HERESY, IN THE LAND OF AIDS

[Guest guest]

http://www.sickofdoctors.addr.com/articles/castro/castrosynopsis.htm

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PRELUDE "As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, (in which a number of people were murdered, others killed with experimental drugs, and governments and universities corrupted), I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.The Constant Gardener" by John le Care. Author's Note

PREFACE

This monograph discusses the vexed question of HIV/AIDS.

It is based on the assumption that to understand this matter, it is necessary to study it.

It does not accept the assertion that only scientists and medical doctors are capable of understanding this medical condition. Written essentially by non-scientists, it nevertheless seeks to understand the scientific logic of the thesis of HIV/AIDS.

It recognizes the reality that there are many people and institutions across the world that have a vested interest in the propagation of the HIV/AIDS thesis, because they have too much to lose if any important element of this thesis is proved to be false.

It also accepts that among those that share the vested interests of these companies are governments and official health institutions, inter-governmental organizations, official medical licensing and registration institutions, scientists and academics, media organizations, non-governmental organizations and individuals.

The monograph accepts that our people, and others elsewhere in Africa and the rest of the world, face a serious problem of AIDS. It rejects as illogical the proposition that AIDS is a single disease caused by a singular virus, HIV.

Poverty...or HIV?

During the last year of this 20th century, 2000, our President, Taboo Mbeki, was asked to open the Durban 13th International AIDS Conference, which he did.

Let us quote what he said.

 

" Let me tell you a story that the World Health Organization told the world in 1995. I will tell this story in the words used by the World Health Organization.

" This is the story: The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill-health and suffering across the globe is listed almost at the end of the International Classification of Diseases. It is given the code Z59.5 - extreme poverty.

" Poverty is the main reason why babies are not vaccinated, why clean water and sanitation are not provided, why curative drugs and other treatments are unavailable and why mothers die in childbirth. It is the underlying cause of reduced life expectancy, handicap, disability and starvation. Poverty is a major contributor to mental illness, stress, suicide, family disintegration and substance abuse. Every year in the developing world 12.2 million children under 5 years die, most of them from causes which could be prevented for just a few US cents per child. They die largely because of world indifference, but most of all they die because they are poor." A person in one of the least developed countries in the world has a life expectancy of 43 years according to 1993 calculations. A person in one of the most developed countries has a life expectancy of 78, a difference of more than a third of a century. This means a rich, healthy man can live twice as long as a poor, sick man.

" The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill health and suffering across the globe, including South Africa, is extreme poverty.

For some strange reason, Africa, among the poorest continents of the world, is not supposed to talk about these diseases of poverty and to focus on their eradication. We are urged from all sides to break the silence about HIV/AIDS and maintain perfect silence about the diseases of poverty.

To what do we owe these strange goings-on!The war to defeat AIDS is also a war to defeat the humiliation and dehumanization of the African people.

Our friends claim that millions of Africans, in increasing numbers, are infected with a highly mutant and indestructible Human Immunodeficiency Virus. They say that this HI Virus is communicated from person to person through heterosexual intercourse and from mother to child.

To stop the spread of the Virus, they say that the Africans should abstain from sexual intercourse or use condoms.

They also say that HIV-positive mothers should be given drugs to stop the transmission of the Virus. Their babies, too, should be given the same drugs, presumably to kill the Virus if the mother has nevertheless transmitted it.

They urge that in the event of rape, the victims should also be given drugs, in case the rapist/s is or are carriers of the HI Virus.

The message is simple to understand and communicate. If it moves - clothe it in a condom! If it was naked - destroy its diseased emission with drugs!

In his book, "Eros & Civilisation", (Sphere Books, London: 1970), Herbert Marcuse wrote of our epoch as " a period when the omnipotent apparatus punishes real non-conformity with ridicule and defeat."

And so it has come to pass that anybody who has dared to question any of the above allegedly established scientific truths, has been confronted by this omnipotent apparatus. Accordingly, it has punished non-conformity with ridicule, defeat and worse.

The defeat and repression of the non-conformists is sustained by repression from within. The unfree individuals, the Africans, have introjected their masters and the commands of the masters into their own mental apparatus. Thus do they sustain their masters, their ideas and their institutions.

Hetero HIV

Given that our minds on this matter have become thoroughly clogged by the information communicated by the omnipotent apparatus, a miracle will have to be achieved to get all our people to use their brains, rather than perish on emotional responses based on greatly heightened levels of fear.

In reality, as will become clear, what we are about is the cleaning of the Augean stables that constrain the African mind. Let us present our first scientific fact.

The first report on the incidence of HIV in South and Southern Africa was published in the "New England Journal of Medicine" and the "South African Medical Journal", both in 1985.

Two of the most important findings in this report were that in our country and region:

· HIV infection was confined to male homosexuals; and,· HIV was not endemic in this region of the world.

Some of our friends, the friends of the Africans, say that five years later, this situation had changed completely. They say that now, in our region and country, the HI Virus was transmitted heterosexually and that it had become endemic.

The point made in the 1985 report about male homosexuals and HIV coincided with what science said about the incidence of HIV in the United States and Western Europe at the time.

To all intents and purposes, 15 years later, this situation has not changed both in the US and in Western Europe. But, as we have said, and as is generally known, our own situation has changed radically, resulting also in it being said that we now have the highest incidence of HIV or the spread of HIV in the world.The question that arises from this is - why! Why does the same Virus behave differently in the US and Western Europe from the way it behaves in Southern Africa!

Immune to Hunger

When "The New Encyclopaedia Britannica" (15th Edition), discusses "immune deficiencies" it says:

" There are several ways in which the protective mechanisms (of the immune system) outlined above may fail. Some are inborn, due to genetic defects in the development of one or more of the cells involved in immune responses. Others result from infectious agents that damage essential immune cells. Still others are due to poisons or to drugs administered accidentally or with the intention of curing or ameliorating other diseases. In yet other cases, the immune deficiency stems from inadequate nutrition.

" Severe infections by certain parasites, such as trypanosomes, also cause immune deficiency, as do forms of cancer, but it is uncertain how this comes about.

" In countries where the diet, especially that of growing children is grossly inadequate in respect to protein intake, severe malnutrition ranks as an important cause of immune deficiency. Antibody responses and cell-mediated immunity are seriously impaired, probably due to atrophy of the thymus and the consequent deficiency of helper T cells. This renders the children particularly susceptible to measles and diarrheal diseases. Fortunately, they thymus and the rest of the immune system can recover completely if adequate nutrition is restored."

Honest medical science recognises the disastrous impact of malnutrition on us as Africans and the rest of the developing countries.

An Indian article (aidscareindia.com) says: (See also: the World Health Report, 1998):

" Some 40% of the 10 million deaths among under-five children each year in the developing world are associated with malnutrition." In Africa.the actual number of malnourished children has, in fact, risen. In addition, natural disasters, wars, civil disturbances, and population displacement have all contributed to continuing high rates of malnutrition.

All of this tells us, the Africans, that poverty and underdevelopment are a major cause of premature mortality and disability among us. We are confronted by 'the larger pandemic' of poverty and underdevelopment. But the omnipotent apparatus is intent that we should not know all this. If we do, we should discount it as being of no major consequence.

In this respect, all of us are obliged to chant that HIV=AIDS=Death! We are obliged to abide by the faith, and no other, that our immune systems are being destroyed solely and exclusively by the HI Virus. Then our government must ensure that it makes anti-retroviral drugs available throughout our public health system. Everything else that causes ill health and death among us, the omnipotent apparatus argues, is of peripheral importance.

Where's the Virus?Given the numbers of people who are said to have died of HIV/AIDS, the question must be asked - has the HI Virus been isolated during medical examinations and post-mortems to establish that the prime cause of illness and death is HIV infection?

The reality is that this seemingly critical first step that would enable us to know the nature of the creature we are dealing with has not been taken.

Strange as it may seem, given what our friends tell us about the Virus everyday, nobody has seen it, including our friends. Nobody knows what it looks like. Nobody knows how it behaves. Everybody acts on the basis of a series of hypotheses about the Virus, which are presumed to be facts, supposedly authenticated by 'clinical evidence'.

Those who have imbibed the faith that millions among us are infected by a deadly HI Virus, will disbelieve the assertion that the work of isolating our unique HI Virus has not been done. The omnipotent apparatus will scream loudly that the telling of this truth constitutes the very heart of the criminal non-conformity that must be denounced and repressed by all means and at all costs.

What the Africans do not know, of course, is that at the time HIV was 'discovered' in 1984, Montagnier's French Pasteur Institute accused Gallo of having stolen the HIV discovery from them. Ultimately, this controversy was resolved when the two scientists, together with US President Reagan and French Premier Chirac signed an agreement in 1987, which proclaimed the two scientists as co-discoverers of HIV.

In 1992, the NIH Office of Research Integrity determined that Gallo was guilty of scientific misconduct. Nevertheless, it said that this did not "negate the central findings" of Gallo, with regard to HIV.

In 1984, before any information was published in the scientific journals, and therefore examined by the scientific community, Gallo and US President Reagan's Health and Human Services Secretary, Margaret Heckler, announced at a press conference that Gallo had isolated the "AIDS virus" and developed the test to prove the existence of the virus in human blood.

Clearly, the later findings about the scientific conduct of the "co-discoverer" could not, and would not, be allowed to interfere with what had been announced to the press and the world!

Testing the Test

If, however, despite and perhaps because of this peculiar manner of 'advancing' science, it is true that we have not identified our own unique virus, the question then arises - what methods were used to identify the millions in our country who are said to be HIV-positive?The response to this question is that blood or saliva specimens were and are subjected to the ELISA test, said to be a test to establish whether specific anti-HIV antibodies exist in the particular specimens.

The manufacturers, Abbot Laboratories, say:" At present there is no recognised standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood. Therefore sensitivity was computed based on the clinical diagnosis of AIDS and specificity based on random donors."

To return to the scientists, Roberto A. Giraldo, MD, a physician and specialist in internal medicine, infectious and tropical diseases, says: (Continuum: Midwinter 1998/9.)

" The scientific literature has documented more than 70 different reasons for getting a positive reaction other than past or present infection with HIV. All these conditions have in common a history of polyantigenic stimulations."

Indeed, Dr Giraldo explains in this article that he conducted his own tests at the New York Yorktown Medical Laboratory. He says:

" I first took samples of blood that, at 1:400 dilution (the recommended dilution for the ELISA test), tested negative for antibodies to HIV. I then ran the exact same serum samples through the test again, but this time without diluting them. Tested straight, they all came out positive. Since that time I have run about 100 specimens and have always gotten the same result."

In another article written by Dr Giraldo et al, published in Continuum, Summer 1999, the authors say:

" Some of the conditions that cause false positives on the so-called "AIDS test" are: past or present infection with a variety of bacteria, parasites, viruses, and fungi, including tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, influenza, the common cold, leprosy and a history of sexually transmitted diseases; the presence of polyspecific antobodies, hypergammaglobulinemias, the presence of auto-bodies against a variety of cells and tissues, vaccinations, and the administration of gammaglobulins or immunoglobulins; the presence of auto-immune diseases like erythematous systemic lupus, sclerodermia, dermatomyositis or rheumatoid arthritis; the existence of pregnancy and multiparity; a history of rectal insemination; addiction to recreational drugs; several kidney diseases, renal failure and hemodialysis; a history of organ transplantation; presence of a variety of tumours and cancer chemotherapy; many liver diseases including alcoholic liver disease; hemophilia, blood transfusions and the administration of coagulation factor; and even the simple condition of aging, to mention a few of them."

One mystery has always been the reported high sero prevalence of HIV in South Africa of over 15% (as extrapolated from Antenatal Clinic Survey data), compared with rates of 2% in West Africa and the Caribbean. In this regard, the experience of a physician working in an Eastern Cape prison, Dr Stuart A. Dwyer, is of note. His institution of 550 inmates has high rates of men having sex with men, with very little use of condoms. He routinely checks the HIV status of those who present to him with various illnesses, including STD. In the past 5 years, he has noted a sero prevalence of 2.8% for the jail as a whole, but recorded only a few deaths from AIDS-related disease. His conclusion is that the meaning of a positive HIV ELISA test in the African setting needs to be re-examined, and that in his "high risk" group, there is little evidence of an "AIDS pandemic".

(Dr Stuart A. Dwyer, British Medical Journal, 22 September, 2001.)

A number of questions arise from all this. What do the HIV tests test? It was for these reasons that the Presidential Scientific AIDS Panel decided to seek an answer to the question - what do the HIV tests test?

One of the questions that arises from all this is what has changed many well-known diseases from being well-known curable diseases into one incurable, and little known disease, called AIDS?

The French physician and historian of medicine, Mirko Grmek, tried to explain the puzzle in the following way:

" (AIDS) is not a disease in the old sense of the word, in as much as the virus is immunopathogenic, that it affects the immune system and produces symptoms only through the expedient of opportunistic infection or malignancy...In the past, a disease was defined either by clinical symptoms or by pathological lesions, which are morphological changes in organs, tissues, or cells. Nothing of the sort, neither clinical symptoms nor lesions, observable by the old means, characterises AIDS. It is not a disease in the sense given to the term before the twentieth century. Persons affected by HIV suffer and die with the signs and lesions that are typical of other diseases. As recently as twenty years ago, these opportunistic disorders were the only reality that physicians could observe and conceptualise."

("History of AIDS" by M. Grmek: Princeton University Press, 1990. Our emphases.)

This brings us to the question of treatment.

 

 

THE TERMINATOR

Before we proceed to the matter of Mother to Child Transmission and nevirapine, let us briefly discuss the issue of AZT, which continues to have its own fans in our country. It is used by the provincial government of the Western Cape among African women allegedly for MTCT. Despite the unequivocal advice of its manufacturer that it should not be used in instances of rape, those intent on marketing this drug continue to demand that it should be made available for this purpose within our public health system.

In her book "Positively False", (I.B. Tauris, London: New York, 1998), Joan Shenton has written:

"In spite of the manufacturers claiming that (AZT) prolonged life and delayed the onset of AIDS, doctors actually working with patients could only see them getting sicker and sicker before their very eyes and then dying.

"Why? Quite simply, AZT is a DNA chain terminator. That means it destroys the mechanism by which new cells are made in the body. It stops the growth of DNA causing the fast or slow death of the immune system because all growing cells will be killed by the incorporation of AZT. Its action is similar to cancer chemotherapy, whereby bad cells are killed in the hope of keeping enough good cells to survive. In cancer chemotherapy the treatment is given for a limited period of time. AZT is prescribed indefinitely - until death.

It is not accidental that AZT action is "similar to cancer chemotherapy", as Joan Shenton puts it. This is because it was developed in 1964 by a Dr Jerome Horwitz as a cancer chemotherapy drug. However it was abandoned even before it reached the stage of human trials because of its high levels of toxicity and its ineffectiveness against cancer.

The manufacturers of AZT, the then Glaxo Wellcome, presented it 20 years later as an anti-HIV drug. This was at a time when the scare mongering referred to earlier had produced great panic in the US that millions were going to die as a result of HIV/AIDS, the same panic that is now been sown among our people. Overnight, the abandoned cancer "treatment" AZT, became the miracle drug that would contain HIV/AIDS!

So great was the fear generated by the scare mongers that even the approved trial was abandoned before it was concluded.

In his book "Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story", (Asklepios 1990), John Laurintzen writes that 'Martin Delaney of Project Inform gives a fair summary of what emerges from the FDA material:

"The multi-center clinical trials of AZT are perhaps the sloppiest and most poorly controlled trials ever to serve as the basis for an FDA drug licensing approval. Conclusions of efficacy were based on an endpoint (mortality) not initially planned or formally followed in the study after the drug failed to demonstrate efficacy on all the originally intended endpoints. Because mortality was not an intended endpoint, causes of death were never verified. Despite this, and a frightening record of toxicity, the FDA approved AZT in record time, granting a treatment IND in less than five days and full pharmaceutical licensing in less than 6 months."

Laurintzen reports that a conference on AIDS was held at Columbia University, New York, on 19 November, 1988. Dr Sonnabend was one of the speakers. Lairintzen says:

"Sonnabend began by saying that the toxicities of AZT should not lightly be dismissed. The harmful effects of the drug are real, and they are serious. Technically, AZT is a poison; it is cytotoxic (i.e. it kills cells). The drug cannot distinguish between infected and healthy cells; it kills both. Never before has a drug as toxic as AZT been prescribed for long-term use. The long-term effects of AZT, the cumulative toxicities are unknown.

Despite all the foregoing concerning the toxicity of AZT and the strange circumstances surrounding its licensing in the US, there are some in our country who are desperately keen that we make AZT generally available in the public health system, as we would ordinary headache tablets. Boldly, they claim to be the best friends of the African!

THE RASH DRUG

Let us now return to the matter of MTCT and nevirapine.Roxane is a pharmaceutical company that produces nevirapine, selling it under the brand name Viramune. This company published the following warning (in capital letters) in the Physicians' Desk Reference (PDR 2001), considered the best available source of information on the safety of medications for humans:

"WARNING: SEVERE LIFE-THREATENING SKIN REACTIONS, INCLUDING FATAL CASES HAVE OCCURRED IN PATIENTS TREATED WITH VIRAMUNE. THESE HAVE INCLUDED CASES OF STEVEN-JOHNSON SYNDROME, TOXIC EPIDERMAL NECROLYSIS, AND HYPERSENSITIVE REACTIONS CHARACTERISED BY RASH, CONSTITUTIONAL FINDINGS, AND ORGAN DYSFUNCTION.... RESISTANT VIRUS EMERGES RAPIDLY AND UNIFORMLY WHEN VIRAMUNE IS ADMINISTERED AS MONOTHERAPY, THEREFORE, VIRAMUNE SHOULD ALWAYS BE ADMINISTERED IN COMBINATION WITH ANTIRETROVIRAL AGENTS."

PDR 2001 also says:

" Patients should be informed that Viramune therapy has not been shown to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV-1 to others through sexual contact or blood contamination.Viramune is not a cure for HIV-infection; patients may continue to experience illnesses associated with advanced HIV-1 infection, including opportunistic infections."

The most recent guidelines of the US government on HIV treatment were issued on February 5, 2001. With regard to HIV-infected pregnant women, the Guidelines say:

" Guidelines for optimal antiretroviral therapy and for initiation of therapy in pregnant HIV-infected women should be the same as those delineated for non-pregnant adults. Thus, the woman's clinical, virologic and immunologic status should be of primary importance in guiding treatment decisions. However, it must be realised that the potential impact of such therapy on the fetus and infant is unknown.Long-term follow-up is recommended for all infants born to women who have received antiretroviral drugs during pregnancy.

We draw attention to the fact that the US scientists who drew up the Guidelines sought to highlight the point that HIV-positive pregnant women should also be handled and prepared in the same way as any other adult with regard to treatment.

" It is necessary for the patient to be entered into a continuum of medical care and services, including social, psychosocial, and nutritional services, with the availability of expert referral and consultation. In order to achieve the maximal flexibility in tailoring therapy to each patient over the duration of his or her infection, it is imperative that drug formularies allow for all FDA-approved NRTI, NNRTI, and PI as treatment options."

With regard to the immediate foregoing, at least three questions arise in the South African context.

Are these Guidelines being followed by our medical practitioners?

Does the public health system have the capacity to implement these guidelines?

If this capacity does not exist, would it be ethical for our doctors nevertheless to prescribe anti-retroviral therapy?

If our medical practitioners do not follow the Guidelines as indicated above, would they not be guilty of justiciable malpractice?

Recently, in October 2001, Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al, published a monograph entitled: "Mother to Child Transmission of HIV and its Prevention with AZT and Nevirapine." We will quote a few paragraphs from this monograph, which we will identify as EPE.

EPE says:

" As far back as 1988, there was evidence that the antibody tests in children are non-specific. It is accepted by all AIDS experts that a child can have positive antibody test without being infected. This is because maternal antibodies cross the placenta as early as the 12th week of gestation. As a result of normal catabolism, the level of these antibodies decreases post partum and by 9 months of age they are no longer present in the child. In other words, if the HIV antibody test is specific, any child who has a positive HIV antibody test beyond 9 months should remain positive for the remainder of his or her life. In the only study providing a detailed analysis of post partum loss of infant HIV seropositivity, the European Collaborative Study, approximately 23% of the children became seronegative between birth and 9 months. However, 59% became seronegative between 9 and 22 months. Since the latter cannot be due to loss of maternal antibodies, the only explanation is that: the antibody test is non-specific or; (ii) the children managed to clear HIV infection without treatment. If 23% of children test positive because of maternal antibodies and in 59% the test is non-specific, how certain can one be that in the remaining 18% of children the test will also not seroconvert after 22 months? Or if the test remains positive it is true positive?"

All the studies of transmission of HIV from mother to child use the Roche Amplicon PCR to detect neonatal HIV infection, as HIV antibody detection by HIV ELISA cannot be used in the first 18 months due to the persistence of maternal antibodies in the infant's circulation.

Yet the US CDC states that PCR must not be used to diagnose HIV infection in adolescents and neonates. It then says that nevertheless it can be used in infants!

We should also note that the abundant 'copies per ml' that PCR detects in the bloodstream are not whole virus particles, despite the misleading appellation of 'viral load'. They are genetic material whose sequence is the same as that of constituents of the HIV genome.

Therefore, 'high viral load' on PCR does not automatically assume profound infection with HIV. This is presumably why the manufacturers caution against use of the test to diagnose HIV infection - lest they be sued by a patient who subsequently proves not to have HIV infection.

Despite all this, all the evidence for reduction of vertical transmission using antiretroviral drugs is premised on the detection of neonatal HIV infection using PCR. Not surprisingly, the evidence is consequently self-contradictory, with a proportion of so-called infected babies spontaneously becoming disease free in the first 9 months and later, while another subset initially negative, developing positive PCR despite the mother abstaining from breast feeding.

Most puzzling of all is the finding from the (still unpublished!) PETRA B study in which the well-known Dr Glenda Gray was a principal investigator.

This study demonstrated that at 18 months following birth, there was no difference in HIV free survival between the infants whose HIV positive mothers had been given AZT plus 3TC just before birth, and those whose HIV positive mothers had received placebo.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Dr Gray's PhD thesis, which is presumably largely based on this study, is, several years later, still in the 'pipeline' and unpublished. Is this because the study shows that antiretroviral therapy for HIV positive pregnant women does not, in fact, "save babies' lives"?

EPE also says:

" The pharmacological mode of action of nevirapine can only prevent infection of cells not already infected. Thus, when given to the mother, it could prevent transmission only if the child is not already infected.

" Since nevirapine like AZT is capable only of preventing infection of new cells and is unable to inhibit the expression of HIV within already infected cells or eradicate the virus, when the drug is given to neonates, especially three days post partum, it will have no effect on MCT in utero or during labour and delivery. Under these circumstances nevirapine may prevent transmission via breast feeding and then only for a very short period of time (days). However, since,

(a) a single dose of 200mg administered to the mother leads to a drug concentration in milk much lower than the concentration necessary to have an anti-retroviral effect;

(b) the concentration reached in the infant after a single dose of 200mg to the mother and 2mg/Kg to the infant is much lower than that necessary to induce an anti-HIV effect;

such a regime of the drug cannot inhibit MCT via breast milk even for a very short period of time.

" Given the pharmacological action of the drug and its pharmacokinetics, one wonders how anyone can propose a protocol like that used in the Uganda study and expect an effect on MCT?

" At present, no proof exists that children become infected by their mothers either in utero or post partum with a unique human retrovirus, HIV or (that) this can be prevented by AZT or nevirapine."

EPE also quotes a 1998 study carried out by Ian Timaeus of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Relying on this study EPE says:

" It is worth emphasising that infant and child mortality fell in Uganda in the early 1990s despite the severity of the HIV epidemic in this country.... Without additional data (said Timaeus), one cannot separate the impact of AIDS on infant and child mortality from that of other factors.

" In other words, in Africa no proof exists of an increased mortality in children above that reflected by the 'enduring impact of under-development', resulting from HIV infection, not even in Uganda, where no less an authority on HIV and AIDS than Robert Gallo reported that as far back as 1973, 50/75 (67%) of a sample of 75 children were infected with HIV. This means that a similar proportion of mothers and presumably fathers in Uganda would also have been infected in 1973. If the HIV antibody tests do prove HIV infection and if HIV is the cause of AIDS one should have witnessed an inexorable decline in the Ugandan population over the past twenty years. Instead:

" Timaeus says: 'The population in Uganda has increased from the 4.9 million enumerated in the 1948 census to 6.5 million in 1959; 9.5 million by 1969; 12.6 million by 1980; and 16.7 million were enumerated at the 1991 census. Uganda's population is growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent which leads to an estimated population of 21 million people by 1998. It is estimated that 47 per cent of the population is under 15, while only 3 per cent are above 65 years. Thus the population is young and has in-built potential to grow (momentum) as the large proportion of children become parents.'.

" The one necessary and sufficient measure to decrease childhood mortality in the developing world, including death from 'AIDS', as well as the phenomena claimed to prove HIV infection and thus the putative mother-to-child-transmission of 'HIV', is to eliminate poverty."

(NB: the population of Uganda is now 23 million!)

NO FREE LUNCH

This, of course, raises the critically important question of where these resources are to come from, "to eliminate poverty." For those who think that the route of the extensive distribution of anti-retroviral drugs is the most affordable, they should take heed of what an IMF staff study had to say.

The newspaper, Business Day, reported on November 15, 2001 that:

" No southern African nation will be able to offer general access to antiretroviral treatment for HIV/AIDS through its public health service, even if the drugs are available at marginal cost, concludes a grim new International Monetary Fund (IMF) staff study.

" By 2010, Haaker estimates, the cost of providing highly active antiretroviral treatment to 30%, or less than a third, of South Africans who need it would represent about 1,4% of gross domestic product (GDP).

" With just 10% of those needing the treatment receiving it, the cost of all HIV-related health service for SA would be close to 1% of GDP in 2010, equivalent to nearly a third of public health expenditure in 1997.

The WHO supports this conclusion when it says:

"However, it should be noted that drug costs may represent only a fraction of the costs of the services that are required for an effective MTCT-prevention programme." (WHO/RHR/01.21). The fact of the matter, however, is that the omnipotent apparatus has succeeded to convince everybody that all that needs to be done is to reduce the price of the drugs, and all problems of cost will be solved!

Taking advantage of this, some of the pharmaceutical companies have sought to capture particular markets, especially in the poor countries, by offering to donate their drugs free-of-charge, for particular periods of time. The manufacturers of nevirapine/viramune, Boehringer-Ingelheim, have offered our country a free supply of this drug for five years.

Our national Ministry and Department of Health have not accepted this offer. Nevertheless, some of our provinces have been both proud and loud to announce the acceptance of this offer.

The leadership in these provinces is happy to ride a crest of dangerously misinfomed popularity, in fact to threaten the health, and lives, of our people, while claiming to be acting in the interest of life itself. This is a matter that has to be dealt with strongly and in a principled manner.

What our people are about, both black and white, to decide what happens to themselves, their children and their country, demands that they decide what they do with their health. This requires that they think independently.

They must refuse to be bribed or intimidated as some presume that because they are poor, and by definition deprived and dis-empowered, they are ready to be bought and terrorised.

Difficult as it is, the possibility to think independently must also apply to the question of HIV/AIDS. This, too, is about what happens to us as a people. It has to do with our physiological health, our psychological health, our political health, our assessment of ourselves as Africans.

And so we come to the questions which the omnipotent apparatus decrees should not be asked.

Since the US government does not recommend nevirapine for MTCT, on what basis are we being asked to use this drug for MTCT?

Since its safety relative to the child has not been established, why are we being asked to give it to our mothers and children?

What do those who argue for the efficacy of nevirapine in MTCT base this conclusion on?

Given the difficulties associated with determining the HIV status of infants, how is this status determined in our country?

What study exists in our country that measures comparative infant mortality between 'HIV-positive' and 'HIV-negative' infants?

What is meant by an AIDS-orphan - how are these scientifically determined as 'AIDS-orphans' as opposed to mere orphans?

LIES & STATISTICS

We have already referred to the need to get accurate information about the incidence of disease and death in our country. Everyday, we are fed with "information" that large numbers of people are dying from AIDS, with many anecdotes being told.

On November 22, 2001, the US periodical, "Rolling Stone", published an article by the South African writer and journalist, Rian Malan.

There are many things that Malan says in this article that, undoubtedly, will have enraged the omnipotent apparatus.

Referring to the HIV-tests we have already dealt with, Malan says that in the US each person is subjected to a number of tests. He says:

" In other words, we're talking six tests in all, doubly confirmed. Such a protocol is probably foolproof.In the annual pregnancy-clinic surveys on which South Africa's terrifying AIDS statistics are based, the protocol is one ELISA only, unconfirmed by anything. In America, one ELISA means almost nothing. 'Persons are positive only when they are repeatedly reactive by ELISA and confirmed by Western Blot,' says the CDC." (Our emphases).

Malan reports that he asked a member of a team of demographers who had studied African mortality statistics:

" Do you accept the high levels of HIV infection being reported by Geneva (UN AIDS)?" To which the demographer replied:

" I don't have much faith. It's essentially a modelling exercise, and the exercise has always seemed to have a political dimension."

Malan then says:

" Since (I assumed that) it was indeed true that very large numbers of South Africans were dying, then the nation's coffin makers had to be laboring hard to keep pace with growing demand.

" So I called the real-wood firms, three industrialists who manufactured coffins on an assembly live for the national market.

" 'It's quiet', said Kurt Lammerding of GNG Pine Products. 'We aren't feeling anything at all.' His competitors concurred - business was dead, so to speak.

" 'It's a fact,' said Mr A.B. Schwegman of B & A Coffins. 'If you go on what you read in the newspapers, we should be overwhelmed, but there's nothing. So what's going on? You tell me.'

" I couldn't, although I suspected it might have something to do with race. Since the downfall of apartheid in 1994, illegal backyard funeral parlors have mushroomed in the black townships, and my sources couldn't discount the possibility that these outfits were scoring their coffins from the underground economy. So I called a black-owned firm, Mmabatho Coffins, but it had gone out of business, along with others I tried calling.(In downtown Johannesburg) Penny's place was locked up and deserted. Inside I saw unsold coffins stacked ceiling-high, and a forlorn CLOSED sign hung on a wire."

Inevitably, the omnipotent apparatus will kill Rian Malan's article by ensuring that as many people as possible do not know that it was ever written and published. Among other things, this will help this apparatus to sustain the fiction of catastrophic figures of "HIV infection" in our country.

The sustenance of these figures, which derive from drastically wrong testing practice even in terms of the "orthodox" paradigm and process, is important because it creates a market for the sale of anti-retroviral drugs. In this context, findings such as those made by Rian Malan, that after the necessary scientific work was done, "eighty per cent of the suspected HIV infections disappeared", are totally unacceptable.

Having sounded thunderous drums about millions of our people being "infected by HIV", imagine what would happen to the domestic and global army that lives off this "apocalypse", if suddenly it would be said that eighty per cent of the suspected HIV infections are a result of pure imagination or defective medical processes!

It seems obvious that the omnipotent apparatus will never allow such an outcome, in its own interest. Of no consequence to the omnipotent apparatus in this regard is the actual health condition of our people.

The story we have told so far shows unequivocally that, at best, the "scientific" story that is told about the "HIV/AIDS pandemic" in our country, is highly tendentious.

The more any open-minded person probes it, as Rian Malan did, the more will this person find that what this "science" states as incontrovertible truths throws up more questions than it answers.

The problem with all this is that, here, we are dealing with matters of life and death. The issues we are discussing have to do with the lives of millions of people. This does not allow for any recklessness or anything other than a rigorous understanding of all the matters we have raised, and others besides.

It does not permit of submission to a herd-instinct, to which many of us are so prone. Because we are dealing here with science and facts, we cannot allow the truth to be defeated by perceptions, faith and fear of the omnipotent apparatus.

In this situation, we have to accept that the search for the truth will be denounced and punished by the omnipotent apparatus as unacceptable non-conformity.

The question that faces any honest person, having been exposed to the reality that there are many outstanding questions that require scientific answers, is whether it is possible both to be conformist and retain one's sense of personal integrity! Is it possible for us to be conformist and actually defeat the AIDS threat that faces our people!

The "scientific proofs" adduced to convince us about the various facets of the HIV/AIDS question rest on very tenuous grounds. Yet, the reality is that the majority of our people and the rest of the world, including our Continent, believe that these "proofs" are indeed scientific proofs.

The question arises naturally - why this groundswell of belief and faith!

DARK SEXUALITY

The answer lies in the reality that the hypotheses about ourselves, that are presented as facts, rest on an age-old definition by others of what and who we are, as Africans.

This following extract appears in the book, "AIDS, Africa And Racism", written by Richard and Rosalind Chirimuuta. (Free Association Books, London, 1989.)

" 'Two of the Negro's most prominent characteristics are the utter lack of chastity and complete ignorance of veracity. The Negro's sexual laxity, considered so immoral or even criminal in the white man's civilisation, may have been all but a virtue in the habitat of his origin. There, nature developed in him intense sexual passions to offset his high death rate."

This view was backed by our own Charlene Smith, who wrote in the Washington Post of June 4, 2000 that:

" Here (in Africa), (AIDS) is spread primarily by heterosexual sex - spurred by men's attitudes towards women. We won't end this epidemic until we understand the role of tradition and religion - and of a culture in which rape is endemic and has become a prime means of transmitting disease, to young women as well as children."

The Chirimuuta's also cite a letter published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, contributed by one F. Noireau in 1987. In his letter, Noireau says:

" The isolation from monkeys of retroviruses closely related to HIV strongly suggests a simian origin for this virus.Several unlikely hypotheses have been put forward to explain the indirect transmission of the virus from monkey to man - for example, the theory that the disease spread to man through bites or the cutting up and consumption of monkey meat or the arthropod vector hypothesis. In his book on the sexual life of people in the Great Lakes area of Africa, Kashamura writes: 'pour stimuler intense, on leur inocule dans les cuisses, la region du pubis et le dos du sang preleve sur un singe, pour in homme, sur une guenon, pour une femme' (to stimulate a man or a woman and induce them to intense sexual activity, monkey blood (for a man) or she-monkey blood (for a woman) was directly inoculated in the pubic area and also in the thighs and back). These magic practices would therefore constitute an efficient experimental transmission model and could be responsible for the emergence of AIDS in man."

But unfamiliar as we are with the existing huge volume of literature on the issue of HIV/AIDS, how were we to know that the supposed behaviour of our people was, in fact, pre-prescribed by the scientists of the developed world! Naturally, having foretold of its inevitability, these scientists, supported by the media, discovered this behaviour in our country as well. Was this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Interestingly, and inevitably, we too, the Africans, proved, once more, that we were quite willing to authenticate as the truth what the omnipotent apparatus told us was the truth. And as we behaved, as it were as to the manner born, we helped to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Having done this, we then felt very useful when we stood up, relying on such authority as we enjoyed among the people, to urge them not to do what they had never thought to do, until we told them they we doing it! Such are the ironies and tragedies of our age and our condition!

The Chirimuuta's conclude their own book with the words:

" We have shown how racism has guided the direction of AIDS research; moreover, that the problem is not simply the subjective prejudices of individual AIDS researchers but a racist world-view that coincides with the material self-interest of research institutions and of the Western governments that fund them. There is an illusion that science is objective, that scientists search for the truth irrespective of outside pressures. In reality the only science that exists is the science that is done, and he who pays the piper calls the tune."

More recently than everything we have said about racism and AIDS, what we have recounted above was illustrated in an ugly racist incident that took place at a Caravan Park near Port Edward in southern KwaZulu-Natal at the end of December 2001.

A group of white school children decided to have an end of the year party at this Caravan Park. Among them was one black boy, Castro Hlongwane, 17, their schoolmate.

Relevant to our story, The Sunday Times of January 6, 2002, reported:

" Schoolmate Ryan Templar, 18, said he was told by (Park owner) Theresa Smit that Hlongwane had AIDS and would rape other campers."

The unsophisticated Theresa Smit expressed openly a conviction and belief that many other sophisticated Theresa Smit's hold, but would never express in public, because they are mature practitioners of the deceits of the sophisticated.

For those who question the truth of the statements made by the Chirimuuta's about 'outside pressures' on scientists, we recommend that they read the well-researched and illuminating novel by John le Carré, "The Constant Gardener." Most important, this includes the explanatory notes the author has provided. Please read them carefully, having accepted the need for suspension of disbelief.

Regardless of the fact that the scientific proof is hard to come by, nevertheless the conviction has taken firm hold that sub-Saharan Africa will surely be wiped out by an HIV/AIDS pandemic unless, most important of all, we access anti-retroviral drugs.

This urgent and insistent call is made by some of the friends of the Africans, who are intent that the Africans must be saved from a plague worse than the Black Death of many centuries ago.

For their part, the Africans believe this story, as told by their friends. They too shout the message that - yes, indeed, we are as you say we are!

Yes, we are sex-crazy! Yes, we are diseased!

Yes, we spread the deadly HI Virus through our uncontrolled heterosexual sex! In this regard, yes we are different from the US and Western Europe!

Yes, we, the men, abuse women and the girl-child with gay abandon! Yes, among us rape is endemic because of our culture!

Yes, we do believe that sleeping with young virgins will cure us of AIDS! Yes, as a result of all this, we are threatened with destruction by the HIV/AIDS pandemic! Yes, what we need, and cannot afford, because we are poor, are condoms and anti-retroviral drugs!

Help!

In his time, Marcuse saw a different form of violence being perpetrated against the victims of poverty and underdevelopment by affluent societies. He said:

" When, in the more or less affluent societies, productivity has reached a level at which the masses participate in its benefits, and at which the opposition is effectively and democratically 'contained', then the conflict between master and slave is also effectively contained. Or rather, it has changed its social location. It exists, and explodes, in the revolt of the backward countries against the intolerable heritage of colonialism and its prolongation by neo-colonialism.Yet the revolt in the backward countries has found a response in the advanced countries where youth is in protest against repression in affluence and war abroad. Revolt against the false fathers, teachers, and heroes - solidarity with the wretched of the earth: is there any 'organic' connection between the two facets of the protest?"

In time, the explosion and the revolt came to an end. With regard to the developing countries, Marcuse spoke of the physical violence inflicted on them by the affluent societies.

Perhaps he did not foresee the intellectual violence that was to come, as a result of which we, the Africans, have come to accept that we are the immoral, diseased and sexually depraved animals which all racism had, from the beginning, defined us as - the putative Castro Hlongwane's!

He did not see that the overkill would be an overkill of the mind, achieved not with laser directed bombs, but the capacity to over-communicate through satellite saturation media communication.

The omnipotent apparatus has advanced the extraordinary argument that our political leaders in government should not comment on scientific questions. It demands - leave science to the scientists!

If our government heeded this absurd argument, it would then have to cede the exercise of the function of government to the specialists!

The logic of the argument of the omnipotent apparatus is - leave the economy to the economists!

Leave education to the pedagogues!

Leave agriculture to the agriculturalists!

Leave mining to the engineers and the geologists!

Leave social development to the sociologists and the anthropologists!

Leave defence to the generals! Leave the environment to the ecologists!

Leave politics to the political scientists!

Leave health to the medical doctors!

Leave sanitation to.and so on!

Conscious of the need to access the best available scientific advice on the all-important issue of HIV/AIDS, without abandoning its responsibility to govern, our government did, in fact, constitute a Presidential International Scientific AIDS Panel, to help provide answers to the questions posed in this document.

The Panel has published its Interim Report, which includes the decisions it has taken to seek to answer these questions, scientifically. But because the scientists who make up this Panel decided to behave as scientists, the omnipotent apparatus decided to treat their Interim Report as part of the non-conformity it is committed to punish.

Because it could not denounce the scientists for behaving as scientists, it decided to kill and bury their Interim Report by silence. In this instance, it applied the principle it knows well - if it is not known, it does not exist!

Not known, though known, is precisely the fact that, contrary to what our government is being charged with not doing, it has, in fact, gone back to the science intelligentsia whose task it is to inquire, and asked them to inquire and to advise the government, as scientists.

But the omnipotent apparatus is intent that this known fact should become unknown. Thus will its campaign succeed to present our government as a monkey troupe of imbeciles, intent to trouble an established and comfortable world of ecclesiastic belief and practice.

It believes that unless it is stopped, this simian troop of African clowns will thrive and grow fat and important, feasting on dangerous ignorance.

We hope that the Panel of Scientists will do their work, loyal to their consciences as scientists and true to their courage as people of integrity. What they have to do is of the greatest importance to us as a people. Inevitably, for no fault of their own, what they have to do is both about science and politics.

For us, the recipients of their expert knowledge and advice, their work is about our health and our dignity as human beings. It is about helping to find answers to many unanswered questions about HIV/AIDS.

NEW AFRICAN

Because we are African, who have to overcome centuries of treatment as the repulsive and unacceptable Other, could we avoid to ask the question - why have fellow human beings such a scope for love and hate, despondency and hope!

Writing about "Colonial War and Mental Disorders", Frantz Fanon said:

" Because it is a systematic negation of the other person and a furious determination to deny the other person all attributes of humanity, colonialism forces the people it dominates to ask themselves the question constantly: 'In reality, who am I?' "

In spite of our friends, the friends of Africa, we must stand up to say that we have had enough of the insults that demean Africans, whatever their nationality. The time has come that we gather the courage and the intellect to say that we too are human, as human as any other human being.

We are neither freaks, nor do we behave like freaks.

We have never been barbarians and are not now.

We are poor.

We live in conditions of under-development.

We are concentrated within the tropics and suffer from and enjoy the physical conditions that nature has imposed on this part of the globe.

None of this makes us sub-human.

Nor should the impact of disease, including AIDS, that afflicts us, be used in the name of questionable science and friendship with us, to reduce us to a peculiar species of humanity likely to slip back into a state of savagery.

Like the "Africans and Europeans" that Dr Konotey-Ahulu of Ghana met when he spent six weeks touring sub-Saharan Africa, we must pose the question:

" Why do the world's media appear to have conspired with some scientists to become so gratuitously extravagant with the untruth?"

The posing of that question begins the process of the humanisation of the African.

Even if we have been deceived before, we must know that the asking of this question, to which the omnipotent apparatus will object most strenuously, means that we shall overcome the centuries of racism that continue to define a subservient place for us in the world.

We must also know that we have succeeded to produce geese among us that have been fattened by those who hold us in contempt.

In this situation, it is clear that as Africans, we must learn well the instructions of Sun Tzu, the Chinese strategist, who lived more than two millennia ago. For its part, the omnipotent apparatus understands what he said, thoroughly. He said:

" When the enemy approaches carelessly and without a plan, when his flags and banners are confused and disorderly, when both men and horses often look to the rear, one can attack an enemy force ten times his own and surely rout it.

" When the forces of the feudal lords have not yet assembled, when sovereigns and ministers are not in accord, when moats and ramparts are not yet completed, when prohibitions and commands are not yet published, when the entire host is in an uproar, when they wish to advance and cannot, or to retire and do not dare, then one may attack an enemy twice his size, and in one hundred battles there will be no calamity."

(Sun Tzu: The Art of War: tr. Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963.)

Perhaps, as we have fought for our humanisation and humanity as Africans, our flags and banners have been confused and disorderly.

Having read Sun Tzu, we must, at last, say - no more shall we approach carelessly and without a plan. The ceremony of African innocence is drowned!

We will fight for and defend the reality that we are African and human. Young Castro Hlongwane must never again be expelled from the Caravan Park. No longer must Africans be outcasts from the caravan park and the global village.

No longer will the Africans accept as the unalterable truth that they are a dependent people that emanates from and inhabits a continent shrouded in a terrible darkness of destructive superstition, driven and sustained by ignorance, hunger and underdevelopment, and that is victim to a self-inflicted "disease" called HIV/AIDS.

For centuries we have carried the burden of the crimes and falsities of 'scientific' Eurocentrism, its dogmas imposed upon our being as the brands of a definitive, 'universal' truth.

Against this, we have, in struggle, made the statement to which we will remain loyal - that we are human and African!

Because we are human, we shall no longer permit of control by a colonial mother who claims for herself the right unceasingly to restrain us from reclaiming our dignity.

We shall overcome!

March, 2002.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CASTRO HLONGWANE, CARAVANS, CATS, GEESE, FOOT & MOUTH AND STATISTICS.Full Table of Contents