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]

Comments

[Bennett]

Bravo Otis! I'm not sure what's more amusing - the fiction itself or the fact that you must have wasted a considerable amount of your time writing it...

I suppose I'm flattered you considered me worthwhile.

Cheers

Bennett

[Otis]

Well Nick we got two things here.

1. You are flattered that I considered you worth wasting my time writing about?

I'm not sure I quite understand that, but after reading Objukwu's report I can understand perfectly your present state of mind, and I wish you well in your upcoming court appearance. I really do.

2. I am no more Objukwu than you are. Your rush to a totally inaccurate conclusion, and your public insistence on it are exactly like your religious beliefs concerning the genetic sequences you understand so pitifully little about.

It is clear from the points above, and the comment by "Bennett" that he is almost certainly the "real one" that is second only to Moore in propensity for tripping over his own tongue (so to speak) in public [or at the very least that I did not cyber-clone him] because if it were not, there is no way in the world I could write what I have just written.

And by the way Nick, I can of course prove that Objukwu is very close to whom he writes he is if you have the balls to want to put something substantial where your big british mouth is.

[Lise]

"Mr Bennett",

I am shocked, as is my husband, to discover that you are a blind believer who runs off half-cocked (so to speak) at the drop of an insinuation.

Do you prescribe drugs on such bases? Design your experiments, if you do any, in such fashion? Conclude HIV is the cause of AIDS on the same sort of evidence you concluded Otis and Objukwu are the same? Etc.

My hubby wonders how you can ever write another word after this cock-up (there's that word again).

And so do I.

"Cheers"

[Bennett]

I apologise for assuming you were "Romeyn Objukwu" Otis. A little disappointed too I guess, as a cut-paste takes far less work then writing original prose. I also fail to see how I "insisted" on anything, since I've only written on this matter once ;-)

Anyhow, it's clear from the article that it, too, suffers from inaccuracies. I am not an AIDS researcher here, my middle initial is wrong, and Petrello was 7 1/2 at the time, not 8 years old.
But he did cheat.

I'm curious though about Objukwu since you say that "Objukwu is very close to whom he writes he is". And Lise - I would in point of fact be remiss in assuming that Otis and Objukwu were NOT the same based merely on the fact that a biography of the 'author' was added at the bottom of the post. I see that Otis is the name attached to the post and the balance of probabilities is skewed. If, indeed, Objukwu existed he could have posted under his own name, which might have been entirely more convincing (i.e. I would have assumed it was merely yet another anoymous internet pseudonym, but at least not incorrectly credited Otis with authorship).

Cheers

Bennett

(joking about Petrello, by the way, before any AIDS denialists believe yet another lunacy from the internet)

[Otis]

Not even a half decent try old chap. Mr. Objukwu did compose the essay, which is I believe entitled "Romeyn Objukwu Explains....", under his own name (the biography was added by the editor as everyone except you and maybe Mr. Petrello had no difficulty understanding) and I now see you have made yet another idiotic assumption -- that is was cut and pasted from someplace rather than submitted and edited like all the other excellent pieces here that have attracted such a wide and varied readership, and an Alexa that has impressed even the internet pros.

You are a fraud and a cheat and a deviant of the worst kind, and no patient should be allowed near you. You are also thoroughly disgraced (almost as much as Moore but you had less to lose being a very junior officer in the AIDS army), and if you had bothered to look around this weblog before you posted your foot in the mouth comment, you would have found Mr. Objukwu's name, and earlier writing, on the same page as your own in the "rogues gallery".

Your mathematical incompetence (also on display here almost two years ago, is well known. Now you have joined it with this display of backpeddling and waffle that only goes to further show the world what a total ass you are, Mr. Bennett of Cambridge, UK.

[Harvey Bialy]

I am in receipt of the following email from Mr. Bennett in reply to a note I sent to him a short while ago after seeing the side splitting new comments.

It is illuminating in several aspects, and should put a lid on this particular Sunday madness (although maybe not, knowing what I do about NB and his internet chat proclivities).

But honestly, between the two Cambridge pods, Moore and Bennett, I find it tough to choose which is the preferred spokesperson for their church.

Maybe Otis could take an electronic poll of the 2000 (and growing) independent readers (many FASEB members) that I understand have asked via email to subscribe to this weblog's listserver.

-----

bialy, harvey wrote:

Even you are not dumb enough to have published that cut your own throat from ear to ear comment.

Tell me it isn't so, and I will ask Otis to remove the entire set lickity split.

----

Greetings dear Harvey,

Alas your email ended up in my spam folder, so I'm delayed in replying. However it seems as if I'm now forced to add your email address to the blocker on this account as well as my work ccount (which you mail-bombed after going to pieces on Dean's World all that time ago).

I also note that the author Romyen does in fact have an email. I salute you sir on your elegant prose, but in future please post in person so as not to cause confusion about authorship. I am sure you were unhappy about Otis getting all the credit.

Cheers

Bennett

Note: I am informed that both Drs. Bennett and Bialy have agreed to "put the lid" on this exchange, and since I can see nothing but opportunities for mischief of various kinds if the string is allowed to continue, I have now closed it pending any further, unusual events. [Otis, 5.02 PM]