EVERYONE’S AT RISK AND NEEDS MORE FUNDS — ESPECIALLY **OUR** GROUP

An unhappy corollary to affirmative action and political correctness has been the occasional competition among self-appointed spokespeople and activists to bring to their particular minority group the maximum of attention and to their own organization the associated funds.

The big story about HIV/AIDS and Native Americans is that they are not affected so disproportionately by HIV/AIDS as are African Americans or Hispanics. National data on HIV tests find positive tests among Native Americans at rates that are not much above those of white Americans, definitely lower than among Hispanics, and far lower than among African Americans:

“Overall, American Indians and Alaska Natives in 2004 had a diagnosis rate of 11.1 per every 100,000 people. That compares to a rate of 76.3 among blacks, 29.5 among Hispanics and nine among whites” (“Conference focuses on Natives and HIV/AIDS”, AP 4/30/2006, Mary Pemberton)

“In 2005, data from the CDC showed that the rate of HIV and AIDS diagnosis for American Indians and Alaska Natives was 10.6 per 100,000, compared with 72.8 for blacks, 28.5 for Hispanics, 9.0 for whites and 7.6 for Asians and Pacific Islanders” (“Navajos continue to battle AIDS and HIV despite cultural taboos”, AP 6/11/07, Felicia Fonseca) .

The relative rates, compared to white Americans as 1, are:

blacks 8.1-8.5; Hispanics 3.2-3.3, Native Americans 1.18-1.23

When it comes to actually dying from “HIV disease”, the relative rates again place Native Americans well below blacks and Hispanics (see “HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS, 19 March 2008). For males, the relative death-rates from HIV disease in 2002-4 were (again relative to white Americans as 1)

blacks 7.4, Hispanics 1.9, Native Americans 0.84, Asians 0.3

and for females the relative rates were

blacks 24, Hispanics 3.4, Native Americans 1.4, Asians 0.22

Those numbers are the basis for what has acknowledged even by the mainstream and the media: that in the United States, HIV/AIDS has become a disease of the black community, that in other racial groups it is only such high-risk individuals as drug abusers or promiscuous gay men who need to be concerned about HIV/AIDS. Nevertheless, self-serving activists make a fuss about the situation of Native Americans, even though they are affected at rates comparable to those among white Americans:

“On March 20, 2008, the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) honors the second annual National Native (American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian) HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Native organizations together selected the date and each year the first official day of spring will symbolize a new era of awareness, prevention and treatment around HIV/AIDS in Indian Country. . . . ‘When we think of the impact HIV/AIDS has on communities of color in the U.S., we must broaden our scope to include Native and Indigenous communities. Per capita, American Indians/Alaska Natives have the third highest rates of HIV/AIDS, behind African Americans and Hispanics,’ says Ravinia Hayes-Cozier, NMAC’s Director of Government Relations and Public Policy. ‘We must ramp up our efforts to combat stigma, provide culturally competent prevention strategies, better access to care. This is a real crisis, and it deserves our attention’.

Yes, it’s true that Native Americans “have the third highest rates of HIV/AIDS, behind African Americans and Hispanics”—but “behind” so far that it doesn’t deserve mention in the same breath.

HIDING CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

For years now, universities have been a little hesitant to accept research grants or contracts from tobacco companies. Faculty too have been queasy about it—except, of course, those faculty who would be taking advantage of the money. Entrepreneurs at Weill Cornell Medical College came up with a nice scheme for masking the source of funds and hiding the associated conflict of interest:

Set up a foundation.
The foundation receives the funds.
The foundation makes research grants.

Outside academe, this is known as money laundering. Inside academe, it is a way of not letting principles interfere with getting things done, as it was once put it in my presence by an academic vice-president who later became one of the longest-serving and most highly paid university presidents (p. 167, To Rise Above Principle: The Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean).

At Weill Cornell Medical College, “Dr. Claudia Henschke . . . jolted the cancer world with a study saying that 80 percent of lung cancer deaths could be prevented through widespread use of CT scans” (Cigarette company paid for lung cancer study, by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, 26 March 2008).

The work had been published in the New England Journal of Medicine and credited support from the Foundation for Lung Cancer: Early Detection, Prevention & Treatment—whose funds came almost entirely from “the Liggett Group, maker of Liggett Select, Eve, Grand Prix, Quest and Pyramid cigarette brands”. President of the Foundation was Dr. Henschke, her assistant was Treasurer, and directors included the Dean of Weil Cornell (Antonio Gotto) and a member of the College’s Board of Overseers. Cozy.

“Dr. Gotto said . . . that Dr. Henschke, Dr. Yankelevitz and another colleague set up the foundation initially without the university’s approval . . . . He and Mr. Mahon joined the board some weeks or months after its creation to ensure that the Vector grants were handled correctly . . . . We think we behaved honorably. There was no attempt to set up a foundation to hide tobacco money.”

“The Cancer Letter . . . recently reported that Drs. Henschke and Yankelevitz had failed to disclose in articles and educational lectures a patent and 10 pending patents related to CT screening and follow-up. . . .Jonathan Weil, a Weill Cornell spokesman, said Dr. Henschke did not disclose the patents in some articles and lectures because she did not deem them relevant.”

“An increasing number of doctors and institutions are setting up foundations to accept money from companies without having to disclose its source, said Dr. Murray Kopelow, chief executive of the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education.”

Please refer to the post of 15 December 2007, CONFLICTS OF INTEREST:

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

INSTITUTIONS OF HIV/AIDS

I knew HIV/AIDS was big business for drug companies, activists and activist groups, researchers, and others. But I hadn’t realized how institutionalized it has become in the medicine-related professions until I saw this on a blog:

“AAHIVM Announces Pilot Credentialing for HIV-Expert PharmDs

WASHINGTON, D.C. March 1, 2008 — The American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM) has announced a one-year pilot program that will enable HIV-specialized Doctors of Pharmacy (PharmDs) working in clinical practice settings to participate in its widely known HIV Specialist™ credentialing program. The Academy’s pilot credentialing initiative for PharmDs is being developed in response to the large number of inquiries that the organization receives from PharmDs who have extensive day-to-day involvement with HIV treatment, and who want to attain a valid measure of recognition for their expertise in this sub-specialty.

For the 2008 credentialing program only, PharmDs who serve a substantial number of HIV patients may apply for a credentialing process that is similar to that currently offered to physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants who specialize in HIV. Eligibility criteria for PharmDs will vary slightly from the current provisions for frontline providers, and successful completion of the program will yield an ”HIV Subject Matter Expert” designation (“AAHIVE”), distinct from the AAHIVS HIV SpecialistTM designation currently awarded to primary medical care providers. This one year pilot program will be open to all eligible practicing PharmDs, irrespective of membership with AAHIVM.

The criteria for entry into this pilot program will be similar to the current credentialing eligibility requirements for physicians, NPs and PAs, and are as follows:
Licensed PharmD in the state of practice
Direct involvement in the care of a minimum of 20 HIV/AIDS patients over the 24 months preceding the date of application (this requirement may be fulfilled by direct retail or clinic client service, inpatient or out-patient service in a clinic or hospital consultative role, or other treatment team roles, varying by the scope of practice in the PharmD’s home state)
Completion of a minimum of 30 hours of HIV-related CEU in the 24 months preceding the date of application”

… and more

Through that, I learned of the existence of the American Academy of HIV Medicine, which offers a trademarked “HIV Specialist” credential. However, the Academy and the HIV Specialist credential are not among the 24 specialties for which the American Board of Medical Specialties has approved Boards that certify specialists in those areas.

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This is a reminder of what’s involved in trying to bring out the truth about HIV and AIDS. Thousands of doctors, nurses, and assistants have been indoctrinated as HIV Specialists. They cannot afford, psychologically as much as or more than professionally, to admit to themselves that what they have been taught might be wrong.

That’s true also for the hordes of PhD and MD researchers, and the vast number of administrators and facilitators and activists.

It’s true for a large number of “HIV”-positive people who have suffered through awful “treatments”; and it’s probably true for a large proportion of the relatives of those who died under those “treatments”.

We desperately need to discover plausible strategies by which this bandwagon might be brought to a halt (HOW CAN THE HIV/AIDS BANDWAGON BE STOPPED?, 27 January 2008; STOPPING THE HIV/AIDS BANDWAGON—-Part II, 1 February 2008).

These are my present thoughts:
1. Anyone who is not already a “dissident” greets the dissident view with utter disbelief and is therefore not willing to look at the evidence.
2. Therefore, non-dissidents can only be persuaded to look at the facts by people whom they fully trust.
3. Consequently, a chain or bridge needs to be constructed between, at the one end, dissidents who can explain and document the facts, and at the other end a person or persons whose influential position makes it possible to start an official reconsideration. That chain or bridge has to be a series of people who already know and respect and trust one another implicitly.
4. Can anyone identify people at the influence end of the bridge as well as a plausible chain from us to them?

“HIV DISEASE” IS NOT AN ILLNESS

This post is longer than I prefer, but I saw no good way to split it into parts. It explains that the way “HIV infections” and deaths from “HIV disease” vary with age and with race and over time constitutes a resounding disproof of HIV/AIDS theory.

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A couple of years ago, I had come to the conclusion that the demographics of positive “HIV”-tests, data published largely by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), represent definitive proof that “HIV” is not an infection. Icing on that cake is the fact that “HIV” and “AIDS” are not correlated—again, in officially published statistics—, as became clear to me while writing The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory (see chapter 9). Now I’ve found that a more direct line of proof lies in comparing the data on deaths from “HIV disease”—as the CDC has come to call it—with data from “HIV” tests.

In earlier blogs, I had argued that “HIV disease” is not an illness, citing among other things Table A below (see WORLD AIDS DAY . . ., 22 December 2007; “HIV DISEASE”, 28 December 2007; HOW TO TEST THEORIES . . ., 7 January 2008).

TABLE A (click in table for full size)

There I had waffled about how the racial disparities and sex differences in “HIV” deaths parallel those found on “HIV” tests, and how strange it is that blacks and Hispanics are more susceptible to “catching” HIV and yet survive to later ages than do whites or Asians or Native Americans equally suffering from “HIV disease”, and how all this supports the hypothesis that testing “HIV”-positive is a non-specific indication of some sort of physiological stress. But I had failed to grasp the significance of the fact that the age distribution of deaths from “HIV disease” reaches a maximum in people in the prime years of life, mid-thirties to early forties. That is the very opposite of how people react to infectious diseases, where everyone is about equally at risk of infection, but the young and the old are most at risk of succumbing to the infection, from pneumonia, say, or influenza; so the variation with age of “HIV” deaths is the very opposite of how death rates from infectious diseases vary with age; and for the same reason, it’s the very opposite of how all-cause death rates vary with age (Table B).

TABLE B (click in table for full size)

Even death rates from chronic diseases—diabetes, say—or “diseases of old age”—heart and cardiovascular, say, or cancer—show the same trend, though the death rates at very young ages are much less prominent:

TABLE C (click in table for full size)

The all-cause death rates of people in their thirties or forties are comparatively low, between ¼ and ½ of the age-adjusted overall death-rate (Table B, 193.5 or 427 compared to 800.8). Nowhere have I found mention of an illness that is most life-threatening for people aged 35-44 or 45-54—except, of course, “HIV disease”.

One might quibble that the numbers in Table A are not rates for each of the given age-groups; but adjusting for the age distribution in the population makes little difference, as shown by the age distribution of reported death-rates from “HIV disease” (Table D, which is Table 42, p. 236, in “National Center for Health Statistics: Health, United States, 2007 with Chartbook on Trends in the Health of Americans”, Hyattsville, MD, 2007) : for males as for females and in every calendar year, the highest rate of death from “HIV disease” comes at ages 35-44 with the single exception of females in 1987 when it came at 25-34.

TABLE D (click in table for full size)

 * in table D means rates based on fewer than 20 deaths, considered unreliable

The failure of HIV/AIDS theory is demonstrated not only by this incongruous age-dependence of death rates. Note how constant over the years is the shape of this age distribution. While the magnitudes of the rates go up from 1987 to 1995 and then down, they do so in similar fashion in each age group. By contrast, HIV/AIDS theory would have predicted high death-rates at relatively early ages in 1987 and before, when there were no treatments for AIDS and victims were dying within months, or at most a year or two, after diagnosis; then—HIV/AIDS theory would have it—the highest death-rates would have moved steadily to older ages as treatments were introduced, and particularly after the supposedly revolutionary introduction of “life-saving” HAART in the mid-1990s and the development of continually better individual drugs. But there is no such trend; the actual data show no change at all, over the years, in the age range within which people are most at risk of dying of “HIV disease”. For two decades, the greatest risk of dying from “HIV disease” has been experienced by people between 35 and 44years of age.

Also to be noted is that from 1987 into the mid-1990s, every age-group saw a great increase in death rates. That was the era of AZT monotherapy, initially deploying doses so high that even the mainstream acknowledged their toxicity by cutting them back drastically. Discontinuation of monotherapy in favor of “cocktails” then allowed the death rates to fall back again; but, as mentioned above, there is no indication at all that years of survival were increased by introduction of HAART as monotherapy was phased out.

(After writing this I was struck by a sinking feeling that, like increasing arrays of HIV/AIDS numbers issued by the CDC, Table D might have been drawn from computer models, which would explain their astonishing regularity. Then I noticed the phrase in fine print just below the Table’s header, “Data are based on death certificates”, and I was reassured —at least provisionally.)

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That “HIV”-positive” is not an illness is, of course, the reason that African Americans survive “HIV disease” to later ages than do white, Asian, and Native Americans (Table A), one of the points to which I had drawn attention earlier (7 January). Black people test “HIV”-positive more often than others under all circumstances and in both sexes and at all ages (The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, Figures 13-17, pp. 53-6), so when they die they still test positive more often at every age, even to an appreciable extent at ages where others test positive so rarely as not to show up in the statistics (above 55 for men and above 45 for women, Table A).

These variations with age of death rates from “HIV disease” run exactly as would be expected on the hypothesis that testing “HIV”-positive is a non-specific response by the immune system to some sort of physiological stress and that, for a given challenge to health, the strength of that immune response varies according to the capacity of the individual’s immune system (The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory).

From the teens into the “golden years”, external health challenges do not (on average, overall) vary systematically with age, so on average the variation with age of the tendency to test “HIV”-positive reflects the capabilities of the immune system, which tend to be at their best in the middle years of life:

FIGURE 1

Health challenges are considerably higher, though, at very early ages, because newborns experience the stress of birth and because young children meet many health challenges for the first time as their immune systems are just learning to cope with them. So the graph rises to the left not because the immune system is fully capable, as in the middle years, but because the stresses and health challenges encountered in those years are exceptionally great.

But why should deaths from “HIV disease” parallel the tendency to test “HIV”-positive in the middle years if that tendency represents a capable immune-system response?

Because of the manner in which the CDC defines “HIV disease”.

After “HIV” had become accepted as the cause of “AIDS”, an increasing number of diseases were included by the CDC as “AIDS-defining” just because a significant number of people with those diseases were reported as testing “HIV”-positive. As Rebecca Culshaw noted, this led to the extraordinary situation that the death from any cause of a person known to be “HIV”-positive would be reported as a death from “HIV disease”—even when the immediate cause of death was heart attack, liver failure, CMV infection, or even suicide, a car accident, or drowning (“Science Sold Out”, 2007, p. 30, citing Massachusetts Department of Health, 2002). (There may be a financial incentive to do this: federal funds to “fight HIV/AIDS” are apportioned to states and cities according to the perceived relative impacts of HIV/AIDS.)

Now: illness and death are in and of themselves often associated with positive “HIV”-tests (after all, they represent extreme challenges to health). Hospital patients (admitted for reasons not connected with HIV/AIDS) test “HIV”-positive at between 0.1 and 7.6% (The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, Table 3 p. 25; Table 23 p. 81); and moreover the tests vary with age as in the diagram above (ibid., Table 26 p. 98); emergency-room patients tested at 5-6% (ibid., pp. 48, 85); “HIV”-positive rates in autopsies were reported in one instance as between 1.9 and 3.7% and increasing in proportion to the degree of death-causing trauma, and in another instance at 18% with no indications of AIDS (ibid., p. 85). Since even accident and trauma victims tend to test “HIV”-positive, as well as people ill for a wide variety of other reasons, there is then a definite probability that anyone who is seriously ill will test “HIV”-positive, and so anyone who dies for any reason may well have tested “HIV”-positive while in hospital, or may well do so in autopsy, with a probability of a few percent or more; that’s much higher than the “normal” rate in the US population as a whole, which is an order of magnitude lower at a few per thousand or less.

The maximum death-rates from “HIV disease” in 2004 (Table D) were 10.9 (per 100,000) at ages 35-44 and 10.6 at ages 45-54. The all-cause death-rates for those age groups were (Table B) 194 and 427 respectively. Thus deaths from “HIV disease” represented respectively 5.5% (10.9/194) and 2.5% (10.6/427) of all deaths in those age groups, quite comparable to the frequency of positive “HIV”-tests among non-AIDS hospital patients and emergency-room patients and in autopsies. Thus deaths from “HIV disease” are merely that fraction of all deaths in which the non-specific “HIV”-positive reaction happened to turn up in response to the health challenge that had caused the death.

So death rates from “HIV disease” parallel the age variation of “HIV” tests simply because all deaths of “HIV”-positives are called deaths from “HIV disease”, and because “HIV” tests are so highly non-specific as to react to many life-threatening conditions. And that is also why the age variation of death rates ascribed to “HIV disease” is (for chronic diseases) unlike or (for infectious diseases) opposite to the variation with age of death rates from every other malady.

Figure 1 is schematic, not quantitative. I had mentioned in connection with its first appearance (ibid., p. 26) that the actual “middle” age of the peak appears to vary somewhat with sex and with race. To compare the actual years of that peak on “HIV” tests with the peak years of “HIV” deaths, I wanted “HIV”-test data for the population as a whole, since the death-data in Table A are also for the population as a whole. The most appropriate data-sets are those, totaling nearly 10,000,000 tests, published in 1995-8 by CDC for all public testing-sites (clinics for TB, HIV, STD, drugs, family planning, prenatal care, and more, as well as prisons and colleges and some reports from private medical practices). Pooling the actual numbers for each of those four years and making the appropriate calculations delivers the following results:

TABLE E (click in table for full size)

The highlighted cells and the “XXX” overlap or straddle in 12 of 13 cases; there is a good quantitative correspondence between the ages of maximum probability of testing “HIV”-positive and the ages of maximum rate of dying from “HIV disease”. But under HIV/AIDS theory, infection by HIV is supposed to be followed by a “latent period” of about 10 years: the peak ages for deaths from “HIV disease” should be a decade or more later than the peak ages for “HIV” infection, rather than overlapping in the same age-ranges. Furthermore, the difference between age of “infection” and age of death should have increased during the years—from the mid-1990s on—when “life-saving” antiretroviral treatments supposedly extended the life spans of “HIV”-positive people by a significant amount. Yet in 2002-4 (Tables A and D), the peak ages for “HIV” infection and for deaths from “HIV disease” are virtually the same as the ages where infections were most common in 1995-8, even though most people “infected” in 1995-98 should have survived well beyond 2005-8!

All this is inexplicable under HIV/AIDS theory, whereas it comports perfectly with the alternative theory that testing “HIV”-positive denotes physiological stress.

HIV/AIDS theory lacks substantive legs to stand on. “HIV” is not any cause of illness. Testing “HIV”-positive signals the presence of some sort of challenge to health. The tendency to test “HIV”-positive depends on what the health challenge is, and on how strongly an individual tends to respond.

CDC MONGERS FEAR AND HAWKS DEADLY VACCINE

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
— have confused correlation with causation, thus committing perhaps the most elementary error against which students of statistics are warned (p. 194 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory);
— invented an “hierarchical” classification scheme that set HIV/AIDS on a wrong course and made multivariate analysis impossible (ibid, p. 19);
— disseminated propaganda that everyone was at risk for AIDS while knowing that “for most heterosexuals, the risk from a single act of sex was smaller than the risk of ever getting hit by lightning” (Bennett and Sharpe, Wall Street Journal, 1 May, pp. A1, 6);
— use incompetent computer models (ibid, p. 223) and disseminate their flawed estimates rather than actual counts (pp. 221-2);
— reduced retroactively some actually reported numbers, thereby obfuscating a decline in “AIDS” deaths (ibid, p. 221);
— had the gall to say in 2005 that “HIV infections” in the United States had surpassed a million “for the first time” when they had been estimating about a million for the past two decades (ibid, pp. 1-2);
— increasingly commingle “HIV” and “AIDS” data so that the lack of correlation between them is obscured;
— and for reasons not difficult to infer, they have invented “HIV disease” (post of Friday, 28 December 2007).

Given all that (and more), I hardly imagined that I would ever be taken aback at anything said or done by the CDC. Still they managed to surprise me with the 11 March announcement that

“1 in 4 Teenage Girls Has a Sexually Transmitted Disease
— 3.2 Million Female Adolescents Estimated to Have at Least One of the Most Common STDs” (CDC Press Release, 2008 National STD Prevention Conference—Confronting Challenges, Applying Solutions)

1 of every 4 teenage females just seems awfully high. But how can one argue with scientific facts?

“Chicago [March 11, 2008] – A CDC study released today estimates that one in four (26 percent) young women between the ages of 14 and 19 in the United States – or 3.2 million teenage girls – is infected with at least one of the most common sexually transmitted diseases (human papillomavirus (HPV), chlamydia, herpes simplex virus, and trichomoniasis).… The two most common STDs overall were human papillomavirus, or HPV (18 percent), and chlamydia (4 percent). …CDC also recommends that girls and women between the ages of 11 and 26 who have not been vaccinated or who have not completed the full series of shots be fully vaccinated against HPV.”

The study was based on data from a survey done in 2003-4. Why did it take more than 3 years to release information of this importance? Perhaps there was no point in frightening people before an HPV vaccine was available?

“ ‘The statistics are certainly disheartening,’ said Dr. Dorothy Furgerson, medical director at Planned Parenthood Mar Monte” (Julie Sevrens Lyons, Mercury News).

Indeed. But disheartening perhaps for other reasons than Dr. Furgerson had in mind:
“The new study by CDC researcher Dr. Sara Forhan is an analysis of nationally representative records on girls and women ages 14 to 19 who participated in a 2003-04 government health survey. . . . [of] 838 teens”

One might wonder whether 838 could be truly representative nationally. But the main point here has to do with human papillomavirus and the touting of “full” vaccination against it. Here are some other facts from the CDC itself:

“Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and another 6.2 million people become newly infected each year. At least 50% of sexually active men and women acquire genital HPV infection at some point in their lives
….
The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2008, 11,070 women will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in the U.S. . . . [and with other] HPV-related cancers . . .
3,460 women diagnosed with vulvar cancer;
2,210 women diagnosed with vaginal and other female genital cancers;
1,250 men diagnosed with penile and other male genital cancers; and
3,050 women and 2,020 men diagnosed with anal cancer.”

In other words, with 6.2 million newly infected with HPV annually, about 20,000 women annually will be diagnosed with a cancer “related” to HPV.

Keep in mind that it has never been proven that HPV causes the cancer; all the CDC has, once again, is a correlation.

Evidently the chance of contracting one of these “HPV-related” cancers if one is infected with HPV is 20,000 out of 6.2 million, about 1 in 300 or 3.3 per 1000. Can something that is “associated” with a cancer only three times in a thousand really be said to cause that cancer?

Even were that so, consider the relative risks of vaccination and of not vaccinating. Leave aside that the HPV vaccine, Gardasil, costs $120 for each of three required shots. Consider only that it was approved in June 2006 by the Food and Drug Administration, and that within less than a year there had come numerous reports of dangerous “side”-effects:

“Judicial Watch Uncovers Three Deaths Relating To HPV Vaccine” (24 May 2007)

“Judicial Watch . . . today released documents obtained from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, detailing 1,637 reports of adverse reactions to the vaccination for human papillomavirus (HPV), Gardasil. Three deaths were related to the vaccine. . . . As of May 11, 2007, the 1,637 adverse vaccination reactions reported to the FDA . . . included 371 serious reactions. Of the 42 women who received the vaccine while pregnant, 18 experienced side effects ranging from spontaneous abortion to fetal abnormities. Side effects published by Merck & Co. warn the public about potential pain, fever, nausea, dizziness and itching after receiving the vaccine. Indeed, 77% of the adverse reactions reported are typical side effects to vaccinations. But other more serious side effects reported include paralysis, Bells Palsy, Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and seizures. ‘The FDA adverse event reports on the HPV vaccine read like a catalog of horrors,’ stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. ‘Any state or local government now beset by Merck’s lobbying campaigns to mandate this HPV vaccine for young girls ought to take a look at these adverse health reports. It looks as if an unproven vaccine with dangerous side effects is being pushed as a miracle drug.’”

Yet the CDC is urging this dangerous vaccine on all females aged between 11 and 26… Evidently, press releases from the CDC ought to carry a “black box warning”:

Not that it’s necessarily better elsewhere:

“Glaxo wins European Union approval to sell Cervarix” (byline Marthe Fourcade)
“Sept. 24 (Bloomberg) — GlaxoSmithKline Plc won European Union approval for its cervical cancer vaccine Cervarix, allowing the company to compete with Merck & Co.’s Gardasil in the world’s second-largest pharmaceutical market. The vaccine was cleared for sale in 27 countries . . . .”

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Sometimes toxic things (think antiretroviral drugs) have temporarily beneficial side-effects (the general phenomenon is known as “hormesis”). In this case, the toxic press-release from the CDC has the side-benefit of allowing me to recommend the book “Virus Mania” by Torsten Engelbrecht and Claus Köhnlein (www.trafford.com/06-3226 or orders@ trafford.com; 320 pp, softcover, US$24.00, C$27.60, EUR18.71, £12.40).

I had been in a quandary, what to write about this book, which I’d just been reading. It contains some important eye-opening material; but the translation from German leaves quite a bit to be desired, and the tone is strident at times in indicting institutions and companies for deliberate deception and putting profits ahead of everything else. But any such defects are dwarfed by those in CDC publications. Readers should of course reach their own opinion by checking the sources cited in “Virus Mania”—just as they should always check in CDC publications for inconsistency of data, for estimates masquerading as facts, and so on. But all quibbles aside,“Virus Mania” reveals palpable facts that bring into serious question the widespread official propaganda about hepatitis C, mad-cow disease, SARS, avian flu, and cervical cancer, as well as more generally about vaccination and virology—not to mention AIDS, of course.