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Rethinking AIDS   AidsMyth.com

side fx 2000
Pills! Chills! Spills! Thrills!
POZ September 2000
This is a prime example of the perverse rhetoric POZ magazine employs to direct market one of the most gruesome experiments in medical history. No study has ever proven that these drugs are "lengthening life spans" and many of the "side fx" listed here would amount to full blown AIDS.

No entry for immigrants with HIV
OTTAWA - Immigrants with HIV will be banned from entering Canada, Citizenship and Immigration Minister Elinor Caplan said yesterday. The only exceptions will be for refugees who come to Canada because they fear persecution in their homelands, or immigrants who already have close family members in Canada, such as spouses, partners and dependent children.
   Letter submitted to the Editor

SEPT 2000

Three stories on what went down in South Africa:

Suspend all HIV testing Mbeki expert panel recommends
Eminent world scientists from both sides of the AIDS debate have been mandated by the Mbeki AIDS panel to undertake historic experiments to attempt to purify, or isolate, the HIV virus; and also examine the current HIV testing methodologies. In the meantime, the panel wants all HIV testing to be suspended. "It's a worthless distraction," says one panel member. Huw Christie reports from Johannesburg.

Aids: Judgement day on the 13th
Pusch Commey, reports from Durban, on the good, the bad and the shananagians at the recent 13th International Aids Conference held in that city.

AIDS: There is no more room to hide anymore
There appears to be some confusion about the process of the South African cabinet-approved Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel. By Anita Allen

More press on the Nkozi Uganda conference

SAY HIV CAUSES AIDS, LEAKED PAPER TELLS MBEKI
By Judith Soal
Cape Times (South Africa)
A confidential document written by the leaders of the ANC's national health committee has called on President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang to publicly acknowledge that HIV is the cause of Aids.

HIV MIGHT VERY WELL CAUSE AIDS - MBEKI
The South African government on Thursday moved to quell the growing controversy around President Thabo Mbeki's stance on HIV and Aids. Advertisements seeking to clarify the views of the President and Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang on whether HIV causes Aids have been placed in Friday's newspapers.

Statement from the First International Holistic AIDS Conference
Held at Uganda Martyrs University, Nkozi, Uganda 29 August - 1 September 2000

Grass Roots Seeded by Drugmaker
By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Tuesday, September 12, 2000; Page A01
Showing all the signs of a thriving grass-roots movement, a host of new health-care groups are drawing attention to the perils of a contagious, sometimes lethal virus called hepatitis C. But contrary to appearances, these coalitions are not spontaneous gatherings of concerned citizens. They are instead a key part of a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign funded by Schering-Plough Corp. to sell the primary therapy for hepatitis C, Rebetron, which costs $18,000 a year

see: Hep C Challenge

'You Cannot Attribute Immune Deficiency Exclusively to a Virus'
In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with TIME, South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki restates his contentious position on AIDS

Aids: Controversy over the disease still rages
By Lucy Kirauni East African Standard
The emerging notion that the HIV virus may not be the real cause of Aids leaves some people dumbfounded and others furious.

Statistics scam in South Africa
A gloom & doom article from the Johannesburg Sunday Times is followed by a Noseweek investigative report that exposes the fraudulent manipulation behind the "horrible truth".

San Francisco DPH Cooked Up HIV Statistics
Officials backpedal in wake of news stories:
San Francisco health officials were working overtime feeding juicy quotes and leaking unpublished data to the media in advance of the media frenzy surrounding the International AIDS Conference in Durban, South Africa, just as Congress is poised to cut Ryan White CARE Act funding to San Francisco due to a dropped AIDS caseload. Sensational headlines circled the globe Friday, June 30. "S.F. HIV Rate Surges; alarming incidence of new infections raises fears of scourge to come" ... "New HIV infections soar in San Francisco"...

"Fire the Liars" for the HIV Scare
Activists stage sit-in at San Francisco AIDS Office; Crash meeting to deliver "pink slips" to DPH Director Mitch Katz and epidemiologist Willi McFarland.

AIDS and Aid: Global Blackmail?
By Patricia Nell Warren  A & U Magazine 7/2000

Doctor drops breastfeeding bombshell
AIDS Conference: Push to allow HIV-infected mothers to nurse sparks outcry
By Rosie DiManno  Toronto Star Columnist

In response to the views of dissident scientists who challenge the idea that HIV causes AIDS, an international group of scientists and doctors has released a manifesto called "The Durban Declaration", in an attempt to end debate on this critical world health issue. The journal Nature agreed to publish it in their July 6th issue.

Earlier this spring, Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa, attempted to start a dialogue between orthodox AIDS scientists and the dissidents about HIV and AIDS in advance of the conference on HIV and AIDS in Durban, South Africa, from where the declaration gets it's name. However, orthodox AIDS scientists refused to participate in the dialogue. They chose instead to sign a declaration restating their consensus position that HIV is the accepted cause of AIDS and accusing the dissidents of threatening "countless lives", implying that they must be silenced.

Included in this paper is the full text of their manifesto, along with interlinear comments that show how orthodox claims about HIV and AIDS have been repeatedly contradicted in the medical and scientific literature.

Mbeki under fire for AIDS speech
Controversy continues at international conference

South African President Thabo Mbeki's speech at the 13th International AIDS Conference

A Call for support to Strategies of Hope to the African HIV/AIDS Holocaust
From Peter Kasule, HEAL Uganda, 5 June 2000

Doctors Urge AIDS Tests For All Pregnant Women Recommendation goes beyond those 'at risk'
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor
05/24/2000 - San Francisco Chronicle
The national organization of doctors who deliver most of America's babies urged routine AIDS testing yesterday for every pregnant woman -- ``regardless of her apparent risk.''

Jail won't deter HIV lovers
By MINDELLE JACOBS, EDMONTON SUN
As far as the justice system is concerned, the issue is clear. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 1998 that failing to tell a sex partner you have AIDS or HIV can amount to an assault. And in the past week, two HIV-positive men were jailed for deliberately infecting their girlfriends with the virus.

NOTE: It is worth looking at these two documents at our hiv test index in light of these news stories:
Is the "AIDS Test" Accurate?
Why not test everyone for HIV infection?

A Dissenting View on AIDS Policy - South African President Thabo Mbeki deserves praise for questioning `official' beliefs about cause of disease
Michael P. Wright
05/24/2000 - San Francisco Chronicle
For nine years beginning in 1987, I was involved professionally in AIDS/HIV research. During the 1990s, I was awarded two federal grants for this work by the Small Business Innovation Research program of the U.S. National Cancer Institute. By the end of this period, I had become skeptical about official beliefs concerning AIDS.

AIDS & South Africa
A Contrary Conference in Pretoria
by Celia Farber
"Over the past several months, the Western AIDS orthodoxy has been rendered increasingly deranged by South African President Thabo Mbeki's call for a reopening of the HIV-AIDS causation question. Before long they began earnestly calling for the criminal prosecution of AIDS dissidents. (This rabid wish was voiced by way of the mainstream AIDS media.) Fantastic, I say. Just make sure it's televised because Americans will recognize the face of at least one man being hauled off in handcuffs for supporting open debate on AIDS, and it won't be his first visit to the slammer: Nelson Mandela."

AIDS REALISM VERSUS THE HIV HYPOTHESIS
by John Lauritsen
23rd May 2000
From BadPuppy - GayToday Viewpoint
AidsMyth Dissident News

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
I enclose a transcript of the programme Huw Christie and I made in South Africa after President Mbeki gave us the interview. You may wish to circulate it. The first half has a taster quote from Mbeki, and then the second half consists of the interview. Very brief extracts were used on BBC2's Newsnight last week in a very critical piece, but with staunch support for Mbeki from an interviewee from the Africa centre. Best wishes, Joan Shenton [Meditel]

MALARIA KILLS US, BUT AIDS MAKES US EQUAL
By Charles Onyango-Obbo
The East African (Nairobi) May 18, 2000
Last year, more than 500 million cases of acute malaria were reported, five times more than all cases of tuberculosis, Aids, measles and leprosy combined.

SOCRATES AND DUESBERG
Christine Qunta
Business Day (South Africa), May 19, 2000, Opinion & Analysis

Drug Rush
Stephen Pomper, Washington Monthly May 12, 2000
A major exposé on the drug industry's abuse of the drug trial and approval system.
The drug world that Americans once worried about was a shadowy demi-monde populated by hollow-eyed junkies toting needles, spoons, and Jefferson Airplane LPs. But times have changed, and a new drug culture requires our attention. The pushers in this culture wear lab coats and business suits and move their product through HMOs and family doctors. And although their drugs may be government regulated, that does not make them safe. According to statistics cited by Food and Drug Administration officials, toxic reactions to marketed drugs are estimated to cost more than $30 billion per year and be among the ten leading causes of death in the United States.

WAR ON TRUTH:
The Secret Battle for the American Mind
Pharmaceutical companies use many of the tactics and services of big PR firms that most people have never heard of. In this interview John Stauber of PR Watch explains how we are influenced by corporate propaganda disguised as information. It is estimated that that half or more of what appears in newspapers and magazines is lifted verbatim from press releases generated by public-relations firms.

NEMJ Editor Laments Conflicts of Interest

Is Academic Medicine for Sale? (Editorial)
Uneasy Alliance -- Clinical Investigators and the Pharmaceutical Industry
The New England Journal of Medicine -- May 18, 2000 -- Vol. 342, No. 20

Under the Influence
A REUTERS new story

Concerning AIDS research and Mark A. Wainberg, PhD

Conflict of interest in drug research is a fundamental issue within the medical profession itself, and not merely a concern of consumer advocacy groups. This material should be circulated widely and brought into the debate not only about AIDS research, but all medical research that leads to prescriptive drug therapies. I have also included a related disclosure statement (from the Journal of the American Medical Association) of Mark Wainberg, AIDS-drug researcher at McGill University and widely-quoted President and spokesperson of the industry lobby group known as the International Aids Society. This should not be construed as a critique of Dr. Wainberg, but merely as another illustration of the dilemmas elaborated by the outgoing editor of NEJM as they apply to the specific issue of AIDS. - Brian Murphy, Inter Pares

AIDS treatment funding sought
"Activists want virus-killing gels developed"
In this Toronnto Star article, Dr. Mark Wainberg and his chorus of "activists" call for the government and WHO to stop dragging their heels on vaginal and rectal "anti-HIV" microbicides.

Letter to the Toronto Star
David Crowe discovers that Wainberg holds patents on substances suggested for use "preventing the transmission of HIV to uninfected cells and contraceptive compositions comprising the said derivatives"

Medical errors kill more than AIDS

(GENEVA) About 98,000 people die each year in the United States as a result of medical errors, which makes such mistakes the eighth leading cause of death nationally, U.S. Secretary of Health Donna Shalala said.

The United States has launched a new plan to improve health care quality to reduce medical errors, which can include cases of patients inadvertently being given the wrong medicine, the World Health Organization said.

According to a report by the Institute of Medicine, even the lowest estimates of death from medical errors are higher than the annual mortality from breast cancer and AIDS. (AFP)

Institute of Medicine Press Release
Institute of Medicine Report Review

Open letter to President Mbeki
MAIL AND GUARDIAN
Johannesburg, South Africa. May 9 2000
Three South African scientists working in the field of HIV/Aids research respond to President Mbeki's controversial letter questioning the link between HIV and Aids. They allege, among other things, that the "dissidents" are not “sufficiently well informed as to have any credibility in this debate.”

Letter to the MAIL AND GUARDIAN
Robert Johnston sets the record straight.

South Africa turns to research in the hope of settling AIDS policy...
MICHAEL CHERRY Nature: News
Duesberg and Bialy cooperate with US and South African medical authorities to devise experiments to settle the score on HIV and AIDS. Meanwhile the US government stacks the deck on Mbeki's panel to favor the orthodoxy. -- R.J.

AIDS ADVISORY PANEL FINALLY LAYING THE HIV CONTROVERSY TO REST?
By Claire Bisseker
Financial Mail 12 May 2000
Dissident promises to shut up once proof is provided
President Thabo Mbeki may yet emerge from the controversy surrounding the creation of his Aids advisory panel with his credibility intact - not because the dissidents' view will prevail, but because they have been co-opted into a process that may quash their views once and for all.

Salvage therapy for HIV-1 infection--the challenge grows
The Lancet; London; Apr 22, 2000; John Mellors;Julio Montaner;
Abstract:
Sobering news emerged at the Third International Workshop on Salvage Therapy for HIV-1 Infection. Delegates heard that despite gains from widespread use of highly active antiretroviral therapy, rates of treatment failure remain high.

Reexamining AIDS in South Africa
By Tom Bethell The Washington Times, May 10, 2000
"In Africa, AIDS is not a science. In the U.S., AIDS is said to be caused by HIV. But in Africa, it can be diagnosed without an HIV test. This relaxed rule was promoted by U.S. health officials in 1985, at a conference in the Central African Republica. They were eager to find that men and women were equally infected. In no time, sick people in Zaire were called AIDS cases. Now, with a heterosexually transmitted epidemic on the front pages, public health budgets would soar."

Bulgaria wants international experts in HIV trial
SOFIA, April (Reuters) - Bulgaria has urged Libya to allow international experts to testify in the case of six Bulgarian medics charged by a Libyan court with intentionally infecting 393 children with the HIV virus, the government said on Monday.
related story:
Health staff held on HIV charge

South Africa controversial AIDS panel starts work
South Africa's AIDS advisory panel began work on Saturday amid a storm of controversy over the inclusion on it of scientists who doubt that the deadly disease is caused by the HIV virus.

POLITICS: Mbeki: Wise man or fool? President defends his questioning of HIV orthodoxy as divided panel gathers to find responses to a 'catastrophe'
PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki opened the first meeting of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel yesterday by saying the scientists should explain how the disease had come to blight Africa.

South Africa gives AIDS maverick role in task force
South Africa appointed leading American "AIDS dissident" Peter Duesberg on Sunday to a powerful government team tasked with staging experiments that could prove or reject orthodox science's view that AIDS is caused by HIV.

AIDS dissidents enraged
THE "dissident" scientists who oppose the view that HIV causes AIDS are said to have "thrown their toys out the cot" yesterday after scientists supporting the orthodox view appeared to dominate the first day of discussions of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel in Pretoria yesterday.

Amid Epidemic, 'AIDS Skeptics' give prominent role on South Africa panel
South Africa lurched into another AIDS controversy this week with the announcement that about half of the scientists invited to join a national AIDS advisory panel are so-called dissident researchers who dispute the conventional explanations for the origin of the disease.

SOUTH AFRICA MBEKI'S PRESIDENTIAL AIDS ADVISORY PANEL

The Globe and Mail lends their stage to a witch hunt:

HIV deniers should be jailed: researcher
Head of AIDS body slams fringe movement
By André Picard,   Monday, May 1, 2000

Those who contend that HIV does not cause AIDS are criminally irresponsible and should be jailed for the menace they pose to public health, one of the world's top researchers says.

AIDS dissonance and dissidents
You can't imprison HIV-deniers and you can't ignore AIDS chaos
Editorial, Tuesday, May 2, 2000

Almost 20 years after the disease first burst upon human consciousness, AIDS still carries a problematic status unlike that of any other modern illness.At the root of the issue is an intrinsic heterogeneity. People who are infected with HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, can die in very different ways. Some succumb to pneumonia. Others die of a heretofore rare skin cancer. Still others have their brain eaten away by funguses. In all, 26 varying conditions are grouped together to constitute AIDS.

'Getting' HIV
By Jonathan Leith,   Wednesday, May 3, 2000

With respect to Mark Wainberg's welcome address to the Canadian Association for HIV Research (news -- May 1) and your editorial (May 2): When did it become so difficult to understand that a virus (HIV) that destroys the immune system renders the victim susceptible to infections that might otherwise be contained by a functional immune system?

When junk science turns lethal
By Margaret Wente,   Thursday, May 4, 2000

Dr. Mark Wainberg is taking a certain amount of flak these days for taking on the HIV deniers. The renowned Montreal researcher is president of the International Aids Society, and he thinks these people are deeply irresponsible. He wouldn't mind seeing a few of them silenced. ''These people are doing harm,'' he told me. ''Perhaps there might once have been good ground to dispute the linkage between HIV and AIDS. It's indisputable now.''

The National Post (Canada), May 4, 2000
Africa's AIDS figures are dubious
"But the most important question is: Are we sure that the millions of victims in sub-Saharan Africa are suffering from HIV/AIDS? Some, like Africa veteran Charles Geshekter at the California State University, aren't so sure. He points out that in North America, AIDS patients are certified as HIV positive and suffer from any one or more of 30 diseases or conditions. To qualify as an AIDS victim in sub-Saharan Africa, however, there is no need to test positive to HIV, let alone undergo a test at all. As a result, the narrow North American definition of AIDS has been swept aside, and we're using in its stead a sprawling catch-all. If some unfortunate soul contracts malaria or tuberculosis, or even succumbs to a 'prolonged fever, weight loss of 10% or greater, and prolonged diarrhoea,' he or she will probably be catalogued as an AIDS victim."

The Toronto Star, May 1, 2000
More insidious than drought, more deadly than famine, more chronic than war
"800 dying of AIDS in Ethiopia every day", reports Scott Simmie of the Star. But is Ethiopia really being devastated by AIDS? The diagnosis is made without HIV testing and based on symptoms that are common to many diseases endemic in Africa. A critical reading of this article might suggest that drought, famine and chronic strife are the real roots of the disaster.

Straight Arrows in Gaysville, U.S.A.

"As gays and lesbians once again prepare to march on the Capitol Sunday, one thing seems clearer all the time: They're losing the last strains of fringe chic, the vive la diffe»rence that once made homosexuality cool. Now being gay is boring. Being gay is being Donna Reed. Gay men and lesbians, who never agreed on much, have laid claim to the white-picket-fence dream – God, country, Boy Scouts, bridal showers – in unison." There may be some insights here to help us understand the complacency about HIV/AIDS among gay men. - RJ

The Great AIDS Debate
NewAfrican, May 2000
South Africa is coming alive with discussion and hopes for the government's "Expert Panel of Inquiry" into the assumptions about the causes of AIDS, how to properly diagnose it, and which treatments are genuinely helpful.

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