Review from the Townsend Letter for Doctors, January 1994
BATTLING FOR TRUTH
Reviewed by Jule Klotter
THE AIDS WAR: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex
by John Lauritsen
Asklepios, Provincetown 1993
John Lauritsen's book The AIDS War reveals the
disparity between the scientific search for truth and the
medical-industrial complex. John Lauritsen, a survey research analyst,
began reviewing AIDS research in 1983. This book is a collection of his
articles, written since 1985, that document the sloppy science,
propaganda, and greed behind the “AIDS plague”.
Throughout the years, Lauritsen has analyzed information or lack of
information, from the authorities and researchers at the Centers for
Disease Control, National Cancer Institute and FDA. The articles
dispute the assertions that AIDS is a “gay disease” (or
even a sexual disease), that HIV causes AIDS, and that AZT and other
nucleoside analogue drugs (ddI, ddC, d4T) provide any benefits.
By pointing out the fallacies and information gaps
in the CDC's statistical tables that show high risk factors, Lauritsen
attacks their assumption that AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease.
Amazingly little research has focused on other factors that affect the
immune system, such as diet, alcohol and drug use, medical history, and
antibiotic use of persons with AIDS (PWA). When the first cases of this
immune deficiency came to the CDC, someone noticed that a majority of
the patients were gay men and that the rest were IV drug users.
Prejudice, ignorance, and our Puritan heritage being what it is, the
assumption was made that it was sexually transmitted. Promiscuity
became a risk factor according to the CDC, yet its statistics never
included sexual frequency. Being gay does not necessarily mean that
someone is promiscuous. A person can be gay and celibate, just as a
heterosexual person can be celibate. The CDC also decided that sharing
needles was another risk factor. IV drug users were told to stop
sharing needles, although no evidence that they did share needles
exists. Nearly 80% of the people diagnosed as having “AIDS”
in Italy are IV drug users, yet needle-sharing is extremely rare
because buying needles is legal.
The CDC never considered that drug abuse is one
characteristic that all PWA have in common. Doctors and observers of
the gay community that Lauritsen has questioned over the years say that
while not all PWA they've been in contact with are promiscuous, all
have used drugs (quaaludes, cocaine, poppers, ethyl chloride,
amphetamines, etc.), were alcoholic, and/or had taken antibiotics
repeatedly. Poppers, a recreational drug common in a subset of the gay
culture, and heroin used by IV drug users are known immunosuppressants,
yet the CDC claimed it was dirty needles and sex, not drugs themselves,
that were the primary danger.
In addition to these information gaps, the CDC has
skewed the information it has. In their statistical tables a patient
who is gay and an IV drug user is categorized as being gay only, as if
sexual orientation (not even sexual frequency) is the determining
factor. The cdc manipulated the statistics in another way. In 1987,
patients who exhibited all the symptoms of the disease but who tested
negative to HIV and did not have a positive culture were no longer
considered to be AIDS patients. As Dr. Polly Thomas of the NYC Health
Department explained, an IV drug user with TB who has HIV antibodies
would be counted as an “AIDS” case, but one who has TB
without antibodies would be considered merely a tuberculin patient.
For whatever reasons, the CDC is committed to the
belief that AIDS is an infectious disease caused by a virus.
Originally, AIDS was defined as a condition in which the body's immune
system became deficient due to many factors, including use of
Cyclosporin (used in organ transplants), cortisone, radiation, even old
age. With the discovery of HIV, AIDS became a disease, treatable as all
infectious diseases with the use of a drug. The problem is that AIDS
and HIV don't follow the characteristics of infectious diseases.
Lauritsen points out that the “AIDS virus” does not satisfy
bacteriologist Robert Koch's criteria for establishing that a
micro-organism causes a specific disease. Koch's first postulate states
that the microbe must be found in all cases of the disease. Lauritsen
points out that between 20-64% of various samplings from people with
AIDS do not show HIV-1. When they could no longer blame it on the
fallibility of the lab tests, the CDC solved the problem by deleting
cases that don't show signs of the microbe from its statistical tables.
Koch's second postulate states that injection of the micro-organism
into susceptible animals must result in the same disease. While test
animals develop antibodies to the virus, none have contracted AIDS. A
1988 CDC study of health care workers who had been stuck by needles
used on “AIDS” patients found that out of 1428 only 4 had
developed HIV antibodies and none had gotten AIDS. Compare this to
another study concerning health care workers stuck by needles that had
been used on hepatitis-B patients in which 26% became ill. It makes one
question how infectious and virulent the dreaded HIV really is.
In June 1987 Lauritsen interviewed Dr. Peter H.
Duesberg, Professor of Molecular Biology at UC-Berkeley, about the
nature of HIV. Duesberg is an expert on retroviruses and the developer
of techniques used to map the genetic structure of retroviruses.
Duesberg's article in the 1 March 1987 issue of Cancer Research
questioned the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS. HIV is a retrovirus, a
benign, latent virus that needs living cells in order to replicate.
Duesberg explained that “the most effective time for the virus to
be pathogenic is right after infection and before it induces antiviral
immunity. They you are unprotected, they the virus can grow. That's
when you get your symptoms.” He said that there is
“no precedent for a microbe that causes disease only after, but
never before, the formation of antibodies.” Yet, the HIV
blood test, upon which the diagnosis of AIDS is based, measures the
presence of antibodies to the virus.
Lauritsen asked officials at CDC and NCI for proof
that HIV causes AIDS. In all the years since Duesberg's 1987 article
not one government researcher has provided data to support the
HIV-causes-AIDS hypothesis. What responses have been issued are
defensive and uninformative. “The evidence that HIV causes AIDS
is so overwhelming that it almost doesn't deserve discussion
anymore,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. In 1990, Luc Montagnier,
who discovered HIV, admitted that “HIV was not sufficient to
cause AIDS, and perhaps not even necessary.” The scientific
community may know that HIV is not a death sentence, that AIDS and HIV
are not the same thing, but the medical establishment, government and
media still perpetuate the myth. People still erroneously see the
presence of HIV antibodies as a death sentence, primarily due to media
sensationalism.
The “AIDS epidemic” in Africa is
primarily a product of bad science and propaganda. Diseases common in
poverty-stricken areas of Africa for decades but unfamiliar to Western
doctors, are now being diagnosed as “AIDS”. Lauritsen found
in the British book, AIDS, Africa and Racism by Richard and Rosalind
Chirimuuta, that “[Western doctors] conducted small and
unreliable seroepidemiological surveys that ‘proved’ that
millions of Africans were infected with the virus.” One Belgian
team spent 3 weeks in Kinshasa, diagnosed 38 people as having AIDS,
“then figured out how many cases this would amount to in a year's
time, divided that by the total population of Kinshasa, and estimated
an annual rate of developing AIDS in that country to be about 17 per
100,000.” When West German researchers examined thousands
of serum samples from Central Africa and found only 4 contained HIV
antibodies, their findings were ignored since they didn't fit the AIDS
plague myth.
The media further propagate fear and prejudice via
stories like the one about David Acer, the gay Florida dentist, who
supposedly infected five of his patients with HIV and caused the death
of Kimberly Bergalis from “AIDS”. The CDC studies regarding
health care workers and HIV-infected needles show how hard it is to
transmit the HIV virus. Investigations by the CDC indicate that Acer
followed their safety procedures conscientiously. Transmission of HIV
to five people is extremely unlikely, especially since no other case of
a health care worker infecting patients has been found. Even if Acer by
some bizarre chance, did infect five people with HIV, the discoverer of
HIV himself says that the virus does not cause AIDS. Whatever caused
Kimberly Bergalis' illness, it wasn't David Acer. No one has yet
determined how common HIV is in the general, non-risk population.
However, the picture of this homosexual causing the death of this
young, “innocent” woman provides Jesse Helms, David Duke,
the Oregon Citizens Alliance, and other right-wing fascist groups great
ammunition for their hate and fear campaign.
Other celebrated “AIDS” cases have also
been misrepresented. The Hemophilia Foundation of Indiana, when
contacted by a colleague of Dr. Duesberg, reported that Ryan White's
major health problem was not AIDS, but hemophilia. Hemophiliacs had an
average life expectancy of 13 years until the development of Factor
VIII, a concentrate made from blood donors used to treat hemophilia.
While Factor VIII ameliorates the effects of hemophilia and extends
life expectancy, it is also immunosuppressive. So is AZT.
AZT, which has been marketed as the main weapon
against “AIDS”, has caused untold numbers of deaths. No one
has lived more than 3 years while taking AZT — and this isn't
because they were infected by HIV. People testing positive for HIV
antibodies have remained healthy for decades. AZT destroys bone marrow
and causes severe anemia, requiring transfusions. AZT causes liver,
kidney, and neurological damage, and destroys intestinal cells
resulting in wasting disease. The FDA classifies it as being a
potential carcinogen as it is “highly positive on the Call
Transformation Assay.” Most disturbing of all, AZT and other
nucleoside analogues, like ddI, prevent new cells from being formed by
attacking DNA synthesis. The contention that AZT extends life is based
on the poorly run, multi-center Phase II study which Lauritsen
documents and analyzes at great length. The bottom line is that
Burroughs-Wellcome has made billions of dollars by effectively
promoting the use of AZT to thousands of people who have antibodies to
a latent virus, a virus that does not cause the immune deficiencies
that we call AIDS. The medical complex desperately wants a virus, then
they can develop and sell drugs to kill it. Imagine their horror if
word gets out that it's their antibiotics and drugs that contribute to
the disease.
The AIDS War documents the scientific, industrial,
political, and social factors that have combined to create a deadly
boondoggle of misinformation, poor science, stupidity, and greed. That
people are dying from immune suppression is not in question. The cause
is. it is part time to consider the evidence that AIDS is caused by
non-infectious agents such as psycho-active drugs, over-medication with
antibiotics, and AZT itself. John Lauritsen's The AIDS War is
journalism at its finest; it is well written, and shows a deep regard
for digging up truth.
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