Introduction to the AIDS-HIV controversy

Why would someone like me write about a subject like the connection between AIDS and HIV (or lack of one)? Simple. I find it fascinating.

I'm naturally skeptical of conspiracy theories. I think Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of JFK, as did Jack Ruby in the murder of Oswald. I believe NASA actually landed on the moon in 1967, and I believe UFOs make great fiction, but have better explanations than alien life forms.

But I also believe that the theory that HIV causes AIDS was accepted by scientists, politicians, and the pharmaceutical industry way too fast, and with little or no scientific evidence. This is not some crackpot theory, but a serious scientific discussion taking place. You may not be hearing it in the mainstream media, but it's definitely echoing through the halls of science right now.

Was the HIV-AIDS link some elaborate conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies? No, but the promise of easy money made it too hard for drug companies and government policy-makers to make unbiased decisions. From day one, there were politicians, interest groups, and pharmaceutical companies whose financial futures were too easily vested in the notion that HIV causes AIDS. It was too easy to grab headlines and generate billions of dollars in fundraising and profits. The early media hysteria over the disease in the 1980s tainted emotions, biases, opinions, and ultimately, decisions about where research money would be directed. It set off a chain reaction of group-think and scientific blundering in its wake.

So let me get straight to the point. HIV does not cause AIDS. Real scientific knowledge of how viruses affect living cells has been turned on its head, so that a harmless passenger virus has been convicted as a contagious disease of epidemic proportions. As a result, it gets billions in federal funding. And that's just the way the participants in the research and drug manufacturing establishement want it.

Just about everything you have heard in the mainstream media about HIV and AIDS is plain wrong. After years of obscurity and Gallileo-like persecution, scientists with differing views than the mainstream one (affectionately know as AIDS dissidents) are finally getting heard, and I will try to highlight them here for the amusement of friends and education of all.

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