Vitamin entrepreneur, snake oil salesman, and AIDS Denialist Gary Null is void one media outlet. Thanks to the initiative of just a few people, Gary Null may not be broadcasting on New York’s WBAI radio again. Null has had access to a broad audience in the past and this effort helps constrict his reach. It is a great example of how informing reasonable people about the destructiveness of AIDS denialism can help rein them in.Read below Null’s empty response. Plus an extra bonus – David Crowe’s attempt to rescue him.
For Moron Gary Null visit Quackwatch.com.
UPDATE 6/17/2009: “Gary Null Calling”: That’s right, Gary Null is calling AIDS scientists asking for a debate on whether HIV causes AIDS. This is yet more evidence that toxic hair dyes cause D-SBD (denialism-specific brain damage).
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Dear Distinguished Professors and Health Practitioners,
We are in receipt of correspondence sent to you by Dr. Seth Goldberg, a board member of WBAI in New York City, with respect to my return to that station. In response to the accusations raised by Aaron Boyle at Act UP and Dr. Goldberg, I am including at the end of this message a statement of referral for my return to WBAI by David Crowe, President of Rethinking AIDS in Canada, who eloquently outlines the scientific HIV/AIDS controversy.
My radio broadcasts, as well as my many award-winning documentary films, have strived to be open forums for constructive dialogue on the critical issues that affect our lives. To support my sincerity, on May 8, 2009, both Drs. Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier appeared together as guests on my program. The questions prepared were not my own but were submitted by leading scientists and dedicated scholars who you perhaps agree with Dr. Goldberg should be labeled as “Denialists.” In my opinion, and in the tradition of true scientific integrity, it is more accurate to perceive them as the “Denied.” They have been denied publication of their work in peer-reviewed medical journals. They have been denied participatory attendance at major scientific AIDS conferences. They have been consistently denied funding for their research. Some have been forced out of their teaching positions at their respective educational institutions or have been demoted to lesser roles within their departments, such as was the case with Prof. Peter Duesberg at University of California, Berkeley. Yet this is the very man who Dr. Gallo has publicly stated “knows more about retroviruses than any man alive” (Spin Magazine, 1992).
The huge amount of funding that goes into the pro-HIV/AIDS medical industry and research has, in my opinion, led to the creation of a rigid scientific arrogance now too self-righteous to accommodate dissenting opinions. During my interview with Dr. Gallo, he remarkably characterized this arrogance that now pervades many levels of the pro-HIV/AIDS community along with its strategy to simply remain silent and avoid those unanswered medical questions that challenge their pet views and personal agendas. Nevertheless, the sole purpose for inviting Drs. Gallo and Montagnier was to hear their responses to those same questions that a growing number of scientists find perplexing and unsatisfactorily answered. (You can listen to this interview under the May 8 date on our archives at http://garynull.org).
As physicians and researchers who signed Dr. Goldberg’s petition, I would like to invite you to be guests on one of my forthcoming broadcasts to address some of the questions about HIV and AIDS that have remained with us for a couple decades. Since Drs. Gallo and Montagnier generally avoided our questions, I would like to offer you the opportunity to share your insights and expertise about the same for my international audience without debate or interruption. Some of you do not list HIV/AIDS issues in your professional backgrounds that we have reviewed. Nevertheless, if you have solid scientific evidence, this will offer you an opportunity to share it with my audience. I host one of the few radio programs in America that accommodates leading scientists and researchers to present their points irrespective of how controversial they may be. Mainstream media has not been open to educating the public and allowing these types of debates and discussions to take place.
I wish for nothing more than to accommodate constructive scientific dialogue between the opposing views about whether or not HIV is the primary cause of AIDS and whether or not the dominant pharmaceutical drug protocol is the most advantageous means for tackling the problem if it is. I would also be pleased to forward you a copy of my award-winning documentary AIDS Inc. It will introduce you to the concerns being expressed by those who are “Denied” in addition to how they are being attacked by the inquisition of the AIDS industry. Yet these are but a sampling; since the documentary’s release I have heard many similar stories from other professors and scientists.
I do not arrive at my conclusions arbitrarily and hastily. Instead, I have taken a concerted and measured approach in reviewing the available medical, epistemological, and therapeutic literature. As an award-winning investigative journalist, I have had the opportunity to interview hundreds of medical professionals with impeccable scientific credentials and a deep commitment to rational, sound scientific standards. There are now well over 2500 professionals who all agree that the dogma surrounding HIV/AIDS deserves a new appraisal. That I can be held liable without the opportunity to dialogue and be slandered without the benefit to defend myself does not represent any kind of professionalism and proper behavior. If an individual feels they have the truth on their side, at the very least they should be permitted to engage in an open and non-confrontational discussion. There has been no open discussion. Inflammatory organizations, such as Act Up and its many supporters, have been completely insensitive to this dialogue. This is even more insidious because they have no expertise whatsoever in the medical science at the heart of the controversy. Nevertheless, they imagine themselves as the protectors of this very science. Any dissenting opinion is met with ridicule, dehumanization and vicious slander.
In the meantime my attorneys are actively pursuing my legal options, and we are heretofore placing you on notice about that.
I look forward to hearing back from you. If you would like to receive a copy of the AIDS Inc DVD, please include your mailing address and one will be sent to you.
Sincerely,
Gary Null, PhD.
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DAVID CROWE RESPONSE TO DR. SETH GOLDBERG
Dear Dr. Goldberg;
Why is it that 25 years after the world accepted that HIV was the cause of AIDS that many people, including highly credentialed scientists and academics, still question this? Why is it that those who ask questions are labelled with the hateful name "Denialist"? That scientists who question are cut off from research funding, publication and promotions? That journalists who question are banned?
When AIDS was first named (as GRID, Gay Related Immune Deficiency) at the start of the 1980s it was representatives of marginalized gay men who called for action on this new syndrome, although a syndrome can never really be new because it is just a name given to a collection of pre-existing diseases, in this case PCP pneumonia and the skin disorder Kaposi's Sarcoma. Putting these two diseases together under one umbrella only makes sense if there is a common cause. And there were two theories to explain this, use of drugs, especially "poppers" (nitrite inhalants), or a previously unknown virus. These people deserved support and action, but only support and actions that helped solve the health crisis that had been identified.
There was a lot going for the theory that AIDS could be caused by recreational drugs, as all the early cases were among poppers users -- the majority of gay men were unaffected. However, the virus theory won out and by the time Robert Gallo announced that he had discovered HTLV-III (HIV) at a press conference in 1984 (prior to any scientific publications, but after filing a patent), and called it the probable cause of AIDS, research on the drug theory by scientists like Harry Haverkos had been all but banned.
Leaders of the gay community essentially had a choice, they could recognize that some gay men, just like some heterosexuals, had a drug problem and help them deal with it. Or they could choose to believe that they were too promiscuous, and blame the problem on that. They chose the latter.
Financial considerations entered the picture early. Poppers manufacturers were big advertisers in gay publications (the drugs have long been marketed almost exclusively to gay men). The medical research establishment has always been biased towards germs (or occasionally genes) and away from chemical causes to illness, particularly in America where massive government funding allows much tighter coordination (and control) of medical research (including censorship of areas that might offend the chemical elite that is so powerful). And, finally, pharmaceutical companies, another huge source of funding, were only interested if there was a virus to kill, there was no role for them in getting people off drugs. There was an ironic twist too, because one of the big early manufacturers of amyl nitrite was Burroughs Wellcome which is now part of GlaxoSmithKline, the first and biggest AIDS drug manufacturer. They sold the compound in small glass vials that could be crushed and inhaled by angina patients to open the coronary arteries, hence the name "poppers".
Pharmaceutical companies have made it easy for AIDS organizations to secure funding. "The Body", for example, has credits at the bottom of their home page (http://thebody.com) to major AIDS drug companies. On the day I wrote this the list included GlaxoSmithKline (AZT, Combivir, etc.), Bristol-Myers Squibb (Sustiva, Serit, Videx etc.), Gilead (Atripla, Emtricitabine, Tenofovir), Merck (Crixivan, Raltegravir etc.), Abbott Virology (HIV Testing plus Lopinavir, Norvir etc.) and Roche (Saquinavir etc.). There were no other sponsors listed.
This has created a massive conflict of interest for AIDS organizations. Life is comfortable if you promote drugs as the main solution for AIDS, but gets very lonely and unfunded if you decide that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, or even simply that AIDS drugs are too toxic or that alternative health remedies are safer and more effective than the high tech products of modern pharmacology.
All that is allowed is faux-criticism of the drug companies for not producing drugs cheaply enough. This promotes drugs as "life-saving" but too expensive, and suppresses criticism of the drugs as unsafe and ineffective.
The major questions about the HIV=AIDS theory are whether HIV is the only cause of AIDS, whether HIV infection always leads to AIDS and AIDS to death, whether HIV tests are unambiguous, whether CD4 counts and Viral Load are accurate indicators of future health, whether HIV can be transferred sexually and whether the AIDS drugs are truly "life-saving", as so often repeated.
I could go into a detailed analysis of why each of these points can legitimately be questioned, complete with citations from the mainstream literature (see http://aras.ab.ca/test.html for the level of detailed analysis that is possible) however that would be a book, rather than a short message.
Perhaps a shortcut is to realize that there are thousands of scientists, MDs, academics, journalist, lawyers and other educated and accomplished people who question the HIV=AIDS=Death dogma, see:
http://www.rethinkingaids.com/quotes/rethinkers.htm
In closing I would like to address one specific point that ACT/UP made in their email, that rethinkers of the AIDS theory are genocidal, and have been the cause of hundreds of thousands of deaths. This claim published in JAIDS in October 2008, despite coming from Harvard, is absurd. The study is based on assumptions that, not surprisingly, tautologically support the beliefs of the authors. It is not based on real deaths, and the mathematical model that it used to produce the numbers does not include a single death from adverse events associated with the use of AIDS drugs despite the scientific literature being replete with such reports, and despite the fact that the leading cause of death among people with AIDS in America is now reported to be liver disease, a common side effect of AIDS drugs, but something that has never been added to the list of AIDS defining diseases.
What we need now is more discussion, not less. I hope WBAI puts Gary Null back on the air.
Regards,
David Crowe
President, Rethinking AIDS
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