Secretary General of the International Forum for Accessible Science (IFAS), an educational Human Rights organisation in the field of science and health.

He is Acting Editor of Continuum Magazine.

Etienne deHarven worked in electron microscopy (EM) primarily on the ultra-structure of retroviruses throughout his professional career of 25 years at the Sloan Kettering Institute in New York and 13 years at the University of Toronto. In 1959 he was the first to report on the EM of the Friend virus in murine (mouse) leukaemia, and in 1960 to coin the word "budding” to describe steps of virus assembly on cell surfaces. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of IFAS and the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel of South Africa.

The hypothesis according to which some human cancers might be caused by viruses is placed in an historical perspective. The contrast between the period 1945-1970, dominated by electron microscopy, and the post-1970 era, dominated by molecular biology is emphasised. Demonstrating association with viruses is far from enough to establish an etiological relationship. The overall impression is that possible etiological relationships belong more to DNA than to RNA viruses. Pitfalls in the molecular approach to the study of RNA viruses, and in particular of retroviruses, are underlined in reference to to-day's HIV research.

Claus Köhnlein, is a clinical oncologist and clinician with AIDS-practice in Kiel, Germany, clinical Advisor to IFAS and member of the Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel of South Africa

If you are willing to believe the medical as well as the general press, the world today is again and again beset by new big epidemics. First AIDS, then hepatitis C, now BSE. These new plagues differ from the plagues of the past in one respect: The number of affected people is relatively small. While the old plagues annihilated whole towns, the number of people who actually fall ill with the "new big plagues" is very low. The epidemic-like character of these diseases is generated by a molecular biological phenomenon, namely so-called test explosions. Because the symptoms are often missing, they must proclaim endless latency periods, up to 55 years (between infection with the "BSE pathogen" and developing the new variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob-Disease).

Christine Johnson is a member of MENSA and a freelance science journalist from Los Angeles, USA. She is the Contact person of HEAL/Los Angeles, is on the Board of Advisors of Continuum magazine and copy-editor of Reappraising AIDS. She has an extensive background in medicine, law and library research and is motivated by a desire to find out the truth about ‘AIDS’. She has a special interest in making the information in technical science journals accessible to the public. Over the past four years she has followed the work of the Perth group and written articles critical of the HIV antibody tests, including an extensive interview with Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, which have been published world-wide.

“Biotechnology’s version of the Xerox machine”—that’s what Forbes magazine called the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). This revolutionary technique enables a scientist to take a sample containing a minute amount of DNA and replicate that DNA sequence until there are a million copies instead of just one or two.

Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR, won a 1993 Nobel prize for his billion-dollar invention, which has become indispensable to any genetics lab. It is ironic that one of the first applications of PCR was to detect HIV, considering that Mullis himself doesn’t believe his invention is capable of this. Mullis states the problem is PCR is too efficient – it will amplify whatever DNA is in the sample, regardless of whether that DNA belongs to HIV or a contaminant. And how do you decide which part of the amplified material could be HIV and which part the contaminant(s), if you couldn’t detect HIV in the sample without using PCR?

Professor Michael Tracey is Director of the Centre for Mass Media Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. From 1980 to 1988 he has been head of the Broadcasting research Unit in London. From 1994 to 1995 he was visiting Professor and Chair of International Communication at the University of Salford, England.

This paper is based on his Inaugural Lecture.From it very beginnings, the media, in its various forms, has appointed itself as the tribune of the people, guarding the public interest and, in a democracy, educating everyone about their choices. Its moral authority to do this is rooted in the claim that it rigorously and impartially verifies and tests the facts of any event or idea while putting them in the public domain.

And yet, the mainstream media has singularly failed to recognise and expose as false what may prove to be the greatest medical blunder, not only of the 20th century but also perhaps of all time.

How the media came to be duped by the ‘HIV’ theory, and how they in turned duped most of the rest of the world, is an important question that is given only occasional consideration by AIDS critics.

Six years ago, however, Professor Michael Tracey, by his own admission, not an AIDS expert but a media scholar, delivered an important lecture at Salford University in the United Kingdom while inaugurating the Chair of International Communication.

This article is edited from that lecture, and its importance lies not only in the fact that it offers some answers to the question of how the media failed to recognise and expose the ‘HIV’ blunder, but especially because it comes from someone outside the usual battle lines of HIV/AIDS discussions.

Professor Tracey is more interested in how the media can be so easily duped rather than in taking sides between AIDS orthodox and critics. He chose ‘HIV’ because it was such a good example.

Klazien Matter-Walstra studied human biology at the University of Groningen, Holland. Thereafter she came to Bern, Switzerland for her PhD. After a 7 year period work at the Institute of Pathology in Bern, where she introduced and managed a laboratory for immunocytochemical cancer diagnosis for exfoliative cytology. She became involved in evidence based medicine and epidemiology and changed jobs. At the moment she works for the company Mediscope where she is responsible for medical literature monitoring, teaching evidence based medicine and writing critical appraisals on medical publications. Her own homepage with more information and a full c.v. can be found at http://home.tiscalinet.ch/kmatter

Evidence based medicine stresses that the results of diagnostic tests aren't black and white--no test result ever gives a true value, but only a probability statement. Whether a positive HIV antibody test is meaningful or not depends on the pre-test probability of infection in the individual being tested. In many instances, it is valid to ignore a positive result. Klazien Matter discusses why.

To what extent are we as individuals allowed to make use of our freedoms of thought and choice in our own affairs once we have been labelled with a medical diagnosis? These and other important questions relating to human rights in the scientific and medical fields will be addressed on a regular basis in each issue of Continuum Magazine. Knowledge is the best weapon. We aim to help with critical information on such crucial issues as diagnoses (labels) and treatments. But also we seek to inform readers about their rights as patients - how and where to claim ones rights when we find them violated.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has!”

Margaret Mead, anthropologist

There is a village in India called Chhochi. In 1997, the Indian administration and the media ‘infected’ the village with ‘HIV’ and nearly destroyed it. Only one organisation in the whole of the sub-continent had the courage and the integrity to uncover the truth, expose the lies, and save the village. That organisation was JACK.
What happened at Chhochi is a classic example of how the ‘HIV’ hysteria can get out of hand and destroy not only individual lives but also whole communities. The western world has been telling India for some time now that it has a growing problem with AIDS. The official line on that problem, of course, is that the supposed virus ‘HIV’ causes AIDS. From being a local social improvement group formed in the pre-AIDS era, JACK has now evolved into a national protest organisation, solely committed to counteracting the ‘HIV’ theory in India and abroad.

Alistair McConnachie has a degree in Agricultural Economics. He is a farmer and freelance journalist and has organises public meetings and written extensively against the present slaughter policy for Foot and Mouth Disease. In May 2001, Alistair McConnachie was involved in the successful defence of Mossburn Animal Centre, outside Lockerbie, South of Scotland. This incident ended the compulsory contiguous cull in Scotland.

The British government’s response to the present outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) has seen at least 6 million cattle, sheep and pigs slaughtered. This is around 10% of the entire national livestock herd. However, scientific evidence to justify such aggressive policy is strangely absent.

Olivier Clerc is a Swiss Journalist, living in France. He has been working in the field of personal development, heath and spirituality for the past twenty (20) years, as an author, translator, journalist and publisher. He is the author of four (4) books.

In 1999, the French-speaking Swiss journalist Olivier Clerc published Médecine, religion & peur: l'influence cachée des croyances. This important book draws on the author’s 20 years spent working in the field of alternative medicine, human relationships and spirituality, and is not yet available in English. It argues that in a supposedly secular age, modern medicine has replaced religion as the opium of the people, even to the extent of assuming its structure, rituals and superstitions, and becoming, in effect, a new religion.

Clerc’s analysis, while not exclusively concerned with ‘HIV’ and ‘AIDS’, resonates strongly with those AIDS critics who find themselves continually up against the quasi-religious fanaticism that seems to characterise the supporters of the virus creed, and who argue their case with zeal rather than facts. The author seems to have put his finger on a possible explanation as to why so many rational and intelligent people are prepared to accept a theory that has never been proved.

Until the book is translated into English, this summary article, by the author himself, must serve as a temporary introduction to his ideas.