Drug non-adherence, imaginary epidemics, and sexual nonsense

How many don’t take their antiretroviral drugs?
After I had commented on the decrease in “HIV” in Washington, DC, that had been described in the media as an alarming increase [STOP PRESS: 40% DECREASE in HIV in Washington DC, 18 March 2009], I received from Dr. Stephen S. Elgin, MD, a clipping from the Washington Times (Christopher A. Keys, “The need for electronic records”, 14 April 2009) containing this fascinating item:
“In any given month, about 40 percent of the approximately 1,900 clients actively enrolled in the D.C. AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) are not utilizing antiretroviral medications. . . . [although] almost all of these ‘nonutilizers’ have active prescriptions for antiretroviral drugs written by their physicians, nurse practitioners or physician’s assistants. . . . ADAP programs across the country report similar rates of ‘nonutilizers’ (about 40 percent).”

A reasonable inference is that a considerable proportion of those who are placed on antiretroviral drugs have similar experiences of being unable to tolerate the drugs’ toxicities as, for example, Onnie Mary Phuthe,  Karri Stokely, or Maria Papagiannidou.

Official: Antiretrovirals maybe not the best treatment
“Updated HIV guidelines emphasise primary care need of patients”
“While improvements in antiretroviral therapy have improved the prognosis for many HIV patients, data from recent studies suggest those living with HIV are at higher risk for developing common health problems, such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer”
— but those are not “common” for adults in prime middle age, which is the age at which HAART-treated individuals are dying from heart failure, kidney failure, liver failure, and certain cancers [“AIDS” deaths: owing to antiretroviral drugs or to lack of antiretroviral treatment?, 2 October 2008; NIH Treatment Guidelines, 3 November 2008].
“Baseline urinalysis and calculated creatinine clearance should be considered, especially in black patients, because of an increased risk of HIV-associated nephropathy”
— “HIV-associated nephropathy” is actually iatrogenic, drug-induced nephropathy occurring in “HIV-positive” people who are on HAART; which is admitted, but only  indirectly:
“Urinalysis and calculated creatinine clearance should also be performed prior to initiating treatment with drugs such as tenofovir or indinavir, which have the potential for nephrotoxicity”
— “potential” for nephrotoxicity sounds much less alarming than a straightforward description as nephrotoxic.
“Emphasis should be placed on the importance of adherence to care rather than focusing solely on adherence to medications”
— because HAART itself can cause a variety of ailments.

Asian “epidemics”
There will never be epidemics of heterosexually transmitted “HIV” outside Africa, according to the head of the HIV/AIDS Division of the World Health Organization [WHO SAYS that WE’VE BEEN VERY WRONG about HIV and AIDS? (Clue: WHO = World Health Organization), 10 June 2008]. But of course that is no reason why UNAIDS should cease fearmongering over those imaginary epidemics, which have the added implausible feature that the greatest risk of acquiring “HIV” is through getting married [Abstinence-based HIV programs in Africa may put married women at risk, 25 September 2008; B***S*** about HIV from ACADEME via THE PRESS, 4 March 2008; HIV/AIDS ABSURDITIES AND WORSE, 9 DECEMBER 2007; TO AVOID HIV INFECTION, DON’T GET MARRIED, 18 November 2007]:

“In Cambodia, India and Thailand, the largest number of new HIV infections occur among married women, the study showed”. That’s from a UNAIDS report released in Bali at the 9th International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.
Here’s the “reasoning”:
“50 million women in Asia are either married or in long-term relationships with men who engage in high-risk sexual behaviours and are at risk of being infected with HIV from their partners. . . . Men who buy sex constitute the largest infected population group and most of them are either married or will get married . . . . ‘This puts a significant number of women, often perceived as “low-risk” because they only have sex with their husbands or long-term partners, at risk of HIV infection’. . . . UNAIDS estimated over 90 per cent of the 1.7 million women living with HIV in Asia became infected from their husbands or partners while in long-term relationships.”
But those “risk factors” are nothing new, yet more than two decades of “HIV/AIDS” have not resulted in any Asian epidemics. UNAIDS is speculating and making predictions that have already been disproved by the facts.

More marriage and “HIV” risk….
Since the greatest risk of being “HIV-positive” occurs among married women in Africa and Asia, it’s logical (HIV/AIDS logical) that  “Nigeria agency pushes marriage to control HIV spread” .
That’s actually not as absurd as it may seem, for “Both bride and groom are HIV-positive and marrying with the support of a local government program that encourages such ‘HIV-marriages’ in the hope of preventing the virus from spreading”.
Of course that’s a forlorn hope, because we know from James Chin, former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, that the reason why “HIV” has spread so much in Africa is that 20-40% of the adult population — including, obviously, a lot of married people — is continually engaged in multiple concurrent sexual relationships with constant changing of partners (The AIDS Pandemic).
If married people are NOT so engaged, then the UNAIDS-certified African epidemic could not have happened. If married people ARE so engaged, then this new initiative is nonsense.
Not the first time that left and right hands of “HIV/AIDS” don’t jibe.

Prisons are hotbeds of men having sex with men and spreading “HIV”
Everyone knows that, even though the facts are otherwise [Recent HIV/AIDS tidbits in the “news”, 6 April 2009; AIDS activists spout b***s***; media pass it on, 3 April 2009; “HIV” IN PRISONS: REGULAR AS CLOCKWORK, 2 May 2008].
So the experience in Alabama prisons won’t change “what everyone knows” and what HIV/AIDS spokespeople will continue to blather about:
“in Alabama in-prison transmission is all but non-existent . . . . HIV is, of course, a serious health concern” [“Prisons’ HIV decision shows progress”]
— and no one would dare mention the lack of spread in prisons publicly without paying obeisance to this belief about a serious health concern.
“However, as has gradually become widely understood, it [“HIV”] is not easily transmitted”
— gradually understood, that is, by officialdom; AIDS Rethinkers and HIV Skeptics knew it all along.
“Given that, the rules barring HIV-positive inmates from work-release programs ceased to make sense”
— but it’s probably asking too much to have all such senseless rules abandoned; say, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” . . . .
“As of last week, [Prison Commissioner Richard] Allen said, two of the 17 female HIV-positive inmates at Tutwiler Prison have passed the classification requirements, as have 47 of the 252 men in the HIV ward at Limestone Prison. ‘I don’t see it as a big deal,’ Allen said. . . . But it is a big deal . . . . By recognizing the medical realities of HIV and adjusting its policies accordingly, the department is making a significant statement.”
— a significant statement whose implications the HIV/AIDS bandwagon will continue to ignore assiduously.

“CDC recommends mandatory HIV testing…without consent
In an effort to slow the spread of HIV, the CDC is recommending mandatory testing of emergency room patients without their consent”.
— which is GUARANTEED to result in some alarming statistics about the occult spread of “HIV” and the unexpectedly large proportion of people who are infected without knowing it, because from the very earliest days of sentinel surveying, it has been abundantly clear that emergency-room patients and people who have just died tend to test “HIV-positive” at very high rates [see sources cited at pp. 48 and 85 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory].

HIV skepticism, Nessies, homophobia, and racism

Some months ago, I had written: “One of the burdens that AIDS Rethinkers and HIV Skeptics impose on one another is that the HIV/AIDS groupies and vigilantes seize every possible opportunity to assert ‘guilt by association’. I’ve felt apologetic for some time that my fellow Rethinkers and Skeptics have been tarred by the brush of being associated with Henry Bauer, who is a believer in Loch Ness monsters (‘Nessies’)” [Henry Bauer and the Loch Ness monsters, 16 February 2009].

I was recently asked by a neutral observer about another guilt-by-association charge directed at me in vigilante blogs, Wikipedia, and no doubt elsewhere as well: that I am racist and that I am or was at one time homophobic. So I’ll explain here where these charges came from, which will demonstrate at the same time how ludicrously unfounded they are.

The cited basis for my alleged homophobia and racism are the memoir, To Rise Above Principle: The Memoirs of an Unreconstructed Dean [Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press 1988, under the pen-name ‘Josef Martin’], and the newsletter (Virginia Scholar) which I edited for 7 years (1993-99) for the Virginia Association of Scholars.

It’s only now that I’ve come to realize what a remarkable coup it had been on my part to have the University of Illinois Press put their imprimatur on homophobic and racist remarks. It may be even more remarkable that the reviews of the book were so favorable, and that not one of them picked up on the homophobia and racism. It was yet another remarkable coup that the Council of Colleges of Arts & Sciences unblushingly invited this racist homophobe to address its Annual Meeting in 1989, and that the American Conference of Academic Deans had him give the keynote speech at its 49th Annual Meeting in 1993, where he even used the occasion to expound his racist views, namely, that every person should be treated as an individual and not as a generic member of some group.

It took two decades after the Dean’s Memoirs were published, and a decade or so after my editorship of the Virginia Scholar, before the homophobic, racist nature of their contents were discerned under an evidently very close reading by an enterprising albeit amateur literary critic, Kenneth W. Witwer, then a graduate student in biology who was minoring in AIDStruth.org. He first announced his discovery in a “review” on amazon.com of my book, The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, a “review” that was subsequently withdrawn. The same discovery was also inserted into a “bio” about me posted on Wikipedia (see “Beware the Internet: Amazon.com ‘reviews’, Wikipedia, and other sources of misinformation”, 11 April 2009).

Witwer’s discovery is all the more remarkable when one considers the number and nature of the interested parties who had failed for a couple of decades to discern in those texts what he was able to discern. Since the late 1980s, political correctness has held prominent hegemony at my university (Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, a.k.a. “Virginia Tech”), resulting for example in the resignation of the university’s best, most appreciated teacher after being charged with sexual harassment on the basis of a joke told in class that 496 students out 500 did not find inappropriate let alone objectionable [“The trivialization of sexual harassment: Lessons from the Mandelstamm Case”, Academic Questions, 5 (#2, Spring 1992) 55-66; letters and response, ibid., 5 (#4, Fall 1992) 5-6; “Affirmative action at Virginia Tech: The tail that wagged the dog”, ibid., 6 (#1, Winter 1992-93) 72-84]. Yet in that hotbed of political correctness, those homophobic, racist memoirs and newsletters somehow brought no complaints, though the newsletter was widely distributed and the university’s president and provost had each received an author-inscribed copy of the memoirs hot off the press. This homophobic, racist author even continued to receive very satisfactory salary raises and a semester of paid leave (sort of a “sabbatical”) to write two books. Of course, political correctness pervaded and pervades academe as a whole, not only Virginia Tech; one of my favorite illustrations is that when I suggested to that collection of Deans in 1993 that every person should be treated as an individual and not as a generic member of some group, a number of individuals complimented me afterwards on having the courage to say such a thing.

The memoirs have long been out of print, but a PDF has long been freely available at my website. The Virginia Scholar is also freely available. I invite anyone who wants to decide at first hand about my views on affirmative action, homosexuality, race, or anything else to read and judge for themselves.
I was never homophobic, which properly means fearful of or averse towards people who happen to be homosexual. I was, however, guilty of accepting the then-generally-held view that homosexuality is in some way aberrant. When in later years I began to actually think about it, I came to a better conclusion, for reasons that I described in a book review in 2005 (Journal of Scientific Exploration, 19 #3, 419-35)  and cite on my personal website.  That guilt, of having accepted thoughtlessly a societal shibboleth, is comparable, I suggest, to the guilt of those who accept thoughtlessly other societal shibboleths, for example, that “HIV” causes “AIDS”, which is accepted so thoughtlessly that its believers are unable to cite any proof for it.

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As I’ve remarked ad nauseam, when someone seeks to assassinate characters instead of arguing the substance of an issue, it reveals that those someones are unable to prove their case by substantive argument. All the HIV/AIDS vigilantes and groupies have to do to shut me up is to cite the scientific publications that prove HIV to be the cause of AIDS. They don’t do that because those publications don’t exist, and they acquired their belief not by looking at the evidence but by just accepting “what everyone knows”.

Further, as again I’ve remarked ad nauseam, even the most assassin-worthy characters may nevertheless be right about something. I could be wrong about Nessie, homosexuality, racism, and much else and still be right about HIV/AIDS. The charges are beside the point as well as unfounded.

Los Angeles Times supports AIDS Rethinking

Brent Leung’s documentary, “House of Numbers”, was reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, 21 August, p. D14, by Gary Goldstein. It was good to read the following:

“impressive range of interviewees, whose contradictory positions on HIV/AIDS become the project’s raison d’être. There’s no denying . . .  the value of exploring such game-changing topics as how HIV-infection numbers are cooked for monetary and political gain; how the effects of global poverty may have led to so many AIDS-related deaths; how such widely used AIDS drugs as AZT have, themselves, often proved fatal; and whether HIV really exists.”

One doesn’t know, of course, how many readers will come across this item, but the LA Times has a current circulation of 3/4 million, so this represents nice exposure for  HIV Skepticism and AIDS Rethinking.

Routine “HIV” tests; herbal magic; Canadian natives at risk

“Veterans to routinely be offered HIV tests [posted 2009:08:19] — The Veterans Affairs Department has begun offering routine HIV tests to veterans who receive medical care. The new policy follows recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which advised that all patients should be offered HIV testing even if they are not considered at risk. The hope is that more veterans will get tested and, when necessary, receive medical treatment early.”
PREDICTION:  It will turn out that an alarmingly high proportion of veterans with no risk factors are “HIV-positive”, and of course didn’t know it.

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“HerbalScience research demonstrates that HIV infection is inhibited by elderberry, cinnamon, and green tea extracts”
No, this is NOT being said by the much maligned South African former Health Minister “Dr. Beetroot”; it’s in Antiviral Chemistry & Chemotherapy, a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The work is joint between the University of Miami Leonard Miller School of Medicine and the commercial outfit HerbalScience (not connected in any way to much maligned Dr. Matthias Rath, who has long advocated the benefits of vitamins and natural remedies in connection with “HIV/AIDS”).
“Previous research by HerbalScience had demonstrated the ability of its proprietary elderberry extract to inhibit entry of the H1N1 influenza virus into target cells. For the HIV study, researchers used the same elderberry extract, and compared the antiviral activities to those of extracts obtained from green tea and cinnamon, two botanicals that are also known to be rich in flavonoids, plant nutrients that are beneficial to health. All the extracts were prepared using the company’s patented extraction technologies. . . . Furthermore, the study examined the inhibitory interactions between the elderberry extract and enfuvirtide (also termed Fuzeon), among the first of a new class of HIV antiviral drugs called entry inhibitors, or drugs that disrupt the fusion of virus and target cells. . . .  When enfuvirtide was combined with the elderberry extract, the inhibition of infection increased by nearly 6 orders of magnitude.”
A real panacea, apparently; and even without any mentioned ingredient of snake oil.

I’ve commented before on the unremarkable fact that when mainstream researchers find value in alternative remedies, that’s sound science; but when others report similar findings, it gets dismissed as pseudo-science [Mainstream pseudo-science good, alternative pseudo-science bad, 25 February 2009; UCLA’s AIDS (“Beetroot”) Institute discovers how HIV kills cells, 2 January 2009].

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Canadian aboriginals behave like Estonians but are doomed to die like South Africans
Native Americans are far less likely to test “HIV-positive” than are people of African ancestry; Aboriginal Americans test “HIV-positive” very little more often than Caucasians and significantly less often than Hispanics (for example, pp. 50, 64-6 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory). Yet
“HIV could devastate Sask. First Nations” (2009:08:20)
This dire prediction comes from “Dr. Khami Chokani, the medical health officer for the Prince Albert Parkland Health Region. Chokani has worked in countries across southern Africa. ‘If you think decimating the African population was bad . . . HIV in this province will kill 15 to 30 per cent (of the aboriginal population). Not all at one time, but over a five- to 10-year period.’”
[The African population hasn’t been decimated, by the way. It‘s been growing at about 3% annually throughout the “AIDS epidemic”
Here’s the basis for concern in Canada: “There were a total of 174 cases of HIV in the province [Saskatchewan] in 2008, a threefold increase from 2004 . . . . Of those 174, more than 100 victims were aboriginal.”
“There are 141,890 First Nations people in Saskatchewan”.
That’s a truly alarming incidence, isn’t it: 100 in 140,000, or 1 in 1,400. Quite comparable to the alarming rate in Estonia [Estonian drug addicts don’t have much sex, 13 August 2009; “HIV/AIDS” in Estonia: Demographics and Shibboleths, 18 August 2009]. And curiously enough, just as in Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania and Russia and Eastern Europe generally, “intravenous-drug users sharing needles is the main way HIV is transmitted in the province. Young aboriginal women are of increasing concern. . . . primarily in the young females, pregnant women and newborn babies”.
AIDS Rethinkers and HIV Skeptics, unlike mainstream HIV/AIDS researchers, know that solid data show that drug abuse causes both ill health and testing “HIV-positive”; and that pregnancy and birth are both conditions that have a tendency to stimulate a positive “HIV”-test result.
PREDICTION:  There will be increased testing, increased prescribing of antiretroviral drugs, and an alarming increase in the death rate.

Anonymous bloggers aren’t safe; nor is decency

A friend just forwarded this story to me. A person who had been slandered on an anonymous blog created specifically for that purpose won a court case forcing Google to reveal the identity of the blogger (IP and e-address):

“Skanks for nothing: Google must ID ‘anonymous’ blogger”
“Yesterday a U.S. Federal judge ruled that Google must turn over the name of an anonymous blogger who took a severe disliking to aging supermodel Liskula Cohen. The ripples emanating from the ruling could potentially wash over every member of the blogosphere (including those who delight in anonymously depositing nasty comments on blogs — you know who you are). The backstory: In August 2008, some soon-to-not-be-anonymous blogger (STNBAB) created a Google blog called “Skanks in NYC” (no longer available, but archived at Mahalo). The sole topic of this short-lived blog: Liskula Cohen, a zygomatically-gifted Canuck who has graced the covers of Vogue, Elle, and other magazines probably not in the bathrooms of most InfoWorld readers. Among other things, the STNBAB called Cohen ‘a psychotic, lying, whoring, still going to clubs at her age, skank.’ . . .
Cohen’s attorneys sent a nastygram to the blogger, who immediately removed ‘Skanks in NYC’ from Blogger.com. But it didn’t end there. Last January Cohen sued Google, demanding it reveal the blogger’s identity. Yesterday, the court ruled that Google had to hand over the only information it had — the blogger’s IP and e-mail addresses.
So it looks like STNBAB is about to be sued for defamation, libel, and anything else Liskanka — err, Liskula’s attorneys can dig up. . . .
There is way too much nastiness on the Net hiding under the shield of anonymity. . . . virtually every blog with any traffic suffers from the Anonymous D—— Commenter syndrome (fill in the blanks yourself). A lot of that would go away if people had to staple their own identities to what they actually said. Yes, free speech is a good and powerful thing. But as a wise superhero once said, ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’”

[The way ahead for anonymous cowards seems clear: Don’t set up a blog, just send your stuff to Wikipedia   ;-)]

Liskula Cohen’s court success has brought other stories of harassment by anonymous bloggers, for example “The problem with anonymous bloggers”.

Just yesterday I was reminiscing with a friend of my generation, recalling the splendid moment when attorney Joseph Welch faced down Senator Joe McCarthy:
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

We agreed, sadly, that such words would have no impact in today’s political and social scene, where lying (“spin”) has become routine and acceptable and where few seem able to impart emphasis to what they say except by resorting to four-letter words.
Legal actions are no solution, either, no matter how satisfying this one might have been for Liskula Cohen personally. Civility, decency, ethics, morals stem from a proper upbringing, on being “well bred”, to commit another anachronism. “No breeding”, my mother used to say about the likes of Snouts and Moores.