VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE
DEBATING AZT
The AIDS Apostates
By Anthony Brink
To overturn orthodoxy is no easier in science than
in philosophy, religion, economics, or any of the other disciplines through
which we try to comprehend the world and the society in which we live.
Ruth Hubbard Phd
Emeritus professor of molecular biology, Harvard University.
Considering how
AIDS saturates our public discourse, galvanises our politicians, thrills our
gee-whiz journalists, inspires our musicians, worries our clergy, agitates our
AIDS-activist lawyers, perturbs the judges of even our highest courts, engages
the South African Law Commission’s
energies in cooking up imaginative new bills, dominates our medical research
effort, infuses exciting new relevance into tired careers in virology
departments, and siphons off our tax rands into the pockets of condom
missionaries proselytising to a stubborn public and ‘AIDS counsellors’
programming their victims for death, your regular guy might be excused for
believing that our country and the world were in the throes of a dire public
health crisis, a new Black Death, and for thinking that the fact of it was as
certain as any in science about which there obtains a universal consensus.
In fact, hundreds of
scientists of the highest rank disagree with the HIV-AIDS causation hypothesis.
They think ‘AIDS’ as a diagnostic construct is a passing fad, a fashionable new
name for age-old ills, and that ‘AIDS’ boils down to money-spinning political
kitsch. In their most assiduous dissents they emphasise that ‘HIV’ has never
been isolated under the well-settled rules for viral isolation, assert that
‘HIV’ has never been shown to exist as an infectious entity of exogenous
origin, and demonstrate that every protein employed in the ‘HIV antibody’ test
kits as antigens, and claimed to be uniquely constituent of ‘HIV’, is actually
cellular, not viral - in other words, that all HIV-positive test results are
false positives. In short, they consider the HIV-AIDS paradigm to be a
scientific blunder of biblical proportions, and its experts foolish quacks.
These AIDS dissidents include professors emeriti at the pinnacle of their
specialities in cell-biology, virology and related fields. They also include
eminent mathematicians, actuaries, philosophers, ethicists and law and history
professors. Among them are two exceptionally distinguished Nobel laureates in
our time, Walter Gilbert (Chemistry 1980), and Kary Mullis (Chemistry 1993).
Dr Peter
Duesberg, professor of cell-biology, University of California at Berkeley,
member of The National Academy of Sciences: Before Duesberg’s wrecking-ball
challenge to Gallo’s HIV-AIDS theory was published as an invited paper in the
prestigious journal Cancer Research
in 1988, Gallo had remarked, “No one knows more about retroviruses than Peter
Duesberg.” Once acclaimed as a widely published and extensively cited Nobel
candidate for his discovery of onco-genes and genetic mapping of retroviruses,
but now ‘delegitimated’ as a scientist, Duesberg was the recipient of the
largest annual research grant in biology for years - awarded for the pursuit of
whatever avenue of scientific enquiry took his fancy. Stripped of his grant and
his post-graduate classes, evicted from his laboratory, practically barred from
researching and publishing, and reduced to chairmanship of his faculty’s annual
picnic committee, he continues to point out the fundamental anomalies,
deficiencies and paradoxes of the 15 year old theory that the 29 old diseases
renamed AIDS in the presence of HIV antibodies could have any causal link to a
retrovirus. However, Duesberg finds himself increasingly alone in the AIDS
dissident camp too, eclipsed by Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al
(below) whose more fundamental
tack in impeaching the HIV-AIDS theory is winning over its best heterodox
scientists - most recently, Kary Mullis (below), pathology and epidemiology
specialist Gordon Stewart (below), and Etienne de Haarven, pathology professor
emeritus at the University of Toronto, renowned for his pioneering published
work in the electron photomicrography of viruses.
Eleni
Papadopulos-Eleopulos, bio-physicist, department of medical physics, Royal
Perth Hospital, Australia: Collaborating with, among others, John
Papadimitriou, a practising pathologist and professor at University of Western
Australia’s medical school, David Causer, senior physicist, head of the
department of medical physics and professor at Royal Perth Hospital, and
Valendar Turner, consultant emergency physician at the Royal Perth Hospital,
Papadopulos-Eleopulos has raised the most radical and dramatic challenges to
the HIV-AIDS theory, by highlighting the lack of a proper gold standard for the
HIV antibody tests, in that unlike other known viruses, HIV has never been
isolated according to the classical procedure for the isolation of viruses,
commonly referred to as the Pasteur Rules.
Dr Walter Gilbert, formerly
molecular biology professor at Harvard University: One of contemporary
science’s most outstanding and accomplished scientists, Gilbert won his Nobel
for inventing the now foundational modern technique for DNA sequencing. He
considers Duesberg to be “absolutely correct in saying that no one has proven
that AIDS is caused by [HIV]. There is no animal model for AIDS, and without an
animal model, you cannot establish Koch’s postulates [to prove the role of the
suspected pathogen].” He observes, “The community as a whole doesn’t listen
patiently to critics who adopt alternative viewpoints although the great lesson
of history is that knowledge develops through the conflict of viewpoints, that
if you have simply a consensus view it severely stultifies; it fails to see the
problems of that consensus and it depends on the existence of critics to break
up that iceberg and permit knowledge to develop. This is in fact one of the
underpinnings of democratic theory. It’s one of the basic reasons that we
believe in notions of free speech. And it’s one of the great forces in
intellectual development…The general public accepts what the media tells them.
And the media has blown up the virus as being the cause of AIDS, and the
scientific community - parts of it - have blown up the virus as the cause of
AIDS because it is more convenient to have a neat explanation than to be in
that situation in which we often are in science at which the problems, the
questions, still face us, and our knowledge proceeds gradually to overcome
those difficulties.”
Dr Kary Mullis, molecular
biologist: Nobel winner Mullis’s watershed invention of the Polymerase Chain
Reaction technology for amplifying minute DNA fragments for identification has
so revolutionised biology that one might fairly speak of two epochs, the dark
ages before and the enlightenment after it. He deplores the misapplication of
his invention to measure ‘HIV viral load.’ He points out, “It is not even
probable, let alone scientifically proven, that HIV causes AIDS. …there should
be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that
fact, at least with a high probability. There are no such documents.” He
predicts, “Years from now, people will find our acceptance of the HIV theory of
AIDS as silly as we find those who excommunicated Galileo.” Endorsing
Duesberg’s rejection of the orthodox model of infectious AIDS, he says, “As
applied, the HIV theory is unfalsifiable, and useless as a medical hypothesis…
I can’t find a single virologist who will give me references which show HIV is
the probable cause of AIDS. [Not even Luc Montagnier could help.] If you
ask...you don’t get an answer, you get fury.” The HIV-AIDS hypothesis, he
thinks, is “one hell of a mistake.”
Dr Beverly Griffin, director
and professor of virology, Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London: “I do not
believe HIV, in and of itself, can cause AIDS.”
Dr Harry Rubin,
retrovirologist, professor of molecular biology, University of California at
Berkeley, member of National Academy of Sciences: “I don’t think the cause
of AIDS has been found. I think [that in] a disease as complex as AIDS…there
are likely to be multiple causes. In fact, to call it a single disease when
there are so many multiple manifestations seems to me to be an
over-simplification…The causal role of HIV in AIDS is certainly not proven.”
Dr Albert Sabin, discoverer
of live-virus polio vaccine, National Institutes of Health: “The basis of
present action and education is that everybody who tests positive for the virus
must be regarded as a transmitter and there is no evidence for that.”
Dr Luc Montagnier,
virologist, ‘co-discover of HIV’, Pasteur Institute, Paris: “There are too
many shortcomings in the theory that HIV causes all signs of AIDS…We are seeing
people HIV infected for 9,10 years or more, 12 years, and they are still in
good shape; their immune system is still good, and it is unlikely that those
people will come down with AIDS later.”
Sir John Maddox, former
editor, Nature: “[Luc]
Montagnier said clearly what he meant. HIV [alone] is…not…a sufficient cause of
AIDS.”
Dr Simon Wain-Hobson,
immunologist, Pasteur Institute, Paris: “…an intrinsic cytopathic
effect of the virus [HIV] is no longer credible...”
Dr Richard Strohman, emeritus professor of
cell-biology, University of California at Berkeley: The HIV-AIDS hypothesis
is “bankrupt.”
Dr Gordon
Stewart, emeritus professor of public health at the University of Glasgow,
former AIDS advisor to the World Health Organisation: “AIDS is a
behavioural disease. It is multifactorial, brought on by several simultaneous
strains on the immune system - drugs, pharmaceutical and recreational, sexually
transmitted diseases, multiple viral infections… there is no specific etiologic
agent of AIDS... the disease arises as a result of a cumulative process
following a period of exposure to multiple environmental factors… Nobody wants
to look at the facts about this disease. It’s the most extraordinary thing I’ve
ever seen. I’ve sent countless letters to medical journals pointing out the
epidemiological discrepancies and they simply ignore them. The fact is, this
whole heterosexual AIDS thing is a hoax.”
Dr Bernard Forscher, former
managing editor of the journal,
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “The HIV hypothesis ranks
with the ‘bad air’ theory for malaria and the ‘bacterial infection’ theory of
beriberi and pellagra [caused by nutritional deficiencies]. It is a hoax that
became a scam.”
Dr Alfred Hassig,
immunologist, former emeritus professor of immunology, University of Bern, and
former director of the Swiss blood transfusion service(recently late):
“The sentences of death accompanying the medical diagnosis of AIDS should be
abolished.”
Dr Charles Thomas, former
professor of molecular biology at Harvard and Johns Hopkins universities: “It is widely
believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group of
diseases called AIDS. Many biomedical scientists now question this hypothesis.
We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against
this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable independent group.” He himself has
no doubts. He rejects the HIV-AIDS hypothesis as a “fraud”.
Dr Phillip Johnson, senior
professor of law, University of California at Berkeley: “One does not
need to be a scientific specialist to recognise a botched research job and a
scientific establishment that is distorting the facts to promote an ideology
and maximise its funding. The establishment continues to doctor statistics and
misrepresent the situation to keep the public convinced that a major viral
pandemic is under way when the facts are otherwise.”
Dr Serge Lang, professor of mathematics, Yale University and member of the
National Academy of Sciences: “There does not even exist a single proper
definition of AIDS on which discourse or statistics can reliably be based...
the CDC calls these diseases AIDS only when antibodies against HIV are
confirmed or presumed to be present. If a person tests HIV negative, then the
diseases are given another name… I do not regard the causal relationship
between HIV and any disease as settled. I have seen considerable evidence that
highly improper statistics concerning HIV and AIDS have been passed off as
science, and that top members of the scientific establishment have carelessly,
if not irresponsibly, joined the media in spreading misinformation about the
nature of AIDS.”
Dr Joseph Sonnabend, South
African born New York physician: “...there is no specific etiologic agent of
AIDS... the disease arises as a result of a cumulative process following a
period of exposure to multiple environmental factors... The marketing of HIV,
through press-releases and statements, as a killer virus causing AIDS without
the need for any other factors, has so distorted research and treatment that it
may have caused thousands of people to suffer and die.”
Dr Harvey Bialy, scholar in residence,
Institute for Biotechnology, University of Mexico; founding Scientific Editor: Bio/Technology
(now Nature Biotechnology): “From both my literature review and my personal
experience over most of the AIDS - so called AIDS centres in Africa, I can find
absolutely no believable persuasive evidence that Africa is in the midst of a
new epidemic of infectious immunodeficiency.”
Dr Charles L. Geshekter,
professor of African History, California State University: From “Cameroon
to California, sex education must no longer be distorted by terrifying, dubious
misinformation that equates sex with death… African poverty, not some
extraordinary sexual behavior, is the best predictor of AIDS-defining diseases…
A 1994 report in the Journal of
Infectious Diseases concluded that HIV tests were useless in central
Africa, where the microbes responsible for tuberculosis, malaria, and leprosy
were so prevalent that they registered over 70% false positive results...in
people whose immune systems are compromised for a wide variety of reasons other
than HIV...”
Dr Hiram Caton, ethicist, head of the School of Applied Ethics at Griffith
University, Brisbane, Australia: “The AIDS epidemic was a mirage
manufactured by scientists who believed that integrity could be maintained
amidst the diverting influences of big money, prestige and politics.”
Dr Ralph Moss: author of The Cancer Industry: “The paradigm
that was laid down for how to milk the cancer problem is basically the same
paradigm which is being followed in milking the AIDS problem.”
Dr Frank Buianouckas:
professor of mathematics, Bronx, New York: “I suspect everything
involved in this AIDS epidemic. If HIV causes anything, it certainly causes
fund-raisers. It sells stocks. It supports dances. It sells condoms. And it
keeps the AIDS establishment going.”
CONTENTS
DEBATING AZT
VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE