{"article":{"id":113547,"heading":"The New Religion","author":"Gos","created":"2004-06-29 18:48:44","modified":"2005-08-15 02:58:48","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 09:58:48","article":"

Your Skeptics' Links page includes a serious omission of some serious

skeptics:

http:\/\/www.virusmyth.net<\/a>

I strongly encourage you to examine the facts about HIV and AIDS, and give

the subject the same sort of rigorous examination that you've given to the

existence of God. I am confident that you will be shocked to discover,

after such examination, that like God, HIV has never been proven to exist,

and in all probability does not exist.

You'll also be dismayed to find that science has, unfortunately, become yet

another religion.

This is particularly true of Western medicine. Prior to the 19th Century,

the masses of \"lay people\" were illiterate and ignorant of the Bible, and

were deliberately kept that way, so that the religious leadership could

maintain a position of power and economic advantage. Today, a \"layperson\"

is someone with little or no scientific training, and medical professionals

deliberately keep the lay public in ignorance of relevant medical facts, in

order to maintain their own lucrative and powerful positions in society.

They even go so far as to engage in the extensive use of Latin, just as the

Catholic Church once did, which serves the practical function of keeping

their \"congregation\" in a state of artificial incomprehension.

Applying this strictly to the \"science\" of HIV, and leaving the myriad of

other worthy considerations untouched, we find that the majority of

laypersons in Western society hold a great deal of faith in a virus that

they themselves have never seen, smelled, touched, tasted, or heard. This

in itself might be insignificant, if it weren't for the fact that this

belief is maintained despite the fact that scientists themselves have never

produced a single sample of purified virus to prove the existence of HIV,

in more than 20 years of the best-financed scientific research since

Christopher Columbus.

\"But wait a minute,\" you ask, \"if HIV has never been isolated or proven to

exist, just what are all these scientists studying in the lab?\" I'm glad

you asked. What they're studying, in their own words, are \"indirect

markers\" for HIV. Antibodies, \"viral\" protein fragments, and other such

manifestations are not actual virus, and do not constitute isolation.

The significance of this may not be immediately obvious, so I'll draw an

analogy for you: We cannot see the air (unless, of course, we live in Los

Angeles,) but we can feel the wind, and see its effect on trees and other

objects in our environment. The wind, therefore, constitutes an \"indirect

marker\" for the air that we cannot see.

However, in practice, indirect markers are far more slippery, because they

only point to something that we cannot directly sense; they do not tell us

exactly what that something is. For example, I'm sure you've seen the

illustrations in children's books, of the \"Cloud-man\" in the sky who makes

the wind blow -- usually portrayed as a giant cloud with a face, whose

cheeks are puffed to blow the wind. Does the demonstrable existence of

wind prove the existence of the \"Cloud-man\"? Of course it doesn't.

Air, however, while it cannot be seen, can be collected, studied, measured,

and even separated into its component gases, whose properties can be

demonstrated and independently confirmed. \"Cloud-man\" cannot. This,

therefore, is how we know that air exists, and that \"Cloud-man\" does not.

Having never been isolated, HIV cannot be collected, much less studied,

measured, or otherwise examined.

\"But what,\" you ask, \"of the HIV antibody tests and the highly-accurate

viral load PCR tests that are capable of counting individual viral

particles in a patient's blood?\" Again, I'm glad you asked, (and my but

aren't you full of intelligent questions today?) The only way to

corroborate the accuracy of an antibody test is to check it against the

presence or absence of the actual virus. The only way to do this is to

isolate the virus. Without isolation, it's entirely impossible to verify

the accuracy of any particular antibody test. This is why HIV tests all

come with disclaimers which state that the given test is not intended for

use as a sole diagnostic tool for HIV infection, and many come with a

disclaimer similar to the following: \"At present, there is no recognized

standard for determining the presence or absence of HIV-1 infection.\" Read

that again. It might as well say, \"For entertainment purposes only.\"

As for the viral load PCR tests, there's something very strange going on

here. The inventor of the PCR technique, Dr. Kary Mullis, who won the

Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993 for his invention of this highly-useful

scientific technique, is quite proud of its many legitimate uses. If you

visit his website, karymullis.com, you'll note that he extolls the many

uses of his invention, from the fields of archeology and anthropology to

the criminal forensic sciences. Yet, you'll note that nowhere in the site

does he make mention of the PCR technique's most common use: Measuring HIV

particles in the blood of AIDS patients. This is because Dr Mullis is not

proud of this particular use of his invention, because he sees it as

pseudo-scientific hokum.

In Dr. Mullis' own words, from the foreword of Dr. Peter Duesberg's book,

\"Inventing the AIDS Virus\":

\"We [Drs Duesberg and Mullis] 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.\"

Also, if the viral load PCR test were accurate at all, it could be used as

a sole marker for HIV infection, since those who didn't have HIV would

theoretically not have a detectable viral load. This, shockingly, is not

the case. In fact, it is the standard practice of physicians in the West

that viral load PCR tests are NEVER to be done on anyone who has not

already tested \"positive\" on the ELISA and Western Blot antibody tests. If

you ask your doctor about this, he'll tell you that this is because you

might show a viral load on the test, even if you were HIV-negative. The

same standards might easily be applied to \"test\" for the presence or

absence of Satan in a person's soul, with equally convincing results.

Since the \"discovery\" of HIV in 1984 by Dr. Robert Gallo (a \"discovery\"

whose history I encourage you to investigate for yourself, though I warn

you that you'll be appalled by what you find,) modern virology has

continually presented us with virus scares that have little, if any, true

scientific basis, and which defy the laws of virology and epidemiology:

HIV: Allegedly discovered by Dr. Robert Gallo, who previously had

\"discovered\" no fewer than two retroviruses that, in his opinion, caused

leukemia. Of these, one, HL23-V, has been proven nonexistent, and the

other, HTLV-1, has never been conclusively linked with leukemia. In 1994,

Dr Gallo was stripped of his patents for his \"discovery\", as it was found

that he'd actually stolen the work of Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur

Institute. Without missing a beat, Dr. Gallo changed his tune about HIV:

Suddenly, HIV by itself cannot cause AIDS, and needs another virus to act

as a \"co-factor\". Can you guess the name of Dr. Gallo's \"AIDS co-factor\"

virus? Why, it's our old friend HTLV-1, the virus that didn't cause

leukemia, resurrected as the new AIDS virus. What a coincidence that a

single scientist managed to \"discover\" both of the viruses that, in

combination, supposedly cause AIDS, and what greater coincidence that he

serendipitously discovered one of them before he'd even begun AIDS

research, and was still seeking the virus that causes leukemia. What are

the odds, huh? I guess that this must prove that there IS a God.

Curiously, AIDS \"experts\" commonly refer to AIDS as an \"epidemic\" or even a

\"pandemic\", despite the fact that statistics fail to support the use of

such words. Cambridge Dictionary defines \"pandemic\" as, \"(of a disease)

existing in almost all of an area or in almost all of a group of people,

animals or plants\". Globally, fewer than 1 out of every 1400 people are

estimated to be infected with HIV. This describes neither an epidemic nor

a pandemic. It is also worth noting that, according to the World Health

Organization, over 95% of all HIV cases reside in third-world countries

where the facilities necessary for diagnosing HIV infection are virtually

nonexistent, which, in turn, means that over 95% of all of the estimated

4.2 million HIV infections in the world cannot be either confirmed nor

disproven. Convenient, huh?

SARS: Supposedly an airborne coronavirus, and highly contagious. Despite

this, only a few isolated outbreaks have been reported, and only a few

cases in each outbreak have been \"confirmed\", by the same sorts of

standards whereby we \"confirm\" HIV infection. Worldwide, the SARS death

toll, even if we take the most pessimistic estimate, is so small that it

vanishes in the noise-floor of ordinary mortality. SARS also marks the

first time that viral \"isolation\" has been accomplished on a computer

screen rather than in a lab. All of the pictures that you've seen in the

news of the SARS virus are actually computer-generated graphics. To date,

there are no actual pictures of the SARS virus itself.

West Nile: Supposedly a mosquito-borne virus, this year's first cases in

America were reported only this past week, in Arizona and New Mexico, in

the month of May. I challenge you to find a single mosquito in either

state at this time of year. Last year, Colorado led the nation in West

Nile cases, despite the fact that Colorado is not known for its mosquito

population. Nearly 11% of the cumulative total of all West Nile related

deaths since the beginning of the \"epidemic\" occurred in Colorado in 2003.

Curiously, heavily mosquito-infested states like Louisiana and Florida seem

to have been more or less ignored by this supposedly mosquito-borne virus,

in favor of states like Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico.

Monkeypox: Viruses, by nature, tend to be cell- and species-specific. For

example, the common cold virus is incapable of infecting human brain cells,

or indeed, any cell other than the cells in the mucuous membranes of the

human upper respiratory tract, and it is also impossible for you to pass

your cold on to your dog or cat. Not so with Monkeypox, which seems to

indiscriminately jump from species to species with ease. The lay public is

largely unaware of this obvious conflict with the known laws of virology,

and the Chicken Little \"scientists\" who perpetuate the virus scare

blatantly ignore it.

Ebola, Marburg, etc.: About 10 years or so ago, the book \"Hot Zone\" and

the movie \"Outbreak\" treated the American public to the spectacle of the

next panic, which was to fill the void between the Cold War and the

terrorism threat: Killer viruses from Africa. Ebola, in particular, is

said to destroy connective tissue, dissolving internal organs, until the

victim becomes nothing more than a bag of blood and bones, and literally

explodes. Despite being allegedly highly-contagious, none of these

supposed viruses has ever presented a serious outbreak on the African

continent itself, and all have failed to spread elsewhere. Numerous

expeditions to the same regions of Africa that supposedly spawned these

viruses (including the AIDS virus), have unearthed zero in terms of clues

as to the origins of these alleged viruses, or how they manage to infect

humans.

What more do I need to convince you that science has replaced Christianity

as the religion of our times? Do you need fire-and-brimstone predictions?

We've got that, in the form of the numerous virus scares listed above.

Would you be convinced if you saw the orthodox leadership denouncing their

detractors as irresponsible and dangerous? It's been done. All we really

need, to make it official, is a case of Immaculate Infection.

...Oh, wait. What about Kimberly Bergalis, the Virgin Mother of

heterosexual AIDS? I'll leave it to you to discover the facts of that case

for yourself.

---Gos

http:\/\/www.aliveandwell.org<\/a><\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","summary":"The New Religion: "Science" \r\n("HIV" and other such nonsense...) \r\n\r\n***WARNING: sense of humor required!!*** \r\nCheck out this letter I wrote to EthicalAtheist.com:","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2004\/06\/chart_what_about_africa.jpg","filesize":"10.6 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2004\/06\/113547.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2004\/06\/chart_what_about_africa.jpg","small":"\/uploads\/2004\/06\/chart_what_about_africa.jpgthumb.jpg"}},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}