Qualified outsiders and maverick insiders are very often right about the need to replace received wisdom in science and society. This site exists to back the best of them in their uphill assault on the massively entrenched edifice of resistance to and prejudice against reviewing, let alone revising, ruling ideas. 
Saving the chimps from scientists
Joy of liberated chimps shows up witless abuse of power by researchers
Suggests lethal motivations in HIV∫AIDS drug research are similar
Strong men may weep and rage at the Nature segment on Chimpanzees: An Unnatural History running on PBS stations this week in New York.
According to this poetic video lament by filmmaker Allison Argo, scientific researchers who work with chimps behave with less sensitivity than chimps themselves. They have neither the imagination nor the principles to treat their charges as they deserve, ie as 99.5 per cent genetically human, and deserving of equal rights if not in all respects, then in 99.5 per cent respects.
Up at Fauna Foundation [outside Montreal], a female chimpanzee named Pepper was grooming my arm and she clearly wanted me to take my watch off because it was in the way. So I took my watch off and she had it so fast! It was in the cage, and I thought, “Oh well, that’s the end of the watch. I really liked that watch, too.” She grasped it in her foot, since they can use their feet like hands. So she held it in her foot and groomed me for about 10 minutes. And then when she was finished, she very gently took it out of her foot and handed it out to me. And I was just amazed. It was so considerate, sensitive. She understood that it was something that was mine, something that I liked.
Just how ruinously our brothers and sisters under the hairy skin are treated in America is made only too miserably clear. In labs they are or have been the subject of damaging experimentation without consent, often permanently harmful and sometimes useless. They were shot up into space, injected with disease, surgically messed with and strapped into seats to test seat belts at high speeds.
Small cages were their living quarters in between these heroic services to mankind, solitary confinement for creatures with strong social needs, probably stronger than the scientists who neglected them.
In circuses or show business, all their teeth would be removed.
After their scientific or show business careers are over, they are transferred to retirement homes funded by the Federal government which are no better than solitary in Alcatraz. Typical quarters are or were steel cages indoors without even visual access to their fellow chimps living next door behind the concrete dividers (Click on pics to enlarge hugely).
Kissing a chimp with HIV
In this moving documentary, some women are introduced who, unlike the typical chimp researcher, have that part of the brain functioning that can empathize with chimps as deserving of humane treatment as much as any other intelligent, thoughtful, inventive, passionate, family oriented and loving creature – a group which apparently does not include many of the researchers, though one girl looking after them in a lab does feel a sharp pang when she can’t give them the attention they obviously implore.
The women are trying to move their retirees to the outdoors by building an island or otherwise releasing them into grass and trees. One hitch is that one collection of chimps is among the 200 or so that were “injected with HIV” in the early days of AIDS. The research was carried out because chimps are genetically so close to humans that they are thought to be ideal subjects for such experimentation.
The effort was abandoned, the documentary explains, because the chimps didn’t get AIDS. There is no answer to the obvious question, why then didn’t the researchers conclude that HIV didn’t cause AIDS in humans?
So now one sympathetic woman has a bunch of chimps “with HIV” in hand, and heavy resistance on the part of the townspeople where she runs her chimp home to the idea of building an island for them in case they somehow escape and give everyone the AIDS which they do not have themselves.
There is one exception, a gentleman who at first is scared stiff of catching AIDS from the chimps but gets to know one and is totally transformed in attitude, kissing the chimp fearlessly and saying his feelings about people are as changed as his feelings about chimps:
“Now there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Tommy…I used to be a redneck type. I’ve changed immensely. It’s unbelievable how I have changed in my attitude towards people as well as chimps. They are so forgiving. They have hearts bigger than us. There’s no way I could forgive like they forgive. And we’re supposed to be human and smarter. But I don’t know if we are smarter.”
In their bones, do they know it’s false?
In their behavior, he and the woman who rescued the chimps “with HIV” are certainly smarter than the scientists who research HIV∫AIDS, which is odd. The woman who was the retired chimps’ savior in this case, when warned that the chimps “had HIV”, did not panic and abandon the project. Her immediate reaction was “I have to save these chimps.”
A: I didn’t have a choice. The day that I went to the lab and met the chimps, I decided I would be taking whomever I met. I was introduced to two groups of chimps –15 in total, 7 of which were infected with HIV. There was no way I was going to discriminate. I met the chimps and I decided that, even if they were HIV positive, it didn’t matter. It wasn’t even a question in my mind. We would overcome the obstacles.Q: Safety Precautions with HIV + Chimps?
A: We did everything we needed to do in terms of learning about HIV. We had healthcare workers come in to educate our staff about working with the chimps. And we knew that the two primary methods for contracting the disease were intercourse and exchange of needles. But we are at the same risk as doctors, police officers, and healthcare workers– we’re not really at a greater risk. Plus, we knew who had the virus. The chimps had been labeled and they were behind bars.
Why their instincts are so much more accurate than thousands of HIV researchers is not explained. As far as the ordinary viewer is concerned, they simply demonstrate that HIV is not infectious enough to worry about in daily contact, as we have long been told by the NIAID. But the man’s original worries about “mosquito bites” remain valid, as far as we are told here. Perhaps we are meant to assume that it shows that love overcomes fear, and magically preserves the lover from harm.
To us, however, it suggests an inherent wisdom in the fact that people tend to stop worrying about the threat of HIV over time. The CDC and Oprah of course recognize this phenomenon in their constant search for new ways to alarm the populace. But is it too hopeful to imagine that this public torpor is more than natural apathy, and that it reflects an instinct for detecting BS on the subconscious level that operates regardless of what the conscious mind accepts?
After decades, grass, trees and pond
Eventually the townspeople come around and the island is built. Then the chimps are released, to enter a brave new world of grass and trees some may not have experienced for decades if barely at all at the beginning of their lives.
There is no more moving segment in all of Nature documentaries. One chimp is so unused to grass that even when he emerges to the outdoors, he won’t leave the concrete and goes back indoors to the familiar limits of his cage after a while. But the others slowly expand into knucklewalking and then romping into the meadows, where they sit and gaze at the world they were meant to live in, but hardly did.
One won’t come in at dusk and elects to stay out all night enjoying the space and the plant life and gazing at the water in the lake and the moon.
Another, Tommy, evidently dimly remembering his very early life before capture in the wild, immediately climbs a tree to a considerable height and stays there, happily transported into the opposite extreme from the concrete and steel box where he has been imprisoned and experimentally tormented for most of his life, without even the consolation of affection and company.
Absurd to care about inferior species?
Of course, this is all sodden sentiment and impractical, we acknowledge that. Just as doctors and surgeons couldn’t function unless they turned coldblooded enough not to be queasy about cutting into flesh, dead or alive, or if they did not turn off empathy for the sick and suffering human beings they have to deal with in such overwhelming numbers, so experimenters trying to find a way to cure human ills cannot worry overmuch about the welfare of the beings they have to use as test subjects.
Otherwise they would never do their experiments, and save large numbers of human beings from suffering and dying. And of course we all know any human life is worth far more than the life of any mere 99.5% human chimp, however much they might resemble us in their need for affection, company, family and variety of life.
After all, could chimps appreciate television, Madonna, a MacDonald’s triple decker cheeseburger, or the importance of face lifts? These refinements of civilization are far above the ceiling of their unsophisticated chimp mentality.
On the other hand, what would it have cost to provide chimps that we sent into space or that suffered us cutting out their spinal discs some decent group living accommodation, instead of cooping them up in steel cages all alone? What kind of people are these researchers that have so few principles or perceptions they cannot relate to animals that are so close to them in appearance and behavior, let alone genes?
Presumably, they are the same kind of people that experimented without permission on the children of a certain orphanage in New York. Or who thought it was fine to feed AZT at doses up to 1800 mg to gays in the late eighties, since, after all, they ignorantly demanded release of the drug, didn’t they, before the safety trials were over, in ACTUP demonstrations outside the FDA?
Every human being has to make up his or her mind as to what their life is worth, compared to a chimp. Probably very few of us would give up our own lives for a chimp. Nor would many of us rather die than sacrifice chimps in the cause of prolonging our lives, however insignificant we may be in the grand scheme of things.
But it seems likely that many of us will breathe a sigh of guilty relief when medicine moves on to designing medicines for each individual’s set of genes, and therefore doesn’t need to experiment on our closest relatives any more.
Meanwhile, the disgrace remains that we did not treat them properly when they were test subjects or afterwards, when they had given up most of their lives for us to find out, for example (perhaps the worst example) if safety belts work at high speed, or what happens when they don’t.
Update Nov 22 Wednesday
Of course, scientists are not alone in their cruelty to sentient experimental animals. For the record, the Army’s treatment of pigs is the most horrific we have ever heard of. It was described in passing in a front page article in the Times on Thurs Nov 2. We advise those who love pigs to stop reading at this point:
Petty Officer Kirby began to list the schools he had attended to be ready for this moment. Some he had paid for himself, he said, to be extra-prepared.In one course, an advanced trauma treatment program he had taken before deploying, he said, the instructors gave each corpsman an anesthetized pig.
”The idea is to work with live tissue,” he said. ”You get a pig and you keep it alive. And every time I did something to help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does, and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.”
”My pig?” he said. ”They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire.”
”I kept him alive for 15 hours,” he said. ”That was my pig.”
”That was my pig,” he said.
Medic Tends a Fallen Marine, With Skill, Prayer and Anger
By C. J. CHIVERS
Petty Officer Third Class Dustin E. Kirby clutched the injured marine’s empty helmet. His hands were coated in blood. Sweat ran down his face, which he was trying to keep straight but kept twisting into a snarl.
He held up the helmet and flipped it, exposing the inside. It was lined with blood and splinters of bone.
”The round hit him,” he said, pausing to point at a tiny hole that aligned roughly with a man’s temple. ”Right here.”
Petty Officer Kirby, 22, is a Navy corpsman, the trauma medic assigned to Second Mobile Assault Platoon of Weapons Company, Second Battalion, Eighth Marines. Everyone calls him Doc. He had just finished treating a marine who had been shot by an Iraqi sniper.
”It was 7.62 millimeter,” he continued. ”Armor piercing.”
He reached into his pocket and retrieved the bullet, which he had found. ”The impact with the Kevlar stopped most of it,” he said. ”But it tore through, hit his head, went through and came out.”
He put the bullet in his breast pocket, to give to an intelligence team later. Sweat kept rolling off his face, mixed with tears. His voice was almost cracking, but he managed to control it and keep it deep. ”When I got there, there wasn’t much I could do,” he said.
Then he nodded. He seemed to be talking to himself. ”I kept him breathing,” he said.
He looked at Lance Cpl. Matias Tafoya, his driver, and raised his voice. It was almost a shout. ”When I told you that I do not let people die on me, I meant it,” he said. ”I meant it.”
He scanned the Iraqi houses, perhaps 150 yards away, on the other side of a fetid green canal. Marines were all around, pressed to the ground, peering from behind machine-gun turrets or bracing against their armored vehicles, aiming rifles at where they thought the sniper was.
The sniper had made a single shot just as the marines were leaving a rural settlement on the western edge of Karma, a city near Falluja in Anbar Province.
The marines had been searching several houses on this side of the canal, where they found five Kalashnikov assault rifles and bomb components, and were getting back into their vehicles when everyone heard the shot. It was a single loud crack.
No one was precisely sure where it had come from. Everyone knew precisely where it hit. It struck a marine who was peering out of the first vehicle’s gun turret. He collapsed.
Petty Officer Kirby rushed to him and found him breathing. He bandaged the marine’s head as the vehicle lurched away. Soon he helped load the wounded marine into a helicopter, which touched down beside the convoy within 12 minutes of the shot.
Once the helicopter lifted away, he ran back to his vehicle, ready to treat anyone else. He was thinking about the marine he had already treated.
”If I had gone with him,” he said, and glanced to where the helicopter had flown away, over the line of date palms at the end of a field. His voice softened. ”But I’m not with him,” he said.
He turned, faced a reporter and spoke loudly again. ”In situations and times like this, I am bound to start yelling and shouting furiously,” he said. ”Don’t think I am losing my mind.”
He held his bloody hands before his face, to examine them. They were shaking. He made fists so tight his veins bulged. His forearms started to bounce.
”His name was Lance Cpl. Colin Smith,” he said. ”He said a prayer today right before we came out, too.”
”Every time before we go out, we say a prayer,” he said. ”It is a prayer for serenity. It says a lot about things that do pertain to us in this kind of environment.”
The only sounds were Doc’s voice and the vehicle’s engine thrumming.
He recited the prayer. There was a few moments of silence. ”It’s a platoon kind of thing, if you know what I mean,” he said.
He listened to his radio headset and looked at Lance Corporal Tafoya, relaying word of the marines’ movements. ”Right now the grunts are performing a hard hit on a house,” he said. He turned back to the subject of Lance Corporal Smith, 19.
”The best news I can throw at anybody right now, and that I am throwing to myself as often as I can, is that his eyes were O.K.,” he said. ”They were both responsive. And he was breathing. And he had a pulse.”
He listened to his radio. ”Two houses they’ve hit so far have both been swept and cleared.”
He looked at the reporter beside him. ”Do you pray?” he asked. ”Do that. I’d appreciate it.”
After a few minutes he started talking again. ”You see, having a good platoon, one that you know real well, it’s both a gift and a curse. And Smith? Smith has been with me since I was”
He stopped. ”He was my roommate before we left,” he said.
He refilled his lungs and raised his voice. ”His dad was his best friend,” he said. ”He’s got the cutest little blond girlfriend, and she freaks out every time we call because she’s so happy to hear from him.”
He sat quietly again. A few minutes passed. ”The first casualty we had here — his name was James Hirlston — he was his good friend.”
”Hirlston got shot in the head, too,” he said.
He said something about Iraqi snipers that could not be printed here.
Then he was back to the subject of Lance Corporal Smith.
”I really thank God that he was breathing when I got to him, because it means that I can do something with him,” he said. ”It helps. People ask you, ‘What are you doing? What are you doing?’ It helps, because if he’s breathing, you’re doing something.”
There had been many Iraqi civilians outside a few minutes before the sniper made his shot. Most of them had disappeared. Now an Iraqi woman walked calmly between the sniper and the marines, as if nothing had happened.
She passed down the street.
Petty Officer Kirby began to list the schools he had attended to be ready for this moment. Some he had paid for himself, he said, to be extra-prepared.
In one course, an advanced trauma treatment program he had taken before deploying, he said, the instructors gave each corpsman an anesthetized pig.
”The idea is to work with live tissue,” he said. ”You get a pig and you keep it alive. And every time I did something to help him, they would wound him again. So you see what shock does, and what happens when more wounds are received by a wounded creature.”
”My pig?” he said. ”They shot him twice in the face with a 9-millimeter pistol, and then six times with an AK-47 and then twice with a 12-gauge shotgun. And then he was set on fire.”
”I kept him alive for 15 hours,” he said. ”That was my pig.”
”That was my pig,” he said.
He paused. ”Smith is my friend.”
He looked at his bloody hands. ”You got some water?” he said. ”I want some water. I just want to wash my wedding band.”
He listened to the tactical radio. The platoon was sweeping houses but could not find the sniper.
The company started to move. It stopped at another house. The marines were questioning five Iraqi men. Doc watched from the road, waiting for the next call.
”I would like to say that I am a good man,” he said. ”But seeing this now, what happened to Smith, I want to hurt people. You know what I mean?”
The marines had not fired a shot.
They took one of the men into custody, mounted their vehicles and drove back to Outpost Omar, their companybase, passing knots of Iraqi civilians on the way. The civilians looked at them coldly.
Inside the wire, First Lt. Scott R. Burlison, the company commander, gathered the group and told them that Lance Corporal Smith was alive and in surgery. He was critical, but stable. They hoped to fly him to Germany.
Doc had scrubbed himself clean. A big marine stepped forward with a small Bible, and the platoon huddled. He began with Psalm 91, verses 5 and 11.
”Thou shall not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day,” said the big marine, Lance Cpl. Daniel B. Nicholson. ”For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.”
Then he asked for the Lord to look after Lance Corporal Smith and whatever was ahead, and to take care of everyone who was still in the platoon.
”Help us Lord,” he said. ”We need your help. It’s the only way we’re going to get through this.”
Doc stood in the corner, his arm looped over a marine. ”Amen,” he said. There were some hugs, and then the marines and their Doc went back to their bunks and their guns.
* Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
November 9th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Because it would have been an irrational conclusion? Because there are many examples of illness that produce little damage in one host (particularly one in which it has a long evolutionary history), but do serious damage in another? Trying to reproduce HIV AIDS in a chimp was a reasonable shot, given how close they are to humans, but it is not particularly surprising that it failed. And of course, back then nobody knew that the virus had a long evolutionary history in chimps, with plenty of time for the virus and chimps to become evolutionarily co-adapted.
November 9th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
Nice try, T, and plausible enough on the face of it. Your premise, however, that HIV is newly arrived in humans, courtesy of some chimp treated as bush meat and not roasted long enough, and of a randy airline steward, is that right? is a little shaky.
Our bet would be that HIV such as it is has had a long evolutionary history with humans as well, like 98,000 other retroviral bits in the genome. That would seem to fit the raft of other evidence that HIV is irrelevant to human health, not to mention avoids falling in with crude fairy tales improvised by Bob Gallo and friends, who must be surprised to this day by the gullibility of the human race, not to mention their very own colleagues among scientists.
November 9th, 2006 at 3:01 pm
We should be working on saving the humans from scientists as well.
Many humans are just as defenseless against scientific experimentation as the chimps are. Sure, the humans can run, frolic and play in their environment, but many of them aren’t able to question their roles (for various reasons) in the mass pharmaceutical experiment of “AIDS”.
Like the caged chimps, who are unable to properly socialize, if at all, the humans are unable to experience their birthright of deep, emotionally-bonded intimacy with other members of their species without fear, anxiety or physical barriers that prevent this most basic human form of expression.
November 9th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
Dan,
Quite a stirring comment you made. Speaking for myself, I didn’t realize, consciously, until I was already too deep into the Terra Incognita to turn back, that the HIV/AIDS “debate” was a life and death battle at the severing point of human intimacy. Antibody as persomal prison. Our technologies controlling us; The medium being the message, etc.
I always carp on about the RED SLASH waistband (1984, Orwell) around the waist of Julia, and that on the note she so perilously slipped to Winston, she’d written: “I love you.”
Why is it so little discussed that 1984 was a novel about (among other things) a totalitarian state of the future where human intimacy was made impossible and criminalized.
The destruction of reality, yes, of language, yes yes, but also of intimacy as the central crime, in the eyes of Big Brother.
At the same time, as I write this, I feel I am going off some kind of deep end. Are we dreaming?
November 9th, 2006 at 5:09 pm
Like the caged chimps, who are unable to properly socialize, if at all, the humans are unable to experience their birthright of deep, emotionally-bonded intimacy with other members of their species without fear, anxiety or physical barriers that prevent this most basic human form of expression.- Dan.
1984 was a novel about (among other things) a totalitarian state of the future where human intimacy was made impossible and criminalized. – Celia.
Yes, indeed, there are enough barriers to intimacy in modern life without having Big Brother and his test kit looming over candlit dinners and sunsets.
But let’s be realistic, there always are barriers to intimacy, and idealistic passion usually overcomes them, even celebrates them by finding them to act as incentives (Romeo and Juliet etc). As the Oprah show demonstrated, and the chimp lover confirmed, people are not much ruled by this stuff in action, even if they are in their heads.
This doesn’t evade the fear, anxiety and guilt piled on people if they test positive, however, let alone the damage they are in for when they go on drugs, all of which is the murderous effect of allowing this criminal bandwagon to keep rolling.
But currently, except for the small step forward of getting coverage in Discover, it doesn’t seem the bodies of the HIV∫AIDS dissidents are enough to block its forward momentum, fueled as it is by the root of all evil.
We are trying to join you in the deep end, Celia, but we feel that the driving force is financial rather than political power.
November 9th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
But let’s be realistic, there always are barriers to intimacy, and idealistic passion usually overcomes them
There are real barriers and there are imagined barriers. Unfortunately, one imaginary barrier has an iron grip on the minds, hearts and bodies of the community in which I reside.
Intimacy isn’t simply the act of inserting Tab A into slot B. Although, since “AIDS” began, with it’s microscope focused on our sexuality, I’ve found that what used to be something spontaneous, natural, and for some of us, a spiritual experience, has become little more than a politically-correct, mechanical series of stimulating actions to various body parts. We’ve gone from a sexual revolution to a sexual devolution.
November 9th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
a politically-correct, mechanical series of stimulating actions to various body parts
Are you referring to all four sexes, here? (Male h, female h, male g, female g).
Commerce in our culture may continually devalue intimacy in the young through media and music, but it hasn’t eradicated it yet, perhaps because emotional maturity eventually prevails in most people, perhaps because of the overall social trend where culture becomes more and more communicative and realistic in general and through the Web.
Oprah today ran what looked like a remarkable segment on some innovation for high schools called Team Challenges or somesuch where students confess their real problems in life instead of bravely putting on a front of lies to keep their popularity. The brief snatches we saw were very moving.
So things may be changing on that front, and eventually on every front, as emotional truth emerges to confront lies.
To our mind, that is very much the story of the last half century in America and we hope and expect it to continue. That is to say, this society seems very good at moving towards more truth in most areas, from politics to sex, and we don’t expect commerce to be able to defeat the trend in the end.
So we doubt that HIV∫AIDS can last for ever. Probably as Max Planck put it we will advance funeral by funeral.
November 9th, 2006 at 6:04 pm
Are you referring to all four sexes, here? (Male h, female h, male g, female g).
I’m speaking from my point of reference, the gay community.
November 9th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
The destruction of reality, yes, of language, yes yes, but also of intimacy as the central crime, in the eyes of Big Brother.
I’d heard that in San Francisco, the few bathhouses there are, are legally required to monitor patrons to ensure they aren’t having “unsafe” sex (which is ill-defined, or at the very least, there are as many interpretations of what is “safe” and “unsafe” as there are gay men).
When I heard this, I thought it was so incredulous that my mind placed it in the “urban myth” file. I’ve done a little searching and found that the big bathhouse in the Castro advertises itself as a “safe sex” club. Now, maybe they don’t want to scare away potential patrons who visit their website by mentioning that they will be visibly monitored. I don’t know. Can somebody here let us know if this is true? If so, how much more Big Brother can things get?
November 9th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Dan,
You might could use some attitude improvement classes to advance beyond the sour grapes/turn on the violins approach to life.
Like this is it. Life is not dress rehearsal until abc and xyz happens within big pharma and the guvmint or the gay community creates the conditions to make you happy. But that isn’t for YGB to say.
What I do want to say is that my favorite neuroscientist is brilliant beyond which a mere moron like myself can ever expect to hope to be. He is:
Robert Sapolsky
And he can talk for like 20 hours without stopping except for lunch and other necessities. And has worked personally and gentl y many years with baboons whom he studies and treats well.
He has a lot to say on the alpha male:
A BOZO OF A BABOON: A Talk with Robert Sapolsky
If I were 25 and asked that question I would certainly say competitive prowess is important—balls, translated into the more abstractly demanding social realm of humans. What’s clear to me now at 45 is, screw the alpha male stuff. Go for an alternative strategy. Go for the social affiliation, build relationships with females, don’t waste your time trying to figure out how to be the most adept socially cagy male-male competitor.
There’s more here:
Estrés y placer, extremos encontrados
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0R8HVmmeM_Q
November 9th, 2006 at 10:53 pm
If HIV was an endogenous retrovirus that has been in the human genome for a long evolutionary time then HIV DNA should be detecable in every cell in every human. It isn’t.
Even “rethinkers” make a big deal of the observation that HIV DNA can only be found in a fraction of T-cells.
If HIV is an endogenous retrovirus then it should be present in not only every CD4+ cell but every single cell in the body.
So how much was the bet?
November 9th, 2006 at 11:21 pm
Regardless of what you may choose to believe about the evolutionary history of HIV in primates, the fact remains that there are many examples of infectious agents causing severe disease in one species, but not in a related species. So it would have been quite irrational to conclude that because HIV does not cause illness in chimps, it cannot do so in humans. I cannot imagine any unbiased person making such an argument.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:20 am
irrational to conclude that because HIV does not cause illness in chimps, it cannot do so in humans. I cannot imagine any unbiased person making such an argument.
True enough, there are many differences in the two species, even though the DNA is quite similar, but still, given the basic assumption that chimps are good subjects for experimentation, on the basis on what we have in common, then anything they do not have in common requires explanation, and is an indication that assumptions may be incorrect.
This reexamination never occurred, because of the extraordinary bias inherent in the HIV∫AIDS faith, which is the bias which you should be objecting to, not our bias towards reexamination of premises which is indicated by the evidence.
No one said it was proof of the invalidity of the HIV∫AIDS claim. So you have just given yet another example of your frequent resort to the straw man method of countering valid reasoning. In fact, one would have to say that most of your arguments are of this nature.
But then, so are Nobel’s, including in particular his incessant complaint that Duesberg misled by stating the consequences inherent in the HIV∫AIDS theory, because he (Chris the Unstoppable Noble) is unable to understand the meaning of ceteris paribus.
Minsunderstanding the argument and misstating it as a result renders your critique meaningless. But the problem is that you both seem not to understand that you are misunderstanding it. So explaining the argument to you becomes rather like describing green to a color blind man.
The fact that chimps were unaffected by HIV is an indication which when combined with 30 other indications adds up to a conclusion which only the most adamant believer in his enormous bias would deny, which is that HIV is a pussy cat and no tiger.
It is certainly not an attack rabbit of a retrovirus unless you come from the world of Monty Python.
November 10th, 2006 at 12:53 am
31 bad arguments =/= 1 good argument
We actually have a good idea what factors determine the speciies specificity of these retroviruses.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/103/14/5514
We can also modify HIV to make it tropic for other species.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/314/5796/95
November 10th, 2006 at 1:12 am
First you imply that the researchers should have concluded that because most HIV infected chimps do not progress to AIDS that HIV does not cause AIDS and then you deny it.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:40 am
Chris Noble made a statement that HIV DNA would be present in everyone. The test that is presently used dilutes the specimen by 1/400th – if they didn’t do that, everyone would test positive.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:54 am
“First you imply that the researchers should have concluded that because most HIV infected chimps do not progress to AIDS that HIV does not cause AIDS and then you deny it.”
Chris, this blog is FULL of other reasons why HIV/AIDS should be questioned. This just being another one. Yawn!
November 10th, 2006 at 9:00 am
Trrll wrote:
“…the fact remains that there are many examples of infectious agents causing severe disease in one species, but not in a related species.”
OK, but “related species” is vague. How far down the phylogenetic tree do you go and still consider two species “related”? Since the discussion is about humans and chimpanzees, can you give me examples of infectious agents that cause disease in homo sapiens but not in pan troglodytes?
Glider
November 10th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
This just seems like the usual bait and switch dodge. When somebody points out that a particular argument is illogical, you insist “but we’ve got lots of others.” But a bunch of bad arguments does not equal one good one. And making an obviously irrational argument such as this one hardly increases confidence that the other arguments are any better. Indeed, so far the ones that I’ve seen are not.
November 10th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
“bait and switch dodge”
How ironic coming from Trrll.
In 1984: We inject chimps with HIV
If chimps get AIDS => we’ve proven causation!
If chimps not get AIDS=> virus limited to humans!
Don’t folks find it a bit unusual that there really isn’t a peer-reviewed published paper on what happened to the HIV infected chimps?
The best I’ve come across is from Gallo, Temin, Blattner in their famous debate with Duesberg.
“It is true that HIV does not cause AIDS in chimpanzees”
(Gallo et al, Science 241, pg 518, (1988)
But, of course, this is unreferenced.
Typical
November 10th, 2006 at 6:12 pm
Hank …. Dave , you missed one:
J Infect Dis. 2000 Oct;182(4):1051-62. Epub 2000 Sep 8. Related Articles, Links
Progressive infection in a subset of HIV-1-positive chimpanzees.
O’Neil SP, Novembre FJ, Hill AB, Suwyn C, Hart CE, Evans-Strickfaden T, Anderson DC, deRosayro J, Herndon JG, Saucier M, McClure HM.
Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center, Atlanta, GA 30329, USA. soneil@rmy.emory.edu
Chimpanzees are susceptible to infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-1; however, infected animals usually maintain normal numbers of CD4(+) T lymphocytes and do not develop immunodeficiency. We have examined 10 chronically infected HIV-1-positive chimpanzees for evidence of progressive infection. In addition to 1 animal that developed AIDS, 3 chimpanzees exhibit evidence of progressive HIV infection. All progressors have low CD4(+) T cell counts (less than 200 cells/microL), severe CD4:CD8 inversion, and marked reduction in interleukin-2 receptor expression by CD4(+) T cells. In comparison with HIV-positive nonprogressor chimpanzees, progressors have higher plasma and lymphoid virus loads, greater CD38 expression in CD8(+)/HLA-DR(+) T cells, and greater serum concentrations of soluble tumor necrosis factor type II receptors and beta2-microglobulin, all markers of HIV progression in humans. These observations show that progressive HIV-1 infection can occur in chimpanzees and suggest that the pathogenesis of progressive infection in this species resembles that in humans.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
This is a straw man. The goal was not to prove causation, which was already established to the satisfaction of most scientists by that time–it was to establish an animal model that could be used to test therapeutic interventions. It was understood that it might not work, but it was a reasonble thing to try.
November 10th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
The PCR method is sensitive enough to detect even a single copy of a specific nucleic acid sequence. If the virus was indeed present in everybody, then everybody would be positive by PCR, regardless of dilution.
November 11th, 2006 at 12:48 am
So, Trrll, you are saying the virus is present in every single chimp?
but when will you learn that every time you say “illogial” you should direct it at the authors of the DURBAN DECLARATION, not poor unscientific rethinkers who can only go by what they are told is important by the HIV experts.
In the paragraph of said ultimate document on HIV/AIDS beginning with The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest scientific standards , you can read following:
Monkeys inoculated with cloned SIV DNA become infected and develop AIDS. Further compelling data are available. . .
The argument TS is trying to express is this from Dr. Harvey Bialy:
There is no other virus (than HIV)that causes a disease in humans which will not reproduce that disease in chimps.
Why is it that one is “compelling data” and the other “illogical”?
November 11th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Macdonald:
No. Where do you get that notion?
Glider:
Dr. Harvey Bialy (as quoted by Macdonald):
Dr. Noble:
I thought that it was worth highlighting these comments because they provide such a clear contrast between nonscientific argumentation by analogy and real scientific thinking.
Glider and Bialy try to address the issue by arguing about what is the proper example for drawing an analogy: Are there any other infectious agents that don’t cause disease in species this close? If we follow this fallacious mode of thinking, we can then get into fruitless arguing about the validity of the analogies. Just how “close” are chimps and humans? What other viruses infect chimps and humans, and what are their symptoms really the same in the two species?
In contrast, real scientists understand the limits of analogy. They know that valid conclusions can never be drawn from analogies, and regard them only as a starting point for suggesting hypotheses. After all, HIV is not exactly the same–in a molecular sense–as any other virus, so there is no logical basis for assuming that it will behave like any other virus. Similarly, there is no pair of species that have exactly the same molecular differeces as chimps and humans. In principle, a difference as small as a single base change could determine susceptibility to infection.
So to an actual scientist, the difference in the behavior of HIV in chimps and humans is not a basis for drawing conclusions, but rather raises a question: “What molecular determinants are responsible for the differences in the behavior of HIV in humans and other primates?” And as Dr. Noble cites, scientists have proceded to investigate this question experimentally.
November 11th, 2006 at 10:09 am
In their bones, do they know it’s false?
In their behavior, he and the woman who rescued the chimps “with HIV” are certainly smarter than the scientists who research HIV∫AIDS, which is odd. The woman who was the retired chimps’ savior in this case, when warned that the chimps “had HIV”, did not panic and abandon the project. Her immediate reaction was “I have to save these chimps.”
It doesn’t sound like “they know it’s false”. It sounds much more like their compassion overrides any fear they may have.
There are people who, in their bones, know it’s false. I happen to work with a person fitting this description. It just never rang true for him. I fit that description as well.
At some point in life, you’ve GOT to go with what your gut is telling you, especially concerning matters as potentially grave as “AIDS”. Unfortunately, denying this very natural vehicle of information and communication is almost a hallmark of western civilization. I suspect one of the reasons some Africans may not be keen on swallowing toxic “AIDS drugs” is because their guts are telling them something. Poor, stupid Africans. Don’t they know that the west is right? Our knowledge supersedes their knowledge.
November 11th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
It doesn’t sound like “they know it’s false”. It sounds much more like their compassion overrides any fear they may have.
True in the beginning, but one suspects from the confidence they gain that their gut tells them that there may be nothing there after all. Of course, that may be bias on our part, but we always think that the public may have that subconcious wisdom about HIV, simply because no one they know is affected by it.
For some reason it struck us yesterday that in some ways the HIV issue is rather as if one told a friend that one had seen a cook in the kitchen spit in the food he was served. Even though investigation might demonstrate the we are certainly lying, his feeling about the food would never recover.
Similarly, there is no rooting out the meme that HIV is deadly from the minds of its converts, and they will never view any of the material without that fearful prejudice as a premise which confounds the objectivity and the sense of what they write, which is why is its logic is so often very mediocre and deals with weak points that go without saying.
The fact plain to any 12 year old is that if there is no case where a microbe causes health problems to a human and not to a chimp, and vice versa, then it is unlikely that HIV is the one marvelous exception and that its nil effect in chimps is an indication that we must acknowledge its vicious effect in humans, rather than salute the chutzpah of the cheerful rogues in science who have made their fortunes by spoiling everyone’s dinner, on the basis of a specious claim with no more content than perpetual motion.
Let us salute our Noble hero, Bob Gallo,
Who has shaken the world with a claim so shallow,
That in two years it was rejected as spurious,
But yet in a development more than curious,
It became a world wide, mythic belief,
That promoted another genius to NIAID chief,
That rendered a nation’s media hamstrung,
That covered the pages of Nature with dung,
That milked the nation of billions we needed
To fund the solutions to real ills superseded.
How odd it is that Bob has no Nobel,
Perhaps in Stockholm they have a different story to tell.
November 11th, 2006 at 1:57 pm
Trrll, it seems you’re so busy trying to divert attention from the fact that you’e arguing against the Durban Declaration, that you’ve completely lost the plot. So in the true spirit of NAR, let me help you catch up on those read and comprehend classes.
1. I restate the question so even Chris can understand you didn’t answer it: Why is the fact that Monkeys inoculated with cloned SIV DNA become infected and develop AIDS , allowed to stand as compelling data, part of the clear-cut etc. evidence that HIV causes AIDS in humans, when the chimp argument, according to you is irrational and unscientific?
2. The chimp argument is not an analogy since it doesn’t postulate that because humans and chimps are similar in one respect they are similar in another. It simply says chimps and humans are similar in this ONE respect that what causes disease in one causes disease in the other.
HIV DOES infect chimps, it just doesn’t produce AIDS.
3. So, Trrll, you are saying the virus is present in every single chimp?
No. Where do you get that notion?
Let me recap so we can all see where the argument changed:
If HIV was an endogenous retrovirus that has been in the human genome for a long evolutionary time then HIV DNA should be detecable in every cell in every human. It isn’t. (Chris Noble)
back then nobody knew that the virus had a long evolutionary history in chimps, with plenty of time for the virus and chimps to become evolutionarily co-adapted. (Trrll)
Chris Noble made a statement that HIV DNA would be present in everyone. The test that is presently used dilutes the specimen by 1/400th – if they didn’t do that, everyone would test positive. (Martin Kessler)
The PCR method is sensitive enough to detect even a single copy of a specific nucleic acid sequence. If the virus was indeed present in everybody, then everybody would be positive by PCR, regardless of dilution. (Trrll)
I hope you can follow the ‘evolution” of the argument now, along with everybody else.
Instead of demonstrating you don’t know what an analogy is, you should spend your ‘real science’ lectures clarifying why HIV should be present in every human cell if it had a long evolutionary history in humans, but not so in chimps.
Or alternatively you could clarify the apparently interchangeable terms ‘THE virus’ introduced by you and HIV DNA and nucleic acid which CN and Martin Kessler were talking about.
Following that you could go on to explain the difference between a supposedly HIV specific marker test that has to be diluted a LOT to avoid everybody, including my dog, testing positive on it, and PCR which looks for. . . what was it again? nucleic acid or THE (whole) virus . . .?
4. If you’re impressed with Chris’s lazy and pretentious habit of throwing pubmed. at us without even an attempt at summarizing and stating succinctly the argument he has in mind, I guarantee you’re the only one.- and, as I said, it ain’t for lack of pretensions:
We can also modify HIV to make it tropic for other species
I guess ‘we’ stands for Chris and everybody else whose knowledge of molecular biology is just sufficient to google the term.
November 11th, 2006 at 3:21 pm
Trrll,
The goal was not to prove causation, which was already established to the satisfaction of most scientists by that time
Oh really? You claim that viral causation was established before they started infecting HIV in chimps? That would have been in 1985. Please name the experimental paper that actually tested the hypothesis that HIV was a pathogenic virus, rather than a passenger paper.
Your major error is simple: You have abandonned the sine qua non of science — the testable hypothesis.
That is the mistake Gallo made in 1984, that is the mistake Padian made in 1986.
Here’s how it should have gone down:
1984: I, Robert Gallo, hypothesize that a virus, HTLV-111, is the cause of AIDS. I predict that I will find this virus in all 72 AIDS patients I am studying.
If he find the virus in all or close to the 72, he is right, Duesberg shuts up.
But, in fact, he found it in only 26. (See, Gallo et al, “Science, 224:503-503 (1984).
Therefore, the hypothesis was tested, but not proven.
Same with Padian in 1986:
Here’s how it should have gone down:
1986: I, Nancy Padian, hypothesize that the virus is sexually transmitted. I predict that when 176 discordant couples have sex, several of the healthy uninfected partners will contract HIV.
If all or close to the 176, get HIV, she is right, and Duesberg shuts up.
But, in fact, after 10 years, she found “no seroconversions”. (See Padian, Am.J.Epidemiology, pg 354.)
Therefore, the hypothesis was tested, but not proven.
Why and how your minions abandonned these solid scientific principles for this voodoo and witchcraft that poses as modern day “AIDS science” is a truly remarkable phenomenom.
It would be merely an interesting, historical blunder — except for one thing — the indiscriminate use of cancer chemo (AZT) that killed all those patients from 1986-1996.
November 11th, 2006 at 3:29 pm
It would be merely an interesting, historical blunder — except for one thing — the indiscriminate use of cancer chemo (AZT) that killed all those patients from 1986-1996.
Excuse me, Dave, but you overlook the fact that this was the unfortunate collateral damage of a heroic effort to save them from the effects of a deadly inert virus.
November 11th, 2006 at 3:45 pm
TS,
In principle, you are probably right. But, that makes it harder for sycophants — like Trrll — to reassess their opinions. Who wants to acknowledge a mistake that lead to the death of all these people?
For some, it is just too hard to face up to this logical conclusion. It is much easier to either: (a) ignore Duesberg’s scientific claims or (b) attack him personally than to face this fact.
November 11th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
You are very confused.
The 1:400 dilution that you refer to was the dilution used in a particluar ELISA test. It was an antibody test and not a nucleic acid test. One component of the diluent used in many antibody tests is Bovine and Goat sera. These are added for the express purpose of binding non-specific antibodies from the test serum and make the test much more specific. That the tests lose accuracy when you don’t follow the instructions is hardly surprising to anyone with a passing knowledge of the subject.
http://www.aidstruth.org/howimmunoassayswork.php
Nucleic acid tests are very sensitive and have no problems detecting very low levels of DNA in a small fraction of cells. If HIV were an endogenous virus then HIV DNA would be detected in every cell in every human. People making the claim that HIV is an endogenous virus are only displaying a profound ignorance of the subject or a desire to deceive. I think the former is more likely.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:18 am
If Nancy Padian were attempting to test the hypothesis that the cause of AIDS, HIV, is sexually transmitted (she wasn’t) then she would not have deliberately done all that she could to prevent the couples transmitting HIV.
She was not attempting to test this hypothesis. Padian’s main goals were to determine how to prevent HIV transmission. As a means to this goal she attempted to obtain an *estimate* of the transmission risk of HIV via heterosexual sex.
Your continued misrepresentation of this work despite corrections from the author herself is nothing short of dishonest.
On the other hand Duesberg’s hypothesis has been tested and falsified. Get over it.
Does Drug Use cause AIDS?
November 12th, 2006 at 12:53 am
While not a key piece of evidence that HIV causes AIDS, it does demonstrate that viruses in the SIV/HIV family are potentially capable of producing immunodeficiency disease.
The claim is that because chimps are similar to humans at the genetic level, then all viruses should produce similar effects in chimps and humans. This is argument by analogy, not scientific reasoning.
You seem to be confusing the (mistaken) notion that HIV has a long evolutionary history of vertical transmission in the genome in humans with the very different idea that chimps have a long evolutionary history of horizontal transmission (i.e. by infection).
I’m not sure exactly where your point of confusion is here. HIV is an RNA virus which is transcribed into DNA by reverse transcriptase. RNA and DNA are both nucleic acid. The PCR assay is capable of detecting HIV nucleic acid with extraordinary sensitivity, even at the level of a single molecule, so if HIV really was present in every human cell, the PCR assay would detect it in all people. It does not.
The PCR assay detects a specific nucleic acid sequence that is present in all HIV, and which is also present in HIV infected cells. Because of the extraordinary sensitivity of the PCR test, dilution is irrelevant. If there is even a single copy of the virus present in a cell, the PCR test will detect it.
I thought that Dr. Noble’s point was quite clear–that rather than perseverating in irrational argumentation by analogy, scientists are investigating the exact molecular determinants that dictate whether or not a particular type of cell is subject to infection and damage by HIV. Which part of this do you find difficult to understand?
November 12th, 2006 at 1:07 am
As a means to this goal she attempted to obtain an *estimate* of the transmission risk of HIV via heterosexual sex.
Those who were cavalier about the use of condoms ie didn’t bother to try and prevent transmission, about fifty seven couples if casual memory serves, scored zero in the study.
Whatever the objectives of the study you claim, it makes no difference to this finding. A heterosexually transmitted pandemic or epidemic or mini epidemic is therefore impossible to achieve ie ruled out, unless you have some other way of transmission which all have overlooked.
Nil transmission is nil transmission. That’s the estimate she achieved. Are you suggesting that her results were inaccurate for some reason? What is your reason? Has she stated this herself? What was her reason, if she did?
Her statement on AIDSTruth is a transparent piece of obligatory double talk, the kind that is demanded if you wish to keep on the right side of Dr Fauci, but does not alter the finding in the slightest.
As we have told you several times, her only supplementary claim to try and rescue the paradigm she tossed her firebomb into is that transmission is somehow higher in Africa, accompanied by childish and insulting speculation as to why African heterosexual sex might differ from white North American sex.
Our advice to Padian is to keep an eye out for the collapse of the paradigm’s political support, and when she sees it coming for sure, to switch to taking credit for her finding, and for exploding the African pandemic part of the gimcrack Heath Robinson paradigm, for which she might get a Lasker, or if not, at least the gratitude of “AIDS” patients around the world who are taking vile and misdirected substances on the basis of scientifically ignorant advice.
November 12th, 2006 at 1:49 am
Dismissing a hypothesis based on some sort of intuitive notion of what is “unlikely” is another example of an irrational argument that may fool a 12 year old, but not a scientist. Susceptibility to illness as a result of a virus is not a random process to which statistical concepts such as likelihood can meaningfully be applied–it is dependent upon specific molecular determinants. A biologist is obligated to ask specific molecular questions: What are the specific molecular factors that determine infection and damage? Are these molecular determinants the same or different in humans and other primates?
November 12th, 2006 at 1:51 am
You say this without the briefest attempt to define what rate of transmission is necessary for an epidemic. Most people believe that transmission from shared needles has been a contributing factor to the African epidemic although the exact fraction is disputed.
Except there were transmissions in the Padian cohort. She meticulously looked at the seroconversion history of the couples and found transmission events.
Padian has also argued that transmission risk will vary with viral load and that this will vary with the stage of infection. More recent studies by other authors including Ronald Gray with the Rakai cohort have confirmed this.
None of the HIV+ partners in the discordant couples were in the acute infection stage. Hence Padian’s figures are likely to underestimate the transmission risk. As I have pointed out transmission risk per act can be much, much higher.
I shouldn’t need to explain but monogamous couples do not create epidemics. People having sex with multiple partners during the acute infection stage will make a much, much greater contribution to an epidemic than monogamous couples.
Epidemiology: Dimensions of superspreading
These observations led to the proposal of the 20/80 rule2, 8, which suggests that roughly 20% of the most infectious individuals are responsible for 80% of the transmission
November 12th, 2006 at 2:40 am
The only source for this contention is Duesberg. As usual his iron rule is not as exact as he makes out.
1) A subset of chimpanzees infected with HIV do show progressive CD4+ cell depletion.
2) Chimpanzees infected with other viruses such as HBV and HCV show quite distinct symptoms both in severity and type than humans.
Cue AL to give his normal ceteris paribus response.
November 12th, 2006 at 8:09 am
Glad you can spell the phrase, at least Chris.
But it would be appreciated if you did not repeatedly mar this blog with poor logic and incorrect statements, which interfere with the process of clarifying error by compounding it, and we suspect your motives in doing so.
The above two messages are such blindingly dazzling examples of both tendencies that they need no comment, since they have already been very thoroughly dealt with more than once here, and we have to get to a conference by 9am.
But if you truly think that you are making valid points, and cannot recall how they were trounced before, then we will rescue you from your befuddlement when we return.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:24 am
Trrll:
The claim is that because chimps are similar to humans at the genetic level, then all viruses should produce similar effects in chimps and humans. This is argument by analogy, not scientific reasoning.
No. The claim is that all (other) known disease causing microbes produce similar effects in humans and chimps.
One explanation given for this correlation is that chimps and humans are genetically similar.
Standing the chain of reasoning on its head does not make analogy of induction.
The animal model was not established succesfully where it was most reasonable to expect it.
The anomality is therefore cause for investigation.
If you, who supposedly have the necessary background to inform us, are in possesion of the molecular explanation why HIV kills humans but spares infected chimps, please share it with all of us in that inimitable pedagogical style of yours.
Until then the fact remains that the authors of the Durban Declaration, as well as Duesberg’s opponents in the legendary Nature debate, had nothing to say about molecules, but chose instead to resort to monkeys and cats for their animal model ‘analogy’, which they obviously find more important than you do (could it have something to do with Koch?), since it was chosen in the Durban Declaration to represent evidence according to the “highest standards of science”.
So, Dr. Trrll, once more, take all your lectures on analogy and lay it at the feet of well known HIV scientists, who have nothing but analogy and ever more shaky correlation to trumpet as the highest standards of science.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:49 am
Anomality = anomaly for those who have a basic grasp of written English, MacDonald obviously not belonging in that category these days
November 12th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Similarly, there is no rooting out the meme that HIV is deadly from the minds of its converts
I think you’ve hit upon a key word, Truthseeker.
This is why I think the “gay community” may be the last to understand that HIV=AIDS=CROCK. Not only did the meme take root, we’ve created a symbiotic relationship with it. Gay culture might very well collapse without “AIDS”. What would we do without the belief system and the rituals (the most profound being the “guilty until proven innocent” “HIV test”)?
Sorry about getting off track again, but the word “rooting”, caught my attention.
November 12th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
MacDonald,
HIV has killed 40 million humans — but not one chimp:)
Chris Noble wrote:
Except there were transmissions in the Padian cohort. She meticulously looked at the seroconversion history of the couples and found transmission events .
This is, at best, misleading; at worst, a bald-faced lie.
Let me quote from Padian:
1. “To our knowledge, our study is the largest and longest study of heterosexual transmission of HIV in the United States.” (Padian, pg 354.)
2. “We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study.” (Padian, pg 354.)
3.”Nevertheless, the absence of seroincident infection over the course of the study cannot be entirely attributed to significant behavior change. No transmission occured among the 25 percent of couples who did not use condoms consistently at their last follow-up nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up” (Padian, pg 356.)
If she wanted to compare the heterosexual transmission rates of HIV for 2 groups:(discordant couples who used condoms) and (discordant couples who didn’t use condoms), she easily could have done so. She didn’t. She came up with 1 rate for men=>women (1/1000) and 1 rate for women=>men (1/10,000).
Bottom line: She biased her own study, assuming a priori that HIV was transmitted by sex, but couldn’t figure out how to handle her factual finding of “no seroconversions.”
November 12th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Chris Noble wrote:
If HIV was an endogenous retrovirus that has been in the human genome for a long evolutionary time then HIV DNA should be detecable in every cell in every human.
This is actually a good scientific hypothesis. It makes a prediction. Well done.
The problem is that you taint it, almost immediately, with this little tidbit at the end. It isn’t.
For that 2 word statement to be true, Chris, you would have had to cite a paper, where the authors tested the hypothesis, actively scoured the human genome to find endogenous HIV, to no avail. You didn’t.
But, let’s flesh it out a bit:
1. Human genome has about 3 billion nucleotides;
2. Retroviruses make up about 8% of the human genome;
“Human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) sequences, which account for 8% of the human genome” (Lander et al., 2001). (See Schroder et al, “HIV-1 Integration in the Human Genome Favors Active Genes and Local Hotspots”
Cell, 110 (4), 521-529 (2002))
3. So, that means roughly 26 million nucleotides per human cell are retroviral sequences.
4. HIV has about 9100 nucleotides. (See Li, Journal of Virology (1992).
So, why would it be so extraordinary that of the 26 million nucleotides in the human cell, characterized
as endogenous retrovirals, that a mere 9100 correspond with the HIV genome?
The one paper that I know of where researchers at the University of Minnesota looked at this issue, wrote this:
Endogenous retrovirus-related sequences exist within the normal genomic DNA of all eukaryotes, and these endogenous sequences have been shown to be important to the nature and biology of related exogenous retroviruses and may also play a role in cellular functions. To date, no endogenous sequences related to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) have been reported. Herein we describe the first report of the presence of nucleotide sequences related to HIV-1 in human, chimpanzee, and rhesus monkey DNAs from normal uninfected individuals.
Horwitz et al., “Novel human endogenous sequences related to human immunodeficiency virus type 1“, J Virol. 66(4):2170-9 (1992).
Does Horwitz prove that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus? Probably not. Proof is a high standard. But, it certainly provides evidence supporting that proposition, and certainly suggests further research into the question.
So, to recapulate:
1. You claim HIV is not a human retrovirus (”It isn’t')
2. Yet, you fail to note that the human genome is 3 billion base-pairs
3. You fail to note that HIV is only 9100 base pairs
4. You fail to note that the human genome has millions of retroviral sequences (8%)
5. And, you fail to note a paper (Horwitz) which actually looked at the issue.
That is why few of us here respect you. On this issue, you do not act like a scientist; you act like an AIDS activist, who merely toes the party line, cloaking his biased opinions with a thin veneer of science.
November 12th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Sorry about getting off track again
Seems very much on track, since our distinguished deniers of reason and evidence here seem to have this particular LSD mushroom rooted deep into their synaptic network such that only major physical surgery would be enough to remove it and that would probably risk the end of all semblance of ratiocination in their uniformly reliable frontal cortices, and we certainly would not want that, given the entertainment they afford to all who peruse this humble blog.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:39 pm
So what? That says nothing about HIV. To draw a conclusion about HIV based on that statement, you need to also assume that HIV is “like” all other known diseases. That’s an analogy.
But not, however, identical. And since biochemical studies of how disease organisms affect cells depend upon the molecular details of how a cell is constructed and how a cell functions, one cannot rationally expect that all disease organisms will affect both species the same way.
To make this clearer, let’s contrast an irrational vs. a rational argument:
Irrational:
All known diseases other than HIV affect chimps and humans the same way, therefore if HIV doesn’t make chimps sick, it cannot make humans sick.
Rational:
There genetic difference between chimps and humans is small, therefore, if HIV affects chimps and humans differently, it must be the result of one or more of the things that are different. This provides an important clue as to the genetic determinants of HIV infectivity and cytotoxicity. As Dr. Noble has pointed out, this sort of reasoning has already led to significant insights into molecular determinants of host specificity.
November 12th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Whether or not you think it extraordinary, the fact is that it is not true. The PCR test is sensitive enough to detect those 9100 nucleotides if they are present in all humans. They aren’t.
It is not, however, at all surprising that there are HIV related sequences. This means sequences that are not derived from HIV itself, but are remnants of an infection, sometime in human evolutionary history, with a virus of the same family as HIV.
From the abstract of the paper you cited:
The key word here is “low stringency.” PCR as typically used is a high-stringency test. It will detect only sequences that actually are HIV, excluding sequences that are only somewhat like HIV sequence. In contrast a “low stringency” assay is specifically designed to also detect sequences that are different from authentic HIV sequence, but bear some degree of “family resemblance” to HIV.
November 12th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
Because if the human genome did contain a 9100 bp sequence corresponding to the HIV genome then nucleic acid tests using primers based on parts of the 9100 bp sequence would detect this DNA in every single cell in every single human. There is no escaping this blindingly obvious fact. It doesn’t matter how much of the human genome contains related retroviral sequences no sequences with any significant similarity to HIV exist in the human genome.
Duesberg and other “rethinkers” have repeatedly made a big deal of the observation that in HIV infected people HIV DNA can only be found in a small percentage of CD4+ cells in serum. “Rethinkers” have also made a big deal of the observation that HIV DNA is not found in Kaposi Sarcoma tissue. I don’t expect much from “rethinkers” but some consistency would be good. Which is it? Are HIV sequences in the human genome or are they absent from most CD4+ cells?
You offer the paper by Horwitz as evidence for the presence of HIV sequences in the human genome and accuse me of failing to mention it. I must be covering it up!
That’s probably why I gave you the reference in March.
Hank’s endogenous HIV theory
The authors deliberately used low stringency hybridisation so that they could find sequences that only partially matched the HIV primers that they used. Even then they only found very short sequences of 28-31 bps that were a) highly repetive and b) low similarity with HIV sequences.
In contrast if a 9100 bp sequence corresponding to the HIV genome was in the human genome Horwitz et al would have found it in every single cell.
Only a scientifically illiterate person would make the claim that HIV is an endogenous virus. There is no evidence for the claim and the maount of evidence that contradicts the claim is overwhelming.
The real question is why a scientifically illiterate lawyer is held in such high regard in HIV “rethinker” circles. Why don’t you ask your buddies like Bialy if HIV is in the human genome?
Really your claim to be an arbiter of what is and what isn’t science is laughable.
November 12th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
Chris Noble,
Typical hocus-pocus. Typical ad hominem. Typical weasle.
You made the claim on this thread — that HIV was not an endogenous retrovirus — without any supporting evidence.
If HIV was an endogenous retrovirus that has been in the human genome for a long evolutionary time then HIV DNA should be detecable in every cell in every human. It isn’t.
But, you didn’t cite anything. That’s how you guys operate. You make claims, but don’t cite references.
Then you get fussy, when called on it.
Had you mentioned Horwitz on this thread, you would have at least had something. But you didn’t. I don’t keep track of all the silliness you have printed all over the internet, so its ridiculous to say, Hey, I cited Horwitz 8 months on another blog!
Then, you intentionally mistate and personalize the charges:
Only a scientifically illiterate person would make the claim that HIV is an endogenous virus .
Well, I think it is a valid claim, for the reasons stated above. 8% of the human genome translates to 240 million base pairs in each cell. That’s a lot of room for a genetically, inconsequential 9000 nucleotide retrovirus called HIV.
I would enjoy having a molecular biologist make this claim, get funding, actually investigate it and publish his findings. Has this been done? It surely would put the scientific issue to rest.
So, in sum, unless this claim has been investigated,(it should be a simple experiment), you still remain an AIDS activist spouting the party line, not a scientist, because you don’t know the answer.
The key point to take away from this is that every human has an abundant number of retroviruses in the cellular DNA of each of his 10 trillion cells — so what makes HIV, biochemically, so special?
According to Gallo and Temin, it doesn’t kill chimps.
According to Padian, it doesn’t transmit by sex.
According to Montagnier, it isn’t sufficient to kill T4-cells in vitro, without “co-factors.”
According to Hoffman, only a surprisingly low number of T4- cells are infected with HIV in AIDS patients.
So, again, I ask, what makes this sparse, little retrovirus so special?
November 12th, 2006 at 8:32 pm
Trrll,
You claimed above that HIV was established to cause AIDS, sometime before they started infecting chimps with HIV (probably ‘85-’87.)
The goal was not to prove causation, which was already established to the satisfaction of most scientists by that time
Please provide the reference(s) for the paper during that time frame that tested the hypothesis that HIV was a pathogenic virus, not a passenger virus.
Again, we’re looking for a paper that made a testable hypothesis, not one that merely presumed that HIV caused AIDS.
BTW, Here’s a wiki on passenger virus that doesn’t quite get it right, but will work.
Funny thing, when trying to find a medical definition of “passenger virus,” it’s almost as if the scientific community has forgotten about this simple phenomenom –viruses that don’t do anything.
November 12th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
According to Gallo and Temin, it doesn’t kill chimps.
According to Padian, it doesn’t transmit by sex.
According to Montagnier, it isn’t sufficient to kill T4-cells in vitro, without “co-factors.”
According to Hoffman, only a surprisingly low number of T4- cells are infected with HIV in AIDS patients.
So, again, I ask, what makes this sparse, little retrovirus so special?
The fact that a sizeable proportion of the human race believes it is deadly in a supernatural way ie without any scientific evidence for its deadliness or as yet for its machinations.
All the admirable neuroscientist Terrell and the distinguished not-a-statistician Noble ever do is argue for exceptions to plain and simple rules, and the reason they do this so strenuously is evidently because they believe in the guidance of Bob Gallo and Tony Fauci, plus all the “cows that graze the pasture of science” (in Peter Medawar’s phrase) that follow the lead of these gentlemen.
Well, one has to grant that it is always possible that our teeny pseudo virus (which is what HIV really is, one of a brethren not otherwise active in causing anything interesting at all) may well be an exception, as far as strict logic goes, since there is not something physically preventing it from being so, as Noble points out time and again, as if this proved it was so, rather than being simply an extremely outside possibility with no firm evidence at all that it is so or even that it is possible, mechanically speaking.
And indeed, if the power of belief is sufficient to turn water into wine perhaps it can turn insignificant wisps of RNA into deadly biological entities causing fatal harm to humans and no other species, at some point in the vague future which ranges from immediately (well, two months if the recent HAART study is valid) to twenty or more years after infection.
In fact, it is fairly clear that the power of belief is sufficient to knock over some people, so there is truth in what they claim. Though not in the sense they imply, which is that the entity rather than the belief is at work.
Only brain science can tell us the mechanism with which belief prevails over reason, but we have already posted on that.
Perhaps Terrell should read a little of Sam Harris and his Letter to a Christian Nation to see how a fellow neuroscientist can find his way amid religious dogma ie have the courage to disrespect it and respect reason, rather than cherish it as some kind of solution. Religion has no place in science.
November 12th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Don’t you read Duesberg’s articles?
Pharmacology &Therapeutics 55: 201 277, 1992
I have pointed out very clearly that your theory is completely untenable. If HIV were part of the human genome then nucleic acid tests would detect it in every human cell in every human. A key argument from Duesberg involves the observation that only a small proportion of circulating PBMCs have HIV DNA in them so you can’t claim that there is no evidence that completely falsifies your theory.
Your arguments, which I am criticising are completely scientifically illiterate. They display profound ignorance coupled with perverse illogic. This of course reflects badly of you but it is not in iteslf an ad hominem because I criticise first and foremost your arguments.
You on the contrary repeatedly imply political motivations on my part.
I have been citing Horwitz for years. Your ignorance is no excuse. Have you actually read the article?
PCR and other nucleic acid detection methods are extremely sensitive. They can detect HIV DNA even if it is only present in a small fraction of cells. If HIV sequences were present in the human genome then they would be found by PCR. Your repeated assertion that your claim is valid only demonstrates your profound ignorance. There is no more polite way I can put it. Why don’t you ask Duesberg?
The source for this claim is this article
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1991 April 15; 88(8): 3060–3064.
The reference that Hoffmann gives is this one from 1989.
The reservoir for HIV-1 in human peripheral blood is a T cell that maintains expression of CD4.
And guess what? They used PCR to look for HIV DNA in various subsets of T-cells. In most types apart from CD4+ cells they found no or very little HIV DNA. In CD4+ cells they found HIV DNA in about 1/100 cells.
You cannot claim that nobody has looked for HIV DNA. The very studies that you cite show that they have looked and typically find HIV DNA in only a small fraction of CD4+ cells and little in other cells.
The fact that you are simultaneously arguing both that HIV DNA is only present in a small fraction of T-cells and that it is present in the human genome is self-contradictory and frankly stupid.
All it reveals is your profound ignorance and remarkable illogic. It is clear to most observers that your reasons for supporting Duesberg have nothing to do with the science that you obviously do not understand.
The fact that you are apparently encouraged in your ignorance by Bialy and Duesberg reveals their lack of integrity.
November 12th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
Chris,
You are beyond lost. It’s like communicating with a hysterical teenager.
I love this non-sequitur of yours right of the box:
Me: But, you didn’t cite anything. That’s how you guys operate. You make claims, but don’t cite references.
You:Don’t you read Duesberg’s articles?
Umm, yes I have. Did you cite it above in support of your claim that HIV was not an endogenous retrovirus? Further, what does this have to do with my small observation that you made a claim, but failed to cite a reference to it?
I have pointed out very clearly that your theory is completely untenable.
It’s not my theory — it’s a theory.
If HIV were part of the human genome then nucleic acid tests would detect it in every human cell in every human .
Well, I agree in principle. It would be in every human cell — that’s a testable hypothesis, isn’t it? That’s good science, isn’t it? Has it been tested or not?
I have been citing Horwitz for years. Your ignorance is no excuse. Have you actually read the article?
Really, for years? Wow, I am impressed! Where? And, why didn’t you cite it above in this thread to support your claim? But, Yes, I’ve read the entire article.
You cannot claim that nobody has looked for HIV DNA.
Boy, you are dense beyond belief. I haven’t made that claim. I said I didn’t know if a researcher made the hypothesis above and then specifically tested for it.
The very studies that you cite show that they have looked and typically find HIV DNA in only a small fraction of CD4+ cells and little in other cells.
Wrong. That’s a separate issue and separate paradox — how can HIV simultaneously infect so few cells and, cause so much harm (in humans, but not in chimps!)
The hypothesis would be to test healthy, humans cells and look for the HIV sequence among the 240 million base-pairs of retroviral DNA.
In theory, this seems like it would be easy to do. But, I haven’t found a paper where it was done. By your glaring omission, I guess you haven’t either.
The rest of your post is just silly verbiage. On AIDS, you’re just not a scientist. You’re simply a true believer — no different than an evangelical in Mississippi singing the gospels, no different than a muslim fanatic praising Allah.
Finally, I note with glee that you have run full speed away from your vapid, demonstrably false statement regarding the Padian the study above:
You: Except there were transmissions in the Padian cohort. She meticulously looked at the seroconversion history of the couples and found transmission events .
Padian:
“We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study.” (Padian, pg 354.)
“Nevertheless, the absence of seroincident infection over the course of the study cannot be entirely attributed to significant behavior change. No transmission occured among the 25 percent of couples who did not use condoms consistently at their last follow-up nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up” (Padian, pg 356.)
November 12th, 2006 at 11:57 pm
It’s a theory that you are unsuccessfully attempting to defend.
No, it is not a separate issue at all. Various researchers such as Schnittman et al have specifically looked for HIV DNA in human cells. The vast majority of cells in a human infected with HIV do not contain HIV DNA. The exception are CD4+ cells which by some wild coincidence just happen to decline in people infected with HIV.
Well the paper from Schnittman et al did look at healthy human cells. Perhaps you mean in HIV- people.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 detected in all seropositive symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.
The authors looked for HIV in the PBMCs from 131 healthy HIV- subjects and could not find any. By contrast they found HIV DNA in the PBMCs of all HIV+ subjects.
Duesberg cites this very article by Jackson et al in his attempt to win the Continuum prize.
For example Jackson et al. have tested blood cells of 409 antibody-positives including 144 AIDS patients and 265 healthy people. In addition 131 antibody-negatives were tested. HIV-specific DNA subsets -defined in size and sequence by HIV-specific primers (start signals for the selective amplification) – were found in 403 of the 409 antibody-positives, but in none of the 131 antibody-negative people (Jackson et al., 1990).
Your ignorance is breathtaking.
Your inability to read and understand scientific papers might be part of the problem.
I have presented the evidence that HIV is not an endogenous retrovirus that has been present in the human genome for millennia. There is nothing at all religious about my argument.
November 13th, 2006 at 12:19 am
This is pretty silly. Of course it has been tested, as anybody who has even the most basic knowledge of HIV testing knows. The PCR test, which so sensitive that it is fully capable of detecting even a single copy of HIV genetic material out of the entire human genome, is recognized as the most accurate and reproducible test for HIV infection. Quite obviously, it would be useless if it read positive for everybody (as it would if HIV sequence were present in everybody’s genome). This is very elementary information.
You can’t have it both ways. HIV cannot simultaneously be present in every cell in everybody and also be present in “so few cells.”
November 13th, 2006 at 12:32 am
In biology, it is very hard to find reliable “plain and simple rules.” Evolution produces complexity and elaboration. Things that at first appear plain and simple almost always turn out on further investigation to be more complex.
This actually approaches a rational statement, although you still seem incapable of stating the idea in an unbiased way (e.g. “pseudo virus”). And do you really believe that the “brethren” of HIV are “not otherwise active in causing anything at all”? How about SIV in rhesus monkees? FIV in cats?
November 13th, 2006 at 11:06 am
There is, or was, a lady in the UK who theorized that vivisection blunts a scientists’ “emotional intelligence” which might explain why they are such arrogant insensitive twits. I would like to take that one step further.
I’m sure she is right that torturing animals makes a medical or biology student insensitive to suffering. How could it not? But I wonder if, in addition to that, insensitive youngsters who like to torture animals are attracted to the biological and medical sciences, where their sadism will not just be tolerated, but rewarded, maybe even with Nobel prizes and the like.
I think it’s a theory worth thinking about, and I’d appreciate comments. Alas, even our own Peter D., who wants to experiment on rats, is not an enlightened man in this area.
I also take exception to some of the posters who argued that chimps’ similarities to humans are the reason why we should not torture them. Why does an animal have to be similar to us to merit being spared pain? Don’t you think that birds and cats and dogs and, yes, even rats, also feel pain and hate being isolated in cages? We know that they do. We who have been close to them also know that they are as fully capable of love as any human or chimp. To argue that only humans or similar primates should be spared suffering is really missing the point, IMO.
November 13th, 2006 at 11:19 am
To Celia’s and Dan’s point about intimacy, yes, the condom is the most perfect way yet invented to keep people from connecting to one another. And people who can’t connect with one another cannot see that we are all really one, and that our individual existences are an illusion.
It’s vitally important for David R. and the other master controllers to keep people from realizing that, because if people realize that we are all one, that “I am you and you are he and he is me and we are all together,” as John Lennon put it if memory serves correctly, our civilization that exalts the individual above the common good breaks down. And with that breakdown, David R. and Bill G. and Bill C. and all the rest lose their exalted status. Which is of course unthinkable.
Preventing such terrifying realizations is also one of the reasons that the establishment connived to kill off the sixties spirit and replace it with Yuppyism. But that’s another story.
November 13th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
To Celia’s and Dan’s point about intimacy, yes, the condom is the most perfect way yet invented to keep people from connecting to one another.
Marcel,
condoms can be a physical barrier to intimacy, but our minds and belief systems are the strongest forces keeping us from intimacy. “AIDS”, which is a very powerful belief system, is a perfect example.
November 13th, 2006 at 6:57 pm
Duesberg said that retroviruses such as HIV (and SIV) cannot possibly cause AIDS.
Duesberg said it. That it settles it.
November 13th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Your arguments, which I am criticising are completely scientifically illiterate. They display profound ignorance coupled with perverse illogic. This of course reflects badly of you but it is not in itself an ad hominem because I criticise first and foremost your arguments.
You on the contrary repeatedly imply political motivations on my part.
Alas, the principled attempt to avoid ad hominem reactions breaks down when faced with sufficiently repetitive amd wilfully dense responses to responsible skepticism, especially when the repetition begins to smell of purposeful sabotage of the process of enquiry. After all, how does one reconcile the evident brilliance and profound knowledge exhibited by our stalwart believers concerning the deadly cunning of a mere 9kb wisp of RNA which has so far evaded the combined expertise and research investigations of 17,845 Ph.Ds in search of its modus operandi with their insistence that it causes harm?
Noble and Trrll’s combined savvy and ability to jockey the PubMed data base is positively breathtaking, second only to the storied accomplishment of our Robert Houston, but yet they still persist in peddling misstatements and misinterpretations and other dead end lines of resistance to what is as plain as a pikestaff mounted on Nelson’s hat on Nelson Column in the middle of Trafalgar Square, which is that play it whatever way they like, there is only the disturbing truth apparent that there are 41 reasons why the most credulous person finds it impossible to believe that HIV is the cause of anything at all other than the release of large amounts of lucre from the public purse, and not a single viable and reasonable point in its favor as a lethal agent, other than the nightmarish religion which has attached itself to their own brain cells and thus rides hobby horse over their neuronal connections and disturbs their normal razor sharp logic.
Apart from that excuse one woukd naturally suppose that they are doing it on purpose to annoy and gain the cheaply won attention that comes from acting as a road block rather than a facilitator of productive thought, which naturally incenses their interlocutors, who for a moment may be under the initial impression that they actually want to get at the truth and advance the cause of enlightenment in an area where lives are at stake.
But this is not the case, as far as we are concerned. As far as we can see, the brilliant, ineffably far seeing minds of both our correspondents would never stoop to anything so low as to purposely interfere with the search for truth. It is quite clear to us that it is the horrible distortion of that fine machinery introduced by the dread AIDS meme which is having this effect, and we plead for all here to have forbearance and forgive these lost souls, who we are quite certain will publicly repent and gnash their teeth and rent their garments with sorrowful and despairing apology for what they have wrought when the time comes and Fauci and Gallo are on their plane to Rio de Janeiro, where we imagine they have already bought condos near the Copacabana and its beautiful array of sand covered bosoms and buttocks.
This actually approaches a rational statement, although you still seem incapable of stating the idea in an unbiased way (e.g. “pseudo virus”). And do you really believe that the “brethren” of HIV are “not otherwise active in causing anything at all”? How about SIV in rhesus monkees? FIV in cats?
Everything we write is rational, so you must mean that occasionally we write a meta level survey of the proceedings which doesn’t address your arguments specifically, for which we apologize, but the competing responsibility of finding anything at all cogent to post on this HIV∫AIDS topic at the advanced stage of obviousness it has now achieved – obvious that HIV has no involvement whatsoever in the ills of AIDS, that is – is now taking more and more time, since there is so little that is intelligent to report and so much of the stupidity is repetitive and has already been noted and analyzed.
As far as FIV is concerned you saw what the cat lady posted a while back about what she thinks of this scam by Max Essex, the well known shame of Harvard in his business dealings, and as for SIV, we seriously doubt that any harm caused by this entity occurs without a great deal of quantitative assistance from desperate researchers unable to find any evidence in simians that any retrovirus does anything more than any retrovirus does in humans, which is nil, if you accept that Bob Gallo’s HTLV-1 has as much chance of producing leukemia as Babe Ruth scoring a home run if he was pitched a grapefruit.
November 13th, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Irrational:
All known diseases other than HIV affect chimps and humans the same way, therefore if HIV doesn’t make chimps sick, it cannot make humans sick.
To draw a conclusion about HIV based on that statement, you need to also assume that HIV is “like” all other known diseases. That’s an analogy.
And if I expect, like John Moore, that when I drop an object it will fall to the ground, I would have to assume that object is “like” all other objects in this respect, wouldn’t I?
So what you’re saying now is that John Moore’s analogies meant to illustrate the truth of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis are based on analogy themselves, thus doubly irrational.
Rational:
There genetic difference between chimps and humans is small, therefore, if HIV affects chimps and humans differently, it must be the result of one or more of the things that are different. This provides an important clue as to the genetic determinants of HIV infectivity and cytotoxicity. As Dr. Noble has pointed out, this sort of reasoning has already led to significant insights into molecular determinants of host specificity.
It is a truly revolutionary outcome of scientific reasoning that IF something is different, it is a result of something else being different.
But, although I’m sure we’re all dazzled by your superior demonstration of the inherent explanatory power of rational thought, as opposed to the entirely irrational mode of John Moore, I must point out for the 3rd time that you and the esteemed Dr. Noble are strangely reluctant to tell us what those “significant insights” so often mentioned are; and how exactly they explain the method of cell killing in humans and the lack thereof in chimps.
November 13th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
The above to Trrll in case somebody’s just switched to this channel
November 13th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Once again you display a profound ignorance of the literature.
There are many, many papers that demonstrate that SIV reproducibly infects CD4+ cells in rhesus macaques and produces a profound CD4+ cell depletion followed by a simian AIDS with opportunistic infections and death.
These viruses are commonly used to test the efficacy of vaccines. The macaques are given the vaccine and then they are exposed to SIV. Controls that are not vaccinated become infected progress to AIDS and die.
In an attempt to make the results of these vaccine challenge experiments more comparable to HIV and human infection HIV/SIV hybrids have been developed these are HIV with some SIV genes added so that they infected macaques.
More recently a virus that is essentially HIV-1 with only a couple of small SIV sequences has been developed.
Generation of Simian-Tropic HIV-1 by Restriction Factor Evasion
A cursory knowledge of the literature would provide you with the evidence that SIV and SIV/HIV hybrids reproducibly produce AIDS in macaques.
These viruses are available from AIDS reagent programs.
To continue to hold Duesberg’s authoritarian dogmatic claim that retroviruses cannot cause AIDS above clear experimental evidence that viruses such as SIV and SHIV do is antiscientific
November 13th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
99% of David Steele’s diatribes are ad hominem attacks on people like John Moore. So far I have seen no evidence of any priciples whatsoever on his part.
David Steele’s “skepticism” is neither skeptical nor responsible.
Anyone that simultaneously argues that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus and that HIV is not present in a sufficient number of T-cells to cause disease is remarkably stupid and incapable of serious debate let alone passing judgement on real scientists.
The points I have made are simple. Endogenous retroviruses are present in the human genome and are contained in the DNA in every single cell in every single human. If HIV were an endogenous retrovirus then HIV DNA would be present in every single cell in every single human.
Early papers including the paper by Schnittman that Duesberg has cited have specifically looked for HIV sequences in the DNA of human cells. Only one subset of T-cells, CD4+ cells, has a significant number cells with HIV DNA. Even then only 1-10% of CD4+ cells have HIV DNA.
In addition other researchers have tested the specificity of nucleic acid tests for HIV by looking for HIV DNA in the PBMCs of healthy HIV- subjests. They don’t contain HIV DNA.
The only possible conclusion is that HIV is not an endogenous retrovirus.
The fact that I have had to repeat this several times is a testament to David Steele’s ignorance, pigheadedness and stupidity.
November 13th, 2006 at 10:04 pm
And that analogy would serve you very well until your first encounter with a helium balloon. At which point you would have to abandon comfortable but often misleading analogical reasoning, and start thinking rationally–about messy details such as what gravity actually is (which after decades of intensive investigation by legions of physicists is still imperfectly understood) and how the physical properties of objects dictate their behavior in a gravitational field.
Yes, and you can be assured that neither one of us has any intention of attempting to summarize in a few paragraphs the over 100,000 papers in the scientific literature regarding HIV and AIDS. Particularly since Dr. Noble has pointed you toward a number of quite interesting studies, and I have seen no indication that anybody here has bothered to read them, much less think about them in any rational way. Rather than any serious attempt to survey the massive scientific literature on the subject, all I see on this site is incessant harping on misinterpretations of a few isolated studies that can be twisted (over the protests of the actual authors) into some kind of appearance of agreement with the popular obsession on this site.
November 14th, 2006 at 12:44 am
Trrll, you’ve personally read over 100,000 papers on the molecular differences between chimps and humans? Or did you split the task with Chris? Howsoever I rest assured that neither of you has an answer.
BTW, have you mentioned the helium balloon to prof Moore? If so, did he call you a denialist?
H.I.V. causes AIDS. This is not a controversial claim but an established fact, based on more than 20 years of solid science. It is as certain as the descent of humans from apes and the falling of dropped objects to the ground.
(Prof. John P. Moore “Deadly Quackery”)
November 14th, 2006 at 1:17 am
It seems that I’ve read more than anybody here, and it isn’t even my field. Chris has already cited a number of papers on the subject, without the least indication that anybody here has bothered to look at them. If you can manage some meaningful discussion of the research already cited, beyond a kneejerk dismissal of anything that doesn’t reinforce your prejudices, perhaps we can have a serious discussion of the real science (but I’m not holding my breath).
If he were actually basing his scientific conclusions on irrational analogies like “HIV doesn’t make chimps sick, so it can’t make people sick,” rather than merely offering a point of comparison to illustrate the level of confidence that most scientists have regarding the HIV/AIDS theory, then I certainly would have such a criticism. But he quite obviously is not, so I don’t.
November 14th, 2006 at 2:59 am
If he were actually basing his scientific conclusions on irrational analogies like “HIV doesn’t make chimps sick, so it can’t make people sick
John Moore and the authors of the Durban Declaration base their scientific conclusions on analogies like SIV makes monkeys sick, so it seems my quote from “Deadly Quackery” is representative of the high scientifc standards of Moore et al.
But since you mention it, is “the level of confidence that most scientists have regarding the HIV/AIDS theory” a scientific argument in your opinion?
What would that be then, argumentum ad consensus or confidensus?
November 14th, 2006 at 4:42 am
Once again you display a profound ignorance of the literature.
There are many, many papers that demonstrate that SIV reproducibly infects CD4+ cells in rhesus macaques and produces a profound CD4+ cell depletion followed by a simian AIDS with opportunistic infections and death.
Chris Noble, we hereby accuse you on the basis of this statement to be a brother to Pinocchio, since you must know (after being told countless times) that this is nonsense.
These viruses are commonly used to test the efficacy of vaccines. The macaques are given the vaccine and then they are exposed to SIV. Controls that are not vaccinated become infected progress to AIDS and die.
This statement also (the last sentence).
We are making this precipitate accusation without reference to any papers but on the basis of common knowledge that one of the difficulties of the whole theory is that SIV really doesn’t mimick “AIDS” in any convincing way.
So if you can produce the precise papers that say this is indeed so and that we are wrong we apologize in advance. But if you wish to prove us wrong you will have to justify your statement that SIV reliably kills “unvaccinated” macaques when present in the tiny quantities that HIV is present in the bodies of “AIDS” patients.
If not, you will presumably retire in confusion from any further discussion on this board for at least a day, since your willingness to make outright baseless exaggerated claims will have been exposed and embarrass you beyond endurance, we would expect, as well as vitiating your credibility for evermore.
November 14th, 2006 at 4:55 am
Here’s a quote for you, just to help you along, Chris:
A threshold virus load value which remained below 104 RNA equivalents/ml of plasma was indicative of a nonpathogenic course of infection.
That’s from “Journal of Virology, December 1998, p. 10281-10285, Vol. 72, No. 12 A Pathogenic Threshold of Virus Load Defined in Simian Immunodeficiency Virus- or Simian-Human Immunodeficiency Virus-Infected Macaques
Peter Ten Haaft,1 Babs Verstrepen,1 Klaus Ãœberla,2 Brigitte Rosenwirth,1 and Jonathan Heeney”.
November 14th, 2006 at 5:42 am
Alas TS, I fear the endurance of Dr. Noble is far from exhausted yet.
Your petition for disclosure of the substance said to be contained within certain arcane documents darkly hinted at seems equally ill-fated:
you can be assured that neither one of us has any intention of attempting to summarize in a few paragraphs the over 100,000 papers in the scientific literature regarding HIV and AIDS (Trrll)
You are instead recommended to “survey” them yourself, which presumably will earn you equal right to cite obscure references, or better yet “the literature” in its seamless, monolithic entirety, instead of “harping on isolated studies”. Most importantly, you too will then be in the enviable position of being under no obligation to apologize in advance (or retrospect) for any accusation however precipitate.
Failing initiation into the exclusive PubMed longterm non-progressor jockey club, you will in all likelihood never know if the apparently effective vaccination campaign so benefitting maqacues, otherwise brutally assaulted with laboratory created “SIV/HIV hybrids”, would reproduce in humans, or if it will turn out that the molecular determinants, subject-matter of true scientists, are ultimately aligned against it.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:01 am
The discovery that SIV causes an AIDS like disease in rhesus monkeys disproves the claim that retroviruses in the HIV/SIV family are capable of causing immune deficiency disease. However, it is at best a plausibility argument, and if that was all that the HIV-AIDS theory had to support it, it would be regarded as little more than a hypothesis.
No. The scientific arguments and evidence are what have led scientists to that level of confidence, but confidence itself does not constitute evidence. It does, however, suggest that the evidence must be quite strong, and that one should not dismiss it without thoroughly understanding why so many scientists with years of experience interpreting such evidence have found it so compelling–and certainly not on the basis of crude analogies or naive notions of “plain and simple rules” of biology.
November 14th, 2006 at 10:18 am
A while back you were insisting that viruses in the HIV/SIV family are “not otherwise active in causing anything at all.” Now you want to add additional requirements that must be “present in the tiny quantities that HIV is present in the bodies of ‘AIDS’ patients.” This is known as “moving the goalposts,” and is one of the hallmarks of denialist thinking. Rather than re-evaluating the validity of your reasoning when you find out that your premises are wrong, you want to go back and retroactively change your argument.
November 14th, 2006 at 11:59 am
This is known as “moving the goalposts,” and is one of the hallmarks of denialist thinking.
Please, it is not we who deny, it is your honorable selves who are denialists, denying that a face has a nose, that Europe is larger than Ibiza, and that one and two make three, not 767.
Salt is an element we all need to ingest at a certain level every day. If, however, you are marooned in the tropical sea without fresh water, and try to survive on seawater, you die.
This is not “activity”, this is quantity.
In other words, we have monkeys being sacrificed to the stupidity of men, which is what the post is about, and which you deny.
November 14th, 2006 at 2:55 pm
What distinguishes denialist thinking from rational thinking is not the subject matter or the specific conclusions, but rather the presence of specific modes of irrational thinking, such as reasoning by analogy, or moving the goalposts.
What moving the goalposts is symptomatic of is backwards reasoning–starting with a particular conclusion that you are emotionally attached to, and then reasoning backwards to try to construct an argument that will lead to that desired conclusion. So when the premise of the argument that SIV/HIV type viruses cannot produce illness in apes, and therefore cannot produce illness in man (itself an example of irrational reasoning by analogy) turns out to be incorrect (because SIV has been well established to produce immune system damage in rhesus monkeys), instead of questioning your conclusion that such retroviruses cannot produce illness in man, you go back to your desired conclusion and, reasoning backwards, try to come up with a new set of premises–”SIV/HIV viruses cannot produce illness in man, because the illness that they produce in rhesus monkeys is not absolutely identical to AIDS in every particular”–in order to rescue your desired conclusion.
November 14th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
I have heard countless “rethinkers” claim that SIV does not cause AIDS. Rather than simply accepting the word of “rethinkers” I read the scientific articles.
Convincing to whom? You? Scientifically illiterate lawyers? It may surprise you but whether or not a few ignorant people find something convincing is of little importance.
I take it this was supposed to make me fall over in astonishment at your extensive knowledge of the scientific literature and concede that SIV disease in macaques is nothing at all like HIV disease in humans.
If you had read the paper that goes with the abstract that you quote from you would have learnt something- that is if you are capable of understanding it which you have not yet demonstrated.
You might have followed the references to find this article.
Quantitation of HIV-1 RNA in Plasma Predicts Outcome after Seroconversion
Conversely, the absence of HIV-1 RNA ( less than 1 x 104 Eq/mL) in all or most samples was associated with stable CD4+ T-cell counts (19 of 23 patients) and a lower risk for AIDS or decline in the CD4+ T-cell count (10 of 39 patients; P less than 0.001). In multivariate analysis of all laboratory values at the seroconversion visit, a plasma HIV-1 RNA level greater than 1 x 105 Eq/mL was the most powerful predictor of AIDS (odds ratio, 10.8; P = 0.01).
This is actually very good evidence that SIV disease in macaques is similar to HIV disease in humans. The early stage of infection – around 6-12 weeks – is very important for future disease progression. High viral loads at this point are a highly predictive of disease progression.
It all comes down to Duesberg’s completely unsupported claim that retroviruses cannot possibly cause AIDS in humans or monkeys. You and other “rethinkers” credulously take his word as gospel. More skeptical people bother to read the literature.
Do you think that people that work in vaccine development using SIV macaque models will take Duesberg’s gospel over the experimental evidence that they see all the time.
This really makes me wonder. Who is Duesberg trying to convince? It isn’t scientists with a knowledge of the field.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:29 pm
Moving goalposts is the habit of the defenders of the paradigm, who have often been called on it. No goalposts were moved by us, what transpired above was merely that we were offered a causal theory of HIV in human AIDS and a reason for believing it in the supposedly analogous SIV and certain monkeys, with the desperate claim that SIV acts in rhesus monkeys in a way which demonstrates HIV probably does the same thing the saem way in humans. But then we discovered that this was not true, the analogy is vitiated by various differences in the two systems, not least of which is that SIV doesn’t cause monkeys to die unless you throw enough at them to defeat them by quantity more than any “activity”.
This is not demanding that the systems are identical in every subtle particular but merely that they are analagous in important ways, one being that the rhesus monkey system shows SIV to be fatal in and of its self at normal levels, rather than souped up levels which to happen at all need a gang of theoretically desperate white coated scientists standing by to force feed SIV into their systems like forcefeeding geese to enlarge their livers and make pate de foie gras.
What moving the goalposts is symptomatic of is backwards reasoning–starting with a particular conclusion that you are emotionally attached to, and then reasoning backwards to try to construct an argument that will lead to that desired conclusion.
This describes exactly the problem with the thinking of those such as yourself who show such an admirable loyalty to the current paradigm kite flown by Bob Gallo in 1984 without any justification even in his Science papers (only one third of his samples had the claimed HIV proteins!!) that they will argue backwards from any evidence to show how it must go along with the HIV∫AIDS meme even though it flatly contradicts it as in the recent JAMA and HAART studies which show that what happens to CD4 cells and other AIDS symptoms is independent of HIV levels in the blood, and instead correlate only with medicinal drugs, which is hardly likely to happen if HIV causes CD4 decrease or AIDS symptoms.
What distinguishes denialist thinking from rational thinking is not the subject matter or the specific conclusions, but rather the presence of specific modes of irrational thinking, such as reasoning by analogy, or moving the goalposts.
But the analogy was drawn by you and other supporters of HIV∫AIDS, between monkeys and man and between SIV and HIV. So your description of denialist thinking is a very precise description of your own thinking, which is indeed denialist, since it denies the obvious in all its manifestations, as if you were hypnotized by the AIDS meme, which you continually show you are.
You believe in one of the most absurd, unlikely and fatuously inconsistent schemes ever claimed in science, which is continually being disproved in papers produced by the mainstream researchers themselves who research it, and yet you have no idea this is the case, or that you are involved in the phenomenon.
This is a pretty good definition of hypnosis, since there is no other reason for this happening to such brilliant, skeptical and objectivs scientific debaters such as your two exemplary selves.
November 14th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Do you think that people that work in vaccine development using SIV macaque models will take Duesberg’s gospel over the experimental evidence that they see all the time.
Do you think that people who work in vaccine development have any prospect of success at all, given the logic of their work?
HIV vaccinates any humans it invades, if it does, since it creates antibodies which do an excellent job of kicking out HIV from their system to an extent that it is impossible to find it without using PCR which creates multiple needles in a haystack and finally produces enough needles by doubling that they can be detected.
Short of PCR detection it is a plain fact that it is impossible to find ie there is no HIV worth a damn in any healthy person’s system, and that is why the HIV test is actually a test for HIV antibodies, which you suppose against all science and logic somehow cause AIDS and are transmitted from man to woman and vice versa, even though studies show that this is impossible, as one would expect for antibodies.
Is there something about these eternal verities of HIV∫AIDS that you don’t accept or don’t understand Chis? Why do you think that no vaccine work has been fruitful, and that Ho and gang now babble about a vaccine being so problematical that it may take twenty more years to find one, and perhaps as Gallo says it may never happen, but it is of course essential to make sure the effort is funded to the hilt, let’s not argue about that, ladies and gentlemen, that is what public funds are for.
Until Dr Fauci snaps his fingers and tells you to wake up, it is of course impossible to tell you anything that contradicts the claims he has told you to believe in, so we don’t expect you to realize what we are talking about Chris, that’s OK.
Nor do we feel guilty at being amused by the antics he had induced in you.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
You either have not read the article you cited or you are incapable of understanding it.
The study looked to see whether SIV/SHIV viral load in the early infection stage predicted progression.
In animals inoculated with nonpathogenic strains, shortly after the primary peak of viremia viral RNA levels declined and remained below 10(4) RNA equivalents/ml of plasma between 6 and 12 weeks postinoculation. Animals infected with documented pathogenic strains maintained viral RNA levels higher than 10(5) RNA equivalents/ml of plasma. In animals infected with strains with low virulence, a decline in plasma RNA levels was observed, but with notable individual variation. Our results demonstrate that the disease-causing potential was predicted and determined by a threshold plasma virus load which remained greater than 10(5) RNA equivalents/ml of plasma 6 to 12 weeks after inoculation. A threshold virus load value which remained below 10(4) RNA equivalents/ml of plasma was indicative of a nonpathogenic course of infection.
Compare that with a study that looked to see whether HIV viral load in the early infection stage predicted progression.
Conversely, the absence of HIV-1 RNA ( less than 1 x 104 Eq/mL) in all or most samples was associated with stable CD4+ T-cell counts (19 of 23 patients) and a lower risk for AIDS or decline in the CD4+ T-cell count (10 of 39 patients; P less than 0.001). In multivariate analysis of all laboratory values at the seroconversion visit, a plasma HIV-1 RNA level greater than 1 x 105 Eq/mL was the most powerful predictor of AIDS (odds ratio, 10.8; P = 0.01)
Far from demonstrating a difference you have highlighted a similarity.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:35 pm
Sorry Chris, but the study is not proof of the generality, we didn’t state that. What you have to state is which statement you disagree with, and what you consider to be correct, and produce the paper that backs your contention, which in this case is SIV killing monkeys in some way that can be taken as impressively analagous to the way HIV works in human beings to kill them, and thus suggestive that HIV causes death in humans after all, which is the claim you made last night, which we challenged rather rudely, though we have in the light light of day changed that wording so that we merely ally you fraternally to Pinocchio, rather than anything more direct, for which we apologize, as a contravention of the traditions of NAR.
November 14th, 2006 at 9:48 pm
TS,
We seem to be approaching the point of critical mass, whereby, the reclusive McKiernan feels impelled to come out of temporary
leave to introject yet another poem. YossariansGhostbuster has been making a buncha bum comments of late and may be relegated to the psych ward for attitude rehabilitation and re-education.
What think ye ?
November 14th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
AL before we go any further can you tell me what your purpose was in citing this paper:
November 15th, 2006 at 12:44 am
YGB,
What think we, although ‘we’ be in this case not TS?
First we must congratulate the scientists on the revolutionary finding, well worth years of animal torture, that “documented pathogenic” stuff results in a more consistently high viral load than “non-pathogenic stuff , and eventually leads to disease -or was the disease part just a foregone, because previously documented, conclusion?
Never mind, it doesn’t detract from the enormous significance of this milestone study, carried out on the daring hypothesis that pathogenic stuff is more pathogenic than non-pathogenic stuff .
Only one small inconvenience, “in animals infected with strains with “low virulence”, a decline in plasma RNA levels was also observed”.
But fortunately it didn’t remain that way, so we can conclude 1. That there was after all a difference between documented pathogenic stuff and “less virulent” stuff 2. When we know exactly what we’re looking for, namely documented pathogenic live virus under controlled laboratory conditions, viral load measures were (in the end) not all over the map – according to the benevolent executioners
Of course high values of the same strain “at seroconversion visit” (the HIV study), and a viral load which “remains high” because injected with different stuff (the milestone SIV study)is not exactly the same. But then again, who says strict analogy must be the alpha and omega of science?
TS, I think YGB may be right, the viral load of crap has just about reached critical mass here. Even a McKiernan poem would be a welcome improvement.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:34 am
Now you are attempting to rewrite the history of this thread. Perhaps you might want to read it again? To refresh your memory, you made the following claim:
When Chris and I pointed out that SIV, a close relative of HIV, fatally damages the immune system of rhesus monkeys, you revised your argument as follows:
So you are the one who
1) invoked a supposed analogy between humans and other primates as an argument against the HIV-AIDS theory, not the other way around. (irrational reasoning by analogy),
2) falsely attributed to me the “statement that SIV reliably kills “unvaccinated” macaques when present in the tiny quantities that HIV is present in the bodies of “AIDS” patients” (straw man)–a statement that I never made–apparently to distract from the fact that you were
3) revising your own argument (moving the goalposts). Now, rather than insisting that SIV does not cause any kind of disease in any monkey, you are merely insisting that it doesn’t cause damage “when present in the tiny quantities that HIV is present in the bodies of “AIDS” patients.”
And of course, it is quite clear that you still do not perceive how irrational your argument is.
November 15th, 2006 at 3:47 am
Trllll, what is irrational is your account of your understanding of our argument, which is so off the mark and upside down that one can only put it down to being an extreme effect of the blankness of the computer screen and the lack of body language inherent in the medium, which allows enormous misunderstanding of simple statements if one is under the hypnotic effect of Dr Fauci’s Famous Giant Conundrum Generator, which has such a distorting effect on the brain that one can be said to live in a parallel universe, which mirrors exactly our own, but reverses in its reflection every facet of the logic of the original.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Mac,
Thank you for your inspiration. The following poem could be a metaphor for a certain paradigm of which some have been examining of late. The title of the poem could even be re-labelled Paradigm Lost. Once again we present the late, great Sam Walter Foss 1856-1911.
The Poster-Painter’s Masterpiece
“Let us paint a landscape in June,” he cried;
“A Landscape in high June.”
And the poster-painter swelled with pride
And trilled a merry tune.
And he painted five cows in Antwerp blue
(For he was a poster-painter true),
And the grass they browsed was a light écru
And a dark maroon.
And the foot of one cow was in the sky,
And her horns were pink and green;
Her amber tail it curled on high–
A bright and beauteous scene.
And a lavender river flowed at her feet
With gamboge lilies fragrant and sweet,
But some were the color of powdered peat,
Some light marine.
And another cow’s tail was round the sun
(Her horns hung limply down);
And her tail was white as wool new-spun,
And the sun was a neutral brown.
In the drab background was a pale-blue lamb
Who stood by the side of her turquoise dam,
And the sky–a pink parallelogram–
On the lamb closed down.
And the rhomboid hills were of ochre hue
With trees of lilac white,
And rectilinear forests grew
In a limpid cochineal light.
An isosceles lake spread fair and pink,
And, gathered about its damask brink,
Triangular swans came down to drink
With glad delight.
Then a milkmaid came with cheeks of dun
And a smile of dark maroon,
One arm was on the setting sun,
One on the rising moon.
And she seemed to float from a Nile-green sky,
With an ebony arm and an ivory eye,
And her gown swelled from a point on high,
Like a pink balloon.
But all the things the painter drew
‘Twere hard to tell–
The cow, the sky, the swans of blue,
Lamb, maid, he painted well.
But which was the cow and which the maid,
And which were the swans or the trees of shade,
And which were the sky or the hills, I’m afraid,
No soul could tell.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Well then, Truthseeker, let’s see if you are capable of expressing your argument into a rational hypothesis. Here is what you said:
So it sounds like you are arguing that damage to the immune system of rhesus monkeys by SIV is not a consequence of viral infection, but rather a nonspecific toxic effect of the viral particles, analogous to the way that salt at high levels is toxic? Is this correct?
Would you agree, then, that this predicts:
1. Mutation of enzymes involved in infectivity, such as reverse transcriptase, will not affect viral levels or pathology?
2. Drugs that specifically inhibit reverse transcriptase will not affect viral levels or pathology?
3. A rhesus monkey with the virus will be incapable of transmitting it to other rhesus monkeys?
If you disagree that these are predictions of your hypothesis, please explain why.
November 15th, 2006 at 10:49 am
The cow, the sky, the swans of blue,
Lamb, maid, he painted well.
But which was the cow and which the maid,
And which were the swans or the trees of shade,
And which were the sky or the hills, I’m afraid,
No soul could tell.
Says it all, McK, thanks. Excellent taste you have in verse, we must say.
Is this correct?
Trlll, if one takes a gigantic bicycle pump, fills it with salt water containing .0001% of SHIV, sticks it up the backside of a rhesus monkey, pumps the rhesus monkey full of said solution, until the monkey is seven times the normal size, and finally explodes, and the monkey dies, then yes, it would be clear that SHIV is a deadly weapon, and under an enlightened system in a civil society, should only be licensed to Max Essex and colleagues, who will no dount develop a richly remunerative test for the feds to apply to the blood bank.
Short of that, we wait to see if SHIV can kill monkeys at the level at which HIV infects humans.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:25 am
What is the relevance of this? Who, specifically, has done such a nonsensical experiment or attempted to draw conclusions from it?
When you come back to reality, you might attempt to address the questions asked in my previous post regarding your “quantity not activity” claim.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Thank you, trlll, for that priceless response. You are the most dignified and civil poster here, apart from your brother in arms and scientific colleague Chris Noble, and we appreciate your qualities. Without them, this blog would be a dull place.
November 15th, 2006 at 1:10 pm
There is no mistaking the lethal effect of the stuff applied to the backside or wherever (although, to the disappointment of some I’m sure, not via a gigantic bicycle pump) of the maqacues in the study introduced by TS. Within the 12 weeks of study, the philantropist researchers managed to terminate at least 4 out of “more than 50″ specimens.
One died of (unspecified) non-AIDS related disease (perhaps from banging its head against the cage), 2 fell victim to the “documented pathogenic” strains, producing (unspecified) AIDS, and the last died (presumably) from one of the non-pathogenic strains(!!) likewise producing an (unspecified) “AIDS-like disease”.
This last sacrifice on the altar of science was the only one deserving an epitaph. In the touching words of its executioners:
Interestingly, one animal infected with SHIVsf33 was reported to have developed AIDS-like disease (21), suggesting that SHIVsf33 may possess some pathogenic potential.
An unexpected but fortunate discovery which obviously makes the study all the more exciting, while bringing the discovery of an HIV vaccine a giant step closer.
So all in all not a bad score for a so called lentivirus with no help from AZT. Except of course all 4 simians were victims of primary. . . infection? before the immune system ever kicked in. Not exactly the HIV scenario.
But who says an analogy has to be perfect?
Special thanks to McK, whose poem gave me the fortitude to go through one last viral load of crap.
November 15th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
Dear Dr Trrll,
I’m really beginning to think all you biologists are the same. My husband also persists in calling me the most irrational creature in the entire biosphere, despite the fact he wouldn’t know on which foot to put his right shoe if left alone.
And just like you, he won’t tell me which molecular determinants it is that keep HIV infected chimps from developing AIDS. He says the mechanism is well known and documented, and if I don’t already understand it there’s no point in trying to explain.
He was more forthcoming about the gigantic bicycle pump study. He said he’s never heard anything so irrational and unscientific as a sevenfold magnification of a rhesus monkey. In all the animal experiments he’s ever performed (he likes performing hands on science) he’s never managed to blow up a monkey to more than twice its normal size
before it exploded regardless of salt levels in the solution.
But he says some independent researchers – my husband is not independent as you may have guessed – have elected to inject themselves with saltwater to find out just how infectious it really is. So far none of them has developed any AIDS-like diseases.
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_
world/2006/11/views_from_the__2.html#comments
November 15th, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Now the goalposts have moved again. Maybe SIV does cause progressive CD4+ cell depletion in macaques leading to severe immune deficiency and opportunistic infections such as PCP but it supposedly does it too fast. Apparently according to “rethinker” logic a retrovirus can cause immune deficiency fast or not at all.
Different strains of SIV and SHIV vary in their virulence and pathogenesis. Some strains result in high viral loads and rapid progression. Some strains result in lower viral loads and slower progression over the period of years despite strong SIV antibody responses.
There are also differences in the progression rates seen in macaques of Chinese origin and of Indian origin when infected with the same SIV.
Likewise humans vary in their susceptibility to HIV due ot genetic factors and different strains of HIV vary in their virulence. Some people progress to AIDS shortly after infection.
Most of the SIV/SHIV macaque models used in vaccine development use highly pathogenic viruses for the simple reason that you can’t afford to wait ten years to see whether your vaccine has been effective.
November 15th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
Most of the SIV/SHIV macaque models used in vaccine development use highly pathogenic viruses for the simple reason that you can’t afford to wait ten years to see whether your vaccine has been effective.
Another angle not to be overlooked in these attempts to endanger the lives of our monkey brethren, in the cause of Dr Fauci’s loyal army trying to make a monkey out of us, as well as Bill Clinton, Chris Noble, Bill Gates, Oprah, Trrrllll, President George “Often Unfairly Cartooned as a Chimp” Bush, Warren Buffett, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeffrey Sachs and Magic Johnson, is the age of the subjects, which are said to be typically young enough to lack a proper immune response, ie babies.
How odd that “highly pathogenic” viruses pumped into baby monkeys at seven times normal air pressure result in so few casualties.
Some people progress to AIDS shortly after infection.
We thought you could spell ‘ceteris paribus’, Chris.
November 15th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
The link Lise mentioned is not described, or properly written in html, so when we had finished laughing at her post (3.5 minutes) we rewrote it as follows: Jan Spreen’s Post on Barnesworld (YBYL) claiming Shipwrecked Raft Occupying Folk can Drink Seawater without Much Harm has Dean Esmay’s Comment stating A Diet of Fatty Meat can provide Complete Nutrition.
Two most fascinating claims.
=========================
(By the way, Lise, please add html to any url quoted by writing
left pointing circumflex
then
a href=”
then
the url
then
”
then
right pointing circumflex
then
the ordinary language title
then close the link with
left pointing circumflex
then
/a>.
Sorry cannot write out the thing in html without it disappearing.
Thanks.)
============================
November 15th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Over 12 weeks? That’s a pretty short time to see much death from immune system damage, even if a fast acting viral strain was used.
And where do you get this nonsense about “7 times normal air pressure?” And what does the pressure have to do with it, anyway? Any time you get an injection, it is being pumped into your body at more than normal air pressure. How else do you think you squeeze liquid through a narrow needle?
November 15th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
McDonald is complaining that these viruses were killing the macaques too fast and you are complaining that not enough were killed within 12 weeks.
If you want an example of a highly pathogenic virus then you could just follow some of the citations in the article you mentioned.
The PBj14 isolate of simian immunodeficiency virus from sooty mangabey monkeys (SIVSMM-PBj14) is the most acutely pathogenic primate lentivirus so far described, always causing fatal disease in pig-tailed macaques (Macaca nemestrina) within 8 days of inoculation.
Remember what Duesberg was saying in the past.
Retroviruses do not kill cells
Any sign of Duesberg admitting he was wrong?
You also keep on implying that the macaques are pumped full of abnormally high levels of virus.
The rate of progression to AIDS is independent of virus dose in simian immunodeficiency virus-infected macaques.
November 16th, 2006 at 12:38 am
Chris,
For a lenti-virus – defined as any of a group of animal viruses that cause various diseases that exhibit an unusually slow progressive course – to cause fatal illness within 8 days IS most impressive.
As a matter of fact, with all the innumerous, for some reason previously completely unknown, super lethal animal lenti-viruses discovered lately, it is remarkable all our furry friends are not wiped out by now.
In the meantime, average life expectancy of HIV infected Americans is now estimated at 24 years, despite the fact that almost half of them don’t take the life saving medicine when they’re supposed to. So there are presumably not too many strains capable of super power endowing mutations that made it into homo sapiens through all those dry sex and wet blood rituals practiced on the dark continent.
November 16th, 2006 at 12:58 am
And where do you get this nonsense about “7 times normal air pressure?”
Good point, trrlll, and well worth pointing out. Not much gets past you, that’s for sure.
This is a rough estimate, based on the coefficient of expansion (seven times the initial volume).
One thing perturbs us. You have never expressed any sympathy for these unfortunate inflated animals. Are you among those hardened souls that work with them, and are thus prevented from empathizing with them at the normal level of response?
You are, after all, a neuroscientist, perhaps involved in removing parts of their skulls to insert electrodes, etc.
November 16th, 2006 at 1:27 am
Evolution to a less pathogenic virus and evolution of host resistance factors is expected.
Read Frank Fenner’s work on the myxoma virus that was introduced to control rabbits in Australia for another example.
That figure was for people undergoing ARV treatment. It takes a huge illogical 180 degree turn to then present this as evidence that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.
What is your point?
Are you still denying that SIV causes AIDS in macaques?
November 16th, 2006 at 1:36 am
I thought it would be obvious but perhaps this is an unwarranted assumption.
Sooty Mangabeys are native to West Africa. Pig-tailed macaques are native to South-East Asia. Viruses that are non-pathogenic in their original host can be extremely pathogenic when introduced to other animal.
November 16th, 2006 at 2:30 am
OK, this is not AIDS, but the latest headline news on CNN: Foul play suspected in a death once ruled a suicide
The younger DeFusco said a local police chief was so insistent that his father had committed suicide that he stood on a chair to give a demonstration of how it could have happened.
It seems reasonable to ask, is this fellow related to either Trrlll or Chris Noble? Fellas, either one of you related to this guy, whose behavior seems strangely reminiscent of your side of the debate here, for some reason?
He is a police chief (position of some responsibility and no flake) who having been presented with a corpse shot in the mouth (supposedly) and weighed down with a heavy anchor tied to it, stuck to his theory that the guy had shot himself in the mouth, failed to kill himself, so then wrapped a heavy anchor round his feet and jumped into the sea. All this maintained steadfastly in the face of the victim’s family telling him there was no way the guy had any reason for or showed any signs of interest in suicide. The fellow even jumped up on a chair to demonstrate his theory.
There has to be a name for this syndrome.
Here is the full story for future reference:
PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island (AP) — Louis James DeFusco was found floating in Narragansett Bay in August 1964, a ship’s anchor tied around his legs and a bullet in his mouth. Authorities called it a suicide. But relatives were left with lingering doubts and questions.
Some four decades later, his relatives had his body exhumed so it could be moved to a family burial plot and asked the medical examiner’s office to perform another autopsy.
The second examination this past summer revealed a bullet wound to the back of the head — a finding that switched the official cause of death from suicide-by-drowning to homicide.
Family members say that if they can’t find out who killed DeFusco, at least they have it on record that he didn’t take his own life.
“We didn’t want this thing to go on anymore, with the injustice of it being recorded as a suicide,” Robert DeFusco, who was 15 when his father died, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Louis DeFusco was 38 when he disappeared the night of August 6, 1964. He was last seen leaving a marina in Warwick that he and his brother had just sold.
Autopsy missed head wound
Twelve days later, his body was found floating in the water.
An initial autopsy found a bullet in the mouth and damage to his teeth, but didn’t spot a gunshot to the back of the head, said Dr. Thomas Gilson, the state’s current chief medical examiner.
“He’d been in the water for a period of time, maybe as much as 12 days, and it was overlooked,” Gibson said.
Now, the homicide classification provides a measure of vindication for DeFusco’s son and other relatives who have maintained for decades that the death was not a suicide.
The youngest of six children, and a entrepreneurial son of Italian immigrants, DeFusco was considered a hardworking businessman.
His younger brother, Anthony DeFusco, called him “a beautiful kid, a good-looking kid, a good boy.”
At the time of his death, he was in the process of divorcing his wife, with whom he had three kids. Authorities looked into several theories, even questioning his estranged wife — who was in Arizona at the time — before ultimately settling on suicide.
“He wasn’t despondent, none of the things that would indicate he would be suicidal. It just wasn’t him,” said Robert DeFusco.
Signs of foul play
Plus, there were the peculiar circumstances of his death — the heavy anchor tied around his legs, for instance, and the undetected gunshot wound to the head.
After the first autopsy failed to find the entrance wound, Gilson said, doctors must have inferred that DeFusco shot himself in the mouth, survived, and drowned by attaching an anchor to himself. The gunshot wound identified in the mouth was initially thought to be nonfatal.
The younger DeFusco said a local police chief was so insistent that his father had committed suicide that he stood on a chair to give a demonstration of how it could have happened.
DeFusco said there was plenty of speculation as to who killed his father, but that it was hard to know the truth. He said his father was not involved in any way with the mob, but said there were “shady characters who had boats” and “some of them were mob-related figures.”
“Nobody kills like that” but the mob, Robert DeFusco said.
Gilson said the case was referred to the Warwick Police Department, which was investigating. A spokesman for Attorney General Patrick Lynch said the office was working with the police to evaluate any evidence.
Warwick Police Chief Stephen McCartney did not return a call seeking comment.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press.
November 16th, 2006 at 7:05 am
Are you still denying that SIV causes AIDS in macaques?
Chris, I think it’s about time you go take your ARVs and perhaps do a little gardening, cuz you’re really starting to drift now. When have I expressed anything but pure admiration of the many ways in which the many strains of SIV, SHIV, FIV, HIV etc. produce AIDS-like diseases in various hosts?
From Asia to Africa,, from monkeys to cats. And to think they’re all just newly discovered. Nothing short of amazing!
Evolution to a less pathogenic virus and evolution of host resistance factors is expected
I guess that explains the ever increasing life expectancy of HIV infected people.
November 16th, 2006 at 8:26 am
It is a possibility, I suppose, that this is due to evolution of the virus to a less pathogenic strain, but it seems a bit fast for that to happen. I think that the most likely explanation is that understanding of the molecular details of how HIV infects cells and replicates has led to the development of more effective, less toxic antiretroviral drugs that are effective even in spite of the fact that people often don’t take their drugs exactly on the prescribed schedule.
November 16th, 2006 at 8:33 am
I think that you need to go back to your basic physics and review coefficient of expansion. Liquids are relatively incompressible. A liquid injected at 7 times atmospheric pressure would show negligible expansion. The only real practical concern with high pressure injection would be the possibility of local tissue damage at the site of injection if the liquid exits the tip of the needle too rapidly.
November 16th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
Trrlll, you make an excellent point, and certainly help to keep this thread on the rails, scientifically speaking.
However, we were referring to the expansion of the monkey, not the liquid in the pump or even the air in the pump.
And as we have noted, and the information from Lise’s husband’s laboratory seems to confirm, the expansion of the baby monkeys tends to result in a fatality at only double atmospheric pressure, rather than seven, as in adults.
By the way, Chris states that the impact on the monkeys was not dose dependent. But this is incorrect. The monkey’s risk of disease is directly proportional to the titer of SIV, see Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS Virus, Appendix B, and Flutz et al 1990. Any claim to the contrary needs to be closely examined. Did they vary only from heavy to very heavy, and then make the claim?
November 16th, 2006 at 6:40 pm
HIV would cause AIDS in Clark Kent, given the right dose and the right strain of the virus. Given the right dose and right route of administration and the right time in someone’s life. Alone in and of itself. No doubt in mind.
However, that doesn’t mean cofactors can’t make things more likely. The biggest cofactor is the virus itself – the dose – that’s a chance. The dose you get is critical like in all biology. People don’t seem to let that sink into their heads. Dose is important. One man’s dose is not another man’s dose.
Route of infection is also important. Low dose, infection by some routes and you are going to ward off infection. But walloping dose, intravenously, it is unlikely you can escape the devastating effects of the virus
(Robert Gallo to Anthony Liversidge, Spin Magazine)
Since SIV seems to be dose independent, according to Chris, I think we can conclude it’s something else that blows up the monkeys to pathogenic levels.
November 16th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Incorrect? You haven’t read the paper and yet you feel confident to make such a bold statement. You must have some authoritative source for your confidence.
Duesberg said it. That settles it. Amen.
Actually you have troubles interpretting the holy scriptures. Duesberg was referring to viral load after infection. The paper I cited looked at the effect of the initial dose of virus that was used to infect the macaques. If you had actually read the paper you would have realised this.
Based on these as well as observations from other infectious disease models, we set out to determine the influence of the dose of the inoculum on the initial viral load, the threshold achieved, and thus the influence on disease progression. To address this question, different dilutions of the SIV8980 isolate were administered intravenously to ten mature rhesus monkeys. Animals were monitored for evidence of infection, plasma viral load, CD4+ T-cell decline and the rate of progression to AIDS. These results were compared to data compiled from other animals infected previously with different doses of the same virus stock.
They diluted the innoculum repeatedly by a factor of ten until a point where no macaques were infected.
There was a 1000 fold difference in the doses but this played no role in the rate of progression. You don’t have to pump macaques full of SIV to induce AIDS.
November 16th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
TS, I can’t help but notice that you have not yet attempted to answer the questions that I posed regarding your “quantity not infectivity” notion.
To refresh your memory, here they are again:
Now to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really expect you to answer these questions. My experience with denialists has been that they tend to be extremely reluctant to formulate their beliefs into anything resembling a testable scientific hypothesis. They tend to be a lot more comfortable with analogies, which are vague and flexible enough to rationalize almost anything. What I’ve observed is that trying to pin denialists down to a testable hypothesis generally results in a ludicrous blizzard of attempts to sidetrack the discussion with, nonsequiturs, facetious remarks, personal comments, accusations, and insults etc. The discussants here certainly have run true to form.
I used to regard such behavior as actively dishonest, an attempt to “win” the argument by deceptive means, but I’m beginning to think that there may be another explanation. I now suspect that despite their professions of certainty and their aggressive argumentation style, denialists subconsciously recognize the fundamentally irrational nature of their beliefs, and that being pressed to think rationally engenders great anxiety, which can only be relieved by distracting themselves with the avoidance strategies mentioned above.
November 16th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
When “rethinkers” like David Steele come out with such abysmally moronic arguments such as simultaneously arguing that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus and that it cannopt cause AIDS because HIV DNA is not found in a “sufficient” number of T-cells I wonder who they are trying to convince. I think the answer is first and foremost themselves.
David Steele’s assertion that HIV was an endogenous retrovirus was as far as I can tell the only firm testable hypothesis that he has put forward. If HIV were an endogneous retrovirus then it would falsify the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS.
He seems to have run away now after shooting himself in the foot. Or perhaps he shot himself in the head, tied and anchor to his feet and threw himself into the water.
November 16th, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Chris,
Umm, nice try.
It’d be nice if you stopped lying. I, Dave, did not argue that HIV was an endogenous retrovirus. I noted that 8% of the human genome is retroviral DNA — about 240 million nucleotides — that cause no harm whatsoever and kill no cells.
So, I agreed with your hypothesis that if HIV were an endogenous retrovirus, it would likely be found in all humans. And, I specifically, noted that I hadn’t seen whether this had been investigated or not.
I am fully aware that the Perth Group have danced around the issue of whether “HIV” is an endogenous retrovirus, or whether it’s just an artifact of sloppy lab techniques, and that Duesberg thinks it is exogenous.
Now, I’ve let you have your tedious, repetitive, dense, wierd personal attacks, only because I have respect for Truthseeker’s ground rules here. He encourages open-minded intellectual inquiry, whereas AIDS activists posing as scientists (like you) simply bluster the party line. But my patience is waning.
Finally, you made the claim above:
Except there were transmissions in the Padian cohort. She meticulously looked at the seroconversion history of the couples and found transmission events.
This is a lie. She found no seroconversions, and she did not “meticulously” look at seroconversion history, because she did not consider perinatal transmission — which all sides agree occurs. So, her retrospective invesetigation was sloppy and her prospective investigation revealed no seroconversions.
2. “We observed no seroconversions after entry into the study.” (Padian, pg 354.)
3.”Nevertheless, the absence of seroincident infection over the course of the study cannot be entirely attributed to significant behavior change. No transmission occured among the 25 percent of couples who did not use condoms consistently at their last follow-up nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up” (Padian, pg 356.)
So, deal with it, Chump. (Sorry TS!)
November 16th, 2006 at 9:44 pm
Now to be perfectly honest, I didn’t really expect you to answer these questions. My experience with denialists has been that they tend to be extremely reluctant to formulate their beliefs into anything resembling a testable scientific hypothesis. They tend to be a lot more comfortable with analogies, which are vague and flexible enough to rationalize almost anything. What I’ve observed is that trying to pin denialists down to a testable hypothesis generally results in a ludicrous blizzard of attempts to sidetrack the discussion with, nonsequiturs, facetious remarks, personal comments, accusations, and insults etc. The discussants here certainly have run true to form.
Trrlll, you have nailed us. We failed to provide a testable hypothesis. Instead, we indulged in the antics you have listed. You have shamed us into confessing this, and we beg your forgiveness, hat in hand. Our motives don’t bear inspection. The temptation is always too great to degenerate into playfulness, when faced with arguments of the quality you have purveyed, rather than answer them in the serious spirit in which they are posed, which in your ordered and resolute manner, you exemplify, refusing to be derailed or diverted by misplaced humor or invidious comparisons with current news stories.
Not sure about the analogies part, though:
They tend to be a lot more comfortable with analogies,
Is not the macaque/rhesus research meant to suggest that HIV causes AIDS by analogy with the HIV case?
If not, what are we arguing about, exactly?
Our testable hypothesis in this case would be, if humans, chimps, macaques or rhesus are infected with HIV, they will not demonstrate AIDS, in the absence of co factors such as drugs, starvation of essential nutrients, other disease agents etc.
Is this “denialist”? or in the absence of any convincing evidence that this is so, is it not “denialist” for you to deny such an obvious point.
What reasons, exactly, do you have for belief in HIV as the cause of AIDS? We weren’t aware that there were any scientific ones, but perhaps you have heard of one. All we know are reasons why HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS, which we will list for you if you wish.
The analogy of SHIV with rhesus monkeys was one you were advancing, we thought. But the analogy doesn’t hold up for many reasons, which we don’t have to list here, since you have in your comment above already ruled out an analogy as a valid argument, which is very true, and a fine example of the keenness of your debating style.
In fact, in this case you agree with Duesberg, who as Chris Noble keeps pointing out, is an impeccable authority on these matters, as he states, even though he thinks he is being sarcastic. For instance, on p 559 Appendix B of Inventing the AIDS Virus, an admirable book which should be the bedside reading of all who are interested in this topic, he writes:
“Moreover, the observation that a retrovirus that is 60% unrelated to HIV causes disease in monkeys cannot prove that HIV causes AIDS in humans, even if all parameters of infection were completely analogous.
It can only prove that under analogous conditions other retroviruses may also cause disease, which has been demonstrated with numerous avian and murine retroviruses long ago.” (Weiss et al., 1985)
As we have long ago noticed, your arguments are on a par with Duesberg’s in keenness of intellect so we are not surprised that you have reached the same conclusion in this respect.
November 16th, 2006 at 10:21 pm
I’m can’t see what the relevance of that would be if it is true, but let me ask a more basic question, one that goes to the fundamental logic of your argument–how do you even know that it is true? After all, people suffer in large numbers from a variety of largely unexplained ills–Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, many types of cancer, as well as many poorly-defined syndromes such as chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, etc., not to mention the many other infirmities associated with aging. How do you know that endogenous retroviruses do not contribute to some of these diseases? Do you have some individuals lacking endogenous retrovirus that you can point to to show that they are not any more healthy than people who have retrovirus in their genomes?
November 16th, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Chris,
Umm, nice try.
It’d be nice if you stopped lying. I, Dave, did not argue that HIV was an endogenous retrovirus. I noted that 8% of the human genome is retroviral DNA — about 240 million nucleotides — that cause no harm whatsoever and kill no cells.
So, I agreed with your hypothesis that if HIV were an endogenous retrovirus, it would likely be found in all humans. And, I specifically, noted that I hadn’t seen whether this had been investigated or not. Dave
Nice try, Hank… Dave. But your friend Dave… Hank did say on March 6, 2006 at 11:54 AM the following:
Quoting Chris: Chris,
Hank, you still haven’t attempted to support your claim that HIV is an endogenous virus.
I offered above to do that on a separate thread. Tell me when and where?
Hank
Posted by: Hank Barnes | March 6, 2006 11:54 AM
So why should anyone believe you, Hank/Dave ?
November 16th, 2006 at 10:47 pm
All this is taken from this thread which coincidentally discusses your continuous misrepresentation of the “Padian Paper”.
Discussion of the Padian paper
The funniest thing in this thread is where you have the gall to pretend to be in a position to evaluate scientific statements and give grades such as D+.
PS. If HIV were an endogenous retrovirus it would falsify the contention that HIV causes AIDS.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:13 am
I imagine it must be comforting to have the Book close at hand in case you have a moment of doubt. You can easily find a passage and recite it several times before falling asleep with the absolute cerntainty that you are right and thousands of scientists are all stupid.
Nobody except “rethinker” strawmen are arguing that animal models by themselves prove that HIV causes AIDS in humans. They do prove that retroviruses are capable of causing AIDS which “rethinkers” such as Duesberg go to incredible lengths to deny.
Duesberg argues that for various reasons that HIV cannot cause AIDS.
For instance he argues that HIV has the same genes as all other retroviruses (not true), lacks an “AIDS gene” and therefore cannot cause AIDS. SIV is a retrovirus without an “AIDS gene” that causes AIDS so Duesberg’s argument is plainly false.
In addition SHIV models are mostly HIV and many of these are definitely pathogenic.
Recently a simian-tropic HIV has been developed that is HIV with only a couple of short sequences modified so that infects macaques.
This result confirms that we do understand many of the species specific factors that control the host range of these retroviruses.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:15 am
Nope. You were the one who first suggested an analogy between chimps and humans, in the following quote: “There is no answer to the obvious question, why then didn’t the researchers conclude that HIV didn’t cause AIDS in humans?
When I pointed out the irrationality of that reasoning, you went on to make a broad claim of the nonpathogenicity of HIV related retroviruses, in the following quote: “Well, one has to grant that it is always possible that our teeny pseudo virus (which is what HIV really is, one of a brethren not otherwise active in causing anything interesting at all) may well be an exception”
Nope. It is meant as example of the way that you are basing your arguments on false claims, in this case the claim that the “brethren” of HIV are incapable of producing illness.
When Chris and I pointed out a well-documented example of pathogenetic effect, SIV induced immunodeficiency in rhesus monkeys, you insisted, that the pathogenetic effect of SIV is analogous to the effect of salt “Salt is an element we all need to ingest at a certain level every day. If, however, you are marooned in the tropical sea without fresh water, and try to survive on seawater, you die. This is not “activity”, this is quantity.
All I’ve asked you to do is confront the logical implications of your “quantity not activity” hypothesis.
You still have failed to do so, retreating now to “Our testable hypothesis in this case would be, if humans, chimps, macaques or rhesus are infected with HIV, they will not demonstrate AIDS, in the absence of co factors such as drugs, starvation of essential nutrients, other disease agents etc.”
Although you describe it as testable, it is of course no such thing, because the defining symptom of immune deficiency disease is enhanced susceptibility to other infectious agents. So in the absence of “other disease agents,” there is no way of detecting AIDS (other than by surrogate markers, which you do not accept as valid). Not to mention the fact that, aside from animals raised in a completely sterile environment, no animal is ever completely free of “other disease agents.”
So just to make it clear, are you now retracting your claim that the “brethren” of HIV are incapable of causing disease?
November 17th, 2006 at 12:59 am
Appeal to the Judge!
Truthseeker,
At what point can I respond with ad hominem to the continuous ad hominem attacks by Noble and his friend, Yossarian?
In any event, Trrll is the one misusing analogies. Is there a simian polio virus? Is there a simian flu virus? Is there a simian herpes virus? If so, who cares?
The only reason these fallback arguments by analogy arose, was because of the utter failure of HIV to cause AIDS in chimps –after repeated efforts to infect them.
So, again, we are faced with the paradox: HIV has supposedly killed 40 million humans, but not one chimp?
If HIV did cause disease in chimps, nobody on the planet would care about SHIV or feline immunodeficiency virus or any other “analagous” animal virus. This is goal-post moving writ large.
This, coupled with the fact, that human retroviruses (the family to which HIV belongs) also do nothing — except, ironically, for claims made by Dr. Bob “Maximum Fraud” Gallo that 2 of his retroviruses, HTLV and HTLV-11, cause leukemia in trivial numbers of villagers somewhere in Asia.
And, the rest is history — Gallo discovered HTLV-111 (via the French Post Office), claimed it was the cause of AIDS, (26/72 AIDS patients) and later had it renamed, HIV by committee to solve all the legal problems after Montagnier sued him for patent infringement.
It was a political mess — the science got crowded out. Yes, a consensus formed, but only a political consensus among cowardly scientists, not a scientific consensus.
That’s the distinction.
November 17th, 2006 at 1:46 am
Why is it that many “rethinkers” confuse criticism with ad hominem attacks. I have repeatedly attacked your arguments. This is by definition not ad hominem .
Saying that only a scientifically illiterate person would make the claim that HIV is an endogenous virus it is not an ad hominem attack.
When the same person simultaneously argues that HIV cannot cause AIDS because it’s DNA has only been found in a small fraction of T-cells then he is also stupid.
I have detailed in depth exactly why HIV cannot be an endogenous retrovirus. The very references you cited are sufficient evidence to falsify your assertion.
You a) have not admitted being wrong and b) still persist in the delusion that you are in a position to judge real scientists like John Moore.
November 17th, 2006 at 3:27 am
Saying that only a scientifically illiterate person would make the claim that HIV is an endogenous virus it is not an ad hominem attack.
When the same person simultaneously argues that HIV cannot cause AIDS because its DNA has only been found in a small fraction of T-cells then he is also stupid.
Both these are ad hominem, even if they are prompted by what you consider evidence of “stupidity” etc.
You correctly make the distinction between attacking the argument and attacking the person, the latter being what ad hominem means in Latin, as you know – directed toward the person. You understand this, of course.
But this is a blurred distinction, in practice. Any word like stupid tends to be ad hominem even if not directed explicitly at the person. If you did not understand the distinction, for example, one could say you were “being stupid”, and while this phrase is not entirely ad hominem, it surely is somewhat ad hominem – try it on Mike Tyson – but then to say that you were stupid would be very ad hominem (try THAT on Mike Tyson).
You claim to attack the argument but you really insult the person. To avoid this you have to say very specifically eg this is a dishonest argument, not even that “you are being dishonest”. Certainly not “you are dishonest”.
Similarly, to say John Moore is a real scientist is a compliment to him, perhaps deserved, perhaps not (seems evident to us that after his Op Ed piece in the Times and his AIDSTruth site this is prima facie wrong, since he may be a scientist of sorts in label and role and function but he is obviously not a real scientist by any definition we have ever heard of “real scientist”, which would have to include an open mind to new ideas including the possible flaws in his own thinking, ie enough interest in the world he doesn’t yet know to add to that curiosity a willingness to listen to counterargument, and certainly not censor it with bullying and other political means. This is the very definition of a scientist who is not a real scientist.)
Meanwhile the implication that your addressee is not a real scientist is ad hominem.
The point of all this is that arguments stand or fall according to their merits and not the merits of the one who voices them. So ad hominem arguments are just distractions which cause ill will, which is even more distracting.
Even the intellectually limited can present worthwhile arguments as this blog and its comments demonstrate.
For example, what are your credentials in this realm? You have always refused to state them, which is an indication that they are minimal, unless they are so great that you dare not draw more attention to yourself in case you are outed as in the pay of the interests served by HIV∫AIDS, which seems unlikely, since you do not sound like an architect of science, but rather, like one of its bricklayers (oops, that’s ad hominem, we profoundly regret the slip).
But if you are a bricklayer it doesn’t prevent you from advancing quibbles of extremely practiced sophistry, enhanced with logic of such subtle inversion as to baffle HIV critics by their sheer effrontery, especially when they are factually misleading.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:53 am
I’m gonna drop in here just to make a single point, and then let it go. People wonder why I stay on the fence regarding the question of causation. The answer is simple, and can be found easily in this thread. It’s clear that the research on chimpanzees and macaques does not provide anything near clear and unequivocal proof that HIV or SHIV causes AIDS. It’s also clear however that there is data indicating that SHIV damages the immune system. These kinds of ambiguous data are more common than either “side” of the argument would wish for. When confronted with ambigous data (like, for another example, Gallo’s 26/72 split on HIV in culture), the most reasonable position is to sit on the fence. I find both “sides” bring interesting considerations to the table, but neither has a firm, unequivocal argument, because neither has a firm set of unequivocal data.
November 17th, 2006 at 7:05 am
As to the question of whether or not non-scientists should comment on all of this, I think that the answer is easy: non-scientists, and scientists trained in disciplines other than microbiology, should probably state theories and hypotheses tentatively — really, all scientists studying this issue should state theories and hypotheses tentatively. But I do respect the fact that many non-scientists have spent a great deal of time exhaustively studying this issue, and therefore, are equipped to comment. At the same time, I always keep in mind what Celia Farber often says when confronted with the question on causation — that she is not equipped to answer that question, and in truth, none of us really is. I’ve made the point before — there is too much certainty being expressed on both sides of this debate, when the one thing that is clear, is how much uncertainty there actually is when one considers all theories and hypotheses.
November 17th, 2006 at 11:09 am
The research for a rational mechanism in this disease is a very exciting matter. The mechanism by explosion of the cell T4 by proliferation of the virus is for a long time obsolete, and nobody knows how to explain how this virus would provoke the disease.
The last discoveries in biochemistry seem all the same rather exciting, and can claim to explain the process of appearance of marker pens as well as the disease.
But to be rational, it is necessary to release itself from the viral definition
In their last publication, the researchers of the university of Greensboro (North Carolina) showed that ” -1 frameshifting induced by the HIV-1 env-fs sequence AAAAAGA (which contains a potential “hungry” arginine codon, AGA) increases during arginine deficiency, which has been associated with increased oxidative stress”.
They indicate so a little higher that the more the person suffers from a declared AIDS, the more the protein that they study ( the GPx) undergoes this frameshifting and goes away from the structure of the GPx of mammals.
When we disregard the intervention of a virus, we realize that this deficiency it arginine is easily provoked by its conversion in NO under the influence of divers oxidizers and catalysed by the iNOS. Furthermore, this forming of NO, conjugated to that of ion superoxide, creates the conditions of appearance of the ions peroxynitrites, responsible of the apoptosis of the lymphocytes.
In summary: the oxydatif stress provokes the forming of new proteins ( the molecular marker pens) and the disappearance of lymphocytes.
But all this is, naturally, only a hypothesis.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:37 pm
So what you’re saying, John, is that the Greensboro findings can be productively interpreted both with HIV, as they have done, and without HIV. That HIV could potentially cause the frameshifting seen by the researchers, but so could other potenital cellular mechanisms. The Greensboro data is an excellent example, in this case, of a very important truth here — that much of the data proferred in HIV/AIDS research can be produtively interpreted in multiple ways. Meaning that such data do NOT argue well for either HIV or non-HIV hypotheses, because they argue well for both. That’s what I mean when I say the lay of the land is not yet remotely unequivocal, and this is the battle of interpretations discussed most eloquently by Celia Farber in her reply in Harper’s.
November 17th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
John,
“Only a hypothesis, naturally”, and as such not likely to settle the matter either. However, Dr. Trrll’s profound analysis of denialists’ subconscious determinants appeared no less than a mirror held up:
denialists subconsiously recognize the fundamentally irrational nature of their beliefs, and that being pressed to think rationally engenders great anxiety, which can only be relieved by distracting themselves with the avoidance strategies mentioned above.
The depth of Dr. Trrll’s insight into the dark netherworld of the human mind could only stem from years of sawing off skulls and applying electrodes to naked animal brains, out of which not yet conscious biological systems our own brains evolved with the same certainty as the falling of dropped objects to the ground and the fact that HIV (and HIV-2 and SIV and FIV and SHIV etc.) cause AIDS all by themself(es)
Improved by Dr. Trrll’s analysis, I have noticed above that our scientific and VERY serious friends (it is their job after all and no laughing matter) once again have assured us that even if they lose every single simian argument they advance against the vile, ad hominem spewing, joke cracking and generally offensive denialists, it does nothing to sow doubts that HIV=AIDS.
In recognition of the error of my now former rethinker denialist ways, mainly to mistake the Durban Declaration for an authoritative document, I propose we distract ourselves no further with immaterial discussions, but let our distinguished connoisseurs of real science (including the science of the intentional directedness of the sub-conscious), Dr. Trrll and Dr. Noble, lay out the substantive arguments that prove HIV the sole cause of AIDS, including predictions that support the hypothesis, so we can examine, discuss and enlighten ourselves by the undiluted waters gushing from the true fountain head of that supreme certainty among certainties.
I propose, in other words, that Dr. Trrll and/or Dr. Noble author a document for the record, that presents in detail the essential proofs of the certainty they champion.
What could be more rational, high minded and fair?
November 17th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
At the same time, I always keep in mind what Celia Farber often says when confronted with the question on causation — that she is not equipped to answer that question, and in truth, none of us really is. I’ve made the point before — there is too much certainty being expressed on both sides of this debate, when the one thing that is clear, is how much uncertainty there actually is when one considers all theories and hypotheses.
NHM, we have brought to your attention before what we believe is the fallacy of this statement, and attitude, which to our mind serves only to play into the hands of the true denialists, ie those who like Nelson raising his telescope to his blind eye at Trafalgar, deny the 100% force of the critics of HIV∫AIDS.
The fallacy, once again, is that while all hypotheses, even the most convincing, are in theory at least subject to displacement by better ones, or at least improvements which don’t disturb their foundation, there are some hypotheses which have nothing to recommend them, and are shown by critics to have nothing to recommend them, and are therefore must be taken down, as an embarrassment to reason and good science.
HIV∫AIDS is one such abomination, being nothing more than a kite flown without much conviction by Gallo to which the NIH attached the rocket booster of federal funding.
There is no reason to allow anyone polite leeway, in this case. If something has nothing to recommend it, then it should be despatched, not allowed out of politesse or kindness, as in “I’m OK and You’re OK”, or “You have every right to differ in your belief”, which properly applies to issues of religion, not science. There is nothing to recommend the scientific belief that HIV causes AIDS, except that many respectable people believe it. Please, respect them if you like, but not their belief.
There is not one single valid piece of scientific evidence, epidemiological or laboratory, which justifies the scientific claim that HIV causes AIDS symptoms. This is not a matter of judgement, it is a matter of fact. Neither Gallo, nor Fauci, nor Temin, nor Baltimore, nor Science, nor Nature, nor Ho, nor Moore, nor Montagnier has ever come up with a single justifiable scientific reason to believe that HIV causes AIDS. Period.
In fact, as we have pointed out in this blog, Gallo originally pointed out in his Science papers the reason that HIV did not cause AIDS, which is that he was unable to find it in more than a third of the patients he sampled. Fauci has come up with nothing but admissions that he is emptyhanded when it comes to explaining how HIV could possibly cause immune dysfunction. All of them have tacitly admitted severe doubt by cutting off review.
Ho and Montagnier have since distinguished themselves by finding another cause altogether in mycoplasma, and Montagnier has secured his reputation as the only decent scientist in the whole bunch by also moving to the oxidative stress theory first launched by the Perth Group even before Gallo flew his HIV kite in 1994.
Of course, Noble and Trrlll may have discovered some reason to believe in HIV as the cause of AIDS unknown to us, and if so they are welcome to say what it is. We asked them to do this a few comments ago, and as yet there is no reply. However, now MacDonald has asked them to make a formal statement along these lines, so perhaps they cannot ignore it.
In fact, we hereby back up the MacDonald-Truthseeker offer by promising to make any decent response a post on this blog, especially if Trrlll wants to say why he believes that HIV causes AIDS. Subject to comment, of course, in Comments.
There is just one proviso. The statement cannot be boilerplate copied from the Durban declaration or the NIAID web site etc. What we are asking are your genuine personal reasons for belief in HIV∫AIDS, if any.
November 17th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
Not quite. “Ad hominem” is not a highfalutin synonym for insult. “Ad hominem” means to attack the argument by attacking the person.
For example, if I say, “You do not have a PhD, therefore you don’t know what you are talking about and there is no point in debating with you”, that is ad hominem.
Similarly if I say, “Dr. Padian has to support the HIV-AIDS model to get funded, so her insistence that her results don’t disprove transmission of AIDS should be disregarded,” that is also ad hominem.
But if I say, “SIV causes immune deficiency disease in rhesus monkeys, and the fact that you don’t know this proves that you are an idiot,” that is insulting and rude, but it is not ad hominem.
November 17th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
TS,
Pardonez moi, fer just a minute. Yossarian is missing one ad hominem and cannot locate any other ad hominems that remotely resemble a continuous string of attacks as in:
“the continuous ad hominem attacks by Noble and his friend, Yossarian? ” (Dave/Hank)
And Hank/Dave still has never responded to Chris’s question:
” Hank, you still haven’t attempted to support your claim that HIV is an endogenous virus.” to which Hank/Dave responded:
“I offered above to do that on a separate thread. Tell me when and where? ”
For that Dave is awarded a green border. That is insultive
from the guy that calls others smuckface and Sir Smuckface and his pal who emails others asking, “how’d you like the picture, on wiki ?”
Next the borders and the goal posts are not just moved they are erased and in comes old Macdonald to further smear the discussion from which you and he are now challenging nohivmeds and others to prove hiv=aids.
That’s slick. But it ain’t honest. Please inform Dave/Hank to come clean and deal with the readership with honest and truthful dialogue. And quit pandering to them.
It seems from here, that if you had had a sincere vested interest in the subject matter of this blog you wouldn’t have jerked around nohivmeds during his recent clinical treatment with which you obviously disagreed.
Now you give a green border to MacDonald ? For what, reading or changing the subject ?
November 18th, 2006 at 12:25 am
Anyone who wishes to turn the above message from the distinguished YGB into something more comprehensible to the dimwitted is welcome, but short of that, we cannot immediately understand it. It is written it appears by someone who lives on an elevated plane and who fondly believes that whatever catches his attention is the focus of attention for everyone else, but we regret his mental acuity is on a far higher plane than we can aspire to and we need directing to whatever it is that he is referring to.
If the issue is why MacDonald deserves a green border, that is entirely the work of the green border awarding software, which is currently set to recognize any sign of truth, wit, enlightenment, or barefaced effrontery, so all we can say it is a function of one or more of these parameters.
The subject of this blog is the question of whether we accept the paradigm or its debunking. All contributions on this vexed issue are welcome, even though the conclusion is already obvious, and has been for twenty years.
Ad hominem” is not a highfalutin synonym for insult. “Ad hominem” means to attack the argument by attacking the person.
Trrlll, have to say that anyone who characterizes the use of Latin as “high falutin” may not have the level of education that is required to comprehend the points traded in this blog or its Comment threads.
This seems to be demonstrated by your comments. As we recall, “Ad” means “to” and “hominem” means “the person”, and the meaning of “ad hominem” means any statement in a debate which is directed at the person speaking rather than at his/her arguments.
For instance you conclude that
“But if I say, “SIV causes immune deficiency disease in rhesus monkeys, and the fact that you don’t know this proves that you are an idiot,” that is insulting and rude, but it is not ad hominem.”
is not ad hominem. The only reason we can suppose you think this is that you are distinguishing between an argument and a statement, and you believe that only an argument can be ad hominem. But a statement can be ad hominem, too, if one lacks the kind of discriminatory taste in language that you exhibit. Since we used it in this looser sense, we can only apologize for our lack of taste, though we plead that 65% of the advisory committee of the American Heritage Dictionary agree with us, see below, thus suggesting that we are in our crudeness in line with more people that you are, and this is a democracy after all, where things are decided by majority.
However, we still believe that the best way to decide whether something is ad hominem or not is to try saying it to Mike Tyson and see what happens, eg try telling him “the fact that you don’t know this proves that you are an idiot”, and you will have your answer.
ad ho‧mi‧nem  /É‘d ˈhoÊŠmɪˌnÉ›m; Eng. æd ˈhÉ’mÉ™nÉ™m/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[ahd hoh-mi-nem; Eng. ad hom-uh-nuhm] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation
Latin.
1. appealing to one’s prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one’s intellect or reason.
2. attacking an opponent’s character rather than answering his argument.
[Origin: lit., to the man]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary – Cite This Source
ad hom·i·nem (hm-nm, -nm) Pronunciation Key Audio pronunciation of “ad hominem” [P]
adj.
Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason: Debaters should avoid ad hominem arguments that question their opponents’ motives.
[Latin : ad, to + hominem, accusative of hom, man.]ad homi·nem adv.
Usage Note: As the principal meaning of the preposition ad suggests, the homo of ad hominem was originally the person to whom an argument was addressed, not its subject. The phrase denoted an argument designed to appeal to the listener’s emotions rather than to reason, as in the sentence The Republicans’ evocation of pity for the small farmer struggling to maintain his property is a purely ad hominem argument for reducing inheritance taxes. This usage appears to be waning; only 37 percent of the Usage Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The phrase now chiefly describes an argument based on the failings of an adversary rather than on the merits of the case: Ad hominem attacks on one’s opponent are a tried-and-true strategy for people who have a case that is weak. Ninety percent of the Panel finds this sentence acceptable. The expression now also has a looser use in referring to any personal attack, whether or not it is part of an argument, as in It isn’t in the best interests of the nation for the press to attack him in this personal, ad hominem way. This use is acceptable to 65 percent of the Panel. ·Ad hominem has also recently acquired a use as a noun denoting personal attacks, as in “Notwithstanding all the ad hominem, Gingrich insists that he and Panetta can work together†(Washington Post). This usage may raise some eyebrows, though it appears to be gaining ground in journalistic style. ·A modern coinage patterned on ad hominem is ad feminam, as in “Its treatment of Nabokov and its ad feminam attack on his wife Vera often border on character assassination†(Simon Karlinsky). Though some would argue that this neologism is unnecessary because the Latin word homo refers to humans generically, rather than to the male sex, in some contexts ad feminam has a more specific meaning than ad hominem, being used to describe attacks on women as women or because they are women, as in “Their recourse… to ad feminam attacks evidences the chilly climate for women’s leadership on campus†(Donna M. Riley).
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November 18th, 2006 at 1:18 am
At the same time, I always keep in mind what Celia Farber often says when confronted with the question on causation — that she is not equipped to answer that question, and in truth, none of us really is
Causation of what, though?
Causation of malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, candida, Kaposi’s Sarcoma?
Causation of a “syndrome” consisting of a hodge-podge of illnesses that are tied together by a microbe that weakens the immune system through an amazing array of(nearly unbelievable!) methods? All the while turning our heads from such immune-weakening conditions as malnutrition, starvation, poor sanitation, excessive drug use, overuse of antibiotics, “AIDS drugs”…the list goes on.
“AIDS” is a fake syndrome. “AIDS” is tunnel vision. We don’t need “AIDS”. We don’t need “HIV”, either. We need to abandon “AIDS”.
November 18th, 2006 at 2:50 am
AIDS” is a fake syndrome. “AIDS” is tunnel vision. We don’t need “AIDS”. We don’t need “HIV”, either. We need to abandon “AIDS”.
Why? The issue is, what is the real cause of immune dysfunction once HIV is swept out of the way as irrelevant, even as an indicator?
Broadening the analysis of the cause of the problem from HIV, rejected as without sense or science, to the other causes you list, doesn’t seem to demand changing the name from Auto Immune Deficit Syndrome, does it? Which word do you object to – Auto?
Or do you mean that the cultural association of HIV and AIDS in HIV∫AIDS is now like inseparable twins with one heart?
November 18th, 2006 at 6:49 am
I agree with Dan (now don’t everyone get too surprised) —
we aren’t seeking to find the cause of “AIDS” — that jumble of crap doesn’t meet the scientific standards I’m aware of for the word “syndrome” to be applied (and yes, such standards do exist). I think that Celia Farber and I, and apparently TS too, are talking about immune deficiency, immune decline, and then, of course, the deaths that result. That’s what we need a causal explanation for. It was “my bad” for using the term “AIDS.” It’s like a reflex at this point, thanks to the meme, I’m afraid. But it’s the immunodeficiency that needs a causal explanation — and it’s the immunodeficiency for which there are currently at least 2 dissident causal explanations. At least. Even the dissidents are not in agreement on this question.
November 18th, 2006 at 8:47 am
Also, YSG said:
It seems from here, that if you had had a sincere vested interest in the subject matter of this blog you wouldn’t have jerked around nohivmeds during his recent clinical treatment with which you obviously disagreed.
Thanks, YSG. I appreciate that, but at the same time, it’s okay that I was a bit “jerked around.” People are entitled to their opinions, and I offered my clinical picture up publicly, so I was prepared for those responses. Besides, I have found support from a very prominent AIDS dissident regarding my choice of treatment — which again brings home the point that there is no single line of dissident think — not about causation or about treatment. And again, that’s why I find the level of certainty expressed on this blog alarming at times, but, again, people are entitled, and all I wish to do is to point out the level of uncertainty that actually pervades even dissident thinking on these topics.
November 18th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Truthseeker,
bear with me for a moment, as I bombard you with a bunch of questions inspired by your post.
It seems we’re in agreement that “HIV” is irrelevant, at the least. Correct?
So, taking “HIV” out of the “AIDS” equation, what have we got?
Is there really a “syndrome” that affects gay men in the US and tens of millions of people in Africa?
Without “HIV” how would this syndrome be defined? Would Tcell counts be part of the equation? If so, should it be renamed to Tcell Deficiency Syndrome?
How would “AIDS” (without “HIV”) be medically useful?
Do we need “AIDS” to understand malaria and Kaposi’s Sarcoma?
Let’s say that I’ve been diagnosed with lymphoma. With “HIV” out of the equation, would it be “AIDS lymphoma” or just lymphoma? Would the treatment for “AIDS lymphoma” be different from the treatment for garden-variety lymphoma?
I’m curious, Truthseeker, since you often focus on the psychological effects of the meme, how does keeping “AIDS” disable the meme?
November 18th, 2006 at 10:29 am
I have a question for you Dan.
Why is it that my immune system, over almost a decade now, seems to have lost so much steam? It can’t be the ARVs as I’ve spent about 1/6th of the time on those. It has resulted in multiple opportunistic infections, same as Noreen, so it can’t be a gay male thing. And nobody seems to get KS anymore, so what’s the fascination with that? What do you think explains what happened to Noreen and myself? She and I have both used ARVs, but neither until decimation of cellurlar immunity was apparent. As you wish — take HIV out of the equation and explain how it is that both Noreen and I suffered serious compromises in cellular immunity and a host of opporutnistic infections. I don’t care what name you give it — we’re not talking semantics here. We’re talking about two people, one a gay man, the other a heterosexual woman, with the exact same profile of problems.
November 18th, 2006 at 10:33 am
And while you’re thinking that through — add in those chimps or macaques or whatever simian sample that has also shown serious immunodeficiency.
So we’ve got:
1. A gay man with serious immunodeficiency and opportunitistic infections
2. A straight woman with serious immunodeficiency and opporutnistic infections (and we’re not talking tuberculosis or malaria here — we’re talking thrush, HSV, other bothersome little infections).
3. A bunch of apes with serious immunodeficiency.
Now, explaining that — that’s an interesting question. Please go for it, Dan.
November 18th, 2006 at 10:37 am
I think, by the way, we can rule our your favorite topic — semantics, as those poor old apes didn’t know they were “labelled” with anything. So, if it isn’t the meme, which it clearly can’t be, then what is it that ties myself, Noreen, and a bunch of simian samples together?
November 18th, 2006 at 10:52 am
So, if it isn’t the meme, which it clearly can’t be, then what is it that ties myself, Noreen, and a bunch of simian samples together?
Could it be HIV ? That seems the common denominator if you toss in the simians. No, I’m not being facetious. Next qt. Is it auto immune deficiency or acquired ?
November 18th, 2006 at 11:03 am
That’s a good, good, good, good quesiton YSG, and I think it takes us beyond Dan’s “none of this exists” premise. Dan, please cross the bridge and leave that behind. Although I appear to be only text displayed on your video monitor, the truth is that I exist , I know Noreen exists , and from what I understand, all those defenseless simians exist as well . Come, brother and cross that bridge. There’s much more going on that the meme here.
November 18th, 2006 at 11:21 am
?Would the treatment for “AIDS lymphoma” be different from the treatment for garden-variety lymphoma?
No (although lymphoma is a cancer, is it not, and therefore not caused by immune dysfunction anyway, is it?). But are you talking on a medical or cultural level? Are you talking philosophy or science? On the philosophical and cultural level, the discussion is too complex for our poor intellect to grasp. We are merely discussing the science, or lack of it, in this field.
Scientifically and medically, this blog is addressing a fantasy, a supposedly widespread immune deficiency and its consequences, supposedly caused by HIV, which is now a universal meme.
When that fantasy is contradicted by a critic as an empty invention, since HIV shows no sign to date of any causing anything other than the release of massive funding, the natural response in believers lay and professional is to ask, why are people dying, then? In other words, the fantasy still has content for them, even if the alleged cause is spurious.
The proper answer to their question, of course, is that people are ill or dying of whatever illness they are suffering from, which is relabeled “AIDS” instead of “TB”, or whatever. Medically speaking, as you say, there is no difference between AIDS TB and TB. What is happening is that some part of TB that is occurring is being relabeled AIDS. This is why you suggest getting rid of the whole idea of AIDS as spurious, isn’t that right? If it is nothing but relabeling, let’s get rid of the concept and the relabeling.
But the idea is bigger than that. It is that there is some extra immune deficiency causing extra TB, which is called “AIDS with TB”. Even though as you rightly point out, AIDS X (X = some illness caused by immune dysfunction) is just X, the idea is that we have an extra wave of it, an epidemic in the US, a pandemic elsewhere. “AIDS” is the idea that we have a new addition to the world’s ills, and that its cause is more immune dysfunction than we would otherwise have, and that HIV is the cause, and that if it is not the cause, then we have to find some other new cause.
This seems to be perfectly true in the US, where there was a wave of new “GRID” immune dysfunction resulting from the gay sex-drug binge of the late seventies, a wave that was eventually labeled HIV∫AIDS, and boosted and maintained by the medical profession who were misguided by scientists into supplying dangerous drugs to counter the effect of dangerous drugs. This wave has now retreated somewhat as the drugs administered have become less toxic, though they still clearly account for many if not all of the deaths of AIDS patients. But as an “epidemic” it was an additional amount of illness, and still is, that otherwise wouldn’t exist, and you have to call it something. AIDS still seems suitable, but you could relabel it Drug Induced Immune Dysfunction and be more accurate, perhaps. What are you suggesting?
On the global front, there is no extra wave of illness, no real pandemic at all, merely a wave of HIV testing, or conventional illness reinterpreted with the HIV causal assumption, which is spreading across the world as the AIDS meme. This is a fantasy pandemic, so the total illness remains the same, with part of it reinterpreted. This is shown by the death rate in South Africa remaining more or less constant, for example. If you mean that it would be as well to get rid of this reinterpretation by getting rid of the AIDS fantasy, fine. That would be mentally and politically very beneficial.
As experience to date has shown, however, this is a tough one, because uprooting a meme of this caliber from the minds of believers is akin to deprogramming the victims of a cult, a cult established and maintained by the highest secular authority (the NIAID and the highest government, academic, research, corporate, and media institutions) which actively fights deprogramming with all the massive resources available to it.
The UN Report on the Global AIDS Epidemic 2006 is 630 pages of small print, printed on heavy glossy paper, with many color pictures of smiling people, and weighs five or six lbs. It is only one item in a propaganda stream fed by whole forests which includes the finest newspaper in the world, etc. Apart from Dr Harvey Bialy’s insurgent email campaign, the propaganda stream of the critics consists of about 24 excellent but unread books, 12 pages of Harper’s March issue, the AIDS Wiki, the RA site and ten or twenty other sites, and two or three blogs read by a few hundred people, most of whom are already aware of the situation, and can or will do very little about it.
Good luck.
November 18th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
I think it takes us beyond Dan’s “none of this exists” premise.
NHM,
I seriously question your reading and comprehension skills. Or maybe you read and comprehend just fine, but are compelled to mischaracterize for some reason.
First, what do you mean by my “none of this exists” premise? Awfully vague. Could be interpreted in more than one way.
Immune impairment is real, so are the various illnesses that get placed under the “AIDS” umbrella. So, what is it you’re reading of mine that says “none of this exists”? I haven’t questioned the existence of immune deficiency/impairment OR any of the illnesses lumped together as “AIDS”. So…please enlighten us all and tell us how you’ve ascertained my “none of this exists” premise.
November 18th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Truthseeker,
that was a nice, lengthy post.
Would you be interested in answering all the questions I posed…with statements, not more questions?
I’m asking direct questions. They aren’t philosophical or cultural.
November 18th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Would you be interested in answering all the questions I posed…with statements, not more questions?
Normally your posts are the most sensible around here, but this dimissal of our answer to your point strikes us as foolish. Perhaps you need to answer your questions yourself.
Is there really a “syndrome” that affects gay men in the US and tens of millions of people in Africa?
Our reply answered this question. A drug binge caused unexpected immune dysfunction in the US among reckless gays but there is no evidence of any unusual level of immune dysfunction in Africa. The syndrome in the US was caused by stupidity and ignorance about the effect of drugs and poor nutrition on health. If a syndrome is the right word for a complex of resulting ailments, then use it.
Without “HIV” how would this syndrome be defined? Would Tcell counts be part of the equation? If so, should it be renamed to Tcell Deficiency Syndrome?
As AIDS, unless you insist that AIDS is always HIV∫AIDS, which is what this blog argues against. If so, the answers to the other two questions is Why not?
How would “AIDS” (without “HIV”) be medically useful?
Because it refers to the unexpected additional wave of immune dysfunction, and would therefore help to call attention to the stupidity and ignorance of the celebrants who suffer it, and would warn others off the suicidal behavior they have practiced.
Do we need “AIDS” to understand malaria and Kaposi’s Sarcoma?
No and yes. Read my reply.
There really is no excuse for confusion on any of these points, as you well know.
November 18th, 2006 at 1:52 pm
Truthseeker,
I’m unhappy that you find my questions to be foolish.
Now that I’ve gotten more succinct answers from you, I have a few new insights that I didn’t have before. Sorry to come off as dismissive. “Impatient” is closer to the truth. I apologize.
November 18th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
TS wrote:
Our reply answered this question. A drug binge caused unexpected immune dysfunction in the US among reckless gays but there is no evidence of any unusual level of immune dysfunction in Africa. The syndrome in the US was caused by stupidity and ignorance about the effect of drugs and poor nutrition on health. If a syndrome is the right word for a complex of resulting ailments, then use it.
So maybe that explains my immune deficiency (it doesn’t, but for the sake of sane argument, sometimes concessions are made), but how does it explain Noreen’s immune deficiency, or the simians? I notice that those questions have been covertly swept under the carpet. Time to drag them out again.
November 18th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I do have to say that I think it’s funny (in a dark humour sort of way) that there is this impression that ALL gay guys who are immuno-suppressed are that way because they acted like drunken, drug-addicted sluts. I mean, that is a laugh! If only it were actually true.
November 18th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
If you reduce the term ad hominem to anything that may cause offence then it is completely meaningless. In that case it is not a logical fallacy.
David’s argument that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus is directly contradicted by his second argument that HIV DNA is only found in a small fraction of T-cells in HIV+ subjects. There is no other way to characterise this argument as anything other than stupid. Dose this reflect poorly on David’s scientific literacy and intellect? Yes. Is it likely that David might be insulted by the manner in which I have pointed out the stupidity of his argument? Yes. Does this make it an ad hominem attack? No,
An ad hominem attack would be to attribute political motivations to your opponents as an alternative to addressing the actual arguments. This what David Steele and other “rethinkers” do all the time.
November 18th, 2006 at 11:58 pm
Thanks for that non-sequitor on the nature of logical fallacies, Chris. It was right on point (not). Maybe you want to attempt to address the very simple question I put out there on the collection of immuno-deficiencies we seem to have amassed here at NAR. What do one high-brow faggot, one lovely straight lady, and a bunch of tortured great apes with immunodeficiencies have in common? We seem to have determined that it can’t be the “meme” (those apes don’t pay too much attention to memes, after all). We also seem to have established that it wasn’t sex, drugs, and rock and roll either. No one seems to have any good ideas here beyond that.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Infection with one of a family of related retroviruses.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:23 am
Sorry, Dan, didn’t mean to be impatient with you, just thought our oh-so-brilliant and provocative response would tell all.
but how does it explain Noreen’s immune deficiency, or the simians? I notice that those questions have been covertly swept under the carpet. Time to drag them out again.
I do have to say that I think it’s funny (in a dark humour sort of way) that there is this impression that ALL gay guys who are immuno-suppressed are that way because they acted like drunken, drug-addicted sluts. I mean, that is a laugh! If only it were actually true.
Whether you have behaved like a slut or not is entirely for you to claim, and we did not include all immunodeficient gays in that category.
Immune deficiency is due to recreational drugs, lack of essential nutrients and/or poisonous medications, or the assault of real disease if that is overwhelming, which is not usual in the well fed and protected West, if people do not have a weak constitution to begin with.
Yes, most gays who acted like drug-addicted sex crazed idiots – sluts in your vernacular – risked immune deficiency and came down with it often enough to be noticed as a new disease, marked by KS, in the early eighties (GRID).
The rest who exhibited immune deficiency then or later must have either taken fewer drugs or been brought down by one of the other causes listed, in most cases presumably the deadly AZT that was the first medication.
That this was indeed the case is suggested by the fall off in numbers with time as the really lunatic and self destructive contingent was hit earlier than the more inhibited ones who came down later, which correlated with lower intake of drugs, thus creating the famous ‘latent period’ which slowly grew from an initial two or three to over 12 years.
If you don’t want to confirm you acted like a lunatic yourself in this regard, presumably you are in the second box, where the numbers are now kept up with ARV’s and lower doses of AZT. Noreen has to account for her own experience in the same fashion, we assume. Let her tell you. We doubt she was a riproaring drug and sex addict, as you do.
As for the monkeys, apparently you have been unable to read all the many posts here which have dealt with that topic. For your information, and perhaps to bring this silly thread and its misleading statements by Chris Noble to a close, here is the bottom line summary of the facts of the matter.
Forget the monkeys:
There is no viable analogy between a) HIV, humans and “HIV∫AIDS” and b) SIV, SHIV, monkeys and “simian AIDS” because the two are dissimilar in the following respects:
1. The virus strains used on the monkeys are pathogenic strains selected out from the range available.
2. The virus strains that occur in the wild cause no problems in their natural host nor in humans, only in a different subspecies.
3. They cause problems only in baby monkeys before their immune systems have developed fully.
4. They otherwise cause problems only to monkeys who have lived well beyond their normal life span.
5. Lab monkeys are weakened by living in cages without exercise or sunlight (Vitamin A deficit, a key to combating Tumor Necrosis Factor, and your key to disarming Bird Flu if it ever arrives, as we have told you)
6. The symptoms produced are not similar to human “AIDS” but merely to the initial impact of any virus, ie ARC in the case of HIV.
7. The quantity of virus thrown at them is much higher than any HIV level in humans, certainly relative to antibodies.
Any analogy between SIV and HIV is thus null and void, despite the desperate attempts of the HIV boys to squeeze a square peg into a round hole.
This is just off the top of the head out of impatience with this nonsense which has been going on at such length because we have given Chris Noble free rein, and he has littered this thread with a score of spurious claims and assertions. We regret that you have been taken in.
November 19th, 2006 at 1:18 am
If you reduce the term ad hominem to anything that may cause offence then it is completely meaningless. In that case it is not a logical fallacy.
Thank you Chris for providing such a clear example of your propensity to logical fallacy, not to mention misquoting and misunderstanding. Let us correct you, as usual. The term “ad hominem” means directed towards the person. That is what we said and what we meant.
Is it likely that David might be insulted by the manner in which I have pointed out the stupidity of his argument? Yes. Does this make it an ad hominem attack? No
Ditto. The answer is Yes. Given the ad hominem manner in which you pointed it out. What happened to your favorite ad hominem claim, “dishonest”, by the way?
An ad hominem attack would be to attribute political motivations to your opponents as an alternative to addressing the actual arguments. This what David Steele and other “rethinkers” do all the time.
Thank you for stating the definition correctly, even though you probably meant the opposite.
By the way, when you say that rethinkers often ascribe political motivations to you, let’s point out that you have never denied this despite being offered many opportunities to do so, including the question of whether you are paid.
Since you have been at the same repetitive effort without accepting any correction since 1998, it is fairly clear what the conclusion is.
To argue on such a fixed basis without any room to take in new arguments and information and change your mind must be somewhat tedious over eight years, and we sympathise. On the other hand, the pay must be worth it, which is our final reason for believing in the obvious conclusion. It could hardly be worthwhile for an intelligent person simply to be motivated by the attention.
Feel free to correct our impression any time you wish.
Meanwhile, we beg you to try not to divert discussion here with casual errors of fact eg that SIV creates the same symptoms in monkeys as HIV in humans, see above. If one removed your misstatements from this thread, there would hardly be anything left.
But thank you for providing the opportunity to scotch one of the three reasons why Luc Montagnier claims that HIV is involved in AIDS after all, when he has discovered so many co factors, as he states at the end of Chapter 7 in his book, Virus. These are
1) HIV causes a decline in T cells
2) simian “AIDS”
3) The drugs “work”.
Since none of these hold up under scrutiny, as this blog has demonstrated, it is clear that Montagnier is an HIV “denialist” at heart, and just being polite in tipping his hat to HIV, not to mention retaining his glory as the discoverer of this viral Beelzebub. Read his book to find out how “co factors” cause AIDS, Chris, it will interest you.
No wonder he doesn’t get invited to World AIDS Conferences any more.
November 19th, 2006 at 4:16 am
Well I see that the very serious and very adult scientists, Dr. Trrll and Dr. Noble (and a couple others) have made their bid.
To recap, when forced by the sheer weight of the available evidence to admit that a gigantic bicycle pump and saltwater can be a lethal weapon under certain circumstances, Dr. Trrll complained that,
My experience with denialists has been that they tend to be extremely reluctant to formulate their beliefs into anything resembling a testable scientific hypothesis. They tend to be a lot more comfortable with analogies, which are vague and flexible enough to rationalize almost anything. What I’ve observed is that trying to pin denialists down to a testable hypothesis generally results in a ludicrous blizzard of attempts to sidetrack the discussion with, nonsequiturs, facetious remarks, personal comments, accusations, and insults etc. The discussants here certainly have run true to form.
I used to regard such behavior as actively dishonest, an attempt to “win” the argument by deceptive means, but I’m beginning to think that there may be another explanation. I now suspect that despite their professions of certainty and their aggressive argumentation style, denialists subconsciously recognize the fundamentally irrational nature of their beliefs, and that being pressed to think rationally engenders great anxiety, which can only be relieved by distracting themselves with the avoidance strategies mentioned above
This caused the denialists, TS and myself, to immediately repent of our ways and offer the real scientists, Dr. Trrll and Dr. Noble, a free hand to get the discussion back on its scientific rails: objective examination of the proof supporting the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
We asked the above mentioned 2 scientists to lead the way by giving us an example of that which they rightly perceive as lacking in denialists, namely a willingness to let themselves get “pinned to a testable hypothesis”.
We challenged them to “lay out the substantive arguments that prove HIV the sole cause of AIDS, including predictions that support the hypothesis”. And furthermore to do so in a personal way, giving their own reasons for thinking why this evidence is so strong.
I hereby summarize the arguments they came up with in favour of HIV/AIDS:
Dr. Trrll: “Ad hominem” is not a highfalutin synonym for insult. “Ad hominem” means to attack the argument by attacking the person.
For example, if I say, “You do not have a PhD, therefore you don’t know what you are talking about and there is no point in debating with you”, that is ad hominem.
Similarly if I say, “Dr. Padian has to support the HIV-AIDS model to get funded, so her insistence that her results don’t disprove transmission of AIDS should be disregarded,” that is also ad hominem.
But if I say, “SIV causes immune deficiency disease in rhesus monkeys, and the fact that you don’t know this proves that you are an idiot,” that is insulting and rude, but it is not ad hominem.
This powerful argument, going straight to the heart of the matter, was immediately linked to the equally central issues of border policy and football by the always fair minded Yossarian:
Next the borders and the goal posts are not just moved they are erased and in comes old Macdonald to further smear the discussion from which you (TS)and he are now challenging nohivmeds and others to prove hiv=aids.
NB! The denialists would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the discussion for further smearing it by asking proof that HIV=AIDS.
Fortunately, the indefatigable Dr. Noble wasn’t discouraged by our low attempts at smearing the discussion. Instead of getting bogged down in the denialist quagmire, he stayed the course and threw his scientific bulk into the argument at the point where his experience told him it counts the most:
If you reduce the term ad hominem to anything that may cause offence then it is completely meaningless. In that case it is not a logical fallacy
An ad hominem attack would be to attribute political motivations to your opponents as an alternative to addressing the actual arguments. This what David Steele and other “rethinkers” do all the time.
This excellent belabouring of Dr. Trrll’s previous argument clearly shows the moral integrity of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
In the meantime NHM, who, as we saw above, is identical with Dr. Trrll and Dr. Noble according to Yossarian, provided more compelling data that the meaning of words isn’t pathogenic, regardless of titers, by presenting a flawless example of scientific analogy based on the animal model:
I think, by the way, we can rule our your favorite topic — semantics, as those poor old apes didn’t know they were “labelled” with anything. So, if it isn’t the meme, which it clearly can’t be, then what is it that ties myself, Noreen, and a bunch of simian samples together.
In the interest of scientific debate, denialists forbear to give any of the many obvious answers to this question. Instead we note that Yossarian and Dr. Noble successfully applied the HIV=AIDS explanatory model to the conundrum: That which ties together creatures that have tested positive on an antibody test for HIV-1, HIV-2, SIV, SHIV etc. (FIV possibly excepted) is that they have tested positive on an antibody test for HIV-1, HIV-2, SIV, SHIV etc. (FIV possibly excepted).
Dr. Noble nails it admirably:
Infection with one of a family of related retroviruses.
The logical force of this argument, needless to say, is a hallmark of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, quite possibly its strongest feature.
So on behalf of the denialists, I would like to thank the real scientists for obliging us in delivering all this compelling, up to date and extremely hard to argue with evidence to show that HIV causes AIDS, and that denialists are only interested in smearing the discussion.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:49 am
That was all a brilliant display of this debate, and I am grateful to all participants for their answers. The conundrum I presented (especially our friend Noreen’s case) is easily answered by both the HIV=AIDS supporters, and not quite as easily, but also answered by our dissident friends, in the manner of a “dose-response” to toxins in my case (maybe I’m not one of those crazy gays from the early days who are not here to tell us if TS’s hypotheses about them is correct — but I MUST, if the dissidents are right, be suffering at the very least from the effects of the cytotoxic drugs I take). As for our friends the chimps, a more elaborate (and therefore less parsimonious, and so less likely to be correct) answer is arrived at by TS.
But, alas, the dissidents cannot account for Noreen’s difficulties. Score one for the HIV=AIDS supporters, I’m afraid.
And to all — I’m sitting very comfortably on my fence here. I refuse to endorse any of the answers provided. Why? Well, as TS and others have shown, there are still large unanswered questions and theoretical black holes in HIV= AIDS theory. And voila — it appears the same is true for dissident thinking as well (many thanks to my simian friends and to Noreen).
It is most interesting to observe that the two sides state their claims so very emphatically, with what appears to be utter certainty. Of course, there is no call for that, as the mere existance of the other side provides evidence that at the very least, both sides have something wrong in their thinking. I present this as the Third Way of thinking about all of this. What if both the establishment and the dissidents were both partly right and partly wrong? Now I know this idea will receive short shrift here, but I put it out there for the readers, not my fellow posters. There is a Third Way.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:52 am
And Yossarian, you never fail to disappoint. You appear and then disappear when the going gets interesting. I wonder if you are interested in the Third Way. Perhaps you’ll let us know sometime.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:03 am
On the thirty-second day of the thirteenth month on the eighth day of the week,
On the twenty-fifth hour and the sixty-first minute, we’ll find all things that we seek.
Sam Walter Foss 1858-1911
November 19th, 2006 at 8:07 am
Hmmm. Thanks for that YSG. Very illuminating — or, I imagine it might be very illuminating if I understood what it was you were trying to say.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:13 am
Perhaps YSG is indicating the existance of a Fourth Way — that being that we will never know the answers to the questions we discuss. As an optimist, I can’t endorse it, but as a fellow human, I can certainly validate it. Still, I hope you’re wrong, YSG.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:23 am
Actually, I was gone most of Friday and yesterday and wasn’t around to comment. Dr. Bialy does not have all the answers nor does TS. Yes, I am open to a third way, NHM, and align myself with your basic approach. Denialists are less than accurate in totally jetisoning HIV from paradigm.
I seriously doubt NIH/CDC will ever remove HIV from the blood borne pathogen category.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Lets try an analogy. If you study your family history geneaology with any seriousness, you will soon find out there isn’t an end point. As you go further and further back in time, the less information is advailable and you may or may not find yourself analysing yDNA or mtdna in relatives/cousins etc. That doesn’t mean you cannot be an optimist.
Studying AIDS is like that. Its like listening to Sec of Defense Rumsfeld talk about the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Presumably there are also unknown unknowns.
So my basic approach is optimistic. Now, don’t take this too serious, I haven’t had my morning coffee yet and am still in insomniac mode.
Here’s a question:
Do you think any of these discussions would take place if ARV’s didn’t exist ?
November 19th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Studying AIDS is like that. Its like listening to Sec of Defense Rumsfeld talk about the known knowns and the unknown knowns. Presumably there are also unknown unknowns.
I couldn’t agree more with that, and anyone who holds another opinion simply isn’t very informed on the nature of epistemology. Of course there are unknown unknowns. There are always unknown unknowns. If either highly polarized side could admit to this, then things might look very different. But my guess is that neither side will concede to what is a very obvious epistemological point.
Do you think any of these discussions would take place if ARV’s didn’t exist?
No, I don’t. At this point, the existance of the ARVs has become such an enormous confound in figuring all of this out — it is almost impossible to disentangle the phenomena of the illness with the treatment industry. Almost impossible, but not entirely. There are potential ways to examine the confounding effect of the meds — some that are actually happening with studies of “long-term non-progressors.” But again, in answer to your quesiton, I think the ARVs are just as vital to the dissident argument as they are to the establishment’s argument. Both sides claim that the ARVs prove their theory correct. Clearly, that is not tenable, unless one resorts to the Third Way, in which both sides could be partially right concerning the ARVs (i.e., they could be dangerous and helpful at the same time). Of course, I’m writing blasphemy here, but for the benefit of those who don’t post, I’ll just blast away with this blasphemy.
Go have some coffee. Nice talking with you.
November 19th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
The beneficial and toxic effects of the ARV’s can be completely explained in the model of the oxidative stress .
So, the first one of the ARVs, AZT, certainly provoked the temporary increase of the CD4 +, and I think that the Fischl study was not so slanted that we sometimes think of it. But in the time, we did not know the impact of NO and of its by-products on the immune system.
So, the chemical thermodynamics learns us that azides are oxidizing (towards thiols), and at the same moment reducers (towards peroxynitrites).
The speed of the reactions between these two nitrogenous compounds (giving nitrogen monoxide or dinitrogen) is more important than that between azides and thiols.
Furthermore, as well as shows it Kim and al ., compounds releasing NO are not toxic in the presence of thiols, and NO released in it conditions has an antiapoptotic role.
So, we understand better the initial “virological” impact of AZT
But, as well as we know it since 1988 thanks to the works of Oppenheimer and al ., AZT oxidizes slowly these same thiols, until make them unimportant.
NO is not more managed by thiols, and its concentration increases strongly, what confers him now apoptotic properties, the rates of CD4 + decrease, and the death follows.
And, when, in 1996, we fell (accidentally as usual), on an nucleosidic analog which allowed AZT to work again, we did not regrettably study if the sulfur of this 3TC allowed again to mobilize NO. What corresponds well the classic experimental data of chemistry.
November 19th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
For the followers of “The Third Way” (sounds like a religion)…
Please keep us up to date on your progress. I’m curious to know what aspects of “HIV” research you keep, and which ones you dismissm, and the reasoning for your choices.
It sounds like HIV is still front and center, correct? You’re just not sure what it does, how it does it, or what help it may need to do what it does?
If HIV is still a central part of “whatever is going on”, then are the tests 99.95% accurate? If I go get an “HIV” test, I will know for certain whether or not I have “HIV”? Let us know if you’re keeping this one. One of my “favorites” is “HIV”’s amazing ability to mutate. Keeping that one? Well, there’s just so many to choose from. Keep us informed, please.
November 19th, 2006 at 2:04 pm
The retroviral model passes necessarily, according to Montagnier, by the model of the oxidative stress , this one indicating moreover that we do not know how it arrives there.
On the other hand the model of the oxidative stress is self-sufficient in itself. The principle of Ockham thus pleads in its favour.
The tests are tests with limit, and the “cross-reactions”, which should give a background noise whatever is the concentration in these “cross-reactive” proteins, gives values of optical densities very superior when the serum is not diluted (Giraldo). Thus it is the same proteins, that are not thus specific of a virus, but a metabolic trouble : the oxidative stress
November 19th, 2006 at 2:05 pm
nohivmeds (mail):
I do have to say that I think it’s funny (in a dark humour sort of way) that there is this impression that ALL gay guys who are immuno-suppressed are that way because they acted like drunken, drug-addicted sluts. I mean, that is a laugh! If only it were actually true.
This is one of those complicated biological situations for which the ignoble doctor Trlll is always longing.
An examination of an immuno-compromised individual’s health history will almost always reveal past drug use, either hard, recreational drugs or otherwise illicit drugs via prescription. Of course, such thorough examinations are a medical relic in the HMO era. Doctors are expected to be able to provide a diagnosis and treatment is derived in a paltry 15 minutes for many patients. With HIV, passing out ARVs to the sick is absolutely easier than considering all the many, complicated circumstances of those individual health histories. This is especially problematic, given the new health dangers we face, living in enviroments that are increasingly toxic. We may certainly have conquered a few of the most insidious microbes, but we have also become fixated on that interpretation of disease, to the detriment of medical efficacy.
As for the above quote from NHM…there is much irony in understanding the complexities of this major medical debacle. Case in point…I’m an HIV-, gay, immuno-compromised man who has never participated in the gay “druggie scene”. Honestly
But I have participated in the “pill for every ill” lifestlye that is ruining the health of people of all sexualities. I was given hundereds of antibiotic prescriptions for sinus infections by nearly the same amount of doctors. Not one them objected. Not one of them suggested the other lifestyle changes that I now find so valueable. There are thousand more like me out there. Antibiotics, as well as other pharmaceuticals may have serious long-term effects for frequent users. We are the first generation to grow up with powerful anti-microbials. Sure, there are some doctors out there now who are being more prudent in prescribing antibiotics, but the proverbial damage is done for some of us.
Regardless, go to any health-related messageboard and read the entries for “sinus sufferers”. They are legions; sinus infections are the number one reason for primary care. And this chemical experiment is growing day by day, while the medical industry continues to deny the need to treat the whole patient.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Kevin,
it’s posts like yours above that can pull us away from the HIV tunnel vision that so many of us cling to. Realizing that there’s just so much going on with health and healthcare that too often gets distilled into simplistic dogmas (HIV=AIDS, for example).
November 19th, 2006 at 2:12 pm
To those who ask what the “sick with AIDS” “SIV infected monkeys” and the “HIV-infected humans” of all persuasions and demographics have in common, try a list that begins with this:
A defective cytochrome monoxidase.
November 19th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
I think the ARVs are just as vital to the dissident argument as they are to the establishment’s argument
It’s incredible how the “third way” meme, also called the “sitting so comfortably on the fence that I don’t ever want to come down – EVER!” meme, makes its host repeat the most inane and misleading rubbish over and over with the sole purpose of keeping him balanced fifty-fifty between either side.
The argument we are talking about here is proof of causation. The efficacy of ARVs is in NO way, shape or form “vital” to the dissident contention that the hypothesis ‘HIV causes AIDS’ remains to be proved.
If truly effective drugs were to be developed that target HIV and absolutely nothing else, they would become meaningful as proof of causation.
Until then it is a sign of utter bankruptcy that AIDS ’scientists’ after 25 years have to rely on “the drugs work – well sort of – so it’s got to be HIV that causes AIDS” as their weightiest argument.
So, Solomon, go chop up some other baby if you feel you must feed Gallo’s dogs at least half of every bone of contention.
And Mr. Yossarian of course we would not be having this discussion if ARVs didn’t exist, because then there would be no product to fund, develop and sell, and therefore no need to perpetuate the HIV lie – unless you think antibody tests without drugs could keep the whole industry going.
Next time have your coffee before you come up with the question of the day.
November 19th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
A defective cytochrome monoxidase
Please say more for those of us not intimately familiar with the microbiological lingo. And Dan, the Third Way has nothing to do with HIV, or oxidative stress — you miss the entire point. That being simply that it is the skeptical position, so it takes no position. That isn’t hard to understand, I don’t think.
Also, thank you to both John and Kevin for interesting and informative posts. I agree Kevin that one not need to have been involved with the gay drug scene – that was indeed my point — TS seems to have a hard time with that. Perhaps your post helped clarify. John, next time break it down even more simply if you can — I get the gist, but would like to understand the details better.
November 19th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
MacDonald wrote:
Failing initiation into the exclusive PubMed longterm non-progressor jockey club, you will in all likelihood never know if the apparently effective vaccination campaign so benefitting macaques, otherwise brutally assaulted with laboratory created “SIV/HIV hybrids”, would reproduce in humans, or if it will turn out that the molecular determinants, subject-matter of true scientists, are ultimately aligned against it.
Very well said. Such fools make rich satirical fodder, and mocking them is the rare opporunity to inject a little humor into what is by most accounts a rather grave matter.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 3:50 pm
So they just happened to accidentally have pick simians with a defective cytochrome monoxidase ?
November 19th, 2006 at 4:13 pm
A defective cytochrome monoxidase.
Inscrutable as ever. You mean they have all been sniffing car polish which has been left too long with the lid off?
Of course there are unknown unknowns. There are always unknown unknowns.
Always the excuse of the weak minded and indecisive. What distinguishes the smart and decisive from the bewildered is that they can recognize the point when enough evidence accumulates to render one alternative inconceivable, because it becomes irreconcilable with the facts known, regardless of how many known or unknown unknowns might remain.
This syndrome of indecision before the obvious is something which arises from a nervous temperament, aging, illness or lack of emotional and spiritual support. We therefore ask everyone’s indulgence of NHM in his travail and to provide maximum emotional and social support at this time of need, bound to be magnified by the double whammy of the holidays coming up.
I was given hundreds of antibiotic prescriptions for sinus infections by nearly the same amount of doctors. Not one them objected. Not one of them suggested the other lifestyle changes that I now find so valuable. There are thousand more like me out there. Antibiotics, as well as other pharmaceuticals may have serious long-term effects for frequent users. We are the first generation to grow up with powerful anti-microbials.
Hundreds over what period?
On the other hand the model of the oxidative stress is self-sufficient in itself. The principle of Ockham thus pleads in its favour.
We can look forward to Montagnier and the Perthies getting the Nobel for AIDS, then. Duesberg can be awarded the Nobel for Peace.
November 19th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Trlll wrote:
Similarly if I say, “Dr. Padian has to support the HIV-AIDS model to get funded, so her insistence that her results don’t disprove transmission of AIDS should be disregarded,” that is also ad hominem.
No it isn’t.
Such a critique first examines the summary declarations submitted with the paper, and then, it is exceedingly easy to compare the conclusion of the written declarations to any “official” comments after publication. If those two analytical processes yield contradictory conclusions, it is not ad hominem to point out such inconsistencies. In fact, it would be intellectually weak-minded not to notice that such contradictions are out of hand.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 5:00 pm
TS wrote:
his syndrome of indecision before the obvious is something which arises from a nervous temperament, aging, illness or lack of emotional and spiritual support. We therefore ask everyone’s indulgence of NHM in his travail and to provide maximum emotional and social support at this time of need, bound to be magnified by the double whammy of the holidays coming up.
Honestly, TS, that really is below you, now isn’t it? You understand the role of the skeptic — if you don’t, well, I wouldn’t know where to begin with you.
It seemed to me that there was room for doubt amidst all the certainty expressed by C.N. and trrll on the one side, and you, TS, and others on the other side. It seems clear that things have become too dichotomized when one side can’t even talk in a civil fashion with the other. My fingers are pointing at both sides on that one. The oppressed (dissidents) have come to resemble their oppressors all too well, exemplified by the kind of comments you, TS, make. No one is obligated to make a decision. People are very much allowed to reserve judgement. It’s fine with me that you feel so confident in your views. I’m not interested in changing your mind. In fact, I’m not writing for you. Again, I’m writing for NAR’s readers.
Rudeness is unnecessary here. Why you find it necessary to insult my intelligence every time I disagree with you is a mystery to me, but it is wholly unnecessary and rather ridiculous, especially when you do it so unfailingly. It’s clear you do not question your own beliefs for one second. Fine. Please afford me the same luxury then — entitlement to my own beliefs without the casting of person dispersions.
The role of the skeptic is to observe the existance of unanswered questions and inject doubt. It’s a vital role in the advancement of any science. If you fail to understand that, then you fail to understand science at all.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:07 pm
This lovely quote, supposedly endorsed by you TS, is important to remember, I should think, at times like this:
A clash of doctrine is not a disaster but an opportunity
Alfred North Whitehead
Heed Whitehead’s advice. Instead of getting your panties balled up into a wad every time someone disagrees with you, why not look at such disagreements as an “opportunity” for further discussion. You seem unable to live that which you preach.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:28 pm
Rudeness is unnecessary here. Why you find it necessary to insult my intelligence every time I disagree with you is a mystery to me, but it is wholly unnecessary and rather ridiculous, especially when you do it so unfailingly. It’s clear you do not question your own beliefs for one second. Fine. Please afford me the same luxury then — entitlement to my own beliefs without the casting of person dispersions.
Sorry if you think our sympathetic analysis was rude, when we were asking all to support you emotionally and socially until you were strong enough to make a decision based on the fact that THE FACTS OUTSTANDING ARE IRRECONCILABLE WITH HIV∫AIDS, regardless of how many unknown unknowns there are, unless they change the laws of logic and the physical universe.
Notice how you choose to quote and reply to the emotional paragraph rather than the analytical paragraph which makes the point you have to take. That is what we object to in your style. This is a site for analyzing the reason and evidence behind the now broken paradigm, not for going off those rails down every emotional byway, which only delights the specialists in red herrings, by which we mean none other than Chris Noble and the rest of the pharmacrew.
The role of the skeptic is to observe the existence of unanswered questions and inject doubt. It’s a vital role in the advancement of any science. If you fail to understand that, then you fail to understand science at all.
Then precisely according to the wording of your own statement we are practicing skepticism to the hilt here while you hang back from the diving board shivering at the prospect of throwing away the remnants of your embarrassing previous belief that the drugs you swallowed were saving your life because they kept your “viral load” down.
Get with the program NHM if you want to “understand science at all”. We will give you all the support you need as long as you are grateful for it, instead of behaving as if your rescuers were trying to drown you in certainty.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
TS, you have me laughing out loud!
Get with the program NHM if you want to “understand science at all”.
I know it’s inconvient for your to remember this, TS, but I actually am a scientist and you’re actually a writer.
“Understanding” apparently implies signing up hook-line-and-sinker for the
“TS Approach.” Apparently, any other conclusion is evidence of some sort of misunderstanding. Do you realize what a fanatic you sound like? Like the “John Moore of Dissidence.” Really. Take the title — it is yours, hands down.
November 19th, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Before you take another swing, let me just say, TS, that I know you to be a very intelligent person with a great deal of knowledge on this topic, which is one of the reasons I come to NAR. You’re railing against a fan. Don’t be such a fool. My position is tenable. It’s as tenable as anyone’s position. Let it go. I come here for interaction and knowledge, which I gain from everyone who posts here. So I’m reserving judgement. So what? This shouldn’t threaten you at all. It shouldn’t threaten anyone. The fact that it does deserves personal examination, because it is, I think, rather foolish to be threatened by someone who is actually interested in what everyone here has to say.
November 19th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Dan wrote:
1. It seems we’re in agreement that “HIV” is irrelevant, at the least. Correct?
2. So, taking “HIV” out of the “AIDS” equation, what have we got?
3. Is there really a “syndrome” that affects gay men in the US and tens of millions of people in Africa?
4. Without “HIV” how would this syndrome be defined? Would Tcell counts be part of the equation? If so, should it be renamed to Tcell Deficiency Syndrome?
5. How would “AIDS” (without “HIV”) be medically useful?
6. Do we need “AIDS” to understand malaria and Kaposi’s Sarcoma?
7. Let’s say that I’ve been diagnosed with lymphoma. With “HIV” out of the equation, would it be “AIDS lymphoma” or just lymphoma? Would the treatment for “AIDS lymphoma” be different from the treatment for garden-variety lymphoma?
8. I’m curious, Truthseeker, since you often focus on the psychological effects of the meme, how does keeping “AIDS” disable the meme?
___________________________________________________________
Dan, I’ll answer your questions because they are very relevant to getting to the truth of this illness.
As I see it?
1. Irrelevant. There is correlation but research expecting causation has not proven frutiful, except in producing some very toxic anti-microbials.
2. An immune dsyfunction syndrome characterized by disparate factors, but four types of AIDS seem evident to me (Stephen Davis recognizes these four and I agree): African AIDS caused by malnutrition and unsanitary conditions (but not just Africa, extremely poor diets in the Western world are equally culpable), iatrogenic AIDS(pharmaceutical cause is much greater than most recognize), AIDS-by-decree (the CDC’s statistical trickery), early-80’s AIDS (which was co-factorial in my opinion, but primarily born of drug use a litany of other poor health choices… putting it mildly ).
3. Yes but it isn’t new or infectious, and the solutions are not related to treatment based on HIV status, thus it might be better to jettison the term for clarity. Immune-suppression caption the essence and is itself quite clear for people who suffer with it.
4. No, T-cell counts do not uniformly correlate with clinical presentations, whether good or bad, particularly in the long-term, i.e. T cells often rise when treatment begins but health frequently declines the longer you stay on the meds. Also, many people appear quite healthy with low T-cell counts, irrespective of HIV.
5. It is a historical fact that will be used to explain what happens when large numbers of people choose not to be responsible enough to take an interests in their own health status, even when threatened with a health care system that is unscrupulousy profit-driven, where wealth protection for the few is far more important than health protection for the many. (Not sure if that’s what you mean).
6. Absolutely not. However, people who are immuno-compromised will require more careful treatment when faced with any serious infection. Once again, this is independent of HIV status. A very careful and healthful diet, plenty of rest in a low stress environment, and timely, appropriate treatment for OIs are all essential. My health would still be tenuous without realizing and living by these important truths. My HMO doctors still haven’t figured out why my health drastically improved when I stopped following their recommendations or taking their pills, but I’m intimately familiar with what works for someone who is immune-supressed and their resistance to my successes speaks volumes about the perverse abstraction into which that the doctor-patient relationship is obscured.
7. Cancer in an immune-compromised individual is a more serious complication, I would think, given that the most common treatment is chemotherapy which is known to damage bone marrow, and thus, the immune system. One only has to look at past HIV treatment to see how useful chemo therapy is in helping the immuno-compromised individual recover health. I do believe that several hundred thousand “AIDS” patients were essentially killed by the adminstration of high-dose AZT. Many of those people were healthy, having merely tested positive when treatment began, so their deaths are even more tragic and senseless.
8. It doesn’t and should probably be tossed. We could always use the lesser-known CDC acronym for non-HIV immune dsyfunction called, ICL, which is quite similar clinically to AIDS, no matter what the apologists say. They point out numerical differences between the two regarding immune cell counts, but that does not prove causation from correlation, no matter how you dress it up.
Until healthcare and lifestyle decisions are made in ways that benefit patients at the individual level, people will continue to suffer ill-health in greater and greater numbers, and no amount of labratory wizardry will change that fact. High-quality healthcare of the future need not be so fundamentally different than what I think is high-quality healthcare of the today, namely holistic care that is not chemically-centric. Unfortunately, HMO-based care is the anti-thesis to holistic care, and it’s hold over us all might not be broken without enduring worsening circumstances, first.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Kevin, since you brought it up, can you be more specific regarding the following:
early-80’s AIDS (which was co-factorial in my opinion, but primarily born of drug use a litany of other poor health choices…putting it mildly).
I wasn’t aware that drug addiction was considered a “choice.” At least, not in any of the addiction models I’m aware of. Can you say more about the “other poor health choices?” It seems you’re passing judgement here, so you should say what you mean.
November 19th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
TS wrote:
I was given hundreds of antibiotic prescriptions for sinus infections by nearly the same amount of doctors. Not one them objected. Not one of them suggested the other lifestyle changes that I now find so valuable. There are thousand more like me out there. Antibiotics, as well as other pharmaceuticals may have serious long-term effects for frequent users. We are the first generation to grow up with powerful anti-microbials.
Hundreds over what period?
25 Years.
I used to average 4-6 acute sinus infections a year, with one or two being more difficult to treat and requiring multiple prescriptions to clear. Most of the time, I only had a few “good” days after each course of antibiotics before symptoms of infection returned. I always postponed going to the doctor until my symptoms had worsened. After all, they’d just write me a RX for some antibiotic that would wreck my stomach while clearing my sinuses. This was my life for 25 years. I otherwise tried to live a normal, active life but the quality was low, not to mention, it was frightening to always be ill in the age of AIDS.
At age six, I was treated intraveneously with antibiotics for double pneumonia, and my health was never the same. Up until that point, I had been very healthy according to my parents.
Now, I haven’t needed an antibiotic in two years and my health has never been better after discovering holistic approaches to treating sinusitus, including diet changes and irrigation. Sadly, I can’t find a doctor on my HMO plan that believes my story, and I’ll never trust a doctor who can’t appreciate my level of health education, particularly since understanding iatrogenic candidiasis is crucial to managing immune dysfunction. I’m in the process of interviewing doctors that are available on my plan and few of them are proving capable of actually providing quality care. So the search continues, meanwhile I intend to do every thing in my power to guard my own health from needing to traverse the minefield that is modern medicine.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 7:12 pm
Recapping:
early-80’s AIDS (which was co-factorial in my opinion, but primarily born of drug use a litany of other poor health choices…putting it mildly).
Is sex one of the “other poor health choices….putting it mildly” that you were discussing? You said there was a “litany” of these “poor” choices. Yet, all you discuss is drug use. A “litany” seems like a long list. What else is on it?
November 19th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
nohivmeds (mail):
Kevin, since you brought it up, can you be more specific regarding the following:
…It seems you’re passing judgement here, so you should say what you mean.
They were partying beyond what is healthful. They were very promiscuous, which I think is relevant mainly because they were given lots of antibiotics to treat numerous infections. Not all of which were STDs. I’m not out to pass judgment. Sex is good. It’s the antibiotic use in tandem with the well-recognized “fast, gay lifestyle” of the time that I think is key. I think advanced Candida infections were the major cause for early-80’s AIDS cases. Poppers’ use is also relevant since there is no question in my mind that they are immuno-suppressant, particularly for people who are otherwise unhealthful. I mean only that an NBA athlete who inhales concentrated chemicals for a high is probably less likely to get sick when compared with a hard-partying gay guy who inhales the same chemicals. There are countless other drugs that were popular then that have since been found to be more physically damaging than previously thought. Drugs like heroin, meth and cocaine have always been popular in gay culture.
If you find this above to be prejudicial then you are overly sensitive and unconcerned with the truth.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 7:16 pm
I mean, if you’re going to characterize an entire cohort of gay men, most of whom are not here now, as having made a “litany” of “poor health choices,” don’t you think you at least owe it to them to elucidate? So you don’t want to repsond to me. Fine. What about them? Is no explanation owed? Do we just hand-wave that entire cohort of gay men away? Kind of disrespectful. Maybe also kind of naive.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Is sex one of the “other poor health choices….putting it mildly” that you were discussing? You said there was a “litany” of these “poor” choices. Yet, all you discuss is drug use. A “litany” seems like a long list. What else is on it?
Poor nutrition
Lack of sleep
Stress
Self-destructive tendencies, in general.
Being gay has never been easy in a society that frequently considers it shameful.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Ah — a cross-posting. Sorry for that and thanks for elucidating. I think you make a lot of assumptions based on extremely little to no actual data. I don’t think you were in the gay community at that time. Why such a rush to characterize it? I mean — I wasn’t in the gay community at that time. I’ve talked to people who were. They tell me that not everyone who died did drugs. They tell me that formerly very healthy people died. I don’t hear from gay men presently in their 50s that everyone who died lived that “well-established” lifestyle you discuss.
Assuming that your hypothesis does not account for all the AIDS deaths during those years, and from what I’ve been told by men who were there, it doesn’t account for all the deaths, this means that there would have to be other factors than the ones you elucidated. I mean, look at gay men today. Is everyone into drugs and partying? Doesn’t it seem unlikely to you that everyone would have been into that lifestyle then? Not everyone who died at that time resembles this profile. It’s a definite over-generalization.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
entire cohort of gay men
I think most might agree with me since examples abound where surviving contemporaries of those first few years often speak to the to insanity of the “fast-paced” “gay lifestyle” of that time period. I’m not putting words into anyone’s mouth. The concept is their own. Perhaps, those survivors look back on that time and remember how unwell they often felt. In the Scovill documentary of 2004, “The Other Side of AIDS” two of those comtemporaries make that very claim. They first wondered at their survival from the drugs and the partying moreso than the virus and the ensuing hysteria that nurtured its acceptance.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I certainly don’t intend to review the literally thousands of studies supporting the HIV-AIDS theory in a few paragraphs. Considering how long it took people here to understand and accept the rather elementary statistics showing Duesberg’s error in claiming that a person would have to have had sex an “absurd” number of times to catch HIV, I believe that the amount of remedial education required to review even a small fraction of the literature and explain it adequately to convince such an overwhelmingly biased group is probably beyond my time constratints. However, we can certainly make a start. Chris Noble has already cited quite a few studies in this thread, so far without my seeing any any indication that anybody here has bothered to read them. If anybody wants to actually read some of those studies and discuss them rationally, we could have the beginnings of a real scientific discussion. I must admit, however, I don’t believe that this is likely to happen. Denialists never seem to want delve deeply into the literature; they always want to perseverate over a few studies that can be twisted to support their obsession.
For example, TS insists
Now this is the sort of argument that leaves a scientist dumbfounded. Why would anybody try to base an argument on a result from many years ago, using a methodology (antibody test) that is known to be relatively insensitive and often to yield false negatives? After all, we now have PCR, a highly sensitive and reproducible method. We even have “real time” PCR, which (with appropriate controls) is highly quantitative, and can tell you how much of a particular DNA or RNA sequence is present. No scientist would appeal to an ancient study using an inferior methodology when more recent studies are available. But this is just the kind of argument that one frequently hears from denialists, who are unable to let go of any argument, no matter how badly flawed, if they think that it supports their position.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:36 pm
They tell me that not everyone who died did drugs. They tell me that formerly very healthy people died.
The first few cases were absolutely from the partying crowd. However, it’s true that healthy people died, especially during the AZT years. I agree that examining individual health histories from the first 3 years would be very illuminating, but getting unbiased accounts today is virtually impossible since the HIV meme has been retro-actively applied to all case histories, not to mention the fear-mongering that continues to pollute the impressions of any contemporaries who survive.
Kevin
November 19th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Well, I can only speak to what my friend Phil, a journalist in NYC, told me about that time. He said that he knew people who died who did not do drugs, were not depressed, were not even especially promiscuous. I don’t think he’s suffering from a memory disorder, nor do I think the men in “The Other Side of AIDS” are suffering from a memory disorder. I’m sure that my friend Phil and the two men you speak of are both correct. I’m sure there were plenty of men who feel grateful they escaped those times. I happen to know one man who lived through those times, whose friends were not partyers, and still many died.
My point is, again, the generalization hurts our knowledge here — it doesn’t help it. We have to know the full spectrum, not just one view. Not all gay men who died of AIDS in the 80s had anything to do with partying, or with ill health. It doesn’t matter if that group accounts for, let’s just say, 10% of the deaths — those deaths still have to be accounted for to explain the entirety of the situation.
It seems that there is a general distaste for exceptions to the rules here, but facts must be faced. There are exceptions. They too will have to be explained.
And also: “ensuing hysteria?” You make it sound like all gay men mobilized with bull horns and ran around every major US city sounding ritualistic alarm calls. I think “hysteria” is a bit of a stretch — and again, exposes a subtle judgement.
November 19th, 2006 at 7:49 pm
trrll:
if pcr is so great, then why doesn’t the US or any other country in the world accept the results to diagnose “HIV infection?” To receive Ryan White funds here in the good old US of A, a pcr is not acceptable — only an antibody test.
Your comments on Gallo’s study betray your inability to step even slightly out of your little box. If 2/3 of the sample did not test positive — then it is appropriate to question why, and the answer cannot be entirely accounted for by test error. Get real.
November 19th, 2006 at 8:35 pm
In fact a different nucleic acid test for HIV has recently been approved by the FDA for diagnostic purposes.
http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2006/NEW01479.html
One problem of using nucleic acid testing is carryover contamination. Failure to sterilise equipment from a previous test will result in the presence of amplified sequences that will give false positive results. This is a quality control issue rather than a fundamental limitation of the test.
I find it rather perplexing that “rethinkers” spend a great deal of time arguing that current tests are imperfect and have a high percentage of false positives and false negatives but insist that the very first crude tests must be 100% accurate.
The argument is remarkably similar to that espoused by people rabidly opposed to vaccination. They obsess over Pasteur’s initial experiments in the vain attempt to avoid dealing with the following years of science.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 detected in all seropositive symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8093633&dopt=Abstract“>Unexplained opportunistic infections and CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia without HIV infection. An investigation of cases in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control Idiopathic CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia Task Force.
November 19th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
Get real.
NHM, you have actually written a post in a decisively skeptical style, which rests on a scientific principle (that conclusions are based on evidence). What happened?
But we regret that in making this new move you have chosen to disturb the grandest achievement of all of Trrlll, a unique and splendid example of skill in misunderstanding basic science and elementary logic in his fervent desire to support the paradigm globally peddled by the inadequate to the untutored.
It is far better to leave such posts undisturbed. We intended to border it in green and leave it for all to admire. Now you have exposed its absurdity for all to see.
Still, it is always worth repeating that Gallo began the whole affair with a false experimental conclusion, which set the tone for all that followed, and that by its very nature PCR is not a quantitative measure and never will be (ask Kary Mullis, its inventor).
Bravo.
November 19th, 2006 at 9:34 pm
NHM: Your comments on Gallo’s study betray your inability to step even slightly out of your little box. If 2/3 of the sample did not test positive — then it is appropriate to question why, and the answer cannot be entirely accounted for by test error. Get real.
CN: I find it rather perplexing that “rethinkers” spend a great deal of time arguing that current tests are imperfect and have a high percentage of false positives and false negatives but insist that the very first crude tests must be 100% accurate.
This is possibly the grandest achievement of Chris the Noble, which also should be beyond comment, it is so exquisitely phrased and yet so silly. It reminds us of Algie’s remark in The Importance of Being Earnest:
(ALGERNON:
It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be!”
which occurs in the following stretch which should be quoted in full at any opportunity:
ALGERNON
All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That’s his.
JACK
Is that clever?
ALGERNON
It is perfectly phrased! and quite as true as any observation in civilised life should be.
JACK
I am sick to death of cleverness. Everybody is clever nowadays. You can’t go anywhere without meeting clever people. The thing has become an absolute public nuisance. I wish to goodness we had a few fools left.
ALGERNON
We have.
JACK
I should extremely like to meet them. What do they talk about?
ALGERNON
The fools? Oh! about the clever people, of course.
JACK
What fools!
Of course, Chris’s remark comes in the last category, since he apparently thinks that 1/3 rd accuracy is a forgivable error for a technology in its infancy.
However, the real question is whether that was the right basis on which to found a global paradigm. Did it make sense to say that HIV was a “probable” cause of AIDS on the basis of that finding?
Chris?
November 19th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Everyone should check out the new citation from CN — it really is fascinating. What I thought was most interesting about it is how difficult, if not almost impossible, it seems to be to create a test that would reliably test for the presence of the HIV antigen, rather than the antibody. Sad, really. For CN, that is. Did I mention the hemophiliacs? That, and the fact that the citation is almost 20 years old. Got anything else, CN? Something perhaps more current that doesn’t partially rely on already ill individuals who, because of their illnesses, require multiple transfusions that could potentially expose them to who knows what?
November 19th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Indeed, the sensitivity of HIV antigen tests has improved since 1990.
Ultrasensitive quantitative HIV-1 p24 antigen assay adapted to dried plasma spots to improve treatment monitoring in low-resource settings.
Duesberg’s arguments about patients with hemophilia have been thoroughly debunked.
Response: arguments contradict the “foreign protein-zidovudine” hypothesis.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:13 am
And Dan, the Third Way has nothing to do with HIV, or oxidative stress — you miss the entire point. That being simply that it is the skeptical position, so it takes no position. That isn’t hard to understand, I don’t think.
You miss the point, NHM, and in your usual snide, condescending way. I keep wondering how you justify your treatment of others here. Or maybe there’s no need to justify treating others disrespectfully when one simply views themselves as superior.
Anyway…the dissident position is the skeptical position. I can’t be sure if you’ve noticed, but most of what “we” do is simply question what we’re being told. And “dissidents” are as varied in their opinions and views as any group of people. The only thing the dissidents seem to agree on is a skepticism of HIV’s role in AIDS.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:07 am
Duesberg’s arguments about patients with hemophilia have been thoroughly debunked.
Chris Noble’s idea of a paper which demonstrates that HIV cuts down hemophiliacs:
BMJ 1996;312:211-212 (27 January)
Papers
Response: Arguments contradict the “foreign protein-zidovudine” hypothesis
Caroline A Sabin, lecturer in epidemiology and medical statistics,a Andrew N Phillips, reader in epidemiology and biostatistics,a Christine A Lee, director haemophilia centre b
a HIV Research Unit, Department of Public Health, Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, London NW3 2PF, b Haemophilia Centre and Haemostasis Unit, Department of Haematology, Royal Free Hospital and School of Medicine, London NW3 2PF
Correspondence to: Dr Sabin.
In 1991 Duesberg challenged researchers to provide either data on “controlled epidemiologic studies comparing matched hemophiliacs, with and without HIV, or epidemiological evidence that the mortality of hemophiliacs is increased by HIV.”1 We and Darby et al have provided that evidence.2 3 Duesberg’s commentary4 requires further comment.
HIV may be enough to cause AIDS
It is incorrect to conclude that HIV is not sufficient to cause AIDS simply because some of the infected patients in our study had not developed AIDS by 10 years after seroconversion. Only longer term follow up studies will finally establish whether all HIV positive patients would, given enough time, ultimately develop AIDS. In the United States around 3800 haemophilic patients have reportedly developed AIDS out of 9000 who have been infected5 (World Federation of Hemophilia, personal communication, 1995), a far higher proportion than that quoted by Duesberg in arguments against the HIV hypothesis.
Duesberg’s foreign protein-zidovudine hypothesis predicts that haemophilic patients will not develop non-immunodeficiency diseases such as dementia. Given the low prevalence of some of the 26 different AIDS defining conditions it would not be expected that we should witness all conditions among our 17 patients. However, dementia is well documented in HIV positive haemophilic patients and occurs with a similar prevalence to that in other exposure categories (Xen Santas, Centers for Disease Control, personal communication, 1995). Among all 111 HIV positive haemophilic patients at this hospital, dementia occurred in six.
Duesberg points out that lifetime usage of concentrate may be expected to be different between a 60 year old and a 14 year old (our pair 3). Unfortunately, lifetime usage of concentrate was not available in these patients and therefore usage patterns over 10 years were used. However, it is important to remember that clotting factor concentrate was introduced in our centre in 1978 on average, so that age differences in the pairs may suggest larger differences in lifetime usage than actually existed. Even when the analysis was restricted to pairs in whom the HIV positive patient was younger than or the same age as the HIV negative patient (eight pairs) the results remained similar: four of eight HIV positive patients developed AIDS defining diseases compared with none of the eight HIV negative patients. Furthermore, since 1980 none of 400 HIV negative haemophilic patients registered at this hospital has developed AIDS despite having received clotting factor concentrates on average since 1978, and CD4 counts in these patients have been similar to those of HIV negative heterosexual subjects.6
Contrary to Duesberg’s assertion, sexual transmission of AIDS has been observed at our centre. At the Royal Free Hospital sexual transmission of HIV to partners with no other risk factors for HIV has occurred in three cases. Of these infected partners, one developed AIDS and died (the haemophilic partner of this patient also died with AIDS), one was symptomatic with a CD4 count of zero but remained AIDS free, and the third remained asymptomatic but with a CD4 count of 0.2×109/l. No wives of any other haemophilic patients at our centre have developed AIDS.
Patients are given zidovudine because they are ill
It is not true that most British haemophilic patients infected with HIV have been given zidovudine since 1987. Initially patients were given zidovudine after the development of AIDS. Subsequently, since around 1989, patients have been given zidovudine once their CD4 count has fallen below 0.2×109/l or after the development of symptomatic disease. Similar recommendations are made for pentamidine or co-trimoxazole as prophylaxis against Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Consequently, by the time patients begin zidovudine and pentamidine they have low CD4 cell counts and are usually symptomatic.
Observational studies often show that patients given zidovudine have a worse prognosis than untreated patients.7 Patients receiving zidovudine are selectively treated because they are ill. The interpretation of findings from these studies should not therefore be that zidovudine increases the risk of AIDS. Of the nine patients developing AIDS in our study, seven received zidovudine only after an initial AIDS diagnosis when immunological deterioration had already occurred. There is no possibility, therefore, that either zidovudine or pentamidine had a causal role in the initial development of symptomatic disease in these patients.
Finally, though there may be some beneficial effect of high purity clotting factor concentrates on the immune systems of patients with haemophilia,8 there is little evidence that this has translated into clinical benefit for these patients.7 Conversely, a recent paper has suggested that increased usage of intermediate purity clotting factor concentrates may be beneficial for HIV positive haemophilic patients.9
Despite the provision of new data which support the HIV hypothesis for the development of AIDS, the arguments proposed by Duesberg in his commentary remain unchanged and contradict the “foreign proteinzidovudine” hypothesis. For the benefit of patients infected with HIV it must now be time to move on to enable researchers to devote time to the real issues at hand.
1. Duesberg PH. AIDS epidemiology: inconsistencies with human immunodeficiency virus and with infectious disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci 1991;88:1575-9. [Abstract/Free Full Text]
2. Sabin CA, Pasi JK, Phillips AN, Lilley P, Bofill M, Lee CA. Comparison of immunodeficiency and AIDS defining conditions in HIV negative and HIV positive men with haemophilia A. BMJ 1996;312:207-10. [Abstract/Free Full Text]
3. Darby SC, Ewart DW, Giangrande PLF, Dolin PJ, Spooner RJD, Rizza CR. Mortality before and after HIV infection in the complete UK population of haemophiliacs. Nature 1995;377:79-82. [Medline]
4. Duesberg P. Commentary: non-HIV hypotheses must be studied more carefully. BMJ 1996;312:000-00.
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. US HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1994. HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report 1994;6:1-39.
6. Bofill M, Janossy G, Lee CA, MacDonald-Burns D, Phillips AN, Sabin C, et al. Laboratory control values for CD4 and CD8 T lymphocytes. Implications for HIV-1 diagnosis. Clin Exp Immunol 1992;88:243-52. [Medline]
7. Goedert JJ, Cohen AR, Kessler CM, Eichinger S, Seremetis SV, Rabkin CS, et al. Risks of immunodeficiency, AIDS, and death related to purity of factor VIII concentrate. Lancet 1994;344:791-2. [Medline]
8. Seremetis SV, Aledort LM, Bergman G, Bona R, Bray G, Brettler D, et al. Three-year randomised study of high-purity or intermediate-purity factor VIII concentrates in symptom-free HIV-seropositive haemophiliacs: effects on immune status. Lancet 1993;342:700-3. [Medline]
9. Montoro JB, Oliveras J, Lorenzo JL, Tusell JH, Altisent C, Molina R, et al. An association between clotting factor concentrate use and mortality in human immunodeficiency virus-infected hemophilic patients. Blood 1995;86:2213-9. [Abstract/Free Full Text]
BMJ Search 42,000 articles on bmj.com
© 1996 BMJ Publishing Group Ltd
Very impressive, Chris. We particularly like “one was symptomatic with a CD4 count of zero but remained AIDS free”.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:30 am
I appreciate the brilliant in depth analysis.
A very low CD4 count does not imply that the person currently has an ooportunistic infection. It means that the person is at a much, much higher risk of contracting an opportunistic infection.
November 20th, 2006 at 2:48 am
I appreciate the brilliant in depth analysis.
We will waste brilliant in depth analysis on you, Chris, when you show us a brilliant in depth analysis, which we have yet to see. After eight years of your dedicated servility to a dogma that even people who cannot spell can see through once they are informed of the basics, however, it is probably time to give up any hope of you ever producing such a contribution.
Wait. What about your corrections to Duesberg’s Biosciences paper of 2003? Have you forwarded them to the Indian Academy yet? if so, how did the editor reply, and can we now see a copy of this masterwork? We hope the editor was sufficiently grateful for your efforts, and will be publishing them for all to read and benefit from.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:30 am
Dan, I’m not sure how much simpler I can make this. I choose to question the establishment (as I have demonstrated here) and the dissident positions. The dissident position is informed mostly by two theoretical positions — that of Duesberg and the Perth Group, so it cannot be the skeptical position. Hope that helps. Maybe you need to step outside your little box as well?
November 20th, 2006 at 5:34 am
And CN– if advanced in detecting the antigen have been so fabulous, then why aren’t we engaged in large-scale testing for the antigen? Why is the “HIV Test” still an antibody test? You’re grasping at what appears to be non-existant straws (i.e., the antigen). p24 is NOT the antigen, CN. It’s a protein. Just one protein. Honestly.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:41 am
But hey, CN, if you don’t believe me — then how about the Los Angeles County District Attorney. Given that they dropped charges against Christine Maggiore, because all they had was (they said) a positive p24 assay, doesn’t this mean to you that such an assay is NOT proof positive (as it were) of the existance of the actual antigen? Suggesting that p24 is the antigen is like suggesting that Paris Hilton’s lip gloss is indeed Paris Hilton. Here’s another “get real” for you this time.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:51 am
And before you or trrll suggest that viral load measures the “antigen,” consider, if you would, that viral load only identifies what it thinks is approximately 3% of the genetic material known as “HIV.” 3%. Given that, it should more likely be called the “I think it’s the antigen, but I don’t know for sure, as I can only see 3%” viral load test.
After 25 years, there is no adequate CULTURE for the “antigen.” Face facts. As culture is the gold standard for identifying microbial life in vitro, looks like your beloved paradigm has some serious problems.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:54 am
Just to drive this home for the folks at home:
We have tests that identify the Hepatitis antigen and the Hepatitis antibody. So why, after millions upon millions upon millions of dollars and 25 years of time, are we talking about p24 and RNA fragments?
November 20th, 2006 at 5:57 am
An even better analogy:
Remember those commercials back in the 80s (when, according to some, gay men were partying so hard they couldn’t see straight — but, whatever), where the little old lady orders a burger and says, “Where’s the beef?” Well, after 25 years of research, we are still left asking, “Where’s the antigen?”
November 20th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
“…one was symptomatic with a CD4 count of zero but remained AIDS free”.
How can a CD4 count of zero not equal AIDS? Change the country you live in.
According to the US definition of AIDS, a CD4 count below 200 IS AIDS, OIs not needed for the labelling.
“HIV the virus that causes AIDS”
“AIDS” (and an international plethora of definitions)
“HIV disease”
“AIDS-related complications, disease, traffic accidents, suicides, death, etc…”
“HIV-related complications, disease, traffic accidents, suicides, death, etc…”
No wonder the world is confused and is rightfully starting to reject it.
November 20th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
After 25 years, there is no adequate CULTURE for the “antigen.” Face facts. As culture is the gold standard for identifying microbial life in vitro, looks like your beloved paradigm has some serious problems.
NHM, this is shocking news. Are you saying that after all these years we are still not sure whether we can find the actual virus the HIV gang have labeled rather selfservingly as “Human Immunodeficiency Virus” in the blood of “HIV positive” patients? That they cannot even culture the virus?
We were under the impression that you cultured it in human T cells and that then it flourished, even though these are the very same human T cells that it supposedly decimates in vivo. In culture we have been told it makes them stick together occasionally and they then unusually die and that then is laughingly said to prove that HIV kills T cells in vitro. But otherwise they flourish. Do they not send this stuff to you in culture when you order it up by mail?
Perhaps you mean that there is so little of the supposed actual virus in people once their antibodies have routed it from their system that it is impossibe to culture from their blood, is that it?
As the skeptics point out, this makes it rather hard for HIV to do anything at all to the host, but then, there is no evidence that it does do anything to the host, so that fits.
We have only a vague idea about all this nonsense now because a) it is so crystal clear that HIV does not cause immune system dysfunction in humans according to about thirty major indications and b) every single minor indication is twisted by the Nobles of this world into a logical pretzel of mediocre reasoning which purports to validate the wingless paradigm after all, but on close examination does not, and one tires of filling one’s brain with spurious counterarguments, rationalizations and Ptolomeic extrapolations desperately trying to justify a paradigm which a blind man can see does not fly, except in the meme riddled minds of its congregation.
I certainly don’t intend to review the literally thousands of studies supporting the HIV-AIDS theory in a few paragraphs. – Trrlll.
Name one.
Name one good study that “supports” the HIV∫AIDS theory as such, rather than assumes it as a given. Name one that does so as a conclusion, rather than a claim. Name one study that can be adduced to demonstrate that HIV theory is valid, despite its multifarious notoriously fallacious assertions.
Name one study that sets out to test the theory and succeeds in proving it. Name one study that sets out to test the theory, even.
Name one study that does not use the assumption “HIV causes AIDS immune dysfunction” as a premise, rather than asking whether it is true, and that then answers that question with conclusive evidence that it is after all true.
No paper in the 22 year history of HIV∫AIDS exists to investigate and demonstrate that HIV causes AIDS, except the first batch of Science papers by Gallo that on closer examination show that it does not.
If such a paper existed there would be nothing to debate. All proposals for any such confirmatory studies have been killed by lack of funding support from NIH reviewers who are strangely unwilling to hand someone a saw to lop off the branch of the tree they are sitting on.
Any scientist who proposed such a study would find himself frozen out of the field. It is because it is a matter of faith so utterly lacking in proof that the skeptics are having such a field day with this stuff. Wake up from your hypnosis Trrlll and smell the coffee, and stop making empty declarations of your membership in a club with no scientific justification.
Considering how long it took people here to understand and accept the rather elementary statistics showing Duesberg’s error in claiming that a person would have to have had sex an “absurd” number of times to catch HIV, I believe that the amount of remedial education required to review even a small fraction of the literature and explain it adequately to convince such an overwhelmingly biased group is probably beyond my time constraints.
A nice piece of contemptuous dismissal, Trrlll, but one that reflects badly on your standards of accuracy. Maybe you need to go back and read our post Duesberg’s math incorrect, say bloggers on the topic again, which demonstrated that the not very obvious technical adjustment to be made in Duesberg’s formulation had no effect on the implication, which was that the chances of contracting HIV through heterosexual sex are stunningly low, contrary to the impression given by the Cassandras fo the global AIDS “pandemic”. So low that there is really no conceivable way in which a heterosexual epidemic of HIV could occur, let alone a global pandemic, despite Chris Noble’s relentless attempts at massaging the figures to make them come out. And the Nancy Padian study confirms this, as expected, with nil transmission even between the fifty seven or so couples who used no prophylactic over six years.
The group on this blog or any other blog demanding sense from HIV∫AIDS believers is not “overwhelmingly biased” in any direction except sound science, scientific evidence and proof and consistency in thinking as opposed to fantasy running against evidence and supported only with more fantasy.
Demonstrate that there is any good reason to suppose that HIV causes immune dysfunction and they will salute it and you. Short of that, they are biased in favor of science which makes sense, and has some evidence to support it.
November 20th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
For those of you who are interested in the treatment failures surrounding HIV, you might also be interested in learning of the treatment failures for chronic sinusitis. There are many parallels and most “AIDS” patient suffer from chronic sinusitis.
Below is the link that set me on my journey of renewed health, where I discovered alernative treatments that worked when nothing else did, and where I became enlightened to the ironic fact that the allopathic care I was receiving was actually responsible for my ruined health. Eventually, I discovered much more than I had initially expected, i.e. all the misinformation surrounding HIV/AIDS. As you will see when you go to the site, it is now a “sticky” post so it appears at the top of the opening page on the allergy-sinus forum of health boards, even though it was originally posted in 2003. Reading through this post you’ll get a good idea of just how big of a medical problem chronic sinusitis is and just how innovative those who suffer from it have had to become, since the most common allopathetic care is not only ineffective but is actually responsible for making the condition worse (sound familiar?). Anyway, here’s the link:
“>Sinus sufferers post
I used the method described in this post for about a year and my symptoms improved during that time without the use of any antibiotics, so it inspired me to continue my research into immune dysfunction and its role in chronic sinusitis. Eventually, I found the following article that changed everything:
Mayo clinic study implicating Fungus as causative agent
A quote from the article:
This research was published in 1999!!! When do you suppose primary care physicians will “begin to treat the cause of the problem instead of the symptoms”? It really is too bad that antifungals-though expensive—are readily available as generics, so drug companies have no financial incentive to legitimize a change in treatment course.
The irrigations did not improve my overall health so I set out to find a doctor that would treat me for fungal sinusitis. Two HMO-approved ENTs that I saw out-right refused to treat me for a fungal infection; they asserted that only HIV+ people contracted fungal sinusitis, even after I showed them the official Mayo Clinic press release that the above article references. That was in 2003 – 4 years after the release of the study, mind you. Another ENT offered to treat me with an antifungal, assuming an HIV test yielded a positive result. I once again tested negative, so he concluded that I just needed a stronger antibiotic, for a longer duration. Of course I told him to kiss my ass. I had to seek care out of state and out of pocket before I found a doctor enlightened enough to provide the treatment I needed.
Once properly treated for the candida infection, I no longer have to do the peroxide flushes (though I do still irrigate with salt water) and my overall health improvements have been quite profound. Before treatment, I looked and felt like a dying human being; My face was gaunt, and I was severely underweight. I had other minor infections as well. After treatment, I gained 40 pounds and I look and feel like a different person. I do have to maintain a very healthy lifestyle but now I feel in control of my health for the first time in my life. I hope my sharing of this information can help those who are similarly afflicted. AIDS and advanced systemic fungal infections are closely linked in the my opinion. The correlations between the two are far more convincing than the data manipulation needed to correlate the HIV virus to AIDS.
Kevin
November 20th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
(-: (-: (-:
For example, TS insists,
In fact, as we have pointed out in this blog, Gallo originally pointed out in his Science papers the reason that HIV did not cause AIDS, which is that he was unable to find it in more than a third of the patients he sampled.
Now this is the sort of argument that leaves a scientist dumbfounded.Why would anybody try to base an argument on a result from many years ago, using a methodology (antibody test) that is known to be relatively insensitive and often to yield false negatives? After all, we now have PCR, a highly sensitive and reproducible method. We even have “real time” PCR, which (with appropriate controls) is highly quantitative, and can tell you how much of a particular DNA or RNA sequence is present. No scientist would appeal to an ancient study using an inferior methodology when more recent studies are available. (Trrll)
(-: (-: (-:
Please Dr. Trll, sign this with your real name and full title. Please, please, for me. I promise I’ll make you famous.
November 20th, 2006 at 4:59 pm
Here is another interesting link regarding the extent of illness caused by fungal overgrowth:
Candida Patient Database
(clicking on the numbers, i.e. patients, on the left side will show that anonymous patient’s relevant health history)
This is a voluntary patient database of 847 patients where patients have no connection with each other except a common history of illness due to iatrogenic immuno-suppression. That, to my mind, is a strong argument for linking antibiotic use to the subsequent immuno-suppression that leads to opportunistic overgrowth of candida and other pathogens. Other commonly prescribed drugs that are immuno-suppressive include steroids, birth-control pills, and hormone-replacement therapy; however, antibiotics are the primary culprit.
As you read through each patient’s health history, notice that this condition is also a syndrome—one with seemingly disparate symptoms, yet those symptoms occur routinely creating correlation. Sound familiar? Notice too that some patients are more ill than others and that those who are most ill are usually the ones that have been sick the longest. Latency anyone? Untreated this condition does not get better. In fact, it is incredibly hard to resolve once it is sufficiently advanced. Yet, the medical establishment refuses to acknowledge candida-related illness. They are all too happy to ordain a seemingly harmless virus as being capable of indirectly causing a similar collection of symptoms. Guess which interpretation is more profitable? More and more patients are self-diagnosing out of desperation and thanks to the ability to share information via the web. Sounds a bit like the way the truth about HIV is emerging…not through the expected channels of a healthy medical establishment but against the grain, so to speak. Admitting to the truth about iatrogenic illness would bring the entire house of cards down and require medical providers to finally take responsibility for the health of individual patients and to disavow their incestuous relationship with Big Pharma.
So Duesberg is absolutely right about chemically-induced immuno-suppression being a crucial component of understanding AIDS, and even though I think hard recreational drug use can cause such suppression, I think the major cause is the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics or can otherwise be found in any number of combinations of the aforementioned pharmaceuticals that are currently flooding the market. Anyone who refuses to accept this as a real phenomenon is the real “denialist”; this most-unwanted consequence of a medical establishment that has lost its way is not going resolve itself. I say look in the mirror, Trlll and Noble, and there you’ll find your denialist.
Kevin
November 20th, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Please Dr. Trll, sign this with your real name and full title. Please, please, for me. I promise I’ll make you famous.
But Dr. MacDonald, Terrell “Trrlll” X the neuroscientist has already given you the clues to google which will give his name, post etc, even a picture. However, we believe the principle of noblesse oblige applies here.
In other words, those who enjoy privilege, in this case, of possessing the ability to think about science anew instead of retailing the wholesale supply of false claims of the officials of a field, have a social responsibility to be kind to those less fortunate , who may be born without the faculty, or have been taken over by the notorious AIDS meme, or any of the others to which innocent hardworking young or even middleaged scientists are exposed.
Thus in line with our claim of intellectual nobility it is not for us to do anything but border this post in the green of admiration for its prowess at getting things wrong, and leave it twisting in the wind as a permanent emblem of the sorry state of mind to which otherwise decent and exemplary scientists with enormous brains and almost infinite knowledge about science are reduced by the dreaded AIDS meme, whose power to take over the world can never be underestimated even though a powerful insurgency led by Dr Harvey Bialy is scoring major successes in deprogramming victims, albeit with difficulty, one by one, apart from the readership of Harpers, who were depropagandized wholesale, and the many Web sites and few blogs devoted to this topic, led by the ponderous and humorless NAR and the dangerously uninhibited one now conducted by Dr B himself, You Bet Your Life at Barnesworld.
Lucky for Dr Terrell he did not make this already fabled post at that ruthless site, which knows no limits in eviscerating the statements of representatives and followers of the silliest and most misguided hypothesis that has ever reached global acceptance.
Here we try to be nice, which is why Dr Chris Noble has been able to stock this thread with even more misstatements and misleading assertions than AIDSTruth.org, previously the record holder for truthiness in HIV∫AIDS content.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Fourth generation tests include both the detection of HIV antibodies and the HIV-p24 antigen.
Fourth-Generation Assays for the Simultaneous Detection of HIV Antigen and Antibody
November 20th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
What is the point of me citing papers if none of you actually read them?
I have cited this study twice so far in this very thread.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 detected in all seropositive symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.
HIV was cultured from 100% of AIDS patients and 0% of HIV- subjects.
Culture is time consuming and costly. HIV antibody testing is cheap, fast and highly accurate.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:55 pm
even though I think hard recreational drug use can cause such suppression, I think the major cause is the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics or can otherwise be found in any number of combinations of the aforementioned pharmaceuticals that are currently flooding the market.
Kevin, evidently this applies to you, according to your experience, but let’s not go overboard. Isn’t your experience unusual? Don’t antibiotics work OK for most people when they have a temporary sinus or chest infection? And are doctors really that culpable for cooperating with drug companies in prescribing these and other drugs to help patients? The armamentarium of drugs contains some useful ones which save us from many illnesses and deaths, don’t they?
We ask merely for information, since we avoid all drugs as far as possible, including even aspirin. However, we expect to change as we lose a degree of immunity as the years roll on and we sink into despair at our failure to root out the global AIDS meme, though decent nutrition should do the job for the most part.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Actually the CDC case definition of HIV infection includes virus culture and HIV antigen detection.
1993 Revised Classification System for HIV Infection and Expanded Surveillance Case Definition for AIDS Among Adolescents and Adults
November 20th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
What is the point of me citing papers if none of you actually read them?
I have cited this study twice so far in this very thread.
Perhaps if you stopped citing PDF’s of smudged Xeroxes of an utterly misleading paper from 1990, and cited readable text from the Web which was onto the problem?
We especially liked both halves of the sentence “We isolated HIV-1 or detected HIV-1 DNA sequences (in all 409)”.
Tell us, what does “reduce viral load to undetectable levels” mean? We’ve seen that phrase often used.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:39 pm
TS,
You are getting insufferable. The very same paper was quoted by Duesberg in which he said:
“However, …that HIV does not exist, fails to explain
(i) why virtually all people who contain HIV DNA also contain antibodies against Montagnier”s HIV strain -the global standard of all “HIV tests”- and
(ii) why most, but certainly not all people who lack HIV DNA contain no such antibodies.
I will argue that HIV exists, and has been properly identified as a unique retrovirus on the grounds that
(i) it has been isolated – even from its own virion structure – in the form of an infectious, molecularly cloned HIV DNA that is able to induce the synthesis of a reverse transcriptase containing virion, and
(ii) that HIV-specific, viral DNA can be identified only in infected, but not in uninfected human cells .
The existence of an unique retrovirus HIV provides a plausible explanation for the good (not perfect) correlation between the existence of HIV DNA and antibodies against it in thousands of people that have been subjected to both tests.
…In conclusion, HIV has been isolated by the most rigorous method science has to offerâ€.
And you TS are in front of your monitor announcing or challenging what precisely ?
November 20th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
And you TS are in front of your monitor announcing or challenging what precisely?
That the issue is whether HIV causes anything, not whether you can reliably isolate it from someone who scores positive on an HIV test. Even so, we marvel at the 100% results obtained. Very encouraging. None of those darn false positives to be seen, nor those with “AIDS” symptoms without HIV that we hear about.
It’s very frustrating that we don’t have an electron microscope picture of HIV, isn’t it, Chris? Perhaps you know of a source, do you? We could put it up for all to admire.
November 20th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
The pdf file of that paper is not a smudged Xerox. Perhaps you are having problems with the font. Your complaint is pathetic. What exactly is “utterly misleading”?
Viral load tests measure the amount of HIV RNA in serum. This is indicative of the amount of HIV replication atking place. ARV treatment can reduce viral load to undetectable levels.
The paper I previously cited tested for HIV DNA that had been integrated into T-cells. This is not immediately affected by ARV treatment because the HIV is already integrated into reservoirs of T-cells.
November 20th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
Fine structure of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and immunolocalization of structural proteins.
This paper has some very nice electron micrographs of HIV from 1987.
Of particular is the immunferritin labelling that demonstrates that HIV p24 is localised in the tubular central core and that HIV gp120 is located on the outside of the virion.
November 20th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
I’m heading out the door but here’s my quick answer to your questions:
Kevin, evidently this applies to you, according to your experience, but let’s not go overboard. Isn’t your experience unusual?
The reason I decided to finally offer up the links in my recent posts is to show you and other readers of this blog that “No, my experience is not so unique.” Eight hundred and seventy-six strangers found an obscure website on Candida sickness and felt compelled to participate in the discussion. Read through some of the individual accounts. Some are more detailed than others. There are thousands more like them and me, all across the globe, particularly in wealthy Western countries where pharmceutical use is heaviest.
Don’t antibiotics work OK for most people when they have a temporary sinus or chest infection?
Yes and No. They are obviously useful, but many of today’s antibiotics are very potent and they have been overprescribed for decades. Most of the people who develop chronic immune problems from their use were using them frequently and/or continuously, i.e. a large percentage of people with severe acne were given antibiotics for more than a decade. Many of those patients now have immune problems. Once again read through case histories on that site. There are also plenty of examples of people who develop chronic health problems after a single round of antibiotics, particularly after using the potent synthetic ones like Cipro.
And are doctors really that culpable for cooperating with drug companies in prescribing these and other drugs to help patients?
Yes. Ever notice all of the advertisements in doctors office waiting rooms. They’re on the kleenex boxes, the ink pens, the post-it pads, the clipboards, the calendars….need I go on. It is well-documented that doctors receive kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies often in the form of paid vacations to exotic loacales. Have you also never been in a doctor’s office and seen the briefcase carrying WASPy pharmaceutical reps and how fast they get in to the see the doctor. I’ve discussed the situation with two of my past physicians. Both were very honest about the “benefits” of prescribing one drug over another.
The armamentarium of drugs contains some useful ones which save us from many illnesses and deaths, don’t they?
Absolutely, but that doesn’t exclude the possibility that these drugs do not have long-term health implications for those of us who have used them heavily. Do some research on birth control pills and the health problems that are well-documented. They are very convenient but they are by no means “good for you.”
When the truth about AIDS is known, how free-wheeling pill-for-every-ill approach to healthcare will figure prominently into the explanation. The 1960’s and the 1970’s were the beginning of the experiment. It continues to this day but as one might expect, not all of these useful drugs are “good for you.”
One useful comment that Trlll has made a few times refers to the “immune system as being a very complex biological system.” Modern living has drastically changed the envrionment in which the human immune sytem is expected to function. It’s being assaulted on every front and that needs to be a part of any discussion regarding HIV/AIDS.
Kevin
November 20th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Excellent, Chris, thanks. But that is the summary, and we are not in the library. Perhaps you could email a copy, could you, we could put the photos up.
How odd that Etienne de Haarven, who taught electron microscopy of small items to others in Manhattan from his lab at Rockefeller in the sixties, didn’t know of these photographs when we chatted last year.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:36 pm
De Harven is aware of these and a multitude of other electron micrographs of HIV.
The really odd thing is that Duesberg spends no time attempting to convince de Harven that HIV exists and that de Harven spends no time trying to convince Duesberg that HIV does not exist. As a result HIV “rethinkers” typically switch from citing Duesberg to de Harven or the Perth Group or even Lanka and never form a self-consistent argument.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
CN, you’re such a liar! You keep repeatedly citing papers that evidence our ability to test for the “HIV p24 antigen.” Is p24=HIV? No. It’s not. So a test of it is not a test for the “HIV Antigen.”
As for cultures being so unbearably expensive — that’s a load of crap. Ever had a throat culture for strep? How about a rectal smear for chlamydia? Those don’t seem to cost too much at all — and VOILA! Something actually GROWS!!!!
Each and every paper you cite you also misrepresent. I AM reading your citations, and none of them match what is you say they say. Duplicity. Duplicity. Duplicity. Kind of vile.
November 20th, 2006 at 10:44 pm
I would gladly pay whatever the exhorbitant amount is for a culture of my “HIV.” I really would. Direct me to the nearest lab. I live in upstate NY. Part of the problem we “awakened” poz guys have is that no one has ever grown the virus in CULTURE!!! They’ve tested us for “antibodies” that are of questionable specificity, and they’ve measured “viral load,” or, perhaps better stated as “something like 3% of the base pairs that make up HIV alive or dead.” It’s like smoke signals, for God’s sake. If I HAVE a microbe, and that microbe is killing me — then we should be able to GROW IT IN CULTURE. I really don’t think that’s asking too much.
November 20th, 2006 at 11:30 pm
HIV p24 is an HIV antigen. It is the protein used in HIV antigen tests. Detection of HIV p24 is considered evidence of infection with HIV.
Diagnostic, Monitoring, and Resistance Tests for HIV
Although isolation of HIV from an individual definitively diagnoses HIV infection, a single positive culture should be confirmed with a second specimen. Although this assay is very specific, it is rarely used because it is expensive, labor-intensive, and less sensitive than antibody testing.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:51 am
This paper has some very nice electron micrographs of HIV from 1987.
Of particular is the immunferritin labelling that demonstrates that HIV p24 is localised in the tubular central core and that HIV gp120 is located on the outside of the virion
Must be from one of those non-mutating strains of HIV.
November 21st, 2006 at 6:14 am
CN wrote:
HIV p24 is an HIV antigen. It is the protein used in HIV antigen tests. Detection of HIV p24 is considered evidence of infection with HIV.
And he wrote:
HIV gp120 is located on the outside of the virion
Chris — how about that virion — or in other words — the ENTIRE antigen, not bits and pieces?
And what about my culture? You just keep peddling slop for answers, or no answers at all. I mean — I ask for THE antigen — implying detection of the virion, not single proteins. Does p24 cause AIDS, Chris? Does, in your theory, gp120 cause AIDS? Or do you need more than that? How many of these little proteins do you need to make a virion? If I detect these little proteins, are you saying that for sure, swear on your mother’s bible, I’ve detected a real LIVE virion?
November 21st, 2006 at 6:29 am
Here’s some really impressive information on your two favorite proteins, CN:
From Wikipedia:
The exact mechanism of virus entry into a cell is unknown although the gp120 protein is thought to have at least responsibilities. It seeks out viable receptors on cells for virus entry, fixes the virus to the receptor on the cell and helps in passing the viral genome into the cell.
And from http://www.hivandhepatitis.com
An alternative approach to diagnosing HIV-1 infection is to detect the presence of viral antigens in the blood. The best antigen for this purpose is the capsid antigen, p24, a viral structural protein that makes up most of the virus core particle. Because high titers of p24 antigen are present in the serum of acutely infected individuals during the short period between infection and seroconversion, p24 antigen assays are useful in the diagnosis of primary HIV-1 infection.
After seroconversion the antigen is bound by p24-specific antibodies and becomes undetectable in the majority of infected individuals. For this reason p24 antigen assays are not useful for diagnosing HIV-1 infection in otherwise healthy individuals who are thought to have established infection.
Now that’s some impressive stuff. Really impressive.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:01 am
TS,
Kevin’s experience is not unique; I don’t think he’s going overboard. And, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts in other threads, I agree with him because I’ve been through similar things. I estimate that by the time I tested “poz” I had been prescribed antibiotics about 75 times—at least—in the years prior. I believe my current good health, despite having this month entered my 13th year of being “poz”, is due to my efforts aimed at correcting the effects of antibiotic overuse.
Perhaps others—NHM?—can learn from our experiences. What can it hurt?
TS, maybe you and I could sit down and chat over coffee or Guinness sometime. We both live in NYC and have a few acquaintances in common. Let me know if you’re open to that.
Kevin, I would also like to correspond with you personally. Please email me if you’re so inclined.
Glider
November 21st, 2006 at 11:17 am
Gentlemen, can we avoid mention of obscenities here, if possible? Thank you.
Glider, you are invited to a lunch meeting of the Bones Club. Maybe we can get MacDonald if he lives in NYC.
De Harven is aware of these and a multitude of other electron micrographs of HIV.
And the problems with the paper you cited, CN, confessed by the authors later, as you no doubt know. Was it really HIV? Seems not.
By the way, the paper on hemophilia allegedly rebutting Duesberg was reproduced here by us to show how flawed it was, just in case anyone missed the point. It was merely a reply to a letter, by the way, not to Duesberg’s 20 page condemnation of the hemophilia line.
Chris, can you explain why the AIDS tests demand that sera be diluted 400 fold to differentiate the infected from the uninfected? Normal dilution for other pathogens is none to 20 fold, is it not? What’s going on here?
November 21st, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Glider wrote:
Perhaps others—NHM?—can learn from our experiences. What can it hurt?
Thank you for speaking up, Glider. I’m glad to hear that someone else understands both the severity and the prevalence of this condition. I’m also glad to hear that someone else has been able to regain health after self-educating. Regardless, Duesberg’s chemical explanation of AIDS needs to be fleshed out by those of us who are intimately familiar with the immune damage that is possible from prescribed drug use, for that is, in my mind, the missing link in the dissident position. It’s obvious to me, but I’ve lived it. Everyone knows that using hard, recreational drugs is “bad for you”, but most are not aware of the extent of iatrogenic illness caused by prescription drug use. Yes, dissidents are rightfully concerned about ARVs but other anti-microbials are just as dangerous.
The reason I focused on chronic sinus sufferers earlier is three-fold:
1. It is exceedingly common (37 million and growing) and the ordained treatment protocol is not providing relief but is rather exacerbating the condition and perhaps even causing it.
2. Sinus health correlates closely with immune health. They are one of our first lines of defense, and most immuno-compromised people suffer frequent sinus infections.
3. Lastly, the more recent Mayo Clinic study found here:
Yet another Mayo Clinic study implicating Fungus (2004)
shows that chronic sinusitis is overwhelmingly caused by an immune response to the fungus that natural resides in the nasal passages, which to me suggests that there may be other areas of the body where more serious fungal infections reside thereby explaining the otherwise mysterious immune response in the sinuses, i.e. the chest cavity, the gut, the lungs, the esophageal tract are common candida infection sites for AIDS patients. These are obviously vital areas so the health of the host is understandably compromised and other OIs can then easily occur.
From the above link, these are some of my favorite quotes:
“Results of their research suggest that common airborne fungi lodge in the mucus lining of the sinuses in most people, but initiate an immune response only in individuals prone to chronic sinusitis.”
…and what do those who are prone to chronic infection have in common…frequent use of potent antibiotics resulting in systemic yeast colonization. Why the Mayo Clinic researchers fail to see the big picture, I cannot say, but most chronic sinus sufferers also have other yeast infections that clearly manifest once health declines past a certain threshold. This should lead to a more thorough investigation of fungal prevelance elsewhere in the body. After all, many knowledgeable physicians have recognized this condition for decades. Once again, the NIH ignores the epidemiological facts that reflect poorly on Big Pharma.
Through a randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind pilot trial using the fungicide Amphotericin-B applied intranasally, the researchers found that the treatment group showed a significant decrease in the inflammatory thickening of the sinus membranes compared to the control group.
I can personally attest to the effectiveness of this treatment. It was nothing short of amazing. However, now that I’ve taken care to eliminate my systemic problem with yeast, I no longer have to use an anti-fungal intranasally.
“We showed in 1999 that fungal organisms were present in the mucus of 96 percent of patients who had surgery for chronic sinusitis, and that inflammatory cells were clumped around the fungi, which indicated to us that the condition was an immune disorder caused by fungus, ” said Sherris. “But many doctors didn’t believe us.”
Doctors still don’t believe the results of this study. I’m currently “interviewing” doctors within my HMO and none are familiar with these findings, even though all readily admit that “chronic sinusitis” is the number one reason for prescribing antibiotics. The last moron I crossed-off the list had this response when I showed him the results of this study. He said: “Well, it’s well-known that some people have sinus problems and they just have to learn to live with it>” What a genius.
“Chronic sinusitis…is thought to affect 16.8 percent of the adult population of the U.S. It causes long-term nasal congestion, production of thick mucus, loss of sense of smell and creates an environment for opportunistic bacterial infections that exacerbate those symptoms. Sherris said studies have shown that chronic sinusitis exceeds even congestive heart failure in its adverse effects on quality of life.”
“Little is known about the causes of this disease. Without a specific target for intervention, physicians often simply treated the secondary bacterial infections in hopes of providing a modicum of relief.”
I would contend that most of the 16.8 percent of sufferers also have systemic candida infections which, sadly will probably take another decade for modern medicine to acknowledge. Furthermore, they need to realize that it isn’t the opportunistic bacterial infections that excerbate the symptoms but rather the antibiotics that are given to treat those infections. Broad-spectrum antibiotics kill all the good bacteria in the gut, the fungus grows unchecked, health deteriorates progressively as the cycle continues with each prescription.
Sorry to post such a lenghty post, but I hope at least a few of you find it interesting. As Glider points out, I feel very strongly that immuno-compromised individuals — positive or negative — can benefit greatly by becoming educated about this issue.
Kevin
November 21st, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Glider, you are invited to a lunch meeting of the Bones Club. Maybe we can get MacDonald if he lives in NYC
It would be my honour. But unfortunately I’m oceans and mountains away from New York in the country suggested by my name.
November 21st, 2006 at 4:02 pm
NHM,
In your p24 comments, you’ve hit on the big problem with HIV virion isolation: except for the case of acutely infected patients, there just aren’t enough of them in the bloodstream. For the Denialists, this proves the non-existence of HIV…or whatever it is the individual denialist believes. To a “mainstream” scientist, it says that the virus has gone latent, hiding out with little to no replication in a very shy and long-lived population of T-cells hidden in some as-yet unknown location(s) in the body.
But you’re right: a poz person should at least have the opportunity to SEE the virus that is supposedly in a position to destroy him/her, not just some surrogate marker.
By taking enough blood from a patient–even gallons and gallons over a long period of time, possibly shortened by doing some sort of “dialysis” combined with immunodepletion–or by taking sufficient blood from an admittedly rare patient who presents during the acute phase, or by recruiting individuals who refuse medication and are not classified as long-term non-progressors (i.e. they have measurable virus in their sera)….it should be possible to isolate the virion directly from blood, not just from the artifical environment of cell culture. This would be a tremendous step forward for patients (and for science and medicine). If this could be done, the individual virus replicating in the patient could be analyzed and treated with specific means.
Yet it hasn’t been done…yet. Why??
Proteomic methods are advancing rapidly, and should soon (next five years, maybe less) reach a level of sensitivity that will allow detection of virions if they are at all present in the individual patient…using a clinically feasible sample volume. If, five years from now, the matter of virion isolation from a patient has not been resolved, I will prepare to join the diverse ranks of the denialists. Until then, please save a fencepost for me.
November 21st, 2006 at 5:45 pm
Hi Martel: There’s plenty of room on my fence for you, and thanks for the additional info on isolation issues. I think that R. Culshaw is going to cover this issue explicitly in her forthcoming book.
To Kevin and Glider: I am definitely benefitting from your posts, and I really appreciate the in-depth information. There are so many unknowns regarding immuno-deficiency — as far as I am concerned, all information is helpful at this point. I have personally discussed the issue of fungal infections with my doctor and will continue to monitor it carefully. But yes, you are both absolutely right to note that the information is very helpful to me.
November 21st, 2006 at 6:43 pm
If, five years from now, the matter of virion isolation from a patient has not been resolved, I will prepare to join the diverse ranks of the denialists. Until then, please save a fencepost for me.
The fence is made of barbed wire in this case, since this kind of inability to grasp the nettle and yank it from the ground is what gives the HIV boys and girls their advantage.
Odd how easy it is to plant an idea in someone’s mind, how quickly it takes root, and how mightily it then resists being uprooted. Common finding of brain research, according to Gazzaniga.
It is really not any extra dollop of skepticism or cynicism or proof that should be required here, just plain thinking. A tells you B, does B make sense, if not, science says reject it, even if society says humor A, play politics, gain two squares, free throw.
Can’t you see the strongest of all reasons to dismiss the paradigm now, and not sit on the fence, is already apparent? This is the simple fact that its top officers don’t have any conviction about it after 22 years.
If they did, they wouldn’t censor its review by scientists or media, for they would have no motive to do so. They have always done so, and do so now.
QED.
November 21st, 2006 at 7:28 pm
How imperious of you, TS. Thanks for your take, but I’m comfortable where I am. I’ve decided to be more circumspect. Clearly, that’s not your style. It’s fine we have different opinions on this issue. It’s not indicative of any lack of reasoning ability on either of our parts, I’m sure. No need to condescend.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:16 pm
I live in another country. You can contact diagnostic laboratories in your state and ask them whether they perform HIV virus culture tests.
There is no THE antigen. There are several structural HIV proteins all of which stimulate specific antibodies. HIV antigen tests contatin antibodies that are specific to HIV p24. These tests are highly specific so yes a positive reaction is almost 100% certain that the detection of HIV p24 indicates active HIV replication.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:38 pm
Confessed by the authors? What are you talking about. If you can explain why HIV antibodies bind to specific parts of the virion then please explain.
You obviously have not read it then.
We and Darby et al have provided that evidence.2 3 Duesberg’s commentary4 requires further comment.
The article is a response to Duesberg’s commentary.
4
Commentary: non-HIV hypotheses must be studied more carefully
Duesberg’s commentary was on this primary article by Sabin et al
2
Comparison of immunodeficiency and AIDS defining conditions in HIV negative and HIV postive men with haemophilia A
Sabin also refers to another study by Darby et al.
3
Mortality before and after HIV infection in the complete UK population of haemophiliacs. UK Haemophilia Centre Directors’ Organisation.
These two studies have directly looked at HIV+ and HIV- patients with hemophilia and have directly tested Duesberg’s hypothesis. It failed.
HIV+ patients suffered progressive CD4+ cell loss and eventual severe immunesuppression. HIV- patients didn’t.
Duesberg’s response to Sabin’s study was just a series of ad hoc excuses for why HIV+ patients got AIDS and HIV- patients didn’t.
In addition to these studies we also have:
opt=Abstract&list_uids=8095697&query_hl=27&itool=pubmed_docsum”>Does drug use ca
use AIDS? Ascher MS, Sheppard HW, Winkelstein W Jr, Vittinghoff E. Nature. 1993
Mar 11;362(6416):103-4.
dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8876838&query_hl=27&itool=pubmed_docsum”> The lack of as
sociation of marijuana and other recreational drugs with progression to AIDS in
the San Francisco Men’s Health Study. Di Franco MJ, Sheppard HW, Hunter DJ, Tost
eson TD, Ascher MS. Ann Epidemiol. 1996 Jul;6(4):283-9.
opt=Abstract&list_uids=8095571&query_hl=37&itool=pubmed_DocSum”> HIV-1 and the a
etiology of AIDS. Schechter MT, Craib KJ, Gelmon KA, Montaner JS, Le TN, O’Shaug
hnessy MV. Lancet. 1993 Mar 13;341(8846):658-9.
Duesberg’s theory is just not supported by the evidence.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:56 pm
Only one HIV test has used a dilution of 1:400 and that one is no longer on the market. Other HIV tests have dilution factors ranging from 1:2 to 1:100. Other antibody tests for other pathogens also use these dilutions.
One of the reasons that sera is diluted with Bovine Serum or Goat Serum is to improve the specifity of the tests. Sera may contain large amounts of non-specific antibodies. These non-specific antibodies will bind to proteins such as BSA in the diluent which is then removed. HIV specific antibodies will not bind to BSA but have a strong affinity for the HIV antigens in the test kit. This dramatically reduces the number of false positives and improves the specificity of the test.
The dilution used in a particular test is normally adjusted to provide the best balance between specifity and sensitivity. Ideally you want to have no false negatives and no false positives. In practice this ideal is never achieved although modern HIV tests probably have the highest specificity and sensitivity of any test in history.
Of course if you do not follow the instructions and fail to dilute the test serum containing BSA then specificity of the test will be reduced resulting in a large number of false positives.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:01 am
Chris — what about Martel’s post on these new proteomic methods? Are you aware of these? Are you aware, as Martel says, that they would be able to isolate the ENTIRE VIRION directly from blood? Don’t you think that needs to be done?
In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not interested in a surrogate marker, and I think that’s my right. No one performs HIV cultures here except in laboratory experiments. I’ve been “poz” for 10 years and no one has offered to culture my blood. Enough with p24 and gp120. If these things were such miracles of science, I think we’d all know that. We’re talking about the entire virion now, and you’re making me repeat myself not because you don’t understand what I’m asking for, but because you don’t have anything resembling a good answer. Frankly, that’s just cruel. Play that game with people who haven’t been “treated” for this, but not with me.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:13 am
And to the kind Dr. H.B. — what about cytochrome monoxidase? Come back and explain. I want to know what you’re talking about — in as close to layman’s terms as possible, if you would be so kind.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:36 am
And to TS and others:
It appears as though fence sitting is gaining some respect here, and that’s as it should be. Do you really think it would behoove me to yolk my health and well-being to a single paradigm? I did that already and have been sorely disappointed. Why do it again at this point? I think it makes the most sense for me to consider all possibilities, with a skeptical eye, of course.
I mean, after all, as folks who read this know, I had an immune crash last month and a host of little opportunistic infections — these are things that I was directly confronted with, not words on a blog. I don’t think it is in my best interests to align myself with any particular hypothesis at this point. I’m better off trying to learn from everyone — the more information, and the more diverse that information is, the better equipped I will be to make important decisions regarding my health.
The Third Way (the Fence) is logical from my perspective. I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone by taking this position — in fact, the exact opposite is true. You could say that I’m desperate for information and diverse perspectives, and I think anyone in my position would be, by necessity. It may behoove others to gain closure on this and to choose a position — I don’t take argument with that — but I do question anything presented to me that is less than defnitive — from either side of the debate. It just makes sense to me to follow this course. I’m not doing it to be difficult or to be different — just to be as well-informed as possible. That is not so hard to understand, is it?
November 22nd, 2006 at 11:53 am
I don’t think it is in my best interests to align myself with any particular hypothesis at this point.
No one here is forcing another paradigm down your throat. The review of HIV∫AIDS finds no reason to believe that HIV is an actor in this great medical drama, that is all. Your clinging to the idea is illogical. What actually causes immune dysfunction or failure is another question, which in any individual case encompasses a range of possibilities which only they and their health providers can review with any authority, as you well know.
That said, however, as you also know there are various likely candidates for causing widespread immune problems of the serious kind that gave rise to GRID/AIDS, and drugs are so obvious a reason in the US and Europe that to deny them as the primary factor would be ridiculous. What does it take to put two and two together? Not much once the HIV meme is extracted from the frontal cortex. Syphilis and other infectious disease might be involved, in the unprecedented frenzy of sex that arrived in gay clubs in the seventies, but where is the evidence they could give rise to an unprecedented crowd phenomenon of the massive and fatal breakdown of the immune system? Drugs before and drugs after the symptoms appear are the obvious, simple and rational answer.
All this speculation arises because research on other causes and even co factors has been blocked by the politically driven insistence on HIV as the only cause. The first order of business is to remove the HIV∫AIDS meme from the analysis, and that is necessary before the evidence can be properly assessed. The data is riddled with this assumption, however, and additional studies will probably be necessary to find out what really happened, and new data, which is the sensible point you made yourself your letter to Harpers, though not original to you, since Duesberg tried for some time to get a study going on drug effects om mice which was enthusiastically blocked at the NIH despite the support of the (ex) editor of Science.
Anyone clinging to the idea that HIV is involved has to present a very good reason for the amazing coincidence that Nixon’s War on Cancer gave rise to a lot of retrovirologists with expensive expertise and labs hunting for a retrovirus that caused any harm to a human being, once the hunt for one that caused cancer proved to be a dead end, and Bingo! suddenly one appears out of the blue to cause a global pandemic of unprecedented immune collapse!
As we have said before, if you give any credit to that we have a bridge to Brooklyn that we would like to sell you.
November 22nd, 2006 at 12:06 pm
NHM wrote:
It may behoove others to gain closure on this and to choose a position — I don’t take argument with that — but I do question anything presented to me that is less than defnitive — from either side of the debate.
For those who are suffering with “immune collapse”, taking a position off the fence is not just empowering, it is often the difference between life and death. Had I not made the connection between the treatment I was receiving and a worsening of my symptoms, I would be dead or, in the least, beyond recovery. Sure, each acute infection would usually resolve after taking lots of anti-microbials, but my overall health was being further damaged in the process, and this cycle of sickness just repeated over and over. I see ARV-use in a similar way; they help many people recover from acute, opportunistic infections (the so-called Lazarus effect is real), but I shudder when I think about the effects they are having in the rest of the body. Treating the opportunistic infections is necessary, but unburdening the immune system is the key to recovery.
You have to break the cycle of fear and sickness, and that’s difficult to do if you do not free yourself from the dogma. You can still be open to hearing both sides of the argument, as I am, but if you want to get well, you’ll need to take action and allow yourself to be well, to have hope for better health. Hope is less profitable than fear, so any real sense of hope is omitted from the HIV=AIDS meme. Most importantly, you have to limit and eventually eliminate anything that is poisoning your body, whether the source is ARVs, hard drugs, poor diet, or other unnecessary environmental exposures to chemicals. Only then can you really get your body back to health, using whatever combination of healthful actions is required. It’s not easy, but I found that there was much merit in following the guidelines of natural hygiene, particularly in the beginning. This approach will allow your body to heal even during the period when you may need to take strong anti-fungals to eliminate the systemic candida that is undoubtedly affecting your immune health. It takes time, but better health for the immune-suppressed individual cannot be achieved by pills, alone.
Kevin
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:10 pm
Hey Chris,
time for a new read and comprehend session instead of all that cut and paste.
The question was not why is sera diluted, but why is it diluted 400 times? I’m aware that John Moore has answered the question the same way you have about two dozen times here – which is by not answering but giving a lecture on how much hay it takes to make a strawman. But I’m sure with your googling skills you can find the actual answer to the question somewhere. Come on impress us, come up with an independent answer.
By the way, why is it the test is off the market? Did they run out of BS to dilute it with?
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:24 pm
Man, you guys are still going at it:)
NHM writes:
If I HAVE a microbe, and that microbe is killing me — then we should be able to GROW IT IN CULTURE. I really don’t think that’s asking too much .
This is exactly right!
Compare to cancer –
If a Doctor suspects that Mr. Jones has cancer (x-ray, clincal symptoms, etc), he must confirm it by biopsy — getting the tissue and having a pathologist, through electronmicroscope and/or complicated immunohistochemical staining, confirm whether or not the cells are cancerous.
This is rigorous stuff. There ain’t no “false” positives. There ain’t “indirect” evidence. There ain’t “surrogate” markers. You either have cancer or not.
With HIV anti-body testing and PCR viral “loads”, you get a lot of fear-mongering mumbo-jumbo.
November 22nd, 2006 at 1:46 pm
MacDonald,
The problem is not so much knowledge why we dilute as much, as to find the publications which show, after sequencing, that proteins giving an absorbance below the cut’ off, are different from those giving an absorbance above, and it strictly.
November 22nd, 2006 at 2:01 pm
I admire your emphasis on “plain thinking” TS, I really do, and I admire the many plain thoughts you have communicated to your readers. I also truly wish the resolution of the HIV issue could result from merely thinking plainly. At the risk of assuming the universally accursed position of a jaded relativist, I question the validity of this binary MAKES SENSE/DOESN’T MAKE SENSE view. What, exactly, does it mean to “make sense”? “Sense” depends ultimately on the reference point of the person doing the thinking. I happen to know people to whom it makes perfect sense that AIDS is a punishment inflicted by God on unbelievers. If I voice my vehement disagreement with them, I am, to them, clearly in the wrong, someone who has abandoned all sense by rejecting the ways of truth, the ways of God, the cosmic arbiter of all sense, meaning, logic.
TS, you claim that NHM, I, and others like us should abandon the fence because the AIDS paradigm adherents lack “any conviction about it after 22 years.” This is a curious route to a claim of QED, and by this logic, those fire-brimstone-and-immunosuppression Protestants I mentioned above must be absolutely right, since I have witnessed their firm conviction, even self-abandoning zealotry: their church has watched as its own have gone abroad and died gruesome deaths for the sake of their gospel. They are convinced. Therefore, HIV is not the cause of AIDS; sin and God’s judgment are. QED. If the strength of one’s claim to the truth depends upon one’s conviction, we should all become fundamentalist Christians, since they are willing to die for their faith; or, perhaps, Wahhabist Muslims, who willingly blow themselves up for a future Caliphate; or, alternatively, Buddhists, who can immolate themselves in protest at injustice.
But do the paradigm adherents really lack conviction? If so, they wouldn’t bother to defend their views. But they do, and viciously. That they defend their tidy HIV=AIDS equation in such a sleazy manner–suppressing dissent–bespeaks not a lack of conviction, but rather an intellectual laziness and unwillingness to transcend their base human instincts. How easy (and satisfying!) it is to call a foe an idiot! How rewarding to watch as an adversary is relegated to social obscurity, scientific marginality, for daring to question the Deans of Disease! How incredibly and despicably human!
For my part, however poorly the Moores and Gallos comport themselves, their behavior cannot in and of itself consign every bit of their belief system to the garbage heap.
In my view, one who claims the scientific mindset must always remain on the proverbial fence, else s/he becomes a believer, an acolyte. Maybe I’m just quibbling over words, and if so, I apologize for ranting, but the fence is becoming dear to me.
November 22nd, 2006 at 3:16 pm
John,
It is my opinion as well that the level of dilution is not in itself an argument, but since it is so extremely high in this case it is cause for suspicion.
John Moore and Roberto Giraldo both agree that undiluted serum will produce false positives in the complete absence of HIV.
I think, your point is that the ELISA test we’re talking about is non-specific for HIV, and that the odds of testing positive increase in proportion with the general levels of antibodies in the test serum.
The test is said to have been validated clinically against on one side people diagnosed with AIDS (diagnosed how exactly I don’t know), and on the other people who were known to be without risk of AIDS.
The cut off level of dilution was reached when all the former and none of the latter tested positive.
Of cause people with fullblown AIDS are likely to have much higher general levels of antibodies in their system than people who are known to not be at risk for AIDS.
What’s missing in all of this is of course the gold standard, the virus itself. But I don’t know enough about the procedures for antibody test validation to know if there is anything unusual in this, apart from the high levels of dilution.
According to John Moore,
The bovine or goat antibodies bind to the same non-specific sites as the human antibodies would, so they compete out the human antibodies. However, the detection antibodies are specific for human IgG, and do not efficiently react with the bovine or goat counterparts
Of note is that truly HIV-positive serum samples can often be diluted by as much as 1:100,000, sometimes even more, and still give a positive reaction. This is because the serum antibodies to HIV react SPECIFICALLY with the HIV antigens that are coated onto the ELISA plate surface, or present on the western blot membrane.
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:47 pm
TS, I’m saddened that you can’t see clear of this. I really am. Your post to me was very condescending — I don’t imagine that was intentional, but perhaps it was.
It’s unnecessary. That’s the bottom line. Your obsession with my position is unnecessary, counterproductive, and unkind. I don’t judge you — yet you continue to judge me. If you need to do that — make me some sacrificial lamb so you can preach from a pulpit (to borrow a reference from Martel), then fine — sacrifice away. I think you know, because you know me personally just a little bit, that nothing you write will alter my course whatsoever — I guess I have CONVICTION about this.
I’ve made productive contributions to this thread, as Dave has pointed out, and as Martel has pointed out. If you can’t get past the Fence and simply appreciate those contributions, well, I’m terribly sorry, but that is not my problem.
Beyond that — Martel spoke beautifully regarding the reservation of judgement. I concur with everything he said.
November 22nd, 2006 at 4:56 pm
I would just add, that when this “awakening” happened to me, I made contact with John Moore, Gregg Gonsalves — several prominent spokepeople for the establishment. And you want to know what? They wrote condescendingly to me too, when I challenged the HIV faith.
I’ve argued this for a long time. Now I don’t argue it, I simply state it again with that necessary CONVICTION: The oppressed have learned all too well how to emulate their oppressors. Neither the Establishment nor the Dissidents will stand for any reasonable questioning of their arguments. That is a fact.
And that is why I constructed the Fence, and pointed out the fact that there is indeed, whether the Establishment or the Dissidents want to admit, a Third Way. That way is both scientifically and philosophically legitimate (as Martel has already detailed), and it is personally congruent with the place I find myself in.
And I feel quite certain in writing that it is not just Martel and I who feel this way. I would guess that a very significant percentage of this blog’s silent readership is still reserving judgement.
Finally — the act of reserving judgement alone is revolutionary. I don’t need to reject anything to topple the establishment. Doubt is a more than adequate weopan.
November 22nd, 2006 at 6:19 pm
I’ve found the past few posts from NHM and Martel to be thoughtful and well-spoken…but…
From my perspective, I’m seeing what’s claimed to be “fence-sitting” as only another flavor of “rethinker”. Because what those who call themselves rethinkers mostly do is simply question the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. The need to create a “third way” is an attempt to create distance from some rethinkers who, after examining the evidence, rightly understand that lacking the evidence to maintain the HIV=AIDS hypothesis, there’s no convincing reason to hold out hope that HIV causes AIDS.
There really are only two camps: the orthodoxy, and those who question.
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:02 pm
The only person that could possibly understand what Martel was talking about is Martel and I even doubt this.
The proteome of HIV is weel characterised.
HIV proteins have been isolated and purified. Their sequences are known. Studies have established the approximate numbers of each of these proteins in the virion and their location and arrangement.
HIV proteins have been crystallised and X-ray crystallography has been used to determine their structure.
Site directed mutagenesis studies have also revealed the importance of specific amino acid residues for the function of many of these proteins.
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:19 pm
As I said before other HIV tests use dilution factors between 1:2 and 1:100.
The dilution factor chosen for a particular test will depend on the type of test, the amount of antigens and the concentration of blocking agents in the diluent.
When people design an ELISA test they typically vary a number of factors to try to get the biggest separation between the readings for negative samples and positive samples. They use a panel of reference sera.
One factor that they vary is the dilution factor. The panel is tested using a series of different dilutions. Ideally all positive samples will show a high optical absorption and all negative samples will show a low optical absorption with no overlap. The dilution factor that produces the best separation is chosen. A cut-off optical absorption is then chosen so that close to 100% of positive samples have a reading higher than this value and close to 100% of negative samples have a reading lower than this value.
In reality 100% specificity and 100% sensitivity are never achieved although the modern HIV tests certainly come as close as any test.
Other factors such as cost and ease of use are also considered.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:37 pm
Dan — first, thank you, and second, just to clarify, you wrote:
there’s no convincing reason to hold out hope that HIV causes AIDS
I don’t think that’s what I’m doing. Certainly the word “hope” is misplaced. And you have discussed, quite eloquently — that “AIDS” as a syndrome is a hopeless mess from a definitional perspective, so discussing “causation” when it comes to such a poorly defined syndrome, makes little sense — a point I think you’ve made. So I wouldn’t be interested in arguments that HIV “causes” “AIDS” or drug use “causes” “AIDS,” etc. I think we’re really discussing immunodeficiencies, and this thread has made it clear, thanks to Kevin and Glider, that there are multiple factors that ought to be considered beyond those normally discussed here, like HIV and drug use.
No one is hanging on desperately to HIV, my friend. But Peter Duesberg says it exists but is harmless, and the Perth Group disagrees, and there are still other opinions on the issue as well (I know you’re no fan of Root-Bernstein, but he is not alone in his thinking). So even if we were to speak of HIV, there would be no single “rethinker” stance on the issue. These are exactly the kinds of reasons one might muster to explore a “third way.” Reasons for a fence. For some contemplation without necessarily drawing a firm conclusion. If you do feel comfortable with a firm conclusion on this whole mess, I support you in that, but I do not feel comfortable and cannot draw a firm conclusion. I’m committed to being circumspect and suspect of all comers and their theories.
We’ve talked shades of gray before. There is no dichotomy here — there are actually a plethora of views. Certainly you and I agree that one view has been center stage for too long with way too little scrutiny. But that doesn’t imply that the answer to our questions is yes or no, black or white, this or that. All I’m asking for is the simple acknowledgement that this is more complicated than that — and I think this thread provides ample evidence of that complexity.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:11 am
In his worthy efforts to enlighten the heathen, Chris Noble has persevered through 150 pages of this thread, patiently explaining the proper doctrine according to the AIDS scientific establishment. I think we should thank him and his colleague Terrell (trill) for the generous time and effort they have given us as visiting missionaries from orthodox science.
Regardless of any differences in views, I’m sure they would agree that the factual record should be respected. For that purpose, and with no hope or intent of changing anyone’s opinion, I think it’s time to start to set the record straight. The reality is that for all their good intentions these loyal representatives of AIDS, Inc. have dispensed a considerable amount of misleading information.
As an example, CN recently assured us that current HIV antibody tests no longer use the 1:400 dilution of the standard Abbott ELISA test, which Roberto Giraldo, MD, showed gave 100% false positives on undiluted samples (Everyone Reacts Positive on the ELISA Tests for HIV). Mr. Noble says that “other HIV tests use dilution factors between 1:2 and 1:100.” But according to Dr. John Moore in his recent article at AIDStruth, “The 1:400 standard dilution in the test referred to by Giraldo is reasonable and typical …”
Some newer tests are actually using higher dilutions. The current instructions for the Vironostika HIV-1 test shows maximum dilution factors in the thousands for detecting HIV-1 antibodies (Table 7, et seq). A recent study of three current rapid test kits for HIV reported that “the optimal specimen dilution…was 1:1,000…,1:1,600…and 1:5,000…” (S. Soroka et al. Modification of rapid HIV antibody protocols…Clin Diag Lab Immunol 12:918-21, 2005).
Dr. Moore’s statement on the matter sought to debunk Dr. Giraldo’s article but it’s clear that Moore never got past the first page. For all his bluster, Dr. Moore could come up with only one specific criticism: that Giraldo didn’t follow “the recipe.” Moore and Noble both missed the point. Giraldo pointed out that most serologic tests for antibodies use undiluted samples (e.g., for hepatitis A and B viruses, rubella virus, etc.) or else use dilutions of 1:10 (EB virus) up to 1:20 (cytomegalovirus). The 1:400 dilution that has long been employed in the most widely used antibody test for HIV is unusually high, and suggests that the antibodies to HIV proteins differ only quantitatively, being present in everyone.
It’s interesting to note that the original studies determining HIV proteins, such the 1987 Gelderblom study which CN mentioned and which showed an electron micrograph, were based on the assumption that HIV alone was present in the banded material from sucrose gradient testing. Ten years later, Gelderblom and his colleagues had to modify this view, when they found the retroviral band was contaminated by normal virus-like microvesicles from the cells (P. Gluschankof et al., Cell membrane vesicles are a major contaminant of gradient-enriched HIV type-1 preparations. Virology 230: 125-33, 1997). They wrote, “Analysis of the cellular molecules present in the fractions…demonstrated that virus and cellular vesicles share several cellular antigens…” Furthermore, several HIV antigens, including p24, are also found in other retroviruses, including HTLV-1, HTLV-II and endogenous retroviruses. (This is not to say that HIV is an endogenous retrovirus, only that it shares some of the same key proteins.)
_____
Another example of misleading claims by CN was his recentl flurry of put-downs regarding Dr. Duesberg theory of AIDS in hemophilia. Mr. Noble had cited a response by Sabin et al. to a commentary by Duesberg on their study. Though CN took this letter of commentary as Duesberg’s paper on the subject, in fact Sabin et al. never cited or discussed Duesberg’s paper on hemophilia. Suffice it to say that many studies backed his theory and Sabin’s response did not affect the main points of Duesberg’s critical commentary,
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:38 am
There really are only two camps: the orthodoxy, and those who question.
What do we have here, a scientific cult? Even Dan is influenced!
We cannot agree. There are three camps. The orthodoxy, the fence sitters (NHM and Kevin’s Third Way), and the Other Way, decisive rejection of the claim that HIV has supernatural abilities which cannot be explained by science except in the resulting swathe it cuts through US gay bathhouses and clubs and African kraals, in favour of the simple and obvious interpretation, which is that AIDS is drugs in the US and disease in Africa, relabeled. End of BS.
How surprised and relieved Gallo must have been when he was first pushed over the line by Margaret Heckler and found that his thin and tattered paradigm kite flew after all, and instead of being shot out of the sky by his fellow scientists, soon collected an army of faithful with the help of a couple of other self appointed generals, and now proves as difficult to eradicate in the souls of even those who are aware of its defects as bedbugs from a mattress.
The usefulness of extended Comments is that it does eventually reveal rather clearly who people are, mentally speaking. This thread as a litmus test for gullibility has now revealed how easy it is to get followers for a cult even among those who claim to be “scientists”. Even those who can see the force of the argument against HIV retain the sense that there may be something to it. Why are there so few here who can handle a simple research problem, which is whether the claim of HIV causing AIDS has anything to recommend it, and if not, then reject the idea as unfounded?
“But do the paradigm adherents really lack conviction? If so, they wouldn’t bother to defend their views. But they do, and viciously.”
Which shows they lack conviction. You don’t defend your position viciously unless you have reason to be vicious, which betrays lack of confidence. It is calmness and tolerance for dissent which betokens confidence.
They don’t defend their views much, not the top people, who know their flaws. It is only the second tier that defend the science with attempts at scientific justification, such as John Moore, and they throw in a lot of bullying too with their claims. The top paradigm brass defend the position by censoring challenges, as you say.
The relevant issue is why they cannot or will not defend their position with arguments in public. Just as the religious cannot, ultimately, defend their faith with reason, since it is not only beyond reason but also against reason, the priests of HIV∫AIDS have always avoided and hardly ever troubled to defend their paradigm in a free for all where the discussion is allowed to continue, as on this blog. Challenges in the literature have gone unaswered despite promises to reply from Gallo and Montagnier (who was so influenced by reading Duesberg’s challenge he has been hot on co-factors ever since), and a debate in Science cut short after one reply round. Live debates haven’t been seen except very early on when there was an enquiry chaired by Howard Temin in New York City, an AMFAR panel in Washington where the HIV boys referenced an invented graph, and a White House meeting of both sides Bialy organized which Fauci and Gallo swiftly scotched.
Where does this distaste spring from? It can only hsve one source, lack of confidence that the thing can stand up to close examination from informed skeptics. Otherwise, you must tell us why confident people would think they needed to go to the trouble of censoring a critique of a strong hypothesis? Does a strong theory need a censor of review? Is that not a scienctific giveaway? Do you have any other example of extended massive official admitted censorship of the opponents of a strong claim? Emphasis on the word extended. Wake up and smell the coffee, NHM!
Don’t challenge us to retreat from a condescending attitude, NHM, when with so much at stake, you cannot take the responsibility of thinking things through to a conclusion which we would frankly expect a child to see: A claim with nothing but inconsistency and paradox and conflict with known reality cannot be accepted, even for the sake of argument, even as a possibility by a scientist or anybody else, especially not when it risks death for its believers.
Forgive us for saying so but you do in your hesitant fence sitting and self justification perfectly instruct us as to how easy it is to start and maintain a cult. You and Kevin are useful and articulate case study, and we are grateful fo it. We are busy trying to think we could exploit the cult phenomenon, in fact. Unfortnately it is hard to start a cult for disbelief.
Again, we do not and would not blame you, if you did not insist on it repeatedly, for you are ill, and that disturbs the edge of the mind, we know that. One night at 1 am years ago we were strangled into unconsciousness coming up the subway steps by a strong black arm wrapped around our neck, and when we awoke with our nose in the concrete we found it took a week to get back our normal mental edge. But even though we make that excuse for weak willed indecisiveness for you, which you of course find condescending, we cannot join you in your emotional response to what is and should be a matter of reason.
You don’t seem to see that the mysteries of AIDS are in no way an argument for a role played by HIV. If anything, they are a result of that unacceptable claim. If that claim hadn’t been introduced and politically maintained with the help of censorship we would not have had research in other directions roadblocked, and we would certainly know a great deal which we do not know yet.
So there is also that scientific damage exacted by your publicly subscribing in some small residual degree, whatever it is, to this great confidence trick, which compounds the irresponsibility of not grasping the nettle and just saying No. In your ambivalence you are really weakening support for the very research you have called for.
Most disappointing of all is that you are a psychologist and yet apparently blind to this psychological influence in yourelf. Surely as a professional you have a responsibility to analyze psychological factors in HIV∫AIDS belief, not boast of the fence sitting which they have induced in you. You do deny that psychological factors are swaying your analysis, right?
Psychologist, heal thyself!
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:06 am
The 1:400 dilution that has long been employed in the most widely used antibody test for HIV is unusually high, and suggests that the antibodies to HIV proteins differ only quantitatively, being present in everyone.
Well put, Bob. Everyone get that? The 400 x dilution can only be required because lesser dilution will result in too many positives. Nil dilution will result in 100% positives.
We all are positive, folks, to some varying extent.
The test is nothing more than a lottery, with the winners awarded death by AZT and Protease Inhibitors, as soon as they fall even slightly ill with any one of a raft of symptoms, though only after an initial period when the drugs cleanse the system of any infection and probably much of the resident good bacteria, as quickly as a Rotorooter driven through the intestines.
Are we overstating, Chris, my boy? Or have you a stock of misleading counterclaims to make to fog up the windows and bring the discussion to a halt as far as new understanding goes?
And by the way, what is the reason for your anonymity? You have nothing to fear from Fauci. For all we know, he will pay for your Christmas turkey.
The only reason we can think of is shame. Tell us it ain’t so.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:12 am
What is it with “rethinkers” and their inability to read instructions?
From page 10 of the document that robert Houston cited:
2. Prepare a 1:21 dilution of each serum or plasma test specimen, Calibrator, and Controls. Include three wells of Negative Calibrator, and one well each of HIV-1 Positive Control and HIV-O Positive Control on each run.
Table 7 refers to a dilution panel that demonstrates the sensitivity of the test.
Table 11 is also of interest. The makers of the test checked for conditions or substances that could possibly casue false positives. All of these were negative. Addition of a very small amount of HIV+ sera turned them positive.
Again Robert Houston has major reading and/or comprehension problems. The paper was about distinguishing recent infections from old infections so that an extimate of HIV incidence (as distinct from HIV prevalence) could be determined. The basic idea is that people with recent infections have fewer antibodies to HIV than those with established infections. They deliberately modified the tests by using a much higher than recommended dilution. The tests lost sensitivity and people with recent HIV infection tested negative.
+ normal test + diluted test => old infection
+ normal test – diluted test => recent infection
Here are a list of ELISAs for a variety of infectious diseases that all use 1:101 sample dilution:
IBL > Products > Infectious Diseases > Infectious Diseases
What do you think the results of not diluting the samples would have on these tests? Would this be evidence that everyone is positive for Chlamydia trachomatis, Yersinia enterocolitica, Treponema pallidum, Trichinella spiralis, Dengue Virus etc? Or that these microbes don’t exist?
?
Sabin’s study and that of Darby do not support Duesberg’s theory they demolish it.
Duesberg’s ad hoc explanations like blaming AZT for the AIDS in the HIV+ patients are ridiculous. As Sabin points out the patients were given AZT after they had developed AIDS. Unless the effects of AZT can travel backwards in time then that effectively rules out this excuse.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:21 am
??
Chris Noble
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:44 am
Has it truly never occured to “rethinkers” such as Giraldo to take ELISAs for other microbes that are designed to use a serum dilution of say 1:101 and see what happens when you use undiluted serum?
Surely this would have been the first thing to do – some control experiments!
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:59 am
TS wrote:
…the fence sitters (NHM and Kevin’s Third Way),…
Just for the record and no offense to NHM, but I’m no fence-sitter.
I do not think that HIV has been sufficiently proven to cause AIDS, nor anything else. The HIV theory should have been abandoned long ago. Though I do believe in keeping an open-mind about most things, I endorsed “listening to both sides” here mainly out of respect for the wisdom of “know thy enemy.” Examining the track record of the HIV orthodoxy reveals ugly truths about the consequences of corporatizing important social institutions like healthcare and science. The industry supporting HIV is dangerous to human health and in that respect it is an enemy to us all–including all the disenfranchised peoples of the world. Unfortunately, they must endure our almost-but-not-quite-right “cures” to satisfy our almost-but-not-quite-right theories, as well as our ego–no matter how gruesome the results.
My commentary regarding ARV usage is based on my experience of trying to recover good health after suffering serious health problems. I never took ARVs but I took lots of anti-fungals which can also have serious side-effects when used for long periods, but I would have never gotten well without them. Iatrogenic illness is particularly suited for modern medicine, it seems. The increase in numbers of Naturopathic Practitioners in recent years is in direct response to the increase in health problems caused by allopathic care. Whether or not health can be fully restored to the most severely afflicted remains to be seen. In my opinion, your goal should be to live drug-free but sometimes you’ve got to kill pathogens directly. Unlike HIV, there are some real nasty organisms that do real damage when the opportunity arises inside a weakened human body:
“In its fungal form, yeast develops rhizoids (long root-like structures that are invasive and penetrate the mucosa).”
http://www.mercola.com/2003/jun/18/antibiotics_bacteria.htm
November 23rd, 2006 at 4:14 am
Duesberg’s ad hoc explanations like blaming AZT for the AIDS in the HIV+ patients are ridiculous. As Sabin points out the patients were given AZT after they had developed AIDS. Unless the effects of AZT can travel backwards in time then that effectively rules out this excuse.
Don’t be perfectly silly. A statement like AZT caused AIDS in patients before they received it would hardly be overlooked by the dimmest peer reviewer, let along a hostile one, which all his reviewers were. You reveal your bias as going overboard into silliness with this one. Obviously Duesberg is saying the AIDS in people which occurred before the AZT was due to other drug intake, but after the AZT was given, was also due to AZT. AZT created more AIDS, whatever there was to start with. If none, it will create AIDS. If some, it will create more AIDS. Even Bob Gallo if HIV positive would avoid taking AZT, he told us at the time, even though as he also told us that HIV killed like a truck. (See SPIN Interview 1988)
Chris, an explosion of reaction to Robert Houston’s post – seems that he must have gotten to you on the testing, and you rush to contradict with misleading answers.
Your basic point seems only to be that most tests will score positive if not diluted, is that correct? Is that what you are trying to say? The truth is that Giraldo’s paper tells you the answer, doesn’t it – that lower dilution is used for most testing, and it is only HIV testing that for 15 years at least (till he did the work, even if tests have been changed later) used/uses such exceptionally high dilution, and that nil dilution results in turning 100% negative results into 100% positive.
The reason for this is clearly that there are enough constituents produced by every body to turn the test positive at nil dilution, even when there was no HIV around, because there are enough non HIV constituents to cross react with the test even though they were not HIV constituents. Or do you have some other explanation?
Has it truly never occured to “rethinkers” such as Giraldo to take ELISAs for other microbes that are designed to use a serum dilution of say 1:101 and see what happens when you use undiluted serum?
Surely this would have been the first thing to do – some control experiments!
How do you know he didn’t? Try looking to see. And why does it even matter? The bottom line remains this:
RH – The 1:400 dilution that has long been employed in the most widely used antibody test for HIV is unusually high, and suggests that the antibodies to HIV proteins differ only quantitatively, being present in everyone.
Do you deny this statement and its implication, or not? No more red herrings please.
And by the way, what is the reason for your anonymity?
??
Chris Noble
Even if the name is correct, anonymity in every other way, since you do not say what country you are in, what role you play, etc?. Do you wish to confirm that you are this Australian Chris Noble or not? If so, why did you state on one Tara thread that “I am not a statistician”, when that Chris Noble page says you are one: Dr Christopher Noble BSc (Syd), BE (Syd), PhD (NSW) Assistant Professor of Statistics.
We conclude that you are the Chris Noble at Queensland University, then. Care to confirm this?
If you are not that Noble, kindly identify yourself in a way which accounts for your peculiar activity in trying to throw a spanner in the works of the HIV∫AIDS heretics for eight years without being influenced by new mainstream information or superior logic in the slightest.
Fess up, Chris.
November 23rd, 2006 at 4:43 am
Kevin,
I’ll take the opportunity to falsify Trrll’s claim that rethinkers never state a testable hypothesis by suggesting that TS confused you with Martel.
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:10 am
TS honestly. You are the perfect example of everything I’ve written. You will broach no disagreement with your contentions. Again I state emphatically that this makes you the “John Moore of the Dissidents.”
That you fail to see the scientific justification for the Fence is not surprising to me however, as you’ve never actually done science.
Finally — I AM NOT SICK. I had thrush. It’s gone now. There is nothing to heal here, TS, except for your fanaticism. You should have taken Dan’s comments as clarion call for you to wake up and smell the coffee. The Third Way is now established. And like I said earlier, it does not matter how many times you put me on the alter of your need to destroy — I’ll simply stand up again and say exactly the same thing. You will not win that battle, TS, for the sake of civility, you might as well stop. The Fence has been built, and I am not alone sitting on it. The fact that you confused Kevin with Martel (who do have very different viewpoitns) clearly indicates the fluster YOU are in about all of this.
Heal thyself “Truthseeker.”
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:20 am
And even though your an ex-pat — have a happy Thanksgiving, TS. Same to everyone.
Also — a special thanks to Robert Houston for his illumination of the dilution issue. RH’s posts are always so well researched and so helpful. He does not appear to need everyone to agree with them — in fact, he hardly ever strays into the personal. TS, you should take a lesson from RH. Stick to what you know and leave your distaste for other people’s opinions off the blog.
There is no cult. Your paranoia is apparent. You are not at risk, nor are any of your ideas. So have some civility and leave it alone.
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:27 am
By the way, that’s about the last olive branch I have to extend. In other words, don’t push your luck with me, TS, in an intellectual debate about the validity of skepticism. I wouldn’t advise that.
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:16 am
Truthseeker,
maybe this just boils down to a semantics debate. What I’m reading from the third way guys is that, on the surface at least, they’re questioning some aspects of the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. So… technically they’re “rethinkers”.
This need to create a “third way” to distance themselves from the rethinkers who understand that HIV does not equal AIDS simply looks reactionary. What I’m seeing is the difference between freedom and bondage. Strange, how when freedom is possible, some prefer bondage. To each his own, I suppose.
November 23rd, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Dan — think through what you wrote and what you’ve read. Am I “free from bondage” if I unquestionably accept everything TS writes? No, I’m not. Am I “free from bondage” if I accept the Establishment’s line? No, I’m not.
You were right to guess that this is about freedom, but wrong regarding where one might find such freedom. By eschewing strong connections to all available theories, I create the necessary freedom to evaluate each of those theories from a neutral vantage point.
Once again, there is a tendency among rethinkers to pathologize any thinking that is not in agreement with basic anti-HIV tenants. That’s not freedom. That’s a little bit of facism, and it is no different that the Establishment view.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:39 pm
It really is an entertainment how you get your knickers in a twist every time you are asked to respect logic, NHM, but Happy Thanksgiving yourself.
Give thanks that you live in a free country and the Fascist Truthseeker lacks the power to enforce rationality and exclude emotionalism in your multiple posts. You are not so much a scientist, NHM, as an artist, it is clear, who is admirably responsive to every imagined threat, such that you cannot forget its influence even when the bogeyman is blown up in front of your eyes.
Oh no, you will insist yet again, you are a scientist and your faithful blogger a mere writer. A Fascist, paranoid, olive branch offered, confused (thanks MacDonald, it probably was Martel not Kevin, just as it wasn’t us that Dan is quoting above, if he meant that as an attribution) politicized writer, truth seeking down rabbit holes.
Well, LOL. As should be clear, you are being asked to respect logic, scientist or not, and logic knows no favorites. Neither scientists nor writers have a reserve on logic, which when practiced on evidence is the only arbiter of truth and guide to reality.
NHM, you are as Dan sadly notices in bondage to an expired meme, a corpse of a paradigm, which was dead out of the gate, a dead parrot of a belief which is only upright because it is nailed to its perch, and the salesman behind the counter insists that it is only sleeping, and even though you have gripped it by the legs and whacked it on the counter and it shows no sign of life, you can’t help believe that just maybe it will spring to life and squawk.
Either you can see the logic of what we wrote, or you cannot. On the face of it, you cannot, but perhaps you don’t read it very thoroughly. It would be more interesting if you did, and replied to the reasoning, rather than railed against Fascistic politics being perpetrated on you. This is not a political argument. Politically you are something of a mild, rather surprised skeptic, but a half hearted one, handicapped by your artist’s response to what is a purely scientific question, or should be. But this is a scientific discussion, where emotional investment is just another word for bias.
Get with the program, deal with the reasoning, follow it to its conclusion. Goodbye meme, hello other, entirely conventional causes, which respect science and logic. Let go, NHM. You’ll be safe. Trust reason, It is our only saviour.
Meanwhile, happy holiday and don’t forget the cranberry sauce.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:56 pm
TS — we’ll have to have an extended discussion of philsophy it appears – as skepticism is intimately tied to logic — which is something I think one of your faves, Bertrand Russell, has pointed out. Watch where you step. You like to play at philosophy, but it isn’t really a game.
And for the final time — please stop characterising me. It seems you cannot resist the temptation. Emotional, an artist, etc., etc. I work as a scientist, TS. Get over it.
November 23rd, 2006 at 1:58 pm
For now, for everyone else’s benefit:
The Fence has been built.
I am not sitting alone on it.
The Third Way is here.
It will not go away like a wish.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:05 pm
There are countless scientists who cannot think straight, as you have now recognized. A scientist to be worthy of the name has to think straight. Can you do it? Can you put away the parrot? HIV is dead. RIP.
And if you like reading Russell, perhaps you should refer to our post earlier where he addressed the topic of HIV, AIDS and the tendency of human beings to abandon logic in the face of God and other delusions.
That is where skepticism comes in – not believing in nonsense even though other people do.
But now we have a dead horse as well as a dead parrot. We won’t flog it any longer, unless you bob up again like a jack in the box.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Am I “free from bondage” if I unquestionably accept everything TS writes?
Back to your MO, NHM. You’ve mischaracterized once again.
Where in the world did you read that you must unquestioningly accept everything TS writes to be free from bondage?
Very telling, actually, that you focus on Truthseeker. Why would anyone accept everything TS writes (or any other writer)? It’s looking exceedingly personal, and not terribly scientific.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:12 pm
There once was a God of logic,
Who was normally quite pedagogic,
But when Mark on the fence,
Called reason pretense,
He imploded into a podge quite hodgic.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:12 pm
TS — I believe I complimented your use of Russell previously. I was mistaken in doing so, given what seems an incomplete understanding. But that is irrelevent.
We are not talking about HIV here. We are aware you think that argument is dead. Bully for you, darling. Unfortunatley, t’s irrelevant at this point in the discussion.
We are talking about a stance, a position taken on the whole affair, that is different than yours and different than the Establishment’s. You obviously note this, and have equally noted your distaste for this stance, but have not provided any good arguments against it. Again, not arguments about HIV — we are talking now about the role of skepticism in philosophy and in science.
I am bobbing up again. Ever so sorry. But necessary to repeat, so you can, as you have mentioned you seem to need, see my conviction:
The Fence has been built.
I am not sitting alone on it.
The Third Way is here.
It will not go away like a wish.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:16 pm
Why would anyone accept everything TS writes (or any other writer)?
Because it is all true?
That is why we accept everything you write, Dan. Which flaws have we overlooked?
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:17 pm
The Fence has been built.
I am not sitting alone on it.
The Third Way is here.
It will not go away like a wish.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:21 pm
And Dan, darling — I am not focusing on TS. I am using him as a surrogate marker. Get it?
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:22 pm
The Fence has been built.
I am not sitting alone on it.
The Third Way is here.
It will not go away like a wish.
Is this a cult now? Sounds like it.
Repetition is a hypnotic influence which dissolves reason. Please do not attempt to hypnotize the readers and the blogger of NAR. Being scientifically minded, we are largely immune.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:48 pm
It’s a mantra, my dear. A mantra. And thank you for repeating it.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:49 pm
Truthseeker,
I think we need to define what the word “accept” means in the current context.
In one vein, I can accept that you mean everything you say, as does NHM and any other poster here.
In another vein, do I accept that everything you, myself or others say is 100% error-free? No.
If we unquestioningly accept everything you or myself or any other poster writes, then we aren’t thinking.
Unquestioning acceptance of what’s written wasn’t my point. My point was that NHM singled out you in his statement. I was noting how much more personal than scientific it was.
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Dan, honestly. I used TS as a placeholder for the phrase, “and all Rethinkers.” You’ll note he was contrasted with the “Establishment.” TS is a “surrogate marker,” for the concept of “all Rethinkers.”
And you’re confusing “accept” which you can always do, with “agree.”
November 23rd, 2006 at 2:56 pm
In any case, I have to withdraw from this discussion now. I’m grateful to have had a place to make my views read and hopefully understood, so, towards that end — Thank you, TS, for providing that place. And thanks to everyone else who I learned something from in this discussion.
November 23rd, 2006 at 6:39 pm
Everything can apparently be taken to be a sign that “rethinkers” are correct and that the “orthodoxy” are scared. If nobody responds to “rethinker” nonsense then that is a sign that the “orthodoxy” are scared. If someone rrsponds by pointing out some of the silly errors and misconceptions then that too is a sign that the “orthodoxy” are scared.