Modern science twisted by like irrationalities, especially in HIV(not)/AIDS

Anyone who thinks the Dreyfus Affair is an irrelevant episode which has no bearing on modern life should read today’s well executed summary of this shameful story in the New York Times Book review, where Leo Damrosch boils down Ruth Harris’s large new tome, Dreyfus: Politics, Emotion and the Scandal of the Century to its essence.

An entirely innocent man was convicted of espionage and suffered four years of hell on earth on the notorious Devil’s Island before his brother enlisted Emile Zola and other intellectuals to reverse the monstrous injustice, with the Army and conservatives resisting all the way with lies, manufactured evidence and persecuting the whistleblower who discovered the real culprit, not to mention attacking Zola for libel and hounding him out of the country. Even then a zealot nearly killed Dreyfus with a pistol after he was freed.

Sound familiar? There are parallels in every facet of the appalling story of how HIV(not)/AIDS zealots have managed to maintain their entirely irrational paradigm in the face of an avalanche of books, article, contrary scientific papers and critics of all stripes, from both inside and outside the system – in this case, Big Science, rather than the French Army.

Nothing could be more obvious than the innocence of this harmless wisp of retroviral RNA of all charges of harming humans brought against it, yet the bulk of the world’s population has been led to believe it a very damaging and ultimately fatal threat to their health, and that the antibodies they form to it which repel it from their bodies somehow much later will ruin their immune system and kill them, and anyone they have miraculously transferred those antibodies to, in a sequence of reasoning which is irrational in every step and which contradicts the basic premises of infectious disease as demonstrated throughout the rest of medicine and its science.

Have a look at Damrosch’s review and you will get a very clear picture of what happened to Dreyfus, and how human behavior in the leading civilizations of this planet has not changed one iota from over a century ago.

July 15, 2010
At War With Itself
By LEO DAMROSCH
DREYFUS
Politics, Emotion, and the Scandal of the Century
By Ruth Harris
Illustrated. 542 pp. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt & Company. $35
The scandal known as the Dreyfus Affair still resonates after more than a century, though it has been blurred for most Americans by time and distance. It is the goal of the Oxford historian Ruth Harris to extricate the story from the myths it has generated, on both the left and the right, and to trace its tortuous evolution from 1894 to 1906 in all of its human complexity. Combining an even-tempered tone with generosity of imagination, she has achieved that goal, charting a steady course through the voluminous literature that the affair inspired and exploring the reactions of scores of soldiers, politicians, journalists, salonnières and ordinary citizens. A helpful “Dramatis Personae” at the end of the book lists nearly 150 people, all of whom are given substantial treatment during the course of the narrative.

Alfred Dreyfus grew up in a wealthy Jewish family in Alsace, a disputed eastern territory that many French people regarded as covertly German. He was 10 years old at the time of the Prussian invasion in 1870, when the French Army suffered a humiliating defeat, and he remained fiercely patriotic ever after, which motivated his choice of a military career. Intent on improving its leadership, the army began to promote officers on the basis of success in examinations rather than through the old-boy network, and Dreyfus was one of those selected for special training. The old-boy network was predictably resentful, especially when beneficiaries of the new policy were Jews, who numbered fewer than 100,000 in a nation of 38 million and were regarded by many as an insidious “enemy within.”

On Oct. 14, 1894, a few days after his 35th birthday, Captain Dreyfus spent the evening in his Paris apartment with his wife, Lucie, and their two young children. The next morning he was summoned unexpectedly to headquarters, subjected to a bewildering interrogation and placed under arrest. During the star-chamber trial that followed, he was never permitted to know the actual charges against him, which were based entirely on a torn-up bordereau, or memorandum, that a cleaning woman had retrieved from the wastebasket of the German military attaché. It was clear that someone was offering to sell low-level secrets to the Germans, and a chain of flimsy circumstantial evidence was said to point to Dreyfus. He wasn’t short of money and wasn’t entangled with women, two of the most frequent motives for espionage at the time, but his superiors decided that the handwriting on the bordereau was his, and an Alsatian-Jewish scapegoat was convenient.

Early in 1895 Dreyfus stood at attention in the courtyard of the École Militaire while an officer publicly broke his sword in two (Harris mentions that it had been broken and soldered together in advance to preclude any embarrassing difficulty). He was then condemned to solitary confinement in the ferocious tropical heat of Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He spent four appalling years there, forbidden to speak with his guards and with no knowledge of what was happening in France. As Harris comments, “Dreyfus, in fact, was one of the few French alive who knew nothing of the Dreyfus Affair.”

Alfred’s brother Mathieu, tireless in support despite constant threats, managed increasingly to attract the attention of politicians and journalists who suspected that in its zeal to defend its honor, the army had perpetrated a monstrous injustice. The “Dreyfusards” appealed to Enlightenment ideals of truth and justice, while conservatives, with the support of the Roman Catholic Church, argued for nationalist traditions that the army was held to embody. As Harris shows, allegiances were often complicated and illogical. Some important Dreyfusards were personally anti-Semitic, and some conservatives who believed that Dreyfus was innocent nonetheless were convinced that defending the army, and hence its persecution of Dreyfus, was more important than justice.

The case against Dreyfus, such as it was, began to unravel when Lt. Col. Marie-Georges Picquart stumbled on evidence that the real spy was Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy, a commandant whose handwriting did indeed match that of the bordereau, and who did indeed need money to cover huge debts. In the tragedy of errors that followed, paranoid army leaders punished the whistle-blower Picquart and did everything in their power to protect Esterhazy. They even abetted the forging of a letter by a commandant, Hubert Joseph Henry, that allegedly confirmed Dreyfus’s guilt. Amazingly, after the forgery was exposed, the anti-Dreyfus press claimed that Henry had acted out of patriotism to defend his nation’s honor, and when he slit his throat in prison they proclaimed him a martyr.

In fact, the forces of reaction proved impervious to argument and evidence. The novelist Émile Zola became fascinated by the case and ignited a huge protest by analyzing its details in “J’Accuse,” a celebrated open letter to the president of the Republic. Zola was thereupon convicted of libel in a trial whose judge ruled nearly all the relevant evidence inadmissible and was forced to go into exile in England.

Dreyfus himself was brought back to France in 1899, a broken man after four years on Devil’s Island, and put on trial once more. His prosecutors claimed, as more recent governments have done, that national security forbade them to reveal secret evidence that would have been decisive if known, and he was convicted all over again. To forestall further controversy he was immediately granted an official pardon, which did nothing to clear his name. It was not until 1906 that a court finally declared him innocent. In 1908, after he had retired from the army, a would-be assassin wounded him slightly with a pistol; the attacker was tried and acquitted. Dreyfus died in 1935.

The story is clearly a very rich one, exposing the determination of military and political leaders to cover up their errors at all costs and, still more profoundly, the bigotry that foreshadowed the genocidal horrors of the 20th century. It was apparently at this time, too, that the word “intellectual” assumed its modern connotations, with writers and thinkers acquiring a prestige in public debate that they have retained in France to this day.

In the splendidly terse “Why the Dreyfus Affair Matters” (2009), Louis Begley brought a lawyer-novelist’s insight to untangling the deceptions through which Dreyfus was framed, and he suggests explicit parallels with post-9/11 legal abuses by the United States. More spacious, and also more densely detailed, is Frederick Brown’s “For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus” (2010), which traces the development of racist nationalism and reactionary Catholicism from the mid-19th century onward until they culminated in the Dreyfus Affair.

For readers who want a concise account of what Harris calls “the most famous cause célèbre in French history,” Begley’s book and Brown’s chapter will appeal. For the story in depth they should turn to Harris’s excellent “Dreyfus,” which deserves a wide audience for its patient, fair-minded exploration of human ideals, delusions, prejudices, hatreds and follies.

Leo Damrosch’s most recent books are “Tocqueville’s Discovery of America” and “Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius.”

Anyone who remains innocently skeptical that today’s leaders of science and society and their unthinking followers can behave like braying asses in intellectual matters should read “Dreyfus” through for a good understanding of human folly, and how easy it is to mislead the faithful, even in science, when it turns political, and fights over its truths in the media rather than in peer reviewed journals.

UPDATE: Wikileaks sends heat missile into US policymaking

The NYTimes sees fit today (Jul 18 Sun) to carry on the top left front page of its presumably well read Sunday edition a story by Elizabeth Bumiller on an Unlikely Tutor Giving Military Afghan Advice.

Turns out the tutor is Greg Mortenson, author of “Three Cups of Tea”, and builder of more than 130 mostly girl schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the US Army under McChrystal has been paying a lot of attention to his ideas for the past year. The story gives the impression that “Three Cups of Tea” is now the unofficial army manual on how to achieve victory in Afghanistan ie how to leave it to the Afghanis without the Taliban taking over again. Mortenson’s answer, as we noted in an earlier post, is to educate the better half of Afghanistan, its women. And who is the group behind this sudden enlightenment after eight years of floundering in a military quicksand which has swallowed every other conqueror in history? Army wives:

“We will move through this and if I’m not involved in the years ahead, will take tremendous comfort in knowing people like you are helping Afghans build a future,” General McChrystal wrote to Mr. Mortenson in an e-mail message, as he traveled from Kabul to Washington. The note landed in Mr. Mortenson’s inbox shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern time on June 23. Nine hours later, the general walked into the Oval Office to be fired by President Obama.

The e-mail message was in response to a note of support from Mr. Mortenson. It reflected his broad and deepening relationship with the United States military, whose leaders have increasingly turned to Mr. Mortenson, once a shaggy mountaineer, to help translate the theory of counterinsurgency into tribal realities on the ground.

In the past year, Mr. Mortenson and his Central Asia Institute, responsible for the construction of more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan, mostly for girls, have set up some three dozen meetings between General McChrystal or his senior staff members and village elders across Afghanistan.

The collaboration, which grew in part out of the popularity of “Three Cups of Tea” among military wives who told their husbands to read it, extends to the office of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Last summer, Admiral Mullen attended the opening of one of Mr. Mortenson’s schools in Pushghar, a remote village in Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush mountains.

Cont:

Mr. Mortenson — who for a time lived out of his car in Berkeley, Calif. — has also spoken at dozens of military bases, seen his book go on required reading lists for senior American military commanders and had lunch with Gen. David H. Petraeus, General McChrystal’s replacement. On Friday he was in Tampa to meet with Adm. Eric T. Olson, the officer in charge of the United States Special Operations Command.

Mr. Mortenson, 52, thinks there is no military solution in Afghanistan — he says the education of girls is the real long-term fix — so he has been startled by the Defense Department’s embrace.

“I never, ever expected it,” Mr. Mortenson, a former Army medic, said in a telephone interview last week from Florida, where he had paused between military briefings, book talks for a sequel, “Stones into Schools,” and fund-raising appearances for his institute.

Mr. Mortenson, who said he had accepted no money from the military and had no contractual relationship with the Defense Department, was initially critical of the armed forces in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks as “laptop warriors” who appeared, he said, indifferent to the civilian casualties inflicted by the American bombardment of Afghanistan.

In its early days “Three Cups of Tea,” the story of Mr. Mortenson’s efforts to build schools in Pakistan, was largely ignored by the military, and for that matter by most everyone else. Written with a journalist, David Oliver Relin, and published in hardcover by Viking in March 2006, the book had only modest sales. Most major newspapers, including this one, did not review it.

But the book’s message of the importance of girls’ education caught on when women’s book clubs, church groups and high schools began snapping up the less expensive paperback published in January 2007.

Sales to date are at four million copies in 41 countries, and the book’s yarn is well known: disoriented after a 1993 failed attempt on Pakistan’s K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, Mr. Mortenson took a wrong turn into the village of Korphe, was nursed back to health by the villagers and, in gratitude, vowed to build them a school.

He returned to Pakistan a year later with a $12,000 donation from a Silicon Valley benefactor and spent most of it on school construction materials in the city of Rawalpindi — only to be told he could not get his cargo to Korphe without first building a bridge.

The story of that bridge, Mr. Mortenson’s relationships with Pakistanis, and the schools that followed appealed so much to one military spouse that in the fall of 2007 she sent the book to her husband, Christopher D. Kolenda, at that time a lieutenant colonel commanding 700 American soldiers on the Pakistan border.

Colonel Kolenda knew well the instructions about building relationships with elders that were in the Army and Marine Corps’ new counterinsurgency manual, which had been released in late 2006. But “Three Cups of Tea” brought the lessons to life.

“It was practical, and it told real stories of real people,” said Colonel Kolenda, now a top adviser at the Kabul headquarters for the International Security Assistance Force, in an interview at the Pentagon last week.

Colonel Kolenda was among the first in the military to reach out to Mr. Mortenson, and by June 2008 the Central Asia Institute had built a school near Colonel Kolenda’s base. By the summer of 2009, Mr. Mortenson was in meetings in Kabul with Colonel Kolenda, village elders and at times President Obama’s new commander, General McChrystal. (By then at least two more military wives — Deborah Mullen and Holly Petraeus — had told their husbands to read “Three Cups of Tea.”)

As Colonel Kolenda tells it, Mr. Mortenson and his Afghan partner on the ground, Wakil Karimi, were the American high command’s primary conduits for reaching out to elders outside the “Kabul bubble.”

As Mr. Mortenson tells it, the Afghan elders were often blunt with General McChrystal, as in a meeting last October when one of them said that he had traveled all the way from his province because he needed weapons, not conversation.

“He said, ‘Are you going to give them to me or am I going to sit here and listen to you talk?’ ” Mr. Mortenson recalled. The high command replied, Mr. Mortenson said, that they were making an assessment of what he needed. “And he said, ‘Well, you’ve already been here eight years, ” Mr. Mortenson recalled.

Despite the rough edges, Colonel Kolenda said the meetings helped the American high command settle on central parts of its strategy — the imperative to avoid civilian casualties, in particular, which the elders consistently and angrily denounced during the sessions — and also smoothed relations between the elders and commanders.

For Mr. Mortenson’s part, his growing relationship with the military convinced him that it had learned the importance of understanding Afghan culture and of developing ties with elders across the country, and was willing to admit past mistakes.

At the end of this month, Mr. Mortenson, who lives in Bozeman, Mont., with his wife, Tara Bishop, and two children, is going back for the rest of the summer to Afghanistan, where to maintain credibility he now has to make it clear to Afghans and a number of aid organizations that he has no formal connection to the American military.

Mr. Mortenson acknowledges that his solution in Afghanistan, girls’ education, will take a generation and more. “But Al Qaeda and the Taliban are looking at it long range over generations,” he said. “And we’re looking at it in terms of annual fiscal cycles and presidential elections.”

To turn the US Army in a new direction after eight years is quite a feat, and here we learn it was achieved by the wives atop the Army power structure ie the spouses of Christopher D. Kolenda, then commanding 700 American soldiers on the Pakistan border, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and General David H. Petraeus, now the Army commander in Afghanistan. Note that the actual first names of only the last two, Deborah and Holly, are mentioned by the Times female reporter, which seems odd.

Why doesn’t Mrs Kolenda deserve respect as the initiator of a vast expansion of US Army objectives in Afghanistan? Colonel Kolenda certainly took her point, judging from his piece in the Weekly Standard in October, 2008, How to Win in Afghanistan:It’s time to adjust the strategy.. At least, he included a reference to “Local governments desperately need to draw on the expertise of civilian partners from the international community to develop durable systems relevant to everyday life” amid his hard nosed assessment of spoiler factors in “winning” in Afghanistan including a dysfunctional timber trade and tax system.

The $200 billion pork barrel

How to win the war in Afghanistan is none of the business of this blog, of course, though we celebrate any advance in releasing the energies of the better half of the population of the world, which Greg Mortenson’s school building is part of.

But the influence of money on the behavior of large systems is our business, in that the influx of money into science from the post World War II federal funding of scientific research to the Wall Street exploitation of breakthroughs in biotechnology and medicine seem to us to account for much of the misbehavior we witness today in scientific leadership, since funding has become the first order of business in almost every field.

How does Afghanistan look from this point of view? A lost cause, we would say, unless things change. According to David Samuels in Harpers August issue, Barack and Hamid’s Excellent Adventure: Afghanistan’s president visits the White House , gigantic sums are being pocketed and dispensed as the powers involved cooperate in a clandestine game that has little to do with the headline stories we read in New York:

“Is your brother a CIA agent?”

The question refers to Hamid Karzai’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who is regularly portrayed in the American press as a corrupt drug lord who charges huge fees for allowing trucks full of opium to cross the bridges over the Helmand River to Kandahar. Last fall, President Obama duly warned that he expected Karzai to establish tough new anti-corruption laws and remove his brother from the government of a country into which the United States would soon be sending 30,000 additional troops. Never mind that Afghanistan produces an estimated 90 percent of the world’s supply of opium; and that the Taliban pays Wali Karzai to ship opium through the territories he governs; and that the U.S. Army, under the ill-fated General Stanley McChrystal, relies on Wali Karzai for logistical support and subcontracts special tasks, which include killing people, to gunmen under his direct control; and that as a courtesy we no longer destroy the poppy crop; and that Wali Karzai happens to be the CIA’s landlord in Kandahar, renting them Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s old villa. After a few months of back-and-forth, the message got through, and on March 30 the New York Times reported that “Afghan and American officials have decided that the president’s brother will be allowed to stay in place,” quoting a senior NATO official as saying that Wali Karzai could be a big help to the ongoing American reconstruction effort. “One thing, he is a successful businessman,” the official said. “He can create jobs.”….

…an interview with former U.S. diplomat Peter Galbraith, an arrogant creep who was forced out of his job as deputy U.N. envoy to Afghanistan and chose to express his unvarnished opinion of Karzai. “He can be very emotional, act impulsively,” said Galbraith, who repeated the word “emotional” three times in the course of the interview. In case viewers didn’t get the gossip-page code, Galbraith explained that “some of the palace insiders say that he has a certain fondness for some of Afghanistan’s most profitable exports,” leading a reporter to ask State Department spokesman Philip Crowley the next morning whether the United States had any reason to believe that Karzai was “like, hiding out in the basement of the palace doing bong hits, or something worse.” …

Eikenberry, a tall man in a good suit who used to be a lieutenant general, was opposed to the surge, because the Afghan government—whose ministers he knows better than any other American in the room does—was corrupt and unable to run the country effectively. Having spent more than twenty hours on a plane with Karzai and his ministers circumnavigating clouds of volcanic ash, Eikenberry is now even better equipped to evaluate the men in whose pockets much of America’s $276-billion investment in Afghanistan now resides. Appearing at a news conference in the White House briefing room on Monday, Eikenberry was asked whether his opinion of Karzai had changed. “President Karzai is the—he’s the elected president of Afghanistan,” Eikenberry said, falling back on the military man’s necessary obeisance to the idiocy of legal authority….
The fact that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate has been supplying the Taliban and even helping to plan attacks on Afghan and American forces is another inconvenient fact of the war that the leader of the free world would prefer not to deal with….

Yet there can be little doubt that a major source of money for the insurgency comes from payments made by elected Afghan officials and Wardak’s army, meaning that America is funding both sides in what is very clearly an Afghan civil war.

Cont. (much more)
A case in point is a recent scandal involving the defense minister’s own son, Hamed Wardak, a Rhodes scholar and class valedictorian at Georgetown University; his transportation company, NCL Holdings, won a $360-million Pentagon contract despite the fact that it wasn’t registered with the Afghan government and didn’t own any trucks. “Those accusations are without merit,” the defense minister responds, adding, correctly, that his son’s company has received the highest possible marks from the Pentagon.

I ask the minister about whether, in general terms, the logistics systems shared by the U.S. Army and the ANA might be susceptible to some form of graft. I note that Watan Risk Management and Compass Security, the two major companies that escort supply convoys across the country, are known to pay large bribes to the Taliban and even to stage attacks on convoys in order to raise their rates. Although the fee varies according to the number of trucks and what they are carrying, the average bribe required not to get shot at is reportedly somewhere around $800 per truck. Both companies are owned by relatives of President Karzai. A report published last year by the Center on International Cooperation at New York University estimated that the United States and its allies spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on payments to private security and trucking companies.

“We have a very good logistics system,” Wardak answers. “It works exceptionally well. There is proper institutional control. Accusations to the contrary are without any merit.”

To make him feel better, I ask whether girls’ schools are still being burned down in Afghanistan. “That does happen very regularly,” he assures me. Over the past year, he says, there have been approximately 600 attacks on schools that have resulted in the partial or complete destruction of their facilities.

The interior minister, Haneef Atmar, a tall, ascetic-looking man who walks with a cane and is known as one of the few competent ministers in Karzai’s cabinet, tells me that although corruption is indeed a problem, he has instituted a “zero-tolerance” policy for payments from contractors to the Taliban. He gives me his email address so we can talk further and then introduces me to a no-nonsense-looking military type named Kevin. “Kevin is my adviser,” he says. It turns out that every member of the Afghan cabinet has a minder who “controls” that minister, a locution that the minders not only do not avoid but in fact seem eager to stress, as in, “I control the minister of mines.” I ask Atmar when this meeting was planned, and he tells me, “About three weeks ago,” confirming my impression that this visit was more or less arranged on the fly, after someone in the administration determined that Karzai had outfoxed them. As it turns out, Atmar’s announcement of a zero-tolerance policy on payments to the Taliban is premature: he will be unceremoniously fired by President Karzai shortly after the cabinet returns to Kabul.

The State Department desk man for Afghanistan informs me that if I want a meeting with the minister of mines, Wahidullah Shahrani, he will be appearing later at the Chamber of Commerce. Huge deposits of minerals including iron, copper, and lithium have been found in Afghanistan over the past few years. Last year, a contract for the Aynak copper deposit, thought to be worth some $88 billion, was awarded to a Chinese company in exchange for what American intelligence officials told the Washington Post was a $30-million bribe paid to Shahrani’s predecessor, Mohammed Ibrahim Adel, who was reported to be a close friend of Mohammed Karzai, one of the president’s brothers.

The problem with building anything in Afghanistan, the men tell me, is ensuring a consistent supply of fuel. There’s an eleven-inch pipeline that the Red Army built, and everything else needs to be trucked in, which means payoffs to the security companies and the local police, who are worse than the Taliban. I talk to a young American-born Afghan who grew up in Virginia and is now working in Afghanistan for an organization called SEIF, which was set up by CARE with funding from USAID. His job is to help small and mid-level entrepreneurs build packing plants in the countryside for dried fruit and nuts. I ask him how he thinks the war is going. “People in the rural areas are not happy with the last five or six years,” he explains. “They see billions of dollars being pledged for the reconstruction of Afghanistan. They don’t understand why they don’t see any of that money, why they don’t have roads, they don’t have schools, why they are still living in a mud hut.”…

I ask Ambassador Wayne how it is possible for the Chinese to pick up an $88-billion copper mine in the middle of a country in which America has spent more than $200 billion to no apparent purpose. “First is that the package that was put together was very massive,” he says, arching his eyebrows again. “Speaking frankly, there are all sorts of rumors about what else was happening.”

After the meeting, I ride with Minister Shahrani to the Willard Hotel, where we sit on pale yellow chintz-covered armchairs in a far corner of the lobby. In addition to the copper mine, he says, Afghanistan has the largest undeveloped iron-ore deposit in the world, for which bidding will soon ensue. “Everything will be done in the most transparent way possible,” he assures me. “We’re not Nigeria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”

I try to imagine how that conversation goes. “So, you have already stolen billions of dollars, and you’ve deposited it in Geneva,” I say out loud, playing the role of Shahrani. “Be content with what you’ve stolen already. Please don’t steal more or the international community will be mad at us.” Shahrani smiles. The State Department minder—who has been sitting three feet away while pretending not to listen to us—looks up, but the minister waves him off. “No, let him ask questions,” he says. “All contracts will be made perfectly transparent,” he repeats, before launching into a long disquisition on the procedures and the road show for the iron-ore contracts, which will happen sometime this fall. The total worth of the additional unexploited mineral resources in Afghanistan may be between $1 trillion and $5 trillion. Whatever the real number is, it will provide plenty of incentive to keep fighting.

Ann Gearan of the AP, who has covered the State Department for years in the old-fashioned way, stands up to ask the Afghan president a final question. Is it really appropriate for the United States to be launching a major operation in Kandahar when the president is unable to remove his brother from office? Karzai nods politely. “Fortunately, officials who are elected by the people cannot be removed by the president,” he explains. The issues raised by the American press have now been understood better, he concludes, before stating firmly, “the issue is resolved.” Hillary Clinton turns her face toward the bright, shining lights. “I have nothing to add,” she says. The vision is real and ineluctable. America will win the hearts of the Afghan people by defeating the Taliban and educating women to go to the moon, and our president will be reelected at a cost of $6 billion per month and tens of thousands more lives, Afghan and American.

Sobering stuff. Also, somewhat disillusioning to all those that wish Greg Mortenson and his girls schools well.

After all, he built no fewer than 130 schools over several years in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but the Taliban and other fighters have burnt down or crippled 600 in Afghanistan in the past year alone, so it would seem that the imagined transformation of Afghan society in support of the US Army might take a great deal longer than even a generation. Are the US Army prepared to stay the course? one might ask Colonel Kalenda.

Barack’s bedtime reading

So while we originally read the Times story as a heartening indication that perhaps our advice to the HIV/AIDS mythbusters to get to Michele somehow and let her insist that President Obama adjust US policy on AIDS in the right direction was not too wacky, we now realize that it may more difficult than it seems to actually change policy whatever success Michele has in getting Barack to make Peter Duesberg’s “Inventing the AIDS Virus” his bedtime reading.

After all, the amount invested so far in the totally spurious idea that HIV causes AIDS, a idea that is so scientifically silly it should be quickly rejected by any 14 year old who reads up on the topic, is calculated by some to exceed $400 billion, though the usual figure claimed in Vienna is half that.

UPDATE

WikiLeaks shoots heat seeking missile into Pentagon

Today (Jul 26 Mon) the Wikileaks release of 92,000 Army records, more than 200,000 pages of detailed description of battle events from January 2004 through December 2009, delivered a body blow to current Afghanistan war policy possibly equivalent to the Pentagon papers undermining of Vietnam, though the documents are not as secret. The texts make clear that the war has not been going even as well as claimed by the White House, and why after $300 billion spent by the US the Taliban are stronger than ever.

They confirm the corruption and incompetence of the Afghan government, its army and its police, probable Pakistani ISI (Interservices Intelligence) support for the Taliban, at least until recently, that insurgents of all kinds have continually multiplied beyond official estimates and are now apparently using heat seeking missiles (Manpads, not Stingers) successfully against US helicopters, as they did against the Soviets, police cruelty to civilians sometimes as sadistic as the Taliban, and Army disregard of the lives of civilians who may be in a target zone without any hope of fleeing.

At the time of writing the Pentagon is fuming that this must have been the work of Bradley Manning, the 22 year old intelligence analyst they have in custody for releasing the video of the helicopter attack in which the Reuters correspondent got shot (see previous post, Bullets vs books: Greg Mortenson and the un-infowars), but Wikipedia isn’t saying, of course.

The fundamental lesson for science here may be that what is needed for systematic scientific outrages such as the maintenance of the HIV/AIDS paradigm two decades after its expert debunking in top journals is a whistle blower who can expose internal memos and other correspondence which can give the game away to the public.

Unfortunately the only instance we know of where such a text was exposed was the incriminating memo written by some functionary at HHS asking why Peter Duesberg’s Cancer Research article in 1987, the one which first shot down the prima facie absurd HIV=AIDS claim, was not headed off at the pass ie not stopped before publication by intervention from the NIH or its agents.

Shortly after the Cancer Research paper appeared, a memo was sent from the office of the secretary of Health and Human Services, (HHS) with the words “MEDIA ALERT” that castigated the NIH for allowing the paper to have been published in the first place. “The article apparently went through the normal pre-publication process and should have been flagged at NIH,” it read. “This obviously has the potential to raise a lot of controversy…. I have already asked NIH public affairs to start digging into this.” The memo listed the few media outlets that had covered Duesberg’s review – primarily the New York Native, a gay weekly that has since gone out of business – and cited a few journalists by name it promised to check up on.

The notion that the NIH expects to vet every scientific paper in every cancer journal is surprising to people who think of science in the old fashioned, soft-fuzzy way. But to anybody who knows the system it is no surprise at all. The NIH exerts a militaristic control over the ideas that emanate from US government science, and the control extends to the media, who are rewarded and punished in accordance with their suspension of curiosity.
The NIH and all its branches are not only part of the “government,” they are part of the US military. Public Health has its roots in the military; the NIH began during World War I as an organization that solely focused on the health of soldiers. This remained its core mandate through World War II, after which it expanded to a more sweeping public health institution. Still, top NIH scientists hold military rank – the only openly stated one being the Surgeon General.
The NIH, UC Berkeley, the respectable science press, and needless to say the world’s many thousands of AIDS organizations choked on Duesberg like a bone lodged sideways in its throat. Ironically though, his achievements and reputation had lodged him deep in the system and it would take a while for them to expel him. (Celia Farber, The Passion of Peter Duesberg, at AIDS Wiki.)

Despite the fact that this notorious page has been displayed or at least quoted on the Web for years it seems to have made no difference at all to the success of HIV propagandists in selling the world on their lucrative idea, and that any challenge to it must be “dangerous” to the welfare of the public.

What is needed is 90,000 pages of such admissions but Alas there seems no chance of that. Although perhaps we should get in touch with Julian, just in case. He is reportedly miffed, however, that the copter killing video didn’t enough of a dent in the politics of Afghanistan’s civil war – for that is what it is now exposed to be – and that is why he released the current material, which is only part of the total, he states.

Meanwhile BradAss87 faces 52 years in prison.

From Huffington Post:

Jon Stewart Mocks Media for Wikileaks Reaction (Video) Watch for the final shot of Afghan soldiers smoking hits of opium before going on patrol with American soldiers one of whom complains it is impossible to get them to stop giggling.

From the Guardian:
Biting column by Simon Jenkins, A history of folly, from the Trojan horse to Afghanistan – By recording failure in meticulous detail, the leaked war logs bear devastating witness to our incompetence

Naive Obama is no help at all, and John P. Moore is still well funded

The world’s greatest HIV/AIDS gathering will cram Vienna next week, bonding over the latest ways attendees have worked out to milk the greatest funding cow any of them have ever encountered.

None other than Ambassador Eric Goosby, the US Global AIDS Coordinator, will lead the US delegation to the XVIII International AIDS Conference to join 25,000 other HIV/AIDS dogmatists “to discuss efforts to stop AIDS.”

From July 18 to 23, Ambassador Eric Goosby, U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, will lead the U.S. delegation to the XVIII International AIDS Conference in Vienna, Austria. The conference brings together an estimated 25,000 participants, including scientists, health care providers, political, community and business leaders, government, non-governmental and multilateral organization representatives, and people living with HIV/AIDS, to discuss efforts to stop HIV/AIDS. Reflecting America’s leadership in the fight against global AIDS through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the U.S. will use this opportunity to share data, best practices, and lessons learned from PEPFAR-supported programs with the global community of HIV/AIDS program implementers.

Truth on the sidelines

The only fly in the ointment will be the rather smaller, but more truthful AIDS Knowledge and Dogma – Discerning the Difference: Conditions for the Emergence and Decline of Scientific Theories, Congress, July 16/17 2010, Vienna, Austria running today (Jul 16 Fri) and tomorrow in the same city, announcing in innumerable ways that the whole basis for their work, the supposed science of HIV/AIDS, is hollow at the core, which is one reason why it has got nowhere in 26 years in explaining how AIDS works or curing it. (HIV/AIDS patients treated with the standard drugs in the US are dying at the same rate as ever, 20,000 a year, give or take three thousand (the CDC and the WHO estimates vary)).

Unlike the gargantuan main fair, the AIDS Knowledge and Dogma conference will be an excellent source of accurate information on HIV/AIDS. One might view it as nothing less than a celebration of truth and good science, as verified by the published record in the highest peer reviewed journals. Its basic theme – that HIV does not cause AIDS, and HIV/AIDS is not infectious – has been sounded since 1987 and 1989 in comprehensive reviews which have never been challenged in the same publications, Cancer Research and the Proceedings of the National Academy, let alone refuted there or anywhere else, contrary to the propaganda of all those living off the current dogma.

But will its message calling for a return to good science in AIDS penetrate the noisy ramparts of the celebration of the status quo? The sorry tale of how politics and propaganda have trumped the best published science over the last quarter century in HIV/AIDS bodes ill for the prospects of turning the direction in which the vast crowd of lemmings at the other gathering is running, which is over the cliff of destruction and into the sea of despair, albeit well funded despair.

Can truth prevail in the numbers game?

It really is quite extraordinary how successful the promoters of the established paradigm have been in protecting it from debunkers led by the best man in the field, which is what Peter Duesberg of Berkeley was and is, even now, despite the Nobels given to less deserving rivals which have been used to (a)ward off his critiques.

Remarkable, indeed, given that there are so many books out now, well over thirty at last count, describing this scandal in detail, books by very acute minds with a perfect understanding of the issue, such as Peter Duesberg himself (“Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1996″) the science editor Harvey Bialy (“Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg , 2004″), science critic Henry Bauer (“The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, 2007″ ) and the mathematician Rebecca Culshaw (“Science Sold Out, 2007″), two of whom (Duesberg and Bauer) will be speaking in Vienna.

Other distinguished speakers in the program include the worldly ex-Sunday Times investigative science and medicine journalist and author Neville Hodgkinson (AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996)), the sharp minded market researcher, author and drug critic John Lauritsen (Death Rush: Poppers and AIDS, “Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story (1990), and The AIDS War” and others), gynaecologist, obstetrician and AIDS in Africa expert Christian Fiala (author of “Do We Love Dangerously? – A Doctor in Search of the Facts and Background to AIDS”), the virus structure electron microscope researcher Etienne de Harven who has just published “Ten Lies About AIDS”, internal medicine specialist and co-author of “Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics, Making Billion-Dollar Profits At Our Expense” Claus Kohnlein (video in French), molecular biologist and radiologist Marco Ruggiero (video) (site), and award winning British science and medicine documentary maker (“AIDS—The Unheard Voices”) Joan Shenton, author of “Positively False: Exposing the myths around HIV and AIDS”. The excellent full length 2009 documentary expose of the rot at the core of the HIV paradigm, “House of Numbers” will be shown, along with a shorter German film from 1996, “AIDS – die grossen Zweifel (AIDS -the huge doubts)”.

But is anyone else listening?

All this material is quite enough to convince anybody listening there in Vienna (or who follows the links above, and reads the fine page of abstracts of the HIV truth conference) that HIV is the Worldcom of science, but the likelihood of it being heard by anyone from the main AIDS event seems remote. For twenty six years the response of everyone in the vast world of HIV/AIDS has been to turn a blind eye to anything which might threaten the central place of HIV in their scheme, and the funding that flows from that idea. As Upton Sinclair once remarked, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Though the ruling idea that HIV causes AIDS is as vulnerable to debunking as a sucked egg is to a sharp stick, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men of reason and disproof have so far failed to dislodge the Humpty Dumpty of HIV from atop his wall, because none of them can get anywhere near him. No one who matters in the system will discuss the topic.

Of course, the naivete of Presidents, officials, editors, charity celebrities, health workers and the general public when it comes to paradigm battles within science is not helpful. Or perhaps it is not naivete. After all, what recourse do people even in high position normally have to a second opinion in scientific matters, which are beyond their own understanding?

Like even scientists expert in other fields, they have to ask Joe, or Bill, or whomever they know or trust, in the established ranks, and this chain of collegial agreement extends outwards from a very small group of insiders in the know. The number of people in HIV/AIDS who are fully aware of its ramshackle, unbolted theoretical underpinnings can probably be numbered on both hands, and half of them probably refuse to admit even to themselves the weakness of believing that HIV causes AIDS. And as Peter Medawar observed in Advice to a Young Scientist, “a scientist who habitually deceives himself is well on the way toward deceiving others”.

Where is the candidate for change?

In such conditions it is probably unfair to blame even President Obama for going along with this appalling boondoggle, although a case could be made for expecting more from a sophisticated politician. After all, it was not beyond South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki to realize that if such highly qualified scientists still disagreed over the issue. something must be going on, and to demand open public discussion, if not reconciliation of views. Having examined the issue for himself, it seems clear that he concluded like every other intelligent and objective outsider who comes upon it that there is no reason to believe in the unique absurdities of HIV/AIDS, which are legion.

Not to mention the stark giveaway that in established circles reexamination of the HIV faith is verboten, which is why HIV mythbusters have to hold their conference separately in Vienna, in the Imperial court stables, or Hoffstallungen.

For as any child should be able to see, censoring disapproval of questioning of a belief in science is the mark of vested interests anxious lest the paradigm they are living off get toppled, and a signal of its weakness. The lethal degree of counterattack on anyone who raises doubts in HIV/AIDS is notorious, and the most obvious flag that a can of worms will be exposed if it is opened.

A world where no one reads the science

In a modern world where no one has time to read beyond the headlines of journal articles, and even expert reporters are not paid to do any investigation in scientific disputes, the general public rarely tries to read up on a scientific topic hiding behind mounds of jargon on all sides, and so we have a world where a scientific paradigm can be maintained forever floating on general opinion, maintained by censorship and propaganda and the enthusiastic fellow traveling of activists, and the enormous momentum of tens of thousands of organizations and their need for funding.

The Web, which was meant to save us from institutions and systems which might conceal the truth, has now been exposed as ineffective, despite the growing pile of video clips and now even films on You Tube. The number of attendees tells the story: 25,000 versus probably more than a hundred times less. The chance of change at the grass roots level now seems remoter than ever.

But then, truth is not a numbers game, and science is not a democracy. When will a truth seeking leader look into the matter, and rescue the situation?

Calling Mr Goosby

Will Mr Goosby pass by the Imperial Court Stables, where the AIDS-Knowledge and Dogma congress is being held, despite the not very promising name of this venue, and grasp the baton? Will he report back to President Obama that things may be amiss? Will Michele take an interest, and be put in charge of a new White House AIDS Investigative Unit?

Perhaps the current trend led by New York State surreptitiously to test everyone on the country for HIV will turn up a positive somewhere in the White House power structure, perhaps Mr Goosby himself. Certainly that would provide a personal motivation to reexamine HIV skepticism on his part, at least, if he has heard of it at all.

Certainly if he ever troubled to read Peter Duesberg’s book or site, or Rebecca Culshaw’s slim but powerful book, Goosby would be privately persuaded, we feel. But who in this Blackberry era has time to read any book? And who in a world of overwhelming consensus would think that contrarian views are worth reading, especially one atop the pyramid of power, privilege and pay generated by that consensus for 26 years? Probably not Mr Goosby, even if his alternative was the drug regime that increasingly is used to attack the health of blacks here and in Africa.

Moore pipes down

Meanwhile, we note that lately John P. Moore of Weill Medical College at Cornell, the lead propagandist in HIV/AIDS science notorious for attacking HIV skeptics as viciously as he possibly can (by his own account), has kept out of the limelight, so we doubt that he will be in Vienna hosting a panel on why the media should be censored of any mention of doubts about HIV, as he did in Toronto.

After all, the NIH listing of grants in 2009 in HIV/AIDS has him busy as the grantee of some eight projects amounting to $2,171,570 (click on PIName heading, then seek page 14).

All of them seem to be related to microbicides, where his last major result was that his microbicide actually assisted the passage of HIV, as we recall.

We doubt that the funding of the alternative AIDS – Knowledge and Dogma conference amounts to anywhere near this sum. Were we in charge at NIAID, however, we would allocate $2 million to it, and $20 million immediately to Duesberg, whose line of research in cancer seems more promising that the entire oncogene industry put together.

UPDATE: Russian English speaking TV has run segments featuring HIV Mythbusters during the week – see AIDS: questions remain unanswered – Jul 18 story with 8 video clips embedded. . (Thanks Carter and Questioning AIDS Forum where a couple more videos will be found of Neville Hodgkinson on YouTube from Russia Today and CrossTalk on the AIDS Industry – a TV news segment panel including Peter Duesberg.

Duesberg wins crossfire panel: The last one – Cross Talk – is a must see with Duesberg in a Crossfire type discussion where two stalwart defenders of the faith one from UNAIDS and one from the pharma side are pitted against Duesberg, who they try to repel as “dangerous” and a “murderer” 25 years out of date with his valid (they admit) complaints about AZT killing all the patients, but he is given adequate time to counter them by pointing out that his complaints are drawn from JAMA and the NEJ in the last few years where half the AIDS victims in the US are now dying of symptoms not of AIDS but of drug toxicity, and is given the last victorious word on the topic with that unanswerable point.

A creditable performance by the news host who did his research beforehand it is clear.

Media are invited, but will they come?

A gathering of luminaries in the movement to review the current dogma in HIV/AIDS is meeting today, tomorrow and Sunday morning (Nov 6-8) at the Waterfront Plaza Hotel, Jack London Square, Oakland, California. Media are invited to all conference sessions including the documentary screening on Saturday afternoon at 4.30 of House of Numbers, and the cocktails after the keynote lecture today, Friday (Nov 6).

The speakers will include Peter Duesberg, the Berkeley professor who has stood against the paradigm for 22 years, John Lauritsen, the Harvard graduate and market researcher and author of AIDS: Death by Prescription, Etienne de Harven, expert on electron microscopy, David Rasnick, Henry Bauer, Charles Geshekter, Klaus Koehnlein, Robert Giraldo, Joan Shenton, and Tony Lance. Panelists will include Celia Farber and Gary Null, and the keynote speaker is Michael Tracy professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Tracy is a specialist in media issues, public broadcasting and “the injustice of the American justice system.” Several years ago he said, “the news about AIDS was flagrantly wrong in fact and interpretation, but hugely successful in constructing a prevailing understanding, locking into modern consciousness the belief that here was one more bug to threaten us all.”

Here are the speakers biographies together with the abstracts of the talks (English and Spanish) (hit the icon, which is meant to display as a show button).

RA2009 SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

David Crowe
david.crowe@aras.ab.ca
David Crowe is a science critic and writer based in Calgary, Canada. He has a degree in biology and mathematics and has written extensively on HIV/AIDS, failures of modern medicine and telecommunications. He was one of the founders of the Green Party of Alberta, and is president of Rethinking AIDS and the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society.

Michael Tracey
michael.tracey@colorado.edu
Professor Michael Tracey has been Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Colorado at Boulder since 1988. From 1981 to 1988 he was head of the London based Broadcasting Research Unit, then Britain’s leading think tank dealing with media issues. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Politics from the University of Exeter in 1971, and his doctorate from the Centre for Mass Communications Research at the University of Leicester in 1975. From 1975 to 1981 he was a Research Fellow at the Leicester Centre. Tracey has written eight books, including his 1983 biography of Sir Hugh Greene, Director General of the BBC from 1960 to1969, “A Variety of Lives; a Biography of Sir Hugh Greene” (Bodley Head) and his 1998 book, “The Decline and Fall of Public Service Broadcasting” (Oxford University Press.) Tracey has also written scores of articles on many different aspects of media and communication, but most notably dealing with the history, condition and future of public service broadcasting. He has also lectured in many different countries. From 1991 to 1998 he was a Trustee of the International Institute of Communications, and from 1994 to 1999, Visiting Professor and Chair of International Communications at the University of Salford. More recently he has produced documentaries, with his friend and colleague David Mills, and their work has appeared in the UK on Channel Four, ITV, and the American networks CBS, Court TV and A&E. They are currently – 2009 – developing a documentary series that will profile the lives of successful men who never knew their fathers. In 2008 he published his first e-book on http://www.scholarsandrogues.com. “From Xmas to August: an Essay on Murder, Media Mayhem and the Condition of the Culture” is about his decade-long involvement in the case of JonBenet Ramsey. He is currently working on a book of essays, “The Inner Moonlight: Literacy, Culture and the Future of Democracy” and writing the authorized biography of the life and times of the legendary British broadcaster Donald Baverstock. He lives with his wife, Jen, three dogs, Beau, Jess and Babe and his cat Miss Bardot, in a small hamlet at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains west of Boulder.

Keynote Lecture
The talk reflects on a number of subjects and issues that confront not just the discourse around Aids, though that will be front and center, but also other areas of discourse. Taking a historical perspective the talk will consider the confluence of forces—political, medical-industrial, cultural—which so effectively closed down ways of thinking that did not accept the HIV-Aids hypothesis. It will suggest that here was a potent example—but far from being the only one—of the extraordinary capacity of key institutions and actors to shape the public imagination, to establish “understandings” in the public mind, to lead that public to see “this” way rather than “that,” with immense consequences for fashioning public policies that rest on ignorance not knowledge, and that serve particular interests but not the public interest. It will point to the way in which the cultural apparatus employs a political economy of fear because fear, like blood, sells, is something the public understands and seems to need: fear of the “other,”—think Muslim—of “death panels,” of “socialism, Marxism, fascism” often uttered in the same sentence, and fear of “the bug” that is going to decimate human kind. In other words, “fear” however perversely, has a crude fiscal utility: it sells. The talk will finally argue that in many ways one might see in the way in which the discourse around Aids evolved, or didn’t, of how counter-discourses were so successfully closed down a harbinger of what America has become, a closing down of the rational mind, a casting aside of the pursuit of truth and understanding, and their replacement with the almost willful pursuit of ignorance so long as that comports with, and feeds, distressed emotional needs as well as political and economic interests. In other words, the repressing of open discourse about HIV-Aids was yet one example of a society in deep betrayal of the vision of its founders, that a democratic society needs rational, open, honest debate if it is to thrive. There is, in effect, as the literary critic Lionel Trilling put it, a “moral obligation to be intelligent,” not blinkered, biased, closed minded.
Conferencia principal
La ponencia reflexionará sobre un número de cuestiones y temas que no se enfrentan exclusivamente al discurso en torno al SIDA, aunque será central y principal, si no también a otros discursos. Desde una perspectiva histórica, la charla considerará aquella convergencia de fuerzas – políticas, médico-industriales, culturales – que tan eficazmente bloqueó la manera de pensar de aquellos que no aceptaban la hipótesis VIH-SIDA. La charla sugerirá que este es un ejemplo fuerte – aunque lejos de ser el único – de la extraordinaria capacidad de la que disponen las instituciones y los protagonistas claves a la hora de determinar la imaginación pública para establecer “interpretaciones” en la mentalidad pública y para guiar a aquel sector del público a ver “esta” vía en vez de “aquella”. Asimismo, las inmensas consecuencias que esto tiene a la hora de diseñar unas políticas que se apoyan en la ignorancia en lugar del conocimiento, y que sirven a intereses particulares en lugar de intereses públicos. Indicará la manera por la cual el aparato cultural emplea la política económica del miedo, ya que el miedo, al igual que la sangre, vende, siendo esto algo que el público entiende y parece necesitar: miedo al “otro”, – piensen en musulmán – a los “death panels”, al “socialismo, marxismo, fascismo” pronunciados con frecuencia dentro de la misma frase, y miedo al “bicho” que va a diezmar al ser humano. En otras palabras, el “miedo” por perverso que sea, tiene una dura utilidad fiscal: vende. Por último, la charla argumentará que uno puede ver de muchas maneras la forma en la cual el discurso en torno al SIDA evolucionó, o no lo hizo, y como los discursos en contra de la corriente oficial fueron bloqueados con tanto éxito, siendo esto precursor de lo que los EE.UU. ha llegado a convertirse. Es decir, un cerramiento de la mente racional, un dejar de lado la búsqueda de la verdad y el conocimiento, y como esto fue substituido por la casi intencionada búsqueda de la ignorancia con el fin de que ello corresponda y alimente las necesidades emocionales afligidas además de intereses económicos y políticos. En otras palabras, la represión del discurso abierto sobre el VIH-SIDA fue un ejemplo más de una sociedad en profunda traición a la visión de sus fundadores, es decir, que la sociedad democrática necesita un debate racional, abierto y honesto para prosperar. Hay, de hecho, como el crítico literario Lionel Trilling lo expuso, la “obligación moral de ser inteligentes,” sin estrecheces de miras y sin ser parciales ni cerrados de mente.

John Lauritsen
john.lauritsen@verizon.net
John Lauritsen graduated from Harvard in 1963. He is a writer, retired survey research analyst, gay liberationist, AIDS dissident, and freethinker. His first major AIDS article, “CDC’s Tables Obscure AIDS-Drugs Connection”, was published in February 1985. Beginning in 1986 he wrote for the New York Native, which in eleven years would publish over fifty of his articles. His AIDS-dissident books include Death Rush: Poppers & AIDS (1986), AZT: Poison by Prescription (1990), The AIDS War (1993) and (co-edited with Ian Young) The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (1997).

History of AIDS controversy spanning three decades
This talk will analyze the underlying premises and assumptions of “AIDS”, a protean construct rather than a coherent disease entity. Particular attention will be paid to gay men, the group most targeted by the AIDS Industry, with a discussion of gay media, AIDS organizations, and the premier gay drug, “poppers” (nitrite inhalants).
Historia de la controversia SIDA que ya abarca tres décadas
Esta ponencia analizará las premisas subyacentes y las suposiciones sobre el “SIDA”, una invención de extremada variabilidad más que una coherente entidad patológica. Se prestará particular atención a los hombres gays, el grupo que más ha estado en el punto de mira de la industria SIDA, con un debate sobre los medios de comunicación gays, organizaciones del SIDA, y la droga gay por excelencia, los “poppers” (inhaladores de nitritos).

Peter Duesberg
duesberg@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Peter H. Duesberg, Ph.D. is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and 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 is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health. On the basis of his experience with retroviruses, Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis in the pages of such journals as Cancer Research, Lancet, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Science, Nature, Journal of AIDS, AIDS Forschung, Biomedicine and Pharmacotherapeutics, New England Journal of Medicine and Research in Immunology. He has instead proposed the hypothesis that the various American/European AIDS diseases are brought on by the long-term consumption of recreational drugs and/or AZT itself, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS. Since 1996, he has published extensively on the chromosomal (aneuploidy) theory of cancer. http://www.duesberg.com/

HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS — a new perspective
A recent study by Chigwedere et al., “Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa”, claims that during the period from 2000 to 2005 about 300,000 South African deaths from AIDS per year could have been prevented by available anti-HIV drugs. The study blamed those who question the hypothesis that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the cause of AIDS, particularly former South African President Thabo Mbeki and Peter Duesberg, for not preventing these deaths by anti-HIV treatments such as the DNA chain-terminator AZT and the HIV DNA inhibitor Nevirapine. Here we ask, (1) What evidence exists for the huge losses of South African lives from HIV claimed by the Chigwedere study? (2) What evidence exists that South Africans would have benefited from anti-HIV drugs? We found that vital statistics from South Africa reported about 12,000 HIV-positive deaths per year between 2000-2005. This figure is 25-times lower than the 300,000 lives per year estimated by Chigwedere et al. Moreover, the US Census Bureau and South Africa reported that the South African population had increased by 3 million during the period from 2000 to 2005 instead of suffering losses, growing from 44.5 to 47.5 million, even though 25-30% were positive for antibodies against HIV. A similar discrepancy was found between claims for a devastating AIDS epidemic in Uganda and a simultaneous explosive growth in its population. We conclude that the claims that HIV has caused huge losses of lives are unconfirmed and that HIV is not sufficient or even necessary to cause the previously known diseases, now called AIDS when antibody against HIV is detected. Further we call into question the claim that HIV antibody-positives would benefit from anti-HIV drugs, because these drugs are inevitably toxic and because there is as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS.

La hipótesis VIH-SIDA anticuada ante el SIDA sudafricano — una nueva perspectiva
Un estudio reciente por Chigwedere et al., “Calculando los beneficios desaprovechados por el uso de medicamentos antiretrovirales en Sur África”, afirma que durante el periodo del 2000 al 2005 se podían haber prevenido aproximadamente 300,000 muertes anuales de SIDA en Sur África a través de los medicamentos anti-VIH disponibles. El estudio culpó a aquellos que cuestionan la hipótesis de que el virus de inmunodeficiencia humana (VIH) es la causa del SIDA, particularmente al anterior presidente sudafricano Thabo Mbeki y Peter Duesberg, por no prevenir aquellas muertes a través de tratamientos anti-VIH como son el terminador de cadenas de ADN el AZT y el inhibidor de ADN del VIH el Nevirapine. Nuestra pregunta aquí es, (1) ¿Qué evidencia existe sobre la gran cantidad de muertes en Sur África por el VIH que afirma el estudio Chigwedere? (2) ¿Qué evidencia existe de que los sudafricanos podían haberse beneficiado por medicamentos anti-VIH? Vemos que las estadísticas vitales de Sur África notificaron aproximadamente 12,000 muertes anuales por VIH entre el 2000 y el 2005. Esta cifra es 25 veces menor que las 300,000 muertes anuales calculadas por Chigwedere et al. Además, el US Census Bureau y Sur África documentaron que la población sudafricana en lugar de sufrir pérdidas incrementó en 3 millones de personas durante el periodo de 2000 a 2005, creciendo de 44.5 a 47.5 millones, incluso cuando del 25-30% dieron positivos a anticuerpos contra el VIH. Una discrepancia similar se halló en las afirmaciones sobre una devastadora epidemia de SIDA en Uganda y simultáneamente un crecimiento explosivo de su población. Llegamos a la conclusión de que las afirmaciones que el VIH ha causado gran cantidad de muertes no están confirmadas, y que el VIH no es suficiente o ni siquiera necesario para causar las enfermedades ya conocidas y ahora llamadas SIDA cuando van acompañadas de la detección de anticuerpos contra el VIH. Más aun, hacemos un llamamiento a que se cuestione la afirmación de que las personas seropositivas se beneficiarían de medicamentos anti-VIH, ya que estos medicamentos son inevitablemente tóxicos y porque todavía no hay prueba de que el VIH cause el SIDA.

Etienne de Harven
pitou.deharven@orange.fr
Etienne De Harven obtained his M.D. degree in 1953 from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, (where he later became “Professeur Agrégé” in Pathology). He specialized in electron microscopy at the “Institut du Cancer” in Paris. In 1956, he joined Charlotte Friend’s team at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York, the largest cancer research center in the United States, where he was in charge of electron microscopy research. It was there that he produced the world’s first description of a retrovirus budding on the surface of infected cells. He served as President of the Electron Microscopy Society of America in 1976. In 1981, he was appointed Professor of pathology and director of the electron microscopy laboratory at the University of Toronto, Canada, where he researched the marking of antigens on the surface of lymphocytes. He is former President of Rethinking Aids (2005-2008), a group comprising over 2600 scientists and other re-thinkers who refute the viral origin of AIDS. He recently published Ten Lies About AIDS http://books.trafford.com/07-2938

Questioning the Existence of HIV
Most unfortunately, AIDS Rethinkers have recently appeared divided on the issue of the existence or of the non-existence of HIV, one group claiming that HIV exists but is a harmless, passenger virus, while the other group asserts simply that HIV does not exist. Neither of these two stands is compatible with available scientific evidence.
Claiming a harmless passenger is not consistent with the name HIV that implies a causal relationship with immunodeficiency, a most serious pathological condition. Asserting simply that HIV does not exist is a fragile position that can hardly account for 1) the fact that typical retrovirus particles illustrated in the 1983, Barré-Sinoussi et al. Science paper, and 2) the fact that retroviral nucleic acid sequences are routinely amplified by PCR methodologies in attempts to measure an hypothetical viral load in AIDS patients.
Obviously, an alternative analysis is urgently needed that is consistent with all the scientifically published evidence. Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) provide such an alternative analysis that can no longer be ignored. As stated by myself in Pretoria in 2000, nobody has ever demonstrated by EM retroviral particles in the blood of patients tagged as presenting with a high viral load. An award, offered to whomever would demonstrate the opposite, has never been claimed. However, harmless viruses, when existing, are just as readily visualized by EM as pathogenic ones. The fact that they have never been observed in high viral load blood samples is therefore significant.
In conclusion, HERVs have interfered with HIV/AIDS research. Facing this fact makes it possible to correct several miss-interpretations that stand at the roots of the current HIV/AIDS dogma. Recognizing the role of HERVs in a coherent analysis of available data shall restore RA’s scientific credibility, consolidate a united front for RA, and provide RA with the strength of fundamentally redirecting AIDS research, far away from hypothetical exogenous retroviruses.
Cuestionando la existencia del VIH
Desafortunadamente, los “disidentes” del SIDA se han mostrado recientemente divididos sobre el tema de la “existencia” o “no existencia” del VIH. Mientras que un grupo alega que el “VIH existe pero es un virus inofensivo y pasajero”, el otro grupo simplemente afirma que “el VIH no existe”. Ninguna de estas dos posturas es compatible con la evidencia científica disponible.
Alegar que es “un pasajero inofensivo” no es coherente con la denominación “VIH” ya que esta implica una relación causal con la inmunodeficiencia, una condición patológica muy seria. Afirmar simplemente que el VIH no existe es una posición frágil y que apenas puede explicar 1) el hecho de que el artículo de Science de 1983 por Barré-Sinoussi et al. estuviese ilustrado por partículas típicas de retrovirus, y 2) el hecho de que se amplifiquen rutinariamente secuencias de ácido nucleico retroviral usando metodologías basadas en PCR con el fin de medir una hipotética carga viral en pacientes de SIDA.
Obviamente, se necesita con urgencia un análisis alternativo que sea coherente con toda la evidencia científica publicada. Los retrovirus endógenos humanos (HERVs) proporcionan dicho análisis alternativo que no puede seguir ignorado durante más tiempo.
Como indiqué en Pretoria en el 2000, nadie ha demostrado mediante EM la presencia de partículas retrovirales en la sangre de pacientes etiquetados como portadores de una carga viral alta. Nunca se ha reclamado un premio que se ofrecía a cualquiera que demostrase lo contrario. Sin embargo, mediante EM, los virus “inofensivos”, cuando existen, se visualizan con la misma facilidad que los que son patógenos. Por lo tanto, es significativo el hecho de que nunca se hayan observado en muestras de sangre con una carga viral alta.
En conclusión, los HERVs han interferido con la investigación sobre VIH/SIDA. Afrontar este hecho hace posible corregir varias interpretaciones erróneas que se levantan sobre las raíces del actual dogma del VIH/SIDA. En un análisis coherente de la información disponible, reconocer el papel que juegan los HERVs restaurará la credibilidad científica de RA, consolidará un frente unido para RA y proporcionará a RA la fuerza, fundamentalmente, para redirigir la investigación del SIDA, lejos de los retrovirus hipotéticos.

Charles Geshekter
chollygee@earthlink.net
Charles Geshekter is Emeritus Professor of African history at California State University, Chico. After earning his Ph.D. in History from UCLA, Geshekter has held three Fulbright Awards and his African field research was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ford Foundation and Social Science Research Council. His publications examine various aspects of modern Somali history, techniques of documentary film making, and reappraising the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Geshekter helped to establish the Somali Studies International Association, coordinated its first conference in Mogadishu in 1980, and co-edited the Proceedings of the 1st Congress of Somali Studies. During the United Nations intervention in Somalia, Geshekter was news analyst for CBS National Radio Network, KRON-TV/San Francisco, PBS, and numerous radio stations. In 1985, he produced a PBS documentary, “The Parching Winds of Somalia” for WQED-TV. Portions of the film were included in a McNeil-Lehrer NewsHour special program, “Somalia: Anatomy of a Tragedy” that was nominated for a 1993 Emmy Award. Geshekter was Program Coordinator for the 1989 Meeting of the American Association for Advancement of Science/Pacific Division. From 1991-95, he served as Chairman for its History of Science Section and was on its Executive Council. In 1996, he was Chief Policy Advisor on Education Finance for the California State Assembly. He has worked for the Department of Justice as a consultant and researcher on African immigration issues. From 2000 to 2003, Geshekter was a member of the South African Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel.

The Deception and Dishonesty of African AIDS Statistics
For over 25 years, the media has bombarded the public with a barrage of figures purporting to tally AIDS cases and AIDS deaths in Africa. This presentation examines the empirical basis for those numbers and critiques the methodology used by AIDS agencies and its researchers to gather such data, interpret its meaning, and then use dubious statistics as the basis for requesting ever increasing amounts of funding.
As an example of how bogus claims come to form the basis to solicit funds and initiate interventions into African societies, the author will critique the findings of prominent AIDS investigators, published in The Lancet (2007-2008), that purported to show how male circumcision in Kenya and Uganda reduced a male’s chances of contracting HIV.
Fraude y engaño de las estadísticas del SIDA africano
Durante más de 25 años, los medios de comunicación han bombardeado al público con un aluvión de cifras pretendiendo cuadrar casos de SIDA con muertes por SIDA en África. Esta ponencia examina las bases empíricas de esos números y critica la metodología usada por los organismos oficiales del SIDA y sus investigadores para reunir tales datos, interpretar su significado y luego utilizar dudosas estadísticas como base para solicitar cada vez una mayor financiación.
A modo de ejemplo de como afirmaciones falsas llegan a formar la base para recaudar fondos e iniciar intervenciones en las sociedades africanas, la ponencia critica los hallazgos de destacados investigadores sobre el SIDA, publicados en The Lancet (2007-2008), que pretendieron demostrar como la circuncisión masculina en Kenya y Uganda reducía las probabilidades de contraer el VIH en varones.

Christian Fiala
christian.fiala@aon.at
Dr. Christian Fiala is a gynaecologist and obstetrician and currently working in Vienna, but has extensive experience in Thailand and Africa. April, 2007, he established the Museum of Contraception and Abortion. For almost 20 years he has been following critically the scientific and political discussion on the epidemiological aspects of AIDS and contributed actively. He was a member of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel in South Africa. Dr. Fiala has published many papers focused on the problems of AIDS in Africa and the definition of AIDS. is the author of the book “Do We Love Dangerously? – A Doctor in Search of the Facts and Background to AIDS” (Lieben wir gefaehrlich? – Ein Arzt auf der Suche nach den Fakten und Hintergruenden von AIDS) (1997); and the article in English, Aids: are we being deceived?

Aids in Africa — a call for sense not hysteria

“Can Africa be saved?” asked Newsweek on it’s front page as far back as 1984, reflecting the old Western belief that Africa is doomed to starvation, terror, disaster and death. This was repeated two years later in an article in the same journal in a story about Aids in Africa. The title set the scene: “Africa in the Plague Years”. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed “by mid-1991 an estimated 1.5 million Ugandans, or about 9% of the general population and 20% of the sexually active population, had HIV infection”. Similar reports were repeatedly published during the last 25 years. The predictions announced the practically inevitable collapse of the country in which the worldwide epidemic supposedly originated.
Today, however, one reads little about Aids in Uganda because all prophesies have proved false. Summing up, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics reported the results of the (ten-year) census in September 2002: “Uganda’s population grew at an average annual rate of 3.4% between 1991 and 2002. The high rate of population growth is mainly due to the persistently high fertility levels (about seven children per woman) that have been observed for the past four decades. The decline in mortality reflected by a decline in Infant and Childhood Mortality Rates as revealed by the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys (UDHS) of 1995 and 2000-2001, have also contributed to the high population growth rate.” In other words, the already high population growth in Uganda has further increased over the past 10 years and is now among the highest in the world. Similarly economic development has shown a constant growth over the same period reflecting the energy and determination of Ugandans to improve their living conditions.
It is long overdue that we recognize obvious facts proving that all predictions about an Aids epidemic in Africa have been wrong because they were based on erroneous assumption. Consequently budgets need to be redirected so that they meet the actual needs of the local population. Furthermore, individuals and organizations who have deliberately taken advantage of the hysteria they helped to create, need to be held accountable.
www.altheal.org/statistics/fiala.htm?www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/327/7408/184-a

Sida en África — una llamada a la razón, no a la histeria
“¿Se puede salvar a África?” preguntaba Newsweek en su portada remontándose a 1984, reflejando la creencia de occidente que África está condenada a la hambruna, el terror, el desastre y la muerte. Esto se repitió dos años después en un artículo de la misma publicación incluido en un reportaje sobre SIDA en África. El título preparaba la escena: “Äfrica en los años de plaga”. La Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) confirmaba que “para mediados de 1991 se calcula que 1,5 millones de ugandeses, o aproximadamente el 9% de su población general y el 20% de su población sexualmente activa, tendrían infección por VIH”. Se han publicado informes similares de manera repetida durante los últimos 25 años. Las predicciones anunciaban el colapso prácticamente inevitable del país en el que supuestamente originó la epidemia mundial.
Hoy, sin embargo, se lee poco sobre el SIDA en Uganda. Porque todas las predicciones han resultado ser falsas. Resumiendo, el Uganda Bureau of Statistics notificó los resultados de un censo (de 10 años) en setiembre de 2002: “La población de Uganda creció a un ritmo medio anual de 3.4% entre 1991 y 2002. El alto índice de crecimiento de la población es debido principalmente a los continuos altos niveles de fertilidad (aproximadamente siete hijos por mujer) que se han observado en las pasadas cuatro décadas. El descenso en mortalidad reflejado por el descenso en los índices de mortalidad infantil tal y como muestran el Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys (UDHS) de 1995 y 2000-2001, también han contribuido al alto indice de crecimiento de la población.” En otras palabras, el ya existente alto índice de crecimiento de la población en Uganda ha incrementado aún más en los últimos 10 años, encuentrándose ahora entre los más altos del mundo. Igualmente, el desarrollo económico ha demostrado un crecimiento constante en el mismo periodo reflejando la energía y determinación de los ugandeses para mejorar sus condiciones de vida.
Hace mucho tiempo que se debió reconocer hechos obvios que prueban que todas las predicciones sobre la epidemia SIDA en África han sido erróneas porque estaban basadas en asunciones erróneas. Por consiguiente, los presupuestos deben ser redirigidos para que cumplan con las necesidades actuales de la población local. Más aun, se deben pedir cuentas a individuos y organizaciones que se han aprovechado deliberadamente de la histeria que ayudaron a crear.
www.altheal.org/statistics/fiala.htm
www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/327/7408/184-a

Roberto Giraldo
robgiraldo@aol.com
Roberto Giraldo MD, Specialist in internal medicine, infectious, immunological and tropical diseases from Universities of Antioquia (Colombia), Kansas and London. Independent AIDS researcher since 1981. Worked with the so-called HIV tests for 13 years at New York Hospital, Cornell Medical Center. Author of several critical articles and books on AIDS. Former President of rethinking AIDS. Currently is Director of the Department of Psychosomatic Medicine of the International Society of Analytical Trilogy in São Paulo, Brazil. www.robertogiraldo.com and www.trilogia.ws.

The role of the inner pharmacy in the prevention and treatment of AIDS
A short review of the literature on the Psychoneuroimmunology of AIDS. 1. The role of negative emotions on the genesis of seropositivity and on the development of AIDS. Description of the main personality characteristics, both in rich and poor countries, needed to develop seropositivity and AIDS. 2. Experience dealing with seropositive individuals and patients with AIDS indicates that external therapies, even natural measures, have very little value in the prevention and treatment of AIDS. The real 1healing comes from our inner doctor also known as our inner pharmacy. Revealing the power of consciousness in dealing with seropositivity and AIDS.
El papel de la farmacia interior en la prevención y tratamiento del SIDA
Breve revisión a la literatura sobre la psiconeuroinmunología del SIDA. 1. El papel negativo de las emociones en la génesis de la seropositividad y en el desarrollo del SIDA. Descripción de las principales características de personalidad, tanto en los países ricos como en los pobres, que son necesarias para desarrollar seropositividad y SIDA. 2. La experiencia en el trato con individuos seropositivos y pacientes con SIDA indica que las terapias externas, incluidas las medidas naturales, tienen muy poco valor a la hora de prevenir y tratar el SIDA. La verdadera curación viene de nuestro médico interior también conocido como farmacia interior. Mostrándose el poder de la conciencia a la hora de tratar con la seropositividad y el SIDA.

David Rasnick
drasnick@mac.com
David Rasnick received a PhD in chemistry (organic and biochemistry) from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a BS in Biology and a BS in chemistry. He has over 20 years experience in the pharmaceutical/biotech industry working on cancer, emphysema, arthritis, and parasitic diseases. He is former President of Rethinking AIDS: the group for the scientific reappraisal of the HIV hypothesis and former President of the International Coalition for Medical Justice. He was a member of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel of South Africa. He published Germ of Lies, a scientifically accurate but reader-friendly novel depicting of the AIDS blunder. Since 1996 he has been working closely with Peter Duesberg at University of California at Berkeley on the aneuploidy (or chromosomal imbalance) theory of cancer. http://www.davidrasnick.com

HIV drugs causing AIDS
It has never been shown that adults or children or fetuses in the womb taking the anti-HIV drugs live longer or at least better lives than a similar group of people not taking the drugs. On the contrary, there is ample evidence that ARVs cause AIDS-defining and other diseases and death. To hide this fact, the AIDS orthodoxy has come up with yet another syndrome given the oxymoronic name Immune Reconstitution Syndrome or IRS. The diseases of IRS are identical with the list of AIDS-defining diseases. IRS is nothing other than AIDS caused by the antiretroviral drugs.
Los medicamentos anti-VIH causan SIDA
Nunca se ha demostrado que ni adultos, ni niños, ni fetos en el útero tomando los medicamentos anti-VIH vivan más o por lo menos mejores vidas que un grupo similar de personas que no los tomen. Por el contrario, hay abundante evidencia de que los ARV causan enfermedades definitorias de SIDA además de otras enfermedades y la muerte. Para ocultar este hecho, otro síndrome más ha surgido por parte de la ortodoxia del SIDA, dándole el nombre oximorónico de Síndrome de Reconstitución Inmunológica o IRS (siglas en inglés). Las enfermedades del IRS son idénticas a las enumeradas en la lista de enfermedades definitorias de SIDA. El IRS no es más que SIDA causado por los fármacos antiretrovirales.

Claus Koehnlein
koehnlein-kiel@t-online.de
Claus Köhnlein received his MD in 1982 from the University of Kiel, Germany. From 1983-92, he trained in internal medicine in the Department of Oncology at the University of Kiel. Since 1993, he has been practicing internal medicine in Kiel and treating HIV-positive patients who are critical of antiviral treatment. Co-author of Virus Mania: http://www.amazon.com/Virus-Mania-Continually-Epidemics-Billion-Dollar/dp/1425114679

The treatment dilemma of HIV-positive patients as a result of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis. The illusion of antiviral treatment.
The study that eventually led to FDA approval of AZT in 1987 was terminated after only 4 months because the treated group seemed to do better than the placebo group. In the following years, however, the mortality in both groups rose significantly. Most physicians thought that this was due to the HIV infection. However, it soon became clear that the recommended dosage of 1.5 g of AZT caused severe bone marrow suppression (AIDS by Prescription) and was killing large numbers of AIDS patients. The dosage of AZT was reduced several times to lower its toxicity and the mortality of patients taking the drug began to decline. Unfortunately, the decline in the mortality was wrongly attributed to the life-saving benefits of AZT (Pallela, 1998). In the mid 1990s, new treatments such as the HIV protease inhibitors were introduced. The HIV protease inhibitors turned out to be very good against fungal infections. The combinations of the cytotoxic antiviral drugs plus protease inhibitors are antibiotic treatments in the true sense of the word—they are anti-life. This may account for their successful short term effects in treating bacterial, viral and protozoal infections. Thus, the symptoms due to infectious diseases that are called AIDS in the presence of a positive HIV-test may improve when the drugs are first used. But soon, the combinations of anti-HIV drugs damage the liver, kidney, central nervous system and bone marrow, which is the very source of the immune system. It would be much better to treat the specific infectious diseases (e.g. TB) with recognized specific treatments instead of using the inevitably toxic anti-life cocktails.
El dilema del tratamiento de personas VIH-positivas como consecuencia de la hipótesis VIH-SIDA: La ilusión del tratamiento antiretroviral.
El estudio que finalmente llevó a la FDA a aprobar el AZT en 1987 se concluyó en sólo 4 meses, dado que el grupo bajo tratamiento parecía reaccionar mejor que el grupo placebo. Sin embargo, en los años siguientes la mortalidad en ambos grupos incrementó considerablemente. La mayoría de médicos pensó que eso era debido a la infección por VIH. Sin embargo, pronto se hizo evidente que la dosis recomendada de 1.5g de AZT causaba supresión severa de la médula ósea (SIDA recetado) y estaba matando a una gran cantidad de pacientes con SIDA. La dosis de AZT se redujo varias veces con el fin de bajar su toxicidad y la mortalidad de pacientes tomando el medicamento empezó a reducirse. Desafortunadamente, el descenso en la mortalidad fue erróneamente atribuido a los beneficios salva-vidas del AZT (Pallela, 1998). A mediados de la década de los 90, se introdujeron nuevos tratamientos como los inhibidores de proteasa. Los inhibidores de proteasa resultaron ser muy efectivos contra infecciones fúngicas. La combinación de medicamentos antivirales citotóxicos e inhibidores de proteasa son tratamientos antibióticos en el verdadero sentido de la palabra – son antivida. Esto podría explicar sus exitosos efectos a corto plazo a la hora de tratar infecciones por protozoas e infecciones bacterianas y virales. Por consiguiente, los síntomas debidos a enfermedades infecciosas, llamadas SIDA cuando van acompañadas de un resultado positivo a un test de VIH, podrían mejorar cuando los medicamentos son utilizados por primera vez. Sin embargo, las combinaciones de los medicamentos anti-VIH pronto dañan el hígado, los riñones, el sistema nervioso central, y la médula ósea que es la verdadera fuente del sistema inmune. Sería mucho mejor tratar aquellas determinadas enfermedades infecciosas (por ejemplo, tuberculosis) con tratamientos específicos reconocidos para dichas enfermedades, en vez de usar los inevitables cócteles tóxicos anti-vida.

Henry Bauer
hhbauer@vt.edu
Henry H. Bauer earned his Ph.D. in 1956 from the University of Sydney. He was trained as an electrochemist and reported his research in numerous publications. He is emeritus professor of chemistry and science studies, and emeritus dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. After his retirement in 1999, he was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Scientific Exploration from 2000 to 2007. You can find details about his book The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory at http://failingsofhivaidstheory.homestead.com; the book collates and analyzes, for the first time, the results of more than two decades of HIV testing, revealing that common assumptions about HIV and AIDS are incompatible with the published data. Links to his other books are at hivskeptic.wordpress.com. His home page is henryhbauer.homestead.com

HIV/AIDS blunder is far from unique in the annals of science and medicine
I believe an enormous hindrance to Rethinking is that most people find it incredible that “everyone” could be so wrong about this for so long, but the history of science and medical science in particular shows it’s far from atypical. This wider historical context also has potential lessons for how the mainstream consensus might eventually be overturned.
El gran error VIH/SIDA está lejos de ser el único en los anales de la ciencia y la medicina
Creo que un enorme obstáculo para Repensar es que a la mayoría de la gente le parece increíble que “todo el mundo” pueda estar tan equivocado acerca de este asunto durante tanto tiempo. Sin embargo, la historia de la ciencia y la ciencia médica en particular, demuestra que está lejos de ser atípico. Este contexto histórico más amplio también ofrece lecciones potenciales sobre cómo puede ser derrocado finalmente el consenso de la opinión pública dominante.

Christopher Black
bar@idirect.com
Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer and political activist based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has been involved in high-profile human rights cases investigating alleged war crimes and defending those accused of these crimes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Black is currently defending Augustin Ndindiliyimana, the former head of Rwanda’s Gendarmerie or National Police Force, before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha, Tanzania. He and other defense lawyers went on strike in early 2004, claiming that the tribunal was being used by the U.S. for political ends and that a fair hearing was impossible. He has been the subject of several death threats as a result of his work at the Rwanda tribunal and the subject of threats and intimidation from the current RPF Rwandan regime. Christopher Black is listed as a member by the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis. He was a signatory to a December 2008 letter which urged the journal Science to retract a number of scientific papers from the early 1980s in which Robert Gallo alleged HTLV-III (HIV) caused AIDS.

The Criminalization of Illness
The criminalization of people allegedly infected with a virus known as HIV is unique in history. No communicable disease has been criminalized in this manner. It is a phenomenon that has spread to many countries in the world. In some countries specific criminal laws have been passed, as in the UK and some US states for example, in others, such as Canada, the existing criminal law is used. I will briefly outline the various reactions to hiv in the criminal law and its contradictions and inconsistencies, and then discuss what I and others think really lies behind the criminalization of an infection whose existence is not established and whose role in AIDS is refuted.
La ciminalización de la enfermedad
La criminalización de las personas supuestamente infectadas con un virus conocido como VIH, es única en la historia. Ninguna enfermedad contagiosa ha sido criminalizada de esta manera. Es un fenómeno que se ha extendido a muchos países alrededor del mundo. Leyes penales específicas han sido aprobadas en determinados países, por ejemplo el Reino Unido y algunos estados de EE.UU., y otros, como Canadá, utilizan la ley penal existente. Resumiré brevemente las diversas reacciones al VIH por parte de la ley penal y sus contradicciones e inconsecuencias. Posteriormente hablaré sobre lo que yo y otros piensan de lo que en realidad subyace bajo la criminalización de una infección cuya existencia no se ha establecido y cuyo rol en el SIDA ha sido rebatido.

Universidad Libre Pereira Colombia Law Grouppe
joralogo@gmail.com
The “Free University of Pereira (Colombia) Law Group” is composed of three people. Jose Ramon Lopez Gomez is a university teacher of philosophy and law and has worked with people affected by HIV and AIDS for the past 5 years. Leon Dario Muñoz is a cancer specialist with more than 20 years experience. Rodrigo Andres Medina Diaz is a law student working on a thesis on AIDS and the law who has worked with people affected by HIV and AIDS for the past 3 years.

There are two main positions on the origins, diagnosis, treatment and understanding of AIDS and a Colombian law applies to physicians and patients and resulting from that established by UNAIDS in this regard. A group of teachers, students and researchers have known and studied the medical, the legal, the psychological, and nutritional Rethinking posed by Colombian MD Roberto Giraldo. Today is legally obliged to patients and physicians to follow protocols without taking into account that the Colombian law gives the possibility of applying the proposed cheap and effective treatments for RA. In the Faculty of Law at the Free University of Pereira in Colombia we have the task of studying what is nationally and internationally as legal for AIDS patients and physicians have a legal support for the proposal and receive treatment than those conventional do not give good results, but on the contrary, aggravate the situation of the sick. All our efforts are directed to seek legal action through which patients can claim and defend their rights to good health, to be fully informed, to choose between treatment options to one that better results and to foster better quality of life, even in the midst of his illness. also look through the same mechanisms that physicians can fulfill their Hippocratic duty of disclosure to the patient the whole truth about their illness and various treatment options for patients, as is their right, choose according to his will.
Repensando los aspectos jurídicos del SIDA en Colombia
Existen dos grandes posiciones sobre el origen, diagnóstico, tratamiento y comprensión del SIDA y hay una legislación colombiana aplicable a médicos y pacientes y derivada de lo establecido por la ONUSIDA al respecto. Un grupo de docentes, estudiantes e investigadores hemos conocido y estudiado lo médico, lo legal , lo sicológico, lo nutricional que plantea RA a través del MD colombiano Roberto Giraldo. Hoy en día se obliga legalmente a pacientes y médicos a seguir unos protocolos sin tener en cuenta que la legislación colombiana da la posibilidad de aplicar los baratos y efectivos tratamientos propuestos por RA. En la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad Libre de Pereira Colombia nos hemos dado a la tarea de estudiar lo que hay nacional e internacionalmente en lo jurídico sobre SIDA para que médicos y pacientes tengan un apoyo legal para proponer y recibir tratamientos distintos a los convencionales que no dan buenos resultados sino que , por el contrario, agravan la situación de los enfermos. Todo nuestros esfuerzos están encaminados a buscar que mediante acciones legales los pacientes reclamen y defiendan su derechos a un buen estado salud, a estar totalmente informados , a escoger entre opciones de tratamientos a aquel que de mejores resultados y le propicie mejor calidad de vida, aun en medio de su enfermedad .Además, también buscaremos mediante los mismos mecanismos que los médicos puedan cumplir su hipocrático deber de darle a conocer al paciente toda la verdad sobre su enfermedad y las diversas opciones de tratamiento para que el enfermo, como es su derecho ,escoja según su voluntad.

Joan Shenton
joanshenton@clara.co.uk
Joan Shenton is founder and administrator of Immunity Resource Foundation. The is the author of Positively False: Exposing the myths around HIV and AIDS. She is an award winning television producer whose company Meditel Productions has specialized in science and medical programmes. She has made over 150 programmes for network television. In 1987 she produced the first documentary challenging the science behind the HIV/ AIDS hypothesis: AIDS—The Unheard Voices (Dispatches Ch4) which won the Royal Television Society Award for Journalism. There followed three further Dispatches documentaries on the subject, The AIDS Catch, AZT—Cause for Concern and AIDS and Africa. Sky News has broadcast Diary of an AIDS Dissident, AIDS Dissidents in Europe and AZT Babies. In 2000, she was granted an interview by the South African president Thabo Mbeki broadcast by M-Net South Africa – Search for Solutions—The Great AIDS Debate. Joan Shenton is currently compiling 15 years of archive material on the AIDS debate for the Immunity Resource Foundation website. http://www.immunity.org.uk/index.html

Censorship in the AIDS debate — the success of stifling, muzzling and a strategy of silence
My talk will offer examples from my own experience of some of the most sinister examples of censorship that I and my colleagues have endured, and describe how censorship, largely the result of a very successful strategy of silence adopted by the scientific orthodoxy, has prevented the truth from coming out about the cause or causes of what came to be called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. I have searched the Immunity Resource Foundation archive and found some filmed gems that have never before been broadcast. They include excepts from interviews with Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier, Sam Mhlongo, Huw Christie and others that reflect essentially, what we wanted to say but couldn’t.
Censura en el debate SIDA — el éxito de sofocar, de amordazar y de una estrategia de silencio
Mi ponencia ofrecerá ejemplos desde mi experiencia personal sobre algunos de los casos de censura más siniestros que yo y mis colegas hemos sufrido y describe como la censura, en gran medida el resultado de una estrategia de silencio adoptada con mucho éxito por la ortodoxia científica, ha impedido que la verdad salga a la luz sobre la causa o causas de lo que llegó a llamarse Síndrome de Inmunodeficiencia Adquirida. He buscado entre las filmaciones de los archivos de la Immunity Resource Foundation y he encontrado algunas joyas que nunca han sido retransmitidas. Incluyen extractos de entrevistas con Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier, Sam Mhlongo, Huw Christie y otros, que reflejan en esencia, lo que quisimos pero no pudimos decir.

Marco Ruggiero
marco.ruggiero@unifi.it
Marco Ruggiero, MD, PhD, is a professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Firenze, Italy. He has a specialization in clinical radiology and served as Lieutenant Medical Officer in the Italian Army. In 1984-86 he worked on signal transduction and protease inhibitors as a post-doctoral fellow at Burroughs Wellcome Co. (Research Triangle Park, NC) with Drs. Cuatrecasas and Lapetina. One of his papers on protease inhibitors was presented to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Nobel laureate Sir John Vane. Subsequently he worked as visiting scientist at the Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Biology (Chief: Dr. S. A. Aaronson) of the National Cancer Institute (NIH, Bethesda, Maryland); his research was focussed on oncogenes and signal transduction. In 1992, he moved back to Firenze, Italy, where now he teaches in the Faculties of Mathematical, Physical and Natural Sciences, Medicine and Surgery, and Engineering. He has been the tutor of many students preparing Bachelor or PhD. theses, several of which have been on AIDS with particular emphasis on the non-viral origin of the disease. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers in journals such as Science, PNAS or Oncogene, and he has been recently appointed Author in Chief of the “Springer Reference Live: Cancer”. His website is: marcoruggiero.org

Religion, Politics, and AIDS in Italy: curious paradoxes from the Ministry of Health
According to the Vatican, AIDS is “a pathology of the spirit”, and not condoms, but “chastity and fidelity are the means to defeat the fatal virus”. The Vatican is highly respected by politicians and common people alike, which has led to curious paradoxes concerning HIV infection and AIDS. The most notable is that the Italian Ministry of Health appears convinced that AIDS is not (or not solely) caused by HIV. In Italy AIDS can be diagnosed in the absence of signs of HIV infection. As of May 2009, there is no surveillance system of new HIV infections, which allows manipulation of data concerning HIV infection. The Ministry of Health does not classify AIDS either as a relevant and particularly interesting infective disease or as highly frequent, or even susceptible to control interventions. AIDS in Italy is confined to two categories of people not particularly liked by the pervasive moral regime—gay men and drug addicts. In about 25% of paediatric AIDS cases the mother was HIV-negative. If the data and the definitions provided for by the Italian Ministry of Health are accurate and consistent, and assuming that the Ministry always uses the acronym “AIDS” to indicate the same pathologic entity, then we are forced to conclude that the Ministry is convinced that HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS in Italy.

Religión, política y SIDA en Italia: curiosas paradojas del Ministerio de Salud
Según el Vaticano, el SIDA es una “patología del espríritu”, y no son los condones, si no “la castidad y fidelidad los medios para derrotar a este virus mortal”. El Vaticano es tenido en mucha consideración tanto por los políticos y como por el pueblo, lo cual ha dado lugar a curiosas paradojas respecto a la infección por VIH y el SIDA. La paradoja más notable es que el Ministerio Italiano de Salud, parece estar convencido que el VIH no es la (o no es la única) causa del SIDA. En Italia, el SIDA se puede diagnosticar en ausencia de indicios que indiquen infección por VIH. A día de hoy, mayo de 2009, un sistema de censo nacional de nuevos diagnósticos de infecciones por VIH no está disponible, lo cual permite la manipulación de datos con respecto a la infección por VIH. El ministerio de salud no clasifica el SIDA ni como una enfermedad infecciosa relevante ni particularmente interesante, ni tampoco como una patología muy frecuente, ni siquiera como una enfermedad susceptible a intervenciones de control. El SIDA en Italia esta confinado a dos categorías de personas que no son de particular agrado del régimen moral dominante – hombres gays y drogadictos. Aproximadamente en el 25% de casos de SIDA pediátricos la madre era VIH-negativa. Si los datos y definiciones proporcionados por el Ministerio Italiano de Salud son precisos y consistentes, y asumiendo que el Ministerio siempre utiliza el acrónimo “SIDA” para indicar la misma entidad patológica, entonces estamos obligados a concluir que el Ministerio está convencido que el VIH no es la única causa del SIDA en Italia.

Daniele Mandrioli
mandry83@libero.it
Daniele Mandrioli, M.D, 26 years old. He obtained his M.D. degree in 2009 from the University of Bologna, Italy, including a thesis on the Chemical-AIDS hypothesis. His thesis work was supervised by Prof. Giovanni Pierini, toxicologist, and realised thanks to his experiences at Dr. Koehnlein’s practice in 2008. In 2007/2008 he was a Medical Student at Charité—Universitätsmedizin, Berlin. He is a member of the “Conflict of Interest Formation Program”, a group where Medical Doctors and Medical Students discuss conflict of interest in medicine, which was created by the Center for International Health, Bologna with the help of NoGraziePagoIo (Italian branch of Nofreelunch). In the summer of 2009 he attended the BSRT International Summer School on Innovative Approaches in Regenerative Medicine in Berlin.

The Italian epidemiology supports the chemical AIDS theory
The Italian epidemiology supports the chemical AIDS theory. The AIDS cases went down in the last 10 years just among the drug abusers (4737 to 680). This happened because of the decline in Heroin abuse. Moreover, in Italy just 1/3 of HIV-positive people use the anti-HIV drugs, which means that antiretroviral use cannot account for the decline in AIDS cases (from 5052 to 1144) in the last 10 years. Moreover, scanning electron microscope images (SEM) help us see how the immune system could be stressed by the impurities that we can find in a heroin doses.
La epidemiología italiana apoya la teoría química del SIDA
La epidemiología italiana apoya la teoría química del SIDA. En los últimos 10 años, sólo se redujeron los casos de SIDA entre los drogadictos (de 4737 a 680). Esto es debido a la caída en el abuso del consumo de heroína. Además, en Italia sólo 1/3 de los pacientes utilizan los ARV, por lo que esto no podría explicar el descenso en los casos de SIDA de los últimos 10 años (de 5052 a 1144). Asimismo, algunas imágenes al microscopio electrónico de barrido o SEM (siglas en inglés), nos ayudarán a ver como el sistema inmune podría estar estresado por las impurezas que se pueden encontrar en una dosis de heroína.

Karri Stokely
kstokely2@yahoo.com
Karri is a 43 year old mother of two children, ages 17 and 14. She and her husband, Joe, have been married for 19 years. Karri’s background is in emergency medicine; she worked as a Paramedic, then in out-patient surgery until she had her children. As a stay-at-home mom, she has successfully home schooled both kids for the past 12 years. “It has been such a wonderful experience, quite a blessing and a privilege to build relationships with them while home-schooling” says Karri. In her spare time, Karri enjoys exercise, reading, and teaching classes on whole/living foods nutrition. Karri makes her own herbal tinctures and believes the key to good health is through natural remedies, sprouting, juicing and organic, living foods. One of Karri’s favorite quotes is: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”—Hippocrates
Diagnosed with AIDS after a positive HIV test in 1996, Karri followed the current orthodox paradigm of treating AIDS for 11 years until she and Joe discovered there was another side to the story—One they had never heard or been told. Karri has fully regained her health and has successfully been off pharmaceutical drugs for 2 ½ years.
Karri and her family reside in Florida and you can find out more about them at: ww.myspace.com/rethinkaids

How I fell victim to the AIDS machine
My story is one of how I fell victim to the AIDS machine and how my husband and I found out the truth surrounding this controversy after I had been taking the HIV drugs for 11 years. I was given an AIDS diagnosis in 1996, based on nothing but a t-cell count. I experienced many side effects from the drugs over the years, ranging from nausea and vomiting, muscle cramps, anemia, insomnia, wasting, and hair falling out. We were led to believe that these were all symptoms of HIV disease, or having full blown AIDS. My doctor never told us that these symptoms could be medication related. Since stopping all the medications in April 2007, I have fully regained my health and well-being, and all side effects have disappeared. I do have some concerns about any long-term, unseen damage these poisons may have done to me, but I try not to worry about it, as I live my life as healthy as possible.
Como caí víctima de la máquina SIDA
Mi historia trata sobre como caí víctima de la máquina SIDA y como, tras llevar 11 años tomando los medicamentos anti-VIH, mi marido y yo descubrimos la verdad en torno a esta controversia. En 1996 me diagnosticaron SIDA basado únicamente en un recuento de células T. Sufrí muchos efectos secundarios producidos por los fármacos que iban desde náuseas y vómitos, calambres musculares, anemia, insomnio, consunción y caída del cabello.
Nos hicieron creer que estos síntomas eran propios de la enfermedad por VIH, o un estadio SIDA completamente desarrollado. Mi doctor nunca nos informó que estos síntomas pudiesen estar relacionados con la medicación. Desde que deje de tomar los medicamentos en abril del 2007, he recuperado íntegramente mi salud y bienestar, y todos los efectos secundarios han desaparecido. Tengo algunas preocupaciones acerca de cualquier daño que me haya podido causar estos venenos a largo plazo y que haya podido pasar inadvertido, pero intento no preocuparme de esto mientras vivo mi vida de la manera más sana posible.

Noreen Martin
noreenelaine@hotmail.com
After having survived cancer, hepatitis, and having been diagnosed with full-blown AIDS, she knew that it was time to make major changes in her life, as she did not think that modern medicine holds out much hope for life-threatening diseases. Having to cope with these diseases in a lifetime would probably be enough to push most people over the edge. However, Noreen found that all the hurdles that one has to overcome in life only go to make one stronger. She has never accepted that these diseases, or any other for that matter, were incurable. She believes that the body and the mind have a great healing capacity if given time and the proper ingredients to work with. She has since rebuilt her health, is not on anti-retroviral medication, but takes an enhancer called low dose naltrexone. She has completed a nutritional course and a master herbalist program and soon will have a Bachelor of Science in Holistic Nutrition. She is also working on a naturopathy degree. Noreen’s program of recovery started by getting educated about health issues, then she proceeded to detoxification, eliminated negative influences and added positive ones which included vitamins, supplements, and herbal products. She paid special attention to all of the food and drinks which went into her body, including products used on the body. Her health wasn’t destroyed in a day, neither does she think it could be rebuilt in a day. She took one day at a time and pressed forward with good health habits and a positive attitude. Her latest book is Perfect Immunity Against Disease

AIDS, Big Deal, Next!: A journey to hell and back with AIDS
A journey to hell and back with AIDS that nearly killed me to wonderful health without the HAART. When life gives one lemons, make lemonade as there is always a silver lining to be found in any situation!
SIDA, no es para tanto, ¡El siguiente!: Un viaje de ida y vuelta al infierno con el SIDA
Un viaje de ida al infierno con el SIDA que casi me mata y de vuelta a una maravillosa salud sin los HAART. Cuando la vida te da un limón, haz limonada ya que en cada situación no hay mal que por bien no venga!

Tony Lance
tonylance@mac.com
Tony Lance is a freelance writer and editor living near Nashville, TN. He’s been active in the rethinking community since 1997 when he co-founded the HEAL-Atlanta chapter (now defunct). From 2004-2008 he ran an Alive and Well-affiliated peer support group in NYC. In 2008 he wrote an article exploring the connection between intestinal dysbiosis and immune dysfunction in gay men that was published on Dr. Henry Bauer’s blog.

Challenges faced by gays who question HIV/AIDS with implications for dissidents
For several decades HIV/AIDS has been a rallying point for the gay community, bringing it together against a perceived common threat and, in the process, catalyzing the gay rights movement. Consequently, there is a shared sense of pride in this group about the manner in which they’ve responded to the issue, inextricably linking HIV/AIDS to the collective esteem of many gay men and women. Where does that leave those in the community who question HIV/AIDS? What challenges does that pose for dissidents at large?
Desafíos a los que se enfrentan los gays que cuestionan el VIH/SIDA y sus consecuencias para los disidentes
Durante varias décadas el VIH/SIDA ha sido un motivo de reivindicación para la comunidad gay, aunándola contra lo que se percibe como una amenaza común y, en ese proceso, catalizando el movimiento por los derechos de los gays. Por consiguiente, existe en este grupo un sentimiento compartido de orgullo sobre la manera en que han reaccionado a la cuestión, vinculando de manera inextricable el VIH/SIDA a la estima colectiva de muchos hombres y mujeres gays. ¿Dónde deja esto a aquellos en la comunidad que cuestionan el VIH/SIDA? ¿Que desafíos plantea esto para los disidentes en general?

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Notably absent from the impressive lineup are some of the best authors of books against the prevailing wisdom, including Rebecca Culshaw author of Science Sold Out, and Harvey Bialy, author of Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS. To some extent this absence reflects the vicious politics used to repress the view that HIV/AIDS science is profoundly incorrect and in urgent need of review and revision, which will undoubtedly be the theme of the conference.

The Rethinking AIDS 2009 Conference “will consist of talks that question the widely held dogma that HIV causes AIDS, including whether HIV exists, whether it is sexually transmitted, whether HIV tests are accurate and whether AIDS drugs are safe and effective. The social, psychologic and legal impacts of an HIV diagnosis will also be considered, as well as alternative health approaches for people whose health has been damaged by an HIV diagnosis, by the prescription of AIDS drugs or who have been diagnosed with an AIDS-defining illness.”

Brent Leung’s excellent documentary House of Numbers, revealing the disarray of leading scientists who promote the current paradigm and propagandize in its favor will be shown on Saturday afternoon at 4.30pm. Joan Shenton’s talk will also include her own found gems of the kind that decorate House of Numbers: statements by HIV/AIDS scientists which support the statement and claims of their critics, such that the critics are vindicated by the very people that strive so determinedly to silence them. “I have searched the Immunity Resource Foundation archive and found some filmed gems that have never before been broadcast. They include excepts from interviews with Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier, Sam Mhlongo, Huw Christie and others that reflect essentially, what we wanted to say but couldnh’t.”

Media are invited to all conference sessions including the documentary screening and the Welcome Cocktail after the Keynote Lecture today, Friday (Nov 6) (register in advance by filling out the attached registration form and emailing it back to or call Siggi Sachs at (510) 717-8635.

Here is the program:

Rethinking AIDS 2009 Conference

Friday November 6th

Opening Session
6:00
Welcome and introduction of Keynote Speaker by David Crowe (Calgary, Canada)
6:15
Keynote Lecture: The media, HIV/AIDS, and the making of public “understandings”
by Michael Tracey (Boulder, CO, USA)
7:15 Welcome Cocktail

Saturday November 7

Morning Session Chaired by Charles Geshekter
8:00 1. History of the AIDS controversy spanning three decades by John Lauritsen
(Dorchester, MA, USA)
8:40 2. HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS—a new
perspective by Peter Duesberg (Berkeley, CA, USA)
9:20 3. Questioning the existence of HIV by Etienne de Harven (Saint Cézaire, France)
10:00 Coffee Break
Chaired by Helen Lauer
10:30 4. The deception and dishonesty of African AIDS statistics by Charles Geshekter (Chico, CA, USA)
11:10 5. Aids in Africa—a call for sense not hysteria by Christian Fiala (Vienna, Austria)
11:50 6. The role of the inner pharmacy in the prevention and treatment of AIDS by
Roberto Giraldo (São Paolo, Brasil)
12:30 Lunch

Afternoon Session

Chaired by Christian Fiala
2:00 7. HIV drugs causing AIDS by David Rasnick (Oakland, CA, USA)
2:40 8. The treatment dilemma of HIV-positive patients as a result of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: The illusion of antiviral treatment by Claus Koehnlein (Kiel, Germany)
3:20 9. HIV/AIDS blunder is far from unique in the annals of science and
medicine by Henry Bauer (Blacksburg, VA, USA)
4:00 Coffee Break
4:30 Screening of Brent Leung’s documentary, House of Numbers

7:00 Conference Banquet ($100)

Sunday November 8th

Morning Session Chaired by Roberto Giraldo

8:00 10. The criminalization of illness by Chris Black (Toronto, Canada)
8:30 11. Rethinking legal aspects of AIDS in Colombia by Rodrigo Andres Medina Diaz, Jose Ramon Lopez Gomez (Universidad Libre Pereira Colombia Law Group, Pereira, Colombia)
9:00 12. Censorship in the AIDS debate—the success of stifling, muzzling and a strategy of silence by Joan Shenton (London, UK)
9:30 Coffee Break
Chaired by Joan Shenton & Dale DeMatteo
9:45 13. Religion, politics, and AIDS in Italy: curious paradoxes from the Ministry of Health by Marco Ruggiero (Florence, Italy)
10:15 14. The Italian epidemiology supports the chemical AIDS theory by Daniele Mandrioli (Bologna, Italy)
10:45 15. How I fell victim to the AIDS machine by Karri Stokely (Lakeland, FL, USA)
11:00 16. Challenges faced by gays who question HIV/AIDS with implications for dissidents by Tony Lance (Nashville, TN, USA)
11:15 Panel discussion: Panelists: Celia Farber, Gary Null, Joan Shenton, and Michael Tracey Moderator: David Crowe
12:00 Closing Remarks

Conference organized by Rethinking AIDS
website www.rethinkingaids.com
or contact at info@ra2009.org

Whether any of this will have any influence on the political scene in this high spending arena is a question. Currently the leaders of HIV/AIDS are clamoring as loudly as ever for increased funding, and the idea that spending is based on a grand error maintained by self serving scientists against all logic and evidence is not something that will make itself heard until the New York Times opens up its columns to all the news fit to print on this issue, or some other watershed change comes about.

Meanwhile, one wonders about the priorities of the conference organizers themselves when they schedule the remarkable and rarely heard analyst John Lauritsen and the distinguished Peter Duesberg to speak at the ungodly hours of 8 am and 8.40 am on Saturday morning.

It reminds us of the New York conference of Rethinking AIDS where Peter Duesberg, the key speaker, was rushed off stage before he could even complete his presentation, not to mention answer any questions, so that the program schedule could be maintained.