Unclear outlook for radical journal as HIV/Aids deniers evoke outrage

This is an important story. AIDS Denialists like Peter Duesgberg and his colleagues continue to undermine HIV prevention and treatment. They continue to claim that HIV does not cause AIDS and has not afflicted South Africa. Their retracted article is debunked yet again in a new study just published in the peer reviewed journal AIDS and Behavior.

Nothing is more damaging than when AIDS denialists evade peer review and achieve the perception of credibility. Elsevier needs to fix Medical Hypotheses so that pseudoscience cannot be mistaken for science. Professor Charlton has a unique perspective on dissenting views in science. His anything goes approach that has been editorial policy at Medical Hypotheses has a place in newsletters perhaps. There is not a single scientist who would accept that paper as legitimate science. As the editor of a peer-reviewed journal I had a blinded review of that paper conducted to see for myself. The good news is it was retracted. The bad news is that the paper is widely distributed by AIDS Deniers online. Damage done and damage persists.

"There is not a single scientist who would accept that paper as legitimate science," writes Seth Kalichman--overlooking the fact that the editor of Medical Hypotheses is a scientist. I happen to disagree with Duesberg about AIDS but I also know that there have been plenty of times in the history of science when an unusual new view has been roundly criticized as impossible, beneath serious consideration -- and later turned out to be correct. Kalichman and Moore's view that not only should certain ideas not be published but that any journal that publishes them should be destroyed resembles what dictators think. It also resembles the attitude expressed in the Climategate emails where one researcher wanted to destroy a journal that had printed a dissenting view about climate change.

"My colleagues and I acted responsibly and appropriately, as did Elsevier by retracting those papers." Writes John Moore. The letters to Elsevier and NLM demanding that the two papers be reviewed had several factual errors, mixed up Duesberg's anti-HIV paper with the Ruggiero et al paper which never attempted to suggest that HIV did not cause AIDS, and went far beyond asking for a withdrawal to demanding that Medical Hypotheses be blackballed. I understand that Duesberg is a profound annoyance to the HIV research community. I agree with them: I think he is wrong. I think the specific paper in Medical Hypotheses that raised so much ire was wrong. But as an editorial board member of Medical Hypotheses, I think demanding that the entire journal be destroyed is over-reaction. When science has no place left for annoying dissenters it will have lost a basic component of honesty that is central to getting the enterprise.

When does the right for Medical Hypotheses to publish un-peer reviewed HIV denialism trump the right of the wider public to have access to honest, factual, peer reviewed information?

A journal that does not subject its papers to peer review has no business being included in Medline, or any similar scientific database. This is true whether or not the journal publishes papers that are for or against any particular scientific claim. The nature of the claim is irrelevant, it is simply that peer review is a quality control mechanism, albeit an impoerfect one, that is utilized to protect the integrity of scientific knowledge. Medline is - I thought - a database of peer reviewed journal articles.

The basic facts are that Medical Hypotheses - www.elsevier.com/locate/mehy - is explicitly and proudly editorially-reviewed (i.e. by me - not peer reviewed); aims to publish radical and revolutionary scientific ideas; and it is objectively a successful journal.

It makes a profit, the Thomson ISI Impact Factor is 1.416 (much better than average, and rising), and I know from internal sources that there are half a million papers downloaded per year - which is equivalent download usage to the prestigious Journal of Theoretical Biology.

Clearly, in spite or because of our policy to publish bold and sometimes bizarre ideas, Medical Hypotheses plays a significant role in medical science. Fact; not opinion.

The editorial advisory board currently includes such respected figures as Nobelist Arvid Carlsson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvid_Carlsson; Sir Roy Calne http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Calne; Antonio Damasio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Damasio and V.S. Ramachandran http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilayanur_S._Ramachandran .

Past editorial advisors have included Sir Karl Popper and Nobelist Sir James Black.

***

There are only two possible legitimate outcomes to the current process.

Either:

1. Medical Hypotheses could continue as an influential, profitable and well-known editorially-reviewed journal with a radical mission.

Or else:

2. The journal could be closed-down altogether, and the title abolished.

But it would obviously not be ethically acceptable to launch a new ‘imposter’ journal - with utterly different editorial aims, procedures and personnel; yet retaining the 34 year established title of Medical Hypotheses.

After what we've learned about peer review from Climategate, one has to laugh at those who suggest that peer review is the Holy Grail of science and "a quality control mechanism". We've seen that peer review can function as peer exclusion and an attempt to ruin careers, and whatever the merits or demerits of the Aids skeptic case, that is exactly what is going on here. The notion that every single journal must toe an ideological line of peer review and furthermore that the Aids skeptic case is grounds for dismissal and blackballing is both absurd and soft totalitarian. That an article and a journal be listed on MedLine and readable on the internet appears to horrify those calling for action against Medical Hypotheses, who are openly against the dissemination of information and obviously fear dissent.

If the anti-denialists are so sure of themselves, why do they call for the suppression of science?

Some years ago, when I was a referee for a physics journal, I had a paper to review which clearly contravened the second law of thermodynamics. I rejected it. A year or so later it re-appeared, modified but still at variance with the second law of thermodynamics. I again rejected it. Was I right to do so? Or was I guilty of suppressing radical science?

Seth Roberts and William Baines assert that those who wrote to Elsevier about the Ruggiero and Duesberg papers "demanded" that Medical Hypotheses must "be destroyed", Bruce Charlton, in the main article, asserts that there were "behind the scenes activities" (i.e., some form of conspiracy against him). These comments are inaccurate and, frankly, rather foolish. Calling for an investigation by a publisher into how papers such as those were accepted into a PubMed-listed journal (as I did in my own letters to Elsevier) is not the same as demanding the "destruction" of a journal. How Elsevier responded to the obvious problems caused by the journal's practices once they were aware of them is a matter for Elsevier. Having said that, my personal view is that a journal like Medical Hypotheses has no role to play in the dissemination of scientific and medical information to the public that funds much of the work of academics. Many articles in that journal simply make fools of our profession, as noted by Ben Goldacre in his 'Bad Science' articles written a year and more before this present controversy arose. I brought these articles to Elsevier's attention, and rightly so. I do not know this as a fact, but I would think that once Elsevier executives read how Medical Hypotheses is perceived, they were shocked and acted.

Bruce Charlton's attitude that he has the sole right to determine what is published in the journal is remarkably arrogant. On the particular issue of South African AIDS statistics, is he an expert who can judge whether Duesberg et al. were right? I think not. The "science" (sic) content of Duesberg et al. was so fatally flawed as to preclude the publication of the paper anywhere. Authors do not have the right to disseminate inaccurate and self-serving information to the public in a PubMed-listed journal, and an editor should not have the sole right to allow them to. If Medical Hypotheses disappeared, it would be no loss to serious science.

Elsevier has hitherto supported the form of manuscript review used by Medical Hypotheses. There seems no good reason to change this format. All journals, including those with the most rigorous peer review, publish research which is wrong. All scientists appreciate the failings of peer review. Some of such failings are clear almost immediately upon publication while others are shown to be 'wrong' with the passage of time and changes in the particular consensus opinion. Any decision to change the format of manuscript review because of political considerations cannot be condoned and can only lead to a higher level of censure than is already inherent within classical peer review. Medical Hypotheses would probably have published in 1859 a brief letter by one Charles Darwin on why primates were the possible ancestors of humans. Such an offensive proposition would probably not have been published elsewhere.

If I received $34 million dollars from NIAID Director Anthony Fauci MD, who issued HIMSELF 36 questionable grants between 2000 and 2007 , would anyone be surprised if I attacked those who exposed what now appears to be an ongoing fraud?

If not, then it’s easy to understand why John Moore ($34 million) and propagandist Seth Kalichman ($17 million) took the time out of their extremely busy schedules to attack Peter Duesberg’s questions about what is finally being recognized as a highly profitable politically-created disease. Who could blame them for abhorring the prospect of bunking with Bernie Madoff?

Not only do Moore and Kalichman profit personally from these questionable payouts, but the NIH abruptly stopped Professor Duesberg’s award-winning cancer research funding after Duesberg exposed HIV as a scam in 1988 (PNAS).

Because Moore and Kalichman are two of Fauci’s highest paid lieutenants, it’s understandable why they’re as hostile as they are, and why thousands of hard-working and uncorrupted scientists continue to remain so silent on this issue.

http://www.omsj.org/blogs/dirty-rotten-scoundrels

Bruce Charlton deserves credit for acting like a conscientious scientist and editor, under enormous and unfair pressure.

The fact is Peter Duesberg, PhD is an excellent, pioneering scientist in the field of retrovirology, and a distinguished member of the National Academy of Science.

He has published many well-reasoned critiques of the retroviral theory of AIDS in very prestigious journals such as Science, Proceedings of National Academy of Science and Cancer Research.

Of course, many scientists such as John Moore, not only object to Duesberg's work, but actively seeks to censor his work, and prevent its publication.

Make no mistake, that's what happened here. Medical Hypothesis published Duesberg's and Ruggiero's work on AIDS, but then John Moore and others worked hard to get it retracted -- not on the merits, mind you, but because they don't like the message.

In 1988, Duesberg was the first scientist to raise the question whether AZT, a former cancer chemotherapy drug, was too toxic to give to AIDS patients, and whether as a DNA-chain terminator, it was a potential carcinogen.

Last month, the State of California recognized AZT as a carcinogen.

http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/Newlist.html

Not only was it wrong to censor Duesberg, but he was correct on one highly critical scientific issue central to the issue of AIDS treatment.

Medical Hypothesis was right to publish Duesberg's and Ruggiero's paper, and should "retract" the retraction, made under duress by competing AIDS scientists.

The fact that Bruce Charlton or ANY editor of ANY publication sites WikiPedia to defend his integrity speaks for itself. WikiPedia was created as an ISP specifically to avoid the liability that comes with the blatant libelous reports that are regularly and anonymously posted on the website - which is why thousands of editors have left the website. If anything, Peter Duesberg's report might have given undeserved credibility to MH.

http://www.omsj.org/corruption/thunderbolts-report-wikipedia-woes

How hilarious it is to read these bombastic and apocalyptic threats from John Moore and Seth Kalichman.

Their frenzied, manic style suggests anew that such HIV-causes-AIDS adherents cling tenaciously to what Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has termed the "mentality of taboo."

According to Pinker, some debates become so entwined with people’s moral identity that they can never be resolved by reason and evidence. The mentality of taboo describes an intellectual loop into which one enters, accepts its main propositions, and then finds it difficult or impossible to escape.

HIV-causes-AIDS mainstreamers like Moore and Kalichman are furiously ensnared in their own loops.

Within their mentality of taboo, certain ideas are so dangerous that it is sinful even to think about them. Defenders of the HIV-causes-AIDS theory are outraged at even being asked to entertain a contrary thought as the superb article that should be published in "Medical Hypotheses" obliges them to do.

Not only do Moore and Kalichman refuse to consider such proposals, but they would allow no one permission even to think about them because that very thought is self-evidently sinful and deserves only condemnation.

Reading these exchanges or watching the fine documentary film *House of Numbers* (2009) one sees how incendiary and unyielding the HIV-causes-AIDS dogmatists become when challenged, especially people like. Moore and Kalichman who are blithely ignorant of South African history.

Their trembling frenzy and shaking anger show how the HIV/AIDS establishment resembles addicts unable to end their addiction since, in the case of Moore and Kalichman, it would stop the flow of funds and damage their social standing.

Their characteristic response to critics entails a haughty refusal to debate them or (in this case) even to permit people to read counter-arguments.

Psychologists use the term "denial" to refer to defense mechanisms that people may use to resolve conflicts or allay anxieties. The characteristic responses about one’s addiction include silence, rigidity, and denial. That’s how a patient disavows any thoughts, wishes or needs about external realities that they know are consciously unpleasant or may undermine their professional status.

Look how easy it was for this single article to unnerve Moore and Kalichman just by asking tough questions and reinterpreting statistical data.

The denials from Moore and Kalichman involve a kind of emotional numbness that occurs when someone encounters something considered threatening to his ego image or purpose. This allows a person to maintain his status quo behavior while minimizing emotional (or statistical) dissonance from within or without.

Moore and Kalichman inhabit the world of HIV/AIDS orthodoxy where their knee-jerk denial of the many errors and dangerous inconsistencies of their own dogmas has become a way of life.

An irresponsible state of denial is widespread among the AIDS mainstreamers like Moore and Kalichman who dismiss inconvenient facts but expect the public to ignore how they have squandered billions of dollars in a futile pursuit of one costly research project after another.

By shifting the blame to insinuate that HIV/AIDS skeptics suffer from a psychological defect, the defenders of the orthodoxy hope to ignore their challenges.

In my opinion, the scope of the HIV/AIDS scandal is staggering, particularly since the claims made by these orthodox scientists have shaped public health policies around the world.

As a growing audience reads the article in *Medical Hypotheses* and continues to pepper folks like Moore and Kalichman with harder and trickier questions, it will be interesting to see how (or if) responsibility for this debacle gets assigned.

One wonders if it will ever be possible to repair the damage some dogmatists like Moore and Kalichman have done to their professions.

Most journals in Pubmed are peer reviewed but not all of them are. In addition, some journals publish a mixture of peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed articles and both types of article will be included when the journal is indexed in Pubmed. The US National Library of Medicine, producer of Pubmed, does say, however, that 'Scientific merit of a journal's content is the primary consideration in selecting journals for indexing' in Medline, the major component of Pubmed.

@ Seth Kalichman

Kary Mullis is a scientist who doesn't agree that HIV causes AIDS, and you wouldnt be able to test for HIV without his research.

Geshekter, Baker and Scheff are long standing AIDS denialists whose views should be ignored by any rational individuals.

Professors John Moore and Seth Kalichman have received millions of research dollars from the NIH to support and promote the retroviral theory of AIDS.

Is it any wonder that they violently oppose all scientists who factually dispute the retroviral theory of AIDS?

"I am all for new and radical ideas in science," writes Seth Kalichman. Duesberg's ideas about AIDS are about 20 years old -- not new, I agree. But I don't agree there should be a statue of limitations. I don't agree that if your radical new idea has not gotten mainstream acceptance in X years, you should never say it again. My point is that science benefits from a diversity of journals -- journals with a wide range of acceptance and editorial policies -- so that radical ideas can be communicated widely even as they are ridiculed. To find solutions to difficult problems, you need to 1. Consider a wide range of possibilities. 2. Test each of them. A journal like Medical Hypotheses, as its title says, helps the rest of us consider a wide range of possibilities. When you consider a wide range of solutions to a problem, it's inevitable that some of them, maybe even most of them, will be wrong.

As for John Moore’s 330,000 dead South Africans, South Africa’s own mortality statistics prove that all infectious disease, including the alleged cause of AIDS, has been statistically irrelevant in the US since 1960… http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/JAMATrendsArmstrong.pdf... and remains irrelevant in Europe, Australia and South Africa (2007).

http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/Africa1997_2002.pdf
http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/Africa2007.pdf

While Moore blames HIV for South Africa’s mortality, he doesn’t explain how Africa’s 1600+ international mining companies now prevent mine-related lung diseases that killed millions of Africa’s slave laborers between 1880 and 2000. To what does Moore attribute the alleged increase in HIV mortality and the correlative disappearance of mine-related lung diseases? Could it be that companies like DeBeers and AngloGold avoid billions of dollars in liability by blaming mine-related lung diseases on the stereotypical mating habits of the African population?

http://www.omsj.org/corruption/hiv-africa-connecting-the-dots

John Moore’s knowledge of the economic, medical, statistical and historical realities of South Africa is less than non-existent. That glaring defect enables him to utter his mindless blather and garbled gibberish about AIDS in that country.

Professor Geshekter is an Emeritus Professor of African Studies from California who has lived in Africa, worked in Africa, was hired by the State Department to consult about Africa, and speaks several African dialects fluently.

Professor John Moore, at best, has read newspaper articles about Africa.

Henry Bauer writes:
"...article’s authors, who would naturally be in the best position to comment on the technical allegations..."
This is laughable and hypocritical coming from Mr. Bauer who often takes articles out of context on an almost daily basis at his blog.
Here is an example from Lancet 2006 368: 451–58. Bauer writes:

"Interpretation Virological response after starting HAART improved over calendar years, but such improvement has not
translated into a decrease in mortality."

The truth from that paper is, as Ben Goldacre points out:
The lack of a "decrease in mortality" that is being referred to in that quote involves a comparison of mortality AFTER JUST ONE YEAR ON TREATMENT among people who started treatment in 95/96 compared to people who started in 2002/3.
Mortality after one year of treatment in 95/96 was 2.2% (27 deaths out of a cohort of 1,232 people) and in 2002/3 it was 1.3% (25 deaths out of a cohort of 1,932 people). This is not a statistically significant difference. BUT IT IS NOT A COMPARISON OF TREATMENT vs. NO TREATMENT.

How can Mr. Bauer be taken seriously when he does not even give authors the respect of quoting them properly?
JTD

Perhaps we should leave the personal attacks aside and address the issue. Just a thought.

A solution that would not compromise the aims of the journal would be to keep the current editorial policy, but farm out the editor's role to a much larger body of specialist co-editors (not reviewers), who would then select the best articles. Each submitted manuscript would be sent to 3 specialist co-editors who would return their decision (2 out of 3 = publishable) along with their suggestions for improvement (NOT conditions for acceptance).

Or perhaps the co-editors could receive 2 or 3 submitted manuscripts and choose the best one, or two. The authors would still be ultimately responsible for their work, and the follies of the more common peer-review system would still be avoided.

Yes, AIDS Denialists probably have it wrong, but they do have, nevertheless, strong points to be made or they would have never made it this far. Duesberg may seem like a nutty guy, but he is very very smart and has earned my respect many years before AIDS was known. Given the sheer number of people affected by HIV/AIDS, loss of life, and money spent, it makes good reason to keep an open point-of-view. The more science and medicine pushes back against Denialists, the more they will attack us. There are plenty of examples from our History Books where science was wrong.

Medicine Must Stay Objective.

ALWAYS REMEMBER: It is not what we DO NOT KNOW that will cause the most harm; rather, it is WHAT WE KNOW TO BE TRUE BUT ISN'T that will be our undoing.

It is a shame when a scientific debate cites the names of scientists who support their views much more often than citing the experimental data that succinctly supports or refutes a given hypothesis. When people rather than experimental data are the main arbiters of scientific "truth" science is in trouble indeed. The political game of going after a journal and its editor when an unpopular article is published is an easily recognizable power play to squelch scientific debate by arguing that certain viewpoints are not worthy of debate.

I am not sufficiently knowledgable in the field to be sure whether the paper under discussion is worthy of debate. However, avenues such as Medical Hypothesis have great value in contributing to important scientific debates, and the dubious value of a small number of papers that perhaps should not have been published is outweighed by the much greater value of legitimate debate encouraged by the majority of the papers published.

Authoritarian power plays almost always serve to give much greater voice to the viewpoint they are attempting to supress. Answering a paper by publishing a response through the standard mechanisms is sufficient to make one's point. If the discussion of the data on the merits is compelling, most relevant readers will be convinced. Aiming one's argument at the authors/editors rather than their arguments appears to be vindictive.

How perfect to have a top scientist who's accessed $34 million in research grants -- John P. Moore -- extol the virtues of censorship and brag about how successful he's been at it, keeping that whole public who pays his considerable salary in the dark.

"A betrayal of the public that funds most of our work." That's really funny, when he treats that "public" like a bunch of naughty schoolkids who must obey his censorship or, literally, die. And "a higher morality." Gotta love that one. $34 million must buy a lot of "higher" things, and not just "morality."

Moore says he wants only proper, peer-reviewed research to be considered. So consider it. Go to www.aras.ab.ca for a good library of peer-reviewed research. If it supports Moore's conclusions, then fine. If it doesn't, then maybe you might look in all those places Moore doesn't want you to look.

To wit: Moore doesn't want to you watch "Guinea Pig Kids" (don't watch www.guineapigkids.com) or "House of Numbers" (don't see www.houseofnumbers.com). He also doesn't want you hanging out with bad seeds like Peter Duesberg and Clark Baker. (So avoid, at all costs, going to the "Hollywood Gumshoe" site or Peter Duesberg's own site. Just ignore them, OK?) Whatever you do, don't go to the articles archive at www.virusmyth.com. Or to www.rethinkingaids.com.

And when you're done NOT visiting all those sites, don't drop in at www.askdeblasiowhy.com, check out the kids being used in truly awful drug trials, and send me a note, through that site, telling me how misleading it all is.

I think the lack of credible science and abundance of personal abuse in the rant style postings by the self proclaimed supporters of Dr Duesberg nicely illustrates why having his paper retracted from Medical Hypotheses was the right thing to do. If these people support him, then it's obvious there's a serious problem!

The article was retracted. The question, therefore is: "is it fair to destroy a journal because it has published an article that had to be retracted?" How many peer-reviewed journals can proof they never published an article that had to be retracted later? Are we going to propose their closure based on that?
Closing journals evokes dictatures, whilst freedom of expression and creativity are much needed virtues, in science and beyond. Whilst there are thousands of peer-reviewed journals, killing one of the few that allows hypotheses to be expressed (and discussed, and criticized) would be a very unwise decision.

One should not destroy a unique journal because of mistakes and a retraction. About one month ago I published an article in Medical Hypothesis " Transfusion of sickle cells may be a therapeutic option for patients suffering metastatic disease" . The idea came to me when I learned that my closest friend had been diagnosed with a very aggressive cancer. Many that I spoke with thought it to be a possible novel treatment that at least should be tested first in animal models. The treatment could be totally ineffective or it could help millions. Medical Hypotheses allowed me to rapidly disseminate the idea so others could consider scientific work in their laboratories. Medical Hypotheses is a unique publication that should be preserved.

Joe S Goldberg. There's a world of difference between you publishing a medical hypothesis for the attention of anyone interested, and Duesberg et al. publishing an article that does NOT present ANY medical hypothesis, but merely contains inaccurate and false analyses that attempt to contradict the work of legitimate scientists on totally spurious grounds. Likewise, Ruggiero et al.'s "hypothesis" is no such thing, by any sensible definition of the word.

The letters of concern written to Elsevier (at least those I have seen) did NOT demand the closure of the journal, they asked for an investigation of how the Duesberg and Ruggiero papers came to be published - among other points of concern was that neither presented a medical hypothesis, contrary to the apparent purpose of the journal. How Elsevier responded to those letters is up to Elsevier, as is the future of the journal. The expressions of concern about some of the articles Medical Hypotheses publish were taken seriously, and rightly so, because they were meritorious. My own view is that the journal needs a new editor and a better way of detecting and rejecting articles that are merely silly or worse. The world of Blogs is the place for such articles, not PubMed-listed journals.

So, again, what you have published is a different kettle of fish from what was raised as problematic. If you were to read the two papers, you might see the point.

Eliza Jane is exactly right. Clark and his gang are being sued for $5 M for the kind of baseless attacks in this blog.

Clark has said that REAL men and women would welcome a court of law to defend their statements. All denialists are welcome to join Clark in this lawsuit.

Elizabeth, are you ready to join Clark in this lawsuit? I should think you would welcome a chance to state your views in court. Perhaps all denialists on this blog will volunteer to be sued. Sure, you will lose, but you will have the honor of putting your views on the record.

Any person who supports Clark Baker's actions to disrupt doctors careers should clearly state their belief, and submit a statement on this blog. Any person who has assisted Clark can merely submit their address so that they can be properly served.

Clark's actions have real consequences. People who help Clark disrupt doctors careers need to admit what they have done, and testify in a court of law.

Dear friends,

These days are very sad about what happend in Haiti.

I want that you know that I have published 9 hypotheses in Medical Hypotheses, and none of them have been critized. I also have published my works in Ann NY Acad of Sciences, Vaccine, Exp Hematology, Novascience, Drugs of the future. look for me as an author: halabe bucay (without hyphen).
In Mexico, we have many patients documented that are exposed to VIH and didn´t get infected, they are resistant to VIH, can you explain me that?. The answer: because there are other factors than VIH to produce the AIDS infection.
I can show to all of you articles from many "prestigous" journals that are really controversial, such as those who declare that Helicobacter pylory is the main cause of cancer, or that asthma is sole an allergic disease, or that dipirone is very dangerous (In Mexico we use dipirone every day), or that MMR vaccine cause autism.
We have to respect each author ideas, that´s a Universal principle.
I believe that Bruce G. Charlton is a very profesional Editor.
I published in Medical hypotheses my work regarding the hypothesis that citric acid can be the cure for cancer: doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2007.02.002
and I also published in Medical Hypotheses the first patient with cancer who improves after taking citric acid orally:
doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.03.018
Today, more than 25 patients with cancer, most of them with terminal cancer, have improved after taking citric acid orally, all of them,10 to 15 grams each 8 hours. Including patients with leukemia, breast cancer, melanoma, pulmonary cancer, cervical-uterine cancer, etc.
Try it, and give citric acid to patients with cancer, you will see the results, in 5 to ten days....
And finally, Dr Clark Baker, I personally believe that Wikipedia is a serious source of information.
If anyone wants information about my work, including studies of the patients refered, please contact me:

doctorhalabe@hotmail.com

Sorry, is Helicobacter pylori...

I havn´t write it from along time ago.

The obvious repressive nature of the proponents of the HIV=AIDS hypotheses is clearly evidenced by their responses to Duesberg's fundamental right to express his thoughts on HIV. Their determination to diminish his (ours) innate human capacity and right to express his rational questioning regarding HIV is astounding in its presumptive hubris. The choke hold that is placed on individuals by the HIV=AIDS proponents is a disgrace to the human race and is so very, very far from the Socratic ideal.

Which one of these groups is seeing the shadows of Plato's cave? Those that seek to diminish the rational capacity of man. Those that want to have us remain in the cave with them. How else to explain the vehemence of their irrational response to Socratic questioning?

Orwell is turning in his grave: 1984 indeed !!!!!

Dr Fred,

I am not agree with anyone that denies the existence of HIV epidemic, I published an article, also an hypothesis to improve the immunogenicity of AIDS vaccines and to try to stop the epidemy:

Clinical hypothesis: Application of AIDS vaccines together with thyroid hormones to increase their immunogenic effect
Vaccine, Volume 25, Issue 33, 14 August 2007, Pages 6292-6293
Alberto Halabe Bucay

Fred, Liam, Elizabeth and Scheff, and Celia Farber

Clearly, you believe that Clark Baker is right to disrupt doctors careers. Since this is your belief, why not say so in a court of law? If you work with Clark to defame your opponents, simply let us know your address and your attorney so that you can be properly served in a court of law?

Clark is silent for some reason, but in the past he loudly states that REAL people welcome the opportunity to defend themselves in court. This can now be easily arranged.

Clark has had a lot to say, but as usual, methinks the Clark doth protest too much.

And finally, sorry about my english spell...

As a medical student during my youth, i have been critisized and humiliated multibple times by my peers and teachers for my radical ideas. Humans are not use to accept thoughts beyond a frame. During my second year of medical schooling, i proposed a radical thought that FNAC might lead to distant metastasis of malignacy. Fortunately promoters of FNAC may not be regular readers of Medical Hypotheses and that paper wasnt objected.
During third year of my medical schooling, i suggested a formula to calculate expected date of delivary and did a study among medical students. The data concludes that medical students make errors while calculating EDD, and the formula suggested by me can reduce the errors significantly. The original study has been rejected by so many peer reviewed (so called scientific) journals, while the paper could get place in Medical Hypotheses.
During my fellowship in diabetology, i published a hypothesis that being very intensive in mangement of diabetic pregnancy can be harmful. Luckily there are a few more people who agree with it. A novel parameter - Index of Central Obesity was published by me in this journal and is getting a wider acceptance now, so much so that a PhD student (georgia State University - http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-07232008-232710/unrestricted/Griesemer_Thesis.pdf) was alloted a thesis to validate it, and the editor of Expert Review of Cardiovascular Therapy has taken it for key paper evaluation.
I can say that the quinch of an innovative person in the field of medicine can be satisfied only by Medical Hypothese. Peer review should only be meant to evaluate the methodology of some original paper. Definitely the radical thoughts need to be immune to the killing process of peer review. Any change in the present status of the journal would definitely an obituary to budding scientists with innovative aptitute.

Medical Hypotheses functions today a bit like Nature under the editorship of John Maddox in the 80s. John Maddox published many items of "scientific correspondence" and even proper papers on a gut feeling that they proposed something important and did so without peer review.

Today I scan the contents of MH and find in each issue one or two articles that have similar interest because they are unlikely to be found elsewhere. Some might have passed review but their interest is often that they are so interdisciplinary that no real "peer group" exists that could properly evaluate them.

Science is an ecology of ideas that needs diverse publication habitats. One of those is the instinct of a good editor -- John Maddox or Bruce Charlton as what is interesting science rather than peer review. John Maddox in 1988 published a paper by Jacques Benveniste on these grounds that supported homeopathy that led to similar attacks faced now by Charlton so this kind of editorship is not without risk.

Medical Hypotheses is an important part of the ecology of science.

I will not discuss the AIDS issue, but I am pretty sure, that Medical Hypotheses is an extremely important journal. Peer review is the best procedure we have, but it is not the only way of publishing. And all scientists know that peer review is associated with an important bias - it is quite problematic to publish data or ideas not in line with the current general view. There must be a "Hyde Park" fur such unconventional ideas despite the higher risk that some or even most of them are not correct. Do not forget the Watson & Crick paper about the structure of DNA, it has not been peer reviewed although published in Nature.

Med Hypotheses is a leading and main stream medical journal. Several research scientists from all over the world really enjoy reading fascinating, new and thought-provoking ideas in this journal.

Viva med Hypothesis…

Funny how no one has brought up whether the paper under question is any good or not... Michael Pyshnov above, for example, says: "It is clear to me that the article (which I have not read) should have never been retracted.". I'm curious as to how he came to this conclusion given that he has no idea what is in it. Myself, I have read the article concerned, several times and closely. It is readily available on the website of one of its co-authors. As science - or even as a preliminary sketch of a scientific hypothesis - it is utterly woeful, and would fail even as a first-year end-of semester essay in any competently run epidemiology course. It is loaded with elementary errors of fact, logical non-sequiturs, ridiculous claims like the fortyfold increase in antenatal HIV seorprevalence over 15 years in South Africa being consistent with stable prevalence, and outright and deliberate misrepresentation of at least one key study of antiretroviral treatment. For it to be accepted for publication in a Pub-Med listed journal suggests to me that the editorial process for that journal is incapable of distinguishing between a worthwhile if unproven hypothesis and outright scientifically illiterate bilge and worse. That being the case, a fair question is whether the journal concerned should be PubMed listed.

If a hypothesis paper advances a non-trivial idea, relies on the factual information that is available, clearly underlines its hypothesis status and states how the required experimental confirmation is to be collected, it deserves to be published and listed in Medline. I think Medical Hypotheses, being edited by Prof. Bruce G. Charlton, publishes precisely the papers of this sort and, therefore, performs a very valuable function in the scientific community. Cleary, the journal and its editor deserve full support from the scientific community. Even if 1% of the published hypotheses are indeed correct, the benefits for science are immence. If some people cannot differentiate between a theoretical paper and a factual paper, it is their fault, not the fault of the journal, the editor or indeed the author.

I completely agree with Oleg Tolmachov. There is a deceptive ulterior motive being played out here. Yes, this HIV manuscript is ridiculous. However, it is being used to undermine the concept of a non-peer reviewed journal. Such a journal has some negatives such as the HIV article in question. However, it is overwhelmingly outweighed by postives. The positives involve rapid dissemination of out of the box thinking to may lead to important new insights and approaches. And what is dangerous about this HIV article anyway? Anyone with common sense is going to ignore it. Do you really think its publication is going to cause groundswell of support?

From the time of its founding in the early nineteenth century until about 15 years ago, The Lancet published medical hypotheses reviewed by a single editor in London. The Lancet is now a more conventional medical journal and no longer regularly publishes hypotheses as such. Medical Hypotheses is the only journal in English that does this, and should continue to do so. Unusual hypotheses are the basis for many advances in science. Without these hypotheses, where will such advances come from?

Yes, Dr Judson, you are quite right on both counts: the manuscript is ridiculous and there is a deceptive ulterior motive being played out here. The motive is to gain credibility for a largely internet-based propaganda group called "Rethinking AIDS" who directly target people with HIV or who are at risk, and try to convince them that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that AIDS is not sexually transmissible, that testing for HIV is useless and that treatments for HIV/AIDS do more harm than good. Four out of the five co-authors of this paper are board members of this group - the fifth is a 22 year old lab assistant who works with the first author ... The ulterior motive has nothing to do with presenting a bona fide hypothesis for consideration by "fellow" scientists with the background to critically examine the claims - the purpose of this paper is to provide a patina of credibility for the internet activities of HIV/AIDS denialists - so they can claim "Look: a real life scientific paper supporting our cause!". As one of the co-authors made explicit on his blog: "At any rate, AIDStruthers [the scientific mainstream that holds that HIV exists and causes AIDS] are not the audience to be courted. Their arguments must be countered with answers directed to the media and the general public in terms that are understandable by and clearly convincing for unengaged observers. That means the points cannot be too technical."
http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2008/12/26/cognitive-dissonance-a-human-condition/ ...I would hope that a medical doctor such as yourself would be horrified by such a perverse and morally reprehensible project. If you are not yet, then read this heartbreaking thread on the main HIV/AIDS denialist discussion group: http://forums.aidsmythexposed.com/main-forum/6115-reaching-almost-end-line.html

Oleg Tolmochov put it very clear and consise. Medical Hypotheses is the only place where people with radical thoughts can put there concepts. It is very clear that its just a hypothesis. There is no harm in putting some hypothesis (even in pub med listed journal) if the audience understands the diff between hypothesis and thesis. It would very much unfortunate if such thought are not allowed to be read by the scientific community. I here remember Galilio whose hypothesis of earth being spherical was critisized to the same extreme by the scientific community of that time.

I published two papers in MH. No, I won`t advertise like some other fellows did (see above). It is very hard to publish hypotheses in scientific journals these days. Mainstream scientists are obsessed with experiments and data. Problem is, if you look at the wrong place, you won`t find the important data. Thus, if the mainstream theoretical model is wrong, 1000s of scientists are producing junk data.

The "dangerous" paper is retracted, so what`s the problem of a journal which publishes theoretical papers?

I can not even begin to imagine firing an editor because he screwed up on one article. Should not that one screw up be forgiven if there were dozens of articles that turned out to be priceless that would not have had a prayer of a chance getting by reviewers, almost all of whom believe they have a solemn duty to torpedo a hypothesis? The annals of science are replete with times when authors were snow balled or worse. I think I recall Archimedes being murdered, Bruno burned at the stake, Galileo placed under house arrest, Pasteur ridiculed, Arrhenius almost washed out of graduate school because of that inane ionization hypothesis of his. Leeuwenhoek was a janitor and Einstein a patent clerk. Should we miss Einstein’s photon hypothesis just because he came up with that ridiculous warped ether hypothesis? I have published over a dozen hypotheses. Every one of them failed to get a favorable review and were only published because the editor went to bat for me (those editors included editors in Journal of Applied Nutrition, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Bulletin of the N.J. Academy of Science, Speculations in Science and Technology, Clinical and Experimental Rheumatology, Journal of Soil Biology and Ecology, and of course, Medical Hypotheses). Should those journal’s editors have been fired? Keep in mind that none of the hypotheses have been refuted yet, and one has been brilliantly substantiated by Dr Rastmanesh in relation to a disease that costs the world tens of billions of dollars each year, rheumatoid arthritis (see; Rastmanesh R. 2008 A pilot study of potassium supplementation in treatment of hypokalemic patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A randomized, double-blinded, placebo controlled trial. The Journal of Pain. Vol. 9; p722.). Maybe Dr Charlton should be replaced, but who to replace him with? In such an extremely important, even priceless, post, a panel of the world’s premier psychologists should be convened with instructions to select someone with the following characteristics; A high emotional skepticism toward accepted paradigms, a university degree in the biological sciences, a propensity to make risky decisions, totally honest, independently wealthy so he is not concerned about losing his position, a propensity to hire or use like minded assistants, and preferably has been shot down by reviewers himself in the past. However, while we patiently wait for this paragon to be evaluated, my vote is to keep a man of proven merit, even though he is not nearly skeptical enough, and might even would have lit the match under poor Bruno. If he is not wealthy enough, it can easily be solved by the publisher plopping a large sum in his bank. That would be cheaper than hiring the psychologists.
PS Dr. Charlton, you have my permission to delete the part about the match under poor Bruno if you wish.

Medical Hypotheses is one of my favorite journals. I published in MH and like to read those manuscripts. Nowaday, mainstream science is more and more supported by funds and grants, nobody has the courage to publish hypotheses or nieched research. The peer review process is sometimes very helpful and useful but it sometimes destroys the verve and joy of research. Reasonable research should start with a good idea and a possibly bold idea that can be proven with data. My expericence is that bold ideas are never published as there is no a large body of literature to cite and if there is a large body of evidence, reviewers do not accept manuscripts for publication as the idea is not revolutionary enough. Furthermore, most reviewers remain anonymous leaving them a lot of room for other interests than the spirit of science.
I have always appreciated the honest way of Medical Hypotheses and will be highly dissapointed if it has to be transformed into a peer reviewed journal.

I have completely lost faith in the honesty of the scientific establishment and in the honesty of journal editors; please, see my web site at www.universitytorontofraud.com But now, my comment here related to AIDS research and policies (mentioning Gallo and J. Mann, as well as what I believe to be other severe problems with AIDS research and policies) has been removed. My comment pointed to the scientific problems and problems with science policies that now are, very sadly, taken out of the discussion. I probably can safely state now only that in my opinion the article in question should have never been retracted. This opinion is based not on the merits or the lack of merits of this article (which I have not read), but on my belief in the freedom to express an opinion on scientific problems. In the past, I published two papers in the Journal of Theoretical Biology that contravened the established views. Now, something terrible happened to science.

Dr. Charlton is a great guy. I am not saying this because he accepted some of my manuscripts (he also rejected some of them). I say it because he has a daunting task of going through hundreds of proposals per week, and evaluating them. You do it; you'll see how "easy" it is!
Med Hypotheses is a great journal: it provides a voice that might otherwise never be heard. Dr. Charlton provides data related to the solidity of the journal, which is being criticized on one paper only.
Turning Med Hypotheses into another peer-reviewed journal would - in my humble opinion - contradict its own title and principles. It would also turn it into yet another run of the mill journal, de facto making it undistinguishable from thousands of others.
Honestly, I do share the suspicion expressed by many that the AIDS paper is being used as an excuse to please people and goals that have vested interests in a new format for Med Hypotheses.
Best regards.

Once again the HIV=AIDS proponents use sophistry to make their case. The case that Duesberg makes is that HIV does not cause AIDS. Therefore that would make him a 'HIV denialist' and not an 'AIDS denialist'. Your sophism is clear.

I am shocked to read some readers' comments and to learn that Medical Hypotheses is under threat. As a chemist and physicist, I truly regret that technical sciences do not have a forum for radical and cutting-edge ideas on a comparable level as Medical Hypotheses. If we fail to investigate something (due to a lack of instrumentation, personnel or money), our best ideas often remain unpublished. Some studies simply cannot be completed and thus cannot be published in a regular journal. It is thus not a question of laziness to publish in Medical Hypotheses.

In fact, Elsevier should not cease Medical Hypotheses (neither completely nor in its present form) but launch MORE journals of this kind!! Start with physics and chemistry today, not tomorrow!

It has not been mentioned, and should be, that TWO articles accepted and in press were simultaneously withdrawn.Those articles, by Duesberg et al. and by Ruggiero et al., have nothing in common except that they raise questions---quite separate and independent and different questions---about HIV=AIDS theory.
None of the allegations about deficiencies in the Duesberg paper are relevant to the Ruggiero paper.
Quite clearly the reason for withdrawal was the questioning of HIV=AIDS, and the assertions about deficiencies are attempts to obfuscate what really happened --- namely an overhasty response to an e-mail to Elsevier executives.

Another important point to be emphasized is the speed at which the current editorial review of Medical Hypothesis publishes important ideas. A recent paper of ours in blast-related TBI was accepted in under a week, available on-line in about 60 days, and in print in 6-7 months. I don't think I've had a peer-reviewed paper appear on-line in under six months, and 12-18 months to print is typical. One of our papers currently submitted to a peer-reviewed journal has been under the first stage of review for 19 months. Getting important ideas published quickly is an important benefit of the editorial review system currently used by Medical Hypothesis and a slightly more effective filter of bad papers is not worth the inevitable increases in time to publication.

This forum is not a forum - all posts made by me in the past 2 days have been deleted. Why? Who knows - because I bothered to fill in a few details on the corrupt industry?

See you out on the free web, in that case.

LS

I am glad that the on-line editor removed some of the more volatile comments above, so that we could re-focus on the scientific issues.

Dr. Duesberg et al wrote a paper which was published in Medical Hypothesis

Dr. Ruggiero wrote a paper that was published in Medical Hypothesis.

Both papers questioned some of the data and conclusions concerning the retroviral theory of AIDS.

In response, certain scientists who have commented above, sought to: (a) force a retraction of the papers, (b) fire Dr. Charlton, (c) shut down Medical Hypothesis.

These certain scientists say they were doing this because the data and conclusions contained the Duesberg and Ruggiero papers "could damage public health initiatives."

These certain scientists were successful in causing the retraction of the papers (on unspecfied grounds) and are working on (b) and (c).

Those are the facts. Feel free to draw any conclusions.

In my view, this is not how science should operate. Those papers should not have been retracted but challenged on scientific grounds by either a rebuttal paper or letter to the editor.

It is really a tragedy in scientific world that a journal published a different opinion would be forced to retract that publication and has it fate being doomed.
I heard of Medical Hypothesis (MH) from a scientific friend who found me from reading my Correspondence in Nature "Debating controversies can enhance creativity" (403:592, 2000). In that Correspondence, I announced the establishment of the word first OA-OR (Open Access-Open Review) journal called Logical Biology (http://logibio.com). This scientific friend of mine whom I have not even met despite of frequent communications for eight years submitted many of his outstanding discoveries for publishing in Logical Biology and also mentioned his previous publications in Medical Hypothesis. I actually published in MH a Correspondence entitled "Linkage between asymmetric cell reproduction and aging: The first publications" in 2007 to denounce the re-inventions I saw in many "top" journals which actually discovered some of what I had already discovered and published years ago.
However, I would say that the Editor for MH, Bruce Charlton, was a prudent person. Later I submitted a Hypothesis paper entitled "Occurrence of cancer at multiple sites: towards distinguishing multigenesis from metastasis" with three other co-authors with clinical experiences to MH. But that paper was rejected. Later that paper was published in Biology Direct (3: 14, 2008), after being peer-reviewed by three experts and agreed by the editor.
Prof. Charlton seemed to be a modest person, too. In 2007, I submitted a Correspondence "Flawed Impact Factor Severely Undervalued the True Impact of Medical Hypotheses". It considered the “respectable” IF value of 1.3 for MH as far short in comparison with its high downloading rate of 26000 papers download per month. It also asked why people would be so interested in reading the "ideas" papers published in this revolutionary journal but then not cite them even when some of these earlier published ideas led to their later experimental verified "findings". However, for the reason that I still do not know, my submission was rejected. But this article can be read at Top Watch 2: 61, 2007; http://im1.biz/displayimage.php?album=57&pos=10 ).

Now, even such a prudent and modest editor would be criticized for his "radical" practice. Even a journal with a much better-than-the-impact-factor-reflected reputation might be closed for its “bold” action. What the "mainstream" of the scientific publishing enterprise wishes to achieve - A monopoly in maintaining as many dogmas as it can?

As the president of Truthfinding Cyberpress (TFCP; http://im1.biz ) which runs Logical Biology and a fleet of new-generation scientific journals such as Pioneer, Scientific Ethics, Top Watch, and International Medicine, I would extend my warmest invitation to Editor Charlton to join me in revolutionizing scientific communication/publishing. I can proud to say that TFCP journals do not play the impact factor game. It has published many ground-breaking discoveries that were only re-discovered years later by other impact factor-high journals. Even thought we often publish papers against some well-established dogmas, we find ourselves in such a good position of no need to publish any correction, not to say retraction. This is because even with our proactive approach of sending invitations to authorities whose views were challenged by our publications, we still haven't felt any resistance to our publications because no one has even dared to challenge our publications (in public).

So, if Elsevier would kick Prof. Charlton out, there is a home for him, the TFCP. If Elsevier would stop publishing MH, then it can be published somewhere Else (if it is legal to do so).

Finally, to those who claim that "A journal that does not subject its papers to peer review has no business being included in Medline, or any similar scientific database", I would say, all of our TFCP journals do not employ the behind-the-scene peer review but subject their publications to public peer review indefinitely. We do not do business with Medline but all of our publications can be found easily when people search for them such as by Googling. In the future, all of TFCP publications will be included in an all-inclusive index – the Pioneer Index which has a mission to collect all if possible scientific publications regardless where they are published.

Shi V. Liu (http://im1.biz)
SVL8EPA@gmail.com

Let's see if the masters of the forum find this 'legally objectionable':

“Whether previous U.N. initiatives are responsible for the epidemic’s downturn is uncertain. Some experts said the drop in HIV may simply be a result of the virus burning itself out, rather than the result of any health interventions.”

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Yes, it's burned out, alright. Because in most cases, it never was. It was and remains poverty, however. Which cannot be treated with Nevirapine.

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A Study of the Safety and Effectiveness of Treating Advanced AIDS Patients Between Ages 4 and 22 With 7 Drugs, Some at Higher Than Usual Doses

Condition: HIV Infections
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00001108?order=30


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Seven FDA Black Box labeled drugs, at higher than normal doses, adult doses. What parent on earth would give their child 7 over the counter drugs at once? What does the FDA's labeling signify?

Anyone? Care to try to answer?

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]

So, you understand, children cannot tolerate these regimens. The solution?

[][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][][]


"Reasons for nonadherence include refusal, drug tolerability, and adverse reactions. We assess: 1) the potential benefits of gastrostomy tube (GT) for the improvement of adherence to HAART in HIV-infected children, and 2) the factors that may result in improved viral suppression after GT placement."

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http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/vol105/issue6/images/large/pe0604282001.jpeg

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When children given this diagnosis refuse the drugs, which make them extraordinarily ill, they have a hole cut into their stomach, and a tube shoved through it, so that they can no longer have any choice in the matter.

This is AIDS medicine. This is simply the state of their art. Read the journal article:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/105/6/e80

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Listen to the testimony of patients:
http://www.nypress.com/article-11844-inside-incarnation.html

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Read about the drugs from the standard 'approved' sources:
http://aras.ab.ca/haart.html
http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/DrugsNew/Default.aspx?MenuItem=Drugs

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Then tell me who is doing the 'covering up' here.

Kind regards,

Liam Scheff

Henry Bauer, a world authority on the search for the Loch Ness Monster, alien crop circles and other aspects of the paranormal, invariably errs when he weighs in on real-world subjects outside his comfort zone. His dogmatic assertion above "Quite clearly......" is merely an opinion, and it's one that's inconsistent with the facts. One shared feature of the Ruggiero and Duesberg papers is that neither presents a "medical hypothesis" in any meaningful sense of the phrase. The former is a rambling, sarcastic criticism of perceived aspects of the Italian government's health care policies that would be appropriate for a Blog but not a PubMed-listed journal. The latter's multiple scientific defects have been discussed amply above and need not be reiterated here. Neither paper is a contribution to knowledge, and both deserved to be retracted on the grounds that they were inconsistent with the publisher's goals of disseminating scientific knowledge and improving public health.

There are, in fact, many other papers in Med Hyp that also should not be there and that, if reported to the publisher, would perhaps also have been withdrawn on similar grounds. However, those various papers weren't reported, so they still exist in the journal, alongside ones that do have merit and that are consistent with the journal's and publisher's stated policies. The flawed, silly and foolish papers drag down the reputation of the journal and thereby harm the credibility, by association, of the ones that do make genuine contributions to knowledge. The publishers, having become aware of what does get accepted into Med Hyp and seeing how the journal has been lampooned by, inter alia, Ben Goldacre, presumably see the need to prevent future embarrassment by putting better policies into place. One hopes that such policies would preserve the strengths of the journal while eliminating the manifest and obvious defects. That's something long overdue. Are the supporters of the present version of Med Hyp so arrogant as to believe that the journal could not be improved?

Many of the posters on this thread are missing the point that the publication of inaccurate information truly can harm individuals and society. One has only to consider the scientifically flawed reports that vaccines cause autism or other neurological complications, including but not limited to the now-retracted Lancet paper by Andrew Wakefield. Although that paper WAS retracted, its transient appearance has had a substantial impact on the uptake of vaccines, which increases the number of people who are harmed, or killed, by avoidable infectious diseases. The Wakefield paper persists to this day on the internet, where many people find their health care information nowadays. Med Hyp has also published several flawed papers alleging there is a link between vaccines and autism, papers that also have an impact on the internet by bolstering the anti-vaccine movement. Society pays a price when scientists, and journals, screw up and publish fatally flawed papers in PubMed-listed journals. That's why the maintenance of high professional standards in what gets disseminated to the public is so important. The Ruggiero and Duesberg papers lacked merit and were inconsistent with the publisher's policies.

My idea on such journal like "Medical Hypotheses" is simple. I will
support my oppinion in a few points.

1) Scientific journals like "Medical Hypotheses" are dedicated to
scientists. Each professional knows the area of her/his dyscipline,
there is no danger of misunderstanding of any paper.
2) The value of journal import_ance is an IF, it is simple and clear. If
article is bad it will be lost in "medline space" very quickly.
3) There is a strong need for a free change of minds and ideas.
4) The title of Journal is "....Hypotheses" not "...Theses" nor "Medical
Proofs" nor "Medical Rules or Statements", so what is the problem?
5) Scientific journals are not dediacted to journalists, writers (etc),
those almost always do not properly understand the idea within any
paper, nevermind peer-reviwed or not. You need the proofs? - every day we can hear from radio or TV then "Now cancer can be success fully treated with.....", "Alzheimer can be treated ..." or American scientists have just discovered a new drug for... whatever we can imagine. "These news" are scinetific peer-reviewed papers presented by journalistes. I think, that rather it has to be prohibited to publish scientific informations in newspapers and in quasi-scientific journals prepared by non-proffesional persons.

Censorship and suppression are the direct opposite and inverse of science. It's not hard to see what's going on here - suppression of dissent and of evidence that a fraud has been and is being committed in AIDS research.

People with nothing to hide don't cower from argument, or from facing the public, when the public is paying for the song.

William Manning states: "Those are the facts." In fact, those are not the facts......

He states: In response, certain scientists who have commented above, sought to: (a) force a retraction of the papers, (b) fire Dr. Charlton, (c) shut down Medical Hypothesis.

Only point (a) is a fact. Points (b) and (c) are simply untrue, at least in so far as my own interactions with Elsevier are concerned. Calling for an inquiry into how two fatally flawed papers were accepted by Med Hyp does not constitute points (b) and (c).

He also states:

These certain scientists were successful in causing the retraction of the papers (on unspecfied grounds) and are working on (b) and (c). Those are the facts.

Again, those are not the facts, they are merely a reflection of William Manning's conspiratorial thought process.

The last post by Dr. Moore (2 above this one) is simply an apology for censorship.

Historically, censors have always provided a rationale for their censoring, but often it turns out wrong.

It seems I've skipped the best part:

"In a letter to critic Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, a French virologist who was jointly awarded a Nobel prize for the discovery of HIV, Elsevier says: "We share your concerns about the (Duesberg article) and particularly the implications of its wider dissemination for global healthcare."

--------

------

What then, do these statements, coming from the primary recipient of the Nobel Prize, "signify?"
-----------
Dr. Luc Montagnier:

“We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system....It’s important knowledge which is completely neglected. People always think of drugs and vaccine."
----------
Interviewer: "There is no money in nutrition, right?"
----------
Dr. Luc Montagnier: "There is no profit, yes."

----------

Can you 'retract' that?

What about Bioscience Hypotheses? It`s also an Elsevier journal, listed in Medline ...without peer review. Please shut it down too, to protect mankind from the evil! ;-) This is so ridiculous...

Note how Weill Medical School Professor John Moore PhD defends his $34 million view that HIV is, like global warming, a “settled science.”

While LEGITIMATE SCIENCE stands on its own and speaks for itself, Moore wages a PERSONAL attack on Professor Geshekter because, from the beginning, this was the only way that the political disease could be defended. John Moore’s well-documented personal attacks (throughout the decade of his NIAID grants) against Geshekter, Duesberg and MANY others has more in common with Pope Urban’s defense of Rome’s geocentric universe than anything remotely related to science. Note this email from Moore:

http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/goons/Moore/JPMoore27Jan07.pdf

The difference between Urban’s astronomers and Fauci’s NIAID grant beneficiaries is that Dr. Geshekter are not forced to recant under penalty of death – a reality that Moore and Kalichman likely lament.

Despite the passage of time, the attacks upon Duesberg, Ruggerio, Geshekter and others illustrates how little science has changed during the past 400 years – thanks to the highly funded defenders of Anthony Fauci’s church.

http://www.omsj.org/corruption/the-semmelweis-report-gallos-egg

Uuuuups...just realized that Bioscience Hypotheses was shut down 2 weeks ago. So now, it really gets dirty... :-(

Moore concedes my factual assertion that he and others caused a retraction of the 2 papers published Medical Hypothesis.

He denies that he and others also tried to (a) get Dr. Charlton fired and (b) shut down Medical Hypothesis.

With due respect, these are Nixonian denials.

The article above states:

"Prominent Aids researchers contacted Elsevier to object to the article and wrote to the US National Library of Medicine requesting that Medical Hypotheses be removed from the Medline citation database - an act that would exclude it from the mainstream scientific-communication network."

John Moore writes above in a comment," If Medical Hypotheses disappeared, it would be no loss to serious science."

Trying to get the journal removed from Medline citation database is, de facto, trying to shut the journal down. Making veiled threats regarding same adds to this effort.

You can weigh Dr. Moore's credibility on this point, yourselves.

The article also quotes Dr. Charlton:

"Professor Charlton this week accused the researchers who complained of taking "behind-the-scenes action" to exclude dissenting views and bring the journal down. "

"The coercive and anti-scientific reaction shows exactly why it was right that these papers were accepted to be published," he told Times Higher Education.

Indeed, John Moore writes above," My own view is that the journal needs a new editor and a better way of detecting and rejecting articles that are merely silly or worse."

Again, readers can decide for themselves whether Moore is both a censor and has respect for factual assertions.

William Manning is clearly too silly a person to warrant my further attention. I have not just "conceded" that I was one of the people who asked Elsevier to retract the papers; that's been public knowledge for a long time and I clearly stated it earlier on this thread. I'm proud I stood up for the integrity of the scientific literature in this way, and that many other professional scientists took the same action.

Yes, I believe that the disappearance of Med Hyp, in its present form, would be no loss to serious science. But that's not the same thing as stating that I asked Elsevier to close the journal down or fire the editor. I didn't, whatever William Manning chooses to believe. Moreover, just because the Med Hyp editor states that he believes there is "behind-scenes-action" doesn't make it true.

"My own view is that the journal needs a new editor and a better way of detecting and rejecting articles that are merely silly or worse." Yes, that's true. I do believe the journal would benefit from having a new editor and a better set of procedures. But again, I did not ask Elsevier to fire the existing editor.

William Manning seems to like to believe the world is run by some kind of conspiracy. I've seen a lot of this nonsense on the internet. It's too silly to merit my further attention.

During the course of my scientific career, I have published well over 200 papers in Medical Hypotheses, with 6 more due to be published soon. As a former mathematician with little inclination toward laboratory or clinical work, it is unlikely that my biomedical ideas would have ever achieved publication without Dr. Horrobin's wonderful inspiration, which has been carried forward with distinction and commitment by its current editor Dr. Bruce Charlton. Although Medical Hypotheses had a rather humble beginning, it has evolved over the years, and now attracts the work of a number of distinguished scientists with innovative and challenging ideas; they appreciate the fact that Medical Hypotheses offers a rapid vehicle for publication of their authentic insights - whether or not these insights are concordant with current orthodoxy or are "politically correct". A journal of this sort makes a vital contribution to biomedical progress, and those who effectively wish to kill it because one or two or its articles might be exploited by deluded people with malign agendas, evidently have no appreciation for the key role it performs. In point of fact, intellectually dishonest people with political axes to grind will always be able to cite the biomedical literature highly selectively to support their agendas; destroying Medical Hypotheses will not alter this situation. Medical Hypotheses is a great resource - it is not broken, and does not need to be fixed. If Dr. Charlton is relieved of his editorship and Dr. Horrobin's inspired intent is dishonored, I will never again submit a manuscript to "Medical Hypotheses", and I will seriously consider never again publishing in the literature.

Here are John Moore's own words for you all to read and digest:

"Yes, I believe that the disappearance of Med Hyp, in its present form, would be no loss to serious science. But that's not the same thing as stating that I asked Elsevier to close the journal down or fire the editor"

I didn't say that you "asked" Elsevier to close down Med Hyp. Of course, you didn't "ask". I said that you tried to get Charlon fired and shut down the journal. You operated behind the scenes to destabilize the editor and journal for publishing 2 papers you didn't like.

That's how it works in politics, but not how it should work in science. Do you think Joe McCarthy "asked" government agencies to fire left-leaning employees, or did he engage in whispering innuendo campaigns behind the scenes.

Let's not be naive here. Any junior scientist who has ever had telephone calls placed to his or her Lab Director or thesis advisor knows exactly what I am talking about and this is exactly what John Moore has conceded doing to Prof. Charlton.

Not only is he a censor, but he thinks it is justified.

Reviewing the Duesberg paper and the above discussion, I am not seeing convincing support that the Duesberg paper is nothing but a rehash of old material. Where has the analysis of the South African data from 1980-2008 been previously published? Since this debate has brought considerable attention to Duesberg’s claims and the questions he raises, they should be answered on the scientific merits without resorting to the ad hominem attacks, strawman fallacies, and mudslinging that are dominating the discussion. Can anyone cite the experimental data (not panel pronouncements, review papers, or authoritative opinions, I want original published data) that answers Duesberg’s three main points: (1.) What evidence exists for the huge losses of South African lives from HIV claimed by Chigwedere et al.? (2.) What evidence exists that South Africans would have benefited from anti-HIV drugs, such as AZT and Nevirapine (that the benefits outweigh the risks)? And (3) What proof exists that HIV is necessary to cause AIDS? There are some obvious flaws in the Deusberg paper: some opinions are worded over-confidently as conclusions and Tables 1 and 2 have negative exponents when they should be positive powers of 10. (I wonder how carefully critics actually read the paper if they failed to catch such a simple and obvious flaw.) However, since critics of the paper have brought the paper much more notability by their rhetorical fallacies and power plays, they owe the community reasoned answers to the above questions so that the broader community understands the papers flaws based on published data rather than on “authoritative” pronouncements and rhetoric. As far as I can tell, the analysis of South African data from 1980-2008 is new and relevant to the discussion of the hypotheses considered in the paper. Please enlighten me with specific facts to the contrary if I am mistaken.

"Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth."
— Albert Einstein

“Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

— Albert Einstein

Michael Courtney,

I laud your efforts to discuss the scientific merits of Duesberg's paper. That is entirely correct and a good thing.

If science degenerates from a process by which one writes to challenge a scientific assertion in a paper to a process by which one writes to fire the editor of a paper, it would be a huge loss for civil scientific discourse.

Dear Dr. Reinhard Stindl, I published a work in Bioscience Hypotheses: Endorphins, personality, and inheritance: Establishing the biochemical bases of inheritance.
Ref: Halabe BUcay:Bioscience Hypotheses, Volume 2, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 170-171
doi:10.1016/j.bihy.2009.03.003
And a lot of people in the world comment it, 99% favorable, scientist and not scientist.
This is a news form Thailand:
Happiness ‘can be inherited’
May 15th, 2009 - 1:08 pm ICT by ANI -
Washington, May 15 (ANI): Our feelings in our lifetime can affect our children, concludes a new study. Dr Alberto Halabe Bucay led the study published in Elsevier's journal Bioscience Hypotheses. The expert suggests that ...


Read more: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/tag/endorphins#ixzz0ci7v63IO

And believe me, this is not publicity, these are facts, as well as my work regarding cancer treatment with citric acid.

Manning's rambling and conspiratorially-inclined speculations are simply wrong, but sadly revealing of his thought processes. I made no such phone calls. End of story. Unless Mr Manning chooses to now call me a liar and then provide his full contact details for me to refer the matter to a lawyer under UK libel law.

It appears to me that what would really settle things like this is some very large study, with the proper controls of course, which observed the world over those people who were tested for HIV. In each case, it should also collect data as to whether the patient developed AIDS or not.

It sounds simple. Do it on enough people, and rigorously, and with the proper mix of BOTH known denialists and people who agree with the 'mainstream' view, and it becomes a very influential piece of research. It's not a proof, and this would need to be done independently SEVERAL times to get a proper picture.

Nevertheless, it's something on a scale that *that I know of* isn't being done.

I have no objection to free scientific access, but I do think that experts in the field to which the paper relates should review it and AT LEAST give serious comment.

Steven Chick,

A controlled study of HIV+ patients, as you suggest, is highly desirable. I welcome it, as it would be good science. However, I suspect that most orthodox AIDS researchers would try to (a) prevent funding of such study, (b) preventing publishing of any data on it and/or (c) threaten any editor who did have the temerity to publish it.

Steven Chick,

A controlled study of HIV+ patients, as you suggest, is highly desirable. I welcome it, as it would be good science. However, I suspect that most orthodox AIDS researchers would try to (a) prevent funding of such study, (b) preventing publishing of any data on it and/or (c) threaten any editor who did have the temerity to publish it.

Steven Chick,

A controlled study of HIV+ patients, as you suggest, is highly desirable. I welcome it, as it would be good science. However, I suspect that most orthodox AIDS researchers would try to (a) prevent funding of such study, (b) preventing publishing of any data on it and/or (c) threaten any editor who did have the temerity to publish it.

Saying something three times doesn't make the expressed suspicions any more credible than saying them once, when the expressed suspicions are merely indicative of conspiracy theory in action.

Saying something three times doesn't make the expressed suspicions any more credible than saying them once, when the expressed suspicions are merely indicative of conspiracy theory in action.

Apologies for my triple post -- don't know if it was user error or something with the site.

The Medical Hypotheses is a voice of free science. I think that case like "Med Hypotheses" has the finacial background. If anybody wants to say anything on this subject has to show CONFLICT OF INTEREST. All of us know that only money is a creative (often negative) force of our world.
I have no conflict of interst nor finacial support.

By the way, of course, I don't need to tell anyone here that Pubmed or even google.scholar can yield a wealth of scientific papers on the question of AIDS. There is also a new documentary out -- House of Numbers -- where most of the upper echelon AIDS researchers are interviewed on camera. It is fascinating to hear all the self-contradictions and evasions. http://www.houseofnumbers.com/

From an epistemological viewpoint, “settled science” is an oxymoron. How many times has a disease turned out to have more than one cause? Remember Pasteur’s lesson, “Nothing is accomplished – there are two diseases.” My own field (blast-induced TBI) often faces the temptation to regard support for one hypothetical mechanism as disproof of others. However, support for one hypothesis is rarely conclusive disproof of other hypotheses. Ultimately, hypotheses can only be supported or disproved with data. Good science is open to the possibility that previously rejected hypotheses can be supported with new data; likewise, theories thought to have complete generality are often considerably narrowed by emerging data. There are lots of examples in the history of science. There are also lots of examples of critics of a hypothesis resorting to rhetorical attacks rather than a reasoned discussion of the data supporting or disproving the hypotheses under consideration. If people with PhDs cannot get this right, how much hope is there for sound science education? Data, rather than the dogma of the intellectual elite, is the currency of scientific debate. Remember Michael Faraday? MH is a valuable resource in overcoming dogmatic adherence to unproven viewpoints.

Liam Scheff complains that this site is cesoring his comments.
Mr. Scheff HEAVILY cesors his own site.
Please go to Scheff's site and look for comments that disagree with him. You will not find them.
JTD

@Bruce G. Charlton

IMHO, it is tiresome and off-putting if silly or even already discredited ideas get published in journals of this kind. There is all sorts of valuable “radical and revolutionary” stuff in the excellent Foundations of Physics (Letters) but no Einstein-Cartan-Evans 'theory' anymore:

http://www.springer.com/physics/journal/10701
http://www.springerlink.com/content/l1008h127565m362/

Perhaps you are right that Medical Hypotheses “plays a significant role in medical science” - I wouldn't know - but it won't continue to do so if it just publishes any old crap, surely?

Looking at some of the self promoting comments on this thread by people whose only outlet for their wacky ideas is Medical Hypotheses, I agree with phayes. Of course these people want their favorite journal to continue! But that doesn't mean keeping it alive would do medical science any favors.

Steven Chick suggests "...what would really settle things like this is some very large study, with the proper controls of course, which observed the world over those people who were tested for HIV. In each case, it should also collect data as to whether the patient developed AIDS or not."... There have already been been dozens if not hundreds of such natural history studies of untreated individuals with a known date of seroconversion, conducted in just about every country in the world during the 80s and early 90s. An overview (over 10 years old now, but still useful) can be read at http://www.hivinsite.com/InSite?page=kb-03-01-04
...Such studies of untreated individuals for any condition can only be done before effective treatments become available. Such a study withholding treatment in 2010 would constitute a modern Tuskegee-type experiment.

Dear David O'Hare, mayby you do not remember that:
N Copernicus had "his wacky" idea
G. Bruno had "his wacky" idea and some other "crazy" men.
As a scientist you have to know that any wacky idea can be turn into the true and nobody knows when.

Dear David O'Hare, mayby you do not remember that:
N Copernicus had "his wacky" idea
G. Bruno had "his wacky" idea and some other "crazy" men.
As a scientist you have to know that any wacky idea can be turn into the true and nobody knows when.

In WWI, the hypothesis of “shell shock” as a genuine brain injury caused by an explosion without penetrating injury to the brain case was eventually written off by government sponsored scientists, not because there was compelling data disproving the hypothesis, but because (what later became known as) PTSD was a confounding factor, and the disability expenses and loss of war fighters due to a genuine brain injury would have been too high. This cycle of the hypothesis being raised by war injuries and then discounted was repeated in later conflicts (WWII, Korea, Vietnam) without ever carefully conducting experiments that could support or refute the hypothesis of non-penetrating blast-induced TBI (even though many experiments were conducted on lung and abdominal injuries that could have easily included looking for brain injuries as well). It wasn’t until the Balkan wars in the 1990s that Ibolja Cernak and her colleagues published convincing support for blast-induced TBI as a phenomenon distinct from PTSD. How much further along would this field be had earlier generations of scientists demanded data rather than accepting the convenient (and politically expedient) explanations? My experience is that those who argue scientific points based on authority (“it is well known that”) or rhetoric (“wacky ideas”) rather than data are usually wrong. I wonder if Cernak would have succeeded in publishing her groundbreaking work in blast-induced TBI had there been a bigger political consequence to her findings at the time.

Liam Scheff is still promoting his orphans as guinea pigs story of Incarnation House.
However,the Vera Institute Report in January 2009 completely and unequivocally refuted Scheff's horendous allegations!
http://dissidents4dumbees.blogspot.com/2009/01/vera-institute-report-readers-digest.html
JTD

We must come to terms with the fact that we still live in the time of Kings; that the bully still rules the schoolyard and that "might makes right"; HIV causes AIDS because Kalichman and Moore say so!

Ignore the evidence! - Ignore the evidence! - Ignore the evidence!

Peer review is greatly over-rated. Unethical ties between researchers and pharmaceutical companies are concealed, and the "peers" who review other "peers" are often members of the same gang. In 1987 I informed the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine that the 1986 Phase II trials AZT, on which he had published two reports, were fraudulent. By return mail he told me that my charges were "without foundation". Never did he consider seriously investigating my charges or retracting the two reports. Nevertheless, the research was fraudulent, as the researchers deliberately used data that they knew were false. In early 1992, lawyers for Channel 4 Television in England reviewed FDA documents I had obtained under the Freedom of Information ACT, and told Meditel to go ahead with its documentary, "AZT: Cause For Concern". In that documentary I described the types of cheating that had taken place in the AZT trials, AIDS patients described AZT's horrible toxicities, and Peter Duesberg explained exactly how the biochemical action of AZT made in incompatible with life. Burroughs-Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT, didn't sue for libel, which was wise on its part. as truth was on our side. ("AZT: Cause For Concern" and other Meditel documentaries are archived at the Immunity Resources Foundation website.)

There are good reasons why AIDS critics (or dissidents) publish outside mainstream or peer-reviewed journals, The Internet has at least provided an end-run around censorship, peer-review or other. My own "AIDS" section is at: paganpressbooks.com/jpl/AIDS.HTM.

p.s. In my previous post I forgot to mention my two main articles on the fraudulent Phase II AZT trials. They are: "AZT On Trial" (1987) and "FDA Documents Show Fraud In AZT Trials" (1992). The first is in my out-of-print book, _Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story_ (1990), and the second is in my book, _The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex_ (1993). Both articles are also available on the Internet.

as some who is hiv+ and in great health for 23 years without any medication, and who nearly died on the same as pushed by individuals such as john moore, i am more than convinced that hiv does not cause aids.

the oppressive and bully tactics applied by mainstream aids science only demonstrates who fascisct and intolerant mainstream science has become. the recent swine flu outbreak omplocatiing close ties between WHO and the pharmaceutical companies only highlights that dilemma as reported by Russia Today.

Peer review is useless if all those 'peers' are funded by the same pharmaceutical company. The same pressure is now resulting in a science paper being shut down.

This is not only a tragedy of huge proportions for scientists needing to publish fresh new and challengng ideas. It is costing lives as the same old unproven ideas result in millions being poisoned with toxic ARV's.

People like me though are growing in numbers. And we demand justice. We wlll not go away, nor we will submit to John Moore and the likes of him, nor will we sacrifice our health for their profit, These days are over. I am looking forward to the day when the pharma industry will be held accountable for all this. And I predict that when it happens, John Moore and his lot are going to be the scape goats.

It would be great to re-examine the entire field of "retrovirology," a relatively new field created by David Baltimore, Howard Temin and Robert Gallo in the 1970s. There are exactly 4 human retroviruses -- yet this field has generated 10 Nobel Prizes.

The problem: these viruses have absolutely no clinical relevance, whatsoever. But the promoters of this field have hijacked a lion's share of research dollars to perpetuate the quest to connect diseases with the viruses they are studying.

If you are a working scientists, outside the field of AIDS and are struggling for grants, you should be aware of this massive financial drain away from your work.

If you are a patient battling breast cancer, diabetes, stroke or Alzeimer's, you should be aware that billions of dollars are diverted away from treating these diseases to the boutique disease called AIDS.

It's interesting to note just how many papers the editor, and apparent sole arbiter of merit and suitability, has himself published in Medical Hypotheses. Here's a list below taken from his own Blog. Even allowing for the concept of 'The Editorial', 13 of 18 total publications being in the editor's own journal puts a whole new spin on the phrase "physician, heal thyself". No wonder he's so keen to maintain the status quo! How else would be able to publish the gems listed below and thereby contribute to medical science in the way he does? I wonder how Britain's prestigious University of Buckingham assesses the quality of a faculty member's contributions to science and medicine? A review committee in the USA would die laughing when presented with a CV like this one. Perhaps standards are lower on the other side of the pond.

But seriously, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Bruce G Charlton
Selected Publications up to December 2008
(single author, unless otherwise indicated)

Genospirituality: Genetic engineering for spiritual and religious enhancement  Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 825-828

Pioneering studies of IQ by G.H. Thomson and J.F. Duff - An example of established knowledge subsequently 'hidden in plain sight' Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 625-628

Figureheads, ghost-writers and pseudonymous quant bloggers: The recent evolution of authorship in science publishing. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 475-480.

Zombie science: A sinister consequence of evaluating scientific theories purely on the basis of enlightened self-interest. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 327-329

Mavericks versus team players: The trade-off between shared glory and making a personal contribution. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 165-167

False, trivial, obvious: Why new and revolutionary theories are typically disrespected  Medical Hypotheses 2008; 71: 1-3

First a hero of science and now a martyr to science: The James Watson Affair - Political correctness crushes free scientific communication. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 70: 1077-1080

Charlton, B.G., Andras, P. Stimulating revolutionary science with mega-cash prizes  Medical Hypotheses 2008; 70: 709-713

A book of ideas collected from Medical Hypotheses: Death can be cured by Roger Dobson .  Medical Hypotheses 2008; 70: 905-909

Charlton, B.G., Andras, P. 'Down-shifting' among top UK scientists? - The decline of 'revolutionary science' and the rise of 'normal science' in the UK compared with the USA. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 70: 465-472

Crick's gossip test and Watson's boredom principle: A pseudo-mathematical analysis of effort in scientific research Medical Hypotheses 2008: 70: 1-3  

Jacob Bronowski's principle of tolerance. Medical Hypotheses 2008; 70: 215-217 Charlton, B. G., & Andras, P. (2007). Evaluating universities using simple scientometric research-output metrics: Total citation counts per university for a retrospective seven-year rolling sample. Science and Public Policy, 34(8), 555-563.  

Charlton BG. Peer usage versus peer review. BMJ. 2007; 335: 451.

Charlton, BG. The bowling equivalent of the batting average: quantitative evaluation of the contribution of bowlers in cricket using a novel statistic of ‘Extra Runs Saved per Match’ (ERS/M). OR Insight. 2007; 20: 3-9.

Andras P, Charlton BG, Herald NDJ. Analysis of the dynamics of British academic science. NTIS Selected Reports. <http://hdl.handle,net/123456789/10011>http://hdl.handle,net/123456789/10011

Charlton, B. G., & Andras, P. (2007). Complex biological memory conceptualized as an abstract communication system-human long term memories grow in complexity during sleep and undergo selection while awake (2007) Understanding Complex Systems, 2007, pp. 325-339.

Charlton, B. G. (2007). How can the English-language scientific literature be made more accessible to non-native speakers? journals should allow greater use of referenced direct quotations in 'component-oriented' scientific writing. Medical Hypotheses, 69(6), 1163-1164.  

Charlton, B. G. (2007). Medical Hypotheses 2006 impact factor rises to 1.3 - A vindication of the editorial review' system for revolutionary science. Medical Hypotheses, 69(5), 967-969.  

After what we've learned about peer review from Climategate, I'd be very suspicious of those who want to pressure journals for publishing unwanted results. This smacks of totalitarianism and a desire to shut down debate.

As has been pointed out elsewhere:if others are so sure of themselves, why do they call for the suppression of science?

Michael Elner writes: "Ignore the evidence! - Ignore the evidence! - Ignore the evidence! " but true denialists don't just ignore the evidence that HIV causes AIDS; they deny the existence of any such evidence, and then make up lies about counter evidence.

For example, Peter Duesberg's withdrawn paper denies there has been a 170% increase between 1997 and 2003, in the death rate of South Africans aged 25 to 49 years old. He wants his readers to believe that there is no evidence that HIV infections and AIDS have ravaged healthy middle aged people there. His paper claims that because total deaths per capita have not change by a lot, we can pretend that AIDS has not killed many people.

http://www.journaids.org/index.php/factsheets/hivaids_statistics/south_african_hiv_infection_and_mortality/

It may not make any difference to Peter Duesberg, if a few hundred thousand South Africans die at age 30 instead of age 70, but to the children left as orphans, and to the people left to care for those orphans, it make a HUGE difference.

http://www.avert.org/aidsorphans.htm

The GOOGLE GapMinder tool:
http://www.gapminder.org/
is an excellent tool for exploring how South Africa has compared to other nations, in terms of changes in life expectancy and per capita income over the past 20 years. While poverty is still an issue, it is clearly not the cause of the drastic drop in life expectancy that has come with the rise in untreated HIV infections.

@M. Pearle Which results are "unwanted"? Yes, of course it would be nice if AIDS did not exist, and if global warming would not occur. But science isn't about producing results that make us happy, it is about finding the truth. AIDS is killing people, and the glaciers and polar caps are melting. It sucks, but sticking our heads in the sand is not going to help us.

Somehow, I just don't see Utopia being a place where people are better off when publications, whether they are "scientific" or "journalistic" print anything that someone writes, whether it is truth, lies, or propaganda. I enjoy reading tabloids as well as serious publications, but I like to have some clue from the start whether an article is from The Onion, Weekly World News, or The Wall Street Journal. I don't trust all editors to have equal standards, but it is important that they have some standards, or let us know up front that they have no standards.

@ Seth Kalichman, I was wondering what do you have to do with HIV and AIDS? Have you treated HIV patients? what's your function besides writing a book to fund genocide in Africa? don't you have a hobby? like sewing or spending time with your family...


@ John Moore. When was the last time you and Richard Horton had afternoon tea, scones and devonshire? enquiring minds???

@JT Deshong do you realize how Scientific your blogspot is and how it looks when one steps out of the blogspot? do you really think your messsage in its [scientific] fashion will persuade someone to listen to you and do you get off on being a nancy priss ass? just so you know I don't like you or your style so don't EVER try to engage with me EVER again. Kapeesh?


@ everyone. I hope that this article stays up permenently. This will be great for "HIV" patients to stumble upon and rethink being an "HIV" Patient. way to go! Zoë Corbyn .

Is h.i.v. AIDS cause???.. where are this prove ??? there is not any prove that hiv cause AIDS Im posiitive at hiv test since 1990 my health is perfect!! i have never taken medicines in 20 years end never i will change my health winth anybody
Luc Montagner (hiv descoverd 1994) say hiv dont cause AIDS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoNW7lOnT4
My expirience after 20 years.... AIDS is not infectious desease but toxic ! And hiv test is not an effective instrument for diagnosis of AIDS !
Marco -Florence Italy

@ Marco! Hi there brother! Keep up the good fight! We are not alone. There are thousands more like us WHO SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE JOHN MOORE AND HIS FIRENDS ANY MORE! there are too many of us doing just fine without any meds. Check out some activism at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EXYyCMTGnvQ and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yaBLAUsR4 That is what they are afraid of. People FIGHTING back, reclaiming their lives and freeing themselves form a scientific and medical DICTATORSHIP that is costing lives. Dont give up!

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.Albert Einstein.

My field of expertise is not HIV and AIDS, since I am a psychiatrist myself, so my opinion is based on principal values and not by specific events and facts.
My view is that although peer review is and should be the mainstream for scientific publishing (I am editor-in-chief of a peer-reviewed journal myself), it is today more than ever necessary to have a parallel open system (a minority of journals within the publishing system) who will function in a different way (no matter whether this would be 'arrogant', 'selfish' or 'fatally problematic').
The peer review system has the advantage of choosing 'good science' papers and acts as a quality filter. The same time it has the important problem that it suppresses radical and revolutionary and it tends to support the current view and interpretation of things and precludes breakthrough.
As an editor-in-chief myself, I know how difficult it is today to find reliable peer reviewers; as an author I often find myself in the position to respond to impossible comments by reviewers who obviously have limited knowledge of the subject they were asked to review. The publishing of a paper is based on the assumption that the authors are honest and have not fabricated the data (I think that this can not be verified for most of the papers submitted to a journal) and that the reviewers have no conflict of interest, they have sufficient knowledge of the subject (I doubt for most cases) and that they will invest much time to do a proper review (I also doubt they will). For prestigious journals these are often the case but there are important problems for the majority of journals.
Another important problem is that although innovation today can come from a limited sources, and one of these sources is interdisciplinary collaboration and carrying of innovations achieved in one field of science to another, most scientists and reviewers are either super-expert prominent scientists or undereducated technicians (I know first names in prominent journals who can discuss nothing more than the very papers they have published, they have no more than 2-3 years of formal training and they are asked to review papers on a regular basis because their general credentials are never shown anywhere).
I often wonder what happens to papers accepted with bonfire by the highest ranking journals; the vast majority disappear from the scientific thinking and their results are proved mistaken and misleading after only a few years.
To cut a long story short, the above are inherent problems of the peer-review system and the way research is conducted today. We don’t have a better way to regulate things and we are indeed not allowed to let the field of science to become chaotic; a field where any charlatan can do whatever he wishes and cause harm to humanity.
However, we also need to keep a small door open; we need to let new ideas and proposals to circulate uncensored. The word UNCENSORED is important. There are not many journals in the publication business that are serving this goal, and Medical hypothesis is one of them. Their function is important for the future of science, no matter whether there are problems from time to time. Science is a dynamic procedure. Its not only a matter of democracy in expression, it is a matter of keeping the horizon open for the future development.
In this frame, I consider an honor for Elsevier to have such a journal, the Medical Hypothesis, and I hope that in the future it will continue to serve the same goal and need of the scientific community.

the current aids mainstream displeys all the hallmarks of a totalitarian dictatorship, mostly:

- suppress alternative views, no matter what
- ridicule those that do not agree
- victims of the hiv-aids dogma are imprisoned if they are suspected of passing on this virus which yet has to be shown to cause AIDS

and now john moore and his supporters who have access to millions of dollars in funding from the aids pharma industry propose to go even further:

- shut down publications if they do not fit their criteria and dogma

Nazi's did something similar, but a lot more efficient: they burnt dissident books.

@Kostas Fountoulakis Most fields of science are actively seeking new and exciting ideas. It is just that they usually require some evidence to support the idea before it gets published. If a reviewer is shutting out ideas simply because they are "new", that reviewer needs to be reprimanded. I cannot imagine how a study of belly button lint ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/4883791/Revealed-The-secrets-of-belly-button-fluff.html ) is likely to be medically important, but at least the paper had real data in it. It is indeed nice to have places where even truly bizarre ideas with no evidence to support them can be published. It is also nice to have freedom of expression which allows people to tell lies and make up totally fictional stories. But librarians have always attempted to keep fiction, history, science and other topics in separate sections of the library.

I think there is a place for unpeer reviewed material. It should be very clealrly marked as such. Skeptics need a place to publish. But they also need to temper their language. Phrases such as "as yet no proof that HIV causes Aids" are, at the very best, questionable.

As for deniers (not the same as skeptics) who cite ranting blogs, there is a place for them too. Dante has reserved his inner circle for them. I also deny gravity as I see birds in the air. Sigh.

Dear Dr. David O´Hare: I personally believe that articles from Dr. Bruce G. Charlton are interesting, one article that I mentioned to a Professor in Mexico who wrotes about William Harvey is: Charlton B. False, trivial, obvious: Why new and revolutionary theories are typically disrespected? Med Hypotheses 2008; 71(1):1-3
My Professor was agree with Dr. Charlton´s point of view.

And sorry, this is in spanish, but is a very interesting citation from one of the most important leaders from Mexico: Don Benito Juarez (R.I.P.)

Entre los pueblos, como entre las naciones,el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.

For people who enjoys numismatic, Benito Juarez appeared in a silver coin from Mexico of 5 pesos, an excellent piece for collection.

Sorry, the citation from Don Benito Juarez is: Entre los individuos, como entre las naciones, el respeto al derecho ajeno es la paz.

Por estar pensando en inglés me confundí.

@john samual - you mean the inner circle where gallo and john moore have special permanent residence? the one circle where dinner is served with ARV's for desert?

and with regards to gravity, i guess myself, marco from florence and many others such as karry who are well without meds for over 20 years could be considered 'birds' defing gravity?

hiv does not cause aids. while you, john moore and gallo work this out, we have been put on death row with an execution date yet to be determined.

well - it wont happen. because we are not taking those ARV's any more. but do you know what it is like being put onto 'death row' for more than 20 years with all the world just waiting for you to die? and then you don't? because there isnt anything wrong with you? other than some scientists who plain and simple got it wrong and won't admit it otherwise they'd be out of a job?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE TERROR AND NIGHTMARE WE GO THROUGH EVERY DAY?

i dont think you do. THIS HAS TO STOP! and i repeat it: duesberg saved my life. if i had not listened to him in the early 90-ties i'd be dead taking ARV's. thats a fact. ARV's kill. and i am just waiting for the day when i see gallo, moore and his likes in court explaining all this mess.

@Kostas Fountoulakis
I agree! To improve the quality of peer review,
the authors (and institution) should be made anonymous to the reviewers. This way, the reviewer cannot check the „importance“ of the authors and will study the paper more carefully. Whereas, the reviewers of every paper listed in Medline have to be published. As long as this is not achieved, Medical Hypotheses remains the last man standing ;-)

Jim Beam wrote - "Most fields of science are actively seeking new and exciting ideas. It is just that they usually require some evidence to support the idea before it gets published. If a reviewer is shutting out ideas simply because they are 'new', that reviewer needs to be reprimanded."--------- Jim, please tell us how to reprimand a reviewer in the peer-review system. Pay cut? Fewer articles to review? Email a stern rebuke? Many famous theoretical works have been published with little evidence. There was no evidence to distinguish Einstein's general relativity from Newtonian gravity when Einstein published. There was very little to support Planck's photon hypothesis. When Quantum Mechanics was developped, the only atom it was known to work on was Hydrogen. Whether it would predict the energy levels of the rest of the periodic table was an open question. From my earliest schooling, I was taught that a "hypothesis" is nothing more than an "educated guess" based on limited data (that does not directly apply) and intuition. How much sense does it make to demand a journal named "Medical Hypotheses" require the same level of supporting data as other journals?

@Michael Courtney I don't think I said anything about demanding that Medical Hypotheses requirements for level of supporting data. I only said that there is a place in literature for fiction and lies, a place for wild speculations with no data, and a place for peer reviewed research. Nobody tried to get Medical Hypotheses "shut down", they only suggested that the journal should choose which category to be in. If it wants to be listed in PubMed, it should follow the rules for PubMed listing. That is all. Likewise, if Peter Duesberg or anyone else wants his paper listed in PubMed, he will need to follow PubMed rules. These are not "AIDS" rules, they are rules set up for the benefit of medical science in general.

I think what Jim Beam is trying to say, is that fertilizer is a necessary commodity that should indeed be sold. But it should not be packaged up and labeled as chocolate cake and sold in the bakery.

Joe Farmer and Jim Beam get the point, the only one that matters here. Med Hyp masquerades as part of the peer review system by being listed on PubMed alongside Nature, Science, NEJM etc, etc. But it doesn't have the same standards, nowhere near, for determining what it publishes. Sure, professional scientists know the difference between a Med Hyp paper and one in, say, Science. But the lay public doesn't, and gets fooled - as, sadly, do a subset of science "journalists" who emphasize sensationalism over solidity. Moreover, as I've said before, the AIDS denialists (and also the "mercuries" who believe that vaccines cause autism) use papers published in low grade journals like Med Hyp to claim that their crazed, demented views have passed the peer review test and have scientific credibility (and as the public too often doesn't know the difference between Med Hyp and Science, that tactic does succeed in causing confusion). As AIDS denialism kills innocent people, that's a serious situation that demands a solution. Preventing Med Hyp from containing non-reviewed, fatally flawed papers that bolster the denialist position is part of that solution. That's not censorship, that's maintaining appropriate professional standards for what's published in a PubMed-listed journal. I'm delighted that AIDS scientists made such a strong case to Elsevier that the publishers retracted those papers. I look forward to the outcome of the Elsevier review on the future of the journal, in the hope that its many and obvious flaws will become a thing of the past.

To digress, I always get a belly laugh out of "whereistheproof"'. His crazed postings make the point perfectly about how AIDS denialism has fooled laymen who don't understand science and who emphasize anecdotes over data. Sadly, this guy is too far gone down the denialist path to change now. But as to his desire for criminal trials, class action lawsuits, etc, etc, over the use of drugs that have saved millions of lives, well, it's just not going to happen. Far more likely is that those responsible for the 330,000+ unnecessary deaths in South Africa will face some form of legal justice, for that is morally merited and justified by the science and facts.

So "whereistheproof" can rant all he likes, and work himself into whatever self-righteous froth he chooses, but it will lead to nothing. I also get the impression he doesn't like me very much. Gee, I'm really hurt, cut to the quick...... He's just the kind of rational, thoughtful person I like to hang out with......

@Jim Beam: Exactly how has Medical Hypotheses failed to follow the rules for PubMed listing? PMC scientific quality standards do not explicitly require peer review. Lots of journals in PMC contain material that is not peer-reviewed. Your implication that Medical Hypothesis fails to follow the rules for PubMed listing seems incongruent with the facts.

Dear Dr John Moore, one hypothesis regarding the relationship between MMR vaccine and autism was published in The Lancet in February, 1998.

@whereistheproof - thank you for reinforcing my point on the need for more temperate language.

And that Lancet paper, by Wakefield et al., was retracted after an inquiry into its many problems, whereas papers on the same theme in Med Hyp still remain in the published literature. In other words, the peer-review system responded to a flawed, damaging paper by retracting it, while Med Hyp took NO such steps. That difference is very telling as to the contrasting attitudes of The Lancet and Med Hyp to the important principles of protecting the public from flawed science, and of maintaining high professional standards in what remains in the scientific literature. So, thanks for helping to expose why Med Hyp is such a problematic journal.

Thanks to you John...

Hywel y Bryniau: you rejected those articles which appeared to conflict with the 2nd law of thermodynamics. You ask, sardonically, whether you were right to do so. If you rejected them because there were no testable hypothoses, and no evidence that such tests will be undertaken, then you were correct to reject them.

If, on the other hand, you rejected them because of your distaste at their violation of said law, then you were incorrect in so doing.

I hope this clarifies things.

@John Moore - just one example (I know of) regarding the "high quality" of Nature: Bob Weinberg published a paper in Nature in 1999 with the title "Creation of human tumour cells with defined genetic elements." In the abstract he lists the 3 "defined genetic elements". However, after a while it turned out that the authors mistakenly introduced at least 4 “defined genetic elements”. Nature never published any erratum (can`t see anything in Medline) and the original paper got cited a lot. Hahn and Weinberg just published another paper in a different high-impact journal, mentioning 4 genetic elements: "Enumeration of the simian virus 40 early region elements necessary for human cell transformation." Is this the high professional standard you are talking of?

"Manning's rambling and conspiratorially-inclined speculations are simply wrong, but sadly revealing of his thought processes. I made no such phone calls. End of story. Unless Mr Manning chooses to now call me a liar and then provide his full contact details for me to refer the matter to a lawyer under UK libel law."(JP Moore)

It’s an amazing RESEMBLANCE to science, what Professor Moore has dished out to this forum. Until he shows his true colors.

"On the particular issue of South African AIDS statistics, is he an expert who can judge whether Duesberg et al. were right? I think not."(JP Moore)

Professor Moore, anyone can take a closer look to see that African HIV infection numbers are NOT “statistics” but mostly mathematical guesses. (See Chris Rawlins report at Treatment Information Group website.)

"One shared feature of the Ruggiero and Duesberg papers is that neither presents a 'medical hypothesis' in any meaningful sense of the phrase."(JP Moore)

We find the following … err … hypothesis for the existence of HIV in the Duesberg paper in question: “HIV DNA synthesis has never been detected in HIV antibody-positive people, because replication of HIV is suppressed in the presence of antibody against HIV.

Clearly, such a hypothesis is falsifiable since one can surveill populations of HIVAb positive people to measure those who don’t take ARVs and don’t get sick.

Note Professor Moore’s "colleaugue" is Mr. Kalichman, a world-recognized authority on purifying viruses, and publisher of diatribes that such a methodological suggestion constitutes a mental disorder.

"The Wakefield paper persists to this day on the internet."(JP Moore)

Of course, you refuse to debate anyone on THAT paper as well Herr Moore?

“The flawed, silly and foolish papers drag down the reputation of the journal and thereby harm the credibility, by association, of the ones that do make genuine contributions to knowledge.”(JP Moore)

Professor Moore, unlike other scientists of course, is obviously in a position to know what constitutes “genuine knowledge” and what doesn’t, just like an infallible Pope.

"It appears to me that what would really settle things like this is some very large study, with the proper controls of course, which observed the world over those people who were tested for HIV. In each case, it should also collect data as to whether the patient developed AIDS or not. It sounds simple. Do it on enough people, and rigorously, and with the proper mix of BOTH known denialists and people who agree with the 'mainstream' view, and it becomes a very influential piece of research." (Steve Chick)

This was proposed by the Mbeki Panel in 2000 and oddly enough, the CDC backed out of the arrangement. Perhaps Professor Moore can suspend conversations with his lawyers and tell everone why he prefers mathematical guesses to collecting data as outlined in the Mbeki Panel Report. (This can be easily googled.)

"Saying something three times doesn't make the expressed suspicions any more credible than saying them once, when the expressed suspicions are merely indicative of conspiracy theory in action." (JP Moore)

Professor Moore who knows all things is obviously choosing to ignore Brian Martin’s documentation (Accountability in Research) on this subject. So caught up with lawyering his way out of current jam, he charges his opponent (I’m sure he knows better) with “conspiracy theory”.

Apologies that everything is in one paragraph above. Apparently this is supposed to be the short response phase.

A lot of papers get press exposure and public attention long before they appear in PubMed. The Moss and King paper on skull flexure as a mechanism of bast injury got lots of press soon after it appeared in arXiv, 11 months before it appeared in Physical Review Letters and was indexed in PubMed. Lots of arXiv papers get wide press coverage before they appear in peer reviewed journals, and some very influential papers never appear in peer reviewed journals. Shall we shut down arXiv because it can result in wide public knowledge of paper (even biomedical papers) without prior peer review? I say no because without arXiv (and subsequent coverage by New Scientist which contacted me for an opinion) I would not have known about the skull flexure paper for 8 more months. A journal that specializes in hypotheses is bound to publish papers that turn out to be duds. It's inherent in the mission of the journal, and not a sign of poor editorial policy or practices.

Another idea that helps explain the frenzied and endless rage of dogmatists like Moore, Kalishman and their ilk is that they are used to be treated obediently and deferentially as "experts," albeit of a very narrow and technically specific sort.

The fact is that citizens who are non-experts do not defer to their expertise because on their own they have figured out the lies, errors, faux predictions and tragic inconsistencies that characterize the HIV/AIDS mainstream work that Moore et al. must defend at all costs.

Moore et al. sincerely still imagine that their narrow technical expertise (and vaunted credentials) allows them to dictate public policy and interfere in people's private lives around the world. However, AIDS re-thinkers show that they have absolutely no basis for making such claims. Unlike most politicians who defer to such "experts," Thabo Mbeki said they were dangerously in error and showed why.

That was an unpardonable sin in the eyes of the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy. Their next step was to manufacture a preposterous set of claims based on statistical sophistry and numbers from nowhere that Mbeki's policies had caused 350,000 deaths! Duesberg et al. replied by calmly and rationally showing the data in the *Medical Hypotheses* article that Mbeki had done no such thing and that the claims that Moore et al. believe in so religiously are utter nonsense and irrational. The Duesberg piece also meant, in turn, that the AIDS orthodoxy is so barren and bereft of scientific accuracy and consistency, that no one should follow its core claims.

Duesberg's piece demonstrated that Moore et al. deserved henceforth to be tossed into the trash can of history. That helps to explain why Moore and his flawed religious mates have gone so utterly ballistic and hysterical over this one article. They cannot afford not to......their stakes are too enormous......

@john moore: you know this is exactly what the eichmann thought back in his day: "It just won't happen". it did. there was nuremberg. and eichmann was sentenced to death later in isreal. it did happen. and the more i look around me the more i notice people become aware of this scam. they are catching up fast on the swine flu, hiv is not that far of any more. every day there are more people signing up for House of Numbers on facebook. Aidsmythexposed still outnumbers any orthodox site by far. no one BELIEVES YOU AND YOUR PHARMA FRIENDS ANY MORE JOHN!

Despite your ramblings, i am still here. after 23 years. together with quite a few others who just won't die or go away by NOT taking your ARV's OR following your peers advice. that in itself is all the proof we need.

and with regards to temperate language: people are being poisoned and are dying because of a hypothesis that is just totally wrong. what sort of language would you like to apply in such a situation? and the more often you repeat that there won't be class action, the more that shows me -and the rest of the world- that you are thinking about it. which begs the question why on earth you would even consider that - if you were right all along.

fact is if i had listened to the orthodoxy i would be dead by now. you can call me names, insult me me all he want and claim"i am too far down the dissident road".

well i am still here, healthy and without and meds whatsoever - and that must really annoy you john.

@john moore: and yes - i do not like you very much. YOU are the reason thousands of lives have been ruined, partnerships that broke up over inaccurate and lousy testing, people getting sick on ARV's, and dying from it too. YOU and your pharma friends are the reaon why we are discriminated against at work, home and by governments. That too needs to be on the record.

Upthread Dr. John Moore wrote: "Unless Mr Manning chooses to now call me a liar and then provide his full contact details for me to refer the matter to a lawyer under UK libel law."

A general rule of thumb on internet -- if a person invokes the threat of legal action from comments on a blog by strangers, the person is losing the argument. The Duesberg and Ruggiero papers should have been published, should not have been retracted, and the censors, should be shunned.

@Charles Gesheckter I guess we will just have to wait a few months and see how the infant mortality rate in South Africa changes, now that the government is no longer denying that HIV can kill.
http://www.southafrica.info/about/health/aidsday-2009.htm

Most other countries have been working hard to prevent mother-to-infant transmission for over a decade.

The science cannot be pocket, a toy in someone's hands. Unfortunately, people are ready on meanness for the sake of greater money , including in a science. Probably, us will "bite" also because of a hypothesis psychogenic carcinogenesis and mad ideas, that anti-cancer drugs to create it is impossible (http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(09)00418-6/abstract).
Bruce G Charlton is the present scientist!

@Oleg Bukhtoyarov Exactly! Thanks for letting us know. Bruce Charlton is indeed a present scientist! You don't "bite" at all.

@ Jim Beam: The World Bank's own data at

http://datafinder.worldbank.org/under-5-mortality-rate

shows this for SA's child mortality rate per 1000 population:

1970: 112.6
1975: 96.7
1980: 90.4
1985: 75
1990: 63.6
1995: 64.1
2000: 74.1
2005: 64.5
2007: 59

Can you please explain to me where HIV is having an impact on mortality rate? In 1970 perhaps? Or even before that? When was this epidemic exactly taking place in SA where child mortality rates supposedly exceed 112 per 1000 as was in the case in 1970?

SA is supposed to be devastated by HIV and AIDS. Again the Wold Bank statistics paint a different picture:

Life expectancy in SA:

1960: 49
1965: 51
1970: 53
1975: 54
1980: 57.16
1985: 59
1990: 61
1995: 60.95
1997: 60.27
2000: 56.12
2005: 51
2007: 50

How come life expectancy continued to rise right throughout the alleged AIDS epidemic and only recently dropped, but not even below 1960 levels and before? Could living conditions, quality of life perhaps be reason rather than some 'virus'?

Population growth for SA:

1960: 2.46%
1965: 2.25%
1970: 2.17%
1975: 2.20%
1980: 2.33%
1985: 2.60%
1990: 2.04%
1995: 2.16%
2000: 2.48%
2005: 1.17%

Can you explain why SA's population enjoys a healthy growth of 2-3% right through the AIDS epidemic until 2005? Could econmoci factors play a role here? even at 2005 rates, SA exceeds that of the US and western europe. As societies do better population growth goes down. To back this up here are some per capita income figures for SA:

1980: 3940 USD
1985: 4780 USD
1990: 5440 USD
1995: 5870 USD
2000: 6470 USD
2005: 8330 USD
2007: 9460 USD
2008: 9780 USD

So where exactly are these 40 millions that the WHO claims have died due to HIV? (a figure which is now constantly being downgraded)

SA seems to growing at a steady rate as the GDP indicates:

1970: 5.25%
1975: 1.7%
1980: 6.62%
1985: 5.00%
1990: -0.32%
1995: 3.12%
2000: 4.15%
2005: 4.97%
2007: 5.10%
2008: 3.06%
2009:

How come that right through the AIDS epidemic in the 90-ties SA is enjoying healthy growth until now? Even the EU does not have an overall grwoth of 3-5% such as SA. Where is the impact of the alleged AIDS epidemic in the 90-ties on the economy? How come the economy and per capita income is growing, child mortality decreasing sine the 1970?

This is data available to any one, from the World Bank. Make up your own mind. But HIV=AIDS does not work any more. It IS A DEAD END. Its inhumane.

@wherestheproof...sorry, but your anecdotal "evidence" of supplying names of a few people who are doing well without ARV's are just that, ancedotes. For every person you can name that are not on ARV"s, I can name two that are on ARV's and doing great. Me, for one. On HIV Meds for 16 years and ZERO side effects and many, many friends whom I know PERSONALLY as well, not just via the net.
Example: You supplied Karri, who is Karri Stokely. She has only been off the meds for 2 and a half years. Not exactly earth shattering. Also, by her very own words, when she was on the meds, she tolerated them "very well"! She only later amended those words.
JTD

@JTD - well good for you then ;) keep taking those drugs.
'Anecdotal' - i keep hearing this frequently. Just google sideeffects Atripla, AZT, Nevirapine. I was on the the original concorde trial. if you call seeing those that were not on the placebo arm get sick - ok. if you call liver and kidney for those on the drugs long term anecdotal, though there are plenty of studies that show that, keep closing your eyes. i had severe side effects on the concorde trial from headaches, diarrhea, rashes all the way to weight loss. then i stopped. never looked back. and am still in touch with some of those on the trial at the kobler centre he did the same. they are well and doing just fine. those who didnt - well on early dosage regimes, they died. later on 'combo therapy' they just got sick a lot later. if you are doing great on ARV's without any side effects - great for you. i would call THAT anecdotal. because i have not seen or met any one who did well on ARV's long term. to the contrary. best of luck to you JTD.

whereistheproof, according to the figures you just cited, life expectancy in South Africa has fallen from 61 in 1990 to 50 in 2005. This is despite becoming a democratic country with majority rule, maintaining a sound economy (certainly by African standards), improving per capita incomes and standard of living, and a government that has made significant inroads into reducing absolute poverty and the historical inequalities suffered by the black majority. For a country's average life expectancy to fall by eleven years between 1990 and 2005, something catastrophic must have happened during that time. What do you think that is?

Jenny McCarthy proselytizes against the use of vaccines in society because her son has autism and she claims it was caused by vaccination. In fact, there's a huge amount of evidence from multiple areas of science that vaccines do NOT cause autism. McCarthy's "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Fortunately, public policy on health and medicine is based not on anecdotes and claims, but on accumulated scientific evidence. Hence vaccines are recommended by all national and international health policies, because there's massive medical experience that they save millions of lives and harm, at most, very, very few.

"whereistheproof" and a few other people claim that ARVs kill people but HIV doesn't because of his own purely experience that he is alive despite long term HIV infection and did not tolerate early generation ARVs very well (assuming anything he says can be believed). Whereistheproof's "evidence" is purely anecdotal. Fortunately, public policy on health and medicine is based not on anecdotes and claims, but on accumulated scientific evidence. Hence ARVs are recommended by all national and international health policies, because there's massive medical experience that they save millions of lives and harm, at most, very, very few.

The attitudes of Jenny McCarthy (who sadly has influence in the anti-vaccine movement) and whereistheproof (for fortunately is merely an anonymous internet troll with no influence within the AIDS denialist movement) are very dangerous because they use their own perceptions and beliefs to attempt to persuade other people to make fatal mistakes with their own health and others'. That's irresponsible, but fortunately without impact on public policy. Policy decisions and best medical practice is based on scientific evidence and not anecdotes that are untypical of the population's response to the life-saving properties of vaccines and ARVs. Individual anti-vaccine advocates and AIDS denialists are free to make their own health care choices, but when they try to persuade others to make the same mistakes, they become dangers to public health and a civilized society. That's why responsible scientists counter them whenever possible - to protect the greatest number of people for the greatest period of time, which is one of the hallmarks of a civilized, advanced society.

John - why don't you just answer the questions the dissidents are asking you instead of hiding behind all of this meaningless rhetoric?

In recent years we have heard a lot of people talk as if the fact that two thousand scientists agree about something constitutes evidence, if not indeed proof, that it is true. So it may be a sign of the times that Elsevier is considering closing a scientific journal whose main sin is that it published an article that bucked the consensus belief that HIV is the cause of AIDs. Elsevier recently removed Peter Duesberg et al’s ‘HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS?a new perspective’ from MEDICAL HYPOTHESES’ online website and left a notice explaining its action. It correctly stated that the editorial policy of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES is to consider ‘radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas’? but went on to say that Elsevier had ‘received serious expressions of concern about the quality of this article, which contains highly controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS, opinions that could potentially be damaging to global public health’.

The fact that the article contains controversial opinions about the causes of AIDS is part of the reason why it is preeminently suitable for publication in MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. But the idea that these opinions could be damaging to global public health is a clear beg of the very scientific question at issue. The opinion that HIV is not the cause of AIDS could be damaging to global public health?if HIV is in fact the cause (or a cause) of AIDS. But if HIV is not the cause (or a cause) of AIDS, but a harmless passenger virus as Duesberg claims, then the HIV theory of AIDs, and the use of anti-HIV drugs to combat it, may itself be damaging to global public health.

In taking this action, Elsevier unwittingly took sides in what is essentially a philosophical disagreement regarding what science is and the criteria for scientific publication. We have heard a lot more in recent years about the scientific consensus behind certain theories than we have about the scientific evidence for and against them. We have also heard people who should know better say that certain theories have now been established once and for all, and are thus beyond rational dispute. And we have sometimes even heard them proclaim that whether or not you believe that a certain theory is true should now be regarded as a moral issue. MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, however, was founded nearly thirty-five years ago in an attempt to provide an outlet for medical research that runs contrary to received opinion and is too controversial to be published in peer-reviewed medical journals. David Horrobin, our founding editor, believed that the peer-review system can impede the growth of science by systematically rejecting articles that fall outside the consensus of scientific belief. Horrobin was attracted to Sir Karl Popper’s philosophy of science and enlisted Popper himself to serve as a kind of philosophical godfather on the journal’s first editorial advisory board. Popper taught that scientific knowledge is inherently fallible, that universal theories cannot be justified or shown to be true by empirical evidence, and that the best we can do is to test our theories against observation and reasoned argument. He said that scientific theories are distinguished from non-scientific theories by the fact that they can be refuted, or falsified, by empirical evidence. And he wrote that ‘the game of science is, in principle, without end’. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game’.

There can be little doubt that many scientists would like to suppress Peter Duesberg’s views about these matters. I have actually heard well-meaning scientists say, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, that Duesberg should be imprisoned for them. But the scientific response for those who believe that the views articulated in an article are false is not to prevail upon a publisher to suppress them. It is to present credible evidence and reasoned argument to refute them. Some scientists, especially those who are convinced of their own opinions, may say that this is a waste of time and effort since the HIV-AIDS hypothesis has been fully verified, and since Duesberg’s views are clearly false and pseudo-scientific. But this is not the attitude that has inspired MEDICAL HYPOTHESES. And it only means that we are still fighting a battle for the freedom of thought, nearly four hundred years after Galileo, and that some scientists have forgotten which side they are supposed to be on.

This may sound like hyperbole. It is not. I used to think that it would be too ironic, given the history of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, if Elsevier were to subject our policy on peer review to peer review. But that is just the tip of the iceberg. The panel of experts that Elsevier enlisted to investigate how we came to accept Duesberg’s article for publication has now completed its report. It does, indeed, recommend that articles submitted to the journal be subject to peer review. It also recommends that Elsevier impose a list of forbidden topics?of a controversial or politically-incorrect nature?to be excluded from the journal.

Mark Amadeus Notturno
Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of MEDICAL HYPOTHESES
Washington DC
16 January 2010

On a related topic, while I am flattered (well, not really, given where it's coming from) that whereistheproof gives me personal credit for the introduction and widespread use of the ARVs that have saved so many lives, I'm afraid I must decline such an accolade. If "witp"s assertions were true, I would be recognized as one of the greatest medical scientists of the 20th century, and would surely have visited Stockholm already. Sadly, neither is true, and it would be arrogant and professionally inappropriate of me to accept credit (even on a Blog) for accomplishments that were not my own (there are behavioral standards in science that should be adhered to). The introduction of effective ARVs over an approximately 10-year period relied on the efforts of thousands of academic and corporate scientists and physicians in several countries, working in multiple disciplines (chemistry, virology, structural biology, pharmacology, clinical science, etc). And I wasn't one of them, as I worked on other aspects of HIV science in the relevant time period. I've often regretted that I wasn't in a position to have helped so many HIV+ people by assisting in the development of life-saving ARVs, but sadly, it was not to be. So, like I say, this is an accolade I am obligated to decline, lest it be thought I was passively taking credit for the work of others, many of whom I truly admire for what they accomplished.

I think I remember very interesting and enthusiastic presentation given by Prof. John Moore at a conference in Bath (UK) in 1994. It was the first time I heard of the HIV virions' tendency to include cellular plasma membrane proteins in its envelope. In the frame of the current discussion, it can be safely asserted that HIV is a very tricky virus, which targets a unique cellular subset of the human immune system, which in itself is quite tricky as well. Of course, there is a connection between HIV and AIDS, but it is not a simple one and much remains to be investigated, particularly from the side of the immune system. Yes, current antiretroviral drugs have toxic side-effects, which in some individual cases can outweigh the benefits. That is why the drugs are prescribed by a medical professional (not by a scientist) who (at least in theory) has sufficient medical basis to prescribe them. There is much unknown in medicine and the choices facing a doctor and a patient are often quite cruel. New antiviral and immune system boosting strategies need to be developed and that is where Medical Hypotheses with Prof. Bruce Charlton as an editor can make a vital contribution.

@John. Apologies John. And yes you are right. I am giving you too much credit. But you are very good at threatening others if they do not agree with you, wouldn't you agree? Here is an example:

http://exlibhollywood.blogspot.com/2008/07/gallos-egg.html

"When you're in a war, there are no rules.

This IS a war, there ARE no rules, and we WILL crush you, one at a time, completely and utterly (at least the more influential ones; foot-soldiers like you aren't worth bothering with)"

This is not exactly confidence inspiring behaviour for a scientist with access to 34,000,000 in funding: http://exlibhollywood.blogspot.com/

Now I know you are going to discredit Clarke Baker in your usual fashion, but then there is the Semmelweis Report, which also does not reflect well on the AIDS mainstream.

The world that John Moore would like us to live in is one, in which scientific papers are withheld if their content questions HIV=AIDS, scientists questioning HIV=AIDS him are discredited, and people such as myself are called 'public health risks' if we dare contradict the mainstream dogma. What is next John? Are you going to have us tagged? Locked up if we speak up?

The only risk I see here is the total lack of a comprehensible ethical epistiomology for mainstream AIDS sciences. It is all about money. And those that resist, such as Duesberg and Mullis, are ridiculed, grants are withheld, their jobs are on the line.

Even Montagnier is backing away from all of this. Tellingly to date he has not issued a retraction of anything he has said in House of Numbers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQoNW7lOnT4

Montagnier: We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected… our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks if you have a good immune system.

HIV is not the cause of AIDS. After 23 years of total FAILURE on the part of Gallo and Moore there is nothing to show for other than ARV's that do more harm than good, a countless wrecked lives based on tests that are lousy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SL1yagwaKM4

And now Medical Hypothesis has fallen victim to mainstream AIDS as well.

Dissent is also a meaningful contribution to a discussion: there can be no debate if there is no ‘against’ to the ‘for’. The medical world has always been and in the light of the ‘attack’ on Medical Hypotheses’s editorial policies, will continue to remain cocooned in its own ivory tower of supercilious self righteousness, using its arm-twisting others into kowtowing to its own definitions on journalistic ethics and privileges. The general and all-pervading intolerance to opinions or dissent or different from ‘acceptable’ self-proclaimed norms’

Merely because someone pronounces something unpalatable or contrary to popular trend about an infectious disease, and finds an appropriate forum to air his views, does not make his opinion gospel. Yet, to single out the editor or the journal for daring to open its pages to such radical views, is not ethical or cricket. Of recent development is the exposure of how really different the ground situation actually was during the so-called pandemic H1N1. While me-too editors were going overboard to touting dire straits, wily- nily jumping into the welcome home net spread wide by avaricious drug cartels.

Much brouhaha and tomtoming on the infallibility and merits of peer review and its absence in MH has accompanied the stifling and strangling of free and fearless editorial practices of MH, autocratic though they may appear at times – the fact is, there is much that is sacrosanct about peer reviewing as a quality check for publishing: I myself have had my submissions politely rejected by anonymous reviewers of one journal, only to see that very paper published in yet another’ peer reviewed’ journal a while later. How may in the medial world will honestly declare they too haven’t experienced this irony? Do editorial boards of the so-called peer reviewed journals know how many of the papers their own reviewers ‘passed’ had been outright rejected by their own ilk elsewhere?

If a paper is lacking in conviction or content then it should be unsuitable for exposure to a wider audience. Yet, time and again, all of us know, that being rejected by one set of reviewing ‘peers, implies resubmission and acceptance in another equally popular or patronized journal: If the much vaunted peer review system was as holy a cow as assumed to be, how come there so difference and disparity in submission quality assessment between one journal and another?

If your name is Casca then you will be hanged for your bad verse: Strange logic this in a world moving towards open access along the free information. I myself, as author or co-author have had the mortification of having ‘accepted peer reviewed’ articles kept in permafrost by editors, neither seeing them in print nor having them released from the copyright transferred clause I readily agreed to sign. The only reason for the cold storage of at least one among such papers in question is, I deduce, because it says something at variance with ‘acceptable’ regimens and presents radical observations on lowering viral loads in HIV patients. Could it be that too many megabuck toted apple-carts would go cart-wheeling by new and effective cost-friendly initiatives on AIDS control?

Medical Hypotheses and its Editor has allowed me, at no price, to present a few observations and theories over the years, many of which I could not pursue meaningfully to conclusion for want of infrastructure and funding. That some of my publications in MH have even been cited or referred to in indexed journals is itself a telling commentary on how hollow the sanctity of peer review actually is ( incredibly a few editors even request the submitting author to suggest reviewers or choose tem from a panel provided: how much lower can the system go?.

As a novice editor of a nascent third world based open access journal <www.scientificmedicineonline.org> I humbly implore Elsevier to leave Medical Hypotheses and its editor/s pursue their goal of providing space to new, novel, controversial or dissenting opinions. Stet is a term that editors often use, maybe it is time publishers used it to. Stet, leave it as it was.

Prof. Arunachalam Kumar
Editor-in-Chief, www.scientificmedicineonline.org
Dean, Faculty of Medicine, Nitte University
K. S. Hegde Medical Academy
Mangalore 5785018
India

Sorry if Medical Hypothese could't be issued as usually. I myself have had two articles published by it and wouldn't have succeded without it. I think it is necessary to have such a magazine.

A number of times in the present discussion, reputable scientists have asked for facts and original citations to published data that would support claims made against Medical Hypothesis and against the paper under discussion. Instead, we have been offered scatological rhetoric, exaggerations, and polemics on the importance to public health of preventing the publication of unsupported hypotheses. It seems that it has been falsely claimed that: (1.) Medical Hypothesis claims to be (“masquerades as”) a peer reviewed journal. (2) Scientists supporting MH are incapable of getting their ideas published in other journals. (3.) That MH is breaking the rules for listing in PubMed. ------Other rhetorical exaggerations include: (1.) The claim that the Duesberg paper is nothing more than a rehash of old ideas. However, when asked, there was no reply to where the analysis of the South African data from 1980-2008 had been previously published. (2.) Certain parties are labeled “AIDS deniers” when a more accurate description would be “HIV/AIDS deniers” or “HIV deniers” because the papers under discussion question the link between HIV and AIDS rather than denying the existence of AIDS. (3.) That the Deusberg paper contains no medical hypothesis.--------When one side of a scientific debate consistently responds to requests for citations to published data with scatological rhetoric, appeals to consensus, doomsday worries, and “authoritative” pronouncements rather than simply citing the published data that supports their view, I begin to wonder how clearly the published data really supports their case. Remember the legal saying, “If you have the facts, argue the facts. Otherwise, discredit your opposition.” I am still waiting for someone to cite original published data that answers Deusberg’s three main points: (1.) What evidence exists for the huge losses of South African lives from HIV claimed by Chigwedere et al.? (2.) What evidence exists that South Africans would have benefited from anti-HIV drugs, such as AZT and Nevirapine (that the benefits outweigh the risks)? And (3) What proof exists that HIV is necessary to cause AIDS?

MIchael Courtney,

I don't have the Duesberg paper on South Africa, due to its retraction. However, Duesberg published a paper in PNAS, entitled "Human immunodeficiency virus and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome: Correlation but not causation"

This paper reviewed much of the published data and greatly refuted the purported retroviral cause of AIDS

http://www.pnas.org/content/86/3/755.full.pdf

Dear Michael Courtney,

Here is a summary of the currently censored evidence you were asking for, which is indeed the focus of the current debate on the merits of censorship in science:

HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective
Peter H. Duesberg a,*, Joshua M. Nicholson a, David Rasnick b, Christian Fiala c, Henry H. Bauer d
a Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Donner Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
b Private residence, Oakland, California, USA
c Gynmed Ambulatorium, Mariahilferguertel 37, 1150 Vienna, Austria
d Chemistry and Science Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24060-5623, USA
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 9 June 2009
Accepted 11 June 2009
Available online from June until August 2009.

S u m m a r y
A recent study by Chigwedere et al., ‘‘Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa”, claims that during the period from 2000 to 2005 about 330,000 South African AIDS-deaths were caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) per year that could have been prevented by available
anti-HIV drugs. The study blamed those who question the hypothesis that HIV is the cause of AIDS, particularly former South African President Thabo Mbeki and one of us, for not preventing these deaths by anti-HIV treatments such as the DNA chain-terminator AZT and the HIV DNA inhibitor Nevirapine.
Here we ask, (1) What evidence exists for the huge losses of South African lives from HIV claimed by the Chigwedere study? (2) What evidence exists that South Africans would have benefited from anti-HIV drugs? We found that vital statistics from South Africa reported only 1 ‘‘HIV-death” per 1000 HIV
antibody-positives per year (or 12,000 per 12 million HIV antibody-positives) between 2000 and 2005, whereas Chigwedere et al. estimated losses of around 330,000 lives from HIV per year. Moreover, the US Census Bureau and South Africa reported that the South African population had increased by 3 million during the period from 2000 to 2005 instead of suffering losses, growing from 44.5 to 47.5 million, even though 25% to 30% were positive for antibodies against HIV. A similar discrepancy was found between claims for a reportedly devastating HIV epidemic in Uganda and a simultaneous massive growth of the Ugandan population. Likewise, the total Sub-Saharan population doubled from 400 millions in 1980 to
800 millions in 2007 during the African HIV epidemics. We conclude that the claims that HIV has caused huge losses of African lives are unconfirmed and that HIV is not sufficient or even necessary to cause the previously known diseases, now called AIDS in the presence of antibody against HIV. Further we call into question the claim that HIV antibody-positives would benefit from anti-HIV drugs, because these drugs are inevitably toxic and because there is as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS.

Send me an email (duesberg@berkeley. edu), if you like a pdf of the whole paper.

Semper fidelis,

Peter Duesberg

@fraser - if you read duesberg's paper, you find out what is going on. but its not HIv that is causing the shift in life expectancy, which was lower during the 60, then rose consistently until recently. if you look up tha actual SA statistics you can also discover some discrepancy between WHO, World Bank and SA statistics.

Dr. Duesberg, you were the first scientist (that I am aware of) to question whether treating AIDS patients with AZT, a nucleoside analogue, DNA chain terminator, was a sound practice. I believe you have been vindicated, Sir, as AZT was recently identified as a carcinogen by the State of California. Many of us salute your persistence and tenacity in making major contributions to science over the years.

Dear Professor Duesberg ----

as a young student I once asked your advice regarding HIV and never regretted in doing so. 23 years later I am alive and well like so many others I know who refused ARV's. Your courage and persistence in exploring facts that are conveniently ignored by mainstream science and above all your scientific integrity are an example to all of us. I join Dennis Fryar in his salute and hope that one day I can thank you in person.

This is the last time I will access this thread, as it long ago degenerated into what always happens when the subject of HIV/AIDS is raised on a "mainstream" website that allows comments. The small clique of AIDS denialists rush in and post their insane, pseudoscientific rambles, in the hope that "neutrals" will take them seriously. The "questions" they ask have invariably been raised many times before elsewhere on the internet, answered (there or in the peer-reviewed literature) and ignored - the "American in Paris" principle of "just shout louder" is a standard AIDS denialist tactic when provided with the answers.

The future of Med Hyp does not depend on what anyone posts on this Blog. It will be determined by Elsevier after the review it has commissioned is completed. I hope that Elsevier gets it right and converts Med Hyp to a serious journal with appropriate standards.

Many of the "neutrals" on this thread have emphasized the importance of abstract concepts such as freedom of speech and the opposition of censorship. Those concepts have merit and the principles are worth defending, within reason. And yet there are well recognized constraints in all western countries on what constitutes free speech. Among them are restrictions on hate speech, and on speech that constitutes a danger to the public (e.g., the "shouting 'Fire!' in a crowded cinema" prohibition, unless there is actually a fire). There are also restrictions on, for example, advertising tobacco to children, to protect the health of vulnerable people. I strongly believe that AIDS denialist propaganda falls into such categories, because it can and does kill people. The deaths caused by Mbeki's denialist-inspired policies are proven by scientific research, and are accepted within that country by all but a few AIDS denialists. Moreover, many other individuals have been driven to their deaths by AIDS denialists, or by embracing AIDS denial. For examples of these deaths, visit the AIDS Truth web site and consult the "Denialists who died of AIDS" page. Or visit Seth Kalichman's Denying AIDS blog, and read about the AIDS death of the prominent Washington diplomatic journalist, Lambros Papantoniou, after he was persuaded to stop taking ARVs. At least one other prominent AIDS denialist is desperately ill from AIDS and may not live much longer. Conversely, my colleagues and I in the anti-denial movement know of many examples of people who were fooled by the denialists into stopping their physician-recommended therapies, became sick, contacted us, and were then saved from dying of AIDS after accepting our advice. Only last night I had a tentative enquiry from someone who appears to be in that position. So, this is why we counter the AIDS denialists whenever and wherever we can - to save lives. And saving lives is by far the most important issue, more important than "freedom of speech" when the speech breaches accepted societal restrictions and costs lives. I assume that anyone on this thread who doesn't agree with my priorities will, of course, "defend to the death" my right to express the views that underpin my choice.

“Moreover, the US Census Bureau and South Africa reported that the South African population had increased by 3 million during the period from 2000 to 2005 instead of suffering losses, growing from 44.5 to 47.5 million, even though 25% to 30% were positive for antibodies against HIV.”

Good grief! There is no excuse for publishing anything /that/ stupid.

phayes is quite right. By the same analogy, there must be no cancer in California because the state's population has risen in recent years..... But sadly, that's exactly the stupid standard of "science" that the denialists come up with all the time. Idiots.....

Again, we see juvenile flailing from supposed adults. Good riddance, John Moore. Phayes, why not address the entire paper? Your cherry-picking rebuttal is unsound. O'Hare, your argument by analogy is subpar. Dr. Duesberg has over 200 papers in the published literature, and was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1986. He is not hiding his scientific conclusions from anyone, and, of course, anyone, including the best scientists in the world are free to criticize his conclusions or the underlying data supporting them. The last 3 comments are illustrative of the sub-standard emotional responses often posing as science, when dealing with the problems of AIDS.

Sure John - you can dish out as much crap as you like. But looks like you are unable to take the crap when it comes to it.

A final point regarding John Moore's parting emotional cri de coeur. He implies that his rationale for censoring scientific work is to save lives. "So, this is why we counter the AIDS denialists whenever and wherever we can - to save lives. And saving lives is by far the most important issue, more important than "freedom of speech" when the speech breaches accepted societal restrictions and costs lives." President Johnson used the same warped thinking (saving lives) to initiate the Vietnam War; President Bush used the same warped thinking to invade Iraq. President Obama used a similar warped thinking to bail out Wall Street. Don't be fooled by such appeals to emotion. In science, they often turn out famously wrong (bleeding, radical mastecomy, lobotomy, Tuskegee Airmen experiments, eugenics.)

I remember being dissuaded years ago, that there was no debate on the cause of “AIDS” despite my growing curiosity, now for over 18 years in this sexually promiscuous, heterosexual, Western part of the world. I was seduced by a white coat in a British clinic that everything that we had been lead to believe for years was still true, if not more so. So this is where the debate is!

"Conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this commentary which I reached slowly and reluctantly over many decades....one reason for the pervasive bias that is that physicians learn to practice a very drug-intensive style of medicine." [emphasis added].

.the author of that candid observation was Marcia Angell, M.D. who was for twenty (20) years the editor of................The New England Journal of Medicine.

January 15, 2009, New York Review of Books, p. 12.

So typical of John Moore to run when Professor Duesberg enters the building and the cold blooded truth about AZT fills the atmosphere.. Constructive Criticism is due, John Moore calls us Denialists and he runs like he always does, what a coward.

HIVAIDS Deny-alism will eventually crush them all, the Truth always prevails.

@Dennis Fryar...

Because the content of the rest of the paper is irrelevant. You don't seem to have understood that I shouldn't be able to find *any* errors like that in a published paper (in fact I'd be shocked to see such appalling illogic in a preprint) and that a journal which publishes such papers is not a science journal - it is a comic.

@ John Moore: You are being accused of something but you progress unstopably on it. I've seen you use abusive words repeatedly more than anyone else on this threat 'foolish, silly, demented, crazed' etc. My understanding is that you are supposed to be a university professor. I pity your students, I really pity those around you if you recourse to this kind of attitude easily. 'Whereistheproof' makes a strong point that he is HIV+ but has shelved the ARVs that he considers toxic for 20 years and you say he is a denialist? Are you more catholic than the pope? Or are you suggesting that those who have been off the ARVs don't love themselves. You make a good prrof that you are suppressing something and that there is 'truth' to be hidden. Why censor in this day and age? Why? Where is the science in you? How old are you? I look forward to your retirement soon. - Peter J.

If the denialists are so wrong and the mainstream scientists so right I think it is high time to isolate the virus in a pure state then the denialists arguments will be over.

Somewhere in the online debate the BMJ hosted between the dissidents and the mainstream the figure of £400,000 and several months was mentioned for this to be done.

This is a drop in the ocean for the AIDS industry.

If the dissidents are costing lives they should be proven wrong with the isolation of HIV.

One extant problem in America is the power and ruthlessness of the Pharmaceutical Companies, and how this power distorts science and medicine. Upthread a salient point is made regarding Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine,who discovered that not only were pharmaceutical companies overseeing and micro-managing clinical drug trials of their own products, but also enlisting ghost writers or paid consultants to write the papers in the prestigious journals with the proper subtle slant of the data. No doubt, AIDS is a medical problem that requires compassion and good science to assess and treat. However, it has degenerated into a money-making enterprise for Pharmaceutical companies to simply sell lots of drugs, whether the drugs work or not. To ignore this, is either pure naivete or collusion.

MEDICALLY CAUSED DEATH IN AMERICA - published in JAMA



An exclusive interview with Dr. Barbara Starfield


By Jon Rappoport

www.insolutions.info

www.nomorefakenews.com



On July 26, 2000, the US medical community received a titanic shock to the system, when one of its most respected and honored public-health experts, Dr. Barbara Starfield, revealed her findings on healthcare in America.



The landmark Starfield study, “Is US health really the best in the world?”, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, came to the following conclusions:



Every year in the US there are:



12,000 deaths from unnecessary surgeries;



7,000 deaths from medication errors in hospitals;



20,000 deaths from other errors in hospitals;



80,000 deaths from infections acquired in hospitals;



106,000 deaths from FDA-approved correctly prescribed medicines.



The total of medically-caused deaths in the US every year is 225,000.



This makes the medical system the third leading cause of death in the US, behind heart disease and cancer.



The Starfield study is the most explosive revelation about modern healthcare in America ever published. The credentials of its author and the journal in which it appeared are, within the highest medical circles, impeccable.


http://canadiansforhealthfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/an-exclusive-interview-with-dr-barbara-starfield-medically-caused-death-in-america/

@ John Moore, what is wrong with you? You continue in your profane use of words 'insane, neutrals' etc. What do you think about yourself? But for public funds the disbursement of which is now being question in this thread, do you have a strong resume or prodessional profile than Dr Deusberg? Do you have a wife and kids? And do they tolerate you? Are you a happy man? Do you have friends? I guess not, because yo must have abused them into non-existence. Please, please, there is nothing wrong in dissent. I would think dissent is the bulding block of good science, andthing to the contrary is inimical. - Peter J

Dr. Duesberg, I have taken this direct quote from you, elsewhere:
“A precursor of this paper was rejected by the Journal of AIDS, which published the Chigwedere et al. article, with political and ad hominem arguments but without offering even one reference for an incorrect number or statement of our paper (available on request).”
However, I am aware that many people have indeed requested this from you several months ago, but you have not delivered? Why is that? Is it because it is not true? Why make an offer you do not follow up on unless you have something to hide?
Please post those "political and ad hominem attacks" here.
JTD

Tim, but the few gatekeepers in the AIDS orthodoxy don't even want to spend £400,000 and several months to isolate "HIV", since they say it would divert scarce resources ($15 billion a year in U.S. federal funds alone is scarce?) from research they say is all about saving lives.

In a recent paper on epistemology, my co-author and I asked whether we have exchanged one set of authorities (the religious authorities of the middle ages) with another (the scientists of the 21st century), because this is the inevitable consequence of replacing experimental data with an intellectual elite as the arbiter of scientific validity. What impression are we giving the general public when we eschew a direct discussion of the published data and instead employ rhetoric that questions motives and impugns reputations rather than simply casting our argument in light of the experimental data? What impression are we giving the next generation of scientists? Is the scientific method really a powerful, objective epistemology for exploring natural law and improving the lives and health of humankind, or is science nothing more than a tool of commercial and political rhetoric? Science will best serve its purpose if and only if published experimental data is the primary currency of scientific discourse.

I know I'm leftfield but I have the opinion that the entire idea of HIV causing AIDS is based on using new technology to test for things we simply never understood when the tests were introduced.
By creating a theorum about a range of diseases and then defending it when it simply doesn't add up should be a basis for going back to square one to find out where we went wrong.
My opinion is S-adenosylmethione deficiency is a direct cause of the disease symptoms we see as it causes global hypomethylation of the genome and expression of our 8% endogenous retroviruses.
We are using a vague non specific test for retroviruses to gauge disease but what we are really doing is measuring the extent of hypomethylation in a patient.
This is why Selenium works on AIDS.
As examples, when women get pregnant their retroviruses have function in the placenta (the placenta undergoes hypomethylation) and kick into action just at the point where we apply tests, especially in Africa as the AIDS industry waged a direct campaign to get into the African market and create the image of an epidemic, they did this by using maternity centre tests as the measure of AIDS in Africa.
And AIDS scientists are blatantly racist and homophobic, they have concentrated on looking for disease in gays, blacks, prostitutes and drug users.
I thnk the fact that prostitutes in Africa not dying from AIDS is the clincher, they simply earn more money for food and hence they are not Selenium deficient.
Let Peter Duesberg have his right of reply, we are so overdue now for sorting out this mess that it will only get worse if you try and dodge out of the way and make up lame excuses.

I agree with Michael Courtney that this thread has become tedious - because as with every other thread on the subject very few of the commenters defending the paper in question admit to having read it. This is surprising, since it has been readily available on the website of one of its co-authors for months now. What I would like the defenders of the paper to answer is how it is possible to claim that "HIV is a long-established, non-pathogenic passenger virus" that "has remained epidemiologically stable" in South Africa while citing data that the antenatal HIV seroprevalence rate has increased fortyfold from 0.7% in 1990 to 30.2% in 2005. Similarly, I would be interested to know how it is possible to claim that "there is no evidence for the loss above normal mortality of 300,000 lives per year" while citing Stats SA's death notifications which increased from 317,000 in 1997 to 607,000 in 2006 - almost all of the excess mortality occurring in young to middle aged adults. See http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m_07Sa4htyg/Sm0oivYvNLI/AAAAAAAAAIo/RKmkC87Nzu8/s1600-h/sa+deaths.jpg ........ I also wonder how it is possible to claim that "hundreds of American and British researchers jointly published a collaborative analysis in the Lancet in 2006 concluding that treatment of AIDS patients with anti-viral drugs has not translated into a decrease in mortality" when this is a blatant misrepresentation of the findings of the study concerned which compared first year mortality in early HAART with later HAART (and in later papers 2nd and 3rd year mortality), not overall mortality of HAART versus no HAART... These are not "minor" quibbles like using negative exponents rather than positive powers of ten or mistaking incidence for prevalence. These and many other errors and misrepresentations speak to the quality of the paper, and to the editorial process that initially approved its publication in Medical Hypotheses.

The bigger picture:

We may or may not agree with what you say but we must defend to the death your right to say it

The good news is that the South African government is no longer following the recommendations of Peter Duesberg et al to ignore HIV. Since the roll-out of antiretrovirals, infant mortality and premature deaths from AIDS among people aged 15 to 45 have declined significantly. http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/health_and_hiv_aids/sa_mortality_rate_declining.html

http://www.politicsweb.co.za/politicsweb/view/politicsweb/en/page71619?oid=156058&sn=Detail

John Moore, you probably think eating at Fast food Mc D's is good for you too, as you seem to like Fast medicine and science. Yep, a simple metaphor in response to your gross misunderstanding that you, john moore, and bobby gallo, think that can fool all the people all the time with glossy dramatic science.

Bravo!!! Dr. Peter Duesberg, Dr, Kary Mullis, and all 'the enlightened and educated' types that research for valid studies and hypothesis' that are 'site specific to region, environment and own personal self. Even Montagnier, co founder of HIV(HTVL)has backed away, to also infers diet, can turn around immune issues. Let's leave alone the flaws of the tests and the size of the 'partial chains' of the DNA or RNA for that matter, and lets not talk about having a nice public demonstration, for all to observe, a public isolation demonstration. As much as the mainstream would like to sell the cure to be in the bottle, for Cute named diseases, well your expired date is almost to come due. People are dying around the world but not from HIV, immune issues for sure, but there are many causes some are viral, bacterial, fungal, self created and genetically weak systems, in disease enriched environments but not one called HIV. People are loosing faith with the sensationalized as they should and the governments will slow down backing cons, because of the 'back fire potential to shabby manipulated science, and thers is better science to put their money to. 'Real' always beats the 'Fake' in time...Don't worry you'll always get a job at the counter of fast food...No offense to those that just need a job due to circumstances and they end up flipping burgers....Keep looking, hang in there, things will get better!

with Love

John

Carry on Truth

Funny how Clark gets no readers at his blog, then creates a new one, and trolls the internet putting up links to his new one....

So on 12/18/09 the State of California has determined that AZT should be listed on its Prop 65 List of Chemicals known to cause cancer.

http://oehha.ca.gov/prop65/prop65_list/NEWlist.html

I wonder how AIDS physicians will explain the Prop 65 warning on the medicine bottle?

It's all too evident that if one simply follows the money trail, one shall forever seek those adamant in keeping the unproven HIV = AID$ very much alive, irrespective of how many lives doing so costs, and innocent children orphaned at tax payers expense.
On the other hand, those dedicated to seeking the truth scientifically, at their OWN expense (i.e. not for fame nor fortune but merely taking their hippocratic oaths seriously ~ something rarely seen in medicine these days), shall unfortunately, continue to remain in battle whilst attempting to expose their HONEST, scientific findings.
I am definitely with, as well as truly admire, all those who display a moral obligation of social justice towards humanity in general.
Blessings from Durban ~ South Africa.

I was amazed, years ago, by the fact that on one side AIDS is infectious, transmittable disease, but on the other side the transmission requires "body fluids", blood. So, I thought for myself that there could be this possibility: VIRUS is NOT an infectious agent, the infectious agent is VIRUS+CELL. Virus alone is somehow not a complete infectious agent, but a living cell with the virus - is. ---------------- There was a hypothesis that cancer has viral origin, and another hypothesis that cancer can be transmittable. Can it be a similar situation where infectious agent is a cell carrying incorporated virus? (Transmission in families, histocompatibility is important?)

J Todd De Shong is right. Duesberg et al did make the promise to send the peer reviews on their paper to anyone who asked for it. So, I'm asking. Post the reviews here for all to see! You won't of course, for the same reason you've never released after other public requests - you are scared to. The peer reviews will show WHY your paper was rejected from a proper journal, and WHY you had to dump into an outlet for junk science like Medical Hypotheses where you could evade the peer review process. Once responsible people at Elsevier were told what you had done, your little game was over and your paper got what it deserved. The idea that Duesberg is a "great" scientist is a joke. Whatever might once have been the case 30 years ago is different now. The Medical Hypotheses paper alone is sufficient to prove that Duesberg is incompetent beyond belief nowadays. To put his name on something so clearly wrong on the science (see earlier posts by Fraser) shows the depths he's sunk to. A "great" scientist would simply never stoop so low as to be an author of a junk paper in a junk journal after evading peer review.

Here's a clip showing Duesberg's reaction to the peer reviews he won't release http://www.mixx.com/videos/9624933/youtube_scientific_peer_review_ca_1945.

The clip is particularly appropriate given what's well known in the scientific world about Duesberg's politics and attitudes, and what's posted on the internet.

I find the behaviors of those contributing to this post, from both sides, shocking. Personally, I feel there is lots evidence for HIV to be the cause of AIDS. However, I also respect Peter Duesberg and feel he has made many important observations in the AIDS literature, which have proven to be correct. Duesberg was correct the HIV is not the main cause of cell death in AIDS, but was wrong to exclude viral induce autoimmunity and immune activation. He was right to highlight low transmission rates. AIDS researchers themselves admit this, but instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, they are interested in social and cultural dynamics that may enhance transmission.

Overall, I feel Duesberg has been mistreated. He has made many valid points, and has made some mistakes. How human of him, or should I say how scientific of him? I feel if Duesberg had been treated as a part of the AIDS team, instead of being pushed away, he would of contributed greatly to solving AIDS riddles. Instead we have two polar opposite sides that are slowing progress because of conversations and debates they failed to have in the past. The time is not past to make up for this, and I think we owe it to those who have HIV, or are at risk of developing HIV, to clear the air. Instead of playing games and spewing political words, can we talk about this? Can we do it like adults? The money that would be spent driving the message home for the skeptical few would save more lives than name calling and censorship.

As for the last post by David O'Hare. May I ask that you remove the Hitler video as a refection of Duesberg. It is very offensive considering Duesberg's earlier life in Nazi Germany. If you disagree with Duesberg, tell us why with science and facts. I can, why can't you? I would gladly debate the science on HIV with dissidents. I feel they are wrong, but they are still thinking and caring human beings. They are upset for exactly the same reasons as you - they think people are dying for the wrong reasons. Nobody is evil here and both sides have just as horrible conspiracy theories as the other. Please, let us talk science and numbers. Let us elucidate the facts. Let us convert those who could be helpful to the cause of stopping AIDS. After all, that is exactly what we all want here. Fighting and name calling is not going to make that happen!

My Partners and I have an unusual contribution to make to the debate ~ in that ten years ago we were invited by a university in S. Africa, to provide the underlying science in support of the 'only' successful clinical trial for AIDS: knowledge of which had been suppressed under the influence of a vested interest. The AIDS virus has an unusual characteristic, in that its atoms are formed by an electric particle 'field energy' which is less than the speed of light c. An appropriate electrical treatment was applied during a European hospital clinical trial: the effect of which was to elevate the abnormal slower moving electric particle energy to the normal speed of light c. The patients recovered, for reason of the DNA being enabled then to read the information associated with the AIDS virus as 'foreign', and thereby mark it for destruction by the immune system: an immune system which (for the same subatomic electrical reason) had been returned to normal. HIV is a 'very efficient carrier' of the AIDS virus. WHY HAS INFORMATION NOT BEEN PUBLISHED CONCERNING THE SUCCESSFUL AIDS TRIAL? Within the experience of this Partnership: (a) Four of our computers containing our AIDS Research were destroyed: it would appear, by a vested interest. Special Branch in the UK investigated: a Crime Prevention Officer advised "If those concerned are who you and I believe them to be, they can afford the very best people: if there is a way into your computer, they will find it." (b) We reported in detail to the World Health Organization, at its most senior level: we were advised "our portfolio does not include support to the development of novel HIV treatments". (Signed: Dr. Jack C. Chow. Assistant Director General HIV/AIDS). More than 30 million AIDS patients have died since.

@Robert Wood-Smith

this is very interesting. can you tell us more about that trial? are there any records? i would like to learn more about this.

@Robert Wood-Smith Your invention of the cure for AIDS, Influenza and other problems as you described above, and in the flu forum: http://birdflunewsflash.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/shine-a-light-on-the-bird-flu-virus/ should be published in Medical Hypotheses.

Moore isn't one to be talking about legal actions stemming from misconduct. I have evidence of someone using his computer to harass a dissident, and a criminal complaint of said conduct has been filed with the FBI and a Minnesota police department, under penalty of perjury if the allegations in them aren't true, and I stand with the victim in seeking redress of his complaints.

HIV “DENIALISM” MAY NOT BE THE ONLY PRETEXT FOR DESTROYING THE MEDICAL HYPOTHESES JOURNAL
============
MEDICAL HYPOTHESES (MedHypot) has tackled only recently another highly sensitive issue: TOBACCO SMOKING, particularly one weird form which has got highly concerned all antismoking experts of the world: HOOKAH (shisha, narghile), also known in the orthodox mainstream “peer-reviewed” PubMed indexed literature as “waterpipe”. The latter, in one word, is in fact a scientific nominalism since it lets the naïve reader believe that all water pipes of the world are, in spite of their huge differences (from a chemical viewpoint to start with), one same object.
============
The hookah has been tremendously growing in popularity in the USA and the world for almost one decade now. It is considered by WHO experts as a global epidemic.
MedHypot has published a first brilliant article by Biji KURIEN and R. Hal SCOFIELD in which an audacious hypothesis based on the use of CURCUMA / TURMERIC (a natural cheap inexpensive spice already known as an excellent ANTI-CANCER NATURAL DRUG: search PubMed) in filters for cigarette and hookah [1].
============
No need to say that this hypothesis may have a huge impact on the world public-health. I had the opportunity to publish a Letter to the Editor about this article in which I praised the authors for tackling a taboo issue: TOBACCO SMOKING HARM REDUCTION [2]. Indeed, for most of the mainstream peer-reviewed PubMed literature, only abstinence is effective…
============
Then the same journal has also published a medical hypothesis put forward by antismoking researchers (Fouad RASTAM et al.) in which they repeatedly state that they “firmly believe” that hookah smoking causes ORAL and LUNG CANCER [3].
============
As a truly open tribune for scientific debate (vs. silencing any critique as this is the rule in the main antismoking journals), MedHypot allowed us to publish a critique of this cancer hypothesis [4].
============
Our point was that the antismoking researchers directly applied the cigarette carcinogenesis model to hookah smoking. This is not possible because hookah and cigarette smokes are, chemically to start with, completely different from each other, not to mention the high differences in temperatures involved in each case (for memory, tar carcinogenicity is a function of temperature).
============
We criticised the antismoking doctrine and the numerous errors generally published (strangely enough, they remained uncommented for almost one decade now) in the mainstream ““waterpipe”” PubMed indexed literature.
============
Some of our cited references and the Conflict of Interest section also show that PHARMARCEUTICAL COMPANIES play a major role in the design of the politically-correct TRUTH about the hazards of tobacco smoking. Certainly tobacco smoking is very dangerous. However, and just to take one of its aspects, the hazards of its ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE (passive smoke) have been systematically hyperpolised. In some case, statistics officially used to support the enactment of smoking bans in the European Union have been twisted [5].
============
(CONTACT: kamcha*gmail.com)
======= REFERENCES ==========
[1] Kurien BT, Scofield RH. Bubbling hookah smoke through heat-solubilized curcumin/turmeric and incorporation of the curry spice as an additive or filter in cigarettes to minimize tobacco smoke-related toxicants. Med Hypotheses. 2009 Sep;73(3):462-3.
===========================
[2] Chaouachi K. Harm reduction techniques for hookah (shisha, narghile, "water pipe") smoking of tobacco based products. Med Hypotheses. 2009 Oct;73(4):623-4.
===========================
[3] Rastam S, Li FM, Fouad FM, Kamal HM, Akil N, Moustafa AE. Water pipe smoking and human oral cancers. 1. Med Hypotheses. 2009 Nov 3. [Epub ahead of print]
===========================
[4] Chaouachi K, Sajid KM. A critique of recent hypotheses on oral (and lung) cancer induced by water pipe (hookah, shisha, narghile) tobacco smoking. Med Hypotheses 2009 (online: 24 Dec). doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2009.11.036
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2009.11.036
===========================
[5] Molimard R. [The European Report "Lifting the SmokeScreen": Epidemiological study or manipulation?] Rev Epidemiol Sante Publique. 2008 Aug;56(4):286-90.
http://www.formindep.org/L-article-integral-du-professeur [English version]
===========================
http://cagecanada.homestead.com/AnalyseCritiqueMolimard.html [English version]

CLASSICAL "PEER REVIEW" TOO OFTEN INADEQUATE FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY ISSUES
=============
As John LAURITSEN (16 Jan 2010) rightly put it, “peer-review” is greatly over-rated. “WHEREISTHEPROOF” (16 Jan) was also right to conclude that “peer review is useless if all those 'peers' are funded by the same pharmaceutical company”. The same for M PEARLE (16 Jan) who stressed on “after what we've learned about peer review from Climategate”…
=============
Chris EXLEY’s remark (14 Jan) must be highlighted again: “all journals, including those with the most rigorous peer review, publish research which is wrong”. Indeed, as Rakesh PARIKH pointed out (15 Jan): “Peer review should only be meant to evaluate the methodology of some original paper. Definitely the radical thoughts need to be immune to the killing process of peer review”.
=============
As for PubMed, Anne COSTIGAN (14 Jan) has clarified things surrounding its holiness (in any case, that credited by proponents of orthodox “peer-review”) : “most journals in Pubmed are peer reviewed but not all of them are” and that the 'Scientific merit of a journal's content is the primary consideration in selecting journals for indexing' in Medline, the major component of Pubmed”.
=============
Finally, John SKOYLES (15 Jan) raised the question of INTERDISCIPLINARITY which makes papers of this kind most of the time inadequate for sound peer-review: “Some might have passed review but their interest is often that they are so interdisciplinary that no real "peer group" exists that could properly evaluate them. This is the case of hookah smoking where only a radical transdisciplinary dauntless medical anthropological (not based on a mere addition of knowledge or putting side by side two disciplines) is needed.
=============
Classical peer-review, with its inherent flaws, is a good instrument for a great number of research fields and this is fine. However, in sensitive fields (tobacco research, drug use, AIDS, climate change, etc.), etc, it is not ethically acceptable to present peer-review as a condition for the production of high standard quality science. In the mentioned sensitive fields - where only one or a few researchers hold heterodox views-, even “blind” peer-review proves to be meaningless.
=============
Indeed, from the ideas, style, language, and cited references, the peer-reviewer may easily identify the supposedly “anonymous” author of a manuscript. Furthermore, the holder of radical views or hypotheses is compelled to cite her/his own studies even more that the totalitarian consensus in the above mentioned sensitive fields too often deter “naïve” researchers to cite her/his works. ============ (CONTACT: kamcha*gmail.com)

THE EXAMPLE OF A SIMILAR TABOO ISSUE : ENVIRONMENTAL TOBACCO SMOKE
====================
The attack on MEDICAL HYPOTHESES (MedHypot) is similar to that which targeted the BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL (BMJ) when two scientists of high caliber, James ENSTROM and Geoffrey KABAT, succeeded in publishing therein in a study based on a long follow up of a wide cohort of Californians. They found no causal relation between Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) and tobacco related mortality although they did not rule out a small effect [1] .
====================
These unexpected results have been hardly accepted by anti-smoking organisations and there has been a similar flow of online comments (“Rapid Responses”) has been pouring in the BMJ dedicated section. Many of them were threats issued on behalf of well-known antismoking researchers and activists. BMJ Editor-in-Chief (Richard SMITH) said somewhere that he did not understand what the “FATALLY FLAWED” critique means. in a Letter from the Editor, he showed that being anti-tobacco or pro-tobacco proves to be of no help in this field: by contrast, being “passionately prodebate and proscience” certainly does” [2].
====================
Most recently in the European Journal of Public Health, the two “maverick” scientists were portrayed by Pascal DIETHELM and Martin MCKEE as “DENIALISTS”. The article begins by a long introduction on HIV “denialism” before openly attacking the unacceptable study on ETS [3].
====================
Interestingly, I have also been considered as a “denialist”: of the great hazards caused by hookah side-stream smoke… However, the interesting paradox is that hookah side-stream smoke is almost inexistent (and also not visible) contrary to cigarette smoking… [4].
====================
Even more amazing is the fact that Pascal DIETHELM is himself the author of a public fear-arousing paper on this very topic. Unfortunately for his fame as ETS denialism critic, he did not realise that he took hookah mainstream smoke (the one inhaled by the smoker) for side-stream smoke [5]…
============ (CONTACT: kamcha*gmail.com)

===========================
REFERENCES
===========================
[1] Enstrom JE, Kabat GC. Environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality in a prospective study of Californians, 1960-98 BMJ 2003; 326: 1057
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7398/1057
===========================
[2] Smith, R. Comment from the editor. BMJ 2003, 327, 505.
===========================
[3] Diethelm, P, McKee, M. Denialism: what is it and how should scientists respond? Eur J Public Health. 2009; 19:2-4.
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/extract/19/1/2
===========================
[4] Chaouachi K. Hookah (Shisha, Narghile) Smoking and Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS). A Critical Review of the Relevant Literature and the Public Health Consequences. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009; 6(2):798-843.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=19440416
===========================
[5] Chaouachi K. E-Letter: Denialism, Hookah Environmental Tobacco Smoke, and the «Overwhelming Consensus on the Evidence». Eur J Public Health. 2009 (17 Feb).
http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/eletters/19/1/2#114

Are voices here suggesting that science reporters and the general public cannot be trusted to distinguish between published hypotheses and compelling scientific results; therefore, journals that clearly publish hypotheses should only publish papers that can be believed with the same level of certainty as well-validated results? Is there no legitimate place in the scientific literature for discussion of ideas at the hypothesis stage? By definition, the logic and data on which a hypothesis is based only supports the hypothesis as a plausible explanation of the data. If the logic and data were irrefutably solid, you’d have more than an “educated guess;” you’d have a well-validated result, and the appropriate journal would not be Medical Hypotheses. Any propensity of science reporters and the general public to give an overly certain level of validity to papers published in a venue clearly dedicated to hypotheses is not the responsibility of the journal, its editors, or its authors, and it should not be used as justification to criticize a journal that clearly describes is mission as publishing hypotheses. Maybe the journal needs a warning label: WARNING: THIS JOURNAL PUBLISHES MEDICAL HYPOTHESES, NOT WELL-VALIDATED SCIENTIFIC RESULTS. BASING HEALTHCARE DECISIONS ON HYPOTHESES CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH. The big logical flaw is not with the authors or editors of Medical Hypotheses, but rather with those who advocate basing healthcare decisions on ideas at the hypothesis stage of development.

The publisher’s unilateral retraction of the Duesberg and Ruggiero articles and the potential shutdown of Medical Hypothesis is reminiscent of both my times in the Soviet Union as a U.S. National Academy of Sciences exchange scientist where “genetics” was illegal due to the government policy of Lysenkoism and of current totalitarian government practices of some countries of shutting down offending publications who challenge the party line.

Why argue? Today's medical science representatives made themselves ridiculous beyond belief until the end of times with the 2006 avian flu and the 2009 Mexican flu hypes. And, since the HIV=Aids defenders and the no-brainer$ who came up with the H5N1 and H1N1 nonsense are one of a kind, they are not be taken serious. Really.

I believe one of the most unfortunate parts of the successful AIDS trial, was the WHO mandate: “to find pharmaceuticals and vaccinations against AIDS”. This is an irrational restriction against other known and tested healing modalities, especially against one which has little of no side effects and is within the economic reach of most of the world. It make little sense to so limit the research in the face of a fatal, globally spread, disease which is taking young adults and leaving a legacy of orphans such has not been seen globally before.

Assuming "HIV" were the cause of TB, malaria, diarrhea, weight loss, persistent cough, flu etc and assuming antibody/RNA testing under such circumstances were not worse than useless then the following illustrates what happens when opportunistic activism, media hype and questionable epidemiology conspire to exaggerate a problem and undermine its root causes to serve their own separate agendas:---
Innovations in Rwanda’s health system: looking to the future by
Dorothy E Logie, Michael Rowson, Felix Ndagije--
More than half of Rwanda’s health sector aid comes as
project support and is not sufficiently coordinated with
government policy or well aligned with the MDGs. High
transaction costs and varied donors’ agendas confound
health planning. For example, $47 million of health aid is
spent on HIV/AIDS programmes even though the
prevalence is low by sub-Saharan African standards,
whereas only $1 million is spent on the Integrated
Management of Childhood Illness programme, in a
country where one in every seven children dies before
the age of 5 years.14 The difficulty with project aid is that it
is short term, unpredictable, and can cause very uneven
spread of aid.--www.thelancet.com Published online July 10, 2008 DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(08)60962-9 --- An interesting anecdote was hearing, from a long term employee of Save the Children UK in Kigali, where I visit annually, tell me that 35% of children in the villages are malnourished. THERE ARE OVER 2000 AIDS NGOs registered in tiny Rwanda. Feeding off of whom? The same vulnerable ones they refer to as "ignorant" and have preached the same mantras to about condoms, abstinence, "high risks" and "AIDS" for 20 years. Cui bono? If anybody would like to know more about my observations, recorded interviews with medical people, journalists, African "AIDS patients" and Western sex tourists on the subject of "AIDS" in Uganda or Rwanda please don't hesitate to contact me. Ricci1003@yahoo.dk

"The deaths caused by Mbeki's denialist-inspired policies are proven by scientific research, and are accepted within that country by all but a few AIDS denialists."(JP Moore)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
@ Professor Moore. If you mean Chigwedere et al is "scientific proof", then you are confused or simply malevolent. Mbeki's 2000 Report was not "denying the reality of AIDS" and none of this is accepted by scientists. It may be accepted by technicians* posing as scientists, a matter of their opinion. Last time we checked, opinions of scientists outside their fields are no different than lay opinion.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Again, see website of Tratement Information Group, essays by Claus Jensen and Chris Rawlins, for the science of African AIDS numbers Professor Moore refuses to engage.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So above quote looks like a flat-out lie, Professor Moore, and you should know better.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So come on big shot, I'm calling you out in public, go crying to your lawyer ....
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
*signers of Durban Declaration who didn't analyze pro's and cons

Addendum to commment about "AIDS" in Rwanda above: Note: In the paper cited it states, "... even though the prevalence is low by sub-Saharan African standards....". Is the reason that the estimate for "HIV prevalence" is not mentioned simply because it is so low? I remember hearing that the estimate for 2006 was set at 3% and was never publicized in the Rwanda media simply because it would "give Rwandans the wrong impression".

Apolgies again, that's Treatment Information Group at http://www.tig.org.za/
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Rawlins,C.; http://www.tig.org.za/Critical_Analysis_of_Child_HIV_Prevalence.pdf
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Jensen, C.; http://www.tig.org.za/Transparency_and_Conservative_Values_in_Chigwedere_et_al..pdf
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
and Rawlins, C.;
http://www.tig.org.za/Critical_Analysis_of_the_Underlying_Assumptions_Used_by_Chigwedere_et_al.pdf

I concur with Ostero's post above. Prof. Duesberg's argument is based on epidemiological analysis. Epidemiology is not a very precise science, so there is considerable scope for subjective or skewed views and downright errors in any epidemiological discourse. However, this does not make it "unscientific" or "quack" as epidemiologically observed trends can lead to important breakthroughs using alternative, more mechanistic, approaches. Of course, even with epidemiology in mind one can find deficiencies in Prof. Duesberg's arguments. For example, in my view, it is not entirely correct to make conclusions on the basis of a comparison of epidemilogical profiles of "HIV-positivity", common infectious diseases and "life style" diseases without any reference at all to available epidemiological data on lentiviral diseases in animals. Although there are not that many lentiviral diseases, there are some (e.g. equine infectious anemia). Thus, the relevant data should be sought and analysed because, in fact, unusual "life-style"-like epidemiological profile of "HIV-positivity" can be well accounted for within the "HIV causes AIDS" view if one takes into account that lentiviruses themselves keep very unusual life-style. In other words, epidemiological profile of "HIV-positivity" can be just a lentiviral disease specific profile, and nothing more. That said, there is a degree of selectivity to data, which is completely justified at the hypothesis stage and I think Prof. Bruce G. Charlton was right to allow Prof. Duesberg's view to be published in MEDICAL HYPOTHESIS. The particular difficulty of HIV-AIDS studies is that HIV/SIV is a human-simian only virus and (as it looks) AIDS is a human only condition. Therefore, the straitforward experiment to prove or disprove "HIV does (not) cause AIDS" is just ethically not possible. We are bound to work with data which are more or less circumstantial. There are some small humanized animal models for HIV infection but it looks like there is no such model for AIDS so far.

I would like Mr. Moore and Mr. Kalichman to acknowledge the money they have received - no conflict? Please. If it were any other disease, you can question the hypothesis all you want, it is encouraged. Why not here?

If funding were stopped - you would find the research stops and the syndrome fade away but as long as AIDS Inc., continues - nothing will change.

I just hope they are both still alive when it is revealed that this is the biggest medical blunder in history and they are shamed into the shadows.

all of this is a tragedy of huge proportions.
countless lives wrecked, destroyed, many more humiliated and discriminated against, while the world, the news and scientists are trying to determine what the cause of aids is. for some 30 years now. in the meantime we remain on 'death row' which is not death row at all, but it has become the AIDS trap in which some of us cared and poisoned to death, others remain socially ecluded not knowing where to turn for help. and at the end of this all, no one will be accountable, all just once again 'followed orders'.

Science magazine just published a study finding the XMRV retrovirus in a majority of CFS patients, another lab in England did not find this virus in CFS patients. So it Looks like the XMRV viral/CFS hypothesis might be wrong, therefore Science magazine should be shutdown!

Millions of people with CFS are now demanding ARV's, Science magazine risked the public health by promoting a dubious hypothesis! Give me a break, this is not how science operates. If you have a problem with someones hypothesis point it out, make your case, censorship is a sign of fear.

No one who uses the term Denialist can even describe the experiments that proved HIV is lethal justified AZT release in March of 1987, all they can do is spam a website , something that would get them laughed out of a courtroom or classroom.

Duesberg and hundreds of other scientists have been pointing out other co factors in AIDS that could play a major role in disease like AZT, severe drug abuse, mycoplasmas and the enormous terror one gets with a positive test. All Duesberg is saying is there is no real animal model and the latent period for HIV was extended from 10 months to 10 years when no one got sick, it is his right to say that and not be censored. Debate him if you feel he is wrong.

Anyways people should read an article from the Miami Herald called "Is hiv Guillty" and a book about a real dangerous microbe, mycoplasma incognitus, found in the blood of sick gulf war vets called "Project day lily."

meant to say "describe the experiments that justified azt's release in 1987"

Would someone please provide evidence to counter Duesberg's claims about South Africa, other than pronouncements? This is 2010, and there is no obligation to believe everything simply because an authority figure like John Moore deigns to tell us what is and is not true. What a burden it must be to be you Mr. Moore. How does it feel to be so right and yet unable to convince the ignorant masses with your declarations?

I'm a proud author of a paper that was published in medical hypotheses a couple of years back.

I have recently been informed about the latest developments on the journal medical hypotheses and Elsevier's plans to "transform" it to a thoroughly peer reviewed journal. I do not think that we as editors, authors or even reviewers should be affected by such a move at all as this is not the first of its kind attack of business on academics that we are witnessing. In fact the academicians are now kind of "used to" suffer from the business led irrational attacks.

We have thousands of peer reviewed journals existing in the world. But how many journals can we boast of that dare to publish short radical and convincing ideas and observations. Addition of just one more journal to an already existing vast pool of peer reviewed journals will not benefit the medical community as much as it will hurt the publishing of theoritical ideas and innovative experiments encouraged by Medical Hypothesis.

Some time back there was news of Elsevier publishing a phony journal in collaboration with Merck pharmaceuticals company.

http://blog.bioethics.net/2009/05/merck-makes-phony-peerreview-journal/

I just hope that the current attempt is not business driven and does not further kick out ethics in medical publishing.

MEDICAL HYPOTHESES SHOULD SURVIVE.

I think science matter should be dealt with scientific attitude, compulsive shut down is not an appropriate way of cope with such a matter, reform maybe necessary, closed down should be avoided.

Davidi asks: "Would someone please provide evidence to counter Duesberg's claims about South Africa, other than pronouncements?" I did above on 18th January... Duesberg et al claim that South Africa's HIV seroprevalence is stable and cite antenatal seroprevalence studies showing a forty-fold rise from 0.7% to 30.2% between 1990 and 2007... They claim no evidence of additional mortality from HIV while citing statistics showing a doubling of deaths between 1997 and 2006 - and almost all of the additional deaths occurred in young to middle-aged adults... They cite a study comparing first-year mortality in cohorts treated with HAART in 1996 with completely different cohorts treated with HAART in later years and either dishonestly or incompetently claim this proves HAART is ineffective - a gross misrepresentation of the study they cite... There are dozens of other serious errors in the paper. The claims of Duesberg et al are inept at best, and at worst represent deliberate dishonesty. For an editor to approve such a paper for publication in a PubMed listed journal suggests either a gross failure of jprofessional judgement, or that his editorial decion making process does not deserve pub-med listing, or, I suspect, an editorial process that is corrupted by personal considerations.

I posted one comment on Jan. 14 stating that it is really a tragedy in scientific world that a journal published a different opinion would be forced to retract that publication and has its fate being doomed. From what have been posted here, I can say that there should be a journal that collects these disputes in some more organized fashions such as "cross fire" articles. Logical Biology seems to be a good candicate for publishing these different reasonings which are more than just some hypotheses. So, as the Editor-in-Chief of Logical Biology, I wish to express my desire to publish both the MH-retracted papers and also debating articles organized from these online comments. Logical Biology does not have any form of censorship as some other journals often have and gives authors complete freedom in their writing. ///Shi V. Liu (http://im1.biz ; SVL8EPA@gmail.com)

Fraser does what the aids mainstream is good at: diffuse the issue.

at
http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/P03093/P03093.pdf

you can see SA statistics between 1997 and 2003 first hand. previously i posted world bank statistics going back as far as 1960. pre 1960 mortality was even higher.

At http://aras.ab.ca/transmission-Africa.html additional information on studies are available, demonstrating how absurd the current HIV=AIDS notion really is.

henry bauer's analysis is also worthwhile reading in response to mainstreanm claims, once more outlining how HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS:

http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/italy-demographics-of-hiv-and-aids/

Dear Chris Lloyd
Vice President of Health Science Journals at Elsevier

In September 26th 2006 my paper entitled “Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia is triggered by the introduction of immunization against diphtheria” (2007;68(2):324-7) appeared online in Medical Hypotheses (MH). Only two months later I was invited by Grover Bagby, to review papers for Blood journal. I have reviewed, very successfully, five manuscripts (one done at Harvard University) so far. The paper was previously brutally rejected by many high impact factor and heavily peer reviewed journals (NEJM, Lancet, Nature, JAMA, BMJ, Lancet oncology…). Fortunately I was told to submit my paper to MH and I did it.
My second paper, related to the prevention of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia entitled “Case-control studies compare "apples and pears": Proposal for a retrospective cohort study in the USA of vaccination history in relation to subsequent childhood leukemia”, was also brutally rejected by the same (above mentioned journals), but fortunately, again was published in MH (2008 Dec;71(6):892-6). This paper was very negatively criticized by Logan Spector (as commentary in MH). My reply to Spector LG was, owing to Bruce Charlton (editor-in-chief of MH), published in MH also (Dear Chris, I would suggest you to read my MH papers).
Very interesting event happened, few months after the correspondence between me, and colleague Spector. Namelly, I was invited by Polly Newcomb to review for the American Journal of Epidemiology (AJE). For my review task which I did for AJE, I got a letter of appreciation from the editor-in-chief, Moyses Szcklo, which is send to you as an attachment.
And finally I would like to express my own judgment concerning the importance of the existence of high impact factor journals (HIFJ) whose high impact factor is in large measure a result of heavy external peer review process. The peer review, I believe is done by the, in the field, experts. I must remind you of the fact that sometimes, great advances in the science are made by the ignorance of the advices of the experts (personal communication with Robert Bob Arceci, editor-in-chef of Pediatric Blood and Cancer). In this context I would remind you of the story of Linda Buck (2004 Nobelist). She published a paper in Nature in 2001, and in 2008 the paper was retracted. In other words, in 2001 she presented false data. How strange? HIFJ Nature, published false data which brought to the author Nobel Prize???!!! Should we therefore DESTROY Nature? Of course NOT.

With best wishes, I remain
Sincerely Yours,

Petar Ivanovski, MD, PhD
Blood and AJE reviewer (owing to MH and its editor-in-chief, Bruce Charlton).
PS. Out of seven submitted papers to Medical Hypotheses, four were rejected.

Fraser, you must be very careful in interpreting official South African population statistics. There is a considerable underregistration of deaths. However registration has improved considerably in the last ten year period, year by year. Consequently the rise in the number of deaths may very well be nothing but a rise in the registration rate of deaths.

One of my articles published in Medical Hypothesis was reported on by the British Medical Journal. The point here is that the British Medical Journal set high standards and take great care in what they print. They are hardly likely to report on an article printed in another journal if that journal was not well respected.

I was not going to participate in this Forum again, I am really against insults between colleagues.
In Mexico, a person with an academic degree is very respectable.
I understand why AIDS epidemic involves so many heart feelings; I couldn´t believe, when I was a Medical student, why a very loved singer, Freddie Mercury, should died so young; my grandmother cried for a week when Rock Hudson died.
But yesterday, when I watched the news, I asked to myself:
What, scientists, including me, that we have the capacity to understand life on Earth, what are we doing for Haiti?, or what are we doing to prevent suffering for human being?
Do we have the capacity to change the world???

To Anthony Frais (19 Jan) >>>>
Since your paper was published in Medical Hypotheses (MH) , it has undoubtedly a scientific merit. However, when it comes to transdisciplinary complex topics (Aids, drug use, climate change, tobacco use, etc.), serious errors are very frequent in the mainstream literature. >>>>>> It happens that, as a MH author like you, I have written today to Chris LLOYD, Vice President of Health Science Journals at Elsevier, in defense MH. >>>>>>>>>>>>> I have pointed out that “Even journals of the Elsevier Group, which are supposed to be peer-reviewed in an orthodox acceptable way, may publish gross errors from time to time”. I gave a striking example from the Elsevier Group itself. >>>>>>>>>>>> And since you cite the British Medical Journal, I could cite the Gatrad et al. paper published by that journal (2007; 335: 20). They should have retracted it because of its numerous serious errors but, above all, because it was used to support the Ban on Smoking in the United Kingdom. Instead, BMJ Editors have authorised the usual flow of Rapid Responses. >>>>>>>>> The conclusion is that no journal is perfect and this is why the attack on MH is unacceptable (kamcha*gmail.com).

Hi

Those who criticize suppression misunderstand the nature of science and knowledge creation. According to evolutionary epistemology, ideas are generated and then (through suppression) bad ideas are filtered out. The ideas surviving the critical evaluation merit continuation. Of course, the grounds for suppression should be rational or empirical, not political, and there is always the danger of suppressing valid ideas. It is then up to those who advocate the eliminated idea to come up with some compelling evidence for its reconsideration.

Take care
Jim

Janlen, if you check the changes in the age distribution of reported deaths in South Africa between 1997 and 2004, you will note a trebling of young adult female deaths and a doubling among young adult males over that 8-year period, while there is minmal change at older age groups (in fact a decrease in some age groups in some years). Changes in the completion of reporting and population growth over that period cannot possibly account for the changes of this magnitude in the age distribution of deaths. See: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_m_07Sa4htyg/Sm0oivYvNLI/AAAAAAAAAIo/RKmkC87Nzu8/s1600-h/sa+deaths.jpg which is sourced from the Stats SA Mortality and Causes of Death Report to 2004: http://www.statssa.gov.za/Publications/P03093/P030932003,2004.pdf ... whereistheproof, virtually all developed and developing countries have reported a steadily increasing life expectancy since 1960, as did South Africa - until the mid 1990s. Since then, life expectancy there has plummeted to below 1960 levels over little more than a decade. Why is this? The graph I've linked above shows the age groups where the additional deaths are occurring. Duesberg et al deny not only that these deaths are due to HIV/AIDS - they deny that these additional deaths have even occurred.

thanks fraser.

considering your graph, why is AIDS in the western world mainly restricted to a much smaller group, mainly male and drug users? Have a look at the link i provided upthread to henry bauers site. look at the the italian study you can find there. the world bank data also shows that life expectancy was increasing in SA up to the mid 90-ties and only began declining somewhat after 2000. why is that if SA is supposedly being hit by milliions of AIDS death much earlier? Life expectancy in SA: 1960: 49 1965: 51 1970: 53 1975: 54 1980: 57.16 1985: 59 1990: 61 1995: 60.95 1997: 60.27 2000: 56.12

whichever you look at this, the numbers dont make sense, and an improved system of recording deaths in SA explains those statistical discrepancies much better than the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. in addition to the living standards experienced as outlined in the SA mortality rate document also posted upthread. it lists SA death according to SA regions.

Then, if you look at the global picture. Why is AIDS in africa so different to AIDS in Europe? Duesberg, the Perth Group - all of them have models that explain AIDS way better than Gallo's HIV=AIDS theory. A disease doesn't recognise borders.

whereistheproof, if you look at your life expectancy figures above, you'll see that they peaked in 1995 and declined thereafter. They are still declining. According to the antenatal seroprevalence studies, HIV prevalence rose rapidly from near zero in 1990 over the following 15 years to peak at 30.2% (antenatal clinics), corresponding to a population-wide prevalence around 10-11%. The median "latency" of untreated HIV progressing to AIDS is around a decade (although clinical "latency" distributes over a wide range around that median). The figures make perfect sense. If you claim that the changes in the graph are due to more complete reporting, you have to explain how deaths of young women were under-reported by a factor of three and males by a factor of two in 1997 relative to 2004, while deaths at older age groups were equally complete throughout. That is simply not plausible. You also have to explain the extremely high death rates among young adults compared to older adults - a pattern that is not seen even in the poorest countries in the world, let alone a middle-income country like South Africa - unless there is some major extraordinary underlying cause that disproportionately affects people in the prime of life... The epidemiological patterns of HIV in different countries reflects the predominant modes of transmission, and the public health efforts to contain the spread. The male predominance in many Western countries reflects the fact that gay men and male IDUs are disproportionately affected, unlike in most countries in Africa. There is nothing unusual about this: the sexually transmissible infections hepatitis B and syphilis show a similar male prodominance in many Western countries but have a relatively equal sex distribution in non-Western settings.

Charlton is a charlatan.

Let's do away with all peer reviews of anything, as it has suppressed many papers I would have liked to publish.

The Sun has wide readership (mainly for page 3), makes a profit, has a high citation rate (i.e. impact factor), etc. But I would not on those accounts push to have in considered a legitimate scientific journal.

@ thanks fraser. i do not agree on your interpretation of the data. better record keeping does account a lot for this. according to mainstream, aids has had its origin in africa, so the delay of a decade up to 2005 does not make sense as mortality should have started to decline much earlier, especially regarding recent findings where HIV was found in blood samples going back to the 1960 with some studies concluding that HIV has been around since 1900.

distribution in the west also does not make sense at all by stating that gay man are disproportionally affected. why would gay men be more affected than people in africa? why is AIDS heterosexual in adrica and in the west a gay disease? oxidative stress (lifestyle and environmenatl influences, poor living conditions, etc) explain this phenomena way better than HIV=AIDS.

Professor Ruggiero's study (did you look at that on henry bauer's site) is yet another example of how HIV=AIDS can simply not be correct. Or the fact that HIV compared to other STD's is hardly affecting western populastion. teenage pregancies in northern england are among the highest in the world, STD's are increasing among teenagers, especially chlamydia, yet HIV infections are not. why is that? safe sax obviously isnt taking place.

there are so many holes in the mainstream HIV=AIDS theory that the whole science of it is simply no longer credible. i am in touch every day with so many others like me who have been HIV+ for more than 20 years now and ONLY became ill when taking ARV's. yet we are called anecdotal. well - us anecdotals have more traffic to dissident websites such as noaids.ca and aidsmythexposed.com then any other aids/hiv mainstream site. especially house of numbers. and this is not because of expensive marketing - it is simply that people stopped BELIEVING in retrovirology. swine flu, influence of pharma on WHO and the way media is reporting on this, manipulation of data are just some examples.

the problem with retrovirology is that they only look at their own small world which is almost entirely dominated by individuals in the hands of pharmaceutical companies. retrovirology can at best be a part of the whole - yet it is imposing its conclusions, which lack any kind holistic approach, onto the rest of the world.
this has got to stop. retrovirology does not have the holy grail to solve the AIDS misery. and we want out lives back. we want the 30 years stolen from us back. like any one else we just want to live normal lives. we do not want to be on death row any more - which is not death row at all but a form of suspended life where we are either cared and poisened to death - or left without any help and support at all! can you not see that fraser? are you really so involved in retrovirolgy that you do not see the misery and suffering behind all this? why do you think we make so much noise? the whole dogma of HIV=AIDS is just totally wrong, inhumane and cruel.

dear Dr Truth: Prof Charlton and Prof Bains are the world leading scientists in area of biomedical hypotheses. They are rising to challenges and breaking the boundaries…

Trends in Biotechnology (TiB) is also an Elsevier journal which is unique in drawing together a wide readership of scientists and engineers from the many disciplines of the applied biosciences (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405917/description). Its (short 2-year) Impact Factor is 6.624 and its 5-Year Impact Factor is even higher at 8.212. -----------However, it once-a-while also accepted truly flawed papers for publication and at least at one time "retracted" an accepted paper before its due publication.
-------------On October 5, 2005 TiB editor-in-chief sent me an email which informed me of the up-coming publication of a Commentary criticizing my views. The Commentary was authored by an internationally-known world-class expert. The editor even went on stating that "we do not want to publish a string of correspondence about this", indicating the "final words" nature of that "authoratative" Commentary which is many pages long.
-----------Against TiB's will, I submitted a response to that Commentary within three days. However, it took more than a month for TiB to reach a decision which even surprized me: TiB retracted its previously accepted Commentary just to avoid accepting my response. I disagreeed with TiB's decision and plead it to still publish that Commentary even if my response remained being rejected. However, TiB did not buy my proposal and gave me no explanation for its act.
-----------An invitation was sent to the author of that TiB-retracted Commentary from the Editor-in-Chief of Logical Biology (which is me) to publish that Commentary (criticizing my views) in Logical Biology. However, this invitation, which was repeated several times, was not accepted by that author, despite his strong statement made in that TiB-unpublishable Commentatry that my view has to be invalidated to avoid confusion in the related research field.
At the end, Logical Biology decided to publish my response to that once-up-coming but later no-way-to-show Commentatry (I still have that Commentary but will not show it to the public without author's permission).
------------The details of this incidence can be read at http://im1.biz/displayimage.php?album=14&pos=13 with links to the full-length HTM and PDF free of charge and also http://im1.biz/displayimage.php?album=21&pos=18 with links to the respective open-access HTM and PDF.
---------For even more information please contact me directly at SVL8EPA@gmail.com -------------
Shi V. Liu (http:///im1.biz )

Dear whereistheproof,

You are absolutely right in your analysis! Being aware of how the latest “pandemics” unfolded, I truly believe that in the USA, more than health care reform what we need is reform of the pharmaceutical industry. Are you aware that a cure for many cancers (prostate, colon and breast) and HIV, a macrophage activating factor - GcMAF, has been proposed by Dr. Nobuto Yamamoto? Did you hear about it? Don't you expect NCI, dr. Fauci or even the President to address the nation on this matter? It's a cure for God’s sake!!! The science is sound and the only thing I expect, if the system works in the interest of people, is rushing into clinical trials.
The research was published on peer-reviewed journals, if that matters, and nothing seems to be happening! I’m including these links where tests on humans have been reported:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2510818/

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17935130?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppController.PPMCArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=2

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18058096?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppController.PPMCArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19031451?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19031451?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=50

This treatment causes no side effects and is cheap! It’s PROBABLY the major breakthrough in medical history, of course if the results of clinical trials confirm what has been published, only no one seems to be doing anything to do the clinical trials!

Has any of the many invalid "discoveries" or claims made in the extremly hot iPS research been retracted? Check out the single most important source for all the (mainstream-covered) truth on iPSCs at http://im1.biz/iPS.htm or contact Shi V. Liu at SVL8EPA@gmail.com

AZT has recently been added to the list of substances known to the State of California to cause cancer. You may search California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment's website to confirm this. AZT has long been touted as a life-saving drug, but it isn't. Perhaps other things have been wrong about AIDS. Why doubt the science of an expert on retroviruses (which would be Peter Duesberg)?

No one responded to my report - re; John Moore’s 330,000 dead South Africans, South Africa’s own mortality statistics prove that all infectious disease, including the alleged cause of AIDS, has been statistically irrelevant in the US since 1960…
http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/JAMATrendsArmstrong.pdf... and remains irrelevant in Europe, Australia and South Africa (2007). http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/Africa1997_2002.pdf http://www.cwbpi.com/AIDS/reports/Africa2007.pdf While Moore blames HIV for South Africa’s mortality, he doesn’t explain how Africa’s 1600+ international mining companies now prevent mine-related lung diseases that killed millions of Africa’s slave laborers between 1880 and 2000. To what does Moore attribute the alleged increase in HIV mortality and the correlative disappearance of mine-related lung diseases? Could it be that companies like DeBeers and AngloGold avoid billions of dollars in liability by blaming mine-related lung diseases on the stereotypical mating habits of the African population? http://www.omsj.org/corruption/hiv-africa-connecting-the-dots

iPSCs (induced pluripotent stem cells) have been cherished as "ethical" and "safe" replacements for ESCs (embryonic stem cells) by some "scientists" engaged in therapeutic cloning and regenerative medicine. These "scientists" rejected the discoveries of clear distinctions between iPSCs and ESCs from their published studies making the flawed "indistinguishable" claim to continue their efforts of replacing condemed ESCs with hyped iPSCs. These "scientists" also violently denied the discovery that iPSCs are incorrectly programmed stem cells or, in other words, man-made cancer stem cells (mmCSCs) and even carelessly claimed their iPSCs as "cancer-free" when critical evaluation was not done or was started but reported as ND (not done). Finally, when studies actually showed that removing tumor-suppresing mechanisms strongly potentiated the oncogenic effect of the iPS cell reprogramming process just as criticisms predicted, the iPS researchers all cheered for their "success" in enhancing the reprograming efficiency and totally avoided to confirm the discovery that iPS reprogramming is an artificial cancer cell production process. To learn more of these mainstream-blocked insights on iPSCs, please visit http://im1.biz/iPS.htm or contact Shi V. Liu at SVL8EPA@gmail.com

Yes, Mr. Baker, your "concerns" have been properly addressed.
Actually, Fraser has re-dressed your concerns, dressed them down, and corrected them. You seem to either ignore the correct data presented by Fraser, or perhaps you just do not understand the data.
JTD

Also Mr. Baker, please, please stop manufacturing data. The disease process experienced by miners in S. Africa is not AIDS and has absolutely nothing to do with the disease process which presents in patients with AIDS. There is absolutely zero correlation here. You seem to be quite adroit at manufacturing information in your head and supplying absolutely no supporting facts or data.
The links that you do supply are just to your own website with articles that you wrote and again, supplied no actualy peer reviewed data.
Again, the disease processes are not simillar. Just as Sustiva is not addictive just because you claim it to be.
JTD

The Perth Group has published in both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed medical journals including Medical Hypotheses. Despite the controversial nature of our material, no HIV expert has followed the accepted mode of response by writing to the editors of the relevant journals. Below is a small commentary which we are contemplating submitting to MH. It is written because we recently became aware of significant discrepancies between what Montagnier claimed in 1983, 1997 and 2002 in regard to his experimental proof for the discovery of HIV. We would be grateful if contributors to this column, especially those with editorial experience, could read the commentary and provide scientific reasons for its acceptance or rejection. If Medical Hypotheses publishes it without external review what scientific reasons would John Moore, Seth Kalichman and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi have for demanding its retraction? This commentary is also at http://leederville.net/links/PGCommentary.pdf.

COMMENTARY
Re-reading Luc Montagnier's work on HIV/AIDS we found a number of contradictory statements. In his historic 20th May 1983 Science paper1 Montagnier described a culture of umbilical cord lymphocytes to which was added supernatant from a coculture containing cells from a patient (BRU) and a healthy blood donor. In this culture they found reverse transcriptive activity and type-C particles. Montagnier wrote: "That this new isolate was a retrovirus was further indicated by its density in sucrose gradient, which was 1.16 [g/ml]". They claimed the 1.16 g/ml band was "purified" virus, but published no electron micrographic proof.2 "The supernatant of a 10,000g centrifugation of the cell extract" and the "purified" virus were reacted with BRU's serum. Of the many reactive proteins in the extract, three, p80, p45 and p25 were reactive in the "purified" virus. Montagnier claimed that one, p25 was viral and, because p25 did not react with "type-specific antisera to HTLV-I", concluded they had discovered a new retrovirus, HIV-1. Although Montagnier's claim has been questioned by many, including Robert Gallo3, Jaap Goudsmit4 and Anders Vahlne5, the scientific community accepted it.

In July 1997, during a videotaped interview with the French journalist Djamel Tahi6, Montagnier stated "analysis of the proteins of the virus demands mass production and purification. It is necessary to do that". Then surprisingly he said that in 1983 he did not purify the virus: "I repeat we did not purify". And, unbelievably, in what they called "purified, labeled virus” they were unable to find any particles with "the morphology typical of retroviruses". In a similar interview in December 2005, Charles Dauget, the Pasteur Institute electron microscopist, confirmed that in the "purified" virus, they found only cellular debris. (Tahi, personal communication).

Nineteen years later, Montagnier wrote "A History of HIV Discovery".7 In this paper he does not mention purification or umbilical cord lymphocytes but states: "On 3 January 1983, Francoise Brun-Vezinet obtained a lymph node biopsy from…a young gay man (BRU)…I minced the lymph node, disassociated the fragments into single cells, and cultured the T lymphocytes…Fifteen days later, Francoise Sinoussi…found the first traces of RT in the supernatant of the lymphocyte culture, indicating the presence of a retrovirus…So, we tested whether the viral proteins in the supernatant could be recognised by Gallo's antibodies against HTLV. Surprisingly, our labeled viral supernatant could not be immune precipitated with the HTLV antibodies, but could be precipitated with the patient's own serum (4). A protein with a molecular mass of about 25 kD precipitated by the patient's serum seemed to be the counterpart of the p24 protein of HTLV-1". These immunoprecipitation experiments were not reported in the 1983 paper (4)!

Montagnier must clarify exactly how he proved the existence of the HIV p24 protein and thus HIV.


1. Barré-Sinoussi F, Chermann JC, Rey F, Nugeyre MT, Chamaret S, Gruest J, et al. Isolation of a T-lymphotropic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Science 1983;220:868-71.
2. Sinoussi F, Mendiola L, Chermann JC. Purification and partial differentiation of the particles of murine sarcoma virus (M. MSV) according to their sedimentation rates in sucrose density gradients. Spectra 1973;4:237-243.
3. Popovic M, Sarin PS, Robert-Gurroff M, Kalyanaraman VS, Mann D, Minowada J, et al. Isolation and transmission of human retrovirus (human t-cell leukemia virus). Science 1983;219:856-9.
4. Goudsmit J. Viral Sex-The Nature of AIDS. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
5. Vahlne A. A historical reflection on the discovery of human retroviruses. Retrovirology 2009;6:40. http://www.retrovirology.com/content/6/1/40
6. Tahi D. Did Luc Montagnier discover HIV? Text of video interview with Professor Luc Montagnier at the Pasteur Institute July 18th 1997. Continuum 1998;5:30-34. at http://leederville.net/links/PGCommentary.pdf
7. Montagnier L. HISTORICAL ESSAY: A History of HIV Discovery. Science 2002;298:1727-8.

Several questions raised by the Medical Hypotheses affair risk being ignored due to the strength of feeling over the tragedy of AIDS. I have a lot of sympathy and respect for those expressing the very different points of view and, without wishing to upset anyone, believe legitimate questions include the following. Should commercial publishers retract papers without the agreement of academic editors? In cases of controversy, who should decide on which journals can be accessed in MEDLINE via PubMed and how should these decisions be influenced? Is it desirable that PubMed/MEDLINE be seen as giving a seal of approval in any way to the 18 million or so papers in its journals? Should scientists try harder to convey the fallibility of both the hypotheses they use and the data they generate? Does Medical Hypotheses actually help with the public understanding of science by providing an easier route for publication by non-scientists than conventional, peer-reviewed journals? Does it publish any interesting hypotheses that might not be published in a visible form elsewhere? Is Medical Hypotheses valued by those outside the mainstream community of HIV workers and, in particular, by theorists? Should the involvement of HIV in AIDS be an area where speculation is controlled? Should other sensitive areas in science be controlled and, if so, by whom and under what circumstances? Should there be more punishment in science for those who err? Should 'mistaken' scientists, 'misinformed' reviewers, 'misguided' editors and 'miscreant' publishers be punished? If so, how and by whom? Perhaps these and other questions could be discussed in the pages of a journal. Perhaps even in Medical Hypotheses itself.

Mr Baker, the Director of the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (based in a 24 hour post office box in Studio City, California) suggests that 300,000-odd deaths annual excess notified in South Africa in 2004 over and above the 300,000 or so recorded in 1997 might represent additional mortality from mining-based lung disease that wasn’t identified eight years earlier. This is, to say the least, implausible. First of all, deaths from pneumoconiosis and related occupational lung diseases such as mesothelioma occur mostly in late middle age and old age. Secondly, most mine workers are male, and pneumoconiosis and related disease occur almost exclusively among males. The excess deaths recorded by Stats SA between 1997 and 2004 occurred predominantly in young adults, and with a distinct female bias.....
Mr Baker also suggests that South African mortality statistics “prove” that infectious diseases are an “irrelevant” cause of death in that country....
According to the South African Medical Research Council, in 2000, HIV/AIDS was the underlying cause of death in 25.5% of cases, and other non-HIV related communicable/maternal/perinatal/nutritional causes (difficult to distinguish as such deaths tend to have multifactorial aetiology) accounted for a further 22.2%. In terms of life-years lost, these percentages are a gross underestimate. http://www.mrc.ac.za/bod/bodestimate.pdf .....
According to Stats SA the commonest immediate causes of death notified in recent years include tuberculosis, “influenza and pneumonia”, parasitic diseases, and “various diseases of the immune system” – all common sequellae of HIV/AIDS related immunosuppression. HIV infection itself is not notifiable in South Africa, and deaths tend to be reported by the terminal event, not its underlying cause.....
Mr Baker also suggests that we can derive useful conclusions about the relative importance of infectious causes of deaths for Australia, the United States and other countries from the South African mortality data. I’m puzzled as to how he drew this conclusion.....
Mr Baker also suggests that the NNRTI efavirenz is “addictive”. Although there are anecdotal reports of youngsters attempting to abuse the drug by smoking it thereby potentiating its usually mild but well recognised psychoactive properties, there is no evidence of either neuroadaptation or craving (the key features of addiction) associated with the drug. To support his claim, Mr Baker provides a case study of a person who became physically ill for some weeks following cessation of HAART including efavirenz. Acute retroviral syndrome, similar to that experienced by the majority of people within a couple of weeks of initial infection can also occur on cessation of longstanding antiretroviral therapy. The case he describes much more closely resembles ARS than any known syndrome associated with withdrawal from drugs of addiction.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/224968

"The final, and perhaps most daunting, problem with Paul's work is that so far, the only published research has been conducted in test tubes and mice. (Paul says he also has some promising data from rabbits, but it's unpublished.) The NIH has funded his work lavishly until recently, contributing almost $30 million, but now, just as he's getting ready to move to trials in monkeys, it's balking. "Sometimes when things don't fit with the mainstream work, it's harder to get them funded," says Montefiori, who has assessed an enormous number of AIDS-vaccine candidates. "Sudhir's approach is novel, so it's exciting—but that's also why it hasn't really caught on in the field." This is Paul's Catch-22: the basic science behind his work is so strange that he needs primate research to prove its potential, but without successful primate research already in hand, his peers are wary of his claims about the basic science." http://www.newsweek.com/id/224968

I've put it to comments before, but it seems to have gone purposefully unnoticed, as does anything that might stick to Prof.Moore:

The research that Moore is proudest of is that done to give African women drugs PRIOR TO HAVING SEX. The net result of that was MORE, NOT FEWER HIV infections. Or, should I say, presumptive "HIV infections" based on non-specific antibody testing. Is Professor Moore ready to pay reparations to Africa for his part in this calamity?

THE "SCIENCE":
http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/dkh011v1.pdf

Moore opines:

“Where do we go from here [with the monkey-vagina microbicide]?… The combined expertise of many sectors of the infectious disease research community will be required to develop an urgently needed product. ”

[A product for who? For Africans - of course! Just like Nevirapine...]

“New compounds to evaluate and more knowledge of the sexual transmission would certainly help.”

["More knowledge?" OF SEXUAL TRANSMISSION? MY GOODNESS, IS DR. MOORE ADMITTING THAT THERE'S SOMETHING MISSING HERE?.]

“And perhaps, above all, the involvement of the major pharmaceutical companies will be essential.”

THE RESULT?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11081.html

"It is the second SPECTACULAR FAILURE of a microbicide gel or a cream designed for women to use vaginally to prevent infection with HIV. Microbicides were hailed as an important new weapon in HIV prevention (see Protect and survive)."

As an independent journalist I would like some confirmation on several questions that have been discussed here. Can you please refer to references on these topics.
1. Was the original submission of Robert Gallo's research that spawned the HHS press conference on April 23rd,1984 ever peer reviewed to a back up the basic claims he made then?
2. Where is the absolute proof of the pathogenic process by which HIV causes AIDS? My understanding is that the publication in Nature in 1998 by Roder et. all, entitled "Final Nail in the Coffin for Viral Load" left the HIV=AIDS proponents without the last of an ongoing failed attempts to explain exactly how HIV causes AIDS.
3. Can John Moore verify that he has received approximately 34 million dollars and that Seth Kalichman has received approximately 17 million dollars in medical industry and or taxpaer funding for their work with HIV=AIDS?
I am hoping that John and Seth can confirm this themselves. Thank you.

Wiil See asks whether the four 1984 Science papers produced by Dr Gallo's NiH team were peer reviewed. The answer is yes. They were submitted to "Science" on the 30th of March, and underwent peer review over the following fortnight. The outcome of the peer review process was that the papers were accepted for publication by the 18th of April, and appeared in print in the 4th of May edition. As an "independent journalist" I am surprised he was not already aware of this chronology, as these dates are provided in the published papers themselves.

Perhaps Wiil See could not locate this info his/herself as they must have gone to journalism school with Farber and Scheff.
JTD

Though this thread has attracted the usual squad of crackpots with unusual theories, vituperation on both sides, and other interferences with those who honestly seek the truth in the tortured field, it has yielded some useful evidence for onlookers as to who is right and who is wrong about the core issue, which is whether AIDS is caused by HIV and whether it is infectious.

It is neither, as the literature clearly shows and shows more clearly with every passing year, as has been exhaustively analyzed on http://www.scienceguardian.com and other sites and books for the layman on AIDS science, which are listed down the right hand margin of that site. But who to believe?

Onlookers who do not have the scientific literacy to read the papers in peer reviewed journals (most people do, in fact, if they will only grasp the nettle) have to count the indirect indications they can read there, here and elsewhere. What are they? They are

1. Defenders of the status quo such as John Moore prefer to deal with questioners by insulting them, rather than answering with reason and evidence in a reasonable tone and acting as if they were confident of their science and its truth. This aggressive defensiveness suggest powerfully that they are well aware of the weakness of their beliefs, if not fully conscious they are not scientifically validated.

2. The acceptance of the paradigm infectious-AIDS-is-caused-by-HIV and its maintenance as a public policy assumption has resulted in vast amounts of money and attention flowing to the proponents of this belief for the last 25 years.

3. Those who reject this belief are shut out of AIDS scientific funding because their mainstream colleagues will never support their grant applications, and will ostracise them, even when they are at the top of the field, Peter Duesberg being the prime example.

4. Year after year research finds more and more problems with the hypothesis and its projects fail to deliver any advance in defeating the supposed cause or curing the symptoms of AIDS on the basis of the prevailing rationale.

5. The only progress that has been made in alleviating the sufferings of AIDS patients has come from reducing the dose of the most damaging drug (AZT) given them and substituting other less harmful medications.

6. The reduction of AZT dose (now officially completely removed from authorized regimens for a couple of years or more) correlated with an extension of the lives of medicated patients but their overall death rate continues at the same level (17-24,000 annually in the US).

7. The original critiques of the HIV=AIDS paradigm by Duesberg in Cancer Research and Proceedings of the National Academy in 1987 and 1989 stand unrefuted in those journals where refutation was promised but never took place.

8. Attempts at refutation moved to mostly non peer-reviewed locales in journals and on the Web and in books, but have never succeeded in dispensing with the many major objections first raised by Duesberg then and since.

9. No proof of HIV causing any symptoms by itself has ever been documented in any peer reviewed study among the tens of thousands of AIDS papers that now infest the literature, all of them assuming that premise.

10. Completed studies of the effects of drugs in AIDS have never contained control groups.

11. No studies designed to check whether or not HIV actually causes any symptoms have been funded, despite the editor of Science supporting a Duesberg application for experiments in that regard.

12. Absurdities in the HIV=AIDS belief system are so blatant that there have been over thirty books exposing them, many of them by lay authors who speak from experience rejecting standard medical treatment.

13. The absurdities include some which even a schoolchild should question, including the remarkable assertion, unique to HIV=AIDS, that the presence of antibodies to the cause HIV and the effective absence of HIV in the body mean that you will eventually die of the disease.

14. Though the evidence is anecdotal, those who reject standard medical treatment tend to do much better than those who accept it, even at the low doses of newer drugs now administered. Over time the former tend to stay healthy, the later tend to die.

15. Careful reading of the professional papers of AIDS researchers reveals that they question the details of their paradigm as often as their critics, John Moore being an excellent example.

16. The soon to be released film House of Numbers shows this in house uncertainty quite clearly revealed by the Director Brent Leung's Socratic questioning.

17. 16. Research by Moore and others into AIDS palliatives and cures such as microbicides and vaccines have always failed, the latest example being Merck's abandoning their decade long vaccine effort today. Since HIV makes its own very effective vaccine (as Montagnier has said in House of Numbers, anyone with a healthy immune system will defeat HIV is two or three weeks) the effort is by definition absurd.

So what then maintains this scientific nonsense in the face of continual questioning and criticism for a quarter century? As shown by the above article and this thread, if a small coterie of leading scientists in a field discover that a belief can be converted into a funding bonanza, they will stick to that belief through thick and thin, whether it costs other people's lives or not.

However stupid, irrational, and short of evidence it may be, and however obvious the alternative, they will fight tooth and nail to preserve it, as John Moore famously promised in his "This IS a war, there ARE no rules" remark recorded above. This attitude is standard politics inside science, one should note, and has been ever since big money has been involved, and even before. All men of ideas treat them as territory, in whatever field, and resist incursions. Ask any Nobel prize winner how his prize winning idea was received when he was young and new to the game, and he or she will groan at the memory of how those on top of the hill tried to kick him/her back down.

The only surprise is how the rest of humanity tends to cling just as hard to accepted mainstream beliefs, and join in the kicking of outsiders as cranks, crackpots and charlatans, as if they were social threats - which of course they are. Be that as it may, there has never been such a blatant and enormous error in science and medicine as HIV-is-the-cause-of-AIDS, a monster marvelous to behold. It has gobbled up the lives of tens of thousands, while nearly bringing down the career of the best man in the field, Peter Duesberg, despite the quality of his papers which are easily appreciated by anybody who troubles to go and read them at duesberg.com.

Now Duesberg has regained his reputation with his bold leadership of a new field of cancer, and now that House of Numbers is being shown more and more widely and will soon be on DVD, and now that John Moore has made the very unwise decision to exhibit his empty bag of tricks in public at every opportunity in threads such as this one, perhaps this will now change.

But given that this is a scientific Worldcom of tens of billions globally, don't hold your breath.

And yes, Virginia, Gallo's original papers were based on lab work subsequently revealed to be highly questionable if not fraudulent. But that is not the issue, the issue is that they never demonstrated that HIV was a probable cause of AIDS. If anything, HIV supposedly being found in too few samples, they demonstrated it was not a viable candidate.

The entire scientific belief system arose out of evidence for the opposite. The fact that it continues to kill people whose health could well be saved by rational treatment doesn't seem to bother John Moore, who will allow outside public review only over his own dead body. It is hard to see this as a scientific approach.

Truthseeker: You said ". 5. The only progress that has been made in alleviating the sufferings of AIDS patients has come from reducing the dose of the most damaging drug (AZT) given them and substituting other less harmful medications". Unfortunately the current NIH Treatment Guidelines ( 1 December 2009) still include AZT (now most commonly called ZDV), for example, as (p. 39) "
Preferred Regimen2 for Pregnant Women • LPV/r (twice daily) + ZDV/3TC1 (AI) ". On p.31, treatment initiation for pregnant women is recommended even at high CD4 counts.

You are correct, Henry, I was referring to advised HAART regimens and not the outrage if not horror of dosing pregnant women with harmful AZT to prevent transmission of HIV positivity to the embryo, a useless and damaging exercise if, as is clear from the scientific literature dismissing the absurd paradigm, HIV does not cause any illness of any kind whatsoever. There is one other instance where AZT is still advised, post exposure prophylaxis in hospitals, ie dosing with AZT hospital personnel who think they may have contracted HIV positivity from needles, a doubtful privilege indeed.

The information is available via the Wiki entry for "antiretroviral drug" where the out of date footnote 13 directs the reader to a pdf of the DHHS pamphlet "HIV and its treatment: What you should know" from 2006, a reference which has not been updated in Wiki but which showed that AZT was eliminated by 2008 for HAART regimens. The reference is now updated at the NIH to Dec 2009 (the pdf is http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/ContentFiles/HIVandItsTreatment_cbrochure_en.pdf) but unfortunately the Guidelines on which the relevant section is based are not currently accessible (the link https://aidsinfo.nih.gov/Guidelines/ is broken) but one assumes you are reading from that page.

We should make one other clarification, which is that I was also referring to HAART in saying there have never been any placebo controls included in clinical studies of AIDS drugs, for there were a couple of studies of AZT which included placebo groups. These showed that the net effect of AZT was harmful, which is presumably why there have been none since of HAART. One would expect properly controlled studies of the effect of HAART would also show that they are useless in regard to HIV and damaging, though there is evidence for anti biotic effects and increase in certain trace elements such as selenium and zinc essential for T cell function.

It is worthwhile going to the recent New York magazine article on the mental problems arising from the HAART regime, Another Kind of AIDS Crisis: A striking number of HIV patients are living longer but getting older faster—showing early signs of dementia and bone weakness usually seen in the elderly,, at http://nymag.com/health/features/61740/#ixzz0dO41o5ja to read the thread there to confirm the impression conveyed by this discussion thread, which is that scientists in HIV/AIDS and their under-researched lay supporters are betraying the trust of AIDS patients and the army of officials and concerned health workers in this arena by misleading them.

truthseeker: Yes, that NYMag article should be required reading --- but readers should be warned of the graphic images and correspondingly upsetting text

Perhaps now that one of the co-author's of the paper in question, Henry Bauer, has ventured his viewpoints on antiretroviral therapy on this thread, he might like to clarify his claim and that of his co-authors that "hundreds of American and British researchers jointly published a collaborative analysis in the Lancet in 2006 concluding that treatment of AIDS patients with anti-viral drugs has not translated into a decrease in mortality". Or, for that matter, his recent claim on his own blog that "Luc Montagnier’s view [is] that HIV is a consequence and not a cause of immunedeficiency". While in general I support the right of self-decribed "skeptics" to hold whatever ignorant or harebrained beliefs they choose, to then dishonestly attribute such views to respected scientists is reprehensible. Such behaviour should not be tolerated in "scientific" journals - whether peer reviewed or not.

John Moore and his internet hit men are the ones that should be ignored. All they have here is a vested interest that their little secret does not become common knowledge. My wife is healthy now because we ignored idiots like John Moore. He has no credibility. He and his goons go out of their way to silence people like us that are thinking for ourselves now. We are telling everyone we meet now the truth about HIV. I also want to point out that John and his group of internet bloggers are the only AIDS denialists here. He just has a lot more money to lose, Thats all. Thanks, Joe Stokely You can read our story here. www.myspace.com/rethinkaids

ONE: I await a response from the grand inquisitor, John Moore, he of the microbicide experiments, that, when put into practice, rendered more, not fewer, "HIV positives" in Africa?

Does the mainstream have total license to experiment on the human population, without regard to rights, or results? Is there no threat of removal of funds in case of continued failure? In the case of, to their way of thinking, causing the death (or, at least, "HIV positivity") of individuals?

TWO: On that note, here is one of several dozen studies that Ph.D. Moore did everything he could to suppress from the public mind - studies on infants and children, orphans in New York.
http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00001108?order=30

It was from Moore and his co-conspirator Jeanne Bergman that the constant order was issued to the press to ignore the hundreds of deaths that were, eventually, admitted to having occurred, in children who passed through these studies - deaths excused as having nothing to do with the unusually high number of FDA Black Box drugs, given at unusually high doses?
http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/04/27.php

Who would make such a claim in the case of a tobacco lawsuit? That smoking an unusually high number of cigars, in childhood and infancy, with unusually high levels of tar and nicotine, had no effect on health?

This is the kind of fiction that Dr. Moore defends - not only defends, but peddles.

THREE: What does Medical Hypotheses have to do, then, to be given sufficient breathing room by said Dr. Moore, to be permitted to explore the problems of the AIDS medical paradigm?

Truthseeker (Liversidge), as always, you misplace one point:

The issue is not solely and simply, at its heart, 'does HIV cause AIDS;' the issue is, 'what is AIDS, how is it defined, is it in any way uniform or precise a definition as is required to label it 'one condition.'

And, 'what is HIV,' what collection of molecular and biological signatures, loose bits of protein and other cellular detritus are now tabulated under that one heading?

I know you love to skip past the entrance and go straight to the production, but please do, as the 'philosophe' said, let's 'define our terms,' shall we?

At what stage of understanding of a meme or paradigm does intransigence set in? At what point is flexibility in pursuit of understanding no longer tolerated?

I GIVE YOU John P. Moore on our full and complete understanding of "HIV and AIDS":

"The details of HIV pathogenesis - how HIV kills people - are still being worked out."

HERE IS his esteemed colleague, Dr. Robin Weiss, on the topic:

"Living cells are complicated, and how they work inside the body is even more complicated. So there’s still a lot of debate on how exactly HIV causes AIDS."


HERE IS their esteemed colleague, Dr. Barre'-Sinoussi, on the same topic:

"We are almost convinced that there [are] other factors [than "HIV"] that are involved in the loss of CD-4 cells, and we don’t know yet all the mechanisms."

QUESTION: Is it possible to know without any doubt, THAT something definitely causes something else, IF it can never be observed, tabulated, or understood?

We, peorple that have the courage to publish new ideas, knowing the challenge that we are taking, we need comments like this:

Though this thread has attracted the usual squad of crackpots with unusual theories.

And I think that this is not only psychological, it is physiological.

sorry.... people.

I can not speak as a proffessionals do in this field. i will only speak as a person whom all the activities of 1984, the decisions, the medicines and all the messages that relate to hiv and aids has affected. I will speak not in a way that needs symphathy but in a way that will leave a reader asking themselves - what is hiv and what is aids + is the use of arv,s relavant and or are we adding petrol on fire or treating an ear ache by nailing a 9"inch nail in to the ear.

8 years of endless complaints has been healed by pulling off ARV and taking natural herbs prepared by an MD who has seen the SECRET behind Hiv and AIDS.

I usually pinch myself to see if i am dreaming or what. I have stopped having meical conditions that were untreatable. ones that ended me on narcotics on top of arv.

I have now been able to do activities that i used to fail to do, eg , walking, my memory, coordination, pure thinking improved by stopping arv. if any on wanted to re employ me, i would agree though i am a penssioner at 34 yrs. the information that came with hiv and aids has nevr been of health. the information is of hopelesness and death incubation.

i am still puzzled - why has pulling off arv made me better + i did it without medical supervision or authority!!

http://www.thetruthbarrier.com/essays/72-onnie-mary-phuthe/139-divorcing-the-man-in-the-bottle

Liam Scheff, you are asking for Dr. Moore to address your questions, and yet you refuse to address the Vera Research Institue Report that 100% de~bunked your NY Orphans as Guinea Pig story. Also, you never mention the fact that the BBC had to apologize for the documentary based on your shoddy journalism!!
For those who want the real story:
http://dissidents4dumbees.blogspot.com/2009/01/vera-institute-report-readers-digest.html
OR
http://dissidents4dumbees.blogspot.com/2009/01/response-to-liam-scheff-blog.html
JTD

Liam,

One: Mr. Moore has promised on 17 January not to show up here again.

Two: Let's hope he'll keep his promise.

Three: You said: "The issue is not solely and simply, at its heart, 'does HIV cause AIDS;' the issue is, 'what is AIDS, how is it defined, is it in any way uniform or precise a definition as is required to label it 'one condition.'"

This is not the issue. The issue is: Has "HIV" ever been shown to exist? Does it exist in real life?

If you do not agree, please kindly provide the evidence where this has been shown. This is what I would call "defining our terms" or going back to the roots. I don't think we should expect people who have been indoctrinated for a quarter of a century with the propaganda that "HIV=AIDS=death" to just forget about it and concentrate on the definition question. This might be step three or step four, but it is not step one. Why should we omit the most important step of all? The first one?

Liam, you make excellent points in quoting Moore Weiss and Barre-Sinoussi admitting they literally do not know what they are talking about, when they say that they don't know how HIV causes AIDS. The reason they are empty handed when asked how HIV causes AIDS is because after 25 years there is not the slightest indication how it could possibly do so. Dr Fauci of the NIH also makes such admissions, though he still tends to make the absurd claim that it somehow directly kills T cells, even when it has become crystal clear that it doesn't. All these fine gentlemen seem not to know what every first year student of science knows, that correlation is not causation. However, to insist we go further and take the lid off the can of worms that is labeled "define AIDS and Define HIV" is only to confuse people who are wholly concerned with whether HIV causes AIDS, because that is the rationale which makes HIV tests threatening, and the only claim which justifies administering health-damaging and eventually often fatal drugs to AIDS patients, instead of giving them food and clean water, including beetroot and other foods and dietary supplements good for the immune system and without side effects. The self serving umbrella definition of AIDS under which thirty five or more diseases to which immune deficient people are vulnerable are grouped is absurd by definition, since it contains nothing that cannot be attributed to other causes yet it is said to be caused by HIV attacking the immune system in the aforesaid undefined manner. The issue is properly whether the immune deficiency is or is not caused by HIV. The fact that the reality of HIV is questioned by some who say the evidence for its presence is insufficient to prove it is a viable independent retrovirus is a separate issue, too. Since this is contradicted by the opinion of the best and the only truly intellectually competent and honest scientist in this field of scholarship, Peter Duesberg, who probably knows more about the entire corpus of AIDS literature than anyone else, perforce, and who sacrificed great career advantages in exposing the fact that it rests on a false claim that HIV was the cause of AIDS, I see no reason to open that can of worms either. To do so only serves the interests of John Moore and others who seek to muddy the waters of this paradigm review at every opportunity to avoid a proper outside public examination of the core claim of his field, on which so much money is being spent. Defenders of the faith love nothing more than to throw red herrings at critics who try to show how unlikely if not absurd their core faith is, as this thread shows, see Moore, maybe Fraser, DeShong etc. The more red herrings, the more they can distract the onlookers from the otherwise blatant fact that they have no answers to the scientific questions raised in every thinking mind by their fond religion. Meanwhile the references you cite to emphasize that John Moore seems to have had a very callous attitude towards children as test subjects for HIV drugs would, if valid (and I have no reason to imagine they are not, and many reasons to suppose they are, given the record of Moore and others in trying to suppress coverage of their work by applying to the publishers) surely be in line with the general irresponsibility regarding the health and lives of AIDS patients exhibited by Moore and all others who try and block outside public review of this paradigm with which they ensure their career funding, when the professional peer reviewed journal reviews rejecting it stand unrefuted - without any refutations even attempted in the same high level journals in which they were published. That the media should be so witlessly biased in their reporting in favor of Moore and other scientists who lead HIV/AIDS research and politics is a shameful indication of how under researched reporters and editors are, even at distinguished periodicals such as Science, Nature, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. Harpers is the only one which has proved politically sophisticated and independent enough of political pressure to see the plain truth and publish it three years ago . See scienceguardian.com for more on why Moore should not be believed.

The fact that HIV/AIDS denialists like Liam Scheff and Truthseeker cannot even agree among themselves about whether HIV exists or not demonstrates how intellectually vacuous their whole project is. They've had 25 years to sort this one out and they're still squabbling among themselves at the starting gate. What's hilarious is they try to pretend that no-one else has noticed.

Congratulations, Fraser, on exhibiting from several angles how foolish and empty are the contributions of unread HIV/AIDS defenders in this most important matter, where the health and lives of so many are at stake, including many lives lost of people who were significant in the culture, from Mapplethorpe to Arthur Ashe.In the first place, you confuse a united front with an indication of a group being correct in its claims. That is because the HIV/AIDS defenders present a front united in defense of a paradigm, like wagons drawn in a circle, and by definition they are united round one single theme. No one, in fact, in mainstream HIV/AIDS research dares call into question the basis assumption, because they know they will be ostracized, because there is so much funding at stake, it is so vulnerable to so many questions, so fundamentally flawed that it cannot bear the smallest examination from anyone with a working brain outside the field. . That the paradigm gathers all kinds of critics from laymen through professionals of all kinds to the leading scientist in the field of retroviruses from which it sprang is inevitable, however, since it is so easy to find flaws in it, from scientifically invalid claims to scientifically invalid studies, inconsistencies, paradoxes, bad reasoning and plain stupidities visible to a child of 12, though apparently not to you. It is the myriad flaws which produces so many critics of every stripe. The fact that I disagree with Liam Scheff as to whether it is worth the time to assess the long running questions as to what the test for HIV antibodies really means and whether HIV is truly the retroviral entity it appears to be is not an indication of how wrong we both are to question HIV=AIDS, but an indication of how much time and attention we are willing to give to different flaws which are different questionable parts of a very corrupt whole. Since it is not the only instance of a questionable scientific paradigm that has far out lived its shelf date - we get new ones every decade, often reflected in the Nobels - I devote time to other ones while Scheff has studied this aspect of the world's biggest stupidity in science more thoroughly than I have.
I do not condemn his suspicions or his conclusions because I haven't studied the problem and given that so much of HIV=AIDS just vanishes into thin air on close inspection I wouldn't rule out even this challenge to the orthodoxy ie that something is rotten in that area too. But in discussing science one has to start somewhere in accepting the peer reviewed literature even though so much of it in HIV=AIDS and elsewhere is so bad in terms of studies which are not properly controlled or reasoned. Walter Gilbert of Harvard told me he simply never accepted any paper without repeating the experiment, and all too often was unable to do so. Given the rank stupidity of HIV=AIDS scientists generally. both in terms of the quality of their research and their inability to see they are participating in the most absurd charade in the history of science, not to mention the silliness of their followers on the Web as indicated by the two discussion threads here on the Medical Hypotheses journal, it is impossible to write off the possibility that the entire house of cards will eventually collapse.
One fundamental reason for believing that HIV is not the cause of AIDS is one that anyone intelligent would notice from the very beginning, but apparently no one has. That is, suddenly at the beginning of the eighties a new disease phenomenon appeared in the US among gays which had supposedly never been seen before. And guess where the solution popped up, the purported solution.HIV, to the conundrum of what caused it? Why, in the brand new field of retroviruses and human health, no less. What a wonderful coincidence! The appearance of an entirely novel disease phenomenon, and the solution to its cause appearing immediately in a field barely operative before the Nixon War ion Cancer suddenly decided that maybe retroviruses caused cancer in humans. Wow! Talk about luck. Gallo was suddenly able to do something relevant to human health with his million dollar lab which otherwise was left foundering after it proved that such viruses did not prove the culprit for cancer. In the unlikely event that he believed in God he must have got down on his knees and thanked Him quite profusely. Of course then he made a slight adjustment and claimed the discovery for himself, which took Montagnier and the French until last year to roll back, not to mention managed to sell the US authorities on HTLV-1 as a cause of leukemia. Sorry if I am being too subtle for you, but this paint should be made, I believe. But perhaps you believe in God too and believe that Divine Providence produced the solution to AIDS just as soon as it gave us AIDS. Perhaps we should then give the Nobel to God.

Umm... Right... So does HIV exist or not?

Anthony (Truthseeker),

1. Define what you mean when you talk about HIV, and AIDS. It's necessary to understand the paradigm. Otherwise you're talking about constructs.

2. HIV in practical terms refers to "HIV positivity," which refers to HIV testing. AIDS, in practical terms, is given as a clinical diagnosis, often in no relation or in contrary relationship with any HIV result.

3. HIV in laboratory terms refers to any collection of molecular cloning and assembing projects (sometimes called 'Frankenstein molecules, because they are assembled out of bits and pieces of detritus found in cultured cells, but never found extant in any human body). HIV refers to highly separable phenomena, various proteins and genetic signatures, that must be assembled in order to fit with a 'consensus agreement' about what a retroviral model might or 'should' look like - at least, according to the mainstream's databank. https://www.aidsreagent.org/

Back to Moore, Kalichman, Bergman, and crew:


ONE: The very troubled Mr. Deshong - a close personal web colleague of Seth Kalichman of U.Connecticutt, and primary supporter of John P. Moore and Jeanne Bergman - would like me to talk about the orphans that were used and who died in clinical trials. I'd be happy to.


I ALREADY LINKED to one NIH study in a previous comment. Please read that study for yourself, it is one among dozens of AIDS drug studies at the Incarnation Children's Center orphanage that anyone can look up on the NIH database:

[ http://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct/show/NCT00001108?order=30 ]


SEVEN FDA BLACK BOX labeled drugs at one time, some at higher than normal doses, in children. This is the state of the art, in AIDS medicine. Refusal or inability to take drugs results in G-tube surgery - CUTTING A HOLE IN THE STOMACH OF THESE CHILDREN through which ground drugs are pumped. [ http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/105/6/e80 ]

AGAIN, de rigeur in AIDS medicine.

TWO : JEANNE BERGMAN AND JOHN P. MOORE did everything they could to bury the story, including threatening the BBC (who distributed an independent documentary on the story), with libel if they did not make a public apology for allowing critical words to be spoken about AIDS drugs. No retraction as to the actual events of the story has ever been made - no one denies that the drug trials occurred. The BBC was forced to say, however, that AIDS drugs are, by definition, "life-saving." Despite having FDA Black Box labels - meaning they have killed or maimed at standard doses.

THREE: THE VERA INSTITUTE was told to investigate the drug trials, but they were forbidden from looking at a single medical record for a single child. They listed 25 deaths during the trials, 55 following, [ http://www.ahrp.org/cms/content/view/546/9/ ]

AND THEN Tim Ross of the VERA Institute admitted (on WBAI radio in NYC) that the number was closer to 200 deaths of children who had been through the trials. (29% of the remaining 417, out of a total 532 NYC foster care children that are admitted to have been used were dead; thousands of foster care children were used nationally in NIH AIDS drug trials: http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/05/04.php ).

NO PAYMENT, no reparations, nothing has ever been paid to the children who were used in these trials, or to the families of the children who died, or were killed by drug toxicities.

"Vera Research Institue Report that 100% de~bunked" Liam ...
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Except Vera did not have access to the raw data as stated in the Village Voice article.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Similarly, it should also be clear why Professor Moore refuses to engage the substance of the "numbers debate" in South Africa.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Why should he? When stenographers in the press have passed along the "guessing-game" Truther indictment of Thabo Mbeki with no critical analysis. Because after all, it must be true that "lives were lost" due to a failure to treat with ARVs in S Africa. A Cornell professor says so; I believe it, that settles it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
When an Illusionist plies his trade, he's certainly not going to reveal the awful secret - that no hard data exists that can be used in any potential indictment of Mbeki.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
So if one is confused over the existence of a single virus that, when transmitted organism to organism, each and every time CAUSES DEFICIENCY THAT LEADS TO DEATH* within "immune network", it's because they have not looked at recent findings. Including the FACT of intracellular "immunity" to foreign nucleic acids. It exists. These mechanisms were unknown in 1986, when that "blue ribbon committee" of retrovirologists went beyond the experimental data and proclaimed the existence of HIV.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
In other words, a "hijack-of-cell hypothesis" based on a single "t-cell lymphotropic retroviral agent" does not withstand scrutiny. For one thing, M Martin et al found in their culture experiments that so-called "natural isolates" did not head for the CD4 receptor like some kind of homing device. They found inherent properties NOT found with Gallo et al's HTLV III/LAV. So quite logically they concluded that "cell-adapted strains" were DIFFERENT biologically from "ex-vivo" strains. This 1980's finding is consistent with more recent results that support an endogenous origin for these "retroviral" sequences. (Call them what you will, they "exist" but not as a "single bundle".)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
*This can't even be established for a single cell, never mind the entire organism.

Well said Gene Semon (Liversidge, take note):

[quote] "In other words, a "hijack-of-cell hypothesis" based on a single "t-cell lymphotropic retroviral agent" does not withstand scrutiny.

This 1980's finding is consistent with more recent results that support an endogenous origin for these "retroviral" sequences. (Call them what you will, they "exist" but not as a "single bundle".)"
[end quote]

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

The VERA Institute REFUSED TO ACCEPT audio and text interviews from persons who had been in, or had children in the ICC orphanage, that I handed to their interviewer, Anne Lifflander.

[ http://liamscheff.com/daily/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/vera1.gif ] I WAS TOLD BY VERA DIRECTOR Michael Jacobson, that the scope of their investigation was very limited - hamstrung - in fact. They were not able to "initiate contact with clinical trial participants and their families."

AND, I was forbidden from giving any their team ANYTHING That identified by name ANY CHILD who had been IN A TRIAL, even for their research purposes.

THEREFORE THEIR INVESTIGATION REQUIRED THAT NO ONE BE NAMED, OR CONTACTED, WHO WAS IN A CLINICAL TRIAL. They then "welcomed" me to send them the names of anyone who WAS NOT IN A TRIAL (for what? what was their study for? The question answers itself - it was a cover-up, a whitewash).

I DID SEND the child care workers who would speak, under these circumstances, to the VERA institute interviewers, but people who have been through the abuse of the trials, aren't excited to re-live it for a group that is asking them to censor their memories at every turn.

HA! Liam Scheff's own words proves he is a bit hollow with the truth:
"THE VERA INSTITUTE was told to investigate the drug trials, but they were forbidden from looking at a single medical record for a single child."
You also, Mr. Scheff, NEVER saw a single medical record for a single child! I have indeed read elsewhere that you do admit that. SO, how can you be sure what killed any child in the study and how many actually died? Very simply, you can not. Your assumptions and inferences are NOT what a good journalist would use as the basis for such an article.
NOW, for the article you linked regarding gastro tubes. I am sure you linked that article as proof it was done at Incarnation. It is not proof of that. No one denies this is done in rare cases. Your "expose" makes it seem that it was FORCIBLE and done BEHIND CLOSED DOORS with NO CONSENT, done by a rogue doctor! Again, it is a terrible inference in your shoddy article. And your "source" was dubious at best!
Now, to your other article. That was a published report which was a culmination of 19 other facilities in addition to Incarnation. The report states that the children ages 4 to 22 were "agressively monitored by physicians" for 2 weeks. Then the patients went home where they were visited by healthcare professionals TWICE a DAY for 6 weeks and monitored closely with blood tests. After 24 weeks they were given the option of continuing if all blood work was acceptable. The article also emphatically states: "if the patient's family and the investigator feel it is in the best interest of the child to remain on study." WOW! The children (ages up to 22) had their family involved!! And let me reiterate these words from the study: "IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE CHILD..." Come on Scheff, your article was written as a complete smear tactic even below the sensational pseudo journalism of the National Inquirer. Both of these studies are the antithesis of your article. You should learn from Clark Baker and not link to articles that do not truly support your claims. WHY? Because people like me actually read them!
Nice try.
JTD

Also, Mr. Scheff, the next time you would like to call me "very troubled" I suggest you at the very least supply some sort of proof! I know that a journalist of your caliber would not go around making libelous and slanderous remarks like that without some sort of proof!
And make it good, solid proof. You do not want a law suit such as the one Clark Baker is now experiencing.
JTD

Mr. Deshong,

IF YOU WOULD BE WILLING TO set up a public hearing, with your friends Seth Kalichman, John P. Moore, Jeanne Bergman, and the board of Columbia Presbyterian, and members of the N.I.H. clinical trial board, to be open to the general public, with witnesses called from the five boroughs of New York, whose children were used in these trials - or who lived through them, or whose friends died in Incarnation Children's Center, while being medicated with "7 drugs at one time, at higher than usual doses,"

I FOR ONE WOULD be pleased to accept that invitation. On the grounds that the hearing was public, that each witness be given ample time to tell their story, and that participating witnesses, who did not wish to expose their identities for public ridicule (as is the specialty of AIDStruth.org), would be permitted to give testimony via closed-circuit TV, with their faces blurred, or through pre-recorded video.

IF YOU ARE willing and able to attend to setting that up, I would be most grateful.

IF YOU ARE NOT, then I encourage you to go to New York City, and as a humanitarian service, track down the families of children who died horribly on drugs in high combination, including Thalidomide - or the children who survived it, with bodily deformation, cancers, and tremendous psychological scarring - and lobby for reparations for these people.

AS TRUE BELIEVERS in the AIDS paradigm, you, Kalichman, Moore and Bergman could not ethically be opposed to paying for the human lives that you tortured and ruined, and those that ended in the trials, or immediately after. After all, these people died for your program - the least you can do is thank them, publicly, for their unwilling service.

Just for the record, because I've always been curious, Dr. Moore, Mr. Kalichman, Ms. Bergman, and Mr. Deshong:

**ONE** How many children would have to die in or following a drug trial for you to care? For you to be even slightly concerned over the nature of the drugs or trial? Give us a figure - we know the number is greater than 200 out of 532 - which is the number in the case of the New York orphans. Ballpark it for us. 300? 450? All of them? Or, is there a limit to the number of deaths that can be tolerated in an AIDS drug trial in children?

**TWO** How many children having their stomachs cut open would be too many? Stomachs cut open to facilitate a plastic tube, through which drugs are pumped, and cannot be refused? What percentage is just 'too much' in your estimation?

**THREE** How many buffalo humps, and breasts on boys from Protease Inhibitors would be too much for you to think "okay?"

**FOUR** How many uncounted 'adverse effects' would be too many to cover up in Uganda?

**FIVE** How many toxic FDA Black Box labeled drugs given to a four year old child at one time, at higher than normal doses, would be too many? More than 7 - we know that already. So, name it.

HOW MANY IS TOO MANY?

Please do, fill in the blanks, so the rest of us know what we're dealing with.

Just wondering, since nothing seems to have any effect on any of you, as long as it bears the word "NIH approved."

Regards, and auf wiedersehen, unless I get an answer to these questions from Messrs. et Mesdames Kalichman and Moore, Bergman and Deshong.

Liam Scheff
[ http://www.omsj.org/corruption/dr-catherine-painter-details-the-use-of-orphans-in-aids-clinical-drug-trials ]

My ego, unlike Mr. Scheff's, will allow me to only speak for myself.
First and foremost let me say, thank you for your line of questioning. It perfectly underscores exactly why you are not a serious journalist and are not mistaken for one. Even your line of questioning is sensationalistic and self serving. Why do you insist on trying to make others out to be monsters while you are the savior of others and the ONLY ONE WHO CARES?
I would not like for ANY children to die. But I live in reality and I know that those trials were INTENDED TO SAVE LIVES! Not only the lives of the children involved but the lives of countless children to come! Now Mr. Scheff, how many lives of future children TO BE SAVED would make you join reality?
Your second request I will not even respond to. I sufficiently and adequately pointed out in my previous post how you not only sensationalised that procedure, but outright lied! So just stop with that!
All the rest of your comments are just unsubstantiated ramblings. Buffalo humps and breasts on boys and "uncounted adverse effects" (intentionally vague?...typical tactic) and Black Box Labled drugs are all insinuations about the side effects of HIV Drugs which the pharmaceutical company discovered and NEVER HID! And science and doctors do not hide from patients either! People who are HIV positive LIKE ME and UNLIKE Mr. Scheff, are aware of these side effects and HAVE A CHOICE! Take the drugs or take your chances. That's what it boils down to. I take the drugs as well as most of my many, many friends and NONE OF US have experienced NOT ONE of those side effects you love to harp on. Yes, they occur. That's the difference between orthodox science and AIDS Denialists. Orthodox science admits the good, the bad and the ugly! Whereas the dispicable AIDS Denialists sensationalise every bad aspect and NEVER ADMIT TO THE BENEFITS!! That is where you lose ALL CREDIBILITY!!
JTD

No, Scheff, I am not willing to come to NY and set up a public hearing. I have already fallen for that same type offer from your co~hort Elizabeth Ely. She offered to come to TX for a debate. When I jumped thru every hoop she put before me, then she disappeared. She never returned any of my emails.
Also, WHY should I come to NY to set up a public hearing? You are the one who "broke" this "story". If you really believe your own story, YOU should NOT sleep until every person who "cut holes in the stomachs" of children with no consent and other heinous acts you accuse are locked up! You should be knocking down the doors of NY Congresspersons and NY Senators and every level of gov't below! Take some action yourself IF you really believe your own hype! Fight your own battles. If it were me in your shoes, I would already have done all that and more!
JTD

Mr. Scheff - Your conversation with JTD reenforces the axiom that when you wrestle with pigs, the pig wins.

Mr JTD (or do you prefer Miss?) - as an unaccomplished 44-year-old who blogs from your mother's basement, we know what you've done in your own shoes so it's unlikely that you would accomplish anything more in someone else's.

The endless effrontery of the paradigm defense squad's ripostes to HIV critics is astonishing in the context of the many lives lost to HIV/AIDS. Now we have Fraser asserting that it is wrong to question that “untreated HIV infection progresses to AIDS a median of a decade or so following seroconversion” since it is supported by “literally dozens of natural studies in the peer reviewed literature from as far back as the 1980s and 1990s”. Apparently this commentator is unaware that HIV was only put forward as a putative cause of AIDS in 1984, so there would hardly be time for any study to demonstrated a median of ten years progression to AIDS after seroconversion in the 1980s. But further discussion is futile as long as he like all smart HIV defenders ignores the problem that the genetic makeup of the supposed virus is too small for the virus credibly to have its dastardly effect after a time lapse, even if anyone had ever discerned what that work might be.... Surely after 25 years it is time for the leaders of HIV=AIDS and their supporters to stop making misleading blanket statements which fly in the face of all the “natural studies” which have been carried out over 25 years in the lab and in the field, none of which validly support their hypothesis and most of which argue that there is a much better and simpler explanation for the immune deficiency of AIDS than an inert wisp of retroviral RNA. Apparently Fraser is also not aware that AIDS studies all include his belief in HIV infection leading to AIDS as a premise, a prima facie assumption, and a sine qua non of their authors membership in the AIDS/HIV establishment and their right to publish their results. The contortions of some authors of studies which turn out to directly contradict this basic assumption are marvelous to behold, though understandable, since if anyone questions the premise “HIV causes infectious AIDS” they will suffer the fate of Berkeley's Peter Duesberg, who went from leadership to pariah in the field for denying that the paradigm made any sense whatsoever, and still does..... When inviolable belief governs the interpretation of evidence, such studies are no evidence at all for the premise when it is questioned by critics. Why can't Fraser, apparently an excellent scientific mind, see this serpent of logic eating its own tail? It seems that we have yet another case of confirmation bias, the familiar phenomenon of behavioral economics where believers content with the status quo tend to discount all conflicting evidence, and rationalize inconsistent findings as outliers. This is why instead of conducting an open minded discussion where they admit the good points made by HIV critics, defenders on these threads confine themselves to squabbling over details and when that doesn't work they send up a smoke screen of disparagement (in Fraser's case “endlessly recycled nonsense” “not honest brokers” “consistently misrepresent evidence” “harebrained beliefs” etc etc) before vanishing. This is a pity because it forces HIV critics to disparage in return or keep out of these threads, which can serve a useful purpose informing the public of problems with the unproven HIV/AIDS hypothesis. Currently trying to conduct a reasonable and open minded discussion on where the truth lies is like pushing on string, getting no one anywhere, when points are never taken, and faith remains beyond dissection.... Nevertheless, let's make one more attempt to set the record straight here with regard to AZT being the cause of death in AIDS patients rather than HIV. Fraser “trots out” (his expression) a standard denial by those that defend HIV/AIDS. He denies that the reduction of the AZT dose has anything to do with the temporary extension of the lives of AIDS patients seen since the mid nineties, since when AIDS patients in the US have all continued dying annually at the rate of 17,000 (CDC estimate, the WHO estimate is 24,000) a year but have taken longer to do it. He states that “the AZT dose used in the new HAART regimens was precisely the same dose (500-600 mg daily) that had been used in mono and dual therapies for the previous four or five years.” ….. The correct facts according to the NIH are as follows: AZT was originally dosed at 1500 mg when it was introduced in early trials in 1995 or 96, reduced to 1200 mg in 1990 or 91, then halved to 600 mg in 1993, and then effectively lowered with the introduction of HAART in 1995 to 200 or 300 with the widespread non compliance that resulted from regimens of as many as 20 pills a day which patients resisted and doctors alleviated with reductions and substitutions. By 2006 AZT was recommended in only half the suggested preferred regimens, and in 2007 or 2008 was removed entirely from preferred treatment, though not from preventive treatment in mothers to be and post exposure prophylaxis in hospital staff as mentioned above. The incessant contradiction of this influential decline in AZT dosing by Web defenders is grossly misleading.

Liam Scheff asks: "How many children would have to die in or following a drug trial for you to care?" While any death of a child is heartbreaking, the broader answer is "any avoidable death, and any number of deaths or reduction in survival that exceeds the mortality for the condition for which the drugs were given." Liam seems to be unable to get his head around the fact that untreated paediatric AIDS is almost universally rapidly fatal and in really horrible ways. He naively believes that it can be cured with food and clean water, or perhaps with vitamins. Survival with untreated paediatric AIDS is usually very short. Not every child with AIDS who accessed treatment through the trials in question survived, but a hell of a lot more did than would have had they been untreated, or restricted to the then currently approved antiretroviral regimens for children...... Liam's characterisation of trial participants as "guinea pig kids" is misleading and emotionally manipulative. The drugs and regimens under trial had already been extensively tested and approved as safe and effective for use in adults with AIDS - "black box" warnings notwithstanding ("black box" warnings are designed to draw attention to salient risks and measures required to ameliorate those risks, not to warn off clinicians and patients from using valuable and often lifesaving treatments after carefully weighing up risks and benefits). However, treatments approved for use in adults cannot be used in children until separate trials are conducted in children. The net result of this was that children were dying of AIDS, unable to access the lifesaving drugs and regimens that had been approved for their adult and adolescent counterparts. The solution to this is to make such treatments available to children according to clinical need but under close supervision, monitoring and data collection conditions. This is called a "trial". This is what Liam objects to with his offensive "guinea-pig" rhetoric.... Liam's basic problem is that he is unable to understand what AIDS is, or even whether HIV exists - as you can readily see from his confused sophistry above. Because of this he is unable to distinguish between a horrible and heartbreaking disease and the effects of its treatment. Having no insight into these handicaps, a few years ago, Liam tried to produce a histrionically self-righteous piece of journalism about the issue of paediatric drug trials in New York. It was savagely canned for its at best naive and at worst unethical misrepresentations. Ever since then, Liam has hawked his discredited hobby-horse from blog-thread to blog-thread, hoping to gain new audiences and the vindication he craves. As you can see above.

Truthseeker, you are talking rubbish.

"AZT was originally dosed at 1500 mg when it was introduced in early trials in 1995 or 96."

Utter nonsense.

I think Mr De Shong you have rather missed the point. I don’t know what the percentage is but the fact that many of the children in these trials were in orphanages such as the ICC suggests they didn’t actually have any family to consent to either “treatment” with these ARVs or to the forced (and let’s face it, no child consents to anything as barbaric as a gastrostomy) insertion of gastric pegs to facilitate getting these drugs into them.
This procedure was developed for feeding (nutrition) in conditions where oral nutrition was an ongoing problem. The use of gastric pegs for drug adherence is unprecedented and has never been used in any other pharmacological indication – doesn’t that tell you something about the toxicity and unacceptability of these drugs? Almost 50% of health care workers following purported HIV exposure cannot tolerate the usual regimen of post-exposure prophylaxis – 3 drugs at the “normal” dosage for even 4 weeks and discontinue treatment – and these people are supposedly well aware of the “deadliness” of HIV. In other words the treatment is SO BAD that “exposed” health care workers would rather risk “certain death” from “HIV disease” than continue with such a horrible treatment.
Unfortunately for the aforementioned babies and children, refusal to accept the disgusting effects of not just 3 drugs at supposedly normal physiological dosage but up to 7 drugs at higher dosages results in “procedures” that would make Dr Mengele proud. And do not commit the unforgiveable sin Mr DeShong of claiming the “life-saving” ends justify the means – I challenge you, Mr Kalichman and Mr Moore (and any other HIV-AIDS defender) to provide just ONE study proving ANY “life-saving” benefits of these drugs in children (as per FDA rules) – and p.s. the Gortmaker study does not count – not only was there no control group, but the majority of children were already on ARVs at the start of the study.
Fraser – accusing Mr Scheff of “confused sophistry” is quite honestly one of the most asinine things I have read in years – surely the two are mutually exclusive? – and your own rhetoric on the use of the term “life-saving” disqualifies you from accusing anyone else as per above comment. Additionally, from the Fischl study: “and were randomly assigned to receive either 250 mg of AZT or placebo by mouth every four hours” – in case your math is a little lacking that equals 6 doses – 1500mg per day so I think you owe Truthseeker a major apology.

"Apparently this commentator is unaware that HIV was only put forward as a putative cause of AIDS in 1984, so there would hardly be time for any study to demonstrated a median of ten years progression to AIDS after seroconversion in the 1980s.".... Stored series of blood samples going back to the late 70s were available for a number of cohorts at high risk of HIV infection during that time, such as the San Francisco Men's Health Study. From these it was possible to retrospectively pinpoint seroconversions as early as the late 1970s, once HIV testing was developed in the mid 1980s. By the late 1980s it was possible to establish 50% (median) progression rates to AIDS among late 1970s seroconverters. It's not rocket science, Tony.

No, Cathy. HIV infection and AIDS are not "mutually exclusive" conditions. I have no idea where you got that bizarre idea from. By definition, everyone who has AIDS also has HIV infection, and nearly everyone who has anything that looks even remotely like AIDS (progressive CD4+ depletion resulting in opportunistic disease) has HIV infection. Furthermore, people who develop HIV infection have a strong tendency to develop AIDS (or AIDS-like conditions) - 50% within ten years of seroconversion, and around 90% within 20 years if untreated. Practically no-one else develops AIDS-like immunosuppression. What on earth do you mean by "mutually exclusive"?

Oops – I still have my old 1990-1991 ABPI Data Sheet Compendium – keeping this has been an interesting exercise: “200 to 300 mg Retrovir should be taken every 4 hours , i.e. six times daily, including the night-time dose” – that’s 1500 – 1800mg daily Fraser – waiting for that apology….

Oh gee Fraser you are taxing my politeness – your phrase “confused sophistry” was what I said was mutually exclusive – “sophist = one who reasons with cleveer but fallacious arguments” COD. Clever does tend preclude the concept of confusion does it not?
And don’t lecture me about the mutually exclusive or otherwise nature of HIV-AIDS – I’ve been waiting years to see the actual evidence that HIV causes AIDS – and I’m still waiting – and don’t quote me a tsunami of questionable soft end points; CD4 cell counts and “HIV viral load” are meaningless in the context of mortality as has been pointed out by dissidents far more eloquent than I and by your own establishment flunkies (e.g. Rodriguez).

Truthseeker, I understand that 1) you deny that HIV causes AIDS, 2) you apparently believe that "there is a much better and simpler explanation for the immune deficiency of AIDS than an inert wisp of retroviral RNA." ------------------------- Can you answer this simple question: DO YOU BELIEVE THAT IMMUNE DEFICIENCY (AIDS) IS AN INFECTIOUS, TRANSMITTABLE DISEASE OR YOU DENY THIS? ------------------- I ask this because the question whether HIV is the cause of AIDS is a SECONDARY question, but the first question is whether AIDS is an infectious disease. You refer to some "much better and simpler explanation for the immune deficiency of AIDS", and you, it seems to me, have an idea what this "explanation" is, however, you stopped just short of spelling out what it is. But, at this stage I am not asking what this explanation is since this, again, would be a secondary question; the first question is whether you (and apparently, other "denialists") believe that the disease is infectious and transmittable. Is it infectious and transmittable or not? ------------------ All this discussion would be totally a waste of time if the positions on this question are not made clear. All treatments also would, obviously, depend on this answer.

Nice try "Cathy". Truthseeker said, "AZT was originally dosed at 1500 mg when it was introduced in early trials in 1995 or 96". Oh, and 200 x 6 isn't 1500.

De$hong is one of many that are paid to inhabit cyberspace, he trolls around all links to HIV/AIDS injecting his particular brand of venom in to the debate. His other notable cohorts include $eth Kalichman, $nout, Poodle $tomper and the venereal Profe$$or John P Moore, who is the leader of the gang. Just as he was the inspiration behind AIDSTRUTH and a consultant to THE BODY. His efforts alone have netted Cornel University some 30 million in grants and he receives considerable gratuities and speaking fees from the pharmaceutical companies that coincidentally market anti HIV medications. THE BODY itself is simply an advertising vehicle for HIV medications and not a credible source of health information.

Simple analysis of the number of blogs they troll and make comment on shows that they cannot possibly hold down bonafide jobs eslewhere unless they are working 60 hour days.

He who pays the piper calls the tunes, in this case it's Glaxo, Pfizer and host of others that maintain sizeable budgets whithin their PR departments to fund this activity.

One shouldn't take them too seriously, they are just doing their jobs, and a brief visit to their various sites shows the quality of their cut/paste/insult/deride ventures. They all regularly engage in sock puppeteering in a vain effort to bolster their numbers and usually favourably comment on each others blogs in a verbal daisy chain. Often they are the only people to post on these open forum blogs and self congratulate each other their perceived witicisms, cyber masturbation if you will. Their propensity to attempt outdoing the others is matched only by their greed and lack of ethical or moral values which makes them by definition true sociopaths.

Of course they will vehemently deny this and claim that they are serving the interests of public health when in fact they are only servicing their bank accounts. John Moore has of late taken to threatening everyone and everything with libel actions if he disagrees with your point of view. Everytime you lend credence to these mercenary cretins the cash register goes Ka Ching and they laugh out loud. At humanities and your expense.

Yeah – nice try Fraser – but the higher dosage of 1800mg/day still stands. And don’t bother putting my name in inverted commas – I guess you must be “Fraser” huh?

Furthermore – is it me or has anyone else noticed you completely sidestepped the issue of your virtually calling Truthseeker a liar and made your response all about misinterpreting my comment about “mutually exclusive”?

For those on the other side of the ditch the ABPI (the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry) Data Sheet Compendium is the “Bible” of prescribing in the UK. If “the bible” says the dosage was 1200-1800mg/day then that is what was prescribed “by consensus” according to the “best evidence” at the time.
Ready to apologise to Truthseeker yet Fraser?

Sorry again, Cathy. One can be clever and fallacious while arguing from a totally confused set of premises. Liam's arguments are undoubtedly both clever and fallacious (ie "sophistry") and he is also utterly confused about the basics of what HIV is, and what AIDS is. They are not mutually exclusive states. Oh, and if you are struggling to maintain your politeness, could I recommend you take some time out have a herbal tea, or a bit of a meditate, or something?

Well “Fraser” – could I recommend you participate in the strange craze for a high colonic to rid yourself of some troublesome faecoliths. You haven’t addressed your egregious response to Truthseeker in virtually calling him a liar. Nor have you provided me a study proving survival benefit in babies/children given ARV.

Oh goodness “Fraser” – Liam Scheff is confused about what HIV “is”? Could that be because none of you know? Possibly because “HIV” was never isolated and nobody has ever seen the elusive Pimpernel virus – you know, the one that somehow disintegrates and dies within 1 hour of being outside the human body and yet somehow miraculously survives for 3 months in freeze-dried Factor VIII whilst sitting on a shelf for 3 months? The one that somehow manages to “destroy” red blood cells and cause anaemia when “HIV” is supposed (according to your most “esteemed” experts) to only attack nucleated cells – of which red blood cells are not?
Or is it possible that Mr Scheff is “confused” about the issue because your science and explanations are rubbish, contradictory and plain nonsense?

Reference: "whereistheproof 18 January, 2010 @Robert Wood-Smith this is very interesting. Can you tell us more about that trial? Are there any records? I would like to learn more about this." ALSO "Jim Beam 18 January, 2010 @Robert Wood-Smith. Your invention of the cure for AIDS, Influenza and other problems as you described above, and in the flu forum: http://birdflunewsflash.wordpress.com/2007/02/19/shine-a-light-on-the-bird-flu-virus/ should be published in Medical Hypotheses." >>> REPLY by ROBERT WOOD-SMITH: I will write to Bruce G. Charlton, Editor-in-Chief - MEDICAL HYPOTHESES (Professor of Theoretical Medicine, University of Buckingham, United Kingdom) and provide for him an electronic PDF copy of a new WHITE PAPER, which my Partners and I have been encouraged to prepare by my Associate Partner, H. Rosalie Bertell Ph.D., Environmental Epidemiologist: Regent: International Physicians for Humanitarian Medicine, Switzerland. The White Paper presents detailed information concerning H1N1 swine flu and H5N1 bird flu: their cause, and 'potential' treatment of the expected re-assortment: whether these be an inter-mutation, or specific individual mutation(s). Sections of the White Paper provides new scientific knowledge concerning 'electrically abnormal pathogens': supported by knowledge of efficacious new treatments (by way of example) for several cancer types, medically proven by UK university research teams to provide remedial success rates as high as 95% ~ success in the treatment of MRSA ~ in addition, information concerning a successful AIDS clinical trial is provided. The White Paper provides corroborating scientific evidence from some of the most prestigious research organizations known to the scientific community. Section 4 of the paper: makes a case for re-examination of the existing peer review process, with respect to the needs of cases where a highly significant advance in medical science is to be presented for review ~ and (with respect) there exists no appropriate authority to review. The above named Editor-in-Chief will also be provided with 'additional knowledge' within three associated reports: one under the heading 'Medical Science is in Crisis, Worldwide', presented to Sir Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for the Department of Health. London. The Senior Medical Officer for Infection Control and Blood Policy, Geoff L Ridgway MD. BSc, FRCP, FRCPath. (since retired) replied on behalf of the CMO, requesting five detailed reports: a PDF of the 1st of Five reports will be provided for Bruce G. Charlton, Medical Hypotheses. May I conclude: my delayed response is due partly to the above mentioned White Paper, being currently in the process of presentation to Heads of State, Health Ministers, and other senior medical officers in major countries across the world: also, selected others.

Sorry to butt in, Robert. Cathy thinks it is bizarre and implausible that a virus might remain viable in a "freeze dried" (lipophilised) preparation for months... Cathy, have you ever seen a vial of lipophilised measle-mumps-rubella vaccine containing... err... "live" attenuated vius prior to its reconstitution by adding sterile water? (Much the same preservation process for producing powdered factor VIII). Cathy also believes that no-one has ever "seen" HIV. Despite the fact that a Google image search for "HIV electron micrograph" gets 8,120 hits showing a huge number of both scanning and transmission EMs of the beastie. Go to a library and check the journals or virology textbooks and you'll find thousands more... Oh, but they're all forgeries, aren't they... Why am I wasting my time with these people?

JKramrasky must be one more pseudonym for Clark Baker. BTW, Clark, you forgot "unmarried" to go along with "unaccomplished" or have you dropped the unmarried part since I embarrassed you so bad the last time you wrote those same lies about me?
Also, JKrmarsky, why resort to unsubstantiated personal attacks? Why not respond to what I wrote on the Oregonian about the truth about Maggiore's death that you lied about?
As for Cathy, YES, I did read BOTH links Scheff supplied. And the one about the gastrotubes EMPHATICALLY stated that CONSENT was received. Read it for yourself!! Also, that's another thing about Scehff's "story". He played up the minority angle as well as made it appear as if these kids were dumped and forgotten about with no one to support their best interests. When in fact, many of the children had family even if it was not their parents. And many of them did have parents, but they were drug addicts and not able to care for them AT THAT MOMENT. Also, do you think the State of NY was using children, "forgotten" or otherwise, literally as research vessels as Scheff wanted you to think? Well then, Cathy, try to think for yourself!!
JTD

Sorry Cathy, I only answered the part of your comment that was most annoying to me.
You asked:
"...to provide just ONE study proving ANY “life-saving” benefits of these drugs in children (as per FDA rules)"
I have taken the first PubMed search I found:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19341524?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=6
Out of 298 HIV+ children in Guatemala on ARV, only 44 died over a 9 year period.
NOW, Cathy, why don't you supply proof of these 50% of exposed Healthcare providers who stop prophylaxis due to not being able to tolerate the drugs? I am a healthcare worker and I am not aware of this statistic.
JTD

INTHEKNOW, is also Clark Baker!
Clark now has to hide his name because he can not stop libeling and slandering on the net and since he is being sued for that, he has at least gotten smart enough to use a pseudonym!!
Way to go, Baker!
JTD

The heated HIV/AIDS debate that is presented here has nothing to do with the issue of importance of Medical Hypothesis journal to the scientific world. This is the only journal that gives voice to the unconventional ideas in science. Eccentric, irregular and odd are synonyms of unconventional, which is why I guess MH papers are described above as "flawed, silly and foolish". However, original, alternative, unusual are also synonyms of unconventional. My experience reading papers form MH is reading alternative, unusual, original views to different scientific problems. Often it is by people who are outside of mainstream science (pathologist view on the origin of cancer based on similarities of samples from different diseases, veterinarian ideas for the role of magnesium in hey fever), but that is exactly why it is so important to hear those ideas, because they give us somebody unique prospective, and even if you end up disagreeing with the conclusions, the examination of the rigor of arguments and the whole exercise of synthesis of this information is invaluable. Personally I have published a paper in MH on the topic of potential importance of underarm hair. And guess what, it was featured in all those comical stories about MH, because journalists do find it funny when somebody writes about underarm hair. And yes, I was criticized in my grant applications for producing "questionable quality science" based on this paper, because some scientists find anything non mainstream "silly and foolish". But I would argue with anyone who'd like to, that my ideas (as well as those presented in many other "silly and foolish" papers) represent rigorous original scientific thought. I am thankful for MH and strongly support its continuous existence in the current form.

Deshong I had made a vow not to ever engage with nut jobbery...
"dissident4dumbees" ? are you 12 years old?


duuuuuuude!

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124

Mr. Fraser,

I think you're doing an excellent job on all fronts here, but maybe we should go a little more in depth on just an issue or two, what do you think?

Let's stick with HIV isolation/EMs and Factor VIII, shall we?

Why reference thousands of google hits on HIV EMs when you can just link to a couple you find particularly convincing and explain to the good people reading the Times how they can know that it's HIV they're looking at?

Speaking of occular evidence, I have never seen "a vial of lipophilised measle-mumps-rubella vaccine containing... err... "live" attenuated virus".

Have you ever seen "viable" (infectious) cell-free "HIV" particles being maintained for more than a couple of hours outside special protective environments?

Is it not the case that the drying process described above destroys almost all of the supposed HIV?

How vested interests invert perceptions:

Robert Gallo vouches for Peter Duesberg:

Here is a quote for the blog commenters who do not seem to fully appreciate the stature of Peter Duesberg, the critic of HIV?AIDS:

“Peter knows more about retroviruses than any man alive”. – Dr. Robert Gallo, who first officially claimed that HIV was the retrovirus that probably cause AIDS.

We record this comment as revealing the true status of Peter Duesberg in the eyes of his colleagues before he challenged what became their favored theory, and the bedrock of their prestige and funding.

Here is the full quote, in a published introduction, see Duesberg on AIDS – Introduction by Robert Gallo

Introduction For Peter Duesberg (1984)

By Robert C. Gallo

National Cancer Institute, Maryland U.S.A.

“It is time now to introduce my friend Peter Duesberg. Where do I begin? At NIH, Peter is sometimes known as the battling bulldog. He gets his teeth into something and 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years later those teeth are still sunk in it. I Should be serious a bit, shouldn’t I? Peter, of course, was born here in Germany. He was educated at Tubingen and he came to the United States 20 years ago at age of 27. I’ve known Peter now for about 15 years. When I first met him, he was already doing molecular virology, and I was already involved in retroviruses. Peter first began work on the molecular virology of parainfluenza and influenza viruses. He was the first to show that parainfluenza had a singular RNA genome and that influenza had multiple RNA’s. This was the first time a virus was shown to have a segmented genome, thus explaining the rather distinctive ability of that virus to undergo frequent recombination by reassortment.”

“He began working with retroviruses around 1966, and he was among the first, or perhaps even the very first, to characterise their structural proteins. He was involved in the first work that provided a genetic map of retroviruses. Surely, this is one of the most important of his many biochemical contributions, that is, the order of the genes gag, pol env, and some aspects of the nature of their nucleotide sequences. We now know that this fundamental result is applicable to all retroviruses, including HTLV-I, II, and III. So, the application of biochemical methods to the mapping of retroviral genes was first and primarily carried out by Peter. Some of his work also ultimately became critical to the taxonomy of retroviruses.”

“He carried out the first restriction endonuclease mapping of a provirus. This was the first, or one of the first, to demonstrate repetitive sequences at the ends of the proviruses, which were the beginning of our understanding of the LTRs that we talk about routinely today. He was involved in the first publications which demonstrated that these viruses replicate via a circular proviral DNA form. After reverse transcripts was discovered (it was about that time I began to know Peter fairly well), Peter did some of the early characterisation of this DNA polymerase. His publications with his colleagues were the first reports showing that reverse transcriptase utilised a primer mechanism, not just a template, but a primer to initiate DNA synthesis, and he was the first to show that the primer was a 4S molecule. But actually, although listing this as one as his major accomplishments, I remember Peter telling me when he did those experiments he didn’t know what a primer actually was!”

“The next major phase of his work involved his classic studies with Peter Vogt; Vogt the biologist. Peter the biochemist. This really led to the first molecular and genetically defined transforming gene, the sarc gene. A great deal of this brilliant and original, the real critical aspects, was carried out by his extraordinarily effective collaboration through the 1970’s. Of course, Peter also worked on a number of other onc genes, describing several for the first time, mostly in avian systems but also in murine systems. Most recently this has been in collaboration with Takas Papas at NCI.”

“These are some of Peter’s contributions. There are many more. However, there are things about him that stand out as much as his science. Peter Duesberg is a man of extraordinary energy, unusual honesty, enormous sense of humour, and a rare critical sense. This critical sense often makes us look twice, then a third time, at a conclusion many of us believed to be foregone. However, his critiques are sometimes a major problem for the casual observer. When is he truly debating? When is he only being the devil’s advocate? When is he being the devil himself? The casual observer is also often at a loss to determine which of the many weapons he possesses he is using. Peter, it is hard for us to tell when you are using your machine gun or your slingshot, or simply exercising your vocal cords. In any event you are an extraordinary scientist, a man who makes life more interesting and pleasurable to many of us: and it is my good from: fortune to know you as a friend.”

Source: Modern Trends in Human Leukemia VI, Haematology and Blood Transfusion vol.29 p.1, 1985.

How did it happen that he lost the support of Gallo and his very fine reference?

This way: In 1984, Gallo, a scientist at the NIH, was hauled off the plane by the scruff of his neck by Margaret Heckler, Reagan’s Health Secretary, and shoved in front of the world’s press to announce that American scientists (ie Gallo and his lab workers) had discovered the “probable cause of AIDS” in the form of a retrovirus, subsequently named the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, that he had detected in little more than half (26 out of 48, or 54%) of the blood samples from AIDS patients, according to a paper not yet even published in Science magazine.

Heckler was excited because the AIDS question was becoming a political thorn in the side of the Administration as gay activists were agitating for the government to deal with the disease more attentively. This supposed victory in the search for a cause would take the heat off.

By the next day Larry Altman at the Times was trumpeting that Gallo had found “the virus that causes AIDS” (”probable” was mostly gone) and ever since the Times has been printing the same mantra any time it mentions HIV.

Didn’t appear to concern anyone overmuch that the Gallo papers were not yet published and exposed to the scrutiny of the world, nor that the incidence of little more than one half was hardly impressive proof of causation, nor that no retrovirus had ever been convincingly blamed for any health problem of any animal or human (that includes the one unconvincing exception, HTLV-III), nor that understanding of the way retroviruses worked would indicate that it was impossible for a retrovirus to cause any harm to anybody, let alone kill any cell of any kind.

By the time Peter Duesberg pointed all this out when he published his extensive critique in the respected Cancer Research three years later, rejecting the idea as virtually worthless according to good science and entirely without valid lab or statistical (epidemiological) evidence (Duesberg, P.H. (1987) Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality (Cancer Research 47: 1199-1220)), the new paradigm was bunkered against all critical review by bureaucratic and political power, federal money and the universal adoption. It was the only game in town, and if you didn’t play by this rule, you went nowhere in AIDS research.

Inevitably, even Peter Duesberg’s acknowledged status as the mosty respected man in the field – even by his old friendly colleague Bob Gallo – could not defend him adequately once he aimed his slingshot at the new Goliath.

http://www.scienceguardian.com/blog/robert-gallo-vouches-for-peter-duesberg.htm

"Can you answer this simple question: DO YOU BELIEVE THAT IMMUNE DEFICIENCY (AIDS) IS AN INFECTIOUS, TRANSMITTABLE DISEASE OR YOU DENY THIS? Yes, I can certainly answer that simple question. AIDS is not an infectious and transmissible disease in normal circumstances, ie heterosexual sex, or sharing households, even toothbrushes. That has been clear from the beginning. Supposedly gays transmit it with strenuous and unusual efforts but I leave it to others to assess the studies which show this. Exactly how even gays would transmit HIV antibodies to each other is hard to imagine. What is easy to imagine is that there are cross reactions going on which might make the test misleading - if the studies validly suggest any transmission. But all the anecdotes of African truck drivers catching HIV positivity and transmitting it to their wives go against reason and evidence. Nancy Padian did the biggest study on heterosexual transmission and with hundreds of discordant couples (one HIV+ and one HIV-) with forty or more often using no precautions whatsoever, and she was unable in six years to record ONE transmission. Her claim that the rate was one in 1000 was based on her fantasy of transmission having occurred before the study began (yes, the logic of that is absurd). When personally congratulated by me on her proof that there was no transmission she said rather weakly "Well there is more in Africa". The claim that AIDS is infectious is globally accepted but anyone with a working mind can see it is obviously not, otherwise the excited forecasts of Oprah Winfrey and other media experts that there would be hospital beds on every street corner of New York City in the nineties would have been realized. There has never been a heterosexual epidemic in the US or anywhere else. Even a UN official can see that, as one rather indiscreetly acknowledged to the gaping media.........Fraser, don't be silly, obviously I mistyped 1995 and 1996 instead of 1985 and 1986 in haste.

Apologies to all, the mention of HTLV-III in the above quote kindly transported from scienceguardian.com by "RicciDavis" about the way HIV rapidly became falsely entrenched partly because it suited the Reagan administration should be HTLV-I of course. This is the notorious virus which supposedly causes leukemia, in 1 in 100 people, taking 50 years to do it, according to Gallo in a personal conversation with me at one of his research conferences. Asked "But is that a very convincing correlation to prove causation?" the great scientist cheerfully replied, "Tony, you're such a boy scout!" and sped off. I have no idea what he meant by this, of course, but it seemed a very unscientific comment.

Fraser, your valiant defense of your fond belief that they had enough data from old samples of HIV to project a median delay of ten years before infection was followed by AIDS symptoms is far from the real story. What happened at the beginning surely was that people died rapidly from AIDS because they had taken the highest amounts of recreational drugs, or later, the highest dose of AZT, when that became the medication. Those who imbibed less lasted longer before they expired. Those who took neither never got AIDS. Meanwhile the expansion of testing raised the numbers of HIV positives identified who did not take drugs, but these failed to turn into AIDS sufferers. It's that failure of HIV positivity itself to produce AIDS which saw the median delay get longer and longer. If your prediction doesn't pan out you have to extend the median delay. As AIDS numbers increasingly failed to justify doomsayers predictions (those who took fewer recreational drugs took longer and longer to come down with AIDS) the median delay rose from two years to four years to six to eight to ten and even twelve. If no one else had taken drugs the figure would have gone to infinity, because HIV doesn't cause any trouble at all by itself. It was the adoption of AZT that kept the numbers up, as non recreational drug takers who proved HIV+ were given this helpful medication whenever they fell ill from any cause (helpful to HIV believers by producing more AIDS victims). Without AZT and then the cocktails the median would have gone to twenty, fifty and 100 years. Even the ten years was an underestimate at the time, soon enough, and still is. The true figure is forever. No one with HIV and innocent of any other disease causing agent will ever fall ill from AIDS. unless they starve.

Truthseeker, thank you for answering my question. But, you disappointed me: had you said that it is infectious, period, or - it is not infectious, period, I would not need to reinterpret your answer. Now, I have no choice but to reinterpret your answer as "It is infectious, period". I don't have to explain here why only infectious disease can be transmitted, and you said that in some cases it is transmitted. Therefore, there is an infectious agent, right? ------------------ However, then, you strangely are talking not about transmission of the infectious agent, but about the transmission of antibodies, which of course are not an infectious agent. And you say "Exactly how even gays would transmit HIV antibodies to each other is hard to imagine." Why hard? They are transmitted with some body fluid. ------------------ When at least some transmissions (I mean transmissions of the disease, not antibodies) are beyond doubt and are proven in court (in heterosexual cases also, although in principle it makes absolutely no difference for the conclusion), not just by the presence of antibodies, but by the evidence of dead victims of transmissions, the fact that immune deficiency is the infectious and transmittable disease cannot be denied. ----------------- Transmission through blood transfusion is proven. That is so, unless you will be able to show that in each individual case, the person was tested positive for antibodies and immediately - before any symptoms of the disease appeared, was given AZT and died from AZT. In this connection, I would ask another question (which I tend to think should have been already studied): Does AZT, etc. give, BY THEMSELVES, specific symptoms of immune deficiency? If this is shown, your task will be easier. This of course would be difficult to show because healthy people are not given AZT. Yet, and this is important, similar drugs unquestionably lower immune resistance by severely damaging ALL proliferating cells. ---------------- In one my posting above, I suggested that the AIDS can be transmitted by a cell with the virus, but not by the virus alone, which would explain the "efforts" (as you say) needed for transmission, and the obligatory presence of body fluids (containing cells) during transmission, and the fact that infection does not fly on the subway. I would concentrate on the nature and properties of the infectious agent, not deny the fact of transmission.

Macdonald, no, lyophilation does not reliably destroy or inactivate viruses - including HIV. It's not like just leaving a pool of gunk to air-dry on the bench and go crusty. A silmiiar process that preserves factor VIII is used to preserve and whole viruses in a viable form. Next time you are at the doctors, ask them to show you the "special protective environment" they use to store lyophliised live virus preparations - often for a year or more. It's called the vaccine fridge.

Truthseeker said: "Exactly how even gays would transmit HIV antibodies to each other is hard to imagine." ..... Have you tried disabling Net Nanny?

Michael P., Truthseeker,

I suggest you start off with an effort to distinguish between HIV and AIDS, something that should be rather uncontroversial no matter what position you take. Then move on to distinguish between HIV, and a positive HIV test. Finally, define in each case what you mean when you say "AIDS".

Right now you're one big mess and not helpful at all.

Agreed, MacDonald, and I should be careful to distinguish HIV from HIV antibodies, even when I am quoting TS solely for amusement purposes. Here's a clue: HIV is a type of transmissible virus, AIDS is a type of pathological process (disease) of the immune system and refers to a particular stage of the immune system disease more broadly known as HIV/AIDS, and a positive HIV test is the result of an element of a diagnostic decision making process - or in some cases the term is used to refer to the diagnostic decision-making process as a whole.

Mr. Fraser,

If it's the case that a process similar to preserving Factor VIII is used to preserve viruses in a whole and viable form, "HIV" must be rather fragile as viruses go, or is the CDC referring here only to the process of "leaving a pool of gunk to air-dry on the bench and go crusty"?

"To obtain data on the survival of HIV, laboratory studies have required the use of artificially high concentrations of laboratory-grown virus. Although these unnatural concentrations of HIV can be kept alive for days or even weeks under precisely controlled and limited laboratory conditions, CDC studies have shown that drying of even these high concentrations of HIV reduces the amount of infectious virus by 90 to 99 percent within several hours. Since the HIV concentrations used in laboratory studies are much higher than those actually found in blood or other specimens, drying of HIV-infected human blood or other body fluids reduces the theoretical risk of environmental transmission to that which has been observed—essentially zero."

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/transmission.htm

One wonders why they are talking about "precisely controlled and limited laboratory conditions", and pretend that keeping the beasties alive even for several days is a big deal, when what they really mean is that all you need to store them for years, cell-free, is a standard fridge.

Agreed, MacDonald, and I should be careful to distinguish HIV from HIV antibodies, even when I am quoting TS solely for amusement purposes. Here's a clue: HIV is a type of transmissible virus, AIDS is a type of pathological process (disease) of the immune system and refers to a particular stage of the immune system disease more broadly known as HIV/AIDS, and a positive HIV test is the result of an element of a diagnostic decision making process - or in some cases the term is used to refer to the diagnostic decision-making process as a whole.

Apologies for the double-post...Yes MacDoanld, the CDC was indeed referring to environmental air drying (going crusty on the bench) when they were discussing environmental transmission of HIV. The proteins tend to oxidise and denature and the virus rapidly becomes unviable. Not all viruses are as fragile, which is why some viruses are transmitted through envrionmental contact relatively easily. Pathogens that are primarily sexually transmitted or blood-borne, though, as a rule tend to be pretty fragile when exposed to the environment. However lyoph... lipoph... freeze drying is an artificial process designed to preserve proteins (such as factor VIII) and viruses and other things against the ravages of degradation by environmental oxidation. Unfortunately, as numerous haemophiliacs have found out, HIV is one of the things that the process preserves very well in viable form. So yes, you can store viable HIV in a standard fridge for days or weeks - provided it has previously been preserved by lyophilation.

Fraser it appears is completely unable to apologise for his unforgiveable scoffing at the AZT dosages first quoted by Truthseeker and subsequently proven to be a “conservative estimate” as epididymologists (and don’t [sic] me here – this “misstype” was entirely deliberate) would have you believe. So, as Fraser would have us swallow, the virus rapidly disintegrates outside the human body, EXCEPT when being freeze-dried for Factor VIII purposes, in which case it heroically and tenaciously “holds on” to that last vestige of holistic infectiveness for about 3 months because while extremely reticent about appearing “au naturelle” on an electron micrograph, it somehow “has it in” for haemophiliacs?
DeShong – you quote me an MTCT study in GUATEMALA as proof that feeding babies and children with ARVs is “lifesaving”??? Your laziness becomes you – and you still need that eye seeing to. Is that REALLY the best you can come up with when the OR was given only for transmission (i.e. meaningless)? Forty-four (> 25% - and you say “only”!) of 167 children “HIV-infected” given HAART actually DIED – given that these babies/children were recruited over a 9-year period (i.e. staggered) that is hardly a mortality rate “proving” any benefit of HAART!
You want proof of how many HCWs discontinue HAART Mr “Poo poo you are so annoying” – well here’s something I wrote earlier:
“US Center for Disease Control studies into post-exposure prophylaxis in HCW report that 75% suffer adverse effects; nausea, malaise, fatigue and headache being the most common [1], and that up to half of them discontinue treatment because of adverse effects [2]. Take a moment to digest the implications of this fact. Healthcare workers with all their knowledge and training, consider the risk of deadly HIV infection preferable to taking these ‘life-saving’ medicines – not even for a month.
1. Tokars, J.I., et al., Surveillance of HIV infection and zidovudine use among health care workers after occupational exposure to HIV-infected blood. The CDC Cooperative Needlestick Surveillance Group. Ann Intern Med, 1993. 118(12): p. 913-9.
2. Panlilio, A.L., et al., Updated U.S. Public Health Service guidelines for the management of occupational exposures to HIV and recommendations for postexposure prophylaxis. MMWR Recomm Rep, 2005. 54(RR-9): p. 1-17.

Mr. Fraser,


I would like to see some references for the claim that the process used to prepare Factor VIII preserves infectious "HIV" "very well". From what I have come across even the most optimistic calculations estimate that the level of "HIV" is heavily reduced at each step in the process, including the waiting time from collection to preparation. In fact the process of lyophilisation itself lowers the infectious virus titre about 10-fold. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2861402




When I go to AIDStruth.org there's an unreferenced story about an infected Factor VIII batch from 1978. There's further mention by Zhang et al, 1991 of a couple of supposedly infected batches from the early eighties. I say supposedly infected since no particles were found, merely free-floating RNA detected by PCR. Presence of small pieces of RNA cannot be taken as evidence for presence of whole virus particles, much less infectious particles, especially in Factor VIII where no cells are present, which excludes the possibility of active replication.

Cathy, I was scoffing at the dates. 1995 to 6. No one was taking 1500 mg then, or for 3-4 years prior. TS corrected it in a later post, but still got the dates (a little less) wrong. Get off your high horse. And the short answer to your sarcastic question is yes. The techniques for preserving and storing that particular protein also work to keep HIV intact and viable enough to be infectious. If you are claiming this is impossible, then show me why it cannot be the case - particularly since almost-as-fragile viruses like hep B and hep C were transmitted that way too.. Exactly how much viable virus do you need for an intravenous bolus to have a reasonable chance of causing an HIV infection? How did you establish this?

Mr. Fraser, surely you know that to prove something to be impossible in the real world is a hard task. How should Cathy go about proving that not a single viable virus ever got through in the early Factor VIII batches? When some haemophiliacs became HIV positive, although in lesser numbers, after the introduction of heat treatment of Factor VIII, the HIV Orthodoxy speculated that this was due antibody reactions to preserved proteins stemming from "dead" viruses. Nothing is impossible, not even testing positive for "HIV" without ever being infected with anything.

Cathy, you are disingenuous! You asked a question to provide JUST ONE study showing ANY life saving benefits...
DId I NOT do that? Yes, I did! So please stop with the GOAL SHIFTING! You are the lazy one, my dear. I provided the first study that popped up. Try it for yourself and you will find a myriad of other studies.
NOW, why not answer MY QUESTION? Provide the studies that back up your ridiculous claim regarding the 50% of healthcare workers exposed and went off prophylaxis!
Also, just by the fact that you do not understand the lyophylising procedure is sufficient evidence to me that you do not understand basic tenents of biology!
JTD

Let me clarify, half of 75% is NOT 50%.
I want you to completely back up your comments and stop bandying about statistics.
JTD

Here is the exact quote, Cathy:
"31% of workers did not complete planned courses of zidovudine because of adverse events."
AND
"Zidovudine is used after exposure by a sizable proportion of health care workers enrolled in the project despite frequent, minor, associated symptoms." MINOR SYMPTOMS
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8387737?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=5
Here is something you left out, Cathy:
"the benefits of zidovudine outweight the risks if efficacy is above approximately 3% to 8%."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2179491?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=6
Oh, and another risk v. benefits:
"postexposure use of zidovudine (ZDV) by HCWs was associated with a lower risk for HIV transmission."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8531910?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=5

It's lyophilization (with z or s). It is the process of removing water by evaporation from solid (frozen) state. Since VARIOUS REACTIONS, OFTEN WITH ENZYMES, ARE GOING ON IN LIQUID WATER, damaging sensitive molecules, the specimen should be frozen and water removed in vacuum. All system is below 0 C, but the temperature of the specimen is higher than the temperature of the connected with it vessel in which snow/ice is collected; that is until complete removal of water from the specimen. Only the molecules and simple structures can be preserved by lyophilization. Storage in liquid nitrogen at -190 C, with fast thawing when needed, is used for cells. ----------------- I also see here a lot of figurative language that is completely screwing the discussion.

Cathy, you left out something else quite important. You and I both cited information from 1993. HOWEVER, as of 2005, looks like the data is getting even better:
"Of 503 HCP who stopped HIV PEP prematurely (<28 days), 361 (24.0%) did so because of adverse effects of the drugs. Similar data have been reported from the Italian Registry of Antiretroviral Postexposure Prophylaxis"
Let me restate this. As of 2005, it is now down to less than half of your original FALSELY STATED half = 24%!!!!!!!!!!! In the U.S. and corroborated by Italy.
Let's keep up with the times & stop posting 15 year old stats, HUH?
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5409a1.htm
JTD

I add: vacuum is not necessary, it only makes the process faster. What removes water from the specimen is the difference in temperature in the two ends of the system.----------------------------- MacDonald, you said: "Michael P., Truthseeker, I suggest you start off with an effort to distinguish between HIV and AIDS..." I did not make any mistake.

I would love to see what the ivory tower crowd would do should they find themselves with their working shoes on and in the business of treating the sick.
Some disaster happens, help is needed, someone says "Here's a doctor!"- no, no, you say, as you back away, looking for the nearest exit- I am not that kind of doctor......
A bit like theorizing on carpentry having never held a nail or swung a hammer.

MacDonald, please do not ask me to question the basic elements of HIV/AIDS, such as the reality of HIV itself, antibodies to it as revealed by the "AIDS test", etc etc. You are doing a fine job doing that yourself. As for myself, it seems to me rather impolite to suggest that all of HIV/AIDS is based on imaginary constructs, misinterpreting inadequate evidence. Any philosopher would allow that this kind of extreme skepticism can be applied to any science, indeed any assertion by any human mind about the true nature of reality. Particle physics would be a good example. A weird wonderland, only to some extent justified by collider results, and telescope observations. As someone once said, if you think it makes sense you don't understand it. May we not say the same thing about HIV/AIDS? Here we have two staunch foot soldiers of this magical theory, HIV/AIDS, believing that someone's antibodies to a supposed disease agent can be transmitted to another person. It is at this point that one has to wink at onlookers and leave the stage to these latter day Schrodingers. After all, as New York magazine recently pointed out, imbibing anti-HIV pills often leads to dementia. Allied with confirmation bias, there is probably no limit to what such imaginatively perceptive minds can believe. For myself, it is enough to leave the stage and take a front row seat to watch what they will come up with next. To them, it seems 17,000 dead men a year counted by the CDC (24,000 counted by WHO) are merely ghosts, it seems, a simple misunderstanding of the plain fact (plain to them) that AIDS drugs are a blessing whose revolting buffalo humps and other horrible side effects unsustainable to so many patients are worth it because they throw a spanner in the workings of a humble 9 kilobase retrovirus which will still kill them but take longer to do it, the Gods of science be praised. To them this marvelous virus detects whether it is in the US or in Africa, that dark continent where it will devastate as many women as it does men, since it somehow knows they are black Africans, and not black African Americans in the US, whom it leaves entirely alone if it does happen to run into them. Who said the Middle Ages have anything over the 21st Century when it comes to imagining the cause of plagues?

Is so hard to come all down in this Forum to get to the comment section, We should ask Zöe (let me read her last name in the top)...Corbyn, to make it in pages...

I would like to know, how many patients died after trying to combat different infections (including syphilis) with "salvarsan", do we have records?

It was more easily to attack bacteria, because we could see them (Honour to Sir Alexander Fleming), but treating viruses... virus in latin means poison (veneno).

Windhill, you are right, any pediatrician, when a little baby comes to the ER of a Children´s Hospital with herpetic lesions in all his body and candidiasis in the rest, when he begin to think the effects of intravenous aciclovir and anphotericin, the tachycardia (of the pediatrician) begins, and when the HIV test of the babie and of the mother results positive, his heart rate increases; maybe the HIV test of the father results negative (it happens)...and if he begins to think about the effects of the antirretrovirals that he shall prescribe.... I hope he never read this Forum.

Todd – you did not cite a study that demonstrated any mortality benefit in children taking ARVs – as I already pointed out, the one you cited was a MTCT study, not a prospective, randomised clinical trial. How have I “shifted goals”? If as you claim there are “myriad” other studies then cite one – JUST one – surely you must be able do that seeing as there are so many?
“The frequency of adverse events in the PEP subjects was 70.3% compared to 11.1% for HIV-infected patients. In the first group, adverse events caused treatment interruption in 21 subjects (56.7%) versus 14 patients (7%) among the HIV-infected group. Only one case of a severe event (grade 3-4) was observed in the prophylaxis group against 12 in the treatment group.” [1]
Is 56.7% enough for you Todd??

1. Quirino, T., et al., HAART tolerability: post-exposure prophylaxis in healthcare workers versus treatment in HIV-infected patients. Antivir Ther, 2000. 5(3): p. 195-7.

sorry again, is baby... not babie.

second sorry: is amphotericin (the mistake is because in spanish is anfotericina).

Cathy, you are either intentionally lying, OR you can not admit defeat!
The Guatemala Study was NOT about MTCT!! Just stop the lies!
Here:
"From January 1997-June 2006, a total of 536 children (individuals under 13 years of age) were registered at the clinic, 54% of them female. At the initial visit, 241 were known to be HIV infected, while 295 were known to have been exposed to HIV, but were of undetermined infection status."
For "mortality benefit" what is YOUR criterion?
NOW, for the HCP, you are goal shifting AGAIN! First you quote Tokar from 1994 and try to say that 75% stopped their PEP. I, however, ALSO using Tokar PROVED that it was really 31%!!!
AND, I also cited the 2005 CDC, MMWR study that you listed above and showed that via this update of 11 years later, those stopping PEP were down to 24%!!!!!!!!!!!! YOU, however, ignore that and pull up Quirino et al study from 1999 from Milan which is a much smaller study!!! WTF???? Can you not stay on point with your original studies?
You have been bested all the way around. I am sorry you cannot or do not read the studies you cite. OR you just do not understand them! But please, stop.
JTD

Mr. Truthseeker,

Accuracy is everything, as you know.

Speaking of which where did our friend, Fraser, go?

Just as we were getting into second gear, yeah?

Cathy: I know that if I give you more studies, you might not respond at all, but I'm gonna take my chances.
Below I have supplied another study that proves that children do receive benefit from HAART, just as you requested and just as you said did not exist.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071866?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=10
Copy/paste directly from the study above:
"No new staging events were observed after six months of initiation of HAART. The median CD4% increased from 6.0 % at baseline to 15.5% at six months, 21.7% at 12 months, 25.4% at 18 months, 24.6 % at 24 months 25.3% at 30 months and 23.7% at 36 months."
Let me explain. CD$ counts went up dramatically and steadily for 3 years. Is that a benefit?
How about this?
CONCLUSIONS: Non- Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor based HAART regimens are feasible and effective in long term in resource-limited setting despite initiation of treatment in advanced stages.
JTD

Mr MacDonald, you are quite correct about how difficult it is to prove something to be impossible in the real world. This notwithstanding, certain HIV/AIDS dissidents make the positive claim that transmission of HIV through contaminated factor VIII is an "impossibility". The evidence that it is not "impossible" comes from multiple lines, including precedent - previous experience of HBV and HCV transmission by precisely that route, and epidemiology: haemophiliacs only seroconverted for HIV during the brief period when HIV positive people were donating blood products. They weren't seroconverting before HIV was prevalent in the donor population, and they stopped seroconverting when the blood supply was screened for HIV (in fact a little earlier, when factor VIII was heat-treated specifically to inactivate any HIV or other viruses in it). On the basis of this evidence alone, I think that infection of haemophiliacs by virus in factor VIII is not "impossible" but "extremely likely" - notwithstanding outlier phenomena like brief, transient, incomplete seroreactivity to possible inactivated virus in heat treated batches. If dissidents wish to make as a positive claim "The impossibility of haemophiliacs acquiring HIV following factor VIII infusions" as the Perth Group have, it is encumbent on them to prove this claim to the satisfaction of the mainstream scientific community, and indeed to anyone with a little commonsense. They have not done so.

Todd you are the time-waster here – 30 children in India were analysed in a retrospective analysis and what happened exactly – CD4% rose – whoop-de-doo! Compared to what? Oh nothing! I’m sure a 7-year-old child feels SO MUCH BETTER knowing what happened to their CD4 counts. Oh and about that median age of 7 years prior to HAART initiation – golly gee, I bet those piccaninnies were ever so grateful that HAART came along because they were all undoubtedly about to drop dead without it.
Don’t bother reposting until you can show me a mortality study – soft endpoints mean diddly squat Todd and you jolly well know it.

Fraser,

If the HIV Orthodoxy wants to make the positive (and prior) claim that haemophiliacs were infected with "HIV" via Factor VIII, they should provide direct evidence of infectious viral particles in those preparations.

As for your viral precedents, are you sure you want to start on that with a "virus" that repeatedly rewrites all established virology?

Naughty naughty, Mac. You don't get to choose which and only which lines of evidence would be acceptable to you and arbitrarily reject everything else that doesn't suit your rhetorical purposes. That's what got Mrs Papadopulos in trouble and made her a national laughing stock for about 15 minutes when she tried to pretend to be an "expert" in Adelaide a couple of years ago. You might get away with it in the echo-chamber of AIDS denialist internet discussion groups, but you'll last approximately two nanoseconds in the real world if you try to pull that kind of stunt. As Justice Sulan said, (tearing strips off Mrs Papadopulos in his Reasons for Decision) that she "...lacks independence. She is an advocate for a cause. She chooses to rely upon opinions of others which she often takes out of context and misinterprets. She lacks objectivity. If faced with evidence which does not support her views, she simply refuses to acknowledge it, or dismisses it without any basis for so doing. Examples of her refusal to acknowledge evidence which does not support her views include her response to the epidemiological evidence which she says is not proof and which she dismisses as unreliable." According to their web page, the Perthians assert "the impossibility of haemophiliacs acquiring HIV following factor VIII infusions". Their main "proof" of this bizarre assertion is a pathetic and transparent lie about a CDC information sheet (which was talking about air-dried environmental fluid spillages, not factor VIII) and to suggest that it is impossible for virus prepartaions to remain viable for long periods in freeze dried powdered forms. The former is a perverted form of the old "argument from authority" only misrepresenting the alleged authority, while the second is an "argument from ignorance" which only highlights their - well - ignorance. Do you really think anyone with their wits about them is going to buy that kind of sophistry?

Fraser it really comes to something when an establishment flunky has to quote the words of a medically illiterate judge to back up his assertions – one has to ask “why?” – can’t you refute the PGs well-referenced and scientific arguments on their own merits? Why don’t you address the actual concerns instead of quoting someone that obviously knows nothing about the issue at hand. And the name is Eleni Papadopoulos-Eleopulos – but then you should know that shouldn’t you Frooser?

No, Cathy, there are only two "o"s in Papadopulos, not three. Problem is when you try to be a smart alec and correct people's spelling you run into Hartman's law and just make a fool of yourself.......

From the Denialist Echo Chamber: Christine Johnson "interviews" Eleni Papadopulos (Eleopulos) on why HIV cannot be transmitted by factor VIII:-----ELENI: ...perhaps I can persuade you with one quick and simple explanation. Tell me this. If someone HIV positive is cut and bleeds how long does the blood remain infectious? Outside the body?----

CJ: According to what I've read, for only a few hours at the most.----

ELENI: And why is that?----

CJ: Because HIV dries out and dies. Certainly that's what the CDC says.----

ELENI: OK. Let me ask you this. How is factor VIII made?----

CJ: From donated blood.----

ELENI: Right. Have you ever seen a vial of factor VIII?----

CJ: No.----

ELENI: All right I'll tell you. It comes as a dry, flaky, yellowish powder and by the time it's used it's at least a couple of months old. Do you see the problem?----

CJ: I do. If it's dry and that old any HIV in it should be long dead.----

ELENI: Exactly...

http://ourcivilisation.com/aids/hivexist/index.htm

Oh, and Cathy the issue is evidence and the way evidence is abused. Personally, I am happy to accept the insights of a Supreme Court Judge on the matter, particulalry one who has spent considerable time watching the Perth Group in operation.

Mr. Fraser,

Mr. Fraser, no, the main argument is not the CDC quote. The Perth Group used it, as did I, to give perspective.

The question remains

What evidence do you have to suggest that "HIV" can survive the extraction, drying, storing, freezing, thawing process for Factor VIII and remain infectious, when usually it "dies" after a few hours outside specific, protective laboratory conditions?

In fact, "HIV" is so fragile that it is claimed that the process of purifying and isolating it makes it fall apart. Which reminds me, you still haven't linked to a couple of the thousands of pictures (EMs) of HIV that you find particularly convincing.

Cathy (I am a big goal shifter), you are not just a waste of time but a waste of oxygen! Well, maybe you're not actually wasting oxygen since it is obviously not getting to your brain!
Previously you asked for one study showing ANY life saving "benefits" of HIV Meds to children. I have provided you with two, NOW you want a mortality study! How about difing exactly what you want and sticking with it? HUH? Can you do that?
I should have known that an AIDS Denialist would not consider vastly increasing T~Cells a "life saving benefit"!!!! What a sad person you must be.
OH, and now I see you are completely blowing off the health care workers prophylaxis issue. Do you admit defeat?
Lastly, do you want to explain your vile "piccaninnies" comment?
JTD

Mr MacDonald, I presented the deliberately misrepresented CDC quote and the "dry, flaky, yellowish powder" quote to demonstrate the frank dishonesty and fatuousness of the Perthians' rhetorical style - which is precisely why they are regarded with contempt, inside the courtroom and out. As Sir Gustav Nossal has remarked, "they are an embarrassment to Australian science".... You ask: "What evidence do you have to suggest that "HIV" can survive the extraction, drying, storing, freezing, thawing process for Factor VIII and remain infectious?" Errr how about seroconversion of several tens of thousands of recipients of that particular blood product for HIV in the early 80s (up to 70% of haemophiliacs in some settings), the same period in which HIV was prevalent among donors. Just like thousands of other blood product recipients seroconverted during that period, many if not most connected to specific, seropositive donors through epidemiological investigation. But not before. And rarely after, Just like haemophiliacs seroconverted for hepatitis B and hepatitis C in large numbers, as did other blood product recipients before effective screening methods were developed, and/or specific methods of inactivating these viruses in the product? Do you also deny that both HBV and HCV can remain infectious throughout the factor VIII production process unless heat treated? If not, it is up to you to provide evidence that HIV is completely inactivated, when we know that at least two other viruses aren't. To claim that it is "impossible" for HIV to be transmitted through unscreened un-treated factor VIII in the face of the epidemiological evidence to the contrary, and citing the Perthians' utterly flaky argument is.. well... unconvincing.to say the least.

Mr. Fraser, it's always a pleasure when you people admit it up-front that you have nothing but shaky "epidemiological" correlation - zero biological evidence - of "HIV" infection.

If any of the Times' readers wonders why Mr. Fraser seems to have gotten stuck on the "deliberately misrepresented CDC quote" from an interview, it's probably because he doesn't want to deal with the main arguments presented in the Perth Group's Genetica paper on Factor VIII
http://theperthgroup.com/SCIPAPERS/ephemophilia.html
Any literate person reading this will immediately see why Mr. Fraser chooses to discuss "epidemiology" rather than biology and obscure Australian kangaroo courts rather than standards of scientific proof.
But let's discuss a little epidemiology: I suppose if "HIV" and your other pet viruses can survive the processing of Factor VII, so can, say, HHV8. We all know that the combination of HHV8 and "HIV" is supposed to be a sure recipe for Kaposi's Sarcoma in gays. Why not in haemophiliacs? It was after all the initial AIDS disease along with PCP.

MacDonald, unlike HBV, HCV and HIV, chronic HHV8 infection is not, as far as we know, blood-borne. Why then would you expect it be transmitted through blood products? ..... And if you want to insult the Supreme Court of South Australia as a "kangaroo court" for refusing to accept your favorite cranks as expert witnesses in fields they have no training, qualifications or practical experience in, I believe this reflects more on your own prejudices than those of the Australian legal system. Mrs Papadopulos-Eleopulos and Dr Turner don't come within a bull's roar of qualifying as expert witnesses on HIV in a legal setting. As the judge observed, "the evidence given by Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos about the Perth group demonstrates that she is promoting a cause. She is not independent. She is motivated to create a debate about her theory." That kind of behaviour is clearly an abuse of legal process for a personal agenda, and would be recognised as such by any competent court anywhere. Judge Sulan's Reasons For Decision were detailed, cogent, rational, and above all legally sound. So stick that in your marsupium and hop off.

"Among women with low sexual risk, HHV-8 seroprevalence was 0% in never-injectors and 36% in ever-injectors (p<0.001). In multivariate analyses, independent predictors of HHV-8 seropositivity included HIV (odds ratio (OR)=1.6, p=0.01), syphilis (OR=1.8, p=0.01), and HCV (OR=1.5, p=0.02) or regular injection drug use (OR-2.1, p=0.007) (these latter two variables were modelled separately to avoid collinearity). Conclusions: The association of injection drug use and HCV infection with HHV-8 seropositivity suggests that HHV-8 is transmitted via shared needles, implying bloodborne transmission of HHV-8 in the US." ----- Another study: "Our data confirm other studies showing that individuals who share needles are at risk for acquiring Hepatitis B/C and HIV infections. In addition, our results suggest that they are also at risk to acquiring HHV-8 infection by the same route."--------- Another study: "This study has provided serological evidence for a high rate of HHV-8 infection in HIV-1-infected women in the Apulia region, and has identified a possible association between HHV-8 infection, past use of injection drugs and HCV infection. Parenteral transmission may, therefore, be a mode of virus spread"------- Another study named "HHV-8 Peripheral-Blood Viral Load and the Titer of Antibodies against HHV-8" quantified HHV8 in both blood and plasma of the subjects using PCR: "The amount of HHV-8 DNA present in plasma and peripheral-blood mononuclear cells from each patient was determined by a quantitative kinetic polymerase-chain-reaction (PCR) assay." etc. etc. In sum, the evidence for infectious HHV8 in blood and plasma, as well as the epidemiological evidence for its routes of infection are not much more shaky than for "HIV". Now, Mr. Fraser, if you would like to discuss the Australian "HIV" court case and Judge Sulan's Reasons, I'd be happy to do that, as long as we agree that's our new topic.

Cathy, ask and ye shall receive! I found the perfect study for you regarding "life saving benefits" of HAART for children. The mortality study you requested. I was perusing AIDSTruth.org and found a study that was published in JAIDS. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2010 Jan;53(1):86-94

http://www.aidstruth.org/new-research/2009/declines-mortality-rates-and-changes-causes-death-hiv-1-infected-children-during-h

JTD

MacDonald, finding an epidemiological association between HHV8 and illicit injecting drug use (much weaker than that of HBV, HCV and HIV) does not prove efficient transmission through donated blood products. As Engels et al conclude: "Our findings of a lack of transmission of HHV8 through transfusion confirm observations from the Transfusion Safety Study, in which none of 14 recipients of HHV8-seropositive blood transfusions developed infection (14). These two studies, which together comprised 32 seronegative transfusion recipients, suggest that transfusion-associated transmission occurs infrequently (exact 95% CI for transmission risk = 0%-9% per individual transfused). Single transfusions that transmitted HTLV-I (present study) or HIV [Transfusion Safety Study (14)] but not HHV8 provide further evidence that HHV8 is not efficiently spread via transfusion." If HHV8 is transmitted through donated blood products this appears to be very uncommon - certainly vastly less than the risk of products from HBV, HCV or HIV -infected donors. So there is no mystery on that score about low seroprevalence rates for HHV8 among haemophiliacs who received blood products in the early 80s, relative to that of HIV.

Engels et al also suggest that the risk of HHV8 tansmission for factor VIII recipients might be even lower than the already low (possibly zero) risk for whole blood recipients: "The paucity of B lymphocytes accompanying most types of transfusion may also contribute to low transmission risk. HHV8 may circulate in blood largely within mononuclear cells (23,24) and predominantly within B lymphocytes (10). For red blood cell transfusions, transmission risk may be reduced through routine procedures that remove most circulating B lymphocytes (25). Similarly, acellular blood products have few lymphocytes and might convey little risk."
http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/91/20/1773

Dear friends, please, relax, this video from Queen could help, it only takes 3:27 minutes...............http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdCrZfTkG1c&feature=related

If we accept this Engels et al. study (based on 32 seronegative transfusion recipients) as proof for the impossibility to transmit HHV8 via blood transfusion don't we also have to accept the Padian study (based on 175 HIV-discordant couples) as proof for the impossibility to spread HIV through heterosexual intercourse?

Mr. Fraser, in addition to Stefan's comment, I repeat, there is no more evidence for viable HIV particles in plasma than there is for HHV8.

Further, I am glad to see you disagree with the conclusions of the HHV8 experts regarding virus transmission in the face of their explicit conclusions, and are able to juxtapose different studies that seem to indicate different things. For example, Hladik et al, 2006: "Conclusions This study provides strong evidence that HHV-8 is transmitted by blood transfusion. The risk may be diminished as the period of blood storage increases."

"Of course, absolute and final truth does not exist in science -- or at least did not exist before science became a sort of pseudo religion in our time."

"The amount of wishful thinking that goes into research has been increasing enormously."

"In a world in which everything can be manufactured and sold if advertised, is it astonishing that there are some who succumb and manufacture scientific truth?"

"If I may make a prediction, I believe that there will be more and more faking and cheating in science, some detected, more undetected, until finally -- not today or tomorrow -- the whole machinery comes to a standstill because too many absurdities and falsehoods have come home to roost."

"The principle of the nearly automatic self-correction of science is no longer valid. Investigations, at least in those fields that are open to me, have become so expensive, so numerous, and so complex technically and materially, that they are most unlikely to be repeated outright. It is much easier to begin a new piece of work than to repeat one already published. Were it not for accident, envy, or malice, many swindles would remain undiscovered... I believe that most, in fact, do remain so."

"Because of the tremendous growth of so-called scientific knowledge, research workers have become alienated from the cores of their respective disciplines, in other words, they can no longer know what they must know."

From "Serious Questions -- An ABC of Skeptical Reflections" (1986) by the late Erwin Chargaff, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry at Columbia University.

No, Stefan, because Engels et al did not claim their study as "proof" that HHV8 transmission via tranfusion was "impossible". They concluded from their results "that transfusion-associated transmission occurs infrequently (exact 95% CI for transmission risk = 0%-9% per individual transfused)". Their conclusion was confirmed by the larger Hladik et al study which found a roughly 3% transmission rate attributable to tranfusion with HHV8 positive blood - most of the transmissions occuring with fresh blood, declining rapidly with storage. By contrast the transmission rate for HIV infected blood averages around 90% over a wide variety of components and storage times. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2240875 ... I'm happy to concede that the evidence is that blood-borne HHV8 transmission may well occasionally occur, although it is uncommon to be infected by an HHV8 infected donation in the settings of transfusion or blood product administration unless the donation is very fresh. This, incidentally, might explain the apparently high HHV8 rates among IDUs that MacDonald cited earlier - in needle sharing between illicit drug users the blood transfer time is frequently seconds or minutes. (I emphasise, though that this is no more than a hypothesis on my part.).. In discussions like this it is easy to lose track of the original argument, particularly when protagonists like myself overstate a case by saying "chronic HHV8 infection is not, as far as we know, blood-borne" when I should have said "HHV8, unlike HIV, is only uncommonly transmitted by infected tranfusions, particularly if the blood or blood product has been stored." MacDonald's claim was that if transmission through factor VIII were the reason for high HIV seroprevalence among haemophiliacs receiving blood during the early 1980s, then they should also have correspondingly high HHV8 seroprevalences too. His assumptions are that (a) transmissibility of HIV and HHV8 are similar with fresh blood, (b) storage of blood has a similar effect on the transmissibility of HHV8 and HIV and (c) processing to factor VIII identically affects the transmissibilty of both viruses. (a) and (b) are demonstrably incorrect and (c) is unknown (at least to me). Nor, incidentally, is anyone claiming that HHV8 transmission through factor VIII is "impossible", merely that the seroprevalence among haemophiliacs indicates that such transmission is likely to be infrequent.

Mr. Fraser, it was you who persisted in drawing analogies to other viruses as evidence that "HIV" is not destroyed in the process of manufacturing Factor VIII.

As you suggest yourself - and here is where the CDC quote mentioning how quickly HIV deteriorates outside special protective environments comes in - some viruses are considered more fragile than others. HIV is regarded as an extremely fragile virus, but it seems you and I have just co-discovered an even more fragile one: HHV-8.

http://www.denniskunkel.com/product_info.php?products_id=84 is an example of a supposed image of HIV sold as stock photography of "Mature virus and budding release of HIV in human lymph tissue". It is one of a number of images listed and displayed at http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.virology.net/Big_Virology/BVretro.html. Almost all the links to sources are broken, however. A number come from AIDS Pathology, a text updated this year at the University of Utah by an assistant professor. The text is at http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/AIDS2009.PDF. A list of images of HIV is on page http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/TUTORIAL/AIDS/AIDS.html from the same university. One can page through them. There is no source listed, however, and the size as usual doesn't show much detail. The frequent lack of images of HIV at sites where a set of images of RNA viruses is displayed by a specialist in EM is conspicuous eg Linda Stannard at http://web.uct.ac.za/depts/mmi/stannard/linda.html. Certainly the images always have a nucleus visible, however, sometimes they are circular and sometimes oblong. Why is this? Surely it is possible in 2010 to produce an image of HIV which is indubitably HIV according to a top lab? Dear Snouty "I am not suffering from comformity bias, thank you" Fraser, surely you can sniff out one of these truffles for us, can you not? MacDonald's request seems very reasonable. Which of the 8,120 images of HIV (we get 13,200) you googled on the Web is such a prize specimen, in your informed view? Surely the crackpot Perthians cannot be right in saying that no such confirmed sighting yet exists? We ask merely for information, in the Chargaffian manner. Are all sightings of HIV indirect, and no means of establishing their proper identity visually exists? Are we all groping in the dark, as in nuclear physics, using indirect indications to formulate the many thousands of gene sequences of HIV established according to a post above? It is time to set the record straight on this vexed issue. Did you see House of Numbers yet? This featured the young director sitting at the feet of an EM specialist who showed him a picture of HIV but then informed him that the image was only "supposed" to be HIV or some such remark.

On this topic of the mysterious paucity of good EMs of HIV please see continuance on the other thread at http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=410113

There can various reasons for the shape of the nucleus appearing different from particle to particle. The circular vs. oblong/conical-appearing shapes could be due to the angle at which the particles are viewed.

It is not difficult to get an EM of something that looks the way a textbook retrovirus is supposed to look; unfortunately having a retroviral-like particle in an EM doesn't make it a novel, endogenous retrovirus.

That's why it is disturbing to find out what the CDC is still releasing as views of HIV - see other thread.

Free scientific inquiry is synonymous with a free society. In order for science to go forward, we must have the basic human right of free scientific inquiry, including the “right to be wrong”. Science moves forward often by spurts of insight, some of which challenge the “established way of thinking”. A few examples include Mendel’s genetics, which was buried for 40 years, plate tectonics which was treated as heresy or the idea of retrovirus RNA coding for DNA by Temin which was scoffed at for disobeying the “central dogma” of molecular biology. Some great insights were only partially right, such as Shapley’s determination of distances of objects in the Milky Way galaxy and the position of the sun, but they thought the Milky Way comprised the entire universe. The Great Debate was held at the National Academy of Sciences in 1920 between Shapley and Curtis to argue whether the Milky Way comprised the entire universe. Where are the Great Debates of AIDS?

Throughout history totalitarian regimes, be they the Catholic Church, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, have suppressed science in order to maintain their doctrine and therefore their power. The outcomes of such suppression brought us the Dark Ages, World War II, the Holocaust and Stalinist terror. The arbitrary administrative withdrawal by the publishers of the Duesberg and Ruggiero articles and the threatened shut down of Medical Hypothesis for attempting to publish these articles is not consistent with free scientific inquiry and a free society.

The term “Denialist” which has been coined to label those who ask questions regarding the cause and nature of what is currently defined as AIDS, appears to have been taken from the term given to those who question the Holocaust such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the “President” of Iran. The outcome of such a comparison is to put those who exercise their basic human right of free scientific inquiry in the same category as Holocaust deniers.


During the time I have been a cancer researcher, since approximately 1965, there have been many “answers to cancer”. For example, the prevailing hypothesis in the early 1970’s was that viruses cause cancer which led to Nixon’s war on cancer and gave enormous funds to support the virus-cancer cause and the offspring of the virus-cancer hypothesis that a change in a single “oncogene” is the cause of cancer. Free scientific inquiry subsequently showed that these prevailing hypotheses were, for the most part, not correct.

Those who challenge prevailing hypotheses must be allowed to do so as this is basic for free scientific inquiry which is a human right and is necessary for science to move forward. The “Devil’s Advocate” can play an invaluable role in science and all other areas of thought and should not be condemned and ostracized.

Ludwik Fleck (1896 – 1961) was a doctor, a scientific philosopher and an historian of science who was a predecessor of Thomas Kuhn. The thesis of Fleck’s book “Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact” was what was considered “scientific fact” depends on society at the time. His example was Syphilis. Fleck stated that it took four centuries to arrive at our current concept of Syphilis and its cause. We have only studied what is now defined as AIDS for approximately 30 years. Without free scientific inquiry and the right to challenge existing scientific hypotheses without fear of ostracism and being compared to Holocaust deniers (Denialists), how can we learn more about AIDS such that we can cure, and more importantly, prevent this disease.

Correction:

Above I wrote "novel endogenous retrovirus". It should be novel, exogenous retrovirus

Thank you for that long and salutary list of times when paradigms have been wrong in medicine and science, Robert, which argue for free speech and review in the face of that characteristic of large groups united under one flag of belief, the hostility towards and skeptics who challenge their fond idea. The phenomenon is familiar in religion, of course, but what people need to appreciate is that it is live and well in science, the one place where people profess the opposite, that all results are strenuously corrected for emotional and political bias. Sadly, they are not, and modern funding and the sheer size of scientific fields and experiments has engendered the opposite. Correction and progress is fiercely opposed. And why not? Everyone believes their job, wives and children, dogs, houses and holidays are at stake!

With respect, Robert M. Hoffman, the outrage evoked by the AIDS deniers has nothing to do with "asking questions" or "free scientific enquiry". Here, as an example, is the opening text of the most recent disinformation pamphlet endorsed and approved by “the board” of a bizarre interest group called “Rethinking AIDS” and distributed via their website. It is designed specifically for people with “limited literacy” who might be considering testing for HIV: ------ “Don’t lose your life to AIDS hysteria: AIDS doctors accidentally killed an estimated 300,000 people during the AIDS hysteria years of 1987 -1997 (by prescribing heavy doses of AZT or similar drugs). It was a mass iatrogenic (doctor-caused) massacre claiming the lives of Arthur Ashe, Rudolf Nureyev, Keith Haring, Kimberley Bergalis, Freddie Mercury and many others. They were healthy until convinced to take the medicines. This danger is still with us. Modern AIDS drugs are less toxic, but still life-threatening – just not as quickly. Today, 2009, those taking the modern ARV therapy are dying at an average age of 45.” ------------ You can read the rest of this insane and libellous tract here: http://www.rethinkingaids.com/Portals/0/The_AIDS_Trap.pdf -------Rethinking AIDS is not a scientific group. None of its members are now or have ever been involved in any actual scientific activity related to HIV or AIDS. They are a propaganda organisation with a perverse mission to convince the public, including people with HIV/AIDS or who may be at risk of infection not to get tested, and if sick to forgo effective medical treatment. Infected mothers are encouraged to avoid measures shown to reduce the chances of MTCT from around 25% to less than 2%. They deny that HIV is the cause of AIDS, or that the diease is sexually transmissible. Wherever they have gained influence they are, beyond any shadow of doubt, a serious threat to public health. They produce films and pamphlets such as the one above targeted toward some of the most vulnerable people in the community. They are especially active on the internet and have been for years. So what does the “board of Rethinking AIDS” have to do with this furore over Medical Hypotheses? Answer: the “board” responsible for distributing the scientifically illiterate and frankly libellous trash of “The AIDS trap” and producing numerous similar “information” and “public relations” exercises consists of: Peter H. Duesberg, David Rasnick, Christian Fiala, Henry H. Bauer, and a few of their closest friends (the fifth author of their Medical Hypotheses “paper” is Duesberg’s 23 year old lab assistant). The only HIV-positive member of the “board” died of untreated AIDS in 2008. She had been active in encouraging HIV positive pregnant women to forgo treatment to prevent transmission to their children. Her own 3-year old daughter died of untreated AIDS a couple of years earlier. The purpose of publishing the paper is nothing other than to provide the authors a patina of credibility in the eyes of their scientifically unsophisticated target audience. Charlton should have been aware of the origins and intent of the “paper” he approved for publication, even if he was incapable of recognising its complete lack of any scientific merit.

Fraser thy name is Snout, is it not?. Regardless, the above needlessly impolite post is entirely revealing of your incorrigible nature as a fully paid up member of the paradigm goon squad which defends HIV/AIDS at all costs, particularly at the cost of the free speech that is as Robert Hoffman says vital to good science, as clearly shown by the many important episodes where false reigning wisdom resisted replacement. Not to mention that free debate is essential to progress in any human sphere. Now sorry to say your above answer is exhibit #1 to show that review IS needed in this field. For in what way is the statement of Rethinking AIDS anti free speech? After years of obdurate resistance on the part of the grand Denialists in charge of HIV/AIDS who deny the need for review regardless, who trash a basic principle of science - free debate - in their ad hominem invective against those who demand outside review, the latter quite reasonably have become certain that you completely lack confidence in your doctrine and that it must be as wrong as it appears to be. You yourself testify against it with all this endless prejudicial characterization of the critics- "bizarre, insane, libellous, propaganda, perverse, serious threat to public health, scientifically illiterate, frankly libellous,complete lack of any scientific merit" - and in this case as well, two completely false facts, for neither Maggiore nor her child died of AIDS by any stretch of the imagination even if you believe that HIV causes illness. Invective plus false facts speak very loudly against the genuineness of your conviction and validity of your science. The disrespect you like to spray like a certain striped animal defending itself on the perfectly respectable critics of HIV/AIDS - led by the superb scientist Peter Duesberg's highly accurate scientific deconstruction of the paradigm - just gets them equally riled up, and the public interest gets trampled. It is very easy to imagine this is your objective.

Truthseeker, I do really would like to know who are you, and contact you, I am completely agree with you:"....free debate is essential to progress in any human sphere..."

the market for HIV drugs is booming ! No recession for HIV (or flu vaccines) !

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100126-714964.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

* JANUARY 26, 2010, 4:22 P.M. ET

Gilead Sciences 4Q Profit Up 43% On Strong HIV Drug Sales

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


Gilead Sciences Inc.'s (GILD) fourth-quarter profit rose 43% on strong sales of its HIV drugs as well as continued increases in royalties from flu-treatment Tamiflu because of worldwide preparations for swine flu.

Shares rose 1.2% to $45.40 in after-hours trading as the drug maker's results topped Wall Street's expectations. The stock through the close was down 7.3% in the past year.

Gilead, known more for its HIV treatments, discovered Tamiflu but licensed it to Roche Holding AG (RHHBY) for royalty payments that it receives with a one-quarter lag.

For the latest quarter, the biopharmaceutical company reported a profit of $802.2 million, or 87 cents a share, up from $560 million, or 59 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding stock-based compensation, acquisition-related costs, restructuring charges and other items, earnings rose to 93 cents from 63 cents.

Revenue climbed 42% to $2.03 billion.

Analysts estimated earnings of 85 cents on revenue of $1.93 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

Products sales, which make up the bulk of total revenue, climbed 30%.

Royalties from Tamiflu soared to $194.1 million from $16 million a year earlier, but were below Gilead's forecast of $195 million. Sales of its top-selling HIV drugs Atripla and Truvada increased 50% and 19%, respectively.

the market for HIV drugs is booming ! No recession for HIV (or flu vaccines) !

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100126-714964.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

* JANUARY 26, 2010, 4:22 P.M. ET

Gilead Sciences 4Q Profit Up 43% On Strong HIV Drug Sales

DOW JONES NEWSWIRES


Gilead Sciences Inc.'s (GILD) fourth-quarter profit rose 43% on strong sales of its HIV drugs as well as continued increases in royalties from flu-treatment Tamiflu because of worldwide preparations for swine flu.

Shares rose 1.2% to $45.40 in after-hours trading as the drug maker's results topped Wall Street's expectations. The stock through the close was down 7.3% in the past year.

Gilead, known more for its HIV treatments, discovered Tamiflu but licensed it to Roche Holding AG (RHHBY) for royalty payments that it receives with a one-quarter lag.

For the latest quarter, the biopharmaceutical company reported a profit of $802.2 million, or 87 cents a share, up from $560 million, or 59 cents a share, a year earlier. Excluding stock-based compensation, acquisition-related costs, restructuring charges and other items, earnings rose to 93 cents from 63 cents.

Revenue climbed 42% to $2.03 billion.

Analysts estimated earnings of 85 cents on revenue of $1.93 billion, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

Products sales, which make up the bulk of total revenue, climbed 30%.

Royalties from Tamiflu soared to $194.1 million from $16 million a year earlier, but were below Gilead's forecast of $195 million. Sales of its top-selling HIV drugs Atripla and Truvada increased 50% and 19%, respectively.

Dr AHB, my name and address is on my site, scienceguardian.com, and any communication is always welcome. Unlike J.D Salinger, I am not averse to communicating with interesting other people, but I share some of his attitude to maintaining privacy, which I put down in his case to a natural aversion to hearing the intellectually and emotionally challenged ie most journalistic reviewers and other busybody self promoters in the trade of reviewing, opine on his work. I share the same disinclination to suffer the antagonism of the axe grinding HIV enthusiasts to what I write on the topic, since it is merely the undiscriminating reflex of the self serving. On the other hand, what do the open minded reviewers of this and other science past its expired date have to offer each other? Nothing more than friendly camaraderie, I'd say, since to the open minded the fatal flaws in HIV are as obvious as the red blotches of Kaposi's Sarcoma on the face of nitrite laden clubgoers. At least, I doubt if I can offer you any new information which is not on my site, where the topic of attempts to close off debate by those invested in the HIV status quo has been chewed over so often it is only repeated for the sake of those who have never heard of the scandal. But is is always interesting to deal with the active progressive in science and medicine such as yourself.

Thank you very much Truthseeker, I really appreciate your answer. And congratulations for scienceguardian, very interesting.....

There are still gentlemen in this world.

Readers can check for themselves the veracity of "Truthseeker's" claim that "neither Maggiore nor her child died of AIDS by any stretch of the imagination". The autopsy report on Maggiore's daughter by the Los Angeles coroner has been published on the net, and is easy searchable. She died from "Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) due to or as a consequence of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome". She also had HIV encephalopathy, marked thymic atrophy, severe anaemia and other features of late HIV disease in children. The child's godfather was Peter Duesberg, the man who inspired Maggiore's denial of her own condition and her very public reckless endangerment of her daughter's life. Maggiore's own death certificate states that she died from pneumonia, disseminated herpes and oral candidiasis. She died nine days after being diagnosed with pneumonia on xrays ordered by her local doctor. She did not seek competent specialist treatment, and died at home. Unknown to the coroner, her family commissioned a private autopsy, the results of which they have not released for obvious reasons. However, a second-hand "analysis" of the pathologist's actual report revealed that she too had PCP at post mortem. The "analysis" (by a veterinary toxicologist and board member of Maggiore's "Alive and Well" organisation) fancifully attributes this finding to treatment with therapeutic doses of corticosteroids during her final illness. Predictably, HIV/AIDS denialists are in denial of the cause of both these avoidable deaths. They blame both deaths on antibiotics, and have accused the coroner's office of corruption. Sad and crazy stuff.

TO ROBERT M HOFFMAN : Apologize ! You should be ashamed of your anti-"denialist" PROPAGANDA. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad IS the legal president of Iran (1). President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is NOT a "denialist". He wants to know "the cause and nature of what is currently defined as holocaust" and supports independent research on it (2).

(1) http://www.voltairenet.org/article160676.html

(2) http://www.voltairenet.org/article161487.html

IAlors que nous étions virologistes et imminologistes à l'institut Pasteur,nous avons rencontré quelques John Moore .Nous aurions été heureux alors de l'existence d'un journal sans comité de lecture.Notre expérience se résume à de longs débats presque pour chaque article s'il avait quelque chose d'original.Pour nous,notre expérience se résume à "Comité de lecture,Comité de censure".ce sont les mêmes individus qu'on trouve aussi dans les commissions où je les ai entendu dire:"Si on est là,c'est pour se servir!."Avec ces individus autoritaires, prétentieux et incompétents dés qu'on les sort d'une technique qu'ils prennent pour une science",on perd plus de temps à réussir à sortir une publication qu'à faire des recherches,leur seuil rôle efficace étant de vous dégouter du métier.Il faut garder le journal tel qu'il est avec son éditeur qui a déjà eu tort de se laisser impressionner,sinon,la prochaine fois ,des individus de cette sorte parviendront à rendre impossible l'indépendance même sur internet.
Leur rage s'explique par leur incapacité à répondre à des critiques.les articles litigieux;s'ils existent ,doivent être discutés;on ne doit en aucun cas essayer de les empêcher de paraître.Tout ce comportement n'est pas nouveau;il est désastreux qu'il s'étende .Que John Moore nous montre son immortel vaccin et nous lui accorderons la même considération qu'à ceux qui ont produit celui contre la poliomyélite.Et qu'on cesse de nous assommer avec les statistiques truquées où l'ensemble des maladies infectieuses va bientôt passer sous la rubrique AIDS!

Trutheseeker, you say:
"...led by the superb scientist Peter Duesberg's highly accurate scientific deconstruction of the paradigm"
Did you write that with a straight face? hahahhaaaa
You certainly gave me a belly laugh and a guffaw!!
Thanks, I needed a laugh, and you provided one in spades!!
JTD

" Leur rage s'explique par leur incapacité à répondre à des critiques"

Exactement. Bravo!

Fraser, your uninformed and imaginative interpretation of Christine Maggiore's and her child's as attributable to HIV/AIDS is an insult to the intelligence of all readers and a silly and disgusting piece of Denialist nonsense, by Denialist of course I mean the array of intellectually and morally challenged people who resist review of the absurdly fantastic claim that HIV causes AIDS< or indeed any effect on human health at all This is so obvious to anyone familiar with the sorry record of the research over the last 25 years in the field which assumes that HIV causes AIDS and always succeeds in showing it does not, by any stretch of the imagination, except in the minds of those in love with the unproven hypothesis and its enormous funding power, and all the other career blessings it brings them.

As an English gentleman I must say I object to this disgraceful sullying of the name of a good woman who was able to resist your overwhelming propaganda and the erroneous endorsement it receives from uninformed officials, ex Presidents and pop stars. She had a good and independent mind, and was not taken in. To suggest she was a fool is dishonorable of you, especially when it is only to serve your own ends, the maintenance of a received belief which is an insult to the judgment of any good scientist, let alone a superb scientist whose highly accurate scientific deconstruction of the paradigm has saved many lives and would have saved more except for the efforts of the scientific donkeys who defend it, present company excepted of course. Or should one say laughing ass, in the case of the always amusing JTD.

Perhaps one should point out that the biggest single reason why this paradigm continues in place is not only that the drugs prescribed are less toxic than the ones they replaced, but also the fact that they have some antibiotic and immune boosting effects, somewhat misleadingly, since they are overall a serious medical insult to the system. This has been known since 1987 (Lynn P. Elwell et al) when the antibacterial action of AZT was shown, and in 2007 (Sandrini et al) nucleoside analogues were recommended as antibiotics useful in the fight against resistant bacteria. AZT is potent against e coli, salmonella, bacterial pneumonia, and other bacteria, though not against yeast, fungi or mycoplasms, and protease inhibitors against other viruses than HIV of course.

This slight benefit amidst an overall toxicity is what has led the unfortunate patients to think the temporary Roto Rooter effect of ARV's somehow means they are being saved, and for the foolish to believe that ARVs thus prove that HIV is the cause of AIDS. The eventual decline of enough patients to keep up the deaths at a steady rate of 17,000 a year is what gives the lie to all this propaganda on this and other sites to the effect that ARVs are good for you. Only those with the scientific understanding of a DeShong or a Kalichman will believe it, and if anyone smarter says they do, it brings into question their motives, it must be said.

From The Least of These My Brethren, by Daniel J. Baxter, M.D., © 1997

From dust jacket:

“The Least of These My Brethren” is the AIDS story that no one has written about so far, told by the one who cares for these marginalized people in conditions that are symbolic of their station in life: the decrepit facilities of New York’s largest designated AIDS center, the Spellman Center for HIV Related Disease in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. For three and a half years, Dr. Daniel Baxter served as attending physician of this facility and ran an under-supplied hospital ward, which was the last resort – and often the last stop – for these souls.”

Page 181: “Contrary to popular belief, accidental infection with HIV is NOT one of the major occupational risks of working with AIDS patients. Acquired in health care settings only by needle-stick injuries, HIV is transmitted by needle-stick only one third of one percent of the time. In spite of due vigilance, needle-stick injuries occur regularly on Spellman wards, and whenever a Spellman worker has such an injury, there arises the primal fear, usually unspoken, that the split-second needle-stick may irrevocably transform the caregiver into one of the eventual care receivers – that the invisible line between being HIV-negative and being HIV-positive has been transgressed…. Fortunately, however, THERE HAVE BEEN NO KNOW INSTANCES OF HIV TRANSMISSION TO A SPELLMAN WORKER FROM A NEEDLE-STICK, but the psychological stresses of such events are immense.”

Page 182:

“However, two major HIV-related infections do pose serious risks to caregivers on AIDS wards such as Spellman’s: Hepatitis and tuberculosis, both of which have afflicted several members episodically over the years.

Hepatitis B and C are viruses that can be transmitted via needle-stick injuries much more easily and more frequently than HIV.”

My tuppence. stop this.

Ah, Truthseeker, why do you defend Maggiore? She was not independent, but incredibly selfish and narcissitic. Why would she not at least give her daughter the benefit of the doubt? The same benefit she would be required by law to give a criminal if she were on a jury? But no, since she was governed by her own selfish interests and not by the law, she did not have a C~Section and went on to breast feed. Her dauther died 31/2 years later of AIDS complications! A real autopsy proved that! Then Maggiore herself died of what? Oh, yeah AIDS illnesses: PCP, (even Al~Bayatti said so) Dissiminated Herpes Infection and Candidiasis.
You can say EJ and Maggiore died of whatever you want, but it will not change the truth, and you really look sad, pathetic and, well, like a liar, by stating otherwise.
Oh, and why are you so proud of having zero integrity and credibility?
Just wonderin'!
JTD

Thanks for that amusement
Todd, to relieve our bemusement
At your playing-the-fool foolishness
And your four hooved mulishness
When faced with truthful simplicities
To replace HIV's obvious infelicities
I am sorry you prove so unteachable
If not completely unreachable
With our constant corrections,
Despite our irresistible affection
For your many thread contributions
To obscuring the obvious solutions
And replacing the impossible paradigm
Which sadistically torments our time
And consigns the scientifically illiterate
To a fate quite nasty and obliterate,
All with your frequent jack-in-the-box
Assistance. It seems that crazy as a fox
You'd eat your own tail
Rather than help us bail
You out of the HIV/AIDS jail
Where you share the sentence
Of all the poor innocents
That you help to condemn
With all these sparkling gems
Of thoughtless witticism
At the expense of good criticism.
So let's just say.
Using common sense, pray,
That children don't expire
Of AIDS in a few hours
When they have been healthy
HIV ain't that stealthy
Between symptoms and death
Just ask your friend Seth.
And leave Christine alone
Or you'll have much to atone
For, when all this explodes
In a rain of toads
And all those who mislead
Will have to pay for their deeds.
Such as claiming an HIV minus
Woman died, one of truth's finest,
Of HIV/AIDS, that's quite a trick,
Absent agent making her sick.
Or so we were told by Jeanne Bergman,
Before she picked up her marbles and ran.
But if you say this is all quite wrong
And the fair lady was + all along,
Still her experience was nothing like AIDS,
Her collapse was sudden, not any slow fade.
Only a believer, in faith, not science,
Can go on peddling all this nonsense.
So forgive us for putting it in very bad verse,
But if it helps you think better, we could do worse.

Nothing is new under the Moon!
It is amazing how similar Elsevier’s actions towards Medical Hypotheses are to those in the Soviet Union (dictate, censorship or destroying journals daring to publish something not in line with the Communist party policy), that were harshly criticized by Western “democratic” world!

In a free society, we all have the right of free speech and free press. The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees this: "Congress shall make no law…or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…" Americans demand this right be given to all who live in countries where governments deprive its citizens of these basic human rights. Nowhere is free speech and free press more important than in Science, which seeks the truth. Getting to the truth of highly complex phenomena such as AIDS is extremely difficult. For example, Fleck (“Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact”, The University of Chicago Press, 1979) pointed out that it took four centuries to reach our current concept of Syphilis and its cause. Getting to the truth usually involves some wrong turns, but, if we are not allowed to take the road of free inquiry, which the AIDS establishment tries to block, how can we ever take the right turn? The vilification, suppression and ostracism of Peter Duesberg, a person of exceedingly rare brilliance who has enormous scientific accomplishments, for trying to publish his ideas on AIDS is unconscionable. What has been done to Professor Duesberg violates his basic human rights, including his right of free scientific inquiry. What does the treatment of Professor Duesberg by the AIDS establishment and their allies tell a young scientist? It clearly says don’t challenge a prevailing paradigm if you want a career in Science. The damage to all of Science by the treatment of Peter Duesberg is incalculable.

Even in the “heyday” of the viral carcinogenesis paradigm which was elevated to its highest peak by the Nixon war on cancer, the words “virus” and “cancer” were not joined by a hyphen or a slash as we see now with HIV-AIDS or HIV/AIDS. The viral cause of cancer paradigm has long since lost prevalence with viruses now thought to be a cause of only a few cancer types at most. New paradigms of cancer were arrived at because the virus paradigm was openly questioned and found, for the most part, to be not correct. The HIV-AIDS and HIV/AIDS designations send very strong messages: there is to be no questioning of the correctness of the current AIDS paradigm and that if a person has been diagnosed with HIV antibodies, it is the same as having AIDS. The history of the concept of Syphilis and its cause, which took more than four centuries to reach its current paradigm, as told by Fleck (“Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact”, The University of Chicago Press, 1979) is a good lesson about how extremely difficult it is to arrive at a correct concept of a highly complex disease like AIDS.

Truthseeker, this may give you or anyone the need to simply ignore Deshong. He provides no Scientific argument, or Scientific appeal. Seth and his imps are embarrassed by his trolling around the vast universe of the internet and that blog of his "dissident4dumbees" is that of a 15 year old mindset, Deshong lost his credibility a long time ago for his "profanity". Cursing people out is just the typical mainstream thing to do..

hit the iggy button. I did.

http://networkedblogs.com/p26535694

Tomas, what you say is true, but deShong is very amusing, is he not, in his dissident4dumbees 15 year old mindset caper? And is Mr Kalichmen any more elevated intellectually? He is simply less comic in his grand incompetence. DeShong is the court jester of HIV/AIDS, which is quite an accomplishment. And thanks, looks like the link is a good one, all who are looking into this issue should go to it as an example of intelligent comment.

The story of Demetrios Spandidos may shed some light on the current situation of vilification, ostracism and suppression of scientists who are challenging the current AIDS paradigm. Spandidos came from a very poor family in Sparta, Greece, to work in the laboratory of Lou Siminovich at the University of Toronto in the late 1970’s. Spandidos published a number of papers (Transfer of codominant markers by isolated metaphase chromosomes in Chinese hamster ovary cells. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 74(8), 3480-4, 1977; Linkage of markers controlling consecutive biochemical steps in CHO cells as demonstrated by chromosome transfer. Cell 12(1), 235-42, 1977; Transfer of anchorage independence by isolated metaphase chromosomes in hamster cells. Cell 12(3), 675-82, 1977; The relationship between transformation and somatic mutation in human and Chinese hamster cells. Cell 13(4), 651-62, 1978) showing that cancer cells had genes, which upon transfer, could make recipient cells more malignant. Spandidos work showed that cancer cells had what are now called “cellular oncogenes”, that were later nicknamed “the enemies within”. Spandidos was the hottest topic around, and in 1978 was interviewing for jobs at Harvard and MIT, especially to the dismay of one MIT cancer researcher, up for tenure at the time, who was overwhelmed with jealousy of Spandidos. However, soon thereafter, rumors were flying that Spandidos’ data were all fabricated. Spandidos was then evicted from Siminovichs’ laboratory and Canada and had to go back to Greece in disgrace. Spandidos findings, fabricated or not, provided a bonanza for many. The virus-cancer hypothesis was unraveling at that time and many virologists seeking fame and fortune found their way to the cellular oncogene field Spandidos started. Nobel, Lasker, Wolf and other prizes were awarded to Spandidos successors. Other refugee virologists from the viral carcinogenesis program found a new home in the new field of AIDS and it was most convenient that a retrovirus, the type that was so prominent in the cancer program would be designated the cause of AIDS at the Heckler news conference in 1984. Spandidos papers were never retracted but it became taboo to cite them. Spandidos was guilty until proven innocent, as judged by the “courts” in the “Peoples’ Republic of Science”. Spandidos remains in Greece to this day, still trying to clear his name. The virology and oncogene establishments rid themselves of Spandidos and some of its members benefited enormously in fame and fortune from pursuing what Spandidos pioneered. Unfortunately for them, another nemesis, Peter Duesberg, who challenges both establishments, has not been so easy to eliminate as was Spandidos, despite blackballing, ostracism and vilification at its foulest.

Oh, Tomas and TS, your contempt for me makes me very proud. The fact that I give proof for EVERYTHING I state leaves you with no other option except ad hominem attacks. That is fine. It speaks muc more to who you are than who you want me to be.
If I did not provide irrefutable proof, then why did I run Cathy and Scheff off? They came. They threw down the gauntlet. I threw down facts. They retreated, never to be seen here again. I think that says it all.
Now run along and pick on someone a little closer to your own IQs. Perhaps a rock? That should do it.
JTD

@Robert Hoffman, perhaps I'm being unfair to our North American cousins here, but why do so many Americans seem to have trouble distinguishing between "freedom of speech" and some kind of obligation on the rest of us to provide a platform, audience and applause indefinitely to people who clearly don't merit them? Why else do you think the internet was invented? There are plenty of non-PubMed-listed venues for Duesberg to sound off about HIV/AIDS if he wants to. I gather the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons isn't too picky about what they publish. Nor is whale.to.

Todd D, I have nothing but admiration for your outstanding accomplishment as the only person who makes this sordid subject and its misleaders such as the distinguished Fraser/Snout a comedy instead of merely a tragedy. Of course this may be because you are suffering from AIDS dementia as induced by the drugs, a phenomenon now familiar from New York magazine coverage and the Times magazine coverage of the HIV propaganda victim Fred Hersch, lyrical jazz pianist. But I like to think not. I like to think you have a gorgeous native talent which has found its ideal outlet. And Fraser, you seem as unaware of the history of this debate as you are of the overriding truths which explode your scientific religion. Peter Duesberg long ago decided he had better things to do in science than blunt his intellectual scalpel on the concrete of those fine minds such as your own which close against the light of truths obvious to small children. His latest paper was simply to set the record straight against the paper from Harvard scoundrels who claimed that he was responsible for the deaths of people who were not supplied by Clinton with toxic ARVs because Mbeki could see that HIV=AIDS science raised more questions than a skunk in a dinner jacket at a Buckingham Palace garden party.

TS, once again you blow hard, but without supporting facts.

I am glad you brought up The NY Magazine article. However, why did you gloss over the real point of the article? Which was the ONLY reason those people were able to feel any bad side effects from their HIV meds 20+ years later, is because those HIV Meds brought them back from the BRINK OF DEATH and allowed them to live another 20+ years!!

Every single persons' story in that article started with that person describing how incredibly sick they were and literally ready to die. Then they started HAART and within a few months were feeling like their old selves. And all were back to work and living productive, healthy lives within 6 months to a year!

Yes, when you intentionally leave that out, you completely change the truth of the story. But is that NOT what you AIDS Denialists do? Change the facts to support your agenda when in fact, the "truth" that you put forward is a complete distortion of the truth?

How can you live with yourself? How about trying to be honest and truthful just once? Just ONCE!

JTD

@Truth Seeker There is nothing Intelligent about him? "dissident4dumbees" ? c'mon if there are any newly diagnosed person gonna click on his link for some hyper fanatic AIDS Truth? I'd give the body.com a lot more credit than that, The Topic is HIV and AIDS, his topics are about winning arguments, and there without even confronting him he accused us of ad hominen attacks and moved the goal post to Liam and Cathy.

Who cares why they left? dissidents are just plain tired of the immaturity he brings to the subject and you're correct Seth whines Denailst so much he may need an excorsism, very soon, and personally I think Deshong needs quite a few sessions with Seth.

good day mates.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned it yet, but in the last couple of days there has been yet another example of BLATANT CENSORSHIP by a PubMed listed journal. Andrew Wakefield's groundbreaking 1998 Lancet paper was CENSORED by the publisher on February 2nd on the trivial grounds that it was "dishonest", "irresponsible", and that an investigantion by the UK GMC into its authors' work “would not be insufficient to support a finding of serious professional misconduct”. Lancet editor Richard Horton tried to justify his VIOLATION OF WAKEFIELD'S HUMAN RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH with the pathetic excuse that "It was utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false." What is the world coming to when dishonest, irresponsible, utterly false findings can no longer be published with impugnity in PubMed listed journals? It's an outrage!!!1!

Mr. John Moore et al -

Exactly why are you so opposed to new ideas, especially the ones that are not right by you, and who are you to decide for others that things aren't right in the first place? If we the independent, non-dogmatic readers had our way, we wouldn't have an editor at all, just out of concern for a hapless soul trapped in that seat and subjected to the heat of naysayers such as yourself. So, were you waiting for the publication of just one article to give you a chance to pounce upon said editor? Are you jealous that someone even has that position? Are you opposed to the idea and the fact that scientific progress can only be made through open-mindedness and the advent of new ideas, for ALL progress has been made on the foundations of novel thoughts, and there have always been opponents such as yourself - unrelenting, litigious, argumentative in defense of your ego or some imagined threat and not science itself. Needless to say, the world is a better place because the authority of the 'editors,' whether self-appointed or nominated by a few, was exerted ultimately in favor of the voice representing original thought rather than the (often resounding) voices seeking to quash that one original voice, that one original idea - be it evolution, the earth's shape and physics, or the theory of relativity.

And seriously, let the reader, who happens to be the real editor in the case of MH - use their own judgment to decide what to accept and what not. Your reaction, based on the fear of an AIDS epidemic or just that the editor(s) here may choose to agree with X or Y, is still no different than the reaction of the armed folk defending their imagined fears of erasure by ideas different than their own. Medical Hypotheses is the one jewel in the Elsevier crown that is sustained by readers' zeal for the truth as it may exist unaltered by the crossing lines of statistical 2x2 (and so on) tables.

In the end, even the Church may not deny that the whole world began as an idea of sheer creativity, the prime opponent of which the Church would itself characterize as being Satanic.

Sue us all, Mr. Moore, but sue Einstein, Galieo, Copernicus and Darwin first. 

Tomas, your command of this subject is that of a three year old. I have read your "story" and it a perfect representation of someone who had a bad experience and is now bitter.
As for my "goal shifting" to Liam and Cathy is bunk. You stated that I "provided no Scientific Arguement". I provided proof that I took on Laim and Cathy and provided nothing but proof and they retreated. How is that goal shifting?
Plain and simple, it is not. I addressed your statement and proved you wrong. You made a baseless claim. It was a transparent lie.
Set. Point. Match.
Once again, I win.
JTD

You didn’t “run me off” Toddy (what an ego!!) – I had a little thing called paid employment to attend to. And the link to the abstract you provided, yet again, proves NOTHING. At the risk of sounding like a broken record; show me that data that prove HAART is lifesaving in children – not data that prove switching kids from one more toxic regimen to a less toxic regimen arrests the precipitous, drug-induced high mortality rate. I did glean at least one interesting fact from your abstract though – “Overall death rates declined from 1993 to 2000 but have since stabilized at rates about 30 times higher than for the general US pediatric population”. Now the CDC’s own statistics put the mortality rate due to “HIV disease” at 1.1%, as compared to a general mortality rate of 0.83% - so if the paediatric mortality in children on HAART is 30 times higher than general paediatric mortality, and total HIV mortality is only a fraction higher (i.e. 27% increased risk in total population vs 3000% in children) then how does the abstract you provided “prove” mortality benefit in children Todd? Seems to me it proves exactly the opposite.

Cathy, you are disingenuous at best. I did indeed provide the material you requested. Now you come back weeks later like a crack head begging and foraging for scraps.

The data I provided prooved beyond a reasonable doubt (and I do realize you AIDS Denialists are beyond reason) that HAART saves lives of children...as well as adults.

I love how you end with the statement: "seems to ME it proves exactly the opposite." You save me the trouble of proving just how inept you are at understanding scientific papers. Also, why do you insisit that I provide you with certain proof, and when I do, you IGNORE the papers (PLURAL) that I supply? Typical denialist tactics on your part. I seriously need to know, why do you cling so selfishly to your ideals in the face of the exact data you asked for? I think you have observed Duesberg too often.

Stop being selfish. Ask others to explain the data to you since you obviously do not understand it.

JTD

Toddy – jumping up and down and SCREAMING that you have provided data to back your assertion does not, in and of itself, provide me with the proof I have asked for now on so many occasions it has become tedious. If you actually read my previous post – you yourself have ACTUALLY provided a link to an abstract demonstrating that HAART in paediatric populations is far from “life-saving”.
I’m only going to ask once more – in order to prove any mortality benefit in any intervention it is necessary to conduct a randomised, placebo-controlled trial that measures, strangely enough, MORTALITY; not soft endpoints like CD4 cell counts and viral loads. You are either dead or not – no room for equivocation there. Now provide me a citation for just such a trial in a paediatric cohort and I’ll eat my own underpants. Failing that – which you will – stop your tiresome ranting and leave this message board to the grown-ups.
BTW – I spent many years of my childhood in the Caribbean where I can assure you from personal experience that “piccaninny” was not used in a derogatory way – perhaps it’s different for you queer folk in the US.

Cathy, just stop. You are making yourself look as sad and illiterate as TS is on the other thread.

I have provided more than sufficient evidence for you. Just because you either do not understand it or do not want to accept the facts (which is more in line with your AIDS Denialist tactics) then I am not willing to waste my time with you any longer.

Just to reiterate, Cathy, I have provided the data, you do not accept it. Let's leave it at that.

JTD

Beautiful work, Cathy.

It's very refreshing and encouraging to find that someone actually understands the HIV treatment efficacy trickery. The Aidists always use their self-invented, self-serving surrogate markers--endpoints--as you call them to prove that the various treatments for so-called "Hiv infection" and "AIDS" actually work. This trick is used in many areas of medical treatment. Here's how it works: You set up your own invented surrogate markers for disease or efficacy and if your treatment surpasses them you have efficacy.

Vaccine makers inject their antigens into the subjects then count the antibodies. If the number exceeds their self-invented standards you have efficacy.

Of course this is all just smoke and mirrors and obvious junk science.

Antibodies in Aids means death.
Antibodies in flu vaccines means protection from disease. WTF, eh Cathy.

As any intelligent researcher will know by now. Hiv positivity means exactly nothing regarding whether a subject will come down with full-blown aids. (Unless he/she has been unlucky enough to get the enhanced version). If the Aidists are so sure that HIV antibodies mean something, why don't they just count the number of antibodies in the patients blood, instead of presenting their own private antigens? Viral loads measure amplified sequences of RNA, which even the PCR's inventor, Kary Mullis says shouldn't be use to predict future illness, and cluster differentiation, type 4 T-lymphocytes counts, which also can fluctuate in the presence or absence of immune depression.

These are all surrogate markers for illness and they are parallel to the surrogate markers the flu vaccine manufacturers use to "prove" the efficacy of their vaccines. Treating disease which is predicted to appear in the future by the use of surrogate makers is a cynical and criminal misuse of public funds.

Hopefully, some day soon the various marketeers of treatment regimes, such as HAART, will be required to stop treating perfectly healthy people until such people present with objective or subjective symptoms which require treatment.

Pharmacorpia uses antibodies in AIDS tests, which are really vaccination of the subjects' blood sample with supposedly purified HIV antigens, (as Duesberg corretly discovered), to indicate that the subject will come down with immune depression;

The vaccinators use antibodies to indicate that the vaccine is efficacious.

I'd suggest that the Aidists take a look at the visna virus and its unusual sequences which parallel those in HIV as well as visnas ability to infect without its antigenic proteins being expressed. The complete genomes of both of these viruses is available online.

I'd also suggest that the Aidists google: "mycoplasma enhances HIV" to learn how this animal virus has been upgraded in its replication capability to be able to do a slow infection of humans.

Pathogenic HIV is all but run its course, but AIDS Inc. will continue to try to milk this benign retrovirus for all its worth.

The original, enhanced version of visna, which is today known as HIV, has long been withdrawn from the vaccine vectors which targeted those original young homosexual men back in the early eighties.

It would be easy to determine whether HARRT actually works.

Set up legitimate double-blind, randomized placebo-controlled clinical trials.

Of course the HAART supporters will never do this as it will show that the best way to survive this now benign retrovirus is to decline the dangerous treatment regimes and lead a healthy lifestyle.

The one bright ray of hope in all of this junk science is that the Aidist vaccination researchers will never devise a vaccine for HIV exactly because they have painted themselves into a corner with these meaningless surrogate markers. It will continue to be impossible to develope a vaccine for HIV when you have to prove that their requirements of the surrogate markers have been met.

Thank god for small blessings. Otherwise the Aidists would, by now, be pushing a totally useless and unproven HIV vaccine.

I am really happy, I found that "end" key in the computer can take me to the last part of f this Forum.
I know people, smart people, who denies that man has already put his feet on the moon, the scientific evidence for this is that the flag of the United States moved with air... in the moon. (Honour to Neil Armstrong).
I have a friend, he is agreat international dealer, but he alwayas say: Is impossible to go to the moon (I hope he never find this Forum)

Cathy, at least you don't sound like Truman Green, right? Jeez!
JTD

Truman, good comment. But can't we simplify? HIV creates HIV antibodies in a few weeks which gets rid of HIV, as the discoverer of HIV has recently confirmed in the film House of Numbers. So HIv creates HIV antibodies, which are effective. So HIV is the best vaccine already in our hands to combat HIV/AIDS. We have made this point to Anthony Fauci for years but he doesn't seem to cotton on. Perhaps Wall Street should be consulted to fund a company devoted to manufacturing this very effective new vaccine, HIV. It is time, and I ask even John Moore now that his microbicide research expenditures have led precisely nowhere to climb on board. We can all ride this bandwagon to a new level of financial success for all. The first use of such funds of course should be to award J Todd Deshong the Science Guardian award for Humor in HIV/AIDS. Humor is a very important influence on health, and studies have now shown that a hearty laugh a day keeps cancer away. J. Todd Deshong - Science Guardian HIV/AIDS Humorist of the Year. Please vote early.

Before you vote, perhaps you should read the other THE thread.
TS states that all the editors of all the peer reviewed journals defer to my judgement.

It seems TS is secretly in love with me!

JTD

Thanks for the laugh TS – I’m one step further away from the cancer that plagues my family? and I second you on that Science Guardian award.
Todd – what is this peculiarly paranoid habit you have of assuming that we all engage in the sock puppetry so obviously and terribly familiar to your own hilarious self? And while we are on that paranoia, do you see Clark Baker as the proverbial monster under the bed when you retire? Does your mum have to come and banish him? It certainly seems so from your textbook phobia responses on other threads. Oh and no… you… didn’t… provide… the… data… I… politely… requested, and I repeat, screaming that you did does not make it so. As for my ability to understand scientific papers – that was my job for a considerable time – yes, I was actually paid for it! That was when scepticism really took root in my thankfully already open mind.
I’m as “Sad and illiterate as TS”? – for a person who repeatedly misspells words in common usage you could only dream (and fail miserably) at achieving the eloquence and wit of TS; no, really, take a poll.
I’d say “well said” Truman, but that would just confirm Todd’s paranoia – Truman, however, would know the sentiment was genuine. On that vein, would Snout, Noble, “Fraser” or anyone else please explain this concept of “herd immunity”? Surely if a vaccine works by providing immunity (via those secondary efficacy endpoints known as antibodies) to an individual then it shouldn’t matter if 0% or 80% of the surrounding population is carrying these dread diseases – umm, if you are “immune” thanks to those “efficacy-proven antibodies” then you are “immune” right?. I’d really like a scientific citation for that 80% “herd immunity” figure as well because it makes no logical sense whatsoever.
Yow! Nothing but charlatan alchemists would stand by the shoddy vaccine science with a straight face and claim their methods “scientific”. Soporific maybe, sophist definitely, scientific no.
Oh and TS – I don’t think our friend John will jump the bandwagon; it doesn’t involve performing unspeakable perverse acts on innocent simians.

Well, that compliment is exceedingly kind of you, Cathy, it makes my week. To be compared with the inimitable Todd DeShong, court jester of AIDS, and be rated even higher - that is difficult ever to beat. I think I may now retire from the fray with my laurels intact. Nothing could beat -being rated higher than Todd, who is 10 on the -10 to -10 Saturday Night Live Scale of Humorous Achievement. That must make me an 11!! Woopee!!, as Todd might say. Todd gets his prize today, even before the votes are in, because I have expanded to toad like size - in the familiar manner of all HIV/AIDS leaders - and am filled with such a generously inflated idea of myself that I cannot bear that Todd should be in agony over his chances any longer. Todd, you should email me immediately for your prize. And Congratulations from all who have had to endure this unpleasant topic for two decades and more until your worthy self showed up to ameliorate our stress.

Hey Cathy, if you're having trouble grasping the elementary concept of herd immunity, here's an idea: why not go to the library and get out an introductory textbook on public health, or immunology, or infectious diseases? There'll be an explanation of the concept there - usually within the first chapter or two. Otherwise, look it up on wikipedia. But here's a clue: in any population there will be individuals in whom the vaccine doesn't work, or is contraindicated, or who are unimmunised for other reasons such as they are too young. How do you think the size of the susceptible proportion of a population might affect the dynamics of a potential infectious epidemic? And how then do you imagine these dynamics on a population level might influence an unimmunised person's chances of becoming infected? And no, I'm not going to spoon-feed you any further here, just because you are too lazy to look it up yourself.

For those who view the video from Queen: "We are the champions", watch again in second 30-32 the reaction of Freddy Mercury (R.I.P.); he was a true genious who did not accept even 2 seconds of delay of the man in the battery. And for those who really like good music, another extraordinary song from Queen: "Love of my life".....And I want to share with all of you an excellent idea: Let´s talk to an Editor and publish this Forum, of course, with pemission from Zoë Corbyn, as a book, now we have 90 pages. I would call it: "Trying to understand human mind". The list of authors is splendid.

Another true genious... Michael Jackson (also R.I.P.).

The virtues of peer review have just been demonstrated :-) ...... The discussion will be review and carried on ScienceGuardian, Alberto, just in case it is erased or edited here, as has happened at other Web sites.

Cathy, I completely understand why you were fired from your "job" of understanding scientific papers. You really are delusional.

If I did not supply the information you requested, (because you goal shifted, and then goal shifted again?), please, why not tell me exactly how. If you attempt this, please do so realistically.
You asked for proof of "life saving benefits" of HAART to children. I provided a paper which showed dramatic and consistent increases in CD4 counts over a considerable period of time. I am sorry if you do not understand how improving immune systems is considered a benefit to realistic human beings.

Please, I welcome your particular brand of stupidity and crazy. It makes me laugh. It also makes me very, very sad for you.

JTD

PUBMED listed journals are not the sole source. What about journals indexed with EMBASE ?

My God, and here I thought the only people who got labeled "deniers" were in the climate sciences. You guys sound like a bunch of whiny idiots, just like the Hockey Team at CRU/UEA comparing climate skeptics to Holocaust deniers. The same consensus position is at work here--to the point that the literature is censored to keep out dissenting views.

That's unacceptable, peer review or not. (And peer review has become a joke anyway.)

I'm not taking sides here--I'm not at all knowledgeable about HIV efficacy and don't presume to have an opinion. I'm just saying that shutting out dissenting opinions doesn't advance our knowledge one little bit.

In a hopeless attempt to bring this argument back to a more socratic mode of discussion, I would like to ask Fraser and/or DeShong if they would be kind enough to address Dr. Luc Montagnier's statement, made on camera, reiterated here: "We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system... It's important knowledge which is completely neglected." Do you agree with this? If not, could you explain your reasons?

Belknap, Montagnier has already "explained" what his statement means. He didn't mean it, he didn't make it, those are not the words he used, if he did use them he didn't mean them, that it fits with other things he has said over the years has nothing to do with it, anyone who believes it doesn't understand the science, it depends on what you mean by the word "will", he was not talking to le publique, he was having what he thought was a merry chat with an earnest and harmless student of what great men really think, and it anyway was said before he got the Nobel, when words and thoughts meant something different since th context was completely different, and it should have been checked with him first, and he doesn't explain himself perfectly in English, you understand, c'est un peu difficile, c'est necessaire d'expliquer parce que je suis un Parisien aussi, vous savez, aussi bien qu'un scientifique, vous comprenez? Non? E voila! Prenez un autre verre de vin! Ici, permettez-moi de verser. A votre santé! Salut!

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/359/21/2233.pdf

NEJM Volume 359:2233-2244

Early Antiretroviral Therapy and Mortality among HIV-Infected Infants

Avy Violari, F.C.Paed., Mark F. Cotton, M.Med., Ph.D., Diana M. Gibb, M.D., Abdel G. Babiker, Ph.D., Jan Steyn, M.Sc., Shabir A. Madhi, F.C.Paed., Ph.D., Patrick Jean-Philippe, M.D., James A. McIntyre, F.R.C.O.G., for the CHER Study Team

ABSTRACT

Background: In countries with a high seroprevalence of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), HIV infection contributes significantly to infant mortality. We investigated antiretroviral-treatment strategies in the Children with HIV Early Antiretroviral Therapy (CHER) trial.

Methods: HIV-infected infants 6 to 12 weeks of age with a CD4 lymphocyte percentage (the CD4 percentage) of 25% or more were randomly assigned to receive antiretroviral therapy (lopinavir–ritonavir, zidovudine, and lamivudine) when the CD4 percentage decreased to less than 20% (or 25% if the child was younger than 1 year) or clinical criteria were met (the deferred antiretroviral-therapy group) or to immediate initiation of limited antiretroviral therapy until 1 year of age or 2 years of age (the early antiretroviral-therapy groups). We report the early outcomes for infants who received deferred antiretroviral therapy as compared with early antiretroviral therapy.

Results: At a median age of 7.4 weeks (interquartile range, 6.6 to 8.9) and a CD4 percentage of 35.2% (interquartile range, 29.1 to 41.2), 125 infants were randomly assigned to receive deferred therapy, and 252 infants were randomly assigned to receive early therapy. After a median follow-up of 40 weeks (interquartile range, 24 to 58), antiretroviral therapy was initiated in 66% of infants in the deferred-therapy group. Twenty infants in the deferred-therapy group (16%) died versus 10 infants in the early-therapy groups (4%) (hazard ratio for death, 0.24; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.11 to 0.51; P<0.001). In 32 infants in the deferred-therapy group (26%) versus 16 infants in the early-therapy groups (6%), disease progressed to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stage C or severe stage B (hazard ratio for disease progression, 0.25; 95% CI, 0.15 to 0.41; P<0.001). Stavudine was substituted for zidovudine in four infants in the early-therapy groups because of neutropenia in three infants and anemia in one infant; no drugs were permanently discontinued. After a review by the data and safety monitoring board, the deferred-therapy group was modified, and infants in this group were all reassessed for initiation of antiretroviral therapy.

Conclusions: Early HIV diagnosis and early antiretroviral therapy reduced early infant mortality by 76% and HIV progression by 75%.

Twenty infants in the deferred-therapy group (16%) died versus 10 infants in the early-therapy groups (4%) (hazard ratio for death, 0.24)? Is there any limit to the conformity bias of workers in this field of anti-medicine and anti-science? By all the measures of the expert review of HIV and its hollowness as a paradigm, this is a grotesque example of murderous nonsense perpetrated on the most vulnerable and innocent human beings, 377 six to 12 week old infants, when the immune system is most immature. Babies of the poorest of the poor in Soweto, and CapeTown, found via pre natal clinic and children's hospital. Every one of the group responsible should be forced to justify his or her ruling belief, if not eat a triple dose of their favorite arvs for breakfast. "A plasma HIV-1 RNA level on PCR of >1000 copies per milliliter" - quantitative results from a non quantitative method, contraindicated by the Nobel winning inventor himself. No real placebo control group, of course, as usual. But a roster of big spending agencies and purported statistical and mathematical exactitude. Dosed over 40 or 96 weeks with AZT, the drug now abandoned in the US for its grotesque and eventually fatal side effects in any significant amount. Symptoms including "symptomatic lymphoid interstitial pneumonitis, bronchiectasis, nephropathy,cardiomyopathy, and failure to thrive," not to mention death All to stop an inert virus without any proven or even speculative modus operandi. Wonder what symptoms the mothers exhibited after their single dose of nevirapine? And the criteria of CD4 counts, questionable guides to status even in adults. Come back Celia Farber and Roger Hodge of Harpers, we need you. Oh, sorry, Hodge has left Harpers and is writing a book attacking Obama from the left, while being told by the scientifically ignorant hack pack in the NY Observer and elsewhere that his "low point" at Harpers was his finest editorial work, the Farber piece on science "Out of Control" in AIDS (AIDS and the corruption of Medical science" in March 2006), with nevirapine reported responsible in one case for horrific and quickly fatal effects in an adult female. In this case, this study, "10 of 252 infants in the early-therapy groups (4%) died and 20 of 125 infants in the deferred-therapy group (16%) died." But all that paradigm questioning is wrong, it seems. Early ARV therapy saved lives compared with late - and compared with their "control" group, African birth cohorts before ARV therapy or diarrhea tablets, halves deaths : "The estimated probability of death in the deferred-therapy group
(17%) is lower than the 35% probability reported in African birth cohorts before the introduction of antiretroviral therapy or widespread cotrimoxazole prophylaxis.3". Wow! Impressive, especially since early AZT didn't work with adults in the Concorde study, which achieved the opposite effect. How well done was this study, behind the agency alphabets and the two percentage points stats? Who knows? African studies are notoriously sloppy, according to Harpers' well researched piece, and others. And like all studies in HIV=AIDS they are riddled through and through with the assumption that anything operating against HIV is necessarily a good thing regardless of the damage it does. So does this study prove that early ARV "therapy" for tiny black babies with no developed immune system is a great benefit? Anybody not wearing mauve spectacles should take it with a very very large pinch of salt, about the size of Lot's wife.

@OM Belknap, Dr Montagnier's opinion that "we can be exposed to HIV many times without becoming chronically infected" is entirely unremarkable and well supported by evidence. Only a small minority of sexual exposures to a partner with HIV - to take the most common transmission mode - result in chronic infection (confirmed HIV positive status). I'm not aware of any known pathogen that has a 100% strike rate in causing disease following exposure. However, it is quite untrue that this fact has been "completely neglected". In fact there is a vast literature examining the factors that increase or decrease the probability that a given exposure will result in chronic infection: for example viral loads in the infected partner, presence of genital ulcer disease and other infections, type of sex, and even whether the insertive partner