HIV Skepticism Gets A Day in Court Down Under
Brian Doherty | February 22, 2007, 7:36pm
In an Australian criminal appeal involving a man charged with knowingly spreading HIV by having unprotected sex, the question of whether it is scientifically proven that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease caused by HIV is being aired in court, including testimony from a group of organized HIV skeptics the Perth Group and by Dr. Robert Gallo, the American scientist credited with discovering the virus and its AIDS connection.
See the front page of the "AIDS alternatives" site Alive and Well, the "News and Updates" section, for Austrialian press coverage of the trial and links to Gallo's testimony. The site editors find that testimony damning, as their excerpts from it has him appear to claim that the evidence he gathered when first annoucing HIV had been proven to be the cause of AIDS--40 percent of AIDS patients in his study found with the virus--does not in fact do so.
UPDATE: The larger context of the Gallo testimony, unquoted on Alive and Well's page, shows that what they have him appearing to claim is not exactly what he was trying to claim on the stand. Gallo says "I think we isolated in almost every patient with AIDS that we tried...we didn't get negative results in 70 other people. You may be including the normal controls where it wasn't isolated." Please note: I have not myself read Gallo's original 1986 Nature paper under discussion in writing this blog post.
lunchstealer | February 23, 2007, 10:04am | #
Dear Reason writers and H&R commentors,
I am writing you with much concern after having read Australia's court case to decide whether the alternative theories of AIDS Epidemiology should be presented along with the HIV theory of AIDS. I think we can all agree that it is important for readers to hear multiple viewpoints so they can choose for themselves the theory that makes the most sense to them. I am concerned, however, that readers will only hear one theory of AIDS Epidemiology.
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of AIDS Epidemiology. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that AIDS is caused by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards HIV is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be presented in your magazine and blog, along with the other two theories. In fact, I will go so far as to say, if you do not agree to do this, we will be forced to proceed with legal action. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the AIDS Epidemiology theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be presented, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
Some find that hard to believe, so it may be helpful to tell you a little more about our beliefs. We have evidence that a Flying Spaghetti Monster caused AIDS. None of us, of course, were around to see it, but we have written accounts of it. We have several lengthy volumes explaining all details of His power. Also, you may be surprised to hear that there are over 10 million of us, and growing. We tend to be very secretive, as many people claim our beliefs are not substantiated by observable evidence. What these people don’t understand is that He built the world to make us think the earth is older than it really is. For example, a scientist may perform an HIV test process on a patient. He finds that HIV antigens in the blood of the AIDS patient. But what our scientist does not realize is that every time he makes a measurement, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is there changing the results with His Noodly Appendage. We have numerous texts that describe in detail how this can be possible and the reasons why He does this. He is of course invisible and can pass through normal matter with ease.
I’m sure you now realize how important it is that your readers are presented this alternate theory. It is absolutely imperative that they realize that observable evidence is at the discretion of a Flying Spaghetti Monster.
In conclusion, thank you for taking the time to read about our views and beliefs. I hope I was able to convey the importance of promoting this theory to your readers. We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in healthcare practices around the world.
Sincerely Yours,
The Theif of Lunches
Appologies to
Bobby Henderson.
Chris S. | February 23, 2007, 10:14am | #
What!?!?
Honestly, why do you people buy this crap? No one has ever witnessed HIV infecting live human immune cells
in vitro? That's just not true. See, e.g. http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/99/7/1555 (and this is hardly a unique study -- people infect T cells with HIV
in vitro all the time).
Once upon a time there was legitimate doubt regarding this issue, because experimental data was sparse. This was mostly a function of our limited tools in the early 80s. For instance, you can't tag a virus capsid and expect to get any meaningful results about the virus' behavior, as the capsid never enters a given cell and the tag wouldn't be replicated anyway. You need active DNA transcription (DNA-->RNA) in a given host cell after infection to witness the infection in vitro, and after the host cell bursts it isn't easy to seperate the new RNA from the older RNA. For HIV in particular, I understand that the virus doesn't really replicate absent host cell replication, which requires that we induce replication of T-Cells
in vitro, which is apparently a bit of a hassle. To make a long story short, we now have means of dealing with all of the problems once associated with this type of research, so it isn't a big issue anymore. There is currently an enormous quantity of
in vitro and
in vivo data on this issue, and all of the current skeptics are either hucksters trying to sell books to non-scientists or stubborn fools who can't admit that statements they made in the 80s were wrong.
Oh, and you're an idiot, lunatic denier. TB tests are used because they're a very very cheap, fast and simple indicator. This doesn't mean that we don't have more reliable tests, it just means that mass testing in developed nations needs to be cheap to be useful. Like the flu, the RNA coding for HIV capsid protiens mutates quickly, making it difficult to detect and tag HIV by ordinary means. Your comparison with the flu is hilarious because it's just as hard to detect, and flu tests also always rely on indirect indicators, so they're just as uncertain as HIV tests. Ee have HIV doubters and not flu doubters because HIV research has been obfuscated by (1) religious nuts with sexual hangups, and (2) hucksters selling books to these notoriously gullible religious nuts.
Akira MacKenzie | February 23, 2007, 12:32pm | #
The only motive for skepticism must be religious lunacy or stupidity.
Given my well established atheism, I'd say something along the lines of "religious lunacy" and "stupidity" are redundant, but there is another word in this sentence that doesn't belong here.
"Skepticism"
Don't use the word "skepticism" or any variant thereof, mother fucker. You don't even come close. James Randi is a skeptic. Dr. Michael Shermer is skeptic. Hell, Penn & Teller are better examples of skeptics than you and your woo woo friends will ever be. Ashholes such as yourself have misused the word "skeptic" in order to lend credence to their bullshit. That comes to an end here and now. We're taking the term back!
No, you're a "denier." You use fallacy, anecdote, twisted language, and cherry-picked data to make your point. I've heard and read similar nonsense spewed from other species of deniers: I've heard it from evolution-deniers(i.e. Creationists) who dream up all manner of pseudoscience to disprove what is scientific fact in the name of maintaining fundamentalist dogma. The same can be said of global-warming deniers who are usually hired guns from oil-companies or right-wing ideologues who equate any environmental policy with "communism" at the expense of our ecology. The worst of the lot, of course, are the Holocaust-deniers; antisemites who nitpick the tortured memories of survivors and distort the evidence of history in order to vindicate the evil of Hitler and his cronies.
From my experience, HIV-deniers have different motivations. Around here, they seem to be contrarians who think " standing up to the system" and "the man" somehow fulfills libertarianism principle, even when "the man" is right every once and a while. Others are new age loons who have bought into the stupidity of "alternative medicine" from homeopathy to faith healing and want to believe that the big, bad, money-grubbing "medical establishment" has cooked up HIV to sell expensive anti-viral drugs when it could be "cured" by chakras, chiropractors, or crystals. Then there are the scam artists, who prey upon the ignorant (Undeveloped regions, like Africa, are sadly full of such people.) and the fearful (as anyone with a potential fatal disease would be).
Being anti-establishment, superstitious, or a criminal doesn't make you a skeptic. Critical thinking makes you a skeptic. Relying on the scientific method, searching for evidence, and having other experts test that evidence again and again to make sure the data fits the hypothesis makes you a skeptic.
Disbelieving in something because you don't want to believe in it makes you a denier, not a skeptic. HIV-Deniers have nothing to contribute to fight against AIDS. They spread nothing but ignorance which is in turn helps spread the virus which can only spread suffering.
I call upon all rational people to take a stand, here and now, against the ignorance and deceit of the HIV-deniers; indeed, deniers of all stripes. Too much is at stake--human lives, scientific integrity, civilization--not to.
