The authorities have lied, and I am not glad (AIDS insiders expose the AIDS scam)

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick, author of 1987’s The Truth About the AIDS Panic, says it is a shame that AIDS insiders did not expose the myths and opportunism of the AIDS industry earlier. But still, better late than never.

There is a widely accepted view that Britain was saved from an explosive epidemic of heterosexual AIDS in the late 1980s by a bold campaign initiated by gay activists and radical doctors and subsequently endorsed by the government and the mass media.

According to advocates of this view, we owe our low rates of HIV infection today largely to the success of initiatives such as the ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ leaflet distributed to 23million households and the scary ‘Tombstones and Icebergs’ television and cinema adverts (though they are always quick to add that we must maintain vigilance and guard against complacency).

Now former AIDS industry insiders are challenging the imminent heterosexual plague story and many of the other scare stories of the international AIDS panic. James Chin, author of The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, is a veteran public health epidemiologist who worked in the World Health Organisation’s Global Programme on AIDS in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Elizabeth Pisani, a journalist turned epidemiologist and author of The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels and the Business of AIDS, spent most of the past decade working under the auspices of UNAIDS, which took over the global crusade against HIV in 1996. Once prominent advocates of the familiar doomsday scenarios, both have now turned whistleblowers on their former colleagues in the AIDS bureaucracy, a ‘byzantine’ world, according to Pisani, in which ‘money eclipses truth’.

For Chin, the British AIDS story is an example of a ‘glorious myth’ – a tale that is ‘gloriously or nobly false’, but told ‘for a good cause’. He claims that government and international agencies, and AIDS advocacy organisations, ‘have distorted HIV epidemiology in order to perpetuate the myth of the great potential for HIV epidemics to spread into “general” populations’. In particular, he alleges, HIV/AIDS ‘estimates and projections are “cooked” or made up’.

While Pisani disputes Chin’s claim that UNAIDS epidemiologists deliberately overestimated the epidemic, she admits to what she describes as ‘beating up’ the figures, insisting – unconvincingly – that there is a ‘huge difference’ between ‘making it up (plain old lying) and beating it up’. Pisani freely acknowledges her role in manipulating statistics to maximise their scare value, and breezily dismisses the ‘everyone-is-at-risk nonsense’ of the British ‘Don’t Die of Ignorance’ campaign.

Chin’s book offers a comprehensive exposure of the hollowness of the claims of the AIDS bureaucracy for the efficacy of their preventive campaigns. He provides numerous examples of how exaggerated claims for the scale of the HIV epidemic (and the risks of wider spread) in different countries and contexts enable authorities to claim the credit for subsequently lower figures, as they ‘ride to glory’ on curves showing declining incidence. As he argues, ‘HIV prevalence is low in most populations throughout the world and can be expected to remain low, not because of effective HIV prevention programmes, but because… the vast majority of the world’s populations do not have sufficient HIV risk behaviours to sustain epidemic HIV transmission’.

By the late 1980s, it was already clear that, given the very low prevalence of HIV, the difficulty of transmitting HIV through heterosexual sex and the stable character of sexual relationships (even those having multiple partners tend to favour serial monogamy), an explosive HIV epidemic in Britain, of the sort that occurred in relatively small networks of gay men and drug users, was highly improbable, as Don Milligan and I argued in 1987 (1).

As both Chin and Pisani indicate, high rates of heterosexually spread HIV infection remain the exceptional feature of sub-Saharan Africa (and parts of the Caribbean) where a particular pattern of concurrent networks of sexual partners together with high rates of other sexually transmitted infections facilitated an AIDS epidemic. Though this has had a devastating impact on many communities, Chin suggests that HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean has been overestimated by about 50 per cent. The good news is that, contrary to the doom-mongering of the AIDS bureaucracy, the rising annual global HIV incidence peaked in the late 1990s and the AIDS pandemic has now passed its peak.

Most significantly, the sub-Saharan pattern has not been replicated in Europe or North America, or even in Asia or Latin America, though there have been localised epidemics associated with gay men, drug users and prostitution, most recently in South-East Asia and Eastern Europe.

Many commentators now acknowledge the gross exaggerations and scaremongering of the AIDS bureaucracy. It is clear that HIV has remained largely confined to people following recognised high-risk behaviours, rather than being, in the mantra of the AIDS bureaucracy, a condition of poverty, gender inequality and under-development. Yet they also accept the argument, characterised by Chin as ‘political correctness’, that it is better to try to terrify the entire population with the spectre of an AIDS epidemic than it is to risk stigmatising the gays and junkies, ladyboys and whores who feature prominently in Pisani’s colourful account.

For Chin and Pisani, the main problem of the mendacity of the AIDS bureaucracy is that it leads to misdirected, ineffective and wasteful campaigns to change the sexual behaviour of the entire population, while the real problems of HIV transmission through high-risk networks are neglected. To deal with these problems, both favour a return to traditional public health methods of containing sexually transmitted infections through aggressive testing, contact tracing and treatment of carriers of HIV. Whereas the gay activists who influenced the early approach of the AIDS bureaucracy favoured anonymous and voluntary testing, our whistleblowers now recommend a more coercive approach, in relation to both diagnosis and treatment.

Pisani reminds readers that ‘public health is inherently a somewhat fascist discipline’ (for example, quarantine restrictions have an inescapably authoritarian character) and enthusiastically endorses the AIDS policies of the Thai military authorities and the Chinese bureaucrats who are not restrained from targeting high-risk groups by democratic niceties. The problem is that, given the climate of fear generated by two decades of the ‘everyone-is-at-risk nonsense’, the policy now recommended by Chin and Pisani is likely to lead to more repressive interventions against stigmatised minorities (which will not help to deter the spread of HIV infection).

Chin confesses that he has found it difficult ‘to understand how, over the past decade, mainstream AIDS scientists, including most infectious disease epidemiologists, have virtually all uncritically accepted the many “glorious” myths and misconceptions UNAIDS and AIDS activists continue to perpetuate’. An explanation for this shocking betrayal of principle can be found in a 1996 commentary on the British AIDS campaign entitled ‘Icebergs and rocks of the “good lie”’. In this article, Guardian journalist Mark Lawson accepted that the public had been misled over the threat of AIDS, but argued that the end of promoting sexual restraint (especially among the young) justified the means (exaggerating the risk of HIV infection): as he put it, ‘the government has lied and I am glad’ (2).

This sort of opportunism is not confined to AIDS: in other areas where experts are broadly in sympathy with government policy – such as passive smoking, obesity and climate change – they have been similarly complicit in the prostitution of science to propaganda.

It is a pity that Chin and Pisani did not blow their whistles earlier and louder, but better late than never.

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is the author of MMR and Autism: What Parents Need to Know (buy this book from Amazon(UK)) and The Tyranny of Health: Doctors and the Regulation of Lifestyle (buy this book from Amazon(UK)).

The Wisdom of Whores, by Elisabeth Pisani, is published by Granta Books. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness, by James Chin, is published by Radcliffe Publishing Ltd. (Buy this book from Amazon(UK).)

(1) Michael Fitzpatrick and Don Milligan, The Truth About The Aids Panic, 1987

(2) Mark Lawson, ‘Icebergs and rocks of the “good” lie’, Guardian, 24 June 1996

Actually, it is you who keep citing homosexual publications that advocate anal sex to rebut scientists like Duesberg who say the fast-track homosexual lifestyle causes AIDS. But beyond your disgusting crusade to vindicate homosexuality, what really bothers me is that we have both been told by the mods to steer clear of each other. Why do you insist on following me around and making a mockery of the mods?

Given your continual need to cover up how the fast-track gay lifestyle is one of the main causes AIDS, I’m starting to think you delicate geniuses have been dispatched by the Log Cabin “Republicans.” Is this true? Fess up now.

Um, GGG, you're the one who is arguing that having anonymous gay intercourse with multiple partners is perfectly safe, so long as one does not use drugs while doing so.

I doubt any of the people you posted to share your views on the safety of drug-free gay orgies.

You're 100% correct in my case. I have no use for fagots with or without dope. Neither do I have any use for nut jobs like the poster.

I have nothing against homosexuals, in general. But only a loon would deny that the largest vectors for the spread of AIDS has been promiscuous male gay sex, followed by the sharing of needles for drug use.

Did the promiscuous gay sex involve the use of drugs? I'm sure that much of it did, but the (non-intravenous)drug use in no way directly led to the transmittal of AIDS.

I have a feeling that this poster is mixing up correlation with causation- homosexuals who use illegal drugs are also likely to engage in other risky behavior, such as unprotected sexual activity with numerous partners.

I have never argued that gay orgies are “perfectly safe.” Their disgusting lifestyle is responsible for spreading a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases. But a growing number of scientists and medical doctors, many of them at the very apex of their respective fields, are claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS, and that AIDS is really just a list of a couple of dozen unrelated diseases that are called AIDS by a circular definition that does not hold up to scientific scrutiny. If you would like good layman’s summaries of what these scientists are saying, give the Policy Review, National Review, American Spectator, or the Reason Magazine articles on my profile page a read. If, on the other hand, you prefer to remain ignorant and ineffective on this timely and important conservative issue, then by all means bury your heads in the sand and remain part of the problem. The choice is up to you.

I have never argued that gay orgies are “perfectly safe.” Their disgusting lifestyle is responsible for spreading a whole host of sexually transmitted diseases.

We aren't talking about other STD's here- we're talking about HIV/AIDS. Your attempt to change the subject notwithstanding, at the end of the day your position still remains that, at least when it comes to AIDS, drug-free gay orgies are perfectly safe.

But a growing number of scientists and medical doctors, many of them at the very apex of their respective fields, are claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS

They may be growing, but they constitute a miniscule percentage of respectable medical opinion on the subject.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to remain ignorant and ineffective on this timely and important conservative issue, then by all means bury your heads in the sand and remain part of the problem. The choice is up to you.

The claim that drug-free gay orgies are safe when it comes to HIV/AIDS is a conservative issue? Who knew?

Anytime science is prostituted to achieve political objectives, it is a conservative issue. In the case of AIDS, science is being prostituted to achieve a left-wing political agenda, which is also a conservative issue. As for “drug-free gay orgies,” the fast-track lifestyle is so extreme that it cannot be sustained without massive amounts of immunotoxic drugs. Try to think like a toxicologist for a moment. What does the following chart tell you???:

Table 3. CDC 1983*: Drug use by American male
homosexuals with AIDS and at risk for AIDS.

Drugs: Percentage users among 50 AIDS cases and 120 at risk for AIDS

Nitrite inhalants 96%
Ethylchloride 35–50%
Cocaine 50–60%
Amphetamines 50–70%
Phenylcyclidine 40%
LSD 40–60%
Metaqualone 40–60%
Barbiturates 25%
Marijuana 90%
Heroin 10%
Drug-free NONE REPORTED!

What does the following chart tell you???:

That there is a high correlation between drug use and HIV/AIDs infection. Which isn't surprising- people who use illegal drugs are also likely to engage in other risky behavior, such as promiscuous and unsafe homosexual sex. Illegal drug use lowers inhibition and impairs judgment. Some of the drugs listed, such as heroin, are also injected, so there's also the issue of shared needles.

You are making the classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation. The drug use doesn't directly cause HIV/AIDS- it's the risky activities that high people engage in that leads to infection. You're acting like you've made some novel discovery, but all your evidence shows is that drug users tend to engage in other risky behavior.

==That there is a high correlation between drug use and HIV/AIDs infection.

Agreed.

==You are making the classic mistake of confusing correlation with causation.

That is of course possible. But remember, confusing correlation with causation is a two-way street. Let's superimpose drug use and HIV infection over the AIDS statistics and see which one provides a better explanation for what causes of AIDS. Notice that the rate of HIV infection is flatlined, whereas the drug epidemic in the US and Europe has a near perfect correlation with the rise of AIDS cases :

==The drug use doesn't directly cause HIV/AIDS- it's the risky activities that high people engage in that leads to infection.

I don't see how you can say that when it is a demonstrable fact that the drugs that IV drug addicts and fast-lane homosexuals use cause AIDS defining diseases without the presence of HIV.

Notice that the rate of HIV infection is flatlined, whereas the drug epidemic in the US and Europe has a near perfect correlation with the rise of AIDS cases :

AIDS cases trail infection rates. Though someone may be infected in one year, they may not develop AIDS for several years thereafter. That explains how though HIV infection rates may go down, AIDS cases can continue to rise. But, in any event, your top chart shows that as HIV cases go down, AIDS cases have gone down, too, if I'm reading it correctly. And I'd like to see that chart extended through a more recent year than 2000.

I'm also not sure what to make of the fact that the first and third charts measure AIDS, HIV and drug deaths using different scales of magnitude.

I don't see how you can say that when it is a demonstrable fact that the drugs that IV drug addicts and fast-lane homosexuals use cause AIDS defining diseases without the presence of HIV.

I would not be surprised that drug afficts catch some of the same diseases as people infected with HIV. Continuous drug abuse, along with the lifestyle of many addicts (poor nutrition, lack of sleep, lack of hygiene, homelessness, prostitution, exposure to physical violence) all have negative impacts on a person's immune system. Of course such people, even without being HIV-positive, are going to fall prey to many of the same diseases as people with AIDS- those diseases opportunistically go after people with weakened immune systems, whether due to AIDS, lifestyle or a combination of both. At the end of the day, AIDS does nothing more than weaken a person's immune system to the point where the body cannot defend itself from diseases. It's not surprising that people with weakened immune systems due to other causes will find themselves in a similar situation.

==Of course such people, even without being HIV-positive, are going to fall prey to many of the same diseases as people with AIDS...(so) It’s not surprising that people with weakened immune systems due to other causes will find themselves in a similar situation.

So how do we tell which is which??? In other words, let’s suppose a HIV-positive drug addict comes in with a weakened immune system and suffering from an AIDS defining disease. How could we possibly indentify the underlying cause of his disease? It could be HIV, it could be drugs, it could be malnutrition. How would we tell the difference?

In the case of the HIV-infected homeless drug addict, any doctor can tell you that all of the various things involved have served to compromise his immune system. The HIV/AIDS have just made an already bad situation even worse.

As a counterexample, look at someone like Magic Johnson who is HIV+, but lives a lifestyle of diet, medication and exercise that allows him to keep the disease in check more or less indefinitely. He's the flipside of the drug-addicted homeless person who is HIV+

To figure out the effect of HIV infection, you compare one group of drug addicts who are not HIV positive with a similar group of drug addicts who are, then look at the relative rate of diseases arising from compromised immune systems. You'll find instances of such diseases in both groups, but the rate for the HIV infected drug addicts will be, over the long-term, significantly higher.

You are quite correct that living a life of drug abuse and promiscuous homosexual orgies (with all of the attendant STDs and other health issues) is bad for one's immune system. But that lifestyle, even if it leads to getting certain AIDS-like diseases, is not the cause of AIDS. It can simply lead to health situations that are similar to AIDS, however.

==As a counterexample, look at someone like Magic Johnson who is HIV+, but lives a lifestyle of diet, medication

Last I heard, Magic Johnson discontinued his AIDS chemotherapy drugs over a decade ago.

==You are quite correct that living a life of drug abuse and promiscuous homosexual orgies (with all of the attendant STDs and other health issues) is bad for one’s immune system. But that lifestyle, even if it leads to getting certain AIDS-like diseases, is not the cause of AIDS. It can simply lead to health situations that are similar to AIDS

Again, at this stage of the game, scientists can’t tell the difference. Moreover, the AIDS establishment has put the kibash on all attempts by scientists to resolve the issue. And if they can’t tell the difference, then they can’t be sure what’s really causing AIDS.

Last I heard, Magic Johnson discontinued his AIDS chemotherapy drugs over a decade ago.

That would explain why Magic Johnson sponsors almost a dozen AIDS clinics.

The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation on Monday will open in Jacksonville, Fla., an Earvin "Magic" Johnson Jr. Clinic for HIV/AIDS, which will offer HIV testing, medical care and social services, the Florida Times-Union reports. Although this will be the first Magic Johnson clinic in Florida, AHF operates 10 such clinics in California and a jointly operated medical office and pharmacy in New York. AHF President Michael Weinstein said that the Jacksonville site was chosen "because of need in the area," as the Florida Health Department says that one in 156 Floridians are HIV-positive. "Jacksonville is representative of a lot of medium-type cities where there is limited access to care," Weinstein said, adding that AHF expects 200 patients to use the clinic in its first year. The clinic, open to all patients regardless of insurance coverage or ability to pay, will offer initial HIV testing; disease monitoring, including radiology and laboratory tests; and treatment for HIV/AIDS, with the option of participating in clinical research trials. In addition, the clinic will provide social services such as "public benefits counseling, mental health counseling and 24-hour access to medical advice." The goal of the clinic, which uses Magic Johnson's name because he is a "symbol of hope and success in AIDS treatment," is to see patients within 48 hours of first contact, as the average wait time is currently one to three months. "That's like telling someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer to wait," Robert Catalla, the clinic's medical director, said, adding, "That's unacceptable" (Skidmore, Florida Times-Union, 7/24). For more information on HIV/AIDS in Florida, visit State Health Facts Online.

Link

Has anyone mentioned that in addition to practicing medicine without a license, you are also a shameless, criminally insane liar?

Last I heard, Magic Johnson discontinued his AIDS chemotherapy drugs over a decade ago.

You've never provided any evidence of this. The only article I remember you pointing to as evidence only dealt with an incident where Magic stopped taking his medications during a cruise he went on with his wife, in order to avoid nausea. But your claim that he stopped taking his AIDS drugs a decade ago is pure wishful thinking on your part. Other than the handful of people who seem to have a natural immunity to HIV/AIDS, an HIV+ person who stops taking their medication can expect to be dead in a very short time.

Telling the difference is quite easy, statistically. Look at a population of people who are HIV+ and compare them to a similar population (in terms of age, lifestyle, other illnesses etc.) of people without the disease. The HIV+ group is going to die a lot sooner than the control group. There are homosexuals who survived the promiscuous bath-house lifestyle of the 80's because they dodged a bullet and didn't get infected with HIV. But virtually every homosexual who lived that lifestyle and got infected is dead now.

Again, you're assuming no one else has ever thought about this, but the evidence is overwhelming that if you take two people who are otherwise similar demographically, and one of them becomes infected with HIV, that person is looking at an earlier death.

The simplest way to refute this crap is to point out that back in 1996 , when GGG stopped paying attention to reality, the gay community tried to deny the link between AIDS and HIV, and tried to deny the usefulness of drugs.

What happened is that the denier community died of AIDS, and drug cocktails with fewer side effects were developed. It’s still nasty stuff, but there’s a FReeper MD who has treated 1200 patients without losing one since the late 90s. Prior to the drugs, all his AIDS patients died. It’s really pretty simple.

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