The men behind the myth

AIDS Funding: 'An Epidemic of Waste?' By Matt Pyeatt CNSNews.com Staff Writer February 15, 2002

Washington (CNSNews.com) - AIDS activists will converge on Washington Friday, demanding more tax dollars for various prevention and treatment programs, but one government watchdog group says about $1 billion in federal AIDS money has already been wasted. What's needed is wiser spending of AIDS-related money, not an increase in spending, according to the group, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW). CAGW Thursday released its special report, "AIDS Programs: An Epidemic Of Waste," which systematically shows how federal funds meant for AIDS programs have allegedly been misallocated, mismanaged and wasted. "Overall, we found about $1 billion, about 7.7 percent of the $13 billion in total federal AIDS funding, that is being mismanaged and wasted," Thomas A. Schatz, president of CAGW, said. "We believe that it would be more compassionate to take the money that is being wasted and provide it to the people who truly need it." The CAGW report offers a detailed look at the history of AIDS in the United States, but it is the scathing assessment of the taxpayer-funded AIDS programs that stands out. Included in the report are several examples of the misuse of federal funds. For example, Positive Force, a San Francisco AIDS prevention group, receives $1 million annually from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). According to CAGW, Positive Force offers flirting classes and, last July, hosted a workshop on how to have anal intercourse even while suffering from diarrhea. Diarrhea is a common side effect of the AIDS virus, according to the report. On February 28, the Stop AIDS Project of San Francisco, which received nearly $700,000 from the CDC, will host "GUYWATCH: Blow by Blow," the CAGW report stated. The advertisement for the seminar reads, "What tricks do you want to share to make your man tremble with delight?" Another alleged misuse of federal funding in the fight to stop AIDS occurred in Tampa Bay, Fla., where the non-profit Tampa Hillsborough Action Plan (THAP) "rang up nearly $1,000 in meal charges in a three-week period and were also afforded the use of sport utility vehicles," the CAGW said. THAP's top executives also received four season tickets for Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Tampa Bay Lightning professional sporting events, according to the report, at a time when "THAP owed nearly $25,000 in delinquent payroll taxes." THAP receives $450,000 a year from the federal government to provide housing to people with AIDS, the CAGW report shows. Aids activist Wayne Turner, the co-founder of ACTUP DC! joined Schatz at Thursday's news conference and agreed it's necessary to stop the abuse of federal funds earmarked for AIDS programs. "As an AIDS activist, someone who has lost a partner to AIDS, I can say that it is so important that people living with and dying from this disease have access to the services necessary to keep them alive," Turner said. "We've been on the forefront of fighting for more money for AIDS and fighting for these programs and demanding passionate and humane treatment for those who suffer from this disease," Turner said. "But, there is another part of that coin when you ask for more money, which has been poorly addressed in the twenty years of the AIDS epidemic." Turner said it was important to make sure the money was efficiently used. "This is a federal problem. There is a federal responsibility to insure that AIDS money is spent appropriately and helps people," Turner said. Turner brought along a tote bag, from which he pulled a water bottle, key chain and other trinkets that he said were paid for with AIDS funding. He called on AIDS programs to quit wasting money on such items and to start helping people. "There are real people who are falling through the cracks in the system," Turner said.

Why is this breaking news?

Sheesh. Are you afraid paragraphs are sold by the pound or something?

Not quite sure what your main point is, but those large obscene salaries are a tiny fraction of what those companies are each worth, providing billions in jobs, economy, and VITAL life-saving services.

They deserve every penny, the b@stards do. It's real easy to hate them for it, but they did earn it.

This lame crud belongs over at DU.

Worst. Post. Ever.

The truth behind the myth,

National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention
Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention


Table 17.	Reported AIDS cases, by age category, transmission category, and sex, cumulative through 2003—United States


	Males				Females				Total

			Cumulative				Cumulative				Cumulative
	2003		through 2003^a		2003		through 2003^a		2003		through 2003^a

Transmission category	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%

Adult or adolescent
Male-to-male sexual contact	15,859	48	401,392	55	â€“	â€“	â€“	â€“	15,859	35	401,392	45
Injection drug use	4,866	15	156,575	21	2,262	20	61,621	38	7,128	16	218,196	24
Male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use	1,695	5	57,998	8	â€“	â€“	â€“	â€“	1,695	4	57,998	6
Hemophilia/coagulation disorder	74	0	5,130	1	11	0	318	0	85	0	5,448	1
Heterosexual contact	3,371	10	40,947	6	5,234	45	70,200	43	8,605	19	111,147	12
Sex with injection drug user	477	1	10,930	1	985	9	24,148	15	1,462	3	35,078	4
Sex with bisexual male	0	0	0	0	223	2	4,402	3	223	0	4,402	0
Sex with person with hemophilia	7	0	80	0	16	0	465	0	23	0	545	0
Sex with HIV-infected transfusion recipient	24	0	505	0	37	0	705	0	61	0	1,210	0
Sex with HIV-infected person, risk factor not specified	2,863	9	29,432	4	3,973	34	40,480	25	6,836	15	69,912	8
Receipt of blood transfusion, blood components, or tissue^b	111	0	5,219	1	108	1	4,076	2	219	0	9,295	1
Other/risk factor not reported or identified^c	7,274	22	62,217	9	3,946	34	27,181	17	11,220	25	89,399	10
Subtotal	33,250	100	729,478	100	11,561	100	163,396	100	44,811	100	892,875	100
Child <13 yrs at diagnosis)
Hemophilia/coagulation disorder	0	0	227	5	0	0	7	0	0	0	234	3
Mother with the following risk factor for, or documented, HIV infection:	61	87	4,232	88	70	85	4,317	95	131	86	8,549	91
Injection drug use	6	9	1,643	34	11	13	1,645	36	17	11	3,288	35
Sex with injection drug user	8	11	784	16	6	7	741	16	14	9	1,525	16
Sex with bisexual male	0	0	95	2	2	2	102	2	2	1	197	2
Sex with person with hemophilia	1	1	21	0	0	0	15	0	1	1	36	0
Sex with HIV-infected transfusion recipient	0	0	11	0	0	0	16	0	0	0	27	0
Sex with HIV-infected person, risk factor not specified	18	26	705	15	18	22	737	16	36	24	1,442	15
Receipt of blood transfusion, blood components, or tissue^b	0	0	73	2	0	0	83	2	0	0	156	2
Has HIV infection, risk factor notspecified	28	40	900	19	33	40	978	21	61	40	1,878	20
Receipt of blood transfusion, blood components, or tissue	1	1	244	5	1	1	143	3	2	1	387	4
Other/risk factor not reported or identified^d	8	11	80	2	11	13	98	2	19	13	178	2
Subtotal	70	100	4,783	100	82	100	4,565	100	152	100	9,348	100
Total	33,320	100	734,261	100	11,643	100	167,961	100	44,963	100	902,223	100


^a	Includes persons with a diagnosis of AIDS, reported from the beginning of the epidemic through 2003. Cumulative total includes 1 person of unknown sex.
^b	AIDS developed in 46 adults/adolescents and 3 children after they received blood that had tested negative for HIV antibodies. AIDS developed in 14 additional adults after they received tissue, organs, or artificial insemination from HIV-infected donors. Four of the 14 received tissue or organs from a donor who was negative for HIV antibody at the time of donation.
^c	Includes 36 adults/adolescents who were exposed to HIV-infected blood, body fluids, or concentrated virus in health care, laboratory, or household settings, as supported by seroconversion, epidemiologic, and/or laboratory evidence. One person was infected after intentional inoculation with HIV-infected blood. For an additional 361 persons who acquired HIV infection perinatally, AIDS was diagnosed after age 13. These 361 persons are tabulated under the adult/adolescent, not the pediatric, transmission category.
^d	Includes 5 children who were exposed to HIV-infected blood as supported by seroconversion, epidemiologic, and/or laboratory evidence: 1 child was infected after intentional inoculation with HIV-infected blood and 4 children were exposed to HIV-infected blood in a household setting. Of the 178 children, 23 had sexual contact with an adult with or at high risk for HIV infection.

Last Updated : March 8, 2005
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention
National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention
Divisions of HIV/AIDS Prevention
Contact Us

The Hidden Face of HIV – Part 1
"Knowing is Beautiful"
http://gnn.tv/articles/article.php?id=1035

by Liam Scheff

As a journalist who writes about AIDS, I am endlessly amazed by the difference between the public and the private face of HIV; between what the public is told and what’s explained in the medical literature. The public face of HIV is well-known: HIV is a sexually transmitted virus that particularly preys on gay men, African Americans, drug users, and just about all of Africa, although we’re all at risk. We’re encouraged to be tested, because, as the MTV ads say, "knowing is beautiful." We also know that AIDS drugs are all that’s stopping the entire African continent from falling into the sea.

The medical literature spells it out differently – quite differently. The journals that review HIV tests, drugs and patients, as well as the instructional material from medical schools, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and HIV test manufacturers will agree with the public perception in the large print. But when you get past the titles, they’ll tell you, unabashedly, that HIV tests are not standardized; that they’re arbitrarily interpreted; that HIV is not required for AIDS; and finally, that the term HIV does not describe a single entity, but instead describes a collection of non-specific, cross-reactive cellular material.

That’s quite a difference.

The popular view of AIDS is held up by concerned people desperate to help the millions of Africans stricken with AIDS, the same disease that first afflicted young gay American men in the 1980s. The medical literature differs on this point. It says that that AIDS in Africa has always been diagnosed differently than AIDS in the US.

In 1985, The World Health Organization called a meeting in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic, to define African AIDS. The meeting was presided over by CDC official Joseph McCormick. He wrote about in his book "Level 4 Virus hunters of the CDC," saying, "If I could get everyone at the WHO meeting in Bangui to agree on a single, simple definition of what an AIDS case was in Africa, then, imperfect as the definition might be, we could actually start counting the cases..." The results – African AIDS would be defined by physical symptoms: fever, diarrhea, weight loss and coughing or itching. ("AIDS in Africa: an epidemiological paradigm." Science, 1986)

In Sub-Saharan African about 60 percent of the population lives and dies without safe drinking water, adequate food or basic sanitation. A September, 2003 report in the Ugandan Daily "New Vision" outlined the situation in Kampala, a city of approximately 1.3 million inhabitants, which, like most tropical countries, experiences seasonal flooding. The report describes "heaps of unclaimed garbage" among the crowded houses in the flood zones and "countless pools of water [that] provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes and create a dirty environment that favors cholera."

"[L]atrines are built above water streams. During rains the area residents usually open a hole to release feces from the latrines. The rain then washes away the feces to streams, from where the [area residents] fetch water. However, not many people have access to toilet facilities. Some defecate in polythene bags, which they throw into the stream." They call these, "flying toilets.’’

The state-run Ugandan National Water and Sewerage Corporation states that currently 55% of Kampala is provided with treated water, and only 8% with sewage reclamation.

Most rural villages are without any sanitary water source. People wash clothes, bathe and dump untreated waste up and downstream from where water is drawn. Watering holes are shared with animal populations, which drink, bathe, urinate and defecate at the water source. Unmanaged human waste pollutes water with infectious and often deadly bacteria. Stagnant water breeds mosquitoes, which bring malaria. Infectious diarrhea, dysentery, cholera, TB, malaria and famine are the top killers in Africa. But in 1985, they became AIDS.

The public service announcements that run on VH1 and MTV, informing us of the millions of infected, always fail to mention this. I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with the information that 40 million people are dying and nothing can be done. I wonder why we wouldn’t be interested in building wells and providing clean water and sewage systems for Africans. Given our great concern, it would seem foolish not to immediately begin the "clean water for Africa" campaign. But I’ve never heard such a thing mentioned.

The UN recommendations for Africa actually demand the opposite –"billions of dollars" taken out of "social funds, education and health projects, infrastructure [and] rural development" and "redirected" into sex education (UNAIDS, 1999). No clean water, but plenty of condoms.

I have, however, felt the push to get AIDS drugs to Africans. Drugs like AZT and Nevirapine, which are supposed to stop the spread of HIV, especially in pregnant women. AZT and Nevirapine also terminate life. The medical literature and warning labels list the side effects: blood cell destruction, birth defects, bone-marrow death, spontaneous abortion, organ failure, and fatal skin rot. The package inserts also state that the drugs don’t "stop HIV or prevent AIDS illnesses."

The companies that make these drugs take advantage of the public perception that HIV is measured in individual African AIDS patients, and that African AIDS - water-borne illness and poverty - can be cured by AZT and Nevirapine. That’s good capitalism, but it’s bad medicine.

Currently MTV, Black Entertainment Television and VH1 are running "Know HIV/AIDS"-sponsored advertisements of handsome young couples, black and white, touching, caressing, sensually, warming up to love-making. The camera moves over their bodies, hands, necks, mouth, back, legs and arms – and we see a small butterfly bandage over their inner elbows, where they’ve given blood for an HIV test. The announcer says, "Knowing is beautiful. Get tested."

A September, 2004 San Francisco Chronicle article considered the "beauty" of testing. It told the story of 59 year-old veteran Jim Malone, who’d been told in 1996 that he was HIV positive. His health was diagnosed as "very poor." He was classified as, "permanently disabled and unable to work or participate in any stressful situation whatsoever." Malone said, "When I wasn’t able to eat, when I was sick, my in-home health care nurse would say, ‘Well, Jim, it goes with your condition.’

In 2004, his doctor sent him a note to tell him he was actually negative. He had tested positive at one hospital, and negative at another. Nobody asked why the second test was more accurate than the first (that was the protocol at the Veteran’s Hospital). Having been falsely diagnosed and spending nearly a decade waiting, expecting to die, Malone said, "I would tell people to get not just one HIV test, but multiple tests. I would say test, test and retest."

In the article, AIDS experts assured the public that the story was "extraordinarily rare." But the medical literature differs significantly.

In 1985, at the beginning of HIV testing, it was known that "68% to 89% of all repeatedly reactive ELISA (HIV antibody) tests [were] likely to represent false positive results." (NEJM - New England Journal of Medicine. 312; 1985).

In 1992, the Lancet reported that for 66 true positives, there were 30,000 false positives. And in pregnant women, "there were 8,000 false positives for 6 confirmations." (Lancet. 339; 1992)

In September 2000, the Archives of Family Medicine stated that the more women we test, the greater "the proportion of false-positive and ambiguous (indeterminate) test results." (Archives of Family Medicine. Sept/Oct. 2000).

The tests described above are standard HIV tests, the kind promoted in the ads. Their technical name is ELISA or EIA (Enzyme-linked Immunosorbant Assay). They are antibody tests. The tests contain proteins that react with antibodies in your blood.

In the US, you’re tested with an ELISA first. If your blood reacts, you’ll be tested again, with another ELISA. Why is the second more accurate than the first? That’s just the protocol. If you have a reaction on the second ELISA, you’ll be confirmed with a third antibody test, called the Western Blot. But that’s here in America. In some countries, one ELISA is all you get.

It is precisely because HIV tests are antibody tests, that they produce so many false-positive results. All antibodies tend to cross-react. We produce antibodies all the time, in response to stress, malnutrition, illness, drug use, vaccination, foods we eat, a cut, a cold, even pregnancy. These antibodies are known to make HIV tests come up as positive.

The medical literature lists dozens of reasons for positive HIV test results: "transfusions, transplantation, or pregnancy, autoimmune disorders, malignancies, alcoholic liver disease, or for reasons that are unclear..."(Archives of Family Medicine. Sept/Oct. 2000).

"[H]uman or technical errors, other viruses and vaccines" (Infectious Disease Clinician of North America. 7; 1993)

"[L]iver diseases, parenteral substance abuse, hemodialysis, or vaccinations for hepatitis B, rabies, or influenza..." (Archives of Internal Medicine. August. 2000).

"[U]npasteurized cows’ milk…Bovine exposure, or cross-reactivity with other human retroviruses" (Transfusion. 1988)

Even geography can do it:
"Inhabitants of certain regions may have cross-reactive antibodies to local prevalent non-HIV retroviruses" (Medicine International. 56; 1988).

The same is true for the confirmatory test – the Western Blot.
Causes of indeterminate Western Blots include: "lymphoma, multiple sclerosis, injection drug use, liver disease, or autoimmune disorders. Also, there appear to be healthy individuals with antibodies that cross-react...." (Archives of Internal Medicine. August. 2000).

"The Western Blot is not used as a screening tool because...it yields an unacceptably high percentage of indeterminate results." (Archives of Family Medicine. Sept/Oct 2000)

Pregnancy is consistently listed as a cause of positive test results, even by the test manufacturers. "[False positives can be caused by] prior pregnancy, blood transfusions... and other potential nonspecific reactions." (Vironostika HIV Test, 2003).

This is significant in Africa, because HIV estimates for African nations are drawn almost exclusively from testing done on groups of pregnant women.

In Zimbabwe this year, the rate of HIV infection among young women decreased remarkably, from 32.5 to 6 percent. A drop of 81% - overnight. UNICEF’s Swaziland representative, Dr. Alan Brody, told the press "The problems is that all the sero-surveillance data came from pregnant women, and estimates for other demographics was based on that." (PLUS News, August, 2004)

When these pregnant young women are tested, they’re often tested for other illnesses, like syphilis, at the same time. There’s no concern for cross-reactivity or false-positives in this group, and no repeat testing. One ELISA on one girl, and 32.5% of the population is suddenly HIV positive.

The June 20, 2004 Boston Globe reported that "the current estimate of 40 million people living with the AIDS virus worldwide is inflated by 25 percent to 50 percent."

They pointed out that HIV estimates for entire countries have, for over a decade, been taken from "blood samples from pregnant women at prenatal clinics."

But it’s not just HIV estimates that are created from testing pregnant women, it’s "AIDS deaths, AIDS orphans, numbers of people needing antiretroviral treatment, and the average life expectancy," all from that one test.

I’ve certainly never seen this in VH1 ad.

At present there are about 6 dozen reasons given in the literature why the tests come up positive. In fact, the medical literature states that there is simply no way of knowing if any HIV test is truly positive or negative:

"[F]alse-positive reactions have been observed with every single HIV-1 protein, recombinant or authentic." (Clinical Chemistry. 37; 1991). "Thus, it may be impossible to relate an antibody response specifically to HIV-1 infection." (Medicine International. 1988)

And even if you believe the reaction is not a false positive, "the test does not indicate whether the person currently harbors the virus." (Science. November, 1999).

The test manufacturers state that after the antibody reaction occurs, the tests have to be "interpreted." There is no strict or clear definition of HIV positive or negative. There’s just the antibody reaction. The reaction is colored by an enzyme, and read by a machine called a spectrophotometer.

The machine grades the reactions according to their strength (but not specificity), above and below a cut-off. If you test above the cut-off, you’re positive; if you test below it, you’re negative.
So what determines the all-important cut-off? From The CDC’s instructional material: "Establishing the cutoff value to define a positive test result from a negative one is somewhat arbitrary." (CDC-EIS "Screening For HIV," 2003 )

The University of Vermont Medical School agrees: "Where a cutoff is drawn to determine a diagnostic test result may be somewhat arbitrary….Where would the director of the Blood Bank who is screening donated blood for HIV antibody want to put the cut-off?...Where would an investigator enrolling high-risk patients in a clinical trial for an experimental, potentially toxic antiretroviral draw the cutoff?" (University of Vermont School of Medicine teaching module: Diagnostic Testing for HIV Infection)

A 1995 study comparing four major brands of HIV tests found that they all had different cut-off points, and as a result, gave different test results for the same sample: "[C]ut-off ratios do not correlate for any of the investigated ELISA pairs," and one brand’s cut-off point had "no predictive value" for any other. (INCQS-DSH, Brazil 1995).

I’ve never heard of a person being asked where they would "want to put the cut-off" for determining their HIV test result, or if they felt that testing positive was a "somewhat arbitrary" experience.

In the UK, if you get through two ELISA tests, you’re positive. In America, you get a third and final test to confirm the first two. The test is called the Western Blot. It uses the same proteins, laid out differently. Same proteins, same nonspecific reactions. But this time it’s read as lines on a page, not a color change. Which lines are HIV positive? That depends on where you are, what lab you’re in and what kit they’re using.

The Mayo Clinic reported that "the Western blot method lacks standardization, is cumbersome, and is subjective in interpretation of banding patterns." (Mayo Clinic Procedural. 1988)

A 1988 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 19 different labs, testing one blood sample, got 19 different Western Blot results. (JAMA, 260, 1988)

A 1993 review in Bio/Technology reported that the FDA, the CDC/Department of Defense and the Red Cross all interpret WB’s differently, and further noted, "All the other major USA laboratories for HIV testing have their own criteria." (Bio/Technology, June 1993)

In the early 1990s, perhaps in response to growing discontent in the medical community with the lack of precision of the tests, Roche Laboratories introduced a new genetic test, called Viral Load, based on a technology called PCR. How good is the new genetic marvel?

An early review of the technology in the 1991 Journal of AIDS reported that "a true positive PCR test cannot be distinguished from a false positive." (J.AIDS, 1991)

A 1992 study "identified a disturbingly high rate of nonspecific positivity," saying 18% antibody-negative (under the cut-off) patients tested Viral Load positive. (J. AIDS, 1992)

A 2001 study showed that the tests gave wildly different results from a single blood sample, as well as different results with different test brands. (CDC MMWR. November 16, 2001)

A 2002 African study showed that Viral Load was high in patients who had intestinal worms, but went down when they were treated for the problem. The title of the article really said it all. "Treatment of Intestinal Worms Is Associated With Decreased HIV Plasma Viral Load." (J.AIDS, September, 2002)

Roche laboratories, the company that manufactures the PCR tests, puts this warning on the label:
"The AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR Test….is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection."

But that’s exactly how it is used – to convince pregnant mothers to take AZT and Nevirapine and to urge patients to start the drugs.

The medical literature adds something truly astounding to all of this. It says that reason HIV tests are so non-specific and need to be interpreted is because there is "no virologic gold standard" for HIV tests.

The meaning of this statement, from both the medical and social perspective, is profound. The "virologic gold standard" is the isolated virus that the doctors claim to be identifying, indirectly, with the test.

Antibody tests always have some cross-reaction, because antibodies aren’t specific. The way to validate a test is to go find the virus in the patient’s blood.

You take the blood, spin it in a centrifuge, and you end up with millions of little virus particles, which you can easily photograph under a microscope. You can disassemble the virus, measure the weight of its proteins, and map its genetic structure. That’s the virologic gold standard. And for some reason, HIV tests have none.

In 1986, JAMA reported that: "no established standard exists for identifying HTLV-III [HIV] infection in asymptomatic people." (JAMA. July 18, 1986)

In 1987, the New England Journal of Medicine stated that "The meaning of positive tests will depend on the joint [ELISA/WB] false positive rate. Because we lack a gold standard, we do not know what that rate is now. We cannot know what it will be in a large-scale screening program." ( Screening for HIV: can we afford the false positive rate?. NEJM. 1987)

Skip ahead to 1996; JAMA again reported: "the diagnosis of HIV infection in infants is particularly difficult because there is no reference or ‘gold standard’ test that determines unequivocally the true infection status of the patient. (JAMA. May, 1996)

In 1997, Abbott laboratories, the world leader in HIV test production stated: "At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV antibody in human blood." (Abbot Laboratories HIV Elisa Test 1997)

In 2000 the Journal AIDS reported that "2.9% to 12.3%" of women in a study tested positive, "depending on the test used," but "since there is no established gold standard test, it is unclear which of these two proportions is the best estimate of the real prevalence rate…" (AIDS, 14; 2000).

If we had a virologic gold standard, HIV testing would be easy and accurate. You could spin the patient’s blood in a centrifuge and find the particle. They don’t do this, and they’re saying privately, in the medical journals, that they can’t.

That’s why tests are determined through algorithms – above or below sliding cut-offs; estimated from pregnant girls, then projected and redacted overnight.

By repeating, again and again in the medical literature that there’s no virologic gold standard, the world’s top AIDS researchers are saying that what we’re calling HIV isn’t a single entity, but a collection of cross-reactive proteins and unidentified genetic material.

And we’re suddenly a very long way from the public face of HIV.

But the fact is, you don’t need to test HIV positive to be an AIDS patient. You don’t even have to be sick.

In 1993, the CDC added "Idiopathic CD4 Lymphocytopenia" to the AIDS category. What does it mean? Non-HIV AIDS.

In 1993, the CDC also made "no-illness AIDS" a category. If you tested positive, but weren’t sick, you could be given an AIDS diagnosis. By 1997, the healthy AIDS group accounted for 2/3rds of all US AIDS patients. (That’s also the last year they reported those numbers). (CDC Year-End Edition, 1997)

In Africa, HIV status is irrelevant. Even if you test negative, you can be called an AIDS patient:

From a study in Ghana: "Our attention is now focused on the considerably large number (59%) of the seronegative (HIV-negative) group who were clinically diagnosed as having AIDS. All the patients had three major signs: weight loss, prolonged diarrhea, and chronic fever." (Lancet. October,1992)

And from across Africa: "2215 out of 4383 (50.0%) African AIDS patients from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Lusaka, Zambia, and Kinshasa, Zaire, were HIV-antibody negative." (British Medical Journal, 1991)

Non-HIV AIDS, HIV-negative AIDS, No Virologic Gold standard - terms never seen in an HIV ad.
But even if you do test "repeatedly" positive, the manufacturers say that "the risk of an asymptomatic [not sick] person developing AIDS or an AIDS-related condition is not known." (Abbott Laboratories HIV Test, 1997)

If commerce laws were applied equally, the "knowing is beautiful" ads for HIV testing would have to bear a disclaimer, just like cigarettes:

"Warning: This test will not tell you if you’re infected with a virus. It may confirm that you are pregnant or have used drugs or alcohol, or that you’ve been vaccinated; that you have a cold, liver disease, arthritis, or are stressed, poor, hungry or tired. Or that you’re African. It will not tell you if you’re going to live or die; in fact, we really don’t know what testing positive, or negative, means at all."

FOUR GRADE EVENT
Are AIDS drugs worse than the disease? Don't ask the people who make them.

By Celia Farber

After 20 years of hysteria, alarmism, misplaced recrimination and guilt, AIDS fatigue has beaten the newspaper-reading mind into a kind of blank. Citizens can't be faulted for not knowing how exactly to respond to last week's eruption of scandal from an NIH whistle-blower named Jonathan Fishbein, an AIDS researcher charged with overseeing clinical trials here and abroad. A reverberating language of bureaucracy and euphemism surrounds AIDS stories, making it impossible to know what has actually transpired. When people die from AIDS drugs, for instance, the word "death" is studiously avoided. I have seen medical articles documenting the fact that more people now die of toxicities from AIDS drugs than from the vanishingly opaque syndrome we once called AIDS. Death was referred to as a "grade four event," thus placing it eerily within the acceptable parameters of predictable phenomena in AIDS research—not as a failure, a crisis or even something to lament.

John Solomon broke the first in a series of stories in the Associated Press on Dec. 14. The lede read:

Weeks before President Bush announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS, top US health officials warned that research in Uganda on a key drug was flawed and may have underreported severe reactions, including deaths, government documents show.

The story held many shocking revelations, but was quickly spun upside-down and inside-out by the AIDS spin machine, which can take any horror and reduce it to banality, keeping the strict focus off of government malfeasance. What Fishbein disclosed was that NIH AIDS research chief Edmund Tramont had airbrushed and cooked damning clinical data from a large experimental trial in Uganda that tested a drug called Nevirapine against AZT, in pregnant HIV-antibody-positive women, intended to reduce HIV transmission. Tramont had censored reports of thousands of toxic reactions to the drug, and "at least 14 deaths," concealing from the White House the truth about the drug, just before Bush rolled out his $500 million plan to push Nevirapine across Africa.

Additional data not widely reported in the media revealed that there were 16 more deaths in babies on Nevirapine, bringing the total to 30, and 38 babies died on AZT (the other arm of the study). The ominous data coincided with findings from an aborted study in South Africa in the late 1990s (stopped due to toxicities and deaths); it was disturbing enough that the drug's manufacturer, Boehringer Ingelheim, withdrew its application to have the FDA approve the drug for use in pregnant women in all Western nations, including the U.S.

In 2000, the FDA put out a black-box label on the drug (which is approved for use in HIV-positive adults as part of a "cocktail therapy"), warning that it could cause fatal kidney damage and a syndrome that causes the flesh to blister and peel as though burned.

This is the drug that countless campaigners—spanning the political spectrum from George Bush to Bono—wish to give all Africans "free access" to. South African President Thabo Mbeki has been savagely pilloried for attempting to stop the drug's distribution to black South Africans. South African lawyer and journalist Anthony Brink's scathing report "The Trouble With Nevirapine" documented the long-known "problems" with the drug. The report was widely read by South Africa's leadership, and is the source of furious debate between black South Africans and the mostly white-run media, which still ridicules all criticism of U.S.-imported AIDS drugs and protocols as being a symptom of not caring about AIDS victims.

Nevirapine is a cheap drug, believed to reduce the transmission of HIV antibodies from mother to child if given before and during birth, despite there being no reliable data to prove that Nevirapine "drastically reduce[s]" transmission." (On average, in women who are well nourished, about eight percent of babies born to HIV-positive mothers with no intervention wind up HIV-antibody-positive; of these, disease progression is not tied to HIV status but rather to the overall health of the mother.) Wild claims about reduction in transmission are based on outdated, flawed research and ignore critical facts. In Africa, for instance, the test used to detect for HIV antibodies cross-reacts with the very proteins of pregnancy, meaning the women may not be true positives to begin with. Furthermore, every baby carries ghost antibodies from its mother for up to 18 months, which it eventually sheds, so all data about HIV status prior to that window of time is useless—but consistently cited anyway.

Nevirapine is a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor—a class of drug designed in the hopes of being less toxic than AZT. This isn't asking much, since AZT is chemotherapy that simply terminates DNA synthesis.

"Of all the AIDS drugs, Nevirapine is the most acutely toxic," explained Dr. Dave Rasnick, a fierce critic of the government's AIDS research agenda, and a former drug developer. "It shows its toxic effects quickly. It has been documented in the medical literature for years that a single dose of Nevirapine can kill a person. People don't normally drop dead from taking a protease inhibitor, but that is what happens with Nevirapine. The rationale for this stuff is just as bizarre as it could be."

He continued: "Liver toxicity is the leading cause of death of HIV-positive people in America and Europe in the cocktail era."

Some months ago, I asked Rasnick to send me documentation of this seemingly unfathomable statement, which he did. The statement is in line with interviews I did with healthcare workers back in 2000, who reported that many more people are hospitalized from the effects of the AIDS drugs than from any of the 30-odd symptoms that originally constituted the definition of AIDS (i.e., a disintegration of the immune system).

This would seem to be a p.r. problem for the AIDS industry. But as we learned from the spin that followed the Fishbein revelations, death by AIDS drugs is not viewed as something that should get in the way of a well-intentioned research agenda—either in the West or in Africa.

The high dudgeon, when it came, was directed not at the NIH for experimenting to lethal effect on pregnant Ugandan mothers, cooking and deleting data, stating openly that African research can't be held to the same standards as Western research, or any of the other disturbing things that came out of Tramontgate.

The ire was aimed at the Associated Press and its reporters for spreading alarm about Nevirapine in Africa, which raised "fears that many women there will stop taking the drug."

The New York Times led the Orwellian spin, in a December 21 article by Donald McNeil Jr. The lede went right to the heart of the matter: The dyspepsia of activists and public health experts.

A series of articles critical of past trials of an important AIDS drug has created a furor in Africa, causing many public health experts to worry that some countries will stop using the drug, which prevents mothers from infecting their babies with the virus that causes AIDS.

It went on: "On Friday, The National Institutes of Health for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, an arm of the National Institutes of Health, sharply criticized the articles, saying, 'It is conceivable that thousands of babies will become infected with HIV and die if single-dose Nevirapine for mother-to-infant HIV prevention is withheld because of misinformation.'"

Misinformation? The AP stories were specifically about the transmogrification of information into misinformation that Tramont engineered for his White House report. He cooked data. He deleted information about toxic reactions and death. In what kind of inverted universe is this not a gross violation of the entire premise of science and medicine?

Nature soon followed suit. From an article dated December 23, this dizzying opener:

Scientists and patient advocates this week united to defend an HIV treatment against allegations that a key clinical trial was flawed. A doctor from Global Strategis for HIV Prevention was quoted: 'This is the most successful therapy in the entire AIDS epidemic. It should not be attacked.'

"We are now living in a time of psychotic science, or abnormal science as I call it," said former New York Native publisher Chuck Ortleb, who was boycotted by the activist group ACT UP for publishing scathing critiques of AZT in the 1980s—a drug that was later proven to shorten rather than lengthen life. "That's why there are no controls in AIDS science, no dissent, why it's all science by press release. These self-appointed AIDS czars pretending to speak for the gay community, pretending to be revolutionaries, pretending to be anti-government when in fact they've always worked hand in hand with the government."

In recent years, Ortleb has turned to writing satirical novels, plays and a soon-to-be-released film called The Last Lovers on Earth, which is centered on a future dystopia in which AIDS research has been so successful that all gay men are dead.

"With their logic," Ortleb says, "this risk-benefit analysis, it doesn't matter if people die on the drugs, because they died so that the rest of the world could be saved."

His most recent send-up is a fictional press release for a new medical group called "Doctors Without Borders, Brains or Ethics," and focuses on protecting the AIDS establishment from criticism, "before the infection of skepticism spreads."

Let us not forget that Nevirapine is a drug that was pulled by its own manufacturer from use in the West, after an investment of many millions of dollars. It remains banned for use in pregnant first-world women.

Still, the NIH is using it on American women, in experimental trials you never heard about—until now. Alongside the revelations about the Ugandan trial, the AP stories brought to light that Joyce Ann Hafford, a 33-year-old, perfectly healthy, eight-months pregnant HIV-positive woman from Tennessee died from liver failure in an NIH trial testing Nevirapine. Her liver counts had been way off for days, and still doctors didn't take her off the drug.

The doctors told her family, naturally, that she had died of AIDS. The trouble is, cocktail-drug deaths are easily distinguished from AIDS deaths. This was not the case with AZT, a drug that simply decimated the immune system. Cocktail deaths are caused primarily by liver toxicity, heart attacks and strokes—from the effects of the drugs on the body's fat metabolism.

Hafford's death crystallizes the raging conflict between the establishment point of view that HIV is deadly and drugs save lives and the "denialist" or dissident point of view that HIV is not deadly at all by itself, but AIDS drugs are. Hafford had no so-called AIDS symptoms; she was simply HIV positive. She also had an older healthy child, which suggests that HIV may not be as lethal as advertised. By refusing to lament her death, or even the scores of Ugandan deaths, and instead attacking the messenger, the AIDS establishment has shown itself to be lost, with a broken compass, on the map of medicinal ethics.

Once it becomes acceptable to kill patients in experimental clinical trials and cover it up, without

This is why W had to give them tax relief in the form of prescription payments for Seniors.

Interesting study is the number and "brand" of those who work in Govt high up who are carried by the pharma companies at high salaries when they are out of office (and thus out of a job until they are cycled back in during the next administration).

'MEDS' not 'HIV' - The real killer
Don't believe what the drugs companies tell you.

WITHOUT HAART 'MEDS"

“These long-term nonprogressors [Hiv+ people who remained healthy] are a heterogeneous group with respect to viral load and HIV-1 responses…none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers

NOT ONE USED HAART

“Subjects: homosexual men in Amsterdam. “None of the LTAs [long-term asymptomatics–people who remained healthy]…received any antiviral drugs during the study [7 years].”

“Ten HIV+ people; 11-15 years infected; non-progressors [i.e., healthy]; maintained stable T-cell counts above 500. “These long-term nonprogressors…all showed the same risk factor (sexual exposure), and all had...virus...and none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers
Journal of Infectious Diseases, 171:811 (1995)
– Hogervorst E, et al, Aids Researchers
_________
__________

WITH HAART

“…Choosing between many of these [HAART] combinations is, therefore, increasingly dependent upon knowledge of antiretroviral toxicities...[which include] myopathy [gross muscle atrophy] (zidovudine [AZT]), neuropathy (stavudine, didanosine, zalcitabine; hepatic steatosis and lactic acidaemia (didanosine, stavudine, zidovudine); and possible also peripheral lipoatrophy and pancreatitis (didanosine)...drug hypersensitivity... lipodystrophy...[including] peripheral fat loss (Presumed lipoatrophy in the face, limbs and buttocks) and central fat accumulation (within the abdomen, breasts and over the dorsocervical spine [so-called buffalo hump]...[and prevalent in] about 50% [of patients] after 12-18 months of therapy...Metabolic features significantly associated with lipodystrophy and protease-inhibitor therapy include hypertriglyceridaemia, hypercholesterolaemia, insulin resistance...and type 2 ...diabetes mellitus. Dyslipidaemia at concentrations associated with increased cardiovascular disease occurs in about 70% of patients. These metabolic abnormalities are more profound in those receiving protease inhibitors...Most cases of diabetes have been identified in recipients of protease inhibitors...Anemia and granulocytopenia affect about 5-10% of patients who receive zidovudine...Virtually all antiretroviral medications can cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea early in therapy...Diarrhea is probably most common with protease inhibitors...Most antiretroviral agents have been associated with hepatic [liver] toxicity...Most protease inhibitors seem to result in increased rates of spontaneous bleeding (bruising, haemarthrosis, and rarely intracranial haemorrhage) in haemophiliacs... 25-35% of patients cannot tolerate [AZT monotherapy] or triple combination therapy for 4 weeks...”

Lancet. 2000 Oct 21;356:1423-0.
– Carr A, Cooper DA, Aids Researchers

BLINDNESS

“This study was conducted to determine the likelihood of the development of [immune recovery vitritis, IRV], which causes vision loss in AIDS patients with cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, who respond to HAART. We followed 30 HAART-responders…Symptomatic IRV developed in 19 (63%) of 30 patients.”

J Infect Dis. 1999 Mar;179(3):697-700

CASTLEMAN'S DISEASE

“Recently, we observed an unusual cluster of cases of rapidly progressing multicentric Castleman’s disease. Fever, weakness, generalized enlargement of lymph nodes, and marked polyclonal gammopathy developed in three patients with AIDS...Two of these patients died within one week after the diagnosis, with generalized involvement of the lymphatic system, liver, and bone marrow at autopsy. A fourth patient with AIDS who died equally rapidly after the diagnosis of multicentric Castleman’s disease had been seen in our hospital 14 months earlier... symptoms…started after the initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy in these three patients.”

N Engl J Med. 1999 Jun 17;340(24):1923-4
– Zietz C, et al, Aids Researchers
– Karavellas MP, et al, Aids Researchers

DEATH
“…Of the 70 patients studied, 84% were still alive after the 3-month study period...17 surviving patients (24%) had HAART regimens discontinued due to drug intolerance and 11 (16%) expired [died] during the study period...”
J Pain Symptom Manage. 2001 Jan;21(1):41-51

NERVE DAMAGE

“The antiretroviral drugs currently licensed in the United Kingdom [June 1996] are zidovudine (azidothymidine [AZT]), zalcitabine (ddC) and didanosine (ddI). All three are nucleoside analogues...All are very toxic. Suppression of bone marrow elements can occur with any of the three, as can peripheral neuropathy [nerve damage].”

Adverse Drug Reaction Bulletin. 1996 Jun;178:675-8.
– Ellis C.J., Leung D., Aids researchers

“A decrease in mtDNA [DNA of the mitochondria; the energy regulating entities within every cell] content was found in HAART-treated HIV-infected patients with peripheral fat wasting in comparison with subjects in the control cohorts...Lipodystrophy with peripheral fat wasting following treatment with NRTI [Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor]-containing HAART is associated with a decrease in subcutaneous adipose [under the skin fat] tissue.”

AIDS. 2001;15:1801-9
– Shikuma CM, Hu N, Milne C, et al, Aids Researchers

‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’
“7 HIV patients presenting LD [Lipodystrophy, all taking antiretroviral therapy] and 5 HIV non-LD controls participated in the study…Structural muscle abnormalities, mitochondrial respiratory chain dysfunction or mtDNA deletions were detected in all HIV lipodystrophic patients. The mitochondrial abnormalities found suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction could play a role in the development of antiretroviral therapy-related lipodystrophy. ”
AIDS. 2001 Sep 7;15(13):1643-51
– Zaera MG, et al, Aids Researchers

“Combination drug therapy, or the triple-drug ‘cocktail’…often provokes severe side effects… ‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’ warned Dr. James Kahn, UCSF associate professor of medicine…”
– Science Daily, Sep 4, 2001

SEXUAL DIFFICULTIES - Body distortions

“[Chapters in this guide to HIV drugs are entitled Introduction, Appetite loss, Body distortions (lipodystrophy), Bone death and destruction, Cardiac concerns, Diarrhea, Fatigue, Gas and bloating, Hair loss, Headaches, Insulin resistance and diabetes, Kidney stones, Liver toxicity, Muscle aches and pains, Nausea and vomiting, Nightmares, daymares and sleeping difficulties, Pancreatitis, Peripheral neuropathy, Skin problems, Sexual difficulties, The end]”

– A Practical Guide to HIV Drug Side Effects, CATIE, 2002

HEART ATTACKS
“Use of protease inhibitors was strongly associated with the likelihood of having a myocardial infarction [heart attack] and correlated with diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia.”
Lancet. 2002 Nov 30;360(9347)
– Holmberg SD, et al, Aids Researchers

87% of U.S. aids cases are the result of lifestyle choices,Africa is Africa

Why is HIV So Prevalent in Africa?

By Michael Fumento

Tech Central Station, April 15, 2005
Copyright 2005 Tech Central Station

Massive airdrops of condoms won't stop African AIDS. Ninety-nine percent of AIDS and HIV cases in Africa come from sexual transmission, and virtually all is heterosexual. So says the World Health Organization, with other agencies toeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda campaign would practically make the epidemic vanish overnight. Or would it?

A determined renegade group of three scientists has fought for years – with little success – to get out the message that no more than a third of HIV transmission in Africa is from sexual intercourse and most of that is anal. By ignoring the real vectors, they say, we're sacrificing literally millions of people.

These men are no crackpots. John Potterat is author of 140 scholarly publications. He began working for the El Paso County, Colorado health department in 1972 and initiated the first U.S. partner-tracing program for AIDS/HIV.

Stuart Brody, who has just accepted a full professorship in Psychology at University of Paisley in Scotland, has published over 100 scholarly publications, including a book called "Sex at Risk." Economist and anthropologist David Gisselquist has almost 60 scholarly publications to his name and is currently advising the government of India on staunching its potentially explosive epidemic.

These renegades point out that a reason we know vaginal sex can't be the risk in Africa it's portrayed to be is that it hasn't been much of one risk in the U.S. Here 12 percent of AIDS cases are "attributed to" heterosexual transmission, meaning they claimed to have gotten it that way. Of these, over a third are males.

Yet San Francisco epidemiologist Nancy Padian evaluated 72 male partners of HIV-infected women over several years, during which time only one man was infected. Even in that case, there were "several instances of vaginal and penile bleeding during intercourse." So even the small U.S. heterosexual figure appears grossly exaggerated.

The chief reason it's so hard to spread HIV vaginally is that, as biopsies of vaginal and cervical tissue show, the virus is unable to penetrate or infect healthy vaginal or cervical tissue. Various sexually transmitted diseases allow vaginal HIV infection, but even those appear to increase the risk only by about 2-4 times.

So if vaginal intercourse can't explain the awful African epidemic, what can? Surely it's not homosexuality, since we've been told there is none in Africa. In fact, the practice has long been widespread.

For example, German anthropologist Kurt Falk reported in the 1920s that bisexuality was almost universal among the male populations of African tribes he studied. Medical records also show that African men who insist they're straighter than the proverbial arrow often suffer transmissible anorectal diseases.

Yet almost certainly greater – and more controllable – contributors to the African epidemic are "contaminated punctures from such sources as medical injections, dental injections, surgical procedures, drawing as well as injecting blood, and rehydration through IV tubes," says Brody.

You don't even need to go to a clinic to be injected with HIV: Almost two-thirds of 360 homes visited in sub-Saharan Africa had medical injection equipment that was apparently shared by family members. This, says Brody, can explain why both a husband and wife will be infected.

For those who care to look, there are many indicators that punctures play a huge role in the spread of disease. For example, during the 1990s HIV increased in Zimbabwe at approximately 12 percent annually, even as condom use increased and sexually transmitted infections rapidly fell.

Or consider that in a review of nine African studies, HIV prevalence in inpatient children ranged from 8.2% to 63% – as many as three times the prevalence in women who'd given birth. If the kids didn't get the virus from their mothers or from sex, whence its origin? Investigations of large clinical outbreaks in Russia, Romania, and Libya demonstrate HIV can be readily transmitted through pediatric health care.

Until we stop HIV spread through needles, we won't stop HIV spread in Africa. Good people can differ on exactly how much of the HIV in Africa is spread vaginally – including our three renegades themselves. Nevertheless, their findings readily belie the official figures. AIDS studies in Africa, Potterat says, are "First World researchers doing second rate science in Third World countries."

There's no one reason for the mass deception. In part, once people have established any paradigm it becomes much easier to justify than challenge.

"These guys are wearing intellectual blinders," says Potterat. "Only a handful are even looking at routes other than sex. They have sex on the brain." Other reasons:

* Grant money goes to those who follow the dictates of the paradigm, not to those challenging it. "Sex is sexy," notes Potterat.
* There's fear that blame for the epidemic will fall on the medical profession.
* To the extent sex vaginal sex does play a role in spreading the disease, there's fear people will stop worrying about it.
Finally, says Brody, for researchers to concede they were wrong would be "to admit they're complicit in mass death. That's hard to admit that to yourself, much less to other people." Hard, yes. And too late for many. But not too late for millions more in Africa and other underdeveloped nations – if we act now.

http://www.fumento.com/disease/aids2005.html

Simple maths?

We are told by the CDC : -

"The HIV/AIDS crisis at home remains tragic as precious lives continue to be lost to the disease. Each year 40,000 Americans are infected with HIV. Currently, an estimated 900,000 Americans are HIV positive and evidence indicates those numbers are
increasing, not declining or even holding steady."

What is startling is that this is the same line we've been told for years now. We supposedly have this increasing
number of "HIV converts" (40,000 per year), yet that number, 40,000 remains the same year after year. Weird. It like, 40,000, 40,000, 40,000, 40,000, 40,000 and on and on and we have 'evidence' for increasing
seroconversions. Lame.

And that number, 900,000. Someone at the CDC just completely pulled that number from their ass.
In 1990 the CDC retroactively revised downward the estimates of HlV-infected persons for the period of 1985-89 (in the US). It went from 1.2 million to 0.75 million. The number for 1990 itself was said to be
about I million (CDC, 1990). Then, in 1996, the CDC retrospectively revised downward the 1992 estimate to yet another figure of 650,000.

By 1996, the number of people said to be infected was between 650,000 and 900,000.

So there's that number 900,000 being used in 1996. Yet now in 2003 we supposedely still have 900,000
ESTIMATED infected people according to the SGN article (they use the word 'currently'). However, in 1999, to further confuse matters, the CDC estimated HIV incidence as approximately 40,000 infections per year
and the number of persons living with HIV at about 800,000 to 900,000 (MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 1999). So if you're head isn't just spinning quite yet, consider this; if, in 1996, they had an estimated 650,000 to 900,000 HIV 'poz' folk, in 1999 they had 800,000 to 900,000 'poz' folk. Why only increase the lower estimate?

Do we now only have ONE estimate and not a range? If we take the 1996 estimate of 900,000 and add 40,000 new cases per year until the end of
2001, we really should have 1,140,000 'poz' people. If we go back to 1992, when the number was said to be a firm 650,000 and add 40,000 cases per year
until 2002, we come up with 1,050,000 cases. So where they get this 40,000 number and 900,000 is beyond me.

Perhaps they revised the numbers down without really telling anyone.

I hope you are all completely and utterly confused, because frankly, I think the CDC, with all their numerous PhD heads running around, are as
equally confused.

Put simply the CDC figures don't add up and are simply intended to keep funding flowing.

They lump together 21 years of figures to make them look dramatic.

Try doing this with REAL diseases like cancer and see how massive the figures are.

I find it difficult to imagine anything one could do to "earn" such sums. Someone once told me that they "create wealth" which entitles them to such incomes.

However, I'm for the free market economy, and applaud anyone who can cut themselves such a deal. Nevertheless, what do they do that many others couldn't do for much less $$$$$$$!

Heck, I would do it for just a $1,000,000/yr and perks!

And the tax dollars spent go up each year,

"Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

Actually thy do a lot for their money: -

Story Acquired From the Anti Ignorance Web Site

Every year, nearly 100 million animals die in research laboratories at the hands of curious scientists who perform outdated and inaccurate tests that prove no benefit to humans or animals.
Before these animals die, they are routinely burned, scalded, poisoned, starved, given electric shocks, addicted to drugs, subjected to near freezing temperatures, dosed with radioactive elements, driven insane, deliberately inflicted with diseases such as cancer, diabetes, oral infections, stomach ulcers, syphilis, herpes, and AIDS.

Their eyes are surgically removed; their brains and spinal cords damaged, and their bones broken... The usage of anesthesia is not mandated by law, and consequently, thus is rarely administered. Despite all of this cruelty, not a single disease has been cured through vivisection in this century.

________

IRS says Glaxo owes $5.2 billion in taxes, interest
The drugmaker said it had paid its U.S. share and would fight the claim over how it apportioned multinational obligations.

By Linda Loyd
Inquirer Staff Writer

GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C. said yesterday that the IRS wanted it to pay $5.2 billion in back taxes and interest on pharmaceutical sales that go back to 1989.

The world's second-largest drugmaker, which has a U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, said it would fight the IRS claim on the grounds it has made "adequate provision for tax liabilities."

_____

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The family of a pregnant woman who died while taking an experimental AIDS (news - web sites) drugs to protect her baby from getting the disease is suing the doctors, drug makers and hospitals involved in the study for $10 million.

______

The House That AIDS Built

In New York’s Washington Heights is a 4-story brick building called Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC).

This former convent houses a revolving stable of children who’ve been removed from their own homes
by the Agency for Child Services. These children are black, Hispanic and poor.

Many of their mothers had a history of drug abuse and have died. Once taken into ICC, the children become subjects of drug trials sponsored by NIAID (National
Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, a division of the NIH), NICHD (the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in conjunction
with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – GlaxoSmithKline,
Pfizer, Genentech, Chiron/Biocine and others.

The drugs being given to the children are toxic – they’re
known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage and fatal skin disorders. If the children refuse the drugs, they’re held down and have them force fed.

If the children continue to resist, they’re taken to Columbia Presbyterian hospital where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs. From then on, the drugs are
injected directly into their intestines.

The IRS sent London-based Glaxo a "statutory notice of deficiency" for $2.7 billion that was owed by the predecessor company, Glaxo Wellcome, between 1989 and 1996, before the merger with SmithKline Beecham three years ago.

_______

Half UK pollution
traced to one plant

By Michael McCarthy, Environment
Correspondent

Official figures show that Britain's
most heavily polluting factories are still spewing more than 10,000 tonnes of
cancer-causing chemicals every year, Friends
of the Earth claims today.

Nearly half is coming from just one
plant, that of Associated Octel
which produces lead additives for motor fuel at Ellesmere Port, Merseyside,
the environmental group says. The ICI chemical
plants at Runcorn and Teesside, and Glaxo
Wellcome's antibiotics plant at Ulverston, Cumbria, are the next worst offenders,
FoE says.

There Is No Doubt That Glaxo Is A Problem !
UK Observer July 8, 2001

Drug Company Admits Unsafe Vaccines Were Used

The former UK company Wellcome allowed thousands of babies to be inoculated in the 1960s and 1970s with toxic whooping cough vaccines it knew had not passed crucial safety tests, the Observer, a UK newspaper, claimed on July 8.

It said its investigations showed that two batches of the firm's vaccine were more than 14 times more potent than the standard dose and 14 other batches containing thousands of vaccine doses were not put through a crucial toxicity test.
One of the toxic batches was the same batch that led the Irish Supreme Court in 1992 to award £2.7 million (US$3.8 million) in compensation to Kenneth Best, a Cork boy who suffered permanent brain damage. At the time the Irish judge accused Wellcome of negligence and attacked the company's poor quality control at its Kent laboratory.

Now, 9 years after the award, the newspaper said the Irish Department of Health had received details from GlaxoSmithKline about the batch--numbered 3741--and was tracing 296 Irish children who were inoculated with it.

Glaxo Wellcome merged with SmithKline Beecham to form GlaxoSmithKline in late 2000.

The newspaper added that pressure from Denis Naughten, a senior Irish Member of Parliament (MP), has forced other disclosures from the company, including the fact that a second batch of vaccine, numbered 3732, produced by Wellcome around the same time, was even more potent than that used on Best in 1968.

In the 3 years after Wellcome produced the toxic batches, dozens of British parents believed their children suffered brain damage or even died as a result of the whooping cough vaccine. But their views were dismissed by drug companies and health officials.
The report quotes Gordon Stewart, emeritus professor of public health at Glasgow University, as saying the revelations are "scandalous." Stewart, who in 1984 was asked by the government's Chief Scientific Officer to investigate a link between brain damage and the vaccine, said he advised the Department of Health about these potential toxic batches in 1989 but they did not act.

His report, which was never published by the government but has been seen by The Observer, is highly critical of the whooping cough vaccine used at this time, which he believes was toxic.

Ian Stewart, Labor MP and chair of the all-party Commons committee on the vaccine issue, said he would be holding an emergency meeting of the committee this week and tabling a series of parliamentary questions.
He said, "The families need to know the truth."
"If it can be shown that Glaxo Wellcome were negligent in allowing toxic vaccines to be used, then the company must face up to its responsibilities."

The families of vaccine-injured children receive £100,000 compensation from a government fund financed by the taxpayer. Stewart believes if the firm is at fault, then they should pay compensation, which would be significantly more.