He glances down at his
Blackberry, and says, “Another one…”
“Another what?” I ask.
“People send me emails every day from inside DAIDS, telling me they’re right
behind me, telling me what’s going on in there. But they can’t go public. It’s
terrible in there now. Everybody is terrified", Dr. Fishbein says.
I ask if he’s able to show me any of their emails, but he says he can’t, for
their sakes. He does email me some of the messages from the AIDS industry.
One of them, from Boehringer funded longtime AIDS organization Project Inform
head Martin Delaney accuses Fishbein of being “an unbalanced and reckless
individual who is putting his own interests above those of people worldwide who
are affected by the spread of HIV,” and of having “psychological
problems.”
“In all my 20 years of working in this field, I have never seen a package like
you,” Delaney writes, concluding with the old Act Up chant: “Shame,
shame, shame.”
Insisting that “nothing has been hidden here,” and that the “deficiencies in
record keeping were addressed,” Delaney concludes: “The only thing that strikes
me as odd here is your own behavior.”
A few weeks later, Delaney sent another one—reacting to Fishbein’s article
published in UPI that compared HIVNET to Tuskeegee. This time Delaney calls
Fishbein a “crackpot” and says he should be “banned from making further false
claims over the internet.”
“You obviously have no understanding of the issues facing developing nations or
the challenge to implement such protocols. You just sit on your lazy ass
somewhere in the US, pontificating, attacking, and denigrating the work of
others, all in hopes of, of…of what? Vindication? A big settlement? Another
shot at fiften minutes in the media spotlight?”
Delaney concludes his furious email by saying: “You disgust me as a human being
and you are clearly ill.”
Fishbein nods in disbelief.
“I am astounded that a man such as Delaney who shamelessly writes such virulent
hate-mail serves as a consultant to the NIAID. It sickens me to think that our
tax dollars are used to support such a hate-monger.”
(Delaney is a notoriously febrile letter-writer—working hard for his pharma
funding. He has written long, single-spaced, fulminating letters over the years
to the employers of any journalist who has ever crossed him idelogically, on
the subject of either HIV’s role in AIDS, or AIDS drug controversies. I have
several in my files—all of them directed at my bosses or even the investors of
magazines I wrote for—demanding that I be fired.)
TAG member Gregg Gonsalves—one of the kingpins of insider AIDS “treatment
activists”—also lost his cool when he saw the Tuskeegee comparison. He wrote to
Fishbein: “Do not send me this biased crap from a disgruntled NIH employee—you
know nothing about AIDS and are doing tremendous damage.”
Somebody named “Mike Thomas” identifying himelf as an MD in private practice,
emailed Fishbein ominously: “You should know that there are many of us in the profession
who are disgusted with you. So far, you have demonstrated your cunning by
staying one step ahead but we are watching and, when you make a mistake, you
will be exposed for what you are…”
A DAIDS employee who stays in touch with Fishbein told him that at the last HPTN meeting, in Febuary, the mood against him verged on real violence. “She said it felt like scientific terrorism,” he told me.
“Meaning what?” I said.
“Meaning somebody could take matters into their own hands…like in the abortion war.”
Doesn’t exactly sound like a group of people who feel confident in their innocence or the solidity of their positions, now does it?
The right word is: fanatics.
[Websters: L. fanaticus: inspired by a deity, frenzied]
All material pertaining to the
case of Dr. Fishbein was
gathered prior to the settling of his
unlawful termination lawsuit in December of 2005, which resulted in his
reinstatement. © 2006 Celia Farber
Note from Otis: The above is drawn from Ms. Farber's archives (going back many years) of "on the record, but never published conversations with the reviled and the regaled of AIDS".
Celia Farber is widely known
"as the world's most dangerous AIDS reporter". A collection of
her finest work, spanning 20 years of investigative reporting, is now available
under the title, Serious
Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS. Dr. Fishbein's website, HonestDoctor.org, contains a wealth of
additional material, beautifully presented, to open your eyes wider, and further sadden your
heart. (Hank)
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