Jerndal: AIDS Statistics are 'Smoke and Mirrors' - Epidemic is False Alarm

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30 April 2004 - BBC informs us that "Aids has killed 2 million Nigerians", and that another 3.8 million are infected by the HIV virus. Only South Africa and India are said to have more people infected. The article goes on to say that Nigeria "has been criticised for not doing enough to fight Aids" and that a big problem seems to "raise awareness" about the disease.

A few days later, we read that in South Africa, Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi has revealed that his son died of Aids, "breaking the taboo" about Aids in that country. Obviously we are to come to the conclusion that the reason we hear little about Aids from the African people themselves, is that they are ashamed to talk of it - that there is a taboo which must be overcome if ever we are going to effectively fight Aids.

BBC this time also accompanies the article with a photo of protesters who seem to say the government "is not doing enough", presumably because it is not distributing retroviral drugs.

Another recent incidence of UNAIDS exaggerated reporting comes from Bangladesh. While the UN/WHO suggests there are "at least 13,000 AIDS/HIV patients in Bangladesh", the actual figures of the country's government give a different picture: "HIV virus was found among 363 persons ... 57 were AIDS patients".

If you have read my recent article titled "HIV-Aids: A Tragic Error" you may remember that not only has the HIV virus never been proven to cause any disease, but, as Neville Hodgkinson explains in his historic documentation, it has not even been scientifically isolated. The virus was "announced" at a press conference - almost exactly 20 years ago - but there was never any scientific debate on the "fine points", such as its isolation from patients' serum, or its ability to cause the immune weakness observed in those who are said to suffer from Aids. Press coverage took the place of science.

Consequently, the HIV tests which are used to tell a person whether he/she may live or will have to die of Aids, have never been validated against an isolation of a virus, they therefore are completely incapable of giving any certain indication of "infection" by HIV. Kim Marie Bannon, who was tested and told she had Aids and was to die more than a decade ago is now suing the test kit manufacturers in a case filed under the Kansas Consumer Protection Act. She says that the tests are based on the scientific equivalent of clay feet....

Could the campaign for more and more funding for toxic AZT and other retrovirals to be sold in Africa, India and presumably in several other lesser developed nations, be nothing but a clever promotional trick of the pharmaceutical multinationals? Professor Jens Jerndal certainly seems to think so. He explains how Aids statistics are "worked" to make us believe we are facing a mortal threat when in fact the epidemic, if ever there was one, has been on a downtrend ever since the early '90s.

His article is required reading for anyone wishing to understand what is happening in Africa and why we are supposed to send toxic medication there when what the Africans need is clean water, a nutritious meal, and better sanitation.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS - the great illusionist numbers called Aids statistics

PROFESSOR JENS JERNDAL
M.D.(MA), D.Sc.h.c., M.Sc., B.A.., F.W.A.I.M.

Statistics are supposedly the rock solid foundation of modern science, a science exclusively concerned with objectively determined quantities, measurements and numbers. Unfortunately, it is easy to produce erroneous or biased statistical results unintentionally by just overlooking certain complicated and specific rules for sampling or weighing the data. But the most fascinating thing about statistics is that a clever statistician can work magic with the numbers and quite intentionally create the illusion of proving or disproving almost anything.

The subject of AIDS statistics is a showcase of illusionists at work. It is clearly manufactured to order, using several illusionist tricks to inflate the numbers to where they will inspire sufficient terror or panic in the population at large, to enable those in power to introduce exceptional measures or control over the population by means of force, such as mandatory "medical" interventions, and constraints in the freedom of movement and behaviour. Somewhat like a curfew to control a situation of political upheaval or war.

For the moment, lets ignore the possible reasons for such a power play, and just look into the way AIDS statistics are de facto manipulated intentionally in order to convey a grossly distorted impression of the underlying reality, with unfounded alarmist projections for the future.

What are the illusionist tricks I am talking about? First of all, a cumulative technique of reporting is used, which is never used for other illnesses, and which has no other rationale or utility than to give the impression that the numbers are much greater than they really are, and growing. So rather than reporting how many new AIDS cases have been registered in a particular year, you are likely to be fed the total accumulated number since the beginning of reporting. This gives more impact, and perhaps it makes you think that it is an annual figure.

A second technique liberally used in AIDS reporting, is to now and then change the basis for the numbers included, especially when the figures do not conform to expectations. This has been done in various ways, the most important probably being the widening of the definitions of what is diagnosed as AIDS. For instance, new so called AIDS-defining illnesses have been added, so that now at least 29 different illnesses - all existing on their own before AIDS entered the stage - are considered as AIDS, when they are accompanied by a positive so called HIV test (actually only a non-specific test that may react to more than 60 different conditions that have nothing to do with either AIDS or HIV).

It is easy to understand that the more illnesses are included, the greater the number of people affected by any of them. That is one of the ways by which AIDS can be shown to increase in numbers, when the dry, clean facts are showing the opposite.

Official statistics actually show that the number of new AIDS cases in the USA peaked in 1992, and has steadily decreased since then. Not the impression you get from media, US authorities or UN agencies, is it?

It is important to be a aware of the fact that in Africa no HIV test is required for an AIDS diagnosis. Any illness that lasts more than a month and has certain symptoms will automatically be diagnosed as AIDS. All those illnesses have existed always, and were common long before there was any such thing as AIDS. That is one of many reasons for the inflated number of AIDS cases in Africa. But even with this liberal definition, the real numbers fall far short of the numbers you see in the newspapers.

The reason for this is that the figures you keep seeing are not based on facts, but on generously creative "estimates", liberally spiced up with imaginative but unfounded "projections" for the future. Obviously, it is preferable to use "estimates" whenever possible, since these can be inflated at will, rather than sticking to the less glamorous numbers of existing records. Besides, when one wants to publish the number of "HIV-infected", estimates are the only option, since there is no way of knowing that figure. Only a very small percentage is ever submitted to the antibody test, falsely claimed to be an "HIV test", so it's a free for all to estimate the numbers. If only the number of correctly diagnosed "full-blown AIDS" cases were reported, the figures would certainly not cause much of a stir, let alone panic.

In a recent report from the US it was claimed that at least a third of all HIV positive people don't even know it themselves! If they do not know it themselves, and have never taken a test, then how could the reporter, or whatever source he used, know that these people are HIV-positive? AIDS statistics are full of this kind of absurd and nonsensical assertion, but nobody seems to notice, let alone react.

One of the few factual sources of African AIDS statistics, is antibody (so called HIV) tests in pregnant women at a few public maternity centres. The test results reportedly show that a very high percentage are "HIV positive". Why? Because there are more than 60 different medical conditions that may give a false positive test result, and among these is pregnancy itself! Others are vaccinations and recent infections, such as hepatitis, malaria, tuberculosis, and influenza.

Considering that the test is performed on pregnant women, when pregnancy is one of the acknowledged causes for a false positive outcome, and considering that the mostly poor and often undernourished women who come to these centres are likely to have been exposed to several of the other conditions as well, it is predictable that a high percentage of them should test positive. However, this does not mean that they are actually HIV-positive, and it certainly does not mean that they will ever have to develop AIDS.

Yet, these evidently inaccurate and essentially meaningless test results are computed and applied to the entire African population, men as well as women. Old and young, rich and poor. As if they would apply equally to all, and as if they were proof of the incidence of AIDS. Neither of these is the case, and anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the tests, and of statistics, must be aware of it. Yet this is how statistics on AIDS in Africa are manufactured and publicized.

Incidentally, apart from the more than 60 common causes for a false positive test result, it has been proved that test results for one and the same person may vary from one occasion to another, and from one country to another. The reason is that there is no "gold standard" for the test, meaning that it is arbitrary exactly from where on a scale a positive result is registered. And this kind of test is used to tell people that they will die of AIDS, and that they have to take obscenely expensive medicines that make them desperately ill and even kill them, but can never cure them.

This is the background for South African President Mbeki’s reluctance to offer these not only ineffective but fatally harmful drugs at the Government’s expense to pregnant women and new-born children, and indeed to anyone. And very good reason he has for it too.

One study reportedly showed that a group of young men who tested HIV-positive had a higher death rate than a group that did not test positive for HIV, and anybody reading this would automatically assume that all those HIV-positive men died of AIDS. However, the study did not show what actually caused the deaths in the HIV-positive group. When this was investigated, it turned out that there may in this case have been a correlation between an HIV-positive test and a slightly higher death rate, but the same correlation did not show up for AIDS disease. Most of those death