[quote=tim post_id=90280 time=1737895010 user_id=2211]
[u]Plague of Corruption: Restoring Faith in the Promise of Science[/u]
[quote]Dr. Judy Mikovits is a modern-day Rosalind Franklin, a brilliant researcher shaking up the old boys’ club of science with her groundbreaking discoveries. And like many women who have trespassed into the world of men, she uncovered decades-old secrets that many would prefer to stay buried.[/quote]
[quote]What I Really Think about HIV and Ebola
The first concept I want you to understand is called zoonosis, or
more properly, zoonotic diseases. If you think it’s a funny word
and you immediately imagined a picture of a zoo, you wouldn’t be
far off. Zoonosis literally means a disease which can spread between
animals and humans.
It may surprise you given my reputation as a renegade, but I
believe the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) can occasionally
provide good, basic information to the public. Here is what they
have on their website about zoonotic diseases.
Every year, tens of thousands of Americans will get sick
from diseases spread between animals and people. These are known as
zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic means infectious diseases that are
spread between animals and people. Because these diseases cause
sickness or death in people, CDC is always tracking them.
Animals provide many benefits to people. Many people
interact with animals in their daily lives, both at home and away
from home. Pets offer companionship and entertainment, with millions
of households having one or more pets . . .
However, some animals can carry harmful genes that can
be shared with people and cause illness—these are known as
zoonotic diseases or zoonoses. Zoonotic diseases are caused by
harmful germs like viruses, bacteria, parasites, and fungi. These
germs can cause many different types of illnesses in people and
animals ranging from mild to serious illness to death. Some animals
can appear healthy even when they are carrying germs that can make
people sick.
And the biggest zoonotic disease that is not covered in that list
is HIV-AIDS, which affected more than sixty million people leading
to our world’s greatest modern plague. While a good deal of ink
has been dedicated to the question of how prejudice against the gay
lifestyle delayed efforts to properly address the disease, our job
as scientists is to provide an explanation of events in the past and
how problems might be avoided in the future.
Let’s make sure we understand our terms. The human
immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is linked to the condition known as
acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). There was a brief time
when the disease was known as gay-related immune disease (GRID), and
many activists claim the name change to AIDS prompted a more
balanced examination of the disease. Perhaps this is true.
But what of the genesis of the retrovirus HIV? Where did it come
from?
We have a clear answer.
It came from a primate. The field agrees the precursor to HIV was
the simian immunodeficiency virus or SIV.
To be more precise, the human virus came from a monkey or
chimpanzee virus. [/quote]
[quote]What we were told at the time was that the disease probably
jumped to humans as a result of Africans forgetting how to cook
their food, in this case chimpanzees, often referred to as “bush
meat,” and that the promiscuous sexual lifestyles of African
peoples (with implications of possible bestiality with primates) led
to the cross-species jump and spread of the virus among the human
population. I am now appalled that at the time we did not more
closely question these assumptions.
Since that time, there have been two competing and, in my mind,
closely related theories of how a chimpanzee retrovirus made the
jump to humans.
The first was popularized by the journalist Edward Hooper and
expanded upon in his lengthy 1999 book, The River: A Journey to the
Source of HIV and AIDS, for which he conducted more than six hundred
interviews. Of the interviews conducted, Hooper was most impressed
with evolutionary biologist Bill Hamilton, who, along with other
independent researchers such as Louis Pascal, Tom Curtis, and Blaine
Elswood, was proposing an idea that, before my work with XMRV, I
would have found quite radical. They proposed that the jump from
chimpanzees to humans came as a result of vaccine trials in the
Belgian Congo from 1957 to 1960 in which more than five hundred
common chimpanzees and bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) were killed so
that their kidney cells and sera could be used to grow the oral
polio vaccine. This vaccine was subsequently administered to more
than a million Africans during that time period.
Hooper suggests there was great resistance to this idea, since
even in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was little public
support for the idea of using chimpanzees in such medical
experiments. In addition, the Belgian royal family was publicly
supporting the idea of wildlife conservation, and the revelation of
these actions would go against that image. Hooper believes another
reason for resistance to his idea is that if his theory was
accepted, it would shake public confidence in the medical
establishment as well as lead to multibillion-dollar class action
lawsuits for the AIDS epidemic.
This is what Edward Hooper has written on his website about the
circumstances surrounding the creation of HIV-AIDS from these
experiments and why it makes more sense than the competing bush-meat
and “cut hunter” theory.
By contrast, the oral polio vaccine (OPV) theory proposes that an experimental OPV that
had been locally prepared in chimpanzee cells and administered by
mouth, or “fed,” to nearly one million Africans in vaccine
trials staged in the then Belgian-ruled territories of the Belgian
Congo and Ruanda-Urundi between 1957 and 1960, represents the origin
of the AIDS pandemic. It provides a historically-supported
background: that between 1956 and 1959 over 500 common chimpanzees
(Pan troglodytes schweinfurthi and Pan troglodytes troglodytes) and
bonobos or pygmy chimpanzees (Pan paniscus) were housed together at
Lindi Camp (Near Stanleyville in the Belgian Congo, or DRC).
Hooper goes on to explain that the use of chimpanzees was not
technically prohibited by any conventions, but that in most
countries around the world at the time, Asian macaques were used in
polio virus preparation. As for the claim of other outbreaks, Hooper
believes they fit comfortably within the bounds of his theory:</p>
<blockquote><a name="calibre_link-251"></a>The OPV theory ascribes
the minor outbreaks of AIDS caused by other variants of HIV-1 (Group
O, Group N and the more controversial “Group P”) to other polio
vaccines (both oral and injected) that were prepared in the cells of
chimpanzees and administered in French Equatorial Africa (including
Congo Brazzaville and Gabon) in the same late fifties period. It
ascribes the outbreak of AIDS from HIV-2 (of which it maintains that
only two were epidemic outbreaks) to other polio vaccines (both oral
and injected) that were prepared in the cells of sooty mangabeys (or
other monkeys that had been caged with sooty mangabeys) and
administered in French West Africa in 1956–1960. All the other
HIV-2 groups that are claimed by bush-meat theorists have infected
just a single person, and some OPV theory supporters argue that
dead-end, non-transmissible infections such as these are the natural
fate of SIVs that infect human beings via the bushmeat route: that
unless they are introduced in an artificial manner (as via a
vaccine), they simply die out.
I find myself in complete agreement with Hooper’s analysis.
Yes, viruses can jump from one species to another, possibly by the
eating of an infected animal. But the natural process of degradation
by the digestive system, as well as cooking (even when poorly done)
is likely to inactivate most pathogens.[/quote]
[quote]The second plausible theory, which has come to be known as the
“bush-meat” theory, is that sometime early in the twentieth
century an individual became infected with SIV from handling
chimpanzees or chimpanzee bush-meat. It usually involves the actions
of some anonymous native hunter (often called the “cut hunter”
because he cut himself shortly after having killed a chimpanzee).
Added to this scenario is urbanization encroaching upon the jungle,
allowing it to be spread by those newly introduced western evils of
prostitution and intravenous drug usage.
This theory has recently been expanded by the science writer
David Quammen in The Chimp and the River: How AIDS Emerged from an
African Forest. Based on an extrapolation of some scientific data,
Quammen sets the date for this viral transfer from chimp to human
around 1908 in the area known as Leopoldville (later Kinshasa) in
the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The description is vivid, and
plausible, but I question much about it:
Let’s give him due stature: not just a cut hunter but
the Cut Hunter. Assuming he lived hereabouts in the first decade of
the twentieth century, he probably captured his chimpanzee with a
snare made from a forest vine, or in some other form of a trap, and
then killed the animal with a spear. He may have been a Baka Pygmy
man, living independently with his extended family in the forest or
functioning as sort of a serf under the “protection” of a Bantu
village chief . . . There’s no way of establishing his identity,
nor even his ethnicity, but this remote southeastern corner of what
was then Germany’s Kamerun colony offered plenty of candidates . .
The chimp too, tethered by a foot or a hand, would have
been terrified as the man approached, but also angry and strong and
dangerous. Maybe the man killed it without getting hurt; if so, he
was lucky. Maybe there was an ugly fight; he might even have been
pummeled by the chimp, or badly bitten. But he won. Then he would
have butchered his prey, probably on the spot . . .
I imagine him opening a
long, sudden slice across the back of his left hand, into the
muscular web between thumb and forefinger, his flesh smiling out
pink and raw almost before he saw the damage or felt it, because his
blade was so sharp . . . His blood flowed out and mingled with the
chimp’s, the chimp’s flowed in and mingled with his, so that he
couldn’t quite tell which was which. He was up to his elbows in
gore. He wiped his hand. Blood leaked again into his cut, dribbled
again into it from the chimp, and again he wiped. He had no way of
knowing, no language or words or thoughts by which to conceive, that
this animal was SIV-positive. The idea didn’t exist in 1908.[/quote]
[quote] It’s a possible scenario. I can’t say something like that didn’t happen. I just wonder why
it hadn’t happened many centuries earlier. Africans had been
hunting chimpanzees for thousands of years and cooking them. An
interesting addition Quammen makes to the theory is that
subsequently the virus spreads slowly among the population. But then
starting in 1917, there were vaccination campaigns against sleeping
sickness by European doctors who used glass syringes that were
reusable. One French colonial doctor during a two-year period
treated more than five thousand cases with only six syringes.
These campaigns peaked in the early 1950s, and by that time the
precursor to the deadly strain of HIV had arisen.
When you think about it, you come to the realization there’s a
battle of narratives, with science having a definite preference for
one over the other.
In the first scenario, unwitting scientists release a plague of
massive proportions on the population because of their use of
questionable animal experiments, infecting more than sixty million
people and causing the death of at least thirty-nine million.
In the second scenario, a chance event in a jungle encounter with
an infected chimpanzee leads to cross-species transmission, then
because it’s always a good play to blame urbanization and
prostitution, as well as maybe a little inadvertent help from
western medicine, and you have a new disease!
Is it any surprise that scientists far prefer scenario number
two?
While I can’t come to a definitive conclusion as to which
scenario is more likely, the first one, in which chimpanzees are
directly harvested for their organs and the growing of polio virus,
makes the most sense to me. It doesn’t have as many moving parts.
The virus is in a certain percentage of the five hundred
chimpanzees sacrificed. They’re cut up, then used to grow polio
vaccine, which is then given orally to nearly a million Africans.
And there’s another part of the story that makes Hooper’s
account sound more plausible.
After Hooper made his claim that the oral polio vaccine grown in
chimpanzee tissue and given to humans was the source of the HIV-AIDS
epidemic, there was an “investigation.” As I read Hooper’s
account, it sounded a lot like the Ian Lipkin investigation into
XMRV.
In this great investigation, they sampled stocks of polio vaccine
from the 1957–1960 period for traces of chimpanzee DNA, or simian
virus. Lo and behold, they found NOTHING!
There’s just one problem. All of the samples they used were
from the United States.
They did not have any samples of polio vaccine from Africa. The
samples of polio vaccine from the United States had never used
chimpanzee tissues as a growth medium or cell line.</p>
<p>They DID NOT test African samples of the oral polio vaccine for
that which used chimpanzee tissue.
This is what Hooper wrote about the supposed investigation into
the use of chimpanzee tissue in the development of the polio vaccine
that was performed by the Royal Society in September of 2000:</p>
Instead of the open and honest debate, and the
even-handed investigation of the OPV theory, which had been
promised, what actually took place was a carefully-planned attempt
to suppress the theory by fair means or foul. The conference became
focused around the testing of samples of CHAT vaccine which the
parent institute (The Wistar in Philadelphia) had finally released
for independent analysis. The vaccinators and the meeting organizers
insisted that the vaccine samples were representative of the batches
which had been prepared for use in Africa. Since they tested
negative for HIV, SIV, and chimpanzee DNA, they concluded that the
OPV hypothesis had been disproved— and an acquiescent press
largely concurred.
The reality, however, was very different. None of the
tested samples had ever been near Africa, let alone prepared for the
African trials.[/quote]
[quote]As the weeks and months
passed after the meeting, it became clear that a carefully-organized
whitewash was being carried out, partly by the original protagonists
(who had, among other things, leant on witnesses to change key parts
of their stories), and partly by well-meaning research scientists
who could not countenance the possibility that their work of the
last ten years might be erroneous, and who secondly were unwilling
or unable to imagine that their peers might not be telling the
truth.
I’ve never met Edward Hooper, but he was writing this in 2004,
years before I ever pursued a similar line of inquiry. I’m sure he
must have undergone a similar evolution, from hopeful questioner to
disillusioned critic. Is it so difficult to imagine that members of
an organization will not believe the worst about their own members?
Don’t we see the same pattern among police, members of the clergy,
and our political class? Isn’t it the rare member of an
organization who sees the flaws of their own group?</p>
<p>We leave scientists alone in their research and practice,
expecting somehow that they can self-police. But we do not even
allow the police to self-police. There are citizen review boards,
internal affairs, and oversight committees.
In a similar manner, we have learned through bitter experience
that just because a person is a member of the clergy doesn’t mean
they are not capable of crimes against children. We are also
beginning to understand that these crimes are not just committed
against the flock, but there are more nuns and sisters in the
Catholic Church who are coming forward with stories of rape and
sexual assault committed by the male members of the clergy. These
stories sicken us, but perhaps we have simply trusted too much in
unaccountable authorities.
Now, maybe Hooper is wrong about his accusation, but it sounds
like a pretty serious charge to make. Given what I observed in the
“official” investigation into XMRV and the way they cavalierly
rewrote basic principles of virology, I’m more inclined to believe
Hooper’s account. The scientific establishment tells their stories
and expects we will believe them.
The simian virus gets transferred into humans, and then the
question becomes one of immune activation. What happened in the gay
community in the late 1970s and early 1980s?
There was a great deal of recreational drug usage, and it’s a
scientific fact that anal sex, with its subsequent tearing of
tissue, promotes immune activation. The sexual revolution for the
heterosexual population, and the lesbian population as well, did not
involve such risks.
Are dangers to the human population limited to the use of
chimpanzee tissue in the development of medical products, or is it a
more general question of any animal tissue? I tend to believe the
latter and use as an example the controversy over Simian Virus-40
(SV-40) in the same antipolio campaign of the 1950s and 1960s. The
concern is that these viruses may lie dormant in people until some
form of immune stimulation, just as we saw with HIV and the gay
lifestyle that included multiple partners, sexual activity that
involved anal tearing, and high recreational drug usage.[/quote]
[quote]In her Pulitzer Prize-nominated book, The Pentagon’s Brain,
detailing the work of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), author Annie Jacobsen provides a brief overview of this
controversy. One of the DARPA scientists she interviewed for the
book was microbiologist Stephen Block, and this is what she wrote:
If the notion of a
stealth virus, or silent load, sounded improbable, Block cited a
little-known controversy involving the anti-polio vaccination
campaign of the late 1950s and early 1960s. According to Block,
during this effort millions of Americans risked contracting the
“cryptic human infection” of monkey virus, without ever being
told. “These vaccines,” writes Block, “were prepared using
live African green monkey kidney cells, and batches became
contaminated by low levels of a monkey virus, Simian virus 40 (SV
40), which eluded the quality control procedures of the day. As a
result, large numbers of people—probably millions in fact—were
inadvertently exposed to SV 40.”
The controversy over SV 40 was whether it would ultimately lead
to cancers in humans decades later. The virus would often be found
in cancerous tissues, raising the question of whether it was simply
a passenger or a causative agent. Again, this is the same concern
raised by the finding of bovine leukemia virus in samples of breast
cancer tissue and whether the use of growth hormone in the cattle
was prompting the expression of this virus. It’s also worth noting
that essentially zero testing is done these days of animal viruses
contaminating our vaccines or other medical products. Our medical
authorities simply assume we’re all tough enough to fight off
these contaminating viruses. Jacobsen continues:
Block says that two
outcomes of this medical disaster remain debated. One side says the
98 million people vaccinated dodged a bullet. The other side
believes there is evidence the vaccine did harm. “A great deal of
speculation occurs about whether [simian virus] may be responsible
for some diseases” that manifests much later in the vaccinated
person’s life, says Block, including cancer.
Let’s go to the doubters who agree that at least ninety-eight
million people were inoculated with a polio virus that was
contaminated with SV-40. Is it reasonable to assume that if you fire
ninety-eight million bullets, none will cause any harm?
And this only considers the polio vaccine. Every vaccine has been
grown in animal tissue, usually of several different species,
including monkey, mouse, bird, and cow. Each one of these
cross-species events has the potential to transfer a pathogen to
humans, or to create some new strain that can cause harm. We have
fired several billion bullets of biological ammunition at the human
species, and it is the height of arrogance to believe we have caused
zero damage.
In my discussion of Ebola, I want to highlight an idea many
others have been discussing in recent years in one form or another,
but that is likely to reconfigure how we go about promoting health.[/quote]
[/quote]