A reader passed along a link to this post on Short memories: AIDS denialism and vaccine resistance. The author learned that a friend had dated an AIDS denialist:
This was absolutely the wrong thing to say to our friend, who had been an AIDS activist since the early days of the epidemic, had nursed several beloved friends through the illness, had seen way too many of those friends die... and had seen others come back from the brink of death when the protease inhibitors and combination therapies finally came out.So Ingrid and I were talking, not only about how ignorant AIDS denialism is and what a perfect example of the Galileo Fallacy it's proving to be... but also about how profoundly insensitive and clueless it was for this woman to talk this way to someone who'd been through the worst days of the epidemic. Doesn't she remember? we said. Doesn't she know what AIDS was like before the drug cocktails came along?
And it occurred to both of us:
No. She doesn't remember.
She argues that the same thing has happened with vaccination--that people simply don't remember the havoc vaccine-preventable diseases used to wreak--an attitude that leads to apathy. As she notes, the best public health is invisible--preventing disease rather than responding to outbreaks, so it's difficult for the average individual to realize how important it is until it's broken.
I won't summarize everything; she makes a number of excellent points that readers here will appreciate, so go check it out.
Medicine & Health
Comments
They should read the International Carnival of Pozitivities. The new edition came out today - read the very first entry, by Ron Hudson:
http://ogresview.mu.nu/archives/243135.php
Posted by: coturnix | October 10, 2007 4:28 PM
Thanks Tara
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 4:30 PM
http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta_christinas_weblog/2007/09/the-galileo-fal.html
Adele, is that in reference to you/me?
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 4:43 PM
Once again, I wonder how long it will take for the HIV/AIDS deniers to hijack this thread. Counting one, two, three, ...
Posted by: SLC | October 10, 2007 5:12 PM
Apy, if the subject is AIDS, don't we rethinkers have a right to voice our opinions too or are is this blog like CNN and Foxx News,which are both slanted favoring their political parties. How else can we learn or make informed dicisions without both sides of the story being heard?
Posted by: noreen Martin | October 10, 2007 5:23 PM
Excuse me, I meant SLC instead of Apy.
Posted by: noreen | October 10, 2007 5:24 PM
My dad was born in 1916 and he grew up amid polio scares. My sister and I were born before 1952 and had heard of people with polio when we were little. Then came the vaccinations, and Jonas Salk displaced Albert Schweitzer as the most admired doctor in the world.
A guy on our high school basketball team had one leg shorter than the other thanks to polio.
By the time our baby brother came along, nobody talked about polio anymore.
I still remember whooping cough and how badly it scared parents. How many people now even know what it is? Or that it can kill?
I think the point about not remembering is a good one. With a whole host of deadly diseases now safely at bay, a lot of people can get away with being dilettantes about issues that used to be life-or-death.
When water fluoridation began, people opposed it for stupid reasons -- only because they could: our nation's water supplies had become so good and reliable that people soon took clean water for granted.
Posted by: 6EQUJ5 | October 10, 2007 5:43 PM
You have a right to voice your opinion, but it would seem like when you are shown that your opinion does not represent the facts you would correct your opinion or simply stop voicing it.
I cannot help but remember all of the various studies that you and the others have pasted here, only to find out that they really state the opposite of what you are claiming, only for you (the plural here) respond by saying the studies are wrong, shills, etc, and seemingly forget that you are the ones that brought the study up in the first place. Stepping back for a second, regardless of if the conclusion reached by those studies is correct or not, the very fact that dissidents claim it says one thing, then find out it says the opposite, only to respond by blaming the mainstream and study, sounds a lot like denial to me. You seem to think that we should all agree with you irrelevant of the fact that the evidence you give us disagrees with what you are saying.
I'm apologize for turning yet another thread into a battle.
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 5:43 PM
noreen, perhaps you're familiar with the sentiment that "you're entitled to your own opinions, but not your own facts?" Y'know, like denier Al-Bayati redefining what it means to be HIV+?
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | October 10, 2007 5:44 PM
They also don't remember the scientific history of AIDS/HIV. The standard HIV Denialist narrative goes like this:
Gay men were getting sick. And then Gallo came along and saw the opportunity to make his career by fraudulently identifying HIV as the cause of AIDS. And other scientists saw this as a source of research funds, and immediately jumped on the bandwagon to get a piece of the action. And the drug companies saw this as a chance to make a lot of money by selling toxic drugs that actually caused the disease they were supposed to prevent, and they paid scientists a lot of money to support the HIV "myth." And then brave Duesberg stood up to point out the obvious flaws in the entrenched HIV dogma and to bring new ideas to the AIDS field. More and more people are coming around to Duesberg's way of thinking, and the HIV "myth" is about to collapse Real Soon Now.
What they've forgotten, of course, is that Duesberg's ideas are not new--they go back to the earliest days of thinking about AIDS, and were once widely considered to be plausible by much of the scientific community. Far from being a "rethinker," Duesberg is a holdout, doggedly clinging to a pet hypothesis that other scientists discarded, one by one, over a period of years, in the face of steadily accumulating scientific evidence identifying HIV as the causative agent of AIDS.
Posted by: trrll | October 10, 2007 5:52 PM
Many of the denialist 'movements' remind me of the final chapter in The Fifty-Minute Hour, where the patient is completely mad and living in a fantasy world which he believes to be real and the only way the therapist is able to get him out is to completely enter the fantasy and work on it together. Eventually the patient comes out of it, but at that time the therapist is quite enthralled in the entire thing and almost has to get help of his own.
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 6:02 PM
tara. instead of condescendingly sneering at people that dont agree with you why dont you provide me with the scientific paper that proves hiv causes AIDS? It should read like this.
"in 1984 Robert Gallo claimed hiv was the cause of AIDS, because of the lack of a relaible model and an ever extending window period we are going to follow 20 hiv positive people for 10-15 yrs with no other risk factors such as AZT, severe mental illness, other infections like mfi, drug abuse and compare them to matched hiv negative controls to prove or falsify gallo's hypothesis"
this study should have been done a while ago, soon after the press conference, by people truly seeking an answer, not by people who view dissidents as nazis. It shouldnt be to hard to find this study on pub med right?, or did all the studies assume Gallo 100% right and assumed hiv already caused AIDS because the medical/government/ industry complex would not dare allow such a study to take place?
Waiting...........afterall this is the only way to test a microbe that does not induce disease in nearly every animal and that has such a long window period. Please give this reference, if you dont provide it than its a debatble issue. maybe hiv does cause aids but more research is needed, waiting.....
Posted by: cooler | October 10, 2007 6:06 PM
cooler, did you bother to read the essay?
Posted by: Tara C. Smith | October 10, 2007 6:08 PM
Now who's being a denialist Tara...
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 6:11 PM
"what they dont remember"
is psychobabble by an armchair psychologist who does not beleive its possible for the government to lie to them. Please provide with the study I mentioned above.
Posted by: cooler | October 10, 2007 6:18 PM
Good morning Trrll,
I liked that history lesson, that was really clever. Touche! If I may say so. And I know you're doing it all for free too, cuz that's the kind of guy you are. But I wouldn't want literary talent such as yours to go unappreciated, so why don't you publish your views somewhere... like Sceptical Enquirer. Maybe you can score a scientific point on the denialists, like Nicoli Nattrass here. See how she caught Val Turner saying "reverse transcription" when he should have said "reverse transcriptase", according to Gallo:
Valendar Turner, testified that HIV had not been
isolated because it had been identified only through the detection of reverse transcription (the process of writing RNA into DNA), an activity not unique to retroviruses (Turner 2006, 4). In subsequent testimony for the prosecution, Robert Gallo (the discoverer of retroviruses and codiscoverer of HIV) pointed out that HIV had been identified as a retrovirus through the detection of reverse transcriptase, which is an enzyme unique to retroviruses, not the activity of reverse transcription, per se. He added that "only a fool" would mistake the two (Gallo 2007b, 1310, 1313-1314).
But even more importantly, Val turner says the activity of reverse transcription is not unique to retroviruses, Gallo says reverse transcriptase is and that's how he identified HIV. What say you Trrll, do you think Val Turner was mistaken?
Feel like going for a bonus point Trrll? Who discovered retroviruses?
http://aidstruth.org/AIDS-Denialism-vs-Science.pdf
Posted by: Pope | October 10, 2007 7:05 PM
He's obviously Duesbergs butt-boy! A shill for the anti-pharma industry. I wonder how much he was paid off for that testimony, obviously a fraud.
Posted by: apy | October 10, 2007 8:13 PM
Pope, it's uncanny how Greta's essay describes you so well.
What's more, the Gadfly Corollary both reveals and encourages some tremendously lazy thinking. When people assume that "if I'm pissing people off, I must be doing something right," it absolves them of the responsibility of finding out whether they really are right; the difficult, tedious, often humbling work of actually doing the damn research.
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 10, 2007 8:51 PM
Re noreen Martin
11 minutes.
Posted by: SLC | October 10, 2007 9:43 PM
Ah Dr. Noble, peeved because there's no question for you?
I recognize, as does Nicoli Nattrass, that you're an authority almost on the level og Dr. Gallo, and Aetiology a publication well worth quoting from. In fact in that whole piece the only example she gives of a scientific prediction borne out by HIV/AIDS theory comes from you:
Well, we seem to have drifted a long way from the famous
Padian study which according to Harvey Bialy "demonstrated so well that sexually transmitted HIV was a figment."
I note that Bialy never once made a comment that was relevant to the study. These are the people that claim that HIV cannot possibly cause AIDS. You ask them for justification and they give you the "Padian study." You demonstrate that this study cannot be used to conclude
that HIV is not sexually transmitted and they go all silent, bring up other studies or in Bialy's case proceed to insult everyone that doesn't worship Peter Duesberg.I predict that in the future the exact same people will again
cite the "Padian study" as proof that HIV is not sexually transmitted. (Noble 2006)
That is truly remarkable and quoteworthy don't you think Dr. Noble? Quite possibly the cleverest thing anybody has ever written in support of the surrogate marker theory of HIV infection. Unfortunately, when you click on the link to the source of this supremely convincing example of scientific reasoning it comes up blank. But we gads are always resourceful, so instead I went straight to Gallo himself, the same place where he really showed what an uncientific fool Val Turner (or what say you Trrll, surely "particle associated" reverse transcriptase was isolated from fresh culture by both Montagnier and Gallo, right?) Dr. Gallo has this explanation for why the Padian study, as you say, Dr. Noble, "cannot beused to conclude that HIV is not sexually transmitted":
... a lot of material is out of context or material that is stopped in time. A good example is Padian, a woman who has done epidemiology who is quoted as refuting heterosexual transmission because she found heterosexuals not with AIDS and heterosexuals who have got AIDS. What is not said is she never looked for HIV. (p. 1253)
Wow! that man has a way with words, here revealing clearly the rub of the matter in just one sentence: "she found heterosexuals not with AIDS and heterosexuals who have got AIDS". No wonder Bialy and the other denialists went silent after that well placed correction. Imagine the fools really thought that a study titled, Heterosexual Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Northern California: Results from a Ten-Year Study. would have anything to do with looking for HIV.
Posted by: Pope | October 10, 2007 11:36 PM
Ah, the proverbial absentminded professor raises yet another redundant thread and here referencing "Galileo Fallacy" the Team Virus Tara's Clan needs reminded of the myriad of common fallacies dispersed with religious like fervor over and over again from them.
Ad Hominem:
If you don't believe that HIV causes AIDS, well, you suck.
Appeal To False Authority:
The NIH has a great government website, which explains why HIV Causes AIDS
Appeal To Emotion:
Look, millions of poor Africans are gonna die, if you don't immediately start believing that HIV causes AIDS!!!
Appeal to Fear:
Did you see what we did to Duesberg? If you don't accept that HIV causes AIDS, we will strip away your funding and ostracize you. Now, get smart, will ya?
Appeal To Force:
If you don't agree that HIV causes AIDS, we will call CPS and take away your children.
Appeal To Majority:
C'mon, everybody's wearing a red ribbon, why not you?
Appeal to Novelty:
Yeah, I know that retroviruses historically haven't been show to kill cells, but this is a NEW retrovirus from a Chimpanzee in Cameroon via the Castro!
Appeal To Numbers:
Thousands of scientists think that HIV causes AIDS, why not you?
Appeal To Tradition:
Traditionally, viruses are very bad things, causing many different ailments, why not this virus, too?
Appeal To Pharmaceuticals:
You must stay on these toxic drugs all your life, even though you have no clinical symptoms.
Appeal To Money:
We've spent hundreds of billions on research, therefore HIV has to cause AIDS."
Appeal to Dilbertism:
When humorless pedants who know little of the subject matter are enlisted by FRANKLIN for uninteresting critiques.
Posted by: carter | October 11, 2007 12:22 AM
Carter, like everything else you regurgitate we've been over this before.
A Straw Man gets AIDS
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 11, 2007 12:35 AM
The linked article is excellent! It unambiguously makes the point that, until they stopped AZT monotherapy, life expectancy upon diagnosis was less than two years - in many instances only months.
Posted by: Pope | October 11, 2007 12:41 AM
Brilliant. Nobody was dying from AIDS before AZT was introduced. Let's forget about the people that were dying months after being diagnosed with AIDS in the period before AZT. Lets forget about the 19 people that died in the placebo arm of the Fischl et al AZT trial after only a few weeks.
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 11, 2007 12:54 AM
Dr. Noble, I take it you mean nobody died of HIV before they started prescribing heavy doses of chemotherapy for it.
Posted by: Pope | October 11, 2007 1:00 AM
Oh for Pete's sake.... Evidence evidence evidence... AIDS AIDS AIDS...
It's all about science isn't it? Untill you guys wake up and see what's happening in the real world it aint gonna get any better. But thats alright, in the meantime lets just get numbers of unsuspecting people walking right up to be tested so they can be indoctinated into AIDS religion. Isn't that how it works for you.
Posted by: carter | October 11, 2007 1:12 AM
The problem is not that "both sides" haven't been heard. The problem is that when AIDS denialists were presented with the clear and overwhelming evidence linking HIV and AIDS, their reaction was to put their fingers in their ears and say "What?! Can't Hear You! Train Coming! *Ding* *Ding* *Ding* *Ding* *Ding*"
Posted by: Benjamin Franz | October 11, 2007 5:13 AM
Pope:
Since Chris mentions directly in the preceding comment the people dying of AIDS before AZT, and since people don't die of HIV infection per se, but of the resulting opportunistic infections, I'm guessing this is a word-game playing on HIV vs. AIDS. Am I right?
carter,
No.
Posted by: Peter Barber | October 11, 2007 8:21 AM
cooler asked tara ... why dont you provide me with the scientific paper that proves hiv causes AIDS?
I don't know about tara but it was reading Duesberg that did it for me. Particularly his 2003 J. Biosci. review. The arguments he used to support his own position were nonsensical and the data in the literature he cited clearly failed to support his views. So I asked myself if this is the very best evidence that Duesberg can find against the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS and that evidence actually supports the hypothesis, am I not pretty much forced to conclude that HIV causes AIDS?
Posted by: Dale | October 11, 2007 8:59 AM
@ Dale,
You are exactly right. About ten years ago, Duesberg published two, thick volumes that argued his side. Not only did none of it make sense; but I got the impression that he was a bit unbalanced because every scrap of information that contradicted him was met with increasingly shrill post-hoc rationalization.
Posted by: Joe | October 11, 2007 12:48 PM
Denialism: "they don't remember"
This title, Tara ! The stroke of genius !
They don't remember!
Exit Denialists, they're just a bunch of senile Alzheimer-ridden human debris.
But will it work? I doubt it. I mean, well, yes, maybe it's fine for those who badly need to get rid of dissenters gnawing at their conscience, those who can't get to sleep too well thinking "What will become of me if there's something in the deniers' sayings ?"
What precisely do you think deniers don't remember, Tara? Do you really think I forgot what has happened in the eighties and nineties? For almost twenty years I've been swallowing main stream information. I had absolutely no reason whatsoever to doubt the official version. My wife was a social assistant, she has worked with Aids patients (almost all were junkies...) for a couple of years, we had the red ribbon pinned on all our sweaters. We've been talking for hours/days/weeks/months/years about the disaster that hit whole families all around.
But then came a day I stumbled upon some different information, away from main stream. It seemed interesting right from the start and I followed the thread. I'm curious, you know. And I have a scientific background. Enough to know how and where to look, not enough to be dependent on how other people judge what I think.
You self proclaimed scientists, you should start to lend an ear to people who dare to defend ideas different from what everybody thinks is true. Denialist know what you know Tara, they read the same newspapers, watch the same TV, study the same publications. One cannot possibly get away from the official HIV=Aids version, Tara, not unless one moves over to another galaxy. And it's impossible to not remember. That is one reason why you should lend an ear to alternative information. Deniers know what you know, but they also know about things you never even considered.
Denialists, it's not that they don't remember, Tara. Denialist, they simply didn't forget. About the importance of freedom and independent thought. You've lost both, Tara. It has nothing to do with one's convictions. It has to do with people praising themselves into being scientists and accusing others of being denialists.
Posted by: jspreen | October 11, 2007 1:33 PM
funny all my life i beleived in hiv, I got tested several times, and I heard of A duesberg guy when I was 20 and I thought he was totally nuts. I even brought it up in class one day that this guy was a complete lunatic ( I never bothered reading his papers)
many years later I saw the film hiv fact on fraud on google, i was so mad before wtaching it, cause I thought it was BS, but after it totally changed me, that more research is needed.
This same thing thing happened with me and 9/11, thought no way it could be a false flag operation, then we all saw loose change and it blew us all away in our college dorm room.
Weird how much thought control there is in America, and how millions of people are getting exposed to these alternative theories and they are beliveing them, not because they are crazy, but they seem to make more sense to any open minded intelligent person.
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 1:59 PM
Well I guess all HIV theorists have to do is put together some poor 'documentary', put it on the intertubes and make cooler watch it.
Posted by: apy | October 11, 2007 2:21 PM
To save Tara the time of reposting something she's posted before:
Pathogenesis of human immunodeficiency virus infection. by J A Levy, Department of Medicine, University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco 94143-0128. (Microbiol Rev 1993;57:183)
This is referenced in The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS
To save lazy people a click, the abstract is pasted in below:
Since this is all very technical, some readers may need an overview of the immune system:
Immunology from CELLS alive! A graphics heavy site.
Immunology from The Biology Project. Fewer pictures, more detail, may be a few years old.
Immune System from a Multiple Sclerosis website. No pictures, and no HIV/AIDS discussion, but not very technical.
Infection & Immunity: from MicrobiologyBytes. This site has a good overview of "helper" T-cells: Role of CD4-positive T cells in Bacterial Killing.
For a detailed discussion of how B-cells and helper and killer T-cells differentiate and become specific to one antigen: The Exception to the Rule: Immunoglobulin Genes from DevBio, a companion to Developmental Biology, Eighth Edition by Scott F. Gilbert.
Three of the above sites have discussion of HIV/AIDS.
Posted by: AK | October 11, 2007 2:42 PM
or you could provide me for that study I asked for before
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 2:49 PM
@ Cooler,
I think the evidence is well-summarized in the "Evidence that HIV Causes AIDS" link, just above (posted by AK).
So now, tell me where is the article that supports each of Duesberg's claims that AIDS is caused by 1- recreational drugs (e.g., cocaine), 2- blood factors used to treat hemophilia, 3- AZT. That's just for starters, because Peter has a really long list.
Consider that cocaine was around for decades before the first cases of AIDS. Also, hemophilia treatment was safe before HIV and is safe now that blood products are screened for HIV. And people who already have AIDS get better when treated with AZT.
If you can't understand; maybe it's you: http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf This is an article about how people with no background in a field become so, ridiculously, certain of their mis-understandings.
Posted by: Joe | October 11, 2007 3:28 PM
I want the study that I mentioned at the beggining of this thread, not faucis propaganda page, or levy's book which already assumes hiv is the cause of AIDS, which is the very question at issue.
"in 1984 Robert Gallo claimed hiv was the cause of AIDS, because of the lack of a relaible model and an ever extending window period we are going to follow 20 hiv positive people for 10-15 yrs with no other risk factors such as AZT, severe mental illness, other infections like mfi, drug abuse and compare them to matched hiv negative controls to prove or falsify gallo's hypothesis"
is this too much to ask?
you should study history to see how many "experts" tend to go along with the states propaganda, like in russia and germany during communism and fascism.
Besides the "consensus" you guys talk about can only exist when you prevent scientists from hearing the other side of the argument, once scientists not tied to the aids industry look at the evidence your consensus shrinks by the day.
There will always be scientists who think its impossible for the government to lie to them, if a study came out tommorrow that proved hiv didnt cause AIDS, they would ignore it. Luckily more are coming out, and I know from talking one professor they are many more that are too afraid to speak out.
scientists that have questioned hiv at some time
margulis
pollock(both very recently)
shyh ching lo army highest ranking scientist/pathologist
kary mullis nobel prizw winner
duesberg retroviral expert
walter gilbert nobel prize winner mcb
many more
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 4:06 PM
Why are you even wasting our time asking for a paper then? Your response to any evidence given to you is that there is a conspiracy, so even if I found you some mind blowingly amazing paper about HIV causing AIDS you will just respond by saying it's propaganda. So what is the point? What do you want?
Posted by: apy | October 11, 2007 4:19 PM
@ Cooler
I take it, you can't provide definitive articles proving Duesy's claims; as opposed to the definitive article you demand (and have been provided).
Did you even read the article about ignoramuses who think they have it right?
Posted by: Joe | October 11, 2007 4:51 PM
This is referenced in The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS
Ha! Ha! Ha! The famous fact sheet. Man, it's the most fabulous piece of publicity I've ever seen. Selling what? Disease!
It's a crazy world, man. Some years ago I was still very naive and thought that people would be interested to find out that HIV=AIDS is a lie. Now I know better. They're not interested at all, they even very badly want it to be true. I can't get it man. Interested? They rather throw stones to the person who dares to question.
Well, that's the impression one gets when hanging around on this "science" blog. Of course, most people here are dependend on disease to earn their living. They wear coloured glasses they can't live without.
Posted by: jspreen | October 11, 2007 5:04 PM
@ jspreen,
Can you provide the definitive articles supporting Duesy that I requested?
Did you read the article about ignoramuses who think they figured it out? What makes you think you are not still naive?
Posted by: Joe | October 11, 2007 5:22 PM
Yes, it is too much to ask. Essentially, you are demanding a modern equivalent of the Tuskegee study, a study in which HIV infected people are denied medications that have been well established (to the satisfaction of everybody except HIV denialists) to be effective in delaying or preventing progression to AIDS. No ethical scientist would conduct such an experiment. No hospital review committee would approve it. And it would be a waste of time, anyway. Everybody capable of rational thought is already convinced, and the HIV denialists would find some kind of flaw in the study (every study has a flaw if you look hard enough) that they could point to as an excuse for discarding its conclusions, just as they have done with the many previous studies that demonstrate the connection between HIV and AIDS.
As an aside, the obsession with Gallo is quite typical of denialist thinking. Evolution denialists are similarly obsessed with Darwin. This seems to be rooted in a misunderstanding of science such that they imagine that all of the hundreds of thousands of studies that have been done since then somehow depends upon Gallo (or Darwin), and if they can find a flaw in that initial study, then they can somehow bring down the entire field of study. To real scientists, this comes across as very weird. To a modern scientist, Gallo and Darwin are purely of historical interest. Gallo got the field started, but the tools available at the time were so limited compared to modern scientific methodology, and his findings have been so far surpassed by later studies, that Gallo's initial paper is completely insignificant in terms of the weight of evidence supporting the modern understanding of the role of HIV in AIDS.
Posted by: trrll | October 11, 2007 5:28 PM
"It's a crazy world, man. Some years ago I was still very naive and thought that people would be interested to find out that HIV=AIDS is a lie. Now I know better. They're not interested at all, they even very badly want it to be true."
You know jspreen, almost anyone else would begin to question if what they were saying was true if it was consistently met by indifference or resistance. Nobody wants HIV=AIDS to be true (not even those evil, coloured glasses wearing scientists), but that's just the way it is and believing otherwise isn't going to change it.
"I can't get it man. Interested? They rather throw stones to the person who dares to question."
No they don't. They throw stones at people who drag out tired, refuted arguments over and over and over and over because they ignore the answers given to them. Genuine questions asked in good faith are never met with stone throwing.
Posted by: Jim | October 11, 2007 5:31 PM
well then youve made your hypothesis "unfalsifiable", meaning the only way to prove it, (since most every species of animal doesnt get AIDs when inoculated) according to you the study I mentioned would be unethical
Even though the drugs like AZT are far from life saving, and theres plenty of denialists who are hiv positive that would agree to take part in that study, theyre not going to take the medicine anyways, so theres no ethics problem.
youve just admitted it, the only study that can prove/disprove hiv cannot be conducted, therefore youve made your hypothesis unfalsifiable, therefore unscientific.
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 6:00 PM
It is only denialists who hold the convenient belief that the link between HIV and AIDS can only be proved by conducting studies that are manifestly unethical. Scientists recognize many ways of testing a hypothesis. A tiny sampling of the many studies confirming the HIV/AIDS connection can be found here and here.
Your notion of ethics is considerably more "flexible" than that of most scientists and all human subjects review boards. It is not considered ethical to knowingly provide substandard treatment for a life-threatening illness to a cohort of patients, whether or not they consent to it, or even request it. To qualify to be enrolled in a study, every patient must agree to accept treatment that meets the accepted standard of care for his condition.
Posted by: trrll | October 11, 2007 6:35 PM
oh yeah, the nih fact sheet! the mention that chimpanzees get aids, what they fail to say is that hundereds were inoculated and only a couple had immunosupression, the rest were fine, what else would you expect if you lived in a cage for 20 yrs?
Lies by ommission
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 8:54 PM
I take it that cooler cannot provide the definitives studies that support Duesy's claimed causes of AIDS.
Posted by: Joe | October 11, 2007 9:37 PM
I dont agree with duesy's claims, I think the multifactorial hypothesis makes the most sense, other infections might be involved like shyh ching lo's mycoplasma incognitus, a microbe that kills every animal inoculated. Catstrophic stress, AZT, severe drug abuse who knows?
there were only about 4,000 deaths a year early on in 1984-85, it skyrocketed to 50k when people were given monster doses of AZT, seems like the more attention and funding the disease gets the more people die.
more research is needed, does hiv cause AIDS? maybe, but more research is needed. Funny thing is in Garth nicolsons book Project day lily he claims to have uncovered through informants in the Pentagon that mycoplasma incognitus was part of the bioweapons program and the people in charge of it are laughing their asses off on how stupid doctors are not to discover this, how hiv is harmless and mycoplasma incognitus is the only microbe people need to worry about it.
Although nicolson does not claim who his sources are, it is clear from reading the slightly fictionilized version of true events Project Day Lily that it was shyh ching lo himself, the army scientist. This would make sense bc Lo in peer reviewed journals and patents incoulated chimps, monkeys, mice, embryos and they all sickened/died, and he didnt find it in over a hundered healthy controls.(refrences in lonliness thread)
When the nicolsons found it in the blood of gwi vets armed intelligence agents threatened them to stop their research. wonder why?
What a crackup, could it be that hiv is some harmless retrovirus while mycoplasma incognitus/penetrans is the only microbe to worry about? seems like it, Its being found in many patients with complex multi organic symptoms like that have been misdiagnosed with CFS/ALS/AIDS etc. Sad but true that this genocide has been perpetrated by closed minded scientists.
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 10:19 PM
And here we have another very typical denialist behavior. From two web sites listing dozens of studies, he chooses to cherry-pick one result and nitpick it. A scientist unfamiliar with the contorted arguments of the denialists would find it quite bizarre that he chose this particular report to attack. After all, from a scientific point of view, there is no particular reason to expect chimps to get AIDS from HIV. Many viruses produce different pathology in different species, and if simians are the natural reservoir of the virus, they are probably better adapted to it, and even humans can fight off HIV for years. But the chimp has special significance to denialists, because they've harped for years on the irrelevant fact that no HIV-infected chimps have progressed to AIDS. Now a couple have, so it's time to move the goalposts--not enough chimps have progressed to AIDS.
And as for those that have, well, it must be a coincidence. That's the ticket!
Denialists are very big on coincidence. Association of HIV with AIDS? Coincidence! Reduced AIDS mortality after the introduction of drugs designed to attack HIV? Coincidence! Epidemic of immunosuppression in gays, IV drug users, and hemophiliacs? Coincidence! AIDS in drug-free sexual partners of IV drug users? Coincidence! AIDS after accidental HIV needlestick? Coincidence! AIDS-like diseases produced by related viruses in simians? Coincidence! And on, and on...
Posted by: trrll | October 11, 2007 10:31 PM
cooler, you seem very stuck on this animal model thing, but I find that somewhat confusing. Are you saying SIV does not exist? Some of the papers that various denialists claim invalidates HIV causes AIDS theory seem to use SIV as the basis of the calculations in it. The most recent one that comes to mind is the study that says HIV + some other factors cause AIDS, not just the CD4+ depletion. This was done by studying SIV, and excuse me but I do not recall if it was you, carter, or another person that posted that. But on top of that you might respond by saying: SIV is not HIV, when you give HIV to animals they don't die. But I'm not sure that logic works, many viruses have a species barrier, which is good because I don't want to get a number of diseases animals have. Are you saying that HIV should not be victim to this same rule? Or are you saying HIV should live outside this and pass between species without issue? Could you please be more specific on what yoru problem is with HIV and animals?
Posted by: apy | October 11, 2007 10:36 PM
so chimps dont get aids bc theyve adapted to it, why dont mice get aids? what ad hoc excuse do you have for that?
im not denying that some microbes are species specific, but the only way to make that distinction is the study I mentioned above.
apy, siv is not hiv, siv only occurs in labratory maqacue monkeys, not in the wild, to condemn a whole generation to death bc of siv and macaque monkeys, seems to be unfair considering most every animal does not get AIDS.
Posted by: cooler | October 11, 2007 10:44 PM
I'm not sure what that proves cooler? How lethal a virus is often depends on its ability to get between hosts. A disease like SIV in the wild, it would seem, most likely would not be traveling between hosts as HIV in humans could, but I am unsure as I don't know much about SIV.
On top of this, I'm not sure how good other monkeys are at diagnosing disease in their friends, nor am I aware of what the monkey healthcare system is like, is it possible that some monkeys do die from SAIDS in the wild and we are unaware of it? Or would you mark that off as completely impossible?
On top of that, when monkeys are given SIV in captivity they do acquire SAIDS, I did not notice in your previous statements that you a required the animal model to be in the wild. Are you saying that because monkeys get SAIDS when given SIV in captivity that SIV does not exist? Or that SIV is not causing them to have SAIDS?
I'm also unsure of what you mean by "considering most every animal does not get AIDS", do you know this for fact? It seems most animals are not researched in this way and would most likely succumb to a predator prior to any useful external diagnosis. Many animals live a rather short lifespan next to humans as well. On top of that, I know of very few animals that have the healthcare to live to a ripe old age. Finally, it is well known that FIV does exist, HIV for felines. So we seem to have SIV, HIV, and FIV. Again, I would not necessarily expect a monkey to get sick after injecting it with FIV, given that viruses seem to have a species barrier, but these animals, when infected wiht their corresponding viruses do appear to get sick in much the same way, so there does appear to be some animal model here.
Could you please explain why captivity matters and what point you are making with that statement? Could you please give some information on the FIV and if there are any studies which contradict the existences of FIV? Are there any studies showing that FIV is a product of poor diet? Drug use? Lack of attention? Finally could you please explain how you know most every animal does not get AIDS and why you would expect every animal to get AIDS if HIV does exist, as well as why which species of animals get which diseases is relevant to whate disease humans get?
Posted by: apy | October 11, 2007 11:01 PM
Another good morning for you I see Dr. Trrll. Since you were unwilling - surely not unable - to explain what Robert Gallo was talking about regarding reverse transcriptase/transcription, perhaps you could tell me where you've got the thing from about freethinkers and coincidence?
I'm also interested in your theory of chimps and HIV. If I understand you correctly, you are saying that chimps are adapted to HIV so they don't get AIDS - except in a couple of cases where they do get AIDS. So both the chimps who(allegedly) do get AIDS and those who don't support your theory. Likewise, people who are unfortunate enough to test positve on the tests manufactured to identify predetermined risk groups and get AIDS confirm you theory. But those who do not progress also confirm your theory.
Posted by: Pope | October 12, 2007 12:13 AM
SIV and HIV are all related viruses. In fact HIV-1 is closer to SIV-cpz than to HIV-2. In addition some of the SHIV are basically HIV with only small parts of SIV added and these cause SAIDS in susceptible animals.
SIV does occur in the wild in African monkeys and primates. It does not cause disease in these animals. However, it does cause disease in Asian monkeys.
Duesberg argues that retroviruses do not kill cells and that retroviruses cannot cause AIDS. These are blatantly untrue. SIV and SHIV reproducibly cause SAIDS in macaques.
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 12, 2007 12:35 AM
It's difficult to express just how stupid this is. The fact that a proportion of both chimpanzees and humans that are infected with HIV do not progress to AIDS does not confirm the theory that HIV causes AIDS. It is, however, entirely consistent with the theory. Viruses do not cause disease and death in 100% of infected animals.
The various tests for HIV are not manufactured to identify predetermined risk groups. They are manufactured to detect antibodys to HIV proteins, HIV proteins, HIV RNA and HIV DNA.
Coincidentally they just happen to predict who is going to progress to AIDS.
Coincidentally HIV just happens to specifically infect the exact type of T-cells that are depleted in AIDS patients.
Coincidentally treating people with AIDS with drugs that are designed to specifically interfere with HIV enzymes just happens to reduce HIV viral loads, increase CD4+ counts, and dramatically reduce mortality and morbidity.
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 12, 2007 12:51 AM
The bit about captivity and in the wild is a red herring.
SIV is prevalent in monkeys and primates in Africa. It is not present in Asian monkeys.
If you give Asian monkeys SIV they get AIDS and die.
Is cooler suggesting that we have to introduce SIV into wild populations of Asian monkeys to personally convince him? Doing this under controlled conditions in captivity isn't enough?
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 12, 2007 1:08 AM
I don't know whether evolutionary adaptation to the virus is why chimps don't get AIDS more often, although it is certainly true that when a disease coevolves with a species it often gets less damaging. But that is only one of many reasons why chimps might respond differently to the virus than humans. And since there are more differences between mice and humans than between apes and humans, there are even more reasons why mice might respond differently to the disease.
The point is that whether chimps get AIDS from HIV tells you very little about how the virus affects humans, because theory provides no strong basis to predict one way or another. And whether mice get AIDS tells you even less. The reason scientists are interested in AIDS in animals has nothing at all to do with proving that HIV causes AIDS in humans, which is already firmly established. It would, however, be very convenient to have an animal model for AIDS, because it would help in testing prospective treatments.
Posted by: trrll | October 12, 2007 1:20 AM
Apy, you asked about FIV. The following is from:
http://www.theanimalspirit.com/Questions.html#test
Should I Test Feral Cats For FIV and FeLV?
Testing is not necessary for feral cats who are going to remain within their colony and do not show signs of serious illness. Positive test results are not always accurate and it's necessary to rule-out false-positives. The funds that would have been used for testing can be used toward sterilization. Moreover, killing a cat who is not suffering is unethical. The tests normally administered to ferals are not reliable enough to make life or death decisions. Euthanasia is defined as the mercy killing of a suffering individual. Killing for any other reason is not euthanasia. Cats who show no active sign of serious illness should be returned to their colony.
Many will try to make you feel guilty for not testing. They feel that feral cats lead short, miserable lives and you are choosing to allow them to suffer and die from horrible diseases. We know that this is not accurate.
Amazing. Feral cats are treated more intelligently than human beings!
Ahhhh, but to laugh, as they say the tests should not be used to make life/death decisions for cats. Ahhhh, but to laugh even more as the tests used on cats ARE the very same as those claimed to be 99% accurate and then used to diagnose humans and to put them on expensive, fast-tracked, little studied, unproven to relieve anything but intense fear and panic of the diagnosed, to be taken for a lifetime, lipodystrophy causing, neuropathy causing, bone marrow and liver killing, and quite often death dealing super toxic HIV drugs.
Apy, you asked: Are there any studies showing that FIV is a product of poor diet?
Now why, Apy, why would they ever want to do that? You know damn well that if they did, it would be the end of the highly profitable HIV and FIV business.
Gee, Apy, I really wonder why FIV is such a great concern and so often found in the often malnourished starving wild feral cats. Could it be because stressed wild feral cat poplations quite often suffer from starvation and POOR DIETS and that when such is the case, the starvation is usually affecting nearly the entire colony of cats???
Could the poor diets of some wild feral cats leave them open to many OIs and infections and cellular destruction that causes the FIV tests to blow off false poz just the same as the HIV tests do when humans are run down from drug abuse, stress, and malnutrition?
The well known retrovirologist that JP Moore used to buddy around with is famous for having said the line: "Its the virus, stupid!"
As a dissident who has intensely investigated the HIV and the dissident stuff for years, FIV turning up ALMOST EXCLUSIVELY in malnourished and also at times in other heavily stressed out cats shows me once again that
"IT AIN"T THE VIRUS, STUPID!"
It's the stress and malnourishment and toxed out bodies, that leaves ones immune system unable to fight off common OI's, just as it has been in EVERY AIDS CASE that I have ever seen in my 35 years of living exclusively in the highly affected gay community. And I have personally known and befriended and lived with plenty of them.
That is why I continue to drill it into the heads of the know-it-all HIV promoters, that AIDS is about toxins, stress, emotions, and drugs. Yet, for whatever reason, the HIV pushers just won't wake up and smell the coffee. Much of the gay community is still too paralyzed by panic and fear to smell the coffee, let alone think with any degree of healthy scepticism.
The mainstream HIV pushers and researchers also most always do not even personally know a single person who is or has been an AIDS case on any kind of a personal level. They may know some casually or know of some, but they certainly do not KNOW these people on any intimate or long term personal friendship level as I have with many of them over the last 25 years. I know many who died, and I know the stress and lifestyles they lived. I know the stress that many were under prior to any diagnosis or illness. Many had been disowned by their families for being gay. Many even had their own internal death wishes. I watched as some slowly declined in health due to their mindset and stress and drug habits, etc, and finally came down as HIV or AIDS.
And in knowing so many of these people close up and personally for many years, and in knowing their stresses and fears and problems and habits and addictions, and eating habits, I also know what a crock it is to believe that these peoples main problem was ever any single virus. HIV could be completely removed from the equation and these people would still have been quite ill.
Chris Noble, the biggest mouth on these threads does not even personally know a single HIV positive on any kind of personal level.
Neither does Tara. Neither does franklin, elkmountain, adele, trrll, etc, etc, etc. Neither do you, and neither do 99.99% of the HIV hypothesis promoters and believers who bellow out their programmed beliefs on these threads.
Yet they all certainly profess to know-it-all when it comes to HIV and this supposed disease, even though they don't even know anybody who was ever diagnosed other than some of the dissidents that they argue with in these threads.
Posted by: Michael | October 12, 2007 1:26 AM
Unwilling is right. I have zero interest in humoring HIV denialist obsessions regarding Robert Gallo. From a scientific perspective, Gallo is ancient history, with little relevance to the modern understanding of HIV. I have, however, followed the AIDS story since the beginning. I remember when Duesberg's theory of AIDS was taken seriously by much of the scientific community. I've seen support for Duesberg's ideas drop away as study after study supported the causative role of HIV and not Duesberg's "drugs and sex" theory. And I've seen Duesberg and his disciples repeatedly appeal to coincidence in their hopeless struggle to explain away the steadily accumulating mountain of evidence supporting the role of HIV.
Posted by: trrll | October 12, 2007 1:39 AM
HIV enters CD4+ cells by binding to specific receptors on the surface of the cells. Mice CD4+ cells do not have the same receptors.
However, if you take SCID mice with no immune system and give them human thymus tissue they produce human CD4+ cells.
Now if you infect these SCIDhu mice with HIV guess what happens. Active HIV infection, CD4+ cell depletion and AIDS!
This is an animal model for AIDS, you know the animal models that the denialists deny exist.
Posted by: Chris Noble | October 12, 2007 2:33 AM
Dr. Noble, really now, "if you take mice with no immune system". Yes or monkeys for that matter. As you said yourself, "It's difficult to express just how stupid this is." Anyway I think you managed splendidly, Dr. Noble:
The fact that a proportion of both chimpanzees and humans that are infected with HIV do not progress to AIDS does not confirm the theory that HIV causes AIDS. It is, however, entirely consistent with the theory. Viruses do not cause disease and death in 100% of infected animals.
Why not? We are not talking about a hyothetically mutagenic virus here, but a good old infect-and-deplete killer microbe. So what's up with those 2 chimps out of, 150 or however many? Or should I say what's up with the 148 anomalous chimps?
The various tests for HIV are not manufactured to identify predetermined risk groups. They are manufactured to detect antibodys to HIV proteins, HIV proteins, HIV RNA and HIV DNA.
Coincidentally they just happen to predict who is going to progress to AIDS.
Coincidentally Drs. Noble and Trrll they just happen to "predict", Ceteris paribus, who is black and who is white with an amazing accuracy.
Coincidentally HIV just happens to specifically infect the exact type of T-cells that are depleted in AIDS patients.
Coincidentally, HIV supposedly depletes a lot of T-cells it never infects, so what's you point?
Gallo is ancient history, with little relevance to the modern understanding of HIV.
Couldn't agree more Trrll. I'll make sure to let him know you feel that way as well. Are you tenured by the way? There's a high correlaton between belittling Gallo and sudden loss of job you know.
Posted by: Pope | October 12, 2007 3:07 AM