In our paper on HIV denial, Steven and I started the introduction off with a note about South African president Thabo Mbeki:
This denial was highlighted on an international level in 2000, when South African president Thabo Mbeki convened a group of panelists to discuss the cause of AIDS, acknowledging that he remained unconvinced that HIV was the cause. His ideas were derived at least partly from material he found on the Internet. Though Mbeki agreed later that year to step back from the debate, he subsequently suggested a re-analysis of health spending with a decreased emphasis on HIV/AIDS.
Though he's not been publicly vocal about his views in recent years, it has been suggested that they've not changed--that he still remains unconvinced, at best, of HIV causation of AIDS. An article in today's Guardian suggests he's ready to start speaking on it again--and it's the same old schtick:
President Thabo Mbeki remains an "Aids dissident" who has told a biographer that he regrets bowing to pressure from his cabinet to "withdraw from the debate" over the disease ravaging South Africa.***
Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred describes how the president contacted the author earlier this year to reiterate some of the views that caused uproar in the medical community before Mr Mbeki stopped talking publicly about Aids several years ago. Mr Gevisser also describes how the president's view of the disease was shaped by an obsession with race, the legacy of colonialism and "sexual shame".
The book will reinforce the view of Mr Mbeki's critics who say his unorthodox opinions have cost hundreds of thousands of lives by delaying the distribution of medicines, and that the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, has continued these views.
This may sound familiar to those who've read our PLoS Medicine paper (or who've simply dealt with pharma-phobic deniers) as well:
The president said he was seeking an open debate but portrayed those who disagreed with him - who include Nelson Mandela, trade union leaders whose members were dying in large numbers and Aids activists - as in the pay of the drug companies.
And while Mbeki attributes much power to "drug companies," it sounds like many who've disagreed with his stance on AIDS have been fearful to tell him as much:
Mr Gevisser says that while Mr Mbeki has never explicitly denied the link between HIV and Aids, he is a "profound sceptic". The issue came to a head in the cabinet in 2002 after Mr Mbeki's political advisers and some ministers told him it was running out of control and damaging South Africa's reputation, which had been so high under Mr Mandela's leadership.
"What happened was not, quite, a rebellion," writes Mr Gevisser. "Only one elected ANC representative, Pregs Govender, the chair of a parliamentary committee on the status of women, resigned and publicly criticised Mbeki. And even behind closed doors only one or two people actually had the courage to tell Mbeki they thought he was wrong."
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The blocking agent (Bovine and Goat Sera) is in the diluent. If you don't use the diluent you don't use the blocking agent.
Ah ok, we're talking about the different implications of omitting that one and same step. Fair enough. Thanks for the clarification.
Jim, franklin, noble etc
You guys have no balls and no expertise whatsoever, you guys are no different than those idiotic experts that said said "scurvy" was caused by a virus for decades, a few "herectic" scientists and independent researchers like myself said it was cause by a vitamic c deficiancy and were called "loons", so I would suggest you clowns stop defending viruses that do zilch in animals, have 40 year window periods and are in one in a thousand cells.
Aka get some balls heart and courage. Let me guess franklin the broken record is going talk about "works of fiction" not knowiing himself that his stupidity should be a work of fiction, but sadly its not.
While you continue to claim against all evidence that Karpas states that HIV is defeated there is no other way to explain your behaviour.
Is this supposed to be satire? How old are you? When was scurvy thought to be caused by a virus? You are an independent researcher? Of what?
And cooler chimes in with his stock answer indicating that, as usual, the discussion is beyond his comprehension. While others discuss science, cooler is off thinking about balls and courage and some reference to scurvy. I am flattered though that you included me.
This silly game only demonstrates your dishonesty. Karpas does not say that the human immune system defeats HIV. HIV continues to replicate after the initial acute infection. After a period of time HIV causes CD4+ cell depletion, immune suppression, and AIDS.
Well, Chris, it seems that you share with franklin not only a pet monkey but also your self-condemning habit of charging dishonesty in a context in which it makes no sense whatsoever.
Thank you for repeating the HIV meme once again as some kind of incantation, which you seem to find a pacifier, but there is nothing in your attempt to evade the meaning of the simple words that Karpas writes.
You have exposed yourself Chris in your usual attempt to claim that others have misinterpreted whatever you think contradicts the meme.
When will you wake up, throw off the monkey and understand that everything contradicts the meme? - except the evasive claims of those who cling to the paradigm as if it was their lifeboat.
Which it is. There ain't nothing else for them to cling to, since AIDS decline has zip to do with retroviruses of any kind as a cause, as the literature constantly confirms.
HIV just a harmless passenger, dummy. Wake up and smell the coffee. Muttering mantra won't change anything. The party line that antibodies don't neutralise is bunk. Fauci agrees - read his textbook chapter in Fundamental Immunology edited by Willam Paul.
Stop supporting dangerous and useless drugs which you would refuse yourself.
That's known as hypocrisy.
"There ain't nothing else for them to cling to, since AIDS decline has zip to do with retroviruses of any kind as a cause, as the literature constantly confirms."
What literature are you reading?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&T…
Care to tell me how this show HIV is a passenger virus?
Im an independent researcher of idiotic frauds of the century for my balls are big. It was the prevailing hypothesis that some type of virus caused scurvy and pellegra were caused by infections. Duesbergs book is my source, for HE IS OUR GOD DAMN FUCKING MASTER.
DUESBERGS BALLS ARE ONLY OUTSHINED BY ONLY ONE OTHER MANS BALLS, SHYH CHING LO'S MD PHD ARMY'S LEADING PATHOLOGIS, THE ONLY SCIENTIST TO DISCOVER A MICROBE THAT KILLED EVERY ANIMAL INJECTED, MYCOPLASMA INCOGNITUS/PENETRANS. BOW YOUR GOD DAMN MOTHER FUCKING HEAD IN AWE OF YOUR FATHER LO! TEN HUT!
patholgist. I meant to say, perhaps you people need a touch of Lily in your life. PROJECT DAY LILY SON, TRUE STORY ABOUT THE MYCOPLASMA BIOWARFARE PROGRAM, SLIGHTLY FICTIONILIZED TO STAY OUT OF COURT. RAVE REVIEWS FROM REAL SCIENTISTS LIKE ROGER GUILEMANN MD PHD NOBEL PRIZE WINNER, NOT FRAUDS LIKE FRANKILN/JIM/NOBLE ETC.
http://www.projectdaylily.com/
about the mycoplasma biowarfare program, rave reviews from real scientists like nobel prize winner roger guilemann md phd., not frauds like you fools, true story slightly fictionilized
http://www.projectdaylily.com/
It is simply that "lying" is a stupid accusation which doesn't make any sense.
While you continue to claim against all evidence that Karpas states that HIV is defeated there is no other way to explain your behaviour.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 2, 2007 1:38 AM
"Defeated" "kept at bay" "vanquished" "kicked its little ass" you choose.
It doesn't make a comeback of its own accord with a healthy system.
Antibodies neutralize.
Drugs damage uselessly.
Drugs kill.
You wouldn't take them.
Hypocrite.
By the way, Fauci says HIV makes T cells proliferate.
Stick that in your monkey and smack it.
Low enough style for you, Chris.
yeah jim, whatever you useless hack, your no expert at anything, guarenteed you got rejected from your schools of choice, and your girls of choice if you know what I mean.
Expert wannabe hacks like yourself will say anything, like before the war expert poser hacks like you said saddam was gonna nuke us with WMD'ds, ignorant poseurs like yourself are no replacement for real experts like lo, duesberg, strohman, margulis, gilbert maniotis, etc thats why your sorry asses wouldnt debate them in public cause your a god damn fraud.
I spent yesterday with a three-year-old. His use of the rhetorical "Nyaaaahh" surpassed yours, but only marginally.
No matter how much you spin Karpas' review it does not mean what you claim it means. HIV is not defeated. It is not conquered. It is not vanquished. It continues to replicate. It is not latent. It is a chronic infection.
He does not. You are simply incapable of understanding the text.
I have read the chapter and it most definitely does not support your bizarre interpretations. It describes several of the mechanisms by which HIV can cause immune suppression.
The relevant passage that you refer to is
It does not support your fanciful fictions.
Duesberg's balls glow in the dark? I am awestruck, but I don't think I'll be bowing my head.
PS. scurvy has been known to be caused by nutritional deficiencies for over 200 years - long before viruses were discovered.
Truthseeker (sic),
You continue to defend your claim that Karpas's paper can be accurately described as:
However, in his paper, Karpas flatly states that HIV infection leads to disease progression and death in nearly every infected person.
A scientific discussion does not require politeness, but it does require honesty.
There is no scientific discussion taking place between us, because you continue to misrepresent Karpas's paper--even though anyone can obtain the paper and see for himself that your characterization in no way reflects Karpas' views on the lethality of HIV infection.
Your continued misrepresentation of Karpas prevents you from engaging in any meaningful intellectual discussion, scientific or otherwise.
Your need to misrepresent the views of other people in an attempt to support your own flawed positions only serves to emphasize the irony of your Blog Handle.
Noreen says:
Noreen, how long did it take for you to develop an opportunistic infection the first time your CD4 T-cell counts consistently stayed below 200?
I guess we would need to know this information to determine if your asymptomatic period is longer, shorter, or the same this time around.
Franklin, my original CD4's were 78 and I don't have any idea when or for how long before that first meassuremt of them. However, since stopping the meds, nearly two years ago, they have stayed under 200 and without any incidents.
Truthtwister,
You might consider that some people consider lying to be rude. Whether its lying about the paper directly or whether its lying about having read and understood the paper.
Beyond that, it is also considered rude, by many, to put your lies in the mouth of the author of the paper. That you are doing this is clear to anyone who has bothered to read your needlessly verbose comments.
"90%...deadly...10 years" Who is stupid enough to consider a virus that ends the lives of 90% of those infected within 10 years defeated?
You're worse than the tobacco company execs Truthtwister. You are the Public Relations Officer for death. And you are a fool if you believe anyone should take you seriously.
No matter how much you spin Karpas' review it does not mean what you claim it means. HIV is not defeated. It is not conquered. It is not vanquished. It continues to replicate. It is not latent. It is a chronic infection.
" Fauci agrees - read his textbook chapter in Fundamental Immunology edited by Willam Paul."
He does not. You are simply incapable of understanding the text.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 2, 2007 3:02 AM
Chris, there is no point in continuing to trade counter assertions, which is your only style of argument. Let the intelligent reader decide what is going on, on and between the lines, even if it is too subtle for you to appreciate. The text is there for all to see.
It is disappointing however to try and meet you on your own three year old level and find that you disown it, Isn't that what you enjoy? If not, why do you do it?
Surely there is only one reason why those who are challenged reply with noxious crudities. Their intellectual position is too weak.
Your continued misrepresentation of Karpas prevents you from engaging in any meaningful intellectual discussion, scientific or otherwise.
Posted by: franklin | December 2, 2007 3:23 AM
The readers can easily decide who is right, Franklin. All your claim repetition adds up to is your own certainty that you know what is going on. That is what is known as the Kraft-Dunning effect.
"90%...deadly...10 years" Who is stupid enough to consider a virus that ends the lives of 90% of those infected within 10 years defeated?
You're worse than the tobacco company execs Truthtwister. You are the Public Relations Officer for death. And you are a fool if you believe anyone should take you seriously.
Posted by: Roy Hinkley | December 2, 2007 9:41 AM
The Kraft-Dunning effect in glorious technicolor, Roy, thanks for the demo. Maybe you should ask yourself if you understand why the texts we have in hand are being written, not just what they claim..
Thanks again to Tara for hosting three supposedly competent people who when disturbed in their complacency emit such incivilities that decent people cannot abide being in the same room.
Probably the only thing that keeps most good people here is a sense of public responsibility that impels them to contradict supposely intelligent people who distort science and condemn so many to lethal medications.
Of course, the misleading claims and self-contradictory assertions are worth teasing out so that they can be exposed for what they are: management of data and logic to fit a monkey meme. Forewarned is forearmed, and the list of false counters to the debunking of HIV=AIDS is always useful.
Shame on you three for the insulting tone of your posts, though, which don't even deserve humorous tolerance, let alone satire. But the posts are now on the record for all to see and judge.
1016 comments and what have you learned? Absolutely nothing, it seems. And that's your most effective argument, isn't it?
Exactly like the professor in Pisa, who refused to look through the telescope, because he thought it was a trick.
Noreen,
From the information you provide, you have no way of knowing how long your CD4 counts had been below 200 cells/microliter before developing your fitrst opportunistic infection. They may have been below 200 for 2 years or more before your illness manifested itself.
If that is the case, your current clinical condition would be entirely consistent with your original clinical presentation.
In the table that I brought to your attention, 14% of individuals with CD4 counts below 200 cells/microliter and viral loads greater than 30,000 copies/ml did not develop an opportunistic infection over a 3 year period.
From what I can tell, there is nothing about the course of your disease that contradicts the importance of CD4 T-cell counts and viral load testing for prognosis of HIV-infected patients.
You have made choice that avoiding potential toxicities of anti-retroviral medications is of utmost importance to you. That is a perfectly valid choice, and I am glad that you are so pleased with the outcome of your choice over the past two years.
But for you to claim that your condition disproves the relationship between HIV infection, decline of CD4 T-cells, and immune deficiency is fallacious.
Precisely Truthseeker, these staunch defenders of failed science, refuse to learn anything let alone have any semblance of logical thought. Sad but true.
Truthseeker (sic),
If my posts seem repetitive to you, it is because you have yet to respond to the criticisms of your position.
I explained my understanding of your assertions about Karpas's essay, why they are wrong, how your continued defense of these assertions can only be explained by lying or a lack of comprehension, and your response has been merely to fantasize about my mommy spanking my tiny botty.
Your incompetence even extends to your insults.
You have accused Chris, Roy, and myself of demonstrating the "Kraft-Dunning Effect."
I believe you mean the Kruger-Dunning Effect, the phenomenon wherein "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it)."
That you are ignorant of the scientific context of the Kruger-Dunning Effect, yet continue to confidently assert it in your rhetorical arguments, provides an ironically satisfying illustration of your ignorance, incmompetence, and intellectual puffery.
By staying here and as more and more time goes by and my levels are public knowledge, we will all see what the outcome will be. I am not afraid to post levels, etc. as I have great confidence in the fact that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
I believe you mean the Kruger-Dunning Effect, the phenomenon wherein "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it)."
That you are ignorant of the fact that Chris mentioned this paper here first in this thread, and that I have mentioned it since many times, provides an ironically not very satisfying example of how silly you are, franklin.
It doesn't let you off the hook for misleading readers by claiming that an inert virus causes the immune system catastrophe which you want to medicate with DNA chain terminators, though.
It doesn't let you off the hook for supporting this monstrous iatrogenic evil when you claim to be able to understand the science, and read the criticism of it carefully.
It doesn't let you off the hook when people sicken and die, half of them in this country from the drugs you support, and which may support you, is that right?
Noreeen, if I may you ask out of curiosity, what changes you made in your lifestyle (namely nutrition) since you stopped with the ARVs and/or recovered from those AIDS defining symptoms? And what kind of ARVs (name/class) you were taking?
Rezaf, basically, I eat a low fat diet with some carbs diet. Very little sugar, sodas and not much junk food, except I do like chocolate. To answer your second question, they initially started me Sustiva, Viread and lamivudine. I stopped these meds for six weeks and then was placed on truvada, atazanavir and lamivudine. I was very allergic to atazanavir meaning my skin, including my eyes and inside mouth turned green along with very high liver enzymes. Then I was placed on a third set, which was Truvada, Ritonavir and I think lexvia is an antiviral.
" Very little sugar, sodas and not much junk food, except I do like chocolate"
chocolote is VERY good for you (in moderation, of course)
A square a day keeps the doctor away!
try the belgian chocolates, they are better than the Swiss (I just commited treason!). I recommend Mont d'Or- more cocoa....mmmmmm yummy!
The cure for scurvy was proposed by average laypeople, indigenous tribesman, who reccomeneded tree bark, fruits, high in vitamin c, it was ignored for decades, they were called "cranks" patients were denied informed consent and thousands died needlessly, sounds like what is going on now.
and idiotic experts pursued thier stupid theories such as infections etc. for decades ignoring hypothesis bc of scientific arrogance, murdering hundereds of thousands when the cure was already proposed and ignored by hacks like you guys. Not only that the sailors were not made aware of this easy cure, if they did they would have tried it and lived instead of dying a miserable death, ie Shows you how dumb experts can be, pathetic sycophants sheep that classic examples of groupthink at its worst, denying patients informed consent (for if they were made aware of the tribespeople reccomendation they would have tried and lived, but no, the experts said it was crankery! and they should not be able to hear such a thing, just shutup and take your medicine like nurse ratched said) You guys are pathetic.
Same thing now with your no animal model 1/1000 cell slow viruses. See hiv fact or fraud.
Franklin:
Truthseeker (sic):
The irony arises not from having referred to it first nor even from mentioning many times.
The irony arises from repeatedly referring to it as the Kraft-Dunning Effect, illustrating the overconfidence fueled by ignorance that lies at the heart of the effect.
Noreen,
From the information you provide, you have no way of knowing how long your CD4 counts had been below 200 cells/microliter before developing your fitrst opportunistic infection. They may have been below 200 for 2 years or more before your illness manifested itself.
If that is the case, your current clinical condition would be entirely consistent with your original clinical presentation.
In the table that I brought to your attention, 14% of individuals with CD4 counts below 200 cells/microliter and viral loads greater than 30,000 copies/ml did not develop an opportunistic infection over a 3 year period.
From what I can tell, there is nothing about the course of your disease that contradicts the importance of CD4 T-cell counts and viral load testing for prognosis of HIV-infected patients. (Franklin)
Franklin,
You never answer questions on substance, so I don't suppose you're gonna answer this one either since you're basically a chickenshit:
What if Noreen had an intitial CD4 count, before any (other) AIDS defining clinical symptoms, of less than 200 for 5 years; would that "contradict the importance of CD4 T-cell counts and viral load testing for prognosis of HIV-infected patients"?
Would anything contradict the Fiat of your mono-causal god?
How about 8 years? 10 years? 20 years?
You wanna play chicken? Franklin Maybe, just maybe, I have before me a couple of old CD4 counts from Noreen. Remember she has a long history of health problems. Are you on? Name the stakes.
How about meeting Christine Maggiore in LA
Truthtwister, you are sounding more an more like a three year old. A typical three year old will try to talk back by parroting the language that it hears. Accusing me of demonstrating the Kraft-Dunning(sic) effect is a good example of simply parroting such a criticism.
You give me no reason tyo believe that you have read and understood the paper by Kruger and Dunning or the articles by Karpas, Richman and Fauci.
You keep on vainly claiming that Karpas says something that he doesn't. He categorically does not say that the human immune system defeats HIV. The only way that youi can come to the conclusion that he does is through ignornace, wishful thinking and self-delusion.
The reason why Denialists perform this charade is extremely obvious. Denialists do no actual research on HIV or AIDS of their own. Zero. They are then limited to misinterpretting the results of others and trying to pretend that these scientists really agree with the Denialists. Maniotis has already shown the way.
Pubjacking howto
The only thing that Maniotis demonstrated was that he is incapable of accurately and honestly quoting from papers and that he can't read and understand lab manuals.
This behaviour is not limited to HIV denialism. The ID proponents do the same thing with "orthodox" papers. They selectively and dishonestly quote "orthodox" papers out of context and then go through the charade of claiming that scientists are closet Intelligent Design proponents.
Noble and the rest of you wackjobs, if you are so sure that hiv is the cause of aids, please send us links from pub med for the 3-4 first scientific papers that prove hiv causes AIDS, Koch had orginal expiriments that proved causality, so did shyh ching lo........so your Idol moores rocket ship analalogy is the biggest joke of them all. Waiting..................................
The irony arises from repeatedly referring to it as the Kraft-Dunning Effect, illustrating the overconfidence fueled by ignorance that lies at the heart of the effect.
Posted by: franklin | December 2, 2007 6:02 PM
In a classic example of the Kruger-Dunning effect, the better irony arises, franklin, from your inability to appreciate wordplay. Perhaps one should call it the Kruger-Ebbing effect, to make it clearer through the fog that obscures your brain, the one that the monkey meme sits on, invisible to you but visible to all who read what you write. But then you would complain that I spelled it wrong...sheez.
Anyhow the corpus of Krafft-Ebing is what one keeps thinking of in observing your behavior, and that of your fellow trio members, here. In fact, there seem to be five influences at work at once: 1) Kruger-Dunning 2) Krafft-Ebing 3) Moore-Noble 4) HIV meme 5) The Duesberg-Bialy litmus test for scientific intelligence, or its absence.
In case you didn't know the Duesberg-Bialy effect (discovered at New AIDS Review, as it happens by the humble blogger) is the following:
The absence of a sense of humor correlates very highly - 99.9999% - with the inability to percieve the Grand Canyon sized flaws in the HIV=AIDS hypothesis.
It is not yet known why this is, but the favored theory is that those brilliant fellows such as yourself who lack the wit and mastery of the topic that allows one to see what is really going on are distracted by the monkey meme jumping up and down on their head.
HIV blocked from T cells
By the way, franklin, if you guys are so familiar with the literature that you know our interpretation is wrong when we see Fauci, Karpas and other commentators of irreproachable mainstream authority acknowledge that HIV is a pussy which the immune system chases up a tree and keeps it there, how about this quote (you recognize it, I hope, and who wrote it):
"However, quantitative studies of the frequency of HIV-infected cells in vivo suggest that single cell killing by direct infection with HIV may not be the predominant mechanism of CD4+ T-cell depletion. In this regard, the proportion of HIV-infected, peripheral blood CD4+ T cells in individuals in the early asymptomatic stage of HIV infection is typically in the range of 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,10,000 (Pantaleo et al) Although this frequency increases with disease progression,the proportion of HIV infected peripheral blood CD4+ T cells rarely exceeds 1 in 100 even in patients with advanced HIV disease....the data illustrate the difficulty in accounting for CD4+ T-cell depletion solely by direct mechanisms."
Gee. No direct cell killing by HIV. Parade past us all the excuses and imaginative claims offered to fill this Grand Canyon of contradiction of the first mechanism assumed by the HIV brigade, then read Zvi Grossman on how none of them have the slightest data to back them up and how exactly how HIV kills T cells remains a "conundrum".
Neutralizing antibodies
Meanwhile try contradicting my description of the overcoming of HIV by the healthy immune system as "DEFEAT" again, when Rochman's paper is NAMED Rapid evolution of the neutralizing response to HIV type 1 infection. What do you think neutralizing means?
"We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants."
"During the natural course of early HIV infection, fully functional envelope variants continuously emerge and compete for outgrowth in a RAPIDLY EVOLVING NEUTRALIZING ANTIBODY RESPONSE."
Gallo himself saluted neutralizing antibodies to HIV in 1985 in Nature (Jul 4-10;316 (6023):72-4,
"Natural antibodies capable of neutralizing HTLV-III infection of H9 cells were detected in most adults AIDS and ARC patients but in no normal heterosexual controls."
The only way HIV escapes these antibodies is to retreat to some hiding place protected from the antibodies in the bloodstream, folks. It doesn't make any kind of comeback until the antibodies army is weakened by some other sickness, which HIV doesn't have a chance to cause.
Karpas explains
Why the established paradigm exploiters insist on maintaining that the defeated HIV is the threat is a scientific mystery, but it may have something to do with money After all, even Abraham Karpas, professor of virology at Cambridge and one of the generals of the campaign to support HIV to the tune of $30 billion even though it doesn't do anything, has this to say about the credentials of his colleagues:
"The history of AIDS research involves huge rewards, unscrupulous ambition, disregard for common principles of scientific conduct, battles over priority leaving injustice uncorrected, and terrible consequences in the wider world."
Written about Gallo's record in the early stage of HIV research, from which the asinine theory emerged, but also applicable to the whole crowd of scientific deceivers and their hangers on such as the trio here in the years since.
A sad reflection on human motivations to peddle murder rather than medicine.
darin writes YOU REGARD THE PRESENCE OF ANY NUCLEIC ACID WHICH IS DETERMINED BY YOU TO BE "FOREIGN" (whatever that means) AS ORIGINATING IN AN EXOGENOUS VIRUS.
Regardless of whether you can actually SEE such a virus, regardless of whether you have a way of detecting virus particles or even "virus-like particles" (whatever THAT means!!!, I read some papers from just a few years ago on "HCV-virus-like particles" being FINALLY (finally!!!) detected, 20 years on now...)
THE NUCLEIC ACID SEQUENCE IS YOUR GOD-KING, YOUR DEITY, YOUR SOVEREIGN. YOU WORSHIP IT.
Once again you appear to have completely misinterpreted reality. "Any" nucleic acid sequence? Hardly. A nucleic acid sequence contains genetic information. If that information is not consistent with a virus that nucleic acid won't be labelled viral.
Your efforts at argumentation consist entirely of wordplay. You know fully well that Karpas, Richman and Fauci do not support your interpretations and yet you continue to argue about this.
This complete and utter disregard for the truth only demonstrates your dishonesty. It is difficult to tell whether your chosen moniker of "truthseeker" is meant to be an ironic wordplay or youreally are self-deluded.
Your efforts at argumentation consist entirely of wordplay. You know fully well that Karpas, Richman and Fauci do not support your interpretations and yet you continue to argue about this.
Don't be silly, Chris. They agree with what they wrote.
This complete and utter disregard for the truth only demonstrates your dishonesty. It is difficult to tell whether your chosen moniker of "truthseeker" is meant to be an ironic wordplay or you really are self-deluded.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 2, 2007 10:20 PM
Is that a machine you crank out this repetition on?
Face up to the simple truth that the bigger men in HIV=AIDS have made clear to us:
HIV+ people have vaccinated themselves.
Repeat:
HIV+ people have vaccinated themselves.
Still can't get it? Let's leave you forever with a quote:
It takes two to speak the truth. One to speak, and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau.
Truthseeker (sic),
Again you demonstrate that you can only support your erroneous conclusions about HIV by misrepresenting the scientific work of others, either because you are lying or because you are unable to understand the science.
You quote from a paper:
Then draw the following conclusion:
Perhaps you should look up non sequitur.
Don't be disengenous. You know fully well that they do not agree with your interpretations and extrapolations of what they wrote.
I am not disagreeing with what Karpas, Richman and Fauci have written. I am disagreeing with your interpretations such as
You are playing a juvenile game whereby you are pretending that I am disagreeing with Karpas, Richman and Fauci. I am not.
I have stated exactly why you are wrong. You continue to fill this webblog with overly verbose empty rhetoric.
Grow up!
I acn only think of the term cognitive dissonance at this point although I suspect that Truthtwister will simply parrot this criticism back.
Somehow Truthtwister manages to avoid the part of this sentence which states that fully functional envelope variants continuously emerge. An honest person would not equate this to "defeat". What does "fully functional" mean? What does "continuously emerge" mean?
As another example of cognitive dissonance Truthtwister failes to quote this sentence
Richman is saying that ART is better at reducing viral replication than the normal human immune response.
What does "fully functional" mean? What does
"continuously emerge" mean?
Dr. N
What does "early HIV infection" mean? As stated here the quote is a perfect tautology within the HIV belief system. If no "fully fuctional", envelope variants emerged during "early infection", it wouldn't be much of an "infection" would it now?
Karpas then hypothesizes that HIV, AFTER EARLY INFECTION, never becomes completely latent (never fully "defeated", just resorting to scattered, ineffectual for years, guerilla warfare) because the explanatory lentivirus model demands it or the HIV construct would merge into the "ordinary" opportunistic infection scenario, as Adele in one of her few bright moments has told us it is.
The paper by Richman covered the time period of 0-39 months post infection.
HIV is never latent except perhaps in a small percentage of elite controllers. It is a persistent chronic infection as distinct from viruses such as herpes simplex that form persistent latent infections.
Stop trying to put words into Karpas' mouth. The only thing you are demonstrating is your dishonesty.
Truthseeker (sic),
Maybe you're not lying, after all.
At least not on all of the points you argue.
When it comes to Richman et al. (2003) it seems just as likely to me that you simply do not understand the paper, because the passages you quote disprove your thesis that HIV is defeated by the immune response in "any healthy person exposed to HIV" (free full text available here).
As Chris has already pointed out, the second passage you quoted indicates that despite the neutralizing antibodies made by the infected patients, "fully functional envelope variants continuously emerge."
Even in the patients with the greatest production of neutralizing antibodies, the virus is not defeated, but instead continuously evades the immune response via evolution of resistant mutants.
The antibody response evolves rapidly, but the authors show that the virus evolves even more rapidly.
They demonstrate the more rapid evolution of the virus by studying virus and antibodies isolated from the same blood sample.
The patients' antibodies are less effective at neutralization of the virus present in the blood sample from which the antibody was derived than virus present in earlier blood samples from the same patient.
Because the evolution of the antibody response does not keep up with the evolution of the virus, the antibody response "fails to appreciably impact levels of virus replication" and fails to defeat the virus.
I certainly hope that you wouldn't lie about such an elegant experiment.
Somehow, I would prefer to believe that you simply don't understand it.
For, in my opinion, to purposely lie about this work is to besmirch a thing of beauty.
The question then arises why such a strong selective pressure fails to appreciably impact levels of virus replication as does chemotherapy.
"Richman is saying that ART is better at reducing viral replication than the normal human immune response" (Dr. N)
What Richman does, Dr. N, is point to one of the many paradoxes raised by an explanatory model which is forced to assume that HIV is mutating furiously as answer to "strong selective pressure", aka known as a potent antibody response.
The paradox is, as stated, that an antibody response which is so powerful that it forces HIV to perform evolutionary acrobatics which outpace many times over in a single infected person the worldwide evolution of an average influenza strain during the course of an entire year is supposedly still not potent enough to dent the viral load.
That is like carpet bombing an Iraqi village all night only to discover in the morning that all major structures are still intact and Al-Qaeda holding a soccer tournament in the town square.
Why do HIV enthusiasts pretend that they don't know the obvious? Antibodies afftect what's accessible in the blood and may have little effect on virus in the lymph nodes or inside cells, where replication could continue.
This does not mean that an antibody response is without benefit. The low rate of infected T-cells, "1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000" acccording to Dr. Fauci in his chapter from Fundamental Immunology (2003, p. 1294) that Truthseeker quoted above, indicates that the immune response is doing an effective job in curbing the virus in the blood. Or as a Cambridge virology professor put it:
"The immune response to HIV can be compared to that of a live viral vaccine. It explains why most HIV-infected patients remain well for many years." - Abraham Karpas
In his review (Biology Reviews 79:911-933, 2004), Karpas mentioned the hypothesis that "mutants emerge that manage to evade the immune response and lead to disease progression and death..." He quickly noted, however, that "this cannot be the only reason" for AIDS mortality. As D.D. Richman et al. note in their paper, "Rapid evolution of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV type 1 infection" (PNAS, April 1, 2003), in a third of the HIV patients they studied the neutralizing antibody response was actrally stronger against the mutant variant than against the original strain of HIV.
Robert Houston:
No Robert. Richman et al. are not forced to assume that "HIV is mutating furiously."
Richman et al. experimentally demostrate that the antibody response does not neutralize the virus present in the same plasma sample from which the antibodies are derived as effectively as it can neutralize virus isolated from earlier plasma samples from the same patient.
They experimentally demonstrate that the virus evolves in such a way that it escapes from the neutralizing anitbody response of the host.
This is known as the scientific method.
Robodoc N,
I think we've all got today's talking point upload. Words are being put in Karpa's mouth. Now I may have confused Richman and Karpas at somepoint, though I doubt it, but apart from that show me you pathetic overpaid, whatever you're paid, spambot where I put words in Karpa's mouth.
My apologies Robert.
MEC stated:
No MEC. Richman et al. are not "forced to assume that HIV is mutating furiously."
Richman et al. experimentally demostrate that the antibody response does not neutralize the virus present in the same plasma sample from which the antibodies are derived as effectively as it can neutralize virus isolated from earlier plasma samples from the same patient.
They experimentally demonstrate that the virus evolves in such a way that it escapes from the neutralizing anitbody response of the host.
This is known as the scientific method.
Somehow, it seems less surprising that MEC would not recognize the scientific method.
Again, my apologies, Robert.
Here's your scientific method Frankie,
As D.D. Richman et al. note in their paper, "Rapid evolution of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV type 1 infection" (PNAS, April 1, 2003), in a third of the HIV patients they studied the neutralizing antibody response was actually stronger against the mutant variant than against the original strain of HIV.
And THAT quote was brought us by the real Robert Houston
MEC,
Try bringing your head far enough out from under the sand to look not just at "quotes" but at the actual data:
The patients' antibodies are less effective at neutralization of the virus present in the blood sample from which the antibody was derived than virus present in earlier blood samples from the same patient.
I have stated exactly why you are wrong. You continue to fill this webblog with overly verbose empty rhetoric. Grow up! Posted by: Chris Noble | December 2, 2007 11:00 PM
You are always ready to stop people enlightening you and other HIV loyalists with your wearying, pedestrian, heavy footed, mechanical, predictable, monkey meme repetitive and insulting responses, Chris, which do certainly convince one you are incapable of seeing beyond your own nose, yes.
OK how's this for brevity:
HIV+ people have vaccinated themselves.
Period.
Just in case you crank your meme machine again, let's say it slightly longer, so readers can see it clearly.
After several weeks at most, all HIV+ people have vaccinated themselves against HIV, period, because antibody neutralization is completely effective, reducing virus presence and activity to a vanishing point, where it stays for as many years as you otherwise stay healthy, and even if you fall fatally sick will barely manage a resurgence from negligible reservoirs outside the bloodstream.
Once they are self-vaccinated, HIV will never trouble them in any way that paradigm partners such as yourself can justify from the published literature, even though you read it through paradigm loyalist spectacles with the HIV meme monkey tying your optic nerve into a knot.
Karpas wrote it, I quoted it, your posts have confirmed it, your friends also confirm it, so I bid you Goodbye, since the case is proved.
It would be appreciated if you would now kindly switch off your repetition/red herring/contradiction/contempt/accusation Kruger-Dunning-Moore-Noble-Krafft-Ebing meme machine and not have the monkey crank out yet another "you misinterpret/you lie/you misinterpret/you lie/you misinterpret/you lie/you misinterpret/you lie" post so that we don't have to deal with your uniform autoreplies again.
We all understand that you three don't understand, Chris. The only objective is to help readers understand that.
You have been a big help, thanks.
"Antibodies neutralize HIV" - Abraham Karpas, Anthony Fauci, Douglas Richman, Robert Gallo, Margaret Johnson, David Ho, Nancy Padian, John P. Moore, Peter Duesberg, Harvey Bialy, Henry Bauer, Gordon Stewart, Rebecca Culshaw, Darin Brown, Robert Houston, Claus Jensen, in fact every intelligent student of HIV?AIDS except Chris Noble and his acolytes here.
Nobody is saying otherwise. There is, however, a large gap between that and HIV being "defeated". You appear to be going to a great deal of effort to confuse the issue. The evidence shows that HIV viral titres rise to a high during the acute infection stage and then fall to a non-zero "set-point". At no stage is HIV "defeated". It is never latent.
HIV continues to replicate after the acute infection period and continues to cause CD4+ cell depletion.
A large proportion of the damage is done in the initial acute infection stage.
HIV pathogenesis: the first cut is the deepest
Karpas most definitely did not write: "ordinary levels of antibodies seen in any healthy person exposed to HIV are sufficient to defeat it" and he most definitely did not write "because antibody neutralization is completely effective"
You know perfectly well that Karpas does not agree with you and yet you continue to claim that he does.
The only things that you have proven are your powers of self-delusion and your inability to admit to a mistake.
At no stage is HIV "defeated". It is never latent.
It is "never latent"? A mistyping, Chris?
You still are missing the fundamental distinction between the factual concession Karpas makes (HIV is neutralized by antibodies) and the imaginary claim he tries to make (it makes a comeback against a healthy immune system and defeats it after all):
Factual concession:
"This does not mean that an antibody response is without benefit." Nobody is saying otherwise. There is, however, a large gap between that and HIV being "defeated". You appear to be going to a great deal of effort to confuse the issue. The evidence shows that HIV viral titres rise to a high during the acute infection stage and then fall to a non-zero "set-point". - Posted by: Chris Noble | December 3, 2007 1:25 AM
Imaginary claim:
At no stage is HIV "defeated". It is never latent. HIV continues to replicate after the acute infection period and continues to cause CD4+ cell depletion.
A large proportion of the damage is done in the initial acute infection stage.- Posted by: Chris Noble | December 3, 2007 1:25 AM
Inadvertent factual concession:
HIV pathogenesis: the first cut is the deepest. -Posted by: Chris Noble | December 3, 2007 1:25 AM
Yes. After the initial multiplication of HIV before the immune system gears up, HIV is quickly put down.and there is no further revival. But there is no "cut" before, during or after.
HIV does nothing except vaccinate you against HIV.
You are vaccinated by harmless HIV. Period.
Chris, you seem to be unaware that the vaccine project is planning to spend billions, and here you are being told that the best vaccination against HIV is HIV itself.
Why don't you just believe what Karpas tells you, claim some of the money for yourself, take a holiday, and stop annoying everybody with misleading objections to good science?
Just a suggestion.
Truthseeker (sic):
Why do you maintain that the continued replication of HIV in the face of the neutralizing immune response is imaginary, given that Richman has provided experimental verification of the virus eluding even the most potent immune responses that they observed?
Richman demonstrates a neutralizing antibody response and the evolution of the virus to escape the response. Neither is imaginary. Both have been empirically demonstrated.
You simply choose to bury your head in the sand and ignore the data that you so helpfully brought to our attention.
Unlike you I write what I mean and I mean what I type.
At no stage is HIV latent. It seems that at this stage of the conversation you are still not aware of the distinction between latent and chronic infection.
Natural history of acute and persistent human infections
It was neither inadvertent nor a concession. Why do you play these silly word games?
I am not objecting to anything Karpas has written but rather your persistent misinterpretations.
Your rhetorical attempt to pit me against Karpas is simply pathetic. You know perfectly well that Karpas does not agree with you.
Why do you maintain that the continued replication of HIV in the face of the neutralizing immune response is imaginary, given that Richman has provided experimental verification of the virus eluding even the most potent immune responses that they observed?
Because my wits have not been frightened out of me by the story of the nightmare Virus, which allows me to see that whatever life the virus might still manage to have coaxed out of it by Richman matters not a jot, because the Virus is so effectively neutralized by antibodies that it couldn't overcome the healthy immune system which imprisoned it safely away from the bloodstream and which keeps it locked up safely for the duration.
In biology quantity rules. As Moore points out in one of his sadly neglected masterpieces, they chuck 40-500 times as much Virus at cells to prove it is toxic as occurs in vivo. Naturally it proves toxic.
Franklin you underestimately the level of rationalizing BS going on even though you do it yourself!
Franklin, a word in your ear. Here's a plan. Forget about Chris and John Moore, and repeat fine times after me:
Harmless HIV does nothing but vaccinate you against harmless HIV.
See if it fits the scientific literature, which it will, without exception, except that part of the literature which consists of data management, paradigm imposed misinterpretation and so forth.
Then have lunch at Nello's with Anthony Fauci and David Ho, and tell them that you have a short cut to the HIV vaccine. HIV itself.
Show them Karpas' paper as evidence you know what you are talking about.
Anthony Fauci will say something like, "Franklin, who have you told about this? Anybody else?" He will look at David Ho meaningfully.
You should reply, "I have put it in a sealed bank box to be opened at my death."
Fauci will suddenly become very friendly, swear you to secrecy, and give you a check for $500 million.
If you don't bother to mention this to Chris Noble, no one will blame you. However, it might be as well to give him and Hinckley $100 million just in case they start investigating why Fauci didn't respond to THEIR phone calls on the same topic.
My commission is merely $10 million, since it is your status as family that will get you the lunch with Fauci and Ho. They probably wouldn't see me at all.
Good luck!
This sentence highlights the fundamental dishonesty of Denialists. They cherry pick isolated bits of papers that they falsely believe support their position and ignore the rest that refutes that position.
This is a classic Duesbergian misdirection. The vast majority of CD4+ cells are in lymphoid tissue and not in circulating blood. Not coincidentally this lymphoid tissue is the major reservoir for HIV and it is where it is doing its damage. Far from being locked up safely HIV is continuously replicating in lymphoid tissue at all stages of infection.
At no stage is HIV latent. It seems that at this stage of the conversation you are still not aware of the distinction between latent and chronic infection.- Posted by: Chris Noble | December 3, 2007 2:52 AM,/i>
Neither statement is true.
You still are missing the fundamental distinction between the factual concession Karpas makes (HIV is neutralized by antibodies) and the imaginary claim he tries to make (it makes a comeback against a healthy immune system and defeats it after all):
This sentence highlights the fundamental dishonesty of Denialists. They cherry pick isolated bits of papers that they falsely believe support their position and ignore the rest that refutes that position. Posted by: Chris Noble | December 3, 2007 2:59 AM
The above statement reflects the foolishness of those who cannot see what part of a paper is based on data and what part based on imaginative argument, which doesn't refute anything, especially the data in the other part of the paper.
The foolishness arises from the HIV meme which monkeys about with the already strained reasoning powers of those whose only scientific role is teacher's pet.
Sorry Chris but you are trying to manoever your next roadblock into our path when we are already gone.
There is a limit to which one can carry on dancing with a monkey with a wooden leg, even if it is a meme.
Adieu!
No, it demonstrates that the sole criterion you use to decide which part of a paper to cite is whether you can spin it to support your position. You are quite happy to cite Karpas as an authority when a sentence can be twisted to mean something that appears to support your claim but you have no trouble dismissing every thing else he says that clearly refutes your position.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. This schizophrenic attitude to the literature is characteristic fro Denialists.
The paper by Richman et al that you cited is a classic example. It details direct experimental evidence that HIV continues to replicate despite the antibody response.
Even the title should give you a few clues: Rapid evolution of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV type 1 infection.
Why would the antibody response continue to evolve over a period of 39 months if HIV has been put out of action?
I can only conclude once again that you are either knowingly lying or are too stupid to have a clue what you are talking about.
The very paper by Richman et al that you yourself cited demonstrates that HIV is never latent.
Baghdad Bob (AKA Truthtwister) said:
"Karpas wrote it, I quoted it, your posts have confirmed it, your friends also confirm it, so I bid you Goodbye, since the case is proved."
Now TS, if only you would read it:
"90%...deadly...10 years" - A. Karpas
"Truthseeker" or, more aptly, truthtwister (with props to Hinkley),
Your insistence on calling yourself a seeker of truth is irking me out of my silence of several weeks. You and your fellow "journalist," Robert Houston, pretend to objectivity. Yet you both keep yourselves as far from facts as you can, and the extent of your "objectivity" is revealed in most of what you write, including Robert Houston's reference to scientists as "HIV enthusiasts." Anyone who can call a Joseph Sonnabend or any prominent AIDS doc or researcher an "HIV enthusiast" has never spent enough time with such people to learn of their passion and compassion and hatred of the virus.
Until you have some basic knowledge of biology, chemistry, mathematics, etc., it is pointless to argue with you about science. Nothing lost there, since science is clearly not the sticking point with you. Your objection is to facts or authority in general, it seems.
Is that perhaps why you try to provoke others with your self-consciously un-PC remarks?
Such as calling Tara "delectable" above (i.e. delicious, for cooler's benefit)?
Or writing that jen is just another "female know-nothing"?
Or questioning Adele's gender, deciding she must be a (male) "gay activist," a term you use with the utmost of disgust?
Your apparent problems with society's acceptance (relatively speaking, of course) of women as more than vacuous eye candy for British "gentlemen" who use the royal "we" and of gay people as worthy of something more than dismissal as "activists" would be a good place for you to start in assessing your unwillingness to be objective re science.
Now TS, if only you would read it:
"90%...deadly...10 years" - A. Karpas
Posted by: Roy Hinkley | December 3, 2007 7:44 AM
Why do you truncate this quote till it its absurdity is unrecognisable, Roy? It reads in full:
Sexual intercourse has now spread the virus around the World; and there are probably some 70 million infected. 90% of those infected with HIV develop the deadly disease of AIDS within ten years of infection: the death toll from the disease has been enormous.
You do know the date this was written, and examined, and revised, till Karpas and the peer reviewers and editors of Bio. Rev. were satisfied it was accurate? 2004, in case you overlooked it.
So we have them all agreeing that 90% of those infected with HIV develop AIDS within ten years.
How does this jibe with the current claim that the mean latent period of HIV is ten years or more? That would indicate that 50% or fewer would be showing AIDS symptoms by the ten year mark, wouldn't it? Indeed that is the case - fewer, in fact, as the predictions fail and fail, kept up only by the medications being applied earlier.
Now the UN has corrected the 70 million guess, which was pessimistic to say the least in 2004, to 33 million today.
Don't you recognise what is happening? These guys go overboard in pushing the view of AIDS towards the doomsday scenario of maximum sick and dead people, as they make as many claims as they can in that direction to keep the disbursements from the public purse flowing in an era where you have to compete for every penny, especially when you already have more than your fair share.
It is almost childishly transparent in this case.
Yes, Karpas is an honest man when contemplating facts. When trying to keep his fellow Fauci Club members happy, however, having burst their balloon with his observations of how HIV gets stopped and rolled back to a negligible set point by any healthy person's antibodies (pace the three HIV meme monkeys sharing silently in this thread), he rushes to prove he is a fully paid up loyal member of the HIV=AIDS Maximum Funding Regardless of Absurd Hypothesis Killing Gays and Blacks Club, and talks nonsense about 90% being ill in ten years, and 70 million infected.
Roy, as the only bright and creative and somewhat careful and thoughtful person here defending the absurd paradigm, at least unleash your sophisticated reading of journal review texts and in this case see the blindingly apparent.
Harmless HIV vaccinates against harmless HIV.
That is the only conclusion for which we have any data for this exceptionally rewarding but otherwise overwhelmingly inert retrovirus.
Perhaps you are a physicist who doesn't understand what is going on in biology as far as funding pressures warping common sense goes, but just as an example from another field, why not skim that Kruger-Dunning paper just for laughs?
Its brilliant topic of study which it proves several different ways is that dim people do not realize how dim they are. The funding is from the NIMH. Yes, the review committee sat around one day contemplating this proposal and funded it. In other words, public money was spent proving that the sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
This is the pretty pass we have reached in the semi-sciences of psychology and disease study. You may be shocked to hear me label disease study a semi science, and claim that disease is an active arena for such collegial boondoggles. But that is what appears to be the case, from SARS to bird flu. The outstanding example of jobs-for-the-boys peer review is HIV=AIDS, and it has encouraged all kinds of imitation, it appears.
Of course, I am writing this in the fond belief that you are not a player in this sphere who is well aware of what I say, but an unwitting fellow traveler from a cleaner arena such as physics.
Your friend,
Baghdad Bob II
I must say that this amusing (and quite tedious) thread has showed a few glimmers of solid reasoning. I salute Truthseeker for actually engaging some of these AIDS knuckleheads, who really don't think about these issues (let alone falsify them), but merely close ranks with their better paid brethren of the orthodoxy to recapitulate standard, scientific-sounding garbage.
HIV develops its own vaccine!
SARS is bullshit, so is avian bird flu, so is west nile, so is the dreaded swine flu of the 70's, .. the list endless, and in a few years we may just have to add HIV to it.
Barney,
The fact of the matter is HIV is on the list of dead virus campaigns, except that the great protectors and purveyors of the paradigm wish to keep the status quo because God forbid they should loose their funding. Want to stop HIV AIDS? - drop the funding.
"Truthseeker" or, more aptly, truthtwister (with props to Hinkley),...etc etc etc. Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 3, 2007 11:51 AM
By the mighty Virus you cannot even read the posts properly, Mr Elk, so you really don't deserve a reply to this series of rank misstatements and misreadings, almost one per sentence. We would sympathie with you if any were true, but none of them are.
One might observe, however, that you fit neatly into the Duesberg-Bialy litmus test of intelligence in this affair, being somewhat humorless in your perceptions of what we wrote. That's one cause of what "irks" you, it is clear, in this very inaccurate reading of posts you have skimmed on return from your holiday.
The absence of a sense of humor correlates very highly - 99.9999% - with the inability to perceive the Grand Canyon sized flaws in the HIV=AIDS hypothesis.
But just for the record, who said Joseph Sonnabend lacked compassion? The problem is that he loves the Virus nearly as much as all its other scientific husbands, who we observe married to it for its money. He may not be thinking straight because he is a doctor in the midst of dealing with the tortures visited upon the HIV congregation by its priests, but he knew enough to resist until he was threatened with being cut off by the powers that be, when he compromised.
We cannot see into his soul and cannot say why it happened, but it looks suspect to us, since nothing had changed in the data to make HIV any more likely a candidate for causing the effects of drugs, conventional illness and nutritional deficit, which are obviously the real causes of AIDS illness and deaths to anyone who reads the literature with any objectivity.
Oh sorry, are we talking to someone with the HIV meme sitting in his brain? Then you believe that he just grew more enlightened, right, as "overwhelming evidence" accumulated?
OK we'll have to leave it at that, though referring you to the recent posts recording the rout of Christopher Noble et al trying to maintain that HIV is not powerfully neutralized by the immune system of any healthy person in a manner equivalent to any good vaccine.
But kindly do not babble about how we don't credit data and good scientific reasoning, that we scorn authority, etc when we don't. We recognize the authority of good scientists who are not politically influenced to skew their judgement away from what good data and precise reasoning indicate.
Nor accuse us of scorning gays when we only scorn the ignorance and prejudice of gay activists who profit from the monetary disbursement of drug companies into their organisations and then by some remarkable coincidence reliably agitate on behalf of the HIV paradigm and the drugs sold on that rationale which injure and eventually kill them and their friends.
Sorry, but that is the height of non-science to us, since the reasoning and objective data of good science as found in the literature is our touchstone in viewing events in this catastrophically misunderstood plague. You imply this measure is yours also. Then what a pity you don't feel responsible enough to get yourself together and get a proper grasp on events and what we are saying, instead of firing off objections to statements we didn't make and attitudes we don't have. So typical of the masochistic self injury of the gay activists in this field to be so righteous when wrongly informed. Do you really want to mimic them?
And by the way we don't have any problem whatsoever with society's acceptance of women as more than eye candy, we support it totally, in fact unlike you we accept it as going without saying. In any circles we have anything to do with there is no mention of color or sex as affecting credentials in any public role, polticial or academic.
Sorry that you still seem to feel this is an issue, so when we delight in Tara's superattractive image as posted by herself proudly on her site you start worrying about whether we take her mind seriously or not, when it has nothing to do with that. We would take her mind more seriously if it showed a more critical and independent scrutiny of HIV=AIDS, but that has nothing to do with her appearance.
Are you suggesting that attractive people are dumber than plain people? Why would that be? Is that what you think, since it occurs to you and not to us? If anything we imagine that they would be brighter, since they would get more attention and support in life.
While we are repeating quotes, let's just repeat this one from Houston for the third time:
"The immune response to HIV can be compared to that of a live viral vaccine. It explains why most HIV-infected patients remain well for many years." - Abraham Karpas
Let's see how Chris Noble's hand cranked autoresponse you liar/you misinterpret/you liar/you misinterpret/you liar Krafft-Dunning-Kruger-Ebing-Moore-Noble-HIV meme machine deals with that one.
Guess it lacks a reverse gear, so we can't expect much except the same old same old, a pattern which suggests to us he is not even there half the time, he has just set the meme machine to respond automatically to certain posters while he is off somewhere else entirely doing something useful in his life down under..
Meanwhile back at the ranch...
"Investigators found that Brodie [Scott J. Brodie] falsified data in 15 instances -- in published and unpublished journal articles, and grant proposals. The research in question included cellular responses to the HIV virus."
Kinda make one think what kind of science Tara et al. are really supporting, doesnt it?
Click on my name for Seattle Times article by Nick Perry and Carol M. Ostrom
Thanks Carter. From that news story:
"It was a very traumatic investigation to be involved with," Liggitt said. "We got to look at the underbelly of science."....
He said medical research and HIV research in particular is highly competitive, with the National Institutes of Health making cutbacks and many researchers competing for limited funding. Getting published can help bolster a researcher's push to land the next grant, he added.
"It's ugly out there," Liggitt said. "There are a lot more desperate people because of the cutbacks."
Oh dear, it seems that Fauci didn't manage to keep funding up as high as he promised his faithful at last year's HIVNET meeting after all.
I dont have any sympathy for these guys working on a false and murderous premise which takes a disproportionate amount of funding anyway, so much of it wasted on examining an innocent retrovirus.
They shouldn't go into science unless they have something to offer science in genuine passion and talent. Find something else which suits you, for God's Sake, instead of trying to live off deceit in an area which professes truthseeking.
Once in though, I can see they become trapped, what with wives and children and all.
This HIV=AIDS scam that Gallo launched without knowing it would grow so big can be viewed as a trap for all the people involved, with no one able to come clean now without being ruined. How Science, Nature, the Academy of Sciences, the NIH, the NSF, the New York Times, Harvard, etc etc etc can survive any correction is problematical, to say the least. That is why I posted on Saturday that the dissenters may as well give up.
By the mighty Virus you cannot even read the posts properly, Mr Elk, so you really don't deserve a reply to this series of rank misstatements and misreadings, almost one per sentence. We would sympathize with you if any were true, but none of them are.
Tuthseeker, ElkMountainMan is on old friend, who, like the paper tyger virus, should have remained in the aloof scientific recesses where he is no doubt germinating. However, since by his own words he has been coaxed out of his 6 foot deep chromatin slumber as a reincarnated authority on Political Correctness, moral philosophy, and the satiric genre, maybe he would now like to elaborate, in his own name, on his comments about Christine Maggiore, Al-Bayati and the baby killer connection?
How about it Mr. PC Elk, were your statements concerning those matters just for fun? There's a free trip to LA and instant fame for you if you can explain to Al-Bayati face to face in a public, non-anonymous venue why you find his work distasteful and his conclusions strange.
"There are a lot more desperate people because of the cutbacks."
Um, well Truthseeker, you know as well as I do it ain' just cutbacks. The whole freakin ordeal with HIV is just plain desperate!
Each and every post by the apologists here has a very strong and distinct smell of desperation!
MEC,
Did you perhaps mean "ruminating," not "germinating?" Your would-be linguistic master, the twister of truth, would not be pleased. But no matter; whatever I am doing in my "scientific recesses" is of little importance alongside the situation I read about this morning on the blog of Mark and Chris Hoofnagle.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/12/hivaids_denialism_is_deadly_t…
It seems that the Liversidge-emulating "gatekeepers" at the MSN Aids Myth Exposed board are encouraging an HIV-positive mother to avoid any medical care for herself and her infant. Chiming in is one "rebecca veronica," whom several denialists in the past have identified as Rebecca Veronica Culshaw. (Truthtwister, you may not be familiar with this minor denialist but cooler has vouched for her "hotness," so you can safely listen to her. To use your words, Culshaw is a real female know-nothing, and not just some gay activist who likes to get a kick out of a female name.)
Culshaw and sidekick former academic Darin Brown tell the young mother to continue breastfeeding her baby, since there is nothing healthier and the "orthodoxy" doubt that mother to child transmission ever happens.
Lies, stupidity, and ignorance conspiring against an innocent mother and her child: a sad and lamentable state of affairs. How do these denialists sleep at night?
HIV Is Not the Cause of AIDS
By Peter H. Duesberg
Science, Vol. 241, pp. 514-517, July 29, 1988.
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is not the cause of AIDS because it fails to meet the postulates of Koch and Henle, as well as six cardinal rules of virology.
1) HIV is in violation of Koch's first postulate because it is not possible to detect free virus (1, 2), provirus (3-5), or viral RNA (4, 6, 7) in all cases of AIDS. Indeed, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has established guidelines to diagnose AIDS when all laboratory evidence for HIV is negative (8).
2) In violation of Koch's second postulate, HIV cannot be isolated from 20 to 50% of AIDS cases (1, 9-11). Moreover, "isolation" is very indirect. It depends on activating dormant provirus in millions of susceptible cells propagated in vitro away from the suppressive immune system of the host.
3) In violation of Koch's third postulate, pure HIV does not reproduce AIDS when inoculated into chimpanzees or accidentally into healthy humans (9, 12, 13).
4) In contrast to all pathogenic viruses that cause degenerative diseases, HIV is not biochemically active in the disease syndrome it is named for (14). It actively infects only 1 in 104 to > 105 T cells (4, 6, 7, 15). Under these conditions, HIV cannot account for the loss of T cells, the hallmark of AIDS, even if all infected cells died. This is because during the 2 days it takes HIV to replicate, the body regenerates about 5% of its T cells (16), more than enough to compensate for losses due to HIV.
5) It is paradoxical that HIV is said to cause AIDS only after the onset of antiviral immunity, detected by a positive "AIDS test," because all other viruses are most pathogenic before immunity. The immunity against HIV is so effective that free virus is undetectable (see point 1), which is why HIV is so hard to transmit (9, 12, 13). The virus would be a plausible cause of AIDS if it were reactivated after an asymptomatic latency, like herpes viruses. However, HIV remains inactive during AIDS. Thus the "AIDS test" identifies effective natural vaccination, the ultimate protection against viral disease.
6) The long and highly variable intervals between the onset of antiviral immunity and AIDS, averaging 8 years, are bizarre for a virus that replicates within 1 to 2 days in tissue culture and induces antiviral immunity within 1 to 2 months after an acute infection (9, 17). Since all genes of HIV are active during replication, AIDS should occur early when HIV is active, not later when it is dormant. Indeed, HIV can cause a mononucleosis-like disease during the acute infection, perhaps its only pathogenic potential (9, 17).
7) Retroviruses are typically not cytocidal. On the contrary, they often promote cell growth. Therefore, they were long considered the most plausible viral carcinogens (9). Yet HIV, a retrovirus, is said to behave like a cytocidal virus, causing degenerative disease killing billions of T cells (15, 18). This is said even though T cells grown in culture, which produce much more virus than has ever been observed in AIDS patients, continue to divide (9, 10, 18).
8) It is paradoxical for a virus to have a country-specific host range and a risk group-specific pathology. In the United States, 92% of AIDS patients are male (19), but in Africa AIDS is equally distributed between the sexes, although the virus is thought to have existed in Africa not much longer than in the United States (20). In the United States, the virus is said to cause Kaposi's sarcoma only in homosexuals, mostly Pneumocystis pneumonia in hemophiliacs, and frequently cytomegalovirus disease in children (21). In Africa the same virus is thought to cause slim disease, fever, and diarrhea almost exclusively (22, 23).
9) It is now claimed that at least two viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2, are capable of causing AIDS, which allegedly first appeared on this planet only a few years ago (20). HIV-1 and HIV-2 differ about 60% in their nucleic acid sequences (24). Since viruses are products of gradual evolution, the proposition that within a few years two viruses capable of causing AIDS could have evolved is highly improbable (25).
References and Notes:
J. Albert et al., J. Med. Virol. 23, 67 (1987).
L.A. Falk, D. Paul, A. Landay, H. Kessler, N. Engl. J. Med. 316, 1547 (1987).
G.M. Shaw et al., Science 226, 1165 (1984).
D. Richman, J. McCutchan, S. Spector, J. Infect Dis. 156, 823 (1987).
C.-Y. Ou et al., Science 239, 295 (1988).
M.E. Harper, L.M. Marselle, R.C. Gallo, F. Wong-Staal, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 83, 772 (1986).
A. Ranki et al., Lancet ii, 589 (1987).
Centers for Disease Control, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 258, 1143 (1987).
P.H. Duesberg, Cancer Res. 47, 1199 (1987).
H. von Briesen et al., J. Med. Virol. 23, 51 (1987).
D. Gallo, J. Kimpton, P. Dailey, J. Clin. Microbiol. 25, 1291 (1987).
J.W. Curran et al., Science 239, 610 (1988).
G.H. Friedland and R.S. Klein, N. Engl. J. Med. 317, 1125 (1987).
J. Coffin et al., Science 232, 697 (1986).
A. Fauci, ibid. 239, 617 (1988).
J. Sprent, in B and T Cells in Immune Recognition, F. Loor and G.E. Roelants, Eds. (Wiley, New York, 1977), pp. 59-82.
H.A. Kessler, J. Am. Med. Assoc. 258, 1196 (1987).
R.C. Gallo, Sci. Am. 256 (No. 1), 47 (1987).
Centers for Disease Control, AIDS Weekly Surveill. Rep., 18 April 1988.
R. Baum, "AIDS: The molecular biology," Chem. Eng. News (23 November 1987), pp. 14-26.
R.M. Selik, E.T. Starcher, J.W. Curran, AIDS 1, 175 (1987).
R. Colebunders et al., Lancet i, 492 (1987).
K.J. Pallangyo et al., ibid. ii, 972 (1987).
F. Clavel et al., Nature 324, 691 (1986).
J. Sonnabend, in New York Native (9 May 1988), p. 19.
Is duesberg our eternal mother, or is outshined by father shyh ching lo? Every animal he incoculted with mycoplasma incognitus/penetrans died, mice/monkeys/chimps/embryos.
What a nightmare, when Dr. Garth nicolson and nancy nicolson found it in the blood of sick gulf war vets armed defense intelligence agents threatened him to stop his research? Would two of the top cancer researchers in the world lie aboout that? Who do you trust more, the pathetic hacks on these blogs like franklin/noble/ moore etc or honest researchers not tied to the drug industry like the nicolsons, Lo, montagnier, baseman, nobel prize winners Mullis, Guilleman etc.
Seems as if mycoplasma incognitus was part of the bioweapons program, the nicolsons true story, slightly fictionilized, rave reviews from real scientists, not the losers who troll these blogs.
www.projectdaylily.com
What did Karpas really say?
The entire quote should be put up at once, before the handcranked Noble meme machine is launched. I believe it is worth going through with an index finger, mumbling the words out loud, to get the full impact of what it reveals:
"The immune response to HIV can be compared to that of a live viral vaccine. It explains why most HIV-infected patients remain well for years. Other viruses that establish lifelong infection, such as herpes viruses, tend to remain latent in the body and the only other exogenous retrovirus known to be capable of infecting humans, the adult T-cell leukaemia HTLV-1, causes disease in less than one in a thousand of infected individuals. In man infection with HIV is probably never latent, because the virus appears to mutate continuously in every infected individual due to its highly error prone reverse transcriptase (RT) which lacks the proof reading capabilities of other RNA polymerases. This has two consequences: 1) In nearly every infected individual, despite a vigorous immune response that is protective for many years, eventually one or more mutants emerge that manage to evade the immune response and lead to disease progression and death; (2) in drug-treated individuals, a drug resistant virus emrges and treatment fails to halt disease progression. The continuous mutations of the replicating virus cannot be the only reason for the very high mortality of HIV infection in man, because the viruses HIV-1 and HIV-2 do not cause disease in their natural hosts, the chimpanzee and the sooty mangabey monkey, respectively. Disease occurs only when the viruses cross species.i
In addition to its high mutation rate, HIV can also evade the immune response by direct cell-cell contact through fusion between infected and non-infected cells: the virus can be transferred without being exposed to agents of the immune response, such as neutralising antibodies. This is facilitated by the affinity of viral glycoproteins expressed on the surface of infected cells for CD4 molecules on neighboring uninfected cells. Probably this process is particularly important in the lymph nodes, where presentation of foreign antigen to lymphocytes by cell-cell contact is an essential step in initiating immune responses.
Early after infection with HIV, cell-mediated immune responses can be detected in infected individuals... It is possible that when cytotoxic T-cells are lost a high level of neutralising antibodies can by itself delay disease progress....
Most HIV infection in the world is not confirmed by tests:
Most test methods can give false positive readings, so it is important to check any positive reading by a screening assay with a confirmatory test.....many third world countries are not in a position reuglarly to confirm positive readings obtained by the routine screening methods such as an ELISA. Since nearly 90% of the HIV infected live in third-world countries, this means that the majority of positive reactions are unchecked.
(Karpas developed his own alternative test method in 1985 which "contains its own controlled confirmatory test"):
The cell test showed that most of the healthy HIV-infected individuals have a very high level of anti-HIV antibodies whereas, in contrast, patients who progressed to AIDS had a low level of antibodies that decreased further with disease progression. Studies of such sera with Western Blot correlate with the cell test titration studies... The sera from the AIDS patients are missing numerous antibodies and even the antibodies which are present are at low concentrations.... We have assayed for the presence of neutralising antibodies in over 100 healthy HIV-1 infected individuals and without exception found that the sera contained significant levels of such antibodies....(We carried out) one of the earliest studies trying to explore and explain the differences in the immunological state between healthy HIV-infected individuals and AIDS patients (in 1985). Our studies have demonstrated that healthy HIV-1 infected individuals who were not viraemic had high levels of neutralising antibodies against the virus and a CD4+ T-cell count within the normal range while AIDS patients with very low numbers of CD4+ T-cells and high levels of HIV-1 were devoid of neutralising antibodies and had low levels of other antiviral antibodies (Karpas et al 1988).
Studies from the USA of long-term survivors have also found high levels of neutralising antibodies (Cao et al 1995, Pantaleo et al, 1995). Although polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays for the presence of HIV-1 RNA in the plasma revealed significant levels of RNA in some individuals, the biological assay for viral infectivity failed to reveal the presence of infectious virus, suggesting that the HIV-1 in the bloodstream had beeen inactivated by the neutralising antibodies. In addition, this indicates that PCR does not distinguish between infectious (live) and neutralised (killed) virus.
Yes, sir, neutralise= kill.
Also helpful are someone else's antibodies:
We have recorded similar observations with AIDS patients who were treated with passive immunotherapy (PIT). AIDS patients before the infusion of hyperimmune plasma were HIV-1 viraemic as monitored by the isolation of infectious virus from the plasma. After the infusion of hyperimmune plasma, infectious virus could not be isolated but many remained PCR positive.
Translation: Neutralising antibodies reduce HIV to vanishing set point. The pussy is treed by the dogs of the immune system.
Ultimate conclusion, as we said before:
HIV vaccinates you against HIV.
Here's a bonus. How about AZT? Nasty stuff. Killed thousands, right?
Confirming this, Karpas continues, showing what a mistake AZT, and how beneficial IN AND OF ITSELF it must have been to stop using high doses of the poison - a proven useless poison which reportedly they are still mixing in small amounts into the cocktails:
The first drug that was approved for use in people with HIV disease was azidothymidine (AZT), a chemical developed years earlier as an anti-cancer drug but abandoned because of its high level of toxicity.... Not surprisingly, an early study of bone marrow in patients who had been receiving AZT revealed that all developed anaemiawith a varying degree of other white blood cell deficiencies.
AZT inhibits HIV replication by blockingg the viral RT and there is no doubt that initially the effect is very dramatic. In the early short-terms trials, AZT appeared to be beneficial. However, within a few weeks to a few months of AZT treatment, replication-competent, AZT resistant HIV strains emerge followed by disease progression, A placebo-controlled trial, lasting two years, revealed that AZT did not imptove survival and was associated with more side-effects. In the British/French Concorde trial which involved 1700 patients and lasted three years, follow-up revealed a statistically significant increase of deaths in the AZT treatment arm as compared to those in the placebo (J. Derbyshire, personal communciation, 1994). The other nucleotide analagues that have been approved for use, such as ddC and ddI, are also highly toxic and of short term benefit....
(With regard to protease inhibitors and HAART) Protease inhibitors are less toxic than AZT but when used alone , the virus quickly develops drug-resistant mutants. However, when a protease inhibitor was used together with two RT inhibitors it marked the first significant progress in anti-HIV treatment, The combination of drugs has been named highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). Following the initiation of HAART treatment approximately 80% of AIDS patients improved clinically; and coincidentally their CD4+ T-cell counts increased and the plasma viral load dropped significantly or completely disappeared. (Hogg et al 1997). The length of the beneficial effects of HAART differs between the individual patients and ranges from a few months to several years. For some the toxic side effects are more pronounced than for others. In most individuals who can tolerate the drug combination over prolonged periods, a wide range of pathological conditions develops due to toxicity, many of them, such as lipodystrophy, have never been seen before in AIDS while liver damage and vascular conditions are common. As a result the HAART treatment of AIDS patients has changed from combating opportunistic infections to reducing toxic side effects...
Meanwhile HAART fails to eradicate replication competent HIV-1:
A recent study of a group of patients who have been treated successfully for up to 30 months with triple therapy, replication-competent HIV-1 was routinely isolated despite the fact that even the plasma assay for HIV-1 PCR was negative (Finzi et al, 199; Wong et al 1997).
Some AIDS researchers suggested that drug treatment should be initiated early in the course of HIV infection (Ho, 1995) but so long as the available drugs have only a limited period of effectiveness, and are toxic, that may be misguided. In most HIV-infected individuals, the immune system manages to limit the damage caused by the virus for many years - far longer (on average nine years) than any drug cocktails available that have the added disadvantage of being toxic.
Hey, why not try borrowing antibodies from healthy patients? It worked!
After our early study demonstrated that healthy HIV-infedcted individuals had high levels of neutralising anitbodies, while AIDS patients had none, we investigated the possibilitiy of using passive immunotherapy as a form of treatment in AIDS. This began in 1985, transfusing blood plasma from healthy HIV-1 infected individuals to AIDS patients (Karpas et al, 1985)....(There was ) some evidence of benefit when the patients were treated for two years...(Other studies suggested that PIT is beneficial but) Unfortunately, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials have not been able to muster financial support in the UK....
(Meanwhile they have found) an increasing number of plasma donors who have been donating continuously for 3-7 years without a decline in numbers of CD4+ T-cells or antibody level or other signs of disease progression (Abelian et al, 2001). The mechanism of these effects is not understood. Defining it might help us to understand why HIV overcomes the immune system, and could open up new avenues for the development of therapeutic strategies against this deadly virus.
After you read enough of this stuff, you realise that Karpas is a reviewer who is severely handicapped by the HIV meme, which here, for example, prevents him from seeing the obvious - that the simplest explanation of "the effects" is that HIV is not deadly or even harmful at all.
Following all this you can read Richman's paper, which Karpas didn't see before going to press, and see that mutation is no answer to the question: How come the virus makes any kind of comeback with antibodies around to neutralise it?
Because Richman showed that the antibodies keep up very well with viral mutation, leading the dogs of the immune system to chase all the new variants of pussy cat virus up a tree just as fast as before, sometimes faster.
What a mess. All any thinking gay has to do is read this paper, I would think, and he wouldn't cooperate with this latter day pellagra. But Alas! they all will doubtless read it like ElkMan with the monkey meme in their noggin, just like Karpas, and not see where the dividing line comes between evidence and misinterpretation.
Maybe one should borrow that meme machine from Noble and turn it on Karpas: "you liar/you misinterpret/you liar/you misinterpret/you liar/you misinterpet".
Question for the Tara's Club Clan:
The date on cooler's above Duesberg post indicates July 29, 1988
I'd assume sometime between Gallo/Margaret Heckler announcement that they have found the "probable" cause of AIDS in 1984, within that 4 year period, when exactly did HIV make the massive jump from being "probable" to "concrete"?
After this Science, Vol. 241 isn't that when you all started to call Duesberg a crackpot? So, therefore somewhere between those dates there had to be another announcement, another hoopla hurrah party and press conference for that now unmistakable claim HIV is now the cause of AIDS. When was it? What date. I cannot find it anywhere.
Truthtwister, you know fully well that Karpas and Richman do not agree with your misinterpretations.
The only thing you are demonstrating is a highly developed form of cognitive dissonance.
You somehow skip over parts of these papers that refute your claims.
This is fundamentally dishonest.
when exactly did HIV make the massive jump from being "probable" to "concrete"?
This took a week or two, Carter, but it was by the authority of the New York Times.
Larry Altman deserves the credit for this bold move, or his editors.
A very high scientific authority indeed, the New York Times, which has not hesitated to repeat itself ever since to retain the glory of that moment, with the copyrighted mantra inserted in its every story on "HIV, the virus that causes AIDS".
I believe other media are required to pay the Times a penny each time this phrase is used, but I am not quite sure, lacking concrete proof.
But heck, my assertion is enough, isn't it?
"Yes, sir, neutralise= kill"
No, sir, it doesn't. Neutralizing antibody blocks glycoprotein:receptor interactions, nothing more. Neutralized virus is still infectious if one were to remove the bound antibody.
"Translation: Neutralising antibodies reduce HIV to vanishing set point. The pussy is treed by the dogs of the immune system."
An antibody species reduces the particular clone (probably the most prevalent) that it recognizes, nothing more, nothing less. However, ready to step up in its place is another HIV clone that is more fit than the other within the new environment. Repeating this immune activation, acquired response and reduction of HIV clone process eventually results in T cell exhaustion of both CD4 and CD8 T cells and is an important factor in the collapse of the immune system.
"HIV vaccinates you against HIV"
It's not that black and white and you know it.
"After you read enough of this stuff, you realise that Karpas is a reviewer who is severely handicapped by the HIV meme, which here, for example, prevents him from seeing the obvious - that the simplest explanation of "the effects" is that HIV is not deadly or even harmful at all."
No, after reading your post you realize that you are either 1)disingenuous or 2)unable to understand what you are reading. I'm going with option 1, as you conveniently forget to emphasize parts of the paper that discuss mutation and immune evasion. I also have this nagging feeling the "..." sections contain information that doesn't fit with your ideas and therefore must not be acknowledged.
"Because Richman showed that the antibodies keep up very well with viral mutation, leading the dogs of the immune system to chase all the new variants of pussy cat virus up a tree just as fast as before, sometimes faster."
Only to have a new variant spread requiring new dogs to be made. Again, it is this continued immune activation that is detrimental. PubMed "HIV and T cell exhaustion."
Jim, please stop acting as the ventriloquist's dummy for the meme. Don't you realize that is the problem we are discussing?
If you read the post you will see that Karpas himself defines neutralize as kill. Write to him if you disagree.
I did read the post. It seems you are discussing neutralizing antibody responses and the fact that in your naive ignorant world you take that to mean the virus is incapable of causing disease once that occurs.
Nice to see though that you respond with only the lame "write to him" comeback and don't actually address any other point (is it because there aren't denialist talking points to refute them?). It doesn't matter what he defined it as, that is not what it means in the context being discussed.
MEC,
Did you perhaps mean "ruminating," not "germinating?" Your would-be linguistic master, the twister of truth, would not be pleased. But no matter; whatever I am doing in my "scientific recesses" is of little importance alongside the situation I read about this morning on the blog of Mark and Chris Hoofnagle.
http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/12/hivaids_denialism_is_deadly_t…
It seems that the Liversidge-emulating "gatekeepers" at the MSN Aids Myth Exposed board are encouraging an HIV-positive mother to avoid any medical care for herself and her infant. Chiming in is one "rebecca veronica," whom several denialists in the past have identified as Rebecca Veronica Culshaw. (Truthtwister, you may not be familiar with this minor denialist but cooler has vouched for her "hotness," so you can safely listen to her. To use your words, Culshaw is a real female know-nothing, and not just some gay activist who likes to get a kick out of a female name.)
Culshaw and sidekick former academic Darin Brown tell the young mother to continue breastfeeding her baby, since there is nothing healthier and the "orthodoxy" doubt that mother to child transmission ever happens.
Lies, stupidity, and ignorance conspiring against an innocent mother and her child: a sad and lamentable state of affairs. How do these denialists sleep at night? (ELkMountainMan)
Brave Sir Elkie,
If you're too much of a chickenshit to face Al-Bayati and the other people you're smearing, just admit it, it's no shame where you're coming from, but please save yourself more embarrasment by trying to smear Truthseeker by non-existent association.
I have no doubt you're a total zero as a scientist since you've often made that clear, not only by declaring the ineffectual smears of your fellow losers, Mark and Chris Hoofnagel, more important than your own, but also by spewing your characteristic, unbroken strings of toe cringingly uninformed propaganda.
Here is a little reading to get you up to date on breast feeding in your distant scientific recesses.
http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2007/11/21/more-hiv-less-infection-the-…
Since I have not been able to find anything relating to science nor linguistics that suits your level of complete illiteracy, I guess it's up to me to clear up your other major confusion: It is indeed "germinating" and not "ruminating", since germinate, not ruminate, is what germs and people of equal intelligence do in their recesses.
"This took a week or two, Carter, but it was by the authority of the New York Times."
Then so if this is true, then why do the pound the living day lights out of Duesberg at this point? They'd only be right if there was proof beyond any doubt the conclusive jump from "probable" to "is" was made and documented somehow. I see the Duesberg bashing as it's none other than trying to protect a flawed concept, and a sure fire way to keep money flowing into their pockets. They must have known Duesberg's Science, Vol. 241 was correct because there was no way the hypothesis by then had any merit because it was unproven. They had to come up with "he's a crack pot" for no other reasons. I thought there had to be a massive leap from probable to proven somewhere announced, otherwise these purveyors shouting from the AIDS pulpit have nothing to stand on.
To put things in context, the significance of the revelations by Prof. Karpas and by Richman et al. about the neutralizing effect of anti-HIV antibodies is that for 23 years the AIDS extablishment has maintained that the antibodies to HIV are non-neutralizing and ineffectual.
Thus when the Richman paper appeared, the HIV loyalists tried to spin its meaning as being that HIV triumphs by mutating. We see Franklin and Chris Noble also exemplifying this interpretation. What the paper actually says, however, is that the antibody response rapidly evolves to keep up with the mutations and neutralize them. To quote the authors:
"We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants."
--D.D. Richman et al. "Rapid evolution of the neutralizing antibody response to HIV type 1 infection," PNAS 100:4144-9, 2003.
To repeat: "potent neuturalizing antibody reponses are generated...to subsequent variants."
Earlier in this thread, Franklin suggested that the findings were that the virus outruns the immune response. But the paper says that the immune response keeps up with the virus variants. Franklin then presented Table 1 from the paper, which he had misread. The table was for a single patient in the study (though the legend applied to 3 tables), and according to the authors, the case (TN-1) exemplified strong neutralizing responses ("peak neutralizing antibody responses reached >1000 as exemplified in patient TN-1"). Contrary to Franklin's spin, the table for this case actually shows highest neutralizing antibody titers against later virus variants.
Franklin also misinterpreted the author's interpretation of their results. What they termed "individual variability" Franklin misreported as a pattern of ineffectual later antibody responses. Although one would expect that the original virus strain would have the strongest neutralizing response, because it predominates and was present longer, in fact the study found that in a quarter of the patients, "higher titers of neutralizing antibody developed against viruses that emerged later in infection."
In the study, the antibody response neutralized the later mutant variants, regardless of whether the titer of antibody was as high as against the original virus strain.
Richman et al. provided no data regarding "levels of virus replication." Prof. Karpas, however, has written that the immune response does substantially reduce levels of HIV replication. So has Fauci.
Bullshit.
Richman et al write:
and
10^10 virions generated per day. This is incompatible with Truthtwister's spin.
If you really believe that Richman and Karpas mean what Truthtwister says they mean then why don't you contact them.
It is hard to tell whether you are being deliberately deceptive or whether you are suffering from Truthtwister's delusions of competence.
Table 1. Antibody neutralization titers (subject TN-1, treatment naive)
The peak neutralizing antibody responses of more than 1000 are always to virus variants from 3 or more months in the past.
The antibody response to the current variant is always much less.
Who are you trying to fool?
Take the column for 25 months. The peak antibody titer is to the virus variant from 19 months in the past. The antibody titer to the concurrent variant is much less.
The story that this paper tells is fundamentally different from the fairytale that you and Truthtwister are concocting.
Nice to see though that you respond with only the lame "write to him" comeback and don't actually address any other point
Well, I didn't mean to blow off what you wrote carefully, Jim, but as Chris Noble relentlessly proves, arguing with anyone's meme machine is a waste of time when the meme itself is the subject under discussion - is HIV=AIDS valid or not, and if not, what fits the data better?
You have to do more than handcrank a meme machine, Jim, not because it is not a useful activity but because we are not discussing things on that basis. I like many here question the meme. So we are discussing not just what scientists tell us about the data but what they would tell us if they were not ruled by a meme which forms the framework for every study and review they carry out.
Unfortunately I believe Karpas is a prime example of the too quick acceptance of Gallo's hypothesis as the premise of his work, He does not question the premise that HIV=AIDS however much his data may suggest a simpler story. He will instead try to wrestle any square peg into the round hole in his mind and fiddle and shove until it goes in.
So in reading his paper in a discussion where the meme itself is in question, it doesn't do much good to handcrank a meme machine and hand me the objections that it turns out, since all it will do is lead
to a standoff with accusations of various kinds, see Chris's rather feeble post above.
Hey Chris is that you or the machine all by itself? All it cranked out were your basic four lines - Karpas wouldn't agree/its cognitive dissonance/its my selective quoting/its dishonest. What happened to its stupid/your selective quotes?
What one needs is a genuine partnership in sorting all this out, and a willingness to use a more sophisticated premise, involving the idea that a text of any review like his is written with certain assumptions and we have to see where the boundary line is between what everyone can agree is data and what is imaginative interpretation based on the Deadly-Virus premise.
We have to decide if and where Karpas goes wrong, as well as appeal to him as an authority. That is what is involved in questioning a paradigm. You can't just be a teacher's pet if the teacher's belief is what we are questioning.
By the way, you are calling Chris Noble "lame", since his repeated suggestion is that we write to Karpas and Richman to find out whether they agree with our interpretation, and you say that is lame.
Fig 3 shows the viral load of one patient. High viral loads over 100,000 copies/mL were seen for the first four months until iniation of ART.
Truthtwister, this is getting very boring. All you are doing is repeating your original claims over and over again.
You know that Karpas did not mean what you say he means.
You know that if you asked him he would not agree.
The only thing that you are demonstrating is the fundamental dishonesty of the HIV "rethinker" movement.
What Robert said:
What Richman et al said:
Where Robert says "the mutant variant" Richman et al. say "viruses that emerged later in infection."
Richman et al. show that in patients producing neutralizing antibodies, new viral variants are continuously evolving--they do not find "the mutant variant" but multiple mutant variants that vary depending on the point in time in which they are isolated.
Robert later adds the following quote from Richman:
And he interprets that statement as meaning:
The beauty of this experiment is that they assayed serial antibody samples against serial viral samples taken from the same patient.
For an antibody to effectively neutralize a viral infection, the antibody must be able to neutralize the virus present in the patient at the same time that the antibody is present in the patient.
If the virus evades the immune response, then virus isolated from a blood sample will not be neutralized by antibodies isolated from the same sample. That is what Richman found.
For example, the blood sample obtained at the six month time point of patient TN-1, contains a high titer of neutralizing antibodies to the virus isolated from the same patient at 0 months (titer = 675) and to virus isolated from the same patient at 3 months (titer = 1024).
So, as the authors reported, this patient developed "potent neutralizing antibody responses" to the autologous infecting variant (the virus isolated at 0 months) and to a subsequent variant (the virus isolated at 3 months), and the titer to the subsequent variant is higher than the titer to the autologous infecting variant (1024 is greater than 675).
But remember, these antibodies were isolated at 6 months and in order for them to effectively neutralize the virus in the patient they must be able to neutralize the virus present in the patient at six months.
The titer against the virus isolated at six months is only 78. This means that the virus has changed so that the antibodies that the patient is making--antibodies that potently neutralize the viruses isolated at 0 months and at 3 months--are not able to effectively neutralize the virus found in the same blood sample as the antibodies.
What happens next?
Over the subsequent months, the patient produces antibodies that can neutralize the virus isolated at 6 months--his titer against this variant rises to 1769 at 12 months and to 4345 at 25 months.
But how well do his antibodies isolated at 12 months work against the virus isolated at 12 months?
At 12 months the titer against the virus isolated at 12 months is only 76.
And at 25 months the titer against the virus isolated at 25 months is only 95.
So, even though the antibody response is evolving (over a 19 month period the titer to the virus isolated at 6 months rises from 78 to 4345), the virus evolves even faster; resistant variants are always found in the blood--variants that are not effectively neutralized by the antibodies present in the same sample of blood.
This is the same pattern that Richman observed in all of the patients who produced high titers of neutralizing antibodies.
The high titers are always observed against viruses isolated from blood samples drawn from the patient earlier than the blood sample from which the antibodies are taken--not against the virus isolated from the same blood sample as the antibodies.
Contrary to Robert Houston's remarks, this isn't my spin, it is what the data show and it is what the authors of the paper conclude:
If Robert has an alternative explanation of the data, let's hear it.
If you really believe that Richman and Karpas mean what Truthtwister says they mean then why don't you contact them.
Your comrade in arms say this is lame, Chris.
The true timing of emerging neutralizing antibody responses may be masked by the extensive levels of virus replication (10^10 virions generated daily during chronic infection (20) and 100 times that during acute infection (21).
10^10 virions generated per day. This is incompatible with Truthtwister's spin.
Apparently you are unfamiliar with even the basic science of the immune response to HIV, Chris. Of course there is plenty at the beginning, before and as the antibodies emerge. The issue is how much there is later, whether it is thoroughly neutralized and banished from the arena of the bloodstream, and whether mutation allows it to escape repression.
The answers Karpas and Richman give us are a) none worth discussion b) yes and c) no.
This is so stupid, to use your favorite word, that one suspects you of deliberate dishonesty, your next favorite phrase. But don't bother to answer, Noble, even if you are misunderstood. You are now proven to be nothing but a name caller, who hopes to avoid inspection of his replies by making them stink, verbally speaking,
You have achieved complete success. I for one have no interest in ever reading them again except as specimens from the pig sty, and something one can point to as good evidence that the paradigm is worthless, since only the second rank try to defend it in public.
The elite such as Fauci and Moore know how to evade responding, just as in your infinitely more primitive way, you do. How odd, that the genuine believers in the claim that HIV=AIDS are so evasive in their responses with censorship and insults.
Your replies are obtuse, smell like a pig sty, and they are automatically hand cranked from your meme machine, with not the slightest glimmer of wit or humor about them, which marks you as intellectually challenged. This matches their content, which is also worthless. I had hoped for a nice collection of the main points that paradigm defenders on the lower level could raise against the unanswerable points of the critics. But there aren't any. Just handcranked misunderstanding expressed in gutter phrases.
Now why would that be? You are a bright computer geek, there must be purpose in your acting so crudely. That's it - you do it on purpose to avoid people engaging you, and exposing the hollowness of your claims.
Well, congratulations on your success.
Truthtwister, this is getting very boring. All you are doing is repeating your original claims over and over again. You know that Karpas did not mean what you say he means. You know that if you asked him he would not agree.The only thing that you are demonstrating is the fundamental dishonesty of the HIV "rethinker" movement. Posted by: Chris Noble | December 4, 2007 2:45 AM
Only one insult here, what happened, Chris? Just the tired old you-are-dishonest jibe.
No, Chris you are wrong as usual in your statements, I didn't just repeat myself. First I quoted Karpas in full, where it was relevant, even his claim that got you so excited, that mutation accounted for the survuval of infectious virus, and told you that he had not seen Richman's paper yet. Then I discussed with Jim why your meme machine approach is inappropriate when the subject of discussion is whether the HIV meme is correct, and how far data is misinterpreted through it.
Now you complain that I repeat myself to a boring extent, and that I know that Karpas would not agree with what I wrote, and that I show how intellectually dishonest the HIV "rethinker" movement is.
What could be more boringly repetitive that that? It has no science in it at all, and all three points are standard initial output from your handcranked meme machine.
I see I was right, and you were not present at all when the machine responded. You had it set to automatic.
Once again you completely fail to respond to any of the points raised and merely reassert your false claims.
The paper by Richman shows that HIV is not "thoroughly neutralized", it is not "defeated" and it is not "vanquished". Your continual assertions to the contrary only demonstrate your dishonesty. I have detailed precisely why your misinterpretation is fallacious.
This causes me to wonder as to whether you regard this issue as one vast joke. I don't find you or your overly verbose essays in the least bit humourous or clever. If you want to be a court jester then so be it but kindly don't make a joke out something which is killing millions of people.
Franklin, Dr. N,
You have convinced me: like Archie Moore against Muhammad Ali, the clumsy, flatfooted antibodies only manage to punch holes in the air where the virus was last round, never where it is at present.
You have even explained that inscrutable table for us, in a clear, comprehensible manner, so it's inescapable to everybody who doesn't deny facts that the continuously replicating virus is continuously outgunning the immune system in a thoroughly predictable way - like any acutely disease causing agent.
So now would, pretty please, could you put the "lenti" in lentivirus for us and tell, nay better still model mathematically, why it takes the little suberbugger so long to finish the job?
It took Ali 4 rounds to beat Archie Moore - exactly as predicted.
Researchers at the U. S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in Washington, D. C., and the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center at the National Institutes of Health, have found compelling evidence that a previously unrecognized opportunistic infection -- one potentially treatable with antibiotics -- may be a major cause of illness in people with AIDS. Many infections of organs including the brain, spleen, liver, or lymph nodes -- as well as some systemic infections -- might be caused by the newly-discovered organism, called Mycoplasma incognitus. Until now, these infections would be counted among the many which cannot be diagnosed.
While the first report of the organism now known as Mycoplasma incognitus was published over three years ago, most of what is now known was learned later and published last year. And only in the last few weeks has the AIDS research community paid serious attention. Until recently the new organism was mistakenly believed to be a virus, and its discovery seemed to have little immediate relevance to treatment.
Then a series of five articles by Shyh-Ching Lo and others in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, between February and November 1989, showed:
(1) The new organism is a mycoplasma -- which is potentially treatable. Mycoplasma, a form of life between bacteria and viruses in complexity, was discovered about 100 years ago. Some species are known to cause human diseases.
The published articles only hint that the new organism might be treatable with antibiotics. But scientists at AFIP tested 15 common antibiotics against the Mycoplasma incognitus in the laboratory. A detailed report is being prepared for publication, but because of the public-health importance of the information, AFIP released a list of the drugs and their effective concentrations in a separate document. Doxycycline, tetracycline, clindamycin, lincomycin, and ciprofloxacin were found to be effective against Mycoplasma incognitus. But erythromycin, the antibiotic most commonly used to treat mycoplasma infections, was not effective -- and penicillin, streptomycin, gentamicin, and others also had no effect.
(2) Mycoplasma incognitus was found in the thymus, liver, spleen, lymph node, or brain of 22 of 34 persons who had died of AIDS. The patients who were selected for this autopsy study had all had evidence of organ failures.
(3) In a separate study with different patients, the mycoplasma was found in seven of ten persons with AIDS. Also, a much earlier study had found Mycoplasma incognitus in blood lymphocytes of 12 of 23 living persons with AIDS -- but in none of 22 healthy blood donors used as controls.
(4) The mycoplasma was also found in six HIV-negative patients (with no sign of AIDS) from different parts of the world, who had died in one to seven weeks of an undiagnosed infection.
No one knows how the organism spreads, but evidently it is not by casual contact, as family members of infected persons have not become infected themselves.
(5) Four monkeys were injected with Mycoplasma incognitus; all died in seven to nine months. The organism was found in the spleens of all the monkeys, and in some other organs as well. It was not found in a fifth monkey tested as a control.
(6) Extensive evidence from electron-microscope examinations, from specially designed PCR tests to look for the DNA of Mycoplasma incognitus, and from immunologic tests, showed that the organism was concentrated in lesions in affected organs. Mycoplasma incognitus is unusual in that it often infects and kills tissue without causing an inflammatory reaction, suggesting that it disables or evades part of the immune system.
Altman LK. Unusual microbe, once dismissed, is now taken more seriously. THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 16, 1990, page B6.
Booth, W; Specter, M. Microbe may play role in AIDS, other diseases. THE WASHINGTON POST, January 5, 1990, page A3.
Lo SC; Dawson MS; Wong DM; Newton PB 3d; Sonoda MA; Engler WF; Wang RY; Shih JW; Alter JH; Wear DJ. Identification of Mycoplasma incognitus infection in patients with AIDS: an immunohistochemical, in situ hybridization and ultrastructural study. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE, November 1989, volume 41, number 5, pages 601- 616.
Lo SC; Shih JW; Newton PB 3d; Wong DM; Hayes MM; Benish JR; Wear DJ; Wang RY. Virus-like infectious agent (VLIA) is a novel pathogenic mycoplasma: Mycoplasma incognitus. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE, November 1989, volume 41, number 5, pages 586-600.
Lo SC; Dawson MS; Newton PB 3rd; Sonoda MA; Shih JW; Engler WF; Wang RY; Wear DJ. Association of the virus-like infectious agent originally reported in patients with AIDS with acute fatal disease in previously healthy non-AIDS patients. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE, September 1989, volume 41, number 3, pages 364-376.
Lo SC; Wang RY; Newton PB 3d; Yang NY; Sonoda MA; Shih JW. Fatal infection of silvered leaf monkeys with a virus-like infectious agent (VLIA) derived from a patient with AIDS. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE, April 1989, volume 40, number 4, pages 399-409.
Lo SC; Shih JW; Yang NY; Ou CY; Wang RY. A novel virus-like infectious agent in patients with AIDS. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE AND HYGIENE, February 1989, volume 40, number 2, pages 213-226.
In addition, the NEW YORK NATIVE has published frequent and sometimes controversial coverage of this research.
Part of the bioweapons program, found in many cases misdiagnosed as CFS/GWI. Google project day lily to find out how it was part of the bioweapons program, great facsinating book.
franklin,
I see. But isn't it normal that shortly after the first exposure to a new antigen (in this case a new mutant virus), the antibody concentration will still be low (before the initial response)? The authors assume that it will take 3 months to have an inital response to the new mutant. Did they try to test the serum, say, 10 days or 30 days after t=n months to see how long the body takes to mount a proper response? How can the authors conclude that the virus evolves faster if the titers don't decrease in value? If they would see a decrease in the titer t=6 months relative to t=3 months and in t=12 months to t= 6 months and so on, probably they could conclude with more safety that the virus is indeed evading. No?
Could you please link me to that paper please?
Rezaf et al,
Dont bother debating these trolls, they are "paridigm defenders" they will never have an open honest discussion, they are trash, who only regurgitate whats on the CDC's website, if the CDC said mycoplasmas were the cause of AIDS theyd be parroting that.
These are the same types of people who ignored the cure for scurvy when it was known hundereds of years in advance, murdering thousands, because of their tremendous arrogance, sycophancy to the establishment and even greater stupidity. Read the pathology study above by Lo to and Duesbergs paper to how real scientists operate.
Franklin, elkmountainman, hinkley and noble etc are trolls who have been posting on these blogs in real time for the past 20 years, they probably went to med school back in the 20's, Debating these wackjobs will drive you insane. Take your message to the people and to real scientists.
"MEC,
Did you perhaps mean "ruminating," not "germinating?"
- Elk Mountain Grammatician.
"germinating" is proper and is a highly accurate cruise missile; not a crude IED and it landed a direct hit. Elk dude, you need a night at Yuk Yuks and a brew!
"The absence of a sense of humor correlates very highly - 99.9999% - with the inability to perceive the Grand Canyon sized flaws in the HIV=AIDS hypothesis." -AL
This causes me to wonder as to whether you regard this issue as one vast joke. I don't find you or your overly verbose essays in the least bit humourous or clever. If you want to be a court jester then so be it but kindly don't make a joke out something which is killing millions of people. Posted by: Chris Noble | December 4, 2007 4:21 AM
No, Chris "Mr Meme" Noble, obviously I don't consider this whole issue a vast joke, since I have studied it rather more closely and longer than you have, it seems. That is the only reason I can think of why I have reached the only conclusion that makes sense, and you have not. It can't possibly have anything to do with objectivity, can it?
No, the vast joke, a rather bad one, is your continuous effort to pile sandbag after sandbag in a relentless but vain effort to block the workings of reason, common sense and informed interpretation as they demolish the inconsistent, irrational and impossible paradigm you seem to regard as a biblical text.
Your irresponsibility and perhaps wilful stupidity in playing this fatuous role instead of taking an interest in what is really going on is a matter for your conscience, and your embarrassment when the paradigm is changed, as it inevitably will be at some point.
As far as the millions of victims of your long time efforts in delaying this change are concerned, they may well not forgive you, stupidity or not. One of the first questions they will ask you is why you did it.
Good luck with that.
This is like watching international ice-hockey tournaments.
High-flying, high-salaried NHL (first-out) loosers getting thouroughly wacked by the smaller, under-funded national teams from the rest of the world. All the NHL players have to offer are "enforcer-rules" hockey. i.e. If you can't out-play them, then resort to the "no-rules-barred" approach: punching, high-stickig, interfering and whatnotelse-ing.
Very amusing (in a Schadenfreude way) and humbling to this disgrunteled and disillusioned Canadian.
Go- (insert random non- N. American coutry here)- Go!
Some play for keeps and others for money. The "better" game is not necessarily obvious at first glance but the seasoned lover can tell the difference with very littel experience.
Chris et Al., your passes and stick handling suck! TS, MEC and Razaf at least play well and are deserving of attention and praise. They play for the crowd and win and you play for your pay-check and loose pathetically. In other words, they take great pains to explain their play to the audience and you fuckers just sulk and stall.
I want my money back!!!
(actually not, I enjoy your loosing more than their winning!!!)
Truthseeker (sic):
I don't know who you think you can fool with your "baffle them with BS" approach.
And Later:
You brought up the Richman paper in the first place, which in some circles would imply that you have read it.
I've provided links to this paper's data showing that the human antibody response does not keep up with the evolution of the virus--not even 25 months into the infection, in the patient shown in the link.
The patient with the longest follow-up is TN-3 who has been followed for 39 months and is shown in this figure. For this patient they show data on viruses isolated at 10 different time points (0 months, 3 months, 6 months, 10 months, 14 months, 19 months, 22 months, 35 months, and 39 months), and for each of these viruses, they show the neutralizing antibody titer present in the sera of patient TN-3 at 10 time points (0 months, 3 months, 6 months, 10 months, 14 months, 19 months, 22 months, 35 months, and 39 months).
Pick any time point you like, and you will see that the antisera from that time point has negligible neutralizing activity against the virus isolated at that time point. High titers of neutralizing antibodies are only present against viruses isolated months before the antibody was isolated.
In contrast to your distortions of Richman's work, their data show that the virus evolves to evade the host antibody response. Neutralizing antibodies are ineffective against the virus isolated from the same blood sample as the antibodies but are effective against viruses isolated from blood samples taken months earlier from the same patient.
You provide no alternative explanation for the data.
In fact, you completely ignore the data.
You simply pretend that the data show the exact opposite of what anyone who clicks on the links can see with his own eyes.
You pretend to see the opposite of what the authors conclude about their own data, but you provide no rationale for your conclusion.
But then again the author's conclusions were based upon examination of the data.
Whereas you only seem to have examined the paper as a potential source for the cherry-picking of quotes.
OK, I guess I was wrong about you. You *are* lying about the Richman paper.
You probably don't understand the paper, either, but you simply keep repeating your lies while ignoring the fact that the data in the paper disprove your claims.
At some point, repetition of a falsehood in the face of contrary evidence becomes a lie--even if the falsehood was originally the product of honest incompetence.
You imagine yourself as Galileo looking through his telescope--but you refuse to honestly confront the data and statements found in the very papers that you bring up.
Better to bury your head in the sand, little ostrich, otherwise, you might accidentally see the data--and they might be too disturbing for your pseudoscientific world view.
Ok I've read the Richman paper.
"We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants. The antibody responses to these variants exert a selective pressure that drives continuous evolution of neutralization escape mutants."
So that means no matter how much the virus mutates and escapes, it is always caught.Yes?No?
In fact, I think they never mention any virus overwhelming the immune system in this paper, as a proper immune response is always mounted.
"Although drug-resistance mutations confer much greater fitness in the presence of antiretroviral drugs, they typically do not exist as common polymorphisms in untreated patients because they impair the replication of wild-type viruses. In contrast, during the natural course of early HIV infection, fully functional envelope variants continuously emerge and compete for outgrowth in the presence of a rapidly evolving neutralizing antibody response."
So the immune system can respond. Always. With a 4 week delay, yes, but how long does one take to fully heal a flu?
"The lack of cross-neutralizing antibody responses against heterologous primary isolates during the early stages of HIV infection adds to existing concerns about the difficulty of identifying immunogens capable of inducing broadly protective responses. It will be of interest to determine whether more broadly reactive antibody responses evolve over a longer course of HIV infection (i.e., >39 months). Nevertheless, an optimist might argue that neutralizing antibody confers such potent selective pressure that antibody targeted against a broad range of circulating viruses could contribute to an effective HIV vaccine. Moreover, in contrast to the selection for escape by a narrowly focused, potent neutralizing response that is reactive to remarkably high levels of virus replication, the prophylactic use of such potent activity against a relatively modest inoculum might confer significant levels of protection and is consistent with the efficacy of passive prophylaxis with antibody to autologous virus in the macaque model"
Could the vaccine to HIV be HIV itself?
So the basic idea that I get from this paper after reading it is that the immune system can always keep up with virus mutation. And there is no decline in antibody response along the time frame they set. In fact, it increases. the ability to mount a defensive response is not impaired, or at least it is not visible. That's why " It will be of interest to determine whether more broadly reactive antibody responses evolve over a longer course of HIV infection (i.e., >39 months)".
Opinions?
The crowd being yourself, TS, MEC and Rezaf?
You will find that outside of your small band of Denialists most people think you are completely nuts.
Franklin and I have detailed exactly why the experimental data provided in this paper completely contradicts Truthtwisters assertions that HIV is "defeated" or "vanquished".
Given that the paper is available online and anyone can read it who do you think will be convinced by Truthtwisters dishonest misinterpretation?
This is where the vast gulf separating Denialists from reality is most evident. They seem to believe that the burden is on the "orthodoxy" to prove to a small group of contrarian kooks that HIV causes AIDS. Somehow the need for you to prove anything is forgotten.
They are not nuts anymore than I am, or if by not following the herd and if by not taking toxic drugs for the rest of one's life makes one nuts, then I am very happy to be called a nut too. You foks are the cracked nuts who won't "debate" the rethinkers. The truth is that you are afraid too as you know others would listen to us and you would come out looking foolish. So go ahead and enjoy your free ride as it will soon be ending and you will be the ones that no one will listen too!
Rezaf:
No, Rezaf, that means that no matter how hard the immune system works, the virus still produces variants that escape the neutralizing antibodies.
In the Richman paper, the antibody response always lags behind the evolution of viral escape mutants. In all of the blood samples from untreated patients, virus can be isolated that is invisible to the neutralizing antibodies of the host, even years after the initial infection.
You compare the lag of the antibody response in the HIV-infected patients to the length of time it takes to get over the flu, but years later the HIV-infected patients are still fighting off new variants of the virus.
Patients TN-1, TN-5, TN-6, TN-7, and TN-10 have each been followed for between approximately 1-2 years, and patients TN-2 and TN-3 have been followed for approximately 3 years--and even in their latest blood samples, all of these patients still have viruses that are not subject to neutralization by the antibodies present in the same blood sample.
Does it take you 3 years to fight off a cold virus?
But I commend you for reading the paper, thinking about the data, and trying to understand what they mean.
That's already more than Truthseeker (sic) has done, and he's been pontificating about this paper since November 28th.
Baghdad Bob says:
"...when the paradigm is changed, as it inevitably will be at some point."
Name a date, plus or minus 12 months.
There's $50,000 in it if you're right.
Come on! Its free to enter!
Step right up and name a date.
I can't understand why none of the denialists will simply name a date when the pardigm will fall? They're all so sure its wrong why don't they just tell us when the medical community will see it too? Surely it can't last much longer right TS? Tell me when, 12 month? 24 months? Name a date by which the paradigm will fall or stop predicting its imminent demise.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day and you've been wrong for 24 straight years Liversidge. Redeem yourself now and tell us when, +/- 12 months, the paradigm will fall.
"...enjoy your free ride as it will soon be ending..."
Please Noreen, name a date, +/- 12 months, by which the paradigm will have fallen. That gives you a two year window to be right.
When will the paradigm fall please?
No. HIV exists as a persistent chronic infection. It is never "defeated". It continues to replicate and continues to cause damage to the immune system at all times. Compare this to an acute infection with influenza virus that is cleared once an immune response is mounted.
HIV is not alone in this respect. Richman gives other examples of animal retroviruses that cause disease after the host has produced neutralizing antibodies.
The first two references predate the discovery of HIV.
Hinkley aka birdbrain,
It took hundereds of years for the true cause of scurvy to be discovered, even though the cure was proposed and ignored by idiotic expert hacks like you guys for decades, causing death and torture because patients were denied informed consent for these "tribal remedies" were kept hidden from the public by mainstream hacks.
Its been 25 years and it will probably take a a few decades more for all people to see the flaws in the hiv hypothesis, and hacks like you guys will cull even more of the population as mycoplasma incognitus/penetrans slowly disables the population, the only microbe out of hep c, hiv etc that induces death and disease in every species of animal inoculated. Once again thanks for the genocide and denying patients informed consent. If people had informed consent they would demand to be vaccinated (Lo and the army have already patented and developed a vaccine, the sign of good hypothesis), not slowly be killed by an undiagnosed infection that will ruin their lives.
Tommy morrison, former heavyweight champion, diagnosed hiv positive in 1996, Dumped doctor Ho and his drugs after he read Duesberg's book, had all kinds of unprotected sex with his wife, more than ten years later both still alive and totally healthy with no drugs, what ad hoc excuses do you have for them?
One of the few hiv positive people that had informed consent, who knows how many more could lead happy lives if they had informed consent like former heavyweight champion Morrison had. Would you tell morrison to his face he was a "idiotic woo denier low life" for beleiving Duesberg, hahaha I would love to see that confrontation!
Especially when you guys told him hed be dead by now if he didnt hit hard and hit early! Cant wait for all of your ad hoc excuses for his good health.
That's a strange choice for a poster child for HIV "rethinking".
According to his estranged wife he did take ARVs. His current argument is not that HIV doesn't cause AIDS but that he is not infected with HIV.
There are conflicting accounts as to whether he really is HIV+ or not. If you can find out the truth then please enlighten us.
Franklin,
Now you're at it providing useful public service, could you please define an adequate level of antibody reponse in terms of the numbers given in the tables for the different subjects?
If I read, for instance that the initial antibody neutralization titre is 26 for subject TN-1 how far exactly is that from an adequate response? After 3 months the titre is 216, how far is that from an adequate response?
Would you also care to explain the clinical relevance of these varying titers in light of this:
The failure of 2 of 14 patients to generate a significant neutralizing antibody response (Table 2) and the varying levels and timing of peak antibody titers among the untreated patients did not seem to correlate with levels of plasma HIV RNA or CD4 lymphocyte counts during the period of follow-up
Thank you.
MEC,
why don't you just say what you want to say rather than pretending you are the grand inquisitor?
Given that the paper is available online and anyone can read it who do you think will be convinced by Truthtwisters dishonest misinterpretation?
Answer: All open minds with even an elementary grasp of scientific reasoning and data.
Rezaf, for example, who doesn't know me, had no preconceived position, and had not made up his mind till he read this thread, on which you have exposed yourself so nakedly as unable to read scientific papers with any sophistication.
He only encountered the examination of HIV=AIDS on ScienceGuardian.com a few weeks ago, yet he reads the Richman paper and concludes:
So the basic idea that I get from this paper after reading it is that the immune system can always keep up with virus mutation. And there is no decline in antibody response along the time frame they set. In fact, it increases. The ability to mount a defensive response is not impaired, or at least it is not visible.
In other words, a good scientist, a knowledgeable chemist, and an open mind reaches a conclusion which you cannot.
Result:
Score: Chris "The Meme is Me" Noble: 0.
Truthseeker: 1.
All intelligent, open minds will see what I mean, Chris, when they read Richman, and not what you see. They will also see your incompetent pleas for the status quo for what they are.
The truth is this. With the monkey meme pulling half the levers in your logic-challenged, politically naive brains, you, Franklin, Roy and Elk are exposing yourselves as very silly to the entire world for ever.
So please for your own sake - you need every ounce of energy to run your extremely slow wits - I beg you to stop cranking your meme machine which has run so low on fuel it has nothing left but pre-adolescent jibes and tedious, empty counter assertions.
Acknowledge your defeat like a man, Chris, even if you are no gentleman.
Aussies are reputed to be among the most realistic and down to earth people in the world. Are you an immigrant? If so where from? It might explain a lot.
Your definition of an "intelligent open mind" as somebody that agrees with your interpretation gives us a clear indication of your delusions of grandeur.
The article by Richman has been cited over 200 times in the literature. None of them interpet the paper in the manner in which you have. I guess you would have us believe that all of these scientists are completely stupid whereas you have some special knowledge that allows you to look past the data to some hidden truth.
I see you are doing your very best impersonation of the Black Knight from Monty Python and The Holy Grail
I guess that you are hoping that anybody reading this will not realise that you have not made a single substantial response regarding the data in the paper by Richman et al.
Noble,
he was positive period in 1996, they do repeat testing in professional boxing.
Tommy Morrison Wants You To Believe
Boxing's Next White Hope fired Dr. David Ho
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's just a living room, done up in Middle-Class American, with the requisite television the size of a small refrigerator and the stack of videos beside it; and the portrait photos of three red-cheeked children on the wall; and the three-seat sofa and the reclining chair; and it's really all Tommy Morrison, who grew up in a fractured household in Jay, Oklahoma ever wanted for himself. "I'm just a normal guy" is his mantra. But this isn't Morrison's room. It belongs to the family of an HIV positive 26-year-old named Aaron Shriver, who now sits sprawled in the plush leather chair, legs extended, in his blue jeans and Eskimo Joe's baseball cap. Across the room, poised atop a couch as though at any moment he will spring to his feet, an arm slung over the back for balance, Morrison radiates intensity. Ordinary living rooms have become his venues for combat, prettied-up boxing rings. A former top heavyweight contender (and briefly the champion of the weight class as ranked by the World Boxing Organization), Morrison hasn't stopped fighting since shortly after his own positive test result in February 1996. His opponent isn't AIDS, but the medical community that has linked it to HIV.
To Morrison, HIV is a benign virus and AIDS a fraudulent collection of symptoms. "AIDS has been here since creation, but it doesn't do anything," Morrison all but shouts across the room. Shriver nods. A few days before, following a tearful telephone call from Shriver to Morrison's mother, the ex-boxer had driven his pickup here to Chelsea, about half an hour outside Tulsa, crossed the railroad tracks that run through the center of town, and visited Shriver and his family. Since 1994, Shriver had been treating HIV with AZT and other medications. But he felt himself getting progressively sicker. Morrison came to talk up his strategy of "natural hygiene," a term he remembers reading, but he isn't certain where. It's a regimen of exercise, vitamin intake, healthy eating and no medicine. "I don't even take aspirin," Morrison says. "You know why? Because I'm not sick."
Morrison believes it is the medications used to treat HIV, not the virus itself, that initiates a breakdown of the immune system. "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome is something that's easily cured," he told the Shrivers. "The human body was made to cure itself, but we keep putting lots of shit into it." To his surprise, they didn't need much convincing.
"I knew the treatment was killing me," Aaron Shriver says now. "It was taking a toll on my body, physically and mentally. Every time I'd eat a pill I'd say, 'Aaron you are going to die. This pill is for people who are dying.' But everything you hear about HIV, you have to take this stuff."
Hearing this brings Morrison to his feet. At 28, he's a big man with oversized arms, maybe not in fighting shape but not far from it. He wears a tiny diamond stud in his left ear, a depiction of Jesus Christ on his t-shirt and a wide-open face that shows emotions bigger than life, like a drive-in movie screen. "This kid was perfectly healthy before he started taking the medication," he says. "He knew something wasn't going right. All he needed was me to put him over the edge."
When Shriver learned he had acquired HIV from a dirty needle, he considered it a death sentence. Like Morrison, he no longer believes that. "I'm tired of being the victim of this," he says. He has stopped taking his meds: "I was feeding myself death."
"'Cause you knew how it was going to make you feel," Morrison replies.
"Let me show you something," Shriver says. He leaves the room and returns with a plastic bag half-filled with white-and-blue pills -- a month's supply of AZT. Morrison picks it off the table and gauges its heft. "Wow! Look at all that poison," he says. "A big bag of pills that looks like death. No wonder someone gets sick. They get people who are totally healthy and give them poison, and their bodies start breaking out into infection or fever or diarrhea, whatever.
The body is trying to get rid of the toxins... "
"And then they give you a pill for that... "
"That's right!" Morrison says. He's standing in the middle of the wall-to-wall carpet now, his arms out in front of him like the boxer he was, booming his message through the living room and the empty house beyond, preaching to the converted. "They treat the symptoms! They treat the symptoms of the symptoms of the symptoms, and they poison you," he says. He takes a breath, wraps his will around his emotion, gets it under control.
"Boy, I get mad," he says. "But if somebody told you something, and you found out that if you'd followed their direction, you'd have died, well, that's enough to spark anybody. That's where my fucking motivation comes from. These guys tried to kill me, and they're killing a bunch of other people, and it ain't right. And I'm not going to let it happen."
Living rooms aren't Morrison's only outlet for his proselytizing. As part of the probationary terms of suspended sentences for a weapons violation and an assault charge against his ex-wife, he gives speeches to high school and college students. But he'd do it anyway, he says, to spread the truth.
"I need something to motivate me," he says. "Boxing was there, and then it was yanked away, but this other stuff is there now. Like defying conventional wisdom. I run into people in airports I haven't seen in a long time and they're like, 'Man, you look good,' and I'm puzzled because I forget what most people believe. And then it's like, 'Oh, but there's so much you don't know.' And I don't get down off my soapbox for an hour."
Morrison takes pride in his candor, but he has had enough bad publicity in his short, out-of-control life to make him shun controversy. So in speeches to students he offers up a sanitized version of his own weird science. "You can't go in and say to kids they're not going to get AIDS from sex," he says. "They're not, but you can't say it. You can't say, 'Here's my wife, she doesn't have it and we fuck all the time,' because the media will pick it up and call you insane. So I tell them, 'This is what you're told, this is what I think, this is what I've done. And look at me: I'm healthy!'"
Morrison's lifestyle, too, now has the trappings of normality. He lives on a ranch near Jay and works as a boxing commentator for Fox Sports. He has all but stopped drinking -- though he was cited for driving while intoxicated near Kansas City recently, a function of wine with dinner at the home of a friend, he says -- and is no longer a regular in the barrooms and clubs of Tulsa. Unlike many ex-athletes, he has money in the bank.
Nine months ago, in a surprise ceremony, he married his longtime girlfriend. He had pursued her for years while his reputation as a hell-raiser kept her at arm's length. "She was afraid of me because of what she'd heard," he says. "She thought all I wanted to do was get in her pants. She'd actually only been with one guy her entire life, the guy she went out with before me. We didn't have sex until right before we got married."
Now they have unprotected sex. Why use a condom, Morrison believes, when HIV can't hurt you? "We haven't changed one thing, and she tests negative every single time," he says. "I've shown her everything I know, and she's content with it. Basically, she's giving me her life. She's saying, 'Here, whatever you're doing, I'm doing.' That's how certain I am; there's no way I'd ever do something to hurt that woman. Because there is no fucking way you can get HIV from sex. It's scientifically impossible."
Morrison won't comment publicly on how he acquired the virus. He was first diagnosed in February 1996, after a blood test in Las Vegas. He was scheduled to fight Arthur Weathers that night as part of a three-bout contract that would culminate with Mike Tyson. Instead, he was suspended. He heard of the test result from his manager, Tony Holden, left his hotel and flew home. "I was as uneducated as anyone else about HIV," he says. "I didn't know what to think." He landed at the Tulsa airport after midnight and saw a crowd huddled around a TV in the airport bar. As he approached, he realized they were watching videotape of him. That's when he knew what a big deal it would be.
In northeastern Oklahoma, he is considered a hero. There aren't many national figures from this part of the country. "I've read that Muhammad Ali and Elvis Presley never turned down an autograph request," he says, "and I try to be the same way." Everywhere he goes in Tulsa, where he keeps an apartment, he is greeted with a handshake, a backslap, a bit of conversation. When his periodic indiscretions put him in the news, the locals in this corner of the world forgive him.
"I'm just like they are, except that I became a millionaire," Morrison says, speeding his pickup past the Sonic drive-throughs and convenience stores that serve as topography along the prairie landscape. But Morrison stepped more quickly than most from adolescence to adulthood. He was a seventh-grader when he skipped a year of school, forged an ID and began fighting adults for winner-take-all paychecks in bars and roadhouses. These were Tough Man competitions, essentially street fights with gloves. "I was 13, had an ID, said I was 21," he says. "I was working at construction sites, going to titty bars. They could tell I wasn't legal, but nobody cared. The ID looked good, so they were covered."
He returned to school and played football while continuing to make money fighting in bars under the name James White. He planned to play in college, but in his senior year, on a lark, he entered a regional Golden Gloves boxing tournament in May 1988. He had no formal boxing knowledge, two weeks to train and an army duffel bag filled with sawdust to beat on. But he traveled to Kansas City and won the heavyweight division, a real-life Rocky. That led to the national Golden Gloves, and then, it being an Olympic year, to the Western Region Olympic trials and the national trials in Concord, California. Eight fighters in each class were invited to Concord from across the country, including Morrison -- two months removed from head-butting in sports bars.
He lost, but by then Morrison was being touted as the Next White Hope. It didn't hurt that he was related by blood to John Wayne -- born Marion Morrison -- and seemed so unpretentious. "Everybody was telling me how much money I could make, with my ability and my personality," he says. By November he had moved to Kansas City and turned professional. His nickname, like Wayne's, was "Duke." After two years, he was undefeated and featured opposite Sly Stallone in Rocky V.
But for a kid from rural Oklahoma, Kansas City was the fast lane. He never fell into drugs, but he did about everything else. He'd train for fights and win them all, but they were little more than pit stops between parties. "In the heavyweight division, if you're a Top 10 guy, you only have to fight once or twice a year," he says. "So there's usually nothing to stay in for at night. And I couldn't handle that."
He says he never got into a scuffle out of the ring, though he was accused of many. "I never punched a girl, never hit a guy," he says. But he admits to sometimes waiting until a friend or hanger-on had passed out drunk, then shaving off an eyebrow as a souvenir. He did it at a party once to someone he barely knew and got sued for it. He lost $8,000. "There was a time when I couldn't have farted in an elevator without someone wanting to sue me," he says.
Morrison's string of casual trouble kept him in the headlines. It scared away endorsement deals, but his success in the ring kept getting him fights. He beat George Foreman to win the championship of the WBO, one of several alphabet-soup organizations that promote championship belts. He lost the belt but stopped the formidable Razor Ruddock on the way back up. Tyson was on his radar screen.
And then he tested positive. "He was white, and he had some talent, and in this wonderful world of boxing that goes a long way," says Ross Greenburg, executive producer of HBO Sports, which telecast four of Morrison's bouts. "He had a questionable chin, but a lot of heart. I do not honestly believe he would have been heavyweight champion of the world, but his heart willed him to win fights he shouldn't have won. He had personal demons he had to attack, but he seemed to have overcome them and was training hard. We'll never know."
There used to be a sign by the road at the Jay city limit declaring it the hometown of Tommy Morrison, WBO heavyweight champ. Two days after he tested positive, the sign was taken down -- officially or unofficially, Morrison never learned. And one man joined a health club, discovered Morrison worked out there and asked for his money back. "He figured out we'd be laying on the same bench or something," Morrison says. "He was afraid he'd get infected by my sweat."
Mostly, though, his celebrity helped him. Calls and letters came rolling in. Stallone left a message suggesting a German doctor; athlete friends he'd made in Kansas City's pro sports community made recommendations. There were folk remedies, antigovernment manifestos, miracle cures. Morrison read them all, looking for a way to make HIV seem nothing more than normal. A month after testing positive, he was talking of a visitation from God.
"I believe that this virus is going to disappear from my body," he said during an interview. He had sent for studies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and devoured conspiracy-theory research such as Peter Duesberg's Inventing the AIDS Virus and Richard Willner's Deadly Deception. He was ready to believe.
Holden and Stuart Campbell, his attorney and close friend, urged a more conventional course. They contacted Dr. David Ho, the pre-eminent AIDS researcher who later became Time's Man of the Year and serves as a physician to Magic Johnson. Ho agreed to treat Morrison. But Morrison refused to take various medicines, citing his own research and a spiritual vision. "All Dr. Ho did was do my bloodwork," Morrison says over a boxer's breakfast of strip steak, four eggs, two orders of hash browns. "And then he tried to give me the damn medication. The top guy in the field doesn't even understand that HIV isn't a germ, it's a virus. It's not alive, so you can't kill it -- which is why, 13 years later, we're no closer to a so-called cure."
Ho refuses to comment on Morrison's case. He refers inquiries to the esteemed researcher Dr. Robert Schooley, head of infectious diseases at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver. "What Morrison is doing is actually not a method of battling HIV, it's a method of denial," Schooley says. "We know enough now to know that the cause of AIDS is incontrovertibly HIV, and that the drugs we have to treat it prevent disease from spreading and cut mortality rates. Telling people HIV doesn't cause AIDS is a very convenient thing for the Peter Duesbergs of the world to be doing because it lets patients continue to do things they want to do. Unfortunately, it's wrong."
When Morrison refused to take medication, Ho's office stopped treating him. That was fine with the boxer, who perceives doctors as the unwitting endpoint in a conspiracy among the pharmaceutical giants and the U.S. government. "AZT, ddI, all that stuff is very toxic," he says. "AZT rids the body of the virus, but it brings your immune system down with it, so you catch a cold and die." He calls himself the most educated person he knows regarding HIV. "I don't know how I know the things I know," he says. "I just know I'm right. I haven't been sick in five years. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
True to his word, Morrison even managed to fight last September against a designated patsy, though he had to go to Tokyo to find both a governing body that would sanction him and a willing opponent. He earned only expense money and donated his winner's purse to Knockout AIDS, a fundraising foundation he helped create that is designed to send HIV positive children to championship bouts, make sure they have enough healthy food to eat, and do other similarly good deeds. Other than that, Morrison is almost completely detached from the HIV positive community -- so much so that when the gay newsmagazine The Advocate called his house for a scheduled interview, Morrison responded with insults and invective because, he says, he figured it was a friend pulling a prank.
So far, Morrison and Knockout AIDS have seen little of the estimated $500,000 his Tokyo fight was supposed to raise. But he has planned a celebrity golf tournament in Nashville to make up the difference. He would raise money by fighting again, he says, or even resume his career. But he's afraid -- not of infecting an opponent but of falling back into the lifestyle he had in Kansas City. As it was, much of the partying-induced puffiness of his earlier bouts was gone for his latest bout. "You should have seen him in Tokyo," Campbell says, shaking his head. "He was in terrific, terrific shape."
To Campbell, those rippling forearms are exactly what has Morrison deluded. "Until your body says, 'Hey, you've got a virus,' who tells him? His doctors, whom he doesn't trust or believe anyway," Campbell says. "If your body tells you you're sick, you're going to listen. But until then, it's really, really hard to say, 'Look, Tommy, you've got to start taking these drugs.' And then it's too late. You get a cold and it turns into pneumonia, and you go in and find out you have AIDS. And I think that's what'll happen with Tommy. I pray it doesn't, but I'm worried it will."
Since leaving boxing, which he calls God's will, Morrison has led a full, fulfilling life. "I'm enjoying the hell out of being married," he says. When he isn't on the road giving speeches or broadcasting fights, he spends time teaching and training Brenda Rouse, a female boxer who is billed as the top-ranked contender in the 112-pound flyweight division. At a martial-arts studio near his Tulsa apartment, he extends his arms with padded gloves and lets Rouse work on her timing, her technique, her footwork.
They slide across the carpet, Rouse throwing staccato punches that crack like rifle shots. Morrison shows the same intensity in his eyes he had in Aaron Shriver's living room. "In boxing, you never stop learning," he says, wiping the sweat from his forehead during a break. "You start thinking you know it all, it's the beginning of the end. Be a sponge! Absorb every kind of information you get about life, then decide for yourself what works."
Outside the gym the day is bright and the March air is warm, the first warm day in a while. After the training resumes the crack of Rouse's punches carries out the open door and into the sunshine. Morrison has mentioned getting back to the ranch before too long and maybe going fly fishing, for it's a shame to waste a day like this indoors. But he's in no hurry. He knows he has all the time in the world.
Dr. MCCANDLESS wrote in the LDN support group about another positive effect of taking LDN for AIDS.
--- In LDN_HIVAIDS@yahoogroups.com, JAQUELYN MCCANDLESS wrote:
>
> New Data on Cancer Rates Among HIV-Positive People
> 'Underline' Need for Antiretrovirals That Restore
> Immune Function, Opinion Piece Says
>
>
> New data on cancer rates among HIV-positive
> people "underline" the need for the development of
> antiretroviral drugs that "restore immune function
> more effectively" than currently available treatments,
> Mark Wainberg -- director of McGill University's AIDS
> Centre at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal,
> Canada, and former president of the International AIDS
> Society -- writes in a Washington Post opinion piece.
>
> As a result of increased life expectancy because of
> new antiretrovirals, clinicians and researchers are
> seeing higher rates of several "life-threatening"
> cancers among people who have been HIV-positive for
> long periods of time, Wainberg writes. These cancers
> include lymphomas, carcinomas and lung cancers,
> according to Wainberg, who adds that although the
> "numbers are still relatively small overall, these
> cancers are occurring with far higher frequency among"
> HIV-positive people than among the general population.
> One reason for the increase is that HIV causes a
> decline in immunological function that "cannot be
> completely repaired" by antiretrovirals, according to
> Wainberg. Treatment helps ensure that HIV-positive
> people will not acquire some infections, but the
> immune system still might be compromised in its
> ability to protect against cancer, he notes.
>
> According to Wainberg, the increases in cancer
> incidence "raise a number of important concerns" --
> including whether rates of cancer among HIV-positive
> people will continue to increase and whether the
> cancers will be "restricted to certain types or will
> diversify." Another concern is related to treatment
> because chemotherapy temporarily might prevent the use
> of antiretrovirals, Wainberg writes, adding that such
> interruptions in treatment could "lead to renewed
> replication of the virus and exacerbation" of
> progression to AIDS. In addition, "long-term
> surveillance" is needed to track whether people living
> with HIV for 10 to 25 years will become more
> susceptible to developing cancer as antiretroviral
> therapy improves, Wainberg writes.
>
> According to Wainberg, although the number of cancers
> seen among HIV-positive people could "plateau,"
> widespread "damage" to the immune system already might
> have occurred in almost all patients, regardless of
> when they were diagnosed, by the time they start
> antiretroviral therapy. The "changes" the data on
> cancer "reflect in the evolution of HIV/AIDS as a
> long-term condition and in the quality of life of
> those living with it are vivid reminders that AIDS
> remains a fearsome disease, despite all the progress
> we've achieved over a quarter-century in therapies,
> acceptance and awareness," Wainberg concludes
> (Wainberg, Washington Post, 12/4).
>
But wait, hes a loon, hes going to be dead for sure by 2006 and have full blown aids! We must tell him that theres a 100% chance hes going to die and that he needs to be protected from Duesbergs ideas! oh golly this is murder!.................well hes still alive and totally healthy!
Why dont you just admit that morrison, an average laymen knows more about hiv than you guys do, hes alive and proved you guys wrong, and if he took your deadly advice hed probably be totally miserable and sick now.
Not only that you cant cite any scientific paper that shows that people without mycoplasmas, severe stress, AZT and severe drug abuse even get AIDS, not one chimp out of hundereds inoculated has died after 20 years, why do you people deny people like Tommy morrison informed consent, and let them control their own destiny, crush their dreams when you have no evidence to do so?
Believe what?
He currently claims that he was never infected with HIV. His ex-wife and his ex-lawyer have different stories.
He says that bc he claims to test negative now, strange I thought those tests were 99.9% reliable!
MEC,
It is very difficult to determine exact values for the degree of protection offered by a given level of neutralizing antibodies in an individual patient. In general, when there is a robust immune response to an antigen, the antibody titer will increase over a period of weeks to months. This is what Richman observed in 12 out of 14 patients.
Several of these patients are summarized in table 6, which compares the time course of the production of neutralizing antibodies against the initial viral isolates in several patients, and shows that each patient's neutralizing antibodies are specific for the virus isolated from his own blood.
With the exception of patient TN-2, all of the patients in Table 6 show a significant rise in the titer of neutralizing antibody specific for his own viral isolate. For patient TN-1, the titers against his initial viral isolate at 0 months, 6 months, and 12 months are 54, 1236, and 3677, respectively. For patient TN-5, the titers against his initial viral isolate at 0 months, 6 months, and 11 months are 54, 3020, and 1435, respectively. For patient TN-6, the titers against his initial viral isolate at 0 months, 6 months, and 12 months are 62, 355, and 1097, respectively.
In contrast, for patient TN-2, the titers against his initial viral isolate at 0 months, 6 months, and 11 months are only 44, 78, and 73, respectively. He did not demonstrate a significant rise in his titer against his primary viral isolate.
But how high a titer is biologically significant? The most biologically relevant answer would be a titer that is high enough to interfere with viral replication. Such a biologically significant titer could manifest itself in several ways. For example, the titer might rise to a level that neutralizes the virus so effectively that the virus is unable to maintain the infection and the patient is cured.
Another possibility is that the titer might rise to a level that neutralizes the virus, selecting for rare variants of the virus in which the antigenic target(s) no longer will bind to the neutralizing antibodies, thus leading to the emergence of a slightly different virus in the patient. Richman's data demonstrate the occurrence of this phenomenon in the HIV-infected patients. By this model, one would predict that if the titer gets high enough to be biologically significant--i.e. to significantly interfere with viral replication--then one will begin to recover variant viruses that no longer are recognized by the high titer antibodies.
Table 3, which shows the response of patient TN-3, a patient with a significant but somewhat sluggish response, helps illustrate this process. Looking at the numbers in the vertical columns, one can compare the activity of the antibodies isolated at one time point against the viruses isolated from the same blood sample as the antibodies, viruses isolated from earlier blood samples, and viruses isolated from later blood samples.
The number in bold always indicates the titer of an antibody against the virus isolated from the same blood sample as the antibody--the concurrent virus. Starting at the bold value and moving up, we can see how the concurrent virus compares to earlier viruses from the same patient. If the titer against the concurrent virus is a lot lower than the titer against the viruses directly above it in the column, then the antibody has provided a strong enough selective pressure that a variant strain has grown out. If the titer against the concurrent virus is similar to the titer against the virus directly above it in the column, then no selection has taken place.
For example, looking at the second column from the left (the 3 month plasma), the titer against the concurrent virus is 69 (the 3 month virus, in bold) and the titer against the Zero month virus (directly above) is 67. This indicates that between 0 to 3 months, the patient's antibodies were not significantly interfering with replication of the virus.
In the next column to the right (6 month plasma) the titer against the concurrent virus is 81 (the 6 month virus, bold) and the titer directly above is 142 (representing the activity of the plasma isolated at 6 months against the virus isolated at 3 months). This is starting to indicate a change in the virus, suggesting that viruses that have an antigenic structure that differs from that of the virus predominating from 0-3 months have a selective advantage. The neutralizing antibodies are interfering with the replication of the viral strains isolated at 0 months and at 3 months, and the presence of these antibodies has started selecting out variants from the viral population.
Moving over one column further to the right (10 months plasma), the titer against the concurrent virus is 75 (10 month virus, bold). This titer is not very different from the titer against the 6 month virus directly above (titer = 91), but both of these are much lower than the titer against the 3 month virus (titer =231). This suggests that the immune response continues to be interfering with the replication of the viral strains isolated between 0 - 3 months, but little selective pressure has yet to interfere with replication of the viral strain that emerged at 6 months.
As you continue examining columns further to the right, neutralizing antibodies are eventually produced that interfere with the 6 month virus, and a new viral strain emerges that is insensitive to the neutralizing antibodies. This pattern repeats itself as you examine the subsequent columns.
From looking at these numbers, it seems that when the titer against the most recent earlier strain reaches about 120-175 (when the number directly above the bold number reaches about 120-175), the concurrent strain begins to antigenically diverge (the bold number becomes smaller than the number directly above it).
Comparing these results with Table 2 is also instructive. Table 2 summarizes the titers observed in patient TN-2, who did not mount a significant neutralizing antibody response. His titers bounce around between about 50 to 120, but no consistent increase is seen over time. With no selection taking place, no differences emerge between the titer against the concurrent virus and the earlier viruses.
How the production of neutralizing antibodies relates to the viral loads measured in individual patients is complex.
The strength of this paper is that it provides a detailed investigation of the neutralizing antibody response in individual patients and of the selective pressure that the antibodies impart on the virus.
But this paper does not attempt to provide a comprehensive evaluation of all of the parameters that affect viral replication and viral load in HIV-infected patients.
MEC,
why don't you just say what you want to say rather than pretending you are the grand inquisitor?
But Dr. N, if I were the Grand Inquisitor I'd rank above John Moore, who is only a Small and steadily diminishing Inquisitor. But an Inquisitor is somebody who accuses. I only ask about the basis on which you arrive at your conclusions. Here's what I want to say again:
"Franklin,
Now you're at it providing useful public service, could you please define an adequate level of antibody reponse in terms of the numbers given in the tables for the different subjects?
If I read, for instance that the initial antibody neutralization titre is 26 for subject TN-1 how far exactly is that from an adequate response? After 3 months the titre is 216, how far is that from an adequate response?
Would you also care to explain the clinical relevance of these varying titers in light of this:
The failure of 2 of 14 patients to generate a significant neutralizing antibody response (Table 2) and the varying levels and timing of peak antibody titers among the untreated patients did not seem to correlate with levels of plasma HIV RNA or CD4 lymphocyte counts during the period of follow-up
Thank you."
Now Dr. N, do you know the answer?
Your definition of an "intelligent open mind" as somebody that agrees with your interpretation gives us a clear indication of your delusions of grandeur.
No, those are simply the qualifications needed to escape the meme when reading any paper, but as it happens, with Richman it yields my interpretation, yes, as you would appreciate if you possessed either quality in examining meme-riddled papers, which unfortunately is like asking you to look yourself in the face without a mirror, because you are indeed the Meme incarnate, Chris, and your arguments a classic example of the Meme Effect, ie the Kruger-Dunning effect in the special instance of HIV=AIDS, perhaps the grandest example of the Kruger-Dunning effect in the history of the politics of science, let alone biology.
The article by Richman has been cited over 200 times. None of them interpet the paper in the manner in which you have. I guess you would have us believe that all of these scientists are completely stupid.
Precisely. The meme inhabits most of the brains in the field. You hadn't noticed this yet? We pointed it out to you earlier. Like Windows, the Meme is a bad idea that has network utility: the more it spreads, the more useful it is to everybody, even though there is a far better alternative, as in Mac OSX. You are not aware of this Chris? Well of course, the Meme is not aware of it, And you are the Meme.
whereas you have some special knowledge that allows you to look past the data to some hidden truth.
Yes indeed.. Not because I am privileged, but simply because I looked at the question, instead of allowing the Meme to take over my brain and prevent me from doing so. What you call special knowledge is easily available to anybody with an independent mind who does the same, impossible only to you and others ridden by the Meme.
It is truth hidden only from you and your busy gang of resolute HIV=AIDS apologists, who manage the almost inhumanly difficult trick of examining papers in HIV=AIDS having been told the correct interpretation and still concluding that HIV=AIDS, which is intellectually equivalent to forming a human pretzel, ie putting both feet behind your head and sucking on both big toes at once.
you have not made a single substantial response regarding the data in the paper by Richman et al.
True, and why should I? You misread the paper, I told you what the paper actually says, and you and Franklin raised false points corrected by Robert Houston and Claw, which was kind of them since none were worth responding to.
Richman found that the virus mutation is easily dealt with by the immune response of a healthy person. It does not allow HIV to escape its influence. It renders HIV a puddy tat up a tree, which is where your absurd twisting of clear data lands your Meme.
I see you are doing your very best impersonation of the Black Knight from Monty Python and The Holy Grail
Houston, Claw, Cooler, Rezak have now lopped off the arms and legs of the Monty Python Black Knight, not vice versa. I prefer to keep out of repeating the same old obvious points while you play the role of Denialist, which is the only one you know,
If you had any fresh and original point to make, I would answer, and if you won it, I would concede like a gentleman, It is time for you at long last, Noble, to face up to the fact that without the Meme machine, you have nothing to say.
Come out from behind it and fess up, Noble. Telling the truth about yourself is good for the soul,
Simply repeating this falsehood over and over again does not make it true. You know very well that Richman does not agree with this mis/interpretation.
Figure 3 and Table 7 demonstrate that HIV continues to replicate and reach high viral loads despite antibody response.
You expect somebody to believe that even the authors of the paper are incapable of understanding it? Everybody apart from your small band of "rethinkers" misread the paper?
But you haven't actually said anything. At least Truthtwister has the courage/foolishness to offer his own erroneous interpretation of the paper.
In case there are still people that accept Truthtwisters dishonest interpretation of this paper there is a more recent paper from Richman.
Antibody responses in primary HIV-1 infection
franklin,
Thank you.
"Patients TN-1, TN-5, TN-6, TN-7, and TN-10 have each been followed for between approximately 1-2 years, and patients TN-2 and TN-3 have been followed for approximately 3 years--and even in their latest blood samples, all of these patients still have viruses that are not subject to neutralization by the antibodies present in the same blood sample."
But according to what they report in the paper, the patients will develop a potent immune response eventually.
I did not find this quote on the paper. In fact the graph you linked me to is part of this:
"Individual Variability of Neutralizing Antibody Responses. The impact of antiretroviral treatment on the emergence and evolution of neutralization responses can be appreciated by comparing the patterns of individual responses among seven patients who declined treatment and five patients who successfully suppressed plasma HIV RNA with antiretroviral therapy (Fig. 4). Fig. 4 also depicts the considerable intersubject variation in the time to peak titer and the potency of neutralizing antibody responses directed at viruses that emerged later in infection. In 9 of the 12 untreated patients with detectable neutralizing antibody, the highest measured neutralization titer was directed against the baseline virus (month 0) whereas in three others higher titers of neutralizing antibody developed against viruses that emerged later in infection."
Sorry I've read the paper again and I did not find anything that says that the immune system will eventaully stop responding. And I've read it over again. And again.
Uh oh...Here come comments about my ability (and intelligence) to understand even the simplest of papers.
I'm sorry, but English is not my native tongue and this paper is not very direct in its conclusions and is full of very technical language.
Noble,
Regardless of my position in this matter, I'm still able to read a paper (even if I have to n times) and understand what they conclude there. I don't think it is the purpose of the authors to write a paper and let the reader's imagination run wild and draw their own conclusions. All this because the paper is difficult to read. The paper that I'm used to read have a much more accessible language and convey their conclusions without rodeos.
You don't know me or know anything about my intelligence or lack of it. If the paper said anything about virus overwhelming the immune system, then I would see it and they would tell it straight out. Not imagine that was what they are trying to say.
"We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants. The antibody responses to these variants exert a selective pressure that drives continuous evolution of neutralization escape mutants."
That's what they report and conclude. Thank God for abstracts. They even suggest to study the immune response over a larger time frame.(Probably because they didn't see the expected signs of immune decline?)
"We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants (To ALL subsequent variants? That must be, because they don't say otherwise)."
It is always caught.
Oh, I may not take 3 years to heal a flu, but I can be infected with the same strain of flu and not develop symptoms because of immune memory. Normally I take about 4 weeks to fully recover. That's about the same time these patients take to develop proper immune response to the virus. And as Adele said before, that HIV evades immune response like, for example, herpes, one can have HIV in the system but only have an outbreak when the immune system is weakened by other factors. Just like herpes. And this one is not cleared from the system.
Noble, don't strip me (and others) from my (modest) intellectual and critical ability. Nor label me with the D word. I read the paper with an open mind and unbiased stance. I don't read paper with the sole purpose of not taking their word for it. Nor I do blindly believe in what it is written. (And I've had some surpises for blindly believing what is written on papers) I think one has to retain some critical attitude. The peer-review system isn't incorruptible and holy. With all due respect for Mr. Richman's work, if Mr. Richman was so secure about what he was doing, the messages conveyed in the paper wouldn't be enshrouded by the extensive use of technical language. He would say his conclusions in a (even) more direct manner.
And I will not stand here and be judged because what I was able to take from the paper wasn't pleasing to one or other "faction". Nor I will be called murderer for that matter. It is the lack of constructive conversation that murders. That "we don't negotiate with terrorists" stance has brought some positive results, didn't it? Just look at Palestine or Iraq.
Hmmph...I wonder what would happen I my doctor called me heretic/denialist after I questioned one of his methods or asked for informed consent? I would sure deny him of the wad of money he takes for each appointment. And I've dealt with medical incompetence first-hand. And so have many others.
Franklin, on the other hand, is willing argue without the aggressive attitude (which I appreciate very much!).
Science is not just for you people.
Rezaf,
Even though high titers are raised against variants that arise after the initial inection, that doesn't indicate that the immune system has blocked replication of the virus.
In order for the immune system to block replication of the virus, the concurrent sample must not contain virus that the antibodies are unable to neutralize.
As long as the high titer antibodies do not recognize the concurrent virus, virus is able to replicate.
Even if months later the patient produces neutralizing antibodies against a prior variant, the new antibody sample is accompanied by a concurrent virus that escapes neutralization.
The paper shows that although the antibody response evolves, the viral population evolves faster, continuously producing variants that are invisisble to the neutralizing antibodies.
Please go back to the paper and let us know know which patients have high titer neutralizing antibodies to their concurrent virus. If no patients have high titer neutralizing antibodies to the concurrent virus, then the virus continuously evades the immune response, as Richman et al. conclude.
"Here's what I want to say again" (Mec)
"But you haven't actually said anything. At least Truthtwister has the courage/foolishness to offer his own erroneous interpretation of the paper." (Dr. N.)
Dr. N, thank you for this further opportunity; you know how I love rubbing your nose in it. Here's once again for the cheap seats what, not I, but Richman has to say:
The failure of 2 of 14 patients to generate a significant neutralizing antibody response (Table 2) and the varying levels and timing of peak antibody titers among the untreated patients did not seem to correlate with levels of plasma HIV RNA or CD4 lymphocyte counts during the period of follow-up
The failure to generate a (detectably) significant antibody response and the varying (detectable) levels and timing of peak antibody titers had zero, zippo, zilch, nil, nada, correlation with viral load and CD4 levels, the markers of progression towards AIDS.
In the post-Rodriguez et al. era of AIDS apologetics, I do not expect this to faze the believers, but still, would you like to present a mathematical model explaining this by now well known lack of correlation extending to antibody levels as well?
In order for the immune system to block replication of the virus, the concurrent sample must not contain virus that the antibodies are unable to neutralize.
As long as the high titer antibodies do not recognize the concurrent virus, virus is able to replicate. (Franklin)
Which begs the question yet again, how do I read from the different figures in the tables how many concurrent intact virions in the bloodstream are escaping the antibody response at any given point in time?
To help you in the right direction, here is Richman:
The true timing of emerging neutralizing antibody responses may be masked by the extensive levels of virus replication (1010 virions generated daily during chronic infection (20) and 100 times that during acute infection (21). Therefore, much of the neutralizing antibody that is generated early in infection may be bound to virions in lymphoid germinal centers and elsewhere and thus undetectable in plasma.
This was two quotes from Richman. I hope Dr. N comes on once more to say that I (meaning Richman) haven't actually said anything since in that case he would be in perfect agreement with Rezaf and myself, and we can all go home early.
I will never cease to be amazed at the schizoid POV of the denialists.
Scenario One:
Scientists: "HIV rapidly evades host neutralising antibody responses - this is why we cannot develop a protective vaccine"
Denialists: "The virus escapes! They can't make a vaccine! This is proof HIV does not cause AIDS!"
Scenario Two:
Scientists: "HIV rapidly evades host neutralising antibody responses"
Denialists: "Oh no it doesn't! (we can interpret the science better than you!) This is proof HIV does not cause AIDS!"
The stupid......It burns!
Welcome back DT. I want to report that my CD4's are 145, an increase of 62 points. The only new thing in my life is the complete removal of all mercury amalgams and I have started the long process of chelation therapy. Although, I am happy with the latest results, I think the next three month levels will be more accurate after more and more mercury is removed, which it has been proven to lower CD4's as has many other things.
Oh, want to add that my doctors are looking into the prospect of an HIV culture for me. I want to really see what is going on once and for all.
I must share a jewel of a quote to you from Dr. MCcandless, who is doing studies in Africa in AIDS:
"The future of new medicine in my opinion lies in helping the immune system, not in trying to poison, cut or burn every pathogen eccountered."
Glad you are keeping well Noreen. Any info on your Hep serology yet?
Perhaps you can tell us the criteria by which you critically judge a statement of medical information; what guides your decision to believe one "fact" rather than another?
I am just wondering because through these boards you have had exposure to countless studies in the field of biomedicine, but decide anecdote suits you best. Do you do the same with studies on mercury amalgam? Can you provide a link to the "proof" that it lowers CD4 cells? Does it lower all lymphocytes, or maybe CD3-bearing cells? What about its effects on CD4 cells, CD8, NK cells, CTLs etc? Does it affect CD19 populations? I am curious, so would be delighted to be pointed to the studies that have "proven" your claim for you.
This paper and others exist in a context of the literature. The authors do not write these papers with the idea that a group of people with little knowledge of the literature will go through and find selected quotes that can be twisted to mean something that they don't.
It would be nice if you argued against what I have said not what you imagine. Although neutralizing anitibodies are generated they fail to stop HIV from replicating and they fail to stop new escape mutants from evolving.
By the time neutralizing antibodies to one particular variant have been generated new escape mutants have already evolved. HIV continues to outstep the immune response. You have apparently seized upon something Adele has said and are misinterpretting it. HIV and herpes simplex are both persistent infections. Herpes simplex is however a persistent latent infection. Replication is basically stopped and the virus hides out in neural ganglia. HIV on the other hand is a persistent chronic infection. It is never latent. Replication occurs at al stages of infection.
Please read up on the other examples of persistent chronic infectiuons - Visna-maedi, EIAV and SIV.
Once again, he did not write this paper with people like Truthtwister in mind. This might come as a surprise to somebody who has a delusion that he is the guardian of science and that it is up to scientist like Richman to prove to him personally that HIV causes AIDS.
This suggests that cellular immunity rather than humoral immunity plays the main role in controlling HIV viraemia. You could try reading more of the literature than the one or two papers that are handed to you with pre-misinterpretted quotes.
DT, the following link shows some info about mercury and dental amalgams. Also, I contacted Dr. Huggins and Dr. David Eggleston, who have done research on the issue of amalgam removal and CD4 improvement. They both agreed that by my having my amalgams removed, that I would see increases in CD4's. DT, I think that around 80% increase in CD4's is pretty good!
http://www.xs4all.nl/~stgvisie/AMALGAM/EN/SCIENCE/bernie_science.html#8
Also:
Pelletier L. "Autoreactive T Cells in Mercury Autoimmunity"J. Immunology, 140 no.3 (1988) pp750-54
"You fail to grasp over and over the simple fact that she has conflicting HIV tests."
Christine Maggiore has claimed to have various HIV test results (positive, negative and indeterminate) but I would request of her what she claims to request of others: Proof.
I don't know that she's ever had ANYTHING but a positive result - EVER. And the only reason I know that is because her 3 year old daughter died of PCP with a positive stain for P24 and assuming the kid wasn't shooting heroin or sleeping around, mama was the source.
There are at least tens of millions of people with dental amalgams, yet no explosive percentage of PCP among them. Same goes for drug addicts, the malnourished, the sleep deprived, the highly stressed, etc.
But these groups of individuals are not suffering from single digit CD4 cells, PCP, PML, Cryptococcal Meningitis or CMV Retinitis UNLESS they also test positive for HIV.
However, you find an overwhelming percentage of individuals with the above infections whom also test positive for HIV - yet nothing else about them is in common.
The correlation here are obvious to a child.
Many things besides HIV, if at all, bring CD4's down. I had radiation treatments,which is not known to increase levels. I would suggest that you read the above referenced document and see how terrible mercury is in the human body.
This suggests that cellular immunity rather than humoral immunity plays the main role in controlling HIV viraemia. You could try reading more of the literature than the one or two papers that are handed to you with pre-misinterpretted quotes
Thank YOU for that admission Dr. N. I'll pass your misplaced compliment on to your colleague, Franklin, who unfortunately had stared himself blind on humoral immunity to the exclusion of all other considerations. However, allow me to repeat:
The failure to generate a (detectably) significant antibody response and the varying (detectable) levels and timing of peak antibody titers had zero, zippo, zilch, nil, nada, correlation with viral load and CD4 levels, the markers of progression towards AIDS.
Richman, found it significant enough to mention: NO correlation between antibody titers viral load and CD4 count.
NONE whatsoever.
Hanna, I also had a double whammy by having numerous amalgams and by working in the dental field for 5 years, unprotected. Female dental assistants and hygienists were exposed to mercury and it vapors more so than the dentists. In fact, the study showed that even dental students had high levels of mercury and lowered immunity. I also have had several diseases that are linked to mercury exposure which occurred in that time frame.
Admission?
Truthtwisters initial claim was that the antibody reponse "defeated" HIV and therefore HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
Now apparently you have chnaged direction 180 degrees and are arguing that because the antibody titres did not seem to correlate with viral load that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
Round and round we go!
Yeah Noreen, I figured you'd point out the OBVIOUS that people who've undergone extensive radiation and/or chemotherapy or organ recipients receiving high-dose steroid treatment would be immune suppressed.
Prior to 1980, that WAS the source of immune deficiency and the life-threatening opportunistic infections I noted.
Subsequent to 1980, young people never having undergone radiation, chemotherapy or high-dose steroids were suffering these illnesses and dying. Hmm....what could it be? After all, it was men, women, some children - people with different backgrounds, behaviors and with such differences that no common factor could be found. Until HIV. Suddenly THAT was the ONE common factor these otherwise healthy people had that were now facing life-threatening OIs.
Again, only a child wouldn't add it up.
Further Noreen, if you have a peer reviewed paper that's been published in a reputable medical journal that implicates amalgams as the cause of PCP, PML, Crypto, CMV Retinitis in a group of individuals, please do provide - I would be greatly interested.
Otherwise, it's meaningless.
Thousands of women dye their hair blue, some of them develop breast cancer. That's not enough to implicate the dye. However, if breast cancer is a rarely seen illness and suddenly there are explosive pockets of breast cancer among women who are also dying their hair blue yet breast cancer remains extremely rare otherwise, you have to start making an obvious connection that something's going on with the blue dye that's causing breast cancer.
With HIV, the logic works perfectly in both directions. Over 90% of people who test positive for HIV face a life-threatening OI within 15 years. These life-threatening OIs are only rarely seen outside of an HIV positive patient.
Do the math.
Richman, found it significant enough to mention: NO correlation between antibody titers viral load and CD4 count.
Gee MEC,
Maybe that's because the neutralizng antibodies are ineffective at halting the replication of the escape variants that arise in HIV-infected people.
Your worries about this lack of correlation should probably be directed to Truthseeker (sic), since he is the one that maintains that HIV is "defeated" by the neutralizing antibody response.
Those of us who have carefully examined the paper realize that even in the individuals who have produced the highest titers of neutralizing antibodies for years, every blood sample contains viral variants whose replication is not blocked by the antibodies present in the blood sample.
I have discovered an answer from Franklin, which I had either overlooked or which had been held back because of the many links. It provides useful assistance on how to read the tables, and it also recognizes that,
"this paper does not attempt to provide a comprehensive evaluation of all of the parameters that affect viral replication and viral load in HIV-infected patients."
Posted by: franklin | December 5, 2007 1:52 AM
So Dr. N's compliments were doubly misplaced it seems.
The question then arises why such a strong selective pressure fails to appreciably impact levels of virus replication as does chemotherapy.
Hard to know what you or even Richman are really arguing, Chris, when the basic picture is so clear. After a few weeks the level of virus is excruciatingly low, that is what repression (Fauci's word) means. The virus is thus vaccinated against, just as we are vaccinated against your objections, Chris. Once exposed to enough of them we develop an immunity. Mutated virus doesn't get anywhere, just as your red herrings get nowhere.
In your intransigence, Chris, you are a Denialist who when offered a scientific lemon, says Ah - an orange! Informed that it is a lemon, you then inspect it very carefully and find a fleck of orange amid the yellow and shout triumphantly "It's an ORANGE! You're a liar! You're dishonest! It's an orange! looky here, an orange an orange an orange!!!!"
It's a lemon. You've been taken, Mr Meme. HIV=AIDS is the biggest giant lemon in the history of science. And you think it is an orange.
I recognise your genius, Chris, but unfortunately like many geniuses you are misled in the real world by charlatans who take advantage of your idealism and your good nature and twist your neurons into pretzels.
It's a giant lemon, Chris. Smell it. Taste it. Prod it. It's the world's biggest lemon. Sold to you by the world's greatest used car salesmen, labelled scientists.
As to your new Richman paper, right now we can only see the abstract:
Antibody responses in primary HIV-1 infection.
Primary HIV infection
Current Opinion in HIV & AIDS. 3(1):45-51, January 2008. Frost, Simon DW a; Trkola, Alexandra b; Gunthard, Huldrych F b; Richman, Douglas D a,c,d
Abstract: Purpose of review: HIV-1 establishes persistent infections characterized by high levels of viral replication. This finding is remarkable given the presence of apparently vigorous HIV-specific cellular and humoral immune responses. We review the dynamics of antibody responses and viral escape from these responses during primary HIV-1 infection.
If this is PRIMARY infection, it is the first few weeks when there are high levels of virus, I take it, not later months when mutations make entirely ineffectual attempts to get going. Anyhow, basic point: that's when virus titers are HIGHEST, so where is the AIDS? You just get a cold. Half don't. That is all the AIDS HIV ever causes - a cold, if that.
HIV gives you a cold while vaccinating you against itself. End of story.
Bite the lemon, Chris! In weeks you get a hundred to thousand fold reduction in virus titer to a low set point, a steady state of very low level of virus concentration FOREVER unless there is an environmental change ie a later loss of immune competence from other sources. That's why we have the flat line on the graph of virus titer - it is in equilibrium at a very low level.
We are talking of a plateau phase lasting for years and years, when people are effectively NOT ILL and NOT INFECTIOUS. Why? Because they now only harbor 1/100 to 1/1000 of the initial viremia. That is the measure of the VERY effective counter response of the immune system, Mr Meme. The virus is suppressed, DEFEATED by the body. Period. There is no further bad effect on the patient unless he is loaded with immune suppressors, such as gay fast life style drugs, or killer DNA chain terminator drugs given to him by well meaning physicians informed by the Meme as explained by Chris "Me da Meme" Noble, or malnourishment or starvation, or anti inflammatory drugs ie corticosteroids or stress or malnutrition which create cortisol, which suppresses immunity, as in the transplant operations where it is used for just such a purpose. Cortisol depletes T-cells in the plasma and the lymph nodes, as shown by your great leader Anthony Fauci, who now uses the word SUPPRESS to describe the action of the immune system cells against the virus.
Cytotoxic CD8 T-cells also help suppress the virus down from the initially high viremia, according to Fauci. 1) Neutralizing antibodies bind with key parts of the envelope to prevent the virus from infecting the cell, rendering almost all of it inert and uninfectious, Karpas says explicitly, neutralise means kill, and 2) antibodies tag it for destruction by other components of the system even earlier than the neutralizing antibodies, unless Richman is right to say they occur earlier than people thought in lymphoid germinal centers.
Anyhow, the very existence of mutated virus is a result of the original version being stymied and destroyed. The mutations which arise from decimated virus are despatched with equal gusto (please dont start bleating that because the virus is able to mutate it is not defeated, this is just silly), Moreover, check how replication is measured - PCR? Very MISLEADING - it gives far too high a virus titer because it counts fragments and dead material,
So a) the virus is kept down, and b) the PCR measures Richman et al are using are vastly exaggerating the numbers of live intact virus left by at least 60,000 times. Only 1 in 60,000 virions/part virions detected is infectious, maybe just 1 in a million.
We went through all this with David Ho in the late 90s, when Ho won his Time cover, for what turned out to be bad science, justifying his lethal hit "early and hit hard" scheme. Ho, Moore's boss at the time, made the same claim as you are peddling now, that the virus was dangerously busy during the latent period, but unfortunately for him it all fell apart when Duesberg and Bialy pointed out the amount of active virus in the plateau period was far too little to cause trouble, even though Maddox tried to protect the claim by asking Does Duesberg have the right of reply? and confining him to a 500 word letter. Poor Ho, bathed in glory on the Time cover and then exposed as using fallacious mathematical models which overestimated the amount of active virus with PCR by 60,000 or more.
Not that there was any surprise in that. John P. Moore in 1992 had co-signed the finding that the ratio of infectious virus to the total of one cloned strain he studied was 1 in 10,000 to 1 in ten million. Only as few as 1 in ten million HIV-1 virions was capable of infecting a cell!! Plus the stuff spontaneously inactivates, Chris - loses its powers as it disintegrates all by itself. We'll replay Mr Moore in detail as promised on Science Guardian when we recover from the exciting panel last night at NYU on Ending AIDS: Why The World Can't Wait, full of beautiful women including the lovably cherry lipped Laurie Garrett all trying to help as the Meme spreads round the world destroying happiness and lives.
No wonder the visually highly presentable Nancy Padian is forced to say that people are hardly infectious if at all - that people who have heterosexual sex probably don't ever transmit HIV positivity. Even in her apology on AIDSTruth she can only claim 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000 bouts result in heterosexual transmission by imagining some transmission occurred before her six year study, which found NONE at all.
But Mr Moore could have told her that. Of COURSE non-gay people don't transmit, if there is such a very low level of virus in the otherwise healthy person and only as little as 1/10,000,000th of it is infectious.
Chris, you are an indomitable true believing Aussie knight tilting your tiny ineffective lance against a vast pyramid of theoretical consistency when you gallop against the true drug/conventional disease/nutritional deficit theory of AIDS. Duesberg established it two decades ago and it has not budged since, but merely accumulates evidence and confirmation year after year.
You are fighting this immovable pyramid on behalf of a vast garbage heap generated by monomania, the inconsistent, silly, impossible theory that AIDS is caused by an infectious virus, a smoking festering hypothetical heap which is disintegrating of its own accord as its high priests are forced to make concession after concession in their papers.
Read Fauci in the May 17 2007 NEJ and see how he agrees that the virus is SUPPRESSED by the immune system and that the efficiency of HIV transmission is DIRECTLY RELATED to the level of virus in the plasma. Then stop trying to blight heterosexual romance with this revolting theoretical stink. You may not value the smile on the face of a beautiful woman but we do. Stop worrying lovely girls by talking scientific nonsense about a part of life that should on this basis be as free of condoms as Africans feel they should be. In Uganda 80% never use them and their rate of transmission is 1 in 900 (Wawer).
Repeat - four out of five never use condoms and their rate is 1 in 900. Gee. I wonder why. It aint there, Chris, the HIV=AIDS hypothesis is a vast lemon.
The concern, Franklin, is Richman's own:
The question then arises why such a strong selective pressure fails to appreciably impact levels of virus replication
He spends a good deal of the discussion wrestling with this problem.
hanna,
since you know every answer about hiv, please provide me with the first few papers published before 1990 that proved hiv causes AIDS. Koch etc had original documents that prove causality etc.
Since most every animal incoulated doesnt get aids such as the hundereds of chimps who are still alive and kicking after 20 years of being inoculated with HIV, please send us the study that proves gallos 1/1000 cell microbe causes immune deficiancy.
In duesbergs book he claims the window period was originally 10 months, and has been extended to 10 years(and you talk about deniers extending the goalposts)
So ill be waiting for the study that shows people who are not on AZT, severe drugs/stress, mycoplasmas get aids vs matched controls, a study specifically designed to test gallo's hypothesis, the only real way to tell if a species specific microbe with such a long window period is pathenogenic. Please send me that study, surely some expirementts were conducted that were designed to test gallo's hypothesis? Oh wait, a study that questioned gallo's sacrosanct hypothesis would never be allowed!
Truthseeker (sic),
Next time why don't you just save some time and say:
"Pay no attention to the data behind the curtains!"
The basic picture that Richman describes is that HIV-1 establishes persistent infections characterized by high levels of viral replication at all stages of disease. 10^10 virions generated daily during the chronic infection stage and 100 times this during the acute infection. Neutralizing antibody titers to contemporaneous virus variants are low and fail to appreciably impact the levels of virus replication. Neutralizing antibody titers to virus variants from several months in the past may be relatively high but escape mutants have evolved in the intervening time.
No amount of bullshit and obfuscation on your part will ever turn this into "the virus has been defeated".
If the titer against the concurrent virus is a lot lower than the titer against the viruses directly above it in the column, then the antibody has provided a strong enough selective pressure that a variant strain has grown out. If the titer against the concurrent virus is similar to the titer against the virus directly above it in the column, then no selection has taken place.
I take it it would be the ideal antibody response if the values remained constant then, indicating that no escape variants has been produced.
How would you distinguish that from...
many studies of autologous neutralizing antibody after primary HIV infection stress the low or absent responses with only infrequent examples of escape (Richman)
... which apparently is bad?
PS. First quote is from Franklin.
MEC, what is the purpose of these continual floundering questions?
I know it isn't an actual interest in understanding these papers because you have already made up your mind about the issue.
Although the neutralizing antibodies do not significantly impact the levels of HIV replication they do place a soft selective pressure on HIV and drive the evolution of escape variants. If neutralizing antibody titers remain low then there is little selective pressure to drive the evolution of new escape variants.
Next time why don't you just save some time and say: "Pay no attention to the data behind the curtains!"-
Posted by: franklin | December 5, 2007 10:30 PM
No amount of bullshit and obfuscation on your part will ever turn this into "the virus has been defeated".
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 5, 2007 11:25 PM
Translation: no amount of irrefutable reasoning (antibodies) will ever stop us (the Meme Boys) from claiming that it is BS and obfuscation and "We are not defeated!"
Fine. Then maybe it takes driving a simple stake into the heart of this walking Dead Meme:
Can you produce one instance of a healthy HIV+ person who falls sick and dies without one of the ADDITIONAL FACTORS we listed above?
From the peer reviewed scientific literature, where the facts are loud and clear?
A healthy HIV+ who fell ill just from that condition? No fun drugs, no dangerous medical drugs, no corticosteroids, no stress from witch doctor voodoo,
no dietary deficiency, no conventional disease?
One genuine case.
If you contemplate that long enough, Chris, maybe even you will get the picture.
As Montagnier has.
After that overwhelming broadside from Truthseeker, anything I say may be anticlimactic. However, I've checked his remarks against the cited paper and found them consistent (see M. Johnston and A. Fauci: An HIV vaccine -evolving concepts. NEJM 356:2073-81, 2007).
Even with no neutralizing antibodies, the immune system is able to beat down the early high viremia to 100th, or even 1000th the original level and do so in a matter of weeks. What would one call the destruction of 99% of an enemy army? What would one call its continued suppression for years to about 1% of its original full force? Not a defeat? In any case, Fauci says that the immune responses (especially the CD8 T-cells) "continue to suppress the virus."
I appreciate the analyses by Franklin and Chris Noble in response to my comment yesterday about the Richman paper (PNAS 100:4144-9, 2003). Franklin kindly invited me to suggest an alternative interpretation to the one he presented. I gather that he and Dr. Noble believe that only contemporaneous neutralization is relevant and regard the contemporaneous figures as negligible.
Their claims are not consistent with the authors, however, who define "negligible" as below 100. In the table shown (Tbl. 1) by Franklin from the Richman paper, the initial contemporaneous neutralizing response to the baseline virus was 26 but then climbs to between 3 and 8 times this value.
I was berated by both critics for pointing out that Table 1 in the Richman paper actually showed better responses for the later virus variants than for the baseline one. Noble and Franklin miscronstrued "later" to mean "latest" and accused me of deception. Table 1 however shows higher peak neutralizing titers for the 3, 6, and 9 month viruses than for the baseline strain. Those later variants also had higher contemporaneous neutralizing titers than did the original strain. Table 1 refered to patient TN-1 who exemplified the high antibody levels which were achieved by nearly half the patients. As the authors pointed out, in a quarter of their subjects "higher titers of neutralizing antibody developed against viruses that emerged later in infection."
The titers of contemporareous neutralizing antibody were not high but were significant, generally over 100, which the authors defined as non-negligible. These levels were sufficient to eliminate the conemporaneous strains sufficiently so as to select for the subsequent variants.
Is the high potency of antibody achieved over time clinically irrelevant, as Noble and Franklin claim? No, it means that any earlier HIV variant that is in "the pool of latently infected, resting CD4+ T cells" (Fauci) will be zapped by powerful neutralizing antibodies if it's ever re-expressed.
Furthermore, binding antibodies appears earlier than neutralizing antibody and may tag the virus - or cells harboring the virus - for destruction by other components of the immune system. Working with them, even low to moderate levels of neutralizing antibodies may pack a wallop, as the emergence of new strains suggests they did.
Although the neutralizing antibodies do not significantly impact the levels of HIV replication they do place a soft selective pressure on HIV and drive the evolution of escape variants.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 6, 2007 12:20 AM
Bingo!
Decrease by 100 to 1000x with activity 1/60,000 is not "significant"?
To a flat line for years with no change until some other disturbance of the system?
Even Myron Cohen would have to correct you, Chris.
This statement alone is enough to vaccinate anyone literate in this field from having to deal with you.
Your entire second career now lies in ruins.
Maybe you should move to Denying that the sun rises in the East.
You forgot the other things on the list of things that are supposed by "rethinkers" to cause AIDS. Antibiotics, cigarette smoke, aspirin, stress ....
The simple reality is that the list of things that "rethinkers" claim cause AIDS is so long and extensive that there isn't a single person alive that hasn't been exposed to at least one of them. The "rethinker" theories explain everything and nothing.
Raphael Lombardo was held up by Duesberg as an example of people not taking recreational drugs or ARVs. That is until he had the misfortune of progressing to AIDS and dying. Then in an textbook example of cognitive dissonance Duesberg retrospectively decided that Raphael must have been lying about not taking drugs. Duesberg has immersed himself so far into his state of self-delusion that nothing will ever convince him that he is wrong.
In the more recent paper by Richman (Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS 2008, 3:45 51) he describes the neutralizing antibody titer to contemporaneous variants as "low" and that the reason they are low is that escape variants rapidly evolve.
You are playing silly word games. You know that Richman does not agree with Truthtwister's misrepresentations and yet you continue to try to spin the truth.
Richman himself writes that HIV establishes persistent infections characterized by high levels of viral replication at all stages of disease with 10^10 virions generated daily during the chronic infection stage.
You can waffle all you want about suppression and repression it won't turn this into defeat.
Thanks Robert for detailed clarity in answer to the fumbling autoresponse obfuscation generated by Chris and Franklin's meme machine.
Furthermore, binding antibodies appear earlier than neutralizing antibody and may tag the virus - or cells harboring the virus - for destruction by other components of the immune system. - Houston
Right, I meant to write "if" Richman is right about this coming earlier, not "unless."
Not that Chris or Franklin are going to try and refute the post anyway, it is clear.
Guess the meme machine is under repair. It has temporarily run out off "you liar" and "You dishonest" and "you misinterpet" chips and more had to be ordered up from the sale page of AIDS Truth.
MEC, what is the purpose of these continual floundering questions?
Although the neutralizing antibodies do not significantly impact the levels of HIV replication they do place a soft selective pressure on HIV and drive the evolution of escape variants. If neutralizing antibody titers remain low then there is little selective pressure to drive the evolution of new escape variants.
Dr. N. not only are you not able to undertand the simplest questions, you are also spinning like a top at the moment. For instance, how on Earth do you decide that the selective pressure exerted by antibodies is "soft"?
The sequence variation in one isolate from a single
HIV-infected individual sampled a few years after infection is greater than the global variation of an influenza epidemic strain during a flu season. (Burton et al.)
Is it this rate of evolution you consider the result of a soft pressure by largely ineffectual antibodies?
As for the rest Dr. N, Franklin has come up with a new way of determining the efficacy of the neutralizing antibody response:
The number in bold always indicates the titer of an antibody against the virus isolated from the same blood sample as the antibody--the concurrent virus. Starting at the bold value and moving up, we can see how the concurrent virus compares to earlier viruses from the same patient. If the titer against the concurrent virus is a lot lower than the titer against the viruses directly above it in the column, then the antibody has provided a strong enough selective pressure that a variant strain has grown out. If the titer against the concurrent virus is similar to the titer against the virus directly above it in the column, then no selection has taken place.
On this view, constant values would show that no variants have escaped the neutralizing antibody response. However, Richman says:
HIV-1 were reported first by Weiss in 1986 ( 9), and several later studies have suggested that its appearance is slow to develop and of low titer ( 2, 4, 5). Neutralization escape of HIV has been reported in limited cases ( 10-15); however, many studies of autologous neutralizing antibody after primary HIV infection stress the low or absent responses with only infrequent examples of escape ( 5, 16-18). We report here that in most patients, potent neutralizing antibody responses are generated early after infection, at first to the autologous infecting HIV variant and then to subsequent variants. The antibody responses to these variants exert a selective pressure that drives continuous evolution of neutralization escape mutants.
In other words:
1. "Low or absent responses with only infrequent examples of escape" = ineffectual antibody response.
2. "Potent neutralizing antibody responses" = ineffectual antibody response.
3. Potent neutralizing antibody responses with no or infrequent examples of escape are (on Franklin's interpretation at least) indistinguishable from "1.", thus translatable into "low or absent antibody responses" = ineffectual antibodies.
I refer again to Robert Houston:
To put things in context, the significance of the revelations by Prof. Karpas and by Richman et al. about the neutralizing effect of anti-HIV antibodies is that for 23 years the AIDS extablishment has maintained that the antibodies to HIV are non-neutralizing and ineffectual.
Thus when the Richman paper appeared, the HIV loyalists tried to spin its meaning as being that HIV triumphs by mutating. We see Franklin and Chris Noble also exemplifying this interpretation.
It would seem this "spin" is inevitable since Richman's study is designed so that the very figures which demonstrate the potency of the neutralizing antibody response automatically confirm the superior powers of the virus to outmutate them. Richman's conclusion, not surprisingly, is also his basic premise:
The antibody responses to these variants exert a selective pressure that drives continuous evolution of neutralization escape mutants
For clarity I have made an addition under "2."
1. "Low or absent responses with only infrequent examples of escape" = ineffectual antibody response.
2. "Potent neutralizing antibody responses" with frequent examples of escape variants = ineffectual antibody response.
3. Potent neutralizing antibody responses with no or infrequent examples of escape are (on Franklin's interpretation at least) indistinguishable from "1.", thus translatable into "low or absent antibody responses" = ineffectual antibody response.
I am amazed at how people who know next to nothing about South Africa, Mbeki and his take on AIDS have so much to say. It is obvious that Tara C. Smith never read a single document our government ever produced or read any of our HIV strategy plans. Never listed to a single interview Mbeki gave or read a single article where Mbeki was interviewed about his stance on the epidemic. Tara C. Smith regurgitates the lies that have been peddled in the media with no proof to support her claims about Mbeki's denialisim.
For the record:
Mbeki has never denied the existence of the epidemic.
Tara C. Smith cannot produce a single fact that disputes this assertion.
Mbeki has never denied the existence of HIV or that HIV compromises one's immune system.
Tara C. Smith cannot produce a single fact that disputes this assertion.
All our government HIV/AIDS strategies are based on the premise that HIV causes AIDS. Mbeki initiated or started all these strategies.
Tara C. Smith cannot produce a single fact that dispute this assertion.
Mbeki's government has increased money spent on HIV and AIDS every single year since he took over as the president of the country.
Tara C. Smith cannot produce a single fact to dispute this assertion.
Mbeki has questioned the relationship between HIV/AIDS and poverty. He was ridiculed for this by the interested parties. Data is however on his side. The "negative synergy" between HIV/AIDS and poverty can no longer be denied. Poverty is the main driver behind the global epidemic! Mbeki has always asked and sort the most effective ways of fighting the epidemic. Interested parties have tried to block anything that suggest that there are other things that can be done to fight the epidemic. They have promoted ARVs with no shame. Lies have short legs, the truth is out:
- Treating STIs is KEY
- Fighting poverty is KEY
- Education campaigns are very important but ineffective and
- For those already infected ARVs are the best we have for now.
There are studies that seem to suggest that circumcision may slow down transmission rates. This is interesting, but more research is needed.
The truth will come out at the end. Mbeki is neither a denialist nor a dissident!
T. kwetane,
thanks for chiming in, I assume you are a member of Mbekis regime. You might want to research mycoplasma penetrans/incognitus, every animal army scientist shyh ching Lo md phd inoculated it with sickened/died, such as chimps, monkeys, mice and embryos. He did not find it any healthy controls, and saw it in dying patients tissues with EM ( so it could not posssibly be a contaminent) Refrences above. As you know HIV does not do much in animals.
Refrences are above and on pub med. I belive Montagnier has found a high corrleation with mycoplamsas and sick people in Africa. As you should you should inform the african people of this epidemic, protect them with the vaccine that Lo and the Army has already developed, and treat those infected with antibiotics, and make testing a mainstream priority. And perhaps you should do some more research and google Project Day Lily to find out how it was part of the biological weapons program, written by 2 top cancer reserachers. This along with poverty and hiv can play a role in the AFrican epidemic.
Kwetane,
You might not want to jump on the Band Wagon of circumcision. It's a haox, a way to have government control and another way the AIDS hierarchy can keep perpetuating failed Hiv/Aids science.
"Public Health & Education | Male Circumcision Does Not Offer Protection Against HIV Among U.S. Black, Hispanic MSM, Study Says"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22096758/
http://www.kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_index.cfm?DR_ID=49216
Mbeki has never denied the existence of HIV or that HIV compromises one's immune system.
Mbeki is not interested in quarreling with scientists about their stock in trade; he is a politician who checked out the dissenters and found them led by qualified, establishment mavericks with expertise, especially Duesberg, who is a scientist equivalent to ten Nobles, or three Faucis, or two Baltimores.
That what politicians deal in and do best -evaulating credentials and motivation, He saw that there was a serious dispute in which the visible behavior suggested nothing but politics was being raised as a defense to criticism of the validity of the basic scientific and medical premise.
Thus he must have concluded the government should be cautious in joining the HIV=AIDS bandwagon to get the money it was throwing to African passengers, He played it according to intelligent politics - have a panel to see if there could be agreement on the science, join the passengers in the bandwagon and get the handouts, and reserve judgement on a very suspicious ideology where suddenly AIDS became a phenomenon found in poor remote African villages rather than in big cities
An experienced politician can spot such things a mile away. They tell him all he needs to know. Do you really think Mbeki doesn't know what is going on with all the scientists and health workers? The man fought against apartheid and won a revolution. He is not an idiot. In fact he is unique among politicians on the world stage in having the wit to see through the charade.
Meanwhile, one gapes at these statements by Chris "Super Meme" Noble which deserve the front of the stage and the brightest spotlight:
"No fun drugs, no dangerous medical drugs, no corticosteroids, no stress from witch doctor voodoo, no dietary deficiency, no conventional disease?"
You forgot the other things on the list of things that are supposed by "rethinkers" to cause AIDS. Antibiotics, cigarette smoke, aspirin, stress ....
The simple reality is that the list of things that "rethinkers" claim cause AIDS is so long and extensive that there isn't a single person alive that hasn't been exposed to at least one of them. The "rethinker" theories explain everything and nothing.
Raphael Lombardo was held up by Duesberg as an example of people not taking recreational drugs or ARVs. That is until he had the misfortune of progressing to AIDS and dying. Then in an textbook example of cognitive dissonance Duesberg retrospectively decided that Raphael must have been lying about not taking drugs. Duesberg has immersed himself so far into his state of self-delusion that nothing will ever convince him that he is wrong.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 6, 2007 12:38 AM
Their claims are not consistent with the authors, however, who define "negligible" as below 100.
In the more recent paper by Richman (Current Opinion in HIV and AIDS 2008, 3:45 51) he describes the neutralizing antibody titer to contemporaneous variants as "low" and that the reason they are low is that escape variants rapidly evolve.
You are playing silly word games. You know that Richman does not agree with Truthtwister's misrepresentations and yet you continue to try to spin the truth.
Richman himself writes that HIV establishes persistent infections characterized by high levels of viral replication at all stages of disease with 10^10 virions generated daily during the chronic infection stage.
You can waffle all you want about suppression and repression it won't turn this into defeat.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 6, 2007 12:57 AM
Thank you, Chris for giving us two perfect specimens of why you are so notable as a paradigm defender.
Anyone who hasn't yet gathered that your scientific arguments are pretzeled minutiae baked in misunderstanding can now see from these two classic Meme outbursts very plainly all they need to know:
You forgot the other things on the list of things that are supposed by "rethinkers" to cause AIDS. Antibiotics, cigarette smoke, aspirin, stress ....
The simple reality is that the list of things that "rethinkers" claim cause AIDS is so long and extensive that there isn't a single person alive that hasn't been exposed to at least one of them. The "rethinker" theories explain everything and nothing.
Not true at all (I included stress, by the way - do you even read what is said? Chris, why not try using the one finger, speaking each word out loud approach, as we already suggested twice?). This is a very silly counter. I am sure no one said aspirin, cigarette smoke, antibiotics, or stress were enough by themselves to collapse the immune system. You need heavyweight drugs, starvation, serious disease, and vital nutritional deficiences to seriously wreck the immune system. Obviously. As contributory factors to illness however you might get a significant contribution from eg heavy use of antibiotics, if prolonged. You didn't know this Chris? Didn't your grandmother tell you not to take even aspirin too long? Any foreign substance of this kind impacts the immune system and will prove toxic if there is enough of it, by definition. Some aspirin contains acetominophen which lowers the antioxidant glutathione in white blood cells and exposes them to damage from oxidative stress. Stress, too, can have a major impact - the psychic stress of being told by authorities such as your doctor, or even Chris Noble, that you are going to die, and all the medicine can do is delay it, and by the way, welcome to major and sometimes lethal stigma in the US as well as some faraway lands. It elevates cortisol which reduces T cell counts in the blood by sending them to the lymph nodes and the bone marrow (Fauci). I just told you this.
Your ignorance of all this seems wilful. The impact of other factors than HIV on the immune system is obviously decisive, especially if you realise, as any good scientist does, that the literature tells you HIV itself is not the danger.
Raphael Lombardo was held up by Duesberg as an example of people not taking recreational drugs or ARVs. That is until he had the misfortune of progressing to AIDS and dying. Then in an textbook example of cognitive dissonance Duesberg retrospectively decided that Raphael must have been lying about not taking drugs.
Please. Stop being silly, Chris. Squabbling about twisted anecdotes where the true data is not known is just embarrassing, The statistics show clearly that those without major other factors involved do not endure AIDS symptoms. Period,
Duesberg has immersed himself so far into his state of self-delusion that nothing will ever convince him that he is wrong.
Typical smallminded ad hominem babble. Duesberg has a better grip on the literature and a better grasp of the reality of the situation that you ever will, by thirty times, clearly, not just because he has a greater mind and it is his field of long study now, but because he has had to answer innumerable challenges from the best scientific defenders the paradigm could muster, not to mention masses of outside professionals and ordinary people who insist on having everything explained to them six times before they can accept that the elite institutions are wrong on this one, misled by Fauci et al. Stop being cheaply cheeky. In this arena you are no match for Duesberg, whatever your uncelebrated brilliance in your own field. He predicted the total failure of the vaccine program in 1987, twenty years ago, and look what is happening now. Two major trials stopped because they were causing higher rates of HIV infection. The only predictions which prove out are Duesberg's, not one of Fauci's or by the WHO.
You are playing silly word games. You know that Richman does not agree with Truthtwister's misrepresentations and yet you continue to try to spin the truth...Richman himself writes that HIV establishes persistent infections characterized by high levels of viral replication at all stages of disease with 10^10 virions generated daily during the chronic infection stage. You can waffle all you want about suppression and repression it won't turn this into defeat.
This endless attempt to try and ride Richman to the goal of asserting that the virus is high level active throughout the years it is suppressed by the immune system to a vanishing point is wearying, Richman is an apologist, just as you are, but on a higher level - one where he has try to fit a square peg of data into a round hole of hypothesis. The virus is reduced to a faint ghost of its former presence, Mr Meme, and none of YOUR silly word games will get you any converts to the notion that it is active during this period in any meaningful sense.
You are quite absurd in your efforts to pretend that a virus which is run up a tree is really not up a tree at all, but down standing its ground to the dogs of the immune system. It is up a tree, Chris,like you, reduced to a low flat line on the famous graph of its "load" in a typical patient, where as everyone but you recognises it is in a defeated state, just as the Scots were defeated at Cowton Moor, Falkirk, Dunbar, and Langside.
The English didn't kill every Scot in vanquishing the bonnie kilted clansmen of the Highlands in any of these victories, but defeats they were for the Scots, sorry to say, since a Scottish ruled England would have been a fine nation indeed, judging from Adam Smith, David Hume and James Boswell.
10 ^10 or 10 billion is David Ho's number which was his vastly exaggerated PCR count, mostly dead virus and bits. Ho was thoroughly embarrassed by the specious error of his exaggerated numerical claims. The Richman paper doesn't mention any data on replication in untreated patients, as Houston notes. It has only one table, table 7, on replication in one case, one ARV treated patient, whose ARVs reduced viral load, as they are designed to do.
You don't know all this it seems, even though I just told you.
By the way, even if Ho had been correct with his 10^10, you would have to reduce the 10^10 by 1/60,000 to 167,000 per day for actual infectious virus, and that's for the whole body. A viral load of 60,000 is only one infectious virion per milliliter (Piatak). Some estimate the figure as low as 1 in a million ie 1/17th of that. That's 1 active virion per 17 milliliters ie in four teaspoons, one infectious virus. Isn't that IMPRESSIVE, Chris? Sheezz..
Kindly be embarrassed and at long last, shut up.
T. Kwetane I am glad to here Mbeki is not a denialist, it's good he sees HIV causes AIDS and ARVs can help people.
Its also good to fight poverty because everyone knows it makes it harder to stop infections and diseases. The UN says it and Mbeki says it and me too. But some people mis-interpret Mbeki on that and they think it means poverty causes AIDS. Poverty doesn't cause AIDS HIV does.
SA got richer not poorer while AIDS went up.
1985 130b Rand GDP, 1000s HIV+, life expectency over 60
2005 1500b Rand GDP, millions HIV+ 300 000 AIDS deaths, life expectency 48
So SA got richer while HIV and AIDS went up, life expectency went down. I'm not stupid I know higher GDP doesn't mean everyone is richer but also per capita GDP doubled 1985 to 2005 in South Africa. Fighting poverty is major but its is not enough to stop AIDS.
Pverty has affects on HIV spread and AIDS and AIDS can cause poverty. Poverty can't cause AIDS by itself, being rich can't make you immune. Ask Christine Maggiore she was a rich women but she got HIV and looks like she gave it to her daughter who died of AIDS.
This awe inspiring demonstration of higher mathematics, together with the fact that the so-called opportunistic infections (OI) are exactly the same good ol' diseases Fred and Wilma Flintstone already knew too, makes Hanna one of the silliest HIV=Aids apologist of the WWW.
OK, Hanna, this will normally do you in. I'll keep the hilarious "...90% of people .... within 15 years..." for some other time.
Robert Houston says for 23 years the AIDS extablishment has maintained that the antibodies to HIV are non-neutralizing and ineffectual.
OK that means these people aren't Extablishment,
Bob Gallo
Flossie Wong-staal
Jerome Groopman
Max Essex
Joe Sonnabend
Robin Weiss
Hans Gelderblom
Barre-Sinoussi
Chermann
Luc Montagnier
Levine
David Ho
About a thousand other people BC they all wrote papers about neutralizing antibody 1985 to now.
Robert Houston meet pubmed!
1985 Bob Gallo and Robin Weiss had papers in July Nature about neutralizing antibody.
Bob Gallo said
Here, we report that natural antibodies capable of neutralizing HTLV-III infection of H9 cells were detected in most adults AIDS and ARC patients but in no normal healthy heterosexual controls. Geometric mean antibody titres in ARC patients were double those in AIDS patients, and were even higher in two antibody-positive healthy homosexuals. This suggests that virus neutralizing antibodies may exert an in vivo protective effect. The presence of these antibodies indicates an immunological response to HTLV-III which potentially may be manipulated for therapeutic advantage.
1986 from Joseph Sonnabend et al
J Immunol Methods. 1986 Sep 27;92(2):177-81.
Sensitive assay for neutralizing antibodies against AIDS-related viruses (HTLV-III/LAV).
Harada S, Purtilo DT, Koyanagi Y, Sonnabend J, Yamamoto N.
1987
Krohn K, Robey WG, Putney S, Arthur L, Nara P, Fischinger P, Gallo RC, Wong-Staal F, Ranki A.
Specific cellular immune response and neutralizing antibodies in goats immunized with native or recombinant envelope proteins derived from human T-lymphotropic
virus type IIIB and in human immunodeficiency virus-infected men. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1987 Jul;84(14):4994-8.
And they knew nuetralizing antibodies worked in patients in 1987, Bob Gallo again.
Robert-Guroff M, Oleske JM, Connor EM, Epstein LG, Minnefor AB, Gallo RC.
Relationship between HTLV-III neutralizing antibody and clinical status of pediatric acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and AIDS-related complex cases.
Pediatr Res. 1987 Jun;21(6):547-50.
Bob Gallo said
All (100%) of the stable patients possessed serum neutralizing antibody in contrast to only one of the 12 (8%) clinically poor patients.
Good EMs from Gelderblom and Robin Weiss
J Virol Methods. 1987 May;16(1-2):125-37.
Detection of HIV envelope specific antibodies by immunoelectron microscopy and correlation with antibody titer and virus neutralizing activity.
Hausmann EH, Gelderblom HR, Clapham PR, Pauli G, Weiss RA.
Robert Houston may be that paper doesn't exist because it's immunogold of virus by EM?
Wow Max Essex and J Groopman to!!
Haematol Blood Transfus. 1987;31:410-3.
Transfusion-acquired HIV infection among immunocompromised hosts. Marlink R, Anderson K, Essex M, Groopman J.
Sheesh I have to stop BC there's like 2000 papers about neutralizing antibody. So for 23 years the AIDS extablishment has maintained that the antibodies to HIV are non-neutralizing and ineffectual? Wrong.
Robert Houstion and Truthtwister why don't you look it up somewhere except Bialy and Duesberg.
Adele Darling!
This is your best post since you confirmed HIV is an opportunistic infection just like any other:
Sheesh I have to stop BC there's like 2000 papers about neutralizing antibody. So for 23 years the AIDS extablishment has maintained that the antibodies to HIV are non-neutralizing and ineffectual? Wrong.
Good! Now please go tell Drs. N and Richman:
the neutralizing antibodies do not significantly impact the levels of HIV replication (Dr. N)
The question then arises why such a strong selective pressure fails to appreciably impact levels of virus replication (Richman)
Good EMs from Gelderblom and Robin Weiss
J Virol Methods. 1987 May;16(1-2):125-37.
Detection of HIV envelope specific antibodies by immunoelectron microscopy and correlation with antibody titer and virus neutralizing activity.
Hausmann EH, Gelderblom HR, Clapham PR, Pauli G, Weiss RA.
Robert Houston may be that paper doesn't exist because it's immunogold of virus by EM?
Adele get your facts straight, Houston and Truthseeker believe in the micrographic proof of the existence of HIV even more fervently than you do. But perhaps that study would be non-existent to Richman who found no correlation between antibody titres and virus neutralizing activity?
The failure of 2 of 14 patients to generate a significant neutralizing antibody response (Table 2) and the varying levels and timing of peak antibody titers among the untreated patients did not seem to correlate with levels of plasma HIV RNA or CD4 lymphocyte counts during the period of follow-up.
Adele, I know this is not strictly according to the honey bun rules, but I've already had my second grant proposal for proving that "HIV" can be conjured up artifactually in the lab turned down, and the titers of black choppers seem to be increasing by the minute, so how about I simply show that infectious HIV can be isolated from viral RNA negative
samples?
Come on girl how about it? Be a sport.
"The crowd being yourself, TS, MEC and Rezaf?" -CN
You would like to think that, wouldn't you? I think you are imagining it.
"You will find that outside of your small band of Denialists most people think you are completely nuts."- CN
You have yet to demonstarte what I "deny" but I do know YOU think I am nuts.
"Franklin and I have detailed exactly why the experimental data provided in this paper completely contradicts Truthtwisters assertions that HIV is "defeated" or "vanquished. Given that the paper is available online and anyone can read it who do you think will be convinced by Truthtwisters dishonest misinterpretation?""
-CN
No you haven't; they have. As I said, your stick handling sucks...in my "nutty" eyes.
"This is where the vast gulf separating Denialists from reality is most evident. They seem to believe that the burden is on the "orthodoxy" to prove to a small group of contrarian kooks that HIV causes AIDS. Somehow the need for you to prove anything is forgotten."
I am no idiot. The "burden" of proof is on those who say they have a "fact" and your "fact" remains a hypothesis until "proven" true(whatever that means) remember...the pathogenesis is unexplained to this day...it is ASSUMED!!!... Duesberg cant study his hypothesis until he is given the means to.
Chris, be a chap and take on razaf and show me that you are better at stick handling; until then I AM watching a crapy NHL game.
I have an Idea Chris...why don't you and I fuck off with our stupid "one liners" and leave the grown-ups talk, how about it?
"I can't understand why none of the denialists will simply name a date when the pardigm will fall? They're all so sure its wrong why don't they just tell us when the medical community will see it too? Surely it can't last much longer right TS? Tell me when, 12 month? 24 months? Name a date by which the paradigm will fall or stop predicting its imminent demise."
Who cares about a specific date. HIV history has shown us nothing but downward revisions since the word go. The medical community has no problem with it bit you cling on to 1984 dooms day scenarios. You are an anachronism, a "blast from the past". You are a laggard!
Molly, you are taking it out of context. HEre's some context, Richman papers. Read them, you will know more about neutralizing antibody.
Virology. 2006 Nov 10;355(1):1-5. Epub 2006 Sep 7.
Lack of neutralizing antibody response to HIV-1 predisposes to superinfection.
Smith DM, Strain MC, Frost SD, Pillai SK, Wong JK, Wrin T, Liu Y, Petropolous CJ, Daar ES, Little SJ, Richman DD.
Hum Antibodies. 2005;14(3-4):101-13.
Characterizing anti-HIV monoclonal antibodies and immune sera by defining the mechanism of neutralization.
Crooks ET, Moore PL, Richman D, Robinson J, Crooks JA, Franti M, Schülke N, Binley JM.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Dec 20;102(51):18514-9. Epub 2005 Dec 9.
Neutralizing antibody responses drive the evolution of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 envelope during recent HIV infection.
Frost SD, Wrin T, Smith DM, Kosakovsky Pond SL, Liu Y, Paxinos E, Chappey C, Galovich J, Beauchaine J, Petropoulos CJ, Little SJ, Richman DD.
This is where you and Duesberg are totally hypocritical and insincere.
Duesberg's book has whole sections that are just anecdotes about Raphael Lombardo, Kimberly Bergalis etc. For some reason these are perfectly good anecdotes to support his theories until Raphael died from AIDS.
Let's get this straight. Duesberg holds Raphael Lombardo up as a shining example of what happens when a HIV+ person doesn't take recreational drugs or ARVs. Apparently his story is evidence that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Raphael Lombardo then dies from AIDS. Does Duesberg stop to think maybe I'm wrong? Maybe HIV does cause AIDS? No. He decides with absolutely no evidence that Lombardo must have been lying about not doing drugs.
Duesberg is a creep.
"Tommy Morrison Wants You To Believe
Believe what?
He currently claims that he was never infected with HIV. His ex-wife and his ex-lawyer have different stories"- Chris Noble
Chris Noble WANTS US to belive RUMOUR!! Rumour IS science. Ex- wives and lawers TRUMP science. hurray for the scientific method!!!!
Tommy Morrison's story is an anecdote. His ex-lawyer was one of the people claiming he tested negative. Now he claims that Morisson tests positive. Where is the science that you are bleating about?
Some anecdotes may arise from an overlooked phenomenon. Regardless of the circumstances of a particular case, such as the purportedly non-drug using Raphael Lombardo, there is documentation of major immunosuppressive agents common in the lifestyle of AIDS risk groups. Aside from well-documented immunosuppressive effects of various recreational drugs and anti-HIV agents such as AZT (a cause of leukopenia and even pancytopenia, according to the PDR), little attention has been given to the role of medically recognized immunosuppressors: glucocorticoid and corticosteroid agents. These are often used as anti-inflammaatory agents, as Truthseeker pointed out, and have a natural counterpart in endogenous cortisol, which rises in conditions of stress and malnutrition.
This is described in the important papers by a toxicologist, Mohammed Al-Bayati, Ph.D., which are an important supplement to the Duesberg theory. They can be found at Virusmyth.com. The latest paper, "Examining the Causes of AIDS" (Medical Veritas 3:901-13, 2006) is quite fascinating and can be seen at: justiceforej.com/CausesOfAIDS(Al-Bayati).pdf
"Duesberg's book has whole sections that are just anecdotes about Raphael Lombardo, Kimberly Bergalis etc. For some reason these are perfectly good anecdotes to support his theories until Raphael died from AIDS." - Chris "Limbless Black Knight" Noble.
Returned from two parties in New York to find this is the best Mr Meme can come up with. Not too surprising. The meme machine is still down, one assumes, while AIDSTruth Fedexes emergency supplies of -you liar-/-you misinterpret- chips.
The anecdotes in Duesberg's book (sadly it shows signs of the clumsier hand of its original draft co-author Bryan Ellison, whose refusal to cooperate with the publishers' demands led to him being jettisoned) are anecdotes and never treated as scientific proof of anything, except the idiocy of lay rumor and the unlikelihood of lay claims.
Name one anecdote ever used in any Duesber peer reviewed paper to prove anything scientific. Given the gigantic crowd bias towards assuming all data fits the HIV=AIDS meme, the one that directs Noble's brain as well as the brains of all scientists in the field, it is natural to speculate about the truth hidden behind the vast curtain of the assumption which walls it off.
The science shows the Meme is wrong but doesn't show what is right of its own accord. You have to look at the data and unlike Chris Noble ask what it really means, insofar as the truth can show through the corrupted research analysis. Duesberg has to guess where the facts are wrong. Putting words into his mouth is no help in this task which everybody has to tackle.
Let's get this straight. Duesberg holds Raphael Lombardo up as a shining example of what happens when a HIV+ person doesn't take recreational drugs or ARVs. Apparently his story is evidence that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Raphael Lombardo then dies from AIDS. Does Duesberg stop to think maybe I'm wrong? Maybe HIV does cause AIDS? No. He decides with absolutely no evidence that Lombardo must have been lying about not doing drugs.
Why should Duesberg decide that all his carefully argued peer reviewed papers are wrong just because some guy he doesn't monitor scientifically is claiming that he has no other source of AIDS than HIV? The chances are that the guy is lying because there is no reason whatsoever to believe that HIV is the culprit for his AIDS (see Gallo, Fauci and all HIV=AIDS papers so far.)
All the conflict and inconsistency in HIV=AIDS research is overwhelmingly suggestive of both data management, misinterpretation and misreporting in much of the data base, and that is part of what causes the hypothesis to look increasingly bad with every paper which reviews total achievement.
Duesberg like any literature reviewer has to politely accept the data of the papers he reviews, but he doesn't have to accept anecdotal stories and claims that don't fit what the literature has told him, which is that HIV is as capable of causing AIDS as Chris Noble is of winning the Nobel prize.
Duesberg is a creep.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 6, 2007 7:02 PM
Alas, one cross that Duesberg has to bear is that a scientific pygmy can call a scientific giant a name on the Web and have a few other pygmies cackle.
But most people know what to think.
What, like Raphael Lombardo dying from AIDS. Duesberg did a very good job of overlooking that.
You still haven't explained the Denialist paradox of why Lombardo was a perfectly good anecdote to prove that HIV doesn't cause AIDS UNTIL he died from AIDS. Now he's supposedly a liar.
I really liked Al-Bayati's fairytales about poppers. Apparently, Duesberg and all the other dissidents are wrong. Poppers don't cause AIDS directly. People taking poppers get lot of headaches. They take aspirin for the headaches. The aspirin causes throbocytopenia. They take corticosteroids for the thrombocytopenia. Then the corticosteroids cause the immune suppression. It's all so clear now.
Medical Veritas is as ironically named as "Truthseeker". Its "editorial board" is stacked with HIV Denialists and antivaccination kooks.
You are really starting to disgust me.
Lombardo wrote to Duesberg personally. Duesberg included his story in the manuscript because he believed that it supported his claims that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Duesberg didn't seem to worry about whether lombardo was telling the truth at this stage.
You can't have it both ways. You can't use Lombardo as an anecdote supposedly proving that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and then switch to him being a liar when he dies from AIDS.
When I call Duesberg a creep I'm restraining myself.
Explanation for a two year old mind:
Duesberg didn't seem to worry about whether lombardo was telling the truth at this stage.
He took a man at his word, just as we take you at your word, Noble, not having any further information. Then he took another person or persons at his/her word and was left with a contradiction, which he resolved in the most obvious way, contingent on better information.
This is how decent people behave in society, they trust strangers because they themselves are trustworthy. Why this trust is disgusting to you is not clear, but it is certainly creepy to hear you express such an opinion.
Then, you believe, Lombardo "died of AIDS". Extraordinary as a supposed scientist (we currently trust that your interest in this material reflects some background in science or near science of some kind) that you don't know that this statement is not a scientific fact, but by definition a claim based on an interpretation based on a diagnosis based on a belief in a paradigm. All we know as fact even if everybody involved is an accurate reporter is whatever diagnosis was made by someone and some idea of the medical data on which it was made.
The diagnosis itself is by definition a loose assessment - "he had AIDS" - of a very unscientific and unspecific nature, hinging on an test which if positive makes all symptoms "AIDS" because supposedly it detects a Virus which cause catastrophic immune collapse, for which there is no conclusive evidence after 20 years, and which Duesberg shows does not match the literature. Therefore he naturally will suggest some other reason if told a man "died of AIDS" that he was previously told was healthy.
None of the discussion then or our discussion now is scientific, since the data is vague and subject to different interpretations and the "AIDS diagnosis" claim is based on beliefs which contradict the literature of the field. By definition your objection to what Duesberg concluded is as unscientific as the rest of your reasoning and claims here, for the same reason.
You can't have it both ways. You can't use Lombardo as an anecdote supposedly proving that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and then switch to him being a liar when he dies from AIDS.
Anecdotes don't prove anything in science, Mr Monkey Meme, so one doubts here you have any training in scientific logic, Duesberg merely recorded a blatant conflict in two beliefs held simultaneously by paradigm heads such as yourself, when he accepted that the guy was healthy and was "HIV positive". When he was told one of your beliefs had changed, he pointed to the fact that they still conflicted with the literature, and suggested a way to resolve that conflict. If you don't want to accept the suggestion, that's up to you. But the switch is yours, not his. You as the provider of data are the creep, if the change of story is creepy. You are the disgusting one, if a change in view is disgusting. Duesberg merely reacted to the story he was told,
When I call Duesberg a creep I'm restraining myself.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 7, 2007 2:52 AM
Maybe you restrain yourself more.
Correcto mundo Truthseeker!
"....HIV=AIDS research is overwhelmingly suggestive of both data management, misinterpretation and misreporting..."
Lest we add the all the corruption such as in the case of deliberate flat out fraud!
"AIDS researcher committed scientific misconduct by altering images and fabricating data, a UW investigation found." [click carter]
If one person almost gets away with fake data and altering EMs - How many haven't gotten caught?
"Tommy Morrison's story is an anecdote. His ex-lawyer was one of the people claiming he tested negative. Now he claims that Morisson tests positive. Where is the science that you are bleating about?"- CN
No no chris, where is the science YOU are bleating about behind his testing history??? What are we supposed to believe? What are we supposed to believe about Maggiore? When it suited Aidstruth (bergman) she was an HIV neg impostor and now she is an HIV pos impostor or whatever it is you make her out to be. What is the flavor of the month on his status today, or her's??? Why is it ok for you fuckers to waffle around everyday about other peoples testing history? Have you ever been tested for hiv? how often do you get tested? C'mon, give us your "fucking" testing history anecdotes...Do you believe everybody should get tested? How often should they get tested? After every sexual encounter? ...or only when they have sex with a "vulnerable minority"? If you had sex with an African woman, would you freak? Why? How many close friends do you have that are HIV positive and have to make difficult health descisions for themselves and their families??? C'mon, share YOUR medical history. Lead by example and tell us how you get tested and how often and why. I bet I've been tested more often than you...
You are a comfortable white prick without a worry in the fucking world stuck on one of the cheeks of the world's arse. Why dont you shift some grass and move a little towards the arsehole of the world, you do live very close to it geographically speaking. You are the "butt" of your own laughable world.
Can you imagine if tommy morrison was dead and not totally healthy today, theyd be talking endlessly how he died of aids bc he beleived deusberg, now that hes alive and totally healthy, they just ignore him and say he probably wasnt positive (Yeah right, he saw david ho, all positive tests are repeated).
The only "better information" was that Lombardo died from AIDS.
This puts the lie to your empty challenge to come up with "drug free" AIDS cases. Any person that didn't take drugs and dies from AIDS is a liar according to Duesberg.
It should be a lesson for all HIV+ "rethinkers". You are valuable to Duesberg while you are healthy. If you progress to AIDS you'll become a liar or they'll invent stories about you.
As for Maggiore, it was OK for her to continually present herself and her children as an anecdote supposedly proving that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Now that her daughter dies from AIDS all of a sudden anecdotes don't mean anything.
You can't have it both ways.
I bet I've been tested more often than you...- Patrick Moore to Chris Noble
This is an odd remark from an infidel outside the HIV=AIDS religion. Let's hope you weren't tested voluntarily, Patrick, since it is hard to imagine why anyone informed about this field and what is really going on in its science (read Science Guardian/New AIDS Review if you need to catch up) would allow themselves to be tested, exposing themselves to being dragged into the teeth of such a dangerous modern witch hunt/lynch mob machine for chewing up innocent "HIV positives" and not only be stigmatized without reason but given dangerous drugs on no scientific or medical basis other than a fairy tale.
What is the purpose of educating people about this if they still go along with it? May as well treat Chris Noble as a scientific authority.
By the way, Mr Noble, when will you take responsibility for publicly misleading people for so long, and put your background, credentials and motivation on the table in public view for all to assess?
You are clearly intelligent enough to know what is going on, even if you are not always bright enough to know the correct science and why it is obvious.
The rationalizations you peddle are hollow, and your activities vicious in their effect on any innocents who may follow you. Tell us who funds your activities in this arena before proceeding further, and what your motivation is. Why should innocents believe you are well motivated, and love science, when you muddle it and trash it so often?
What are your background, credentials and motivation? Who pays you for your incessant and relentless attack on unbelievers in this groundless scientific faith? Who do you please, that we don't know about?
Why is it a secret?
Any person that didn't take drugs and dies from AIDS is a liar according to Duesberg.
Or he died from some other source of immune damage, not HIV.
Well, done Chris, you're getting there. Slog on, maybe you will understand it all before the year is out!
Noble asked to confess
Now in the meantime, fess up, it will probably help clear your mind further:
What are your background, credentials and motivation?
Who pays you for your incessant and relentless attack on unbelievers in this groundless scientific faith?
Who do you please, that we don't know about?
Why has it been a secret?
Hello everyone,
You may have noticed that the usual AIDS Wiki website address has been unavailable for accessing over most of the past couple weeks.
This was due to some technical problems we've been experiencing recently. While the usual website address is now working again, to make sure that similar possible technical problems are avoided in the future, the AIDS Wiki is now officially moving from the .ORG to the .COM suffix.
This change of URL address does not reflect any change in philosophy, either in theory or practice, regarding the non-profit status of the website. The change is purely a technical decision by the webmasters to avoid future possible problems.
Thank you for your attention and please help spread this information to as many others as possible. Thank you very much.
Darin Brown
Wikimaster
AIDS Wiki
Have you all seen this story about a court case filed by Audrey Serrano?
The woman was "diagnosed" HIV+ (whatever that means), then given toxic anti-viral chemotherapy for 9 years, then told she was HIV-.
Curious as to what the moron AIDS alarmists think of this. If Ms. Serrano had died of the drugs, no doubt they would have attributed it to AIDS. Probably, this has happened with thousands of "AIDS" patients.
Then why does Duesberg accuse a dead man of lying? You can't seem to admit that Duesberg's actions were morally questionable.
Paranoid? Has it ever occurred to you that some people are just disgusted and alarmed by the psuedoscientific nonsense that you and other "rethinkers" spread on the internet? There is absolutely no secret about my motivation for countering your bullshit. I believe that HIV Denial kills people.
Ignore noble, he just thinks hes a badass now because the hoofnagle brothers on their denilalism blog here(two of weirdest looking idiotic mother fuckers ive ever seen) put a blog recently called "hiv denial these sick bastards have another victim" (something to that effect) when they spied on the aidsmythexposed site and accused some members of "murder" when they informed an newly diagnosed hiv positive pregnant women of duesbergs views, ie gave her informed consent, so theyre getting all ghetto hyper about it.
So noble has changed his tune from his usual mild mannnered idiocy and stupidity to getting all sanctimonious about these issues, for after all the Hoofnagle loser brothers are these gatekeepers are these all knowing gods that tell us what is debatable and whats not, and what people can and cant hear. Forget these losers, they are murderers for not informing the public of the impending epidemic of mycoplamsa incognitus/penetrans, the only microbe to kill every animal injected, thier murderers for not letting people have informed consent and tell people that there is 100% chance youll die with hiv, even though there isnt one scientific paper published between 1984-90 that proves this.
They murdered ten of thousands of gulf war vets that tested positive with shyh ching lo's pathenogenic mycoplasmas incognitus, not to mention all hundereds of thoussands civilains infected that have been misdiagnosed with depression/CFS etc.
We can never be accused of murder because we want the patient to hear both sides of an issue and make a health descion based on informed consent, not manufactured consent. Why shouldnt every person go to the aidstruth site and see hiv fact or fraud and control thier own destiny? Experts have proven to not be trustworthy and are frequent victims of groupthink and stupidity, like when the cure for scurvy was known decades in advance, but idiotic experts kept it hidden from the public and murdered millions, like they do now. This is not to say that many experts havent spoken out, as they have.
The real problem is that HIV Gullibility has killed people on a massive scale. As reported by Lederer In POZ magazine (April 2006), Joseph Sonnabend, M.D., co-founder of AMFAR, has charged: "1200 mg a day of AZT (the first approved dose in the '80s) killed thousands, as did so-called early intervention."
There is absolutely no secret about my motivation for countering your bullshit. I believe that HIV Denial kills people. - Chris Noble.
Then answer all the questions, since you have done nothing you are ashamed of:
To: Chris Noble
What are your background, credentials and motivation?
Who pays you for your incessant and relentless attack on unbelievers in this groundless scientific faith?
Who do you please, that we don't know about? Why has it been a secret?
Nice selective quotation! You missed the bit where he concurs that HIV does cause AIDS and that current treatments are effective.
If the "rethinkers" sole point was that high dose AZT monotherapy was a bad idea and resulted in people dying then you might have a legitimate point.
The continued insistence that HIV doesn't exist or doesn't cause AIDS is pseudoscience that results in needless deaths.
Then why does Duesberg accuse a dead man of lying? You can't seem to admit that Duesberg's actions were morally questionable.
Perhaps you would like to show us the exact quote, to show the context, and that the word "lying" was used, but why is it morally questionable to make a perfectly reasonable suggestion as to why the conflict between his claims and his fate arose? The other suggestion is that some other factor caused his death. The one certain fact, if the literature of the field is to be trusted, is that it was not due to being HIV positive, a non infectious condition of having vaccinated yourself against harmless HIV.
Why is it morally questionable to suggest someone is lying about a morally questionable activity they might want to deny for social reasons? You constantly accuse others here of being "liars" and being "dishonest", so that appears to condemn you out of your own mouth for being "morally questionable".
Did you mean to label yourself morally questionable? If not, presumably it was a Freudian slip, and quite a telling one.
Why do you constantly accuse others of being liars and dishonest? Are you judging them by yourself, or do you have some other reason for this morally questionable activity, which disrupts discussion here examining your muddled claims that the literature is upside down and HIV is really a dangerous virus causing a global pandemic because it escapes the immune system and is infectious, all of which the AIDS literature and its leading proponents say is wrong,
Nice selective quotation! You missed the bit where he concurs that HIV does cause AIDS and that current treatments are effective.
If the "rethinkers" sole point was that high dose AZT monotherapy was a bad idea and resulted in people dying then you might have a legitimate point.
Yes, indeed, selecting the concessions made by Denialists to a valid HIV=AIDS debunking is a very useful activity.
For example, moving from the confused Sonnabend to the self-propagandized Chris Noble:
Now we have:
1) Chris Noble agrees that AZT monotherapy was a bad idea. The record tells us it killed possibly 300,000 people.
2) He wouldn't take current ARV drugs himself.
So now we have his concession that the scientific/medical community is capable of killing 300,000 gays with the wrong medication, and this appears to have been enough to caution him not to take the currently prescribed drugs himself.
But he nonetheless enthuses about them and their rationale to all comers, often enough to suggest he couldn't afford such heavy use of his time and attention without financial backing or significant rewards of some kind for making such an ass of himself in public for so long.
Is this not a "morally questionable" activity - to lead people into this dangerous belief without studying the literature carefully enough (use that index finger, Chris, and say the words out loud, it will really help a lot) to know what you are talking about?
After all, contradicting Karpas, Richman, Fauci, Gallo and Gisselquist must be the result of under research, when your intellectual brilliance is so obvious,
Now answer the questions:
To: Chris Noble
What are your background, credentials and motivation?
Who pays you for your incessant and relentless attack on unbelievers in this groundless scientific faith?
Who do you please, that we don't know about? Why has it been a secret?
Who is your patron, Chris? Why the preoccupation with a topic so far from your apparent field of providing computer services to chemists? Do your gay friends love you for helping them believe in bad science, contradicted by the literature and its chief proponents?
Barney,
If the suit is upheld then it's called malpractice; nothing more. No second shooter, no explosiv puffs, no hanger full of red sand.
The alarm is all yours. Cut the coolaid and use tinfoil to wrap your lunch, not your head.
Mr. Noble,
If people stop BELIEVING in HIV, it is not necessary that they will stop using condomns. If not for HIV, then let it be for other REAL STDs.
This "Denialism" as you so are so quick to label it, does not kill anyone. Now that is a lie. You're "excommunicating" people. If you go outside and breathe some fresh air and talk to real, common people, you will find that most of them find your beloved theory somewhat "fishy". To the most knowledgeable ones, it will for sure. But because of people like you, no one has the guts to speak out until the day they get a positive and bullied into getting the ARV therapy. Mr. Noble, even some of our doctors advise against testing for HIV, if one does not belong to a "risk group". Do you want to know what they tell us? "If you're not an IV drug user and never had "unsafe sex" and are an all-round healthy person, there is no point in testing. For the infection rates are very, very low. Even if you had unsafe sex with an infected person, the rate of infection is 0.01%"(That's 1 out 10000 intercourses, I think).
Thank the Lord, there are doctors who really care about their patients.
The fact that there are "risk groups" is strange enough to the most knowledgeable.
Of course, no one will tell you this if you behave as a Grand Inquisitor for AIDS Monotheism.
By the way, how many times have you got tested?
Would you take ARVs if positive?
Would you test yourself again if positive?
What would you do if, by any chance, the results were inconclusive?
And don't tell me that you'd monitor your white count, blah blah blah. To tell someone that they are going to die AND make them feel guilty about it is enough to cause immune suppression. The feeling of one's resignation to death is halfway to get there, and that is reflected in the white count.
Rezaf
Tell that to Eliza-Jane Scovill, or the tens of thousands of infants in SA who died of AIDS because Mbeki denied their mothers antiretrovirals.
Why does Chris Noble, proudly leading the bashing of HIV=AIDS review on this thread and others over the years, prefer not to answer the questions above, so that we can fully apreciate the spirit and motivation of his efforts ?
Could it be that the answer are compromising? Surely not. Surely Chris is well qualified by background and motivation to defend good science without any regard to who is pleased by his knightly tilting against "liars" and "dishonest" "misinterpreters" of HIV=AIDS ideology?
Does anyone else know the answers?
Could it be that you like asking rhetorical questions?
In distinction to numerous "rethinkers" I have always used my real name. I have made no secrets or false claims about my qualifications or motivations.
I have a PhD in the physical sciences in a research area not connected to HIV. My current research is not connected to HIV. I have no financial connections to "HIVinc" and "bigpharma". I do not speak for any patron. I speak for myself.
Do you have any more leading questions?
I guess you've given up discussing the science that you misrepresent in the Karpas and Richman papers and have decided to start attacking me personally instead.
You can't manage to write a single sentence without twisting, distorting and lying. Why do you play these silly rhetorical word games?
The idea that AZT killed 300,000 is completely ridiculous and not supported by any data and I have in no way made such a "concession".
You are also twisting my comments about ARVs. I did not say that I would not take them. I have been honest enough to say that I cannot say what I would do if I was in the position of some of the HIV+ "rethinkers". I don't know what I would do if I was diagnosed with cancer either.
Chris Weasel,
If the "rethinkers" sole point was that high dose AZT monotherapy was a bad idea and resulted in people dying then you might have a legitimate point.
Why was this a "bad idea"?
According to Dr. Sonnabend:
1200 mg a day of AZT (the first approved dose in the '80s) killed thousands, as did so-called early intervention."
Dr. Sonnabend thinks that "killing thousands" is a bit more than a "bad idea" -- don't you?
"I bet I've been tested more often than you...- Patrick Moore to Chris Noble
This is an odd remark from an infidel outside the HIV=AIDS religion. Let's hope you weren't tested voluntarily, Patrick,... ...exposing themselves to being dragged into the teeth of such a dangerous modern witch hunt/lynch mob machine for chewing up innocent "HIV positives" and not only be stigmatized without reason but given dangerous drugs on no scientific or medical basis other than a fairy tale." -TS
infidel...hmm.
Why do you tink I would be freightened?
Why do you think I would seek desperate medical help? There is nothing odd about having a testing history at my age. I didn't always care.
ZOMG!! You mean to tell me early attempts at treating HIV were to a certain degree faulty and the side effects resulted in unnecessary death. This can only mean that HIV doesn't cause AIDS and that there is a conspiracy to convince people otherwise. I'm gonna go get high ya'll, peace.
I said that this was the one area where "rethinkers" might have had a point.
The literature has detailed the toxicities associated with AZT from the first trials by Fischl et al. Nobody is denying that these side effects can be very serious and even fatal.
The first trials showed that AZT was effective in treating people with symptomatic HIV infection.
Later studies showed that AZT monotherapy provided no advantage as early treatment in asymptomatic HIV. By the same token in the average of three years follow up in the Concorde trial there was no evidence of any deaths caused by AZT let alone the massive genocide that "rethinkers" allege.
Chris Weasel,
The myopia from which you suffer is truly astounding. AZT is cytotoxic. It kills white blood cells. During the AIDS hysteria in the 80's, they pumped so much AZT into gay men, that the US death rate for AIDS reached 50,000 year. When they moved off AZT, the death rates began to plummet.
AZT was a f%cking disaster, and you're a f%cking moron!
"Could it be that the answers are compromising? Surely not. Surely Chris is well qualified by background and motivation to defend good science without any regard to who is pleased by his knightly tilting against "liars" and "dishonest" "misinterpreters" of HIV=AIDS ideology?"
Could it be that you like asking rhetorical questions?
In distinction to numerous "rethinkers" I have always used my real name. I have made no secrets or false claims about my qualifications or motivations.
I have a PhD in the physical sciences in a research area not connected to HIV. My current research is not connected to HIV. I have no financial connections to "HIVinc" and "bigpharma". I do not speak for any patron. I speak for myself.
Do you have any more leading questions?
I guess you've given up discussing the science that you misrepresent in the Karpas and Richman papers and have decided to start attacking me personally instead.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 8, 2007 8:13 PM
But this was not attacking you, was it? These are just kindly meant enquiries as to the state of your mind, You have now reassured us that your dedicated efforts to play John Moore-Mark Wainberg at the grass roots level are not fueled by any outside patron, which we are glad to hear, except it leaves the question, why the obsessive effort?
Specifically, we have to ask, are you compensating for the death of some relation or friend from AZT/Protease Inhibitors and trying to avoid considering whether it was iatrogenic murder?
Sorry to say it but there has to be a reason why you personally entirely closed off your own review of this patently ridiculous paradigm a long time ago, when you didn't have any personal payday stake in it.
You are not unintelligent and the enormous inconsistencies which crawl the corpse of this hypothesis like worms are not balanced by one sustainable pillar of reason to believe in it, and you have been thinking about it for years in public, so there is an inconsistency in that, which is why we ask leading questions - that and your resolute lack of public information beyond your name.
There is always the question in smart HIV=AIDS defenders as to why they cannot see the wood for the trees, when so many talented people have well explained the real shape of the epidemic, which is that HIV accounts for none of HIV=AIDS except its defining label and analytical bias, and drugs recreational and medical/conventional disease/nutritional deficits and hunger account for all of it.
The behavior of digging in and refusing to concede any problem, and lobbing hand grenades like "liar!" over the top of the trench, ignores blatant fundamental disproofs such as a virus that the immune system conquers quickly and permanently (even that rise at the end of the viral load graph is a famous AMFAR panel fiction which has no confirmation in the literature), symptoms that correlate with everything but the virus, radical disparities in the epidemiology between continents, and on and on in a list which never ends, while the only pillar of the paradigm left standing after review is that it is all a "conundrum".
The only conceivable reason why anyone well informed should try to bar the door against review is that they have a financial or emotional stake in the outcome, and that is why we ask what it is.
Since you deny that you are rewarded by commercial or other interests for your work, and you profess scientific ideals, we have to conclude that you have the only motive we can think of for a good man who is not easily fooled by bad logic.
That is, you have lost a friend or friends, or someone close, to this murder machine and like so many who have suffered that loss, you are impelled to believe that it is all valid, and the loss wasn't a reflection of sheer blind human stupidity and wrongdoing, but an inevitable act of Nature and Destiny perpetrating a new lethal disease on people who had no reason to foresee it, and anyone who suggests otherwise, and that humans are to blame, raises a horrific possibility that cannot be countenanced, and its proposers are villains for even suggesting it, etc.
This emotional denialism is familiar to all writers and viewers of movies which feature anyone who has loses a loved one, and it does not reflect badly on anyone who feels it, except that in science it should be forgotten if people are trying to find out why a paradigm is such a failure after twenty years, providing no vaccine or cure, only a harmful and ultimately fatal poison as temporary palliative, no sense in theory or validity in its defense, a literature in which its main researchers quietly concede its pillars to critics, and ads from AmFar which boast of no cure for millions who face a certain death - while its main public defenders call for firing and jailing critics who ask what is really going on.
Your Denialism is understandable, just as the institutional Denialism of the NY Times, Science, Nature and other journals and media, scientific institutions, celebrities, governments, and activists is understandable, since the consequences of retraction are so vast. But an individual doesn't have the same excuse if he sacrifices other lives to his own emotional comfort.
So tell us, Chris, are we right - do you have a tragedy at the possibly good heart of your determined Denialism?
Dr. Noble persists in spreading his misinformed distortions about what he claims the data show.
A follow-up study by Fischl et al. in fact found that between 2/3rs and 3/4ths of the AZT-treated patients were dead in two years - the higher the dosage the more who died (M. Fischl et al. A randomized controlled trial of a reduced daily dose of zidovudine... NEJM 323:1009-14, 1990.
The published Concorde trial reported a 25% higher death rate for the AZT early treatment group (M. Seligmann et al. Concorde. Lancet 343:871-8, 1994), though they curiously left this finding out of the abstract. Prof. Karpas of Cambridge has commented:
"In the British/French Concorde trial which involved 1700 patients and lasted three years, follow-up revealed a statistically significant increase of deaths in the AZT treatment arm as compared to those in the placebo (J. Derbyshire, personal communication, 1994). The other nucleotiede analogues that have been approved for use, such as ddC and ddi, are also highly toxic and of short-term benefit." - Abraham Karpas (Human Retroviruses in leukaemia and AIDS. Biology Reviews 789:911-33, 2004)
It's should obvious to all but the most fanatic ARV drug-pushers that a reduction in dosage of a deadly drug to around 1/4 the original dose will improve survival as compared to its original dose. Such may be the major reason for the claimed improved survival results of HAART over high-dose AZT monotherapy. In fact, the common characteristic of HIV+ long-term non-progressors is that they never had antiretroviral treatment.
Insinuating that I'm a paid pharma-shill isn't attacking me personally? Piss off.
The patient group all had advanced AIDS on entry. The earlier plaecbo controlled study showed what the life expectancy of people with advanced AIDS was at this time. Nineteen of the 137 in the placebo arm were dead by 24 weeks into the trial.
The actual figures are 81 AIDS related deaths (out of 877) for the immediate arm and 69 AIDS related deaths (out of 872) for the deferred arm. (There were 22 deaths that were not related to AIDS or drugs.) The difference was not statistically significant.
Karpas cites as a personal communciation that further follow-up showed a statistically significant increase in mortality in the immediate arm. This is plausible and I won't contest it.
Nobody is saying that AZT was a wonder treatment. It clearly had severe side-effects. It showed clear benefits in short term treatment of people with advanced AIDS. The same benefits were not seen in asymptomatic HIV infection.
This does not however justify the fairytales put out by rethinkers. The Concorde trial while showing that AZT monotherapy was not beneficial for asymptomatic HIV infection clearly shows that it is not as toxic as "rethinkers" pretend.
Insinuating that I'm a paid pharma-shill isn't attacking me personally? Piss off.
We are shocked - shocked - that you feel we suggested any such thing. We merely asked for information, since you have provided none, which in itself is suggestive, so perhaps you have yourself to blame for any insinuations you read into a information enquiry. We believe we said we were sure it wasn't so:
Could it be that the answers are compromising? Surely not. Surely Chris is well qualified by background and motivation to defend good science without any regard to who is pleased by his knightly tilting against "liars" and "dishonest" "misinterpreters" of HIV=AIDS ideology?
Why the sensitivity on the subject, Chris? Is it because you have lost a loved one to the AZT/PI machine?
Your statements are becoming so contrary to the literature that we are worried about a possible stroke, and plead for you to calm down, and think before you make more spurious claims. For example:
The first trials showed that AZT was effective in treating people with symptomatic HIV infection...(Chris Noble)
By the same token in the average of three years follow up in the Concorde trial there was no evidence of any deaths caused by AZT let alone the massive genocide that "rethinkers" allege.(Chris Noble)
The idea that AZT killed 300,000 is completely ridiculous and not supported by any data and I have in no way made such a "concession".(Chris Noble)
"In the British/French Concorde trial which involved 1700 patients and lasted three years, follow-up revealed a statistically significant increase of deaths in the AZT treatment arm as compared to those in the placebo (J. Derbyshire, personal communication, 1994). The other nucleotide analogues that have been approved for use, such as ddC and ddi, are also highly toxic and of short-term benefit." - Abraham Karpas (Human Retroviruses in leukaemia and AIDS. Biology Reviews 789:911-33, 2004) (just posted by Robert Houston).
Pick up a copy of the PDR and check the side effects of protease inhibitors, Mr "Piss off" Meme. They are almost as bad as AZT, which is only reduced to 1/4 of the original killer dose when now mixed into the cocktails, last I heard.
Al Bayati a very expert toxicologist whom you fear and loathe needs two long paragraphs to merely list them in his Medical Veritas article you apparently cannot contradict except with cheap nonsense about aspirin not causing AIDS, which by the way ignores the fact that Protease Inhibitors can cause bad headaches, among a zillion other more revolting symptoms, and that aspirin mixed with alcohol reduces platelets and causes thrombocytopenia which leads to prescriptions of corticosteroids an immune suppressant to brake the autoimmune response the doctors think is causing it.
As a gay Australian if you are gay as you appear to be then you should know all this stuff, and as an HIV=AIDS apologist you certainly should know it.
Maybe you do know it:
You are also twisting my comments about ARVs. I did not say that I would not take them. I have been honest enough to say that I cannot say what I would do if I was in the position of some of the HIV+ "rethinkers".
In other words, you feel some caution and would not care to decide until you have to. Precisely what we noted, and in the wake of your remark that rehtinkers would have a "point" if they pointed to the AZT debacle:
If the "rethinkers" sole point was that high dose AZT monotherapy was a bad idea and resulted in people dying then you might have a legitimate point.
I said that this was the one area where "rethinkers" might have had a point.
The literature has detailed the toxicities associated with AZT from the first trials by Fischl et al. Nobody is denying that these side effects can be very serious and even fatal.
So Chris, is 300,000 that far off if 50,000 were being killed a year? What figure would you put on this iatrogenic manslaughter?
A follow-up study by Fischl et al. in fact found that between 2/3rs and 3/4ths of the AZT-treated patients were dead in two years - the higher the dosage the more who died (M. Fischl et al. A randomized controlled trial of a reduced daily dose of zidovudine... NEJM 323:1009-14, 1990. - Houston
So once again, answer the question. Did you lose a loved one to toxic AZT/PIs, and ever since therefore desperately insisted it was HIV=AIDS? - a supposedly infectious virus, supposedly properly medicated? It would seem to be your only excuse.
And just while we are at it, are you yet aware of the overall grand tendency to try and blame toxic illnesses on infectious disease causes over the last forty years, and why it exists?
The feeling is creeping over me that you may after all be a grand sucker taken in by this childishly hollow hypothesis. Surely not.
Surely a man however vulgar in his language with a PhD in physical sciences from an Australian University could do better, even if it wasn't physics?
Now Chris are just spinning off the party line without any genuine thought, and it is tiresome. The early AZT studies were totally compromised and a useless foundation for medication, and so it proved. 300,000 or even more possibly died.
The patient group all had advanced AIDS on entry.
They only had early PCP, reliable toxicologist and pathologist Al Bayati notes.
The earlier placebo controlled study showed that the life expectancy of people with advanced AIDS was at this time. Nineteen of the 137 in the placebo arm were dead by 24 weeks into the trial.
The 1987 Fischl study, the only one that ever tried to compare placebo with AZT, was a total shambles violating protocol and ethical standards. Many in the AZT group were saved by transfusions, which unblinded the study. When all were put on AZT, the early AZT group died at a higher rate. They also eliminated deaths from AZT from the books ex post facto.
Meanwhile the placebo group were or had been taking a ton of other "life style" drugs, as well as getting their AZT slipped to them by the AZT group, and they did not get any transfusions. Their placebo group death rate was thus artificially high, and since some of the deaths of the AZT group were expunged, the whole AZT 'improvement' was engineered and bogus.
As history has shown everyone except you.
The (Concorde) difference was not statistically significant.
The Concorde study yielded a death ratio of 1.25 for the early AZT group. The group treated with AZT early went down the drain 25% faster. Derbyshire, a principal, said it was statistically significant, despite pressure from Glaxo-Wellcome to tone it down.
That's medically and clinically significant, for sure, you numbskull.
It showed clear benefits in short term treatment of people with advanced AIDS.
No, the Fischl study was a mess, unethical and unreliable, as shown by Lauritsen and Duesberg and recognised by all now except you. There was never any confirmation in any controlled clinical study.
Karpas re Concorde cites as a personal communication that further follow-up showed a statistically significant increase in mortality in the immediate arm. This is plausible and I won't contest it.
Great Virus, a concession! Noted. Guess you have stopped arguing with Karpas, at least.
Nobody is saying that AZT was a wonder treatment. It clearly had severe side-effects.
Yes, but they were calling AZT miraculous at the time and activists like you were busy egging the gays on over the cliff in an orgy of massive self destruction aided by the drug companies that were pleased to take the money.
The only warnings came from AIDS dissidents John Lauritsen and Peter Duesberg. You still haven't got the message, it seems, even though NIAID have.
This does not however justify the fairytales put out by rethinkers. The Concorde trial while showing that AZT monotherapy was not beneficial for asymptomatic HIV infection clearly shows that it is not as toxic as "rethinkers" pretend.
Killing at 25% higher rate is VERY TOXIC. A tiny excess of deaths of a few percent gets a drug off the market fast by the FDA eg Vioxx etc recently. This rate of killing is disastrous.
Chris you live in a fairy tale kingdom ruled by the "Piss Off" Meme, as you call it, twenty years behind the times.
Read Lauritsen or Duesberg, stop peddling the party line on Fischl and AZT, which is fallacious, shoddy, compromised, standard violating, sloppy, cover up BS, never confirmed, and abandoned by all including NIAID which has AZT monotherapy as "not recommended".
All you are doing is showing you haven't a clue, sneering ignorantly and enforcing lies and stupidity.
You cannot have it both ways. AZT kills, and HIV believers killed and were killed with it.
The story is the same with protease inhibitors. Nice poisons that kill parasites before they kill you.
And thus spake the Lord Duesberg and his Apostle Lauritsen! Now bow down all you believing unbelievers (or is it unbelieving believers?) for the Truth as it is written in the Holy Scriptures of the Church of Denial shall set you free!
Drink this coolaid for it will enlighten you and open your mind to the HIV does not cause AIDS Meme.
Talk about faith blinding one to the world around you.
I do hope you all get help very soon, I fear you might yourself and more importantly someone else with your delusional rantings.
Ohhhh!!
Now I get it!
Duuuhhhh!
It was the recent spate of black is white, night is day, up is down, you disagree with me so you agree with me,.... posts that finally tipped me off.
(Cue lengthy retort about "Big Brother Tony Fauci" and "AIDS INC." in: 5... 4... 3...)
The patient group all had advanced AIDS on entry. (Dr. N)
They only had early PCP, reliable toxicologist and pathologist Al Bayati notes. (TS)
LOL! Truthseeker, Dr. N and I have been over this many times and a great lengths. "Advanced AIDS" is a phrase as common in his minuscule and thoroughly predictable vocabulary as "dishonest" and "liar". The term, to our unpaid pharma shill, is as mutable as the virus itself; it sounds impressive and means whatever suits him at the moment.
And thus spake the Lord Duesberg and his Apostle Lauritsen! (Sascha)
If it wasn't for the new word in the vocabulary I'd have thought Sascha was Dr. N's alter ego. Never mind, in my All-embracing magnanimity I don't mind correcting this creature either:
It was not the Lord but the prophet Zarathustra who, in Nietsche's variant over the name Zoroaster, "spake thus". Neither was it Duesberg's but Abraham Karpas' words that were written on the tablet just quoted by the credulous unbelievers Robert Houston and Truthseeker. The
cross-literary allusion Sascha is looking for is therefore, Thus spake the prophet Abraham Karpas. . .
Aessch!! no rest for the wicked it seems Roy the expression you are groping for is "fair is foul and foul is fair". Otherwise glad the penny finally droped - or is that the dime in your case?
the Truth as it is written in the Church of Denial shall set you free!....Talk about faith blinding one to the world around you. - Sascha
Thanks for this perfect example of how the responses of the faithful often consist in holding up a mirror to themselves and describing their critics in terms of what they see, and deploring it.
They often borrow their arguments from their critics, too.
Is this a sign of unconscious guilt or merely lack of imagination? Could be both,
A system-grinder hates the truth.- Ralph Waldo Emerson
# Truthseeker
Duuuhhhh!
Hi Roy!
See above comment re the mirror you are holding.
The comprehension of truth calls for higher powers than the defense of error. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Eppur si muove! Galileo Galilei
Truth's a dog must to kennel (John Moore)
"My good fellow, don't make such a noise, we must bear these things better." Sir John Moore
The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason. The Fool,King Lear, I, iv
"Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment." - Thomas Mann
Vengeance! plague! death! confusion! - John Moore
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite. - Bertrand Russell.
Mirror TS?
Sorry, I no longer read your comments if they are longer than five paragraphs.
These AZT Denialists are really some of the dumbest pseudo-scientists on the planet. Very simple story. After failing to develop a promised vaccine, these idiots panicked, and turned to AZT, ignoring the fact that AZT was cancer chemo, with all the ordinary side-effects of cancer chemo.
That's why the "latency" period was only 2 years -- once you take AZT, death is almost inevitable.
How stupid can these people be?
"*ç%& this shit" -confuscius
1. Woman who goes to man's apartment for snack, gets titbit.
2. Man who lay woman on ground, get peace on earth.
3. Man who gets kicked in testicles, left holding the bag.
4. Man who kisses girl's behind, gets crack in face.
5. Passionate kiss like spider web-lead to undoing of fly.
6. Man with holes in pants pockets, feels cocky all day.
7. Man who fight with wife all day, get no piece at night.
8. Virginity like balloon-one prick, all gone.
9. Girl who rides bicycle, peddles ass all over town.
10. He who farts in church, sits in own pew.
11. Baseball all wrong-man with four balls can't walk.
12. Man who live in glass house, dress in basement.
13. Kotex not best thing on earth, but next to best thing.
14. Man with penis in peanut butter jar is fucking nuts.
15. Man who walk through airport door sideways is going to Bangkok.
16. Man who drop watch in toilet, bound to have shitty time.
17. Man who take lady on camping trip, have one intent.
18. When lady say no, she mean maybe, When lady say maybe, she mean yes, When lady say yes-she no lady! Confuscius also say: Man who go to bed with question of sex on mind wake up with solution in hand.
Wow, this thread is really something. It is really instructive as a lesson in attending to the subtleties of language.
Chris,
I did not object to the statement that there exist antibodies specific to "HCV epitopes". I objected to the statement that there exist antibodies specific to whole HCV antigen.:
I quote myself verbatim:
"There is NO SUCH THING as an 'antibody to HCV', nor is there any such thing at all as 'antibody to XXX', where you can replace 'XXX' with your favorite antigen. If there is such a thing as an "antibody to XXX', the 'XXX' is an EPITOPE, not an antigen. [my emphasis] This failure to remember that antibodies are produced in response to EPITOPES, NOT WHOLE ANTIGENS, is perhaps the most common mistake made by immunologists."
And then, you, Chris Noble, go right on to make exactly the mistake that I mentioned above. Friggin' unbelievable:
Chris Noble said:
"There are antibodies that are specific for HCV antigens. They have high binding affinities to certain epitopes on the protein."
Thank you, Chris Noble, for completely verifying my original point, that immunologists constantly confuse the distinction between whole antigens and epitopes. The issue is NOT whether certain antibodies are specific to "epitopes on the protein", the issue is whether antibodies are specific to whole HCV antigen, in other words, whether certain antibodies can be shown to be specific according to the gold standard of being "infected with HCV". Pointing out that certain antibodies bind specifically with certain epitopes does absolutely nothing to demonstrate this point.
The ONLY way one can determine scientifically that there exist antibodies "specific to HCV" is to do the following:
1. Find a large group of patients who are known NOT to be "infected with HCV".
2. Show that very few of these HCV-uninfected individuals have antibody which reacts with the proteins in the antibody test.
And yet even then, THIS WOULD NOT JUSTIFY THE USE OF THE TERM "HCV-SPECIFIC ANTIBODY". Specificity is a trait of a TEST, NOT of an object.
As Val Turner is tireless in pointing out, the ORIGIN of the proteins used in antibodies tests is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY IRRELEVANT. Specificity is not determined by the "purity" of the diagnostic in its biochemical origin, i.e. an antibody tests is NOT made more "specific" because the proteins used in the tests have a certain biochemical origin. Specificity is determined very simply -- "How often does the diagnostic ring true in people who are absent the gold standard?" The biochemical origin of the diagnostic is completely and utterly irrelevant.
This is a central fact which you people do NOT seem able to comprehend. Yet it is the FUNDAMENTAL issue -- specificity is simply a ratio, one number divided by another. It has sod all to do with any molecular-biochemical interpretations put upon the gold standard and diagnostic assays used.
Unfortunately, step 1 above, to determine specificity, is in practice impossible with HCV, e.g. in the 1993 paper the antibody tests were used as a "gold standard" for determining the specificity and sensitivity of the presence of "HCV RNA" using RT PCR, despite the fact that everyone knows a mere antibody/antigen reaction is never sufficient to demonstrate the ORIGIN of the antibodies or antigens. And indeed the authors state that there is no in vitro isolation of "HCV particles", nor any blood immunoassay to determine the presence or absence of "HCV antigen". This was a full 4 years after the antibody tests were developed!! I find it amazing that 4 years after such tests were developed, the authors of a paper basically concede that there is no way of determining whether someone is "infected with HCV" or not.
Nine years later, in 2002, the situation did not seem to have improved much. Blanchard et al., in "Hepatitis C Virus-Like Particle Morphogenesis", Journal of Virology, April 2002, p. 4073-4079, Vol. 76, No. 8, state
"Several entire cloned HCV genomes are able to initiate infection when introduced directly into chimpanzee livers (11). However, the transfection of cell lines with constructs containing these genomes does not result in HCV replication in vitro (1). [my emphasis] Similarly, the use of infected sera to infect cell lines or primary cell cultures has yielded disappointing results because infection and replication are very inefficient (2). Molecular studies of the HCV infectious cycle in the host cell and the development of specific anti-HCV agents have been considerably hampered by the inability to achieve propagation of the virus in cultured cells in vitro. A significant advance in HCV research was recently made with the development of subgenomic HCV RNAs consisting of sequences encoding nonstructural proteins flanked by the 5' and 3' UTRs, which self-replicate in hepatoma cells (4, 18). However, this model cannot be used to address the structural features of the virion or its assembly pathway. In addition, viral particles are difficult to observe by electron microscopy in the plasma or liver tissues of infected patients. [my emphasis] A number of attempts have been made to obtain recombinant HCV particles, but only Baumert et al. (3) have reported the obtainment of HCV-like particles in insect cells, using recombinant baculoviruses expressing genes for HCV structural proteins. However, although particles containing the three HCV structural proteins were generated, they were unstructured and heterogeneous. [my emphasis]"
and in "Hepatitis C Virus-Like Particle Budding: Role of the Core Protein and Importance of Its Asp", Journal of Virology, September 2003, p. 10131-10138, Vol. 77, No. 18, Blanchard et al again state, here referring to their own work in the 2002 paper,
"A significant advance in HCV research was made with the development of subgenomic HCV RNAs, consisting of sequences encoding nonstructural proteins flanked by the 5' and 3' UTRs, which self-replicate in the Huh7 hepatoma cell line (5, 26). However, recently developed systems for the expression of the full-length HCV polyprotein in the context of these self-replicating RNAs have not allowed the production of virus particles (34). [my emphasis] Using a recombinant Semliki Forest virus (SFV) replicon expressing genes encoding the three HCV structural proteins (core, E1, and E2), Blanchard et al. have demonstrated the assembly of these proteins into HCV-like particles in mammalian cells (3, 4). However, most of these HCV-like particles seem to display an abortive budding process (3, 4). [my emphasis] Our attempts to purify HCV-like particles from the cell lysate gave disappointing results. We believe that, in the absence of a membrane completely coating the HCV-like particles, these particles are unstable and may be damaged by the purification procedures. A similar hypothesis was put forward in a recent report describing the in vitro assembly of alphavirus core-like particles (32). Also, our efforts to obtain HCV-like particles in hepatoma cells such as the Huh7 cell line were unsuccessful, since the SFV vector is less efficient in these cells."
One gets the eerie sense that one is "chasing a ghost", as the saying goes. A full 13 years after antibody blood tests for HCV were put on market, "viral particles are [still] difficult to observe by electron microscopy in the plasma or liver tissues of infected patients", a funny situation indeed if HCV virions are supposedly the cause of hepatitis!!
And even when lab technicians have access to the full genetic information of the "HCV genome", the best they can achieve IN VITRO is to obtain so-called "HCV recombinant virus-like particles" which are "unstructured and heterogeneous" and which "seem to display an abortive budding process".
I don't believe in phantoms. I don't believe in the existence of things by watching their "shadows" (antibodies) and I don't believe in the existence of things given a postulated essence but which are damn near impossible to find in actual patients in vivo.
Franklin said:
"The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Ed. (1992) Houghton Mifflin Company: Boston. p 173:
specific 6. Immunology. Having an affinity limited to a particular antigen or antibody."
to which Roy (who actually thinks quantitative PCR can determine "specificity" of binary classification tests!!) Hinkley chimes in:
"You're dismissed... Idiot."
The American Heritage Medical Dictionary, Second edition, 2004, p. 22:
"affinity 2. The attraction between an antigen and an antibody"
In other words, the "immunological" definition
"Having an affinity limited to a particular antigen or antibody."
reduces to
"Having an antibody/antigen attraction limited to a particular antigen/antibody (respectively)."
or equivalently,
"[For antibody:] Having an attraction limited to a particular antigen" or "[For antibody:] Having an attraction limited to a particular antibody"
But how do you determine whether such an attraction is in fact "limited"??. The only way to RULE OUT attractions which are NOT "limited to a particular antigen/antibody (resp.)" is to rule out CROSS-REACTIONS, in other words, to test the antibody/antigen reaction against presence of the actual antigen [in the case of antibody tests] itself, to determine experimentally if said reaction ever occurs in the absence of the antigen.
But this is precisely what we "specificity" means in binary classification testing, we determine how often a particular reaction occurs in the ABSENCE of said antigen. And so we now see that your supposed "immunological" definition of "specificity" is in fact identical in content to the so-called "mathematical" definition of "specificity".
Now, WHO IS THE IDIOT???
Jim said:
"You are aware of the fact that highly specific antibodies can be produced against any antigen of interest, both polyclonal and monoclonal right? Also there is this thing called controls that all experiments have to have. Considering these two points, I'm not really sure why you think the above sentence was worth emphasizing."
Ah, yes, that thing called "controls".
You seem to neglect the fact that PROPERLY determining specificity ENTAILS the use of the ULTIMATE control -- THE ABSENCE OF THE ANTIGEN ITSELF. And I think I have demonstrated above that in the case of HCV, such scientific controls have never been conducted.
The issue is not whether controls are necessary are not -- I hope we agree on that. The issue is whether HCV researchers have ever used controls at all in the first place, i.e. whether they have actually demonstrated that individuals NOT infected with HCV rarely test positive on HCV antibody tests. That's the question -- the only question, really.
Dale said:
"Once again you appear to have completely misinterpreted reality. 'Any' nucleic acid sequence? Hardly. A nucleic acid sequence contains genetic information. If that information is not consistent with a virus that nucleic acid won't be labelled viral."
READ CAREFULLY, Dale. I did NOT say, "Any nucleic acid". I said "Any FOREIGN nucleic acid". Again, I quote myself directly:
"YOU REGARD THE PRESENCE OF ANY NUCLEIC ACID WHICH IS DETERMINED BY YOU TO BE "FOREIGN" (whatever that means) AS ORIGINATING IN AN EXOGENOUS VIRUS."
So, thanks for mis-quoting me. You also seemed to have missed my central point -- I am asking you guys, WHAT IS IT that you deem to be "consistent with a virus"?? My contention is that any nucleic acid sequence that you deem to be "foreign" (i.e. not originating in the host genetic information) you label as "viral", i.e. originating in an exogenous virus.
So, the fundamental question comes again: What does it mean for a nucleic acid sequence to be "consistent with a virus"? Certainly, it can't mean actually SEEING virus particles, either in vitro or in vivo, because HCV has shown that you believe in "viral sequences" without "virus" or even "virus-like" particles.
darin
Mirror TS? Sorry, I no longer read your comments if they are longer than five paragraphs.
Posted by: Roy Hinkley | December 9, 2007 8:33 PM
The 21st Century professor from Pisa!! Perfect. Defeated by six paragraphs, huh, Roy? Now we know why the best you can muster in the face of reason is ..."I didn't read it!" Well, dont worry, the longer posts are not meant for the HIV meme which commands what you refer to as your brain, Roy, if that is what it is - they are meant to help onlookers not fall into your shallow error, HIV=AIDS, and you now help prove our point, so thank you. Don't drop that mirror you're looking into as you reply, it's bad luck.
There has never been anything, however absurd, that myriads of people weren't prepared to believe, often so passionately that they'd fight to the death rather than abandon their illusions. To me, that's a good operational definition of insanity. - Arthur C. Clarke.
"The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong" C. J. Jung
This is so much more real; at least there's no more pretence of understanding anything.
"To demand 'sense" is the hallmark of nonsense. Nature does not make sense. Nothing makes sense." Ayn Rand
Congratulations,
Darin Brown desperately arguing that there is no such thing as specific antibodies and "Truthseeker" desperately arguing that not only do HIV neutralizing antibodies exist but that they "defeat" HIV have convinced me I am an idiot for wasting my time here.
Forgive me for interrupting the sparkling exchange of quotes from our literary scholars.
Dr. Noble contended earlier that the Fischl 1990 study on AZT that I cited, which found a disastrously high death-rate, involved only patients with advanced AIDS (M. Fischl et al. A randomized controlled trial of a reduced daily dose of zidovudine in patients with AIDS. NEJM 323:1009-14, 1990). He was probably confused by a too cursory reading of the abstract, which spoke of its "substantial toxicity" in earlier testing on "patients with advanced disease." The patient criteria for the new study, however, was not advanced AIDS but rather patients who "had a first episode of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia." To repeat: "a first episode."
Two dosage levels of AZT were compared, 1000 mg/day and 800 mg/day. At 18 months, 48% of the higher dose patients were buried and 37% of the lower dose patients, a significant difference (P = 0.012). At two years, the respective carnage was 73% and 66%, also signficantly worse for the higher dose (P = 0.033).
So, AZT defenders: go ahead and take your poison, if you wish, but bear in mind that it was only the AIDS dissidents who tried to warn you from going along as "lambs to the slaughter."
Only PCP? Ask EJ Scovill if PCP is just a minor complaint.
You are presumably attempting to argue that AZT at 1000 mg/day caused a 73% mortality at 2 years.
The immediate arm in the Concorde trial was given 1000 mg/day and there were 81 AIDS related deaths out of 877 after an average of three years. When you compare this with 69 out of 872 for the deferred arm then it is obvious to anyone accept a raving lunatic denialist that even at 1000 mg/day AZT is nowhere near as toxic as you would have us believe.
So what was the difference between the Concorde trial with 9% mortality at 3 years compared to the Fischl trial 73% mortality at 2 years. The immediate arm in the Concorde trial and the high dose arm of the Fischl:1990 trial were both on 1000 mg/day?
The patients in the Fischl trial had advanced disease. The high mortality was not due to AZT.
All of your bloviations about the Concorde trial avoided mentioning that the mortality in the immediate arm who were given AZT at 1000 mg/day was only 9% after three years and was not significantly higher than that for the deferred arm.
This tells me that you are deliberately being dishonest.
A question for John: What's fair?
Congratulations, Darin Brown desperately arguing that there is no such thing as specific antibodies and "Truthseeker" desperately arguing that not only do HIV neutralizing antibodies exist but that they "defeat" HIV have convinced me I am an idiot for wasting my time here. Posted by: Chris Noble | December 10, 2007 12:49 AM
Poor Moore. One feels sorry for you. Bluster won't do it, old chap. In fact, your reluctance to "waste time" here is very understandable, even if you are lurking and not daring to post arrant rubbish, as in that sterling sentence. It must be very depressing to realize that the flaws in HIV=AIDS, your very favorite and indeed only paradigm/meme/basis for your specious and scientifically ridiculous search for a microbicide to apply to macaques to see if it can stop HIV from transmitting between humans at a rate of 1/1000-to 1/10,000 (PAdian, AIDSTruth.org, ed by JPMoore) are so gigantic that even people who can't spell can see them a mile away through the wrong end of a telescope.
What will you do with yourself when $500,000 produces exactly zilch in this little enterprise now clogging up the limited Cornell lab space and lives of your wretched lab assistants and other who trust your leadership?
More important, perhaps, to you, what will your mother have to say when she realizes what her son has been up to? What will all your gay friends have to say when they are finally forced to face up to what you have been up to, leading them by the nose over a very high cliff?
What, come to that, will you have to say to the Congressional committee that will place you on the front stove hot plate for all the world to see skipping up and down on C-Span, when they ask how it is that not only did the literature your colleagues wrote make it very plain that HIV was as likely to cause AIDS as one of your macaques to jump over the Empire State building, but your very own papers show that you knew it?
What will they call the act of using public money for a boondoggle? Won't the federal prosecutor take an interest in your computer files? My advice to you, old chap, is to make sure you erase them all before anything comes to a boil. Also, don't forget to buy that condominium in Rio.
Here a little quote for you to keep in your pajama pocket overnight, so that you can refine your obfuscation and ensure that the FBI and the Attorney General's office don't twig too quickly what is so neatly compartmentalized in the non-working part of your brain, that your life work is completely and utterly hollow, and what is more, has taken the health and lives of thousands upon thousands who have trusted you and your colleagues.
"The rate at which an untreated HIV-positive person's CD4 cell count is declining is a poor predictor of the risk of AIDS or death in individual patients the Fourteenth Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections was told this week".
"This means that medium term CD4 decline - the quantity Rodriguez said was poorly predicted by viral load - is itself a useless predictor of progression to AIDS, because it is so immensely variable. In fact it is so difficult to calculate the gradient of a medium-term CD4 decline which may in fact feature short-term, abrupt increases and decreases such that the average statistical error in the calculation is 55 cells - almost equal to the average annual decline. In a quarter of the observations, the error of the slope is greater than the measurement of the slope itself," Mellors said.
Oh gee, all that worry about viral load and when to take one's revolting meds designed to give one AIDS, except that nearly 3/4 of those given them end up refusing to take any more.
What will happen, John, when they expand their refusal to swallow poison to a refusal to swallow any more of your lethal "science"? Will you be able to walk the street without a bodyguard? These are serious questions for you to consider, given the wholesale demolition of your claims in this thread and in every other forum where this nonsense has been intelligently discussed, contrary to the policy of Fauci, who successfully prevented it for so many years.
It is so funny watching you flirt with danger on the Web, as it sucks caution out of you and tempts you to flaunt your overconfidence in your secret being safe. Watch out, John, pride cometh before a fall. If Fauci sees this stuff he will have a fit.
But then, it may count in your favor in the end. Maybe your loose tongue will get you off with a lesser sentence than the rest of your bunch of irresponsible pseuodscientists that have perpetrated this scheme while pretending that they believed in it. After all, without you and your Gallo-like tendency to make a fool of yourself in public with transparently unscientific arguments like "denialists are dangerous", this discussion would have been as inert as HIV in an HIV positive healthy person for many more years.
In other words, you may get time off for cooperating with the investigation. Maybe ten years in the slammer instead of twenty, what do you think?
What do you think is a fair sentence for what you have knowingly done to AIDS patients, their loved ones, and to science?
Truth,
You might want to consider your own legal liability if people, on your assurance that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, go and knowingly infect others.
What would be a fair sentence for one who encourages others to propagate a deadly infection?
Only PCP? Ask EJ Scovill if PCP is just a minor complaint.
You are presumably attempting to argue that AZT at 1000 mg/day caused a 73% mortality at 2 years.
The immediate arm in the Concorde trial was given 1000 mg/day and there were 81 AIDS related deaths out of 877 after an average of three years. When you compare this with 69 out of 872 for the deferred arm then it is obvious to anyone accept a raving lunatic denialist that even at 1000 mg/day AZT is nowhere near as toxic as you would have us believe.
So what was the difference between the Concorde trial with 9% mortality at 3 years compared to the Fischl trial 73% mortality at 2 years. The immediate arm in the Concorde trial and the high dose arm of the Fischl 1990 trial were both on 1000 mg/day
The patients in the Fischl trial had advanced disease. The high mortality was not due to AZT.- Posted by: Chris Noble | December 10, 2007 1:43 AM
So you think that AZT isn't so toxic, since less than 10% taking it in the Concord trial died? Hey that's not too bad!
Medicine is meant to make people better, Chris, not be praised because it is not as lethal as you might imagine on the basis of the murderous Fischl trial, where AZT caused more extra dying than Concorde.
Yes, Fischl 1990 was pretty bad cos they were all already sick. AZT accelerated deaths 30% (statistically highly significant) at 18 months with a 25% increase in dose (1000 from 800 milligrams). At 2 years the proportion of dead went from 2/3rd (low dose)to 3/4 (high dose}.
That shows the deadliness of AZT. Quite impressive, when you give it to a sick man.
Yes the Concorde trial was less lethal than the Fischl, you're right. Yes, it was because the Concorde subjects were in better shape than the wrecks in the Fischl trial. None had AIDS yet, they were all asymptomatic, generally healthy HIV positives.
However, the AZT accelerated AIDS with them too.
In Concorde early AZT ingestors died 25% faster than the late AZT swallowers.
Bottom line was that AZT did not prolong life, it shortened it. It did not prevent AIDS, it brought it on. Mortality rose 25% higher.
AZT is filthy stuff that will give you AIDS, period. Yet they are still giving it to the patients. Why?
Your statement that the 25% difference in Concorde was only 9% and not statisticlly significant is wrong, though it comes from the abstract. They either lied and or engineered it on some basis when they wrote,under pressure from the drug company: "Similarly, there was no significant difference in progression of HIV disease". Not true. We mentioned that Derbyshire wrote to Karpas that it was statistically significant. It was, and it was 25%. Read the paper's tables.
If you are ill AZT will be disastrous, if healthy it will take longer to kill you. But it's lethal, period.
Truth,
might want to consider your own legal liability if people, on your assurance that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, go and knowingly infect others.
t would be a fair sentence for one who encourages others to propagate a deadly infection?
Posted by: Sascha | December 10, 2007 2:55 AM
Thanks Sascha. I don't have any legal liability when I am discussing the scientific literature and what it plainly says, since I am not telling people my prescription for their symptoms, which only an MD is licensed to do for individuals.
However, I would not hesitate to tell anybody that the scientific literature I have read and that other objective people have read says in six hundred different ways that HIV does nothing but vaccinate you against itself. It is not even a debatable proposition among intelligent people if they read all the literature. Of course my definition of intelligence includes not being purposely pig headed a la Noble.
I don't know why you believe the Meme but I assume you are going by what others tell you and write in the New York Times etc.and you are not carefully reading the literature, which I urge you to dom it is not that opaque, It is up to you if you want to take the assurances of Chris Noble and John Moore at face value, however.
I prefer to read the published peer reviewed literature, where even Moore has to tell the truth to some extent instead of switching to the unscientific and political arguments he uses against critics of his research assumptions.
Noble just makes practised moves at throwing spanners in the works of truthseeking, his views are not at all informed by any overall perspective. They are purely prejudiced all the time,
The literature is the only touchstone we have, once scientists start behaving like businessmen. But if they spend twenty years evading the obvious message of the papers they themselves write, which is that they are wasting public money and ruining the lives of patients chasing HIV, then one can ask, what is their responsibility? Can they pretend they are dumb? Can they get away with the line, Oh we didn't kinow, everybody made the same mistake?
One has to consider, is everyone a muttonhead like Noble, who appears to do it on purpose for reasons of his own. Is Moore as dense as Noble? Is Fauci? Maybe, if their minds are derailed by a massive Meme.
But scientists are pretty intelligent people, on the whole, so if they behave like Nelson and put the telescope up to their blind eye, you have to suspect they are perpetrating a silent scam, especially when they cover it up with diversionary tactics such as calling for critics to be jailed, etc.
People like Moore are not dumb. I refuse to believe they don't know very well they are doing what many desperate liars do, that is, compartmentalizing their brains and leaving the other side untouched behind a closed door in some kind of conscious act of pushing things away out of sight. Call it self deception if you like, but I believe it is knowing. Like good embezzlers and thieves, they just take care to lie very well by not admitting reality into their thought processes. But they really know the elephant is in the room.
You put your finger on an interesting point, though. Dissenters from conventional wisdom in medicine, even doctors who simply want to try out new approaches, are often silenced by the threat of prosecution for prescribing non standard treatment.
It is part of the politics of repressing dissent, even it comes from members of the club.
Science is a profession in certain areas now, you cant afford to contradict those that run it. Everyone knows it.
So every scientist is in on this conspiracy?
Not just the scientists Sasha but obviously the politicians as well. Otherwise why would the American government pour so much money into research and treatment of AIDS patients? Oh yeah and private health insurance companies. They shell out their fair share as well. Everyone's either part of the conspiracy or being duped. Except for Truthseeker and a few of his friends of course.
"You might want to consider your own legal liability if people, on your assurance that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, go and knowingly infect others."
What would be his legal liability? That is a question everyone seems to know the answer to...
If my hairdresser told me not to worry about winter tires in winter can I sue him if I crash my car?
Sasha,
HIV, a Retrovirus can not case disease and death all by it's self. It needs the help of drastic chemo Anti-HIV regimens like the watered down AZT now being prescribed and other toxic drugs. It also needs the omnipresent death sentence handed down by the all caring orthodox establishment whom are in a trance by the Meme to carry out its self fulfilling prophecy. There's no Conspiracy Theory. Its business as usual.
HIV, a Retrovirus can not case disease and death all by it's self. It needs the help of drastic chemo Anti-HIV regimens like the watered down AZT now being prescribed and other toxic drugs. It also needs the omnipresent death sentence handed down by the all caring orthodox establishment
So Carter says EJ got diagnosed with AIDS and got drastic chemo and it killed her. I didn't know, thanks Carter.
Thousands died before AZT for HIV. Millions die of AIDS and they dont' get in a mile of nearest AZT. Millions die w/o diagnosis.
So much death and most important thing for Truthtwister is, who pays Chris Noble.
Thousands died before AZT for HIV. Millions die of AIDS and they dont' get in a mile of nearest AZT. Millions die w/o diagnosis. So much death and most important thing for Truthtwister is, who pays Chris Noble.
Posted by: Adele | December 10, 2007 10:54 AM
Millions die of AIDS w/o diagnosis, without AZT ... so much death... poor Adele, so easy to fill your tiny noggin with fantasy. Can I interest you in the Brooklyn Bridge? I have it for sale at $2,500. It's a steal.
Why would anyone prescribe toxic cancer chemo (AZT) to people who have anti-bodies to a latent retrovirus?
My understanding is that nearly 8% of the human genome is retroviral in origin.
These idiots are chasing microscopic phantoms with elephant guns.
Have y'all noticed the top banner here?
Schering-Plough and Seed Media Group present the Science and Society Series!
This whole blog is one big Pharma-Whorehouse. Yuck!
Schering-Plough has no interest in science and society -- it has an interest in selling drugs to maximize shareholder wealth. They'd sell rat poison, to make a buck, if they could.
So Carter says EJ got diagnosed with AIDS and got drastic chemo and it killed her. I didn't know, thanks Carter.
The jury is still out Adele. I don't know, so how should you know. The fact is you DONT KNOW, so shut the fuck up already. In the meant time stop with the bull shit, because by all current knowledge you and your friends are seriously mistaken, skewed to the Meme and can't possibly see the fact you are wrong.
Thousands died before AZT for HIV. Millions die of AIDS and they dont' get in a mile of nearest AZT. Millions die w/o diagnosis.
You don't need the sole explanation HIV caused deaths prior to AZT, Millions are not dying as a result of not being on meds. What? Haven't you heard?
"I personally do not prescribe AZT unless a patient insists. I have continued to find that patients survive longer without it."
Spin, April 1991
Dr. Michael Lange, MD
"I have a large population of [HIV + patients] who have chosen not to take any anti-retroviral [drugs]. They've watched all of their friends go on the anti-viral bandwagon and die."
"Lecture to Medical Students," Synapse, 1996
Dr. Donald Abrams, MD, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco
So much death and most important thing for Truthtwister is, who pays Chris Noble.
So much to say Adele, with so little substance.
So every scientist is in on this conspiracy?
What do you mean by a conspiracy? A coordinated, planned strategy, worked out by a small group, and perpetrated in the unknowing crowd? That would more or less fit the story, actually, since the leaders in this sorry affair, the scientists and Fauci and his pr staff, and fellow travelers on the staff of the NY Times and other media who need to keep cosy with the NIH, did discuss policy and response in regard to Duesberg's original article in Cancer Research 1987 when it appeared - "Why didn't we intervene with this before it was publlished?" etc in memos excavated later. Of course Fauci and his pr guys keeo an eye on dissidence. His funding is at stake.
However, a vast cospiracy, involving many individual docs and scientists? Obviously not. A conspiracy of fools, perhaps, motivated to go with the status quo, and now locked into the biggest mistake in medicine and science.
Let's see if my diatribe gets an answer from Chris "Who me? You're all liars!" Meme and John "I am not a macaque and you are dangerous to the patients whose welfare I have at heart" Moore. Whatever they say will be recorded for history, as their answer to a J'Accuse which will be posted in black bold font on Science Guardian soon enough.
As John Moore himself announced, this is war - and yes, it is a moral war, where he and Wainberg, Fauci and Baltimore, have to take responsibility for blocking outside review of what the scientific literature says is a lethal wrong turn.
What excuse do they have? it is very hard to think of any, if they are not utter fools. And do you think that Moore or even Noble are utter fools?
They are a disgrace to the human race, and should be publicly held to account. But we are all too collegial to allow that, aren't we?
"Wretches hang that jurymen may dine" - Pope. That is why that quote now heads Science Guardian/New AIDS Review. Whence we now return, since this thread seems fully mined for evidence of stupidity way past the venaility reading on the scam meter, and is just serving now to siphon off outrage from where it should be - square on the front page of SG/NAR, the only page on the Internet willing to say it like it is, publish and be damned.
"Darin Brown desperately arguing that there is no such thing as specific antibodies".
Ah Chris, it's so reassuring to see you withstand all arguments with the same ol' lines. A useful tactic that apparently maintains credibility with your friends, of course, is to caricature the arguments of your opponents while accusing everyone who disagrees with you of misrepresentations.
And now I read that you may even be Professor Moore, which explains everything, as Holmes might say to Watson.
In truthseeker and sidekicks, you've met inexhaustible someones who've exposed your confidence games, who will confidently and authoritatively counter everything you say and always manage to have the last word. Right here on your home front.
But what I truly love about the Aetiology gang is how completely they deny the tight reasoning of Darin while simultaneously ignoring 21st century mainstream HIV research that settles the purification argument. And backs up Darin's points.
It's as simple as asking a series of questions.
What can a reasonable person conclude when presented with the "central paradox" of our favorite putative enveloped virus where in vivo detection EVEN of COMPLETE RNP cores to confirm the initial "acute phase infection" or "classical viral" cell-killing is not in evidence?
Given documented coding env genes in the human transcriptome, not known in the 1980's, how does one exclude that a "viral" particle - complete gag-pol RNP core plus cellular proteins plus cellular plasma membrane - may not register as "foreign" to the "host"?
What excludes "background" retroviral activity or horizontal transfer of mobile genes- insufficient levels to cause disease pathogenesis but including RNA-based polymerases - from being a constant (therefore not "infectious") in the evolution of metazoans, perhaps even a driving force, as theorized by many?
Should experiments with new RNA "species", RNA-based polymerases, RNA "donor" and "acceptor" templates, multiple roles of tRNA, etc. be reconciled by the ways of science (e.g. "genomic tag hypothesis") or by fiats issued from an inbred community of virologists?
So every scientist is in on this conspiracy?
Sascha, you are undoubtedly the blonde bimbo in this aptly named "Pharma-Whorehouse"; the problem is exactly the opposite of your shallow-minded jab, namely that not
"every scientist is in on this conspiracy".
The problem for you, Fanklin and Moore is that you have no idea when you can get away with your kindergarten level diversions and when you cannot. If you don't want to get ripped to pieces yet again, I suggest you and your masters reserve the soft balls for the kind of venues now cherished
by the Mistress of this House, where the people smeared have no right of reply.
Truth,
You state that the published peer review literature is clear on the fact that HIV does not cause AIDS; do you have evidence to support that claim?
You state that Moore, Fauci et al. are perpetrating a lie and that they know very well that the theory they publicly espouse has been falsified by their own research; do you have evidence to support that claim?
You are quite right in believing you have no liability when discussing scientific theories and the relevant literature; it is inherent in the right to free speech and a necessary element of the scientific process. The threat of prosecution will not apply to the discussion.
But in most jurisdictions, knowingly infecting a partner with an infectious agent is an offence, it can be subsumed in a charge of causing bodily harm or even manslaughter or murder. These same jurisdictions punish the act of incitation to commit an offence; it is not necessary to be in a position of trust - as an MD would be when prescribing a therapy or giving a diagnosis.
I'm not saying you have committed such an act, but it is something that needs to be remembered. Whether the scientific basis for these laws is wrong is at this point is moot, as the judges are to a large degree bound to follow scientific consensus.
Pat,
If the Hairdresser told you to drive in an unsafe manner, that person might be considered to have committed an offence. I couldn't sue the hairdresser for you still are personally responsible for your own actions.
Carter,
You have evidence that a retrovirus cannot cause desease or lead to death?
MEC do you know who Sascha is bc sascha may be isn't a blonde bimbo. You and Truthtwister say women are stupid but may be Sascha is not even a women. Sascha is Slavic man's name.
"MEC do you know who Sascha is bc sascha may be isn't a blonde bimbo."
I do believe he was speaking metaphorically, Adele, and I have to agree with MEC that Sascha is a bimbo, regardless of sex.
Anyway, have you been following the economy, Adele, or are you still a one-trick pony?
Kevin
how completely they deny the tight reasoning of Darin
Tight ... as in intoxicated? How perceptive of you Mr. Natural.
Sasha,
I have read the complete work of Etienne de Harven M.D. a professor emeritus of pathology at the University of Toronto and a former cancer researcher at Sloan-Kettering Institute, New York (1956-1981). He produced the first electron microscopic studies of a retrovirus (the murine Friend leukemia virus) and was director of the Electron Microscopy Laboratory at the Banting Institute, Department of Pathology, University of Toronto.
HAVE YOU?
No, but you are making a claim and must back it up with evidence.
Again you are either incapable of reading or you are lying.
The 3 year mortality in the immediate arm was 9%. In the deferred arm it was 8%. The difference was not statistically significant. (p value ~ 0.34).
1000 mg/day for three years and the mortality possibly increased from 8% to 9%. That is the limit of the effect. Perhaps the difference became statistically significant after more than 3 years of follow-up.
Now you are apparently trying to say that AZT is only toxic to people who already have AIDS. Have you bothered to look at the survival rate after AIDS diagnosis before AZT was introduced. Contrary to Robert Houston's blitherings after a first episode of PCP your chances of seeing another two years were very slim.
The same "rethinkers" would have us believe that Kimberly Bergalis was perfectly healthy before she took AZT. Bullshit. A CD4+ count of 46, PCP and other opportunistic infections is not perfectly healthy.
Adele, you're right. I have no idea if Sascha is blonde. It was, as Kevin said, metaphorically speaking.
Nevertheless, please reserve the either HIV is the cause of AIDS or every medical scientist is a co-conspirator "logic" for the pages of AIDStruth, PLos, Nature and similar no right of reply publications intended for the gullible rabble.
Btw. what's your hair colour, Adele?
Now you are apparently trying to say that AZT is only toxic to people who already have AIDS. Have you bothered to look at the survival rate after AIDS diagnosis before AZT was introduced. Contrary to Robert Houston's blitherings after a first episode of PCP your chances of seeing another two years were very slim.
Dr. N, allow me to remind that you are arguing against people like Sonnabend and Karpas, not Truthseeker and Houston? Are you saying Sonnabend and Karpas are dishonest and illiterate?
Another line from King Lear springs to mind:
"The art of our necessities is strange,
That can make vile things precious." (3.2.70)
I missed the bit where Sonnabend and Karpas claim that AZT killed 300,000.
Give up on the stupid rhetoric.
Stupid rhetoric?!
Dr. N, are you now arguing against Shakespeare?
Shakespeare claims that AZT killed 300,000?
Neither Sonnabend, Karpas, nor Shakespeare gave an estimate of how many HIV patients have been hastened to their demise by AZT. However, Dr. Josef Sonnabend, AmFAR's co-founder, charged last year that at the original 1200 mg/day dosage, AZT "killed thousands, as did so-called early intervention."
Prof. Karpas of Cambridge wrote in his 2004 review paper that "In the British/French Concorde trial...follow-up revealed a statistically significant increase of deaths in the AZT treatment arm as compared to those in the placebo..." He cited a personal communication from J. Darbyshire.
Dr. J. H. Darbyshire was listed as the corresponding author of the 1994 Concorde study in the Lancet and was also a co-author of the follow-up study, which appeared 4 years later. The 1994 Concorde report found a higher death-rate in the early AZT- treated group of asymptomatic HIV+ subjects (Immediate group) versus the deferred treatment group, who received the drug later. It stated that "the estimated 3-year probabilities of death were 8% Imm [Immediate group] and 6% Def [Deferred group], an observed relative increase...of 29%..."
The later report on Concorde extended these findings to 4 and 5 year follow-up and concluded that the difference in death-rates between the groups was statistically significant ("Long-term follow-up of randomized trials of immediate versus deferred zidovudine in symptom-free HIV infection," AIDS 12:1259-1265, 1998). Both groups of originally asymptomatic patients received AZT, but those that got it immediately had significantly poorer survival. The authors wrote:
"There were 440 deaths (241 immediate, 199 deferred) in the Concorde trial (Table 1), and survival was significantly different between the two groups (Fig. 1; log-rank P = 0.02). The summary hazard ratio (immediate:deferred) was 1.25 (95% CI, 1.04-1.51)... The estimated 5-year survival probabilities were 0.75 (95% CI, 0.78-0.72) for the immediate group, and 0.81 (95% CI, 0.83-0.78) for the deferred group. The difference between the groups persisted when the analyses were stratified by country (France or United Kingdom; log-rank P = 0.02), and by baseline CD4 cell count (log-rank P = 0.003). When deaths considered unlikely to be HIV- or drug-related were ignored, the summary hazard ratio (immediate:deferred) was 1.21 (95% CI, 1.00-1.47; P = 0.05)."
Dr. Noble's repeated assertion that the Concorde results were "not significant" is thus misinformed. (For non-scientific readers, a probability value or "P value" of 0.05 or less indicates that the difference is statistically significant and unlikely to be due to chance.) These were originally healthy patients yet 25% were found to die in 5 years when given AZT early.
The 1990 Fischl study about which Dr. Noble commented involved patients with early AIDS as signalled by an initial episode of PCP (M. Fischl et al. A randomized controlled trial of a reduced daily dose of zidovudine in patients with AIDS. NEJM 11:1009-14, 1990). It's obvious that a toxic agent will tend to have a more toxic effect on the sick than on healthy asymptomatic subjects.
Comparing the standard dosage (1000 mg/day) with those on a reduced dosage (800 mg/day), the study found a dose response relationship. The standard dose resulted in a statistically significant greater mortality rate than the lower dose. This is evidence that the extra deaths in the high dose group were due to the effect of increased dosage in patients with AIDS, and not due to AIDS per se. To quote the authors:
"RESULTS...At 18 months the estimated survival rates were 52 percent for the standard treatment group and 63 percent for the low-dose group (P=0.012)..."
WTF? I correctly said that the differences in mortality at the 3 year mark were not statistically significant. This is true.
At the five year mark the differences are significant. The mortality in the immediate arm was higher at 25% compared to 19% for the deferred arm.
Even if we sever our frontal lobes with a hatpin and assume that all of these deaths were caused by AZT then this is still a much lower mortality than that claimed by "rethinkers".
I'm also intrigued by the fact that you cited this review Long-term follow-up of randomized trials of immediate versus deferred zidovudine in symptom-free HIV infection but for some reason failed to mention the three other Opal trials where no statistically significant difference in mortality was seen after 6 years follow-up. When all trials were combined there was no statistically significant difference.
It should also be pointed out that despite taking a placebo the patients in the deferred group in the Concorde trial still suffered CD4+ depletion, still came down with opportunistic infections and still progressed to AIDS.
To further counter Robert Houston's assertion that people with a first episode of PCP didn't really have advanced disease.
Improved short-term survival of AIDS patients initially diagnosed with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, 1984 through 1987.
In the period before AZT the 1 year survival after a first episode of PCP was just 42.7%.
The mortality rate was higher than that seen in Fischl's AZT trials.
Noble, you are positively Jesuitical in your determination to count AZT a good thing, and represent it as helpful in medicating those suffering from a harmless virus which vaccinates them against itself with a copious production on neutralizing antibodies against even its mutations.
Are you in love with the Virus, as the Jesuits were in love with Christ?
On Sunday Tom Johnson of the New Life Church lost his lovely and vivacious blonde daughter Tiffany, who "only wanted to help people" early, to Murray the lunatic gunman in Colorado, and Larry King asked if it dented his faith. Tom said: "It did a bit at first but I realize that God didn't create this, it was more a worldly thing."
Gene Crouse who lost his son Philip hasn't lost his faith either he said.
Said the courageous female guard who killed Murray the gunman, "God was with me all the time. He never left my side." She was praying all the time as she advanced on the gunman, she said, and it helped her to keep calm and keep her aim straight.
You see, the fact that God let the gunman kill eight people in arbitrary fashion is not any proof he didn't have their welfare at heart. He was too busy helping the brave guard who shot the gunman. At least, her belief in Him was helpful, even if he was out of the office at the time all this took place in one of His Colorado churches.
Is this not exactly how Chris "Meme on My Shoulder" Noble reasons his way out of the obvious result of studies which show that AZT is poison - as it is labeled, Chris, have a gander at a bottle before you grind on with your hand cranked meme copier?
It is rather like the Iraq conflict. God is on both sides. The soldiers involved tell CNN that, and so do the terrorists.
Similarly, the AZT Loving Meme kills, but Chris only sees the ones that survived for a time. Did AZT accelerate death? Yes, but not in Chris's view. It just didn't do anything. Proves it is a good thing!
Just as God didn't do anything, and the congregation can't wait to get back into the Mission and pray to Him again.
Chris would think twice he tells us before he takes AIDS medications today (which include 1/4 original dose AZT). But he knows that AZT is a good thing, because the Meme tells him so. Even if it doesn't make any difference, in his reading of the studies. That proves it is a good thing, you see. It proves that it didn't harm anybpdy. In his book. Of course, the studies say otherwise, as Karpas and Darbyshire tell us.
Hey Chris, why the secrecy as to who you are and what you do and where you do it and who for? Don't witnesses for the Lord AZT stand up in public as they proclaim? Look out for your bio on Science Guardian, coming shortly (see Cast of Characters)
The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason. - Voltaire
"Larry King asked if it dented his faith. Tom said: "It did a bit at first but I realize that God didn't create this, it was more a worldly thing."
Gene Crouse who lost his son Philip hasn't lost his faith either he said.
Said the courageous female guard who killed Murray the gunman, "God was with me all the time. He never left my side." She was praying all the time as she advanced on the gunman, she said, and it helped her to keep calm and keep her aim straight.
You see, the fact that God let the gunman kill eight people in arbitrary fashion is not any proof he didn't have their welfare at heart. He was too busy helping the brave guard who shot the gunman. At least, her belief in Him was helpful, even if he was out of the office at the time all this took place in one of His Colorado churches."
Sounds like absolute blind faith to me. Its a little like a story I heard about a mother in California. Her daughter died of AIDS despite the mother's insistence that HIV doesn't exist or cause disease.
I wonder, did she even have a moment when her faith waivered? Or is she even more a of a blind believer than the Minister in Colorado?
"Her daughter died of AIDS despite the mother's insistence that HIV doesn't exist or cause disease." RH
I can never find her actually saying this. where did you find it?
It's a little like a story I heard about a mother in California. Her daughter died of AIDS
Her daughter died of overreaction to an antibiotic, as all but a Meme Monkey could see and understand from the very beginning, and all discussion has confirmed. One does not die overnight from "AIDS". The hounding of Christine Maggiore in the midst of a family tragedy which had nothing to do with "AIDS" by a lynch mob of witch hunters is a viciously insensitive disgrace marring the record of any who have joined in it, and a microcosm in its misplaced prejudice, cruelty and unreason of the entire AIDS fiasco. It is a litmus test for civility and rationality, and with that silly remark, Roy, you stand naked of both.
Yes Truthtwister every time you take a antibiotic you get encephalitis in a day. And puts HIV proteins in your brain in a day. Makes your lungs stian for pnuemocystis in a day. And gives you pneumonia in a day. And has a time travel way of messing up your growth charts back to when you were born like "failure to thrive". Big secrets doctors don't want you to know!!
Not just that Twisterman all car accident victims died of antibiotic over reaction!! Antibiotic causes all cancers and heart disease to!!
Keep that fantasy wrapped around you tight guy it's cold for a deniosaur in NY this winter isn't it.
Pat says
I can never find her actually saying this. where did you find it?
Well pat she wrote a book called What if everything you know about HIv is wrong. You know like HIV causes AIDS HIV exists HIV gets spread sexully, tests work, drugs help people, babies get HIV from breastfeeding. You should read it some time it's a good intro to the bad denial arguements!!
So Anthony Liversidge, whose writing is a torture far worse than Vogon Poetry or anything Douglas Adams could have possibly conceived of, is now making some wimpy threat against the person who highlighted Liversidge's complete inability to grasp either Karpas's or Richman's papers. I would suggest someone review the lows and lows of Liversidge's science writing career, but there's not enough there to sustain more than a couple of sentences.
Sure Truthtwister, well said. Anyone who takes coroner's reports over the ravings of a greiving mother clearly lacks rationality.
You sound just like a Muslim forced to view a depiction of the prophet.
Or a Christian who has happened upon Serrano's piss Christ.
Maybe your handle should be TrueBeliever.
So because I believe the "meme" I'm a bimbo, but I categorically deny being a bimbo. That makes me a denialist; meaning I am telling the truth. So I can't be a bimbo.
Aah! I feel better already.
Damn, but I am blonde, I can't deny that. So I'm a lying shill for the "meme"! Oh well. I'll just blow dry my brain for a bit and all will be well.
Hey Sasha
No, retroviruses are never kiliing people. So assuming that they exist, they exist within the DNA of their host, so killing a cell is to commit suicide, and to cause the death of the entire host is to kill an entire population of viruses. There is no evolutionary reason for them to evolve into killing machines.
What other fatal diseases other than AIDS are blamed on retroviruses? HTLV-I which causes disease in about 1% of people who have it? And which isn't causally related?
So Carter,
"So assuming that they exist, they exist within the DNA of their host, so killing a cell is to commit suicide, and to cause the death of the entire host is to kill an entire population of viruses. There is no evolutionary reason for them to evolve into killing machines."
How does that reasoning stand up in the face of the numerous retroviruses widely known to kill their hosts including everything from primates to horses to birds?
Why is it you believe humans should be immune to similar types of viruses? Divine intervention?
Carter
Do you have evidence for the claim that retroviruses cannot kill people?
This has to be one of the most stupid arguments that you've regurgitated from Duesberg.
There is no evolutionary reason for any virus to evolve into killing machines. This goes for ebola too. The only criterion that matters is whether the virus is transmitted to another host before the host dies.
If anything viruses evolve to become less lethal. Highly lethal viruses are often seen when they jump from one host to another. Like HIV.
Doesn't reading this ignorance make you want to cry out in pain?
What the hell is the evolutionary reason for a cell transforming into cancer and killing the organsim?
Biology doesn't follow our preconceived notions. And unfortunately HIV doesn't follow Duesberg's preconceived notions about retroviruses.
What the hell is the evolutionary reason for a cell transforming into cancer and killing the organsim?
Ahem... Roy, cancer is a disease, not a species, but otherwise your question is an interesting one, like why do we age.
Anyway I thought you knew the "evolutionary reason for a cell transforming into cancer": It's those retros again isn't it? Just like anything else these days from your beer belly to rampant mythomania. . . which would make it appear biology and retroviruses do follow somebody's
preconceived notions very neatly after all.
So Ant**** L****, whose writing is a torture far worse than Vogon Poetry or anything Douglas Adams could have possibly conceived of, is now making some wimpy threat against the person who highlighted L*****'s complete inability to grasp either Karpas's or Richman's papers. I would suggest someone review the lows and lows of L*****'s science writing career, but there's not enough there to sustain more than a couple of sentences. Posted by: BD | December 11, 2007 5:33 PM
What "wimpy threat"? To post a bio on New AIDS Review honoring the person who "highlighted L******'s complete inabilityetc"? Why is that a threat and not a promise? You mean there is something to be ashamed of in Chris's plodding univision? Hmm. We would have thought you would love to applaud his one trick pony. So you think there is something embarrassing and disreputable in it?
Love these Freudian slips.
By the way, wouldn't "conceive" be the better expression, rather than "conceived of"?? Isn't the "of" redundant? As far as judging writing goes, you seem to be vitiating your own judgement here. Can we trust you to discover good writing amidst bad, when your own is atrocious?
Sure Truthtwister, well said. Anyone who takes coroner's reports over the ravings of a greiving mother clearly lacks rationality. You sound just like a Muslim forced to view a depiction of the prophet. Or a Christian who has happened upon Serrano's piss Christ. Maybe your handle should be TrueBeliever.
Posted by: Roy Hinkley | December 11, 2007 5:47 PM
No, no, Roy, I don't sound like a Sudanese Muslim meeting a Teddy Bear named Mahommed and threatening the teacher with execution. That would be John M****'s style.
The child was not HIV positive and died of sudden, immediately fatal symptoms. That is not AIDS. If you don't understand how AIDS is defined, Roy, you are not qualified to discuss it. Go to the CDC site and check the basics.
Your suggestion of 'Truebeliever' is fine with me, thanks. I believe in science. I believe in thinking. I believe in asking questions. I believe in testing data. I believe in reading the scientific literature thoroughly. I believe in checking claims and findings for politics and stupidity. I believe in checking paradigms for consistency, sense, logic, rationality and freedom of debate and review.
All of the meme raths outgrabing here (B*, Ade**, Roy H*****, Chris N****) fall short, as does the paradigm they love, as the last fifty posts demonstrate..
You don't believe in all these things, Roy? Which do you reject?
Regarding the Concorde trial of early vs. deferred use of AZT, the vital sacrament in HIV treatment, Dr. Noble has finally acknowledged that follow-up results showed that "the differences are significant." He's still confused, however:
"At the five year mark the differences are significant. The mortality in the immediate arm was higher at 25% compared to 19% for the deferred arm... this is still a much lower mortality than that claimed by 'rethinkers'."
No one claims that all the mortality in AIDS is due to AZT. My original statement was that the Concorde study showed that early AZT in asymptomatic HIV+ subjects increased the death-rate by 25%. According the 1998 follow-up report cited above, that was exactly correct: "In the Concorde trial...survival was significantly different between the two groups (...P=0.02). The summary hazard ratio(immediate:deferred) was 1.25..."
If 25% extra deaths are produced by early treatment with AZT, then at least 20% of all AIDS deaths on such treatment would have been hastened by the drug.
Dr. Noble also mentioned the three "Opal" trials in Europe and Australia that were included in the followup. Concorde was substantially larger than all of them put together. Two were terminated early, and due to different protocols much more of the deferred groups were using AZT and at a much earlier point than in Concorde. Thus, there was much less of a drug-free period for comparison. However, all these trials agreed that early AZT ("ZDV") was worthless at delaying AIDS symptoms or death. As the authors concluded:
"The findings of Concorde and Opal trials taken together suggest no evidence of benefit from starting early with ZDV alone."
Regarding Fischl's 1990 study comparing standard vs. low dose AZT, Dr. Noble seems to think that I was claiming that all the deaths were due to AZT. On the contrary, there are many other causes of immunosuppression and mortality in the life-style of AIDS risk groups.
Fischl provided evidence, however, that the poorer survival (i.e., excess of deaths) in the high-dose group was attributable to their extra 200+ mgs of AZT, since the mortality differences were statistically significant. This was an RCT and thus constituted a higher level of evidence than a mere historical comparison. Whether the patients were advanced AIDS or late AIDS does not change the fact that the higher dose of AZT resulted in reduced survival.
"RESULTS...At 18 months the estimated survival rates were 52 percent for the standard-treatment group and 63 persent for the low-dose group (P=0.012 by the log-rank test). At 24 months the estimated survival rates were 27 for the standard -treatment group and 34 percent for the low dose group (P=0.033)." -- M. Fischl et al. NEJM 323:1009-14, 1990
So take your hemlock, true believers.
South African president Thabo Mbeki is the only living statesman that I would call a hero.
He is the only statesman who has the guts to question the HIV=AIDS=Death theory. Which should be condidered a duty for all responsible politicians and Scientists to do. At least by now. When it is clear that the HIV hypothesis is wrong.
AZT is a poison that kills Africans. Stop it!
Greetings from Sweden
"I do not believe he is an Aids denialist. Thabo Mbeki is an Aids dissident. He does not deny that there is an epidemic. He accepts that there is an epidemic, but he is a dissident that asks questions firstly about the severity of the epidemic secondly about whether HIV causes Aids which causes the epidemic and thirdly and consequently about whether ARVs are the correct way to deal with the epidemic," he said.
read article - click on carter
Robert Houston,
You deserve accolades, Sir. Are you a doctor,perchance? You have systemically dismembered these bizarre AIDS fanatics, with skillful display of facts and logic.
One thing to understand is that AIDS alarmists have a bizarre belief system in the same way that a 3 year old has a bizarre belief system. The 3-year believes, strongly, in the boogeyman (bad) and Santa Claus (good), while the AIDS alarmists believe in the virus (bad) and the drugs (good).
It frames and clouds everything they think about this issue. If they would only read Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, who worked in the trenches of AIDS and gay culture for 30 years, they would learn something (including the critiques of Duesberg and the dissidents.)
http://www.poz.com/articles/229_1638.shtml
Jul 1998
The Good Doctor
interview with Joe Sonnabend
http://www.gmhc.org/health/treatment/ti/ti1911.html#3
Treating HIV is Rarely an Emergency
An Interview with Joseph Sonnabend
BD,
Excellent articles! Best excerpt:
I'm one of the dying he has kept alive. Not through some magic combination of pills he urged me to take, but through an intangible conveyance of hope, respect, trust and--ironically--through urging me not to take certain pills. Since my diagnosis, I've outlived three of the four doctors I had before Sonnabend, each of whom, while caring and compassionate, had sought to prepare me for my eventual death from AIDS. Joe was the first to prepare me for survival.
This crazy thread has been exponentially improved!
In a wild attempt to get you guys to keep your fight over here, here is the abstract of the paper that "Barney" and apy were arguing about:
Padian NS, Shiboski SC, Glass SO, Vittinghoff E. Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in northern California: results from a ten-year study.Am J Epidemiol. 1997 Aug 15;146(4):350-7.
To examine rates of and risk factors for heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the authors conducted a prospective study of infected individuals and their heterosexual partners who have been recruited since 1985. Participants were recruited from health care providers, research studies, and health departments throughout Northern California, and they were interviewed and examined at various study clinic sites. A total of 82 infected women and their male partners and 360 infected men and their female partners were enrolled. Over 90% of the couples were monogamous for the year prior to entry into the study; < 3% had a current sexually transmitted disease (STD). The median age of participants was 34 years, and the majority were white. Over 3,000 couple-months of data were available for the follow-up study. Overall, 68 (19%) of the 360 female partners of HIV-infected men (95% confidence interval (CI) 15.0-23.3%) and two (2.4%) of the 82 male partners of HIV-infected women (95% CI 0.3-8.5%) were infected. History of sexually transmitted diseases was most strongly associated with transmission. Male-to-female transmission was approximately eight-times more efficient than female-to-male transmission and male-to-female per contact infectivity was estimated to be 0.0009 (95% CI 0.0005-0.001). Over time, the authors observed increased condom use (p < 0.001) and no new infections. Infectivity for HIV through heterosexual transmission is low, and STDs may be the most important cofactor for transmission. Significant behavior change over time in serodiscordant couples was observed.
Jen you forgot the part which shows apy is right, the rest of the abstract, why did you leave it off,
Over time, the authors observed increased condom use (p 0.001) and no new infections. Infectivity for HIV through heterosexual transmission is low, and STDs may be the most important cofactor for transmission. Significant behavior change over time in serodiscordant couples was observed.
Like apy says this paper shows transmission cut with increased condom use.
If you don't like people arguing go to a Barney and Friends web site!! Barney hijacked that other thread on the second comment not all of us are so self disipline as you to ignore it. Sorry.
Noreen,
The numbers provided from that page might give some insight as to why your husband has not become infected if you are HIV+. I know nothing of your sexual habits or how often he gets tested but it is certainly a possibility.
There is no reason at all and such a cell does not exist outside of our delirious misconceptions about cancer. Cancer has nothing to do with cells killing their host. Medicine has gone wild and instead of incessantly and humbly trying to observe what's going on all around, we think we already know a lot, find a tumor here and there and decide that that's what turns bodies into a corpses. We invented the worst poisons to try to stop the process and, although we cannot possibly fail to notice the patient's instant health degradation on chemo administration, we accuse some tiny and slightly different cells to have caused the ultimate mess.
Cancer isn't deadly. But our misconceptions and our treatments of cancer are. Cancer is part of the mechanisms of survival and will only appear in cases where the organism finds no way out of unbearable stress.
A cornered rat that can neither attack nor flee develops a cancer. . .
Bang! All the way back, deep down into the basement...
I hope you never have to watch cancer kill a person you love jspreen but most people do. Like me right now, some one I love who never had chemo or radiation. Some one who is not a cornered rat but a beautiful person who means alot to me and lots of other people. No new stresses, no new diet, no drugs or smoking or new medications. Just cancer.
Jspreen, I believe you've said you lost your father to cancer, no? My sympathies - this summer I actually watched my father choked to death by untreatable cancer (anaplastic thyroid cancer - as our dear friend cooler says, google it), and the tumor definitely, beyond any doubt, killed him. I could see it from outside his neck, and it grew visibly week to week. He didn't get chemo, radiation, or surgery because the cancer was so aggressive there was no point. He did have a tracheostomy placed, but that was purely palliative.
He wasn't unbearably stressed. He enjoyed life. I'm offended at the idea that somehow his body decided the way to cope with a mostly hale old age was to strangle him to death.
Don't get me wrong - I certainly believe that people can somatize their stress, and that stress can both exacerbate and cause disease, but cancer is a real thing, and costs real lives.
Adele, I didn't deliberately cut off the end of the abstract - it was accidental, a problem with the less-than sign, I think. My only argument about safer sex is that it wasn't an intervention study - it was observational, so even though some people did better with condoms, some couples were practicing unsafe sex. (My belief is right along with mainstream medical science: HIV is a bloodborne pathogen that causes a profound immunosuppression absent treatment with an antiviral regimen. It is transmitted by contact of body fluids which have many white blood cells in them, including blood, semen, vaginal fluid and milk, with vascular access points, including highly vascularized mucous membranes and openings in the integument.)
And here is the whole abstract, just so we can argue properly:
"To examine rates of and risk factors for heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the authors conducted a prospective study of infected individuals and their heterosexual partners who have been recruited since 1985. Participants were recruited from health care providers, research studies, and health departments throughout Northern California, and they were interviewed and examined at various study clinic sites. A total of 82 infected women and their male partners and 360 infected men and their female partners were enrolled. Over 90% of the couples were monogamous for the year prior to entry into the study; less than 3% had a current sexually transmitted disease (STD). The median age of participants was 34 years, and the majority were white. Over 3,000 couple-months of data were available for the follow-up study. Overall, 68 (19%) of the 360 female partners of HIV-infected men (95% confidence interval (CI) 15.0-23.3%) and two (2.4%) of the 82 male partners of HIV-infected women (95% CI 0.3-8.5%) were infected. History of sexually transmitted diseases was most strongly associated with transmission. Male-to-female transmission was approximately eight-times more efficient than female-to-male transmission and male-to-female per contact infectivity was estimated to be 0.0009 (95% CI 0.0005-0.001). Over time, the authors observed increased condom use (p less than 0.001) and no new infections. Infectivity for HIV through heterosexual transmission is low, and STDs may be the most important cofactor for transmission. Significant behavior change over time in serodiscordant couples was observed."
jspreen,
You used to aggravate the heck out of me. Now I realize you are the perfect poster child for AIDS Rethinkers. Please do tell me more about cancer, with particular emphasis on kidney cancer if you don't mind.
You consistently forget to mention that at three years of taking 1000 mg/day the estimated mortality was only 8% which was only marginally higher than the 6% for the deferred arm. There were vastly different amounts of AZT taken but very little possible effect on mortality. This is inconsistent with the hyperbolic claims made by Denialists.
Which is definitely not what I have ever argued against. The Concorde definately demonstrated that early treatment with AZT monotherapy provided no long term benefit. The harm from toxicities quickly outweighed any poissible early benefits seen in slower progession to AIDS. What it also shows is that the Denialist claims about it killing 300,000 are hyperbolic.
Your claims that I didn't read the study properly are laughable. The high dose arm recieved 1500 mg/day while the low dose arm received 1200 mg/day for 4 weeks followed by 600 mg/day for the rest of the study. Your claim that the patients didn't really have advanced HIV disease was a pathetic excuse to blame the mortality on AZT. They had all had PCP and had an average CD4+ count of about 86-88 cells/mm^3. As I said before the 1 year survival for people in this stage of advanced HIV disease was about 42% before AZT. All trials of AZT in advanced HIV disease have shown significant short term benefit. The study showed that the higher dose was involved in more severe side effects including anemia and neutopenia and significantly lower survival. The conclusion states "On the basis of our findings, a lower daily dose of zidovudine (a total daily dose of 600 mg) should be used in the treatment of patients with advanced HIV disease".
I stated clearly at the start that AZT monotherapy has only been shown to have short term benefits in advanced HIV disease. Quickly the well known severe side effects outweigh the benefits. AZT monotherapy has never been shown to have significant benefit for people with asymptomatic HIV infection.
This is a long way from the hyperbolic claims of Denialist who try to blame every single AIDS death between 1987 and 1993 on AZT.
So now there's a conspiracy to hide the truth about cancer. Cancer doesn't exist. Man am I ever ignorant!
If cancer is such a touchy subject for some of you, why didnt idiot hack liars like adele(the phony lab tech, what kind of lab tech posts in real time here for the past 20 years) and hinkley etc. condemn jp moore when he mocked bialy while he was dying of kidney cancer "at least since harvey bialy wandered of the scene to die of his kidney cancer" jp moore. You guys are such sacntimonius hypocrites.
Que adele with her "your an anti semite" response, well in advance, your an arab hating racist troll psuedoscientist, oh by the Rob Shwartz is Jewish himself and left a message for Adele up above how she twisted his words.
Excuse me,
I am the Rob you are referring to and for the record, I am Jewish. My last name is Schwartz which is a Jewish last name and if you had any sense of humor whatsoever or knew anything about being Jewish, you would realize that I was joking about that. In fact, I was the creator of the group exposing experimentation on children. The remark I made was in response to a joke my friend Seth had made on the wall of the group and playing along with the joke I made an antisemitic joke, knowing that anyone with half a brain knows that Schwartz is a Jewish last and therefore it was a joke. Sometimes people use humor to deal with tragedy, get over yourself.
Posted by: Rob Schwartz
That paper was given a whole thread of its own before.
Discussion of the Padian paper
The comments made by "Hank Barnes" may seem similar to those currently made by "Barney". Perhaps it is a coincidence.
Coolaid
No, you're clear and concise arguments and rigourous scientific analysis have convinced me. Cancer doesn't exist.
By the way, can anyone show me the "one" paper that proves we exist? I have serious doubts any of this is real and anything more than a figment of my imagination. To much evidence has accumulated for us to continue to accept the dominant and hoplessly flawed paradigm of existence.
Thats a strawman, I never said Cancer doesnt exist, you pathetic liar. Infact my posts here have been very consistent with classical microbiological standards created by Koch, microbes that induce disease in experimental animals are just as or if not more of a danger to the human race than those that dont. This is first year undergraduate microbiology that you people are too dumb to understand.
Mycoplasma incognitus induces death and disease as shyh ching lo showed in every animal injected, while your 1/1000 cell no animal model 40 year window period viruses dont. The public has a right to this knowledge to prevent suffering in their lives, not to suffer needlessly with an infection that can masquerade as many different diseases like depression etc.
You guys are being laughed at for being so ignorant of basic microbiology. Yes, i know microbes can be species specific, but when you have made the window period so long you need studies that rule out confounding factors such as AZT, drugs, severe mental illness, mycoplasmas, i have not found these studies for hiv, hpv, hepc, which I would like to see since over a hundered chimpanzees have been inoculated with hiv and not one has died after 20 years.
Project Day lily google it to find out how you guys are being laughed at for your scientific stupidity by people who are more knowledgable about the biological weapons program, true story, slightly fictionilized about the mycoplasma biowarfare program........rave reviews from real scientists, not the frauds like adele, hinkley, franklin, noble who some of the most stupid people Ive ever talked to in my life.
Anyone that is suffering with cancer should purchase the 3rd annual LDN conference video when it becomes available, probably early next year from Skip's Pharmacy on the internet. I attended the conference and heard amazing stories from physicains who treated various types of terminal cancers, including kidney cancers, with diet changes, supplements and in some cases without the standard treatments of chemo and radiation, but all were given LDN. There is a better way to help the immune system besides poisoining, cutting and radiating the body. But then again, there isn't much profit to this approach just as there isn't profit to treat AIDS with LDN either.
However, thanks to the internet, the word is getting around about this miracle drug, which is helping countless numbers and saving many lives. I am a living testiment to this and soon more studies will be completed, which will prove this too. I would encourage anyone who has or knows of someone with any type of immune deficency disease to check out lowdosenaltrexone.org, it could save your life or the life of someone that you love!
It's called parody coolaid.
Mountain Man kindly gave us this reference Factors influencing outcome of treatment with zidovudine of patients with AIDS in Australia. The Australian Zidovudine Study Group.
Presumably he wanted us to look at figure 2 which shows survival for patients diagnosed with AIDS before AZT was introduced and for those who were given AZT.
It is hard to understand the degree of self delusion that must have been involved in Mountain Man providing a citation that refutes his claim.
Oops. Mountain Man cut and pasted from Duesberg without reading the citations. Blind Faith!
"By the way, can anyone show me the "one" paper that proves we exist?"
I think therefor I am???
Get out of the house; chop a tree- preferably right side of driveway- looking downhill. hiiiiiiiiinyinyinyiiiiiiiinyinnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahwrwwrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Factors influencing outcome of treatment with zidovudine of patients with AIDS in Australia. The Australian Zidovudine Study Group.
Median survival before AZT 44 weeks. Median survival with AZT 124 weeks.
Why does Duesberg cite this paper when it contradicts his claims? Why does Mountain Man copy and paste from Duesberg's articles without reading the citations?
So you just beleive in the "meme" of your existence because you think? But that is absurd!
Regarding the 1994 Concorde report which compared early vs deferred use of AZT in symptom-free HIV, I had mentioned that "the Concorde study showed that early AZT in asymptomatic HIV+ subjects increased the death-rate by 25%."
Chris Noble commented, "You consistently forget to mention that at three years of taking 1000 mg/day the estimated mortality was only 8% which was only marginally higher than the 6% for the deferred arm."
Dr. Noble apparently didn't realize that the 25% figure referred to the relative increase, not the absolute amount. As compared with 6%, 8% is actually a relative increase of 33%. I had in fact preceded Dr. Noble in mentioning these figures in a previous comment quoting from the report: "The estimated 3-year probabilities of death were 8% Imm [Immediate treatment] and 6% Def [Deferred treatment], an observed relative increase (Imm to Def) of 29%..." Their 29% exceeded my 25% figure, but they also stated that "the summary risk ratio (Imm/Def) was 1.26."
In the 1998 follow-up report on the Concorde study, the 5-year estimated death rate was 25% for the early (immediate) AZT group and 19% for the late treatment, a relative increase of 32%. This is a substantial impact.
I'm fully aware of the difference. I also know why you emphasize the relative increase that at 3 years had a confidence interval that included zero. 25% sounds much bigger than 2%.
I have no argument here. After five years at 1000mg/day the mortality was substantially higher in the immediate arm.
This was never something that I was arguing against. I've said from the start that high dose AZT monotherapy had limited benefits in symptomatic AIDS and serious and sometimes fatal side-effects.
This does not justify the bizarre extrapolations to 300,000 deaths. AZT was preferentially prescribed to patients with advanced HIV disease. Criteria used to decide when to begin treatment were typically clincial AIDS or when CD4+ counts feel below 500 cells/mm^3. You can't blame AZT for causing AIDS before it was taken. You can't argue that patients with PCP as the AIDS defining illness weren't seriously, seriously ill to start with and that several trials showed short term benefit for these patients.
Similar increases in the death rate, comparable to those in the Concorde study, were found in AIDS patients given the higher (then "standard"} dosage level of AZT in the 1990 Fischl study, about which Dr. Noble recently commented. (M. Fischl et al. A randomized controlled trial of a reduced daily dose of zidovudine... NEJM 323:10009-14, 1990.)
The authors wrote, "At 18 months the estimated survival rates were 52 percent for the standard treatment group and 63 percent for the low dose group (P=0.012)..." This represents a death rate of 48% (standard dose) versus 37% (lower dose), an increase of 30% in the death rate for the higher (standard) doseage of AZT.
Does anyone remember the good old days when medications were supposed to help one live longer? Chris Noble may be right about the dosages. I had thought "every 4 hours" meant 4 times a day. But AIDS, Inc. may indeed want to wake up the patients to give them more rounds of their profitable snake oil.
By the way, for several years prior to the commercial release of AZT in 1987, AIDS patients were receiving a variety of risky expermiental drugs, including AZT, which may have adversely affected their health and survival. These were in addition to the numerous toxic and immunosuppressive factors in the life-style of AIDS risk groups. Obviously, AZT is not the whole problem, but it is a longterm negative factor. If anyone disagrees, kindly cite one longterm controlled study finding a signficant survival benefit for AZT treatment per se. We're waiting.
I have no argument here. After five years at 1000mg/day the mortality was substantially higher in the immediate arm.
This was never something that I was arguing against. I've said from the start that high dose AZT monotherapy had limited benefits in symptomatic AIDS and serious and sometimes fatal side-effects.
This does not justify the bizarre extrapolations to 300,000 deaths. AZT was preferentially prescribed to patients with advanced HIV disease. Criteria used to decide when to begin treatment were typically clinical AIDS or when CD4+ counts feel below 500 cells/mm^3. You can't blame AZT for causing AIDS before it was taken. You can't argue that patients with PCP as the AIDS defining illness weren't seriously, seriously ill to start with and that several trials showed short term benefit for these patients.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 13, 2007 1:53 AM
May I be the first to congratulate Dr Noble for adopting a style of response which is almost civil and unprovocative, except for the word "bizarre"? This is a post which respects the poster it is directed to, who may also deserve some of the credit. I hope that the other HIV=AIDS team members here are influenced by this fine example of civil and constructive interchange to drop their own undignified name calling and stick to the scientific points being discussed, in the cool and balanced style that Dr Noble here demonstrates, in an elegant manner that approaches the meaning of his name.
Thank you Dr Noble for admitting that AZT had no value in asymptomatic patients and in advanced patients no long term survival benefit. So much for what is still the obligatory sacrament included in every treatment but only justified by a bogus and corrupted study, followed by one in 1989 where Fischl found that the AZT group DID have MORE deaths than the deferred group even if they got transfusions!
Yet Fischl still sang the praises of AZT thru 1990 - what a nutty lady she is/was. No nuttier than other HIV=AIDS fanatics though, Dr Noble now excepted. AZT was her one claim to glory I suppose. A vicious confidence trick of which she should be shamed by the deaths that resulted.
In fact, while it is undoubtedly correct to say that AZT was unlikely ever to have been the sole cause of 50,000 deaths annually in the early days of the AIDS phenomenon, surely it was a contributing factor whenever it was applied, because it is a strong poison - as its labelling attests, as its mechanism indicates, and as its effect proves. Let's recall it was so poisonous to the patient that Sam Broder had to shelve it rather than push it as a cure for cancer.
Even if AIDS was/is in fact caused in some completely mysterious and unaccounted for way by HIV, on which Dr Noble and I will apparently never agree, there would still be no good reason to prescribe it at any dose given its toxicity. HIV is supposed to cause AIDS symptoms on an average of ten years, ie zero to twenty years if this fantastic idea is believed.
AZT at high dose pretty reliably kills you off in two or three years, and in a low dose presumably has to punish you in a way which as the studies indicate is liable to be the last straw. There was never any justifcation for using it, clearly. Did the insurance companies who must have known the actuarial analysis fail to object because it saved them money, cutting lives short by eight years on average? One has to wonder.
Dr. Noble makes a gentlemanly admission that the stuff is horrible in saying that "high dose AZT monotherapy had limited benefits in symptomatic AIDS and serious and sometimes fatal side-effects." But he still seems to imagine it is beneficial in some manner that makes up for this.
Dr.Noble, it may be a slippery path but I think you have to recognize the absurdity of giving anyone any AZT given its proven effect and the relatively restrained behavior of HIV even according to the HIV=AIDS paradigm hypothesis.
The next step would be to recognise the absurdity of giving anyone any other DNA chain terminators as they now do in combination with AZT to deal with this totally unconvincing threat from HIV which by the way, never does really rise in level in patients at the onset of what are supposed to be AIDS symptoms.
That upturn in the famous graph of viral load is a chimera, I think we can safely say. The upturn is bunk. as much fiction as when Redfield first projected his slide with no values or measurements at the farcical AMFAR panel in 1988, which I attended.
HIV never makes a comeback in anybody.
But perhaps you have a paper that you believe shows it does?
See the paper at http://aras.ab.ca/articles/scientific/DatalessGraphs.html named "Nice Graph No Data" by David Crowe showing that the upturn is as much fiction as when Haseltine first projected a slide with no values or measurements at the farcical AMFAR panel, and Duesberg immediately asked why it had no units of measurement along the axes, and Haseltime was allowed to say he would explain later, and did so by admitting it was invented to show what he thought happened, and was not based on complete data.
"John Lauritsen describes a scene at a 1988 AmFar sponsored conference (designed to discredit Dr. Peter Duesberg in the opinion of many people) where William Haseltine (a man with strong financial connections to a HIV testing corporation, Cambridge Biosciences) put a slide with this graph up. He claimed that it showed that Duesberg was wrong, that there was evidence that virus titer (the solid black line) peaks early, and then after a latency period rises again, this time causing fatal illness. The presence of the virus, he implied, is proof that it is what is doing the killing. This chart was immediately criticized by Peter Duesberg upon presentation for having no units. Haseltine's colleague Robert Redfield confided afterwards that the chart was just illustrative, but Haseltine had introduced it as if it represented real data, proof that free virus was present later in infection."
Your opinion on this would be appreciated, Dr Noble,
It is entirely likely that the high dose extended survival too. As I have pointed out before there are numerous studies that looked at the survival rates of people with PCP as the AIDS defining illness. The 1 year survival was less that 42%. Any improvement on that is an improvement. Although this is based on comparison with a historical cohort you can't ignore the data. It is not reasonable to just invent ad hoc excuses for the reduced mortality in the high dose AZT group compared to historical cohorts.
There was also no need for the jibe about "AIDS Inc". The idea that Margaret Fischl was motivated by anything other than compassion for her patients is baseless.
The more legitimate point is that being woken at 4 in the morning to take these drugs must have made the quality of life terrible.
Given that I have repeatedly stated my belief that AZT has not been shown to have any longterm survival benefit I don't know who you are arguing with. I have also said that in the long term the balance between harm and benefit from AZT monotherapy is negative.
It only takes half a minute to look back and find papers from the 80s that looked at temporal changes in HIV p24 antigenaemia during progression to AIDS.
See for example Temporal relation of antigenaemia and loss of antibodies to core antigens to development of clinical disease in HIV infection.
So you just beleive in the "meme" of your existence because you think? But that is absurd!
Sascha I know you're a blonde and all, but really if you want be funny and not just tedious like the good Dr. N - to whom we will indeed return in our next epistle, but fun things first - please use the google function to educate yourself before you answer. After all, it's not like we're asking you to read through the entire contents of Pubmed or anything like that, all you have to do is look it up in Wikipedia. You asked for the paper that proves "we" exist. Pat gave you that proof, a proof that should be so well known he didn't have to mention the "paper" it was published in. It's Discourse on the Method by Descartes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourse_on_Method
As you can learn from this, the proof of the existence of the singular thinking thing/being (res cogitans) was fairly straight forward, but the "we" (world) was much more difficult to prove, whch prompted Kant to call the lack of proof the greatest scandal of philospophy. The problem was solved, however, by Martin Heidegger in Being and Time when he showed that it was the erroneous formulation of the problem of the external world rather than the lack of proof of it that was the real scandal.
It is likewise the outdated conceptual framework in which the HIV/AIDS connection is conceived that is the scandal rather than proof or lack thereof of existence and causation.
So there you are my blonde friend, two "papers", Discourse on the Method and Being and Time, deliver the composite proof you're asking for.
Of course it is a real thing, I never wrote the contrary. But it's not the thing everybody thinks it is. For instance, a cancer in any organ, like a lung, a kidney or a bone, is always accompanied by a modification in the brain. A thing our modern medicine wizard pupils completely ignore. Which is silly because the real danger is generally not in some tumor consisting of "uncontrolably" growing cells, but in the corresponding brain spot.
Thanks Molecule,
But your just regurgitating the tired old meme that has been force fed to you by the philofascists! You'll find when you bow your head down low enough that existence is ludicrous and only serves to fill the pockets of those who feed off our delusion of material being. Descartes and Heidegger are shills for the Cartesian conspiracy.
Reading the recent comments on AZT, I conclude that Robert Houston and Anthony Liversidge simply value contrariness over informed skepticism or objectivity.
What do Houston and Truthwister, these two denial activists, attempt to establish?
-That 300,000 US AIDS deaths are due to AZT, as maintained by denialists with even less of a connection to reality? If so, the denier duo has not made the claim explicitly, only that AZT was a "negative factor" in some cases. Does anyone disagree?
-That AZT has side effects? If so, they are correct, as proven by medical science two decades ago, as developed in increasing detail in many studies since then.
-That AZT monotherapy is of limited effectiveness? Again, nobody disagrees. "Mainstream" scientists, not deniers, established this fact long ago in careful studies. As Chris Noble correctly observes, AZT monotherapy's initially positive benefits often diminish as the virus develops resistance, until in many cases the negative effects outweigh the positives. There are very few instances today in which AZT monotherapy (short term) would be advisable.
-That alternatives are needed? Once again, the "orthodoxy" is many steps ahead of Houston and Truthtwister. Combination therapies that work better than AZT mono, allow alterations to minimize side effects, and nearly eliminate the chance of resistance, have been on the market for years.
The position of Robert Houston and Truthtwister on AZT monotherapy, then, is approximately the same position espoused for nearly two decades by the "mainstream." Why the spite in the journalists' treatment of Noble and other scientists? Why their insistence on "exposing" something that is fifteen-year-old news?
Perhaps the main point of contention is whether AZT should ever have been prescribed. According to the Truthtwister, the virus is a docile beast, so therapy of no sort is needed. The Twister may wish to consult with Joseph Sonnabend on just how docile this virus is, on just how harmless it was for the patients Dr. Sonnabend and many other doctors treated in the days before AZT. The need was dire, the drug worked wonders in initial trials, and the calls for its availability were loud.
If prescribing AZT was wrong, then giving most drugs is wrong. What drug has been evaluated rigorously for its effects over more than several months or years? What percentage of drugs has been studied comprehensively for developmental effects on the fetus? If the drug approval process is the true object of Houston's and Twister's ire, perhaps they could stand up and tell the cancer patients Noreen mentioned that LDN and all other experimental drugs will not be made available to them for at least another century, until the results of ten- and fifty-year studies and any number of others are available.
The proper balance between caution and urgency is a matter of perspective. Houston and Liversidge are apparently unable to view the issue from the patient's perspective.
Reading the recent comments on AZT, I conclude that Robert Houston and Anthony Liversidge simply value contrariness over informed skepticism or objectivity. - Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
Do you? How remarkable that the Meme should distort your vision so. Or is it simply that you wish to make some kind of general remark to express your wish that our informed skepticism and objectivity was really the contrariness you exhibit religiously yourself?
Understandably, you rush to preserve your shibboleth as it threatens to topple over and smash into a million shards. But the discussion has moved beyond wishing and defending and ad hominem remarks, EMM, to basic incontrovertible flaws in the false medical idol you worship with such zeal.
These flaws include the poisonous nature of AZT, which we now all agree upon here. It is a poison, it was labeled as such, and it did its work, accelerating the deaths of those that trusted the false god and its high priests. It is time to recognize this was the consequence of the prejudice you still cling to, actual deaths, people accelerated into their grave against all common sense and scientific logic.
Yes, they had other reasons they were dying, other assaults on their health which were overcoming their resistance, but AZT was exactly what was not required to save them, and the studies showed it clearly, if the assumption that somehow it was needed to defeat the Virus was put where it belonged, in the circular file, and the activist agitation to provide drugs before they were tested properly and objectively was ignored, as it should have been.
But oh no, people who thought as you thought, whose brains were inhabited by the Monkey, had to have their KoolAid, and it hastened them into their graves, and you are still defending it two decades later, when even Dr Noble can see that it was not a good thing, though he likes to quibble that the criticism of the "denialists" is excessive:
Given that I have repeatedly stated my belief that AZT has not been shown to have any longterm survival benefit I don't know who you are arguing with. I have also said that in the long term the balance between harm and benefit from AZT monotherapy is negative. - Posted by: Chris Noble | December 13, 2007 4:46 AM
What, precisely, in this admirably clear statement is there that you do not understand, EMM?
What do Houston and Truthwister, these two denial activists, attempt to establish? - Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
As noted above, EMM, we are all now abandoning childish ad hominem smearing for objective scientific discussion, so can this stuff. The name Truthseeker expresses the spirit in which we are all moving forward, so join up. Like Socrates, we ask for answers to the obvious questions that good science raises to your idol worship, and your reflex defense of iatrogenic Kool-Aid, but we don't attack you and your motives personally. Kindly extend the same courtesy.
-That 300,000 US AIDS deaths are due to AZT, as maintained by denialists with even less of a connection to reality? If so, the denier duo has not made the claim explicitly, only that AZT was a "negative factor" in some cases. Does anyone disagree? - Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
No.
-That AZT has side effects? If so, they are correct, as proven by medical science two decades ago, as developed in increasing detail in many studies since then.- Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
Thank you. Eventually fatal side effects.
-That AZT monotherapy is of limited effectiveness? Again, nobody disagrees. "Mainstream" scientists, not deniers, established this fact long ago in careful studies.- Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
Thank you. And yes, that is indeed the source of all critical review, the mainstream papers in the scientific literature of the field. The ones that demonstrate that the belief that HIV attacks the immune system is unable to find validating data, and that all the data gained by mainstream studies contradicts it.
As Chris Noble correctly observes, AZT monotherapy's initially positive benefits often diminish as the virus develops resistance, until in many cases the negative effects outweigh the positives. There are very few instances today in which AZT monotherapy (short term) would be advisable.- Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
Are there really initial positive benefits?. Where do you find valid data to this effect? Perhaps you mean the initial relief obtained through the poisoning of parasitic infections which are blocking the proper digestion of essential elements of food which the immune system needs? Ah yes, the condemned man was hung after he enjoyed a hearty breakfast, a fine initial positive benefit of his sentence of capital punishment. Or are you unable to conceive of this parasite poisoning as being the secret of why dna chain terminators might yield the feeling of initial positive benefit?
Well, let's grant this initial benefit. Maybe poison does yield an intial positive benefit of this kind. That seems reasonable. But it remains a poison which in this case then proceeds to hurry the patient into the grave. Even those rescued from initial death with transfusions in the first AZT study, for God's sake, did worse than the AZT deferred group by the time Fischl did her 1989 study.
So we agree, take 'em off AZT in the long run or you'll lose them. But in the short run, hit them with poison to flush out their system, like Rotorooter. OK, we can go along with that (though the initial Fischl study which showed it was a total mess). But wouldn't you advise other cures to genuinely boost the immune system if you didn't have the Meme in mind? One imagines you would.
So it really is the same old problem. As long as you cling to the Meme, you'll tend to make it come true by poisoning the patient needlessly. Once again, you HAVE to question your basic assumption, or simply not debate anything in this realm. Which is rather what you are doing - denying the debate by refusing to cooperate with review. Or are you hiding some secret openmindedness, where you ultimately reserve judgement until you have throroughly explored the paradigm critique without prejudice? Doesn't sound like it, EMM.
That alternatives are needed? Once again, the "orthodoxy" is many steps ahead of Houston and Truthtwister. Combination therapies that work better than AZT mono, allow alterations to minimize side effects, and nearly eliminate the chance of resistance, have been on the market for years.- Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
A retreat from high dose AZT has been in place for years, with the beneficial effect that all reasonable people would expect whether they worship the Meme or not. But what you deny is that there is a different reason to expect benefit other than Meme think. You see the benefit as deriving from the blessing of antgiretroviral action. But the more obvious and simpler answer is that the less AZT the better. And the timing of the improvement matches that reduction, it doesn't match the possible benefit of antiretroviral action, according to the studies as they come out of the pipeline. It doesn't cure the disease, as people continue to sicken and die, half of them from purely drug symptoms, there isn't any correlation between the immune system response and viral load, unless you count 4% persuasive (Rodriguez in JAMA), and in ten years treatment results have remained the same.
The position of Robert Houston and Truthtwister on AZT monotherapy, then, is approximately the same position espoused for nearly two decades by the "mainstream." Why the spite in the journalists' treatment of Noble and other scientists? Why their insistence on "exposing" something that is fifteen-year-old news? - Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
Probably because as above there is some automatic resistance to fully acknowledging that the justification for AZT in the first place was all bad science and self destructuve activist politics, and that Fischl in her "compassion for her patients" -
There was also no need for the jibe about "AIDS Inc". The idea that Margaret Fischl was motivated by anything other than compassion for her patients is baseless.- Chris Noble
- abandoned them to bad science rather than meeting her responsibility as a scientist and a leader of medical treatment for the patients she felt so compassionate about. It is this irresponsibility, and willingess to rush into causing harm without properly reassessing the Meme you serve so confidently, which is so objectionable to those that value objectivity and careful science as the only touchstone of care and genuine compassion.
Perhaps the main point of contention is whether AZT should ever have been prescribed. According to the Truthtwister, the virus is a docile beast, so therapy of no sort is needed. The Twister may wish to consult with Joseph Sonnabend on just how docile this virus is, on just how harmless it was for the patients Dr. Sonnabend and many other doctors treated in the days before AZT. The need was dire, the drug worked wonders in initial trials, and the calls for its availability were loud. Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
You are repeating anecdotal data and biased emotional evaluation of personal experience on the part of Sonnabend and other doctors in the trenches in the early days, which is precisely what scientific and statistical studies exist to evaluate and correct if necessary, which Sonnabend and others have not allowed, it seems, which is an abandonment of science and of their responsibility to patients.
You support them with your own mistaken belief in the idea that AZT "worked wonders in initial trials", showing that you haven't followed what scientific scrutiny has revealed about how very corrupted the initial trial was. You have every right to disagree with other interpretations of the data if you are familiar with it and why those interpretations exist but not to repeat error which even Dr Noble has now acknowledged to be wrong.
If prescribing AZT was wrong, then giving most drugs is wrong. Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
That doesn't follow at all.
What drug has been evaluated rigorously for its effects over more than several months or years? Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
AZT was not evaluated positively rigorously at any point.
What percentage of drugs has been studied comprehensively for developmental effects on the fetus? If the drug approval process is the true object of Houston's and Twister's ire, perhaps they could stand up and tell the cancer patients Noreen mentioned that LDN and all other experimental drugs will not be made available to them for at least another century, until the results of ten- and fifty-year studies and any number of others are available.
You seem to want to justify pulling a drug out of a trial on the hope and belief it is beneficial before it has been shown to be the case. Sure it seems reasonable to allow patients to voluntarily risk taking a drug on that basis, but that is a right they might be allowed to exercise, not an argument they are scientifically or medically justified in doing so. They would gamble based on insufficient data, and they might win out.
But that overlooks the fact that in AZT's case everyone who was informed on the background of the drug knew it was very nasty stuff, too nasty to use on tumors because it killed the patient off too effectively as well.
The proper balance between caution and urgency is a matter of perspective. Houston and Liversidge are apparently unable to view the issue from the patient's perspective.- Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 13, 2007 8:49 AM
This is unwarranted. In a state where data is insufficient, whether to wait for good data or not is a decision which can be taken by the patient and his doctor on the basis of a guess as to outcome, and whether to do so is a matter for the patient to decide. What is important is that science should not be flouted and bad data given out so that patients desperate for a cure rush into taking poison which is falsely justified as medication. It is the bad data and the corruption of science which we deplore, and the abandonment of responsibility toward patients in giving them bad advice and bad data on which to make their decisions about what treatment they want to obtain from their doctors.
This cheating corrupted the expertise of the doctors and led them into harming their patients.
This is why one objects to the behavior of those who justified giving AZT to patients, and to those who refuse to reevaluate the Meme even today, after all its debunking in the literature. that has debunked it.
Let's face it, EMM, your beliefs are scientifically absurd from the ground up. HIV = AIDS by definition. It is not really a hypothesis at all, but a self serving definition that yields a perfect correlation automatically. AIDS is anything that goes wrong in someone counted HIV+, from yeast (half of women suffer from yeast) to traffic accidents (truth spoken in jest), even though an HIV+ test result is in itself a very doubtful way to describe the outlines of a supposed epidemic where it seems to be an entirely non-infectious state for most people.
Yet you wish to medicate people with very harmful drugs on the basis on a scientifically absurd belief.
Hmm. This looks interestng. A $2.5 Million verdict in a bogus HIV diagnosis case.
So, they gave this woman all these toxic anti-virals for 9 years, then determined she was HIV-.
Most importantly, on said drugs, she developed a whole lot of AIDS-defining diseases.
I wonder how often this happens......
Well that convinces me. I suppose anytime a doctor misdiagnoses a patient with something then the end conclusion is the something doesn't exist, or whatever your point is supposed to be.
I will draw your attention to...
Seems like the doctor is most likely a shmuck or......he's a shill for the big Pharma.
Seems like the doctor is most likely a shmuck or......he's a shill for the big Pharma.
Most AIDS doctors are shills for big Pharma. Take a look at the "sponsors" for the AIDS 2008 Conference.
Pfizer, Boehringer, Gilead, Glaxo, Abbott, Bristol-Meyers -- did I forget anyone?
What Michael Mountain MAn says,
Most importantly, on said drugs, she developed a whole lot of AIDS-defining diseases.
What the news says, Associated Press,
Audrey Serrano claims the treatment caused a number of problems, including depression, chronic fatigue and weight loss.
So Michael since you don't you know, depression, not an AIDS-defining disease.
Chronic fatigue, not an AIDS-definind disease.
Weight loss, not a AIDS-defining disease by itself.
The only AIDS defining disease she said she had was before she saw the doctor she sued, she told the doctor she had PCP.
She told the doctor other stuff to, she said she was HIV+. She said she was a prostitute, she said her partner had HIV. So high risk.
To bad for that doctor who believed it and ignored the blood tests who said she didn't have HIV. AP says the doctor didn't order definitive tests even after blood monitoring showed no HIV in her blood
So the woman lied, the doctor didn't do the right thing, tests said she was negative and the doctor still gave drugs!! Stupid stupid stupid all around. That woman is may be stupid too but the doctor deserves it.
Michael and Barney and friends how you go from HIV mis-diagnosis or cancer misdiagnosis to HIV and cancer don't exist that's very weird.
Adele, What part of $2.5 Million dollars are you failing to understand?
Adele, What part of $2.5 Million dollars are you failing to understand?
The "test" for HIV is bullshit. It scares and frightens a lot of people. For some reason, you approve this. Wierd.
The press release from RA says it all:
RETHINKING AIDS: THE GROUP FOR THE SCIENTIFIC REAPPRAISAL OF THE HIV/AIDS HYPOTHESIS
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Dec. 12, 2007
Verdict Of $2.5 Million Over False-Positive HIV Diagnosis Brings up Basic Problems With AIDS Testing and Treatment, Say Scientists
CHICAGO, Dec. 12, 2007--A lawsuit decided today against the University of Massachusetts Medical Center over consequences of an allegedly false-positive HIV antibody test exposes basic problems with the test and treatments for all persons taking them, according to a high-ranking medical researcher who has advised the plaintiff's lawyer on the case. The verdict, issued today, awarded $2.5 million to the plaintiff.
The complaint by Audrey Serrano, 45, in court hearings this week in Worcester, Mass., focused on the absence of a "confirmatory" Western Blot test in her records. However, Andrew Maniotis, Ph.D., research assistant professor in the Department of Pathology, University of Illinois-Chicago School of Medicine, contends that, though the reliability of all HIV testing was not on trial in court here, the case history opens questions about it. And, because Serrano developed illnesses commonly defined as "AIDS-related conditions" only after taking HIV medications known as "highly active antiretroviral therapy" (HAART), the drugs themselves appear to have caused "AIDS."
Rethinking AIDS (RA) has been asking such questions since its founding in 1991. Etienne de Harven, M.D., president of RA, says, "It is urgent that we open a public debate on the highly suspect reliability of all HIV testing. Moreover, I fully share Dr. Maniotis' concern about the safety of HIV drugs." Further resources are online at the group's Web site, www.rethinkingaids.com.
Rodney Richards, Ph.D., worked on the development of antibody (ELISA) and genetic "viral load" tests for Amgen and holds some related patents. "The diagnosis of being HIV positive is based on arbitrary combinations of tests, none of which are approved for diagnosing HIV," he says. "In fact there is no test for HIV. It's just an illusion."
Raising issues of informed consent for all persons submitting to HIV antibody testing, the test kits themselves contain disclaimers that doctors rarely, if ever, share with patients. For example, Abbott Laboratories' ELISA test kit, typically used as a preliminary test, warns:
"ELISA testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS."
Confirmation of an ELISA result with a Western Blot test is currently required as a "standard of care."
Epitope's Western Blot package insert reads:
"Do not use this kit as the sole basis for HIV infection."
"This is somewhat more concerning, since the Western Blot is supposed to be a highly accurate test, used to confirm that an ELISA is not a false positive," says Dr. Maniotis. "Moreover, the peer-reviewed literature gives substantial evidence that the virus 'HIV' has never been isolated in purified form free of contaminating cellular debris in order to generate the so-called 'specific viral antigens' used in the test kits."
Serrano, now acknowledged to have always tested HIV negative and therefore not to have been at risk for developing AIDS, nevertheless suffered from several AIDS-defining illnesses, including wasting, herpes, and oral thrush, while taking HAART. She also suffered from other health problems, including constant diarrhea (AIDS-defining under the African definition), muscle wasting, profound fatigue, non-specific skin lesions, oral thrush, herpes outbreaks, severe nosebleeds, constant gynecological bleeding and pain from ovarian cysts, fibrocystic breast lesions, hyperplastic pituitary lesions, and severe heart and respiratory difficulties.
Labels for HAART drugs actually list these conditions as possible side effects, suggesting that the drugs themselves cause AIDS-related conditions, Maniotis says.
Serrano's experience is, sadly, not unique. Dr. Maniotis chose to investigate her case because, he says, "it is typical of many cases reviewed and, as it illustrates so clearly the development of AIDS-related conditions in a woman testing HIV negative who was healthy before she took HAART, strongly suggests that profound paradigm shifts are urgently needed to avoid more human rights violations."
Michael and Claus, Serrano's tests were negative didn't you read that?
She told her doctor she was positive and had AIDS, the doctor stupidly treated her based on that!! The court said malpractice because the doctor should of confirmed it!! The doctor, it was a woman btw, didn't confirm it she ignored the tests that's why she got in trouble and has to pay 2.5 million.
This case says, HIV tests are accurate, docs should base treatment on tests not guesses. Mani-otis disagress but whe know he's off in la-la land.
Oh and RA like usual is wrong like Michael is wrong, the AIDS-defining she says she had was PCP before she took HIV meds. Oral thrush, no, it's esophageal bronchial tracheal is AIDS defining not oral. Diarrhea, nope sorry not on there. Herpes, well she said she was a prostitute no surprise there. Well and I guess she didn't have wasting syndrome due to HIV did she now like the tests said the whole time.
Michael "Mountain Main" Geiger how is Serrano alive, HIV negative, and AIDS free after nine years of "toxic" therapy and stress of HIV diagnosis? If your theory's right the stress and poisoning would make her test positive give her AIDS and kill her!!
That she was a prostitute, had PCP and was HIV+ was disputed by the plaintiff herself according to the news reports. It was the defendant who makes these claims. Until we actually can read the transcripts we will not have all the facts of the case and thus will not know what actually transpired.
Adele, we don't know that she was a prostitute. We don't know what she suffered from before or after. The media reporting is insufficient for a determination.
Molecule, we don't know what she may or may not have suffered from before or after the treatment. the media reports shed only partial light and may not necessarily reflect what actually was alleged and proven in court.
If somebody can track down the transcript then we might be able to debate the case. It is quite certain that from the media reports themselves no claim for or against the existence of HIV can be made.
True Sascha, although even with the transcript no debate can be made about the existence of HIV. The transcript would prove nothing either way, this is a question of either a doctor being poor at their job or a patient being dishonest about their history, or both.
LOL!
Adele Darling, relax! Try to be cowardly dignified about this like all your masters who have suddenly forsaken you while assessing the situation before running their mouths.
Do something around the house for awhile, add some growth factor to your own personal sub-zero HIV cultures or feed the monkeys, there's plenty to do that doesn't involve embarassing yourself and Sir John who thinks so highly of you.
Dr. N, I haven't forgotten you at all although TS haskindly covered some of my points. For instance,I see you have now defined "advanced HIV disease" as CD4 count < 500 cells/mm^3
AZT was preferentially prescribed to patients with advanced HIV disease. Criteria used to decide when to begin treatment were typically clincial AIDS or when CD4+ counts feel below 500 cells/mm^3.
Is 500 cells/mm^3 advanced AIDS? You've previously said only patients with advanced AIDS were put on AZT.
I also gather you've now admitted that AZT is a severely toxic antifungal, not an antiviral:
You can't argue that patients with PCP as the AIDS defining illness weren't seriously, seriously ill to start with and that several trials showed short term benefit for these patients.
If AZT works only against PC and not f. ex. KS I'd assume it's because of its (very short term) antifungal properties
mmmm?
Go ahead, Dr. N, start spinning.
Sascha thank you for the correction I should of said the AP reported she was prostitute, said she had PCP, and all that.
What no body disputes is, she took antivirals nine years tho!! And she's still alive, AIDS free according to all reports even RA, and testing negative according to all reports. Evidence these drugs aren't so bad like Michael Geiger and Truthtwister say. They didn't kill her make her test positive or give her AIDS.
No, you shouldn't never take them when you don't need to like Serrano bc of a doc who didn't test right. But they didn't kill Serrano in nine years after a "AIDS" diagnosis.
Hey all. I've been following this blog for a week or so now but this is my first post here (although Darin seems to have introduced me in his "rant" e-mail as its been called, which was an e-mail he sent to me in response to one I sent to him a bit after I had stopped posting on the AME HepC board). So there is no confusion or possible accusations of deception I am of the mainstream "orthodox" view. While I'm not really interested in debating right now, I did have a quick question for MEC regarding his post:
Did they specify that she had suffered from muscle wasting or did it just say "weight loss"? I could only find weight loss in the news articles.
-BioLad
No it's quite economical with the truth.
Audrey Serrano took antiretrovirals for 9 years including at times AZT and she showed zero depletion of CD4+ cells. Her CD4+ cell counts never fell much below 800 cells/mm^3. She never suffered from immune suppression.
I remember another misdiagnosis in the past. The same story. Somebody was misdiagnosed with HIV infection and was put on antiretrovirals. The person suffered from stress, depression and side effects from the medications but did not become immune suppressed.
These cases show that misdiagnoses do happen but that antiretrovirals do not cause AIDS.
Apy, Adele,
In fact I doubt very much the existence of HIV was an issue for the court. Had any of the two parties disputed that, we would certainly have seen it reported in the media. The question considered by the court was whether the defendant had acted properly in relying on the claimants statements as to her overall health.
The fact that, again according to the media reporting of the facts, she'd been on some form of retroviral therapy and, also according to the media, is not dead speaks against the alarmist portrayal of retrovirals being necessarily and always deadly.
But Apy is right; this case will not serve the debate about the scientific validity in anyway.
Why do Denialists always use this rhetorical device. I did not "admit" anything. I clearly stated in a manner that only a dishonest person could misinterpret that AZT has severe and potentially fatal side effects and that although it showed significant short-term benefits in people with advanced HIV disease there is no evidence for long-term benefits. I stated this from the start so I can't be now "admitting" or "conceding" anything.
AZT is clearly antiviral. It inhibits HIV reverse-transcriptase both in vitro and in vivo.
If MECidiot can come up with any evidence that AZT inhibits pneumocsystis then show us.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear.
The idea that AZT caused 300,000 deaths, ie that every single AIDS death from 1987-1995 was not caused by HIV but by AZT, is not just bizarre it is moronic, stupid, braindead and more importrantly deeply insulting to the people that were getting AIDS before taking AZT.
Your claim assumes the fiction that these people weren't dying before AZT was introduced. As I have pointed out several times before the chances of somebody seeing 2 years after a diagnosis of AIDS was very small.
Only a cretin would repeat this claim. The original source for the claim appears to be a fiction book from Stephen Davis where he fantasises about an alternate reality where Denialists are all really clever. I'm sure cooler will come along with his google wrongful death true story slightly ficionalized.
She is very lucky that she didn't use the "Perth Group" as expert witnesses.
Today this place is like a dirty corner where you shine a torch and all you see are cockroaches running for their life.
Whatever, if your so much about the science Noble provide me with the first 3-4 papers from pub med showing that hiv is the cause of aids, koch and lo had original experiments proving causation, please send me these original expirements, waiting........
As for AZT, the death rate of AIDS skyrocketed during high dose monotherapy, yes there was aids before but there were only a few thousand cases before AZT, Mycoplasmas ,maybe hiv, or severe drug abuse could explain these cases, no one really knows because there hasnt been one long term study looking at people with hiv and no other risk factors to see if they even progress to AIDS, so aids apologists should stop pretending they know that every case OF AIDS is caused by HIV when they have little evidence for it, its possible, but so are other hypothesis.
Again if your so positive just send me the original experiments proving pathenogenicity in humans? Is it that hard, Koch and shyh ching Lo did it................ waiting
No. The absolute number of cases of AIDS skyrocketed over this period. The survival rate after an AIDS diagnosis increased from the pre AZT era to the post AZT era.
The evidence demonstrates that if anything AZT reduced the death rate.
If Denialists actually read the papers that they cite they would not be so confused.
Factors influencing outcome of treatment with zidovudine of patients with AIDS in Australia. The Australian Zidovudine Study Group.
A simple AIDS primer
You can't reason a believer in God out of his/her faith.
You can't reason an HIV believer out of his/her faith. What will happen is that he/she will rationalize every last piece of data from the other side of the coin. Thus the sensible person will say, AZT does you no good and a lot of harm, all agree, avoid it, and Adele will say, Hey it didn't kill you, so therefore it is good, why are you avoiding it, take some more.
The believer says HIV causes AIDS, it kills T cells without being present, all disease and deficiency here is due to HIV, drugs are good for you even though they cripple your system, condoms will save you from all this.
The skeptic says there is no explanation or evidence for HIV doing harm, that drugs, disease and deficiency cause illness, disease and deficiency, that anti-HIV drugs do you no good and a lot of harm.
The outcome of belief: stress, illness and death, no vaccine or cure, only poisonous antidotes, and the need to trust in the science of Adele, Noble, Roy, Moore, Fauci, Gallo etc.
The outcome of disbelief: health, common sense, no need to trust spelling challenged Adele etc.
QED.
Regarding Mrs Serrano, it is clear from what Maniotis himself reported that she did not have any AIDS-defining illnesses:
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/09/the_mathematics.html - see about half way down the thread.
Here we can see that according to Maniotis "she began to suffer from constant diarrhea, muscle wasting, profound fatigue, non-specific skin lesions of various types, the "feeling she was about to die," bouts of oral thrush (oral candidiasis) herpes outbreaks, severe nose-bleeds, constant gynecological bleeding, bleeding gums, fibrocystic breast lesions, hyperplastic pituitary lesions, and heart and respiratory difficulties (heart failure on one occasion where she was revived)."
Maniotis is on record as stating "Mrs Serrano exhibited 7 AIDS-indicator illnesses: chronic diarrhea, Herpes, anemia, thrombocytopenia, wasting, oral candidiasis, cardiovascular problems-all of which are considered "AIDS-indicator diseases."
With the possible exception of significant wasting/diarrhoea (which may have many other causes), none of these conditions is AIDS-defining. Maniotis' lies were pointed out to him at the time, but ignored.
I do not dispute that she may have experienced drug side effects; but many of her symptoms were clearly not due to HIV drugs (eg herpes outbreaks, thrush, fibrocystic breast lumps, pituitary problems, heart and lung difficulties).
If MECidiot can come up with any evidence that AZT inhibits pneumocsystis then show us.
I have only your words Dr. N. Only your words:
You can't argue that patients with PCP as the AIDS defining illness weren't seriously, seriously ill to start with and that several trials showed short term benefit for these patients.
Or do you now want to argue that asymptomatic patients with <500 CD4 cells/mm^3 per definition are suffering from advanced HIV disease, or advanced AIDS whatever you prefer to call it at the moment, and therefore would benefit from AZT?
Biolad,
I have no idea why you felt it necessary to introduce yourself for a quick question, neither do I have much interest in what Ms. Serrano's case proves other than an HIV or AIDS diagnosis is built on social or racial prejudice rather than test chemistry or the precise clinical definition of "muscle wasting".
Ms. Serrano's symptoms HAVE been described as "muscle wasting" in different places, but unlike others here I find it useless to speculate before we have the records in front of us.
What should tell you much more than this one semi-anecdotal case of Wasting, Sir Biologist, is the fact that a number of new diseases are seemingly poised to become HIV or AIDS defining - and that people like Wainberg are freely operating with phrases like the "Western version of HIV disease/AIDS" in typical anything goes manner.
But that new longevity in the Western version of the disease has brought other problems. Clinicians and researchers are seeing, as a result of the progress in life expectancy accomplished through the development of antiretroviral drugs, an underreported and unforeseen consequence of HIV infection: As the New England Journal of Medicine and other publications have reported, people who have been HIV-positive over long periods are presenting in high numbers with a variety of cancers that are both life-threatening and that defy the traditional therapies used to treat cancer in those who do not have HIV. These cancers include lymphomas, carcinomas and lung cancers (in smokers and non-smokers). Although the numbers are still relatively small overall, these cancers are occurring with far higher frequency among HIV-infected people than among members of the general population.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR20071…
To clear up posible confusion (I see Biolad very easily gets confused about identities, and then hung up on his confusion) I was NOT the one who posted the stuff from the RA site.
Can you get a second opinion from
Stephen Caiazza
David Pasqarelli
Huw Christie
Raphael Lombardo
Rex Pointdexter
Jack levine
Casper Schmidt
Jody Wells
Peter Mokaba
Parks Mankhalana
....
EJ Scovill
...
and the 38,000 babies that were born infected with HIV just this year in South Africa?
Even in the US around a third of people are only diagnosed with HIV infection when they turn up in hospital with AIDS.
Ignorance may be bliss but it does not protect you from AIDS.
Truthseeker, so true. I will come along and say regardless of what causes AIDS, LDN is a much better and safer drug to take than the standard AIDS medicines. My blood was constantly abnormal and I was anemic while on the antiretrovirals. This cannot be good for one's immunity. LDN works with the body, not against it and without all of the nasty side effects of antiretrovirals. In fact, it has been known to reverse the "buffalo humps" and other problems, which are associated with these toxic drugs. This is a wonderful, immune enhancing drug that could greatly benefit AIDS patients.
Hmmm... for some reason this is the second time the same words have been cut out of a sentence. I'll try a simpler formulation for Dr. N and the software:
"If MECidiot can come up with any evidence that AZT inhibits pneumocsystis then show us."
I have only your words Dr. N. Only your words:
"You can't argue that patients with PCP as the AIDS defining illness weren't seriously, seriously ill to start with and that several trials showed short term benefit for these patients."
Or do you now want to argue that asymptomatic patients with a count of less than 500 CD4 cells have advanced HIV disease, Or advanced AIDS, whatever you prefer to call it at the moment?
Which don't say let alone "admit" what you were blathering about.
PCP is one of the AIDS defining illnesses that typically show up in advanced HIV disease when CD4+ counts are every low. Other AIDS defining illnesses frequently show up earlier in the disease. Having PCP as one of your initial opportunistic infections at the time of AIDS diagnosis in the era before AZT and other antiretrovirals meant that your chances of living two years were very slim. If your AIDS defining illnesses did not include PCP then your chances at surviving two years were higher.
" May I be the first to congratulate Dr Noble for adopting a style of response which is almost civil and unprovocative, except for the word "bizarre"?"
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. The idea that AZT caused 300,000 deaths, ie that every single AIDS death from 1987-1995 was not caused by HIV but by AZT, is not just bizarre it is moronic, stupid, braindead and more importrantly deeply insulting to the people that were getting AIDS before taking AZT.
Your claim assumes the fiction that these people weren't dying before AZT was introduced. As I have pointed out several times before the chances of somebody seeing 2 years after a diagnosis of AIDS was very small. Only a cretin would repeat this claim. The original source for the claim appears to be a fiction book from Stephen Davis where he fantasises about an alternate reality where Denialists are all really clever. I'm sure cooler will come along with his google wrongful death true story slightly ficionalized.
Posted by: Chris Noble | December 13, 2007 6:39 PM
Thank you for emerging in your true, uncivil colors once again, Chris "Meme unto death" Noble. Excessive scorn is clear evidence of the insecurity of your science, though you don't seem to have realized this yet, after many years of struggle with the logic you vainly oppose.
Here you have as usual failed to understand what was said to you, so anxious are you to defend the Meme you evidently cannot live without (you answer needs fixing, by the way - "seeing" what?). The claim is that AZT contributed to 300,000 deaths, at say 50,000 a year for six years, not caused. The numbers are probably on the high side, but there is no question in anybody's mind - even yours, it is clear - that AZT delivers death if added to serious illness.
You excitedly harp on the "it is not the only cause" of death point, as if this let you off the main hook of counting AZT a poison. It doesn't.
You have made your major admission and conceded the point that AZT is a poison so move on to playing ping pong with some other point where you can still disagree on some silly basis or another,
"I clearly stated in a manner that only a dishonest person could misinterpret that AZT has severe and potentially fatal side effects and that although it showed significant short-term benefits in people with advanced HIV disease there is no evidence for long-term benefits. I stated this from the start so I can't be now "admitting" or "conceding" anything."
Your post also needs correcting as follows, to this true statement:
The idea that AIDS is caused by HIV and not by drugs including AZT is not just bizarre it is moronic, stupid, braindead and more importantly deeply insulting to the people that were getting AIDS before taking AZT, and after.
Interesting that the more fatuous your claims the more colorfully contemptuous the language you use, Chris. Of course HIV doesn't cause AIDS, there is no reason or evidence for it.. Of course drugs and nutritional deficits cause immune problems, and allow disease and decline to take hold, = AIDS. You still haven't realized this after all these years? That Meme has a death grip on your brain, it seems.
Interesting outburst, though. What happened, did Moore give you a rocket for conceding the obvious, that AZT is a fatal poison if given to weakened people?
Or are you feeling guilty, underneath all this specious resistance to the obvious, about all the people you have sold down this sewer of a river?
Just remember that all pharma dweebies will have to face up to what you have done at some point that time will inevitably bring, though no one can say when.
And no one paid you to do it, you say. So you don't even have that excuse for your unintelligence.
How bizarre.
MEC;
"To clear up posible confusion (I see Biolad very easily gets confused about identities, and then hung up on his confusion) I was NOT the one who posted the stuff from the RA site."
Yup, you're right, that should have been directed to Molecular Claw not MEC. My bad. Either way, I was simply wondering if I had missed a news article that said muscle wasting is all. Also I would be interested if anyone on either side knows if she had any T-cell counts done during her time on medication that were made public. It would be interesting to see those. Anyone?
-BioLad
MEC,
As for the introduction it was two fold. 1) I was described on the AME board as having "barged in" so I wanted to avoid that. 2) Since I was only asking questions I didn't want anyone else to later accuse me of trying to hide which "side" I was on. Merely precautionary.
-BioLad
Why do you attempt to bullshit your way out of this?
Anyone can search through the thread and find the numerous occasions where you stated that AZT killed 300,000. Iatrogenic murder you called it. Now you want to say you only meant "contributed" not "caused".
Your silly word games only make you look like an idiot.
Andrew Maniotis writes in his ABC of stupid Denialist rhetoric
Audrey Serrano did not get AIDS from the antiretrovirals. She didn't see any reduction in CD4+ counts.
None of the illnesses she had were indicative of severe immune suppression.
You really are slimy. I have stated exactly what I meant several times I have not "conceded" that "AZT is a fatal poison if given to weakened people".
You have a serious problem. You just can't bring yourself to be honest. This continual twisting and distortion, these stupid word games.
I gather these are meant to highlight your superior wit and sense of humour. They don't. They just reveal your fundamental dishonesty.
Me. AZT has serious and potentially fatal side effects and has only been demonstrated to have short term benefits in advanced HIV disease.
You. So you admit that AZT killed 300,000.
Chris Nobel:
"Her T-cell count hovered around 600-800 for 9 years
...
Audrey Serrano did not get AIDS from the antiretrovirals. She didn't see any reduction in CD4+ counts.
None of the illnesses she had were indicative of severe immune suppression."
Thanks for the info and link!
-BioLad
Now you want to say you only meant "contributed" not "caused".
Your silly word games only make you look like an idiot.
Why, Dr. N, have you never heard of contributing causes?
Its obvious to anyone with any brain whatsoever, being on chemotherapy in a pill for 24/7 for years can harm you. Especially when the virus is in only one of a thousand t cells, and the drug will target healthy dividing cells.
Give primates AZT, inject another group with hiv, inject another group with mycoplasma incognitus, we know that over 100 chimps have been injected with hiv and not died after 20 years, we know that mycoplasma incognitus is fatal in primates, and we can probably predict that high dose AZT would kill and disable the monkeys, as any long term chemotherapy would, overall id much rather get inoculated with hiv than mycoplamsa incognitus or take monster doses of AZT, based on these animal models.
Me. AZT has serious and potentially fatal side effects and has only been demonstrated to have short term benefits in advanced HIV disease.
You. So you admit that AZT killed 300,000.
So nervous at Moore that you cannot read straight? CONTRIBUTES TO not CAUSES death.
What do you think "serious and potentially fatal" means, Chris? Check dictionary.com.
I gather these are meant to highlight your superior wit and sense of humour.
Thank you for the acknowledgement, very flattering.
I have not "conceded" that "AZT is a fatal poison if given to weakened people".
You now wish to deny this statement as something you disagree with, then? I just wish to establish the extent of your denial of what is written on the label. Check: AZT is a poison? Check: It contributes to death?
Ah well, don't bother, really. You produce one quibble after another. The fact plain as your timewasting but still useful, resolute if vain, endless and ultimately tiresome attempt to justify the Meme is that AZT is harmful, while its effects in any individual case will depend on all the other factors making people ill.
AZT is poison and it is a disgrace it was ever given to patients, given all that was known about it and that the original study was totally broken. That you try to be an apologist for is another mini-disgrace. Maybe if you stopped babbling that any correction of what you say is dishonest you would have time to tell the truth.
MEC,
As for the introduction it was two fold. 1) I was described on the AME board as having "barged in" so I wanted to avoid that. 2) Since I was only asking questions I didn't want anyone else to later accuse me of trying to hide which "side" I was on. Merely precautionary.
-BioLad
Don't worry B-boy, nobody has any illusions about whose side you're on, or how exceptionally sensitive you are to
accusations. I'm pleased to inform this is just the place for you: full of sanctimonius cowards.
Welcome home.
Noble: "Me. AZT has serious and potentially fatal side effects and has only been demonstrated to have short term benefits in advanced HIV disease."
Side effects? What side effects?
AZT can only do one thing: Kill.
Chis said, "Ignorance may be bliss but it does not protect you from AIDS."
Well that's quite interesting you should bring up a dozen or so poster people for your twisted AIDS Meme.
What about the thousands of unsuspecting people poisoned to death by prescribed AZT monotherapy and the watered own versions still being prescribed? Oh, I know... Lets start with Ashe, Mercury, Hudson, Bergallis and White. Then take your attention to "The Quilt". How many names are that icon of mainstream dogma?
Side effects? What side effects?
AZT can only do one thing: Kill.
Good point.
WELL SAID MEC!
I'm pleased to inform this is just the place for you: full of sanctimonius cowards.
Bio-Boy dropped out @ AME because he couldn't handle it. There you can catch a glimps of how severely tranced this lad is. I'd venture to say you're right, he is a coward. Ask him how his debate went with Gos. He couldn't answer. Is that right Bio-Boy?
Classic! I think that idiot john moore might have edited lynn margulis's wikipedia page. Right after I posted she believed 9/11 was a fraud after reading up on David ray griffin JP the idiot told me I had posted something that will help his idiotic cause and gave one of those vague warnings. Suddenly Margulis's wiki was updated on nov 18 and added she beleived 9/11 was a false flag operation.
IE he is scared shitless of Lynn margulis revealing the hiv fraud, so hes desperate to smear her in any way possible, because hes too dumb to debate the science, especially with margulis whos a far more accomplished and award winning scientist than moore or the trolls on these blogs.
Anyone want to edit her wiki page, I think there is a conspiracy by aidstruth to make her look bad on her wiki..........man these people are like deranged retards. Funny how her wiki page does not mention her questioning the hiv hypothesis, ie theyre terrified if people find out one of the worlds most distinguished scientists is a duesberg supporter.
theyre terrified if people find out one of the worlds most distinguished scientists is a duesberg supporter.
Not if you insist on labeling her a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, cooler. Then they will be gleeful and quote her everywhere as an example of "denialists" being crackpot paranoids with the political sophistication of Guatemalan house cleaners.
Where does this stuff come from about Lynn Margulis supporting this 9/11 nonsense? It was someone on her side who removed it, believe me. Where does it come from, so I can ask her about it?.
Yeah, I see, it's hopeless. Score one for Moore.
Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.
I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."
Of course, good scientists buried in their work on the imaginative leading edge of their field are likely to be taken in by political fantasies out of sheer naivete, since they judge as reliable what they read in such books if well written since they themselves in their own sphere are reliable - but it doesn't mean that they don't recognize excellent and reliable scientific debunking when they are shown it..
Oh, wake up man. Today everybody but the mentally retarded know that the official version is total crap! Have a look here: Former President of Italy: 9/11 was an Inside Job
But I do understand that after all those years of treating 911-rethinkers as assholes it must be kind of tricky to make that turn. Like Chris Noble, stuck in his AIDS-apology BS written all over the Internet for the rest of eternity.
Truthtwister,
Come in out of the rain, man.
It's pouring stupidity out there.
And yes, you're getting soaked by it too.
Carter:
"Bio-Boy dropped out @ AME because he couldn't handle it. There you can catch a glimps of how severely tranced this lad is. I'd venture to say you're right, he is a coward. Ask him how his debate went with Gos. He couldn't answer. Is that right Bio-Boy?"
Wow Carter, when you're wrong you're really wrong! I left AME because I decided not to waste my time on people who did not know science and instead resorted to insults to compensate. Not all the people there did that but those who posted the most did. As for Gos, you are even more incorrect. He and I simply decided to continue discussions together off the board. In case you didn't get his e-mail he quit due to issues he had with the moderators moderating out posts. It would probably help to check up on things before opening your mouth.
-BioLad
Truthseeker and others,
Duesberg's claim that AZT was too toxic to be used as a cancer drug has been corrected again and again since Duesberg, having failed to check the facts, made it about twenty years ago. The developer of AZT has even written a statement to debunk this myth, and your repetition of the falsehood is either a blatant lie or evidence of your own intellectual laziness. AZT was shelved because it was not toxic enough to rapidly growing cells like cancer cells. It had little promise as a cancer chemotherapy. Drugs approved for use against cancer are far more successful at killing cells, and as such are far more toxic than AZT. Truthseeker, do you oppose the use of this entire class of drugs, or only the use of the relatively low-toxicity AZT?
Cooler and Truthseeker,
Intrigued by your insinuations of a plot to smear Lynn Margulis, I looked up her Wikipedia page. In contrast to cooler's claims, Margulis' alleged opinions about 9-11 AND HIV were mentioned on the page at least twice during the past year, first in early spring. Everything related to HIV was deleted by Wikipedia editors. The claims about 9-11 have been deleted, as Truthseeker correctly claims, by "someone on her side," i.e. in Amherst, Mass. More recently, they were changed by someone in New York City (care to venture a guess, cooler?).
I also read the Wikipedia discussion related to these edits. A Wikipedia editor involved in the latest round of additions and deletions makes a claim that might surprise Truthseeker: s/he ("MastCell") considers the sources for Margulis' supposed HIV opinions to be completely untrustworthy, but the sources for her alleged 9-11 ideas somewhat less so. At least to some Wikipedia editors, then, 9-11 conspiracy websites are more credible than anything the HIV denialists have to offer.
If Truthseeker has some information about Margulis and the source of comments about 9-11 attributed to her in the media, I hope that he will not keep the truth to himself. If Margulis has been smeared, her good name demands the truth: by whom was she smeared and why?
Biolad.
You quit AME because you couldn't handle it whatever it is you think you couldn't handle.
And the debate with Gos that Carter is refering to IS the private one.
Now take Dr. N's reassurances regarding the Serrano case, that you felt you had to repeat point for point,
congratulate yourself on the splendid outcome of your clever little scientific query and parade it in front of your favourite sexual object. Your triumph is well earned.
I fail to see what BioLad's experiences at AME or his debate with someone else has to do with Mbeki.
It's pouring stupidity out there.
Yes, we agree Roy. Two silly fantasies:
1) HIV causes AIDS: a priori, a silly fantasy.
2) 9/11 plotted by White House: a priori, a silly fantasy.
Both well propagandized, though 2) lacks credible alternative scenario to reality, even superficially.
Both prime examples of how easy it is to rationalize emotions of paranoia, power seeking and prejudice using your imagination against all likelihood, even when the data doesn't support it, and investigation shows it to be hollow.
John Moore et all must be in ecstasy at the fact their own con game is now bolstered by association of reliable scientific critics with conspiracy theory.
But Lynn Margulis is just being consistent in asking questions of the standard belief in both cases. Skeptics tend to do that. It so often pays off. Outside science, she is naive by definition, since sciencer is her preoccupation, her obsession, and her field of great victories.
And for AIDS skeptics, one can see that given that AIDS is a proven chimera, it is liable to destroy confidence in other standard narratives. After all, for most people it is turning the world upside down to find that scientific belief is based on wishful thinking, and that scientific institutions are underresearched, and to see how the data is ignored and twisted in AIDS, and to realize there is nothing valid backing the prevailing belief.
But the 9/11 critique lacks sense from the beginning, since it is almost impossible to envisage a likely alterative scenario that makes sense and fits with what we know to be true, and there is virtually no data in line with it, as it typical of a lot of bad ideas, such as ESP etc.
In AIDS dissent, there is the entire scientific literature of the field sitting there telling us different - if the Meme spectacles are removed.
It is hard to ignore tens of thousands of papers all telling us that the paradigm doesn't work.
In 9/11 it is hard to find any significant data which conflicts with the conventional belief, or an alternative scenario that makes any sense. It is nibbled at the edges. AIDS is exploded at the core.
Note how many involved in approving the Griffin book are professors of religion, a field of fantasy.
Twisterman you are so fast to call other people nutty like cooler. Well like elkman says alot of people think you are nuttier then cooler, AIDS denial is nuttier then 9-11 denial.
You said
Lynn Margulis is just being consistent in asking questions of the standard belief in both cases
Umm Twister she's not asking questions she's saying
Someone in the government did 9-11 she doesn't know who but someone in big guvmint!!
It was a publicity stunt
The goal was to get more powere or land she compares it to the Reichstag fire and other stuff
It was a false flag operation
She says Pearl HArbor was the same way.
Kinda crazy yeah but not near so crazy like when she says all pregnant woman test poz for HIV!!
9-11 conspiracy is respectible next to you buddy Truthtwister!!
If this thread is simply degenerating into slightly clever snipes at one another it might be time to call it a day.
Everything related to HIV was deleted by Wikipedia editors. The claims about 9-11 have been deleted, as Truthseeker correctly claims EMM, believe this is now changed, as you seem to say. Here is the current mention this morning in the Lynn Margulis entry on the Wiki site:
Recently, Margulis has leant her support to 9/11 conspiracy theories, calling the September 11, 2001 attacks a "false-flag" operation of the United States government itself.[8],[9]
8 # ^ statement by Lynn Margulis, [1](Accessed November 17, 2007) ((at http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/professors.html#Margulis - Ed. NAR))
9 # ^ [www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2007082682539691](Accessed November 18, 2007)
If Truthseeker has some information about Margulis and the source of comments about 9-11 attributed to her in the media, I hope that he will not keep the truth to himself. If Margulis has been smeared, her good name demands the truth: by whom was she smeared and why?
No information at all currently, but I was suggesting the embarrassment should be comfirmed with Margulis. However, the first reference looks pretty conclusive. Seems that this excellent scientist was persuaded by Griffin's book that suspicion was justified.
Duesberg's claim that AZT was too toxic to be used as a cancer drug has been corrected again and again since Duesberg, having failed to check the facts, made it about twenty years ago. The developer of AZT has even written a statement to debunk this myth, and your repetition of the falsehood is either a blatant lie or evidence of your own intellectual laziness. AZT was shelved because it was not toxic enough to rapidly growing cells like cancer cells. It had little promise as a cancer chemotherapy.
Even if Duesberg is contradicted by "the developer of AZT" (who do you mean, by the way, the origin of AZT goes back through several corrections, last time I looked), it is hard to credit any other belief than it was toxicity to the system that got AZT shelved, given all the data showing that it is one of the most toxic drug ever concocted and used after being rejected for cancer chemotherapy. Is AZT less toxic than the data suggests? Do you have your Meme spectacles on, EMM?
AZT increases DEATHS. More people DYING.
Your guys were killing people en masse, with the help of AZT.
No controlled trials are allowed with HAART, but probably the same thing is still happening, just more slowly, if people don't drop out, as most do (70% Amfar says). That is selecting for healthier patients, please note, giving quite the wrong impression (otherwise known as the attrition bias).
Then in the past they censored the weaker ones, as you know, excluding deaths of people who didn't meet the criteria of dose and longevity of use. They probably do it now. So you have the hardier ones like Magic Johnson who keep going OK, and act as poster boys for poison.
40,000 used to die with full dose, 18,000 still do with 1/4 dose, half due to known drug effects ie 9,000 a year. DEAD.
Face facts.
CBS News has picked up the Audrey Serrano verdict
Good quote from her attorney:
Audrey's case clearly demonstrates how inadequate that procedure was," Angueira said. He said his client "is responsible for changing thousands of lives in the future."
We can only hope! Nobody should be taking toxic drugs based on these bogus, subjective, HIV tests, for the same reason nobody should be trying to interpret pig entrails on whether to go to war. Both are meaningless.
Truthseeker, Margulis along with hundereds of architects and engineers at ae911.org think 9/11 was a fraud. Some people are not going to think planes dissapear into thin air while passports and terrorists bandanas survive.
University of Massachusetts Professor Calls For New 9/11 Investigation
The 9/11 tragedy is the most successful and most perverse publicity stunt in the history of public relations. I arrive at this conclusion largely as the result of the research and clear writing by David Ray Griffin in his fabulous books about 9/11. I first met him when he was a speaker at a scholarly conference unrelated to 9/11. He immediately impressed me as a brilliant, outstanding philosopher - theologian - author, a Whiteheadian scholar motivated by an intense curiosity to know everything possible about the world.
On the plane home and for the next two days I did little else but read Griffin's first book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbor. From there I went on to read his even more disturbing account of the bogus 9/11 Commission Report, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which provides overwhelming evidence that the official story is contradictory, incomplete, and unbelievable.
It is clear to me that David Ray Griffin and his fellow critics are correct: the 9/11 "new Pearl Harbor" was planned in astonishing detail and carried out through the efforts of a sophisticated and large network of operatives. It was more complex and far more successful than the Allende assassination, the US bombing of our own ship the "Maine" that began the Spanish-American war (and brought us Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines), the Reichstag fire that was used to justify the suspension of most civil liberties in Germany in the 1930's, and even Operation Himmler, which was used by Germany to justify the invasion of Poland, which started World War II.
Whoever is responsible for bringing to grizzly fruition this new false-flag operation, which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as unprecedented assaults on research, education, and civil liberties, must be perversely proud of their efficient handiwork. Certainly, 19 young Arab men and a man in a cave 7,000 miles away, no matter the level of their anger, could not have masterminded and carried out 9/11: the most effective television commercial in the history of Western civilization.
I suggest that those of us aware and concerned demand that the glaringly erroneous official account of 9/11 be dismissed as a fraud and a new, thorough, and impartial investigation be undertaken."
Lynn Margulis
Distinguished University Professor
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Loose change 2nd edition was the most watched movie in internet history, the final edition thoroughly destroys the official theory, great film for free.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2035108967536002048
Did she really sign that:
"Distinguished University Professor"?
Do people actually do that?
Lynn margulis has clearly wrote of glowing review of Bialys book, saying there is barely any evidence that hiv causes aids.
She then made a public statement posted above on David Ray griffin's work that she doesnt beleive the official story at all.
You trolls with no credentials/ honors are just going to accept this, winner in 1999 of Clintons medal of science, member of the NAS, doubts 9/11 and hiv, and shes not alone, hundereds of scholars agree with her, and they can defend their views publicly, and win any debate on 9/11 and hiv, so you guys should stick to debating the evidence instead of ad hominem attacks.
You guys should watch the newly released loose change final cut I posted above, you need to get your head examined if you still believe the OCT after watching that.
Truthseeker finds it difficult
to credit any other belief than it was toxicity to the system that got AZT shelved
Truthseeker, this is because you have not reviewed the entirety of the available information. Peter Duesberg injected a (lie? baseless conjecture? mistake?) into the AZT debate twenty years ago concerning the toxicity of AZT-as-cancer-drug. Since then, his falsehood has been repeated often by denialists and has even been picked up by the media on occasion when a reporter fails to check facts adequately. In truth, apart from Duesberg's statement, there is no evidence I have encountered that AZT was considered to be a toxic compound before it was tested on human AIDS patients in the mid-1980s.
AZT studies were first published by JP Horwitz in the mid-60s. Horwitz is often cited as discovering AZT, but it appears that he discovered it after Dr. Richard Beltz, who had synthesized the compound and tested it on cancer cells several years earlier. At least one of Beltz's associates had also tested AZT in the laboratory.
According to numerous published statements of Horwitz and Beltz, AZT showed no effect against human cells, cancer cells, mice, or cancer cells in mice. Duesberg somehow twisted a 1986 statement by Horwitz in the New York Times (i.e. that AZT had no effect on mice with cancer) into a claim that AZT so effectively destroyed healthy growing tissues that the mice died of the extreme toxicity.
If any of you has information supporting Duesberg (from the early AZT literature or from Beltz, Horwitz, or their associates), please share it with us in the interest of truth.
Unfortunately, all of the accounts of pre-AIDS knowledge of AZT toxicity that I have seen are either written by Duesberg or postdate his comments and are clearly based upon them.
A helpful account of Duesberg's misunderstanding is found at:
aidsmyth.blogspot.com/2004/08/azt-not-toxic-enough.html
apy, "Distinguished University Professor" is Margulis' actual title at UMass.
According to numerous published statements of Horwitz and Beltz, AZT showed no effect against human cells, cancer cells, mice, or cancer cells in mice. Duesberg somehow twisted a 1986 statement by Horwitz in the New York Times (i.e. that AZT had no effect on mice with cancer) into a claim that AZT so effectively destroyed healthy growing tissues that the mice died of the extreme toxicity.
You raise an interesting objection, EMM, but the fact is that the above statement seems very unlikely. "No effect"?
If suddenly AZT is not toxic after all, it would certainly astonish most readers of the literature, which as explained above shows a distinct rise in the death rate from adding AZT to medication. Then there is the label on the bottle. A skull and cross bones and dire warning to keep it away from human contact.
Rather than force people to produce references to show that AZT is toxic, which we have already done, it is for you to cite references for this astonishing claim of yours.
Can you do it? From the literature?
cooler,
I'm not sure why I should care what Lynn Margulis says. She certainly has shown herself to be an intelligent person but that hardly makes her infallible.
Truthseeker,
My claim is not at all that AZT is non-toxic. Like most medicines, indeed all chemicals, including table salt and water, AZT is toxic in a dose-dependent fashion. So toxic, we now know, that its toxicity at high doses, combined with HIV's ability to evolve resistance, makes it a poor medication for high-dose monotherapy. We know this today. It was not known in 1985.
My claim (and it is not originally my claim, but the claim of the two inventors of AZT) is that AZT was relatively non-toxic in all of the initial studies. Its relative lack of toxicity disqualified the compound as a cancer chemotherapy.
Here is one source for the "unlikely" statement from Dr. Jerome Horwitz: the September 20, 1986 issue of the NYT,
The scientists tested AZT and sister drugs in leukemic mice. ''We failed,'' Dr. Horwitz said by telephone on Thursday. ''The compound showed no activity.''
I also point you again to the reference I gave above, which contains sources for more information. AIDSTruth also includes a statement from Dr. Beltz.
I grant you that both of these scientists could be lying about their own results and that only an omniscient Dr. Duesberg was privy to their mendacity. Or that their papers contain the correct information and they simply forgot it.
Shall we strike a deal, Truthseeker? If you agree to join me, I will not comment here again until I have read whatever I have missed of the 1960s and 70s AZT literature. I will then report back. You can do the same. Do you agree?
I dont give a flying fuck what you think about her views, just wanted to rub in the faces of all the "paridigm" defenders that weve got the best scientists on our side, while you guys are just hacks like moore that havent accomplished one thing in your careers besides staying up late at night like moore does editing margulis's wiki page.
Then you anty-paridigm scientists should start putting out some excellent research to make the existence or lack of existence and cause if it does exist unequivocal.
cooler that Bialy review wasn't by Margulis it was by a grad student who says she wrote it with him. Who knows may be she did. May be not. Who knows what she really says about 911 and HIV.
EMM,
Since you have such problems simply finding and citing the studies you are refering to, how about contemplating some easily found statements:
But that new longevity in the Western version of the disease has brought other problems. Clinicians and researchers are seeing, as a result of the progress in life expectancy accomplished through the development of antiretroviral drugs, an underreported and unforeseen consequence of HIV infection: As the New England Journal of Medicine and other publications have reported, people who have been HIV-positive over long periods are presenting in high numbers with a variety of cancers that are both life-threatening and that defy the traditional therapies used to treat cancer in those who do not have HIV. These cancers include lymphomas, carcinomas and lung cancers (in smokers and non-smokers). Although the numbers are still relatively small overall, these cancers are occurring with far higher frequency among HIV-infected people than among members of the general population.
One likely reason is that, above all, HIV infection causes a loss of immunological function that cannot be completely repaired by antiretroviral drugs (ARVs). ARVs combat replication of HIV, which prevents the rapid deterioration of the immune system and helps ensure that HIV patients will not fall prey to pneumonias and other infections that occur most commonly in people with weakened immune systems. However, the HIV patient's immune system may still have been compromised in its ability to defend against cancer. etc. etc. etc.... (Mark Wainberg, Dec. 04 2007)
How come that for some reason Dr. Wainberg, in his great concern for the possible effects of long term HIV exposure, entirely forgets stuff like this published months earlier?
Now researchers in the field have published two animal and two human studies in a special issue of the journal Environmental and Molecular Mutagenesis.
In the first animal study, researchers gave AZT in various doses to female mice and rats during the last week of pregnancy and looked at the tissue of their offspring two year later.
They found a clear increase in the development of a cancer that affects the cells lining blood vessels - called haemangiosarcoma - in male mice and leukaemia in female rats (Walker 2007). There was also some evidence of increased risk of liver cancer and glioma - cancer of the central nervous system.
The second animal study looked at the offspring of mice given AZT during pregnancy. The researchers found genetic mutations in two genes - K-ras and p53 - which are associated with lung cancer in humans. The rates of lung cancer were significantly higher in those mice whose mother had been given the highest doses of AZT (Hong 2007).
The authors of this study said that their data suggest that infants exposed to AZT in the womb may be at increased risk of cancer as they age.
Studies on humans do indeed seem to substantiate that suggestion:
The two human studies looked for evidence of DNA damage in the blood of infants born to mothers who had been taking antiretroviral therapy.
In the first the researchers studied immature blood cells in the blood of both the newborns and their mothers for the presence of micronuclei - small, damaged pieces of broken-off DNA.
The micronucleus test is commonly used to study the potential DNA-damaging effects of chemicals.
They found a ten-fold increase in the number of micronucleated blood cells - in both the infants and the mothers who had been taking antiretrovirals. But the frequency of these abnormal blood cells dropped in the first six months after birth to normal levels (Witt 2007).
In the second human study researchers looked at a gene involved in building red blood cell walls - glycophorin A (GPA) - in the blood of children born to women who had been taking both zidovudine and lamivudine (Epivir).
They found GPA damage was more likely in the children of mothers who had taken both drugs, and these mutations were still present a year after birth (Escobar 2007).
Author of this last study, Dr Patricia Escobar of the department of environmental and occupational health at the University of Pittsburgh, said the results were "troubling" but emphasised: "There is a need for careful monitoring of the future health of children who received AZT-based therapies [in the womb], the development of new safer NRTIs and the identification of drugs that will mitigate the side effects of antiretroviral therapy."
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/4ACCD629-4485-4F6A-A43C-D73A5A6658BF.asp
This may be "troubling" to Dr. Patricia Escobar, but if it is troubling to Dr. Wainberg he entirely forgets to mention it in favour of the fact that,
Then, as now, it was surmised that this increased frequency [of various cancers] was attributable to the damage that HIV had inflicted on the immune system.
Maybe it is these kinds of "surmises" andautomatic attribution to HIV that explain why 25 years into the widespread use of AZT studies of the cancerous effects of a failed cancer drug are still in their, excuse the pun, infancy, in spite of astronomically heavy funding for the field and repeated warnings from people like Duesberg, Lauritzen Sonnabend. . .
What say you EMM?
For those who, like Biolad, may have missed my Wainberg link earlier it's here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/03/AR20071…
Shall we strike a deal, Truthseeker? If you agree to join me, I will not comment here again until I have read whatever I have missed of the 1960s and 70s AZT literature. I will then report back. You can do the same. Do you agree? Posted by: ElkMountainMan | December 14, 2007 3:36 PM
Why? We all agree it is toxic. The literature shows how toxic, in high dose. What is it that you wish to add or change? Duesberg dealt with Horwitz's remark, and may have been wrong. Maybe it isn't any good as an anti-cancer drug, period. So what?
AZT is bad. It hurries weakened people into their grave. OK, it doesn't affect cancer. It does create AIDS. Lay off it. Don't prescribe it, unless you like to kill gays.
Here is the eminent authority EMM on the topic:
My claim is not at all that AZT is non-toxic. Like most medicines, indeed all chemicals, including table salt and water, AZT is toxic in a dose-dependent fashion. So toxic, we now know, that its toxicity at high doses, combined with HIV's ability to evolve resistance, makes it a poor medication for high-dose monotherapy. We know this today. It was not known in 1985.- EMM.
Here is the eminent authority Noble on the topic:
AZT has serious and potentially fatal side effects and has only been demonstrated to have short term benefits in advanced HIV disease."
Here is the eminent authority Nick Bennett on the topic:
All in all, far from being a toxic anti-cancer drug that was abandoned due to toxic effects, it doesn't kill enough cells. It is, unarguably, a nasty drug. Many (perhaps a quarter to a third) of patients require blood transfusions while on it, at least they did on the older doses which were twice those of today. However, it is quite clearly not, and never was, an anti-cancer drug.
If what Horwitz said was accurately reported, and confirmed in the literature, then it is a dna chain terminator that does not terminate cancerous cellular reproduction for some reason, which seems odd.
An interesting point Bennett made before, and now EMM is anxious to make again, perhaps for proprietory reasons (ie EMM=Bennett?) Duesberg's speculation was wrong on this point it seems, assuming the literature confirms it.
Apparently your point is that it didn't look like a dangerous drug in 1985:
My claim is not at all that AZT is non-toxic. Like most medicines, indeed all chemicals, including table salt and water, AZT is toxic in a dose-dependent fashion. So toxic, we now know, that its toxicity at high doses, combined with HIV's ability to evolve resistance, makes it a poor medication for high-dose monotherapy. We know this today. It was not known in 1985.
So Sam Broder wasn't the Mengele of AIDS, and didn't knowingly polish off hundreds of thoudsands of gays by introducing them to AZT. Or was he? Gays were fed AZT for some time without a valid study to see how toxic it was. Then the studies did show it, and there wasn't a big hurry to take people off it. That had to wait until they had something else to give them, and the drug companies another drug to sell.
Whose benefit were they thinking of?
It all goes in parallel with the death grip on HIV as the supposed cause of AIDS, when reason and data in all the literature combine to say it isn't and there was never any good reason for saying so.
Except the political reason, which is that some solution is needed, some cause to pursue and spend money on. If HIV is n't the cause, they always asked, what is? Give us something to hang our hat on, and we'll change.
Just not the drugs! God forbid, the drugs. You can't use drug against drugs! You would have to stop the drugs, and we would all go bust!
A system needs a direction, and apparently the welfare of patients is not it.
All that is offered in defense by Noble et al now are red herrings of this type. Azt doesn't kill cancer. So what? It kills weakened gays. So do other chain terminators.
Stop giving gays dna chain terminators and they might even recover. As long as they can recover from the damage they have self-inflicted on their own systems with drugs and dietary deficiencies.
That's what the scientific literature says, with many of the voices there belonging to the same gang that is feeding the gays their Kool-Aid still.
The intellectual schizophrenia induced by the Meme is astonishing. Defenders like Noble assume against all the literature that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and then live with it by talking of how Duesberg's attempt to make sense of Horwitz's remark fails, how AZT isn't so bad as some people imagine, how the virus isn't defeated by the immune system, just laid low but still there ready to spring back into action ten years from now etc etc one feeble rationalization after another.
Give it up, children, Take responsibility and face facts. HIV's only medical role is to justify selling poison to gays. Gays who turn into germ breeding sewers and die, all the while thanking you guys for delivering them from HIV.
And now we have Clinton and Gates trying to deliver the same drugs on the same insane rationale to starving tb ridden Africans to turn them into disease ridden immune broken people whose only weapons against infestation with parasites and germs are the deadly ARVs that are killing their chances of returning to a robust immune state where food and hygiene are their pillars of health and freedom from drugs.
But the West is saving them from HIV, for which they are not even tested reliably!
Stop rationalizing deadly drugs.
MEC,
Thank you for bringing these articles to our attention, but you are once again engaging in the tactic our football-frenzied friends call "moving the goalposts."
No one has claimed that AZT is completely non-toxic, nor has anyone to my knowledge stated categorically that AZT is non-carcinogenic. There is no contradiction between Mark Wainberg's words and the findings of the groups you cite. Unless you agree with the oncofantasist Jan Spreen, you may know that cancer is a complex, multifactorial disease; there is no single cause. Certainly, a breakdown of the immune system, such as that induced by HIV, may permit some cancers to establish themselves. Certainly, any drug that interferes with DNA synthesis (or any of a host of other cellular processes) may have the potential to accelerate cancer formation.
None of this has the slightest to do with Truthseeker's catechism-like repetition of Duesberg's AZT lies. In the absence of proof, Truthseeker's (i.e. Duesberg's) implication that AZT was known to be seriously toxic before any trials were conducted with AIDS patients is baseless. Truthseeker has no back-up for his claims. But both AZT inventors, Richard Beltz and Jerome Horwitz, have said in sources I referenced that AZT lacked the necessary cytotoxicity to recommend it as a cancer chemotherapy. This was in contrast to many similar compounds (such as 5-fluorouracil, Ara-C, or bromodeoxyuridine) that are hundreds or thousands of times more toxic than AZT. Some of these much more toxic chemicals were and are used widely against cancer.
In addition, the pre-1985 papers I have read that address the biological effects of AZT do not support what Duesberg wrote.
If you or anyone else knows of a single study that indicated serious AZT cytotoxicity BEFORE its AIDS trials (as Duesberg claims and Truthseeker uncritically parrots), please let us know. So far, I have found nothing of the sort.
Truthseeker,
I read your comments after responding to MEC. You can't seem to understand that my quarrel with you is entirely separate from the issue of AZT toxicity, which no one disputes.
Duesberg was wrong to accuse doctors of using a known toxic agent. You were wrong to repeat the baseless accusation. Since AZT was not known to be toxic like approved cancer therapies, there was nothing unethical or immoral about trying this agent in very sick patients against a deadly condition.
Whether it should have been prescribed as a monotherapy as long as it was is another matter. You might call it immoral, I might call it an unfortunate result of the inertia inherent in medicine.
ElkMountainMan,
Jeez are you thick-headed. You are a discredit to our race of people!
Listen up -- it's quite simple.
Why is HIV reportedly harmful? Because it purports to kill T4-cells (mechanism unknown).
Why is AZT reportedly harmful? Because it kills all fast dividing cells (white blood cells) by terminating DNA synthesis.
Do you not understand this very, very, very, very, very simple concept?
From the Physician's Desk Reference --
"..it was often difficult to distinguish adverse events
possibly associated with zidovudine [AZT] administration from underlying signs of HIV
disease..."
HIV may or may not be cytotoxic; AZT definitely is cytotoxic. Get a frickin' clue and accept this easily digestible fact of life, science and logic. You cannot treat a disease characterized by white cell death, with a drug that causes white cell death! This is so, so simple, for any person on planet earth, except for members of the AIDS cult! You are killing people with your medicine, just as doctors of yore, bled people to death for yellow fever, gave lobotomies from those suffering mental disease, and gave radical mastectomies to women with small lumps in their chest.
Unfortunate, may ass! Your still treating patients with the God Damn stuff!
I see that Tara is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology. Epidemiology must be the best perspective you can use in order to see that there is some thing fishy about the orthodox HIV=AIDS theory. How do you deal with all the epidemiological oddities concerning HIV-AIDS?
What do you think about the book written by Rebecca Culshaw "Science Sold Out"
http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/index.php/Rebecca_Culshaw
Truthtwister said:
"...it is a dna chain terminator that does not terminate cancerous cellular reproduction for some reason, which seems odd."
It only seems odd if you don't know shit from Shinola, or Creme Brulee.
EMM, I am afraid it is you who are moving the goalposts. Never mind 1985, I have just shown you a 2007 example of one the most vocal AIDS cultists, John More's next best friend, Mark Wainberg, blaming HIV for cancers that specifically correlate with AZT. AZT furthermore has a much better established mechanism of pathogenesis than HIV. YET Wainberg doesn't mention it with ONE word:
HIV-positive over long periods are presenting in high numbers with a variety of cancers that are both life-threatening and that defy the traditional therapies used to treat cancer in those who do not have HIV. These cancers include lymphomas, carcinomas and lung cancers (in smokers and non-smokers (Wainberg)
Wainberg has nothing but correlation, and last I checked lung cancer wasn't on the list of AIDS indicator diseases. YET HE PUTS THE BLAME SQUARELY ON HIV!!
However, researchers occasionally engaged in research instead of 24 hours inquisition and propaganda have found this:
genetic mutations in two genes - K-ras and p53 - which are associated with lung cancer in humans. The rates of lung cancer were significantly higher in those mice whose mother had been given the highest doses of AZT (Hong 2007). (See links above)
Didst catch the doublespeak this time around, Sir Elkie? 2007, the pattern is still the same: virus and drug blamed for ONE AND THE SAME DISEASE. Since Wainberg's statements postdate the AZT research almost a year, one has to presume the virus as usual is winning the aetiological place of honour.
Are you troubled now, Sir Elkie, just a teeny weeny bit?
Lenart,
Dont bother asking Tara any questions about hiv dissidency, she'll just condesendingly sigh and make some subtlely insulting reply.
She cant debate the issue sincerely, she cant even cite the first 5 papers that hiv causes AIDS. Koch, lo had original experiments, why cant they just show us the original experiments that prove causality that should have been published before 1988 when everybody in the world was told hiv was the cause of aids and to get tested if you were at risk?
Because they dont exist, thats why Tara and her idol moore (who very likely sneakily edited margulis's wiki page in a pathetic attempt to smear her because hes a lunatic) they just name call and act like you just told them Santa claus doesnt exist, "denier" "kool aid drinker"
I've already displayed my vastly superior knowledge of microbiology to these kooks, ie microbes that induce disease in every species of animal such as mycoplamsa incognitus are more of a threat than those that dont (as koch stated), and microbes that are only in 1/10000 cells and have mysterious ever extending window periods that get extended from ten months to ten years need to be investigated further to see if there is truly a causal connection, ie rule out confounding factors.
None of this has the slightest to do with Truthseeker's catechism-like repetition of Duesberg's AZT lies. In the absence of proof, Truthseeker's (i.e. Duesberg's) implication that AZT was known to be seriously toxic before any trials were conducted with AIDS patients is baseless. Truthseeker has no back-up for his claims.
Yes, you said that before you read my civil and openminded reply, EMM, so be ashamed, old chap, there are no lies issuing from my pen or Duesberg's, especially his, peer reviewed as they are by excessive numbers of peer reviewers so hostile and obdurate to the HIV debunkers that they score 340 on the Chris Noble 1 to 10 scale of pigheaded bonebrained immovability in the face of d ata and reason, yet are forced to pass his stuff because they can't find ONE SINGLE STATEMENT which is untrue and uncorrectable.
So can the lies slur, it is beneath your otherwise elegant self.
Sorry if I am intellectually lazy about looking up whether Duesberg misnterpreted Horwitz's stuff to mean that AZT knocked out cancer quickly, though I have to doubt it in my ignorance since it knocks out every dividing cell it comes near otherwise, for the very good reason it imitates thymine and screws up the rebuilding DNA process.
Maybe cancer is such a genetic mess that it doesn't get a hold on its reproductive process, though being uninformed on the matter (" you don't know shit from Shinola, or Creme Brulee" as Roy "I do not come from the upper echelons of society, but I know how to say it so my peers understand" Hinckley puts it) I bow to whatever the literature says, though I notice you have only quoted a newspaper and a blog by Bennett, an MD who swallows anything his betters tell him, so I am still waiting for the literature reference before I humbly beg your pardon).
My laziness stems from the fact that whether AZT knocks out cancer still has no relevance to the horrors of the basic unfortunate misunderstanding which has led to dosing ignorantly trusting gays with a vile substance that turns them into human sewers who die, which is an undeserved fate in my view since although Mr Huckabee says that gay is unnatural it seems certain to me it is nature's doing and to be gay is to deserve to be part of the human community with the same standing a priori as anybody else and not necessarily the target of inattentive docs and boffins with their eyes more on their bank accounts rather than on the results of what they do.
I am sure their parents and friends feel the same way. It is the goddam responsibi/lity of docs and boffins to know what they are doing before doing it when other people's lives and health are at stake.
Then ignorance is no excuse, although it has to be admitted that without the ignorant and stupid agitation from gays in the streets and at the doors of the NIH screaming Gimme my pills now! maybe the AZT study would have been completed properly and revealed the drastic effect of AZT immediately,
That is the trouble with this whole society, unfair treatment makes groups paranoid and they interpret the actions of scientists and bureaucrat through very negative lenses, Prejudice creates prejudice, as it were.
What we need is proper schooling in sociology ie why prejudice is mistaken and morally wrong and how to get on with your partner in love and marriage, etc. But that's another bigger story.
We also need schooling in civil discourse which would bar words like shit from the same phrase as Creme Brulee in polite discussion of questionable beliefs in science.
It certainly shows a lack of imagination, though we knew that existed here anyway.
Truthtwister,
"... though being uninformed on the matter..."
Thank you for admitting that you have literally NO IDEA the mechanism by which AZT works. A fact everyone else reading this thread recognized about 50,000 words ago. But it is nice to see you tell the truth for once. Congratulations! That's a big first step for you.
If you are going to go on, at length, in the puffed-up pretentious style of the amateur schooling the professionals, please do read a high school biology textbook some time. It would SO make your performance as intellectual poseur more believable if you were actually able to pose as intellectual.
TruthTwister should take a moment, when talking about sociology, prejudice, and paranoia, to realize that not all people infected with HIV or who died of AIDS were gay men. Tens of thousands of people have taken AZT without turning into "human sewers" as TruthTwister says. TruthTwister surely does have imagination, but not much else to offer here.
Hi Buffalo Hump Woman!
You write:
TruthTwister should take a moment, when talking about sociology, prejudice, and paranoia, to realize that not all people infected with HIV or who died of AIDS were gay men
This is like saying, not all people who get breast cancer are woman (there a few cases of male breast cancer each year).
It is focusing on the margin, the exception, instead of squarely on the main issue.
Here's the first NY Times article on the subject, "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals."
Read the entire article to see (and hopefully understand) the subtle disinformation by Larry Altman, as this former CDC scientist raises the spectre of a possible contagious outbreak.
First, look at the demographics. All 41 are young, gay men. There are no older men, no lesbians, no bisexuals, no straight women
Second, the "outbreak" is bi-coastal (NY and California). Yet there's not a shread of evidence that any of these 41 people were: (a) lovers, (b) friends, or (c) even met each other.
Third, check out the health histories of these fellows:
Many of the patients have also been treated for viral infections such as herpes, cytomegalovirus and hepatitis B as well as parasitic infections such as amebiasis and giardiasis. Many patients also reported that they had used drugs such as amyl nitrite and LSD to heighten sexual pleasure.
The key word is "many." The correlation between poor health (herpes, parasitic infections), over-prescription of anti-biotics to treat these infections, drug use (LSD and Poppers) and a weakened immune system is staring you right in the face.
These young gay men were totally unrepresentative of the the gay community. They revelled in an excessive, obsessive, partying lifestyle, that wrecked their own health. Inhaling poppers likely gave them KS.
It has nothing to do with an outbreak of Dr. Gallo's leukemia viruses.
It would be like surveying 2 frat houses in California and New York, on Sunday mornings, seeing 41 hung-over, dishelved heterosexuals, stinking of vomit and beer, and concluding that, NO, this condition had nothing to do with the partying the night before -- but it may be a new virus!
MEC,
I admire your attempts to read the biomedical literature, but it can be difficult to understand without any grasp of biology. I don't say this to disparage you, only to urge more caution on your part.
Take the Hong, et al, study you cited as evidence that AZT causes cancer. AZT may well contribute to cancer. But this study is not what you think it is.
First, what system did the authors use to test their hypothesis? CD-1 Swiss mice. What are CD-1 Swiss mice? You understandably don't know, since you have never worked with them or eaten lunch with anyone who has. The CD-1 Swiss mouse is an outbred line of mice especially useful in research on pulmonary cancer. Why? Because it is extremely susceptible to lung cancer. Between a fifth and a quarter of these mice develop lung tumours spontaneously. They are also extremely sensitive to chemical insults that other mouse strains sneeze at.
Hong et al's mice, without any exposure to AZT, develop spontaneous tumors at 28%, slightly higher than the 20-25% usually seen. If you get the paper and look at Table 1, you will see this figure in the first column.
Second, what dose of AZT did these animals receive? Again, look to Table 1. They received 0, 50, 100, 200, or 300 mg per kilogram of body weight.
Third, what dose of AZT do humans receive? In the days of early monotherapy, the accepted dose was 1200 mg/day (although 1500 had been given in some trials); this was cut in half by many doctors by 1990. At 1200 mg/day, a 165-lb person (75 kg) receives 16 mg of AZT per kilogram of body weight. This is less than one-third the lowest AZT dose given to Hong's ultra-sensitive mice. At the current dose of 600 mg/day in combination therapy (lower in lower-weight individuals), people receive ONE FOURTIETH or less of the maximum amount, 300 mg/kg, given to Hong's mice.
Fourth, what was the effect of AZT on the mice? Again, look to Table 1. At 50 mg/kg AZT (6 or 7x what a human might get today), these cancer-supersensitive mice had no statistically significant increase in pulmonary tumours. At 100 mg/kg AZT, there actually a very slight, but again statistically insignificant, decrease in tumour formation over controls. Only at 200 and 300 mg/kg (doses humans have never received) did tumour formation increase significantly.
Of course it is entirely possible (as the Witt and Escobar papers imply but do not prove) that AZT could be partially responsible for the development of some cancers found at higher frequency in AIDS patients.
Mark Wainberg observes that some of these cancers are more refractory to treatment (i.e. after they developed, for whatever reason) in some AIDS patients than in other cancer patients. His assertion that this is due to HIV's effects on the immune system is entirely consistent with our knowledge of the immune system's vital role in cancer surveillance.
Again, there is no contradiction between Mark Wainberg's comments about developed cancer and Hong et al's findings concerning the initial development of cancer in CD-1 Swiss mice. And, fortunately for all of us, we are not CD-1 Swiss mice.
Sure Mountain Man. Gay men suddenly started partying in 1981, and only in Los Angeles and New York. Then, later in 1983 or so, they started partying in San Francisco. And a newspaper account of the outbreak is surely better than the contact tracing done by the epidemiologists who worked on the early cases. You are a genius, and we are all dolts. We bow down to your intellect.
Not!
Thank you for admitting that you have literally NO IDEA the mechanism by which AZT works. A fact everyone else reading this thread recognized about 50,000 words ago. But it is nice to see you tell the truth for once. Congratulations! That's a big first step for you.
If you are going to go on, at length, in the puffed-up pretentious style of the amateur schooling the professionals, please do read a high school biology textbook some time. It would SO make your performance as intellectual poseur more believable if you were actually able to pose as intellectual.
Oh oh...I love this stuff Roy "Creme Brulee" Hinckley produces at the drop of a social correction - an inaccurate statement, showing my post was not read with any attention or respect, an invocation of a fantasy "everyone" in his support, the familiar trick of wives and children in debate, the worn and still unsupported claim that truth like God is on his side and not that of his critics, the complaint that one is too "intellectual" and not democratically ordinary in tone as he is, though good science is after all not a democracy where popularity determines truth, the deeply hurtful accusation of "poseur" and "puffed up" which may only reveal the terror of the outgunned, the scornful suggestion to read a textbook to learn what he cannot formulate clearly, for some reason, the confusion of "intellectual" with the simplicities of elementary science which any educated person can understand, if only he could express them well enough - a tour de force of name calling, in fact, which brilliantly illuminates the embarrassment that Roy like the other paradigm billboard gluebrush wielders here is without any cogent reply to the charges brought against him, and has to flourish a batch of six red herrings to distract us from the sharp point with which his complacency is pricked. Congratulations, Roy! Nice work.
Well none of that is too relevant. What's relevant is the moral charge, the sharp spear in his side. That out of moral laziness and intellectual inertia he is aiding and abetting in an often lethal iatrogenic assault on the health and lives of people who trust him to responsibly review the assumptions he uses to advise them, when those assumptions are questioned for twenty years by his betters without peer reviewed refutation, on the contrary, with clear support in the literature from those of his betters who profess to scorn the critique, and with incontrovertible evidence that their dismissal is so weakly justified that they need to censor and disparage their critics, cut them off from funding and from the media, and otherwise censor their objections from a hearing in the public arena and from the attention of politicians, the press and the people of influence who might otherwise demand opening this can of worms in plain sight, instead of out of the way in humunguous blog threads - 1400 and counting! - and underpublicized web sites.
If you cannot agree with my "intellectual" critique, Roy, then at least realize that censorship, hostility, disparagement, scorn, insults, and the rest are EVIDENCE of weakness, and proof of the need for outside review of this affair, this takeover of the ship's wheelhouse by people who bar the door and hide the maps from the passengers as the ship heads straight for a very large iceberg under their helm, and who won't unlock the door even after the ship has crashed into said iceberg and is sinking with a huge hole in its prow.
According to my scientifically unprofessional, but journalistically established from good sources and I believe sufficient understanding AZT - azidothymidine - is a dna chain terminator, Roy. It is mistaken, in the dna rebuilding process that follows division of any cell into two, for thymidine, one of the four building blocks of dna, so it is then inserted in the new cell's dna chain, but lacking the corrrect hook to which to attach more building blocks, brings the process to a halt, leaving the cell without rebuilt dna and without life.
Is that sufficiently unintellectual for you? It means that any dividing cell near AZT will be killed. That anyone weak taking enough AZT will die, since cell division occurs all the time in the normal course of bodily operations and especially in the blood and gut and the bone marrow which creates blood cells.
Do you have any significant refinement to offer of that simple description of why full dose AZT is lethal? If so feel free to set us all straight. I sit at your feet, Roy, on this one.
If not, then accept this indisputable fact. That in discussing whether HIV=AIDS is a good idea or not, it is important to see the shape of the wood, and not allow the trees, distractions perpetrated by its ignoble defenders in the form of quibbles, red herrings and insignificant corrections on the technicalities of the science of the immune system (which is clearly still to be completely understood as we learn more every year) to obscure the very clear outline of giant error defended by spurious strategies.
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. - Harold Fabing and Ray Marr, Fischerisms (1937)
This exchange of ours is one example of this red herring defense, is it not? Whether I fully examine and comprehend the ins and the outs of the current understanding of how AZT works, by reading textbooks as carefully as a grad student, is not relevant to whether the whole shape of the science and politics of HIV=AIDS tells us that it stinks like a giant Manila garbage dump, and the efforts of the rats to escape the flame throwers of the critics are not going to change that obvious shape and stink one iota.
There are fundamental reasons why HIV=AIDS appears to be a bill of goods, a scientific shell game, and a system based on profit and power and not on consideration for scientific truth and patient welfare, and all your schoolboy taunts are not going to distract serious investigators from what is going on.
Meanwhile know this, with EMM: as I understand it AZT was synthesized to be an anti leukemia drug, by Richard Belz, and tested at Yale in 1961, and Jerome Horwitz in 1964 did the same in Michigan and both saw it didn't work against cancer, though it had a temporary anti bacterial effect. Around 1985 Daniel Bolognesi at Duke found it seemed to stop HIV replicating and Sam Broder at NCI, the man in charge of Gallo's lab, did too, both given some by David Barry at Burroughs Wellcome from its shelf.
They said they didn't find it toxic in their skimpy, rushed tests, granted. But actually, in six studies other researchers found it was a thousand times more toxic ie killed T cells at a thousand times lower dose that Broder and Bolognesi had used. The PDR still reports their finding, it has never been corrected. In other words, a mistake or a lie conveniently never corrected. AZT is a thousand times more toxic than Broder etc alleged to get it past the FDA.
When Duesberg did his tests later he DID find it to be toxic. Why? He used doses even higher than Broder's, because actually to get it to interfere with reverse transcriptase you need at higher level. So the stuff is MUCH more lethal than Broder said and you have to use MORE of it.
Repeat: to get AZT to work against reverse transcriptase, stop DNA synthesis and thus stop a retrovirus replicating, you need a bigger dose of what is a thousand times more lethal than Broder claimed. It is this which blocks DNA chain rebuilding in the way described above, and ensures you die faster than you otherwise would. Yes, it is dose dependent. At the dose used to block retroviral activity it is poisonous indeed. You had better be sure you need to block retroviral activity.
A good question you surely have asked, Roy, is why did they not move into animal tests as they should have done. Trials should be preceded by animal tests, if anyone cares to do things properly, right? Instead the human trials were started up straight away. Was every opportunist so anxious to share in the glory of AZT? Did Burroughs Wellcome act like a drug pusher? Did the trusting gays want AZT Now!, having developed a drug culture where drugs were viewed as such wonderful social and sex enhancers their side effects were discounted? What do you think?
AZT sickens and kills. Later animal tests showed a lot of toxicity - and lymphoma half the time! AZT caused cancer rather than cured it, and gays treated with AZT die from this cancer. Those who support AZT in any way sicken and kill people, and if they think themselves justified, had better know what they are talking about, and let it be thoroughly and openly reviewed, and not visit sickness and death on those in professional care under a rationale that they defend with red herrings and distractions, insults and censorship of review.
But you wouldn't do that, Roy, would you?
Label on a lab order Sigma Chemical Co. 100 mg AZT bottle: Azidothymidine > 99% pure. Toxic by inhalation. Target organ bone marrow. Wear suitable protective clothing. For lab use only. Not for drug, household or other uses.
100mg is 1/5 to 1/12 of the daily dose.
Only those who mistake shit for creme brulee would promote this stuff, apologists with the conscience of killers.
Thank you for admitting that you have literally NO IDEA the mechanism by which AZT works. A fact everyone else reading this thread recognized about 50,000 words ago. But it is nice to see you tell the truth for once. Congratulations! That's a big first step for you.
If you are going to go on, at length, in the puffed-up pretentious style of the amateur schooling the professionals, please do read a high school biology textbook some time. It would SO make your performance as intellectual poseur more believable if you were actually able to pose as intellectual.
Oh oh...I love this stuff Roy "Creme Brulee" Hinckley produces at the drop of a social correction - an inaccurate statement, showing my post was not read with any attention or respect, an invocation of a fantasy "everyone" in his support, the familiar trick of wives and children in debate, the worn and still unsupported claim that truth like God is on his side and not that of his critics, the complaint that one is too "intellectual" and not democratically ordinary in tone as he is, though good science is after all not a democracy where popularity determines truth, the deeply hurtful accusation of "poseur" and "puffed up" which may only reveal the terror of the outgunned, the scornful suggestion to read a textbook to learn what he cannot formulate clearly, for some reason, the confusion of "intellectual" with the simplicities of elementary science which any educated person can understand, if only he could express them well enough - a tour de force of name calling, in fact, which brilliantly illuminates the embarrassment that Roy like the other paradigm billboard gluebrush wielders here is without any cogent reply to the charges brought against him, and has to flourish a batch of six red herrings to distract us from the sharp point with which his complacency is pricked. Congratulations, Roy! Nice work.
Well none of that is too relevant. What's relevant is the moral charge, the sharp spear in his side. That out of moral laziness and intellectual inertia he is aiding and abetting in an often lethal iatrogenic assault on the health and lives of people who trust him to responsibly review the assumptions he uses to advise them, when those assumptions are questioned for twenty years by his betters without peer reviewed refutation, on the contrary, with clear support in the literature from those of his betters who profess to scorn the critique, and with incontrovertible evidence that their dismissal is so weakly justified that they need to censor and disparage their critics, cut them off from funding and from the media, and otherwise censor their objections from a hearing in the public arena and from the attention of politicians, the press and the people of influence who might otherwise demand opening this can of worms in plain sight, instead of out of the way in humunguous blog threads - 1400 and counting! - and underpublicized web sites.
If you cannot agree with my "intellectual" critique, Roy, then at least realize that censorship, hostility, disparagement, scorn, insults, and the rest are EVIDENCE of weakness, and proof of the need for outside review of this affair, this takeover of the ship's wheelhouse by people who bar the door and hide the maps from the passengers as the ship heads straight for a very large iceberg under their helm, and who won't unlock the door even after the ship has crashed into said iceberg and is sinking with a huge hole in its prow.
According to my scientifically unprofessional, but journalistically established from good sources and I believe sufficient understanding AZT - azidothymidine - is a dna chain terminator, Roy. It is mistaken, in the dna rebuilding process that follows division of any cell into two, for thymidine, one of the four building blocks of dna, so it is then inserted in the new cell's dna chain, but lacking the corrrect hook to which to attach more building blocks, brings the process to a halt, leaving the cell without rebuilt dna and without life.
Is that sufficiently unintellectual for you? It means that any dividing cell near AZT will be killed. That anyone weak taking enough AZT will die, since cell division occurs all the time in the normal course of bodily operations and especially in the blood and gut and the bone marrow which creates blood cells.
Do you have any significant refinement to offer of that simple description of why full dose AZT is lethal? If so feel free to set us all straight. I sit at your feet, Roy, on this one.
If not, then accept this indisputable fact. That in discussing whether HIV=AIDS is a good idea or not, it is important to see the shape of the wood, and not allow the trees, distractions perpetrated by its ignoble defenders in the form of quibbles, red herrings and insignificant corrections on the technicalities of the science of the immune system (which is clearly still to be completely understood as we learn more every year) to obscure the very clear outline of giant error defended by spurious strategies.
Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification. - Harold Fabing and Ray Marr, Fischerisms (1937)
This exchange of ours is one example of this red herring defense, is it not? Whether I fully examine and comprehend the ins and the outs of the current understanding of how AZT works, by reading textbooks as carefully as a grad student, is not relevant to whether the whole shape of the science and politics of HIV=AIDS tells us that it stinks like a giant Manila garbage dump, and the efforts of the rats to escape the flame throwers of the critics are not going to change that obvious shape and stink one iota.
There are fundamental reasons why HIV=AIDS appears to be a bill of goods, a scientific shell game, and a system based on profit and power and not on consideration for scientific truth and patient welfare, and all your schoolboy taunts are not going to distract serious investigators from what is going on.
Meanwhile know this, with EMM: as I understand it AZT was synthesized to be an anti leukemia drug, by Richard Belz, and tested at Yale in 1961, and Jerome Horwitz in 1964 did the same in Michigan and both saw it didn't work against cancer, though it had a temporary anti bacterial effect. Around 1985 Daniel Bolognesi at Duke found it seemed to stop HIV replicating and Sam Broder at NCI, the man in charge of Gallo's lab, did too, both given some by David Barry at Burroughs Wellcome from its shelf.
They said they didn't find it toxic in their skimpy, rushed tests, granted. But actually, in six studies other researchers found it was a thousand times more toxic ie killed T cells at a thousand times lower dose that Broder and Bolognesi had used. The PDR still reports their finding, it has never been corrected. In other words, a mistake or a lie conveniently never corrected. AZT is a thousand times more toxic than Broder etc alleged to get it past the FDA.
When Duesberg did his tests later he DID find it to be toxic. Why? He used doses even higher than Broder's, because actually to get it to interfere with reverse transcriptase you need at higher level. So the stuff is MUCH more lethal than Broder said and you have to use MORE of it.
Repeat: to get AZT to work against reverse transcriptase, stop DNA synthesis and thus stop a retrovirus replicating, you need a bigger dose of what is a thousand times more lethal than Broder claimed. It is this which blocks DNA chain rebuilding in the way described above, and ensures you die faster than you otherwise would. Yes, it is dose dependent. At the dose used to block retroviral activity it is poisonous indeed. You had better be sure you need to block retroviral activity.
A good question you surely have asked, Roy, is why did they not move into animal tests as they should have done. Trials should be preceded by animal tests, if anyone cares to do things properly, right? Instead the human trials were started up straight away. Was every opportunist so anxious to share in the glory of AZT? Did Burroughs Wellcome act like a drug pusher? Did the trusting gays want AZT Now!, having developed a drug culture where drugs were viewed as such wonderful social and sex enhancers their side effects were discounted? What do you think?
AZT sickens and kills. Later animal tests showed a lot of toxicity - and lymphoma half the time! AZT caused cancer rather than cured it, and gays treated with AZT die from this cancer. Those who support AZT in any way sicken and kill people, and if they think themselves justified, had better know what they are talking about, and let it be thoroughly and openly reviewed, and not visit sickness and death on those in professional care under a rationale that they defend with red herrings and distractions, insults and censorship of review.
But you wouldn't do that, Roy, would you?
Label on a lab order Sigma Chemical Co. 100 mg AZT bottle: Azidothymidine > 99% pure. Toxic by inhalation. Target organ bone marrow. Wear suitable protective clothing. For lab use only. Not for drug, household or other uses.
100mg is 1/5 to 1/12 of the daily dose.
Only those who mistake shit for creme brulee would promote this stuff, apologists with the conscience of killers.
First, what system did the authors use to test their hypothesis? CD-1 Swiss mice. What are CD-1 Swiss mice? You understandably don't know, since you have never worked with them or eaten lunch with anyone who has. The CD-1 Swiss mouse is an outbred line of mice especially useful in research on pulmonary cancer. Why? Because it is extremely susceptible to lung cancer. Between a fifth and a quarter of these mice develop lung tumours spontaneously. They are also extremely sensitive to chemical insults that other mouse strains sneeze at. etc. etc. etc. etc.
LOL! Sir Elkie,
Ever heard of a gambit? Never mind, please keep using that condescending tone about researchers, funders and peer reviewers who think their work and their inbred mice are important, but whose understanding is obviously vastly inferior yours although they've frequently lunched on CD-1 Swiss mice.
Mark Wainberg observes that some of these cancers are more refractory to treatment (i.e. after they developed, for whatever reason) in some AIDS patients than in other cancer patients. His assertion that this is due to HIV's effects on the immune system is entirely consistent with our knowledge of the immune system's vital role in cancer surveillance.
Mark Wainberg observes that the frequency of cancer is higher in HIV+ patients. He also observes that their cancer is more difficult to treat. I'm sure the lack of response to chemotherapy is due to HIV caused immune system weakening in spite of a succesful ARV regimen as measured by the CD4 count and viral load markers - aren't you, Sir Elkie?
What's funny is that these cancers take so long to develop that only in the era of patients on long term ARVs has their significance been discovered. Somebody who has had his/her immune system ravaged by HIV a mere 5-6 years
cannot be expected to show a difference in the cancer statistics, right? That's why these various cancers are not AIDS defining, double right?
Or to cut through the crap, Sir Elkie, which disease would not be consistent with a weakened immune system, whether the weakening was caused by HIV or chronic prescription drug overdose?
MEC,
I don't mean to condescend, not even to you. To Truthseeker, perhaps, who cannot admit his errors even when caught in a lie. I am simply pointing out that you have no grasp of the subjects you're discussing. CD-1 Swiss mice are of course a useful tool in cancer studies and toxicology studies because of their exquisite sensitivity. In the Hong et al study, they demonstrate the potential carcinogenicity of AZT. We must be careful, as Hong et al are, about extrapolating these results to humans. People rarely have a tendency to cancer similar to the CD-1 mice and never take AZT at the doses used in this study. I have no objection whatsoever to Hong's study, methods, or conclusions. I object to your gleeful misunderstanding of the group's findings and your misuse of legitimate research to smear a successful scientist, Mark Wainberg.
Wainberg, by the way, is far more active in research than in "witch-hunts" or whatever you call the correcting of denialist lies. Wainberg has at least fifteen papers so far this year, data-rich publications in excellent journals. In case you were wondering, that would be more than Duesberg, Maniotis, De Harven, Koehnlein, Rasnick, Culshaw, Al-Bayati and Bialy (did I miss anyone?) all put together in 2007.
a successful scientist, Mark Wainberg...Wainberg has at least fifteen papers so far this year, data-rich publications in excellent journals.- Elk
This suggests something about your scientific values EMM which you may wish to have kept quiet... you sound like a businessman and make Wainberg sound like a "productive" and "successful" scientest in terms many people would recognize as exactly what has gone wrong with the vocation in the last fifty years. But I doubht you know what I am talking about.
To Truthseeker, perhaps, who cannot admit his errors even when caught in a lie. -Elk
Delighted to recognize any error or lie if you can point one out. So far you have signally failed to point out any error, and a lie is of course inconceivable from the Truthseeker. Presumably you mistook one of yours for mine. Sorry, EMM it belongs to you. How odd that you do not recgnize it. Is it possible that your brain is compartmentalized? They do say that is a characteristic of HIV loyalists.
All right Truthseeker, I despair of having a meaningful dialog with you but I'll pretend on one condition, we both read this paper with a completely open mind setting aside ALL of our preconceived notions about HIV and AZT. Are you willing to try that?
If so, here's the paper:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/pagerender.fcgi?artid=323194&pageindex…
It is Mitsuya and Broder's first paper on AZT.
Just read this paper and look at the graphs they have presented without trying to de-rationalize them or disprove the evidence that is presented here. Just consider this paper as an independent collection of data without drawing on any other sources of information, what does the data in this paper tell us?
Does this paper offer any evidence
1. that HIV kills T cells
2. that AZT kills T cells
and
3. Which is more toxic to T cells? AZT or HIV?
(Please, in the formulation of any response, be considerate of my inability to read more than five straight paragraphs.)
TruthTwister wrote:
"It is mistaken, in the dna rebuilding process that follows division of any cell into two, for thymidine, one of the four building blocks of dna, so it is then inserted in the new cell's dna chain,"
Actually eukaryotic DNA polymerases are very disciminating, and don't use nucleoside or nucleotide analogs indiscriminately. They are very specific for actual deoxyribonucleotides, and don't often mis-incorporate ribonucleotides or other bases.
The retroviral reverse transcriptases, such as the HIV RT, are less able to discriminate. This is the reason why AZT was found to be 100-fold more active in inhibiting reverse transcription, than inhibiting eukaryotic DNA polymerization.
Also, DNA replication take place in the nucleus, BEFORE, not after cell division. In the nucleus, there are dozens of DNA damage and repair enzymes responsible for recognizing the misincorporation of a base or analog, and excising the wrong base or analog so that DNA replication can proceed accurately.
Reverse transcription of viral genomic RNA into complimentary DNA prior to insertion of the proviral DNA into the host chromosomes, occurs in the cytoplasm, where there are no repair enzymes. This provides yet another reason why the nucloside anologs and non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors can inhibit retroviral RT without having a significant impact on DNA polymerization.
DNA polymerases have never been isolated. The modern biology paradigm is being replaced by the New Biology of Mae Wan Ho, of the fluid genome fame, and other clear thinkers. DNA is not the hereditary information system. We are all just light and energy, as our native intelligence makes clear to us. As more people become educated in the post modern New Biology and spirituality of the new millennium, to false paradigms of the old guard dogma will melt away.
TruthSeeker is clearly a man of the future. Simply by basking in the glow of his clever prose, we can feel the energy of his solid soul.
Truthseeker,
I fear that your elegant prose and insightful, civilized comments are falling upon deaf ears. Did you ever see "Night of the Living Dead", with all those swarms of zombies? That's what these AIDS cultists are like.
Buffalo Hump Woman and the rest of these ninnies, simply regurgitate an in vitro study of AZT, yet ignore the in vivo studies both in animals (Olivero et al) and humans (Fischl et al, Richman et al, Pluda et al), which show that AZT is cytotoxic and carcinogenic.
These are zombie true-believers. Their collective psyches cannot fathom the thought that they either directly caused the deaths of thousands of gay men thru AZT or sat idle, while it happened. Or, even worse, actively stifled those trying to do undo this terrible tragedy.
Maybe if we all collectively sucked on shyh ching Lo's balls for power we could have a more balanced view of hiv and a more dangerous microbe mycoplasma incognitus/penetrans, heres a doozy some electron microscopy pics from patients of mfi and animals that died when inoculated......from father Lo
http://books.google.com/books?id=G3rURFq6u84C&pg=PA525&lpg=PA525&dq=mol…
"denialists" will love the first page, he basically lays out the same arguments duesberg does against the hiv hypothesis, than clearly proves mycoplasma incognitus/penetrans is pathenogenic in humans.
This was in 1992.....................so just how did the militarys most distinguished infectious disease pathologist shyh ching lo md phd know so much about this microbe?...........garth nicolson and nancy nicolson claim in the book that it was part of the biological weapons program and Lo was forced to follow some unethical orders, but tried to reveal as he could through publishing on the academic points of the microorganism to save the human race.
The only microbe to kill/sicken every animal injected mycoplasma incognitus............nicolsons claim it was part of the biological weapons program. New book will blow your balls off.
www.projectdaylily.com
(Please, in the formulation of any response, be considerate of my inability to read more than five straight paragraphs.) - Roy
Is this why you produce a paper than I have already commented on, and said why it is misleading? Broder appears to have tried to have misled the world in his papers claiming AZT didn't kill cells at the level it worked to stop HIV. How he managed this three card monte and got awaye with it I don't know, but as I said I there are at least six studies saying the stuff was 1000 times more deadly than he and Horwitz claimed/found.
So now we have found out why sense and science make no dent at all in your fantasies of AZT as harmless and HIV as harmful? Because you are mentally challenged if faced with more than five paragraphs? So it's not that you are a naughty boy, Roy, and willing to sacrifice dumb gays who trust you in order to line your pockets, but you are just a decent slow witted fellow?
Glad to hear that at least. Otherwise it would be hard to imagine why a fellow so literate - five paragraphs manageable, well done, you can do it, Roy, you can do it! - cannot read the label on a bottle. Wait, a bottle doesn't exceed your limit. Why can't you read a label on a bottle of AZT and see whether you should swallow the stuff or not?
Wear protective clothing it says, do not inhale, it attacks bone marrow, from whence blood cells generate. Yet you, Roy, will mix it into your Pina Colada without a second's thought. Mind over matter, is that it, Roy? Mind over science, for sure.
We do seem to have shown thanks to the HIV apologist drones here that owing to this Broder fiddle eg the paper you have just put on the table here was some excuse for not thinking that AZT was deadly in the early days, but there sure isn't any excuse now. So why the big emphasis on the Duesberg belief that it was clearly toxic at the beginning, despite Broder's claims? Maybe he knew the lie of the land despite the bogus papers?
And why are you trying to get away from the obvious truth that no one but a trusting ignoramus would go near this stuff whether they were healthy or ill, and that the later dna chain terminators look as if they are reliably killing off 9000 patients a year still with symptoms that have nothing to do with HIV=AIDS?
What is your motive for distracting the attention from the ball in play?
This is what shell game practitioners do in the street - distract. It is the modus operandi of every apologist here. They move the shells around while their colleagues are picking your pocket,
Has Truthtwister seen an MSDS for warfarin?
Skull and cross bones, toxic, do not inhale, avoid skin contact, wear protective clothing ...
Perhaps he also denies that warfarin can save lives.
AZT isn't a very helpful drug--unless, I suppose, you enjoy funerals! And these bastards still prescribe AZT as if were candy. Simple fucking ludicrous!
WARNING: RETROVIR (ZIDOVUDINE) MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE ANEMIA PARTICULARLY IN PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED HIV DISEASE (SEE WARNINGS).
PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS. RARE OCCURRENCES OF LACTIC ACIDOSIS IN THE ABSENCE OF HYPOXEMIA, AND SEVERE HEPATOMEGALY WITH STEATOSIS HAVE BEEN REPORTED WITH THE USE OF ANTIRETROVIRAL NUCLEOSIDE ANALOGUES, INCLUDING RETROVIR AND ZALCITABINE, AND ARE POTENTIALLY FATAL (SEE WARNINGS).
Retrovir Capsules are for oral administration. Each capsule contains 100 mg of zidovudine and the inactive ingredients corn starch, magnesium stearate, microcrystalline cellulose, and sodium starch glycolate.
Myopathy and myositis with pathological changes, similar to that produced by HIV disease, have been associated with prolonged use of Retrovir.
Has Truthtwister seen an MSDS for warfarin?
Skull and cross bones, toxic, do not inhale, avoid skin contact, wear protective clothing ... Perhaps he also denies that warfarin can save lives. Posted by: Chris igNoble | December 16, 2007 10:44 AM
No, I haven't seen one, Mr "My exception is the rule, but why are they keeping me locked up in the computer room away from gays, women and children?" igNoble. I know nothing about it. Please explain.
Is there a similar scam going on with this medication? So you are willing to mix warfarin in with your Coca Cola? Fine, but wouldn't the difference be that it is used against an actual medical threat? Oh but you believe against all the scientific literature that HIV is a threat. I see.
Is there a similar situation in another field? An unproven, against all the studies and papers, medical threat of some kind serving as a basis to administer seriously toxic and eventually fatal poison to dumb patients who trust in their Rev. Jones's?
Warfarin is a rat poison, yes, as well as a blood thinner, perhaps poisonous to rats simply as an anti coagulant, or some other effect as well, I don't know. Of course if you use too much it will kill you. But it serves to thin the blood, when needed. Like many things it kills people when not used carefully. Dosage is key, as someone here just wrote, remember? How stupid to try to make the point that a useful medication is also a poison. Many antidotes are. Dosage is everything. That is where Broder tried to fiddle the result, But AZT is a special case, it attacks the immune system quite determinedly, and you are giving it to people whose immune system is down or thought to be at risk for going down. You are simply giving medication to ADD to the problem you are trying to curb. You are hurrying them into their graves.
Another RED HERRING, Mr "pill pusher of death" igNoble?
Didn't Duesberg deal with all this nonsense about AZT being harmless in his Genetica 1996 article with David Chiu? As I recall he tested it rather more realistically and longer, as long as 48 days, found it could damage all of the T cells, and though some resistance in some T cells developed, these were 3/4 impaired in rate of proliferation. ie AZT was as he found 'highly toxic'.
Other studies he reviewed said AZT was much worse in its effect on human bone marrow and mouse liver cells than on T cells, but inhibited T cells as well, at as low as even one fifth of the minimal dose Broder was recommending and tested for too short a time. At the same dose Broder used others found he was up the creek for it was definitely impairing the T cell line to 50% inhibited proliferation or more and in one study wiped them out completely in 38 days.
Do you ever read this stuff? Have you even read Duesberg's book, by the way? If you have, what is there in it that you do not understand?
Words?
And by the way why are you guys pushing invalid Broder studies? You haven't read the later literature? What's the problem. It has words in it?
Why are you peddling bust studies to show why people should swallow AZT with their milk and cookies?
Is the foundation of your fond faith in HIV as the infectious pandemic virus based on equally inadequate reading of the rest of PubMed? I thought this was what you prided yourself on - the ability to produce red herring diversion from the literature. Now we find you don't read it well.
This seems very telling. You are quoting out of date, exploded studies and pretending they prove AZT is mother's milk.
What is there that makes you think this is viable, even in some obscure 1420 post Tara thread that three people are reading?
Are you so overconfident in the stupidity of HIV critics that you suppose they wouldn't know it?
On what basis is that supposition, since it is clear to all observers that HIV critics are much swifter than any of the plodding oxen used to pull the HIV bandwagon out of the mud into which its rickety wheels sink as the rain of disproofs the critics pour down on them goes on and on?
Now you are exposing yourselves as untrustworthy even in the papers you quote after scouring the literature for anything - ANYTHING! - that can be passed off as somehow supporting the world's most hollow paradigm.
Seems a bad strategy to me.
I would suggest at least not quoting debunked papers in support of your debunked paradigm and its attendant poisons.
(Trying to keep it simple for you by making paragraphs one sentence, Roy)..
In Diwan, they reseachers gave AZT to pregnant monkeys and mice
The results?
This short-term AZT exposure resulted in AZT incorporation into DNA of fetal liver, lung, heart, skeletal muscle, brain, testis, and placenta, which varied between 29 and 1944 molecules of AZT/106 nucleotides
So, who are the idiots that claim AZT selectively bonds to RT as opposed to ordinary DNA polymerases?
How about all those cells that died when exposed to HIV Truthtwister?
How about the fact that when HIV and AZT were added to cells the cells did not die?
Doesn't that suggest that HIV is toxic and that adding AZT prevents HIV's cytotoxic effects?
Please save us the 6,000 narcolepsy inducing word response Truthtwister, these are rhetorical questions. Of course HIV kills the cells and AZT does not. And of course when AZT is administered to the cells they are protected from HIV.
Not only is AZT not as toxic as you claim it is, NOTHING is as toxic as you claim AZT is.
Not only is AZT not as toxic as you claim it is, NOTHING is as toxic as you claim AZT is.
Go and argue with Karpas, then. I claim it is as toxic as Karpas agreed and stated. You think you know better, argue with him. Also with Genetica and their peer reviewers of Duesberg.
Probably better catch up with the literature first, Roy, if you can manage that with your teensy five paragraph attention limit.
Hey Roy, feeling under the weather? Take a little AZT, that should boost you. Take a lot, why not?
Roy Hinkley,
Did you really write this?
Of course HIV kills the cells and AZT does not
You just might be the dumbest man on planet earth. No wonder you guys are so lost.
Roy.
Did you not read my post about 4 back, about Retrovir??
"...ARE POTENTIALLY FATAL!"
Not toxic my ass! your an idiot.
Of course HIV kills the cells and AZT does not. And of course when AZT is administered to the cells they are protected from HIV.
You just might be the dumbest man on planet earth. No wonder you guys are so lost.
No just a perfect specimen of the Meme in action Mountain Man. The Meme signal is the "of course". That is the sign of the Meme, and it's freezing of the brain into whatever pretzel shape is ordained by the institution for which one works and the institutions that work with it. Anything else is dangerous and leads to expulsion from the system.
When talking to Roy, Noble etc you are talking to a system, not to a person. The system is made up of institutions and they are made up of Pod People, who rise by virtue of their conformity to the pretzel, which could represent reality turned inside out for all they know or care.
Mavericks live outside the system where values are very different, and if they have never been in the system they will never understand the values of the institution, which involves basically giving up your freedom of thought for the greater good ie that all share in the proceeds of the system.
The mavericks get crushed if they challenge the system, which blindly rolls over their tiny bodies like a juggernaut without a tremor. They live on only in their books, which are read by a small audience of still living part time mavericks, who make a living pretending to be conformists while they are at work.
Their only outlet is the internet, where they are constantly put down by the system loyalists trying to curry favor by maverick bashing, Its a win win for the loyalists because they get the kudos and don't really care about the issue that obsesses the mavericks, they just enjoy bashing them, throwing curve balls at them = junk studies and other misinformation,
The mavericks enjoy themselves shooting the lame contradictions of the loyalists like fish in a barrel until they realize they are wasting time with system heads who the Meme has rendered brain dead, and they had better go off and do something more challenging, now armed with evidence that their case is doubly proved.
It may be too much to expect that the AZT drug reps on this thread would actually read Prof. Duesberg's laboratory study on AZT, but they could at glance at Table 1 (D. Chiu & P. Duesberg. The toxicity of AZT on human and animal cells in culture at concentrations used for antiviral therapy. Genetica 95:103-9, 1995). It documents 6 other studies that found AZT was toxic to human T-cells and bone marrow cells at concentrations 20 to 1000 times less than Broder's group (Furman et al. 1986) had reported. (See: www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/pdaztgen.htm)
The party-liners speak of HIV being cytopathic but apparently are unaware that it has shown no such effect in established immortal T cell lines, in which the virus was grown to harvest its proteins for the original antibody tests. Gallo's early report of cytopathic effects was later shown to be due to his own poor lab conditions, in which half of the uninfected T cells perished in 12 days. Regarding primary T cells, several later studies found no cytopathic effect of HIV. Even its discoverer has written:
"In a search for a direct cytopathic effect of the virus on (primary) T-lymphocytes, no gross changes could be seen in virus-producing cultures, with regard to cell lysis or impairment of cell growth." - L. Montagnier et al. (1984)
In dense culture, the virus can promote cell fusion at the cell surface (syncytia formation), which would normally be blocked by antibody in vivo. This can give rise to giant cells, which usually (though not always) remain viable.
Even conventional virologists have long rejected cytopathicity of the virus as a plausible basis for AIDS (see, for example: R.W. Anderson et al. Direct HIV cytopathicity cannot account for CD4 decline in AIDS in the presence of homeostasis. J. AIDS & fHuman Retrovirology 17:245-252, 1998).
Truthseeker,
Nice eloquence you got there. Probably pretty close to the truth. But I don't do "memes or "systems" very well. Too much nuance for me.
These AIDS cultists are idiots who enjoy the power that comes with stigmatizing gay men, blacks and Africans with the voodoo hex of HIV. And, they have some strange fawning allegiance to big pharma and big gov't science to pimp these toxic drugs.
Yes Mountain Man, The Cult of Illness, Death and Dying.
Season's Greetings all and ho-ho-ho to Roy.
Since Roy doesn't like referencing his claims, I'm assuming he is refering to studies that under varying in vitro conditions didn't appear to show direct cytotoxicity with AZT in the mix. However, things do seem to happen in vivo oder was Roy? Perhaps your response would be different if we were to talk about for instance AZT's mitochondrial toxicity - Random example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?db=pubmed&uid=9168161&cmd=show…
Roy is actually being quite modest when he says AZT junkies are protected against HIV considering that Mark Wainberg tells us ARVs can actively repair the immune system, so if Roy or a family member does feel a bit under the weather Truthseeker's advice to pop a few AZT pills seems pretty sound.
HIV infection causes a loss of immunological function that cannot be completely repaired by antiretroviral drugs(Wainberg)
So if Roy or a family member does feel a bit under the weather Truthseeker's advice to pop a few AZT pills seems pretty sound. Given that ARVs are almost able to repair immune systems devastated by the super bug, HIV, it's bound to work wonders against something as simple as the common cold, far better than honey and lemon at any rate.
How on earth did that sentence manage to repeat itself?! Are there Xmas imps in Tara's software?
Give me a freaking break! You're going to cite Duesberg's 1995 Genetica paper as evidence?
Isn't that the issue that wounded Achilles, I mean Duesberg, was allowed to edit the entire issue because his papers couldn't pass peer review by any other means?
That's a real good one boys! I like that.
In it you see some of the classic "Duesenbergs" crashing and burning like:
-treating viral infections is unnecessary because viruses can't spread in the presence of antibody (Pure Grade A stupid that one.)
-the human genome is larger than HIV so the human genome will be inhibited by AZT more than HIV (Again pure Grade A stupidity! As Buffalo Woman pointed out above AZT is not randomly incorporated into cellular DNA, cells are highly selective against incorporating AZT into DNA while HIV eats the stuff up as fast as it can get it. Duesberg, like Truthseeker, has no idea what the mechanism of AZT's action.)
And then, of course, a final classic that any Duesberg paper must contain is the "because the world must work as I say it should, no evidence that proves I am wrong is relevant."
The one point that Duesberg does recapitulate in this paper, that others knew already, is that AZT has toxic effects on bone marrow. Hence anemia etc. when taking AZT.
The paper I cited was looking at T cell lines. I cited one single paper so that we could actually discuss it first before moving on to all the other issues with AZT and what happens? Denialists coming out of the woodwork citing anything they can find so they can avoid looking at one paper that proves everything they say is wrong.
In it you see:
- cells dying in the presence of HIV
- cells living in the presence of AZT
- cells living in the presence of HIV if AZT is present
This dispels most of the myths about HIV and AZT that the denialists spread.
Does the trippily typing Twister feel that Yarchoan, Broder, and others should have taken Duesberg's 1995 data (reviewed by whom?) into account ten years before it existed? Or even the data in the papers cited by Duesberg, which also did not exist in 1985?
I would like to thank my imitator, "Mountain Man," for citing the 1999 JAIDS study. I encourage him to check the numbers more carefully, though. The quoted sentence should read,
This short-term AZT exposure resulted in AZT incorporation into DNA of fetal liver, lung, heart, skeletal muscle, brain, testis, and placenta, which varied between 29 and 1944 molecules of AZT/10 to the 6 [i.e. 100,000, not one hundred six, as Geiger claims-EMM] nucleotides
The incorporation then is not as high as MountainMan improbably states. And this study does NOT establish the long-term consequences of that much lower level of incorporation. BuffaloWoman is right. DNA repair enzymes will excise many incorrectly incorporated analogues.
A question for Mountain Man: What is the rate of AZT incorporation in the virus vs. the cell's nucleus?
These AIDS cultists are idiots who enjoy the power that comes with stigmatizing gay men, blacks and Africans with the voodoo hex of HIV. And, they have some strange fawning allegiance to big pharma and big gov't science to pimp these toxic drugs.- Posted by: Mountain Man | December 17, 2007 1:17 AM
Yes Mountain Man, The Cult of Illness, Death and Dying. - | Posted by: Carter December 17, 2007 1:38 AM
Yes, that's the short and sweet truth, I agree, you have the core cultural/emotional explanation. The weaknesses of those who grew up on Mean Street or just come by it naturally are rampant, one of them being the petty satisfaction of sticking it to underdogs to make up for their own internal lacks. I was just trying to map the structure which empowers them and handicaps correction of their appalling use of public ignorance and trust to actually harm and kill people with impunity. It's the social power structure which allows Meme propagandists to flourish without being zapped by a can of insecticide.
In it you see: - cells dying in the presence of HIV - cells living in the presence of AZT - cells living in the presence of HIV if AZT is present This dispels most of the myths about HIV and AZT that the denialists spread. - Roy "Meme Boy" Hinckley
So you don't accept that this study was a piece of hasty and inadequate work which was subsequently corrected by honest and unbiased scientists such as Duesberg and others waiting the proper amount of time to see the real effects take place, at even a twentieth of the dose he tested?
Or you just don't read words, when they are posted in answer to your own shell game, Roy, which is so obvious that a child of six could find the pea?
Gee, HIV causes AIDS, and AZT is good for milk shakes, because Broder pulled a fast one.
Thanks for the tip, Roy. Have to revise the entire conclusion of all PubMed as soon as possible. Could you call Fauci? He was wavering on one or two points before you wrote this.
Should we dig up the graves of the 40,000 a year, now still 9,000 a year, of those dead in the US from "AIDS", and sit them down at your table, grateful for the rescue because you tipped us all off that they were buried alive?
By the way, setting yourself up against Duesberg is a little embarassing for onlookers. Have you no idea of the quality of his work? It is apparent to anyone intelligent as soon as they encounter it. Perhaps it would be more appropriate if you respected it a priori before trying to fathom what the words mean.
Does the trippily typing Twister feel that Yarchoan, Broder, and others should have taken Duesberg's 1995 data (reviewed by whom?) into account ten years before it existed? Or even the data in the papers cited by Duesberg, which also did not exist in 1985?
AZT should have been tested adequately before becoming the top selling milk shake at the Meme Gang Diner, using sufficient time, dose and controls in the trial. You don't agree?
That is what you would have wanted I am sure if you were going to be prescribed this Kool Aid now universally acknowledged to have hurried many thousands - 300,000? more? - into an early grave, when if properly treated they might have recovered from all the immune assaults they suffered both from their own self-destructive behavior and that visited upon them with AZT.
But the enthusiasm of people like you for a very bad idea which didn't stack up from the very beginning had everyone rushing over a very steep cliff in a stampede, so I think science got trashed, yes.
Maybe it was understandable at the time but not now, not for you guys to still be trying to justify it by ignoring the corrective scientific literature that followed.
Truthseeker writes ...which was subsequently corrected by honest and unbiased scientists such as Duesberg and others waiting the proper amount of time to see the real effects take place, at even a twentieth of the dose he tested?
Duesberg may have been honest but he was off by orders of magnitude in his calculations of what 1500mg/day ingested by a human being translated into as a concentration of AZT. A human being is not a cell culture. Can you say "bioavailability", Truthseeker?
TruthSeeker wrote:
By the way, setting yourself up against Duesberg is a little embarassing for onlookers. Have you no idea of the quality of his work? It is apparent to anyone intelligent as soon as they encounter it. Perhaps it would be more appropriate if you respected it a priori before trying to fathom what the words mean.
Exactly. Duesberg's impeccable research and TruthSeeker's infallible logic are darn near superhuman. Bow down, all ye mere mortals. Accept their infallible wisdom. If Duesberg and TruthSeeker claim that it is universally acknowledged that 300,000 people were poisoned to death with AZT, and that HIV is harmless. Then it is true. Do not question it.
Duesberg's impeccable research and TruthSeeker's infallible logic are darn near superhuman. Bow down, all ye mere mortals. Accept their infallible wisdom. If Duesberg and TruthSeeker claim that it is universally acknowledged that 300,000 people were poisoned to death with AZT, and that HIV is harmless. Then it is true. Do not question it.
Posted by: Pardigm Overthrown | December 17, 2007 11:44 AM
That's a fine thought, PO, thank you (simper, simper, smirk). Actually I don't mind if my facts are questioned, why not, gives me a chance to improve them and to see what the oppo is going to try when I am on Charlie Rose, Nightline, McNeil Lehrer, Colbert, etc elucidating the future Congressional HIV/AZT Investigating Committee's activities as they put your and your NIAID bosses in the dock for misleading the public by preventing review, a charge you are less culpable for, perhaps, since you at least try to defend publicly the dreadful policy of supporting HIV=AIDS instead of ignoring the problems with it, even though your anonymity suggests a bad conscience, or that your institution would object to your participating in a democratic public discussion of the policy we are all paying for. Bravo for that at least.
Also let's face it I am not a scientist but a wide ranging journalist who knows something about which sources to reply on, and I like to test my sources with challenges of the kind you produce. The difference between us is that I am somewhat objective being outside the system and not prone to buddy-bias, boss-bias, or even gay bias in this matter, though I admit I am a little biased in favor of blacks for no good reason except that among other things I enjoy their level of everyday self-expression, which so often seems to be high regardless of their background and economic level. Also, I believe jazz is the greatest gift America has contributed to culture, surpassing even musical theater and classic pop, blues, rock and country music, zydeco and bluegrass, those other musical jewels in the US crown.
That lack of bias is probably the chief reason why we disagree, apart from the horrendous gaping chasms of reason and evidence on your side that I can see through the wrong end of a Pisa telescope. I am not in it for the money, you see, nor for the glamor or the prizes or the royalties or the position or the pleasure in shafting gays and blacks or being smugly on the mainstream side or whatever else fuels the great Meme Bandwagon. There is no profit in it for me though contributors have contributed to keep the blog going and certainly it will now grind to a halt unless I try and get more. Should I write to Fauci, do you think?
I am in it because I hate to see people in high places play Pied Paper to their people and the public and profit from the public purse by peddling what they know is pusillanimous piffle and calling it science. Science professes honesty and self-checking and deserves to keep out the pseudo-professionals who don't treat it as a vocation but an opportunity to practice the politics of self advancement. I especially hate to see personal and professional quality of the rare kind Duesberg exhibits being trashed for threatening the interests of scientific crooks and morons, which is the charaterisation one is forced to make of much of his opposition, present company excepted, of course..
Why should our leaders be honest and intelligent, and why do I care? For me it is because they are in loco parentis, and we entrust our welfare to them, and they should keep their side of the contract. But even that is a little bit of a rationale for me. Coming from a sheltered background in the English countryside I just value the decency of decent people, and when it is abused I feel like fighting for it, even though Don Quixote showed how useless it may be to break one's lance against windmills, and in this case the institutions involved are very large windmills.
My feeling is why otherwise live life? Cheating kills trust and trust is something which oils and fuels society, and people need it as much as they need bread, and they shouldn't abuse it and kill it and exploit it for selfish ends. There is intimate involvement of trust with love, and that too is something which should be protected, and encouraged, since it is the fuel of the best things in society from friendship and family to ambition and productive achievement. In this instance, the complex of HIV /AIDS/gay/black/charity work/Africa culture is involving love in a cheating complex where it is being twisted to kill rather than succour, and that is an emotional and philosophical monstrosity that should be caged and executed.
Them's my motives, let's hear yours,
Truthseeker writes The difference between us is that I am somewhat objective being outside the system and not prone to buddy-bias
Funniest thing you've ever written TS. As one of Duesberg's self proclaimed sycophants how can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you claim yourself not prone to buddy-bias.
Dale you beat me to it!!
Duesberg said people get 20 to 60 micromolar AZT.
Pereira A et al studied bioavailiablity, AZT and 3TC affect excretion of HIV at 6th Conf Retrovir Oppor Inf 1999. Average blood level of AZT at regular dose was under 50 nanograms per ML thats about 180 nanomolar.
I will do the math for you, Duesberg overestamated between 111 and 333 times!! Or was it a lie not a overestamate. Good thing he's so honest and unbiased!!
Funniest thing you've ever written TS. As one of Duesberg's self proclaimed sycophants how can you expect anyone to take you seriously when you claim yourself not prone to buddy-bias.-
Posted by: Dale | December 17, 2007 1:23 PM
Supporter, not sycophant, Dale. Someone who assesses the quality of his work by reading it, and appreciating it, and applying it to pharmadweebie webheads who use phrases like "funniest thing you've ever written" instead of words with the meaning you intend. Try dictionary.com, you will find it useful, it lists the meaning of words, those things used in sentences, you know, one after another.
Sycophant would be what you appear to be re Anthony Fauci of NIAID, or John P. Moore of Weill-Cornell, an unthinking worshipper who loves to apply microbicide to their appropriate body part, heedless of the real consequences of your neglect of the flaws in their thinking on HIV=AIDS, generated as it is by the Meme with which you are inhabited in the area of your anatomy you like to label your "brain", but which is really your amygdala, the seat of fear, aggression, sex and gain.
Duesberg is one of the finest minds in science today, approximately seventeen levels above the average defender of the HIV faith. Read his papers for Cancer Research and the Proceedings of the National Academy. Well, I forgot, they have words in them, but you should manage, Dale, with the help of dictionary.com
It is a relief to know that at least one man in biology can still think well and write well, and that the classic values of academe are not completely forgotten.
I will do the math for you, Duesberg overestamated between 111 and 333 times!! - Adele
Adele, all you have to do is go to dictionary.com to correct your incessant mispellings and erase this signal that you are educationally unqualified to debate in this arena.
Take it from your friendly deniosaur.
TruthTwister wrote:
"Duesberg is one of the finest minds in science today, approximately seventeen levels above the average defender of the HIV faith."
But didn't he claim that viruses can't cause cancer? Like not even the avian sarcoma viruses, nor the mouse mammary tumor virus? Hasn't he recently written about anueploidy and cancer?
Now, correct me if I am wrong, but it seems a bit like saying that drunk driving, icy roads, and other such factors don't cause car accidents; it is actually smashed up vehicles that cause car accidents! Duesberg argues that because millions of cells are infected by something like Rous sarcoma virus, but only one of them grows into the tumor that kills the chicken, that the virus can't be said to "cause" cancer. Likewise, millions of people drive on icy roads each winter, but only a few thousand die in car wrecks. Therefor something that simply increases the odds of an event by 1,000 fold or a million fold can't be said the be the "cause" of the increase in those events.
It seems sort of odd to me, that the chicken breeding industry is spending millions of dollars to fight the spread of subtype J of the avian leukosis virus, if it doesn't cause tumors in chickens:
Pandiri AR, Reed WM, Mays JK, Fadly AM.
Influence of strain, dose of virus, and age at inoculation on subgroup J avian leukosis virus persistence, antibody response, and oncogenicity in commercial meat-type chickens.
Avian Dis. 2007 Sep;51(3):725-32.
PMID: 17992933
Big disconnect there TS. If Duesberg is "one of the finest minds in science today", why does he make such silly mistakes as ignoring bioavailability in determining AZT concentrations in patients? Sycophant would seem to characterize you quite nicely.
So much wisdom from Truthseeker yet out of all the Tara Et Al clan no has one idoda of wisdom. Just empty claims and junk science to back it up.
Jeez - if people weren't dying at the hands of orthodox AIDS interventions the stuff the Clan comes up with here would be down right laughable.
Truthtwister people understand what I write. Sorry. So I'm not a great speller like you, so I don't take time to do a spell check, sorry.
Wierd my mis-spellings are so important to you. Duesberg off on a calculation by 111 to 333 times isn't important to you at all!! Duesberg making up stuff about HIV negative AIDS isn't important to you. Duesberg lying by cutting up a quote to make it say the opposite isn't important to you. A mis-spelled word, that's real important tho!!
carter writes So much wisdom from Truthseeker yet out of all the Tara Et Al clan no has one idoda of wisdom. Just empty claims and junk science to back it up.
Congratulations Truthseeker! You have a sycophant of your very own!
Congratulations Truthseeker! You have a sycophant of your very own! - Dale
No, agreement is not sycophancy. Use dictionary.com, Dale, before posting, thanks. Sycophancy is not practiced by independent minds, by definition. Carter is an independent mind, QED. Sycophancy is not possible in his case. He simply agrees with something I wrote.
In your case, however, sycophancy is a constant presence, again by definition, since you are not an independent mind. It is a grave impediment to truthseeking not to have an independent mind. You are dependent on what is agreed by the group, the conventional wisdom, the committee decision, and so forth.
This is notoriously fallible. People in groups do not think well because efficiency is lowered so drastically and because they all have to agree to get anything done ie compromise. The result is too often a Confederacy of Fools. This is well known and often demonstrated eg in piano competitions where the very best and most individual and original pianist often loses out to the one that the judges can agree upon, though he/she is the one who gets the audience and the recording contracts afterwards regardless.
Sometimes groups and crowds are better at guessing hidden quantities and summarizing directions and predicting outcomes, though, as the book The Wisdom of Crowds pointed out. There is a certain crowd wisdom, though in matters of science and logic it is not very clever. This may sometimes be because when crowds behave like lemmings a group vote naturally predicts the direction they will all average out, or compromise in, I dont know. You can find out who will be the presidential candidates nominated and elected if you go to the sites which accept bets on the outcome, which you will find are very accurate. The answer appears there very early.
But crowds are hopeless at doing science. A century ago the Indiana Lehislature introduced a bill to determine pi which would have certified a wildly wrong value and proposed to license it to others, and it passed in the first reading, before wiser heads prevailed. Democracy doesn't work in science. Try putting the validity of relativity to a vote. Good science is elitist by nature. Witness this thread. And in HIV=AIDS, we have an excellent example of how a billion can be wrong, and a few thousand right.
A mis-spelled word, that's real important tho!! - Adele
Adele if that be your name please do not think we do not find your posts entertaining and provocative, and your point is usually clear. It is just it is impossible to take seriously anybody who doesn't know how to spell. They just loose so much status with us (joke) that we can't raise the energy to give your points the consideration they deserve, even if they are all cribbed off the NIH HIV propaganda site and are fully answered in Duesberg's drug paper, one of his masterworks, in case you didn't appreciate it. Your attempt to say that Duesberg got it wrong on the quantities is up the creek, but who can be bothered to lead you through it.
But we are sure you are a lovely person and can be relied on to support all your institution's values and norms to the utmost in a very reliable and wholesome manner. Even if you are a gay man, which you may well be, though we have no information on the topic, and only pretending to be a misspeller.
Your friendly deniosaur,
TS
TruthTwister claims to be a science writer. Perhaps he writes for the third grade level, where is is appropriate to think of Issac Newton itting under an apple tree and just "thinking up"
a theory about gravity. Mister Twister likewise claims that Duesberg is a genius, because he can "rethink" AIDS.
In reality, people who go to school in science beyond 8th or 9th grade, learn that Isaac Newton was a serious mathematician, and that he actually took measurements of the velocity of falling objects. He gathered data and did math, he did not just "think" about gravity.
Duesberg has never even looked at AIDS data, let alone gather any of his own. If a man gets AIDS and says that he did not participate in the "lifestyle" that Duesberg claims is responsible for AIDS, Duesberg claims the man must be lying.
Right buffalo women and Duesberg makes some thing up about AZT concentration in the body he doesn't measure it and he's wrong, like a couple a hundred times off.
What's that, like truth-seeking?? No it's lying or being stupid and stubborn.
Dale:
Instead of brain dead comments. Why not offer up some of your own wisdom? Huh? Surly you have something to offer.
It is not carter's agreement with you Truthseeker that makes him a sycophant, it's his description of what you write as "wisdom".
Adele, I don't think Duesberg "made up" his estimate of AZT, he just made some completely unjustified assumptions; namely that you could calculate AZT concentration in a human being as you would in a cell culture by dividing the mass of AZT added to the liquid volume.
And carter? I have no 'wisdom' to offer on AIDS except to say that a critical reading of Duesberg convinces me that his arguments present no serious challenge to the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS.
Dale
"his arguments present no serious challenge" - fair enough, your opinion.
But one should not rely solely on Duesberg alone. But the collective witting from the mass of other dissidents as a whole demonstrate beyond a doubt that HIV/AIDS, which as you and the other protectors of this great debacle see it, is clearly one big fat failure. Why dont you expand your knowledge?
Meant ---> can't see it <---- above
carter - I have read a significant fraction of that collective writing - at least that that calls itself scientific - and I still fail to see any serious challenges to the hypothesis. So, I'll ask you ... which pieces of data (as opposed to unsubstantiated opinions of Duesberg) do you see as the most serious challenge to a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS?
Duesberg has never even looked at AIDS data, let alone gather any of his own. - Buffalo Woman
Exhibit No 1 showing that this pharmadweebie meme monkey does not have the wit to read Duesberg's papers, or even read about them.
No wonder even John P. Moore is embarrassed to associate with these buffalos and has gone off to tend to his macaques.
Time to declare victory, though Carter and Cooler mustn't be discouraged from daily searing the hindquarters of the running dogs of HIV=AIDS with their flamethrowers.
So, TruthTwister. Can you show us any data, any data at all, in any of Duesberg's writings? I have seen the graph claiming that AIDS cases exactly mirror recreational drug abuse in the USA. But he did not tell us where he got the data. Nor does it show that the people who used the recreational drugs were the ones who got AIDS. Duesberg claims that gay men were heavy drug abusers, but he did not actually interview gay men about their drug use, he just assumes that they are abusers based on who knows what.
It is not carter's agreement with you Truthseeker that makes him a sycophant, it's his description of what you write as "wisdom". -
Posted by: Dale | December 17, 2007 4:41 PM
How so? A statement of fact is merely a statement of fact.
So, I'll ask you ... which pieces of data (as opposed to unsubstantiated opinions of Duesberg) do you see as the most serious challenge to a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS?
Posted by: Dale | December 17, 2007 5:40 PM
Unsubstantiated even though entirely based on the thousands of papers produced by the Meme ridden corps of scientists tilling the fields of HIV=AIDS?
Hmmm.. maybe you know more than you let on, Dale.
To answer your question, a virus 9,999/10,000 AWOL from its supposed war on T cells, an infectious virus causing a global epidemic that doesn't infect a single heterosexual in a major six year study, a virus without a mechanism, a virus that has left heterosexuals alone for twenty three years in the US, a virus which alters its behavior after as long as twenty years, a virus suggested as cause by a rogue scientist officially condemned for bad lab work who found it in 1/3 of samples, a virus that makes no difference in the symptoms observed in "AIDS" whether it is present or not, a virus where the objections of critics are all admitted by its proponents except for it not being the cause of disease, a virus that is not detected by the tests that map the epidemic it supposedly causes, how many facts do you want, we can give you twenty more,
Anyone who believes in this paradigm is a moron who cannot understand the literature.
Give us ONE good reason for believing it causes disease, except your paycheck, Dale.
wow, the level of denilaism is disgusting. I just spent about 20 minutes going through this thread and have never seen so many wackjobs in one place.
Weve got truthseeker, more like liarseeker, mountain man and mec who dont know one thing about microbiology and cooler the national spokesperson for "mycoplamsa" and 9/11 nonsense, sorry "cooler" that was debunked long ago, this isn't 1888 anymore, animal models are not the be all end all, most viruses like hiv are generally species specific.
What is wrong with you people, the evidence that hiv causes aids is overwhelming, why do you denialists spread such lies? You guys are such a sad pathetic group of people. Get help. I did especially enjoy Dr. moore's brief visit, he made such fools of MEC, micheal and cooler, an honor to have him speak here.
I just spent about 20 minutes going through this thread and have never seen so many wackjobs in one place. - dk
Exhibit #2, the level of intelligence, reason and education of the Mememonkeyss who support John P. Moore and HIV=AIDS.
What is wrong with you people, the evidence that hiv causes aids is overwhelming, why do you denialists spread such lies?
Fine, then answer the points in my post above, and very specifically, ONE good reason to believe, in all this overwhelming evidence you know about.
Of course, it is clear from what you write that you would n't know the difference between a good reason and a bad one, so don't bother.
Truthiness
You are the one making the claim that everyone but yourself, Yeti, Molecule and the Coolaid Kid are wrong. You have to show the relevant peer-reviewed and verified literature that proves you right.
You're the one making the claim that everyone but yourself, Yeti, Molecule and the Coolaid Kid are wrong. You have to show the relevant peer-reviewed and verified literature that proves you right.-m Posted by: Sascha | December 17, 2007 7:16 PM
No, Sascha, you are the ones making the claim that the Virus does something, anything, to affect human health. So give us one good reason for believing you, other than your bank account.
We are saying there are none.
If you said Martians are living in your bedroom cupboard, it would be up to you to produce any evidence of this unlikely story. We would not be obliged to disprove it, however lovable your character.
You cannot prove a negative, though you can provide a million reasons for doubt. Perhaps Martians do live in your cupboard. About as likely as your other, viral belief.
If we did visit your bedroom to confirm our suspicions there was nothing in it, you would probably say the Martians were out for the day.
We would reply, you have learned your method of proof well from Ptolemy, Fauci, Gallo and Moore, but we don't buy it.
We are scientists, and we require evidence of some kind other than your claims of overwhelming evidence of Martians in your cupboard, or a Virus that causes plague without being present more often than a hatpin in a hayfield..
so sad you are, the evidence is overwhelming, sad you denialists twist and lie. Virtually every everyone with aids tests positive for hiv, no hiv= very rare to have aids. Siv causes AIDS in maqacue monkeys, I know chimpanzees dont get AIDS but this is to be expected, for they have adapted to it over the years.
Oh and cooler, your mycoplasma in all liklehood was a contaminent.........coolaid kid, so no one is committing "genocide" as you claim. Dr. Lo may be a fine scientist, but it was just an accidental contamination. Try again.
Take that back, Dr. Lo could not be that great a scientist for getting so carried away w/ a contaminent, not to mention he and his pals at the armed forces lab actually gave credence to some of Duesbergs nutty ideas in the early 90's, so they lost all credibility there. One cant be a credible scientist and a denialist as the brilliant Dr. Moore says, its a matter of fact.
So your hero cooler seems to be an incompetent fool, like so many government employees seem to be so often.
To answer your question, a virus 9,999/10,000 AWOL from its supposed war on T cells, an infectious virus causing a global epidemic that doesn't infect a single heterosexual in a major six year study, a virus without a mechanism, a virus that has left heterosexuals alone for twenty three years in the US, a virus which alters its behavior after as long as twenty years, a virus suggested as cause by a rogue scientist officially condemned for bad lab work who found it in 1/3 of samples, a virus that makes no difference in the symptoms observed in "AIDS" whether it is present or not, a virus where the objections of critics are all admitted by its proponents except for it not being the cause of disease, a virus that is not detected by the tests that map the epidemic it supposedly causes, how many facts do you want, we can give you twenty more,
First. 1 in 10,000 infected T cells in the peripheral blood doesn't reflect the proportion of infection in the gut mucosa. Moreover, there is no a priori reason to believe that a virus HAS to infect some arbitrary proportion of T cells to cause a phenotype: that is one of Duesberg's unsubstantiated assertions. Second. Padian's retrospective study showed a significant proportion of long term sexual partners of HIV positive individuals were HIV positive. Moreover, direct sexual contact tracing and sequence analysis of virus isolated from sexual partners has unequivocally demonstrated heterosexual transmission. Third, Gallo found it in 1/3 of AIDS samples and a much larger proportion of ARC samples - a result explained by the fact that CD4+ T cells become so depleted in the blood in late stages of AIDS it becomes difficult to find infected cells there. Forth. The virus does make a difference in the symptoms observed in AIDS and makes a difference in response to particular treatments. Fifth, the virus is detected by the tests that map the epidemic; by ELISA and Western and by PCR. Sure, none of these tests are 100% sensitive or specific but they are pretty damn close and certainly as close as comparable screening tests for other diseases. In summary, none of your 'facts' changes the overriding 'fact' that ~90% of HIV positive individuals end up immunosuppressed while only a small fraction of HIV negative individuals do.
So, Truthseeker, what are your 20 more facts that you believe draw the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS into question?
I'm not making any claim other than that I put my trust in the process. The vast majority of the people working in the field have accepted and verified the theory, I accept that.
You claim the vast majority are wrong and only you know the truth. You are making a claim; you must provide evidence.
Were I to claim that I had martians living in my cupboard, I would have to provide evidence. But your hypothetical situation is bass ackwards. No one is claiming there is a martian in their cupboards; you are the one claiming we all think there is a martian in our cupboards.
Whether you buy anything at all is irrelevant. But we all know you are a consumer for you have bought into the Lord Duesberg's follies.
Until you provide evidence that can be verified, your claim to be a scientist rings hallow.
Fifth, the virus is detected by the tests that map the epidemic; by ELISA and Western and by PCR. - Dale
Dale, if you are unaware that ELISA and Western blot test for antibodies and not HIV, there is no helping you. If this is the level of your grasp of the issue in one respect that you should casually misstate so, it confirms the suspicion that any time very intelligent people such as yourself profess to believe in the Meme, they are simply underresearched.
Were I to claim that I had martians living in my cupboard, I would have to provide evidence. But your hypothetical situation is bass ackwards. No one is claiming there is a martian in their cupboards; you are the one claiming we all think there is a martian in our cupboards. - Sascha
You are not aware that this paragraph is illogical, and you wrote every word of it? Sascha there is no helping you either, if you do not realise you are the one making the claim, which you have to justify, and we are the ones denying it, who ask for proof. You are not aware that we critics are called "denialists"? You are the ones we call Denialists, because you Deny reason, which proves that your claim has the substance of a tea merengue.
Anyhow, to reply to critics who ask for evidence of any kind for your fantasy by asking them for evidence is so logically pretzel like that one is flabbergasted.
In fact one's gast is so flabby one cannot remain in the discussion but must depart elsewhere to deal with real problems involving real people and real facts, apparently unknown here in this netherworld you inhabit, a kind of Alice in Wonderland of science where nothing's true but thinking makes it so, and the dormice wake up every now and then and squeak Hiv is AIDS! Hiv is AIDS! while their betters eat cake and drink champagne and toast the dumbclucks who take their AZT and win them another $30 billion in funding.
Dk,
you dumbass idiot, contaminents are not visible in patients tissues by electron microscope, and contaminents dont cause fatal wasting diseases in mice and monkeys. Ive posted all the refrences above, including the EM pics, so you can suck on Lo's balls.
Contrary to your claim virtually everyone who is positive with hiv is asymptomatic and they extended the window period from 10 months to 10 years when no one got sick, and there is not one study that rules out confounding factors such as AZT mycoplasmas severe drug abuse to see if this 1/10000 cell no animal model even causes aids, just show me the first 3-4 papers that prove hiv causes aids, koch had original documents to prove causation. waiting..............
Dale, if you are unaware that ELISA and Western blot test for antibodies and not HIV, there is no helping you.
TS, if you are unaware that the presence of anti HIV antibodies is strongly suggestive of the presence of virus and when accompanied by a significant viral load pretty much guarantees the presence of virus, there is no helping you.
And I'm still waiting for your 20 other facts.
anti HIV antibodies is strongly suggestive of the presence of virus
Instead of "strongly suggestive," why not detect actual virus in actual high titre?
Do you really believe that a spelling mistake does anything to reduce the importance of the point she made.
Duesberg made a huge error by simply assuming that you could calculate the biologically relevant concentration of a drug by assuming that a human is a bucket of water.
This is a simple case of Duesberg making claims outside of his field of expertise. Duesberg is not a pharmacologist. He demonstrated his ignorance extremely well in this paper.
As Roy has pointed out Duesberg was the guest editor for this edition of Genetica. His other articles in the edition cowritten with Ellison include what I can only call lies. I don't know which "peers" reviewed these articles but they certainly did not do a very good job.
If you have any response to the points that have been made about Duesberg's error then make them. I think if Adele needs a spell checker then she can get one that isn't also a pompous idiot.
Instead of "strongly suggestive," why not detect actual virus in actual high titre?
Because very few AIDS patients wish to jump in a Waring blender or have intestinal biopsies. Because detecting actual virus in actual high titre is riskier to lab personelle and far more expensive than using ELISA and Western blots. Because the purpose of diagnosis is not to prove the existence of HIV to dissidents but to assist in the treatment of a patient.
Your still making a claim, whereas I'm not. Provide evidence. Or is it just that your faith has an air of truthiness?
Jesus, Dr. smith how do you put up with lunatics like cooler? He/she is claiming that you scientists are responsible for genocide by "ignoring" mycoplamsa research, as if scientists would just leave things up in the air. Cooler it was a contaminent Dr. shyh ching lo the fraud and his pals at the army probably hallucinated it and thats why they saw it in the electron microscope.
I think frauds like Lo, duesberg , mullis, walter gilbert and margulis are just jealous of the far better science and successes of Gallo, Levy, Baltimore and Gaduseck, these charlatans couldnt stand all the attention they were getting and how they were long forgotten so they turned science into politics. Not only that Margulis is a 9/11 conspiracy nut, like cooler.
Dr. Moore has written about this jealousy complex as well, Just read his posts and he breaks down you denialists frauds like you deserve. Its all about jeoulusy and then you have a group of loonies like micheal, Mec , cooler truthseeker who dont even know the science they speak of and question an hiv expert Dr. moore when they have no training at all! HOw do you put up with all this Tara? These people are insanely pathetic!
I know perfectly well that you would like to pretend that you personally are the Grand Arbiter of science and that it is up to everybody to drop what they are doing and "prove" to you that HIV causes AIDS.
This might be a pleasing fantasy for you but it is not reality.
You have been presented with evidence. You show no sign of comprehending this evidence nor any sign that you modify your beliefs according to the evidence.
Despite your rhetorical devices it is up to you to provide evidence for your claims. Don't pretend that you aren't making any like "AZT killed 300,000".
When Duesberg first started having his hissy fits about HIV it was pointed out to him that he needed to do more than just attack the science showing HIV causes AIDS he was obliged to present an alternate theory that better explains the data - all of the data.
This lead to him proposing his recreational drug theory. But of course this theory is completely unsupported by the evidence so Duesberg is still where he started in 1987, trying to pick holes.
As the example of Duesberg getting the pharmokinetics wrong shows that most of the holes he does manage to dig are in his own brain.
You mean the "rethinkers" are not the centre of the world?
Amusing to see the chickens left squawking in the backyard after the fox has left. How revealing the squawks are too - nothing but noise. What a contrast with the cock-a-doodle-doo that we saw earlier.
Just the nervous clucking of flimsy logic, uncorrected science, bad nature and complete inability to operate on a higher plane by flying over the wood to see its shape; instead all they can do is try to peck down individual trees with their tiny beaks.
Wait, these are actually humans with what passes for brains, and the best defenders of the faith we have.
Well then, all one can say in that this sequence of worthless posts is the equivalent of usually sedentary people dancing naked in a hayfield in the midday sun - a grotesque and not very beautiful sight, and more revealing than is pleasant.
But Exhibits 4, 5, 6 and 7 for the defense of sanity in science, that's for sure.
Cluck on, chickens, I am sure that Mr Moore will come and feed you soon.
Dale
"..the most serious challenge to a causal relationship between HIV and AIDS?
How about the thousands of Mainstream AID$ Establishment papers without any proof at all, started by Gallo claiming to have "isolated" HIV from (36%) of AIDS patients, assumptions built upon assumptions, massive amounts of hearsay, most of which contain dubious comments such as; "we Believe," "More research is necessary." and everything coming from mitogenically stimulated, cultured, co-cultivation, in vitro crap.. But honestly try Padian et al., Rodriguez et al., Mellors et al., for some further fine reading why HIV is not the cause. Collectively the Mainstream papers demonstrate nothing but research off on an other planet.
Maybe you should expand your horizons too and do some alternative reseach outside the Meme, Etienne de Harven, Harvey Bialy, Matt Irwin, Ian Young, Rebecca Culshaw, Michael Ellner, Henry Bauer, John Lauritsen, Anthony Brink, Celia Farber, Robert Willner, Joan Shenton, Neville Hodgkinson to name a few.
Then find the numerous posts by the quite closeted dissidents.
I get messages such as this one almost daily: "My name is G____. also known as o_______e. i am 41. always lived in California, Palm Springs for the past 4 years. Poz since 93. took meds for 11 years. had epilepsy, neuropathy, and all the other side effects. was sorta activist. got high speed Internet April 2007. saw The Other Side of AIDS and AIDS Inc.. did the research. will never take HIV meds again. very spiritual. psychic medium. kinda smart. on disability for past 8 years."
Dale: ad to the names above: Anthony Liversidge.
Do remember to tell us when you have found anything. You know, such as an intact passport on a street or the prod made from alien metal.
It's all very entertaining. Really.
Ever the master of irony.
Somehow I missed the bit in your post where you made an attempt to deal with Adele's point about Duesberg miscalculating the bioavailability of AZT.
Truthiness
For your benefit, here is why you carry the onus of providing evidence for your claim:
A quarter of a century ago, a man named Gallo claimed to have found the cause for AIDS. Whether he had or hadn't, whether he lied or didn't, whether he jumped the gun, had a pet canary and wore women's underwear while whistling in the shower is moot. Ever since he made that claim, other people have reviewed his research and verified the basic claim. Nobody but an insignificant minority dispute that HIV is the causative agent for AIDS. Hence the "Scientific Consencus"; or conspiracy for those inclined to fantasies.
Now you and your ilk claim everybody, but yourselves, is either a fool, a dolt or a criminal. You are the one that is claiming that the science is flawed. You are the one claiming there is a conspiracy to hide these flaws. You are the one claiming scientists have committed "genocide". You are the one making these claims so you have to provide the evidence. Simple, yes?
carter writes how about the thousands of Mainstream AID$ Establishment papers without any proof at all, started by Gallo claiming to have "isolated" HIV from (36%) of AIDS patients, assumptions built upon assumptions, massive amounts of hearsay, most of which contain dubious comments such as; "we Believe," "More research is necessary." and everything coming from mitogenically stimulated, cultured, co-cultivation, in vitro crap.. But honestly try Padian et al., Rodriguez et al., Mellors et al., for some further fine reading why HIV is not the cause.
Amusing really isn't it? Dissidents like to argue that there should be one or at most a few papers that 'prove' HIV causes AIDS but when asked what are the most compelling arguments against that hypothesis list a number of names - not arguments but names.
But okay, we start with Gallo. Who identified HIV in 36% of AIDS patients, a much higher percentage of ARC patients, a much lower percentage of healthy gays and not at all in healthy heterosexuals. A scientist wouldn't necessarily expect to detect a virus in every sample - not in the beginning because assays always have to be optimized and certainly not in human samples which aren't always obtained or stored under ideal conditions. But with more sensitive assays HIV was detected in virtually every AIDS and ARC patient. Not just by Gallo but by a number of other investigators. The need for mitogenic stimulation, culture and co-culture doesn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, I'd be more suspicious if those techniques weren't used as they are a requirement of growing T-cells. I've grown T-cells myself for non HIV related research - nothing unusual or unreasonable about the protocols. Then we come to Padian et al. who found 19% of female sexual partners of HIV positive men in her study were HIV positive. In a population where the frequency of HIV positivity was at least an order of magnitude lower that single piece of data strongly suggests that HIV is heterosexually transmitted. Together with all the other data based on both epidemiological studies and molecular analyses of viral RNA that HIV is horizontally transmitted, I find that evidence solid.
On the other side we have de Harven - who wants EMs of HIV that look like Friend virus. To insist that the lack of one particular piece of evidence negates all of the other evidence for HIV's existence is silly - It's like I say I'll only believe the moon isn't made of cheese if I see a picture taken by a one legged German using a Polaroid camera. When asked to present a rational argument Harvey has never responded with anything but clever insults as far as I've seen. He's funny but not very convincing. Rebecca's arguments consist mostly of "I can't mathematically model it and therefore it can't exist" (see comment re de Harven). Celia is passionate as hell about her beliefs but wouldn't know a scientific argument if it bit her in the ass and furthermore refuses to allow that there is ever more than one side (hers) to any story.
As far as your e-mail messages go, I'm not surprised. Given the opportunity to believe that they aren't really ill, many people will take it. It's called denial. Besides, there is nothing in the mainstream views of HIV that says that HIV meds don't have serious side effects for some individuals. They do. Hopefully more effective treatments are in the pipeline. One thing I'm pretty sure of though - more effective treatments won't consist of pretending HIV doesn't exist and they aren't going to come from dissidents but from mainstream scientists.
Truthseeker has made some progress recently.
First, AZT was to him a failed cancer drug because it was too toxic, killing everything in its path. Truthseeker didn't tell us where he got his information, but it was clearly from Peter Duesberg, whose portrayal of AZT researcher Jerome Horwitz's mouse experiments was either an outright lie or just another in a long, long line of incredible misunderstandings.
Truthseeker now seems to understand that AZT did not kill cancer cells very well and that Duesberg may have misinterpreted Horwitz. (This reminds me of MEC's admission that Duesberg's misconduct by deliberate alteration of a quote's wording and meaning to meet his needs was "cheeky.")
There is much more progress to make, Truthseeker. When one seeks truth, it is best to start at the source of information, not to settle for the accounts of a journalist like Duesberg or Lauritsen.
When we read the scientific literature, we learn that AZT
1)was relatively non-toxic to primary cells AND to cancer cells;
2)was relatively non-toxic to animals, even at many times the dose later used in humans;
3)was relatively well-tolerated over six weeks by informed, consenting subjects in the initial trials, even at doses four or eight times higher than what patients later received;
4)was found to have longer-term side effects in the very trials Truthseeker claims did not take place;
5)was reduced in dose after those effects were reported.
Since Truthseeker has complained of a lack of citations (although he usually gives none himself), I have a few for him, along with some explanations.
The scientific literature on thymidine analogs goes back over half a century. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of differently substituted and modified deoxyribonucleosides were synthesized, described in the literature, and tested for biological activity. Here is an example from 1955:
WELCH AD, PRUSOFF WH, LAJTHA LG. "Azathymidine, the deoxyriboside of an analogue of thymine: an antagonist of the utilization of thymidine and of the reproduction of certain cells. Trans Assoc Am Physicians. 1955;68:112-7. (Note "Azathymidine," not "azidothymidine" or AZT.)
Many of the compounds synthesized during those years were highly toxic to cancer cells AND to primary "normal" cells. In general, inhibiting replication of cancer cells means inhibiting replication of rapidly-growing normal cells, too, the main reason for the severe toxicity of most anti-cancer therapies and for the difficulty in finding truly cancer-specific therapies.
But some were relatively non-toxic. Azathymidine (from the paper above) was one. Prusoff and colleagues later tested Azathymidine against viruses. Why? To quote from their 1966 Nature paper (Sekely and Prusoff, "Anti-viral activity of Azathymidine and Uracil Methyl Sulphone," 17 Sept. 1966, 1260-61),
"In mammalian cells the incorporation of formate into DNA is effectively inhibited by azathymidine, but thymidine incorporation is much less sensitive. Because azathymidine appeared to be relatively non-toxic to mammalian cells, we decided to investigate its potential anti-viral activity" (p 1260, one endnote removed).
"Relatively non-toxic to mammalian cells" and having "anti-viral activity" were the two main qualities sought in a potential anti-HIV agent in the middle 1980s. AZT was one of many candidates.
As mentioned earlier, Richard Beltz and Jerome Horwitz synthesized AZT in the early 1960s. Independently or not, I don't know, but with the activity in organic chemistry at the time, I wouldn't be surprised if more than these two scientists synthesized AZT independently.
What did Beltz and Horwitz find about the biological activities of AZT? Here are the only potentially relevant, MedLine-listed papers from Richard Beltz during the period in question (pre-AZT AIDS trials):
Beltz RE, Hunter-Laszlo MJ. "Synergistic interaction in Jensen tumor cells of two modes of exposure to inosine that potentiate the cytotoxicity of 5-fluorouracil." Cancer Lett. 1985 Sep 30;28(3):263-71.
Beltz RE, Waters RN, Hegarty TJ. "Enhancement and depression by inosine of the growth inhibitory action of 5-fluorouracil on cultured Jensen tumor cells." Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1983 Apr 15;112(1):235-41.
BELTZ RE, VISSER DW. "Studies on the action of thymidine analogues." J Biol Chem. 1957 Jun;226(2):1035-45.
BELTZ RE, VAN LANCKER J, POTTER VR. "Nucleic acid metabolism in regenerating liver. IV. The effect of x-radiation of the whole body on nucleic acid synthesis in vivo." Cancer Res. 1957 Aug;17(7):688-97.
BELTZ RE. "Comparison of the effects of x-radiation on the elevation of thymidine kinase and thymidylate synthetase during liver regeneration." Biochem Biophys Res Commun. 1962 Sep 25;9:78-83.
BELTZ RE. "Comparison of the content of thymidylate synthetase, deoxycytidylate deaminase and deoxyribonucleoside kinase in normal and regenerating rat liver." Arch Biochem Biophys. 1962 Nov;99:304-12.
And a few of the many articles from Horwitz:
Philips KD, Horwitz JP. "Nucleosides. XVII. Benzylation-debenzylation studies on nucleosides." J Org Chem. 1975 Jun 13;40(12):1856-8. No abstract available.
Zemlicka J, Freisler JV, Gasser R, Horwitz JP. "Nucleosides. XVI. The synthesis of 2',3'-dideoxy-3',4'-didehydro nucleosides." J Org Chem. 1973 Mar 9;38(5):990-9
Most of these papers describe the chemical synthesis of nucleosides, and most do not even mention AZT. I could not find information on AZT's biological activity in these papers. One explanation would be that I missed something. I doubt it because of Beltz's own statements in his correspondence with David Crowe and Horwitz's statements, including to the New York Times in 1986. Their initial AZT results fell victim to the positive result bias in science. Negative results, such as the finding that a particular substance is not toxic enough to work well against rapidly-dividing cells, are rarely published unless there is some additional interest in the substance. It seems that our best sources on the first AZT studies are Beltz and Horwitz themselves, the different statements they have made to the media and even to AIDS denialists like David Crowe.
Years after the first synthesis of AZT but before the AIDS trials, some biological effects of AZT were published in the context of multi-drug screens.
Biochem Pharmacol. 1980 Jun 15;29(12):1849-51. Antiviral, antimetabolic and antineoplastic activities of 2'- or 3'-amino or -azido-substituted deoxyribonucleosides. De Clercq E, Balzarini J, Descamps J, Eckstein F.
De Clercq and the other scientists examined 16 different (but closely related) deoxyribonucleosides including AZT for antiviral and anticancer effects, as well as for toxicity to primary cells. Of the 16 (see Table 1), AZT was the third-least efficient at killing cells/inhibiting proliferation. It was 40,000 times less toxic than Ara-C (Aracytidine), the most toxic of the 16. AZT also exerted little noticeable effect on normal cell morphology except at doses greater than 500x greater than Ara-C.
Note that AZT was found to be relatively non-toxic not only to cancer cells, but also to normal cells (in contrast to Truthseeker's claims).
With the discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS, AZT became one of hundreds of drugs tested against the virus. PA Furman et al and MH St. Clair et al presented their work to the October, 1985 Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Minneapolis. Mitsuya et al published AZT work in PNAS in 1985. These scientists showed that AZT, a relatively non-toxic chain-terminator, specifically inhibited the HIV polymerase in comparison to the main cellular polymerases. In other words, it was more toxic to HIV than to mammalian cells.
Initial studies on the toxicity of AZT in humans were promising. Again, in contrast to what Truthseeker claims.
Even at some of the highest doses of AZT tested on humans (up to 60 mg/kg/day, or nearly 5 g per day for a patient weighing 80 kg, the concentration of AZT in the blood reaches only into the single digit micromolar range...and only transiently, falling into the nanomolar range within hours. (Except at the very highest dose, where the concentration hovered around one micromolar. See Yarchoan R, et al, Lancet. 1986 Mar 15;1(8481):575-80, Figure 2 and Results, p. 578; and RW Klecker, Jr., et al, Clin Pharmacol Ther. 1987 Apr;41(4):407-12.
It is truly unfortunate that Mr. Liversidge, science writer that he claims to be, has not bothered to read the Yarchoan study. The authors, reporting human studies of AZT for the first time, find no intolerable toxicities over six weeks. Even at four times the (high) dose that later would be prescribed to patients for several years. This finding was consistent with the data from animal studies (the authors cite work by K. Ayers; other scientists, including Dr. Horwitz, had also performed such studies). Yet they do not hail AZT as some sort of wonder drug, but instead (and appropriately) devote considerable space to discussing the possibility of longer-term toxicities.
It is even more unfortunate that Dr. Peter Duesberg, an actual scientist, would ignore the history of AZT as documented in the literature and state that in 1985 it was a known toxic substance. It is unfortunate that in 1995 he would ignore the extensive and solid evidence, stretching back for ten years, on the metabolism of AZT, including actual numbers, and instead give a false "typical" concentration of AZT in the body, tens or hundreds of times higher than the actual figures and arrived at according to Dale, Adele, and Noble in an incredibly naïve fashion.
Liversidge and Duesberg are both out to construct their own version of the "truth," evidence be damned. Duesberg just doesn't have recourse to Liversidge's excuse: scientific ignorance.
Cluck on, chickens, I am sure that Mr Moore will come and feed you soon, with a nice drink laced with your favorite treat, AZT, ddC and ddi, a tasty concoction which you will no doubt praise once more as you toast Dr Moore, Dr Fauci, and their progenitor Rev Jones.
Until, that is, this 21st Century Kool Aid reaches your digestive system and knocks out your liver and your kidneys and adds you to the 9,000 a year being polished off with this stuff, as the CDC informs us, witness the fact that they die of DRUG symptoms and not of "AIDS" symptoms.
No, O world class backyard garbage peckers, I haven't time to shoot any more of the funfair popup cartoon targets you feature in your booth. I am going out for breakfast in the real cold on the real streets amid real people doing real work, and not extending civility anymore to a bunch of backroom nerds with time on their hands pushing a fatuously flawed hypothesis and its drugs on the Internet and reversing sense and argument by trying to prove that exceptions rule and that the world turns backwards, poison prolongs your life, an inert virus conquers healthy bodies, and that Duesberg is not an impeccable scientist and an intellectual giant (his science never challenged at the peer reviewed level) when set beside the mentally inert coterie at the top of "AIDS".
That's the coterie that prefer to support the misdirected system than fund true science, let alone the rabble here following at their heels, contradicting their very own leaders and saying that AZT is a good thing to give to the immune damaged, and that the "AIDS" wood can hide its shape behind a few of its trees.
To me this is the core point here. The inability to discern the wood amidst the trees is what separates the chickens from the eagles. It is what separates the Meme gang from the sharp witted independent thinkers just listed here, who retain their critical faculties and use them, unlike yourselves, for more than reflex justification of the choice of branch they are sitting on, a justification which always turns out to be a pretense that a twig represents the tree, and a few trees the wood.
Get off the darn branch and stand back from the tree you are sitting on and see whether it is alive or dead. Everybody else standing away from it can see that it is dead.
The Monty Python skit where the shopkeeper insists that a dead parrot is really alive and just "sleeping" even when it shows no sign of life when held by its claws and whacked by John Cleese on the counter was written about you guys, sorry to say.
But how much longer can we laugh when 9,000 a year are dying from symptoms of your cure and not of the supposed disease?
I can hear it from where I'm at too Truthseeker!
Cluck - cluck - cluck - cluck - cluck - cluck - cluck,,
ER - ERRT - Er - Er!
In short, Truthseeker and Carter, when called upon to defend errors in Duesberg's 'science', you have no response but bluster.
Come on kids,
If you've got something then show. Aah! I get it now; they are sticking it to us conspirists by inventing their own conspiracy. "I know something you don't and I won't tell you!"
Where is your reason and science now, truthiness, mole, coolaid et al? Anything?
Headless chickens? The mantra used to be : "the Lord Duesberg has said, ... (insert inane fantasy here)" Now it's just bleating.
I guess they're having trouble on some other blog with some other wild conspiracy theory.
The Twister says Lord Duesberg is great never made a mistake and AZT is a poison nothing else.
Every one here says he's wrong, we have all the articles and stuff to prove it.
So Twister acts like a school kid on the playground and says, your gay!! your a chicken!! And his friends make animal noises.
All deniosaurs want is a scientific debate, until they get it and they can't do their side of it.
They'll be back,
"show me the ONE paper..."
"Padian demonstrates..."
"The Da Vinci Code says..."
"I found this in a box of corn flakes..."
Initial studies on the toxicity of AZT in humans were promising. Again, in contrast to what Truthseeker claims.
The nonsensical evasion of the Meme bunch here is enshrined forever in this remark.
Initial studies of the toxicity of AZT were wrong, for reasons described earlier - they were hasty and did not show what would really happen to the unfortunates who imbibed this AIDS nectar overmore than a few days.
Subsequent experiments and the experience of patients as measured by more thorough scientists and the CDC showed the real outcome would be accelerated deaths among the immune compromised,
No one challenges this fact, even you guys - you just try and draw a red herring across its path by focusing on the early studies and trying to let Horvitz and Beltz off the hook by saying they didn't find it was toxic.
Duesberg being a bright scientist knew better, it seems. Since you never allow intelligent perception to be factored into thisn discussion, you remain blind to why he thought so.
Fine, remain blind, get those guys off the hook with their inadequate science and unjustified conclusion that AZT was "promising" against an inert culprit blamed without any better science than theirs for immune dysfunction.
The fact remains that dna chain terminators do not recsue damaged immune systems, you numbskulls. They just initially form a crude substitute for the lack of strong immune response by polishing off a few parasitic infections and worms and bacteria like any toxic agent.
They don't rescue immunity, they defeat it. Stop pretending that they do.
All your stuff is like opening a can of worms that is marked with a "do not use" date that is long past. Let's chuck some AZT at it.
A reference for you, or rather anyone sane who wants to check all this, is David T. Chiu and Peter H. Duesberg, The toxicity of azidothymidine (AZT) on human and animal cells in culture at concentrations used for antiviral therapy, in Genetica, 1995, as Houston noted just now, reprinted in AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced? 143-149, 1996. Peer reviewed.
Yes, "unexpectedly, variants of all cell types emerged over time that were partially resistant to AZT." But "it is concluded that AZT, at the dosage prescribed as an anti-HIV drug, is highly toxic to human cells."
The initial study by the manufacturer of the drug and their collaborators suggested that it was fine to use AZT since it only inhibited human T cells at 2000- to 20,000 times higher dose than needed to inhibit HIV replication, sure.
However, after licensing "several independent studies reported 20-1000 fold lower inhibitory doses" would harm human T cells and human bone marrow cells, correcting the manufacturer's claim. They ranged as low as 1uM to 50 uM. In fact, "life threatening toxic effects were reported in humans given AZT doses of 20-60uM."
There is no peer reviewed journal-published 'A. Pereira' contradiction of this, sorry idiot non scientist Adele, and if blood levels of AZT in treated patients are lower than Duesberg estimated they were reducing the dosage, anyway.
In a monkey study of 40 mg = 600 mg equivalent human AZT dose daily (O. A. Olivero et al 2001 Experimental Biology and Medicine, "Plasma drug levels compared with DNA incorporation of AZT in adult... monkeys", 226: 446-449, 2001)) plasma levels matched Adele's claim but they were diluted 400 times and allowing for this the outcome figure exceeded Duesberg's estimate of human plasma levels at 500-1500 mg. dosage.
Anyhow, non-liar never-liar, always impeccable scientist Duesberg was dealing with Broder's claim in 1986, which turned out to be bunk. Oral bioavailability of AZT is a fairly high 64%, by the way, in an adult, according to the PDR.
PDR: "Warning: Retroviur (zidovudine) has been associated with hematologic toxicity including neutropenia and severe anemia particularly in patients with advanced HIV disease.....etc etc etc etc etc "
Welcome to anemia, AZT milk shake chickens.
Muscle wasting ... Swollen liver. Death.
Cluck, cluck...caaaarrr...k.
Grab that chicken and wack it on the counter. It's "sleeping".
.
I LIKE THIS ONE
"Due to Extremely Low Titers, HIV Can Be Isolated Only with Great Difficulty from AIDS Patients. Koch further postulated that it must be possible to isolate and propagate the etiological agent from all cases of the disease. However, virus isolation, although possible in up to 80% of AIDS cases, is technically very difficult and is perhaps best described as maieutic (23, 69, 70, 81-84). It depends on reactivation of dormant proviruses from one or a few latently infected lymphocytes among millions of uninfected lymphocytes from AIDS patients. This is only possible by culturing these cells for several weeks in vitro, away from the suppressive, virus-neutralizing immune system of the host (23, 48-50). Even then success sometimes comes only after 15 (!) trials (85). These difficulties and the often over 20% failure rate (84) in isolation of HIV from AIDS patients are consistent with the extremely low titers of HIV in such patients. Thus, HIV does not meet Koch's second postulate."
Twister says no peer reviewed contradiction of Duesberg. Well actually lots from before and after Duesberg's "peer reviewed" thing in the journal he edited.
STart on Markus Ruhnke its october 1993 AA and C peer reviewed, Duesberg could of read it they looked at kinetics of AZT when you eat or fast before you take it. They were AIDS patients who took 500 to 1000 mg a day, they got 100 or 250 mg dose and measured plasma. AZT shoots up for fasting people between 1 and 2 micromolar , goes down to 100 nanomolar in 3.5 hours. If your eating it only goes up at 500 or 600 nanomolar and back downnear to 100 nanomolar.
Yeah and diluted plasma?? Ofelia Olivero measured AZT in plasma, they diluted the plasma for the test. The numbers are for whole plasma so you think they are so stupid they didnt correct for dilution. It says in plasma not in diluted plasma.
Plasma level in monkeys who got 1.15 times the human dose were from 223 nanomolar in monkey 304 to 407 nanomolar in monkey 297. Duesberg said 20 to 60 micromolar in humans.
Human studies animal studies, before 1995 after 1995, Duesberg is so wrong it hurts!!
That's page 93 in Infectious AIDS: Have We Been Misled? By Peter Duesberg.'
Bedside reading for all who savor lucidity over foggy brained faith.
More bluster, TS? If you don't understand why Duesberg was wrong in his calculations of AZT concentrations, just say so. I expect, despite your insults, that someone would be willing to try to explain it to you.
Adele's rant above is based on perceiving the idea of the infectious HIV, monkey Meme AIDS zOnE theory, is correct, but when looked at objectively, it's obviously a very convoluted piece of crap. Why? because the only thing HIV is to AIDS is some correlation, weak as it may be, and we all know correlation doesn't equal causation. Sheez.. I just love it when the protectors of the theory still claim the theory is not a theory any more. Then they all try and say its proven because there's hundreds of thousands all thinking like it has been. Adele just has her panties on BaSs AcKwArDs.
So now I'm gay and I wear my panties backwards. Personally I don't know what's so hienous about either but oh well whatever floats your fantasy!!
So here's a question how do you get to Duesberg's concentration, 20 to 60 micromolar AZT in your body. Since they used to try for 1 micromolar in people and then it was 500 nanomolar and it inhibits RT at under that. And since people are mostly in nanomolar concentratoin back in the 80s on the high doses!! It was in lots of papers before 1995. So how do you get to 20 to 60 micromolar? Well may be you could take like a month supply at once.
Am Journal of Med
Broder 1990, 88
Take the old daily per kilogram dose, get enough of it for two weeks, give it all to a mouse at once. For half an hour you'll get concentration in Duesberg range before it goes down.
Pharmacokinetics of 3'-Azido-3'-Deoxythymidine and Its Catabolites
and Interactions with Probenecid in Rhesus Monkeys by Erika Cretton et al in AA and C May 1991
Give a cyno four times the per kg per day person dose all at once and give it sub-q not PO, your up in low Duesberg range for 20 minutes then down.
So pump an animal full of AZT, you get there. Guess what at doses people tried, people don't get into the Duesberg range.
Gene Morse et al AAC march 1990,
Here there's people on AZT taking 1200 mg every day, after a dose the maximum plasma concentration is average 7.7 micromolar at first and it goes down to 280 nanomolar four hours later. and lower at night when you don't get another does. After they were on it four months the max is 6.4 micromolar, goes down under 400 nanomolar four hr later. So before, they reduced dose to 600 mg/day these people still didn't get to Duesberg range even at max AZT right after you take the dose.
Truthless believes something Duesberg put in a journal issue he edited and he didn't measure any thing. Above like a hundred peer review papers before that about AZT pharmaco stuff where they measured AZT. Weird.