AIDS: conspiracy or reality?

[Dusty]

When it comes to alternative healing, Homeopathy has gained massive ground in the UK. That doesn't stop it being total utter bollocks.

There is always money to be made in any form of healing. Moving away from scientific bias as you put it just dumps you into realm of other people all willing to charge you by the hour.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Fuck off, Zhao.

Seconded, thirded and fourthed.

Kinda funny to watch him blow any remaining credentials he may have had vis-a-vis not being a credulous hippy tool, all the same.

 

[zhao]

Seconded, thirded and fourthed.

Kinda funny to watch him blow any remaining credentials he may have had vis-a-vis not being a credulous hippy tool, all the same.

you are reacting without a rudimentary understanding of what is going on.

for now, as fun as it is to act like an asshole, go to bed and sober up.

but in the morning, please read the last page or 2.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I have read it. Though I could have pretty much predicted the basic course it would take without bothering to make the effort. And I'm perfectly sober, I'm just experimenting with a k-punkian disregard for niceness. Next time nomad logs on and sees this thread, she's going to demolish your arguments even more thoroughly than they've been trashed already.

 

[scottdisco]

many of the claims of the skeptics who exist in the wide gray area between hard-core deniers and believers of the hype, and even some of the claims of the hard-core deniers, are now revealed to be much more valid than previously thought, in some cases pretty close to what is emerging as the truth (or the closest we have come to it thus far). plus:

perhaps that wiki needs to be updated.

perhaps it does, though it's certainly sourced well enough, but, yes, perhaps it does.

i was actually addressing Ianugo and not you, to be fair, Zhao.

i did not start this thread with denial in mind, as i had repeatedly stated; but only to point out contradictions and inconsistencies in the official story, and suggest that the truth lay else where.

(knee jerk reactions were of course to be expected, again not helped by the probably unwise over-sensationalist title.)

i can only speak for myself, but please don't infer i am implicitly accusing you of denial. just throwing out something to bear in mind.

after all, the cumulative effects of questioning what is proven to work in the context of the RSA, for sure contributed to many deaths (as that wiki, among other sources, remind us).

big pharma greedy, problematic, too powerful, sure, we all get that.

and i'm sure the literature on the ins and outs of HIV is changing all the time, scientific knowledge is always pushing forward after all.

btw the fear mongering in the 80s and stuff, if i understand the sketch you're broadly outlining, i think you're barking up the wrong tree there. certainly from a (necessarily parochial, but hey you guys did suffer enormously from it in the 80's) American pov, Reagan - from what little i know - was clearly a fucknut wrt the AIDS epidemic and i'm sure a lot of populist conservatism helped stoked general prejudices toward a then 'gay disease' etc etc etc, and sociologically yes the US Right was a, the big driver toward the new strait-laced times, away from the hedonism, but if i understand what you're implying - happy to be corrected, as i strongly suspect i'm misreading your implications - you are almost implying the science, emerging scientific knowledge base etc about HIV/AIDS at that time, that was used as a stick by the US Right to cow people?

i dunno man, i know science has its uses and mis-uses, and is frequently abused for political gain, but i'm not really buying that.
(as i say, i may be completely overstepping the mark in reading stuff into what you wrote on that specific bit.)

maybe the scientists struggling away in their labs, sure, some conservative pol somewhere could mis-use their research and twist it to try to fit their agenda, but i'm not going to throw the baby out w the bathwater just because somebody in the GOP or some bible basher gets a bit cute w their sources.

 

[Slothrop]

^^ what Dr. Luc Montagnier says here is completely in line with various things i have heard from AIDS sceptics who question the official story, as well as flat-out deniers who say the entire phenomenon is full of lies and largely a conspiracy:

• general health is more important to a person's well being than having or not having the virus.

• the drugs they sell (and make a LOT of money from) either help very little, do not help, or are actually harmful.

• there are a great number of people who are living extra-ordinarily healthy lives WITH the HIV virus, after switching to super conscious and healthy diets.

Erm, did you watch a different video from me? I don't think he said any of that. He seemed to be saying that good general health and good diet can make it easier for someone to fight off HIV infection before it becomes chronic, that containing other diseases (as in the ones that hit you once your immune system has been weakened) can reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS, and that these approaches are being underemphasized in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, presumably thanks to the influence of big pharma. That's a very different from "there are a great number of people who are living extra-ordinarily healthy lives WITH the HIV virus".

Also, I think this exhibits a classic symptom of internet conspiracy theorizing - this man first 'established' the fictional link between HIV and AIDS and is therefore a misguided dupe whose opinion isn't worth paying attention to. Until he says something you agree with, at which point his credentials are trotted out to make him an unassailable authority.

 

[nomadthethird]

Oh wow.

Dissensus has some ridiculous threads but this one should win an award.

"Best Well-Meaning but Alarmingly Ignorant Conspiracy Theory On the Net"

I don't know where to start... with the nonsense about a "single pathogen theory" (whatever that is supposed to mean with regard to a virus as plastic and mutagenic as HIV)? With a primer in how HIV attacks t-cells and becomes AIDS in a host after it surpasses a viral load threshold? Stuff you could read in a 9th grade biology textbook...

The people who are living a relatively good/healthy life with HIV (and of course there are many) are doing so thanks mostly to a bunch of antiretrovirals and other very intensive therapies. Of course, they live mostly in the U.S. and western Europe (New York and California are well-known and sought out states for AIDS patients because they fully fund and subsidize AIDS treatment). The HIV/AIDS patients in the third world are lucky if they get some painkillers as they die of AIDS-related complications or if they're reeeally lucky, they find a place in a clinical trial for new meds. Just recently India and China (with two of the fastest-growing AIDS populations in the world) went off the reservation and started producing generic AIDS medications, which was basically like giving the pharma companies with patents the middle finger. So far nobody dares litigate.

But of course, these craaaazy Indian and Chinese scientists must have done that because they were brainwashed, not because millions of people are dying agonizing deaths because they have no access to state-of-the-art HIV/AIDS treatments.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

It is precisely this cozy existential bubble bath paired with a ridiculous degree of self-rightneousness that lays the foundations for humanity's enslavement.

humanity's enslavement? jesus christ, isn't that just a tad melodramatic? I love it when some self-appointed internet guru declares something to be "quite revealing". yes, what a penetrating insight. dude, spare me. you know absolutely nothing about me or my motivations, so please do us both the favor of not pretending otherwise and extrapolating bullshit. that said:

you're not blowing anyone's mind. you apparently share this delusion with Zhao. it's not exactly news that the pharmaceutical industry is a shady one or that it has a potential feedback loop with medical research or whatever. even with those problems I'm far more inclined to listen to the great majority of scientists - slurred as "the orthodoxy" (as if iconoclasts are always, or even often, right) - who study a particular topic than I am message board guys yelling about human enslavement & conspiracy theories. still, as theories by their very nature will be overturned or altered, give me a holler - when there's some solid evidence.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

your prejudices do a good job of displaying ignorance of a deeply indoctrinated kind, the nature of which will become more and more clear as time passes.

what are my prejudices, Zhao? how have I been indoctrinated? what exactly am I ignorant of? please, elaborate. I really doubt you can, beyond your usual vague B.S. about close-mindedness. you are the living embodiment of the danger of knowing just enough to be staggeringly wrong. you never actually say anything, cause you don't really know anything. this is, again, just another issue of the week for you throw a hissy fit about once every three years.

me, I've always been in favor of mixing Western medicine with whatever else works. the two caveats; make sure the practitioners of alternative medicine are reputable cos there is a ton of snake oil out there & it's less heavily regulated. second, alternative medicine is definitely not a substitute for vaccines or x-rays or antiretrovirals.

Dissensus has some ridiculous threads but this one should win an award.

ain't that the goddamn truth. if it was just the usual bullshit about the absence of the spiritual in our impoverished Western techno-lives I'd say whatever but this is of a different order. thankfully I don't think people take this very seriously.

 

[nomadthethird]

Many viruses work in specific ways to find a particular way of reproducing itself in the body.

I only have an small qualification in biology, but during my studies of blood and diseases of the blood, its fascinating and stange that the HIVirus SPECIFICALLY picks the section of the mRNA strain to do with immunity, and then reproduces itself....Almost as if it was 'programmed' to... if it was a simple virus, why not go for some other section to do with metabolism or something

I dont know many viruses that SPECIFICALLY choose where they reproduce, maybe a biology professor could enlighten me...

All kinds of RNA viruses do this same thing, it's not uncommon or miraculous... what's really amazing about HIV is how in each host it infects it mutates into several different strains (it's "plastic"). This is why a vaccine is exceedingly unlikely, because even if a vaccine was developed for one strain, an immunized person could in fact be reinfected by another strain from another HIV-infected person. The only vaccine that would work would be one that included antibodies for a large majority of possible strains or mutations of the virus. Apparently, two vaccines that recently failed in phase 3 of trials in China were combined and retried. No one knows why, but the combination of the two failed vaccines seems to work, and the resulting vaccine may be able to immunize people against about 1/3 of HIV strains. Not perfect but definitely worth a try.

If you're interested in the science of HIV/AIDS, do a google search on David Ho.

 

[nomadthethird]

what are my prejudices, Zhao? how have I been indoctrinated? what exactly am I ignorant of? please, elaborate. I really doubt you can, beyond your usual vague B.S. about close-mindedness. you are the living embodiment of the danger of knowing just enough to be staggeringly wrong. you never actually say anything, cause you don't really know anything. this is, again, just another issue of the week for you throw a hissy fit about once every three years.

me, I've always been in favor of mixing Western medicine with whatever else works. the two caveats; make sure the practitioners of alternative medicine are reputable cos there is a ton of snake oil out there & it's less heavily regulated. second, alternative medicine is definitely not a substitute for vaccines or x-rays or antiretrovirals.



ain't that the goddamn truth. if it was just the usual bullshit about the absence of the spiritual in our impoverished Western techno-lives I'd say whatever but this is of a different order. thankfully I don't think people take this very seriously.

What's funny to me about the anti-medicine folks is that they imagine medical doctors are these evil minions of big pharma who are part of a conspiracy bent on convincing people that homeopathy doesn't work and that it should be ignored--because, of course, they're afraid that people will realize that $50 bottles of milk thistle caplets are the real deal and abandon Western medicine forever. In reality, doctors push "holistic" practices all the time, especially to people who are suffering from generalized, non-specific or vague symptoms. I wish I had a dollar for every time a primary care physician referred someone to an osteopath FFS. I'd be fucking Warren Buffet by now. Or to an acupunturist to help someone quit smoking. Etc.

Nobody understands better than doctors that people need to limit stress and make time for calm and relaxation and good nutrition. It's just that doctors are fighting a society that's out of control when it comes to consumption. Doctors can only treat the patients they get as they present with symptoms. Sometimes this means they'll have to hand out a lipitor script to someone who *could* just lose weight and exercise, in order to keep them from dying. Unfortunately, even doctors with the best of intentions can't force their patients to stop eating saturated fats and lying on the couch all the time.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

David Ho

I dunno anything about vaccines, but I though the idea of the cocktail (HAART) approach was to cast a wide net, i.e. target HIV at as points as possible. one of which is inhibiting the HIV-1 protease - the protease inhibitors that Dr. Ho is famous for. I'm not an expert by any stretch but to elaborate a bit for anyone interested (nomad & anyone else who's studied biology probably knows all this) - replication is normally a very complicated affair that can be regulated at numerous different levels. the cocktail drugs are inhibitors - most of them prevent an enzyme from catalyzing a specific reaction either replication or afterward. some of them alter cell receptors so HIV can't bind them. or whatever. the problem with HIV's mutagenic abilities is that everything with proteins is really specific, so a tiny change in amino acid sequence can mean the inhibitor no longer recognizes the molecule its supposed to inhibit or alter. then its worthless. plus, of course, drug resistance & the side effects. it's really, really tough tho, cause it's all so complicated, so many factors all acting on each other. if you change one thing, it's apt to change all these other things, unintended consequences (hence elderly people on this drug wheel where everything is counteracting the side effect of something else).

there's a lot of this stuff in the loop tho. gene therapy, induced pluripotent stem cells, etc. it's kinda the future of medicine.

 

[padraig (u.s.)]

even doctors with the best of intentions can't force their patients to stop eating saturated fats and lying on the couch all the time

this is the very reason I want to go into emergency medicine. you either fix it or you hand it off to a specialist. I don't think I could handle a life spent begging people to eat right and stop smoking. I'd go nuts in 6 months.

also co-sign the bit about many doctors (and nurses, EMS personnel, dietitians) promoting non-Western medicine 100%. that's been the case for a while now. the IVF clinic my mom works at regularly farms patients out to a holistic medicine center. I'm sure many doctors are wary of con artists but that's hardly the same thing as being biased against the arts themselves. the difference with AIDS skeptics is that they promote refusal of Western medicine rather than a combination of the two approaches.

 

[zhao]

When it comes to alternative healing, Homeopathy has gained massive ground in the UK. That doesn't stop it being total utter bollocks.

There is always money to be made in any form of healing. Moving away from scientific bias as you put it just dumps you into realm of other people all willing to charge you by the hour.

the difference between medical establishment methods and natural healing methods are often this kind:

surgery, prescription drugs, hospitalization VS. change of diet and large amount of herbs everyday

bone transplant VS. acupuncture

In reality, doctors push "holistic" practices all the time, especially to people who are suffering from generalized, non-specific or vague symptoms. I wish I had a dollar for every time a primary care physician referred someone to an osteopath, ... Or to an acupunturist to help someone quit smoking. Etc.

co-sign the bit about many doctors (and nurses, EMS personnel, dietitians) promoting non-Western medicine 100%. that's been the case for a while now.

yes, we have come a long way. for it was only recently Ancient Methods (including noise techno ) such as acupuncture have started to become recognized by the establishment.

The oldest known text on acupuncture, the Systematic Classic of Acupuncture, dates back to 282 A.D.

In the early 1900s, only a few Western physicians who had visited China were fascinated by acupuncture, but outside of Asian-American communities it remained virtually unknown until the 1970s.

Today acupuncture is being practiced in all 50 states by over 9,000 practitioners, with over 4,000 MDs including it in their practices. Acupuncture has shown notable success in treating many conditions, and over 15 million Americans have used it as a therapy. Acupuncture, however, remains largely unsupported by the medical establishment. The American Medical Association has been resistant to researching it, as it is based on concepts very different from the Western scientific model. - Douglas Dupler

Mainstream medicine has been slow to accept acupuncture; although more MDs are using it, the American Medical Association does not recognize it as a specialty. The reason for this is that the mechanism of acupuncture is difficult to scientifically understand or measure, such as the invisible energy of chi in the body. Western medicine, admitting that acupuncture works in many cases, has theorized that the energy meridians are actually part of the nervous system and that acupuncture relieves pain by releasing endorphins, or natural pain killers, into the bloodstream. Despite the ambiguity in the biochemistry involved, acupuncture continues to show effectiveness in clinical tests, from reducing pain to alleviating the symptoms of chronic illnesses, and research in acupuncture is currently growing. The Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institute of Health is currently funding research in the use of acupuncture for treating depression and attention-deficit disorder. from Medical Dictionary

(speaking about a study on acupuncture)...Dr Richard Halvorsen, a GP and press officer for the British Medical Acupuncture Society, said: “It indicates a complete change in the way that the medical establishment views complementary therapies.” The study was commissioned in 1998 to “investigate the scientific basis and efficacy of acupuncture and the quality of training and standards of competence in its practitioners.”

what are my prejudices, Zhao? how have I been indoctrinated? what exactly am I ignorant of? please, elaborate.

your insinuation that the citing of natural healing doctors is reasonable ground for an argument's dismissal on the previous page, before changing your tune below, indicated the same kind of prejudice that is, much less common than merely decades ago, but still wide spread in western medical establishment.

me, I've always been in favor of mixing Western medicine with whatever else works. the two caveats; make sure the practitioners of alternative medicine are reputable cos there is a ton of snake oil out there & it's less heavily regulated. second, alternative medicine is definitely not a substitute for vaccines or x-rays or antiretrovirals.

and alternative medicine is not as regulated as it should be precisely because the establishment is slow to overcome its biases and recognize many practices as legitimate.

lets bring this conversation away from abstraction, generalized and cliche statements, and down to earth, to the actual, physical, everyday.

a first person account:

a few years ago i fell ill. high fever, nausea, stomach hurt, could not keep food down. but no headache or any other symptom of influenza or related.

after 2 days of this, with conditions getting worse, i chose not to go to the hospital on suggestion of a friend, and went to a natural healing doctor instead.

after listening to my symptoms, he felt my abdomen with his hand, and after a few minutes, told me that the problem was what he had thought: that there is a blockage in a section of my intestine, which was not allowing food to pass, and it was becoming infected. and that this is due to damage of parts of my intestine from unhealthy eating habits over the years, which had become more narrow than before.

and then he put Two Fingers (oh man all these music nerd puns) on where the problem was, and pressed down, about as hard as you would press during a hard massage, until a little "bloop" was heard. he told me that in the next 24 hours i will be going to the bathroom a lot, and that i was healed -- i did and i was. he charged me 50 USD for about 15 minutes of his time.

if i had gone to hospital, they would have cut me open, remove the section of intestine with the blockage, and possibly replaced it with another depending on size, and i would have been in the hospital for months until it healed -- not good at estimating cost but safe to say that it would have been significantly more than 50 USD.

____________

Padraig and Nomad, you are saying reasonable things, and it sounds like we are not on the opposite ends of any kind of dichotomy. but even if we were, there is hardly ground for aggressive opposition.

the difference with AIDS skeptics is that they promote refusal of Western medicine rather than a combination of the two approaches.

i certainly am not interested in refusing western medicine or denying its value, and never have been.

remember you are speaking to someone who has benefited from the effects of western medicine such as LSD and MDMA for many years

 

[zhao]

about HIV / AIDS:

1. what Dr. Luc Montagnier is saying is radically different from what the government/medical establishment has been saying since the 1980s.

2. what Dr. Luc Montagnier is saying in many ways sympathizes with and if not completely, at least partially, validates some of the claims of the skeptics, conspiracy theorists, and deniers.

 

[mms]

@ mms & padraig (u.s.): It is quite revealing how both of you - in a strikingly similar reaction to my post - immediately try the refute the claims of the dissenters from the single pathogen theory of AIDS by refering to supporters of it that you know from the sphere of your own private lives. What seems to make the opinion of these persons relevant in regard to this matter is obviously not their level of expertise (after all it's a Nobel laureate whom you don't believe) but the fact that they are somehow involved with the current initiative that is being taken against "AIDS". You regard the merit of their effort and struggle as unquestionable and therefore simply dismiss the possibility of a truth that would expose their actions and convictions as futile and heteronomous. For you the the significance of what these people do and what they believe is beyond doubt. Everything that threatens to destroy this little private microcosm of meaning is thus to be labelled as "nonsense". It is precisely this cozy existential bubble bath paired with a ridiculous degree of self-rightneousness that lays the foundations for humanity's enslavement.

what the fuck are you talking about?

 

[mms]

the difference between medical establishment methods and natural healing methods are often this kind:

surgery, prescription drugs, hospitalization VS. change of diet and large amount of herbs everyday

bone transplant VS. acupuncture





yes, we have come a long way. for it was only recently Ancient Methods (including noise techno ) such as acupuncture have started to become recognized by the establishment.









your insinuation that the citing of natural healing doctors is reasonable ground for an argument's dismissal on the previous page, before changing your tune below, indicated the same kind of prejudice that is, much less common than merely decades ago, but still wide spread in western medical establishment.



and alternative medicine is not as regulated as it should be precisely because the establishment is slow to overcome its biases and recognize many practices as legitimate.

lets bring this conversation away from abstraction, generalized and cliche statements, and down to earth, to the actual, physical, everyday.

a first person account:

a few years ago i fell ill. high fever, nausea, stomach hurt, could not keep food down. but no headache or any other symptom of influenza or related.

after 2 days of this, with conditions getting worse, i chose not to go to the hospital on suggestion of a friend, and went to a natural healing doctor instead.

after listening to my symptoms, he felt my abdomen with his hand, and after a few minutes, told me that the problem was what he had thought: that there is a blockage in a section of my intestine, which was not allowing food to pass, and it was becoming infected. and that this is due to damage of parts of my intestine from unhealthy eating habits over the years, which had become more narrow than before.

and then he put Two Fingers (oh man all these music nerd puns) on where the problem was, and pressed down, about as hard as you would press during a hard massage, until a little "bloop" was heard. he told me that in the next 24 hours i will be going to the bathroom a lot, and that i was healed -- i did and i was. he charged me 50 USD for about 15 minutes of his time.

if i had gone to hospital, they would have cut me open, remove the section of intestine with the blockage, and possibly replaced it with another depending on size, and i would have been in the hospital for months until it healed -- not good at estimating cost but safe to say that it would have been significantly more than 50 USD.

____________

my mum was referred to the doctor by her acupuncturist and the doctors did key hole surgery on her brain tumour, thank god she would have died else, good news eh? irrelevant here though.

 

[scottdisco]

about HIV / AIDS:

1. what Dr. Luc Montagnier is saying is radically different from what the government/medical establishment has been saying since the 1980s.

2. what Dr. Luc Montagnier is saying in many ways sympathizes with and if not completely, at least partially, validates some of the claims of the skeptics, conspiracy theorists, and deniers.

which government? there's certainly been differences of opinion between (to, er, say the least), between different govts on HIV/AIDS since the 80's.

as Slothrop noted earlier Erm, did you watch a different video from me? I don't think he said any of that. He seemed to be saying that good general health and good diet can make it easier for someone to fight off HIV infection before it becomes chronic, that containing other diseases (as in the ones that hit you once your immune system has been weakened) can reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS, and that these approaches are being underemphasized in the fight against the AIDS epidemic, presumably thanks to the influence of big pharma. That's a very different from "there are a great number of people who are living extra-ordinarily healthy lives WITH the HIV virus".

this is what i saw too.

of course i'm no scientist, but given Nomad and Padraig have already taught me more in this thread than i knew at all, i'm less inclined to treat Ianugo's toys-out-of-pram grandstanding w any patience this morning.

i note that that 'libertarian Democrat' guy, Terry Michael, that Ianugo quoted on page 4 of this thread, as well as being a self-professed AIDS denialist, is also a climate change sceptic.

this has nothing to do, necessarily, with his views on the great HIV swindle, but, similarly, Zhao, your acupuncture tale (i'm glad for you man, of course) has as about as much to do w shoring up (or otherwise) your opening, tentative gambit on this thread, which was

1. AIDS is a fictional diagnosis which is applied to existing diseases.

2. what actually kills people is not the imaginary HIV virus, but the (very expensive) medicine which are given to patients.

and let's drop/move away from the "aggressive opposition" shout you made. sure, someone told you to fuck off but rather than turn the other cheek, you called my buddy Tea an asshole a couple of pages back, so seems like clean records on this are hard to find, eh.

perhaps you would care to address what Nomad said when she wrote

The people who are living a relatively good/healthy life with HIV (and of course there are many) are doing so thanks mostly to a bunch of antiretrovirals and other very intensive therapies. Of course, they live mostly in the U.S. and western Europe (New York and California are well-known and sought out states for AIDS patients because they fully fund and subsidize AIDS treatment). The HIV/AIDS patients in the third world are lucky if they get some painkillers as they die of AIDS-related complications or if they're reeeally lucky, they find a place in a clinical trial for new meds. Just recently India and China (with two of the fastest-growing AIDS populations in the world) went off the reservation and started producing generic AIDS medications, which was basically like giving the pharma companies with patents the middle finger. So far nobody dares litigate.

But of course, these craaaazy Indian and Chinese scientists must have done that because they were brainwashed, not because millions of people are dying agonizing deaths because they have no access to state-of-the-art HIV/AIDS treatments.

i appreciate you may want to reply to a lot of people on the thread, but i'd love to read your responses to this man, so let's see what you think. nice one.

 

[zhao]

which government?

i was referring to the US government. and the stuff i and everyone else was told: "you get it, you die. end of story."

your acupuncture tale (i'm glad for you man, of course) has as about as much to do w shoring up (or otherwise) your opening, tentative gambit on this thread, which was

1. AIDS is a fictional diagnosis which is applied to existing diseases.

2. what actually kills people is not the imaginary HIV virus, but the (very expensive) medicine which are given to patients..

those statements comprise what i had heard of the denialists' position, and nowhere in this thread, or anywhere else, will you find anything stating that it is MY position.

i clearly said in the opening post: "check this out guys, i heard these people who are not obvious morons, say this CRAZY STUFF right? and i was wondering what you thought about it"

but you people are bent on making me into an AIDS denier.

and my natural healing story was my personal experience with alternative medicine, which people have insinuated is a sham over and over (albeit some backing away from this position later)

and let's drop/move away from the "aggressive opposition" shout you made. sure, someone told you to fuck off but rather than turn the other cheek, you called my buddy Tea an asshole a couple of pages back, so seems like clean records on this are hard to find, eh.

when people make points, even in a dishonest fashion, i almost always address them. but when people come in with nothing but expletives, i see nothing wrong with calling an Asshole an Asshole.

perhaps you would care to address what Nomad said when she wrote

The people who are living a relatively good/healthy life with HIV (and of course there are many) are doing so thanks mostly to a bunch of antiretrovirals and other very intensive therapies. Of course, they live mostly in the U.S. and western Europe (New York and California are well-known and sought out states for AIDS patients because they fully fund and subsidize AIDS treatment). The HIV/AIDS patients in the third world are lucky if they get some painkillers as they die of AIDS-related complications or if they're reeeally lucky, they find a place in a clinical trial for new meds. Just recently India and China (with two of the fastest-growing AIDS populations in the world) went off the reservation and started producing generic AIDS medications, which was basically like giving the pharma companies with patents the middle finger. So far nobody dares litigate.

But of course, these craaaazy Indian and Chinese scientists must have done that because they were brainwashed, not because millions of people are dying agonizing deaths because they have no access to state-of-the-art HIV/AIDS treatments.

i appreciate you may want to reply to a lot of people on the thread, but i'd love to read your responses to this man, so let's see what you think. nice one.

sure in places of the world where a complete lifestyle change and radical dietary therapy is not available, drugs can, and do help.

again, i never ever said that I BELIEVE the HIV virus does not exist, and that all AIDS medication are made with cyanide.

 

[zhao]

my mum was referred to the doctor by her acupuncturist and the doctors did key hole surgery on her brain tumour, thank god she would have died else, good news eh?

good news indeed. I am happy for her.

i certainly am not interested in refusing western medicine or denying its value, and never have been.