"You Bet Your Life"

Seinfeld, Kramer and the Red Ribbon Brigade!

Surely, y'all remember the great Jerry Seinfeld and his cast of merry pranksters, Elaine, George and Kramer from the 90s?

I am reminded of the episode where Kramer -- the hipster doofus -- joins an AIDS Walk in Central Park for a good cause, but gets bashed by hordes of AIDS activists for refusing to wear a red ribbon. The following is the excerpted screenplay of the actual show, with my comments in blue interspersed within:

Kramer joins the gang at that little coffee shop on the upper west-side

KRAMER: Hey, boys and girls. I need you both to sponsor me in the AIDS walk.

ELAINE: Is that tomorrow?

KRAMER: Yeah, yeah, so...git-git...<gestures to Elaine to sign the form.>

ELAINE (signing): Well, I admire you for joining the fight against AIDS.

KRAMER: Well, if I didn't do something I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

JERRY (signing): It's hard enough living next door.

KRAMER: I tell ya, there's some people, they just wear a ribbon and they think they're doin' something? Not me. I talk the talk, and I walk the walk, baby. <gets up> I'll be right back.

New scene - Jerry approaching his apartment door. He hears the sound of a loud group of people from inside Kramer's place. Jerry knocks and finds Kramer engaged in a rip-roaring game of poker.

JERRY: Kramer, what the hell is going on in there?

KRAMER: It's a poker game...<yells to the crowd> And I'm kickin' some serious butt!

JERRY: Are you out of your mind? You got the AIDS walk tomorrow!

VOICE FROM POKER GAME: Hey, Kramer - are you in?

KRAMER: Oh, you gotta be kiddin'! You see those two ladies I got showin'? Do they look scared?!

JERRY: You're never gonna make it!

<Kramer giggles and returns to the game.>

New scene - Kramer signing in at the AIDS walk.

KRAMER (to organizer at desk): Uh, Cosmo Kramer?

ORGANIZER: Uh...o.k., you're checked in. Here's your AIDS ribbon.

KRAMER: Uh, no thanks.

ORGANIZER: You don't want to wear an AIDS ribbon?

KRAMER: No.

ORGANIZER: But you have to wear an AIDS ribbon.

KRAMER: I have to?

ORGANIZER: Yes.

KRAMER: See, that's why I don't want to.

ORGANIZER: But everyone wears the ribbon. You must wear the ribbon!

KRAMER: You know what you are? You're a ribbon bully. <Walks away.>

ORGANIZER: Hey you! Come back here! Come back here and put this on!

New scene - Kramer in the AIDS walk. Some AIDS activists accost him for failing to wear the red ribbon.

WALKER #1: Hey, where's your ribbon?

KRAMER: Oh, I don't wear the ribbon.

WALKER #2: Oh, you don't wear the ribbon? Aren't you against AIDS?

KRAMER: Yeah, I'm against AIDS. I mean, I'm walking, aren't I? I just don't wear the ribbon.

WALKER #3: Who do you think you are?

WALKER #1: Put the ribbon on!

WALKER #2: Hey, Cedric! Bob! This guy won't wear a ribbon! <Cedric and Bob turn around and glare at Kramer.>

BOB: Who? Who does not want to wear the ribbon? <Kramer is frightened.>

New scene - Kramer surrounded by Cedric, Bob, and the other walkers.

BOB: So! What's it going to be? Are you going to wear the ribbon?

KRAMER (nervously): No! Never.

BOB: But I am wearing the ribbon. He is wearing the ribbon. We are all wearing the ribbon! So why aren't you going to wear the ribbon!?

KRAMER: This is America! I don't have to wear anything I don't want to wear!

CEDRIC: What are we gonna do with him?

BOB: I guess we are just going to have to teach him to wear the ribbon!

<Kramer tries to climb up a fire escape, but the mob grabs him and pulls him back down. Kramer screams.>

Final scene - Jerry and George waiting for Kramer at the finish line.

*           *              *

JERRY: It's probably so the woman has one last chance to change her mind.

GEORGE: You never run out, do you? <Jerry smiles.> Where's Kramer? Everything's finished here.

JERRY: Oh, I told him he'd never make it. He was up all night! Oh my god...Kramer?

<They see Kramer staggering towards them with cuts and bruises, clothes torn, one shoe off. He collapses and crawls across the finish line.>

JERRY: Look at you. I told you. Up all night playing poker. Come on. <Jerry and George are about to leave. George turn's back and looks at Kramer.>

GEORGE: Hey, where's you AIDS ribbon?

_______________________________________

So, there you have it -- art imitating life.  Hordes of bean-counting, do-gooding AIDS activists demanding compliance and conformity with their stupid little red ribbons, trying to impose their little warped stigmata on poor 'ole Kramer. Well, respectfully, we at Barnes-ville share the same sentiments as our hero, Cosmo Kramer. We are sick of you jerks -- and, No, we ain't gonna wear no dumb-ass red ribbon, either! So, How's that for a yada-yada-yada:)

More AIDS Goofiness: Stunning Contradiction

Here's a typical cheerleading article, where the stenographer journalist merely transcribes the hyper-ventilating medics touting the much ballyhooed progress of AIDS science. The clear import of the article is that prescription drugs are saving lives.

'Today, I can tell my patients with HIV that they can have a normal life expectancy,' said Stefano Vella, director of drug research and evaluation at the Institute Superiore di Sanita in Rome, the equivalent of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Well, Hell yeah, we celebrate a normal life expectancy for HIV+ folks. That's great news, right? The implication from the article, of course, is that the toxic drugs  life-saving meds are prolonging life, ie, decreasing mortality. Who on earth can complain about this?

Problem: The Lancet just came out with a mega study of 22,000 patients over the past 10 years on meds, entitled, "HIV Treatment Response and Prognosis in Europe and North America In The First Decade of HAART: A Collaborative Analysis."

The conclusion?

"Virological Response after starting HAART improved over calendar years, but such improvement has not translated into a decrease in mortality." (pg 453).

In short, T-4 cells increased, viral load decreased -- but patients did not live any longer as a result of these wonderous drugs.

Typical AIDS shell game -- they bombard you with all these numbers and indicators that bear little on a person's health --and, according to his massive study, bear nothing on a person's survival rate.

But, according to the cheerleading paper above -- normal life expectancy has been attained!!!!

Logical deduction: If life-expectancy has increased, but meds have nothing to do with it, something other than the meds is providing great health benefits.

Any takers?

An Invitation Finally Accepted

A while ago I invited "our" pal, doc Bialy, to contribute to Barnes-ville as an irregular columnist.  Until today he had declined what I considered an oft extended, gracious invitation, often politely but often as not in a grouchy (not Groucho) style that I have learned to accept, if not always enjoy.

But this morning, for reasons of which I have (as he might type) "noooo idea", the following email arrived, and being an Honest Hank, I am forced to publish it, although truthfully it is not exactly what I had in mind when I made my first, and perhaps, ultimately foolhardy offer months and months ago.

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Dear Hank,

I have decided to take you up on your offer of publishing whatever I might think to send you in the way of idle or not deliberations of what are widely known as the "pouring from the empty into the void concerning the general state of affairs" type, insofar as they can be related to the matter of attention graphically illustrated by the button in Groucho's lapel.

*

The difference between molecular virologists and politicians.

The former are overly enamored of "single-hit" explanations for even the most complex of phenomena. This is a fault of their teachers and teacher's teachers who were overly influenced by the apparent success of Beadle and Tatum's "one gene, one enzyme" hypothesis.

The latter, on the other hand, are passionate about "multi-hit" strategies and are noted for reducing the simplest of problems to unmanageable proportions at the drop of a coin in the campaign box.

It is another wonder of HIV/AIDS that it majestically and uniquely encompasses both of these divergences.

It may very well be that the meek will inherit the earth. But what will be left to inherit when the last bastard drops dead?

All things Under One Umbrella

The wire services are carrying a report today about the Iranian heavy water facility. In the body of several of these the following is embedded.

According to the facility's director, Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who also heads the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, it will produce 80 tonnes of heavy water a year that will be used to treat AIDS and cancer, and for other medicine and agricultural purposes.

Now while heavy water treatment has been known for a long time to be an extremely effective, but also lethal, form of chemo, it boggles what is left of the mind to think that it could also be used to restore a decaying immune system.

Just like "an idiot who has found one word to express everything", an appeal to the AIDS god can succor all souls, infidel and true believer alike.

Glaxo Chief Speaks! Insists Big Pharma won't survive

Have any of you folks heard of this French fellow, Jean-Paul Garnier? No, he's not a swiss chocolate maker -- he's the chief henchman honcho at Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Beecham-Burroughs-Welcome --a big ass Pharma conglomerate.

He opines that Big Pharma is roiled with excesive costs so that it may not survive in its current form.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC's chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier told Manager Magazin that he foresees several pharmaceutical companies folding in the next few years because of increasing outlays for research.

Well, we like folding pharma companies. That's a good thing!

'Of the 15 pharma companies that have a significant role in the world, only a handful will remain,' Garnier said in an interview to be published on Friday.

Again, we say "good"!

'Hardly any of the large companies are in the position right now to invest enough money into research,' Garnier continued.

Huh?!!? Then where are they investing all that dough, we ask?

Garnier said pharmaceutical companies invest too much money in advertising and marketing at the expense of more research, development and production.

Ahh, we get it -- the king of the snake-oil salesmen coyly let's us in on the scam.

Umm, Jean-Paul -- here's a thought. You're the frickin' CEO -- if you're spending too much $$ on  advertising to pimp your drugs, well then, spend less.

The Influence of Money on Medical Science

No, that's not 'ole Hank pontificating -- that's the Editor of JAMA, Catherine DeAngelis.

This is a great editorial in a major scientific journal -- so grab a chair and pay attention.

While on vacation recently, I had the opportunity to contemplate the sometimes unethical influence of money on medical science, a very serious issue, which has become more evident over the past year or so...

Unethical influence of money?!!? Hmm, I thought you scientice-types wuz only interested in the evidence, facts and truth?

....it is important to discern the necessary and honest interests of for-profit companies from the potentially corrupting influence of commercial interests.

You mean "corrupting-influence" in the sense that certain big powerful companies control and distort the studies that will determine whether or not their drug will receive FDA approval?

Two basic goals of for-profit companies are the discovery, testing, and production of products (the scientific goal) and the sale of products to garner profits, thereby generating returns to the shareholders (the marketing goal). Profits are a logical expectation of the companies that fund the discoveries. Ideally the products discovered, tested, and produced will be beneficial to many individuals for whom the products will be prescribed and who will purchase them, returning a healthy profit for the company.

That don't seem so unreasonable in theory, does it? We don't mind folks making a profit of selling, say, insulin, for diabetics, do we? But, here's where it gets ugly.

Now comes the potential problem. In some instances, the marketing goal of a company dominates the scientific aspect of the company-funded research. There have been a number of high-profile examples of such research irregularities involving for-profit companies, such as the refusal to provide all study data to the study team, reporting only 6 months of data in a trial designed to have 12 months of data as the primary outcome; incomplete reporting of serious adverse events; and concealing clinical trial data showing harm.(footnotes omitted)

Refusing to provide data? Reporting only half the data? Ignoring serious adverse events? Concealing harmful data?

Well, blow me over with a feather. I didn't think science was such a ....contact sport. These folks sound like politicians --- or worse, lawyers!

And it ain't just the pharmaceutical companies -- even some of the doctors and scientists get in on the action:

Individual clinicians or medical scientists may also exhibit inappropriate or unethical behavior perhaps influenced by money or other factors. All would agree that it is dishonest for clinicians and medical scientists to falsify data or data analysis; to provide negative peer reviews of other's submitted but not yet published manuscripts because they do not want to be "scooped"; or for an editor of a medical journal to participate in the editorial review and decision to publish a review article authored by himself or herself and for which financial imbursement from the sponsor was obtained. These are obvious problems, but in other situations, the concerns about potentially unethical financial influence on individuals are more difficult to identify. 

Anyhoo -- the DeAngelis piece is a great wake-up call for some of you naive types on what's at stake here. Again, it isn't that science is somehow innately corrupt or misguided. That just ain't true. We love science -- the art of deduction from evidence. We maintain that it is the best means devised by man to ascertain the truth. But, currently -- like the steroid problem in baseball -- we're in a 30 year rut, where politics, money and systemic greed is crowding out good, honest science.

We intend to change this. Read the whole piece. And, don't be shy about letting Dr. DeAngelis know about some specific, ahem, examples of this scientific rot.

Dr DeAngelis is Editor in Chief, JAMA ([email protected] ).

Nice One-Two Combo to the Body!

First, we have Cliff Kincaid, with a nice right hook to the flabby mid-section known as AIDS Inc. with an aptly entitled piece -- The AIDS Vaccine Project has Failed.

We couldn't agree more, Mr. Kincaid:

In total, the U.S. has spent about $200 billion on HIV/AIDS-and an AIDS vaccine-since 1981.

$200 Billion? Thatsa lotta sheckels! And what do we have to show for it, I ask? Well, crack stenographer NY Times Reporter, Scary Larry Altman elaborates:

Altman also said that "Although more than 30 experimental H.I.V. vaccines have been tested in people, only one has completed full-scale testing. That vaccine, Aidsvax, made by VaxGen, failed in a large trial that ended in 2003."

You mean more  false promises, billions thrown down a rathole, and abject failure in AIDS science? Say it ain't so, Shlomo!

Kincaid closes with a nice little nugget at the end:

An HIV/AIDS vaccine could be made mandatory, for children as well as adults, despite the fact that some experts still insist that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, and AIDS tests can be extremely unreliable.

Hmm. Must a conspiracy or sumptin';)

Next, we have a stiff upper-cut to the glass jaw of AIDS, Inc.  from Michael Fumento, writing in that Right-Wing rag, The American Spectator. His piece -- exploring the moribund International Yawn Fest in Toronto -- declaims, most sensibly, I must add, that, No, We Don't All Have AIDS. We like the clarity of this point made by Fumento:

Seriously, this bit of propaganda is but one illustration of how efforts against AIDS have always been handicapped by politics. Nobody really believes we all have AIDS. But many have bought into the "Everyone is at risk" nonsense, which clearly works against targeting those truly at risk.

Yes, it most certainly is nonsense of the highest order. Recall the figure of 272 AIDS cases in all of Canada last year! Fumento continues:

These figures are from an agency that itself has grossly exaggerated the world AIDS threat. For example, in 1998 it estimated that 12% of Rwandans age 15-49 were infected; now it says it's only 3%. Whoops. On the other hand, other agencies had estimated a horrific 30% of Rwandans were infected. According to James Chin, a former U.N. official who made some of the earliest global HIV estimates, such concocted figures are "pure advocacy."

Give that feller, Chin, a gold medal for honesty! Of course, none of these lies, bogus predictions, and unbridled advocacy of false data, slows down the money train:

Meanwhile, worldwide AIDS spending averaged $1.7 billion between 2002-2004 but reached $8.3 billion for 2005 and is slated to hit $10 billion in 2007. The size of that pie, and the desire to have a slice of it, is all you need to know to understand how the Toronto conference could attract a stunning 24,000 attendees who have been rightly labeled "the AIDS industry." Nevertheless, insists UNAIDS, that $10 billion isn't nearly enough.

The AIDS industry -- I like that.

New rule: Any person -- scientist, activist, journalist -- who is making $$ from the AIDS Industry oughta be ignored. They are part of the problem, not the solution.

The Fallible Words of Pope David I

Hank just received this email from our pal James MacCallister -- the colleague of Prof. Lynn Margulis, who wrote with her the very informative Amazon review of doc  Bialy's book about the scientifc life and times (and travails) of UC Berkeley's one and  only , and very own, Prof. Peter H. Duesberg:

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"As we recently learned at Roger Williams College from the expert physician researcher from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, AIDS is unbelievably mutagenic.  It makes billions of mutant versions in just 24 hours. And then some of these mutants mutate back to the original strain thus doing an end run around any vaccine.  But yesterday I picked up one of the pantheon of primary science journals, Discovery  magazine, to find an interview with David Baltimore. Baltimore is slurping from the Gates Foundation trough.

Here's his take:

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first known case of AIDS. Is AIDS research, a quarter century later, where it should be? AIDS research today suffers a lot from our inability to figure out aroute to make a vaccine. The research in the treatment of the diseasehas gone very well, but what the less-developed world needs, and what we need, too, is a vaccine. Because of the biology of HIV, it has been extremely difficult to make such a vaccine—and it's not for lack of smart ideas. But the virus always seems to figure out a way around anything that we come up with. We're going to live in a world without an HIV vaccine for at least another decade, at the rate we're going. And we've been saying it's going to be another decade for the last few decades. So it's a very depressing circumstance.

What makes HIV so challenging to a biologist? The virus has found ways to protect itself—particularly against antibodies—almost completely. It hides in a cloud of sugar—carbohydrates—and it has only a few open spaces on its surface that are not covered in sugar. Those open spaces are so designed that the body finds it difficult to make an antibody that will be able toget in there and block the receptor sites that the virus uses to bind the cell. The end result is that this is one of those very rare diseases—there's hardly another like it—where the virus multiplies continuously at high levels and the immune system is unable to deal with it. What vaccines depend on is the immune system. We know that the standard vaccine simply won't work, and so we have to look for novel ways of making vaccines. But so far no one's come up with an answer.

Is it possible that no one will ever be able to develop a vaccine? I'm not positive it will be found. This may be a disease that we simply can't vaccinate against. And if you look at the other diseases we can't vaccinate against, they are the major killers in the world—malaria and tuberculosis in particular. We may live in a world where our only protection is educating people to protect themselves."

You'll notice no mention of billions of mutant HIV.  Now it's a sugar cloud. Who says medical research isn't getting anywhere?"

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Baltimore also has some other gems. For example, he explains away the entire 1986 fraud case involving our favorite AIDS crook, Robert Gallo, as "just a record-keeping problem that got blown out of proportion...people wrote things on paper towels back then, it was a different time..."  I'm sure Bob will be pleased to learn he has received special dispensation from the Pope.

Toronto AIDS Conference: International Yawn Fest Finally Ends!

Well,  perhaps you heard about this big, important international AIDS Conference in Toronto that finally, mercifully, came to an end.

Sure, it's pretty much a professional boondoggle -- free trip, hotel, etc, etc. Of course, the best perk was simply to bask in the warm glow of all that is AIDS -- with other like-minded drones. Also, don't forget to thank your corporate sponsors-- Pfizer, Merck, Glaxo, Gilead, Abbott -- for such great hospitality!

Anyway, if you hadn't heard of this international conference or didn't attend, well, that's okay. You're not alone. In fact, most sane people didn't know or care about it, either. The altogether atrocious AIDS stenographer journalist, Laurie Garrett, summed it up nicely from one of the panels:

[T}here's a story in today's Globe and Mail. It's part of their package set up of this conference. The story is all basically alluding to the conference as being a total waste of time, just a bunch of glitz. Why is everybody here? Maybe that explains why there's no banners welcoming us to the city as we come to the airport, why this is the first international AIDS conference I've been to where there's no visibility, no red ribbons, nothing about AIDS on the streets. You don't see it. You'd think we'd gone to the moon.   (Transcript, pg 57.)

No visibility, red ribbons, or banners? Mon dieu! The horror......the horror.....the horror.....

Umm, I hate to break it to you, Laurie, but... Nobody on the planet cares about this irrelevant jive. It most certainly is a waste of time. We wish you would simply pack up and go away!

The estimable Ms. Garrett --stenographer to the AIDS stars -- continues in glorious fashion:

The Globe and Mail has a long article that's basically one voice. It's Robert Gallo saying this conference sucks and that's why I didn't come. Why didn't they interview the organizers to find out that Gallo was insisting he could only come if he could have a plenary speech[?] (Transcript, pg 57.)

Robert Gallo? You mean Bob "Scientific Misconduct" Gallo -- the man who rediscovered the AIDS virus thru the French Postal Service?   Where has he been all these years?

Well, if I may speak for the esteemed organizers and attendees, NO, Bob, you can't give a plenary speech, and NO, Bob, you shouldn't even come -- but, Yes, Bob, we agree -- the conference does suck:)

But, let's not jump to conclusions and give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps, Bob just had another "family emergency" (wink, wink)

In any event, Ms. Garrett is merely begging the question: The effect -- the AIDS international conference sucks. But what is the underlying cause? Is it boring speakers? Is it too much hype? Is it that few people care about this farce anymore -- except the ones milking it?

Ahhh, my gentle readers, never fear. These probing questions and keen investigative mind are why 'ole Hank gets paid the big shekels.

Out of curiousity, I sifted thru the truly wretched conference website to identify said organizers. There were about 15 committees consisting of about 526 concerned AIDS activists/scholars on the committees. That's right -- 526. A whole lotta cooks in the Canadian kitchen, as they say. Do you really need 526 people to put on a conference?

Then, I checked out some of the health statistics on AIDS data in Canada. Bingo! -- a blockbuster finding!

So, humor me, friends, How many Canadians do you think were diagnosed with AIDS in all of 2005? Hold on to your hats, Sports Fans.

For 2005, in all of Canada, there were a grand total of.....272 Total AIDS cases.

Let me repeat that paltry, trivial figure: 272 -- in a country of 32 Million people. No wonder why the prime minister, Stephen Harper, snubbed these bozos. For you math wizards, that's an odds ratio of -- pretty goddammn low:)

So, to recapitulate:

There were more AIDS researchers, activists, lapdogs and sychopants mooching free meals in Toronto than actual AIDS cases in the preceding year!!!!!!!

But, the absolutely best part -- the creme de la creme -- the piece de resistance -- comes when old Doc Nancy Padian gets dragged from the audience to make a few meaningless comments. I quote old Nancy Pants:

What really strikes me about this is I'm shocked actually at how few people are here. Now I don't know how well this has been advertised, but to me this is such an essential thing......(Transcript pg 64).

The video then pans on the audience, and, there's maybe 3 or 4 bored guys in the seats. Again, memo to the crack organizers:  Here's a good rule of thumb: if there are more panelists than audience members, that's usually bad:)

Well, I hate to break it to you AIDS do-gooders, but here on Planet Earth, we are not shocked. Frankly, we are sick of you jerks. It would be much better for humanity if next year y'all just stayed home  -- or even better -- formed an international scientific bowling league...something like that. Hell, it would save Pfizer and Glaxo a lotta dough and give you some well-needed exercise to boot!

And, so my friends, the curtain drops, once again, on the international magical, mystery tour where the best and the brightest of AIDS scientists search for meaning, search for faith, and, most of all, search for viruses. I guess, a virtual cornacopia of bogus tests, condoms and toxic drugs just ain't enough to draw a crowd these days.

To close, in the rebellious 1960's, one perceptive cultural observer once asked, "What if you held a war and nobody came?"

Well, 40 years later, we ask, "What if you held an international conference on AIDS, and nobody cared?"

Way to Go, Thabo !

South Africa dismisses AIDS policy criticism

By Andrew Quinn (AP)Sat , Aug 19, 10:04 AM ET

South Africa dismissed harsh criticism of its AIDS policy by a top U.N. official "with contempt" on Saturday and said he was no Messiah for Africa's HIV/AIDS crisis.

U.N. special envoy on AIDS in Africa Stephen Lewis closed a global conference on Friday with probably the most blistering attack ever on South Africa's "lunatic fringe" approach to AIDS, calling it immoral and ineffective.

Lewis' comments, echoed by other speakers at the Toronto conference, represented a diplomatic broadside against President Thabo Mbeki's government, which faces one of the world's biggest HIV/AIDS caseloads. (italics HB)

About five million people, or one in nine South Africans, are infected. (sic)

Health Ministry spokesman Sibani Mngadi issued a statement on Saturday rejecting Lewis' speech "with contempt."

"Lewis is not Africa's Messiah," Mngadi said, detailing South African accomplishments on AIDS including the distribution of millions of free condoms and a free drug program ( *not* ARVs) that now reaches more than 175,000 infected people.

"What Africa needs now is not unsubstantiated attack on democratically elected governments, but delivery on the many resolutions made with regard to addressing poverty and underdevelopment which increases the vulnerability of our population to disease," Mngadi said.

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It then goes on to repeat more of the ususal, murderous lies of course, but the lede is pretty surprising to me :)