“OK, so maybe there’s a condition, which you might call AIDS, and maybe it’s caused by something, which you might call HIV, and maybe taking ARVs helps, but I refuse to believe that there’s any proof that any of these things work in the way that you think they do.”

Russell’s teapot looms large.

Irrelevant question. Even the orthodoxy doesn’t claim to know everything about how “HIV” is supposed to do its thing and how the ARVs or vaccines are actually supposed to stop this thing. So there is a lot of room for speculation but even complete success wouldn’t mean anything for the fundamental scientific questions lingering around, like the ones posed by the Perth Group. If you must know however, ARVs are reported to protect the T-cells of “HIV negative” people too: http://cytotalk.blogspot.com/2009/07/viremia-independent-t-cell-protection.html

Best wishes to all contributors…

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

I wonder if he had someone like Sadun in mind?

- Aha ! it’s all about trying to line their own pockets ! no-one who does research for money can be disinterested !

(as the CO2 skeptics might put it …)

Exactly – he’s nothing more than a glorified troll. As the favourite drunk saying goes “leave him; he’s not worth it”.

If you reread all of Sadun’s posts in this thread (not that I recommend this) you will notice that he has never once articulated any of the Perthian’s specific claims, or tried to argue them. He never does.

Instead he posts paragraph after pargraph of syntactically correct but meaningless waffle designed to draw attention to his friends Mrs E-P and Dr Turner, and makes vague accusations that those who disagree with him are “unscientific”, “illogical”, “closed minded”, “bamboozled by the powers that be” or indulging in “ad hominems”. He’s been doing this on multiple threads for many, many months now.

*Who he is is obvious.

Of course I was being facetious, but you have made my point for me. You’ve yet again proven you clearly don’t understand (or refuse to understand) why the position of the PG is so utterly nonsensical, and I’m increasingly of the opinion you’re just here for an argument for the hell of it, whether it’s because you like standing up to “the man” or feel like trolling or whatever.

The PG say that HIV hasn’t been proven to exist because the evidence doesn’t match up to impossible criteria they are demanding be met. If you actually knew anything about science, after everyone here has patiently explained why a number of times, you’d know:

1) why their impossible criteria are just that – impossible
2) why they make excuses when evidence contradicts their position
3) what those excuses are
4) why they’re invalid or irrelevant, and therefore
5) why the sum of their actions is the scientific equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and going “la la la la laaaaaa I’m right and you’re wrong la la laaaaa” as loudly as possible.

They may as well reject all evidence for HIV that wasn’t gathered in a mobile laboratory being towed by a 1970s Ford Anglia on the Birmingham ring road on a Tuesday by a man called Gerald dressed in a stovepipe hat and dungarees as “invalid” – it would make about as much sense. Or perhaps something more simple – maybe they could deny HIV exists because they can’t see it with the naked eye. Absurd? No more absurd than the criteria they demand be met. Or indeed no more absurd than you accepting what they say seemingly without question or concern they’re taking you for a ride. So answer this: you clearly don’t understand the science here (and please don’t pretend you do – or in fact please *do* say that you do, because to do so would render you a laughing stock), so why do you support the Perth Group who have nothing rather than the overwhelming, evidence-backed consensus? Simply because they’re the outsiders?

As I say, I have my suspicions you’re just here for the kicks of winding people up. Unfortunately, by spreading misinformation and sowing the seeds of doubt with pseudoscience where there is no evidence for that doubt, you’re not just having a jolly little spat with some other nerds online. If this were just an internet row, it really wouldn’t matter one jot and you could happily spin your nonsense wheels harmlessly – but it isn’t. It’s far, far more important than that, and that’s why your absurd posturing about a subject you clearly can’t or won’t grasp is quite so despicable.

Through hubris, a desire for attention and/or stupidity, the Perth Group casually put lives at risk at no threat to themselves. And through your promotion of their nonsense and your own hubris, desire for attention and/or stupidity, you are also casually putting lives at risk at no threat to yourself.

Before you come back with another load of waffling nonsense patched together out of misinformation, conspiracy theory, flat-out cobblers and a misguided sense of fighting the powers that be – assuming you have the nerve to do so – bear in mind people *may actually die* just so you can enjoy having an online argument and make yourself feel like a big man for standing up to all those awful, conformist science types. Please do take some time to reflect on that, and consider you may be more comfortable engaging, say, film fans in a debate as to whether Jar-Jar Binks was in fact the best Star Wars character ever. You’ll still have your row, but no one will die as a result. As you say, this is not a game – so stop treating it like one, grow up and stop acting like a bad loser just because your heroes have been shown to be attention-seeking, clueless bluffers rather than the anti-establishment renegade science warriors you clearly wish to see them as.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters/324/7340/757#21057

1) The prize is dedicated to Huw Christie who despite denying the causal connection between HIV and AIDS died from the disease.

2) The criteria deemed to be necessary for proving the existence of a retrovirus are different from those of the Perth Group. In fact, the Perth Group deny the exitence of the retrovirus that de Harven claims to have electron micrographed.

For a classic example of denial you should check out Duesberg’s rationalization of this 1998 paper which again shows the one ARV is better than none, two are better than one and three are better than two.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/338/13/853

http://www.duesberg.com/papers/chemical-bases.html

“The WHO and the Declaration report
in 2000 34⋅3 million “living with HIV”, and the WHO
reports 471,451 AIDS cases for 2000 (World Health
Organization 2001b) (obtained by subtracting the WHO’s
cumulative total of 1999 from that of 2000, see also table
4). Thus, even if we assume that all AIDS cases were
fatal in 2000, the resulting global mortality rate of HIV-
positives would only be 1⋅4% – and thus 4 to 6 times
lower than the 6⋅7–8⋅8% mortality rate of HIV-positives
treated with anti-HIV drugs in the US and Canada.”

Duesberg tries to argue that the mortality in untreated people with HIV is less than those taking drugs. The flaws in his logic are large enough to drive a truck through.

Some denialists, such as Claus Koehnlein, say that ARVs “appear” to work because they are, in fact, broad-spectrum antimicrobials. They are effective against a variety of bacteria, viruses, fungi, apicomplexa and other parasites, In fact, they are a panacea against just about every kind of microbial pathogen known to man – except for retroviruses, of course.

Koehnlein suggests that instead of using “toxic ARVs”, doctors should just focus on treating AIDS defining opportunistic infections with antimicrobials specific for the particular pathogen involved – antifungals for fungi, anti-mycobacterials for TB and MAC, anti-herpetics for HSV and CMV, etc.

Apparently, in the entire nearly 30 year history of AIDS treatments, no one has thought of treating the opportunistic diseases before.

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/324/7340/757

that seems to be strong evidence that is inconsistent with their position.

Actually, it requires clarification, not justification. And my rationale is obvious: reasoned thought.

The the real world, if it looks like a duck, smells like a duck and sounds like a duck, we call it a duck. Is that reasonable? Whilst technically correct that what defines “reasonable evidence” is somewhat open to interpretation, you’re simply playing semantics here. Never mind, I’ll play along, but my patience at your inability to answer the questions posed to you about the ramifications of your thought processes by the good people here is wearing thin.

Here’s a hypothetical example. I say, “look over there, a duck!” You say, “well it looks like a duck, but it might just be a wooden statue painted like one”. [Early days for a hypothesis, data are open to interpretation. This is where debate shines in science.]

We walk a bit closer “well it smells like a duck”
“But that could just be that someone sprayed it with scent.”

“Listen, it sounds like a duck.”
“But someone might have planted an audio player with duck sounds.” [Notice how as the evidence builds, the excuses become more silly?]

“It moves like a duck and it’s soft and feathery like a duck. I think it must be a duck”

“No it isn’t, you haven’t isolated a duck. Ducks don’t exist. Waaaaaaaaaah conspiracy! Those closed-minded scientists wont listen to my fringe theory that ducks are actually wooden models!”

Okay so it was a silly example, but the idea is there. The fact is that there is a mountain of evidence to support the existence of HIV. Ignoring it will not make it go away and it makes you look stupid. (Also an ad hominem is a personal attack on someone in the absence of any reasoned argument. If I gave you a spade and you told me it was a flower, it’s not an ad hominem for me to make the observation that you are a moron.)

Well it works on the majority of the population apparently… but that’s more because of a lack of awareness probably. And I’m confident that in the future things will change in that regard. I’m unsatisfied with the excuses I receive from “experts” like you.

Excuses? From “experts” like me? Indeed. I’m not an expert in HIV, but I am a microbiologist and I’ve had plenty of exposure to the field. But please, enlighten me, what kind of excuses do you get and about what?

But on their webpage they recently put up a section requesting donations for experiments, so that can be considered progress I suppose. It’s not about oxidation stuff though, it’s about HIV’s existence as far as I know.

What, they’re going to try and disprove the existence of HIV? You realise you can’t prove a negative in the empirical universe, right? To use Dawkins’ favourite example: you cannot disprove the existence of a teapot orbiting Mars, however unlikely it may seem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friend_virus

Ironically, the Perth Group now also deny that the Friend Virus exists either.

http://www.tig.org.za/Friend.pdf

A former coauthor with the Perth Group (Stefan Lanka) now denies the existence of any virus that causes disease in humans.

Maybe the HIV Denialists should all sit down together and try to reach an agreement?

This should be possible after all. They are all driven purely by science and logic.

All one has to do is present evidence to them and they’ll be convinced.

You fail to answer the questions you are asked. You fail in identifying logical fallacies. And you fail even more devastatingly in realising that it is the PG that is resisting scientific progress. It demands a very strict isolation of a virus, an isolation that is absent for MOST viruses (and even many other pathogens) known today. But whenever isolation of HIV HAS been achieved, the PG just screams “CLONES!”, without explaining how we can clone something that the PG claims has not been isolated and thus(!) does not exist. It also does not explain how it is possible that a clone of this supposedly non-existing virus can generate the same effects in animal models as the proposed effects HIV has in humans. The PG shows a devastating failure in understanding scientific principles, merely promoting its own hypothesis that does not, in any way, explain the many observations. By its failure to test its *own* hypothesis, and ignoring those studies that do and find it to contradict the observations, it is violating basic scientific principles.

Sadun, you are clearly one of those people who WANTS to be deceived by the PG, because the alternative is just too scary.

Where are all the retroviruses that have been proven to exist using the criteria that the Perth Group claim are “self evident”?

Why did oxidising agents that supposedly caused cancer in 1982 start causing AIDS in 1984?

When did the Perth Group become the authorities on proving the existence of HIV?

If you are anti-authoritarian why do you insist that there have to be fixed dogmatic “rules for the isolation of retroviruses”? It is a very strange view of science. If science worked that way then we would never discover anything new. Viruses certainly did not fulfil the “rules” for pathogens when they were discovered.

… and if you think that anyone is going to give money to the Perth Group so they can not find HIV then you are completely nuts.

You keep on trying to shift the burden of proof onto everybody else to convince the Perth Group that HIV exists. If the Perth Group don’t want to accept that HIV exists then no amount of evidence will ever convince them. They will always come up with some excuse for denying the evidence just as creationists come up with excuses for denying the evidence that evolution explains the diversity of life on the planet.