Lesson 4 in Traditional Serbian Rural Architecture:The Family Homestead

This is what I saw the first time I visited the homestead. The ground is on the right side of the village road on a little hill whit a wooden entrance gate. 

On the left there is the older house (where my husband's grand dad Velimir was born) and in the background is the newer house that Deda Velimir has build in the 1970's.

I noticed right away, that the view from the house is really nice , you have control over the village road seeing who's coming and going (fantastic!)

This is the view from the terasse of the newer house. 
A big pear-tree (with two kind of pears on the same tree, Deda Velimir liked to cross sorts of fruits!) gives a nice shadow over the house, in front the older house and in the background the village road.
Deda Velimir choose the best place to build the new house, on top of his terrain with the best view. He arranged trees in manner to have shadow and to be protected from too curious looks.

Also in the back he built a couple of stalls, for chicken, pigs and other smaller animals. Now for a couple of years they're been empty. 
It corresponds pretty good to the typical arrangement of a traditional Serbian Homestead, where single or mixed stables are arranged around the house, with stalls and toilets in the back, between the house and the stalls or in front of the house it's usually a good place for the fruit garden (grapes, pears, apples and of course plums) or the vegetable garden.
Some houses have also the hayloft and all sorts of workshops around the main house. Common is also to have a pantry or place for storage placed somewhere near the house.

Above is a sketch I made of the arrangement of the homestead. Usually homesteads consisted of several buildings, each one of a specific purpose. 
Deda Velimir lived with his wife Jelica in the newer house and used the older one as a workshop (he weaved baskets, worked also as the local barber and did all sorts of craft works around the house).
He used the basement of the old house as a storage for Rakija and a lot of other kind of winter supplies from the garden and fields. (The fields are not directly connected with the homestead and lay lower in a flatter part of the village). 
 

This the newer House like I saw it for the first time. Not in very bad shape, but however staying empty for years and on the other hand, the fact that Deda Velimir couldn't completely finish the house, showed that if we want to renovate it, it will be a big work and it will need to be planned carefully.

Also from the terrasse there is a very nice overlook (over the old's house roof) to the other mahalla (district) of the village. Deda Velimir built the house high enough to overlook the older house and to have a nice panoramic view.

The terrain has like two entrances. One below, arriving from the lower village and one a bit up the road, what would allow to enter the terrain without climbing up a foot path.
In the background is the backside of the older house. 

On the foot of the terrain is one of the intersections of the village...ok it's not particularly crowded, but it's sort of a center. Alo there is the source of water, a very old source with always very good quality water for drinking (summer and winter).

Another very important piece of the traditional homestead is the fountain (бунар). This one in front of the house was made by Deda Velimir. 
Water is a big question here in the village, in winter there is enough of it, but in the summer months, when it doesn't rain much, the private water basins run out of water and the sources dry out.

View to the upper side of the terrain. I also see it better as the main entrance instead of the lower entrance so far away and with the steep path.

Walking around the ground, we were pretty sure that we liked most of the components of the homestead and didn't wanted basically to change their arrangement. The main question was more, if to keep the newer house like it is...or to tear it down and build a completely new one on the same place.
We decided to sleep over it and to consider the two options. 
What we knew so far was, that yes, we wanted to put all our energy into this project. Too tempting to create our getaway far away from traffic, noise and all sort of craziness you want to escape from time to time.

Later we went to vist Uncle Radivoje who showed us the two little goats that were born a couple of weeks before.

How AIDS Denialism Can Kill You Part V: Is it too late for Karri Stokely?

For years, Christine Maggiore was the face of AIDS Denialism. When she died of AIDS in 2008, many people thought it would bring an end to the craziness. It did not.  

Just as Christine Maggiore  denied that her baby died of AIDS, her followers claimed that Christine died from the stress caused by a Law and Order SVU episode that portrayed her life.

Soon after Christine Maggiore died, there was a new face of AIDS Denialism. Karri Stokely, an HIV positive mother of two who has repeatedly shared her story of how HIV medications, not HIV, nearly killed her. Karri Stokely became seriously ill while taking anti-HIV medications and believes that her health only improved because she stopped the medications. She has appeared healthy ever since.  That is until now.

Karri Stokely has shared that she developed a serious ulceration in her colon. Untreated, the ulcer will perforate her colon and could kill her. Her doctors cannot perform life saving surgery because her immune system is too compromised and she refuses HIV treatments. She believes HIV treatments are toxic and that they caused her ulcerated colon in the first place.

Karri Stokely's condition is serious. She says she is in terrible pain.  No one in their right mind can feel good about this. I am sure that the AIDS Deniers will say that I am celebrating her falling ill. They are sick enough to believe that. 

My honest hope is that she will stop listening to the insanity and start listening to her doctors. Even if just until they save her life. It sounds like it is not too late. Her condition is treatable and her immune system may be salvageable. There is no question that a lot of people care for this woman.  Anyone who truly cares about her will tell her to do whatever is necessary to medically treat her condition, before it is too late. 

SUBMIT! SUBMIT! SUBMIT!

 By Karri Stokely

Have you ever found yourself taking a long, horrific, and unexpected journey through the bowels of hell?

Has it ever even occurred to you that you may end up being forced into taking this little trip through the world of modern medicine?
Would you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that you would have to play a game, literally, with bargaining chips, to get a surgery that was rapidly becoming crucial to saving your life?

This is what I've been dealing with the past 2 weeks. The story is so long and horrifying, it would bring tears to the eyes of the strongest if I had the time to share every little detail.

I'm going to condense this into a nutshell, because so many people have asked and expressed the help and concern.
I tested "positive" on a non-specific antibody test called the "HIV" test back in 1996. (You may read my story in full, or listen to radio podcasts for the entire background here:  www.myspace.com/rethinkaids)
Although I was not in a considered "risk group", I believed in doctors, medicine, and tests.
I believed what they told me.  I willingly submitted to taking very toxic anti-retroviral drugs for 11 years, believing the entire time that I was infected with a deadly, killer virus.
Every single day, from June 1996-April 2007, I swallowed AZT, 3TC, Crixivan and then Sustiva.

After immense research into the genocidal world of HIV/AIDS, I quit all of these drugs in April 2007.
Since then, I have been on a journey trying to rebuild and repair the damage done by the black-box, nucleoside analogue, cell killing poisons.  

Overall, I have felt fairly well the past 3 1/2 years since quitting these drugs.

I lead a very active life. I jog. I am raising two teenagers. I'm involved in a number of different things that keep me busy. My husband and I will have our 20th wedding anniversary on Oct. 6th.

I am the AIDS establishment's worst nightmare. 

The biggest problem that I've been struggling with since quitting these drugs is a large amount of damage to the gastrointestinal tract. I do not digest food well. I don't have much stomach acid. There is no peristalsis left in the colon. The colon appears almost "dead". And when I do move my bowels, it's all diarrhea. In the past 2 years, I've been dealing with an anal fissure, produced by struggling and immobility.

All of this is a direct result of drug damage from the "life-saving" ARV's.

About 6 weeks ago, I began to run fevers and had increased and constant rectal pain.
After 2 weeks, I went to see a colo-rectal surgeon who immediately took me up to surgery that day.
What he found was a fairly large rectal ulcer, about an inch by an inch, sitting near the sphincter.  It is eating it's way through the colon wall and into the vagina. Once the wall is breached, there will be cross-contamination and a recto-vaginal fistula is formed.

Side note: I had a recto-vaginal fistula in 1992 due to a botched episiotomy after delivery of my first child. So this is already a "weak" area.

The surgeon drained and debrided the wound and took biopsies.

His plan was to go back in over the next couple of months and do 2 or 3 more surgeries to lay skin grafts to repair the hole.

Three weeks after this initial surgery, I was still running low grade fever and experiencing pain.
I was admitted to the hospital for I.V. antibiotics. 
Due to conflicting pathology reports, we are having the samples sent to an indepentant lab for review.
One sample found CMV in the wound,other samples were negative for all virus and bacteria. There is no evidence (from the blood cultures) of CMV, or anything else, anywhere in the body or blood.
I allowed them to run I.V. gancyclovir for 3 days while in the hospital. While on this BLACK BOX drug, I experienced exploding headaches, nausea, and vomiting, and an increase in liver enzymes.
They blamed all of that on "HIV" and CMV. I had them discontinue the drug, against their "better advisement" to me. I immediately felt better.

Due to my low CD4 count, which was always low while 11 years on the drugs, the surgeon then refused to go back in and do any more surgery.

UNLESS.......I submit to taking the BLACK BOX ARV's that almost killed me the first time around.
He, and no less than 7 other surgeons (and I.D. doctors) attempted to blackmail me into taking these drugs. Every surgeon I saw told me that they would not operate UNLESS I take ARV's.
These doctors looked me right in the face and told me that I was "on my last legs", would "never lived to see my daughter get married", and would be "dead any time now".

We have even had other consults this week since being out of the hospital. One doctor who refused to help told me that eventually the wound would perforate and I would bleed to death.
Thank you very much.

Up until just a few months ago, I was still incredibly active.

My (major) problem now is that I have an open wound, a hole, in the colon that will only get worse and cannot find one ethical surgeon ANYWHERE (so far) to step up to the plate and help repair this issue.

Although these doctors continue to tell me how immune suppressed I am, based on just a CD4 count, all of my other lab work is pretty good. It does not indicate a non-working immune system.

Not to mention, I do not get sick with anything.

At the moment, I am feeling okay, other than the pain. I am home. I am up and moving a lot. We are pursuing many options daily. So far though, we have not found ONE surgeon willing to do the right thing and fix a legitimate surgical problem.

So, I thank you all for your concerns and prayers. Our search continues.

I am alive and well (for the most part) but the situation will continue to worsen and could get desperate quickly if all help is refused. 

My advice: stay far away from the overwhelming evil of the AIDSMafia and consider very strongly before ever taking ARV's. The bullshit, the blackmail, and the terrorism involved in this genocidal scandal of the century is unlike anything I could ever imagine in my wildest dreams.  

Blessings,
Karri

How AIDS Denialism Can Kill You Part III: Lambros Papantoniou

In Memoriam, Lambros Papantoniou
by George N. Pavlakis, Rockville, MD USA
[Reposted in honor of Lambros]
Note that this story was originally posted in December 2009. I have been in touch with more of Lambros' friends who have confirmed the horrific acts of AIDS Denialists described in this touching essay. AIDS Denialists are on notice... you are on the minds of loved ones. SCK

What do you do about someone who claims to be an expert, serving up half-truths, twisting the facts in credible-sounding sentences and misleading a patient? There must be some rules that apply to someone who professes to be an expert and induces patients to stop their doctor-prescribed medication. These must be applied to prevent harm to more patients. And what if these actions lead to the patient’s death?



Such is the case of Lambros Papantoniou, a journalist living in Washington, a diplomatic correspondent for several Greek media institutions for more than 30 years and a man loved by all who met him. Even in the higher political echelons of Washington, he was affectionately known as “Mr Lambros”.

During a hospital stay approximately ten years ago, Lambros was diagnosed with AIDS and given anti-retroviral therapy. Following this, his interest in the AIDS problem skyrocketed, and he sought information on it. Although he was a diplomatic correspondent, he reported on AIDS issues several times.

 Unfortunately, Lambros attracted the attention of Andrew Maniotis, a scientist and self-proclaimed expert on many fields, and AIDS denialist. Dr. Maniotis is not a medical doctor, nor a pathologist, as he occasionally describes himself. He is not a tenured professor, nor a tenure-track candidate for a higher academic career. At times he denies he is an “AIDS denialist,” but this term accurately describes public opinions. He does not shy away from controversy and publicizes naïve opinions that contradict the established knowledge and medical science, trying to nullify the medical gains of generations of researchers and doctors.

Maniotis claims that Lambros was like a brother to him. With such brothers, who needs enemies? The two men became friends, and Maniotis visited Lambros often in the last few years, his influence growing stronger and stronger, ultimately convincing him that HIV did not exist. Lambros stopped taking his medication and the result was devastating. After his death, Lambros’s family and friends found his medication in his refrigerator, untouched since 2007. Instead of his life-saving doctor prescribed medicine, Lambros was convinced to consume Maniotis-promoted vitamins.

During 2007, increasingly influenced by Maniotis, Lambros became more aggressive in interrogating scientists and government officials about AIDS. In his attempts to discredit Dr. Robert Gallo, Maniotis urged Lambros to seek an interview with Gallo, hoping to confront him with an AIDS denialist agenda and publish articles containing slander and misinformation.

Dr. Gallo took the bait and spoke with Lambros openly and frankly. To his credit, Lambros published a series of articles in which he reported on the issue ethically and to the best of his ability. Undaunted by this failure, Maniotis intensified his efforts to convince Lambros of his outlandish ideas on AIDS. Lambros was finally convinced and published an extensive interview, in which Maniotis disputes all scientific facts about HIV and AIDS, advising HIV positive people, like Lambros himself, to stop taking their doctor-prescribed medication and to rely on vitamins and other unproven methods.

Unfortunately, Lambros’ non-scientific background and his personal vulnerability as an HIV positive person got the best of him, and he became more and more a spokesperson of the AIDS denialists, putting his complete trust in Maniotis.

This trust eventually cost him his life. He simply stopped taking his medication. Already hospitalized once, Lambros’s health depended on blocking HIV through anti-retroviral drugs. Without this protection, the virus continues to damage the immune system, until the patient becomes vulnerable to a multitude of common infectious agents, which would ordinarily be blocked by a functioning immune system. With the medication, he likely would have lived a longer and healthier life.

Having finally succumbed to Maniotis’ 'freindship', at several White House and State Department briefings in Washington, Lambros asked hostile nonsensical questions repeating the statements of Maniotis verbatim. He asked whether anyone had actually seen the virus. He accused the medical profession of poisoning the “so-called AIDS” patients with drugs.

In retrospect, Lambros’ increasingly erratic behavior can be partially explained by his deteriorating health. HIV ultimately landed him at Howard University Hospital under unclear circumstances. The most likely scenario is that he was found confused and disoriented and was taken to the closest emergency room. He had developed encephalitis, a common outcome of end-stage HIV infection. He was later transferred to Georgetown Hospital, where he died of encephalitis. During his more lucid moments at the hospital, Lambros told his friends he was dying of AIDS.

In the meantime, Maniotis, having the trust of Lambros’s family, was calling both hospitals and arguing about prescribed treatments, accusing medical personnel of trying to kill Lambros, all while denying the existence of AIDS. The doctors found the situation highly distracting and asked that Maniotis does not contact them. The Greek Embassy had to intervene and tell Maniotis to back off.

During this last period of his life, Lambros was clearly very sick and confused, making several statements reflecting this confusion. To their shame, AIDS denialists are promoting these statements on the Internet in order to build up their own agenda, disrespecting the memory of a sick and confused man, and, of course, not acknowledging their part in his death.

"Nobody really knows why he's gone," claims Maniotis. But in the end, Lambros knew, and so do we. He died of encephalitis following the collapse of his immune system, an outcome of HIV infection. We know from millions of other cases that, had he taken his anti-retroviral medicine and prevented further damage by HIV, he could have had many more productive years.

Some of us who knew him also feel a bit guilty at times about not being able to protect him more from predators like Maniotis.

Consequently, we feel that along with celebrating his contributions, his achievements, his life of giving, of helping many people in his community, we also need to tell his true story. Lambros was a defender of our democratic ideals, a stalwart defender of the truth, a man who gave freely of himself, his time and the limited money he had, helping countless people in his neighborhood in Washington, in cities throughout the U.S. and in Greece. He is missed even by those he criticized.
We must honor him by not allowing his death to be used to hurt others. We must not be silent, as silence did not become Lambros himself.

As a generation of AIDS activists realized some time ago, Silence = Death.

May 28, 2009 - Lambros Papantoniou of Washington D.C. passed away peacefully this morning.

He was 63, weeks shy of his birthday on July 4th, the American holiday which filled this proud immigrant son of Greece with immense honor.

Mr. Papantoniou, known to official Washington for decades as "Mr. Lambros," was the Washington diplomatic correspondent for the Greek daily newspaper Eleftheros Typos, Radio Thessaloniki, and the U.S.
weekly newspaper Greek News.

He was born on July 4, 1945 in Mandra Xanthi, a village in Greece's Western Thrace region. His parents were refugees, who fled from Asia Minor in 1922 to settle in Greece.

He studied law at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, and arrived in the United States in 1973. He studied international law and political science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he obtained his Master's Degree and Juris Doctorate.

In 1975, after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, he began working as a journalist, specializing in U.S. foreign policy issues relating toGreece, Turkey, Cyprus and the Balkans. Over the course of a prodigious career, he was correspondent to many Greek and Greek-American Media, and participated at numerous foreign policy conferences and panels in the United States, Greece, Cyprus andAustralia.

A member of St. Sophia Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Washington, D.C., he is survived by three sisters and one brother in Greece, one brother in Boston, and his beloved nephew Stavros Stavrakis, who resides in Philadelphia with his wife Vasiliki and their children Prometheus, Aristotle and Elektra Cynthia.

How AIDS Denialism Can Kill You Part IV: A Wake Up Call

I ask readers to share their personal experiences and encounters with AIDS denialism. Those who do usually prefer to not post their stories on my blog because they do not want to be harassed by the predictable onslaught of attacks. Perfectly understandable. At times people are willing to share their stories, usually out of a desire to help others.


Stories of getting hooked into AIDS Denialism have much in common. This is the latest addition to my series on how AIDS Denialism can kill you. have also updated previous posts from the series. Thank you again for sharing your experiences with me and for allowing me to share them on my blog.

"One too many" coincidences

I first learned about the AIDS dissident movement through a friend's "doctor" in around the mid 1990's. The doctor was a guy who had lived in China for many years and had been making a living as an acupuncturist. He was also an advocate for a myriad of other superstitious and odd points of view.  I've always found unorthodox views interesting.  Instead of just rejecting them flat out, I feel they are worth considering. I guess my nature is to be a curious person. At the time I just thought it was an interesting point of view. I wasn't even HIV positive, but being an AIDS dissident kind of fit my overall perception of the world back then.





I borrowed plenty of literature from the doctor. Mainly articles by Stefan Lanka and Peter Duesberg, and some Continuum magazine issues.  Truth is I was sold on it. I later did my own research on the Internet. I found websites like Alive and Well or Virusmyth, which found their way into my bookmark list. I thought they sounded believable. They were definitely saying the things you like to hear. The scientific dissidents were believable because they seemed very confident in their assumptions. And then there are (or were...) people like Christine Maggiore who I could relate to because she was just a lay person in apparent perfect state of health.

I can tell you that I have been harmed by my years of buying into AIDS denialism. First, I wasn't too careful about my sexual activities for many years, precisely because I believed HIV might not even exist.


 In 2006 I had clear symptoms of syphilis and went to get tested. It came out positive, and because the HIV test is included in the work up, I got the surprise HIV positive result too. Because of my dissident beliefs, I didn't really care about the HIV diagnosis and ignored the doctor's advice to start a follow-up for CD4 counts, etc.

In 2008 I had bumped into the website aidstruth.org and, while reading it in a "yeah blah blah whatever" kind of attitude, I saw the "denialists who have died" and "who the denialists are" sections. Something clicked. And very soon after I paid one of my usual visits to the Alive and Well site and found the memorial text about Maggiore's death. It didn't mention the cause (of course) so I Googled away thinking "please, let it be a traffic accident or something" and bam! Pneumonia...

You know how denialists usually say it's just a coincidence, like "why not? Anybody can have pneumonia", but having recently read the list of dead denialists and wondering if those weren't too many untimely coincidences, for me Maggiore's death is where I drew the line. For me it was the "one too many" coincidence. That's where I secretly started to wonder if I had been wrong. But I still remained in denial.

It was just this year, 4 years after testing positive, I went to the doctor because I had these strange warts growing in my arm, and seemed to start reproducing in other parts of my body. Guess what... I had developed Kaposi's Sarcoma. That's what shook me out of denialism. I started on antiretrovirals, to my dismay because I've always hated pills, let alone those I had been indoctrinated to think of as pure evil.

I should point out that I have not taken poppers in my entire life, not once (and I'm 40), which seems to be one of the idiotic assumptions by the denialists.

I'm now taking antiretrovirals and I am in the middle of chemotherapy and seem to be doing well, but unfortunately I need more biopsies for yet more growths. All of this because I believed a bunch of quacks.  Thanks for giving me this chance to help debunk their moronic theories.

Another Tragic Case of AIDS Denialism: Kim Bannon

Another cast member of the AIDS Denialist film House of Numbers is dying of AIDS.

A post at the Denialist website 'Questioning AIDS Forum' reads "Kim Bannon gravely ill".  

"Kim is deteriorating rapidly and there is little hope left. As of now, she can still recognize people, but it seems this will not last long. Her delusions are getting worse. ...The dissident movement owes her a lot, and we can't afford to forget what she did for all of us."

It is fair to say that the 'AIDS Dissident Movement' owes Kim Bannon nothing less than her life.

In April 1992, at the age of 29, Kim Bannon tested HIV positive. She was diagnosed  at her local health department after learning that she may have been exposed to herpes. Kim was referred to a well known HIV/AIDS specialist, Dr. Donna Sweet of the Kansas University School of Medicine who described her diagnosis as "indisputable" and "classic".  Dr. Sweet told Kim that without proper treatment she would develop the full spectrum of AIDS within five to seven years and die soon thereafter.

But Kim is a rebel. A free thinker who unfortunately found what she was looking for - a way out. Seeking AIDS information on the Internet, Kim read that HIV tests are invalid and that HIV may not even exist at all. Kim believed what they said. She believed what she wanted to hear. She soon fell into a sea of convincing propaganda by AIDS Denialists from Perth Australia.

Kim ignored her test results  and refused treatment. And here we are today. Kim has AIDS. She is indeed gravely ill. 

Kim Bannon has told her own story. Here she describes how she became an AIDS Denialist.  

In April of 1992 I was twenty-nine years old. I was a well-respected business woman and an accomplished freelance court reporter in Wichita. I traveled frequently for business as well as pleasure. I spent a lot of time at the gym and in outdoor sports, and I took good care of my diet. I was attractive, healthy, intelligent, successful and energetic. Even though I’d been seeing a certain young man exclusively for a few months, I referred to myself as “happily single”. I was financially and spiritually independent, and my sense of well being was off the charts.

Then the certain young man in my life, Don, went to the local county health department for a sore he thought might be herpes. When he told me the nurses there had confirmed it as herpes, I thought the responsible thing to do would be to find out if I had it as well. At the health department, I was told that since I didn’t have a sore that could be cultured, they could not test me for herpes; but how would I like to have an AIDS test? They were offering it to everyone these days.

I was embarrassed and confused. I felt that a refusal of this AIDS test would be tantamount to a confession of illicit drug use or promiscuity. I had heard that anyone can get AIDS, but I still felt I was in a very low risk group. I agreed to the test and was told to come back in a week for my results.

A week later, I sat in the waiting area for two hours waiting to get my results. I was finally taken to a private exam room by two women. They apologized for making me wait for so long and then explained that the reason for my wait was because they were trying to figure out how to handle the situation. My test was positive. Almost everyone who tests positive is either gay or on drugs or suspects they are positive for some reason. Here I was a heterosexual female, non-drug user, non-prostitute, and I was really giving them a problem.

Then they told me it was just a “screening” test, which was called an ELISA. They said I was not in any risk group, and it would most likely turn out to be negative when I was given the “confirmatory” test. They wanted to know if I’d been recently pregnant, but they didn’t inform me of anything else that could cause a false positive result.......

On April 18, 2002, a friend of mine emailed a link to Nexus Magazine, asking me to check out an article about the benefits of coconut oil. As I scanned the magazine index for the title, I noticed another article entitled “The Yin and Yang of HIV”, and I clicked on it. It was long, it was technical, it was heavily referenced and footnoted. I decided to print it out after reading only a few paragraphs, and settled myself onto the sofa in the lodge to study it.

I emerged from the sofa several hours later in a state of amazement. I began with my friends at the Ranch, telling them what I had found. Then I emailed Dr. Valandar Turner of the Perth Group who had written the article, and at last I started searching the web. I could do nothing but read for hours and hours each day all of this enormous volume of information which confirmed the suspicions I had had about my own supposed “diagnosis” as well as giving support to the holes I perceived in the prevailing AIDS dogma.

Since that time I have done a tremendous amount of research into this subject, first for the purposes of my own health, then in outrage, and finally in an effort to help as many people as I can who find themselves in a similar situation as myself. Now, more than twelve years after my diagnosis, I remain healthy and have never taken any AIDS medications.

Kim became so convinced that her HIV diagnosis was meaningless, she launched a lawsuit against the companies that manufacture HIV antibody tests. Kim's law suit brought her increased attention from AIDS Denialists.

Kim followed the path of AIDS Denialism all the way to the poor house. She spent everything she had on acupuncture, Chelation Therapy, Meta-Physical Therapies,  and Scientology. Kim lost nearly everything in her pursuit of fake cures and quackery. Kim is not the first person to live the contradiction of seeking natural cures for a disease that she believes does not exist. 

Ultimately, Kim was featured in the AIDS Denialist film House of Numbers.  The film was shot in 2006 when Kim appeared healthy. But Kim was not healthy. Within two years of appearing in House of Numbers, Kim's condition deteriorated and she developed AIDS. Indeed, three people featured in House of Numbers have since died of AIDS. 

AIDS Denialists are now scrambling to explain Kim's declining health, especially because of her portrayal in House of Numbers. While Kim's family and doctors try to treat her HIV infection, the AIDS Denialists have other suggestions.

Celia Farber, for example, has written "It is clear she need (sic) intense and radical brain rehabilitation, and treatment for severe trauma, post traumatic stress disorder, brain injury, and over medication with HIV drugs and psych drugs."

Celia Farber recommends treatment at the Life Vessel Institute in New Mexico.

"The Life Vessel uses light, sound, frequency and vibration to balance the Autonomic Nervous System. Detoxify in our beautiful relaxing suites with Far-Infrared Saunas. Release subconscious emotional stress with our highly effective technology utilizing Voice Mapping, Galvanic Skin Response and Frequency. Deep tissue Pain Laser Therapy for back pain, sports injury, tennis elbow, carpal tunnel and many additional injuries. MEDI-SPA offering massage, Facial Treatments, DNA Cryo-Stem Cell Therapy, Micro-Current face enhancements for wrinkle reduction and lifting. Arasys III device for muscle building and inch loss."

The "Life Vessel Package" includes 'one Life Vessel Series of one hour on the first day, two hours on the second day and one hour on the third day.  One Asyra  to determine areas of stress in the body, and one Evox for emotional clearing" for a mere $895.

Another AIDS Denialist, Henry Bauer (also the leading authority on the existence of the Loch Ness Monster) cheers for Kim refusing HIV treatment.  

"Quite often I wonder how many other healthy women have been subjected to the same sort of ordeal that Onnie experienced for years and managed to survive. We know of Kim Bannon, Maria Papagiannidou, Audrey Serrano, Karri Stokely."

While Kim suffers full blown AIDS, Denialists are lying and denying. They are saying that Kim has health problems, but not caused by HIV.

AIDS Denialist Christine Maggiore did the same thing  when David Pasquarelli died of AIDS. Maggiore said it had been the stress of jail that killed him.  When Christine Maggiore died of  AIDS, Denialist Celia Farber said it must have been a 'radical detox' that killed her.  Other AIDS Denialists said that Christine Maggiore could not handle the stress of watching a Law Order SVU episode that portrayed her story of AIDS Denialism. That is right, they said she died from watching a Law and Order episode. AIDS Denialists die of anything, except AIDS.

The same AIDS Deniers are claiming that Kim is weak minded and unable to cope with stress. 

They are....

Lying about her past and present life situation.  

Saying that she was abused and traumatized, and that is why she is ill.

Implying that she is weak and unable to cope with stress. 

Claiming that HIV medications have caused her to become ill.

Kim's condition would be quite different if she had accepted treatment for her HIV infection. Tragically, and with the encouragement of AIDS Denialists, Kim Bannon refused treatment.

How have the AIDS Denialists contributed to Kim's deteriorating health? Kim's friend explained on her Facebook Page.

I have been friends with Kim since 3rd grade, best friends.......she was  always a Daddy's girl.......ALWAYS......everyone was jealous of their relationship, they were so close....Kim worked for her Father and things became tense and Kim removed herself from him and was involved in Scientology, at this time she also removed herself from our friendship, only to call a year later and acted like nothing had happened........this was Kim's personality......still is.......She and her Father are close again, they are Best Friends.....
 
 A little insight......I stayed with Kim many weekends when she was living at her parents home.......so her parents could get away from the 24 hr care......Kim required constant care......and she wasn't always, uhm, cooperative, she can be VERY difficult........I was with them when they made the decision to let her go to the AID's hospital in KC (that she wanted to go to) this was very difficult for them.......I received calls from both of them, they were in constant turmoil.....this was their baby, they couldn't put her into assisted living........it had taken toll on them and their health......they simply couldn't care for her any longer.  And she certainly made it clear that she would never move back to their  home. Ironically, she now asks me to talk her parents into letting her  move back home.........
 
 Kim and I spoke for hours and she wanted me to tell her story.....She  wanted me to help her write something to the effect of......The second  chapter.......living with AID's, she was taking the meds and she was  improving, I witnessed this, she was strong, she still had what my son  called her "6pack", she was still going to the gym and working out with a  personal trainer........she was eating all natural stuff.....(that made  me want to gag).......she was improving..........her mind was good, we did  a lot of talking about Non HIV AID's, she admitted at this point that she  had Aid's.........her counts were doing good........everything was  good.........she did have the neuropathy which she had started showing  signs in 2007....she had to be fed because of her arms trembling.......we  laughed, we cried...we remembered the old days......She felt the drugs  were saving lives.......This was July

Denialists started calling and she got off the meds......I stayed with her  one night, home health had been there til I got there.......she was delusional, she said the devil was on her arms and yelled for him to "Be  Gone".......it got worse quickly.......This was Sept or Oct.......This is  when she started speaking of the dentist and was in denial again......

Kim Bannon's story is chillingly similar to that of Lambros Papantoniou. Lambros died of AIDS. He too bought into AIDS Denialism. He was persuaded by AIDS Denialists to refuse treatment.  His friends are vocal about the role AIDS Denialist Andrew Maniotis played in Lambros' death. (see April 5, 2010 repost below) Maniotis is said to have gone so far as to actually talk with Lambros' doctors, telling them not to treat Lambros for HIV/AIDS. Instead, he wanted Lambros to go to Germany for an intensive nutritional treatment that would supposedly cure him of his ailments. Sound familiar?

AIDS Denialism is at its worst when it hooks those who are most vulnerable and sells them a bill of self-promoting false information that ultimately kills.

There is a lot of talk about the 340,000 South Africans who died at the hands of AIDS Denialists. But how many Kim Bannons and Lambros Papantonious are there?

No one knows. But 300,000 deaths from denialism is sounding like a small number.