Reflectorites
On Tue, 08 Feb 2000 16:21:18 -0600, Susan Brassfield wrote:
[...]
>>SB>I have personal knowledge of a man who contracted HIV which developed
>>>into AIDS and who subsequently died. It is trivially true that people who die
>>>of AIDS are always HIV positive for some time before that.
>SJ>That there is a connection between HIV and AIDS is not disputed.
>>That it is the *sole* cause of AIDS is disputed by Duesberg, et. al.
SB>so has Duesberg identified a population that has AIDS but never showed HIV
>positive?
Yes. I understand that Duesberg has pointed out there are many
documented cases where people have tested positive for HIV but have
never developed AIDS and many cases where people have developed
AIDS who have never tested positive for HIV. I am not an expert on this
and I haven't got the time any more to go looking for it.
I suggest that Susan visit the "Rethinking AIDS" website at
http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/ and read up on it for herself.
I would however point out that Duesberg is not just some lone crank in
this. Consider these quotes from eminently qualifies scientists at a page that
same site: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/controversy.htm:
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[...]
Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel prize for chemistry: "If there is
evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents
which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high
probability. There is no such document." (Sunday Times (London) 28 nov.
1993)
Dr. Serge Lang, Professor of Mathematics, Yale University: "I do not
regard the causal relationship between HIV and any disease as settled. I
have seen considerable evidence that highly improper statistics concerning
HIV and AIDS have been passed off as science, and that top members of
the scientific establishment have carelessly, if not irresponsible, joined the
media in spreading misinformation about the nature of AIDS." (Yale
Scientific, Fall 1994)
Dr. Harry Rubin, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of
California at Berkeley: "It is not proven that AIDS is caused by HIV
infection, nor is it proven that it plays no role whatever in the syndrome."
(Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)
Dr. Richard Strohman, Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the
University of California at Berkeley: "In the old days it was required that a
scientist address the possibilities of proving his hypothesis wrong as well as
right. Now there's none of that in standard HIV-AIDS program with all its
billions of dollars." (Penthouse April 1994)
Dr. Roger Cunningham, Immunologist, Microbiologist and Director of the
Centre for Immunology at the State University of New York at Buffalo:
"Unfortunately, an AIDS 'establishment' seems to have formed that intends
to discourage challenges to the dogma on one side and often insists on
following discredited ideas on the other." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April
1994)
Dr. Luc Montagnier, Virologist, discoverer of HIV, Institute Pasteur Paris:
"There are too many shortcomings in the theory that HIV causes all signs
of AIDS" (Miami Herald 23 Dec. 1990)
Dr. Steven Jonas, Professor of Preventive Medicine, Suny Stony Brook,
NY: "Evidence is rapidly accumulating that the original theory of HIV is
not correct." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)
Dr. Harvey Bialy, Molecular Biologist, editor of Bio/Technology: "HIV is
an ordinary retrovirus. There is nothing about this virus that is unique.
Everything that is discovered about HIV has an analogue in other
retroviruses that don't cause AIDS. HIV only contains a very small piece of
genetic information. There's no way it can do all these elaborate things they
say it does." (Spin June 1992)
Dr. Gordon Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of
Glasgow: "AIDS is a behavioural disease. It is multifactorial, brought on by
several simultaneous strains on the immune system - drugs, pharmaceutical
and recreational, sexually transmitted diseases, multiple viral infections."
(Spin June 1992)
Dr. Alfred Hassig (1921-1999), former Emeritus Professor of Immunology
at the University of Bern, and director Swiss Red Cross blood banks: "The
sentence of death accompanying the medical diagnosis of AIDS should be
abolished." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)
Dr. Charles Thomas, former Professor of Biochemistry, Harvard and John
Hopkins Universities: "The HIV-causes-AIDS dogma represents the
grandest and perhaps the most morally destructive fraud that has ever been
perpetrated on young men and women of the Western world." (Sunday
Times (London) 3 April 1994)
Dr. Joseph Sonnabend, New York Physician, founder of the American
Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR): "The marketing of HIV,
through press releases and statements, as a killer virus causing AIDS
without the need for any other factors, has so distorted research and
treatment that it may have caused thousands of people to suffer and die."
(Sunday times (London) 17 May 1992)
Dr. Etienne de Harven, Emeritus Professor of Pathology, at the University
of Toronto: "Dominated by the media, by special pressure groups and by
the interests of several pharmaceutical companies, the AIDS establishment
efforts to control the disease lost contact with openminded, peer-reviewed
medical science since the unproven HIV/AIDS hypothesis received 100%
of the research funds while all other hypotheses were ignored."
(Reappraising AIDS Nov./Dec. 1998)
Dr. Bernard Forscher, former editor of the U.S. Proceeding of the National
Academy of Sciences: "The HIV hypothesis ranks with the 'bad air' theory
for malaria and the 'bacterial infection' theory of beriberi and pellagra
[caused by nutritional deficiencies]. It is a hoax that became a scam."
(Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994)
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And there are more on the next page!
On another of the pages at: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/group.htm
there is a list of signatories from the following group to the following
open letter:
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The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis
came into existence as a group of signatories of an open letter to the
scientific community. The letter (dated June 6, 1991) has been submitted to
the editors of Nature, Science, The Lancet and The New England Journal
of Medicine. All have refused to publish it. In 1996 The Group was able to
get a letter published in Science. A copy can be found here.
[...]
To the editor:
It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV
causes the group diseases called "AIDS". Many biochemical scientists now
question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the
existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable
independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies
be devised and undertaken.
Signatories:
Charles A. Thomas, Jr. Ph.D. (Mol. Biologist, Pres. Helicon Fnd.,
San Diego, CA)
Harvey Bialy, Ph.D. (Editor Bio/Technology, New York, NY)
Harry Rubin, D.V.M. (Prof. Cell Biology, Univ. Cal. Berkeley, CA)
Richard C. Strohman, Ph.D. (Prof. Cell Biology, Univ. Cal.
Berkeley, CA)
Phillip E. Johnson (Prof. Law, Univ. Cal. Berkeley, CA)
Gordon J. Edlin, Ph.D. (Prof. Biochem. & Physics, Univ. Hawaii, HI)
Beverly E. Griffin, Ph.D. (Dir. Dept. Virology, Royal Postgrad. Med.
School, London, UK)
Robert S. Root-Bernstein (Prof. Physiology, Michigan State Univ.,
East Lansing, MI)
Gordon Stewart, M.D. (Emeritus Prof. Public Health,
Epidemiologist, Isle of Wight, UK)
Carlos Sonnenschein, M.D. (Tufts Univ., Medicine, Boston, MA)
Richard L. Pitter, Ph.D. (Dessert Research Inst., Univ. Nevada
System, Reno NV)
Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D. (Psychiatrist, Roslyn, NY)
John Lauritsen (Author 'Poison by Prescription', New York, NY)
William Holub, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Live Sciences Inst. New York,
NY)
Claudia Holub, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Live Sciences Inst. New York,
NY)
Frank R. Buianouckas Ph.D. (Prof. Mathematics, Cuny, Bronx, NY)
Philip Rosen, Ph.D. (Prof. Physics, Univ. Mass. Amherst, MA)
Steven Jonas, M.D. (Prof. Preventive Medicine, Suny Stony Brook,
NY)
Bernard K. Forscher, Ph.D (Ret. Editor Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Santa
Fe, NM)
Kary B. Mullis, Ph.D. (Biochemist, PCR inventor, Consultant, La
Jolla, CA.)
Jeffrey A. Fisher, M.D. (Pathologist, Mendham, NJ)
Hansueli Albonico, M.D. (General Practitioner, Langnau,
Switzerland)
Robert Hoffman, Ph.D. (Prof. Dept. Pediatrics Univ. Cal. Med.
School, San Diego, CA)
Timothy H. Hand, Ph.D. (Dept. Psychology, Oglethorpe Univ.
Atlanta, GA)
Eleni Eleopulos, M.D. (Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, West Australia)
Robert W. Maver, F.S.A., M.A.A. (Dir. Research, Mutual Benefit
Life, Kansas City, MO)
Ken N. Matsumura, M.D. (Chairman Alin Foundation & Research
Inst., Berkeley, CA.)
David T. Berner, M.D. (Condon, MT)
Theodor Wieland, Ph.D. (Max Planck Institut, Heidelberg,
Germany)
Joan Shenton, M.A. (Meditel, London, UK)
John Anthony Morris, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Bell of Atari College Park,
MD)
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. (Prof. Pharmacology & Toxicology, Rutgers
Univ., Piscataway, NJ)
In addition there were 14 others who have added their signatures in
July 1991.
[...]
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[...]
>SJ>It is not
>>disputed by me because I don't know enough about the issue. I do think
>>that the AIDS drugs cocktail approach is unfalsifiable.
SB>people are living longer either because the drugs are working
*How* does Susan *know* that "people are living longer"? If someone
with AIDS under intensive drug cocktail therapy dies at 30, how does
Susan know he/she would not have lived longer and less miserably without
taking such massive doses of cytotoxic drugs which could kill even a
healthy person?
At hospitals I was at, we were extremely careful about how we disposed of
such cytotoxic drugs so that even healthy people would not come into even
the slightest contact with them. Partially full and even completely empty
containers of such drugs were shipped to the State capital, Perth by special
courier to be destroyed in a special, high-temperature incinerator. Yet
*multiples* of similar (and indeed the same drugs -we had AIDS patients)
are injected into already gravely ill patients and when they die it is blamed
on AIDS!
And even if we grant Susan's proposition that they did live longer because
"the drugs are working", how does she, or anyone know, *which* of the
"drugs" in the cocktail "are working", which are not working and which
are downright harmful?
SB>or the virus has mutated a less virulent strain. .
The point is that there are so many unfalsifiable escape clauses that if the
drug companies were wrong it would be impossible to prove it!
SB>It would be unethical to withhold drugs that might help. What's your point
>here?
My point is that if they don't *know* that the drugs actually *do* help
(when they are acknowledged to be highly toxic even to healthy people),
then it is "unethical" to keep pumping them into human guinea pigs in the
hope that eventually one might actually work unequivocally and the
patients recover.
>SJ>I explained my position is "one of a `devil's advocate' who is "not yet
>>convinced of the Duesberg claim that HIV does not cause AIDS":
SB>I think what is confusing me is why you are so interested in it.
I really can't help that Susan is confused. If she paid attention to what her
opponents actually said and stopped trying to fit everyone who disagrees
with her in little `one-size-fits-all' pigeon-holes, she might become less
confused.
Susan is also wrong that I am "so interested in it", if the implication is that
I have some special `bee in my bonnet' about this. I am interested in
*anything* to do with science and I don't go especially looking for these
articles. They are there on the ordinary Yahoo and CNN, etc, science news
pages I visit and post links to the Reflector about. The reason there is a lot
of them at the moment is that there is a big AIDS conference going on in
San Francisco at the moment and it is generating a lot of scientific news.
I have known about Duesberg's claim that HIV does not cause AIDS for
about 4 years now, when I heard that Phillip Johnson believed it. Frankly
until recently I thought Phil was wrong on this one. But as I read the
articles of Phil's on this topic when I posted their links to his page on my
website, and the HIV/AIDS issues on Yahoo and CNN, etc, I was
increasingly struck by the unfalsifiable reasoning employed by the
researchers and the drug companies.
>SJ>"I should also explain that I am not yet convinced of the Duesberg claim
>>that HIV does not cause AIDS. ...So my attitude is one of a `devil's
>>advocate'. I am looking at the HIV/AIDS issue as a sceptic would, without
>>necessarily being one. I must admit it does start to look shaky when one
>>adjusts one's mental spectacles and starts to consider whether the central
>>assumption of the HIV/AIDS industry is flawed and that money and
>>politics has created a pseudoscientific juggernaut which no one has the
>>courage to stop....If it is true that millions of lives have been lost
>>prematurely and miserably, and billions of dollars has been wasted which
>>could have been put to better health use, then this will be the greatest
>>scandal of science - *ever*! That is why I consider this issue on-topic."
>>
>>If they have got it wrong and HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS, then
>>Susan's friend may not have died so soon or so miserably.
SB>how could they have kept him alive? They didn't just treat the HIV they
>treated the AIDS as well. When AIDS first appeared the treatment was a
>farewell handshake. Now they can keep these people alive with the drugs
>that have been developed in the last 20 years. It's doing *something* which
>is causing these people to live longer. Which, in my book, makes it worth
>the money. There is no cure. Big deal, there's still no cure for a lot of
>cancers either, even though billions have been spent on research, but
>because of that research a lot of people are surviving cancer that didn't
>30 years ago.
This is simplistic reasoning. There is no doubt that people die of the
various diseases collectively grouped together in a *syndrome* called
"Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome". That the *cause* of all these
various diseases was *solely* a group of retroviruses called " Human
Immunodeficiency Virus ", is the question.
If HIV is not the sole cause of *all* the diseases in the group of diseases
collectively called "AIDS", then people might be suffering and dying
unnecessarily of things that could be better treated.
>>SB>So my question
>>>is this: what is the advantage to your co-religionists to try to persuade
>>>people there is no link between HIV and AIDS?
>>
>>The leader in this is Duesberg who is not a "co-religionist".
SB>I've never heard of him or his controversy and you have. Therefore I assume
>literature on this stuff circulates where you read it. I know nothing about
>you except your religion.
This "stuff" does not particularly circulate "where I read it". AFAIK I first
heard about it on this Reflector in about 1995 when a theistic evolutionist
brought it up to ridicule Johnson. Otherwise I have not heard about it much
elsewhere. The articles on my web site are AFAIK all I have read on this
controversy.
>SJ>And no one is saying that "there is no link between HIV and AIDS".
>>The question is whether HIV is the *sole* cause of AIDS or even *a*
>>cause of AIDS. A second question is whether anti-HIV drug cocktails
>>are worse than the disease.
SB>I'm told they have horrible side effects. If they keep you alive, even for
>a while longer, it's worth it, don't you think?
The question is *whether* these highly toxic drug cocktails with "horrible
side effects" *do* "keep you alive, even for a while longer"? If they are not
treating *all* (or even any) of the real causes of the group of diseases
called "AIDS", then people may be suffering "horrible side effects" and
dying unnecessarily.
I have listed above some eminently qualified experts (only one of whom is
Duesberg), who thinks that this is so, or at least possible.
>SJ>My interest in this is both from the scientific method point of view and
>>from the fact that I am an employee of the Health Department of WA
>>and one of my degrees is in Health Administration which included a
>>unit in Epidemiology.
SB>Ah! something about yourself I didn't know.
I had already mentioned that I was a former Hospital Administrator in the
original post in this thread that Susan is responding to.
>SJ>I am aware from my Epidemiology unit above how easy it is to get
>>causal factors wrong in disease.
SB>yes, and?
And therefore it is easy to get causal factors wrong in a whole "syndrome"
of diseases, especially when politics and big money are involved.
Susan should read those web pages and understand how President Reagan
was accused by gays of being homophobic for doing nothing about
homosexual deaths from AIDS and in political desperation he grasped at
the straw of a viral cause of AIDS.
>SJ>Why I am opposed to evolution is because I don't think its *true*.
SB>you *wish* it weren't true
I could with more justification say that Susan *wishes* that evolution was
true. I have pointed out before that a theist can accept evolution but an
atheist like Susan has no choice.
The fact is that for about 20 years I did believe that evolution was probably
true and just the way God did it. That in fact was the tenor of my first post
on the subject on a Fidonet forum (as stated on my web page testimony):
"My first post to Fidonet of 15 February 1994 included: "Why must it be
Creation versus Evolution? Genesis 1 - 2 has a lot of process in it `Let the
earth bring forth...'. One of the key themes in the Genesis account of
Creation is `separation'. `And God separated... light from darkness' ...
`water from land' ... `day from night', etc. If forming by separating means
making something new out of something existing, then it doesn't seem far
from evolution to me...."
It was only when I observed the evasive and ad hominem way that
evolutionists responded to criticisms of their theory that my suspicions
were first aroused that maybe evolution is not true.
>>SB>Most fundmentalists/inerrantists are
>>>anti-modernist, and I can understand that. But *this* I find hard to
>>>understand. Why don't you want HIV to be related to AIDS?
>SJ>See above. It would help if Susan saved wasting all our time by finding out
>>what her opponents *actually* believe, rather than what she *wants* them
>>to believe.
SB>If I know the answers, I don't bother to ask the questions.
The problem is that Susan often assumes she knows what her opponents'
"answers" *must be* without bothering to find what they really *are*!
SB>I'm still
>curious why you sound so hopeful that there might not be a connection
>between HIV and AIDS.
First, I do *not* say there is *no* "connection between HIV and AIDS."
In the very post that Susan is responding to I said:
"That there is a connection between HIV and AIDS is not disputed..."
It is very important if Susan wants to meaningfully discuss complex
scientific issues like this one, and not waste everybody's time, she get her
words describing her opponents' positions *exactly* right.
Second, I am not "hopeful" that HIV will turn out not to be the sole cause
of AIDS. I have made it clear that I am being cautious in accepting
Duesberg et. al.'s claims. I have sat on the fence on this issue for about 4
years without posting much on it. Hardly the mark of someone who is
"hopeful" that HIV will turn out not to be the sole cause of AIDS.
If Duesberg et. al.'s criticisms are heeded and the HIV/AIDS researchers
re-double their efforts, clean up their act and prove that HIV is the sole
cause of all the diseases in the syndrome called "AIDS", well and good.
That is what science is supposed to be all about.
But if the criticisms continue to be ignored and it turns out that the critics
were right, then it shows that science can be captured by a wrong idea,
suppress criticism, and millions of lives and billions of dollars lost
unnecessarily. That is *not* what science is supposed to be all about.
SB>It really sounds like you don't *want* there to be a
>connection. I'm curious why.
Susan has admitted she has never heard of this controversy and therefore
presumably knows nothing about the facts of the matter. Yet based on her
prejudices against "religionists" in general, she just assumes, without even
looking at the evidence, that I must have a non-rational, unworthy basis for
even *thinking* that HIV might not be the sole cause of AIDS!
I must say that I am getting a bit tired of Susan's `fact free' posts, which
like Chris', work on the basic assumption that all her creationist opponents
are automatically "fundamentalist" fools and knaves who have nothing
rational to discuss.
Most of this post has been a waste of time because Susan doesn't even
bother to read carefully what my position is, and this seems to be more the
rule, rather than the exception, in her posts.
Recently Susan has defended herself against other Reflectorites complaints
about the low standard of her posts by arguing that this is just a "debate":
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On Tue, 8 Feb 2000 20:07:04 -0600 (CST), Susan B wrote (to Bertvan):
[...]
SB>This is a debate list. I'm going to challenge all ideas I think are
>illogical or not based on fact. You can defend those ideas as best you can
>and try to punch holes in my logic. But it's a DEBATE list, not an opinion poll.
[...]
On Tue, 8 Feb 2000 19:55:37 -0600 (CST), Susan B wrote (to Mike):
[...]
SB>it's a debate list. You have to persuade using evidence and logic. I haven't
>seen much of that.
[...]
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From that I gather that Susan thinks it is OK to waste everybody's time by
dashing off error-ridden `fact free' posts under the pretext that this is just a
"debate".
Now I know this is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but I believe
there is a basic ethical responsibility by participants on the Reflector to try
to converge on the *truth*, rather than just indulge in trying to score cheap
debating points by any means.
Now that I have started studying for my Biology degree it is clear that I am
going to have much less time than I had before. So if Susan keeps up her
low standard of "debate", then on cost/benefit grounds I am going to start
more and more ignoring her.
Steve
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"Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually
supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection
is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when
the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual
reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to
work, even in the limited degree to be discussed .... This presents an
insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological
organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A
primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like
the fidelity of present-day systems .... With only poor copying fidelity, a
primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the
mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system
could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with
crossover beggars the imagination." (Hoyle F., "Mathematics of
Evolution", [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p20)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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