I was out yesterday, and as such missed Lynn Margulis' blog tour stop at Pharyngula. For those who may not be familiar with Margulis, she's a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and was the one who pushed the (now accepted) idea that chloroplasts and mitochondria in cells came about due to symbiosis. In the post announcing her impending arrival, there were lots of questions about her stance on HIV/AIDS. This is mostly due to a review she co-authored on Amazon of Harvey Bialy's biography of HIV denier Peter Duesberg. The review ends: "As both Bialy and Duesberg emphasize, let us see the research results of those who show that cancer is 'caused by an oncogene' and that 'AIDS is caused by the rapidly mutating HIV virus'. Please point us to the published evidence."
However, since this review was co-authored, it was uncertain how much of this was Margulis' view alone. She answers that at Pharyngula; I'm going to quote it in its entirety here because it's just so incredible:
What is an HIV/AIDS denier? Or HIV/AIDS denialist?
Peter Duesberg is a fine scientist, I have read his book and examined some of the scientific papers upon which it is based. From the CDC (Center for Disease Control) in Atlanta I have requested the scientific papers that prove the causal relationship between the HIV retrovirus and the IMMUNODEFICIENCY SYNDROME commonly known as AIDS. They have never sent even references to the peer-reviewed primary scientific literature that establishes the causal relationship because they can't. Such papers do not exist.I have seen all four of the films made by Coleman Jones and colleagues in Toronto. Film #3 in the series is most telling. Although no strong evidence exists for any simple causal relationship what is clear is that the HIV claim is erroneous by the standards of microbiology and virology.
When I saw the glowing review of George Miklos, a colleague and a fiercely honest scientist, of Harvey Bialy's book on the scientific life of Peter Duesberg I bought and read Harvey's book. I have also read Celia Farber's superb article in the Lewis Lapham "swansong" issue of Harper's magazine, last March, I believe. Rebecca Culshaw's paper on why she quit AIDS statistical research and Dr. Geschachter's unpublished ms about African AIDS, accepted by the editor and then rejected both substantiated my reluctance to accept the glib "HIV/AIDS" term. I found all of these readings far more convincing than any literature proported to show a HIV-AIDS causal connection.
I heard a talk by a "medical scientist" from the Harvard Medical School at a meeting at Roger Williams Univ in Rhode Island from a supposed expert who attempts to design an HIV vaccine. He claimed the HIV virus mutates a billion times in 48hours. It became clear that the HIV virus has no clear identity. The HIV tests, nearly always positive for pregnant women, that vary significantly in the US, Europe and Australia are particularly disturbing. My son-in-law, James di Properzio spent several months researching this story for the Common Review (the Great Books Foundation in Chicago). His findings were consistent with Celia Farber's and after encouragement from the editor the board reviewed and rejected his draft.
"Science is the search for truth" said David Bohm, "whether we like it [the truth] or not. From my readings, discussions with knowledgable scientists close to the story, I simply conclude, as does Kerry Mullis, the Nobel Lauriate who wrote a foreword to Duesberg's classical work that there is no evidence that "HIV causes AIDS". I have no special expertise. I simply seek the evidence for scientific claims, especially when they have dire consequences for the science itself and the treatment..not just medical..of so many people.
I have observed that the closer one comes to the study of humans the shoddier the quality of the scientific evidence. Maybe that is one of the reasons that I work with bacteria and protoctists (the eukaryotic microorganisms and their immediate descendants exclusive of plants, animals and fungi). The vast majority of these are harmless to human health.Although I have written about the natural history of the anthrax bacterium, Beethoven's and Nietzsche's syphilis and the work of Hentry Taylor Ricketts with insect-borne pathgens (eg.g, ticks carrying Rocky Mt Spotted fever), in general I avoid the last 3 million years of evolution and any other studies thatrequire detailed knowledge of mammalian, including human, biology. Why? Because political bias, hearsay and gossip are inevitable whereas in the first part of the evolution story (from 3800 until 3 million years ago) politics intervenes far less obtrusively. In pursuit of the story of life and its effects on planet Earth one can be more honest if the earliest atages of evolution are the objects of study.
And this way I can lay low and not be "name-called" (i.e., "denialist") because I ask hard questions and require solid evidence before I embrace a particular causal hypothesis. Indeed, is not my attitude of inquiry exactly what science is about?
Of course, her "attitude of inquiry" is indeed what science is about, but how can one be a renowned scientist and be unable to search the biomedical literature for oneself? Or refer to other colleagues who are also well-respected in their fields in scare quotes as "medical scientists?" Indeed, in the chat transcript that followed PZ's post, Margulis makes her opinon of biomedical researchers even clearer:
No. I believe at all zoologists are intrinsically poorly educated in biology and that medical people are misinformed. This results f rom "field chauvinism". Lovelock aptly calls it "academic apartheid". Probably related to the budget categories and marketers that set them up.
I ask, who's the one hindering science, by assuming that entire fields of experts are "poorly educated" and "misinformed," and therefore allowing the evidence accumulated by those fields to be hand-waved away?
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I think the reason for our special friends not being too insulting on SBM is that the posts there are signed with a real name. It's one thing to insult someone anonymously who's also using a pseudonym, and another to do it to a "real person". It's the hidden fear that someone might expose THEIR identity too.
"Pat, I'll stack up my denialist reading list against yours any day. I wonder how much actual science you've read?"
I am sorry, what are you refering too?
thanks for all thinks...
güzel...
Know what? I always wanted the denialists to be right. It's kind of cool to think about a rag-tag bunch of eccentrics like Duesberg and Rasnick taking on a multi-billion dollar worldwide conspiracy and being right. It would be even better if the vitamin peddlers were right, too, and all we had to do to end AIDS was take garlic pills or wear goat's teeth around our necks.
I have no dog in this race, no absolute conviction one way or the other, although I tend to think that HIV is at least one primary cause of AIDS, if not the only one. I suppose this would qualify me for the pejorative classification âdenialistâ, however, since it seems to be levelled at anyone who is not a dyed in the woo âacceptancistâ. I donât think I can contribute much that is novel to this debate in terms of the evidence pro or con for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. I thought instead, my efforts might be better invested in an analysis of the debate itself. That consists simply of this: the consensus viewpoint here is expressed with high emotion and great vitriol, whereas the minority report is rather more subdued and civil, almost as though they were interested less in the ad hominem and more in the accomplishment of science. I would add that the minority viewpoint, as nearly as I can perceive, merely asks for certain research to be undertaken that would decide the debate unequivocally, and which would cost considerably less that the billions that have been annually allocated to the present lines of inquiry.
Widely financially enriching for us though these undoubtedly are, these present lines have not been exactly spectacular, particularly in the usable results department. One would think that this rather incontrovertible fact alone would leave us aching for newer and better ideas, and certainly reticent indeed to cast away any out of hand. Therefore, our entrenched viewpoint seems merely to be entrenched, since we seem curiously unwilling to respond to the questions initially set forth in the article above and at least several of those raised in the commentary. I would suggest that a useful and most scientific exercise might be to review the comments of, say, Kevin (for one, and for example) and attempt to enumerate and debunk those several points of his that stand as yet almost completely unaddressed. Were this to happen, then the consensus viewpoint might look and sound a little bit more scientific than theological. My concern is this: it is disturbing how prominent 9-11 truth, for instance, has become, as it now claims some 30 or more percent of our gullible public. Yet, all that would have been needed to crush it in its infancy was some more transparency and earnest, well-funded investigation. I am confident that had this occurred there would not today be more than 1% of the population thus succumbed, for it is not the evidence per se that fuels it (obviously) but rather the fact that the actions of those representing the official consensus viewpoint are indistinguishable to the public from those of a cover-up.
It is very sad that we so-called scientists are not behaving in this thread in a manner that is any more distinguishable from criers of âheresy, heresyâ. We could have merely allocated a few tens of millions (or even less) to this minority viewpoint, whilst exclaiming âsure, letâs look into that, you never knowâ and thus, in as far as we are right and they are wrong, condemned them to certain disgrace in fairly short order. If we had done so, then it would have appeared to the public that we were behaving as scientists. Instead, since they lack the scientific training to determine the question for themselves, they will no doubt latch on instead to the vitriolic and antiscientific TONE that we have taken with our dissenters, and decide, as they always do, for the polite underdog braving the slings and arrows of the dismissive establishment and I, for one, will not be able to blame them, bless their incredulous little hearts. Instead, once again, as in the case of the 9-11 âtruthâ movement, we are absolutely guaranteeing that the minority viewpoint, so easily satisfied at the outset, will grow and persist at a potentially great cost to us all, especially since tens of thousands of patients will choose to accept the âHIV is not the causeâ hypothesis for obvious reasons of wish-fulfillment. It is sorely tempting to enumerate the sins of anti-science of the consensus arguers in this thread, but I have taken up too much of your time already. Perhaps I will in the near future, though, if the minority viewpoint is allowed to persist so shamefully intact. I might suggest that character attacks, when employed in lieu of facts, might work better if they gave the impression that the attacker had read the works in question.
çok güzel bir yazı çok büyük bilgi teÅekkür ederiz! Benim için çok yararlı. Ãok teÅekkür ederim. Fikir harika. Tebrikler
Here's to Dr Margulis, Barry and Lincoln! Drive on!
The truth is out there and as long as the money does not trail there the bulliers will it to keep the money in their pockets at the expense of everything else.
Margulis at least has produced something valuable to science and humanity unlike every self-proffessed defender of science on this blog."
The same thing could be said about the three individuals I named earlier, namely Shockley, Hynek and Josephson, in addition to Pauling. The fact that somebody was at one time a first rate scientist is no guarantee that they will remain so, that is unless Mr. pat thinks that vitamin C cures cancer, that black Americans are intellectually inferior to white Americans, that the earth has been visited by aliens from outer space who have abducted earthlings for medical research or that PK, ESP, and cold fusion are real phenomen
Very Interesting!!!!!! and fascinating information!!!!!!!
it's good but dont for me :)
herkeze teÅekkürler hizmetleri ve emekleri için
çok güzel bir yazı çok büyük bilgi teÅekkür ederiz! Benim için çok yararlı. Ãok teÅekkür ederim. Fikir harika. Tebrikler
I have never at any time made any claim to have personally done research in this area.
I challenge you to provide any example of anything posted by me in which I have made any such claim.
I agree that most of the science supporting HIV is inconvenient and not because it is so overwhelmingly convincing, Adele, but because it interferes with the advancement of real scientific inquiry. I think all of the "tests" associated with HIV fit this definition of "inconvenient", i.e. they suck. Regardless, I would certainly not label anything I've read in this thread regarding ELISAs as groundbreaking.
The dilution factor for ELISAs is not a particularly damning factor, in and of itself, for reasons given regarding the use of dilution in other assays. However, the difference is that ELISAs cross reacts so severely with so many things and since we do not have a proper isolate of HIV, such cross reactions are indeed very damning.