Revelations from the Reveal Rapid hiv antibody test.

Pro-aids people put a lot of faith in the test that supposedly tests for hiv antibodies. They claim that hiv tests detect antibodies specific to hiv, and that many strains of hiv are also detected by these tests.

To test this assertion, I selected at random one of the tests the FDA has approved as a hiv diagnostic test, the Reveal Rapid test and read what the manufacturer themselves had to say about their test. This test was approved by the FDA in 2003 and is manufactured in Canada.

This test, interestingly enough, does not give us any confidence in it's ability to detect antibodies to hiv. In fact, it says,

" A Reactive test result using the Reveal™ Rapid HIV -1 Antibody Test suggests the presence of anti-HIV-1antibodies in the specimen." [page 8 of the above-linked label]

If the test genuinely detected antibodies to hiv, and this ability to detect hiv antibodies were thoroughly scientifically validated, then there would be no need to say the test “suggests” the presence of anti-hiv antibodies. In fact, given that “dissidents” have criticized the “hiv test” for decades, I would imagine that the manufacturer would openly and loudly declare that the test absolutely detected anti-hiv antibodies. But no, this test “suggests.”

Though the manufacturer of the the test says its product merely, “suggests” the presence of anti-hiv antibodies, the FDA approved this test as a diagnostic test. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, labels are written by the manufacturer and approved by the FDA. So this language, and the word “suggests,” is approved by the FDA.

But there is more to see on the label for the Reveal Rapid test. Though this is an “approved diagnostic test” the label cautions :

" Results of the MedMira Reveal™ Rapid HIV -1 Antibody Test should not be used in isolation, but in conjunction with the clinical status, history, and risk factors of the individual being tested." [ibid]

Few people understand that one cannot be positive “for hiv” without the discretion and sanction of a doctor who has “approved” one’s clinical status, history, and “risk factors.” In other words, even a positive or negative result on the Reveal Rapid test is not meaningful until a doctor asks about sex, sexual orientation, intravenous drug use, condoms, and a whole host of questions that really should not affect the results of a blood test. Yet not only do the manufacturers of the Reveal Rapid state that these bits of information are useful, they state that they are required if their test is going to be used properly. Ultimately, the manufacturer declares the doctor is accountable for the result of the test.

The reason the manufacturers insist that sexual and drug activities be used to understand the test is partly because of this:

"The specificity of the Reveal™ Rapid HIV -1 Antibody Test for serum specimens in low -risk populations has not been evaluated."[ibid]

What this means is that people who aren’t “supposed” to get hiv, may still test positive! Not only will they test positive, but the manufacturer is saying they have no idea why a person in a “low-risk” demographic would light up their test. This is a clear admission that they are not really sure what triggers a “positive” result at all. What is also clear is that gays, blacks, the promiscuous, and the poor are all in pre-defined “risk-groups” and therefore will not be afforded the same consideration of someone not in a risk-group. The same “positive” result will result in a gay man being told he “has hiv,” while a Republican politician will be negative based on his placement in a “low-risk” demographic. The risk groups are pre-judged.

The Reveal Rapid test tells us exactly what is happening. It says that only people “at-risk” can accurately be tested with their product. For some reason, the test is a little wonky on everyone else, and heck they don’t know what it could mean for them, but it must not be important and it isn't worth studying.

Pro-aids people argue that these statements by the manufacturer and approved by the FDA are just legal disclaimers. Yet, the manufactures do not call these statements “disclaimers,” they call this section of the label, “Limitations of the Test.” It is a limitation that the test “suggests” the presence of anti-hiv antibodies. It is a limitation that it can only be used on people pre-defined as being likely to have hiv.

If people who stand by the Reveal Rapid test want to testify in court and swear under oath that these limitations are not obstructions to its ability to detect hiv in a person, I am sure they will be able to find a court case and face the attorneys at the Office of Medical and Scientific Justice, www.OMSJ.org. They have won several dismissals of hiv-related charges by asking the simple question: can the prosecution prove that an hiv test actually detects hiv? As we can see, the manufacturers are not very convinced that their tests can actually detect hiv (“…suggests!”). So far, the experts are not willing to testify in front of an informed defense team.

The Reveal Rapid test has been approved by the FDA as a diagnostic test. However an actual reading of the insert for the Reveal Rapid test shows that the test is not a diagnostic test. In fact given the published limitations of the test, they don’t really know what it tests for at all. Moreover, whatever result it does give, the doctor is free to just tell the patient whatever result she thinks is correct!

The Reveal Reapid antibody test does not, by their own admission, detect hiv nor hiv antibodies. It cannot be used to diagnose hiv infection in anyone. YET this test has been approved by the FDA as a diagnostic tool! Do not fall into the hiv lie my friends! Never test!

The Anti-Climax of Gay Marriage in Canada

In July 2005, Canada passed the Civil Marriage Act, Bill C-38. This bill clarified marriage as being "...the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others.” Canada, a nation that has stubbornly refused to follow the US and Europe like a lemming off the cliffs of international fads, has also avoided a banking crisis, spoken against the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, and maintained one of the best systems of socialized medicine in the world. Is gay marriage going to ruin their moral fiber?

According to the Catholic Church yes. The Catholic Church believes that children cannot be properly raised in a same-sex household and that "...Among the likeliest effects of gay marriage is to take us down a slippery slope to legalize polygamy and polyamory (group marriage).[sic]" [citation] But what has really happened in Canada?

I googled, "negative impacts of gay marriage in Canada" and received many hits...from 2004. It seems the opponent pretty much gave up lambasting gay marriage after the passage. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were taking a "wait and see" approach. Well, it's been five years and what do we see?

Almost no noticeable change in Canada's existence as a nation. It's been an anti-climax. The haters have almost nothing to say. What is interesting though, is that gay marriages seem to be much more resilient than straight marriages. It took two years after the first gay couples were married before any divorces of gay couples took place, and they are still much more rare than Canada's average of 37% divorces per year.

Interestingly, the only ones trying to slide down that slippery slope the Catholics so fiercely warn about are the Canadian Mormons. These Mormons (belonging to the same church which has been found guilty in California of political malfeasance while supporting California's ban on gay marriage) are already practicing polygamy! Why is the Catholic Church not addressing this with the same vitriol? On the same Catholic website that accuses homosexuals of ushering in an era of moral decay, only a couple of articles about Mormons come up...neither says a word about the Mormon practice of polygamy.

Now, I realize that the Mormon church may well officially deny polygamy, but it does seem to be a recurrent practice among their laity. I guess it is just "easier" for the Catholic Church to pick on gay people than it is to pick on the fifth largest Religious cult...err...organization in the world. Way to stand up for the oppressed Catholics!

The fact is that being an open, defiant, and proud gay person is a revolutionary act. We become targets of all kinds of intolerance. Of course, we seem to be making equally revolutionary progress. But it is important to remember that there are large, old, wealthy organizations that want us "in our place." Not only do they want us to stay away from the altar, but they want us to suffer from our "unnaturalness."

In the context of aids dissidence, it is clear that gays are chased, hunted, and harassed by Churches, how hard is it to grasp that we are also being targeted for medical mistreatment and exploitation?

When is aids not aids? When a dissident says it isn't

As I see the dialog of dissidents, there are a few vital flaws that prevent us from liberating ourselves from the dogma of hiv/aids lies. Perhaps the first problem are attempts to redefine aids. Some dissidents wish to eliminate hiv, but keep aids. In other words, some are trying to use the idea of immune suppression and divorce immune dysfunction from hiv as a cause, while still holding onto the word aids. There are several issues with this.

The first issue is that aids already has a meaning. In common usage, aids means "hiv disease." Aids means an std. Aids means certain death. Yet, some dissidents insist that aids can mean general immune dysfunction. Why they insist on using the term aids when they mean autoimmune, or general immune disease is a mystery to me. This needs an explanation, or the practice should be discontinued so as to avoid confusion.

Additionally, if aids means general immune dysfunction for these dissidents, then why don’t they include in their attempts to explain “aids," a.k.a. general immune dysfunction, asthma, allergies, Rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, Type 1 diabetes, Celiac disease, Multiple Sclerosis, etc. Instead, these dissidents focus solely on gay men with health issues. If what the dissident really means is a failing immune system, then why focus on a very small subset of people who suffer immune system failure?

It appears homophobic to hold onto a term that is already understood by most people as a horrible gay disease and then apply it only to gay men! At the very least, if they can suitably demonstrate that there is a specific brand of immune dysfunction that comes from gay sex (a big huge IF), then it MUST be named something that does not have connotations of gay hatred. Otherwise, there is no hope to change the dialog with doctors and the public. As long as people say aids, they are also saying, “Gay men are dirty, nasty sick individuals and nature is killing them for it.”

Furthermore, dissidents seem confused and fractured when they utilize "aids data." Even among those who seem to want to divide out people who actually have health problems from so-called, "false positives," they still confound data of those who are merely, "hiv positive" with those who have some symptom of immune dysfunction ("aids" in their view). The Perth Group does this relentlessly. In many of their articles, they co-mingle data and conclusions based on hiv positives with actually ill people. And these are the people that have done the best work on isolation and have shown how absurd hiv tests are in the first place! Their tendency is to place special emphasis on gay "hiv positives" and to dismiss those who are not gay.

The Perth Group, for instance, places special emphasis on receptive anal sex. By their definition, it is all but impossible for a straight man who doesn't use drugs to get "aids." However, the Padian Study, which they use to justify their view that a "positive antibody test and AIDS [are] sexually acquired but not sexually transmitted," mostly followed straight men who were "infected" and their female partners. Straight men with "aids!" So how does this study do anything at all to demonstrate that receptive anal sex among men causes aids? How did all those straight men get "the aids" in the first place? In reality, the Perth Group is attempting to redefine "aids" as a condition in which gay sex causes immune dysfunction so that "aids" becomes and remains an exclusively gay disease, yet, they are using data that has a completely different parameter. The Perth Group itself confuses their aids with orthodox aids.

Dissidents cannot have a discussion about aids at all, unless they are showing how it does not exist. If the point is to show that there may be a link between immune issues and receptive anal sex (for instance) then it will help to use a different term than aids. Whatever term they do use, even if they insist on using the term aids, the term needs definition. Explain the symptoms for instance. Show how your "aids" is not like the other "aids."

People vs. the Pope in Argentina

Gay people are the enemy of religious dogma whether they want to be or not. It is not the other way around, Churches are not attacked and discriminated against by gay people. Yet the leaders of institutionalized churches follow gay people around harassing their rights, lives and happiness.

In Argentina, as most of us know by now, gay marriage has been passed by the national legislative body. The major opponent to the passage of this law was: The Catholic Church.

In its race to derail the change, the church organized large protests involving tens of thousands of opponents of the measure, with Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, the archbishop of Buenos Aires, calling the bill a “destructive attack on God’s plan.”

The Catholic Church views homosexuality and more specifically, normalizing homosexuality, as destructive. This is no minor point for the Church, which, apparently spent money, time, and effort to "enforce" the idea that homosexuality is not normal.

But the people defied the Pope. No small victory "...in a region where the separation of church and state is not always so clear..."

Yet, back in the USA, we find that religion holds politicians in check even though we have a Constitutional separation of church and state. The irony is bitter. At least the Mormon church was found guilty of malfeasance in California. Ya, that's right, they broke the law in order to harass, intimidate, and denounce you and me.

The battle in Argentina is not over though, and the opponents of gay normalization will stay on the offensive (pun alert!) and press forward with legal challenges.

However, it is important to celebrate this victory for homosexuals. We are in an age of rapid and surprising change.

ARV's: Worse than Any Virus

Amazing the commitment of people taking aids drugs to the very thing that is causing their bodies to break down. Sean Strub, founder of poz, is losing bone density and has the "bones of an '85 year old woman'" because of the drug Viread. Of course he still takes ARVs and is still committed to ARV treatment. Is he another victim of the Stockholm Syndrome? The love of the victim for his abuser?

Sean fully admits he is an "...experimental canar[y] in the pharmaceutical coal mine" and that the pharmaceutical companies either do not know or do not convey the side-effects of their "treatments."

Sean says:

Six years ago, when I started Viread, I was told nothing of this possible side effect

.
He also points out that this is not an isolated problem:

Overall, bone fractures amongst people with HIV are increasing at an astonishing rate. The HOPS study, as reported by AIDSmeds.com's Tim Horn, showed that from 2000 to 2008, people with HIV had seven times the rate of fractures requiring hospitalization and three times the rate of fractures treated on an outpatient basis, as compared to a similar HIV negative cohort. Three quarters of the HIV positive arm of their study were also on anti-retroviral therapy.

Note for future reference: A quarter of the study participants are not taking ARVs.

But, apparently it is not just Viread that causes bone density issues. Sean lists Truvada and Atripla as containing the "demineralizing" ingredient tenofovir. Of course though, he also claims hiv also can cause demineralizing.

HIV itself, as well as a number of other anti-retroviral AIDS drugs may also contribute to bone loss, but there is growing evidence which points to tenofovir (found in Viread, Truvada and Atripla) as a particularly intense demineralizer [sic]

Considering the shrill cries of pro-aids people though, one would have to conclude, if they are correct, that a virus would have MUCH WORSE effects than these drugs. They still say at least 1 of 5 people "don't know" they have hiv, and that even in the study referenced about 25% of the participants do not take ARVs (and that there is speculation that a good 50% of supposedly hiv infected people do not take ARVs) then they would be suffering far more than Sean! But I don't know any person not on those drugs that have the bones of an 85 year old woman--except for 85 year old women! We have to conclude that, even if there is a virus, the pro-aids people have not made a convincing case that hiv left untreated is any worse than their treatments.

Look, I feel very sorry for Sean. He is suffering as a canary in a coal mine and he doesn't have to! There is no virus worse than those drugs.

Another case of non Aids early death and chronic disease

People are very quick to say that a gay man or a person given a "positive" diagnosis has died of aids if they die "too young." The tendency is to blame any and all health issues on "hiv" and throw up their hands.

However, people suffering poor health are common. There is nothing terribly rare about people with multiple infections, diseases and problems. Of course, the majority of these cases are likely the results of poverty, addictions and self abuses. But the point is that when a person is gay, or labeled with hiv, then suddenly, there is only hiv, and not the gritty reality of life-style problems.

The article: Police find woman dead in apartment, states that a 58 year old woman was found dead in an apartment, and her death is being labeled "natural causes." However, the article also says: "...Barnes had a number of health conditions including emphysema, hepatitis and heart conditions for which she was taking medication..." if this woman had the misfortune of testing for hiv, surely she would be diagnosed as hiv positive and her death would be an aids death.

Maybe, to get more funding, hiv/aids groups could adopt a version of the Mormon practice of post-mortem baptism and posthumously declare all cases such as this woman to be aids deaths.

But seriously, there is no difference between this poor woman's struggle with life and the struggle of many people labeled "hiv positive" except for the "hiv positive" label.

Yet Another Person's Life Destroyed by hiv/aids Lies.

This article shows us the damage done when bias, greed and shoddy science come together under the umbrella we call "hiv/aids."

The unfortunate story of Mr. Hedgepeth.

Mr. Hedgepeth was given a "positive" diagnosis based on his self-reporting that he had been having regular sex with an "hiv positive" person for quite some time--despite his lab test being negative. Not only did the doctor know full well that his test was negative, but Mr. Hedgepeth did not have clinical symptoms, had no "viral load." Yet, for months, the Clinic reported to state agencies that he was taking arv's and also kept treating Mr. Hedgepeth as if he had hiv.

Personally, I don't think a "positive hiv test" is particularly helpful to diagnose long-term health, but, for those that do, it is important to realize that a positive test is NOT necessary for a person to given this kiss of death. If a clinic simply believes you probably have "the aids" because of sexual relations, then they have the clinical right to say you do. Remember, the test is merely to "aid in diagnosis" according to the FDA and the manufacturers.

Mr. Hedgepeth was nearly killed simply by being labeled with a "positive" diagnosis. Read how ready to die he was. Read how self-destructive he became. This is no little game here. This is attempted murder by suggestion.

Guess which one Christianity condones

Absurd Conclusion based on Padian Study.

The Perth Group misunderstands the Padian Study and attempts to contort it's conclusions to support it's own Oxidative Stress Hypothesis (OSH):

Unquestionably, to date, the best designed and executed study in heterosexuals was conducted by Nancy Padian and her associates...The results from their long prospective study of couples, of whom only one partner of either sex was antibody positive, were published in 1997 in a paper entitled Heterosexual Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Northern California,. Results from a Ten Year Study.

"Prospective results.

We followed 175 HIV-discordant couples over time, for a total of approximately 282 couple-years of follow-up...At last follow-up, couples were much more likely to be abstinent or to use condoms consistently, and were much less likely to practice anal intercourse

Thus, a positive antibody test and AIDS, like pregnancy, can be sexually acquired but not sexually transmitted. The difference is, that while pregnancy can be acquired by a single sexual intercourse, for AIDS to appear a very high frequency of receptive intercourse over a long period is absolutely necessary. AIDS is more like cervical cancer. The effect is not the result of the act itself, but its high frequency. But, as with pregnancy and cervical cancer, other factors may mitigate against the development of AIDS.[citation]

The Perth group wants to use the Padian study to confirm their hypothesis that "positive antibody test and AIDS" (they blur the two) is "sexually acquired but not sexually transmitted." However, the participants in the study were:

A total of 82 infected women and their male partners and 360 infected men and their female partners were enrolled...

360 men and their female partners were enrolled. How did these men get their "positive" test results? In their argument for OSH, the Perth Group wants to show that anal sex is a major cause of "positive antibody test and AIDS," but that would mean that these 360 men were previously "bathhouse bottoms" and then ended up in monogamous, straight relationships in time for this study.

The majority of the "infected" partners in this study were NOT sperm receivers. ln fact it is very much the other way around. The "infected" partners were giving sperm to their "uninfected" partners over the course of the study, and yet most of the partners never became "infected" despite being receivers of supposedly "infected" or "oxidizing" sperm.