It was difficult for me to imagine that anyone could possibly be upset about the announcement that billionaire Warren Buffet had decided to team up with Bill Gates and donate billions of dollars to improve global health. Silly, naive little me; nothing should surprise me anymore, but this is really beyond the pale.
Via Moment of Science, I found someone who does, indeed, gripe about the donation: none other than (cue menacing music) Focus on the Family:
"It's very scary," D'Agostino told CitizenLink. "The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has very close ties and gives a lot of money to pro-abortion groups, such as Planned Parenthood, and for population control around the world."
Judie Brown, president of the American Life League, said the Gates Foundation is heavily involved in bankrolling "women's health" initiatives in Third World nations.
"Most of those reflect or are directly a result of the efforts of the International Planned Parenthood Federation," Brown said. "We are extremely concerned that millions and millions of dollars are going to go to the ultimate goal of ending the lives of millions of preborn babies -- and jeopardizing the health of millions of women and men."
*sigh* Yes, billions of dollars given for philanthropy, to help develop vaccines and treatments for some of mankind's oldest scourges that, combined, kill millions in the developing world each year. How terrible. Perhaps Willem DaFoe can play a Green Goblin version of Gates in the movie...
They continue:
The Gates Foundation has to date given more than $20 million to the International Planned Parenthood Federation -- largely to promote abortion and condom education in Third World countries. It also has given more than $12 million to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, one of the nation's largest abortion providers.
Buffett, the world's second-richest man behind Gates, has already spent millions of his own money on population-control efforts.
What they, of course, ignore, is that condoms ain't only for birth control. One of the major scourges in the countries they're targeting is AIDS, and one of the most successful prevention strategies is regular condom use.
They then take this into a rant about how the efforts of Gates and Buffet will eventually destroy these countries because of their effect on the birth rate. I won't delve into this because Pharma Bawd already fisked it, but yes, FoF is worried that the developing world simply doesn't have enough people, and "the last thing the Third World needs is more population control"--which, they claim, is "quite literally destroying much of the Third World." (Literally, eh? I wonder if they understand the meaning of that word?)
So, how do those associated with FoF react to this potential mass murder on an unprecedented scale? To counter the supposedly "pro-abortion" stance of the Gates Foundation, Julie Brown, president of the American Life League (ALL):
...has been protesting the historical pro-abortion bent of the Gates Foundation, [and] has requested a meeting with the man who runs it -- William Gates, Sr. -- Bill Gates' dad.
She has not heard back on her request yet.
Well, color me green and call me Gumby! She completely mischaracterizes their work, uses loaded, misleading, and emotional descriptors such as "pro-abortion" and "preborn," and Gates Sr. isn't inviting her in for tea and cookies? I. am. ever. so. shocked.
Carrie Gordon Earll, director of issue analysis at Focus on the Family Action, said the Buffetts and Gateses of the world have great influence, but it doesn't take billions -- or even millions -- to make a difference.
"We can still support these and similar God-affirming endeavors as our resources allow," she said. "We don't have to be Bill and Melinda Gates or Warren Buffett to make a difference.
"If there are enough of us together, we can counter their efforts."
Indeed. I'd love to see them mount a campaign against a foundation that fights horribly painful guinea worm infections, AIDS in monogamous, married relationships; and funds scientific breakthroughs for a number of underfunded illnesses. Go ahead and show us again, FoF and ALL, just how "pro-life" you really are.
[Edited to add: Neurotopia's take on it.]
Tara,
I'm sure you can understand the emotions here if kids around the world are facing situations like the forcible drug administration going on at ICC and Liam is trying to get folks to take a close look and do something about what appears horrific. With only respect and fellowship intended, may I ask what I believe Liam has asked before, which is, as a Mom yourself, wouldn't you take a good, hard look at things before you allowed any invasive measures, let alone a tube insertion in your child's abdomen to facilitate drug administration, if your child tested positive on a test very open to different interpretations?
Dare we all look closely together at the test that the administration of arvs is based on? I would very much appreciate hearing your answer to Liam's questions and hearing your thoughts as a scientist about the test and whether you as a mother would automatically go along with your child being given highly toxic meds based on a positive result of an hiv antibody test. Could you please share your thoughts about the test itself and how reliable it is as an indicator that arvs are required for the treatment of a postive testing child? Might you as a scientist and Mom want to take a close look as to why the child might be testing positive, or what antibodies in the child's system might be setting off a positive result before you allowed your child or anyone's child to be given highly toxic meds based on a test open to various interpretations?
I truly look forward to your thoughts.
Thanks very much,
rob
Tara writes:
One of the major scourges in the countries they're targeting is AIDS, and one of the most successful prevention strategies is regular condom use.
From Padian:
"Nevertheless, the absence of seroincident infection over the course of the study cannot be entirely attributed to significant behavior change. No transmission occured among the 25 percent of couples who did not use condoms consistently at their last follow-up nor among the 47 couples who intermittently practiced unsafe sex during the entire duration of follow-up" (Padian, pg 356.)
Now, I ain't opposed to condom use, but answer me this, Doc Epidemiology Smith:
If Padian remains the "largest and longest study of heterosexual transmission of HIV in the United States" (Padian, pg 354), How come none of the HIV+ folks having sex without condoms transmitted HIV to their partners?
HankB
Oh, yeah, before I forget. Buffett and Gates can spend their money any damn way they please. See, there's my Libertarian side coming to the forefront!
Hank
Hank, is it possible for you to make a single post about the Padian paper without mis-representing it?
Name the misrep above. There are 2 direct quotes from Padian and question that you, as usual, dodge.
You don't seem to get the FACT that Padian found no seroconversions in those in used condoms and no seroconversions in those who didn't use condoms.
HankBarnes
p.s. Also, don't forget to answer the question:
How come none of the HIV+ folks having sex without condoms transmitted HIV to their partners?
Hank, all that was extensively covered in the post and comments of that discussion. I didn't dodge anything--you just keep misrepresenting both the paper's intent, and the very data within it. I'm sick of it. Stick to the topic here, please--you have your own blog if you want to continue discussion of the Padian paper. Otherwise, I'll treat them as spam.
Might want to reveal your divine knowledge about HIV to the partners in my study group, Hank. Female-->male transmission.
Cant wait for your post hoc explanation.
**blush** Sorry, I didnt mean to feed the troll. Its just theyre so fluffy at first...
Why actually do something when just saying the words is so much easier?
Blech.
I still think his company makes crappy software, but I'm liking Gates himself more and more every day!
For some reason, my last comment didn't get posted.
Hank Barnes
I realized that Focus on the Family was terminally clueless when I discovered that their pet media-reviewing publication, Plugged In, said that the Beatles song "Got To Get You Into My Life" concerns "the need to rely on others for support" (link). Now, even Paul admits that it was about marijuana, and Paul is notorious for toning down his reminiscences of Beatle days. In the Beatles Anthology book, John says up front that it was about LSD.
Perhaps I just hold people to excessively high standards of Beatle knowledge. . . . Not that FotF haven't proven their character traits in a myriad other ways, too.
Hank,
you keep plugging away at that Padian study!!!
No matter how hard Tara tries, she just can't polish that turd (and her valiant efforts are noted).
Largest study of discordant couples ever, with no seroconversions. Get polishing, Tara!
No, Tara, you missed the point. FOF and other "Pro-Life" groups are only "pro-life" while the woman is pregnant. After the child is born, it's someone else's problem.
I grew up under the influence of these clowns (yes, I was raised Southern - so-called "Bible Belt", but I escaped) and the worst thing that could happen to a young child in my youth was to have his/her mother get pregnant out of wedlock and then be pointed out as her "punishment" for the rest of its life. The Pro-Life lobby is very big on punishment and hellfire/brimstone, but almost bereft of compassion.
'Nuff said on that. Leave the hypocrites on the sidelines where they belong. Follow the parade of people with a clue.
'Largest'? From that abstract, there were 442 couples in that study. I can think of one off the top of my head with over 900 discordant couples (and Im sure its not the 'largest').
Why did you say that?
Seriously. Don't y'all ever get tired of completely lying about that study? I know I get tired of reading it; hence sending Hank's last refrain to the spam box.
OlderGeek, I'm aware of that--sometimes it still just depresses me.
I don't know of any group or individual willing to call themselves pro-abortion. It's just name calling.
Last i checked, Planned Parenthood's advice on abortion is that abortion is quite the emotional and physical shock, etc. Hardly a pro stance.
Now then. I did end up adopting a child through an agency founded by a bascially fundamentalist christian group. Here, at least, they provide an abortion alternative, at least to some. Not everyone is entirely hypocritical.
No worries about Padian, HB and Dan,
AIDS is a pseudoscience. Nowhere in Padian is the algorithmic/subjective/non-standardized methodology for so-called HIV test interpretation discussed. The results are accepted, a priori, as they are throughout AIDS eugenics.
The data is worthless, it neither proves nor disproves sexual transmission of any event or factor.
There is no test that determines infection with any particular factor related to the conventional/eugenic view of AIDS.
AIDS is clearly, obviously, blatantly (except to the institutionally paradigm-blinded) a multi-factorial illness - No - rather, set of illnesses, non-illnesses, politicizations of illness, race, gender, class, etc.
No point in debating it with these people. They believe what they believe, and they would accuse those who argue with them of the same.'
And perhaps, at this point, they would have a point.
I have no interest in a technical debate with persons whose reading of the technical excuses each and every of the grossly inexcusable errors in favor of the a priori hypothesis-cum-enforced death sentence.
In short, fuck em.
Or rather, the world can stand another paradgim - a dual paradigmatic approach.
Let the reductionists have their labs, and the mutualists/wholists/toxicologists/nutritionists, etc, have their labs...
And may the best work lead the way.
If it is a solution we're arguing about...then who, but the deeply frightened, secretly shamed and woefully guilty would oppose a democratization of the research into AIDS, or any other paraigm?
Reductionists versus the rest of us.
Game on.
Liam,
I'm with you on this one.
Celia Farber said something today that stuck with me. It's on New AIDS Review. Here it is:
I don't think the "question," is: "Does HIV Cause AIDS?"
This is a stale and old trap of a question. The question is, what are the consequences of the paradigm? Has the world gotten better or worse under it?
The answer to her question is resoundingly clear.
It's a new game. Let's get this one going!
Liam Scheff writes:
South Africa has been such a lab for the past decade. The president and the health minister have been operating under an alternative paradigm. They have questioned the relationship between HIV and AIDS. They have done their best to prevent their citizens from having access to ARVs and have instead encouraged garlic, beetroot and lemon juice concoctions, ubejane, virodene and a variety of other quack treatments.
What are the consequences of their paradigm? Has South Africa gotten better or worse under it?
Mortality and causes of death in South Africa
I'm sure Wilhelm will just talk about all the South African deaths from TB. Nothing is less fun than having a stable full of HIV denialists ruing a perfectly good public health bloggo.
Liam: I'm a molecular toxicologist, and I know nutritionists, but in what scientific fields do wholists and mutualists work? As far as I was aware, mutualism is part of anarchist politics, and wholism (assuming it is what I call 'holism') is a school of philosophy. What does either bring to the study of AIDS?
South Africa isn't working under any "alternative" model. They're living with the same old paradigm, HIV=AIDS.
Celia's question is very pertinent for South Africa (and anyplace that people are being terrorized by the paradigm)...what are the consequences of the paradigm? Has the world gotten better or worse under it?
I think we're going to "lose you" on this one, Chris. Don't think you're going to be able to "get up to speed". But you probably don't want to do that anyway.
Hmmm. My last post was deleted. I guess the resident epidemiologist, does not like examining epidemiological studies (Padian, Amer. J. Epidemiology 1997).
Hank Barnes
Hank, I said I was sending the posts where you've repeated yourself dozens of times off to the spam box. I'm sick of you dragging every post off-topic. Additionally, you're lying again by saying I don't like "examining epidemiological studies," since I'll emphasize again that I already thoroughly went through that one.
Hmmm. My last post was deleted. I guess the resident epidemiologist, does not like examining epidemiological studies (Padian, Amer. J. Epidemiology 1997).
To be fair, she did threaten to delete any more Padian posts from you, Hank.
It has to be rough though, trying to explain a study that effectively nullifies a beloved paradigm.
Hank obsesses:
Yeah, you tell her Hank. I mean, the least she could do is to address your thoughts on Padian, maybe even start a thread specifically to examine this paper. But no, she'll never do anything like that.
She just doesn't care about epidemiology and scientific truth like you do Hank.
Well, you dodge the central question:
In Padian, How come none of the HIV+ folks having sex without condoms transmitted HIV to their partners?
Instead of censoring my remarks, Why not answer it, Madame Epidemiology?
Hank Barnes
I didn't dodge anything. For those of you who didn't read the prior post (which apparently includes Hank), I addressed that in the post:
Seroconversion was found in the retrospective study. For the prospective portion, there were a number of limitations that reduced their ability to find seroconversions:
Attrition was severe.
Couples were counseled to use condoms and avoid risky sex practices (and indeed, condom use went way up and anal sex went down).
The vast majority of couples were followed for only a short time (~ a year).
There was a low rate of infection with other STIs in the study population.
And finally, Hank, if this study disproves sexual transmission of HIV, why isn't the author in your camp? Maybe you can answer this at your own blog; don't bother to here. Go ahead and cry "censorship," but I've allowed you to repeat yourself on here dozens of times already. Bring something new to the table and I'll retain the comment.
And finally, Hank, if this study disproves sexual transmission of HIV, why isn't the author in your camp?
Oh...maybe...not wanting to bite the hand that feeds her?
Also, it's just data, it doesn't require one to "choose" a camp. Not a convincing point, Tara.
Ah, yes...they support you, they're honest scientists. They're against you, they're motivated by greed &/or fear or are just sheep following the herd. Nice to pick 'n' choose like that.
Hence the inclusion of the findings of the paper, Dan.
Ah, yes...they support you, they're honest scientists. They're against you, they're motivated by greed &/or fear or are just sheep following the herd.
It looks like Dr. Tara is putting words into others' mouths. Interesting as always what she chooses to say. Is this a cry for help, Dr. Tara?
By all means, Dan, then please elaborate then on what you meant then by "not wanting to bite the hand that feeds her."
Man oh man. Every time I read another story about the utter inanity of groups like FoF, I am just that much more flabbergasted. Then, to see utter bullâ¢â¢â¢t from morons like Frank just tops it off for me.
For the record, my family is also into philanthropy. We are having a family meeting next month to discuss the directions to take our foundation into. We are particularly inspired by what Gates and Buffet are doing and intend to follow suit. I, for one, am going to propose funding efforts to counter the anti-science, anti-intellectual, brain-dead idiots like FoF and to encourage kids towards careers in science and mathematics with the hope of turning out more people like Tara and fewer like Frank from our schools.
This is nuts. I've sat back and watched much of this AIDs "debate" unfold over several months.
The oft-cited Padian paper? Thoroughly examined by Tara and well explained why it is NOT a good paper if you're looking for evidence of no seroconversions. Yet the denialists always bring it up, repeatedly, as if it is a smoking gun despite its massive flaws if used that way. Tara points back to her original analysis again and again and the familar refrain continues to happen, like a broken record or skipping cd: "But Padian, no seroconversions!"
Hank: you're lucky Tara is far more patient than I. If this was my blog I would have banned you months ago for constant derailing of threads.
The Gates and Buffet gestures are nice and resulting in I am sure a lot of personal gratification, guilt absolution, and media attention for them and their organizations. However, I am skeptical that the objectives so far outlined that seem to be aimed at transient alleviation of temporary acute problems in Africa and other third world problems will be much more than transient pouring of valuable assets down the drain. The problems will likely remain when the money is gone. The assets would have much greater long term impact if they were simply devoted to funding purely basic research by unconventional individual investigators to take up the slack that has occurred in funding by government agencies, the increasing climate of throwing resources prematurely at applications, e.g. The NIH Roadmap to "Nowhere," and the increasing climate of anti-science thinking against long term understanding and knowledge for its own sake. The sites where the Gates and Buffet resources appear to be applied are some of the most corrupt in terms of government and infrastructure on earth, and unless there is a cohesive plan to solve this along with aims of alleviation of acute problems at the site, the money will be a waste. At least it would be better to support self-sacrificing individual onsite investigators applying scientific principles with a global vision for building local self-sufficiency and infrastructure as this scientist from Yellow River country than throwing the resources at government agency-sponsored technicians and field workers. MOTYR
Peter Barber:
The answer to your question/s is a line of research inherent in my original post.
AIDS is a pseudoscience. Nowhere in Padian is the algorithmic/subjective/non-standardized methodology for so-called HIV test interpretation discussed. The results are accepted, a priori, as they are throughout AIDS eugenics.
And nowhere is just where it is. Nowhere. It's junk science. Pure garbage.
You have it if we say you have it, because we're the masters of the game. Those who say otherwise are holocaust denialists!!
Really?? Asks the curious onlooker.
Holocaust denialists, that's what people who point their sticks at the blustery, gaping holes in the side of the artiface of AIDS, inc??
Yes! say the AIDS eugenicists. We have no room for your questions - we're too busy chemically sterilizing and condomizing Africans and Homosexuals, a la Malthus, a la Sanger, a la...well, you do the reading.
Have at it Peter. Dig in. See what falls out.
AIDS, it's like American Express - it's everywhere we want (it) to be.
Yes, "pseudoscience" just like influenza (where's that Part II?) and global warming, eh, Liam? Funny how you only accept the "science" of researchers who have no personal experience in the field they write about (such as Duesberg on AIDS) and are written off by the mainstream. Reminds me of kids who stop being fans of indie bands once they become popular and lose their coolness factor.
Eugenics, Liam? How do you figure?
technical blog problem - trying to view response, but not allowing entry (not allowing preview)
This is nuts. Tara Smith alleges that Duesberg has "no expertise" in AIDS, and is "written off" by the mainstream. Let us review the basic historical, indisputable facts:
1. AIDS was declared caused by a novel retrovirus in 1984 by Robert Gallo, then employed by the NCI.
2. Duesberg was at the time, by Gallo's own admission, the world's foremost retrovirologist. (Gallo introduced him at a lecture by calling him: "The man who probably knows more about retroviruses than any man alive."
3. Duesberg was invited by the journal Cancer Research in 1987 to write a paper on retroviruses, cancer, and AIDS. He did so--arguing that retroviruses caused neither cancer nor AIDS.
4. He was immediately amputed from all functions as a scientist--defunded, banished, exiled.
5. Prior to the 1987 paper, he never had a grant rejected by the NIH, and was funded by an elite grant reserved for the nation's top handful of scientists ("Outstanding Investigator Grant")designed to limit time spent seeking grants. Since that paper was published, he has had every single grant (a total of 30) rejected, for research he wished to do on both HIV and on Cancer.
Now Tara Smith picks up the impossibly unjust accuastion that many have thrown into the road before her, that Duesberg is not an HIV/AIDS researcher and so should shut up.
The NIH made it impossible for him to do HIV research or any other kind of research, after 1987.
Have you no sense of decency or fairness whatsoever?
This is like something out of Darkness At Noon.
Tara--have you ever reviewed the complete list of scientists, researchers, etc, who, like Duesberg, have asked for a re-opening of the AIDS causation dialectic?
They number over 2,400, and more are signing on every week.
They represent a vast array of voices, and they are distressed about many facets of what I call the consequences of the HIV paradigm. May I post the link to the list?
Must they all be relegated to the Total Idiot Bin?
Many of them HAVE worked very closely with HIV/AIDS. And they are hardly marginal.
Duesberg mapped the genetic structure of retroviruses. Kary Mullis invented PCR. Harry Rubin is one of the founding fathers of retrovirology. Harvey Bialy is the founding editor of the journal Bio/Technology. If memory serves, the inventor of AZT is on this list!
What do you say we post the list? It might help you cease at least to mischaracterize so utterly, the size, depth, quality, scope, and history of dissent against the HIV paradigm, which is not small or fringe at all, but quite formidable.
May I?
Surely we never say no to pure data around here? These are names, affiliations, quotes, and contact information for thousands of dissenters, from many countries, many scientific disciplines.
Dale wrote:
Dale. I'm surprised. If you had only bothered to do the appropriate research (on the internet) you would have realised by now that AIDS Inc is just one part of a global conspiracy to rid the world of Africans and gays.
Kofi Annan, Nelson Mandela, Larry Kramer are all part of this conspiracy.
Tara,
You refer to a couple of nice pieces I wrote, in which I seek to ask questions in other fields, as though you've revealed something. And I think you do reveal a great deal:
In this, and in sum of your posts on the subject in discussion, you are a eugenicist. A soft-eugenicist.
I have asked you in previous posts, directly:
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/02/post_3.php#comment-12536
You did not reply, I reiterated:
http://scienceblogs.com/aetiology/2006/02/post_3.php#comment-13006
You never replied. I feel that you are showing profound and inexcusable cowardice in avoiding these questions. You are displaying no great love of science, or investigation. Nor are you displaying any great humanitarianism.
You are attached to the disposition of the leaders of your field. And why should it be otherwise? You are a company girl, like so many company girls before you.
So do us all a favor, you and yours, and move your asses over on the research bench, and let some healthy competition in... There is room for another approach to what has been brand-named "AIDS" throughout the world. You are not the group to lead the charge.
You're intellectually fat, lazy, myopic, defensive and obsessed with holding up the broken limbs of a false-start theory. If you want to prove the standard model correct - if that is your life-long goal - please, be my guest...
But move your asses over, and take your 'denialism', with you.
Competition - it's the American Way.
And why not? Who could complain that there were two schools investigating the problem? Who, except the secretly, morbidly frightened, terrificly guilty, profoundly alarmed at the potential for permanent disgrace in the eyes of the public and of history?
Who but the dishonest are afraid of honest competition?
(continues)
technical blog problem: I have tried to post a response, it will not enter.
technical problem - my entries aren't posting, shall I email them to T.Smith?
As to your initial post:
(and Dale, getting to your question)
You wonder why there are those who aren't in love with Planned Parenthood?
Read Maggie Sanger's biography/manifesto "The Pivot of Civilization", and see how far you can walk with the women. It's not about the right to make a decision about motherhood, you sponge-headed reactionary brain-dead iberals,
It's about eugenics. That ugly piece of human nature that rears its head (over and over), tribally, culturally, societally - re-dressing itself in seductive camouflage, and reconvincing people that a great many of "the other" are ripe for... assistance. Assistance in not breeding, not living, not propogating. Chemical, surgical or latex sterilization. AZT and NVP, where the now-considered-brutal surgical sterilizations once took place. And take place they did.
To defend against the sex-plague of the early 20th Century: Imbecilism, Feeble-mindedness, low character. Spread from mater to fils, science told us. Like a virus, like a strand of genome, like a test that can't test for anything but the preconditioned interpretation of the tester.
To the victims of the sex-plagues, we offer assistance:
Not assistance in freedom from the various slaveries that conscribe people and nations, families and villages to wage-slavery, rural and urban poverty, morbid hunger and terrifying civil strife - not assistance from the burdens of cultural ghettoization, endemic, institutional isolation, poverty, drug-abuse, and apartheid -
But chemical assistance - AZT and NVP - assistance in not reproducing stably, healthily. We shock and frighten and shame them by invoking the scarlet letter of our age:
Sex equals Death. Ask Hester Prinn, she wore the Scarlett Letter A, too.
We don't offer assistance that will help them up - we offer them assistance that makes US feel better. Assistance in not having that dirty kind of sex - it must be, after all, because it gives them poverty - I mean, AIDS, Thomas.
But then again, sex has as much to do with AIDS, as sex did with poverty in Thomas Malthus' model of the world.
Malthus wrote that children bred poverty. And lack thereof bred wealth? And Maggie Sanger liked what she heard (as did famous others, too famous to mention here), and decided to offer that wealth-giving prospect to all the poor corners of... Harlem.
But Malthus got it backwards.
Poverty breeds children, Wealth breeds small families. It's the miracle of the germ-line. When in struggle and in doubt - produce, produce, produce.
When in fat and in comfort - conserve, conserve, conserve.
If you're interested in saving the world from AIDS, then get everyone fed and nourished first.
And if you're not willing to do so, then get the fuck out of the way, because there are those of us who are interested in working from other models. The good news is, you don't have to like it. That's the wonder of being human. Go on with your reductionist, self-limiting mythologizing about single-causes and sex illness, and we'll lead the charge according to our view of the research and the problem.
And may the best come to the top, and lead the way.
Quote me on that, Celia. Should be easy for you to do as a journalist. Where did I ever say that Duesberg should shut up?
Regarding your list, the creationists have lists too. I'm equally unimpressed by theirs.
Your "more are signing on every week" quote is amusing. Here's another quote from you...
...in 1992. Boy, that AIDS paradigm has sure disintigrated since then! Know who else keeps claiming the imminent demise of a well-supported scientific theory? Creationists. Funny, that.
You take every opportunity to peacock-strut your elitism, and you all seem to fall back on the same baseless cliches, such as this sarcastic rubbish from Chris Noble about the "Internet," as the racoon dumpster of AIDS 'denialists.'
Little or none of the HIV debate has taken place on the Internet, and in fact preceded it by many years. (It began as early as 1980-81.)
Dr. John Moore managed to get a foul, pathetic one paragraph letter published in New York Magazine totally falsely claiming that an article I wrote which he didn't like "drew heavily" on the "blogosphere." Not one sentence in said article drew, much less "heavily" from the blogosphere.
This is code for the neo-violence, neo-snobbery, neo-idiocy. Say "The Internet!" ...and expect your kind to reach right for their smelling salts.
Need I point out that THIS is the Internet.
Who's "peacock-strutting?"
and
Oh, forgive if this reposts, but Smith's blog is acting Smithey.
You wonder why there are those who aren't in love with Planned Parenthood?
As to your initial post:
(and Dale, getting to your question)
You wonder why there are those who aren't in love with Planned Parenthood?
Read Maggie Sanger's biography/manifesto "The Pivot of Civilization", and see how far you can walk with the women. It's not about the right to make a decision about motherhood, you sponge-headed reactionary brain-dead iberals,
It's about eugenics. That ugly piece of human nature that rears its head (over and over), tribally, culturally, societally - re-dressing itself in seductive camouflage, and reconvincing people that a great many of "the other" are ripe for... assistance. Assistance in not breeding, not living, not propogating. Chemical, surgical or latex sterilization. AZT and NVP, where the now-considered-brutal surgical sterilizations once took place. And take place they did.
continues -
Oh, good, there it is.
Celia's hard work, intelligence, style and beauty aside,
Duesberg, or Tara's lack of love for him, is irrelevant.
The data is there for review, from the many sources.
There are the reductionists and the rest of us.
And then there are the eugenicists - those whose fear and shame and guilt makes them cry "denialism" when any come to the fore with a challenge.
Duesberg is a bit of a reductionist, he just happens to reduce on the side of humanity.
How many of them are named Steve?
Could someone explain to me why these people keep humping this 'Padian' paper? It was done nearly a decade ago, there are many many subsequent studies that not only had better methods, but had more couples/longer following time/better retention/better controls/etc I can tell just by perusing 'Padian.' And I do HIV epidemiological research, and I have never seen this paper. While Im a total newbie, my mentor is very thorough, and I have never heard of 'Padian.' Not a ground-breaking study, as far as I can tell. And even pretending her study 'concluded' what the Deniers want it to conclude, her other studies are all on preventing heterosexual HIV transmission. Whys she wasting her time doing this if her paper supports what the Deniers think it does? Most importantly, does she know Deniers are gratifying themselves to her paper?
Tara, Im so glad I got to meet these Deniers on your blog. I was *this* close to going to graduate school to get a PhD in immunology. Thanks to these folks, Ive discovered that you can know more than the entire field just by being a journalist.
Liam, you remind me more and more of one of my favorite authors ... who was that guy who wrote "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"?
Celia Farber writes:
The list you refer to consists predominantly of people in the "etc" category rather than scientists or researchers in relevant fields.
Journalists including yourself and Liam Scheff are included despite the fact that Liam Scheff states publically that mother and fetus share the same blood during pregnancy and other such nonsense.
What sort of a list includes some 30 odd homeopaths as a scientific authority? How many iridologists? How many acupuncturists?
What sort of list includes Intelligent Design proponents such as Jonathan C Wells and Philip Johnson as supposed scientific authorities?
What sort of a list includes Hulda Clark and James DeMeo as scientific authorities? Dr. Daniel H. Duffy? Ryke Geerd Hamer? Gary Null? Stephen Byrnes?
The list does indeed have depth. It includes leading proponents of pseudoscience. How ironic that AIDS "rethinkers" label modern science as pseudoscience. Can they tell the difference?
They also list Casper Schmidt but in case people haven't noticed he stopped doing any "rethinking" when he died from AIDS. How many HIV+ people on the list are so to speak no longer active "rethinkers"?
Why do people like Celia Farber think that lists like this will impress people?
Liam? Are you intoxicated perchance?
(Forgive me for asking if in fact it's a neurochemical imbalance of an involuntary nature.)
So it's all about eugenics is it? Giving $37 billion to philanthropic purposes? Plus the $30 billion Gates has put in? Going to vaccines, antibiotics, TB treatment, malaria treatment, schools, libraries, education, improving crops for better nutrition,....
Somehow I think Gates and Buffet are smart enough to realize that funding vaccination programs runs counter to a eugenics program.
You should apply for a job with FoF. Your illogic and fit right in if you could clean up your language.
I know expecting you to actually read something about what's being discussed, pause and think before you write is a lot to ask of someone in the grips of as profound a case of diarrhea of the key board as you seem to have. But please, take some immodium and give it a try.
As to competition, I hear Bill Gates has some money to give away. Why don't you, Celia, Hank, and Duesberg, Bialy, Rasnick and the rest of the gang write him a proposal saying you can cure Africa of its AIDS epidemic by simply having every man woman and child on the continent read the Padian paper.
Chris, are you serious?
Now I've gotta csee this list!
Where is it Celia?
Dear Pharma Bawd:
Most people who are honest about the matter agree that clean water, elemental nutrition, and basic health care, is a priority in most African nations--before ARVs. Why would you distort the matter so flagrantly and sarcastically as to suggest anybody thinks a reading of the Padian paper is what has been suggested.
Don't you see how small, ugly, absurd you sound when you have to resort, time and again, to shaming, sracasm, distorting, belittling?
Liam Scheff wrote:
Please, someone, read the 'original post' and point out the answer to the question I asked - I can't spot it.
The list does indeed have depth. It includes leading proponents of pseudoscience. How ironic that AIDS "rethinkers" label modern science as pseudoscience. Can they tell the difference?
Misrepresentation and mischaracterization do wonders for you, Chris. The only science that may get the label of "pseudoscience" by some rethinkers is "AIDS" science. I've seen this little argument of yours about "the list" more than once. Did you simply cut and paste it from misc.health.aids?
They also list Casper Schmidt but in case people haven't noticed he stopped doing any "rethinking" when he died from AIDS. How many HIV+ people on the list are so to speak no longer active "rethinkers"?
I hope you're not trying to "win over" anybody with this charm offensive of yours. Mr. Compassion...making jokes about the dead. Nice.
The grand list of "researchers and scientists" that question HIV and AIDS is found here.
THE AIDS INDUSTRY AND MEDIA WANT YOU TO THINK THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF SCIENTISTS WHO DOUBT THE HIV-AIDS THEORY.
Why anyone thinks that a list like this provides support for their ideas is beyond me.
You will also find Tine Van Der Maas who claims to have cured 4000 people of AIDS with garlic lemon juice and beetroot except she can't provide evidence because burglars peed on the records.
Dr Robert Cathcart who claims massive doses of vitamin C cures anything and everthing and that shaken baby syndrome is just vitamin C deficiency.
Dr. Michael Culbert a proponent of laetrile and chelation therapy.
Philip Day another laetrile/vitamin B17 proponent.
Burton Goldberg. Publisher, Alternative Medicine Magazine
Ross Horne proponent of a fruitarian diet (ie fruit only). Humans were supposedly originally fruit eaters.
Dr. Stefan Lanka rabid anti-vaccination nut. Doesn't believe any viruses cause disease.
Lynne McTaggart antivaccine and all round kook
Dr. Joseph Mercola - more pseudoscience than can be listed
Dr. Matthias Rath. Cancer, heart disease, influenza, HIV can all be cured with large doses of vitamins and enzymes.
The list contains a veritable who's who of quacks and charlatans.
The people that assemble the list cannot tell the difference between science and pseudoscience
To what should I reply? Dale's snarky remark? (Read a book, friend. I'll have some recommendations for you.)
To Peter Barber's incredulousness that he must look to my original post and consider the inherent question? Your questions are distractions, Peter, anarchy? holism? Spelling corrections? Don't be a boob. The question is again repeated below. Try to follow along.
To Pharmabawd's nonsense? (Read, child, read. Read Sanger, Malthus, Galton, Darwin, (and Margullis, Mullis and McClintock for something useful), and start to put together that your religion has its limits).
Let's be clear, you are avoiding the question.
* The length of the list of persons who agree or disagree with your pseudoscience is irrelevant.
* Padian is irrelevant. Because:
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are doubtless convinced of their good charity. And I'm sure a lot of it will be good.
And my questions to Tara remain avoided and unanswered, in sheer and apparent cowardice.
So, to repeat:
Would you, our beloved Iowan, our harumphing, sighing, dirt-dishing, NY Observer snarking (what is that, Tara, do you wish to insinuate that Celia wrote the article in which she was profiled? That she chose which phrases would be used to identify herself?
Oy, you are special...our own Anne Coulter of the Fauci set),
Ahem, to the question, oft-asked, never answered:
Would you give one of these eugnics thermometers (the mythical HIV tests) to one or both of your lovely towheaded children (or to yourself in your time of pregnancy?),
then treat with AZT and NVP, in- and ex-utero, and to the chldren every day of their lives, for their limited eternities?
Would you, when they threw up the noxious stuff, plunge it down their esophogial passages with a plastic tube?
Would you cut through the walls of their stomachs to implant the tube that would feed them these wonder-drugs, just until they died?
Would you then claim that they had died of AIDS?
Oh, such a terrible story? Who would do such a thing?
Who? Who but you people. You lovely, bloody eugenicists.
LS, You're right. I was snarky and I apologize but I confess I find many of your posts full of hysterical rhetoric that I find trying at times.
So let me try to make this post polite.
The fact that someone dies while taking drugs doesn't mean the drugs killed them. Many cancer patients are taking chemotherapy up until or very close to up until the time they die. People who die of pneumonia or sepsis are often on antibiotics at the time (Eliza Jane Scovill being a case in point). Diabetes are on insulin, people who die of strokes or heart attacks are often on various blood thinners etc. etc. Almost any treatment for a chronic disorder has side effects. And what sometimes happens is that a person will take the treatment until such time as the initial problem clears up to the point that they notice the side effects more and more until the side effects are the only obvious problem they have. So if you're an adult you can decide the problem has cleared up and you stop taking the treatment and suddenly and for a time you'll feel much better. Until the original problem comes back (which it often does) and then you start taking the treatment again and the cycle will continue until the treatment is no longer effective and then you can declare the treatment killed you or someone else can declare that. It's all in the perception.
If I were an HIV+ mother given the chance to reduce my child's chances of developing HIV by taking and have the child take a short course of ARVs, yeah I'd do it in a flash. I agree it would be much harder to have to make the decision to put the child on ARVs indefinately because I'm as prone as the next fellow to falling prey to the phenomenum I described above. Of course, if the short course prevented the child from becoming HIV+ then I'd never be faced with the second choice.
LS, You're right. I was snarky and I apologize but I confess I find many of your posts full of hysterical rhetoric that I find trying at times.
Dale,
To respond to your rationale: I find most of your posts trying, I just don't respond to them when they're personally invective or worth naught. But I don't typically feel the need to share this information with you. I think it is understood.
None of us lined up on opposite sides of the shooting range really likes each other so very much. We're on different sides of a tempermental issue. But please, be consistent with me. Either be an ass, or be decent. Tara is an ass. Noble is the king of asses.
You go back and forth. If you want to dialogue, then let's dialogue, and we'll leave the assine stuff to those who can't be or do otherwise.
So, I thank you for answering the question (it was for Tara, after all, but I like that you went first).
Your answer was not to the question I asked, though.
Implicit in my question was a note about the make-believe tests you use to determine the label assigned to this hypothetical child (real, as they were and are though, in the case of Incarnation Children's Center).
Then to the forcing of drugs - would you also do that. That is the practice, after all.
Then to the cutting of stomachs to insert gastric tubes. Would you do that as well?
regards,
Liam
Liam
It is difficult to respond to a hypothetical question. Like I said, as a parent I would find forcing drugs and cutting stomachs to insert gastric tubes very hard, even though I personally find the evidence that those methods are at least to some degree effective very compelling. So if my child was diagnosed HIV+, yes I think I would do it although I would find it hard.
Let me ask you a question. If the hypothetical child was your child and you could see him getting progressively sicker and none of the nutritional supplements or alternative medicines you will giving him appeared to be helping ... would you do it? And if you did finally give in and do it and your child died anyway would you be torn between believing that the treatment killed him or that the treatment was ineffective because you just might have waited too long to let the doctors administer it?
Liam, the problem is that your questions are much like the famous "have you stopped beating your wife?" They are filled with inherent assumptions that simply aren't correct, and use loaded and emotional terms. And the repeated insults don't exactly make me care to answer, either.
Liam, the problem is that your questions are much like the famous "have you stopped beating your wife?"
No they aren't. They're quite simple.
He's asking if you would apply the same standards to your children when it comes to "AIDS" as are being applied to other children? Pretty straightforward stuff.
Look, Tara's pouting:
"The repeated insults don't make me feel like answering either"???
*boo-hoo*
*sigh*
I asked those questions in my second post, lo these many moons ago, in all humility and politesse, thinking I might be among adults.
You responded nihil, nunca, jamais.
(that's Never, as in Never ever).
Which leads to one consideration: You're a coward.
Or, answer the question: Would you drug your children in the manner that they were drugged at ICC? Would you enroll them in those trials - 7 drugs at once, at higher than usual doses?
Would you, oh master of the tarty deflection, "sipping wine" are you?
Come on filly, buck up. You start these fights, you invent names for people - when you can't answer questions you duck behind your hair. Flaxen and chestnut as it might be, it isn't nearly enough.
Answer the questions, or shut up about AIDS, because you either know nothing about the experience of persons branded with your dark mark, or you are not willing to learn, which makes you a fraud for daring to post on the subject.
Closet Eugenicist, Tara Smith.
Dale, thank you for your response, I will get back to it thoughtfully, I promise, but I must get on with my day at present.
Michael
graphic and extraordinary story -
Watch as 150 men, the majority high on crystal and many sniffing poppers, and doing a multitude of other drugs, are fucking and sucking each other indiscriminately. Watch carefully as some are having a partner shove their entire hand and fist up their ass to their elbows. Watch as they pull out their arm and hand, see the blood and obvious anal bleeding.
This is something I've heard from interviewees, and read about time and time again, but perhaps not with this level of sewage.. I mean plumbing... I mean... detail.
It's a mess, isn't it, what goes on in the gay community, in the pleasuredomes? You try to tell these aryan do-gooders a thing or two about the psycho-social effects of a culture of homophobia (of ghettoization of the gay community - and the manic, pressurized responses of the community to illness, isolation, and sexual conduct) - but I don't think they get it over in Iowa.
Thanks for putting this up here. It's not pleasant, per se, but it's true, and it matters.
It also matters in Africa.
--->
damn this blog engine. I'm sorry if anything double posts, I keep getting the same 'forbidden access' note.
But it's not that simple. Liam is suggesting that all children given antiretrovirals are treated in an abusive manner when the drugs are administered, based on an exposé written by none other than...himself. He then extrapolates that to ask if I'd treat my children in that manner, when he's the source of the story that any children are being treated in this manner. He can pout, throw insults and make ridiculous accusations about me, but I'll not play his game, thank you.