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Manto wants Aids dissident as adviser
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) March 9, 2003
Health minister says UN vindicates her view on nutrition. By S'Thembiso Msomi and Ranjeni Munusamy
Controversial US Aids dissident Roberto Giraldo has been invited to South Africa by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to act as an adviser to the government.
Giraldo, a member of President Thabo Mbeki's Aids advisory panel, believes Aids is caused by nutritional deficiencies, not HIV. He also argues that antiretroviral drugs induce rather than treat Aids.

Vaccine Results Lose Significance Under Scrutiny
"HIV's amazing escape act"
"Why don't we do what scientists always do, and settle this once and for all in an open forum?" - Anthony Fauci.
Science March 7 2003

Large Trial Finds AIDS Vaccine Fails to Stop Infection
February 24, 2003
By ANDREW POLLACK with LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN NYTimes.com
BRISBANE, Calif., Feb. 23 - The first AIDS vaccine ever to be tested in a large number of people has failed, over all, to protect them from infection with the virus that causes the disease, the company that makes it, VaxGen, said today.
The vaccine did, however, seem to significantly lower the infection rate among African-Americans and other non-Hispanic minorities participating in the trial, the company said.
Its researchers called this finding totally unexpected and said they were at a loss to explain why there would be ethnic differences in response to the vaccine.

International Journal of STD & AIDS Press Release
20 February 2003
Unsafe healthcare "drives spread of African HIV"

 Since the 1980s most experts have assumed that heterosexual sex transmitted 90% of HIV in Africa. In the March International Journal of STD and AIDS, an international team of HIV specialists presents groundbreaking evidence to challenge this consensus, with "profound implications" for public health in Africa.

 In a series of articles, Dr David Gisselquist, Mr John Potterat and colleagues argue that the spread of HIV infections in Africa is closely linked to medical care. In their unique study of existing data from across the continent they estimate that only about a third of HIV infections are sexually transmitted. Their evidence suggests that "health care exposures caused more HIV than sexual transmission", with contaminated medical injections being the biggest risk.

Canadian aboriginals in Vancouver face AIDS epidemic
The internet postings regarding this news item in the British Medical Journal turned into a lengthy debate on whether or not HIV and AIDS are sexually transmitted. The various pundits present their references and argue how they should be interpreted.

Tshabalala-Msimang won't comment on Giraldo's claims that she is also an Aids dissident
By Lynne Altenroxel and Siyabonga Mkhwanazi
Cape Times, South Africa January 22, 2003
Aids dissident Roberto Giraldo, in South Africa for the second time in two months to talk to health officials, says Health Minister Manto Tshabalala- Msimang agrees with his controversial views. But the minister of health denies this.

Aids dissident finds common ground with his opponents
By Nomusa Cembi
The Star, South Africa, January 21, 2003
Good nutrition and adequate vitamin levels are enough to prevent the development of Aids in HIV-positive people, says Aids dissident Dr Roberto Giraldo. Giraldo, a member of President Thabo Mbeki’s Aids panel, gave an enthusiastically received address to a conference of regional health ministers yesterday.

Dissident's invitation irks AIDS activists
Health minister sparks controversy
Science Correspondent
Business Day (Johannesburg) January 20, 2003
CAPE TOWN AIDS activists yesterday voiced sharp criticism of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for inviting a prominent AIDS dissident, who believes that AIDS is caused by nutritional deficiencies and not HIV, to address a top-level meeting of regional health ministers in Johannesburg today. News of Roberto Giraldo's invitation to address a two-day Southern African Development Community (SADC) health ministers meeting on HIV/AIDS and nutrition has renewed speculation that despite two cabinet statements last year indicating that government believed HIV causes AIDS the dissident view still holds sway in senior government circles.

Aids dissident's invitation to address forum stuns scientists
By Lynne Altenroxel
The Star, South Africa, January 9, 2003
South Africa's scientists have said they are "disappointed" and "deeply perturbed" at the news that Health Minister Dr Manto Tshaba-lala-Msimang is to host a leading Aids dissident [ Dr Roberto Giraldo] in the country. "Dissidents are a laughing stock. The minister, by giving them a forum, is aligning herself with a group which is the laughing stock of the world." Many scientists and activists were hoping that the government's disastrous brush with Aids dissidents in 2001 had ended after cabinet statements in April and October last year which acknowledged that anti-retrovirals could improve the health of HIV patients."

Dr No hosts fellow Dr No: Dissident believes Aids is not infectious nor is it sexually transmitted
By Lynne Altenroxel
The Star, 8 January 2003, page 1 lead second edition - not posted on The Star web site.
Giraldo is scheduled to address 14 health ministers from the SADC on "Nutritional therapy for the treatment and prevention of Aids". This is the same topic he presented at a function organised by Health Department officials in November, when he told delegates that Aids was the result of nutritional deficiencies and could be "effectively prevented, treated and overcome" by a healthy diet. "However, it seems that propaganda spread by pharmaceutical companies to commercialise anti-retoriviral medication has prevented these ideas from being widely accepted, despite the toxicity of these medications," Giraldo said. See: Dr. Sam Mhlongo's response to Altenroxel's article

Aids dissident's invitation 'strange' activists
By Lynne Altenroxel
The Star, South Africa, January 8, 2003
An outspoken Aids dissident who believes that HIV does not cause Aids has been invited, in the name of Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, to address a health ministers' forum of the Southern African Development Community. Dr Roberto Giraldo, a member of President Thabo Mbeki's Aids Advisory Panel, has confirmed that he is scheduled to speak on "Nutritional therapy for the treatment and prevention of Aids" at the event to be held on January 20.
See: AN EFFECTIVE PREVENTION FOR AIDS By Roberto Giraldo, June 2000

Take statistics on Aids deaths with a pinch of salt
CASTOR KWEYU, Nairobi
Daily Nation (Kenya) Letters, Wednesday, December 18, 2002
"We are continually treated to pictures of the poor and unfortunate whose conditions are portrayed as Aids without any sound scientific information to back the claims. "
Castor Kweyu is founder of AIDS LIBERATION AFRICA in Nairobi, Kenya.

Smallpox vaccine: not for HIV patients
by Randy Dotinga
Gay.com / PlanetOut.com Network
People infected with the AIDS virus -- and those at risk for HIV but who haven't been tested -- shouldn't get vaccinated for smallpox. And if you live with an HIV-positive person, the government doesn't want you to get a shot, either. It turns out that the potentially dangerous virus in the vaccine itself is contagious.

The ultimate question: DO I HAVE HIV?
The answer is more complex than you think.
By Liam Scheff
UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE VOL. VII, NO. 4 - CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH - DECEMBER, 2002
When Christine Maggiore was diagnosed HIV-positive in 1992, she found herself in a situation she never anticipated. Remaining healthy and retesting positive, negative and indeterminate a year later put her in a position she'd been told was impossible. Today, Christine Maggiore is one of a growing number of citizens and scientists who are not satisfied with the current dogma and are rethinking AIDS

SOUTHERN AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY (SADC) MEETING ON NUTRITION AND HIV/AIDS
Johannesburg November 28 and 29, 2002
BRIEF REPORT
Prepared by Roberto Giraldo, MD, New York.
AMONG THE ISSUES ADDRESSED: The role of nutrition in improving the health of people living with HIV/AIDS. Roberto Giraldo, New York. Addressed the scientific bases of nutritional immunology, nutritional deficiencies, and HIV/AIDS; nutritional deficiencies and the progression of HIV-positive individuals to AIDS; nutritional deficiencies and the "transmission" of HIV/AIDS; oxidative stress and HIV/AIDS; nutritional and antioxidant deficiencies in the pathogenesis of AIDS; and nutritional and antioxidant therapy for the prevention and treatment of AIDS. The main objective of this presentation was to demolish the myth that HIV = AIDS = DEATH and to describe the scientific bases and international experiences which support the conclusion that AIDS can easily be prevented and healed with alternative, nontoxic, efficient, and inexpensive measures.

New evidence from the FDA that HIV Tests are Fundamentally Flawed
In a November 7th press release FDA APPROVES NEW RAPID HIV TEST KIT a series of startling statements were revealed that are a disquieting reminder of serious questions regarding the validity of HIV tests. Some of the interesting new language in the package insert includes: "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), AIDS related complex (ARC) and pre-AIDS are though to be caused by the Human Immundeficiency Virus (HIV)."

Mysterious malaise
Purushottaman Mulloli, Convenor, JackIndia
The Pioneer, Nov. 17 2002, New Delhi(India)
Preventing and curing AIDS is this century's most lucrative profession. No wonder HIV/AIDS programmes are primarily controlled by population control departments, not national health policies. Western pharmaceutical companies fared badly over the last few years, as the world health situation improved on broader parameters, with the improved avialibility of basic medicines. Then, AIDS conveniently came along-incurable, indetectible and fatal. What more could pharmacies ask for?

CIA report on HIV/AIDS baseless, to help Bill Gates interests
By Annapurna Jha  United News of India  11/10/2002
New Delhi, Nov 10 (UNI) 'JackIndia', an NGO working in the field of HIV/AIDS, has charged the US intelligence agency CIA of creating an AIDS scare here by claiming India would have 25 million HIV positive cases by 2010.
Two other stories on Bill Gates India interests

My Bout of So-Called AIDS
By Christine Maggiore
This past March, I had the unsettling experience of being diagnosed with an AIDS defining condition. The news arrived with cruel precision on the 10-year anniversary of my testing HIV positive, coinciding perfectly with the orthodox axiom that we get a decade of normal health before our AIDS kicks in.

In a recent article appropriately titled Sorting Through Confusing Messages: The Art of HAART, author W.G. Powderly offers this interesting observation:

"Deferring treatment in asymptomatic individuals avoids introducing adverse effects in an otherwise healthy person. Asymptomatic patients, particularly, experience a sense of loss of well-being when they start therapy, at which time they then become symptomatic and their quality of life changes."*

Powderly states his belief that "all [HIV+] patients will ultimately require antiretroviral therapy." No wonder he's confused!

*Powderly, W. G., Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (2002) 31: S3-S9.

Risk of Progression to AIDS and Death in Women Infected With HIV-1 Initiating Highly Active Antiretroviral Treatment at Different Stages of Disease
Anastos et al. Arch Intern Med 162: 1973-80 (2002)
The paper is torture to read because of the confused logic and techno-babble, but it provides otherwise hard-to-come-by useful data on just how ineffective HAART really is. As usual, the authors do not provide a control of consisting of the outcomes of women who were HIV-negative or the outcomes of HIV-positive women who did not take HAART. Nevertheless, the results are highly damaging to the value of HAART. David Rasnick provides illuminating commentary.

Many Malawians Are Reluctant to Go for HIV Tests
Malawi Insider (Blantyre) September 26, 2002
To most people, a positive result is literally a death knell and they immediately lose the will to survive. A random survey conducted by The Malawi Standard showed that the majority of people do not want to know their HIV status. Most argued that once someone tested positive, they would die prematurely. "In my case, I will never go for an HIV test no matter what. I have seen so many people who went to that test dying just months after testing positive because knowing you have the virus will psychologically kill you just like that," said Alfred Chanza of Kawale in Lilongwe.

Kramer vs. Kramer
BY SKY GILBERT / PINK PANTHER eye 09.26.02
Larry Kramer and I used to be as different as two people can be. Mr. Kramer is an infamous AIDS activist and author of the play The Normal Heart. He was diagnosed with HIV in 1988. Back then, Kramer pleaded with his fellow fags to stop having sex. He also put an enormous amount of faith in doctors to find a cure. [...] But last year, Kramer changed his tune -- at least, with regard to the medical establishment. He became so angry with his doctors that he allowed a photo of himself in his underwear to be printed for all the world to see.

West Nile Virus Epidemics
The Epidemiology of Air Pollution
This site provides critical reviews of data related to the phenomena called "The West Nile Virus Epidemics", and provides an environmental base for understanding. When you are finished looking at this site, you may very well conclude that the West Nile Virus is harmless, and the official propaganda regarding it is not only false, but quite harmful. There are many parallels with the loose logic of the HIV/AIDS HYPothesis here. Nicholas Regush, producer of medical features for ABCNEWS, sums up the problem; "The West Nile virus was never purified. I find no evidence anywhere in the scientific literature that the rules of virus purification and isolation were followed thoroughly. Add to this potentially serious omission the scientific indifference to the possible role of the environment in what is being called "West Nile" illness and death."

Treatment of Intestinal Worms Is Associated With Decreased HIV Plasma Viral Load.
Wolday D et al. JAIDS. 2002 Sep 1; 31: 56-62.
According to the abstract "Helminth 'load' is correlated to HIV plasma VL, and successful deworming is associated with a significant decrease in HIV plasma VL". So, what are the really measuring; HIV or worm droppings??

The Problem with Protease
by Lawrence Goodman POZ, September 2002
"According to an unpublished study by Julio Montaner, MD, an HIV researcher at the University of British Columbia, 50 percent of U.S. and Canadian HIVers put on HAART since 1996 didn't need these meds: Their clinical health - how they actually felt - would have remained the same even without attaining "undetectable" viral loads or raising CD4 counts that were already above 200. "All these people could have waited," Montaner says. "They could have deferred the cost of the drugs and the side effects." If, as Harrington estimates, as many as 300,000 HIVers went on antiretrovirals, that's 150,000 wasted regimens."

Use of Nevirapine Among Women of Unknown Serostatus
This World Health Organization discussion paper basically recommends the use of Nevirapine by all expectant mothers in places where HIV testing is not routine (e.g. Africa). The executive summary states: "the participants concluded that the evidence to date indicates that the risk of serious adverse effects of a single dose of nevirapine is low, though very rare adverse effects cannot be ruled out, and they agreed that this possibility should not delay implementation of programmes that can prevent HIV transmission to infants, including programmes that provide nevirapine in selected circumstances to women of unknown HIV serostatus. " Given the recent revelations about the HIVNET 012 trial in Uganda and other evidence of the severe toxicity of nevirapine, this could be a prescription for disaster (see news reports below).

Summary of the INTERNATIONAL MEETING FOR THE SCIENTIFIC REAPPRAISAL OF AIDS
Barcelona, July 8-11, 2002
While agencies of the government of the United States (CDC, NIH, DHHS), pharmaceutical corporations, WHO, and the Population Council were meeting at the Palau St. Jordi in Barcelona at their "XIV World Conference on HIV/AIDS", continuing their deceptions of all the world’s people, a group of so-called “AIDS dissidents” were meeting at La Farinera del Clot, a culture and arts center of the Barcelona Municipality, in an “International Meeting for the Scientific Reappraising of AIDS”, organized by the Spanish National Association of Complimentary Medicines (AMC). About 200 people attended from Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, England, Ireland, Mexico, Colombia, India, Cameroon, and the United States.

African Numbers, Problems and Number Problems
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
The New York Times August 18, 2002
ALL over Africa, customs officials, border guards, police officers and countless bureaucrats can be seen jotting down information helter-skelter, often on random sheets of paper if there is paper, and if the ink hasn't dried in their pens. At hospitals that have almost no supplies, where patients must provide everything from medicine to surgical tools to be treated, the illnesses of the sick or dead go unrecorded. Yet there is never a shortage of statistics about the continent: millions of dead from the war in Congo, hundreds of thousands of refugees in West Africa, where a third of the population is H.I.V.-positive. Despite their apparent precision, the numbers are often estimates that can vary according to politics.

Arrogance of TAC is nauseating
Mathatha Tsedu  The Star (Johannesburg) Aug. 13, 2002
When the Medicines Control Council calls Boehringer Ingelheim, the makers of Nevirapine, in to explain aspects of this medicine being used to curb mother-to-child transmission of HIV, all hell breaks loose among anti-government Nevirapine campaigners. All the MCC wanted to know was whether Boehringer could explain why it had withdrawn its application for registration in the US for the use of the drug in mother-to-child transmissions.

Interview With Christine Maggiore
by Onyango Oloo,CKUT 90.3 FM • Monday July 22, 2002 at 04:29 PM
Christine Maggiore is the author of a path-breaking book and a very prominent leader of a growing global movement of people seeking alternative perpectives on HIV/AIDS. She was interviewed from her California home on July 22,2002 for Montreal's CKUT 90.3 FM.
audio: MP3 at 16.0 mebibytes

Liver failure top killer of AIDS patients
UPMC Health System News Bureau ~ July 8, 2002
Elevations in ALT and AST enzymes signal injury to liver cells and, in some cases, to other cells in the body. The condition can result from highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART), viral hepatitis or alcohol abuse, all of which are toxic to liver cells. Liver failure is the most common cause of death in people with AIDS. "The fact that the findings were similar in two very different cohorts suggests that these results apply to all HIV patients," said Dr. Justice. "Furthermore, the fact that the most common current cause of death among people with HIV is liver failure suggests that liver injury may be a major limiting factor in the effectiveness of current HIV treatment."

ISSUES CONCERNING PERINATAL NEVIRAPINE TREATMENT
This document presenting a 100 points case against nevirapine was kindly provided by Dr. Sam Mhlongo. He as given his permission for its release. Dr. Mhlongo has presented this 100 points document to Dr. Eagles of the Medicines Control Council of South Africa. It's equivalent to the US FDA.

S Africa soaks up pressure to change HIV/AIDS policy
by Adele Baleta
The Lancet Volume 360, Number 9331 10 August 2002
South African doctors, activists, and politicians have vowed to fight plans by the country's drug regulatory authority to withdraw nevirapine for the prevention of intrapartum HIV transmission.

Study Can Clear Air On Nevirapine
Cape Argus (Cape Town, SA) August 7, 2002
THE question mark hanging over nevirapine, the drug used extensively in the Western Cape to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, will be cleared up, believes manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim. The answer, the company says, will come from specialists of the United States's prestigious research body the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is filing relevant data in Uganda "as we speak".

Aids drug could be banned
Secret meeting leads to fears that nevirapine may be withdrawn.
MAWANDE JUBASI  Sunday Times (South Africa)
THE fate of the controversial Aids drug nevirapine hangs in the balance, with the Medicines Control Council set to take a final decision next month on whether HIV-positive pregnant women in South Africa should continue using it. The council confirmed this week that it was reviewing its approval of the drug because it had "serious concerns" about its effectiveness and toxicity.

For more background on Nevirapine go here.

SIDA y agentes estresantes El sida no es infeccioso ni se transmite sexualmente. Este es un síndrome tóxico-nutricional causado por el alarmante incremento mundial de agentes estresantes para el sistema inmunologico.

Es satisfactorio poder informar que el Departamento de Publicaciones de mi universidad en Colombia — Universidad de Antioquia — ha publicado mi libro “SIDA y agentes estresantes”, Junio de 2002. Esta es una versión ampliada y actualizada de mi libro “AIDS and Stressors” publicado en 1997.

~ Roberto Giraldo

Big Pharma, Bad Science
By Nathan Newman The Nation  July 25, 2002
At the most basic level, researchers who defy their corporate sponsors know they may lose their funding. When one Toronto scientist revealed in 1998 a serious side effect of deferiprone, a drug for a blood disorder, her contract was terminated. More dramatically, when a number of researchers concluded that Remune, an anti-AIDS therapy, was of little benefit to patients, the company funding their research, the Immune Response Corporation, sued the scientists in 2001 for $10 million for damaging its business.

Just how tainted has medicine become?
The Lancet   Volume 359, Number 9313   06 April 2002
Editorial
Chief executives of multinational pharmaceutical companies have much to celebrate this week. They saw spending on prescription drugs in the USA soar by a remarkable 17% in 2001, according to figures recently released by the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. As bonuses for corporate leaders ratchet upwards, so does the unalleviated financial pressure on the elderly, the largest users of these drugs.

Sponsorship, authorship, and accountability
The Lancet   Volume 358, Number 9285    15 September 2001
Commentary
As CROs and academic medical centres compete head to head for the opportunity to enrol patients in clinical trials, corporate sponsors have been able to dictate the terms of participation in the trial, terms that are not always in the best interests of academic investigators, the study participants, or the advancement of science generally.

Dread diseases hit SA's starving kids
Three-quarters of all South Africans do not have enough food
MICHAEL SCHMIDT, ANDRÉ JURGENS and BOBBY JORDAN
Sunday Times (South Africa): Sunday 28 Jul 2002
Siphewe Mngomezulu, 6, is suffering from the effects of marasmus, a condition similar to kwashiorkor - right on the doorstep of one of South Africa's richest suburbs. In Alexandra, Johannesburg - a mere 5km from the Sandton Convention Centre where the World Summit on Sustainable Development will start on August 26 - children like Siphiwe are suffering from chronic diseases usually associated with the famine-plagued Horn of Africa.

• Dr. Sam Mhlongo's letter to the editor of the Sunday Times

Viral Load Tests Poor Predictor of "HIV progression" or Survival
Barcelona, Spain; Monday, July 8, 2002 -- Medscape coverage of the XIV International AIDS Conference: "When quantitation of viral load became possible in the mid-1990s, it was widely believed that this would provide the ultimate marker of the risk of HIV progression and death. In fact, this has not proved to be the case, and there has therefore been renewed attention to other, perhaps simpler and cheaper measures of risk."

Kaisernetwork.org: Daily HIV/AIDS Report Science & Medicine | Antiretroviral Therapy Can Be Delayed in Individuals With Higher CD4+ T Cell Counts, Two Studies Say [Jul 10, 2002]      Triple combination antiretroviral therapy can be "safely" delayed in patients with CD4+ T cell counts higher than 200 cells per milliliter, according to two studies presented yesterday at the XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain, the Washington Post reports. Alvaro Munoz of Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health examined HIV-positive people who started antiretroviral therapy when their CD4+ T cell counts were below 200, between 201 and 350 and between 351 and 500 cells per milliliter. Normal counts are between 600 to 800 cells per milliliter. The study found that while it was "detrimental" to delay treatment until after CD4+ T cell counts dropped below 200 cells per milliliter, there was "almost no difference" between people who started treatment with counts between 201 and 350 and between 351 and 500. The federal government currently recommends that HIV-positive people start antiretroviral treatment when CD4+ T cell counts drop below 350 cells per milliliter. A study presented by Genevieve Chene of Bordeaux, France, found a "similar outcome." The Post reports that the findings "could be vital in the campaign to bring treatment" to HIV-positive people in developing countries who often cannot afford the cost of long-term antiretroviral therapy (Brown, Washington Post, 7/10). New Treatment Guidelines for Developing Nations The World Health Organization and the International AIDS Society yesterday officially released new guidelines that simplify the administration of HIV therapies and "give options to poor regions lacking medical staff or sophisticated laboratories," Reuters Health reports. The guidelines are expected to "reduc[e] the complexity" of antiretroviral treatments and provide developing countries with "simple advice on options for treating" HIV infection. WHO Director-General Gro Harlem Brundtland said, "For the first time we now have the chance to apply a simplified, easy-to-follow public health approach to AIDS treatment rather than complex individual treatment regimens" (Reuters Health, 7/9).

Does the HIV virus really cause AIDS?
RUDOLF WERNER, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Miami
The Miami Herald ~ Letters to the Editor, Jul. 18, 2002
"In your July 14 editorial The other global threat, you write 'unless more is done, 70 million people will die of AIDS by 2020.' Similar predictions have often been made and disproven. It's the pharmaceutical industry that is interested in keeping the AIDS threat alive to sell more drugs. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis remains just that -- a hypothesis. Many experts' predictions turned out to be false." This letter provoked responses from the orthodoxy and a second letter from Werner to the Miami Herald.

Beyond Temporary 'Miracles'
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
The New York Times ~ July 16, 2002
BARCELONA, Spain, July 14 — A cynic wandering through the 17,000-person international AIDS conference here last week might have been tempted to point out that there were actually two conferences taking place under one roof, with remarkably contradictory messages. One was devoted to establishing the need for AIDS drugs in poor countries devastated by the epidemic. The other was devoted to coping with the endlessly mischievous, sometimes life-threatening complications of these same drugs. Half the world is determined to put as many patients as possible on medication, it seems, while the other half is trying to take as many patients as possible off.

AIDS in Africa: why the West is interested
by Dr Stuart Derbyshire
spiked
The international focus on HIV/AIDS seems to be less a result of a concern about public health than it is about Western nations using the issue as a way to justify more intervention into, and control over, African societies.

Dangerous false positives
By Lisa Penney, The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Vancouver -- Re HIV Tests Urged For Pregnancies (July 15): There are a number of conditions other than HIV, including pregnancy itself, that can cause a woman to test positive to an HIV test. The fact that 90 per cent of women testing positive were not in a high-risk group gives weight to the possibility that many of these are false positives.

Exclusive breastfeeding is best in all cases
AnotherLook has a letter published in the July 2002 issue of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. It was written in response to an article by Marie-Louise Newell, "Prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV: challenges for the current decade" WHO Bulletin, 2001, 79 (12)

Rage Over 'Poison' As AIDS Treatment
South African's fears disputed by others
By Laurie Garrett
Newsday ~ July 8, 2002
Barcelona, Spain - The minister of health for South Africa yesterday called drugs used to prevent transmission of HIV from mother to child poison. "The High Court has decided the Constitution says I must give my people a drug that isn't approved by the FDA . I must poison my people," she said. [Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang denies she made the statement.] Though the FDA was never asked to approve single-dose nevirapine for use by pregnant Americans, its use as one of the drugs in the anti-HIV drug cocktail been approved, Dr. Allan Rosenfield, dean of the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, said. [Clearly this last statement is not the truth. See: Drug firm withdraws nevirapine and Nevirapine.]

Researchers Find AIDS Drugs Cause T-Cell Deaths in Healthy, HIV Negative Patients!
In the June 2, 2002 issue of the Journal of Virology, researchers report an astounding discovery: The protease inhibitor drugs Crixivan (indinavir) and Invarase (saquinavir) caused T cell death in healthy HIV negative donor blood in three separate experiments.

Nevirapine: Both sides claim victory
SOUTH AFRICA - Both sides to the Constitutional Court dispute on the provision of nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV were claiming victory on Friday night. Government said it accepted a judgment handed down earlier in the day, adding that the ruling confirmed its approach to the pandemic as articulated by Cabinet in April, particularly on the provision of nevirapine beyond the research sites. [Go HERE for some revealing background on nevirapine.]

Breast is still best even when HIV prevalence is high, experts say
Roger Dobson, Abergavenny
BMJ 2002;324:1474 ( 22 June ) News
Child health specialists have urged governments and agencies not to provide free formula milk in programmes aimed at preventing mother to child HIV transmission. They say that although formula may seem to be a good idea, the consequences can be damaging. "Free formula milk may appear to be a blessing, but while potentially decreasing the rate of postnatal transmission, it is very likely to increase morbidity and mortality from other infectious diseases, thus decreasing overall child survival," say the specialists from the University of Natal and the Child Health Group of the Africa Centre for Population Studies and Reproductive Health in a report (Health Policy and Planning 2002;17:154-60)

SURROUNDED: An AIDS Dissident in the Antiretroviral Treatment Shop
By David Crowe
How did I, an AIDS dissident who questions the existence of HIV, end up on a panel writing a position paper on African health destined for G8 leaders surrounded by people who feel that access to antiretroviral treatment is one of the major current healthcare challenges? People that feel that the major issue is, who should pay for the medicines, and not whether they are safe and effective.

AMA Journal Critiques Report Data
By LINDSEY TANNER .c The Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) - The Journal of the American Medical Association has put aside presenting medical advances this week to turn a critical eye on itself, finding imperfections in the way it and other medical journals report scientific research. JAMA's latest issue [June 5, 2002] says journal studies are sometimes misleading and frequently fail to disclose weaknesses and disagreements among authors, while news releases some journals prepare often don't mention study limitations or industry funding.

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