(image courtesy of The Ethical Nag)

Just how much are physicians influenced by pharmaceutical reps bearing gifts? It’s a question recently posed in this report on Medscape, based on posts at a physician-only discussion group.

The original question seems simple enough: “Are you influenced by the ads on paper and pens?” It was asked by a family physician in a recent posting on Medscape’s Physician Connect (MPC).

What follows are several indignant responses from fellow physicians about how they could not be bought with coffee mugs or pens, “or any other gift worth only pennies at best.”

Others disagree, and the doctors debate the relative merit of the current system, with some of them acknowledging that they rely on Pharma for their continuing education:

Still other physicians argue that there is a benefit to having drug reps visit the office with samples and gifts. A urologist says, “Shutting your doors to the pharma world is limiting your exposure to new meds, new applications of old meds, and the changing patterns of insurance coverage.”

A general practitioner agrees, “How [else] would you make yourself aware of new drugs that have arrived on the scene? Read the ads in journals? Where would you get the details you need to know about the drug? How long would it take before you became aware of what’s new? When you have a question about a drug, if there were no samples and no package inserts to view, what resource would you use?”

The cost for this pharma-funded continuing education delivered to the front door of physicians’ practices?

Indeed, a meta-analysis published in JAMA in 2000 found that the estimated $8000-$13,000 spent per year on each physician does affect prescribing and professional behavior.^[1] A small study published in the International Journal of Health Services in 2009 suggested that patients, too, are aware of the pharmaceutical gifts that doctors receive.^[2] Furthermore, researchers found that patients’ approval of gifts was related to the perceived value of the gift to patients as well as its monetary value.

Eight to 13 thousand dollars, per physician, per year?   That’s a lot of pens and coffee mugs.

Articles like these reinforce for me that what is being called “health care” in the United States is nothing more than “medicine peddling”. Medical training for doctors is all about… well, medicine, which is not the same thing as health. So why are doctors referred to as “health care providers” when their training and practice is so limited and narrow?

If you need a drug, visit your doctor. If you need help improving your health, find a healer. Hint: they are not listed in your “health” insurance provider directory.

I recently unboxed some of the early media accounts of my life as an openly gay AIDS activist in Kansas City.  The very first words in the very first article ever written about me as an activist proclaim:  “Jon D. Barnett is an angry young man.”

That anger served me well as fuel for many years of social activism, though it ultimately took a toll in burnout and poor health.

Nearly ten years later, when I was diagnosed as HIV-positive, my world tail-spinned and I withdrew socially for nearly a decade.  The anger that once drove me was now directed internally against an invisible—and supposedly invincible—enemy.

It was only after the life-changing experience of quitting all pharmaceutical drugs in 2007 that I began to work my way out of my drug induced, self-imposed exile.

While questioning the wisdom of committing to a lifetime of AIDS drugs may be controversial, it is not crazy and there is definitely no malicious intent in telling my story.  I simply cannot have the life experiences I have had and keep them to myself.

One would think from some of the reactions I’ve gotten from readers, viewers and even personal friends lately that I am trying to hurt people, though nothing could be further from the truth.

A couple of weeks ago, as I sat across the table from a friend I’ve known for decades, I felt his hurt and his anger as he challenged me for suggesting that it may not be necessary for everyone to take ARVs for life to survive a positive HIV diagnosis. There is more to his story. His partner had just been brought back from the brink of death a few months ago after starting HAART.  He was a real-life example of the “Lazarus” effect.

Never mind that it takes HIV ten years or more to cause symptoms, ARVs are credited with restoring health in just a few months! I did not have adequate answers for all of my friends’ questions, nor did I feel that was my job.  What was important was that we discovered that we shared many of the same questions, though getting there took quite a bit of effort to overcome the misdirected anger and hurt first.

On my youtube page I have posted a video about the LOTTI study, which found that many positive people can successfully quit their drugs for long periods of time, and possibly even permanently. (I also blogged about the LOTTI study here). The video has received comments from some people involved in “AIDS education”, including a poz man from Portland, Oregon.

In a comment he has since deleted, youtuber gbfowler was apparently frightened enough by the notion of some people choosing to try a drug-free alternative path to recover their health that he felt compelled to counter the message of hope I had presented, warning others who might stumble upon the video that my views are “extreme” and that “99 percent of HIV docs and researchers disagree with [me].”  Of course, he is right on both accounts, but the question begs:  why did he feel it was so important to warn others of the obvious?

Yes, it made me angry that someone who makes their living pushing drugs onto other gay men would express only fear about any scientific information that offers hope to tens of thousands of gay men—many of them otherwise healthy—who are facing, or have already embraced a lifetime of chemotherapy.

Talk about extreme and dangerous ideas!

The gay community has developed a myopic view of AIDS in the last few decades, thanks in no small part to massive, well-funded marketing and “education” campaigns designed to convince us that we must give up natural sexual intimacy and instead embark on a lifetime of chemotherapy.  Self-funded, actually, as the  largest non-governmental supporters of most AIDS organizations in the U.S.—pharmaceutical companies—invest in these (marketing) agencies with their profits from AIDS patients, the vast majority of whom are gay men.

Why in the world would I want to challenge this image of the modern pill-popping, disease ridden, latex wrapped gay man?! (sarcasm, for those who need to be told).

Talking to a television reporting at an ACT UP/KC demonstration outside the FDA, demanding faster access to AIDS drugs, circa 1989.

Despite what some gay men seem to think, I am not the enemy and if my story or my writing makes some of you feel that I am, it may be a good indication that our communal psyche has been fucked with.  I have a long history of fighting for my community. I will continue to fight for gay men until they put my ashes in the ground, which I hope will be a few more decades yet.

There was a time when I organized die-ins to demand faster access to unproven drugs.  I picketed the Circle K convenience store that denied health insurance to a PWA—by myself—before founding ACT UP in Kansas City. I ran the first campaign as an openly gay candidate for city council.  I co-founded the organization that worked to pass a gay rights law in Kansas City, served as regional editor of one of the largest lesbian and gay news publications in the Midwest, and have received recognition for leadership in my community.

I realize that all of this must sound boastful, and yes, I am proud of my life and my accomplishments.  My point though is that I have a lifetime record of promoting and advancing the gay community, not hurting it.

Covering an ACT UP demonstration for the News-Telegraph, a regional gay newspaper,  in the early 1990s.

I have paid my dues and I have earned my props.  I am not only entitled to share what I’ve discovered since my own HIV-diagnosis in 1998, I am obligated to do so.  I have faced down threats to my safety, to my livelihood and to my health.

I am appalled and distressed by the lemming-like behavior of my own community and wonder why and when did we stop challenging the establishment?  I do not stand in judgment of others, because it is obvious I have been a lemming in the past too.

I will spend the next stage of my life trying to advance a new message to the gay community.  We cannot accept the current terms of the Final Solution, as spelled out by one of the largest segments of the U.S. economy—the pharmaceutical industry and its allies in government and social agencies.

Are we really for sale so cheaply?

I am constantly rethinking my views and my beliefs, and I assume others do so as well. When I was a  teenager, I had a religious experience in the Jesus movement commonly referred to as “born again.” When I came out of the closet as a gay man a few years later, I was born again. Again. Since then I have been reborn more times—mentally, spiritually and emotionally—than I can count, and I hope I continue to be open-minded to new ideas and ways of thinking and believing.

I did not come to this place called AIDS dissidence easily or smoothly.  It is not a particularly fun or easy place to be.  It is not even really a place at all.  It is more like an anti-place… a not-place to be.  It is all of the space that exists outside of the AIDS meme.  (Note:  the link may be irreverent, but it does a good job of capturing just a few of the reasons I refer to a “meme” here.)

Lately I find myself struggling to find ways to break through the (fear of) death culture that has snared the gay community the last few decades. Not since I was a teenager have I felt so alone and lonely in how I think and how I feel. Unlike those years, thanks to the Internet I have managed to make contact with a handful of gay men who walk a similar path.

The anger in my life has never completely subsided, it has just morphed into a different form of energy as I’ve learned to co-exist with it in ways that do not consume me.  I hope I have learned to conserve my energy and to focus it more intensely where it is needed, as I no longer wish to be a flamethrower, preferring to strive instead to be a torch.

That some people find my words and my work to be dangerous and threatening is reason enough for me to keep thinking and writing and speaking out. I am not trying to burn down the house; I am trying to cut the lock off the prison door.

That is exactly what happened this weekend though.

There is a page on my blog called “the graveyard”, a list of dead friends that I published as a response to those who claimed that every time an AIDS dissident died it was because they chose to not take the so-called “AIDS cocktail” of drugs.

The graveyard includes this photo montage I created of eight close friends who died while faithfully taking their ARVs.

As you can see, I’ve superimposed a skull-and-crossbone image over their faces to make a statement about the lethal effects of the drugs they took.

Provocative?  I hope so.  Shocking?  Maybe to some.  Disrespectful?  Never.  This is a graphic illustration intended to make a point.  I admit I was nervous when I first posted it and have even taken it offline for brief periods.  I have living friends who also knew these friends.  What would they think?  So far, not a single one of them has protested to me about the imagery, even though I’m sure some of them disagree with me.

A couple of days ago J Todd DeShong, a blogger apparently supported by Baylor Health Care System of Dallas, decided to repost this image out of its original context to attack me.  DeShong’s blogspot blog has a notorious reputation for posting some of the most vile and malicious commentary about publicly identified AIDS dissidents to be found on the web.

If it was disrespectful for me to create a photo montage of friends I had partied with and known intimately, what does one call the action of a person who did not even know them to repost this image as part of a slimy personal attack?

The first word that comes to mind is copyright infringement, something DeShong apparently has no regard for.  Even the lamest blogger knows that when one lifts an image from another site, it must be attributed with a link back to the original source so readers can view it in its original context.  Deshong has denied me that basic right, even though I’ve politely requested it.

That is the least of my concerns though.

J Todd DeShong: you can call me any name you’d like; you can continue to lie about my disability status and sources of income; you can continue to misrepresent my involvement in the creation of the Questioning AIDS website; you can claim I tried to cost you your job, even though it was you who violated your company’s policy.

But, by defiling the graves of people who have nothing to do with our disagreement, you have shown just how despicable and shameless you really are.

Anyone reading your blog, and the comments of your supporters will see you for the sad, miserable creature you are.  I don’t hate you, but I do pity you.

Many of my dissident friends will probably wish I had not made this post, and perhaps it is a mistake to do so, but my friends’ memories won’t permit me to remain silent.

DeShong really is a bit player in the AIDS dissident debate.  His blog barely shows up in any rankings, and my post will only help give him more attention, something he obviously craves.

On the other hand, DeShong is popular with some of the leaders of the anti-AIDS dissident movement, including “snout”, “poodlestomper”, and he is now best friends with Seth Kalichman and other AIDS cheerleaders who are single-mindedly devoted to discrediting and smearing anyone questioning AIDS dogma.  They love his style and support him with frequent comments.

Those who are following the AIDS dissidence issue from the sidelines would do well to read DeShong’s blog and even more importantly, the comments from his fellow “anti-denialists”.

While a debate should stand on its own merits, it never hurts to discern the personas behind the arguments as well.

David Rasnick, PhD:
Do ARVs Save Lives? The raw data

Rethinking AIDS Conference
November 6-8, 2009
Oakland, CA

Well, I did, and it was a very enlightening opportunity to observe the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of corporate America and our so-called “health care” system.

My job was to parse data.  By parse, I mean to find a way to make the business look as good as possible.

For example, when we needed to address a RFI (request for information) concerning the rate of mammograms for our members, I might be able to increase the percentage by slightly shifting the age range used.  “Women over age 45” might yield one number, while “women over age 50” another, and “women aged 45-60” yet another. Then the marketing person responsible for answering the question could pick the number that looked best and simply respond, “based on the data available to us…” or some such phrasing.

Because of this background, I quickly notice data that seems to have been manipulated to support a particular point of view, and such is the case with the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) website’s user ratings for the AIDS documentary House of Numbers.

What is “weighting”?

Weighting is the name of a process often used by pollsters to compensate for shortcomings in their polling data due to methodology. It is a complicated subject and prone to errors, because it inevitably requires that assumptions be made.

A very simple example of the need for weighting might be a telephone survey of consumer purchasing habits. Weighting might be required to compensate for those consumers who do not have telephones and therefore can’t participate in the survey as it is designed, for example.  It is common practice to use weighting in political polling to compensate for gender imbalances.

Here is how the National Council on Public Polls puts it:  “For example, men and women vote differently. Gender is correlated with vote. If we weight the sample to reflect the correct proportions of men and women in the population we will improve the results.”

Weighting can be good, but it is not without risks.

Unbalanced weighting skews results

I recently came across a poll result that was so astoundingly affected by weighting that it raised some red flags to me about the methodology used.

House of Numbers is a very controversial documentary that challenges the conventional theory about HIV and AIDS by talking directly to the discoverers of the alleged virus, as well as top AIDS researchers and policy makers around the world.  Needless to say it has thrown the AIDS establishment into a damage control tizzy that includes a coordinated campaign to discredit the film and its producer, Brent Leung.

It is obvious from the raw voting data below that there is no middle ground when it comes to supporters or detractors who find their way to IMDb to cast their vote.  More than 93% of the voters rated the movie either a 10 or a 1, and there are zero middle-of-the-road votes (data as of 02/12/2010).

It is understandable that IMDb has felt compelled to devise a weighting system  to prevent “vote stuffing” that might unfairly skew the results of new movies:

IMDb publishes weighted vote averages rather than raw data averages. Various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at ‘vote stuffing’ by individuals more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it.

I propose that the “ballot stuffing” IMDb is trying to weight for usually comes from movie supporters, such as directors, cast and supporters trying to boost their movie’s rating.  It may be effective for that and it is even possible that this is happening with some of the favorable votes for HON.

What IMDb’s secret algorithm does not seem to take into account however, are organized detractors, opposed to the message of this controversial movie.  Vested interests that are the focus of unflattering documentaries have a lot of resources to try to stack the deck to sink such movies.

Similarly controversial films, like Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, or Michael Moore’s Sicko may have been such targets as well.

Unlike HON, these movies do not have that glaring  donut hole of no votes for any intermediate ratings.  There is also the matter of volume of votes.  HON has 135 votes to date, compared to tens of thousands votes for Sicko and hundreds of thousands for Inconvenient Truth.  These differences alone probably help make the IMDb algorithm work better.

There is no way a casual observer knows how IMDb is weighting this kind of anti-movie reverse vote stuffing:

The exact methods we use will not be disclosed. This should ensure that the policy remains effective. The result is a more accurate vote average.

I would argue that the secret algorithm used by IMDb probably does not take into account organized attempts to stifle a controversial documentary that negatively impacts those naysayers’ own industry, prestige and livelihood.

The actual average ranking for House of Numbers, based on raw votes without weighting, would be 9.37, not 2.8 as stated on IMDb.  That’s a big difference.  A difference that begs to be re-evaluated.  Even IMDb acknowledges that the arithmetic mean is 7.0, which is also a far cry from the IMDb user rating of 2.8.

Appropriate weighting requires that analysts consider all possible factors that might skew the numbers.  There is no doubt a need to consider the influence of supporters trying to promote this film, but it is equally important to consider the fact that there is a significantly passionate group of detractors who are trying to disproportionately discredit this film.

My partner Michael is taking a class to get his EMS (Emergency Medical Services) certificate. One of the course requirements is that he get a series of Hepatitis B vaccinations.

Because we were concerned that this or one of the other mandatory vaccinations could result in a falsely positive reaction to the Gallo antibody test result (aka HIV test) in the future, Michael made the difficult decision to have that test done before getting any vaccinations.

Michael has not tested in many years and until now has always tested negative when he did.  If his status were to suddenly change after a Hep B vaccination, he wanted to have as reasonable a point of reference as is possible with these flaky and poly-reactive tests.

The medical staff at the suburban clinic he goes to actually tried to discourage Michael from HIV testing, despite knowing he is gay and has been in a long term relationship with a poz man.

The reasons the medical staff gave to not take a HIV test? First, it wasn’t included on the school’s list of required tests and vaccinations and secondly, they cautioned him that a positive result could cause him a lot of problems with his insurance and employment!

Concerns about the possibility of a cross-reaction due to the vaccinations if he was ever tested later in life were summarily dismissed.

When the clinic finally accepted the fact that Michael still wanted the test done, they first made him read and sign several papers, including a 2-page “patient consent form”, initialing 14 points.

Here are the first two points in that form, posed as questions & answers:

WHAT IS AIDS?
Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is caused by a virus(HIV) that destroys the body’s ability to fight infection.

WHAT IS HIV?
HIV is a virus which is the cause of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

There is no reason to go further down the list of points in the informed consent form because one cannot escape the circular reasoning of the answers to the first two questions that are the basis for everything that follows.

Circular reasoning is an attempt to support a statement by simply repeating the statement in different or stronger terms.  In this fallacy, the reason given is nothing more than a restatement of the conclusion that poses as the reason for the conclusion.  To say, “You should exercise because it’s good for you” is really saying, “You should exercise because you should exercise.”

It shares much with the false authority fallacy because we accept these statements based solely on the fact that someone else claims it to be so.  Often, we feel we can trust another person so much that we often accept his claims without testing the logic.  This is called blind trust, and it is very dangerous.  We might as well just talk in circles.

None of this is new information to most of us who have been questioning the HIV/AIDS paradigm for any length of time, but I was surprised nonetheless that the AIDS orthodoxy hasn’t done a better job of covering their tracks for sloppy science from the very beginning.  After all, BigPharma’s army of drug pushing sales representatives taking up valuable space in these clinics’ waiting rooms and the doctors’ schedules could be mobilized to provide some straight answers.

If there had any.

You could no longer climb the stairs in your home without dropping to your hands and knees, and could only come back down by crawling backwards?

Do you remember the times you came out of unconsciousness to see the faces of friends and loved ones hovering over you with concern… no, panic in their eyes because you had dropped to the ground, started trembling and speaking in tongues, and your eyeballs rolled up in your head until only the whites of your eyes were visible?  Worse yet was the time you came to, laying in a snow bank in the back yard, staring at the stars in the night sky, with no one else around at all.  You had seized on your way in from the garage.

How can you forget the strange look in people’s faces as you sss—tt—u—tt—ered every word to the point that you were nearly unintelligible?  Other times you struggled to find even the simplest word to express your needs.

You must remember how your hands were unable to guide a fork or a spoon to your mouth as you ate and food ended up on your cheek, or up your nose instead? When they weren’t misguiding your food, your hands would simply rest on the edge of the table and tremble.

Remember the overwhelming sense of panic you would experience upon entering the brightly lit and noisy Costco store?  Sensory overload you called it.  Or “rockin’ and rollin’”.  You wouldn’t stay long at the family holiday gathering either, for fear of stepping on, or tripping over noisy, distracting kids.

Congnitive dysfunction, you were told.  Neurological problems. Advanced aging.  Multiple autoimmune disorder syndrome (MAS, but you called it MAD). These were just some of the general diagnoses you got from medical specialists across the country, from San Francisco to Denver to Chicago and back home to Kansas City.

You only now remember some things about those times, though details are still often difficult to recall. Fortunately, you kept most of your records, though their organization leaves much to be desired.

The neuro-psychiatrist in Chicago ordered an MRI of your brain in April, 2006:

IMPRESSION:

1. There is slight generalized atrophy with nonspecific periventricular signal alteration. The signal can certainly be related to HIV or perhaps CMV. PML can give this appearance as well. There are no obvious enhancing mass lesions of any sort. (emphasis added)

2. There are inflammatory changes in the left maxillary antrum.

“AIDS-related dementia”, the shrink told you, just because one day you tested positive on an antibody test developed using fraudulent research by the now-discredited Dr. Robert Gallo.  A test that can return a positive result for dozens of other reasons.  A test developed from the cellular debris of hundreds of unhealthy gay men in the 1980s, most of whom did not even have symptoms of AIDS.  A test that went through a process that might be compared to making sausage and then sending it to a dry cleaner for a chemical bath.

(Note: the past is written third person for a reason, but now that we’re back in real time I’m going to switch back to first person.)

If my diagnosis of probable early stage HIV-associated dementia in April 2006 was correct, there is no way in hell I would be writing this today.  That’s just not how progressive dementia manifests itself, whether it is HAD, or PML (a lovely condition, google it) or Altzheimer’s.  It’s progressive… that means it gets worse, not better.

These various explanations were given to me by the same physicians who prescribed the two dozen pharmaceutical drugs I took in 2006.  Every one of them received a copy of my then-current med list.  (Regular readers know that I quit all pharmaceutical drugs in 2007 and now take only 1 or two prescription drugs required to manage recurrent DVT blood clots until I find a better solution.)

Now a study from Wash U in Saint Louis and UC San Diego admits that AIDS drugs must be responsible for the “premature aging” of brains in “HIV-positive” patients. Despite this likely cause, study authors perform contortions to try to blame the virus instead.

For one thing, despite this being a study of “long term” effects, which surely means that most of the patients must be on some form of antiretroviral therapy and probably dozens of other drugs for side effects and other symptoms, the authors never specifically address the numbers of patients taking drugs.

Secondly, they dismiss the use of traditional, and therefore comparative means of measuring cognitive function used for Altzheimers studies, claiming that HIV-populations are poorer, have less time on their hands (or brains), and the lack of testing sites.

Huh?  OK. Whatever.

Instead they perform advanced MRI scans on patients brains to study blood flow.  Now, that’s got to save some money, right?

The researchers go on to perpetuate a myth (which is what I call a debunked theory) that the HI virus crosses the blood brain barrier and pisses on the machinery there because the ARVs can’t follow it.

Another report on these symptoms of advanced aging in poz people, published a few months ago in New York magazine, was more honest:

But in many cases of dementia, there are no signs of viral activity around the brain, suggesting other factors may be at play. At the Manhattan HIV Brain Bank at Mount Sinai, researchers have dissected the skull contents of 250 volunteers who agreed to a series of psychological interviews and neurological exams, then promised to hand over their brains at death. (One is the gift of Fred Gormley, a felicitous writer who toiled with me years ago at the now-defunct New York Native; he wrote about his life as a brain donor before his death from AIDS complications in 2002.) According to Dr. Susan Morgello, who directs the lab, most people who showed signs of dementia while alive do not have evidence of HIV in their autopsied brain. What they do have in common, she says, is evidence of persistent inflammation, which alone could account for the cognitive damage.

(Read more: Why a Number of HIV Patients Are Aging Faster — New York Magazine http://nymag.com/health/features/61740/index3.html#ixzz0dNXmDa8o)

So what else might explain the symptoms of advanced aging?  “The inflammation might be caused as much by the patient’s emotional and psychiatric burden as the virus’s pathological course,” says Dr. Susan Morgello, director of the above mentioned brain bank.

Sounds reasonable to me.  I’m a big believer that the cause of most illness and disease is multi-factoral. Looking for a single causative agent can be counterproductive.

How are the effects of environmental toxins factored into this research?

Better yet, what about the effect of pharmaceutical drugs?  More than any other factor, this is the most probable common denominator for people with AIDS and other chronic diseases. Similar brain aberrations are also common in patients with lupus, MS and other auto-immune disorders.

Most problems caused by medication are cumulative.  People can generally handle a week or two of antibiotic treatment and either avoid serious effects, or quickly rebound from them, for example. The fast pace of drug development demanded by AIDS activists (including me) in the 1980s means long term trials have never been conducted and we are only now seeing some of the worst, cumulative effects and interactions.

Regrettably, AIDS research is so entrenched in the theory of HIV causation and the notion that ARVs can control viral replication that other possible (and rather obvious) causes of symptoms are not even examined.

I opened this post with some descriptions of my life a few years ago.  Today I walk without a cane; speak fluently; haven’t fallen since 2008; have had no seizures since 2007; and you would not be embarrassed to sit across the table from me while we ate a meal.  I still avoid Costco, but not just because of the bright lights.

I do not claim to be totally free of health problems.  I still experience considerable fatigue, for example, and have a nasty habit of throwing blood clots in my left leg. Considering the likely damage of several years of pharmaceutical abuse, I’m lucky I don’t have worse problems I suppose.

One person’s experience does not make for a clinical trial, but it shouldn’t be ignored either, and there are others who can testify to similar experiences.  Nor is it just about HIV and AIDS research. I remember sharing an IV infusion (vitamins and nutrients) room with a woman several years my senior who has successfully treated her cancer for decades without chemo or radiation.  It does happen.

A sneaky, mutating virus that can evade the electron microscope was not the cause of my cognitive and neurological problems.  Those problems started after I began taking a lot of prescription drugs and greatly resolved after I quit them.

Anyone care to study that proposition?

Once in a while I come across a piece of writing that resonates so closely with my own experiences that I want to say “I wish I had written that”.

Carl Stryg wrote just such an essay recently, published at The Truth Barrier, a website founded by journalist Celia Farber. From the first paragraph, Stryg has me hooked:

I, personally, have lost count of the friends who I have watched shrivel-up and die over the years — all of them so young — since this dark, bewildering cloud of sickness blew into all of our lives. I feel shell-shocked and exhausted from the sheer numbers. Looking back, I think death stopped meaning anything to me years ago.

Like Stryg, I lost dozens of friends and probably hundreds of acquaintances in the 1980s and 1990s.  My entire extended family of gay men was decimated and I withdrew from the endless grief of funerals and memorial services as much as possible.

Every one of these friends died in their 30s, which makes the notion of 10+ year incubation periods and life-extending drugs pretty unbelievable.  I’ve posted a listing of some of the dead on a page of my blog I call “the graveyard“.  All but one of them faithfully took their anti-retrovirals, including the highly touted protease inhibitors when those became available.

Johnny Gutierrez

The one exception that I know of, a sweet and lovable young friend named Johnny Gutierrez, was an alcoholic and addicted to crack and gawd only knows what else.  Johnny tried to take his AIDS drugs until the free health clinic denied him prescriptions due to “non-compliance”.

Johnny was haunted by his diagnosis and was terrified of a living death, which is exactly how his life ended, his spiritless body kept alive by machines at Truman Medical Center for more than 48 hours because his family didn’t want to pull the plug on Valentine’s Day.

Stryg addresses the conflict I feel about people taking ARVs to treat minor health problems seemingly associated with a positive test result on the polyreactive Gallo antibody test (aka the AIDS test):

One thing is absolutely clear to me: I have never met even one HIV positive person who felt healthy whose quality of life was improved by HIV drugs. What benefit there may be is certainly limited to those very near death, in my experience.

Where Stryg really lets loose is when he addresses the reaction of the mainstream AIDS establishment to anyone who questions the current state of knowledge about this disease or options for treating it.  Their use of the term “denialist” to describe us, for example.  Instead of engaging in honest and transparent dialogue, some of those who make a living promoting pharmaceutical-backed theories resort to historically obvious propaganda techniques of discrediting questioners by villifying and ostracizing them.

Funny how AIDS reappraisers who ask for transparency and dialogue, or warn of the shortcomings or dangers of HIV treatments are accused of causing unnecessary AIDS deaths. Strange that when someone dies after years of choosing not to take HIV drugs, fingers are immediately pointed at the AIDS denialists. And yet, when a patient dies after 2 or 6 or 12 years on HIV treatments, the AIDS Police speak of the extra few years treatment ‘gave’ the patient. Curiously, these self-described ‘life-savers’ accept no responsibility for those who died from high-dosage, experimental AZT monotherapy in the 1980’s, or those whose entire skin ‘detaches’ while on AIDS drugs like Nevirapine. I don’t see them clamouring to confess their guilt. I hear no cries of ‘Murderer’! I guess it’s just collateral damage to them. ‘We did our best’. So one-sided. So self-serving. Well. It seems their Ivory Towers are built much higher than I ever imagined.

The main point Stryg is trying to make is summed up nicely near the end of his essay, which I hope you take the time to go read in full:

Frankly, in the end, I really, really don’t care what causes AIDS. I just want people to stop suffering and dying from whatever it is… Looking at the pathetic, toxic fruits of HIV research, is it any wonder people look beyond it for help? Perhaps the AIDS Police shout so shrilly to distract us from their shame at having failed to cure even one patient in 25 years? Can you imagine the fuss if Cancer research had failed to yield a cure for even one case? Can you even imagine? In my view these people have nothing to brag about and shouldn’t be pointing fingers at anyone. They might more appropriately beg forgiveness for their massive failure. These are the same people who trumpeted to the world that there would be a Vaccine by 1990. I don’t know about your friends, but my friends are still dying.

Please click here to read the entire essay at The Truth Barrier.

According to the AIDS mantra, penetrative sex without latex is the highest risk behavior for transmission of the HI virus. Yet, a recent study from the University of Florida–a state with a greater than usual interest in the sexual behavior of seniors–claims that chemically induced erections do not lead to this very same risky behavior.

Researchers reviewed data from another study of more than 2,500 aging military veterans being conducted by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Health Administration. More than half of those participants are known to test positive on the Gallo antibody test (aka “AIDS” test).

Of the 28% of men who took prescription erectile drugs, such as Viagra and Cialis, ten percent engaged in “unsafe” sexual behavior, which about the same percentage reported among the men not taking drugs.

Despite the headline on the press release announcing the study’s findings: “UF study: Prescribed erectile dysfunction drugs don’t lead to risky sexual behavior”, there were some interesting caveats in the study itself. According to the report’s authors for example:

Men were more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior if they consumed alcohol over recommended amounts, had sex with other men or used cocaine.

This is a pretty important observation, considering the highest risk groups for positivity are MSM (men having sex with men), with drug users a close second. It is hard to understand (no pun intended) how inflating otherwise limp penises could not possibly increase transmission… unless, of course there is a flaw in the sexual transmission theory in the first place.

Back to the motive for conducting this particular study in the first place. The report goes out of its way to diss previous studies showing an increase of “risky” sexual behavior by those taking ED drugs because:

“Previous studies have linked erectile dysfunction drugs to risky sexual behavior, but nearly all of those studies have evaluated the behavior of men who obtained erectile dysfunction drugs without a prescription or were already known to be at high risk, such as men who have sex with men, or men who have substance abuse problems,” said Cook, an associate professor in the department of epidemiology and biostatistics in UF’s College of Public Health and Health Professions.

At about $20 per pill, it is understandable why men interested in ED drugs might bypass their physician and the local pharmacy, especially when they can be purchased online for a fraction of the retail cost.

Suggesting that studies of men “already known to be at high risk” are somehow less relevant also seems pretty disingenuous at best, considering the long-threatened heterosexual AIDS epidemic never materialized.

Look, I’m not all that concerned about whether men take Viagra or not. Hell, I’ve experimented with it myself. What is maddening is how pharmaceutical-based research is conducted and promoted to advance the market share and bottom lines of bigPharma, regardless of the outcome on the public’s health. This particular study just caught my eye as yet another blatant abuse intended to increase the number of prescriptions written by doctors (see screenshot of the Viagra ad on Mayo Clinic’s website below).

Funding sources and potential conflicts of interest were not reported in the press release, but will hopefully be available when it is published in Journal of General Internal Medicine next month.

Viagra for sale at Mayo Clinic

Antibiotics and MRSA

That country embarked on a campaign 25 years ago to eradicate MRSA (antibiotic resistant staph infection) which has proven remarkably successful. A key component of that campaign: cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.

This doesn’t surprise me one bit. I have read so many accounts of the damage caused by many pharmaceutical drugs, especially antibiotics and ARVs (anti-retroviral drugs) to the gut, a major player in our immune systems.

I am not surprised, because I have experienced antibiotic abuse and an infection with MRSA myself, before I became aware of the dangers of western medicine’s love affair with all things pharmaceutical. I have spent months at a time on antibiotics earlier this decade, battling an infection that didn’t have to happen in the first place, according to the AP report linked above.

MRSA infections are taking far more lives in the US, Japan and Europe than AIDS and unlike “HIV-infections”, MRSA rates are growing at truly epidemic proportions, up from 2 percent in 1974 to 63 percent in 2004. MRSA is also lethal, causing 19,000 deaths each year in the U.S. alone.

Obstacles to stopping a killer disease

There is so much more information in this article that I’d like to just copy and paste, but I leave it to you to go and read it for yourself. I’ll simply post this one snip:

But can Norway’s program really work elsewhere?

The answer lies in the busy laboratory of an aging little public hospital about 100 miles outside of London. It’s here that microbiologist Dr. Lynne Liebowitz got tired of

seeing the stunningly low Nordic MRSA rates while facing her own burgeoning cases.

So she turned Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Kings Lynn into a petri dish, asking doctors to almost completely stop using two antibiotics known for provoking MRSA infections.

One month later, the results were in: MRSA rates were tumbling. And they’ve continued to plummet. Five years ago, the hospital had 47 MRSA bloodstream infections. This year they’ve had one.

It’s unlikely that we in the U.S. will ever see similarly spectacular results for some very obvious reasons.

Our medical system is disproportionately influenced by the large amount of money spent by the pharmaceutical industry; profit that is earned by inflating the costs of drugs beyond reason. Money that is shoveled out to medical schools, doctors and media marketing campaigns as part of a blatant campaign to influence, if not control medical decisions that benefit the corporate ledger, rather than the consumer’s health.

Secondly, the government agency responsible for oversight, the FDA, has become a haven for former pharma staffers who have become rubber stamp clerks, rather than the vigilant guardians we need.

Finally, we have become obsessed with curing disease with pills and injections. “Norwegians”, on the other hand, “are sanguine about their coughs and colds, toughing it out through low-grade infections,” according to the article.

Disease as markers of a broken medical system and the AIDS connection

MRSA is just one of many marker diseases that indicate a problem with our medical system’s misplaced faith in pharmaceutical drugs to treat illness.   I can’t resist highlighting a couple of more points that are especially relevant to the AIDS debate.

One of the most commonly cited diseases associated with, and probably misdiagnosed as, AIDS in Africa is tuberculosis. Treatment resistant TB is frequently blamed on the HI virus (HIV), yet:

The World Health Organization says antibiotic resistance is one of the leading public health threats on the planet. A six-month investigation by The Associated Press found overuse and misuse of medicines has led to mutations in once curable diseases like tuberculosis and malaria, making them harder and in some cases impossible to treat.

We have also seen similar problems with the use of ARVs in healthy people who test “positive” on vague antibody tests used to detect HIV.  Long term treatment leads to failure, which is dismissed by calling it “drug resistance” and additional drugs are imposed onto an already over-burdened  body and immune systems until the patient dies of systemic organ failure, especially of the liver and heart.

ARVs are also known to have strong antibiotic properties.  It is not unreasonable to assume there are similarly dangerous consequences associated with their use.

Many people with failing immune systems, especially gay men, have been victims of antibiotic abuse, one of the factors suspected of causing their illness.Those who were first diagnosed with immune failure in the early 1980s were the so-called “fast track” gays who lived dangerously close to the edge, pre-emptively popping antibiotics before stepping out to the baths and the bars.

When I first came out as a gay man, testing for STDs and treating them with antibiotics was just one piece of the rite of passage into the urban gay culture.

One plausible alternative explanation for what is now call AIDS, among gay men especially, has been offered by Tony Lance, who coined Gay Related Intestinal Dysbiosis, a must read for any gay man concerned about his health and probably good information for others with “poz” diagnosis as well.

If intestinal dysbiosis plays a causative role in AIDS, the obvious question is why in
the late ‘70s and early ‘80s would sizable numbers of gay men suddenly become afflicted with the condition to the point of becoming seriously ill and dying. In his papers Koliadin points to the widespread and sometimes prophylactic use of broad-spectrum antibiotics which destroy bacteria indiscriminately. Although these drugs undoubtedly played and continue to play a big role, there are other factors that deserve serious consideration.

I think next time I get an infection I will just have to pass on the doctor’s treatment of choice.

(hat tip to my sisters Merrilee and Diana for sending the AP article to me.)

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