In other words, depending on what the criteria… this is the western blot criteria again – they vary. But if you take the most stringent criteria, 51 per cent of patients are not infected with HIV, given the most stringent criteria; and given the least stringent criteria, 21 per cent are not infected with HIV. Now, I mean, here is… what causes…?
What is the cause? How can this be? How can AIDS be due to a pathogen which is not present or not infecting the person? I mean… and sure, this is a question… another reasonable question that people can reasonably expect an answer to. There is no answer. It doesn’t make sense. We could say, “Look, tests aren’t perfect and you don’t get all the things”… and people often… when we discuss this with our colleagues, they start arguing by analogy.
A typical answer is, “Look, we can’t find the syphilis organism, we can’t always find the virus in glandular fever, or some other disease we can’t find the virus or the bacteria but we still say it’s that and we do say it’s that and we treat it”. That is one very important difference which we’ve stressed between scientific debate and the pragmatism of clinical medicine. Clinical medicine is pragmatic. It has to be because it has to deal with real problems as they occur, but this is a scientific debate that matters because we’re going round telling people who are positive on AIDS tests they’re infected with a lethal virus which people… if we’re going to say this, a reasonable expectation from the population is that there’s a sound scientific basis for saying so. Like… you say, “When you take this pill you won’t get pregnant”, you can’t tell people this unless there’s good scientific reasoning to say it’s the case. You can’t argue by analogy, you can’t say because the polio virus is not present in all people with polio or we can’t find it, therefore it’s all right for HIV not to be present. They’ve got nothing whatsoever to do with each other at all.
Eleni: Especially the tests they are using for HIV are considered to be 98 per cent sensitive, the best, not only specific but 98 per cent sensitive.
Val: It’s unbelievable.
Eleni: Even 98 per cent sensitive, then we shall have only 2 per cent of people with AIDS as being non-infected, but to have enough between 20 to 50 per cent of them non-infected for me is a big problem, for us is a big problem.
Val: And yet when I mentioned this data to an expert in the field in Australia, I was told that this was old data. Now, I mean, that’s just not an answer.
Eleni: In 1988 all they say to you it is old data but today data is even less. Today we have even less data. Unfortunately now people are becoming more and more… how you say?
Val: Complaining?
Eleni: No, they don’t complain.
Stuart: Complacent?
Eleni: Complacent, that is the word. We’re not as thorough as we used to be earlier.
Val: In that regard I think the medical profession has probably been a little complacent over accepting the HIV/AIDS theory because…
Eleni: They have no other choice but to accept it.
Val: No, but it’s important for us to state this, that scientific theories are accepted because people accept the authority of those who are in power, if you like, and they have to because they haven’t got time to go and check up on all this stuff. It’s too hard, it takes too long, we know that, and so no one blames everyone for believing. The ordinary GP, physicians, patients, even the experts, don’t read the original isolation. We know; we’ve asked them. I mean, it’s not as if…
Eleni: But they can’t, they have not got the time. Immunologists sit down as we did… I mean, I devote my life to this. There would be very few people who devote their lives to find out why… about retroviruses. And why they should not accept what I have accepted if I do not have this theory? I must admit that I am biased and if I did not have… life would have been much easier, I agree.
Val: What Eleni is saying is important. I mean, one of the AIDS commentators has addressed the question: how did we get into this mess, sort of question. That’s exactly how it’s been stated but it’s: how did we get into this mess? I’ve often reflected on this and, as Eleni just said, you have a lot of… there’s four specialties, there’s four big bodies of knowledge. There’s retrovirology which commenced in 1911. There’s an enormous amount of work done over the decades. Immunology which started to sort of blossom in the…
Eleni: In the eighties.
Val: In the sixties it started seriously.
Eleni: But really the immunology of AIDS is eighties.
Val: It’s almost AIDS related. And epidemiology which is a topic in itself, and clinical medicine. And the immunologists don’t all speak retrovirology and vice versa. I mean, everyone’s relying on the judgments of everybody else. It’s been an enormous task to look at this knowing in my case very little and seeing it all in all those different forms. And you do cut across all of it and when you get the big view, then it’s obvious that there’s something wrong here, very wrong. How they can say a serological test – when we already know that antibodies cross react – with a specificity of nearly 100 per cent; I doubt if even X-rays are that specific. I mean, they’re pretty unbiased type tests.
Eleni: 99.9 per cent. In fact the latest thing… I told you they say that the Burke data presented evidence that one in a million western blots is false positive.
Val: And they came to this conclusion by comparing their western blots with a whole series of antibody tests which were basically the same.
Eleni: And you repeat them again and again.
Val: Against themselves or, if you like, mirror images of themselves an arbitrary number of times without using a proper gold standard. I mean, the gold standard is the problem.
Eleni: Yes, but you can’t blame the immunologists then for accepting this because this is retrovirology or this is… you know, so he will say all right, they prove it. He has to accept it, he hasn’t got time to go and check them. He will say they’re proven that the tests which we’re doing here are 100 per cent specific. I mean, one in a million is more than…
Stuart: As three researchers, two of whom are here, working very much on your own in isolation, how important has it been for you to have one another?
Eleni: Very.
Val: Well, I think it’s been very important. I mean, this work has been done over a period of what, ten years now. Most of the intellectual effort and most of the actual elbow grease has been done by Eleni, although she probably would have found it difficult without some physical support and help from John and myself.
Eleni: Maybe I should talk on this.
Val: I’m just trying to think how Eleni has helped me, and that’s my part of the question. I know I’ve helped Eleni but I’m just wondering how Eleni and John have helped me. John has taught me patience and to be polite, very much so, and to be circumspect about what one says and not to take the frustrations of being not treated seriously out by having wars with my colleagues, and I hope I’ve succeeded in that way. My wife’s not very keen on AIDS. You’ve heard of golfing widows. Well, I suppose in a sense my wife’s an AIDS widow in a metaphorical sense, and it’s been a bit difficult, there’s been a bit of family neglect and I hope it ends soon.
Eleni: I don’t think knowledge of something is sufficient to be able to do the work. I mean, it is true that initially John and Val were only morally supportive in the first few years, but even without their moral support I could not have done anything. But, you know, for most of our papers recently… I published only one paper by myself. The others are always in cooperation with John and Val and other people in our department, but especially John and Val. Because we are completely different, because each of us looks from a completely different point at the problem, we all contribute to it.
We argue between us, we’ve been arguing to no end, you know, and each of us tries to put his or my point across, but we always come to a compromise and it’s not a compromise just for the sake of compromise. I mean, I never will accept something unless I am really convinced of John’s and Val’s point of view and I’m sure they will never compromise unless… I’m sure… I mean, we’ve been arguing. I know that we come to the compromise only when the other person puts the evidence down and the others accept it.
But I think it helps us a lot that we’re different. In fact, as far as I’m concerned, our best weapon… I don’t know if I can call it that way… if we are proven to be true, if our theory is proven to be true – not us, we are true – but if our theory is proven true, it will be the fact that we are outsiders, because I am sure if… I’m talking for myself. If I was an immunologist or a retrovirologist or… not so much epidemiology because epidemiology really supports our view, but if I was a retrovirologist, immunologist, I would not have behaved different than they are. The only reason that we are seeing differently because we are outsiders. The fact that we’re outsiders I think helps us a lot.
Val: Yes, I agree with that. In fact this is sometimes levelled as a criticism of us, that we are outsiders, that we don’t do laboratory work and we don’t treat AIDS patients and we don’t do either of those things. I see the occasional AIDS patient through the emergency department and that’s about it, but I fail to see why that should matter.
Eleni: Yes, I think we are more objective. I mean, as I said, if I was that, I would be exactly the same. I can’t see me being different, but the fact I am from outside I look at things differently.
Val: I think we’re fighting human nature here.
Eleni: No, it’s not human nature, it’s human knowledge.
Val: I disagree. I think it is a large dose of human nature.
Eleni: You don’t know if you are right or wrong. We don’t know if we are right or wrong, so everybody finds for his…
Val: We must say that we are the first to admit it; that if… we could be proven wrong tomorrow and if evidence was presented that we were proven wrong, we would accept it. We are not… that’s it.
Stuart: I think that’s the point on which we’ll have to leave it. Thank you very much, both of you.
[End of interview with Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos & Valendar Turner]
Weiterführend:
AIDS, HIV & IMPFUNGEN
AIDS: Wußten Sie das?
Dr. Lanka: HIV: Realität oder Artefakt?
Michael Leitner: Mythos HIV
Kremer: AIDS – medizinisches Versagen
Retroviren-Betrug
AIDS ist Absicht
HIV-Test ist sinnlos
Falsch positiv
HIV-Antikörper
Barbara Seebald
Fehlende Virusisolation
Fehlende Kontrollexperimente
Virus-Beweisfrage
Gibt es krankmachende Viren?
