HIV denial. Christine Maggiore looses her child to HIV.

[FM Arouet666]

I admit, I was ignorant of the HIV denial controversy. I spotted a few posts by Trey Ellis on Huffington which prompted me to investigate the issue further.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/the-right-hasnt-cornered_b_7876.html

Ellis has a follow up to his original post and a link to a Salon article about Peter Duesberg a Berkeley professor and proponent of the Hiv denial debate.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/trey-ellis/the-politics-of-health_b_8025.html
http://www.salon.com/health/feature/2000/07/28/aidsdeniers/index.html

Autopsy report on Maggiore's daughter
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/maggiorecoroner.pdf

And a response from a few skeptics.

http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-rebuttals-of-hivaids-skeptics.html
http://catallarchy.net/blog/archives/2005/11/29/hiv-dissidents-continued/

And a counter post from a liberal blogger. Deans World.
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1127620494.shtml

As I have posted before I am a physician, a surgeon, and I do not claim to be an Aids expert. However, I find the arguments proposed by the Hiv deniers to be unconvincing. Peter Duesberg is center in the debate, a Berkeley professor, my alma mater, and I am astonished at his conclusions.

I wonder, is Hiv denial a pervasive idea within the liberal community?

[Richard Steele]

1. Pervasive? I do not believe so..

I suspect that relatively few people are even aware of it.
This is the first I have even SEEN Deusberg's name in several years.

[Tom Joad]

2. I think it is a small group who believe that stuff.

even with very radical folks.
I can imagine it has some prevalence among new-agers, but they are not necessarily progressive.

[Trillo]

3. The variation of "HIV denial" that I've read of

is that AIDS is is occurring and is infectious in some HIV negative people, and that industry and government, i.e., the corporatists, due to various potential liabilities and interests, have propagated a biological or viral agent explanation (these are outside of the corporatists 'control factor', therefore, they are not 'liable').

A disturbing announcement was made at the July 1992 international AIDS conference held in Amsterdam: Several people with symptoms of AIDS, but who had no evidence of infection with either HIV-1 or HIV-

2 (the viruses generally believed, at the time, to cause AIDS), had been identified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. A few weeks later, in early September, Newsweek made an even more shocking announcement: that Chronic Fatigue Syndrome researcher Dr. Paul Cheney had in his practice 20 CFS patients who had the same immune system deficiencies as the non-HIV AIDS cases revealed at the Amsterdam conference.
...
One of the most puzzling things about the ICL cases to AIDS researchers -- other than the fact that they didn't have HIV -- is that most of the patients do not fit into recognized AIDS "risk behavior" categories; that is, they were not gay men, IV drug users, or the sexual partners of people in those risk groups. These cases may, in fact, be dramatic evidence that federal officials have not told the public the whole truth about the nature and the full scope of the AIDS epidemic.
http://www.chronicillnet.org/CFS/Ostrom/chp1.html

I haven't particularly been following this, and am not making any claims in support of or against it other than curiosity.

[Celebration]

9. Cheney, other

The chronic fatigue folks really like Cheney. It does seem like some fishy things are going on with Gulf War Syndrome, Lyme Disease, etc. I don't have any particular knowledge about a coverup, but the way this government classifies information and covers up everything else, you gotta wonder?

I have done some minimal amount of reading about pleomorphic bacteria (cell wall deficient) that are hard to identify. That could possibly account for Lyme Disease symptoms absent actually identifying Lyme Disease. Some of the more out there MS type health care practitioners find Lyme Disease in all MS patients. Of course the means by which they identify it is not conventionally accepted. I realize AIDS is a virus, but if bird flu can morph into attacking humans then it doesn't sound unreasonable that AIDS could morph into something a little bit different than how it began. That reminds me--I find the obsession of the media with bird flu a little strange, especially given the flu non events over the past few years. It "almost" feels as if there is an agenda behind it all. LOL. I am just paranoid enough to refuse to get a flu shot. I'll take my chances. They'll have to send the feds after me and stick me in one of those new Halliburton controlled camps meant for emergencies.

[Quakerfriend]

4. Well, I am not all that surprised because,

some of these theories have been around for a number of years.

Perhaps, my story will be of interest to you.
I did clinical research for the NIH (at UPenn) for years. We did all of the AIDs clinical trials on our unit. At the time, Penn was one of the 8 ACTGs in the country. I was chief of Nutritional Research and sat on the advisory committee for all protocols done on the unit.

I found out, at the age of 38, that I had widely disseminated breast ca.
I researched all treatments available to me, including those outside of the country. I made the very difficult decision to have myself admitted to a hospital in Tijuana where they did Gerson Therapy- juicing, O2, laetrile etc. I was intrigued by the unusual number of cases of pancreatic and liver cancer they had claimed to cure. And, naturally, I believed in the basic premise of healing through nutrition and support of the immune system. I had also seen far too few survive chemo and rads.

So, after staying in the hospital for one week and learning how to do the therapy myself I came home. In less than five weeks all of my cancer was gone, and that was eight years ago.

But, what I wanted to tell you was that while I was there I learned that they had an ever growing number of AIDS patients coming there for treatment. I do not know what the outcomes were for these patients but, one of the MDs told me that many 'were getting well'.

It was several years later that I stumbled upon Dr. Gary Glum's book "Full Disclosure". Dr. Glum is a chiropractor, not an MD, btw. I called him about another one of his books and he told me about "Full Disclosure". It was one of the strangest phone conversations I have ever had. He told me that his life had been threatened for publishing this book and that it quickly taken off of all bookstore shelves. So, I bought a copy thru him.

The book details how the US gov't at Ft. Detrick and Bar Harbor 'created' the AIDS virus. The book is based on info supplied by a British scientist who was involved in the project and who decided to tell all after finding out he was dying from cancer. It contains very precise info about different meetings btw. researchers etc.

After working for the NIH for 17 years, I believe that the info in the book is probably very accurate. It has haunted me for years now.

I wonder if HIV denial arises from the info contained in "Full Disclosure".

I will also add to this that I am a big fan of Dr. Lorraine Days. You may know of her as she's been on 20/20, Oprah etc. She's an orthopod out of Ca who has been very outspoken about the AIDS virus, an was the first to insist that surgeons must wear goggles etc. during surgery to protect themselves from 'airborne' HIV. She used a therapy similar to the one I used to cure herself of cancer years ago.

[FM Arouet666]

8. Curious

You mention that you had disseminated breast ca at 38, what was the exact diagnosis? DCIS, LCIS, metastatic breast ca?

[Rowdyboy]

5. "Is hiv denial a pervasive idea within the liberal community?"

Possibly in larger, more metropolitan areas but certainly not here in the sticks.

[bemildred]

6. Rather uncommon anywhere from what I can see.

I find the arguments and explanations proposed by both sides unconvincing, and the generally politically charged and emotion-laden lack of skepticism and scientific objectivity which has characterized the debate about AIDS from the beginning most depressing to observe. That is, to be clear, I find both Duesberg's thesis and the canonical explanations lacking for various reasons, they do a decent job of critiquing each other, and a poor job of proving their own point. I saw an article on Duesberg recently, he appears to still be teaching at Berkeley and sticking to his guns on HIV.

[trotsky]

7. I don't think it's necessarily pervasive, but...

I've seen more than one HIV-denier post on DU.

Interesting quote from the post:

"Like a lot of people, especially out here in California, she not only has distrust for Western medicine, she seems to have a virulent contempt for it..."

Now THAT attitude is pretty pervasive, especially here on DU.

[Warpy]

10. I think you'll find this "community" of doctor phobes to cross

party and ideological lines. I don't think you can point to any one group of people, unless their religion is one that mandates avoiding medicine in favor of prayer, as having a corner on this particular marketplace of dangerously stupid ideas.

Being sick means being out of control. Turning your life over to a medical professional means being out of control of your treatment and ultimate fate. Being largely ignorant of medicine (although you may be very knowledgable in other areas) means being out of control in that you're never quite sure what is going on, and it's your own body.

I think this feeling of being out of control is central to this deep seated phobia of all things medical. The AIDS deniers are simply trying to regain control of a situation that is too monstrous for them to confront on a purely rational level. The amalgam crazies are grasping for control over a chronic illness that may be treated but never cured. The antivaccination crusaders are trying to control the possibility of birth defects in their children. Quackery gives them an illusion of control through simplistic ideas, anecdote posing as research, and fakery posing as treatment.

It's often said you can never kill an idea. Unfortunately, that applies to stupid ideas as well as valid ones. You'll never be able to convince a phobe of the germ theory of illness. You'll never be able to convince a supply sider that the rich don't provide jobs as welfare. And you'll never convince an HIV denier that a tiny virus in their bloodstream is going to kill them and others if they don't take medication to control it.

[Odin2005]

11. It's the same contempt of western science that gives us...

...creationists, people who think alternative "medicine" is anything more than the placebo effect, New Age crazies, anti-nuclear energy people, etc. Our society is mostly to blame, people are bombarded with memes of "every opinion is equally valid" and "teach the controversy" that make people distrustful of "experts" and "ivory tower intellectuals."

In my experience, HIV-denial seems most common among African acedemics with an axe to grind.