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Blog - Dispelling Misconceptions
by Chris Jennings
Blog to Dispel Misconceptions
The Myth of a General AIDS Pandemic -
James Chin, MD, MPH
January 3, 2012
James
Chin, MD, MPH was the former Chief of the Surveillance, Forecasting, and Impact
Assessment Unit for the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA) at the World Health
Organization (WHO) between 1987 and 1992.
From
hearsay, I understand that Dr. Chin quit WHO in protest over WHO's
consistent use and distribution of the highest computer estimates for
global HIV/AIDS statistics.
Nevertheless, the title of this document by Dr. Chin is forthright: The Myth of a General AIDS Pandemic: How billions are wasted on unnecessary AIDS prevention programmes. Strong words inside as well:
"Since its inception in the mid-1990s, UNAIDS and
its scientific advisors have been misleading the public
and policy makers regarding the scope and trend of
the AIDS pandemic. In addition to these miscalculations,
UNAIDS has exaggerated the potential or HIV epidemics
in “general” populations."
“Poverty is a socially and politically attractive
hypothesis to account for high HIV prevalence, but
available data support the opposite.”
“Easily preventable diseases are still killing
millions of children each year, while billions of
dollars are being squandered annually by AIDS programs
to prevent HIV epidemics in populations who are not
at risk.”
Again, as with Roger England's assessments (see The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS,
below), Dr. Chin utilizes the WHO's own estimates in his criticisms. Dr.
Chin criticisms amount to a substantial conflict between modelers, but
their arguments, assumptions, and interpretations remain essentially
remain within the modeling domain. For example, Dr. Chin adheres to the
theory that African populations remain at risk:
"Disastrous demographic impact has and will
continue to occur in severely affected sub-Saharan
African populations, in men who have sex with men,
and injecting drug user (IDU) networks throughout
the world; but minimal to no demographic impact
in most other populations."
Also, in September 2008, Dr. Chin stated: "my major epidemiological differences with UNAIDS have been mostly resolved because now UNAIDS' numbers and estimates of the pandemic's trajectory are almost identical to mine" on a web site adjuvant to his trade book, The AIDS Pandemic: The Collision of Epidemiology With Political Correctness.
Related Blogs: Emptying the Ocean with a Bucket (India's reduction)
Related Blogs: The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS - Roger England
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- Free PDF -
The Myth of a General AIDS Pandemic
by James Chin
Dr. Chin's
Trade Book
Kindle Edition
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The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS - Roger England
December 27, 2011
Roger England
is Chairman of the Health Systems Workshop, Grenada. His analyses and
commentaries are lightly sprinkled through the scientific literature. The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS was England's editorial in the British Medical Journal, May 2008.
England
criticizes the rampant "exceptionalism" granted to HIV/AIDS across many
domains. In one strong statement, England writes:
"HIV exceptionalism is dead—and the writing is on the wall for UNAIDS.
Why a UN agency for HIV and not for pneumonia or diabetes,
which both kill more people?"
England's
article focuses on the billions in HIV/AIDS expenditures, and its
affect on the health care infrastructures of impacted nations:
"Although HIV causes 3.7% of mortality, it receives 25% of
international healthcare aid and a big chunk of domestic expenditure.
HIV aid often exceeds total domestic health budgets themselves,
including their HIV spending."
"HIV aid often exceeds total domestic health budgets themselves,
including their HIV spending. It has created parallel financing,
employment, and organisational structures, weakening national
health systems at a crucial time and sidelining needed structural
reform."
"Yet UNAIDS is calling for huge increases: from $9 billion today
to $42 billion by 2010 and $54 billion by 2015. UNAIDS is out of
touch with reality, and its single issue advocacy is harming health
systems and diverting resources from more effective interventions
against other diseases."
Notably, in these deliberations, England is working with the
disease statistics and financial expenditures generated by UNAIDS itself
(among other authorities). England's conclusions were made without the
"benefit" of the empirical information that I now bring to the table.
For example, in the Republic of South Africa (RSA), UNAIDS
estimated that the RSA had 140,000 HIV/AIDS death sin 1997, but the RSA
tabulated on 6,635 HIV/AIDS deaths in the annual death tabulations: two
orders of magnitude.
Although the health authorities of the RSA have more faith in the
WHO/UNAIDS computer models than their own death counts, these findings
tend to substantiate, or perhaps augment, the validity of England's
arguments, even allowing for substantial error in measures.
England's entire BMJ editorial is available free via PubMed Central (U.S. National Library of Medicine) - England R. The Writing is on the Wall for UNAIDS. British Medical Journal. May 10 2008;336(7652):1072.
Related Article: HIV/AIDS: Dangerous Statistics (Think Africa Press)
Related Blog: The Myth of a General AIDS Pandemic - James Chin, MD, MPH
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Emptying the Ocean with a Bucket
December 16, 2011
In the words of René Dubos: "It's easy to think you are emptying the ocean with a bucket when the tide is going out."
Perhaps I paraphrase. I can't recall in which of book I read this statement - one of the two recommended. His writing is focused on the history of science and a wonderful discourse on the cyclic and repetitive nature of social thought and concepts of health and disease. To quote an Amazon.com reviewer: "extremely interesting reading for anyone interested in humanity, disease, science and history."
Such a situation could exist with HIV/AIDS, relative to the success achieved in global HIV/AIDS interventions. New York Times, among others, reported the global number of HIV/AIDS deaths has
declined consistently over the past 3 years despite the challenge, in tough times . . . to
find enough resources."
The NY Times was citing the UNAIDS World AIDS Day Report which stated that anti-HIV/AIDS interventions had reduced annual new infections globally by 21% between 1997 and 2010.
(All
this despite a 250% increase from 2001 to 2010 in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. The Russian Federation and Ukraine
account for almost 90% of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region’s
epidemic with IV drug use the leading HIV transmission vector, same report.)
Is
the epidemic receding? Or are the modeled of HIV/AIDS
prevalences simply fluctuating? For example, between 1993 and 2007, WHO
estimates for PLWH in Africa were consistently 25 to 30 times greater
than the cumulative number of HIV/AIDS cases reported by the internal surveillance
systems of participating African countries, combined.
India
recognized - to some extent - that its internal HIV/AIDS estimates were
over inflated. As a result, India reduced its HIV/AIDS estimates by almost by half in one
step in 2007 (from an estimated 5.7 million to an estimated 2.5 million). "Part of wider trend" said National Public Radio.
So is the epidemic retreating? Or is the tide of estimates on the ebb?
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HIV has a 10-Year Incubation Period - NOT
December 1, 2011
Contrary to popular belief, HIV infection does not have a
10-year average incubation period. On the lower end, the incubation
period of HIV infection is 8 to 24 months, according to research
conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) at the beginning of
the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
AIDS was a mystery at outset, and the CDC actively tracked and
interviewed patients when possible to gather information both about
possible etiology and transmission vectors (both unknown at that time).
Not much of this empirical data was published in the medical
literature. But in one published study, the CDC traced 40 AIDS patients
in 10 cities linked by sexual contact. In 6 of these patients, CDC determined a mean latency
period of 10.5 months (range 7 to 14 months) between sexual contact and
symptom onset.[Ref] (AIDS was diagnosed at that time by the
manifestation of opportunistic infections.)
In 1983, even before HIV was discovered, the CDC publications
alternately described the incubation period AIDS as "8- to 18-months" or
“several months to 2 years.” The term “several months” in this
situation presumably referring to the short incubation period observed
among infants born with HIV infection (who survived 9 months on average).
The incubation period among the first AIDS patients in Denmark
was determined by their time of travel to the United States, then
recognized as the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. Eight of the first
20 AIDS patients in Denmark had visited New York, San Francisco, and
Los, Angeles 12 to 24 months before developing AIDS (diagnosed at that
time by the manifestation of opportunistic infections).
The medical literature also contains a peppering of extremely
short incubation periods reported by individual physicians; including:
• 2-month incubation period following sexual contact in a homosexual male
• 6-month incubation period following sexual contact in a homosexual male
• 7-week incubation period following a blood transfusion
• 2-month incubation period following intravenous needle transmission to lymphadenopathy
(All of the above data cited and referenced in "HIV/AIDS Statistics in the Republic of South Africa").
These findings do not necessarily countermand the existence of individuals, or some portion of the HIV-infected population that survive for 11 years without treatment or experience a silent 10-year incubation period. Yet in these virgin, untreated groups 6 patients (among a network of 40 sexual contacts) developed AIDS (manifested opportunistic infections) in a median 7.5 months after exposure (range 7 to 14 months), and 8/20 AIDS patients had average incubation periods of 1-2 years (range 4 to 39 months).
When this data are introduced, the rapid response is to label such findings as outliers. Yet . . . what would make these small populations differ from those who followed? The numbers are very small, yet they likely represent the edge of the distribution curve for HIV incubation.
Moreover, these first few cases heralded an incipient tsunami. For the first two years, the AIDS numbers in the United States doubled very 6 months. By 1985 it has slowed to doubling every 12 months or so. By 1987 or so, the wave had crested, such that the annual prevalence increased only 10% between 1989 by 1989 (although a threshold population had been established; enabling the epidemic to perpetuate itself).
When one searches the medical literature for "incubation HIV,"
the results contain only articles reporting incubation periods derived
via computer models. These computer models utilize pre-selected distribution curves and
mixtures of raw and imputed data. The empirical data on incubation
periods is rarely contained in articles whose titles contain the word
"incubation." Rather, the empirical data on incubation periods are found buried among other
vital data, a way of describing the population at hand.
There is no large database of raw empirical data detailing
incubation for hundreds or thousands of patients. The incubation periods
imputed into the computer models used to generate global HIV/AIDS
estimates are estimates themselves. The utilization of the 8-11 year
incubation period in the computer models generated by Geneva is one
reason for the distorted global estimates so widely purveyed.
The only empirical knowledge on HIV's incubation periods,
derived from direct patient interviews by epidemiologists trained to
gather information is now forgotten knowledge.
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Why did the Soviet KGB blame the American CIA for creating HIV? |
November 17, 2011
The concept that HIV is the product of biological warfare
research is a popular. Unlike the other well-known, blood-borne, viral
disease - Hepatitis B, which had been endemic worldwide for decades -
HIV had come rocketing up out of nowhere.
For some, the pronouncements of the Soviet KGB provided
substantion of this theory. The KGB broadcast that the CIA had
experiemented with HIV, and it had escaped from their laboratories. |
In a radio interview on December 6,
2001, Oleg Kalugin (photo), the former Head of Foreign Counter-Intelligence for
the KGB, admitted that the KGB had blamed the CIA for the creation of
AIDS as part of an organized propaganda campaign Listen to the audio by clicking on the link(s) below.
Enjoy!
Chris
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Oleg Kalugin was recruited by the KGB while attending attended
State University. In 1958, as a KGB operative, he attended Columbia
University as a journalism student. He continued to pose as a journalist
for a number of years, eventually serving as the Radio Moscow
correspondent at the United Nations for 5 years.
Later, Kalugin was assigned to Washington, D.C. as deputy press
officer for the Soviet Embassy. His real title was Deputy Resident and
Acting Chief (KGB) at the Soviet Embassy. Returning to the Soviet Union,
Kalugin was promoted to be the youngest general in its history of the
KGB, and eventually became Head of Foreign Counterintelligence.
On December 6, 2001, Oleg Kalugin was interviews by Kojo Nnamdi on
the Public Interest, a radio program broadcast by American University
Radio (WAMU), University of Maryland, Washington, DC. He describes
the disinformation campaigns that included spreading the rumor that the
CIA created the AIDS epidemic. Below are links to the audio excerpts:
You can listen to the following excerpts (wav files):
• Public Interest with Kojo Nnamdi - Oleg Kalugin Biography (7.25 MB)
• Public Interest with Kojo Nnamdi - KGB Blames AIDS on the CIA (9.04 MB)
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The Fallacy of HIV’s African Origin
November 11, 2011
The fallacy that HIV originated in African primates is central to the concept that HIV/AIDS is endemic in Africa. The consequences of these misconeptions are enacted daily in African and perhaps other tropical, indigent settings. For example, in the $20 million dollar study mentioned in New Africa Analysis article, below, the goals of this health care interventiion includes:
• Voluntary circumcision > 70% of 18- to 49-year-old adult males not infected with HIV
• Administer antiretroviral therapy > 90% of HIV-infected adults
• Administer antiretroviral therapy to 95% of HIV-infected pregnant women
The first two are notable goals so long as the populations involved have legitimate HIV infections. Interventional circumcision is highly questionable as the concept is based slipshod statistics. Botswana is purported to have a 25% HIV seroprevalence, meaning that 1 in 4 people are supposedly infected with HIV. A seroprevlance rate far beyond the realms of heterosexual HIV transmission. But that is a discussion for another day. First, the deconstruction of the African primate theory.
Chris
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The Fallacy of HIV’s African Origin
As
principal investigator at the Harvard School of Public Health, Max
Essex, was recently awarded $20 million to study HIV prevention in
Botswana – a meager reward for the man who played a pivotal role in
creating the current conceptual model of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, compared
to the billions distributed annually.
Essex’s erroneous
research spawned the theory that HIV originated in African monkeys.
This misconception is critical because the concept is a pillar for the
fallacy that HIV/AIDS is endemic in Africa.
In 1985, it was
Essex and his team of investigators that “discovered” an "AIDS-like"
virus in the blood sample of wild-caught African green monkeys (AGM).
This “AIDS-like” virus eventually came to be called SIV, the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, even though it did not cause immunodeficiency in African green monkeys.
AIDS was a hot topic at that time; the discovery of SIV by the Essex
team was instant front-page news worldwide. Both scientists and the
public were striving to make sense of this terrifying mystery, and the
impact of this initial media acclaim continues to reverberate throughout
the medical and mainstream media today, and adversely affect both
HIV/AIDS and general health care interventions in Africa.
Yet, in 1988 – only 3 years later – the truth came out!
SIV was not from Africa! SIV was not a new virus! Rather, what was
thought to be SIV was actually another virus, which had contaminated the
blood samples of the African Green monkeys.
This
contaminating virus originally came from Rhesus macaque monkeys. As a
species, Rhesus macaques originated in Asia, but these particular Rhesus
macaques were residents of the United States, and lived at the New
England Regional Primate Research Center (NEPRC) in Southborough,
Massachusetts, where various species of primates were housed and bred
for the purpose of medical experimentation.
Several months
prior to the discovery of “SIV,” a researcher at NEPRC, Phyllis Kanki,
had isolated the virus from 4 sick Rhesus macaques monkeys. She then
gave Max Essex a sample. Three years later, another group of
investigators compared the genetic structures of SIV (“discovered” by
Essex) and the virus from Rhesus macaques. Genetically, the two viruses
were 99% identical; meaning they were the same virus. The viruses
Kanki had given Essex had contaminated the blood samples of the
wild-caught AGMs in the team Essex laboratory (the blood samples but not
the monkeys had been brought over from Africa).
In 1988, Nature, the leading interdisciplinary scientific journal, published a letter by Essex admitting this contamination and its source. Nature also
published the genetic analysis that exposed the contamination.
However, both the admission and the genetic analysis seemed to pass
unnoticed by the medical and scientific community at large - even
though Nature followed up several months later with a short editorial entitled “Human AIDS Virus Not From Monkeys”.
Nonetheless, 6 months after Nature published Essex’s letter of admission, Scientific American
– a magazine of far greater distribution – published an article
co-written by Essex and Kanki entitled “The Origins Of The AIDS Virus”
which featured a full-page, color photo of the African green monkey . . . .
Read the entire of the article on New Africa Analysis
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