Posted on 12/10/2008 8:33:43 AM PST by GodGunsGuts
Top Scientists Ask Medical Journal Science To Retract Original AIDS Papers
SAN FRANCISCO (Rethinking AIDS) Dec. 9, 2008—The international nonprofit scientific organization Rethinking AIDS gave its full support today to 37 senior researchers, medical doctors and legal professionals who are requesting that the medical journal Science withdraw four seminal papers on HIV authored by Dr. Robert Gallo—papers widely touted as proof that HIV is the "probable cause of AIDS." An online posting of the letter can be found here.
"With new findings that undermine the scientific integrity and veracity of Gallo's four papers, the entire basis of the theory that HIV causes AIDS may now be questioned," says Rethinking AIDS president David Crowe.
The letter to the journal comes at a time when the microbiology world is abuzz about Gallo's omission from the 2008 Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of HIV, contrary to an international agreement that the two teams should share credit. French scientists Drs. Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barré-Sinoussi are instead to be given the award, a decision that also implicitly questions the scientific integrity of Gallo's claim of the discovery. Montagnier, however, admitted on camera more than a decade ago that his experiments did not purify any virus.
The four papers were originally published on May 4, 1984, a few days after a press conference by Gallo announcing he had discovered the "probable cause of AIDS." Now, a British investigative journalist has shown that Gallo's claim was based on last-minute alterations to documents that make false claims about the results of his lab work and research experiments. The letter to Science sent by the 37 experts on Monday, Dec. 1, 2008, includes a copy of Gallo’s handwritten changes to the article, a letter from an electron microscopy expert indicating that Gallo’s samples did not contain any virus, and a letter from Gallo to a researcher verifying that HIV could not be purified directly from human materials.
The investigative conclusion prompting the letter to Science was made by journalist Janine Roberts, author of Fear of the Invisible, a book that examines the origin of several disease theories. "I was shocked when I read the original draft of the key scientific paper now widely cited as proving HIV causes AIDS," says Roberts. "Gallo's handwritten last-minute changes had reversed what the scientists in his lab had originally concluded. This demonstrates a stunning disregard for the scientific process and a very disturbing breach of public trust."
It is clear that the seminal research published on HIV contained unjustified claims and alterations. In 1993, governmental investigators determined Gallo had so poorly recorded his key and much-cited experiment that it was impossible to repeat and verify it.
In the early 1990s, several highly critical reports on the research underlying Gallo's papers were produced as a result of governmental inquiries working under the supervision of scientists nominated by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services concluded that the lead paper of the four was "fraught with false and erroneous statements" and that the “ORI believes that the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records . . . reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken." Further, a Congressional Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations produced a staff report on the papers, containing scathing criticisms of their integrity.
Rethinking AIDS — an international group of more than 2,600 scientists, doctors, journalists, health advocates and others — offers several eminent medical and scientific experts to comment on this and other AIDS issues currently in the news:
Etienne de Harven, M.D.* Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto Saint Cézaire, France Member and professor in cell biology, Sloan Kettering Institute, New York, 1956-1981. Isolated and obtained the first electron microscopic studies of the murine Friend leukemia virus, and retroviral budding. Frequent critic of the "isolation" of HIV, and past president of Rethinking AIDS. Dr. de Harven can comment on the science of retrovirus isolation.
Janine Roberts Investigative Reporter Bristol, U.K. jan@fearoftheinvisible.com Author, Fear of the Invisible, a recent book exposing the fraud in the drafting of one of the original 1984 Science articles by Robert Gallo. Web site: www.fearoftheinvisible.com
Media Contacts:
David Crowe* President, Rethinking AIDS Calgary, Alberta, Canada (Mountain time zone) 1-403-289-6609 (office) 1-403-861-2225 (mobile) david.crowe@aras.ab.ca
Elizabeth Ely Public Relations Chairperson Rethinking AIDS Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S. (Eastern time zone) 1-718-704-9672 (mobile) publicrelations@rethinkingaids.com
*Rethinking AIDS board member.
Rethinking AIDS: The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis ("RA" or "the Group") was formed in 1991 to express the concerns of a growing number of renowned scientists and medical doctors about HIV research and the resulting human rights abuses. In 1995, by a letter published in Science, the Group called for a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against the HIV/AIDS hypothesis and recommended that critical epidemiological studies be undertaken.
Among RA's founders and key members are University of Toronto professor emeritus and former cancer researcher Dr. Etienne de Harven; Harvard microbiologist Dr. Charles Thomas; 1993 Nobel laureate for chemistry Dr. Kary Mullis; Nature/Biotechnology co-founder Dr. Harvey Bialy; University of California at Berkeley molecular biologist Dr. Peter Duesberg and the late Yale mathematician Dr. Serge Lang, both members of the National Academy of Sciences; physicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos of the Royal Perth Hospital in Australia; and Glasgow University professor emeritus of public health and World Health Organization consultant Dr. Gordon Stewart.
Try and get this through your head....EVEN GALLO didn’t find any virus. Go look at his papers.
The drug manufacturers make NO claim that their drugs are helping anyone with aids. I already posted some of the disclaimers. You can ignore them if you it makes you feel better.
If you feel suspicious about what I posted go to the drug manufacturers websites and see for yourself. By law they have to disclose.
I am not going to respond to the typical attacks of the viral theory of aids..i.e. ad hominem, emotional blackmail, etc.
if it makes you feel better to do that rather than ask questions and look into it then I can’t stop you but I have better things to do.
I am not misrepresenting anything. I already answered that question. You have to read the whole study and not just the abstract.
Direct all claims that I’m misrepresenting the article over here. I’m done
http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/08/more_on_african.html
or here
http://groups.msn.com/AIDSMythExposed/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=1&ID_Message=36631
I can’t keep saying the same thing over and over again.
All I have to read is the abstract to tell you that the 19% man to woman and the 2.4% woman to man HIV transmission rate observed among condom using heterosexuals is not and never will be a ZERO transmission rate.
Are you claiming that a 19% and 2.4% transmission rate was not observed? What then does “Zero transmission” mean to you?
“I already answered that” is the typical ploy of someone who doesn’t have the answer.
Cant keep repeating the same untruthful statements over and over again?
A 19% and 2.4% transmission rate is not and never will be a zero transmission rate.
Why do you feel the need to misrepresent these data?
Sure you can. For example, you can imply that couples were followed for ten years, which would be a lie.
But TOP SCIENTISTS dispute the HIV/AIDS hypothesis:
Kofi Ababio. Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Folarin Abimbola. Medical student, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, Nigeria.
Jotham Achineku. Engineer, Ikeja, Nigeria.
Leonardo Acosta. Journalist, Author of more than a dozen books, Havana, Cuba.
‘Ayo Adeboye. Physician, Nigeria.
Martin Adjuik. MSc, Biostatistician, WHO Fellow, Navrongo Health Research Centre, Ghana.
Sina Ahmadi. Medical Student, Tehran, Iran
Syed Masud Ahmed. Physician, MBBS, MPH, Senior Medical Officer, Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC Centre, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Dr Yele Akinrolabu. Lagos, Nigeria
Morris Alexander. Senior Public Prosecutor, Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court, South Africa
Anita Allen. Journalist, former Science Writer, The Star, Johannesburg, South Africa
Karin Wiedmer Aebersold. Homeopathic doctor, Hefenhofen, Switzerland.
Mabili Ajani. Broadcast Journalist, Tampa, Florida
To be fair, there are some people with actual qualifications on the list. But when you eliminate the unqualified, the list is pretty short.
You are attacking the messengers instead of looking at what they’re saying. You are also leaving out the signatories with caucasian names and those that are intimately involved in hiv/aids, like Kary Mullis who won the Nobel prize for inventing the PCR which is a cornerstone of the viral theory of aids.
GO LOOK at Gallo’s original “proof” instead of looking for ways to shoot the messengers.
http://fearoftheinvisible.com/fraud-in-key-hiv-research-background
You argue as if nothing has been done or learned since 1994.
There’s a reason why you and GGG show charts and graphs and quote studies that cut off in 1996. That was just prior to effective antiviral therapy. You don’t dare show data comparing AIDS mortality before and after the availability of multi-drug therapy.
But since you’re back you can answer my yes or no question.
Is anal sex safe and not capable of transmitting AIDS?
This is what the quote your trying to lift out of context says. They followed up 175 couples with one partner infected and the other not infected. 25% of these did not use condoms consistently, that is 44 couples. 47 couples intermittently practiced unsafe sex. That is only a subset of 91/175 couples, or only 52% of the sample that is covered under these two subsets of people among whom they observed no transmission of HIV.
Among ALL the couples studies they did not, as you erroneously claimed, observe a ZERO transmission rate, they observed a 19% transmission rate for male to female infection and a 4% transmission rate for female to male infection.
I already posted some of the drug disclaimers. Go and check the manufaturers’ web sites if you doubt what I posted. Even the drug manufacturers don’t claim the drugs are helping anyone.
If you choose ignore that that’s up to you.
I already answered your question. You keep pretending I haven’t. I don’t know why but it probably has to do with the same reason you choose to ignore the disclaimers the manufacturers put on their own products.
I already said you have to read more than the abstract. If you choose not to that’s up to you.
How do you reconcile Padian’s claims of transmission when she herself observed NO transmission?
We observed NO seroconversions AFTER entry into the study” [NOBODY became HIV positive] Padian page 356
I already said you have to read more than the abstract. If you choose not to that’s up to you.
How do you reconcile Padian’s claims of transmission when she herself observed NO transmission?
We observed NO seroconversions AFTER entry into the study” [NOBODY became HIV positive] Padian page 356
In the abstract Padian’s group clearly shows that there is a 19% transmission rate from male to female and a 4% transmission rate from female to male.
How do you reconcile the clear observation in the abstract with your erroneous claim that there was no transmission?
You claimed she observed no transmission. Why do you feel the need to misrepresent these data? Clearly she observed a 19% and 4% transmission rate, as anyone who reads the abstract of the study can observe. Clearly your out of context excerpt only covered a subset of the experimental population, the part YOU want to talk about because they observed no transmission among those 52% of the experimental group.
But why do you feel the need to claim erroneously that she observed no transmission? Why do you need to misrepresent that data and claim a 19% and 4% observed transmission rate in this study was a zero transmission rate?
Then you will no doubt be able to supply the post number where you answered the yes or no question: Is anal sex safe and not capable of transmitting AIDS?
I hate to keep bringing this up, but there is something really odd about HIV denial. The original HIV deniers were militant gays, but most of them died. I can't quite figure the motives of the current crop.
Really odd. What is their motivation? Why do they feel the need to misrepresent the data at every step?
I can see believing something based upon good data, but when you have to misrepresent the data, shouldn’t that tell you something about how untenable and unsupportable the belief is?
I just find it really odd that someone like GGG should devote his life to hurting or attempting to hurt other people.
I mean, I don’t really care if he thinks the earth is 6000 years old or that gold will reach $1600 in the summer of 2008, or that DNA is unrelated to phenotypes. These are just delusions.
But I have trouble with people who use the forum to promote dangerous medical advice.
Notice that neither GGG nor his buds will answer a straight question about the sexual transmission of AIDS, nor will they or anyone in their circle take the risk of infecting themselves with the “harmless” HIV virus.
But they’re happy to run websites telling other people HIV is harmless.
The mortality rate was going down BEFORE the drugs were introduced. I’m looking for the reference now, I haven’t seen it in awhile. In the mean time...
“The most common cause of death among HIV positive people (being treated with AIDS meds) is liver failure.”
— Amy Justice, Aids Researcher, 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, 2002
more studies re: the drugs can be found here
http://www.jpands.org/jpands1204.htm
Questioning HIV/AIDS: Morally Reprehensible
or Scientifically Warranted?
AAPS Winter 2007
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