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’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…
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.
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.
I mentioned in my last post that I frequently get messages from people, asking about something I’ve shared, or sharing their own story. A few days ago, I received just such an email from a person I’ve never met, but who I’ve come to know fairly well online, and we continued the exchange through yesterday. […more]
You might not know it from reading the comments left here on my blog, but there are more than a few AIDS dissidents who really don’t like how I think or what I write about.
There’s a whole thread on a very popular Facebook page called “Rethinking AIDS”, discussing my open letter to Dora. Last I looked, that thread had nearly 100 comments, and very few of those comments were about Dora, Ruggiero or the defense of academic freedom.
No, the gist of the thread was whether or not I am in “the AIDS Zone.” It seems that because I did not use “air quotes” around the term “HIV disease”, I’m not really an AIDS dissident. Others took issue with my post for daring to publish that some AIDS Rethinkers hold a very narrow view about “HIV” and “AIDS”, while others of us are merely “questioning” the whole affair. None of them chose to comment directly to me here.
Some of the most visible and vocal Rethinkers seem intent on imposing their own “beliefs” (another loaded term that deserves quotes) on the entire movement. There has long been a tendency to try to impose a sort of litmus test to determine whether or not one is a true “AIDS dissident”.
Since I first met the AIDS dissident community via the AIDS Myth Exposed forums—since renamed Questioning AIDS—several years ago, I’ve become aware of several of the various factions, distinctive personalities and divisions within that broad group. Now I’m finding it ironic just how guilty some of these people are at their own version of “bone-pointing”.
I’m still trying to wade through the results of several tests that have been done, and I summarize some of the important things I’ve discovered in a youtube video. While I have a lot of new information, I don’t necessarily have the answers yet, just more questions. At least I now have a better idea […more]
Note: I’d like to welcome those of you visiting this site from the forums at aidsmed.com. This may be the first time that a mainstream AIDS site has referred to this blog as a “clear-eyed ‘alternative hypothesis’ site,” and I’m flattered. Given that, I hope you will look around a bit. A good place to […more]
A recent phone conversation with a friend is helping me to continue to refine what I want to focus on as an AIDS dissident activist. In a passionate outburst that revealed a new side of his character, he blurted out his dismay that our society in general and our gay community in particular seems to be willing to settle for a solution to AIDS that relies exclusively on drugs from the pharmaceutical industry.
The notion that HIV exists is a farce. When energy is not able to move freely through your chakras (energy centers in the body that generate your physical form), illness can result. Negative thinking causes blockages in energy moving through the body which can lead to physical manifestations of disease in your body. Illness is […more]