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Charleston City Paper

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NOVEMBER 29, 2006

FEATURE STORY | Rethinking AIDS

Doubters abandon traditional HIV/AIDS theories and treatment

BY GREG HAMBRICK

Everything known about AIDS suggests that Noreen Martin is near death. The 53-year-old Lowcountry woman was diagnosed with AIDS three years ago. Her viral load, the rate of HIV in her blood, is at more than 100,000 — 200 to 500 is good and an undetectable number is even better. Her CD4 rate that gauges the number of “helper” cells in her system is at 136 — healthy people run between 600 and 1,200. Martin’s doctors have begged her to take antivirals, but she’s refused the drugs since March and the numbers keep heading in the wrong direction.

The puzzler is that Martin looks great. She feels great. She says it’s no surprise. She claims it’s because everything known about AIDS is wrong. She says HIV is a harmless retrovirus that can’t be sexually transmitted, that AIDS medicine can cause the very disease it is expected to fight, and that the government knows this and is ignoring the facts.

It should be said early that this is not the generally accepted understanding of HIV and AIDS. The Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Health point to thousands of studies that show HIV is primarily a sexually transmitted disease that depletes the body’s immune system, opening it up to one or more AIDS-defining opportunistic infections.

At first glance, “AIDS rethinkers” like Martin seem to be buying into an elaborate conspiracy theory. Most rethinkers contend that the man who discovered HIV stole it from the French, many gay men get AIDS because of poppers and other recreational drug use, and most notably, there’s no AIDS epidemic.

Their argument is based on one disputable fact: No scientific study has been done that proves that HIV causes AIDS.

An argument that is contested, of course, by HIV and AIDS researchers. There are thousands of articles that prove the connection between the virus and AIDS, says Cornell University professor John Moore, even if there isn’t a singular paper that draws the line between the two.

“It’s like a moon rocket,” he says. “You’re not going to go to the web and find one five-page paper on how to build a moon rocket, but you know that it has been done.”

The scientific evidence is overwhelming and compelling that HIV is the cause of AIDS, says Jennifer Ruth, spokeswoman with the National Center for HIV, STD, and Tuberculosis Prevention.

“Infection with HIV has been the sole common factor shared by AIDS cases throughout the world among men who have sex with men, transfusion recipients, persons with hemophilia, sex partners of infected persons, children born to infected women, and occupationally exposed health care workers,” Ruth says.

Henry Bauer, a retired chemistry and science professor and an ardent rethinker, says history has shown reversals in science when the orthodoxy was challenged by mounting questions.

“When the questions get to a critical mass, it’s a revolution,” he says. “But it’s often a bloody revolution.”

“Rethinkers”

The underground scientific controversy over AIDS began in the disease’s earliest days. On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control reported the deaths of five gay men in Los Angeles from a rare type of pneumonia and a month later, they reported more than two dozen cases of gay men with Kaposi Sarcoma, another very rare disease. As the AIDS table grew to include drug users and hemophiliacs, scientists scrambled to find answers.

Rethinkers say American Robert Gallo claimed in 1984 to have found HIV, but his findings were based on a French group’s 1983 study of the virus. Gallo’s perceived deception is a sticking point for rethinkers because they say it is only the first in a string of lies regarding the disease.

In 1986, the Australian-based Perth Group claimed there was no proof that HIV existed. A year later, American scientist Peter Duesberg joined the argument, acknowledging that HIV existed but claiming it was harmless and that AIDS did not show signs common to contagious diseases.

“It’s so anti-scientific when you read these studies,” Duesberg says of more than 20 years of AIDS research. “As a scientist, you have to ask all the questions.”

Duesberg’s theory would gather support over the years as reports on his ideas continued to grow. But they were far outpaced by studies that furthered the popular counterargument that HIV depletes T-cells, which work to fend off disease in the body, ushering in AIDS typically within a decade of transmission.

Those only modestly familiar with HIV and AIDS can be excused for not hearing about rethinkers, but a quick search for information on HIV or AIDS on the internet will show various chatrooms, blogs, and internet sites dedicated to furthering Duesberg’s message.

Bauer has been collecting HIV and AIDS data compiled since the onset of the disease.

“What that data shows is that the rate at which Americans test positive for HIV has been the same for 20 years,” he says. “Therefore it’s not a spreading epidemic.”

The Centers for Disease Control’s findings mirror Bauer’s claim, noting that the number of people diagnosed with HIV or AIDS in 2004 was about the same as it was in 2001 in the 35 states that compile these figures. But a recent United Nations AIDS report notes that HIV infections continue to grow in Africa, but now at a slower pace than eastern Europe and central Asia, where there were 270,000 infections in 2006 compared with 170,000 in 2004. With the expectation that many HIV-positive people don’t know they’re positive, UNAIDS estimates that 39.5 million people are living with HIV worldwide and 4.6 million people were infected in 2006 alone.

The rethinkers movement received attention in 2000 when the government of South Africa began a public debate on HIV, AIDS, and antiviral medicine and called in Duesberg and other rethinkers to help determine how the country would combat the disease. AIDS activists have since worked around the government to get antiviral medicine and HIV education to the people.

Australia will soon have its own debate over the validity of HIV. That country’s Supreme Court recently heard arguments in a case where an HIV-positive Australian man claimed that he could not have infected a woman and endangered two other sex partners because HIV hasn’t been proven to exist.

The rethinkers movement took a blow last year when outspoken rethinker Christine Maggiore, who had refused antiviral medicine for years, even while pregnant, and decided against testing her two small children for HIV, lost her three-year-old daughter to an AIDS-related illness. Her son has since tested negative.

AIDS rethinkers exchange news on these stories and various AIDS findings through a growing number of websites that offer support for rethinkers, which heartens Martin.

“When I did it, I had to do it the hard way,” she says.

Noreen’s Story

Among a varied collection of antique books in Noreen Martin’s library is an old, thick book from the Library of Health that she considers one of her favorites because of the inscription on the book cover: “You can do nothing to bring the dead to life; but you can do much to save the living from death.”

Martin, a Hanahan housewife who does some reporting for the community paper as a hobby, has been fighting off injuries and illness for years, including a herniated disc and pinched nerves, cancer, an ear infection, and various allergic reactions to medicine she was taking to combat these problems.

“I’ve forgotten a lot, which is a good thing,” she says. “It’s part of the healing process. The mind has a way of blocking out the negative things or bad memories.”

In 2003, her health further deteriorated, as she began experiencing fatigue, nausea, diarrhea, breathing troubles, weight loss, and continued memory loss. Doctors pressed her to get a bone biopsy and blood tests to determine if she had cancer. The tests came back indicating she was cancer-free, but further tests found she had HIV and AIDS.

“After months and months of being sick, I was relieved,” Martin says. “I just wanted to know what was wrong.”

Martin was told to wait two months for an appointment with an infectious diseases doctor. Not wanting to wait around, she went to a health food store, where the owner told her about an alternative doctor who performs chelation therapy, a hours-long cleansing of sorts for the blood that targets proteins and is supposed to help with blood flow. Chelation therapy has its own controversies, with the American Heart Association and the FDA stating there is no medical benefit to the practice and the CDC attributing the deaths of two children to a chelation drug called Endrate. But Martin says it was one of the few things that helped her in the early months after she was diagnosed.

“It didn’t cure me, but it certainly helped,” Martin says. “On the chelation days I could at least get off the couch.”

But her overall health continued to decline and when she finally got to the infectious diseases doctors, they rushed to get her on an antiviral medicine that Martin concedes likely saved her life.

“I had about three different viruses going on at the same time, so these things were a godsend,” she says, though noting that the success of the medicine was in tandem with healthy living and natural supplements.

But her doctors weren’t supportive of Martin’s alternative supplements, which sent her looking elsewhere for answers and eventually to the rethinkers movement.

“The more I read, the more things just weren’t adding up,” she says.

The picture of health – Noreen Martin has AIDS, but she’s refused antiviral medicine and believes her disease is based on a natural immune deficiency

Where Martin had first thought that she had HIV, she now doubts that initial test and believes that she contracted AIDS through a natural immune deficiency.

“Everybody’s immunity is different,” she says. “I can’t give somebody my immunity any more than I could give them my toothache.”

Feeling better, Martin decided to go off the antiviral medicine in early 2005, but soon returned to it after pressure from the doctors and her husband. Last March, she decided that she would get off the medicine and not look back. She is now taking Low Dose Naltrexone, a drug that helps people with immune deficiency diseases, that was prescribed by another physician.

Though he’s not familiar with the rethinkers movement, Robert Cantey, director of infectious diseases with the Medical University of South Carolina, says an AIDS patient ditching their drugs isn’t uncommon.

“That’s a typical response when someone has a good response to the medicine,” he says, but notes it was more common years ago when the side effects were more severe.

Martin says she’s been in great health since going off her antivirals, but the blood tests paint a different picture as her CD4s, the helper cells that ward off diseases, continue to fall and her viral load climbs from less than 100 to more than 100,000. Cantey says the numbers are now in the range where Martin is susceptible to brain, lung, or bloodstream infections that are common among AIDS victims. He says Martin’s late diagnosis likely contributed to her quick drop in CD4s.

“The worse those numbers are when you go on the medicine, the faster they’ll drop when you go off the medicine,” he says.

Meanwhile, Martin’s advice for others is to stay healthy and don’t get tested for HIV.

“People’s lives are being ruined by this very faulty test,” she says. “You get the results and it’s downhill from that point on. Doctors need to treat symptoms, but they don’t do that. All they care about is if you’re positive. If you’re positive, you’re screwed.”

“Denialists”

Rethinkers have been combated quietly over the last 20 years, but more high profile attention on the movement in the past few years has prompted scientists that support the link between HIV and AIDS to openly refute the rethinkers’ claims. Facing the public doubts of the South African government in 2000, 5,000 scientists, doctors, and researchers, including several Nobel Prize winners, signed the Durbin declaration that reaffirms that HIV causes AIDS.

Earlier this year, after what they saw as a one-sided story on rethinkers in Harpers magazine by a writer immersed in the rethinkers movement, Moore and other HIV scientists and doctors began the website www.aidstruth.org to refute the claims in the article. They have since updated the website to combat other claims by the rethinkers, whom they refer to as “denialists.”

“These people are basically being persuaded to kill themselves,” Moore says.

The argument begins with what causes AIDS. Rethinkers attribute the disease, in large part, to drug use. Duesberg notes drugs have long been known to deplete the immune system and an early study of AIDS cases among gay men found a large number of them used recreational drugs, primarily poppers, an inhaled drug used as a sexual stimulant.

“It’s a matter of dose and time and genetic constitution,” Duesberg says, noting that drugs effect different people in different ways the same way that smoking does.

But a 1993 study that followed 715 gay men for more than eight years found that 350 men who never acquired HIV noted “appreciable” drug use. Another 2005 study found a strong link between poppers and unprotected sex among San Francisco gay men, suggesting that even though the drug may not cause HIV/AIDS, it could place users at increased risk of contracting HIV through unsafe sexual intercourse.

If drug use causes AIDS, rethinkers then note that the concerns of sexual transmission are moot because it cannot be spread this way. Martin says that she does not use protection during sex with her husband. She points to a study by California scientist Nancy Padian that studied heterosexual couples where one was HIV-positive and one was HIV-negative and found that transmission of the disease was far less than one percent (as low as 1 in 1,000) among heterosexual couples.

It’s Padian herself who refuted these arguments earlier this year on www.aidstruth.org. She notes that her study regarded couples that were counseled to use protection, not avoid it.

“Individuals who cite the 1997 publication … in an attempt to substantiate the myth that HIV is not transmitted sexually are ill-informed, at best,” she stated. “Their misuse of these results is misleading, irresponsible, and potentially injurious to the public.”

Padian notes that HIV transmission between couples can be as high as 20 percent, depending on risk factors including other sexually transmitted diseases. Cornell professor Moore says that Padian is not alone and that certain lines from scores of studies have been selectively cited to further the rethinkers movement.

“Then these things become urban legends,” Moore says.

Rethinkers also claim that the standard HIV test is woefully unreliable, claiming that as many as 70 factors can cause a false-positive.

“HIV has never been isolated in its pure form,” Bauer says, “which means that these tests have never been validated.”

This claim by rethinkers is based in fact. The majority of HIV tests aren’t designed to identify HIV. They actually find HIV antibodies, or proteins the body creates to defend itself against HIV.

Moore says that technology has improved by leaps and bounds since the virus was first identified and that the rethinkers often base their logic on outdated data. To combat inaccuracies, HIV tests have been confirmed through a second, different test for several years. The Centers for Disease Control notes that the two tests together have a 99 percent accuracy rate, and Cantey says he’d put the accuracy rate at 99.9 percent.

Not only is the HIV test quackery, rethinkers argue, but so are the drugs HIV and AIDS patients are given to battle the disease.

Much like the test, medicines to combat the viral load have evolved as older drugs, which time has shown to be less effective, are replaced with newer drug regimens. Some rethinkers say that drugs like AZT cause AIDS and others say that the toxic side effects of the drugs have led to death.

“It’s an example of the old saying that the operation was a success, but the patient died,” Bauer says.

Today HIV and AIDS patients are typically given a cocktail of medicines. “Use of potent anti-HIV combination therapies has contributed to dramatic reductions in the incidence of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths in populations where these drugs are widely available,” the NIH’s website states. “An effect which clearly would not be seen if antiviral drugs caused AIDS.”

Africa’s high-profile struggle with AIDS has also received the ire of the rethinkers. People with AIDS in Africa are dying from the same diseases that have always plagued them: wasting, malnutrition, and tuberculosis. Rethinkers claim this is because AIDS is not an epidemic in Africa and that the perceived plight is just a way to pull money to the region and bolster the global fight against AIDS.

“I’ve seen commercials of kids starving in Africa,” Martin says. “That’s nothing new. Now they have something new they can blame it on.”

But just as AIDS-defining illnesses in America began appearing at much higher rates than seen before, these diseases in Africa are showing unusual trends when it comes to AIDS patients, attacking them at much younger ages and including those middle-class groups who aren’t malnourished. A 1995 study found that HIV-positive people in Cote d’Ivoire were 17 times more likely to die from tuberculosis than those not infected with HIV.

Rethinkers also note that the disease is affecting different races and regions differently, something uncommon with communicable diseases. The NIH and others note various reasons for the difference, including in what groups the disease was first recognized and sex practices.

These and other attempts to refute the claims of the rethinkers have done nothing to quell their continued belief that everything the world has been told about HIV is wrong. Noreen Martin is active daily on a number of rethinker web forums and she has started her own website to further the cause and chart her own progress.

“Let people make up their own mind,” Martin says. “I made up my mind and I’m not turning back.”

Dec. 1 – World AIDS Day Charleston Events

On Friday, the world gathers to combat the spread of HIV during World AIDS Day. In Charleston, Lowcountry AIDS Services and other groups will expand this year’s events to two days.

Events will begin on Thurs., Nov. 30 with information booths set up from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at the College of Charleston’s North Campus, Trident Technical College’s Main Campus, The Citadel, and at the Medical University of South Carolina, which will also host a luncheon with guest speaker Dr. Preston Church.

On Fri., Dec. 1, there will be events at MUSC’s horseshoe from 11:30-1:30, at the College of Charleston from 11 a.m.-1 p.m. at Rivers Green, and from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at Trident Technical College Palmer Campus. Roper Medical Center and St. Francis Medical Center will also have panels of the AIDS quilt on display from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.

A candlelight march and rally will begin at Marion Square near the Embassy Suites at dusk, around 5:30 p.m., with marchers walking to the Cistern at the College of Charleston where they’ll have the opportunity to call there loved one’s name publicly. There will be an area of healing and comfort at the Cistern with lay pastors and counselors and refreshments for those that need assistance.

Glass luminaries dedicated to those lost from HIV/AIDS are also available for $10. Their names will be labeled onto the luminaries, which can be retrieved at the end of the event. For more information, contact Mark McKinney at 849-8531.

A little more than a week later, on Sat., Dec. 9, more than 100 red ribbon retailers in downtown, West Ashley, and Mt. Pleasant will host Shopping with Friends, a fund-raiser for Lowcountry AIDS Services where 10 percent of the sales on that day will be donated to the AIDS organization.

The event starts with a kick-off party from 5-8 p.m. on Dec. 8 at Saks Fifth Avenue on King Street. On Saturday morning, there will be a brunch from 9 a.m. to noon at the Renaissance Hotel with complimentary gift bags. For more information on the events, visit Lowcountry AIDS Services online at www.aids–services.com/shopping.html or look for the posters in participating stores. –Greg Hambrick

AIDS By the Numbers

Worldwide

•39.5 million people in the world are living with HIV and 4.3 million were newly infected in 2006.

•Eastern Europe and Central Asia are outpacing Africa in the number of new AIDS cases, with 270,000 in 2006, compared with 170,000 in 2004.

Nationwide

•1.2 million people in the U.S. had HIV in 2005.

•Men still account for about 73 percent of the HIV diagnoses in the U.S., with almost two-thirds of those infections attributable to unsafe sex between men.

Statewide

•There were 13,508 people living with HIV/AIDS in South Carolina by the end of 2005.

•560 people tested positive for HIV/AIDS statewide in 2005, compared with 832 in 1995.

Locally

•4,156 people were tested for HIV in Charleston last year. Of those, 51 tested positive, about half as many as a decade ago.

•Berkeley and Dorchester had a combined 1,831 HIV tests, but accounted for less than 1.2 percent of the positive tests statewide, compared with more than 3 percent in 1995.

Source: UNAIDS, SCDHEC

COMMENTS

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1 comments posted for this article

Henry H. Bauer, Virginia 11/29/2006 - 2:16pm

Greg Hambrick did a great job in covering in a balanced way a huge story, about which gross misinformation is so common. Naturally he could not give details on every point, so I should like to add these: –John Moore’s comparison with moon rockets is plain silly. A better analogy is that lots of bad data don’t make even a tiny bit of good evidence. Many HIV-positive people never got ill in two decades, and many people with AIDS symptoms are HIV-negative, in particular people with Kaposi’s sarcoma which was a “signature” AIDS disease. Even the mainstream now says Kaposi’s is caused by a different virus –Ruth’s statement about HIV being common to all cases is demonstrably untrue. She should cite all the scientific articles on which she bases that assertion. (They don’t exist.) –No one claims to know how HIV kills T-cells, after 2 decades of research –All the cited numbers of infections are from computer models, they are not actually observed and counted cases. The models rely on innumerable doubtful assumptions, and have been demonstrably way off the mark in a number of specific instances. –Even the computer estimates by UNAIDS give the same rate of HIV infection in 2006 as in 1996, for sub-Saharan Africa as well as other regions of the world –Christine Maggiore’s child did NOT die of an AIDS-related illness. The coroner concerned has long been regarded as unreliable. –Recent scientific publications (August and September) showed that people on “cocktail” therapy got AIDS events EARLIER than those not on therapy; and that while the “surrogate markers” of CD4 counts and “viral load” improved, the patients’ health got worse –More than a dozen studies besides Padian’s, in Africa and Haiti and Thailand as well as in the USA, have never shown sexual transmission of more than a few per thousand acts; and where use of condoms was controlled for, they made no difference None of these comments should detract from my praise of Greg Hambrick for a balanced account of an enormous and difficult topic.

(citypaper@textgenie.com), NYC 11/30/2006 - 2:17pm

An excellent article, giving an unsually clear and even handed review of a debate that is not widely covered in the media, because the scientists in tehe field actively fight reexamination of their theory, an attitude which the comments of John Moore, Nancy Padian and other spokesmen in the article betray. The Charlotte City Paper and reporter should be congratulated for bringing such level headed coverage to their readers. This is one issue in science where the critics have established that there are very serious problems with the conventional wisdom, and with lives at stake it is depolorable that scientists should resist public review. As Professor bauer points out, the points made in defense quoted in the article include many which are wrong, especially Nancy Padian’s attempt at refuting her own study, which showed that heterosexual transmission of AIDS through sex is far too weak to sustain any epdiemic, let alone a world wide pandemic. Readers who have been alerted by this article to the possibility that standard medicine is wrong in HIV/AIDS will want to visit Peter Duesberg’s site, Virusmyth and the two most active science blogs, Barnesworld You Bet Your Life and New AIDS Review for more information.

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Michael, Downtown 11/30/2006 - 8:09pm

Right On Greg!

You did a great job balancing both sides of a very touchy issue. But make no mistake. Nobody has ever died of AIDS. AIDS is a definition, not a disease. AIDS is NOT a disease! It is a definition that includes about 30 common diseases that even HIV negative people die from all of the time, like pneumonia. Once diagnosed with the flakey and faulty HIV tests as HIV positive, a patient is not allowed to catch the flu or get pneumonia without blaming it on HIV and calling it AIDS.

Yet most of the death certificates of those who died of what is called AIDS almost always say “complications of AIDS” which is a convenient way of saying they were poisoned to death by the AIDS medications. Liver failure is the most common cause of death in American HIV positives, not anything viral! Kidney failure and heart failure are right up there as well. All due directly to the AIDS drugs, yet the pharmaceutical companies making and selling these drugs have not even taken responsibility for even a single death!

Those doctors and scientists and drug companies who have cashed in on the hundreds of billions of dollars dumped down the AIDS hole will not go down without one helluva fight! Their bank accounts and overly inflated egos are at stake! Do you think any doctor that has handed out toxic and deadly AIDS drugs to his patients will ever admit to having helped to do his patient in? Not in your life!

It’s about time somebody speaks out on this. How many people scared themselves to death, and how many doctors scared their patients to death over this very issue. By the way, the number of AIDS deaths in the US did not come down until high dosages of AZT were taken out of the doctors hands in about 1995. But the scientists say it is because today’s drugs are better at controlling HIV. Bull! The drugs are simply less toxic than the AZT that was given in 1200mg dosages to patients from 1987 to 1995, the years of massive death said to be due to HIV. Today the leading cause of death in American HIV positives, according to a 2002 study by University of Pittsburg AIDS researcher Amy Justice, is liver failure, which is not due to a virus, it is directly due to drug poisoning.

But the issue is even deeper than this. Ever wonder why HIV and AIDS hits 99% gays and blacks? Do you really suppose a virus knows the difference between white and black or between gay and straight, or drug adicts of any race? How come it is not ravaging West European and American heterosexuals, as it does in poor poverty stricken and starving Africa? That is one genius of a virus that knows how to tell the difference between race and sexuallity and also knows if you are a hardcore drug abuser or not, dontcha think?

The pharma companies make money selling the ingredients for making crystal meth to the public and then cash in again when the ravaged bodies of the addicted are diagnosed as having HIV AIDS.

I don’t believe death by AIDS will ever stop unless and until big pharma is reigned in and unless and until our gay sons and brothers and friends are accepted just the way they are, instead of being disowned and shamed to death by the so called moral majority.

AIDS in Africa will not stop until hunger, dirty water, and hopelessness are eradicated. Any time you find people living in shame, starvation, squalor and hopelessness, you find disease and death to be rampant. Back in the 1950’s we just called all the dead drug addicts “junkies”. They were found dead all the time back then, and we rightfully condemned the drug use. None of them were called HIV/AIDS, which is what they are called today.

The population of Africa just so happened to have doubled during the last 25 years of the so-called AIDS epidemic, and the starvation and hopelessness and water pollution has doubled as well.

America’s bigoted answer to this is to put all of Africa on toxic and deadly AZT and Nevirapine. No wonder South Africa’s president Mbeki is an AIDS Rethinker! At least President Mbeki can think for himself and see what is at the core of the problems in South Africa for himself, which is more than I can say for the imbeciles who lord over the more developed countries of the Western Hemisphere.

What was Bush’s answer for AIDS? First to put the CEO of Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals in office as the AIDS Czar, which did not even raise an eyebrow of 99.9% of supposedly intelligent Americans. Second to throw 15 billion dollars at HIV AIDS as long as it was spent on American pharmaceuticals.

Excuse me, but Gee, I fail to see how this will help Africa come up out of poverty. It will only clean out their national treasuries trying to pay for these drugs for exploding pulations. I fail to see how this will help American drug addicts to overcome their addiction and self loathing. I fail to see how this will help us all to love and care for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, exactly as they are. And I fail to see how it will end the bigoted and racist attitudes that still drive many blacks even in developed countries to overcome the handicap of being born black and poor.

The only thing Bush and Clinton and any other elected official throwing Money at HIV and AIDS will do, is to make the poor poorer and the rich richer, and we regular tax paying fools out here, who elect these morons to continue to keep us ignorant, will continue to pay for it all.

And then we have the problem of many who were diagnosed as HIV positive, cash in big time on their diagnosis. Free medical, free food, free dental, free housing, and perks galore for lots of them, disablilty checks, welfare, etc. These people are not about to give up their diagnosis of HIV. It gives a lot of them a free ticket to skate through life. Lots of others get stuck up on the self pity and the pity poured on them by others. For a lot of them, it is the first time they ever “felt loved” by all those pity filled friends and folks close to them. Not that pity is love, but its the closest that a lot of many of these often self loathing and self destructive people will get to it. Not anywhere near the majority of HIV positives, but many fall into this spell. But what the heck, lots of them are still untreated drug addicts, and/or disowned gay sons of the self righteous moral majority.

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Immauelk, USA 12/ 1/2006 - 3:05pm

Mr. Hambrick,

Two questions:

1. Did you actually SEE the results of Ms. Martin’s laboratory tests?

2. Will you please write a follow up story and tell us how Ms. Martin fares? And if she ultimately chooses conventional therapy?

I wish her well, but the published AIDS literature suggests that her prognosis is not good. Let’s hope that there is something different about her case that keeps her well.

Manny Kimmel

AIDS Activist

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Greg Hambrick (greg@charlestoncitypaper.com), Downtown 12/ 2/2006 - 6:54am

Yes, I have seen the results and we do plan to stay in touch with Noreen and check in on how she’s doing.

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Kamileon 12/ 2/2006 - 11:30pm

In your statewide statistics on infection, you have HIV/AIDS grouped as HIV/AIDS. Statistically speaking, this is VERY inaccurate and can be quite misleading. When you say that 13,000 and some people are infected with HIV/AIDS, what the hell does that mean?!

First of all, you can only be infected with HIV.

Second, not all people with HIV have AIDS.

Lastly, you can’t say all the people with HIV will get AIDS.

So what is it? Do the 13,000 some-odd people have HIV or AIDS?

Hey don’t worry about it, you’ve only been brainwashed by the HIV establishment into grouping your statistics into the “HIV/AIDS” realm, something they are notorious for.

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Michael, Downtown 12/ 3/2006 - 9:24pm

Hey Kamileon. As far as whether they are HIV or AIDS in the state listings, Lets also remember that once anyone who has been diagnosed as HIV positive comes down with any of the 29 common and supposedly “AIDS” defining diseases such as common pneumonia, they are forever after defined as having “AIDS” for the rest of their life. They are NEVER removed from the AIDS listing category, no matter how healthy or illness free that they ever become for the rest of the remainder of their lives. The state likes it that way, and so do the individual counties, as they both tap the federal government for funding every year based on these bullcrap and phoney baloney numbers. It’s a convenient little shell game to keep the bucks flowing. If HIV causes anything at all, it is most definitely the cause of fundraisers and money shuffles to keep the game going.

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Kicking AIDS

Local photographer captures fight for Africa’s future

In Zimbabwe, the average lifespan was 61 years in 1990. Today, the average adult dies at 39 with only 3.5 percent of the population making it to 65. The reason? HIV/AIDS. Deaths from AIDS-related illnesses have orphaned one million children in the country — 20 percent of all Zimbabwe’s children — and that will likely continue considering that 20 percent of pregnant women were HIV-positive in 2003. According to UNICEF, more than half of the patients in Zimbabwe are hospitalized with HIV/AIDS-related illnesses and more than 120,000 children under the age of 15 have HIV, the retrovirus that causes AIDS. Grassroot Soccer, a nonprofit that includes a Charleston photographer among its ranks, focuses on preventative education for 12-year-olds in Zimbabwe, using interactive programs and engaging volunteers whom the children will listen to with rapt attention — their soccer heroes.

There are lots of tools to fight HIV/AIDS, but usually soccer’s not one of them. That is, until Thomas Clark created Grassroot Soccer. Clark, an American who spent his early teenage years in Zimbabwe while his father coached soccer, fell in love with the country and eventually played for the same team his father coached. After returning to America for medical school, Clark decided to create Grassroot Soccer as a class project in 2002 after realizing that soccer could be used to reach children who are dealing with the realities of AIDS.

“It’s a way for the cultural love affair with soccer to be harnessed for something good,” he says.

The Grassroot program is loaded with informative games and information for children, but Clark says the focus is on community involvement and utilizing these children’s idols.

“Otherwise it’s a series of games and points anyone could do, but the special sauce is getting the role models involved.”

Though Grassroot Soccer is only one of several initiatives intended to spur HIV/AIDS education in Zimbabwe, the message appears to be getting across. In the last two years, the HIV prevalence rate has dropped from 24.6 percent to 20.1 percent, according to UNICEF.

“It’s certainly not solely due to our efforts, but it’s due to prevention education,” Clark says.

An independent evaluation of the program by Stanford University in 2004 found the program “significantly improves student knowledge, attitudes, and perceptions of social support related to HIV/AIDS.”

Denny leads a Grassroot Soccer session about HIV and AIDS prevention at St. Michael’s Primary School

The study found that students who participated in the program had a more positive attitude toward condoms and HIV testing and had more negative feelings about unprotected sex. There also seemed to be a decrease in the number of students with prejudice toward those with HIV and AIDS.

Welcome to Zimbabwe

The country was formed in 1980, but democracy never really took off in Zimbabwe. Robert Mugabe, the nation’s first prime minister, has ruled the country of 12 million for nearly 20 years. He rigged presidential elections in 2002 and quelled labor strikes calling for his retirement in 2003. His political arm, ZANU-PF, stole March 2005 parliamentary elections to allow it to change the constitution at will, according to the Central Intelligence Agency. A month later, Mugabe would institute Operation Restore Order, displacing 700,000 mostly poor supporters of the opposition, by United Nations’ accounts.

Immigration isn’t a problem, because the unemployed, who account for about 80 percent of the population, are leaving the country for economic opportunities in neighboring South Africa and Botswana. In response, South Africa has militarized its border and Botswana has installed electric fences to deter the exodus. News from Zimbabwe is sparse in America — the government raids last summer weren’t reported in The New York Times until November.

Aside from the political strife, the Central Intelligence Agency notes environmental nightmares, including deforestation, soil erosion, land degradation, air and water pollution, and poaching. Poor mining practices have also left the country with toxic waste and heavy metal pollution.

This was the backdrop last May as Alice Keeney’s plane pulled into a hangar in Bulawayo, the country’s second largest city. A soccer player for the College of Charleston before graduating in 2004, Keeney had spent a year learning photography in Paris until some friends suggested that she travel to Africa for a month and document the work of Grassroot Soccer.

“I really didn’t know what to expect,” she says. “I went over there pretty naive, to be honest.”

Keeney was the first off the small plane, greeted in the hangar by men with automatic weapons.

She had her $30 cash in hand — she’d been told that having the processing fee ready would help her move through customs quickly. She told them she was vacationing. Working photographers and aid workers can sometimes get a hard time from the government — while she was visiting, an American photographer was being held prisoner by the government.

“I never felt extremely unsafe,” Keeney says. “But, being there and hearing about it are two very different things.”

Tommy Clark, the director of Grassroot Soccer, also didn’t know what to expect from Keeney’s trip.

“There’s always someone going over there,” he says of media attention for the group. “I was just hoping nothing bad would happen to her.”

Keeney was introduced to the Grassroot staff in Zimbabwe, comprised almost entirely of locals.

“They’re either group leaders for after-school programs or professional soccer players,” she says.

Team Zebra takes part in “The Final Game,” in which the students answer questions that test their overall knowledge about HIV and AIDS at the end of the eight-day session with Grassroot Soccer; Each team of about seven players must answer each question correctly in order to then have the chance to complete a section of the obstacle course

While most Americans would be hard-pressed to name one of our soccer heroes from the past 20 years, Zimbabweans have a quick answer — M. Khupale. Known as Mr. Khupa to the masses, M. Khupale draws crowds and cheers everywhere he goes. The excitement is no different when he works with the Grassroot program, Keeney says.

“When he walks in to a classroom and starts teaching kids about HIV and AIDS, their attention is just wrapped around him,” she says.

The Program

In an age when some people push undeterred for abstinence education for teenagers, it’s impossible to imagine the Grassroot program of HIV/AIDS education will ever take place in the United States. In America, the realities of AIDS can be easily avoided by most any seventh grader.

“You walk into a classroom in the U.S. and you talk about sex and condoms, there’s giggles everywhere,” Keeney says.

But in Zimbabwe, where the darkness of AIDS takes family, friends, and neighbors hourly, let alone daily, children can’t be children anymore. “They realize they can be a victim of it.”

The Grassroot program lasts eight days over a two-week period. The students spend the first day in the classroom, answering true and false questions to dispel dangerous rumors long removed from American perceptions of HIV, but still prevalent in Africa.

“A lot of them have misconceptions, like you can get it easily through a mosquito bite,” says Keeney. They also might think HIV is contracted easily through schoolyard horseplay or that dangerous traditional healing practices will purge the disease, she notes. “It’s just a huge lack of education, really.”

After day one is complete, the rest of the program is chock-a-block with activities.

“It makes the kids think,” Keeney says. “That way they’re not just being told.”

One of the more effective games is “Hide the Ball,” where students are lined up shoulder to shoulder and a tennis ball with HIV/AIDS scrawled on it is passed behind their backs. Someone yells stop and a student left out of the line is asked to pick who has the ball.

“The point is you can’t see it,” she says. “It’s impossible to look at someone and see that they have HIV or AIDS.”

In “The Transmission Game,” the students learn the value of protection as students mingle in the classroom as if the people they speak with are sexual partners. At the end of the lesson, students learn that only three of them given a “condom” pass at the beginning of the class would survive if the game was actually intercourse.

Other games include “My Supporters,” which focuses on the community as a support system for those with HIV and AIDS in an area where many with the disease are still ostracized. In “Juggling My Life,” students learn how to make positive choices for themselves, and in “The Final Game,” the students use what they’ve learned in a team-style trivia game where correct answers move them through an obstacle course.

Along with the games, Grassroot Soccer also works with Ray of Light, a dance troupe of teens that help the students learn about HIV and AIDS through dance.

Once the program is completed, parents and family members are invited to a graduation ceremony where students are congratulated for their work. In one instance, parents told Clark that having their children go through the program gave them the courage to tell the children that both parents were HIV-positive.

“There’s such a stigma about HIV and AIDS,” Clark says. “Stories like that are so encouraging.”

Grassroot Soccer graduates put their hands together on June 3, 2005, after completing a two-week HIV and AIDS education course at Mawaba Primary School in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Grassroot also has a sister program for U.S. students called KickAIDS. Through the program, sports teams coordinate an education campaign that includes HIV/AIDS awareness, but focuses more intently on helping America’s young people understand the plight of Africa’s youth.

“It was a notion that it’s important that American kids understand what’s going on over there,” Clark says, “and encouraging them to be advocates in their community.”

The program includes a viewing of A Closer Walk, a documentary about Africa and AIDS narrated by Glenn Close and Will Smith. Students then organize fund-raisers, be they juggle-a-thons for soccer players or swim-a-thons for swim teams, with the proceeds going to Grassroot Soccer.

The group does have one American superstar contributing to its mission, although he’s better known for his reality TV appearances then his soccer skills. Ethan Zohn, a two-time Survivor competitor, including his $1 million victory in Africa, has used almost all of his stardom to highlight the programs of Grassroot Soccer, including wearing a T-shirt with the group’s logo during his stint on Survivor All-Stars. Zohn now coordinates the group’s American programs.

Heading back

Keeney returned home with photos of the hope that children in Zimbabwe get from the program. Grassroot now uses the pictures for fund-raising events and on the website to garner attention for the plight of Africans struggling with HIV/AIDS and the need for preventive education for Africa’s future. Clark says he has Keeney’s photos on his cellphone and his computer.

“She continues to be a big part of the organization,” he says. “She’s made herself invaluable.”

Keeney also notes the importance of pictures to show Zimbabwe’s children confronting their country’s struggles.

“A lot of the images you see from Africa are really desperate pictures,” she says. “Kids with flies all over their faces, which is definitely happening. But there’s also the other side of the story, where there is so much hope and desire for change.”

The response to the work of Grassroot has been very positive in Charleston, Keeney says, likely stemming from the program’s proactive approach.

“People like to see an organization that is doing something positive on the prevention side,” she says, noting the photographs she brought back show the realities of AIDS in Africa. “It helps having pictures. It puts a face to a name.”

Since her trip, Keeney has given Grassroot free use of her photos, providing about $10,000 in fund raising. Through local programs, she’s tried to educate South Carolinians about the dangers of HIV and AIDS a world away and here at home.

“It’s become a big part of me,” she says. “It’s nice to do something I love and help out a good organization.”

From the time she stepped foot on the plane to come back to the states, Keeney says she was ready to plan another trip back. She’ll be returning to Africa in a few weeks for a two-month stay with the help of local contributors, including Kudu Coffeehouse owner John Saunders.

The trip will begin in Botswana and Zambia, where she will document Grassroot Soccer’s other programs before heading back to Zimbabwe. She’ll then visit South Africa, where Grassroot is working with local mining camps to expand the AIDS education program. After harsh rebukes towards South Africa during the recent AIDS summit, education is a top priority.

“There’s a lot of pressure to set it up,” Keeney says. Grassroot will be a good fit for South Africa, with the 2010 World Cup planned in the country.

Before she goes, Keeney is holding two special events this weekend to go toward her work with Grassroot. On Saturday, Sept. 9, Kudu Coffee House will host a fund-raiser from 6-8 p.m. with prints for sale, a silent auction, door prizes, and music by Toca Toca. Beer and wine will be served. Keeney will also have a table set up at the Charleston Battery game against Rochester at 6 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 10, at Blackbaud Stadium on Daniel Island. All profits from both events will go to Grassroot Soccer.

One teen that helps Grassroot Soccer with its education programs told Keeney that these children take the message just as seriously as the adults do.

“He said, ‘We’re the future of Zimbabwe. If we don’t make change, there won’t be a Zimbabwe,’” she says. “They realize something has to be done.”

For more information, visit

www.grassrootsoccer.org or www.kickaids.org.

COMMENTS

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1 comments posted for this article

jdewars411, Downtown 9/ 6/2006 - 4:35pm

With so many people dying from this terrible disease, I am glad to see some coverage on those who are working so hard to fight back. As a young individual, Alice Keeney’s efforts to help with aids awareness through Grass Roots Soccer is truly inspiring. If only there were more people like her in this world…

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