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Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy

Seeking Stories of AIDS Denialism

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

aidsandbehavior@yahoo.com

All information will be kept confidential.

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Harvard Denialism, Mistrust, and Stigma Symposium

















  
Hosted by Dr. Laura Bogart, Harvard Center for AIDS Research

On October 19, 2009 Harvard University hosted a day long symposium on AIDS Denialism and Conspiracy Theories. Presentations featured new research and social analysis with excellent commentaries and questions.

I had the opportunity to present along side Nicoli Nattrass from the University of Cape Town South Africa. Nicoli is one of the great anti-denialist researchers and activists. The Symposium also featured Pride Chigwedere from Harvard University who provided additional insights into the devastating effects of AIDS denialism in South Africa. Nicoli and Pride presented compelling research that shows how hundreds of thousands of South Africans needlessly died from the AIDS denialist policies during the Mbeki/Manto/Duesberg era.

In addition to AIDS denialism, the Symposium featured the latest research on AIDS conspiracy theories. Pioneering researcher Laura Bogart organized the Symposium and she presented some of her latest research showing the harmful consequences of AIDS conspiracy theories.

Now you can watch the Symposium presentations and discussions at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health website. Listen for the uninvited and always interesting example of AIDS Denialism in action provided by John Lauritsen. See if you can pick out other frequent bloggers in the audience.



Q&A Session featuring AIDS Denialist John Lauritsen as himself

Symposium Summary
HIV denialism is a barrier to HIV prevention and treatment at the individual, community, and policy levels, and can increase HIV stigma, homophobia, and racism. This symposium focused on misconceptions related to HIV, defined as mistrust, suspicion, and rejection of medical research (e.g., HIV does not cause AIDS, HIV was created in a government laboratory). Researchers and community speakers defined HIV denialism and conspiracies and discussed their distinct consequences for policies, individual behavior related to HIV prevention and treatment, and HIV stigma.



Symposium Overview. Drs. Kalichman, Nattrass, and Chigwedere presented data showing the implications of denialism for public policy and the public health. Drs. Nattrass, Bogart and Cunningham presented data on the links between HIV conspiracy beliefs and individuals’ prevention and treatment behaviors. Dr. Gruskin discussed effects of state-level denialist and discriminatory policies on human rights. In the community panel, members of different communities (Ms. Johnson Tuckett, Ms. Rivera, Mr. Perkins, Ms. Galloway, and Reverend Hobbs) discussed HIV denialism and stigma that they have encountered in their front-line work.

Dr. Stone summed up the days’ events and insights. Definitions: HIV Denialism and Conspiracies. Both HIV denialism and conspiracies are forms of mistrust, but they differ primarily in terms of their origins. HIV denialism consists of mistrust and suspicion of accepted, mainstream scientific research on HIV. A central denialist belief is that HIV does not cause AIDS. Denialists think that HIV research has been corrupted, for example, by drug companies, and the NIH review process. Denialism has been advanced by pseudo-academics and people in power (e.g., professors state leaders, and policymakers), and it has gained momentum through the Internet. As discussed by Drs. Kalichman and Nattrass, denialism may originate with people who have a paranoid, suspicious view of the world; such individuals attempt to spread denialist beliefs to vulnerable others who are searching for explanations for their disadvantaged situations.

HIV conspiracies are characterized by mistrust of mainstream HIV information about HIV’s origins and treatment. A central belief is that HIV was created by the government, CIA, and/or Whites as a form of genocide against disadvantaged groups in society (e.g., African Americans,the poor). Conspiracies are spread in communities, most notably among African Americans and others who are disadvantaged and vulnerable. It is thought that these kinds of beliefs are a response to years of historical and current discrimination within healthcare and society in general. The most well-known example of mistreatment in healthcare is the Tuskegee syphilis study, although everyday chronic discrimination can wear away at people over time and lead to this kind of mistrust and suspicion of the healthcare system and government. HIV denialists find ready audiences among vulnerable people who do not trust mainstream science, and who are therefore open to alternative theories about HIV.

Ideas Matter. The central theme of the symposium was that ideas matter – a phrase from Dr. Nattrass’ book Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Antiretrovirals in South Africa. Bad ideas like HIV denialism have bad consequences – for public policy and for human behaviors. HIV denialism and conspiracies have deadly implications for HIV prevention and treatment, and can contribute to low rates of HIV testing and condom use, unwillingness to use HIV treatment, and nonadherence to HIV treatment.

Addressing Denialism and Conspiracies. Several ideas were advanced for intervention, including using respected community members to spread accurate HIV information; “normalizing” HIV in communities with higher prevalence, by discussing HIV openly and acknowledging conspiracies and the reasons for them; and providing cultural competence training for HIV providers (including education about the existence of denialism and conspiracies). Importantly, solutions must be generated by communities, and community stakeholders must be equal partners in the research process.

35 comments:

  1. Nice summary. I enjoyed being present for this symposium.
    To me, the biggest impact was the panel discussion at the end with those people actually in the trenches helping those who are facing this very true, real and actual disease. I was amazed not only by the stories of those they help on a daily basis, but also by their own stories.
    If I remember properly all but one of the panelists have been poz for over 10 years, with two over 20 years. And all on meds and all in excellent health. Listening to those people and speaking directly with them afterwards was more moving and humaninzing than anything I have experienced in quite some time!
    Thanks again, Seth for keeping this debate in perspective!
    Todd

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  2. The Q&A video made me cringe for two reasons:
    1) Dr. Lauritsen's angry diatribe.
    2) The back of my head! Why did I not sit a few rows back with your staff?
    It reminds me of the "I Love Lucy" episode where Ricky was taping a scene to send to Hollywood agents. He needed a girl for the video (enter Lucy) to sit with her back to the camera so Ricky could sing to her. Of course Lucy kept trying to turn to get her face in the camera. It looks like I am doing the same when in actuality I am turning to look to see who the old man screaming at Seth is. Actually, if I had a thought bubble over my head it would just say: "HuH"? And if it could be heard it would sound like Scooby~Doo!
    JTD

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  3. My doctor recently prescribed me Ambien, because I was suffering from insomnia, but what a waste, I coulda just watched Seth's little video from Harvard. Boring. Hideously boring. Bean counting academics.

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  4. Why do you need research to show how many died of AIDS in South Africa? There are actual government statistics relative to this. But then I guess they don't quite tie in with your own peculiar theories. In effect though you are in Denial yourself of the official version of events. So which should we trust, an actual count or a computer model?

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  5. Anonymous
    Just so you understand. Chigwedere and his Harvard associates, including world class scientist Max Essex, did use real counts of deaths. What they modeled was how many of those deaths could have been prevented had Mbeki/Manto allowed HIV testing and treatments to scale up. By the way, the estimates are likely low because they have not included reductions in incident infections resulting from testing and wide-scale treatment...as has had happened in neighboring Botswana... where new infections have dropped significantly after scaling up treatment.

    Please do not be like Bill who rejects everything empirical.

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  6. Please do not be like Bill who rejects everything empirical.

    I don't reject everything empirical. That's a lie. Empirically, in 1983, Jaffe, the head of the CDC found that 96% of gay men used poppers. (Jaffe, Annals of Internal Medicine, 99: 145 - 151, see table 2.)

    Snorting toxic chemicals on the disco floor cannot be good for one's health. Only gay men did this; only gay men got Kaposi.

    Without poppers, you don't get an outbreak of Kaposi Sarcoma. Without KS, most of the remaining AIDS cases just fade into background. Even better, all those egg-heads at Harvard have no grounds to persist with those boring inept conferences that nobody cares about.

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  7. Come on Bill, POPPERS?
    Think about poppers and compare them with cigarettes, for example, and then really, truly try to hold on to that ridiculous farce of a theory!
    Duesberg should be ashamed of ever entertaining such a stupid theory, much less holding on to it. And propagating that theory is just further proof of the fact that he is the Milli Vanilli of scientists: a pathetic, one hit wonder who turns out to be a fraud!
    JTD

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  8. Think about poppers and compare them with cigarettes

    Ok, both are bad, both are inhaled and both cause cancer.

    Well done, Toad!

    Finally, it wasn't Duesberg who called out poppers, it was Dr. Haverkos at the National Institute of Drug Addiction.

    But, of course, do have a Merry Christmas.

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  9. This is really sad.
    Bill, poppers and KS are correlated. But poppers do not cause KS.

    Amazing that you and that Klaus Kohnenberger (whatever his name is), still wont let this one go.

    Poppers are a sex drug..popular in the 70's among gay men..commonly used before anal sex for a variety of reasons.

    KS is caused by a Human Herpes Virus (HHV-8)that is anally transmitted.

    so poppers are associated with anal sex.'
    anal sex transmits HHV-8.
    HHV-8 causes KS.

    Pretty basic.

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  10. Anal sex is correlated with death, does that prove causation?

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  11. The government statistics show that in 2006 about 14,000 people died of AIDS in South Africa. That's some pretty powerful modelling to extrapolate at last "guestimation" 365,000 deaths, and you still claim it to be on the low side!

    Your statistical prowess is matched only by your psychological qualifications which I presume were obtained from a cereal packet at breakfast.

    They used the same software as UNAIDS who got a figure of 40 million HIV infections and then downgraged it to 32 million when the farce was becoming too obvious even for the orthodoxy to sustain and then had the gaul to state it was their interventions at work and claimed success.

    Still I guess you could just redefine AIDS once again to get the desired results, perhaps add the 35,000 homicides a year or 10,000 road deaths, I'm sure a lot of the victims were HIV positive. How about expanding the Bangui definition to just say "Black", that should cover it nicely.

    You're a clown Seth, a clown.

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  12. Max Essex was most notable for his ridiculous and totally disproven theories on the source of the HIV virus, Macaques, Greens, Chimpanzees. He was just one of many who jumped off the cancer band wagon on to the AIDS one. So whatever did happen to all that cancer research? and are retrovirus's still linked to cancer as they claimed for so long? 20 years of research dumped and forgotten in a blink. The same will eventually happen to HIV as well. They are just waiting for the next wagon to roll on by.

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  13. Not Bill

    You know, I think you are Bill. I pray on this Christmas Day that there are not that many stupid people visiting my blog.

    According to Statistics South Africa, the governmental source for the State, over 250,000 South Africans died of AIDS in South Africa in 2008.

    http://www.statssa.gov.za/Publications/statsdownload.asp?PPN=P0302&SCH=4437

    See also; http://www.avert.org/aidssouthafrica.htm

    So 'Not Bill' but equally hopeless in denial as Bill, can you provide a government source for your '2006 about 14,000' died of AIDS statistic? Where did you get that from Brink and Associates?

    Your statistics are as credible as Henry Bauer's pseudo-epidemiology. You guys pull numbers out of your Butts and claim 'Skeptical Science' when what you really have is Septical Crap.

    You should also probably keep cancer out of this. How dumb do you want to look? No genetic causes for any cancer? Aneuploidy? Rasnick's Fake Diagnostics Machine? Duesberg's harmless passenger viruses? Dr. Hulda Clark Parasite Cleanse Please, do not get us going.

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  14. Bill,
    "Snorting toxic chemicals on the disco floor cannot be good for one's health. Only gay men did this; only gay men got Kaposi."

    Of course Bill will ignore this because it doesn't jive with his faith but Bill, where do you get the idea that only gay men get Kaposi? There are children with HIV that got KS as well as hemophiliacs. Are you swallowing Virusmyth BS without fact checking again?

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  15. Bill, were poppers around in 1872 when Dr. Moritz Kaposi first described what became known as Kaposi Sarcoma?
    I do believe you are right, though. I think elderly men of Mediterranean descent first started sniffing poppers in the middle 1800's. I know the label on all my poppers bottles state:
    Popular since 1853: Made in Vienna.
    JTD

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  16. Poppers are, obviously, not the sole cause of Kaposi -- Yes, KS preceded poppers, just as lung cancer preceded RJ Reynolds and Phillip Morris.

    Returning to Planet Earth: Popper use is the best explanation for why gay men in the 1980s were getting Kaposi Sarcoma -- just as cigarette smoking is the best explanation for the stark rise in lung cancer beginning in 1940s.

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  17. Why?
    Why Bill would you think that "Popper use is the best explanation for why gay men in the 1980s were getting Kaposi Sarcoma"?????

    Even The Great Peter Duesberg does not say that poppers cause KS. It is Dr. Klaus von Kohnenbergerschnitzle (whatever the hell his name is) says poppers cause KS. I believe it is in House of Morons that he says it again, very clearly, in broken English.

    But Duesbeg says (also in not so good English) that poppers cause immune deficiency, not KS.

    So this is what we have...

    Bill and Klaus say...
    Poppers cause KS.

    Duesberg says...
    Poppers cause immune deficiency allowing KS to magically appear

    Modern Medicine says....
    HIV causes immune deficiency allowing the sexually transmitted viral infection (HHV-8)to cause KS.

    Modern Medicine is consistent with KS developing in elderly men - just as shingles develop in the elderly...

    It is all about immune suppression Bill...caused by something...

    So Bill, when you back off and re-adopt Duesberg's position, show me any evidence that poppers cause CD4 cell loss that would allow KS to develop?? NIDA funded those studies...and they were fruitless. That is why Duesberg never got his pointless grant...

    Bill, you really should read Denying AIDS so you will at least know what I will say in response to your denialism.

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  18. Some internet troll says: "Max Essex was most notable for his ridiculous and totally disproven theories on the source of the HIV virus, Macaques, Greens, Chimpanzees."

    That short sentence is incorrect on multiple levels. First, that line of research is not what Max Essex is "most notable for" (albeit that it's a subjective and not an objective area of assessment). Second, the non-human primate source of 'the HIV virus' (sic) is not "ridiculous and totally disproven", it is an established and fully proven scientific fact. Multiple research groups in many countries have contributed to this area of science (although not Max Essex's actually, at least not since a flawed paper he and Phyllis Kanki published back in the mid-1980's that has long been discounted within the field). Third, the different "HIV viruses" have different origins within non-human primate species. Thus HIV-1 crossed into humans from chimpanzees in Central Africa (Congo/Cameroon area), and it did so at least three times (although only one such event triggered the international pandemic we're all familiar with). HIV-2, on the other hand, originated in sooty mangabey monkeys in West Africa, and more than a dozen such zoonosis events have now been documented.

    So, as usual, a sadly inaccurate AIDS denialist post.......

    ReplyDelete
  19. Seth asks:

    Why?
    Why Bill would you think that "Popper use is the best explanation for why gay men in the 1980s were getting Kaposi Sarcoma"?????

    Good question. Let's walk back a few years and look at the big picture rationally. No conspiracy theories, no ad hominem attacks, no agendas.

    1. Men have been trying to get high for centuries.

    You had Opium Dens in San Francisco in he late 1800s

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/opiummuseum/914548548/page2/

    You had speakeasies in Chicago in the 20's

    http://www.essortment.com/all/ginjoints_ricy.htm

    None of this, I'm sure, surprises you.

    2. In the early 1960s', a bunch of bored, dense white boys began a fad of sniffing glue. Today, it sounds quaint and goofy, but it did wreck the health of a small number of kids, and did make it to the scientific literature.

    In 1964, Doctors in Fresno, CA published a paper about glue-sniffing juvenile delinquents, where they measured white blood cell counts and liver enzyme activities:

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1515364/

    Yes, I know it totally sounds goofy but it became a minor problem in some lower income communities.

    By 1979, a Canadian psychologist, wrote a good review of the literature of these idiots who had evolved from getting high off glue to inhaling paint and other chemical solvents. Why were they doing this? I have no idea.

    http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.3109/10826087909054571

    3. In 1970's and 1980s, this fad of inhaling chemicals entered the gay community via "poppers".

    Wikipedia has a pretty good, neutral page on poppers,although it only dances around the physiological effects of popper inhalation:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poppers

    4. During the 1970's and 1980's, America was a pretty homophobic society. Unfortunately, gays were pretty much driven underground,in the media, culture and society. So, few people outside these small gay communities in Greenwich Villiage and the Castro, understood what poppers were and how prevalent they were used.

    5. A good movie depicting the underground gay community is "Crusing" with Al Pacino in 1980.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080569/

    The movie was very controversial at the time, but seems grossly outdated today. Nonetheless, it shows the gay community that first got AIDS. Al Pacino sniffing poppers on a gay disco dance floor is a sight to see.

    6. Poppers were banned in 1990 (this explains the decrease in Kaposi Sarcoma cases).

    However, they are still sold as, I'm not joking, video-head cleaners and room de-odorizers.

    https://www.rizeproducts.com/

    "All our nitrite based products are sold as room odorants, liquid incense, liquid aroma, or video head cleaner only."

    You have to be willing to look at this history and connect up these dots, to see that:

    1. Inhaling solvents became a dangerous fad in America in the 1960s (before it was subsumed by the hippie/drug culture).

    2. Gay men joined this fad, focusing on poppers.

    3. Poppers are simply potent chemicals, originally used to revive heart attack victims, now used as room de-odorizers.

    4. Inhaling them is very dangerous, and, now, against the law as they were banned in 1990 (a good thing), which caused a decrease in Kaposi Sarcoma.

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  20. Ok Bill, I am with you on this.... I am not sure I agree with your history of inhalants but it is reasonable enough.

    You are right that people have been sniffing and snorting all kinds of crap for eons. I think it is important to distinguish sex enhancing drugs from non-sex drugs. You deal with this in your history as well.

    But I still do not get the connection much less a causal link between any drug, including poppers, and AIDS. Duesberg makes the foolish mistake of showing up and down patterns of drug use plotted along AIDS cases as if it were to imply causation. Worse yet, he is very selective in his choice of drugs (again all in Denying AIDS).

    But how does any of this even remotely or for that matter theoretically, suggest that poppers cause AIDS???

    Help me out here?

    Do you just believe that? Is the belief based on that history?

    By the way, I saw Cruising when it was in theaters way back when. I recently watched it again for the first time all of those years. I also agree with your take on the film... more entraining now and certainly less controversial. Progress I suppose.

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  21. Ok, we're having a civil post-Christmas dialogue on an important issue:

    1. In the 1970s & early 80s, Poppers were nearly ubiquitous in the gay community.

    2. Indeed, the first 41 cases of "AIDS" were all Kaposi Sarcoma cases, all gay men, none of whom had sex with each other. (Ny Times, Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals, 7/3/81.)

    3. Indeed, the New England Journal of Medicine in 1981, was on to the popper-Kaposi connection, I quote:

    "Perhaps, one or more of these recreational drugs is an immunosupressive agent. The leading candidate are the nitrites, which are commonly inhaled [by homosexuals] to intensify orgasm." .

    http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/citation/305/24/1465

    The question isn't, Do poppers cause AIDS? That's too big of a question.

    The question is, What did poppers do to the gay men who frequently inhaled them in the late 1970s?

    When AIDS broke, Dr. Harvey Harverkos of the National Institute of Drug Addication (NIDA) was investigating the poppers-KS link.

    http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=Haverkos+poppers&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2000&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

    He even had a pow-wow with Dr. Robert Gallo from the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

    http://www.duesberg.com/articles/tbkaposi.html

    Everyone is familiar with the power struggle between Gallo and Montagnier, but few people are familiar with Gallo's power struggle with the NIDA. Gallo easily prevailed. His retrovirology lab was prestigious, he was on the front lines of the War on Cancer. He had plenty of gov't funding. Virus research was sexy.

    On the other hand, researchers at the NIDA were neither sexy nor interesting, nor connected. Nancy Reagan's plea to "Just Say No" was considered a joke. These guys were ineffectual pawns in the War on Drugs. Gallo easily trumped them.

    So, the truthful answer is that the poppers-KS connection has not been fully vetted. Dr. Haverkos came close, claiming an "association" a "link," a "co-factor," but then he got swamped by the retrovirologists. He and Duesberg made a grant proposal to study poppers in mice, but it was rejected by the NIH, because Duesberg was too politically toxic.

    The bottom line is that inhaling chemicals cannot be healthy. This fad, which ensnared the gay community in the 70s, was highly unhealthy, and, in my view, explains the KS phenomenom.

    Since AIDS is a spectrum of diseases, it doesn't explain other aspects of the syndrome. Generally, women don't get KS, nor heterosexuals, nor pediatrics -- mostly just gay men. KS was the signature disease that scared the crap out of people in the 80s, causing hysteria and launching the epidemic. At the time, few people knew what poppers were, few people were sympathetic to gays in general, and few people even knew what a human retrovirus was (there were only 3).

    This mix of fear, ignorance, homophobia lead us astray, and continues today.

    But, by banning poppers for human consumption in 1990, the gov't did a good thing.

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  22. Here's a fairly unbiased and informative account of poppers from the folks at Aegis.com, who strongly support the viral theory of AIDS.

    http://www.aegis.com/pubs/atn/1992/ATN16005.html

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  23. Bill

    I would agree that poppers are bad for you.

    And lets be clear, I would never say anal intercourse is bad for you - so long as your partner is not HIV infected. Even then I would not say condom protected anal sex is bad for you.

    But what is curious is that there is no evidence that they themselves cause AIDS or KS.
    The old animal studies that show immune effects are not similar to AIDS - that is the specific destruction of T-cells.

    True, women do not use poppers. But the rate of anal sex among women is less than 10%.

    The correlation between poppers and anal intercourse is obvious.

    The citations you rely on are ancient in the world of AIDS research... 1980's... even the 1992 aegis piece dates before the HHV-8 link to KS was determined.

    If poppers account for KS, then explain the increase in KS in South African men and women, where there is no popper use, that parallels the increased HIV epidemic.

    http://tiny.cc/sKWtF

    Bill, even in HIV Negative men and men who are HIV+ co-infected with HHV-8, drug use, including poppers, has no biological association with KS.. see this 2009 article

    http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/aid.2008.0196

    I know you think I am in denial Bill. But why? I do not study KS. I do not study poppers. I have never been funded by NIDA and I have never had Pharma funding. So what is my motivation for not buying into the oldies of popper research?

    In all fairness Bill. The fact that top researchers are still looking at poppers and KS, such as the 2009 reference I provide, attests to the legitimacy of your beliefs. But the evidence is just not there.

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  24. In all fairness Bill. The fact that top researchers are still looking at poppers and KS, such as the 2009 reference I provide, attests to the legitimacy of your beliefs. But the evidence is just not there.

    That's fair -- I'm not getting hysterical about the tragic injustice of poppers. It is an unresolved question, though.

    But, I submit, that if you compare the purported causal link between poppers and KS with HHV-8 and KS, the former is much more persuasive:

    1. Dixon et al,“Fatal Methemoglobinemia Resulting from Ingestion of Isobutyl Nitrite, a ‘Room Odorizer’ Widely Used for Recreational Purposes”. Journal of Forensic Sciences, pp. 587-93, July 1981.


    A clinical account of a 30-year old black male who died from “acute nitrite poisoning”. He had apparently swallowed some poppers liquid. Contains a description of unsuccessful emergency procedures used, results of the autopsy, as well as a discussion of other butyl nitrite-related fatalities and the various hazards of alkyl nitrite inhalant abuse.

    2. Friedman-Kien et al. “Disseminated Kaposi's Sarcoma in Homosexual Men”. Annals of Internal Medicine. pp. 693-700, June 1982.


    A study of 19 men with KS. “All of the patients had used amyl or butyl nitrite inhalants.”

    I know you think I am in denial Bill. But why?

    I don't think you're in denial, I think you enjoy being on the winning side, but haven't honestly assessed where you could be wrong.


    I do not study KS. I do not study poppers. I have never been funded by NIDA and I have never had Pharma funding. So what is my motivation for not buying into the oldies of popper research?

    I don't question your motives. You honestly believe a retrovirus spread thru sex is killing Africans, and "Denialists" are thwarting proper treatment. You could be wrong, though, and the consequences could be severe. Smart people get big ideas wrong all the time. Duesberg is wrong about 2 or 3 important things. Gallo was grossly wrong about HLV-23.

    On a final note, anal sex has been going on for centuries, without KS, without AIDS.

    The only new development was the Popper fad of the 70's in NY gay discotechs-- and the ensuing Kaposi Sarcoma among gay men at the time.

    Good chat, Seth.

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  25. I heard that KS is coming back among the raver crowd - huffing like bathhouse queens. I wonder if KS makes viral counts go up and t-cells down.

    As for anal sex being safe - maybe sometimes yes. But the CDC reports that 3 percent of ALL American men are victims of rape by other men.

    So if you're a straight man who likes to rape young boys, what better place to find your next piece than at a gay party where crystal is served? So the boy and rapist do the meth and they go at it for two, three or four hours - no pain, hard as a rock and the boy's hole and colon get ripped to shreads. Male rapists like to make their victims cum too - so the boy cums and washes up and maybe takes on three or four other rapists. How long would that take to heal? Regardless of whether HIV exists or not, the trauma of a shredded colon would probably compromise immunity anyway. Fecal matter and ripped colon walls can't be good. And although the boy was raped, he probably thinks its LOVE (or something) and the rape never gets reported.

    Over time, an uncountable series of rapes could be an added mind-fuck. A 45-year-old who thinks anal rape is a normal expression of love could have a really warped sense orf reality - if he survives. I'm sure that after weeks of that kind of trauma a kid could get depressed and maybe suicidal. He goes to a clinic and find a doctor who takes an interested in him that no one else does. He does everything the doctor tells him to do, takes the test and suddenly is HIV positive. The doctor make money from his growing practice by pushing drugs the kid doesn't need. But there's no harm done - the kid's alone - he's a loser and it's not like anyone is going to miss him if he dies.

    Sorry - I didn't mean to go on. It's just that when you said that gay anal sex is safe, you're lying or you don't know what you're talking about. Check out the CDC stats on male rape and the work by Groth/Burgess.

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  26. Bill

    You are right that all of our knowledge is limited in space and time. I could be wrong about a lot of things. I have been wrong many times and surely will be many more time. All I know is what the current science and medical research say. We have seen time and time again that AIDS science changes and what we know today may be wrong tomorrow.

    But at some point the facts are just so overwhelming that the chance of total reversal is unimaginable.

    HIV does cause AIDS....even if the details are still being worked out.

    Antiretrovirals do suppress the virus and improve health for many people, even if they do not cure (yet).

    Finally, about poppers causing KS. Could research reverse the current state of knowledge on poppers and the immune system? Sure.

    But until that happens, until actual research passes through the filter of peer review, I will stick with what the current science says.

    The references you continue to rely on date back to the 1980s. That is a huge mistake.

    Bill you really should read Denying AIDS. If I could read Duesberg, Culshaw and Null(they were painful because they were not written in English) and Bauer (also painful but from laughter)-- you can read Denying AIDS.

    In Denying AIDS, I say we can throw out ALL AIDS science dating back before 1990...including Gallo 1983. What we know about HIV causing AIDS does not depend on the old it is based on the new.

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  27. Re: Anonymous

    Ok, so I almost did not print this comment.

    But I felt that readers should see that all types are visiting this blog. Plus the timing seemed right. (I will explain below)

    Anonymous, your comment is pretty far out there. I am not sure what rape has to do with anything posted here? Some readers will say that your comment is deeply homophobic. I am not sure that you have insight into that. Your reference to Groth/Burgess takes me back to my days in graduate school. But old theories of rape (even if they have stood the test of time) are totally irrelevant to this discussion.

    Anyway, readers forgive me for posting it but I thought that following a rational stream of comments between me and Bill, one where neither of us called each other names, it would be good to close with some third party insanity.

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  28. Seth, use your physchology training and see if this person is just offering up his own sick, twisted rape fantasies! I would bet that anonymous has a psyche about as well developed as Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy or Dennis Rader a.k.a BTK!
    He is obviously sick and does not deserve to use your blog as his forum to spread his hate and fucked up sickness.
    JTD

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  29. Dear John Moore,

    Essex was publicly humiliated for his vociferous claims of the origins of HIV. Perhaps you would like to defend David Ho's pet hypothesis too? and your mate Gallo is squeaky clean. Aw shucks he's a genius us well, right up there with the lot of you moronic science drones. Santa and the tooth fairy has more credibility.

    As for Poodles claims of children and haemopheliacs getting karposis, WTF? your current mantra is that Karposis is caused by HHSV-8, you also claim it is sexually transmitted........by anal sex.....so now your saying haemopheliacs and children were all indulging in your favourite deviant pastime.

    The problem with you gurus is that you keep coming up with a different explanation for the same set of facts when you data doesn't match up, but you really should read your previous theories because that truly shows your idiocy when any comparison is made.

    Bill is right on the money with poppers.

    HIV is an artificial construct from the laboratory.

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  30. Anonymous is a serious kind of crazy. Not our usual garden variety nutty AIDS Denier. This guy is way way out there... thought pattern is disorganized in a way that makes you think Anthony Brink. If this was speech it would be pressured. I am thinking flagrant paranoid delusions.

    If anyone wants to reply they can, but I doubt that I will post any more from this one.

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  31. Fairy Tale said...

    One upon a time in a land far far away,

    a famous scientist Gobert Rallo stole one of his friends favourite toys. He he claimed this toy was his own and used it to make a lot of money for himself. Sadly his friend did not like Rallo using his toy and said he would do bad things unless he got it back.

    Rallo being a greedy child would not give the toy back and only agreed to share it with him when his mommy told him he was going to be grounded and not allowed in his lab to play.

    Rallo grumbled a lot about having to share the toy and went to his friends Max, John and Tony to see if they would help him. Max, John and Tony had been playing with other toys up to then but had become bored with them. They too did not want to be grounded so they told him that he could not play in their labs anymore and would have to start up his own, so he did.

    Now Rallo's stolen toy was a special toy. It could change it's shape and size and color at any time you wanted it to and often it would try to hide in the most unlikely of places. This toy didn't actually do anything but it was pretty and everyone else wanted to play with it as well. These were the same children that liked dressing in their sisters clothes and playing with dolls. So many children wanted to play with this toy that it was eventually cloned so that there were lots of them, enough for every lab child to be happy with. The toy was also magic, it could make money come from out of nowhere!

    Eventually though the smart children became tired of Rallos toy and stopped playing with it. This made Gobert and a lot of lab children unhappy because they worried that the money would stop coming too and they wouldn't be able to buy sweets and porsches and big houses, or go to fancy dinners with adults and have their names in the papers.

    Gobert came up with a smart plan though, he would take his toy to Africa where there were so many other children, surely they would play with it too. Africa was a great success for the toy, you could make people play with it even if they did not want to. And the rest of the world approved of this toy in Africa as no one wanted to deny a poor black child of a toy, that would make them seem mean.

    Eventually though, the child that had originally owned the toy became upset at how much attention the other kids were getting over the toy. So he decided to tell the truth about it. He told all the children that Africans didn't need the toy after all, they would be much happier with some nice water and food and a good nights rest.

    The other children though were very grumpy about this and started to call him names, they even said he could not speak their language!

    Now mommy became upset about this and thought the other kids did not play fair at all, she thought about this for a long time, how to make her boy happy again.......so she gave him a Nobel Prize and he smiled.

    The other kids got nothing, they looked very grumpy but tried and tried to make the prize not seem very good, They held on to their toy tightly because now it looked like someone might take it away from them.

    The End

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  32. Seth,
    Fairy Tale made a the exact same hit and run at D4D!
    Looks like someone needs a little attention.
    Just tell him what a nice little story he has written so that he goes away without detonating whatever is in his lap!
    JTD

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  33. Bill, even Haverkos now accepts that HHV-8 causes Kaposi's and that immunosuppression from HIV is also a key determinant.

    http://www.springerlink.com/content/u11168pqm0877915/

    In science it is perfectly OK to be wrong. The real problem arises when you refuse to admit to being wrong. Haverkos has moved on since the 80s. He saw the evidence that HHV-8 causes KS and was persauded by it. He still thinks that poppers may play some role but this is uncontroversial. Nobody is saying that poppers are good for you

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  34. Oh hey I didn't see Anonymous's post:

    "As for Poodles claims of children and haemopheliacs getting karposis, WTF? your current mantra is that Karposis is caused by HHSV-8, you also claim it is sexually transmitted........by anal sex.....so now your saying haemopheliacs and children were all indulging in your favourite deviant pastime."

    Err, no. Just because HHV8 can be transmitted sexually does not mean it cannot be transmitted other ways as well, say perinataly? Likewise, if tainted clotting factor was not sterilized correctly why should it be surprising that HHV8 could survive? Anonymous, you need to think your post through before you press the submit button.

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