WHO SAYS that WE’VE BEEN VERY WRONG about HIV and AIDS? (Clue: WHO = World Health Organization)

“A 25-year health campaign was misplaced. . . . there will be no generalised epidemic of AIDS in the heterosexual population outside Africa. . . . outside sub-Saharan Africa [the threat of AIDS] . . . was confined to high-risk groups including men who have sex with men, injecting drug users, and sex workers and their clients.

… the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared. . .

Ten years ago a lot of people were saying there would be a generalised epidemic in Asia . . . That doesn’t look likely. . . .

In 2006, the Global Fund for HIV, Malaria and Tuberculosis . . . warned that Russia was on the cusp of a catastrophe. . . . it is unlikely there will be extensive heterosexual spread in Russia. . . .

the factors driving HIV [are] still not fully understood. . . .

In the US , the rate of infection among men in Washington DC is well over 100 times higher than in North Dakota, the region with the lowest rate. . . . How do you explain such differences?”

No, these are not statements and questions from “deniers”, “dissidents”, “denialists”, rethinkers, or other outsiders. They are from Dr. Kevin De Cock, head of the World Health Organization’s department of HIV/AIDS (Jeremy Laurance, “Threat of world Aids pandemic among heterosexuals is over, report admits”, Independent.co.uk, 8 June 2008 [’ve changed the British usage, “aids”, to “AIDS” throughout]).

Not only does De Cock hold that authoritative position at WHO, he has been in the forefront of HIV/AIDS research from the very beginning. Indeed, he is at the forefront of those who are demonstrably culpable for promulgating a notion that underpins the whole HIV/AIDS house of cards, namely, the notion of a “virus out of Africa” which was created on the basis of zero evidence as well as high implausibility.

As the Chirimuutas* pointed out long ago, the conceit that 1980s outbreaks in a few American cities stemmed from a virus brought back to the United States by tourists ignores the fact that Africans had been transported to the United States long before that; that people from many parts of Africa had been visiting and residing in the United States for many decades; that the back-and-forth people traffic between Africa and colonial European powers had been far more intense, and had gone on far longer, than between Africa and America, so that an imported-from-Africa virus would have done its first damage in Europe, not America. And, after all, none of the early 1980s AIDS victims had ever been to Africa.

Furthermore, De Cock’s explanation, for why AIDS was not noticed or identified in Africa before it traveled to the United States, ignorantly indicted African medicine for incompetence in diagnosis of even such endemic diseases as malaria. De Cock also suggested that Africans had adjusted physiologically in some way to cope with the disease better than Americans could, which hardly explains why AIDS supposedly devastates Africa but not America or Europe.

The book by the Chirimuutas, chock-full of citations of peer-reviewed literature, is a stunning exposé of how early Belgian researchers in Africa—Peter Piot as well as De Cock—laid the groundwork for decades of misguided research through their thoroughly incompetent activities. More recent articles make many of the same points: “Is AIDS African?” (1997); “AIDS and Africa: A case of racism vs. science? AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean 1997”

Piot has been Executive Director of UNAIDS since its creation in 1995 as well as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations. Given his and De Cock’s role in creating it, perhaps HIV/AIDS should be known as “the Belgian disease”.

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Reality has now intruded so forcibly that De Cock can no longer avoid the fact that AIDS epidemics have not happened, those epidemics that he and his cohorts prophesied with such overweening confidence for more than two decades. But— cognitive dissonance once again!—he also cannot recognize that this fact undermines the whole HIV/AIDS scenario. De Cock describes as “four malignant arguments” some certifiable truths cited by critics: that official data have inflated all HIV/AIDS estimates and that HIV/AIDS has diverted funds from such obvious needs as malaria prevention and the provision of clean water and food, building infrastructure, and sensible public-health programs; even then, plain reality forces De Cock to admit that there are “elements of truth” in these criticisms.

Nevertheless—recall what cognitive dissonance involves, HIV/AIDS ILLUSTRATES COGNITIVE DISSONANCE, 29 April 2008 —De Cock still asserts that AIDS “remains the leading infectious disease challenge in public health” , even as he knows that it is no threat outside Africa and in the face of at least equally authoritative assertions by others that malaria and malnutrition kill far more Africans than “AIDS” does (A SMALL HITCH IN THE BANDWAGON?, 29 May 2008; WHY UNAIDS SHOULD BE DISBANDED, 31 May 2008 ).

De Cock’s muddled state of mind manages only to recognize that something doesn’t fit:

“The biggest puzzle was what had caused heterosexual spread of the disease in sub-Saharan Africa—with infection rates exceeding 40 per cent of adults in Swaziland, the worst-affected country—but nowhere else. . . . Sexual behaviour . . . doesn’t seem to explain [all] the differences between populations.”

Yet having acknowledged that sexual behavior isn’t the explanation, he resorts to sexual behavior as an explanation:

“more commercial sex workers, more ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases, a young population and concurrent sexual partnerships. . . . Even if the total number of sexual partners [in sub-Saharan Africa] is no greater than in the UK, there seems to be a higher frequency of overlapping sexual partnerships”.

Regarding that shibboleth about multiple concurrent overlapping partnerships, not only is there no evidence for such multiple overlapping concurrencies, there is strong evidence against the assumption; see earlier posts, in particular RACE and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: STEREOTYPE vs. FACT, 27 May 2008.

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The epidemiology is so clear that even such insiders as James Chin++ and Kevin De Cock can’t make it jibe with HIV/AIDS theory. And since— remember, cognitive dissonance—they cannot admit to themselves that they have been utterly and entirely wrong, so too can they not find a way to admit publicly that they have been utterly and entirely wrong. But their attempts to cope with the evidence inevitably become more and more absurd, and the whole enterprise begins to crumble, as insiders from specialties that compete with them for funds begin to raise their voices (A SMALL HITCH IN THE BANDWAGON?, 29 May 2008; WHY UNAIDS SHOULD BE DISBANDED, 31 May 2008 ).

* Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta, AIDS, Africa and Racism, Free Association Books (London), 1989 (2nd ed., revised). Rosalind Harrison (Chirimuuta) is a diplomate in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, specialized in ophthalmology, and presently a consultant with the British Health Service

++ Re Chin, see for example B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS, 4 March 2008

Acknowledgment: Many thanks to the several people who alerted me to the article in the Independent.

ANTHONY FAUCI EXPLAINS RACIAL DISPARITIES IN “HIV/AIDS”

(Several references below — euphemism, minority, macacas — are more fully explained in the earlier post, HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST, 19 May 2008 ).

Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health, has appeared often on the public-radio Diane Rehm show. For example, on 27 November 2007, he was introduced thus (“HIV/AIDS Worldwide”, transcript by Soft Scribe LLC):

“Racial and ethnic minorities continue to be disproportionately affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic here in the U.S. New figures show that African Americans are among those who are most at risk. Here in Washington, D.C. 1 in 20 residents is thought to have the HIV, and 1 in 50 to have AIDS.”

Once again (see HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST), that euphemism “minority”. Already the following sentence shows that actually meant is black. (In Washington, DC, blacks comprise a majority of the population.)

Fauci said that “in the District, about 37 - 39 percent [of ‘HIV-positive’ results from] heterosexual transmission, 20-some-odd percent men who have sex with men, and about 14 percent injection-drug users. . . . [This] resembles in some respects . . . what we see in third world countries. And the confluence of an inner city area with poverty, lack of healthcare access, injection-drug use which keeps a core of infection in the city, and then that’s spread heterosexually and then from there you get secondary and tertiary heterosexual spread” [emphasis added].

Once more: “complex social mixing patterns” (see HIV/AIDS IS INESCAPABLY RACIST) are postulated in these “minority” communities whose conditions happen to resemble those in Third-World countries (euphemism for sub-Saharan Africa).

Another remark by Fauci illustrates how content the mainstream is to assert as fact what cannot be known: “there is a disproportional amount of transmission from people who do not know that they are infected”.
STOP.
THINK.
They don’t know they’re infected. No one told them. Why not? Because no one else knows, either.
What Fauci asserts could only be assumed, not actually known; and it is also and first assumed that there’s a short period of undetectable infection but high infectivity just after being infected; because that’s the only way to cope with the undeniable fact that the average probability of apparently transmitting the “HIV-positive” condition is only about 1 per 1000 acts of unprotected intercourse, far too low a probability to sustain any sort of epidemic (14 May 2008, SEX, RACE, and “HIV”).

(”Don’t know they’re infected” reminded me of the study that found “Nine in 10 students who experienced hazing . . . did not think they had been hazed”; Chronicle of Higher Education 21 March 2008, p. A21)

Fauci again: “disproportional amount, more of poverty, lack of access to medical care, a lack of access to counseling for prevention, proximity in locations in inner city for example where there are pockets of injection-drug use . . . . among blacks … being gay and having gay sex is not as accepted … as it is in the society as a whole”.

Again: it’s so but it ain’t “their” fault.

More Fauci: “a misconception that because women get infected in this community that they are leading promiscuous lives. That’s certainly not the case in general. Very often it’s someone who is being monogamous with someone who happens to be infected”.

“Very often”: How often must a monogamous woman have sex with an infected partner to become positive, when the probability is about 1 per 1000? James Chin, epidemiologist, says the contrary. To produce the alleged levels and rapidity of spread, 20-40% of people must be engaged in multiple concurrent relationships with frequent partner change (4 March 2008, B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS). Doesn’t that qualify as quite promiscuous?

Over and again, Fauci pretends to believe that it’s not their fault, it’s their culture — “very often women want their male sexual partner to use a condom, but they won’t do it. And in certain cultures it is not easy for a woman to assert herself and say, ‘No, this is the way it’s going to be. We don’t have a condom, I’m not having sex.’ They can wind up getting abused as it were. Those are the kind of cultural barriers that we need to overcome” (emphasis added).
(1) How does Fauci know that this happens “very often”?
(2) Again it’s those macaca cultures, which are apparently ensconced just as powerfully in Washington, DC, among people whose ancestors left Africa many generations ago, as among those still now living in Africa.

Fauci: “68 percent of the infections in the world occur in southern Africa. . . . it has to do with cultural and other factors. Poverty, dissolution of the family units, post-colonization where people would leave the family and go and work in mines, go on the trucking routes, get exposed to commercial sex workers, bring the infection back to their family, infect their wives, lack of prevention modalities. . . . some very good studies about sexual activities that in certain cultures, including those in Southern Africa there is what’s called overlapping concurrent multiple sexual partners. If you have a society that has sequential sexual partners, it is much less likely to have explosive transmission than when you have people who have simultaneously multiple sexual partners that you share.
…
there is a degree of disenfranchisement . . . There is discrimination . . . communities in which there is crime, there is murder . . . .”

Once more, it’s those other cultures that do sex differently than “we” do; and those cultures in Washington DC and in southern Africa share the common factor of people with dark-hued skin. As documented in my book, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, Native Americans suffer even more than African Americans from violent crime and disenfranchisement and abuse of alcohol and drugs, but their rate of testing “HIV-positive” is far below that of blacks and not much higher than among whites. It’s the biological race that matters, not the “minority” “culture”.

Note once again the asserting, as fact, matters that are speculative. “Overlapping concurrent multiple sexual partners” have been postulated to explain spread of “HIV” among heterosexuals. I await citation of those “very good studies” that actually found that sort of situation which — recall James Chin’s calculations (14 May 2008, SEX, RACE, and “HIV”) — require 20-40% of adults to be behaving in this fashion if “HIV” is to spread. Such a rate of promiscuity would be evident to the most casual observer, yet it has not been reported by any observers.

Fauci virtually confessed his belief that race and cultural determinants of sexual behavior go together:

FAUCI: it’s very difficult when you have societies whose cultural approach to life has been going on for centuries that you are going to all of a sudden change sexual practices.
REHM: But I don’t think we ought to single out sub-Saharan Africa.
FAUCI: No, not, of course not, anywhere.
REHM: I mean, here in Washington –
REHM: — that kind of promiscuous sex –
FAUCI: Right, and –
REHM: — is going on.
FAUCI: Right, exactly.

*************

Anthony Fauci and many others, including those who speak for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appear willing to ascribe racial disparities in “HIV-positive” to “cultural” factors, even though those disparities transcend all social milieus and all geographic boundaries and all age groups and are seen in both sexes. Would they also ascribe to “cultural” factors characteristic of Caucasians that whites always test “HIV-positive” anywhere from 50% to 300% more often than Asians? Could it be that Caucasians are inherently more given to “multiple concurrent sexual relationships” than Asians are?

RACE and SEXUAL BEHAVIOR: STEREOTYPE vs. FACT

Racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” are explained — by proponents of HIV/AIDS theory, that is — as stemming from the harmful effects of racial discrimination, which mire the discriminated-against in circumstances rife with drug abuse and sexual promiscuity. That runs counter to a goodly body of actual evidence that undercuts this type of explanation; and it also draws on stereotypes not readily distinguishable from racist beliefs (see 19 May, HIV/AIDS THEORY IS INESCAPABLY RACIST).

Some of the evidence confounding the stereotypes is cited in my book (p. 77):

“As a matter of actual fact, research in the context of HIV/AIDS has not revealed any racial differences in sexual behavior. Among drug users, no significant differences in behavior by race were found as to numbers of sexual partners, frequency of intercourse, numbers of sexual partners who were IDUs, numbers of non-IDU sexual partners, prostitution, or intercourse with people then or later diagnosed with AIDS (Friedman et al. 1987). Samuel and Winkelstein (1987) found no significant racial differences in behavior among gay men in San Francisco, and they concluded that the black-to-white ratio of . . . [“HIV-positive”] could not be explained by differences in major risk factors. The San Francisco Department of Health (1986) found no differences between races as to anal intercourse . . . . Bausell et al. (1986) found white Americans less likely than black Americans to take protective measures during sex. Historical data from Zimbabwe records a higher incidence of venereal disease among the white South Africa Police and the British Armed Services than among the Native Police or among Africans in general (McCulloch 1999, 205, 207). Contemporaneous surveys have found that levels of sexual activity in general populations in Africa are comparable to those in North America and Europe (Brewer et al. 2003; Gisselquist 2002).”

It has become fashionable to assert that black women in the United States are at particular risk because of black men “on the down low” (indulging secretly in male-with-male sex), becoming “HIV-positive”, then transmitting that to their female partners. But here again, the evidence doesn’t sustain the speculation:

“The lifestyle referenced by the term the DL is neither new nor limited to blacks, and sufficient data linking it to HIV/AIDS disparities currently are lacking. Common perceptions about the DL reflect social constructions of black sexuality as generally excessive, deviant, diseased, and predatory. [“social construction” means stemming from human interpretation rather than from the objective reality] Research targeting black sexual behavior that ignores these constructions may unwittingly reinforce them” (Ford et al., Ann Epidemiol 17 [2007] 209-16).

An illustration of such unwitting reinforcement is one of the CDC’s statements:
“The phenomenon of men on the down low has gained much attention in recent years; however, there are no data to confirm or refute publicized accounts of HIV risk behavior associated with these men. What is clear is that women, men, and children of minority races and ethnicities are disproportionately affected by HIV and AIDS” (emphasis added; unchanged since at least March 2006; www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/aa/resources/qa/downlow.htm, accessed 11 May 2008).

Another common and politically correct gambit (attempting to explain away that blacks always test “HIV-positive” more often than others) seizes on the high incarceration rate of young black men, particularly from inner-city regions, and combines that with the shibboleth that prisons are a hotbed of “HIV” transmission (for example, Johnson & Rafael 2006). But once again the speculation goes contrary to fact, because “actual observations in prisons have failed to reveal transmission of HIV there (Brown 2006; Horsburgh et al. 1990; Kelley et al. 1986)” (p. 79 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory).

In South Africa, blood from black donors was, for some time, being destroyed as “unsafe” because it tested “HIV-positive” so much more often than blood from people of mixed race or from South-East Indians or whites (p. 75 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory). However, since testing was available for the blood, this blanket rule surely owed something to underlying and pre-existing racist beliefs. Racist preconceptions in the 1980s among HIV/AIDS workers in Africa — some of whom are still prominent in HIV/AIDS research nowadays — were described, long ago and in detail, by the Chirimuutas (AIDS, Africa and Racism, Free Association Books, London [UK] 1987/89). Konotey-Ahulu, a distinguished Ghanaian physician and medical researcher, also exposed the lack of evidence for an African origin of HIV/AIDS in a book (What is AIDS? 1989/96, ISBN 0-9515442-3-3) I described in a review as “flavored by a traditional attitude toward what constitutes acceptable behavior” and displaying “what used to be called good breeding and proper upbringing”, exploding by personal example all sorts of notions about “those Africans” (Journal of Scientific Exploration 21 [2007] 206-9).

That blacks always test “HIV-positive” more often than others simply cannot be explained by differences in behavior:

“AIDS researchers don’t have a solid explanation for why black women in America have such a shockingly high prevalence of HIV infection. . . . injection drug use, a particularly effective way to spread HIV, is actually lower in black women than in white women” — Jon Cohen, “A silent epidemic”, 27 October 2004, www.slate.com/id/2108724/.

“Black young adults . . . are at high risk even when their behaviors are normative. Factors other than individual risk behaviors and covariates appear to account for racial disparities” — Halfors et al., Sexual and drug behavior patterns and HIV and STD racial disparities: the need for new directions, Am J Public Health 97 [2007] 125-32.

“HIV-positive gay men are more likely than HIV-positive black African heterosexual men and women to engage in sexual behaviour that presents a risk of HIV transmission. . . . There were no significant differences between white gay men and those from other ethnic background in terms of sexual behaviour” (Rod Dawson, 5 January 2007. AIDSmap news, summarizing Elford et al., “Sexual behaviour of people living with HIV in London: implications for HIV transmission”, AIDS 21 [suppl. 1, 2007] S63-70).

“According to Robert Janssen, director of CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention, blacks do not engage in riskier sexual behavior compared with other groups, but the population’s HIV/AIDS infection rates mean that blacks who have sex with other blacks are more likely to get HIV than people in other ethnic groups” — (emphasis added; Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 9 March 2007).
Perhaps Janssen has never heard of the chicken-&-egg conundrum? How did the infection rate in the black community become higher than in others in the first place, given that the first affected groups in the USA were predominantly white gay men?

That ill-founded grasping-at-straws argument is not unique with Janssen:
“racial disparities in seroprevalence were . . . not attributable to disparities in risk factors such as STD, bisexuality, or acceptance of HIV testing. This finding suggests that the observed differences may reflect racial differences in the background seroprevalences” — Torian et al., Sex Transm Dis. 29 [2002] 73-8.
I suppose one must sympathize with people trying desperately to explain the unexplainable. This “explanation” is a tautology: blacks test “HIV-positive” more often than others because blacks already test “HIV-positive” more often than others.

“Paradoxically, potentially risky sex and drug-using behaviors were generally reported most frequently by whites and least frequently by blacks. . . . Understanding racial/ethnic disparities in HIV risk requires information beyond the traditional risk behavior and partnership type distinctions” — Harawa et al., “Associations of race/ethnicity with HIV prevalence and HIV-related behaviors among young men who have sex with men in 7 urban centers in the United States”, JAIDS 35 [2004] 526-36.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found, in one study, that “Black gay and bisexual men . . . [were] more likely to engage in safe-sex practices than their white counterparts. . . . ‘Across all studies, there were no overall differences [by race] in reported unprotected receptive sex or any unprotected anal intercourse . . . among young MSM — those ages 15 to 29 — African-Americans were one third less likely than whites to report in engaging in unprotected anal intercourse’ . . . . Black gay or bisexual men were also ‘36 percent less likely than whites to report having as many sex partners as white MSM’ . . . . Blacks in the study were also less likely to use recreational drugs, such as methamphetamine or cocaine, compared to whites” (“One-third of HIV-infected gay men have unsafe sex: CDC”, HealthDay News, 3 December 2007).

*******************

Black people always test “HIV-positive” more often than others.

Black people do not differ greatly from others in their sexual behavior. Where they do, it is through behaving somewhat more responsibly than white people.

The racial disparities in testing “HIV-positive” cannot be explained by differential behavior: blacks always test positive much more often, but their sexual behavior does not constitute a corresponding risk.

THEREFORE: Testing “HIV-positive” must indicate something other than a sexually acquired condition. Testing “HIV-positive” does not mark infection by a sexually transmitted agent. Rather, testing “HIV-positive” is a very non-specific indication of some sort of physiological stress; see, for example, REGULAR AS CLOCKWORK: HIV, THE TRULY UNIQUE “INFECTION”, 1 April 2008; “HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS, 19 March 2008; UNRAVELING HIV/AIDS, 8 March 2008; HIV DEMOGRAPHICS FURTHER CONFIRMED: HIV IS NOT SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED, 26 February 2008; TWINS ATTRACT THEIR MOTHER’S HIV, 12 January 2008; HOW TO TEST THEORIES (HIV/AIDS THEORY FLUNKS), 7 January 2008.

STOPPING THE HIV/AIDS BANDWAGON—-Part II

My earlier post about this [HOW CAN THE HIV/AIDS BANDWAGON BE STOPPED?, 27 January 2008] brought a gratifying number of useful comments.

There seems to be general agreement that the mainstream scientific community will not spontaneously or willingly change its view on HIV/AIDS, even as the evidence against it continues to mount and anomalies and incongruities accumulate. That’s the lesson of some two decades. This is then a natural starting point for considering strategies that might help toward producing change.

There’s also general agreement over the somewhat related point that it’s not just a matter of what the science does or does not prove, because such a vast array of people and organizations apart from the scientific community benefit in some manner from the present situation. Not that they are willfully selfish or that they deliberately ignore the evidence, it’s a matter of cognitive dissonance, a psychological phenomenon that makes it difficult if not impossible to grasp anything that runs too severely against deeply ingrained beliefs. People came to benefit from the HIV/AIDS industry because they believed HIV/AIDS theory, and they believe they are doing worthwhile things.

Scientists are no less subject to cognitive dissonance than everyone else, and that serves as a partial explanation for the fact that unorthodox claims in science are routinely resisted (see, for example, Hook, “Prematurity in Scientific Discovery”).

For one example among innumerable available ones: Max Planck placed the foundational piece of what became quantum theory, but—like most great innovators—he was initially opposed vigorously by the pooh-bahs of the Establishment. In his memoirs, he made the remark often cited by dissidents in all fields but apparently not known to run-of-the-mill journeymen scientists: “New truths do not triumph by convincing their opponents, they win out because a new generation replaces the old one” (a free translation from German); which has also been paraphrased as “Science progresses funeral by funeral”.

At any rate, it seems evident enough that change as to HIV/AIDS will only come as the result of pressure from social or political forces external to the medical-scientific establishment. Those forces must be sufficiently influential to stand against the colossal combination of interests vested in HIV/AIDS. They must be able to force a public discussion of all the evidence in a way that allows full airing of the variety of interpretations. Where might dissidents turn to enlist such forces?

Obvious places to look are among those who are being most hurt by what’s presently happening. That means anyone who tests HIV-positive or may at some future time test positive. Here everyone is truly at risk, for anyone might be unfortunate enough to have a test administered just after they’ve been vaccinated against flu, or when pregnant, or when they are more likely to test HIV-positive for some other of the many possible reasons. And if someone tests HIV-positive, they will at once be emotionally shattered, and thereupon almost certainly debilitated physically by antiretroviral drugs.

Though everyone is truly at risk in this way, the danger is greater for some people than for others. As a class, gay men are particularly at risk because they tend to be tested more often than most, and they tend to test HIV-positive more often than most; as do drug abusers; as do TB patients; as do hemophiliacs; as do African Americans. Might any of those groups offer the possibility of forceful organized action against HIV/AIDS dogma?

The trouble is, these high-risk people understand no better than the general public what the risk is. They think it’s “HIV/AIDS”. Only after experiencing what goes with testing positive do some people learn that HIV = AIDS is a dreadful illusion that has caused them tangible harm. Some learn it from personal experience of series of inconsistent tests; some learn it through being unable to tolerate the antiretroviral drugs and trying to live without them and finding that to work; some learn it through losing friends and loved ones. But few people even in the highest-risk groups come to question HIV/AIDS dogma before it affects them directly in some way.

So: The endeavor to enlist the people who would most benefit from toppling the paradigm, who are most at risk under current circumstances, presents the same problem as that of convincing the media and the general public; they have to be made to understand what’s wrong with HIV = AIDS before they have a really direct incentive to question the orthodox view. This starts to look like a circular discussion. Anyone who voices the dissident view is automatically dismissed as either crazy or an old fool (both terms recently applied to me by a medical scientist asked by a friend to comment on my book). What’s needed is an emotional, psychological, human-interest hook so powerful that it is at least competitive with the belief that’s been ingrained in almost everyone by the constant media refrain of “HIV, the virus that cause AIDS”. The emotional hook must also be strong enough to shake the general belief that official statements about medicine and science can be relied on.

Are there candidates for such psychologically powerful hooks?

I can think of two: for gay men, the issue of homophobia; for African Americans, the matter of racism.

I can suggest two other possible avenues for change that don’t entail such strong emotional charge but enlist forces in society that have the requisite power:

1. Legal actions. Maybe HIV/AIDS “science” could be forced to defend itself in a court of law where dissident arguments could be aired. Perhaps it might be possible to sue a laboratory that carries out HIV tests, since it presumably certifies—against the manufacturers’ test-kit disclaimers—that those tests detect infection by HIV; or perhaps in some case where an HIV-positive person is charged with endangering sexual partners, a lawyer might find a way to have the scientific issues argued. The Parenzee case represents one such attempt, so far unsuccessful (”Can we learn from Parenzee?”).

2. Perhaps Congress could be persuaded to hold hearings about the utterly disproportionate amount of research funds directed towards HIV/AIDS in comparison to diseases that affect vastly more people, like heart disease, diabetes, cancer:

(data from http://www.fairfoundation.org/factslinks.htm)

Even once the scientific issues are raised publicly, however, there will still remain a matter over which dissidents must come to agree if there is to be truly coherent action: which part of the scientific story should be emphasized as decisive disproof of HIV/AIDS theory? While all dissidents agree that HIV has not been proven to be the cause of AIDS, there are differing views on just about everything else: Does HIV even exist? What caused AIDS? What causes AIDS now? What does a positive HIV-test signify? And more.

I’ve suggested (”Can we learn from Parenzee?“) that the best strategy will be to concentrate on the simplest point, the most readily proved one, the one most readily understandable by the largest range of people. Recent e-mail discussions indicate that the most appropriate point, and one generally acceptable among dissidents, might be the lack of validity of HIV tests for diagnosing infection by HIV. After all, the instructions accompanying test kits (aras.ab.ca/HIVTestInformation.zip at http://aras.ab.ca/test.html) acknowledge that they cannot be used to diagnose infection. Further to that, the data collected in my book show that HIV tests do not track an infectious agent

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

Healthy people are told to take drugs known to cause severe “side” effects that some find literally intolerable (see WHAT HIV DRUGS DO, 15 December; OFFICIAL GUIDELINES FOR HIV TREATMENT, 14 December; ANTIRETROVIRAL DRUGS: HISTORY AND RHETORIC, 12 December; BEST TREATMENT FOR HIV: THIS YEAR’S ADVICE, LAST YEAR’S, OR NEXT YEAR’S? , 10 December 2007).

These debilitating drugs are recommended by people who have vested financial and career interests in them through connections with drug companies–a clear case of conflicts of interest. This in itself should discredit, thoroughly and completely, everything in the Treatment Guidelines featured in those recent posts.

The Panel responsible for the December 2007 Guidelines had two co-chairs, both with financial connections to drug companies. Only 3 of the 24 Panel members disclaimed such a conflict of interest. More details about the connections of some HIV experts to drug companies can be found at http://www.shillfactor.net/.

Recall that the most important criterion for each recommendation is “expert opinion” (BEST TREATMENT…, 10 December). Perhaps the most basic fact about conflicts of interest is that they influence opinions.

The significance of conflicts of interest is widely ignored in contemporary affairs in the United States, and not only in science and medicine. Circumstances have become accepted as normal which, if occurring in other countries, would be easily recognized as utterly corrupt. Here’s a synopsis of Conflicts of Interest 101.

If I teach a class that has my daughter in it, no conscious effort on my part can ensure that she will be treated in exactly the same manner as the other students. Subconscious and unconscious emotions can influence my thoughts and actions in ways that I am unaware of and therefore cannot do anything about. No matter how consciously honorable and upright I may be, no matter how unfailingly rule-abiding and law-abiding and ethical in all my other interactions, there can be no guarantee that my daughter will not receive some degree of special treatment.

THE ONLY SAFEGUARD AGAINST THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCE
OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IS TO HAVE NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.
PERIOD.

Once upon a time, this was widely understood. That time was not even so long ago. When President Eisenhower nominated Charlie Wilson, the CEO of General Motors, as Secretary of Defense, Wilson was asked about a possible conflict of interest. His response was,

“What’s good for General Motors is good for the country,
and what’s good for the country is good for General Motors”.

The naive absurdity of that response was so widely appreciated at the time that it was featured in cartoons and comic strips and late-night comedy shows. Collections of quotations and infamous sayings still feature it. Check it out: just Google “What’s good for General Motors”.

Nowadays, the experts who draw up Treatment Guidelines, and the people who choose those experts to make up the Panel, are telling us implicitly that what’s good for the drug companies and for those who consult for them and get grants and presents from them is also good for the rest of us, for the people who will be using the drugs and for those who will be paying for the drugs.

At a conscious level, no doubt these are all ethical, well-intentioned, upright people who would never allow possible financial gain to sway their expert scientific judgment. But they are no more able to control their subconscious drives than I could control mine about my daughter in class.

In fact, to venture some amateur psychological speculation, the most consciously upright and ethical people are also those most likely to succumb to subconscious corruption, because they are least on guard against the possibility. Furthermore, human beings are protected against acknowledging to themselves their own misdeeds, through the phenomenon of compartmentalization: we can and do hold incompatible views simultaneously, and we manage to do things while imagining not only that we are not doing them but even that we never would do them:
Think Jimmy Swaggart and other sinners who preach against sin.
Think ex-Senator-to-be Larry Craig.
Recall the sublimely naïve response of David Baltimore when asked about a potential conflict of interest: “I think people are entitled to ask that of me. But I do think the statements and decisions I make come from the highest sense of integrity” (Chemical & Engineering News, 15 March 1982, 12).

Of course he thinks that. They all do. WE all do.
That’s why we have to be protected against ourselves, against doing for unconscious reasons what we would not wish to do. That’s why the only protection against undue influence is to have no conflicts of interest at all.

THE ONLY SAFEGUARD AGAINST THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCE
OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IS TO HAVE NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.
PERIOD.

 

Andrew Stark, in the book “Conflict of Interest in Public Life”, makes it very clear. There are three aspects of a conflict of interest:
1. The connections
2. The associated state of mind
3. Actions that may stem therefrom

For example:
1. My daughter is a student in the class I teach
2. My feelings about her and my attitudes toward grading
3. I assign a grade

Or:
1. X consults for a drug company
2. X’s judgments about the drug company’s products
3. X recommends wider use of the company’s product

Stark points out that there is no way of knowing or finding out, what my state of mind was when I awarded the grade, whether my love for my daughter influenced it one way or the other, favoring her or overcompensating against favoring her; and there is no way of knowing whether X’s attitude toward the drug company influenced the decision to recommend its product.

However, any number of studies have amply confirmed that on average, statistically, such situations do influence the resulting actions: those experts with conflicts of interest are more likely than others to judge favorably toward approval of a drug. For instance, when the question was, should Vioxx and the other drugs in this class, Bextra and Celebrex, be allowed to remain on the market, this is how the experts voted:

Vioxx: Full panel: 17 yes, 15 no. Panel without those with conflicts of interest: 8 yes, 14 no.
Bextra: Full panel: 17 yes, 13 no. Panel without those with conflicts of interest: 8 yes, 12 no.
Celebrex: Full panel: 31 yes, 1 no. Panel without those with conflicts of interest: 21 yes, 1 no.
(Goozner, AARP Bulletin, May 2006, p. 10, citing New York Times, 25 February 2005).

Industry sponsorship made studies 4 to 8 times more likely to be favorable to beverage companies (Chronicle of Higher Education, 19 January 2007, A27-8). “Psychiatric drugs fare favorably when companies pay for studies” (Elias, USA Today, 25 May 2006, 1A). Those are just a few of the innumerable such social-science studies all confirming what plain common sense already knows. Doctors with financial stakes in analytical labs prescribe more lab tests than those without such interests. And so on and on.

THE ONLY SAFEGUARD AGAINST THE POSSIBLE INFLUENCE
OF CONFLICTS OF INTEREST IS TO HAVE NO CONFLICTS OF INTEREST.
PERIOD.

 

Many individuals, institutions, and organizations simply don’t understand that when they blather about “apparent” or “negligible” or “potential” conflicts of interest. There are no such things. A conflict of interest is Stark’s aspect 1: the connections.
Either there is a connection or there isn’t.
PERIOD.
“Apparent”, “negligible”, “potential” are intended to address stage 3, to express doubt as to whether the connections will actually exert an influence. As Stark points out, that cannot be known. What is known, beyond any doubt, is that conflicts of interest exert a statistical influence. No matter how hard human beings may try, they cannot know or control or counteract their subconscious or unconscious motives.

To recuse people who have conflicts of interest, to exclude them from particular activities, is not to accuse them of being consciously swayed by those conflicts of interest, still less is it to accuse them of being consciously self-serving evil-doers. Recusing people with conflicts of interest is to their own benefit, to protect them from doing what they would not consciously wish to do. Recusing people with conflicts of interest is simply an acknowledgment of the fact that paths to Hell are paved with good intentions.

* * * * * *

Some of the above I’ve taken from my seminar “Ethics in science” posted at www.chem.vt.edu/chem-ed/ethics/hbauer/hbauer-ref.html and being reprinted in “Against the Tide: A Critical Review by Scientists of how Physics and Astronomy get done”, M. López-Corredoira & C. Castro (Eds.), 2007 (in press).

While the titles of some of the following books may suggest sensationalist muckraking, that is far from the case. All the authors are respectable mainstream figures: senior tenured faculty, a couple of former editors of top medical journals, a former university president, and several respected journalists. All the books are written in matter-of-fact prose with proper citation of sources.

For corruption at the National Institutes of Health through conflicts of interest, see the series of articles by David Willman in the Los Angeles Times, 7 December 2003, pp. A1, A32-35, and 22 December 2004.

For further reading on the corruption of science and medicine in general, start with Daniel Greenberg (2001) “Science, Money and Politics: Political Triumph and Ethical Erosion” and Sheldon Krimsky (2003) “Science in the Private Interest”.

For the corrupting influence of Big Pharma, see John Abramson (2004) “Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine”; Marcia Angell (2004) “The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do about It”; Jerry Avorn (2004) “Powerful Medicines: The Benefits, Risks, and Costs of Prescription Drugs”; Merrill Goozner (2004) “The $800 Million Pill: The Truth behind the Cost of New Drugs”; Jerome Kassirer (2004) “On The Take: How Medicine’s Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health”.

For the commercial corruption of contemporary academe, see for example Derek Bok (2003) “Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education” and Jennifer Washburn (2005) “University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of American Higher Education”.