Science Guardian

Bad behavior reaches the Wiki as Cornell researcher secretly counterattacks Bialy

Fun and games in the schoolyard shows human flaws at work, and whose case is vulnerable

Cornell’s John P. Moore, chief public defender of the absurdities of the HIV∫AIDS paradigm on the Web, seems to have become obsessed with leading paradigm critic Harvey Bialy recently.

The thorn in the side of Moore, the youngish, red haired star of HIV∫AIDS research, who currently spends his research time daubing the privates of macaques with putative HIV microbicides, is Bialy’s notoriously savage email.

Moore has been relentlessly tormented by the brilliant but unrestrained HIV∫AIDS critic’s extreme version of this Web weapon, whereby Bialy combines a flair for discomfiting recipients with sharp points and bad news with blistering vulgarities. The scathing and intemperately phrased email is witty enough that we are sure that Bialy must constantly undermine Moore’s confidence in the science he promotes, and his defensive actions seem to indicate this.

In fact recently Moore has thought of two ways to get back at Bialy, both of them even less dignified than Bialy’s notorious email, and much more malicious and public.

We have decided to carry news of these personal excesses here because onlookers will find the public cockfight not only entertaining but informative on our main topic, since it is the only direct public clash between the two sides of the HIV∫AIDS debate at the top tier level that has occurred in two decades.

The scrap is educational because it suggests in its dynamic who is confidently right on the underlying issue, the validity of the paradigm itself. It also will teach the naive that science is done by people who may have large flaws, usually expertly concealed by the top players.

Certainly these two champions on opposite sides of the HIV fence are well matched, or as some might say, thoroughly deserve each other. Both are combative and outspoken, and good at delivering sarcastic jibes, though Bialy is the sharper needler. Both have a tendency to stoop to conquer, Bialy with his flamethrower multicopied email and Moore with his delight in exposing private correspondence to public view on his paradigm promoting website, AIDSTruth.org.

With his latest moves Moore has lowered the bar even further, we would say.

Moore edits the Wiki

First, he has been exposed in a schoolboyish attempt to malign Bialy in public by entering the Wikipedia under a pseudonym and editing the Bialy biography, adding a large number of phrases severely detracting from the otherwise excellent impression that biography makes on readers.

For as his Wiki biography normally records, Bialy has much to his credit in his singular career in science editing and scholarship, including being the founding scientific editor of Nature/Biotechnology, where he proved to be the only editor in the science journal establishment with the courage, honesty and perspicacity to support Peter Duesberg of Berkeley in his public criticism of the HIV∫AIDS theory in the early years of the eventually stifled public debate.

Since it added a number of changes which disparaged these acccomplishents, naturally Moore’s underhand but obvious corruption of the Wiki entry, once Bialy complained of it, was swiftly removed by the administrators. Moore must have expected this, so we assume he meant the initiative only as a temporary schoolboy prank in an irresponsible but jocular spirit harking back to his Downing College, Cambridge years, and occasional reading of Private Eye, a hallowed name in English satirical journalism which spends its time ‘debagging’ (pulling down the trousers of) the financially and politically powerful, pompous and personally foolish in England’s higher circles. (Asked if this is indeed the spirit in which he acted, Moore hasn’t yet responded to our query.)

Bialy’s sense of humor, bred at Bard College, where he graduated first in his class, did not rise to the occasion, however, and Moore received a scorcher of an email which was also forwarded along with Harvey Bialy’s mild complaint filed with the Dean of Cornell suggesting he should curb the antics of his junior colleague.

We certainly support Bialy in his reasonable objection to this character assassination, not least because Moore had the amusing but possibly dangerous effrontery to adopt our own moniker, TruthseekerNYC, as his sign in name at the Wiki, where it is now reprimanded in public. It was not our doing, in case anyone ever thought so.

This cheeky disguise to conceal his authorship of the libel was instantly blown by Dr Bialy, who seems to have known without asking that we would never perpetrate such mischief even if we had reason to, which we don’t. As all readers of this blog know we believe in treating the Web as a permanent repository of truth, of the same stature as print, even if this futuristic policy is shared by all too few at present. One good reason is that Google’s memory is eternal.

Here for reference is the correct Wiki bio of the distinguished Bialy, a uniquely fierce proponent of truth in science of the old school, whose book is all the credentials any reader will ever need to check for his intelligence, scientific acumen and reliability in reporting. (Where is John Moore’s book, one may well ask? We look forward to that apologia, which will undoubtedly be a rich entertainment in rationalizing nonscience, especially if the entire HIV∫AIDS scheme has finally collapsed in the meantime.)

Harvey Bialy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harvey Bialy is an American molecular biologist and AIDS dissident. He was one of the original signatories to the letter establishing the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis,[1] the editor of its first newsletter,[2] and was a member of the controversial South African Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel convened by Thabo Mbeki in 2000.[3]

Bialy was a resident scholar of the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Cuernavaca between 1996 and 2006, where he also founded and directed the Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas. At the beginning of 2007, he left both positions.

Bialy graduated first in his class from Bard College in 1966, and was awarded a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1970 by the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the journal Nature Biotechnology (part of the Nature family of publications) as its scientific editor in 1984,[4] and edited its peer-reviewed content from 1984–1996. He has coauthored significant papers in molecular genetics — among them the first to show that phage genes can subvert host functions [5],[6] and numerous editorials and commentaries on contemporary issues in biotechnology in Nature Biotechnology and other journals.

Bialy was the co-recipient (with Prof. Stanley Falkow, Stanford University) of a grant from the Charles Merill Trust to study antibiotic resistant pathogens in Nigeria in 1978. He received a World Health Organization grant to study the epidemiology and genetics of antibiotic resistant enteric pathogens in Nigeria in 1982. He worked as a visiting researcher or research fellow at several universities in the United States, and Africa throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He was advisor to the Center for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering in Havana, Cuba from 1986–1996.

Bialy authored Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS (ISBN 1556435312), a book about the scientific life of fellow molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, with special emphasis on Duesberg’s aneuploidy theory of cancer and on the politics of modern science. A Spanish-language translation by Roberto P. Stock, a senior investigator at the IBT, was published by the UNAM Press in 2005 (ISBN 9703225993), and contains an introduction by the IBT’s previous director.

He is also an artist and poet. Some of his work can be seen at his website “bialy/s”.

Here is the email Bialy was forced to write to the Dean after the attempted desecration by Moore of this entry, an email which has been disseminated by the author to key members of the HIV∫AIDS reformist clique, and is thus a public document, its reproduction given permission by the author, a model rule the notorious Dr. Moore might well follow:

(To AL) the slanderous edit to my wikipedia page copied below was produced by “TRUTHSEEKERNYC” …. you are free to do with these emails anything you wish.

gezay gezunct

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: bialy harvey < Date: Apr 5, 2007 7:33 AM
Subject: Fwd: you really are 10 years old
To: kasmith at Cornell, Dean at Cornell
Cc: "John P. Moore, PhD" <

I really am sorry to disturb you with this, but I think the nutso prof has gone around several new bends and you really might wish to put some real pressure on him to cease and desist before he disgraces your otherwise fine institution any further. The slander below was posted by him on my Wikpedia biography page, as a 'corrected' biography. It was so outrageous that even the generally unfriendly Wiki moderator removed it on the instant almost, although it remains on the page's archives, with a warning to the 'truthseekernyc' that it was in serious violation of several Wikipedia policies.

I cannot really believe you let him near any students.

I make no apologies at all for the 'offensive' language of my own, which is a pale shadow compared to what he wrote.

Harvey

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: bialy harvey
Date: Apr 5, 2007 7:08 AM
Subject: you really are 10 years old
To: "John P. Moore, PhD"
Cc: Darin Brown <

you actually thought this slander you penned would stand? … you are one of the most pathetic pieces of dreck i have ever encounterd..and i have encountered more than few. if i ever am face to face with you, i will kick your faggot brit butt from one wall to another.

Harvey Bialy is an American molecular biologist and AIDS denialist. He was one of the original signatories to the letter establishing the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis,[1] the editor of its first newsletter,[2]. The leadership of this organization now regard him as a mere gadfly who detracts from their cause through his sheer silliness. He has been a member of the South African Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel, from April 2000 – present. [citation needed]. On that Panel, he demonstrated that he was unable to comprehend even the most basic aspects of the science of HIV infection and AIDS, botching his responsibilities to the President and the South African nation by acting unscientifically and irresponsibly.
Bialy was a resident scholar of the Institute of Biotechnology (IBT) of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Cuernavaca between 1996 and 2006, where he also founded and directed the Virtual Library of Biotechnology for the Americas. At the beginning of 2007, he left both positions because the UNAM authorities demanded his resignation on the grounds that he was bringing shame and dishonor to the good name of a respected university.Bialy graduated first in his class from Bard College in 1966, and was awarded a Ph.D. in molecular biology in 1970 by the University of California, Berkeley. He is the founding scientific editor of Bio/technology (part of the Nature family of publications), and edited its peer-reviewed content from 1983–1996. Nature Biotechnology then insisted he sever his links to the journal, because his unscientific views on AIDS were bringing discredit to the journal in professional scientific circles. He has coauthored (middle authorships only) papers in molecular genetics — among them being the first to show that phage genes can subvert host functions [3] [4], and numerous editorials and commentaries on contemporary issues in biotechnology in Nature Biotechnology and other journals.
Bialy is now retired from academic life, and spends his time editing a conspiracy theory based website on which he posts ghost written articles under pseudonyms and generally makes a fool of himself. The time he devotes to this site reflects the fact that he has nothing better to do nowadays as no mainstream scientists and journalists now take him seriously. One look at the site is enough to prove that the editor lacks credibility and credentials.
Bialy authored Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS (ISBN 1556435312), a book about the scientific life of fellow molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, with special emphasis on Duesberg's aneuploidy theory of cancer and on the politics of modern science. The book has sold minimally and is generally regarded as nothing more than a pathetic hagiography of a scientific renegade who wasted his career by adopting idiotic positions on first, cancer, then latterly HIV and AIDS. Bialy was one of the few people to be suckered into adopting similar positions. He is also an artist and poet, these works being put together under the influence of the psychoactive drugs that he habitually uses. Some of his work can be seen at his website "bialy/s".

Quotes
None that make any sense to any serious scientist.

With this perfidious though not unfunny move now blocked, we are dismayed to report that John “Macaque” Moore (the juvenile spirit of this catfight is catching, sorry, to any reader of Private Eye) has gone even further, and prominently posted a pdf file of certain of Bialy’s typically rude emails to Mark Biernbaum, a distinguished commentator here at NAR, on his “AIDSTruthiness” site (as it is familiarly known to the HIV∫AIDS revisionists), claiming they are “homophobic”. Whether they are or not, readers can judge for themselves. But the communications were back channel and privileged, and surely he has no business making them public. Of course, Bialy’s mass copying of ultrarude emails is almost as bad, and subject to the same moral stricture.

But it is not as if Bialy is another Don Imus, announcing to millions that the Rutgers female basketball team are “nappy headed ho’s,”
the current PC outrage for which the NBC shock jock has been suspended for a fortnight. The use of the offending words in Bialy’s case was in a mood of private and personal irritability and no more meant as a public statement than the insults of a marital spat. They should not have been posted in Comments here by the target, Mark himself, which is where Moore found them, and we are sorry for that.

The real cause of bad behavior

What’s going on? Why are grown men behaving like schoolboys because they are at loggerheads on an intellectual theory which they should be debating in the pages of serious science journals? One reason is the signal unwillingness of defenders like Moore to debate anything at all in reevaluating the HIV∫AIDS pardigm.

All the other significant defenders of the faith senior to Moore have long followed a policy of ignoring HIV∫AIDS critics as completely as they possibly can. In fact, with Moore so loudly playing the role of chief public defender of the science of HIV∫AIDS, we are pretty sure that the editorially active microbicide researcher is an embarrassment to Dr Anthony Fauci of NIAID and his HIV promotion cohorts at WHO and elsewhere, though he has yet to be reprimanded for it, according to his initial emails to us.

For Moore has over the past year, with his new web site, Op Ed piece in the Times last year, trouble making attacks on objective journalists at the Toronto AIDS Conference and public battles with Bialy ruptured their stunningly successful policy long in place of resolutely ignoring the critics of the paradigm that pays for their expensive suits and other perks of leadership in science politics, a strategy which has proved successful over 22 years in reducing media interest in AIDS “denialists” to almost zero. Until, that is, Moore stirred up a hornet’s nest on the Web by publishing his crudely stated and highly misleading Op-Ed piece in the New York Times last year, Deadly Quackery, and started the AIDTruth.org site, which holds up the HIV∫AIDS critics’ names, claims, writings and references to ridicule – and for all to see and check out.

Moore’s hatchet job in the Times

Here for reference is the Deadly Quackery piece with the false claims in it highlighted in bold:

Deadly Quackery
By JOHN MOORE and NICOLI NATTRASS

H.I.V. causes AIDS. This is not a controversial claim but an established fact, based on more than 20 years of solid science. It is as certain as the descent of humans from apes and the falling of dropped objects to the ground.

So why reiterate the obvious? Because lately, a bizarre theory has gained ground — one that claims that H.I.V. is harmless, and that the antiretroviral drugs that curb the growth of the virus cause rather than treat AIDS. Such talk sounds to most of us like quackery, but the theory has emerged as a genuine menace to public health in the United States and, particularly, in South Africa.

The theory, which we call AIDS denialism, has gained such currency with President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa that his administration is reluctant to expand access to antiretroviral drugs. Despite generous allocations from the country’s Treasury and substantial assistance from foreign donors, only a quarter of those needing antiretrovirals receive them. This response is poor by the standards of middle-income countries, but it is especially troublesome in South Africa, which has more H.I.V.-positive people than any other country.

American AIDS denialists are partly to blame for South Africa’s backsliding AIDS policy. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, the health minister, has described antiretrovirals as poisons. She is supported in these views by Roberto Giraldo, a New York hospital technologist who says AIDS is caused by deficiencies in the diet, and who served on President Mbeki’s AIDS advisory panel in 2000. The minister promotes nutritional alternatives like lemons, garlic and olive oil to treat H.I.V. infection. Several prominent South Africans have died of AIDS after opting to change their diets instead of taking antiretrovirals.

Another American AIDS denialist, David Rasnick, a regular letter-writer to South African newspapers, absurdly claims that H.I.V. cannot be transmitted between heterosexuals. Mr. Rasnick now works in South Africa for a multinational vitamin company, the Rath Foundation, conducting clinical trials in which AIDS patients are encouraged to take multivitamins instead of antiretrovirals.

In the past, South Africa’s Medicines Control Council acted swiftly to curb such abuses, and the Medical Research Council condemned AIDS denialism. But recent high-level political appointments of administration supporters to both bodies have neutered their influence. In South Africa, AIDS denialism now underpins a lucrative nutritional supplements industry that has the tacit, and sometimes active, support of the Mbeki administration.

By courting the AIDS denialists, President Mbeki has increased their stature in the United States. He lent credibility to Christine Maggiore, a Californian who campaigns against using antiretrovirals to prevent transmission of H.I.V. from mothers to children, when he was photographed meeting her. Two years later, Ms. Maggiore gave birth to an H.I.V.-infected daughter, Eliza Jane, who acquired an AIDS-related infection last year and died at age 3.

Mother-to-child H.I.V. transmission is now rare in the United States, thanks to the widespread use of preventive therapy and the activities of organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. Sadly, this is not so in South Africa, where many children are born infected and then face short, painful lives. The health and lives of American children are also still under threat: a small clique of AIDS denialists is trying to block the provision of antiretrovirals to H.I.V.-infected children in the New York City foster care system.

Until recently, AIDS researchers and activists in the United States tended to regard the denialists with derision, assuming they would fade away. Unfortunately, this has not happened. Harper’s Magazine recently published an article by Celia Farber promoting the denialist view. There is a real risk that a new generation of Americans could be persuaded that H.I.V. either doesn’t exist or is harmless, that safe sex isn’t important and that they don’t need to protect their children from this deadly virus. A resurgence of denialism in the United States would have far reaching effects on the global AIDS pandemic, just as it already has in South Africa.

The AIDS denialists use pseudoscience and non-peer-reviewed Internet postings to bolster their false claims about H.I.V. The real facts about this virus have been uncovered by scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health, the British and South African Medical Research Councils, the Pasteur Institute and many other national research organizations. The public should seek AIDS truth from the latter sources.

It is sad when selling magazines and vitamin supplements is considered more important than promoting public health and scientific truth. The truth is that H.I.V. does exist, that it causes AIDS and that antiretroviral drugs can prevent H.I.V. transmission and death from AIDS. To deny these facts is not just wrong — it’s deadly.

John Moore is a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University. Nicoli Nattrass is the director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit at the University of Cape Town.

A letter from the South African Ambassador in Washington followed the Deadly Quackery piece as follows, indicating a regrettable level of official acquiescence to the pressure exerted on Mbeki by AIDS Inc to deliver AIDS drugs to South Africans counted as ill from HIV. No corrective letters were published by the Times to counter Moore’s misleading statements, such as the false claim that Christine Maggiore’s lost child was HIV positive, which corrupt about half the editorial, as indicated in bold above:

June 11, 2006
South Africa and AIDS

To the Editor:

Re ”Deadly Quackery,” by John Moore and Nicoli Nattrass (Op-Ed, June 4):

The South African government’s comprehensive H.I.V. and AIDS program has three principal objectives. One, prevent the transmission of H.I.V. Two, when transmission occurs, delay for as long as possible the onset of AIDS-defining illness. Three, care for patients whose infections have progressed to AIDS-defining illness.

Once an H.I.V.-positive person has a CD4 cell count of 200 per cubic millimeter of blood or exhibits Stage 4 AIDS-defining illness as defined by the World Health Organization, he or she is eligible for antiretroviral treatment at public expense. By the end of March, at least 134,473 people were receiving free treatment at 231 facilities around the country. Government has allocated more than $500 million to procure antiretroviral drugs through the end of 2007.

A recent report by Health Systems Trust, an independent group that monitors the health care delivery in South Africa, found that our progress in delivering antiretroviral treatment ”has probably been swifter than in any comparable country.”

How symptomatic is this of leadership in denial about AIDS, its causation or the efficacy of antiretroviral treatment?

Barbara Masekela
Ambassador of South Africa
Washington, June 6, 2006

Moore as a closet dissident

HIV∫AIDS critics must like Moore for his arrogant confidence since it highlights the mismatch between the claims he repeats and the literature of the field, which denies them, and they should thank him for his site, which is now one of the most useful HIV∫AIDS criticism destinations on the Web, which has hardly any traffic but deserves more.

Not only does it present many of the claims of the critics to the faithful and the curious, but it shows off the weakness of the best replies that can be managed by the paradigm supporters. We also like it because it suggests that Moore’s naive enthusiasm for his belief is genuine. Clearly he has no inkling that he is on the wrong track, and acts from conviction.

Of course, there is a faintly vindictive flavor to his strikingly hostile treatment of paradigm critics which seems unnecessary, but at least Moore in advocating media censorship of countervailing views is not as bad as his Canadian partner, Mark Wainberg of Montreal, who says publicly that HIV∫AIDS critics should be jailed and evidently would prefer they were executed for the threat they pose to delivery of “life saving drugs”.

Bialy’s nuclear missives

And to one very small extent separate from his reflex support of the conventional wisdom in HIV∫AIDS, Moore may be right. Harvey Bialy, despite his searingly brilliant guide to HIV∫AIDS scientific skullduggery (“Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg”, North Atlantic, 2004), is something of a concern to the critics of HIV∫AIDS, his comrades in arms, primarily because he insists on sending his red hot emails to them and everyone else who ignores his wishes or contradicts his beliefs, emails which in terms of the language used are literary napalm.

Just as Moore suspects, Bialy’s colleagues among critics of the paradigm worry that Bialy’s credibility will be reduced, as so will theirs by association, just as Moore hopes, by the public exposure of his linguistic lashings. They do not expect outsiders unfamiliar with the accuracy of Bialy’s scholarship and his artistic bent to suppose, as we like to do, that his scathingly belligerent manner in email is a personal foible used freely to reinforce the intellectual points he makes, in a manner which artistically speaking is intended to match film director Alfred Hitchcock’s habit of placing a chase scene in a concert hall, with a gun toting villain playing hide and seek with the hero in the orchestra as a classical opera is performed. The contrast adds to the drama and excitement of the scene, ensuring it gets the attention it deserves, just as Bialy’s email tone always does.

Moore has been a prime recipient of these scorchers, some of them included in exchanges posted on You Bet Your Life, the critical science blog that Bialy edits with an iron hand and with little compromise with scientific ignorance, since it is aimed at PhDs that know what is going on. Some of these readers are inside the HIV∫AIDS field, and speak out anonymously on the blog. Naturally the renowned Cornell HIV microbicide researcher feels discomfited by Bialy’s lack of politesse exposing him to ridicule among his colleagues and students and so he has come up with his two below the belt counterblows in their ongoing standoff.

Internal demons loosed on the Web

As laborious recorders of the human comedy, we don’t blame either of these gentlemen for their excesses, for they seem to us to be victims of a very widespread phenomenon, the corruption of standards by the peculiarly intimate anonymity of writing on the Web. Everyone who does it has to constantly watch themselves to keep from going over a line in the sand between frank honesty and antisocial exposure of impulses normally kept in check when talking face to face. Excessive swearing and schoolboy jibes are two of the biggest of these subterranean demons which burst out if not checked.

That Moore is prepared to break the rules of decency, and Bialy ready to break the code of civility, in the cause of what they perceive as justice and truth is just one more example to us of how the Web works to reduce politesse to zero and expose character failings in even the brightest of men, unless inbred maternal training is strong, especially in naïve academics who are relatively new to posting on screen.

Anyone who checks out many message boards know that these built in moral restraints are often missing except at the highest levels of education and the food chain. We are mildly surprised, however, to find a Downing College, Cambridge graduate behaving in such a reckless manner, let alone one now attached to Cornell. Perhaps the Dean will rein him in as Bialy has suggested.

Proposals for rules of conduct

But the Web has that effect, it is clear. Email and Web posting is subject to the psychological distortion of the blank screen, which as a kind of live vacuum empty of answering body language or voice tones seems to suck out of people their innermost devils, the id without the superego, the adolescent within the adult.

The problem is so widespread that initiatives are springing up all over to resolve it. On Monday the Times had a front page story, A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs about Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, and others trying to come up with a code of conduct. The piece indicates how upsetting bad email and Web behavior can be.

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship….

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

Distraught over the threats and manipulated photos of her that were posted on other critical sites — including one that depicted her head next to a noose — Ms. Sierra canceled a speaking appearance at a trade show and asked the local police for help in finding the source of the threats. She also said that she was considering giving up blogging altogether.

In an interview, she dismissed the argument that cyberbullying is so common that she should overlook it. “I can’t believe how many people are saying to me, ‘Get a life, this is the Internet,’ ” she said. “If that’s the case, how will we ever recognize a real threat?”

The New York Times

April 9, 2007
A Call for Manners in the World of Nasty Blogs
By BRAD STONE

Correction Appended

Is it too late to bring civility to the Web?

The conversational free-for-all on the Internet known as the blogosphere can be a prickly and unpleasant place. Now, a few high-profile figures in high-tech are proposing a blogger code of conduct to clean up the quality of online discourse.

Last week, Tim O’Reilly, a conference promoter and book publisher who is credited with coining the term Web 2.0, began working with Jimmy Wales, creator of the communal online encyclopedia Wikipedia, to create a set of guidelines to shape online discussion and debate.

Chief among the recommendations is that bloggers consider banning anonymous comments left by visitors to their pages and be able to delete threatening or libelous comments without facing cries of censorship.

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

“If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

The code of conduct already has some early supporters, including David Weinberger, a well-known blogger (hyperorg.com/blogger) and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School. “The aim of the code is not to homogenize the Web, but to make clearer the informal rules that are already in place anyway,” he said.

But as with every other electrically charged topic on the Web, finding common ground will be a serious challenge. Some online writers wonder how anyone could persuade even a fraction of the millions of bloggers to embrace one set of standards. Others say that the code smacks of restrictions on free speech.

Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly were inspired to act after a firestorm erupted late last month in the insular community of dedicated technology bloggers. In an online shouting match that was widely reported, Kathy Sierra, a high-tech book author from Boulder County, Colo., and a friend of Mr. O’Reilly, reported getting death threats that stemmed in part from a dispute over whether it was acceptable to delete the impolitic comments left by visitors to someone’s personal Web site.

Distraught over the threats and manipulated photos of her that were posted on other critical sites — including one that depicted her head next to a noose — Ms. Sierra canceled a speaking appearance at a trade show and asked the local police for help in finding the source of the threats. She also said that she was considering giving up blogging altogether.

In an interview, she dismissed the argument that cyberbullying is so common that she should overlook it. “I can’t believe how many people are saying to me, ‘Get a life, this is the Internet,’ ” she said. “If that’s the case, how will we ever recognize a real threat?”

Ms. Sierra said she supported the new efforts to improve civility on the Web. The police investigation into her case is pending.

Menacing behavior is certainly not unique to the Internet. But since the Web offers the option of anonymity with no accountability, online conversations are often more prone to decay into ugliness than those in other media.

Nowadays, those conversations often take place on blogs. At last count, there were 70 million of them, with more than 1.4 million entries being added daily, according to Technorati, a blog-indexing company. For the last decade, these Web journals have offered writers a way to amplify their voices and engage with friends and readers.

But the same factors that make those unfiltered conversations so compelling, and impossible to replicate in the offline world, also allow them to spin out of control.

As many female bloggers can attest, women are often targets. Heather Armstrong, a blogger in Salt Lake City who writes publicly about her family (dooce.com), stopped accepting unmoderated comments on her blog two years ago after she found that conversations among visitors consistently devolved into vitriol.

Since last October, she has also had to deal with an anonymous blogger who maintains a separate site that parodies her writing and has included photos of Ms. Armstrong’s daughter, copied from her site.

Ms. Armstrong tries not to give the site public attention, but concedes that, “At first, it was really difficult to deal with.”

Women are not the only targets of nastiness. For the last four years, Richard Silverstein has advocated for Israeli-Palestinian peace on a blog (richardsilverstein.com) that he maintains from Seattle.

People who disagree with his politics frequently leave harassing comments on his site. But the situation reached a new low last month, when an anonymous opponent started a blog in Mr. Silverstein’s name that included photos of Mr. Silverstein in a pornographic context.

“I’ve been assaulted and harassed online for four years,” he said. “Most of it I can take in stride. But you just never get used to that level of hatred.”

One public bid to improve the quality of dialogue on the Web came more than a year ago when Mena Trott, a co-founder of the blogging software company Six Apart, proposed elevating civility on the Internet in a speech she gave at a French blog conference. At the event, organizers had placed a large screen on the stage showing instant electronic responses to the speeches from audience members and those who were listening in online.

As Ms. Trott spoke about improving online conduct, a heckler filled the screen with personal insults. Ms Trott recalled “losing it” during the speech.

Ms. Trott has scaled back her public writing and now writes a blog for a limited audience of friends and family. “You can’t force people to be civil, but you can force yourself into a situation where anonymous trolls are not in your life as much,” she said.

The preliminary recommendations posted by Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly are based in part on a code developed by BlogHer, a network for women designed to give them blogging tools and to guide readers to their pages.

“Any community that does not make it clear what they are doing, why they are doing it, and who is welcome to join the conversation is at risk of finding it difficult to help guide the conversation later,” said Lisa Stone, who created the guidelines and the BlogHer network in 2006 with Elisa Camahort and Jory Des Jardins.

A subtext of both sets of rules is that bloggers are responsible for everything that appears on their own pages, including comments left by visitors. They say that bloggers should also have the right to delete such comments if they find them profane or abusive.

That may sound obvious, but many Internet veterans believe that blogs are part of a larger public sphere, and that deleting a visitor’s comment amounts to an assault on their right to free speech. It is too early to gauge support for the proposal, but some online commentators are resisting.

Robert Scoble, a popular technology blogger who stopped blogging for a week in solidarity with Kathy Sierra after her ordeal became public, says the proposed rules “make me feel uncomfortable.” He adds, “As a writer, it makes me feel like I live in Iran.”

Mr. O’Reilly said the guidelines were not about censorship. “That is one of the mistakes a lot of people make — believing that uncensored speech is the most free, when in fact, managed civil dialogue is actually the freer speech,” he said. “Free speech is enhanced by civility.”

Correction: April 11, 2007

A picture caption on Monday with a front-page article about a proposal for a blogger code of conduct misstated a Web site that has developed a set of standards. It is BlogHer.org, not BlogHer.com.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

There is also a new book out, Send: The Essential Guide for Office and Home. A sort of Strunk and White for the e-sphere worked out by David Shipley, the Op-Ed editor of the Times, and Will Schwalbe, editor in chief of Hyperion Books, it offers a new email etiquette for those sufficiently socially challenged to need one. One of their rules is “Never forward without permission, and assume everything you write will be forwarded,” which is certainly apt in this case.

Science’s human factor

Is this washing of grubby laundry in public relevant to whether the paradigm should be replaced? After all, the credibility of both men is called into question by juvenile behavior, even though Moore’s habits of Web warfare are more public, disgraceful, antisocial and irrelevant to the paradigm dispute than Bialy’s napalm email.

We think it is telling in two ways, both counting against Moore rather than Bialy. In the first place, if Moore wishes to silence Bialy, how come he has no better argument to undermine him with? The fact that he stoops to ad hominem attack, holding Bialy up to ridicule on AIDStruth.org and accusing him of homophobia, suggests he wants to put Bialy out of business without having the science to do so.

Of course, there is nothing new in that. The response to Peter Duesberg has always been more ad hominem than serious debate, with his original two broadsides against the HIV∫AIDS cruise liner never answered directly. The articles were published in two top journals, Cancer Research and the Proceedings of the National Academy, and replied to with a pregnant silence that has lasted to this day, as far as those two journals are concerned, even though Robert Gallo originally promised to reply in the Proceedings.

Moore’s use of underhand Web tactics is not new. One truth damaging action adopted early on by Moore in response to Harvey Bialy’s book condemning HIV∫AIDS and current cancer oncogene science consisted of rounding up cronies to post all out pans of the dangerously accurate book on Amazon. This might be taken as just the flip side of the author rounding up friends to post positive reviews, except that the negative ones arranged by Moore betrayed little familiarity with the book’s contents.

But then Moore’s idea of resolving the HIV∫AIDS paradigm issue has very little truthseeking spirit in it, as he has made clear in an email to HEAL activist Michael Geiger. Moore told him that as far as he was concerned, the HIV∫AIDS critics deserved nothing less than all out “war”.

This IS a war, there ARE no rules, and we WILL crush you, one at a time, completely and utterly (at least the more influential ones; foot-soldiers like you aren’t worth bothering with).

The other important point these high jinks will teach the outsider is that science is practiced by undignified and often immature humans and not by gods, and its theoretical course is determined like any other human activity by the character and disposition of the men and women involved, who are pulled by and serve many more interests than simply the vocation of researching the truth about reality.

In the case of the long suffocated HIV∫AIDS scientific discussion, where the truth lies is indicated clearly by that one huge factor: the avoidance of paradigm debate by the powers that be. Moore has been publicly challenged to a debate by Bialy and has shown no sign at all of picking up the gauntlet. In his response to critics Moore has never agreed to public debate, a characteristic goal of genuine truthseekers.

Clearly the efforts of John Moore to detract from the public reputation of Harvey Bialy as a supreme critic along with Peter Duesberg of the science he (Moore) clings to, a supremacy established by Bialy’s book, and his long record of hyperintelligent writings in Nature Biotechnology editorials, articles and reviews, are really no more than yet another indication of how anxious the HIV∫AIDS paradigm defense squad are to avoid direct intellectual confrontation.

It is unlikely to work among those familiar with Bialy’s record.

Biernbaum blows up Moore

Meanwhile, we should emphasize that while we do not share the opinion that the Bialy missives quoted on AIDSTruth are homophobic, we understand that others may be more sensitive to the issue and think otherwise. By this we mean of course the addressee, Mark Biernbaum, a psychologist who is clearly more sensitive than we are to such implications, and perhaps rightly so, since our main concern is to keep that debate off this blog as too complicated and non-scientific.

But one irony of the whole affair is that at one point recently John Moore made the mistake of trying to curry favor with Biernbaum by telling him he (Moore) for one was definitely not homophobic. In answer he got shot out of the water three times in an email sequence which may be counted as a bigger come uppance than anything achieved to date by Bialy.

This is how it went (reprinted with permission from Biernbaum though so far without permission from John Moore, who is however sufficiently compromised by his own email privacy violations that we think it fair in this case just to wait and see if he objects, since there is nothing compromising to him in his email that we can find, other than the inaccuracies:

Apr 2, 2007.

John P. Moore, PhD wrote:

Relax, Mark, you’re in good company – I routinely get emails from several AIDS denialists complaining about Bialy’s conduct and dissociating themselves from it. The RA group leadership regards him (quite rightly) as one of our sides’ greatest assets…. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for us, they can’t find a way to shut him up and stop handing us cheap ammunition. All we have to do is steer journalists, neutrals, and vulnerable HIV-infected people to the YBYL site… pointing out that its stock in trade is personal insults and no more than that, and our case is proven, with no effort on our part…….. And that drags the whole AIDS denialist movement down into the gutter with him, even the people who behave with a degree of personal dignity (although poor scientific judgement). Go figure why I continue to feed him material to post……

So, I wouldn’t waste my time having a spat with this madman if I were you – he’s inconsequential to your side, and quite an asset to us. I think it’s the mind-altering drugs he uses that’s really to blame – he was probably fairly intelligent once, but there’s a limit to the amount of chemicals any brain can tolerate. But long may he thrive!

You, on the other hand, should look to your own best interests and seek the best possible health care and advice at the earliest possible opportunity.

John

Mark Biernbaum writes back:

Thanks, John. If by the “best possible healthcare” you mean an “HIV doctor,” a “CD4 count” a “viral load test” and some chemotherapies, I think I’ll pass. I’m willing to bet that I’ll outlive you, John, without availing myself of any of those things. To be perfectly frank, I cannot discern a difference between you and Harvey Bialy. You two just seem like opposite sides of the same rotten, homophobic mirror. It’s my opinion that gay men should avoid both sides of that mirror like the plague that is supposedly upon us.

Best wishes,
Mark

John Moore PhD replies:

Mark,
I sense there is absolutely no point in attempting to persuade you on the science, but I will clarify one specific point you make below, as it’s personal. I am most certainly NOT a homophobe. That’s the kind of stock in trade insult that Bialy delivers, based on no knowledge, no information, and without any thought. Many of the people who operate the AIDSTruth site are gay men, some are not, and it really doesn’t matter who has what sexual orientation or why – so, by all means think of me what you wish, but try to keep your views based on the facts (or at least don’t make assumptions).
Regards
John

Mark Biernbaum:

John,

I’m so relieved to know that some of your best friends are gay. Could you do me a favor then, and stop telling them they’re going to die? Also, perhaps stop the chemotherapy? Then I’d believe you. Otherwise — the facts indicate that you are indeed, a homophobe. And I’m sure, being as smart as you are, that there are many self-loathing gays out there — some of your best friends, perhaps.

John P. Moore, PhD:

All my friends, gay and straight, are perfectly comfortable in what they are and are not – I hope that one day you too find some inner peace.

And don’t forget that the majority of HIV-infected people worldwide nowadays are NOT gay men, and that heterosexual transmission is now the most prevalent route of infection. AIDS scientists work to help everyone, irrespective of gender and sexual orientation.
Regards,
John

Mark Biernbaum:

How could I forget about all of those Africans, John. If HIV was their only problem — or really any problem, I would just be thrilled. But I direct my international charitable donations to organizations that build clean water systems and sanitation and provide food for those who have none, rather than expensive cytological medications.

Your world-wide epidemic is a farce. I’m very sad that the homophobia that started this all has been transported around the world. It’s really a terrible thing.

So it is ironic that Mark Biernbaum now finds himself in the curious position of being championed by the very same John Moore, now joining him in accusing Bialy of the homophobia that Mark in our experience sees everywhere, including (falsely) on this blog from time to time.

The tendency of this accusation to stick indiscriminately to anyone and everyone who does not watch their Ps and Cs with utmost attention, like bits of static styrofoam filler from a UPS parcel, is why we at NAR prefer not to open this particular Pandora’s box, that is all. But we certainly appreciate Mark Biernbaum’s three bullseyes, scored despite John Moore’s remarkably polite responses (after his initial diatribe), which set a high standard all should follow.

Here for reference are the top six rules that we at NAR think are best for email:

1. Always rewrite the heading.

2. Always begin and finish with proper salutations.

3. Never forward anything without permission from the Sender.

4. Never use profanity.

5. Never joke without indicating it somehow.

6. Never insult.

All suggestions welcome.

AIDS “most dangerous reporter” does not take scientific position, but she has clear view

Her responsibility is to report what has happened, she says

Jon Cohen as repugnant parrakeet

The great rush to attack the Harper’s article Celia Farber wrote for the March issue this year, on the grounds that it was wrong to imply that Duesberg was credible and HIV was extremely suspect as the cause of AIDS, has always mystified Celia Farber, she has said, because nowhere in the article did she assert that claim herself.

Now in her new interview with Bookslut, at this page Interview with Celia Farber by Joanne McNeil, she says the same thing repeatedly, just to make sure everybody hears her:

An Interview with Celia Farber”I have never written that HIV does not cause AIDS. I don’t think I’ve ever said that HIV does not cause AIDS. I took one semester of journalism in college. The first thing one is taught is to answer the question: what happened? What happened in 1987 was that a top virologist — Peter Duesberg — published a paper in which he argued that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. That was the news event that I reported on. It is not for me to say as a journalist — as a nonscientist — what causes or doesn’t cause AIDS. But it is for me to say as a journalist what’s going on the landscape of AIDS dialectic.” by Joanne McNeil

That’s the headline and subhead of the piece at Interview with Celia Farber by Joanne McNeil, which makes it plain that Celia wants to “get off the meat hook here”, as she puts it.

You are constantly described as an AIDS dissident that does not believe HIV causes AIDS — but nowhere in your book is this explicitly stated. So how would you describe your views?Thank you for noticing that critical detail. I have never written that HIV does not cause AIDS. I don’t think I’ve ever said that HIV does not cause AIDS. I took one semester of journalism in college. The first thing one is taught is to answer the question: what happened? What happened in 1987 was that a top virologist — Peter Duesberg — published a paper in which he argued that HIV was not the cause of AIDS. That was the news event that I reported on. It was my second column in Spin magazine. It came out in 1988. It immediately became clear to me that interviewing Peter Duesberg, who argued HIV does not cause AIDS could not and would not be distinguished from the writer saying HIV does not cause AIDS. Because the stance then and now of mass media was that to interview Duesberg, to describe what he was saying, was exactly tantamount to endorsing him and agreeing with him.

It is not for me to say as a journalist — as a nonscientist — what causes or doesn’t cause AIDS. But it is for me to say as a journalist what’s going on the landscape of AIDS dialectic. And this was a huge event on the landscape.

By the end of the piece it is clear that Celia’s real engine is more a rich literary sensibility devoted to the human experience and not that of an investigative science reporter, as such. At least, not when the cost exacted on her and her family is so great:

That’s a good question. I am asked often, if I had known what the cost would be to my life and my career, would I nonetheless have done it? My quick answer is usually yes, of course. But it’s unanswerable… What I wish I had done differently, in retrospect, was to calculate the damage and the blight, both on myself and on my family and ask myself, “Is it fair to do to others?” Because what you actually do is you invite financial ruin…

…But for the sake of the story itself, which absolutely had to be told, I’m very glad I did it and very proud to have been involved in it.

But in fact it turns out she has a very clear idea as to what the cause of AIDS is, and says so. It is a view we entirely support here at NAR:

Are there any medicines you see as beneficial?I always want to pull back so I don’t start sounding like a self-declared doctor… but if I had to commit to a causation camp, I would be some kind of multi-factorialist. What that means is AIDS is caused by an assault on the immune system over time from many sources, both chemical, nutritional, psychic, and social. It is always affected by the people pushed out into the margins of society — isolated and alienated.

I am most enthusiastic about the data I’ve seen — and this is mainstream data — about mass nutritional replenishment: limited antibiotic use and basically gradual rebuilding of the immune system. I know countless people for whom that has worked. Now, I don’t mean, you’re not eating your string beans. But if you are exposed to extreme toxic assaults on your body, you will cease to absorb nutrients properly. If we are absorbing nutrients properly, then our bodies are designed to fight infections and to live.

Nutritional answers excite me very much especially in Africa, where the idea drives most people insane. How we can have a world where the left is opposed to clean water, core nutrition and basic health care to poverty-stricken Africans? It just boggled my mind. If anything, it’s a traditionally left-wing position that people poor, marginalized, and starving are going to get sick — as they always have.

Where this leaves her parallel statement that she doesn’t wish to deny HIV a role in AIDS we are not sure, but that doesn’t matter. Celia Farber has not, it turns out, spent twenty years under heavy fire in the trench of honest HIV∫AIDS reporting without coming to the proper conclusion indicated by the mainstream scientific literature, as opposed to the unfounded claims of NIAID and the scientists who lead the field and exploit the HIV theory.

This lioness of a reality seeker has nothing but contempt and rightly so for the chicken hearted, NIAID fellow travellers who have led HIV∫AIDS mainstream journalism into the current mire:

Any journalist today who looks at the landscape including science journalism, conferences, the rigging of clinical trials, the cooking of data, the cover-up of deaths — all this stuff, for which there are just reams of evidence — to look at that and to declare fault on the part of those journalists, writers, and filmmakers who decry it: that is denialism. That’s pervasive and severe denialism.Jon Cohen strikes me as a journalist who has so abjectly identified with the ideological agenda of mainstream medicine and the pharmaceutical industry that he can’t seem to distinguish from what they say and from what he thinks. He’s just the official parakeet.

[Later, Farber e-mails me a link to Jon Cohen’s “repugnant” article in the July 28 issue of Science magazine about recruitment for AIDS vaccine trials in Peru.

Finally, a literary magazine gives Farber her writerly due.

New York Post unafraid to back Harper’s author

Gallo South African team loses Cup to Canada

The top buzz column in Manhattan draws attention today (Jul 11 Tue) to Celia Farber’s defense team scoring a World Cup win over her detractors in HIV?AIDS today in Cuckoo Over AIDS Writer

The column notes that the Gallo team which launched the offensive against the newly minted media celebrity’s article in Harper’s March issue, “Out of Control: AIDS and The Corruption of Medical Science” (see Blogroll List on this page bottom right, where all the pages mentioned are listed), has now been replied to by the Rethinking AIDS team captained by David Crowe of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society.

The ‘56 errors’ claimed by Gallo and his colleagues in the South African Rockefeller Foundation funded Treatment Action Campaign and the Treatment Action Group in New York were carefully analysed and none of them passed muster. In a reply posted on the Rethinking AIDS site, the group found no errors whatsoever in the Farber piece. The only error was one which Farber finally realized herself, she says, which is the rather obvious one that cuckoo clocks are not grandfather clocks.
So-called community AIDS activists were sprung like cuckoo birds from grandfather clocks at the appointed hour to affirm the unwavering AIDS cathechism: AIDS drugs save lives. Apparently she (or Richard Johnson or the Page Six editors) is still confused, since cuckoo clocks do actually have pendulums (pendula?):
CUCKOO OVER AIDS WRITER July 11, 2006 — CELIA Farber, the maverick author of “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS,” is having the last laugh on the medical-industrial complex that’s trying to destroy her. Farber, part of an insurgent group which distrusts most of the research done on AIDS, was attacked earlier this year after Harper’s published a comprehensive article she wrote on the subject. A pharmaceutical-promoting organization in South Africa called TAC (Treatment Action Campaign) spearheaded the attack and composed a manifesto claiming Farber’s story contained at least 56 errors. But now another group, Rethinking AIDS, has released a rebuttal finding “no serious errors.” Farber tells Page Six, “There was one error, actually, that was brought to my attention by a clock collector. I likened the drug-promoting activists to cuckoo birds sprung from grandfather clocks, but grandfather clocks have pendulums. I regret the error.” The cuckoos forgive you, Celia.

Detailed front page story stays away from saying she is wrong

Deft sketch portrays her as basket case study of her theme of censorship

Whatever you make of it as science politics, Sheelah Kolhatkar’s take on Celia Farber today (Wed Jun 28) in the elitist pink gossip sheet of the chattering classes in Manhattan draws an accurate picture of a tough minded but supersentient being who has suffered the tortures of the damned for twenty years in pursuing the off limits topic of whether HIV is valid as the key to AIDS.

On the night of Saturday, June 10, the controversial journalist Celia Farber was holding court at a quiet cocktail party in a roped-off section of the Roosevelt Hotel bar in midtown Manhattan. “What does an animal do when they know they’re going to be killed?” she asked, her voice taut, as a handful of people looked on. “They play dead.”Ms. Farber was in the midst of an anecdote about one of her preferred subjects, her persecution at the hands of a vast network of enemies, and its effect on her writing career. “I’ve been there,” she continued. “You lose interest in doing well; you stop caring about being successful.”

The author of this tragicomedy, the slim, brunette Kolhatkar, is a young beauty who while at the party mentioned in the piece admitted to this writer that she was so devoted to her work writing up various figures in circles of publishing power and influence in Manhattan that she finds herself dreaming about it, and she does a very sophisticated job, handling Farber with care and the perceptive ear of a good theater critic.

She is noticeably polite about Farber’s iconoclastic view on HIV?AIDS, and after the obligatory quote from Moore’s Op Ed piece, gives no extra space to Celia bashing by calling on the likes of a John Moore or Martin Delaney, the paradigm palace guard who can be counted on to make cheap cracks deploring Farber’s misguided resistance to the authority of the HIV?AIDS scientists who are in fact the chief suspects in this case.

The gossipy but telling piece feels to us like a wry Manhattan inner circle assessment of another member of the media power club, who however renegade in her work is not treated here as someone to be trashed as beyond the pale. Although she may be taken aback at being sketched as unremittingly doleful, we hope it will be a pleasant surprise for Farber to read this, when she does – at the moment she has fled to the country with her family and a robot is answering her email.

For while the elephant in the room is largely overlooked as usual, the “blonde, thin AIDS anarchist” is framed in a worldly manner that leaves plenty of room for the possibility that she may be right to champion the censored side of the issue – that is, it does until the very end of the article. Then in a rather abrupt windup it seems to us that Farber is finally patronized as an obsessive who according to her friend and one time editor Bob Guccione of SPIN and Gear has spent a little too much time on “her holy quest”. And in Sheelah’s own view, Celia is a born agitator who would be “lost without her battles”:

When asked how the endless contrarianism might have impacted Ms. Farber professionally, Mr. Guccione, another believer in the “fostering debate” approach to publishing, said: “I think she has paid a terrific price.” He continued: “You know, the flip side of that is, I think she spent too much time dwelling on the AIDS beat. It’s been a holy quest for her.”In any case, Ms. Farber would be lost without her battles. She said that she’s always been fascinated by Stalinism, Communism, the Holocaust, witch hunts; she visits “as many dictatorships as I can.” ”

Seems to us this is going overboard, like the headline – Celia is a paradigm revolutionary in our book, not exactly an anarchist. She is fighting spurious and abusive authority, not all authority, all the time. But perhaps the writer is handicapped by the almost universal inability to conceive that the whole world is wrong on HIV?AIDS. What’s nice is that she dosn’t push it. On the other hand, she doesn’t justify Celia’s quest either.

For most of the deft article as we read it she is respectful of Celia’s work and of her pain, though she doesn’t seem to be entirely clear that Celia was and is not always as she is painted here. Celia’s present preoccupation with the hostility aroused by her work quoted throughout the piece is to our ear the sound of nervous fatigue, coming after twenty years where huge demands were made of the talented author with very little recompense, by the standards of the market today.

——————————————————-

“And this may be the genius of the piece: by depicting so well the plight of a literary victim, it makes exactly the point that Celia wants to demonstrate in her work, which is that it is the censorship which is killing people.”

——————————————————–

Sheelah hints at the financial stress over the years mentioning Celia’s jobs as dishwasher etc but she doesn’t seem to realize that this sacrifice is far from over. Celia is suffering from nervous exhaustion after two years of superhuman effort with not enough emotional and professional support from colleagues or editors, let alone proper pay for her efforts and talent. This is the price demanded of those who flout the current media-science-industrial complex, at least in HIV?AIDS.

That is why the charmingly unpretentious picture of Celia by Melanie Flood accompanying the article (titled Celia Farber in her apartment on the Upper West Side) looks a little more bedraggled than a personal publicist would like (on the Web only — in the print version, where the inside full page is headlined “Celia’s Offensive”, nice pun, the photo looks absolutely beautiful, for some reason). Here is another one of Celia two years ago, looking a good deal fresher at a HEAL gathering in Manhattan, where her colleague in paradigm dismantling, scientist Harvey Bialy, gave a lectern-pounding reading from his “Oncogenes” book. It was the night she heard from Lapham that her piece was accepted.

Here at least she does get credit for her achievements. The “rag tag band” of dissenters would still look like 9/11 conspiracy theorists except for two things that have emboldened them recently, Kolhatkar reports. These are Farber’s twin literary successes – the big piece in Harper’s March issue and now her new book that is just out (July 1st publication date, but already available for three weeks on Amazon), a collection of her key pieces on HIV?AIDS.

*****************************************************

Commercial interruption: Let’s hope a lot of people buy “Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS”, as they should – it is a great read for any nonscientist (or scientist) who wants to catch up with this scene, unique in its vast social and political distortion of sense and science, which Celia describes with a true writer’s thoughtfulness and clarity in vivid story telling from the front lines.

The paperback, which has the cover design of a literary classic and deserves it, includes the first draft of what she wrote for Lapham, a lovely, telling piece which centers on Peter Duesberg’s travails as well as his science; the biographical part was eventually displaced in Harper’s by the newer topic of cooked and lethal AIDS drug trials. It’s worth the price of the book – but so is every well told, illuminating chapter, in which science derailed is described with the clarity of an on-the-scene report from a critical observer.

*****************************************************

As we say, the Observer piece falls apart at the end, we find, though others may read it differently. The last paragraphs shortchange Farber’s intellectual cause by reducing it to reflex anti-fascism and saying that she has taken refuge in appealing merely for free debate. Here given Celia’s deep moral sensibility and her outrage at the deaths of patients, and her twenty year championing of Duesberg’s consistent position that there is nothing in the HIV argument, we expect that she will feel insulted and cheapened.

By focusing her outrage on her opposition’s desire to silence dissent rather than on the actual scientific arguments, Ms. Farber finds protection under the idea that no subject or theory, regardless of its implications, should be taken off the table; continuing to ask the questions can be more important than answering them.

But even if it finally does go off the rails in this way, perhaps due to hasty editing, this is in many ways the first intelligent, worldly article about the leading HIV?AIDS lay critic and her cause, and it is certainly unfair to expect a young woman however smart who is unfamiliar with the field of unscience involved to catch up with the real situation in only three weeks.

All in all, for a gossip piece this is a brilliant encapsulation of a unique spirit and her predicament, even if the forces that have led to it – and the validity of her cause – are not fully depicted by the profiler. Truth to tell, it seems pretty clear that in her extended conversations and emailing with a very thorough reporter her subject neglected the issue herself.

And this may be the genius of the piece: by depicting so well the plight of a literary victim, it makes exactly the point that Celia wants to demonstrate in her work, which is that it is the censorship which is killing people.