1. What's wrong with the traditional 'HIV/AIDS' theory?

• Criticisms of electron micrography are only just beginning to surface from the murk of censorship of the last half-century or so. In the first place, because a vacuum is needed, and because fast electrons have a lot of penetrating power through ordinary tissue, samples have to be soaked with heavy metal compounds, then dehydrated and sliced. The popular idea, found in many 'AIDS' books, of a specimen being 'seen through an electron microscope', or 'looked at by electron microscope', after an assistant has put a sample into a slot in the way light microscopes work, is completely false. And the treatment method leads to many problems. To take just two: the 'protein coat' supposedly seen around viruses by electron microscopes is an unsound inference from micrographs, and may or may not exist. And the supposed identification of a 'reticulum' within cells, which has led to an enormous amount of spurious work on things like 'lysosomes', and on the cell membrane and the way proteins are supposed to bind and migrate, and RNA is supposed to be read off and decoded. The problems are faintly analogous to those in interpreting air photos. All this work, including that of many Nobel prize winners, is suspect and probably false.
      (This selection of Usenet exchanges Unanswered Questions in Biology which I've recovered from 1996, illustrates some of the points. The content appears rather advanced, but in fact is fairly easy to master, at least if you have some background in science. 178K - LONG!)
• Protein detection has rather obvious problems in the sense that body fluids are an immense soup of compounds. So trying to detect the effects of viruses may be a little bit difficult. Although the AIDS establishment do their best to conceal the fact, it's quite well known that many diseases and bodily stresses cause 'HIV' tests to show 'positive', at least in the judgement of the people trying to use them. This is why it's possible for people diagnosed 'HIV positive' to later be diagnosed 'HIV negative' just as confidently, and why people with malaria, malnutrition and a whole list of diseases can be believed to be 'HIV+'. It's amusing to reflect that a similar, more reliable correlation than 'HIV+' can be got simply by adding up the number of drugs/conditions which a possible victim has been exposed to—'poppers', syphilis, gonorrhoea, malnutrition, excessive antibiotic use, blood transfusions, intravenous drug use, etc—giving (let's say) a 'RISK' score, with RISK+ indicating danger.
        (Incidentally the 'Elisa' and 'Western blot' methods are used in 'BSE science', too. Unfortunately, critical BSE investigators seem to be even more unable to cooperate with each other than AIDS activists, and so far as I know there's still no critical work exploring this crucial aspect of BSE).
• Centrifugation of minced-up cells—'subcellular fractionation'—the idea being to collect together similar fragments, has subtle difficulties, for example in knowing where substances originated when they end up sorted more or less by density. Neville Hodgkinson's book (see below) is unusual in looking at this issue.
• A newer technique is polymerase chain reaction, which relies on properties of DNA to replicate bits of DNA; without some such technique it's difficult to see how much work can have ever been done with DNA. It's significant that its inventor, Kary Mullis, has been an opponent of the 'HIV' theory ever since it was first promoted by the US government.

2. Opponents of the official theories who've had some success

• Continuum magazine, was published about six times a year in London. I've been informed (November 2000) that they are ceasing publication, at least in paper form. Their executive committee included TV film-maker Joan Shenton (see below), whose record in medical TV films (her company is Meditel) is, as far as I know, unparalleled.
      Continuum is now available online, from their site www.continuummagazine.org . (I'd offered to do a website for them about four years ago—better late than never, I suppose). The back numbers are in .pdf format (as I also suggested, last November).
      [Boring technical note: In my experience, PDF files are tricky to save, so NB: they use file names like v5_n1.pdf for vol 5, number 1. You may need to use Start/ Find/ Files or folders, then search for v*.pdf on your hard disk, then click-and-drag your PDF file(s) from its/their temporary storage into your own new folder.]
      Continuum seems to have linked with an outfit called the 'Immune Development Trust', a charity which an online search says is run by Paul Lev Pedro, from an Islington address. This seems to be a 'complementary' promotion outfit (everything from acupuncture to Tai Chi, and which assumes the existence of AIDS), which, with my customary honesty, I have to point out is unlikely to have much scientific validity. It is funded by long-suffering ratepayers and many others, including Elton John.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Dr Lorraine Day has a long-running website still going strong in 2023 Dr-Day.com . She wrote on 'AIDS', and was, she says, widely interviewed on her local media, when she worked as a trauma surgeon, 'covered in blood', I think in San Francisco. Her books (and the same thing appears in her site) show a build-up of Jew awareness in the USA medical system. But they also show a very sad Biblical fundamentalism, which she doesn't seem to understand is entirely based on Jewish rubbish. She must have been an interview subject by the Jewish media on AIDS to ensure the sound parts of her criticisms were upstaged by the weaker stuff. I noticed that Dr Sherri Tenpenny has a similar rather pitiful naivety, which I'd guess keeps her in the fairly good books of Jewsˆ.
        Dr Day has given her account of Jew awareness growing in her: Lorraine Day on Jews in San Francisco (nearly 5 mins video; October 2020.
        She's something like a fundamentalist Christian; in my view, she hasn't rid her brain of 'Jewish' junk. Here she is on laser projections and 'Satan' and other stuff—some sound, such as the New World Order project being 'worryingly behind'. About 1 hour audio, with Andrew C Hitchcock, who even has an astrologer on his show.     [Back to top]
  
  
• Peter Duesberg (one of the principal ‘dissidents’) has this site https://duesberg.com . His book Inventing the AIDS Virus (with Kary Mullis) is listed by Amazon as their #50,814th selling book. The last I heard he'd been demoted by Berkeley to running the annual picnic, or something like that, to their lasting shame. Duesberg is important, but hasn't yet in my opinion subjected his techniques to full scrutiny. I think this possibly has helped his work not be completely accepted. This 1987 paper Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectation and Reality from Cancer Research (but watch for typos) is famous for the lack of response; the journal editor said that not one single reply was received. Another of his papers is AIDS Acquired by Drug Consumption (1992) .   [Back to top]
  
  
• Bryan J. Ellison, for five years or so a graduate student of Peter Duesberg, wrote Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS , published with a taped interview of the author in 1994, and credited to both Ellison & Duesberg. This in my view is one of the best single-volume books on 'AIDS', but, because of disputes of the sort which so divertingly enliven alternative work, the book is or was almost unobtainable. There were disputes between publishers, between authors and publishers, between the authors (Duesberg I believe taking the view that Ellison pinched his work), between the authors and their University, and between various other interested parties. (But I received an email from Joel Schwartz, who helped Inside Story publish Ellison's book, assuring me that Duesberg 'pinched' from Ellison). So far as I know, Ellison unfortunately doesn't have an Internet site. Internet entries about him all seem to be old, e.g. this site has an interview. Amazon lists an out of print book as #516,109.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Neville Hodgkinson (ex-Sunday Times medical & science correspondent, who must be one of the politest people in the known universe) is important partly because of his careful investigation of the situation in Africa, as a result of which he amassed detailed knowledge of the way spurious figures were made up, and partly because he tenaciously investigated techniques in 'HIV' science. His book AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science subtitled How a Virus that Never Was Deceived the World (1996) is in an interesting science/ detective story genre. He tends to favour the 'oxidative stress hypothesis' of Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopolus. (I personally think this is very likely to be another failure of modern biology).
      I have discussed AIDS and modern science with him at length, and had hoped for some time to put a transcription on Internet. Here it is at last. Interview with Neville Hodgkinson fairly soon after his book was published. [About 74K].
      For reasons best known to himself, he now works for the Brahma Kumaris Global Retreat Centre near Oxford.
      Neville replied on 17 Jul 2000 to an e-mail query, 'What's your view re Mbeki?':-

  Hello Rae. Mbeki is a fine politician as well as an independent thinker. The insecurity within UNAIDS, the WHO, the Aids establishment etc is so great that even his asking a few questions put them in a state of panic. So he has to be very careful in his public pronouncements.     He is also genuinely open-minded—he just wants to know what is going on.     The panel agreed to set up some research into the "HIV" test and the aim is to report back by the end of the year.     Here is a piece I wrote on the essence of the case against the test, published by the Johannesburg-based Sunday Independent on 9th July under their "Inside Story" slot [short-8K—RW].

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• Christian Fiala has written on the statistical fakery underlying 'HIV/AIDS'.
        His selection of his own online articles is:—
  
  We have lived with HIV/Aids for 20 years. A call for an open discussion of contradictory facts (2000) [Worldwide survey drawing attention to failed forecasts, and the differences in definitions of 'AIDS' in different parts of the world, with amusing material on competing health agencies inventing their own 'definitions']
  
  NEW AFRICAN AIDS—Dirty tricks over AIDS figures (1998) [Ugly methods used by the WHO to invent figures]
  
  AIDS IN AFRICA—The Ugandan example (1998) [With evidence on the real effects of dictatorships, war, violence]
  
  Danger from the Far East? (1998) [Interesting material on Thai morals, and on the panic search for a new scare when African headlines were failing]
  
  HIV/AIDS—How Great is the Danger for Young People? (1998) [A look at the absurdly scanty data]       [Back to top]
  
  
• John Lauritsen was one of the originators, or the main instigator according to Ellison, of the anti-HIV movement. If so, this is a considerable achievement. So far as I've been able to tell, he used to live in a New York apartment almost completely filled with journals and books and his computer, and from which he conducted his work, which included publishing some books with cheap sepia one-colour covers. He worked in market research and maintained that this discipline (market research) is, unexpectedly, more rigorous than a great deal of science, because the money at stake enforced rigorously controlled experiments. He investigated the actual records of AZT trials (the US Freedom of Information Act providing him with the leverage). One of his books, The AIDS War... , appears in Amazon's online catalogue—#146,967 when I checked. He occasionally appears in TV films as an owlishly-spectacled man discussing the mass of papers on 'HIV' as toxic waste, and commenting on the medical-industrial complex. Click to see his bibliography .
      He is also, I found, a freethinker. Spring 1998's Gay and Lesbian Humanist has his comments on a website 'godhatesfags' based in Topeka, Kansas. He has also written A Freethinker's Primer of Male Love (Pagan Press; 96 pages) which was reviewed in the same magazine.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Thabo Mbeki is the first politician known to me who has intervened in medical corruption (with the possible exception of Bismarck). Although Mbeki's precise words never seem to be reported, his position seems to be that he considers the subject of 'AIDS' worthy of investigation, without necessarily taking a position himself. His interactional panel is reported to include Duesberg, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos (who lives in Australia, has authored some highly competent papers, but leans to the oxidative stress hypothesis), Gordon Stewart (known as a statistician and epidemiologist, and a long-term sceptic of the official position), and Andrew Herxheimer (a sceptical pharmacologist). And, in the black corner, A CDC representative and also Luc Montaignier. All this, as might be predicted, has set off a spurt of hysterical activity and propaganda.
        On my site are (a) the text of the online petition in support of Mbeki, (b) comments on recent newspaper articles , (c) BBC radio and TV items supposedly dealing with the situation in South Africa.
        Mbeki verbatim was, for once, presented in a TV film, Search for Solutions , made by Joan Shenton. Nobody would broadcast it, except in Africa, where 40 countries are reported to have done so. Click here for the transcript of her unbroadcast programme, which includes a fairly long interview between Shenton and Mbeki.
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• Joan Shenton's TV production company 'Meditel' has made five important, long (50 minute) programmes. Four of these, AIDS-the Unheard Voices (1987)—the voices are those of scientists— The AIDS Catch (1990), AZT-Cause for Concern (1992), and AIDS and Africa (1993), were broadcast by British Channel 4's 'Dispatches'. I don't think they're available on video. (There has since been a change at the top of Channel 4; someone called Jenny Barraclough is credited with a recent (3rd January 1999) 90-minutes on the subject, which omitted everything important and apparently had just one young woman 'researcher'). Search for Solutions (2000) has never been broadcast but will probably be made available as a downloadable mpeg file.
      Meditel's shorter items have had a chequered career, some being broadcast (e.g. Amsterdam Conference, 1992), others being pulled at the last minute without explanation—for example a ten-minute piece for 1st Dec 1998 ('World AIDS Day') which included people who had been diagnosed HIV positive, and then, later, HIV negative; and other pieces showing clearly the unreliability of 'HIV' tests. Meditel has had an extraordinary success rate, including for example the nearly-forgotten Japanese 'SMON', found eventually to have been caused by Entero-Vioform.
      Her book Positively False: Exposing the Myths Around HIV and AIDS is advertised by Amazon books (at position # 73,773 when I looked). Her background was modern languages; I attribute her success to her ability to ask apparently simple questions, then shrewdly sum up the answers.
      Click for Meditel information . The same site has downloadable file, which can be played as a small talking image (see the still picture), with Shenton's voiceover. This was a piece censored by Channel 4 TV (the other channels of course wouldn't even commission it) showing inter alia gay men who have tested both HIV positive and negative. (The downloadable file is 3Mb in '.RM' format, playable with 'Real Player' and perhaps other software, but is stored as a .ZIP file, though this saves hardly any space, suggesting weak technical competence somewhere).   [Back to top]
  
  
• Michael Verney-Elliott, an indefatigable researcher, in not very good health (he's a heavy smoker) who works with film director Ken Russell's son Alex. Although he keeps a rather low profile, he has done an impressive amount of work. One of his interests is in trying to establish whether 'retroviruses' actually exist—which could prove an Achilles heel of Peter Duesberg. He has a standing offer of £1,000 to anyone who can produce an electronmicrograph under lab conditions of 'HIV'. So far as I know, he's been published so far only in magazines. He predicts a considerable backlash against the gay and drug company alliance.
  
  Here is a three-hour taped talk with Michael Verney-Elliott.   [Back to top]

• Martin J. Walker, author of Dirty Medicine: Science, big business, and the assault on natural health care (7000 copies sold). His book has very detailed though not, unsurprisingly, complete, research into PR/journalism and interlocking funding by governments and industry of research, handbooks like M.I.M.S., bodies like the Campaign Against Health Fraud and U.S. Skeptics. He has details of failed AZT trials. He places emphasis on the sociology/politics of medicine, being for example baffled how Foucault (who analysed—whether correctly or not—the history of modern medicine almost entirely in terms of a struggle for control by medicos) could swallow the entire story of AIDS, and, along with it, sufficient AZT to kill himself. His overriding thesis is that industry has a vested interest in profits, and also in minimising harm caused by, for example, pollution—both factors leading to the 'assault on natural health care'. Although this book is only partially on AIDS, and gets off to a weak start with homoeopathy, it's thorough and thought-provoking enough to be included in this section.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Susan Warman , an education administrator and biology lecturer, on the HIV/AIDS hypothesis and the British education system. (Which of course has a similar approach to almost every other system). Based on a careful literature search (including a long list of newspaper/ journal articles) and on questionnaire surveys both of students and their teachers, Warman concludes that full evidence should be given to students, not unsubstantiated dogma. (I'm not suggesting she was aware of what the full evidence actually was.) She wrote "History may well prove the HIV/AIDS phenomenon to be the greatest public scandal of the late 1980s and early 1990s...". This dissertation (part of M.Ed.) was written as long ago as late 1994. With permission from Sue Warman. (270K split into eight chapters plus tables, appendices). Click here to browse her dissertation.
  
  

3. Failures (and Baddies)

• Academics and Journalists. It's curious to watch on TV, or to read, people pontificating in tedious academese on subjects they don't understand but have been funded to talk or write about. The general rule is that, so long as fundamental questions aren't asked, any drivel will do provided it sounds like the usual sort of thing. To take a completely random example, Glasgow University Media Group published Getting the Message in 1993. In it we find:-
        P Beharrell's chapter AIDS and the British Press   'examines the way in which newspapers have reported a key aspect of the government education strategy.., the risk of heterosexual transmission of HIV.'  What follows reveals no interest in 'HIV', but is essentially press cuttings interspersed with 'educated' officially-purveyed comment (e.g. 'This attack on 'promiscuous homosexuals' was not unique.. the imagery is that of plague and pestilence..'), padded with connective material like 'The mainstream media reporting of AIDS is not uniform. It draws upon a number of competing perspectives which are rooted in institutional arrangements, social movements and struggles. ..'
        J Kitzinger's chapter Understanding AIDS: Researching audience perceptions... tried to investigate peoples' views on AIDS by giving them photos and asking them to act their own TV news based on them. Typical reactions showed, of course, that  'people were able to reproduce specific media and health education messages about AIDS using the concepts, language and rhetorical techniques etc.' One thing that Ms Kitzinger had been told was that it's correct to talk of HIV, and not 'AIDS virus', so she has a section on this—'.. Some people were unclear about the distinction between HIV and AIDS and others.. etc.'
        Unfortunately there is very little published material on the realities of behaviour and pressures on commissioning editors, TV researchers, publishers, and so on.
  
        As regards journalists, some good ones are simply driven out. There appear to be no ethical standards amongst fellow journalists. As an example, Neville Hodgkinson of the Sunday Times , after a number of years of genuinely investigate reporting, suffered a change of editorship. He wasn't sacked, but was invited to stay, provided he wrote nothing about AIDS. He would not accept this and was replaced by an ignorant woman.
        Ed Lieb (see below) emails: ‘.. the New York Native . Their advertisers were pressured to withdraw and the publisher was forced into bankruptcy. When a scurrilous lawsuit failed to bring SPIN down, the publication was quietly bought out with no fanfare. Other than the disappearance of Bob Guccione, Jr., reporter Celia Farber and "AIDS" column, it's the same magazine. I did notice AIDS drug ads started appearing in the new SPIN, but no other changes noticed. Celia Farber's writings are among the earliest and best in the U.S.’ [NB: I've heard Guccione and Farber had a relationship, as it's coyly known, and another female journalist sued over possible resulting bias. I don't know if this is the scurrilous lawsuit referred to—RW]
        The London Times , 19th Jan 2000, has what purport to be two reviews by Helen Rumbelow (of books on Luc Montagnier, and on flu virus, the latter following a recent media scare). In fact the flu book appears only to be about someone getting hold of a 1918 corpse and 'recovering the virus'. The other is Luc Montagnier's 'discovery of the HIV virus'. It would be nice to be able to say, with other people, that the Times was good, but now isn't; the sad truth of course is that it's garbage now, and was garbage then.
        The united front is sometimes broken in very strange quarters. Reader's Digest , not best known for intellectual honesty, in 1983 ran an oddly unpanicky piece.
  
        As part of the anti-Mbeki moves, the Guardian (Fri June 30th 2000) ran a large piece decorated with huge photos, by Sarah Boseley. It's amusing to see Robin Weiss, described as 'a viral oncologist at the Institute of Cancer Research' (no virus has been found to cause a human cancer), absurdly described as a 'leading authority on HIV'. And to see that 'he was invited to join Mbeki's panel, but could not make the dates.' One of the techniques used by hacks now is to put remarks in quotation marks in a box: ‘Everything that has happened in the past 10 years strengthens the evidence that HIV causes AIDS’. This article seems to have been based on a report 'released' this week, by UNAIDS. So does the Observer of Sunday 2 July 2000, though this also has been contacted by Nature , due to publish a mass signing in its next issue, on Thursday 13th July. Robin McKie, 'Science Editor', includes a prurient piece on black virgins, and a picture of two blacks making coffins, as contributory evidence. (They mis-spelt Duesberg as 'Duisberg'; I thought conceivably this might be to avoid their piece showing on computer searches). Neither piece quotes Mbeki, or shows any sign of even having had any contact with him: it's impossible to tell whether or not he's made a statement, and, if so, whether it was suppressed, as of course routinely happens with third world leaders.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Jad Adams published AIDS: The HIV Myth in 1989. He studied history at Sussex. He told me his book never went into paperback; the hardback printing was 2,000 (this may be the UK only). In my view, although the book has interesting points (for example, accounts of Haiti, and of Lauritsen's work, plus satire on the way TV films are made which is far feebler than it could have been), it is mostly an exercise in what might impolitely be called plagiarism, with many pages of material industriously culled from other peoples' books and papers. Adams had no idea of the weakness of the scientific basis for detection of viruses and HIV, and simply repeats the received wisdom on 'lentiviruses' and so on. After all, why should he have thought to query it? (But perhaps I'm a bit unfair to list this book as a failure.)   [Back to top]
  
  
• The BBC has an appalling record here. But then it has in all serious issues.
  1. As just one example, Joan Shenton told me she discussed her work with the editor of Panorama, a so-called 'flagship' news programme, more than ten times.
  2. Another example is 'Science Correspondent' James Wilkinson, selected, perhaps, because he has spectacles and wears white shirts. In the mid-1980s he said "The AIDS virus needs to be treated with much greater urgency.. with better education of the public and by stepping up research."
  3. This great tradition is currently (2000) being continued by a BBC TV programme, which I imagine is unlikely to be saleable outside the UK, called Casualty, which currently has two actors playing 'HIV positive' men. From memory, the average salary as printed in their official magazine averages about $100,000 a year; it is, perhaps, amusing that most of these ignorant hacks are paid more than many doctors—at least, while the fun lasts. Another amusing spin-off surfaced lately: an actress from a BBC Irish-based soap (Catholic church as a noble institution, peasantry with funny faces doing manual work, recycled actors) is supposedly promoting a bra (for women, in case you're wondering) with a condom pouch to 'help reduce HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.'
  4. A typical BBC radio programme (Radio 4, Jan 11 2000. Apologies for British bias) looked at what it imagined was AIDS in Africa. The voiceover was by Isabel Hilton, who, judging by her presentation and level of knowledge, might have been a failed actress trying to rise above her natural job of promoting tampons or cough syrup. She thinks there's an 'HIV/AIDS epidemic of devastating proportions in the townships of South Africa.' (Cue for African music, excitable voices, Africans with accents: the arrogant condescension is truly amazing, especially from such an ignorant source: "They've heard of AIDS, of course. And they know it kills. But they don't know much more about it.") She reads out: 'Those who've escaped infection so far will stay safe if they do use condoms. .. AIDS patients in South Africa die much faster than AIDS patients in the developed world. Just because they can't afford the medicines they need. .. 1 in 10 of the people [in effect, of forty million] already have the virus.. will die of AIDS sooner rather than later. .. Now there's an epidemic and a national emergency.' A white South African 'expert' says the life expectancy is probably 55; 5 years ago it was 65, 'potentially more devastating than Europe's black death'. There was an amusing point at which someone, in a church (believe it or not) says pneumonia or TB is on the death certificate, so how can anyone know about AIDS? Then we have the corrupt black politicians:—a black female health minister: "Yes, we have policies, plans, programmes. On AZT, we always had the policy of not giving AZT until we were sure of its safety." And Isabel Hilton: "Recently medical opinion in Africa was surprised and shocked when the president cast doubts on the safety of the drug AZT. There is little doubt outside political circles that giving AZT to HIV positive mothers late in pregnancy dramatically cuts the risk that the baby will develop AIDS. For doctors, the safety charges weren't credible." It was interesting to hear Sir Richard Sykes, of Burroughs-Wellcome, who turned out to sound like the playwright Alan Bennett. It would be hilarious to eavesdrop on BBC selection panels; is this person stupid enough to be acceptable for the BBC?   [Back to top]
  5. A typical BBC TV program (BBC1, Panorama , Mon 17th April 2000—apologies) again looked at AIDS in South Africa. (The perhaps obvious reflection occurs to me that Thailand and south-east Asia have been quietly dropped because of US prostitution interests). I was interested to see that no writer(s) or researcher(s) whatever were credited, only technicians (VT and film people, mixers, unit managers), and the producer David Harrison, main credit going to the reporter, Feargal Keane.
           It's not widely known that BBC front people are often actors, and presumably Keane was essentially a failed actor; at any rate, the questions he was shown asking in his Irish brogue were impressively banal. We see, of course, the usual cheery blacks, the supposed black music, the youth saying 'fuck', a breast feeding woman, discussions of condoms—Keane was even shown asking Jacob Zuma, Deputy President of South Africa, the caption said, if he personally used condoms. And Keane being patronising, as, one imagines, the English might have been during the potato famine—for example, on rural poverty, with money sent from the mines, his voiceover says unquestioningly "It's been like this for generations". There was no information that I saw on treatment; what was being done to the 'HIV positive' people? Who carried out the tests, and what tests were they? Did anybody ever re-test? Was any treatment offered for (e.g.) syphilis? There were few images—close-ups of flowers, earth being dug, and so on, a woman with an unpleasant sore (which seemed undiagnosed in any way), small grubby wards. There futurology: a white mine functionary saying there would be 20,000 dead miners. In the next 10 years. And of course the infinitely sad hangers-on, the locals, who only half remember their lines, trained-up by missionaries. President Mbeki did not appear.   [Back to top]
  6. Yet another BBC Radio 4 programme. Leading Edge , Thurs 8th June 2000. Producer Jim Clarke; 'presented by' Geoff Watts. (I've emailed these people to try to establish what qualifications, if any, they have, and will post their replies, if any. My guess is that Watts is another voice-trained actor). Their pro-AIDS people were something of a mixed bag: the Head of the South African Medical Research Council, Dr William Makoba, who has managed to learn his lines like a good piccaninny: "They mix poetry, ideology, religious fervour, with a bit of science." And Jerry Kuvadya (these spellings may not be right), a Johannesburg paediatrician who says ".. no single disease or episode.. equals this in scale." Careful listening establishes he's talking about the 'epidemic of HIV AIDS', which seems to mean HIV positivity; the test methods aren't stated. Kuvadya said "Why does [Mbeki] delve in such a manifestly abzurd theory..?" And rather oddly added: "You may not know, but five of us sent a private letter to [Mbeki].." (contents not revealed). Kuvadya seems to want to give any child diagnosed 'HIV+' with AZT. I wonder if this is blacks only?
           Geoff Watts produced the usual highly convincing evidence for mass AIDS deaths, in the shape of 'Teresa, a local AIDS worker of Lamontville' and Gertrude, who lives in a tin hut.
           Mbeki's voice—I think—was heard saying "the link with HIV has not been demonstrated scientifically" apparently from some previous recording. Any honest broadcaster would state that the subject of the programme hadn't been interviewed (again), but in the world of state propaganda this formality is dispensed with:—Geoff Watts voice: "By chance, so it's said, Mbeki stumbled on a website." Well, did he or not? Granted, radio is the Siberia of the media. Even so these hacks should have checked this Internet story.
           An interesting interviewee was Prof. Sam Mashongo who "practised in Neasden, North London. .. My patients included eleven Ugandan families, all certified HIV positive... confirmatory test showed eleven negative. So I began to wonder..". Unusually, Peter Duesberg was broadcast, though of course only on the sociology, not the science. He said, perhaps unfortunately, that "Scientists [were in years gone by] paid to be like a jester.. [this was] academic freedom." Duesberg said it's now huge government business, and there is a correspondingly huge conflict of interest. The HIV belief was adopted under Reagan in 1984, and never changed. Duesberg has tried nine separate funding applications for non-'HIV' research, all turned down. What he said on virologists is worth quoting: ".. we were trained in viruses.. war against cancer.. we came home from that huge campaign empty handed. We have not been able to show a single human cancer is caused by a virus.. Why do Americans speak English, and not German.. or Chinese? That's all they know. They like to do what they can do! .. They just aren't checking the evidence." It was quite a clear statement of the bunch of fleas analogy:—as one corpse sinks in the water, the parasites leap off if they see another.
           Duesberg's scientific arguments were not of course aired; instead we had Geoff Watts reading out someone's three-point summary: "Doubts about.. the length of time for AIDS to manifest, difficulty of detecting virus in all cases, and the absence of a vaccine." I leave it to my readers to check how accurate this summary is.
           The final amusing part was a double-act of 'our' chief scientist, Sir Robert May, a cheerful unintellectual Australian, with, believe it or not, a journalist, Roger Highfield, science editor of the Daily Telegraph (a newspaper which is part of the world of neo-Nazi apologists, and never reports any of the dark side of science: genocide? Mass destruction? Corruption in nuclear technology? Not for our readers.) May spoke entirely on GM food, and BSE (".. Tony Blair has always been pro-safety, pro-environment, and pro-the technology"). His background is in theoretical physics (codeword for certain limited types of mathematics) after which he switched to zoology; there was no evidence that he knows anything about virology or AIDS. He did make one good joke: "We've put into place explicit protocols and guidelines on science advice that say, share the thinking, do it openly.." Highfield was less cautious and more stupid: "AIDS mavericks... a sort of zombie that won't die. There was a big debate in the 1980s [sic; in fact, of course, there was no 'debate']." He says of Mbeki: "Of course it was done with political motive." There's no sign that he even knows what Mbeki said, or, of course, has any interest in the distortions presented by the rag employing him.   [Back to top]
  7. And another BBC Radio 4 programme. 10th July. 9pm-10pm. Producer Philippa Goodrich; research Joanna Mathis; presented by Robin Lustig. This one-hour programme was unusual in actually having an extract of Mbeki speaking. It lasted 32 seconds and concerned the question of checking patients being given things like AZT: they have to be watched! It's not just a matter of handing out drugs. It was not stated in the programme how long the original interview with Mbeki had been. By contrast, Dr Costa Ghazi, an extremely obscure person, was given considerable air time, as were a mixed bag of Irish nuns and so forth.   [Back to top]



• Coca-Cola , which according to new chairman Richard Daft [sic] wants to make itself a "valued citizen" in international markets. Mr Daft said he was "very aware of the need to address the Aids issue." (From the Financial Times Feb 1st 2000. What Daft meant isn't made clear—perhaps distributing condoms along with his fizzy drinks?)   [Back to top]
  
  
• Duncan Campbell , who became involved in campaigning in health matters, but managed, on the whole, to select the wrong side. Since his background seems to have been physics, perhaps this is not surprising. Campbell (who made a suicide attempt while at university) became known as an investigative journalist, though how genuine his investigations were is a hard thing to assess; a spy satellite controversy involving him was, it seems, in the public domain all the time. Even the title of one of his pieces seems to have been plagiarised from a popular science paperback. His AIDS writings were a mixture of journalistic invective with lack of understanding of the principles and therefore worthless as a critique—incidentally some published in the New Statesman , a deservedly unpopular supposedly left-wing journal, usually filled with hack articles on vaguely pop-culture subjects, and with reviews of third-rate books, though it occasionally includes such excellent authors as John Pilger.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Hiram Caton is an American living in Australia, 'Head of the School of Applied Ethics at Griffith University and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Biology' as he was described in his tiny book in 1994. (This is on Internet: The AIDS Mirage . When I looked, this site had had 16 hits).
        I list his booklet as a failure because of its remarkable lack of cogent argument. Caton appears to have no grasp of the weakness of the technology underpinning 'AIDS'. He re-spins other peoples' yarns (his word) on such subjects as syphilis, oxidative stress, T cells, Kaposi's sarcoma, American 'bathhouses', Randy Shilts, Margaret Heckler, safe sex, Duesberg, hospital infections, 1976 swine flu (compensation: $1.7 billion), CDC half-truths and omissions, preventive medicine, chlamydia and infertility, nitrites, infotainament and Oprah Winfrey, melanoma, the greenhouse effect, frauds in Gallo's lab (p 48), and death anxiety.
        Unfairly, he states that the 'virus attacks the mind', instancing 'morticians' who treat corpses with extreme caution. Whereas, of course, if the predictions of the spread of AIDS had been correct, their behaviour would have been perfectly sensible. Caton seems to rely on Gordon Stewart's studies of epidemiology, and published figures on the low rates of HIV infection. (He expresses no view on whether HIV actually exists or not). For these reasons, it seems unlikely this booklet could have made much impression, since it doesn't address the root issue of where the science was incorrect.
        Caton seems to have remarkably little insight into the actual practices of medical ethics, stating, apparently without irony (p 54) 'the Florida Board of Health adopted in good faith as a best practice standard' not telling e.g. Kimberley Bergalis that a dentist had 'full-blown AIDS'. It's of course perfectly clear that defence of doctors tends to take precedence over patient information. Another tiresome aspect is his depiction of 'sex workers' in South East Asia, meaning young girls driven into prostitution. Just as in the nineteenth century bearded barkers and scribblers pontificated over slavery, so the 'comfortably numb' schools of ethics draw money and do nothing effectual.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Noam Chomsky on AIDS (an article from Continuum, with their permission). Sorry, Noamie. You missed the vital point.   [Back to top]
  
  
• William Campbell Douglass M.D.: W.H.O. Murdered Africa . This piece (click here; dated 1987) —the author appears to be an American medico—is interesting as an early example of the conspiracy theory of a man-made virus. Most doctors have little knowledge of the research bases of their work. They receive training, but have no time to learn the techniques underlying their systems of surgery, diagnosis, or whatever. Douglass obviously has no idea how viruses are, supposedly, tested for: he simply quotes the received view, just as he presumably did in his medical school exams. Those familiar with biological work will be better aware of the tremendous holes, gaps, and unjustified assumptions on which modern biology is erected. The sinister engineered retrovirus is, in my view, a fantasy.   [Back to top]
  
  
• The late Princess Diana, Elton John, Stephen Fry and others. Diana's AIDS work reached a peak in about 1991, which coincided with a huge expansion in clinics, agencies, teams, projects, centres, units, support groups, foundations, associations, helplines etc (I have a 1991 'Handiguide' for London listing about 170).
        Fry appeared on TV ('World Aids Day', 28 Nov 1998), showing "Aid's impact on the artistic community", which turned out to mean pop singers, comedians, and Hollywood actors. He had a novel theory of etiology: ".. it's like a mushroom. The more you keep it in the dark, the more it thrives." A boyish chap presented as 'Dr Peters, head of AIDS research at Guys and St Thomas's', said there were over 30 million cases in the world. At one point, an on-screen message read 'There is no cure. AIDS no longer kills every time', presumably a caption writer's attempt to import sense into confusing messages. There seems to be no code of ethics whatever as regards actors: any role, voiceover or advert, no matter how misleading or deceptive, seems to be acceptable to actors, provided they get paid.
  

  FREDDY MERCURY R.I.P. I'd sit alone and watch your light My only friend through teenage nights And everything I had to know I heard it on my radio [Well, nearly everything...] Too much love will kill you Just as sure as none at all It'll drain the power that's in you Made you plead and scream and crawl And the pain will make you crazy You're the victim of your crime Too much love will kill you Every time [Words: Brian May, Frank Musker, Elizabeth Lamers]

        I took some interest, for no special reason, in the 'Elton John AIDS Foundation' (registered charity 1017336; annual turnover equivalent to about one million dollars). The first of its five objects is ‘1) to promote, sponsor and assist financially research into the causes, origins, transmission and treatment of the disease or condition known as aquired [sic] immune deficiency syndrome and any apparently related similar or consequent disease or condition and to assist the publication and dissemination of the useful product of such research’). Two years ago I applied in the spirit of curiosity for a grant to research into the shaky bases of virology, to someone called James Locke, a sort of office manager. He never replied, nor did he recently when I faxed reminders. Maybe this is unsurprising, as, according to an employee, who was so ignorant as not to know the objects of the charity she worked for, Locke has no medical qualifications, but has had administrative functions only, training nurses in whatever few non-medical things nurses do.
        The EJAF listed among its patrons a golfer, two singers, a murdered clothes designer, several lawyers, two TV presenters, an ex-politician, an ex-arts minister, someone who wrote a book in 1986 on 'AIDS', and I think just one medico. Plus Michael Hooker, a professional fundraiser, described in Who's Who as 'Managing Director of first institutional fund raising consultant in the UK', specialising in 'Christian stewardship'. He was with the EJAF from the start. It might be interesting to know how many candles in the wind Elton John's organisation has helped snuff out. His function appears to be decorative only: for example, he appeared in person in June 1998 on a main news show, connected with some tiny 'AIDS' clinic, as though this was a major news item. It might be argued that he's a simple entertainer, unversed in medical science. This doesn't seem a completely convincing argument, as disputes about 'AIDS' have existed from the start, and presumably he's an adult hypothetically supposed capable of weighing evidence. On the other hand, it's obvious that Diana was selected because she had looks but negligible brains, so perhaps the same's true here.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Bill Gates. On 12 July 2000 in Durban, according to Bill Gates's own site, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation , with 'an asset base of approximately $21.8 billion', 'led by.. William H. Gates, Sr., and Patty Stonesifer' 'announced a series of new AIDS-related grants'. Africa has many health needs, but naturally these will be mostly ignored—or worsened.
        It seems $90 million is involved: —details are vague—, but some seems to be aimed at pregnant black women, to make them take AZT or some other useless poison. Some money will be needed for 'palliative care', no doubt! They have already 'boosted the research effort toward discovering a vaccine for HIV/AIDS.' They're also experimenting with Merck in Botswana. Some money is to be used in 'clinical testing of microbicides.. against STDs, including AIDS.' There are of course campaigns of 'information'. Other organizations, such as the 'Peace Corps', are involved.
        [The Gates Foundation seems to have given $210M / £120M to Cambridge University. According to the New York Times , (13th Oct 2000) 'Scholarships will be awarded only to non-British students'. However reports differ; a search reveals the Hindustan Times says 'scholarships will be open to students of all nationalities.' It also says 'Cambridge University will contribute to the scholarship programme.' As is usual with this sort of scheme, the criteria for selection of the 'scholars' are kept secret. The previous issue of this sort faced by Cambridge was the question of whether it should take a sum of money from tobacco companies.]   [Back to top]
  
  
• Robert Gallo. 'Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.' (P G Wodehouse. I don't know who, if anyone, he was quoting.)   [Back to top]
  
  
• Annie Lennox (note added Spring 2012) An exhibition at the Lowry Centre in Manchester said Lennox, seeing someone wearing an HIV positive t-shirt in 2007 .. 'decided to do the same, to help break down fear and stigma and stand in solidarity with those affected b the virus.' A black t-shirt with white lettering was exhibited. I wondered whether the Lowry Centre had been partly funded by Wellcome, or Lennox's singing for that matter, but the list of donors and companies who worked there, presumably at a discount, didn't include Wellcome, at least at the time—the names were on metal versions of postcards and clearly designed to be exchangeable.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Masters and Johnson who published CRISIS: Heterosexual Behavior in the Ages of AIDS in 1988, with R Kolodny (who also co-wrote How to Survive Your Adolescent's Adolescence and Smart Choices .) Masters and Johnson became famous in 1966 for Human Sexual Response . One of the amusing features of their writing style is the carefully explanation of pseudo-technical terms: '[Lesbian] genital apposition' means 'rubbing the female sex organs together'. CRISIS does at least have a chapter section on 'Testing for HIV Infection', consisting of the most simple-minded possible material.
        Their book has what they call a concluding note, which impressed me by its complete uselessness. I quote it in full:- ‘Governments across the world will have to struggle with many difficult questions in confronting the realities of the AIDS epidemic. May their attempt to find answers be informed by a wise balance between compassion, rationality, and adequate protection of the public health. We have already witnessed a distressingly slow response to the AIDS epidemic in America and in the world at large. It is quite clear today, as it has been from the inception of this epidemic, that not enough money has been earmarked for research. It is also quite clear that not enough attention has been paid to the fact that the AIDS virus infects people regardless of their sexual orientation, their morals, or their age. While we fervently hope that mindless panic over the AIDS epidemic will not dictate government policies, we are also convinced that of implementation of effective prevention strategies is delayed by a mistaken belief that this epidemic is now under control or by a single-minded preoccupation with individual autonomy, many millions of lives will be needlessly lost. There is precious little personal freedom in death.’ You can say that again.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Monkey researchers who seem to have used so many chimps that they were in some risk of being exterminated completely. Their work, being insecurely based on techniques that were never properly validated, was presumably a complete waste of time. Some of these people I find extraordinarily disgusting: for example an American, interviewed on TV, saying some chimps should be 'euthanised', i.e. killed, because funding had been cut back.
        Felix Konotey-Ahulu commented (in a letter unpublished by The Times ) that faulty evidence was supposed to have shown that homosexuals and Central Africans had a genetic 'something' predisposing to 'HIV' (1987); and faulty evidence was supposed to have shown identical antibodies in Senegalese prostitutes and some monkeys (1988); and faulty evidence was supposed to have shown that Africans injecting themselves with monkey blood might have started 'AIDS'. In each case, media trumpeting was not followed by any noticeable retraction. This was in response to a Times editorial speculating that chimps don't get AIDS because of 'the small genetic differences between the two.' He was requesting, when this is disproved, that the Times will not keep quiet, as it did before.   [Back to top]
  
  
• 'national aids manual' (Yes, all lower case. This is a British thing—the title presumably was chosen for its official appearance) funded by drugs interests including Glaxo Wellcome, and the Department of Health, and others. Their small print somewhere says 'The publishers have taken all such care as they consider reasonable in preparing this newsletter. But they will not be held responsible for any inaccuracies or mis-statements of fact contained herein. ...' In simpler language, they will print any rubbish they want to. This warning, however, is not repeated on all their leaflets.   [Back to top]
  
  
• The NIH [‘National Institutes of Health’] [American] made this document ainih959.html (LONG! 170K. My file name. This version is in simple HTML format and doesn’t have the four tables of the printed version) publically available first in September 1995. They sent printouts free to anybody who asked. The presentation was praised by ‘Nature’ then under John Maddox. It is a curious document: anonymous, without an ISBN or even an internal reference code, it mentions no critic except Duesberg;—Jad Adams, Hiram Caton, Bryan Ellison, John Lauritsen, Maver, Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Root-Bernstein, Shenton, Willner, Louis Pascal & sundry others are all omitted! Similarly the nitrite-Kaposi’s hypothesis is omitted, though some arguments, e.g. on Koch’s postulates, are given some attention.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Louis Pascal spent three or four years (after hearing Eva Snead on a radio programme—see below) assembling and writing his piece What Happens When Science Goes Bad. The Corruption of Science and the Origin of AIDS. A Study in Spontaneous Generation (about 20,000 words, including 73 detailed footnotes, which unfortunately are clumsily arranged in this Internet version). Pascal naturally had no way to distinguish genuine science from spurious, and accepted the idea that a virus was 'a small but growing fire', pretty certain to kill off a large chunk of the human race (but not all, for some reason). He has well-written passages on the HeLa scandal, which he correctly assesses as having been thoroughly hushed up ('Thomas Gold's book A Conspiracy of Cells: one woman's immortal legacy and the medical scandal it caused [sic—the point is of course that it didn't cause a scandal] (1986).. cited only four times in 3,200 scientific journals in the Science Citation Index '. It's amusing to note there's an unreliable 1993 book on cancer also entitled A Conspiracy of Cells... ). Pascal had previously written on AIDS (accepting the virus idea), and he wrote papers which nobody published on the possibility of the virus adapting itself and thus killing more people. Pascal has also written on the population explosion and apathy (Douglas Hofstadter's 'Metamathematical Themas' notes him), and tobacco: "How many of the cigarette companies have admitted their product causes lung cancer?"
        Pascal's claim in his piece is that 'AIDS' was man-made catastrophe, caused by polio vaccination [see below for more on polio] carried out in central Africa: Unbelievable as it may seem, the oral polio vaccine consisted of nothing more than the culture fluid from the polio-inoculated monkey kidney cell cultures after passage through a filter small enough to remove bacteria but large enough to permit passage of the polio virus, and whatever other viruses may have been infecting the monkeys before they were killed . He also claimed, quoting everyone else, that it was a catastrophe in the making. Finally, he was incensed that his piece was unpublished by supposedly serious science journals. (After its publication by the University of Wollongong, the following short piece by Raanan Gillon appeared in the 'Journal of Medical Ethics', the author being one of the editors who rejected Pascal's paper. It's fascinating to contemplate the probable worthlessness of these journals). Versions of this story appeared in early 1992, for example in the UK's 'Independent', although as is traditional with hack journalists no sources were given.
        (This material seems to have been taken up by Ed Hooper in a book, which I haven't read, called The River , which in late 2000 appeared in newspapers as though its contents were new, presumably as it appeared to support the AIDS-in-Africa mythology).
        Pascal failed in his AIDS campaigning, although of course it wasn't his fault that the shaky basis of the technologies wasn't known to him. (I pointed out to him, by mail, that he seemed naive about this, and about experimental chemical and biological warfare, but these issues seem to be outside his ken).
        The responses of the various editors to Pascal's piece raises again the interesting question as to how many people ever really believed the AIDS stories. Certainly a 1995 talk I attended, by Kay Wellings, entitled Teenagers and Sex, had published findings in which self-reported use of condoms (the respondents knew what they were supposed to say!) in the UK had risen from 34% to 43% or something, not impressive figures.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Penguin Books. A promising topic; however, I haven't yet completed this...   [Back to top]
  
  
• The public must share some blame for continuing to support discredited sources of information.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Scientists in related fields. One of the extraordinary psychological facts about dissidents is that, despite their experiences, they usually accept anything as true which is outside their direct experience. I might as well refer here to Gilbert Ling (on this site) who spent years trying to get his almost certainly correct views on cell walls accepted. Gilbert Ling was regarded by Harold Hillman as a fellow rational critic of worker in cell biology. As far as I know, Ling spent most of his life promoting his Association-Induction Hypotheses But, as you can see, his scepticism stopped dead there. This is unfortunate; he received money for his education from the 'Boxer Indemnity Scholarship' which sounds analogous to the 'Rhodes Scholarship' and which might have given him insight into Jews and China.  [Back to top]
  
  
• The Skeptics Society's magazine 'The Skeptic' published an article, 'The AIDS Heresies: A Case Study in Skepticism Taken too Far' by Steven B. Harris, M.D. which says it's copyright free for noncommercial electronic circulation—so here it is, complete, for reference. (About 100K). It's a sad reflection on the standards of US skeptics and rationalists. Harris doesn't attempt to deal with the actual arguments, but, amid the waffle, simply quotes the usual stuff. He has no idea about (or gives no sign of awareness of) the insecure bases on which the inverted pyramid of hypotheses leans.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Eva Lee Snead achieved some notoriety with her two-volume book, Some call it "AIDS" -- I call it murder! published in 1992 by a small publisher in Texas. She says she wrote it after the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners revoked her medical license, though she doesn't state why they did this.
        To illustrate her thesis, here's an extract from an e-mail I had in April 99: '.. [was] Aids was created by the U.S. and African governments? As told by Leonard G. Horowitz and Eva Lee Snead. Do you agree with their conclusive findings?' Her book is remarkably badly-written, a material on fluoridation, bio-warfare, simian viruses, Epstein-Barr, 'Yuppie flu', Hepatitis B, genetic engineering, feline leukaemia, pesticides, ELISA test, vaccines, WHO, vivisection, human embryos, cytomegaloviruses, cell lines and HeLa, polio scandal, retroviruses, AZT. She includes a letter from Admiral Zumwalt, an American war criminal responsible for chemical warfare in Vietnam, famous for having a dead son.
        You might think, with this material, she would be able to marshal an interesting case. But you'd be wrong. She has enormous vehemence, but can't argue closely—e.g. she says all epidemics are caused by biting insects, and gives two examples, malaria and sleeping sickness; but what about flu, for instance? And yet this sums up her case against vaccination. She uses silly linguistic arguments—Gallo means cock, Malherbe means bad grass, AIDS is a fairy-tale (pun intended), the immune system means 'I am one'. The idea that polio is man-made is interesting, and of course there's a lot of evidence in favour, though not in her sense [see Jim West's revisionist polio site , which has online versions of scientific papers linking polio with DDT, in particular. No relation to me]; but it has little to do with AIDS. On her biological warfare beliefs, it's very likely this would have been done, if it could have been done. But fortunately, unless things are very well hidden, the science is still too primitive.   [Back to top]
  
  
• Susan Sontag. Connoisseurs of vacancy might amuse themselves by browsing the works of Susan Sontag. Her 1989 AIDS and its Metaphors , republished in 1991 by Penguin with 'Illness as Metaphor' which started life in the New York Review of Books . Unfortunately one has to cite it as another distressing example of Jewish mutual promotion irrespective of merit. Sontag knows nothing about AIDS and, in fact, her book largely contains material on tuberculosis and cancer. (TB was convenient in the construction of romantic death scenes: it produced an attractive facial flush, with no embarrassing symptoms below the waist—though Sontag doesn't quite say this). Sontag's style is reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoir's—fragments from novels, films, music librettos, writers on poetry, and popular descriptions and hearsay of various types, are jumbled together with no regard for evidential validity. Her AIDS sources, listed with apparent seriousness, include Time magazine, Literaturnaya Gazeta , 'the Indian newspaper Patriot' and 'the front page of London's conservative, mass-circulation Sunday Express '. Her occasional emphatic statements, indicating where she's absorbed the party line, illustrate something like the hypnotic effect of the media in giving people with no grasp of a subject the illusion of knowledge. (I believe she was recently awarded some sort of intellectual prize in the U.S.)   [Back to top]
  
  
• Terrence Higgins Trust a pseudo-independent British organisation. 'In some strange and inexplicable reason, [in UK] Duncan Campbell and the Terrence Higgins Trust became the arbiters, censors and critics not only of alternative treatments and trials, but also of critical views of Wellcome's AZT.' (Martin Walker, p 406, who adds information on Nick Partridge, their press officer, who, he says, like Campbell, 'was not a clinician of any kind and.. would have been hard pressed to give serious scientific evidence.' ). Terrence Higgins supposedly 'died from AIDS in 1982.. His friends decided to set up the Trust to provide the care he lacked.' It's never been clear to me how an obscure working-class chap with a misspelt name should have friends able to set up a Trust in 52-54 Gray's Inn Road, in the heart of London's legal area. This organisation seems no longer listed in phone books. The last time I checked, its annual income was listed as £4.4 million (about $7 million).
        The photo shows Mike Slocombe, who, according to internet-magazine.com, is 'the effervescent power source behind Urban75, the influential campaigning e-zine'. This promises 'Direct action, rave, drug info, unpublished essays..' and also reproduces two 'excellent, plain-talking booklets from the Terrence Higgins Trust'. There's no warning of doubts about the science. But no doubt Mr Slocombe is just the person to guarantee it. The Terrence Higgins Trust Helpline is now given as 0171-242 1010, 12 noon to 10 p.m., every day.   [Back to top]
  
  
• The US Government , with a special award to Margaret Heckler. David Kuznet must be another award-winner.
        It's amusing to speculate to what extend AIDS might be a fraud run by 'Jews'—inverted commas because of the doubts as to authenticity—though a serious answer would need a lot of burrowing, and disentanglement from the strands which must be expected to accompany any fraud. One might speculate for example about Harry Rubin—about whom I know very little—at Berkeley, or about the New England Journal of Medicine . Or about the fact that 'Aids awareness' in Israel receives about 4% of what is spent 'elsewhere', according to the Times 29 Feb 2000. 3 Mar Jewish Chronicle said 'staff at the hospital where Israeli music superstar Ofra Haza [41?] died last week from an Aids-related illness [sic] are furious that they were not told of her condition.' (18 May, 2000: a BBC TV item on Mbeki, conducted by someone called Jeremy Paxman, who, of course, knows nothing about anything, had a US woman called Jane Silver trotting out the usual line.) It amused me to see the only signatories of the 'Durban Declaration' deemed newsworthy were Aaron Klug, Max Perutz, Caesar Milstein, and James Watson.
        Ingrid Rimland, a notable contributor to the 'Zundelsite', says she ghost-wrote Dr Lorraine Day's AIDS: What the Government Doesn't Want You to Know. In the course of this work she interviewed Duesberg, and refers to him as an 'AIDS denier' by analogy to 'Holocaust denier'. (Neither phrase is accurate without some definitional work). "Both Ernst [Zündel] and I were struck by just how similar the persecution of so-called Holocaust Deniers mirrored the persecution of a small, dogged group of Scientist AIDS Deniers.." Rimland hadn't thought of a further comparison, namely that of spurious survivors; cf. for example James Locke, mentioned above. AIDS shares similar problems of proof with the Second World War: in each case the allegations centre on parts of the world which are or were difficult to get to; the technical sources of proof are censored or concealed; there are huge vested interests and lobby groups. A further comparison is the existence of pressure-groups, which have so far been immune from criticism by our miserably corrupt media, the 'Jewish'/anti-German/arms lobbies corresponding to the pharmaceuticals/gay lobbies. And there are legal interests hovering in the wings: I received an e-mail (30 April 2000) about a CNN report: 'AIDS pandemic declared threat to U.S. national security...' from an AIDS dissident, wondering if he's considered a 'national security risk'. And in a news item of 1 May 2000, someone called Mark Wainberg, described as a 'renowned researcher', 'president of the International AIDS Society', was reported as saying in Canada "If we could succeed and lock a couple of these guys up, I guarantee you the HIV-denier movement would die pretty darn quickly". Moreover, Wainberg belongs to the Deborah Lipstadt school of debate, '.. saying that to even debate the question "Does HIV cause AIDS?" leads to irresponsible sexual behaviour and prompts those undergoing treatment to abandon their medications.'
  
  Not just the US government and legal system! A few British examples showing how fraud gets bedded down and integrated into the establishment:—

  '... a new category [in the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme] means people infected with HIV or AIDS will receive £22,000 [$30,000], the same tariff as loss of sight in one eye, loss of a kidney or rape with severe injuries....' [London local paper, 20 Feb 2001] It added that payouts in civil cases 'contrast strongly'—at least if they're successful and the people ordering the awards are ignorant of simple valuation principles!

  Michael Verney-Elliott told me gays diagnosed with 'HIV' in the UK get huge benefits—housing, three vacations a year, haven't worked since the 1980s. But there's dispute about this. Why?    I'd say mainly because of secrecy—'In a rational world, there would be no need for people with AIDS or HIV to feel compelled to keep hidden the diagnosis' says Colin Nee's Benefits for People with HIV (1993, Terrence Higgins Trust), which also says it's a 'criminal offence for Benefit Agency officials to disclose personal information to third parties without the claimant's consent'. It's difficult to tell how much word-of-mouth information circulates, typified by the people in the US who know perfectly well that AZT kills and so just throw away this 'medication'. Close reading of the Higgins booklet suggests that money can be made e.g. by pretending to find walking difficult, but obviously a printed handbook will not explicitly contain such information.     Another reason of course is the failure to identify why the few ill people are really ill, where investigation is wrecked by the HIV hypothesis.

  '... The German cut-price supermarket chain Aldi.. Last year.. angered gay rights groups when it sacked a HIV-positive manager from one of its stores citing "genuine and understandable concerns that if the applicant remained in situ sales at the store would suffer". The store later made a £250,000 [$400,000] out of court settlement with Mark Headley, who ran the Seaham store in County Durham. [Northern England-RW]..' [Published late Feb 2001 in a London paper, apparently from 'Rainbow Network, an online gay and lesbian website']

    [Back to top]
  
  
• Robin Weiss a British researcher might stand as an example of an academic who drifted into 'HIV' research via virology. It's clear [taped interview 1994] that he made no attempt to check any of the medical evidence about 'AIDS', and, in fact, had no medical qualifications. Money came in; his lab expanded; why ask questions? (Jeremy Paxman, of the BBC, on 18th May 2000 continues to present him as an expert).   [Back to top]
  
  
• Robert E. Willner must, I think, be included in the list of failures, though admittedly this is being harsh. His 1994 book Deadly Deception (published in Boca Raton) probably had little impact, except possibly in Spain where the author was lucky enough to get TV publicity. His book resembles Snead's stylistically, and begins with 14 pages of statements like this: THIS IS A BOOK OF FACTS   IT IS NOT BASED ON FACT, IT IS FACT   IT IS NOT BASED ON HYPOTHESES, IT IS FACT. In my view, Willner didn't take the trouble to separate out all the strands in the story—drug use, how predictions are made, viruses and retroviruses, immune deficiency and starvation and 'autoimmunity', antibodies and viruses—so his book isn't convincing, because one wonders whether there may be something that's fallen between the gaps of his one-after-the-other assertions. This book is a sad warning that even people who are right must pay some attention to presentation. Willner became famous through injecting himself on stage with 'hiv' contaminated blood. He wrote a similar book on cancer, I think self-published in the same year (1994) as his AIDS book. He was born in 1929; he's now dead.   [Back to top]
  
  

4. What's the future for 'AIDS'?

You may sign the 'statement' of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis. Click here for the relevant page on their site.

    Mbeki: the date for this petition has passed; however, the site still seems to be accepting on-line signatures. The total is something like 1600. (There's no easy way to retrieve the list of signatories, but searching has been improved):—

INTERNATIONAL ON-LINE PETITION IN SUPPORT OF PRESIDENT MBEKI PETITION OF SUPPORT In science, no theory should be immune from challenge, and debate over an issue affecting millions of lives should never be declared over. I support South African President Thabo Mbeki's intention to investigate the definition, causation, treatment and prevention of "AIDS". On behalf of the Internation Coalition to End AIDS Censorship (ICEAC), we are requesting that everyone go to the following webpage and sign this on-line petition in support of South African President Thabo Mbeki: https://www.virusmyth.com/aids/news/mbeki.html Our goal is to collect as many signatures as possible before April 27, 2000, which is the "International Day of Action in Support of President Mbeki." April 27th is also "Freedom Day" in South Africa, and the one-year anniversary of President Mbeki's inauguration. Although this petition campaign will be ongoing, all signatures collected by April 27th will be presented directly to President Mbeki's office. As most of you already know, President Mbeki's bold and courageous actions have opened him up to a Pandora's Box of unwarranted criticism and ridicule. International media reports have repeatedly attempted to portray those who question "AIDS science" as a microscopic group of fringe, pseudo-scientists unwilling to yield to long-established, universal "consensus." Our job is to SHATTER this media myth, and this petition is one way to accomplish that goal. The following organizations have joined forces to create The International Coalition to End AIDS Censorship:— Academy of Nutrition Improvement (Nagpur, India), ACT UP San Francisco, Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society, Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives (Los Angeles), Alive and Well (Eugene, Oregon), Continuum Magazine (London), E1, Peque o Periodico, The Forum for Debating AIDS South Africa (FDASA), Fundacion Arte y Ciencia (Columbia), The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis, The Health Education AIDS Liaison (HEAL) Network (New York City, Denver, Hartford, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington, DC, Toronto, Uganda), International Forum for Accessible Science (IFAS), Joint Action Council Kannur (JACK), Journalists for a Free Media, Mothers Opposing Mandatory Medicine (MOM), The Mythbusters, New York Rethinking AIDS Society (NYRAS), The Sheppard Foundation, Students Against the HIV Causes AIDS Hypothesis (SATHIVCAH) President Thabo Mbeki has lashed out at those refusing to debate the cause of AIDS for waging a "campaign of intellectual intimidation and terrorism" and has likened their intransigence to the "racist apartheid tyranny we opposed." [From a news item].

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5. Links to Other Websites

[Back to top]
[No guarantees as to existence of these sites, contents, though these websites are on the right lines. Note that there seems to be no webring on these subjects.—RW]

Actup San Francisco .
From an anonymous correspondent:
      ACT UP/SF split in the 1980s; ACT UP Golden Gate was formed for those with faith in new drugs. They changed their name to 'Survive AIDS'.
      ACT UP/SF: in the 1990s, many left. The remaining ACT UP/SF has been 'dissident' for five years, since 1995. Their friends were killed by toxic medications; among other activities they try to get sick people off their poisonous medications. There was an ad campaign against them, and their medical marijuana dispensary (which they operate at risk of arrest), urging a boycott against them, but the effect so far seems to have been to give them the full spotlight of publicity.
      They've been praised by name by Jacob Zuma (S. Africa Deputy President), expanding on Mbeki, and support good water, food and shelter for Africa.
      They are involved in a legal action with the SF Dept of Public Health and 'Project Inform'.
      I had stated, basing myself on Robin Lustig's radio piece (above), that ACT UP/SF interrupted Al Gore's 1999 campaign with their slogan "AIDS drugs for Africa" [i.e. cut price]. And therefore may be phoney. But of course this may simply be a typical BBC smear.

Other groups include:
ACT UP Hollywood: dissident, and changing its name to aidsrealitycheck.org
ACT UP Atlanta: mostly exposing endless useless 'AIDS' research vivisection
ACT UP DC in medical marijuana movement.

ACT UP/NY, and ACT UP PHILADELPHIA are suspected of being pharmaceutically-funded and possibly therefore phoney. (Perhaps Tom Hanks was involved? - RW). This extract (21st July 2000) is from Anita Allen published in a South African newspaper): "... a professional rent-a-crowd from ACT UP staged outrageous "incidents" for cameras tired of talking heads. The ACT UP coalition is funded by pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp and Dohme, executive director Jeffrey Sturchio admitted to me after having allowed ACT UP to plaster his company's stand with graffiti demanding cheap—and more—drugs for Africa. ..."

Aidsmyth.com detailed site with daily updates: 'Today's uncensored Aids news from South Africa. .. The Daily Dissident Netpaper'. DAILY WEBCASTS of XIII INTERNATIONAL AIDS CONFERENCE

Alive and Well Alternative AIDS Information Network. Opposed to orthodox errors, notably AZT. Not a very large site. Some Q/A, e.g. on Africa and disease relabelling, and the baby Felix Tyson. Links include L.A. site and AIDSGATE by Stephen Davis. Edward Lieb's site is another interesting aliveandwell site. He says he's the world's longest survivor.
Anti-Red Ribbon Campaign American site; accepts 'HIV' and 'AIDS', but puts statistical arguments forcefully.
'Death Camp' : several back numbers of this magazine are online, the most recent being April 1999. [Technical proficiency of the site's a bit doubtful.]

Elenopulos Perth Group.

German site aids-kritik, by Eva Binder. With many downloadable voice files (all of course rather long).
    'HIV ist nicht die Ursache von AIDS - Ein kleiner historischer Überblick über die Entstehung der Hypothese, "AIDS" werde von einem Virus "HIV" verursacht'

HEAL, Toronto : about 30 items. A HEAL ITEM seems to be Ian Young's The AIDS Dissidents supplement to bibliography.

Refuse and Resist . 'The new voice in AIDS reporting'. Site was run by the ex-publisher of the New York Native . This seems to have disappeared; refuse-resist.com now redirects to a sex site.

Rethinking AIDS site, in case you've missed it. It is (I fear) pitifully slow-loading and not well-designed.

Spanish site Free News e-mailed me about themselves. I haven't studied this site carefully. (It includes some cancer material which I'm very sceptical about).

Sumeria (scroll down to the two AIDS sections, near the end of much other interesting material. Unexpectedly large numbers of files await you. But there's some dubious selling stuff, at least in my opinion. Click to read my short questioning e-mail to them on this. )

World Without AIDS is a book-selling site, advertising World Without AIDS by Steve Ransom & Phillip Day. I haven't seen this book. There's a detailed online review by Alex Russell, of Continuum.
      Ransom wrote, of the Observer : 'McKie.. makes no mention of the fact that inexpensive simple tools, irrigation systems, seed, and basic medicines for basic diseases, .. would transform Africa. Neither does McKie mention the fact that the World Health Organisation has quite cynically lumped together pre-existing known diseases under the new AIDS umbrella, thereby falsifying the spiralling plague statistics. .. a ravaged African labelled HIV positive and doomed to die would very probably soon recover with simple treatment and nutritional input. .. UN, WHO, UNAIDS, UNFPA, World Bank, IMF statistics so often quoted by these influential reporters are issued by these powerful agencies for self-serving purposes also, these reports actually carrying little factual weight. ..'
      Ransom believes in contacting newspaper editors, in my view a rather futile activity—if they had any intelligence or honesty, they wouldn't have published or written their material in the first place. However, in case I'm wrong, here's an extract:

David Blair, Harare. For Telegraph Newspapers. "Mortuaries are working overtime to cope with the 1200 deaths every week.. health experts say at least 25% of fifteen-and-over Zimbabweans are HIV positive. Across sub-Saharan Africa, 12.1 million children are AIDS orphans according to United Nations statistics.. the risk of contracting HIV from adult women prompts men to abuse children."
    Since the publication of this article, repeated requests have been made to David Blair to please furnish the following simple information.

1. Could he please supply the names and addresses of the mortuaries referred to in his article, this information surely to hand, it being impossible to make such claims without contact with these agencies being established.
2. Who exactly are the health experts stating that 25% of Zimbabweans over the age of fifteen are HIV positive?
3. Where on earth did he get the references for that horrendously sweeping allegation that "the risk of contracting HIV from adult women prompts men to abuse children.. "

To date, despite these repeated requests, there has been no answer from David Blair. ...'

Steve Ransom suggests people should contact Richard Spencer, 'the Telegraph news editor', and/or Harriet Green, the 'health and well-being editor.'