Comparing mainstream claims in science and technology and received wisdom in society with the published record, we defend honest, accomplished, independent minded and often heroic scientists (Peter Duesberg, Serge Lang, Harvey Bialy, Kary Mullis, Henry Bauer, Jim Watson, Peter Medawar, Erwin Chargaff, Richard Feynman, Linus Pauling, James Hansen, Fred Singer, Richard Lindzer, Rainer Plaga, Otto Rossler, Michio Kaku, David Rasnick, Rebecca Culshaw, Ernst Krebs, Mark Leggett, Adrian Kent) and their good science against the censorship, mudslinging, false arguments, ad hominem propaganda, overwhelming group prejudice and internal science politics of the paradigm wars of cancer, HIV/AIDS, evolution, global warming, collider physics, health, medicine and nutrition, as well as from time to time promoting truth in personal technology by identifying items of genuinely high quality from those whose reputation is unjustly magnified in the media.
This publication aims to measure truth only by the professional and scholarly literature in peer reviewed journals, well researched books, and the investigative reporting and reviews of thoughtful and informed if often unconventional academics, philosophers, researchers, scholars, authors, and journalists (John Lauritsen, Celia Farber, Liam Scheff, Robert Houston, Claus Jensen, Anthony Liversidge, James Blodgett, Jim Tankersley, John Tierney, Bob Herbert, Dennis Overbye, Marcus Cohen, Gary Null, Walter Wagner, Luis Sancho, Toby Ord and Eric Johnson) too often scorned, shortchanged or damned by publicly irresponsible scientists and other authorities living off the status quo. 
I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it. – VoltaireWhoopi Goldberg heralds Worlds AIDS Day of behalf of orphans
The BBC pandering again, Alas
Whoopi Goldberg weighed in today with the full force of her glamor on the BBC to push AIDS Day (tomorrow, Thurs Dec 1) and the urgent need for a cure for a plague which, she tells the BBC World News, has left 15 million children orphaned. It shouldn’t be overshadowed by bird flu, she points out, when children are the ones which are suffering.
As we have noted before, the BBC seems to be neglecting its mandate to serve the public with unbiased news by reporting AIDS and other global medical alarms without ever quoting skeptics for balance. Once above marketing considerations, the public, license-funded corporation is now obsessed with audience numbers and has hardly any public affairs programs at all. How are the mighty fallen! American viewers. if unaware of this comedown from its majestic past, presumably view it as independent and responsible, even a cut above the once regal PBS which has now taken to running commercials for its sponsors.
Alas the truth is much different. The BBC has become a purveyor of biased information of the most sensationally simplistic sort, at least in AIDS. It informs viewers about AIDS at this BBC page on AIDS news”, which is chock full of the standard beliefs and claims without the slightest hint that the whole ideology has been ill founded for 19 years, according to the scientific review literature, peer reviewed and in the highest level journals.
Supporters of dissent in AIDS viewing this page with a jaundiced eye shouldn’t get excited at the big headline, “AIDS Debate”. This is not a reference to the scientific debate about whether HIV has any support in reason or evidence for being taken as the cause of the 33 AIDS symptoms, rather than their conventional causes.
The headline in fact refers to this news story Tough challenges remain in Aids fight by Karen Allen
BBC Health correspondent
Yet it still falls far short of the $20bn UNAids estimates will be needed by 2007, just to stop the epidemic getting worse.
With more money now in the system, divisions are emerging about how it should best be spent.
The Bush administration in the US has committed $15 billion to fight HIV/Aids. It’s an impressive sum.
Global funding for HIV/Aids has tripled in the past four years from a little over US$2bn to $6bn.
Tough challenges remain in Aids fight
By Karen Allen
BBC Health correspondent
By the time World Aids day has run its course an estimated 14,000 more people in the world will have become infected with HIV.
Nearly 40 million people globally are living with the Aids virus and within two years, six million more are expected to die.
A volunteer receives a vaccine shot in Bangkok
Only a small percentage of Aids funding goes into vaccine research
The statistics make grim reading and with infections continuing to rise at an alarming rate, there is no room for complacency.
It is a dynamic picture and one of the biggest global challenges the international community has had to face.
Funding
Global funding for HIV/Aids has tripled in the past four years from a little over US$2bn to $6bn.
Yet it still falls far short of the $20bn UNAids estimates will be needed by 2007, just to stop the epidemic getting worse.
With more money now in the system, divisions are emerging about how it should best be spent.
The Bush administration in the US has committed $15 billion to fight HIV/Aids. It’s an impressive sum.
But it has come in for criticism from some aid agencies for pushing programmes that use brand name anti-retroviral drugs which are more expensive than their generic counterparts.
It has also been under fire for pursuing an agenda which gives priority to projects that promote sexual abstinence over condom use.
Finding a safe effective vaccine is the holy grail in HIV/Aids research.
Some commentators say this is irrelevant for women in parts of Africa, for whom the biggest risk is of getting HIV is having a partner who sleeps around.
But others argue that even money with strings attached is welcome at a time when the epidemic shows little sign of waning.
Anthony Fauci – the US government’s key advisor on HIV/Aids argued at the International Aids Conference in Bangkok that the logic behind the Bush programme was to maintain accountability and control over how US taxpayers’ money is spent.
Meanwhile UN Secretary General Kofi Annan ruffled feathers when he countered that the American unilateral approach was undermining the Global Fund – an international mechanism to raise cash for HIV/Aids work, which is struggling to meet its financial targets.
That dispute has not really been resolved but there is now a concerted international effort to co-ordinate Aids funding in a more orderly manner.
This is likely to be a key theme taken up by the British government when it assumes the presidency of the G8 and EU next year.
Drugs
The cost of a year’s anti-retroviral treatment has fallen from around £6,000 a year to £180, yet nine out of 10 people who need the medicines are still not getting these life-saving treatments.
Aids drugs
The price of anti-retroviral drugs has plummeted
The World Health Organisation has set an ambitious target of getting three million people onto the drugs by the end of 2005.
But there are real doubts whether this is achievable, given current funding levels. Aid agencies say that it is entirely possible to meet that deadline but what is needed is the political will to roll drugs out on a massive scale.
However, it is not simply about distributing pills.
Christian Aid is one of the charities warning that without proper investment to build hospitals and train staff, sustaining anti- retroviral treatment in the long term will be hard.
Anti-retrovirals need to be taken consistently and widespread failure to do this could lead to major drug resistance and a reduction in treatment options for infected patients.
Vaccines
Finding a safe effective vaccine is the holy grail in HIV/Aids research but is proving a difficult challenge and it is unlikely that we will see effective immunisations available before the end of the decade.
Aside from the scientific difficulties, there are also enormous financial challenges
There are currently some 30 different Aids vaccines undergoing trials.
These experiment with different approaches, aiming either to disable the Aids virus or prevent it from entering human cells and multiplying.
Aside from the scientific difficulties of HIV vaccine research, there are also enormous financial challenges.
IAVI, the International Aids Vaccine Initiative points out that only 1% of global research and development funding is being channelled into finding an Aids vaccine.
The G8 have promised to set up a Global HIV Vaccine Enterprise, a consortium to fast-track Aids vaccine research and pool information and cash.
The British government has already indicated that it intends to push Aids vaccine research up the political agenda, backing it up with a promise of more funding.
If indeed it does deliver, it could be a lasting legacy that finally turns the tide on an unrelenting epidemic.
amid a whole collection of unexceptional news items and other aspects of the AIDS non-debate, scientifically speaking, which are offered on the page.
Have Your Say Special
Last Updated: Wednesday, 30 November 2005, 15:45 GMT
Find out the facts, explore the issues and read about life with HIV in our BBC Aids special.
Overview
DEBATE IN: Arabic Persian Hindi Russian Spanish Portuguese Chinese
FEATURES
Anti-Aids drugs have transformed Bongani’s life Aids: A South African success story
Bongani’s health has been transformed since he began taking ARV’s.
IN PICTURES
Light bulbs of hope: A mother and daughter’s story
Interrupted lives: Don McCullin’s images
The time has come for our governments to press the panic button
Karthik Dinakar, Bangalore, India
Your views: How can the battle against Aids be won?
Sha Wang, suspected Aids sufferer Slow starter
China’s new openness to tackling Aids begins to pay off – for some
Woman farmer in Thyolo, Malawi HIV in Malawi
Cultural norms fuel the spread of the disease among women
Logo of the Rainbow House, a Haiti orphange for children whose parents have died of Aids Catching a rainbow
Orphans find a home at Haiti’s first refuge for children with Aids
MORE FEATURES
Tackling Iran’s growing drugs problem
A pilot scheme is helping drug addicts who would otherwise be “dead or in prison”.
LIVING WITH HIV
Amir Reza ‘One cannot expect a drastic change’
A man walks past a Chinese government-sponsored poster on HIV/Aids ‘Everybody seems to know I have HIV’
TALKING POINT
You asked Botswana’s president
Peter Piot, UNAids
WHO Aids Director
HIV/AIDS AROUND THE WORLD
MORE PERSONAL STORIES
YOU ASKED THE EXPERTS
‘Why we are failing African girls’
Girl-trafficking hampers Aids fight
New York’s ‘guinea pig’ kids
Mozambique faces HIV dilemma
Mally, S Africa: Staying upbeat
Bogdan, Romania: Teenage years
Niza, Mexico: Fears leaving son
Juan, USA: Loneliness of HIV
UK minister Hilary Benn
Aids activist Emma Thompson
HIV drugs: Our panel
Condoms and culture: Our panel
Shukria Gul, HIV positive counsellor Tackling taboos
Uphill struggle for open debate in Pakistan on Aids
The biology of Aids
Find out how HIV attacks the body and how drugs fight back
Condom quiz
What do you know about the sheath that saves lives?
YOUR PICTURES
HIV/AIDS SEASON
The ‘real face of Aids’: Final days in Florida
Fighting HIV in Trinidad and Tobago
A lone mother cares for her son in Vietnam
Kenya’s slum volunteers fight back
world service banner
The Interview: Kofi Annan
Outlook: India’s Aids hospital
Young people & HIV
The Nelson Mandela concert
The BBC Aids concert
Out of control
The impact of Aids in the worst-hit countries
Global disease
Maps, charts, facts and figures about the global spread of HIV
Aids frustrations
A global survey for the BBC reveals anger and confusion
For anyone who grew up with the Beeb as the disinterested authority in all matters concerning news and views, the epitome of starchy, unperturbable decency carried over the ether across the mountains and jungles of the world to outlying posts of the contracting British Empire, this is a sadly low station for the old lady to inhabit in her dotage.