"You Bet Your Life"

Stephen Colbert on HIV/AIDS

Romeyn Objukwu Explains HIV/AIDS Cultural Learnings from America

Saturday Special to the Johannesburg Sunday Times

Poughkeepsie, NY.  He hardly seemed the type - an accomplished pediatrician, a distinguished AIDS researcher at a well known hospital, seemingly a model citizen in every way. No-one would have guessed that this was the person who, disguised as a fireman, had surreptitiously gained access to Madison Square Garden and chased Madonna around the stage with a blowtorch. Yet, when police last night revealed his name, the neighbors of Dr Nicholas T Bennett, here in this sleepy little hamlet a scant 90 minutes from midtown New York, expressed little in the way of surprise.

"Surprised? Why should I be surprised," said Mrs Ira Horowitz, a third grade teacher at nearby Lincoln elementary school. "Anybody with two eyes could see he was coming apart. Look what he did to that poor kid's bicycle. So he paid for a new one, so what? Any man who would do that is a nut", she insisted angrily. But Mrs Horowitz, who has marched to raise money for AIDS victims in Uzbekistan, couldn't  pinpoint exactly when it was that Dr Bennett had become, as she put it, a “candidate for the psycho ward". 

"That would be hard to say," she explained, because for such a long time Dr Bennett had been, by almost any standard, what most people would consider a perfect neighbor. He was helpful, courteous, and kind. He'd contributed both his time and money to neighborhood organisations. "And he was so good with the children here," she said with a wide sweep of her arm. "They were always out there, Dr Bennett and just about every kid in the neighborhood, playing one kind of game or another."  Hide 'n seek, skateboarding, kick the can. "Or just chasing one another around in the street.".  Mrs Horowitz pointed to the big vacant lot where Dr Bennett often played kickball. "Always playing," she said wistfully, "every afternoon, they were out there, playing something. I don't know where he got the energy to run around all over the place like that. But the kids loved him. They thought he was the greatest thing since ping pong." 

But Mrs Horowitz began to suspect something was wrong when, last summer, Dr Bennett won the neighborhood Yahtzee tournament for the 3rd year in a row. It was Dr Bennett himself who'd brought the tournament into existence, and who offered a cash prize and tickets to Six Flags  for the winner. "The oldest child in this neighborhood is eleven," sneered Mrs Horowitz," and she wasn't even in the tournament. That means you had a grown man with a PhD competing against children who aren't even in middle school yet."  This didn't seem normal to Mrs. Horowitz.  "Is that normal", she demanded? "You have to have a few screws loose yourself if you think that's normal." She felt sorry for Dr Bennett, and wished that some-one had stepped in before things had gotten so badly out of hand.

An examination of the records at City Hall unmasked some of the problems Dr Bennett had experienced as his emotional state began to deteriorate. On several occasions police had been called to the Bennett home to stop Dr Bennett from banging the metal lids of his garbage cans together at 2AM in the morning. And, according to divorce papers filed last month by Mrs Bennett, "...at a recent family gathering, during an argument over the last ice age... Dr Bennett, in one violent motion, picked up his dinner plate with both hands ...and flung its contents at Mrs Bennett's mother, showering her about the head and face with his food." 

Moreover, civil actions filed against Dr Bennett allege that, acting together with  several (un-named) juveniles, ..." He (Dr Bennett) would hide behind the bushes lining the front of his property...then dart out and throw bottles at...plaintiffs' car(s) ..as they passed by on the street..". Dr Bennett was described as both a "perpetrator" and an "instigator" throughout these suits.

There is one report of an actual arrest. This  came about as a result of a flare-up that occurred during the annual Yahtzee tournament taking place on the lawn of Dr Bennett's home. It was the 3rd such tounament, each organized and sponsored by Dr Bennett, and  Bennett himself had won the previous two. At some point or other during the competition, an argument erupted between Dr Bennett and one of the contestants, Anthony Petrello , each one having accused the other of cheating.  Bennett allegedly went into a rage. Rushing into the garage, he retrieved a sledgehammer, and proceeded to wildly pound Petrello's bicycle into rubble. Dr Bennett then hoisted the mangled heap of rubber and metal onto his shoulder, marched it to a nearby bridge, and threw it into the river. Tony Petrello was 8 years old at the time of the incident.

At the hospital where Dr Bennett practiced medicine and conducted research on pediatric AIDS, there was a search for answers. "If you're asking did I...did any of us...see this coming, the answer is no", said Dr Martin Feldman, research director, and long time friend of Dr Bennett's." At least, no-one mentioned anything to me, and I certainly didn't notice anything different in his behaviour. Nick might kick a few wastebaskets up in the air now and then, but around here that's hardly unusual."

A portly, jovial man with over 20 years of experience re-researching the AIDS virus, Dr Feldman noted the only thing more or less out of the ordinary at the facility happened a few months ago when somebody blew up the candy machine with a stick of dynamite. "You have to understand we're under a lot of pressure here," he explained "There is still no cure for this disease. No *real* cure, is what I mean.  No vaccine, which is what we're really striving for. That's our ultimate goal, not these exorbitantly expensive drugs with their horrendous side effects. But--- we've been at it ---what?--- over 20 years now? People are starting to demand results, and that can wear on you after awhile." Dr Feldman described the pressure that came at him from all directions: from government sponsors, from corporate sponsors, from foundations and associations--everybody was on your back, 24/7, "And THEN, to top it all off, you've got these carping, maniac, protestor 'denialists'," he exclaimed forcefully, "who really screw things up!"  With a movement that inadvertently sent an expensive spectrophotometer crashing to the floor, Dr Feldman made a fist and slammed it onto his desk as he nut-shelled the denialist's preposterous ramblings: "They don't even believe HIV causes AIDS," he gasped, "And they're quite vocal about it. What's worse, people are actually starting to listen to them!"

Denialists, as it happened, not only ticked-off Dr Feldman, they ticked-off Dr Bennett as well. "They really got Nick riled up. You mention somebody like Duesberg or Bialy, and Nick could put a wastebasket through the uprights from sixty yards out.  I could---maybe---see him possibly getting mad enough to go after somebody like that---but, then again---," the doctor added pensively "Maybe not, either. It's hard to say."  The Nick he knew was spontaneous. He wasn't the type to ...'premeditate' . The fact that Bennet had dressed up as a fireman really threw Dr Feldman. And how anybody went from despising Duesberg to thinking that Madonna was a cannibal, moreover a cannibal who'd put sodium hydroxide into their oatmeal, the research director did not care to speculate. "Nick got into a debate with one of these denialists a while back," he continued, ( This 'debate' had taken place "internet style"; the advocates weren't in the same room with one another) "and---well--- to be honest , he didn't really acquit himself in the best of fashions." Somehow the argument had been reduced to: 'what constituted a proper statistical treatment of the data' , "and Nick was a little bit weak in that area. He really should've dropped the whole thing at that point. Nobody pays any attention to those nuts, so why debate them? You're just giving them credibility, and he had nothing to gain. Why let them frustrate you?

We told him to just let it go, but he wouldn't listen. Those arrogant fools think they're better qualified to interpret the results of a study than the authors who actually did the research, so the hell if he was gonna' let it go . Nick's pugnacious. He wasn't going to let anything go." He was in for all ten rounds. Don't even think about throwing in a towel. "He pushed his cut man aside and jumped back in swinging." Dr Feldman said. For a moment, the research director paused, his hands resting in the pockets of his lab coat, which in turn rested on the boulder that was his stomach, then he added a bit regretfully, "That was where Nick made his big mistake .The doctor he was debating was going strictly by the book . But Nick said, 'the book didn't apply in this case' . Actually, he had never even read the book. And by 'the book', I mean any standard texbook on regression analysis. Nick claimed he didn't really need it, because he'd developed his *own way* of analysing data." Doctor Feldman said that he preferred not to comment on the relative merits of Dr Bennett's *way of analysing the data*  versus that found in standard textbooks on the subject, except to say that: "People weren't buying. They still preferred using the textbook method over his 'novel mathematical technique', or ...whatever ... however ... it was he'd referred to it, and I have to include myself in that group of people. We really love Nick, but he'd gone over the top on this one. I said to him 'Nick, call me a total cretin if you want, call me an imbecile, whatever, but I don't see how drawing a line at a 37 degree angle through a bunch of points scatterred up and down and all over the page constitutes a 'novel mathematical technique'. That's pretty much what everybody said to him. Nobody was buying it, but he thought he had a real breakthrough."

Maybe that was what had pushed Dr Bennett over the edge; Dr. Feldman didn't know. "All I know is, that guy he was debating? -- that ---*doctor* somebody or other?---there is an ignoramus if you ever want to meet one." There was an arrogant moron , in Dr Feldman's opinion, who obviously spends too much time watching re-runs of SpongeBob. "That's who Nick should've gone after with a blowtorch."   

Doctor Feldman wanted to make something clear, however: "No matter what anybody says, you gotta give Nick style points for originality. Did you know he can do a CloudBuster on a skateboard? I'll bet he's the only doctor in the country who can do that. And Nick's got a theory on how HIV hides in the body for ten years. He says that HIV actually turns into the tissue it invades."  Pausing for a moment to be sure this was being understood in its essence, Dr Feldman continued his message with poker-faced sincerity: "That's exactly correct." he nodded , "It Transubstantiates. The virus actually turns into the body of the person it invades. One becomes indistinguishable from the other  --which -- I gotta' admit I love it. I mean, think about it: The virus turns into the body- -The body turns back into the virus--No wonder you can't find it for ten years! What's not to love already? He said he got the idea from a priest. I said 'a priest? That's perfect. Why not a priest? After all, what were the Wright Brothers? They were bicycle repairmen, were they not? Yes. That's what they were, bicycle repairmen. So... why not a priest already? Everybody should have a priest like that. I said: Nick, get that into print immediately before somebody else thinks of it". Dr Feldman closed with a tinge of lament:

"I'm sorry about this thing with Madonna, .... but ..maybe this is a good thing for Nick. AIDS is a tough business. Maybe now he can get a little peace."

 

Romeyn Objukwu is a political refugee about whom I can discover little in the way of detail. Mr. Objukwu claims not to have "been seen in public since 2003, when this photograph was taken in front of the Maccabi Building in Ramat Gan, Israel".   "When not travelling (undercover) on assignment", he resides "near Matatapo, in the region of Zimbabwe once controlled exclusively by the Ndebele." [Otis]

Dear Dr. Culshaw: What is PEM, and How Does It Concern HIV, AIDS and Africa?

Last week, a curious article appeared from the Associated Press entitled "Hunger Seen as Big Enemy in War on AIDS", from which I excerpt the following gem: 

"Starvation and malnutrition are fast becoming the twin perils of the AIDS fight, and doctors and health experts say millions of infected people in the developing world are rapidly approaching a tipping point where food will replace drugs as the biggest need." 

To AIDS rethinkers, this will certainly not come as revelation. Malnutrition - or more precisely, under-nutrition - has long been recognized as the major cause of immune deficiency in the world.  This fact is known, yet minimized or ignored, by the most prominent proponents of the HIV hypothesis.  For example, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, states: 

"...Protein energy malnutrition (PEM) occurs primarily under two circumstances:  in developing nations it may be present in endemic form, and under famine conditions the prevalence may approach 25 percent... the magnitude of the malnutrition problem worldwide is immense.  In 1983 the World Health Organization estimated that 300 million children had growth retardation secondary to malnutrition.  Gastrointestinal infections frequently precipate clinical PEM because of the associated diarrhea, associated anorexia, vomiting, increased metabolic needs, and decreased intestinal absorption. Parasitic infections play a major role in many parts of the world.  Cell-mediated immunity is impaired as indicated by all standard tests." [italics mine] 

However, the following excerpt from the Merck Manual indicates that nutritional deficiency may well be a more significant causative agent for cellular immune deficiency than the AIDS apologists would like us to think: 

"Total lymphocyte count, which often decreases as undernutrition progresses, may be determined. Undernutrition produces a marked decline in CD4+ T lymphocytes, so this count is more useful in patients who do not have AIDS."

When looking through the distorted lens of HIV and AIDS, however, doctors and scientists seldom consider malnutrition an independent cause of immune suppression.  Rather, malnutrition is swept under the rug of the “mysterious” mechanisms of HIV. The following , which appeared recently on ScienceBlogs, is typical of orthodox reductionism: 

"Clean water and adequate nutrition may not help much in stopping the spread of HIV, but they certainly would help fend off the secondary infections that result in clinical AIDS. While I strongly disagree with the idea put forth by Bethell et al. that the root cause of AIDS in Africa is really malnutrition, I don't think anyone disagrees that having good nutrition keeps one generally healthier and increases their ability to fend off a variety of diseases... Improved health care structures would also help immensely." 

Essentially, the mainstream considers malnutrition a "co-factor" for "HIV disease".  But is there any real evidence for that HIV is involved at all?  The mechanisms by which protein malnutrition cause immune suppression are intuitive and well-understood, whereas understanding the pathogenesis of HIV "remains elusive" despite 25 years and a biilion research dollars. Furthermore, the lack of adequate sanitation and water are clearly a major cause of many of the continent's medical emergencies.

It's way past time for the world, that's us, as well as the politicians and chronically misled talk-show hosts, to wake up to reality - the notion of a sexually-transmitted retrovirus causing an epidemic of immune deficiency in Africa is a racist construct. It has no basis in reality, and is causing a medical disaster in the call for the mass administration of "antiretrovirals" to the Third World -- a form of iatrogenic genocide masquerading as philanthropy.

***

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 next month. [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.]

Jeffrey Dach on Watermelons, CAT Scanners and the Origins of HIV

One of my idols in radiology was Benjamin Felson, M.D., the guru of plain chest xray interpretation.  Back in 1977, while in residency training in Chicago, I attended a radiology meeting where Felson showed slides of interesting cases, and asked the audience for the diagnosis.  Stumping the audience on a difficult case, he jokingly disclosed that the findings we thought were due to eosinophilic pneumonia were in reality due to a bottle of scotch in his luggage which had broken during travel, and the radiographic findings were tongue marks on the slide as he tried to salvage a few drops of the rare elixir.  This was an important lesson, because we all realized that the information on the xray could be misleading, and occasionally at odds with common sense.

Later that same year, I witnessed another example when a trickster neuro-radiologist put a watermelon in the EMI CAT scanner.  The chief was proud that we had one of the first EMI scanners ever built, but the early images were crude 80 x 80 pixels, and the lateral ventricles were barely visible. Not content with the act, he placed the resulting “watermelon” CAT scan images into a fake chart in the “to be read” bin.  Next morning, bright and early during the daily CAT scan reading session, the chief jumped out of his chair exclaiming the “patient” had a massive subdural hematoma and needed an immediate life saving craniotomy.  It was an effort to contain our laughter.  We did, however, knowing our fate in the department depended on it.

The same lesson applies to interpretation of HIV/AIDS theories based on incomplete data sets.  For example, take Beatrice Hahn’s idea-du-jour that AIDS originated in 1931 from cross species transmission to humans from chimpanzees in Cameroon.  Hahn is credited with braving the African bush to perform HIV testing on chimp droppings.  She found that 30 percent test positive for HIV using western blot and PCR, thus showing (yet again) that chimps (and other primates) have served as natural reservoirs for retroviral sequences forever.  Yet according to the lead author, it somehow helps to prove the virus jumped species just a few years ago. 

Among the obvious problems with the chimp to human transmission "theory" (sic) is that there has never been a documented (or even anecdotal) case of AIDS from chimpanzees, gorillas or any other primates "known to have HIV".   We can get rabies from animals, but no reports of AIDS from chimps.  Even Jean Marx cannot credit this "new" discovery.  Writing in Science, she remarks that: “AIDS does not qualify as a zoonosis and this explanation cannot in itself account for the origin of the AIDS epidemic.” In addition, there are no reports of AIDS among the African Bushmen who have hunted, butchered and eaten chimps for decades. "We've been eating chimps and monkeys for years and years, and never had anyone get sick from AIDS," says Lazare Ampomadjimi. "So it can't be true."   Native Africans have hunted and been exposed to primates in the wild for thousands of years, and any AIDS cases should have been reported in the 18^th century at the time of the slave trade.

David P. Mindell theorized : “Inferred newness of HIV is contradicted by discovery of noncytopathic HIV and relatively low virulence of HIV in rural human populations”, and suggested that chimps may have actually acquired HIV from humans in the ancient past.  Of course, this blasphemy was promptly refuted.

Hahn’s 1931 date for the origin of human HIV is based on computer modeling with questionable assumptions.  Could there be a hidden agenda in the selection of 1931, which is fairly recent, yet predates the emergence of modern virology? One observation which raises questions about the 1931 date is the stable incidence of 1 million HIV positives each year in America since 1983.   

Although shedding no light on the imagined African origins of the invented epidemic, the chimp data reinforce what we know from other sources about distribution and frequency of retroviral sequences in the primate genome.

Additionally, just as hypothesized re chimps by Hahn, a "non-pathogenic HIV" in humans is well known. Those “infected” have been described as long term non-progressors viremic controllers, and elite controllers, and are currently the subject of a study at Mass. General Hospital. The exact number of these HIV positives who never get sick and don’t take antiviral drugs is unknown.

Rachel Rosenberg, coordinator for the Mass General study, told me that although they guess that 1 in 300 HIV positives may be in this special category, they don’t focus on analyzing the frequency of the control (personal communication).  This cavalier attitude is surprising, because the incidence of these "elite controllers" in the general population would seem to be important data, especially in light of the CDC's plans to test everyone.

Fried watermelon anyone?

Jeffrey Dach M.D. is board certified in interventional radiology and a member of the Board of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine. He retired from radiology two years ago, and is currently in private practice focusing on bio-identical hormone treatment.

HIV/AIDS: The Cardboard Castles Collapse

Truth to tell, since completing my “very scientific” biography of Peter Duesberg, who I affectionately, and accurately call “the Darwin of oncogenesis and the Mr. Magoo of the Internet", I have not personally kept up with either the cancer genetics literature or the HIV/AIDS paper machine except for a few noteworthy exceptions.

But with the publication just last week of the remarkable admission in Medical Care, it seems that only a deaf, dumb and blind could still seek shelter in the 100 billion plus dollar house of cards that AIDS, Inc. has built over a quarter of a century.

The once deadly, sexually transmitted virus that caused AIDS by irrevocably destroying the all important CD4+ sub-population of T helper cells, but could be held in check and even reversed (at least temporarily) by newer combinations of old and new drugs whose efficacy could be accurately monitored by precise, biochemical measurements known as “viral loads”, and which was epidemic in both the United States and Africa since at least 1980, has of today definitely been shown:

• According to the Am. J. of Epidemiology, not be sexually transmitted.

• According to the Lancet, not respond to HAART regimens in a way that supports the anecdotal accounts of these “magic bullets.”

• According to JAMA, have no meaningful relationship between always biologically, insignificant amounts of its nucleic acid and CD4+ cell numbers. 

• According to the CDC, never have been epidemic in the Unites States at all. 

• And now, according to Medical Care, it isn't even deadly.   

Did somebody say, “Excuse me” ?

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

Confessions of a Subversive Grad. Student: Cartoon AIDS for Public Consumption

I would like to say  a few words about the extravagant events that AIDS Inc. produces to fund its researchers and “help” those infected with "HIV – the virus that causes AIDS". Since I work for the AIDS establishment, I am a captive audience at their shows every time one occurs within my vicinity, or is so important that travel and participation are a requirement. I therefore consider myself capable of judging what actually occurs during these events –- as compared to what is said to occur.

For example, Toronto AIDS 2006 was advertised to deliver advances in AIDS science and "global community" outreach, and the  2006 AIDS Walk for Life in the city where my university is located was claimed to be for the purpose of raising AIDS awareness, as well as  money for those infected. Since it costs close to half a million US to keep an "AIDS patient" alive with anti-biologicals and anti-anti-biological chemicals etc., this is no small task and requires constant effort. While the Walk most certainly raised funds and awareness (of a scientific fiasco), AIDS 2006 did not deliver anything remotely close to its billing. Both, however, are excellent examples of contemporary science show biz -- glitz and hypocrisy in equal measures.

The fact that AIDS events are often star studded was always perplexing since the "overwhelming majority" of people at these events have already bought the DVD, the CD and all the marketing toys. So, why are the beautiful people there?  Now,  as someone who did his fare share of star gazing, I understand. These celebrities (and their accompanying entourages) are carefully and strategically used for the simple and effective purpose of preventing people from thinking.   

More AIDS 2006 delegates attended lectures by Richard Greer, Alicia Keys, Bill and Melinda than did all of the scientific sessions combined. While scientists poured out data about one failure after another to rows of empty seats (in the smallest rooms in the Toronto Convention Center), thousands of delegates listened to what a few well known figures “thought” about the AIDS epidemic. Appears to be a good distraction, huh?  Well, please do not go away thinking that distracting these scientists and activists is too hard. After all, a large number of delegates I met  were so satisfied by the opening ceremony (and concert) that they admitted to not attending any of the other conference associated events.

For those of you wondering how AIDS events can also be venues of hypocrisy (other than the obvious reasons), look no further than the loud promoters of safe sex and serial monogamy who, like certain well known (now) American evangelists, appear to not practice what they preach. While attending gay related events at AIDS 2006, which often promote random sexuality and drug experimentation, I witnessed numerous men, sporting the sunken cheek look, disappear into back bedrooms with one partner and then another over the course of a few hours.

Similar displays abounded at the 2006 AIDS walk where fellow lab members and I noticed men meet and disappear at various points along the walk route. Later that night, at several of the gay bars I frequently visit, I noticed some of the men who I had seen hooking up earlier in the day leaving with different partners to continue the fun.

AIDS ravages communities and destroys lives, and the invisible, but all powerful (like god), "scientific community" refuses to hold a meaningful discussion about its cause. Meanwhile, in the corner of a seminar room at AIDS 2006, two attendess joke about some "chick" they met yesterday, and how one had his way with her. The second offers, with a wink and nod, that the first might need to get tested.

I found it comforting to know that those whose salaries and perks I am paying are every bit as dedicated and serious as I imagined. I'm sure you are too.

Grad. Student studies B-cell immunology at a well known university that is not in Australia.

Out of Africa: Osagyefo Says, "HIV/AIDS is the Key to Aid. Why Fight It?"

A Miranda warning for the easily offended. You have the right to not read  — this is after all “a free world”. Whatever follows can and will be used against your prejudices. Do not, BTW,  even begin to contemplate any counter-actions, because as the child of a peasant farmer, you will not have anything to claim from me except my father's hoe.  Now we can proceed.

I have observed my government and the private sector (sometimes called NGOs) quadruple their efforts in fighting the dreaded AIDS. However as an individual who thinks with half his brain, I am totally against this continuous fight.  No offences intended to the anti-AIDS campaigners and the affected — but ask me why?

I believe as a country we benefit so much from this scourge that fighting it is equivalent to shooting ourselves in the foot.  I can see some of you frowning.  How foolish!

Look at it this way. AIDS is a thriving industry, and its economic benefits are really ballistic. It single handedly earns us more foreign exchange than all our cash crops combined. We get more funds to fight AIDS than even the money we get from selling Shimoni, UBC, CMI and even Mabira forests combined.

So I wonder why we are wasting time trying to eradicate a dependable foreign exchange earner. Instead of fighting the virus we should promote it. Just imagine if decided to go into exile — gloomy faces would galore.

We would have no state-of-the-art four wheel drive gas guzzling SUVs (as the Americans call them) on our roads, ARV's would just expire on the health stalls, and some medics I know would have no salaries. Their families would starve, and most of all there would be no Global Fund from which the former minister of health and his deputies could steal. (Purloining public funds is OK according to the President if only the stolen money is not siphoned to a foreign bank account but instead reinvested locally in the “Pearl of Africa”.)

Just think of this country suddenly free of AIDS. UN-imaginable isn't it? As a patriotic citizen of the “Pearl”, I am going to advocate for a national AIDS contraction and transmission campaign. You may unleash the black mambas on me, but I am not going to see my country go down the tubes.

My sources in the health ministry tell me that the prevalence of "HIV infection" is decreasing dramatically, and will shortly jeopardize our enviable position in the eyes of the donor countries. I believe we should give each other more AIDS to retain the AID, I know am saying this at the risk of facing the wrath of the high and mighty,  but not even the gods can touch me - I am an un-lynch-able son of the Motherland.

Osagyefo holds a master's degree in epidemiology from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. He is currently studying for his PhD in a major US university. "Like the biblical Paul who saw light after hitting Damascus", Osagyefo has "seen the HIV/AIDS lie for what it is, and has just one regret — why it took [him] so long." The photograph is of a young Jomo Kenyatta. "When the Missionaries arrived, the Africans had the Land and the Missionaries had the Bible. They taught how to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible".  

Living Longer and Longer with AIDS

In an article published in Science last year, David Ho, Daniel Douck, and Ronald Desrosiers were quoted as saying that the "HIV=AIDS" time course should be shortened to span several months to a few years (Jon Cohen. "It's The Gut, Stupid." Vol 307, p. 1395, 2005), and that "HIV" kills the lymphoid tissues of the gut in a few days to months. 

This proclamation was at variance with the CDC's long-standing contention that "HIV" has an average latency of 5-10 years before progression to AIDS. 

This weekend,  Dr. Bruce R. Schackman, Chief of Health Policy at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York (that beacon of AIDS science) and lead author of a new paper appearing in Medical Care, a journal published by the American Public Health Association said that "HIV/AIDS"  patients can live an average 24 years, if they pay $385,000.

Can everyone appreciate what good news this really is for a disease that is 25 years old (or 22 years old once that "HIV," "a variant of a known cancer virus" was found to be “the cause”)? It means that, for 385,000 dollars, you can actually live longer with a disease (on average), than the period of time that that disease is said to have been killing off our species. There are people probably living for 50 years who have a disease that is at most only 25 years old  (1981-2 was when Michael Gottlieb first described it).

The logic of these proclamations is stunning in the context of the AIDS ABC's:

A ("HIV") leads to B (decrease and inversion of CD4/CD8) which leads to C (full blown AIDS):

The CDC says: A ("HIV infection") leads to B (drop and inversion of CD4/CD8 in 5-10 years), which leads to C (inevitable full blown AIDS/DEATH). 

David Ho, Daniel Douck, and Ronald Desrosiers say: A ("HIV infection") leads to B (drop and inversion of CD4/CD8 in a few months), which leads to C (inevitable full blown AIDS/DEATH). 

Bruce R. Schackman says: A ("HIV infection") leads to B (drop and inversion of CD4/CD8) which leads to C (inevitable full blown AIDS/DEATH in 24 years on average).

Baltimore Sun : "Living Longer with HIV"
Associated Press: "U.S.  HIV Forecast: 24 years, $600,000" 

Andrew Maniotis, is a Program Director in the Cell and Developmental Biology of Cancer unit of the Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, University of Illinois at Chicago

 

Website Infomation Request: "Is Peter Duesberg Still Standing?"

I was wondering if Peter Duesberg is still standing by his HIV/AIDS theory. Is there a way to contact him? What about testing 12 year olds at random who are not sexually active or drug users? If they all test negative, wouldn't this show that it has to be a transmissible disease?  Craig R.

Dear Craig, 

Yes Duesberg is still standing by the theory that AIDS is a chemical epidemic, caused by recreational drugs, anti-HIV drugs and malnutrition. Please have a look at duesberg.com, which has been updated just today. 

Do you have any data on 12 year-olds testing negative? Well even that were so, this alone would not prove that AIDS is sexually transmitted. For example, cancer is practically never found in 12 year-olds, but it is not a sexually transmitted disease. 

Let me know if you have further questions or objections.

Peter D. 

The correspondence continues:

You signed this response with the name Peter D. Is this the actual Peter Duesberg? If so, why did you refer to yourself in the third person? 

Because you asked, "if Peter Duesberg is still standing ....". 

Anyway, I had a couple of critical questions in regard to your theory. 

I read the AIDSMEDS forums. There are people there who are dedicated to responding to peoples' questions about HIV. Some of the people say they have always tested negative for HIV. After some risky sexual exposures, they test positive. Repeat tests show them testing positive again. You state on your website that HIV is transmitted perinatally. 

("A9: HIV, like all other retroviruses in animals and humans, is perinatally transmitted from mother to child. All viruses and microbes that are perinatally transmitted in nature are harmless for the reasons stated in A8. Thus those 17 million HIV positives who are healthy, are those who do not use recreational and/or anti-HIV drugs.") 

My question is: If it is transmitted perinatally, why would they not test positive every time? I can't accept that their test was consistantly wrong when they were testing negative. 

Only those who have HIV-positive mothers are perinatally infected. That is a very low percentage in the US, < 1 in 300. Have a look at duesberg.com for references and further documentation, or else ask me for pdf files of papers.

The more important question from me is: There are people on the AIDSMEDS forums who say they had no idea they were HIV positive until their health started declining. Must we assume they are drug users? 

Don't you think there are many non drug users and women whose health gradually starts to decline before realizing they are infected? This happened to a friend of mine who is a non drug using female. She was constantly getting sick and got an HIV test. She found out she was positive. After 15 years she is still ok on medications. 

Are you assuming that antibody against (!) HIV (not the virus) is the only reason, why people's health can decline? What was she sick from? And what "medications" does she take for 15 years now? 

How about Michael Callen? Why did he die? 

Michael Callen died with Kaposi sarcoma in 1994 from long-term use of recreational drugs, particularly nitrite inhalants. He told me about gay recreational drug use personally on several occasions in New York and in Amsterdam.

In the "The AIDS dilemma: drug diseases blamed on a passenger virus", Peter Duesberg & David Rasnick, Genetica 104: 85-132, 1998, Callen describes the AIDS consequences of recreational and anti-HIV drug use in his own words. You can look it up on duesberg.com, which contains an original, unsearchable version, plus a searchable version useful for such questions as yours.

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. Prof. Duesberg sometimes forwards us letters he receives at his website along with his replies, and sometimes we publish them.

New on the Dissident Web

WWW.HIVvoice.com is a new web forum specifically designed for those diagnosed as HIV-Positive to ask questions, support each other and discuss issues such as

- Does HIV cause AIDS?

- What are the HIV tests really testing?

- What does it mean to test HIV positive?

- Is HIV sexually transmitted?

- Do the HIV medications do more harm than good?

- What's it like living as HIV positive?

- What's it like loving someone who's HIV positive?

- What's it like for discordant couples (one positive, one negative)?

- What are the family issues surrounding HIV/AIDS?

The forum was created and will be moderated by Jeff Kiefer of San Francisco, who tested  positive in 1995. If you want to find out more about Jeff, you can listen to Episode 1 of Stephen Davis' podcasts or read his story.