May Day 2008

“AIDS, Inc.,” Rev. Wright, and CAM – The Story Goes On

© By Peter Barry Chowka

(May 15, 2008) The recent political controversy involving the leading Democrat presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama (IL), and his former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr., occasioned by Wright's statements about HIV/AIDS (in which the minister claimed that the U.S. Government created it as a weapon against African-Americans) – which I wrote about here on May 1, 2008 – has put renewed attention on HIV/AIDS.

It has also made possible some new insights into the 25 year long official campaign against HIV/AIDS – information that should be of particular interest to people in the worlds of CAM (complementary alternative medicine) and alternative medicine.

First, a little history

At this point, I should note that, as a journalist, I am not new to this subject. In the spring of 1985, I made my first public comments about HIV/AIDS as a guest on a number of major mainstream radio talk shows, including several broadcast nationally on the ABC TalkRadio Network. The subject of most of the interviews was the politics of cancer and alternative therapies. At the time, I compared the then fledgling “War on AIDS” to the failed War on Cancer that had started in 1971 and which I began reporting on soon afterwards. It was clear to me then (1985) that many of the same people who sold us on the Cancer War were jumping on the AIDS bandwagon, and were employing many of the same strategies of fear, deception, obfuscation, and hype to build toxic new medical empires.

Over the next several years, in more talk show interviews, public lectures, and finally in several magazine articles that were published in 1987 and '88, I continued to expand the analysis. On January 15, 1990, for two hours live on KFI AM 640, Los Angeles, I debated Michael Gottlieb, M.D., a leading HIV/AIDS proponent and the author of the first article to be published in the scientific literature in 1981 reporting on the first cases of the syndrome that would soon come to be called AIDS.

Looking back today, I make no great claims to originality or global impact in the field of challenging the dominant HIV/AIDS meme, and instead respectfully defer to veteran reporters like Celia Farber, who this week is receiving an award for her work in Washington, D.C., British broadcaster Joan Shenton, and legions of others – scientists, writers and journalists, activists, etc. – who have worked to bring clarity to this daunting and increasingly murky situation. The point is that I have paid some dues.

Early on in the AIDS story, alternative medicine, which in the 1980s was still a distinct and vibrant field, offered truly alternative insights into HIV/AIDS. I recall an entire conference – large, well attended, and spanning several days – devoted to natural therapeutics and AIDS held at a high rise Los Angeles hotel in January 1989. That is where I first encountered Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., in whose work, at the time, the alt med community seemed to be very interested.

Over the next 8-10 years, as the HIV/AIDS Establishment was growing in power and influence, alternative medicine was being subtly but surely transformed into “CAM” – complementary alternative medicine, an entirely new philosophical and clinical therapy model that folded certain non-threatening alt med light (as opposed to primary or potentially curative alt med) therapies into the dominant mainstream allopathic medical system. Helping this process along was the new Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) at the National Institutes of Health, which began in 1991. In 1998, the OAM became NCCAM – the National Center for Complementary Alternative Medicine. Before long, the OAM/NCCAM was doling out millions of dollars a year in coveted research grants. As the old adage goes, “He who pays the piper calls the tune.”

One of the first grants the original OAM gave re: HIV/AIDS in 1994 was to Bastyr University in Washington state. Bastyr, growing rapidly at the time, was founded as a school to turn out naturopathic doctors – doctors of natural medicine. With the infusion of unprecedented levels of new funding at the behest of the government and as a result of other factors, the naturopaths were going from essentially North America's barefoot doctors of natural healing to white coat- and stethoscope-wearing, drug-prescribing crypto allopaths longing for mainstream acceptance and rewards as they raced towards practicing in “integrative” medicine environments – ones mostly dominated by orthodox allopathic clinicians.

With alternative medicine on its way to being transformed into CAM and eventually neutered as a primary force for change, its ability to provide a true alternative critique of AIDS, Inc. had seriously weakened, as well.

The essential and transformative history that went down then (the 1990s), little noticed at the time and covered up, forgotten, and largely irrelevant now, speaks volumes.

Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.

An emblematic example of that history occurred in March 1997 when Joseph E. Pizzorno, Jr., N.D., a co-founder and then president of Bastyr, gave a presentation on HIV/AIDS at the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, CA. I shared the speaker's platform with Pizzorno (my talk was titled “Alternative Medicine and AIDS”) and, recalling that day recently with the aid of an official audiocassette recording of the proceedings, I was shocked at what I heard him say.

Pizzorno was, and is, one of the highest profile and most influential proponents of naturopathy and complementary alternative medicine. Following are some telling excerpts from his 1997 presentation. While some extraneous material has been edited out, the context of the comments, which are in their original order as they were delivered according to the audio recording, has been preserved.

Joseph Pizzorno, N.D.: The newest class of medical drugs used for the treatment of AIDS called protease inhibitors may be helping...

We now have better clinical laboratory assessment procedures available to us so we can actually measure the viral load in a person's blood and we can then apply a therapy and get very direct information on how effective that therapy has been. That is something that is very significant in helping us figure out how to deal with this terrible calamity...

I have been privileged to be appointed to the board of health in Seattle King County, which is the tenth largest board of health in the country. And so I get very good information now on AIDS and actually some of the data I'm going to give you is actually from King County because we have such a good program there.

The reason it's not improving in women is because women are not aware that they're infected... When we look at the gay neighborhoods in Seattle, 82% of the men in Seattle have been tested for the HIV virus. So there's a high level of awareness amongst the gay community about who is infected and who isn't. But the women do not have that level of awareness...

This past year there was a dramatic drop off in deaths from AIDS. This is being lauded as a demonstration that the new protease inhibitors are working... It is clear that protease inhibitors are helping people...

Eighteen per cent of the gay men in King County are infected. And the current data is that 50% of teenage gay men will become infected sometime in their life. So I think this is a tremendous public health problem...

The current data on the efficacy of drugs: There are nine different drugs currently being used to treat AIDS patients. They are finding that combinations appear to be more effective. AZT actually now appears to be working in one group and one group only and that's in pregnant women. It seems to decrease the rate of transmission of AIDS to the newborn infant by about one-third... So that [AZT] does work...

The protease inhibitors – Saquinovir, Indinovir, and Retonovir – these appear to be effective in actually getting rid of – decreasing the body load of – the virus... The short term anecdotal reports are that they are helping...

Interruption by a question from the audience about the rationale behind the protease inhibitors.

Pizzorno: I don't understand the biochemistry of them well enough. I can't do that. My own orientation is how natural medicines work...

In 1994 we [Bastyr] got the landmark grant from the National Institutes of Health Office of Alternative Medicine to establish the AIDS research center at the institution [Bastyr]. In 1995 the Natural Healing Clinic established its first integrated care clinic where we had an M.D., an N.D., an acupuncturist, a nutritionist, and a psychologist, all five together working with our AIDS patients... In 1997 we now have eighteen current research studies now going on at Bastyr University...

People often say the reason we do research is to prove ourselves to the medical community. That's not why we do research. We do research to get better. And we're finally at the stage where we can do that...

Back to the present (2008) now, the story of HIV/AIDS, alternative medicine, and CAM goes on, and will be continued here in weeks to come.

Did the U.S. Government Introduce HIV/AIDS?

Right now, I want to return to a timely examination of some of the issues raised by the Rev. Wright imbroglio, with some original insights from two people who have a lot of experience with HIV/AIDS and who aren't afraid to speak their minds.

David Crowe

First, David Crowe. Crowe is the recently appointed president of Rethinking AIDS, an “organization of scientists who have been questioning the HIV=AIDS hypothesis since the early 1990s.” Crowe has written extensively on HIV/AIDS, other supposedly infectious diseases, and the limitations and flaws of medical science. A Canadian, Crowe was founder and president of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society and he is a founder and executive member of the Green Party of Alberta.

In an e-mail exchange that I initiated on May 13, 2008, I noted that I was interested in Crowe's perspectives on the allegations by Wright and a number of others that HIV/AIDS was manufactured by elements of the U.S. government to kill blacks and other “undesirables.”

I commented, as well, that I was struck by the irony that the sensational allegations by Wright and others who agree with him have been given some degree – actually, what seems like a surprise degree – of visibility and credibility in the mainstream American media, while the reputable “AIDS dissidents,” like Duesberg and Crowe, for that matter, are largely ignored, attacked, or threatened with being censored and even locked up. (Several influential participants in an official forum, titled “HIV Science and Responsible Journalism,” at the 2006 International AIDS Conference actually advocated censoring journalists who reported on the AIDS dissident line.)

David Crowe: “Regarding Rev. 'Wrong,' I think that the reason why viewpoints like his are on the margin of respectable discourse, unlike the dissidents who are outside, is because they actually endorse the mainstream beliefs about HIV and AIDS, and because Wright and other proponents of these conspiracies are straw men, easy to dismantle.” At this point, Crowe mentioned his radio debate in April 2008 with Boyd Graves who claims to have uncovered evidence that the U.S. Government is behind HIV/AIDS. (An mp3 audio file of Crowe vs. Graves is here.)

“Rev. Wright,” Crowe went on, “is actually embedded in the AIDS paradigm. Check out the Balm in Gilead, Inc. Totally mainstream in its views on HIV testing and treatment. And how much money has Wright got for his church because of this? They are helping deliver their own people to the killing machine.

“Wright, [Leonard] Horowitz, and Graves believe that HIV is an infectious virus, that it's sexually transmitted, that it causes AIDS, and that AIDS is fatal. Horowitz and Graves do question the origin of HIV, that's their main deviation. And to some extent they question the toxicity of AIDS drugs, but they also have a financial conflict of interest, both pushing their own silver-based compounds (Tetrasilver for Graves, Oxysilver for Horowitz).

“Real dissident arguments question much more of the HIV=AIDS=Death dogma. In fact, some dissidents, perhaps the majority, challenge all these major HIV=AIDS principles, including that:

• HIV is an infectious virus

• HIV sexually transmitted

• HIV is a (let alone the sole) cause of AIDS

• AIDS is a meaningful concept

• AIDS is a single universal concept

• AIDS leads to death

• AIDS drugs are 'life saving'

  
  

“This is especially true among the growing fraction that accept the 'Perth Group' argument that the virus has never been purified and, in fact, has not been proven to exist.

“There are cracks in the media wall of uniform censorship. We [dissidents] were briefly mentioned by 'Accuracy in Media.' There is an article on Duesberg in the latest Discover magazine which is quite fair, although it tries to make him out to be a homophobe and a racist. There are the Semmelweis [Society International] awards [to Duesberg and Farber]. These are small cracks, but most catastrophic collapses are preceded by only small signs.

“The challenge for the scientific Establishment is going to be to jump ship at precisely the right moment, so they can land on both feet without threatening their prestige, power and, most importantly, their obese incomes.”

Michael Ellner

Also offering comments in the wake of the discussion that Wright helped to generate is Michael Ellner, a highly regarded hypnosis practitioner and educator. Relevant to this discussion, Ellner is a pioneering AIDS re-thinker and an alternative health advocate. He is the president of HEAL (Health Education AIDS Liaison–NYC) and, he notes, has been challenging the conventional view of AIDS since 1982. (The article “Deconstructing 'AIDS' – The 'Advanced Iatrogenic Disease Syndrome,'” co-written by Ellner, is a good critique of the mainstream view of HIV/AIDS.)

Michael Ellner: “I am not surprised by the popularity of the mythology that AIDS was created in a government lab. After all, [Leonard] Horowitz and his theory are the perfect complement to [Robert] Gallo's 'AIDS came from a monkey' mythology; both reinforce the one truly manufactured mythology, i.e., that AIDS is an infectious, sexually transmitted syndrome.

“Duesberg and the AIDS Rethinkers who are critical of these myths are shut out because they represent serious threats to a crisis mentality that fuels the AIDS crisis. It's no accident that it's been primarily the political Left and the Left-leaning media outlets that have played a central role in promoting the myth that everyone was at risk for a 'deadly, sexually transmitted virus.' AIDS, as a toxic-nutritional syndrome of multiple non-infectious origins, is too practical a problem – not good for generating hysteria or discouraging sex.”

Ellner reminded me about some of the recent news coverage in the UK about an article, extremely critical of the international HIV/AIDS Establishment, specifically UNAIDS, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) May 10, 2008, “The writing is on the wall for UNAIDS” by Roger England, chairman, Health Systems Workshop, Grenada. The full text of the article is available in html and PDF versions at the BMJ's site.

On a similar note, again in the UK, a leading daily newspaper, The Independent, in a feature article published April 24, 2008, asked “Is it time to give up the search for an Aids vaccine? – After 25 years and billions of pounds, leading scientists are now forced to ask this question.” According to the story, “Most scientists involved in Aids research believe that a vaccine against HIV is further away than ever and some have admitted that effective immunisation against the virus may never be possible, according to an unprecedented poll conducted by The Independent. A mood of deep pessimism has spread among the international community of Aids scientists after the failure of a trial of a promising vaccine at the end of last year. It just was the latest in a series of setbacks in the 25-year struggle to develop an HIV vaccine.”

By the way, coming full circle to where this article began (with candidate Obama and his “former” pastor, Jeremiah Wright, Jr.), Obama's plan for “Fighting HIV/AIDS Worldwide” calls for massive increases in spending both domestically and internationally, including expanding testing, providing more drugs, doubling HIV/AIDS research, etc. For example, “Expand Funding for Research: Barack Obama will expand funding for research, especially for prevention options including a vaccine.”

 

Peter Barry Chowka is a widely published writer and investigative journalist who writes about politics, health care, and the media. Between 1992 and 1994, he was an advisor to the National Institutes of Health. His Web site is: http://chowka.com