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…
We cannot afford to exclude from our conversations people who hold different points of view than ourselves, as was becoming the norm for the RA Facebook group. It is enough that we agree to question, challenge and really “rethink” the mainstream theory that a new, sneaky pathogen that defies electron microscopy for detection suddenly burst forth in Africa and gay men in the West, causing this new disease that is really a collection of old rarely seen diseases.
The questions about whether or not HIV exists, or is capable of causing AIDS remain. AIDS “rethinkers” had better get used to the idea that dissidents have—not surprisingly—failed to prove a negative.
Frankly, in the end, I really, really don’t care what causes AIDS. I just want people to stop suffering and dying from whatever it is. It appalls me deeply that after all the hundreds of billions of dollars in research — possibly more than that spent on researching all other microbes combined — HIV research has ‘succeeded’ only in giving patients the horrifying choice between either dying slowly of Opportunistic Infections associated with a damaged immune system, or dying slowly of Liver Failure or having your skin peel off or maybe a Heart Attack caused by HIV drugs themselves. All the while ignoring the patients who do just fine for rather a long time when left to pursue their lives unmolested. So pick your death.
-Carl Stryg
In the simplest possible summation, Leibowitch has been treating HIV-positive patients with traditional ARV cocktails, called HAART. Where he leaves the path of traditional treatment guidelines is that once a patient is “stabilised”—meaning they have achieved respectably high CD4 counts, and their viral load is undetectable for six months—Leibowitch starts reducing the number of days per week that a patient takes these drugs, to as little as twice per week.
Each patient fell into one of three groups: <350 CD4 cells/muL; 351-499; and >500. This last group would be considered “normal” according to AIDS.gov, which lists the range for CD4 counts as 500-1000. Yet, according to this study, this group of so-called “healthy” patients were almost one and a half times more likely to experience a drug-related adverse effect.
The report reinforces another point that I find I must continue to drive home over and over again, and that is the definition of “low CD4 counts”.
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)