July 30, 2008

What if Everything We Think We Know About AIDS is Wrong?

Clark Baker, who is a Los Angeles based Private Investigator, and a former Los Angeles police officer and U.S. Marine, has a compelling new report regarding AIDs. From the web site for his recent interview with Robert Scott Bell:

After the Semmelweis Society International (SSI) presented Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber the Clean Hands Award earlier this year, the controversy that erupted caused SSI to hire a P.I., Clark Baker, to investigate claims by AIDS activist groups that "anyone who questioned HIV as the cause of AIDS" is a criminal.

Baker's new report is called "Gallo's Egg:"

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."

.....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.

A Nobel-prize-winning scientist, Kary B. Mullis, wrote the forward to Duesberg's book on the subject, published by Regnery in 1995. Mullis' views support Baker's work:

IN 1988 I WAS WORKING as a consultant at Specialty Labs in Santa Monica, setting up analytic routines for the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). I knew a lot about setting up analytic routines for anything with nucleic acids in it because I had invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction. That's why they had hired me.

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), on the other hand, was something I did not know a lot about. Thus, when I found myself writing a report on our progress and goals for the project, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, I recognized that I did not know the scientific reference to support a statement I had just written: "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

So I turned to the virologist at the next desk, a reliable and competent fellow, and asked him for the reference. He said I didn't need one. I disagreed. While it's true that certain scientific discoveries or techniques arc so well established that their sources are no longer referenced in the contemporary literature, that didn't seem to be the case with the HIV/AII)S connection. It was totally remarkable to me that the individual who had discovered the cause of a deadly and asyet-uncured disease would not be continually referenced in the scientific papers until that disease was cured and forgotten. But as I would soon learn, the name of that individual-who would surely be Nobel material-was on the tip of no one's tongue.

Of course, this simple reference had to be out there somewhere. Otherwise, tens of thousands of public servants and esteemed scientists of many callings, trying to solve the tragic deaths of a large number of homosexual and/or intravenous (IV) drug-using men between the ages of twentyfive and forty, would not have allowed their research to settle into one narrow channel of investigation. Everyone wouldn't fish in the same pond unless it was well established that all the other ponds were empty. There had to be a published paper, or perhaps several of them, which taken together indicated that HIV was the probable cause of AIDS. There just had to be.

I did computer searches, but came up with nothing. Of course, you can miss something important in computer searches by not putting in just the right key words. To be certain about a scientific issue, it's best to ask other scientists directly. That's one thing that scientific conferences in faraway places with nice beaches are for.

I was going to a lot of meetings and conferences as part of my job. I got in the habit of approaching anyone who gave a talk about AIDS and asking him or her what reference I should quote for that increasingly problematic statement, "HIV is the probable cause of AIDS."

After ten or fifteen meetings over a couple years, I was getting pretty upset when no one could cite the reference. I didn't like the ugly conclusion that was forming in my mind: The entire campaign against a disease increasingly regarded as a twentieth century Black Plague was based on a hypothesis whose origins no one could recall. That defied both scientific and common sense.

Finally, I had an opportunity to question one of the giants in HIV and NII)S research, Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute, when he give a talk in San Diego. It would he the last time I would be able to ask my little question without showing anger, and I figured Montagnier would know the answer. So I asked him.

With a look of condescending puzzlement, Montagnier said, "Why don't you quote the report from the Centers for Disease Control?"

I replied, "It doesn't really address the issue of whether or not HIV is the probable cause of AIDS, does it?"

"No," he admitted, no doubt wondering when I would just go away. He looked for support to the little circle of people around him, but they were all awaiting a more definitive response, like I was.

"Why don't you quote the work on SIV [Simian Immunodeficiency Virus]?" the good doctor offered.

"I read that too, Dr. Montagnier," I responded. "What happened to those monkeys didn't remind me of AIDS. Besides, that paper was just published only a couple of months ago. I'm looking for the original paper where somebody showed that HIV caused AIDS."

This time, Dr. Montagnier's response was to walk quickly away to greet an acquaintance across the room.

Cut to the scene inside my car just a few years ago. I was driving from Mendocino to San Diego. Like everyone else by now, I knew a lot more about AIDS than I wanted to. But I still didn't know who had determined that it was caused by HIV. Getting sleepy as I came over the San Bernardino Mountains, I switched on the radio and tuned in a guy who was talking about AIDS. His name was Peter Duesberg, and he was a prominent virologist at Berkeley. I'd heard of him, but had never read his papers or heard him speak. But I listened, now wide awake, while he explained exactly why I was having so much trouble finding the references that linked HIV to AIDS. There weren't any. No one had ever proved that HIV causes AIDs. When I got home, I invited Duesberg down to San Diego to present his ideas to a meeting of the American Association for Chemistry. Mostly skeptical at first, the audience stayed for the lecture, and then an hour of questions, and then stayed talking to each other until requested to clear the room. Everyone left with more questions than they had brought.

I like and respect Peter Duesberg. I don't think he knows necessarily what causes AIDS; we have disagreements about that. But we're both certain about what doesn't cause AIDS.

We have not been able to discover any good reasons why most of the people on earth believe that AIDS is a disease caused by a virus called HIV. There is simply no scientific evidence demonstrating that this is true.

We have also not been able to discover why doctors prescribe a toxic drug called AZT (Zidovudine) to people who have no other complaint than the presence of antibodies to HIV in their blood. In fact, we cannot understand why humans would take that drug for any reason.

We cannot understand how all this madness came about, and having both lived in Berkeley, we've seen some strange things indeed. We know that to err is human, but the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is one hell of a mistake.

I say this rather strongly as a warning. Duesberg has been saying it for a long time. Read this book.

Kary B. Mullis
Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1993

Baker's report is sparking new interest in this subject. Read Clark Baker's report, "Gallo's Egg," here.

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