I spent several years reading the original scientific literature about HIV and AIDS, and am thunderstruck at the disparity between the scientific evidence and what is disseminated from official sources and through the media. As to the antiretroviral drugs–the sort of thing tested on those orphans–, note the latest (October 2006) revision of the Fact Sheet of the National Institutes of Health:

“the use of antiretroviral therapy is now associated with a series of serious side effects and long-term complications that may have a negative impact on mortality rates. More deaths occurring from liver failure,
kidney disease, and cardiovascular complications are being observed in this patient population”

There is no standard procedure for informing federal agencies of drug side-effects. It depends on observations and decisions by individual doctors, and the manufacturers do not always pass such information on in
timely fashion–recall the case of Vioxx. The praised “cocktail” antiretroviral therapy now standard was introduced barely a decade ago.

That officialdom has already decided that these toxicities are serious indicates that they are far from uncommon.

Beyond that, much of what is repeated publicly is icorrect. The data from HIV tests in official reports and in the peer-reviewed literature show clearly that the mainstream reiteration that HIV and AIDS are correlated
is simply untrue. They are NOT correlated geographically, chronologically, or in their differential impacts on men and on women, and on black and on white Americans. Full citations of the literature are in my recently published book, see http://www.failingsofhivaidstheory.homestead.com

The incessant repetition of “spreading epidemics” is also contrary to the facts. For example, yesterday,

“Catholic condom ban helping AIDS spread in Latam: U.N. – Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071023/hl_nm/honduras_aids_dc

The article says, “The rapid spread in Latin America of the virus that causes AIDS”

But here are the official numbers from the reports issued by UNAIDS:

Latin America 1997: 0.5%
2003: 0.6%
2005: 0.55%”

It is past time that the mass media did some proper investigative reporting about the facts about HIV and AIDS.

As to the protest about the BBC documentary, it came from a small group of self-appointed vigilantes whose credentials for commenting about HIV and AIDS are less than impressive. Their “AIDStruth” website was set up by a dozen people who include a graduate student (Ken Witwer), a professor of economics (Nicoli Nattrass), several “HIV/AIDS activists” with no technical credentials (Martin Delaney, Nathan Geffen, Gregg Gonsalves, Richard Jefferys), and a PhD in a non-scientific discipline (Jeanne Bergman).

Yet these people have the gall to say that Kary Mullis, Nobelist for PCR invention, and Peter Duesberg, leading retrovirologist and member of the Nationla Academy of Sciences, aren’t qualified to talk about HIV/AIDS
because they’ve never done research on it!

Please, please, look beyond the standard propaganda and contemplate the published scientific evidence. Note that James Chin, former epidemiologist for the World Health Organization, has recently published “The AIDS Pandemic” which calls all the numbers disseminated by UNAIDS bogus.

Henry H. Bauer
http://www.henryhbauer.homestead.com

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Scientific Exploration
http://www.scientificexploration.org/jse.php

Dean Emeritus of Arts & Sciences,
Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Science Studies,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University