| | Regarding Dean's 8 points in Post #2:
1. I understand that HIV viral paricles have been isolated. "In the cases cited by Duesberg where HIV 'cannot be isolated', PCR or other techniques demonstrate the presence of the virus..." (see article in Wikipedia on AIDS Denialism). Remember that it took many, many decades to isolate Leprosy.
2. "Nobody dies immediately from HIV" - what difference does that make? Some cancers are slow acting.
3. People live a great number of years with many conditions with no treatment. But I have heard that there are NOT many people who live decades with UNTREATED HIV and it is the great success of treatment that has convinced many former deniers to change their minds.
4. It is a new disease and I wouldn't expect it to be understood right away.
5. Anything that compromises the immune system may eventually cause the host to die of something that the immune system would have defended them against.
6. To say that AIDS in Africa is caused by malnutrition or poverty instead of HIV is to ignore the numerous studies on that exact point.
7. I don't know anything about the HIV drugs - not how they work or what they are or what the latest info on them is. But I wouldn't take what the AIDS deniers are saying as the last word on it. The studies indicate a high degree of success.
8. Dean says the HIV tests are highly subjective regarding where one draws the line on whether a person is HIV positive or not. From the Wikipedia article: "... denialist claims of HIV test inaccuracy result from an incorrect or outdated understanding of how HIV antibody testing is performed and interpreted." [Details on tests here.]
------------
Here is a statement from a Wikipedia article on AIDS Denialism: "The scientific community considers the evidence that HIV causes AIDS to be conclusive and rejects AIDS-denialist claims as pseudoscience based on conspiracy theories, faulty reasoning, cherry picking, and misrepresentation of mainly outdated scientific data."
------------
FORMER DENIERS CHANGE THEIR MINDS
And later in the article: "Several of the few prominent scientists who once voiced doubts about HIV/AIDS have since changed their views and accepted the idea that HIV plays a role in causing AIDS, in response to an accumulation of newer studies and data. Robert Root-Bernstein, author of Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus and formerly a critic of the causative role of HIV in AIDS, has since distanced himself from the AIDS denialist movement, saying, "Both the camp that says HIV is a pussycat and the people who claim AIDS is all HIV are wrong… The denialists make claims that are clearly inconsistent with existing studies."
"Joseph Sonnabend, who until the late 1990s regarded the issue of AIDS causation as unresolved, has reconsidered in light of the success of newer antiretroviral drugs, stating, "The evidence now strongly supports a role for HIV… Drugs that can save your life can also under different circumstances kill you. This is a distinction that denialists do not seem to understand." Sonnabend has also criticized AIDS denialists for falsely implying that he supports their position, saying: "Some individuals who believe that HIV plays no role at all in AIDS have implied that I support their misguided views on AIDS causation by including inappropriate references to me in their literature and on their web sites. Before HIV was discovered and its association with AIDS established, I held the entirely appropriate view that the cause of AIDS was then unknown. I have successfully treated hundreds of AIDS patients with antiretroviral medications, and have no doubt that HIV plays a necessary role in this disease."
"Both Sonnabend and Root-Bernstein now favor a less controversial hypothesis, suggesting that while HIV is necessary for AIDS, cofactors may also contribute."
----------------
DENIERS DEAD FROM AIDS
And further on in the article: "In 2007, aidstruth.org, a website run by HIV researchers to counter denialist claims,[64] published a partial list of AIDS denialists who had died of AIDS-related causes. For example, the editors of the magazine Continuum consistently denied the existence of HIV/AIDS. The magazine shut down when its editors all died of AIDS-related causes.[65] In each case, the AIDS denialist community attributed the deaths to unknown causes, secret drug use, or stress rather than HIV/AIDS.[19][63] Similarly, several HIV-positive former dissidents have reported being ostracized by the AIDS-denialist community after they developed AIDS and decided to pursue effective antiretroviral treatment.[66]"
"In 2008, activist Christine Maggiore died at the age of 52 while under a doctor's care for pneumonia. Maggiore, mother of two children, had founded an organisation to help other HIV-positive mothers avoid taking antiretroviral drugs that reduce the risk of HIV transmission from mother to child.[67] After her three-year-old daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 2005, Maggiore continued to believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and she and her husband Robin Scovill sued Los Angeles County and others on behalf of their daughter's estate, for allegedly violating Eliza Scovill's civil rights by releasing an autopsy report that listed her cause of death as AIDS-related pneumonia.[48] The litigants settled out of court, with the county paying Scovill $15,000 in March 2009, with no admission of wrong-doing. The L.A. coroner's ruling that Eliza Jane Scovill died of AIDS remains standing as the official verdict."
----------------
Why aren't the deniers talking about the massive successes they are having with the new drug regimes? "The development of effective anti-HIV therapy has been a major factor in convincing some denialist scientists to accept the causative role of HIV in AIDS." (from the same article)
|
|
