The first response I usually get when I tell someone I'm an HIV heretic is incredulity. "If I am right, why does everyone else think otherwise?" The answer is not too complicated -- homophobia, racism, a decline in scientific standards, and a failed responsibility on the part of the scientific and lay press.
The homophobic motivations behind HIV/AIDS are eloquently expressed by Casper Schmidt in his paper "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS":
"A particular form of shame is that which is felt for others who have been shamed and with whom one has identifications, especially in field-dependent subjects. The prototype of this reaction and its resolution is found in an account by Sack. In former times it seems that when a woman had been shamed only her death could remove the shame. I interpret this as a pathway by which already-existing matricidal impulses can be discharged through a fantasy of 'killing the shamed'. This is confirmed by the fact that it was usually the woman's own son who led the killing party. It is my contention that this mechanism of 'killing the shamed' is one of the most powerful, though deeply repressed, dynamics of the AIDS epidemic: that which is enacted in real murder in the tribal culture, becomes a more sublimated but nevertheless equally venomous outpouring of death wishes towards drug addicts and homosexuals.
The racist motivations behind the HIV paradigm are transparent in this excerpt from a scientific article on the "origin of AIDS":
"The first plausible explanation for the origin of AIDS by cross-species transfer is due to Noireau in 1987. He referred to a book published by Anicent Kashamura, a member of the Idjwi tribe of the Lake Kivu region in East Zaire. Kashamura deals with the sexual habits of the people of the large African lakes. Noireau quotes the following sentence: 'To stimulate a man or a woman and induce them to intense sexual activity, male monkey blood for a man or she-monkey blood for a woman is directly inoculated in the pubic area and also into the thighs and back.' Such practices would constitute an efficient means of trans-species transmission and could be responsible for the emergence of SIV infections of man and thus AIDS." (Karpas, A., 1990. "Origin and spread of AIDS", Nature, 348: 578)
Usually such racism is given at least a thin disguise, as in this quote from a CDC report:
"Seroprevalence was substantially higher among blacks than among whites in nearly every serosurveillance population... The marked racial and ethnic differences in HIV prevalence, even among persons treated in the same clinic, suggests that both behavioral norms and complex social mixing patterns within racial and ethnic groups are important determinants of HIV transmission risk." (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "1994 National HIV serosurveillance summary")
In plain English, it is the stated opinion of the CDC and the US government that blacks are hypersexual, promiscuous and irresponsible. They engage in unsafe sex and share needles at a level orders of magnitude greater than whites or Asians.
The decline in scientific standards is now impossible to ignore. With the results of this paper showing HIV isn't sexually transmitted, a recent one demonstrating that reduction in "viral load" does not translate to reduction in morbidity and mortality, and the even more recent paper proving that "viral load" cannot be responsible for CD4 cell loss, the expected thing for HIV scientists to do would be, at the very least, to re-examine the possible role played by HIV, if not to issue a Mea Culpa in caps on the covers of Nature and Science. Instead, par for 25 years, the facts are dismissed, and absurd hand waving offered as defense -- in this case, the pitiful display of the authors of the papers denying the clear implications of their work on insignificant blogs like those run by Nick Bennett, and other places that allow such unseemly displays.
As for a failure of journalistic responsibility on the part of the scientific and lay press, this has been amply documented by Serge Lang.
Five months ago, I introduced the readers of LewRockwell to an archive of documents I had compiled from several thousand papers and files collected by the mathematician Serge Lang on HIV and AIDS. This Serge Lang Memorial HIV/AIDS Archive has since been visited nearly 2,500 times. I believe it represents the most concrete evidence of the systematic bias which permeates the biomedical research establishment and major journals against any doubting the HIV paradigm. At the top of the list of individuals responsible for this bias stands John Maddox, who as editor of Nature from 1980 to 1995 repeatedly frustrated efforts to publish substantial criticsm of HIV.
One month ago, I and several other concerned mathematicians wrote a letter to the editor of the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, alerting its 30,000 readers (the largest of any mathematical journal in the world) to the Archive. The response has been gratifying -- since publication of the letter, I have received comments from concerned readers who have downloaded the Archive and are sharing it with others.
Given the growing audience of YBYL, I feel it is time to re-introduce the Archive again to a new readership. It is my hope that Lang's Archive will be read carefully by members of the scientific community who will then begin to question the sociodynamics of HIV/AIDS culture.
The following is the original article that appeared on LewRockwell.com on 14 June 2006:
THE SERGE LANG MEMORIAL HIV/AIDS ARCHIVE
Serge Lang (1927–2005) was one of the most prolific and influential mathematicians of the 20th century. At the time of his death, he was emeritus professor of mathematics at Yale University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He was also a tireless crusader for clear thinking and holding individuals and institutions accountable for their actions. Lang is perhaps best-known outside of mathematical circles for his book "Challenges'' which documents several of these "trouble-making" crusades, as well as for his "Three Laws of Sociodynamics":
"The First Law of Sociodynamics
* The power structure does what they want, when they want; then they try to find reasons to justify it.
* If this does not work, they do what they want, when they want, and then they stonewall.
The Second Law of Sociodynamics
*An establishment will close ranks behind a member until a point is reached when closing ranks is about to bring down the entire establishment; then the establishment will jettison that member with the least action it deems necessary to preserve the establishment.
The Third Law of Sociodynamics
* It’s like the video games: one can’t shoot fast enough."
Lang was often accused of being "politically motivated," but this would be a facile judgment. Lang was only political to the extent of exposing how political bureaucracy and machinations fostered irrational and unclear thinking, ultimately resulting in poor decisions and policies. In line with his educational background in physics and philosophy and with his mathematical life, he championed rigorous classical standards of evidence and logic, and he held everyone he knew to these standards -- whether by throwing chalk at students, or by throwing angry letters at bureaucrats and administrators:
I am especially concerned when people who construct a reality askew from the outside world have the influence or power to impose their reality in the classroom, in the media, and in the formulation of policy, domestic or foreign. I find the situation especially serious when political opinions are passed off as science, and thereby acquire even more force. (from the introduction "Background and Motivation" to ''Challenges'')
Lang documented his crusades through a technique he called "file-making." Anthony Liversidge described this technique as follows:
''In this unique strategy, Lang moves against an alleged information polluter by engaging him or her in correspondence, and building up a large 'File' of letters, press clips, Congressional testimony, and similar documentation on the issue. He may then mail this substantial 'File', which can reach a hundred pages or more, to several hundred academics, members of the National Academy of Sciences, government officials, influential journalists and the like. The recipients get an inside look at the complete details of an affair, the correspondence that has been written as well as published material, a rounded view not normally available even to participants. They can see for themselves the truth of Lang’s strictures, and the level of cooperation or resistance he met with.''
During the last twelve years of his life, Lang developed an energetic and passionate crusade against irrational and illogical thinking in connection with HIV and AIDS. He became convinced that the current HIV hypothesis of AIDS causation was not supported by available evidence, and in his final years, he became especially vocal about the toxicities of AIDS drugs. He developed a collection of "files" on HIV and AIDS, many of which are now maintained at an archive at the AIDS Wiki.
This archive should provide anyone with time and patience the ability to judge just how honest and reliable our current institutions have been in disseminating accurate and useful information on HIV and AIDS. A few highlights:
* In 1993, Peter Duesberg wrote Harold Jaffe at the CDC, posing eight specific questions. Jaffe wrote a single-page response, addressing almost none of the eight questions directly, and ending with the faith-based retort "Although many questions regarding AIDS pathogenesis remain unanswered, I am convinced that HIV is the etiological agent of AIDS."
* In "Science By Press Conference," Michael Saag, MD, one of the co-authors of a 1995 paper that "re-defined" our "understanding" of HIV pathogenesis, states "I don't think we know much about cell dynamics...the jury is still out!"
* In "The Unreliable Mess in Science," we learn how scientific and government researchers can't keep their stories straight regarding Kaposi's sarcoma.
* In the "''Chemical and Engineering News'' file," a Senior Editor of the ''Lancet'' (a prominent British medical journal) writes on ''Lancet'' letterhead, "No doubt in time Duesberg will be proved wrong."
* "The Einstein Disinvitation" documents how faculty pressures at a medical school overrode a graduate student vote to invite Duesberg as a speaker.
* In "''The Daily Cal'' file," we learn how the readership at UC Berkeley must be "protected" by the management of this newspaper.
* "The NAS file" documents the cavalier attitude with which Lang's submission of a pair of papers on HIV and AIDS to the ''Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences'' was rejected.
These are just a few of the many revelations readers will find by patiently reading through The Serge Lang Memorial HIV/AIDS Archive.
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 webmaster at the AIDS Wiki.
Thanks for sharing the Serge Lang information, Darin, and for maintaining the AIDSWiki. It's an invaluable resource for me, personally, as I attempt to educate the over-educated about HIV.
I've found that showing the best and brightest that HIV research is primarily a specious endeavor aimed towards ends that are far more political than scientific is paramount to leading them out of the darkness.
With the utmost heresy,
Kevin
Posted by: Kevin | November 06, 2006 at 03:22 PM