Over the past couple of months two AIDS Denialism articles were published in a journal called Medical Hypotheses. These papers surprised many of us because Medical Hypotheses was once a peer-reviewed medical journal that is printed by the world’s largest science publisher Elsevier. But it did not take much to notice that these papers were not peer reviewed.The article “Aids denialism at the ministry of health” by Marco Ruggiero (seen here at the gates of UC Berkeley) was received by Medical Hypotheses on June 3, 2009 and was accepted on June 3, 2009. Hmmm, now that was fast. And the article “HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective” by Peter H. Duesberg, Joshua M. Nicholson, David Rasnick, Christian Fiala, and Henry H. Bauer was received on June 9, 2009 and accepted on June 11, 2009. Obviously the Editor at least contemplated Duesberg’s article before accepting it. Just as obvious, neither paper underwent peer review.
Duesberg’s paper had actually been submitted to a legitimate journal called the Journal of AIDS and rejected after peer review. The filters of peer review work most of the time. But of course, being Denialists Duesberg and friends made the following claim in their Medical Hypotheses article…
“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).”
The AIDS Deniers were joyful because they once again circumvented peer review and managed to seep into a what could appear to be a scientific outlet. For instance author Henry Bauer took time away from searching for Monsters in the bog to write at his blog…
“A remarkable coup has just transpired in publishing serious questions about HIV/AIDS in a mainstream journal. A press release describes the article concerned, which is currently in press at Medical Hypotheses (though already available on-line to subscribers).”
And cheerleader David Crowe was sure to post at his website “July 8, 2009–AIDS Denialism at the Italian Ministry of Health? Six doctors from the University of Firenze (Florence) compile evidence that the Italian Ministry of Health doesn't really believe in the infectious AIDS theory in an article in ‘Medical Hypotheses’.”
As an author who publishes in Elsevier journals, I found it hard to believe that the company would so easily and repeatedly publish pseudoscience. As a tax payer, I was outraged that the State of Connecticut was purchasing a pseudoscience outlet for our state libraries. Librarians started receiving letters that included the following statement…
“Medical Hypotheses has become a tool for the legitimization of pseudoscientific movement with aims antithetical to the goal of public health goal. One such movement, AIDS denialism, questions the existence of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and/or its role in causing AIDS. The public health consequences of this movement have been dire, particularly in South Africa, where several hundred thousand people are estimated to have died because availability of treatments was delayed due to the influence of AIDS denialists. Medical Hypotheses, with its lack of peer review and careful editorial oversight, has published numerous articles advancing AIDS denialism, allowing individual denialists, none of whom has ever published original research on HIV, to claim legitimacy as HIV researchers because their work has, after all, appeared in a “scientific” journal. In the most recent of these articles, two prominent denialists, David Rasnick and Peter Duesberg, along with several co-authors, claim ludicrously that HIV and AIDS have had no significant effect on public health in Africa and that antiviral medication has had no effect on AIDS mortality in North America and Europe. The authors make these claims by selectively quoting and misquoting the legitimate scientific literature in a manner that even the most cursory editorial oversight could not allow. It appears that the false claims in this paper were not vetted by the editor of Medical Hypotheses and that the journal, by publishing this and similar papers, has contributed significantly to the spread of medical misinformation and loss of life and wellbeing.”
But in the words of Henry Bauer, “a remarkable coup has just transpired”. The papers are gone. They have vanished. They are no more.
Ruggiero’s and Duesberg’s articles no longer exist at the Medical Hypotheses website. The articles that once were are no more. Oh sure, there are plenty of copies floating around. I know I have mine. And the abstract summaries have not yet been removed from the major indexing services, although that should hopefully happen soon.
This is yet another case where AIDS Denialists can fool some of the people some of the time, even journal editors. But once exposed for who and what they are, the damage caused by Denialists can stop and even be undone.
UPDATE: Examining Elsevier’s policies on removing articles from electronic data bases, which is the case for Duesberg and Ruggiero’s paper, it is apparent that the publisher found the articles to pose a threat to public health. A just finding...
Articles are removed when…
“the identification of false or inaccurate data that, if acted upon,
would pose a serious health risk (See Article removal or replacement).”
“In an extremely limited number of cases, it may unfortunately be necessary
to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where
the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others' legal rights, or
where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the
subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose
a serious health risk.
In these circumstances, while the metadata (title and authors) will be
retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating that the
article has been removed for legal reasons.”
I'm waiting for the inevitable torrent of denialist claims of censorship/conspiracy. "Big Pharma and AIDS inc. are censoring us! *whaaaaa*".
ReplyDeleteOf course you doofus. The folks at Medical Hypothesis were no doubt entertained with a visit from AIDS mafia enforcers and were shown a picture of a bag of cement, a tub and a boat just as a reminder.
ReplyDeletePoodlestomper…you are of course right.
ReplyDeleteWhen Medical Hypotheses accepted their papers they said it was a triumph for science. Watch how suddenly Elsevier ends up in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. They will claim that the Orthodoxy conspired to silence them. But they will not be silenced because the papers will now appear on Henry Bauer’s blog, where all 11 readers will have access. What a joke! I am just glad that Elsevier pulled the crap offline. I can tell you this is very rare. In 20 years of publishing peer reviewed journal I have not seen it. The journal I now edit, AIDS and Behavior, has never done it.
Those papers were really bumming me out because I was not going to submit my work to Elsevier journals in protest. I review for them a lot and I was about to stop that too. Frankly they have some of my best outlets for our work. So I am personally elated that they are off my pseudoscience boycott list.
I disagree with you both.
ReplyDeleteI think Duesberg, Bauer and their co-authors pulled their own paper after it was made blindingly clear that they:
1. made several fatal and embarrassingly stupid errors with their epidemiological "analysis",
2.were found guilty of lying about a paper about the value of antiretroviral treatment they cited (May et al), and
3. failed to declare a financial conflict of interest (Rasnick's pecuniary relationship to the discredited Rath foundation), and then
4. whined about being refused publication for an obviously inept and self serving piece of narcissistic drivel.
see: ttp://snoutworld.blogspot.com/2009/07/coming-aids-denialist-civil-war-henry.html and especially the later part of the comments thread.
Any one of these gross failings would be a scandal for any publisher of a supposed "scientific paper" and its authors. Duesberg, Bauer and the others want to bury it.
Thing is, they're fucked.
The paper has already been circulating through cyberspace for weeks, and will inevitably be posted on the net in all its full glory soon, copyright notwithstanding. Every man and his dog has a copy now. The nature of the net is that there is no way of stopping it now.
Duesberg is already fatally wounded. His fellow AIDS denialists, spearheaded by Anthony Brink, have already seen to that.
Snout
ReplyDeleteInteresting hypothesis.
A couple months ago you may have published it Medical Hypotheses, although not likely now.
The points you make are excellent.
Still, Duesberg and Rasnick are so narcissistic I doubt they would pull anything that is not in their pants. And that paper was clearly the shining light of Bauer’s publication record. I doubt he would ever give it up willingly. It would mean going back to the Journal of Scientific Exploration and the Physicians and Surgeons rag.
But your point about the papers being out there is true. I myself am writing an article now on the harms of AIDS Denialism and I am citing both. I am not sure how to cite them now; ‘in press- retracted’?; ‘Once to be published, but now not’?; ‘Published and Unprublished manuscript’?; Duesberg et al. (in press, NOT!). I will be seeking some guidance on this.
There are other lingering questions. Such as copyright. Elsevier owns those papers as authors transfer copyright to the publisher. I do not believe the transfer is contingent on actually publishing and not retracting. Could be that if Ruggiero and Duesberg rehash and resubmit their papers they will be plagiarizing. They may have to ask David Crowe to help seeing as he has already committed copyright infringement when he pirated my book on FaceBook.
Perhaps you'll recall where this is from.
ReplyDelete"Dr. Duesberg is not a liar, did not engage in fraud, did not alter quotations from scientific literature and did not make false representations from published papers. "
Since it misquoted and misrepresented the Palella NEJM paper (among other things), Duesberg's Indian Biosciences journal paper from 2003 should be withdrawn, too.
The Rethinking AIDS Conference 2009 is going to be a hoot.
ReplyDeleteAccording to the program, the Welcome and Introduction will be by David Crowe, who fellow denialist Anthony Brink described today on AIDS Myth Exposed as "...is a compulsive serial liar" who "could be arrested by the police and taken away in hand-cuffs at any time".
http://forums.aidsmythexposed.com/main-forum/5783-rethinking-rethinking-aids-18.html#post34931
Next we have Peter Duesberg presenting his celebrated and extremely popular landmark paper, "HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS – A new perspective". That'll be good.
Later, Marco Ruggiero takes on the Italian health bureaucracy and the Vatican with his brilliant paper “Aids denialism at the ministry of health”. I wonder if anyone's told him yet that denialists hate being called... umm... "denialists"?
I gather Henry's down at his travel agent this very moment, seeing if he can change his flight bookings for early November from San Francisco to Inverness. I gather there's a very nice quiet little guesthouse in Fort Augustus with lovely lake views...
From the Medical Hypotheses website: "Medical Hypotheses takes a deliberately different approach to review: the editor sees his role as a 'chooser', not a 'changer', choosing to publish what are judged to be the best papers from those submitted. The Editor sometimes uses external referees to inform his opinion on a paper, but their role is as an information source and the Editor's choice is final. The papers chosen may contain radical ideas, but may be judged acceptable so long as they are coherent and clearly expressed. The authors' responsibility for the integrity, precision and accuracy of their work is paramount. "
ReplyDeleteNow David. With your BS degrees, never having published a peer reviewed article, and peer review conspiracy theory... Is this really a sandbox you want to play in?
ReplyDeleteElsevier found the papers bad enough to pull. Unlike websites and blogs they are accountable.
I guess this means I'll never get the pleasure of reading the rejection letter that Duesberg got from JAIDS.
ReplyDeleteI wrote to Duesberg asking for the letter which was stated to be available upon request and received this reply.
We will send you the JAIDS review as soon as our paper is published in Med Hypotheses.
Any bets on where these articles will turn up next?
ReplyDeleteJournal of Scientific Exploration?
Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons?
Gary Null's weekly newsletter?
whale.to?
How low can they go in the peer review limbo?
Chris... I think Elsevier owns copyright... So any republication will violate copyright. Yes, Peter/Marco could end up in court for publishing the paper elsewhere... Both ironic and cool..
ReplyDeleteDuesberg/Bauer/Rasnick/Crowe...Pull My Finger!!
ReplyDeleteJTD
Protests by AIDS scientists triggered the retraction of the Ruggiero and Duesberg papers. The details of how we succeeded in achieving this don't matter right now. Suffice it to say that justice was done and the integrity of the publication process was uphold, albeit belatedly. The AIDS denialists will never again be able to publish a paper in Medical Hypotheses.
ReplyDeleteJohn P. Moore
John Pee Moore chief cement mixer emerges from his HIV rat hole.
ReplyDeleteWe should expect more personal attacks. AIDS Denialists get pretty pissed when there is indisputable evidence that their leaders are pseudoscientists and nut cases. This is what happens when you cannot face reality and your bubble is threatened. It must be frightening with the death of Maggiore, ousting of Mbeki/Manto, snake pit infighting, embarrassments of Bauer, and now Medical Hypotheses retractions. Don’t expect the AIDS Deniers to go away, but at least the damage they are inflicting is being contained.
ReplyDeleteHow does a journal with a "mission statement" such as what guides Medical Hypotheses, even make it into the index of Pubmed or other databases? These databases are supposed to have scientific standards, I can't imagine Medical Hypotheses would reach those, so why is it indexed in the first place? When you pull articles out of Pubmed you have a good amount of confidence in what you read, but this type of journal undermines that.
ReplyDeleteChris asked:
ReplyDeleteAny bets on where these articles will turn up next?"
My money's on whale.to. It is, after all, the Gold Standard Website for nutcases, cranks and conspiracy theorists. I doubt that even JPandS would want to touch Duesenbauer's drivel after Medical Hypotheses had pulled the plug on it.
Whale.to would be an appropriate resting place for it. It could molder away rubbing shoulders with such gems as:
David Icke's urgent warnings about the activities of the Illuminati
http://www.whale.to/b/wilder1.html
David Crowe's "HIV AIDS - science or religion?"
http://www.whale.to/a/crowe.html
Stefan Lanka ranting about how virology, and indeed all of academic medicine is the result of a fiendish genocidal plot by the Vatican
http://www.whale.to/a/lanka_h.html
and (I kid you not) the complete text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
http://www.whale.to/b/protocols.html
Yep, I reckon "Out of Touch with South African AIDS" has found itself a new resting place.
Chris and Snout…
ReplyDeleteThe unpublished articles will surely end up in the cesspool of denialism online. Why not? And who cares? Getting them out of what should be a scientific literature is what was important.
Lisa, Medical Hypotheses is a non-peer reviewed journal under its current Editor Bruce G Charlton. There is an interesting post at Leaves a Mark [http://leavesamark.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/medical-hypotheses/] regarding the AIDS Denialist articles in Medical Hypotheses. Editor Charlton comments…
“I believe that peer review has serious limitations, and that there should also be editorially reviewed journals as an alternative. Editorial review was, in fact, the normal mode of academic publishing until just a few decades ago (i.e. during the ‘golden age’ of science).”
It is up to Elsevier to figure out if Medical Hypotheses will go on being one man’s personal unadvised choice of articles or if they will appoint a new Editor who ‘believes in’ peer review. Realize that although Medical Hypotheses has been around almost as long as Peter Duesberg, it is in its 73rd year, it has only been an Elsevier publication since 2002. It has lots of downloads according to the Editor, so its utilization is a plus for the company. But let’s face it, the Denialism articles had lots of downloads and no one in their right mind will say these papers have helped the bottom line of the journal.
As for PubMed, the National Library of Medicine adopts journals for indexing based on their current status and stature. But thank God, unlike Tenure and the National Academy of Science, membership is not permanent. You can bet they are re-examining Medical Hypotheses.
I personally feel there is a place for a journal like Medical Hypotheses and that Charlton’s case for having it non-peer reviewed is not unreasonable. I have more trouble with outlets that are 'sometimes peer reviewed'. I believe that Editor Charlton has it wrong. He is thinking old school, pre-Internet. He seems to naively think that only scientists access scientific journals. A scientist who reads Medical Hypotheses understands its role and its content. Unfortunately, publishing AIDS Denial gives it the false impression of science and is exploited by Deniers to legitimize their pseudoscience. That is why the Ruggiero and Duesberg articles posed a threat to public health and that is why they are gone.
That's the key point. Duesberg and Ruggiero are not interested in the scientific process. They were unmistakably targeting lay-audiences with their "scientific" articles in Medical Hypotheses.
ReplyDeleteI am just curious to see how low Duesberg will stoop to reach his lay-audience following.
He's already appearing on the popular radio shows of homeopath Robert Scott Bell and quack Gary Null.
Like Seth, I think there's a place for a journal like Medical Hypotheses if it's done properly. But the choice isn't between Charlton and peer review, it's between Charlton and any kind of review.
ReplyDeleteCharlton praises "editorial review," but he doesn't even do editorial review. When you accept an article the same day it's submitted, there's no review happening at all. When you accept an article with lots of obvious errors, you haven't checked a damn thing. When the last time you published data was in the early 1990s, and in a very specialized area, you might not have the "broad expertise" needed to review articles in fields ranging from immunology to belly-button-lintology.
Medical Hypotheses needs a new editor-in-chief, lots of new specialist editor-reviewers, and a new editorial review policy.
My sense is that some important changes will soon take place at Medical Hypotheses to prevent future abuse by AIDS denialists and other pseudoscientists. The likes of Duesberg are desperate to get their offensive, unscientific drivel published in the "peer-reviewed" (sic) literature, and listed on PubMed, because that helps them fool the lay public into believing that what they say has some scientific credibility ("it's in a peer-reviewed journal, it must be plausible"). But the peer-reviewed literature is the territory of real scientists who publish genuine research. Because that territory must be protected, my colleagues and I acted decisively and effectively on this issue.
ReplyDeleteAIDS denialist articles have the same stature as ones alleging the moon landings were hoaxes, that President Obama is not an American, that the Holocaust never happened, that 9/11 was a CIA/Mossad conspiracy, that JFK had Marilyn Monroe killed, that mercury/vaccines cause autism, etc, etc. There is no place in the professional, peer-reviewed literature for such nonsense. Trash like that should be limited to the fringes of the internet.
It is always good to hammer the AIDS denialists flat when they stick their heads out from under the rocks. Having a paper officially retracted is even more embarrassing than having it rejected in the first place (at least it would be for a real scientist who behaves according to the accepted professional standards).
Finally, the saga of the Duesberg paper is not yet over. There are still issues that are now being acted on by the scientific community.
Mr. Moore, I love the comment "Having a paper officially retracted is even more embarrassing than having it rejected in the first place..."
ReplyDeleteEspecially since Janine Roberts headed up those "scientists" (pauses of belly~laugh) that tried to get the Gallo papers retracted and they experienced an epic FAIL!!
Can anyone say Karma?
JTD
"Protests by AIDS scientists triggered the retraction of the Ruggiero and Duesberg papers. The details of how we succeeded in achieving this don't matter right now. Suffice it to say that justice was done and the integrity of the publication process was uphold, albeit belatedly. The AIDS denialists will never again be able to publish a paper in Medical Hypotheses.
ReplyDeleteJohn P. Moore"
Lol!!! "Protests" of an undisclosed nature by undisclosed "AIDS scientists" forced a jounal to retract papers. Moore doesn't even pretend it was because of those papers' scientific content, and he is proud of that fact.
If you don't want to call it censorship, what the hell then would you call a retraction of already accepted papers in those circumstances? Not a single real reason has been given other than someone "leaned" on Elsevier. Then you bozos turn around in the darkness Moore is keeping you in, supposedly because you're not important enough to inform poperly, and pretend it's because of the quality of he scholarship. . . Gimme a Break!
Querido Hank:
ReplyDeleteLet me answer your question with regard to the Ruggiero et al. article. This article did not deny that HIV causes AIDS. It argued that the Italian Ministry of Health was behaving as though it believes that HIV is not the "sole cause" of AIDS. The authors charged that:
1) The ministry admits that AIDS can occur in HIV-free patients;
2) Italy does not have a national registry of new HIV cases;
3) The ministry of health regards AIDS as of lesser importance than many infectious diseases such as cholera, influenza, measles, etc.;
4) 25% of cases of pediatric AIDS in Italy are not due to vertical transmission
All four of those claims are completely false.
The paper is nothing but an attempt to undermine the credibility of an important public health organization on the basis of false claims. Knowing this, the journal has no choice but to retract the paper, lest it damage public health efforts and expose itself to legal action.
Abrazos,
Fulano de Tal
It is not, of course, appropriate to enter into a discussion with an AIDS denialist such as "Hank", but it was precisely BECAUSE of the two papers' contents (which cannot be legitimately described as "scientific") that they were retracted. And of course my colleagues and I are proud that our efforts to clean up the scientific literature were successful. By doing what we did, we reduced the chances of yet more people dying as a result of their reading misinformation from the AIDS denialists.
ReplyDeleteThe full story will be posted elsewhere at a time of our choosing.
By the way, jtdeshong is quite right: the absurd efforts of Janine Roberts et al. to have Bob Gallo's outstanding 1984 Science papers retracted does indeed make a laughable contrast to ours'. The difference, of course, is that Gallo's papers were critically important, and soundly based, contributions to the peer-reviewed literature, and those by Duesberg et al. and Ruggiero et al. were not. And when I read of the cat-fights within the AIDS denialist camp about just who had sufficient "stature" to sign Roberts' letter of protest, I had an outbreak of "ROFL". NONE of the AIDS denialists has any professional stature! Moreover, as the Roberts' protest letter had no merit, it's completely irrelevant which among them signed on anyway! The entire process was yet another example of the AIDS denialists' delusional belief that they should be taken seriously in professional circles. They are not, and never will be.
John Moore
The critical question that Hank raises is whether AIDS Denialists should be censored?
ReplyDeleteAIDS Deniers are always complaining that they are censored. They are silenced because they speak the truth. There is a conspiracy against them. People like Duesberg and Rasnick are censored by scientific orthodoxy.
Well, it is pretty obvious they are censored from scientific literature because they are not scientists. Why would they be published in the scientific literature when what they are doing is propagating myths?
Let them put their crap in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, right next to the latest on Murky Monsters of Scottish Watters.
Censor AIDS Denialists?
Absolutely.
Hank says: "If you don't want to call it censorship, what the hell then would you call a retraction of already accepted papers in those circumstances?"
ReplyDeleteIt is called a Correction.
But there IS a conspiracy Seth!! The papers were accepted, and then Moore and undisclosed "AIDS Scientists" leaned on Elsevier. That's a conspiracy, Seth. The Old Irish Way.
ReplyDeleteDuesberg was personally attacked by Chigwedere et al and denied right of response by the direct intervention of his most vehement attackers That's the only thing you need to know. And John Moore proudly announces that they didn't even address the arguments. They leaned Seth, they leaned, ok. It was a case of making Elsevier an offer they couldn't refuse. It was the Sicilian Boys, it was. Not scientists.
If you want to censor a man, fine. But attacking him at the same time is unsportsmanlike. Are you also one of those who take sadistic pleasure in watching the police tase handcuffed individuals suspected of nothing but having a dark skin color and not showing enough deference to the man in the uniform with the gun? I bet you are. I bet there's Blackwater posters on your toilet door
I found this blog by Googling ‘Nessies’.
ReplyDeleteI am researching the history of Loch Ness. I was somewhat surprised to find such negative and emotionally charged attacks against professor Henry Bauer. Professor Bauer is a true expert and if you bothered to read his work you might just show him a bit more respect. It is true that Nessies may no long exist in Loch Ness. But it is also true that they were there less than 50 years ago. They were likely friendly herbivores who were more shy than threatening. They may have actually been mammals.
Do not be so arrogant as to think you know everything about AIDS and Paleontology.
Hank, the trouble with you AIDS Deniers is that you think you are legitimate and have a right to be heard. What makes you think Duesberg should have a right to respond to scientsists in a scientific journal? That is like saying Becky Culshaw had a right to tenure. Or that Henry Bauer has the right to the respect of his colleagues. Duesberg is not entitled to defend the myths he spreads. Let’s see Duesberg, Rasnick, Mullis or anyone produce some data to support their crazy claims. Lets’ see Bauer answer the numerous comments that are sent to his crap-blog but are never posted (speaking of censorship, see http://snoutworld.blogspot.com/). AIDS Deniers are exactly like Holocaust Deniers. You think you have a right to be heard because the voices in your heads tell you so.
ReplyDeleteNot surprisingly, "Hank" is of course quite wrong. There were no Sicilian-style threats of violence/extortion made to Elsevier. Tactics such as those are the province of some of the AIDS denialists, not our side. All we had to do was to bring the problem to the attention of responsible, professional individuals within the organization, and appropriate actions were taken. As in all institutions, errors are made at low levels that can be repaired by those with more seniority and better judgement. Allowing AIDS denialists space in an Elsevier journal was clearly a mistake. It will never happen again.
ReplyDeleteThe AIDS denialists do NOT have a right to disseminate their views in the scientific literature. Indeed, expressing views anywhere that have no scientific basis but that kill people is an abuse of the privilege of free speech. Duesberg has no right of response, because he has no response that is right.
Dear whoever claims to know that there were no Sicilian-style tactics used by undisclosed
ReplyDelete"AIDS Scientists".
You are ANONYMOUS! Do you get it? Your Comment is written in a thick Italian Accent. It's wearing cloak, dagger, and a fake moustache. It'll probably self-destruct if I attempt to print it.
You guys are TOO MUCH!
Hank, you are a hypocrite.
ReplyDeleteI bet you think it was some conspiracy that Janine Roberts et. al. were unsuccessful when they tried to get SCIENCE to retract 25 year old Gallo papers.
It was very, very funny that they tried, but even more pathetic that they, well, tried!!
Also, Hank, would it be more "sportmanlike" if we dropped Duesberg et al off on a deserted island and then hunted them down with elephant guns? Yeah, probably not. But don't you think the world would be a better place AFTER the hunt was over? Yeah, me too!
JTD
Hank writes:But there IS a conspiracy Seth!! The papers were accepted, and then Moore and undisclosed "AIDS Scientists" leaned on Elsevier.
ReplyDeleteThe papers were not accepted on the basis of integrity, precision and accuracy. In fact, if the editor had bothered to read the ART Cohort Collaboration paper cited by Duesberg he would have noted a distinct lack of all three in Duesberg's writings.
The papers were not accepted for their alleged scientific content. They were not peer reviewed.
They have been peer reviewed now and have been retracted.
I would also suggest that the foray into Medical Hypotheses represents a concerted effort by HIV Denialists to get there message into 'scientific' journals while bypassing peer-review. Is it a coincidence that two papers got through to 'in press' at the same time? I don't think so. If you want a conspiracy then you don't have to go further than this.
Am I the only one wondering whether Charles is being serious or sarcastic?
ReplyDeleteChris Noble,
ReplyDeleteYou still don't get it, do you? If there were a problem with a single sentence or reference, such as the ART collaboration, it could have been fixed with a stroke of a pen.
It is not central to the paper. Central to the paper is the laughable "scholarship" of Chigwedere et al, relying on assumption upon assumption upon model upon model. If you want to talk about "libel", that paper is a political hit piece on Mbeki et al. It's an opinion piece not science.
Nobody has even attempted to touch the Duesberg paper's central claim that there is no basis in the actual statistics for Chigwedere's fanciful surmises.
I repeat: Duesberg's paper has been retracted because of unspecified objections by unspecified "AIDS scientists", once more robbing Duesberg of any means of defending or correcting himself before it is too late. (That's not to say the fix isn't in, and that it was too late the minute the secret hand sign was exchanged between the various operatives). At this point you don't even know if the ART reference was an issue. Nobody knows apart from the upper echelon of the South African Mafia and a few cronies.
Get it now?
Oh Hank, I think we get it.
ReplyDeleteAs one of those scientists who ‘blew the whistle’ to Elsevier, every line in that crap paper was a sham.
You should have stuck with hunting Nessies. Your mistake was trusting David Crowe and believing that you could actually masquerade as an epidemiologist.
You, Peter and Lucifer, I mean Rasnick, know nothing about sexually transmitted infections and epidemiology. Not one thing.
Take this statement Duesberg made in 2000:
“The seasonal poliomyelitis epidemics from the days prior to the polio vaccine, and the ever new, seasonal flu epidemics are specific modern examples of viral epidemics. All of these viral and microbial epidemics have the following in common: (i) They rise exponentially and then decline within weeks or months as originally described by William Farr in the early 19th century…The epidemics spread randomly ("heterosexually" in the words of AIDS researchers) in the population.”
What does any of that have to do with HSV, HPV, Syphilis, or HIV? Who ever said heterosexual transmission of HIV was the same as 'spread randomly'?
Absolute nonsense.
Like when Joe Newton asked you about sexual networks and how behavior within and between networks accounts for what you found so perplexing in your flawed logic. Remember, you became frustrated because you had never heard of a sexual network.
Or when that undergraduate student in Roanoke asked you why you had not compared the spread of HIV to HSV rather than bacterial infections.
You were clueless then and you are clueless now.
It is a classic tactic of denialism to refute the obvious. That is what you are doing when you say “there is no basis in the actual statistics for Chigwedere's fanciful surmises.”
No basis when you are conspiracy theorist who will not trust the WHO and UNAIDS statistics that the Harvard scientists cite. No basis if you ignore the data from the South African Department of Health and the National HIV Seroprevalence Surveys conducted by the Human Sciences Research Council, which they also cite.
Why not post those JAIDS reviews that you said would be available? I requested them from JAIDS and they felt you should release them if you like. Why not post the reviews on your blog? Lets see the basis for rejecting the paper. Let the world see the flaws of peer review.
Don’t anyone hold your breath.
Mr. Poodlestomper
ReplyDeleteWhat makes you think I am being sarcastic?
Dr. Bauer is a real scientist, willing to push the envelope. I am not familiar with his writings on AIDS, but I can assure you that what he says is true. He has stood up to scrutiny by studying scientific phenomenon that others do not have the guts to pursue. Name another real scientist who has scoured the Great Glen in search of Nessie. He knows the 263 thousand million cubic feet of Loch Ness water better than any other living bipedal creature. He is right up there with the Great Robert Rines and Tim Dinsdale. It is his deep understanding of the scientific method that assures me that he knows what he is talking about on all matters of science. Stop your foolishness and listen to him.
Dear Charles
ReplyDeleteThank you for your kind words. I have never met someone, well at least not under the age of 107, who took interest in me. I feel like you really understand me. Why don’t we meet, I could tell you all about Nessies…what we wear, our favorite legumes, I can even show you pictures from Bauerpalooza. That’s right, we have an annual Bauer bash every time he comes to visit. Oh man… he’d be so mad if he knew! Anyways, a little more about me, I’m about 7’11”, a little on the heavy side, and green…but I prefer to consider myself chartreuse!
In the meantime, please don't refer to Bauer's work on me...as you can tell based on his most recent hot mess, he doesn't really have his shit together. In all seriousness, he devotes his whole being to making up garbage about HIV not existing and then co authors a paper that cleary states HIV exists...WHAT A SELLOUT! May be Duesburg "leaned" on him. Speaking of whom, Duesburg has sunk to coauthoring with Bauer?!?!...whose next Geiger, SadunKal, Leung, Nessie (yeah right, Nessie's no sellout!) Lastly, did I say paper? Let me be more specific, toilet paper.
Nessie
Hank,
ReplyDeleteThere wasn't a problem with "a single sentence or reference". Aside from the gross misrepresentation of the ART collaboration paper, Out of touch with South African AIDS was nonsense from start to finish.
It claimed "No evidence for huge losses of South African lives from HIV" while reported annual deaths increased between 1997 and 2006 from 317,000 to 607,000 with the largest increases among young women and men, and infants under 5. It tried to claim a low rate of notifications of HIV deaths while ignoring Stats SA's clear statement that HIV deaths are mostly notified according to the terminal opportunistic disease, not the underlying HIV infection.
It tried to argue that substantial HIV related excess deaths are incompatible with a rising total population, ignoring the fact that Ugandan women average seven live births each, and that more than half of Ugandans alive today were born after 1994.
It tried to claim that a fortyfold rise in antenatal seroprevalence from 0.7% to 30% over 15 years was actually "stable" seroprevalence consistent with a perinatally transmitted passenger virus. It failed to distinguish seroprevalence among antenatal attenders from that of the population as a whole.
It couldn't even get Chigedwere's conclusions right - it was 330,000 deaths in total between 2000 and 2005, not "per year".
And please can you guys learn the difference between prevalence and incidence (see the legend of fig 2)?
Hank, the paper was a mess - inept, self-serving and utterly wrong. It is a classic of denialism, whose sole purpose was to deny the reality of a recent avoidable public health catastrophe. It doesn't need a "stroke of the pen", it needs a shredder.
I second Seth's request to see the rejection letter from JAIDS.
ReplyDeleteWhy the secrecy?
Duesberg et al wrote that it was available upon request.
Why won't Duesberg show us the rejection letter?
I third that request.
ReplyDeleteHank is claiming:
" Duesberg's paper has been retracted because of unspecified objections by unspecified "AIDS scientists", once more robbing Duesberg of any means of defending or correcting himself before it is too late."
What bullshit. I'm not an AIDS scientist, or indeed any sort of scientist, but Out of touch with South African AIDS was obviously dishonest self-serving crap.
Duesberg, Bauer, Rasnick, Fiala and some kid wrote a garbage paper. They submitted it for peer review. It was rejected.
They ignored that rejection and tried a second time to get it published by bypassing peer review.
Now they're whining, "But nobody told us that our paper was nothing more than contemptible drivel. Waaah! Not our fault."
They concluded the paper:
"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)" (bold added).
Well, Pete, Henry, Chris and Dave, we're requesting. Put up or shut up.
Charles,
ReplyDelete"What makes you think I am being sarcastic? Dr. Bauer is a real scientist, willing to push the envelope...It is his deep understanding of the scientific method that assures me that he knows what he is talking about on all matters of science. Stop your foolishness and listen to him."
Now I'm even more confused. I still can't tell if this is serious or sarcasm.
It would also be interesting to know how many times Duesberg's 2003 Indian Biosciences paper was rejected before they managed to get it into print.
ReplyDeleteNobody is silly enough to believe that the Journal of Biosciences was the first journal they submitted it to.
The whole world knows Peter Duesberg is a fraud. See …
ReplyDeletehttp://mysticwicks.com/showthread.php?t=219062
Only a dumb ass-wipe like Henry Bauer would say otherwise.
Oh Hank… What do you say? Common now, you have lots of fans waiting to hear from you… Charles and Nessie included. Any response to the flaws in your retracted paper? What about those reviews from JAIDS?
ReplyDeleteWhy not surprise us and respond?
No more Hank (although he is reading).
ReplyDeleteSo predictable. When you are as ignorant AND wrong as Henry Bauer, there is no answering the likes of Snout, Poodlestomper, Chris, JTD et al. Once you guys pushed on his bubble I expected him to disappear. How he has been retained at State Universities is the stuff that books are written about. Such a joke. So sad.
And to be clear, I am requesting the JAIDS Reviews not just the Rejection Letter. Trust me, I know what a Rejection from JAIDS looks like! It is the reviews that I want to see.
Snout,
ReplyDeleteThe paper was an answer to Chigwedere et al. They did not present the argument about relative mortality rates of different age groups. They merely refer to UNAIDS. This is symptomatic of the paper. None of their basic assumptions are examined. They merely state them and provide a reference. Chigwedere et al are merely collecting these references and doing a glorified cost-benefit analysis of the “what if (the real world were that simple)" kind.
To delve into all these assumptions would have made the Duesberg et al. paper at least 5 times longer than it is at present. Have you, Snout, tried to look behind the apparent explosion in mortality rates in certain demographics? Have you compared the increases of mortality with estimated HIV prevalence district for district to see if they correlate? Have you searched for any other alternatives, such as death registration programs or changes in the working and travelling demographics? Or did you just copy the argument from the TAC site?
You are an amateur, Snout, who obviously has no ideas of real research, or the kind of compromises that goes into a scientific paper in answer to something built on endless assumptions, estimates, models etc; and neither does Seth Kalichman for the simple reason that he has never attempted to go against the mainstream, even if you want to call what he does for a living something else than pure pseudoscience.
But even you must know that if something is made available on request, it means you send a polite mail to the corresponding author and ask for it. It is infantile even for the people to expect that semi-anonymous howling and jeering on an obscure smear-site would somehow reach the ears of Duesberg and dispose him to comply.
Hank,
ReplyDeleteI sent Duesberg this email on the 31st of July.
Dear Professor Duesberg,
in your Medical Hypotheses paper (currently in press) you write "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)."
I would greatly appreciate it if you could send me a copy of this rejection letter.
Yours Thankfully
Chris Noble
Hank.
ReplyDeleteThanks for helping us understand the 'rationale' behind the Duesberg paper.
You say “None of their basic assumptions are examined. They merely state them and provide a reference.”
Now, you are an AIDS Denier so you feel it necessary to question the ‘assumption’ that HIV causes AIDS and that AIDS has decimated South Africa. You do not understand nor do you trust the epidemiology behind their models, forming the very core of your denial.
Saying that Chigwedere et al. are ‘collecting these references and doing a glorified cost-benefit analysis of the “what if”…. Hank, that sounds familiar…
“What evidence do Holocaust propagandists use to prove: Millions of people were exterminated”
“Though six million Jews supposedly died in the gas chambers, not one body has ever been autopsied and found to have died of gas poisoning.”
“Even if we threw away all the evidence and accounted for every so-called gas chamber, it would have taken 68 YEARS to accomplish gassing six million Jews! “
“Truth is not determined by majority vote.”
Hank, I am NOT saying you are a Nazi or that you are a Holocaust Denier. It is just that you share the same thought process with all Deniers. AIDS denialism, which for some nutty reason you have immersed yourself in, is the same social and psychological phenomenon as Holocaust Denial.
You really should have stuck with Nessie hunting.
You ask Snout “Have you compared the increases of mortality with estimated HIV prevalence district for district to see if they correlate?
The Human Sciences Research Council in SA has been tracking HIV-AIDS cases by province since 2002. Harvard cites the second of their three studies. Where there is HIV there is AIDS. No HIV, no AIDS. And it is not circularity in definition. Your analysis of HIV prevalence pitted against AIDS Cases 10 years later from different populations is so flawed, such a joke, I cannot get a serious epidemiologist to even listen. It is hard to laugh and listen at once.
Hank, have you ever examined the HIV testing/prevalence data in San Francisco plotted against AIDS cases in San Francisco over time?
No, you compare testing military recruits with national AIDS cases 10 years later. Yep, I am laughing.
“…smear-site would somehow reach the ears of Duesberg” I am not sure I would call my blog a smear site. But I can see why you would. Although I hear you are not exactly warm and fuzzy toward me/Joey at you blog. Something about KKKalichman?
I like to think of my blog as a resource for the readers of my book. Sort of like your website is a resource for Nessie Hunters. And Duesberg does come by now and then. He commented at the ‘Vito Mbeki’ posting. That brought back memories.
You are quite correct, Hank, that I am an amateur. As I have stated numerous times on the net I am not a scientist, professional or otherwise, not am I a specialist clinician in immunology or infectious diseases. Or a professional epidemiologist. I hold no academic position, emeritus or otherwise. Oh, and for the record I am not Nick Bennett and have never even met him or anyone else on the AIDS Truth team (much as I admire their work).
ReplyDeleteBut despite these seeming handicaps I'm confident I can recognise a complete and utter wanker when I see one. Normally wankers are pretty harmless and don't bother me all that much, but when wankers take it on themselves to provide lethally stupid medical advice for the sole purpose of own ego gratification or to entertain themselves as a retirement hobby in their declining years and do so with no apparent accountability for the consequences of their actions... well that kind of makes my fur stand on end.
Henry Bauer is just such a wanker.
Now I've read the article by Duesberg, Bauer, Fiala, Rasnick et kid several times and your claim that it somehow critiques the "assumptions" or methodology Chigwedere et al used to reach their conclusions is, well, complete and utter crap. At no stage does it even venture to discuss these.
In fact, it is so incompetent it utterly misrepresents even the conclusions of Chigwedere et al's paper:
"...they suggest that about 30,000 newborns could have been saved annually by preventing "mother-to-child transmission of HIV by brief treatments to all pregnant mothers..."
"In view of this and the recent study by Chigedwere et al. "estimating" about 330,000 preventable deaths from HIV per year..."
It is obvious that Duesberg, Bauer, Fiala, Rasnick and the kid didn't bother to read even the abstract of the paper they are pretending to critique. It is also glaringly apparent from my post above that not one of the authors has the slightest clue about the principles and methods of epidemiology, or infectious diseases medicine, or clinical pharmacology.
Whether or not Chigedwere et al specifically mentioned the changes in South African mortality by age, this is common knowledge, even for a non-scientist net hound such as myself. The authors of Out of touch with South African AIDS claimed "...South African statistics provide no evidence for the huge losses of South African lives from HIV during 2000-2005."
It is incomprehensible that the authors could have bothered to take even a cursory look at South African statistics without noticing the catastrophe reflected by the changing age distributions between 1997 and 2006. Unless they are incredibly stupid.
And no, I am not familiar with the TAC site. I got it from reading reports from Stats SA. You should try it some time.
The authors of Out of touch with South African AIDS quite clearly have not bothered to look anywhere except for AIDS denialist websites. Don't you try pulling "no ideas of real research" on me, sunshine.
I have attempted to communicate with one of the authors in the past - courteously and taking extreme care to stick to substantive points.
That particular author rudely dismissed my communications, and then lied in public about their content. I have come to understand that I am not the only person (or border collie) he has treated in this way. However, the internet is a big place...
I am afraid that as a result I am no longer disposed to send polite mails to this person. I understand that numerous others have come to the same conclusion.
The five authors said they would make available the material in question "on request". Of course they could be lying, and that would be entirely consistent with just about everything else in the paper in which they made that statement.
And I have now requested as well...
ReplyDeleteto duesberg@berkeley.edu
dateFri, Aug 14, 2009 at 9:42 AM
subjectRespectful Request
Dear Dr. Duesberg,
In your Medical Hypotheses article you stated "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)."
I am requesting that you honor your promise and send me a copy of the reviews and editor decision letter.
Thank you,
Seth Kalichman, PhD
Professor
Snout,
ReplyDeleteAn excellent observation. You are correct, the Duesberg et al paper doesn't examine Chigwedere's specific assumptions/references anymore than Chigwedere et al do. They present the same sort of sweeping macro-view of the statistics as Chigwedere et al. That is why both papers are less than impressive.
However, it was Chigwedere that led the way, Duesberg et al followed. It was definitely a mistake in my opinion to adopt Chigwedere's bad form, although Duesberg at least included a couple of biologocal arguments. Chigwedere presented nothing but an abstract numbers game. But because Chigwedere could get their political crap into a crony-reviewed journal, it has now been dignified as a tool of political persecution.
It seems that the obsession with Henry Bauer has made you overlook a fact even Seth Kalichman has now grasped: Duesberg is the guy you have to ask for the rejection papers. Has he treated you rudely on some blog lately, puppy?
It shall be interesting to see if Duesberg
"honours his promise" and sends Seth Kalichman the rejection letter. It might take a couple of days, since it is my understanding that the papers are still under review by Elsevier, John Moore's assurances that the case is closed notwithstanding.
Perhaps Elsevier are too cowardly to admit that the whole thing has already been settled over a cigar and a glass of red wine by the fireside, as the anonymous John Moore kindly explained to us above:
"There were no Sicilian-style threats of violence/extortion made to Elsevier. Tactics such as those are the province of some of the AIDS denialists, not our side. All we had to do was to bring the problem to the attention of responsible, professional individuals within the organization, and appropriate actions were taken".
I am interested in the grounds for rejection myself, since I am unable to imagine how they can shoot at Duesberg's paper without hitting Chigwedere's.
BTW, have you seen the pronouncement disspelling the silly rumours that there is internal strife in RA? If not, you should visit their site.
Hank,
ReplyDeleteWe can now add health policy analysis to the list of fields of which you know nothing. This kind of work (like science in general) cannot be done without assumptions, models, and estimates. The difference between the Chigwedere and Duesberg papers is not that one uses assumptions and the other uses data. It is that the former makes justified and conservative assumptions based on the best available research and provides a sensitivity analysis to show a range of plausible estimates, while the latter make bogus assumptions that lead to equally bogus estimates (these have already been exposed here).
But, Snout, I beg to differ with your comment. Duesberg et al. do aim their sharp critical skills at some of the assumptions made by Chigwedere. It appears on page 2, in discussing the modeling of potential ARV benefits in preventing vertical transmission:
“Further, the Chigwedere study from Harvard ‘‘estimates” that between 5% in 2000 to 55% in 2005 of 60,000 newborns were lost from mother to child transmission of HIV because there were no anti-HIV drugs available to prevent infection.”
This is a gross misreading of the text and tables of the study. The 5% to 55% range is not an estimate of mortality, but of the "feasible coverage" of a mother to child transmission prevention program had the South African government not listened to people like Duesberg and Raskin. They then derive figures from their misreading of the Harvard study and attack the numbers that they have unknowingly invented:
“But estimated losses of 3000 to 30,000 among 1 million newborns (.3% to 3%) are difficult to detect statistically, and are even more difficult to attribute to HIV, because all AIDS defining diseases are previously known, HIV-independent diseases called AIDS only in the presence of antibody against HIV.”
Not only is there no assumption of those infant mortality figures in the Chigwedere paper, but the analysis in no way relies on statistical detection, whatever that means, of infant deaths due to HIV. Duesberg et al. thus invent an assumption that they attribute to Chigwedere et al., and then proceed to produce an incoherent critique of it.
Abrazos,
Fulano de Tal
Dear Fulano,
ReplyDeletelike your twin, Snout, you are absolutely correct about the Duesberg paper's confusion. if I am not mistaken Chigwedere gives the total number of "excess" infections, mean life expectancy 3 years, as 35,532 , which is an even smaller drop in the statistical ocean.
But that, or you calling the academic field "health policy analysis", still doesn't make Chigwedere more than an abstract number juggler.
Any amateur, like yourself, can spend half a day looking at the relevant, unquestioned, UNAIDS numbers and make similar what if high end low end estimates.
The whole quantification circus, and the arbitrary "conservative" 3.8 million life-years is simply a way of shaping a political weapon by making it look suitably
"scientific".
Chigwedere is a glorified pollster so he spends most of of his fireworks in the math and modelling department. His show of science, his due dilligence if you will, is somewhat less impressive in the other departments:
"Except among very few scientists, such as Peter Duesberg, the scientific community has accepted HIV as the cause of AIDS for more than 20 years.6HIV satisfies all 3 of Koch’s postulates, the traditional standard of infectious disease causation,7 and all of Sir Bradford Hill’s epidemiological guidelines for assessing causality.8 ZDV was tested for AIDS treatment in controlled randomized clinical trials,9 and its side effects were clearly documented and disclosed.10 Later studies showed that in combination with other drugs, therapy was very efficacious, resulting in the name highly active antiretroviral therapy for triple-drug cocktails.11 ZDV was tested for PMTCT of HIV in a randomized clinical trial that showed much benefit and little risk.12"
That's it. That's Chigwedere's "discussion" of the views he attributes to Mbeki and Duesberg. If only he'd been equally parsimonious with the number juggling, we could have called it an early night.
Ok, such a discussion is not Chigwedere's errand, but it is revealing that he felt he had to make a show of authoritative debunking anyway.
As for the rest, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 40 million. It's all an exercise in unquestioned assumptions performed in a vacuum where the only question is ARVs or no ARVS.
Why don't we ask Chigwedere to estimate how many life-years could have been saved if,
"the increasing availability of financial resources, especially from the Global Fund and United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (US PEPFAR)"
and not least the accompanying political pressure had gone into solving fundamental problems such as malnutrition, TB, sanitation and better working conditions at De Beers?
I am the last person to jump into a game regarding statistics, but even I can see that "Hank's" logic is flawed. Not least of which is this statement: "As for the rest, 2 million, 3 million, 4 million, 40 million. It's all an exercise in unquestioned assumptions performed in a vacuum where the only question is ARVs or no ARVS." He's pulling numbers out of his ass and then making an unsubstantiated statement of "unquestioned assumptions performed in a vacuum..." WTF? Jesus, Bauer, er, I mean "Hank" lay off the booze.
ReplyDeleteFulano and Snout at least write coherently and back up their explainations with a fact or two.
JTD
Hank writes:It shall be interesting to see if Duesberg "honours his promise" and sends Seth Kalichman the rejection letter. It might take a couple of days, since it is my understanding that the papers are still under review by Elsevier.
ReplyDeleteI sent my polite request 2 weeks ago. There is absolutely no reason other than petulance to make the fulfillment of this promise contingent upon what Elsevier does with the paper. The rejection letter in question is from JAIDS not Medical Hypotheses.
If the Journal of AIDS really offered no valid justification for rejecting the paper then why not make the rejection letter public? If it contained ad hominems then why not make it public?
Within hours of my request I received a response from Peter Duesberg…
ReplyDeleteHe said he has received many requests for the article including some who wanted to see also a copy of the reviews and editor decision letter from JAIDS that I requested. He said that he has answered all as he answered me, stating that reprint requests of both of these items will be honored as soon as the paper is published.
To be fair, Duesberg promised in a paper published in Medical Hypotheses to provide the reject reviews from JAIDS upon request.
Now that the paper is no longer published, Duesberg has retracted the promise.
I can understand why an author would do this. I mean, why give away the critiques from a rejection decision to future critics and reviewers? That is just working against yourself.
But if the reviews were baseless, unreferenced, personal attacks then why not release them? What harm can they do to future reviews?
I contacted the JAIDS Editor who handled the paper. Reviews are work product of the publisher/journal/editor. The editor chose to honor the reviews as confidential, despite the allegations Duesberg has made against the journal. JAIDS is a classy journal.
So it is up to the authors, or reviewers if you are out there.
I think we can all see what is going on with the Duesberg Medical Hypothesis paper.
Hank, you say "abstract number juggler" as though this was a bad thing! Then you go on to ask a question that can only be answered through abstract number juggling. Denialists are always arguing that resources could be put to better use in something other than HIV research, treatment, and prevention. These arguments would be much more forceful if backed up by some good number juggling.
ReplyDeleteMany, perhaps most, health policy questions, require that the existing state of affairs is compared to a counterfactual that must be constructed through the use of, yes, assumptions and models. For instance, if we want to estimate the impact of a particular policy, we must compare it to the counterfactual state of what the outcomes would have been in the absence of that policy. That requires very careful number juggling. Informed policymaking requires such analyses.
Whoever is curious about what health outcomes of South Africans would have been if the country's leadership had not listened to Duesberg, Rasnick, Rath, but had instead implemented a feasible ARV program, has no choice but to engage in number juggling. So, as I tried to explain in my last comment, the difference between Chidwedere et al. and the Duesberg gang is that between competent and hopelessly incompetent abstract number juggling.
And yes, it is VERY political, which is why Chigwedere et al. were extremely careful to base their analysis on transparent, defensible, and conservative assumptions.
¡Ignorancia es atrevida!
P.S.: I don't believe you are Bauer. The giveaway was your admission that there is confusion in the Duesberg article. Bauer's ignorance rules out any awareness of the extent of his ignorance.
Snout,
ReplyDeleteYour wish is my command:
Here's one of those silly denialists juggling pretty transparent numbers; a couple of excerpts:
"Last year, for instance, as the United States spent almost $3 billion on AIDS programs in Africa, it invested only about $30 million in traditional safe-water projects. This nearly 100-to-1 imbalance is disastrously inequitable — especially considering that in Africa H.I.V. tends to be most prevalent in the relatively wealthiest and most developed countries. Most African nations have stable adult H.I.V. rates of 3 percent or less.
Many millions of African children and adults die of malnutrition, pneumonia, motor vehicle accidents and other largely preventable, if not headline-grabbing, conditions. One-fifth of all global deaths from diarrhea occur in just three African countries — Congo, Ethiopia and Nigeria — that have relatively low H.I.V. prevalence. Yet this condition, which is not particularly difficult to cure or prevent, gets scant attention from the donors that invest nearly $1 billion annually on AIDS programs in those countries.
Botswana, which has the world’s most lucrative diamond industry and is the second-wealthiest country per capita in sub-Saharan Africa, is nowhere near as burdened as Senegal with basic public health problems. But as one of a dozen Pepfar “focus” countries in Africa, this year it will receive about $300 million to fight AIDS — in addition to the hundreds of millions already granted by drug companies, private foundations and other donors. While in that sparsely populated country last month, I learned that much of its AIDS money remains unspent, as even its state-of-the-art H.I.V. clinics cannot absorb such a large influx of cash. (Botswana, one of Chigwedere's comparisons)
In Africa, there’s another crisis exacerbated by the rigid focus on AIDS: the best health practitioners have abandoned lower-paying positions in family planning, immunization and other basic health areas in order to work for donor-financed H.I.V. programs.
Regimens that are much simpler to administer than anti-retroviral drugs — like antibiotics for respiratory illnesses, oral rehydration for diarrhea, immunizations and contraception
— could also be made widely available. But as there isn’t a “global fund” for safe water, child
survival and family planning, countries like Senegal — and even poorer ones — cannot directly tackle their real problems without pegging them to the big three diseases.
The real-world needs of Africans struggling to survive should not continue to be subsumed by the favorite causes du jour of well-meaning yet often uninformed Western donors."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/opinion/01halperin.html
Harvard, The Lancet, NYT. That Halperin guy must be an oddball! The shills were out in force of course when theseand similar analyses are aired. The same shills who are the only ones with any interest in Chigwedere's day-dreaming.
You see, Snout, every religion has its own fixation. Christians get in a bunch over Mylie Cyrus dancing next to a pole, and HIVists tend to get fixated on HIV, drugs and funding, HIV, drugs and funding, HIV, drugs and funding. There's very few who can step back for a minute and put their obsession in perspective. Halperin is one of them. Chigwedere ain't.
PS. Bauer never posts pseudonymously. That and the fact that I at no point have claimed to be Bauer should have been the first giveaway.
Henry Bauer, you lying sack of shit!
ReplyDelete“Bauer never posts pseudonymously. That and the fact that I at no point have claimed to be Bauer should have been the first giveaway.”
Hank is not a pseudonym. Hank = Henry.
I know four Jewish Henry’s over 65 whose families call them Hank!
How many AIDS Deniers named Hank can there be in Blacksburg using the ISP at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Univ?
Please!
I obviously have no problem using nicknames or even pseudonyms online… say Hello to Joe Newton!
Henry Bauer your comments are transparent. We have been engaging you as Henry Bauer. Don’t insult our intelligence any more than your comments do, Hank.
Hank,
ReplyDeleteWhere on earth did you get the idea that Halperin is an HIV/AIDS denialist? His basic point seems to be that "...as many as 33 million people worldwide are still living with the AIDS virus. This pandemic requires continued attention; preventing further deaths and orphans remains imperative... Meanwhile, many other public health needs in developing countries are being ignored. The fact is, spending $50 billion or more on foreign health assistance does make sense, but only if it is not limited to H.I.V.-AIDS programs."
What on earth does that have to do with morons like Duesberg and Bauer who are claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, that it isn't sexually transmissible, that testing is useless and that ARVs are of no benefit? Looks like a non-sequitur to me. Nice try.
How exactly is Halperin's call for more resources to be made available for basic public health initiatives such as vaccination consistent with the idiot propaganda of uber-denialists like Janine Roberts and RA president David Crowe who deny the existence not only of HIV but numerous other viruses, and actively oppose immunisation?
Perhaps you could explain what exactly has been the contribution of HIV/AIDS denialists to the resolution of the multiple and complex health problems of the third world?
Spare me.
Thank you Hank, though, for acknowledging that Out of Touch with South African AIDS fails to examine Chigedere's assumptions or data (with the exception pointed out by Senor de Tal above).
ReplyDeleteYou are a scholar and a gentleperson.
However, as others point out, it is not sufficient for you to simply wave your hands about and and claim that Chigwedere's study is invalid simply because it uses *shock horror* numbers and models and *gosh* assumptions.
You need to show exactly why the specific numbers or models or assumptions they used are wrong, as we have done with Dusenbauer's drivel. Not merely dismiss Dr Chigwedere as a "glorified pollster" or complain that he didn't address a completely different question in the study that you might personally have found more interesting.
You will note that my own amateurish effort at debunking Bauer does not merely describe him as "inept", a "pseudoscholar" a "crank" and "lethally stupid", but actually goes to some pains to show precisely why his work on HIV/AIDS is deserving of such unkind epithets. And this is no small task for a dog-of-little-brain such as myself.
As for making formal overtures to Duesberg to provide the rejection reviews from J. AIDS, well, as an amateur I am content to leave that to my academic betters. It is unlikely that he would respond more favorably to me than to real scientists using their offline names. In any case, I find it increasingly difficult to conceal the profound contempt and disgust I feel towards him and others among the HIV/AIDS denialist cognoscenti, and I am afraid this might slip out somehow. So it's maybe wiser to leave such a communication to wiser and cooler heads.
As Senor de Tal points out above, this issue is very much political, as is the broader problem of HIV/AIDS denialism. Whether HIV exists, whether it causes AIDS, whether ARVs effectively treat HIV disease and whether testing is clinically useful are not scientific questions, and have not been for well over a decade.
This is not a rarified discussion between scientists about esoteric points of immunology and epidemiology. HIV/AIDS denialism represents a quixotic tilt for glory by a small group of individuals who lack a basic understand of the disease, who are almost entirely formally unaccountable for their actions, and who have continued their stupid and destructive project with an almost sociopathic disregard for the horrific consequences their actions have had for the lives of real people.
It is very easy to lose sight of that in discussions of the scientific minutiae. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
As for the political infighting going on among various prominent denialists at present, well that's kind of fun to watch from where I sit. The central and inescapable inconsistency is between those who claim HIV exists but is harmless and those who claim it doesn't (and neither do various if not all other viruses). It's a diversion: the Stupid fighting the Stupid. The fact that the RA board might pull together to deny there's any lack of coherence among denialists doesn't fool anyone.
Snout,
ReplyDeleteWith your razor sharp wit, you should have disovered that I was being sarcastic when I called Halperin a denialist, especially as I call HIV his obsession later.
Take a deep breath read again.
Your twin, Fulano, suggested following:
"Denialists are always arguing that resources could be put to better use in something other than HIV research, treatment, and prevention. These arguments would be much more forceful if backed up by some good number juggling."
But now you, Snout, don't understand why I bring the Halperin article to the table. . . ?
Instead you want the contribution to come from a real denialist, which you can then dismiss for the same reason. There's no pleasing some.
Take a deep breath and read again please:
Halperin doesn't just call for more resources to be made available elsewhere. He complains of the HIV-centrist mindset, and in some cases advocates reallocation of existing resources.
Take a deep breath and read the last lines again:
"The real-world needs of Africans struggling to survive should not continue to be subsumed by the favorite causes du jour of well-meaning yet often uninformed Western donors.""
Donors such as senor Kalichman, one might add.
You are correct that my critique of Chigwedere has so far only taken the form of a prolegomenon. I promise I shall think on it and perhaps publish a more detailed critique - which you can then disregard because it didn't appear in a peer reviewed journal, you testy little border terrier.
You think you are having fun, but being not half as wise and cool as John P. Moore you are not able to fully appreciate how amusing that momentous RA "press release" really is.
Well I just finished reading the NY Times article by Halperin. I didn't see a hint of denialism in there either. Just the author saying that if we can make accessible the more costly and complex medication for HIV that we need to focus on other more easily solved problems as well, such as food and water. I agree with him that those also need to be a priority. Looks like the author is pretty well aware of the existence of HIV and its causal role in AIDS. Sorry Hank.
ReplyDeleteQuerido Hank,
ReplyDeleteI hope I did not imply that only denialists can question funding priorities. I don't agree with everything Halperin said, but I do agree that funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention should be considered as part of an overall public health strategy, and not pursued to the exclusion of other health crises.
This was the most reasonable thing you have posted yet. If you are really concerned with sanitation, nutrition, etc., in Africa, that's wonderful. But you will only hurt that cause if you let on that you are a denialist.
Abrazos,
Fulano de Tal
Such a joke.
ReplyDeleteI know Dan Halperin.
Most AIDS Deniers have come at him for his being an earlier proponent for circumcision to prevent HIV infection, even before 3 clinical trials proved the efficacy.
Circumcision is another problem for the Denialists, one that David Crowe has boned up on. Crowe told me he likes his Penis ‘Natural’.
Yep, he really did.
So Henry, has David ever expressed sympathy to you because you are afflicted with an un-natural penis?
I hope you guys are not too disappointed in Deusberg's refusal to give what he promised. It is one more example of what a low life, lying, manipulative joke he has become. Back in the 80's he had some legitimate concerns about the cause of AIDS, all of which have been disproven. To hold on with such tenacity is simply an ego that has spiraled out of control. In my opinion, the ego of the denialists is their main problem. If you look closely (and even not so closely) at each and everyone, it is simply their ego that either does not allow them to admit their errors of long ago, OR they have jumped on this denialist bandwagon simply for a very teeny, tiny amount of "celebrity": translation, infamy! Either way it is sad and not only self~destructive, but destroys the lives of those who trust them. Examples such as Karri Stokely (who has time to come to her senses) as well as those such as Rex Poindexter, who unfortunately came to his senses too late. And those such as EJ who never had a chance. How many more EJ's do the denialists need to create?
ReplyDeleteJTD
Also, if "Hank" is indeed Henry Bauer, and I believe Seth would not lie about the IP address, then Henry Bauer is the worst, lowest form of human being...a hypocrite! He writes many blogs about "Joe Newton" and then comes here using a pseudnym! Pathetic.
ReplyDeleteBauer also moderates his own site so that it appears as if he has no opponents. Yet he comes here to debate. Again, pathetic and hpocritical. Especially when everyone knows that Kalichman does not moderate his site, but welcomes discussion.
So that makes Henry Bauer a hypoocrite, liar, manipulator and, in my opinion, a killer. But just don't call him a kike. That word he takes offense to, while obviously taking pride in the other discriptions.
JTD
Seth,
ReplyDeleteYou know David Crowe, bless his heart, is a gaffe-a-minute. I assure you he encourages the freedom to express one's ethnic and religious affiliations through symbolic gestures, as long as it is not forced upon others.
He is also a great fan of half solutions and futile human experiments such as:
"THURSDAY, July 16 (HealthDay News) -- Circumcision doesn't reduce transmission of HIV from infected men to women, says a study that included 922 HIV-infected men in Uganda.
The men, who were uncircumcised before the start of the study, were randomly selected to undergo immediate circumcision or circumcision after two years. The study also included HIV-uninfected female partners of the men. The women were checked for HIV infection at six, 12 and 24 months."
The study was stopped early due to "futility." The final analysis of 92 couples in the intervention group and 67 couples in the control group showed that 18 percent of women in the intervention group became infected with HIV, compared with 12 percent of those in the control group. Cumulative probability of HIV infection at 24 months was 22 percent among women in the intervention group and 13 percent among those in the control group."
JTD
ReplyDeleteI cannot be certain that Hank = Bauer. When hank Blacksburg Va or nearby Roanoke or Salem are viewing the blog. A correlation that does not imply causation. Still, Hank sounds like Bauer. But you know, I have hundreds of hits a day – 6 IPs on this blog right now…including Salem Va. So maybe Hank is not Henry Bauer. It is hard to accept that there could be another AIDS Denier in Virginia as warped as Henry Bauer. Who knows? Who cares?
Hank,
it is your interpretation of the male circumcision trials that convinces me yet again you must be Henry Bauer. Undeniably idiotic. Circumcision preventing HIV transmission TO women was always a long shot. Male Circumcision can offer between 30% and 60% protection against Female to Male Transmission of HIV. Ultimately circumcision protects women from HIV as HIV prevalence in men declines.
Here is one better for you. Lisa Eaton and I have now published two letters/comments – in The Lancet and Plos Medicine pointing out the potential flaws in male circumcision alone for HIV prevention. A stream I have swam against.
We may be proven wrong and if we are I will not hang on to a failed idea… That would be soooo Duesbergian.
Speaking of Dan Halperin..
ReplyDeleteHe says watch for his Op-Ed in the Washington Post on Monday...it raises awareness on the benefits of circumcision..
Seth asked:
ReplyDeleteSo Henry, has David ever expressed sympathy to you because you are afflicted with an un-natural penis?
Seth, while I don't wish to dwell on such an unsavory subject as Henry Bauer's member, you are possibly making an unwarranted assumption: he has on at least two occasions publicly bewailed his tendency to develop candidal balanitis after taking broad spectrum antibiotics, which would suggest strongly (but not conclusively) that he is anatomically atypical compared to other males of his religious heritage.
See: AIDS Denialist Bingo™ #042.
There is possibly a speculative paper in this for someone with a Freudian bent. Perhaps it could be submitted to Medical Hypotheses.
Hank,
Yes, I do understand why you brought up the Halperin piece. You are quite transparently trying to divert the discussion into an area in which I think you will find that we are all in furious agreement in principle, if not necessarily about all the finer details. Setting up a straw man, in other words.
It is perfectly reasonable if not essential to rationally examine priorities for finite resources when there are multiple competing needs. It is also reasonable to question whether foreign aid is appropriately targeted to the needs of the intended recipients, or whether it solely reflects the concerns of the donor. In practice, most foreign aid reflects a combination of both.
However, my point is that HIV/AIDS denialism contributes nothing to such analysis - in fact it cripples it. How is it possible to make a rational decision about how much of the pie goes where if you are still hopelessly confused about the causes of a particular health problem and the costs and benefits of different interventions?
I'm submitting a manuscript to Medical Hypotheses entitled "AIDS Denialism at the University of Conneticut".
ReplyDeleteAccording to orthodox dogma circumcision reduces the transmission risk of HIV - a sexually transmitted disease. However, this is contradicted by recent researchers have written "There is no evidence that circumcision increases or decreases the risk of HIV transmission..."[1].
1. Kalichman S, Eaton L, Pinkerton S, 2007 Circumcision for HIV Prevention: Failure to Fully Account for Behavioral Risk Compensation. PLoS Med 4(3): e138. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0040138
"Circumcision preventing HIV transmission TO women was always a long shot".
ReplyDeleteApparently not too long a shot to try it out on some African guinea pigs.
Hank
ReplyDeleteYou are fulfilling the mission of my blog… to expose the idiocy, moronic ignorance, and reckless harm to public health that is AIDS Denialism.
Thank you!
Chris...the entire sentence reads..
ReplyDelete"There is no evidence that circumcision increases or decreases the risk of HIV transmission by HIV-infected men." Which has now been demonstrated.
AIDS Deniers fear circumcision because in their case it is synonymous with a Frontal Lobotomy.
Snout,
ReplyDeleteI am sorry, but I honestly still don't think you are getting it.
Chigwedere's ARVs vs no ARVs speculation is used to accuse certain people.
Let's put up your two scenarios:
1. A crazy denialist leader does not accept the evidence for the hyposthesis that HIV causes AIDS and that ARVs increase the life span of an infected person by a median 6.7 life-years. This (dis)belief directly or indirectly resuls in X preventable deaths (actually it doesn't, it just postpones them, except arguably in the case of MTCT, which is why the impressive life-year calculation is resorted to).
2. A rational always on the side of science leader, like George Bush (-:, knows that diverting political attention and funds to HIV and ARVs from other much more pressing causes will result in XXX truly preventable deaths, and yet he and the other usual suspects steam ahead with pepfar and what not.
It could be argued that the difference between scenario 1 and 2 is that 1 acted in good faith although perhaps inexcusably so, whereas 2 just acted in bad faith.
Why is only the leader in scenario 1 culpable? If the disbelief itself is what constitutes the crime, we are talking religion, puppy.
Hank,
ReplyDelete""Circumcision preventing HIV transmission TO women was always a long shot".Apparently not too long a shot to try it out on some African guinea pigs."
But circumcision did appear to lower the susceptibility of men contracting the virus. That is half the problem and if that half is addressed then at least some headway can be made. There are anatomical reasons why this makes sense and these same reasons are why it was a long shot that transmission from men to women would be affected. So circumcision is still a valid approach to helping with the problem in Africa (although by no means a perfect or foolproof one).
Just to set the record straight. I (John Moore) was the poster of the August 12, 2009 12:59 PM posting under the name "Anonymous". As Seth knows, I have trouble with accessing his Blog in a way that records my name automatically as the poster, so I add my name at the foot of the message. In the latter case, I forgot, sorry. Unlike "Hank"/Bauer, I think that postings from professional scientists should be made in an identifiable manner. But of course "Hank" is by no reasonable definition, a "professional scientist", is he, she or it?
ReplyDeleteIn all the discussion of Chegwerde et al., I think it's worth mentioning that that group actually CONFIRMED the results in an earlier paper (by about one year) by Nicoli Nattrass in the social science literature. I don't have that paper to hand, here at home, but Seth could surely summarize its contents. Unfortunately, Nicoli's paper never received the attention it deserved, but she was right on the money, and gave an outstanding talk on the subject at a Keystone meeting last year. Duesberg et al. never bothered to respond to Nicoli's paper. Perhaps they don't read the literature all that avidly?
I think it's a shame that Duesberg doesn't have the guts, or the integrity, to release the reviews of the JAIDS paper. Once one makes a public commitment, one should follow through. But of course what one would expect from the likes of Duesberg? And whatever "Hank" says, the decision of the Medical Hypotheses' publishers to retract the Duesberg and Ruggiero papers is definitive and final. What's still under review is the future of the journal itself, not those two papers.
John P. Moore
This may be a digression from the original theme of this thread, but the RA group's schism over whether HIV does not exist or does exist but is harmless is both amusing and pathetic. I see it as akin to:
ReplyDeleteA) Flat-earthers debating whether the world is triangular or square;
B) Loch Ness Monster hunkers arguing over whether Nessie is a fish or a reptile;
C) Moon-landing deniers discussing whether the faked landings were shot in New Mexico or Arizona;
D) Whether the CIA/Mossad used TNT or plastic explosive to blow up the World Trade Center;
E) Holocaust Deniers fighting over whether no Jews were slaughtered, or "only" a few hundred thousand.
As previously noted, Bauer, Duesberg and the rest of the lunatics who constitute the RA group are no different from the members of all these other conspiracy groups - cuckoos, quacks, flakes and loony-toons the lot of them. But sadly, the actions of the AIDS denialists caused over 330,000 South Africans (plus of course American's like Maggiore's daughter, and she herself) to die unnecessarily of AIDS. And that removes these people from the world of the derisive and into the realm of the destructive. Which is, of course, why we take them on, head them off, and deal with them in whatever way we can - such as over the Medical Hypotheses papers.
John P. Moore
John
ReplyDeleteI am surprised that Duesberg is not honoring requests for the JAIDS Reviews.
Duesberg seems to believe that he is a legitimate scientist who will find redemption in Aneuploidy-Cancer. It is my hypothesis that Duesberg wants to go to the grave with an NIH grant secured so he can not only be vindicated but can also pay Leppo back for bankrolling his lab. Refusing to honor his word is counter to the impression that even he believes he is legitimate.
If the reviews from JAIDS were personal attacks without merit, why not show the world? Post them at Celia Farber’s website? Or why not post them in some other credible news outlet, like the Onion?
We would all like to see those reviews to judge for ourselves whether Duesberg was given his due. But we left with his refusal, which speaks volumes!
No, Hank, I think it is you that is missing the point.
ReplyDeleteDuesberg is not arguing that the SA government and and Western donors could get more bang for their buck/rand by spending it on non-HIV related projects rather than HIV prevention and treatment programs.
That could be a perfectly reasonable proposition, provided it could be supported by sound analysis of the kind that Chigwedere et al were doing.
Duesberg is claiming that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that ARVs are of no benefit whatsoever, not comparing two alternative ways of using resources.
He is like a broken record. His views have nothing to do with science or rational health policy, but with his own personal psychopathology.
John, if you look more closely at the ructions among the AIDS denialists it is not so much about whether HIV exists or not, but whether they reckon they can get away with publicly claiming that it doesn't exist.
Many of Duesberg's supporters (like Crowe and several others on the RA board who've rallied together for a show of unity) deny the existence of HIV, but think that saying so outright would scare the horses and undermine the credibility of their propaganda campaign. It's a perfect demonstration of how vacuous and corrupt HIV/AIDS denialism is, and makes it crystal clear that denialism has nothing to do with scientific integrity, but is rather about ideology and power.
Snout
ReplyDeleteI always find it annoying when Deniers like Hank/Bauer, Culshaw, Crowe etc. go on and on about AIDS in Africa. These are people who I bet cannot name 4 cities in South Africa, U doubt they can name countries that boarder South Africa. Can they even locate South Africa on a map? Has any of them ever stepped foot on the African Continent?
Duesberg went for the 2000 panel. Did he visit a clinic? A township?
Lucifer Rasnick worked for Rath and lived in South Africa for a year conducting illegal vitamin ‘trials’. Tells us a lot about Rasnick.
There is no evidence that any of these AIDS Deniers care for Africa any more than they can about African Americans and Gay men.
As for the unity of AIDS Deniers, there are few things going on…
The House of Numbers thing has gotten the Deniers feeling there is life after Maggiore. Nothing like a movie to bring people together.
Perhaps most important is the RA conference. They would like the conference to be unified and well attended. Duesberg’s Aneuploidy meeting was pretty poorly attended. I am not so sure they broke even on that. They will need as many deniers as they can get to keep it from being a bust. Given that the venue is a dive and we are talking Oakland they cannot afford to turn anyone away. Hell, they even say I am welcome!
Hank, the reason scenario 1 is judged more harshly is that it happened. Scenario 2 didn't. Resources were not diverted from more pressing causes -- malaria funding was increased simultaneously and the combination of PEPFAR and the Global Fund has produced the largest ever increase in funding for TB treatment and prevention in Africa.
ReplyDeleteIt is also debatable if there is a more pressing cause than HIV/AIDS in Sub-Sarahan Africa, even more so in 2004.
I can't believe I'm discussing health policy with you. You have no place in this debate. I'd sooner ask a Klansman for his advice on race relations in the US.
Fulano de Tal
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19619953
ReplyDeleteMed Hypotheses. 2009 Jul 19. [Epub ahead of print]
WITHDRAWN: HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS - A new perspective.
Duesberg PH, Nicholson JM, Rasnick D, Fiala C, Bauer HH.
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, Donner Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
This Article-in-Press has been withdrawn pending the results of an investigation. The editorial policy of Medical Hypotheses makes it clear that the journal considers "radical, speculative, and non-mainstream scientific ideas", and articles will only be acceptable if they are "coherent and clearly expressed." However, we have 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. Concern has also been expressed that the article contains potentially libelous material. Given these important signals of concern, we judge it correct to investigate the circumstances in which this article came to be published online. When the investigation and review have been completed we will issue a further statement. Until that time, the article has been removed from all Elsevier databases. The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. The full Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal can be found at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy.
John, if you look more closely at the ructions among the AIDS denialists it is not so much about whether HIV exists or not, but whether they reckon they can get away with publicly claiming that it doesn't exist.
ReplyDeleteWhich shows them to be complete and utter hypocrites when they attempt to claim the moral high ground and portray themselves as defenders of science.
Denialism is all about politics and not science.
No surprises in the hypocrisies of AIDS Denialism. See the same exact thing in Holocaust Denial and all other deniers. This is a single form of psychopathology with symptoms expressed toward multiple targets. Any description of one denialism group can be word substituted for another group, such as holocaust and AIDS.
ReplyDeleteIt's not clear to me why everyone here needs to discredit other scientists in order to make their view or point more valid ... ?
ReplyDeleteDo you honestly think Duesberg (and others) is not a "real" scientist? Do people here truly believe that a scientist at a major research university would make up all this knowing that all his funding would be withdrawn? If so, for what purpose?
Clearly, the comments here are mean-spirited, arrogant, and somewhat bitter.
-arv13@hotmail.com
Thanks for commenting arv13
ReplyDeleteI honestly do believe that Peter Duesberg is not a scientist, although he probably once was. But for the past 10 to 15 years he has engaged in behavior that no ethical scientist would accept. He refutes evidence by cherry picking research results. He makes claims in areas, such as clinical medicine and infectious diseases,where he has no expertise. He has repeatedly raised questions about established fact without offering any evidence to the contrary. I could go on.
Peter Duesberg is not a dissident scientist. He is a denialist because he is not offering viable alternative views and is not conducting research to support or disqualify his proposals.
It should also be clear that his funding was never withdrawn. His grants ended. He was unsuccessful in getting new funding because his ideas could not compete. His proposal to the NIH to do poppers research was out of date on arrival. While aneuploidy is obviously important in cancer, no one will take seriously the idea that ALL cancers are CAUSED by chromosomal anomalies. It is not that others are being funded to do what Duesberg suggests. They are just bad ideas.
And of course there is no rational purpose to any of this. Duesberg is impaired. His own worst enemy.
Now having said all of that, I can tell you he is a charismatic, likable, engaging man. I would prefer to spend time with him over most of the dry and boring scientists I have met. I certainly can see why people would 'take up his cause'.
The comments on my blog do become mean-spirited and surely can come off as bitter. I think much of this is out of frustration. Most people involved in AIDS just ignore AIDS Denialists. But for those of us who have engaged them it is with great frustration. I believe that Duesberg, Rasnick, Bauer and their followers have the potential to do great harm to the most vulnerable persons affected by AIDS. The Internet is their sandbox and if we do not call them out for what they are doing their tactics for persuading people to ignore HIV test results, avoid treatment, and all the rest will go unchallenged.
Thank you again for reading my blog and thank you for taking the time to comment.
All's bullshit.For most of you here, HIV/AIDS is like religion. You must take it otherwise you're cursed forever. There is no way to see further than "authorities" say and (of course) they have patented license for the "only truth".
ReplyDeleteLet's see, the majority here seem to not like to research new ideas ( unless they are well funded and politically correct). So that may be why we get little wothwhile research done for our tax dollars. I bet the majority here make their living toeing a pretty narrow line. You better get back to the lab, your side is losing on the science front - blogging will hold the fort$$ for awhile but get ready for a new gig in a few short years.
ReplyDeleteDenying AIDS - A book by Seth Kalichman
ReplyDeleteSeth Kalichman is a better man than I. Kalichman is a clinical psychologist, editor of the journal Aids and Behavior and director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research and Evaluation (SHARE) product, and he has devoted his life to the treatment and prevention of HIV. Despite a clear passion for reducing the harm done by HIV/AIDS, to research this book he actually met, and interviewed, prominent HIV/AIDS denialists. I confess I simply lack the temperament to have done this. To this day, when I read about HIV/AIDS denialists, and the the 330,000 people who have died as a result of HIV/AIDS denialism, I see red. I think violent, bloody thoughts.
The HIV/AIDS denialists, like Celia Farber, object to being called denialist, a quote from her in the book.
Go to Amazon.com to get a book about Denying AIDS
my field is math so i don't understand all science behind hiv/aids.
ReplyDeletei don't have enough knowlege/data to decide (i am too far from medicine), maybe Duesberg is totaly wrong, but he does not look insane at all (i can say that because i probably know logic and statistic much better than any of biologist).
and all i can see at other side is total rejection of discussion. like this article and all of "ortodox" replies. this actually sounds unscientific to me.
scince history has _many_ examples of such behavior...
anyway, i am still young and hiv negative, so see you in 50 years. will be funny.