If you have wondered just how manipulative and destructive AIDS Denialism can be, look no further than the ‘documentary’ House of Numbers. As I have posted before, House of Numbers uses the classic tactics of AIDS Denialism to create the illusion of a debate among scientists as to whether HIV causes AIDS.Images can be powerful and persuasive. In the age of digital editing, anyone can snip away in their own home to create what could appear to be a credible film. Such is the case with House of Numbers.
The latest mischief focuses on four minutes of snips from an interview in House of Numbers with Nobel Prize winning discoverer of HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier. AIDS Denialists around the world have rejoiced at those four minutes of footage. Aside from the Rethinking AIDS Society etc… the video of Dr. Montagnier has quickly taking on a life of its own with…
Libertarian bloggers…“Particularly problematical for the orthodoxy is the interview with Luc Montagnier, the French scientist who discovered HIV (if you accept that he discovered something).”
Comments on media threads…. “When Luc Montagnier states on released video on World AIDS Day, that vaccines and drugs are not necessary to get rid of HIV, this is earth-shattering news. The Rethinkers have been saying this for a very long time. How can the mainstream keep pushing their toxic drugs to society? The truth always prevails!”
Pseudoscientists.... "Luc Montagnier’s remarks were, it was alleged, (1) taken out of context; (2) suffered from Montagnier’s lack of command of English; (3) reflected trapping through leading questions from the interviewer (though Montagnier himself did not sign the letter)."
Anti-government bent groups…. “In essence, Montagnier has sided with Peter Duesberg in his hypothesis that HIV is harmless. Duesberg believes that several factors, such as the use of pharmaceutical and recreational drugs, are the true causes of AIDS and not HIV.”
AIDS Myth Exposed… “I think he double speaks ie leaves wriggle room because he knows the French will kill him (French Citizen- French law, french court) when the proverbial brown stuff goes flying vs this totally 'all in' buddy Gallo knows corporate and commercial interest will justify the means some how- jobs and billions in revenue will be his get out of jail free card.”
The problem is, unlike Kari Mullis also a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Montagnier is credible. Also unlike Mullis, Dr. Montagnier is not known to use LSD and as far I know he has never claimed to have been abducted by Alien Glowing Raccoons.
Remember, credibility counts and Dr. Montagnier is highly credible.
That is why if he came out in support of AIDS Denialist claims no one, including me, would take it lightly. If Dr. Montagnier raised doubts that HIV is a lethal sexually transmitted virus I would be the first to publically apologize for dismissing Peter Duesberg as a flake. If Dr. Montagnier stated that people in Africa who are dying of AIDS were afflicted by stress and not HIV infection, I would call for an immediate return of all copies of Denying AIDS and burn them in a public ceremony on the University of California Berkeley campus. I would also donate all of the Royalties from Denying AIDS to Henry Bauer’s expeditions in search of Nessies.
Now just hold on. It isn’t about to happen.
Here is what Dr. Montagnier says, taken from the transcript from House of Numbers where he is interviewed by Brent Leung, the guy who made the film:
Leung: You talked about oxidative stress earlier. Is treating oxidative stress one of the best ways to deal with the African AIDS epidemic?
Montagnier: I think this is one way to approach, to decrease the rate of transmission, because I believe HIV we can be exposed to HIV many times without bring chronically infected, our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system; and this is the problem also of the African people. Their nutrition is not very equilibrated, they are in oxidative stress, even if they are not infected with HIV; so their immune system doesn't work well already. So it's prone, it can, you know, allow HIV to get in and persist. So there are many ways which are not the vaccine, the magic name, the vaccine, many ways to decrease the transmission just by simple measures of nutrition, giving antioxidants -- proper antioxidants -- hygiene measures, fighting the other infections. So they are not spectacular, but they could, you know, decrease very well the epidemic, to the level they are in occidental countries, western countries.
Leung: So if you have a good immune system, then your body can naturally get rid of HIV?
Montagnier: Yes.
Leung: Oh, interesting. Do you think we should have more of a push for antioxidants, and things of that nature, in Africa than antiretrovirals (AIDS drugs)?
Montagnier: We should push for more, you know, a combination of measures; antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men also, very simple measures which [are] not very expensive, but which could do a lot. And this is my, actually my worry about the many spectacular action for the global funds to buy drugs and so on, and Bill Gates and so on, for the vaccine. But you know those kind of measures are not very well funded, they're not funded at all, or they are, you know, it really depends on the local government to take choice of this, but local governments they take advice of the scientific advisors from the intelligent institutions, and they don't get this kind of advice very often.
Leung: Well there's no money in nutrition, right? There's no profit.
Montagnier: There's no profit, yes. Water is important. Water is key.
Leung: Now one thing you said, you were talking about the fact that if you have a built immune system, it is possible to get rid of HIV naturally. If you take a poor African who's been infected and you build up their immune system, is it possible for them to also naturally get rid of it?
Montagnier: [Nodding yes] I would think so.
Leung: That's an important point.
Montagnier: It's important knowledge which is completely neglected. People always think of drugs and vaccine. So this is a message which may be different from what you heard before, no?
Leung: The closing?
Montagnier: No, no, yes, my message, it's different from what you heard from (Anthony) Fauci or...
Leung: Yes, it's a little different.
Montagnier: Little different.
The points excerpted in Leung’s interview are used by AIDS Denialists to suggest that Dr. Montagnier is in line with Peter Duesberg and other AIDS Deniers.
But is he?
There is also no basis to believe that Dr. Montagnier agrees with Duesberg that there is no genetic link to ANY cancer and that ALL cancers are caused by toxins, or with Mullis that aliens abduct scientists, or Bauer that Loch Ness Monsters exist, or Rasnick that the CIA is working with Big Pharama to sell AZT, or Matthias Rath that Bill Gates is monitoring our conversations, or Andrew Maniotis that AIDS is caused by Syphilis, or the Perth Group that excessive exposure semen causes AIDS, or Celia Farber with whatever the hell it is that she is saying.
AIDS Myth Exposed… “I think he double speaks ie leaves wriggle room because he knows the French will kill him (French Citizen- French law, french court) when the proverbial brown stuff goes flying vs this totally 'all in' buddy Gallo knows corporate and commercial interest will justify the means some how- jobs and billions in revenue will be his get out of jail free card.”
The problem is, unlike Kari Mullis also a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Montagnier is credible. Also unlike Mullis, Dr. Montagnier is not known to use LSD and as far I know he has never claimed to have been abducted by Alien Glowing Raccoons.
Remember, credibility counts and Dr. Montagnier is highly credible.
That is why if he came out in support of AIDS Denialist claims no one, including me, would take it lightly. If Dr. Montagnier raised doubts that HIV is a lethal sexually transmitted virus I would be the first to publically apologize for dismissing Peter Duesberg as a flake. If Dr. Montagnier stated that people in Africa who are dying of AIDS were afflicted by stress and not HIV infection, I would call for an immediate return of all copies of Denying AIDS and burn them in a public ceremony on the University of California Berkeley campus. I would also donate all of the Royalties from Denying AIDS to Henry Bauer’s expeditions in search of Nessies.
Now just hold on. It isn’t about to happen.
Here is what Dr. Montagnier says, taken from the transcript from House of Numbers where he is interviewed by Brent Leung, the guy who made the film:
Leung: You talked about oxidative stress earlier. Is treating oxidative stress one of the best ways to deal with the African AIDS epidemic?
Montagnier: I think this is one way to approach, to decrease the rate of transmission, because I believe HIV we can be exposed to HIV many times without bring chronically infected, our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system; and this is the problem also of the African people. Their nutrition is not very equilibrated, they are in oxidative stress, even if they are not infected with HIV; so their immune system doesn't work well already. So it's prone, it can, you know, allow HIV to get in and persist. So there are many ways which are not the vaccine, the magic name, the vaccine, many ways to decrease the transmission just by simple measures of nutrition, giving antioxidants -- proper antioxidants -- hygiene measures, fighting the other infections. So they are not spectacular, but they could, you know, decrease very well the epidemic, to the level they are in occidental countries, western countries.
Leung: So if you have a good immune system, then your body can naturally get rid of HIV?
Montagnier: Yes.
Leung: Oh, interesting. Do you think we should have more of a push for antioxidants, and things of that nature, in Africa than antiretrovirals (AIDS drugs)?
Montagnier: We should push for more, you know, a combination of measures; antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men also, very simple measures which [are] not very expensive, but which could do a lot. And this is my, actually my worry about the many spectacular action for the global funds to buy drugs and so on, and Bill Gates and so on, for the vaccine. But you know those kind of measures are not very well funded, they're not funded at all, or they are, you know, it really depends on the local government to take choice of this, but local governments they take advice of the scientific advisors from the intelligent institutions, and they don't get this kind of advice very often.
Leung: Well there's no money in nutrition, right? There's no profit.
Montagnier: There's no profit, yes. Water is important. Water is key.
Leung: Now one thing you said, you were talking about the fact that if you have a built immune system, it is possible to get rid of HIV naturally. If you take a poor African who's been infected and you build up their immune system, is it possible for them to also naturally get rid of it?
Montagnier: [Nodding yes] I would think so.
Leung: That's an important point.
Montagnier: It's important knowledge which is completely neglected. People always think of drugs and vaccine. So this is a message which may be different from what you heard before, no?
Leung: The closing?
Montagnier: No, no, yes, my message, it's different from what you heard from (Anthony) Fauci or...
Leung: Yes, it's a little different.
Montagnier: Little different.
The points excerpted in Leung’s interview are used by AIDS Denialists to suggest that Dr. Montagnier is in line with Peter Duesberg and other AIDS Deniers.
But is he?
For the record, Dr. Montagnier has stated that Duesberg is hopelessly wrong on AIDS, including in Dr. Montagnier's 2008 Nobel Lecture. Now read this section of his lecture carefully because not only does Dr. Montagnier refute the central ideas of AIDS Denialism speaking directly about Peter Duesberg himself, he discusses the complexity of AIDS and the failings of AZT mono-therapy, statements that AIDS Denialists will easily exploit. I have put key phrases in bold to help the Cherry Pickers.
“Our data, which I presented in September 1983 at a meeting on HTLV in Cold Spring Harbor,were met with scepticism, and only in the Spring of 1984 did the description of a quasi identical virus under the name of HTLV III by the group of R. C. Gallo convince the scientific community that this new retrolentivirus was the cause of AIDS. The group of Jay Levy in San Francisco also isolated the same kind of virus, followed by many other laboratories.
However, a few opponents led by P. Duesberg argued, and are still arguing, that there is no real demonstration that the virus does exist and is the cause of AIDS according to Koch_s postulates.
In fact, the proviral DNA of the virus, renamed HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) by an international nomenclature committee, was cloned and sequenced,[9–11] showing the classical gene structure of animal retroviruses which Dr. Duesberg himself helped to uncover earlier. But in addition, new genes (tat, nef), important in the regulation of the expression of the viral genetic information, were recognized from the DNA sequencing, making the viral genome probably the most complex known in the retrovirus family. HIV and its primate cousins are therefore well characterized entities only composed of DNA sequences, none existing in the human genome.
A posteriori, two facts should have provided to the few remaining sceptics final conviction that HIV is the culprit in AIDS:
1) Transmission of AIDS by blood transfusion has practically disappeared in countries where the detection of HIV antibodies in blood donors has been implemented.
2) The inhibition of virus multiplication by a combination of specific inhibitors of the viral enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease) has greatly improved the clinical conditions of the patients. Mutations in the genome of HIV-inducing resistance to these inhibitors has led to relapses and aggravation of the patients_ condition. In 1986, thanks to a collaboration with Portuguese colleagues, we isolated a second virus (which I named HIV2) from West African patients hospitalized in a Lisbon hospital. They all had the signs of AIDS but had no
antibodies against our first virus. In fact, they had only antibodies to the most variable protein of HIV, the surface glycoprotein. The patients had lost antibodies against the well-conserved internal proteins of HIV2 which show common epitopes with their counterparts of HIV1, unlike the glycoprotein .
The isolation of HIV1 and HIV2 viruses from AIDS patients in Africa made us realize that we were dealing with a large epidemic of heterosexually transmitted viruses.
Evidence that HIV was not transmitted by casual contacts came from our study in a French boarding school, where HIV infected haemophilic children were in close contact, day and night, with HIV negative nonhaemophilic children: none of the latter were found to be HIV positive.
The isolation of the virus causing AIDS allowed to implement rational prevention measures and also to start a search for efficient viral inhibitors. The first candidate, azidothymidine (AZT), was an efficient inhibitor of HIV reverse transcriptase in in vitro experiments (Mitsuya and Broder). However, its use in AIDS patients was soon recognized as disappointing. In fact, the treatment readily induced mutants of the virus resistant to AZT and did not extend the life span of the patients. The main obstacle of treatment with a single or two inhibitors was the capacity of the virus to mutate, which also impedes the design of an efficient vaccine and also explains the complexity of the pathophysiology of AIDS.” (page 5822)
To the sane and rational thinking person, there can be no question that Dr. Montagnier does not deny that HIV causes AIDS. He does not dispute the pathology that HIV causes the immune system. He does not question HIV testing or the effectiveness of combination antiretroviral medications. Amazingly, in his Nobel lecture Dr. Montagnier directly dismisses Duesberg and AIDS Denialism.
“Our data, which I presented in September 1983 at a meeting on HTLV in Cold Spring Harbor,were met with scepticism, and only in the Spring of 1984 did the description of a quasi identical virus under the name of HTLV III by the group of R. C. Gallo convince the scientific community that this new retrolentivirus was the cause of AIDS. The group of Jay Levy in San Francisco also isolated the same kind of virus, followed by many other laboratories.
However, a few opponents led by P. Duesberg argued, and are still arguing, that there is no real demonstration that the virus does exist and is the cause of AIDS according to Koch_s postulates.
In fact, the proviral DNA of the virus, renamed HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) by an international nomenclature committee, was cloned and sequenced,[9–11] showing the classical gene structure of animal retroviruses which Dr. Duesberg himself helped to uncover earlier. But in addition, new genes (tat, nef), important in the regulation of the expression of the viral genetic information, were recognized from the DNA sequencing, making the viral genome probably the most complex known in the retrovirus family. HIV and its primate cousins are therefore well characterized entities only composed of DNA sequences, none existing in the human genome.
A posteriori, two facts should have provided to the few remaining sceptics final conviction that HIV is the culprit in AIDS:
1) Transmission of AIDS by blood transfusion has practically disappeared in countries where the detection of HIV antibodies in blood donors has been implemented.
2) The inhibition of virus multiplication by a combination of specific inhibitors of the viral enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease) has greatly improved the clinical conditions of the patients. Mutations in the genome of HIV-inducing resistance to these inhibitors has led to relapses and aggravation of the patients_ condition. In 1986, thanks to a collaboration with Portuguese colleagues, we isolated a second virus (which I named HIV2) from West African patients hospitalized in a Lisbon hospital. They all had the signs of AIDS but had no
antibodies against our first virus. In fact, they had only antibodies to the most variable protein of HIV, the surface glycoprotein. The patients had lost antibodies against the well-conserved internal proteins of HIV2 which show common epitopes with their counterparts of HIV1, unlike the glycoprotein .
The isolation of HIV1 and HIV2 viruses from AIDS patients in Africa made us realize that we were dealing with a large epidemic of heterosexually transmitted viruses.
Evidence that HIV was not transmitted by casual contacts came from our study in a French boarding school, where HIV infected haemophilic children were in close contact, day and night, with HIV negative nonhaemophilic children: none of the latter were found to be HIV positive.
The isolation of the virus causing AIDS allowed to implement rational prevention measures and also to start a search for efficient viral inhibitors. The first candidate, azidothymidine (AZT), was an efficient inhibitor of HIV reverse transcriptase in in vitro experiments (Mitsuya and Broder). However, its use in AIDS patients was soon recognized as disappointing. In fact, the treatment readily induced mutants of the virus resistant to AZT and did not extend the life span of the patients. The main obstacle of treatment with a single or two inhibitors was the capacity of the virus to mutate, which also impedes the design of an efficient vaccine and also explains the complexity of the pathophysiology of AIDS.” (page 5822)
To the sane and rational thinking person, there can be no question that Dr. Montagnier does not deny that HIV causes AIDS. He does not dispute the pathology that HIV causes the immune system. He does not question HIV testing or the effectiveness of combination antiretroviral medications. Amazingly, in his Nobel lecture Dr. Montagnier directly dismisses Duesberg and AIDS Denialism.
There is also no basis to believe that Dr. Montagnier agrees with Duesberg that there is no genetic link to ANY cancer and that ALL cancers are caused by toxins, or with Mullis that aliens abduct scientists, or Bauer that Loch Ness Monsters exist, or Rasnick that the CIA is working with Big Pharama to sell AZT, or Matthias Rath that Bill Gates is monitoring our conversations, or Andrew Maniotis that AIDS is caused by Syphilis, or the Perth Group that excessive exposure semen causes AIDS, or Celia Farber with whatever the hell it is that she is saying.
There is no basis for saying that Dr. Montagnier agrees with any of these things.
But that wont stop some from saying that he does.
Facts rarely affect denialists. For evidence of this, simply look at posts by Billy, Mikey, and so many others.
ReplyDeleteBut Seth, this is where your ignorance of postmodernism shows.
ReplyDeleteListen to Marco Ruggiero:The deconstructive approach. It is eosy for any reader to realize that most artides on HIV and AIDS demonstrate that HIV is net the cause
of AIDS, if the articles are read using the deconstructive approach proposed by the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida's approach consisted in conducting thorough , careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). Deconstruction is the way to bring to light contradictions hidden in commonsense opinions and ideas.
If you apply these principles then you can deconstruct any text to mean whatever you want even if the author disagrees with your interpretation. The author is dead!
It is not ignorance of facts that I find so amazing. It is acceptance of the ridiculous. When David Crowe endorsed Henry Bauer I thought that would kill Rethinking AIDS because Bauer has such crap credibility. Speaking of naive.. I had no clue at that time how ADS Deniers will accept any bull crap that says HIV does not cause AIDS.
ReplyDeleteHey, answer me this:
ReplyDeleteHow come Montagnier got the Nobel Prize for discovering HIV (LAV), but Gallo did not?
The beauty of Montagnier is that in 1990, he asserted that HIV was necessary, but not sufficient to cause AIDS.
Now, in a moment of candor, he says we need to focus on more on nutrition and water, rather than toxic drugs, to boost a person's immune system.
That is exactly correct.
In the HoN segment Montagnier is clearly talking about the variables involved when a given exposure to HIV is either cleared within the first couple of weeks following the contact (and the person remains "HIV negative") or results in seroconversion and chronic infection ("HIV positive" status). Obviously these variables are important in determining not only what happens to individuals who are exposed to HIV, but also the dynamics of the epidemic within a population as a whole.
ReplyDeleteIt's possible that Leung was merely too stupid to realise this, despite Montagnier repeatedly and explicitly stating this is what he's talking about throughout the interview.
You can forgive stupidity and ignorance. However this is not just one foolish filmmaker's failure to grasp what a scientist is talking about. The hoopla around this created by the HoN promotional team is cynical, unscrupulous and very, very deliberate.
Gee, Bill. Maybe it's because Gallo didn't discover HIV. It was discovered by Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and her team in Paris that was under the leadership of Montagnier at the time.
ReplyDeleteNot every scientific discovery of note occurs in the USA. Sometimes people discover stuff in that mysterious and little-known place called "The Rest of The World". Perhaps you've heard of it.
OK Bill
ReplyDeleteThis is perhaps where it gets interesting.
How and why the Nobel people decided to give Montagnier the prize and not share it with Gallo is something I am not sure anyone really knows. But it does seem to be a statement that speaks for itself. I have said before and I say it again now... you can hate Gallo and disregard everything that ever came out of his lab and it has no impact on current HIV/AIDS Science.
I think there remain doctors in the field who say HIV is necessary but insufficient to cause AIDS. It is certainly a point worthy of debate among physicians and scientists.I do not think this is problematic.
I hear Montagnier saying we should focus more on nutrition and clean water and I too agree - although I do not see the instead of drugs part. I also miss the toxic part. Seems reasonable to say what he does say "We should push for more, you know, a combination of measures"
If we stick with what Montagnier says in House of Blunders, I do not see a fight here. If you ignore Leung's leading statements it is easier to follow Montagnier. Trying reading what Montagnier says without Leung.
Personally, I have no problem with this.
Bill, do you accept Montagnier's position...
HIV is sexually transmitted
A robust immune response can protect against infection
Duesberg is WRONG on AIDS
When HIV infection occurs it causes AIDS
Maintaining optimal immune functioning can keep a person with HIV healthy for a long time.
Suppressing HIV replication with effective medications can also keep a person healthy for a long time.
Combinations of measures are needed..including antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men
HIV tests are valid.
AZT alone is a failure and in high doses is toxic.
Combinations of antiretroviral meds properly dosed are not toxic and have saved lives.
Bill, if you are in Dr. Montagnier's camp, so too am I. This would be truly wonderful news because we can stop calling each other names!
Billy,
ReplyDelete"How come Montagnier got the Nobel Prize for discovering HIV (LAV), but Gallo did not?"
As Snout mentioned; because Montagnier is the one who first discovered it. This is not unique to the story of HIV.
Take as another example the story of the HepB vaccine (yes yes I'm sure you don't believe in HepB either but read on anyway).
The person credited with the discovery of the HepB soluble antigen (HBsAG) which was later used to vaccinate people was Dr. Baruch S. Blumberg. At the time the nature of HBsAG (then called the Australia Antigen) was not fully known and Dr. Blumberg did not do much else with it.
Along comes Dr. Maurice Hilleman who took this and showed it for what it was, a protein coded by the HepB virus. He then proceeded to use it to make a successful vaccine and demonstrate its effectiveness. Despite having discovered WHAT the Australia Antigen was and how to apply it for the good of mankind, Maurice Hilleman did not get the Nobel Prize. It was instead awarded to Dr. Blumberg for being the first to discover it. Get it now?
There are other such examples but hopefully one should do for the time being.
It wasn't until we taught Luc the secret handshake that we had total mind control over him. The fact that he makes sense just shows how wrong he must be. People who understand AIDS know that if it makes sense, it's got to be wrong. If it makes money, now you're talking.
ReplyDeleteFew people know that full mind-control was achieved about 20 years ago, which is about how long Luc has been making statements that undermine the AIDS paradigm (there's your proof). However, we had to wait until the Nobel was awarded before we could talk about it.
Seth, can I drop by some time and teach you the secret handshake? Rethinking AIDS is always looking for new assets. You don't have to tell anyone. In fact, it's better if it's just a secret between you and me :)
Does anyone really think that the statements by Montagnier 'undermine the AIDS paradigm'?
ReplyDeleteWhat about Montagnier's Nobel Lecture? What do they think? Big Pharma paid Montagnier to discredit Duesberg?
Are Bill and David Crowe delusional or what?
I heard about Mullis' glowing raccoons and Henry Bauer's Nessie Monsters. I also know about
David Rasnick's CIA conspiracies.
So my question is.... is Denialism a mental illness?
We all know that the "David Crowe" above must be an imposter. As is becoming increasingly clear, "David Crowe" has not yet been fully isolated by the most rigorous method science has to offer.
ReplyDeleteAlthough fellow denialist Anthony Brink is having a pretty good go at it.
The Unbelievable Mediocrity of David Crowe
Snout, I am willing to accept that someone is posting as David Crowe.
ReplyDeleteKellyGN, I think you ask a fair question... are Bill and David Crowe delusional. I discuss this very issue in Denying AIDS. Unfortunately, they themselves cannot answer that question... such is the nature of delusions.
So David, I will rephrase. What do you tell your kids when they ask you why so many people think you are delusional? Do you give them the usual "everyone thought Jesus Christ and Galileo Galilei were crazy" answer? Of perhaps a more contemporary conspiracy theory version?
What about Christine Maggiore's son, what do you guys tell him?
I have always wondered this. It is the kind of question Joe would ask you. So seeing as you would answer my questions just the same, how about it?
FYI - I've received a number of emails from your students who complain of how tedious and inconsequential you really are. As time goes on, rent-a-PhDs like you demonstrate who the actual denialists are. I must say that your twisting and turning is entertaining.
ReplyDeleteSeth wrote: "I have said before and I say it again now... you can hate Gallo and disregard everything that ever came out of his lab and it has no impact on current HIV/AIDS Science."
ReplyDeleteI don't agree. Gallo (and his lab) in 1979 discovered and isolated the first known human retroviruses (HTLV-1), showed that it was infectious, that it integrated into human DNA, and that it caused T-cell leukemia. Gallo was the first who was able to grow it in culture and re-isolate it from those lines. He characterized reverse transcriptase and developed the protocol that Montagnier used to find HIV (which he called LAV). Gallo, not Montagnier, proved that LAV/HTLV-3/HIV is infectious and the cause of AIDS, and he developed the regents for the HIV antibody tests (ELISA and Western Blot). Maybe he's not a cuddly guy, but I think that's a pretty decent contribution to the field.
Crowe, now Baker. This Montagnier thing has brought AIDS Deniers out of the woodwork.
ReplyDeleteBecause I doubt anyone has ever heard of him, Clark Baker is an ex-LA Cop I hear was 'retired' for beating up an old man. see http://dissidents4dumbees.blogspot.com/ for details.
According to Clark he is a writer, producer, US Marine, private eye, pilot, divemaster, fired LAPD officer and father of a US Marine and public school teacher. He studied humanity on the streets of Calcutta, Nairobi, Rio, San Salvador, and Los Angeles.
I am serious. He thinks he is Steven Segal.
So now that we have heard from Crowe and his close friend Clark baker, I am waiting to hear from the glowing raccoons, Nessies, and others who attended the Rethinking AIDS Conference.
Ceteris
ReplyDeleteAgreed.
Dr. Gallo is a world class scientist. He was recently honored at Duke University... I almost went down there just for his talk. Amazing really.
My point is that AIDS Deniers are fixated on Dr. Gallo. I speculate in Denying AIDS that much of the whole AIDS Denialism movement can be traced back to Peter Duesberg's professional jealousy of Dr. Galllo. But what we know about AIDS today has progressed since 1984, the year of Denialism fixation.
Still I agree, I should not suggest that Dr. Gallo's accomplishments and contributions are anything less than revolutionary.
This Baker must be a lier.
ReplyDeleteKalichman has not taught much here at UConn. He spends like 90% of his time on AIDS research. It is pretty hard to believe any student would email some obscure AIDS blogger. Why weren't those emails sent along with the complaint letters that the Dean has received from AIDS denialists about Kalichman? Maybe then we would not have laughed as much.
Seth asks the following series of surprisingly clear and concise questions:
ReplyDeleteBill, do you accept Montagnier's position...
1.HIV is sexually transmitted
No. Padian studied 176 discordant couples having sex for 6 years, and found no seroconversions.
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/146/4/350
2. A robust immune response can protect against infection
Yes, this is true for any infections
3. Duesberg is WRONG on AIDS
No. Duesberg was right about the toxicity of AZT. He was right about the clinical irrelevancy of human retroviruses. He was right about how over-use of illicit drugs generally wreck a person's health and immune system. But he was wrong about the presence of antibodies, which do signal some type of hypogammaglobulinemia, and probably correlate with poor health.
4. When HIV infection occurs it causes AIDS
No. See No. 3
5. Maintaining optimal immune functioning can keep a person with HIV healthy for a long time.
Yes. This is critical. Optimal immune function is the key. To do this, though, you have to avoid drugs, eat well and have good sanitation.
6. Suppressing HIV replication with effective medications can also keep a person healthy for a long time.
No. AZT monotherapy killed the first generation of AIDS patients. The new less toxic regime in 1996, is much less toxic.
7. Combinations of measures are needed..including antioxidants, nutrition advice, nutritions, fighting other infections -- malaria, tuberculosis, parasitosis, worms -- education of course, genital hygiene for women and men
Yes. Agreed. Even the antiviral regime, probably has some general antibiotic effect, which can benefit patients, but the ones you mention above are most important.
8. HIV tests are valid.
Valid for what? They don't detect HIV. They probably do signify hypogammaglobulinemia, which does correlate with sickness.
9. AZT alone is a failure and in high doses is toxic.
Hallelulah! Now, can we direct blame at those who promoted AZT, and direct praise at those who resisted it?
10. Combinations of antiretroviral meds properly dosed are not toxic and have saved lives.
Nope. At best, they function as a general antibiotic and placebo.
Hey, we've made progress. Kumbaya, Seth.
The Baker posting is fake. The real traffic cop/complaints desk jockey would never write anything without referring to Queen Gertrude saying "the lady doth protest too much."
ReplyDeleteThanks for starting this thread, Seth. The more that Leung's many deceptions are exposed on the internet world he inhabits, the better.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Luc Montagnier well on a personal level, although of course I've met him a few times. I know for certain he is not a supporter of anything remotely connected to AIDS denialism. His Nobel Lecture says it all, from this regard, and I think it's actually rather unusual, and quite telling, for him to have made such a comment about Duesberg at such a time to such an audience. Well, good for Luc!
The AIDS denialists have been speculating on the internet about why Luc was not a signatory of the multi-scientist protest letter about HoN that I coordinated. They seem to think that his absence must mean he supports Leung and agrees with HoN. In fact, the truth is very different, as it always is when the AIDS denialists start saying what it must be. Indeed, the truth is boring......
The fact is that Luc did not sign the letter because he was NEVER ASKED TO! And the reason he was never asked to is because he could not be contacted during the week when the signatories were being collated. Luc is "old school", he is not a "Blackberry guy", he rarely checks his emails (I think his assistant prints them for him), and in the relevant time frame he was, I'm told, traveling in Africa where internet connections can be problematic. Anyway, I could never get hold of him, and nor could a few other people who tried.
We probably should have asked him later to sign on as an addendum, but it didn't seem particularly important or significant at the time. Perhaps now it's become obvious the extent to which Leung et al. are manipulating his words, we'll revisit the issue. I feel certain that Luc would be shocked and appalled at what's going on.
I have said this before and I'll say it again, because it's true and it's based on direct knowledge, and also the indirect knowledge of colleagues who know Luc better than I do. He is not very fluent when expressing complex views in the English language. Sure, he can make himself understood well enough for scientists to know what he means, but he doesn't always choose the most appropriate phrase, and in direct, one on one conversation, one sometimes has to ask for clarification, when there's a nuance to be understood. Leung has clearly exploited that. Moreover, as both the Snoutworld post and this one have clearly shown, the denialists have clearly twisted what Luc actually DID say to give it a meaning that isn't actually there (in other words, they have distorted his message).
So, Luc supports the provision of clean water and better nutrition within Africa? Who doesn't! I believe Bono is quite hot on this.....
continued from previous...
ReplyDeleteSo, Luc refers to people who might be able to clear the virus via their immune response to it? Well, as noted on the above posts, Luc is NOT referring here to the clearing of HIV by a person with established, systemic HIV infection, whether or not they have better food and water (i.e., he is not talking about people "curing" themselves by eating or drinking better). What Luc is actually referring to is a body of ongoing research (in humans and the macaque models) concerning what happens in the very earliest stages of sexual (vaginal or rectal) HIV transmission. Although the science is far from fully understood at this stage, there's mounting evidence that HIV replicates locally within the mucosal tissues close to the site of virus deposition, for a period of several days, maybe a week or so. At that time, the infection is "occult", and no virus is detectable in the blood (or even in the draining lymph nodes). In many cases, probably most, the localized, mucosal infection does amplify to a sufficient extent so as to eventually reach the draining lymph nodes, and thence the bloodstream. Once the infection goes systemic, seroconversion occurs and the person is unequivocally and permanently infected (and could be diagnosed as such by, first, PCR assays for the virus, later by serology assays for anti-HIV Abs).
Where this is relevant to what Luc was discussing is the idea that some exposed people do sometimes manage to clear the virus at the early stage when the infection is mucosal and not yet systemic. If this is true, and it's very hard to prove, these people (or macaques, in experiments) do not become systemically infected and do not seroconvert. How this happens is also not yet known, but most investigators believe that either innate immunity or localized acquired immune responses are involved. There are some papers reporting purely mucosal immune responses in some exposed-uninfected people, but there's a lot of controversy about the nature and specificity of these responses (to be fair, the research is VERY hard to do). There's also generally considered to be a significant genetic component to these responses, and indeed to the risk of HIV acquisition in general. Individual susceptibility to acquiring a viral infection varies widely, which applies to ANY virus, or any pathogen, not just to HIV. Again, there's a lot of ongoing work on this area of infection science. Papers and reviews by Ashley Haase and, in the macaque model, Chris Miller or Tom Hope are probably the most useful resource for reading up on the underlying science.
So, if there's a genetic component to possibly protective mucosal immune responses to HIV, could these responses be affected by an individual's general health, which is going to be affected by his/her access to good food and clean water? Although there's no data on this that I'm aware of, I don't see why not. Healthy people generally have better immune systems than unhealthy people do. I don't think that's a controversial viewpoint.
Luc also notes that genital health is important. Again, this is true. A major risk factor for a woman acquiring HIV infection is the presence of an STD. Genital ulceration degrades the natural protective barrier of the vaginal epithelium, facilitating HIV access to the target cells it infects in the underlying tissues. HSV, or some other STDs, cause localized inflammation within the vaginal tissues, leading to the recruitment of target cells for HIV infection. Luc knows and understands this very well.
These are the scientific issues that Luc was getting at in his interview. Leung asked me the same kind of questions, but of course he never shows my answers, perhaps because I'm a native English speaker and expressed myself more fluently than Luc did. As he did throughout his film, Leung behaved with dishonor and deception at the forefront of the production process.
Thanks Bill
ReplyDeleteThat is a first in AIDS Denialism...Cherry Picking one guy!
You know the toy store Build a Bear?
You just invented Build a Scientist... pick and choose what you want and leave the rest! A classic, really.
This is UNBELIEVABLE. Clarkie has just proven himself COMPLETELY RETARDED.
ReplyDeleteHe claims in his latest post that only 5600 people died of AIDS in California, and cites a JAMA graph as showing on average, a 15/100,000 mortality rate for infectious disease. Unfortunately, Clarkie FAILED to read the words to the LEFT of the graph that states "PER YEAR"!!!!!
Thus, on average, it would be 5600 per year - with a total of about 85000 having died, according to the California health Dept" http://www.cdph.ca.gov/programs/aids/Documents/HIVAIDSMergedapr09.pdf
Wow - he can't even read a simple graph correctly!!!
Africans need clean water, nutritious food and political stability. They certainly don't need Nevirapine, Zidovudine, Atripla or any other ridiculous toxic drug sold by rapacious pharmaceutical companies.
ReplyDeleteThe Nobel Committe understood that Gallo was a fraud -- that's why he was snubbed.
Montagnier is caught in a bit of a pickle. In 1990, when he declared that HIV was insufficient to kill cd4 cells, he was pilloried. He shut up, and got his Nobel. But, now he can speak freely and he has.
AIDS scientists are a joke. They'd be selling cars if it weren't for this enormously lucrative boondoggle.
And now Bill's most recent post Ultra-fail list by Poodles:
ReplyDelete1) "No. Padian studied 176 discordant couples having sex for 6 years, and found no seroconversions."
FAIL It was 175 couples of whom the longest duration of those couple' visits was 6 years. The implication of this research is not that HIV is not transmissible but rather that modification of high risk behaviours can reduce transmission. Other studies have long ago proven transmission, including the identification of identical or near-identical viral sequences in the donor and recipient, despite the high mutation rate.
Bill obtains Double FAIL points for not explaining why it is, if this study truly showed HIV was not transmissible, that Giaganto-AIDS-Megacorp-Conspiracy Inc. allowed it to be printed.
2) "Yes. Agreed. Even the antiviral regime, probably has some general antibiotic effect, which can benefit patients, but the ones you mention above are most important.
FAIL for not providing evidence that at the concentrations achieved in the human body that the antivirals have a general antibiotic effect that accounts for the improvement in health. Double FAIL points for not explaining why, then, general antibiotics alone are not sufficient for people with AIDS.
3) "Valid for what? They don't detect HIV. They probably do signify hypogammaglobulinemia, which does correlate with sickness."
SUPER-FAIL. Hypogammaglobulinemia is a decrease in gamma globulins, usually due to defective B-cells. This would lead to false NEGATIVES, not false positives. You get Double FAIL points for not even knowing the difference between hypogammaglobulinemia and hypergammaglobulinemia which can result in false positives on some ELISAs on rare occassions, although not nearly enough to account for the vast, vast majority of positives.
4) "Yes. This is critical. Optimal immune function is the key. To do this, though, you have to avoid drugs, eat well and have good sanitation."
FAIL While the above do help to maintain a good immune system, the lack of any of those alone or in combination has never been proven to result in AIDS.
Sigh, that is too many fails for me to be able to handle for now. More maybe when I'm less depressed by Bill's indication of the state of humanity.
*Bark*
Re Clark Baker, Among the AIDS denialists he's considered a thought leader, a role model, a behavioral icon, a true paradigm of the movement and what it stands for. Even the Perth Group guys and gals love and respect him for being the fine, upstanding All-American boy he so clearly is. So let's hear it for Clark Baker, Celia Farber's right hand man and bosom buddy. Way to go CLARKIE!!!!
ReplyDeleteSETH KALICHMAN SAYS: How and why the Nobel people decided to give Montagnier the prize and not share it with Gallo is something I am not sure anyone really knows.
ReplyDeleteI KNOW, IT'S BECAUSE HE'S A FRAUD see for yourselve's
:http://www.fearoftheinvisible.com/fraud-in-key-hiv-research-background
There is no such fraud concerning Peter Duesberg and that's yet another reason why until someone can prove to me that he bribed or bought these honors:
1969: Merck Award 1971: California Scientist of the Year Award1981: First Annual American Medical Centre Oncology Award 1986: Outstanding Investigator Award National Institute of Health 1986: Elected National Academy of Sciences 1986-1987: Fogarty Scholar-in-Residence at the National Institutes of Health Bethesda MD 1988: Wissenschaftspreis, Hannover Germany 1988: Lichtfield Lecturer, Oxford England
1990: C.J. Watson Lecturer, Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis MN
1992: Fisher Distinguished Professor, University of North Texas, Denton TX
1992: Shaffer Alumni Lecturer, Tulane University, New Orleans LA
And that he hasn't really spent most his life working on retroviruses
And that he is anything but a man of outstanding moral and profesional integrity
I MIGHT BELIEVE THEM, BUT THEY HAVEN'T, THEY CAN'T AND I DON'T!
Actually, Anonymous, you might not be right about the Perth Group loving and respecting Clark Baker. Here's what one of them, posting Anonymously, but almost certainly the great Val Turner herself said about him:
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
Clark Baker has a gun and threatens people.
Anyone concerned about posting a blog with the possilbe implications that a deranged gun wielding ex-cop is going to get them, should take their prozac and get a psych consult pronto. Not a viral diagnosis, you're paranoid delusional.
December 3, 2009 4:33 PM
Looks like dear Val may be right for once. You go girl!
Seth, is that picture above one of Marco Ruggiero's cell biology conference poster presentations?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like one of his, but I wasn't sure because he usually includes a sidebar about Jacques Derrida, cites Liam Scheff's website as a scientific authority, and profusely thanks Henry Bauer for his "constructive helpful discussions".
Oh, and he likes to print his scientific posters in Comic Sans.
http://hivskeptic.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/ruggiero-et-al.jpg
Checkout this new YouTube video. Is this Dueserg an colleagues receiving the reviews from the Journal of AIDS?
ReplyDeleteThe failings of peer review!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY
Snout
ReplyDeleteThis picture is from one of the Stokely family outings. I do not believe they use the same graphics department as Ruggiero. However, it could be that they hired the same visual presentations consultant, Helen Codron, that Henry Bauer hired for his RA Conference PowerPoint slides. Notice the same level of high tech sophistication.
http://ra2009.org/presentations/Bauer.pdf
How foolish Bill is. He knows as little about the Nobel Prize as he does about the science on which Poodlestomper just corrected him (nice job Stomper).
ReplyDeleteMontagnier and Barre-Sinoussi were awarded the prize because they were the first people to actually ISOLATE HIV, which was the discovery that the Prize Committee decided to recognize. The award was shared with Harald zu Hausen for his first isolation of HPV (HPV is a different virus, Bill, not a typo for HIV). So, the committee decided to make that year's award for virus ISOLATION work. The French group were the first to do that for HIV, so they got the prize. If the committee had, instead, decided to make the award for both the isolation of HIV AND for showing that HIV was the etiologic agent for AIDS, then Gallo would surely have shared the prize with the French pair (presumably at the expense of zur Hausen, who would then have been recognized another time).
So Bill's nasty, libelous, defamatory, silly and inaccurate comments about Bob Gallo are, as usual, simply wrong. The only reason Gallo didn't get the Nobel Prize was because the committee decided that they would make the award solely for the initial work on HIV isolation.
Personally, I don't agree with the committee's decision, as I believe that Bob Gallo should have shared the award with Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi. All three scientists made critical contributions to identifying HIV and showing it was the cause of AIDS. I know many AIDS researchers share this view. But what's done is done.
Hey Seth, What is your policy on comments? You seem to censor every other of my comments. Is that the rule just for critics or for both sides?
ReplyDeleteI mean, I'm not really that fanatical in posting here -- I've already said you, Snot, Poodle, Chris Noble, and DeSong are mostly a feeble gaggle of losers.
But, I'm curious as to what your policy is, or if you just decide things on a whim.
Bill, I would agree that I only post about every other one of your comments.
ReplyDeleteBut there is no 'policy'.
There also are not two sides...there is no debate in reality about HIV causing AIDS, just in the mind of AIDS Deniers.
I do not post comments that are way off topic for a thread. Sort of like this one and every other one of yours. But I decided to post this one because it is a fair question and I do not (and will not) have direct contact with you.
An example of a no go comment, for your reference, was the one where you pasted the Montagnier transcript from House of Morons. That was intended to be a comment on the Lambros posting. The Lambros posting, just before this one, concerns AIDS Denialists persuading people to abandon medications that could save their lives. Your comment was so irrelevant it was a distraction, so no post.
I will also not post comments that are only meant to divert traffic to AIDS denialist websites. I do that enough myself, and only in the relevant context. So those are bye bye too.
Enough of this.... it was a fair question and now you know.
End of story, back to the Montagnier post...
Well, I don't know if Seth will print this, but lemme give it the old college try:
ReplyDelete1. Moore writes: The award was shared with Harald zu Hausen for his first isolation of HPV (HPV is a different virus, Bill, not a typo for HIV).
Umm, hammering someone for typos doesn't work if you spell the guy's name wrong. It's zur Hausen, not zu Hausen.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2008/
Also, see The Huffington Post on pharma scandal re Zur Hausen
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/19/harald-zu-hausens-nobel-p_n_152273.html
2. Moore writes:
So Bill's nasty, libelous, defamatory, silly and inaccurate comments about Bob Gallo are, as usual, simply wrong. The only reason Gallo didn't get the Nobel Prize was because the committee decided that they would make the award solely for the initial work on HIV isolation.
2. Umm, you must have not read, Science Fictions by Pulitzer Prize winner, John Crewdson:
http://www.sciencefictions.net/index.html
Check all the documents, Crewdson has up on his site, including those wonderful letters back and forth between Gallo and Luc and Gallo and Barre-Sinoussi. Pretty cantankerous, no?
http://www.sciencefictions.net/documents.html
You forget that even the New York Times covered Gallo's scientific misconduct:
Bottom Line:
I don't hate Gallo anymore than I hate Bernie Madoff, Barry Bonds or O.J. Simpson. They are all are frauds and crooks, who have gamed the system. The entire field of human retrovirology is pure pseudo-science.
The Nobel Committe understood this, and made the award to Montagnier and B-S, a cold and conspicuous slap in the face to Gallo.
End of story, back to Nobel Laureate Montagnier's wonderful interview with Brent Leung about nutrition and clean water and fighting off HIV with a good immune system.
NY Times on Gallo's misconduct:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.nytimes.com/1990/10/06/us/possible-misconduct-is-seen-in-discovery-of-aids-virus.html?scp=1&sq=gallo%20misconduct&st=cse
So Bill, an internet troll, assumes he knows what was in the minds of the Nobel Prize award committee then? Very presumptuous of him. Bob Gallo was long ago cleared of all the allegations made against him, and the award committee would know that very well.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if "The entire field of human retrovirology is pure pseudo-science" as Bill says, then why did the Nobel Prize go to Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi for isolating HIV, a human retrovirus? Bill claims the award committee delivered a "slap in the face" to Gallo, but if the award of the prize to Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi were for "pseudo-science", then why would the exclusion of Gallo be a "slap in the face"? On Bill's perverse logic, the exclusion of Gallo would actually be official recognition that he is not a pseudo-scientist. But of course nothing Bill says is logical, as he's an AIDS denialist, and there's no logic at all in their belief systems.
Being cantankerous is not a reason to overlook someone's scientific accomplishments. Nor is being cantankerous unique to professional scientists - go and take a look at the nastiness of the exchanges between Anthony Brink et al and David Crowe et al on the denialist message boards, part of the huge schism between the Perthies and the RA group over who is most responsible for the failure of AIDS denialism to make an impact in the real world.
Bob Gallo was long ago cleared of all the allegations made against him,..
ReplyDeleteSo, why was he kicked out of the NCI? His career ended 16 years ago, finalized by the smack-down snub by the Nobel Prize Committee.
Gallo is the O.J Simpson of science -- he beat the murder rap, but it was inevitable that he would be caught down the road.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-12-08-simpson-prison_N.htm
Bill
ReplyDeleteAre your beliefs about AIDS all tied up in Gallo?
Get over it man. Who cares?
The science and medicine behind AIDS in 2009 is not dependent on Bob Gallo. Get out of the 1980s. These are better days.
What is relevant here is that Dr. Montagnier is taken out of context and exploited by cherry picked editing. Montagnier clearly states that Duesberg is WRONG in his Nobel Lecture. Duesberg is wrong on AIDS and he is wrong on caner.
There is obviously no way you can deal with the realties of Montagnier, so off you go back on your obsessive trip to Galloland.
Pretty sad state of affairs.
"The phenomenon of AIDS has created other charlatans, probably more in developed countries than in developing countries. For the most part they are wealthy opportunists who exploit the despair of ailing people....."
ReplyDeleteJoseph B. McCormick, M.D. in "Level 4 - Virus Hunters of the CDC" (1996)....
I take McCormick at his word.
He and his wife Susan Fisher-Hoch, M.D. and Peter Piot (two of whom appeared in the fabulous "House of Numbers" film) were among the key charlatans who convened the infamous Bangui Conference in October 1985 that helped launch the entire AIDS in Africa fiasco!
DoctorChipper
ReplyDeleteThanks for providing the quote..
"wealthy opportunists who exploit the despair of ailing people"
I will put up a slide show with Null, Rath, Rasnick an Leppo with this quote above the pictures. Maybe every other image should be pictures of Maggiore, Baby EJ, Lambros...
As I hear of more people dying because of you AIDS Deniers it is becoming more difficult to laugh.
"The phenomenon of AIDS has created other charlatans, probably more in developed countries than in developing countries. For the most part they are wealthy opportunists who exploit the despair of ailing people....."
ReplyDeleteI totally agree. Let me list a few: Duesberg, Rath, Rasnick, Alive and Well, Continuum, Maggiore, all the BS "natural cure" peddlers in Africa, and the list goes on and on and on and on...
I am a working scientist at a major University in the Philadelphia area. I am somewhat unfamiliar with the AIDS controversy, since it really isn't my field, and I was pretty comfortable accepting the general viral theory, without thinking about it much.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, truth be told, I had heard of Kary Mullis, but not of Duesberg.
My niece in Wisconsin called me last week about a showing of "House of Numbers" at her college. She's a tough cookie, a real smart young woman. She explained some of the controversy and said that she and many of her fellow students enjoyed the film, found it to be thought-provoking.
I did a little research on blood transfusions, because if memory serves me, the fear of HIV contaminating the blood supply was a real problem in the early 1980s, before the cause was even determined.
I found only 1 paper, which performed a controlled study: Ward et al. in New England Journal of Medicine, 312:947 - 952 (1989).
Ward and colleagues studied 400 transfusion recipients in San Francisco; 200 had HIV, 200 did not. He found no difference in mortality between the 2 groups, about half in each group, were dead within 1 year after the transfusion.
This is good science, and, in my view, tends to throw some cold water on the orthodoxy position. If HIV- blood recipients die in equal numbers as HIV + blood recipients, it seems a textbook example of gross over-reaction by the AIDS establishment.
Dr. Johnson...
ReplyDeleteThanks for commenting.
I would like to reply to your note... lots we could chat about.
I wanted to look at that NEJM paper an I think the reference is wrong.
I cannot find a paper by Ward in the 1989 volume and the volume number for 1989 is 321. I hunted about for the paper an cannot find it..
1989 was a long time ago. In AIDS research it is a lifetime. Off the bat, I doubt anyone would expect to see a difference between those 2 groups after only 1 year. HIV is not pussycat, as Peter Duesberg says it is... but it does not kill in 1 year either.
Let me know the correct reference... but I am not expecting any cold water.
House of Numbers is a fraud. It is sad that college students are not being informed of that before they see it. I think everyone should see that film, but only after knowing it is a sham.
Thanks again...
Re Dr Johnson's post
ReplyDelete"Ward and colleagues studied 400 transfusion recipients in San Francisco; 200 had HIV, 200 did not. He found no difference in mortality between the 2 groups, about half in each group, were dead within 1 year after the transfusion."
It's hard to be sure of what's going on without reading the paper, but Seth's comment seems spot on. If about half the 200 HIV-negative transfusion recipients die within the year, the patient cohort must be very seriously ill to start with (which is why they needed transfusions in the first place). Since the average time to death from AIDS is around 10 years, only around 10% of the HIV+ cohort MIGHT be expected to die in the one year of follow up (depending on a lot of factors of course that we don't know about without reading the paper). That's around one-fifth of the death rate in the HIV- group (about 50%, according to Dr Johnson). Even if the two death rates (natural and HIV-caused) were additive (which may not be true), the cohorts are probably not large enough to detect a statistically different outcome between the two groups. I haven't crunched the numbers, as Dr Johnson only says "about half", but in 200 index cases, the difference between, say, 50% and 60" death rates is only 20, a difference small enough to be lost in the noise. In other words, the natural rate of death in this very sick, and therefore unnatural cohort would substantially outweigh the additional rate of death caused by HIV infection - to the extent that the latter is not detectable statistically.
A proper analysis needs the paper though, not just a very brief summary.
The science and medicine behind AIDS in 2009 is not dependent on Bob Gallo. Get out of the 1980s. These are better days.
ReplyDeleteGerm Theory Deniers are similarly obsessed with Louis Pasteur. Allegedly Pasteur's research with rabies was fraudulent and therefore the whole Germ Theory of Disease is false. They even invent a deathbed confession.
The study by Ward et al is: “The natural history of transfusion-associated infection with human immunodeficiency virus. Factors influencing the rate of progression to disease” NEJM
ReplyDelete321:947-952, October 5, 1989
Given that the median time from HIV infection to progression to AIDS is of the order of a decade (shorter among these transfusion recipients who were almost certainly sicker and probably older than most people at the time of infection), it is unlikely that HIV infection will have a measurable effect on the mortality of a group this small in the first year after infection. Very few people develop AIDS, let alone die from it, in the first year following seroconversion.
To get an idea of what the study was about, here’s the abstract:
"Patients infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as a result of blood transfusions are unique in that their dates of infection are well defined and their medical conditions before infection are known. To characterize the natural history of transfusion-associated HIV infection, we studied 694 recipients of blood from 112 donors in whom AIDS later developed and from 31 donors later found to be positive for HIV antibody. Of the recipients tested, 85 were seronegative, 116 were seropositive, and 19 had AIDS. Of 101 HIV-seropositive recipients followed for a median of 55 months after infection, 54 had Centers for Disease Control Class IV disease, including 43 with AIDS. Life-table analysis suggested that AIDS will develop in 49 percent of infected recipients (95 percent confidence limits, 36 to 62 percent) within seven years after infection. As compared with recipients without AIDS, the 43 recipients with AIDS had received more transfusions at the time of infection (median, 21 vs. 7; P = 0.01). HIV-infected blood donors in whom AIDS developed were grouped according to whether AIDS developed within 29 months (the median) after donation (Group 1) or 29 or more months after donation (Group 2). As compared with the 31 recipients of blood from Group 2 blood donors, the 31 recipients of blood from Group 1 donors were more likely to have AIDS four years after infection (49 percent vs. 4 percent; P = 0.005) and illnesses resembling acute retroviral syndrome (14 of 24 vs. 5 of 22; P = 0.03). We conclude that most recipients of HIV-infected blood become seropositive, that AIDS develops in about half these recipients within seven years, and that the risk may be higher when AIDS develops in the blood donor soon after donation."
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/321/14/947
I can't see how this is in any way contradicts "orthodox" HIV/AIDS science.
I’d just add to Anonymous’ comment ” Since the average time to death from AIDS is around 10 years, only around 10% of the HIV+ cohort MIGHT be expected to die in the one year of follow up”:
ReplyDeleteIn fact, death from AIDS in the first year following infection is very low among adults . The 20th centile for developing AIDS (not dying from it) isn’t reached until about 6 years after infection among “typical” HIV positives, and the 50th centile (the median) for AIDS at around 9-10 years in most studies. AIDS incidence following infection is not a flat line, it’s a curve starting at zero and rising to a peak at around 7 years or so before falling to a long tail.
With due respect, you are missing the scientific point.
ReplyDeletePeople who get blood transfusions are already under serious health distress. It is a mistake to ignore the fact that they tend to die within 1 year -- whether or not they are HIV+.
This omission tended to inflate the then-existing hysteria that a healthy person would get a blood transfusion, acquire HIV from a tainted blood sample and then die a terrible death from AIDS. In truth, they were as likely to die a terrible death from whatever event precipitated the blood transfusion.
Not that I buy the "Denialist" claims in whole, but it is consistent with the notion that AIDS seems to afflict the already afflicted (drug users, malnourished African, and the small subset of gay men, using illicit narcotics).
Dr. Johnson... I think we are going to hit a stall on this conversation. I know that I cannot access that paper. NEJM only has full text available online well after 1989. Our library has long purged old paper copies of NEJM. Can you email me a pdf of the paper at aidsandbehavior@yahoo.com
ReplyDeleteI can easily make available as a link in this thread. The discussion cannot really go forward with just the abstract available.
My honest feeling is that anything from before 1995 in AIDS is only of historical value and does not represent the current science. Certainly true for anything from the 1980s. It is why I say we can forget about Gallo 1984 with no impact on AIDS today. AIDS Denialists rely on the 1980s for a variety of reasons discussed in Denying AIDS, including the Gallo fixation.
But still, I know some people will say that the science of AIDS was less suppressed by Big Pharma in the 80s, so can trust it more. Obviously, that is not reality based.
Send me the pdf for the article you have and it would be good to continue...
Snout is right. My earlier post was based on the assumption that the death rates were for a cohort with pre-existing HIV infection (for an unknown time). If, in fact, the cohort is one in which infection occurs during the one year monitoring period, then of course VERY FEW people would die of AIDS within that one year period. And those very few cases, if any, would be indistinguishable against the MUCH higher death rate from the pre-existing conditions that lead to the transfusions.
ReplyDeleteBut Seth's also right. There is nothing to be gained by retrospective analyses of 20 year old papers. It's a pointless exercise. Would anyone dissect cancer biology papers from the 1980s and make clinical judgments about how to treat cancer today? I don't see anything to be gained by a further discussion of this or any other paper from that era. For one thing, as none of us on this thread, it seems, had ever even heard of the Ward paper, just how influential was it, then and now? Not very, I'd guess.
Seth, I should probably know better by now given "Dr Johnson's" logic and the fact that he's rehashing a specious argument from Virus Myth, but I'm happy to have a go.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, people get transfusions for a variety of reasons: it's nonsense to make a generalisation that if you get a transfusion you must be so sick your life expectancy (following treatment) is poor. There's a big difference between the life expectancy of someone being treated palliatively for end-stage cancer or renal disease and say a woman receiving a transfusion after a post partum haemorrhage. In the latter case her life expectancy should be normal.
To argue that "because one of the indications for transfusion is for palliative care of terminal illness, then if you get a transfusion you can expect to die soon" is a basic logical fallacy.
The additional impact of HIV infection among people who die in the first year post transfusion is minimal: hardly anyone develops AIDS in the first year post seroconversion, let alone dies from it.
But a significant number of recipients should have a normal or near normal life expectancy after their haemorrhage, say, was treated. It is in that group that you would find the excess deaths due to HIV disease. And virtually none of these excess deaths would occur in the first year because HIV disease does not usually progress that fast.
The 1989 study was important because it documented the rates of progression to AIDS in a cohort whose exact date of infection could be known. For obvious reasons this study could not be repeated today. You can only document the rates of progression among recipients who lived long enough for their HIV disease to progress to AIDS. This is not the group that "tends to die within a year anyway". That group is irrelevant to estimating the excess mortality attribuatable to HIV/AIDS, and to focus only on that group completely misses what you are looking for.
The blood transfusions is only one small aspect of AIDS (1% of total cases). I did not mean to derail the thread, if I did, I apologize.
ReplyDeleteI did spend some time in the Medical Library today, found some interesting items.
1975: Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, "Nutrition and Health with an evaluation of nutritional surveillance in the United States:
"..we have reached the point where nutrition, or the lack or the excess or the quality of it, may be the Nation's number one public health problem. The threat is not beriberi, pellagra or scurvy. Rather we face the more subtle, but also more deadly, reality of millions of Americans loading their stomachs with food which is likely to make them obese, to give them high blood pressure, to induce heart disease, diabetes, and cancer -- in short, to kill them over the long term."
1977: Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, "Diet and Killer Diseases with Press Reaction and Additional Information"
"Six of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States have been connected to diet: heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, arteriosclerosis, and cirrhosis of the liver."
"Modern medicine has conquered small pox, tuberculosis, pneumonia and other major diseases, which were the leading causes of death in this country. We have as yet no vaccine to prevent cancer and we have no single intervention that will cure alcholism, but we do know that to a substantial extent an individual's behavior is capable of both causing and preventing certain chronic diseases."
In 1981, most of the talk on nutrition is completely subsumed by government papers, reports, manuscripts on AIDS.
1987: Centers for Disease Controls, MMW, Reports on AIDS June 1986 - May 1987
1988: Centers for Disease Controls, MMW, Reports on AIDS June 1986 - December 1987
1988: Report of Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic.
1993: The Final Report of the National Commission on AIDS
1995: Office of Technology Assessment, "Adverse Reactions to HIV Vaccines: Medical, Ethical, and Legal Issues"
1996:CDC, MMWR, Compilation of Articles on HIV Infection and AIDS.
I won't bore you with summarizing the findings, although there are some fascinating tidbits.
One area where I think you all can find common ground is with HIV-2.
Between 1981 - 1995, there were only 62 cases of HIV-2 infection in the U.S. and only 5 deaths. Of an estimated 74 blood donations, only 3 cases of HIV-2 were detected. "Nonetheless, the data from these sources indicate that HIV-2 is uncommon in the United States." (CDC, MMWR, Vol. 44, No. 32, pp. 603 - 606.
Dr Johnson says: "I did spend some time in the Medical Library today, found some interesting items."
ReplyDeleteYeah, right..... And I have a bridge to sell you that's presently in Arizona but used to be in London......
All his newly found documents and interests are ones that Andrew "Lambros killer" Maniotis has posted about, ad nauseam, on multiple Blogs over the past few years, asking the same tired questions and make the same senseless points. This moron fools nobody. Don't feed his ego by responding any further.
Go feed your friend Kim Bannon some Plumpy Nut, Andy, and see if that cures the PML that's killing her now you persuaded her to go off Atripla. Another death that will be held at your door, you evil, lethal SOB.
Hold on there Anonymous. Dr. Johnson is Andrew Maniotis?
ReplyDeleteIt could be entirely coincidental that Johnson's style and references are those of Maniotis. Such as these examples...
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2007/01/andrew_maniotis.html
http://aras.ab.ca/articles/scientific/20071007-Maniotis-Lambros.pdf
And thank you anonymous for linking this post to Lambros. As many people know Kim Bannon, who was featured in House of Numbers is deathly ill. The latest sad story of how Rethinking AIDS is killing people. And so the two posts are connected after all...
Maniotis is connected to Lambros and Kim Bannon
Kim Bannon was exploited in House of Numbers
House of Numbers is exploiting Luc Montagnier.
Shorter “Dr Johnson” above.
ReplyDeleteDr J: *pulls bullshit argument about transfusion related HIV/AIDS off “VirusMyth” and dumps it in this thread*. Oh and I’m a working scientist at a major University in the Philadelphia area” and I have a niece who’s a really smart cookie.
[Obviously she’s not, because she not only went to see House of Numbers but thought that it was “thought-provoking”.]
Everyone else: *sigh* (explain in excruciating detail for the umpteenth time why the VirusMyth argument is complete and utter crap).
Dr J: Well, forget about transfusion related HIV/AIDS. Here’s several more random non-sequiturs I pulled off VirusMythead which I’m going to pretend I actually read in hard copy in an actual library. See if you can guess what the fuck I’m trying to say, because I sure as hell have no idea.
At those quiet moments, in the now empty house, do you think that David Crowe ever asks himself "what if I would have told Kim Bannon to take her Atripla? What if I would have given her the fair balamce of pros and cons? What if I would have put her medical needs before my personal agenda? Maybe she would not have fallen to whatever it is that is eating away at her nervous system and killing her?"
ReplyDeleteIf House of Numbers has a leading lady it is Kim. Far more articulate, bright and fresh than Maggiore, whose denial was obviously taking its toll.
Shame on you David Crowe and Andy Maniotis. Shame on you.
At those quiet moments, in the now empty house, do you think that David Crowe ever asks himself "what if I would have told Kim Bannon to take her Atripla?
ReplyDeleteCognitive dissonance is amazing at drowning out those nagging doubts.
They're probably already hiring Al-Bayati to do an "open-minded", "objective", "differential diagnosis" and then decide that Kim's illness has nothing to do with HIV but is caused by one or more toxins.
http://justiceforej.com/20091205-ChristineMaggiore-Report-AlBayati.pdf
I have heard that Maggiore's family have released a commentary on a unreleased autopsy report on her death. The commentary claims she didn't die of AIDS. The commentary was written by the same hired "pathologist" who also tried to whitewash Maggiore's daughter's AIDS death. So, why not just release the original autopsy report ? The autopsy was done 11 months ago. What is the family hiding? Why have a report on a report written by a hired gun? Why the cover up?
ReplyDeleteI would like some serious discussion on this thread of my theory that Jackie Kennedy used AZT to fatally poison JFK, BEFORE he got in the car that fateful day in Dallas. She then arranged for half his head to be blown off by Lyndon Johnson, firing from the Grassy Knoll. This was done so that, in the subsequent furor, the pathologists would forget to carry out toxicology screens and simply jump to the obvious (but wrong!) conclusion that the bullet in his head was the cause of death. I have hired Mohammed Al-Bayati to review the medical evidence that was published in the Warren Commission Report and prove to the world that I am right and that Jackie was an evil murderer.
ReplyDelete"Remember, credibility counts and Dr Montagnier is highly credible"-Seth
ReplyDeleteOooops...you might want to straighten out your goons at Quackometer before they pull a Duesberg on him...
Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know I have goons. That is good to hear.
Yes, Dr. Montagnier is credible and Peter Duesberg is not.
Tell me, was Dr. Montagnier a featured speaker at the Rethinking AIDS Conference? Has he confirmed that Brent Leung did not take him out of context?
http://blogs.healthfreedomalliance.org/blog/2009/12/01/aids-truth-exposed/
Just because AIDS Deniers want to believe that Dr. Montagnier would support your nutty ideas does not make it so.
"Yes, Dr. Montagnier is credible and Peter Duesberg is not."
ReplyDeleteHe is not creadible; Quackometer says he is a duck, period.
BTW, Has he confirmed that Leung DID take him out of context?
"your nutty ideas"???
Which one? Montagnier being a duck? But Quackometer confirms it!
I appreciate the conversations here but I don't like the resorting to cynical hateful comment making.
ReplyDeleteI see no real science here... only AIDS propagandists that are so against scientific debate, that all they can do is attack and assassinate individual characters instead of engaging in intelligent conversation to move the science of HIV/AIDS forward. Sad indeed.
ReplyDeleteWhat is the real goal here? To hold on to such orthodox beliefs that the earth becomes flat and the center of the universe again? Are any of the people behind this site scientists? Or just bloggers with way to much time. I, for one, have been harmed by so-called antiretrovirals; I have chosen to stop them, and apparently in line with Dr. Montagnier himself, I have controlled it with good nutrition and antioxidants. My immune system has completely recovered -- with CD4s at 1,200 and "viral load" undetectable.
I'm not sure I understand what you think you're trying to defend regarding what we've seen Montagnier explicitly state in this video. The theory of HIV and "oxidative stress" is not anything new to the scientific literature; numerous studies are available for anyone who's actually interested in real answers and real science, as opposed to childish behavior.
Well played. I'm a little curious why nobody has mentioned Hulda Clark research, considering she had 1000s of confirmed HIV+ patients cured through her therapy which is now being used by doctors throughout the world in many countries by people who thoroughly researched and have utilized her techniques very effectively.
DeleteI believe that aids is a very sad disease as it really destroys ans deteriorates the lives of those who and up with this curse.
ReplyDeleteI have one big problem with HIV logic... it infects blood cells (T-cells) that naturally have very short lifespan and constantly die to be replenished... or think about when you donate blood how many t-cells do we lose... Reason being, blood cells are produced in bone marrow while HIV claims to "wear-n-tear" the immune system. And here is where science fiction begins... The only way to suppress production of T-cells would be to suppress bone marrow function... by giving meds like AZT. Since AZT and its analogs are used in much smaller doses these days, we now have less fatalities... And I am sure if you give a placebo sugar pill instead of the current meds, it will have the best results :) One fact that the truth will make a lot of loss of profit is a good argument for me to not believe any of these Bullshit wrapped in smart scientific words to mask the truth.
ReplyDelete