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Continuum Magazine
VOL. 4 No. 6

A historical precedent has been set. A daily newspaper in Spain, Diario 16, has opened the HIV/AIDS debate nationwide with a comprehensive series of leading articles, starting April 3rd with the front page banner headline "The Aids Virus Does Not Exist". There followed a two page interview with an increasingly familiar voice, German virologist Dr. Stefan Lanka, in which he declared: "None of the four requirements for the isolation of a virus has been met. The photos are false", and "Dr Gallo [who announced to the world ‘its’ discovery] is a gangster convicted of scientific misconduct in the USA".

The newspaper maintains it does not want to take sides in this powerful dispute, yet is not prepared to believe ‘official truths’ without listening to others. Is the Spanish media ready to embrace the philanthropic paradigm of independent research – i.e. unsullied by pharmaceutical mammon – or would that be just wishful thinking?

D16 (circulation around 60,000) was formed during the Spanish dictatorship (1939-75) by 16 intellectuals and played a seminal role during Spain’s transition to democracy. In the past three years the newspaper has endured financial crisis, prompting an initial founder and current editor Mr Juan Tomás de Salas with the backing of the workers to buy up D16 shares at low cost. Thus the paper is not controlled by any capitalist consortium capable of influencing decision-making. This partly explains why it is the only national newspaper worldwide to dedicate 2 or 3 pages every Tuesday for critics of the viral hypothesis of AIDS, to encourage an open debate. Despite the fact that pharmaceutical companies have stopped advertising in its pages, D16 hope that if circulation continues growing it will be saved from receivership.

Skepticism in science is good, healthy and necessary for the testing of hypotheses. D16’s editorial initiated the paper’s discourse by vindicating HIV/AIDS-dissidents for having survived being shunned into near-oblivion for almost 15 years. Subsequent weekly articles have identified Dr Robert Gallo as one of the main perpetrators of the panic provoked by his HIV-invention. Like other mainstream tabloids, D16 has until recently generally reported orthodox views on ‘HIV/AIDS’. The current dissenting analyses were compiled mostly by Lluís Botinas – coordinator of the Centro Oncológico y Biológico de Investigación Aplicada (COBRA) and D16 Science Correspondent in Barcelona – and feature Lanka, immunologist Prof. Alfred Hässig, consultant and international speaker Dr. Heinrich Kremer, President of HEAL New York Dr Michael Ellner, exiled Colombian Roberto Giraldo M.D., and HIV/AIDS-diagnosed individuals. Other interviews with Nobel Laureate Dr Kary Mullis, "HIV-discoverer" Prof. Luc Montagnier, AIDS-dissident molecular biologist Prof. Peter Duesberg, the first scientists to propose a non-infectious theory of AIDS biophysicist Dr Eleni Eleopulos et al. and journalist and author Neville Hodgkinson were extracted from the television documentary AIDS: The doubt directed by Djamel Tahi and broadcast on Arte TV for a French and German audience in March ‘96. This documentary had been scheduled to appear also on Spanish TVE 2 but orthodox representatives left the studio, refusing to participate in the accompanying debate, and the programme was cancelled.

The headline news on HIV-non-isolation appeared in D16 while the IV National AIDS Congress was taking place in Valencia. About 1000 self-identified specialists participating in the Congress where astonished with the contents of the article, and enraged leading Spanish AIDS official, Dr R Nájera, accused Lanka of plagiarizing Duesberg. Mr C Bracero, president of the Spanish AIDS-patients’ Union, dismissed Dr Lanka’s theory as follows: "…they have no credit. By denying the existence of the virus, they’re trying to identify homosexuality with drug-addiction… They take advantage of the guilt complex of sick people… Besides, it is not a scientists’ dispute: there are vested interests behind it". This was the only time the media were obliged to carry the response of orthodox authorities angrily demanding punishment of dissidents, and insisting this type of debate should not be released through the press but via scientific journals.

Derogatory as these officials may be, they keep getting the facts wrong. They have wrongly equated Dr. Lanka’s analyses (HIV: reality or artifact? etc.) and his corroboration of Eleni Eleopulous et al’s work revealing "There is no proof for the existence of a unique, exogenous retrovirus, HIV, in AIDS patients" , with Peter Duesberg’s Drugs-AIDS Hypothesis. Moreover, as "AIDS-experts" they speak in the name of the HIV/AIDS-diagnosed as if we were hopeless ignorant people and dare to hang us with the noose of sexual guilt. Mr Bracero goes on to proclaim a cure is imminent and the new drugs are checking the disease in people who are treated early. Orthodox devotees ignore that scientific publications and forums are constrained by pharmaceutical funding, and their specialists refuse to publish or debate what might jeopardize their salaries and status. Perhaps Bracero is a redeemer in a ‘syndicate of compassion’, possibly a pharmaceutical fat-cat on a high salary like Britain’s Prof. Robin Weiss, or Gallo – the latter started grossing around $100,000 a year from 1985 to 2002 right after the patenting of his test and axiomatic discovery.

D16, with COBRA, has published details of a prize – equivalent to about £10,000 – for anybody able to provide a scientific paper of experiments which prove that HIV exists and that it is the cause of AIDS. The deadline is July 31, 1997.

Some readers will remember Continuum first offered The Jody Wells Memorial Prize of £1000 cash to the first person finding one scientific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV on World AIDS Day 1995. Interestingly, D16 published that the Continuum criteria are ‘easier’ to meet than the criteria of its own prize, though the Perth group of Eleopulos et al. thinks "In terms of retroviral isolation, the D16 criteria are meaningless".

The D16 criteria for HIV-isolation are four photographs. It appears this risks compromising other HIV-analysts, bypassing the rules for RNA viral isolation – as discussed at the Pasteur Institute, Paris in 1973, and in Continuum – in favor of some of the requirements of DNA viral isolation. Some analysts argue that by ignoring the rigor of empirical science and dismissing retro-virology, the errors of the past will be more complex to dismantle. Botinas concedes it may be tactical that Eleopulos et al. Discuss retroviruses while Lanka speaks of DNA viruses.

Either way, isolation of HIV has never been achieved. D16 and COBRA’s prize is a political manoeuvre, rightly implying that the photos and images shown to date as belonging to a unique HIV are false.

On other fronts, while some AIDS-clinics today replace T-cell counting with the ‘viral load’ test as a surrogate marker for health, D16 ran the headline on 17th June, "The use of PCR is fraudulent", and an article by Botinas explaining that Kary Mullis does not agree his Nobel Prize-winning invention is valid for measuring ‘HIV’-load. In a recent US documentary Mullis addressed the absence of evidence that an HIV causes AIDS – "This is a tangled web of madness. I don’t think it’s worth my while wasting time investigating when the big fact is missing" .

Thousands of Spaniards were able to read in D16 on 5th April that the use of tests (ELISA and Western blot) and criteria which determine a positive HIV test result vary from country to country. Not only are antibody cross-reactions possible in over 60 conditions documented in scientific literature but there is no world standardization or reproducibility of an HIV-diagnosis. Thus a person might test antibody positive in Africa or England with 1 or 2 ELISA tests but not necessarily in the USA or Australia where Western Blot testing is mandatory. D16 printed Tahi’s video photographs of an interview with the Australian team of researches including Eleopulos, who states, "It is not possible to consider that a person is infected here and not elsewhere. Either one is infected by a virus or one is not".

In feature stories D16 has reported various conversations with long-term-survivors of an HIV-diagnosis. M. Garrido, a 10 year antibody diagnosed doctor, argues in June 10th edition that "if AIDS is a deficient immune system facing infections – whatever the causes are – a correct treatment should address such deficiency... Nucleoside analogues – AZT plus – or in combination with protease inhibitors and prolonged use of antibiotics as prophylactics – Septrin – not only do not heal a weakening system but they cause immune deficiency – this is documented in medical text books".

J. M. Alvarado, a 10 year HIV-diagnosed critic of the viral-hypothesis, in 3rd June edition depicted as HIV-victims those who die of the following factors: a) Terror. Starting after receiving the diagnosis. b) Self-destructive feelings of guilt, fear of infecting someone, of being rejected and problems at work. c) Official AIDS-treatments. d) AIDS-defining illnesses, which sometimes kill now but likewise have before AIDS was constructed. e) life style bad habits: illicit drugs, sexual stimulants (poppers) and other prescribed chemicals (antibiotics, tranquilizers, corticoids, etc.)

Throughout the D16 articles, censorship and media responses are examined. Why does the establishment usually refuse to debate HIV/AIDS, if they are so certain? Botinas confirms that apart from the initial reaction to the Lanka interview the establishment remains silent: "Some people call COBRA after D16 ‘s weekly AIDS-debate and if social pressure increases, if scientists and doctors who are not directly implicated start participating in this debate, eventually the establishment will not be able to carrying on silencing".

Does HIV exist? Is "it" an exogenous (originating from without) infectious entity or a bundle of endogenous (arising from within) proteins? Does correlation prove causation? Is AIDS immune or toxic overload? Which therapies enhance the immune system and who really profits from what? It’s necessary that these questions are sensibly and intelligently contested. By definition no tenable hypothesis is eliminated until scientific evidence fairly establishes where the truth lies.

Indeed in Spain a national dialogue has been spearheaded and a prize been won – the Spanish Federation of Practitioners of Natural Medicine (FENACO) has rewarded D16 for giving a platform to AIDS-critics and for openness to natural medicine, while COBRA is campaigning with the agenda "2000 AD: Towards a world without AIDS". Science and humanity will not progress by stifling, silencing and ignoring dissenting views. HIV-eradication in diagnosed minds is a matter of human concern. The proposed viral cause of AIDS is a psychological poison which, closely combined with toxins, stress and drugs, both illicit and pharmaceutical, too frequently guarantees immune deficiency. What’s overlooked is the antidote triggered by the placebo combination rooted in love and the pursuit of healthy living.

Rafael Ramos is a journalist and health activist. Born in Spain in 1960, he moved to London in 1984. He graduated with first class honors in European Studies from University of North London in 1996. He is a Continuum volunteer, and Secretary of its Executive Committee.

 Science…commits suicide when it adopts a creed.
Thomas Huxley 1825-95, biologist

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