In 2000, I attended the second of two hearings called by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa.
He set up an AIDS Advisory Panel after learning of problems and uncertainties in AIDS science.
For his trouble, Mbeki suffered intense criticism from the South African and indeed world media
At the International AIDS Conference in Durban, there were people with placards saying,
“One dissident, one bullet”.
It was as though we were traitors in a war.
But how can you fight a war when you don’t know who or what the enemy is?
There is irrefutable evidence, for example, that TB, a massive global killer, commonly causes those infected, and their contacts, to have raised blood levels of the antibodies that the HIV test detects.
But this has nothing to do with HIV.
"As part of my job as medical correspondent I was writing a lot about AIDS in the late 1980s, taking the conventional line about this great new danger that was facing us. When I came back to the Sunday Times from the Sunday Express in the early 1990s, I was struck by how predictions that had been made about this epidemic – that it would sweep through all sexually active populations – were not coming about, at least in Europe and America. I learned of a critique of the HIV theory mounted by scientists in the United States and wrote a two-page spread on it. It was the first time the critique had been reported in a national newspaper, and it brought fierce responses: everybody attacked the Sunday Times for being irresponsible, because it was thought that for the scientific community to show any differences of opinion on the causes of AIDS would damage the public health efforts. It was as though we were traitors in a war. But how can you fight a war when you don’t know who or what the enemy is?
I’ve come to believe that the medical and science professions lost their heads over this issue. Whilst it is understandable that people will behave differently in the face of a prospective crisis, making and never challenging assumptions about the cause of a new disease simply does not make for good science. I wrote a series of articles that critiqued the mainstream HIV theory. Nature, the bible of science journalism, along with other scientific bodies became more and more upset about these articles. At one point the magazine contemplated picketing the offices of the Sunday Times to try to stop us. It was really a very bitter episode.
There was a feeling amongst journalists writing about AIDS in the late 1980s of really doing something useful; not just entertaining or informing, but really making a difference to the world. In my view, that feeling, which I shared, can be dangerous for a journalist, as well as for scientists. It can cause you to lose your objectivity. You feel so much that you are doing the right thing it becomes very hard to see contradictory evidence.
Broadly, there are two critiques: the first is from the eminent molecular biologist, Peter Duesberg, who argued, from the late 1980s, that HIV was such a conventional retrovirus, with such minimal amounts active in HIV-positive people and even AIDS patients, that it could not possibly be doing the damage ascribed to it. There is also a group in Perth, Australia, who have an even deeper critique. These scientists say that the HIV test was never validated as demonstrating the presence of a new virus, because of the inability to purify the purported virus or locate it in AIDS patients. They argue that the antibodies that are taken to signify HIV are actually non-specific: rather than showing the presence of a deadly new virus, they indicate that the immune system has been activated in a particular way as a result of any one or more of a variety of circumstances and conditions. Their view is that promiscuous, unprotected anal sex with multiple partners, often accompanied by heavy drug use, is a principal cause of “HIV”-positivity and AIDS in the West, whereas the main cause of what has come to be called AIDS in poor countries is diseases linked to malnutrition. In both circumstances, the immune system becomes challenged in ways that lead to raised levels of the antibodies thought to mean HIV is present; but those antibodies can actually relate to a wide variety of conditions, including some that are harmless, such as pregnancy, and others that are often treatable, such as TB. So these are really very radical challenges to the worldwide popular beliefs about the causes and nature of AIDS.
In poor countries within Africa and the Indian subcontinent there are millions of premature deaths, and it is good that world attention is now focused on this tragedy. But the critics argue that AIDS workers, who have the best of intentions, have nevertheless focused on the wrong target. There is irrefutable evidence, for example, that TB, a massive global killer, commonly causes those infected, and their contacts, to have raised blood levels of the antibodies that the HIV test detects. But this has nothing to do with HIV.
You cannot tell simply on the basis of the antibody test whether or not HIV is present. This is acknowledged by the manufacturers of the tests, who put a suitable disclaimer in their product information leaflet. But people who test positive are not told of this non-specificity. Doctors believe they have other tests with which they can confirm a diagnosis of HIV infection, but in fact, none of these other tests is specific either. It is a real tragedy. I still write occasional articles about this:
but many people still think it is irresponsible to question “HIV” science.
So how did you cope with the bitterness that this issue generated?
I wouldn’t have been able to survive the two years of intense criticism whilst I was doing the questioning articles at the Sunday Times if I hadn’t been making progress on trying to take my ego out of the equation, through continual spiritual practice. So it has been a fantastic learning tool! I have had to check my motives constantly. The experience has taught me to be less and less reactive to abuse, in the process of searching for an objective perspective on these issues. If you are trying to prove a particular point of view in a personal way, it hurts when others condemn you. The more you manage to keep your feelings out of it, the more you are able to remain calm, and that enables you to keep going.
The story took me all over the world. I spent a week in a virologist’s laboratory in Germany, learning about molecular biology, so that I could understand how the original mistakes in HIV science came about. I travelled through Africa for several weeks; I went to interview the scientists in Australia. It was actually a great privilege to be with a newspaper like the Sunday Times that could afford to let me investigate and write about the critiques in such depth.
I left full-time journalism in 1994 to write the book, AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996), which was, disappointingly, widely ignored except in some fringe publications. I was a bit innocent. I think I expected – because it seemed so clear to me that the evidence was there that this was a huge mistake – that it would only be a matter of months before the truth came out. Surely doctors wouldn’t want to keep condemning people to death on the basis of this unvalidated diagnostic test? Why would people want to continue giving antiviral drugs, of high toxicity, when it wasn’t even clear what the target of the drugs was?
There are stories of hundreds of people, particularly in the United States, who have been diagnosed HIV positive yet who are mostly doing very well after learning of the flaws in the HIV theory and deciding not to take the drug approach. The organisation Alive & Well – AIDS Alternatives has done tremendous work in alerting those with an HIV diagnosis that this needn’t be a death sentence, and that they should make informed choices about the drugs. It is a sad aspect of modern medicine that doctors are often too ready to tell a patient that unless they agree to take drug treatment, they will die. The public have been led to understand cancer as a death sentence, although some of the cancer charities are beginning to try to change that idea. At least cancer is today a disease that can be talked about openly, but imagine the effect on a patient of an “HIV” diagnosis, given the stigma attached to the purported virus. It is said to be sexually-transmitted, and it’s also linked to drugs; and the diagnosis is considered so terrible that you need to be counselled if you test positive. Surely that only adds to the power of the hex, the belief that you are going to die? I wonder how many people have died simply as a result of being told they have HIV…
So has there been any discussion or debate on the mainstream view of HIV/AIDS?
Mainstream AIDS experts have not been willing to enter into discussion with the “dissident” scientists. They won’t appear on the same platform as these scientists, won’t allow them to publish in their journals, and won’t even debate with them. After he mounted his critique, Peter Duesberg was reduced from being a front-runner in his field to chair of his university’s annual picnic committee!
When my book was published an article headlined “Sunday Times Science Editor Awaits Flat Earth” came out in the Observer. It was written by a journalist who was purporting to review the book, but he admitted to me later that he had not read it. It linked my spiritual study with my “crazy” views on HIV/AIDS, but misrepresented both in order to ridicule both me and the rival Sunday Times. Althoughthe newspaper published an apology and correction, it left quite a scar for a while.
So the discussion on these issues has mostly been polemics. However, after the publication of my book, a group of AIDS workers at the Chelsea & Westminster hospital allowed me to come and address them. Although it didn’t change anything, they were courteous, and also I think genuinely surprised that I wasn’t some kind of monster, a dreadful hack just out for a sensational story, given the nature of the prior publicity. It was generous of them to take that risk with me, and they saw that I was at least serious about the critique.
In 2000, I attended the second of two hearings called by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa. He set up an AIDS Advisory Panel after learning of problems and uncertainties in AIDS science. For his trouble, Mbeki suffered intense criticism from the South African and indeed world media; it seemed to them to be sacrilege that he should be questioning the HIV theory, in a country where millions are thought to be infected. It is extraordinary how angry some people were. At the International AIDS Conference in Durban, there were people with placards saying, “One dissident, one bullet”.
Yet the high rates of disease and death seen among rural black communities in South Africa are probably a consequence of 60 years of apartheid, in which black families were broken up through policies of forced relocation, and deprived of both education and health care. It is easier for some people to attribute the current high death rates to HIV than to accept that these deaths result from the poverty and violence that were apartheid’s legacies."
The Assassination of Dr. David Kelly of MI6 and Porton Down has deep roots
Dr David Kelly knew too much and died rather mysteriously.
Police have now admitted that the following objects found with his body did not have fingerprints on them:
His mobile phone
A watch
The knife he allegedly used to slash his wrist
The packs of pills he is said to have overdosed on
A water bottle
A secret file of evidence was submitted to the Hutton inquiry by Thames Valley Police.
The contents remain secret.
But 'the cover is publicly available and reveals that the codename for the investigation was Operation Mason.'
This has given rise to 'rumours of a freemasonry angle'.
The start time of Operation Mason is given as 2.30pm on Thursday July 17.
That was at least half an hour BEFORE Dr Kelly set off from his home on his fatal walk.
And, it is nearly ten hours before Dr Kelly's wife rang the police to sound the alert over her missing husband.
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