Update On the HIV/AIDS Orthodoxy

Update On the HIV/AIDS Orthodoxy

15 February 2005

After I submitted my ad, I learned of several developments concerning "HIV/AIDS" issues raised in this ad. I told Daily Cal editors about them, and suggested that the Daily Cal itself might write articles about them. I list these developments for the reader's information.

I. Experiments with anti-HIV drugs on orphans and children. I mention in my ad the AP-John Solomon articles exposing the way "AIDS research chief rewrote safety report, ordered clinic opened over objections." Subsequently James P. Hogan informed me of a particularly horrendous event. I quote from his letter to me dated January 11, 2005:

Even beyond the scandal of information on drug toxicity being suppressed to boost sales in Africa, have you come across the situation reported by the Boston journalist Liam Scheff, of orphans and children taken from their mothers being used as laboratory rats and force-fed experimental AIDS drugs in New York City -- with ghastly and sometimes fatal consequences? To the point of having delivery tubes connected to surgically implanted devices in their abdomens when they try to refuse! I have posted a reference on my web site at http://www.jamesphogan.com/bb/content/12183.shtml,

which contains a pointer to Liam's full account of the whole gruesome business, "The House That AIDS Built." The following articles also refer:

Crux Magazine - HIV Negative:

http://www.cruxmag.com/asset/crux_hivnegative.pdf

NY Press- Orphans On Trial:

http://www.altheal.org/toxicity/orphans.htm

AHRP letter to the NIH/FDA:

http://www.ahrp.org/ahrpspeaks/HIVkids0304.php

A&U Magazine:

http://www.aumag.org/viewfinder/leftMay04.html

UK Guardian/Observer:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1185305,00.html

Independent:

http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=587418

BBC TV Listing: http//www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/proginfo/pdfs/tv/week48/bbctvwk48_tues.pdf

Hogan added: "If the mainstream media in the US were fulfilling their obligations, I would imagine we'd be seeing the perpetrators lynched in the streets."

I take this occasion to recommend Hogan's latest book: "Kicking the Sacred Cow". This book provides great stimulation toward clear and independent thinking.

II. The Double U-Turn. As explained in my ad, the NIH, CDC in January 2001 made a "humiliating U-turn" (quote from the New Scientist) with respect to previous policy about anti-HIV drugs, when they recognized officially the toxicity of these drugs and issued new guidelines about restricting their use. Four years later, about a month after the AP-Solomon articles of December 2004 and some mention of their content in the press, the AP reported what I call a "double U-Turn", going back even further than their policy before 2001! I quote from the AP, January 21, 2005:

...The seismic shift in policy, announced Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, says a preventative regimen of drugs should be given to anyone exposed to HIV from rapes, accidents or isolated episodes of drug use or unsafe sex. The previous recommendation, made in 1996, had been only for health care workers accidentally exposed on the job.

No mention is made of the previous "U-turn" of 2001. Articles in a number of newspapers reported accordingly, for instance:

- Atlanta Journal-Constitution: CDC Recommends HIV Drugs for All Exposed to Virus

- Boston Herald: CDC expands use of AIDS drug cocktails

The CDC itself issued a press release January 20:

CDC Issues Updated Guidelines on Use of Antiretroviral Drugs to Prevent HIV Infection

After Sexual, Drug Use, and Accidental Exposure

http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/r050120.htm

III. The Whistle-Blower. A person from NIH who contacted AP-Solomon was Jonathan Fishbein. He was fired by NIH. Then his whistleblower status was reinstated by a judge. See the Washington Post, February 2, 2005 p. A21:

HHS Backs Protection for Special Consultant

"Whistle-Blower law should apply, it says"

by Christopher Lee, Washington Post Staff Writer

Fishbein has a website with lots of material, and can be contacted through www.honestdoctor.org, or:

Jonathan Fishbein Rand H. Fishbein PhD (Tel 301-767-1691)

Honest Doctor.org Executive Director

PO Box 15701 PO Box 59701

Potomac MD 20859 Potomac Maryland 20859

IV. Drug money. Money and Social Forces are two of the main forces acting on people. Frequently, the social forces are underestimated. For example, I don't see a money force in the foreground causing the Nannyism of the Daily Cal. Actually, in a choice between cashing my check and "protecting the readership", they tried to fudge it, but upon my refusing to go along, they didn't cash the check (yet). This doesn't mean money is not sometimes in the forefront. The AP on 11 January 2005 had an article titled:

Feds Failed to Disclose Financial Interest

Federal Researchers haven't Told Patients About

Financial Interest in Experiments

Two of the government's premier infectious disease researchers are collecting royalties on an AIDS treatment they're testing on patients using taxpayer money. But patients weren't told on their consent forms about the financial connection. Drs. Anthony Fauci and H. Clifford Lane, who helped invent the experimental interleukin-2 treatment being tested around the globe, even tried to alert patients about their royalties but were rebuffed by their own agency.

They're hardly alone.

More than 900 current and former scientists at the National Institutes of Health legally collected $8.9 million in such royalties last year for drugs and inventions they discovered while working for the government, according to information obtained by The Associated Press...

Posted: March 4, 2005

Scienza e Democrazia/Science and Democracy