You know the brouhaha that occurred with the discovery of HIV. Montagnier, in France, was the scientist who discovered the virus.
You'll recall my post in which I described Kary Mullis' attempt to get Montagnier to show the connection between HIV and AIDS. Montagnier walked away. I understand that the scientist is now beginning to lean toward the so-called "dissidents", who are no longer "one or two" but are now into the hundreds.
But, back to the uneasy discovery of HIV. The Montagnier group presumably were going through the usual careful routine of scientists with an apparent breakthrough discovery. In the US Robert Gallo held a Press Conference claiming the discovery. Hence, the bad blood that between the French and American "co-discoverers.
Gallo and his sycophants insisted that the virus does its damage by directly infecting and killing cells. In fact, he ridiculed Montagnier's view that the virus causes AIDS only in the company of as yet undiscovered "cofactors." (You'll recall that this is similar to Duesberg's position.) Gallo argued that because being infected by HIV was "like being hit by a truck," there was no need to look for additional causes or indirect mechanisms of causation. This is another example of the absolute certainty of today's "political" scientists of whom I've been often critical.
They are now not so certain. In Scientific American, Warner Greene (professor of medicine UC) wrote that researchers are abandoning the theory. At last! Greene said "Even in patients in the late stages of HIV infection with very low blood T4 cell counts, the proportion of those cells that are producing HIV is tiny-about one in 40. In the early stages of chronic infection, fewer than one in 10,000 T4 cells in blood are doing so. If the virus were killing the cells just by directly infecting them, it would almost certainly have to infect a much larger fraction at any one time."
Even Gallo is reportedly now looking for those additional causes or indirect mechanisms of causation.
The following seems to be what is known and is now generally accepted. As other viruses do, HIV multiplies rapidly, and it is sometimes accompanied by a mild, flu-like illness. While the virus is present in great quantity and causing at most mild illness in the ordinary way, it does no observable damage to the immune system.
On the contrary, the immune system rallies as it is supposed to do and speedily reduces the virus to negligible levels. Once this happens, the primary infection is over. If HIV does destroy the immune system, it does so years after the immune system has virtually destroyed it. By then the virus typically infects very few of the immune system's T-cells.
Contrast this with the scenario that HIV wipes out the immune system, which then somehow fills the body with anti-bodies. Actually, the advocates have been turning the definition of a virus upside down. Each time it is found that HIV isn't "behaving", they redefine virus to fit with the new information.
Another point of interest - one I don't remember mentioning. Some diseases normally attack the immune system. I can't list them but they are out there. My faulty memory seems to find that malaria is one of them. If this is so, what a coup for the AIDS people to include malaria in their list of AIDS diseases! If my memory is correct, anyone with the perhaps innocuous HIV (or at least the antibodies) who has a compromised immune system, can be claimed as an AIDS victim.
As Joe said, malaria kills more Africans than AIDS.
My cynical appraisal of this rests on the non-randomness of AIDS. Viruses attack everyone regardless of race, color, or creed. Viruses don't care.
Except with Aids, which hits specific groups.
Homosexuals made the running in the early days of AIDS. They got large amounts of money to treat mainly homosexuals on the grounds that AIDS would spread to everyone - just like other viruses. They were wrong, but it was necessary to ensure the money rolled in.
I don't blame homosexuals for this. I would have done the same in similar circumstances. Watching friends and loved ones dying is not only horrible - it's terrifying. However, it set the direction for AIDS research - a direction that has been a disaster for those suffering from AIDS. The significant AIDS disease for homosexuals is Kaposi's sarcoma. It wasn't until about 1992 that papers began showing that HIV has no connection with Kaposi's sarcoma. (It's not that specific. It's probably the worst "AIDS" disease in East Africa.)
However, that didn't help the homosexuals who died - including close friend and colleague of mine.
An important part of the propaganda to make AIDS a general disease is to show how it affects everyone - to downgrade its non-randomness. This is done (it seems to me) by including more and more general diseases in ones definition of AIDS.
Important to include are heterosexual diseases. That reinforces the campaign to show this is a "multicultural" disease. There are now 29 diseases that in combination with HIV called AIDS. I mentioned to Joe the African diseases that are "AIDS". They are ordinary diseases that have plagued Africans for decades, or centuries. However, in combination with HIV which causes a "mild, flu-like illness" and "does no observable damage to the immune system" these common African diseases become AIDS.
Amyl nitrites that are sniffed by homosexuals to improve performance so they can "dance all night" might well harm their systems and make them susceptible to Kaposi. I didn't think that general use of drugs would do the same thing - as Duesberg claimed.
I'm beginning to change my mind. There is strong correlation between AIDS and drugs.
I asked Joe for information about drug use in Kenya. I think it was the wrong question. Kenyans and other Africans don't need drugs to cause a depressed and less resistant system. Lack of food and medical treatment for less malignant disease could provide the opening for the killers.
This is mildly confirmed by the refugee camps in Kenya. Kenya has taken in some 220,000 refugees from surrounding countries engaged in violent national suicides. People in the camps have been receiving three meals a day. The incidence of AIDS is low - nothing like the carnage outside - horrors that, described by Stephen, were heart-breaking. Could be different cultures, different sexual moralities or just that they eat better than the people outside.
There is a cost problem developing in the camps. They may have to cut meals down to two a day. If this happens, will we see a surge of AIDS cases? What, if they cut meals down to one a day?
Stephen spoke of kids weakened by hunger, ravaged by AIDS. Would they be ravaged if they weren't weakened by hunger?
Lots of questions that hopefully will provide answers.
Duesberg has been asking questions for many years. Why doesn't he experiment himself on HIV/AIDS?
He'll tell you himself:
"In the US, it is not possible to work with HIV without the approval of the National Institutes of Health and the university. Thus I would need an NIH peer-approved grant to do this. Without such a contract I would risk my lab and job."
Those whom the Gods would destroy . . . . . . . . .
Harry
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Keith wrote
It is said that HIV is difficult to spread unless the virus gets into the
bloodstream of an individual. If it does so, be the numbers of viruses ever
so small, Aids is then inevitable -- sooner in the case of a child or young
person, or later in the case of an adult.
Ask any epidemiologist.
HIV virus can get into the bloodstream of an individual if the protective
layer of delicate skin tissue is abraded, as in aggressive normal sex, or
as in anal intercourse as practised by homosexuals.
Ask any epidemiologist.
All diseases are limited by various constraints until they build up an
intensity in a particular area and then burst forth explosively into the
general population.
Ask any epidemiologist.
It is believed that Aids existed in Africa for hundreds, if not thousands,
of years but it never built up to epidemic intensity because it was limited
in small pockets where the people didn't practise forcible sex or anal
intercourse. Sexually, these Africans were overwhelmingly heterosexual, as
man has been ever since the species came into existence -- otherwise the
species would not have survived.
Ask any epidemiologist.
It is believed that epidemic intensity of Aids (unfortunately aided by a
long gestation without obvious symptoms in the case of some adults) built
up in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco primarily due to the
thousands of homosexuals who congregated there in the late 70s and the
early 80s.
Ask any epidemiologist.
But he or she will only answer the last question privately because, if
answered truthfully in public, he or she is afraid of vituperation, and
probably of his or her career curtailed, from those who think that
homosexuality is as normal and desirable as heterosexual sex. A great deal about Aids and its primary cause will never be discussed objectively for perhaps a generation or two until the present ideology changes.
Keith Hudson
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Harry Pollard
Henry George School of LA
Box 655
Tujunga CA 91042
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tel: (818) 352-4141
Fax: (818) 353-2242
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