“It is a strange world where one is castigated for having an
opinion on a scientific matter that does not fall in line with the
popular consensus.”
I would also like to
point out that the majority of correspondence is positive, and that I do get
mail from people asking legitimate questions, which I will begin to respond to
in next week’s column.
Let’s tackle the first
category that I mentioned above.
“You keep promoting your
thinking that HIV does not cause AIDS or other opportunistic infections and you
will be responsible for killing people who listen to your twisted logic and
comments. You will be responsible for further enabling people to continue their
denial and thus continue infecting others as a result of this denial.”
“You are an incredibly
irresponsible person, I would even say evil. What would you do if you or a
family member was diagnosed? Would you tell them not to take the drugs?”
I’d like to note that these
comments are typical. Probably two-thirds of the negative mail I’ve received
has said essentially this – my words and ideas are somehow going
to kill people. While on some level I can understand that such emails are not
rational, but rather knee-jerk emotional responses that are almost purely
visceral, on another level I cannot understand the vitriol directed toward a theory,
and toward me as a spokesperson for that theory.
To address the theme of my
responsibility for people’s deaths, my reply is twofold. First, I don’t see how
I can be held responsible for anything of the sort. I do not give medical
advice as I am not licensed to do so. The most I can ever do is to tell people
what I would do in their position. I would contend that it is actually irresponsible
to deny people the full range of information that’s available. If an idea is
junk, people will know it and discard it. Perhaps this is simply my naiveté,
but I have faith that most people have the mental capacity to make their own
informed decisions, as well as the intuition to sense what is right for them. I
am merely a conduit; it’s only information.
But the second part of my
reply is even more fundamental. What concerns me the most is that lives have
been ruined or even ended by the blanket refusal to discuss alternatives, by
the strange modern belief that the human body cannot heal itself. Somehow, it
has become accepted that the only way to rebuild a damaged immune system, or to
prevent that damage from occurring in the first place, is through the
prescription of drugs documented to have numerous immune-suppressing effects. It
has become normal to restrict or even remove rights from HIV-positive
individuals that most of us take for granted. In some sense, the question of
whether HIV causes AIDS pales in comparison with the need to return hope and normalcy to those from whom they have been taken.
In the wake of the CDC’s
recommendation for universal HIV testing lies the specter of the profound
effect a positive test result has on the life of the person receiving it. An
HIV diagnosis is unlike any other. Few people, if any, have committed suicide
over a high cholesterol level; no one has had medical insurance refused them
because their liver enzymes were elevated; no one has had their children taken
from them as a result of their being diabetic.
It is impossible to believe
that most of my opponents are truly being compassionate when
“drugs-into-bodies” is the answer for everything. It is highly doubtful that
real concern is being shown when taking away basic human rights happens without
any consideration whatsoever, despite the fact that some of these laws – such
as that barring entry to the US for foreign HIV-positives – are archaic and
result from assumptions of transmission probabilities that everyone agrees are
outdated.
And to answer the second
question – if a family member were diagnosed, I would do my best to ensure that
all the information was available to them. I can’t tell anyone what medications
to take – ultimately, the choice is up to them, and I want that choice to be as
informed as possible.
“With all due respect,
you’re out of your league. Your training is in math, and your beliefs
are unscientific.”
“Overall I think [you are] a paranoid little mathematical ‘biologist’ who does not understand the justification for scientific research.”
***
This brings us to the
second major theme running through the criticisms of me that I have received
and that have appeared on several, reasonably, well-surfed blogs – I somehow “don’t understand how
science works”. What seems oddest about these responses is that when criticizing my “lack of scientific understanding”, these writers feel compelled to use very unscientific language like,
“paranoid little mathematical ‘biologist”.
It seems that there is a
lack of understanding among the general population – including, evidently,
those who refer to themselves as scientists – of what “science” really is. Science,
I would contend, is about observing phenomena, formulating hypotheses to
explain such phenomena, testing these hypotheses by using them to predict
future observations, and reformulating as necessary. It does not seem out of
line to suggest that if a hypothesis that we have doggedly held to for over
twenty years consistently fails to explain much of what it was put forth for,
and catastrophically fails in its predictive value, that it just might
be time to consider that there are some serious flaws. But when it comes to
HIV, the “scientific community” appears to be infected with a strange sort of
moral absolutism that enables people to take a quasi-religious stance against
any sort of dissent – no matter how overwhelming the evidence supporting the
dissenters, or how flimsy the evidence propping up their own set of beliefs.
It’s nonsense to say that I
don’t understand the justification for scientific research. I’m actually
begging for more research to be done. As I have said time and time again, there
are huge gaps in our knowledge when it comes to AIDS (among other things). Clearly,
the current research is not producing the answers we had hoped it would. Science,
of course, is meant to be self-correcting, but it seems to be endemic in HIV
research that, rather than continually building on an accumulating body of
secure knowledge with only occasional missteps, the bulk of the structure gets
knocked down every three to four years, replaced by yet another hypothesis,
standard of care, or definition of what, exactly, AIDS really is. This new
structure eventually gets knocked down in the same fashion. How “scientific” is
that?
I could continue citing nasty quotes, but I don’t see the purpose, as they are all basically the same. These types of responses sadden me, and they form the vast majority of the “hate mail” I receive. It is a strange world where one is castigated for having an opinion on a scientific matter that does not fall in line with the popular consensus. The measures being taken to undermine people’s basic rights are frightening and appear to be changing for the worse even in my lifetime. From my vantage point, I look upon this vast landscape of hatred and misunderstanding, and I wonder if our prejudices haven’t simply shifted perspective. My generation likes to think of ourselves as “enlightened” and “politically correct”, but all I can see are new ways of expressing old intolerances. Intellectual curiosity is discouraged, and postmodern “science” has become the new religion.
***
Rebecca V. Culshaw worked on mathematical models of HIV infection for almost ten
years. She received her Ph.D. in mathematics (with a specialization in
mathematical biology) from Dalhousie University in Canada in 2002 and
is currently an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Texas at Tyler. She is a celebrated internet author as a result of her writings on Lew Rockwell, and "Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?", a book based on those essays is due this December. [The miniature at the top left is Hypatia of Alexandria (370-415), famous as the first woman known to have made a substantial contribution to the development of mathematics.] (Hank)
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