"You Bet Your Life"

Lightning Strikes 33-year old Athlete

Former MLB pitcher Gonzalez killed by lightning strike

Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Former major league pitcher Geremi Gonzalez, who won 11 games for the Chicago Cubs in 1997, was killed by a lightning strike in his native Venezuela on Sunday. He was 33.

Sad Story:

Of course, this 1 fatality caused by a lighting strike is more than:

1. The number of chimpanzees infected with HIV, who have died of AIDS.

2. The number of HIV+ diagnoses that have been validated using a well-defined gold standard.

3. The number of US CASES (let alone fatalities!) from H5N1 ("bird flu").

4. The number of patients cured by AIDS research.

5. The number of seroconversions observed by Nancy Padian in the longest-running study on HIV sexual transmission.

The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS

Here's the full BMJ editorial from Roger England calling for shutting down UNAIDS:

"The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS"

Everyone should really take time to read the rapid responses, as well:

Rapid responses to England editorial

Compare the calm and reasoned tone by England and Mead Over to the hysterical, irrelevant, comical, overtly political and occasionally nonsensical responses posted there.  In particular, note the following posted by England, graphing BOD (burden of disease) against % of funding devoted to AIDS.  All data points above the line represent countries receiving more aid for HIV than justified by their BOD.  (Click for a larger view.)

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the "many vested interests and reputations at stake":

“The AIDS movement fights inequality, gender and sexual orientation oppression, the economies that structure vulnerability, the corporations that withhold life-saving medicines, the weak health systems that restrict scale-up, and the national and international political systems have mounted a lethargic response at best.”

“We believe that HIV is more than a disease.”

“Eminent British scientist Professor Roy Anderson modelled the course of the epidemic and estimated it will take 130 years to work through the global population.”

“Is HIV exceptional? Yes! The HIV pandemic fits the definition of exceptional, 'unusual, not typical'. We all know this in our hearts...”

“HIV is a special virus, with genetic mutability unseen before that constantly challenges a 'status quo' approach to treatment and research.”

and our personal favorite:

“The need for an exceptional response will continue until HIV/AIDS is no longer an exceptional disease...”

We are reminded of another quote, 25 years ago:

“[T]here are powerful forces at work to delay the solution of the puzzle posed by this epidemic and to obscure its group-fantasy origins, since the epidemic itself is a wished-for solution to pre-existing conflicts.”

Less than Zero: The New Bird Flu Vaccine Hits the Market

May 2008: The Washington Post

LONDON (Reuters) - European authorities have approved the first pre-pandemic bird flu vaccine, Prepandrix, from GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK.L), its maker said on Monday.

Europe's biggest drugmaker hopes the move will spur fresh stockpile orders from governments around the world.

Prepandrix is intended for use before or in the early stages of a flu pandemic. It triggers an immune response to the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which experts fear may trigger a widespread human flu outbreak threatening millions of people.

Problem: To date, Avian Bird Flu has caused the death of ZERO Americans. Let me repeat that. Not one single American has died from the dreaded bird flu -- population: 300 Million

Really now, do you think this is honest science, well-intentioned public policy or none of the above?

And, Qui Bono, from this hysteria? Why, the folks selling a vaccine to thwart this non-existent  dreaded outbreak, of course.

So far, Glaxo has received orders for Prepandrix from a handful of governments, including the United States, Switzerland and Finland. In 2007, it sold 146 million pounds ($284 million) of its pre-pandemic vaccine and bulk antigen.

Now Glaxo's flu vaccine head Emmanuel Hanon expects more buyers to follow, justifying the $2 billion his company has invested in increasing flu capacity.

"It's clear that some governments are more proactive than others ... the policy is evolving and I'm looking for some kind of alignment in terms of what governments are going to do," he told reporters.

Gin up fears of a non-threat, seed the literature with bogus studies of avian bird flu, convince the public to worry about it, invest $2 Billion in a vaccine (probably partly funded by Gov't grants,) sell the vaccine back to the Gov't's to "protect the people" -- all for a virus that's caused ZERO deaths in the good 'ole US of A.

Quite a racket, No?

Also don't forget to watch made-for-tv "Fatal Contact--Bird Flu in America" -- but only if you're really bored on a Thursday night at 3:00 a.m. Don't worry if you missed it either, everyone else did -- it came out 2 years ago.

25 years later, AIDS researchers acknowledge "setbacks" and need for "new ideas" and "fresh thinking"

Twenty-five years and hundreds of billions of dollars after the "discovery" of "the AIDS virus" by Luc Montagnier in the journal Science, AIDS researchers admit they have suffered "setbacks" and that "new ideas", "young talent", and "different eyes" are needed to address "some fundamental biological questions".

"'We still don't completely understand the various forms of the virus. It's more complicated for us than we thought,' said France's Luc Montagnier, who with Robert Gallo of the United States identified HIV as the cause of AIDS.

'We need to go back to the question of basic research, to have new ideas, new teams, to take a new look at cellular biology,' said Jean-Francois Delfraissy, director of France's National Agency for AIDS Research (ANRS)."

Hey, guys, how about these "new ideas" for just a start?:

1. BAN HIV TESTING. Without a gold standard, all available "HIV tests" are fraudulent:

"Primary infection was defined as a confirmed positive virologic test result with either a negative HIV antibody assay result or an indeterminate Western blot. Because there is no virologic gold standard, we assumed that levels of plasma HIV RNA had a sensitivity of 100% for diagnosing primary infection."

Daar ES et al. "Diagnosis of primary HIV-1 infection". Ann Intern Med. 2001 Jan 2;134(1):25-9.

"At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood."

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 HIVAB HIV-1 EIA. Abbott Laboratories. 1997 Jan.

"The evaluation of the sensitivity and specificity of PCR for the diagnosis of HIV infection in infants is particularly difficult because there is no reference or ‘gold standard’ test that determines unequivocally the true infection status of the patient..."

Owens DK et al. "A Meta-analytic Evaluation of the Polymerase Chain Reaction for the Diagnosis of HIV Infection in Infants". JAMA. 1996 May 1;275(17):1342-1348.

"Whenever possible, studies of the performance of a diagnostic test should use reference tests that unequivocally establish the true state of disease or health... The lack of an appropriate reference test substantially complicates evaluation..."

Owens DK et al., "Polymerase Chain Reaction for the Diagnosis of HIV Infection in Adults: A Meta-Analysis with Recommendations for Clinical Practice and Study Design", Annals of Internal Medicine, 1 May 1996

2. FUND ALTERNATIVE NON-VIRAL HYPOTHESES.

"At a time when fresh ideas and new paths of investigation are so desperately being sought, how can the AIDS community afford not to fund Duesberg’s research?"

Horton, R, "Truth and Heresy About AIDS", New York Review of Books, Volume 43, Number 9, 23 May 1996

3. WHY STOP WITH UNAIDS?  Shut down ALL AIDS organizations and agencies that aren't producing demonstrable results. (Oops... that would mean shutting down all of them, I guess!!)

"The joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, on which significant effort has been focused, is damaging health systems and distorting health financing, writes Roger England, Chairman of the Health Systems Network, in a View & Review feature released on May 9, 2008 in BMJ. As a result, he believes that UNAIDS should be closed down immediately... HIV globally accounts for 3.7% of mortality. However, 25% of health aid and a large proportion of domestic expenditure is allocated for HIV interventions. England points out that the global catastrophe once predicted with the AIDS epidemic has not occurred, and in comparison draws attention to the fact that global HIV deaths do not overtake the number of deaths of children under five years old in India. He claims that its recognition through a division of the UN, the disease has become more than just an ailment to prevent and cure. "With its own UN agency, HIV has been treated like an economic sector rather than a disease."

"Expert Claims UNAIDS Should Be Shut Down", Medical News Today, 10 May 2008.

So, why aren't these "new ideas" being implemented? Silly me, I forgot:

"New ideas, young talent and injections of money are needed to invigorate the war against AIDS, top experts said here Monday at a review of medical progress since the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was discovered 25 years ago."

Lotta Sheckels for Big Pharma

Ever wonder how much CEO's of Big Pharma are making these days?

Here's the top 17 by yearly salary:

1. Miles White - Abbott - $33.4M

2. Fred Hassan - Schering-Plough - $30.1M

3. Bill Weldon - Johnson & Johnson - $25.1M

4. Bob Essner - Wyeth - $24.1M

5. Robert Parkinson - Baxter - $17.6M

6. Daniel Vasella - Novartis - $15.5M

7. Richard Clark - Merck - $14.5M

8. Frank Baldino - Cephalon - $13.5M

9. Sidney Taurel - Eli Lilly - $13M

10. Jeff Kindler - Pfizer - $12.6M

11. Jim Cornelius - Bristol-Myers Squibb - $11.3

12. Franz Humer - Roche - $11.1M

13. Robert Coury - Mylan - $8.5M

14. Jean-Pierre Garnier - GlaxoSmithKline - $6M

15. Werner Wenning - Bayer - $4.77M

16. David Brennan - AstraZeneca - $4.3M

17. Gerard Le Fur - Sanofi-Aventis - $3.27M

Prescription Drug Abuse Surging

LOS ANGELES, May 18 (UPI) -- Healthcare workers and dishonest patients are filling U.S. streets with potentially addictive prescription medications, officials say.

Also contributing to the problem are pharmacy thefts, robberies and burglaries, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.

Additionally, there are prescription forgeries and Internet pharmacies that require little information before shipping drugs, the newspaper said.

"Unlike illicit drug use, which shows a continuing downward trend, prescription drug abuse ... has seen a continual rise through the 1990s and has remained stubbornly steady ... during recent years," Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told a congressional hearing in March.

Local law enforcement officials say the illegal use of prescription drugs as street narcotics has surged.

"What we are seeing is that prescription drugs ... are quickly becoming the drug of choice and abuse," said police Lt. Dennis Vrooman of Murrieta, Calif.

I wonder how this happened......

Man-Beast Hybrids?

Our scientific friends across the pond are trying new experiments with human-animal hybrid embryos.

Towards what end, you ask?

Professor Shaw answers:

“It will allow us to forge ahead on all fronts in our attempts to understand and develop therapies for a huge range of currently incurable diseases. Cures may be some years off, but this vote does mean we can use hybrid embryos, in addition to adult stem cells, in our search to understand what causes Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neuron disease.”

Sounds noble, right? Except Dr. Shaw forgets one little part, to wit:

."...and it provides another stream of financial support from the government so that we have jobs in the future, irrespective of whether we find a cause or cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neuron disease or spend years doing pointless research based on high-sounding ideals that produce no tangible benefit to anyone."

MInd the curb!

Why is there no Vaccine?

Important story in the Washinton Post:

3/21/08: Vaccine Failure is Setback in AIDS Fight

The two-decade search for an AIDS vaccine is in crisis after two field tests of the most promising contender not only did not protect people from the virus but may actually have put them at increased risk of becoming infected.

In 1984, when government scientists declared at a press conference that the "Probable cause" of AIDS had been found, they also predicted that a vaccine would be developed by 1986.

At some point, after Tens of Billions of Dollars of tax-payer funded research, Why is there still no vaccine?

More so, why is the vaccine increasing the risk of infection?