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   Quoted:

     Dean:

     Since you seem to be on a crusade to prove that HIV is not the
     cause of AIDS, don't you think the most courageous thing you could
     do would be to volunteer to have yourself injected with HIV? Since
     I assume that you don't engage in those high-risk behaviors like
     recreational drug use and gay sex, and you are in fact questioning
     whether AIDS drugs actually cause AIDS, you could be an important
     test case. Getting yourself injected, then living a long,
     drug-free, healthy life would be the best proof possible of your
     hypothesis, right?

     Curious to hear your thoughts on this.

     Best, Thomas More.

   Hi Thomas.

   Several people, including Peter Duesberg, have repeatedly made this
   offer, with only a few simple and straightforward requirements.
   They've all been ignored.

   But I am not on any crusade and I have nothing to prove. Indeed, the
   very claim that I'm on a "crusade" on this matter is more than a
   little annoying. If I'm on a crusade for anything it is greater
   accountability to the taxpayers who fund HIV research, and greater
   accountability to HIV+ individuals, and more rigorous scientific
   standards.

   However, as it happens yes, there are quite a few people who've openly
   offered to self-inject. There are also quite a large number of HIV+
   individuals who are refusing the anti-retrovirals who are willing to
   be studied or take part in studies.

   But, like so many mammoth government and corporate bureaucracies, the
   system has been jerry-rigged: as it stands, it is illegal to work with
   HIV or HIV+ individuals in any research setting without government
   permission, and any researcher doing it without permission can lose
   his lab and his job and maybe even go to jail for doing it.

   Furthermore, over the last 20 years they have gradually expanded the
   case definition of AIDS, and the supposed latency period of the virus,
   to the point that they would no longer consider it in the last bit
   unusual for someone to self-inject and then live 20 years perfectly
   healthy. So let's see, I'm 40 years old, I self-inject now, and in 20
   years I develop a heart condition and then contract a bad case of
   pneumonia. By current definitions they would claim I died of AIDS, not
   because of the heart condition but because of the pneumonia and, after
   all, I was HIV+.

   Or if I didn't die? If I lived to a ripe old age of 95? They would
   call me one of the "lucky" ones, the "long-term non-progressors." Or
   maybe one of the people they're only just now very reluctantly
   beginning to admit might, possibly, maybe exist: people who are
   "completely immune" to the virus.

   After spending literally over 20 years and tens of billions of dollars
   studying HIV--more time and money than was spent putting a man on the
   moon--so far the HIV establishment cannot answer simple questions like
   exactly how the virus causes t-cell loss, or what your exact odds of
   dying from the virus are if you live a sanitary, well-nourished, non
   drug using, and monogamous lifestyle. Although at least now they admit
   that in the United States it's actually very difficult for healthy
   heterosexuals to transmit the virus to each other via regular
   heterosexual intercourse.

   Yet somehow they still wish us to believe the problem is still
   rampantly out of control in Africa--basically, that black Africans are
   so sexually promiscuous and irresponsible that as many as a third of
   them are dying of the disease. Funny bit being they've been saying
   that for over 20 years but the African population continues to expand.

   Oh yes, and they recently admitted that they grossly exaggerated HIV's
   spread in Africa--in parts at least. Without explaining in detail why
   their new methodologies are that much better than the old ones they
   admit failed.

   Thought-provoking question: even if HIV really is immune-suppressive,
   would we have saved more Africans (or Americans) by giving them clean
   water, sanitation, and decent food, and healthy lifestyle information,
   rather than condoms and expensive and clearly toxic drugs?

   It is not in the least bit out of line for anyone who pays taxes to
   demand simple, straightforward, non-condescending answers to any of
   these questions. Nor to demand greater transparency and accountability
   in the funding. The establishment's hiding behind their bogus "peer
   review" (read: Good Ole Boy Network) process in grant allocation needs
   changing, and not just in this area.

   You want self-injectors? Quite a few are already on the table offering
   this, which may in part explain why the establishment has worked so
   hard in recent years to suggest that any such individuals can be
   ignored anyway--unless they happen to die of anything that vaguely
   looks like AIDS, in which case they'll ferociously declare it AIDS
   anyway.

   If none of this sounds right to you, then start asking more questions.
   Remember: it's your tax dollars they are spending.

   Regards,

   Dean

   PS: By the way, [1]here's a study that could be easily funded and
   would stop a lot of the debate in its tracks. And it would be
   amazingly cheap compared to a lot of other research. If HIV is indeed
   a perinatally transmitted retrovirus (of which there are uncounted
   numbers) then it would be simple enough to test the mothers of a few
   hundred HIV+ gay men and IV drug users in the United States. It'd be
   pretty easy to control and double-blind too.

   Prediction: none of the "peer reviewers" who control all the grant
   funding and all the legal permissions to study HIV will be willing to
   give even a few thousand dollars out of the hundreds of millions of
   taxpayer dollars they control to fund such a study. They'll even act
   offended that despicable little peon taxpayers lie me and you would
   possibly dare to suggest experiments--we aren't "qualified" and anyway
   we don't wear halos like they do.

   P.P.S.: Magic Johnson will be on Oprah today. [2]Lee Evans has a
   question for him.

References

   1. http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/10/lee_evans_on_tu.html
   2. http://barnesworld.blogs.com/barnes_world/2006/10/lee_evans_on_tu.html