There. I hope I’ve addressed your question. I am not well. I have never been well. But I continue to function.
I still do not see the correlation between HIV and my health; only a correlation in increased medical problems when I am taking the ARVs.
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.
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…
I could not help but feel a dark cloud lift when the news broke that Fred Phelps had finally died. I’m not particularly proud of that first reaction: one of relief and even something akin to happiness. I didn’t dance around the house right away, but after the news sank in, I admit I did pull up “Ding Dong, the wicked witch is dead,” by the munchkins.
Why would my reaction be considered hateful or negative? I think it was extremely human and natural, if not a bit disrespectful. Like I care if Fred knows I have zero respect for him?
I never imagined that Fred would die like this: alone in a hospice, rejected by much of his family, excommunicated from the cult/church he founded. I expected one of two different stories when his obituary was published.
Nearly four months after his death, and a couple of months after the “final” autopsy report was released, Gos Blank’s wife, Lisa, receive additional information in the form of a letter with the subject: “Supplemental Final Diagnoses”. According to this update, dated February 11, 2014, a stain revealed the “presence of multiple cup and/or boat shaped fungal cysts located within foamy amorphous matériai within the alveolar spaces which were characteristic of Pneumocystis jirovecii microorganisms.
The latest round of OAT, stool and conventional “HIV” surrogate test markers are in, and the news is mostly good. Regardless of which angle one looks at these laboratory test results from, there is evidence to support an evolving thesis that a multi-faceted approach to immune dysfunction might be as efficacious as the current pharmaceutical-based guidelines for treating “HIV/AIDS”, minus the worst of the adverse effects. The not-so-good news is that the continuation of this seven year long experience (experiment?) is being jeopardized by the lack of financial resources. There, I said it, and I won’t mention it again until the end of this post.
So, did Gos Blank die of AIDS? That was the original question, was it not? That is what both AIDS dissidents and the AIDS apologist trolls are waiting to hear, isn’t it?
I don’t know how it is possible to come to any conclusion that would satisfy both sides. Any answer given would only raise more questions, though not many new ones, really. Before anyone starts dancing on Gos’ grave, let’s examine some of these questions… in Gos’ own words as much as possible. (Unless noted otherwise, all blockquotes from this point on are from Gos’ book)
Janine Roberts may well be my favorite investigative reporter on the topic of AIDS and HIV. She has published several books and produced documentary films, on topics ranging from Aboriginal resistance to British colonialism in Australia, to the shame of deBeers’ diamond mining operations in Africa.
Janine has also written the much more personal story about her life as a transgendered person—The Seven Days of My Creation: Tales of Magic and Gender.
The book that has most helped me form an alternative view about what the heck HIV might really be, and its role in the disease most people call AIDS is titled Fear of the Invisible.
As the winter solstice approaches, I am aware of what a noteworthy month this December is for me, in ways that have nothing to do with the holidays. Fifteen years ago this month I was informed that I was “HIV-positive”. Five years ago, I started this blog, primarily to share my experiences with both the diagnosis, as well as previous and new health issues. I will be sharing some exciting news about some changes that will be happening to resistance is fruitful a bit later in this post.
Stop the nukes! No, not nuclear weapons. Well, yes, those too, but today I’m writing about the increase in reports I’m seeing from the AIDS drug medical literature calling for an end to the use of nucleoside(tide) reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), not-so-ironically referred to as “nukes”. As I have written previously, there have been rumblings from clinicians and researchers in the medical literature since at least 2010 to get rid of the NRTI class of antiretroviral drugs entirely from treatment guidelines.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that this change will occur at anything comparable to the speed with which AZT and other poison pills were “fast-tracked” to market more than 25 years ago.