Talk:HIV/AIDS denialism/Archive 6

message: [Discussion through September 2006 archived here.]
::It's not that the "HIV tests" are inaccurate, but that their accuracy is impossible to verify because there is no gold standard for HIV.  The "accuracy" of "HIV tests" is determined by repeating the test over and over again to see if the same result is achieved.  Naturally, this says nothing about whether or not the first in the series of tests was accurate at all.  The one and only way to verify the accuracy of an "HIV test" (specifically, it's the antibody tests that we're talking about here, since there is no test that can detect HIV) would be to compare the results against HIV itself. --Loundry 19:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In any scientific test, repeatability is a surrogate measure of precision, and reproducability is a surrogate measure for accuracy. There's nothing different about HIV testing, including HIV antibody testing, than any other test in this respect. The validity of the test - which is far more important than any of the other measures you've focussed on - is demonstrated by the fact that a positive test correlates with the development of disease, and a negative test correlates with the absence of the disease. And, of course, antibody tests can be validated by comparing them with measures of HIV RNA. - Nunh-huh 19:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "In any scientific test, repeatability is a surrogate measure of precision, and reproducability is a surrogate measure for accuracy." Nunh-huh, I think that's about the stupidest thing you've ever said. And for you, that means a lot. I'm glad your stupidity is being saved for future historians to ponder. 69.252.201.61 02:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's already known that AIDS researchers use a "surrogate measure" because there is no gold standard (HIV itself) against which to verify the accuracy of "HIV tests".  Repeatability only shows that the test will give the same result with the same data -- not that the result in question is valid.  Furthermore, where did this "HIV RNA" come from?  Certainly not HIV itself, for if that were the case, then AIDS researchers wouldn't have to rely on "surrogate measures" to determine the accuracy of "HIV tests".  They would validate the results against HIV itself. --Loundry 20:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: All researchers use surrogate measures. And yes, I made the distinction between validity and repeatability, though you mischaracterize what I said about validity. And of course the HIV RNA came from HIV. - Nunh-huh 20:50, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I didn't address what you wrote about validity (your "correlation implies causation" argument), so we likely have a semantic problem concerning what "valid" means in this instance.  I am using it to mean both sensitive (no false negatives) and specific (no false positives), whereas to you it means "the individual will develop a disease".  If a test gives "(false) positive", and then repeats "(false) positive" five more times, then, yes, it is repeatable, but also invalid since it gave a false positive.  The only way to know for sure that it is a valid test would be to compare its results with the gold standard (HIV itself), something that AIDS researchers obviously don't have since they are forced to substitute "surrogate measures" with the gold standard (HIV itself).  How do you know that the alleged "HIV RNA" came from HIV?  What I'm demanding here is: what did the scientist do, specifically, to harvest the alleged "HIV RNA"?  It looks suspicious since if there were an HIV from which RNA could be extracted, then the "surrogate measures" wouldn't have to be relied on to "validate" the "HIV tests". --Loundry 22:02, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The term "validity" has a specific meaning in statistics, which I linked to in case you'd care to learn it. You consistently misconstrue passages you've just read, either through inattention or malice: for example, your claim that I argued that correlation implies causation is false.  I suspect you already know that HIV can be grown quite well in culture, and that its RNA can readily be purified, amplified and characterized. - Nunh-huh 23:27, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I did not notice you had linked validity, forgive me.  I will hereby abandon the use of "valid" and, in its stead, use "sensitivity" and "specificity" so that there is no confusion.  I have in no way misconstrued your argument ("correlation implies causation") because any "evidence" that HIV causes AIDS is solely based in correlation (and then asserted with appeals to authority and consensus).  You admit as much when you write "a positive test correlates with the development of disease, and a negative test correlates with the absence of the disease".  If you aren't implying that correlation implies causation, then what is the purpose of mentioning the correlation?  You know as well as I that neither you nor any HIV researcher can tell me *how* HIV causes AIDS.  Please show me that HIV has been grown in culture.  I'd like to know who, when, and how.  The record will show who has malice for whom.  If you are unsure about my biases, then please visit my user page so that there is no confusion. --Loundry 14:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: If someone tells you that you've misconstrued their argument, you should regard it as a very big clue that you have. The correlation of a test with that which it is testing for is the very definition of validity. And your inability to understand how HIV causes AIDS is not our concern here, nor are your biases, unless you try to introduce them into the article space. - Nunh-huh 01:24, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: 1) I repeat my request that you show me the who, when, and where of the alleged culture of HIV.  2) It's not that I am incapable of understanding how HIV causes AIDS, but so are 100% of the top HIV researchers.  All they have is competing and mutually-exclusive theories about how it "may" happen.  Do you disagree?  Then, please, by all means, educate me.  The burden of proof lies on he who alleges, and I believe it is you who alleges that AIDS is caused by HIV.  How, exactly? --Loundry 01:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  HIV infected cells are used routinely in laboratory studies throughout the world, in many cell lines, including vero, A3.01, and U1 cells. It's how the effects of various manipulations on rate of viral replication are studied. And I'm afraid that if you are uneducated, it's not for lack of available material to read, so providing more for you would simply be pointless. Characterizing the relationship of HIV to AIDS as an allegation is a gross distortion. It's established fact, despite the existence of people who won't acknowledge it. - Nunh-huh 02:37, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let the record show that: 1) You are incapable of showing any study that indicates that HIV has been cultured.  2) You, along with all AIDS researchers, and incapable of understanding and thus explaining how HIV causes AIDS.  HIV has never been isolated, much less "cultured", and if this is incorrect then produce the study which refutes it.  It is the evidence, not your empty claims, that is convincing. --Loundry 14:39, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The "record" can speak for itself. Anyone actually interested in studies of HIV in tissue culture will find hundreds of them in a simple Medline search. - Nunh-huh 17:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: And yet, you can't do this "simple Medline search" yourself and pony up the evidence.  That's because there is no evidence to support your claim.  I ask you to prove me wrong with a "simple Medline search".  But you can't, so you won't.  Instead, there's going to be more invective and more sanctimony. --Loundry 18:43, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, I won't do your homework for you. If there's any more invective and sanctimony, it won't be from me. - Nunh-huh 19:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You know, I don't think anything will ever be good enough for you Loundry, and you're looking for the other side to loose breathe trying. Try to keep it on topic - the AIDS reappraisal article - and I mean in the 'i'd like to change this passage to this wording with these cites'. Otherwise we can argue about this stuff all week... JoeSmack Talk 19:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

text: Although it's hard/impossible to total up the number of people who support AIDS reappraisal at any given time, the sources under "former dissidents" suggest that the opposite is true; in fact, several very prominent scientifically astute dissidents have become convinced by the accumulation of evidence that HIV is pathogenic. The fact that these researchers' names continue to appear on online lists of "dissidents", in spite of the fact that they have long since abandoned such views, points up the dangers of relying on dissident websites for an accurate list of dissidents, or estimates of their numbers. MastCell 18:28, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The "former dissidents" are pretty much cherry-picked...prob. no more than 1% have "recanted". But go on living out of touch with reality. You remind me of the people of the ship that's half-sunk still dancing on the Titanic. Only Anthony Fauci going on TV and admitting HIV is a scam would convince you, huh? Prob. even that wouldn't be enough. 69.252.201.61 02:35, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Cherry-picked?" AIDS dissidents constantly claim that their views are supported by "two Nobel Laureates". Turns out one of them long since became convinced that HIV causes AIDS (no, not the one who talks to glowing raccoons... the other one). That seems relevant. However, until it meets WP:RS, it can't go in the article. MastCell 00:35, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  peer review 

message: [Discussion through October 2006 archived here.]
I'm a different guy.  Greetings, Yoguido!  Saludos, Randroide!  The one thing we must remember is to keep demanding that the mainstram show and discuss the evidence.  "Burden of proof" falls on he who alleges, not upon he who questions.  Don't fall into the trap of allowing the mainstream apologists to divert you away from the evidence, as they love to do, and understandibly so: it is where they are weakest, so the evidence is the last thing they want to discuss.  --Loundry 18:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Riighhht... the mainstream hates to discuss the evidence so much that the NIH has only produced two fact sheets on it, Science has run a series on it, it's the subject of 500+ PubMed papers, a seminar at the XVI International AIDS Conference, etc etc. Please look at the citations from this article, and the "Mainstream" external links, if you really believe you're being "diverted away" from the evidence. The burden of proof tends to shift to the "denialists" once a scientific consensus is established - for example, right now the burden's on the Flat Earth Society, just as it is on anti-evolutionists and global warming skeptics - and AIDS dissidents. MastCell 20:11, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Burden of proof 

message: I think that reference number 36 should point to an actual article that shows proof for the sexual transfer of HIV, as opposed to a page that just states it as a matter of fact. SadanYagci 20:02, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The link is to a fact sheet from the Centers for Disease Control, and is a secondary scientific source summarizing a large amount of published, peer-reviewed literature. It's a reliable source, and the reliable source policy favors secondary sources as the preferred type. MastCell 21:07, 27 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That may be true. However, the wiki page says that it has been proven. The page it links to says it has been proven. However, where was it proven, who proved it, how it was proven, etc... is not anywhere to be seen. It would just be a way to spruce it up a bit. This is an article about a view that is against the HIV hypothisis. Going the extra mile and showing a better reference would be a good idea, I think. SadanYagci 21:39, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

text: My point is that the article referenced just makes that statement (which is the one being questioned), and does not provide its own reference for that statement. You can't prove anything from that. Besides, it is what the medical industry says without proof that is being questioned. Redirecting to more non-proof helps nothing. A study or two that proved this would make a much better resource for anyone who actualy looks at the references section to find out how the conclusions were reached. SadanYagci 19:43, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I've gone back to the section in question and added a number of references to the primary literature (via PubMed) on the isolation of HIV from semen/vaginal secretions and the epidemiological evidence for sexual transmission of HIV, to give a small sample of the evidence that the CDC, NIH, WHO, and every other international medical organization has drawn on to form their conclusions. As to the straw-man argument that you can't cite "one paper" proving that HIV causes AIDS, or that HIV is sexually transmitted, please see the introduction of Stephen Harris' article on "The AIDS Heresies", which rebuts that argument more eloquently that I could do here. MastCell 22:39, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you :-) SadanYagci 05:36, 30 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to see the electron micrographs of the 1.16 gm/ml density gradient showing and proving the isolation of retroviral particles from those secretions, have they been published? They should look similar to this. Uaxuctum 17:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Here are three papers related to that topic that are available for free online: Detenhofer and Yu (1999), Trubey et al (2003) and Welker et al (2000). Trezatium 09:19, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

text: In particular, take a look at Fig. 8 in the Trubey paper. Trezatium 17:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for taking the time to provide those references, but unfortunately they are not really what I was asking for. I was asking for isolated HIV from sexual secretions (semen, vaginal fluids)—which one would think should not be difficult to obtain given the high degree of "viral load" and infectivity attributed to those fluids (they are said to be teeming with tens or hundreds of thousands of viral copies per milliliter). The pictures published there show particles of notably varying size and shape (which could be mock-virus particles, but let's assume they are in fact infective retrovirions) that were isolated indirectly (not directly from centrifugation through sucrose density gradients as in the classical method of retrovirus isolation, which as the "A" pictures show produced much more contaminant than virus, so further processing was necessary to purify the result) and not from sexual secretions or blood or any other "highly infectious" bodily fluid freshly obtained from a seropositive individual, but from laboratory H9 and CEM cell lines, which originated in leukaemia tumors and are known to harbour and release retrovirus and retrovirus-like particles even when not infected with HIV. The H9 cell line in particular, comes from the HUT78 cell line of lymphoblasts obtained from a 50-year-old T-cell-lymphoma patient, cells infected with a retrovirus named HTLV-I according to Robert Gallo himself, a retrovirus that moreover is said to share important characteristics with HIV/HTLV-III including the molecular weight of their immunogenic proteins. All of which means such cell lines are inadequate to isolate HIV, and that is why they are explicitly excluded in the rules for reclaiming the £10,000 reward. Uaxuctum 19:12, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

text: It's not that I find "peer-reviewed literature unconvincing", it's simply that what Trezatium referenced is not what I was looking for, and the papers you have just referenced date back to the 1980s, so they do not show anything that was not known when in 1997 a group of researchers finally published the first electronmicrographs of what was being called "isolated HIV" (which turned out to show a heavily contaminated population of microvesicles instead of a purified population of retrovirions). Besides, you could take Montaigner's word that they did not purify HIV (even after "Roman efforts"), and remember that the "scientific community" also includes those scientists who do not find those conclusions "utterly convincing", so let's not make generalized statements. Also, the Perth Group counterargued Duesberg's argument, and those who first obtain an EM image of isolated HIV from a fresh bodily fluid have a succulent £10,000 reward awaiting them, so it is unlikely that those pictures have already been produced and published but the authors managed to refrain from reclaiming the money. It is also at least curious that, if HIV has been "adequately" isolated, there is still no gold standard to verify the results of the HIV tests. Anyway, this is not a forum to start arguing about these things, and Wikipedia's goal is not to try to convince anyone of anything but to present all the information in the most NPOV way and let the readers reach their own conclusions, so let's just agree that we don't agree and return to more productive work on Wikipedia. Uaxuctum 22:48, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: What I was getting at is that the "reward" is a publicity stunt, which will never be paid out since Continuum keeps moving the goalposts. But you're absolutely right about the fact that Wikipedia isn't a battleground, nor a place to argue out disputes... so I think your last suggestion makes a lot of sense. MastCell 23:14, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reference 

message: I've removed the external link to the dissident AIDS wiki. The external links policy states, under "Links to be avoided": "Links to open wikis, except those with a substantial history of stability and a substantial number of editors." Having perused 10-15 pages, there appear to be two very active contributors at AIDSwiki and a handful of additional minor contributors. Thus, it would appear to fall under the "Links to be avoided" criteria of the Wikipedia external links guideline. Comments? MastCell 19:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  AIDS wiki link 

message: Is this really worth mentioning in the history section? Anyone at all can put together some crazy accusations and mail them to the Hague; it's only worth paying attention if the court takes them seriously. Anthony Brink has no credibility and neither do his accusations. It's just a public relations exercise. Trezatium 21:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed... doesn't the ICC have more important work to be doing? Brink et al. will be lucky if they don't give Achmat and the TAC a medal for their work. Seriously, I'd be fine with removing it until/unless the Court actually responds, or unless the "indictment" is reported by a mainstream news source (i.e. notability - not to be too radical or anything). MastCell 21:48, 17 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It has already been reported by a number of mainstream news sources from South Africa, but they tend to follow the disputes between the TAC and their opponents like some sort of soap opera, so perhaps that's not a very good indication of notability. Trezatium 22:15, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

text: I've changed my mind - I think the item should stay for now, and I've changed the source to a mainstream news story as suggested. Most likely the ICC will have to give a public response at some point, and that will be worth mentioning. If the ICC doesn't respond then the inclusion of this item should be reconsidered. Trezatium 19:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me - thanks for digging up a more balanced, secondary source. I like the sober legal langauge of the indictment: "...eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race..." MastCell 20:09, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anthony Brink's genocide indictment 

message: There are quite a few items that have been tagged with cite-needed for ages. I'm planning to go through in the near future and make an effort to source them; failing that, I'll delete them. They can always be re-added if/when a source is provided. Does that sound reasonable? MastCell 17:19, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tagged statements 

message: I'm considering reorganizing this article and shortening it, from a point-counterpoint style to a briefer summary of dissident arguments. There are already lots of sites that argue back and forth, and they're linked. I'd like to make this article more readable. Any thoughts? MastCell 05:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Sounds good to me. I'd like to see the article focus mainly on history, people and context with only a brief summary of the arguments, which as you say are extensively described elsewhere. The book by Steven Epstein from which you extracted Duesberg's homophobic quote is a helpful source for this kind of thing. The most useful claim/counter-claim stuff could be transplanted to Duesberg hypothesis. Trezatium 20:52, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Chapter 2 of Eleanor Burkett's "The Gravest Show on Earth" (also cited) may be useful as well. I've previously listed some of the most significant responses to AIDS reappraisal from mainstream scientists, some of which might be worth quoting or referencing if you can access the full text. Trezatium 21:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes, sorry about that - you volunteer for one job and I suggest another! In fact the article already gives quite a good account of the history, people, impact etc. and those suggested resources are unlikely to yield a great deal more. For now it would be best to concentrate on shortening and reorganising what has already been written, as you suggested. Any additional research and writing (if necessary) can be put off until later. Trezatium 22:55, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

text: "pieces of shit... ...paranoid excrements of well formed anii (sic; did you mean "meconium"?)... ...use of freedom of speach (sic) that isn't actually... ...so stronlgy (sic) believe..."? BTW, who-r-u anyways? ô¿ô 00:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ha, ha, well said—it's useless to try to argue with people who are fanatically convinced they hold the unquestionable truth and whose only arguments are name calling, hate slurring and censorship advocacy. No wonder some journalist said the AIDS-establishment guys are the nastiest people he ever interviewed, and no wonder they behave like that, since letting all of the information about AIDS flow freely and a true scientific debate take place openly would prove a fatal blow to their untenable dogmas. BTW, a question to administrators: Isn't posting such kind of heavy-worded ad hominem hate speech ("pieces of shit", "paranoid excrements" and blah blah) considered vandalism in Wikipedia, or at least incivil behavior? Uaxuctum 13:01, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  rewrite