Tripoli Six–moving toward resolution

The strange and tragic case of the Tripoli Six, a group of 5 Bulgarian nurses and one Palestinian doctor working in Tripoli, Libya, is finally drawing to a close. The six health workers had been found guilty of infecting up to 400 children in the hospital where they worked with HIV, and had previously been sentenced to death–even though the science had shown that the epidemic began prior to the arrival of the workers. This saga has been dragging on for the better part of a decade (Declan Butler at Nature has a very nice story here discussing the various twists and turns along the way), but now, as Revere reports (continued below):

After a day’s delay, word has come the Supreme Council has commuted the death sentence to life imprisonment, but with extradition to Bulgaria.

This deal was struck only after a ton of behind-the-scenes wrangling and politics (as Revere points out, the Supreme Council is not a judicial body, but a political one). While justice should have been straightforward–as I pointed out, the science showed that the epidemic began prior to the nurses’ and doctor’s arrival, and poor hygiene measures at the hospital were the likely cause–the case ended up having more wrinkles than a shar pei puppy. At one point it was suggested the medics were part of a US Central Intelligence Agency conspiracy to kill the children; this was later modified to paint the workers as rogue scientists carrying out an illegal clinical trial on the children in their care. The workers were foreigners, and thus could be scapegoated for the problems inherent in the hospital prior to their arrival. And of course, the families of the children are (understandably) outraged, and want their pound of flesh–regardless of its source. The case has been an 8-year quagmire, but hopefully there will be some resolution (if not justice) soon.

[Edited to add: Revere has another post on the topic up today as well].

Comments

#1 Michael D. Houst
July 18, 2007

As you say, the entire Tripoli Children’s AIDS case has been a farce that has succeeded in illustrating to the world at large: (1) that Libyans are pretty much totally ignorant about medicine, epidemiology, and science, (2) that Libya uses torture to extract confessions, (3) that Libya is just as good as the U.S. at covering up and protecting not so civil servants of law enforcement.

It doesn’t help that Libya’s president is just as ignorant of medicine as his citizens. And the fact that in the end, it will all come down to how much can Libya extort from other countries as the price for not killing the defendants.
#2 John
July 18, 2007

This has to have a chilling effect on doctors and other medical personnel who would like to go into poorer countries and lend a hand. Probably makes some think twice before joing Doctors Without Borders and other similar groups. Did Amnesty Int’l get involved at all on this one? For that matter, where the hell IS AI these days?
#3 Unsympathetic reader
July 18, 2007

John writes: “Did Amnesty Int’l get involved at all on this one? For that matter, where the hell IS AI these days?

Type “amnesty international tripoli six” into the Google search box. Let us know what you find.
#4 Justin Moretti
July 18, 2007

AI are too busy beating up on the democracies to worry about nations in which nothing they do will have an effect.

IIRC it used to be that AI would not defend people arrested for crimes of violence. This would automatically exclude everybody held at Abu Ghraib and Camp Xray; in fact pretty much anyone held under anti-terrorist laws.

I have lost all respect for them, just as I have no more respect for Greenpeace – the objects of their ire are far too selective, and I believe both organizations have been infiltrated by persons with political axes to grind; who want the moral high ground that comes with the Amnesty and Greenpeace names, but don’t want to shoulder the official responsibility that would come with the failure of the schemes they propose.
#5 Michael
July 19, 2007

Hello Tara,

and speaking of moving toward resolution…..

I hope you haven’t lost your sense of humor! Though, yes indeed, the HIV/AIDS debate that has raged on your site for a year is enough to try the popes patience! I noticed from the health threads that you don’t care for humorous handles and would prefer me to use only one name.
So be it, and I certainly hope you won’t be closing down all your threads because many various individuals do this for humor or other purposes from time to time.

And speaking of humor, I was just thinking about the “mountains of evidence” against the HIV “denialists” as you prefer to call those certain people who dare to question only HIV science. Though I see questioning any other aspect of science is perfectly politically correct and acceptable if it is a branch of “science” that you happen to agree needs questioning. But back to those 200 plus thousand HIV studies. The veritable “MOUNTAIN OF EVIDENCE against the HIV science dissenters, I found the following interesting piece on PLOS entitled:

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” by
John P. A. Ioannidis

http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Seems to me to be quite relevant to those mountains of evidence, no?
#6 Michael
July 19, 2007

The link did not come up as a link. Perhaps because I put it in bold….

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” by
John P. A. Ioannidis 2005

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1182327

The author seems to think that a lot of scientists are very biased and write not from a detached scientific mind, but from their own emotional preconceptions and bias; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias..

Really and honestly seems to me to be relevant to considering those mountains of evidence in the pubmed against the “denialists”, what do you think Tara?
#7 cooler
July 19, 2007

Yes it’s so funny how they talk of “mountains of evidence” that confirmed gallo’s claims in the past 20 years.

Can they please refer me to one scientific expirement conducted after the press conference that clearly states in the “study aims” or “goals” or “objectives” a statement of intent to confirm/disprove gallo’s hypothesis that hiv is the cause of aids?

They are none, they all assumed it to be true, how can you confirm something that you never saught to confirm because you already believed it to be true?

The whole hiv issue is a sociological issue of groupthink and thought control, not a scientific one. If there was not so much support from the most powerful government ever nobody would of cared about Gallo’s partial barely detectable correlation with no animal model.

Unfortunately, just like in many corrupt regimes in the past, like Stalins Russia, Mao’s China and Orwells 1984 many members of the intellectual class have mindlessly bought into the propaganda, but people are waking up, and many experts are speaking out.
#8 Michael
July 19, 2007

Hey Cooler.

What is interesting to me, is that a single virus was pointed at in the press and media as the cause for AIDS a full TWO YEARS before Montagnier presented LAV as a possibility, and Gallo took his LAV sample and renamed it HTLV-3, and declared it to be the probable cause of AIDS. The mystery is exactly when and who lifted it from “probable” to definite. That seemed to have happened between discussions of Gallo and the director of the NIH within a few short months of the notorious press conference.

But either way, the public itself was already geared to believe it was a single virus a full two years before Gallo and Montagnier, and therefore, so were most of the scientists, and most all of government. As such, it is not possible to point a finger at anyone or any institution in particular. One can best see it as a foible of the minds and egos and emotions of mankind to protect an existing belief, and therefore simply view it from a place of compassion and understanding, for such is the lot of us mere unknowing humans, who are naturally biased by our own collective pre-programming and beliefs. Yes indeed, we are all but humans.
#9 John
July 19, 2007

Unsympathetic:

157,000 hits with this from the last line of the first article: “Amnesty International has repeatedly raised its concerns regarding the case of the health professionals with the Libyan authorities in recent years. Its delegates attended a session of the initial trial in February 2004″.

By the way, were you being snarky? Mine was kind of a rhetorical question. I didn’t really expect anyone to go out and find me an answer.
#10 Dale
July 19, 2007

Michael – interesting article you cite. I particularly like the following quote:

most research questions are addressed by many teams, and it is misleading to emphasize the statistically significant findings of any single team. What matters is the totality of the evidence.
#11 Michael
July 19, 2007

Dale, I absolutely agree with that. What matters is the totality of the evidence!
#12 Robster, FCD
July 19, 2007

Michael,

If the totality of evidence for HIV as the cause of AIDS is what matters, including constantly repeated findings from hundreds of labs at a multitude of universities and institutes from many nations, and combined with studies showing that behavior, drug abuse and treatment hypotheses are not valid, why do you continue to espouse the denialist line?
#13 Epidemilogy-LISA
July 19, 2007

Robster, That sounds really good. Could you give us, like 20-30 out of those hundreds of lab findings showing directly that behaviour and drug abuse hypotheses are not valid?
#14 QrazyQat
July 19, 2007

By the way, were you being snarky? Mine was kind of a rhetorical question. I didn’t really expect anyone to go out and find me an answer.

You may not be aware that a very common wingnut tactic for years now has been to claim that Amnesty, or the ACLU, or feminists, etc., haven’t complained or done anything about _____ (religious people’s rights, the plight of women in Afghanistan, etc.) when those groups have been doing those things for many years. Therefore, unless they know your position on the matter, it would be natural, indeed sensible, for someone to interpret your post’s question as more of that nonsense.
#15 Adele
July 19, 2007

E-LISA, very funny, or is that Michael again? Don’t bug Robster, look ‘em up yourself. There’s this website called PubMed.
#16 John
July 20, 2007

QrazyQat; Yeah, I just kind of take peoples comments at face value and if at some point in the disussion it’s clear that this is what they are trying to do then I deal with that. Seems kind of unnecessarily reflexive to me.

As to the deeper meaning of my question – I just HONESTLY haven’t heard a lot about Amenesty Int’l the last few years and was wondering what’s up – especially when our country is busy torturing people. Seems like I should be hearing a lot, and I haven’t. Doesn’t mean I haven’t missed it. But I was wondering.
#17 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Adele.

I am not E-Lisa. But considering that my unaanswered question was directed at Tara, not Dale or Robster, or you, you and Robster should give us the proof of Robsters claim of “hundreds of studies”.

But don’t bother Adele, and don’t tell us to look on Pubmed, because such studies are not there. If you and Robster wish to claim they are, then prove it.

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.
#18 Adele
July 20, 2007

Michael Geiger, you’re a disgrace. A collaborator in the death of your friends. Have you looked at aids truth recently because if so you know there’s at least one study done about this fifteen years ago. Ascher et al. Funny thing, drug use in this study INCREASES your CD4 count slightly and the only thing decreasing it alot is HIV with or without drugs.

Not that its the only study. Drug use doesn’t cause AIDS. They figured that out in like 1982 before they even knew about HIV. Before the homophobe came along and started all these lies.

Your position depends on, everyone who has AIDS and says they don’t do drugs is lying AND everyone who does drugs and doesn’t have AIDS is lying about doing drugs. Your a clown AND a collaborator.

Why don’t you write Luc Montagnier and ask him if HIV causes AIDS? And ask him to give us his response? You’re a pathetic liar Geiger. Luc Montagnier PROVED HIV causes AIDS.
#19 Michael
July 20, 2007

Adele. Everyone knows that Ascher was Tony Fauci’s well paid buttboy and pet lapdog who was very well funded by Fauci and both were on a mission to discredit Peter Duesberg. He did not even do the study on original work, but relied on information gathered by the City operated City Clinic in San Francisco. The people questioned as to illicit drug use was highly suspect as drug use is not something that most people will admit to! Fear of being arrested and all! Duhhhhhhhh!

Hey Adele. Please tell us all if you have ever tried any illicit drugs and admit to your drug use. And please for once be honest.

Robster and Dale. Same to you. Please tell us of all of your illicit drug use.

And if Seth is around, Same to him. Admit your drug use.

We can verify right here and now how reliable it is to ask someone about their illegal drug use!

Adele, Shove Ascher where the sun don’t shine and show us some of the “hundreds of studies in the pubmed” that you and Robster claim as evidence.
#20 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Adele.

Is poppers, meth, cocaine, heroin, and other drug abuse healthy or harmful to a persons immune system?

Ascher seems to think all this drug abuse causes no harm and is a perfectly healthy thing to do. Do you agree with Ascher on that Adele?
#21 Michael
July 20, 2007

“Luc Montagnier PROVED HIV causes AIDS”.

Hey Adele. Prove that statement with a citation. Until you do, you are a liar!
#22 franklin
July 20, 2007

Michael,

Are you a student of Maniotis? Is that where you learned to make false claims about the work of other scientists?

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

You denialists are so desperate to deny reality that you will invent any claim that you imagine will score a rhetorical point–no matter how easy it may be to prove the claim is false. The truth is of no consequence to your argument, because your entire position is based upon lies and distortion.

What is Montagnier claiming in this paper, if not that HIV is the cause of AIDS?

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. (2003). The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N. Engl. J. Med. 349:2283-5.
#23 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Franklin. Are you dense? This piece from year 2003 entitled “Retrospective”? This is not a study! It is not a scientific citation!

That piece, exactly as it is entitled, is a “RETROSPECTIVE” that was done by Gallo, not by Montangier. Not one word on it was written by Luc Montangier. Even if he gave Gallo his approval to be included in it. Montangier himself has said that his name was on that at the direct appeal of Robert Gallo, and only because it does NOT attribute the claim of HIV as being the cause of AIDS to Montagnier.

The paper explicitly says “Thus, an exceptional linkage of agent to disease had to be established. This linkage was made particularly in Bethesda“.

Bethesda is GALLO’s LAB, jerk-off, not Montagnier’s!

It is simply one more feeble attempt by Gallo to cover his ass! Gallo believes that if he says something often enough, then that makes it true. The “retrospective was done in 2003 directly due to the threat posed by the dissidents in South Africa.

Franklin, are you claiming that it wasn’t until this piece from 2003 that dances around the issues, that Luc verbally confirmed HIV as the causative factor in AIDS. Nowhere in the piece does it even say that!

Does that look to you like a scientific citation there Mr. bonehead? Don’t answer that. I am sure that to you, it probably looks to be some type of “high” science.

Hey Franklin. Have you ever done any illicit drugs?
#24 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Mr. High Science Franklin.

The piece you brought up as some kink of proof lays the evidence for HIV being proven to be the cause of AIDS DIRECTLY at Gallo’s lab in BETHESDA.

Please show us the cite from Gallo’s lab in BETHESDA where the “exceptional linkage” is to be found!

Please DO share with us this “EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE”!
#25 Michael
July 20, 2007

You guys crack me up!

After being told by Adele, Dale, Franklin, Robster, etc, that I am a disgrace, and a liar, a murderer of my friends, and a clown, I think it only fair that you back such libelous statements with proof.

Franklin. I realize how forgetful you clever HIV advocates can be with your seeming “hit and run” jabs of presenting non-evidence as evidence, while refusing to answer any direct questions.

Therefore, Every time I see you post, I will unfortunately be forced to ask you for the cite to Gallo’s “Exceptional Linkage”, until you answer! I will also unfortunately be asking about your personal drug use until you either answer or simply tell me you are not willing to answer such a personal question or it is none of my business or whatever. But I really do need a solid response from you if you choose to continue to interact with me on this subject. I am not willing to settle for less than a direct answer to direct questions.

You are also welcome to ask me any direct question and I will be glad to answer as best as I can.

Adele, Robster, Dale, same to you all. You are the ones who seem to believe that asking people personal questions about drug use is scientifically accurate for proving HIV as the cause of AIDS. We will test this here and now!

Either answer the questions about your own personal drug use, or tell me its none of my or others business, or give some response. Otherwise I will be asking the same question until you do. If you do not choose to answer or respond, I do understand, but I will be left with the belief that perhaps your own drug use has caused you to forget my simple question.

Until then, a gentle little reminder of what the question was: What illicit drugs have you all done and how often have you done them???
#26 franklin
July 20, 2007

Michael,

I was simply pointing out your lie. I was not claiming that this paper is the FIRST paper in which Montagnier claimed that HIV is the cause of AIDS.By only reading the TITLE of the paper anyone can see that you are lying. You stated that:

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

Montagnier is the last author of this paper:

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. (2003). The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N. Engl. J. Med. 349:2283-5.

You defend your lie by stating that:

Hey Franklin. Are you dense? This piece from year 2003 entitled “Retrospective”? This is not a study! It is not a scientific citation!

NEVER includes 2003.

Once again–You are LYING, a recurring theme with the posts by Denialists. Usually you lie about the work of other scientists, because denialists do no serious scientific work on AIDS.

All of your arguments are based on lies, yet you complain that scientists ignore your caims. I wonder why they would do that?
#27 Michael
July 20, 2007

Franklin. After you are done spitting and barfing and barking and fuming. Please read your paper again and tell me where Montagnier says HIV is the cause of AIDS in this paper. Nowhere in this paper does Montagnier make such a claim. All such claim is reverted to Gallo’s lab in Bethesda.

The paper itself attributes such evidence linkage of HIV to AIDS fully to Gallo. Gallo is the first author on this paper and the was written by him. The only reference to Montagnier in this paper is that Montagnier had first isolated a suspected agent. That is the ONLY thing Montagnier admits to in this paper.

The paper DOES NOT say Montagnier agrees with Gallo who is the first author.

Now where is the cite to Gallo’s “EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE”.

And kindly tell us what illicit drugs you have ever done and how often.
#28 Dale
July 20, 2007

I thought that we had agreed Michael that it wasn’t a single investigator or a single paper that was important in evaluating a scientific claim but the totality of the evidence.
#29 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Franklin. You are the liar. YOU are attempting to falsely convey the idea that GALLO’s claims are Montagnier’s claims.

They ARE NOT THE SAME. The paper clearly attributes Gallo’s Claims of HIV causing AIDS directly to GALLO, not to Montagnier.

Dale. Yes we did agree on that, and lets look at the totallity, since the totallity as Franklin’s paper points out, is to be found in Gallo’s work in Bethesda. So Dale, it seems that Franklin can’t find Gallo’s work that shows the “EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE” of HIV to AIDS, so he seems to need your help.

Dale, please show us Gallo’s EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE so that we can indeed see the totallity of the evidence!

And also, Dale, please share with us what illicit drugs you have done and how often, or some response to this, so that we may all, including yourself, experientially understand the validity of Ascher’s paper in attempting to prove Peter Duesberg wrong.
#30 Dale
July 20, 2007

Michael, the totality of the evidence is not restricted to Gallo or to Montagnier or to any combination of the two. Read PubMed. Read CDC or DOH documents for the state/city/county of your choice.
#31 Michael
July 20, 2007

Dale, this is not what the current lead researchers of HIV and AIDS believe at all, as all cite Robert Gallo and Montagnier’s work as the foundation and cornerstone of the totality of evidence that HIV is caused by AIDS.

I have read the pubmed and the cdc and doh documents. They all point to Gallo’s work at Bethesda.

So again, I must ask you to please share with us Gallo’s “EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE”, claimed by the very founders of the HIV belief in Franklins paper published in NEJM in 2003, and re-iterated by him once more in the Parenzee trial in Adelaide Australia as the foundation and the totality of evidence just a couple of months ago.

Please Dale. Share with us this foundational EXCEPTIONAL LINKAGE of HIV to AIDS so that we may all look at the TOTALITY OF EVIDENCE that 200,000 plus papers refer to and are based upon!

And by the way, you still have not answered my question about your own illicit drug use. Certainly you read my question!
#32 Michael
July 20, 2007

Hey Guys, Come on now!

DALE! ADELE! ROBSTER! FRANKLIN!

Why is no-one here willing to be honest and answer questions about their own illicit drug use?

I have been patiently waiting for an answer from you guys for way more than 3 hours! I have asked, and asked and asked for your own responses! Yet none of you have had the courage to answer.

Even President Clinton admitted that he smoked pot once, though he honestly never inhaled any of it! Certainly we believe him on that, don’t we?

It has been claimed that M.S. Ascher’s 1993 paper, now posted prominently on AIDSTRUTH http://www.aidstruth.org/Ascher93.pdf supposedly disproving that drugs are in any way related to AIDS as is claimed by Peter Duesberg.

I contend that the paper is completely unreliable because people are not honest about their use of illicit drugs.

As proof of this, I have been asking for the last 4 hours of Adele, Robster, Franklin, and Dale, to honestly share with us their own illicit drug use.

All have refused to answer, or even respond at all, to this very simple question.

Therefore, any reasonable person must conclude that Ascher’s paper is inherently false, as average people are not at all willing to share such information with strangers.

Conclusion: Ascher’s paper disproving Duesbergs theory is absolutely false and based on at best, very unreliable information that is in no way shape or form proven to be factual!
#33 Dale
July 20, 2007

Michael, apparently you have trouble understanding the concept of totality of evidence. Whether or not you believe that individuals lie about their illegal drug usage, Ascher’s paper is not the totality of evidence against a causal link between drugs and AIDS. Read the literature.
#34 Michael
July 20, 2007

Dale. Be more precise. EXACTLY WHAT LITERATURE ARE YOU REFERRING TO???

Please try to stay focused, Dale. As you have not answered my question about your drug use, I am led to believe that you are probably stoned out of your mind at this very instant.

You continue to tell me not to look at the foundational papers that all subsequent work assumes to be true, but only to look at the subsequent works.

Yet, All subsequent work is about attempting to determine how HIV causes AIDS, not IF it causes AIDS. Which by the way, I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but no subsequent work has ever determined how HIV causes AIDS.

Therefore, it must be assumed, after 25 years of such failure, that the TOTALLITY OF THE EVIDENCE that these studies relied on must be false!

Now, Dale, you are drifting again. So one more time. The TOTALLITY of PAPERS ASSUME HIV CAUSES AIDS and are simply attempting to find out how.

THE TOTALLITY OF EXCEPTIONAL EVIDENCE THAT HIV CAUSES AIDS RESTS ON GALLO’S ORIGINAL WORK.

Now for the seventh time, Dale, please show us the totality of Gallo’s “EXCEPTIONAL EVIDENCE” that all following papers are based upon.

And please share with us your personal illicit drug history, so we may once again trust Ascher’s 1993 study!
#35 franklin
July 20, 2007

Michael,

Nobody is fooled by your lies. You claimed that:

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

Montagnier is the last author of this paper:

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. (2003). The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N. Engl. J. Med. 349:2283-5.

Authorship means taking responsibility for the claims in the paper. The TITLE of this paper claims that HIV is the cause of AIDS. All of the authors–including Montagnier–are claiming that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Ipso facto–you are lying, as usual.

You try to hide from your lie by claiming that:

The paper itself attributes such evidence linkage of HIV to AIDS fully to Gallo. Gallo is the first author on this paper and the was written by him. The only reference to Montagnier in this paper is that Montagnier had first isolated a suspected agent. That is the ONLY thing Montagnier admits to in this paper.

For an author to make a claim in a paper, the claim doesn’t have to cite that author’s previous work. Authors will frequently make claims and cite evidence found in the previous work of others. That is true in all spheres of life–not just in the sciences.

Your claim isn’t that Montagnier never claimed that he personally proved in one of his own papers that HIV was the cause of AIDS. You claimed that:

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

In this paper Montagnier claims that HIV is the cause of AIDS. You are lying.

It is not surprising that you would try to deny this fact. Because, in truth, for you to deny that in this paper Montagnier claims that HIV is the cause of AIDS is no more ludicrous than for you to deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Your whole position is based on the denial of reality.

Like denying the meaning of the title of Montagnier’s paper.
#36 Michael
July 20, 2007

Franklin. You are a liar. Nowhere in your paper does Montagnier claim HIV is the cause of AIDS. All such claims are clearly stated in the paper as attributed directly to Gallo’s lab and therefore Gallo’s claims.

I have repeatedly asked you for your personal illicit drug history and you have repeatedly avoided answering this for more than 4 hours. Please answer so that Ascher’s study claiming Duesberg is wrong can be saved and relied on by all of you AIDS advocates.
#37 Michael
July 20, 2007

Franklin. You are obviously completely ignorant of the original history behind the belief in HIV causing AIDS, or you would understand perfectly why Montagnier has NEVER, and could NEVER claim that HIV was the cause of AIDS.

It is well known history by now that after Gallo had declared HTLV-III as the probable cause of AIDS in 1984, Montagnier immediately went to bat against Gallo and his lab. After all Gallo had just stolen Montagnier’s sample of LAV and Gallo claimed it was his own discovery of HTLV-III. Immediately thereafter, Montagnier was busy for the next few years trying to regain control of his stolen virus as well as sue Gallo, as well as regain control of the patent rights for the AIDS test that were based on the discoveries of Luc’s Lab team at the Pasteur Institute.

The Pasteur and French Government and lab team wanted their own recognition as the proper owners of the isolate, as well as wanted the full royalties to the AIDS test.

Montagnier did not devote his time or his lab to helping Gallo steal his virus or prove it did or did not do anything. He spent his time with French Government officials and lawyers trying to prove that Gallo had stolen his lab’s discovery.

Proving or disproving the now stolen virus as the cause of AIDS was not even on Luc Montagnier’s to-do list! The only thing Luc spent his time on was trying to get back the stolen royalties from Gallo and the NIH.

After several years of fighting and lawsuits between the French and the NIH, as well as all of Montagniers time devoted to it, it took President Reagan and the French president to meet at the US Whitehouse to agree to share the royalties and agree not to press the idea that Gallo had stolen Luc’s lab’s virus, LAV.

No work was done by Luc’s lab in France to verify that HIV was the cause of AIDS, as that was why Luc sent Gallo the samples to begin with, was to allow the NIH and Gallo to verify that it was or was not the cause of AIDS.

As such, Luc Montagnier and the French could NEVER make the claim that HIV was the cause of AIDS, because Gallo had stolen the virus and already made that claim himself.
#38 Dale
July 20, 2007

Michael posted THE TOTALLITY OF EXCEPTIONAL EVIDENCE THAT HIV CAUSES AIDS RESTS ON GALLO’S ORIGINAL WORK.

Again, Michael, the totality of evidence that HIV causes AIDS does NOT rely soley on Gallo’s or Montagnier’s original work. Many subsequent experiments to explore various aspects of HIV and AIDS continue to test the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS. They do this because they compare HIV positive with HIV-negative individuals. If HIV was ‘harmless’ as Duesberg claims (without evidence I might add) then there would be no difference in mortality or morbidity between HIV positive and HIV negative individuals. But there is. Among IVD, mortality rates are higher in HIV positive individuals. Among MSM, mortality rates are higher in HIV positive individuals. Among children of HIV positive women, mortality rates are higher in the children who are HIV positive than in those who are HIV negative. One common characteristic – HIV infection.

My drug of choice is caffeine. Make of it what you will.
#39 franklin
July 20, 2007

Michael,

I claim that on July 19, 2007, Barry Bonds hit his 752nd and 753rd career home runs. As evidence for my claim I direct you to the the article by Henry Schulman in the Sports Section of the San Francisco Chronicle of July 20, 2007.

I make the claim–I’ll even bet one hundred dollars that it is true–yet I am not the author of the supporting documentation.

As evidence that Montagnier has claimed that HIV is the cause of AIDS I directed you to the following paper:

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. (2003). The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N. Engl. J. Med. 349:2283-5.

You seem to be having a little trouble parsing the paper. You say:

Nowhere in your paper does Montagnier claim HIV is the cause of AIDS.

He claims that HIV is the cause of AIDS in the TITLE of the paper.

Is your ability for to deny reality limitless?

When–despite reading this paper–you continue to deny that Montagnier has ever claimed that HIV is the cause of AIDS you illustrate the same capacity for denial of reality that leads Maniotis and the Perth Group to deny that HIV has been proven to exist as a virus.

Your willingness to lie about facts that are obvious to anyone who can read illustrates the complete lack of integrity that permeates your position.
#40 Michael
July 20, 2007

Franklin, the only one parsing is you!

Try working on your reading and comprehension skills between puffs.

You said

“He claims that HIV is the cause of AIDS in the TITLE of the paper”.

If you are meaning by “he”, Luc Montagnier claims HIV is the cause of AIDS, then no, “HE” doesn’t claim any such thing in the title or otherwise. Gallo Claims it, and claims it right there in the title and in that paper.

“HE” as in Montagnier, only claims to be the discovery part of the equation, as in the lab that isolated it, not the verifier of AIDS causation. The article itself attributes that solely to Gallo’s lab in Bethesda!
#41 franklin
July 21, 2007

Michael,

Here is another paper by Montagnier. Again, simply by reading the title of the paper, anyone can see that you are lying when you claim that:

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

C’mon, just concede that you are lying. Confession is good for the soul.

Montagnier L. et al. (1984). Lymphadenopathy associated virus and its etiological role in AIDS. Int. Symp. Princess Takamatsu Cancer Res. Fund. 15:319-31.

Abstract Lymphadenopathy associated virus (LAV) is a novel human retrovirus first reported in 1983. It was isolated from the lymph node lymphocytes of a French homosexual patient with generalized hyperplasic lymphadenopathy. Subsequently LAV was isolated from patients with frank acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) coming from all the different high-risk groups, while anti-LAV antibodies were detected equally in individuals from all “at-risk” groups. Such a profile is consistent with the virus being the major etiological agent of AIDS. Furthermore its biological properties, namely its cytopathic effect in vitro, its T4-cell tropism as well as the role of the T4 molecule in virus infection explain, at least in part, the pathophysiology of AIDS. The major core (gag) proteins are p18, p25, and p13 which are products of a Pr55 precursor. The major envelope (env) glycoprotein is unusually large (gp110) for a retrovirus and comparable to those of the lentiviruses. Recently the virus has been molecularly cloned. The genome is 9.2 kb long, longer than any other known replication competent retrovirus apart from the lentiviruses. The absence of molecular hybridization between cloned LAV and human T-cell leukemia/lymphoma virus (HTLV) genomes compounds the original and extensive differences noted between these viruses and demonstrates that LAV is a prototype of a new class of human retrovirus.
#42 Michael
July 21, 2007

Hey Dale. You said

“Many subsequent experiments to explore various aspects of HIV and AIDS continue to test the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS”.

Gee Dale, if the issue is and has been as settled as you have claimed over and over, then why the need to continue to test the hypothesis? But whatever you say, Dale. And after what study by who was a concensus reached?

And just so we all know that your not high as a kite on your caffeine, please back up your claim of supposed studies post Gallo, and do give us cites to some of these “studies”.

And be sure to show us just ONE study that is free of factors that were pointed to by Duesberg of malnutrion or illicit drug use or administration of AZT, where the cohorts are non-drug and non-malnutrition and not taking AIDS drugs, so we can be sure all factors are accounted for and actually show that the issue is of causation by HIV and not illness directly atributable to the co-factors!
#43 Michael
July 21, 2007

Nice Try Franklin. Where in this does he say HIV is the cause of AIDS? Nowhere in that paper does he make the claim that HIV or LAV IS THE PROVEN CAUSE OF AIDS.

He was still very circumspect and calls it the “major etiological agent”.

He also says that it at this point only “IN PART” explains the pathophysiology of AIDS.

Nice try, but yet nothing definite in this paper but correlations.
#44 Robster, FCD
July 21, 2007

Michael,

What does the vast and overwhelming majority of research show us about HIV as a cause of AIDS? No more distractions, no attempts to derail the conversation with your “drug use” fall back lines. Go to pubmed, enter the search terms “drug abuse AIDS.” Take a look at what comes up.

IV drug abuse is a risk factor much less correlated with progression to AIDS than the presence of HIV.
#45 Michael
July 21, 2007

Robster, you said:

“IV drug abuse is a risk factor much less correlated with progression to AIDS than the presence of HIV”.

Damn Right Robster. Especially when you consider that most coke and meth users don’t shoot it IV, nor do poppers get anything but inhaled. But while we are talking drugs and AIDS deaths. Take a look at the death pre and post AZT use. Look at the death charts especially after the HIV positive diagnosed patients had received High dosage AZT from 87 to 97! Within one year of AZT administration, the number of deaths shot up from a few hundred illicit drug users to many thousands dying who all have in common taking high dosage AZT monotherapy. Average life expectancy for those taking that poison was 1.5 years!

Now quit fooling around and tell us the truth about your own illicit drug use Robster! My personal guess is your a just a weekend total stoner, but you could also be a burned out ex-crackhead.
#46 Robster, FCD
July 21, 2007

Michael,

Why do you persist in your lies that Montagnier is not in agreement with Gallo. In academic writing, you don’t put your name to a paper if you don’t agree with it. Montagnier agrees with the statement that Gallo’s work was important. The title is carefully chosen for any paper, and with Montagnier’s name comes his agreement on this not insignificant issue.

Regardless, attempting to push this lie only demonstrates that you have no interest in truth.
#47 Michael
July 21, 2007

Why do I persist Robster? Because it is well known that Montagnier and Gallo are not in agreement, as can be verified in the following quote by Luc Montagnier:

AIDS does not inevitably lead to death, especially if you suppress the co-factors that support the disease. It is very important to tell this to people who are infected. I think we should put the same weight now on the co-factors as we have on HIV. Psychological factors are critical in supporting immune function. If you suppress this psychological support by telling someone he’s condemned to die, your words alone will have condemned him.

And any fool could understand that the dissidents pose just as much of a threat to Montagnier and his team as they do to Gallo, even if Luc himself is a closet dissident since about 1993.
#48 DT
July 21, 2007

Michael, if drug abuse causes “AIDS”, then you should have no difficulty pointing us to some studies where HIV negative drug users frequently develop diseases such as Pneumocystis, cerebral toxoplasmosis, PML, disseminated atypical mycobacteria etc.

In fact, since there are about 5 times as many HIV negative drug users than there are HIV positive drug users, there these diseases should occur about 5x more frequently in HIV negative drug users.

There have been thousands of cases reported in HIV-positive drug users.

Can you provide one reference (just one?) to a study of say a dozen cases of PCP in HIV-negative drug users?. On the other thread, denialists said they could do so, but never have. I thank you in advance for providing what should be a very simple answer to this question.
#49 Epidemiology-LISA
July 21, 2007

Re. Ascher et al.:

Our scientific study that re-examined the Ascher et al. study discovered (1) at least 45 cases of uninfected, HIV-negative men with AIDS diseases; (2) heavy drug use among those men identified in the Ascher et al. study as having “no drug use”; (3) heavier drug use among HIV-positive men than amongst HIV-negative ones, showing that the HIV virus was not associated with AIDS; and (4) serious gaps in the study’s database, making it useless for any other conclusions. In short, our new study devastatingly refuted the Ascher et al. study.

John Maddox, editor of Nature, was clearly caught off guard by our paper, and he ultimately rejected it from publication — without explanation and in direct violation of his earlier promise. Our study was later published in the prestigious scientific journal Genetica in January of 1995.2 To our knowledge, no answer has ever been made against our paper in the years since then (Bryan Ellison)

Maybe Chris Noble knows of such an answer? Since Ascher is his all-time favorite reference, this cannot be the first time he has been asked about it.

DT,
I’m convinced you’re not a closet denialist, which may be why the point of your challenge escapes me. That studies of PCP in HIV-free drug users are extremely rare just confirms the dissidents’ point that medical interest in PCP focuses exclusively on its association with HIV/AIDS.

Can you provide one reference (just one?) to a study of say a dozen cases of PCP in HIV-negative drug users?. (DT)
#50 Franklin
July 21, 2007

Michael,

Please keep telling such obvious lies. They only emphasize your lack of integrity.

In the long run, their main effect is to undermine the credibility of your entire position.
#51 Robster, FCD
July 21, 2007

Michael,

“And any fool could understand that the dissidents pose just as much of a threat to Montagnier and his team as they do to Gallo, even if Luc himself is a closet dissident since about 1993.”

The threat level to researchers is zero. You have to have a competing hypothesis to challenge the science. The threat posed by denialists is to AIDS patients and public health.

And could you, at long last, offer some proof of your ridiculous claim that Montagnier is a closet denialist? Not some out of context quote, but proof. Can you explain exactly what Montagnier defines as cofactors? I would suggest that cofactors can include genetic variables affecting HIV infection, OIs, etc. Can you tell us what his opinion is now, 10 years after this cherry picked quote?

You are attempting to turn a discussion between scientists as to the details of disease progression into some imagined controversy. Do you have any strategy not shared with creationists?

When you put your name on a paper, as Montagnier did, you are stating that you are in agreement with the contents of the paper, including the title. If you were honest, you could admit this.

That said, mental health care is absolutely important, and should be included for any patient with a serious disease. Just as proper nutrition should be included. Researchers are not saying otherwise, just that poor nutrition and poor mental health care can contribute to progression to AIDS, but do not cause AIDS.

You said the totality of research is what is important, but keep trying to deflect questions as to what the overwhelming majority of research says about HIV as the cause of AIDS.
#52 Michael
July 21, 2007

Hey Robster.

I certainly realized many months ago, that you are a bit slow to catch on, which becomes ever so obvious with your statement:

“You said the totality of research is what is important, but keep trying to deflect questions as to what the overwhelming majority of research says about HIV as the cause of AIDS“.

Which takes us right back to the beginning of my conversation on this thread which you continue to ignore because he was writing about slow and biased people such as you, Dale, Franklin, DT, Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier, John P. Moore, et al!

“Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” by
John P. A. Ioannidis 2005

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1182327
#53 Darin Brown
July 21, 2007

My review of Bauer’s new book:

http://www.reviewingaids.org/awiki/index.php/Document:Brown_reviews_Bauer

darin
#54 Chris Noble
July 22, 2007

Our scientific study that re-examined the Ascher et al. study discovered (1) at least 45 cases of uninfected, HIV-negative men with AIDS diseases; (2) heavy drug use among those men identified in the Ascher et al. study as having “no drug use”; (3) heavier drug use among HIV-positive men than amongst HIV-negative ones, showing that the HIV virus was not associated with AIDS; and (4) serious gaps in the study’s database, making it useless for any other conclusions. In short, our new study devastatingly refuted the Ascher et al. study.

John Maddox, editor of Nature, was clearly caught off guard by our paper, and he ultimately rejected it from publication — without explanation and in direct violation of his earlier promise. Our study was later published in the prestigious scientific journal Genetica in January of 1995.2 To our knowledge, no answer has ever been made against our paper in the years since then (Bryan Ellison)

This is Duesberg’s “reanalysis” of the Ascher et al SFMHS study.

HIV as a surrogate marker for drug use: a re-analysis of the San Francisco Men’s Health Study.

Duesberg writes: … we found 45 HIV-negative men with AIDS defining conditions (according to the CDC), as listed in Table 1.

and

It is important to emphasize that had any of these 45 men been positive for antibod- ies against HIV, they would likely have been recorded as AIDS cases.

Now If we go through Table 1 Duesberg gives Salmonella as the AIDS defining illness for 18 of the 45. But the CDC clearly state that it must be a recurrent infection to count as AIDS defining. Salmonella is a very common food-borne disease. The CDC estimates 1.4 million cases annually in the US You can do the math to find out how many cases you would expect over 4648 patient years.

The next biggest group is 14 with transitory CD4 counts less than 200 cells/ml. The CDC is quite clear that repeat testing may be necessary to ensure that CD4 counts are truly reflective. Sheppard et al point out in this letter CD4+ T-Lymphocytopenia without HIV Infection that these CD4 counts were transient low counts amongs a background of normal counts.

After that Duesberg lists 9 patients with Herpes zoster. I looked in the CDC list of AIDS defining illnesses and couldn’t find Herpes zoster. Now Duesberg does say he is using the CDC definition.

Next Duesberg lists 6 patients with Thrush/oral candidiasis except the CDC definition clearly states that the cadidiasis must be esophageal or of the bronchi, trachea or lungs. Oral candidiasis doesn’t count it is frequently seen in immunocomptetent persons.

Immune thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP) is also not in the CDC definition. It is also observed in immunocompetent persons as is TB. Given the incidence of TB in the US at the time was roughly 10 per 100,000 per year it is not unexpected to see one case in 4648 patient years.

In short there were no HIV-negative AIDS cases in the SFMHS cohort. This has been pointed out to Duesberg before in the literature AIDS data.

Duesberg was so desperate to produce HIV-negative AIDS cases that he stretches the definition so far that he includes the roughly 1.4 million people in the US that get salmonella food poisoning each year.

This isn’t someone arguing from the evidence. He twists the evidence to match his own preconceived ideas.

The effort that Duesberg makes to deny the evidence in the Ascher study is breathtaking. Even then he still doesn’t attempt to explain why it is that the HIV+ patients ended up with Kaposi’s sarcoma and other opportunistic infections that are otherwise extremely rare while the best he could find in the HIV- group was herpes zoster and salmonella that are hardly rare.

In short, Duesbergs response to the Ascher paper confirmed forever his crank status. Nobody pays any attention to him anymore.
#55 Chris Noble
July 22, 2007

I’m convinced you’re not a closet denialist, which may be why the point of your challenge escapes me. That studies of PCP in HIV-free drug users are extremely rare just confirms the dissidents’ point that medical interest in PCP focuses exclusively on its association with HIV/AIDS.

PCP isn’t something that can be easily missed. Unless treated properly people have a tendency to die.

The reason that you are labelled a Denialist is because you invent an endless stream of ad hoc excuses to deny the evidence.

You can’t answer DT’s request for the simple reason that there isn’t an increased number of PCP cases in HIV- drug users. You can make up as many excuses as you want but you can’t change the simple reality.
#56 Chris Noble
July 22, 2007

AIDS does not inevitably lead to death, especially if you suppress the co-factors that support the disease. It is very important to tell this to people who are infected. I think we should put the same weight now on the co-factors as we have on HIV. Psychological factors are critical in supporting immune function. If you suppress this psychological support by telling someone he’s condemned to die, your words alone will have condemned him.

Michael we’ve already gone over this before. You and other Denialists leave out the text that immediately follows.

“… have condemned him. It simply isn’t true that the virus is one hundred percent fatal. If you lead a normal life — sleep regularly at night, avoid alcohol, coffee, and tobacco — your immune system could perhaps resist the disease for ten or fifteen years. By then we might have found an effective therapy”

All Montagnier was saying in 1988 was that if you were very careful there was a chance that you might live long enough until an effective therapy was found. He was not and is not a denialist.
#57 Epidemiology-LISA
July 22, 2007

I apologize to everybody for not making myself clear. I thought it was obvious it was the Ascher et al question that went to Dr. Noble, not the PCP one.

But any answer from him is appreciated if only it would make more sense than the original statement. The drug use epidemic and the “AIDS” epidemic happened concurrently, so what does he mean there isn’t an increased number of PCP in HIV- drug users? Compared to what exactly? There was a whole battery of new drugs and drug users that hit the market in the seventies-eighties, what am I supposed to compare with to determine whether drug-related PCP incidence in those users has gone up or down in the HIV era?

HIV- (and transplant unrelated) PCP has zero interest – read funding – so I’m willing to accept there’s no large study of HIV- PCP patients around.

The transplant related studies of PCP suggest that things like chemotherapy and corticosteroids increase the risk of PCP, unlike, apparently, “blessedly untoxic” drugs like heroin.
#58 Epidemiology-LISA
July 22, 2007

The Times obtained copies of three documents, not previously made public, that purport to be tests of Morrison’s blood this year.

One of them, negative for H.I.V. antibodies, was a report from LabCorp in Phoenix on blood drawn Feb. 6 and was released by Peter McKinn, Morrison’s promoter. The second, which did not detect H.I.V. in DNA, was a LabCorp report on blood drawn Feb. 14 and was released by West Virginia. The state used those tests to license Morrison to box, said Michele Duncan Bishop, general counsel for the West Virginia Department of Revenue, which oversees the athletics commission.

A third test, from Specialty Laboratories of Valencia, Calif., on blood drawn Jan. 5, indicates Morrison tested positive for H.I.V. antibodies but negative for H.I.V. in RNA. That report was released by Randy D. Lang, Morrison’s former legal adviser, who said the antibody result showed Morrison was still infected.

But the experts said the RNA result in the same report raised the possibility that the antibody result was a false positive, an event that studies say occurs in fewer than 1 in 100,000 cases

Fewer than 1 in 100,000 cases? Tommy must be one unlucky bloke then, because now he has drawn that “fewer 1 in 100,000″ bad number,what? 4-5 times including the initial tests that ended his career.
#59 Robster, FCD
July 22, 2007

Michael,

I wrote, “You said the totality of research is what is important, but keep trying to deflect questions as to what the overwhelming majority of research says about HIV as the cause of AIDS”.

You replied, Which takes us right back to the beginning of my conversation on this thread which you continue to ignore because he was writing about slow and biased people such as you, Dale, Franklin, DT, Robert Gallo, Luc Montagnier, John P. Moore, et al!

So lets look at that Ioannidis article that you misrepresent. (ignoring, for the moment the paradox that Ioannidis’s findings may themselves be wrong)

What does Ioannidis say? Several methodologists have pointed out [9-11] that the high rate of nonreplication (lack of confirmation) of research discoveries is a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance, typically for a p-value less than 0.05.

This refers to studies lacking confirmatory research, i.e. it doesn’t refer to research on HIV as the cause of AIDS. HIV/AIDS research is based on multiple independent teams, confirming the results of other groups.

Rather than this article being a condemnation of the HIV/AIDS field of research, it can be better viewed as one of groups that jumped on a hot topic, found early promising correlations that failed to be causative, but refused to change their position as better data was discovered.

Your pitiful attempt at an ad hominem attack (slow and biased) is what you should be rethinking. Did you actually understand anything in the Ioannidis paper beyond the title that you latched onto?

Ioannidis plainly states, “What matters is the totality of the evidence.”

You claim that you agree with this, but will not make any statement regarding what the “totality” actually says. The why is simple. You are wrong, but your overpowering bias and pride prevent you from admitting it.
#60 DT
July 22, 2007

Lisa:

But any answer from him is appreciated if only it would make more sense than the original statement. The drug use epidemic and the “AIDS” epidemic happened concurrently, so what does he mean there isn’t an increased number of PCP in HIV- drug users? Compared to what exactly? There was a whole battery of new drugs and drug users that hit the market in the seventies-eighties, what am I supposed to compare with to determine whether drug-related PCP incidence in those users has gone up or down in the HIV era?

Don’t be deliberately obtuse Lisa. Your rethinker hypothesis is simple – Drug use causes immunodeficiency (and AIDS-defining illnesses).

Therefore it should be very simple matter for the rethinkers to point to the tens of thousands of cases of severe opportunistic infections documented in drug users who are HIV-negative.

The literature indicates these cases are excedingly rare. This is not because of any diagnostic defect or any publishing bias – researchers desperate for publications would be falling over each other to try and get cases written up (and there are examples of single cases where this has happened).

In contrast, cases of PCP, MAC, PML, Toxo etc in HIV-POSITIVE drug users are so common that no-one bothers to write up even a series of hundreds of cases – there is little point – they are so common. Someone like the CDC may collates the stats, that is all, and yes, there are tens of thousands of cases.

The fact that you cannot point me to just a handful of cases in HIV-NEGATIVE drug users blows away your drug-AIDS hypothesis. You just won’t admit it, and resort to post hoc excuses, just as Chris says.
#61 Chris Noble
July 22, 2007

I apologize to everybody for not making myself clear. I thought it was obvious it was the Ascher et al question that went to Dr. Noble, not the PCP one.

The answer to the Ascher et al question has a number of links and is waiting approval.

HIV- (and transplant unrelated) PCP has zero interest – read funding – so I’m willing to accept there’s no large study of HIV- PCP patients around.

Doctors weren’t specifically looking for PCP in the early 1980′s. Nevertheless, a sudden surge in the diagnosis of this disease lead to recognition of AIDS. The idea that PCP in HIV- people is not being diagnosed simply because they aren’t HIV+ is frankly stupid.

The whole reason that AIDS was first recognised was because KS and PCP were cropping up in patients that had no known cause of immune suppression.

PCP cases in HIV- patients with no other known cause of immune suppression would be published.

Stop inventing excuses to cover your lack of evidence.
#62 Epidemiology-LISA
July 22, 2007

The answer to the Ascher et al question has a number of links and is waiting approval

I’m genuinely not sure I understand. Do you need aproval to answer this question? Or do you mean that you or somebody else has submitted a paper for review? What kind of links are you talking about?

PCP cases in HIV- patients with no other known cause of immune suppression would be published.

Look, you and DT might have a point somehow, but this ain’t it. The dissidents’ contention is that the initial US AIDS patients and almost all of the following one million did have not one but several known causes of immune suppression, drug use being a major factor, corticosteroids another, immune- suppressing ‘life-saving’ drugs yet another, various stigma and emotional pressures, including the HIV death sentence yet another.

But you science guys are a funny lot, because 4 replies down you’re still giving me this self-defeating fluff about how researchers would have behaved if they had found any HIV free PCP in drug users, when all you have to do to make the point I think you are trying to make is to reproduce national statistics for PCP incidence in the different at risk groups the last couple of decades and line them up next to the HIV+ figures.
Unless you’re simply saying that an HIV-free PCP case has never been recorded in HIV- drug users?
#63 DT
July 22, 2007

“Unless you’re simply saying that an HIV-free PCP case has never been recorded in HIV- drug users?”

Pretty much, but I’ll never say never. I am aware of documented cases, but as I said before, when a researcher comes across one they write it up for the journals pronto because it is such a rarity (hence publication bias actually works in favour of their documentation/publication).

Other studies have looked prospectively at illnesses in drug users. You don’t like the Ascher study – here is another.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=8031512&ordinalpos=36&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
This study showed no deaths in over 1600 HIV negative drug users from any illness that would have been classed as “AIDS”-defining if it had occured in an HIV positive patient. Yet 89 out of 770 HIV positive drug users died from AIDS-defining illnesses such as PCP.

Let me think… Why would that be?
#64 Darin Brown
July 22, 2007

ANTHONY FAUCI CONCEDES THAT DRUGS AND MALNUTRITION CAUSE AIDS

====

“The administration of glucocorticosteroids results in a wide range of effects on inflammatory and immunologically mediated disease processes. Glucocorticosteroids cause neutrophilic leukocytosis together with eosinopenia, monocytopenia, and lymphocytopenia… Corticosteroid administration causes a transient lymphocytopenia of all detectable lymphocyte subpopulations, particularly the recirculating thymus-derived lymphocyte.”

– “Glucocorticosteroid therapy: Mechanisms of Action and Clinical Considerations”, Fauci AS et al, Annals of Internal Medicine 84: 304-15, 1976.

“…We have reviewed many aspects of the host defenses that are altered by corticosteroids, and the combined effects of these changes must be considered in trying to understand the relation between corticosteroids and infections. Since the defect with corticosteroids is broad, it is not surprising that many types of infections seem to occur more often in patients treated with corticosteroids. Of the bacterial infections, staphylocaccal and Gram-negative infections, as well as tuberculosis and Listeria infections, probably occur most often. Certain types of viral, fungal, and parasitic infections also occur often. Patients with lupus erythematous, rheumatoid arthritis, and renal transplant have more infection with steroid administration. Studies of bronchial aerosols showed that with higher doses of steroid in the aerosol, Candida infections of the larynx and pharynx occurred more often.”

– “Glucocorticosteroid therapy: Mechanisms of Action and Clinical Considerations”, Fauci AS et al, Annals of Internal Medicine 84: 304-15, 1976.

“Glucocorticoid administration results in neutrophilia, monocytopenia, lymphopenia, and eosinopenia. A principle mechanism whereby glucocorticoids limit inflammation is by limiting the access of leukocytes, particularly neutrophils, to inflammatory sites. Neutrophil function is relatively refractory while monocyte and T-cell function is more easily impaired.”

– “The clinical use of glucocorticoids”, Fauci AS et al, Ann Allergy. 1983 Jan; 50(1): 2-8.

“…the direct effects of opiate on opiate receptors in the CNS can result in intoxication-induced nausea and vomiting (medulla), decreased pain perception, and sedation. The adulterants added to street drugs may contribute to some of the more permanent nervous system damage, including peripheral neuropathy, amblyopia, myelopathy, and leukoencephalopathy. Whether from the opiate, adulterants, or the consequences of dirty needles, at least one recent study revealed CNS defects in both computed tomographic and cognition evaluations of opiate-dependent people.”

– Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Anthony Fauci.

“HIV-associated nephropathy closely resembles the heroin-associated nephropathy seen in IDU’s.”

– Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Anthony Fauci.

“…Protein energy malnutrition (PEM) occurs primarily under two circumstances: in developing nations it may be present in endemic form, and under famine conditions the prevalence may approach 25 percent… the magnitude of the malnutrition problem worldwide is immense. In 1983 the World Health Organization estimated that 300 million children had growth retardation secondary to malnutrition. Gastrointestinal infections frequently precipitate clinical PEM because of the associated diarrhea, associated anorexia, vomiting, increased metabolic needs, and decreased intestinal absorption. Parasitic infections play a major role in many parts of the world. Cell-mediated immunity is impaired as indicated by all standard tests. Common infections and opportunistic infections can lead to increased morbidity and mortality. Pneumonia is common.”

– Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Anthony Fauci.

FACTORS LEADING TO AIDS-DEFINING ILLNESSES MENTIONED IN HARRISON’S PRINCIPLES OF INTERNAL MEDICINE, EDITED BY ANTHONY FAUCI:

Cocaine use (treated with glucocorticoids), bronchial asthma (treated with glucocorticoids), protein-energy malnutrition, growth retardation secondary to malnutrition, infection with intestinal parasites (leading to malnutrition), tuberculosis (documented in drug users before the 1980s), cervical cancer (documented at a higher prevalence in women before the 1980s)

A FURTHER PARADOX: ANTHONY FAUCI CONCEDES THAT DEPLETION OF CD4+ CELLS AND APOPTOSIS IS INDEPENDENT OF HIV INFECTION AND VIRAL LOAD LEVELS

====

“…Apoptosis in lymph nodes of HIV infected AIDS patients was not restricted only to CD4+ T cells; both B cells and CD8+ T cells were found to undergo apoptosis. These results indicate that the increased intensity of the apoptotic phenomenon in HIV infection is caused by the general state of immune activation, and is independent of the progression of HIV infection and the levels of viral load.”

– “Analysis of apoptosis in lymph nodes of HIV-infected persons. Intensity of apoptosis correlates with the general state of activation of the lymphoid tissue and not with state of disease or viral burden”, Fauci AS et al, J Immunol, 154 (10): 5555-66, 1995

“…it is difficult to explain completely the profound immunodeficiency noted in HIV-infected individuals solely on the basis of direct infection and quantitative depletion of CD4+ T cells”

– Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Anthony Fauci.
#65 Epidemiology-LISA
July 22, 2007

DT,
I think you’ll have to elaborate with some quotations if you want to put to rest the by now serious suspicions that you ARE a closet denalist. The abstract says, as far as I can make out, that HIV serostatus had no impact on the frequency of pneumonia (PCP?), and that the most notable difference between HIV+ and HIV- was suicide by drug overdose in the presence of a “you’ve got HIV” death sentence.

the overall rate was 1.7 per 100 person-years. Deaths from overdose and endocarditis/embolus tended to be higher in HIV-seropositive than HIV-seronegative IDU, although there was no difference in the rate of deaths due to pneumonia by HIV serostatus. CONCLUSIONS: These data are consistent with other studies demonstrating a higher frequency of mortality among HIV-seropositive IDU. The excess in overdose mortality among HIV-seropositives is disturbing and merits further investigation.
#66 franklin
July 22, 2007

Hey Michael,

Do you still refuse to admit you are lying about Moontagnier?

By the way. Even Luc Montagnier, the Pasteur Institute scientist who first claimed to have isolated HIV, has NEVER claimed that it is a direct cause of AIDS.

I’ve already directed you to the following articles by Montagnier:

Gallo RC, Montagnier L. (2003). The discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS. N. Engl. J. Med. 349:2283-5.

Montagnier L. et al. (1984). Lymphadenopathy associated virus and its etiological role in AIDS. Int. Symp. Princess Takamatsu Cancer Res. Fund. 15:319-31.

I think you may need to take some more lying lessons from Professor Maniotis. Uncovering his lies generally requires actually reading a paper–but your lies are so blatant that reading the TITLE of Montagnier’s papers is sufficient to show that you are lying.

Still you persist in defending your claim that Montagnier “has NEVER claimed that it [HIV] is a direct cause of AIDS,” so we will continue to accumulate evidence until you admit that you are lying.

In this single-author paper by Montagnier finding the proof of your lie is marginally more difficult–the title is suggestive but to obtain definitive proof we have to go beyond the title and read the first two sentences of the text:

Montagnier L. (1985). Lymphadenopathy-associated virus: from molecular biology to pathogenicity. Ann Intern Med. 103:689-93.

Two years of intensive research and international collaboration have resulted in the identification of the primary causative agent of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This agent is a type of retrovirus that has not been previously recognized.

Michael, you have a choice. You can admit that you are lying, or you can continue to deny reality. Professor Maniotis has already admitted that he was lying on at least two occasions.

I wonder what you will choose.
#67 cooler
July 22, 2007

Montagnier said in 1990 that “hiv might be benign” he continued to stress the need for cofactors in his book in 2000 called “virus”

His cofactor was Lo’s mycoplasma incognitus, the only microbe discovered in recent decades with an animal model, no such original papers exist for hiv,hpv,hepatitis c, but they were supported by drug companies etc and thats all that matters.

Having militant geeks safeguarding the publics health is causing an epidemic of CFS etc, because militant geeks can’t think for themselves. Mycoplasma incognitus was part of the biowarfare program. Read it and weep.
http://www.projectdaylily.com/
#68 Chris Noble
July 22, 2007

I’m genuinely not sure I understand. Do you need aproval to answer this question? Or do you mean that you or somebody else has submitted a paper for review? What kind of links are you talking about?

Any post that has several hypertext links gets caught by a spam filter and has to be approved by the blog owner before it appears.

My post has appeared. Duesberg’s “reanalysis” of the Ascher et al SFMHS study
#69 DT
July 22, 2007

You can always tell when a rethinker who has no biomedical background starts to try and rethink the facts given by experts in a different field – they get them totally wrong.

This from Darin Brown, who claims to be a mathematician, on the subject of clinical medicine: “ANTHONY FAUCI CONCEDES THAT DRUGS AND MALNUTRITION CAUSE AIDS”

This untrue statement is followed by a series of extracts from a medical textbook. These state that there are many causes of immune suppression (eg steroids, chemotherapy drugs etc). What the rethinkers fail to grasp is that these do not constitute “AIDS”. To have “AIDS”, one has to have no significant explanation for immune deficiency other than HIV infection.

Darin, stick to proving 1=2, it’s more your style.
#70 Michael
July 22, 2007

Franklin and Robster and other unnamed bonehead(s).

Perhaps you should all learn how to read so that you can understand the “totallity of the evidence”.

Obviously neither you nor the anally retentive nutcase posting above have even read 2000 Montagnier’s book that was mentioned above by Cooler. Funny, how you boneheads are so completely convinced that HIV is the cause of AIDS, when the discoverer himself is not.

Do you guys want to eat your words now, or would you prefer them for a midnight snack. Many here would enjoy shoving them down your throats.

A review of Luc Montagnier’s book “VIRUS”:

Virus: The Co-discoverer of HIV Tracks Its Rampage and Charts the Future

by Luc Montagnier, 254 pp, $24.95, ISBN 0-393-03923-4, New York, NY, WW Norton, 2000.

Reviewed by:
Jaap Goudsmit, MD, PhD (not an AIDS dissident that I know of)

The story of Luc Montagnier is an intriguing one. He and his coworkers in Paris discovered HIV-1, the single most important cause of AIDS, and HIV-2, the less virulent and less transmissible variant of this group of human viruses. After the initial virus discovery Montagnier always distanced himself somewhat from those who claim that HIV was not only necessary but also sufficient to cause AIDS. Montagnier and the Pasteur team had discovered HIV in the blood of people with AIDS and people at risk for AIDS, but most researchers would agree that it was Gallo and his coworkers who first showed the strong correlation between AIDS and HIV by demonstrating the significant difference in number of virus isolations and seroprevalence between people at high vs low risk for AIDS.

I always wanted to know how Montagnier had perceived these early years of HIV research and if his early experiences could explain his relentless search for cofactors in addition to HIV that he thought were crucial for progression to AIDS. The answers can only partially be found in his memoir Virus. But one thing is clear: Montagnier looks back at this early period with “a feeling of bitterness,” evoked perhaps most by the refusal of the French scientific community to back him and the fact that the premier European science journal Nature failed him on several occasions.

I vividly remember my visit to the Pasteur Institute in the fall of 1983, when I first met Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, Françoise Brun-Vézinet, and Jean-Claude Chermann. My colleagues and I had studied the seminal paper of Montagnier’s group appearing in the May 20, 1983, issue of Science and tended to believe that this newly described virus was the cause of AIDS. We immunologists, epidemiologists, and virologists of the Amsterdam Cohort Studies suspected a viral origin, but the fact that we collected urine, faeces, and blood in those early days revealed that we ourselves had no clue as to what kind of virus caused AIDS. I received from the Pasteur group a vial of HIVthen known as LAV (lymphadenopathy-associated virus)cultured in B cells. Unfortunately, I was unable to grow virus from this vial at the time or use it as antigen for antibody assays. Gallo helped us out about half a year later.

Montagnier acknowledges that the discovery of the AIDS virus was technically made possible by the fact that Chermann and Barré-Sinoussi, both retrovirus experts, joined his team from the Pasteur Institute in the Paris suburb Garches. It was Chermann who told me in September 1983 how terrified he and Barré-Sinoussi were when they found out that the reverse transcriptase activity present in short-term cultures was rapidly lost, even in the presence of anti-interferon serum to neutralize endogenous interferon in the culture and IL-2 (called T-cell growth factor or, even earlier, conditioned medium), discovered by Gallo and coworkers. The solution was found in feeding the cultures with fresh and uninfected T lymphocytes at regular intervals, as can be read in Montagnier’s book, but their struggle to get permanent cell lines to produce virus at a constant high rate, as is necessary to obtain enough virus for antibody tests, is unfortunately only superficially discussed.

Another element handled somewhat unsatisfactorily in Montagnier’s book is the biological versus the sociopolitical explanation for the mix-up of the different virus strains in different labs all over the world, including the Pasteur lab,1 which ignited the controversy about the origin of the first HIV strains. The same applies to the antigenic relationship of the LAV gag gene product to the gag gene products of human T-lymphotropic virus 1(HTLV-I) on the one hand and equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) and caprine arthritis-encephalitis virus(CAEV)/visna/maedi virus on the other, in particular at which moment in time the Pasteur team did become convinced that LAV belonged to the lentivirus family.

Montagnier portrays himself in the subtitle of his book as “the co-discoverer of HIV.” He truly is the discoverer of HIV jointly with the key members of the Pasteur team Chermann and Barré-Sinoussi, but he may not be generally considered the person who showed for the first time that HIV was the cause of AIDS. While early independent isolations were made by Montagnier, Gallo, and Levy in the years 1983 and 1984, Montagnier, Chermann, and Barré-Sinoussi were without any doubt the first to identify the virus that was later shown by epidemiological research to be the cause of AIDS. This is relevant because even in this 2000 edition of his book, Montagnier devotes many pages to the issue of causation in a section with the telling title “The Future of AIDS.” Genetic factors appear to modulate the rate at which HIV causes immunodeficiency, in particular marked by heterozygosity in the CCR5 coreceptor and particular HLA types; Montagnier downplays these effects in favor of an infectious cofactor modulating the virulence of HIV: Mycoplasma penetrans. While Montagnier acknowledges that most researchers in the AIDS field argue against the necessity of cofactors, he writes about researching mycoplasma as a virulence factor of HIV that “[i]t is a deplorable fact that to this day, the number of researchers interested in this line of investigation worldwide barely exceeds the number of fingers on both hands.” Having read this, it does not come as a surprise that the “Future of AIDS” section has a chapter on researcher Peter Duesberg, PhD, who disputes the HIV-AIDS causal connection.

In his book Dancing Naked in the Mind Field,2 Nobel laureate Kary Mullis claims that Luc Montagnier could not give him a single reference supporting that HIV is the cause of AIDS. For Mullis this was the defining moment in his joining the Duesberg camp. In his book Montagnier blames confusion on the part of the dissenters about the difference between the primary cause of AIDSwhich Montagnier agrees is HIVand cofactors necessary for HIV to become as aggressive as it is. As a coorganizer of the Durban Declaration (see http://www.durbandeclaration.org), Montagnier, however, cannot escape the conclusion that the virus he discovered is proven to be the one and only cause of AIDS, although, as seeps through between the lines of his book, he himself is still not completely convinced.

In summary, Virus provides important insight into the way Montagnier’s mind works: a somewhat elusive process that has led to the discovery of the first human lentiviruses, one of the most important discoveries in infectious diseases of the last century.

http://www.laskerfoundation.org/reports/jama_lasker/v285n5/ffull/jbk0207-3.html
#71 Michael
July 22, 2007

Gallo says “HIV kills like a Mack Truck”.

Montagnier says: HIV might be benign but I think it is a factor.

Duesberg says: “Hiv is a harmless passenger”.

HOW DARE TARA or ANY OF YOU other HIV pushers LAY A LABEL OF “DENIALISTS” or ANY OTHER DEROGOTORY LABELS on those who take a dissident stand on this issue when the fucking lead retrovirologists in the world on the subject STILL do not agree with each other about it!
#72 Robster, FCD
July 22, 2007

Chris, thanks for the takedown on the Ellison/Duesberg mangling of the Ascher study. I can’t say I’m surprised. It reminds me of the time a denialist told me that I had AIDS because I have had pneumonia once.
#73 Robster, FCD
July 22, 2007

From the review of a 7 year old book, Michael quotes, Montagnier blames confusion on the part of the dissenters about the difference between the primary cause of AIDSwhich Montagnier agrees is HIVand cofactors necessary for HIV to become as aggressive as it is.

What are these cofactors?

Genetic factors appear to modulate the rate at which HIV causes immunodeficiency, in particular marked by heterozygosity in the CCR5 coreceptor and particular HLA types; Montagnier downplays these effects in favor of an infectious cofactor modulating the virulence of HIV: Mycoplasma penetrans.

So the denialist, Michael, is lying about Montagnier’s position. Montagnier is not in doubt as to HIV’s causal role in AIDS, but rather whether mycoplasma can increase the rate of progression. There is some in vitro data to support this, but clinical evidence of it’s importance has been a mixed bag of inconclusive results.
#74 Michael
July 22, 2007

NOTE TO Tara Smith,

Read the last two posts, and understand clearly what I now tell you.

I have tolerated as much poor behavior and disrespect from you and the regular contributors to your site, as I am willing to tolerate.

I, Michael A Geiger, personally DARE you, Tara, to label any of us rethinkers and dissidents by the derogatory word “DENIALIST” just one more time.

You are the one who started and tolerated and encouraged this derogatory labeling and name calling from the beginning of the HIV/AIDS discussions on your site.

You yourself have repeatedly done this, and have tolerated it, and YOU have allowed it to continue and to persist for more than a year.

You have done nothing to stop yourself or anyone else from such antisocial and possibly psychopathic behavior. And you have been told over and over that it is wrong as well as hateful of you to do such.

Yet you have had nothing but absolute disrespect and disdain for us and you have allowed it, tolerated it, and joined in on the derogatory labeling of those who hold a different opinion or belief than your own.

If you yourself call any of us “denialists” just one more time, or allow your contributors to do so without correcting them, then I promise you that I will SPAM your site with every nasty word for you and them that I can come up with from every email address I can dream up. And I know every nasty word in five languages and can access unlimited email accounts. I will type my derogatory spams in caps and boldly as the first comment in every post you write. I will leave spaces between the letters to be sure that the nastiest words come through loud and clear!

Do so one more time Tara, and you will regret it. And the same goes for you and your site if you continue to allow and tolerate such name calling to be done by DT, Adele, Chris Noble, Jefferies, Robster, or any of the others.

So please understand, that just one more time, label me or any of the others, a DENIALIST, and you will pay a price.

Your behavior has been wrong, and you do owe us an apology. I do not however, expect or require such an apology, however, if you label us again, or if you continue to tolerate such behavior from your regulars, there will be a price to pay in the form of even nastier and filthier and more derogatory words leveled at you and your site and at these offensive posters, in the hopes that in the future you will understand how inapropriate such behavior is.

And I promise you, as well as CN, Adele, DT, Robster, Dale, Franklin, and all the rest: I never make a threat that I do not keep!
#75 franklin
July 23, 2007

Michael,

Your claim is that Montagnier has NEVER claimed that HIV is the cause of AIDS. The book review that you quote in your own defense states that:

Montagnier blames confusion on the part of the dissenters about the difference between the primary cause of AIDSwhich Montagnier agrees is HIVand cofactors necessary for HIV to become as aggressive as it is.

Even if you can point to Montagnier’s attempts to identify co-factors that modify the aggressiveness of HIV, Montagnier has certainly claimed that HIV is the cause of AIDS on many occassions, as you well know.

Based on the evidence presented in your own post, you are lying. Your threats to Tara just illustrate the frustration you feel when confronted by your own lack of integrity.
#76 Chris Noble
July 23, 2007

And I promise you, as well as CN, Adele, DT, Robster, Dale, Franklin, and all the rest: I never make a threat that I do not keep!

You definitely make promises you don’t keep.

You promised to stop posting on this site if the Parenzee appeal was turned down.
#77 DT
July 23, 2007

Er, Michael, the last person to use the word denialist in this thread was Epidemiology-LISA when she accused me of being a closet denialist. That is actually untrue – I have two at home, and use them often. But perhaps you need to include her in your list too, and warn her of your threats?

Oh, and LISA, regarding the Zaccarelli study: Is it not strange that you pick out of the abstract one single tidbit of information about HIV positives having a higher rate of suicides and drug overdose, and ignore the primary point of the paper, which is that there were:

No deaths in over 1600 HIV-negative drug users from any illness that would have been classed as “AIDS”-defining (including PCP), and that there were 89 deaths among 770 HIV-positive drug users from AIDS-defining illnesses?.
You don’t seem to have an explanation for this, not even a poor one.

BTW – “pneumonia” in medical circles refers to bacterial pneumonias or non specific pneumonias. If Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonitis exists, it is called PCP. The authors did not find any AIDS-defining illnesses in their HIV-negative drug users, so this means there were no cases of PCP (which is AIDS-defining as you well know). Other pneumonias? – yes, but PCP? – not one case.
#78 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

Dr. Noble, thank you for providing what your enthusiastic supporter calls a “takedown” of the Duesberg/Ellison paper, and also for explaining the part about links and posting on blogs.

Your “takedown” is a critique of one single point (#3 in the abstract) out of several made. I agree with you that the 45 HIV- possible AIDS cases, relying on salmonella to reach that number may seem less spectacular than stuff like PCP. However, the Duesberg/Ellison contention that these would likely have been classified as AIDS in the presence of HIV, has not been “taken down”.

1) Herpes Zoster in the presence of HIV is considered symptomatic of “AIDS Related Complex”, as opposed to asymptomatic “HIV disease”:

Category B

Category B consists of symptomatic conditions in an HIV-infected adolescent or adult that are not included among conditions listed in clinical Category C and that meet at least one of the following criteria:
the conditions are attributed to HIV infection or are indicative of a defect in cell-mediated immunity; or
the conditions are considered by physicians to have a clinical course or to require management that is complicated by HIV infection.
Examples of conditions in clinical Category B include, but are not limited to:
Bacillary angiomatosis
Candidiasis, oropharyngeal (thrush)
Candidiasis, vulvovaginal; persistent, frequent, or poorly responsive to therapy
Cervical dysplasia (moderate or severe)/cervical carcinoma in situ
Constitutional symptoms, such as fever (38.5 C) or diarrhea lasting greater than 1 month
Hairy leukoplakia, oral
Herpes zoster (shingles), involving at least two distinct episodes or more than one dermatome
Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
Listeriosis
Pelvic inflammatory disease, particularly if complicated by tubo-ovarian abscess
Peripheral neuropathy
http://www.aegis.com/topics/cdc93009.html

Although not a category C clinical manifestation, for you, Dr. Noble, to pretend that Duesberg simply invented this condition’s close connection with AIDS is, in one of your favorite words, dishonest.

2) You emphasized that Duesberg was using the CDC definition of AIDS. According to the CDC,

HIV-infected persons should be classified based on existing guidelines for the medical management of HIV-infected persons. Thus, the lowest accurate, but not necessarily the most recent, CD4+ T-lymphocyte count should be used for classification purposes.

Period.

In relation to the Ascher et al. study, the question is not whether Duesberg twists the definition to suit his own purposes; the question is whether Ascher twists the definition to suit HIS purposes. The answer is YES, Ascher has disregarded dozens of possible cases to achieve the perfect no HIV = no AIDS correlation.

I am now eagerly awaiting Dr. Noble’s takedown of the last 80% or so of the Duesberg/Ellison paper.
#79 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

DT, I would have imagined that the primary point of the paper had been mentioned in the abstract.

If not, as I’ve said on many occasions now, you must give me the argument and supporting quotes from the paper. The abstract emphasizes pneumonia. Recurrent pneumonia is AIDS defining
#80 Adele
July 23, 2007

Michael,

Check this out. You are a denialist. Not just a HIV denialist you’re also in denial about alot of other things. Like logic the scientific writing process etc.

When somebody writes a paper really more than one paper and their name is on it you can’t say well they didn’t really mean it. Why don’t you write Luc Montagnier and see what he says about your little theory he doesn’t think of HIV as the cause of AIDS?
#81 Adele
July 23, 2007

By the way Michael your thing about Ascher’s study being bad because they used another data set is interesting. To me it strengthens their conclusion since the authors didn’t run the study. If they have bias they can’t introduce it if they don’t collect the data themselves.
#82 DT
July 23, 2007

Lisa, you say “The abstract emphasizes pneumonia. Recurrent pneumonia is AIDS defining.”
I agree. This is well known, and qualifies as “AIDS-defining”. The paper’s authors categorically stated there were NO AIDS-defining conditions in HIV-negative drug users. This would mean there were no cases of recurrent pneumonia within a 12 month time frame, as per the accepted AIDS definition. Isolated cases, maybe, but NO AIDS-defining pneumonias. QED.

You may not like the study’s conclusions, but they are inescapable. You may wish to persist in concocting a conspiracy where all the researchers involved have deliberately misclassified dozens of cases of AIDS, just for the hell of it (and coincidentally waving two fingers at any scientific and ethical integrity at the same time). That is your choice.

But if it is, is it not getting a little tiresome seeing all of your “rethinker” arguments boiling down to the same old conclusion – “The authors of the study have lied”. We have seen it with Michael and his attempts to clutch at straws with the Ascher study, now you are doing it with the Zaccarelli study. Whatever happened to the devastating scientific ripostes we were led to expect from you all?

“The researchers lied!”
Is that it??
#83 DT
July 23, 2007

“The researchers lied!”

It was only after I posted this phrase that I noticed the startling resemblance between it and another standard stock phrase that denialists of evolution are prone to use when they have no shred of evidence to fall back on: “God did it!”
#84 Robster, FCD
July 23, 2007

Lisa,

You are missing an important part of the Ellison/Duesberg paper. If you are talking about shingles…

“Herpes zoster (shingles), involving at least two distinct episodes or more than one dermatome”

Did it meet the qualification of “at least two distinct episodes or more than one dermatome?”

If it didn’t, Ellison and Duesberg (and you by proxy) were being dishonest, yet again.
#85 Kevin
July 23, 2007

That studies of PCP in HIV-free drug users are extremely rare just confirms the dissidents’ point that medical interest in PCP focuses exclusively on its association with HIV/AIDS. — Epidemiology Lisa

Exactly, Lisa!
I had PCP for almost a month before my doctors could admit to it. All because I was HIV test-negative. That was the last straw and was when I first began to realize that something was really rotten in Denmark, where HIV/AIDS was concerned.
_________________________

Pretty much, but I’ll never say never. I am aware of documented cases, but as I said before, when a researcher comes across one they write it up for the journals pronto because it is such a rarity (hence publication bias actually works in favour of their documentation/publication). –
DT

Bullshit! I was being treated at a top reasearch hospital and my case was swept under the proverbial rug. My doctors’ were obviously so embarrassed by their inability to help me get well that they nearly let me die, but for one caring physician, who was NOT affiliated with the aforementioned research hospital, I would be dead. Your living in a fucking dream world if you think HIV-negative PCP patients are always so well-documented. We are an embarrassment to the established dogma; therefore, we are virtually ignored unless we are part of a preconceived study designed to further establish HIV’s dubious role in AIDs. That was my experience, anyway, and I’m sure it’s not unique.

___________________________

“”The researchers lied!”
It was only after I posted this phrase that I noticed the startling resemblance between it and another standard stock phrase that denialists of evolution are prone to use when they have no shred of evidence to fall back on: “God did it!” –DT

You’re a piece of shit, DT. Researchers lie all the time–mostly by omission, but they are lying all the same. Perhaps, you should check out the following news story that just broke today for the latest example of how downright criminal modern research has become:

Nigeria to refile suit against U.S. drug giant Pfizer

Nigerian government lawyers withdrew a $7 billion civil lawsuit against Pfizer Inc. on Friday, saying they have discovered new material and plan to file what they called an even stronger case against the U.S. drug maker.

The government has accused Pfizer of taking advantage of a 1996 meningitis epidemic to test an experimental drug without authorization or full understanding of the families involved — allegedly contributing to the deaths of some of the children and sickening others. Pfizer denies wrongdoing.

Once again, it is clear to anyone with an ounce of integrity that YOU are the dogmatic cretin who has more in common with evolution deniers than any of the dissidents posting on this blog. The scientific community is intellectually bankrupt in direction proportion to the huge personal profiteering that has replaced traditional scientific inquiry. Thus, the loss of independent inquiry has profoundly influenced how science is being performed and not for the better.

It is you and all your lackey pals, DT, who wish to deny the facts of the matter, but as I’ve pointed out in previous threads, the corruption and the improprieties are so numerous that even the thoroughly propagandized mainstream media can no longer avoid the facts. Are you questioning the veracity of all of these news stories — in totality? They are far too numerous for even a seasoned denialist, such as yourself, DT.

Kevin
#86 Adele
July 23, 2007

Kevin, sorry to see all the profanity is it really necessary?

You said
Your living in a fucking dream world if you think HIV-negative PCP patients are always so well-documented. We are an embarrassment to the established dogma

AIDS was discovered in 1980 81 because PCP cases suddenly went through the roof. Nobody knew about HIV. There wasn’t any “dogma” Just lots of PCP cases no one could explain. Nothing got swept under the rug. And later they explained it.

You don’t need HIV to get PCP. You can get it from other immune suppression. That’s not an embarasment to “dogma” it’s a fact everyone knows. You can get PCP if your on chemo. Seems you can get it if you pump yourself full of unecessary antibiotics against doctors advice too. Like someone named Kevin did.

Most PCP IS from HIV today though. Not all Kevin most.
#87 Kevin
July 23, 2007

Kevin, sorry to see all the profanity is it really necessary?

Hell yes! You’re a piece of shit, too, Adele, so perhaps that why you have troubling understanding why I might get upset with all of the hacks around here denying that HIV-negative PCP is virtually ignored by the status quo. This system of institutionalized ignorance nearly killed me, so I tend to be a little less forgiving than morons like you and DT.

Seems you can get it if you pump yourself full of unecessary antibiotics against doctors advice too.

Just where exactly do you think I got all of those antibiotics, Adele? I mean, it’s not like I can stop off a the corner 7-Eleven for some Biaxin on my way home from work. No, that fact is they were all prescribed by the myriad of doctors who were treating me, and I certainly didn’t pump myself full of them. I was merely conditioned to believe that antibiotics were a necessary part of my treatment, so when I encountered the one physician who disagreed, I just repeated what I had always been told–namely that I had chronic bacterial sinusitis that required antibiotics. Your attempt at another character assault, Adele, is really just more evidence of why you are a piece of shit.

___________________________

Incidentally, I see that you have chosen not to address the latest indiscretion of Big Pharma. Imagine that…an HIV apologist ignoring any and all evidence that might undermine the status quo? Too bad, for it seems that there were several innocent patients in Nigeria who actually were pumped full of experimental antibiotics However, unlike me, they didn’t lived to tell about their experiences, but you don’t have a problem with that, right Adele? It’s probably all their fault, right?

Kevin
#88 Adele
July 23, 2007

Kevin asks

Just where exactly do you think I got all of those antibiotics

Just where you said you got them. By going doctor to doctor until you found a unscrupulous one who rxed you what you demanded even though you didn’t need it. Sorry but alot of docs would rx you anything you wanted to get you out of there office if you always act like you act on here.

Nigeria and pharma, I don’t know anything about this. If it’s true they should get it. Hows it relavent? Kevin this thread is already off-topic it’s kinda AIDS but it’s not about every bad thing a corporation did. Aren’t there other blogs for that? IF you want to talk about corporations and real estate find another place this is a science blog.
#89 Chris Noble
July 23, 2007

However, the Duesberg/Ellison contention that these would likely have been classified as AIDS in the presence of HIV, has not been “taken down”.

In the Ascher study AIDS was defined without respect to HIV status. They simply used the CDC unlike Duesberg. None of the HIV- patients had AIDS.

Duesberg’s pathetic attempt to scrounge up 45 “HIV free AIDS case” just proves the point. HIV causes AIDS.

The HIV+ patinets showed progressive CD4 cell depletion. The HIV- patients did not. The HIV+ patients came down with AIDS defining illnesses such as KS and PCP. The HIV- patients did not.

Duesberg is being deliberately deceptive. There are a number of common illnesses which may become more frequent in AIDS patients but are not AIDS defining. Conditions such as KS and PCP are AIDS defining because they are extremely rare in the general population and indicate immune suppression.

Duesberg flat out lies about using the CDC definition. There is no other way to put it.

Can any Denialist explain why the HIV+ group got KS and PCP whereas the HIV- group got salmonella etc? No more bullshit. Just answer the question.
#90 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

DT,

I notice that you’re still not backing up any of your claims with one word of evidence. In view of that the remaining question is, are you a closet denialist or just an ordinary a piece of shit like Kevin suggests?
#91 Adele
July 23, 2007

Um, DT backed up his claims with quotes from the paper.
#92 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

In the Ascher study AIDS was defined without respect to HIV status. They simply used the CDC unlike Duesberg. None of the HIV- patients had AIDS

Dr. Noble,

Your style is now coming boringly close to DT’s. Simply restating this garbage may impress the choir, but nobody else.

Show us the record of the HIV- patients next to the HIV+ so we can see where your imaginary CDC definition of “progressive cell loss” hasn’t been met.

And I’m still waiting for the “takedown” of the other 80% of the Duesberg/Ellison paper.

Bluff!
#93 Kevin
July 23, 2007

Nigeria and pharma, I don’t know anything about this.

Oh, of course, you don’t.

If it’s true they should get it.

Get “it”? Care to elaborate, Adele, on what those responsible for such a crime deserve?

Hows it relavent? Kevin this thread is already off-topic it’s kinda AIDS but it’s not about every bad thing a corporation did. Aren’t there other blogs for that? IF you want to talk about corporations and real estate find another place this is a science blog.

Relevance, you ask? You’re not very good at connecting the dots, eh Adele? That’s certainly been well-established. First and foremost, I think that it has been proven by many, whether HIV-dissident or not, that the current level of corruption in our social institutions–be it medicine or banking–is having deleterious effects on the well-being of our citizenry–to say nothing of the well-being of the citizenry of developing nations, particularly as we purport to bring them cures that inevitably lead to a more efficient demise. As such, exposing the innumerable frauds inherent in modern society is like plucking low-hanging fruit, and each and every one of these examples of institutionalized corruption that you mention is absolutely relevant to the HIV/AIDS discussion, because that’s the biggest fraud of them all.
_________________________

Without further ado, here’s yet another example of our botched philanthropy, otherwise known as medical profiteering (quotes will have to do since this blog’s filter is as fascist as most of its residents):

Anti-breast-feeding measure backfires in Botswana, causing more despair

A decade-long, global push to provide infant formula to mothers with the AIDS virus had backfired in Botswana, leaving children more vulnerable to other, more immediately lethal diseases, the U.S. team found after investigating the outbreak at the request of Botswana’s government.

Doctors noticed two troubling things about the limp, sunken-eyed children who flooded pediatric wards across Botswana during the rainy season in early 2006: They were dying from diarrhea, a malady that is rarely fatal here.

After the outbreak was over and at least 532 children had died — 20 times the usual toll for diarrhea.

Do you need further explanation, Adele, as to why all of these scenarios are relevant?

Or, perhaps you would now like to explain how the recent events in Tripioli are so radically different to what our government is doing in developing nations…all in the name of “Science” and “progress”? Progress, for whom?

Why don’t we start by providing clean water and adequate nutrition. Can you really not see how incredibly stupid it is to “pump antiretrovirals” into seriously malnourished patients, when they don’t even have clean drinking water? How do you think such an approach would be evaluated in Western nations? That’s what the dissidents are arguing for, and I think they are absolutely right. Of course, your indoctrination into Club Science impedes your ability to think rationally, Adele. How ironic.

Kevin
#94 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

Um, DT backed up his claims with quotes from the paper.

Posted by: Adele

And… um… sweet gal, which quotes from which paper have DT given to back all these claims? Or do you think that one little word ‘If’ suffices to make this print worthy?

You are missing an important part of the Ellison/Duesberg paper. If you are talking about shingles…

“Herpes zoster (shingles), involving at least two distinct episodes or more than one dermatome”

Did it meet the qualification of “at least two distinct episodes or more than one dermatome?”

If it didn’t, Ellison and Duesberg (and you by proxy) were being dishonest, yet again.
#95 Robster, FCD
July 23, 2007

So we are back to the root of Kevin’s denialism. He didn’t have HIV, so nobody can. He had bad medical care, so all care is bad. There are scandals in the pharmaceutical industry, so everything is corrupt (except fellow denialists). And he wonders why we don’t take him seriously.

———-

Lisa, Ellison and Duesberg lied about the data. We are repeating to this because it doesn’t seem to be sinking in.
#96 Epidemiology-LISA
July 23, 2007

Robster,

You’re right, forgive me. I guess I’m just being old-fashioned clinging on to the notion that hostile peer-reviewers would tend to notice it if somebody tried to sneak in 45 HIV- AIDS patients in a paper published in a prestigious journal.
#97 Kevin
July 23, 2007

He didn’t have HIV, so nobody can. He had bad medical care, so all care is bad.

Your mealymouthed responses, another of which I’m sure is forthcoming, add nothing to this discussion, Robster, and they certainly don’t change the facts of the matter. Even though the care that I received certainly corroborates my claim that bad science is resulting in poor clinical care, anyone who takes the time to review my post history here will find that I have only selectively referenced my own health history, which is notable given its considerable relevance. When I first “introduced” myself to this blog, I posted significantly on that topic, but I quickly realized that my geniune attempts to communicate my medical experiences were unwelcome on this blog. In fact, they were consistently met with true denialism, like only an HIV apologist can muster. Nevertheless, I have proceeded to support my position by providing example after example of easily verifiable facts that expose the medical status quo as intellectually bankrupt. New facts supporting my position come to light, every day.

Though it is hardly necessary for me to draw on my own experiences to argue my position, I will continue to reference my experience each and every time that you and your fellow denialists assert that cases like mine do not exist. As someone who feels lucky to have survived in spite of the bad science that is underpinning our putried health care system, you can be damn sure that I’ll speak up when ignorant sychophants like you pick up your megaphone, Robster. People need to know that HIV/AIDS is anything but cut-and-dry like you’d have us all believe.

___________________________

There are scandals in the pharmaceutical industry, so everything is corrupt (except fellow denialists). And he wonders why we don’t take him seriously.

Are you, Robster, denying that all of these “scandals” are factual? And, do you really wish to deny that they are relevant? If so, it is clear who the real denialist is.

That said, you continue to resort to personal attacks rather address the actual examples of corruption the I am referencing. Given that behavior, I certainly do not wonder why an apologist such as yourself doesn’t “take me seriously”; to do so, would require you to come down from your ivory tower and see what is actually occurring, outside the lab, in the real world, and you are clearly not equipped to argue your position in the light of the facts.

______________________________

Speaking of pharmaceutical scandals, perhaps you’d like to turn over a new leaf and begin dealing with reality by addressing Mark Wainberg’s significant conflicts of interests in the HIV/AIDs debate:

Ethics, honesty and responsibility are plainly absent among the denialists?

If you can dispense with your penchant for mealy-mouthed replies, we are all waiting for you to respond to my calling “bullshit” on your erroneous ethics charge, as presented above.

Kevin
#98 Chris Noble
July 23, 2007

You’re right, forgive me. I guess I’m just being old-fashioned clinging on to the notion that hostile peer-reviewers would tend to notice it if somebody tried to sneak in 45 HIV- AIDS patients in a paper published in a prestigious journal.

The paper was rejected by Nature.

It did manage to get into Genetica because the Denialists were given an entire edition to put a stop to the continual whine that they were being censored.

Peter Duesberg himself was allowed to be the guest editor and he could determine who reviewed the papers.

The falt out lies that got through the process indicates that Duesberg didn’t do a very good job of getting his own paper reviewed.
#99 Dean Morrison
July 24, 2007

er.. guys…

You remember the ‘Tripoli 6′ which is who this thread is supposed to be about?

Well they’ve been released:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6912965.stm
#100 Adele
July 24, 2007

Kevin accusing other people of personal attacks!!??

Chris,
I wonder who Duesberg had review his paper? His wife? Bialy? No one?
#101 Kevin
July 24, 2007

er.. guys…
You remember the ‘Tripoli 6′ which is who this thread is supposed to be about? — Dean Morrison

While the release of the Tripoli 6 is certainly good news, there are numerous human rights issues involving HIV that have not ended so fortuitously, Dean. Though your post was brief, I take it that you don’t think those issues are relevant to the discussion of the Tripoli 6? Well, if you do indeed feel that way, then you are embracing a mistaken and naive sentiment:

Papuans debate HIV microchipping

“Legislators in the Indonesian province of Papua are debating whether to approve a bill allowing microchips to be implanted in people with HIV…As well as calling for the introduction of microchips, the bill also suggests mandatory testing of every resident in Papua…Parliamentarians are reported to have discussed tattooing those found to be carrying the virus…Papua’s Aids commission has rejected the bill. Papua’s Aids commission has rejected the bill. Marking out anyone carrying the virus, it said, would contravene their human rights.”

HIV/AIDS is indeed riddled with human rights issues, Dean, and it is not going to go away anytime soon. To the contrary, human rights abuses resulting from the HIV fraud are just getting started and public discussions such as the one taking place here are exceedingly important. So, you can go bury your head in the sand, along with Robster and Adele and all the rest of the immature hacks on this blog, but some day, someone you care about will suffer from your decision, made today, to remain willfully ignorant to the truth about HIV/AIDS and by then, it may be too late to make a real difference.

I’m sure you, along with many others who are reading this blog, will have no comment, but mark my word, some day you may not have that choice.

Kevin
#102 Michael
July 24, 2007

Seeing as Tara has had plenty of time to rope in the use of name calling by the HIV thugs and has refused, I will from here on in use the filthiest word that I know to describe each of you in every post I leave. This filthy word is “AIDS DENIALIST”.

This means that all of you, and Tara included since she is the one who started the use of this pejorative terminology, will henceforth always be termed by the very filthy words “AIDS Denialist” in all of my posts.

This is at very least a much more factual usage of the word anyway as it is the orthodoxy that continues to ignore and deny the MOUNTAINS OF EVIDENCE presented by the dissidents. It seems that Logic, and good science and good sense that prove over and over that the orthodoxy position of HIV causing AIDS is false has been continuously ignored and denied and lied about, hence making all of you thugs the true “AIDS DENIALISTS”.

To repeatedly deny all of the issues repetitively brought forth by the rethinkers shows the world who the REAL AIDS DENIALISTS are.

I would like to encourage all other dissidents to do exactly the same on these blogs when addressing these thugs until the usage of the word has no more meaning to the brainwashed orthodoxy or to the lying thugs on this site. I certainly hope Kevin, Cooler, Lisa, Andrew, and all the others will adress all of the thugs as AIDS denialists frome now on. The overuse of such identical words by both the orthodoxy and the dissidents will make the terminology completely meaningless in very short order.

As such, I begin with AIDS DENIALIST Adele.

Hey AIDS DENIALIST Adele,
Check this out. You are a denialist. You deny the facts that expose HIV science to be fraudulent and wrong. Not just a HIV denialist but you’re also in denial about alot of other things. Like logic and the scientific writing process etc. I despise your ignorance! By the way, how is the monkey abuse going at the lab you work at?
#103 Dan
July 24, 2007

To repeatedly deny all of the issues repetitively brought forth by the rethinkers shows the world who the REAL AIDS DENIALISTS are.

You are absolutely correct, Michael! Spot on!
#104 Michael
July 24, 2007

The lying AIDS DENIALIST CHRIS NOBLE continues to deny obvious logic and common sense, and continues to attempt to promote the lies of the Asher study as being relative to anything. Chris is among the most despicable of AIDS denialists and as he is one of the biggest lying AIDS denialists, he really needs to leave the dope alone and take an HIV test anally and go suck some AZT.
#105 cooler
July 24, 2007

yeah i wonder who would live longer and happier lives……….chimps injected with hiv or chimps forced to take 1200mg of AZT, I think we already know the answer to that one.
#106 Michael
July 24, 2007

Hey AIDS DENIALIST Robster. You are the one who thinks

“everything is corrupt” (except for your fellow AIDS denialists like AIDS denialists Adele, DT, Chris Noble, Tara, and Dale).

And this AIDS DENIALIST wonders why we don’t take him seriously. Robster the lying denialist needs to get a life.
#107 Michael Geiger
July 24, 2007

Hey Pharma Paid AIDS DENIALIST DT. You said:

“Er, Michael, the last person to use the word denialist in this thread was Epidemiology-LISA when she accused me of being a closet denialist”.

Well obviously E-Lisa is mistaken in calling you a “closet denialist”, when it is apparent to any and every thinking person that you, DT, are one of the biggest and “Full Blown” AIDS DENIALISTS in the world.

John P Moore, the worlds biggest mouth of AIDS DENIALISM said just a few weeks ago: “[The AIDS dissident movement] basically says that every scientist, every physician and every clinician out of the hundreds of thousands of professionals working worldwide on this is either some kind of malicious scumbag who will do anything for money, or we’re all stupid”.

Dear AIDS DENIALIST DT, we dissidents don’t think you are some malicious scumbag in it just for the money. And we don’t think you are stupid. We KNOW you and J P Moore are both absolutely stupid, AND malicious scumbags in it just for the money.
#108 Dan
July 24, 2007

Michael,

John Moore was speaking the truth.

Stupid is the biggest problem for those who work on “AIDS”. Although I think a case for ignorance can be made. Money, well, that’s pretty obvious. The closer you get to the top, the more things like arrogance and hubris come into play…squeezing out stupidity.
#109 cooler
July 24, 2007

Yes we as dissidents need to get the word out, ones the public finds out about our arguments, its over, simply because we have superior arguments.

But we must not agree with everything that Duesberg says, AIDS might have an infectious part to it in some cases. The brillaint DR. shyh ching Lo’s mycoplasma incognitus causes death and disease in mice, monkeys, chimpanzees and embryos. This is found in many AIDS cases, CFS etc and not in healthy controls. It was part of the biological weapons program. This book is a riveting story of how Dr garth Nicolson found in the blood of gulf war syndrome victims.

http://www.projectdaylily.com/
#110 Michael
July 25, 2007

Yes Dan.

The AIDS Denialist John P Moore actually was speaking the truth. All of the orthodoxy AIDS denialists ARE all stupid (or pathetically ignorant) or in it for money or both!

The orthodoxy AIDS Denialists must be stopped! Exposing them all as being the true “AIDS DENIALISTS” will help tremendously.

Speaking of AIDS DENIALISTS, we have not heard much lately from AIDS and REALITY DENIALIST Tara Smith who runs this blog site! Probably a good thing!

Hey Cooler. Thank you for pointing out the mycoplasma thing. I checked into it and it is very amazing and fascinating.

It is always possible that mycoplasma played a very large part in the AIDS thing. I am not one for conspiracy beliefs as much as I am for human ignorance and human mistake. Though it is certainly possible that such a thing was done by someone malicious toward gays or blacks, it is also quite possible that such an agent contaminated the labs, which were formerly used for bioweapons, where the experimental live hepatitis b vaccinations were developed back in 1977/78. There was a big push advertised in the gay media in New York, Chicago, San Fran, and LA to take these vaccinations back in the gay rags of 1978/79, shortly before the AIDS thing.

But I myself can’t get away from the “voodoo effects” of belief in making ones own self sick after a death diagnosis, as well as the toxic medicines like AZT, so I don’t think we can blame all on mycoplasma either.

How stupid could they have been to take a biowarfare lab and turn it into labs for public health issues? Nevermind, don’t need to answer because I already know how stupid they can be. After all, it is quite often not the brightest scientists that work for the government labs. It is oftentimes the most ignorant!
#111 cooler
July 25, 2007

yes. This Dr. shyh ching lo injected mycoplasma into mice, monkeys etc they all sickened and died. Theres not much more you can do to prove a microbe causes illness in humans. Thanks for looking into it.

Here’s a summary of Lo’s work, the only scientist to discover a microbe with an animal model in recent decades, but he wasnt supported by the drug companies or that crook Fauci so lets just have the human race slowly suffer because of that………

http://www.aegis.com/pubs/atn/1990/ATN09501.html
#112 Michael
July 25, 2007

Cooler. Thanks for that link. Good Stuff!!!

By the way, just above you called Fauci a “crook”.

Don’t you mean “Thieving Lying Crook and AIDS DENIALIST” since he denies the realities behind the fraud of HIV and AIDS?

I very much hope you will join me in using the proper terminology to turn these crooks “propaganda terminology” right around and always use these terms in describing them, where such pejorative terminology rightfully belongs.
#113 Michael Geiger
July 25, 2007

Fauci the AIDS denialist and crook was also one of the 530 scientists and directors at the NIH who were caught taking undisclosed funding from pharmaceutical companies a year and a half ago!
#114 Robster, FCD
July 25, 2007

Kevin, you have not offered anything substantive as to why you think HIV is not the cause of AIDS. I am not denying that there are serious problems in modern medicine and managed health care. I agree with you on that, differing on the severity and root causes. But when it comes to the science behind the HIV/AIDS theory, your stance is lacking in evidence.

New facts supporting my position come to light, every day.

Have I mentioned that you sound just like a creationist sometimes? I have? Well, you do.

Your mealymouthed responses, another of which I’m sure is forthcoming, add nothing to this discussion, Robster, and they certainly don’t change the facts of the matter.

You can call me mealy mouthed all you want, and you can attack people for not knowing everything about every scandal, but you are right on my responses not changing the facts of the matter. HIV is still the cause of AIDS, regardless of what either of us write.

As to your personal health history, it is emblematic of a rare situation, not one that doesn’t exist in the medical literature.

That said, you continue to resort to personal attacks rather address the actual examples of corruption the I am referencing.

They don’t relate to the subject at hand, nor do they affect the massive amount of evidence for my side or the lack of data for yours. As to personal attacks, I didn’t realize you were so thin skinned that being told that I don’t think you should be taken seriously would set you off so.

and you are clearly not equipped to argue your position in the light of the facts.

The fact is that you did not have HIV, and so, your medical history is not relevant. For some reason, you think it is, and that is simply mind boggling.

Your first team of doctors couldn’t solve the problem, but that also isn’t evidence that HIV does not cause AIDS.

You have a severe dislike and mistrust of profit in medicine, but unless you can unearth a scandal that explains why nearly the entire scientific community, their experiments, and the patients are all colluding against the denialists, you don’t have anything.

As to my comment that denialists lack ethics, honesty and responsibility, that should be simple to understand.

Denialist positions are based on deliberate misinterpretations of data, lies regarding the evidence, and make easily disproved claims on the positions of other researchers and the contents of their papers. Sadly, the denialists win some converts who repeat their lies, believing every word.

If this wasn’t enough, they attempt to convince the public that HIV doesn’t exist or that it is harmless. Those that believe this offal are less likely to use safer sex practices, increasing their risk of exposure to a wide variety of STIs, including HIV. The nationwide denialist experiments based upon ego and wishful thinking have had serious, deleterious effects on South Africa’s public health.

When they preach their beliefs to the HIV+ patient population, they put these people at risk of decreased lifespan and quality of life. When these patients die, the denialists slander them.

It that isn’t a description of a group lacking in ethics, honesty and responsibility, I don’t know what is. Does this suggest that I think that science and scientists are perfect? Not at all. Just that the scientific view is based on evidence. The scientific debate as to the cause of AIDS is over, and has long since moved on to developing more effective treatments with better side effect profiles and public health interventions to limit the spread of HIV. The denialists just haven’t caught on yet.
—————-

Mark Wainberg? Perhaps you could repost the link. I’m sure this is something about him getting some grant money and having some consultant gigs with pharma companies. Does it change how HIV causes AIDS? Not at all. You are attempting to use a rhetorical trick called “poisoning the well” and are avoiding the issue that the denialists have no supporting data, no compelling evidence and no competing hypothesis.

—————–

Well, it looks like Michael is as much of a coward as we always suspected. Instead of trying to do something to get himself banned, he returns to his childish games. I was hoping for his trademark hissy fit.

While we are at it, perhaps we can talk about Michael’s conflicts of interest? Could Mikey explain to us how HEAL (once called ACT UP/SF) has historically been funded by ultraconservative enemies of the LGBT community and pot sales?

HEAL is joined hand in hand with those that would be happy to see the gay community further ravaged by HIV, while selling the same things that they falsely claim are the real cause of AIDS. At best, HEAL and Michael are patsies to a far right anti-gay cult. At worst, they are a fifth column, devoted to destroying their own community from within.
#115 Michael
July 25, 2007

Well, there goes the lying AIDS DENIALIST Robster off on a rant of lies again and this time about how HEAL is funded. Well Mr. AIDS Denialist, I am on the board of HEAL and I know how it is funded! It is funded STRICTLY by donations of its own members by a can passed around at the end of every meeting, with many whom are HIV positive long term nonprogressor anti-AIDS drug members of the gay community who do not buy into your AIDS DENIALIST beliefs of their impending death and who all know that HIV causing AIDS is a fraud!

And by the way Robster the AIDS denialist, everyone in the gay community here knows I am on the board of HEAL, knows that I am gay with an HIV positive lover, and knows that I am one of the most outspoken people in town for gay rights and gay health! I am close friends with and communicate regularly with the gay media publishers in town and most of the gay political leaders including gay city counsel members and a gay senator.

By the way, you lying denialist, the largest local gay press, the San Diego Gay and Lesbian Times, took a poll of the gay community and asked if the public thought that the AIDS dissidents should have a say in current discussions about HIV and AIDS. The result was 62% in favor of the AIDS dissidents! So go fuck yourself Mr. Denialist!

And take your AIDS denialist lies and shove them where the sun don’t shine.
#116 Michael
July 25, 2007

Robster you friggin ignorant AIDS DENIALIST!

HEAL which started in New York has NEVER been part of ACT-UP, let alone Act-Up San Francisco. HEAL and ACT-UP are and always have been completely unrelated!

Act-Up split off many years ago into the pro-pharma AZT and AIDS drug pushers and HIV believers ActUp New York, and the Anti-Pharma HIV dissident group ActUp San Francisco, both of which unfortunately had many illicit drug users in its ranks, although much less tolerated in ActUpSF as they were well aware of the drug=AIDS connection, even if some of their members could not break the addictions.

Neither ActUp group has ever been related to HEAL groups.

HEAL groups started by Michael Ellnor as Health Education AIDS Liason New York. Many other Heal groups later started up world wide. Each HEAL group is independent of the rest and oriented to its own community. Christine Maggiore started a HEAL group, and later renamed her group Alive and Well.
#117 Michael
July 25, 2007

Robster the AIDS Denialist ADMITS THE TRUTH about himself!

About time you admit what you do Robster!

AIDS denialist Robster said:

“Denialist positions are based on deliberate misinterpretations of data, lies regarding the evidence, and make easily disproved claims on the positions of other researchers and the contents of their papers. Sadly, the denialists win some converts who repeat their lies, believing every word”.
#118 Michael
July 25, 2007

Hey Mr. Denialist. Just re-read what you just posted to me and you yourself can hopefully see quite plainly what a whacky conspiracy theorist you really are:

“HEAL is joined hand in hand with those that would be happy to see the gay community further ravaged by HIV, while selling the same things that they falsely claim are the real cause of AIDS. At best, HEAL and Michael are patsies to a far right anti-gay cult. At worst, they are a fifth column, devoted to destroying their own community from within.”

Are all the AIDS denialists as wacky as Robster? Well yes they are. They see conspiracies everywhere!

A far right anti-gay cult????????????????????

hahahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah

You AIDS denialists sure are a bunch of kooks!
#119 Dan
July 25, 2007

Denialist positions are based on deliberate misinterpretations of data

quite true, Michael.

One of the things that AIDS denialists like to do is deny that zero equals zero (Padian). AIDS denaialists will tell you that zero transmissions can somehow be extrapolated into an epidemic?!
#120 Michael
July 25, 2007

Right on Dan, I forgot how the AIDS Denialists, Tara-DT-Chris Noble-Richard Jefferies went on and on denying that Zero transmissions between sero-opposites in a 6 year study somehow equated in their minds to a sexually transmitted epidemic.

Can these people really not see that their own brains are stuck in complete denial? These people are sick. We should feel sorry for them, instead of verbally berate them. But it is important to expose their illness to the public, before they cause further death and damage.
#121 Darin Brown
July 30, 2007

DT lies:

“To have ‘AIDS’, one has to have no significant explanation for immune deficiency other than HIV infection.”

Really, is that the best response you can come up with? I’m LMFAO. As I’m sure lots of others reading this are, too.

If that’s really the case (although, as I show below, it’s manifestly NOT the case), that’s a nice bit of circular logic: i.e. “if drugs (or malnutrition) cause it, by definition, it’s not ‘AIDS’; therefore, drugs (or malnutrition) cannot cause ‘AIDS’!”

But, then again, an inability to detect circular logic is apparently a required trait to be an AIDS denialist. I pointed out the circular nature of the reliance of “AIDS science” on “epidemiology/virology” about a year and a half ago (now preserved in a Magnificent Pipedream), and this didn’t seem to sink in to AIDS denialists like Tara at the time.

Unfortunately for AIDS denialists like DT, his statement isn’t even true!!:

FROM THE 1987 REVISION OF CASE DEFINITION FOR AIDS FOR SURVEILLANCE PURPOSES:

“For national reporting, a case of AIDS is defined as an illness by one or more of the following ‘indicator’ diseases, depending on the status of laboratory evidence of HIV infection, as shown below…

II. WITH LABORATORY EVIDENCE FOR HIV INFECTION

Regardless of the presence of other causes of immunodeficiency (I.A), in the presence of laboratory evidence for HIV infection (See Appendix I), any disease listed above (I.B) or below (II.A or II.b) indicates a diagnosis of AIDS.”

In other words, IF YOU HAVE THE “PRESENCE OF LABORATORY EVIDENCE FOR HIV INFECTION”, THEN EVEN IF YOU HAVE OTHER SIGNIFICANT EXPLANATIONS FOR IMMUNE DEFICIENCY (SUCH AS DRUGS OR MALNUTRITION), YOU STILL ARE DEFINED AS HAVING “AIDS”.

Therefore, you are a liar, DT.

But let’s take a closer look at those “other causes of immunodeficiency” in section I.A of the CDC definition, shall we?

“A. Causes of immunodeficiency that disqualify diseases an indicators of AIDS in the absence of laboratory evidence for HIV infection

1. high-dose or long-term systemic corticosteroid therapy or other immunosuppressive/cytotoxic therapy less than or equal to 3 months before the onset of the indicator disease”

A couple of thoughts come to my mind:

First, think about what the CDC is saying here. They are saying that

(a) if you HAVEN’T had an HIV test (or you had an inconclusive result, whatever THAT means…), then “high-dose or long-term systemic corticosteroid therapy or other immunosuppressive/cytotoxic therapy [hmmm...i.e. AZT??...certainly even the most hard-core HIV denialists admit that AZT is "immunosuppressive/cytotoxic"...so, by this definition, anyone who took AZT 3 months previous to the "onset of their indicator disease" should be disqualified by definition]” is considered to rule out a diagnosis of AIDS. Presumably, the only logical reason to make this part of the definition (although “the logic of the CDC” seems to be an oxymoron) would be that the CDC has concluded that corticosteroid therapy or immunosuppressive drugs are capable of causing AIDS-defining diseases. AND YET,

(b) If you test “positive for HIV” (whatever THAT means…) suddenly, HIV is the cause and corticosteroids or immunosuppressive drugs have nothing to do with it!

Please understand what I’m saying here. I am saying here that THE CDC IS CLAIMING NOT SIMPLY THAT TAKING AN ANTIBODY TEST CAN PROVE HIV INFECTION, BUT THAT SIMPLY TAKING (TAKING!!) AN ANTIBODY TEST CAN DETERMINE WHETHER OR NOT SOMETHING OTHER THAN HIV CAN CAUSE AIDS-DEFINING DISEASES IN A PARTICULAR INDIVIDUAL PATIENT!!

The insanity of this reasoning is astounding. Either something IS or IS NOT a cause of something! Whether corticosteroids cause AIDS-defining diseases should have absolutely nothing to do with whether a particular individual has had an HIV test or not! Yet this is exactly what the CDC is saying — if someone has NOT had an HIV test, then corticosteroids are considered capable of causing AIDS in them. But if that same person then tests HIV positive, suddenly corticosteroids are not considered capable of causing AIDS in them! Insane!!

This is precisely the essence of Duesberg’s formula:

INDICATOR DISEASE + HIV = AIDS
INDICATOR DISEASE – HIV = INDICATOR DISEASE

It is one of the purest examples of CIRCULAR LOGIC.

Secondly, as I pointed out above, the CDC admits in its definition that drugs (“high-dose or long-term systemic corticosteroid therapy or other immunosuppressive/cytotoxic therapy”) can cause AIDS.

Why they choose to fixate on corticosteroids (and from the other parts, some other factors like Hodgkin’s disease and genetic immunodeficiency) is beyond me. Why stop at one non-HIV cause? The “extracts from a medical textbook” I quoted above are a very, very slim cross-section of all sorts of admissions from standard medical sources (such as the Merck Manual, etc.) as well as hundreds of studies that have shown that long-term recreational and pharmaceutical drug abuse and malnutrition can cause AIDS-defining illnesses. (See part 4 of Duesberg’s 1992 P&T paper, as well as the 2003 Chemical Bases paper.)

Anthony Fauci flat-out admits in Principles of Internal Medicine that PROTEIN-ENERGY MALNUTRITION CAUSES AIDS. So, my question is:

WHY ISN’T MALNUTRITION LISTED IN PART I.A OF THE CDC DEFINITION AS A “CAUSE OF IMMUNODEFICIENCY THAT DISQUALIF[IES] DISEASES AS INDICATORS OF AIDS…”??

And why don’t countries such as South Africa have reliable statistics on “malnutrition caused AIDS” vs. “non-malnutrition caused AIDS”, as raised by Anonymous II almost a year and a half ago, and which the AIDS denialist Tara Smith, to the best of my knowledge, has yet to provide an adequate response to. Her best response was basically, “Malnutrition is a co-factor for HIV…” Skirting the whole issue.

After all, you, DT, said:

“To have ‘AIDS’, one has to have no significant explanation for immune deficiency other than HIV infection.”

Fauci admits protein-energy malnutrition is a “signficant explanation for immune deficiency”. So, why isn’t it listed in the CDC definition as an excluding cause? Why, when an IVDU presents with long-term use of immunosuppressive recreational drugs, and concurrent long-term immunosuppressive corticosteroid therapy, and long-term immunosuppressive antibiotic use, and the resulting immunosuppressive PROTEIN-ENERGY MALNUTRITION (as a result of both the drugs themselves as well as spending their money on drugs rather than good food), why is this person not excluded in the CDC definition as an “AIDS” case? Why is the phantom “HIV” presumed to have caused their immunosuppression because it was “acquired by dirty needles”?

PS. DT, I don’t “claim to be a mathematician”, I AM a mathematician. (I’m reminded of Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief: “I do more than claim [that I'm innocent], I insist!.”

PPS. Did you catch my review of Bauer’s book? Last time I checked, it was listed #2 on Amazon’s “hot new HIV/AIDS releases”!!

PPS. There’s a special place in Hell reserved for people like you, DT. And after the Nuremburg trials are held in a few years, a special place in PRISON for people like you, as well.
#122 Chris Noble
July 31, 2007

Darin, the CDC surveillance definition is just that – a surveillance tool.

The Ascher study used a clinical definition of AIDS that did not include HIV infection as a criterion.

Despite Duesberg’s lies about “45 HIV-free AIDS case” none of the HIV-patients came down with AIDS regardless of drug use. Only HIV+ patients got AIDS.

No circluar logic. HIV causes AIDS. Recreational drug use does not.
#123 Adele
July 31, 2007

That guy’s so lucid I wonder if they let him outside in the yard at lunchtime now. Although, I didn’t “catch”, whatever he wrote on a book by Henry Bauer. Really a book that sold like three copies so far one of them to him isn’t high on my to-do list. Sorry.

I reccomend a history book to him instead

after the Nuremburg trials are held in a few years

Hello? Earth to deniosaur, the Nuremberg trials were held in 1945 and 1946.
#124 Dale
July 31, 2007

I believe Adele that Darin was invoking Godwin’s law. You know the one about as the length of an Internet based discussion increases, the probability of someone drawing a Nazi analogy approaches certainty. I suppose it’s only appropriate that the ‘honor’ of invoking Godwin’s law go to a mathematician.
#125 Roy Hinkley
July 31, 2007

As if keeping track of sockpuppets wasn’t trouble enough! Now we have to deal with (denial (denialists)) like Michael and Darin.
#126 Michael
July 31, 2007

OH, poor, poor, little troubled Roy Hinkley. You carry such hard burdens through life. Poor boy. All worked up because you have to read posts by us god awful AIDS dissidents, or denialists, as you prefer to pejoratively call us.

We dissidents, on the other hand, have it easy. We only have the burden of dealing with your pejorative name calling and dealing with the real AIDS denialists, such as you, Dale, Chris, Adele, DT, Tara, and many others. Yes indeed, we have the burden of dealing with all of the Know-It-Alls who have no personal experiece whatsoever with those affected by a diagnosis of HIV or AIDS, but are limited to the knowledge they have gleaned from very possibly biased studies, or from what they have heard on tv or read in the paper.

Meanwhile, many of us dissidents, such as myself who has an HIV positive lover for many years, whose best friend died from AZT poisoning, who knows many hundreds of people diagnosed as HIV or AIDS, who personally knows the intimate lives and addictions and lifestyles and emotions and suffering and maiming from lypodystrophy, liver failure, and neuropathy that they have experienced, who knows many HIV doctors as well as many dissidents scientists, must tolerate all of you ignorant babbling fools who think you know everything, while you have absolutely NO real world experience in the issue that you love to shoot your big mouth off about.

You too are a know-it-all Roy, just like Chris Know-It-All Noble and the rest of the know-it-all defenders and believers and promoters of the lie that HIV is at the core of the AIDS problems.

Know-it-all
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A know-it-all is a person who believes that he or she is extremely knowledgeable, and is determined to demonstrate his or her perceived intelligence at every opportunity. A know-it-all boasts about being an expert on a given subject, although his or her actual knowledge is often (but not always) limited or non-existent.

A know-it-all will invariably dispute others. For instance, someone may present a conflicting opinion or make a recommendation, but the know-it-all will act as though it had already been suggested, analyzed, and discounted. A know-it-all may also disregard or devalue advice from someone who actually has the knowledge the know-it-all purports to have.

Know-it-all may also refer to a legitimate expert who flaunts his or her knowledge.

Read your posts Dale and Roy. The description of a know-it-all also sounds to me exactly like ALL OF YOU DEFENDERS OF HIV!
#127 Michael
July 31, 2007

Hello ADELE? Earth to deniosaur, the Nuremberg trials were held in 1945 and 1946.

AND 22 OF THE 26 CONVICTED AT NUREMBURG WERE MEDICAL DOCTORS!
#128 cooler
July 31, 2007

First the hundreds of chimps injected with hiv, they were all supposed to die of AIDS, none of them did 15 yrs later, suddenly hiv became “species specific”

Hiv was supposed to be killing the cells, it became well known to infect only 1/1000 or so blood tcells, suddenly it was a “diffuse immune reponse” responsible, pure speculation to save a hypothesis.

People with HIv were supposed to die within a year, they didnt, suddenly the window period was extended to 10 years…………..to save a hypothesis that failed every expectation……..

There were many Long term survivors that didnt take drugs………………they must have a “special gene”

Why would so many people support such bogus science? Well the answer lies in the governments support/brainwashing/funding of the hiv hypothesis, no government support and press conferences, television commercials this hypothesis would have been discarded years ago, read orwells 1984 and youll learn how it’s easy to fool people this way. And you guys laugh at us…………….
#129 Michael
July 31, 2007

Hello Deniosaurs

NUREMBURG Medical Case Summary:

The Medical Case, U.S.A. vs. Karl Brandt, et al. (also known as the Doctors’ Trial), was prosecuted in 1946-47 against twenty-three doctors and administrators accused of organizing and participating in war crimes and crimes against humanity in the form of medical experiments and medical procedures inflicted on prisoners and civilians.
#130 Roy Hinkley
July 31, 2007

Hmmm… the description of a know-it-all does sound like someone I’ve read.

For my part, I don’t view the word “denial” in HIV/AIDS denial as a pejorative any more than I view someone with denial of their (or another’s) cancer, pejoratively.
#131 Michael
July 31, 2007

Well hello Roy. Glad to see you are surviving the difficulties we dissidents have presented to you.

You said: “For my part, I don’t view the word “denial” in HIV/AIDS denial as a pejorative”.

Well thats good to know Roy.

So then you really won’t mind me calling you an ignorant know-it-all lying REAL AIDS DENIALIST when you post some more of your pejoratives and know-it-all trash on the subject of HIV and AIDS, which clearly, to me and many others at least, displays you to be an unthinking uncritical brainwashed know-it-all and perhaps even an imbecile.
#132 Michael
July 31, 2007

Roy, you said:

“Hmmm… the description of a know-it-all does sound like someone I’ve read”.

Sounds to me like you must have been reading more of something by Robert Gallo or perhaps reading the 200,000 plus orthodox biased studies by people with serious financial conflicts of interest about HIV and AIDS.
#133 Philly Boy
August 1, 2007

Do any of you idiots (Adele, Roy, DT, Chris Noble) DENY that AZT is dangerous cancer chemotherapy drug?

If so, YOU ARE A DENIALIST!!!!

If not, then you agree with Duesberg………..
#134 Robster, FCD
August 1, 2007

Michael,

What does the totality of the evidence say about the cause of HIV?
#135 Michael
August 1, 2007

Robster, you asked:

You may very well regret asking me such a question because I can get rather deep on a loaded question such as this!

But you asked, so…..!

“What does the totality of the evidence say about the cause of HIV”.

First of all, I think you meant to end that question with “AIDS”, not “HIV”.

Second of all, I think you meant “what do MOST PEOPLE in the world AGREE UPON that the PERCEPTION of the totality of the PEER PUBLISHED evidence says about the cause of AIDS”?

Robster, to begin with, there are often gaps, all throughout the history of mankind, where the perception of what the totality of evidence on one issue or belief after another have changed as mankind evolved or changed its overall perspective.

So what most people agree the totality of evidence says about any issue today, does not mean that is what they will say tomorrow, or years in the future!

Look at how the perception of going to Iraq to free them or the war in Iraq or the perception of George Bush has changed drastically in just a few short years! Look at how the perception of using DDT or the issue of homosexuality or divorce or religion or sex has changed! Perceptions of things change rather quickly around here Robster, so get used to it and try to keep up!

But regardless……

the answer to your question is totally a matter of the perspective of whoever is looking at whatever it is that they are considering to be as the “totality of the evidence”, as there is ALWAYS more to look at and consider.

After all, it is one universe and all is connected to all else. And it is a very vast and unlimited universe. Therefore, one could attempt to look at the entire universe that is known directly or even experientially which differs from person to person, and look at both the seen and unseen but experienced nonetheless to attempt to consider “totality of evidence”. This however, is best done after leaving earthly life behind.

Hahaahahahhhahhhhahhhahahaaaaaaaaa

Cracked myself up over that one!

The answer also depends on “whose” perspective of the “totality of the evidence” you look at it from. Everyones truth is always colored by their own unique individual perspective, as well as by the level of consciousness and preprogramming of the individual who is extrapolating the evidence from their accumulated data.

From lower levels, what are called the “victim” levels of human consciousness, things such as illness or accident are always perceived to be caused strictly by externals such as germs or viruses or something or someone external to the affected individual, and therefore the perception is that one needs something external, such as a doctor or a pill, to “fix” it.

From higher levels of human consciousness, things such as illness or accident are generally perceived or experienced as manifestations of the result of belief or as the manifestations of the lower levels of human consciousness such as repeatedly living on levels of shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desires, anger, pride, and the emotional stresses associated with such. One too many straws on the camels back!

So the answer to your question depends on where one is looking at what they percieve as the “totality of the evidence”, and what level of consciousness they are looking at it from.

And, to me, what someone perceives the “totality of evidence” to be, actually says more about them, than it says about the reality of the situation.

When one considers that 85% of all of mankind live their lives primarily on the lower levels of human consciousness, then it is not at all surprising that HIV is perceived by the vast majority as being the cause of AIDS.

Are they really considering the full “totality of the evidence”, or are they simply considering what they mistakenly believe to be the totality of the evidence from their current perspective, which is colored and filtered by their own pre-programming by what they have been taught, or by their own levels of consciousness, experiences, and even by their imagination, which plays off all of the former, and the sum total is that which is the only perspective that anyone in human form is ever capable of considering anything from or deciding on what it “says”?

But for you, my friend, the only thing that is important, is what do YOU PERCIEVE that the “totality of the evidence” says is the cause of AIDS?

Your answer to that, however, tells me more about you yourself, than it tells me about any actual cause of AIDS.

What does your perception of the “totality of the evidence” say is the cause of all existence?

Robster, if you are interested in investigating the levels of human consciousness, or expanding your concepts of reality, then you might want to read: “Power Vs. Force” by Dr David Hawkins, MD, PHD, who was a co-writer with Nobelist Linus Pauling.

He details the various levels of consciousness from shame to enlightenment, and how they affect us individually, their effects on society, and globally
#136 Robster, FCD
August 1, 2007

Sorry for the typo, Mikey. What does the totality of evidence say about the cause of AIDS?

Second of all, I think you meant “what do MOST PEOPLE in the world AGREE UPON that the PERCEPTION of the totality of the PEER PUBLISHED evidence says about the cause of AIDS”?

You are too much of a coward to answer the question honestly. You said that this was important, but won’t answer the question. You are afraid of the answer, because it means your personal cause is a fraud.

What does the totality of evidence say about the cause of AIDS?

Quit dodging.
#137 Roy Hinkley
August 1, 2007

“Well hello Roy. Glad to see you are surviving the difficulties we dissidents have presented to you.”

What difficulties do you mean Michael?

“So then you really won’t mind me calling you an ignorant know-it-all lying REAL AIDS DENIALIST…”

Not at all Michael. People like you, those in a very deep state of denial, are bound to be irrational and lash out at others who try to point out reality to them. You may want to review your posting history where you will see this tendency clearly on display.