Science Guardian

Editorial rejects political fantasy blaming Bulgarians for HIV positive babies

Sets itself a good example with brief appearance of scientific reasoning to save lives

The Libyan HIV∫AIDS insanity continues. The five Bulgarian nurses and Palestinian doctor are still seriously in danger of execution in Libya because they are held responsible for spreading HIV among hundreds of babies in the hospital they worked in.

The New York Times editorial board comes to their defense very strongly today (Sat Oct 14) in every way they know of, except of course the one basis that really makes the story worthy of being called a “medical-legal travesty” of reason and justice, which is that HIV is not in fact an instrument of death, contrary to the claims of a paradigm which is scotched in numberless ways in the literature including a number of recent mainstream papers which, as we have pointed out, remove the main pillars of the paradigm.

In other words, the main authorities of the belief in HIV∫AIDS themselves have quietly contradicted in mainstream scientific papers the platform they stand on, and if the New York Times editorial writer would continue applying his/her mind to the problem in Libya a little longer and widen his/her focus to the paradigm itself, the editorial position could be even more enlightened.

But the New York Times has no inkling of this, of course, and its defense of the Bulgarian nurses rests on the obvious falsity of the Libyan claims even according to the analysis of Luc Montagnier, who says that the infections emerged before the accused started working at the hospital and continued to spread after they were thrown in jail.

Needless to say the Times editorialist only has to do a little more reading of what “one of the world’s greatest experts on H.I.V., Dr. Luc Montagnier” has said about the topic of HIV∫AIDS to discover that the relatively civilized (relative to his Stateside confreres in HIV∫AIDS) Montagnier believes that HIV is not sufficient to cause AIDS anyway and that nutritional factors are crucial.

Maybe the editorial board should think some more about the situation and apply their new interest in science to the fundamental HIV∫AIDS belief they support in their news columns with the incessant refrain “HIV, the virus that causes AIDS”, as included in this very editorial.

Otherwise, when the world finally comes to its senses about this failed paradigm, which still has no genuine support in the literature after 22 years, they will find themselves partly responsible for these six deaths if God forbid they happen as well as innumerable other ones among AIDS patients who are given ARVs.

October 14, 2006

Editorial

A Medical-Legal Travesty in Libya

Five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor are facing the death penalty in Libya based on preposterous charges that they deliberately infected hundreds of children with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. This looming miscarriage of justice demands a strong warning to the Libyan leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, that his efforts to join the ranks of peaceable nations will suffer if the medical workers are made the scapegoats for the failure of Libya’s own health system.

The doctor and nurses, who had been working at a hospital in Benghazi, were arrested in 1999. They confessed under torture, according to human rights organizations, but later protested their innocence. The charges that they deliberately infected more than 400 children were clearly bogus.

One of the world’s greatest experts on H.I.V., Dr. Luc Montagnier, testified that the real cause of the infections was poor hygienic practices at the hospital. The infections emerged before the accused started working at the hospital and continued to spread after they were thrown in jail.

It seems clear that the government wanted to deflect public outrage by accusing foreigners of committing a horrific crime — rather than acknowledging the negligence of Libya’s health system.

The six medical workers were convicted and sentenced to death in 2004, while nine Libyans who worked at the same hospital were acquitted. The convictions were overturned by the Libyan Supreme Court, which ordered a retrial. Defense attorneys fear the same outcome this time. The attorneys are calling for another independent scientific assessment of the case because the evidence offered by Dr. Montagnier and an Italian scientist was tossed out by the courts.

Thus far the United States and European nations have focused on setting up an international fund to care for victims of the tragedy and to upgrade equipment at the hospital — in hopes that will be enough to get the medical workers set free. Libya is demanding substantial compensation as well, analogous to what it paid to families of the victims of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.

That seems a grotesque overreach given that the nurses and doctors are the victims here. The White House holds Libya up as a model for other nations to follow in renouncing weapons of mass destruction. Libya must also be judged by how it respects human rights and the rule of law.

Tough stuff, right on the mark. When will they apply the same mind set to HIV∫AIDS itself?

Or is that too much to hope for, that the world’s greatest newspaper free itself of the shackles of censorship that Dr Anthony Fauci of NIAID has imposed on the media for 22 years?

Here is a Nature/Reuters report from 20 Sept:

Finally, eyeball proof that HAART works: Alicia visits Mombasa, with crew

Child dies on ARVs, after 14 years without ARVs. Why is Bono overlooked by the Nobel Committee?

Have the critics of HIV∫AIDS misled us? That’s what we are forced to ask after today’s Oprah Winfrey show, and NBC news, which was devoted to Bono and his new Red campaign to raise money for ARVs for needy Africans.

Not only did Oprah and Bono demonstrate that buying red versions of cool gear could save the lives of children with AIDS in Africa. But Alicia Keys reported finding out from her emotionally moving visit (with film crew) to Mombasa that some African children are not given ARVs for years after they are born with HIV, and may die as a result, even when they finally are given the drugs.

The clinic is dispensing ARVs to needy children now, however, courtesy of Oprah’s Angel network. But, we are shown, it may be too late. Sudi, one child photographed by her video crew as Alicia sat with his family trying to be encouraging, cried because he hadn’t had drugs until he was fourteen, though now he was getting them. You could see the tears running down his cheeks. Back in the studio, Oprah enquired after Sudi’s health, and Alicia with lowered voice confided that the poor child had “passed away” a week later. Well, it was a miracle that he had survived so long, Oprah pointed out, since he hadn’t been able to get the drugs until he was 14.

Having seen all this eyewitness testimony on screen with our own eyes we feel somewhat aggrieved. How could we have been taken in so easily by all the claims of HIV∫AIDS critics that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and that the drugs aren’t any good for you? They simply don’t fit what one sees on the screen.

Well, now they can’t keep on saying this, because Oprah, Alicia Keys and Bono have told us and 22 million other viewers how much better the Africans feel when they are discovered to be suffering from HIV and are given ARVs at last, courtesy of those who buy red gear, whereby a portion of the price goes to Bono’s Red movement to deliver ARVs to the needy.

“Now customers can buy the best music player in the world and do something to help the world at the same time,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We’re honored to work with Bono, (RED) and this team to contribute to an incredibly important initiative and help change the way people think about AIDS in Africa.”

Several other companies are offering red-colored products in support of Bono’s charity. The Gap is selling several red-colored clothing items, and Motorola is offering a red-colored RAZR.

Apple Offers Red iPod to Fight AIDS

Yes, readers, we are going to go out and buy a red Nano at once, or at least, as soon as we need one. For we saw with our own eyes Oprah Winfrey and Bono today showing us how if they buy a red $79.99 Motorola phone with two year contract, that will yield $17 for ARV medicine for those in need. Oprah scooped up ten, which meant $170, enough for ARVs for one African for one year. This was after she bagged ten red iPods, each of which meant $10 more drugs for Africans with HIV, and before she collected ten Armani red T shirts, and ten Armani Bono type wraparound sunglasses.

“This is so cool!” said Oprah. “Thank you Apple!” as she left the Apple store and with her arm round Bono’s shoulders continued on a Red item shopping tour of Chicago, with crowds of fans kept back behind ropes at the doorways of the stores, some of whom Oprah handed Armani sunglasses.

“That was so much fun!” she said.

Back in the studio, she welcomed Alicia King – “Don’t we all love her?!” – offering her a red T shirt. But Alicia turned it down, because she will buy a red T shirt herself to support the movement. She was just back as mentioned from visiting the family care clinic in Mombasa hospital. We see her visit on camera. She tells them she is so glad that they are feeling better on the medicines the Oprah Angels are able to provide.

On screen, Alicia sits with the HIV doomed family. One is Sudi, with tears running down his cheeks. Sudi hasn’t improved. He is the one that has had HIV since he was born, but only got medicines when he was 14, courtesy of Oprah’s Keep a child alive! network. But HIV has got him in its grip, regardless, and a week after Alicia’s encouraging visit, she reports, he died. But as Oprah notes cheerfully, it is amazing he stayed alive so long without treatment. Alicia agrees. She informs us that he would still be alive today if he had had ARVs when he was 3 years old.

“It is the simplest thing to save a life in Africa. It is so simple!” says Alicia.

Drugs have immediate effect

It wasn’t just Alicia, either, who told us how important and effective ARV drugs are in Africa. The woman in charge of the hospital gratefully described how the ARVs do good visibly and immediately to the chilren. “They start gaining weight, their height just shoots up astronomically, they have no fever, no infections, they no longer cough. A year later you can’t tell the difference between children with HIV and those without.”

How can HIV∫AIDS critics argue with that direct testimony?

Alicia reports that there are 25 million already dead from AIDS in Africa. “These children look at me and say if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t be alive today.”

At this point, the basic facts having been established and a solution to the AIDS threat in Africa having been provided through shopping, it was time for the entertainment factor to be escalated, and so we were treated to Alicia Keys and Bono singing an unprecedented, never to be repeated duet: “Don’t give up Africa!”

Picture of a skeletal child…slogans appearing on the screen and melting away…”Don’t give up Kenya.”… “Don’t give up Uganda.”… “Don’t give up Zimbabwe.”… Don’t give up South Africa”…as the two mellifluous voices of the two superstars sigh, coo and squeak their way through the sentiment of the day… “It gonna be alright… Don’t give up, Please don’t give up. Whatever may come, whatever may go.. that river’s flowing… that river’s flowing. Don’t give up. There’s no reason to feel ashamed… Somewhere there’s a place. Africa…UHHHH FREEEEE KA AHAHAHAHAHAH….”

Bono’s launch of his Red campaign also won a mention on NBC news tonight. According to NBC announcer Brian Williams, the money “will help save the estimated 6500 Africans that die from AIDS every day.”

So where is the Nobel prize for AIDS?

The only people who seem to be insufficiently impressed so far are the Nobel Peace prize committee, who once again passed over Bono to celebrate a man who has brought a way of making a living to millions.

The lead singer of U2, born Paul Hewson in 1960, was among the favorites for the peace prize in the past two years. This year’s contenders also included former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari and Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

“Over 60 percent of the money we took went on Bono, so it’s a bit of a disappointment for punters,” said Ken Robertson, a spokesman for the Dublin-based bookmaker Paddy Power Plc. “I’ve no doubt he’ll win it at some stage, perhaps when they need to re-energize it.”

Do the Nobel Peace Commitee know something we don’t? It’s not just Bono they haven’t favored, but where is the Nobel prize for Robert Gallo, once the most referenced scientist in the world, who first came up with the theory that HIV caused AIDS, and has stuck with that view through a pile up of contrary evidence over 22 years that would have defeated a lesser man?

Perhaps they are thinking of a combined Gallo Bono Peace prize, which would avoid getting into the embarrassing science of the matter.

But this would of course overlook the giant contribution of Anthony Fauci of NIAID in protecting the paradigm from nosy media reporters and others who might discover that it has not so far been proven in the scientific literature, which has on the other hand produced more reasons for rejecting it that you can shake a stick at.

Given that Anthony Fauci has pointed out that the solution to HIV∫AIDS may well be to add more HIV to stimulate the immune system (see previous post, NAR nominates Dr Anthony Fauci for Nobel – he has found the solution to AIDS), not to mention that HIV entry blocks the cell suicide of infected cells, and that antioxidants will stop HIV replication, perhaps he and Gallo, who first showed that HIV was not the cause of AIDS, and who has also shown antioxidants can protect the cells against cell suicide, can share a Nobel in Medicine for their contribution, now endorsed by the glamor and authority of Oprah Winfrey and Alicia Keys, as well as the renowned Bono.

Nobel Peace Prize Overlooks Rocker Bono for Bangladeshi Banker

Times fanfare for Mather and Smoot doesn’t mention fly in ointment of Big Bang

Arp’s redshift problem another paradigm flaw swept under carpet?

Dennis Overbye’s piece on the Big Bang Nobel in the Times last week (Wed Oct 4) was guaranteed to give inattentive Times readers a warm fuzzy feeling in its story of merit long recognized and now rewarded, a paradigm confirmed with yet another seal of approval, and universal agreement on a popular idea. But to heresy mavens who know to look for them, it was interesting also to see hints of lingering problems with the theory, even though a certain scientist wasn’t likely to be mentioned.

In fact, the success story of the Big Bang paradigm also contains familiar examples of the same politics of paradigm power seen at work in HIV∫AIDS – censorship of a highly respected scientist, ostracism and exile of the same for sticking to unpopular ideas, and the distorting effects of the politics of popularity and success.

COBE proves Big Bang with tiniest measurements

The story in the Times reported this year’s Nobel award to the two physicists who led 1,000 scientists, engineers and technicians who worked on the COBE (Cosmic Background Explorer) satellite launched in 1969. Their measurement of the microwave radiation in the universe thought to be left over from the Big Bang and the irregularities they found bolstered the Big Bang as the only theory which could account for the phenemona.

A result was a resounding confirmation of a universe born in a terrific explosion of space and time 14 billion years ago and in which the ordinary matter that makes up stars and people is overwhelmed by some mysterious “dark matter.”

“What we have found is evidence for the birth of the universe and its evolution,” Dr. Smoot said in a news conference on the results in 1992. About a map showing the splotchy seeds of galaxy formation, he famously said, “If you are religious, it is like looking at God.”

The work led to a wave of theorizing about the dark matter and dark energy that permeates the universe and pushes it apart in “what is known as a preposterous universe”, says Overbye, who doesn’t explain what he means by “preposterous”. Is the paradigm nicknamed ‘the preposterous paradigm’? If so, why?

The work “set cosmology in the track to our present well-based theory of the expanding universe,” according to James Peebles, a cosmologist at Princeton, and Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, chimes in with the assertion that COBE and its measurements had heralded a “golden age” of “precision cosmology”.

A dream realized

COBE allowed precise measurements of the “lumps” in the distribution of the radiation which were hot and cold spots (we are talking of variations of a hundred thousandth of a degree here) which were so small that hopes of measuring them seemed like a “pipe dream”.

In April 1992, however, Dr. Smoot electrified a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington by reporting that the COBE Differential Microwave Radiometer had seen and mapped the lumps.

Cosmologists now believe that these lumps or ripples are a result of quantum fluctuations, tiny jitters in the force fields that filled the universe when it was a fraction of a millionth of a second old.

A cosmologist at MIT, Max Tegmark, says the discovery of cosmic microwave fluctuations was as revolutionary for physics as the discovery of DNA was for biology. “These fluctuations are our cosmic DNA, the blueprints encoding how the baby universe would develop.”

Exciting stuff. These guys can measure fluctuations of a hundredth of a thousandth of a degree left over from the universe’s birth when it was a fraction of a millionth of a second old. Now they are getting the second Nobel seal of approval, following the 1978 award to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of Bell Labs, who first heard the cosmic background radiation as a persistent radio hiss in 1964.

That was when the Big Bang rose to unchallenged ascendancy in the paradigm wars in cosmology, Overbye writes, and

overnight, the few partisans of the rival steady-state theory of an unchanging universe melted away. But the only way to be sure was to measure the microwaves in all directions and at all wavelengths from space, away from atmospheric distortions and influences.

The tool for this task was COBE.

Forgive us in our ignorance if we say it seems to us that cosmology is getting almost as fanciful as nuclear physics in accounting for experimental results, and that it seems possible that refinements might be made in the Big Bang paradigm in the future, even if it is not toppled. “The COBE results provide increased support for the Big Bang scenario” wrote the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in citation, a small concession to those who might object that the theory has its skeptics still.

That pride in the paradigm may cometh before a fall, or anyway that in describing the universe things since COBE have become almost unbearably tangled again, see George Johnson’s piece in the Week In Review on Sunday:

If only it had been that simple. Six years after COBE, another Berkeley scientist, Saul Perlmutter, found something that almost no one had expected. By now, it was assumed, the universe should have settled down, expanding at a steady pace or even slowing, braked by its own gravity. Instead it appeared to be in overdrive, not ballooning as violently as it had in the inflationary era but expanding at a faster and faster rate. Something seemed to be pushing on the accelerator — what has come to be called dark energy, a mysterious kind of anti-gravity.

Shoehorning the new ingredient into the prevailing framework has created new Nobel-sized problems.

Oh, for the Simple Days of the Big Bang

Halton Arp, establishment heretic

We do know of one simple reason for saying that the Big Bang may not be entirely nailed down yet and that is the remarkable saga of Halton Arp, a protege of Edwin Hubble himself, who fell from grace with the US cosmological fraternity when he discovered a large number of huge anomalies which didn’t fit into the Big Bang very well. He was prevented from speaking to conferences here on the topic, and in the end was effectively exiled to the Max Planck Institute in Germany.

The red shift dilemma

Arp discovered a number of galaxies associated with quasar pairs where, according to the red shift, the quasars appeared to be receding very rapidly from us, while the galaxies appeared relatively close by, receding much more slowly. Yet the two entities were observed to be linked together. In other words, the red shift calculation on which the description of the shape and behavior of the universe is currently based cannot be correct after all. Something has to explain the “peculiar galaxies” which Arp has found, enough of them to fill a reference volume which finds a place on the shelves on leading astronomers.

This is how it is described at Arp’s site, which has A Short Biography of Halton C. Arp:

A more detailed discussion of the specific issue of “intrinsic redshift” and why Arp is said to be wrong is here at the Wiki: Intrinsic redshift

A scholar and a gentleman

Having met Halton Arp, at the 2001 Conference on Science and Democracy in Naple’s Institute for Philosophical Studies, perhaps the only conference in the world which gives respect and a platform to science’s otherwise damned heretics, we were surprised to hear how badly he was treated in the US for coming up with this difficulty, and for sticking with it. In manner and bearing he is clearly a gentleman and a scholar, and as his Wiki entry notes, his survey of galaxies is a solid reference.

His papers and observations are as sharp and combative as ever, as can be seen from his web site which carries them. For example, Astronomy By Press Release – News From A Black Hole

Accretion processes onto Black Holes are supposed to enable them to radiate high energy X-rays. When X-ray telescopes found strong X-ray sources in galaxies they said, aha, this is too strong to be an X-ray star so it must be a black hole in orbit around a star – a binary with a massive black hole revolving around it. Discovery of these now MASSIVE Black holes was so exciting that innumerable papers have appeared showing the X-ray positions and deep photographs at the positions the objects.

Strangely, when these objects were seen optically no one took spectra in order to see what they actually were. Finally a paper appeared in a refereed Journal where the authors showed the spectra of two of them to be that of high redshift quasars! Just to cement the case they looked at previously identified quasar in or close to galaxies and in 24 out of 24 cases the quasars belonged to the class of Ultra Luminous X-ray Sources.

This result is a double disaster in that the massive Black Holes turned out to be high redshift quasars, not a Black Hole in a binary star. Perhaps worse, they have been accepted as members of nearby galaxies and therefore cannot be out at the edge of the universe. Bye bye Big Bang and all that fundamental physics. (This result was not put out as a press release.)

The Halton Arp entry in the Wiki on Halton Arp describes all this in more technical detail, but doesn’t fully explain why the issue should be such a sore point. The standard line is that telescopes have been radically improved since Arp came up with his observations and accompanying theorizing which conflicted with the Big Bang, and that the galaxies which have high red shift are in fact very far away.

Since Arp originally proposed his theories in the 1960’s, however, telescopes and astronomical instrumentation have advanced greatly. QSO’s are now generally accepted to be very distant galaxies with high redshifts. Moreover, many objects that are high-redshift counterparts to normal nearby galaxies have been idenfitied in many imaging surveys, most notably the Hubble Deep Field[2]. Moreover, the spectra of the high-redshift galaxies, as seen from X-ray to radio wavelengths, match the spectra of nearby galaxies (particularly galaxies with high levels of star formation activity) when corrected for redshift effects. Very few astronomers today accept any of Arp’s hypotheses on QSO’s or galactic redshifts.

Notice the appeal to the popularity of an idea as a reason to have confidence in it, which is hardly proven by the history of HIV∫AIDS, and anyway is by definition a bad idea. Science is not a democracy where truth is decided by votes.

There is more to it, at least as far as Arp is concerned:

Nonetheless, Arp has not wavered from his standpoint against the Big Bang and still publishes articles stating his contrary view in both popular and scientific literature, frequently collaborating with Geoffrey Burbidge and Margaret Burbidge[3]

A film was made in 2004 about this by Randall Meyers, “The Cosmology Quest” released by Floating World Films. It has been shown in the US and many other countries in film festivals, to astronomy clubs and at conferences, and on Norwegian TV four times. The film shows that the steady state alternative is still alive and kicking with Arp and a few other holdouts, though there is no sign of it regaining momentum any time soon.

The reviews on Amazon of the DVD are here.

They suggest that there is still no satisfying explanation for the discrepancy, and that it is still possible to wonder who is right, and suspect that the complete lack of discussion might reflect the psychology of paradigm power more than can be intellectually justified.

The disgrace of science is the censorship

Certainly the censorship of Halton Arp’s ideas in the US seems no more justified than any other repression of free speech, particularly in science. As Jefferson wrote in 1779, one of this country’s founding principles is “that truth is great and will prevail if left to herself, that she is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless by human interposition disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate.”

In the world of cosmology it seems we have another instance of the unpleasant character of successful scientists, whose ideas become vessels for their pride, arrogance, ambition, envy and personal spite, instead of the professional objectivity which the naive suppose would be the rule, particularly in cosmology of all places.

The sad truth appears to be that the majority of professional scientists, like the majority of human beings, are much more powerfully ruled by the attractions of success than they are by the objective contemplation of truth.

Perhaps they should be reminded that it was Hitler who said that “success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong,” and hold themselves to a higher standard.

We are of course referring to the realm of HIV∫AIDS as much as cosmology.

Two Americans Win Nobel in Physics

Professor Sam Mhlongo, MD, one of the most stalwart practical critics of the African HIV∫AIDS pandemic story, who found his own experience of patients and their ailments differed wildly from the official version, has lost his life, according to Joan Shenton, who was phoned by Janine Roberts and reports that the doctor was killed in a road accident yesterday afternoon.

Joan Shenton interviews Mhlongo

The news has stunned all who knew him. Charles Geshekter has spoken for many dissidents and others in writing that “Sam was a consummate professional, a dear and wonderful friend, a devoted husband and a role model for schoilars, teachers, physicians, and critical thnkers around the world. South Africa and the world has lost a courageous lion of a leader.”

Professor Sam Mhlongo, M.D., returned to South Africa in 1998 after spending 36 years in exile in England during apartheid. He earned his medical degree from the University of London and practiced there for 30 years specialising in cardiology. During that time he was president chairing the Cross Medical School in London and was director of ‘African History and Current Affairs’.

After returning to South Africa he was appointed Head of the Department of Family Medicine and Primary Health Care at the Medical University of Southern Africa, now called the University of Limpopo, MEDUNSA Campus. He founded the Pfunanani Health Research Trust South Africa in 2001.

He has authored and co-authored numerous books and articles on a broad range of subjects, most notably “Forced removal of the Mamatola tribe” in 1967, ”Workers Strikes in South Africa” 1973, “Social classes in South Africa 1975”, “Atenolol post myocardial infarction”, ” Handbook of family practice” in 2000.

He has been medical science editor of African Reclamation Forum since 1999. He was a member of the Royal College of Physicians of the African Caribbean Medical Association and he was its secretary from 1994 to 1998. He is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners UK and member of the Presidential AIDS panel of South Africa.

UPDATE: The Silkwood syndrome

Although there is no evidence yet that Mhlongo’s death was anything but a traffic accident on the way to work in Johannesburg from his home, if there was foul play (as his fellow HIV∫AIDS critics now inevitably wonder) it would be part of a trend world wide which has seen journalists in particular eliminated by professional killings.

The latest is the death on Putin’s birthday, Saturday (Oct 7) of Anna Politkovskaya, 48, severe critic of Putin (”a cynical liar” who condones torture of schoolboys in the Czechen war, she reported) and the 13th journalist killed in Putin’s reign (and the 100th to die since Glasnost in 1986), with Putin a suspect, Gorbachev calling it an outrage, and Bush calling Putin to ask questions. Meanwhile there are revelations on the BBC that suggest US Army troops deliberately fired at the ITN correspondent that died in 2003.

Anna’s funeral was held today:

The investigative reporter’s body was then laid to rest under cold and rain-filled skies.

Police said about 3000 people attended.

Among them were the Norwegian, Swedish and US ambassadors, as well as a who’s who of Russian human rights activists, but there were no high-ranking government officials.

President Vladimir Putin, who has been criticised for not reacting earlier, said during a trip to Germany that her murder had been “cruel”.

However he then sought to minimise her work as “extremely insignificant”.

The New York Times Editorial today, Oct 10 Tues,

Another Killing in Moscow:

The news report in the Times, Journalist Critical of Chechen War Is Shot Dead:

WHO malarial chief is dynamo, brings DDT spray back

Conservatives given credit, too. Million lives a year will be saved

Will AIDS elite also claim credit at their trial?

Having written in support of bringing back DDT to save the children of the poor world (Times on malaria: the solution is to deliver expensive drugs), we are gratified to see support today (Oct 5 Thu) in the Times for the new Bush-WHO move to bring back DDT spraying.

The Editorial Observer in the Times today is Tina Rosenberg, a prize winner enlightened on every global issue with the unfortunate exception of HIV?AIDS, writing a remarkable endorsement of the revival of DDT spraying in poor countries (indoors only) to combat malaria:

This is excellent news for the humans in Africa. DDT both repels mosquitoes and kills them. It is the cheapest, longest lasting and most effective insecticide, and it will not threaten the ecosystem. Unlike in the past, DDT will now be sprayed inside houses once or twice a year in minute amounts.

Along the way in The Revival of a Notorious Solution to a Notorious Scourge she makes the following points: more than a million die each year from the dread disease, Arata Kochi (pic), the new WHO malaria chief, is the dynamo at the center of the change, the US recently decided to pay for DDT spraying after years of selfish hostility to it by Western countries on exaggerated environmental grounds, nets haven’t worked because they weren’t free, and cheap medicine doesn’t work anymore because the disease is resistant to it.

Bald eagle eggs weighed more than babies

The most egregious aspect of the whole saga has been the elitist attitude of the US and Europe, which showed through when Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” turned extremism against DDT into pc environmentalism, after which the fact that DDT had proved stunningly effective at wiping out malaria here and round the world didn’t count any more against bald eagle eggs in the political calculation of William Ruckleshaus.

DDT was the most important insecticide in the eradication of malaria in the United States, and in malaria control in southern Europe, Asia and Latin America. With DDT, malaria cases in Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, dropped from 2.8 million in 1946 to 17 in 1963.

But Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring” documented how DDT, sprayed over crops and over cities, built up in the ecosystem, killing birds and fish. William Ruckleshaus, the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency, banned DDT in 1972 for all but emergencies.

Tina slips in an apology from the aged Ruckleshaus in 2004, which seems as patronizing as ever:

This was the right decision — for the United States. Malaria was no longer an issue, and Washington needed to ensure that it would not be used on crops. But the decision had deadly consequences overseas. “If I were a decision maker in Sri Lanka, where the benefits from use outweigh the risks, I would decide differently,” Mr. Ruckleshaus told me in 2004. “It’s not up to us to balance risks and benefits for other people.”

Yes, except that Africa’s malaria programs are financed by donors and vetted by the world’s health establishment, which is dominated and financed by the United States and Europe, where DDT is also banned. People in rich countries felt it would be perceived as hypocritical to push a product in poor countries that they had banned at home. Even malariologists who knew DDT could be used safely dared not recommend it.

DDT wasn’t pc, so experts and conservatives arguing for it were brushed aside, and a million children a year died. A sad story, with some of the main elements of the HIV?AIDS debacle in it – pc politics trumping reality, experts brushed aside, the right judgement stained by coming from conservatives, illness and death weighing little in the balance.

Interestingly, the Time’s non partisan editorial credit goes to two conservatives in the Senate for the US funding breakthrough:

Conservatives in the Senate, led by Tom Coburn and Sam Brownback, have forced a revolution in Washington’s malaria programs. America now promotes effective malaria drugs, gives away bednets, and has brought back house spraying — including with DDT.

The AIDS pandemic’s angelic side

Ms Rosenberg even credits one more big factor for the renewed interest in the disease – the AIDS pandemic.

The AIDS pandemic has raised interest in third-world disease, and malaria financing has more than doubled in the last three years. African countries are also learning from South Africa, which doesn’t have to depend on donors. Since 2000, South Africa has been successfully beating malaria using the new medicines and house spraying with DDT

So the independence of South Africa from the need to wait upon Western donors allowed it to go ahead and save its children’s lives regardless of Western selfishness and wrong opinion. Well, well. What does that say to President Mbeki about the virtues of maintaining his own counsel in AIDS, one wonders?

Anyhow, AIDS panic has led to increased attention and money for malaria, saving more lives every year, potentially, than have been lost in the West to AIDS so far. So AIDS has in one way been a blessing.

So is AIDS a good thing after all?

The moral quandary for those who disapprove of a paradigm which has sent hundreds of thousands to their sickbeds and needless deaths is this. If AIDS has inadvertently helped to save the lives of a million children a year, is it all worth it in the scheme of things?

Can Anthony Fauci, Robert Gallo, Mark Wainberg, Robin Weiss, John Maddox, David Ho, John Moore and David Baltimore plead for leniency on this basis, when they enter their pleas as defendants in the upcoming Nuremburg Trials II of recalcitrant AIDS officials suggested by Larry Kramer, which when Kramer finally faces up to what is really going on we expect will be more properly be directed against those who have stood in the way of review of the evidently deadly paradigm, now exposed in both the highest level theoretical reviews and in the recent studies and reviews of the mainstream literature as inexplicable and rationally unsustainable in its key premises?

After all, what’s a few hundred thousand dead and a few million mismedicated compared with 44 million dead Africans, mostly babies? Surely the color of their skins cannot weigh in this balance?

Stupidity as a viable defense

But of course, the stalwarts of the HIV?AIDS paradigm guard can always plead stupidity. No one can possibly prove that any of these people had any idea that their favorite paradigm might really be wrong after all, can they? Which of them is demonstrably bright enough for such a charge to stick? Even CalTech president emeritus and Nobel prize winner David Baltimore made such an fool of himself in the Baltimore Affair trying to repress Margot O’Toole that he lost the Presidency of Rockefeller, so even he might have a good chance of copping the same plea in AIDS – except for the fact that he set a precedent for trying to repress the truth, which will be precisely the charge in the new Nuremburg Trial.

Arata Kochi, troublemaker

Of course, stupidity is not a word which is voiced much in genteel high level circles in government or science, however often it is thought.

Frankness on that front is however one of the charms of the new malarial chief at the WHO. Arata Kochi refreshingly admitted calling his new staff at the WHO that very word at times, after the previous chief was kicked out. Talking to the Times last month, Kochi made it pretty clear what he thought of the previous occupant too (W.H.O. Supports Wider Use of DDT vs. Malaria):

Dr. Kochi’s new policies and abrasive style have stirred the small world of malaria experts. Dr. Allan Schapira, a senior member of the W.H.O. malaria team who most recently oversaw its approach to insecticide spraying, resigned last week.

Reached Thursday on his cellphone, Dr. Schapira declined to comment on his reasons, except to say that they were professional. He did not return messages left Friday.

His successor, Pierre Guillet, a medical entomologist, said Dr. Schapira quit because he was uncomfortable with the new approach on insecticide spraying.

There are fierce debates among experts over when it is best to use indoor spraying or mosquito nets impregnated with insecticides that last up to five years, though most agree that both spraying and nets are important tools.

Dr. Kochi said in an interview that half the professional staff of the W.H.O.’s malaria program has left “one way or the other” since he took over in October. He described Dr. Schapira as the “main brain” behind the past approach.

“He was professionally insulted by me,” Dr. Kochi said.

In answer to a question, Dr. Kochi acknowledged that he had indeed told members of the staff in meetings that they were stupid. “They are very inward looking, and they do not communicate outside the malaria field,” he said. “It’s ridiculous.”

The Times’ Celia Dugger wrote that amusing report, which made Kochi sound a little over the top. But whatever works, works. He has helped to transform WHO and US policy and saved the lives of millions, it appears. We nominate this man for the post of chief advisor to Bill Gates and Bill Clinton on global disease matters, and for the Secretaryship of the UN when it comes up.

Few people deserve personal credit for saving a million lives a year. Maybe he’ll get the Nobel Peace Prize.

If so, this will encourage troublemakers everywhere, and truth may break out all over, even in HIV?AIDS.

W.H.O. Supports Wider Use of DDT vs. Malaria

The Revival of a Notorious Solution to a Notorious Scourge

Times reporter in Rome discovers amazing difference in treatment

Classic example of how US system defeats natural antidotes

Real solution is obvious – but far away

The seventh and eighth most searched keywords at the Times today were “health” and “science”, one ahead of “bush”. And we bet it is because of the article on taking fish oil after heart attacks, which is the second most emailed article.

What Elizabeth Rosenthal in Rome has found out will confirm the worst fears of those who suspect the drug companies and the FDA are somehow in cahoots against the welfare of Americans, refusing to give us what the Europeans in their more ancient wisdom hand out freely to their sick and diseased – in this case a key nutritional supplement which protects patients from dying after they have a heart attack.

Her article is polite and balanced in the Times manner so one has to read it closely to find out exactly what is going on. But it seems according to In Europe It’s Fish Oil After Heart Attacks, but Not in U.S. that the big Italian study ten years ago showed a sizeable indication that purified fish oil, or omega-3 fatty acids, can reduce deaths over three years by 20 per cent, and sudden deaths by forty per cent, if you dose heart attack patients within 24 hours after the event.

But there was a minor imperfection in the methodology – the study control group was untreated, rather than given a placebo – so the FDA will not accept the study’s impressive results, even though regulators in Spain, France, and Britain approved the prescription fish oil version, brand name Omacor, by 2004, and in Italy, according to the chief of cardiology at the Rome hospital Rosenthal quotes, every patient who survives a heart attack goes home with a prescription, and it is “considered tantamount to malpractice in Italy to omit the drug.”

Plenty of authoritative sources in the US support the practice too, Rosenthal finds, including a study in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine last month which said it was “important advice” to give patients.

But in the US patients are not given omega-3’s, nor are they offered information on it on the Omacor manufacturer’s Web site, which when it finds out you are a US citizen steers you past the information to a page where heart attacks are not mentioned! Instead, cardiologists and hospitals routinely offer more expensive and invasive treatments, in the form of pills and implanted defibrillators:

But in the United States, heart attack victims are not generally given omega-3 fatty acids, even as they are routinely offered more expensive and invasive treatments, like pills to lower cholesterol or implantable defibrillators. Prescription fish oil, sold under the brand name Omacor, is not even approved by the Food and Drug Administration for use in heart patients.

“Most cardiologists here are not giving omega-3’s even though the data supports it — there’s a real disconnect,” said Dr. Terry Jacobson, a preventive cardiologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “They have been very slow to incorporate the therapy.”

Whose fault is it?

So is this the fault of the drug companies, whose ads and salesmen steer the US medical fraternity to the drugs and tools they sell, and who in the absence of FDA approval for Omacor cannot even mention the European solution? Hardly. The lack of FDA approval means they can make no money out of it, without a hugely expensive clinical trial.

Because prescription fish oil is not licensed to prevent heart disease in the United States, drug companies may not legally promote it for that purpose at conferences, in doctors’ offices, to patients or even on the Internet.

“If people paid more attention to guidelines, more people would be on the drug,” Dr. Jacobson said. “But pharmaceutical companies can’t drive this change. The fact that it’s not licensed for this has definitely kept doctors away.”

For example, on Solvay Pharmaceutical’s Web site for Omacor, www.solvay-omacor.com, the first question a user sees is, “Are you a U.S. citizen?”

If the answer is yes, the user is sent to a page where heart attacks are not mentioned. (In the United States, Omacor is licensed only to treat the small number of people with extremely high blood triglyceride levels.)

So community doctors do not learn how to use the drug. Lack of F.D.A. approval also means that insurers will not pay for treatment with Omacor. Approval from the agency for the use of the drug in heart disease is not expected soon.

A study published last month in The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine found that only 17 percent of family doctors were likely to prescribe fish oil to their patients, including patients who had suffered a heart attack. There was a great need, the authors concluded, to “improve awareness of this important advice.”

A lousy system, but why?

Clearly this is a lousy system in some respect or other. But what is the flaw? Maybe heart attack victims should rise up and storm the gates of the FDA and the NIH, and demand their rights. Why should they not be told about fish oil, have fish oil prescribed, see fish oil ads and read about them on the Web?

Come to think of it, why does this stuff need a precription anyway? Is pure fish oil a danger to your health in some way? The entire Mediterranean tradition says not. The Italians and the Greeks flourish on their delightful cuisine with minimal heart attacks, and as the article notes scientists have theorized as we all have that it’s the fish that do it, along with the wine.

And why does it have to be pure? According to Rosenthal,

over-the-counter preparations of fish oil have much less rigorous quality control and are often blends of the two fish oils know to be beneficial in heart disease with other less useful fatty acids.

For that reason, Dr. Jacobson of Emory gives the prescription drug, “off label,” to cardiac patients, even though the F.D.A. has not approved it for that use. “Then I know exactly what they’re getting, and there is no mercury,” he said.

So according to this the dangers of non-precription versions are “less useful fatty acids” and “mercury”. Is that a reason not to have generic fish oil available?

Still, hard to see why the company with the license for the drug in the US doesn’t seem in a hurry to go through the necessary trials in the US and market Omacor here. Could it be the cost of such trials, which involve hundreds of millions of dollars?

Marylou Rowe, a spokeswoman for Reliant Pharmaceuticals, which owns the license for the drug in the United States, said that further trials of Omacor would be needed for it to be licensed for heart attack patients in the United States. But she refused to discuss a timetable.

Why is is “ethical” to withhold fish oil and not HAART?

The whole story is a classic study of what is wrong with the health delivery system in the US. The FDA is placing a giant hurdle for an obviously beneficial natural compound to jump over before it can be part of the system, and while it is kept from being prescribed all the experts salute its benefit and even pop omega-3 pills themselves.

Rather embarrassing parallels can be seen in the world of HIV∫AIDS where it is becoming rather evident that what the top scientists know and talk about quietly among themselves is a lot more enlightened than what they release for public consumption.

For example, the aforementioned JAMA study below breaking the link between the virus and immune cell depletion which is now causing a little debate in Science and elsewhere, where the authors of the study plainly say it knocks out a basic assumption of the paradigm, but are careful to state their faith in the paradigm itself at every public opportunity to avoid getting in Dutch with Dr Fauci.

We have a friend who recently had a heart attack and was carted off to hospital for a triple by pass. Apparently we now have the duty of briefing him on the need to ask his cardiologist about omega-3 fatty acids when we see him next. Evidently the system cannot now be trusted in this simple matter.

As for the methodological weakness of the massive Italian study which brought the good news in the first place, is this really important enough for the FDA to hesitate before giving permission to cardiologists to prescribe them if they wish?

the landmark Gissi-Prevenzione trial of fish oil had methodological weaknesses: the patients treated with prescription fish oil pills were compared with untreated patients, rather than with patients given a dummy pill. This meant that, despite impressive results, the trial did not meet the F.D.A.’s standards for approval. Yet by 2004, regulators in almost all European countries, including Spain, France and Britain, had approved Omacor for use in heart attack patients.

Obviously not.

After all, if the FDA officials can see their way to forgiving the need for placebo groups in trials of the most dangerous HIV∫AIDS drugs, why is it so hard for them to forgive a slight methodological weakness in a huge trial of a familiar natural substance that the entire world agrees is good for you and rule that it would be “unethical” to withhold it from Americans after heart attacks?

The real solution is far, far away

The story highlights the basic problem with the current profit based system, where “the fundamental premise of US health care is that patients suffer from a deficiency in drugs,” as Robert Houston has wittily observed.

What is needed is for the government to finance nutritional and other approaches to combating ill health which cannot be patented and/or cannot ever be profitable enough to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to finance clinical trials to win approval from the FDA (up to $900 million according to a Tufts University study).

But of course in their extreme capitalist frenzy it is unlikely that our present rulers or their party will ever recognize the fact that economics has a welfare dimension which cannot be reliably covered by the activities of profit making companies, unless government takes action in some way to provide incentives.

So for the moment we will just have to hope that the senior guilt trips of robber barons and other highly successful entrepreneurs and investors such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett will include the idea of funding unprofitable avenues of research into alternatives to profitable drugs.

What we are saying is simple: someone should call or phone Bill Gates, Bill or Hilary Clinton, or any other parties of influence and get either government officials or rich men to fund the trials of natural alternatives so that the FDA has more to license than the latest profit making synthetic drug to come down the pipeline after trials which in HIV∫AIDS at least are notoriously corrupt and which novel chemicals are generally unpredictable in terms of side effects when mixed with numbers of other commercial drugs given the patients, as is so often the case with seniors.

In a sane system it may be that the NIH should be spending $3 billion a year on such trials, starting, for example, with selenium and its relevancy to the health of the immune system.

Under the current system the products of mother nature are effectively banned in favor of synthetic drugs, because they cannot be patented so if any company pays for expensive trials it cannot be sure of payback, since companies with competing versions will be free to come in and exploit the market without any upfront cost.

What’s even more egregious is the kind of thing that happened with AZT where the government paid for invention of the drug and the trials and then handed over the patent to Burroughs Wellcome who proceeded to jack up the price and make money killing people with high doses of this DNA chain terminator branded as Retrovir.

(In Europe It’s Fish Oil After Heart Attacks, but Not in U.S. by Elizabeth Rosenthal: