How to support Rethinking AIDS?

The fact is that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS (or any other illness): no proof has ever been published that HIV causes AIDS, and the evidence against the idea is copious, see The Case against HIV. Yet it seems as though all the official sources and all the media are completely convinced that this mistaken notion is correct. How to change that?

A couple of dozen books have been published, and articles, even a few in mainstream peer-reviewed journals, but they have not dented the conventional wisdom. Rethinking AIDS (RA) is an organized attempt to bring awareness of the facts. The crucial and fundamental point is that the facts by themselves change no minds; one needs to give people a reason to question the official stance, and even before that one needs to spread the word that there exist informed and competent people who offer strong reasons for doubting the conventional wisdom. The task is one of public relations, not of science.

So Rethinking AIDS needs more visibility. Word of mouth is good, and it is worth recruiting one individual at a time — and indeed some significant number of people have been helped greatly when they chanced on RA or one of its members: HIV+ people (and their friends or relatives) who have been rescued from toxic medication or from deadly anxiety or harm from an unenlightened legal system. Much more is needed, though, more publicity; and one way toward that is by means of a public conference.

RA did indeed hold a conference in 2009 in Oakland, CA. Some details including the program can be seen at http://ra2009.org, and videos of the talks are available at http://ra2009.org/video.html: the yellow buttons for “Streaming” do not work, but the red buttons do, they download a .mov file playable on many media players (download takes just a few minutes for each talk with my fast broadband connection through my cable company ISP). I had found the Oakland conference an extraordinary experience, see The Family of Rethinking AIDS, which gives some sense of the benefits such an occasion can bring. Another wonderful experience was a conference in Vienna the following year.

Why nothing similar since then?
Because a conference requires two things: Workers and funds. Absolutely essential are one or more people willing and able to invest the enormous time and effort needed to organize: an appropriate venue including accommodation possibilities and audio and video facilities; inviting of speakers, screening of solicited and unsolicited potential talks; publicity; but above all there is needed money. Nothing can be done about a venue or about speakers without guaranteed funds to cover the basic expenditures, for example hotels require a guarantee before being willing to reserve a group of rooms and conference facilities.

RA has the willing and able people, but it needs the funds. We have talked about the desirability of another conference for years, and now our President, David Crowe, has come across a possible way to raise the needed money: crowd-sourcing, an approach that has shown its possibilities in raising funds for a variety of research projects that were not able to find support through official avenues. Please have a look at
https://www.crowdrise.com/o/en/team/rethinking-aids-future-conference/davidcrowe5, please consider adding your material support, and please tell every potential contributor about this initiative.