Posted on 09/25/2008 6:27:24 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
AIDS: are we being deceived?
15 September 2008
We are still being told that Africa suffers a devastating AIDS epidemic. The gigantic numbers of infections yield gigantic amounts of public funds for research and thus researchers. What scientific judgement can we expect from experts who stand for a broad-based conviction that guarantees their income?
By Christian Fiala, MD, PhD
It took two decades, but finally we are being told the truth: most of what AIDS experts and the media have led us to believe is wrong. A bitter deception, but better now than never.
First, UNAIDS admitted last December that it had overestimated the worldwide total number of people infected with HIV by a staggering 7 million, out of an estimated 40 million. This is a remarkable admission, coming after years of using inflated numbers in its highly successful campaign for more funding.
But the true overestimate is more than twice as high at 15 million, according to Dr. James Chin, the person formerly responsible for these very data at UNAIDS.
Dr. Chin has shared some of his inside knowledge in a new book with the telling title: The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology with Political Correctness. In it he reveals that an AIDS epidemic was never expected in Europe or North America. He also explains how the inflated figures were used to scare the population and to argue for higher budgets.
The next revelation was an article in the well-respected British Medical Journal in May: ‘The writing is on the wall for UNAIDS’. Author Roger England explains: "It is no longer heresy to point out that far too much is spent on HIV relative to other needs and that this is damaging health systems’. Based on data and arguments, he recommends that ‚UNAIDS should be closed down rapidly because its mandate is wrong and harmful".
Finally in June, the head of the WHO's department of HIV/AIDS, Dr. Kevin de Cock, officially admitted that HIV outside sub-Saharan Africa was confined to high-risk groups.
'Everyone is at risk'
These admissions of obvious facts come late. Many people realised long ago that HIV/AIDS is not a threat to the heterosexual population in Europe or North America. In contrast to the numerous campaigns during the last two decades, intended to make us believe that ‘everyone is at risk’. And those familiar with the data know there was never any reason to believe an epidemic would occur: In short: "for over twenty years, the general public has been greatly misled and ill-informed", explains Rebecca Culshaw, a scientist who has been working on mathematical models of HIV infection.
Now that the AIDS frenzy of an epidemic in the general population is finally over, it’s just a question of time until public and private donors translate these facts into a reallocation of their budgets.
Population growth in Africa
But what about Africa? Most people still believe what we’ve been told: A terrible HIV/AIDS epidemic is ravaging poor countries, mainly due to the heterosexual spread of HIV – which oddly enough is not occurring in Europe or North America. This discrepancy is just one of many contradictions in widely-held beliefs about AIDS. Another is the continuously high or even increasing population growth rate in countries said to be ‘hit’ by a deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic. The best example is Uganda. This country was once hailed as the ‘epicentre of a worldwide epidemic’. The journal Newsweek wrote back in 1986: "Nowhere is the disease more rampant than in the Rakai region of south-west Uganda, where 30 percent of the people are estimated to be seropositive." In 1995, the World Health Organisation confirmed that "by mid-1991 an estimated 1.5 million Ugandans, or about 9 percent of the general population and 20 percent of the sexually active population, had HIV infection". Subsequently, estimates of the number of HIV-positive Ugandans increased even further, to 15 percent of the total population. Most were expected to die prematurely with disastrous consequences for their families and the country.
So it comes as a shock to look at Uganda today and find no trace of the predicted premature death of millions of people. Instead, Uganda is a country struggling with dramatic population growth. It has always had a very high growth rate, but for the last 15 years, it’s been among the fastest growing countries in the world. Mortality has remained constant or even declined, while fertility rates have remained high and stable.
In other words, instead of the announced deadly epidemic of historic proportions we find an explosive annual population growth rate of 3.4 percent, which means the country is doubling its population in 21 years.
Obviously, this is paradoxical. But the contradiction between a predicted deadly epidemic and a dramatic population increase can easily be explained: most people who were HIV positive 15 years ago did not die prematurely as expected, but continued to live a normal life.
Therefore, the basic assumption in the HIV/AIDS paradigm – that a positive HIV test leads to AIDS and certain premature death – is wrong, as proven by the example of Uganda.
Inaccurate AIDS tests
The obviously and admittedly inflated figures were based on wrong assumptions, baseless estimates, and fundamental mistakes in epidemiology. To begin with, HIV tests are highly inaccurate in Africa, as several studies have documented. Tests are typically done on a small number of people and the results extrapolated to the total population.
Furthermore, in 1986 WHO created a new definition of AIDS that was valid in poor countries only, and based on unspecific symptoms. According to this so-called Bangui definition, someone has AIDS if he is suffering from weight loss, fever, and cough. But these are the typical symptoms of tuberculosis, a widespread disease in poor countries. In short, the Bangui definition diagnoses well-known diseases and gives them a new name: AIDS. This re-labelling of frequently occurring diseases explains the huge increase of ‘AIDS cases’ in the last 20 years in Africa, even while the total number of people dying has remained stable.
When the number of AIDS cases based on the Bangui definition were reported to UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva, even more cases were added to adjust for alleged ‘underreporting’. Over the years, this padding increased drastically to the point where UNAIDS claimed in 1997 that only 3 percent of the estimated new AIDS cases in Africa had actually been reported. The other 97 percent were created on paper in Geneva.
The global HIV industry
At this point, AIDS experts arrived at a dead end. They could not possibly inflate their numbers further without losing all credibility. Instead, they simply changed strategies and stopped publishing details of how they obtain their HIV/AIDS data.
The strategy of presenting inflated figures and repeatedly announcing an imminent catastrophe has paid off handsomely for those who make their living off HIV/AIDS. As early as 1989, the German Medical Board wrote in its journal that the only explanation for the ‘confusing’ way AIDS statistics are compiled is that ‘huge figures bring in large amounts of public money’ to AIDS research and, by extension, into the pockets of the researchers.
Back in 1989, the authors probably never imagined just how prophetic their comment would be. HIV/AIDS is an unprecedented success story for those who make their living from it. So it’s not surprising how anxious they are to defend conventional beliefs about HIV/AIDS (and their income). An impressive example is the reaction to Roger England’s recent critical article in the well-respected British Medical Journal (as cited above). The author probably knew what he was talking about when he predicted: "Putting HIV in its place among other priorities will be resisted strongly. The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake." Reading the emotional reactions to this well-written and well-researched article conveys the impression of ‘the empire striking back’. But the letters revealed something even more troubling: the majority were written by people affiliated with an HIV/AIDS organisation, but not one of them disclosed a conflict of interest – an ethical requirement in the scientific literature.
What kind of quality of scientific judgement can we expect from experts who defend a widely-held belief that guarantees their income and who are unable to see an obvious conflict of interest?
Priorities
Unfortunately, the almost hysterical focus on HIV/AIDS in Africa has done much harm over the last two decades. First, the huge political pressure has turned health care priorities upside down. Common problems or diseases are neglected. For example, Africa is a continent so poor that almost half of its population has no access to clean drinking water, and alleviation of this fundamental human need has been scandalously slow.
Second, financial resources are being diverted from other important issues. For example, UNAIDS urged African Ministers of Finance to "redirect existing project resources that could be supporting AIDS – billions of dollars programmed for: social funds, education and health projects, infrastructure, rural development".
Third, even interventions like the focus on condoms may be harmful given that abortion is still illegal in most of Africa based on the antiquated laws of the former colonial powers. Condoms are not a very effective contraceptive. And a woman in Africa who finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy due to a condom failure has few options except to turn to illegal and unsafe abortion.
Tragically, effective methods of contraception are rarely available or even withheld on the grounds they do not protect from HIV.
Now that the obvious reality has finally been admitted, we can be relieved that the AIDS epidemic is not the killer we were made believe. But how can we prevent a similar deception in the future? One possible strategy is to avoid just believing what scientists tell us, and instead follow Albert Einstein’s advice: "The important thing is not to stop questioning".
Christian Fiala, MD, PhD, is an Austrian specialist in obstetrics and gynacology. He is a researcher of AIDS in Uganda and Thailand.
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ping!
Here we go again...
Wait a minute. Is this one more instance where the agenda of the left turns out to be one big lie? I am shocked. Just shocked.
Not only is it one big lie, but millions of innocent people (to include women and children) are being maimed and killed by extremely toxic AIDS chemotherapy drugs. One day we will look back on AIDS as the biggest iatrogenic tragedy in the history of medicine.
This more like the agenda of the Globalists - George W threw more of our tax dollars at this than Clinton did. Not that it made Bono love him any more.
If a woman sleeps with a man who has HIV, she has a good chance of contracting the virus.
this article is terrible.
The handwriting is on the wall. HIV-AIDS is being phased out. It was a con from the get-go and all cons end at some point. Time to move on to the next big one which is the Carbon Credits Con.
Nothing in the posted article denies that. The point made is that there is a very good statistical chance that the AIDS carrier got it through behavior of a sort that is not normative and thus affects relatively few people.
Many people are struck and killed by lightning every year. No need for all of us to stay indoors. When it happens, it is a tragedy in that the "bell tolls for thee." But it is a tragedy that humankind survives quite easily. Furthermore, humankind survives lightning without the need of massive effort. No one denies that AIDS needs a lot more attention than that.
Read Frumento's "The Myth of Heterosexual Aids." He was a pioneer in debunking the international AIDS agenda. And no one is denying here that AIDS is a terrible disease with severe global consequences ... just stating that it is a disease with political agendas almost as dangerous to the planet as the disease, because by distorting science with a political agenda, effort is misappropriated and wasted.
“So it comes as a shock to look at Uganda today and find no trace of the predicted premature death of millions of people. Instead, Uganda is a country struggling with dramatic population growth. It has always had a very high growth rate, but for the last 15 years, it’s been among the fastest growing countries in the world. Mortality has remained constant or even declined, while fertility rates have remained high and stable.”
What Uganda HAS done and what was conveniently LEFT OUT of the article,
“Uganda, one of the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to experience the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS and to take action to control the epidemic, is one of the rare success stories in a region that has been ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While the rate of new infections continues to increase in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Uganda has succeeded in lowering its very high infection rates. Since 1993, HIV infection rates among pregnant women, a key indicator of the progress of the epidemic, have been more than halved in some areas and infection rates among men seeking treatment for sexually transmitted infections have dropped by over a third.
In the capital city Kampala, the level of HIV infection among pregnant women attending antenatal clinics fell from 31% in 1993 to 14% by 1998. Meanwhile, outside Kampala, infection rates among pregnant women under 20 dropped from 21% in 1990 to 8% in 1998. Elsewhere, among men attending STI clinics, HIV infection rates fell from 46% in 1992 to 30% in 1998.(WHO).”
But what would Fiala(an obstetrician and gp) care? He doesn't think HIV has anything to do with AIDS anyway.
But no matter how much hot you blow under it the thing just won't fly, will it?
Your agenda-based spin is almost as bad as the spin of some AIDS activists.
AIDS has, thankfully, not turned out to be as bad an epidemic as initally feared. In the West, at least, it has remained mostly a male homosexual and IV drug user issue. In Africa, it has made more inroads to the general population. In some countries, it is pretty disastrous- In Lesotho, for example, 23% of the adult population (ages 15-49) have HIV/AIDS.
But that is separate from the issue of HIV drugs, which have, especially in the West, turned AIDS into a manageable disease and have greatly increased life expectancy for anyone infected with the virus.
Tens of millions of people infected with a deadly disease is a scam?
Please get a clue. This is utterly retarded.
Those numbers are not going away. Readjusted, perhaps but they are not going away.
Agreed, thank you.
Wow, you’ve got it all figured out. Please contact Weekly World News immediately. I’m sure they’ll run with this story.
If you have an open mind, may I suggest you go to my profile page and read the Policy Review, Reason Magazine, National Review, and American Spectator articles on the subject. Then articles like this won’t come as such a shock to you.
See #15.
Hey I read a lot of those but I also live in NYC. And I already see and know what the reality is and don’t need statistical adjustments to gain my bearings.
Your citation of the global numbers changing hardly mitigates the seriousness nor the impact to tens of millions of people.
The other stuff is extraneous to that first comment.
It’s not a statistical adjustment that is a shock. It’s the very idea that tens of millions of people and their families are facing a deadly disease with your attitude about it that is shocking.
Are there any SPECIFIC objections you have to the growing number of scientists and medical doctors who challenge the HIV/AIDS hypothesis?
Other than the utter lack of evidence for their position?
Wow...that was really SPECIFIC!
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