Not totally accurate – one of the AGW commentators here, Ender, accused me of doing Nu-Science here, though I hardly think he would have meant Schmidt’s interpretation of the term.

A really good website is Henry Bauer’s on the AID/ HIV issue – http://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/

It has some very topical posts.

I disagree with you on the Perth Group. This interview with Eleni Papadopulos is one of the best recitals I have read regarding the history of HIV/AIDS.

http://www.theperthgroup.com/INTERVIEWS/cjepe.html

The lady obviously knows her stuff whereas the judge in the case to which you refered was basing his assessment on people paid to discredit her. Even Duesberg, an expert on retroviruses, and who is supposedly on her side as a skeptic could not put up a realistic argument against her. He was willing to settle for partial science as proof of the existence of HIV.

I know she has a degree, not a Ph.D, but a degree in related science. I don’t give a hoot whether she has a degree ot not. If she can put forward a compelling argument based on science, that should be enough. Besides, Stefan Lanka has a degree in microbiology and is an expert on viruses. He backs her argument and takes it even further. Based on the qualifications I cited from the rest of the Perth Group, all of whom have degrees, I think it’s emminently unfair of you to ad hom them as ‘a motley collection’.

It’s that sort of disrespect that bothers me with both AGW and HIV/AIDS types. I would dearly love to say what I think of the crowd at realclimate, using my construction site vernacular, but I hold it down to ‘activist’ or ‘pseudo-scientist’. Even at that, I try not to single out someone like Gavin Schmidt for abuse. I don’t like the guy but I respect his abilities as a mathematician. I just don’t agree with a mathematician presenting himself as a representative of the ‘new science’, while relegating someone like Lindzen, who knows infinitely more about the atmosphere, to the level of ‘old science’.

The people at the Perth Group extended an invitation to you to examine their work and tell them what is wrong with it. So far, all you’ve done is ad hom them. You could use that argument about me, that I wont go to realclimate and argue with them based on fact. I wont do that because they disbar people if what they say does not agree with their POV. They wont even let Steve McIntyre have his say and he has never insulted them.

You claim that I stand in the face of accepted science. Who said it is accepted science, the media, the IPCC, realclimate? What about Lindzen and his work at MIT? What about Spencer and Christy and their traditional observations based on the scientific method? What about Michaels and his colleagues at the University of Virginia who study climate based on hindsight rather than on prediction? How about the several hundred, or maybe several thousand scientists who disagree with this so-called new science?

I have only heard the term ‘new science’ used twice. Once was by you, the other time by Gavin Schmidt.

There’s no argument there. My beef is with the advocates who resist any attempt by a skeptic to be heard. Duesberg’s record in retroviral research alone should be enough to get him taken seriously. Instead, his career has been ruined.

HIV may be ridiculously hard to decipher, or it may be as ridiculously simple as acknowledging the current paradigm about it has borne no fruit. Coupled with the difficulty in isolating HIV and even seeing it, perhaps we need to begin considering the notion that it ‘might’ not be there. Maybe it’s time we went back to considering the first notions about the cause of AIDS, that it’s a lifestyle issue. We’ve ignored that possibilty for 25 years.

I find it a bit tough to accept outright what Duesnberg claims, that AIDS is a product of drug abuse. Even Mullis doesn’t agree, thinking it may be due to a bacterial overload. One thing we know is that AIDS in North America and Europe involves 90% males, and according to Duesberg, those figures come from the US Centre for Disease Control. The WHO (World Health Organiztion) are claiming an epidemic in Africa, with an equal number of males and females involved. However, the WHO are using…guess what??…a computer model to predict that epidemc.

Duesberg went looking for the epidemic using the actual number of deaths in Africa. The death rate for AIDS related deaths in Africa, from a population of over 600 million, was less that one half of one percent, hardly an epidemic. A reporter from Rolling Stone Magazine, taking exception to Duesberg’s insistence that HIV could not cause AIDS, went home to his native South Africa to check the situation out. He came up with the original idea of checking the graveyards in South Africa. He found out they were laying gravediggers off due to a slow down in the death rate, and no one in the business had noticed an unusual increase in mortality.

Africa has always had problems with clean drinking water and malnutrition. A common illness in Africa has been Slim’s Disease, or wasting syndrome, generally attributed to both of those problems. Till recently, there was no talk of AIDS in Africa till this international hysteria began. Suddenly, Africans had sexually transmitted HIV infections and were dying in epidemic proportions from AIDS. Most of the HIV diagnoses, however, were done without the two tests required in North America for such a diagnosis. In other words, the diagnoses were made on appearance and intuition.

Before the focus turned to Africa, over 95% of AIDS deaths in North America involved two high risk communities: the male homosexual community and the IV drug user community. If you go to the page for the US Centre for Disease Control you will see that is still true today. They have fiddled the categories to include a group of people who hang out with IV drug users, thus breaking the clear 60% – 35% ratio of homosexual to IV drug AIDS deaths into a separate ratio including the groupies.

The question I am asking is this: if we know most AIDS deaths in North America involve male homosexuals and IV drug users, why are we messing around in the general population looking for a viral cause, that is supposedly sexually transmitted, when we already know certain high risk behavior in the homosexual and IV drug communities cause immune-related problems? The predicted spread to the heterosexual community has never materialized. Why are we creating a red-herring by changing the focus to Africa? Is it because the paradigm didn’t work in North America and Europe, and Africa is an easy target?

We already know amyl nitrate, a muscle relaxing inhalant popular with male homosexuals causes lung cancer, which is an AIDS opportunistic infection. We know Kaposi’s sarcoma is due to lifestyle and have considered removing it from the list of AIDS infections. We know some male homosexuals and all IV drug users abuse drugs to the the extent that immune function is impaired. We know IV drug users get themselves into states of malnutrition and some people in the high risk groups suffer from chronic sleep deprivation due to their on-going party lifestyle. We know there are sanitation issues in both lifestyles. I’m not implying all male homosexuals live that way, then again, only 16% of them get AIDS. IV drug users are a different story, getting themselves into such stupors they don’t know where they are most of the time. One female IV user admitted to going as long as a month without food.

In this politically correct world of today, it’s a no-no to criticize the homosexual lifestyle. When John Lauritsen, a homosexual, tried to spread the news in a homosexual community that amyl nitrate was dangerous, he was told to mind his own business. High risk lifestyles become so ingrained that some people would rather die than give them up. Have you ever tried to talk someone into stopping smoking?

We need to take a closer look at this blind pursuit of an elusive virus and re-examine the problem.

Have you ever tried to address your posts to the person concerned? Your last one is best described as a soliloquy.

Obviously you do not frequent ClimateAudit otherwise you would know why I changed my avatar. It’s all there in black and white.

Gadfly.

I had some training in physics as well. It was enough to be able to detect delusional thinking, such as Miskolczi, and to realise that the high percentage of people who will so willingly accept delusional thinking on the ’sceptics’ side are wrong, and are not sceptics at all but deniers.

“I criticize people outside my field but I’m careful to cite sources who are in the field, or who have a valid argument. You criticism is based on a purely gut reaction. You provide no evidence to prove I am a nutter. It just seems to bother you deeply that I am critical and skeptical of certain facets of the status quo. Do I detect a neurotic tendency here? Have you had your 10,000 mile libido check?”

My evidence that you are wrong is that you stand in the face of accepted science when the evidence is so compelling, and the authorities you cite are not authorities at all. The “Perth Group” is just a motley collection of people who have nothing like the experience of the teams around the world who are doing the actual research. (The “Perth Group” doesn’t actually undertake any of the work that real medical researchers undertake).

I can spend a few weeks chasing up google if you really want, to list all the research groups, etc, but it would be a waste of time, since you and I already know it will list major research gruops from public and private labs, publishing numerous papers. Against them will be a ‘list of signatories’, that will be eerily similar to Inhofe’s list, or the list of scientists who believe in creationism, etc. Why are there scientists who believe wacky things? I don’t know. That Linus Pauling example you gave was a good one. A man of undbouted talent and genius, who just happened to go a little barmy in his later years. Apparently due to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome after he suffered a sever illness. These things happen. That’s why science doens’t depend on the word of an individual, why there his a scientific process, that, while flawed, does offer a level of objectivism we can’t achieve with individuals.

“Lois the fly, Louis the fly, straight from rubbish tip to you!” hmmm is that the junk science tip?

I think maybe Luke should adopt a can of Mortein as his Avatar!

lol.

At the same time, you support a paradigm that has had absolutley no success in 25 years. They haven’t even come close to a cure for AIDS. One could say the same about cancer but some inroads are being made there. They tried blaming cancer on a virus, and the same guy, Gallo, who came up with the HIV/AIDS theory and the viral cause for cancer, had to quickly retract the latter theory, with his tail between his legs. Why they have allowed him 25 years of no results, with essentially the same theory, would be a better description of anti-science.

Your response to the HIV/AIDS boondoggle typifies your position on global warming, and that’s the whole point. You guys just don’t have the facts to support your theory, so you resort to ad homs, quick answers and any means at hand to divert attention away from your lack of understanding. Over at realclimate, they talk down to the bloggers as if they are schoolchildren, which seems quite apt.

Some problems in science are hard. HIV just happens to be hard. You can’t blame the scientists for that, I have already linked to the reasons why it is hard. You can read them, or ignore them. That’s up to you.

My response to HIV/AIDS is exactly the same as my response to AGW? Thank you. I’d like to think my position on matters scientific is consistent.

one reason the rabble are reticent in their rhetoricisms might be because their Luke (Ken) Walker (Day) has be caught “publicus”.

As Jimmy Durante might have said, ” Nutts to ‘em”.

Thank you! :-)