Darin BrownINSTITUTIONS OF HIV/AIDS
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2008/03/24
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.
*********************
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/AIDS Skepticism 
Michael said
Of further interest regarding The American Academy of HIV Medicine (AAHIVM), is that the recently deceased founder of the AAHIVM, Dr. Scott Hitt, also had quite a colorful history. In 2004, Dr. Hitt had lost his license to practice medicine after having been arrested for illicit drugs added to patient molestation charges.
http://www.planetout.com/health/hiv/news/?2004/07/23/3
Dr. Hitt, a gay man himself, and an active AIDS advocate in the gay community, was unfortunately sold early—hook, line, and sinker—on the HIV and AIDS meds paradigm. He was also an advisor on the Clinton AIDS presidential panel.
Hitt became involved in politics in the late 1980s, when the AIDS (or should I say “AZT”) epidemic was ravaging the gay community. “Like most of us,” said West Hollywood Mayor John Duran, a friend of 20 years, “Scott was very angry about federal inaction. He was trying to treat people with this new disease (with AZT of course) and getting no response from the government.”
Hitt launched Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality in 1989 to take political action on AIDS and other issues and to raise funds for candidates. They even met with Bill and Hillary Clinton in Scott’s living room in 1991.
Hitt is credited with helping deliver thousands of votes for Clinton, who promised vigorous action to find a cure for AIDS and provide quality care for those with the disease.
Henry, you had also noted that 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. Quite right. They were trying to get their own accreditation program going, but California and Hitt beat them to the punch.
Hitt was very well connected politically in California, where he had many democratic politicians by the ear, and he pushed for legislation for credentialing California HIV specialists because the treatment strategies and drug choices changed so often. As the HIV treatment strategies and the new HIV drugs du jour options bounced off the walls, one day it would be Hit Hard and Hit Early, the next it would be “Drug Vacations for All”. As such, Hitt believed it imperative that all HIV doctors were somewhat on the same page, or at least aware of new drug options in treatments.
In 2000, the California state legislature passed a bill requiring health maintenance organizations to offer all HIV-positive patients standing referrals to physicians certified as HIV specialists. It took until January 2003, though, for the law to go into effect after physicians and medical groups hammered out a definition of what constitutes an HIV specialist.
The American Academy of HIV Medicine and the HIV Medicine Association both have their own definition, but each was pursuing different strategies for credentialing HIV specialists.
The American Academy of HIV Medicine, an independent organization of HIV specialists, begun by Hitt, initiated a credentialing process for HIV specialists in December 2001. To receive the credential, which must be renewed ever two years, health-care providers must pass a take-home exam that tests their knowledge of HIV treatment issues.
The HIV Medicine Association, which was created within the Infectious Diseases Society of America in 2000 for all medical professionals engaged in HIV medicine, was working with the American Board of Internal Medicine to allow internists and family practitioners who are not certified in infectious disease to be credentialed as HIV specialists.
The exam that the HIVMA wanted to be used would differ from the exam created by the American Academy of HIV Medicine, would be developed by the American Board of Internal Medicine and would be certified in conjunction with the American College of Graduate Medical Education. They felt that credentialing should come from organized medicine rather than from an advocacy group creating its own credentials.
I do not know if HIVMA and the ABIM ever got their own accreditation program going. But Hitt’s AAHIVM is still going strong.
Dr. Scott Hitt, undoubtedly further stressed by the public shame of his own surrendered doctor’s license, passed away of colon cancer last November, but the monster that Scott Hitt created, the AAHIVM, and its “American Academy of HIV Medicine Approved” designation, which is found on many HIV docs business cards, lives on.
hhbauer said
Michael:
Thank you for that fascinating bit of history.
When the real history of the HIV/AIDS business finally gets looked into by sociologists and historians, an important aspect will be the fearful dilemmas that gay doctors found themselves in. On the one hand, they would feel the urge to follow the advice coming from medical researchers and federal agencies, on the other hand they must surely have wondered about what they were seeing in their AZT-treated patients.
One gay man told me of having avoided AZT while seeing, he estimated, some 100 of his acquaintances succumb to it—under the care of a doctor who was himself gay.
Plain observation had led my informant to deduce that AZT was killing people; how could that doctor not have seen it? I suppose because doctors are trained to believe what their gurus say; and I suppose because doctors have to learn to accept that sometimes their patients die despite their best efforts.
Whichever way I try to think about those times and these issues, it’s heart-rending. But, again, how to stop it?
B. Carter said
How to stop it? I have some insights.
Joan Shelton said, “The next generation of younger doctors are now going to see all the information.”
In my own business of furniture manufacturing I have found a strategy, where in order to gain customers for life you have to appeal to the younger generation who are actually doing the work given to them by the principals for whom they work for. Ever notice what store in the shopping malls is consistently packed with young people? The Apple/iMac store. Therefore one can deduce that this is the target by the way of I-Tunes, youTube and all the other new media.
Look at myspace and find personas like: GayBigFoot (17,000 friends) and Chris Crocker (23,000 friends).
Could this be the influence end of the bridge? Now take a look at Ian Crossland at youTube: 28,000 views of his first dissident video with no other apparent involvement in the movement and he harbors 7000 subscriptions and 1300 friends.
As far as the chain from us to them? Your guess is as good as mine. I have them as friends in cyberspace and that’s about it. Although, since these big three are virtually my next-door neighbors, I’ve tried to reach them otherwise, but to no avail. Or at least not just yet.
Michael said
Henry, you ask “How to stop it?”.
Good question that many of us have asked for more than 20 years, but as the underlying issue seems to have much to do with the consequences of societal programming as well as levels of human awareness and consciousness, I myself don’t see how stopping “it” is possible without confronting the task of removing the underlying issues of racism, homophobia, poverty, illiteracy, human fear, and social programming.
The origins of the belief in HIV are likely the consequence of thousands of years of social programming as well as the baser human/animal instincts of fear-driven fight or flight confronting the germaphobic mind and ego and preprogramming of mankind. Even if beliefs in HIV were stopped today, the public, including well-meaning scientists and doctors and politicians and media, would most likely latch onto another version of germaphobia. Look at the public panic, funding, poorly designed studies, etc, whipped up by fear alone anytime a few individuals anywhere on the globe are diagnosed with “endemic flu”, bird flu, SARS, hep C, HPV, etc, etc, etc.
It took a couple of centuries for mankind to break free of the black plague, though children today still sing “ring around the rosey” which was about the sores that broke out in the afflicted, even though they no longer have any idea of what they are singing about. But eventually, even the black plague, as well as all those who simply scared themselves to death over it, had passed away. The event did, however, quite firmly lock the belief and paranoia of germaphobia deeply into the consciousness and social programming of mankind.
I think there is much truth to what Carter presents just above with his show of younger people rejecting the paradigm and speaking out amongst each other, and his discussion of the next generation.
The greatest hope of course, is that in simply “getting the information out there” for the next generation to access it, such as you, I, and many others have done and continue to do, makes it far easier for the next generations to more quickly step back from the emotionality and programming that was programmed into the former generation, and see it all from a fresh perspective, as well as for what it is.
Certainly the most receptive to the dissident presentations are the younger group of 18-to-20-something year-olds that are often no longer buying into the “retro” beliefs in AIDS with the knee-jerk reactions of the former generations.
Seems to be much truth to the old adage: “In time, all things come to pass”.
Kevin said
I agree that there is hope with the younger generations, as far as AIDS dissidence is concerned; however, the myth of HIV will not “fall away” until the corrupt socio-political condition of the Western World reaches its natural end-stage: widespread poverty and an obliteration of the middle class. Only then will the masses take inventory.
The financial crisis that is currently unfolding is in its infancy, but the dire outcomes that will result for all Western societies cannot be afforded. Once the cascading cross-defaults begin, and they will, a financial meltdown like no other will be the end result. As people and societies suffer through food and energy shortages, perhaps then they’ll begin to realize just how thoroughly they’ve been duped by the media and the ruling intelligentsia. The scale of the greed during the last decade of globalization is unprecedented in human history. Soon there won’t be any money to fund fraudulent HIV/AIDS organizations, nor for anything else.
It’s unfortunate that the circumstances are not more amenable to progressive change, but the financial margin calls will be massive and there’s nothing that can be done to mitigate their effects.
Kevin
hhbauer said
Kevin:
We can only hope that, as in the past, we’ll find a way to muddle through. The succession of financial “bubbles” was described concisely and clearly by John Kenneth Galbraith in a book that deserves to be much better known: “A Short History of Financial Euphoria”. He points out that every bubble starts with someone getting a bright idea for a new way of creating debt . For some time it’s been derivatives, which Warren Buffett aptly calls weapons of mass financial destruction; currently, the paper based on sub-prime mortgages is just another form of derivative and of creating debt.
aaron said
I work with AAHIVM and want to assure you that our only interest is in ensuring excellent care goes to people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Here at the Academy we believe that the best way to do this is through education and the establishment of HIV care as a specialty. You mention that our credential, “HIV Specialist,” is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties. This is true, but is due to lingering issues of homophobia, racism, poverty — and of the other social hang-ups and mores that this disease has had to deal with over the years. In time, as our society matures, and if the disease is not cured, it is fair to expect that our HIV Specialist designation will be accepted by the ABMS.
The Academy appreciates your support.