How AIDS Denialism Can Kill You Part VI: Emery Taylor Dies at age 28

The Rethinking AIDS Website predominantly displays Emery Taylor as one of many people  living just fine without HIV medications. The Home Page at Rethinking AIDS says…

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“HIV+ for over 10 years, no meds, healthy”

Emery Taylor was interviewed at the RA2009 Conference:"According to the numbers I have AIDS, but when you look at me you see a healthy 28-year old ... I don't spell AIDS at all ... I work 70 hours a week ... It's just not consistent with what my doctor said would happen eleven years ago when I tested positive."

Emery Taylor has died. The following Facebook page announces his memorial service.

"It's with heartfelt sympathy that Rehoboth Temple communicates the passing of one of its members, Emery Taylor. 
Our condolences and prayers are with his family, friends and the many whose lives were touched by him.


See past stories on How AIDS Denialism Can Kill You
Part V: Karri Stokely 
Part IV: One Too Many Coincidences 
Part III: Lambros Papantoniou
Kim Bannon
Part II: Henry Bauer
Part I: AIDS Myths Exposed


Funeral memorial arrangements are currently being arranged. Once the information is received, we will share it. 
Emery was loved greatly and will be missed!
We will hold a vigil tomorrow of Praise, Prayer and Reflection for the community to share in. The event will be from 6pm-7:30 in the sanctuary of our church.
We look forward to sharing together.
Pastor Joseph Tolton & the Rehoboth Temple Community"

Karri Stokely, another person with AIDS being exploited by AIDS Denialists, is very ill. 


Kim Bannon continues to decline and requires assisted living.
  

How many more people with HIV infection will fall for the false hope dished out by the AIDS Denialists? 
How many more will die too soon because they live under a delusion?  
How many more people will Peter Duesberg, David Rasnick, David Crowe and the other AIDS Deniers fool with their sick lies?

I am truly sorry that it is too late for Emery Taylor.


UPDATE: Jonathan Barnett provides more information on Emery Taylor's AIDS denialism.

Goodbye to another reckless source of AIDS Denialism

Mothering Magazine Ceases Publication

 BY SIERRA ON FEBRUARY 15TH, 2011 @  http://blogs.babble.com

After over 30 years of publication, Mothering Magazine is leaving the shelves. Mothering will continue as a web-only organization, but the magazine has printed its last issue.

Mothering has long catered to hippie mamas, featuring stories on attachment parenting, cosleeping, natural foods and creative play. The magazine, and more recently the message boards, have been a home base for parents with an alternative viewpoint for generations.

The magazine announced the change on Facebook today, surprising their thousands of readers, many of whom hold subscriptions to the print magazine.

The January/February and March/April issues of Mothering will still be published, but in web-only form. After that the magazine will cease publication altogether, though Mothering will continue its message boards and other online activities.

Mothering Magazine dropped a bomb on readers today with this Facebook post:

Thank you so much for your support of Mothering. We are announcing today that Mothering is becoming a web-only business. Printing Mothering Magazine is no longer financially sustainable. The Jan/Feb and Mar/Apr issues are our final issues, and are digital only. We apologize that we could not provide this information sooner, but it only became apparent to us very recently.

A longer explanation from Peggy O’Mara is available on their website. It seems like this was a sudden decision for them, and has left a lot of readers holding print subscriptions in the lurch. At the same time, it seems kind of inevitable. Mothering has always been a small, independent magazine. With magazine sales dropping and production costs rising, more and more indie mags are going under and become web-only entities.

Hotel Pošta in Belgrade

The famous Hotel Post (Хотел Пошта) projected by famous Belgrade architect Branislav Kojic in 1931 is undergoing remodeling works and will open again later in 2011. The building is at Savska Nr.3 near the Main Train Station. 

Belgrade based architect Mustafa Musić from "Zenit inženjering" Office made an interesting project for this transformation in a new 4-stars Hotel with 4'000m2.

The old Hotel was build in the modern style architecture that was popular between the two Worldwars. Branislav Kojic was one of the architects that didn't follow just follow modernist principles, he found also inspiration in academism and national style. Hotel Post was built on the property of the hotelier Đura Ninković which bought it in 1927 and removed the existing buildings from the property.
Kojic was conditioned by the shape of the lot when he planned the Hotel, so it got an irregular, almost rectangular shape. This three-floor building with attic, has only one facade, although originally it stood freely and could be seen from each side. This facade treatment is typical for Kojić’s architectural expression. 

The new project by Mustafa Musić expands the Hotel with a new building in the yard and with adding some more floors on the existing part of the building. 

The 3,3Mio Project, with 66 rooms, 4 luxury apartments, wellness center and a big Restaurant keeps the modernist between Worldwars Style but with a contemporary, even futuristic spirit.

 Like Branislav Kojic who added some folkloristic details to his facades, Musić made a modern facade but with some sophisticated details, like the coloured bow-windows.

Mustafa Musić was born in 1949 in Belgrade where he graduated in 1975 at the architectural faculty. He runs "Zenit inženjering" since 1990. He was also guest professor at the architectural faculty in Belgrade and realized more than 50 projects.

His website: http://www.mustafamusic.net

Montreal Gets a Crash Course in AIDS Denialism

HIV denialism has taken too many lives  

Beware the medical myth that HIV is harmless or doesn't even exist  

By KEN WITWER AND SETH KALICHMAN, Montreal Gazette February 11, 2011

What if most everything you think you know about HIV and AIDS is wrong?" This, according to Terry Michael in his opinion piece "Junk science and AIDS" (Gazette, Feb. 5) is the question that HIV-positive boxer Tommy Morrison is asking Canadian officials in his plea to fight in Quebec on Feb. 25. Morrison has repeatedly tested positive for HIV and refuses to take an HIV test that is mandatory if he is to take part in the fight. The authorities require the test because, fairly or not, they do not want to risk Morrison's infecting his opponent or anyone else who comes into contact with his blood.

Rather than encourage Morrison to take the simple, routine HIV test, ending the speculation about his HIV status and clearing his way into the ring, Michael astonishingly states that HIV tests are not accurate and that HIV, the cause of AIDS, does not even exist.

The science is indisputable. HIV tests are among the most accurate tests for any medical condition. HIV/AIDS has caused tens of millions of deaths: men and women, old and young, gay and straight.

UPDATE: The Kansas City Star has printed a very sad account of Tommy Morrison's life in AIDS denial. Click here for that story.

Michael's article raises questions of responsibility and accountability. Is it acceptable when unsound information is printed in the pages of a major newspaper? AIDS denialism -the movement professing that HIV is harmless or nonexistent - has claimed several hundred thousand lives in South Africa alone. Presenting such views as if they were valid alternatives to scientific knowledge has the effect of legitimizing them and ensuring their continued spread.

A poignant illustration of the consequences of AIDS denialism is a woman named Christine Maggiore. Maggiore wrote the book that Michael co-opted in his article: "What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong?" Like Michael, Christine Maggiore was neither a doctor nor a scientist, yet when she discovered that she was HIV-positive, she bet her life on the lie that HIV, if it even exists, is harmless.

Maggiore accepted the unfounded views of fringe biologist Peter Duesberg. She listened to an Internet organization called Rethinking AIDS. As a result, her daughter was infected with HIV and died of AIDS at the age of 3. Unshaken by even this tragedy, Maggiore founded an organization to persuade HIV-positive mothers to do the same things that had led to her own child's death. In 2008, Maggiore herself died of AIDS, but not before ensuring that others would follow.

It is disturbingly ironic that Michael uses the late Maggiore's words in defence of Tommy Morrison. Let us hope that HIV-positive people who have been deceived by AIDS denialism -including Morrison, if he is indeed HIV-positive -will come to their senses and obtain sound medical advice.

We encourage the readers of The Gazette to beware medical myths that masquerade as scientific information.

Ken Witwer researches HIV and related viruses as a fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Seth Kalichman is a professor at the University of Connecticut and author of the book Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/denialism+taken+many+lives/4262797/story.html#ixzz1DgxXP0bG

HIV denial is fatal

The most convincing argument that the virus causes AIDS is that anti-retroviral medications are prolonging the lives of millions

Montreal Gazette Feb 10, 2011

How I wish that the opinion article "Junk science and AIDS" by Terry Michael (Gazette, Feb. 5) had begun: "Once upon a time there was a wicked journalist preying on sick and dying people ..." Instead, the article brought us a seemingly reputable journalist publishing a vitriolic and prejudiced rant exhorting Canadians to know that "there is not now and there never was a human immunodeficiency virus.".

Michael is wrong - as are the arguments he uses to deny that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can cause the fatal destruction of the immune system that we call AIDS. Were his article to have been government-sponsored, people would in all likelihood be crying propaganda! It is incongruous and inexplicable that the executive director of what is claimed to be a prestigious and responsible U.S. journalism foundation could write such a misleading and harmful article.

I will not address the prejudiced, pejorative nomenclature Michael uses -such as "lucrative profits," "incestuous urban gay enclaves," "victims of a multi-billion dollar HIV-AIDS industry." Nor will I address his distorted presentation of the science and history of HIV/ AIDS with which he justifies his denial that HIV can cause fatal illness. Science establishes its truths through reproducible and peer-reviewed evidence, not by what politicians, journalists, or even individual scientists might "declare." The quality of science that explains the cause and disease mechanisms of HIV infection that lead to AIDS, and that underlies the development of highly effective anti-HIV treatments, resulted in a 2008 Nobel Prize being awarded to the two scientists who discovered HIV.

The biggest danger from Michael's article is that it might mislead people into failing to understand that HIV is a killer. Without treatment, almost everyone who is infected with HIV will eventually die from the infection. There is abundant evidence that HIV can be transmitted from infected mothers to their babies, through contaminated blood transfusions, by sexual intercourse from HIV-infected wives, husbands or gay partners, or by sharing bloody injection equipment.

Today, the most convincing argument that HIV causes AIDS is that anti-HIV medications -often called antiretrovirals or ARVs - are prolonging the lives of millions of HIV-infected people. The number of HIVinfected people progressing to the life-threatening immunodeficiency that is full-blown AIDS living in Canada or anywhere else has plummeted wherever these medications are being widely used. Blood is now safe thanks to HIV screening tests. Just as impressive is that babies are born uninfected when their mothers are effectively treated. And many of the millions who are taking ARVs are no longer dying or ill but, instead, are returning to work, having babies, and planning a long life.

As a physician and a researcher who has studied HIV infection and cared for HIV-infected adults for 30 years, I am very worried by the real danger that an article such as Michael's might persuade some infected people to forgo prevention that can protect their partners from being exposed to or infected by HIV. And, sadly, it might also persuade some people who are infected to forgo life-saving treatments.

Michael focuses on the case of American boxer Tommy Morrison, who is refusing to undergo HIV testing to be eligible to fight in Quebec. He describes a situation where the boxer's HIV test was initially reactive and he began ARV treatment. Those drugs are only used to treat people who are HIV-infected (i. e. they have reactive tests that are confirmed positive) and who are likely to benefit from being treated. Even if Morrison's subsequent tests became "negative" when being treated with ARVs -an extremely unusual result -he nonetheless remains infected. If Morrison was once found to be HIV positive and needed treatment, then, like everyone else who has been infected with HIV, his infection is a lifelong one, and he remains infected and potentially infectious. As a boxer, he would be a danger were he to be cut, because this could expose others to his HIV-carrying blood.

Morrison's denial is exactly the danger that this article is likely to exacerbate. It's essential that all HIV-infected people accept that they are infected and can, at times, be a potential danger to others. In contrast to Morrison and Michael, all of us, especially anyone who is HIV-infected, need to send a clear prevention message that will help to protect others, instead of one that denies HIV and that suggests being exposed to HIV is not dangerous. This is a universal response to HIV that we hope everyone -especially those who are infected -will understand and pass on.

Norbert Gilmore is professor of medicine (emeritus) at McGill University and a senior physician at the McGill University Health Centre.

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/health/denial+fatal/4247661/story.html#ixzz1DTMSi5sv

Peter Duesberg and the Other Top 9 Most Controversial Professors in America

OnlineUniversities
Peter Duesberg. This professor was much admired and respected at his University of California-Berkeley campus, and has completed some incredibly respectable work. But a recent article in Discovermagazine brought to light some of Duesberg’s more controversial, perhaps even unsavory, beliefs to light. Since 1986, Duesberg has been an adamant AIDS denier, believing that the illness is caused by drug use rather than by the HIV virus. Despite a lack of evidence backing up his claims, as well as some concerns about ethics in regard to his published articles, Duesberg’s views have affected international AIDS policy, especially in South Africa. It is thought that the government’s refusal to provide anti-viral medications to AIDS patients, believing with Duesberg that their condition was not caused by a virus, led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.

Is Boxer Tommy Morrison's Cut-Man the Dumbest Guy on the Planet?

Boxer Tommy Morrison tested HIV positive in 1996. Sadly, he had to stop boxing and gave up a three fight deal worth over $38 Million.

When Earvin 'Magic' Johnson faced the same tragedy, I remember feeling great sadness for him, his sport, and his fans. I was living in Chicago in 1991 and in case you do not remember, in 1991 Chicago was focused on Michael Jordon and NBA Basketball.  Magic Johnson's announcement that he was retiring from the LA Lakers after testing HIV positive stunned the world. Perhaps outside of LA, no place could have been more devastated than Chicago.

Those of us working in AIDS research at the time knew everything in our city had changed. I remember thinking how basketball must be a pretty low-risk sport when it comes to HIV transmission. No question, B-ball is a high contact rough sport. But aside from President Obama's recent lip injury, I am not sure when the last time was that I saw a player bleed on the court much less on a fellow player.

In my life I suppose I have been more of a fight fan. When I was 15 years old I watched the King, Muhammad Ali, train in Miami Beach. I met him. I watched him work out. I watched him spar. I saw men bleed when they sparred with Ali...and they were wearing head gear! 


Unlike basketball, boxing is a no-brainer when it comes to HIV transmission risk. Not just for a Tommy Morrison's opponents, but for his trainers, refs, announcers, press and probably the first couple rows of fans. The most basic rule in HIV prevention is stay away from HIV infected blood. That is pretty simple. I am not sure how a bleeding boxer cannot expose others to his blood?

Tommy Morrison's AIDS denialism seems to be a mix of ignorance and Rethinking AIDS propaganda. He says he tested positive for HIV antibodies, but not the virus. He also says that tests for the virus, mistakenly referring to viral load, fail to find HIV. He is also challenging the validity of HIV antibody tests for diagnosing HIV infection. It is really that sad.

So what happens if Morrison fights and opens a cut? Who is responsible?  What happens next? The fight continues? And who is his cut man -  the person charged with stopping his bleeding between rounds? I know I have a few suggestions for the job, and one of them lives in Canada. After all,  David Crowe has been out front promoting Mr. Morrison's cause. Or how about David Rasnick? He is on record saying that he would be happy to be injected with HIV. Putting the old guy in Morrison's corner would be his chance.

You may be wondering if anyone is taking Mr. Morrison's claims about his HIV status and his desire to step back in the ring seriously. Well check out this article just published in the Montreal Gazette.  Pretty scary shit.

Boxing lesson: Morrison's fight against blood test a teaching moment for Canadians

By TERRY MICHAEL, Freelance February 5, 2011

"What if most everything you think you know about HIV and AIDS is wrong?"

That's the message U.S. boxer Tommy Morrison is sending to Canadian sports fans -and the world-in a confrontation with the Regie des alcools, des courses et des jeux. The gaming board is asking the 42-year-old fighter to take an HIV blood test to qualify for meeting Eric Barrak in a main event Feb. 25 at Pierre Charbonneau Centre.

Regulating a sport that often draws blood, RACJ says Morrison must submit to a test much of the world wrongly believes indicates presence of a pathogenic virus, a string of genetic code in nucleic acid covered in protein. Basing its claimontheworkof Dr. Robert Gallo, the U.S. government 27 years ago announced "the probable cause of AIDS" was indeed such a virus. President Ronald Reagan's Health Secretary, Margaret Heckler, told a press conference April 23, 1984, that immune systems of gay men were collapsing from a retrovirus Gallo claimed to isolate, a virus he said was transmitted through blood during sex.

A researcher at the National Institutes of Health, Gallo's ethics were later the subject of two government inquiries and a major Chicago Tribune investigation of the claim he discovered the "AIDS virus" and "AIDS blood test." When hailed by Heckler as discoverer of HIV, Gallo had published not a single peer-reviewed scientific paper backing his claim. In what might be termed a split decision in boxing, the U.S. and French governments decided in 1987 to share the disputed discovery between Gallo and Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Institut Pasteur -and more importantly, to divide the lucrative profits from the widely used blood test.

That 1984 media event came in a presidential election year, when Reagan was accused of insensitivity to gay men, refusing to utter the newly minted acronym AIDS. Gays embraced the "discovery" offered by the science bureaucrat Gallo, who had been trying with virtually no success for a dozen years to relate his retroviruses to cancer.

A 19th-century germ theory answer to what first was called Gay Related Immune Deficiency was welcomed by the gay community. It made AIDS "everybody's disease," trumping growing evidence it was actually of multifactorial causation, that immune systems were collapsing from: (1) frequent, multi-partner exchange of old pathogens in incestuous urban gay enclaves, causing diseases like gonorrhea and syphilis, heavily treated with antibiotics, which destroy immune-healthful gut bacteria; (2) ubiquitous use of immune suppressive toxins, including alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines and nitrites ( "poppers"), which fuelled partying in a small but significant subset of urban gay culture; and (3) the suppressive psychogenic effects of anxiety and stress on naive, youthful gay male immune systems, from blowback by newly politicized religious fundamentalists, pillorying "unclean gay lifestyles."

I write this with first-hand knowledge. I am a 63-year-old gay man, who participated in that "lifestyle" and who witnessed politicizing of medical science while serving as press secretary in the mid-1980s at the Democratic National Committee, the party opposing Ronald Reagan and supportive of gay rights.

With that brief history, I return to Tommy Morrison and the blood-test-about-nothing Quebec regulators are asking him to take. In fact, the test is nothing more than an assay for some blood proteins that can result from 70 different conditions, including pregnancy and flu vaccinations. Morrison tested reactive -the correct term for the meaningless result -- when he had blood drawn by the Nevada boxing commission before a 1996 fight. He later took "the test" several times and was "negative" -but after being placed on highly toxic, "antiretroviral" chemotherapy, drugs still administered to millions of humans, mostly gay men and black Africans, convinced they carry a lethal bug, not just proteins declared by Gallo to be markers for HIV.

Morrison eventually learned the truth about the test and the chemotherapy, which he stopped taking after it almost destroyed his health.

Thousands of us in the worldwide community of dissenters from the single pathogen theory of AIDS understand Tommy Morrison is really looking for more than a fight in Montreal. He is offering an important teaching moment to Quebecers, Canadians, and millions worldwide who are victims of the multi-billion dollar HIV-AIDS Industry.

The HIV-AIDS story is complex. Many of us have devoted years of study to it, and have concluded there is not now and there never was a human immunodeficiency virus. We ask the world to reassess 27-year-old politicized junk science. Canadians can contribute to that fight for truth by opposing injustice being visited on an American athlete who should be allowed to enter a ring Feb. 25 without taking a test about nothing.

Block 23 in New Belgrade

Blok 23 in New Belgrade is just around the corner of Blok 28 (my usual residence when I'm in Belgrade) and a couple of weeks ago I made a walk through the blocks to take some pictures.
The project was made by Bozidar Jankovic (1931), Branislav Karadzic (1929) and Aleksandar Stjepanovic (1931) a team that planned several housing projects with accompanying buildings and constructed the Faculty of Dramatic Arts. They valorised architecture with expressive materials (rough concrete, brick, dyed linen).

I like the combination of residential blocks in the background and the red-orange school in the middle of the block.

The buildings of block 23 were constructed  from 1968 to 1974. The buildings are organized along two circulation corridors; narrow courtyards are located between the circulation cores. The buildings are constructed of prefabricated concrete elements.
More on blocks of New Belgrade in my posts here (Block70) and here(the future of New Belgrade).

Apartments are open to two sides, while the kitchen and dining area look onto the courtyard. Balconies are located on both sides and are often built out into a loggia or used as additional storage space.

The apartments have intelligent floor layouts, most of the flats can be divided into private zones for the family and zones for social contact. 
A lot of apartments are very flexible and the layout can be easily adapted to the request of the owners.

The yards are a little scary...just a minimum of designing makes it a rather sad place to be

Facade of the school building

 The ground floor facades are mostly full of graffiti, a rather typical thing in the blocks.

 The head of the long 10-storey building

 Building types:

The first type are the residential Towers with groundfloor plus 16 floors, the second type of building has a groundfloor plus ten upper floors and then there are two buildings about 280m long, the third type of building is a meander type with a groundfloor plus four floors and they are located on the east and west border of this block.
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The pinwheel-like floorplans of the residential towers

 

The school with sport facilities in the middle of the block

The urban strategy of a long, protective volume, large green spaces, and some residential towers as an eye-catcher is enhanced with the use of varied architectural forms.

 

The new built Verano Building in the northwest corner of the block

(more information here at beobuild)