Is It the Trend?

By

Ching-Chee Chan, Ph.D.

As Part of the Supplement to

An Alternative Approach to AIDS and Related Problems: Book 2

All Rights Reserved

Egret Publishing Inc.

February 2001

The HIV industry used to be very confident, because the media had been repeating that HIV caused AIDS almost every day. If someone questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, proponents of the HIV hypothesis would reply "It is the virus, stupid" and the mainstream media would echo in similar way. The public in some peculiar way have accepted the hypothesis as a proven theory. Since President Mbeki of the Republic of South Africa expressed doubt about the link, something has changed. The mass media are no longer echoing the view of the HIV industry so readily. A mainstream newspaper, the Toronto Star, published a letter from this author on September 25, 2000 on page 17. It is reproduced below.

"Is HIV the cause?

Re. Immigrants may face HIV test, Sept 20.

This is most outrageous. HIV being the cause of AIDS is a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an assumption made by scientists for discussion about their scientific problems.

Now the Ministry of Immigration is considering using a mere assumption to bar entry of potential immigrants. You know you are not permitted to use assumption as evidence in a court of law.

Ching-Chee Chan

Etobicoke"

The Toronto Star had published many letters from this author but never one about HIV/AIDS. Perhaps the mainstream media are shifting their position a bit.

A mainstream newspaper used to publish articles, regarding HIV and the HIV industry on December the first, the AIDS Day, in the past few years. It devoted at least four or five pages, occasionally even a whole section of ten to twelve pages, for HIV-related articles. On the last AIDS Day, December 1, 2000, it had only a small column about AIDS statistics. Next day, it had a slightly larger column about some AIDS activists but a page for ALS and the terminally ill and a section for caring for dying patients. A TV programme called 60 minutes showed a few HIV-positive people who doubted the link between HIV and AIDS.

In August 1999, this author submitted a proposal to a mainstream radio station and the receipt of the proposal was acknowledged. Nothing more was heard about the proposal until January 16, 2001, an e-mail was received by this author. The sender apologized for the delay due to misfiling and maternity leave. All these are not coincidental. The attitude of the media is changing.

The war on AIDS is being fought like "Vietnam" with the media as cheerleaders. Many people are making a good living out of it, writing positive reports, no matter how negative the results are. Heads of activists groups are drawing good salaries, up to two hundred thousand dollars per annum. Like "Vietnam," when casualties, side effects in this case, are mounting and the media stop cheering, the mood will change. AIDS is really a chronic disease which does not cause death immediately. Some AIDS activists may have realised this, resulting in many countercurrent organizations. The high death rates due to AIDS in the early nineteen nineties were due to aggressive treatments with AZT which may have activated and kept activating AIDS but the HIV industry claims the relatively lower death rates in the late nineteen nineties were due to the efficacy of the cocktails (mainly consisted of protease inhibitors) on HIV. This is false. The relatively low death rates would not have appeared if the high death rates due to aggressive treatments with AZT had not occurred in the early nineteen nineties. Many HIV-positive people, not treated with the cocktails, have remained healthy for more than fifteen years.

Perhaps the medical community is also changing its position. According to New Scientist, the 'hit hard, hit early" HIV treatment may be in the way out in the US, because early use of currently available drugs may do more harm than good (see No More Cocktails by Michael Day, New Scientist. Http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns22698). Of course, iatrogenic effects will be more obvious when healthy HIV-positive people are treated and become sick. The risk of drug toxicity is just as high if not higher when the patients are sick or it does not matter because they are going to die anyhow. It is easier to blame the iatrogenic effects on AIDS when the patients are sick and treated. The benefits may only exist in the imagination of doctors. They would feel better when they think something can be done. It is more likely that the harm is real and the benefit is zero, because HIV does not cause AIDS. Did they not believe in the benefit of AZT? The decline in the number of deaths due to AIDS coincided with the advent of thalidomide treatment for AIDS patients and the reduction in AZT dosages before the advent of the cocktails. Thalidomide is very effective in treating ENL. How many guesses do they need? They have come a long way but there is still a long way to go before they find out what is AIDS and what is the cause.

Postponing treatments will reveal that AIDS is a chronic debilitating disease like arthritis, asthma, ALS, lymphoma (ICD 202) . . . etc. and the disease is manageable especially when the patients are relatively young and the disease is not activated. One possible scenario is, that many HIV-positive people, refraining from dangerous behaviours, continue to live without serious health problems until sixty-five and over. It may even prove HIV and AIDS are not related eventually.

Now the HIV industry is being quietly dropped by parts of the mass media. Meanwhile, the HIV industry is going to recover its investment by marketing those drugs to the third world. South Africa refused to pay for those drugs with borrowed money. The HIV industry has turned its attention to China's bulging foreign currency reserve. There are very few AIDS dissidents in China. Rumour-mongering is China's national pastime. This makes China an easy target.

Relevant authorities in the USA have issued warnings about some more AIDS drugs. When these filter through to the investment community, it is going to affect the market. When they finally admit HIV does not cause AIDS, there will be violent reaction from the market, because the HIV industry has spent billions of dollars in HIV research and most of the money may not be recoverable.

Something good may come out of this. Government funds allocated for HIV research may be diverted to more fruitful research. It is an enormous amount of money and a lot can be accomplished.

As Winston Churchill said "This is not the end, nor the beginning of the end. Perhaps it is just the end of the beginning."

What Is Going to Happen to the Dissidents and the Dissident Media?

A dissident publication requested and got a manuscript from this author in September 1999 and it promised to publish a shortened version or something about the work. So far nothing has happened and it did not respond to e-mails, requesting it to release the manuscript back to this author. It looks like that dissident media are carrying out a different kind of censorship, just wait until it is safe to publish, when the whole world reaches a consensus about the cause of AIDS. Dissidents do not necessarily agree with one another. Some dissidents question the drug hypothesis because some celebrities known to use drugs and do not develop AIDS. This certainly shows drugs alone are not enough to cause AIDS, but it may play a part in activating AIDS, if the ENL mechanism (see Chapter 2 in Book 2) is considered. The slimming disease has been around Africa since ancient time. Most of the dissident hypotheses cannot account for the sudden increase in AIDS cases since 1960. This is the major reason that most of these hypotheses are not accepted by scientists.

As the mainstream media become more flexible, the niche of the dissident media will become more confined, especially those publications dominated by one or two schools of thoughts. Some of these are going to disappear unless they evolve. Most dissidents and their publications have one thing in common that is HIV does not cause AIDS, but they are unable to provide a satisfactory cause for AIDS with a reasonable mechanism. Most dissidents will probably disappear from the scene when we know what AIDS is.

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