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 이름:궁금
2002/5/27(월)
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 HIV 속이기
New Delhi, Sunday, July 16, 2000
The HIV hoax
Tathagata Bhattacharya
They call HIV the AIDS virus, and it's this generation's symbol of terror. It has come to rule us our lives, our relationships, our sexuality a microscopic dictator.
We are afraid of it and, consequently, we have erected buildings, organisations and global programmes in an attempt to keep it at bay. We are sure that it is there, waiting at our doorstep, ready to take advantage of our minimal carelessness.
But what is HIV? Is it worth fearing? Does it actually exist? We never cared to raise these questions. After all, its positivist natural science and it must be letting out the truth. However, a discerning group of scientists, inclusive of two Nobel laureates and more than 70 PhDs (most of them from the US) is questioning the fundamentals of linking HIV to AIDS.
They claim HIV is a harmless "passenger virus" that does not cause AIDS. All the sick people, they say, have lost their immune systems due to drug use, venereal disease, AIDS-associated infections, malnutrition, and/or anti-HIV drugs themselves. Some of them even question the existence of the HIV virus.
The theory that HIV causes AIDS seemed validated when Dr Robert Gallo of the US National Institute of Health, published four long papers in the journal Science purporting to have identified the new virus as the cause of AIDS. The hypothesis became the basis of an industry that has received billions of dollars for research and development, a bulk of the money coming from tax-payers.
The discovery was hailed as adding "another miracle to the long honour roll of American medicine and science". But today the dissenting scientists are no longer to be ignored. They are speaking a language which has compelled the global AIDS meet in Durban today to take cognizance of the questions raised by them. They hold that the basic checks needed to establish the nature and the existence of such a virus were never completed. Biochemist Kary Mullis, recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, sums it up aptly: "If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document, yet."
Evidence indicates that genetic and biochemical signals are better understood as arising from within the body's immune cells, rather than as a consequence of invasion by a deadly new microbe.
Prolonged stress on the body and the mind can cause these signals to appear. They include infection by a range of known germs; exposure to other people s body fluids such as blood and semen; and assaults on the body by medical and recreational drugs. Malnutrition also plays a part, especially in Third World nations.
According to this view, antibodies detected in blood with the HIV test are non-specific: They do not mean a person is infected with a particular virus that is slowly destroying the immune system. The clinching fact is that all the three tests for detection of the HIV virus are not accurate and the establishment itself concedes to that.
Dr Roberto Giraldo, AIDS researcher, in a lecture at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in February, 1999, held that control tests, fundamental to validate any scientific theory, were not undertaken by Gallo or anyone else.
If the release of some particular test-proteins from the blood of a so-called HIV positive person was taken as proof, it was also necessary to show that the same are not being released by non-HIV blood. That has never been done. So what was passed off as a find, was essentially most unscientific in nature and sheer falsehood.
However, Giraldo and his troupe ran the control test at the New York City University Hospital and found out that the same proteins were being released from normal blood. In this connection, Giraldo also raises the issue of diluting the blood by 400 times when the Elisa test is carried out. He points out that this is never done while trying to detect the presence of malarial parasite or bacillus tuberculi. The real reason, he says, lies in the fact that, if not diluted, everyone s blood will test positive. That way, Giraldo says, every human system has a propensity to catch AIDS.
In short, HIV is a myth. Giraldo says pregnant mothers with AIDS have been treated to give birth to healthy offsprings in the US. This demolishes the very notion of transfusion of the virus-entity. This leads Giraldo and other dissident scientists to claim that AIDS is curable.
Gallo, chief proponent of the HIV-AIDS nexus, stated in his seminal paper that HIV was found in the semen of two AIDS patients. "We don't know how many people he looked for HIV in", says Dr Robert Root-Bernstein, a professor of physiology at the Michigan State University and a leading authority on AIDS in the US.
Another study, reported at the same time examined the semen of 12 AIDS patients and found HIV in only one. But the scientists at the NIH held the data to be insignificant and claimed that a 1992 study found HIV in the semen of 28 out of 28 cases studied.
But the study, published by the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome tells a different story altogether. HIV was found in only seven out of the 28 cases studied. Problems got compounded when Dr Luc Montagnier of the Institute Pasteur Paris, who is the discoverer of the HIV virus, came up with the following statement in the Miami Herald, dated December 23, 1990: "There are too many shortcomings in the theory that HIV causes all signs of AIDS". Equally startling are revelations about the anti-virus drug AZT.
Lindsey Nigel, soon after being born in 1990, tested HIV positive but was not affected by AIDS when she was put on the retrovir syrup. Her general health declined over the next 18 months. "She didn't feel comfortable in her body", was how her father put it. She could not eat properly and suffered from diorrhoea. Things turned worse in October, 1992. Night after night she woke up screaming, clutching at her knees and thighs.
By this time the Nagels came across the writings of Peter Duesberg, virologist at the University of California, Berkley. They got in touch with him and this was his reply: "Take her off AZT immediately if you want to see her live. Your daughter will die from it, like Kimberly Bergalis, if you continue the treatment."
Kimberly Bergalis was believed to be infected with HIV in Florida. She had a common yeast infection but it also happened to be one of the "indicator diseases" within the Center for Disease Control s ever-expanding definition of AIDS. She was duly prescribed AZT. Within a year, she was in a wheelchair, as was Rudolf Nureyev. Among its several side-effects, AZT causes muscle atrophy. Bergalis was treated for carrying AIDS and died in 1991. No Erin Brockovich has fought this case.
Arthur Ashe also took AZT. After his death, New York Daily News columnist Earl Caldwell reported that Ashe wanted to break away from his treatment as he was feeling unwell but couldn t do so as he was worried about offending his doctors. Michael Callen, author of Surviving AIDS, claims that the only long-term AIDS survivors are those who have not taken AZT. Larry Kramer, the HIV positive gay playwright states that AZT is not for him.
As regarding the virus-entity, Peter Duesberg says, "viruses work exponentially". They rise until they hit the summit. But the HIV s estimated level of spread is almost the same as it was in 1985. This suggests another possibility: That the virus is not a new one.
It is not really a case of medico-scientific fraud alone that this group of dissenters are trying to fight. There is a lot of money involved in the game. Big pharmaceutical firms have a lot at stake. The Glaxo Wellcome's Combivir was launched amid fanfare in which a number of US Senators took an active interest. By 1997, the cumulative sales of the AZT had exceeded $2.5 billion, despite it being severely toxic.
A pertinent question can arise in a rational mind. Why is that AIDS is specially prevalent among prostitutes, homosexuals, drug-users if the virus-entity is in question? Roberto Giraldo says that the three categories mentioned above are not mutually exclusive ones.
A survey conducted on the whore zone of 42nd Street revealed that a large number of them are into hardcore drug use. One can also get to see a growing number of gay prostitutes.
It was also found out that an average hooker has to satisfy more than 20 customers in each 24 hours. One can easily understand the stress they have to undergo. Coupled with that comes social ostracisation, something that the gays are also familiar with. From the time of the infamous Vietnam War, the US state has successfully alienated the gays from the mainstream American society. It seems that the AIDS institution is a scientific extension of this policy. This leads to immense cell stress. Drugs naturally further weaken the constitution. Seen in this light the cause of AIDS appears rather socio-economic than biological.
The dissident group claims that malnutrition is one of the root causes of the disease as it is generally accompanied by over-work, underpayment and lack of hygiene. All these lead to extreme cell stress. The rapid spread of AIDS in Africa and South-East Asia can be better understood with this logic.
It is also peculiarly coincidental that the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are pumping in an aweful amount of money into developing nations on grounds of countering AIDS at this crucial juncture. But a brief insight reveals their actual game plan.
Where are all the test equipment as well as anti-virus drugs manufactured? In the West, no doubt. So the money goes back to the creditor and debtor falls into a debt that gets heavier by the day. The prestigious science journal, Nature last week came up with the announcement that it has been finally proven that HIV is the root cause of AIDS. But, the deciding debate is scheduled to be held today, July 16, 2000 at Durban. The a-priori announcement by Nature will hold no surprise if one comes to know that John Maddox, the Editor of Nature has in 1994, tried to dissuade The Sunday Times, London, from reporting evidences that the HIV-AIDS theory does not really have a firm ground to stand on. In this connection, it is worthwhile to refer to a particular incident. Dr Peter Duesberg, professor of molecular biology at Berkley, who was voted Californian Scientist of the year 1987 for his discoveries in the field of retroviruses, was reduced to chairing the annual picnic committee of Berkley after he voiced protests against the HIV-AIDS theory.
Probably, this is what prompts Dr Roger Cunningham, immunologist, microbiologist and Director of the Centre for Immunology at the State University of New York at Buffalo, to say, "the AIDS establishment intends to discourage challenges to the dogma on one side and often insists on following discredited ideas on the other." The battle has taken a conclusive turn with South African president Mbeki s call to settle the debate once and for all. May be, Africa will be finally free from the blemish of being the breeding ground of the deadliest disease ever known to Earth. May be, thousands and thousands will come to know that they are not living to die after all. If the dissidents triumph, biochemistry will witness a socialist revolution.
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