p Why are we not getting all the facts about HIV and AIDS? Why do media reports uncritically promote HIV testing and the notion that everyone is at risk for AIDS? Why do the AIDS organizations supported by our tax dollars and donations leave the information addressed in this book out of their education programs and advertising campaigns? Some answers to these questions may be found by examining our current AIDS funding and research systems which offer little incentive for critical review, forthright discussion and innovation, but which are the source of most AIDS news.

p Total tax dollars spent on AIDS presently exceeds $50 billion. Annual AIDS funding increases every year and is one of the only areas of the federal budget that has faced no threat of cuts. The high priority given to AIDS is based on the notion that AIDS poses a widespread and ever-growing health threat to all Americans. Since the government institutions responsible for generating official AIDS reports are the recipients of these multi-billions in AIDS dollars, it is understandable that the information they disseminate would support, rather than challenge the idea that AIDS is a large and growing problem. Their official reports are the basis for most AIDS news—reports that are not analyzed or investigated before they are repeated by the media and AIDS groups.

p Investigative media reports on AIDS are generally discouraged because of sensitivity to the many social and political issues that surround HIV and AIDS. AIDS awareness, AIDS drugs, safe sex, and HIV testing are among the myriad concepts about AIDS that have been integrated into popular culture. Widespread acceptance of these concepts makes challenges to current views on HIV and AIDS appear highly controversial or even too dangerous to report. As orthodox AIDS expert and Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore has declared, “There is no question HIV is the cause of AIDS. Anyone who gets up publicly and says the opposite is encouraging people to risk their lives.”^^155^^

p The Los Angeles Times recently acknowledged the factors that can influence AIDS news in “Protest Averted,” an article that recounts the decision by a local TV station to alter a broadcast that mentioned decreases in AIDS: “After being pressured by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, KCBS-TV Channel 2 has revised a station editorial on AIDS, deleting the line that stated ‘A new report by the CDC indicates that AIDS is down in all categories and is not an epidemic.’~"^^156^^

p Many AIDS activist organizations charge that critical examination of HIV and AIDS is equivalent to promoting unsafe sex and may cause HIV positives to stop or refuse necessary pharmaceutical treatment. One such group, the San Francisco based drug advocacy organization Project Inform, brought their concerns regarding AIDS critics before the National Academy of Sciences. Project Informs founder, Martin Delaney, is a nationally recognized AIDS activist and a member of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Council on AIDS. The groups National Board of Governors includes

p HIV codiscoverer Dr. Robert Gallo and award-winning AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho. In 1997, Delaney petitioned the Academy asking them to expel members who engage in public challenges to the HIV=AIDS paradigm.^^157^^

p In his letter to the Academy, Delaney denounces scientists who make information that questions AIDS available to “young and poorly informed people struggling with HIV infection [whose] natural inclination toward denial gives them a seemingly legitimate way to ignore a positive HIV antibody test, to cast aside...safe sex, and to forgo the complex challenge of multi-drug combination therapy.” He suggests that AIDS is an area of public health that should not be examined in public forums, reasoning that “just as the blanket of free speech doesn’t sanction the person who yells ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, neither does academic freedom provide protection for irresponsible behavior by scientists,” and draws a parallel to criminal behavior claiming that “it is difficult to distinguish [the] actions [of scientists who raise questions about AIDS] from those of a mass murderer.”

p Attached to Project Informs appeal is a list of supporting endorsements. Among the individuals and organizations joining the campaign to curtail critical discussion of AIDS science are AIDS Project Los Angeles; the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of San Francisco AIDS Research Institute; FAIR (Foundation for AIDS and Immune Research); the Florida AIDS Action Council; the United Foundation for AIDS; the Multicultural AIDS Coalition Inc.; Being Alive; Test Positive Aware Network; Gregory Britt, CEO of AIDS Research Alliance; noted AIDS researcher Dr. Michael Gottlieb; Brenda Freiberg, Chair of Public Policy at AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, California; Mary Lucey, President of Women Alive; and Dr. Martin Markowitz of the renowned Aaron Diamond Research Center in New York.

p Project Informs stance against information that questions AIDS is not unusual. For example, LA Shanti Foundation, a Los Angeles support network for people diagnosed with life-threatening illness, recently took a position on what many regard as life-affirming information about AIDS: My request to be considered as a speaker for their Positive Living For Us seminar, “a weekend for those who have tested positive for HIV..in which experts provide information about treatments, nutrition, sexuality, peer support, public benefits, insurance, legal matters, and other relevant topics,” was not only rejected, my letter of inquiry was forwarded to the PDAs California AIDS Fraud Task Force, and to the District Attorney’s AIDS Fraud Unit by the PLUS program manager, Ric Parish.^^158^^ When asked by The Valley Advocate newspaper for comments on the growing movement to rethink AIDS, Nancy MacNeill, program coordinator for the Los Angeles AIDS group Women Alive exclaimed, “We hate them. They’re spreading dangerous information.”^^159^^ Greg Gonsalves, founder of the New York City AIDS drug advocacy organization Treatment Action Group declared that “SPIN magazine’s AIDS column is a public health menace" for its inclusion of alternative perspectives on AIDS. ^^16^^° Imposing limits on what AIDS information may be brought before the public limits public awareness of different ideas about HIV and AIDS.

p AIDS organizations that object to public questioning of AIDS science may take their lead from mainstream media venues where news that challenges 43 common perceptions about AIDS is rare. Journalists who cover AIDS seldom engage in investigative reporting and many have built successful careers by reiterating official AIDS views. Uncritical AIDS reports are the ones that have earned awards and have afforded many writers celebrity status. Laurie Garrett of Newsday, for example, has received two Pulitzer Prizes for her coverage of AIDS and frequently appears on television alongside prominent AIDS researchers and government health officials. In a recent issue of Esquire magazine, Garrett described the PCR test—a test not indicated or approved for the detection of HIV and unable to measure actual virus—as measuring HIV with “exquisite specificity.”^^161^^ Rather than rock the boat propelled by establishment AIDS views, high-level AIDS reporters generally dismiss or ignore challenges to the HIV=AIDS hypothesis.

p Since the publications designed to reach HIV positives are funded almost entirely by AIDS drug manufacturers, it is not surprising that critical reporting on AIDS is absent from these venues. To cite just one example, AIDS pharmaceutical promotions filled 17 out of 31 pages allocated for advertisements in a current issue of Adyl/: America’s AIDS Magazine. Of the remaining 14 pages, nine were purchased by viatical settlement groups offering cash in exchange for the life insurance policies of HIV positives.^^162^^

p The research labs that produce the studies and reports that are turned into AIDS news all rely on some form of federal AIDS funding. Since the late 1980s, government support for AIDS research has been predicated on adherence to the HIV hypothesis. Institutions that depend on government dollars for support must assume that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and grants are not available to scientists or clinicians whose work may challenge the HIV hypothesis. For example, no funding has been provided for studies that compare the health of medicated and unmedicated HIV positives in matched control groups, for conducting viral load tests and T cell counts on HIV negatives matched to AIDS risk groups, or for verifying the accuracy of HIV antibody tests through isolation of actual virus in people with positive test results.

p One well-known casualty of the AIDS funding system is Dr. Peter Duesberg of the University of California at Berkeley. Federal support for his laboratory was not renewed after his 1987 article in Cancer Research that questioned Gallo’s HIV hypothesis and proposed an alternative AIDS hypothesis.^^163^^ Before 1987, Duesberg received ongoing funding as a recipient of the NIH’s prestigious Outstanding Investigator Award. He was also a Nobel candidate for his discovery of oncogenes, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Since raising challenges to the HIV hypothesis, Duesberg has had 21 consecutive research grant applications rejected by the NIH and other federal and state funding sources.^^164^^

p Pharmaceutical company grants are another important source of AIDS research money that make objective circumstances for drug studies almost impossible to achieve. Surprisingly, it is not considered a conflict of interest when AIDS researchers own stock in the companies whose products they test, or when they are hired to run the drug trials they publish in medical journals. In fact, it is common practice for drug companies to pay researchers to author favorable articles about their products.^^165^^

p Many AIDS scientists previously employed by the US government have gone into private AIDS enterprise, a practice that further blurs the lines between news, public relations, and private interests. For example, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Donald Francis, used his reputation in government AIDS work and his access to the media to raise $40 million in private investment capital for his AIDS vaccine company VaxGen.^^166^^ In a recent CNN report on VaxGen, Francis promoted an AIDS vaccine as “the only way to stop a virus that is essentially 100 percent fatal.”^^167^^ In fact, most media stories that incite fear of AIDS and praise AIDS drugs derive from press releases or studies generated by AIDS drug developers. Since the pharmaceutical industry, like any other profit-oriented business, seeks to increase sales and profitability, expand its consumer base, and maintain a favorable public image, it is understandable that their press releases would promote continued success rather than provide critical or unfavorable information. However, their press releases are rarely questioned or scrutinized before being reported as news.

p While Americas institutions of higher learning are considered appropriate arenas for exploration of new ideas, open debate and discussion, this is often not the case when it comes to AIDS. To take just one recent example, members of the Graduate Students Council at Einstein College of Medicine in New York were discouraged from having their invited guest, Dr. Peter Duesberg, speak on campus. After being voted the student-selected speaker over orthodox AIDS researcher Dr. David Baltimore, and NIH Director Dr. Harold Varmus, Duesberg was informed that faculty members had pressured students into canceling the event. As student council chairman Robert Glover explained, “The general consensus is that many people would be offended by Duesbergs visit.”^^168^^

p As AIDS advocacy and service providers have grown from grassroots groups into multimillion dollar corporations, it has become harder for leaders to consider new ideas and approaches to resolving AIDS. For example, the success formula for the $45 million nonprofit AIDS Health Care Foundation of Los Angeles is providing AIDS drugs to people who test HIV positive.^^169^^ Also, much of the money spent by AIDS groups comes from grants by pharmaceutical companies. To take just one example, the Washington, DC based National Association of People with AIDS receives funding from Merck, Glaxo-Wellcome, Roche, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.^^170^^ Such situations provide little incentive for challenging popular ideas about HIV and AIDS.

p There are an estimated 90,000 AIDS organizations in the US, about one for every six Americans ever given a diagnosis of AIDS.^^171^^ Few, if any, of these groups evaluate the news they pass on to us in their education and awareness campaigns. Most repeat unexamined press releases from government agencies, the pharmaceutical industry and government-funded labs to the exclusion of all other information. And most will not participate in public discussion of the questions raised in this book.

Over 100 AIDS groups, AIDS specialists and researchers have declined my invitation to engage in a public dialogue on the validity of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, the accuracy of HIV tests, and the safety and efficacy of AIDS treatment drugs. Their names are posted on the Alive & Well Alternatives website at www.aliveandwell.org.