I started this blog on April 14, 2005, pondering what it means to be a progressive environmentalist. For more than two years various people made a significant contribution to the blog including Neil Hewett and Paul Biggs. About a year ago I asked them to take a more prominent role in the running of the blog and they have been posting under their own names here.
Some readers are able to distinguish posts from Paul, Neil and others, while a percentage continue to ascribe everything that is written at this weblog to me. It can become annoying for all concerned with commentators, for example, directing questions concerning a post from Paul, to me.
We’ve also tried to make it clear that this blog is a gathering place for people with a common interest in politics and the environment and that we strive for tolerance and respect and that we don’t always agree with what we publish, but we believe in giving people an opportunity to be heard.
When it comes to blogging I try to be inquiring and inclusive. My posts are often an attempt to understand an issue, not preach a concluded view. If someone sends me something which looks interesting, even if it is heretical, I’m happy to post it and see what responses we get.
In short, while the blog bears my name, I have seen it as a community, not just a soap box for me.
However, it’s sometimes wrongly assumed that I subscribe to everything that is posted at this site and I’ve even been variously associated with creationism, disputing that HIV causes Aids and the tobacco lobby. Meanwhile I’m an evolutionist, not a creationist, or an intelligent designer. I believe that AIDS is caused by HIV. I’m a reformed smoker, not a tobacco lobbyist.
Unfortunately I can see from the last few weeks that in view of my other professional work, I can’t continue to run this blog like that. Anything that appears here, whether or not I write it or it appears under my name, has been credited to me, and that can be used to try to discredit all of my work by mischief makers.
My day job for the IPA involves examining the scientific claims of others and critiquing them. My credibility as a research scientist is central to that work, and I can’t allow it to be compromised by people who want to seize onto any loose comment on this blog and attribute it to me. I also can’t allow loose comments on this blog to be used as a distraction from my considered critiques of other issues.
So, I have decided to make some changes to the way this blog is run. The changes won’t happen immediately because they involve site redesign, but what you will hopefully see is a clearer delineation of who is responsible for posts, and a clear differentiation between community “chatter” and information that you can rely on.
Paul Biggs will be starting his own blog with a focus on climate research news. I shall be promoting his blog once it is up and running which will hopefully be in the next couple of weeks. Neil Hewett will be putting more time into his own blog which will also be promoted at this site when the redesign is complete.
I hope you will continue to support us, after all, in the mainstream media, particularly when it comes to environmental issues, PR continues to overwhelm journalism.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
“a clear differentiation between community “chatter” and information that you can rely on.
ouch. the end of socratic rhetoric?
or an empty blog?
Jennifer, I am sorry you have had some negative feedback from your blog. I am actually from Canada so I am in a little bit of a time warp relative to you guys but even though I have only been posting recently I have found your site to be one of the best. There will always be the mindless, destructive, malcontents but I think we all recognise them and disregard their drivel, continual misrepresentation and slavish adherence to their illogical mantra you should not let this type of person damage a very worthwhile project.
I’ve purchased a domain name – my blog will be constructed after Jen’s new blog. I’ll continue to concentrate on climate research or observations that the media tend to ignore in favour of climate alarmism.
We’ll be using WordPress, which should mean that that there will be the facility for silly or rude comments to be eliminated – or at least they will be on my blog!
This citizen reiterate his support and hopes not to be a detriment.
Jenn, I am truly sorry to see that your professional reputation may have been threatened by running one of the most open and important blogs discussing the GW/CC/Environmental issues. You must do what is necessary to uphold your reputation, and I hope the debate will not be lessened by it.
CoRev, editor
http:globalwarmingclearinghouse.blogspot.com
It could all be solved if we ignored a few people here, refused to reply to their posts and told them to sod off.
Look on the bright side – you get 3 blogs instead of 1. I’m sure Jen will continue to post about environmental realism – Jen has established herself as an environment realist in the Oz media.
Jennifer: For what it’s been, the blog and the people, I have enjoyed it all. If anyone has been burnt in the fiery debates, then that’s sad.
I hope some mutual respect will prevail in the next format without the need for editorial feedback. Thanks guys in anticipation.
I lurk at 4 or 5 warming-centric blogs on a regular basis. By my assessment it is most crowded under your bridge – so to speak – with what I would call alarmist trolls.
Isn’t that kind of a badge of honour though? They’ve identified you as a significant threat, and hope to shout down any facts presented which contradict their ideology with ad hominems, and false accusations.
I don’t think they realize how their ugly behavior tends to cause a knee-jerk reaction of rejection of their opinions though. I wouldn’t worry about their brainless accusations if I were you. The more they make them, the less credible they become.
Hang in there Jennifer. With every new appearance under the bridge it becomes more evident yours is the quest for truth.
Jennifer,
I’ve seen more than my share of withering diatribe here, and hope you do not take too much of it to heart.
In the main, the *ad hominem* attacks of those collectively known as ‘the antis’ reflect an entrenched ‘us vs. them’ attitude; they unfortunately tend to define themselves more in terms of who they ‘are against’ than anything else.
It happens, all to often, that the antis express themselves with evangelistic, and even Inquisitional fervor.
Much of what the antis say can easily be dismissed by gentler, more thoughtful people, though with a sense of bemusement or dumbfounded outrage. At the same time, the antis–by posting to your website and elsewhere–are often principally engaged in proving ‘their credentials’ to *each other*.
I wish you all the best with your redesign, and with your efforts.
Jennifer.
I read your blog every day and whilst I dont contribute much it has been a very informative.
Some suggestions if I may. I would refer it as a matter of style if you restrained the number of posts in any 24 hours from the one source. Some people have logged +20 in an day, which has to be an absurdity bordering on being obessive.
Further would it be additive to the debate if someone ( nominated at the start of the thread) was nominated to produced a succint summary of the pros and cons of the points raised once the posts have run their course, and then close the thread to any more- a summary which BTW ignored off topics.
I am sure Luke et al,for eg, would give it go, and if he gets the summary wrong then that should lead to another thread being created that homed in on the finer substantive detail and the unresolvable.
There are a whole raft of people who could be nominated adjudicators. I would love to see, for eg only, people like Bill Kinninmoth,cohenite, Barry Moore et al, adjudicate a debate.
Malcolm,
Your ideas make a lot of sense. Especially since Luke, et. al., can post to ‘kindred minds’ blogs as often as they wish.
Even so, it can still be instructive for the rest of us to read what the ‘anti’ extremists have to say.
They’re relentless, they’re completely uncivil, and likely many learn a great deal from their uncouth approach to public discourse.
Should the antis be completely driven back into their foul dens, to croak and bleat their drivel into each others’ ears alone?
Or should they be allowed access to a forum where their peculiar, uninformed sentiments can be exposed to those who prefer to be curious and informed?
We shall see what Jennifer does, and meanwhile, the web will continue its evolution.
And meanwhile, the ignorant and mean-spirited cannot be excluded.
Good idea Malcolm. Any voluneers?
Malcolm – Well I think we should ask CSIRO and BoM to adjudicate and/or participate in a debate – let’s not suggest the foxes run the hen house surely. Reality is that very rarely do you even come up against serious domain experts on here. Enthusiastic amateurs or rank amateurs more likely?
On your point of post numbers – well I agree – but you need some leniency if a debate if progressing – as all debates have their “moment”. And lines of argument need to be followed “at the moment” or be lost. Most of us have steadied up when slapped by Jen (even if some umpire and racket abuse occurred at the time). I take the position that it’s still her graffiti wall in the end – and she still makes the rules.
Moreover I’d like to see people like Cohenite and Gary Gulrud laying out a fuller argument on radiation theory (as an example). My frustration is that we only get snippets and fragments – not a structured argument as to their position/theories.
But if would be good if people would consider the other persons POV – and that we might explore why people hold certain views.
However a deep distrust of the motives of “greener” contributors here is held by the majority. Is that an assumption based on solid knowledge?
You may find courtesy is returned if offered.
I for one don’t want to see an Australia where our individual rights, freedoms and aspirations are curtailed any more than necessary for the functioning of a civil society. But I also want to see sustainable use of natural resources and some conservation of a percentage of the “natural estate”.
SO how to do that IS THE DEBATE !?
At the risk of another comment on the commento-meter. “Even so, it can still be instructive for the rest of us to read what the ‘anti’ extremists have to say. ”
I had to smile – as each side might define the other as the REAL “anti-extremists”. It can’t be me surely – it must be “THE OTHERS”. All POV issues !
Well I thought it was funny.
Best of luck Jen with the new format, but can we please have some real new evidence on AGW from the urgers.
Why can’t they find the hot spot and why isn’t there positive feedback to co2 in the real atmosphere of the real world?
Get over that mountainous challenge and a lot more of us would have to take notice.
Jennifer,
Sorry to have to agree with you, about the abuse directed at you by some, SJT and NT and sod in particular, calling your credential in question on numerous occasions. (even, when as you stated the content had nothing to do with you!)
I am very tolerant, I think, but I would have banned them a long time ago, or shut the blog down.
Nobody needs that sort of treatment!
Argue the merits or lack of the post but leave personal attacks out of it.
If nothing else common courtesy should prevail, even when strongly disagreeing, too much to expect from some I suppose.
Good luck in your future endeavors.
Luke,
Your notion of “courtesy is returned if offered” is ridiculous.
You’re foul-mouthed, verging on–if not surpassing–the obscene, and are a perfect poster-boy for those who plague what could be locations for polite, intelligent discourse.
I would provide you with links to blogs where you would be welcomed, but I’m sure you could find them on your own.
Jennifer, keep up the good work.
The fact that you get personal attacks is proof that you’re on the right track.
The alarmists are getting more alarmed by the day especially with the globe cooling, they have to resort to dirty tactics.
You are a very brave person indeed and your blog is great.
Jen,
As a sometime poster but mostly a lurker I regularly cringe at the ad hom attacks but more so with the use of foul language. It is unneccessary and all sides of the dabate resort to it. It is probably the one thing that detracts most from this and other blogs.
Having witnessed the decline in the standard of this and other blogs I strongly advocate a policy that snips or bars offending posts/posters. It really is not that difficult to keep it civil and therefore readable.
Paul and Neil good luck with your blogs, I’ll visit regularly and Jen I hope that the new format encourages the debate to continue. It really is about the politics and less so about the science when it comes to public opinion. Unfortunatley the lines have been blurred forever within our science institutions in this regard and much science is now advocacy, mores the pity.
My concern is with the fragmenting of the editorial effort into three blogs. This can only reduce the diversity of content and hence the quality of the forum. Could I suggest that both Neil and Paul continue to copy their lead posts to this one. It is what I have always done anyway.
On the issue of defamation and ad homs, one way around this is to leave it in but to substantially reduce the type size of all of any post with direct slurs in it. This way people will be more reluctant to “cut loose”, as it were because it will also reduce the visibility of their substantive points. In this way readers can easily see if the comment should be ignored altogether.
And for serial offenders, especially those under an alias, there must be a point where one can simple reduce the type size of all of their posts until they supply verified details of their name and address so anyone offended by their posts can exercise their lawful remedies.
You Australians play hardball compared to Americans but I like this site. I would hate that you censor anyone except spam. A site develops an ecology after a while. I like to engage people I disagree with. They usually have their reasons why they believe as they do. Plus I would hate to miss any authentic Australian culture because of censorship.
Pretty lame Jennifer,
to blame the drop in your credibility on ‘mischief makers’.
And for people to complain that the quality of posts here is lowered by people like SJT, Luke and I is laughable. Read some of Bird’s posts. The ones where he tells people to kill themselves. This blog has suffered due to the inability of the moderators. Regular posters here, such as Graeme Bird, Louis Hissink, Ian Mott have a serious problem with the use of logic and scientific reasoning. THIS is the problem with this blog Jennifer. You ave attracted a group of cheer leaders with no actual ability to analyse data. And Jennifer, you have perpetuated that.
Your post asking for papers on the Greenhouse Effect demonstrated VERY clearly your ability to research. Especially when people went out of their way to link many papers for you. You chose to ignore them.
If you want to be taken seriously you have to treat science seriously, and this blog has never done that.
It is wise for you to close it, it was only ever good for a laugh.
HEY, hey , hay
“to blame the drop in your credibility on ‘mischief makers’.”
No, she’s right. People like Lambert and Quiggin would be two I have in mind that do their utmost to misrepresent people’s views and opinions.
I think Jen is doing the right thing.
“There will always be the mindless, destructive, malcontents but I think we all recognise them and disregard their drivel”
Sound advice when reading anything by “the Bird”.
“Why not try enjoying yourself in your tawdry, sick, and mindless way a little less.”
I’ve been looking at this site for a while and I find that this poster really does waste a great deal of bandwidth and rarely contributes anything of substance.
“Look gavin you are an idiot”
I don’t know if he has any qualifications (or even if he really is a man) but he make no effort to use them if he has.
“Its just a suggestion……….(idiot).”
The problem is that his relentless abuse eventually causes a reaction to which he childishly replies “Who me?”.
I wonder what he did to vent his anger before the Internet?
In fact I’d say that currently the whole anti-AGW movement is attempting to cloak itself in an aura of victim-hood. That’s part of the “religious” argument, they aren’t true believers and thus they’re subject to persecution. And what’s this about “examining the scientific claims of others and critiquing them”, where do I get a degree in guruism like Jen. How about coming down off the tower and seeing what it’s like in the real world.
Dear Jennifer,
I read the blog about three times a week and always find something of interest. I support the principles under which it was established, and thank you for your amazing hard work and dedication, often attracting absurd attacks.
I always deplored the sneering and crude input from SJT, Luke and one or two others. However I have come to understand that what we have seen from them is part of a deliberate campaign to undermine and provoke and distract people who are a threat to the great global warming scam. The pity is that they are so effective, and the reason is that you have been so tolerant. If I ran the blog I would (1) allow them to contribute only under the conditon that they commented on the issue, and made no personal attacks on you or other bloggers and (2) I would not publish responses from people who have been provoked into replying in the same vein.
Good luck, and thanks.
Damn good post NT. I think Jen once is being disingenuous once again, your reference to the “call for papers” episode is timely.
NT,
As your are an anonymous poster here, libelling some of us with the perjorative that we have some problem of scientific reasoning demands that you identify yourself and then demonstrate why you are competent to determine this.
Your post above, which seems to have won the adulation of Patrick B, suggests that it is you who has no idea of what science and the scientific method is.
Ball is in your court so you need to back up your statement with some facts.
I would have to agree with Bird’s assessment regarding these three turkeys. The three seem to be unreconstructed Marxists pretending they have found science the the scientific method.
Jen,
Thanks for the blog so far to date.
Whatever you decide to do is your choice, I have always admired your restraint in some of the ad hom vicious nonsense that goes on.
Your responses have always been considered under attack not rising to ad hom but the point you have been making, simply and succinctly, which is a credit.
I think that the blog itself has been successful without seeing your visitor numbers but by the quality of credentialled visitors whether pro or anti from time to time.
Some big names have turned up with cricket bats from time to time. It has been fun watching some of it.
I’m not sure Boffin wrestling will ever replace WWE or Mud wrestling but it is different.
Yes Louis I did find NT’s post to be a fine summary of the current state of play in this place. What disappoints me is Ian’s fall from his place as one of this countries premier song writers, rock and roll is such a fickle business.
Nonetheless it has been a privilege to be present when this former Cold Chisel axe man penned his anti-AGW missives even if they lack the gentle grace he evoked in “Flame Trees”. Although they hint at the same anguish he obviously felt as he bashed out “Breakfast at Sweethearts”.
I too am sorry to see change to my favourite blog, as I find most change is near 50/50, only half good.
Like Pandanus77 I find some of the language a bit off-putting, the more so, when it reduces the value of a post with which I strongly agree.
But, please be carefull of any censoring program. As a classic car enthusiasts, I recently tried to post that a particular car had been treated like a pussy cat, by its aged restorer, since its restoration.
I was both dismayed, & amused to find that “pussy” was not permitted on this classic car site.
It does work the other way, as well. Many of the AGWs shoot themselves in the foot, with their ill disguised hate, degrading any value in their posts. It took only a dozen words reading for me to dismiss NT’s post, above as valueless.
So, thanks a bunch, & keep up the good work, for all our sakes.
Luke your tiresome continuous whining about people not posting IR radiation theory I think demonstrates your total lack of credibility I have twice posted what I consider the best paper on this subject by Dr. Nicol. However if you are not technically competant to read this paper I have written an article which includes a synopsis. I am sorry it is a bit long I hope it gets posted, here it is.
Greenhouse Gas Effect; This has to be the most misunderstood and misused term thanks to our scientifically illiterate news media and the devious Dr. Hansen. The greenhouse gas effect only applies to the molecules of gas in the atmosphere and is part of the overall Radiative Forcing effect which applies to aerosols and gasses. By far the majority of the IR radiation which is returned to the surface and increases global temperatures comes from aerosols, second is water vapour and third is CO2, this is not questioned even by the IPCC.
The major difference between aerosols and gasses is that the aerosols capture and reradiate the full spectrum of IR emitted by the earth’s surface the gasses only capture very specific wavelengths of IR within their resonant frequencies. Most of the energy captured by the gasses is transferred to other molecules by collision, very little is reradiated at the same capture frequency.
CO2 can only absorb about 8% of the energy radiated by the earth, once these frequencies have been removed from the outgoing IR spectrum they can only be replaced by the small amount of energy being radiated by the aerosols.
So to put this into an analogy; I have a table ( the atmosphere ) with 100 cups in a line ( CO2 molecules) and a tea pot ( the earth) which holds 8 cups of tea ( the energy at the CO2 resonant frequencies) Now I start pouring ( outgoing IR ) but I can only fill up the first 8 cups. I can have 200 cups in the line but I can still only fill up the first 8 cups. Now as I said earlier the CO2 molecules loose their energy by collision so the first 8 cups are continually being emptied (energy transfer). As a progression of tea pots come along I never get past the first 8 cups irrespective of how many are in the line. Thus an increase in CO2 will not increase the energy being extracted from the outgoing IR because there is no more to be had. For those who can not or will not read Dr. Nicol’s paper the above is the dummies version.
Any increase in the energy removed from the outgoing IR must increase the temperature of the atmosphere which will increase the backradiation and thus global temperatures. Some popular misconceptions are that the energy stored in the atmosphere will be increased by transfers of energy within the atmosphere, clearly one component’s gain is another component’s loss thus the net effect is zero. Another is that for all the components in the atmosphere which are radiating energy 50% goes up and 50% goes down but the 50% going down does not necessarily reach the earth since it will be intercepted and reradiated, this of course equally applies to the radiation going up but since the density of the air decreases with altitude the rising IR travels further than the descending IR before being captured thus there is a net upward flow of IR keeping the world in equilibrium with respect to the heat flow.
Since our comprehensive measurements of the lower troposphere for the last 30 years by satellites and balloons show that no net increase in temperature has been detected there has been no global warming due to radiative forcing, CO2 or otherwise. The IPCC produced computer simulations showing an increase in lower troposphere temperatures, they had to in order to claim temperature increase due to greenhouse gasses. But the computer models have been proven wrong and this is not debatable, even IPCC admit this, they have a lot of desperate excuses as to why they are wrong but this does not change the fact they have failed. We needed time to get proven results to compare the simulations with reality that is why there is now an increasing chorus of dissent. The IPCC still however claim the dropping temperatures are only temporary but why would temperatures drop if they are so inextricably tied to CO2 and it has been rising steadily. Let’s face it the IPCC are caught between a rock and a hard place if they admit there are more powerful drivers of our temperatures than CO2 then their entire hypothesis goes up in smoke but they can not deny the data which has been pouring in from sources which cannot be creatively adjusted like Hansen’s GISS data or proxy data which can be cherry picked and is subject to massive interpretation manipulation.
Jennifer…did not mean to sink you in it by posting about HIV/AIDS. I have been following that debate for over 15 years now and I saw many similarities between that theory and the AGW theory. Whether or not a person believes HIV causes AIDS is not the point, it’s the rhetoric and insensitivity demonstrated by the believers againsts the skeptics that is of concern.
Another important concern is that the theory is 25 years old and we are no closer to a solution. A vaccination had to be withdrawn within the last year because it failed. Why should anyone not be skeptical of the current paradigm? During that 25 years, scientists have been discouraged, through threats to their livelihood, withdrawal of funding, if not outright fired, from exploring alternative solutions. It’s incredible to me that such an atmosphere would exist in science where any scientist is shunned for expressing skepticism.
You said you believe HIV causes AIDS and I don’t have a firm opinion on the matter. I am concerned about the low-calibre, tunnel-vision research being done, and I have little confidence in the researchers who support the paradigm. I have not made a claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, I have only said the research done thus far is myopic and based on really bad science. I don’t think we have nearly our best scientists working on the problem.
I don’t see why anyone should cast stones at you over that, but when I see some of the ridiculous claims being made on your blog supporting the AGW theory, I can sense the source of you being blamed for my post. Hope I haven’t caused you any sleepless nights.
Jen,
I for one am hoping that you are only going to tweak the model as I think your forum is important. Clearly, the goal of the stalker trolls would be met if you were seen to be ‘closing down’. That would be a great loss considering what is at stake.
Louis: with respect to “problems with scientific reasoning”, on this site we have seen the denial of: the link between HIV and AIDS; the theory of evolution; the theory of relativity; the big bang; the theory of radioactive decay; the conservation of energy; and I don’t know what else, with denial of global warming being the last and least of the scientific theories that commentators, most notably you, Allen Siddons, Graeme, and Gordon apparently dispute. Given that this disputation of what to every working scientist are now basic facts is given free rein here, it is damaging Jen’s scientific reputation as she points out.
If all these were as wrong as you (collectively) say they are, then it would show that 99.9%+ of scientific knowledge and scientists are either hopelessly wrong or hopelessly corrupted by some invisible, sinister, all powerful conspiracy (Illuminati? Reptoids? anything goes, apparently). In either case, the scientific reasoning and method which have led to these conclusions would be comprehensively discredited as not having discovered what to you are apparently obvious flaws.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too – you can’t proclaim that you adhere to scientific reasoning and discard all knowledge amassed by others who also adhere to scientific reasoning.
Of course there are always refinements to be made and new things to be discovered (e.g. what happened in the first microsecond after the big bang? Can we narrow the uncertainty of the various feedback contributions to warming beyond +/- 1.4 degrees? individual selection or group selection? Does quantum entanglement break the light barrier? etc) but these questions are a world away from the fantasies that you seem to indulge in.
One additional point, Jennifer. The trolls have clearly been searching and probing for any angle that might get under your skin and get you to change a successful formula. The “others mud still sticks” line has obviously worked to some extent. But the important thing is to consider where the pitch came from.
One loses count of the number of times when clearly antagonistic posters suddenly have a change of heart and start dishing up all sorts of gratuitous advice on how you can “improve” a blog that they had earlier been trying to tear down.
They do it automatically, they can’t help themselves, and it is very valuable battlefield intelligence that reveals as many opportunities as problems.
And for the really serious trolls, all you need to do is line one up, trace him right back to his actual ID, and take him down for that part of his house that he actually owns. You will only need to do it once, and you may as well get paid better for what you do.
Remember, it may sometimes be a pain but it is also a very “opportunity rich environment” for income supplementation.
Jen, don’t give in to the closed minded individuals who cast aspersions on your character and scientific credentials. If running a blog that allows for a huge range of ideas to be conglomerated ( and clearly states that by publishing you are not agreeing!), leads to damaging your profesional credentials then i feel its speaks more of their close mindedness, than your abilities.
Rememember in a few years if not sooner, if this AGW theory can be shown to be erroneus, it will infact speak wonders for your scientific credentials!
Your blog has been very good Jennifer. However it’s the day job that buys the groceries. So whatever the changes, I will continue to read and post when stirred to an opinion.
As for so called trolls etc… The best way of modifing behavior is to snip them with a reasoning as to why. It is after all your blog. So set the behaviour standards.
Keep up the good work.
James Haughton,
I seem to gain the impression that your reading of the scientific literature is limited to what is best described as the pseudosciences.
As no one could possibly have observed the Big Bang, to castigate me for denying it actually a religious castigation, not scientific one.
The HIV/AIDs issue has been thoroughly put to rest by Henry Bauer.
Relativity is simply mathematical nonsense which even Einstein repudiated later on in his life.
As I will never tire of stating, the scientific method is based on three fundamentals – Obsevration, framing of an hypothesis – followed by exerimental testing of that hypothesis.
Science is about explaining the observed by using empirically verified knowledge, not by observing some anomalous behaviour and then proposing a novelty to explain in.
The area of human effort you think is science, isn’t – it’s pseudoscience.
Well I have just read through this thread. Thank goodness you are going to make some sort of change Jennifer. Reading through this one thread sums up all its faults in one hit, and I am not blaming you, although you should be a better moderator and do your research properly and objectively.
Let’s hope there is a hypocrisy meter on whatever new form you devise, and it is dedicated to truth and fairness. And let’s hope for world peace whilst we’re at it (sarcasm).
I tried to warn you, Jen. If you want to educate people, the least you would have to do is.
* ensure the topics are educational, and not nonscience.
* ensure that people who don’t agree with the prevailing political opinions here aren’t attacked, and feel they have the right to respond accordingly.
* provide what is the consensus of AGW/anti-AGW theory. For example, CO2 is a greehhouse gas. This fact is accepted by all scientists who are experts in the subject, pro or anti-agw. The only debate is the extent of warming.
Anything else is actually spreading misinformation and attacks on science, by undermining what is accepted science with rubbish. If you want to provide a platform for rubbish and misinformation, that is your choice, but i have no idea what you would be hoping to achieve. There is so much amateur ignorance out there, you could expand the blog 100 times and still not cater for it all.
This thread is just hilarious. Here we have Jennifer saying, as diplomatically as possible, “I have decided to distance myself from some of the wackier loonies who’ve been posting here and damaging my reputation”, and what do we get?
Reams of nonsense about how it’s all the fault of the people who point out how wacky the loonies are. Truly a grand piece of self-delusion.
James Haughton…you don’t seem to understand the difference between intellectualism and intelligence. Intellectualism is man-made intelligence, such as logic, whereas real intelligence comes in the DNA and doesn’t care about the IQ tests created to measure intellectualism. Do you think intellectualism had anything to do whatsoever with you being born from the union of cells? Do you think it keeps your heart beating or your blood at the required pH level?
Logic and reasoning are forms of thought, not intelligence. They draw on intelligence, which may come as the insight of a new idea. Logic was derived by humans to help them cope with the intelligence in the world. However, a Mensan with an IQ of 150 would perish in the jungles of Borneo, whereas a native, who was unable to pass an IQ test, let alone understand it, would survive. What does that tell you about the intellect you worship?
A person using real intelligence, would wonder why we have poured billions of dollars into HIV/AIDS research over 25 years and come no closer to understanding AIDS than at the outset. An intellect, like yourself, would use intellectual logic to reason that all those scientists must be right because they all have the same opinion. At the same time, you turn a blind eye to their ongoing failure. You’re not in touch with the real intelligence, which naturally wants to ask questions. In fact, you try to stifle that intelligence in others by demeaning their natural curiosity.
You’re dealing with an inherent snobbishness that can only consider the logic others have taught you. You have no confidence in the intelligence you were born with, rather, you have allowed it to be displaced by paradigm driven knowledge, mistaking that for intelligence.
I’ll give you an example then I’ll shut up. I gave you the impeccable research credentials of Peter Duesberg and you failed to even consider why he has been ostracized for claiming HIV could not possibly cause AIDS. I was not looking for an answer, I simply wanted you to ponder that question. I would think an intelligent mind would be curious as to why a highly-experienced viral researcher with so many citations would make such a statement, especially considering the current paradigm has utterly failed to find a cure for AIDS in 25 years.
Instead, you rushed off for an answer that would corroborate your mind set. You quoted one website that had no references as to who was providing the information, and that seemed to satisfy you, obviously because it satisfied your thoughts on the paradigm. Thoughts are not intelligence, in general, they are stored knowledge. Thought can be intelligent if our conditioning is bypassed but, generally, thought is biased.
In the post above, you talk about the first instant after the Big Bang. You are hopelessly caught up in your mind. You don’t have the basic ability to step aside and consider what might be true and what might not be true. Or, maybe it’s that you don’t have the courage. There is no answer to the Big Bang conundrum, it’s a question. In the same manner, evolution is a question. We have no answers to such matters, only questions. You can only proceed with them by making assumptions, but invariably our corrupt mind turn those assumptions into pseudo-fact.
When the IPCC claims something is highly likely, you jump on it as truth, yet you are unable to see the unlikelihood that the Big Bang occured. There’s absolutely no evidence for such an unlikely or cataclysmic event other than a low residual temperature in the universe and the Doppler shift in the spectrum of stars. Once again, you’ll jump to the scientists who support the Big Bang through consensus rather than having the temerity to question thier opinions.
You deride me for my HIV/AIDS studies, yet you cling to a theory that claims the universe will eventually collapse into such a high density that it will disappear. Or, you are comfortable with the notion that the matter comprising our present universe suddenly appeared from a point. Will you get serious??
Even evolution is unlikely, given the evidence against it. Once again, the theory is embraced because we have no other viable answers. Who needs answer? An intelligent mind has to conclude that it has no idea where we came from, or the planet.
The height of the matter is that it doesn’t matter. We live in the possibility of a vast awareness in the hear and now yet we busy ourselves, focused in a fantasy world in our minds. Not only that, we create an illusionary image of who we are and spend our lives fiercely protecting it and imposing it on others.
I got some great advice once, that truth can come when you create silence in your mind by saying ‘I don’t know’.
“Who needs answer? ”
Science is the search for answers.
So your answer would be: scientists, and those who appreciate the benefits science has brought and continues to bring. Pretty much everyone except you, I’d think.
You could always hang the sign from the Golden Horseshoe
Graeme – clearly Jennifer has received some very sound career advice, i.e. to concern herself more with actual science and distance herself from fruitcakes like you.
Sorry you find it so hard to take. Breaking up is hard to do and all that…
Hi Gordon,
a) It tells me “don’t go to the jungle of Borneo without learning about it first”.
b) We have in fact come a long way in understanding AIDS – we’ve isolated the virus and the transmission mechanism, and today’s anti-retro-viral drugs are very effective in prolonging life. I don’t deny that a vaccine would be nice, but most vaccines have historically relied upon discovering a harmless variant of the virus, and that hasn’t happened yet. We don’t have a vaccine against the common cold, yet, either, yet that isn’t evidence that the common cold isn’t caused by a virus.
I do know why Peter Duesberg is ostracised. He is ostracised for the same reason that people who deny the holocaust are ostracised, or people who assure you that you can ascend to Halley’s comet if you castrate yourself are ostracised.
I’m not sure what you mean by “had no reference as to who provided the information”, as the paper I directed you to had numerous references from medical journals backing up its summary.
Actually, I jump on the IPCC’s report as “highly likely”, not “the truth”.
What exactly do you think causes the stars to show a doppler shift, or the cosmic microwave background radiation, if not the big bang? What causes galaxies to aggregate into clusters, or black holes to evaporate in Hawking radiation? Declare, if thou hast the understanding.
I don’t know if the universe will collapse or not. Lots of argument still going on that one.
What evidence against evolution, exactly?
I studied Zen myself for a while. The fact that it is possible to quiet one’s mind so that one no longer hungers for answers, adultation, certainty, etc, is a great thing. However, that doesn’t mean that the answers don’t exist. It just means that they aren’t always the most important thing.
James Haughton; I have never read such absolute total drival, what slimy rock have you been sleeping under for the past 10 years. 99.9% of scientists agree with IPCC? As every one knows on this blog I try to be fair and reasonable and put forward logical trains of thought with suitable back up verification. But Graeme can put it far better than me Sir you are a moron.
Jennifer, I agree that the comments have got out of control. This has happened here before, though, and it tends to be self correcting, however I admit this time it looks as though Graeme Bird will never shut up! (I had a budgie like that once.)
Damage to your reputation is a serious matter, and obviously has to be addressed if it is affecting your work.
If you could arrange for a moderator, I reckon Nichole would do a good job.
Perhaps we should have to register to post?
Failing all that, see if you could persuade Green Davey Gam Esq to administer a test of basic comprehension, grammar and logic to all would be posters!
I just popped over to ClimateAudit, as I feel that the comments there are a good standard to aim for. CA is moderated.
Here are the blog rules
“A reader has written with the following suggested ground rules which are hereby adopted:
Blogs like this one provide a wonderful opportunity to people like me (a retired scientist) to get involved in an ongoing debate and it is very disappointing when the debate generates into one of these slanging matches. May I suggest some ground rules for posts:
1. Refrain from personal abuse and swearing,
2. Never attribute ulterior motives to another participant
3. Be patient with people who know less science or maths than you do yourself.
People who consistently break rule 1 and 2 should be issued with a yellow card by the moderator. If they continue they get a red card and are banned from the site.”
http://www.climateaudit.org/?page_id=2710
Paul I agree with your rules and support them but sometimes I get so frustrated with the totally illogical statements made by some people that it is hard to contain oneself.
Barry: I didn’t say that 99.9% of scientists agreed with the IPCC; I said that “If all these were as wrong as you (collectively) say they are, then it would show that 99.9%+ of scientific knowledge and scientists are either hopelessly wrong or hopelessly corrupted”.
“If all these” includes: the link between HIV and AIDS; the theory of evolution; the theory of relativity; the big bang; the theory of radioactive decay; the conservation of energy; and the greenhouse effect. Not just the greenhouse effect.
Try reading posts carefully before abusing other participants.
Graeme – this thread is about this blog. Staying on topic is courteous and aids the formation of dialogue.
Oh, just give it up Graeme. The reason she shut this down was because of you and assorted Creationist nutcases.
So, all kudos. Instead of being banned from a blog, you’ve actually destroyed one.
Moran. Well done. Great comedy, though.
“Jennifer…did not mean to sink you in it by posting about HIV/AIDS…
You said you believe HIV causes AIDS and I don’t have a firm opinion on the matter… I have not made a claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, I have only said the research done thus far is myopic and based on really bad science…”
Posted by: Gordon Robertson at August 29, 2008 12:44 PM @
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003365.html#comments
after having posted:
“The shortest answer I can give you is there’s no proof whatsoever that HIV causes AIDS, just as there’s no proof that CO2 causes warming. In fact, there’s no proof that HIV exists, period. That may sound astounding but it’s true. It has never been isolated or purefied [sic], and the tests for it don’t measure for a virus but for anti-bodies ‘thought’ to come from the immune system dealing with a virus.”
Posted by: Gordon Robertson at August 14, 2008 03:27 PM @
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003322.html#comments
and
“I wanted people to know we’d been down that path before, and by some of the responses I got, it was clear that many people are convinced of the HIV/AIDS paradigm even though there’s no proof of it whatsoever. So, the only reason I brought it up was an attempt to raise awareness of the modus operandi of alarmists…
…I don’t know if you recall the trial in Australia in which Eleni Papadopoulos, from The Perth Group, was called as a witness for the defence. Eleni has a convincing arguement that HIV does not exist.”
Posted by: Gordon Robertson at August 14, 2008 03:59 PM
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003322.html#comments
The archives seem to detect an inconsistency.
Gordon, the reason why Peter Duesberg “[w]as been ostracized for claiming HIV could not possibly cause AIDS” was because he was applying nineteenth century, nascent-discipline criteria of disease definition to a comparatively immunologically sophisticated twenty-first century virus. In essence was using flat-earth thinking to describe a heliocentric phenomenon.
And repeated above, with obvious ignorance of any understanding of immunology:
“The HIV/AIDs issue has been thoroughly put to rest by Henry Bauer.”
Posted by: Louis Hissink at August 29, 2008 01:43 PM @
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003365.html#comments
Louis, as I have repeatedly stated, I have a decade and a half professional experience in immunology. If you are going to support this irresponsible denialist tripe I would suggest again that you put your conviction to the test and allow yourself to be injected with the human immunodeficiency virus. It could be easily arranged, from an otherwise deisease-free source, and if you do not want to do so I would be most interested in knowing why.
I am glad that Jennifer has dissociated herself from this rubbish, but neither you nor Gordon do her nor yourselves any favours with your comments on this subject.
For heaven’s sake, even Graeme wisely backed away from this one if I recall the rest of that thread correctly! I am never one to with-hold credit where it is due, and for the record:
“Yes I think it would be dangerous to get rid of the idea that HIV causes AIDS. Or to act on the idea that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.”
Posted by: Graeme Bird at August 18, 2008 04:31 AM @
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003322.html#comments
Graeme, this is one of the few times that I will probably agree with you, but I will do so here with full public acknowledgement.
In this matter, you spoke wisely.
What is remarkable is the amount of mean spirited vitriol posted here by those who generally hide behind pseusonyms, CK being the latest exemplar.
The pseudonymous posters here are really the same as the progressive rent-a-crowd marshalled to make life miserable for their opponents by, metaphorically, throwing rotten eggs and tomatoes; The same occurred some time back when Keith Windschuttle was asked to debate his ideas, summarised in his book “The Fabrication of Aboriginal History”, at a left-wing bookshop in Balmain (from memory), to be confronted with a hostile audience. At least the owner of the bookshop, who offered the venue, was thankful that an improved sense of civility existed compared to decades before when Windschuttle would have been burnt at the stake for his politically incorrect views.
This said, I am of the view that the mob have won this round, resulting in Jennifer (not the pompous Jennifer B.) having to change things here.
Occasionally I posted an ascerbic comment which was removed, fairly I might add, but when one’s interlocutors resort to continued personal abuse, often libellous, behind anonymity, one tends to become angry.
Equally I have not entered into extended dialog on topics which my debaters have refused to familiarise themselves with, so when Graeme Bird dismisses many of the posts here as religious claptrap, often obscured by technically sophisticated verbiage, I am hardly interested in discussing matters with the blinkered.
The telling factor in the whole AGW issue is that the sceptics are, for most part, pre-postmodernist scientists educated in the scientific method, and not reliant on grants.
There is optimism however, because the young scientists I employ are questioning the AGW fundamentals and this is a good sign that the malignancy behind AGW has had a restricted effect, and that not all, or those who believe they are scientists, are enthralled with the misanthropy of the global warmers.
The deciding factor seems to be physical reality itself.
As an afterthought, it would be unwise for the AGW crowd, who seem to believe in the Big Bang, to castigate others as Creationist nutcases; one suspects there is a confusion between nutcracking examples.
“”Yes I think it would be dangerous to get rid of the idea that HIV causes AIDS. Or to act on the idea that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.”
Posted by: Graeme Bird at August 18, 2008 04:31 AM @”
Right Bernhard. But you have to take it seriously as an alternative paradigm. Because you need several paradigms in parallel to guide research projects. If you cannot verify, falsify, or rerank as to plausibility than thats a wasted research project.
The alternative paradigm can get the runs on the board and save lives prior to one dropping the old paradigm and risking infection.
I haven’t investigated the matter. I speak above only in terms of epistemology and the design of research projects.
Bernard J.
I quote:
“Louis, as I have repeatedly stated, I have a decade and a half professional experience in immunology. If you are going to support this irresponsible denialist tripe I would suggest again that you put your conviction to the test and allow yourself to be injected with the human immunodeficiency virus. It could be easily arranged, from an otherwise deisease-free source, and if you do not want to do so I would be most interested in knowing why”.
Easy:
1. Your use of the term “denialist tripe” is the first impropriety.
2. Your link to my comment is worthless – it is self referencing to the discussion here, requiring me to search for my particular post that causes offense. As, using memory, I only referred to Henry Bauer’s research on the matter, I therefore assume you have not read Bauer’s work.
3. As you have repeately stated you have 15 years in immunology? Not here, unless it was hidden amongst the flak.
4. Your suggestion that I should be prepared to allow myself to be injected with the HIV virus is simply an inversion of the burden of proof. What you are really saying is that I am right and to you have to disprove me by proving it personally.
Not on Bernard J.
And if you had any knowledge of the matters of medicine, I am the eldest son of Dr. Louis A.G. Hissink, now deceased, a Dutch surgeon and physician, who emigrated here and who made a medical discovery during WWII which raised the possibility of replacing blood with an alternative. I am quite familiar with his research and the scientists with whom he worked with.
Do your homework please before you engorge the whole of your foot.
“What is remarkable is the amount of mean spirited vitriol posted here by those who generally hide behind pseusonyms, CK being the latest exemplar.”
Mate, it’s a blog. Get over it. And whether it’s me making caustic comments, or Birdbrain engaged in cyber-bullying makes no difference.
The fact is that the total lack of moderation here is an absolute joke for a so-called ‘science’ blog.
It’s all freewheeling crackpot tomfoolery.
You want a home? Go to Bolt or Akerman. You’ll be welcome there.
Jen, has, after all, placed herself in the same disreputable and politically charged company.
And if she wants to redeem any shred of credibility, she needs to leave that particular party.
It was a good place that you could talk to people with other views and remain sort of civil. However lately it has degenerated into a Tim Blair sort of blog where the last refuge of people with no idea is abuse. In particular Graeme Bird and AR did lead me to take a break from the blog however it’s closing has saved me the trouble.
Jen if you want to save your scientific reputation how about stopping cherry picking data and presenting the whole picture complete with correct labels.
Look it ought not be necessary CK. Neither my vitriol or the shabby snideness from the other side. You can say its a blog but this ought not be necessary.
“Jen if you want to save your scientific reputation how about stopping cherry picking data and presenting the whole picture complete with correct labels.”
False accusation.
Well had high hopes for this thread.
Guys this was the thread for the magnanimous gesture.
If ever a time – this was the one !
And so we have slipped back into the old ways pretty quickly. Biff. Whack. Thump.
The assumptions of evil leftists intent on destroying the world.
The rest of you left with the solid unwavering conviction of being the ones in the right.
Condemnation of umbrage and return fire from me but nary a comment about a Gatling gun of abuse from Bird or Ivan.
Happy to let Motty allude to take my home for daring to engage him, yet it’s OK for him to suggest he punch out his fellow Australians over the barrages. Nary a comment from the moral majority.
Is this what you’re after – a happy little club of back-slappers feasting on a daily froth fest about Hansen or Gore’s latest adventures?
There is no rent-a-crowd hell bent on destroying the blog – I’ve paid my contribution – so I hope yo’all have to.
Might not agree with Jen. Might not agree with you either. May not agree all the time with my blog colleagues either.
But do you want to debate or not?
I don’t want to take your home or your life. I’m conspiring to get you sacked.
I to want to challenge your ideas.
Do you want a refuge of like minded scoundrels – or an active collision of viewpoints?
There is of course an easy standard that could be applied to all of us – make the blog a total ad hom free zone. Delete ANY posts going over that line ?? Zap’em.
P.S. Barry Moore I was after something much more substantive than your contribution. Sorry. Cohenite and Gary Gulrud I believe are well across the issue from the contrarian standpoint. Was as simple serious request of them. Some of us may listen more than you think. Conversely a few of us may know the odd thing as well.
The current blog platform isn’t much use for moderation – we can only delete comments after they are posted, and banning IP addresses has to be done by a third party, which costs $$$$.
Changing to WordPress will allow total control over comments, including approval before posting.
Climate/environmental realism has credibility – hence Jen’s appearances on TV, radio and in newspapers. The days of climate alarmism are numbered, along with the political rhetoric that can’t be transformed into policies that will have any effect on climate.
Jen has chosen what will ultimately be the winning side, but for now that makes her a target for the global warming industry to attack.
SJT, you said this…. “* provide what is the consensus of AGW/anti-AGW theory. For example, CO2 is a greehhouse gas. This fact is accepted by all scientists who are experts in the subject, pro or anti-agw. The only debate is the extent of warming.”
…. Aside from the fact that the entirety of your post was unashamedly pro AGW and therefor agenda driven. I’ll just look at that small part instead.
So taking that statement in full…. The question remains…. Where is the Anthropogenic signal, fingerprint in the “observed data, that supports the Hypothesis of AGW.
Because even you have to accept that the AGW models do not fit the observations after 30 years, especially in the Tropical Troposphere.
That TT observation alone allows for a questioning of the actual effects of CO2 as a significant greenhouse gas…
Seems it is not cut and dried SJT. Science never is. You are foolish to think it is simple.
erratum “not conspiring”
“What you are really saying is that I am right and to you have to disprove me by proving it personally.”
Is Louis Hissink and Graeme Bird one and the same? Sounds like the same logic.
“And if you had any knowledge of the matters of medicine, I am the eldest son of Dr. Louis A.G. Hissink, now deceased, a Dutch surgeon and physician, who emigrated here and who made a medical discovery during WWII which raised the possibility of replacing blood with an alternative.”
So??? It was your father, not you. Being his offspring does not make you successful or give you the right to take credit for his hard work. Are you seriously suggesting that because your father was a surgeon and you are familiar with his work and colleagues that you are superior to someone who has directly worked for over a decade in this field? You have an MSc in engineering/geology/making holes in the ground and think that 90% of scientists are wrong!
“The fact is that the total lack of moderation here is an absolute joke for a so-called ‘science’ blog.”
Spot on CK! Read this rubbish and be amazed that the thread is about changing the blog for the better and protecting one’s integrity, but yet offensive and off-topic remarks are staying here for all to see! Poor Jennifer is now a media show pony and peddling snake oil for current affairs programs for an audience not unlike her cheer squad here. No wonder she wants to protect her professionalism. Too much science and hard evidence put forward by her detractors is hardly going to get her a spot on 60 minutes, let alone a long lunch with Piers Ackerman.
Nikki. Louis was pushed into mentioning his father by Bernhards rolling thunder of argument-from-authority. Just as the Art Robinson was pushed into the Oregon petition by the relentless false claims of consensus. You ought to have been getting on Bernhards case earlier not Louis’ case now.
“Too much science and hard evidence put forward by her detractors…..”
Now you are just being silly. We just came through an evidence filibuster so strong that it ground the blog down to a halt and Paul presumably had to go back and wipe all my posts and a bunch of others just to get things back on track. We cannot get any evidence from the people you speak thereof. I couldn’t shake them down for evidence with a blowtorch.
Nikki Byler,
“So??? It was your father, not you.” In what respect?
I am professionally respectable in my own right as the best diamond geologist in Australia.
As a scientist I also have an appreciation for my father’s work, having lived with it for most of my life, so your comments are as mean spirited as the rest here.
Oh really, Ender has finally appeared as he is.
Nikki Byler,
I never made any claim to medical discovery – I merely referred readers here to Henry Bauer’s work on the HIV/AID issue, and to support the case that I am not a complete novice, added my experience working with my decedent father in his reseearch on blood substitutes.
Your conclusion has to be, in light of these facts, irrational.
CK,
Another lefty coward?
Louis,
I’d find it absolutely remarkable if untreated HIV turned out to have no effect.
Whether you want to give a single name, like “AIDS”, to the collection of conditions which cause early death in untreated people (be they babies, children, adolescents or adults) is up to you.
However, it is my understanding that people with untreated HIV appear to have very significantly shortened lifespans and that they die disproportionately from immuno-related diseases.
Duesberg is one of those loopy geniuses, I’m afraid. When he’s brilliant, he’s a star, but when he’s not, he’s howling at the moon.
(wonders where the post he replied to disappeared…….).
In the real world most things are not black and white as anyone who has been contributing a lot of time in a big project will certainly know. We have policy, tasks and targets but the fine tuning can often take longer than the whole construction phase.
Just consider your last operation for a moment. Who can say they did not depend on the operating team and the evolving medical science? Come to think of it, let’s ponder who here is still wearing a piece of metal or china inserted in their last reconstruction. Age makes you weary of crash statements.
In all my industrial and commercial work only one smartie had to end up in court on his own and only one company had their works burnt down twice. Everybody else negotiated a way through our problems. Predicting problems and finding solutions before they became unmanageable was a major part of my work. Flag waving rarely helped. Treading softly and listening carefully is far more productive.
Now I can confess: Exaggerating the predicament helps a lot in getting a big response from those outside my own resources. In some cultures this is a way of life. My fat tabby is very good in that way too.
TheWord
It might be useful to study Henry Bauer’s analysis of this issue.
I have his text, (and he has also published it in the Journal of Scientific Exploration) but Bauer’s argument was that the evidence did not support the claims made by the proponents of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
He noted it has not spreads from the initial demographics into the general population.
He noted that the sheer cost of analysing the presence of this virus prompted the use of identifying symptoms as a means of detecting its presence in Africa.
If the HIV virus were infectious, then it should have reached epidemic proportions years ago. That it hasn’t, suggests that the theory is wrong.
And this, along with AGW, contrasts my position with the rest – the demand for physical evidence to support the hypothesis.
The only evidence I have been asked to look at has been of the rhetorical kind.
Just to clarify – the blog was going to be changed anyway, although it was still going to be Jen, Neil and Paul. Jen’s problem doesn’t seem to be related to comments, but to having posts attributed to her that she might not agree with and were not actually written by her, although the blog bears her name.
So the blog will be alive and well. Any guest posts will be clearly attributed to the writer. Other than that, I can’t see much changing. She’s not about to convert to the dark side of climate or environmental alarmism, as far as I know!
hahahahahahah Ender is giving Jennifer advice on how not to lose her reputation as a scientist.
This is coming from someone who thinks well of Hives Hamilton and his economic declimism.
What an idiot. What a total moron. Is there any limit, Ender?
Aren’t you even a little embarrassed at your brazen stupidity?
Hissink.
“If the HIV virus were infectious, then it should have reached epidemic proportions years ago. That it hasn’t, suggests that the theory is wrong.”
Many many viruses and bacteria are infectious, but do not ‘reach epidemic proportions’, for many reasons. Biology, sociology, hygiene – heck, even climate – modulate the passage of disease organisms. A minute’s careful thought about some well-known diseases should have clued you in to this, but instead you choose to demonstrate your ignorance and also your irresponsibility.
Seriously, go to the Immunology/Haematology/Virology lab at your nearest hosptial and have a word with the Immunologist/Haematologist/Virologist-in-charge. Tell him/her your take on HIV and the progress to AIDS, and then listen carefully to his/her response.
Or go to your nearest university medical department. I am deadly serious about this. Spend an hour to talk to someone with genuine understanding of basic virology, get some fundamental immunological learning under your belt, and stop taking the secondhand nonsense of wingnuts on board. It would be time well spent if you actually learned something.
Honestly, if your lack of understanding (in spite of your father’s credentials) of the biology of the human immunodeficiency virus and your belief in the nonsense of Duesburg, Bauer et al is taken on board by just one person to their later detriment, you would be morally culpable, if not legally provable to be so. And all it would take in the latter case is for someone to say “but Louis Hissink said…”, and the efforts of one of those good lawyers that your litigious crowd here seem so enamoured of, and they’d have a bloody good go at turning you upside down and shaking those diamonds out of your pockets.
Your notions and those of some others here about the alleged benign nature (or non-existence) of HIV really shouldn’t appear on the web without explicit and immediately attached disclaimers that the opinions expressed are those of people not trained in immunology.
Oh, and by the way, I am Dutch (I was born in the Netherlands) and I am related to Duesburg on my mother’s side. I am very well aware of his sterling work in other areas, and I am proud of it, but reputation or no he’s cocked up big-time on this one.
I think this blog serves a very valuable purpose; we have seen Jennifer’s overlap with the MSM, which is where the issue of AGW is alrgely being run; apart from Bolt’s, which caters, deliberately, for a different constituent, there has been no other sceptical site which has overlapped the MSM; with that in mind it is understandable that this site should be the target of some concerted criticism from pro-AGW spokespeople. The so-called decline in standard is a red herring; Deltoid is consistently more scatological, and there are a number of pro-green sites which are beyond the pale. Another red-herring is that certain topics should not be discussed because they involve unorthodox, unproven or controversial concepts; that’s a more difficult one and involves the ontology of science and the scientific method; but these are legitimate issues and the only possible complaint would be that certain comments diverge from a posted topic; the introduction of HIV, tobacco and creationism/ID are all issues which have been referred to as genuine corollaries to AGW; I would disagree with that, but they may be a basis for any moderation in the future. My own opinion is that once authorship of a posted subject is established, then normal decorum should govern comment; since decorum. like beauty and commonsense are in the eye of the beholder, the right of application of the standard should lie with the blog proprietor.
Unfortunately, I’ve come late to P&E and so have had only a limited time to enjoy the freak show that’s been on display.
If Jennifer hadn’t put it out of its’ misery, I suspect it wouldn’t have been long before another “controversial concept” – alchemy- was given a run here.
And it would have been right at home.
New blog platform, same Jennifer. Which bit is too hard to understand?
“Honestly, if your lack of understanding… of the biology of the human immunodeficiency virus and your belief in the nonsense of Duesburg, Bauer et al[.] is taken on board by just one person to their later detriment, you would be morally culpable, if not legally provable to be so.”
Why the hypocrisy, Bernie. You pose as knowing anything at all about solar physics, the epistemology of science, even climate science and yet cannot manage the jargon of any of these specialties, let alone coherent argument.
You are a poseur, an irascible, intemperate bully, addicted to the delusion of superior moral rectitude.
Yesterday we saw the global warming party of America hold a convention, where the leader of the ticket and the chief proponent of the AGW issue refused to even mention it. Both Barak Obama and Al Gore spoke at length without so much as a whisper about climate change.
Today we saw the Republican candidate promote a lady who is leading the battle against the listing of polar bears as an endangered species, as the second in line for President of the United States.
Jennifer, that is the impact of you, Mark Morano, Paul, Neil, Lubos Motl, Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Anthony Watts, and a small handful of dedicated truth seeking bloggers, sticking the fork in the side of phonies like Gore, Hansen, Rudd, the UN IPCC.
Are you crazy? Don’t change a thing.
“2. Never attribute ulterior motives to another participant
3. Be patient with people who know less science or maths than you do yourself.
People who consistently break rule 1 and 2 should be issued with a yellow card by the moderator. If they continue they get a red card and are banned from the site.”
In the interest of full disclosure, I have never been “banned” from CA, or any other site to my knowledge, but nonetheless am ‘persona non grata’ at CA: my comments infrequently appear and when they do are often replied to summarily as inapt, without argument.
My interpretation is that Steve Mc, wherever his sympathies lie re: AGW, is interested in access to AGW theorists inorder that the science be documented; and his overriding concern is with the judicious application of statistics to scientific inquiry, not science per se. My care for the self-esteem of AGW apologists is less circumspect.
I firmly believe the paucity of my contribution at CA could only follow from my expressed low regard for AGW theorists and their representations as all of my comments regarding CA and its contents have been, on any forum anywhere, to my mind, reverent.
The reader may come to their own conclusions.
“My interpretation is that Steve Mc, wherever his sympathies lie re: AGW, is interested in access to AGW theorists inorder that the science be documented; and his overriding concern is with the judicious application of statistics to scientific inquiry, not science per se. My care for the self-esteem of AGW apologists is less circumspect.”
Thats true. He only seems to audit data and statistics. He doesn’t tend to like anything to do with auditing the reasoning used. So he’ll put up with all sorts of anonymous dopeyness on the site. Then you show up and talk about the fundamental reasoning of the racket. And you’ll get wiped if you aren’t strictly talking about the data or statistics of the thread. The silly side of the argument gets a pass and doesn’t need to be on topic.
“Honestly, if your lack of understanding… of the biology of the human immunodeficiency virus and your belief in the nonsense of Duesburg, Bauer et al[.] is taken on board by just one person to their later detriment, you would be morally culpable, if not legally provable to be so.”
Putting up alternative paradigms forcefully doesn’t imply wanting to promote buggery and needle sharing. Nor does it mean wanting to take risks before the alternative paradigm is proven.
So your crusade against alternative ideas that you swore on one knee to Coby Beck to continue is really misplaced here.
Here is Bernhard talking to the writer of a very silly book which amounts to an encyclopedia of stupid retorts to cover up for the fact that the warmers have no evidence:
“Also, even though they may not concede on Marohasy’s blog that they have been exposed as incapable of scientific analysis in public, I like to nurture deep down a thought that maybe the humiliation of rebuttal might keep them from spreading their rubbish to too many other fora on the intertubes…..”
What rebuttal? Bernhard has been studious in his avoidance of evidence or argument.
“….And I think that I have detected a strain in the denialist timbre, so don’t give up entirely. From my own corner, I’m waiting for some more HIV comspiracy theory to be trotted out, but I think that Robertson et al have realised that they were sinking through the very thin ice on this one.”
This is Bernhard who refused persistently to offer any argument not solely based on the argument-from-authority. Only feebly trying to branch out overnight.
He seems to think that competing paradigms is not only effrontery but dangerous.
Coby Beck has no science background Bernhard. Which would be OK but he’s a prize dummy to boot.
Here is our friend Grendel. Talking about powerful arguments in logic that he never did make:
“I too have been an occasional commenter on Marohasy’s blog, and although I attempe to point out the illogic in their arguments rather than their errors in science, I am now nearing the point where I consider it a futile exercise.”
This is Grendel’s Woody-Allen-Moment. He’s having a flashback, but its somebody elses life. Next he’ll be telling us that ‘Nam Wuz Hell.
“Seems it is not cut and dried SJT. Science never is. You are foolish to think it is simple.”
Determining what the extent of the warming will be is anything but simple.
Jennifer, if this is of any consideration to your post on behaviour and blog direction.
I was Discussing Your Post
“Interpreting Eastern Australian Rainfall Data” with young Walker, a senior High School student Math, Science, Volleyball and noticing girls.
I showed him the graphs discussed the averaging and smoothing, things he clearly understood.
Grasped the concept side but I asked him the main question, what part of the data is important and should be used.
He said all of it, the whole set all that are available. The basic fundamentals are being taught.
He later came up and said, there are only theories with good evidence not proven wrong in science, not absolute proofs.
Seems science is still being taught.
Don’t give up because of politics. If you are ever wrong admit it and everyone moves on and if not defend it with the evidence or if the debate is undecided then it keeps being examined.
It’s not a debating club on semantics. If the posters want to debate minutae and trivia let them until someone loses an eye because then it’s not funny.
But at the beginning of the comments section you must delineate that the comments of posters are theirs and not the bloggers or mediators or moderators. That is how business defends itself legally, with a legal rider on external commentary, they are posting not you in the comments section.
Because that’s how we set up legally the first business blogs with external content. Separation of content ownership. In the blog post the content is yours, in the comments section the content ownership is the comment posters.
Hope this helps. All blogs should do this as a minimum.
What you do with pests that’s a matter to personal conscience. This allows you control of what you post. You can’t control poster’s thinking or opinion or even behaviour except thru censorhsip and it is not your job to defend it or destroy it or even argue if you do not have the time.
In life control the things one can actually control and influence other things. Comment posters have only the rights of visitors at your discretion.
No more no less. No authority unless you give it to them.
IMO.
You aint no poster girl, you are scientist and scientist commentator.
“Why the hypocrisy, Bernie. You pose as knowing anything at all about solar physics, the epistemology of science, even climate science”
Posted by: Gary Gulrud at August 30, 2008 04:18 AM
Pull your head in Gulrud.
I have stated a number of times that I am a biologist, and not a physicist or a climate scientist. I DO have a thorough understanding of the processes of science, and I know enough basic climate science to be able to spot the howlers that are frequently trotted out here, and I damn-well know enough about immunology and ecology to call out the garbage in these areas that is oft paraded here.
As to the so-called climatology of the die-hards on these threads, I have repeatedly, repeatedly, REPEATEDLY said that I am not trying to present a case here to dissuade the Denialsts of their ideas. Once more for the hard of hearing, I am not a climate scientist and it is not my job to do change anyone’s mind here on AGW. But I DO want to see the apparent experts here engage the experts with whom they so vociferously disagree, but who they are too cowardly to actually confront.
I want to see them confront those with whom they dispute the science, and I want to see their cases tested properly. Repeating ad nauseum their ideas here achieves nothing for either side, and if they have the courage of their convictions they should be falling over themselves to dismantle the AGW paradigm once and for all.
Why is it so bloody hard to get them to do this?!
And Graeme:
“Putting up alternative paradigms forcefully doesn’t imply wanting to promote buggery and needle sharing. Nor does it mean wanting to take risks before the alternative paradigm is proven.”
NO-ONE here has promoted ‘buggery’ or needle-sharing! What IS your fixation with this? In fact my position is quite the opposite – I actively discourage needle-sharing, and any sexual behaviour (it doesn’t matter what form it takes between consenting adults) should be practised with the most careful of precautions for safety.
I’m all for exploring alternative paradigms (I spent four years of my biomed time doing just this) but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and the simple fact is that if you contract HIV, your chance of coming down with AIDS in the following 2-10 years is almost certain.
Sheesh. What is it about the capacity (or not) to absorb simple fact on this blog?!
Continuing on.
It’s really simple, this weblog stuff.
So much of the mainstream media do not Get It, the media barons and their editors see it as a fad and not a real connect between writer and audience, olden time pulpit protected writers see it as a threat, the barons they see money or defence of their patch, the wiser ones recognise value and employ real value whether full time or on a piece work basis, bloggers.
I have seen mainstreamers call commenters bloggers (at the Australian for instance thinking blogging is an orgy without structure), like most laziness in the mainstream journalism they won’t research choosing a wire service for source and so they view blogging without even understanding what it is, there are good bloggers and bad bloggers but commenters aren’t bloggers.
The term is weblog for the site, hence blog. The weblogger or blogger is the content providor or content aggregator, editor and so on, like an olden time community newspaper or in science circles science journal editors inviting discussion and critique. The hyper links bring the depth to the discussion thru other views whether in agreement or opposition.
The blogger is the poster (content providor) and responsible for the blog post content, all of it.
The commentors are just that, letters to the editor, unless the web logger, wishes to engage.
The difference between mainstream op ed and blog op ed, is that blog op ed invites reader commentary or challenge to the piece and may or may not engage, at the web loggers discretion. Mainstream op-ed want to write without feed back, this is why some media traditionalists feel threatened and paint all bloggers as idiots charlatan, frauds and irresponsible when actually a number are actually doing what that idiot you nominate in the ABC hyper link says media has forgotten to do.
Blog op-ed is open to critique and mainstream op-ed is closed to the reader.
Oops to all I am just following the thread.
So in summary as a commenter.
IMO the hardest decisions a web logger having chosen the Blog format must make it are the ones on censorship of the readers commentary to content or thread.
The other decision is on linkages and the blog site must state quite clearly that hyper links that link to other content are not the responsibility of sending weblog site and users must use their discretion and a re only other viewpoints.
My opinion for what it’s worth and I gave it for free.
Subscription and Donation and it’s relationship to content may be a legal gray area.
Personally I think subscription has higher responsibility and donation has a lower fiducial relationship, as donation can be for all content over time and subscription means all content is relative to payment.
Bernard: I agree that all well educated professionals in whatever discipline have learned to rationalize logically and specialization should not be a criteria for having an opinion after considering a cross section of valid arguments. I know I have had cause to get a little irritated but you have shown a willingness to follow threads in a reasonable way unlike others whom we will not mention, so if I have offended please accept my apology we do get a little carried away sometimes in the heat of discussion or through misunderstanding. I have always held the belief that if someone misunderstands me it is because I did not explain my position correctly.
“But I DO want to see the apparent experts here engage the experts with whom they so vociferously disagree, but who they are too cowardly to actually confront.”
You are just being an idiot pal. The frauds are not coming here to be questioned and grilled for their rubbish. And since they are indeed frauds no-one who disagrees with this racket will get any sort of hearing on their blogs.
So now you are back to this tedious argument from authority.
Look you DON’T understand about scientific processes. You are not a scientist Bernhard. You are a science-worker. You would get in the way no matter what specialty you were pursuing.
Clarification : Donation any of the content over time, content not specified.
Bernard J…said…”and your belief in the nonsense of Duesburg…”
Bernard…you were talking about going to see experts, what’s wrong with the expertise of Duesberg?
“Peter H. Duesberg Ph.D. is a Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1968-1970 he demonstrated that influenza virus has a segmented genome. This would explain its unique ability to form recombinants by reassortment of subgenomic segments. He isolated the first cancer gene through his work on retroviruses in 1970, and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. This, and his subsequent work in the same field, resulted in his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1986. He is also the recipient of a seven-year Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health.
Honours:
1969: Merck Award
1971: California Scientist of the Year Award
1981: First Annual American Medical Centre Oncology Award
1986: Outstanding Investigator Award National Institute of Health
1986: Elected National Academy of Sciences
1986-1987: Fogarty Scholar-in-Residence at the National Institutes of Health Bethesda MD
1988: Wissenschaftspreis, Hannover Germany
1988: Lichtfield Lecturer, Oxford England
1990: C.J. Watson Lecturer, Abbott Northwestern Hospital, Minneapolis MN
1992: Fisher Distinguished Professor, University of North Texas, Denton TX
1992: Shaffer Alumni Lecturer, Tulane University, New Orleans LA
Now…if you had the option of going down to your local lab to ask about a retrovirus, or talking about it to someone like Duesberg, who would you pick?
We have been looking for a cure for AIDS for 25 years and the current paradigm has failed us. Is it not about time we started listening to people like Duesberg? Or do you want to support the paradigm another 25 years while people go on dying?
If you put up two working paradigms against a mainstream one and use the three of them to guide research projects it might be that what comes out of it all is different from all three of them. You still need to get up paradigms in parallel to be able to progress more quickly. Thats why I maintain that Bernhards general attitude is really unhelpful no matter whether challenges to the mainstream are right in every respect.
Bernatd J said “the reason why Peter Duesberg “[w]as been ostracized for claiming HIV could not possibly cause AIDS” was because he was applying nineteenth century, nascent-discipline criteria of disease definition to a comparatively immunologically sophisticated twenty-first century virus”.
I see. So, Koch’s Postulate is too old to identify a virus and the Louis Pasteur Institute, which is the world’s authority on virus isolation and purification is wrong too. We have a new strain of super-virii, like HIV, that don’t obey the basic laws of viral identification.
So tell me, how did they identify HIV? You’re the immunology expert, tell me how HIV infects the immune system. Even in advanced cases of AIDS, immune cells outnumbers HIV cells 800 to 1. How exactly does that work?
Tell me something else, since you’re the expert. How is it that 66% of the people in North America and Europe who acquire AIDS are males, and homosexual? Why is it that another 30-odd percent are IV drug users? How does this super-virus go about distinguishing between males and females, heterosexuals and homosexuals? I have always wanted to know that, now you can tell me.
Life style and immune deficiency. Behaviour perhaps, look at the individual subject before they present, what caused it. Not morality.
A deficiency in something. Me when I open a file I read the data, not what the previous person has said.
Obviously if you are looking for a solution, you may read past failures and their attempts.
Longest survivors have a survival trait, that’s the start point not past debate.
The beginning point will be chemical, why do they present. Not morality what is wrong in the chemistry of everyone with the disease.
A Priori they are different what is the difference. Fear and a chemical, long term fear and vitamin deficency. Do the blood work and the chemical work. Because when all else is removed only one solution remains.
What does long term fear and isolation do to the body.
What is missing? Perhaps.
“Determining what the extent of the warming will be is anything but simple.”
There is not going to BE any warming SJT.
Look. At what point do you people give up on this ridiculous fantasy?
Its just occurred to me that in your own stupid little minds this business is non-falsifiable. Its already been falsified but to you its non-falsifiable.
So what test would you accept as proof that the thesis had been well and truly falsified?
SJT “Determining what the extent of the warming will be is anything but simple.”
So you of all people admit, the science is not ‘settled’. It matters whether the extent is .1 or 6 degrees. It matters to the tune of trillions of dollars that you and your gang are happy to sequester on the offchance.
In the spirit of Graeme Bird (before the site is purged of straight talking) may I just say that you are an idiot. Do you even have any idea what a prize cretin you are? Equivocating and sniping while all the time with your hands in the pockets of your fellow citizens and not in the least remorseful.
HIV and aids are not a scourge in western nations.
What if HIV and Aids are just a part and parcel of the human genome.
What if HIV always existed but deaths were related to other causualities.
What if HIV is inherent in the genome of all.
HIV was only discovered recently.
Bernard J said “I would suggest again that you put your conviction to the test and allow yourself to be injected with the human immunodeficiency virus”.
How would you find the virus to inject it, Bernard? There are two tests for HIV: the Western Blot test and the Elisa test. Neither tests for a virus, rather they test for antibodies. The proteins they are finding are ‘thought’ to come from a virus. Some scientists are speculating that the proteins may be a result of high risk behavior. Is that so outlandish, considering the popular paradigm has been so unsuccessful, and that most North Americans and Europeans who get AIDS are drug users and homosexuals? Would it hurt, to explore that idea?
Why don’t they just test for a virus directly? Do you want to know why? Because they can’t find the damned thing!!! It has never been isolated and never been purefied. The co-founder, Luc Montagnier, at least had the honesty to admit he never isolated or purefied it. In fact, he changed his mind long ago that HIV alone could cause AIDS.
BTW…I did not understand your long list of quotes from me. I have never said that HIV does NOT cause AIDS, I have merely said the proof that it does is not good. There really is absolutely no evidence that connects HIV to AIDS. Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis specifically searched for a paper that would show how it infects the immune system and could not find one. He even asked Montagnier, and he couldn’t direct him to one.
Fact:
HIV and Aids are prevalent in third world countries we test.
Fact:
I have never been tested for HIV or aids.
Fact: we test presentation and not population.
James Haughton said…”I do know why Peter Duesberg is ostracised. He is ostracised for the same reason that people who deny the holocaust are ostracised…”
Holocaust deniers are invariably crackpots, not retroviral experts with citations coming out of their ying-yangs. They are not normally members of the National Academy of Science. Gallo himself apparently refered to Duesberg once as the world’s greatest authority on retroviruses. They were friends at one time and are apparently mending fences these days.
I’m going to let this rest because you are apparently not interested in reading the other side of the story, and I am imposing on Jennifer’s goodwill with this arguement. However, I urge you to hold your nose and check out http://www.virusmyth.com or Duesberg’s own site at http://www.duesberg.com . Duesberg has some remarkably sane answers for perplexing questions. I’m not sold 100% on everything he claims, but I think he’s onto something in general.
With regard to Zen and Doppler shifts, allow your imagination to take you to the edge of the universe. What’s on the other side? Can you visualize that…or is there an end to it? If there is a boundary somewhere, what would it look like beyond it and why is the universe there in the first place? Is there a parallel universe, or are we just one of many?
We humans are stuck with a very limited access to overall intelligence and an insufferable ego that lets us think we know it all. There are undoubtedly processes taking place in the university, or maybe right around us, that we can’t fathom. We can only detect certain frequencies with our organs.
I have no idea why the galaxies are in motion or why the background energy is there. In the minds of some scientists, it makes sense that the motion came from a source, or that a force caused it.
With respect to evolution, I’ll borrow something from Einstein:
“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings”.
If I burn in Hades for that, and there is a creator, I’m going to claim innocence. I was given a mind with intelligence and a means to contact that intelligence ‘sometimes’. It suggests to me that something…some intelligent energy….is operating out there…some harmony.
I think evolution is a limited human theory that misses the bigger picture. There are big holes in it with no evidence to back the evolution of species that are infered to develop from one another. I’m sure they can infer from limited plant or animal mutations, that a form of evolution exists, but on the grand scale, I can’t see it. I certainly can’t grasp the notion that life as we know it now developed from pools of chemicals that just happened to form DNA.
One thing that seriously troubles me is a water-bound creature that breathes through gills, evolving into a creature that can walk on land and breath with lungs. I’m aware of amphibians, but relating that to humans is a long-stretch in my books. I’m sure someone could explain it all but I’d need to see one of the transition creatures.
Where does the intelligence come from? Was it just there? When a human embryo begins to form, in the very early stages, it builds a scaffold, grows cells on it, then removes the scaffold. Pure chance, or what?
The thread was about the blog itself and not the commentors.
but Hey I will quote Hermophragedies the Greek philosoper and originator of the theory of bad body parts, it never survived translation thru the dark ages, except in hidden circle.
ol Hermoghragedies said and I quote,
The Human body is all shit, body and mind, born of earth part and returning to earth part. Forget morality and mortality it’s all shit and all Id.
The only parts that count are free minds, free of shit and nice shielas with good tits and a nice arse.
(The last part might be templar).
Jack you got a bad case of the hard hooch or the bipolar. I’m not hassling you man. But only a small part of it is coming together. Onward good brother.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If these guys cannot give us falsifiability criteria, when I would say that all but luke-warming is already falsified… then they will have to admit pseudo-science.
I like Popper as a fellow. I don’t like his philosophy of science.
I think like most philosophers he gets a good idea and takes it too far.
But his falsifiability criteria is a beautiful thing. THIS side of things surely we can agree on. The believers must be prevailed upon to provide their own falsifiability criteria.
We will see that they have created such a universe in their own little minds that it CANNOT be falsified. Their wood-fire could be constantly doused by hailstones and there would be no falsification of their theory.
Thirsty and frost-bitten zombies could be crawling up their driveway only to be killed off by avalanches, hungry polar bears, and albino-wolverine scavengers…… and they would still mutter under their breath “bloody global warming.”
Its already been falsified and it should have died like last christmas. So its not up to us to bring forth the falsifiability criteria.
But we should prevail upon them to supply it to us.
Barry, at 30 August, 2008 03:33pm.
I totally agree that we can all get a bit riled at times, and each of us for probably both good and for not-so-good reasons!
That said, you have never had any reason to apologise to me. I appreciate the offer though, and I tip my hat to you, and I do hope that in my turn I have never carelessly misunderstoond your positions.
Cheers.
Bird.
There is no death to belief only to believers.
To believe is to sacrifice reason, to enter the forum of ideas and question is to sacrifice belief.
That is the only surrender asked in science, the one and only sacrifice, we seek truth not accept it, we know it our present truth does not exist and is only subject to one law, our perception as it evolves, dynamics, we will never find truths only approximations of existence and reality.
because we are not God. The one true belief, man has is, must accept his/her limitations (being political correct and all)
When people claim absolute knowledge without test, people die and lots of them.
The AGW camp ignore the universe as irrelevant to their assumption.
A very precarious logical, philosophic and even scientitic position.
Man does indeed shit in his own earth nest but to what degree without terrorist headline, that is a question.
Gordon Robertosn.
“We have been looking for a cure for AIDS for 25 years and the current paradigm has failed us. Is it not about time we started listening to people like Duesberg? Or do you want to support the paradigm another 25 years while people go on dying?”
Twenty two years ago I had a long conversation with a colleague that went into the small hours of the morning, dissecting the unique nature of HIV immunology. Back then it was patently obvious that a ‘cure’ was not going to be achieved in the traditional fashion, specifically because of the CD4 +ve lymphocyte targets that are one of the primary host cells for the virus. Anyone with half a clue about how vaccines work, and what profoundly important functions CD4 lymphocytes have, would immediately understand the paradox that makes the concept of an HIV vaccine practically unworkable.
The current paradigm has NOT failed us. The magnitude of the task of trying to get around the most conniving of viruses was apparent from the start, and most of the vaccine beatings-up come from the media or from over-enthusiastic biotech executives who have probably only stepped into a laboratory to cut a ribbon.
Personally, I think that prevention is a much better approach than cure, as we do yet not have mature technologies that could effect any such cure. Make no mistake, immunologists the world over know how difficult the task is, and it was optimism and crossed-fingers more than anything else that lay behind the initial naïve attempts at orthodox vaccination.
Flogging wingnut ideas such as the ones that you are so enamoured of is no help to restricting the passage of HIV between people, and is in fact a dangerous and ignorant step to ensuring that more people than need be are infected.
HIV is tested for in the same manner as any other virus with a similar aetiology. Following your logic there are many viruses that we have names for that don’t exist! For heaven’s sake, even common viruses are diagnosed using the same technologies as are used for detecting HIV, and no-one is concerned that there will be some weird misdiagnosis in these cases.
ELISAs and western blots are two tests that DO test for the virus. ELISAs are of at least two types: one that captures and demonstrates the presence of HIV +ve antibodies in the blood of an infected person, and the other captures and titres the virus during the period when it is shed into the blood of infected people. I am well familiar with the patterns of reactivity in both ELISAs and in blots, and with the differences that occur at different stages of infection and in false positives.
I have operated flow cytometers (both Coulter and BD) for over 5 years in the analysis of human leucocyte profiles. I was head-hunted by one of the premier immunology laboratories in Australia for my expertise with these instruments, and I can tell you quite categorically that the scatter signatures and CD profiles of HIV infected patients are distinctive almost to the point of reliable diagnosis by themselves, although no NATA accredited lab would do this when there is a suite of additional tests that are routinely used.
And inconveniently for Kary Mullis, his beloved PCR is quite able to amplify the HIV genome.
There are many electron micrographs of positively identified human immunodeficiency viruses, and I suggest you spend some time flicking through some of the journals in your local university or hospital medical library to acquaint yourself with these. You could try Google, but I am sure that you don’t believe anything that you read on the web…
“I have never said that HIV does NOT cause AIDS, I have merely said the proof that it does is not good.”
Posted by: Gordon Robertson at August 30, 2008 06:34 PM
Um, this is at odds with:
“The shortest answer I can give you is there’s no proof whatsoever that HIV causes AIDS”
And you can get cute with semantics Gordon, but these barely a virion’s width of difference between what you ‘never said’ and what you have repeatedly said.
“How would you find the virus to inject it, Bernard? … Why don’t they just test for a virus directly? Do you want to know why? Because they can’t find the damned thing!!!
Gordon, I have one friend who has the virus in his blood, slowly but surely munching its way through his T helper lymphocytes. I have another friend who spends his professional life trying to find the tiniest chink in the cunning strategy the virus uses to ensure its almost impossible removal from the body, and he works with the virus every day in his laboratory.
Finding the damned thing is a cinch.
Look, get it through your apparently very thick skull: HIV is the proximal cause of the classically recognised acquired immune deficiency syndrome. I am not about to waste the hours and hours it would require me as a slow typer to tutor you in every aspect of the workings of the immune system, as it is probably one of the most complex natural systems in existence. I will repeat my previous advice though, which would achieve the same thing – go to your nearest local hospital or university immunology laboratory and speak with a senior member of staff. You can even ask specifically for enlightenment on these particular relevant points:
What is a lymphocyte?
What is a monocyte/macrophage?
What is a helper lymphocyte?
What is a cytotoxic lymphocyte?
What is a B lymphocyte?
What is a memory cell?
What is the thymus gland for?
What are lymph nodes for?
What is a receptor?
What is a cytokine?
What is an antibody, and what is an antigen? And a trick question, what is an immunoglobulin?
What is CD4, and how does mediate the natural functions on the cells that express it?
What is CCR5, and how does it mediate the natural functions of the cells that express it?
What are the HLA receptors for?
What is RNA?
What is DNA?
What is reverse transcriptase?
How are viruses ‘built’, and how to infected cells signal their infection to the immune system?
What is an immunogen? And another trick question, what is a vaccine?
What are retrovirals, and what mediates their significant side-effects?
What is a pathological cofactor?
What is a genetic allele, and how do they affect the function of expressed gene products?
What is the required ‘dose’ for HIV infection?
What are the most efficient modes of HIV tramsission?
What is PCP? Kaposy’s? CMV? Herpes zoster? TB?
Why do these afflict later-stage HIV patients?
I could go on and on, but this would give you a basic foundation to start with. Have your sought-out professional draw each of these items on an A0 piece of paper, and watch the hundreds of arrows blossom that connect the relationships between them.
Ask your professional to explain why an HIV vaccine is a paradoxical concept, and then ask if HIV causes AIDS. If you still do not accept the learning that you have received, then YOU tell the professional why he or she is wrong, and be prepared to prove it.
If you get off your backside and do your OWN BLOODY HOMEWORK and talk – yes, TALK – to someone who has a clue, you will be able to answer your own questions and stop wondering as you have these long years. YOU get off your bum and educate YOURSELF, and stop being so bloody irresponsible in your promulgation of dangerous crap.
One final thing… You’re quite willing to believe that thousands and thousands of highly trained and technologically productive scientists have the climate paradigm wrong, and yet you can’t accept that two or three otherwise excellent biomedical scientists have cocked up on HIV in the face of tens of thousands of their medical colleagues. How does this work? And if these tens of thousands of biomedical scientists are so bloody wrong, why would you bother going to a doctor for any of the thousands of other treatments and cures these very same scientists have worked hard to benefit you with?
This is not about alternative paradigms, Gordon. It is about evidence that is as substantiated as any that we use to our benefit today. There may be many gaps filled in over the coming years, but the basic structure is sound.
Educate yourself.
But Bernard, I want proof.
See, this is easy, I could keep it up forever.
Bernie, et al.,
For what it is worth, I agree with Bernard J. that HIV is the #1 killer worldwide among infectious diseases ahead of resurgent TB and Malaria.
I am reasonably close to the field research genotyping microbes of all sorts. MLVA studies using tandem repeats at a number of loci are used in epidiemiology to show spontaneous mutation of a microbe in ongoing, chronic, infection of an individual undergoing treatment.
Most bacterial agents are stable for months but even here spontaneous MRSA has health issue despite vigilance.
HIV stability never exceeds a week. A different agent is infecting the indivdual, days apart.
Now, develop a vaccine for that! The influenza virus, developed a year ahead, is generally only helpful against a fraction of genotypes in circulation a year later.
I am not familiar with Duesberg, but will keep my eye open for him now.
“But Bernard, I want proof.
See, this is easy, I could keep it up forever.”
But its mindless to ask for proof. You cannot get proof all in one hit since proof is convergent verification via convergent evidence and surviving all competing paradigms.
I’ve never once put things as you are. I’ve always asked only for evidence. Its EVIDENCE that you guys haven’t been able to come up with regards to non-neglgible CO2-warming. Evidence SJT. You got to crawl before you can fly.
I noticed Bernard J referred to NATA, now that is a good thing we’ve got going that others havent!
Gary: I was working at JCSMR (ANU) about the time their teams got started on the HIV virus. Knowledge is a step by step thing as Bernard says.
A step by step thing? A series of revolutions. Progressing one funeral at a time as Phillip Adams likes to say in a bit of an exaggeration.. Some revolutions going backwards. Like the Keynesian revolution.
“But its mindless to ask for proof. You cannot get proof all in one hit since proof is convergent verification via convergent evidence and surviving all competing paradigms.”
But that’s exactly what you and Jennifer are demanding. The IPCC report is the result of a long chain of research.
While writing a report for federal authorities to put before the courts on bits of confiscated radio gear I was thinking at the time a judge would help make it what they wanted in the end if I only stated the obvious. It was mostly off the shelf ham stuff.
From experience “evidence” can be what you want to make it but people outside the loop won’t know who to trust and that’s why they can become frantic.
“But that’s exactly what you and Jennifer are demanding. The IPCC report is the result of a long chain of research.”
No no no. I’m just after EVIDENCE. Evidence that the armchair Arrenhius hypothesis, pans out to a potentially damaging degree, in the real world.
You had certain facts about radiative physics that you could reproduce in the lab. Then you have the armchair one-step induction that it could mean that the hydro-carbon industry would warm up the world.
Obviously evidence already in the hypothesis is disallowed for evidence to test the hypothesis.
Its the total lack of evidence that is the thing.
You craven mainstream suckartists practice inductive leaps so very seldom you don’t realise that they usually fail. Look I make ten inductive leaps before breakfast. But the deal is that most of the new ones are going to fail. Thats the nature of the beast and its back to the drawing board.
Unlike Disney’s Austrian Duck none of you hard-leftists or reasearch-grant-whores ever go back to the drawing board.
Bear in mind the Arrenhius and Callendar would think you people were prize lunatics. They were hopeful that the fossil fuels would ward off the white wall of death. As am I to some extent. Though the evidence is not there.
“From experience “evidence” can be what you want to make it but people outside the loop won’t know who to trust and that’s why they can become frantic.”
But it isn’t. Properly considered what we are after is…… EVIDENCE. And it cannot be what you make of it since truth comes out of no-ones brain but is out there to be discovered.
So you start with evidence. And then you look for convergent evidence.
Its the same in court. The judge cannot possibly know what really went on. If the prosecuter lays down a whole set of lies in the form of a humdrum paradigm that looks like the same-old same-old, and the defendant tells the extraordinary set of circumstances that is his own view of the truth…. then its likely that the dumb-leftist judge is going for the one paradigm that is the lie and he will be deaf to the other guys story.
Even here we have the same proper method if you had some freak genius with a conscience as judge. You have competing paradigms in parallel. And you have to take them all seriously and rank and rerank them in accordance with convergent evidence.
But all the professions lean to the left. And if you get this dumb-leftist taxeating judge ex-lawyer judging over you the humdrum lies ought to win every time.
“The judge cannot possibly know what really went on” about sums it up hey
“Evidence” will land heavily on Graeme’s head one day and hopefully create a reconstruction between his ears.
ONE DAY???
If this wasn’t blatant science fraud it would be right there RIGHT THERE on your browser. Right there on your browser gavin. All this effort to shake you guys down for evidence or to send you back to the drawing board…… The scientist who will not go back to the drawing board when he’s proved wrong is NO SCEINTIST. Never could be. He’s a science fraud, a research-grant-whore, a science worker. Call him what you want. I use other names on my site. But he is no scientist.
Now hand the evidence over NOW.
Go!!!!!
Notice I’ve never asked for PROOF. Only evidence. And I don’t think thats too much to ask.
Jennifer,
as a Global Warming Skeptic, I enjoying reading your blog on a daily basis, and look forward to your continued dissemination of topics of environmental interest.
“No no no. I’m just after EVIDENCE. Evidence that the armchair Arrenhius hypothesis, pans out to a potentially damaging degree, in the real world.
You had certain facts about radiative physics that you could reproduce in the lab. Then you have the armchair one-step induction that it could mean that the hydro-carbon industry would warm up the world.”
You need to add a few things about ideal gas laws, incompressible liquids, conservation of momentum and so on to your radiative physics, but yeah. You then need to say when I plug my armchair model into (for instance) weather prediction for hurricane tracks, I can predict their landfall pretty well, so we know it has some skill outside climate modeling. (google fvGCM to see this applied)
Then you have the world behaving in a way largely consistent with the armchair reasoning; and in many places where the world is inconsistent, it’s behaving in a way which shows the armchair reasoning has some conservative (anti-warming) bias.
What more do you want?
Sorry for the length of this and the severely off-topic content. I want to demonstrate once and for all that Bernard J. and the other AGWers haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.
Bernard J said “ELISAs and western blots are two tests that DO test for the virus. ELISAs are of at least two types: one that captures and demonstrates the presence of HIV +ve antibodies in the blood of an infected person, and the other captures and titres the virus during the period when it is shed into the blood of infected people”.
Your inability to think baffles me. How did you ever make it in the field of immunology? Or are you just passing yourself off as an immunologist?
You claim that Elisa’s and western blots test for a virus and in the same breath you claim they test for antibodies. Which is it, a virus or an antibody?
“From Wikipedia….Antibodies (also known as immunoglobulins[1], abbreviated Ig) are gamma globulin proteins that are found in blood or other bodily fluids of vertebrates, and are used by the immune system to identify and neutralize foreign objects, such as bacteria and viruses”.
Antibodies are ‘proteins’ used to identify and neutralize foreign objects such as bacteria and viruses. Antibodies are NOT viruses. It’s no wonder you don’t have a clue what’s going on with HIV/AIDS and CO2/warming.
Bernard…you didn’t tell anyone that the serum for the HIV Elisa test has to be diluted 400 times, otherwise every human would test positive for HIV. You don’t know the first thing about HIV, so here’s an excellent link from an Aussie researcher:
http://www.theperthgroup.com/INTERVIEWS/cjepe.html
Now don’t be denigrating Aussie researchers…you know whay happened the last time the medical community at large laughed at the Aussie who claimed stomach ulcers were caused by heliobacter pylori. Or haven’t you heard that one yet?
From the link:
http://www.theperthgroup.com/INTERVIEWS/cjepe.html
Quoting freely from the link:
A virus is microscopic particle that reproduces itself inside a cell. It’s a few proteins strung around a piece of RNA or DNA but without the machinery needed to replicate. Whereas a cell is a factory, a virus is a blueprint that must hijack a factory.
The protective envelope of the viral particle fuses with the cell membrane and then the particle passes inside. Once inside, using the cellular metabolic machinery, the virus particle is disassembled. Then, using the same machinery, separate pieces of new virus are synthesised. Finally, all the viral components are put together and out come the new virus particles.
The virus either destroys the cell or in the case of retroviruses the virus particles have a more orderly exit by budding out of the cell membrane. But that’s not what happens with HIV. Unlike retroviruses, HIV is said to destroy the cells.
BTW…Duesberg maintains the same thing…retroviruses do not damage cells, so why does HIV do it?
To prove the existence of a virus you need to do three things. First culture cells and find a particle you think might be a virus. Obviously, at the very least, that particle should look like a virus. Second, you have to devise a method to get that particle on its own so you can take it to pieces and analyse precisely what makes it up. Then you need to prove the particle can make faithful copies of itself. In other words, that it can replicate.
Not all particles that look like viruses are viruses. You have to prove that whatever particle you nominate can actually make copies of itself. No replication, no virus. I’m sorry but this is an extremely important point. No one, especially virologists, can afford to ignore it.
Bernard…there goes your theory about photos of HIV. No one has ever produced a photo other than a murky rendition of cell matter.
You need an electron microscope to look for viruses. That’s how the size and shape of retroviral particles are known. They’re almost round and they have an outer envelope covered with knobs and an inner core consisting of some proteins and RNA.
The technology of isolating a virus is complicated but the concept is extremely simple. You prepare a test tube containing a solution of sucrose, ordinary table sugar. But it’s made so the solution is light at the top but gradually becomes heavier, or more dense, towards the bottom. Meanwhile you grow whatever cells you think may contain your retrovirus and if you’re right retroviral particles will be released from the cells and pass into the culture fluids. When you think everything is ready you decant a specimen of culture fluids and gently place a drop on top of the sugar solution. Then you spin the test-tube at extremely high speeds. This generates tremendous forces and particles present in that drop of fluid are forced through the sugar solution until they reach a point where their buoyancy prevents them penetrating any further. In other words, they drift down the density gradient until they reach a spot where their own density is the same as that region of the sugar solution. When they get there they stop, all together, or to use virological jargon, that’s where they band. That band can then be selectively extracted and photographed with an electron microscope. In the sucrose solutions they band at a point where the density is 1.16 gm/ml.
Now for how the HIV/AIDS hypothesis got going the wrong way:
Montagnier and Gallo did use density gradient banding but for some unknown reason they did not publish any EMs of the material at 1.16 gm/ml which they and everyone afterwards call “pure HIV”.
Doh!! I wonder why??
This is quite puzzling because in 1973 the Pasteur Institute hosted a meeting attended by scientists some of whom are now amongst the leading HIV experts. At that meeting the method of retroviral isolation was thoroughly discussed and photographing the 1.16 band of the density gradient was considered absolutely essential.
Oops!! Guess they forgot. Then again, that’s old viral identification technology, according to Bernard.
But Montagnier and Gallo did publish photographs of virus particles…..right?? No. Montagnier and Gallo published electron micrographs of a few particles which they claimed are a retrovirus and are HIV. But photographs don’t prove particles are a virus and the existence of HIV was not proven using the method presented at the 1973 meeting.
So before AIDS came along there was a well tried method for proving the existence of a retrovirus but Montagnier and Gallo did not follow this method. They used some of the techniques but they did not undertake every step including proving what particles, if any, are in the 1.16 gm/ml band of the density gradient, the density that defines retroviral particles.
But what about their pictures? Montagnier’s and Gallo’s electron micrographs and every other electron microscope picture published up until March this year are of unpurified cell cultures. Not the gradient. Before March this year, no one had ever published a picture of a density gradient.
Can the 1.16 band contain material other than retroviral particles? Yes. That’s another reason why you need a photograph. To see everything that’s going on. It was known long before the AIDS era that retroviral-like particles aren’t the only material that may find their way into this part of the density gradient. Tiny cellular pieces, some recognisable as internal structures of cells, or just cellular debris, can band at 1.16 gm/ml. And some of this material can enclose nucleic acids and take on the appearances of retrovirus particles.
Let’s talk about the pictures of the density gradient published this year. What do we see there? Two groups, one Franco/German and one from the US National Cancer Institute, published pictures of density gradients. In the Franco/German study the pictures are from the 1.16 gm/ml band. It is impossible to tell from which density the pictures in the American study are taken but let’s assume it’s the correct 1.16 density for retroviral particles.
I wouldn’t bet on it sweetie…not with billions at stake.
The first thing to say is that the authors of these studies concede that their pictures reveal the vast majority of the material in the density gradient is cellular. The authors describe all this material as “non-viral”, or as “mock” virus or “microvesicles”.
What’s the difference between these particles and a real retroviral particle? Gallo and all other retrovirologists, as well as Hans Gelderblom who has done most of the electron microscopy studies of HIV, agree that retrovirus particles are almost spherical in shape, have a diameter of 100-120 nanometres and are covered with knobs.
The particles the two groups claim are HIV are not spherical, no diameter is less than 120nM, in fact many of them have major diameters exceeding twice that permitted for a retrovirus. And none of them appear to have knobs.
Details, details…get outta here, we have money to make and egos to stroke. Don’t bug us with details.
Surely size can’t be that critical? (let’s keep it clean…this is a family show) Many things in Biology have a range of sizes. What about humans? There’s plenty of humans twice the size of other humans. They’re all still humans. What’s true for humans is not true for retroviruses. For a start, retroviruses don’t have to grow up. They’re born adults. So the correct comparison is between adult humans. They’re aren’t too many twelve foot humans. In fact, the tallest human ever recorded was eight feet eleven inches. But there’s more than size involved here.
If we assume both the Franco/German and US groups sought particles at the correct retroviral density then the particles found by both groups must have the same density, 1.16 gm/ml. If you measure the major and minor diameters of the particles in the EMs they claim are HIV and take the average diameters and for argument’s sake, assume they’re all spherical, then the Franco/German particles are 1.14 times larger than genuine retroviral particles and the US particles are 1.96 times larger.
A minor detail my dear, the bigger the better.
Now, to translate this into volumes, we have to cube the ratios of the diameters. So, if we take 120nM as the upper limit for the diameter of a retroviral particle and do the sums, the Franco/German particles have 50% more volume than a retroviral particle and the US particles have 750% more volume. And the US particles are five times more voluminous than the Franco/German.
Which tells us what? It tells us that the Franco/German and US particles must contain 50% or 750% more mass than genuine retroviral particles.
Any genuine retroviral particle contains a fixed amount of RNA and protein. No more and no less. If that’s the case then these particles are made up of much more material than a genuine retrovirus. Which means that if these different sized particles are truly HIV then HIV cannot be a retrovirus.
Uh, oh…?? Why don’t they just use the Elisa test…Bernard says it tests for HIV directly?
The only other explanation is that the electron micrographs are not from the 1.16 gm/ml band. If that’s the case then we have no choice but to redefine retroviruses and more importantly, not to consider the 1.16 band as HIV. But if we do that then all the research done on HIV using this band cannot be used because this is what everyone uses as purified HIV.
You mentioned the particles lacked knobs. How serious a deficiency is that? All the AIDS experts agree that the knobs are absolutely essential for the HIV particle to lock on to a cell. As the first step in infecting that cell. So, no locking on, no infection. The experts all claim that the knobs contain a protein called gp120 which is the hook in the knobs that grabs hold of the surface of the cell it’s about to infect. If HIV particles do not have knobs how is HIV able to replicate?
That sounds like a serious problem to me. How do the experts respond? They avoid it.
Gee…where have I heard that before?
And the knobs problem is not something new. The German group drew attention to it in the late 1980s and again in 1992. As soon as an HIV particle is released from a cell all the knobs disappear. This single fact has so many ramifications. For example, three quarters of all haemophiliacs tested are HIV antibody positive. And the claim is that haemophiliacs acquired these as a result of becoming HIV infected from infusions of contaminated factor VIII which they need to treat their clotting deficiency. The problem is that factor VIII is made from plasma. That’s blood with all the cells removed which means if there are any HIV particles present in factor VIII they must be floating free in solution. But if cell free HIV has no knobs those HIVs have no way of getting into fresh cells to infect them.
A minor problem for an alarmist. Gee…I wonder if something else has been mistaken for a virus before…especially by the co-founder of HIV, Robert Gallo?
Tell us about Gallo’s experiments. Why was he interested in AIDS anyway? By 1984 Gallo had already spent more than a decade researching retroviruses and cancer. He was one of the many virologists caught up in President Nixon’s decade of war against cancer. In the mid 1970s Gallo claimed to have discovered the first human retrovirus in patients with leukaemia. He claimed his data proved the existence of a retrovirus which he called HL23V. Now, just like he would later do for HIV, Gallo used antibody reactions to “prove” which proteins in the cultures were viral proteins. And not long afterwards others claimed to have found the same antibodies in many people who did not have leukaemia. However, a few years after that these same antibodies were shown to occur naturally and be directed against many substances that had nothing to do with retroviruses. Then it was realised that HL23V was a big mistake. There was no HL23V retrovirus. So the Gallo data turned out to be an embarrassment and HL23V is now extinct. What’s interesting for us though is that the evidence used to claim proof of the existence of HL23V is the same kind of evidence said to prove the existence of HIV. In fact the evidence for HL23V was better than HIV.
Oh!! Come on…nobody is stupid enough to make a mistake identifying a virus then use the same methodology to infer that HIV causes AIDS? And nobody would be stupid enough to fall for that after the guy did it once…would they??
Hey, Bernard, did you notice the reference in there to antibodies being ‘thought’ to come from a virus but later being found to occur naturally, and not being from the viral cause predicted. That couldn’t happen twice, could it?
Not even Gallo talks about HL23V anymore. But in 1980 he said he’d discovered another retrovirus.
Oh, no…not another retrovirus.
It was yet more of the same kind of data from leukaemia patients and this time he called it HTLV-I and claimed it caused a particular rare form of leukaemia which Gallo now calls adult T4 cell leukaemia, ATL. In fact, there are some very interesting parallels and paradoxes between HIV and HTLV-I.
Let me repeat, there is no question of isolation. Gallo did not isolate a virus. There were no electron microscope pictures of a banded specimen that one would expect to show nothing but retroviral particles. How could there be? There were no EMs at all of a banded specimen. Just pictures of cells with a dozen or so particles lying nearby but no extraction and analysis and proof that these particles could replicate into identical particles. But what we must ask is whether Gallo had the proof to say he had even detected a retrovirus. In our view he did not. And it’s vitally important at this point to state that finding particles and reverse transcriptase is not proof that a retrovirus is present.
Think about what’s happened so far. There’s an old, logical, reliable, commonsense method of proving the existence of a retrovirus. It’s based on nothing more than the definition of a retrovirus as a particle having a particular size, shape, appearance and constituents and the ability to replicate. But for some unknown reason this method has been abandoned in the HIV era. Don’t ask me why but it has. In its place we have a disparate collection of data including particles not photographed in density gradients and some evidence for reverse transcription either in the culture or the material which bands at 1.16 gm/ml. Neither of these are proof that a retrovirus exists in the cultures. Gallo says so himself.
Just for you Bernard: “And one must not confuse origins with composition. For sure you can’t prove the origin of a protein by an antibody reaction. Why should a reaction tell you that a protein comes from a particle any more than it comes from Mars? But you can’t prove identity either. That’s because antibodies do not work backwards”.
In his 1984 Science papers Gallo…said HIV was the probable cause of AIDS. But even this conclusion is questionable. Even if Gallo’s evidence was incontrovertible proof he had isolated a retrovirus he only managed to isolate it from 26 out of 72 AIDS patients. That’s only 36 percent. And only 88% of 49 AIDS patients had antibodies. And that was mostly using ELISA, the antibody test considered the least specific. No one diagnoses HIV infection on a single ELISA. And if the virus was present in only 36% of patients why did 88% have antibodies? I mean there were more patients with antibodies without virus than there were patients with virus? And there was not even a hint of proof that HIV was killing T4 cells or that having low T4 cells could cause all the diseases diagnosed as AIDS.
Minor details my dear…we have to sell HIV tests.
So the HIV antibody test is really the same procedure that was used to prove the existence of HIV in cultures from AIDS patients in 1984? Yes. And also by the French in 1983. And by Gallo and his colleagues to prove the existence of HL23V in the mid seventies. Our group find it intriguing that any scientist could regard antibodies reacting with proteins as proof of viral isolation. Is an antibody joined to a protein a virus? What would you expect to see under the electron microscope? A particle with a core and knobs?
Then is it fair to say that the HIV antibody tests are useless? No, they’re not useless. There is no doubt being in a risk group and having these antibodies is not a good thing. Because empirically such people are more likely to develop the illnesses we classify as AIDS. In fact, there is evidence published in the Lancet that a positive test also predicts increased mortality from diseases which are not classified as AIDS. But what the tests don’t do, or at least there is no proof that they do, is prove HIV infection. Or even less that HIV infection is the reason people develop AIDS. You may not appreciate that the only evidence HIV causes AIDS is these tests. If the tests are unproven for HIV infection then there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS.
I’ve taken enough space here… go read the rest at the link. It’s mighty revealing.
“hydro-carbon industry”
That’s a new one – so warming the earth is implied to be the fault of the H-C industry?
PSC – radiative physics tells me that radiating gases lose energy faster than non radiating ones, hence such gases will have a cooling effect.
But that’s another armchair induction.
Jennifer…I did not realize my article would take up so much space. Please delete it if it causes problems. Let Bernard read it first, though, he needs the education.
Bernard J…forgot to state in my bombastic reply that an Elisa test is a biochemical technique used mainly in immunology to detect the presence of an antibody or an antigen in a sample. You claimed it’s used to test for the virus directly.
“You claim that Elisa’s and western blots test for a virus and in the same breath you claim they test for antibodies. Which is it, a virus or an antibody?”
He said there are two tests. One tests directly for the virus, the other tests for the virus by detecting the anti-bodies. The only reason the anti-bodies are there is because the virus is there.
Robertson.
You are showing yourself to be an uneducated buffoon.
“You claim that Elisa’s and western blots test for a virus and in the same breath you claim they test for antibodies. Which is it, a virus or an antibody?”
There’s not point running to a wiki to try to cop a 5 second education for yourself, because I know exactly what the difference between a virus and an antibody is, and if you recall I suggested that you seek expert assistance in having this and many other fundamental definitions explained to you.
And as I also said, if you read carefully, ELISAa are very much capable of detecting antibodies specific to an immunogen, as well as detecting the proteins of the immunogen itself. Again, take a pencil and some paper and go seek professional help in having this explained to you, with pretty pictures that will lift the whopping great scales from you eyes.
There is no duplicity in the dilution of serum in an HIV test, just as there is no duplicity in the dilution of serum or plasma in the test of almost every single pathology test routinely used. There are several reason for this, not the least of which is that in order to react properly with the test reagents, which are costly and thus used at low concentrations, the substances being tested for must be at similar concentrations.
There is also the issue of non-specific high-concentration binding, which is well recognised and avoided in (again) just about all serological tests, and the dilution step is absolutely legitimate.
And then there is the fact that undiluted samples would react so quickly as to cause excessive conversion of the detecting substrate, and in titrimetric testing this would render the evaluation of titres next to impossible.
Gordon, frantic flicking through HIV denialist literature notwithstanding, you know not about what you speak.
Your clumsy knee-jerk paraphrasing of density gradient cenbtrifugation is embarrassing, and irrelevant. I’ve performed thousands of density gradient separations in my time, and not just on sucrose gradients, but on chloride gradients, glycerol gradients and proprietary solutions such as Ficoll, Percoll. There a many others, and a variety of products have been used to purify HIV.
Yes, the virus has been purified many many times by this procedure, and you only need to check Current Contents or Medline to confirm that this is so. It even works on Google – my first two of thousands of returns:
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/74/15/6734
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18166180
http://www.axis-shield-density-gradient-media.com/Virus%20leaflet.pdf
“…in 1973 the Pasteur Institute hosted a meeting attended by scientists some of whom are now amongst the leading HIV experts. At that meeting the method of retroviral isolation was thoroughly discussed and photographing the 1.16 band of the density gradient was considered absolutely essential.”
Gordon, things have moved on from the 70s, and not every of the many retroviruses discovered since then have the same isopycnic value. You are placing too much faith in unreliable Denialist clap-trap. Read the first of the references above.
The same basic searching will quickly prove to you that the virus has been ‘isolated’. Again my first two hits:
J Med Virol. 1988 Sep;26(1):23-32.Links
Efficient isolation of HIV from plasma during different stages of HIV infection.
Ehrnst A, Sönnerborg A, Bergdahl S, Strannegård O.
Central Microbiological Laboratory, Stockholm County Council, Sweden.
Attempts to isolate human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from blood plasma using inoculation of pellets from ultracentrifuged samples into cultures of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) resulted in a high overall recovery rate (75%) of the virus from 76 patients in various stages of HIV infection. The recovery rate was dependent on the stage of infection; in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) it was 100%, in AIDS-related complex (ARC) 86%, in persistent generalized lymphadenopathy (PGL) 64%, and in asymptomatic patients 54%. The HIV isolation rates compared favorably with those obtained after cocultivation of patient and target PBMC (overall recovery rate 67%). HIV was isolated from plasma but not from PBMC in 8 cases, whereas the reverse was true in 3 of 71 simultaneously tested cases. Isolation from plasma was found to be superior to detection of serum p24 antigen for the demonstration of HIV (positivity rates 75% and 30%, respectively). The time to appearance of p24 antigen in cultures inoculated with HIV-containing plasma samples was inversely related to the presence of detectable p24 antigen in serum. There was a significantly shorter time to culture positivity of plasma samples from AIDS and ARC patients than from PGL and asymptomatic patients. These results suggested that there is a progressive increase in the concentrations of infectious HIV in plasma from the asymptomatic to the AIDS stage. HIV isolation from plasma samples is a reliable means of demonstrating HIV viremia and has obvious advantages over the more commonly used cocultivation procedures. The frequent occurrence of cell-free, infectious HIV in plasma suggests that the majority of HIV-infected patients have a relative lack of functional neutralizing antibodies against the virus, at least during the late stages of disease.
Isolation and HIV-1 Infection of Primary Human Microglia From Fetal and Adult Tissue
By: Kathleen Borgmann2, Howard E. Gendelman3, Anuja Ghorpade4
Abstract
Glial inflammation, principally involving astrocytes and microglia, underlies the pathogenesis of a broad range of neurodegenerative disorders, including, most notably, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV-1)-associated dementia. Indeed, for the latter, disease mechanisms are attributed to viral infection and activation of microglia and perivascular macrophages and their resultant neurotoxic activities. Although monocyte-derived macrophages have served as models for microglia, they are limited both qualitatively and quantitatively in their immune responses and susceptibility to viral infection. Thus, the acquisition of primary human microglial cells is critical for laboratory studies of human neurological disease. In this chapter, we provide detailed methods of isolation, cultivation, characterization, HIV-1 infection, and experimental applications of primary human fetal and adult microglial cells, with particular emphasis on studies of HIV-1 neuropathogenesis.
Book Title: Human Retrovirus Protocols: Virology and Molecular Biology
Series: Methods in Molecular Biology | Volume: 304 | Pub. Date: May-17-2005 | Page Range: 49-70
Your waffle about size and shape shows ignorance of the very common vexation of experimental artefact, amongst many other things, and a stupendous ignorance of similar vagaries in other virological histories that have never been disputed. Again, get thee to an immunological researchery.
“You mentioned the particles lacked knobs.”
Um, I did no such thing. Get a grip Gordon, you’re making a bigger fool of yourself than even I could have imagined.
If you are really floundering in your efforts to understand the reality of HIV, try:
http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/focuson/hiv/resources/
You can’t find photomicrographs? Well, if you can’t get your sorry arse to a medical library, try:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HIV-1_Transmission_electron_micrograph_AIDS02bbb_lores.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:HIV-budding-Wide.jpg
http://www.phototakeusa.com/index.asp?tag=lbmail&promo=1&pb=STD&co=PHOTOT05
http://www.ssi.dk/sw13990.asp
http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2007/10/071020103343-large.jpg
http://www.aidsmeds.com/articles/hiv_life_cycle_9587.shtml
Gordon, your posts get sillier and sillier the more you write, and are very much reflecting the typical nonscience that infects the Denialist garbage that circulates on the web. It’s time for you to stop regurgitating the unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that you seem to love so much. I simply don’t have the time to set you straight on most of the nonsense that you repeat, and I can only, forlornly, repeat yet again that you need to go to someone who has immunological expertise and spend an afternoon getting some proper education.
Seriously, if one hundredth of the bollocks that you promote were true there would be an absolute crisis in infectious disease management, and quite frankly most of the viruses known to humanity would be Denialisted out of existence.
You simply have no clue.
“I want to demonstrate once and for all that Bernard J. and the other AGWers haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about.”
That’s right Gordon, you, Graeme Bird, Ian Mott and the others are all Real Experts who have done years of research from your armchairs. Those other experts don’t know what they are talking about. 99% of scientists, doctors, professionals in their field don’t know what they are talking about. Thank goodness for you people to set the rest of us plebs straight and do the real work. Please don’t change this blog Jennifer. It is such a valid contributor to the debates on climate change, water resources, polar bears, hunting, polar ice extent, what wilderness really is…..we need a place for all these Real Exerts to come and educate the uneducated and keep those other experts at bay. We need this blog to keep the myths alive, the conspiracies breathing and the poor science at the forefront for the delusional devoted. Take pity on the Gordons of this world and don’t change a thing.
Bernard J…you are without a doubt the biggest fool I have encountered in a blog, or elsewhere on the net. You post half a dozen links of the supposed HIV virus and each one looks different. Not one has a size bar with them to show the size of the virus, yet we are supposed to accept that unscientific garbage as proof of a virus.
This is exactly what you said with respect to Elisa: “ELISAs and western blots are two tests that DO test for the virus”. You even emphasized ‘DO’. Then you write several paragraphs of nonsense trying to defend your stupid mistake.
If you had the basic ability to understand what was said in the link provided, you’d see that there is no guarantee whatsover that the antibodies tested for have anything to do with a virus. The lady said, the source could come from Mars, for all we know.
You can’t even follow the thread. You took the statement, “You mentioned the particles lacked knobs.”…as me ascribing the statement to you. I stated clearly that I was quoting liberally from the article at the link. It was an interview, with a person asking questions.
You didn’t even read the article, you pompous ass, yet you call it rubbish. You are absolutely pathetic, and now I know why you support the AGW theory, you have never read anything that refuted it. You’re a Yuppie snob passing himself off as an expert. You can’t argue AGW on the fact, you have to invite us to be interoggated by a load of
pretenders at RC.
You are also typical of your ilk. You don’t have the facts to argue intelligently so you resort to ad hominum attacks on scientists who are researching retroviruses seriously, and you refute their work with hurredly grabbed links from the net. Pathetic!!
Pseudonyms R Us…the difference between me, and you and the other alarmists posting nonsense here, is that I keep my personal opinions to a minimum. I quote experts, not like the rest of you alarmists who quote mathematicians, activists, and geologists who lose the Medieval Warm Period and Little Ice Age.
You haven’t read many of my posts obviously, and if you have, and still feel I am spouting my own opinion, then you are reading them with a jaundiced eye.
It’s pretty obvious that you bit on my ascerbic dismissal of Bernard and the AGW crowd, which reveals your lack of life experience and general maturity.
SJT said…”He said there are two tests. One tests directly for the virus…”
He’s wrong. Both test for antibodies, which are the product of an immune system reacting to a virus or bacteria. The western blot is preloaded with proteins ‘thought’ to be from HIV.
As the researcher pointed out in the link I provided, a person who has contracted AIDS, which is a syndrome involving about 29 opportunistic infections that can attack a weakened immune system, could benefit from such tests, because they are an indicator of the high risk behavior that probably causes AIDS. For a person testing positive in that situation, it may be too late, but at least that person could take steps to stop the high-risk behavior.
The problem with the way the tests are used is that people are tested who don’t have any signs of AIDS. If they come up positive, they are immediately treated with deadly drug cocktails to kill what is believed to be HIV. That’s where the controversy arises, and that’s what leads to all the emotion.
People like Bernard argue that HIV left untreated will lead to full-blown AIDS in so many years. There’s no proof to that because no one has tested the hypothesis by monitoring people who have not been treated. Others like Duesberg, and the researcher to whom I linked, think it’s the deadly drug cocktails that are leading to the eventuality of AIDS. In fact, Duesberg calls it ‘AIDS by prescription’. After all, AIDS is nothing more than the weakening of the immune system and the drugs do that themselves.
The HIV/AIDS crowd attack what is thought to be a virus with deadly drugs and the person eventually starts to get sick. But they maintain the victim on that drug cocktail regime, and even though the person gets ill, they maintain they are saving his life by staving off the effect of the HIV. Eventually those being treated develop other serious problems.
They even report proof that the drug cocktails are reducing the levels of HIV. Why wouldn’t they? The drugs are designed to kill cells and they are going to kill off whatever is being measured and called HIV.
AIDS is a very serious situation and it is related in North America and Europe to two high-risk groups: male homosexuals and IV drug users (over 90% of all AIDS deaths in those groups). Treating people who test positive for high-risk derived proteins with deadly drug cocktails strikes me as being severe overkill. I should think the people testing positive should be advised to stop partying, stay away from dangerous sexual practices, and to stop doing drugs.
Of course, it wouldn’t do any good. John Lauritsen, a homosexual himself, but a guy who doesn’t believe HIV causes AIDS, went to a local homosexual support centre and urged the leader to get the community to stop doing poppers (amyl nitrate…a muscle relaxant). He was told to mind his own business.
Poppers are now thought to be the cause of at least two AIDS-related diseases and those can happen with no HIV present. Gallo, the co-founder of HIV, has acknowledged that. In fact, Anthony Fauci, of the National Institute of Health, became concerned about treating people who tested positive but who were otherwise healthy.
The tide is starting to turn. Fauci has been one of the greatest advocates of the HIV/AIDS theory.
Look…even if you think I’m a nutcase, that’s OK, I’ll take the fall. Have you no concern, however, over the implications of what I am saying? If we are treating otherwise healthy people with deadly drug cocktails, and they are getting sick and dying, that’s a form of medical genocide, intentional or otherwise. Why would anyone take that risk?
“That’s right Gordon, you, Graeme Bird, Ian Mott and the others are all Real Experts who have done years of research from your armchairs.”
Listen dumbass. I’m not making any claims that I cannot rightfully make. As a point of methodology and cost effectiveness in research one would want to bring up other paradigms in parallel to the prevailing one. Regardless if one thought that the an augmented view of the current paradigm would win out. I’m only talking here about the methodology. I’m here, not as an expert on viruses and depressed immune systems, but simply as a taxpayer, watching taxpayers waste money.
‘Watching TAXEATERS make a hash of the scientific method…’ would have been a better explanation.
Robertson.
ELISAs that capture virus protein can capture both isolated protein and intact virion particles. For pity’s sake man, I used an aggregation assay many years ago that was structurally equivalent to an ELISA, and it could capture erythrocytes.
Go get yourself some real learning.
The proteins that ELISAs capture are necessarily HIV specific. Certainly, on a small number of occasions there might be false positivity, but the nature of the response is distinctive, and is easily confirmed b y western blot.
And the pattern or reactivity in a western blot is absolutely distinctive of HIV. You obviously have no understanding of the workings of a western blot, or you would know why hospital and university scientists use this technique so regularly.
Go get yourself some real learning.
Following your logic ALL viral diseases would need to be diagnosed using an expensive and time-consuming separation and electron microscopy procedures that, incidentally, have been used years ago to confirm the valid application of the tests that you so disparage.
Go get yourself some real learning.
And if I am the biggest fool that you have ever encountered, then every single scientist and technician, who develop and use all of the very medical and pathology procedures that you depend upon to maintain a working relationship between your body and your, soul are similarly foolish, because they would all say what I say. Now here’s a scandalous story for the tabloids…
Go get yourself some real learning.
If you really think that “there is no guarantee whatsoever [sic] that the antibodies tested for have anything to do with a virus” you’d better take up this oversite with NATA, who will be most concerned to find that this is so. Please supply this and other blogs with a copy of your correspondence.
Go get yourself some real learning.
“You’re a Yuppie snob passing himself off as an expert.”
Robertson, how many time’s have you walked into an immunological laboratory?
How many times?
“You don’t have the facts to argue intelligently so you resort to ad hominum [sic] attacks on scientists who are researching retroviruses seriously, and you refute their work with hurredly [sic] grabbed links from the net.”
Oh, the searing irony…
And Gordon, to shove your text under your nose:
” Uh, oh…?? Why don’t they just use the Elisa test…Bernard says it tests for HIV directly?
The only other explanation is that the electron micrographs are not from the 1.16 gm/ml band. If that’s the case then we have no choice but to redefine retroviruses and more importantly, not to consider the 1.16 band as HIV. But if we do that then all the research done on HIV using this band cannot be used because this is what everyone uses as purified HIV.
You mentioned the particles lacked knobs. How serious a deficiency is that?”
You used my name, and then continued without quote marks to include what is now revealed to be a quote. To me and probably to any reasonable reader this parsed as you saying that you attributed the comment to me.
Mendacious, and desperate.
Oh, and the fact that you had to copy and paste swathes of Denialist tripe from another source is telling in and of itself.
Go get yourself some real learning.
“…my ascerbic dismissal of Bernard and the AGW crowd”
I am not speaking about AGW, I am speaking about HIV, and you are ignorantly dismissing TENS OF THOUSANDS of highly trained and expert scientists who have a much better idea about immunology and virology than you. Your level of understanding would not even permit you a contribution to the Twilight Zone in that esteemed magazine Nexus, and if it were not for the web your bizarre theory would have died an ignominious death over a decade ago.
Your theory is on a level with the urban myths of kidney snatchers and smoking banana skins.
“Both test for antibodies, which are the product of an immune system reacting to a virus or bacteria. The western blot is preloaded with proteins ‘thought’ to be from HIV.”
The whole point of the adaptive immune system is that antibodies are specific for particular target antigens. The hundreds of variable region, joining region, and constant region genes of the immune gene complex is testament to the arms races that has evolved between disease and host, and yet again you need to get yourself some real learning. Yes, there is occasional cross-reactivity, and I referred to false positives, but these are easily screened for…
…by, for example, a western blot which contains proteins KNOWN to be derived from the genes SPECIFIC to HIV. The pattern of reactivity id DISTINCTIVE, and diagnostic.
Once more, if it were not so, then no pathology test would be diagnostic for anything, because the burden of proof in most other tests is not as strong as that employed for HIV.
“There’s no proof to that because no one has tested the hypothesis by monitoring people who have not been treated.”
Robertson, you just get sadder and sadder. What do you think happened before the advent of anti-retrovirals?
And yes, the drugs have awful side-effects, but as my friend who is on them himself says, without them he’d be dead. He’s watched dozens of his friends die from the disease, and he knows exactly what the cost/benefit ratio is.
You really have no clue or experience in this, do you?
“I should think the people testing positive should be advised to stop partying, stay away from dangerous sexual practices, and to stop doing drugs.”
And here’s the nub of your problem. You have major visceral issues with peoples’ personal practices. And in the process you are conflating homosexuality with unsafe sex, and drug-taking with unsafe injection. And before you attempt to libel me with respect to these two practices, I partake of neither, but I absolutely believe that a person’s personal preferences should be separated from the real issues that underlie the transmission of the virus. Call me a libertarian in this regard, but there is it.
Pull your outraged morals in, and go and get yourself some real learning.
Finally, there certainly is a very minor proportion of immune deficiencies that resemble AIDS but do not demonstrate the presence of the virus. In these cases the indication for anti-retroviral use would be weak, and indeed the whole point of titring the virus load is partly to advise the clinician on the use and dose of these drugs.
Get it through your head. Medicos do NOT automatically assume that an immunodeficiency is HIV-related. There are dozens and dozens of alternative aetiologies that are possible, and I know how much time these medicos spend confirming what the cause is because I have done the tests.
Gordon Robertson, you are an ill-informed lay person who has read seemingly scientific twaddle and swallowed it hook, line and sinker. You are disputing the intimate knowledge of thousands of trained experts on the basis of completely discredited material, and the fact that a handful of credentialed scientists promoted this nonsense without taking on board the refutations of their flawed thinking says nothing to dismiss the HIV-AIDS link.
Think about it: out of tens of thousands of scientists, there are bound to be a couple who get their heads tangled about the underlying groundwork – anyone with a grain of human understanding would have predicted that a disease as controversially targeting as HIV was when it emerged, would flush out otherwise intelligent folk to would dispute the relationship.
It certainly has flushed out a swathe of less than intelligent folk whose prejudices serve as their measure of what is scientifically credible or not.
Go get yourself some real learning.
“People like Bernard argue that HIV left untreated will lead to full-blown AIDS in so many years. There’s no proof to that because no one has tested the hypothesis by monitoring people who have not been treated. Others like Duesberg, and the researcher to whom I linked, think it’s the deadly drug cocktails that are leading to the eventuality of AIDS. In fact, Duesberg calls it ‘AIDS by prescription’. After all, AIDS is nothing more than the weakening of the immune system and the drugs do that themselves.”
Not true, the very rare people who are known to be infected by suffer no effects are studied with great interest.
“Go get yourself some real learning.”
The real study of such a subject in depth takes a lot of years, a lot of work, and a certain level of intelligence. Most people don’t have all those, and even if you do, you don’t get to learn much more than one specialisation, a few more if you are a genius.
In such a situation, the only rational response is to go with what the experts are saying.
>In such a situation, the only rational response is to go with what the experts are saying.
Yes SJT. As this blog does and encourages so very well.
SJT wrote…”Not true, the very rare people who are known to be infected by suffer no effects are studied with great interest”.
Is that why in 1989 the Centre For Disease Control in the US stopped listing people who had AIDS with no HIV? You would think that would be of great interest, but they delisted them because they had no HIV, hence were of no interest to them.
No one cares about long-term survivors who have refused treatment. Christine Maggiore (Google her) has been living without treatment since 1992 and she is shunned by the medical community.
Second day trying to post this:
“I should think the people testing positive should be advised to stop partying, stay away from dangerous sexual practices, and to stop doing drugs.”
Another thing about this telling statement: you acknowledge that the ‘tests’ positively identify something. However, according to the tenor of your paragraph, it is not a virus but, partying and drugs that are a part of the detected suite.
I acknowledge that you don’t specifically mention homosexuality in this sentence, although you have previously expounded on the moral repugnance of this sexual preference. But assuming for a moment that you werern’t affronted by gay sex, if, by “dangerous sexual practices”, you are referring to unsafe sex, then surely you are speaking of the risk of sexual transmission of disease and the resulting positive testing?
If so, to maintain your stance that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, it would have to be other (apparently cross-reacting) STDs that are then imputed to cause the syndrome, but the problem for you is that other diseases are also tested for and their lack of capacity for also causing AIDS is also recognised. The absence of cross-reactivity with other STDs is well-known, and all-in-all your moral repudiation of the HIV-AIDS link has an internal inconsistency arising from you lack of understanding of the science.
“No one cares about long-term survivors who have refused treatment.”
Have you ever walked into an HIV clinic and asked about this?
Once again you have no idea.
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2008/08/open_thread_12.php#comment-1080848
thank you
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Bernard J….A few of my replies have gone missing, and it seems some of yours did too.
This is a test.
Bernard J…there is something wrong with this thread. I think it has something to do with spam post above about online poker.