| | |

Note to gay community: Don’t celebrate World AIDS Day, Question it!

Byjonathan

facebook iconfrom my Facebook notes:

Question World AIDS Day

by Jonathan Barnett on Wednesday, December 1, 2010 at 4:45am

To my well intentioned and thoughtful friends—especially my gay friends—who are promoting World AIDS Day today:  There is nothing wrong at all with remembering friends and loved ones lost to AIDS, but please take off the self-imposed blinders that prevent us from being aware that AIDS is no longer just a disease.

AIDS long ago became a huge business… and a political/social construct that has evolved to benefit the pharmaceutical and medical industry complex far more than it benefits those Affected.  We helped make this so by passively accepting, and even embracing what was doled out to us.  World AIDS Day is little more than a thinly veiled marketing tool to glorify and sustain a self-perpetuating money machine.

While the institutionalization of AIDS originated in and is overwhelmingly supported by the Gay community, it is not and has never been “gay-friendly”.  It is a cancer that we should be trying to eradicate from our midst.  Not just the disease, but the business of wide scale poisoning of our youth and our elderly.

I’m sure that may sound wack to some of you, or you might be tempted to write me off as a conspiracy kook.  Please don’t.  I once led the effort to bring AIDS out of the closet decades ago, and I only wish I had asked harder questions then.  We were so terrified (terrorized?) that all we could think to do was demand drugs.  Too few of us bothered to question what we were doing and what we were demanding.

I have “AIDS”, but I have never benefited from the AIDS machine.  I am not alive 12 years later because of the drugs, but only because I quit the drugs.  What we have helped to build has not liberated us, but rather chained us and repressed us.  It’s time to dismantle AIDS and refocus our energies on the real causes of illness:  poverty, environmental degradation and quality of our food.  It’s past time to take personal responsibility for our health rather than just demanding new drugs.  It is time to neuter the profits that fuel the control of the pharmaceutical and medical industry over our elected officials.

We can start by refusing to participate in the marketing games like World AIDS Day.  At the very least, let’s restore it to a day of remembrance rather than a campaign to enlist more innocent people in the lethal ‘test and drug’ campaigns that only  benefit profiteers.

Since the beginning of the epidemic there have been questioners, rethinkers and skeptics challenging what has become the mainstream theory of AIDS.  We’re still here. Even if you’re not ready to join us, at least consider the evidence that has caused so many us to become AIDS dissidents.

http://www.questioningaids.com/

http://www.reducetheburden.com/

http://www.rethinkingaids.com/

http://www.hivskeptic.wordpress.com/

http://www.theperthgroup.org/

Wait... there's more!

  • 97

    97. That’s my latest CD4+ count, less than half the count from six weeks ago.

    That’s it. I have tried as many alternative treatments as I can think of to reverse the decline. I will be starting my third round of pharmaceutical ARVs as soon as I can get a prescription and fill it.

    This decision has been a long time coming, and in hindsight, I probably should have restarted a few months ago. There’s nothing magical about 97, or being below 100, but it’s as good a breaking point as any. I’ve long argued that there are two things to keep in mind about CD4 counts: one is the long-term trend; the other is single- or low double-digit counts.

  • Reduce AIDS drug toxicity and side effects

    I embarked on my third course of ARVs since 1998. For ten of the sixteen years I have been HIV-positive, I was able to manage well enough without ARVs and I continue to believe there is no reason for otherwise healthy HIV-positive—let alone negative—gay men to take these drugs. To those who want to wave a recent study about the benefits of early intervention in my face, I would ask them why they put so much faith in a science that has utterly failed us to date.

  • Retreat and Adventure — Midwest Men’s Festival

    When I received my HIV diagnosis in 1998, I withdrew from my community of gay men. I “went to ground”, thinking that isolation was the only safe place to avoid being criticized for seroconverting at such a late date, when we were all supposed to know better.

    This past week has been yet another bifurcation point in my life. I returned to a community I have known about, if not been a steady part of, for more than 30 years. A community of men whom I could touch and hug. Men whose tears might wet my face and whose body heat and life forces I could feel in ways that can only happen in person. It really did feel like coming home.

  • The truth about Truvada: PrEP won’t stop AIDS

    I’m willing to grant that gay men are entitled to use PrEP… provided they have access to all the information they need to make an informed decision. Informed consent has been a hallmark of the HIV and AIDS research and prevention efforts for three decades, and that shouldn’t be waived for the campaign favoring PrEP.

    Gay men deserve to know that all the claims for Truvada reducing the risk of acquiring HIV-positivity  are based on trials—funded by Gilead—that emphasized the importance of using condoms…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *