The Church of HIV: Inventing the AIDS Virus

So much has happened and changed, and been "advanced" with HIV/AIDS since I tested positive in 2004 that it's a pity one doesn't have a site dedicated perhaps to "HIV/AIDS Revisionism".
Perhaps we need a site dedicated to theories and theses out there that have since disappeared or become obscure, and where people in the scientific field (and not just students of literature, like myself) can feel free to reply and speculate.

I don't think there's really a mass scientific disagreement on that Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome in HIV-positive people is caused by the HIV virus. It's also generally understood how it does this, and how it can be measured using CD4 counts and viral load tests. I'm just looking at the book from my collection Men Like Us: The GMHC guide to gay men's sexual, physical, and emotional well-being (Danial Wolfe: Ballantine Books, New York: 2000). With a diagram it describes how the viral code of HIV operates:

1. HIV enters a cell 2. HIV stores its genetic information on single-stranded RNA instead of the double-stranded DNA found in most organisms. To replicate, HIV uses an enzyme known as reverse transcriptase to convert its RNA into DNA. This process is why HIV is known as a retrovirus 3. HIV DNA enters the nucleus of the CD4 cell and inserts itself into the cell's DNA. HIV DNA then instructs the cell to make many copies of the original virus. 4. New virus particles are assembled and leave the cell, ready to infect other CD4 cells.

Antiretrovirals that are effective for long-term management of the virus are described as three types:

1. Non-nucleaoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors. The newest class of antiretroviral agents ... (NNRTIs) stop HIV production by binding directly onto the reverse transcriptase and preventing the the conversion of RNA into DNA. These drugs are called non-nucleoside inhibitors because even though they work at the same stage as nucleoside analogues, they act in a completely different way. 2. Nucleoside Analogues. They act by incorporating themselves into the virus, thereby stopping the building process. The resulting DNA is incomplete and cannot create new virus. 3.Protease inhibitors work at the last stage of the virus reproduction cycle. They prevent HIV from being successfully assembled and released from the infected CD4 cell.

The book also has a handy metaphor for the less scientifically inclined:

Current thinking is to use the combination of two nucleosides and one protease inhibitor or NNRTI to hit HIV coming and going, interfering with two different points of the virus's reproductive cycle. "I think of the immune system as a basketball game, with the Nucleosides and the NNRTIs as the forwards and the protease inhibitors as the guards hanging back to get the virus if it makes the fast break toward the end of the replication cycle," says GMHC's Johnson. For those of us who find sports metaphors as hard to understand as as the appeal of an evening at Hooters, think of the protease inhibitors as the divas who come with white gloves and extra-strength Endust after the house has already been cleaned."

(Wolfe 2000: pp.391-392)

OK, laugh and make nasty comments, or misrepresent me - I don't care.
Use invective to say very little, that's par for the denialist course, I suppose.
Such hard-working people - with their theories on poppers and defunct doses of AZT, and wicked lifestyle judgements for those who dare die of AIDS-related diseases (which some denialists recognize as such, just the cause wasn't HIV, but some bad habit). How do poppers cause such diseases? But never mind this rubbish for now. I mean if they could prove we were all radiated somehow, that could at least provide a believable alternative.

Now something more interesting for myself, where I do find accepted scientific papers raising some serious questions about aspects of HIV/AIDS.

The first concerns HIV 2.
Here we are told that how HIV progresses has to with how it is administered (needle-stick injury, for example is said to lead to faster progression), and HIV 2 has slower progression than HIV 1. They even say HIV 2 mostly occurs in West Africa, and comes from the sooty mangabey, while the more prevalent HIV 1 comes from a chimp. They say HIV2 will take at least 12 years to progress to AIDS, but received thinking said that once progressed, AIDS from HIV2 is just as deadly as that from HIV1. However now I saw a paper which claims many people with HIV2 do not progress to AIDS at all!
Not that it matters to myself, apparently I have both from the person who infected me since 2004.
Now I'd really like some follow up on such papers.
I've been told not to worry about it by doctors until I progress to AIDS, but it is worrying, because they say some meds are more effective for one type of HIV or another.
At least in the US there were genotype and phenotype tests to find the best treatment, since HIV is a fast mutating virus (Wolfe p.409).

Here's an interesting article on HIV 2.
It's neither denialist not quite in line with mainstream alarmist thinking, but perhaps a bit of a gray area?
www.sciencedaily.com...

Here's another pathway of HIV/AIDS research that is sometimes mentioned, but rarely explored.
It's a site devoted to a research group in 1997 on genetic HIV 1 resistance:
student.biology.arizona.edu...

It was once thought that genetic protection somehow came from a European history of bubonic "plague survivors".
But subsequently similar groups were found in Africa.
I suppose it figures because the old worlds were connected, and we never had the mass dying of the native population in SA that characterized the Americas or Australia.
The Zulu people apparently even knew how to inoculate themselves against smallpox using cowpox.
I'm yet to find the info I once read on studies done on a group of sex workers in our Natal province, but here's a similar article on a group of prostitutes in Nairobi:
www.fasebj.org...
cherryblossomlife.com...

Interesting times indeed, with the first post-modern virus.

I'm not surprised that some animals and groups of people can spread viruses to which they themselves are immune (just consider the "Columbian exchange" of diseases), but if some conspiracies are correct and HIV was deliberately spread in some populations, then those who progress to AIDS have no easy way out but medical dependance for now, because that's how it was then planned.
These medications do work nowadays, but they are inherently unequal, imperfect in many ways, and not a solution.
Yet they sure are better than the alternative, where the disease that kills you is only one of the many that will possibly make you blind, unable to eat, dependent, insane, demented, unable to breathe, full of pain ... and that horror could continue for two years.

On HIV denialists and dissidents I'd include Dr. Robert E. Willner as my favorite.
en.wikipedia.org...
I don't agree with much of what he said on starvation being the same as AIDS, or his ozone therapies, and long-term effective treatments (including functional doses of AZT) would only come after his death.
But he talked about "responsible sex" rather than "safe sex".
In this age of "AIDS fatigue", or "safe-sex campaign fatigue" focused on HIV and AIDS, his notion of "responsible sex" would certainly be something to revisit.
He had the guts to inject himself publicly with HIV-positive blood, so he was probably the true practical "dissident".
Unfortunately the world lost him to a heart attack shortly after these acts of personal conviction, so the results are unknown.
Although it was a different time, he was willing to either disprove science, or join the stigmatized and "damned".
That courage, I think, deserves respect.

Then just a quick word on scientific and academic articles, especially the latest.
Most of what is published in journals and edited books is not likely to be available for free.
It's a knowledge industry, and I suppose it is fair on the workers who publish papers and publications.
One must subscribe to specific journals and pay fees, or have some access to an academic institution's databases to access a lot of the information online.

I notice this a lot when even trying to get book reviews, although luckily my institution usually sends what I request because they have access (with a whole bunch of conditions).

So this should be remembered.
I cannot link to the latest articles on HIV/AIDS, and neither can the sites that want more scientific information.
They can only offer what writers are willing or able to give for free.
Most of them are in any case just short sites, perhaps for the newly diagnosed, with just enough info to question the very beguiling and sometimes good work of the denialists.
They have just enough to make people think twice before stopping their medication, or going out and infecting others on the false promise that HIV doesn't exist.
On a more positive note they could encourage people to take more conclusive tests, and not to abandon hope, or to live healthy lifestyles.
If one reads sites critical of denialism and decides it's propaganda, then fair enough, everybody has their own standard of propaganda. However, currently I don't think there's any legitimate political movement in the world that will use AIDS denialism to advance itself, so while terms like "dissident"/"denialist"/"Skeptic" might come from political histiography, this does not mean that AIDS denialism has real political meaning and clout at the moment.

However, to try and deconstruct science on HIV from such sites as AVERT or AIDSTruth is a fruitless endeavor.
These sites are free, and the vast amount of current and relevant science is not free.

New information on HIV cure. They're now beginning to study umbilical cord blood transplants in hopes of obtaining the same results as Timothy Brown did from his bone marrow transplant.

abcnews.go.com...

Originally posted by Maslo
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

To be fair, spreading misinformation about a public health issue that can actually endanger health and lives of people is entirely different from such purely theoretical issues as origin of the universe, where being wrong does not harm anyone. AIDS denialism has already resulted in great damage to public health:

AIDS denialist claims have had a major political, social, and public health impact in South Africa. The government of then President Thabo Mbeki was sympathetic to the views of AIDS denialists, with critics charging that denialist influence was responsible for the slow and ineffective governmental response to the country's massive AIDS epidemic.

Independent studies have arrived at almost identical estimates of the human costs of AIDS denialism in South Africa. According to a paper written by researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, between 2000 and 2005, more than 330,000 deaths and an estimated 35,000 infant HIV infections occurred "because of a failure to accept the use of available [antiretroviral drugs] to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in a timely manner."[13] Nicoli Nattrass of the University of Cape Town estimates that 343,000 excess AIDS deaths and 171,000 infections resulted from the Mbeki administration's policies, an outcome she refers to in the words of Peter Mandelson as "genocide by sloth".[14]

In the light of these facts, stronger response is IMHO justified.

Misinformation such as? There's that most "popular" of cop-out phrases yet again.

JPZ rightly identifies that a massive propaganda campaign is- and has been-- in effect for decades, and even well before we believe that so-called HIV was supposedly isolated. Other debates, such as the hot space theory versus the steady state theory of cosmological existence is not as far fetched as it may seem, because the debate over the pathogenesis of LAV is not nearly as awesome, fear-inspiring, or deadly as the nutjobs on the ANTI-DEBATE side make it seem either.

Those quacks have the f-ing patent on misinfo, mate: "AIDS denialism KILLS!!!1!"

Oh really?

I could almost forgive you and the loons you listen to, if it weren't for the seeming correlation that ANYONE who questions the so-called Orthodoxy; no matter how well referenced, researched, and reasoned, is labelled with the perverse and unwarranted epithet: DENIER.

Hey- Do you DENY pleomorphism?; natural variability cannot account for the apparent explosion of lentivirae. Or that that variance of isolated particles of so-called HIV is nothing like the LAV it was supposedly purified from? That particles in the 33nm range can't possibly be confused with those in the 80-120 nm range; it's like confusing a Kia car with a Tractor-trailer. Do you DENY that reverse transciptase occurs in more than just RNA virae? Then maybe you aren't a "denialist" EITHER.

Not all of Duesberg's arguments have been addressed, sorry, and it should be noted that the so-called 'Duesberg Hypothesis" itself was in fact, the CDC's very own working-hypothesis for years; they abandoned it TOTALLY in favor of a much more LUCRATIVE purely-viral hypothesis. If you read Dr. Duesberg's papers carefully, you'll see that he doesn't directly actually argue that ALL cases of AIDS are from drug abuse or poverty, only SOME of them, and his research demonstrated conclusively that there are OTHER CAUSES of CD helper cell depletion and other immune system suppression biomarkers.

One line of reasoning, for example, is that the titer of LAV is so low in patients with advanced AIDS that it is a practical impossibility that it can account for AIDS alone; there simply aren't enough CD cells knocked out to account for systemic failure; also there is no discernible viremia, it isn't easily isolated from the cells in vivo; and that the mechanism for the delayed latency period in so-called lentiviruses cannot be found.

Viruses are rather simple from an engineering perspective (my background), and even though it's quite easy to imagine a biochemical down-count timer, it is another to identify one or prove that it exists; AND, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, it makes no sense for any organism or proto-organism to delay such a primary function.

The HIV-paradigm has been a boon and a bane, mainly depending on whose payroll you're on.

As for the crap from SA, consider the source, and any time you see the word ESTIMATES, do yourself a favor and SKIP quoting it and drawing your polemics from it.

Will likely comment later in this thread about other bogus assertions from well known net-noisemakers, like Seth Kalichman and his ilk; who actually embrace the notoriety that being an "anti-denialist" bequeaths (whatever that really means). Some of these folks are just misguided, but others make Al Gore look smart, and Ken Lay, honest.

Ciao

Hello

Placeholder post, presently reading page 8 of the replies.

So far, I am in support of the OP, and, yes, as with at least one other poster, I was a long-time lurker and joined to comment soley on this thread (so far), because there is just so much crap out there on this, especially from the propagandists and bankrupt hyper-moralists, and I've been dealing with this issue and many others for years, and have more often than not, been the Minority Opinion holder.

That, unfortunately, usually coincides with being Correct, over longer periods of time.

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can in no other way." - Mark Twain

Originally posted by jollyjollyjolly
AIDS/HIV/Whatever you want to call it was around in the 1940's and 50's. They have found it in sailors cryogenic frozen blood samples from WWII.

Source?

I'm pretty sure you're citing the claim made in the "Encyclopedia of HIV and AIDS" from 1998, wherein it was stated that a Norwegian sailor became ill and died of unknown etiology in the 1960's.

Death from unknown causes is not a new phenomenon, and I have been trying to track down the facts behind things like this for a long time.

Such events would cheerfully be added in places like: en.wikipedia.org...

If true.

There are problems with some of the claims of that wiki article anyway, and I've challenged them to provide corrections, for example, that "2 of the six HIV genes were isolated from blood from the 1959 Congo patient" and the bald faced myth of "Researchers [sic] guess that sometime in the 1930s a form of simian immunodeficiency virus jumped to humans in central Africa. The mutated virus becomes HIV-1" which comes to us from a science "rag" (for-profit, non peer reviewed periodical) in 2006.

Originally posted by phalanx001

[...] feel free to inject some HIV.

Peace and out.

Isolate some first.

You'll find that proves to be the more difficult and fruitless errand.

Originally posted by RealSpoke
reply to post by JiggyPotamus

 

The other Immunodeficiency viruses cause AIDS in other species, such as cats. Why is it so hard to believe that it does in humans?

You're confusing the criteria of classification (of lentivirae) with a general etiology.

It is not just a matter of precision; you and others simply aren't seeing that immunosuppression in mammals has a wide variety of causes, factors and cofactors.

So much so, that to simply state that there is a class of virae that are responsible for all observed IDSs in ammals is as pigheaded and wrong as the counter-denialists claim of their perceived adversaries.

To put it simply (overly-so, perhaps):

TB with a negative ELISA result is just TB, however, Tuberculosis with a positive ELISA test is called AIDS.

A Tcell count under 200 is not usually life threatening, but the same blood work with a positive ELISA -OR- Western Blot is sufficient for an AIDS diagnosis in most labs in the USA.

I won't even dignify the Bangui Definition as a "definition" of anything, but medical malpractice on a vast, regional, and continental scale.

...

Your example, FTLV, is simply NOT related to Human LAV or HTLV, despite their renaming and reclassification, and FIDS marker illnesses definitely don't include stupid crap like Cervical Cancer to ensnare more female cat FIDS patients. They have about as much in common as Rodney King and Arnold Schwarzenegger; they both might've lived and worked in California, but they ain't "related"

Originally posted by halfoldman
Considering just the length of the thread at this point, exactly what thesis have you proven, and how have you proven it?

I'd just like to make sure again what the argument is about in a nutshell.

The Viral AIDS Hypothesis is not the Only One, and it has a disturbing history of mega-frauds, medical dishonesty, and ridiculous and pervasive propaganda.

"Obtuse" was as generous as it was appropriate.

Originally posted by macaronicaesar
reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux

 

Lived a full life eh? She died 14 years after being diagnosed with HIV, too bad her daughter wasn't so lucky. They both died prematurely and neither one of them lived a full life.

It's obvious you're willing to turn a blind eye to see or not see whatever you like.

This is the kind of stupid sh!t we've all grown tired of reading.

You don't know what or who you're writing about, and your talking points come from propaganda, and it shows. How's about Mr. Scovil and their son? Who are you to say what life may or may not be for others? Where is your contempt for those killed by AZT poisoning, or who died of liver failure, or even those who may have taken their own life simply because of the stigma that "testing positive" on a rather non-specific and highly sensitive screening test affirms? Were they no less 'victims'-- did they live greater and more complete lives?

As for turning a blind eye: Tu quoque. As for all the rest; people who espouse such rhetoric sicken me.

reply to post by Maslo

"Wikipedia article on the hypothesis contains refutations:" -Maslo

Ahem. No, it does not.

Not all his arguments are addressed; only the strawman of (some) DRUGS -> (all) AIDS and a few other drive-bys

I rather humbly, but strongly, suggest you read such public sources more critically, and attempt to review their supporting sources; about half the time, they're bogus, broken, or misquotes.

This wiki article itself contains cherry picked information and provides unsourced opinions that amounts to "anything that Duesberg and Rasnick says or does must be wrong."



Examples:

The article correctly quotes his paper [7], and then misrepresents his findings(!):

Duesberg argues that there is a statistical correlation between trends in recreational drug use and trends in AIDS cases.[7] He argues that the epidemic of AIDS cases in the 1980s corresponds to a supposed epidemic of recreational drug use in the United States and Europe during the same time frame.

Now the trap is set:

These claims are not supported by epidemiologic data. The average yearly increase in opioid-related deaths from 1990-2002 was nearly three times the yearly increase from 1979–1990, with the greatest increase in 2000-2002, yet AIDS cases and deaths fell dramatically during the mid-to-late-1990s.[8] Duesberg's claim that recreational drug use, rather than HIV, was the cause of AIDS has been specifically examined and found to be false. Cohort studies have found that only HIV-positive drug users develop opportunistic infections; HIV-negative drug users do not develop such infections, indicating that HIV rather than drug use is the cause of AIDS.[4][9]

Yes, in some cases they are, and even stupiid wiki authors know this en.wikipedia.org...

It is furthermore, not just "opioids" as the idiots writing this hit-piece want you to believe that Dr. Duesberg claimed. When you look at the original cases of GRID, Dr. Gotleib's patients, and the role that drugs played, it is easily seen that there was a correlation, else it would not have been the CDC's own working hypothesis for some three years. We can thank Dr. Gotleib for first suggesting that there must be a sexually transmitted agent causing all this Tcell suppression in Gays! [A] At worst, Dr. Duesberg is only partially correct, and these specious counterarguments are themselves cherry-picked anachronistic data, at best; made up, unsourced opinions at worst; i.e.- argument by assertion.

Heh, if drugs played no role, why then did they continue to be studied ad nauseum? Fact; they do, both from an epidemiological and pathological viewpoint. They contribute to transmission of infectious agents, and weaken chronic users' immune systems; not usually enough to convey AIDS naturally, however, drugs are still one piece of the puzzle, despite what the counter-denialist-denialists spew.

[4] is 404 Not Found

[9] was a paper from Nature (1993) which studied drug use in two populations, and it was clearly rigged. How scientific is this abstract?

Abstract A hypothesis identifying substance abuse as a main cause of AIDS has naturally excited much publicity. But such claims have no basis in fact.

NO attempt was made AT ALL to refute Dr. Duesberg's claim that "retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA."[1]

Instead, we get 4 references to CDC propaganda ([17][18][19][20]) and one op-ed published in Science from 1994 declaring the debate over, and that HIV -> AIDS was the defacto consensus. Sound familiar (CAGW Protagonists)?

The paragraph titled "Scientific study and rejection of Duesberg's risk-AIDS hypothesis" contains some sham research; the Vancouver study surveyed mainly recreational drug use, and did not study any terminal AIDS patients; only so called "HIV infection" ... like "take this ELISA test, now go get high and report back" Riiiiiiight. I don't have the time or space to go into the 1993 Ascher paper, the MACS study, or the WIHS one; suffice to say one that failed to get mentioned was the Padian study which found no seroconversion between two dozen or more actual case-study serodischordant couples over a period of ten years.

I am no apologist for these Doctors, their supporters, or anyone else; and I have no book to sell, and draw no income from Big Pharma or anything related to it. All i personally care about is that Science remains a Method of Understanding; not an Institution of Consensus; and not a Tribunal for "Heretics."

Enjoy and Beware

[1] www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...
[A] www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

Originally posted by Jean Paul Zodeaux
reply to post by ownbestenemy

 

While there have been members in this thread who've dismissed articles of this age, articles written "in the 90's", in terms of rage and ridicule, what has changed?

Proof of concept.
They didn't have that in 1993. Now they do.

There was nothing but mega-dose monotherapy before 1996, and most of them didn't work long, whether it was AZT or several other drugs.This is where all the horror stories of the AZT boogyman came from, and most of them are true. Didn't prove there was no virus, just proved a single drug wouldn't stop it no matter how much you took.

In 1996 they tried smaller doses of combinations to 'give up' on killing the virus, and instead trying to control it.
And That WORKED. It worked by the thousands, and tens of thousands, then the millions, as the treatment spread throughout the earth. The cause and the effect was undeniable.

And who takes AZT now??? There is I think one combo drug that still has it as a component, but most newer drugs have moved far away from that! FYI, it DID work, just not as a single-dose drug, and not in mega-doses. But as small dose with two other drugs, it was a workhorse. Not a boogyman. Thousands including me can tell you that, but old articles dusted off before the book was written don't cut it, well not with me, but I have a perspective problem. I've been there, you have not.

People on disability that had already blown and hocked their life savings got better, and had to go back to work. There were viaticals sold in the early 90's that have yet to pay out, and then it was a sure thing (how sick, and no one benefitted except the insurance companies).

The reason the denialists have to present the 'proof' from the early 90's is that there is no existence of that same 'proof' TODAY, and way too much empirical HARD evidence in the form of lives that were already listed as dead, and even MORE lives that never got served the 'death' sentence.

You can debate many things about this topic, but since this is a real conspiracy forum and not just an academic exercize in debating skills, personal experience and tangible proof trumps articles and opinions written before a truer understanding of the disease was in hand. Proof of concept multiplied by thousands and millions that have been there, goes a long way in confirming a theory denied by hundreds that have NOT been there.

Using the denialist arguments from 1993 is kinda like writing a movie review after the first slow 15 minutes of a thrilling 3-hour production, and expecting those that saw the whole movie not to just laugh at you when you give your opinion of the whole thing.

The terms of rage and ridicule can be forgiven if you understand some of it comes from experience that can't be had by making a formal debate out of life events. There are many here that can debate the subject, and very few that know it thru personal experience. The ones that do...have a hard time playing the debate game.

reply to post by lakesidepark

Using the denialist arguments...

Here is where you undo yourself and reveal you either only glanced through the thread or ignored my initial argument about the conspiracy and that was that the use of words such as "denialist" are inappropriate to science and reveal politics in play that clearly have an agenda, and your use among many in this thread and other sites only proves the conspiracy as clearly you've all conspired to use ad hominem attacks instead of science to assert your claims.

Logical fallacies are not the best use of the scientific method.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


And you illustrate exactly what I stated about my debating skills, so why bother critisizing them?
FYI I didn't discuss politics or science.I discussed cause and effect, simple as that, multiplied by the millions, and please - don't ask for references, they are too easy to find,and once again, to me this is more to educate than to debate a hoax.

What you illustrate - is that you don't care either way, its an academic exersize and good practice, on a subject few bother to learn, and you Google quite good, and are very good with word games.And out of the 1.2 million living in the U.S that could give some life experience, FEW will bother to publisize their personal experience just to debate you. Easy topic for you to win.

Hope no one dies believing you as you leave the podium for your speaker award.











\

reply to post by lakesidepark

And you illustrate exactly what I stated about my debating skills, so why bother critisizing them?

I did not criticize your debating skills, or lack thereof, and simply addressed your argument that this is "real conspiracy forum" and implied in this argument is that no conspiracy has been offered in this thread, merely and "exercise" in debate.

FYI I didn't discuss politics or science.I discussed cause and effect, simple as that, multiplied by the millions, and please - don't ask for references, they are too easy to find,and once again, to me this is more to educate than to debate a hoax.

Establishing Cause and Effect:

Cause and effect is one of the most commonly misunderstood concepts in science and is often misused by lawyers, the media, politicians and even scientists themselves, in an attempt to add legitimacy to research.

(Emphasis added)

It is interesting to note you make your assertion and plead no references be asked for, ironically claiming they are too easy to find, which only emphasizes the sloppiness of your assertion, and even more ironically you follow your plead of not asking for references and assertion they are too easy to find with the argument that this "is more to educate..." Sigh.

What you illustrate - is that you don't care either way

This is a strawman, and far from illustrating I don't care, I have shown I care deeply. What you are grossly exaggerating is my assertion that I do not know if HIV causes AIDS or not.

and you Google quite good, and are very good with word games.

The last resort of a failed arguer is to accuse their opponent of "playing word games".

And out of the 1.2 million living in the U.S that could give some life experience, FEW will bother to publisize their personal experience just to debate you. Easy topic for you to win.

So, when you earlier claim "this is more to educate than debate a hoax" apparently you are speaking of yourself and your sloppy arguments void of reference, and use the word "hoax" to slyly imply this is what this thread is doing, instead of bringing to light the very serious problem with the modern scientist and their proclivity to embrace political movements over actual science.

There is no "win" in any of this. There should absolutely be no sides on the matter. You clearly beg to differ.

reply to post by Jean Paul Zodeaux


First I will note your most recent thread on the SCOTUS decision, and acknowledge your brilliant analysis of the legal decisions rendered, and the pending fallout, and granted the stars and flags appropriate to that thread. In my opinion it was right on with insight and obvious study and knowledge offered with references.

But, doesn't change my opinion of the past arguments of denialist / dissident scientists / whatever, or in a lot of cases the mainstream scientists. It was all theory with the always lurking profiteers looking for their part of the action. It's all history. And in 1993 it had to be considered and debated as there was no proof of a virus, and no hope. No true understanding of the life cycle of the virus / disorder / whatever, no imaging, no genotype, no viral load testing. In a huge number of those that did succumb to diseases that were now rare, and tested with the same clinical patterns, and tested positive to ELISA and to western blot, got sicker and died and no one could stop it. Everyone had a theory and everyone's theory was subject to consideration.

As a writer you offer good research and analytical discussion.
But this story that is being told here is past history, not current fact. To be proposed as current history is to propose a hoax.

As a witness and survivor, my postings are to offer personal observation. My personal observation differs from the assertion of the OP that the disorder is fabricated.

No disagreement that it is full of profiteers and politics...and religion, and morality, and conspiracies of origin and purpose and spread....there is even an argument to make that the dissidents had other motivations, after all, it wasn't an ordinary virus you see, it had its own politics and was considered something immoral or evil by some, there were all KINDS of conspiracies then.

But whatever was believed and discussed and argued in 1993 about whether it was a virus or not that caused the new disorder is inmaterial to the reality of today - unless you begin by ignoring the history of millions of lives, and the direct effect those 'pills of poison' had on continuing and improving those lives.

Common facts adjust to science as part of history, just as it is now a common fact that the earth is not flat, pushed by personal experiences with technology seeing the other round Earths, and the technology for personal experiences in orbiting a round Earth, become a part of history and no longer science (well, except to some - please no flat earth arguments!!!).

This hypothesis was a theory in 1993, and legitiimate to debate. This hypothesis is discredited in 2012 by history, by science, by personal experience, and even by the existence of those that would not be here if not for the push in the direction of a virus causing the disorder. I would say with newer technology and scientific analysis that Gallo could only imagine in 1988, and the huge body of subjects studied since then, that stating HIV doesn't exist is a hoax and a scam, but that's easy for me to say.

You guys can argue it. I long ago disproved it, not only studying it, but being part of the many experiments that disproved it....

Continue on.

reply to post by lakesidepark

[...] doesn't change my opinion of the past arguments of denialist / dissident scientists / whatever [...]

Whatever opinion(s) you have of the most compelling arguments put forth by some of the most brilliant scientists and doctors to ever study this topic is(are) bound to be stunted by your olympic ignorance of the subject matter. If all you have are "debunking denialist claims" talking points from propaganda outlets, then you are empty handed, and, with all due respect, having read your posts so far, my bet is that you don't even have those.

The original Popovic draft of Gallo's HTLV-III "research" paper from the NIH was just the beginning of this mega-fraud.

www.fearoftheinvisible.com...

Res ipsa loquitur.

In fairness regarding Janine Roberts and her book, Claus Jensen wrote an interesting piece titled "Rethinking the letter to Science", which explains how the "experts" had their signatures solicited.
www.tig.org.za...

Jensen concludes on p. 16:

In conclusion: The Roberts-Crowe Letter to Science has indeed caused damage, but
not to Gallo or Science. It has served to redirect focus from the real scientific issues to
peripheral and largely irrelevant questions of editorial practices in Gallo’s lab, as well
as made the Signatories the laughing stock of the scientific establishment

But that's probably all "propaganda".

Not quite sure who Claus Jensen is, and his writings also appear on "rethinking" (I find this a fairly neutral term for "denialism") sites like TIG (to my knowledge founded by SA advocate Anthony Brink, whose bewildering vitriol on SA AIDS activist Zackie Achmat is found previously on the thread).
Jensen seems quite astute in pointing out the fallacies in the argumentation of Duesberg, and their differences with other re-thinkers, like the Perth Group.
However, I'm not sure whether he is a rethinker or not (if so, he seem like a Perthian), but it appears he wants to save other rethinkers from ridicule, by offering his critiques.
Thus, in his article "Deconsrtucting Deusberg" he points out that the passenger virus theory gives the establishment just what it needs, and finds:

As is the case with Duesberg’s co-authors, who argue for and against the Passenger
Virus theory as circumstances dictate, it raises concerns about overall strategic
coherence when a scientist accepts with such ease two mutually exclusive results and
offers two mutually exclusive explanations for them.

www.tig.org.za...

But then again AIDS rethinking is generally confusing and unpleasant, with powerful personalities and personal attacks in the ranks, so I'll let them figure it out amongst themselves before the insults come flying my way.
Just wanted to add that there are other views on the journalist Janine Roberts and her supposed "amazing new findings" on her "Fear of the Invisible" site and book (which is not limited to HIV but also discusses vaccination conspiracies, which to me are a different issue).

PS. I was saddened to see, but not really surprised (considering a scene that is well known for invective) that the 2011 Rethinking AIDS Conference last year was apparently cancelled due to the differences between the Perthians (HIV doesn't exist) and Duesbergians (HIV exists but is harmless):
denyingaids.blogspot.com...
Maybe they've reconciled since then, or perhaps that's just more "propaganda".

Fully reversing NIH research findings on HTLV-I and HTLV-II while utilizing a colleague's virus (relabeled HTLV-III), renamed for other curious purposes is not 'propaganda' at all, it is simply fraud. Fraud; professional misconduct approaching malpractice. And it is a matter of significant historical fact, unfortunately, with regards to Dr. Gallo, and not attributable simply to cavalier editing practices from this ambitious technocrat.

As for Mr. Jensen's conclusions on the "Letter to Science" requesting retraction(s)? I disagree; this is really like saying that finding "Colonel Mustard's fingerprints in the Kitchen directs attention away from the Candlestick!" It's a nonsequitur at best, to my thinking, but I appreciate the citation even if I do not digest his thoughtful diversion.

And this is so very bizarre to read phrases like "deconstructing Duesberg"... in the same way, and for the same reasons, it fails to be amusing or enlightening when one reads other assassination pieces aimed at esteemed and well respected scientists in other fields, such as Dick Lindzen and Pat Michaels, within Atmospheric Physics and Climatology.

As for vaccines, there's no ostensible conspiracy that I can point to; no "depopulation" agenda per se- only the agenda of raking in the most profits possible, even in off-label third world markets with tainted products. Merck could have probably stopped the shipments of tainted Factor VIII, had there been better oversight, or a legal reason to do so before the fact. To parrot Duesberg on this subject, and this is NOT a 'real' argument; but if one was just making a scientific argument from numbers, one could say that tainted Factor VIII and HIV doubled the lifespan of HIV infected Hemapheliacs.

Watch for yourself; not much has changed of his position on HTLV-III/LAV/HIV in the past ten years and Dr. Duesberg has moved on to more lucrative and worthwhile endeavors, such as cancer research (again). There is not much here for one to "deconstruct" and what one usually sees from "anti-denialists" are strawmen arguments or gross misquotes from Peter.

www.youtube.com...

Another decent Doctors for Disaster Preparedness lecture from 2003 (five years later than Duesberg's talk), from his colleague, Dr. David Rasnick:

www.youtube.com...

I have privately expressed my concern to Mr. Crowe that there was so much infighting among totally impertinent dwellers within RA, along with my dismay that RA needs to evolve and go where research directs them, also, lastly, to provide some public balance "in house" to better control their perceived purpose; they can either pursue politics or science, but not both, in my opinion. They really need to reinvent themselves, and update their message; advocating "personal choice" and "education" is fine, but they can't do well without better backing, deeper pockets, and a much more "positive message" (pardon the unseemly double-entendre).

Cheers