HIV is not the real threat. It is our willingness to give up our power, the power to think, the power to seek answers, the power to question. That is the greatest threat to our survival today, and we see the consequences of giving up that power. The myth of hiv is just another example of how easily we can be duped and how easily fear is spread. The War on Terror. It’s no coincidence that the communities affected by these dubious constructs are those that have already been persecuted, shunned, and bullied: blacks, gays, the homeless, and Arabs. Of course, it affects us all if we continue to look at the world as if we’re the only ones that matter. I have joined forces with my writer friend, and together we will be performing all three acts of his rock opera as a two-person show in Toronto to coincide with World AIDS Day. The production is part of a double bill dubbed “The Other Side of World AIDS Day”. Excerpts from Scovill’s film will be shown. We hope people will step outside of their boxes on that day and join us in word and song to celebrate the re-awakening of our collective consciousness. No red ribbons necessary. For more information, visit: www.southerntime.ca Copyright © Shazia Islam 2007. All Rights Reserved.
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| December 2007 |
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• Global Estimates of AIDS Slashed by Millions UNAIDS Admits to a Decade of Exaggerated Numbers On the eve of World AIDS Day, popular claims about AIDS came under scrutiny once again in the global media. On November 20, the Washington Post revealed that UN AIDS planned to admit it has “long overestimated both the size and course of the epidemic,” reporting constant increases when evidence showed the opposite was true. A multitude of news stories followed UNAIDS’ admission of inflated figures, but as Dr. Henry Bauer points out in the commentary following the Post article, “media coverage failed to report clearly that the UN AIDS revision was only of statistically calculated estimates, not of the actual situation those numbers pretend to describe.”
U.N. to Cut Estimate Of AIDS Epidemic JOHANNESBURG-- The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement. AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic. The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year's estimate, documents show. The worldwide total of people infected with HIV -- estimated a year ago at nearly 40 million and rising -- now will be reported as 33 million. Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news. Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS. "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda," said Helen Epstein, author of "The Invisible Cure: Africa, the West, and the Fight Against AIDS." "I hope these new numbers will help refocus the response in a more pragmatic way." Annemarie Hou, spokeswoman for the U.N. AIDS agency, speaking from Geneva, declined to comment on the grounds that the report had not been released publicly. In documents obtained by The Washington Post, U.N. officials say the revisions stemmed mainly from better measurements rather than fundamental shifts in the epidemic. They also say they are continually seeking to improve their tracking of AIDS with the latest available tools. Among the reasons for the overestimate is methodology; U.N. officials traditionally based their national HIV estimates on infection rates among pregnant women receiving prenatal care. As a group, such women were younger, more urban, wealthier and likely to be more sexually active than populations as a whole, according to recent studies. The United Nations' AIDS agency, known as UNAIDS and led by Belgian scientist Peter Piot since its founding in 1995, has been a major advocate for increasing spending to combat the epidemic. Over the past decade, global spending on AIDS has grown by a factor of 30, reaching as much as $10 billion a year. But in its role in tracking the spread of the epidemic and recommending strategies to combat it, UNAIDS has drawn criticism in recent years from Epstein and others who have accused it of being politicized and not scientifically rigorous. For years, UNAIDS reports have portrayed an epidemic that threatened to burst beyond its epicenter in southern Africa to generate widespread illness and death in other countries. In China alone, one report warned, there would be 10 million infections -- up from 1 million in 2002 -- by the end of the decade. Piot often wrote personal prefaces to those reports warning of the dangers of inaction, saying in 2006 that "the pandemic and its toll are outstripping the worst predictions." But by then, several years' worth of newer, more accurate studies already offered substantial evidence that the agency's tools for measuring and predicting the course of the epidemic were flawed. Newer studies commissioned by governments and relying on random, census-style sampling techniques found consistently lower infection rates in dozens of countries. For example, the United Nations has cut its estimate of HIV cases in India by more than half because of a study completed this year. This week's report also includes major cuts to U.N. estimates for Nigeria, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The revisions affect not just current numbers but past ones as well. A UNAIDS report from December 2002, for example, put the total number of HIV cases at 42 million. The real number at that time was 30 million, the new report says. The downward revisions also affect estimated numbers of orphans, AIDS deaths and patients in need of costly antiretroviral drugs -- all major factors in setting funding levels for the world's response to the epidemic. James Chin, a former World Health Organization AIDS expert who has long been critical of UNAIDS, said that even these revisions may not go far enough. He estimated the number of cases worldwide at 25 million. "If they're coming out with 33 million, they're getting closer. It's a little high, but it's not outrageous anymore," Chin, author of "The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology With Political Correctness," said from Berkeley, Calif. The picture of the AIDS epidemic portrayed by the newer studies, and set to be endorsed by U.N. scientists, shows a massive concentration of infections in the southern third of Africa, with nations such as Swaziland and Botswana reporting as many as one in four adults infected with HIV. Rates are lower in East Africa and much lower in West Africa. Researchers say that the prevalence of circumcision, which slows the spread of HIV, and regional variations in sexual behavior are the biggest factors determining the severity of the AIDS epidemic in different countries and even within countries. Beyond Africa, AIDS is more likely to be concentrated among high-risk groups, such as users of injectable drugs, sex workers and gay men. More precise measurements of infection rates should allow for better targeting of prevention measures, researchers say.
Dr. Henry Bauer on Revisions of Imagined AIDS Numbers UNAIDS recently decreased by more than 6 million its estimate of the number of “HIV-infected” people, putting it now at 33 million as opposed to last year’s estimate of 39 plus million. The estimated number of new HIV cases was also lowered by 40%. (For useful commentary, see Science Guardian of November 20th.) Media coverage failed to report clearly that the revision was only of statistically calculated estimates, not of the actual situation those numbers pretend to describe. Thus an editorial on November 25 in the Arizona Republic had the heading, “Turning the corner on HIV is inspiration to keep going”, and the optimistic comment that “The United Nations has revised its HIV estimates downward, correcting statistical flaws that, frankly, should have been addressed earlier. But that shouldn’t obscure the good news: a significant drop in new infections in recent years, especially in hard-hit sub-Saharan Africa. Efforts to fight HIV/AIDS have actually turned the corner. Now is the critical time to keep resources flowing, when it’s clear that prevention and treatment are paying off.” But there had been no good news, just the bad news–for those who didn’t already know it–that UNAIDS’s numbers are not worthy of attention, let alone belief. In this latest revision, for example, the recalculated infection rate in sub-Saharan Africa for 2001 is given as 5.0% (4.6-5.5); in the 2004 version, the rate for 2001 had been given as 7.6% (7.0-8.5). Naïve consumers of numbers may imagine that when experts state a range like 7.0-8.5, that asserts with great confidence that the true value lays between those bounds. Yet three short years later, we are asked to have great confidence in a considerably lower range, 4.6-5.5, that doesn’t even overlap the earlier one. That should inspire great confidence in this conclusion: These experts do not know what they are doing. There is no obvious reason to lend any credence to UNAIDS’ latest numbers, and sound reason not to. Detailed descriptions of the technicalities of the computer models can make the head spin, but it takes no expertise to recognize that the estimates are an affront to plain common sense. The ranges of uncertainty attached to UNAIDS’s estimates are clearly nonsensical. Furthermore, UNAIDS estimates for the United States differ greatly from the data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). For what’s wrong with many other aspects of officially disseminated HIV/AIDS numbers see my book, The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory which includes information on:
- The unexplained retroactive reduction by the CDC of actually reported AIDS deaths (page 221) Rush, The Dissident? Angered by news that UNAIDS had for years misled the global public with exaggerated portrayals of the AIDS problem, the conservative radio talk show host let off some steam and let listeners know where he stands on the issue: Rush Limbaugh: From the Washington Post Foreign Service today, a new report to show UN overestimated AIDS epidemic. Now, why would they do that? Why would the UN overestimate the AIDS epidemic? Can anybody say money? (Reading from the Washington Post) "The United Nations' top AIDS scientists plan to acknowledge this week that they have long overestimated both the size and the course of the epidemic, which they now believe has been slowing for nearly a decade, according to U.N. documents prepared for the announcement. AIDS remains a devastating public health crisis in the most heavily affected areas of sub-Saharan Africa. But the far-reaching revisions amount to at least a partial acknowledgment of criticisms long leveled by outside researchers who disputed the U.N. portrayal of an ever-expanding global epidemic. The latest estimates, due to be released publicly Tuesday, put the number of annual new HIV infections at 2.5 million, a cut of more than 40 percent from last year's estimate, documents show...Having millions fewer people with a lethal contagious disease is good news..." However, as is the case with the Drive-By Media, there is always a "however" after the good news. "Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS." Oooh, okay, so they did it strategically. They were smart. They lied on purpose to get our attention, to make sure we knew just how rotten it was going to be, and to make sure that governments around the world and individuals threw money at AIDS programs all over the world, administered by the United Nations. Can anybody say, global warming overestimated? Same bunch people. In fact, this last line, last paragraph, I never thought that I would see this in the Washington Post: "Beyond Africa, AIDS is more likely to be concentrated among high-risk groups, such as users of injectable drugs, sex workers and gay men. More precise measurements of infection rates should allow for better targeting of prevention measures, researchers say." I don't want to rehash a bunch of history, but I'm sure you all remember back in the eighties when [Ronald Regan] was president and the AIDS epidemic was [supposedly] spreading because Reagan didn't care…and if we weren't careful this was going to spread to the heterosexual population in a geometric fashion and it was going to be devastating…There was never any evidence that it was spreading to the heterosexual community, not sexually anyway, and if you said that, then you were guilty of a hate crime and profiling and discrimination, and all of that. Now, remember what is fundamentally involved in all this. Science. Science told us it was going to spread, it was going to spread to heterosexual community. Science told us it was going to spread at geometric rates. It was a consensus of scientists. Scientists, scientists, scientists told us that this was all going to be one of the most devastating things around the world. It was time to cough up money for education and condoms and cucumbers and all that, and we had rock stars like Bono establish philanthropic careers on the basis of all this, all based on science, science, science… The Aids Epidemic That Never Was Why Political Correctness Influences Too Much Medical Spending From a UK Guardian report by Karol Sikora, 21st November 2007 Billions of pounds were spent telling us we were ALL at risk from Aids. But as scientists now admit the threat was overblown, Britain's top cancer expert attacks the political correctness that influences too much medical spending. “At one stage in the early 1990s, the number of people in Aids counselling, helplines and other jobs exceeded the supposed number of sufferers. Moreover, for every three Aids victims there was one Aids organisation. A fortune was wasted on lecturing people who were never at risk.” Medical care should always be geared to the saving and protecting of lives. Compassion in the face of any type of human suffering should be at its core. But sadly, the vicissitudes of political correctness can dictate medical priorities. Certain diseases become fashionable in the public consciousness and so attract more political support and attention. A classic example of this pattern is HIV/Aids. When this burst on the scene in Britain in the early Eighties, it became the biggest health issue facing the country, over-riding all other medical problems. It monopolised ministerial attention and swallowed huge sums of public money in campaigns to raise public awareness. The gay community, which was the most likely to be affected by Aids, was at the forefront of the pressure for vastly increased state funding. A whiff of panic filled the air, with projections of a soaring rate of mortality from Aids before the end of the century. The Aids terror was extended overseas. It was said that a massive pandemic, on the scale of a modern Black Death, was sweeping through the Third World. Death, in the form of HIV/Aids, was sweeping his cruel scythe through Africa and the Indian sub-continent, extracting an unprecedented toll. Just as the Aids scare in Britain galvanised the bureaucracy of the state into expensive action, so the international agencies, such as the UN, the World Health Organisation and a host of Third World charities, were gripped by a sense of urgency about the need to tackle Aids. Yet it has turned out that much of this panic, however understandable, was misplaced. In Britain, contrary to all the official propaganda of the Eighties that everyone was at risk, it turns out that the disease has largely been confined to certain specific groups: gay men, drug users and migrants. All those with HIV and Aids, of course, deserve all the medical support that can be given, but the truth is that the overblown panic, based more on politics than science, led to a gross misallocation of resources. Between the early Eighties and 1993, the Government spent £900 million on advertising, educating about and treating Aids. And the 1987 public awareness campaign - comprising the now famous Tombstone and Iceberg leaflets and adverts, as well as a week of educational TV programmes - cost £20 million. At one stage in the early Nineties, we had the absurdity that the number of people in Aids counselling, helplines and other jobs exceeded the conceived number of sufferers. Moreover, for every three Aids victims there was one Aids organisation. A fortune was wasted on lecturing people who were never at risk. Now it turns out that, to an extent, the same is true of the developing world, where the UN has admitted that the scale of Aids has been exaggerated. An official report published yesterday shows that the grim forecasts have been over-blown. In reality, far from seeing a remorseless rise, Aids has been on the decline for a decade. According to the UN's latest, more honest, analysis, the number of people living with HIV has shrunk from nearly 40 million to 33 million. Furthermore, new infections have been calculated at 2.5 million, a drop of more than 40 per cent on last year's estimate. In India, the number of Aids sufferers has been revised downwards from six million to three million. Again, just as in Britain, the idea that everyone is equally at risk has proved to be a fallacy. The UN report admits that, in most parts of the world, the disease is concentrated on gay men, drug users and prostitutes. This is not to deny that there is still a major problem with Aids, requiring urgent global action. But it does put some of the hysteria in perspective. What we need in medicine is a sense of realism, not illpolitical posturing, which leads only to warped priorities…. For all the concentration on HIV, by far the biggest killer in the world is dehydration, which is responsible for 12 million deaths a year, mainly in Africa. Simple, cheap improvements in water supplies would seriously cut that number. Our habit of allowing fashion to influence medical priorities is not new. The poets Byron and Shelley positively romanticised disease and at the end of the 19th century, there was a narrow concentration on tuberculosis, though a host of other killers bred by poverty in an age without mass affluence or the welfare state were virtually ignored. Today, we must be realistic about the best way to use health funds… Professor Karol Sikora is a leading cancer specialist and former chief of the World Health Organisation Cancer Programme. Activists Renew Attacks on South African President After Book Reveals He’s Still an AIDS Skeptic Following years of global media reports that President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa had abandoned his skepticism about the HIV hypothesis and was no longer concerned about the toxicity of AIDS drugs, a new book that claims otherwise has treatment activists calling for his dismissal once again. According to Mark Gressier, author of “Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred,” the president recently “admitted he was still an AIDS dissident, and regretted bowing to pressure from cabinet colleagues to withdraw from the debate.” As reported in Business Day Johannesburg, past news stories claiming that Mbeki “had had a change of heart on the issue” after a meeting in 2002 with former US President Bill Clinton were apparently incorrect. Instead, Mbeki was “just capitulating to [political] pressure” when he stopped using his position as president to promote open dialogue on HIV and AIDS. The news that Mbeki remains an "AIDS dissident" has been widely published in the international media. The BBC, Guardian and New York Times have all run the story. So far, Clinton has made no public comment on the matter. Steven Friedman, senior research associate at the Institute for a Democratic SA, said he was not surprised by the revelation: "Mbeki’s opponents know he is an ‘AIDS denialist’ and his supporters don't care." In fact, following the first round of controversy over his questioning stance on AIDS in 2000, Mbeki was re-elected in 2004 with a resounding 73% of the popular vote. Anyone taking a look at the latest population studies from South Africa would have to wonder exactly who is in denial about what: According to figures released last month by Stats South Africa, in the past ten years, the population of the country has grown 20% - from 40 million to 48 million! (Sources: Business Day Johannesburg, November 12, 2007, www.allafrica.com) Research Institute Enters AIDS Debate An article introducing questions about HIV and AIDS to academics recently appeared at the web site of the Mises Institute, a research and educational center of political theory and economics. Working in the intellectual tradition of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) and Murray N. Rothbard (1926-1995), the Mises Institute, “seeks to restore a high place for theory in economics and the social sciences, encourage a revival of critical historical research, and draw attention to neglected traditions in Western philosophy.”
AIDS and HIV: Rethinking the Conventional Wisdom
The conventional wisdom is that the human immunodeficiency virus, HIV, is the direct and only cause of AIDS. Recently, however, a few brave researchers are calling the proposed relationship between the virus and the disease into question. Among the findings are that there are many people who have the virus who don't have the disease, and vice versa; that in recent years many people diagnosed with the virus die from the side effects of the medications commonly prescribed; indeed that scientists never have determined how HIV might cause AIDS. Worse, AIDS itself hasn't been clearly defined by anyone, and the Centers for Disease Control have changed their own definition periodically. Diagnostic tests, then, and necessarily, are notoriously inconclusive and differently interpreted from one lab to another (even more so from one country to another). Lives are being ruined needlessly on the basis of tests that don't even directly detect a virus that itself might do nothing. Aside from challenging conventional wisdom, these studies I've noted have in common that they cover health-related topics so important that following the wrong advice could have strong deleterious effects on one's health. Remember that dietary advice, when incorrect, hurts mainly those who are most conscientious — those most likely to obey doctors' (incorrect) orders. The popular media are headlining these recent findings because, in 2006, reporters and editors find the results surprising. This shouldn't be the situation: In some cases, scientists have been finding the same things for many years; in other cases (such as with regard to AIDS and HIV), the received wisdom is based on only a few weak studies, widely distributed and hailed as The Truth immediately upon their original release, never to be questioned thereafter. Reliance on objectively measured, reproducible, empirical evidence; the application of sound reasoning to that evidence; and open, worldwide peer and public review of studies all contribute to the health of a field that already enjoys the advantage that every new scientist enters his career having studied the best that generations before him have already discovered. Why, then, do scientists appear so often to be so wrong about such important and sometimes ostensibly simple relationships between behavior and health? For one thing, scientists haven't been very wrong very often: Selective reporting by the mainstream media has created ignorance among the populace about what the scientific findings actually have been. The more important problem is that the government holds most of the purse strings making scientific discovery possible. The AIDS arena demonstrates how damaging government interference is: Once a given hypothesis has been accepted as Received Wisdom by the government, researchers with alternative hypotheses not only find it difficult to get funding for their research, they can find themselves unable even to find a job and teach classes; they can be blackballed by the other professors in their field who don't challenge the received wisdom. Sometimes, these other professors work in different specialties, and aren't even fully qualified to comment on whether a blackballed professor's ideas have merit. The problem with science serving the public interest is not that there's anything wrong with the method used in the natural sciences. Nor, indeed, is there a problem in the fact that many scientists (such as the ones who blackball original thinkers) have strong biases of their own, causing them to use their own power to limit the range of hypotheses that receive funding. After all, there are very many scientists and very many universities. A free marketplace of ideas eventually, and inevitably, weeds out those who prefer pet hypotheses to free inquiry. No, the real problem is centralized government funding of research, which always results in selective funding by people often ill-equipped to decide which studies should be funded and which shouldn't. In a free market, where the government doesn't crowd out private investments in research, private funding makes it possible to explore nearly any hypothesis, from the ingenious to the crackpot (for which the ingenious ones are often mistaken in our politically-charged marketplace today). We already see private initiatives at work here and here; imagine what the possibilities would be without government involvement in the market. Science, like anything else, is just a tool; like anything else, it can be wielded for the good or for the bad. It requires a market in ideas to keep the process discovery moving in the right direction toward truth. As Murray Rothbard wrote more than half a century ago, science "is solely the job of the free market economy. Any government meddling with this job can only distort and disrupt the economy, injure the efficient workings and development of science and technology, and substitute unwanted coercion for individual freedom." Getting government out of the funding business is the only way to discover what amazing contributions medical science in particular, and scientific inquiry in general, can make to our quality of life. Brad Edmonds is the author of There's a Government in Your Soup, writes from Alabama. STD Cases Reach All Time High in 2006 While HIV Estimates Remain Stable for 10 Years Yet another reason to question popular claims about HIV and AIDS: While official estimates of the number of Americans thought to be HIV positive has remained unchanged since 1996, the actual number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the country rose again, with 1 million new cases of Chlamydia reported for 2006 alone. Compare that number to the highest cumulative estimate of HIV cases in the US at 1.5 million since the beginning of the so-called epidemic, and it becomes clear that something doesn’t add up!
Chlamydia, Gonorrhea and Syphilis infections Up in 2006
Chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections rose again in the United States in 2006, the second year in a row that rates of these sexually transmitted bacterial infections increased. The rate of chlamydia increased by 5.6 percent between 2005 and 2006, with more than 1 million reported chlamydia cases in 2006 -- the highest number of annual U.S. cases ever for any sexually transmitted disease. According to the CDC, the reported cases of chlamydia are likely less than half the actual occurrence. The rate of gonorrhea rose 5.5 percent in 2006, with more than 350,000 cases reported, and the rate of syphilis rose 13.8 percent, with nearly 10,000 cases. About 19 million new sexually transmitted infections occur each year in the U.S., almost half among people ages 15 to 24. “This is a hidden epidemic,” said Dr. Stuart Berman, who helps track STD’s for the CDC. According to Dr. John Douglas, who heads CDC STD prevention efforts, local and state health departments lack the funds necessary for prevention programs, and lack of health care insurance among many Americans might be a contributing factor as well.
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• Inside the Latest Vaccine Failure Great AIDS Hope Dashed: HIV Vaccine Fails Again The world has been waiting for an HIV vaccine since April 23, 1984 when Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Institutes of Health announced to the international media his discovery of a new virus allegedly responsible for the group of illnesses categorized since 1981 as AIDS. Margaret Heckler, then director of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the agency sponsoring the press conference, assured the world that day that “with discovery of the virus…we now have a blood test…that can identify AIDS victims with essentially 100 percent certainty,” and that “an AIDS vaccine would be ready” in just a few years. Two decades and countless billions of dollars later, there is still no test that can identify actual HIV infection—all tests rely on the detection of substitute or surrogate markers for HIV such as antibodies or bits of genetic material associated with the virus—and all efforts to produce an AIDS vaccine have ended in resounding defeat. A growing number of experts attribute the continuing series of costly failures to a seemingly obvious problem that has raised questions about the direction of AIDS science from the beginning: How can a vaccine for HIV work when disease is diagnosed using antibody response and vaccines are designed to produce antibody response as a way to confer immunity to a disease? A brief overview of the premise of vaccination may help clarify this conundrum: Vaccines are believed to help the body's defense system prevent a disease by producing antibodies against via passive exposure. Antibodies are disease-fighting proteins generated in reaction to viruses, bacteria and other invaders. Viral antibodies, whether generated actively or passively, are thought to confer immunity to viral illness. While active immunity involves natural exposure to a virus resulting in a protective immune or antibody response, passive immunity involves vaccine induced antibody response or the transfer of maternal antibodies. Ideally, the protective antibody response induced by a viral vaccine will be identical to the protective antibody response generated by actual exposure to the virus but with none of the adverse effects associated with infection. Having long questioned the illogic of an HIV vaccine, Professor Peter Duesberg of UC Berkeley was not surprised by Merck & Co’s October announcement that they are pulling out of the AIDS vaccine business after 10 years of lost investments. News on Vaccine Failure Goes From Bad to Worse By November, Merck’s bad news had become worse--not only had their vaccine trial failed in its goals to “prevent HIV infection” and/or reduce the amount of surrogate markers known as “viral load” in people who test positive, further analysis revealed that participants in the trial had become “HIV infected” as a result of receiving the shot designed to protect against HIV:
In Tests, AIDS Vaccine Seemed to Increase Risk In a puzzling and potentially troubling development, an AIDS vaccine tested in a closely watched trial might have increased the risk among vaccine recipients of becoming infected with HIV researchers reported yesterday at a scientific meeting in Seattle…. In late September, Merck unexpectedly halted the trial of its experimental HIV vaccine because it failed in its two main objectives, to prevent infection and to lower the amount of HIV in the blood among those who became infected… The vaccine was being tested among 3,000 volunteers at high risk of developing AIDS in nine countries, including those at immunization centers organized by the National Institutes of Health in the United States. Merck’s was seen as one of the most promising experimental AIDS vaccines to have been tested on people. Many scientists and advocates of AIDS research have called the failure of the experimental vaccine a major setback. “The new analyses are both disappointing and puzzling” because they offer no explanation for the vaccine’s failure, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a partner in the vaccine trial… Meeting participants will continue discussions today about whether the trial leaders should continue to observe the participants without telling them whether they received the vaccine or a placebo and the results of their exposure to the cold virus before the study began. And from the Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2007:
Canceled Vaccine May Have Boosted HIV Risk
New evidence suggests that Merck's experimental HIV vaccine may have made its recipients more vulnerable to the deadly AIDS virus… Merck canceled development of its HIV vaccine in September after it became clear in a clinical trial that it didn't prevent infection or reduce the amount of HIV in subjects who became infected. Since then, Merck and its partners have analyzed data from the 3,000-participant trial and found the damage may be deeper: In a large subset of participants, those given the vaccine acquired HIV at a higher rate than those who received a placebo. All participants were HIV-negative at the start of the trial… The National Institutes of Health, which helped sponsor Merck's aborted clinical trial, recently paused recruitment for vaccine trials involving several diseases, including Ebola. Those vaccines, like the failed Merck one, are made with an adenovirus... Excluding the South African trial, as of mid-October there were 49 cases overall of HIV infection among the 914 male volunteers in the vaccine group, compared with 33 cases among the 922 men in the placebo group… The Merck vaccine's failure was already a big blow to AIDS researchers and advocates, who had become discouraged by the failure of prior experimental HIV vaccines that tried to stimulate the body to produce antibodies that would ward off infection. Merck's approach instead focused on the other arm of the immune system: T-cells that attack and kill cells that HIV has already infected. It is possible that the Merck vaccine's failure indicates similar vaccines may be doomed as well. Merck hasn't disclosed how much it spent to develop the vaccine, but it has said it worked on the project for about a decade. The possibility of heightened infection risk from the Merck vaccine may present researchers with an additional stumbling block: more reluctance by people to participate in other vaccine trials. "We need to ensure that future trials, particularly the recruitment of participants in future trials, doesn't get jeopardized" because of confusion about the Merck results, says Mitchell Warren, executive director of the New York-based AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition… More Questions About Vaccine Trial With no actual test for HIV infection and no tests for surrogate markers that have been validated by the direct purification of HIV from people testing positive for antibodies or the genetic material known as “viral load,” how did Merck decide which trial participants had become HIV infected as result of vaccination designed to produce protective antibodies? Dr. David Rasnick, PhD, a former developer of protease inhibitors and a board member of Rethinking AIDS (http://www.rethinkingaids.com) examines the big question that media reports on the failed HIV vaccine fail to address.
How Does Anybody Know Who Really Has HIV?*
How did scientists and doctors determine which Merck HIV vaccine volunteers were infected with HIV? Officially, there are four ways to decide if someone is HIV infected, none of which involve the direct isolation of infectious HIV: 1) If someone has one or more of 26 or so AIDS-defining diseases, none of which are unique to AIDS. But since according to the US Centers for Disease Control, it takes on average 10 or more years for these “AIDS diseases” to appear after “HIV infection,” there was not enough time in the AIDS vaccine trial for disease to distinguish which of their volunteers had become infected. 2) If someone has a count of CD4 T-helper cells that is at or below 200. The problems with using these cells as a surrogate marker for HIV infection is discussed below. 3) If someone has positive antibody response to “HIV viral proteins.” Antibody response is used around the world to declare someone HIV-positive/HIV-infected, however, the possibility of using antibody testing to determine who is HIV infected is ruled out in this case by the obvious fact that all successfully vaccinated volunteers will be HIV-positive since vaccination by definition gives them antibodies against HIV. 4) If someone is “viral load” positive, a determination based on detection of another surrogate marker to represent HIV infection. More about why this doesn’t work is in the below article I published in British Medical Journal online on March 8, 200). This article shows that neither CD4 cell counts nor viral load measurements can determine the presence or absence of HIV.
Abuse of Surrogate Markers: A Closer Look at CD4 and Viral Load Tests in Diagnosing HIV Infection
“Predictions having an accuracy of approximately 50%, such as the accuracy seen with the CD4 count in the HIV setting, are as uninformative as a toss of a coin.”-- Fleming and DeMets It should come as a shock to learn that if three laboratory tests somehow disappeared or were outlawed, specifically the HIV antibody test, CD4 cell count, and PCR viral load test, then AIDS, as commonly understood, would vanish from the USA and Europe. These three laboratory tests are called surrogate markers because they stand in for either AIDS itself or for its supposed cause, HIV. According to the current definition of AIDS, no matter how sick an American or European is with AIDS-defining diseases, he or she cannot be classified as an AIDS case if antibodies to HIV are not present. In other words, for an American or European doctor to diagnose pneumonia, TB, dementia, cervical cancer, etc. as AIDS, it is necessary to obtain laboratory test results that satisfy the definition of AIDS which requires testing antibody positive. Since the problem with using antibody tests to diagnose infection has been discussed in depth elsewhere (http://www.theperthgroup.com/paperspublished.html), I will limit my remarks about the abuse of surrogate markers to CD4 cell counts and viral load. At the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, a number of experts had already recognized that it was probably a mistake to use CD4 counts as a marker of AIDS or even as a measure of therapeutic effectiveness for treatment drugs. In 1981, James Goodwin, MD, wrote what he called “a diatribe against the measurement of T-cell subsets in human diseases [1].” His “diatribe” began: “It’s starting again. The T- and B-cell measures having run through the sick, the elderly, the young, the pregnant, the bereaved had finally run out of diseases. Each condition was the subject of many reports; so that now, to give but one example, we can conclude with some assurance that T-cell numbers are up, down, or unchanged in old folks. And it’s starting all over again, this time with T-cell subsets. “What will they find this time? Sometimes the suppressor cell markers will be up and helper cells down; sometimes the suppressor cells will be down and the helper cells up; sometimes they’ll be unchanged and various combinations of the aforementioned. My strongest argument is this: Measurement of T and B cells and their subsets in diseases has no clinical meaning. Non-immunologists have naturally assumed that any subject occupying so much journal space as T cells do must be relevant in some way—a logical but incorrect assumption. And while the identification of T-cell subsets in mouse and man represents a major breakthrough in the understanding of immunoregulation, the enumeration of these subsets in myriad diseases largely represents a waste of time. As recently as 1998, Mario Roederer of Stanford University confirmed Goodwin’s assessment that an obsession with T-cell subsets in AIDS patients has been a mistake: “[T]he facts (1) that HIV uses CD4 as its primary receptor, and (2) that CD4+ T cell numbers decline during AIDS, are an unfortunate coincidence that have led us astray from understanding the immunopathogenesis of this disease [2].” Prior to Roederer’s remarks, the use of the CD4 T-cell counts as a surrogate marker of disease progression was also criticized by the authors of the Concorde Study, the largest clinical trial evaluating the use of AZT in two groups of patients, those taking it immediately following a positive antibody result or deferring its use until illness or other concerns arose. The authors concluded that, “The small but highly significant and persistent difference in CD4 count between the groups was not translated into a significant clinical benefit. Thus, analyses of the time until certain concentrations of CD4 were reached (eg, 200/É L, 350/É L, or 50% of baseline) revealed significantly shorter times in the Deferred group. Had such analyses been regarded as fundamental, the trial might have been stopped early with a false-positive result. This discrepancy in the differences between Immediate and Deferred groups in terms of changes of CD4 count and of long-term clinical response casts doubt on the uncritical use of CD4 counts as ‘surrogate endpoints’ in trials [3].” Thomas Fleming and David DeMets have stated that, “The use of surrogate end points has probably been more intensely discussed in the design and analysis of clinical trials of HIV infection and AIDS than in any other area [4].” However, “Predictions having an accuracy of approximately 50%, such as the accuracy seen with the CD4 count in the HIV setting, are as uninformative as a toss of a coin.” With regards to clinical trials and FDA approval of anti-HIV drugs, Fleming and DeMets have warned, “Surrogate end points are rarely, if ever, adequate substitutes for the definitive clinical outcome in phase 3 trials [4].” Indeed, a summary result from a 1993 state-of-the-art conference on AIDS had previously concluded that the effect of treatment on the most popular surrogate, CD4 cell count, did not accurately predict the effect of treatment on the clinical outcomes, that is, progression to AIDS or time to death [5]. 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