Have Health Experts Been Wrong About HIV/AIDS All These Years?

Throughout the HIV/AIDS "epidemic", the Centers For Disease Control estimates of the extent of the infection rate in the U.S. and throughout the world has been over-stated. Notwithstanding its own predictions, the infection rate it once predicted back in the 1980s never came to fruition but not for lack of trying. The agency has widened its definition on infection on several occasions to produce larger numbers. This past week, the CDC upped its estimates on the current rate of infection in the U.S., claiming that at least 65,000 become infected with AIDS annually, a 40% increase in its past estimates. Although little has been reported in the mainstream media, there has for many years been a group of respected virologists who have challenged the HIV causing AIDS postulate. These so-called dissenters, or "denialists" as they are sometimes called by their detractors, have been heavily criticized by the pharmaceutical giants who are making big bucks off the epidemic and establishment health care professionals within and outside the CDC. Research dollars for these respected researchers dried up, but there is a growing body of evidence which suggests the dissenters had it right all along and the world has been fooled by the true cause of HIV/AIDS.

It's a lengthy read, but I would highly encourage you to check out Clark Baker's investigative story, "HIV, AIDS and Gallo's Egg," in the California Conservative. What drew Baker's attention to the issue was a controversy which erupted recently when the Semmelweis Society International decided to award its Semmelweis “Clean Hands Award” to two from the dissenting community, reporter Celia Farber and molecular biologist Peter Duesberg. The award is made in honor of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, who had the audacity to suggest to the hospital where he worked that infections could be reduced if health care providers washed their hands. He was fired for pressing his idea, which was ridiculed as a silly notion. Semmelweis called physicians who didn't wash their hands as "irresponsible murderers." Despite losing his job and being ostracized, Semmelweis tirelessly pressed his theory and eventually turned non-believers into believers. Defending its decision to give the award to Farber and Duesberg, the Society explained:

One Semmelweis Laureate is Peter Duesberg, PhD. (http://www.duesberg.com/ ), Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr Duesberg has asked legitimate but "outside the box" questions about the connection of HIV to AIDS, and even further questions regarding the documented toxicity of AIDS drugs. Drugs that are commonly used to fight the very immune deficiencies that these medications are known to affect adversely, or even to cause.

Dr. Duesberg does *not* advocate the reduction of clinical services or aid to Asia or Africa. Dr Duesberg simply questions the administration of drugs that are known to compromise human immune systems to patients whose immune systems are already compromised by poverty, malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, dirty water, drug use, or dangerous sexual practices. If Duesberg's contrarian concerns are true, the AIDS drugs themselves may be the proximate cause of some or all of the death statistics that pharmaceutical companies currently rely upon to promote the sale of their drugs.

Because the anti-AIDS Pharma Industry has already generated more than $200 billion in Pharma income from US government/US taxpayer funding, it is understandable why that same Pharma industry might attack individuals who propose alternative ideas and treatments that could save the lives of millions of AIDS sufferers around the world, but without their products (and at the loss of their profits).

The overt Hysteria deployed against those who are simply proposing the clinical and fully scientific review of new ideas should alarm public servants and elected officials who are responsible for supporting the First Amendment right for rational discourse.

American taxpayers have not been told the whole truth about the still-unidentified HIV virus, and its arguable relationship to the disease of AIDS, while ignoring the known toxicity of the drugs currently used to fight AIDS.

The taxpayers deserve a better break and a much clearer knowledge of how (and why and by whom) their tax dollars are being spent. If Professor Duesberg and others are wrong, nothing is lost. But if Dr. Duesberg is correct, thousands, if not millions of people around the world may have died due to the toxic properties of AIDS drugs and the misdiagnosis/mistreatment of a still poorly understood disease.

Semmelweis Society International does not present the Clean Hands Award lightly. In Dr. Duesberg case, it is hard to imagine anyone more deserving than Professor Peter Duesberg and investigative reporter Celia Farber. These two have withstood a vicious and ongoing multiyear multicontinent personal onslaught against their livelihoods, their character, and their families that is unparalleled since the Spanish Inquisition.

Their sole "crime" is to ask if there has not been a colossal error in our thinking to date.

The simple facts are that nobody has ever been cured of AIDS. No Vaccine has ever been developed. Something is wrong here.

The award to Duesberg and Farber intrigued Baker. He quickly learned that he too would be vilified if he made any attempt to vindicate their views. Experts told Baker the two were liars who were responsible for the death of millions in Africa. One of the so-called professionals initiated a spam attack against Baker's name and professional e-mail account. Baker pursued the truth, nonetheless, impressed with what he learned about Duesberg. Dr. Duesberg was the first person to isolate the cancer gene in 1970, and he mapped the genetic structure of retroviruses, a class of viruses which does not kill cells. Before Duesberg became a dissenter, he was voted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. Dr. Robert Gallo is the cancer virologist who first claimed the link between HIV and AIDS. In 1984, Gallo said Duesberg knew more about retroviruses than any man alive according to Baker. As soon as Duesberg questioned Gallos' theory on HIV/AIDS, his research funding abruptly ended. Cecilia Farber attempted to report on Duesberg's doubts and she was barred from further contact with key scientist, deemed a threat to public health.

Baker's reporting shows that there are plenty of reasons to doubt Gallo's work based upon prior problems with his work. Clark, quoting another source, writes:

In 1975, Gallo and Weiss stated that they had isolated a human leukemia virus, HL23 virus, but this was shown later to have resulted from laboratory contamination by three primate retroviruses. In 1980 Gallo claimed to have isolated a human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV), but did not present positive evidence that this was a human virus. During 1983-4, Gallo and his associates published several papers asserting that the human leukemia virus, HTLV-1, was the agent involved in the development of AIDS. This was eventually disproven but meanwhile the attention of many scientists was misdirected, wasting time and resources that could have been put to far better use…

What Baker learned about Gallo's work on HIV/AIDS should make any thinking person wonder what the hell is going on. He notes that it was Duesberg who first identified and mapped retroviruses. HIV is considered a retrovirus. Experts agree that retroviruses do not kill cells. Gallo calls Duesberg the word's top retrovirus expert. Yet, Gallo goes on to proclaim that the HIV retrovirus causes AIDS by killing white blood cells. Duesberg reminds Gallo that retroviruses don't kill white blood cells. To this day, Dr Gallo, nor any other medical researcher, has never proven the existence of an HIV virus which attacks white blood cells and causes AIDS.

Baker's reporting shows that some studies suggest more people become sick and die from the drugs they have taken to treat AIDS after being diagnosed with HIV. The drugs cause liver damage, white blood cell loss, anemia, cardiovascular problems, pancreatitis, psychiatric disorders, kidney problems, thrombocytopenia and hemmorhage. Baker points out the changing theories of how HIV develops into full blown AIDS. In the beginning, we were told AIDS would set in within 6 months to one year of infection. Today, we're told the latency period may stretch as far into the future as 30 years! Baker finds it incredulous that Gallo's original findings leading to today's HIV/AIDS postulate have never been released for public scrutiny. Baker notes that one study of chimpanzees, which share 99% of the human DNA, were infected with the so-called HIV virus. Astonishingly, none of the chimps ever developed AIDS. In another study of 175 sexually-active heterosexual couples where one of the partners was infected with HIV, not a single person in the study group contracted HIV from the infected partner after six years.

As Baker's reporting notes, testing for HIV does not react to an actual virus present in the body; rather, it tests for the presence of certain anti-bodies associated with HIV/AIDS. "Using a 'cops and robbers' analogy, Dr. Gallo’s HIV test relies on the presence of cops (antibodies) to indicate the presence of robbers (HIV)," Baker writes. "While it’s true that cops appear at bank robberies, they also appear at doughnut shops, police stations, fundraisers, sporting events, and training academies." "The presence of cops does not necessarily prove the presence of robbers." He notes that false positive tests are often produced because a person is infected with some other disease. Baker's reporting leads him to conclude the worst of pharmaceutical companies.
The pharmaceutical companies are:

• Using inaccurate, unverified testing protocols to claim people are infected with a retrovirus that has not been shown to cause harm but, they claim, could kill;
• Inventing, manufacturing, and distributing toxins designed to disrupt normal cellular and enzymatic functions necessary to sustain life to fight the presence of a harmless passenger retrovirus;
• Using those toxins to deliberately, unintentionally, or recklessly compromise what may otherwise be healthy immune systems, and;
• Manipulating drug-caused illness and mortality statistics to maintain HIV/AIDS funding
• Enlisting and paying uninformed but well-meaning celebrities to promote HIV testing and treatment to specific targets (gay community, low-income minorities, and third world populations) that are most vulnerable to seductive and high-pressure marketing strategies.

"If [this] conclusion is true, America could eventually recover from the scandal: but it’s hard to calculate the impact of the needless suffering, death, lost confidence in American science and good will, class action lawsuits, lost shareholder value, product liability, the wasted energy and resources expended within our academic institutions, its effect in the international community and the US and global economies," Baker writes. "Without honest and intellectually curious scientists like Peter Duesberg, humanity loses the promise of innovation and progress." "Without aggressive and impartial journalists like Celia Farber, industry and government cannot be held accountable." "Without both, the 232-year experiment we call the United States of America will have failed."