The Mail
Liam's Lament
I'm sorry that as an AIDS activist you don't take a greater interest in the toxicity of the drugs that are being funneled into AIDS patients in this country and worldwide.
I'm sorry that you don't take a greater interest in the promising alternative therapies and micronutrient studies which are giving such strong results in the limited space they're allowed in the medical journals.
You are described as "human rights activist." That term has to mean something besides emotional outbursts directed at people who are concerned about the forced use of extraordinarily toxic drugs in a captive population of children-or it means nothing.
Liam Scheff, Seattle
EUrinating on Apathy
I must take substantial issue with Thierry Marignac's article entitled "The EU is Dead. Short Live the EU" (6/22). His weird reasoning for not voting is exactly why the European Constitution failed. If he had such an important economic stake in a more unified Europe, the least he could have done is made his voice known by voting. It's easy to criticize something; it takes work to change it. It appears that Mr. Marignac is just plain lazy.
John Howell, Chicago
Omigod! It's Amy Wilson! The Artist!
My god! If Matt Taibbi had bothered to do his homework, he might have discovered that the section of my drawing reproduced in the Daily News constitutes a tiny portion of a huge work ("Get 'Em, George!" 6/29). The part taken out of context is about a 3" x 3" square of a seven-panel, 14'-long drawing. I couldn't agree with you more that had I simply drawn a parody of the Abu Ghraib prisoner and done nothing more, that that would be pretty dumb-but I didn't.
I am an artist who works with news and political imagery and text, which I incorporate into my work. I created that drawing over last summer, when the Abu Ghraib scandal was breaking, so it was only fitting that I use some imagery from that. There was a lot going on in that drawing-references to the upcoming election, the war in Iraq, 9/11-a lot of stuff.
Oh, and by the way-the drawing was executed in pencil and watercolor, not pen and ink, you idiot.
Amy Wilson, Manhattan
Nutcases
Matt Taibbi's article commenting on the recruiting problems facing the army ("Final Draft?" 6/22) was the very first I had read describing a war injury that I have written about for many months. It is perhaps the greatest secret of Bush's War: the loss of a man's testicles. (Matt had used the street term.) Though Hemingway had written of this injury from his own experiences as an ambulance driver in Italy during WW I (The Sun Also Rises), and Marlon Brando and Jack Webb appeared in a film depicting this tragedy (The Men), it is seldom mentioned, and for good reason. Though a young man may not think of the loss of a limb as being too serious an injury until it happens, the loss of his testicles will strike a far different fear than most other wartime injuries.
The Veteran's Administration rates war injuries based upon the ability of the veteran to earn a living. Though this wound has little to do with earnings or employment, they consider it so serious that they offer a 100 percent disability award.
Steve, WW II Navy vet, via email
Snacking on the Sea of Slime
Re: "Get 'Em George" (6/29):I must again commend Matt Taibbi for stating things clearly. For years now, I, like many Americans, have felt a growingÊunease with the direction in which our country is heading. Taibbi's last article galvanized me with one simple and obvious statement: "...now we have public officials and the media in the business of deciding who is a loyal American and who is not."
However misguided a conservative, Bush-toting imbecile may be, I still support their right to publiclyÊvomit their bullshit ideals. Yet I simply cannot tolerate the New Right's righteousness. Of course, this article touched on only a few issues in the sea of slime that we have been force fed since the earliest stages of the Bush Regime. Still, I thank Taibbi for a brief moment of clarity. Keep fighting the good fight!
Kelly Morris, Manhattan
The Big Picture
Matt Taibbi's article on the recent Drawing Center/Ground Zero controversy made an excellent (though oblique) point about the inappropriateness of the Daily News' tactic of cynically selecting a few works out of the many that the Drawing Center has exhibited over the years, ripping them out of their original context, and acting as if those works were intended to be direct statements on 9/11 to be displayed at Ground Zero ("Get 'Em, George!" 6/29). Such selective use of a small portion of a larger body of work to score political points and attempt to tarnish the reputation of The Drawing Center smacks of shameless opportunism at best and rank ignorance at worst.
This makes Taibbi's characterization of Amy Wilson's work in his own article all the more perplexing and annoying, since it commits exactly the same shameless/ignorant error.ÊHaving seen the piece in question (as well as many other works by Ms. Wilson on display at the Drawing Center and other venues in recent months), I'm frankly a little shocked that Mr. Taibbi's critique seems to be based on a knowledge of her work derived exclusively from the grainy, exaggerated image featured in the first Daily News article. The Abu Ghraib figure in question is a small detail (I'd estimate about one-third to one-half the size of the reproduction featured in the Daily News article) of a much larger piece, which is itself part of a larger series of drawings that contain imagery inspired by current events and historical political art, as well as Ms. Wilson's own complex, quasi-Dargeresque iconography. No mention is made anywhere in Mr. Taibbi's article of the large amount of text that is also present in these drawings, consisting of extensive quotes taken from news sources and political journals that span the spectrum from Far Right to Far Left. One would think that this would get some mention in the article, even if only to provide Mr. Taibbi with further ammunition for his unrestrained attack on Ms. Wilson's character, integrity, and artistic ability.
Instead, we get the following: "Glimpse is about as subtle as a pile of shit under a Christmas tree and contains, as far as I can tell, absolutely no ideas at all, just a statement in the form of a picture-a statement that adds absolutely nothing (while being considerably less shocking and impactful) to the real photographs of the Abu Ghraib prisoners" [italics added].
Frankly, it sounds as if Mr. Taibbi is completely unfamiliar with Ms. Wilson's work, barring that portion of a portion of it that appeared on page seven of last Friday's Daily News. Or perhaps he's merely looked at a different subset of her oeuvre, one that has dispensed with dense text and intricate imagery in favor of big, pretty pictures of unicorns, torture victims, and more unicorns. If that's the case, I'd love to know where that work can be seen, since I've never encountered anything like it at an exhibition of Ms. Wilson's work, and would love to have a richer, more fully-informed context in which to appreciate her artistic output. Do your homework, guys.
Jeff Edwards, via email
Drugs, Disease, Debate: Part II
Thank you for your leadership in bringing the ongoing HIV/AIDS debate to the forefront; commendation is certainly in order ("Drugs, Disease, Denial," 6/22).
However, I would have much preferred to see two qualified doctors discuss the issue, since these two pieces are not of equal caliber. The arguments in support of the AIDS establishment are not as strong as that of the dissident camp (even as a layperson, I could easily do better). Bergman's piece relies too heavily on personal attacks, questioning the character and motivation of the dissidents, rather than focusing on scientific/medical evidence to support her claims. Her language and choice of words are also quite distracting and takes away from her credibility. If she truly believes there is overwhelming evidence to support her side, why not rely on that evidence to dismiss the "wingnut claims" of her opponents. Politicians rely on personal attacks and question the integrity of their opponents in order to win a debate. Scientists rely on scientific and medical evidence. Both approaches work for certain audiences; the latter works best for me.
It is important to note that the "sensationalist stew of lies, partial truths and innuendo cooked up by an AIDS denialist" were investigated by the OHRP. As reported by the AP and New York Times June 17, 2005, the OHRP found that the ICC program did indeed violate federal rules designed to protect vulnerable children. The results of the investigation does not speak to the safety or efficacy of the HIV/AIDS drugs being tested, or HIV/AIDS drugs in general; it simply found that the ICC program failed to obtain and evaluate whether they had proper consent, information and safeguards for foster children. Such a revelation not only discredits Bergman (since this case was the primary focus of her arguments), but also raises more questions and red flags. Whose interests are really being taken into consideration?
Ozell Xianté, San Diego
I would like to thank you for your continuing coverage of alternative scientific views of AIDS, both in last year's article by Liam Scheff on the abuses at Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) and in "Drugs, Disease, Denial" (6/22), the point/counterpoint between Jeanne Bergman and Celia Farber.
I've rejected the HIV/AIDS model ever since the early 1990s. As an independent journalist myself (a former contributor to queer publications in San Diego and since 1994 editor/publisher of my own community news-magazine, Zenger's) I used to go to a lot of meetings about AIDS from researchers and health-care professionals reflecting the mainstream view. The more I attended these meetings, the less sense the case for HIV as the cause of AIDS seemed to make.
When I stumbled onto the views of alternative scientists like Peter Duesberg, David Rasnick, Kary Mullis, Charles Thomas and others who questioned HIV as the cause of AIDS, their ideas seemed logical and consistent with 150 years' worth of microbiology and knowledge of how microbes can and can't cause disease. The alternative AIDS theorists didn't ask me to accept that a single virus could have magical properties, including killing cells it didn't infect and causing disease only after the host developed an antibody reaction (which is what the so-called "HIV test" actually measures), when for all other viral diseases antibodies mean immunity. That's why doctors give people vaccines: to get their bodies to develop antibody responses to viruses so they won't get the diseases those viruses cause.
I would hope an objective reader with no stake in this controversy would read the pieces by Bergman and Farber the way I do. In particular, I would hope people would notice that Bergman's article is a series of ad hominem attacks almost start to finish, offering no scientific support for her jeremiads and instead denouncing challengers to the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy as "dangerously deluded" "wingnut[s]" spreading "lies, partial truths and innuendo" and, in one particular case, denouncing a prominent alternative AIDS activist as "just another lying AIDS profiteer."
I would hope people would notice that Farber cited three healthcare professionals and two journalists in support of her statements-as well as referencing two research studies without naming their authors-while the number of cited sources for Bergman's claims is zero. Bergman writes that the case against HIV as the cause of AIDS "has been thoroughly and completely demolished," but she never bothers to explain who has thoroughly and completely demolished it or where this thorough and complete demolition is available for the rest of us to read, either in print or on the Web. In fact, it's the absence of any scientific paper that actually establishes HIV as the cause of AIDS that led Kary Mullis-who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology used (misused, Mullis says) in the so-called "HIV viral load" tests-to examine critically, and ultimately reject, the HIV/AIDS model.
Besides Liam Scheff and Christine Maggiore-an independent AIDS reporter and an AIDS dissident activist-the only other human being Bergman mentions by name is Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, whom she uses in a classic case of McCarthyite guilt by association. Bergman decides that Maggiore is "just another lying AIDS profiteer" because "she herself emphasizes the term 'positive' and avoids saying she is infected or has the virus." This just goes to prove Farber's point that the HIV/AIDS mainstream has so controlled the language of AIDS that rational debate on these assertions has become impossible. Maggiore's whole point is that one can test
"HIV-positive"-as she has consistently since the mid-1990's-without having an active HIV infection. If Bergman is willing to acknowledge on the basis of Maggiore's HIV antibody testing history that she can repeatedly test "positive" and still not have HIV, she's conceded one of the dissidents' main points: that a "positive" HIV antibody test should not be considered a disease and therefore should not be medicated with highly toxic drugs.
The whole tone of Bergman's piece-an outraged defender of the faith attacks the heretics-just underscores the faith-based nature of HIV "science" and the many bizarre and unsupportable assumptions one has to make to continue to believe in HIV as the cause of AIDS. Nowhere is this more apparent than in her blithe assertion that the children at ICC "would otherwise have died" if they hadn't been fed the anti-HIV drugs.
This is one of the strongest-held beliefs in the HIV/AIDS religion: the idea that not only does an HIV antibody reaction equal an active infection but that everyone who tests "HIV-positive" will get AIDS and will die prematurely.
Astonishingly, the only evidence for this belief is a series of longitudinal studies-in which a sample of people are followed long-term-that were begun in urban gay male communities in the U.S. in the late 1970s before the advent of AIDS. Though these were later converted into AIDS studies, their original purpose was to study hepatitis B. Therefore, these studies enrolled gay men at especially high risk of hepatitis B-heavy users of recreational and/or pharmaceutical drugs, regular practitioners of anonymous sex with multiple partners, who often came down with genuinely sexually transmitted diseases and frequently took antibiotic treatments for them.
These are exactly the risk factors alternative AIDS scientists like Duesberg, Rasnick and Mullis have identified as the prime causes of AIDS in the U.S. and the developed world in general.
To extrapolate long-term studies on a handful of people leading a particularly high-risk lifestyle into a statement that everybody who tests "HIV-positive" will get AIDS and die from it is absurd. Yet it's the whole basis for the HIV/AIDS mainstream's determination to medicate all "HIV-positive" people, whether they're adults or children and whether they're actually in the death throes of AIDS complications or are otherwise perfectly healthy ("asymptomatic," in AIDS-speak). Without controlled clinical studies comparing "HIV-positive" people on the medications with those taking no drugs at all, we'll never know whether those taking the drugs live longer or shorter, and are healthier or sicker, than those who are drug-free. And I suspect those studies aren't being done, not for "humanitarian" reasons (it would be relatively easy for researchers to recruit a drug-free control group from members of AIDS dissident organizations who've already decided not to use the meds) but because the HIV/AIDS establishment doesn't want the world to know the answer to that question.
Mark Gabrish Conlan, San Diego
I'm responding to both of your excellent articles regarding the HIV/AIDS debate ("Drugs, Disease, Denial," 6/22).ÊMy name is Paul Whiting and I am an administrative assistant for a litigation support company here in Portland, Oregon. I am also the moderator of an MSN chat group called groups.msn.com/HEAL-Northwest, which I started just over a year ago.
I was diagnosed as "HIV-positive" in November of 2000. And, at that time, I believed what we allÊhave been toldÊabout HIV being the only known cause of AIDS.ÊSo, for four years I lived with the belief that there was a deadly virus lurking inside of me, ready to strike at any moment! Though, I was taking very good care of my body, the knowledge that "something was out to get me!" was taking it's toll on my mental health.
Then, in May of 2004, something extraordinary happened! Thanks to an unassuming ad placed in the local gay rag Just Out, by a "dissident" named Bob, I found this entire body of scientific evidence from very credible doctors and scientists-many of whom used to be involved in AIDS research-who were saying that HIV could not possibly be the cause of AIDS! So, I started reading...and kept reading...and then read some more!
And this whole new world of information was opened up to me! In one fell swoop,Êall of the blatant contradictions about the HIV theory of AIDS, which I had been noticing-but choosing to ignore, because I could not imagine how 99.99 percent of the world's scientists could possibly be wrong-suddenly made sense! All of the oddities about what my doctor had told me about this deadly virus inside of my body (which, mind you, was in complete contradiction to my own health) became crystal clear! The HIV theory of AIDS was wrong.
No one ever told me there are 60 known conditions that cause "false positives" on both the ElisaÊand Western Blot tests, or that your test results are "interpreted" based on your pre-test interview in order to determine if you belong to a "risk group," or that it is assumed you are truly "HIV-positive" if you have highly elevated antibodies (which, again, could be caused by any number of the aforementioned conditions!) but only if you fall into one of the risk groups-who are "known to be carriers of HIV"-so you must have it too; or that this deadly diagnosis is based on a non-specific anti-body test that has no gold standard for comparison (no EM photographs of an actual virus that has been rigorously isolated and shown to cause disease based on Koch's postulates)!
And so I am called a "denialist," because I choose to see the contractions in the HIV theory and I choose to listen to the voices in the wilderness, who are saying "Hey, folks! This doesn't make any sense! Maybe this scientific theory is WRONG...just like every scientific theory can be!"
Doctors and scientists are people too! And they make monumental mistakes just like the rest of us! They are just as prone to being wrong as the rest of us-and sometimes even more so, because they often act on the assumption they "know better" than the lay person! M.D. does not stand for Medical Diety-but many of us believe it does!
Even if you cannot fathom how HIV cannot possibly cause AIDS, you can at least agree that we deserve to know there is an ongoing debate going in the scientific and medical communities about this highly emotional topic! We have a right to be told about the "other side of AIDS!"
To that end, I spent the last nine months volunteering my time to create a simple brochure thatÊintroduce this very topic. It can be found at groups.msn.com/HEAL-Northwest/documents.msnw and is free for anyone to print and distribute. If you know someone who is affected by the HIV/AIDS (and aren't we all, to one degree or another?), then please share this with them!
Let them at least know there are other scientific theories about what caused the original cases of AIDS as well as what's causing it now, so that they can make their own informed decisions about their health!
Yours in rethinking AIDS,
Paul Whiting, Portland, OR
Perhaps your reporter should have allowed someone who contradicts the establishment dogma about HIV & AIDS to present their take on the "science" regarding this topic ("Drugs, Disease, Denial," 6/22). It is not a simple topic, as all the interactions occurring in a person's body leading to immune impairment can't be placed into a single formula of "virus X = illness Y."ÊHowever, retroviruses have not been shown to be particularly harmful in any healthy population sample, while the treatments for HIV and AIDS (and other diseases) are known to often impair the body's functioning in a variety of ways that could foster conditions associated with AIDS. A lot of well-established scientists dispute the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy, and it is clear that fear and anxiety themselves contribute to immune breakdown and other illnesses, so fostering fear about viruses is as likely to contribute to health decline as viruses themselves.
The genuine denialists are those who are afraid that all that they believe is lies which are ruining lives-not many people are willing to admit they have an erroneous belief and that the belief is contributing to harm of other people. When the majority of people share a fallacious belief it is easiest for them to call dissenters "denialists" rather than independently investigating to find the truth and considering the possibility that they themselves are in denial. Focus on viruses as the "reason" for illness is a backwards way of looking at the disease process, even more so when people are visibly healthy and just appear to have been exposed to a virus. Giving toxic treatments to someone who is healthy just because they may have come in contact with a microbe is absurd. Microbes proliferate in the body when there is an imbalance in body chemistry or related weakness-just the circumstances triggered by many allopathic medical treatments. Teaching people to foster their own health naturally and by avoiding all drugs unless absolutely necessary would be much more helpful than promoting the HIV=AIDS non-sense. Of course, there are too many egos and too much money and power invested in the HIV/AIDS establishment to change paradigms-plus the CIA has made hiding truths about AIDS a matter of National Security, suggesting that HIV & AIDS are vital to some agenda being carried out by the intelligence apparatus; which gives credence to claims that HIV strains were bio-engineered and intentionally released in certain populations (supported by HIV epidemiology, which incidentally doesn't confirm the idea that HIV in itself produces AIDS syndrome).
Well, do some work on those journalism skills there-I commend you for opening a window to the issue even though you present hearsay as "scientific consensus" just because people in positions of authority claim it. It's a common error, as people often repeat what they hear or read in the news as fact when it's really hearsay for which no meaningful evidence has been offered.
Jed Shlackman, Miami
I believe it is unethical to prescribe drugs whose side effects are worse than the disease ("Drugs, Disease, Denial," 6/22). Case in point are the HIV/AIDS drugs. Many people who are HIV+/AIDS+ are alive today because they either stopped taking or never started the pharmaceuticals. Why would anyone want to take medicines that are carcinogenic (AZT) and full of side effects (protease inhibitors) In fact, there is a growing number of AIDS believers who refuse to take the pharmaceuticals. When I was wearing my t-shirt that said, "AIDS DRUGS KILL," a man came up to me and said, "Alright sister, I've had AIDS for 17 years and the only reason I'm still alive is because I never took the drugs." And another AIDS believer said about my shirt, "It says that in the Physican's Desk Reference that 'AIDS DRUGS KILL.'"Many physicans are also delaying writing up prescriptions for patients until HIV/AIDS is "more advanced." It is not only dissidents anymore that are questioning the toxicity of the drugs.
Why these drugs were ever prescribed in the first place remains a mystery to many people. AZT is a failed cancer drug and the side effects of protease inhibitors include pancreatitis, diabetes, facial wasting, neuropathy and sudden death. Both drugs and extremely cytoxic and kill cells. Why take a pharamaceutical that can kill you faster than the disease. I think this disease is better left untreated. The AMA, FDA and physicians should read the Hippocratic Oath (do no harm) and research side effects of pharmaceuticals extensively before prescribing. I'm not questioning the validity of short term antibiotics or insulin. I'm questioning the use of drugs that lower quality of life and lead to premature death such as the HIV/AIDS drugs. Society needs to specifically question the HIV/AIDS hypthesis, at very least if the risks of these pharmaceutical outweigh the benefits.
Denise Jameson, San Francisco
I have to say that Jeanne Bergman's viewpoint, swaddled in a sneering tone and dripping with cynicism, is hardly persuasive ("Drugs, Disease, Denial," 6/22). Whenever anyone writes with such vitriol, I'm instantly suspicous that they have an axe to grind. Celia Farber presented a reasoned, what-if-we-just-think-about-this-for-a-moment essay, and I for one will consider the disturbing issues she raises. Bergman was cavalier and nasty, even denigrating a woman who once endured the agony of testing.
HIV-positive as "another lying AIDS profiteer." Christine Maggiore has hardly made a million bucks off her unfortunate diagnosis-most people have never even heard of her-so why does she raise such venom in Bergman? Tom Cruise's incoherent diatribes notwithstanding, I think most Americans are at a point where they're ready to at least entertain the notion that the political force exerted by the makers of medication has changed the normal course of science. People do take too many drugs, and I'm sure HIV medications are no exception. In fact, on reflection, of the HIV-positive friends I have, all of the long-term survivors have one thing in common: They never took the drugs, or any recreational drugs. Hey, there's no issue so hot that it couldn't at least be discussed, right? Why does Bergman grow so vicious about the mere debate of it? Thanks, but I think I'll open my mind and entertain the possibility-just the possibility-that HIV is not exactly what we assumed it was. Then I'll go from there.