UPDATE (October 2009): A critique of the information presented in this blog post has recently been published on the website of the Treatment Information Group (TIG) led by Anthony Brink from South Africa:

'The so-called Letter to Science,' writes Claus Jensen, 'has been touted as a great success by its authors, Janine Roberts and David Crowe, and it is generally considered one of Rethinking AIDS's success stories.' In fact it was a shambles: 'The Roberts-Crowe Letter to Science has indeed caused damage, but not to Gallo or Science. It has served to redirect focus from the real scientific issues to peripheral and largely irrelevant questions of editorial practices in Gallo’s lab, as well as made the Signatories the laughing stock of the scientific establishment... (CLICK TO READ THE ENTIRE PDF DOCUMENT)


It is recommended reading. For more similar material critical of RA's decision-making visit TIG's website: http://www.tig.org.za/RA.htm

...

Below you'll find the original blog post untouched, but my views on the topic have changed after learning about the above mentioned "internal" criticism of the arguments:

Related videos from the press conference on 1st of October 2008.

Exposed by Janine Roberts, author of the book "Fear of the Invisible".

Documentation and correspondence gathered by Ms. Roberts that reveals Dr. Robert Gallo intentionally distorted his laboratory’s research findings to make claims that he discovered the HIV virus and claims it is a cause of AIDS:

Exclusive Press Conference Interview with Janine Roberts
(From The Gary Null Show - 9/11/08)

In short:

"...The author tells how she disturbingly discovered that the key HIV research, that said to prove that HIV causes AIDS, was investigated for scientific fraud by very powerful US scientific institutions (supervised by the US Academy of Science) and by Congress over a four year period. Why is this not widely known? It seems there has been some sort of cover-up. The book cites their conclusions, showing that they reported over twenty major errors in this research, with some errors so serious that they made it impossible to repeat these experiments and verify them! I reproduce the key documents so the reader can assess them for themselves. This is explosive material."


More info available on the website of the book, you probably won't get what the documents are all about unless you read these or listen to the broadcasts linked above:

• AIDS research Condemned
• How the HIV papers came to be fixed.
• Gallo Defends Himself

Related Documents

1. Exhibit One: Dr. Gallo letter stating HIV (then called HTLV) is “extremely rare” in AIDS patients. Composed one day prior to his submitting his most important paper asserting HIV causes AIDS.
   
2. Exhibit Two: Letter from Dr. Gonda, Head of Electron Microscopy at the NIH reporting the images Dr. Gallo wanted were only cellular rubbish.
3. Exhibit Three: Typed draft document written by lead author and scientist Dr. Popovic for submission to Science magazine with Dr. Gallo’s handwritten edits and comments. (FULL PAPER HERE)
4. Exhibit Four: The 1993 report by the Office of Research Integrity, US Department of Health, indicting Dr. Gallo for medical fraud.

Summary: "...the Science papers [Robert Gallo] authored, despite being found scandalously fraudulent, were never withdrawn, nor corrected, which... is scandalous given the prestige of the institutions that had condemned them and the consequence of leaving them uncorrected. Thus thousands of researchers still consult them in all innocence. Today thousands of papers on HIV and AIDS refer back to them, and all medical authorities point to them too. The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) still state on their website that the key foundation papers in AIDS research are ‘four papers from Dr Gallo's laboratory, demonstrating that HTLV-III retrovirus [HIV] was the cause of AIDS.' It does not mention that they were found ‘polluted with systematic exaggerations and outright falsehoods of unprecedented proportions.'
The findings of all these high level investigations of the 1990s were thus swiftly and shockingly buried. Few AIDS scientists now know that these seminal AIDS papers were thoroughly discredited by scientists belonging to the most eminent of scientific bodies. This is an extraordinary state of affairs. It is totally amazing, almost unbelievable."

Please share this information with as many people as you can. Science is supposed to be better than this, but first the media needs to get better apparently...
(Interested journalists can get Janine Roberts' email address if they listen to the radio broadcast linked above, or you can ask me nicely, or find it elsewhere...)

Bronx residents should question the "HIV tests" as soon as possible!

This will be an improved version of a comment I posted on another blog:
Studies Indicate African-Americans Need to Question Doctors More (BlackInformant.com)

Please inform yourself about what is being said in the following links:
Bronx-wide HIV testing Initiative

Now start by taking a look at this if you wish:
Lee Evans Speaks Out about the HIV Tests

Listen to the audio file at the “Mass HIV Test Dangers” section on this page:
Earl Caldwell on WBAI, Radio New York

Also listen to this interview with Rodney Richards, a former scientist who worked for a company that developed the HIV tests: Voice of Harlem - Interview with Dr. Rodney Richards

This series of videos are excerpts from a more comprehensive documentary:
HIV Diagnosis

It’s actually not only a problem for black people:
Oprah - Consequences of HIV Misdiagnosis

But the tests seem to react differently for different people with different genes(i.e. different races), and seem to give the most positive results with black people: HIV/AIDS Theory is Inescapably Racist

The black community in Bronx is in especially big trouble from my point of view, yet they totally fail to question apparently! But it's equally important for whites too, the difference is not that significant. I posted about this in some forums dominated by people from Bronx, but not a single person replied.[1] [2] [3] It was completely ignored. If you have the time, please start doing some research about this, it’s not only about the HIV tests of course.There are also even nastier things related to Bronx like this one here:

http://www.GuineaPigKids.com/

This topic actually deserves a longer, detailed blog post with lots of text, but due to time limitations I'll leave it at this for the moment.

And by the way, actually the whole HIV/AIDS “science” is questionable. Good luck.

The Perth Group recently updated their homepage with a new document:
DONATIONS FOR EXPERIMENTS

This is an important step and changes a few things in this debate. I guess they were hoping that the scientific community would be convinced by their work and perform the experiments on their own, with the already abundant funding in the HIV/AIDS field. But since such a thing doesn't appear to be likely to happen anytime soon, they finally decided to do the experiments themselves. Also note, from the document linked above:

"It is in the interests of both sides as well as the general public that such experiments are conducted. So much so we invite HIV protagonists to contribute to their cost. It is in their interest because negative findings would boost the HIV theory to an almost unassailable status."

I hope they'll be able to gather enough money soon enough. The whole world would be donating if they knew how important this is. But since the world doesn't have a clue about what's going on I guess people like you and me will have to try and find that money...

" Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. " Albert Szent-Gyorgyi MD (1893 - 1986)

I'm trying to understand if there really is a scientific reason for the majority of scientists to ignore this paper:

BIO/TECHNOLOGY VOL.11 JUNE 1993
Is a Positive Western Blot Proof of HIV Infection?
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Valendar F. Turner and John M. Papadimitriou

(Figures from the paper HERE)

This paper is an extremely important one, since it argues that all "HIV" tests are inadequate to diagnose somebody with "HIV" infection. Please share your opinions.

So far:

- There was an argument for misrepresentation, but it certainly isn't anything significant.
- There was an argument for intellectual dishonesty, but I don't think it makes sense.
- I asked what the widely accepted "rules of retroviral isolation" are -or if such rules even exist;[1][2][3][4] got no response.[5]
- It appears that there isn't a scientific reason for the majority of scientists to ignore this paper.

The following email was sent to the relevant people on October 30:

Dear members of the Nobel Committee, Karolinska Institute and Pasteur Institute,

I regret having to write this email to you. But it feels necessary, because I just can't ignore what I perceive as huge problems which must be dealt with as soon as possible.

Here you can find some documents which I suspect were not taken into consideration while making the decision to award the Nobel Prize to Professor Montagnier and Professor Barré-Sinoussi for their discovery of a new retrovirus:

http://www.theperthgroup.com/montagniernobel.html

Sadly, I'm not even sure if Prof. Barré-Sinoussi is aware of the existence of these documents. The reason for my doubt is because what the Perth Group has been arguing for more than 20 years was never really discussed within the scientific community. Here's what they write in one of the documents:

" Montagnier’s claim as well as that of other “HIV” experts regarding the isolation of “HIV” was questioned by us from the very beginning. When neither Montagnier nor anyone else responded to our critique, in 1991 we personally made him aware of it by sending him some of our published papers. He responded “Thank you for your letter of October 7th and enclosed papers. I will certainly return to you after reading them”. ... He did not return. In 1992, at a Symposium on HIV/AIDS held in Amsterdam, one of us (Eleni Papadopulos), questioned Montagnier in regard to the isolation of HIV. Montagnier made it clear that the only evidence for the existence of HIV is p24. All the other phenomena are non-specific. When it was pointed that p24 was also non-specific, Montagnier expressed surprise and responded that he was not aware of such evidence. Dr. Eleni Papadopulos promised to send him the evidence, which she did but Montagnier did not respond. In 1993 we published papers in which the Montagnier 1983 and four Gallo Science 1984 papers are critically analysed in detail. Neither Montagnier nor Gallo nor anyone else responded. In 2004 we published a detailed critique of Montagnier’s 1983 seminal paper. Neither Montagnier nor any of the other authors responded. "

I'm not pointing this out solely to criticize Prof. Montagnier or Prof. Gallo. This is a very worrying situation and it effects all of us. I don't think I'm in a position to lecture any of you about what science is. However, I do hope that you all realize that the behaviour described in that quotation above, which is also characteristic of scientific journals unfortunately, leaves no room for any scientific progress whatsoever. When science begins to ignore and supress uncomfortable questions, it becomes as fallible as religion.

As far as I can tell, if the arguments by the Perth Group against the discovery of a new virus were so insignificant and weak, someone should've already given a satisfactory answer to them years ago. But that was not the case, the situation is serious. The questions asked were ignored and those who ask condemned for questioning. At that time, it was simply the easier thing to do, since there was no pressure for clarification from the media or any organization of any significance. The pressure was in fact in the opposite direction, you can research that complex topic yourself if you wish.

I'll only mention the latest revelations related to the role Prof. Gallo plays in all this, which is of great importance. Since he was the one to establish a connection between "HIV" and "AIDS", the quality of his scientific publications also deserve some attention. Here's a summary prepared in response to this Nobel Prize decision:

http://www.fearoftheinvisible.com/nobel

In short, journalist Janine Roberts finds out after examining the old documents that Prof. Gallo "changed the paper to hide their failure to prove the French virus the cause of AIDS and their total failure to prove it in the slightest bit dangerous." On that website, to the left, you can find links to the related documents with much more detailed explanation. This adds a new dimension to the discussion about the significance of what Prof. Montagnier and Prof. Barré-Sinoussi observed in 1983. The scientists from the Perth Group, as you will see once you read their papers, were already questioning how Prof. Gallo reached the conclusions he reached in those papers, before they were even aware that such fraud took place.

Again, it is worth pointing out that the media avoids mentioning this sort of information, in a displeasing harmony with the majority of the scientific community, who refuse to see this reality.

My sincere appeal to you for now is only that you start to learn about these different points of view, that you think about these and that you really discuss this issue. Contact the scientists from "Rethinking AIDS", ask questions, look for answers, consult your friends, inform others. Delay some decisions you made if it's the right thing to do, do whatever you can to clarify these important scientific questions... But please, don't keep on living your lives as if nothing is wrong just because it's easier and more comfortable. Be brave, be responsible and take action.

My influence alone may not feel enough to motivate you. What is a single email from an insignificant little guy after all? You can simply delete and forget all about it... But you must understand that this isn't about you or me. Your actions will influence the lives of millions. Think about the future of science, the future of the entire humanity. Your feeling of responsibility should arise independent from outside influences like this email, you won't be cornered by the public or the media to take action either. You should feel responsible simply because there is an obvious problem which potentially has incredible implications for your lives, and you have an influence on how all this will continue. You can act as if you never read this email, or you can turn the problem into a unique opportunity for progress by bringing the scientific method back to science. By defending free scientific inquiry, independent research and vigorous scientific debates.

And for your information, I'm not a scientist (yet). I've just been observing this debate surrounding HIV/AIDS and the picture I saw became more and more frightening the longer I looked. As a lifetime admirer of the universe around me and the wonders science can bring into our lives, I felt great disappointment and concern when I realized that not all is as graceful and as secure with science as I naively used to believe. I know humans are not perfect, I know that sometimes our ignoble desires get the best of us, but still, I'm sure we can do much better than this...

I'll leave you with this quote from a former Nobel Prize winner, Richard P. Feynman, for whom the glare of the prize was meaningless compared to the pleasure gained from furthering our understanding of our reality:

" In the impetuous youth of humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism, proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times before.

It is our responsibility as scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations. "

The rest is up to you... And please do your best not to feel intimidated or threatened by this. In the end we all will grow if this can be openly discussed, independent from what the final outcome might be.

With hope and highest regards,
Sadun Kal

...consider this written on behalf of every caring human being...

P.S. I'd appreciate it if someone could pass this on to Prof. Luc Montagnier, too. I don't have his contact information. Thank you.

- End Of Letter -

[More letters can be found here: RethinkingAIDS.com]

One week later, I attempted to verify if these people really received my email. Instead of asking them all, I asked only four people thinking it would give me enough idea about what went on with my email. They didn't respond. I believe if they didn't know what I was talking about they would've simply said "No, didn't receive anything from you." Since they didn't even reply at all, I assume it was because they did receive it. Or maybe they're not using their email addresses, but that's rather unlikely since their email addresses are published on the official websites.

ADDENDUM:

"Dialectical analysis of the Nobel Prize awarding to the false discovery of HIV"

by Jesús García Blanca

...

" 1. Nobody has carried out procedures scientifically established that allow us to announce the discovery of the HIV virus. In particular, Montagnier, has recognized that he didn’t.

2. This information is common knowledge and sufficiently well-known, if not for the general public, for scientists, doctors, activists, journalists, victims and public authorities… including by all means the Nobel Foundation.

3. HIV/AIDS is not a scientific-medical issue, but a problem of Power.

The scientific work that disassembly the viral theory and gets an explanation to the health problems that have been classified under the “AIDS” label is done. Also, there are treatment proposals that have benefited only a few people but could help many more, once the appropriate political decisions are taken (1).

Therefore, this is not an argument from the scientific or medical point of view. We part from the base that the concession of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2008 to Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier has not been an error nor has been done out of lack of information; the decision was taken with the knowledge that they had not discovered any virus and this fact must be contemplated from the standpoint of the power relations and they should be discussed in a political, financial and dialectical level.

That approach will allow us to answer the apparent paradox: how is it possible that a totally erroneous or false idea prevails, and it is accepted, in spite of the serious and even mortal consequences that it has?

Schopenhauer (2) warns: “it is necessary to separate with clarity the discovery of the objective truth, from the art of making its own thesis an accepted truth”.

That is, we must part from the idea that those who build up the HIV/AIDS Fake, did not try to prove the truth, but force the majority to accept their aproach as true. In other words: those placed in the group called “officialist” do not try to convince the other group known as “dissident”, but try convincing the public who observes the dispute. This distinction is crucial because the response must be totally different. "

(continues...)

[ Prepared for Facebook groups, aimed towards skeptics. Facebook users please go here:
http://www.new.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=23479859352&topic=4735 ]

There was also a discussion about this at the Facebook page of "Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science" for a while, which contains more info and emotions. Click here to view it.

Hello Dear Skeptics,

I question orthodox AIDS.
This is a little long and I broke it in 3 parts to not to scare you off.

Part 1
-------

Did you know that there are a lot of scientists out there, who say that HIV can't be the cause of AIDS? I didn't, until a few months ago... And I found it confusing that I've never heard about such thing before. Apparently the reason was that they're having a really hard time getting their voices heard. And then I was curious why that might be the case...

Later, what convinced me to look really deeper was to witness how the orthodox medicine always avoided scientific confrontation with these people. Maybe it's because the subject is so sensitive, but what I observed was a lack of professional, scientific debate and an excess of emotions and ad hominem attacks. The rethinkers are treated by the mainstream scientists as the evil enemies instead of fellow scientists looking for answers.

Now I thought this is a good chance for all the skeptics in the world to demonstrate some real skepticism and help each other find out the mysterious truth behind all this. I'll expose you only to some rethinker information. I believe that's fair considering that most of us were only exposed to the mainstream views.

I recommend starting with videos, that way you can inform yourself more effortlessly. For example "The Other Side of AIDS" is a nice documentary as an introduction:

Official Website

(In fact, you can stop reading the rest of this text and watch it -illegally- right now!)

Video: THE OTHER SIDE OF AIDS

[ Update 2009: Since Christine Maggiore's death, this documentary film is probably not the best choice for opening people's minds, because it will require an already very open mind to take the content of the film seriously and examine everything critically. House of Numbers and AIDS Inc. seem to be better alternatives at the moment. ]

Part 2
-------

But if you're impatient, here's a recent investigation report by a retired LAPD police officer for a fast start:
http://www.californiaconservative.org/academia/hiv-aids-gallos-egg

Quote from the investigation report:

"...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..."

Take your time, don't rush it. There's a lot to learn if you're new to this debate. After all it started more than 20 years ago. I've been looking into this since ca. 5 months now and I still don't know many things. Here's a plenty of information for the curious minds:
http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/index.php/List_of_dissident_websites

For example you can read how an insider became a rethinker here:
http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/index.php/Document:Why_I_Quit_HIV
http://www.reviewingaids.com/awiki/index.php/Document:Why_I_Quit_HIV:_The_Aftermath

Part 3
-------

I'd like to remind you something before I leave you with the information above. I'm worried about the current condition of modern skepticism. The below excerpt should help you understand my concerns:

"...If we think in terms of the general public and the influence of the media, we may conclude that a healthy dose of reflective skepticism is just what is required to counteract what Richard Dawkins calls “the current epidemic of paranormal propaganda.” Other contemporary scientists, however, thinking primarily of the attitudes of practicing scientists, believe that the scales are skewed very much in favor of negative criticism when it comes to unorthodox views or extraordinary claims which appear to threaten well-established scientific beliefs, and they argue for a greater degree of receptivity. Brian Josephson, for example, argues that the claims of “heretical scientists” are dismissed as “nonsense or impossible, generally without any serious attempt to look at the evidence” (Josephson, 1994). The essence of his objection is not that the unorthodox claims he mentions are actually credible, but that their merits have not been seriously assessed in a genuine scientific inquiry. Josephson is himself somewhat skeptical, but he refuses to say a priori that something cannot be the case. He fears that various “defence mechanisms” spring into action to defend the “purity” of science, and that claim, if true, would clearly undermine the kind of receptiveness which calls for an impartial assessment of an unorthodox claim in the light of evidence.

A fine contemporary statement embodying the attitude involved in critical receptiveness and acknowledging the problem of satisfying both dimensions is found in the writings of the late Carl Sagan who warned against the danger of skeptical criticism degenerating into a debunking of everything new and different: “....what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas....But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, which ever one it is, you’re in deep trouble” (Sagan 1987, 41-2). Sagan thought of these needs as involving a seemingly self-contradictory mix of attitudes, but somehow justice had to be done to both aspects. Such conflicting demands seem likely to call for a “tolerance for ambiguity” in the individual if a finely-tuned critical receptiveness is not to collapse into a one-sided emphasis on one aspect to the exclusion of the other. Sagan’s perceptive comments offer some encouragement that Russell’s insights have filtered through to our own day to help illuminate the complex nature of the inquiring spirit and skeptical outlook. "

Source: http://www.williamhare.org/assets/hare_receptiveness_russell.pdf

Here's even an example for what I'm talking about:
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/Challenges/Crowe-Scalise-et-al.html

Notice that for some reason(Milgram?) the burden of proof never lied on the inventors of HIV/AIDS hypothesis. They announced HIV=AIDS in a press conference, the claims didn't even go through a proper peer reviewing process. So now it shouldn't be about demanding proof that 'HIV doesn't cause AIDS', it's about demanding proof that 'HIV causes AIDS' .

I think you can see where the majority of the modern "skeptics" fail dramatically: We never question the mainstream scientific authorities.

In short, don't approach this as a conspiracy theory to debunk, see it as an oppurtunity to learn something revolutionary new or as a chance to strengthen your confidence in what you already knew to be true. Don't be just skeptical about the paranormal, be skeptical about the seemingly normal, too. Science progresses through revolutions after all and this might be one of them.


Last Words
------------

In the end, what I would love to see is an objective, public, live debate about all this. Just one debate won't be enough probably, because if the rethinkers are right about everything then the problem lies a lot deeper than just HIV research. There should be a series of continuing debates. Even if there's no mass media attention to it, it should be made available for public viewing, simply via websites like YouTube for example. Can the Skeptics Society possibly arrange something like that?

P.S. Please try to ressist the urge to attack me if the above text bothers you, especially if you didn't take the time to examine the information I posted. If you were never objectively exposed to the "other side" before, I recommend investing minimum 15 hours into research before you convince yourself that you've heard enough. Thanks for your understanding and good luck with your research!

And I also kindly ask the admins to send an update to the members about this important mystery waiting to be solved, so that they all get a chance to hear about it. Thank you.

UPDATE: The 15 hours research I suggested should of course consist of informing yourselves from the rethinker/denialist/dissident sources, and not from mainstream. You can do that also but it doesn't count for the 15 hours... Just wanted to clarify that... :)

UPDATE: This addition aims at giving you reasons to care more about this topic:

I decided to bring some order to this blog after reading this, read the comments too:
Anti-War Movement Successfully Pushes Back Against Military Confrontation With Iran

So anyway, this blog was becoming a useless bunch of chaotic information, I cleaned it all up. In the future I'll go on with my "actions" in a more structured, planned way. And they'll probably be more long-term stuff...

I don't think anything will happen with Iran at least until August and if it happens, it'll probably happen very unexpectedly, so I won't be able to do much until that point. I'll concentrate my efforts mostly into other subjects for now...

By the way, this new post can also play the role of an introduction to this blog. This here is the video where I borrowed the phrase "Intelligent Pursuit of Self-Interest" from:

Robert Wright: How cooperation (eventually) trumps conflict