Answering Cranks — THANK YOU, PERTH!

I think it was Bertrand Russell, or perhaps it was Bernard Shaw, who wrote a classic piece about the frustrations of trying to engage in substantive discussion with a crank. The essay has been cited quite often by accomplished science writers like Jeremy Bernstein. The frustration is that it takes far longer to deconstruct the crank’s claims that it takes the crank to make them. The crank pours out undocumented assertions that are wrong not only in detail but that are wrong-headed in general principle, and each assertion then requires general background discourse to establish the correct principles as well as detail-specific answers; and all needs careful documentation and attention to nuance if the contretemps is to be not just a shouting match of opposing assertions.

Since HIV/AIDS theory is pseudoscience (Science Studies 102: Burden of proof, HIV/AIDS “science”, pseudo-science, 22 July 2008;  HIV/AIDS and parapsychology: science or pseudo-science?, 30 December 2008; Trying to think about the Unthinkable, 2 January 2009; Mainstream pseudo-science good, alternative pseudo-science bad, 25 February 2009; Circumcision pseudo-science, 2 September 2009), its proponents are cranks (crackpots, pseudoscientists), and frustration is a common experience for AIDS Rethinkers. The most vociferous of the HIV/AIDS vigilantes, say Jeanne Bergman or Seth Kalichman, show that they know nothing of history of science or philosophy of science or sociology of science, and have not even done any science themselves (unless one grants their idiosyncratic claim that economics or law or psychology are sciences). So their detailed statements are embedded in discourse that is ignorant of the very nature of science, and that needs correction before one even begins to address their detailed claims.

The HIV/AIDS groupies and vigilantes have been increasingly on the defensive after Medical Hypotheses accepted, and posted as in press on the journal’s website in July, a couple of articles striking at the very heart of HIV/AIDS blunders: the fact that the sovereign nation of Italy maintains its health without recognizing HIV as a dangerous infection or AIDS as an illness caused by it (Ruggiero et al.) and that an article in JAIDS found it necessary to multiply by a factor of 25 the deaths from AIDS in South Africa (Duesberg et al.) in order to maintain the fictions that AIDS is devastating Africa and that antiretroviral drugs save lives when delivered indiscriminately to “HIV-positive” individuals.

At the same time, The House of Numbers (documentary film by Brent Leung) as making the rounds of film festivals, gathering honors and plaudits as it showed through direct on-camera interviews the vacuity of HIV/AIDS theories and the disagreements among HIV/AIDS gurus over the most elementary aspects of the whole business.

The first response was a joint letter by some of the interviewed gurus disclaiming what they were seen to have said: just as convincing as Nancy Padian’s repeated assertions over the years that her observation of zero transmission of HIV was not evidence of no transmission. In other words, the first responses was the claim that a goodly number of the leading HIV/AIDS experts are unable to say what they mean.

Luc Montagnier’s remarks were, it was alleged, (1) taken out of context; (2) suffered from Montagnier’s lack of command of English; (3) reflected trapping through leading questions from the interviewer (though Montagnier himself did not sign the letter). The claim of taken out of context would seem to have dissolved when Leung posted an unedited clip of the relevant portion of the interview in honor of World AIDS Day.

The chief attempt to discredit the film appears to be a website devoted entirely to that task. When I learned of it and looked at it, I left again almost immediately because my intellectual stomach turned in revolt at seeing the assertions has Bergman posted in typically crank fashion, undocumented, wrong in detail and wrongheaded in its ignorance of the very nature of science in particular and disciplined logical argument in general.

But no matter how time-consuming and unrewarding it may be to develop properly supported answers to such crankish stuff, it serves as a valuable resource to which other Rethinkers can refer as they try to spread the truth, one acquaintance or friend or student at a time. So we should be exceedingly grateful to the Perth Group who have posted impeccably argued and documented material that demolishes utterly the Bergmanian flim-flam.
The first installment of the deconstruction exposes the dirty little secret that HIV/AIDS theorists nowadays regard immune activation and not immune-cell depletion as what goes wrong in “AIDS”, which among other things explains why antiretroviral treatment, if or when it “reconstitutes” the immune system also brings on AIDS diseases (the phenomenon swept under the carpet by being named, Immune Restoration Syndrome). The Perthers also make mincemeat of Bergman’s attempt to discount the role played by animal models in HIV/AIDS publications (I was about to write “research”).
The second installment of the deconstruction exposes Bergman’s incompetence to write about scientific matters. There is a useful list of the Perth Group’s seminal articles questioning HIV/AIDS theory, some e-mails illustrating J P Moore’s unwillingness to engage in substantive scientific discourse, and a reminder that Montagnier has been talking about oxidative stress for quite some time but without acknowledging the much earlier proposal by the Perth Group of which he had been fully aware. The way in which HIV/AIDS virologists have taken in vain the term “isolation” is described in convincing detail, together with the filmed evidence that David Baltimore, Robin Weiss, and other experts do not appear to be aware that “HIV” has never in fact been isolated in the proper meaning of the word. The claimed evidence for sexual transmission of HIV is demonstrated to be non-existent.
Perhaps the worst of Bergman’s assertions is that of 99.9% accuracy for a two-test protocol of ELISA plus Western Blot. Since she cites no source, one cannot contradict the source; but Perth does the job nicely even without that. Lacking a gold standard, “accuracy” or specificity cannot be known; and there is no gold standard for “HIV” tests (Weiss &Cowan, cited in “HIV” tests are self-fulfilling prophecies, 10 May 2009).

Thank you, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Valendar F. Turner, John M Papadimitriou, David Causer. Well done! Yet another of your invaluable contributions to the Rethinking literature.

HIV protects against cancer and cannot cause AIDS

That startling information was disseminated this week by Ruggiero, Punzi, Morucci and Pacini at the Annual Congress of the Italian Association of Cell Cultures (Italian branch of the European Association). A pdf of the program booklet is here; the Ruggiero abstract is at p. 17.

An HIV protein, VpR, detectable in the serum of HIV patients, “induces selective killing of rapidly dividing cancer cells”. HIV has been present in humans since at least the early 1900s and can hardly be responsible for AIDS, which first appeared around 1980. That, together with the cancer-killing propensity of the HIV protein VpR, suggests that a symbiotic relationship had been established between the human genome and HIV. In recent years, however, the tumor-killing activity of VpR may have been masked by the carcinogenic effect of HAART.

From Congress website:
1. Title of Ruggiero et al. presentation
2. Abstract
3. Full poster
4. Theme of Congress (Cell Death: physio-pathological and therapeutic implications) and sponsorship.
The meeting was hosted by the University of Firenze and sponsored also by the Ordine dei Medici, the only official organization that represents medical doctors and surgeons in Italy. Phoenix Foundation is a non-profit (“onlus”).
Since the full poster is too small to read from this screen shot, here is an easily readable version. Like the other presentations at the Congress, it had been accepted only after peer review.

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This complete documentation is provided because of the penchant AIDS groups and vigilantes have amply displayed in their attempts to denigrate or hide the overwhelming evidence that disproves HIV/AIDS theory. The Ruggiero presentation was accepted after peer review at a mainstream conference sponsored by impeccably authoritative institutions.

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The presentation by Ruggiero et al. not only brings the stunning news that “HIV” is protective against cancer, it also confirms the conclusion, perhaps most recently expressed by Montagnier, that HIV is readily fended off by robust immune systems: HIV is a passenger virus, a consequence and not a cause of immune deficiency.

This work reminded me of the suggestion by James Graham that the evolution of mechanisms for warding off cancer may have been crucial elements in the evolution of animals: see Graham’s website.

World AIDS Day: How about a look back?

The conference, Rethinking AIDS 2009, was a treat in many ways, some of which I described in “The Family of Rethinking AIDS”. A special pleasure for me was to meet in person people I had respected for quite some time, indeed admired for their work and their integrity. I learned something new from the substance of many of the presentations, and perhaps even more from conversations.

I continue often to be abashed at how little I know about the early days of AIDS, and especially that so many incisive insights and explanations were published long ago that have seemed to me like fresh revelations. The difficulty is that AIDS Rethinking doesn’t have the organized indexes and abstracts and review articles and textbooks that established disciplines do. Tony Lance illustrated that in his talk when he mentioned that after he had recognized intestinal dysbiosis as a central explanation for much in the early days of AIDS, he found that Koliadin had made similar suggestions on the old virusmyth website. Who could possibly have read, and even in that case who could possibly remember, all the material on that website, and in Continuum, and in the early newsletters, and in the dozens of Rethinking books, and in the hundreds of articles scattered over obscure periodicals and websites?

The difficulty is compounded by the lack of agreement among Rethinkers over all sorts of details. We are all of the opinion that HIV has never been shown to be the sole, necessary and sufficient cause of AIDS, but beyond that we differ widely; not only over substantive issues but also over how best to proceed in trying to bring regard for the facts into the public arena. In established disciplines, one can read authoritative overviews of manageable size; concerning HIV/AIDS Rethinking, without having read EVERYTHING one cannot be sure that something of importance has not been missed.

Amid these hindrances, it makes sense to look at where Rethinking has been, and we’re fortunate that John Lauritsen accepted the invitation to talk about that at RA2009. He has now posted his initial draft, which was far too long for the 25 minutes he was allotted at the conference, and he invites comments and suggestions for additions or corrections. I enjoyed his talk immensely, and gained even more from reading his longer discussion of  “The History of the Controversy”.

 

 

Other things being equal . . . .

“Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change” (New York Times, 20 November 2009; “Hacked e-mail is new fodder for climate dispute”, by Andrew C. Revkin).

Mutatis mutandis, the same story could be written about HIV/AIDS:

“The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate HIV/AIDS researchers, include discussions of scientific data and whether it should be released, exchanges about how best to combat the arguments of skeptics, and casual comments — in some cases derisive — about specific people known for their skeptical views. . . . In one e-mail exchange, a scientist writes of using a statistical ‘trick’ (and a computer model) in a chart illustrating a recent sharp warming trend increase in HIV/AIDS. In another, a scientist refers to climate HIV/AIDS skeptics as “idiots.” . . .
Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp and worried that any stray comment or data glitch could be turned against them. The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming HIV as cause of AIDS is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument. However, the documents will undoubtedly raise questions about the quality of research on some specific questions and the actions of some scientists. In several e-mail exchanges, Kevin Trenberth, a climatologist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, (any of Fauci, Gallo, etc.) and other scientists discuss gaps in understanding of recent variations in temperature failures of vaccine trails, increasing death rate from side effects of HAART, and no sign of heterosexual HIV/AIDS epidemics outside Africa. Skeptic Web sites pointed out one line in particular: “The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming findings that viral load, CD4 counts, and clinical progression are not correlated with one another . . . and it is a travesty that we can’t,”  . . . . The revelations are bound to inflame the public debate . . . .
Dr. Trenberth (you choose) said Friday that he was appalled at the release of the e-mail messages. But he added that he thought the revelations might backfire against climate HIV/AIDS skeptics. He said that he thought that the messages showed “the integrity of scientists.” Still, some of the comments might lend themselves to being interpreted as sinister. In a 1999 e-mail exchange about charts showing climate HIV/AIDS patterns over the last two millenniums, Phil Jones (you choose), a longtime climate HIV/AIDS researcher . . . said he had used a ‘trick’ . . . to ‘hide the decline’ in temperatures HIV and AIDS numbers. . . . Dr. Mann (you choose) . . . said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word ‘trick’ to refer to a good way to solve a problem, ‘and not something secret.’ . . . .
But several scientists whose names appear in the e-mail messages said they merely revealed that scientists were human, and did nothing to undercut the body of HIV/AIDS research on global warming.”
[Yes, it does. Since humans can make mistakes, and since scientists are now acknowledged to be human, therefore scientists can make mistakes and claims made by scientists may be wrong --- especially when they have conspired for a decade or two or three to suppress data that contradicts the theory they have been peddling.]

“At first, said Dr. Michaels, the climatologist who has faulted some of the science of the global warming consensus, his instinct was to ignore the correspondence as ‘just the way scientists talk.’
But . . . after reading more deeply, he felt that some exchanges reflected an effort to block the release of data for independent review. He said some messages mused about discrediting him by challenging the veracity of his doctoral dissertation at the University of Wisconsin by claiming he knew his research was wrong. ‘This shows these are people (John P. Moore, Mark Wainberg, et al.) willing to bend rules and go after other people’s reputations in very serious ways,’ he said.”

“Spencer R. Weart, a physicist and historian who is charting the course of research on global warming, said the hacked material would serve as ‘great material for historians.’”
So will the files of Peter Duesberg, John Lauritsen, Neville Hodgkinson, Joan Shenton, Gordon Stewart, and the many other courageous fighters for the integrity of HIV/AIDS research.

RA2009 PowerPoint presentations posted

Many of the talks presented at the conference are now available as PowerPoints at the conference website.