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“Reduce the Burden. Remove the Stigma.”

I write about the field of Hiv testing and the Aids diagnosis, for a variety of reasons:

First, because the complex details of Hiv testing and the nature of the Aids diagnosis are not reported to the public; they remain hidden in the medical and industry journals, and are actively suppressed by major media in public discussion. These are important public issues, and we all should have a clear and unobstructed view of all available data, no matter how it affects or challenges a publicly-held idea or policy.

Second, the publicly-advertised face of Aids and the Hiv tests are deeply contradicted by the conflicted, much-less-certain view of each, as reported in 25 years of medical literature. The public face of Aids asks us to believe that Aids is primarily a transmissible sex problem that is always, irrevocably fatal, and that Hiv testing is a means of legally and soundly giving this unalterable diagnosis.

The medical literature differs in a thousand ways from these advertised beliefs, pointing instead to Aids as a treatable, complex series of illnesses, sometimes related, sometimes not, that is not easily or not at all related to sex, and to Hiv tests as poly-reactive and highly conflicted pieces of technology, which do not have the mandate of their design to give any individual an irrevocable death sentence.

Third, I believe it is morally wrong and reprehensible, to tell any individual that they are “going to die, no matter what.” The only player in the Western World who has the authority to do this is the State, and then only when it has been given legal permission to execute by a court of law.

It is morally and ethically wrong to rob someone of their right to live by informing them, with the full weight and support of society, that they now and forever have been diagnosed with a disease that has “no cure,” and that their only recourse is a lifetime of potent drugging, with drugs which themselves can, do and have caused death.

We have robbed citizens not only of their lives, but of their ability to fight for life, to hope for life, to overcome illness, to prove us wrong, to surprise us, to teach us, to correct the errors of our too-sure judgment. Instead we enforce their death through daily reminders - drugs, tests, and the stigmatizing label: “unsafe, and permanently infected.”

It is impossible in a court of law to receive a death sentence for any crime, as easily as it is to receive a false reading on an Hiv test. It is a label that cannot be overcome in court, and cannot be appealed under any circumstance.

Whether Hiv sometimes, always or never causes Aids, it is not ethical to allow the State to mandate the death of its citizens, based on antibody or any other kind of medical testing.

Individuals need medical care, and they need their right to make informed choices to be both protected and respected.

The medical rights of all citizens begin where all our rights begin: The Right to Life, Liberty, the Pursuit of Happiness, The Right to Equal Treatment under the Law and Equal Access to the Law. The Hiv tests violate our inalienable rights. They are treated as sacrosanct, protected from public appraisal and criticism, and their stature is rendered unchallengeable.

The Aids diagnosis, following the over-certain and over-reaching Hiv test diagnosis, continues to violate both human rights and good medical practice: treatments are overly-toxic, over-dosed, over-damaging, because they are not measured against patient improvement over time, but against a false notion of a pre-ordained death.

What treatments are being excluded at present because they do not conform to this rubric? How many “Long Term Non-Progressors” are out there who have already been put on these over-burdening drugs before ever discovering that they did not need them? How many falsely diagnosed are buried under the avalanche of drug toxicity, without ever realizing that their test result was the result of a poly-reactive test? A test that may, at best, show some evidence of immune deficiency, or at worst, show nothing but that the patient has one of a hundred conditions that cause reactivity?

In sum, this diagnosis needs a public evaluation and a scaling down, so that all patients with Immune Deficiency, of any kind, can receive appropriate treatment, whether it be with today’s Aids drugs, or with better treatments that have yet to be put into place.

We’ve got to remove the Stigma of the Aids diagnosis. According to the medical literature, Sex is the least likely culprit, and we should not be punishing the world with this new 21st Century Scarlet Letter, this new medical Commandment, that we cling to because we need something to use as a bulwark against our lack of order as a society.

When we focus, like Levitical Fundamentalists, on the peril of sex, we overlook the primary issues in worldwide Aids: those environmental, toxicological and bacterial plagues carried by unsafe water, poor agriculture, poisoned earth, and the dozen dozen illnesses that combine in places of poverty to wreak fearsome havoc on helpless populations.

We can do better for these people than to condemn them publicly as sexual lepers, isolating them from their communities, and putting them on hard and harsh drug therapies that are registered against a pre-supposed death. We must first address their food, water and infrastructure needs. We must build a sewage reclamation and water supply system for every town and village where we are concerned about Aids, long before we worry about drugging and circumcising them, as we have been doing, following the strange passions of some Aids activists.

We’ve got to reduce the burden on Aids patients. We cannot ethically, morally or spiritually take their death as pre-ordained, lest we enforce it by over-medicating, over-burdening, and over-reaching with an hypothesis, or a belief, whose effectiveness may well be spent, and whose validity is long past. We must open ourselves to re-considering this problem; we may discover, if we allow ourselves to, that it can be solved with a different, more open, more compassionate, and more hopeful approach.

Reduce the Burden. Remove the Stigma.

- Liam Scheff

Read about Hiv Tests:
Hiv-testing-section/
http://aras.ab.ca/test.html

Read about the Aids Drugs:
http://aras.ab.ca/haart.html
http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/DrugsNew/Default.aspx?MenuItem=Drugs
ICC_Investigation_The_ICC_Website_and_Clinical_Trials
http://thebody.com/index/treat/side_effects.html

Read about the changing Aids diagnosis:
http://www.notaids.com/
http://www.heallondon.org/
http://www.livingwithouthivdrugs.com/
http://groups.msn.com/aidsmythexposed/general.msnw
http://www.aidsmap.com/en/news/ux/default.asp
http://www.gnn.tv/articles/2058/Exclusive_The_Good_Man_at_the_NIH
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/
http://projectkengikat.ning.com
http://replantearsida.blogspot.com/