"They are all prostitutes, most of them, my collogues, to some degree, including myself. You have to be prostitutes to get money for your research. You are trained a little bit to be a prostitute. But some go all the way." Peter DuesbergI don’t know about you, but I am getting pretty excited about the Rethinking AIDS conference. What a great opportunity to meet all of the AIDS Denialists and learn about their latest delusions! I am familiar with the venue – same place Peter Duesberg held his Aneuploidy Conference. Truth is the Aneuploidy meeting attempted to present some science. There were some real scientists there, albeit not very comfortably. The Rethinking AIDS Conference promises to be even better. Just look at what the AIDS Deniers are saying…
Who Should Attend? — Anyone who has questions about the connection between HIV and AIDS should attend. If you are already convinced that the HIV=AIDS dogma is broken come and expand your understanding. If you aren't sure about it come and perhaps you will be by the end of the conference. If you are convinced that HIV is the cause of AIDS and want to understand why some people disagree, you are still welcome to come, listen, and participate in discussions.
Why Should you Come? — To learn about the history of the AIDS dogma, scientific flaws in the dogma, treatment of immune deficiency, legal issues and the human impact on HIV-positives.
What Can You Expect — You will see from the program that there will be many talks, with opportunities to ask questions and have group and individual discussions. Social events will allow networking with other people concerned about the science of HIV, the social and legal consequences of an HIV diagnosis and the censorship of science and the media.
PLUS…there will be a special showing of House of Numbers. Now wont that be special?
UPDATE: See Rethinking AIDS Program Below!
Mimicking scientific conferences is not unique to AIDS Denialism. In fact, conferences are an important part of creating a façade of legitimacy for pseudoscience. David Gorski has a great post at Science-Based Medicine on crank conferences. Here is an excerpt.
Crank “scientific” conferences: A parody of science-based medicine that can deceive even reputable scientists and institutions
If there’s one thing that purveyors of pseudoscientific medical modalities crave, probably above all else, it’s legitimacy. They want to be taken seriously as Real Scientists. Of course, my usual reaction to this desire is to point out that anyone can be take seriously as a real scientist if he is able to do science and that science actually shows that there is something to his claims. In other words, do his hypotheses make testable predictions, and does testing these predictions fail to falsify his hypotheses? That’s what it takes, but advocates of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” (IM, or, as I like to refer to it: “integrating” quackery with scientific medicine) want their woo to be considered science without actually doing the hard work of science.
There are several strategies that pseudoscientists use to give their beliefs the appearance of science, a patina of “science-y” camouflage, if you will. One, of course, is the cooptation and corruption of the language of science, which has been a frequent topic on this blog, particularly in posts written by Drs. Atwood and Sampson. Another is to produce journals that appear to be science, but are anything but. I’ve discussed one example, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Medical Acupuncture, but others include Homeopathy, the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and Medical Hypotheses, which recently was forced to retract a horrible paper by arch-HIV/AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. What’s worse is that some of these journals are even published by what are considered major publishers, such as Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., and Elsevier.
There is, however, a third strategy. How do scientists communicate their findings to other scientists, as well as meeting and mingling with other scientists? Why, they hold scientific meetings, of course! These meetings can be small or even as large as the American Association for Cancer Research meeting, which is attended by around 15,000 cancer researchers each year. So, too, do cranks hold meetings. These meetings often have all the trappings of scientific meetings, with plenary sessions, smaller parallel sessions, poster sesssions, and an exhibition hall, complete with exhibits by sponsoring companies. Sometimes these meetings can even appear so much like the real thing that they take in legitimate researchers and legitimate universities. Here, I present two examples of such conferences. [to read the rest of Gorski’s post visit Science-Based Medicine]
Watch the Rethinking AIDS 2009 conference video.
RETHINKING AIDS CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Friday
3:00 Check-in6:00 Welcome and introduction of Keynote Speaker (David Crowe) 6:15
Keynote Lecture (Michael Tracey)
7:15 WELCOME COCKTAIL
Saturday
Morning Session
8:00 Opening remarks (David Crowe)
8:10 History of the AIDS controversy spanning three decades (John Lauritsen)
8:50 HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS—a new perspective (Peter Duesberg)
9:30 Questioning the Existence of HIV (Etienne De Harven)
10:10 Coffee Break
10:30 The Deception and Dishonesty of African AIDS Statistics (Charlie Geshekter)
11:10 Aids in Africa—a call for sense not hysteria (Christian Fiala)
11:50 The role of the inner pharmacy in the prevention and treatment of AIDS (Roberto Giraldo)
12:30 Lunch
Afternoon Session
2:00 HIV drugs causing AIDS (Dave Rasnick)
2:40 The treatment dilemma of HIV-positive patients as a result of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: The illusion of antiviral treatment (Claus Koehnlein)
3:20 HIV/AIDS blunder is far from unique in the annals of science and medicine (Henry Bauer)
4:00 Coffee Break
4:30 Screening of House of Numbers
Evening
7:00 BANQUET
Sunday
Morning Session
8:00 The Criminalization of Illness (Chris Black)
8:30 Rethinking Legal Aspects of AIDS in Colombia (Universidad Libre Pereira Colombia Law Group)
9:00 Censorship in the AIDS debate—the success of stifling, muzzling and a strategy of silence (Joan Shenton)
9:30 Coffee Break
9:45 Religion, Politics, and AIDS in Italy: curious paradoxes from the Ministry of Health (Marco Ruggiero)
10:15 The Italian epidemiology supports the chemical AIDS theory (Daniele Mandrioli)
10:45 How I fell victim to the AIDS machine (Karri Stokely)
11:00 AIDS, Big Deal, Next!: A journey to hell and back with AIDS (Noreen Martin)
11:15 Challenges faced by gays who question HIV/AIDS with implications for dissidents (Tony Lance)
11:30 Panel discussion
12:00 Close
Who Should Attend? — Anyone who has questions about the connection between HIV and AIDS should attend. If you are already convinced that the HIV=AIDS dogma is broken come and expand your understanding. If you aren't sure about it come and perhaps you will be by the end of the conference. If you are convinced that HIV is the cause of AIDS and want to understand why some people disagree, you are still welcome to come, listen, and participate in discussions.
Why Should you Come? — To learn about the history of the AIDS dogma, scientific flaws in the dogma, treatment of immune deficiency, legal issues and the human impact on HIV-positives.
What Can You Expect — You will see from the program that there will be many talks, with opportunities to ask questions and have group and individual discussions. Social events will allow networking with other people concerned about the science of HIV, the social and legal consequences of an HIV diagnosis and the censorship of science and the media.
PLUS…there will be a special showing of House of Numbers. Now wont that be special?
UPDATE: See Rethinking AIDS Program Below!
Mimicking scientific conferences is not unique to AIDS Denialism. In fact, conferences are an important part of creating a façade of legitimacy for pseudoscience. David Gorski has a great post at Science-Based Medicine on crank conferences. Here is an excerpt.
Crank “scientific” conferences: A parody of science-based medicine that can deceive even reputable scientists and institutions
If there’s one thing that purveyors of pseudoscientific medical modalities crave, probably above all else, it’s legitimacy. They want to be taken seriously as Real Scientists. Of course, my usual reaction to this desire is to point out that anyone can be take seriously as a real scientist if he is able to do science and that science actually shows that there is something to his claims. In other words, do his hypotheses make testable predictions, and does testing these predictions fail to falsify his hypotheses? That’s what it takes, but advocates of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” (IM, or, as I like to refer to it: “integrating” quackery with scientific medicine) want their woo to be considered science without actually doing the hard work of science.
There are several strategies that pseudoscientists use to give their beliefs the appearance of science, a patina of “science-y” camouflage, if you will. One, of course, is the cooptation and corruption of the language of science, which has been a frequent topic on this blog, particularly in posts written by Drs. Atwood and Sampson. Another is to produce journals that appear to be science, but are anything but. I’ve discussed one example, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons and Medical Acupuncture, but others include Homeopathy, the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, and Medical Hypotheses, which recently was forced to retract a horrible paper by arch-HIV/AIDS denialist Peter Duesberg. What’s worse is that some of these journals are even published by what are considered major publishers, such as Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., and Elsevier.
There is, however, a third strategy. How do scientists communicate their findings to other scientists, as well as meeting and mingling with other scientists? Why, they hold scientific meetings, of course! These meetings can be small or even as large as the American Association for Cancer Research meeting, which is attended by around 15,000 cancer researchers each year. So, too, do cranks hold meetings. These meetings often have all the trappings of scientific meetings, with plenary sessions, smaller parallel sessions, poster sesssions, and an exhibition hall, complete with exhibits by sponsoring companies. Sometimes these meetings can even appear so much like the real thing that they take in legitimate researchers and legitimate universities. Here, I present two examples of such conferences. [to read the rest of Gorski’s post visit Science-Based Medicine]
Watch the Rethinking AIDS 2009 conference video.
RETHINKING AIDS CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Friday
3:00 Check-in6:00 Welcome and introduction of Keynote Speaker (David Crowe) 6:15
Keynote Lecture (Michael Tracey)
7:15 WELCOME COCKTAIL
Saturday
Morning Session
8:00 Opening remarks (David Crowe)
8:10 History of the AIDS controversy spanning three decades (John Lauritsen)
8:50 HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with South African AIDS—a new perspective (Peter Duesberg)
9:30 Questioning the Existence of HIV (Etienne De Harven)
10:10 Coffee Break
10:30 The Deception and Dishonesty of African AIDS Statistics (Charlie Geshekter)
11:10 Aids in Africa—a call for sense not hysteria (Christian Fiala)
11:50 The role of the inner pharmacy in the prevention and treatment of AIDS (Roberto Giraldo)
12:30 Lunch
Afternoon Session
2:00 HIV drugs causing AIDS (Dave Rasnick)
2:40 The treatment dilemma of HIV-positive patients as a result of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis: The illusion of antiviral treatment (Claus Koehnlein)
3:20 HIV/AIDS blunder is far from unique in the annals of science and medicine (Henry Bauer)
4:00 Coffee Break
4:30 Screening of House of Numbers
Evening
7:00 BANQUET
Sunday
Morning Session
8:00 The Criminalization of Illness (Chris Black)
8:30 Rethinking Legal Aspects of AIDS in Colombia (Universidad Libre Pereira Colombia Law Group)
9:00 Censorship in the AIDS debate—the success of stifling, muzzling and a strategy of silence (Joan Shenton)
9:30 Coffee Break
9:45 Religion, Politics, and AIDS in Italy: curious paradoxes from the Ministry of Health (Marco Ruggiero)
10:15 The Italian epidemiology supports the chemical AIDS theory (Daniele Mandrioli)
10:45 How I fell victim to the AIDS machine (Karri Stokely)
11:00 AIDS, Big Deal, Next!: A journey to hell and back with AIDS (Noreen Martin)
11:15 Challenges faced by gays who question HIV/AIDS with implications for dissidents (Tony Lance)
11:30 Panel discussion
12:00 Close
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