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        B O O K     R E V I E W
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A Battle With Foes, Friends and Fraud

"THE AIDS WAR:  Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the
Medical-Industrial Complex," by John Lauritsen, 26 St. Mark's
Place, New York:  ASKLEPIOS, 1993.
468 pages with index, paperback, $20.00.

Reviewed by Ben Gardiner
    
     AIDS has much resembled war in that it has killed, often
in terrible suffering, young men.  It came upon us strangely,
back in 1981.  First there was mystery, and then a series of 
theories and remedies, followed by controversy.

     For several years now, a mere handful of people have been
vigorously challenging the "common knowledge" about AIDS -- its
cause, its principal treatment, and the discussions that have 
generally not been happening.  Chief writer among these few has
been John Lauritsen, author of "Poison by Prescription" and now
of "The AIDS War."

     Lauritsen, like the retrovirologist Peter Duesberg who first
enunciated a scientist's challenge to the hypothesis that AIDS is
caused by a retrovirus now known as HIV, has been subjected to
considerable intellectual attack often on a level as morally low
as the jeering of teenagers in a public street.  Evidently public
perception has been dulled, because there has been little or no
objection to the schoolyard tactics used defensively by powerful
government and medical authorities.

     In this new book, Lauritsen offers some fresh material and
has added footnotes to update many of his earlier published work
on AIDS.  For anyone whose heart is held in thrall by doctors and
our ever-lovin' government, it may be difficult reading.  But for
those who want to know details of the mess that has been made of
AIDS research, of the spurious and sometimes false bases of many
"official" positions on remedies for AIDS, this book provides the
raw material and indicates further sources that could be the basis
of lawsuits and even criminal proceedings against some of our most
revered "AIDS authorities."

     The author pulls no punches.  Beginning where most of us are,
he tackles psychobabble:

          "The 'AIDS epidemic' is, among other things, an epidemic
     of information overload.  AIDS technobabble is dumped on us
     every day by the media:  T-cell ratios, CD-4 receptors, DNA,
     RNA, latency periods, TAT genes, ELISA test, Western Blot test,
     p-24 antigen test, polymerase chain reaction test, angiogenesis,
     nucleoside analogues, AZT, ddI, ddC, d4T, macrophages, 
     lentiviruses, reverse transcriptase, apoptosis, and all the rest
     of it.  Over 60,000 papers on 'AIDS' have been published to date
     -- untold millions of words.  Nearly all are the equivalent of
     toxic waste, which is to say, both useless and dangerous."
                                              (p. 179)

     Many people will object to such criticism because, as I have
myself seen in San Francisco, we tend to confuse the warm helping
hand with the now-almost-brain-dead medically-educated control that
sends you bills for repeating remedial activities that don't work.
We have paid through the nose for what can now be seen to have been
useless treatments.  We have even paid to be killed.

     These are charges not to be taken lightly.  When they are said
against someone to whom you go when in pain and in physical trouble,
and who gives you comfort and hope, it rubs the wrong way.  Most of
us, and I am no exception, take a narrow view of things when in pain.
The point, at that time, is to stop whatever causes the pain.  And
the doctors will do that.  They have all kinds of anaesthetics and
pain-killers at their disposal through your local pharmacy.  They
can even pick up a syringe and poke some pain-killer right into you
right then and there.  We license them, and they are trained, to do
that.

     What we do not license them to do, but what many of them have
become accustomed to doing, is acting without full consideration of
the ultimate consequences, and without full consideration of the
root condition they are attempting to treat.  This was understandable
and excusable in 1981, when nobody really knew what was causing young
men to wither and die.  But twelve years have gone by, and every kind
of remedy has been tried.  We should by now have some real information
what to do about AIDS.

     Lauritsen's book shows, step by step with reprints of articles
he wrote since 1983, how fraud has been piled on top of mistakes, how
official errors have been covered up with praise and repetition, and
how what little the Federal government has done about AIDS has often
been useless and even damaging.  The hard fact now is that we do not
yet know, with true scientific certainty, what causes AIDS, and we do
not yet have, beyond the band-aid effect, any remedy that works.

     You would never know about this uncertainty and doubt by reading
either the full-page ads in San Francisco weekly gay papers or by
reading articles that appear in the New York Times, Washington Post,
Wall Street Journal or any other significant newspaper.  They will 
all, without exception, refer to HIV as "the virus that causes AIDS."
There is no proof that HIV causes AIDS.

     Lauritsen, Duesberg, and even I have been faced with scorn and
derision for so much as raising the question.  Phrases like "It's
generally known" or "the weight of evidence shows" or yet "all
reputable scientists agree" are used, followed by abusive remarks
and ad hominem attacks and inuendos.  One of the subtle and most
scurrilous of them is to mis-spell Professor Duesberg's name, making
it synonymous with the name of an automobile manufacturer that begins
with "d" and ends with "berg," and to tick him off as a "weirdo."  I
have met Professor Duesberg.  He is calm, intellectually quick and
eloquent, always polite and coherent.

     Events at which Duesberg, and Lauritsen himself, have been
vilified without justification are chronicled in this book.  The lack
of true response to the challenges set against the hypothesis that
HIV causes AIDS is also chronicled.  The fraudulent basis, including
details with names and dates, for the FDA licensing of the orphan
drug AZT or Retrovir, is spelled out.

     Has this war been lost?  Has opposition to the widely-accepted
positions on HIV, AZT, and other things been squashed?  By no means.
On the contrary, an increasing number of people have begun to doubt
those dogmas.  Some say they doubted them all along, but were afraid
to speak out.  Professor Duesberg, after all, lost the funding for
his research in retrovirus -- the same field that he and Robert Gallo
entered over 20 years ago and have dominated.  The difference is that
Robert Gallo holds power in government, apparently holds power in the
process that determines whose research will be funded, despite the
recent fact that he has been under investigation for fraud, and has
been receiving $100,000 a year, according to newspaper accounts, as
royalties on the test for antibodies to HIV that is being used all
over the U.S.A.

     So far, the only murders have been of people with AIDS.  So far,
no one has gone to jail for fraud, murder or anything like that.  And
"AIDS celebrities" continue to pontificate about new theories, new
drug combinations and other promises of "good things" that always
seem to be farther down the road, never here and now -- or proven.

     One can only admire the persistence with which, in the face of
strong opposition, a scientist like Professor Duesberg and a writer
like John Lauritsen, have repeatedly asked the same primary questions
on subjects that are as elementary to AIDS as the gravity is to the
question of what's up and what's down.

     You can't cure something if you don't know the cause, and if
you are honest you'd say so.

     This book will undoubtedly be scorned, as is some of the text
on display here, as irrelevant.  The thinking behind this is "Don't
bother me with FACTS, I'm too busy arguing the TRUTH."  Believe me,
as an editor, I am really sick of such idiocy, and yet I expect it
is human nature to produce it.

     From "safe sex" to "clean needles" to AZT, there is simply no
reasonable truth in any of it.  We need to discuss these things,
and that's why there's stuff here on display that I personally do
not agree with at all.  Callers do discuss these things, and they
let loose "no holds barred" with their feelings, and I think that
is very healthy.

     The book, "The AIDS War," sets forth a complete history of
the significant controversies of the AIDS years, with the possible
exception of a furious word battle a few years ago about closing
or not closing the baths, which got Melvyn Silverman promoted to
bigtime work in AmFAR.  It does not take up the paradox of those
people who have gone on the lecture circuit saying they were cured
of AIDS and who later drop dead, but it does take up the question
of how to begin thinking health and life and stop making a career
out of dying.  People who want to see this in the book will, and
those who persist in suffering will do just that.

     Lastly, a personal note.  Six men have lived here in my place
with AIDS, one at a time.  Five of them did more or less what the
doctor said.  They are all dead.  The sixth looked around the clinic
one day, said to himself "These guys are all dying!" and walked out.
He did several kinds of unorthodox procedures and he stopped doing
drugs.  He's still alive, eight years later, and doing fine.  Though 
he may think it was the weird stuff (good thoughts, cool water,
a confidence-building weekend) that cured him, I tend to see it as
what he quit doing that made the difference.  Drugs don't bring
health.  They may save your life in an emergency, but they usually
bring to or take from your body in ways that are not healthy.

     Neither condoms nor drugs nor reverence for doctors will get
you well.  You are in control of your life.  If not, take control.
And if you need convincing, read this book.

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   From:    Ben Gardiner                        
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            ben@maggadu.Queernet.ORG            
                                                
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