Voir le sida autrement

I accepted the case.

Although I didn’t expect it at first, I was warned that I should expect attacks from the “other side.” I wasn’t sure what they meant but kept it in the back of my mind. It didn’t take me long to find out for myself.

When word got out that I had begun my investigation, several ex-SSI members told me that Duesberg and Farber were dangerous and "not worth my time" to investigate. Having met both in Washington, I found nothing dangerous about the reporter or microbiologist.

Two dissenters, James Murtagh, MD and Kevin Kuritzky, were friendly to me at first and “appealed to my better judgment.” Their friendly pressure intrigued me and I began my investigation by checking into their allegations.

Both essentially charged that Duesberg and Farber were liars and that both were responsible for millions of HIV deaths in Africa. I wasn’t as troubled by their allegations as I was by their insistence that I stop my investigation. It seemed incongruous that the individuals who alleged genocide would also pressure me to not investigate their own allegations.

As both Murtagh and Kuritzky increased their hostility, the more interesting the case became.

From: Kevin Kuritzky [mailto:kevink4@mac.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 9:50 PM
To: Celia Farber
Cc: SSI Membership
Subject: Re: Official Nominations

Celia - why don't you take your parasitic, attention-whore behavior elsewhere, to a place where people actually care.

You have been exposed to most of Semmelweis, and South Africa doesn't want your uneducated "faux-journalistic" crap opinions either. The entire world have basically discredited you countless times, and all the attachments I have sent verifies this. Go back to doing what you appear to know best, which is to [crude remark].

Your anecdotal stinking pile of bullshit is only trumped by the real science of people who are actually qualified to talk about this, not someone like you who [crude remark].

Your false, damaging, and absurd views on HIV are not welcome in the medical community. Now I suggest you exit before you are exposed even further into the pit that you continue to dig.

It was hard to imagine that Kuritzky had once been accepted to the Emory School of Medicine and even more bizarre that his collaborator, Dr. Murtagh, would permit such an attack. Fifteen minutes later, Murtagh replied to Kuritzky:

From: Jim Murtagh [mailto:jmurtag@mindspring.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 10:05 PM
To: celiafarber; kevink4@mac.com
Subject:Fwd: Official Nominations

Dear Kevin,

I asked you to be kind to Ms. Farber because she is obviously ill. Her has distorted her judgment. We are dealing with very sad pathology in the AIDS denialists. What I really want to know is who wrote the SSI press releases? Who put Gil up to this? Obviously, Gil and Roland did not cook this up themselves.

It is sad that Farber did not respond to a single one of your well-documented points. I believe the entire SSI (and ex-SSI members) should be proud of the factual manner in which Kevin has investigated this affair.

Ms. Farber again resorts to made up facts, and ignores the 5,000 scientists who demonstrated that Koch's postulates have been fulfilled.

Kevin, you documented 12 double blind studies. Your research puts any doubt to rest. HIV causes AIDS. This is as certain as the earth is round, and that the moon is not made of green cheese.

At the time, I did not know that Murtagh and Kuritzky were being supported by pharmaceutically funded operatives from South Africa, Cornell University, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It got worse.

On June 19th, I became a victim of their attacks just as I had been warned. Kuritzky initiated a “spam attack” against my name and professional email account and phones, generating thousands of unwanted spam messages and phone calls that offered everything from gay porn to paid vacations. Because I was prepared, I was able to positively identify the source of the attack by matching Kuritzky’s IP address used before and after the attacks as the same address used to generate the attack. I eventually filed a crime report with the LAPD and continue to prepare a criminal and civil case against both.

As of last week, I completed and delivered my report to SSI and will now post it in its entirety below. If you want to understand what I now accept as the most significant criminal conspiracy I have ever imagined, get your coffee and strap on your seatbelt.

The investigation I call Gallo’s Egg took me from America’s “War on Cancer” (1971-1981) to the early history of HIV and AIDS. It reaches from the cities of West Hollywood and San Francisco to the continents of Africa, Asia, and Australia. It led me to the steps of the National Institutes of Health, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and some of America’s most prestigious universities and research centers. It involves hundreds of billions of dollars of misdirected tax-supported funding and some of the most financially successful pharmaceutical companies in the world.

I have never written about anything more important. This story changed my life, and if you have the time and patience to understand what I have written, it may change yours as well.

If Americans, our courts, and our legislature permit the continued corruption of science and medicine by our pharmaceutical industry, I fear that the 232-year experiment we call “The United States of America” will have failed.

CB



On May 13, 2008, Semmelweis Society International (SSI) presented the Semmelweis “Clean Hands” Award to Professor Peter Duesberg and Investigative Journalist Celia Farber.

The awards were not presented as an endorsement of Prof. Duesberg’s scientific conclusions. Indeed, SSI members disagree about many topics related to science, medicine, and politics. They are not unified by one single ideology, but by their commitment to those who oppose the influence of politics that corrupt science, research, and medicine.

Professor Peter Duesberg, PhD

Prof. Duesberg began his award-winning career in cancer research in 1963. Funded by major grants from National Institutes of Health (NIH), Dr. Duesberg isolated the first cancer gene in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of retroviruses – a class of viruses that does not kill cells, but were thought to possibly cause cancer. In 1986, Prof. Duesberg was voted into the most respected scientific body in the United States, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS).

One year later, Prof. Duesberg described the flaws in the HIV hypothesis of AIDS causation. Although formal screenings are not required by Academy members, the NAS published Prof. Duesberg’s paper after an unprecedented six separate peer reviews. After 20 years, Prof. Duesberg’s paper remains unanswered.

Prior to these publications, Dr. Robert Gallo, the cancer virologist who claimed HIV caused AIDS in 1984 described Duesberg as the scientist “who knew more about retroviruses than any man alive.”

At the time of his endorsement of Duesberg, Gallo headed the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Although Gallo’s cancer and leukemia research was fraught with controversy, he still enjoyed significant influence in the distribution of research funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Once Dr. Duesberg questioned Gallo’s hypothesis that HIV (alone) caused AIDS, all his proposals for research funding were suddenly rejected. Before raising questions about the role of HIV in AIDS causation, Duesberg’s grant applications were never denied.

When reporter Celia Farber reported on Duesberg and the controversy over HIV (1988), the NIH barred her from further contact with their scientists and labeled her a “threat to public health.” Despite being under constant attack from the HIV/AIDS industry since then, Farber continued to probe the subject in her writings over the years.

Retaliation against publications and journalists who report on scientific challenges to the HIV hypothesis is not new. The gay publications New York Native and Christopher Street were shuttered as a result of the ACT UP boycotts.

Celia Farber

When Farber published her 15-page exposé in Harper’s on the unethical practices and patient deaths involved in the experimental AIDS drug trials in 2006, the retaliation was immediate.

Instead of addressing the disturbing content, or the inconsistencies of Dr. Gallo’s AIDS research, pharmaceutical industry-sponsored AIDS activists and researchers accusing Farber of having made 56 errors, and urged the global media and AIDS communities to discredit her, the article, and Harper’s, which they did (NY Times, The Nation, CJR, Poynter, Gay City News, The Advocate, The Body, Act Up). The document was posted by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa, where they are not required to identify their top 14 international “core donors”. The non-profit group, Rethinking AIDS, later published a rebuttal to their attack on Farber, which proved there were no errors in the Harper’s article. Farber’s most prominent critics, including Gallo, refuse to respond.

Harper’s and Farber stood accused of "AIDS denialism" and drawing negative attention to a "life-saving drug" Nevirapine, which had just been financed for distribution to more than a dozen developing nations. Their protest was consistent with their demands for increased distribution of lower-priced AZT during the 1980s.

In the heat of the attacks, members of Harper’s staff also received threats. The authors of the attack manifesto demanded 1) an apology, 2) a condemnation of Farber, 3) Harper’s surrender of pages to an article extolling the benefits of the drug in the next issue, same length, and the editor’s resignations. They even demanded to bring their own fact checkers. Harper’s yielded to none of the threats, conceded no errors, and continues to stand by the article to this day.

One of the signatories of the attack document against Farber was Richard Jefferys of New York’s Treatment Action Group (TAG), one of many AIDS “activist” groups that are funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

In May 2008, Jefferys led the campaign to antagonize members of both the Semmelweis Society (SSI) and the No Fear Coalition over the Farber/Duesberg awards. In seeking to get the awards rescinded, Jefferys disseminated falsehoods about Farber’s journalistic record (which this investigator examined) and failed to reveal that the maker of the drug Farber exposed was TAG’s third largest donor. As the coordinator of TAG’s central donor program, Jefferys’ job was to coordinate “global activist/scientist response” against Farber and her article in Harper’s: In short, Harpers paid Farber to investigate, and Boehringer Ingelheim paid Jeffreys to retaliate.

As a result of the false allegations, Farber did not receive another journalism assignment for more than two years. Only one source later reported that an independent panel of non-orthodox scientists found Farber’s article, after a four month review process, to be error free.

Although his recent cancer theory has earned him newfound respect in scientific circles and media (Scientific American 2004, 2007, Discover 2008),
Professor Duesberg remains cut off from all NIH funding, and commutes to Germany to conduct his scientific work. While Prof. Duesberg and other scientists still doubt that HIV kills cells, their questions are even more troubling when we consider the coordinated personal attacks used by Gallo and a core group of collaborators against those who ask legitimate questions about Dr. Gallo’s questionable scientific record:

In 1975, Gallo and Weiss stated that they had isolated a human leukemia virus, HL23 virus, but this was shown later to have resulted from laboratory contamination by three primate retroviruses. In 1980 Gallo claimed to have isolated a human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV), but did not present positive evidence that this was a human virus. During 1983-4, Gallo and his associates published several papers asserting that the human leukemia virus, HTLV-1, was the agent involved in the development of AIDS. This was eventually disproven but meanwhile the attention of many scientists was misdirected, wasting time and resources that could have been put to far better use…

After years of questions about fraud and questionable research, Dr. Gallo left NCI to open Baltimore’s Institute of Human Virology. Professor Duesberg still teaches at the University of California, Berkeley.

A quick summary of the origin of the HIV controversy:

1. Dr. Duesberg identified and mapped retroviruses,
2. Experts determined that retroviruses do not kill cells,
3. Dr. Gallo calls Duesberg the world’s top retrovirus expert,
4. Dr. Gallo proclaims that the HIV (retrovirus) causes AIDS (by killing white blood cells),
5. Dr. Duesberg reminds Gallo that retroviruses don’t harm cells, and;
6. Dr. Gallo has never proven that HIV exists, attacks cells, or causes AIDS.

History of Scientific Retaliation

Because the father of the scientific method was born 1000 years ago in the Middle East, the political pressures of his religion prevented humanity from taking full advantage of the promise of science. Ibn al Haytham and Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis were both judged insane not because they were wrong, but because their ideas threatened contemporary political forces.

Prof. Duesberg and Ms. Farber aren’t alone. Economist Ben Stein reported others whose scientific inquiries are now threatened, interrupted, or corrupted by political influence. This influence results in the loss of research grants or, as in the case of Ms. Farber, industry insiders who blacklisted her in the media. In hospitals, these influences kill thousands of patients annually.

When the NAS published Prof. Duesberg’s 1988 paper, Gallo and company scattered like debutants from a stentorian fart. Anthony Fauci refused comment. Maxine Singer said she was still reading earlier issues. Saying that he hadn’t “heard a single scientist discuss it for a second,” Gallo admitted that a copy was on his desk, but hadn’t read it.

Although he vowed to respond, neither Gallo nor any of his defenders ever published a rebuttal of Duesberg’s paper (or the 196 peer citations that supported it) in any peer-reviewed publication.

Instead, Gallo’s defenders created the specter of AIDS-Denialists and Denialism, epithets designed to marginalize those who questioned Gallo’s opinions as somehow denying the existence of AIDS itself. Because Gallo skeptics never questioned the existence of AIDS, this allegation is false. The fact that malnutrition, septic water, disease, environmental conditions, irresponsible drug use and self-destructive behavior can degrade a body’s ability to protect itself from infection and cause death is undeniable. What is in question is Gallo’s scientifically unsupported assertions that retroviruses cause leukemia, cancer, and AIDS.

When used around casual observers, the denialist/denialism epithet dehumanizes Gallo skeptics as flat-earthers, ufologists, Klansmen, Eugenicists, racists, homophobes, and other socially unacceptable groups. Because most people fear the stigma that comes with those associations – and are socially, politically, and professionally unprepared to defend themselves against this slur, they politely scatter and change the subject like Gallo’s debutants.

The Storm

Months after Ms. Farber published her 2006 Harper’s exposé, AIDS industry activists held this conference where those who offended the official HIV/AIDS “Party Line” were methodically and unrelentingly attacked as denialists.

Co-moderated by TAG operative Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, the 2006 HIV Science and Responsible Journalism Conference asked invited journalists “if balance was always appropriate when the evidence backs one side.” These academic “hit men” openly and unapologetically detailed how and why these attacks shall be executed.

A paid consultant to more than a dozen pharmaceutical companies, Dr. Kuritzkes warned journalists that denialists like Peter Duesberg still work in universities and urged that they be denied access to students and reported to authorities whenever possible.

Kuritzkes told his audience:

“If this happens in your neighborhood ask the university authorities why they allow this and then write about it.”

WSJ reporter Marilyn Chase warned reporters not to unintentionally “exalt the position of denialists by making them seem like just some sort of independent intellectual contrarian whose views really should be heeded.”

Sitting in the audience, research scientist Ella DeCann complained that “science is full of laboratory politics,” and asked the panel:

“Do you understand that AIDS research is actually tied to technology, rather than to science?”

Panelist John P. Moore, PhD quickly rejected her assertion. Although he regularly identifies himself as a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University, Moore rarely mentions the $400 million annual funding that Cornell receives for research from taxpayers and HIV drug makers that include Merck, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Trimeris, or GlaxoSmithKline. Bristol Myers Squibb alone acknowledges more than $100 million in research funding. With billions of dollars in research grants at stake, it’s understandable why Dr. Moore and America’s most prestigious universities are reluctant to offend the pharmaceutical companies that keep their prestigious research laboratories open. Rather than present Gallo’s promised proof that HIV exists, kills cells, and causes AIDS, Dr. Moore attacks with rhetoric. A few examples:

• H.I.V. causes AIDS. This is not a controversial claim but an established fact, based on more than 20 years of solid science. It is as certain as the descent of humans from apes and the falling of dropped objects to the ground.
• To deny that HIV causes AIDS is farcical in the face of the scientific evidence.
• Although science is not an ivory tower that should never be questioned, the fundamentals of whether HIV causes AIDS are so certain that challenging them to create trouble really does harm people.
• AIDS denialism kills.
• We will not engage in any public or private debate with AIDS denialists or respond to requests from journalists who overtly support AIDS denialist causes.
• The debate has been settled. It is not our role to enlighten denialists as to their inability to understand the available information.

A few months later, Dr. Moore wrote this email to another Gallo skeptic:

From: John P. Moore, PhD <jpm2003@med.cornell.edu>
To: Michael Geiger
Sent: Saturday, January 27, 2007 10:24 AM
Subject: Re: Shame on you JP!

Thanks Geiger! What you sent contains useful information we can use against you people! And we will!

"Dan" has it exactly right when he says:

If they are able to "justify" their actions, it's most likely because they simply see this as WAR. War against the "denialists". Nothing more.

When you're in a war, there are no rules.

This IS a war, there ARE no rules, and we WILL crush you, one at a time, completely and utterly (at least the more influential ones; foot-soldiers like you aren't worth bothering with). John (emphasis added)

Although Moore boldly threatens to “crush” those who question the role of HIV in AIDS, he avoids all invitations to engage in public debate on the HIV hypothesis of AIDS.

Because AIDS is mostly confined to its initial risk groups in America (gay men and drug users), most Americans have been too busy to concern themselves with the issue or the storm of politics and retaliation that continues to mute this largely unnoticed international debate. Most Americans feel unaffected, but our general complacency permitted fundamental changes in the direction and progress of higher-priority medical research. The redistribution of hundreds of billions of research dollars based upon Dr. Gallo’s still unproven claims continues to the detriment of millions of Americans and people around the world.

After the Semmelweis Society International (SSI) presented awards to Duesberg and Farber last May, the retaliatory forces that curtailed all funding for
Prof. Duesberg’s award-winning cancer research and attacked Ms. Farber’s reporting were suddenly brought to bear against SSI and its members (including this investigator). If not for the courage of the SSI membership and the support of hundreds of award-winning scientists and researchers, SSI and the awards would have evaporated. For their membership, science and medicine must repudiate all forms of political influence, regardless of the political risks involved.

In the spirit of freedom and science, SSI commissioned this report to respond to questions and arguments regarding Professor Duesberg’s unanswered questions of Dr. Gallo’s 1984 HIV hypothesis. As an independent investigator who could not be influenced by the threats or attacks made against vulnerable SSI members and others; and as someone who had never heard of Duesberg, Gallo, Farber, or AIDS Denialism before May 2008, SSI believed that this investigator had the unbiased and proven investigative experience necessary to examine both sides of the controversy. For his efforts, this investigator was not compensated.

One of the more printable attack letters to SSI was from former Emory medical student Kevin D. Kuritzky, who wrote:

It is my understanding that Semmelweis presented Dr. Duesberg with an award, seemingly on behalf of the group. It is not disputed that Dr. Duesberg is a controversial figure. However, I have had personal experiences with his material and his theories. I have read his works, studied them, and frankly, I am sickened.

I am sickened because… I was born in a nation, South Africa that is ravaged by HIV/AIDS. Dr. Duesberg was used as a pawn of the government to impede providing antiretroviral medicines to the needy. Dr. Duesberg has provided no science behind his theories, and he, as a virologist, allowed himself to be complicit to murder by the tens of thousands, in essence to sell his notoriety.

Investigator’s Response:

South Africa is not “ravaged by HIV/AIDS.” In 2001, the South African Government reported 9,479 deaths due to "HIV Disease" out of a population of 44.8 million. This represented only 3.16% of all deaths in the country and only two-one hundredths of one percent (0.02 %) of South Africa’s total population.

(More African mortality info here)

Kuritzky’s reference to "antiretroviral medicines" also implies an Orwellian use of language. The primary "medicine" is AZT, which was designed as a highly toxic cancer chemotherapy in the 1960s. It’s hard to imagine why anyone in America or South Africa would want to deliver toxic chemotherapies to expectant mothers and villagers who already suffer from poverty, malnutrition, and septic water.

In this 2008 study, 320 Tanzanian patients were placed on “antiretroviral therapy” (ART) between October 2003 and November 2006. Most (223) were women, some as young as 15. The majority were between 25 and 34 years of age. Most were severely malnourished, had thrombocytopenia and varying degrees of anemia.