livius drusus

Hairi was referring to Dr. Karry Mullis, discoverer of the Polymerase Chain Reaction technique for DNA testing and former HIV skeptic, not Peter Duesberg.

MadKally

Good lawd, A booboo so early in the morning. Thank you ever so much for correcting my error. Oh I am so terribly inaccurate, I should have read the entire old thread.

IMO all the
HIV denial is bullshit anyway. Peter Duesberg or the CNA's at the local convalescent hospital. I saw a lot of patients die rather quickly when they were still using AZT. I was a first year student.
Peter Duesberg or former HIV skeptic. One woke up and the other didn't. Big deal. I saw a lot of Kaposi scarcoma, Thrush needing Gentamycin infusions over 6 hour periods with an RN present because Gent is so nephrotoxic. Pneumocystis Carinii, and eventually dementia and death.

Is there really a doubt that HIV ------> AIDS in the scientific community anymore. THe CD4 cell count is becoming higher when they start giving some meds now. That was a big problem. Should they wait until the count dropped to 200, or start at a higher level such as 350 or 400?

Coragyps

Note that Philip Johnston, tbe big gun at the Discovery Institute (an antievolution stealth Christian organization) was a fervent AIDS denier a few years ago.... And he's still a lawyer.

sakrilege

So he must have determined that HIV doesn't have the legal right to cause AIDS.

livius drusus

The title of Hairi's post was "Karry Mullis" and neatly put to bed Roddy's appeal to authority claim that "Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize for inventing [PCR] and says that HIV is a bunch of crap." It's not a huge deal or anything, but that was the entire point of Hairi's post so I thought it was worth correcting your error. Was I wrong? Justin70 is currently investigating the arguments of HIV skeptics. I imagine comparing and contrasting a scientist who currently believes HIV does not cause AIDS and one who used to believe that but is now convinced that he was wrong could be of use to him.
Not that I can see. I couldn't possibly say.

Principia

It is fortunate that PJ is an HIV denier, because it provides an acid test for judging all of the other crap that he talks about in public... in that he uses pretty much the same arguments. He rails against the scientific conspiracy, claims that academic elites are close-minded, and provides all sorts of kooky societal concerns that may arise from believing in a scientific theory.

theyeti

Here is a good page with several links to relevant documents:

HCRC FAQ

In particular, I recomend The AIDS Heresies: A Case Study in Skepticism Taken too Far which originally appeared in Skeptic magazine.

________________________

As for PJ, some of us endevored to find out a while back if he's still an HIV denier after all these years. (The wonders of protease inhibitors won over many former skeptics -- the HIV denialist movement peaked in about the mid 90s and has been going way down hill ever since.) We discovered that he still moderates an anti-HIV email list, so it appears that he still holds that belief as fervently as before. Johnson is the kind of person who's not likely ever to change his mind about such things. Afterall, one of his most frequently used rhetorical tactics is absolute certitude, whereby he presents his arguments with such an extreme degree of confidence that a person unfamiliar with the subject will think that he must be on to something. But this makes it almost impossible to repudiate formerly held views, because it makes your other bold pronouncements look like a lot of hot air (which in Johnson's case, they are of course.)

theyeti

MadKally

Not at all, you were right. I shouldn't start posting something from a source I hadn't even read. My only problem right now is needing to make a pot of coffee. If I make errors I appreciate someone letting me know.

Thank you,
Kally
Now for that coffee... I'm just not ever a happy camper before my first coffee in the morning. uhhhh I was joking.

openeyes

This AIDS-denial mentality seems to fall in with other denial areas (e.g. evolution) in that there's so much evidence and so much research, but as in most areas of science, it's also very complicated, so let's just say it doesn't exist and not tax our brains.



(Smiley's here shown to illustrate the uniform happiness than can result from an untaxed brain.)

RoddyM

As far as I know Kary Mullis hasn't changed his mind about lack of evidence for HIV. HIV propaganda goes hand in hand with all the other garbage the US leaders have foisted onto the rest of the world.