Dear Editor,
Dr. Schlang's knee-jerk reaction is just what needs to removed from the gay community. “AIDS Medicines (sic) themselves cause the symptoms of AIDS.” For her to become apoplectic upon reading a statement which comes from inside the package inserts of the drugs themselves (go ahead, read that paper that came with Crixivan) is absurd. The "HIV theory" of AIDS hasn't panned out. It's time for new theories to be allowed into the fray. The HIV tests do not indicate if a person is infected with HIV, though they may perhaps indicate some immune responses that should be addressed outside of the HIV-centric world view. Patients deserve to know the truth. The very idea that a retrovirus, which has never been properly isolated, has been proven to kill enough CD4+ T cells to cause AIDS all on it's own is totally flawed. At best, AIDS is a multi-factorial syndrome, so there is no need for the terrorism of the HIV=AIDS=DEATH diagnosis.

I can't thank the Gay and Lesbian Times enough for printing an ad that many people, like Dr. Schlang, would censor. You're opening the issue up to debate, and that is good news.

Billie

Upon reading information in the www.rethinkingaids public service announcement in the pride edition, that was aptly named "The AIDS Trap", "Doctor" Schlang declared that she was "apoplectic" (showing signs of a stroke) upon reading that HIV drugs can cause the symptoms of aids."

Why would this come as a surprise to her, considering that not even a single HIV drug has ever been tested against any placebo to see if they do anything useful at all, considering every aids drug has been approved via the broken FDA fast-track schedule with very little testing, considering that every single aids drug carries the FDA's strongest BLACK LABEL warnings for causing illness and death?

Obviously, the 'good doctor' does not bother to read such medical books as "The Physician's Desk Reference" before prescribing drugs to her patients. Here is what the PDR says about the aids drug AZT that is still given to many HIV positives in the "Aids Cocktail" drugs of Trizivir and Combivir:

"It was often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with zidovudine [AZT] administration from the underlying signs of HIV disease" - Physician's Desk Reference, 1994

Perhaps Dr. Schlang should consider gaining a moment of humility to understand that the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA is currently iatrogenic (doctor caused) death. Perhaps she should consider the importance of "informed consent" about things such as the deadly toxic effects of many AIDS drugs before encouraging the further poisoning of her gay brothers. Perhaps she should also consider the Hippocratic Oath, of "First, Do No Harm", before turning it into a "hypocritic oath" that many MD's have unfortunately, unwittingly, and foolishly turned the oath into in todays world. As for our dear lesbian sister, Doctor Schlang, "Ask your doctor" my ass! Doctors such as her are proving to often be the least informed and most misguided.

"I was apoplectic when I read, 'AIDS Medicines (sic) themselves cause the symptoms of AIDS.' It is the height of irresponsibility for such an ad to appear in any publication, especially a publication that is specifically targeted for the gay community.”

Indeed Dr Schlang, this is an oversimplification that should be withdrawn by these people.

It can indeed result in a greater harm in certain cicumstances with certain patients.

Gene Semon

Tens of thousands of gay men were betrayed and killed by high dose AZT...

Friends like HIV/AIDS doctors, researchers, journalists, and activists and testing false positive on the bogus HIV-tests are the biggest threat to the gay community. For the record, all positive results are false positives.

It is time to think outside of the vrus!

Billie -- This publication wasn't opening itself up to debate, it was maximizing ad revenue. The article could have been presented in a free form if it actually wanted to stimulate discussion. (It actually has been presented numerous times over numberous years.) I shared Dr. Schlang's initial reaction and phrased my objections to the publisher in the following letter that was not printed in this current edition:

Re: The AIDS Trap (GLT 7/16/09, pgs 66-67)
Why did you accept this two full-page ad that discourages people from getting tested for HIV, practicing safe(r) sex, and considering medical observation and potential drug treatment? It’s hypocritical to editorialize regularly on ethical stances, and then abandon ‘em when dollars approach. The 6,000 of us in San Diego County currently living with an AIDS diagnosis are alive – and relatively healthy – because we’re not in denial of science and research. It’s discouraging that you’d choose to devote the center-fold of your largest annual issue to a theory that (hypothetically) might have had some value being expressed in 1989, but has thoroughly been debunked globally in the intervening decade(s). Science doesn’t discount psychosomatic illness, or a placebo treatment effect. The leap from such an acknowledgement to discounting the role of HIV in damaging most immune systems is tantamount to a fundamentalist’s testimony that planet earth is but 6,000 years old! (Or did you consider printing that “fact” too, but advocates could only come up with enough money for a quarter page spread?)

Tom Wartelle

Anytime a scientist or doctor says that an article they disagree with should be censored, it is clear that they are not practicing science or medicine. The scientific method invites dissent and tries to "falsify" accepted theories instead of forbidding such challenges. It makes no more sense for Dr. Schlang to censor dissenting views on AIDS and its causation than it would have for dogmatic adherents of Newtonian Mechanics to censor Einstein's theories of relativity.

The statement "HIV causes AIDS" falls into the same category as the statement "Smoking cigarettes outdoors kills non-smokers."

It is not credible, and it reflects and underlying unspoken agenda.

In the case of "deadly second hand smoke," that agenda is simply to get people to stop smoking by telling lies about (or exaggerating) the effects of cigarette smoke on non-smokers in outdoor environments.

In the case of "HIV as the cause of AIDS," the agenda is to give empire building scientists at the National Institutes of Health exclusive control over the definition and diagnosis of AIDS, the funding of AIDS research, and the money making opportunities that such exclusivity represent in terms of patenting and selling "AIDS prevention and treatment."

Since I've owned this paper for the past 21 years I have used it as a vehicle to open up dialog. The first year this ad was purchased we wrote an editorial informing as many people as we could what "nuts" we thought they were. We've weighed in on this subject many times. We believe they are misguided and flat out wrong. The problem with freedom is that sometimes it's ugly. However wrong I may believe they are they have a right to express their opinion. It's not illegal to be stupid in the U.S. Since space is limited your letter could not run this week but will run next week as space allows. I hope you can appreciate our willingness to let dissenting voices be heard.

Please! "HIV" is not based on credible science, it has devolved into a fanatic faith. And those who worship at its' altar blindly are dead or soon will be.

Yes Micheal P., stupid is as stupid does.

The Retrovir (aka AZT, Azidothymidine, Zidovudine) product monograph from GlaxoSmithKline states "It was often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with administration of RETROVIR® (AZT™) from underlying signs of HIV disease or intercurrent illnesses."

Even though AZT is not used as much as it once was, it is still in many combination pills and, even when it is not present there are usually two drugs in the same class (nucleoside analog) in the HAART cocktail.

Michael Portantino deserves a lot of credit for his willingness to publish competing views on all subjects.

Tom said, "This publication wasn't opening itself up to debate, it was maximizing ad revenue." But Tom, this is a debate we are having right now, so I don't know what you mean.

The ideas put forth in that ad have not been "debunked" at all. That's the whole point. Silence by the major media for 25 years does not equal a scientific debunking. All it does is create a false consensus (by making it appear that there are no dissenting opinions). Consensus is not science, it is politics. It only takes one person to be right and a hundred thousand scientists can then be wrong. It's pretty simple really. Some of the dissenters are brilliant people who's contributions to society are felt everyday. Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis is a good example. He invented the method by which your viral load tests are done. If he calls it into question, why not at least listen to him?

Tom also said, "Why did you accept this two full-page ad that discourages people from getting tested for HIV, practicing safe(r) sex, and considering medical observation and potential drug treatment?" Actually, if you remove the "getting tested for HIV" from that sentence, everything else would still be advisable, judging from the content of that ad.

The HIV tests are flawed, which is easy to demonstrate and has never been debunked. The ELISA was never designed to be used as a diagnosis. The Western Blot "confirmatory" test supposedly confirms if a positive ELISA is a true positive, by testing for the same supposed antibodies. The proteins used in the tests are said to come from the blood of AIDS patients in the early 80s, and since it was ASSUMED that "HIV" was causing their illnesses, they took those proteins to be unique to some virus. But what if that assumption was wrong? Those patients had serious fungal and/or bacterial infections (of the respiratory tract) so maybe a positive HIV result indicates that you have similar infections. Wouldn't that be interesting, because those are most likely curable if treated properly?

Just some food for thought.

Why is it that I find those who believe that HIV is not the cause of AIDS to be about as zealous and wide-eyed as those who believe in the "theory" of intelligent design? Perhaps it's because they are, Blanche, they are?

And as far as there being "not even a single HIV drug has ever been tested against any placebo to see if they do anything useful at all" - how does that explain what happened to me in 2007? I developed resistance to my first combo, and had the highest viral load in about a decade. I then started on a new protease cocktail combo, and within a month, my t-cells were back up and my viral load was undetectable - it's been that way ever since.

Well?