"Peer review": a flawed process at the heart of science and journals, by the Royal Society of Medicine Press
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Richard Horton of the "Lancet" blasts HIV and AIDS scientific community on journalist bully
"Peer review": a flawed process at the heart of science and journals, by the Royal Society of Medicine Press
Thursday, June 28, 2012
D.C. hopes to test 35,000 employees for HIV over 3 months
By
The District’s departments of Health and Human Resources, along with union leaders, kicked off a campaign Wednesday with the goal of testing 35,000 city employees over the next three months. During that period, city employees who decide to get tested will first receive instructions on how to prevent infection. READ the whole article: washingtonpost.comWhat they don't tell people is:
What you can expect
By Mayo Clinic staff
HIV is usually diagnosed by testing your blood or a sample of cells taken with a cotton swab from inside your cheek for the presence of antibodies to the virus. Urine samples can also be tested for HIV antibodies, but the results are slightly less accurate.
Unfortunately, these HIV tests aren't accurate immediately after infection because it takes time for your body to produce antibodies to the virus. Most people develop antibodies to the HIV virus within three to six months of infection.
If this test is positive — meaning you have antibodies to HIV — lab technicians run the same test again on the sample you provided. If the repeat test is also positive for HIV antibodies, you need a confirming blood test called the Western blot test, which checks for the presence of HIV proteins.
Monday, June 18, 2012
YAY, Walgreens out to Sell more AIDS Drugs!!!
HIV Testing Events at Select Walgreens Locations in 20 Cities Between June 27-29, from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Daily
UnitedHealth's Misleading Promises--It's What The Company Didn't Say That's Most Important
By
Several years ago, when I was still a health insurance company PR guy, I was accused by a furious CNBC producer of withholding important information when I cajoled her into having my CEO on "Squawk Box" to talk about some new initiative we were rolling out.
"You played us like a Stradivarius!" she screamed at me when she realized that while my CEO was fielding softball questions from her show's host, our chief financial officer was signing off on a disclosure the company was obligated by the SEC to make by the close of business. Because the news we had to announce was so bad it would have a "material effect on earnings" (translation: cost shareholders a bundle), the big bosses ordered us to wait until after the New York Stock Exchange closed at 4:00pm -- and many hours after the Squawk Box interview -- to release it. They wanted to postpone the trauma it would cause the company.
Sure enough, when the markets opened the next morning, the company's stock price began a long slide. The CEO was quoted in the bad-news news release about how the company was taking steps to make sure nothing like that would ever happen again, a statement written for him by the company's lawyers and PR people, but he was nowhere near a TV camera. Every time he was asked for an interview, we "declined" to make him available. We were not about to make him answer what we referred to as "rude" questions from a reporter.
That episode came to mind as I read story after story in the mainstream media last week about the decision by UnitedHealth Group to "honor" some of the provisions of ObamaCare even if the Supreme Court declares the law unconstitutional.
Saturday, June 16, 2012
The House that HIV Testing Built
there is an orphanage in Washington Heights, one of the poorest neighborhoods on Manhattan, located just above Harlem. A Catholic orphanage. It took in the children of crack addicts who’d been abandoned at the hospital. The nuns nursed some of them back to health, but some of them died. Because that’s what being born addicted to crack does to you. It kills you.
by Liam ScheffOfficial Stories (2012)
Liam Scheff
If you want to know why cheap cocaine was flooding the United States, I suppose you can call Barry Seal, who’s dead, or Oliver North, who isn’t and ask them about the CIA bringing drugs into the cities. Or, you can ask Gary Webb, who is also dead, for doing the reporting on it.
This Catholic orphanage was doing a good thing. Then the NIH got a hold of it. They decided that this population of cracked-out orphans, born nearly dead, was a wonderful, untapped resource for testing AIDS drugs on, to see if they could get them approved for children. And in the early 90s, stretching to the mid-2000s, that’s what they did.
The kids were getting daily doses of drugs with the FDA’s “black box” label, which means they had killed adults at normal doses. They were getting them five, six, seven, eight and nine at a time. “Some at higher than usual doses,” went the study description.
There were three dozen drug trials in the government database listing the orphanage as a study site. The studies were sponsored by your tax money given to the NIH, coupled with direct funding from drug companies: Glaxo, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Genentech, Merck and others.
The hospitals used the orphanage to get test subjects, arranged by the doctors who were put in charge. These “doctors,” Dr. Steven Nicholas and then Dr. Catherine Painter, posed as friends to these children and forcibly drugged them. The staff of child-care workers, consisting of neighborhood Dominican women, were made to carry out the drug regimen day and night.
Once on the drugs, severe illness was normal. Children had violent diarrhea and threw up as a regular feature of being drugged around the clock. It was noticeable that many children were stunted, physically and developmentally. Many developed large fatty lumps and humps on their bodies. These come from the protease inhibiting drugs and had to be removed with plastic surgeries.
After starting the drugs, children got sick, fast. Many died. A 6-year-old girl who’d never been sick was brought in for drug compliance. That is, she wasn’t taking the drugs at home and the city social workers had a problem with that, so she was put in the orphanage. On the drugs for a few months, she had a stroke, went blind and then died. This kind of violent drug death happened to a lot of the children, quickly and slowly. That’s what “black box” means, in actuality. I knew some of these children personally. I know a lot more through my sources.
Like the girl, not all of the children were orphans. Many had been adopted or lived with family. They were put into the orphanage by the city of New York if parents refused to drug them at home. They were brought in for “compliance,” or “adherence.” That’s how I got the story, because a mother didn’t want to drug her kids and the city took them away from her.
Children are not stupid. They recognized what was happening and often refused to take the pills, but they weren’t allowed to. If they refused, the nurses and childcare workers force-fed the ground-up drugs through a nasal tube (it went up the nose, down into the stomach). If they continued to refuse, they had a hole cut in their abdomen, where a plastic tube was inserted and the drugs were pumped directly into the stomach, along with infant formula to give them “nutrition.” Yes, that’s what I said. They had their stomachs cut open. You can look up the surgery online. “PEG tube.”
All of this was verified by multiple sources, including the doctor who ran the place. I was talking with a half-dozen insiders at one point (nurses, child-care workers and volunteers), plus four or five children and young adult ex-residents. I had an audio interview with Dr. Painter where she described exactly how and why the children would get their stomachs cut open.
I had it on tape, on record, admitted by the perpetrators and victims alike. But the orphanage kept drugging the kids. I published articles in several magazines and newspapers and appeared on New York and national radio. (Leroy Baylor at WHCR in Harlem championed the story and even had one of the mothers, “Mona,” on air).
I even got a movie made from it, directed by Milena Schwager, who did a very good job. It was released through the BBC, which mortified the AIDS drug pushers; so much so that they demanded the company retract or apologize for the film. Eventually the BBC put up a note that there had been some objection to one of the interviewees, but they left the story up.
The movie was good, but the producer was unwilling to tackle the fraud of HIV testing, so it lost a great deal of evidence. But it helped open eyes, for which I’m grateful. The combined effect of articles, radio appearances and film brought citizens and activists out in protest in the streets outside of the ICC. The powers-that-be in the city had to take action to quiet the rage.
I think someone placed a call to their go-to at the New York Times. Because when the issue was spilling into the streets and into dinnertime conversation, the Times showed up, a year-and-a-half into the public investigation and painted a big “Do Not Look Here ‘X’” on it for its pharma-advertisers and pseudo-liberal readers.
- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -
"The Other Side of AIDS" - an HIV and AIDS documentary Films
Take an unflinching look into an issue the mainstream media doesn’t dare touch: the failure of the multi billion-dollar war on AIDS. The Other Side of AIDS gives voice to a growing movement of doctors, scientists, journalists, and HIV positives who reveal a tangled web of conflicts of interest, political correctness and unresolved errors surrounding AIDS.
After 30 years and more than $150 billion in federally funded research, scientists still can’t explain how HIV causes AIDS. Millions of people have been declared HIV-positive with tests that can’t find the actual virus. The latest AIDS medications are taking more lives than AIDS itself. One expert proposes that the cause and cure for AIDS is as near at hand as our willingness to examine new ideas. Yet according to a prominent AIDS researcher, anyone questioning HIV is a perpetrator of death and should be jailed. Should AIDS advocates have the power to silence scientific debate? Has saving face become more important than saving lives? Watch The Other Side of AIDS and decide for yourself.
"Official Stories" New Book out by Liam Scheff
Friday, June 15, 2012
Breast milk can block HIV oral transmission
Breast milk has a strong virus killing effect and can protect against oral transmission of HIV, a new study has found.
More than 15 percent of new HIV infections occur in children. Without treatment, only 65 percent of HIV-infected children will live until their first birthday, and fewer than half will make it to the age of two.
Although breastfeeding is attributed to a significant number of these infections, most breastfed infants are not infected with HIV, despite prolonged and repeated exposure.
The question of whether breast milk transmits the virus or protect against it has been a mystery for HIV researchers.
Now new research from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine explores this paradox in a humanized mouse model, demonstrating that breast milk has a strong virus killing effect and protects against oral transmission of HIV.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
"Why We Will Never Win The War On AIDS", book banned
Federal Court Declares AIDS Book IllegalOn December 29, 1995In a far-reaching decision that could throw the publishing industry into turmoil, the Federal court of the Southern District of New York has officially banned a controversial AIDS book titled "Why We Will Never Win the War on AIDS" from being distributed - even for free - anywhere in the United States.
The verdict against the book, rendered on November 28, ended a contentious five-day trial in which publisher Alfred S. Regnery was suing to stop publication of the book. Judge John E. Sprizzo is expected to enter the official judgment any day now, including a permanent injunction against the book and over half a million dollars in penalties against the book's publisher and main author, Bryan J. Ellison.
Friday, June 8, 2012
High school students, staff tested for HIV, FEAR
it's a VIRUS, HIV is very fragile and does not survive outside the human body
WINNIPEG — BY THE CANADIAN PRESS Dozens of students and staff at a First Nations high school are being tested for HIV and hepatitis after undergoing a faulty diabetes screening.
A University of Manitoba professor talked to students at Southeast Collegiate on May 4 about diabetes and used a glucometer to test blood-sugar levels on about 80 people.
A university spokesman said the professor changed the needle used on each person, but failed to realize that the part that holds the needle is not supposed to be used on more than one person.
“The lancet, the needle-like poker which punctures the skin, was in fact changed after every use, and the skin was cleaned with alcohol,” John Danakas said Thursday.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
HIV death sentence at 19 - a new film
Oppression Unlimited
A routine HIV test given to Cornelius complicates his relationship with his lover and with the AIDS establishment.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
How to Break the Paradigm -- HIV and AIDS
June 21-22, 2012
Vers Pont du Gard, South of France : more information or wintzingerode@web.de
A conference on changing the prevailing HIV/AIDS paradigm
The HIV puzzle -- what is being measured? * Biomarker Measurements-- Useful or Deceptive? • Historical resistance against scientism • What we are up against--the nature of paradigm change • The money spent on AIDS, an analysis • Dissident scientists under attack * Impunity of mainstream scientists • How should we communicate our message? • Internet tools • How to treat a weakened immune system
“Must we wait for a new generation to see a failed paradigm revised? No!”
---------------------------
Special Highlight -- Positively False-- Birth of a Heresy -- a new film by Joan Shenton -- discussion afterwards with Joan and Andi Reiss
Sunday, June 3, 2012
HIV NO MEDS - A clinical study
Texas A&M University: Professor Patricia Goodson is leading a study of HIV-positive people who have never started AIDS drugs or who have stopped them, yet have survived for a decade or longer without developing AIDS. The website includes a link to a YouTube video describing this work and the email address of the professor if you wish to participate through an interview. All participation will be confidential.
"Anomalies". That is how mainstream science and health care view persons who have tested positive for HIV infection, have refused to submit to mainstream treatments, yet have survived for a decade or longer without developing AIDS.
If LTNPs - also known as long-term survivors, long-term healthy seropositives, elite controllers, or elite suppressors - have captured the attention of geneticists, virologists and immunologists, they have, nonetheless, gone unnoticed by clinicians, policy makers, and health educators. Nonprogressors remain, for all practical purposes, "anomalies"; mysterious cases for which science cannot easily account.
Specifically, very little is known about the lived experiences of HIV+ persons who refuse mainstream anti-retroviral therapies and remain AIDS-free for many years. Some of the questions we don't have good answers for, include:
Decisions to stop (or never start) drug treatments for HIV infection: A pilot study of long-term nonprogressors (LTNPs)
"Anomalies". That is how mainstream science and health care view persons who have tested positive for HIV infection, have refused to submit to mainstream treatments, yet have survived for a decade or longer without developing AIDS.
If LTNPs - also known as long-term survivors, long-term healthy seropositives, elite controllers, or elite suppressors - have captured the attention of geneticists, virologists and immunologists, they have, nonetheless, gone unnoticed by clinicians, policy makers, and health educators. Nonprogressors remain, for all practical purposes, "anomalies"; mysterious cases for which science cannot easily account.
Friday, June 1, 2012
Soldier acquitted in AIDS assault case after HIV tests shown to be completely bogus
An Army sergeant who was falsely accused of being HIV positive, and who spent 240 days in pretrial custody as a result, has officially been acquitted of the charges levied against him. Thanks to the efforts of the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice (OMSJ), a private investigative agency that focuses on medical and scientific fraud, Sgt. "TD," who was arrested in 2011 for HIV-related criminal charges, has been vindicated of his HIV-positive status, which has also caused the legitimacy of HIV tests to once again be called into question.
A former girlfriend of Sgt. TD, as well as three other women, reportedly pressed charges against the man after several ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), Western Blot, and viral load tests revealed that he was allegedly HIV-positive. Based on these tests and on affirmations by both a doctor's diagnosis and a soldier's signed confession, each of the women claimed that Sgt. TD exposed them to HIV without disclosing that he was infected, which is said to constitute aggravated assault.
Initially, it appeared as though Sgt. TD had no defense, and would have to potentially serve 37 years in federal prison for his alleged crime. But after Sgt. TD's attorneys asked OMSJ for help on the case, to which the group agreed, it was eventually shown that each of the HIV tests conducted, including Western Blot, the so-called "gold standard" of HIV tests, could not be relied upon for absolute accuracy in light of the numerous outside factors that may have tainted their results.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Scientists: Chagas disease is the ‘new HIV/AIDS’
Chagas disease, or American trypanosomiasis, is set to be “the new HIV/AIDS of the Americas” according to a paper in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journal “Neglected Tropical Diseases.” The New York Times cited the article Tuesday, saying that the social and economic impact of Chagas disease, which is a close relative of African trypanosomiasis, more commonly known as sleeping sickness, will be just as devastating in coming years as HIV/AIDS has been to Africa.
The paper’s authors, a group composed largely of faculty from Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, argue that the spread of Chagas (which is named for the Brazilian physician who discovered it, Dr. Carlos Chagas) through Latin and Central America mirrors the early spread of HIV in several key ways. According to the study, approximately 10 million of the poorest 100 million people in the Americas have some stage of the disease, which like AIDS is highly stigmatized and disproportionately affects the poor.
Chagas is neither a virus nor a bacterium, but an incurable single-celled parasite like malaria and sleeping sickness. Rural areas and poverty stricken communities are most commonly hit with Chagas disease because, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the triatomine bug that carries the disease “thrives under poor housing conditions (for example, mud walls, thatched roofs), so in endemic countries, people living in rural areas are at greatest risk for acquiring infection.”
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Meridian man charged with exposing others to HIV
let's hope OMSJ is on this - The Associated Press
Police in Meridian say a 37-year-old man was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of knowingly exposing two sexual partners to the virus that causes AIDS.
Craig Hinckley of Meridian was arrested Sunday morning. His first court appearance is set for Tuesday.
Investigators say both victims told investigators Hinckley did not reveal he was infected with the human immunodeficiency virus until after he had sex with them. One victim met Hinckley online in March and the second met him at a party on Friday. Police said the victims were 19 and 20, but did not say if they were male or female.
Detectives are concerned there could be more victims.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Screening Release at Dr. office for HIV antibody
At a recent Dr. office visit: Question #18:
"Do you have any objection to routine screening for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV antibody screening".
my answer: YES
"Do you have any objection to routine screening for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV antibody screening".
my answer: YES
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Study: Sudden heart death high among HIV patients
Patients with HIV infections are 4 1/2 times more likely to die suddenly from cardiac arrest than people without HIV, even if the virus is under control and they appear relatively healthy, according to a UCSF study.
The report, published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, found that sudden cardiac death - which occurs when the heart unexpectedly stops beating - was the second-most common killer among HIV-positive patients. AIDS was the most common cause of death.
Researchers involved in the 10-year study believe no single cause is involved but say HIV patients and their doctors need to be more vigilant about being screened and treated for heart disease risks like high blood pressure and high cholesterol as their lives are being extended by antiretroviral drugs.
"Cardiac disease is a big issue as these people are living longer," said Dr. Zian Tseng, a UCSF electrophysiologist and lead author of the study. "HIV providers need to be aware of the risk of these patients dying suddenly."
Over the past two decades, the treatment of HIV has changed dramatically with the success of antiretroviral drugs. The medications can, in many people, suppress the virus to the point where it's undetectable in a patient's blood, and doctors have begun to see HIV infection as a chronic condition and not a death sentence.
Possible causes
But the trade-off is that the virus does damage over time, and perhaps so do the drugs used to treat it. Add to that the fact that HIV patients were slow to adjust to the idea that they could live much longer on the drugs, said Dr. Priscilla Hsue, director of the HIV Cardiology Clinic at San Francisco General Hospital and an author of the UCSF study.They were reluctant to stop lifestyle choices that contributed to heart disease, such as smoking or heavy drinking, she said. But patients, and their doctors, are beginning to understand, and their thinking is changing, Hsue said.
"Now they're thinking, 'I could live another 25 years if I take care of myself,' " Hsue said. "And I'm really hammering on stop smoking, take blood pressure medication, watch your cholesterol."
The study looked at 2,860 HIV-positive patients who were treated in San Francisco General Hospital's HIV/AIDS ward from 2000 to 2009. In that period, 230 died - 57 percent of them from AIDS, 13 percent from sudden cardiac death, 11 percent from other natural diseases, and 19 percent from suicides, overdoses or unknown causes.
Notably, 86 percent of all cardiac deaths among those patients were sudden. In the general population, the number of sudden deaths is about half of those who have heart-related deaths.
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Unlimited insanity: Truvada to prevent HIV
In my memoir of serving as an academic dean, I had written “I would find myself thinking, Now I’ve seen everything; nothing can surprise me anymore, only to experience a novel surprise the next day or the next week”. That’s how I’ve been feeling the last few days as the media have being hyping the approval by the Food and Drug Administration of prescribing Truvada to prevent HIV infection — administering Truvada to perfectly healthy people as supposed prevention.
Truvada is emtricitabine (FTC) plus tenofovir (TDF). In “HAART is toxic: Mainstream concedes it, in backhanded ways”, I cited earlier blogs about the toxicity of tenofovir and a few salient bits:
— The federal warning that “Tenofovir . . . alone or in combination . . . may cause serious damage to the liver and . . . lactic acidosis”
— The manufacturer’s warning that “Lactic acidosis and severe hepatomegaly with steatosis, including fatal cases, have been reported with . . . nucleoside analogs, including tenofovir”
— “increasing exposure to tenofovir was associated with a higher incidence of CKD [chronic kidney disease] . . . . and there are numerous studies . . . demonstrating that tenofovir is associated with impaired kidney function”.
— The federal warning that “Tenofovir . . . alone or in combination . . . may cause serious damage to the liver and . . . lactic acidosis”
— The manufacturer’s warning that “Lactic acidosis and severe hepatomegaly with steatosis, including fatal cases, have been reported with . . . nucleoside analogs, including tenofovir”
— “increasing exposure to tenofovir was associated with a higher incidence of CKD [chronic kidney disease] . . . . and there are numerous studies . . . demonstrating that tenofovir is associated with impaired kidney function”.
For the combination of FTC plus TDF, the NIH Treatment Guidelines (updated 14 October 2011) cite as advantages superiority in suppressing viral load and also these disadvantages:
“• Potential for renal impairment, including rare reports of Fanconi syndrome and acute renal insufficiency
• Potential for decrease in bone mineral density”
(as well as failure to suppress viral load when combined with nevirapine [!])
“• Potential for renal impairment, including rare reports of Fanconi syndrome and acute renal insufficiency
• Potential for decrease in bone mineral density”
(as well as failure to suppress viral load when combined with nevirapine [!])
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