AIDS Surviver Teaches Africans How To Overcome 'HIV Infection'
CategoriesHis name is David Patient and he was diagnosed HIV positive in 1983 - more than 20 years ago, reports Jonah Fisher of Reuters from ASMARA, the capital of Eritrea. After taking anti-retroviral drugs for a short time and finding they did not agree with him, he has been concentrating on diet, lifestyle and positive attitudes in his fight against what doctors told him to be a sentence of certain death.
Today, David looks back at a difficult time, giving a first person account of his experience:
I was even threatened with deportation by the INS in the States. I've lost jobs, been kicked out of homes and been denied medical care by doctors, despite their Hippocratic oath. I had my own family reject me. I've had bomb threats, along with threats of other acts of violence, toward myself and those I love, including my pets. I've had my name splashed across newspaper headlines, on the evening news and in numerous forms of graffiti in public areas. I have even been labeled a potential threat to national security, as recently as two years ago by the US Government, while applying for a visa to re-enter a country for a conference - a country I called home for 18 years, and where I paid taxes, belonged to numerous research projects at various Universities as well as the NIH and the CDC in order to help them understand this disease better. All of this happened because I am a person living with HIV. I also remember the millions of people who have died because of apathy, indifference and the biggest killer of all, bureaucratic red tape. So yes, I have seen humanity at it's very worst.To read on, follow the link:
Yet on the flip side, I have witnessed the very best that humanity has to offer. I have seen people rally to support those of us living with HIV, from the most unlikely of places and backgrounds. I have seen the infected caring and supporting one another, as they confronted their own mortality. I have seen complete strangers caring for each other in ways I never dreamt possible. I have seen communities form alliances that probably would never have happened were it not for HIV. I have seen apathy and desperation turn into anger and action as these victims shed that label and become empowered to take on the system and all its injustices. I have seen sales clerks and hair dressers become self-educated immunology experts, lecturing at international medical conferences, leading the way to finding better treatments.After collaborating for years with researchers and medics who wanted to find out why he was surviving when everyone else seemed to die, David has now turned his attention to helping others on the African continent live with and overcome the disease.
David has left the world of activism behind. "I just do what I do and don't really get too caught up in all the politics around HIV/AIDS. Twenty years of being around all HIV's politics have hardened me somewhat and I have little, if any patience left. We're coming from 'Lead us, follow us or get the hell out of our way'." He may no longer be an activist, but he's very active. He and Neil Orr are working for the National AIDS Council of Mozambique, on a programme called Vida Positiva/Positive Living, a behaviour change model the two have created over the past 10 years, which had been funded by a pool of international donors. The programme is comprehensive, covering every area where AIDS makes itself felt.Nutrition is only one component of a much larger process, which includes empowerment (individual and group), the basics of HIV/AIDS, basic immune function, health motivations, behaviour change, nutrition where there are no resources, sustainable farming, the basics of psycho-neuro-immunology, basic counselling skills, basic therapy skills, stigma and discrimination, assessing needs, caregiver issues, orphan care, mobilising one's community into action, AIDS activism, home-based care where there are no resources, working with the dying, grief therapy and multiple losses.
It is good to see that, while mainstream medical science is burning billions in its search for a vaccine or a pharmaceutical cure and is adding ever new numbers to the "patient group" by unreliable tests and exaggerated estimations of the statistics, others are acting, taking concrete steps to relieve the immense suffering caused by immune problems and by our insistence on "treating" them with toxic medications.
Three articles on David Patient's story:Interview with David Patient by Jeanne Viall
A first person account by David Patient
South African Defies AIDS Through Diet, Will to Live - Reuters story posted by Yahoo News
And other references on Aids:AltHeal - Access to scientific, verifiable, alternative information about HIV/AIDS and immune boosting treatments for health that most AIDS organizations do not make available.
AIDS Test 'Is Not Proof Of Infection' - The "Aids Test", which was originally developed to make the blood supply safe and has only been really licensed for that use, is not a test that can give certainty of infection of any individual.
Aids Test Unscientific: Test Kit Makers Sued in Kansas - The test kits used to determine "HIV positive" status in patients are deeply flawed - they were developed on the basis of faulty scientific methodology and assumptions and are without value in determining whether a person suffers from "HIV Aids"...
HIV-Aids: A Tragic Error - Despite more than $100 billion spent on AIDS by US taxpayers alone, scientists have not been able to ascertain how HIV causes the AIDS syndrome. Predictions about the course of the epidemic have proved inaccurate.
South Africa: Traditional Medicine to Fight AIDS, Poverty - The South African Health Minister says that the use of African traditional medicines may eventually replace anti-retrovirals in the treatment of HIV and Aids.
Survey confirms - Aids Numbers in Africa overestimated - As reported in the Daily Telegraph today, a recent report by the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey puts the number of HIV infected persons in that country at about one million, a third of the previous estimates of close to three million.
A book discussing a nutritional hypothesis for immune deficits written by Harold D. Foster titled "What really causes AIDS" can be downloaded - free - from his site. The January/February 2004, and March/April 2004 issues of Nexus Magazine also contain recent articles written by Dr. Foster about the treatment of AIDS. These articles are available at
www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/aids.selenium.html and
www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/aids.selenium2.html.Another way to beat Aids: A vaccine from Thailand that actually appears to strengthen the immune system. Michael Culbert reports.
Of Pharma Follies and Thai VaccinesAIDS Prevention:The Missing Key Component
Controversial AIDS vaccines are 'plausible'
12:49 28 September 04 - NewScientist.com news service
A report detailing a controversial cure for HIV, as well as a vaccine that prevents against infection with the virus, has been published in a leading scientific journal.
posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Wednesday June 30 2004
updated on Saturday September 24 2005URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/06/30/aids_surviver_teaches_africans_how_to_overcome_hiv_infection.htm