Letter to CBC Radio’s
Quirks and Quarks

To: Bob MacDonald
Host
CBC Radio Quirks & Quarks

I was pleased last Saturday, when I found out that Quirks and Quarks had decided to rethink HIV as the cause of AIDS. However, your programme falls far short of a balanced review of the two radically different sides of this issue.

After listening, I concluded that you had decided before the programme that this was an issue of science versus anti-science, with HEAL representing well-meaning, but unscientific and overly emotional people rebelling against a death sentence that they do not wish to accept. However, I am afraid that your programme made a number of mistakes. I hope that you will rectify them by reading this letter on a future edition of your programme, or by airing another programme including an AIDS dissident better able to summarize alternative views than Dr. Root-Bernstein was.

Fundamentally, I believe that Quirks and Quarks has mistaken science for technology. Science is not about things, it is about thought. Science is the application of the scientific method to problems and questions that face us. It requires the free exchange of information, endless debate and the admission that the library of scientific ideas is made up of evolving theories, not established facts. Science is certainly not simply the application of high-tech wizardry, and it is certainly should not involve censorship of debate or ossification of ideas through majority votes. Technology, on the other hand, is about the application of scientific theories to products. Drugs and machines, for example. The scientific method and technology may clash. Technology may develop a new drug, for example, and the scientific method may then prove that it is not any good.

Another important point is to recognize that science and scientists are not causally associated. Many scientists are faced with pressures, often economic, that divert them from the scientific method towards conclusions that may be wrong, but are the acceptable answer. On the other hand, people without degrees in science may apply the scientific method, through diligent analysis of problems such as AIDS. As I manually transcribed much of this programme, I may have made some errors. I apologize in advance for these.

1. Introducing the Show Contents – You introduced Quirks & Quarks with the question: “How do we deal with dissenting opinions in a health crisis?” This clearly sets the stage for the programme. “We” are those who believe in science, “deal with” implies censorship, “dissenting opinions” is a put-down to ideas outside the bounds of currently accepted theories, and “health crisis” is simply misplaced when there were only 276 new cases of AIDS reported in 1997 (Health Canada Surveillance Report). AIDS is the result of an alliance between political and economic forces, in which true science has been a big loser. Following this you quoted Dr. Mark Wainberg: “This is not a subject of legitimate scientific debate. We cannot afford to give any credibility whatever to this very marginal group that is also far outside the mainstream of community activism on this subject”. Assuming that the start of your programme is intended to open your listeners’ minds, and not close them, this is a very strange selection. Before the issue has even been discussed, you allow an establishment HIV=AIDS dogmatist to declare it closed. One would think that the challengers should get the first word, with established science getting the last. Furthermore, Wainberg is declaring this subject off-limits. This is, to me, an indication that he is not truly a scientist. Yet, to people who do not consider themselves able to make independent judgments on such issues, it acts as a warning that they should not believe much of what they are about to hear.
   
   
2. Introducing HEAL – After an initial snippet from Carl Striggs of HEAL Toronto, you make a number of negative comments about dissident AIDS ideas: “The scientific basis for their ideas may be dubious…”; “Among mainstream AIDS researchers these ideas never had much credibility”; “as the understanding of HIV has developed, any plausibility they might have had, has disappeared.”; “In defiance of overwhelming scientific opinion the group actually appears to be growing”.
   
   It is true that mainstream AIDS researchers rarely question the HIV hypothesis. To do so, as Dr. Peter Duesberg found out, is to see your ability to publish and obtain grant money disappear. I have read a number of scientific papers that attempt to discredit Duesberg’s ideas, and they all appear to be written with a bias (see my credentials for being able to read and interpret scientific papers below). One paper, for example (Di Franco et al, Ann Epid 6(4), pp 283-289), claimed to have disproved his theory that drug abuse was tightly associated with AIDS, and yet the paper documented that 85% of the study participants were admitted users of nitrite inhalants, the drug that Duesberg had specifically connected with Kaposi’s Sarcoma (and it did not attempt to determine whether the other 15% were lying about their drug use habits). Another paper dismissed Duesberg’s claim that exposure to Factor VIII causes AIDS defining disorders in hemophiliacs (Goedert et al, “Risk of Immunodeficiency, AIDS and death related to purity of factor VIII concentrate”, Lancet 344, pp. 791-2). Yet it did not consider the lifetime quantity of Factor VIII used (one of Duesberg’s major arguments), and attempted to gloss over the fact that the biggest risk of progression to AIDS or death was the use of Zidovudine (AZT). Unfortunately, these are typical of the biased state of AIDS ‘science’.
   
3. AIDS Therapy – Your comments on AIDS drugs start off on the right foot, but make erroneous statements about new therapies: “Early drugs were terribly toxic and had fearsome side effects. And, worse still, they didn’t work very well. Newer therapies, especially the new drug combination therapies are far more effective. But, they’re not a cure. People are still dying of AIDS. And the new drugs still have significant, sometimes debilitating side effects.”
   
   The problem is that the ‘early drugs’ are still with us. Women in Canada who test HIV+ are encouraged to take a drug to prevent transmission to their baby. What drug? AZT, the first AIDS drug ever approved, and a proven, transplacental carcinogen, mutagen and teratogen, which is not surprising for a drug designed to terminate DNA synthesis by being a partial analog for a nucleoside (Thymidine in this case). And the ‘new drug combination therapies’ contain AZT or other nucleoside analogs. And, these new drugs were not tested against a placebo (just against AZT, that proven therapy of yore), were not tested for long term efficacy (which, for AZT, was found to be much shorter, at about 2 years, than the average latency period from HIV infection to AIDS, at about 10 years) and were measured against ‘surrogate markers’ like CD4 immune cell counts and viral load, rather than against the overall health of the patient. Your statements make it sound like the only reasonable decision is to take antiviral drugs. Yet the comments of HEAL spokesman Carl Striggs go unanswered. Everyone is focusing on the numbers (surrogate markers) and accepting the detrimental effects on their health. Furthermore, a significant number of people with HIV never ‘progress’ to AIDS and never take AIDS therapy (they are known as Long Term Non-Progressors). Some of those people would be dead from side-effects if they had taken therapy. Surely, it is reasonable to question therapy that has side effects that can kill you?
   
   
4. Maggie Atkinson of AIDS Action Now – Your introduction to Maggie Atkinson again implied that AIDS drugs are effective (ignoring the side effects that you called “sometimes debilitating” a few seconds before): “But for Maggie Atkinson, HEAL’s agenda doesn’t do much for the fight against AIDS. She knows the drug treatments are effective and are the best chance for her survival. And, with so many legitimate treatments and drug combinations available, the value of reliable information in the AIDS community is huge. She’s concerned that HEAL’s message dilutes that reliable information. And when your life is on the line you need to make the best decision possible.” You did not say whether Maggie Atkinson took therapy for her AIDS-defining disease (PCP) or not. If she did, it could easily be the standard PCP therapy that brought back her health, not the antiviral drugs. Also, Maggie Atkinson can hardly be considered unbiased. She works for an organization (AIDS Action Now) that promotes pharmaceutical solutions to AIDS. Their mandate (as listed on their website) begins: “To improve the availability of drugs mid [sic] treatments for people who are living with AIDS or HIV infections.”
   
   
5. Dr. Root-Bernstein, Dissident? – Dr. Root-Bernstein is apparently not as effective at speaking, as he is at writing. While much of what he said was quite sensible, it was unnecessarily watered down.. He did not even address some of the fundamental, and very scientific, questions raised by HEAL, such as the reliance on surrogate markers to measure health. There are many more effective dissidents who could describe the dissident approach much more effectively:
   • Dr. Peter Duesberg - one of the original dissidents, and a genuine retrovirologist who believes that HIV exists, but that it does not cause AIDS-defining diseases.
   • David Rasnick - an expert on Proteases.
   • Kary Mullis - Nobel prize winner for inventing the Polymerase Chain Reaction (aka Viral Load test). He is still looking for a list of references that validate the statement that he once wanted to put into a scientific paper: “HIV is the cause of AIDS”.
   • Dr. Eleni Eleopulos et al - A team of scientists from Perth who have questioned the meaning and accuracy of HIV tests for over a decade, and have, more recently, questioned the very existence of the virus we call HIV. Why, they ask, are there no electron micrographs of purified HIV? The best so far (two independent papers published in Virology in March 1997) show at least 90% impurities in “gradient purified HIV”.
   • John Lauritsen - Author of “AZT: Poison by Prescription”, “The AIDS War” and numerous articles. He has long spoken against the ‘party’ subculture within the gay community, the bath houses, the promiscuity and, of particular relevance, the drug abuse. He uncovered the FDA investigation into the original AZT trials, which showed that they were fraudulent.
6. Website links – You concluded Quirks and Quarks by encouraging listeners to go to your website to get more information, yet without a link to a HEAL website. You are to be congratulated for correcting this anomaly when it was pointed out to you, but why did it occur in the first place?
7. Dr. Mark Wainberg – Dr. Wainberg made a number of highly emotional, completely unscientific statements that, unfortunately, went unchallenged:
   • “that’s very close to saying that it [HIV] is the cause of AIDS, which of course it is” This degree of certainty, unsubstantiated, has no place in a scientific debate.
   • “The group in Toronto [HEAL] is completely out to lunch…” …nor do derogatory remarks.
   • “This is not a subject of legitimate scientific debate” This is a call for censorship.
   • “Let me point out as well, that there have been lab workers who have unfortunately inoculated themselves by accident with relatively purified HIV. These people have gone on to get AIDS. Some of them have died of AIDS.” According to the CDC 1997 Surveillance report, there were 3 workers who have been accidentally injected with “concentrated virus in a laboratory”, two of whom were diagnosed with AIDS, which might have been nothing more than a low CD4 cell count. Furthermore, with such small numbers, it is entirely possible that they did have an AIDS risk factor that was not revealed. The CDC report does not reveal what percentage of the 2 who got AIDS died, nor whether they took antiviral medication. The same CDC report lists 54 healthcare workers who had been occupationally infected with HIV through December 1997, of which only 25 had so far developed AIDS. That’s 25 healthcare workers out of 633,000 total AIDS cases (0.004%). Two groups that would logically be the most vulnerable to a blood-borne disease, Paramedics and Surgeons, had no reported occupational transmissions (of HIV or AIDS).
   • “…and that is fairly good proof that HIV has fulfilled ... one of the postulates that were initially formulated in regard to proving causality.” Wainberg is presumably referring to Koch’s postulates, of which there are four by most counts. Together they form the logic to show that a pathogen is the cause of a specific disease. Dr. Peter Duesberg, in his book “Inventing the AIDS Virus” provides an eloquent summary of the arguments against HIV meeting Koch’s postulates for any of the 30 or so AIDS-defining diseases (let alone all of them).
   • “...all the sentiments that I have just expressed not only resound well with mainstream scientific thought, but also with the vast majority of community opinion on this subject” This is an attempt to determine scientific ideas by invoking the many against the few. How many Newton’s or Galileo’s, Copernicus’s or Koch’s would there be if we let ideas ‘resound’ with mainstream thought before considering them ‘subject of legitimate scientific debate’?
   • “what HEAL is stating is flat wrong, it is absolutely 100% wrong and has to be condemned for the reasons I mentioned earlier” Condemnation is a moral or religious term, and has no place in a scientific debate. In a normal scientific debate, one side may eventually be proven wrong, but this should never result in the condemnation of people or groups who held those views.
   • “without HIV there will be no AIDS to begin with” True, but a tautology, because the definition of AIDS is a positive HIV test plus an AIDS indicator disease. False, because there is a disease called Idiopathic CD4 Lymphocytopenia, which is effectively AIDS without HIV. “Inventing the AIDS Virus” documents several thousand cases of HIV-free AIDS that have been reported in the scientific literature.
   • “These [Protease Inhibitors] are drugs that when given to people who were on the brink of death 3 years ago...enabled them in many many cases, to start gaining weight, to show improvements in terms of their immune function, and at the same time the amount of virus in the blood in many cases went down to zero. This is absolute proof that these drugs work, and they work by attacking HIV. But also that HIV is the indisputable cause of AIDS.” Without double-blind, placebo controlled trials it is hard to say anything positive about Protease Inhibitors. The weight gains come at the price of fat redistribution (“Crix Belly”, “Buffalo Hump”) and disruption of normal lipid metabolism. The improvements in immune function are merely cell counts, which were shown in the Concorde trials of AZT to be misleading. And, even if these drugs worked as well as the hype, it wouldn’t be proof that HIV causes AIDS.
   • “...we have a system that is called peer review whereby scientists get to review each others grants, and the good ones get funded and the bad ones don’t.” And, sometimes, the popular scientists get funded and the scientists with unpopular ideas (like Dr. Peter Duesberg) don’t get funded. And, sometimes, the anonymous peer reviewers have a grudge against the author and delay, or prevent, publication.
   • “[interpreting HEAL’s message as]…don’t pay attention to the message that you’ve been getting in terms of using condoms.” One of the components of the Multifactorial theory of AIDS propounded by Duesberg, and by some members of HEAL, is that exposure to multiple STD’s, and subsequent overuse of antibiotics is a risk factor for immune suppression. That is not a call to unsafe sex. “… about the dangers of using intravenous drugs or sharing needles” Ironically, a recent study from McGill (Bruneau et al, “High Rates of HIV Infection among Injection Drug Users Participating in Needle Exchange Programs in Montreal: Results of a Cohort Study”, American Journal of Epidemiology, 1997) showed that participants in Needle Exchange Programmes had a significantly elevated risk of being HIV positive! This fits very well with the theory of Duesberg that it is the hard drugs flowing through the needle that are the problem, and not any viruses that might be found on the outside (e.g. see Duesberg PH. Can Epidemiology Determine Whether Drug or HIV Causes AIDS?. AIDS-Forschung (AIFO); 12: 627-635, available online at www.duesberg.com/ch8.html). Again, dissidents have a stronger message than AIDS scientists are pushing. The message is “Don’t do Drugs” not “If you do Drugs, Use a Clean Needle”.
     
     
8. Kaposi’s Sarcoma Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS) was once called the “Gay Cancer” because it was so prevalent among promiscuous gay men (many of whom were also abusers of inhalant drugs). It is interesting to consider that: - KS is still largely limited to homosexual men. Why? - In 1994, Robert Gallo and many others admitted that HIV was not the cause of KS. Now, HHV8 (Human Herpes-Virus 8) or KSHV (Kaposi’s Sarcoma Herpes Virus) is blamed. Yet, KS is still an AIDS defining disease. Why? KS is important because it was one of the two major diseases that started the epidemic of AIDS. Yet now it has been allowed to have one foot in, and one foot out, of the AIDS doorway. Perhaps this is a subject of ‘legitimate’ scientific debate, and could be considered by a future programme.
   
   
9. Fraud in AIDS Research Most doctors and researchers believe that most of what they read in scientific journals is honestly produced. Yet, there have been some ill whiffs of fraud in AIDS. Robert Gallo was investigated by a US Congressional Subcommittee (under Chairman Dingell). The staff report found that he had lied many times, misappropriated Montagnier’s samples as his own, and been protected to the last by the bureaucracy around him, anxious to get the patent on the first AIDS test. You can get the subcommittee staff report, and other information on this, and other cases of scientific misconduct, from [healtoronto.com/galloindex.html]
   
   John Lauritsen, a gay man and a dissident, applied for information on an FDA investigation of the original AZT trials under the US Freedom of Information Act. Although the information he obtained was heavily censored, it revealed that the trial was unblinded early on, and that the use of placebo versus AZT was far from controlled. The FDA did not act on the information they gathered, presumably because of the enormous pressure (from groups similar to AIDS Action Now) to get a drug out on the street. This is documented in his book “The AIDS War”.

The cause of AIDS is still a legitimate debate. It has been suppressed for too long. If dissidents are proven correct in the future, then tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people will have been killed by a combination of inappropriate therapy and ignorance of the root cause of their disorder. I hope that I have provided enough information that you will decide to do another programme on this important issue. If there is anything that I can do to assist in ensuring that the dissident side of the argument is presented fairly, please feel free to contact me.

Yours sincerely,


David Crowe
Acting President
Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society

Copyright © David Crowe, <csobj format="LongDate" h="18" region="0" t="DateTime" w="185">Saturday, December 30, 2006</csobj>.