Science Guardian

David Jay Brown achieves classic summary

Ideal cornerstone primer for newcomers to the issue

Want a neat, check-off basic guide to why the HIV∫AIDS paradigm doesn’t add up to more than wishful thinking on the part of those, like Bulldozer Bob Gallo, invested in it, financially or emotionally?

An unusually good interview with Duesberg is published this week at Smart Publications Health & Wellness Update newsletter site, an “independent publisher providing health and nutritional supplement information from experts and authorities in alternative medicine.” The classic interview is edited deftly, and covers the main points with an ease and clarity - and the occasional Duesbergian sparkle - that makes them seem more irrefutable than ever.

First, AIDS is not infectious. For example, between 1981 and 2004, 930,000 American AIDS patients had been treated by doctors or health care workers. But, despite the absence of an anti-AIDS vaccine, there is not a single case report in the peer-reviewed literature of a doctor or health care worker, who has ever contracted AIDS (rather than just HIV) from any one of these 930,000 patients in now twenty-five years. Likewise, not one of the thousands of HIV-AIDS researchers has ever contracted AIDS from HIV, nor is there an AIDS epidemic among prostitutes anywhere in the world.

Second, like all other viruses, HIV induces anti-viral immunity, which is the basis of the HIV/AIDS test. But, unlike any conventional viral epidemic or individual disease, AIDS is not self-limiting by anti-viral immunity and thus not likely to be caused by a virus.

Third, unlike all other viral epidemics, AIDS in the U.S. and Europe is highly nonrandom: A third of all patients are intravenous drug users and about two-thirds are male homosexuals who have used nitrite inhalants, amphetamines, cocaine and other aphrodisiac and psychoactive drugs for years before they develop any one or more of the twenty-six different AIDS-defining diseases. In addition, most HIV-antibody-positive people are now prescribed inevitably toxic DNA chain-terminators as anti-HIV drugs. But these terminators are AIDS by prescription, because they were designed to kill cells (for chemotherapy) and are thus also immunotoxic. Thus the AIDS epidemic does not spread randomly like a conventional viral epidemic and coincides with toxic drug use.

Fourth, there is no HIV in AIDS patients. Instead, only antibody against HIV or traces of HIV nucleic acid can be found in typical AIDS patients. But, conventional pathogenic viruses are abundant and not (yet) neutralized by antibodies when they cause diseases…

There is both correlative and functional evidence in the AIDS literature that nitrite inhalants coincide with Kaposi sarcoma and other AIDS diseases among homosexual users, and that nitrites are cytotoxic, immunotoxic and Kaposi-sarcomagenic. It is also known for decades that the long-term use of amphetamines and cocaine cause weight loss, immunodeficiency, dementia and other AIDS-defining diseases. It is the long-term use of such recreational drugs alone or in combination with anti-HIV drugs that American and European AIDS patients have in common…

By contrast, millions of HIV-antibody-positive people from without these risk groups are AIDS-free. For example, since 1985, there are one million HIV-positive people living in the U.S. But only about 30,000 of them (three percent) have any one of the twenty-six AIDS-diseases per year—”namely exactly the minority of them that uses recreational and anti-HIV drugs…

The correlation (between HIV and AIDS) is a hundred percent because AIDS is defined by the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and thus for the world (!), as one or more of twenty-six previously known diseases, if they occur in the presence of antibody against HIV. For example, all tuberculosis patients who have antibodies against HIV are called AIDS patients. By contrast, HIV-free tuberculosis patients are still tuberculosis patients. Thus, the one hundred percent correlation is an artifact of the AIDS definition, rather than a natural coincidence.

Q: When I interviewed neuroscience and AIDS researcher Candace Pert, I said to her that, —œA few scientists that I—™ve spoken with told me that they don—™t think that the HIV virus is responsible for causing AIDS.—?
When I asked her what she thought about this idea she said, —œThese people are nuts. The evidence is clear, and it—™s the most elegant scientific story…..

Dr. Duesberg: Take for example Candace—™s —œtidbit—? of the —œelegant science—? of AIDS, that —œa small percentage of Caucasian Europeans don’t have that receptor—? for HIV and —œno matter what risky behavior they indulge in, they do not get HIV disease—?—”which means according to the CDC: no dementia, no diarrhea, no Kaposi sarcoma, no tuberculosis, no yeast infection, no lymphoma, no cervical cancer, no weight loss, no fevers, no pneumocystis pneumonia, etc. Elegant indeed!

Fortunately in the U.S., God must have distributed Candace Pert—™s elegant HIV non-receptors otherwise: Here the majority of the heterosexual population has no HIV-receptors and therefore does not get AIDS! Instead, God must have distributed good HIV-receptors in the U.S. non-randomly to male homosexuals, junkies, and a few hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients, which make up over ninety-five percent of the American AIDS cases. Let’s thank God that our mainstream heterosexuals—”from our president to our leading HIV-AIDS researchers—”are genetically protected against this —œdeadly—? virus via defective HIV receptors, and are therefore AIDS-free—”ever since this virus is said to have arrived in the U.S. over twenty years ago.

Q: Why do you think that so many researchers are resistant to examining the idea that HIV may not be the cause of AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: Scientists are selected for instincts that help them to get funding, recognition, invitations to meetings, access to publications and awards. None of these are available to scientific minorities. On the contrary, minorities are excommunicated at many levels from the consenting majorities, even from personal contacts with mainstream colleagues. Those are strong incentives for scientists not to —œexamine—? unpopular ideas.

Q: What do you think it will take to convince the scientific establishment that HIV is not the cause of AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: It will take hypothesis-independent funding of research. If funding were available for non-HIV-AIDS hypotheses, AIDS would probably be solved very shortly on the basis of the drug or chemical AIDS hypothesis—”as shown in our paper, —œThe chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, chemotherapy, and malnutrition,—? published in the Journal Biosciences of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2003, with support from private sources. According to this hypothesis, AIDS is caused by recreational and antiviral drugs.

This hypothesis is already confirmed by exact correlations, and could be easily tested experimentally in animals and epidemiologically in the millions of human volunteers, who are HIV-free recreational drug addicts and develop AIDS-defining diseases under their old names. If confirmed, this hypothesis could readily solve AIDS by banning the inevitably toxic anti-HIV drugs and by warning the recreational drug users against the AIDS consequences of their drugs or lifestyle.

Q: Are there any new developments since the publication of your book Inventing the AIDS Virus that you think are important for people to know?

Dr. Duesberg: In principle, no. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis has recycled the same unproductive ideas and arguments for invisible or undetectable HIV, for toxic anti-HIV drugs, and excuses for failing vaccines in various formulations, for twenty-one years…

Q: What do you think should be done to help improve medical research in general?

Dr. Duesberg: Generate a free market for scientific ideas in which funding depends on logic, scientific principles, and useful results, rather than on approval, or better yet the blessings of —œpeer-review.—? Since the —œpeers—? represent the established scientific monopolies their self-interest demands —œscience—? that confirms and extends the status quo—”rather than innovation, which threatens their considerable scientific and commercial investments.

Inevitably, everyone new to the topic will ask “What about Africa?’, ie the other side of the “AIDS pandemic” now held to be spreading across the globe. The answer of course is that this is, obviously, another story - an entirely different phenomenon also highly dependent on the idea real or (sill mostly) imaginary that victims are tested for HIV positivity, which determines whether their ailments are counted as AIDS or not. In other words, real hunger and disease amid the poor relabeled as “AIDS” and medicated with AIDS drugs rather than the food and medicines appropriate to the rampant malnutrition, tuberculosis and other diseases which ravage the slums and villages of the sub continent.

The author, David Jay Brown, is an adventurer of the mind who has interviewed a great selection of edgy thinkers over the last few decades, everyone from Allen Ginsberg and John Lilly to Jean Houston, Bob Houston’s sister and guru to Presidents (no, she did not invoke Eleanor Roosevelt’s spirit in a seance, as the media misreported, she merely suggested Hilary write her book in the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt, in other words, with the great First Lady as a model).

David Jay Brown is the author of four volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. He is also the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus. David holds a master—™s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake—™s bestselling books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. To find out more about David—™s work visit his award-winning web site: Maverick of the Mind

Having read the celebrated and witty Duesberg going over his main points in such a locked up, well edited final version, where every sentence now seems to have the irrefutable permanence of an inscribed tablet of scientific truth, one is struck anew by the perception of what a battalion of mediocrity by comparison is formed by the core of scientists who rule this field, who come forth with such pusillanimous prevarications as these lines, emblazoned with pride at the top of John P. Moore’s celebration of witless truthiness, AIDSTruth.org:

The Durban declaration states: “The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science.” And also, “HIV causes AIDS. It is unfortunate that a few vocal people continue to deny the evidence. This position will cost countless lives.”

All we can say to this is, against the long established certainties of Duesberg’s peer reviewed analysis, what hollow claptrap, what empty assertiveness! If anything, it should now be clear to anybody who can read Duesberg, and then use a mouse and check the literature at Pub Med, that these lines should correctly read, “The evidence that AIDS is not caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous.”

Smart interview with Duesberg by David Jay Brown

Challenging the Viral Theory
of AIDS: An Interview
with Dr. Peter Duesberg

By David Jay Brown

Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He is a pioneer in retrovirus research, and he was the first scientist to isolate a cancer gene. More recently, Dr. Duesberg has gained recognition for his theory that abnormal chromosome numbers are the causes of cancer, which challenges the conventional mutation theory. However, he is probably best known for challenging the widely-held theory that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Dr. Duesberg earned his Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of Frankfurt in Germany in 1963. He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and he mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his subsequent work in the same field, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He was also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health, before he called the HIV-AIDS hypothesis into question.

Dr. Duesberg is the author of Inventing the AIDS Virus, and his articles challenging the HIV/AIDS hypothesis have appeared in scientific journals worldwide including: The New England Journal of Medicine, Science, Cancer Research, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and Nature. On the basis of his experience with retroviruses, Dr. Duesberg concludes that it is impossible for HIV to be the cause of AIDS, and that AIDS is, in fact, a nonviral disease. He has instead proposed the hypothesis that the various American and European AIDS diseases are brought on by the long-term consumption of amyl nitrites or —œpoppers—? and other recreational drugs, and/or by the use of the extremely toxic drug AZT, which is a chain-terminator of DNA synthesis that was originally developed for chemotherapy of cancer and is now prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS.

Despite Dr. Duesberg—™s impressive track record, and the fact that his ideas about AIDS are truly compelling if one studies them carefully, he has found himself at direct odds with the medical establishment since he began talking about his controversial AIDS hypothesis. Many AIDS researchers and drug companies have reacted hostilely to Dr. Duesberg—™s hypothesis. For example, when I interviewed neuroscientist and AIDS researcher Candace Pert from Georgetown University, and I asked her what she thought about the scientists that don—™t think that the HIV virus is responsible for causing AIDS, she replied, —œThese people are nuts.—?

However, some other scientists think differently and strongly respect Dr. Duesberg—™s ideas—”including Nobel laureates in chemistry Kary Mullis and Walter Gilbert. Duesberg, Mullis, and Gilbert all point out that there is no direct experimental evidence that HIV causes AIDS, and that there are numerous problems with the HIV-AIDS theory. For example, not everyone infected with HIV gets AIDS, and not everyone with AIDS symptoms is infected with HIV. In fact, the symptoms of AIDS vary from continent to continent, and a medical diagnosis of AIDS is often made simply by testing positive for HIV antibodies in the presence of a disease such as tuberculosis or cancer. However, instead of engaging in scientific debate, according to Dr. Duesberg, the only response from the scientific establishment has been to cut off funding to further test his hypothesis.

To find out more about Dr. Duesberg—™s work, see Harvey Bialy—™s biography Oncogenes Aneuploidy and AIDS: The Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg (North Atlantic Books, Berkeley CA, 2004), or visit Dr. Duesberg—™s Web site at: www.duesberg.com

I interviewed Dr. Duesberg in December of 2005. We spoke about why he thinks that it—™s a mistake to assume that the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS, why so many researchers are resistant to examining the idea that HIV may not be the cause of AIDS, and what he thinks the real cause of AIDS might be.

Q: What originally inspired your interest in molecular biology?

Dr. Duesberg: The idea that there are cancer viruses, and thus ways to understand cancer and perhaps prevent or cure it by vaccines, inspired me forty years ago. I was young enough to ignore, or better, not even know objections.

Q: If you could just briefly summarize—”what are some of the primary reasons why you think that it—™s a mistake to assume that the HIV virus is the cause of AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: Here are four out of many more —œprimary reasons—?:

First, AIDS is not infectious. For example, between 1981 and 2004, 930,000 American AIDS patients had been treated by doctors or health care workers. But, despite the absence of an anti-AIDS vaccine, there is not a single case report in the peer-reviewed literature of a doctor or health care worker, who has ever contracted AIDS (rather than just HIV) from any one of these 930,000 patients in now twenty-five years. Likewise, not one of the thousands of HIV-AIDS researchers has ever contracted AIDS from HIV, nor is there an AIDS epidemic among prostitutes anywhere in the world.

Second, like all other viruses, HIV induces anti-viral immunity, which is the basis of the HIV/AIDS test. But, unlike any conventional viral epidemic or individual disease, AIDS is not self-limiting by anti-viral immunity and thus not likely to be caused by a virus.

Third, unlike all other viral epidemics, AIDS in the U.S. and Europe is highly nonrandom: A third of all patients are intravenous drug users and about two-thirds are male homosexuals who have used nitrite inhalants, amphetamines, cocaine and other aphrodisiac and psychoactive drugs for years before they develop any one or more of the twenty-six different AIDS-defining diseases. In addition, most HIV-antibody-positive people are now prescribed inevitably toxic DNA chain-terminators as anti-HIV drugs. But these terminators are AIDS by prescription, because they were designed to kill cells (for chemotherapy) and are thus also immunotoxic. Thus the AIDS epidemic does not spread randomly like a conventional viral epidemic and coincides with toxic drug use.

Fourth, there is no HIV in AIDS patients. Instead, only antibody against HIV or traces of HIV nucleic acid can be found in typical AIDS patients. But, conventional pathogenic viruses are abundant and not (yet) neutralized by antibodies when they cause diseases.

Q: Can you talk a little about why you think that recreational drug use is the primary cause of AIDS among gay men?

Dr. Duesberg: There is both correlative and functional evidence in the AIDS literature that nitrite inhalants coincide with Kaposi sarcoma and other AIDS diseases among homosexual users, and that nitrites are cytotoxic, immunotoxic and Kaposi-sarcomagenic. It is also known for decades that the long-term use of amphetamines and cocaine cause weight loss, immunodeficiency, dementia and other AIDS-defining diseases. It is the long-term use of such recreational drugs alone or in combination with anti-HIV drugs that American and European AIDS patients have in common.

By contrast, millions of HIV-antibody-positive people from without these risk groups are AIDS-free. For example, since 1985, there are one million HIV-positive people living in the U.S. But only about 30,000 of them (three percent) have any one of the twenty-six AIDS-diseases per year—”namely exactly the minority of them that uses recreational and anti-HIV drugs.

Q: Why do you think that there is such a high correlation between HIV and AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: The correlation is a hundred percent because AIDS is defined by the U.S. Center for Disease Control, and thus for the world (!), as one or more of twenty-six previously known diseases, if they occur in the presence of antibody against HIV. For example, all tuberculosis patients who have antibodies against HIV are called AIDS patients. By contrast, HIV-free tuberculosis patients are still tuberculosis patients. Thus, the one hundred percent correlation is an artifact of the AIDS definition, rather than a natural coincidence.

Q: When I interviewed neuroscience and AIDS researcher Candace Pert, I said to her that, —œA few scientists that I—™ve spoken with told me that they don—™t think that the HIV virus is responsible for causing AIDS.—?
When I asked her what she thought about this idea she said, —œ … These people are nuts. The evidence is clear, and it—™s the most elegant scientific story. There was a movement against HIV research, and the main champion was Peter Duesberg. There were some personal animosities against the power and the money that the early AIDS researchers got, and there are a lot of political aspects to this. But beyond a shadow of a doubt—”and I—™m speaking as somebody who studies data in the lab—”there is just no doubt about the fact that HIV is the cause of AIDS. There—™s just so much elegant science behind it. Just let me cite one little tidbit that tells you how clean the whole thing is. There are two primary receptors that the AIDS virus uses to enter and infect cells. One of them is called CCR-5. It turns out that a small percentage of Caucasian Europeans don—™t have that receptor. They have a genetic mutation where the receptor should be, and it—™s missing a major chunk of it in the middle. Now those people who have that mutation, no matter what risky behavior they indulge in, they do not get HIV disease … Then, of course, you can show clearly in the test tube that you can artificially make cells that have this receptor and they will become readily infected with the viruses that use this receptor. And if the cells don—™t have the receptor then they don—™t. That—™s summarizing like hundreds and hundreds of papers that elegantly address this, so there—™s no doubt that HIV causes AIDS. Duesberg may not like some of the HIV virologists, and their style and all, but it—™s just so silly. And it—™s sad, because they—™ve created a movement that—™s been very destructive. My understanding is that out in California some of these people are like Luddites. Some of the activists—”not all of them, but some small percentage—”have gotten this into their head, and have stormed research labs. They—™ve gotten very angry and very crazy, and it—™s complete rubbish. I have no doubt in my mind. I—™m a hundred percent sure about this.—?
How would you respond to Candace?

Dr. Duesberg: Take for example Candace—™s —œtidbit—? of the —œelegant science—? of AIDS, that —œa small percentage of Caucasian Europeans don’t have that receptor—? for HIV and —œno matter what risky behavior they indulge in, they do not get HIV disease—?—”which means according to the CDC: no dementia, no diarrhea, no Kaposi sarcoma, no tuberculosis, no yeast infection, no lymphoma, no cervical cancer, no weight loss, no fevers, no pneumocystis pneumonia, etc. Elegant indeed!

Fortunately in the U.S., God must have distributed Candace Pert—™s elegant HIV non-receptors otherwise: Here the majority of the heterosexual population has no HIV-receptors and therefore does not get AIDS! Instead, God must have distributed good HIV-receptors in the U.S. non-randomly to male homosexuals, junkies, and a few hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients, which make up over ninety-five percent of the American AIDS cases. Let’s thank God that our mainstream heterosexuals—”from our president to our leading HIV-AIDS researchers—”are genetically protected against this —œdeadly—? virus via defective HIV receptors, and are therefore AIDS-free—”ever since this virus is said to have arrived in the U.S. over twenty years ago.

Q: Why do you think that so many researchers are resistant to examining the idea that HIV may not be the cause of AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: Scientists are selected for instincts that help them to get funding, recognition, invitations to meetings, access to publications and awards. None of these are available to scientific minorities. On the contrary, minorities are excommunicated at many levels from the consenting majorities, even from personal contacts with mainstream colleagues. Those are strong incentives for scientists not to —œexamine—? unpopular ideas.

Q: What do you think it will take to convince the scientific establishment that HIV is not the cause of AIDS?

Dr. Duesberg: It will take hypothesis-independent funding of research. If funding were available for non-HIV-AIDS hypotheses, AIDS would probably be solved very shortly on the basis of the drug or chemical AIDS hypothesis—”as shown in our paper, —œThe chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, chemotherapy, and malnutrition,—? published in the Journal Biosciences of the Indian Academy of Sciences in 2003, with support from private sources. According to this hypothesis, AIDS is caused by recreational and antiviral drugs.

This hypothesis is already confirmed by exact correlations, and could be easily tested experimentally in animals and epidemiologically in the millions of human volunteers, who are HIV-free recreational drug addicts and develop AIDS-defining diseases under their old names. If confirmed, this hypothesis could readily solve AIDS by banning the inevitably toxic anti-HIV drugs and by warning the recreational drug users against the AIDS consequences of their drugs or lifestyle.

Q: Are there any new developments since the publication of your book Inventing the AIDS Virus that you think are important for people to know?

Dr. Duesberg: In principle, no. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis has recycled the same unproductive ideas and arguments for invisible or undetectable HIV, for toxic anti-HIV drugs, and excuses for failing vaccines in various formulations, for twenty-one years.

We have pointed this out in two papers since Inventing the AIDS Virus, which was first published in 1996. One of these papers, —œThe AIDS dilemma: drug diseases blamed on a passenger virus,—? by Duesberg & Rasnick was published in Genetica in 1998. The other paper, —œThe chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, anti-HIV drugs and malnutrition,—? by Duesberg, Koehnlein & Rasnick, was published in the Journal of Biosciences in 2003.

These papers analyze old and new paradoxes generated by the HIV hypothesis, and address new and old evidence for chemical AIDS, namely AIDS caused by recreational drugs, antiviral drugs, and malnutrition.

Q: What are some of the ways that you think a prevailing scientific paradigm can limit our medical understanding?

Dr. Duesberg: By becoming a monopoly able to control funding and publication, as is the case now with the HIV-AIDS monopoly and to a slightly lesser degree with the oncogene-cancer monopoly.

Q: What do you think should be done to help improve medical research in general?

Dr. Duesberg: Generate a free market for scientific ideas in which funding depends on logic, scientific principles, and useful results, rather than on approval, or better yet the blessings of —œpeer-review.—? Since the —œpeers—? represent the established scientific monopolies their self-interest demands —œscience—? that confirms and extends the status quo—”rather than innovation, which threatens their considerable scientific and commercial investments.

The only way to achieve innovation is to replace the so-called peer-review system by a system modeled after American courtroom juries, in which only jurors without any investments in the case on trial are judging the merits of a case.

The claim that only established —œpeers—? have the knowledge to decide on AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer—™s, etc. is not consistent with their failures to explain or cure these diseases. And is not consistent even with the spirit of our constitution, where neither the law nor the health of the citizens should be left solely to the powers of the —œexperts.—? The claims for exclusive authority of —œscientific peers—? are no more valid than those of their legal counterparts nor those of their predecessors who wrote prescriptions in Latin, or those of their theological counterparts who determine what—™s moral or ethical via special connections with God.

Q: What do you think are the primary causes of aging?

Dr. Duesberg: I don—™t know. It—™s an interesting question. But, if I were to work on it, I would look at the three factors that generate the un-aged prototype: (1) The karyotype or species-specific chromosome combination; (2) The genes; and (3) The differential expression of thousands of genes or —œepigenetic—? controls that generate differentiated phenotypes. I would plan experiments which compare karyotypes, genes and gene expressions of un-aged prototypes with aged counterparts.

Q: What do you think are currently the best ways to slow down, or reverse the aging process and extend the human life span?

Dr. Duesberg: The answer would depend on the experiments proposed in my last answer. But it is already known from the experimental literature that the life-span can be much extended, by about a third, and the cancer-risk reduced by minimizing the metabolism and cell divisions by limiting the diet. So aging could probably be slowed down by minimizing the inevitably fallible processes that replicate chromosomes and genes, and maintain differentiated function by limiting metabolism via the diet.

Q: What are some of the new medical breakthroughs that you foresee coming along in the near future?

Dr. Duesberg: I am very skeptical—”indeed I am scared—”of a —œnew medical breakthrough—? from the very same medical establishment, which prescribes inevitably cytocidal DNA chain-terminators to hundreds of thousands of healthy people solely because they have made antibodies against the non-cytocidal retrovirus HIV!

Q: What are you currently working on?

Dr. Duesberg: The currently prevailing cancer theory postulates that cancer is caused by four to seven gene mutations. However, despite over thirty years of efforts, it has not been possible to find one or a combination of mutant genes in cancers that are able to transform a normal cell to a cancer cell, or are able to cause cancer in an animal.

In view of this, I am now studying the chromosomal theory of cancer. This theory is based on the fact that the numbers or structures of chromosomes of all cancers are abnormal.

However, since the currently prevailing cancer orthodoxy holds that gene mutations cause cancer, I am again working on cancer without funding from any non-private, —œpeer-reviewed—? agencies, such as the National Cancer Institute, despite over fourteen grant applications.

David Jay Brown is the author of four volumes of interviews with leading-edge thinkers, Mavericks of the Mind, Voices from the Edge, Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse, and Mavericks of Medicine. He is also the author of two science fiction novels, Brainchild and Virus. David holds a master—™s degree in psychobiology from New York University, and was responsible for the California-based research in two of British biologist Rupert Sheldrake—™s bestselling books on unexplained phenomena in science: Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home and The Sense of Being Stared At. To find out more about David—™s work visit his award-winning web site: www.mavericksofthemind.com
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Times is at it again, shoulder to the wheel: the public mustn’t relax

Experts confer expensively, humbled by virus whose antidote is a click away

What is it about Vitamin A that the Times doesn’t understand? Donald McNeil writes that Scientists Warn That Bird Flu Remains A Threat on the prime Times page 3, front or lead page of the daily International section today (Thus Feb 16).

Do the Times editors have to wait upon Dr Anthony Fauci’s office secretary to dial up PubMed before the editors can get it through their august noggins that as a major global threat Bird Flu is a non-starter? We covered all this more than a year ago in Times falls short on Bird Flu unaware of scientific literature, Duesberg on the coming bird flu global catastrophe: don’t bet on it, Bird flu flap continues needlessly. The antidote is Vitamin A, it’s clear, and ALERT - Vitamin A is probably simple antidote to bird flu, mainstream literature shows (Nov 20 2005), and they still ignore our help. It is very humbling.

The British are very proficient at eliminating veterinary diseases by killing and incinerating animals, officials said, noting that more than 160,000 birds were swiftly killed to contain the British outbreak. The Hungarians are believed capable of the same sort of response.

But the virus is out of control in poultry in three countries —” Indonesia, Nigeria and Egypt —” with combined populations of 447 million people. A year ago, it was out of control only in Indonesia, and Thailand and Vietnam had stifled outbreaks, though the virus returned later. China remains a mystery; despite official denials, there is evidence that it is circulating there, too.

Most alarming to the experts, though it got relatively less attention, was the death in January of a 22-year-old Nigerian woman, an accountant who lived in the crowded financial capital, Lagos. Officially, only one death of the H5N1 strain was confirmed, but Nigerian newspapers said the woman—™s mother died with similar symptoms two weeks earlier, and a female relative was sick but recovered.

How often does New AIDS Review have to bring it to their attention that Vitamin A is the antidote to the generation of the Tumor Necrosis Factor in the lungs which Bird Flu triggers, which is the cause of the quick and horrible suffocation and death that a few hundred unimportant Indonesian peasants have suffered for lack of instruction to Dr Fauci’s office staff to fire up PubMed and insert the words Tumor Necrosis Factor Vitamin A?

Must the peasants stripped of their chickens now all starve simply because Dr Fauci cannot understand how PubMed works? Must the Times continue this grotesque comedy by printing absurdities when the correct solution is but a click away?

We are forced to the conclusion that marketing Tamiflu takes priority in whatever sources the Times uses in these news reports.

—œI—™ve gotten at least 10 media calls in the last few months asking me to deliver the death sentence for avian flu,—? said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. —œBut at any conference, if you get a group of virologists at the bar, after the fourth beer, they let their hair down and admit it —” they don—™t know what is happening. They—™ve been incredibly humbled by this virus.—?

(Pic is of lab researchers in Athens, Georgia swabbing the throats of chickens to see if a vaccine worked) Chastened ourselves by the evident lack of influence of New AIDS Review posts in the upper echelons of government we shed a tear for Bernie Matthews’ 165,000 innocent turkeys killed in Suffolk and another for the unfortunate farmers of Africa and Asia who don’t even get properly recompensed:

Nigerian farmers have complained that government cullers pay them only $2 for chickens that cost them $5 to $7 to raise. But payments, supported by the World Bank, seem to be made fairly promptly through local police stations.

Indonesia, by contrast, provides farmers with $1 vouchers that may not be cashed for three or four months, said Dr. Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, the country—™s director of animal health. —œIt—™s our weakest implementation,—? she admitted at a recent flu conference. —œIt should be treated as an emergency, but we still follow routine budget mechanisms.—?

Eighty percent of all Indonesian households keep poultry, and the flu is in 30 of the country—™s 33 provinces and still, she said, few take the threat seriously enough.

—œFarmers say dying chickens are normal in life,—? she said. —œAnd you must realize that 62 dead people in one and a half years? That—™s not very much in Indonesia. Three hundred thousand die from TB, from dengue. People in the villages don—™t grab what is a pandemic.—?

“At a recent flu conference”? No doubt there is quite a lot of activity at the conference level over bird flu, with officials and researchers gathering to catch up with the latest data already in their computers, in exotic locations where it is necessary to stay in the most expensive hotels to avoid the local water.
(Pic is of Ivory Coast bird flu dance, see below).

The New York Times

February 15, 2007
Scientists Warn That Bird-Flu Virus Remains a Threat
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

Last winter, as the deadly bird-flu virus marched out of Asia, across Europe and down into Africa, public health experts warned of the potential for a catastrophic pandemic like the Spanish flu of 1918.

This year, by contrast, bird flu seems all but forgotten, mentioned occasionally when it claims another life or when it causes a major outbreak in, say, a British turkey farm. With flu season reaching its peak, the question for many Americans now is whether the threat they are facing is not Spanish flu but swine flu —” another widely advertised menace that never materialized.

But that is premature, scientists say, cautioning that the virus is as dangerous and unpredictable as ever. It killed more people in 2006 than it did in 2005 or 2004, they point out, and its fatality rate is rising —” 61 percent now, up from 43 percent in 2005.

More worrisome, they say, is that the disease is out of control in birds in more places than ever, including the Nile delta in Egypt and Nigeria, where public health mechanisms are weak.

—œI—™ve gotten at least 10 media calls in the last few months asking me to deliver the death sentence for avian flu,—? said Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. —œBut at any conference, if you get a group of virologists at the bar, after the fourth beer, they let their hair down and admit it —” they don—™t know what is happening. They—™ve been incredibly humbled by this virus.—?

Since viruses with very high fatality rates, like Ebola, tend to burn themselves out by killing victims faster than those who are infected can pass it on, the increasing fatality rate —” still unexplained —” may be a silver lining. But the virus has plenty of mutational wiggle room —” the 1918 virus had a 2 percent fatality rate and yet still killed 50 million to 100 million because it was so transmissible.

That is why health experts remain cautious, warning that the pandemic could begin at any time and noting that February is a particularly risky month. The Year of the Pig begins on Feb. 18, and New Year—™s celebrations in China and Vietnam have become associated with flu outbreaks because so much poultry for family feasts is on the move.

Dr. Robert G. Webster, an internationally renowned virologist at St. Jude Children—™s Research Hospital in Memphis, ended a recent talk with a slide of three animals in a reference to Asia. —œWe—™ve survived the Year of the Chicken and the Year of the Dog,—? he said. —œWill we survive the Year of the Pig?—?

—œMy take-home message,—? Dr. Webster added, —œis don—™t become complacent. Don—™t trust this one.—?

Recent flu outbreaks among poultry in Britain and Hungary are not particularly worrying, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said, because those countries are proficient at eliminating veterinary diseases.

The British are very proficient at eliminating veterinary diseases by killing and incinerating animals, officials said, noting that more than 160,000 birds were swiftly killed to contain the British outbreak. The Hungarians are believed capable of the same sort of response.

But the virus is out of control in poultry in three countries —” Indonesia, Nigeria and Egypt —” with combined populations of 447 million people. A year ago, it was out of control only in Indonesia, and Thailand and Vietnam had stifled outbreaks, though the virus returned later. China remains a mystery; despite official denials, there is evidence that it is circulating there, too.

Most alarming to the experts, though it got relatively less attention, was the death in January of a 22-year-old Nigerian woman, an accountant who lived in the crowded financial capital, Lagos. Officially, only one death of the H5N1 strain was confirmed, but Nigerian newspapers said the woman—™s mother died with similar symptoms two weeks earlier, and a female relative was sick but recovered.

If true, that suggests a cluster of cases with possible human-to-human transmission. Tests on them were negative, but human H5N1 tests are best done on fresh samples from deep in the lungs, which are hard to obtain, and false negatives are common.

In Nigeria, despite the culling of 700,000 birds, avian flu has been found in birds in 19 of the country—™s 36 states, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. Dr. Oyedele Oyediji, president of the Animal Science Association of Nigeria, told local papers that bans on poultry movement and culling orders were simply not being enforced.

—œIf you go to the markets in Lagos now,—? he said, —œyou would notice that poultry products like guinea fowl, ducks, turkey and chicken from the northern part of the country are still available.—?

Nigerian farmers have complained that government cullers pay them only $2 for chickens that cost them $5 to $7 to raise. But payments, supported by the World Bank, seem to be made fairly promptly through local police stations.

Indonesia, by contrast, provides farmers with $1 vouchers that may not be cashed for three or four months, said Dr. Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, the country—™s director of animal health. —œIt—™s our weakest implementation,—? she admitted at a recent flu conference. —œIt should be treated as an emergency, but we still follow routine budget mechanisms.—?

Eighty percent of all Indonesian households keep poultry, and the flu is in 30 of the country—™s 33 provinces and still, she said, few take the threat seriously enough.

—œFarmers say dying chickens are normal in life,—? she said. —œAnd you must realize that 62 dead people in one and a half years? That—™s not very much in Indonesia. Three hundred thousand die from TB, from dengue. People in the villages don—™t grab what is a pandemic.—?

The picture is not entirely bleak, however. Dr. Joseph Domenech, the F.A.O.—™s chief veterinarian, said he thought the prospects for controlling the spread in birds were —œa lot better than three years ago or even one year ago.—?

For unknown reasons —” possibly weather patterns and better poultry vaccination in northern China —” not as many migrating swans and geese carried the virus across Western Europe and down into Africa as did last winter. The main culprit now in spreading the virus seems to be trade in poultry, health officials say.

Also, Dr. Domenech said, more poor countries have become alert to outbreaks. For example, he said, the virus was found last year in spots from the Ivory Coast to Cameroon, a 1,000-mile stretch of West Africa, in countries with —œvery weak animal health prevention.—? Despite nominal customs bans, Nigeria exports poultry throughout the region, he said.

—œBut we did not have any explosive outbreak,—? he said.

Also, African nations rarely follow the dangerous Asian practice of herding huge flocks of domestic ducks with clipped wings into paddies after harvests to eat leftover rice and snails. Their droppings can pass the infection among themselves and on to wild ducks. Vietnam tried to ban the practice, —œbut it was a mistake,—? Dr. Domenech said. —œIt cannot be enforced. So now they will vaccinate ducks instead.—?

The virus has also been found in cats. That is not new; one of the most startling outbreaks killed 103 tigers in a Thai zoo in 2004. But a recent sampling of 500 stray cats collected near bird markets in Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, found that 20 percent of them were infected. However, no human is known to have been infected by a cat.

World Health Organization reports almost always link human cases to poultry, but Dr. Naipospos, the Indonesian animal health official, released data at a flu conference in early February calling that into question. In the 82 human cases studied, she said, only 45 percent of victims were directly exposed to sick poultry. Thirty-five percent had —œindirect—? exposure, which meant sick birds in the neighborhood, and 20 percent were —œinconclusive.—?

Virologists say they believe that what must be avoided is a situation in which humans with seasonal flu catch H5N1, too, because the viruses could mix.

Indonesia—™s best prevention against that, Dr. Naipospos said, is the —œTamiflu blanket.—?

—œWe learned that in Garut,—? she said, referring to a cluster of cases last August in West Java. More than 20 people died or suffered serious symptoms. The government quickly gave the antiviral drug Tamiflu to more than 2,000 people. Ultimately, only three cases in the cluster were confirmed, but scientists say they suspect that some were missed.

Wacky Ivory Coast bird flu dance

Bird Flu Dance Craze Sweeps Ivory Coast

June 2, 2006—”This isn’t your grandfather’s Funky Chicken.

A local deejay is attempting to lighten the mood after the arrival of the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in early May. Twenty-one-year-old DJ Lewis has invented a wacky bird flu dance that is sweeping nightclubs in the West African country’s major city of Abidjan (Ivory Coast map).

The infectious craze has hundreds of people shaking, flapping their arms, and clucking on the dance floor—”an imitation of chickens’ death throes when they are culled to stop the virus from spreading.

“I created the dance to bring happiness to the hearts of Africans and to chase away fear—”the fear of eating chicken,” Lewis told the BBC.

“If we kill all our chickens and poultry, our cousins in the village will become poor. So I created the bird flu dance to put joy back into our hearts.”

Ivory Coast health experts have been encouraging people to continue eating chicken, saying well-cooked poultry poses little risk of transmitting bird flu.

—”Victoria Gilman

Scientific celebrity offers no valid defense to HIV∫AIDS critique save bluster

77 pages, finally, of dead paradigm for the “denialists” to dissect

The entire transcript from Bob Gallo’s somewhat undignified appearance via video in front of the Australian Supreme Court judge in Adelaide on Monday morning (Sunday evening Feb 11 in the US) is now available at David Crowe’s Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society home page, in the form of a pdf of a rather smudgy typewritten document. (Is the Adelaide Supreme Court unable to afford a computer for the court stenographer to use, or is this the cramped hand of tradition? If the 25 MB size is too big to download, readers are advised to use Adobe on the 3 MB size and not some other display software for maximum clarity).

The 77 page comedy is raw meat for the baying hounds of AIDS “denialism” (that is, any intelligent person willing to read the scientific literature critically, or the books of Peter Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, Rebecca Culshaw, Stephen Davis, or the many other critics and authors celebrated by this blog and by You Bet Your Life).

And therein lies the unprecedented status of this document and the court grilling that gave rise to it: this is the first time in history that the prophet of the HIV∫AIDS scientific cult, the chief instigator of what persuades billions that TB is not TB, drugs are not drugs, malnutrition is not malnutrition, etc but everything from a cold to a traffic accident that brings down man or woman is AIDS if HIV is present, has been put on the spit and roasted by anyone, journalist, legislator, or activist, let alone a lawyer defending a client from this scientific fairy tale (we speak judiciously, our phrase arising from a review of the best scientific literature in the field).

In fact, a prime reason why HIV∫AIDS has lasted longer in circulation than a daily paper used to wrap fish is precisely the alacrity with which Bob Gallo has till this point evaded difficult questions about his unlikely scientific boondoggle, such as “why is AIDS gay in the US and Europe and heterosexual in Africa and Asia?”

One of the most remarkable effects of Peter Duesberg’s initial broadsides fired from the pages of the highest scientific journals into the flank of Gallo’s royal HIV∫AIDS yacht was, in fact, that Gallo developed a mysterious nervous ailment.

This unfortunate health challenge prevented him appearing at the same scientific conferences as Duesberg, even when he was scheduled as the keynote speaker. The instant Gallo heard that Duesberg was going to attend, the ailment immediately created a sensitivity to family responsibilities that demanded his presence elsewhere.

This unusual psychological tic apparently was transmitted in the end to virtually every major figure in HIV∫AIDS science, including even that renowned tormenter of macaques and failed microbicide developer John P. Moore of Cornell, who actually posted a warning on the site he started last year devoted to combating AIDS “denialism” with what he represents as AIDS Truth. The notice tells readers that he will stoutly resist any application from journalist or “denialist” to get him to defend the status quo, since it needs no defense::

We will not:

Engage in any public or private debate with AIDS denialists or respond to requests from journalists who overtly support AIDS denialist causes. The reasons are:

1. The debate has been settled: HIV causes AIDS, AIDS kills, and AIDS can be treated with significant success by the use of antiretroviral therapy.
etc etc.

Meanwhile Anthony Fauci Director of NIAIDS at NIH, invaded by the same meme, has long made the evasion policy official for all bureacrats, scientists and public affairs spokespersons under his rule, ever since he blatantly advertised it in the American Association for the Advancement of Science monthly bulletin, reporting that he had told his sister that any journalist who raised the topic would not get the time of day from any scientist at NIH.

The media are great equalizers in science, which is most disturbing to us scientists. Any scientist quoted in the media becomes an “expert.” We know reporters must consult more than a single source and make room for dissenting opinions. But many people consider what is in the media to be true by definition.

One striking example is Peter Duesberg’s theory that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. I laughed at that for a while, but it led to a lot of public concern that maybe HIV was a hoax. The theory has extraordinary credibility just on the basis of news coverage. My barometer of what the general public is really thinking is my sister Denise. My sister Denise is an intelligent woman who reads avidly, listens to the radio, and watches television, but she is not a scientist. When she calls me and questions my integrity as a scientist, there really is a problem. Denise has called me at least ten times about Peter Duesberg. She says, “Anthony”–she is the only one who calls me Anthony–are you sure he’s wrong?” That’s the power of putting someone on televsion or in the press, although there is nothing in his argument that makes scientific sense. People are especially confused when they see divergent reports about the same thing. (The AAAS Observer, Sept 1, 1989; see page 162, Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg by Harvey Bialy (North Atlantic, 2004)

We wonder if Denise’s doubts were satisfied over the 17 years since, or whether she lost some of her early hero worship of her distinguished brother. Sisters are hard to fool.

Now we have a public appearance of Gallo in the hot seat with a defense lawyer demanding answers, a questioner not showing any of the signs of fawning acquiescence which has so far marked mainstream science journalists enquiring into the rationale which supports Gallo’s profitable paradigm.

The result is to blow away the camouflage that has hitherto concealed the sheer absurdity of what Gallo has persuaded the world to swallow and reveal it, so to speak scientifically and medically, as the biggest pile of Swiss cheese ever palmed off on an unsuspecting public as prime beef.

Gallo fudges in Clintonesque style

The full 77 pages is worth ploughing through if you are familiar with the unplanned caper which somehow has expanded into a global religion outpacing Christianity, since the comic pirouettes danced by Gallo in his masterly evasions of the true science of AIDS (ie that signalled by the lit