aids

  • Just another tease

    Here’s another short outtake from the pre-show walkthrough that John Grosso and I had in a G+ Hangout On Air (HOA) earlier this week for tomorrow evening’s Rainbow Show. Live stream begins at 7 pm CST.     Please drop in to view the show live, and ask questions via the comment stream on YouTube or Google+….

  • Sunshine in the veins

    I first learned of ultraviolet blood irradiation (UBI) a few months ago from a mutual friend. UBI is also known as extracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) in the medical literature, and most recently BioPhotonic Therapy and Photoluminescent Therapy. Photopheresis been around for more than a century, and started gaining attention in medical circles as early as 1902. Like many alternative protocols, the spectacular success of antibiotics to fight battle field infections in WWII captured the hearts and minds of physicians and started the West’s love affair with pharmaceutical solutions to disease.

    Today, as best as I can tell, UBI is approved by the FDA for only two purposes: cutaneous t-cell lymphoma and graft-vs-host disease. It’s use is far more widespread in Europe, Russia, China and South America for a variety of conditions, though it is currently being studied in the U.S. as an alternative treatment or adjunctive treatment for malignancies, auto-immune disorders, and yes, AIDS.

  • The F word

    Enough already with the critics and detractors. I haven’t been doing a very good job lately of keeping current with documenting my personal story, which was and is one of the primary purposes of this blog.

    Despite the gruesome pictures from an earlier post, I am not currently experiencing any horribly disfiguring outbreaks, lumps or other obvious manifestations of poor health. The skin on my left leg has healed nicely and is completely intact, with no breaks, scabs or sores, for the first time in more than a year. The mystery lump on the right side of my face, under my jaw, has shrunk considerably, though I can still detect it. My smile is still crooked, due to what I assume is now permanent facial nerve damage resulting from Bell’s palsy. I also have a few persistent skin sores on my shoulders and back that are resisting healing.

    I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime.

    Other than these minor nuisances, my body seems fine, for the most part, and people who have known me for some time, assure me that I “look good”. What is not so obvious is the extreme fatigue (the F-word),

  • On my way to the forums…

    I previously reported that the recent attacks on Marco Ruggiero’s academic freedom have been instigated, at least in part, by a known Internet troll who goes by various names, including “Snout”. Most of us involved in AIDS questioning are familiar with this nom de plume. Snout is a frequent contributor to comment threads all over the Internet, as a simple Google search will yield well over 2 million hits for “snout + aids + denialists”. Snout also blogs at a site called Reckless Endangerment, which has an Alexa website ranking of about 25M; in other words, he has very few followers, especially considering his tenacity.

  • When trolls attack: an open letter to “Dora”

    Dear Dora,

    You and your ARV-loving friends at the HIVforum (Italian language forum for HIV-positives) might want to have your medications checked. Your latest public attack on a respected and admired researcher is nothing, if not irrational.

    When did you decide that you can speak for all of us who have AIDS, or who test positive for HIV?

    Your recent rant against University of Firenze (Italy) professor Marco Ruggiero, as reported at The Truth Barrier, is amazingly ill-conceived, malicious and detrimental to the well-being of all of us who are living with illness and HIV, and I am compelled to call you out.

    You have accused Ruggiero of advertising for patients to experiment with his probiotic yogurt, and you have claimed that he is putting people with HIV disease at risk by suggesting they not take their AIDS drugs. You offer no evidence that either of these allegations are true, while I can, and will, provide evidence that in fact, the opposite is the case.

  • Who needs t-cells, anyway?

    There seems to be a natural tendency among some skeptics and questioners that when part of a theory or concept is proven to be flawed, any and all other aspects about it should be dismissed as well.

    This certainly seems to be the case for some AIDS dissidents when it comes to discussions about the significance of certain laboratory markers, in particularly certain immune cells involved in fighting infections, called CD4 t-cells. CD4 counts are, arguably, considered by mainstream AIDS experts as the single most important measure of disease progression and risk for patients acquiring opportunistic infections.

  • A link I never expected – UPDATED

    Tim Horn, an Administrator and paid staff member of the AIDSmeds forums, recently gave me a compliment.  I think.  Horn posted a thread at those forums, acknowledging the transition of Emery Taylor, which I reported on a few weeks ago. Horn called this blog “one clear-eyed ‘alternative hypothesis’ site”, and I appreciate that.  Really,…

  • The other Big C

    Since I first mentioned on Facebook that I was going to do high dose intravenous vitamin C (IVC), friends there have been asking me to describe what the experience is like. How odd that I have had to think so hard about how to respond to such a seemingly simple request. Maybe I’m just…