The fanatic fringe of what was once the AIDS “establishment,” and is now a Trotskyite splinter group that even the AIDS lobby fears, have launched one of their frightfully grave missives, demanding repentance for crimes of moral defect—this time against none other than the BBC. Given that the BBC has just aired a four part investigative report exposing the pharmaceutical industry’s fraudulent and perhaps criminal conduct in the sordid story of Paxil and suicide in children, and that the first of those four reports elicited more than 65,000 reader emails, it is unlikely that the BBC will roll over and start erasing Pharma-critical films from its archives at the present moment. Undoubtedly, they have been inundated with similar crow-screeching over Paxil—how it saved countless lives of children who would have otherwise killed themselves etc etc.
I worked as a researcher on the Jamie Doran/Milena Schwager film “Guinea Pig Kids,” for over four months in 2004, and what I found is detailed in the article below. I can attest categorically that among the many lies in the inquisitor generals' letter is the charge that the makers of the film are “AIDS denialists.” Doran made it very clear to me on many occasions that he had no stake in whether HIV was pathogenic—that the film as he saw it cut to the heart of essential human rights of both the children and their parents and/or guardians. Most people who have seen the film are devastated by it in ways that have no bearing on their views about HIV’s pathogenicity.
None, except possibly the seven signatories of that letter, could be proud of a medical ethos in which children are sedated and have feeding tubes for drugs operated into their stomachs. This is what Charles Ortleb refers to as the “abnormal science” culture of HIV/AIDS. In the wake of the global outcry against the forced feeding by tubes and pipes of geese, everybody from Sir Roger Moore, a.k.a. James Bond to Pope Benedict XVI denounced the practice as being, in the words of the latter, “in violation of Biblical principles.”
But as you will see as the details of this deep and labyrinthine story begin (only now) to truly unfurl, forced feeding was only one part of the debasement of human life that transpired at reincarnation hell house.
The first and most elemental matter that I address is the claim made by Bergman and others that “no children died,” during the course of the experiments. The information I have received is that the ICC children themselves told Scheff and Schwager that seven of their friends had died on the drugs. It took me about six months to obtain death certificates for the only two children whose names I had. A characteristic of ARV zealots that you will see very clearly in the BBC complaint letter is a refusal to deal in hard facts or figures. It is always viscous claims about widely known truths a slight distance ahead on the road. Then they make people feel ashamed for wondering what people would naturally wonder, namely, not how safe the drugs are in theory but rather, a simple and singular question: How many of these kids did in fact die?
They don’t know. Why? There was a “warehouse fire” in which all the children’s medical records were destroyed.
The Continuing Heartbreak of our Human Experimentation Culture
I have in front of me two certificates of death. Both were children. Both died in the autumn of 2004, while partaking in what some call a clinical trial, and others call a medical experiment, under the auspices of a well-funded "nursing facility" in Harlem for HIV-positive orphans called Incarnation Children's Center (ICC). According to the AIDS orthodoxy, these children died of AIDS. There is no reason to believe anybody wanted them to die, least of all those who knew them and cared for them. But serious questions remain unanswered about these and other deaths that have occurred in the course of ongoing clinical trials involving foster children in the United States.
About two years ago, freelance journalist Liam Scheff went undercover as a party-line AIDS journalist "visiting" ICC and broke the story about children being forcibly treated with powerful AIDS drugs, experimental AIDS vaccines and other drugs, as part of a vast network of pediatric "trials" that used foster kids who had been signed on by the ACS (Administration for Children's Services).
Some children in the trials were as young as three months old. Those who refused, or tried to refuse, the medications had gastronomy tubes inserted into their abdomens, which dispensed the drugs straight into their digestive tracts. When I first heard this, I thought it had to be an isolated and bizarre departure from common practice — some kind of freak occurrence at a primitive facility. But soon I learned that this is a new draconian development in the treatment of pediatric "AIDS" — code for mere HIV antibodies, which do not signal either true "infection" with HIV, nor inevitable progression to AIDS.
A 2004 paper in the journal Pediatric, titled Gastronomy Tube Insertion for Improvement of Adherence to Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy in Pediatric Patients with Human Immunodeficiency Virus, describes 17 children who had tubes inserted after they refused drugs. "Reasons for non-adherence," the paper states, "include refusal, drug tolerability and adverse reactions."
The paper includes a picture of a child in a diaper with what looks like the plastic twist-cap from a gallon of juice protruding from under his ribcage. The authors found that after the tube insertions, for which eight children required general anesthesia, "adherence" to the drug regimens was 100 percent.
AIDS professionals love acronyms. Everything that happens in their world gets an acronym, which has the effect of making it sound routine, clinical and rational. Gastronomy tubes for children and babies are now simply "GT."
"GT placement," the authors wrote, "allowed for the use of more potent antiretroviral drugs, e.g., Ritonavir, which are often unpalatable and difficult to administer to younger children." They also found that there were no significant differences in virologic response (viral load and CD4 counts), but gave no other clues about how the children had fared, healthwise, after a year of follow-up. All they were really looking at was whether "adherence" had been improved, which one would expect from feeding drugs straight into children's stomachs through a device they cannot remove. [Cont.]
Celia
Farber has a very recent two part interview with her in the extremely influential, online art world magazine, "Stop Smiling", [I,2]. Celia works full time at her writing, and receives a very meagre financial recompense for her labors. If you would like to see her continue the work she began two
decades ago, in the most free and powerful communications medium ever to exist,
please do exactly what you have been doing and remember to say Thank you, Celia every so often.
"Tests of Drug to Block H.I.V. Infection Are Halted Over Safety
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: February 1, 2007
Efforts to develop a topical microbicide to prevent H.I.V. infection during sex suffered a surprising setback yesterday when researchers [led by none other than"AIDStruthiness" guru John P. Moore. Ed.] announced that they had stopped two full-scale trials for safety reasons.
The trials, in Africa and India, involved a chemical, cellulose sulfate or Ushercell, and were the second failure of a potential microbicide in a full-scale trial in recent years. In one of the latest trials, a standard check by an independent scientific committee found an increased risk of H.I.V. infection among women who used cellulose sulfate compared with those who used a placebo gel.
In 2000, a large full-scale trial showed that the only other microbicide candidate, nonoxynol-9, was unsafe when it had been expected to be effective. Subjects in that trial developed a higher incidence of H.I.V. infection, presumably through ulcers caused by chemical irritation.
Yesterday, AIDS researchers at the World Health Organization, the United Nations AIDS program and other organizations expressed hope that at least one of three other potential microbicides undergoing full-scale testing would prove to be safe and effective. The others are Pro 2000 by Indevus Pharmaceuticals, BufferGel by ReProtect and Carraguard, whose trademark is held by the Population Council.
“While the closing of these trials is a profound disappointment for the microbicide field, we cannot let it paralyze us,” said Dr. Zeda Rosenberg,chief executive of the nonprofit International Partnership for Microbicides in Silver Spring, Md.
In the absence of an AIDS vaccine, specialists say development of a microbicide is a public health priority, mainly to protect the many women in poor countries whose partners refuse to use condoms. Such protection could take the form of a gel, cream, film, tablet or sponge that could be inserted into the vagina or rectum.
The study that led to stopping the trials involved 1,333 participants in Benin, South Africa and Uganda. Conrad, a health research organization in Arlington, Va., conducted the study.
Conrad said the independent committee found more new H.I.V. infections among those who used cellulose sulfate than among those who used an inactive gel, but did not report any numbers. Final numbers are expected in March, a spokeswoman for Conrad said.
Family Health International of Research Triangle Park, N.C., conducted the second trial involving 1,700 participants in Nigeria. The study found neither a benefit in preventing H.I.V. infection nor an increased risk of developing it.
So, given the adverse findings in the Conrad trial, “the responsible course of action was to halt our study” also, said Dr. Vera Halpern, the principal investigator of the Family Health International trial.
An ideal microbicide would work in three ways. First, it would kill H.I.V. in the vagina and cervix. Second, the microbicide would prevent any virus that escaped from attaching to a woman’s cells, the way the virus starts to infect. Third, for any virus that did enter cells, the microbicide would block an enzyme, reverse transcriptase, that the virus needs to replicate.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Agency for International Development paid $20 million for the two latest studies.
In speaking at the 16th International AIDS Conference in Toronto in August, Bill and Melinda Gates were enthusiastic about the prospects of developing a microbicide.
Yesterday, Dr. Nicholas Hellmann, acting director of the foundation’s H.I.V. and tuberculosis program, affirmed the optimism.
“We remain hopeful that a safe and effective microbicide will be developed,” Dr. Hellmann said, adding that the foundation was still committed to supporting research on microbicides and other prevention methods.
The new findings were surprising, researchers said, because 11 smaller trials of more than 500 women conducted since 1999 showed that cellulose sulfate was safe. The chemical, which was developed as Ushercell by Polydex Pharmaceuticals in Toronto, was active against H.I.V. in
laboratory tests.
Dr. Peter Piot, the executive director of Unaids in Geneva, said the new findings were puzzling because there appeared to be no biological explanation for the failure of cellulose sulfate, as there was in the case of nonoxynol-9 and the ulcers associated with its use.
Finding new drugs like a microbicide often can be a process of trial and error, and requires scientifically rigorous trials, Dr. Piot said.
He speculated that one of the antiretroviral drugs used to treat AIDS might be needed for an effective microbicide. The world needs a microbicide because “the stakes are so high,” Dr. Piot said."
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YBYL editorial comment (extremely restrained):
Massive amounts of money and effort have been directed toward smearing microbicides on the genitals of Africans, and the results of 16 or more "advanced" clinical trials funded by the NIH and other agencies are somewhat alarming. For instance, the decision was made to cancel the
planned phase III trial of nonoxynol-9 (N-9) gel, a vaginal microbicide, in the genital mucosa of women from Malawi and Zimbabwe in preparation for a phase III efficacy study after it was learned that:
"N-9 gel 100 mg caused a significant increase in the rate of genital symptoms and epithelial disruptions compared with placebo."
Microbicide studies in Africa that involved nearly 1,000 women found:
"59 of those who used the spermicide became infected with HIV, compared to 41 of those who used a dummy gel, and…The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said it was concerned by the findings because some groups advise people to use nonoxynol-9 to protect themselves from HIV if they cannot use a condom."
Lynn Paxton, a microbicides expert at the CDC, said regarding the study:
"I think it's pretty clear we have to tell men who have sex with men not to use it'' [Maggie Fox. Spermicide worsens HIV risk, study finds. Reuters 12 July 2000].
Why doesn't Dr. Paxton tell everybody not to use it if the stuff causes genital lesions?
Posted by: Lawrence K. Altman [in today's NY Times] | February 01, 2007 at 09:55 AM
A very slightly, edited version of the documentary that has caused such an uproar, "Guinea Pig Kids", can now be viewed at the "Help for HIV Positives website".
Posted by: Stephen Davis | February 01, 2007 at 01:24 PM
"When you have power you don't have to tell the truth. That's a rule that's been working in this world for generations. And there are a great many people who don't tell the truth when they are in power in administrative positions."
Dean Burk, PhD, founder and former head of the Cell Chemistry Research Division of the U.S. National Cancer Institute.
Posted by: Croft Woodruff | February 01, 2007 at 04:38 PM