HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular Reasoning
CategoriesHIV tests are are not only unreliable - they have been tweaked to respond to protein fractions found most often in those people that are part of AIDS "risk groups", says Neville Hodgkinson, author of AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science in his latest article published last Sunday (21 May 2006) in The Business.
One story Hodgkinson relates in his thoughtful article is how the symbol of HIV infection - and certain AIDS death - was rejected in India and a national campaign abandoned, when "in front of television cameras, a six-foot red ribbon was cut into pieces as a protest against the 'oppressive and patronising' symbol." Veena Dhari, the first woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said that when HIV-positive people see the ribbon “we feel like committing suicide”.
Red ribbon - (Unesco) Young Digital Creators
Quite apart from the personal tragedies of people being labeled 'HIV positive' and effectively receiving a death sentence, the unreliability of the test, which makes such labeling a cruel if not criminal act, is becoming a major issue. Hodgkinson is not the only journalist saying that the retrovirus which supposedly causes AIDS is not being detected by tests, and indeed has never been properly identified as the cause of the syndrome.
Liam Scheff has contested more than a year ago, that no gold standard exists for the AIDS test, that is, the test cannot be validated against an actual virus isolated from patients that have the disease.
And Rebecca Culshaw, a mathematical biologist and assistant professor of mathematics says she quit her AIDS related work because of the substantial impossibility to model the spread of the disease and the effectiveness of preventive and curative efforts: "The biological assumptions on which the models were based varied from author to author, and this made no sense to me."
As if a bogus test was not enough, the treatment recommended after the verdict of "positive" virtually guarantees debilitating illness and eventual death. The "side effects" of the retroviral drugs which are the treatment 'of choice' include the very symptoms we describe as AIDS.
Not that there were any serious lack of natural treatment options without the deadly side effects, but they cost much less than the chemical drugs and can't be patented...
- - -
The circular reasoning scandal of HIV testing
By Neville Hodgkinson
21 May 2006(See original in The Business on line)
IT WAS an icon of compassion, a sign you cared. To wear the red ribbon meant to express solidarity with HIV/Aids victims everywhere. It signified you knew the importance of antiviral drugs and HIV testing, Aids awareness and condoms – and of the urgent need for a vaccine.
Red ribbons Image Unesco: Young Digital Creators
In contrast, if you cast doubt on the ever-burgeoning and massaged HIV/Aids statistics; or suggested the billions raised for HIV research and treatment might be better spent on established medicines and in fighting poverty; or – perish the thought – if you questioned the theory that Aids is caused by a sexually transmitted virus, you lost your right to be considered a sensible and decent member of the human race. You were a “denialist”, a “pariah”, a “flat-earther”, a “crackpot”. Even if you were a leading scientist, your funds would disappear and your ability to publish in mainstream journals reduced to zero.
Today, whether it is frightening the residents of a Cornish town with a cluster of purported infections, or causing the former head of South Africa’s National Aids Council to apologise for having unprotected sex with an HIV-positive Aids activist, or enabling U2 front-man Bono to edit an issue of the Independent newspaper dominated by impassioned accounts of Africa’s HIV/Aids plight, the virus that has held such sway in the popular mind for more than 20 years is still never long out of the news. It is now very big business: American Express, Motorola, Gap, Converse and Armani are among the corporate giants supporting Bono’s RED campaign promoting special products to raise funds for Aids in Africa.
But unreported in Bono’s Independent (or in any other edition of the paper, which for years has followed an unquestioning line on Aids) there are signs that the power of the red ribbon is in serious decline. In the United States, where respectable opinion has long held the HIV theory of Aids to be immune to questioning, a controversial 15-page critique in the influential Harper’s Magazine has caused culture shock. As well as detailing a cover-up by government scientists regarding Aids medication trials, the article approvingly quotes scientists who have argued for years that HIV is not the cause of Aids.
Meanwhile the Washington Post last month published an investigation headlined “How Aids in Africa was overstated”, arguing that “increasingly dire” and inaccurate assessments of HIV infection by UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids) had “skewed years of policy judgments and decisions on where to spend precious healthcare dollars”.
In India, a proposed Red Ribbon Campaign through the national rail network has been abandoned, following a national convention on HIV in Bangalore last October attended by more than 1,500 HIV-positive people where the once-fashionable symbol of Aids awareness was ceremoniously rejected. In front of television cameras, a six-foot red ribbon was cut into pieces as a protest against the “oppressive and patronising” symbol.
Speakers said there were no similar icons of solidarity for people suffering from other diseases. The ribbon’s connotations that “HIV=Aids=Death” – the scientific orthodoxy subscribed to by UN agencies, pharmaceutical interests and thousands of activists around the world – was said to further the isolation, discrimination and sense of doom suffered as a result of an HIV diagnosis. Veena Dhari, the first woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said that when HIV-positive people see the ribbon “we feel like committing suicide”. She called on all Aids organisations to stop using it.
The story appeared on the front pages of newspapers as well as national television in India, where media have proved more resistant than in most African countries to huge pressures to conform to international opinion on HIV/Aids.
Two years ago Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the United Nations and now president of the Global Business Coalition on HIV/Aids, an alliance of 200 international companies promoting Aids testing, treatment and support, said in Washington that a major impediment in dealing with Aids globally was that many governments – and people – were still in "a denial phase – they believe they have no Aids problem."
Citing India as an example, he said that if it did not change its policies, it would soon have the highest HIV/Aids tally in the world. By last year that had already happened, according to Richard Feacham, head of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the main beneficiary of the Product RED initiative.
"The epidemic is growing very rapidly. It is out of control," Feachem said in Paris. "There is nothing happening in India today that is big or serious enough to prevent it." India had to wake up, because without action, "millions and millions and millions are going to die."
That is not the view of Anju Singh, of JACKINDIA, a Delhi-based Aids policy study group. Singh, chief guest at the Bangalore convention, told The Business last week that "there are no reports – not even anecdotal ones – that reflect visible proof of an epidemic in this country." The official estimate for HIV infections is around 5m; but a dearth of Aids cases – averaging 10,000 a year over the past 10 years - suggests that is grossly wrong.
Nor has there been any abnormal increase in death rates, even in suspected "high risk groups" such as red light areas. The Indian government does not publish data for Aids deaths; but "questions we got asked in Parliament have elicited a cumulative figure of 1,100." When UNAIDS published a figure of 310,000 Aids deaths in India in 1999 alone, and a cumulative total of 558,000 Aids orphans, JACKINDIA challenged them publicly. In late 2001 the figures were withdrawn – but only after being used earlier that year to project the state of the epidemic in India at the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV/Aids in New York.
"For years now, agencies like the CIA, World Bank, UNDP, UNAIDS, a plethora of NGOs as well as articles published in respected science journals have been talking of an exploding epidemic in India, and Africa-like conditions," Singh said. "We have consistently challenged the agencies that claim India is underplaying figures and is in denial; none of them has been able to provide any alternative data or evidence to substantiate their claims."
The iconoclastic Harper’s article, entitled "Out of Control: Aids and the corruption of medical science", has sparked intense debate. Greeted by a chorus of condemnation and calls for the resignation of Harper’s editor, it has nevertheless found many defenders. It was written by Celia Farber, a jo
 |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
||||
|
|
|||||
|
|
||||
