Lindsay Nagel and Peter Duesberg, Nashville airport, 2009
The story of Lindsey Nagel is featured in the “conspiracy” documentary that has collected scores of film awards, House of Numbers. (www.houseofnumbers.com)
She was on AZT for a year and a half as a baby and during which time she suffered excruciating bone pain and a stunted growth chart. Her mother Cheryl reported: “She just got smaller and smaller.” (Robert Scott Bell Show) After contacting Peter Duesberg, when Lindsey’s grandfather found an article in The National Review by Tom Bethell, about the “views” of chemist and virologist Peter Duesberg, that HIV is harmless and AZT deadly, her parents wrote to him. He wrote back, sending a dossier of information on AZT, and advised the parents to take the child off AZT immediately, “…or she will die like Kimberly Bergalis.”
They did, amidst the pediatrician’s repeated threats and accusations that they were killing their child. On numerous occasions, the parents were told their child wound soon be dead, since she was an infant. One year, two years, four years, etc.
Lindsey is now 19 years old, and in perfect health. In 2009 she met Peter Duesberg for the first time at the premier of House of Numbers in Nashville, Tennessee.
The backlash from defenders of the HIV faith held, predictably, that Lindsay was a false positive. They face this accusation by a few hecklers at every screening they attend, as House of Numbers is shown around the country.
The attached documents demonstrate that Lindsey Nagel tested positive for HIV in 1995, at age 4, on both Western Blot and PCR.
“Enclosed is a Zerox of Lindsey’s Western Blot, in addition to copies of all the other lab tests we did. From my point of view, there is no doubt about her diagnosis.”
–Kenneth Boyer, M.D, letter to Cheryl Nagel, Nov. 6, 1995
“Your patient has had a positive test for HIV infection.” (Letter from laboratory to physician, 17 March 1995)
hpsc36 [documents, PDF] [Experiencing trouble attaching files. If they don't show up right away, 4:13 pm EST, please be patient.] — *
With this, I consider this question resolved.
Peter Duesberg saved this child’s life.
At least 10 HIV positive children in Minneapolis were medicated with AZT by the same doctors who treated Lindsey. None survived.
Dean: I ask that you referee this matter and install boundaries to unending obfuscations. Either a fact is a fact or it isn’t, ie there is no such thing as a fact. Innocent people in a sane world should not have to continue to be endlessly prodded and harassed when the facts about a given argument are in, and are crystal clear.
Thank you.
*Update from Dean:
Here is the requested document – hpsc36.pdf
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{ 36 comments }
I was unable to get the PDF documents to attach inside the post, so have sent them to Dean, and asked that he insert them.
I remember when AIDS was discovered in the early 1980s. AIDS was 100% fatal, usually within a year or two.
The death rate from AIDS has greatly declined, so I think the drugs must be doing something.
The diagnoses of AIDS was based on low T-cell counts and certain unusual infections or cancers. If you assume that HIV does cause AIDS, and AIDS is 100% fatal, that does not mean that every HIV infection will cause AIDS. Perhaps there are people that can live with HIV infection forever, and never develop AIDS.
The fact that there are some HIV positive people that never develop AIDS without any treatment does not prove that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. It just proves that HIV does not always cause AIDS and raises the question what percentage of HIV positive people will develop AIDS? Should all HIV positive people with no other symptoms be put on anti-HIV drugs? or should they only be monitored closely for development of AIDS?
Celia, your information seems convincing. But your request to Dean that he place limits on the debate over the HIV, AIDS, AZT debate, and way out of line for anyone posting or commenting on this website. It seems to me you are requesting that we succumb here to the same tactics that the HIV-AIDS establishment managed to inflict. If so, you and your kind are just as intolerant to dissent as the people you are attacking.
This AIDS and HIV business plays no significant role in my long life; in all candor, because neither I nor anybody in my immediate family have been afflicted with it. And unlike people like you, I am not any kind of altruist. So to me, all this is a distant and irrelevant problem, on a par with starvation in Africa or Bengla Desh.
Having said that, I have begun to agree with your argument, based on the evidence you have shown us. But if you start getting dictatorial with all of us about what we can write on Dean’s World, then I and others will tell you just where to shove it. Because that’s not the traditional America I have served, paid taxes to, and lived in most of my 75 years.
So just stay cool, and let the debate go wherever fact and opinion directs it. We’ll all get along better that way.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
“I ask that you referee this matter and install boundaries to unending obfuscations”
It also makes it appear that you have something to hide and/or are simply wrong. Like Arnold, I have no dog in this fight, but I get extremely suspicious of people trying to silence debate (see: AGW). If your case is valid, this is not the way to promote it.
Arnold,
Let me clarify: I was asking that there be some kind of station, some destination, at which A “fact,” once it truly has matured into a true FACT, can rest.
This is against post-modernism, or what admittted post-modernist Nick Gillespie recently, snootily, referred to at his REASON post about Terry Michael’s snuffed article at The Street as a given person’s “version of the truth,” which he instructed us nobody has the “right” to.
I want to have the “right” to, with others, cement SOME facts as FACTS, when they have matured to that point.
I feel that the blogo-sphere allows for a continuous billowing of reality.
Courts of law are better in this way, when they function as they should.
There is unfortunately a very real contingent of what can only be called professional trolls prowling the blogosphere looking for discussions like these and very intentionally trying to sabotage them. I’ve experienced it, I’ve seen it happen to others. It’s bizarre; although it’s not the only subject where that happens, this subject seems particularly acutely prone to it. Almost like clockwork it happened here, with people who aren’t even regulars here suddenly popping up, making bizarre statements, pretending to be people they weren’t, and intentionally skewing the discussion.
I wish Celia hadn’t deleted the earlier conversations–her right, but I wouldn’t have–but I have no problem clamping down on a discussion that goes out of control. And no, it’s not without precedent. Something has to be done when a thread spins completely out of control, especially when it’s being obviously and intentionally sabotaged by strangers. I think, really, that’s all Celia was asking for. Which I’m fine with.
I’ll try to get to the PDFs later, I’m not in a good position to do that at the moment.
Well, Dean.
About this business of trolls stealing other people’s identifies for purposes of faking it for online pissing matches: For a fact, I’m the one and only Arnold Harris of Mount Horeb WI. I can’t think of why anyone would want to pretend they are me. And they probably wouldn’t be able to do a very good job of it. Merry Christmas to you, your kids and to Mary Janelle, just in case I croak before December 25. (One never knows about these things.)
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
It’s interesting that Aids Inc. is apparently sending (paying?) people to heckle the film maker at the screenings of House of Numbers. Just as they doubtless pay people to post obfuscation whenever this subject comes up on any web forum with a sizable audience.
Excellent post, Celia. But if they can’t claim she was a false positive, they can claim that she has the magic gene that turns off hiv and enables some people to live normal lives despite not taking the miraculous meds.
Oh, yes, and the fact that 1 in 100 US kids now has autism is explained by genes, diet, aging sperm…anything except the horrible truth — that their doctors gave it to them with all those poison needles.
When trillion dollar industries and power are at stake, the truth is as disposable as toilet paper.
I have lernt more on this subject in the last few days via “Deans’ world”. Though it has become much more learned then when I first noticed it. I am not a doctor nor even highly educated. At least not as informed/opinionated as those of you who have been contributing to this discussion. I do tend to retain intresting facts though. I am just putting this out as something to think about. I accept I, or the article I had read may have been wrong.
Syphalis. It is know to “imitate” other viruses. Its immatating abilities were reported to have been a distinguishing ability.
Could this old evil be causing the confussion. Mimicing HIV and not evolving into AIDS? Just an idea . Not trying to move in an other direction with the dissussion. Nor otherwise highjack the topic.
Dean. As there has been folks pretending to be others. When I first signed up to your world I profiled that I like near Elk,Bears, and Killer Whales. It is me. Hope you world keeps its orbit. It isn’t too fun right now but is …intresting. Happy Holidays All.
I respect Celia’s argument about deleting time-wasting arguments. When Huffington Post restores my posts, I’ll support “free speech” for people who keep posting little out-of-context factoids on Dean’s World.
I do actually, however, support her earlier refusal to delete posts. If somebody wants to make an ass of themselves on Dean’s World, I support giving them full power to do that. And classifying them in a special section for dunces. I just don’t support responding to sociopaths with reason.
As for “a distant and irrelevant problem,” I beg to differ. Nonspecific medical tests advertised, without FDA approval, as finding a virus when they actually find certain proteins only thought (erroneously) to be associated with a (never convincingly isolated) virus don’t just victimize people you never meet, living in dirty cities you never visit. These scams eventually come around to you. And, because medical authorities support them, they gain the force of law. In other words, you have no right to your privacy; this information is shared with local public health officials. Also, you will be required to treat yourself or your children.
Lindsey was adopted by a white, middle-class family who could afford to take their child to various doctors until they found a protector — someone who didn’t insist on treatment unless she was actually sick. Their original pediatrician threatened them with removal of their child. They had the time and education to check out leads, write to a major scientist, weigh their options, and shop around for a doctor.
A lot of children aren’t so lucky. Look up the ICC orphanage scandal in New York City at http://www.askdeblasiowhy.com, with links to the original investigation at http://www.liamscheff.com. You’re going to read about children of drug-addicted parents, non-white parents, and parents on welfare. These are people bombarded every day with AIDS propaganda, who usually never think they have any options. But when their caretakers did investigate and experiment by taking their kids off the drugs, these children were DOING BETTER. That’s exactly how their doctors suspected “medical neglect.” After the children were taken into the foster care system, they were enrolled in experimental drug trials. Trials that made them incredibly sick, to the point where at least one child died after bleeding from every orifice in his body. (That’s not a symptom of “AIDS,” by the way.) Another, previously healthy, little girl went blind and then died.
Why should you care? It’s “a distant and irrelevant problem” — until it reaches you.
Bogus medical tests and mandatory treatment will, eventually reach you. There is just too much money to be made. And who will help you?
I won’t. I’ll have already been arrested for protesting this practice. Good luck.
Celia, I’m in two minds about your decision to post the HIV diagnostic results of a young woman on the internet.
On the one hand I welcome the clarity this brings to a discussion which has been riddled with speculation for over a decade. Until now no unambiguous indicator had been made public of whether this person has HIV or not: the results publicised by her parents were either not diagnostic, lacked crucial information like dates (essential to interpreting antibody tests in an infant) or appeared contradictory, and her mother even stated that some of the results posted on her behalf were actually misreported. In your own July 1996 Spin article you yourself stated, “Oddly enough, at this point it is not clear whether Lindsey is in fact infected with HIV.” Obviously when information is presented in that way and tied to a contentious issue it is going to invite speculation that is neither informed nor helpful. The more cynical side of my nature wonders if that was intentional.
Perhaps if the court case you announced in that 1996 article had gone ahead it might have provided clarity, but as you are aware, it didn’t.
But on the other hand, there is something disturbing about making the private medical details of a child (later a young woman) the subject of what would inevitably be heated debate by strangers on the internet. Lindsay had no say in it when this all started: it was the adults on both sides who chose to make her a bone of contention. Certainly I would never publicly post confidential test results of another person of my acquaintance, particularly that of a child, and if a 20 year old friend was thinking about doing this herself – especially in such a context of controversy – I would counsel them not to. It’d be different, perhaps, for a mature adult. But perhaps I’m just being old-fashioned in an era where it’s considered normal for young people to let it all hang out on their personal web pages.
But what’s done is done. It’s disingenuous to use a person’s private details to further a conflict-ridden argument and then cry foul when they are vigorously criticised for the assertions they are intended to support. What, exactly, is the point that people (on boths sides) are trying to make when they are using this young woman’s story in this way?
I checked, of course, with Lindsay and her parents, before I posted the results of her 1995 HIV tests. They endorsed it all the way, and thanked me for helping them fight the lies.
Fraser: Your points are valid but you don’t know how Lindsay feels, or how her parents feel. I do know, because I speak to them.
The way they feel is determined–all three of them–to get what they feel to be a vitally important story told. They feel that their story, as it was told in House of Numbers, is only a fragment, and they want to tell the whole story. They want people to understand what happened, how it happened, and why it happened.
Do you think I would have posted that without the explicit consent/endorsement, of all three of them?
Well, you don’t know me, but I would not have dreamed of it.
Celia, I wasn’t suggesting that you’d reveal someone’s HIV test results on the net without their permission, and indeed their approval.
But I do wonder how much Lindsay understands the ramifications of making her health status a public property, a subject of public discussion and debate, in this way. Perhaps I could be accused of being condescending here, but most 20 year olds in my experience wouldn’t.
You can’t – for example – simply say, “here’s the whole story” and then just present the bits you want people to hear, in such a contentious context as claims that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, or in delivering a broadside to the medical and scientific community – no matter how justified you might feel in your position. No one’s just going to accept that. People will ask questions, examine the story critically, and will be relentless in questioning whatever bits of the story they feel you’ve left out.
There is also an issue in that central to the Nagels’ narrative are allegations of at the very least insensitive or inappropriate conduct by Lindsay’s treating peadiatricians, who, unlike Peter Duesberg for example, are restricted from publicly commenting on the details of the case for reasons of professional confidentiality.
You know as well as I do that the dispute between the HIV/AIDS dissidents and mainstream is not a very nice place at all. How well does Lindsay understand what she’s getting into, and how much of her decision is influenced by the agendas of the adults she has grown up with and who are supporting this?
My concern is partly informed by Christine Maggiore’s story – and no, I am not going to go into the rights or wrongs of it or make personal judgements about her character.
The bit I find really sad was that at the end of her life she was so intractably at odds with mainstream medicine, that when she was found to have pneumonia nine days before she died, she – for whatever reason – didn’t/wouldn’t/couldn’t access the competent specialist hospital care for her condition that she so obviously needed. And this is an intelligent, well-off woman in a city with specialist medical care as good as any in the world. Instead she suffered at home under the care of a primary care doc who – whichever account you accept – was clearly not the ideal person to manage her case. She struggled like this for nine long days and nights until she finally died. Probably unnecessarily.
I find that horrible. How did it get to that?
Fraser,
I agree with you in general on this. About Lindsay, let me just try at least to put it in a different light. Why I told that story is not to be contentious, nor to show that her doctors were obedient automatons who almost killed her etc. I have said I think for their part, they were basically following protocol. It was the protocol that should have been more flexible. It should have allowed for monitoring a young immune system , and/or stabilizing it naturally (perhaps nothing, if the immune system seems in good shape) before introducing the chemotherapeutic, new, untested drug AZT.
(AZT was the drug that broke down the previously stringent and long FDA safety and efficacy phase of drug approval.)
What I love about the story is that Lindsay is alive. No matter if every single day people say I am a moron, denialist, and Peter Duesberg is a monster, the word for Lindsay is still “alive.” I don’t think voodoo will be projected onto her because she will soon be 20, meaning she will have reached the 20 year mark of not developing a single opportunistic infection or showing any signs of AIDS, and surely, surely, that must mean she can now expect and assume to be healthy.
This is a very joyous turn of events and I think Lindsay is an inspiration for all people who are HIV positive, to show them that it is entirely possible to transcend the death sentence imposed on so many millions. She enjoys traveling around and meeting people and seeing how much she means to them, just to see her.
I had to fight back tears when I saw her meet Peter Duesberg for the first time. He’s a human being too, you know, and a father of four. His staunch, outspoken resistance to AZT in the early years was, I think, a clear act of heroism. He saved lives.
But in this case, he put it in writing, to the parents, and they heeded his advice, and there was a happy ending. Please don’t make this into something sinister, but allow a very beleaguered people to find hope and joy where they can.
Many children and young people on the mainstream side–Ryan White, Kimberly Bergalis, etc–were out in public representing dying of this terrible disease. Did you object then?
As for Christine, you are right. It was a terrible mistake for her, her MD, and whoever else, not to make sure she got to a hospital.
Because I knew Christine, and spoke to her very deeply about her whole experience, I know that life had become excruciatingly painful for her at almost every level. She was a mother who loved her children very much, and whose younger daughter was as close to her as it is possible for a mother and child to be. When the LA Times published its front page story “A Mother’s Denial, A Daughter’s Death,” by Charles Ornstein, they had received a copy of the second autopsy report prepared by James Ribe, four months after an original autopsy found no cause of death. LAT got a copy of that before Christine and her husband even knew it existed.
Why? How?
Two days after Christine died she was scheduled to confront coroner James Ribe in a sworn deposition he was to give, for the lawsuit she and her family filed, which has subsequently been settled.
Just weeks before she died, she watched the episode of Law and order that was funded and ideologically scripted by the CDC, in which the character based on Christine drops dead in court, as people scream at her that she killed her daughter. People who have seen the show (I haven’t) come away deeply shaken, and call it shockingly crude, mean-spirited, frothing propaganda.
Christine’s husband told me Christine went into decline after watching that show, (which I begged her not to watch. ) Another MD friend told me that when he met her at a conference in Russia shortly before she died she wept and said she couldn’t stand it anymore, the cruelty, that she didn’t know how to carry on. His face was soaked in tears as he told me this; (I had just shown a short 3 1/2 minute film I made as an homage to Christine, called “Mom.”)
I think the fight before us is between the forces of cruelty and the forces of mercy. Mercy, acceptance, and kindness must prevail over the spirit of hate. The dissidents too, have finally been overcome, in many places, by anger and hatred. This could all end tomorrow if the persecution of dissidents could end. The track record of those who opted for drugs is far from perfect. Sure they have survivors. So do those who opted against meds. Both sides also have deaths. Many questions remain.
Who should decide? The government? After it approved an untested toxic drug that killed thousands?
Christine’s daughter was seeing a mainstream MD pediatrician all her life. More than one actually. She saw three in the week before she died. All of them said she was not very sick and that Christine needn’t worry. When Eliza Jane developed an ear infection, one of them prescribed an anti-biotic, which the child was given, on schedule. The day after, she went into cardiac arrest at home, and died later at the hospital. I think it is sub-human that Christine was accused of murder.
If such accusations are going to be bandied about, it is only fair and just that they should also apply to those whose patients, children, etc adhered to drug regimens and died. I’d prefer if nobody was accused of murder but instead, there was freedom of choice, dignity, and an honest and rigorous re-assessment of what HIV positivity means, 26 years after HIV’s introduction into the culture.
There should be a data-base of ALL different treatment modalities, and their outcomes, so we can see what works best for most people.
Dr. Claus Koehnlein in Kiehl Germany has been treating HIV patients for 25 years and recently told me he has treated over 200 patients, and the overwhelming majority are alive, (over 80%) His method was to treat their diseases with conventional medicinal approaches, as opposed to treating their HIV infection per se.
Nobody puts the data together. One side continually screeches that “denialism” kills and staunchly refuses to accept or adopt the success stories. When somebody transcends the death sentence, they have the nerve to claim they were never truly HIV positive.
That’s denial.
Celia,
Peter Duesberg saved that child’s life. I have no doubt.
I honestly cannot disagree. And, I must say that I have never found two conjoining comments on the internet with less acrimony on the subject matter.
And I have not read the updated pdf file. I shall.
Yes, I posted my comment before Dean posted the pdf update.
Dean, have you considered using disemvoweling as a way to keep a simmering topic from boiling over…
Huh. It looks amusing.
Thanks, Celia, for your spirited defense of this outing of FACTS, and enforcement of reasonable discourse instead of endless tap-dancing around it.
This whole nightmare will end when the persecution of the truth-tellers ends. But in all honesty, when will that happen?
Lindsey is not just telling the truth but, as I see it, outing herself as a living example that persecution will not work, and hasn’t worked. She would probably not phrase it so crudely, but: Love talks, bullshit walks. We’re still here. The persecution failed. It didn’t even win against Christine. She’s still here with us, in spirit and energy. They killed a person and still didn’t win. They’ll always be hungry for more death and despair to feed their drama. What are we hungry for? What’s our drama?
Persecution. Dwelling on it will only attract more. Not to deny that there’s pain here, but to make a distinction between the need to acknowledge feelings compassionately and the responsibility to act.
I’m always confused by the pity-parties-on-legs who sometimes show up among us, looking for a “support group.” They just want somebody to acknowledge how awful it’s been. I always do, and it’s never enough. I try to tell them that this thing can just be over for them if they find new friends and take care of their health. But they’re not sure. Why? The hunger for melodrama never ends. The AIDS establishment actually cans this kind of pity and sells it.
I didn’t think WE did.
All we have to do to end this right now is accept our victory over persecution right now and celebrate it. Celebrations attract love.
Where’s the New Year’s Eve party, guys? With a storm on the way, there’s no leaving New York. We’re stuck here. Is anybody up for Brooklyn, my house? Or does it have to be in Manhattan? You know how to reach me.
We can mourn our dead, toast them, and still celebrate life. Christine would have wanted that, don’t you think?
To you “activists” out there on the other side, out in the cold, yelling and freezing your asses off: Just come inside, will ya? It’s warm in here. Do we have to fight you in the streets to make you want love and acceptance?
Love to all, Beth
I am just dropping in to let you know that our daughter’s life has been drastically abnormal since her diagnosis of HIV back in 1991. Once you have been diagnosed as being HIV positive nothing is the same. What does a young teen tell her friends? She might be sued if she tells them. She might be sued if she doesn’t.
We love our daughter very much. We are finally able to speak out and are now being criticized. (You might be thinking we could have spoken out before, but let me tell you that the threat of the medical establishment removing her from our care was still a threat until she turnd 18! One doesn’t just “get over” that kind of threat. We were not about to speak out until we were safe!) This forum has an air of civility to it, but check around. We have been called liars, racists, holocaust deniers and worse things.
Thank God people like Celia Farber are out there trying to expose the truth, even if she is risking her own life by doing so. Thank God Celia Farber has supported us through this entire ordeal! Where were you?
It is really pathetic that you demanded to see test results, and now that you have them you are upset….. What else would have satisfied your hungry little minds? Would you have believed me if I had simply told you?
Why don’t you ever answer this question, “what would you have me do?” I disobeyed the medical community and my daughter is ALIVE. If she would have stayed on the drugs she would be dead as the other 10 babies her specialist admits are dead.
My daughter is not on any meds. She is not sick. She hasn’t been in 17 years.
The HIV diagnosis is horrible – it is still as awful as it was in 1986 if you ask me. If you take the drugs to “treat” the disease you die from them. If you don’t take the drugs and live you are treated like a criminal. Again I ask, “What would you have me do?”
Thank you Cheryl.
I would ask that every single person here understand the gravity of wishing anything other than health, happiness, and replenishment for past injuries onto this brave young woman and her family. Let the madness stop. Here. Now.
deleted
Re: autism. I’m not convinced. OTOH even if it was true you have to balance the dangers of autism against the risks of communicable diseases.
Life is a crap shoot. You do not generally get perfect. It is a choice between better and worse.
So you have: a very small risk of autism vs a very large risk from communicable disease if enough people stop inoculating their children. So far enough are getting inoculated. When we get to the point of not enough and disease goes raging through the population inoculation will get popular again.
I’d like to know why AIDS is no longer a death sentence. I’ll take a look at the pdf for an answer.
In the pdf I see a bunch of hospital correspondence and bills and absolutely no information on the subject. Ya know. For some one with no information on the subject I find this post deficient in science.
I can provisionally accept your premise. Now how about evidence other than anecdotal? How about a theory that explains the facts? For starters.
There are some facts that need answers.
1. Why in America has AIDS (or what ever you want to call it) predominantly attacked homosexuals? IV drug users I can get. But gays are not generally big IV drug users.
2. If it is caused by recreational drugs has there been a precipitous decline in such drug use? (to account for the leveling off of cases)
3. If doctors in the main are following the AZT regime why has AIDS mortality declined considerably over the last decades?
I can accept that AZT is bad for Lindsey. Is it bad for everyone with AIDS?
Celia: IMO you have not done a very good job making your case to some one unacquainted with the subject. Neither has Doctor D from a cursory perusal of his www site.
Let me show you how I deal with illegal drugs:
1. Drug taking is self medication
2. The primary disease is PTSD
3. The cause is in part genetic
4. The other part environmental
5. The environmental trigger is trauma
6. The frequency of the potentiating genes in the population is 20%
7. The frequency of PTSD in the population is about 10%
8. For Iraq war combat veterans (when the war was hot) the incidence of PTSD runs around 20%
9. PTSD if not repotentiated declines over time to the point that for many people drugs are no longer needed. It may take years or decades.
QED
BTW I have other evidence (lots of it) but the above lays out the bare bones of my case.
Try doing that with your AIDS theory.
MSimon,
There are some facts that need answers.
Questions need answers, not facts. If you are interested in the issue, badgering Ms. Farber ain’t the solution. Reading the peer-reviewed literature is:
Here’s Duesberg’ s seminal paper in Cancer Research, where he debunks retroviruses as a cause of disease.
Here’s Duesberg’s follow-up paper in Proceedings of National Academy of Science where he further elaborates on the weak correlation between AIDS and a new virus.
Have a good New Year!
–HB
Facts need answers if they are not explained by theory. If you will recall it was unanswered facts that got Einstein his start.
BTW the NAS paper is 20 years old. Nothing new in the interim?
And neither paper answered my questions.
Happy New Year to you.
Asking questions is badgering? What a novel concept. Scepticism used to be a hall mark of science. Gone are the days. Eh?
BTW I’m a long time internet friend of Dean’s and Tall Dave. I’m not one one of your trolls. I’m truly interested.
M Simon: You’re expecting Celia to lay out an entire case for you here? Was that her stated intention? This is like jumping into one thread related to the global warming issue, and expecting all questions laid out and answered right there.
There are easy answers to all your questions; did you expect them all laid out immediately when all we’re talking about is the specific case of Ms. Nagel now?
Just FYI, the early gay community where AIDS started was rife with drug use. It was huge; almost all the early gay AIDS patients were. It’s since then that things get complicated.
Also, the AZT regimen that was in common use when Lindsey was put on it is wildly different from what is typically used today. I mean, wildly. Indeed, AZT was used then in doses that would be considered malpractice today. (We can leave aside the question of whether AZT is always malpractice, the point is, back then, it was used then in monotherapy, in doses everyone acknowledges are quite lethal).
If you’d like some references where you can learn more about the issue I’m sure someone (including possibly me) can provide them. It’s a question of where you want to begin. This story is now decades old. What do you actually want to know about? If you want to understand the dissident position, you can always start here. There are also books you can pick up.
Dean,
I was sent here by a link at Classical Values left by Tall Dave. When presenting something out of the mainstream I ALWAYS give starter links.
I showed how I would lay out the evidence (above) on a different medical topic. So far I have seen nothing similar on any “HIV does not cause AIDS” site.
I’m not interested in doing a full literature search on the subject. Why not just answer my questions? Since you have studied the subject. BTW thanks for the AZT info. It is a start.
Note: on a subject I’m knowledgeable on if I’m asked respectfully I just answer the questions. I trust you. I trust the people who write on your site. Just tell me.
And you could just say “answer currently unknown” if that is the case. I can live with uncertainty.
I’m starting to feel like I have visited a Real Climate type site (other than no comment deletions here).
And if you have covered my questions elsewhere just give a link.
And a Happy New Year to you.
Dean,
From the link you sent me:
AIDS Wiki is a community gathering place for AIDS dissidents to assist and foster activism.
I was looking for answers not activism.
I did follow this link and read it:
http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/files/NIHRebuttal.pdf
I can think of all kinds of confounding factors to their analysis. Let me give you some:
A virus can be very hard to grow so the fact that it can’t be grown is not proof certain that it is not a cause. There may be multiple causes for a given set of symptoms (is it the onset of pneumonia or just a common cold?) .
IMO neither side does a good job of answering the questions of the other side. So in my mind he jury is still out. There does seem to be some evidence that those getting the current treatment do live longer. It may be a case of “right medicine, wrong reason”. I think some aspects of chiropractic fall in that category. Their explanations are totally off the wall but the treatments seem to help (they helped me).
On the dissendent sites I have visited there seems to be a lot of “if you don’t know I’m not going to tell you.” That doesn’t seem to be the best way to make a case.
“I showed how I would lay out the evidence (above) on a different medical topic. So far I have seen nothing similar on any “HIV does not cause AIDS” site.”
MSimon,
It is rather difficult to prove a negative. You are asking for evidence that show that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
First find one peer paper, that shows with scientific principles that HIV is the likely cause of AIDS. You won’t find it because it does not exist. You will find double talk about numbers and correlations, but little in the way of facts. You cannot ask for poof that refutes facts that are not in existence.
Regards, Sandi
Sandi,
Fair enough. But as I said above both sides are talking past each other. What I see so far is weak evidence for both points of view. For me neither side has proved its case.
And I’d still like to know why the number of new AIDS cases is steady and why AIDS patients seem to be living longer than they used to. The second point seems to indicate that the treatment is right even if the diagnosis is wrong.
Simon,
While that may be true in some respects, I believe that, for the most part serious dissenters (at least those in the scientific community) are asking for research into other areas besides the all-eggs-in-one-basket HIV as the cause.
Not only can’t anyone get a grant for research in other areas, but they run the risk of ruin just for asking for one. But AIDS is a multi-billion dollar industry where so often is the case that money talks and truth walks.
Cheryl, it is unclear who the you is you are referring to when you say “It is really pathetic that you demanded to see test results, and now that you have them you are upset…”
I can understand the reasons why you might have chosen to be publicly coy about whether your daughter actually has HIV or not. Fact is, your own public statements on this, together with Celia Farber’s, have always been – up to now – at the very least ambiguous. But despite this, you also chose to use your daughter’s health status to support an argument that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, most recently in the film House of Numbers.
You cannot make such an extraordinary and contentious public claim as that and base it on claims about your daughter’s health status, and not expect people to ask, “Well hang on – first up – does your daughter actually have HIV or not?”
I don’t see anyone being “upset” that Lindsey has chosen to allow Celia to post her test results here, although I am very concerned about whether this is going to turn out to be in her interests or not. I strongly suspect it is not, and reflects the agendas of various individuals in a political conflict that began before she was born. Quite frankly, I think she is being used.
I would be very sympathetic to your horrible experience of having a child diagnosed with HIV and the difficulties you have had negotiating appropriate treatment (including what seems to have turned out to be appropriate non-treatment) were it not for the fact you make public claims like “If you take the drugs to “treat” the disease you die from them.” You cannot expect such reckless and ill-informed broadsides against the vast majority of HIV positive people and the professionals who care for them to be exempt from criticism, can you?
What would I have you do? Well, given that your daughter has had untreated HIV for 17 years, I’d be encouraging her to seek competent medical advice about the state of her immune function. If there’s no sign of damage from HIV (and you can’t tell this just from a person’s appearance), I’d join you in celebrating her good fortune in being in the few per cent of young people infected as children in this happy situation. Otherwise, I’d be encouraging her to seek the best advice about whether and when to use available treatments, and what the evidence is supporting whatever decisions she might make about this. Such a decision is hers, of course, but the thing about informed consent is that it requires information.
What I would not have you do, though, is set your daughter up as a poster child for an agenda she did not choose when she became publicly embroiled in it, and which would inevitably attract harsh scrutiny and criticism. In my view, HIV/AIDS “dissidence” deserves such scrutiny, but your daughter does not. She is a young adult now, and deserves the freedom to live her own life, make her own choices, claim her own victories and make her own mistakes. She does not deserve to be saddled with battles from a generation before – even if those battles were yours.
Simon: You are certainly not a troll, and you are certainly a long-standing internet friend here.
But to get to your points: Once again I can only repeat, you seem to be demanding that Celia do something she didn’t set out to do. In fact, let me be clearer, I don’t believe Celia even TAKES the position that “HIV does not cause AIDS.” That’s not typical of her work as a journalist, and it’s certainly not the subject of her post or this thread. The subject is one case, that of Lindsey Nagle.
Furthermore, this one thread is not “out of the mainstream.” Facts are being reported, about one case. Do what you will with those facts, they are facts.
So, your objections are somewhat out of order sir. You have changed the subject. It is the equivalent of arriving at a blog where someone is discussing problems in tree ring data on global warming, and jumping on that thread for not providing you with answers on every single issue involved in the Global Warming debate. ;-)
All that said, I’m trying to answer your questions anyway, and to answer them politely.
I hadn’t noticed that the AIDS wiki I pointed you to is calling itself a gathering place for dissident activism. Nevertheless, it has many articles which address your questions, so if you’re truly interested in this subject I can still recommend it. However, if you want a much more compact and completely scientific analysis of what is wrong with the theory that HIV is all by itself the cause of AIDS, read the first paper on this page, entitled The Chemical Bases of the Various AIDS Epidemics. That is fully peer reviewed literature, published in a completely respectable journal, and addresses all the questions you have posed so far.
And I’d still like to know why the number of new AIDS cases is steady and why AIDS patients seem to be living longer than they used to. The second point seems to indicate that the treatment is right even if the diagnosis is wrong.
OK. While I am actually with you to an extent–I think it’s possible the skeptics are wrong, and that HIV is all it’s cracked up to be, although I have severe doubts–the answer to this would be that the chemotherapy in use today in advanced Western nations is considerably less lethal than what was in use 20 years ago.
The general view of most skeptics is that in the very earliest days of AIDS, the establishment jumped prematurely on a virus as the cause of this mysterious disease that was killing gay men and IV drug users–and almost all of those early AIDS cases were both, as I noted above. The jump to assume HIV was the cause was quite sudden and dramatic. Fully qualified scientific dissenters expressed doubts early on, but the government insisted this was the explanation and announced that anyone diagnosed HIV+ should expect to be dead within a year. Thus, anyone diagnosed positive needed to be put on the only available treatment immediately–and that was AZT and only AZT.
AZT was an experimental drug that had been tested for use as cancer chemotherapy, but was withdrawn from consideration for FDA approval because it was too lethal even to use on advanced cancer patients. However its main function was to block RNA synthesis and it was theorized that this would stop pretty much any virus in its tracks, so, because it would do that, it should stop the advance of HIV as well. Yes, the AZT would almost certainly kill anyone taking it, but it was believed it would at least extend the lives of anyone whose system was currently being ravaged by this virus, which at the time was considered the most lethal in history.
In the mid-1990s, you might recall that something called the AIDS “cocktail” came into use. With the cocktail, you had a wide variety of drugs, of which AZT was sometimes included (in much smaller doses) and sometimes not used at all.
Pretty much everybody agrees that the cocktails (now in a wide variety of formats, many no longer using AZT at all) are considerably less lethal than the early AZT monotherapy. You might well conclude from this that the chemotherapy now used is therefore more effective.
The skeptic/dissident view is that yes, of course the chemotherapy is less lethal so we should expect those on it to live longer, but it remains open whether they should be on any chemotherapy at all.
As a comparison, if you theorize that cancer is caused by red hair, and immediately put everybody with red hair on chemotherapy whether they are sick or not, you would expect a lot of redheads to die. If you change the chemotherapy to be less lethal, then you would expect redheads to live longer than they did under the older, more lethal variety of chemotherapy, but this would say nothing about whether red hair causes cancer in the first place, and would be proof of nothing except that your chemotherapy regimen is less poisonous now; you’re still putting otherwise healthy people on chemotherapy.
That basically is the skeptical position on HIV/AIDS today: while the vast majority of medical professionals are in no way at fault here (they’re only doing what they’re told), most “AIDS” deaths in places like the United States are due to people being iatrogenically killed by medication they don’t need. Not because evil mustache-twisting doctors are lying to their patients and gleefully killing them, but that a simply *enormous* mistake has been made using bad science and bad assumptions, and the doctors have been given bad advice just like everybody else.
Speaking strictly in terms of the history, the skeptics have often been vindicated. Not on everything so far, but on quite a lot. Much of what we’re now accepting as self-evident is stuff that would have been considered heresy when Lindsey was a child. Indeed, you yourself would have been considered a dangerous crackpot at one time just for saying this:
IMO neither side does a good job of answering the questions of the other side. So in my mind he jury is still out.
Just by suggesting that the jury is out marks you as a dangerous crackpot; that’s been typical of the establishment. Indeed, many would still say you are, at minimum, a gullible fool who is insufficiently grounded in the literature to dare to even offer such an opinion.
The similarities to the Anthropogenic Global Warming debate are quite strong, actually.
I will close by noting again that you seem to be off to a bad premise: Celia Farber’s work is not to convince you that HIV does not cause AIDS. This thread isn’t about that either. It is reporting of facts of one singular case related to the debate, and that is all. But do read Duesberg’s 2003 paper; whatever your objections to the paper, it will certainly get you up to speed on what all the major issues are–and even if Duesberg is wrong in his suggestion as to what causes AIDS, it isn’t relevant, because his paper will tell you what the problems in the standing wisdom are. Whether he’s right about what really causes AIDS or not, he explains what *is* troubling about the current state of affairs. And his paper will give you sufficient background to start asking much more informed questions.
Let me know if I can be of further assistance.
Dean,
Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW your equating scepticism with crackpottery is exactly what the AGW folks do. And I apply my scepticism equally. So I think I do not fit in the mold you put me in. Each side has questions the other side has left unaddressed (even if it is to say: “good point, no data”).
We are still left with the question of why before the advent of the drugs so many who seemed to have AIDS died and now 20+ (or is it 30 – I admit I’m not keeping up) years later the death rate is much lower. Has the disease changed? Or is it something else. Like the most susceptible have been killed off. Or maybe the current drugs work.
That is what I find missing from both sides (in fact from much of science these days) – confounding factors. I think a lot of it is caused by the corrupting influence of government money (Congress Critter Blowhard says, “We gave you all that money and now we want answers”. i.e. the Critter is confusing science with engineering).
And the human propensity to want to believe that there are answers. And of course a scientist wants to believe that she has the answers. It makes her feel better. And insures bigger budgets – until a new way of thinking gains traction.
Scientists in real life do not behave like scientists are supposed to. Instead of pursuing the truth dispassionately with open minds, their minds are too often full of pre-conceived beliefs and firmly fixed expectations of results. If the experimental data do not fit the preconceived theory, scientists may just throw out the data instead of the theory. Honest scientists like Feynman have understood this reality for a long time, but now brain science is beginning to put the pieces together as to why scientists frequently behave in a most unscientific manner.
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2009/12/where-modern-climate-science-goes-wrong.html
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My own opinion? Science would be much better off if it was leavened with engineering reviews. Openly brutal.
As Feynman and others have said often: the easiest person to fool is yourself.
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It all points up to the fact that all too many in science are identified with their own work. Objectivity is really, really, hard. Especially when budgets are involved.
You know where I would go for objectivity? Engineers with 20 or more years of experience. If they are any good (they don’t last if they are not) they tend to have been burned enough by grasping at hypothesis (is that the right spelling?) that they tend to take a more jaundiced view of both theory and evidence.
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As to the matter of tone: from a cursory review of pro and con sites I’d have to say that in this argument the believers are more measured than the sceptics. The opposite of the debate on AGW.
It was a little offputting. But only at first. After all bad style is not identical to bad argument.
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We (as a population) do not understand science any more. We have come to believe it should provide answers. When actually it is a process for winnowing good answers from bad answers.
And yes – if bad answers predominate for a while people are going to die. But just look at the medical nuttiness that went on during the plague years (mid 1300s in Europe) . Sure people are going to die from errors. It is the nature of the human enterprise.
And as has been noted: bad ideas do not die. They go into decline when those who hold them pass. So don’t expect a sorting of this question for another 20 years.
Another note: peer review cuts no ice with me. It is not a rigorous process.
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It all comes down to: do you want to be right or do you want answers? Engineering has humbled me far to often to place too much weight on wanting to be right. You have to place some weight on wanting to be right or you don’t even start a design.
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