African Delegates Reappraise AIDS
US INFORMATION AGENCY PRESENTS MAGGIORE & RASNICK
by Christine Maggiore
WHEN THE International Visitors Council
of Los Angeles called inviting Alive & Well, the AIDS reappraisal
group that I direct, to meet on May 18 with a visiting delegation
of African AIDS leaders, I figured somebody had made a mistake.
Surely no government organization would allow an official African
delegation to hear dissenting views on AIDS, let alone ask us to present
them. Someone, I thought, must have picked us at random from the hundreds
of local AIDS groups and assumed that we, too, promote the standard
view that HIV is rampaging across the globe, devastating drug-free
heterosexuals, and depopulating the entire African continent.
I imagined myself in a room full of startled and unappreciative African
dignitaries escorted by members of orthodox AIDS groups (my former
comrades) shouting me down. So I did not accept the invitation immediately.
But after the Visitors Council called persistently, I decided to take
a chance.
I solicited a presentation partner: David Rasnick, PhD chemist, pharmaceutical
industry protease inhibitor expert, independent AIDS researcher, and
RA Chairman.
A faxed confirmation from the Visitors Council described our presentation
as part of a US Information Agency (USIA) program to connect African
AIDS workers with grassroots American HIV/AIDS organizations. The
USIA enlisted US embassies in various African countries to select
eleven doctors, journalists, health care workers, government officials,
and other professionals involved with AIDS. The International Visitors
Councils in LA, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta were to host sequentially
the delegation and choose local AIDS groups to make presentations.
To my relief, I learned that we would have a private audience with
the delegates, meaning no host representatives around to shut the
meeting down once our perspective became apparent.
During our communications with Visitors Council representatives, we
found no reason to think that any of them knew about Alive & Well's
controversial view. We kept mum, assuming they'd revoke our invitation
if they realized our conclusions. We wanted to safeguard the rare
opportunity to present accurate information and life-saving facts
to African officials and journalists. Like American officials and
journalists, those in Africa base policies and news dispatches on
misleading and inaccurate data which portray HIV as a pathogen and
ignore or dismiss the real causes of AIDS -- including narcotics,
anti-HIV pharmaceuticals, and poverty resulting in malnutrition and
poor sanitation.
We arrived to find Alive & Well's entire mission statement --
clearly stating our unpopular views -- on the delegates' itinerary;
the Visitors Council knew about our views after all, so our audience
expected to hear what we had to say. I wondered if Visitors Council
officials discovered our banned views at the last minute and were
either too embarrassed or too ethical to "dis-invite" us.
I couldn't imagine that they could have known all along.
We started the meeting by giving each delegate information packets
containing articles by Cal-State Chico African history professor Charles
Geshekter on AIDS in Africa, Celia Farber's report in the Sep/Oct
'98 issue of Mothering on HIV-positive mothers, the latest
article by Yale math professor Serge Lange, "HIV and AIDS: We
Have Been Misled," People magazine's October 5,
1998 story on Valerie Emerson, Maclean's April 12 "Rethinking
AIDS" article, and my book, What If Everything You Thought
You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?
After a "crash course" overhead presentation of basic challenges
to the HIV-AIDS model, I told my personal story.
I described how seven years ago doctors gave me a positive HIV diagnosis
and predicted I'd die in five-to-seven years, after developing horrible
AIDS conditions like persistent wasting and pneumonia. I explained
how I prepared to die by giving up my successful import/export clothing
business and how I became one of LA's most popular public speakers
advocating the conventional views: HIV is the cause of AIDS, AIDS
is contagious, everybody is at risk for HIV and AIDS, and everybody
should be petrified of HIV and support expensive government efforts
to defeat it. I recounted how my popularity as a speaker derived from
my risk-free status as a straight woman with no history of drug-injecing,
blood exposure, or intimacy with gay men or drug injectors; how this
inspired sympathy and qualified me as a "poster girl" for
the official view that "everyone is at risk"; how eventually
I noticed the rarity of my status -- hardly any other drug- or transfusion-free
heterosexuals ever tested positive; and how I began to wonder why
my "HIV infection" had not made me sick, even as I taught
audiences that "HIV-positive" people have lethal AIDS-causing
HIV infections.
I explained how I inadvertently discovered an alternate view, that
other factors, not HIV, explain AIDS. Then I presented some of the
facts that contradict the conventional view that holds HIV responsible
for AIDS and regards HIV testing and treatment as urgent priorities
even for financially strapped nations: HIV tests don't detect HIV,
just trace bits of gene sequences or antibodies that neutralize HIV;
many factors besides HIV exposure cause positive reactions on the
antibody tests; hardly anybody outside of the risk groups tests positive;
AIDS patients always have non-HIV factors that explain their illnesses;
the drugs used to treat presumed HIV infections -- chemicals like
AZT -- feature AIDS conditions among their "side effects";
and many American and most African AIDS patients test HIV-negative.
I told our audience how I studied this information, read papers by
established scientists making these claims, and found plenty of data
documenting their conclusions, but found little evidence to verify
the official AIDS view I'd been advocating. These discoveries inspired
me to resign my volunteer positions and form my own organization,
first HEAL-LA, and now Alive & Well. I told them how seven years
into my five-to-seven year life expectancy, I remain alive and well,
totally free of any AIDS condition. I told them how I've never taken
-- nor will I ever take -- any HIV drugs, which they have heard their
nations need to save their many residents who test positive.
The delegates responded well to my presentation, particularly the
part about my son. They were shocked, then encouraged, to learn that
I have a healthy two-year-old boy. They explained that African women
are told emphatically never to have children if they test positive.
And they never question this. It was heartbreaking to hear delegates
describe AZT trials for pregnant African women, and how expectant
mothers who test positive cannot refuse HIV drugs if they're made
available. The trials have no placebo arms, thanks to western researchers
who erroneously claim to have proven that AZT provides benefits over
placebo.
Dr. George Enow-Orock of Cameroon was at first astonished to learn
that I breastfeed and that my husband, Robin, paid no heed to my HIV
status. Eventually, Enow-Orock and everybody else in the room became
comfortable with my lack of fear.
Rasnick followed by providing everyone with a copy of the new "The
AIDS Dilemma" paper he co-authored with UC-Berkeley retrovirologist
Peter Duesberg (Genetica 104, 1998), a recent article,
"AZT: A Medicine from Hell," by South African attorney and
AIDS reappraiser Anthony Brink, and a photocopy of the skull and crossbones
poison label affixed to commercial-sized containers of AZT. He showed
how AZT, but not HIV, has the capacity to cause AIDS and other life-threatening
problems.
We intended to provide a well-documented counter to the unsupported
exhortations from the west that Africans divert scarce resources from
alleviating poverty (which we describe as the real cause of African
AIDS) to "stopping the spread of HIV." We criticized the
current official recommendations for (1) replacing breastmilk
with formula not just for women who have tested positive, but for
the millions of untested women (including a majority who testing would
identify as negative), (2) massive HIV-screening, and (3) distribution
of AZT to those who test positive, and the infants of positive testing
mothers.
During the lively and cordial exchange, a freelance journalist from
Swaziland, Sandile Ntshakala, asked about AIDS in Zimbabwe. He said
that Zimbabwe's former 3% annual growth rate dropped in the 1990s
to zero due to increased mortality. Something new was killing people,
he said, and that "something" was most likely AIDS. Using
information provided by Geshekter, who could not attend, Rasnick pointed
out that just prior to the decline in Zimbabwe's population growth,
the nation's once-excellent economic situation had collapsed into
its current desperate state of affairs, one in which all manner of
disease has escalated, including diseases that fall outside of the
AIDS definition.
Concurrent with this development and also prior to the decline in
Zimbabwe's growth rate, the World Bank and the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) placed harsh restrictions on governmental social spending
-- a restriction officially called "structural adjustment programs"
-- as a condition for providing loans and other debt relief. The restrictions
specifically curtailed public money for health care and food. Rasnick
suggested that "the 'structural adjustment' imposed by the World
Bank and the IMF makes a better explanation for the declined Zimbabwean
growth rate, since malnutrition, not HIV, is capable of killing human
cells." The point seemed to resonate with the delegates.
Later, Dr. Alti Zwandor of Nigeria explained to Rasnick and me that
people in her country's AIDS wards are clearly dying of simple malnutrition.
She told us that all the mortality among the 300 "AIDS"
patients in her care could be explained by simple lack of food. And
as all available funds go for safe-sex "AIDS awareness,"
she often uses her own money to buy meals.
Andrew Mutandwa, the acting deputy director of Zimbabwe's Ministry
of Information, Post, & Telecommunications, led a unanimous request
for copies of our overheads and additional copies of the What
If... book, which we accommodated. As the meeting closed, the
delegates' LA escort arrived and suggested that everyone read Duesberg's
book, Inventing the AIDS Virus . Apparently, he already
knew about our views and considered them positively. At the end of
the event, Rasnick and I received a round of enthusiastic hugs. The
delegates asked to see photos of my son, took pictures of Rasnick
and me, and had me sign copies of my book. Rasnick and I were encouraged
by the warm reception and the delegates' willingness to discuss AIDS
critically.
"I hoped that the group would leave the meeting a little less
certain about what they thought they knew about AIDS, and with a few
more questions than when they arrived," Rasnick said. "Mr.
Mutandwa of Zimbabwe told me they they were going to spend two or
three days meeting with officials at the Centers for Disease Control
(CDC) in Atlanta. I'd love to see those meetings now that these African
representatives have heard our story."
We obtained their email addresses so we could interact with them during
their CDC visit, while officials there would surely try to lull them
back into orthodox AIDS-think. But we never heard back from any of
them.
After the presentation, I learned that Visitors Council officials
invited us specifically because they wanted to provide a variety of
opinions, so the delegates could reach their own conclusions. The
Council's program coordinator for the African AIDS project, Napah
Quach, discovered Alive & Well on the web. She said our home page
<aliveandwell.org> favorably impressed her with what she described
as its unique view of AIDS and a cogent, professional presentation.
She deliberately chose not to provide a program of unanimous agreement.
The Visitors Council's mission statement includes a clause that explicitly
regards expressed differences of opinion as effective and desirable
learning opportunities. I wonder if Quach knows that this attitude
distinguishes her agency from virtually all government bodies, university
faculties, and major media outlets. Quach said the Council would include
Alive & Well in future programs dealing with AIDS.
I'm learning that such dialogue opportunities seem to drop from the
sky -- provided there's a foundation of consistent effort for them
to land on. Another reason for all of us to keep working.
For videos of the event, contact toll-free 877-92-ALIVE or <alivela@best.com>.