Would you be willing to answer some questions for me, DaveBoy?

HIV causes AIDS, I am living proof! I know many suffering from AIDS and the AIDS meds help!

The HIV/AIDS Network

As I said, Mark’s a smart guy and doesn’t need me, so I’ll leave things there.

If what you’re saying is that most people are skeptical and don’t know what to think, that’s fine. Assuming the skeptics are nuts, however, is a cheap and careless assumption. Wrong? Perhaps. Nuts? No.

There is no requirement for there to be a grand conspiracy by the way. Just a few people with conflicts of interest, and a lot of terrible prejudice and misguided intentions.

You can say that you don’t like that. You can say that you wish it weren’t true. You can say that the lack of a connection between HIV and AIDS is real. All of these things may be altogether true, but that still won’t keep people from thinking you’re nuts if you go around saying that there’s no connection.

Our publication of the CDC numbers and the inferences we have drawn from them has sparked an enormous amount of commentary, most of it good and healthy. You can read responses from other bloggers

Duesberg is a tenured professor and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has recently received widespread acclaim for groundbreaking work in cancer research–and his latest paper on AIDS was published in a well-respected peer-reviewed journal. Bialy is a molecular biologist. Rasnick designed protease inhibitors (that’s what many of the AIDS treatment drugs are) for a living. Miklos is a very highly paid and respected scientific analyst. Others among these people include mathematicians, statisticians, and epidemiologists.

They may be wrong but fer chrissakes, let’s not stoop to cheap disparagement of their character.

Especially when those defending the HIV hypothesis are also very often people with a large financial stake in it. That doesn’t make them wrong either, but for goodness sakes….

This is different than Loch Ness or Bigfoot where you are relying on the word of one person. Many people have done research on HIV and AIDS, and continue to do so.

You say that it “could happen” that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Conversely, it could happen that AIDS is caused by HIV. There has been no absolute proof of either, so I’ll keep an open mind. The current attitude is, as you stated, that those who dissent and even those who keep an open mind are seen as insane. It’s sort of how the scientific community treated those who believed in the Big Bang Theory when it first came out (calling it an attempt to inject religion into the birth of the universe), or how people are treated now if they don’t believe in the Big Bang Theory.

And unfortunately, it looks like the NIH isn’t exactly open-minded either. They seem to be in bed with the drug companies that are making millions selling dangerous AIDS drugs.

That said, the HIV-isn’t-caused-by-AIDS thing has been around for many years, and it’s populated almost entirely by people who are both completely insane and have an axe to grind. It’s like people who follow the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and space aliens. Are there creatures out there? I think it’s quite likely. Have aliens visited humans? I have no idea. I could happen. But so many thousands of nutjobs have claimed to have been visited by space aliens that they’ve ruined it for everybody else.

I tell you this so that you can be aware of what you’re getting into. Is it possible that AIDS isn’t caused by HIV? Sure, it could happen. But anybody who walks around saying it will be judged by their fellow HIV/AIDS doubters, and be assumed to be insane. Me, I’ll wait for the National Institutes of Health to issue a report before I pretend to be an immunologist.