Voir le sida autrement

Greetings!

Some of my readers have asked where I’ve been. I appreciate those who’ve checked in despite my absence, and I apologize for not writing sooner. Except for a few conferences, diversionary projects, and family stuff, I have become involved in the most important criminal racketeering case of my investigative career.

Last June, I posted this report about US hospitals and how many rely on fraud, preventable injuries and infections to patients to compensate for losses due to our government’s insistence that private hospitals treat and care for uninsured and underinsured citizens, indigents, and illegal aliens.

I learned how hospitals destroy good physicians and how predatory hospital chains like Tenet, Kaiser Permanente, and Adventist pressure local physicians already in successful private practice to join their groups. Those who refuse are targeted for sham peer review by corporate administrators and MDs who accuse non-compliant physicians as dangerous, incompetent, or disruptive. While a few tenacious victims expend their life savings to preserve their clinical privileges, others aren’t so lucky. Faced with the malicious and devastating loss of their medical careers, many take their own lives; which is what the health care corporations prefer anyway. To them, it’s only business – nothing personal.

I was never impressed by concerns about “the evils of big pharma.” I assumed that drugs are expensive because of the R & D that goes into finding cures for disease. Until now, I never imagined that some of those same drug companies would support junk science to fund researchers who would then produce expensive drugs that cause illness and disease around the world; or support junk legislation that would force healthy mothers and their children to take drugs that kill (under the threatened loss of child custody), and then use their subsequent sickness and mortality as evidence that a non-existent disease actually exists.

Such a scheme would have made Machiavelli weep with joy.

A New Investigation

I was not concerned about "big pharma" until my visit to Washington DC last May. I was there to meet with members of Semmelweis Society International (SSI). This is an impressive group of medical professionals – physicians, nurses, surgeons, medical and law school professors, and former CEOs of health care corporations. Because of my own experience with retaliation and my ongoing interest in US healthcare and sham peer review, I was interested to hear their stories directly from them.

I accompanied Gil Mileikowsky, MD, the OB/GYN who first explained sham peer to me in 2006. I spent five days with the members – all dedicated men and women who care deeply about the political corruption of healthcare and who risked their own careers to report fraud or abuse within the healthcare system. I recorded and edited their testimony, and posted this video after members testified before the US Congress and Senate. I was also honored to testify regarding my experience as an LAPD whistleblower.

Two recipients of the Semmelweis “Clean Hands Award” were reporter Celia Farber and molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, PhD. I had not heard of them before and knew nothing of their relationship to a little known controversy about HIV and AIDS.

After 28 years as an investigator, I consider myself pretty skeptical about things until I see proof. Most of my work today is pro bono, so I can pick and choose who I assist. Witnesses are expected to lie, but if I discover that a client has misrepresented facts or lied to me, I will usually drop the case. I’m fortunate to have the time, energy, and resources to help good people get out of undeservedly bad predicaments. Not all lawyers are like Mike Nifong or David Sotelo, and not all private investigators work like Anthony Pellicano. Without unbiased credibility, investigators are nothing more than a liability to their clients.

As various members interacted with Farber and Duesberg, I learned that the HIV/AIDS issue had not been entirely resolved. Like Dr. Mileikowsky’s story about sham peer review, this sounded equally unbelievable.

When I returned to Los Angeles, several former members began to question the wisdom of presenting the awards to Farber and Duesberg. In response, SSI President (and neurosurgeon) Roland Chalifoux issued this press release to explain the rationale of the awards. But when two dissenters persisted, Dr. Chalifoux asked me to conduct an independent investigation of Ms. Farber and Prof. Duesberg, citing my investigative experience, independence, and almost complete lack of knowledge about HIV and AIDS.