Science Guardian

Fine example of Meme in action as blogger rejects “denialism”

Fundamental mistake of HIV critics

Of interest to all those who wonder why it is that the scads of sceptics and myriad downright opponents of the ramshackle and inconsistency ridden HIV=AIDS paradigm make no headway at all even with those that should be concerned most about whether it is right or wrong, namely those who are rated HIV positive (ie have antibodies to HIV) in tests and subsequently follow their doctor’s orders and take “ARVs”, the AIDS drugs with all their unpleasant and ultimately often fatal side effects, the classic exchange reproduced below will tell them all they need to know.

This prize specimen of the complacency and total resistance of the paradigm faithful to any effort by well wishers to get them to review their basic assumption (otherwise known to the cognoscenti of this particular paradigm challenge as the virulent HIV-AIDS Meme, now globally pandemic and probably incurable in most cases, as in this instance) occurred at the end of March, 2008, and was provoked by a standard PC blog response by one Scott Swenson, Rev. Wright and PEPFAR, AIDS Complicity, to the views of the congregation-rousing preacher and pastor of Barack Obama, Rev Wright:

Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s comments about the government lying about AIDS are not isolated to black America, not even isolated to America at all, but are shared globally. They are not confined to conspiracy theorists or wackos, as difficult as that may be for some people hearing the concept for the first time to understand. Rev. Wright has said,
The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied.
The first African woman to ever win a Nobel Peace Prize, Wangari Maathai, shares these views,
In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare. Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious.

In 2005, a survey by the Rand Corporation found that half, that’s right, one in every two black Americans think AIDS is man-made, more than half believe the government has a cure they are withholding from the poor, and a quarter believe it was created in a government laboratory. As Phil Wilson, founder and Executive Director of the Black AIDS Institute, said in the Washington Post when the study was released,
It’s a huge barrier to HIV prevention in black communities. There’s an issue around conspiracy theory and urban myths. Thus we have an epidemic raging out of control, and African Americans are being disproportionately impacted in every single sense.
Google “government created AIDS” and up pops many sites and theories that AIDS experts have had to work overtime to confront. The “AIDS denialists”, people who believe that HIV does not cause AIDS, have been prolific in their attempts to offer different perspectives, some rooted in the beliefs that AIDS was deliberately spread, others believing it was simply an experiment gone awry. Still others believe the drugs (and profits drug companies are making from the disease) are more harmful than the disease itself.

For years, even South African President Thabo Mbeki ignored the devastation his country and continent experienced because he bought into the arguments of AIDS deniers.
When governments become complicit in public health pandemics, who can blame people for speculating?

Legitimate scientists and public health experts counter every argument at AIDS Truth.org. If you have doubts, please visit that site.

And so on. A promising beginning, but soon derailed by the usual assumption that any “denialism” in HIV/AIDS must be fringe lunacy and that the source of correction is none other than macaque researcher John P. Moore’s paradigm propaganda site, AIDSTruth.org.

The good pastor (we mention this in case you happened to be paying attention in the last two weeks to more meaningful affairs) you should know is now famous for referring to the “U S of KKK-A” and being used by the Clinton campaign in a vain bid to stain Obama by association with his supposed lack of patriotism (as in “patriotism, the last refuge of scoundrels” - Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary) and his supposed racism (racism as in pointing out that blacks still get the short end of the stick in virtually every realm of American public life outside entertainment).

The rousing Reverend is now recently retired from his fire and brimstone preaching against what he sees as the injustice and prejudice perpetrated against black Americans by white Americans, having made it clear that like many blacks he harbors deep suspicions that the “HIV virus” is a government concocted white attack on black America, and said so from the pulpit, an understandable piece of paranoia which as we have pointed recently here has a very high level of metaphorical truth to it, even if the specific reality he imagines is fiction.

Naturally his famous outbursts, viewed by tens of thousands on YouTube, have provoked all kinds of response in the blogosphere and the one by Scott is fully reproduced below with the comments that ran after it until today’s date (March 31 Mon) when it appears that author of the blog entry abruptly retired injured from any further interchange with his “denialist” readers, whom he characterizes as trying to “force” their opinions on him, which he will resist to the end, as nothing more than misinformation and personal attack, anonymous rhetoric and accusations, interfering with the work of saving himself and others from the effects of the Meme:

“I’m a person with HIV who has read your sites, believes like most people that I’ll stick with proven data as opposed to anonymous rhetoric and accusations, and continue to encourage people to trust their own experience with their bodies, their health care professionals, and their own research. Ultimately it is up to each individual to make their own choices and there will always be snake oil salesman parading as something they are not. What I “preach” here is for people to stay focused on the task at hand, preventing the further spread of a disease and not getting lost in the distractions that you and others make in the form of misinformation and personal attacks. My apologies that the timing and style of my posts are not more to your liking. It seems no one can get anything right but you. I will gladly make this my last reply to each of you.”

This despite the fact that some of the best and most succinct points that can be made to derail blind faith in the paradigm were made in this exchange, in an utterly reasonable manner, by some of the best minds that have been attracted by the great and enduring challenge of changing minds, dislodging absurdity and saving lives in this arena. We hadn’t heard from Cathyvm before, but her entries on Scott’s blog “RHReality Check” (RH stands for Reproductive Health) and some simultaneously here in our own Comments string set a new high level of informed reason and passionate concern.

And what was the standard reaction of Scott “Be the change you seek” Swenson, the man blessed with this brief hope of being better informed, whose native intelligence and charitable work was presumably the spur that excited the generous efforts of his betters to alleviate his admitted ignorance of the true state of science in the matter? Why, immediately to throw these well intentioned advisers off his tumbril, and this reflexive action purely for the sake of keeping up the speed of his and others’ journey towards the Place de la Concorde, and to ensure that everything being done to send more people in this direction should continue to be done as far and fast as possible:

You seem to be missing my point. I’ve read your studies, I’ve avoided medications, pursued alternatives and I’ve made my decision based on personal experience and reasoned study and judgment. No one has forced any belief upon me and neither will you. You continue to attempt to distract this debate from the main point in my original post, which proves my point, that in fact conspiracy theories and deniers are a distraction to the real work at hand — PREVENTING THE SPREAD OF DISEASE.

Meme bone protects brain

We offer this as the finest specimen of the Meme inhabiting a reasonably good mind and blocking contrary notions that has been demonstrated so far and so clearly in this field, where the Meme is pandemic. We are not singling out the unhappy Swenson for ad hominem trashing, we are exhibiting him as typical of a problem which defeats the correction of the HIV meme at every turn. This is the classic Catch-22 of HIV debate: those suffering from the ruling notion, which acts as a sort of mental tape worm, have no idea that their intellectual digestion is constricted by the presence of this devil, invisible to them but assiduously diverting all new ideas into its own gaping mouth.

So they imagine that criticizing the fundamental assumption they live by is criticizing the way they implement it, like a driver thinking maybe he is not driving well enough rather than understanding that those who are waving and shouting at him are telling him that someone has turned the signposts around and he is heading down the wrong road.

The whole topic of extending misinformation to black Americans reminds us of the unfortunate Arthur Ashe, celebrated tennis player and HIV positive forced onto his tumbril by his doctors despite being warned of the alternative views of the incorruptible Peter Duesberg. Arthur read Duesberg’s writings and confessed that they seemed very persuasive to him, but he had to leave them to others to pursue, he said. He had no alternative but to trust his doctors. Some time later, in those days of full dose AZT, he was dead

Unfortunately, Scott vouchsafes that while earlier he had the sense to abjure the drugs and take up alternatives, now he is back on them, so we fear losing him soon in the same fashion. Except that like so many patients, he is so sure he is on the right path that that confidence itself will help him along.

An exchange worth reading through

The brief episode highlights in a way that longer threads, such as the ones at Tara Smith’s Aetiology, do not, the manner in which people talk past each other when the scientifically minded try to inform the scientifically averse, when the minds of the latter are inhabited by the viral HIV=AIDS Meme.

Certainly the dissenters offered some fine posts in vain for the enlightenment of the hapless Scott, whose Meme renders him deaf to some of the most powerfully succinct summary evisceration of the reigning ideology of HIV=AIDS we have yet seen.

Others may benefit, however. The thread is long, though mercifully short compared with Aetiology blockbusters, and starts off with irrelevant material about Wright, but is so full of accurate and succinct high explosive, including some by our own distinguished MacD, who wrote as Brown on RHReallityCheck, and Cathyvm, a new and impressive voice for sanity in this increasingly absurd field, that we think the relevant part it is worth reviewing blow by blow:.

AIDS Truth?

Mr. Swenson,

It may be obvious to you and Marysia by virtue of certain undisclosed “transmission routes” that HIV is a virus. However, I don’t think that entitles you to peddle pure ignorance and prejudice.

Firstly, you use the term “denialists” to refer to those who question the official theory(ies) of AIDS, with which you are obviously no more familiar than with the
“denialists” themselves. “Denialist” was a term invented to smear critics of all stripes and associate them with holocaust deniers in the public mind. What is your justification for using this inflammatory term when you can’t even explain their main positions?….
Submitted by Brown on March 25, 2008 - 4:05pm.

(To which Scott “Be the change you seek” Swenson replied

Thank you for your sober and scientific rant. Being HIV positive myself, I have a firm and intimate grasp of the facts about HIV and AIDS, their causal relationship and their spread…. etc….

Be the change you seek,

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 26, 2008 - 7:39am.)

Civil Tone vs. Rant
I recognize that you’ve answered in a slightly more civil tone than I’ve used, however, that in no way changes the fact that you’re spewing the kind of prejudice and ignorance I normally only encounter on the right-wing hate blocks.

1. I don’t know if it was meant as an argument from authority but being HIV-positive means you have a personal interest in the issue, not that you have a firm grasp of it.

2. Those who question (not “deny”) that HIV causes AIDS stand in no relationship whatsoever to those who think it is spread intentionally or, even broader, “ideologues” of any stripe you don’t approve of. You have exchanged a falsehood for a smear: guilt by far-fetched association.

What you are doing is censoring intellectual debate concerning HIV and AIDS by lumping scientific critique and religious fanatics together. Are you also of the opinion we cannot critique the rationale for Iraq War because it endangers our troops? Or that we cannot inquire into the legality of governmental surveillance because it plays into the hands of terrorists?

3. Unfortunately you missed the point about racial disparity. The disparity has been consistent all through the HIV era for all demographics. This means that for Blacks and Whites in similar social and financial situations Blacks still test positive far more often than Whites. Native American Indians are even poorer than Blacks and they do not test positive at anywhere near the same rates as Blacks. In fact, they are much closer to Whites.

If you would have taken the trouble to go through the critiques of “Doubters” such as Peter Duesberg, the “Perth Group” and many others, you would have discovered that inexplicable, unforeseeable and highly embarrassing blunders, such as this:

Vaccine Failure Is Setback in AIDS Fight

or this:

Indian HIV estimate cut to 2.5 million people

are neither inexplicable, nor unforeseen by those you please to call “denialists”.

But I guess you’re so intimately familiar with the topic that these things and hundreds more examples I could come up with, like the initial high dose AZT fiasco (You do remember the “incubation period” for HIV used to be a LOT shorter back in the good old AZT-80s don’t you?), will only serve to convince you that anybody who doesn’t believe in chemo-therapy for pregnant mothers and their babies must be a nazi. How about chemo as a pre-sex prophylactic, does that strike you as Serious and Responsible enough?

Bonus question 1. Since you’re well into all aspects of these issues, perhaps you can tell us deniers what the gold standard for the EIA/ELISA and Western Blot HIV tests is - the tests I presume informed yourself that you are infected with an invincible, super-mutating, 100% lethal retrovirus, which somehow jumped the species barrier right into the American population at the exact time our biotech revolution developed the tools to discover such things indirectly?

Bonus question 2: How does HIV manage to kill cells at a higher rate than they can be regenerated?

Submitted by Brown on March 27, 2008 - 3:11pm……

The Mark of a Serious and Responsible Scientist

You have placed yourself in excellent company Mr. Brown.

The Serious and Responsible AIDStruth website you link as the final authority on all matters HIV/AIDS remarkably assumes the exact same courageous stance as yourself: Slander individuals, misrepresent dissenting views, censor when possible. Here is part of their “Answering Denialists” manifesto:

“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.”

But I shall spare you another rant, as you kindly call it, and bow out before the temptation to censor becomes too strong for you.

Submitted by Brown on March 27, 2008 - 4:19pm….

(To which Scott “Be the change you seek” Swenson replied:

Heckuva job Brownie …

Sorry Brown, not interested in taking your tests, have spent more than enough time reading the HIV skeptics sites and watching their circular logic you tube videos. For me and many others it all boils down to this: The disease is real, we have seen too many die and prefer to spend our time working to prevent the spread of the disease than arguing with you. You can throw all the links and test questions you want up in your next rant, I’m going to continue trying to make sure we get the right prevention tools and education to the people who need them. If only all the energy spent trying to divert attention could instead be spent teaching people to practice safer sex, delay sexual debut, remain faithful to partners and getting services and education to populations that need them, we might make more progress.

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 27, 2008 - 3:46pm.

Brown then shot back with this:

The Mark of a Serious and Responsible Scientist

You have placed yourself in excellent company Mr. Swenson.

The Serious and Responsible AIDStruth website you link as the final authority on all matters HIV/AIDS remarkably assumes the exact same courageous stance as yourself: Slander individuals, misrepresent dissenting views, censor when possible. Here is part of their “Answering Denialists” manifesto:

“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.”

But I shall spare you another rant, as you kindly call it, and bow out before the temptation to censor becomes too strong for you.

Submitted by Brown on March 27, 2008 - 4:19pm.

(To which Scott “Be the Change” Swenson immediately typed back:

Scientific Theory

Brownie, my understanding of scientific theory (albeit a lay understanding) is that once the scientific community has reached certain conclusions they become accepted, until proven otherwise. What seems to be the case here is that the people on the outside of science with respect to HIV/AIDS just can’t accept the fact that they have been proven wrong, so they keep carping, thus distracting others from the real task at hand, preventing further spread of HIV. If you want to debate gravity or where exactly the four corners of the earth are, go right ahead. Just don’t confuse innocent people who need prevention and treatment in the meantime.

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 27, 2008 - 4:36pm.)

Brown riposted:

My Beliefs

….If you knew anything about the theories I
“peddle”, or if you’re not just trying to smear, you would of course know that I (rather those scientists whose points I argue) do not consider it likely there is such a thing as an “AIDS” virus. I do not believe an HIV-positive test result can be reversed by having sex, although it could possibly be reversed by moving to another country. Likewise, the “AIDS” one has in the US if one tests HIV-positive and has a CD4 count below 200 could reliably be cured merely by crossing the border to Canada. Does that sound like mumbo jumbo to you? Well it does to me too. The mystical reason is that the criteria for an HIV positive test and the definition of “AIDS” are not standardized the world over.

As far as Africa goes, I think it likely that what we call AIDS is largely a renaming of old diseases. The problem would disappear with better living standards, sanitation, clean water, proper nutrition, effective treatment of emdemic diseases such as TB and malaria and, especially in South Africa, reductions in pollution.

I do not find the correlation between HIV and AIDS good enough to consider an HIV-positive test much more than a non-specific marker for some kind of challenge or accumulation of challenges and/or stressors to/of the immune system. The US statistics showing that Blacks are consistently much more likely to test positive than Whites across all demographics and during the whole HIV era, gives plausibility to the view that because of genetic differences Blacks are more likely to test positive.

Thus an HIV-positive test is certainly cause for concern, but not an indication that one is infected with an “AIDS virus” that can only be combated with DNA chain terminators, protease inhibitors, integrase inhibitors etc. all highly poisonous. I believe that for some “AIDS” defining diseases,some of these drugs may have some benefit if used judiciously, but that it is madness to give them to clinically healthy people on background of an HIV-positive result, high “viral load” count, that does not count live virus, or low CD4 counts independent of clinical symptoms.

Submitted by Brown on March 27, 2008 - 5:24pm.

At this another poster backed up Brown:

Well said, Mr.Brown

Well said, Mr. Brown……Well said. The bumbling incompetent unproven and ever conflicting “science” of believing HIV is the cause of AIDS is now going into its 26th unfruitful year.

For further information for those willing to educate themselves, the March 2006 Harpers Article: “AIDS: OUT OF CONTROL, AND THE CORRUPTION OF MEDICAL SCIENCE”, can be found online.

But woe to those religious heretics who question the HIV equals AIDS dogma. For no human ego, and certainly no over paid scientist or doctor, wants to ever admit he or she had erroneous beliefs!

In defence of Reverend Wright, even though I believe him to be quite mistaken about HIV, it is certainly understandable why he would believe HIV were “invented” to do away with unwanted groups of people. Throughout modern history, there have certainly been those in our government, as well as in positions of power throughout the world, who sought the possible means of doing away with unwanted groups, indigenous peoples, religious groups, as well as population control. Genocide and Eugenics are nothing new. There is great evidence of this throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, beginning with smallpox infected blankets being given to American Indians. Nazi Germany clearly showed us that our parents or grandparents lived in a world of such thinking. Genocides in Europe, Africa, and elsewhere still confront mankind today. Even in the latter years of the former apartheid government of South Africa, there were those considering a full extermination of the blacks, in order to hold onto control of the country and its wealth.

In looking at such facts, it is certainly understandable how Mr. Wright might come to believe AIDS were “created” for just such a situation.

However, Mr. Wright, as well as the rest of the HIV believers, including Mr. Swenson, Marysia, and all others who yet blindly follow the belief that HIV is the cause of AIDS, continue to ignore the realities of those who are suffering actual illness and disease, and the obvious effects on their immune systems of lives lived in an emotional state of helpless hopelessness, intensely high stress, drugs both licit and illicit, poverty, malnutrition, the strain of population explosions throughout the continent of Africa (whose population just so happens to have doubled over the last 25 years to now nearly one billion people), and the humiliations of still current racism and colonialism, as well as religiously based homophobism and the rejection and shaming of gays that still deeply and excruciatingly affects some gays in the western world.

These are the facts and realities that are and have been and continue to be at the very core of the illnesses suffered by those who are stricken with failed immune systems. No simple pill nor any vaccine will cure any of these maladies.

Yet, the HIV believers, and their viagra inspired belief that a pill is the answer to all of the hard questions, or that a simple pill will cure all of the worlds ills, are the single greatest barricade to confronting the very factual and very real reasons why millions of people yet get deathly sick and fail to heal, and fail to thrive.

Yet even this is very understandable, as there have been wonderful advances in science, technology, and medicine. And it is understandable that fears of plagues are still deeply entrenched in the minds of man. Much of today’s germaphobia of HIV, Sars, BirdFlu, etc, is just a modern extension of it.

But what is difficult to understand, is how 99 percent of the humans in the world can be so deluded by fear inspired falsehoods, and so unwilling or unable to empathize with gays being dispossessed by religions, families, and societies, or how so many can be unwilling or unable to empathize with the dispossessed starving downtrodden, poverty stricken masses. Yet all the while, blame an imaginary virus as the cause of the problem, and believe that a pill is the solution.

Question: How is it that so very many are yet so oblivious to the very simple realities of life on this planet, as well as some of the very simple solutions to much of these problems?

Answer: Human fear, human programming, human egos, and human greed.

www.duesberg.com
www.rethinkingaids.com
www.hivskeptic.wordpress.com

Submitted by Another take on it. on March 27, 2008 - 9:28pm.

(This is the point where Swenson agreed that poverty, malnutrition etc were part of the problem, but asserted that the drugs benefited HIV positive people and extended their lives, and he recommended AIDSTruth.org as the source of corrective science on the problem of “conspiracy theory” thinking in the field:

Common Ground, Not Just A Pill

Dear Another Take On It …. I completely agree with you that poverty, malnutrition, colonialism parading now as global trade, racism and misogyny/machismo/patriarchy/homophobia all feed into the spread of disease. On those issues we agree. I’ll even go so far as to say the pill(s) are NOT and should never be the entire focus of any policy to combat AIDS. Education, prevention, strengthening the role of women, fair trade, nutrition, clean water, sound economies and an end to bigotry will get us closer to the end of AIDS than any pill. But for people already infected, fighting for all those good causes you mention, if the treatment works, and gives them more life with which to fight for those causes, which many HIV+ people around the world do, then why stand in the way? Why not extend the life of positive people that they too might see the changes in the world we agree are needed? The science is clear, for people diagnosed with what science agrees is HIV, the meds extend life. Period. Are they toxic, do they have side effects, should they be given only with strict medical supervision — the answer to all these is definitively yes. If you believe in bettering the world as you suggest then surely you want to see people diagnosed with whatever you choose to believe HIV is live to enjoy the fruits of your labor. Are there some people who can live a long time without meds, yes again, with proper medical supervision. The pills are not the answer, they are a means to an end to strengthen people that might otherwise already be dead so we can together fight for a better life for the next generation. And since you offered more links, I’d like to repeat mine for readers seeking the currently accepted scientific understanding of facts related to HIV/AIDS, found at AIDSTruth.org.

But Brown then pointed out that the drugs might have a short term effect but were seriously toxic if not fatal soon enough:

Shifting Common Ground

Mr. Swenson

There should indeed be plenty of common ground for us to meet on. I would never advise anybody to stop taking medicine (s)he feels is helpful, and with which his/her doctor agrees. But do we not believe in informed consent? You say the science is clear, the HIV-drugs help those supposedly infected with HIV. How many MDs do you think are aware, never mind inform a clinically healthy patient with a positive HIV test and a high viral load/low CD4 count, of for example the peer-reviewed studies cited in this piece of dissident literature:

“The short-lived “Lazarus effect.” AIDS drugs can be effective in the short term against some fungal, bacterial or parasitic infections, but down the road, they gradually destroy health and life. In the U.S., peer-reviewed studies now acknowledge that AIDS treatment drugs cause more illness and death among HIV positives than AIDS-defining diseases do. In a recent study published in the Journal of AIDS, “All four classes of antiretrovirals (ARVs) and all 19 FDA-approved ARVs have been directly or indirectly associated with life-threatening events and death.” A study published in 2002 showed that deaths attributable to ARVs “surpassed deaths due to advanced HIV.” Other studies have found that people on AIDS drugs are twice as likely to die from liver and kidney failure and heart attacks as from AIDS-defining diseases.

The devastating effects of nevirapine. Nevirapine, commonly touted as a miracle drug for reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, causes liver failure and Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rash that actually burns off layers of skin. The drug’s clinical studies in Uganda showed the opposite of reducing mother-to-child transmission and were so scandal ridden that nevirapine’s manufacturer, Boehringer-Ingelheim, withdrew its applications for nevirapine use by pregnant women in the U.S. and Canada. Because of this, nevirapine has never been approved for use among pregnant women in America, Canada, Europe or any First World nation. Several mothers died from nevirapine use in trials in the U.S. and Africa.

Death by AZT. AZT, one of the main drugs promoted by the (RED) campaign, is one of the most toxic drugs ever approved for human use. It caused tens of thousands of premature deaths among the first generation of Western HIV positives who took it in the late 1980s. AZT is
carcinogenic, mutagenic, brain damaging, and toxic to all cells in the human body, especially immune system cells. Researchers have found AZT to cause severe mitochondrial disorders, tumors, blood cancers, anemia, severe birth defects and other disorders.

The tragedy of AZT for children. A Florida study found that rapid progression to AIDS-defining diseases was “three times more likely” in AZT-treated infants than in untreated ones. Many other studies have compounded this tragic finding. In 2000, British science writer Neville Hodgkinson wrote, “An Italian study examining 200 HIV-positive children found that, at three years old, children whose mothers took AZT in pregnancy were ’significantly more likely’ to become seriously ill than babies of untreated mothers. They also had a higher death rate.”

AZT’s admitted toxicity. The inventor of AZT, Professor Richard Beltz, has warned of AZT’s long-term toxicities. Referring to the media-besieged government of South Africa, he wrote to advocate (lawyer) and magistrate A. Brink:

“I hope you succeed in convincing your government not to make AZT available.””

Active links to some of the studies can be found at rethinkingaids.com (second link submitted above at the end of the Comment by “Another take on it”) where I have quoted from. And there is much, much more on the various dissident sites, all quoting official sources and peer-reviewed studies. Why should this not be allowed to be taken into account in the doctor’s office - by the patient him/herself?

In Africa the situation is trickier: a villager who is told by the White Authority from Abroad that she and her baby are going to die if they don’t stop breastfeeding and start nevirapine immediately is unable to assess the situation, so this is all politics. Your article is about PEPFAR. The strong men behind PEPFAR want more treatment (more pills) less of other stuff. This is where our common ground is shrinking:

““U.S. Senators Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), a practicing physician and Richard Burr (R-NC) today introduced legislation that would ensure the highest priority for U.S. global HIV/AIDS funding would be saving lives by providing treatment to those infected and eliminating baby AIDS by preventing the transmission of HIV from mother to child.”

Id=20080312006354&newsLang=en…

And in case you want to say this does not exclude the improvements in general health the dissidents are calling for, here’s the basic idea:

“I am concerned that many health programs in Asia, Africa, and the western hemisphere will be forced to shut down or greatly reduce operations under the president’s request,” said Congresswoman Lowey.

While it increases funds for HIV/AIDS, Lowey notes that the president’s request cuts $251 million from 2008 levels for health programs she and others say complement HIV/AIDS efforts.”

http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-03-11-voa92.cfm

Are dissidents really equal to holocaust deniers for agreeing with the Congresswoman? Here’s what Tshabalala Msimang, the much maligned South African Minister of Health has to say:

“However, South Africa’s health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who addressed the meeting yesterday, urged the EU not to focus on a single disease.

“We have many diseases in Africa that somehow never get mentioned because we have become so one-disease focused,” she said.”

http://www.dispatch.co.za/article.aspx?id=182523

Is Msimang’s objection really that of a murderous woman in denial?

For less technical discussions focusing on the politics of HIV/AIDS the interested reader can try:

http://newaidsreview.com/blog/index.php

Submitted by Brown on March 28, 2008 - 11:18am.

Another Take on It chimed in with the fact that the beneficial effect of the drugs is quite unproven because they have never been compared with a control group since 1987, and as far as we know a sugar pill might even do better, especially if the diseases incurred were treated directly. Moreover, the money trail led to serious questions as to bias:

Scott, you said: “The

Scott, you said:

“The science is clear, for people diagnosed with what science agrees is HIV, the meds extend life. Period.”

This statement, quite clearly to me at least, is obviously coming from your being well “programmed” in your beliefs, Scott. Perhaps from having so often heard the drug industries slogan of “life saving drugs”. I’m afraid that this statement is only a scientific fact in your and many other peoples imaginations only.

And here is the proof of my statement: There has been ABSOLUTELY NO placebo test of ABSOLUTELY ANY HIV DRUG, since 1987. Therefore it is absolutely NOT scientifically proven that any of the drugs have any effect at all other than the well proven toxic effects. It is nowhere in any scientific study shown that a mere sugar pill and appropriately treatment of the actual opportunistic infections would not do just as well or even better than any and all of the HAART drugs.

To be absolutely honest, there is no evidence whatsoever that any of the hiv drugs are in any way, shape, or form, extending of life, and study after study clearly shows the opposite!

Furthermore, studies have been highly corrupted by not showing who in the studies are drug addicts, not showing who were formerly dying of starvation, tb, malaria, etc, etc, etc, and also not showing WHAT ELSE they had been treated with to cure existing opportunistic infections. Therefore, every study to date has been highly corrupted, fast tracked through the FDA with most often absolutely no long term follow-up as is required by the fast track rules, as well as run and directed and paid for by the pharmacuetical company whose product was at stake.

The ACTG studies are most often done and run by individuals who are also highly invested in the drug companies…..

What with the now more than 110 billions of dollars that have been unsceptically and unquestionably thrown at it for the last 25 years? What with 530 of the top directors and scientists at the NIH having been found 2 years ago of taking undisclosed cash and stock from big pharma? Including 2 million to the former director of all AIDS drug clinical trials?

Just a bit naive of you and all the other wannabe do gooders, don’t you think?

Submitted by Another take on it. on March 28, 2008 - 11:14pm.

Yello stepped in too with the basic point that proper food not dangerous pills is clearly what African “AIDS” patients are most in need of:

I agree with Mr. Brown and

I agree with Mr. Brown and Mr. Swenson on the key issues of resolving the horrific consequences of abject poverty in Africa and anywhere else. I am a dissident, like Mr. Brown;
I look at the officially publish literature on the hypothetical “HIV”/AIDS link and find it sorely wanting.
Were it not for the politics and reputations as well as the cash flow, this disgusting medical miasma would have been junked years ago.

I am however, heartened to see a new group of mainstream AIDS researchers finally recognized that we need to deal with the root causes of the “AIDS epidemic” (all reformulated old diseases). Researchers like Eileen Stillwagon among others are insisting that ARVs are
worthless if we cannot ensure that all poor people
have food, clean water, stable sociopolitical economies and reliable local networks to provide all three.

The greatest demand of the majority of African HIV+ people
isn’t drugs, its food. They need food, good nutritious food.
Jeffrey Sachs visited many villages with people stated to be HIV+ and they always wanted food, not drugs, food!

The insanity of current african HIV/AIDS preventive programs has condoms and ARVs passed out like party favours while blind to the starvation and deprivation around them.

Tell me, how are these ARVs going to work with a malnourished, stressed population?

Submitted by Y’ello on March 29, 2008 - 11:48am.

Another Take on It then got in a nice crack at Scott’s expense having noticed he had retreated somewhat in his confidence that he was up to speed on HIV and AIDS science.

” Mr. Swenson, in one

Mr. Swenson, in one sentence above, you assure us of your firm knowledge on the subject at hand:

“Being HIV positive myself, I have a firm and intimate grasp of the facts about HIV and AIDS, their causal relationship and their spread”.

Then you later admit it is not so firm:

“Brownie, my understanding of scientific theory (albeit a lay understanding)….”

I do commend you for recognising, sir, that you do not know all there is to know on the subject, as one who thinks they already know all can learn nothing new…..”

Scott’s reply was a strongminded blast of conviction that his own experience fit his understanding perfectly and established that the drugs were proven helpful and enabled his friends to survive where those that listened to denialist claims had suffered, and placebo trials be damned. What would arguing denialist theories do to stop the spread of AIDS? What good would listening to denialist theories do for a young woman in Africa who tested positive, he demanded? Would she become the object of denialist scorn too?

Classic Distortion

Another take, Nice twisting of my words. By acknowledging my status I stated that my knowledge was “firm and intimate” not that of a scientist. Never in this dialog have I claimed to be a scientist. My knowledge is like that of millions of others who are HIV positive, based on extensive reading, including the information and sites of skeptics; evaluating alternative methods; paying attention to my own body and experience. All of the research I’ve done, again, like many people diagnosed, has been about understanding how to live with HIV. What I’ve learned is simple: I can’t imagine having this disease without supports, including basic and essential nutrition, clean water, and the ability to make decisions for myself. I can’t imagine not having the support of family, community, employment. I can’t imagine not having a wide range of medical data and expertise from which to draw the best conclusions for me. In other words, I can’t imagine what people in the developing world must deal with. But I’ve seen it, so I don’t have to imagine. You can continue adding skeptics/denialist links here all you want. When your scientific research proves your points to the place it is accepted by the scientific community, we’ll welcome them. Until then, I’m going to stick with my lay understanding of the earth being round, not based on any research I’ve done, but on accepted scientific fact and my own experience of the planet. People I know in the earliest tests for ARVs, prior to compassionate access, lived well during trials and died following them, when the test drugs were removed. Those tests were blinded and placebos were part of the trail, there was no assurance that the dying people volunteering were given actual medicines. To many people that seemed cruel, as cruel as taking the meds away after the trial. People I know avoided using medications for years in part because of claims and confusion of the denialist community, carefully monitoring their numbers taking care of themselves, and still wound up in the hospital. Those who survived went on meds and are now living healthy, strong lives managing the disease mindful of side effects of any meds, particularly any as strong as these. I’m sorry that I have not double blinded my experience with HIV to your satisfaction, or that my experience doesn’t have the equivalent of a placebo for you, it being real. Your beef, to the extent you have one is not with me or the millions of people learning every day to live with this disease, and all you are doing here is proving the point of my original piece. The larger point I made, which you studiously avoid with your personal attacks and efforts to establish more links for your web site, is that your efforts are not preventing the spread of AIDS at all, are they? You bemoan efforts to get prevention methods and education to people, and wow people with your theories, but what good is any of it to a young woman in Africa who today will be exposed to what I call HIV, what you call XYZ, because she cannot negotiate a sexual relationship with her husband who has contracted the virus? What do all your papers and links and rants do for her? Will her opinion and experience be the subject of scorn for you as mine is? Do only you know the truth?

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 30, 2008 - 7:01am.

It was at this point that Cathyvm a newcomer to the debate arrived and delivered a bunkerbuster with the authority of an experienced medical writer on AIDS:

An independent dissenter

I agree with Y’ello. As a medical writer I wrote a lot about ARVs at the end of the 1990s when HAART drugs were proliferating. Study after study and all I could do was wonder - so their CD4 cell counts went up, and their “viral loads” dropped, but did they live any longer? Did they have a better quality of life? Despite the plethora of studies my question was never (and to this day still hasn’t been) answered.
Current disability has allowed me free reign and plenty of time to peruse the literature. When I looked at the HIV-AIDS papers I was stupefied. The evidence that HIV caused AIDS was completely absent. I actually sat in front of my computer crying. At this point I did not know of the existence of the dissidents and egotistically thought I was the only person on the planet to have figured this out. I wasn’t ’swayed’ by anybody’s argument - I have seen the evidence (or lack of) with my own eyes.
If there is controversy (and there is plenty) I think any scientist refusing to even look at evidence refuting his/her pet HIV theory is committing intellectual dishonesty of the worst kind, because this dishonesty is causing unnecessary suffering and death. I did not enter the medical profession in order to harm people, and find the attitude of the “Establishment” inexplicable.
Since qualifying 25 years ago I have seen many erroneous theories come and go, but this one has stuck like the proverbial brown stuff on the blanket because there is so much financial, emotional and political investment. It has become a black hole of truth, honesty and integrity.
Mr Swenson you seem like an intelligent man. Please go and read the evidence for yourself - it might just save your life.

Submitted by Cathyvm on March 29, 2008 - 9:09pm.

(To which Scott, demonstrating the power of the Meme in blocking even the core reviewing neurons in the brain, wrote that he shed tears for Cathy toobut after avoiding the meds for years he had given in “at death’s door” and arguing with skeptics was a useless diversion from effective action in fighting poverty, malnutrition and bad water:

Cathyvm

Cathyvm,

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 30, 2008 - 7:28am.)

To which Your Truth is Not My Truth very accurately replied that in the absence of more information there were many other factors that could have caused Swenson’s illness, obviously, including the mental stress which was relieved when he finally did take the “meds”, and the power of belief could never be underestimated:

“For years I avoided the

“For years I avoided the meds, with a doctor’s supervision, only to knock on death’s door”.

Scott, thanks for sharing, but you are only giving us only a very tiny anecdotal piece of the picture of what all was going on with you and your life at the time.

And what do you mean you had “knocked on death’s door”? You did not tell us the actual illness/’es that you had contended with? And just how is it that you know that whatever actual illness you had dealt with is any kind of evidence that HIV was the cause? After all, just the stress alone of being told one is HIV positive is enough to make the strongest and healthiest of people sick. Google the words stress and thymus. Stress is well proven to cause the thymus gland, where one’s CD-4 T Cells are created by the way, to shut down. High stress can cause the thymus to shrink by 50% in 24 hours. Ongoing high levels of stress cause thymus malfunction to also be ongoing, and continuing in such a state can most definitely lead to the straw that finally breaks the camels back.

Without more forthcoming info, we don’t know if you had some fungal infections perhaps from taking too many antibiotics, KS or PCP perhaps from poppers sniffing, or if you simply were stressing out over your diagnosis, and finally got run down and came down with pneumonia or other common illnesses, just the same as many hiv negative people do. Or if you had been abusing your body with poor eating habits or even illicit drugs prior to your illness.

There can be many reasons that contribute to illness, regardless of HIV diagnosis status.

You also did not tell us what all you did, or what other changes you made at the time of regaining health besides HIV drugs. Did you reach a point of acceptance over a lost love affair? Did you make peace with yourself or your maker? Did you stop using drugs or alcohol? Such factors are very important to healing and one should not overlook them and simply ascribe all healing to be drug induced when there are usually many more factors involved.

You also did not tell us the extenuating circumstances that were underlying your life and emotional circumstances, that highly likely also led up to your actual illness, such as extremely high levels of inner emotional stress prior to your actually becoming ill, or perhaps prior medications or other drug use that may have contributed, or even the stress inducing and body weakening effects of your own prior mental expectations of eventually getting ill because you are programmed to believe that such would happen because you had earlier tested HIV poz. After all, you said you were seeing a doctor even before you got ill and before you took any meds. So, you were seeing him/her even when you were completely well. Most likely, you were also following CD counts and viral load numbers and further scaring yourself silly every time the numbers went up and down. Did you yourself, along with your doctor’s assistance, perhaps finally succeed in actually nearly scaring you to the point near death sickness?

I would only hope you could be honest, not with me, Scott, but with yourself, in addressing these very important factors that you yourself have likely been in denial of and have continued to overlook while blaming all your illness on HIV, and while contending that your wellness was the result of taking the meds. Undoubtedly finally taking the meds also certainly reduced your stress level if you had earlier been stressed out over the fear of getting sick because you were not taking them, but a simple sugar pill may have done the same.

You might or might not want to analyze this carefully, because it is highly likely that your own experiences are yet more evidence of the “power of your own mind”,as well as the “power of suggestion”, as well as the placebo effect of getting well after taking some med because you, convinced by your doctors, simply believed you would.

I don’t know what the truth is Scott, but I am also sure that you, as well as JP Moore, who’s supposed AIDStruth site you love to promote, are not necessarily the holders of all higher truths either.

Submitted by Your truth is not my truth. on March 30, 2008 - 1:48pm.

(Immune to this line of reasoning, Swenson then maintained his position that arguing with people who believe only they are right is a waste of time and that he preferred to go with his own experience and beliefs which had enabled him to survive today, rather than anything “you promote”:

Thanks for making my point again…

I’m not assuming my truth is your truth, but I assuming that by putting more energy toward preventing the spread of disease we would all be better off — the only point I’ve consistently tried to make through many attempts at diversion and distraction in this dialog. I offer anecdotes and speak from personal experience because I want other HIV+ people to understand that their experience with their bodies is more valuable than all the conspiracy theories and deniers. My experience also counters many of the assumptions made about me in earlier comments, and demonstrates that many doctors are not pushing drugs, but learning how to manage a complicated disease and are open to alternative methods. While I’d love to publish my entire medical and personal history here online for you to pick over, perhaps you might trust me enough to understand my truth and what I say and not suggest that just because I don’t agree with you that I’m wrong, or worse, lying. That mentality, that everyone else in the world is wrong and only you can possibly be right, is classic of conspiracy theorists and deniers of every stripe.

Scott Swenson, Editor

Submitted by Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check on March 31, 2008 - 8:15am.)

Brown very reasonably urged him to reconsider, pointing out that the key issue was what was the cause of AIDS illnesses and vouchsafing that his extensive acquaintance with Thai prostitutes had uncovered very little actual “AIDS”, and no one was “lording it” over the bloggger, who could find thousands of discussants at another Website overwhelmingly against the drugs:

Peace

Mr. Swenson,

We seem to have returned to your initial mistake, confusing HIV and AIDS. Nobody denies the reality of what you call
“AIDS”; nobody questions the very real diseases you and others may be struggling with. We question the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS.

The African woman who cannot negotiate a sexual relationship
with her husband has no way of knowing whether what knocks her down 10 years later is HIV or something else. Neither have you.

I have spent the past 8 years among supposedly high-risk people (Thai prostitutes). I’ve known dozens of them for years and I am struggling to find even anecdotal cases of “AIDS”. Is your eyewitness account worth more than mine?

I’ll tell you the difference between Africa and Thailand, my friend: the living standards are much better in Thailand, and so the prostitutes who work in the tourist areas don’t get “AIDS” unless they are heavily into drugs, which very few of them are.

It is depressing to see that you think well-informed critics are “lording it” while you link to the “scientific proof” that HIV causes AIDS on AIDStruth.org and similar places. We’ll meet you on any level you desire. This website, the largest dissident forum in cyberspace, has hundreds of HIV+ people as members, many of them doubters and fence sitters, but overwhelmingly against the drugs:

http://groups.msn.com/aidsmythexposed/general.msnw

After 25 years, and with thousands upon thousands of doubters and dissenters from all corners of the planet and all walks of life, is it not conceivable that we may have a point, although we cannot claim to have all the answers?

Submitted by Brown on March 30, 2008 - 4:04pm.

Another Take on It reiterated that the drug studies never included placebos and the beliefs of the patients were obviously a huge factor in conditions where earlier drugs (AZT) had been much more toxic than the one more recently given patients, boosting the apparent improvement when the latter were brought in (and AZT dose lowered drastically):

absolutely agree with

I absolutely agree with “Your Truth” above.

Scott said: “People I know in the earliest tests for ARVs, prior to compassionate access, lived well during trials and died following them, when the test drugs were removed. Those tests were blinded and placebos were part of the trail, there was no assurance that the dying people volunteering were given actual medicines.”

That is not at all true, Scott. Your saying such is evidence that you have unfortunately not actually read any of the post AZT drug studies. The only HIV drug that has used any placebos at all was the very short (4 month long) AZT trials. There is nowhere in any literature placebo trials of any other drugs. All tests after AZT were done by comparing one drug to another, such as AZT versus a