Science without contradictions is not really science

A few days ago I wrote about just two recent media reports of contradictory scientific findings that try to explain how the human immune system works.  The point was that science does not yet have a unified theory concerning either the immune system, or even the very nature of viruses.  It is difficult to understand why anyone would want to argue against that premise.

Some folks seem to be so deeply mired in the world of AIDS that they are unable to rise above their peer-reviewed journals and view the world as a big picture.  This tunnel vision allows them to overlook, if not protest, all of the contradictions that are ever more likely to show up in the online media.

Reports like this one from the Journal of Medical Case Reports, via Medscape.  A 28-year-old Polish woman presented at a hospital with respiratory problems, rash and ulcerations, among other things.  Doctors were ready to presumptively diagnose “Human immunodeficiency virus seroconversion syndrome complicated by Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia” until a PCR test result came back negative.

The actual disease?  Measles!  I didn’t write the headline:  Measles Mimicking HIV Seroconversion Syndrome: A Case Report, a peer reviewed journal editor determined that from reading the research.

In this case, the misdiagnosis was caught in a modern European hospital, but what would the outcome have been in a less developed part of the world, or even in a rural or community medical clinic with less capability?

Then there is this Reuters report about a supposedly deadly link between salmonella and HIV in Africa.  That’s right, the bacteria typically responsible for food poisoning and the lethal HI virus.  According to this report, researchers are puzzled to discover that HIV-positive people with salmonella did not have a suppressed immune system, but rather an excess of antibodies to salmonella.

“It’s quite a surprise and it suggests that what we are dealing with here is more of a consequence of an immune disregulation as opposed to an immune deficiency per se,” said lead researcher Cal MacLennan of the University of Birmingham.

MacLennan’s  comment is spot-on consistent with the views of Dr. Heinrich Kremer, author of The Silent Revolution in Cancer and AIDS Medicine.  Kremer is a qualified and outspoken opponent of the use of anti-retroviral drugs and a critic of the HIV theory of causation of AIDS.

I approach scientific research as a layperson.  My interest is in taking the pulse of the current state of science, as presented in the media, including, but not limited to peer-reviewed journals.  My area of interest is obviously AIDS, which I have been intimately involved with since it was called GRID.

It doesn’t take a lot of research to find these reports.  Contradiction after contradiction parade across my screen these days, courtesy of Google Reader.  Inconsistent information about AIDS was also the norm in the 1980s and 90s, when the current mainstream theory was being manufactured by the virologists.

I simple share some of the more obvious contradictions here occasionally, as well as at QuestioningAIDS and then leave it to others to draw whatever conclusions they can from this litany of inconsistencies, particularly as it pertains to AIDS.

What is almost amusing is how some of the more rabid AIDS apologists protest my posts about these questions.  It’s kind of flattering to imagine they feel threatened, but I just don’t understand why anyone would think science is immune to contradictions. Historically, contradiction has been one of the essential engines for scientific advances.