"You Bet Your Life"

It's About Bloody Time! Nature: SF DPH Expert Says UNAIDS "Overestimates" HIV

Almost on cue, this week's Nature has published some words that begin to make sense about the "epidemic of AIDS" in Africa. Coming on the heels of the JAMA/Lancet backsliding on HAART's efficacy and the usefullness of viral load measurements in deciding the appropriate time and type of clinical intervention, middle and low level AIDS, Inc. spin doctors, who have been kept extra busy the past weeks, will have even more spinning to do. It has already started, as is clear from the internal bandages in the article itself (reprinted below).

Michael Peterelis, who first brought our attention to the publication, has an excellent report of this item in which he places it in the context of previous public admissions of gross error in estimates.

Nature
Published online: 30 October 2006;
New methods suggest AIDS toll lower than estimated
By Erika Check

There is no doubt that the number of HIV infections worldwide is still on the rise: the toll is up to 40 million, according to UNAIDS. But are scientists using the right method to count the cases?

This year's UNAIDS estimates of the epidemic are lower than those released at the end of last year for 11 southern African countries and for China. And in August, Indian epidemiologists cast doubt on their country's high estimate of HIV cases. [...]

Based on sentinel surveillance, UNAIDS estimates that India has 5.7 million HIV-infected individuals—slightly more than the government estimate of 5.2 million—earning India the unhappy distinction of being the country with the most HIV infections.

But when researchers led by Lalit Dandona, an epidemiologist at the Administrative Staff College of India, ran a population-based survey, their data suggested that the real number could be as low as 3.5 million.

Dandona's group gave HIV tests to as many people as would consent to the study in one district of Andhra Pradesh state. Based on their estimate, only 47,000 people in the district are HIV-positive, less than half of the official estimate of 113,000 people. The team then calculated an adjustment factor for this bias from their data, then applied it to data from other states, arriving at their substantially lower number for the country.

"We were very surprised," says Dandona. "Before we released this to the public, we spent a lot of time making sure we were not underestimating."

Other epidemiologists say that they're not surprised the official estimates are off.

"Many of us in the field have suspected that the standard methods of estimation have resulted in overestimates," says Willi McFarland, director of HIV/AIDS Statistics and Epidemiology for the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

Sentinel surveys are great for tracking trends—to pinpoint sites where infections are rising, for instance—but they're not ideal for predicting absolute numbers, he says.

One explanation for India's overestimate may be that the poor are more likely to be infected than are the wealthy, and a higher proportion of the poor go to public clinics.

Officials are still mulling over the implications of the study. UNAIDS expert Peter Ghys says population-based surveys in other states indicate that the birth clinic HIV rates accurately reflect HIV infections in the general population.

India's National AIDS Control Organisation adds that it is reviewing the methods but is not likely to conduct large population-based surveys because they are too expensive.

Celia Farber: Moving AIDS to the Third World

The word that most ubiquitously appears near the word AIDS is “war.” The now 26 drugs, in four classes that have been marketed to tackle the elusive, endlessly cunning virus have been described as the armamentarium in this war. In addition, there are scores of drugs that have been developed to offset the side effects of the anti-HIV drugs.

The Armamentarium

The battleground for the war on AIDS is the human body -- now almost exclusively human bodies in the developing world -- and those who advocate conventional AIDS drug regimens share a belief that any degree of destruction to the human body is still preferable to allowing the virus to go unchecked. They repudiate any and all research pointing to the possibility that being HIV antibody positive may not mean that a person will get sick or die. There is no natural history of HIV “infection,” (in quotes because antibodies may not signal true infection.) Prior to the 1986 approval of the first AIDS drug, an old chemotherapy drug that became re-named AZT, men who had PCP pneumonia and Kaposi’s sarcoma, the skin cancer that once was the hallmark of AIDS, were treated with potent chemotherapy regimens. It was assumed at the time that they died of “AIDS.” From 1986, AZT dominated the treatment market until its sudden demise after the results of a damning study in 1993 (the one and only large scale study not funded by its maker.) A few other drugs in AZT’s class—nucleoside analogues—were in vogue in the mid 1990s, followed by a sudden paradigm shift in 1996, when Dr. David Ho became TIME Magazine’s Man of The Year for a “whole new way of looking at the virus.”

Ho, drawing on a mathematical model that was later proved faulty, “proved” that HIV, far from being latent and only infecting a few cells, was  constantly draining the body of its immune system cells, which the immune system then regenerated in a furious attempt to compensate. Ho ushered in a new draconianism and even masochism in HIV treatment, that became known as “hit hard hit early,” which meant starting on punishing drug regiments as soon as you test positive. The idea that then took hold was that several drugs in combination might do what no single drug could do. This was the dawn of “cocktail therapy,” which in the AIDS research community became known at Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, or HAART. With approval times as short as six weeks, and very low standards for proving “efficacy,” (a bump up in CD4 cell counts or a reduction in “viral load” was enough) the market was opened up between several pharmaceutical companies, breaking the previous near monopoly held by AZT’s maker, GlaxoWellcome.

Each of the 26 anti-HIV drugs, combined in infinite combinations, or “cocktails,” is, by admission of the manufacturers, potentially lethal. Their toxic effects are comparable only with chemotherapy drugs, and many of them are simply chemotherapy. Some are of course more toxic than others, and they rise and fall in popularity. AIDS professionals can stay busy for the rest of time fiddling with the infinite combinations and the NASA-grade technical myopia about what each new drug combo seems to do to the various surrogate markers measured in the blood. AIDS drugs are not judged by clinical effect—only their effect on what is perceived as HIV’s noise and activity in the blood—CD4 counts and ‘viral load’ chiefly.

Of the 26 anti-HIV drugs on the market today, Glaxo has eight, Bristol Myers Squibb has five, Hoffman LaRoche has four, Gilead has three, Abbott has two, and Merck, Pfizer, Agouron and Boehringer Ingelheim each have one.

At the peak of cocktail therapy excitement, in the late 1990s, Andrew Sullivan wrote a cover story in the New York Times Magazine called “When Plagues End,” which suggested that the new drugs were turning AIDS in the gay community into a chronic infection, something you could live with, and that AIDS as we knew it, (as Sullivan’s circle knew it,) as a death sentence, was over.

Sullivan’s article ignited a furor in the “AIDS community” who don’t take kindly to suggestions that AIDS could ever be “over,” and who complained that this would cause gay men to become complacent.

The zeitgeist did shift, either as a result of or simultaneously with Sullivan’s article, and AIDS became a pharmacological festival. A rain of drugs, and their management, and a strange kind of combined fear and worship of them, which was a response to the fear of HIV. People had timers and beepers telling them when to take their “meds” and were instructed to take them all at different times, some with food, some with fat, some with orange juice, etc. People who couldn’t stand the toxic effects of the drugs were helped by “buddies” assigned by AIDS organizations who helped them stay motivated and/or called at all hours to remind them it was pill time.

Articles were written about the glory of the new drug, about the “Lazarus effect,” and several journalists were rewarded with Pulitzers for their brave and conscientious reportage -- including Laurie Garrett of Newsday, Michael Waldholz of the Wall Street Journal, and Mark Schoofs at the Village Voice (now at WSJ.)

They stopped reporting when the drugs started to prove lethal. One “side effect” nobody foresaw was that the drugs, so-called protease inhibitors, would throw off the body’s capacity to metabolize fat, which caused the fat to “redistribute.” People started to manifest strange body morphings—the fat drained from their faces, legs and arms, and pooled in humpbacks on the upper back and neck. Some developed “santa bellies,” and women got gigantic, engorged breasts. That was dealt with; plastic surgeons in cities like San Francisco started to specialize in plastic surgery to remove these fatty deposits. But worse than that was the other surprise side effect: People were now dying from strokes and heart attacks, even as their surrogate markers, their measures of T cells and HIV levels, were looking great, i.e. in theory, they should be winning the battle. But instead they would drop dead on their way to work.

The other significant danger of HAART proved to be liver and kidney failure, which according to a study done at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, “surpassed deaths due to advanced HIV,” in 2002.

There was no reaction to this in the “AIDS community” which has never lost faith in its core belief that AIDS drugs, even when they are lethal, are better than nothing, because HIV itself is always, to their way of thinking, deadly. Death from AIDS drugs was woven into the range of normalcy in AIDS culture, and the drugs only became more sought after, in “newer and better combinations.” 

At the same time, the marketing strategies for AIDS drugs shifted. Now the campaign themes were geared toward the pre-AIDS themes of levity, freedom, and privilege among urban, upwardly mobile gay men.  The doom was lifted. In a recent marketing campaign for an HIV drug called Reyataz, there is an embedded mini-speaker which, when you open the ad’s fold, rings like a cell phone. You hear a man’s voice say, with an upbeat, let’s party laugh, “He heey we’re at the beach. Catch you later!” The image shows two gay men on a beach, laughing, one of them in a straw hat. 

The San Francisco Department of Health reported only 245 cases of AIDS for the year 2004. That’s HIV/AIDS “culture,” in the year 2004/2005, in the west, in places like New York and San Francisco.

In 1992, there were about 98,000 AIDS organizations in the United States. In the UK at one point, there was one AIDS charity for each HIV positive person. 

These organizations sprang up like weeds at the peak of AIDS hysteria, in the early 1980s, but then AIDS failed to spread along the wildfire patters that were predicted -- along the lines of sex. Many of the AIDS professionals and organizations dissolved, but many stayed in business, and even grew. The ones that are still around today are, without exception, funded by the pharmaceutical companies that depend on them for propagating their AIDS drugs.  Yet remarkably, the old terms persist, and these professionals are still referred to as “AIDS activists.” The “AIDS activists” have woven themselves into a tight bond with both the government and the pharmaceutical industry, presenting a united front and speaking with essentially one voice. This phalanx of interconnected interests has little or nothing to do in the west, where AIDS cases are scarce, so the new battlefront of recent years is the Third World, where there seem to be infinite possibilities for expansion. 

The Targets

In AIDS, as in military wars, death is ennobled by the necessity of battle, and the force that propels it all, the thing that above all else must not be questioned, is the virulence and evil of the enemy.

In mid-February of 2005, there was a weeklong meeting of something called the HIV Prevention Trials Network, a central organ to DAIDS, focusing, like so many of these seemingly infinite branches and subdivisions and working groups of the AIDS research industry, to eradicate HIV around the planet, in people born or not yet born. But there is a very key question nobody ever asks in discussions about AIDS abroad.

What counts as “being HIV,” or “living with HIV” in, for example, Africa?

The definition of AIDS in Africa, known as the Bangui definition, is indistinguishable from the symptoms of tropical diseases and poverty, including TB and malaria. The four main symptoms are: fever, diarrhea, persistent cough, weight loss. Many African countries, Uganda for example, can't afford any HIV testing. They diagnose “AIDS” by looking at the patient for Bangui symptoms. When there is a blood test, it is the cheapest test available, the so-called ELISA test, which is never used solely in any Western country to diagnose HIV infection, and in fact cannot detect HIV.

The following facts will strike the reader as incredible, but unfortunately they are true. The reason we think Africa is "ravaged" by  AIDS is due to statistical projections out of WHO's computer modeling  in Geneva, which in turn are based on small samples taken from pre-natal clinics. Nothing but “extrapolations.” And extrapolations from what? The superior HIV test, the so-called Western Blot test, cross reacts with proteins that are not HIV proteins, including those for pregnancy, and including those for malaria and TB. The ELISA test is so unspecific as to be biologically meaningless, and it is never used in  western AIDS contexts to diagnose AIDS.  If a westerner received an AIDS diagnosis on the basis of a single ELISA test potentially they would have a multimillion dollar lawsuit on their hands. And yet this is the test that plunges countless Africans into a psychic death sentence, and allows for the astronomical, apocalyptic, and utterly fictional figures that bombard us about AIDS in Africa. 

It is also the diagnostic tool that causes thousands of Third World people to become vulnerable fodder for NIH’s 400 plus AIDS drug trials.

And now even that flimsy barrier has been broken down. The new research frontier in Third World populations is HIV negative people. 

The euphemism that legitimizes this new realm of human research is “pre-exposure prophylaxis,” which means that you test drugs on people who are ‘at risk’ for HIV infection to try to make a case that a particular drug, should they remain HIV negative, actually thwarted the antibody conversion. 

It was Jonathan Fishbein’s job at DAIDS, to red light or green light these kinds of trials in the Third World. He told me once about one that could serve as a perfect model for everything that is sinister about the NIH foreign drug testing culture: A group of investigators working in collaboration with for Gilead Pharmaceuticals, in association with UCSF, developed a protocol, and received initial approval, for a trial testing Gilead’s drug Tenofivir on HIV negative prostitutes in Cambodia. The idea was to assert that the drug might prevent them from seroconverting to HIV, should they come in contact with HIV. Needless to say, there would be no earthly way of knowing that they ever might have seroconverted if they didn’t on the drug.

Fishbein had several concerns, the first of which was that the population they wanted to test on might be underage or even children. “You can’t reliably confirm the ages of people in places like Cambodia,” he says. “Prostitutes are typically twelve years old. They may not even know their real ages, or they may not tell the truth.”

The investigators came back to him and said they had a “mechanism” for solving this challenge. They argued to Fishbein that they would ask the recruited trial subjects what the Chinese symbol was the year they were born.  Then they would ask them again the next time they came in, and see if they answered correctly, in which case the NIH could be assured they were not actually children.

Fishbein’s other main concern was that the young prostitutes, particularly brothel-based ones, would not be adequately protected from violence in the hands of their johns, who would probably beat them up to obtain the study drugs, which he described as a ‘commodity.’

The investigators kept pressing to be permitted to go ahead with the trial, but Fishbein was ultimately relieved of the decision by a surprise turn of events. “The Cambodian prostitutes are actually very well organized,” he tells me, “and they protested at the IAS Meeting in Bangkok in 2004.  “They said they wanted more information about possible side effects and assurance that they would be cared for if they had an adverse event.” 

Well that did it. The investigator, Kimberly Paige-Shafer callously remarked to the Associated Press:
"There’s probably no place in the world where women in clinical trial have access to coverage for life. So I have to decide if I want to work on insurance coverage or on HIV prevention."

At the same time, the Cambodian Prime Minister nixed the study.  I breathed a sigh of relief for those young girls who got away unscathed by Tenofivir. “So, the trial was cancelled?” I said hopefully.

“No,” Fishbein said, just when I think he couldn’t possibly shock me more.

“They moved it to Nigeria.”

Silence. 

“Nigeria?”

More silence.

Dr. Fishebin isn’t quick to condemn the whole culture, but when I press him, naively perhaps, to tell me  who are these people, and do they really believe they are doing good, fighting AIDS, whatever, he answers with the same matter-of-fact precision.

“There’s a big trough of AIDS research money,” he said, “and a relatively small community of investigators who view it as an entitlement. These guys need to keep their grants and continue to publish, in order to maintain their stature at major academic research centers. and in turn thousands of people are employed by the AIDS industry because of that money. For this reason AIDS can never be cured. What would happen to thousands of highly educated people who rely on that money for their livelihood?” 

I ponder the fact that that obscene trial was only stopped by the feisty and well organized prostitutes in Cambodia, and shudder to think what went on in Nigeria. Or any of the other dozens of countries these trials take place, that we never hear about.

The trial that truly paved the way for all of them, that showed just exactly what you can get away with in the Third World, the trial that, “struck gold,” for its principal investigator, and gave the AIDS industry its most triumphant moment perhaps in history, was HIVNET 012. It is microcosm of everything you’ll wish you never knew about the global AIDS research industry (and forms the basis of this article in Harper's).

This essay is dedicated in loving memory to Prof. Sam Mhlongo, who perished tragically and suddenly in a senseless road accident in South Africa earlier this month.

© 2006 Celia Farber

Swedish born Celia Farber is widely known "as the world's most dangerous AIDS reporter". Serious Adverse Events: Uncensored History of AIDS, a selection of over 20 years of writing, in a tradition that includes George Orwell and Hunter Thompson, has recently been published by Melville House.

Peter Duesberg Website Information Request: Small Solace for a Dr. in Detroit

 

Dear Dr. Duesberg,

I came across the statement on the Stanford retrovirus website that HIV has the ability to infect NON-dividing cells. Is this correct?

"The lentiviruses, HIV-1 among them, are unique in their ability to infect nondividing cells.This feature is based on a nuclear import pathway that enables the viral DNA to cross the nuclear membrane of the host cell. In the process of HIV-1 reverse transcription, a plus strand overlap; the central DNA flap, is created following a strand displacement in the center of the genome. This is the result of synthesis initiation from the central polypurine tract; cPPT, and termination of plus strand synthesis by the central termination sequence, CTS. The DNA flap seems to act in cis to enable HIV-1 DNA nuclear import. Introduction of this element into the plasmid is thought to avoid or at least decrease the accumulation of DNA in the cytoplasm." (Zennou V, Petit C, Guetard D, Nerhbass U, Montagnier L, Charneau P. HIV-1 genome nuclear import is mediated by a central DNA flap. Cell. 2000. 101:173-85.)

Dr. Depressed in Detroit

Dear Dr. Depresssed, 

I hope it is only the sad performance of your baseball team that is the cause of the depression. It cannot be the quotation you sent me because that could only have produced a smile.

It is pure techno-babble. There is no mention of virus replication in this abstract. An infection without virus replication is an academic point at best. 

Do you need a serious analysis? 

Regards, Peter 

Dear Peter,

Thanks for the reply. If you have a few minutes to spare, go ahead click on the link to their web site, it contains a tutorial and technical material about their plans to use the HIV retrovirus as a routine vector to insert genetic material into human cell lines for various therapeutic purposes.

They mention safety concerns, but then go on to say how they have inactivated key features to make the virus safe to use as a vector.

I found this rather interesting. What do you think about it? 

Regards, Less depressed, and still, Dr. in Detroit

Dear Dr. Detroit, 

You have made a very sharp point.

Indeed, I have made a mini-collection of papers using the "deadly" virus as vector for gene therapy too! 

I will study the dual strategy of this most mercurial killer virus later. 

In the meantime, where would we all be without Dr. Gallo's landmark discovery in 1984? Most of us would be dead from HIV diseases, and evolution-wise the few survivors would be frozen at the Gallo stage - no hopes for gene therapy for the few survivors of the HIV pandemic.

Peter Duesberg is a professor in the department of molecular and cell biology at the University of California (Berkeley), and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

 

Richard Strohman: Maneuvering in the Complex Path from Genotype to Phenotype

"Human disease phenotypes are controlled not only by genes but by lawful self-organizing networks that display system-wide dynamics. These networks range from metabolic pathways to signaling pathways that regulate hormone action. When perturbed, networks alter their output of matter and energy which, depending on the environmental context, can produce either a pathological or a normal phenotype. Study of the dynamics of these networks by approaches such as metabolic control analysis may provide new insights into the pathogenesis and treatment of complex diseases."  (Science  296: 2002, read the complete article in PDF)

Richard Strohman is emeritus professor of the University of California at Berkeley, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. He is a former research director of the American Muscular Dystrophy Association.

Population Growth Overtakes AIDS as Uganda's Biggest Concern

New Vision  (Kampala)
NEWS
October 27, 2006
By Felix Osike And Norman Miwambo

(Kampala) UGANDA'S rising population growth could create additional demands on water and food supplies, the House of Lords has warned.

Uganda's population of 28.2 million people is expected reach 120m by 2050, according to experts.During the debate held on October 19, Lord Dick Taverne, who sponsored the motion, asked what steps the British Government was taking to contribute to the stabilisation of Africa's population growth.

Taverne said although AIDS in Africa was now top of the agenda, stabilisation of population growth was more important."In Uganda, where AIDS is a moderately severe epidemic, the population is expected to grow from 30 million to over 60 million by 2025 and to 120 million by the middle of this century.

There is no official concern about population growth in Uganda and yet its impact on poverty is likely to be immense," he said.Taverne cited Ghana, where more women are likely to die from unsafe abortions than from AIDS, yet funds are being diverted from family planning to fight AIDS.

He said in Niger, there were more meetings about sex among the elderly than on population growth and blamed family planning failure on religious influence.

[Because of the nature of the Special to the NY Times reported yesterday by Monsieur Girodian, and which is receiving such lively and instructive comment today, there are some who might doubt the authenticity of this almost perfectly co-incidental piece. They would do so at the peril of their wallet should they wish to wager. Otis]

Darin C. Brown: Five More Nails in the Rodriguez Coffin

Hi Darin,

I noticed on your recent post that you considered Figure 1 of the Sept 27 JAMA article to be a "mathematical artifact". Take a look at this chart on Dr Bennett’s blog which he maintains is “proof” of a correlation between CD4 cell count and HIV Viral load… he calculates a magic R value of .93 calculated from Figure 1.

I am leaning towards thinking you are correct in your analysis, but Bennett seems to have a point (or five -- not to be gratuitously humorous about the matter because there is nothing at all funny about AIDS, really.)

Any comment? Thanks.

A concerned reader.

  JAMABennett

Dear Concerned Reader,

He has NOT proved a correlation between viral load and CD4 cell loss in individual patients. He has proved a correlation between the viral load and CD4 cell loss for five values that represent the median CD4 cell loss for their respective viral load subgroups. It is statistical trickery of the most transparent kind.

Here is the best way I can put it: ANY data set such as the one under consideration, has a "line of best fit", these appear in Figure 3. ANY data set at all. The coeff. of determination (R^2) tells you how well the data set as a whole "fits" this line of best fit. In Figure 3, clearly they don't fit at all.

Now here is a more mathematical explanation of what I meant by "it's the statistical equivalent of squinting your eyes so hard you can't see any details anymore". Let's say you just take a more-or-less random data set (as Figure 3 almost is) and break it up into subgroups by intervals of the predictor variable. All of the data points in any one of these subgroups come from patients who presented roughly similar HIV viral load levels. But within any one of these subgroups, the data points are still more-or-less randomly scattered. But there IS a general pattern, because the line of best fit does have negative slope. In other words, if you look at the total set, the points do (very generally) slope down slightly. The same holds for each subgroup. For each subgroup, the data points are scattered, but (very generally) have a slight downward trend. The point is, (reflected by the R^2 values for the total data set AND for each subgroup) they don't "fit" that trend very well (if at all).

Now, we have decided to choose the "median" response for each subgroup. It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you choose the median response for each subgroup, those medians are going to lie somewhere very close to the line of best fit. The only way the median point could lie FAR from the line of best fit was if the points had some strange distribution, like 2/3 of them very low and then a big jump and the other 1/3 way up high. Just a quick glance at Figure 3 shows they're not strangely distributed like this.

So, here is the net effect of considering the five points in Figure 1: you have a cloud of almost random data points; you plot the line of best fit through those points (which looks almost as absurd as some of the graphs in Ho/Wei); then you "choose" five data points out of the cloud which all happen to lie very close to the line of best fit. It's no surprise then that they all lie in a straight line and hence give a high correlation to each other. The "correlation" does not reflect any real correlation in the data set itself -- it's a mathematical artifact of the way the medians were chosen. It's the statistical equivalent of squinting your eyes real hard and picking five points with your finger. It's ridiculous.

So, all Figure 1 reflects is the slope of the line of best fit from Figure 3, with the lack of correlation obscured, and with some "error bars". The error bars have absolutely no biological meaning, they are confidence intervals for the median points. They are just saying, "look, the median point lies in here somewhere". So what??

Then people like Bennett point out the "simple linear relationship" in Figure 1 and claim it's evidence of some kind of "correlation". It's NOT reflecting the correlation of the total data set, it's just reflecting the small slope of the line of best fit. But every data set has such a slope value. You can do this trick to ANY data set that's more-or-less randomly distributed. It's so clear that the authors of the study couldn't just put the 4 clouds of data points upfront in the article, and just report the R^2 values in the abstract, they had to concoct Figure 1 to distract people at the start of reading the article, and then report the median values to give the idea there was some "correlation" in the abstract.

Actually, that wasn't good enough, because the median values were still too close to each other. They had to go back over each subgroup individually and run a different model with each one and I can hear their collective sighs of relief when they finally got numbers spaced out from each other a little more. (Meaning, more than 10-15 cells/mm^3/year difference between the most extreme groups.) Then they tried to "rescue" the R^2 = 0.04 by several ways, but could only get to at best 0.08 or 0.10. I can just seem them after they first saw the data and the actual R^2 values -- OMG, we have to put this in JAMA, what do we do??

This all might mean something if there were any reason to look at the subgroups this way. But I can't find any. The only reason I can find is to smooth the data out and have a nice looking graph like Figure 1. In my 9 Oct post, I point out why I think the boundaries chosen are arbitrary and why I don't think there's any good biological reason to group them this way. And biological reasons have to be the reason for choices like this. The reasons can't be purely mathematical or just arbitrary. This is all standard stuff. Do a google search on "subgroup analysis" (in quotes). You'll come up with a slew of articles on how to "misuse/abuse" subgroup analysis. This paper should go down in history as Exhibit A.

Darin C. Brown received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2004. His dissertation was in algebraic number theory, although he tells us he also has "interests in Fuchsian groups, category theory, and point-set topology". (Fuchsian groups? Sounds exciting !) His "mathematical lineage traces to Stark and Chebyshev". Dr. Brown is also the wikimesiter at the AIDS Wiki, and recently became curator of the Memorial Serge Lang Archive, announced in the Oct. issue of The Notices of the American Mathematical Society

OK Discover Magazine, Discover This!

The recent issue of Discover magazine contains a review of Celia Farber's new collection from Melville House, Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS. The review is neither insightful, nor informative, but it does raise a fair enough question, although gives it no consideration of any kind. I had sufficient feathers (mine not Attila's) ruffled by the tone of the very brief piece (below) to issue the challenge to the magazine that follows it.

When the writer is part of the story

"When does the human tendency to question cease to promote progress and instead hinder it? Can debate be detrimental? These questions arise when reading Celia Farber's book Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS (Melville House, $16.95), which flips on its head almost every belief about AIDS—that HIV causes it and that current drug regimens help rather than harm.

Farber began covering AIDS 20 years ago at the magazine SPIN, under the editorship of DISCOVER's current CEO Bob Guccione Jr. Much of her writing from that time, reprinted and updated in this book, covers the ideas of controversial University of California at Berkeley biologist Peter Duesberg, who hypothesizes that AIDS is not caused by HIV but by drug use or poverty.

Most of the scientific establishment feels the debate ended long ago. The journal Science concluded in 1994 that Duesberg's ideas are unfounded; the previous year Nature's editor John Maddox warned that it was unsafe even to allow Duesberg to respond to criticism. "A person's 'right of reply' may conflict with a journal's obligations to its readers to provide them with authentic information," he wrote. But a few, like Nobel winners Kary Mullis and Walter Gilbert, disagree, asserting that no science should be censored. Duesberg's arguments have reached both those diagnosed with HIV and those who are making decisions about prevention and treatment (notably South Africa's president, Thabo Mbbeki. If Duesberg is correct, we have a gravely flawed scientific system where incorrect hypotheses can be verified and become big business. If wrong, his ideas are literally deadly.

Farber contends that she is simply covering the story, not commenting on the science. But a journalist who spends two decades reporting a controversial theory to the public would seem to have stepped out of the role of bystander and become a participant in the debate. Although questioning conventional wisdom is essential to scientific progress, this reader, at least, is left wondering if Farber is raising a question or implying an answer that has extreme consequences."

I challenge Discover magazine to take a crack at my biography of Peter Duesberg, which has been around a couple of years now, and been subjected to the scrutiny of some pretty fair scientific minds as can be found here, and lay off Ms. Farber whose work over 20+ years speaks very clearly for itself through its profund impact, and does not need to be pre-mini-thunk for its readers. [Compare the dull as lead above with the recent review in Liberty magazine by  Richard Kostelanetz  to discover, in addition to some data, the difference between a profound hack and a real writer -- and for that matter, the difference between a substantial and Styrofoam magazine.]

Now the reason I make the challenge is not really to sell books (although that would be nice, see below), but because of the description of the work that appears at Barnes & Noble, and which I quote, as it is quite brief as well. It was written by an in-house book editor, not a professional science writer, and even it is much more instructive and lively than the two for a nickle one for a dime job above.

From the Publisher

"The author is an unabashed friend of Peter Duesberg and makes no bones about it in this personalized account of some of what the transformation of classical molecular biology into biotechnology has wrought. Most people, even many molecular biologists, will either not know or remember that two of the great themes of modern medicine, AIDS and cancer genes, both directly derive from the pioneering work on retroviruses of Peter Duesberg and a handful of others in the 1970s. Thus Duesberg's more than two decade, ongoing theoretical and experimental critiques of the dominant etiological explanations in each of these fields comes from substantial scientific contributions over a highly distinguished professional career that not only placed him in the US National Academy of Sciences at the young age of 50 in 1986, but gave him his own archive at the U.C. Berkeley Bancroft library--an archive that provided much of the documentation for revelations about the extremely unscientific behavior of several of Duesberg's powerful scientific adversaries. In tracing Duesberg's academic trials, tribulations and recent emerging triumphs, the author, an early PhD from the first department of molecular biology in the country at Berkeley, and the founding scientific editor of Nature Biotechnology, uses as guide posts the published papers of Duesberg from the earliest critical analysis of oncogenes in the pages of Nature in 1983 to very recent experimental demonstrations in the pages of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) of quantitative, aneuploidy-based explanations of cancer's genetic roots. In between, the book follows the interruption of this classical scientific arc--in which one dominant paradigm begins to transform into a more useful and correct one--with the story of the iconoclastic professor's professionally self-destructive questioning of the other pillar of today's biotech driven molecular medicine that he unwittingly midwived--HIV and its relationship to AIDS etiology. The author interweaves fully documented and serious scientific history with often quite funny personal accounts to demonstrate how scientific theories develop and are shaped by historical circumstances."

*** So how about it, am I disqualified as being "too embedded" in my history to make my reporting reliable? You need to read the book before you answer.

Harvey Bialy is the editor of "You Bet Your Life".

The Epidemic Has a New Face

STUDY: MASTURBATION CAN SPREAD HIV   

By Marcel Girodian
The New York Times

Oct. 29 -- Safe sex education was thrown into disarray today with the release of a new study indicating that masturbation can spread the AIDS virus.

The study, published in the journal Virology and Yachting, concluded that people with dry, rough hands or cuts on their hands are vulnerable to catching HIV, the virus that causes ads, when they use their hands to masturbate. The scientists found that sperm or vaginal secretions often get on the hands during masturbation, and the HIV viruses in these substances can penetrate tiny openings in the skin.

The authors of the study, virologists Bud Abernathy and Lou Costizski of Harvard University admit that they were shocked by their findings.  "Like everyone, we assumed that masturbation was safe sex," said Dr. Abernathy. "But we found that, under certain conditions, a person can actually infect himself with the AIDS virus. The virus has mutated to the point that it doesn't need person to person contact anymore."

Dr. Costizski elaborated: "Let's say you have HIV, so like a good citizen you refrain from having sex with others, and you masturbate instead. Bad idea! Our data indicate that you can infect yourself with HIV by doing this."

This "intra-personal contagion," as Abernathy calls it, is now the fastest growing transmission segment in the AIDS pandemic. "With over 2 billion people masturbating in Africa every day, they are spreading the virus to themselves at an alarming rate," he said grimly. He compared the situation to the extinction of the dinosaurs in the Mesozoic era. "Just as huge eruptions of volcanic lava covered the dinosaurs and caused their extinction, billions of huge HIV-infected orgasms covering billions of hands will cause the extinction of the Africans!"

"...unless you help," added Costizski, appealing to the public to support important AIDS research.

Famed AIDS expert Dr. Bobbit Gallo, who in 1984 concluded that HIV caused AIDS when he found the virus in 36 percent of the AIDS patients he studied, but not in the other 64 percent, praised the scientists' logic. "I can't find a single flaw in it," he said.

The impact of the study reverberated swiftly throughout the corridors of power. Dr. Anthony Faust, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced an immediate crackdown on masturbation. "This is a public health emergency and we've got to take strong measures," he said.

Gallo agreed. "Congress needs to act and act now," he said. "If masturbation can spread the AIDS virus then it must be outlawed, with all violators given stiff prison terms."

Others suggested a kinder, gentler policy. "If we can simply mandate the use of microbicidal gloves when people masturbate, we can avoid the appearance that government is getting too intrusive," said Senator Hillary Rodham Cliton (D-NY). Asked about enforcement, she said, "We can put surveillance cameras in the bedrooms of people who the president suspects are masturbating. From a civil liberties standpoint, this is preferable to incarcerating them without trial at Guantanamo Bay." She indicated that her staff is already drawing up the needed legislation.

President Bush has called an emergency meeting of the National Security Council to deal with the crisis spawned by the study. The Southern Baptist Convention and Pope Benedict have praised the study and pledged their assistance in bringing about the necessary behavioral changes.

© 2006 Marcel Girodian

Marcel Girodian is a satyr -- I mean a satirist -- who specializes in objective reporting about the "scientific community." His application for a $5 million grant to write about the AIDS establishment was recently turned down by the NIH. (Otis)

Dr. Bialy Receives an Email from Ethiopia

That he has asked me to share with you.

Dear Dr. Bialy,

It was when you officially confronted the representatives of the AIDS industry in South Africa that I started hearing about the controversy.

Since then I have exerted my utmost efforts to collect important information (via the trying dial up connection) from the Internet and disseminate what I know to my fellow citizens (Ethiopians).  I have had some communications with Professor Duesberg, Christine Maggiore, Anthony Brink and David Crowe, and I have to thank them for their encouraging support. Crowe had also included my name in the list of rethinkers and at least a few Ethiopians are officially familiar with this business.

In addition to translating and distributing important materials, I frequently discuss the issues with my colleagues, who have come to realize the truth about HIV/AIDS, and more than 80% responded negatively to an HIV risk assessment conducted twice by a consultant that was hired by our employer; Concern Worldwide, an Irish based AIDS pro NGO that engages in PR efforts with the Guardian, a famous British broadsheet newspaper.

After realizing the discouraging results of the survey are likely to pose challenges to the efforts of establishment HIV/AIDS, management has decided to organize a debate on the issue. I forward (below) the e-mail that the HIV/AIDS Expert at the Head Office sent to her counterpart and my line manager that deals with this.  The organization has planned to invite known AIDS experts to silence me.

Since the issue is taken seriously, I realized that the Country Director and her Assistant (both Irish) of Concern should attend the event. In addition, more than one hundred employees, officers and staff of the HIV/AIDS Project and representatives of partner organizations are invited to participate.

Although I don't know how the debate will take place and who the experts are, I am exerting efforts to get organized as much as I can. Regardless of my ignorance of the scientific and medical profession, I am preparing a speech and presentation, copying important documents such as key papers published in peer reviewed scientific journals and magazines, interviews, quotations, quotes and etc. both in hard and soft copies as much as my income permits doing so. 

AIDS, health, population growth and related information on Africa, particularly Ethiopia are additional resources that I have planned to use. Examples of country specific data include the cumulated reported AIDS cases of 147,000 (since 1984 up to 2003) verses the current estimate of 1.5 million (which has declined from 3.2 million of four years back), the 45,595  people who started ARV since 2003 (where the government officially launched the programme) verses the 35,460 currently taking them (August 2006) so as to question the whereabouts of the more than 10,000 (22%) people who were exposed to the miracle drugs. All the data are from the Federal Ministry of Health and National HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office (HAPCO).

Luckily, since I am currently living in a place commonly referred to "the epicenter of AIDS" in Ethiopia (Kombolcha Town, South Wollo Zone in Amhara Region) because it is a gateway to the ports of Djibouti and Assab (that belong to Eritrea) and one of the industrial areas, the database that the local public authority (Kalu Woreda Health Office) maintained on the top killer diseases was crucial for me. 

Regardless of the presence of more than six HIV Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) Centers that are equipped with Rapid Tests and the reporting system of AIDS through a dedicated office called HIV/AIDS Secretariat, the list of the top killer diseases went as follows: Malaria, FUO (Fever of Unknown Origin), Gastritis, Skin Infection, Acute U.R.T.I. (Upper Respiratory Tract Infection), Other Helmintus, Pneumonia, UTI (Urinary Tract Infection), Amebiosis, Arthritis, Bacillary Dysentery, Physcrosis (mental problem), Otlits Media (ear disease), Accidental Injury, Eye disease called STI (Soft Issue Injury), Rheumatism (of bone), Bilharzias and Acute Bronchitis. It is frustrating to some that none of them is either caused by or associated with the mysterious virus or the new African plague.

In addition to the recommendations of the alternative theories to restore a compromised immune system, I have also planned to avail a sample and evidence of recovery gained in Zambia (Keneth Kaunda Foundation) through a nutritious porridge called E-Pap, that has been claimed as "a unique African solution to address the serious problem of micronutrient deficiencies" by its proponents.   I hope you are familiar with this which is available at www.empowermentconcepts.com or www.empow.co.za.  The rationale of supporting my case with the latter is as Concern (as a "world class" organization in CTC – Community Therapeutic Care), it might think of a paradigm shift and consider inculcating such micronutrients in its HIV/AIDS programmes. 

All of my colleagues are surprised by the likely of this unbelievable debate, because they knew that the ex Country Director has given me a choice of either refraining from dissent or leaving the organization as such activity is contrary to Concern's policy and is unexpected of a person who holds a managerial position (I am the Programmes' Systems Manager and responsible for Human Resources, Logistics, Information Technology and etc functions).

I really must thank the new Country Director who is influential in Concern Worldwide. I really had expected her to have been influenced strongly by the aggressive propaganda campaign that Moore et al. have waged instead of engaging in a healthy and serious debate as recently offered by you for example.

However, I am ambivalent because regardless of the efforts I made, I am worried that the invited "experts" will deploy various strategies (such as medical jargon, medical and scientific documents that I couldn't substantiate or defend, humiliating approaches, etc) in their efforts to safeguard their vested interest.  As I have no experience of engaging in a debate and prefer writing (in my own language) than speaking, I don't want to lose the battle for such silly reasons.

Since this is a golden opportunity to really expose the fraud that people like you have paid an enormous sacrifice in the past to expose, so I would like to get your support in successfully demonstrating the facts in Ethiopia - a country that harbors "the world's third largest number of people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA)' and a total population of 77 million.

If you also feel any resources should back up my efforts (presentations, documents, or whatever that are not available on line), please send me at your earliest. Importantly, I would like to get a copy of your book and/or the CD, if possible.

Also, please bring the issue to the attention of anyone whom you believe could (or should) help me.

I have arranged to document (video) the entire event unless the opposition prevents it. If successful, I promise to send you a copy, whatever the result might be. I am also thinking of providing the same to all concerned parties, including the local media and politicians so as to further stir the pot. 

Best wishes always,

Amhayes Tadesse
Kombolcha, Ethiopia

 

From: "Lemlem Sinkineh"
Date: Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:55:27 +0300
Subject: Debate sesstion on HIV and AIDS

Dear Endalamaw,

As part of Concern Ethiopia's internal mainstreaming process of HIV/AIDS foundation for a sustainable workplace programme Concern Ethiopia conducted HIV/AIDS susceptibility and vulnerability analysis to support staff identify factors that put them at risk of HIV infection and as well as assess their vulnerability as these relate to their duties at work and personally through an internal mainstreaming analysis. 

I would like to inform you that, One of the major finding of risk perception analysis was there is denial of the existence HIV/AIDS itself and there is also beliefs that HIV does not the cause of AIDS. 

To address such issues as recommend by the consultant the HIV/AIDS department plan to organize a half day debate session in wollo which all staff members of the program will be invited to attend the session. 

The major objective of this session is to give clear and evidence based   picture of HIV and AIDS to all our staff members using renowned pathologist or bio-chemists and medical doctor who are working and have a lot of experience on HIV and AIDS. The session will be conducted with 4ps workshop in mid NOV, 2006.   

If you have any quire please do not hesitate to contact me.

Best regards,

                                  ***

Some of you might be able to guess how Dr. Bialy responded, and you can be sure we will continue to provide updates on this amazing event as we can. I have closed the comments to this post for the simplest of reasons. There is nothing to say. One can only, as Bialy wrote,"gasp in stunned admiration, and pinch oneself to be sure it isn't a dream".

[Because of the extraordinary nature of the piece above, Dear Dr. Culshaw does not appear this week, as we did not wish to dilute either by publishing both.]

Otis

Lee Evans on Turning a "Positive Test" into Something Positive

If you have never been "tested for HIV" before and now are being told you are HIV Positive, you may have been that way all your life and not known it. Here's why...

HIV is a "retrovirus," meaning that it uses both kinds of genetic chemicals (DNA and RNA) in its "life cycle". Opposite to what you have heard, retroviruses are not special, they are very common. They are the weeds of the virus world.

Until HIV, no retrovirus had ever been claimed to kill cells in a human being, as HIV is claimed to do in AIDS. Even the scientist who really discovered the virus, Dr. Luc Montagnier, from the Pasteur Institute in France, has written that retroviruses do not kill human cells, and therefore HIV cannot cause AIDS.

Retroviruses can be passed on from mother to child pretty easily, and this is how they have survived for so long, and so well. They are the most common kind of passenger viruses n human beings and other primates too. Harmless viruses are called "passengers". It would not make sense for nature to pass on a harmful virus that was going to kill the very body that inherited it. Evolution would have stopped long ago if that were possible.

Since this virus has been around for a very long time, it is very possible your mother is Antibody Reactive (otherwise called, "HIV Positive"). Since HIV does not cause any harm in a human body, she would never have known this, and neither would anyone else!

And, if you inherited HIV from your mother there is nothing to worry about, for you or for her. After all, she has been living a normal life with "The Virus" for a very long time, and so have you!

So, you can do a wonderful thing for yourself, your loved ones and for scientific truth if you would ask your mother to be tested for "antibodies to HIV". It is very important to find a few brave "Positives" (like yourself) who are willing to find out if their test results come from mama and to make this widely known.

Even a few positive mother-child pairs will be enough to make the scientific community stand up and pay attention, and stop the media lap-dogs from broadcasting racist lies, and encouraging genocide against people of color all over the world.

You can help by contacting the AIDS wikimaster. All inquiries will be kept completely confidential. I promise.

And then maybe you will want to display this Badge of Truth...

Thanks for Reading.

Peace & Love

Lee Evans

Note: This campaign has been ongoing at the AIDS Wiki since early September, where a more detailed version of Mr. Evans' explanation can be found. And a previous Evans' column, "On the Tests" is also worth the read.(Otis)

 

UPDATE  26 October. It is very strongly rumored that Magic Johnson is to appear on the Oprah Winfry show tonight, and this is the reason for the unprecedented appearance of the same lead story for two consecutive days. Why? Oprah and Magic are maybe the two African Americans with the power to dissolve the racist concoction that passes for AIDS in the public, so-called, mind overnight almost. And both are so clearly sock-puppets of the AIDS establishment that it boggles the mind to think why that is so, since in all other ways they each seem such upstanding members of whatever community they might wish to identify themselves with. Be that as it might (and it probably is), we are thinking that there is one very obvious question that Ms. O. needs to ask Mr. Magic on behalf of ALL of us. Dean Esmay asked it this morning (in a subtle way) on his popular blog that gives a whole new meaning to the word "liberal", and one which Ann Coulter must find as bewildering as a quadratic equation. But be that as it might (and it most definitely is), here (from the litttle o to the big one) is the question, bluntly stated, in a form which I urge you to submit, multiple times, to the bulletin board at the O show that was provided by Stephen Davis yesterday as the first comment to the first appearance of the powerful little essay above by the more than amazing Mr. Evans.  And the question for Mr. Johnson is.....Has your mom been tested, Magic?