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Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy

Seeking Stories of AIDS Denialism

Have you or someone you know been harmed by AIDS Denialism? If you, or someone you care about, have been advised to stop taking HIV meds, ignore HIV test results, purchase a 'natural' cure etc., please email me.

aidsandbehavior@yahoo.com

All information will be kept confidential.

Monday, June 8, 2009

"I have no patience for people who would deny history"

President Obama calls death camp 'ultimate rebuke' to Holocaust deniers

President Obama has already proven that he will not be making policy decisions based on denialism. He has appointed solid leaders to head up national and international AIDS policy. Unlike the previous Administration he has shown respet for science. It is not just that my politics are closer to his party. Objective observation tells us the Obama administration is public health minded.

The thing we are waiting for is The President to lift the federal ban on needle and syringe access. I thought this would have happened by now, but it has not. The political forces must be strong because the science is overwhelming. Perhaps it will be part of the national AIDS prevention strategy that the White House will release this year or perhaps part of health care reform. In the mean time, implementing a science-based intervention that we know saves lives is still being held up.
The President has taken a stand against Holocaust Denial. As we know, a stand against Holocaust Denial is a stand against AIDS Denial because they are peas in the same denialist pod. Read here the story on President Obama’s historic trip to the Nazi Concentration Camp Buchenwald and his rebuke of denialism.

From the Associated Press: President Barack Obama has arrived in Paris after meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany and touring the Buchenwald concentration camp, where tens of thousands of Jews perished during the Holocaust.

Obama is to meet Saturday with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and help commemorate the 65th anniversary of the Allies' D-Day invasion in France.

Obama is also reuniting with his family in Paris. First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha flew to the City of Light on Friday to join him.

Obama witnessed the Nazi ovens of the Buchenwald concentration camp Friday, its clock tower frozen at the time of liberation, and said the leaders of today must not rest against the spread of evil.

The president called the camp where an estimated 56,000 people died the "ultimate rebuke" to Holocaust deniers and skeptics. And he bluntly challenged one of them, Iranian President Ahmadinejad, to visit Buchenwald.

"These sites have not lost their horror with the passage of time," Obama said after seeing crematory ovens, barbed-wire fences, guard towers and the clock set at 3:15, marking the camp's liberation in the afternoon of April 11, 1945. "More than half a century later, our grief and our outrage over what happened have not diminished.

Buchenwald "teaches us that we must be ever-vigilant about the spread of evil in our own time, that we must reject the false comfort that others' suffering is not our problem, and commit ourselves to resisting those who would subjugate others to serve their own interests," Obama said.

He also said he saw, reflected in the horrors, Israel's capacity to empathize with the suffering of others, which he said gave him hope Israel and the Palestinians can achieving a lasting peace.

Obama became the first U.S. president to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp. It was, in part, a personal visit: His great-uncle helped liberate a nearby satellite camp, Ohrdruf, in early April 1945 just days before other U.S. Army units overran Buchenwald.

Earlier in Dresden alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Obama pressed for progress toward Mideast peace. The U.S. "can't force peace upon the parties," he said, but America has "at least created the space, the atmosphere, in which talks can restart."

The president also announced he was dispatching special envoy George J. Mitchell back to the region next week to follow up on Obama's speech in Cairo a day earlier in which he called for both Israelis and Palestinians to make concessions in the standoff.

Fresh from visits to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Obama said that while regional and worldwide powers must help achieve peace, responsibility ultimately falls to Israelis and Palestinians to reach an accord.

He said Israel must live up to commitments it made under the so-called "Road Map" peace outline to stop constructing settlements, adding: "I recognize the very difficult politics in Israel of getting that done." He also said the Palestinians must control violence-inciting acts and statements, saying that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "has made progress on this issue, but not enough."

Merkel, for her part, promised to cooperate on the long-sought goal. She said the two leaders discussed a time frame for a peace process but did not elaborate.

"With the new American government and the president, there is a truly unique opportunity to revive this peace process or, let us put this very cautiously, this process of negotiations," Merkel said.

Elie Wiesel, a 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner, author and Holocaust survivor whose father died of starvation at Buchenwald three months before liberation, and Bertrand Herz, also a Buchenwald survivor; accompanied Obama and Merkel at the camp. Each laid a long-stemmed white rose at a memorial. They were later joined by Volkhard Knigge, head of the Buchenwald memorial.

"To this day, there are those who insist the Holocaust never happened," Obama said. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."
It was a pointed message to Iran's Ahmadinejad, who has expressed doubts that 6 million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis.

"He should make his own visit" to Buchenwald, Obama told NBC earlier Friday. He added: "I have no patience for people who would deny history."

Separately, the president told reporters: "The international community has an obligation, even when it's inconvenient, to act when genocide is occurring."

After the tour, Obama flew to Landstuhl, the U.S. military hospital for private visits with U.S. troops recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. He spent about two hours visiting the wounded.




58 comments:

  1. I am glad that Dr. Kalichman put this on his blog. I am amazed that people deny the existance of the Holocaust, Aids or anything that is real. Growing up, my brothers, sister, parents and I were victims of anit-Semitism. My mother would decorate for the holidays and the neighborhood children would stone our windows and write "dirty Jew" on the sidewalk. They would trick-or-treat in their grandfather's Nazi uniforms. Was this real? I was seven years old and came home from school crying and asked my mother why someone had called me a "dirty Jew." Was this real? And the rioting in the 1960s when the Black people were fighting for the rights that should have been their's without a fight. Were their reasons for wanting equality real? And now to think that, in 2009, people are still denying that the Holocaust happened and that Aids does not exist is shocking to me. If people who watched Elie Wiesel speak today, or have at anytime spent time with a Holocaust survivor and listened to their stories (I have on many occasions)can still deny that all of these things do not exist, than we have something very wrong with this society that can never be fixed. I want to thank Dr.Kalichman for his posts and making an effort to make people aware of the "real world." Maybe we can all make some changes for the good of everyone if we can take responsibility for our past mistakes and stop repeating them.

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  2. Phyllis
    Thanks for posting your comment. I understand what you are saying. My family too experienced anti-Semitism when I was growing up, although what you experienced sounds like it may have been worse.

    You know, Henry Bauer is a leading AIDS denialist born in Austria during the Nazi regime. He is Jew and has written a weepy account of his experience with anti-Semitism.

    He seems to have missed the point that I have made about so many AIDS denialists being from Germany (which Austria essentially was in the 1930s, lets not forget Hitler himself was Austrian) and how Duesberg’s German ground swell of support is more than obvious.

    Duesberg’s father was a doctor in the Nazi army, but Peter seems not to take pride in this. Still, it is German nationalism, as well as ties to UC Berkeley, that stand out among AIDS denialists. It is not that AIDS denialists are Nazi sympathizers, rather they are Duesberg sympathizers. And it is not that AIDS denialists are also Holocaust Deniers (although some are). It is that all denialists use the same tactics, have overlapping psychopathology, and share motivations. That is why I named this blog to include other oddities and that is why I posted the statement from President Obama on Holocaust Denial here.

    Thanks again for commenting.

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  3. "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

    Unfortunately, it is only the ultimate rebuke to those who are capable of understanding. Those in denial are not such people. Holocaust denialists even have Paul Rassinier (who was in Buchenwald) as a source of holocaust denialism. It is hard for me to understand why a survivor would become a holocaust denier but it does do a great job showing the lengths to which a person can go to deny a tragedy. And of course denialists will look at Rassinier as "proof" that they are right, discarding all other historical data. Whether people like or dislike Obama, this stand against denialism in general is commendable.

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  4. Though I disagree with what seems to be Phillis' belief that hiv is what is causing aids, I certainly agree with Phillis when she says: "Maybe we can all make some changes for the good of everyone if we can take responsibility for our past mistakes and stop repeating them."

    What do you say, Dr. Seth? Would you be willing to take responsibility for your past mistakes and stop repeating them?

    Would you be willing to refrain from spreading fear and panic about hiv and aids as did the nazis spread fear and panic among the German people about the Jews?

    Would you be willing to refrain from promoting toxic and often deadly chemical treatments for stressed out and panicked hiv positives who are mostly gays and blacks, and which behavior is not all that different from the nazis who used toxic gas to dispose of the jewish people?

    Would you be willing to refrain from nazi-like propaganda that gays and blacks are infected by hiv that you claim is the cause of aids?

    Would you be willing to refrain from the nazi-like behavior of terrifying those who test hiv positive and condemning them to inevitable toxic stress syndromes via belief in inevitable death unless they take the proven toxic drugs?

    Would you, Dr. Seth, be willing to refrain from being an aids-nazi?

    And please remember, Herr Doktor Kalichman, that 22 out of the 26 of the nazis who were brought to trial at Nuremburg were medical doctors, including a couple of psychologists!

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  5. Mikey,
    By looking at the pics of the people in camps such as Buchenwald (my Memoirs of the Holocaust book) I would say that other than the blatant murders, starvation and being worked to death would be a leading cause of death. Illnesses were definitely present as the conditions they were living in were inhuman but bear in mind that Maggs wasn't anywhere near that condition and her stress wasn't equal to theirs by any stretch of the imagination. If you want to claim that her stress caused her disseminated herpes you should have some evidence for that. thus far it is found in the severely immune suppressed from cancer, AIDS, or immunosuppressant drugs and she didn't have a history of cancer and wasn't on drugs. What evidence makes you think that she would be the one convenient exception?

    As for Gulf war syndrome I don't see many similarities in symptoms with those of AIDS. Other than the fact that there is no link between GWS and stress (please feel free to correct me if you find any credible sources that say otherwise), one would likewise have to explain the surprising lack of AIDS symptoms and death in soldiers coming from Iraq. Are they all just super-special and able to take the stress and shake it off (not the people I've seen)? Or, more likely, is it because the military screens potential and current soldiers for HIV?

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  6. Geiger, do you have any internal compass of what is right or wrong? How can you make such crazy statements that are not only hurtful but are also incredibly offensive? Not to mention 100% wrong! Statements such as above where you make an anaolgy that Kalichman is a Nazi with this crazy statement:
    "Would you be willing to refrain from spreading fear and panic about hiv and aids as did the nazis spread fear and panic among the German people about the Jews?"
    And how about this crazy/hateful statement in which you claim that HIV Medications are the same thing as toxic gas used by the Nazis and that these medications are used in the same way that the Nazis used toxic gas!!
    "Would you be willing to refrain from promoting toxic and often deadly chemical treatments for stressed out and panicked hiv positives who are mostly gays and blacks, and which behavior is not all that different from the nazis who used toxic gas to dispose of the jewish people?"
    Geiger, you are one twisted, mentally un~stable fucktard who needs a full frontal lobotomy!
    Seth, I am all for you moderating all future Geiger comments as they are just hateful, stupid irrelevant comments!
    JTD

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  7. The thing that gets me about the whole "AIDS is caused by stress" bit that has been used to explain away the deaths oh HIV+ denialists (such as Maggiore) is the lack of perspective needed to make this claim. Many people endure much greater stress than these people. Maggiore was used as the basis for a law and order episode, yes. Was that probably stressful, sure. Did the idea that she was responsible for her daughter's death contribute to that stress? Probably. But now let's look at other groups of people. The military, for example has one of the highest stress environments of all careers in the US. Suicide rates in the military among soldiers coming back from Iraq are at an all time high. Ft. Campbell shut down for three days recently after a string of 11 suicides. Soldiers in Iraq and Afganistan see their fellow soldiers blown to pieces by IEDs. As a former soldier myself, I feel for these soldiers but how many of them developed AIDS? How many developed disseminated herpes? Want to take a guess? Or how about survivors of the holocaust? Can being seen on TV really compare to seeing scores of family members being killed? Can it compare to having to dig up mass graves for the enemy so that your family's corpses can be buried? How about the women who's children were killed in front of them after delivery in the camps? Did they suffer less stress than Maggiore in here cushy home? These are rhetorical, mind you. The answer is obvious to anyone with half a mind. Any yet we continue to hear about how it was all about the stress.

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  8. I don't know that you'd want to draw any direct parallel, but it is awfully interesting that a similar panic about infection helped motivate Germans to isolate and exterminate 6 million Jews in the 1930s and 40s. Jews were literally thought to be a public health problem. It was said that Jews, by their very presence, spread typhus and other contagious diseases. Schoolkids were marched through exhibitions that compared Jews to rats, lice and germs. Removing Jews from the healthy German body politic and then eradicating them was seen, James M. Glass writes in "Life Unworthy of Life", as "a problem in sanitation management."

    Think about that: the Holocaust as a public health scare. Jews, the SARS of the 1930s. A panic whipped up not just by Goebbels' loony Nazi propaganda machine, but also by supposedly sane, humane German health care workers and medical scientists.

    I always knew the Nazis were Sissies. You can tell from their outfits.

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  9. Dear PoodleStomper,
    You stated:
    "The military, for example has one of the highest stress environments of all careers in the US. Suicide rates in the military among soldiers coming back from Iraq are at an all time high."

    Let me ask you, if these people are committing suicide, how can you track "how many of them developed AIDS?" On one hand you are saying that they are so stressed out that they kill themselves and then using that as proof that stress cannot cause someone's immune system to collapse. Let me get this straight. In your mind, since soldiers don't develop AIDS (instead they kill themselves) this is your proof that stress cannot cause AIDS at all? "The answer is obvious to anyone with half a mind."

    Let's also talk about how the military keeps the most comprehensive databases of people who have tested positive to "HIV" and has not done any analysis of this data over the years. How many of those turned-away recruits have developed AIDS? I believe people have been calling for this for a long time. The military, as you well know, won't let someone in who tests positive, so are you suggesting that soldiers who tested "negative" should be monitored for possible progression to AIDS? Do you then admit that testing "positive" is not a determining factor in AIDS?

    You also need to be more specific than to use the word "stress." The type of stress one is experiencing can definitely influence the type of manifestation that will occur. For example, soldiers are under violent stress, which can be exhibited as violence when they return to their families. HIV + individuals are under the stress of being told they will get sick and die within a few years, so I would not be surprised to see illness manifest in these people. To be told by an authority figure (your doctor) that you WILL DIE, you will succumb to opportunistic infections, is very powerful medicine my friend. Don't underestimate the power of your own mind when it comes to your own health. Have you ever heard of 'pseudocyesis' (or 'pseudopregnancy')? It is documented that women can manifest all the "symptoms" of being pregnant if their thoughts are focussed on the idea.

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  10. Hi Seth, again, best to not post this message to you.

    I was thinking this morning of how fascinating the subject of human denial actually is, and of how easy it is for any of us to be in denial of any subject, as we all often are.

    I remember a dear friend of mine for many years, a black man named Jerry who was taken with me and also worked with me in various enterprises. One day, I had a rental truck which of course I was therefore responsible for, and was moving some business related equipment, and Jerry was driving it. Right in front of me, he accidentally did not stop the vehicle and smashed the front of it into a garage. He got out and I said " What the hell are you doing"? He looked straight at me and said "I didn't do it". Of course I answered that the truck was not driving itself, and again he retorted with "I didn't do it". This went back and forth and he could never get himself to admit that he had not stopped in time and had driven the vehicle into the building! Denial born of self protection no doubt.

    But the entire issue of the opposing hiv aids beliefs, is, if nothing else, a fascinating look at all of our various human behaviors and thinking processes. As you pointed out, if you, or if I are in denial of any issue, we could not know for such is the nature of denial.

    But, what would it take for any of us to go beyond our denial, if we are in such a state?

    I would think that it would first off take courage to even consider it. I think it would take acceptance of the diversities of opinions and viewpoints. I think it would take willingness and likely a state of humility to even admit that one's own self could be mistaken.

    And of course, these are all qualities that we humans hold in high regard; ie; courage, acceptance, willingness, and humility. These also seem to be qualities that are far removed from victim states of consciousness, and are certainly far more empowered states of mind.

    Which then begs the question of what forms of consciousness keeps us trapped in our states of denial? Surely, fear would be one. Could various internal desires or frustrated desires that result in anger, or self righteousness or an ego needing to be right because it fears being wrong be other factors that hold us humans in our states of denial? I would tend to think so. Surely much of it could result from fear of being wrong, or even fear of external believed in beliefs in other people or things such as viruses, fears that may or may not be real, as Feival points out.

    At any rate, I find it all very interesting to ponder this thing we call life. As in one of your messages to me, you said you thought I was an interesting character, I think that goes for each and all of us. Most assuredly I also find you very interesting. I also find all of the other characters like Todd and snout and clever and Gallo and Duesberg and all we are herein involved with as interesting as well.

    What drives them? What motivates them? What are their earlier experiences? What low victim level consciousnesses, if any, and what false beliefs are they entrapped in, and why, and how could they rise above them if they are?

    All very fascinating to ponder on all sides of the issue. It is truly an exploration of our selves, our egos and its beliefs, and even all of humanity itself.

    At any rate, I just wanted to share those perspectives as you are interested in the subject of human denial, and I wish you a great day.

    Michael

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  11. NotSoCleverKid,

    Let me ask you, if these people are committing suicide, how can you track "how many of them developed AIDS?

    Of all the people in Ft. Campbell that went to Iraq, 11 committed suicide. That leaves a bunch of others alive. Look at the statistics of returning soldiers with PTSD, depression, anxiety and other symptoms. If you are naïve enough to believe that all the stressed out soldiers have committed suicide then you need to go back to high school. Simple logic dictates that just because all the soldiers who committed suicide were under stress from deployment does not mean that all the soldiers under stress from deployment committed suicide. Thus, it should be clear to anyone with “half a mind” that the ones that killed themselves are not the only ones who experienced severe stress.

    Let's also talk about how the military keeps the most comprehensive databases of people who have tested positive to "HIV"…Do you then admit that testing "positive" is not a determining factor in AIDS?

    You are reading too much into what I said and jumping to wild assumptions. I said no such thing. Infection with HIV is the determining factor in AIDS. As for the database, I wouldn’t know anything about that as I had nothing to do with it when I was in. The right to privacy (I would guess) is what prohibits people from just checking up on the status of those turned away for HIV. However, studies have followed people with HIV. For example: Choa et. al. Other studies can be found here if you are truly interested in facts.


    You also need to be more specific than to use the word "stress." The type of stress one is experiencing can definitely influence the type of manifestation that will occur. For example, soldiers are under violent stress, which can be exhibited as violence when they return to their families.

    Leave the psychology to Seth or anyone else qualified to comment on it. It isn’t as simple as violent stress = violent result. The symptoms the soldiers experience can lead them to violence but so can financial stress which has lead to many cases of domestic violence. Other soldiers simply go into deep depression.

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  12. Have you ever heard of 'pseudocyesis' (or 'pseudopregnancy')? It is documented that women can manifest all the "symptoms" of being pregnant if their thoughts are focussed on the idea.

    Yes I have and if I recall correctly such events are extremely rare. HIV and AIDS are not. You are trying to apply something unrelated and rare to something different and common. You’re comparing apples and hamsters.


    HIV + individuals are under the stress of being told they will get sick and die within a few years…

    If you would read something other than the denialist BS you hold so dear without evidence of questioning, “my friend”, you would know that the first cases of AIDS were so interesting because the people in question were coming down with illnesses rarely ever seen in non-immunecompromised but had no known risk factors for it. KS doesn’t just appear world-wide in people who are only stressed out. Disseminated herpes doesn’t either. This is why these cases stood out. These people were not told “Boogity! You will come down with Kaposi sarcoma!” Many people today still find out that they are HIV+ for the first time only after having already experienced AIDS-related problems (ask Seth about his friend or look at Africa). And then you have the denialists who didn’t even believe in HIV. CasperSchmidt surely didn’t. He even wrote a deluded book about how it was all in the mind. Maggiore didn’t believe it. Why is she the one special person who magically developed disseminated herpes from stress? Where are the others? A large part of the US population has one or more herpes viruses latent in their bodies, be it HSV-1, HSV2, or chicken pox. Are they all just less stressed? Is it coincidence that Maggs died of symptoms which can only be attributed to severe immune suppression as would be predicted by her having an infection she didn’t believe in?

    Do yourself a favor; instead of thinking yourself so “Clever” that you must be right and literally thousands of virologists, immunologists ect… who actually have hands-on experience handling HIV are wrong or so stupid that they don’t know what you “know”, consider for a moment that perhaps the problem is simply that you don’t have enough education in this subject to know science from pseudoscience and have been duped. Occam’s Razor “my friend”.

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  13. Poodle, you said: "you would know that the first cases of AIDS were so interesting because the people in question were coming down with illnesses rarely ever seen in non-immunecompromised".

    As such, it would seem that you yourself have not yet read the original CDC MMWR report of June 5th, 1981, on the VERY first five cases.

    The report also mentions that TWO of the original five WERE NOT previously healthy. Only 3 of the five were previously healthy. The report ends by clearly stating, and I quote:

    "The diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia was confirmed for all 5 patients antemortem by closed or open lung biopsy. THE PATIENTS DID NOT KNOW EACH OTHER AND HAD NO KNOWN COMMON CONTACTS OR KNOWLEDGE OF SEXUAL PARTNERS WHO HAD SIMILAR ILLNESSES. TWO OF THE 5 REPORTED HAVING FREQUENT HOMOSEXUAL CONTACTS WITH VARIOUS PARTNERS. ALL 5 REPORTED USING INHALENT DRUGS AND 1 REPORTED PARENTERAL DRUG ABUSE."

    Hmmm, says I. No sexual partners in common, but the only commonalities are snorting who knows what drugs (probably crystal meth AND poppers as I was out in the gay scene at that time and crystal meth had just hit the scene a few months prior to these men's illnesses). One of them even reported slamming dope, again probably meth, as my own first boyfriend was doing at that time.

    That original MMWR report also includes an editorial note saying:

    "THE FACT THAT THESE PATIENTS WERE ALL HOMOSEXUALS SUGGESTS AN ASSOCIATION BETWEEN SOME ASPECT OF A "HOMOSEXUAL LIFESTYLE" OR disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population.

    No known sex contacts, all 5 were doing dope and we do not know how honest they were when queried about just how much or what dope they were using, and only 3 of the five were so called "previously healthy".

    The original report strongly suggests lifestyle factors, and you are right about Occam's Razor, ie; stress, drugs, and multiple std's treated with high dose antibiotics explain this these gay mens immune suppression much easier than some mysterious retrovirus that has taken 250 billion dollars to research and still has found no mechanism by which a retrovirus could cause immune suppression.

    Occam's razor, right back at you.

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  14. Michael Geiger
    A Case Study in AIDS Denialism.
    PoodleStomper, If you want to keep having fun I will keep posting. But I am not sure you want to waste your time. The entertainment value for the blog is great, but you may have something better to do. Like anything else but this.

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  15. Seth, Don't worry I am not planning on doing this too long. I agree it is in fact a waste of time.

    Mikey, look up the link I posted above (Choa et. al). Drugs or no drugs, the people with the declining T-cell counts were the ones with HIV while, drugs or no drugs, those who were HIV- did not. Studies such as this one have been around a while. I realize they put a crimp in the "Drugs-cause-AIDS" Duesbergian philosophy (which could by why denialists tend to ignore them) but perhaps you could open your mind to the possibility that like Kid, maybe, just maybe you aren't smarter than the thousands of researchers who not only know the basics of virology, but actually have hands on experience working with HIV. I know, giant conspiracy, new World Order, ect... Again, though; Occam's Razor.

    Something else to consider here (which you won't): if stress lead to AIDS symptoms (lets say KS or disseminated herpes) and drugs abuse can cause them and anal semen exposure (lets not leave the Perthers out) and of course oxidants (which we all have), where the hell are all these HIV- people displaying such symptoms? Why are diseases like KS and Diseseminated herpes so rare outside AIDS? I mean, hell! If all these different factors can all cause AIDS-like symptoms then every person in the world would be breaking out in internal, system-wide cold sores. But they aren't are they? Read the Choa paper. If you can understand it you may surprised to learn something.

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  16. Yo, Geiger, where is your response to me?
    I have refuted your IL~Logic in many different places on the web, yet you consistently run from the facts I present. Much the way Clark Baker also runs from everything that I show is wrong with his crazy, stupid ill~logic.
    Why are you afraid to deal with this straightforward?
    Geiger, you need to rest your 68 year old bones by the beach and enjoy the sun before you are forced to Hell with Christine Maggiore who is forced to watch her daughter, EJ, say over and over and over and over: "Mommy, why did you kill me? And mommy, who is the wrinkled, old fag with the bad dye job?" "Uhm, mommy?"
    JTD

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  17. Hi Poodle.

    You asked "where the hell are all these HIV- people displaying such symptoms?"

    The condition is called "Idiopathic CD4+ T-Lymphocytopenia -- Immunodeficiency without Evidence of HIV Infection". One of the studies on this from the NEJM is here at the following link.

    http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/328/6/380

    By the way, the Choa paper is interesting, but I have never claimed claimed that illicit drugs themselves cause CD4 or CD8 t-cell loss. I have always, as you well know, attributed it to intense stress, primarily in those abusing illicit drugs or who had taken lots of antibiotics for std's. You well know I have always considered stress itself, not drugs, to be the most important factor.

    The Choa paper, however is only looking at a very few factors that affect the human body, with many other factors going unmentioned and unexplored.

    As you well know how often I bring up intense stress, the study did not track any stress levels in conjunction with CD4/8 counts in negatives or positives, so I believe it left out the most important factor in all of this.

    Remember, that the varying and asundry presenting opportunistic diseases that become prevalent are affecting various systems of the body. Whatever is the weakest link will therefore be earliest effected. If drug abuse has weakened any bodily system, then that system will more likely display OI's affecting it.

    For those who have run themselves down by overabusing drugs, and then are subjected to high and/or chronic stress, it is not the drugs, but the effect of intense stress on the thymus gland that causes the initial jump in CD4 cell counts, followed by a drop in the counts as long as the intense stress continues. The weakest link breaks first. Hence, I would suggest that it is the drug use, such as inhaled drugs that weakening the lungs, that then allows lung problems such as PCP to occur. It is the effects of stress on the nervous system weakening the nervous system that allow herpes symptoms, such as KS to occur, and it is the prior use of antibiotics that allows fungal intestinal infections to then occur, and it is the effects of drugs on the liver that then exacerbate the liver problems such as what is diagnosed as hepatitis caused liver problems.

    And as you yourself have already said: "No one (including me) ever said that stress has no effect on health. It is known that it does and it is also known, at least in part, how it does. I never claimed otherwise", it seems very odd that you would expend so much time attempting to refute even your own self!


    So, poodle, I consider you fully refuted, even by you. You can now go have another drink, and come back and try again later when you are perhaps more sober and able to remember what you yourself have already stated.

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  18. Something else to consider here (which you won't): if stress lead to AIDS symptoms (lets say KS or disseminated herpes) and drugs abuse can cause them and anal semen exposure (lets not leave the Perthers out) and of course oxidants (which we all have), where the hell are all these HIV- people displaying such symptoms?

    Why not go the whole way? List all the things that HIV Denialists allege cause AIDS:- cocaine, marijuana, alcohol, stress, loneliness, antibiotics, cigarette smoke, syphilis, HHV-8, mycobacteria, semen, sunshine....

    Everybody should have AIDS.

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  19. Chris, you seem to have made a real breakthrough. Congratulations on your realization that the condition known as aids is indeed multifactorial and certainly not hiv positivity dependent, which would explain why aids is characterized by nearly 30 often common health conditions affecting various bodily systems in various people that many times vary so widely from one individual to the next. Their life experiences greatly vary and so does whatever part of their bodies would be the weakest link, whether those weakest links were environmentally caused, or genetically inate to the individuals themselves. Surely you know from simple physics that the weakest link in any chain or in any system, as well as the weakest bodily system in any individual always breaks down first.

    Obviously, with the intense and prolonged stress and grief that Christine Maggiore was subjected to for so long, her own body evidenced its own weakest links not as her heart which was strong and courageous, nor her liver which had not been toxed out, but as her lungs and nervous systems. And these weakest links of lungs and nervous system in Christine's own body are also common to many of us humans and were simply her own inborn genetic weakest links. Even with all that said and done, it took a lot for Christine's weakest links to break. No big mystery, Chris. No big mystery there at all.

    As such, I think one just needs to to ask the correct questions in order to arrive at the correct conclusions. After all, you are a computer programmer and the same logic holds true in solving any computer problems, does it not? One must always ask the correct question to arrive at the correct answer or solution? Don't you agree?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Oh, and speaking of the necessity of finding solutions to any problem via asking the correct question, perhaps the very first question we need to ask on our common issue of contention would be...

    Is HIV the cause of the various and many conditions now known as AIDS?

    ReplyDelete
  21. See Michael, this is when I love AIDS denialism the best. When you can cut the crap and long verbose silliness and get to the core… ‘ can a virus cause a syndrome’.
    It is the same stupid ass ignorant question that Thabo Mbeki asked while he killed 300,000 of his people and 30,000 babies…better known as Rethinking Genocide.
    No one says HIV causes the diseases of AIDS, idiot.
    HIV (not stress, nor drugs, not ARVs, nor semen, nor sunshine) causes the depletion of CD4 T-Helper cells. HIV does causes the death of immune cells. Why is that so hard to understand? The destruction of her immune system left Maggiore vulnerable to Herpes and Bacterial Pneumonia – or AIDS..
    And keep you reply brief or I will not post it.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Mikey,
    "The condition is called "Idiopathic CD4+ T-Lymphocytopenia -- Immunodeficiency without Evidence of HIV Infection". One of the studies on this from the NEJM is here at the following link"

    Yes, yes, Mikey I have indeed heard of this. However, as with the "pseudopregnancy" that Kid brought up, this is an extremely rare condition. Meanwhile people who are stressed, drugged out, parodied on television, have lost children, have seen their friends killed in Iraq, saw their families obliterated in the holocaust are legion. Your hypothesis doesn't add up. So I ask you where are the millions of stressed out, drugged out people who are HIV- with KS and desseminated herpes? Why were the appearences of KS that signalled the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in the US so surprising if they are a common feature in stressed people? Why is it that before AIDS KS was so rare?

    "Is HIV the cause of the various and many conditions now known as AIDS?

    No one ever said it was. See this is why it is useless trying to "debate" with you guys. You don't even understand the basics of HIV. Seth explains your error quite well above but if you haven't gotten it by now, after all your time as a denialist, I doubt you ever will.

    This is why people that only try to treat the OIs they experience from AIDS but not the HIV (for example Joe the AME moderator) are the equivalent of treating the tiredness and weakness associated with malaria by taking caffeine but never actually taking care of the parasite itself.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Discovery of the cause of Denialism… It must be hair coloring. As noted on a different thread, Celia Baby colors and it is not just her hair dresser who knows for sure. Now we realize thanks to JTD that Mikey colors. All of that toxic hair dye must cause brain damage and that is at the root, or follicle, of AIDS denial! Solved!!

    ReplyDelete
  24. Michael, how can you state above with such certainty that all five people did not have one single sexual contact in common? Good Lord, with all the drugs you are putting up their noses and all the rampant sex they were having (God, I miss all the fun), then these hideous, debauched souls either could not remember every "back door" they went thru, or they were so drugged up they could not pick their sex partners out of a line up. Also, I am SURE there were more than one lay per night! Not to mention the days, since all these losers probably had no job and just, like me, LIVED WITH THEIR MOTHERS!! Hell, the sluts probably did not even get the names of all their sexual contacts, much less a phone number!
    It would be really nice if you "Re~Thinkers" could just apply a teeny, tiny bit of logic to the crap you spew! But alas, if you did that, you would not be able to spew about 99% of the crap, and where would be the fun in that?
    JTD

    ReplyDelete
  25. Michael, how can you state above with such certainty that all five people did not have one single sexual contact in common?

    The real question is why would anybody expect that the first 5 identified to have been directly connected when it takes a median of 10 years between infection and progression to AIDS?

    By the time theses first 5 cases were identified thousands of people had been infected for several years.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Thanks for clarifying that Chris, but if they had gotten it at various intervals over the previous 10 years, why did it suddenly affect the original 5 all at the same time?

    And could you explain how even 10 years could be sufficient for such an infectious epidemic to have happened when Voohis 1990 found RNA believed to be due to HIV in the semen samples of only 1 in 25 hiv positives?

    If 97.5% of HIV positive folks don’t even have detectable HIV in their semen, how on earth is it transmitted sexually to thousands of others?



    See Van Voorhis (1990)

    http://www.rethinkingaids.com/portals/0/TheCD/T-Y/voo.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  27. "And could you explain how even 10 years could be sufficient for such an infectious epidemic to have happened when Voohis 1990 found RNA [sic] believed to be due to HIV in the semen samples of only 1 in 25 hiv positives?"

    Michael, why, oh why do denialists never read the papers they cite?

    Voorhis et al weren't looking for viral RNA (from infectious particles). They were looking proviral DNA, which occurs only in infected CD4+ cells. They estimated that they had only an average 343 of these cells per semen sample.

    Now run along back to Henry's blog and point this out. I would, except that Henry usually blocks my posts.

    ReplyDelete
  28. "And could you explain how even 10 years could be sufficient for such an infectious epidemic to have happened when Voohis 1990 found RNA believed to be due to HIV in the semen samples of only 1 in 25 hiv positives?"

    OMFG! If no one else responds to this soon I will have to! This is too hilarious! Mikey have you read the paper before saying that!?

    ReplyDelete
  29. Mikey,
    I wasn’t going to steal Chris’ thunder but I couldn’t resist so here you go:

    And could you explain how even 10 years could be sufficient for such an infectious epidemic to have happened when Voohis 1990 found RNA believed to be due to HIV in the semen samples of only 1 in 25 hiv positives?

    First off, this is incorrect. They were not looking for RNA. They were looking at the proviral sequence, which by definition is DNA. So they aren’t saying that there is so HIV there but rather few infected cells. They even make it a point to say:

    The prevalence of viral DNA in semen on a per cell basis is much lower than that found in PBMCs

    And go further to state that:

    The technique may be more applicable for [detecting HIV in semen samples] if…a reverse transcription step is added so that the HIV-1 RNA (the infectious form) in addition to the proviral DNA can be detected


    So strike one for you here, Mikey. Now moving on. If the prevalence of the integrated proviral form is variable (or for that matter less than 100%) that right there refutes the debialist mantra that HIV could simply be endogenous (since endogenous viral sequences are, by definition found in every nucleated cell of the organism). Thus, by accepting the results of this paper you have effectively accepted that the HIV sequence CANNOT be endogenous. I hope you won’t ever suggest it is in the future. Strike two.


    Third, the paper itself describes their false positive rate at 0% for the experiments they conducted. This refutes the idea that the HIV sequences are all simply an artefact of the PCR process. Strike three.

    At this point you are already out but I’ll let you bat again. 23/24 HIV+ samples had the virus detected in their PBMC by PCR and 19 of 24 detected by co-culture (remember they had a 0% false positive rate in this paper). This refutes the “HIV tests are non-specific” mantra as well. Strike 4, wanna try batting again? OK!

    Did you actually read the paper? Did you also notice that pages (especially the one with the tabulated data, page 191) is mysteriously missing from the paper on the rethinking AIDS site? Care to guess why? Look at the results and imagine what would happen if someone who was a denialist and (God forbid) had the knowledge to understand the paper read it. The conclusions would be immediately clear. But hey, thanks for bringing that paper up to us Mikey. Next time read and understand it first.

    ReplyDelete
  30. pubmed hiv semen

    Read. Understand.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Perhaps Michael can kindly ask the good people at Rethunking IADS to re-insert the missing page 591 back into the paper? Let us know what they say Michael!

    This paper has some vivid EMs of HIV in sperm cells.

    http://jcb.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/127/4/903.pdf

    ReplyDelete
  32. Michael,

    Is now a good time to bring up HIV shedding in semen as a result of stimulation of the prostate?:

    Smith DM et al. The prostate as a resevoir for HIV-1. AIDS 18: 1600-1602, 2004

    Oh no... thought not!

    ReplyDelete
  33. This is the part I love most.
    When the likes of Snout, Poodlestomper, Chris, and JTD show how uninformed AIDS denialists are. And it is not just the saps like Michael Geiger. I saw Duesberg himself stupid enough to argue in a room full of people that NO CANCERS ARE CAUSED BY VIRUSES….
    Stupid is as stupid says.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Michael, come on man, you don’t have to take this crap. Come on, show these orthodoxy conspiring money mongers they are full of it! Get your buddies Crowe, Carter, Bauer, Goofy and Daffy to help you out. If you run away and do not respond to all of these people I will never post a crazy comment from you again!

    ReplyDelete
  35. Awww, c'mon Seth! You should let him keep posting if for no other reason then to give us a good laugh. Who knows, maybe one day he will realize he is wrong.

    As a nifty aside while Mikey tries to come up with a response for his blunder, the hexameric form of HIV's capsid has been resolved using x-ray crystallography. It may lead to a new target for drugs that interfere with assembly. The link to an article covering the paper can be found here

    ReplyDelete
  36. Anyone wanna take bets on Geiger not saying anything further? He has proven time and again when the going gets tough, the idiots go onto another thread to apply their aggressive ignorance on others!
    It's sad. It's pathetic. It's psychotic. It's their way.
    JTD

    ReplyDelete
  37. So if we have so many X-Ray crystallographic images of various HIV proteins, does that mean that the X-ray is the latest frequency of EM radiation to be paid off by AIDS inc? Are -Rays now a pharma-shill? For shame!

    I am curious, however, JT whether Mikey will come back to comment. Mikey are you man enough to admit you are wrong?

    ReplyDelete
  38. What happened? My Geiger-Counter has gone silent?

    ReplyDelete
  39. Oh, since Mikey will probably be gone for a while I was looking back at his older posts on this thread. I've been officially cherry-picked. I guess I should feel honored. When he quoted me saying:

    "And as you yourself have already said: "No one (including me) ever said that stress has no effect on health. It is known that it does and it is also known, at least in part, how it does. I never claimed otherwise", it seems very odd that you would expend so much time attempting to refute even your own self!
    So, poodle, I consider you fully refuted, even by you. You can now go have another drink, and come back and try again later when you are perhaps more sober and able to remember what you yourself have already stated."

    he seems to have ommitted that the next part of that post in question was:

    "However, if denialists are going to claim that stress alone (or in conjunction with "holistic treatment") can cause a state of immune suppression that it can lead to disseminated herpes then the burden of proof is on you/them."

    Having been cherry-picked, I feel like an official anti-denialist. I feel so honored!

    ReplyDelete
  40. Seth said:

    "What happened? My Geiger-Counter has gone silent?"

    Seth, obviously Michael has followed my advice and is now tied up with trying to get past the "Truth Barrier" (Henry Bauer's habit of deleting anything factual that refutes his bullshit) at Henry's HIV Skeptic website.

    On which note, I currently have a comment sitting in "moderation" there as we speak. It challenges Henry's claim that HIV cannot be a sexually transmissible infection because the median age of incident HIV diagnoses in the US is among people in their 30s.

    I suspect Henry will delete it, as he does with nearly all posts from the Reality Based Community.

    Fortunately, I have also posted it on Reckless Endangerment, and readers can see it there as well.

    http://snoutworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/post-on-henrys-blog.html

    You can delete, Henry, but you can't hide.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I wondered if maybe this thread was enough to snap Mikey out of denial. So I wrote him this email (I have his address from when he wrote my University tattling me being part of the AIDS conspiracy - see My AIDS Denialism Fan Club post below)



    Michael


    Will you face the fact that you are wrong about HIV and its concentrations in semen? Your comment on my blog was just flat out wrong. You parroted back what HEAL and Rethinking AIDS have said in their misuse of the study you cite. Rethinking AIDS even removed a page from the article. Will you actually just leave that post hanging with several replies?

    AIDS Denialists always cry for a debate. Gary Null even called me today asking for a debate. And then when people who actually understand HIV and how it causes AIDS point out your faulty ideas with evidence you disappear?

    I know you are reading the responses. And yet, no reply?

    I will give it another day or two and then I plan to create a post on this denialist tactic… Bait and Ditch.

    Seth

    ReplyDelete
  42. Hi Seth!

    Thanks for reminding me, as I have been meaning to respond, but have been very busy this week as a key employee is on vacation. It is 10pm here and I am just now leaving work to go home. Hopefully I will be up to getting to it tonight or at least in the AM.

    Glad to hear Gary called you. That must have surprised you! Are you going to go on the show?

    I think it would be great if you found the courage to do so! Everyone deserves to hear all sides of the issues, including your perspectives.

    As for the response, I didn't quite parrot anything from HEAL or RA. One of Henry's readers brought up the Voorhis study in the comments in his most recent thread as being related to the recent Porn industry thing, so I just brought it up to poke Chris in the butt and give him something to blather about. Unfortunately, in the rush of my post, regretfully I misquoted the Voorhis work as not finding RNA when I meant DNA. Not a good thing to make such silly errors with the likes of Chris and Snout drooling at the chance to make hay out of it. They may be tipping the bottle, but they are still sharp enough to catch such errors from studies.

    As for your statement of "And then when people who actually understand HIV and how it causes AIDS point out your faulty ideas with evidence you disappear?" Don't make me laugh. Not even Gallo or Montagnier claim to understand how HIV could cause aids. You can bet your bottom dollar that the drunks from down-under do not know the first thing about it. And even poodle is usually too adled from whiskey and also does not have a clue. And poor J Todd, well, I only hope his meds and his former drug use has not fully addled his ability to count to 10. I like Todd, but he is a mess. Did you notice how near violently jealous he got when you and I communicated politely? He almost lost it. We better be careful not to get him too rattled!

    And surely you know that even if what has been said to be found by some researchers in semen is actually a retrovirus or is even contagious, or is even what is claimed to be HIV, well, as you must be aware, the most important aspect is whether or not whatever was found or believed to be found is proven to be the cause of aids, and considering no mechanism has ever been found for it to affect T cells, there is as yet no evidence with any high degree of probability for anything to be confidently called the cause of aids. But surely you must know that by now.

    Anyway, thanks for the reminder about the post, and I will get to it soon without baiting or ditching or even ditching the bitch and switching.

    And let me know if your going to go on Gary's show. I'll try to get on it myself and maybe we can do it together. You can point to me as a case of a "denialist" who just doesn't get it, and I will point to you as, ummm.... Well, I'll think of something!

    Thanks much,
    Michael

    ReplyDelete
  43. Unfortunately, in the rush of my post, regretfully I misquoted the Voorhis work as not finding RNA when I meant DNA. Not a good thing to make such silly errors with the likes of Chris and Snout drooling at the chance to make hay out of it.

    Hilarious! He meant to say DNA but yet still repeated the error of:

    If 97.5% of HIV positive folks don’t even have detectable HIV in their semen, how on earth is it transmitted sexually to thousands of others?

    So what? Is this a double error? Did you mean DNA when you said RNA and then also forgot to mention that they were only looking at proviral DNA when you said HIV was not detectable? If you knew they were only looking at the proviral DNA and not infectious particles (and it was in fact just a typo) why did you suggest that the results of this paper should somehow bring doubt to the sexual spread of HIV? Methinks the evidence points to Mikey having simply copied and pasted but not bothered to actually read the paper. This reminds me of a very poor excuse posted for not knowing that Montagnier did not just use cord blood cells on Aetiology. Sorry Mikey, but your BS excuse isn’t very credible!

    ReplyDelete
  44. Well Seth, You beat me to my own response.

    Meanwhile, Is no private letter betwixt us private? You have robbed me of a full public disclosure of my horrendous error in saying the study found no RNA when it found no DNA.

    But now that I have been mercilessly torn to shreds for it, I will hopefully be more careful in the future.

    Up above, someone named "IP" brought up a very strange Italian study: and said:
    "This paper has some vivid EMs of HIV in sperm cells."

    http://jcb.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/127/4/903.pdf

    The study says they had a cohort of 30 hiv positives, all viremic, but only half even produced sperm. Of the remaining half, evidence of what was believed to be HIV was only found in 8 of them.

    As if this is not weird enough, (only 8 of 30 hiv positives in this study showed any evidence of possible hiv in their sperm) they then go on to produce EM photos of supposed HIV. Yet only a couple of the so-called "very vivid" EM photos are of the same size and only a couple even look like other EM's of what classically is considered to be EM's of hiv!

    I myself don't find the EM photos so "vivid". I do find "IP" to have a vivid imagination, along with the imaginations of Seth, Chris, Snout, Poodle, and "BSE".

    Furthermore, finding RT, findings by PCR, finding P24, all of which are used to supposedly prove infection, does not mean one is finding live infectious exogenous HIV. Nor does it mean that even if one is finding hiv, that such HIV is causing the condition known as AIDS.

    After 25 years and more than 250 billion research dollars, is this the best you guys can come up with?

    ReplyDelete
  45. Please don't forget to let us know what happened to page 591. Is the website administered by someone related to Rose Mary Woods?

    ReplyDelete
  46. Mikey,
    But now that I have been mercilessly torn to shreds for it, I will hopefully be more careful in the future.

    And yet you have failed to do so in this very same post. I won’t “tear you to shreds” yet but will instead give you this following quote of yours:

    As if this is not weird enough, (only 8 of 30 hiv positives in this study showed any evidence of possible hiv in their sperm) they then go on to produce EM photos of supposed HIV.

    Re-read your own quote and then, for the love of God, actually read the paper you cited. I am giving you this chance to correct yourself before “tearing you to shreds”. I hope others will do the same. Tell me Mikey, after re-reading the paper can you tell us why your statement is incorrect?

    ReplyDelete
  47. Nor does it mean that even if one is finding hiv, that such HIV is causing the condition known as AIDS.


    Whooshhh. Goalpost shift.

    That's the beauty of never defining a consistent position. You can start off arguing that HIV isn't found in semen. When that gets too tough you can switch to arguing that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Eventually when nobody is looking you'll go back to arguing that HIV can't be found in semen.

    Anybody for another ride on the Denialist merry-go-round?

    ReplyDelete
  48. Michael
    No communication between me and an AIDS Denialist is ever private.

    It is the stuff that books are written from.

    Looks like you probably won’t be back for a while.

    I see no way you can contend with a thread that has the attention of Poodlestomper, Snout, Chris Nobel, IP, and JTD! Anyone of them has more brains in their left nostril than all of Rethinking AIDS has combined.

    But go ahead, make their day.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Mikey,
    Let me know when you have re-read the paper in it's entirety. Then tell me if you see why your last post is just as much a blunder as your Voohris one. Can you redeem yourself?

    ReplyDelete
  50. Here Seth. This should make their day....

    Last weeks highly publicized hiv breakout of 16 individuals since 2004 who make their living in the pornography business (where, by the way, the vast majority of the performers NEVER use condoms) has just been downgraded from 16 cases to only ONE ACTUAL CASE since 2004. And yet, the very same group had lots and lots of gono and chlamydia, but only a single hiv poz result since 2004...

    Turns out the other 15 cases were not in individuals who were actually even in the porn business but were simply walk-in customers of the testing center that does the tests for the porn industry:

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,526850,00.html

    Think about it. Thousands of performers screened once monthly who have had tens of thousands of acts of sex of every imaginable type, and who had lots of real stds, yet only one single case of hiv in these many thousands of very sexually active individuals in the last 5 years....

    Sorry to burst your bubbles Chris et al. So much for your sexual transmission theory. If any group should be stricken with multiple cases of hiv, it should be those in the porn industry.

    Unfortunately, your belief in sexual transmission of hiv does not resemble reality at all. Not in prostitutes, and not in this most verified sexually active multi-partner grouping of people.

    ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzz, snore, ZZZZZZzzzzzzzz

    Sexually transmitted? Your dreaming. Like I said, you all have very vivid imaginations when it comes to obsessing over your big old sex boogeyman of hiv.

    And, by the way, it would now eem that the best way to stay hiv negative while having lots of partners and enjoying unprotected sex with them is to get a job in porn....

    ReplyDelete
  51. And the LA Times has just reported, that since 2004, "Since then 1,357 porn performers have tested positive for gonorrhea and 15 for syphilis, according to county health data cited by the Los Angeles Times".

    But one single hiv poz test among them. And it was a false positive, just like the rest of them, says I.

    You can all go back to sleep now kiddies, and have sweet dreams instead of nightmares about sexual boogeymen.

    ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz Snore ZZZZzzzzzzzzzz

    ReplyDelete
  52. Mikey,
    if all porn actors are HIV- then they can have tens of thousands of sex acts with each other and they will never get infected.

    The adult film industry maintains a very efficient screening process to ensure that all actors remain HIV-.

    Are Denialists complete idiots. Sex alone won't make you HIV+ you have to have sex with someone who is HIV+.

    In 2004 Darren James managed to infect three actresses with HIV. He was only recently infected and had tested negative days before the film shoot.

    The exact chronology of events is perfectly clear. The three actresses all have HIV test results before and after the film shoot. The case proves beyond any possible doubt that HIV can and is sexually transmitted.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Don't make me laugh, Chris. Surely you are not that simple minded Chris, to think that those in the porn industry ONLY have sex with each other!

    These are NOT married and monogamous individuals, nor are they sexually shy. Of COURSE they have sex with countless people on and off the sets. Yet they still are NOT coming up positive for HIV on their monthly tests.

    Your little Darren James false positive case that was probably going off for herpes or hepatitis or who knows what is simply silly to say the least.

    ReplyDelete
  54. Mikey,
    I'd think it is pretty obvious to anyone with half a brain that the reason HIV transmission is low in the porn industry is the same reason that transmission by blood transfusion is so low; because the "actors" (and I use the term loosely), like blood samples are tested routinely.

    Now are you done rereading that paper? Have you realized why your conclusions are incorrect or do you stand by them?

    ReplyDelete
  55. "Your little Darren James false positive case that was probably going off for herpes or hepatitis or who knows what is simply silly to say the least."

    The three female performers were infected by an identical strain of HIV-1 as the index case, according to molecular analysis of the viral strains identified in this cluster.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16549978

    Your suggestion that these were all "probably going off for herpes or hepatitis or who knows what" displays your total ignorance of what HIV testing is, or how it works.

    We already knew this, Michael, but thanks for making it clear.

    What I don't understand is why you are so hell bent on making obviously stupid comments on a thread that is read largely by people who can instantly spot how clueless you are.

    Is your day incomplete unless you have had a thorough spanking, Mikey?

    ReplyDelete
  56. Since Mikey has been posting away here, I will assume he has already taken the time to reread the paper he commented on. So:

    Reasons why Mikey’s quoting of this paper does NOT support his denialist views.

    First, let us be clear that the paper was looking for HIV particles inside sperm cells, not free infectious virus in semen, meaning that the 8 out of 30 results he gives should not be “weird”. But is that all there was to the paper? No! The authors performed several experiments which are listed briefly below.

    1) Observation by microscopy (p. 908).
    Results: Sperm from AIDS patients showed HIV-like particles AND sperm from uninfected donors that were exposed to a stock HIV strain showed the same particles …BUT…their negative control sperm had none. The authors also report that over the years they have looked at hundreds of sperm samples from uninfected donors and found none with similar particles.

    2) RT-PCR for HIV sequences in the sperm (p. 910).
    Results: Sperm from AIDS patients were positive. Control sperm from uninfected donors were negative.

    3) Hybridization with either almost full length probe or smaller probes representing LTR, gag, and env (p910).
    Results: Sperm from AIDS patients were positive. Control sperm from uninfected donors were negative.

    4) Detection of p24 using monoclonal antibodies in fixed sperm (p. 908).
    Results: In 8/15 AIDS patients AND in sperm infected with stock HIV, p24 was present inside the sperm (remember they are not looking for free virus in the semen). The sperm of uninfected individuals did not show the presence of p24.

    And finally, does this paper reproduce the Voorhis results previously misquoted by Mikey? Yep! Voorhis was looking for proviral DNA in the semen. They found 1 example of such an occurance, indicating that integration of HIV in sperm chromosomes is a very rare phenomenon. Baccetti likewise found that while HIV RNA was present, DNA was not (p. 913).

    (Continued in next post due to length restriction)

    ReplyDelete
  57. (continued from previous post)

    A look at Mikey’s claims:

    … finding RT, findings by PCR, finding P24, all of which are used to supposedly prove infection, does not mean one is finding live infectious exogenous HIV.

    Exogenous? Actually, that actually IS confirmed (yet again) by this paper. If HIV were endogenous, ALL sperm would have come up positive for PCR (as endogenous retroviruses are a natural part of the chromosomes). This is also confirmed by the Van Voorhis paper. Had he read either paper he would know this.

    Does it mean they found live and infectious virus inside the sperm cells? Maybe and maybe not, but then the point of this paper was not to determine that but rather to determine whether HIV was capable of entering them. Remember they were looking inside the sperm, not just in the semen. Thus, whether HIV inside the sperm cells is infectious or not is not necessarily relevant to whether HIV can be transmitted sexually and was suggested by the authors as a topic for future research. Had he read the paper he would know this.

    Nor does it mean that even if one is finding hiv, that such HIV is causing the condition known as AIDS.
    With all of the goalpost moving, Mikey seems to be unaware that this paper was not intended to prove HIV causes AIDS. It was meant to investigate the interaction of HIV and sperm, nothing more. Had he read the paper you would know this.
    However, none of the negative controls (even the hundreds of samples observed over several years by the authors) ever showed any evidence of HIV, be it by microscopy, RT-PCR, p24 detection or hybridization. The only ones that came up positive were the ones from AIDS patients and the ones from uninfected donors incubated with a stock strain of HIV.

    Yet only a couple of the so-called "very vivid" EM photos are of the same size and only a couple even look like other EM's of what classically is considered to be EM's of hiv!

    This was covered on page 909 and 910 as being a result of the type of resin and embedding used. The control cells demonstrated the same issue. This is why controls are run. Had Mikey read the paper he would have known this.

    All in all this once again strongly suggests that Mikey either does not read the papers he comments on (save perhaps skimming the abstracts/introduction) or simply does not understand their content. But please feel free to continue Mikey.

    ReplyDelete
  58. These are NOT married and monogamous individuals, nor are they sexually shy. Of COURSE they have sex with countless people on and off the sets. Yet they still are NOT coming up positive for HIV on their monthly tests.


    Mikey, there is a difference between the fantasy world in films and reality. Of course these actresses have sex with boyfriends off the set. Most of these sexual contacts are also not infected with HIV. Again, just sex is not sufficient. You need to have sex with someone who is HIV positive.

    The only way that people can get infected with HIV while performing in porn films is if one of the actors is in the short window period between infection and detectable on PCR-DNA tests. Most of the actors who do test positive are detected and drop out of the industry.

    The Darren James case is an incontrovertible example of sexual transmission of HIV. There is simply no point trying to argue otherwise.

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