Mmh... it is easy to call oneself a skeptic, and therefore pretend being a figure of facts versus fraud and bigotry.Mike DiCenso wrote:I'am a little bit skeptical of this article, namely because the HIV?AIDS Denial kookslove to hook onto and twist every little thing they can to prove that HIV and other patheogens don't cause disease.
What is more interesting is finding the facts. What does the page says?
These letters are to be found.Thirty-seven legal, medical and research professionals have sent a letter to the journal Science...
Along with a copy of the handwritten changes, the letter from the 37 experts includes a letter from Gallo himself, admitting to another researcher that HIV could not be isolated from human samples alone; and a letter from an electron microscopy expert saying that there was no HIV virus contained in Gallo's 1984 samples.
More importantly, it matters to know if the real problem is one of fraud, error, or if it was just to know who to give credits to between Montagnier or Gallo.
It is equally possible that in this world or bias and opinions, HAD groups would rewrite, misquote and reinterpretate certain observations and reports, possibly out of context, to defend their cause.
Wikipedia devotes a chapter to the "controversy".
However, it makes no mention (yet?) of the letters, although it points out how he did not obtain the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine on his works on AIDS.
What's happening?
Well, what happens, at least, and again, according to RA, is that the Nobel Prize contains an error about the health status of the treated male homosexuals.
A rather interesting read, which would tend to highlight a considerable bias (or even a possible agenda as I see it) to make sure that the gays are seen as sick and even physically become and remain sick.
Anyway, returning to the letters in question, it wasn't particularly hard to get the facts.
From here, I obtained the link to the letter:
>>> Letter to Science/AAAS, December 1, 2008 <<<
Add to that list of docs the fact that RA is a non profit international organization which counts "more than 2,300 scientists, medical doctors, journalists, health advocates and business professionals."It is astonishing now to discover these unreported changes to such a seminal document. We can only assume that Gallo’s alterations of Popovic’s conclusions were not highlighted by earlier inquiries because the focus at the time was on establishing that the sample used by Gallo's lab came from Montagnier and was not independently collected by Gallo. In fact, the only attention paid to the deletions made by Gallo pertains to his effort to hide the identity of the sample. The questions of whether Gallo and Popovic’s research proved that LAV or any other virus was the cause of AIDS were clearly not considered.
Just a bit more than an obscure group of protesters, don't you think?
First, I'm wondering if ratbag (absolute neutral and civilized!) doesn't attempt, along with skepdic, to mix everything deemed "dissident" into one undiscriminating group, without caring about the shades of gray.Among other silliness, they love to claim that Louis Pasteur recanted his Germ Theory on his deathbed nonsense.
-Mike
The matter is that it is irrelevant how certain ideas could be shocking (or silly-- neither of us are qualified to deem anything silly in fact), as long as science proves these ideas to be correct.
Yes, even their page, more detailed about the reasons why they have doubts about Pasteur's work (including observation made by Koch himself), makes the following references;
Pleomorphism is most important here. I went to Wikipedia. It's just funny how certain ideas are barely given any coverage. Wikipedia sums the idea to the following reality:· Acidic terrain, not germs, cause disease
· Germs are already in the body by the billions and don't necessarily have to come from without (although that can sometimes happen)
· Blood is not sterile but can contain many microbial forms
· Germs are pleomorphic, i.e., they can change through many forms (Dr Gaston Naessens identified a microbe undergoing 16 different stages of evolution)
· Virtually all diseases are caused by acidic terrain
· Diseases can be prevented or reversed by increasing the alkalinity of the terrain
"The modern-day definition of pleomorphism in the context of bacteria is now a variation of size or shape of the cell or cell nuclei, rather than a change of shape as previously."
Looking at the list above, I wanted to know more about Gaston Naessens' test and the supposedly "16 different stages of evolution", but a shame that Wikipedia doesn't even have page dedicated to the man.
Instead, it has a page dedicated to Naessens' invention, the 714-X.
Funnily, when it comes to bias, one only needs to look at the Discussion tab, once again:
Wikipedia list Béchamp and Naessens, along other scientists, as people who finally bowed in favour of Pasteur's theory.The inventor of 714-X, Gaston Naessens, NEVER claimed that 714-X was a "cure" for any disease or medical condition. The word "cure" has been attached by orthodox biologists, doctors, and scientists. If a person reads about the trial of Gaston Naessens and his research, this is made clear. The formula, 714-X is taken from his name: "G" is the 7th letter of the alphabet, "N" is the 14th letter of the alphabet, and "X" is the 24th letter of the alphabet and also the year of Naessen's birth (1924). Since Gaston never applied for a patent on his invention (which is based on advanced biology called "Orthobiology"), this was an ingenious way of attaching his name to his invention.
714-X is indeed NOT a cure. What it will do is offer an alternative way to stabilize or boost a human's immune system when it is sick. This may, in time, allow the immune system to become healthy enough to help fight off various infections and/or abnormal conditions.
If we continue to ban anything that is unorthodox or nontraditional, we might as well go back to the days when patients had no say about the medical treatments they would or would not accept and undergo. I am thankful every day that I do have the right to choose traditional Western medicine and treatments OR wholistic medicine, naturopathy, orthobiology, accupuncture, or any other alternative medicine. The fact that health insurance companies now recognize the benefits of some forms of alternative medicine says a lot. It took WAY too long, in my opinion, for patients to be allowed a choice. 714-X, too, will hopefully be recognized soon for what it really is: an alternative means to stabilize the immune system.RaeGirl 16:30, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm the one to be skeptic about Naessens' final abdication, as claimed by the Wikipedia page. According to this page, Naessens was "prosecuted for fraud and driven out of France" and "prosecuted and threatened again with life imprisonment in Canada but was acquitted."
One can only wait to observe the verdict about Scott Reuben $65 billion heavy fraud.
Returning to pleomorphism, the article I linked to says the following:
Pleomorphism, by Wikipedia, is what could be described as a differentiation in shape and size, a variation.What led Professor Béchamp to formulate his pleomorphic theory was the discovery of great numbers of small grainy objects in live blood samples which he observed through his microscope. Many of his contemporaries dismissed these tiny life forms as laboratory contamination which were of no importance. But they intrigued Béchamp. He named them "microzymas" or "little bodies".
He found microzymas present in every cell in the bloodstream, in animals, in plants, and even in rocks. He found them present in the remains of dead animals many years after the animal's body had withered away to dust. He observed that in a healthy organism, microzymas work at repairing and nourishing all cells; but when the terrain becomes acidic, the microzymas morph into viruses, bacteria, yeast, fungus, and mold and prepare to break the host down.
Béchamp's work was ignored, ridiculed, suppressed, and soon forgotten. Down through the years, some scientists discovered pleomorphic phenomena for themselves - Enderlein, Rife, Reich, Livingston-Wheeler, Naessens, and more recently, in the U.S., Dr. Robert O. Young (San Diego) and Dr. David Jubb (New York). Most had no recourse to the works of earlier scientists and thought that their discoveries were unique to them. Like Béchamp before them, they too found their discoveries ignored or suppressed.
Not a change (or evolution) as one cell or nuclei would undergo shape change (shape shifting, if you like the word :) ). But the pleomorphism these guys argued about was a change in form, function and capabilities.
Is it right? Wrong?
Surely something worth to dig, before calling anything silly because there's a "consensus" going on.