Well now isn’t this fascinating. First the AIDS research establishment is caught redhanded with gross scientific incompetence in Africa. Then they admit that AIDS was grossly exaggerated in central Africa, but insisted that it’s still a major problem in Southern Africa even though they still admit that the diagnostic standards are shoddy and would not pass muster anywhere in the developed world. Then a top epidemiologist admits just a few weeks ago that there simply is no AIDS threat to the heterosexual population in the developed world to speak of. Now, after decades of research, Roche announces that a lack of any meaningful progress has caused them to cease all AIDS research and reassign everyone on it to something else.
Well. Now isn’t that fascinating?
I wonder if former AIDS researcher Rebecca Culshaw’s book had any influence on any of this.
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They’ve milked this puppy as far as they can take it.
HB
Roche apparently did not have any AIDS drugs that sold very well. They had invested a lot in research and come up mostly empty. They appear to be just cutting their loses and moving on.
A the moment there are a number of AIDS treatment drugs available. Many of those drugs will be coming off patents, if they are not already. They will be available much more cheaply in the future. This means to sell an expensive, patented AIDS drug a company will have to show that it is more effective than the cheap drugs. That raises the bar for new AIDS treatment drugs.
God, I just love all purpose over arching generalizations.
Anybody can grab on and and promote a whatever in their next sentence and sound plausible.
Oops, Rebecca, wasn’t she was the newly minted phd that got her science from an airplane magazine reading Doctor Duesberg or Mullis, then the man from enchilada land helped her edit her book.
Last time he signed off was “an all politics excuse”.
Can we just all get back to the DaVinci code or something.
I guess 24 years is long enough for a snipe hunt.
That’s what ex-discoverer of the AIDS virus, Robert Gallo, and Health Secretary Margaret Heckler sent the scientific community on back in 1984 with the announcement that HIV causes AIDS.
Mikeca: Yeah, apparently all the current drugs are so good no one can come up with anything better that’s worth any more money, even with programs that give billions for these drugs already annually. Okay then.
McKiernan: Nope, Rebecca got her PhD in what was the hot area of AIDS research in the field, mathematical modeling of the virus and its behavior. After years on it, and publishing three papers on it, she quit as she realized none of it made any damned sense. Since her PhD was in mathematical biology, she went into teaching math because mathematical biological modeling of HIV is now dead–it came up with nothing much of use.
But you keep on with those over arching generalizations. They’re very helpful.
Important article last month from London:
 Threat of AIDS Pandemic among Heterosexuals is over, Report Admits
By Jeremy Laurance
A quarter of a century after the outbreak of Aids, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has accepted that the threat of a global heterosexual pandemic has disappeared.
In the first official admission that the universal prevention strategy promoted by the major Aids organisations may have been misdirected, Kevin de Cock, the head of the WHO’s department of HIV/Aids said there will be no generalised epidemic of Aids in the heterosexual population outside Africa.
Once you peel thru the propaganda, you realize the whole thing is a farce.
HB
Oh my God, Hank,
You’re quoting Dr De Cock, an epidemiologist who has spent much of his career leading the battle against the disease… ummh, okay, which one ?
Whatever.
Okay, I’ll peel thru the propaganda.
So what part is the farce, Hank ?
Gosh McK. You sure are a tricky guy. Which part did you not understand, the part about the epidemiologist who’s spent his life fighting the disease, or the part about how he’s admitted that it was never the threat it was made out to be and that resources and public health campaigns were massively misdirected? Or is it the word "farce" you’re having trouble understanding?
McKiernan,
Are you addressing moi?
The whole thing was a farce. In 1981, You had a concentrated subset of young gay men (not representative of the gay community) who were partying and poisoning their bodies with drugs; the media and government  ginned up fears that a new virus (came from Mars? Chimpanzees?) was gonna spread like wildfire into the general population to kill us all, unless we wore condoms; 27 years later the WHO is saying "never mind".
HB
Better late than never?
Can you see the massive pain to pride that’s hitting some folks now?
I’m mildly sympathetic to a few of them, who meant well. But it’s hard not to feel a growing contempt for the sneering know-it-alls and those who worked so hard to destroy the reputations and even the careers of the skeptics.
Better late than never?
Hah! Yes, I reckon, better late than never.
But, what do we say to all the surviving family of folks who were poisoned and killed by AZT (cancer chemotherapy)Â over the past 27 years?
I guess we say the same thing to the all the survivors of folks in Africa, killed by malaria, because we wouldn’t spray a little DDT. The flip side of the same, stupid dogmatic coin.
HankB
The Senate just approved a $50 billion dollar package to fight AIDS in Africa.
I didn’t see anything about them cutting funds for new drugs, or only buying the cheap off-patent ones with that money. Maybe I missed it somewhere.
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