On Eliza Jane
Dean
The following letter was recently submitted to the Los Angeles Times, which they have so far not even responded to:
I myself remain surprised that what always looked like a case of anaphylactic shock from amoxicillin got diagnosed postmortem as pneumonia despite a complete lack of any pneumonia symptoms (unless you count low-grade fever and the sniffles). But I'm only mildly surprised--Maggiore is a political target after all, and people who not long ago were calling her a liar and saying she doesn't even carry HIV are now calling her a murderer, and her friends accessories.The Silence of The LA Times
Dear Sirs,
This is in response to the story you published yesterday regarding the death of the daughter of Christine Maggiore and Robin Scovill.
In order to have a diagnosis of 'aids related pneumonia', two conditions must be met. The patient must be HIV antibody positive, and there must be a clinical pneumonia. Whether Eliza Jane was in fact Ab+ is information that neither the LA Times nor the coroner's office has as yet made public. However, according to *all* reports it is acknowledged the child suffered none of the textbook symptoms of pneumonia, and had previously been in excellent health for several years. Thus the crucial second condition appears completely unsatisfied. (A post mortem finding of PCP in the lungs means nothing since it is 100% ubiquitous in human beings). Thus we are left to ponder the only significant fact, and it is one of omission, in your story. On what basis did the coroner conclude the child died of 'AIDS related pneumonia'?
After more than 20 years of attempting to get straight answers about HIV/AIDS from so-called authorities, we are less than sanguine that this latest, simple query will be satisfactorily answered.
Sincerely,
Prof. Peter H. Duesberg
Dept of Molecular and Cell Biology
Univ. of California, BerkeleyDr. Harvey Bialy
Resident scholar
Institute of Biotechnology
Autonomous National University of Mexico
Cuernavaca, Mexico
Slander is a hobby for some folks, obviously. Rather than respect the right of informed people to disagree in good faith, lash out with hatred instead. (No, that's not everybody, but yeesh.) Scovill tells me they have serious concerns about the medical examiner's report and are consulting an independent pathologist and will have more to say on that publicly in the next few weeks.
I am still working on getting a copy of the medical examiner's report from LA County. I continue to maintain that if these parents or doctors are lying and the kid was showing symptoms that were ignored then I hope they're punished. But knowing what we know, even from the half-assed reporting of the LA Times, I find myself doubtful.
* Update * Due to heavy interest I have moved this thread up near the top again. I have now corresponded with four people with PhDs in biology who are glad to see this being discussed in public and are themselves very skeptical of the report from the LA Times. This doesn't prove anything--objective reality is not determined by the vote of a majority of PhDs--but I emphasize this point to allay the fears of anyone who thinks this is crackpot wingnuttery. Since starting this I have made a point to only listen to people with at least a PhD in biology or an MD when I ask questions. For whatever that's worth.
In any case, I've written the coroner's office and am awaiting a response.
Par for the course with this mysterious, hyped disease.
Barnes, Hank
Dale
However, my criticsm of the article exclusively concerns the assertion that the girl died from "AIDS-related pneumonia," without stating the underlying factual support. You don't need an expert for that. "AIDS-related pneumonia" is a specific disease, that requires the presence of HIV.
Conversely, if there is no HIV, there is no "AIDS-related pneumnia." The story is silent on whether or not HIV was detected. So, hopefully, the autopsy report can back this up, or there is a terrible injustice being done to this grieving family.
Hank Barnes
May I inquire as to what letter you are referring?
(Maybe you are thinking of some of the transdimensional material that appears in bialystocker.net.)
And may I also inquire as to your straight-ahead opine regarding the true underlying motives for the publication by the LA Times of a story lacking any substance but containing much potential slander?
Harvey
I want to know the truth, Harvey. I want to know what happened to EJ, whether she had HIV or not.
Regarding the article, I'm sure it was printed both to be sensational and to pile on to the tragedy this family has suffered. If it was a fair, fully reported article, it would certainly be an accounting of an important story. However, the reporting was atrocious. As Dean has said, a teenager reporting for the school paper would have written a better article. On this issue we actually agree, I don't see how they can report AIDS-related pneumonia and no HIV status or other symptoms. What substance is there, is clearly thought provoking, and begs any number of questions that I would like answered.
Does this answer your question? (not being smart-aleck, I just want to know if that's what you were after,since, as I said, my brain is a little off today)
Thank you for the precise answer. Hope your head survives the meds.
Harvey
He's notorious for, among other things, his long-held belief that AIDS isn't actually caused by HIV.
Even though the 'news' in this article is actually favorable (Christine and Robin's son will not be taken from them by the social service authorities of Los Angles), the rest of the spin is as noxious as the previous. And of course the unsupported description of the coronoer's report is repeated and rhetorically manipulated as though the original sin of omission never mattered.
------------------
LA Times, 29 September 2005
Son to Remain With HIV Skeptics
Boy tests negative, so county won't remove him from couple whose daughter died.
By Daniel Costello, Times Staff Writer
Christine Maggiore and Robin Scovill, the HIV skeptics whose 3-year-old daughter died of AIDS after they decided against having her tested for the virus, apparently will retain custody of their 8-year-old son, Charlie.
After reviewing recent test results from three labs showing that the boy is HIV-negative, the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services is expecting to close its child endangerment investigation, officials said Wednesday.
"We don't have any specific reason to suspect that they are being negligent in caring for their son," the agency's medical director, Dr. Charles Sophy, said of the Van Nuys couple. "At this point, we are going to let these people get back to their lives."
Maggiore, a high-profile leader in a small but outspoken movement that challenges the basic medical and scientific consensus about AIDS, has indicated in numerous media interviews that she does not believe the human immunodeficiency virus causes the deadly disease.
Although she learned she was HIV-positive in 1992, she has said that she did not, even while pregnant, take AIDS medications and that she never gave the children such medications. She has also said she never tested Eliza Jane for the virus and only did so for Charlie after her daughter's death in May. She also breast-fed both children.
On a radio broadcast seven weeks before Eliza Jane's death, Maggiore boasted of her children's good health.
The girl died three weeks after coming down with apparent symptoms of an ear infection. The cause of death, according to a Sept. 15 report by the county coroner, was AIDS-related pneumonia.
The parents have said they are concerned about the finding and are sending the report to an outside reviewer. Maggiore has also said she has no regrets about her medical decisions and acted with "the best of intentions with all my heart."
Studies have shown that one-fourth of pregnant HIV-positive women pass the virus to their babies when they do not take the drug AZT. Separate research has shown that the risk can be lowered to less than 2% if mothers receive prenatal care, take a combination of antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy and labor, and allow their infants to be given AZT in their first six weeks. Doctors believe that breastfeeding increases the chance of HIV transmission by up to 15%.
Sophy said the couple and their son met Wednesday afternoon with department officials at an office in North Hollywood. County officials wanted to see Charlie in person and discuss the accuracy of the HIV tests that Maggiore and Scovill's lawyer submitted to the department earlier in the week, Sophy said. He added that the department called the three labs to verify the results of the tests.
"Predictably, it went well," Maggiore said after the meeting. "None of this is making us happy. We had a pleasant meeting with kind people, and now I'm just focusing on the treasure hunt for Charlie's birthday this Saturday."
"People who know us are aghast at what we are having to go through," she said. "If you know us, this would seem wholly unnecessary and offensive."
Several ethicists and other experts consulted by The Times were critical of the parents' medical decisions — and those of three doctors who treated Eliza Jane — but they did not fault county child welfare officials for deciding not to seek Charlie's removal from the home. They said officials would be hard-pressed to show an imminent risk to the boy.
"Even if they conclude the parents were negligent in letting their daughter die, it is probably not sufficient to do anything about the other child," said Thomas D. Lyon, a law professor at USC who specializes in child abuse. "Once it's decided that there is no risk to a child, as there doesn't ultimately appear to be in this case, the past is the past."
David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford Medical School, agreed that the child welfare department was making the right call.
"Taking the child out of the family can cause irreparable harm," he said. "You only want to undertake something like this if there is a clear and present danger, which there doesn't appear to be."
However, Magnus and others said the parents should be investigated on possible criminal charges for their handling of Eliza Jane's care.
A criminal inquiry is underway, according to the Los Angeles Police Department, focusing on whether the parents were negligent.
But even if prosecutors filed charges and the parents were convicted, Sophy said, the child welfare officials' position would probably stand. The department could reopen the case, he said, if the parents were incarcerated, and family and friends could not be found to care for the boy.
Meanwhile, the Medical Board of California indicated that it has opened an investigation into three physicians involved in Eliza Jane's care.
The doctors treated her in the weeks before she died but none had the girl tested for HIV, according to interviews and medical records. Two of the doctors, Jay Gordon of Santa Monica and Paul Fleiss of Los Feliz, have long known Maggiore's HIV status and that she breast-fed her children, interviews and records show.
The third, Philip Incao of Denver, prescribed antibiotics for the girl two days before she died, although he is not licensed to practice medicine in California, records show.
Gordon, who days ago expressed strong regrets for failing to press the parents to have Eliza Jane tested, said Wednesday that the case has made him more cautious in discussing alternative medical treatments with parents. Nonetheless, he said, he welcomes the medical board's investigation and believes he will be found to have acted appropriately.
Fleiss could not be reached but said last week that he acted properly and did not believe he could have changed the outcome in the case.
Incao has not returned repeated calls in the last several days seeking comment.
The question to me is, apart from HIV status, what are the accepted medical criteria for diagnosing AIDS related pneumonia and did this particular child meet those criteria?
Dale
Be all of that as it might, here are some additional journalism 101 questions that I bet Elizabeth and more than a few others are by this time beginning to wonder about.
1. What has been the health status of Ms. Maggiore for the 13+ years she has been infected with deadly virus?
2. What is the HIV antibody status of her husband? If it is negative, do they use condoms at least sometimes?
3. How small is the 'small but vocal group'?
(This I admit is a rhetorical question of my own, and also beyond journalism 101. The answer to exactly how small and who constitute this band of skeptics can be found here.
I could go on.
It has been a while since I have had the pleasure to address you in Dean's World, and I am not surprised to discover that you remain unchanged in your thinking, so brilliantly displayed in the Free Book on HIV and AIDS.
If you read the letter that Prof. Duesberg and I submitted (to no acknowledgment even ...not even an automated reply) you will discover that apparently the child met none of the established criteria (easy to find in the textbooks, son) and that there was no basis for a diagnosis of pneumonia according to the very factual LA Times citing several physicians who examined the child.
But yes, having the actual report (i.e. data in place of perverted reporting) would help a lot.
Before you get too enthused about that letter, you might want to google "Peter H. Duesberg".
He's notorious for, among other things, his long-held belief that AIDS isn't actually caused by HIV.
Gee, Steve what a revelation! We've only been hashing this out for the past, I dunno, 8 or 9 months.
Notice how he uses the word "belief" as if he's talking religion or politics. Belief has no part in science. Either HIV causes AIDS or it doesn't cause AIDS. Either there is evidence to support the causal connection or there is evidence that refutes the causal connection.
It's a typical drive-by from someone who probably knows squat about the issue.
Anyway. Good news that the CPS ain't going after the 8-year old boy. They should drop the criminal negligence claim immediately, too, and let this family go on with their lives. They've suffered enough.
Disagree with Dale. I'd like the coroner to confirm whether or not he detected the virus, and if so, how? That shouldn't be too hard. And if it is too hard, the coroner shouldn't be "speculating" about AIDS-related pneumonia. It might just be pneumonia.
They should also look into allergic reactions to the amoxicillin. I was deemed allergic to penicillin as a baby, and have never taken it since. No, I'm not anti anti-biotics. But, like all drugs, they have problems, too.
Barnes
I read your letter. Did you read my comment? I was actually agreeing with you. I said if her HIV status hasn't been tested and shown to be positive then I think the AIDS related diagnosis is a wash from the start and another pathologist would be able to decide that pretty quickly. And if she was tested and shown to be positive, one would still like to know what other criteria were used to classify this as AIDS related anything.
Dale
The new Bangui definition -- y'all got it.
Barnes
Before you get too sarcastic: What about Mandela's son?
The deaths of Maggiore's daughter and Mandela's son are exactly related in terms of the gross, abusive, distorted, uninformative and politically manipulative reporting that each received.
And the piece of satire from the Onion and the blather from the BBC are hard to distinguish, although the former is clearly better written.
Dale
Also, almost all the AIDS drugs (nucleoside analogs, protease inhibitors target HIV --exclusively. So, ER (whose got some sharp claws!) is right -- it matters whether or not the baby girl had HIV.
More so, the claim of alleged criminal neglect is based on their failure to test for HIV. If she didn't have HIV, then that supposed failure is moot.
barnes, hank
I completely that even if she was HIV+, it doesn't prove she died of AIDS. However, if she was HIV-, she didn't, even if she died of pneumonia. The reason the LA Times is all over this is because they're framing it as an ironic comeuppance story; AIDS Activist Denies HIV Kills; Her Child Dies of AIDS! Well, it'd be ridiculous to argue that Maggiore should have been medicating the child if she was HIV-, and that's why I think it'd relevant.
It's a strange to me to find myself in sympathy with Maggiore, but I think in this case I can picture how painful it would be to be accused of causing my child's death. If it turns out that the little girl was HIV+ and her immune system was in decline, as much as I would feel for Maggiore's grief I would say that there's at least a chance she could have prevented her child's death by allowing her to be tested and treated. Otherwise, I'd like to see her cleared of being her child's murderer, as I've seen her called elsewhere, not because I support her cause, but because as a mom of a three year old I can't think of anything much worse.
So no, I don't think the outcome of this has any great relevance for the link between HIV and AIDS, which is well enough established not to need one more death. I'm just interested now and would like to know as much as is reasonable for the public to know about what happened, more than just contradictory assertions from both sides.
Dale
In case you still don't get it. When you write:
"that media sensationalize stories without regard to the feelings of the individuals affected and I think most of us already know that to be the case."
You manage to once again miss the entire point.
This is not an issue of sensitivity to personal privacy or feelings, it is the political use of the media to establish a fear-based instictive reaction in the minds of people, because for two decades there has not been scientific evidence to support even one of the predictions of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
To avoid any new discussion of the 'causation' question, let me hyperlkink once again The Free Book on HIV and AIDS which condenses an exhaustive discussion of this topic that was held here in January, and to which the epislon of the limit function of possible useful addition is as vanishingly small as the chances of contracting HIV from a single, unprotected sexual encouter with an antibody positve.
Those of us who believe that not taking precautions against becoming infected with or transmitting HIV (or that hunkering down in the path of a hurricane when your house is situated below sea level) are dangerous activities, are prepared to cut the general media a little slack if they overexaggerate the magnitude of the danger on ocassion. It is a political use of the media. But then every time a dissident publishes a statement in which key facts have been omitted, that is also a political use of the media. Are you prepared to agree that both are equally wrong in doing it or is it only wrong when your opponents do it?
Dale
The Blogosphere is only place I know of where free, spirited and informative discussion of this topic has been held. Once more go here, and read it again (if you ever have.
Both would be wrong. No doubt about it.
But, here's the problem -- your side completely ignores the charges that the drugs, particularly AZT, has exacerbated the epidemic.
So, I would love to endlessly debate under the nice confines of academic life, whether HIV has been isolated, how it purports to kill T-Cells without infecting them, whether anti-body tests can accurately detect active virus or not. But, we don't have that luxury. I'm new to this issue and I certainly ain't a crusader -- but when I read Duesberg's stuff, it makes sense. And the ridiculous, ad hom, ill-informed attacks levied against him, don't.
And, worst of all, I have this nagging, sick feeling in my stomache, that we're gonna get an Emily Litella "never-mind" moment in 10-15 years, after all these people died from liver toxicity from all these drugs.
My 2 cents.
Hank
Major media outlets don't publish what dissidents have to say because they don't for the most part believe what the dissidents have to say. But dissident media publishes stuff at least as biased as the 'major' media. Your link being a case in point.
Dale
They are trying to paint a familiar picture and use emotions where there are no facts. What kind of mother...etc.
The implicit and easy to capitalize on indictment is that Christine, through her "beliefs" about HIV, infected EJ with HIV, possibly via breastfeeding or possibly in utero. Following that, we are meant to presume that EJ a) was "infected," with HIV b)had AIDS silently growing, silently destroying her immune system, until one day, in a fingersnap c) she died.
This follows no known pattern in any risk group I have ever known of "AIDS," because the syndrome by the definition of the orthodoxy takes many years and send many signals in the form of Opportunistic Infections, along the way. Never 14 days start to finish. Never clear lungs if it was an "AIDS related pneumonia." Never any of this.
If this is AIDS then the ever expanding blanket One Word For All Things disease has once again been radically redefined before our very eyes. It would be better then, to call it a "phenomenon," than to call it a disease. WHAT IS AIDS??
We are now totally lost. Nothing is concrete.
Picture an 'AIDS' patient from the early years, an urban gay man. He had KS and PCP, most classically. An African by comparison has a slow wasting syndrome. Always the image of an emaciated person on a cot. The body wastes away slowly, right? (Never mind, here the actual case definitions and the absurdity, I am only talking about images of the AIDS patient across risk groups.)
I will end with historical perspective, addressing whether one must test positive for the "AIDS virus" in order to have AIDS.
1. Gallo's original cohort of gay men, on which the 1984 Science papers were based, DID NOT ALL 'HAVE HIV.' My reportage yielded a figure of a scant 33% though I would have to double check that.
2. In 1992, it came to light at an AIDS conference in Amsterdam that there were dozens of AIDS cases, reported by doctors, who were HIV negative by all tests. Peter Duesberg chronicled 5,000 such cases in the medical literature. After a short outbreak of questioning at a press conference, Anthony Fauci flew in on Air Force Two and stamped out the "concern," about this, by assuring reporters that these HIV negative cases were "not AIDS." Shortly thereafter, the CDC altered its definition such that an AIDS diagnosis could ONLY occur in the presence of HIV. This accorded them an artificial 100% correlation between HIV and AIDS. The negative cases were re-asigned to a different disease, "ICL," which stands for idiopathic CD4 Lymphocytopenia. (CD4 cell death occurring for unknown reasons.)
Fine.
This means that after 1992, the AIDS orthodoxy has painted itself into a corner, insisting that HIV must be part of an AIDS diagnosis. (They squirmed out of this again,in 1999, but let's hold them to their own doctrines for a moment.)
Eliza Jane cannot have died of AIDS related pneumonia if she did not test positive for HIV.
If she DID, then why was it not reported in the LA Times? If they were not at liberty to report it, then why did they not say THAT?
Something is very wrong with this picture to say the least. Do all agree that if Eliza Jane was not HIV positive then she cannot be said to have died of AIDS? I also cannot comprehend how she can have died of "AIDS related pneumonia" with clear lungs. Is there any other "AIDS related pneumonia" other than PCP? If they mean PCP, why didn't they call it that? Am I correct that PCP takes a long time to manifest and is clearly diagnosed well before it may kill a person?
Lastly, gay men, today, are advised or at least permitted to WAIT many years into their HIV positive journey before they begin cocktail therapy. They are advised to wait until they get SICK. Or until their surrogate markers start to fluctuate.
A BBC story today reported by the way that the AIDS virus is "weakening." Last week, Andrew Sullivan wrote about this as well. "HIV disease" has been described, at least for gay men, in recent years, as a "chronic and manageable disease."
There are so many contradictions here, but I have already gone on too long.
The AIDS establishment has its own graveyard--the quilt, and so forth. It cannot lay claim to "saved" lives. Instead it almost uses its dead as part of its moral stranglehold, to emphasize how terrible the scourge is. If THEY could have "saved" EJ, why have they not saved any of their own? What of the children who died gruesome deaths at ICC, taking cocktail regimens? I have two of those children's death certificates here, making a sham out of the NY Times claim that "no children died" in those experiments.
Thank you Dean, for allowing this conversation.
Celia Farber
Is the Times story in error? If the coroner's report does indeed state as its conclusion that the child died of "an AIDS related pneumonia" then it isn't technically in error any more than Liam Scheffs selective quotes from the literature are technically in error. But by not revealing all the facts surrounding that diagnosis, the Times story may indeed be misleading. It wouldn't surprise me a bit, one way or the other.
The politics of AIDS sucks.
Dale
"My side" has not ignored the side effects of the drugs - in fact the data demonstrating those side effects has come almost exclusively from the scientific establishment. "Your" side, on the other hand, has tried to focus exclusively on the side effects while totally overlooking their benefits.
Dale
But, there should be truth in advertising. Any cancer patient who undergoes chemotherapy isn't hyped-up on the benefits of the highly toxic drug. Expectations are lowered, and they are braced for the excruciating pain of chemo, subsequent anemia, subsequent immune deficiency, nausea, vomiting and weight loss.
With AZT, it's the opposite. The patients aren't told it even is chemo -- then all the same debilitating side-effects noted above are simply blamed on the underlying disease.
Do you see the distinction?
barnes
It is not fair to pose challenging questions to daf9 (aka Dale), especially when he has not yet been fed his lines from the NIH. Minus the-know it-all-nada, second-lieutenant of the Aids, Inc. militia (if he hasn't been demoted due to his miserable scientific performance so clearly on display in THE Free Book on HIV and AIDS, double not doc Nick (not Dick) Bennett, there is no credential left to arrogantly spout the party line in Dean's World HIV/AIDS related discussions.
And since there is not a shred of new scientific evidence to support the demolished hypothesis, once more the defenders of the HIV faith resort to the maleable media to shill for them through garbage passing as reportage. ::
To bring us full circle back to "Howth Castle and environs .....riverrun"
Whenever I've been prescribed a drug for anything, along with the drug, the pharmacist has also given me a pamphlet describing the side effects and contraindications. I believe it may be a legal requirement so I find it hard to believe that the same thing doesn't happen to a patient prescribed a drug for AIDS.
Harvey,
There you go again with the name calling. I understand why you're name calling though. And I can even sympathesize to some extent. Apart from being a personal tragedy for her family, the death of this child creates a potential problem for the dissident movement.
A child dies and her parents are grieving and that should be the end of it. Every year a number of young children die unexpectedly without any involvement of HIV. But unfortunately in this particular case, because of the mother's very public views on HIV and AIDS, the death of her child has weakened her credibility in some circles and there is no way to completely restore that credibility because it depended upon the health of herself and her children. If the child was HIV positive and she announces that; well, people are going to draw the inference that HIV contributed to her death, whether it did or not. At the very least it becomes hard for Ms. Maggiore personally to deny that HIV exists and can be transmitted from mother to child. If she announces the child was HIV negative, people are going to draw the inference that Ms. Maggiore really does buy into the HIV/ disease connection despite her very vocal protests to the contrary. If she announces that the child was never tested then the question will arise why the child was never tested and people will draw inferences from that. She's damned if she does and damned if she doesn't.
The Times and the local authorities acted inappropriately in this particular case; we agree on that. But no matter how you tar the Times or the media in general or the local authorities for not reporting the whole story, that's not what this is about. If it was just about whether or not the child was tested and what the results were, the parents would set the record straight and the Times would be forced to retract its story. They must have seen the coroner's report.
Dale
The logic of your long middle paragraph is as overwhelming as the evidence for the 'deadly virus', and I must resist any further inclination to engage any of the bewildering variety of points you may have made by means of rational discourse.
Hank: Why don't you ask him a more simple question?
But ....They must have seen the coroner's report... would make Nancy Drew blush.
This makes no sense whatsoever. It seems to me, they haven't seen the coroner's report, else the $64,000 question -- Was HIV detected or not? -- would have been answered.
Such question should have been answered by the LA Times.
My simple question to anyone who "believes" that HIV causes AIDS is:
1. What evidence would cause you to reassess the conviction that HIV causes AIDS?
Of course, I'd ask the converse to skeptics as well -- 'cuz I think it's a fair question.
Hank
And I quote from the LA Times article linked by Dean in his original post about this subject
She and her husband, Robin Scovill, said they have concerns about the coroner's findings and are sending the report to an outside reviewer.
Does that not imply the parents have seen the report?
Dale
Hank,
I give you my answer. If a single one of the 16 predictions described below were satisfied, I would have to rethink at least some of my rethinking. I have copied the text from the pdf of the page proofs of my biography of Peter and there may be some formatting inconsistencies for which I apologize, but the text is correct.
The Duesberg—Koehnlein—Rasnick Refutation
Adapted from: Duesberg, P. H., Koehnlein, C., and Rasnick, D. 2003. The chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, antiviral chemotherapy and malnutrition. J. Biosci. 28:383–412, Table 4.
The HIV-AIDS hypothesis: 16 Predictions versus the facts All quotes are from The Durban Declaration, the most authoritative
edition of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis to date, which was signed “by over 5000 people, including Nobel prizewinners” and
published in Nature in 2000 (The Durban Declaration. 2000. Nature 406:15–16.). Numbers in parentheses refer to references
given at the end of the text..
Prediction: Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS,” it must be abundant in AIDS patients based on “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases.”
Fact: But, only antibodies against HIV are found in most patients (1–7). Therefore, “HIV infection is identified in blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences, or viral isolation.” But, HIV can only be “isolated” from rare, latently infected lymphocytes
that have been cultured for weeks in vitro—away from the antibodies of the human host (8). Thus HIV behaves like a latent passenger virus.
2.
Prediction: Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS,” there is no AIDS in HIV-free people.
Fact: But, the AIDS literature describes at least 4621 HIV-free AIDS cases according to one survey—irrespective of, or in agreement
with allowances made by the CDC for HIV-free AIDS cases(55).
3.
Prediction: The retrovirus HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing T-cells (1–3).
Fact: But, retroviruses don’t kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA. Thus, T-cells infected in vitro thrive, and those patented to mass-produce HIV for the detection of HIV
antibodies and diagnosis of AIDS are immortal (9–15)!
4.
Prediction: With a RNA of 9 kilobases, just like polio virus, HIV should be able to cause at most one disease, or no disease if it is
a passenger (22).
Fact: But, HIV is said to be “the sole cause of AIDS,” or of 26 different immunodeficiency and non-immunodeficiency diseases, all of which also occur without HIV (Table 2). Thus there is not one HIV-specific disease, which is the definition of a passenger virus!
5.
Prediction: All viruses are most pathogenic prior to anti-viral immunity. Therefore, preemptive immunization with Jennerian
vaccines is used to protect against all viral diseases since 1798.
Fact: But, AIDS is observed—by definition—only after anti-HIV immunity is established, a positive HIV/AIDS test (23). Thus HIV cannot cause AIDS by “the same criteria” as conventional viruses.
6.
Prediction: HIV needs “5–10 years” from establishing antiviral immunity to cause AIDS.
Fact: But, HIV replicates in 1 day, generating over 100 new HIVs per cell (24, 25). Accordingly, HIV is immunogenic, ie. biochemically most active, within weeks after infection (26, 27). Thus,based on conventional criteria “for other viral diseases,” HIV
should also cause AIDS within weeks—if it could.
7.
Prediction: “Most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within 5–10 years”—the justification for prophylaxis of AIDS
with the DNA chain terminator AZT (Section 4).
Fact: But, of “34.3 million . . . with HIV worldwide” only 1.4% (= 471,457 [obtained by subtracting the cumulative total of 1999
from that of 2000]) developed AIDS in 2000 (28). Likewise, in 1985, only 1.2% of the 1 million US citizens with HIV developed
AIDS (29, 30). Since an annual incidence of 1.2–1.4% of all 26 AIDS defining diseases combined is no more than the normal mortality in the US and Europe (life expectancy of 75 years), HIV
must be a passenger virus.
8.
Prediction: A vaccine against HIV should (“is hoped” to) prevent AIDS—the reason why AIDS researchers try to develop an AIDS
vaccine since 1984 (31).
Fact: But, despite enormous efforts there is no such vaccine to this day (31). Moreover, since AIDS occurs by definition only in the presence of natural antibodies against HIV (Section 3), and since natural antibodies are so effective that no HIV is detectable in AIDS patients (see Table 4,1), even the hopes for a vaccine are
irrational.
9.
Prediction: HIV, like other viruses, survives by transmission from host to host, which is said to be mediated “through sexual contact.”
Fact: But, only 1 in 1000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits HIV (32–34), and only 1 of 275 US citizens is HIV-infected (29, 30) (Fig. 1b). Therefore, an average un-infected US citizen needs 275,000 random “sexual contacts” to get infected and spread HIV—an unlikely basis for an epidemic!
10.
Prediction: “AIDS spreads by infection” of HIV.
Fact: But, contrary to the spread of AIDS, there is no “spread” of HIV in the US. In the US HIV infections have remained constant
at 1 million from 1985 (29) until now (30) (see also The Durban Declaration and Fig. 1b). By contrast, AIDS has increased from 1981 until 1992 and has declined ever since (Fig. 1a).
11.
Prediction: Many of the 3 million people who annually receive blood transfusions in the US for life-threatening diseases (51), should have developed AIDS from HIV-infected blood donors
prior to the elimination of HIV from the blood supply in 1985.
Fact: But there was no increase in AIDS-defining diseases in HIV-positive transfusion recipients in the AIDS era (52), and no
AIDS-defining Kaposi´s sarcoma has ever been observed in millions of transfusion recipients (53).
12.
Prediction: Doctors are at high risk to contract AIDS from patients, HIV researchers from virus preparations, wives of HIVpositive
hemophiliacs from husbands, and prostitutes from
clients—particularly since there is no HIV vaccine.
Fact: But, in the peer-reviewed literature there is not one doctor or nurse who has ever contracted AIDS (not just HIV) from
the over 816,000 AIDS patients recorded in the US in 22 years (30). Not one of over ten thousand of HIV researchers has contracted
AIDS. Wives of hemophiliacs don’t get AIDS (35). And there is no AIDS-epidemic in prostitutes (36–38). Thus AIDS is
not contagious (39, 40).
13.
Prediction: Viral AIDS—like all viral/microbial epidemics in the past—should spread randomly in a population-
Fact: But, in the US and Europe AIDS is restricted since 1981 to two main risk groups, intravenous drug users, of which 80%
are males, and male homosexual drug users (Sections 1 and 4).
14.
Prediction: A viral AIDS epidemic should form a classical, bellshaped chronological curve (41–43), rising exponentially via virus spread and declining exponentially via natural immunity, within months (see Fig. 3a).
Fact: AIDS has been increasing slowly since 1981 for 12 years and is now declining since 1993 (Fig. 1a), just like a lifestyle epidemic,
as for example lung cancer from smoking (Fig. 3b)
15.
Prediction: AIDS should be a pediatric epidemic now, because HIV is transmitted “from mother to infant” at rates of 25–50% (44–49), and because “34.3 million people worldwide” were
already infected in 2000. To reduce the high maternal transmission rate HIV-antibody-positive pregnant mothers are treated with AZT for up to 6 months prior to birth (Section 4).
Fact: But, less than 1% of AIDS in the US and Europe is pediatric (30, 50). Thus HIV must be a passenger virus in newborns.
16.
Prediction: “HIV recognizes no social, political or geographic borders”— just like all other viruses.
Fact: But, the presumably HIV-caused AIDS epidemics of Africa and of the US and Europe differ both clinically and epidemiologically
(Section 1, Table 2). The US/European epidemic is highly nonrandom, 80% male and restricted to abnormal risk groups, whereas the African epidemic is random.
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Bialy’s link, Free Book on HIV and AIDS (Thinking the Unthinkable) is an excellent example of definitively selected bias, that with which the LA Times is here accused. Like there is a conspiracy between the Durban Declaration and the LA Times. Anyhow, composed by editor Charles Stein, Free Book on HIV and AIDS represents ONLY a condensed version of 138,307 carefully chosen words supporting dissident views extracted from Falsifying the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, some 202,998 words of discussion of which editor Charles Stein (cough) in unbiased fashion saw fit to delete 64691 words of opposing viewpoints. Dr. Bialy’s alter-ego character, Eccles who appears in Falsifying the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis 104 times has been relegated to a mere 28 times in Thinking the Unthinkable, rather careful editing, one might suspect to support the trans-scientific stature of Eccles.
And interestingly: Falsifying the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, the original link, curiously no longer appears available as a link for the discerning readership on Dean’s World. Like yesterday’s news, its tossed in the trash.
Yet, one thing is certain, beyond any doubt, the dissidents have but ONE methodology, Keep Asking Questions On and On and On. No worry answers are not important, keep asking the questions. Any sort of condescension, mockery, insult etc.. towards those which answer is permissible.
HB, This much I have learned. We do not wish to be acolytes nor spear carriers in your parade.
And, Dean is correct, the “right of informed people to disagree in good faith” is valid.
-----Original Message-----
From: Todd Miller
Sent: Thursday, September 29, 2005 5:41 AM
To: 'dmagnus@stanford.edu'
Subject: who owns life?
Dear Dr. Magnus,
Although I've not had the pleasure of reading your book, based on your comments to the LA Times regarding the tragedy experienced in the
Maggiore family, I can presume that parents do NOT own the life of their children and presumably the government does. Please remember that thousands of scientists and doctors do NOT think the evidence that "hiv" causes "aids" is strong enough to make policy decisions. As a
biochemist and molecular biologist, I happen to be one of them.
I hope the LA Times contacts you again for comments after the inquiry into the coroner's report. Surely, you have comments on the ethics of erroneous conclusions in coroner's reports as well, and at this point, all comments regarding the Maggiore's behavior are made without the benefit of an impartial inquiry, and couched within the fanaticism that
has surrounded "hiv/aids" for 2 decades.
Regards,
Todd Miller
Dale
Also, Charles Stein specifically went out of his way to try to be fair and include the meat of the arguments of both sides and to simply cut out redundancy. If one believes he left out crucial data, let us know. But it was not--intentionally--cut to simply make the HIV skeptics look good and to ignore anything.
Also, BTW, when mentioning the Durban Declaration it's always fair to mention the repudiation of that declaration signed by a number of distinguished biologists, or other petitions signed by fully qualified scientists.
Not trying to reignite those arguments. Just trying to note what's out there.
Part of my job description is to be curious and to seek out information. You can try, but you will never succeed in making me feel remorseful about any line of questioning my uncertainty and/or curiosity has led me down. This is what a journalist DOES.
Ok, let me try to address this cloud of charges. I have said in print a few times that I think it is ONE question whether a person who is antibody positive and has no history of immunosuppressive intake of drugs and or toxins might expect to stay healthy, and another when one is looking at a person who might fit a multifactorial model. I know NOTHING about Pasquerelli's drug habits or lack of drug habits. Do you? You seem uncertain.
Yes, he evidently had a "severely impaired immune system." Our question remains: How does one get to that point, and is it a point of no return?
Eliza Jane is "not the first" what?
We don't even know if she was antibody positive.
I do know dissidents who have died. One in particular who I won't name but who was, unbeknownst to us, a heavy poppers user, despite all he knew.
Flip the question: Why do you think that Christine has been HIV positive for 13 years and remained healthy? Is it not because clearly HIV does not cause AIDS in all people? That also means it does not "cause" AIDS. The word "cause" actually means in all cases.
Should David have taken cocktail drugs? Perhaps. Had he chosen that, I would not have objected. I only object to people being stopped or thwarted or shamed out of following their own path in this. The knowledge builds over time and is hard won--comes only after much research, reading, and checking in with our inner voice to see what it tells us.
If you are speaking from an orthodox position, I am surprised that you would want to bring up death. Your side has so much death. So much explaining to do. When will you begin? When will you find the courage and decency to begin to restore truth and justice to the victims of AZT?
--Celia
There are so many questions that can be raised about the drugs--their dangers are not disputed, they cause cancer, heart disease, liver disease, stroke, birth defects, and a host of horrors. The established position is that they are less dangerous than the virus, and they have a right to think that. But there are those--many of them fully credentialed scientists, not bizarre flakes--who question that wisdom. I've talked to more than a dozen PhD level biologists who'll say that. Is truth decided by what a majority of PhDs say?
I'll say one more thing and try to be done for now: I am sick to death of the word "denialist" being slung at skeptics. No one--at all--has ever denied that something horrible hasn't killed people, which is the obvious intent of the use of that word "denialist," as if it's holocaust denialism, or an effort to deny suffering and death. No, the skeptics are SKEPTICS, skeptical of the established wisdom, arguing in good faith based on their perceptions, having looked not to--NOT to--crystal healers and herbalists and shamen but to actual scientists, actual licensed physicians, actual patients who've made different choices, and come to judgements of their own. That you may not agree with their choices is no call to slander them, call them names, and so on. It's simply not necessary.
If they are wrong, let them be wrong and not evil. I do not think those who defend the establishment wisdom on HIV are evil. Well possibly there are a few evil people among them, just as I am quite sure there are snake oil salesmen among the skeptics and doubters, who'll promise you eternal health in from a bottle of vitamin pills. If you let one side of an argument be represented by the worst among them, you get idiotic shows like Hannity and Colmes. [shudder]
In that case, cold viruses don't cause colds, the influenza virus does not cause influenza, varicella zoster doesn't cause cause chicken pox, and polio virus doesn't cause polio. Most viruses cause asymptomatic infections in some of the people who contract them.
"Cause" does not mean in all cases, either using the dictionary definition or the way it's used to describe any other virus-disease relationship.
Dale
You are 100% correct. Except - Aids, Inc. insists that there is no such thing as the usual asymptomatic infection with HIV. Eventually, Fauci and the NIH maintain, *everyone* who contracts HIV will one day...nevermind when...contract 'AIDS' and die, with the possibly allowed exception of those fortunate individuals who carry 'special' genes that allow them to remain disease free even longer than the 10+ year average between infection and symptoms in the 'average' person.
It is another instance of HIV being said to behave differently from all other known pathogens, and yet one more reason to question the dogma.
I checked some US government info and you're right, they imply (although don't state) that everyone with HIV will get AIDS eventually. I agree that's unlikely, and I think that the CDC is overstating the case there. There are many other mainstream sources of information which say that it's not clear if everyone with HIV will get AIDS, or go further and say probably not everyone will.
This is actually one of my problems with the dissident movement (Dean, is 'dissident' ok?) - the argument that if I don't agree with every policy decision of the CDC, or the ghoulish reporting of the LA Times, that means I should chuck all of the actual science. CDC recommendations and fact sheets and so on are not scientific documents; they're public health measures. They're supposed to be based on science, but because the CDC is a government institution all kinds of politics and conservative doctor-think go into their policies. They are pretty dogmatic, really, and questioning them is always worthwhile, but it has little or no relationship to the scientific evidence of whether HIV causes AIDS. I find that the dissident movement jumps back and forth between questioning this central point of fact, and questioning ancilliary issues such as specific treatment protocols or drugs. Demonstrating conclusively that AZT does more harm than good wouldn't make a smidgin of difference to that central issue that HIV causes AIDS, so I don't understand why things like that come up so often.
If you look again at the 16 predictions above, I think it is pretty clear why the 'dissidents' question the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis.
I do agree, however, that the distinction you make is a valid one, and that skillfull or not rhetorical manipulators on both sides frequently fuse the two in logically inapprorpiate ways.
Felicidades, not only on your generally splendid thinking, and willingness to actually consider data, inference and argument, but even more so on joining the ranks of the dissidents.
When you wrote:
I checked some US government info and you're right, they imply (although don't state) that everyone with HIV will get AIDS eventually. I agree that's unlikely, and I think that the CDC is overstating the case there. There are many other mainstream sources of information which say that it's not clear if everyone with HIV will get AIDS, or go further and say probably not everyone will.
You directly confronted and contradicted the very basis of essentially all public health interventions, including the removal of children from their parents because they are antibody positive and the mothers refuse to give them AZT, etc.
Seems pretty radical to me.
¡Felicidades otra vez!
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 11:45:09 -0700 (PDT)
From: Neal Macklin
To: David Rasnick
cc: duesberg@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Subject: Survival of the Weakest
It turns out that HIV is now proving Darwin wrong!
At this rate it should become completely non-virulent right about the time that no one can remember that Robert Gallo had anything to
do with it.
BBC story as reprinted by Bloomberg
I began reporting on HIV/AIDS in 1986. Let me try to explain to you what exactly the original doctrine was, and why the dissident 'movement' was so essential. In the early years, in the mid 1980s, the CDC, NIH, federal and AIDS affiliated charity organizations all said in unison that HIV was uniformly deadly and would kill "like a truck," (Gallo) in a period of about two years. Gallo said, and I quote: "HIV would cause AIDS in Clark Kent." (SPIN, 1988, interview with Anthony Liversidge.)
NO HOPE for survival was accorded any person who tested positive. The choices were: A steep free-fall, rapid drop into an immune system collapse by way of unchecked HIV, or, a brutal regimen of AZT, which in those years was given at doses between 1200 and up to 1800 milligrams. These dosages were lethal. At most, people survived nine months.
Those, like Michael Callen for example, who advocated "hope," in the early years were fighting for the orthodoxy to allow a free space within which a discourse could take place, to sort out WHICH factors, precisely, equaled immune collapse and death, outside of a few HIV associated proteins.
Tragically, the cult of HIV that grew around the proteins said to be a novel, pathogenic retrovirus was downright Maoist. The virus was ALL POWERFUL. It was capable of sensational, never before imagined biological feats, it resembled nothing that had come before, it could not be discussed in any terms that were familiar to classically trained virologists.
It was supposed to kill one fifth of all Americans by 1990. (Oprah Winfrey.) It was said to be a loaded gun present in every sexual encounter on the planet, after 1984. "Getting it" or not was a matter of luck or bad luck and once you got it, you were doomed, though you could spend your last days, if you were lucky, suffering from nuke toxicity, which became the appropriate punishment for having caught the sex virus.
You don't know why we bring this up?
I do.
The AIDS orthodoxy must take full responsibility for its MESSAGE, brutally pounded home, in every mind, in every newspaper, and in 1987, in a pamphlet that went to literally every single American household. (Koop)
It was THEY who insisted everybody who crossed paths with HIV would die. Look it up. It was a totalitarian model. NOW they are trying to dissipate it, to break it up, soften it.
It is too late for those who are in their graves, from drug toxicities, from stark terror, from lack of any and all hope, and from sexual shame, turned inward. Many more from suicide. Still more from homicide. In Africa, the consequences of this death-sex ideology is almost incalculable. Read some of the heartbreaking stories in Joan Shenton's book, "Positively False." What about Hector Severino of the Dominican Republic, who tested HIV positive and was refused leg surgery. He lost the use of his leg, and lost his wife, who drank a bottle of bleach upon hearing he had tested positive. She died a slow, agonizing death over a period of a month. Severino later re-tested and twice the test was negative.
How many millions of tragic stories are there that we don't know about?
Why should they (AIDS Inc) not have to take responsibility for the consequences of their madness? That is clearly what it was: Madness.
If you want that on your conscience, which is what apologia and denialism entails, you are welcome to it. The higher instinct, I think, is for truth, however painful. You cannot say that "ideas" have no consequences. What are the consequences of skepticism, of inquiry, of questioning and investigating? These traditions are only loathed in dictatorships.
For historical examples of similar occurences I recommend Charles Mackay's "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds."
--Celia Farber
I appreciate your kind words, but I disagree that I have contradicted the basis of all public health interventions (did you mean just those having to do with AIDS or all of them)?
Public health and safety measures are about the greatest good for the greatest number, and frequently involve harm to individuals as a direct result of the measure. Car airbags are used because the evidence shows they result in fewer fatalities in car crashes, but they've killed people who would otherwise have been unhurt. Vaccinations have prevented epidemics which would have killed many people, but some have died as a result of the vaccinations who might have survived the epidemics. As a society we make this kind of decision all the time, although we don't tend to like to dwell on it.
It's consistent to admit that routine treatment for HIV+ people will kill some of them who would have been fine, and still recommend that treatment for all, assuming you buy into the central idea that "fewer people dead" = "good thing" even if it's not exactly the same people. (And, of course, assuming the treatment works as advertised!) The goal is obviously to keep improving the air bags, the vaccinations, and the medications, and to keep working to better identify who would be helped and who would be harmed, to get that number as low as possible.
I'll go back and read the 16 predictions.
Yes, of course I was referring only to those directed at AIDS, and once again you have produced a more eloquent and comprehensible defense of HIV/AIDS public health policy than the NIH and various other governmental organizations who continue to enforce mandatory and often grossly exaggerated, disruptive and dangerous consequences as a result of an HIV Ab+ diagnosis because HIV infection is uniformly lethal, i.e. there is no risk/benefit analysis of the type that informs other government laws of the types you mention that impinge on personal choice.
It is this direct disagreement that makes you a dissident, and again congratulations.
I'm not going to take responsibility for what the CDC was saying in 1986. I was in high school, so my ability to affect national health policy was minimal. I tend to agree that the CDC's response at that point was an overreaction; many of the early predictions have not been borne out. I have no trouble believing deaths resulted, and even more simple sorrow and despair. I remember myself being the fear of it. 'Chilling effect' doesn't even begin to cover it.
However, you're telling this story as if it's the first one of its kind ever in history. The tendency of medical doctors has always been to take the latest hammer and use it to hit anything that looks like a nail. Off the top of my head, people have died from unnecesary treatment for prostrate cancer and unnecessary horomone replacement therapy, and people have been disfigured by unnecessary breast biopsies and unnecessary circumcisions, etc.
It was THEY who insisted everybody who crossed paths with HIV would die. Look it up. It was a totalitarian model. NOW they are trying to dissipate it, to break it up, soften it.
It sort of seems like you want it both ways - you want them to admit they were wrong, but if they do you're angry at them because they're trying to 'soften' the message. If the fight you're trying to win is with the CDC twenty years ago instead of the one now, it's going to be tricky to manage. I'd noticed this tendency in a lot of dissident literature, and it's true that a lot of the early info on AIDS was wrong, but it makes the movement seem irrelevant to what's going on now. Instead of trying to prevent it from happening last time (too late!) why not turn your attention to preventing it from happening next time?
This time I cannot agree with your logic. If the NIH/CDC was wrong in 'some' things when it formulated the initial 'model' of AIDS as you admit, why are you absolutely reluctant to consider the possibility that it may still be wrong, especially since not a single dire epidemiological prediction about HIV/AIDS in the western world has been even remotely satisfied?
the sense of humor Peter and some other 'dissidents' possess"of not attempting to make false judgements on news stories which as we know is not science:Excerpt:
BRUSSELS, Sept 22 (KUNA) -- The HIV-1 virus which casues AIDS has weakened over the last 15 years, a research by for Tropical Medicine (ITG) in Antwerp revealed.
A statement by the ITG, received by KUNA Thursday said that Kevin Ari[n, who is attached to the ITG, studied 24 samples from the AIDS clinic in Antwerp. The comparison of samples from 1986-1989 and 2002-2003 shows that 75 percent of the new viruses are weaker than the old ones. They appear not to multiply so well and are more sensitive to medicines.
But according to Ari[n "the study is still on too small a scale for it to be possible to conclude that the virus is becoming more innocuous.”
I just don't think that accepting that it could be wrong means giving equal weight to ANY possible alternative to the current model, any more than accepting that, say, because our current model of hominid evolution might have some serious flaws means the Flying Spaghetti Monster model ought to be actively considered. "The NIH is always right," is obviously a poorly considered belief. "The NIH is always wrong," is equally unlikely to be helpful.
I see your point. I do get angry, yes, when they (the AIDS orthodoxy) claim as victory that which is defeat, and assume the right to trumpet the very things that stellar scientists such as Peter Duesberg have been socially and professionally destroyed for saying for decades. His heresy is their "discovery."
It is a classic form of manipulation, but no less upsetting to people who have paid dearly for holding alive the proverbial penguin egg in the antarctic for two decades. (See March of The Penguins!)
I agree with you though--let us rather allow them their crabwalk exit strategy then hold the universe captive inside the deadly sex virus for one more day than is necessary.
In any event, I certainly do not hold YOU responsible for the CDC's dogmatic position.
Instead I salute your willingness to describe things as they are, presently, and I must agree with Harvey: A dissident is in fact anybody who questions whether HIV kills all people, including Clark Kent, like a truck, and/or any of the thousands of public health and social control mandates that spring directly from that oxygenless assertion.
It seems poorly understood that "dissidents" have no lingua franca nor shared absolutes.
I probably could not get three dissidents to agree to walk one city block in lockstep. I am no "dissident," in a sane world, but rather a journalist reporting on AIDS during the dark ages, or better to say, a war correspondent.
The 20-plus year critique is actually neither a "movement," nor a "group." This seems incomprehensible to the AIDS orthodoxy. They, for their part, have the comfort and protection of the "crowd" in the Elias Canetti sense of the word. Differences dissolved generate 'crowds and power.'
Celia
It certainly doesn't come as news to me that public health measures can be only cursorily related to the scientific evidence. The two areas with which I'm pretty familiar are the "everyone should eat lots of carbohydrates" approach to weight management which has left American blimp-shaped and a lot of the ridiculous over-management surrounding childbirth in the US. I think everyone should be skeptical of their doctor's recommendations and make sure they understand when those recommendations are based in sound science and when they're not. The history of medicine is riddled with examples of mistaken theory and mistaken practice.
But calling me an AIDS dissident would only make sense if the term was close to meaningless. I mean, if it means anyone who believes the NIH is fallible, isn't just about everyone an AIDS dissident? It's just a human organization, not the word handed down from on high.
We are all familiar with the probably over-hyped, but nonetheless scientifically sound enterprise that goes under the rubric of genomics. Its greatest triumph todate being the sequencing and early exploration of the human genome.
HIV has only 9 KB of nucleic acid. It is orders of magnitude more simple to understand at the sequence level than even an E. coli bacteria.
Now, if one were to take 1000 random retroviral sequences from the databanks and mix in with them the canonical sequence of HIV-1 (the deadly virus that causes AIDS) and then fed the entire mass of data into the highest-powered computers, running the most sophisticated, intelligent and best programs for deciphering function from sequence, none of them could distinguish HIV from any of the others.
Makes you wonder no?
Dissident, skeptic, what's the diff? The term, btw, is one that has been used to discredit HIV/AIDS skeptics (like calling us denialists), but which is so often used that on occasion it is one some