Front-page news in the U.S. this week included an upcoming recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that Americans automatically be tested for HIV at the same time they undergo routine blood tests. The implementation of this plan portends self-perpetuating, medically caused disaster, as false positives inherent in HIV-testing techniques are rampant. These false positives come from the non-specificity of all testing techniques designed to detect HIV antibodies, antigens or RNA copies.

A friend recently told me that TheBody.com was featuring a Red Flags’ letters page with references to a lecture I did on HIV, along with other web sites and books by people who have questioned the dogma of HIV=AIDS=death. Our inclusion was not intended as a compliment. The page is titled "GOTCHA! Grossly Over-Exaggerated (or Incorrect) "Treatments" or "Cures" for HIV or AIDS.”

The most basic question — what is HIV? — is not an easy one to answer. Depending on what country you are in and who you are talking to, the answer varies. The best I can do is summarize some of these and conclude with my own opinion.

The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses lists only Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 as a species of the family Retroviridae, genus Lentivirus. (1) Elsewhere, scientists talk about three HIV species and 17 different "clades." (2) Then there are enumerable "isolates," including 106 genetically distinct variants in an asymptomatic AIDS patient (3) and more than 108 in a symptomatic one. (4)

From personal correspondence and discussions on the Internet, it is obvious that the Great AIDS Debate has become bogged down by a lack of common understanding of the words "AIDS" and "HIV." Everyone uses the words, but there is no agreement on their meaning. I hope I do not have to point out that this is a serious defect in a dialogue.

This article describes a tentative hypothesis: that creams and lotions designed to lighten the color of skin generate “HIV antibodies” — i.e., antibodies that cause positive reactions on standard HIV tests. This may sound absurd, but the patterns of usage fit HIV seroprevalence statistics reasonably well, and at least one common active ingredient in skin lighteners is immunologically active. Evidence to show convincingly that this is true or false is not available, partly because this is an untested hypothesis, and partly because any hypothesis that challenges the heterosexual transmission model for HIV patterns in Africa is generally dismissed out of hand.

A recent paper in the journal AIDS is another torpedo into the hull of HIV’s SS Sexual Transmission. (1)

The paper provides data from a large “nationally representative” 2003 survey of 11,904 South Africans aged 15 to 24, who were chosen randomly from households in each of the 2001 census enumeration areas. Of the 15,414 young people identified by random selection, 77.2 percent agreed to participate.

As Future Enemy Number One

Just when I thought there could be nothing worse than HIV/AIDS and global warming, along comes the bird flu.

"It’s like a combination of global warming and HIV/AIDS 10 times faster," David Nabarro, the United Nation’s new co-ordinator for avian and human influenza, was quoted as saying. (1)

Nabarro predicted that 5 million to 150 million people "could" be killed "if" the virus mutated and jumped to humans. His estimate was immediately contradicted by a World Health Organization spokesperson on influenza, Dick Thompson, who said the official estimate of the number of people who "could" die was between 2 million and 7.4 million.

What did they think, all those HIV/AIDS leaders, as they sat through the sessions of the International AIDS Society Congress (IAS) in Rio de Janeiro last week? They spent four days with 5,000 delegates discussing “HIV Pathogenesis and Treatment.” But privately, beyond the public statements, was it possible not to have inner doubts given the paucity of anything approaching progress?

Hope is such a wondrous thing. I pay tribute to all those scientists and theorists who have influenced me to hope that mankind has what it takes to meet the challenges of life.

It happens so rarely, amid all the noise that is scientific reportage, that something comes along which indicates man, indeed, has what it takes.

So it is proper to commemorate the publication of just such a breakthrough in the July issue of Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology.(1) The team Ekkehard Schuetz, Howard B. Urnovitz, Leonid Iakoubov, Walter Schulz-Schaeffer, Wilhelm Wemheuer and Bertram Brenig represent a partnership between the Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Dept of Neuropathology, University of Goettingen, Germany, and private company Chronix Biomedical.

We have a first here - a woman Deputy President of South Africa. Phumzile Mlambo Ngcuka is tasked with sweeping clean and taking all along with her in her areas of responsibility. One of these is as the government’s spokesperson on HIV/AIDS. If she has said anything on that subject I don’t know about it, and as soon as she does I will surely report it.

Until then, I have no idea where next I can possibly take the idiocy of HIV/AIDS - huge information vacuum leading to acquired intelligence deficiency signals.

And The Tragedy of Haemophiliac AIDS

I have come to see the “does HIV cause AIDS” dispute as a best-basher-wins-all rhetorical prize fight. In this corner William of Occam. Lightish-weight medieval scholastic, not just best remembered but only remembered for the principle formally stated as "Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" or "plurality should not be posited without necessity." The sentiment was enunciated earlier by others but Occam relied on the principle so relentlessly it became known as Occam’s razor.

It’s my guy meets your guy this week, as President Thabo Mbeki flies in State-side to speak to President George Bush.

I hope media attention is focused on this event. It follows on a visit of former President Nelson Mandela. From reports, HIV/AIDS was and is on the table for these series of talk-talks. Also, upcoming - G8 meetings and UK Prime Minister Blair’s plan for Africa - and Bush’s vision thing of his legacy.

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

When I first started investigating HIV and AIDS to better understand the challenge, I contacted virtually everybody who was anybody in HIV/AIDS in South Africa and personally spoke to them. These scientists had two things in common in 1999:

• none could give me the references to the seminal studies establishing HIV, what it was and that it caused AIDS; and
• none was aware of any dissenting opinion.

As a science journalist at the largest English language daily newspaper in my country, I knew many of these people. I had worked with them through Apartheid times, into the transition when African National Congress and other exiles returned and took up the reins of establishing a democratic order. I was present at the major gatherings where new scientific structures were hammered out. As part of my duties I knew exactly who was an A-rated scientist in their field and who was not.

It’s been a frustrating week for me here at the tip of Africa. What with International TB day and the daughter of a close friend being diagnosed with lymphoma, I’ve been delving deep into the “Health of Nations” book.

I must have waded through hundreds of thousands if not millions of words this week, and judged purely as pieces of communication, it’s a case of never has so much been written by so many of so little value.

International TB Day on 24 March brought an avalanche of articles from across the globe, and buried any hope that TB will be conquered with present strategies.

For people of the western developed world, cushioned in relative luxury, TB may be way down on the list of dangerous diseases. But it is at epidemic proportions in Africa and the No 1 cause of death in South Africa, according to the recently released Death and Mortality report (1).

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Lawrence Altman’s article in The New York Times "Two New Viruses Reported Belonging to AIDS Family" (1) reads like an episode of The Addams Family, only less believable.

In his report on the recent 12th Retrovirus Conference in Boston, Altman proves yet again that he’s a dab hand at spelling out the hocus-pocus thing. Quoting Dr Walid Heneine, a virologist at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) who discovered the new viruses, Altman intones: "The retroviruses, named HTLV-3 and HTLV-4, for human T-lymphotropic virus, are the newest members of a class that can cause a wide spectrum of illnesses."

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

It was American scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) who came up with a  new infectious virus, now dubbed HIV, that was sexually transmitted and passed from mother-to-child, which killed CD4 T-cells.(1,2)

After 25 years it doesn’t matter that those same scientists have been unable to cure a single person or answer basic questions relating to their premise. This includes an explanation of the mechanism by which HIV kills the same CD4 T-cells in vivo, in which Dr Robert Gallo stated under oath in his antibody test patent application it can be mass produced in vitro.(3)

      The effects of the Asian tsunami have focused the world’s attention on three major, life-threatening dangers: severe malnourishment, contaminated water and lack of basic sanitation. Indeed, today’s global relief effort is compassionately addressing these risks, as well it should.

      Africa, on the other hand, in the aftermath of a decades-long political tsunami, struggles with far greater levels of malnutrition, polluted water and lack of basic sanitation, with attendant disease at all time highs. In this part of the world, however, the facts have been rearranged: the obvious risk factors for disease are ignored and, in their stead, a sexually transmitted virus is invoked — the alleged “HIV.”

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

It is interesting that no where in the world has there yet been a court case where the burden of proof has been on the health professional and other parties who promote the HIV cause of AIDS. Such is the universal acceptance of this premise that no one has
yet tested its edge in the legal envelope.

There is a case pending in the US where the plaintiff, Ms Kim Bannon is suing the manufacturers of two tests used by her doctor to diagnose her as "HIV infected" (1). Since both tests carry FDA approvals for the screening of antibodies listed in genebanks as "HIV antibodies", but not for diagnosing "HIV infection", the manufacturers would be  protected by their FDA approvals from any non-approved application of their tests. So Ms Bannon may be suing the wrong parties.

HIV/AIDS is making bigger headlines at Davos World Economic Summit this week than poverty alleviation just to prove that drugs rather than economic empowerment of the world’s poor is more important.(1) Sharon Stone, Richard Gere, Bono - the parade of celebrities willing to raise funds to feed antiretrovirals to babies and anyone else who tests HIV antibody positive grows longer day by day.(2,3)

for Knights of the Round Table
Calgary
December 21, 2004

The Knights of the Round Table is a discussion group that has met monthly in Calgary since the 1920’s, featuring speakers on a wide variety of topics.

Everyone knows that:

‘HIV is a retrovirus that
leads to the fatal disease
call AIDS.
The virus is transmitted
by sex and
contaminated blood products.”  (The catechism of AIDS)

 “Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?” asks the teacher. “A vegetable!” shout the children. “Wrong,” replies the teacher with a smug look, “It’s a fruit.” Both are wrong, although the teacher bears more responsibility for propagating false fruits and for using rote humiliation to substitute for learning.

The right answer is that a tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable, as well as only a fruit and only a vegetable. The choice of question, use of words with multiple definitions without qualification and the purported correct answer, says a lot about how rigid thought patterns and our use of language steer our beliefs.

According to Canadian Geography Professor Harold D. Foster, lack of the trace element selenium plays a role in causing AIDS. Well, lest you think that he is a true AIDS dissident, questioning any role for HIV in AIDS, he also believes that HIV causes AIDS. And he slams Peter Duesberg and other dyed-in-the-wool dissidents in order to establish his mainstream credentials. [Foster, 2002]

Foster starts his book, What Really Causes AIDS, by quoting from the ‘Durban Declaration’[Durban, 2000]  that 250 million people will probably die from AIDS by 2015. This declaration is the Nicene Creed of HIV/AIDS dogma, an assertion of the true faith, written in the reaction to the embarrassment of having an international AIDS conference in South Africa when President Mbeki was questioning the connection between HIV and AIDS. According to the organizer of the declaration, Simon Wain-Hobson of Insitut Pasteur, it was not important to have any specific knowledge of the debate over the cause of AIDS, but it was important to have impressive credentials. Undergraduates were shunned, but PhDs in any subject were welcome to sign.

"Tests indicate that you have a 90% chance of being infected with a deadly virus. There is a 50% probability that it will cause disease within the next 10 years, and a possibility that it never will. If you take the drugs that I offer, there is a significant risk that you will experience a great decline in your quality of life, and a possibility that the drugs will kill you."

Although it might be the truth, you are unlikely to hear a doctor saying this, because neither the doctor nor the patient can deal with the uncertainty that it admits.

Rob Johnston contributed enormously to the AIDS "Reappraisal" movement (also called ‘dissidence’ or ‘denialism’ by those who are offended by it). He died of liver failure completely unrelated to AIDS on April 3, 2003 in Toronto, and will be missed by many because of his commitment, knowledge, intelligence and plain old friendship.

I can only speak of Rob’s involvement in alternative explorations of HIV and AIDS over the past 5 years, not other aspects of his life such as a love for orchids and time visiting with and advocating for the Lacandon Indians and their culture in Chiapas, Mexico.

[This is the text of Crowe’s talk to an Alive and Well ( http://aliveandwell.org ) meeting in Los Angeles on February 19, 2003]

"When religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine, now when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic"

Breastfeeding by HIV-positive women has been frowned upon for a long time. In fact, in at least one case, it has been declared illegal for an HIV-positive woman. This view is based on inaccurate information, and it seems likely that breastfeeding is the best thing that HIV-positive mothers could possibly do for their babies, just as is the case for all other mothers.

It only took two anecdotal cases for the CDC to warn against HIV-positive mothers breastfeeding, but it was a meta-analysis published by Dunn et al in Lancet in 1992 that was the beginning of the end for choice in feeding practices. This study concluded that breastfeeding posed a 14% excess risk of HIV transmission. Since then, breastfeeding has been difficult for women in poor countries, and a huge amount of effort by WHO, Unicef and others has gone into studying and implementing replacement feeding (i.e. formula) by mothers in poor countries.

SOME REALITIES OF HIV FOR SOUTH AFRICA

"Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least — at least I mean what I say — that’s the same thing you know." "Not the same thing a bit!’ said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that ‘I see what I eat’ is the same thing as ‘I eat what I see!’ " - Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll (1865).

A Story Of Fighting The System And Losing

Sophie Brassard fought the "system" and lost. She lost her two sons. She lost her maternal rights. She lost her right to live quietly in Canada. She fought doctors and social workers face to face, and in the courts. Finally, she fled her native Canada and lived as a fugitive in a foreign country. At the age of 40, she succumbed physically and mentally.

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

My optimism about progress in dealing with what is being billed as the Mother of all Epidemics has taken a serious nosedive in recent weeks. The reverse should be the case since there is no doubt that with each day’s passing more and more people realise the paradigm of HIV causes AIDS is just one incorrect route taken in the health sciences.

"Giant corporations are locked in a life and death struggle to provide one of a kind instrumentation with which a given operation "must" be done." Editor, Michael Baggish M.D., Journal of Gynecologic Surgery.

Hans Gelderblom of Berlin's Robert Koch Institute co-authored the first paper in Virology, March 1997, showing 'purified HIV' to be 'purified microvesicles'. What was assumed to be 'purified HIV' was in fact "an excess of vesicles" - particles of cellular proteins. The hypothetical 'HIV' is in fact a collection of endogenous microvesicles and cellular proteins (which also never seem to form particles - so how can they be infectious)? Cell-free viral 'HIV' particles have never ever been visualised in any freshly donated bodily fluid including semen, blood, etc. 'HIV' has never ever proven to be a sexually transmitted retrovirus.

ITCHING FOR A DEBATE

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the principal supporters of HIV theory, received one of medicine’s major monetary awards (second only to the Nobel Prize) — and here’s someone who has been misinterpreting laboratory results for two decades.

These are truly dark times for science and medicine. Fauci is one of the US government's major architects of the myth that HIV has been proven to be the cause of AIDS and that stopping HIV will save lives -- a myth that has become so entrenched in medicine's conventional wisdom that to question it is tantamount to treason.