Legally blind
Judge turned against the Perth pair, threw out the baby with the bathwater
With Perth hobbled, perhaps conventional dissidents will be heard next time
Why Judge Sulan likes Gallo and we like John Moore
News reports of the Adelaide judgement are coming through now, and they show the basis of Judge Sulan’s decision to disallow the appeal of Andre Chad Parenzee, 36, against being jailed for having sex with three women without informing them that he carries antibodies against HIV, a virus which according to the original papers of Robert Gallo in 1984 does not cause AIDS (not to mention that how such antibodies could be transmitted sexually is another unanswered question).
Quite simply, it is his contempt for the independent scholars from Perth.
Both in the media and in his comments, the two decent and thoughtful witnessess for the defense from the Perth Group are being trashed mercilessly for their challenges to orthodoxy, which the judge rates as foolish and inexpert. Their reputation is now mud. Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos is quoted on her forthright willingness to sleep with an HIV positive man as if she was some kind of gang bang:
‘HIV does not exist’ appeal thrown out
By Todd Cardy
April 27, 2007 05:56pm
A HIV-positive man convicted for having unprotected sex with three women has lost an appeal, after a South Australian judge rejected defence claims the virus does not exist.
Andre Chad Parenzee, 36, was convicted on three counts of endangering life last January after one of the women, a mother of two, became infected with HIV.
Defence lawyers launched an appeal calling two Perth medical researchers – Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Dr Valendar Turner – who testified in the South Australian Court of Appeal that the virus did not exist and could not be sexually transmitted.
The two AIDS-dissidents are members of the Perth Group, founded by Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos, that believes HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
Justice John Sulan today dismissed the witnesses’ testimony, saying the pair lacked credibility and were advocates for a cause rather than independent experts.
He said the evidence that HIV existed was compelling and he rejected the application for a re-trial.
“I am satisfied that no jury would conclude that there is any doubt that the virus HIV exists,” he said in his judgment.
“I consider no jury would be left in any doubt that HIV is the cause of AIDS or that it is sexually transmissible.”
Justice Sulan said Ms Papadopoulos-Eleopulos, a physicist who works at the Royal Perth Hospital, relied upon opinions of others, which she often took out of context and misinterpreted.
He said claims that HIV testing methods were flawed were unfounded and the virus had been thoroughly studied by international experts.Parenzee’s application for leave to appeal his conviction was the first time that the existence of HIV/AIDS had been tested in an Australian court.
The hearing spanned more than a year with controversy lining much of the witness testimony.
Under earlier cross-examination, Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos was asked by the prosecution if she would have unprotected vaginal sex with a HIV-positive man.
“Any time,” she replied.
In other testimony, Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos declared that Africa did not have an AIDS epidemic because HIV did not exist and efforts to curb the spread of the virus were merely political stunts.
To counter the claims, the prosecution called eight HIV experts including AIDS research pioneer Professor Robert Gallo.
Prof Gallo, who was one of the scientists who discovered AIDS in the early 1980s and linked HIV as the cause of the disease, testified via video-link from his home in Bethesda, Massachusetts.
He told the court the Perth Group members was misguided, inappropriate and delusional.
Parenzee was remanded in custody to be sentenced at a later date.
The bottom line is that the Perth Group pair made such a poor impression with their claim the virus didn’t exist that the Judge dismissed their authority and, unfortunately, any other arguments levelled against the HIV∫AIDS meme which no doubt took root in his brain many years ago.
It is unfortunate for Parenzee that his home is Australia. The defenders and promoters of HIV∫AIDS must have been delighted when they heard that the only defense witnesses appearing from the critics’ camp to undermine their cause were the two key figures of the nearby Perth Group.
They must have seen that as soon as the Perth pair started attacking the existence of the virus, the otherwise totally unpersuasive paradigm which is now an ideological given of government policy, charity, and culture around the world would get a free pass.
A better idea
Defense counsel Kevin Borick would have done better to arrange a video transmission from Berkeley to match the one from Bethesda, where Gallo testified by satellite. The judge valued hands on science as a qualification, and Duesberg is a classic lab retrovirologist.
For new arrivals to this disputed realm, we refer to the distinguished Berkeley scientist Peter Duesberg, who but for his personal integrity would now have a Nobel in hand for his priority in cancer research, and whose repeated demonstrations in peer reviewed journals that the claims of HIV∫AIDS scientists do not accord with the scientific literature of the field, including the studies which the leading scientists themselves carry out, are a lot harder to dismiss than the Perth Group’s claim that HIV does not exist despite its genetic cloning and different strains.
But perhaps Judge Sulan would dismiss Duesberg, and his repeated demonstrations in peer reviewed journals that the claims of HIV∫AIDS scientists do not accord with the scientific literature of the field, as insufficiently hands on as far as HIV is concerned.
So much for science critics
After all, he appears to have no respect whatsoever for independent examination of the scientific literature by attentive outsiders. This is how he dismisses Valendar Turner’s knowledge, despite his publications in peer reviewed journals:
His opinions are based on reading scientific literature, studying of scientific literature, and spending a considerable amount of time thinking.
That a Supreme Court judge can be so naive, and condemn the very process he lives by, is an embarrassment to the judiciary of Down Under, not to mention the entire nation.
Silver lining to Perth defeat
While the Judge’s contempt is a poor reward for their efforts to save humanity from despair over HIV, and we are sorry for them personally, a Perth retreat from the courts may be a good thing for the more conventional cause of correcting the science of HIV∫AIDS.
There has always been a danger that the Perth Group’s anachronistic and increasingly foolish claim that HIV does not exist would distract from the contradictions of the paradigm based on current scientific literature and label all dissidents as crackpot. Now it has happened.
The judge appears to have decided early that the Perth claim was unfounded and out of date (which it is now that genetic cloning and sequencing of HIV is a commonplace around the world) and that the credentials of the Perth pair were fatally flawed by their lack of hands on experience in the field.
I have found that Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Dr Turner are not experts in the subject matter upon which they have given evidence. I have concluded that the witnesses called by the DPP are experts.
206 Because the witnesses called by the applicant are not expert, the opinion evidence which they gave is not admissible. I have noted above that the evidence given on whether HIV has been proved to exist, whether HIV is sexually transmissible, and whether it causes AIDS is opinion evidence. The finding that the witnesses for the applicant are not experts, and thus are not qualified to give expert opinion evidence, is, in my view, a sufficient basis upon which to refuse the application for permission to appeal.
So he decided there was nothing in the rest of their claims, since Bob Gallo was so much more prominent in the science, famous and persuasive, and therefore reliable. The judge fawned on Gallo and the other mainstream authorities produced by the prosecution, as his comments on Gallo show:
When he gave his evidence he was forthright. At times, he was impatient with propositions that were being put to him. Mr Borick QC is critical of the manner in which Professor Gallo gave his evidence. He submits that Professor Gallo was not entirely frank and that his aggressive attitude towards the questioner was due to the fact that his opinions lacked credibility.
197 I reject that submission. I consider that Professor Gallo was a frank, forthright witness. Professor Gallo has been recognised throughout the world for his work. He is a pre-eminent expert in the field of virus identification and treatment. I accept his evidence and his opinions. I accept his evidence that the debate about HIV, whether it causes AIDS and whether it is sexually transmissible by heterosexual vaginal sexual intercourse, is a debate that was completed by the mid-1980s. I accept his evidence that the witnesses called by the applicant have misused material in support of their argument that HIV has not been proved to exist.
Here come de judge
All this can be seen recorded in detail in his lengthy and illuminating 82 page judgement, the Reasons for Decision of The Honourable Justice Sulan now available to the world for study. Reading through it we have to say it seems unlikely that the Perth Group will survive this lengthy public demolition of their reputation by an inattentive judge prejudiced in favor of power.
In one way this is a pity since they have done good work on the fundamental reasons why AIDS patients should suffer immune decline in the absence of any ascertainable influence from HIV. But their distracting claim that HIV has not been effectively isolated is a stale red herring whose odor attaches itself to all critics of the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, a claim which is genuinely unproven and contradicted by the scientific literature.
Peter Duesberg and other thoughtful scientists who can see that the paradigm is unjustified do not need to be associated with unprofessional quarrels with premises they do not challenge. It was always a danger that the Perth Group would break into the headlines and put paid to any chance that the valid scientific objections to the paradigm would be taken seriously by those outside the field.
Not to mention that Duesberg himself powerfully, cogently and conclusively dismissed the Perth Group’s reasoning ten years ago (see Virusmyth’s The Missing Virus section) on the existential issue, even as he respected their many contributions on other fronts, including the real nature of African AIDS, inaccuracies of HIV testing, and misconceptions about hemophilia and AIDS. In fact, he gave them the first two chapters of the scholarly volume that he edited, AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced, in 1996, for their invited expert reviews of HIV∫AIDS research distortions.
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SPECIAL NOTE: The Perth Group deserves respect, in the opinion of the editorial staff of NAR, and the strictures of Judge Sulan are ignorant calumny. The Perth Group’s identification of oxidative stress as one key mechanism in the kind of immune deficiency now labeled HIV∫AIDS is notable as one of the earliest contributions made (published in 1988, after more than five years research) to a correct diagnosis of AIDS and its underlying mechanism, a solution derailed in 1984 by the unfounded and still undemonstrated claim of Gallo that HIV was the culprit. Their analysis pointing out that oxidative stress caused by drugs, malnutrition and multiple infections can harm sensitive T cells is justified by much mainstream literature since, and has been endorsed by Luc Montagnier in his book “Virus”.It should also be pointed out that their critique of Montagnier’s original experiments detecting the presence of HIV in the blood of AIDS patients (they said that he had failed to purify the virus) was endorsed in the Adelaide court room by none other than the satellite image of Bob Gallo himself, perhaps glad to draw attention away from his own lab sins which are legion (he is famous for making a fool of himself with contaminations of cultures). and Montagnier has conceded it. But this basis for challenging the very existence of the Virus grew out of date as labs all over the world cultured the Virus, duplicated its sequencing, and even distinguished between strains of the 9 kilobase wisp of RNA even as they failed to show its harmful effects.
The Perth Group would have been better off defending their analysis of the mechanism of immune deficiency against Gallo’s groundless challenge by pointing out, for example, that not only was finding HIV in 36%of AIDS patients, and antibodies to it in 88%, screamingly unconvincing, but the presence of cytomegalovirus, Epstein Barr virus and herpes virus in approaching 100% of patient blood samples indicated a theoretical bias on the part of Gallo that science cannot explain. All this is well exposed in Robert Root-Bernstein’s Rethinking AIDS, Chapter four.
Indeed the Group made very sharp points along these lines in the first paper, A Critical Analysis of the HIV-T4-cell-AIDS Hypothesis, they contributed to the Duesberg’s collection, AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced (1996). For example, they point out the little appreciated fact that Gallo’s original T cell culture of HIV was in a leukemia cell line, HT, which already happened to have the property of forming occasional giant cells with fused nuclei. This Gallo then interpreted as a cytopathic effect of HIV, his only evidence of supposed HIV cell killing in the one Science paper of his 1984 broadside to supposedly prove that HIV could kill cells.. “The virus positive cultures consistently showed a high proportion of round giant cells containing numerous nuclei (syncytia)”. But the syncytia was already happening before the presence of the harmless Deadly Virus.
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Now the loss of credibility due to arguing the Virus doesn’t exist has happened as feared in a court of law in Australia and sent an unfortunate man innocent of causing harm back to jail, because it meant that the very obvious proven fact in the literature (pace Nancy Padian, who now denies what she demonstrated) that HIV is effectively not transmissible in sex between heterosexuals could not be established in the Judge’s now closed mind.
But Kevin Borick, his lawyer who made the error of placing his bets on the Perth argument, says he will appeal anyway on other grounds, according to reports. And if this decision now fences off the Perth Group spoiler effect, it is all to the good.
Misdirected insults
However, let’s not agree with the court in rejecting their case on the grounds that they are outsiders to the field of HIV∫AIDS without practical experience of the virus. This is naive if not absurd. Judge Sulan has no idea it seems of how often outsiders come up with advances in a field, especially on a theoretical level. His jeers at Papadopulos-Eleopulos along these lines are silly:
Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos has no practical experience. She has never worked with patients who are said to be infected with HIV, or with any virus. She has never treated or diagnosed patients who have viruses. She has never worked in laboratories or conducted research. She has no practical experience.
133 She has given evidence on the topics of virology, immunology, epidemiology, microbiology and microscopy. She has no practical experience and she has never worked in any of the areas.
134 Although Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos demonstrated a superficial understanding of a number of the areas, I consider that her knowledge is limited to her reading. She has what one might describe as a textbook understanding of the science of viruses, but she has no depth of knowledge or understanding and she simply relies upon written material. She did not demonstrate any understanding or knowledge similar to that demonstrated by the witnesses called by the DPP.
135 I conclude that she does not have expertise in the various disciplines in which expertise is required. In my opinion, she is not qualified to express opinions about the existence of HIV, or whether it has been established that it causes AIDS. Nor has she expertise to express opinions about whether the virus is transmissible. Nor is she qualified to express opinions about the tests that have been developed to diagnose the virus.
136 Even if I were to conclude that Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos had some expertise to express opinions about the methodology for determining whether HIV exists, I consider her opinions to be so out of line with the prevailing opinions and the prevailing evidence which supports the existence of the virus, that no jury could rely upon her opinions. In my view, no weight could be given to her evidence. That is a relevant factor in considering whether permission to appeal should be granted.
137 Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos lacks independence. She is an advocate for a cause. She chooses to rely upon opinions of others which she often takes out of context and misinterprets. She lacks objectivity. If faced with evidence which does not support her views, she simply refuses to acknowledge it, or dismisses it without any basis for so doing. Examples of her refusal to acknowledge evidence which does not support her views include her response to the epidemiological evidence which she says is not proof and which she dismisses as unreliable.[81]
Of course, he had the good lady in front of him, so for all we know she does give a poor impression in public. She certainly fails to speak very good English, according to the transcript, although Gallo’s grammatical structures are not much better. We suspect that if Judge Sulan had been able to see Gallo in person rather than on video he might have got a different impression, also.
Here is what he thought about Turner:
Dr Turner’s knowledge of the subject matter is limited to reading. He has no formal qualifications to give expert opinions about the virus. He has no practical experience in the treatment of viral diseases. He has no practical experience in the disciplines of virology, immunology or epidemiology.
143 His opinions are based on reading scientific literature, studying of scientific literature, and spending a considerable amount of time thinking.
144 I conclude that Dr Turner is not qualified to advance expert opinion about virus isolation, antibody tests, viral load tests, or sexual transmission of the virus. His knowledge of these subjects is limited to having read a number of publications. He relies entirely on his interpretation of various studies in the specialised disciplines of virology, epidemiology, microbiology, immunology, pathology or infectious diseases, in none of which he has qualifications beyond his medical degree. He has no practical experience, and has performed no research which has been published.
This is an extraordinarily clear statement that no one but insiders are qualified to read and understand the literature of a field. The Gallo-Fauci-Moore defense team must be chortling.
How rebels are handicapped
In this way, the task of critics who detect a flaw in conventional wisdom is made difficult. The first accusation is that they don’t know what they are talking about, because they don’t have the inside knowledge needed to make a good decision. If for example you disagree with George W. Bush’s upcoming decision to drop bombs on Iran, the first counter is, you are not in possession of secret information about how close they are to making a nuclear weapon.
Then it is also a fairly clear principle in cases where independent scholars and critics tilt at mainstream shibboleths that the critics are likely to be eccentrics in personality and behavior, and the defenders at the top of the establishment much more acceptable in their smooth conformity to the conventions of dressa and behavior, since that is partly how they got to the top of the pyramid and stay there. The critics, meanwhile often have all the earmarks of the crackpot, or at least can easily be painted as such.
That is why we thank Destiny for the existence of John P. Moore, one of the greatest assets of the movement to reexamine HIV∫AIDS science in his non conformist behavior in speech and writing, and in the inaccurate and ad hominem style of his website AIDSTruth.org
Unlike Anthony Fauci of NIAID, he is neither stylish in dress nor smooth in behavior. He and Robert Gallo, the ebullient roguish initiator of this gigantic mess, have in common the tendency to let loose verbally or in print and on line (in the case of Moore) if they get a chance.
Quick way to tell who’s right on HIV∫AIDS
For a change, we have colorful individuals on both sides of this debate, and that is as it should be. For after all, these are disputes about scientific theory and interpretation, and the quality of the ideas that are expressed are highly dependent on the qualities of the man or woman expressing them.
In fact, we have often thought it is not really necessary for any outsider who comes upon this debate to read very far into it to know who is almost certain to be right.
All one has to do is line up Robert Gallo, Anthony Fauci, Mark Wainberg and John Moore and compare them with Peter Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, Celia Farber and Rebecca Culshaw.
It would be pretty clear even to a distinguished but mentally myopic, meme ridden, power worshipping Australian Supreme Court judge who are the salesmen heavily invested in the paradigm, and who are the independent minded, public spirited, self sacrificial critics.
Addition: While we were posting this a very fine Comment by the inimitable MacDonald has been attached to the previous post, but is highly relevant here for its deft exposure of the Judge’s bias against the Perth Group as revealed in his Reasons for Decision, in which his Reasons for Bias against the Perth Group are in fact, as MacDonald aptly points out, much better as Reasons to Reject the Testimony of Robert Gallo, to whom they apply in spades. (Later moved to Comments under this post. - Ed.)
April 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I posted several months ago that, brilliant as they are, Eleni and Val did not have the right credentials to impress a judge. Val is an emergency room physician and Eleni has only a M.Sc. degree (routinely described in the media as a B.Sc. degree, of course). I said that they should bring on other Perthians with more impeccable credentials, such as Papadimitriou, Maniotis and Alfonso. Apparently they didn’t do this, relying only on Eleni and Val.
Why o why do we not use as witnesses the many hundreds of scientists and doctors we have who DO have impeccable, relevant and impressive credentials? Why not Duesberg, Charles Thomas, Gabor-Miklos, Strohman, Rubin, Rasnick, deHarven, Bialy, Maniotis, Margulis and many many more that we have on our List page.
Had the attorney called any of them to the witness stand, it would have been far more difficult for the judge to dismiss our point of view as being that of unqualified scientists. But, he probably would have ruled against the appeal anyway. Because he was ordered to, I believe. I think the judge’s opinion was not even written by him, it was written by whatever task force the CIA or whoever has assigned to this matter. The fix was in probably from day one.
Too many of us view Aids in isolation from all the other stuff that’s going on in the world, and that’s a mistake. If you follow all the censored information that you can’t read in your newspaper but can read at places like globalresearch.ca, you understand that all around us, the vise is tightening on individual liberty, freedom of information and freedom from government abuse of power. The US govt has already made plans to subvert the internet and has come very close to describing internet dissidents and activists as “terrorists.” With the Patriot and Military Commissions Acts, Bush and his successor Hillary (who has already been elected, though few people realize it), have the power to declare any citizen an “enemy combatant” for any reason, without having to produce proof, and arrange for the person’s “disappearance,” i.e., arrest and prolonged detention without legal representation.
All of this impacts on us because we really are quite a threat to national security, which is a euphemism that really means, “the security of the privileged elites.” The Hiv theory cannot fall, because if it did, most established power would fall with it as the fallout of an enraged world populace was felt, demanding justice and accountability. It wouldn’t just be Aids scientists who would face angry calls for punishment, it would be whole governments. All the institutions of authority, from the scientists (not just Aids scientists, all scientists would be tainted by association) to the teacher who indoctrinates children in school with official “truths”, to the UN, the EU, Unicef, and the national governments who supported the deception, would lose much of their credibility and thus their authority. People would start to see that authorities lie to them all the time, and a general rebellion might begin to snowball, derailing the New World Order Globalization Express Train, threatening not just new, more just and honest directions for government, but punishment and seizure of ill-gotten gains from the authorities who have lied to and abused the public for so long.
Contrary to popular belief reinforced by Hollywood and the platitudes we are fed in the educational system, a judge’s real job is not to deliver justice, it is to protect property and the powerful, and in the case of institutions like the Supreme Court, to assist the power elite in their social engineering and indoctrination programs.
Any court trial we undertake is likely to have the same outcome. We aren’t fighting scientists, we are fighting Almighty Power. We aren’t debating observable facts, we are challenging the legitimacy of authority. Scientific facts have absolutely nothing to do with it. It’s all about Power and Wealth, and Who Rules. The only way we can fight power is to become powerful ourselves. There are ways to do that as I have detailed in other posts.
April 29th, 2007 at 12:55 pm
You know, we can turn this thing around and make it explode in the gloating Aids establishment’s face.
All we have to do is publicize to people that what happened to Parenzee can happen to you, too, if you get tested.
It’s high time for a “DON’T GET TESTED!” campaign.
April 29th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Refuse the HV test…
Good points Marcel but as far as the ‘It’s all a CIA plot’ goes… Marcel, really. As the judgement shows in detail, the decision was made by a very smallminded, provincial and not very clever man who swallowed fallacies whole because he is dazzled by his proximity to the great and fails to detect that they are emitting a noxious cloud of scientific sounding BS and they are fundamentally as logic-challenged as he is, and as incapable of realizing that their beliefs are partly grounded on enormous inconsistencies.
None of these actors in the grand drama are knowing crooks on the conscious level and they are not part of some vast plot to betray the populace worldwide. They are simply clever men and women who are partly fools who believe in fallacious hooey inconsistent with their own scientific literature and with common understanding and experience. What is it about this that you don’t understand? Is it really so difficult for you to accept that despite high position most of the elite and elected cannot think very well, because they are part of a system which is not conspiratorial but formed by common elements of human nature such as ambition, vanity, conformity, and drives for security and comfort, embodied in a social structure erected by such forces controlled and effected by political skills and control of resources.
The former fuel the latter which forms the whole without any plan or conspiracy, as far as we can tell, it is just a natural outcome of all the individual actions. Saying it is all a plot is like saying that a hurricane comes about as a result of a butterfly flapping its wings. There is no control system in place, and it is far too difficult to contruct one in the absence of Nazi level dictatorial violence. All that is happening is that one man who occupies a certain position is led to think and rule a certain way by what he thinks he is told and understands about the case and how other people will react to what he does. To say he is controlled by some vast conspiracy is pure imagination, about as realistic as any other kind of religion, as far as we can see.
You don’t need a conspiracy for things like this to happen, do you? They are surely a natural part of society where acquisition, ambition, vanity, and other selfish drives are still better at elevating men and women in society than idealism and intelligence, which may win in the end as civilization advances but at the moment still tend to remove those that embody those qualities to the periphery, as happened in this case, which demonstrates the process perfectly. We have to work to correct this situation by seeing it for what it is. Such people deserve your strongest practical support, not that you blame some vast conspiracy and divert your goodwill and encouragement of their efforts into building a fantastical mental structure, which in this case is imitating their enemies, who live by just such a grand fantasy that they have sold to the world.
Sorry if this view doesn’t seem persuasive to you, but it is hard to see why it doesn’t unless you have some concrete evidence you are withholding from us which will flip our world view. Perhaps you think George Bush or Anthony Fauci controls Sulan with a phone call, but we doubt it. Perhaps you think that the judge just may have had a little help of some kind in working on his judgement, but it is hard to imagine how or from whom he got it without breaking the rules. As far as we can see his judgement doesn’t seem to be produced by anything more than his own limitations and desire to uphold the status quo, which is natural to all judges. That and the fact that he is out of his depth on the science and credits the testimony of witnesses who come in unifrom with medals tinkling far more easily than independent critics who simply read the literature and “sit and think”, or in other words evaluate it. To him the latter are just crackpot delusionists who are almost as out of their depth as he is and will lead us into error, as most cranks do with their disproofs of Einstein etc. You predicted that yourself rather brilliantly, amd you deserve credit for the cynicism, since it proved out. But you didn’t really know that judge was so limited that he wouldn’t see the fallacies in the arguments he was given. Most of the world doesn’t see them either. It believes in a sex disease caused by a virus that shows no signs of being infectious between the sexes, which isn’t found in patients, whose presence (prevalence) in the US population remained at the same unchanging level as the disease rose and fell over two decades, and which afflicts heterosexuals abroad but only gays at home. Of course, one did hope for more from a legal mind in an elevated position in a major Western country whose job is to review logic and evidence, but human failings intervened.
April 29th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
The judge’s own words can be found here courtesy of David Crowe:
http://www.courts.sa.gov.au/judgments/Judgments2007/0427-SASC-143.htm
It is a lengthy document with no pictures, so the tirelessly labouring blo’ host will probably not mind if we lighten his burden a bit by giving a few salient point(er)s relating to first half of judge Sulan’s deliberations, the half that deals with the Perth Group, primarily Ms. Papadopulos-Eleopulos …
It has long been speculated what kind of homework the wise judge Sulan would engage in as preparation for his ruling in the Parenzee case. Now that the result is out, we will in the interest of good taste forbear to go for any of the obvious puns on ‘kangaroo court’, but we do feel a congratulations to John Moore is in order: All the legal precedent waffling aside, the judge’s method of inquiry and deliberation remained the one first named by NAR’s prescient blo’ host when he coined the term “ask John”.
Accordingly, the judge thought it a major blow to Ms. Papadopulos-Eleopulos’ credibility that she in her evidence had relied on Nancy Padian’s study which, as we all know, demonstrated 000.0000 HIV transmission in the largest study ever of discordant couples.
Judge Sulan drew attention to the circumstance that Ms.Padian had published a statement on Prof. JP Moore’s AIDStruth.orgy to the effect that the 000.0000 seroconversion rate in her study clearly supported the indisputable fact that 80% of HIV transmission worldwide is heterosexual.
Apparently impressed with this line of argument, the judge repeated the point in relation to Rodriguez et al, who have recently published one of the major milestones in AIDS Inc’s. awkward back pedalling on viral load - CD4 count - progression to AIDS correlation.
Rodriguez has also issued a political manifesto on AIDStruth.orgy and elsewhere regarding his latest study, demonstrating that only through statistical trickery, as exposed here,
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/10/darin_c_brown_f_1.html
is it possible to claim significant correlation between viral load and CD4 loss.
In his statement, Rodriguez explains in no uncertain terms, and with the straightest of faces, that his study does not lessen HIV’s role in CD4 cell loss, it merely awards ‘co-factors’ a larger one.
Judge Sulan found it highly significant that Ms. Papadopulos-Eleopulos had omitted to inform the court of the rather obvious fact that the authors of the studies referenced by her do not agree with her and Valendar Turner’s interpretation of their results - and worse still that she was not a regular reader of Moore’s AIDStruth site where these things tend to appear.
It was probably a mistake under the circumstances that Ms. Papadopulos-Eleopulos had not mentioned Padian’s and Rodriguez’ a priori refutations of all possible alternative readings of their data, although she or Valendar Turner is nowhere mentioned by name in the various statements. Still: “Your Honour, if the authors of the mainstream literature and the Perth Group were in agreement as to the ultimate interpretation of the data, there would have been no case to judge, would there now?”
The judge also had questions concerning Ms. Papadopulos-Eleopulos’ status as ‘expert’ witness, perhaps legitimate such. It clearly weakened this aspect of the Defence that real ‘mainstream’ heavyweights, like Duesberg and Mullis only received peripheral mentioning and were not brought in as witnesses.
The judge furthermore thought it went against the Perth group that they were (supposedly) knowledgeable in all the different areas pertaining to HIV science, whereas the prosecution experts, including Robert Gallo, constantly had to plead ignorance and defer to somebody else when cross-examined on various issues. Limited scope of knowledge and perspective in the wise judge Sulan’s opinion indicates real expertise.
Ahh how blissful is not the state of scientific fragmentation?
Be all this as it may, judge Sulan has clearly asked John and received answer, because the reverend judge himself turns out to be a competent prosecution expert who needs no help from Padian or Rodriguez in evaluating the merit of statements pertaining to areas of specialized expert knowledge. Here is but a part of the well tutored judge’s own testimony, ready for publishing at John’s orgy, were it not the case it is already found there word for word:
120 The two instances [Padian, Rodriguez] to which I have referred demonstrate that Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos is not objective in her evidence. She commences with a proposition which she then seeks to justify by reliance on material which, when properly understood [by whom, the judge?] does not support the proposition.
121 Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos propounds theories which are not supported by adequate scientific research or knowledge. She demonstrates an ability to read scientific literature but she has misused and misinterpreted much of the material upon which she seeks to rely. She takes statements out of context and then relies upon them to support conclusions which are not supported by the text. [according to whom, the judge?]
122 Her evidence is littered with examples of misunderstandings, misinterpretation and denial of established scientific research. [according to whom, the judge? Notice the expert use of the word ‘denial’ - Accident?] In many instances she relies upon material which is outdated. She either deliberately fails to acknowledge or is not aware of the most recent scientific research that establishes that HIV exists and that, if untreated, will lead to the breakdown of the immune system.
The so recently AIDS controversy ignorant judge has caught up admirably since he is now in a position to refer sweepingly and with great scientific authority to the ‘most recent research that establishes [retroactively?] that HIV exists and leads to a breakdown of the immune system’
Perhaps it is the judge’s newfound scientific acumen which finally gives him the confidence to declare:
Even if I were to conclude that Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos had some expertise to express opinions about the methodology for determining whether HIV exists, I consider her opinions to be so out of line with the prevailing opinions and the prevailing evidence which supports the existence of the virus, that no jury could rely upon her opinions. In my view, no weight could be given to her evidence. That is a relevant factor in considering whether permission to appeal should be granted.
Or did he simply ask John?
In the same by now well known style, the last part of the first half of the document consists almost exclusively of judge Sulan pointing out the high rank and expert status of the prosecution witnesses, which for some reason entirely exempts them from the kind of close scrutiny of motives that earlier prompted this judgement:
138 The evidence given by Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos about the Perth group demonstrates that she is promoting a cause. She is not independent. She is motivated to create a debate about her theory. The Perth Group will use whatever means available to promote that debate, including encouragement of persons such as the applicant, to promote their theories in courts of law.
‘The Perth Group will use whatever means available…’ These harsh words coming from the same person who found Robert Gallo to be a ‘frank, forthright witness’, whose words should be accepted at face value.
Case closed.
April 29th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
Firstly, I would like to point out that I was disappointed with the outcome of the Adelaide trial. I respect the position of the Perth Group and their argument that HIV has not been convincingly isolated. Despite having read Peter Duesberg’s argument to the contrary (which seems to be the best rebuttal available, certainly better than the evidence of the prosecution witnesses) I remain unconvinced.
However, I am dismayed by the reaction of other commentators who, similarly disappointed with the trial result, have decided to label the judge as “naive”, “an embarassment” and “smallminded”, even going so far as to suggest that the decision was handed down by the CIA. This type of reaction is childish, emotional and speculative. It belongs in a conspiracy theory argument, not a rational debate.
As an interested member of the public I have the luxury of being able to investigate what I choose, and then to form my opinions based on what I decide is relevant and convincing evidence. A Judge does not (and should not) have this luxury. He is obliged to take the qualifications of someone like Robert Gallo at face value, especially when there is no shortage of other, well qualified experts to back him up. Whereas I can say that I disagree with the expert opionions of Dr Gallo, the judge cannot easily do so without what he sees as sufficient justification - regardless of what his personal opinion might be.
From this point of view I think the decision was fair in the legal sense. A scientific argument should be decided based on evidence and open, rational debate, not on consensus. However, it may be argued that the legal system should respect a consensus - it is reasonable to assume that a jury’s decision probably would reflect that consensus.
Interestingly, the issue of whether HIV causes AIDS was only partially addressed in the trial, with Mr Borick QC even stating “The defence has not introduced and nor are we concerned with the issue of whether or not HIV causes AIDS.” In light of the judge’s treatment of the Perth Group and their qualifications, this may leave the way clear for future legal efforts to focus explicitly on this question, and to present evidence from others whose qualifications are more difficult for the court to reject.
April 29th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Every Government governs strictly by the allowance and by the will and according to the beliefs of the majority of the governed. When one lives in a society where most people are fearfilled of invisible threats, and are mostly panicked germophobes, as we are in a society that mispercieves the supposedly constant threat of looming viral destructions such as Sars, Bird Flu, and AIDS, the electorate majority will only elect or listen to those they perceive as strong and who will fight against the invisible viral enemy.
Further, such a germaphobic governed will only listen to or believe the scientist germaphobes who think as the governed do.
When one lives in a world where most people do not have integrity, the electorate unwittingly consents to be governed by the non-integrous. The governed and the governing will only think, see, or believe what they mutually want to think, see, or believe. Most of these thoughts, beliefs, and ways of percieving are pre-programmed due to past and therefore current thinking and beliefs. The evolution of any of these factors does eventually evolve, but not nearly as fast as those on the leading edge of such changes of belief and perception would like them to.
Could you imagine if any of the former presidents were to have stood up and declared that HIV did not cause AIDS and was a complete scam? There would have been riots enmasse in the streets. He would have been impeached, or assasinated!
As such, Governments represent both the wisdom and the ignorance as well as the integrity or lack thereof of those that are governed. When governments fail to do so, they are soon replaced by those that will.
The power of any government is, was, and always will be with the majority of the consenting governed according to their own beliefs. When these beliefs change, the government or governmental positions will soon do the same. It is all a process, not an event.
So, unless any of you have something better you would like to be doing, we might as well just continue to enjoy the show!
April 29th, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Truthseeker has provided a well-balanced discussion of the Perth Group. As he points out, their emphasis on the supposed non-existence (or misidentification) of HIV seems rather outdated and stuck in the mid-1980s. To persist in this view today can be an embarassing Achille’s heel, as it’s rather easily disposed of by conventional medical officials, who can point to the widespread genetic sequencing and culturing of the virus and its various strains.
On the other hand, the Perth Group has done superb analyses and reviews of many other aspects of AIDS, as can be found at their website, ThePerthGroup.com, and their section at Virusmyth.com. Since Eleni’s 1988 paper in Medical Hypotheses (rejected by Nature in 1986), the Perth Group has argued that oxidative stress is an underlying mechanism - produced by drugs, malnutrition, and multiple infections - which promotes undue apoptosis causing reduction of T4 lymphocytes in AIDS patients. After reading a later Perth paper published by the Pasteur Institute, Luc Montagnier himself adopted the same view of oxidative stress as fundamental to AIDS, edited a book on the subject, and propounded the theory in his book, Virus.
There has been discussion in the comments regarding the naivete of the judge or conspiratorial influences determining his judgment. Whichever is correct, the fact is that there has been a general tendency - nearly a consistency - in the legal realm for judges to decide health issues in favor of the prevailing view of the medical establishment and to exclude evidence from unofficial sources. The issue has come up frequently in regard to cancer treatment, and in nearly all cases the judges will defer to the judgment of the medical powers that be - especially government health agencies. This means that there is little independence in the courts.
I therefore agree with Marcel that under the circumstances it is dangerous to take an HIV test. The consequence can be 15 years in jail for a single unprotected dalliance. This despite the fact that knowing carriers of other STDs, such as syphillis and hepatitis B (both of which can have serious consequences) are having unprotected encounters commonly and with impunity. Such behavior is considered foolish and irresponsible, perhaps, but a matter for public health education rather than criminal prosecution.
April 30th, 2007 at 2:01 am
Interestingly, the issue of whether HIV causes AIDS was only partially addressed in the trial, with Mr Borick QC even stating “The defence has not introduced and nor are we concerned with the issue of whether or not HIV causes AIDS.†In light of the judge’s treatment of the Perth Group and their qualifications, this may leave the way clear for future legal efforts to focus explicitly on this question, and to present evidence from others whose qualifications are more difficult for the court to reject
Thanks for noting this, SimonDaniel, it is an important point. Alas, it seems unlikely that this issue will ever be addressed by any court, since it is such a many sided dispute. It is hard enough to get some simple points through a bone headed judge’s skull, as we have just seen. Much better simply to demonstrate that the literature indicates so little virus in a HIV+ erson that it is very unlikely to be transmitted through conventional sex, and that the biggest studies indicate it is not conveyed in heterosexual sex at all. Mentioning that the virus may not exist is asking for a judge to view you as a crackpot, as Adelaide has proved. Mentioning that HIV may not cause AIDS at all is also likely to be dismissed out of hand, and everything else with it.
A judge has to be not only clever but also worldly and openminded, and even if he is all these things he instinctively prefers to take refuge in conventional wisdom, especially in science. The ruling paradigm in any science tends to be the equivalent of precedence in a judge’s mind. That is why the Perth Group is the worst choice for witnesses for the defense, and why there are problems calling even Peter Duesberg, since the prosecution may be able to paint him as a mere “denialist” despite his prominence, just as Kary Mullis was painted a “denialist” in the Adelaide case, to get rid of Mullis’s endorsement of AIDS critics after his letter resulted in a special hearing, when it was put together with a private admission by a prosecution witness that he felt the theory of transmission and its dangers was questionable.
As an interested member of the public I have the luxury of being able to investigate what I choose, and then to form my opinions based on what I decide is relevant and convincing evidence. A Judge does not (and should not) have this luxury. He is obliged to take the qualifications of someone like Robert Gallo at face value, especially when there is no shortage of other, well qualified experts to back him up. Whereas I can say that I disagree with the expert opionions of Dr Gallo, the judge cannot easily do so without what he sees as sufficient justification - regardless of what his personal opinion might be.
This seems unconvincing to us. In this case the job of the judge was to arbitrate in a conflict over the scientific facts of the case, since if science actually said that the act of endangerment of a sex partner, which the law forbade and which the defendant was found guilty of, was as a practical matter impossible, and the conviction based on an act which could not be an endangerment after all, then the appeal against conviction should go forward (see the judgement for the exact issue in legal terms).
The judge arbitrated by evaluating the arguments of both sides as to the validity of the science, and he wrote a lengthy judgement explaining his reasoning, which was based mostly in the credibility of the witnesses on either side in his mind, but also was influenced by evaluating their points, it seems clear. As MacDonald perceptively joked, the judge became an authority in his own eyes with his “newfound scientific acumen”:
The so recently AIDS controversy ignorant judge has caught up admirably since he is now in a position to refer sweepingly and with great scientific authority to the ‘most recent research that establishes [retroactively?] that HIV exists and leads to a breakdown of the immune system’… Perhaps it is the judge’s newfound scientific acumen etc
The outcome of the case was properly founded on the ability and willingness of the judge to evaluate the claim of the defense that the science of HIV∫AIDS showed there could be no endangerment, and we were glad to see it in action. It was just unfortunate that he wrongly assessed the credibility of the two sides, and because he developed contempt for the Perth witnesses didn’t sufficiently question and examine what he accepted as good reasoning and evidence from the paradigm defenders to see the fallacies in what they were saying. If he was more worldly he might have realized that the minor stars of a professional field are quite capable of selling him a bill of goods especially if they believe it themselves, and the blind may lead the blind.
Perhaps it is understandable that a Supreme Court Judge in what is a provincial capital city in global terms does not understand how the billions now swilling around in the HIV∫AIDS bucket in the US and internationally can drown the kind of good science practiced by people who feel science is a vocation and not a profession, and who question basic assumptions. With Walter Isaacson’s book on Einstein just out, and the author on CSpan etc expounding it in his irritatingly People magazine manner, one wonders if an Einstein could get anywhere these days.
April 30th, 2007 at 11:26 am
It seems apparent that some of us were optimistic that this could have been a major turning point. Whether the Perth Group got involved, or other rethinkers with PhD’s, this was not going to be the time and place for an about-face for AIDS.
A rethinker friend rightly remarked a couple of days ago that we didn’t get into this mess via logic. Unfortunately, we won’t get out if it via logic, either. People aren’t rational beings. We’re capable of being rational, but we’re not rational by nature. We’re emotional.
Focusing on reason, logic and rationality would seem like a good idea, that in anticipation of this house of cards falling down, would give many of us a deep feeling of satisfaction that human beings are essentially smart animals. Not so. The mere fact that the AIDS paradigm has existed for twenty-plus years is good evidence that humans aren’t terribly smart and we do run on emotion.
For those of us who truly are interested in resolution regarding this issue, changing tack is essential.
April 30th, 2007 at 12:04 pm
TS, it can be both. You can have all the human foibles of ambition, self-delusion, etc., at work in the Hiv theory, and you can also have conspiracy going on. Indeed, I think you do have both going on, far more of the former than the latter.
But since Clinton named Hiv-Aids a “national security issue”, that automatically involves the CIA. Do you really think that what concerns our leaders is the destabilization of Africa caused by all those Aids deaths, and the result this might have on US desires to exploit and enslave Africans? I think what they are really worried about is the Hiv lie unravelling, and that’s why it’s a national security issue. And if that’s true, that means that the CIA would be working to prop up the Hiv theory wherever it is threatened. And, I shouldn’t have to tell you, there is NOTHING that they won’t do in pursuit of their goals. Just do a little research on what the agency has done in the world, and the tens of millions of people they have tortured, killed and enslaved.
Tampering with a judge is child’s play for them. But I’m also not saying it was the CIA, it could have been the NSC, or just the Medical Mafia that got to him.
MacDonald gives good evidence that the judge was talking to John Peemore. Why do you insist that Sulan’s thoughts were his alone?
As for trials, remember what happened to Kim Marie’s attempt to litigate? Her attorneys kept quitting the case. You don’t think somebody was working behind the scenes on that, bribing and/or threatening them? (I keep forgetting, you’re kinda naive)
Anyway, ain’t dat a great idea for a “don’t get tested” campaign using the Adelaide result (and other examples) to scare people away from testing?
April 30th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Truthseeker has provided a well-balanced discussion of the Perth Group
I disagree.
But, he’s under no obligation to provide a discussion, well-balanced or not, about the Perth Group.
Unfortunately, I don’t get the impression that NAR and YBYL are “team players” in resolving the deadly AIDS paradigm. They seem to be team players only for those whose natural curiousity and questioning minds cease being curious and questioning when confronted with the Perth Group’s analysis of HIV’s existence. I find this to be disturbing, and counterproductive to ending the “AIDS” nightmare. It reminds me much of the orthodoxy’s relentless push to keep us all believing in the bad science of AIDS…the “don’t look over there”, or “don’t question that” way of doing business.
For many of us lowly lay-folk, the Perth Group’s analyses of HIV/AIDS have definitely helped us to unravel this knot. So has Duesberg’s.
Maybe I’ve been naive in thinking to what extent we’re all in this together…working toward the same goal. It’s clear to me that we’re not working toward the same goal, not even in general terms. It’s saddening. I thought we wanted to see the end of this deadly, homophobic, racist, medical nightmare. We do, as long as we marginalize the Perth Group and don’t question HIV’s existence.
April 30th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I had read the Perth Groups papers reprinted in Continuum Magazine several years ago. I was impressed with them because they looked at the fundamental aspects of what (retro)viruses were and what is involved in performing viral isolation. They combed through hundreds perhaps thousands of existing “HIV research” to find relevant studies. It got me to thinking that the idea of how all of the various dissident scientists and journalists have been writing about the subject. If HIV doesn’t exist, no one can be infected with what they were told they were when they received a “positive result”. Even if “HIV” did exist, the tests employed have never been validated. So when I read the dissident literature I look for consistency of scientific point of view: Knowing that none of the tests have been validated, it’s senseless to talk about who’s infected and who’s not.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:14 am
MacDonald’s irrelevant comments and disrespect for the blog host have been removed. If he wishes to justify the position of the Perth Group’s position on the proper isolation of the virus and its consequences for whether HIV causes AIDS or not, he can do so politely, and intelligibly. This is a site where the object is to exchange civilized comment on paradigm challenges and not to indulge ad hominem jibes, unless extremely witty. It is a reference site, to which others may come in the expectation that the information and enlightenment can be accessed without disturbances of that kind.
Unfortunately, I don’t get the impression that NAR and YBYL are “team players†in resolving the deadly AIDS paradigm.
This blog, Dan, is completely independent of YBYL, which we consider a very mixed bag, run by people who are best known for flaming emails which have neither sense nor justification, most recently it seems fired at each other. However, that is their business, not ours. We are not “team players” and have no interest in being so. What has the independent review practiced here got to do with “team playing”? We tell it like it is, as best we can. We think for ourselves, hoping you will follow our example. If you do that, we believe you will save yourself. That is all. We are not part of a conspiracy of dissidents, we are independent scholars and journalists. This is a science blog, not a political one. Otherwise we would be preoccupied tonight with how the pusillanimous, flabby cheeked Tenet ever got the job of running the CIA and how he ever imagined he deserved it, given his best defense of his incompetence in believing Iraq had WMDs runs along the lines of “There is no silver bullet” and “You cannot build a perfect mousetrap”.
Sorry that you feel that the Perth Group deserves more credit than we gave it, which if you will review the post is quite a lot. Their clinging to their claim that HIV has not been proved to exist in some validated form where it can be blamed for causing AIDS seems to us such a prima facie questionable opinion that we feel it only makes a laughing stock of them and anyone who is associated with them, even though they have much to their credit. Perhaps MacDonald can make something of it after all but so far he has not succeeded as far as we could stomach his posts before cancelling them for rudeness to his betters. Perhaps MacDonald is cleverer than Peter Duesberg who rejected it convincingly ten years ago. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
But it doesn’t matter whether they are right or wrong about their incredible claim. The simple fact is that they are a menace to the reputation of others who claim that the paradigm is wrong, as the Adelaide case showed, The first order of business is to establish that HIV does not cause AIDS, a fact that is backed by all the literature of the field, unless you read it standing on your head. Quarrel with the existence or proved existence or valid isolation of the virus after that if you like, when it will be even more irrelevant. The notion that you need the latter to prove the former is ridiculous, as far as we are concerned.
Sorry, but despite the great other contributions of the Perth Group the Adelaide judgement demonstrated that any case brought with them as witnesses is going to go down the tubes. The other witnesses Marcel listed are the ones to use. This is not amateur hour, this is war, as John Moore has stated. To oppose an aircraft carrier you need a few Exocet missiles, not a Vietnam era battleship.
Why O why do we not use as witnesses the many hundreds of scientists and doctors we have who DO have impeccable, relevant and impressive credentials? Why not Duesberg, Charles Thomas, Gabor-Miklos, Strohman, Rubin, Rasnick, deHarven, Bialy, Maniotis, Margulis and many many more that we have on our List page.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:43 am
Some commentators seem to be enthralled with the Perth Group’s contention that HIV doesn’t exist. That’s not an oversimplification; here’s how the Perth Group actually phrases it: “There is no proof that such an entity exists” (The Last Debate, Reappraising AIDS, Dec. 1999). Here’s how they put it at their website (theperthgroup.com): “The view of the Perth Group is that the HIV/AIDS experts have not proven: 1. The existence of a unique exogenously acquired retrovirus, HIV.”
To maintain such a position nowadays is just an embarassment, causing AIDS dissenters to be laughed out of court, as in Adelaide, and out of serious scientific discussion. Truthseeker properly acknowledged that the Perth scientists have made many excellent studies of various aspects of AIDS, but he also noted that an obstinate emphasis on their non-existence doctrine can have potentially detrimental effects.
Some commentators may not be aware that over 10 years Prof. Peter Duesberg conclusively rejected the Perth position on the non-existence of HIV and showed that the virus has been properly isolated and sequenced. His critiques appeared in Continuum, July/Aug. 1996 and Feb./March 1997.
Among other things, Duesberg pointed out that the standards for viral isolation that Perth used to reject HIV were those set forth by the Pasteur Institute, circa 1972, and that better methods later become available. By these more sophisticated methods, HIV has been adequately isolated and sequenced, according to Prof. Duesberg.
AIDS Rethinkers can’t have it both ways, perpetually Hamletizing about whether HIV is to be or not to be. On this key issue, either one sides with Dr. Duesberg, who is a distinguished retrovirologist and has actually sequenced many viruses, or one sides with radiation physicist Eleni Papadopulos and her Australian colleagues, none of whom is a virologist.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:18 am
AIDS Rethinkers can’t have it both ways, perpetually Hamletizing about whether HIV is to be or not to be
AIDS Rethinkers, by definition, are simply rethinking what they’ve been told about HIV/AIDS.
“We’re” not the dogmatic HIV faithful. “We” question. “We” don’t tell others what to think.
“We” don’t assume that since somebody has a PhD, that they’re automatically correct about HIV/AIDS. “We” don’t tell others they need to choose between Duesberg and Perth…or maybe we do.
Duesberg pointed out that the standards for viral isolation that Perth used to reject HIV were those set forth by the Pasteur Institute, circa 1972, and that better methods later become available.
You’re talking about two different things…standards and methods. Are better methods synonymous with better standards? What makes the methods better? It’s a confusing statement, above.
either one sides with Dr. Duesberg, who is a distinguished retrovirologist and has actually sequenced many viruses, or one sides with radiation physicist Eleni Papadopulos and her Australian colleagues, none of whom is a virologist.
Taking sides based on title and rank? How scientific.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:50 am
Robert, MacDonald, and TS as well. On the Reappraising AIDS site was an interesting piece a month or two ago by a French researcher named Jean Umber. She offers a theory that does seem to tie Mainstream, Perth, and Peter’s work together. As I am not knowledgeable about science, I don’t know what to think of it, but I did find it interesting and plausible. I don’t know if you had read Umber’s piece or not, but I would love to know your opinions. Do you think Umbers theory could be a legitimate possibility in explaining a good percentage of HIV positives?
It can be found at: http://aras.ab.ca/articles/scientific/Umber-apoptosis.html
May 1st, 2007 at 1:58 am
Since “HIV” has been isolated, where is the electron photomicrograph of the bug? All I’ve seen are artist concepts/computer generated images. Can anyone direct me to one?
May 1st, 2007 at 4:03 am
Perhaps MacDonald can make something of it after all but so far he has not succeeded as far as we could stomach his posts before cancelling them
I see NAR has solved the problem of dissenting voices amongst dissidents in a strikingly familiar. manner. How could one argue with that?
I feel a congratulations! is once more in order
May 1st, 2007 at 8:52 am
Mr. Houston is referring to a (probably censored) statement to the effect that ‘it is an oversimplification to paraphrase the Perth Group as claiming HIV dosn’t exist’. Seeing that Mr. Houston has actually taken the trouble to look up the exact wording on theperthgroup.com, one is (almost) at a loss for further words:
Some commentators seem to be enthralled with the Perth Group’s contention that HIV doesn’t exist. That’s not an oversimplification; here’s how the Perth Group actually phrases it: “There is no proof that such an entity exists†(The Last Debate, Reappraising AIDS, Dec. 1999). Here’s how they put it at their website (theperthgroup.com): “The view of the Perth Group is that the HIV/AIDS experts have not proven: 1. The existence of a unique exogenously acquired retrovirus, HIV.â€
According to Mr. Houston’s admirable clarification the following two propositions should be identical:
“HIV does not exist.”
“HIV has not been proven to exist”.
I cannot do much more than rely on the reader’s grasp of the English language to demonstrate that to claim identiy between the two is utter nonsense.
Further clarification by the Perth Group:
By “HIV has not been proven to exist”
is meant
“The existence of a unique exogenously acquired retrovirus, called HIV, is not proven to exist”,
Which, if our truthseeking host’s exceptionally sensitive stomach can keep down a few more lines of precise language, means,
“an entity, HIV, with the, by AIDS Inc., specified defining properties and characteristics (the ones that make it “unique”) has not been proven to exist”.
If, as Mr. Houston claims, the Perth Group has been refuted and such an entity has been shown by Prof. Duesberg to have been proven to exist, Prof. Duesberg has also refuted his own claims made elsewhere with regard to the characteristics of the virus.
My guess is Prof. Duesberg would claim no more than that he has shown an infectious,
exogenous, agent with typical retroviral properties has been isolated and sequenced - which makes the scientific rift between him and the Perth Group negligible to anybody with no personal axe to grind.
Ultimatums of the form, ‘either you’re with Duesberg or you’re with Perth’, I think are best left in the care of the current president’s speech writers.
May 1st, 2007 at 9:28 am
Secondly,
Some may have noticed I left out the word ‘unique’ in the position on the virus I attributed to Duesberg. Duesberg I think would say that the entity which has been cloned and sequenced is unique. In this as well as ‘exogenous’ (unique and exogenous are parts of the same controversy) he is at variance with the Perth Group.
But from here it becomes largely a question of semantics. Duesberg may say a unique retrovirus has been isolated, but he would, or should, not say a “unique retrovirus ‘HIV’”, because ‘HIV’ is defined as having all those properties and characteristics from the molecular level up that are in dispute.
If the reader would care to take a look at all the answers to Duesberg’s ‘virus found’ articles referenced by Mr. Houston, he would see for himself that one of the points brought against Duesberg is that he keeps referring to ‘HIV’ as if it is a properly defined entity and that we are all i agreement on what we are referring when we use the name.
Would Duesberg agree with the proposition that what we are referring to when we say ‘HIV’ is a Human Immunodeficiency Virus and that such a virus exists?
May 1st, 2007 at 11:43 am
I don’t understand why TS deleted Macdonald’s posts. They didn’t seem at all out of line to me, and made very good points.
Macdonald, you seemed to me to be suggesting that the Judge actually took John Peemore’s words, verbatim, and used them in his opinion without attribution, as if they were his own words. Is that correct? If that is the case, might that be grounds for a mistrial, or disqualification of the judge, or whatever?
I was very impressed by the Perth Group’s arguments that there is no proof that Hiv exists, and I’ve leaned toward that position myself. Agreed, it’s a much harder sell than the Hiv doesn’t cause Aids proposition, and it is probably better to stick to the latter.
But the nonexistence (not PROVEN to exist) point of view does have some very notable champions, like De Harven, Rodney Richards (who would have been a fantastic witness, with his credentials) Stefan Lanka and others.
I think Borick really blew it. After I posted my thoughts about Eleni’s and Val’s unimpressive credentials several months ago, I guess I thought that maybe he was smart enough to realize that their credentials were not good enough, and bring on some other scientists with better creds. That he didn’t do that reflects poorly on his judgement.
But, regardless, I still think the fix was in, and it wouldn’t have mattered. But indeed, let’s try again, and do it right next time. And also we need someone to organize this “Don’t Get Tested” ad campaign.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Good post, Marcel. I agree with everything in it.
I’ve mentioned the idea of a “don’t get tested” campaign at AME not too long ago. Although intellectually satisfying, I’ve thought that it probably wasn’t practical, as people’s first reaction is that it was completely off the wall.
But, in rethinking this idea, it sounds much better.
The initial reaction may be one of shock, but that’s exactly what people need to jar them out of their present HIV=AIDS mindset. That blow to their comfort zone will get them to think and ask questions…if only to try and find their way back to their comfort zone. And there’s where the great opportunity for rethinking resides.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:12 pm
Thanks Marcel,
With regard to your question re. Moore and Sulan, I’m not suggesting that the judge was actually coached by JP himself. I use his name and site generically to represent the more obvious AIDS infoganda and mafia methods. The term “ask John”, coined by our host, means, on my interpretation, to simply go to the nearest AIDS Inc. representative (who more often than not happens to be John Moore) for the answer when one is faced with criticism of the dogma, rather than seeking independent sources and taking the trouble of making up one’s own mind
Then again, you don’t have to be an expert on “differential language diagnosis” to see that the judge has learned an unmistakable vocabulary, style, tone, inner logic, while away on holiday. Either that or he has taken intertextuality to new levels.
Simply put, maybe JP wasn’t there, but Sulan has done a helluva job of channeling him.
Would be interesting to see which tone and writing style judge Sulan uses in other cases.
With regard to other witnesses, apparently there were certain ‘complicating circumstances’ that prevented Borick from bringing in more Defence experts.
Finally, The blo’ host thought my explanations re. Perth and virus isolation were too indigestible, and has kindly requested a simpler version.
This is as simple as it gets:
1. ‘Does not exist’ and ‘has not been proven to exist’ are just not equivalent propositions.
2. HIV is a word, a word must refer to something well-defined. HIV is not such a something.
3. No rethinker, Duesbergian or Perthian, would say that the existence of a Human Immunodeficiency Virus has been proven.
May 1st, 2007 at 12:58 pm
I see point 2 may still be a little unclear. I rephrase:
2. ‘HIV’ is a word, a word must refer to something well defined. That to which the word HIV refers is not such a something.
This is the very reason why Rebecca Culshaw gave up on modelling HIV mathematically. In her book, Dan Fendel puts it like this:
“Every mathematician knows that by changing the definition of something, you can change the entire truth about that thing. Rebecca Culshaw describes how the HIV = AIDS ‘orthodoxists’ have abused this idea. As in a shell game, they keep moving the definitions around, so that anything can be true and everyone will be confused. The abuse of science that has been documented here is itself very frightening. But when we learn that the standard treatment for HIV-positives — antiviral therapy — will substantially increase their risk of dying, it’s even scarier.” — Dan Fendel, professor of mathematics, emeritus, San Francisco State University
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2007/04/science_sold_ou.html#comments
May 1st, 2007 at 2:28 pm
HIV’ is a word, a word must refer to something well defined. That to which the word HIV refers is not such a something
MacDonald, Perth or no Perth, here’s what I believe you’re trying to say…
Human Immunodeficiency Virus doesn’t exist. For Human Immunodeficiency Virus to exist, it must first be isolated (Duesberg: yes, Perth: no), then…it must actually cause immunodeficiency.
It can’t be Human Immunodeficiency Virus if it isn’t causing immunodeficiency now, can it?
Therefore, Human Immunodeficiency Virus doesn’t exist.
Is this what you’re trying to say, MacDonald?
May 1st, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I see NAR has solved the problem of dissenting voices amongst dissidents in a strikingly familiar. manner. How could one argue with that?
Sorry, Marcel, dissent is the business of this blog, but insults are not, particularly of the host, unless exceptionally urbane and witty, in the usual MacDonald manner. There is also the matter of intelligibility. We tried editing out the jibes but could not immediately make sense of the points, so we actually counted on MacDonald to restate them, which he has done, but again they seem somewhat opaque.
MacDonald, perhaps it is merely our hangover, but your approval of the Perth “HIV does not exist” line is either brilliant to the level of Einstein in its escape from current limitations in thinking about viruses and microvesicles, or it is stenography of a muse from Mars. Please differentiate for us. Is there an entity X which is rightly or wrongly labeled HIV and which exists in some form where it can be detected in some way and its consistent characteristics enumerated and described, an entity which appears in electron microscope photographs as individual particles?
What is needed is a list of facts, or contradiction of facts and statement of true substitute facts. As far as we understand it from the NIH and Duesberg:
1. A retrovirus which has been mislabeled HIV exists as a separate viable entity, a wisp of RNA 9 kilobases long, which replicates by entering cells, transforming itself into DNA and attaching itself to the DNA of the cell, and then replicating as the cell replicates.
2. This retrovirus strand has been repeatedly sequenced by many people in different labs throughout the world who have come up with the same sequence of 9 kilobases.
3. The variations in the sequences are in one case sufficiently large that you have HIV-1 and HIV-2, but in most cases rather small so you have different strains of HIV, which can be detected reliably enough that labs can tell you if your girlfriend got the virus you have from you, and you should go to jail for 15 years for not telling her you are HIV-positive etc etc
4. You can clone the full length virus genetic code of HIV 1 and 2 from virus infected cells by putting it in a bacterial plasmid (a replicating genetic unit in the cytoplasm of a cell) and generating a virion (virus particle) which will have reverse transcriptase and which can be detected by probes for HIV like PCR. This isolation is far more stringent than physically purifying it or separating the virus because it is the “soul of the virus”, the genetic code uncontaminated with proteins or other cell particles or microvesicles as could occur in cell culture. That this occurs by chance is a fatuous idea, mathematically speaking.
5. HIV 1 it is neutralised by anti-sera (immunoglobulins containing antibodies) from the blood of patients who are HIV1 positive, but not from patients who are HIV 2 positive, and vice versa.
6. The specific genetic DNA for HIV has been detected with PCR in most antibody positive persons with or without AIDS, but in hardly any people who are HIV negative.
7. HIV is shipped from one lab to another in culture and shows the exactly the same sequence when it arrives in the hands of the new lab.
MacDonald your last post is absurd. You revise your claim that HIV is not well defined by saying the same thing and then quoting someone with a quote that doesn’t apply, which is about moving other goal posts. HIV is very well defined, as well defined by its genetic sequence as any other virus,
Don’t take an AIDS test
Marcel, you are right. The horrible social consequences of being positive deserve a post.
May 1st, 2007 at 4:21 pm
More or less Dan, except that this is point 3, not point 2.
It can’t be [defined as] Human Immunodeficiency Virus if it isn’t [adequately shown] to be causing immunodeficiency
Therefore [if it is not adequately shown to case human immunodeficiency, the entity defined as] Human Immunodeficiency Virus [cannot be accepted] to exist
On the one well defined characteristic that it’s the virus that causes Human Immune Deficiency, none of the rethinkers in question should accept HIV’s existence.
Point 2 goes deeper and looks at the constantly changing definitions of HIV from molecular level up to make it fit the one constant ’causes human immune deficiency/AIDS’.
An easy example for those of us who aren’t mathematicians or mol. biologists: HIV was first defined as that which causes AIDS, a variety of known diseases. But it is also a disesase unto itself, even when it doesn’t make the person ill. ‘HIV disease’ is when one is diagnosed with HIV, regardless of whether one has any symptoms or not - whether one EVER gets any clinical symptoms.
HIV disease is used to broadly describe the disease or illness caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus; if untreated, the disease typically progress slowly from asymptomatic infection to worsening immunocompromise to full-blown AIDS. In general, this process takes about ten years, though this can vary widely from person to person.
http://www.sfaf.org/aids101/
One of the definitions of HIV, then, is that it is the virus that makes you sick whether you are sick or not. How did this idea come about? Because it’s part of the definition of HIV that it inevitably, without exception, causes AIDS. Now we have ‘elite controllers’, thousands of them, who will probably die of old age before they die of AIDS. But they are still sick, because in theory, had they lived till they were 300, they would have developed AIDS, on which criteria metabolism is a deadly disease. - Or maybe they are mutants who lack certain molecular receptors, because it’s one of the properties of HIV that it needs those receptors to enter the cells, which it per definition always does because the positive test has defined you as sick…. and so on and so forth.
The term ‘HIV disease’ has redefined HIV as a disease unto itself, apart from AIDS, to make it fit with the previous definition, ‘the entity which invariably causes AIDS’. Does such an entity, called ‘HIV’ really exist, or is it a construct?
Rebecca Culshaw again:
So it would appear that “AIDS†and “HIV disease†are not, in fact, the same thing, (…) unless of course one takes them both to signify “meaning nothing and everything at onceâ€.
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/11/dr_dr_culshaw_w.html
Correction: Dan Fendel’s comment is not from Rebecca Culshaw’s book, but from a review on Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Science-Sold-Out-Really-Cause/dp/1556436424/sr=11-1/qid=1167496016/ref=sr_11_1/002-5936051-6572869
May 1st, 2007 at 5:13 pm
Dear Truthseeker,
I’m sad to learn that your initial stomach trouble has now spread to your head. Your questions:
Is there an entity X which is rightly or wrongly labeled HIV and which exists in some form where it can be detected in some way and its consistent characteristics enumerated and described, an entity which appears in electron microscope photographs as individual particles?
There is almost certainly an entity labeled HIV, probably more than one. Any entity’s characteristics can be enumerated and described. I have no idea whether what is called HIV has appeared on a photograph. I do know that entities appearing on photographs have been called HIV.
The following 7 questions referenced by TS’s numbers:
1. A retrovirus which has been mislabeled HIV exists as a separate viable entity, a wisp of RNA 9 kilobases long, which replicates by entering cells, transforming itself into DNA and attaching itself to the DNA of the cell, and then replicating as the cell replicates.
1. I don’t know, but I think that’s the consensus, apart perhaps from some issues with the term ‘retrovirus’ and ’separate viable’ as in the wild, outside of certain artificial conditions.
2. This retrovirus strand has been repeatedly sequenced by many people in different labs throughout the world who have come up with the same sequence of 9 kilobases.
3. The variations in the sequences are in one case sufficiently large that you have HIV-1 and HIV-2, but in most cases rather small so you have different strains of HIV, which can be detected reliably enough that labs can tell you if your girlfriend got the virus you have from you, and you should go to jail for 15 years for not telling her you are HIV-positive etc etc
2,3. Well, that’s where much of the controversy stands right now. Who am I to say?
4. You can clone the full length virus genetic code of HIV 1 and 2 from virus infected cells by putting it in a bacterial plasmid (a replicating genetic unit in the cytoplasm of a cell) and generating a virion (virus particle) which will have reverse transcriptase and which can be detected by probes for HIV like PCR. This isolation is far more stringent than physically purifying it or separating the virus because it is the “soul of the virus”, the genetic code uncontaminated with proteins or other cell particles or microvesicles as could occur in cell culture. That this occurs by chance is a fatuous idea, mathematically speaking.
4. I’m really not familiar with the exact procedure, but something like that sure. I don’t think anybody contends that.
5. HIV 1 it is neutralised by anti-sera (immunoglobulins containing antibodies) from the blood of patients who are HIV1 positive, but not from patients who are HIV 2 positive, and vice versa.
5. Quite possibly.
6. The specific genetic DNA for HIV has been detected with PCR in most antibody positive persons with or without AIDS, but in hardly any people who are HIV negative.
6. I don’t think the correlation is always that good. I don’t know if PCR picks up DNA or RNA (fragments) specific for that which you call ‘HIV’. Possibly.
7. HIV is shipped from one lab to another in culture and shows the exactly the same sequence when it arrives in the hands of the new lab.
7. Don’t know. Not sure about the point.
MacDonald your last post is absurd. You revise your claim that HIV is not well defined by saying the same thing and then quoting someone with a quote that doesn’t apply, which is about moving other goal posts. HIV is very well defined, as well defined by its genetic sequence as any other virus, (TS and his science consultant)
It is true I wasn’t talking about the genetic sequence. As I’ve said, my main concern, and qualifications, lie with the semantic aspect. This started out with the difference between the two propositions “HIV does not exist” and “HIV has not been proven to exist”. I have not moved any goal posts.
On the genetic sequence issue as on the maths I defer to the ladies:
I heard a talk by a “medical scientist” from the Harvard Medical School at a meeting at Roger Williams Univ in Rhode Island from a supposed expert who attempts to design an HIV vaccine. He claimed the HIV virus mutates a billion times in 48hours. It became clear that the HIV virus has no clear identity. (Lynn Margulis)
May 1st, 2007 at 7:38 pm
I’m sad to learn that your initial stomach trouble has now spread to your head
Thank you for your concern, MacDonald, it is true that we have a large headache right now, but it is the peculiar plum colored drink in champagne glasses offered last night at the grand opening of the Lyme Disease Center at Columbia which is the culprit, not your fine words, which you have now made much more specific, for which we are grateful. Your post makes it clear (we think) that you quarrel with none of the factual claims of the NIH or Duesberg except one, #3 (if you will forgive us, we have added the points to which you were replying to your post to make it clear):
(TS) 3. The variations in the sequences are in one case sufficiently large that you have HIV-1 and HIV-2, but in most cases rather small so you have different strains of HIV, which can be detected reliably enough that labs can tell you if your girlfriend got the virus you have from you, and you should go to jail for 15 years for not telling her you are HIV-positive etc etc
(McD) 2,3. Well, that’s where much of the controversy stands right now. Who am I to say?
So you do not think the virus has been accurately and reliably sequenced in its 9 kilobase RNA genetic structure, is that right? So it seems, though you say you are not sure or expert enough to contradict it with any confidence.
Well, can you say why you lack confidence in this claim? Do you credit the counter-claim from Elena P that it could have been reliably sequenced 19 times because they all stumbled across the same bits and pieces by chance? If so, then you do not accept the Duesberg statement that the chance of this happening is impossibly low, as Duesberg pointed out, in his reply, which if you don’t mind we would like to reproduce below since it is not long (the boldface is ours):
Peter Duesberg wrote:
I am honoured by the profound and passionate reactions of Hodgkinson, Lanka and Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al. to my letter on the existence or the non-existence of HIV (1-3).
However, I cannot surrender to the HIV-non-existentialists for the following two scientific reasons:
1) The weakest point of the HlV-non-existentialists is their failure to explain the origin of “19 sequences encompassing the full-length, 10kb-HIV-1 genome” (3) and “19 full-length HIV genomes” (1). Hence Papadopulos et al.’s unanswered question: “Can one exclude the possibility that the 19 ‘full length HIV genomes’ described so far, even if they all had the same length of 9150 bp [base pairs] and identical sequences are nothing more than a chance finding among the many molecular species present in the cultures, or even the uncultured lymphocytes….?” (3), that were “taken from AIDS patients and AIDS risk groups”, as Hodgkinson points out. (1)
Yes, one can exclude that. Remember the odds of coming up with even one nucleotide sequence of 9150 bp by chance are astronomically low, namely 1 in 49150 which is very very close to zero (see my letter in the July/August Continuum 4). The chance of coming up 19-times with the same HIV-DNAs, even “from cultures treated with chemical or physical oxidants” (3) are another 19 orders of magnitude lower than finding it once by chance. Indeed the odds are much much lower than finding 19 guys on this planet with the same phone numbers.
Science offers but one rational origin for such sequences appearing “very occasionally”’ in species, namely viruses or other infectious agents. Thus the virus hypothesis is not a “specious”’ explanation for the origin of 9150 bp DNA that is “very occasionally” found in AIDS patients.
2) The HlV-non-existentialists also fail to realize that available isolation efforts have already adequately identified the 9150 bases as the genome of a virus. In order to “isolate” a given infectious agent, one needs no more than to isolate it from all other, possibly contaminating, infectious agents - this is in fact Koch’s second postulate.
Since viruses have an extracellular and intracellular existence, viruses can be isolated from two entirely different sources:
(i) Viruses have been traditionally isolated from extracellular fluids. Such viruses may be contaminated by extracellular proteins, nucleic acids and possibly other microbes.
Montagnier’s original isolate of HIV from extracellular fluids is an example. Indeed, Montagnier’s isolate appears to meet functional standards of isolation adequately, because two of the world’s leading retrovirologists, Robert Gallo of the NIH and Robin Weiss of the Chester Beatty have re-isolated only HIV from Montagnier’s virus stock (5,6). If Montagnier’s virus had been grossly contaminated by other viruses or microbes, those would have been found by Gallo and Weiss.
(ii) Since the 1980s viruses can also be isolated as infectious nucleic acids from infected cells. Such infectious nucleic acids initiate replication of virus in uninfected cells from which new virus particles are subsequently released. In this case viral nucleic acid is contaminated by cellular nucleic acid, and possible other intracellular viruses.
As I pointed out in my Missing Virus Reward claim in the July/August Continuum, infectious HIV DNA has been isolated from infected cells several times by molecular cloning (4). This cloned, infectious HIV DNA of 9150 bases represents an almost theoretical isolation, as it is a 100,000-fold purification from all nucleic acids of the cell and its possible viruses. This is because the human cell contains 1 million kilobases of DNA and HIV only 10. Contrary to Papadopulos et al.’s slogan - “No isolation no cloning” - cloning is isolation, and is in fact the most rigorous isolation science has to offer for retroviruses.
Thus the high standards of virus isolation from extracellular materials postulated by Papadopulos et al. and Hodgkinson may be relevant for crystallographers or chemists who want to analyze the structure of a virus, but are not relevant for functional isolation.
In view of this I hope to liberate the minds of HIV dissidents from HIV for the cause that unites us all - the solution of AIDS. It seems tragic that over 99% of AIDS researchers study a virus that does not cause AIDS and that the few who don’t are now engaged in a debate over the existence of a virus that doesn’t cause AIDS.
Peter Duesberg, Continuum Feb./March 1997
To us, this seems decisive, even though Elena replied to it with forty pages. What did you detect in her reply that makes you believe her, rather than Duesberg? We haven’t yet troubled to try and make sense out of it, after trying once and giving up.
May 1st, 2007 at 11:09 pm
Here is why I’m not convinced that HIV exists as a unique retrovirus as claimed by the AIDS establishment, and Peter Duesberg.
From the virusmyth site (apparently one of the Pasteur Institute’s rules for isolation of a retrovirus):
3. Electron micrographs of particles exhibiting the morfological characteristics and dimensions (100-120 nm) of retroviral particles at the sucrose (or percoll) density of 1.16 gm/ml and containing nothing else, not even particles of other morphologies or dimensions.
Dr. Etienne de Harven describes one such image of retrovirus particles here, that he published in 1965.
From Prof. Peter Duesberg’s prize claim:
In view of this I can base my claim for the isolation of HIV on the most rigorous method available to date, i.e. molecular cloning of infectious HIV DNA, rather than only on the much less stringent, traditional “rules for isolation of a retrovirus … discussed at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, in 1973″ that were stated criteria of isolation in Continuum’s missing virus reward (6). Indeed I will show that molecular cloning of infectious HIV DNA exceeds the criteria of the old “Pasteur rules”.
Duesberg goes on to argue that HIV DNA has been isolated using his new criteria. If the Pasteur Institute’s rules are less stringent, shouldn’t they be easier to satisfy? The isolation of HIV DNA as described by Duesberg predicts that virus particles can be isolated from a cell culture and photographed, as described by the Pasteur Institute’s rules. As far as I understand it, this is exactly what Gallo and Montagnier claimed to have done, although they didn’t publish any such photographs.
Given the evidence of isolation and identification of HIV DNA that Duesberg describes, it is simply assumed that retrovirus particles are the explanation. Isn’t it possible that there may be another explanation?
A suitable electron micrograph showing these particles would certainly make their existence more difficult to deny!
May 2nd, 2007 at 2:49 am
Isn’t it possible that there may be another explanation?
OK, why is it necessary to suggest another explanation for something that by its nature establishes the existence of the genome without contamination? And if there is another explanation, which one do you like that is not subject to difficulties, such as the Duesberg one of “no it is not likely”, by an order of magnitude as great as the number of atoms in the earth and sky?
A suitable electron micrograph showing these particles would certainly make their existence more difficult to deny!
They seem to have them on a scale that shows particles without being big enough to identify them precisely, so the argument against them being HIV can suggest that the picture could be other viral particles or microvesicles, apparently. Is an electron micrograph possible of such a small item at a magnification sufficient to clearly show the surface structure or outline? Apparently not.
But all corrections welcome. One remarkable thing is that explanations of how this all works have never been clear to us, even from de Harven. Quite amazing how inarticulate scientists are about the simplest things.
May 2nd, 2007 at 6:16 am
As much as I’d like to make that last paragraph from the TS stand as eternal last words on this blog: perhaps next to the proud admission that he couldn’t be bothered reading Perth’s lengthy nor Lanka’s much shorter response in Continuum once Duesberg had spoken, the show must go on.
Contrary to Papadopulos et al.’s slogan - “No isolation no cloning” - cloning is isolation, and is in fact the most rigorous isolation science has to offer for retroviruses. (Duesberg)
Cloning is indeed isolation. What Papadopulos et al’s slogan says/means to say is ¨no purification no cloning¨
The entire expert team’s strategy in Adelaide consisted in exploiting this ambiguity in the terminology.
I say with our host ¨quite amazing how inarticulate scientists are about the simplest things
(TS) 3. The variations in the sequences are in one case sufficiently large that you have HIV-1 and HIV-2, but in most cases rather small so you have different strains of HIV, which can be detected reliably enough that labs can tell you if your girlfriend got the virus you have from you, and you should go to jail for 15 years for not telling her you are HIV-positive etc etc
(McD) 2,3. Well, that’s where much of the controversy stands right now. Who am I to say?
(TS) So you do not think the virus has been accurately and reliably sequenced in its 9 kilobase RNA genetic structure, is that right? So it seems, though you say you are not sure or expert enough to contradict it with any confidence.
According to the defence, Parenzee never had his ‘HIV’ sequenced. Parenzee had a fragment corresponding to 12% of the total consensus genome sequenced. That fragment was then put in a ‘genetic tree’ and compared to the ‘victim’s’ fragment of an ‘HIV’genome. Upon finding thet they were similar, not identical but ’similar,’ it was decided that what was found in the victim had come from Parenzee, and that the 1% difference was as it should be for an entity that mutates half a billion times a day. The obvious comparison is that such a genetic difference, if extended to the whole genome – which is not given in this case - would have turned a man into a chimpanzee many times over.
I don’t f…ing know the answer, but this is how these issues present themselves, not as some simplistic ”the ‘HIV’ genome has been reliably sequenced and it was found in both Parenzee and his ‘victim – same strain to boot” rubbish
HIV has a 30% variability at any given point in time The genomic difference that was finally big enough to make AIDS Inc. declare they had a new Human Immunodeficiency Virus on their hands is 40%-60%. Those 60% were awarded a number, ‘2′, after the definition ‘HIV’.
What’s the mathematical propability that two distinct Immunodeficiency Viruses should decide to jump the species barrier at the same time and earn themselves an H in front of their IV?
And when does something cease to be that something and become something else? When we decide to give it another name?
May 2nd, 2007 at 10:42 am
OK,
no more questioning. Science is about authority, and Duesberg is the authority.
HIV has been isolated with better methods or standards (or something) than Pasteur ‘72. Accept it.
Now that that ugliness is behind us, we are free to question…so long as we know what to question and what not to question.
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Anyway, there are actually three key questions that might be tested in court. 1) Does Hiv exist? 2) Does Hiv cause Aids, and, probably the one that Borick should have asked: 3) Are the tests accurate?
May 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 pm
As much as I’d like to make that last paragraph from the TS stand as eternal last words on this blog: perhaps next to the proud admission that he couldn’t be bothered reading Perth’s lengthy nor Lanka’s much shorter response in Continuum once Duesberg had spoken, the show must go on.
If you say they are worth tackling again we are willing, MacDonald, since we have infinite respect for your judgement, as long as it is backed up by your own reading and genuinely openminded assessment of authority and credibility. But since we tried once and were unimpressed, why do you hold it against us not to waste time doing it again unless you point the way? Sooner or later claims have to be justified, and the Perth Group have had plenty of time to make themselves clear and prove their point, and it doesn’t seem to have happened. All other criticisms of the HIV∫AIDS claim have torn gaping holes in the paradigm, but not this one. Even the length of their 40 page answer is not a good sign, in our opinion. But as we say, we tackled it and found it wasn’t clear, decisive or even attractive.
Anyhow, Dan, Duesberg’s authority in this case prevails with us because his logic seems decisive, not because he is automatically right on every point, although his track record is very close indeed to 100%, and no one even among his opponents has claimed he is weak on logic or in citing evidence, or in producing his own impressive work. He is openminded and considers all evidence against what he thinks and deals with it in public, and he is decisive based on evidence he quotes. In all things scientific he is more impressive than the Perth Group. To bleat that he is prevailing because of his “authority” is silly, but if it is an authority fight, he would deserve to prevail.
Sooner or later, one does tire of giving self deluded minds endless rope. Take cold fusion for example. Pons and Fleishmann had a very good run for their money, and there are still industrial labs in Japan trying to make something of it, and some publications. Yet are you suggesting we go visit Pons in France and listen to him all over again? Presumably not. The world’s greatest labs joined the rush to see if he had anything, the Department of Energy and Utah gave millions, the University of Utah competed with MIT to patent it, the American Chemical Society and American Physical Society gave them a platform, Los Alamos, Harwell, and nothing proved out. There comes a time sooner or later when it behooves all sensible souls to move on from considering the novel ideas of peripheral figures however well meaning and self-convinced, if what they say doesn’t gain traction among even habitual skeptics of the status quo. The strong contradiction of HIV∫AIDS has gained enormous and determined support among good scientists and intelligent people under the leadership of Duesberg, whose efforts are probably a sine qua non of any progress against this massive mountain of delusion, and have always been impeccably grounded on reason and science tested by his willingness to entertain all possible objections without fear or favor, so we value his judgement highly for good reason, and grant him authority far higher than the Perth Group.
Any failure to recognize Duesberg’s stature ignores these facts, and we say this even as we give the Perth Group their due, which is considerable also. But the two are not comparable in weight and we see nothing wrong in acknowledging this. The strange resistance to crediting Duesberg for fear of “hero worshipping” him is not supported here. He is an eminent scientist and deserves his reputation, which his opponents cannot easily deny, though they try to. Without Duesberg, it is doubtful that any of this would be discussed any more. The whole world would be going along with HIV∫AIDS without any credible resistance at all.
Anyway, there are actually three key questions that might be tested in court. 1) Does Hiv exist? 2) Does Hiv cause Aids, and, probably the one that Borick should have asked: 3) Are the tests accurate?
Haven’t you got the point yet, Marcel? You don’t try to test 1). It guarantees your case will fail. Substitute 1) Is HIV transmissible in heterosexual sex?
I don’t f…ing know the answer, but this is how these issues present themselves, not as some simplistic â€the ‘HIV’ genome has been reliably sequenced and it was found in both Parenzee and his ‘victim – same strain to boot†rubbish
These two issues (sequencing as proof of HIV’s existence, and the identification of the strains in the Paranzee case) are a little different, MacDonald. Your comments seem completely valid on the second. Alas, it seems pretty clear that Borick wasn’t up to speed on what should have be argued, and that this was because he was tied to the Perth Group by the family of the prisoner. The bottom line is that the Perth group lost the case, and it would have been won in all probability if the more authoritative witnesses against HIV∫AIDS thinking had been called, and the defense had argued along the lines you are pointing to.
May 3rd, 2007 at 2:00 am
To be sure, there is much to admire and consider seriously in the remarkable contributions of the Perth Group to the understanding of AIDS. Their papers are provocative, thoughtful, and well-informed. I would question only their peculiar obstinacy in maintaining that HIV hasn’t been shown to exist. My earlier point - that on this “existential issue” one must choose, like it or not, between Perth and Duesberg - has been corroborated by the subsequent commentators. While saying they decline to choose, in fact they’ve done so by siding with the Perth Group.
Mr. MacDonald has tried to convert this into a semantic issue regarding “human immunodeficiency” in the name. That’s a separate issue on which we probably agree - the name is self-serving and inappropriate. What we were talking about, however, is the putative existence of the virus itself that was formerly known as “Human T-cell Lymphotropic Virus - III” (Gallo) and “Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus” (Montagnier), and later called HIV-1. (HIV-2 is a different though nominally related retrovirus that occurs mainly in Africa and the Third world, and is believed to be more benign; in the USA and Europe “HIV” usually refers to HIV-1 which was first found in France.) Since Montagnier in France sent it to Gallo in the USA and Robin Weiss in England in a culture vial by special delivery and they identified it as a virus at the other end, apparently there was something real and tangible from the start, i.e., something that exists.
I appreciate Mr. MacDonald’s correction that Perth speaks in terms of “proof” of existence. Is the thrust of their argument, then, that HIV is probably real but just needs better proof of reality? No, it’s that they believe that HIV is unreal and thus hasn’t - and probably can’t - be proven to exist. A sure basis to be laughed out of the court of world opinion.
A suitable electron micrograph showing these particles would certainly make their existence more difficult to deny!
Although Simon Daniel and others keep suggesting that there’s no such documentation, in fact there have been numerous publications of electron micrographs showing what is described as HTLV-III, LAV, or later HIV-1. Perusing the AIDS articles in the journal Science for 1984, I found 9 studies with such electronmicrographic evidence:
These included two of the original four papers from Gallo’s group: M. Popovic et al. and J. Schubach et al. Science, 5/4/84. There were also three studies with photos of LAV from Montagnier’s group: D. Klatzman et al., L. Montagnier et al., and P. Feorine et al. (in Science, 7/6/84). Here are some more from Science: J. Levy et al., 8/24/84; J. Groopman et al., 10/26/84; D. Zagury et al, 10/26/84; D. Ho et al., 10/26/84. Of course, there were many more such studies with photos of HIV in subsequent years (if anyone’s interested, I can list more).
No doubt the Perth Group can find one reason or another to reject any electron micrographs, but it’s incorrect to say that none were published.