Dean's World

Have I mentioned that Falsifying the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis: Eleven Days of real-time Cyber-Drama seems to be getting a lot of readers? Not a lot of comments but lots and lots and lots of downloads? Interest seems high enough that I've gone ahead and permanently placed right over there in the upper left sidebar ("Free book on HIV and AIDS").

By the way, have you seen Robin Scoville's The Other Side of AIDS yet? I did recently. Astounding film, just astounding. I'm not sure what impressed me more, the nobel laureates, the guys who helped design the AIDS tests, the chemists who worked on the protease inhibitors, the working medical doctors, the HIV+ people, or the parents of HIV- children who were forced by the state to put the kids on AZT.

Speaking of AIDS & AZT, we seem to have gotten the attention of a young biologist who's sent me a submission. He got his PhD at Berkeley with a postdoc fellowship from Harvard. I'm sure you'll all enjoy reading his piece on AZT, which I'm currently editing.

On a related note, I've also got an interview lined up with a lawyer who's now kneedeep in a lawsuit against Glaxo. I wonder if Glaxo will talk to me if I call them up to ask for their side of the story?

Speaking of which, anyone out there got name with an email address or phone# for anyone at NIH's DAIDS or CDC's DHAP who'd be willing to talk? Not the generic, faceless contact lines that no one ever returns emails or calls from, but an actual person?

All Related Posts (on one page) | Some Related Posts:

The New Tuskegee Experiments
From The Mailbag: Explaining the BS Theory
Conflicts of Interest...
A New Twist On HIV/AIDS Research
Gratuitous Book Mention, & Other AIDS Miscellany
A Blogospheric Book...
A Conversation
HIV Skepticism
Scientific Dissenters

(link)

chthus (mail):

Another HIV/AIDS twist:

NYC Health Officials Find New, Virulent HIV Strain

"New York City doctors have discovered a previously unseen strain of HIV, which appears to be resistant to three of the four types of anti-viral drugs that combat the disease, and progresses from infection to full-blown AIDS in two or three months, the health department said."

I could see this going either way in the ongoing debate here. Curious to see what both sides have to say.

2.11.2005 5:10pm

Robert Speirs (mail) (www):

I noticed in the Bloomberg article that they said death from "regular" HIV/AIDS, when "properly treated", takes fifteen years ON AVERAGE! What's wrong with this picture? I also noticed that the stock of the company that produces the only drug that can stop the new "super-HIV" is up significantly. Also, the one case the story is about involves a crystal meth user. Is it new that they may have physical problems? I just hope this new scare is the straw that breaks the camel's back.

2.11.2005 6:20pm

Hank Barnes (mail):

Virulent New Strain!!!! Run for the hills!!!!!

Yeah, right -- as my teenage offspring say:)

It's funny -- whenever the drugs don't work, they claim that the virus "magically" mutated, evolved in one generation to develop "resistance," or is a "new strain".

We've heard all this hype before.

Hank Barnes

2.12.2005 12:11am

Christiana E. (mail) (www):

The thing that annoys me about this story is that all this alarm is being raised over ONE CASE! Statistically, one case tells you exactly nothing.

Even the famous Doctor Gallo things it's a tempest in a teapot (at least so far.) Check out this excerpt from the NY Times article.

Dr. Robert C. Gallo, a co-discoverer of the AIDS virus and director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, was very skeptical of yesterday's announcement.

"My guess is that this is much ado about nothing," he said. "Though it's prudent to follow it, I don't think it's necessary to issue a warning or alert the press."

Dr. Gallo said that it was well known that some patients progressed from initial infection to AIDS very rapidly, but that it was usually because they were highly susceptible, not because the virus was virulent. He said that this case, in which the virus is drug-resistant and the progression rapid, was rare but not necessarily alarming.

2.13.2005 2:57pm

maor (mail):

"Not the generic, faceless contact lines that no one ever returns emails or calls from, but an actual person?"

At a government agency?
Dean, are you serious?
;)

2.14.2005 8:33am