Michael,
The question of "isolation" of a virus, and then of this particular
retrovirus, is at the core of the HIV = AIDS causality.
You can feel free to write to me (and to Jim, I spoze) off list about
this, but I certainly would appreciate it. Please note that I HAVE
read through several scientific treatises on this, and I apply the
same skepticism I have towards most other "official" pronouncements
to this science as well. There are internal contradictions and key
unanswered questions in the texts I have read thus far, that have led
me to where I now am, questioning whether what is being portrayed as
"isolation" is consistent, and sufficient to produce non-contaminated
samples -- the idea being that something else in that isolate, and
perhaps not the retrovirus itself -- is culpable for the immune
system breakdown.
There are several other major "core" issues here, but having a
consistent definition of and protocol for isolating viruses would be
extremely helpful. Frankly, I don't think it (the protocol) exists
consistently, universally, but I'm open to learning otherwise.
Mitchel
At 11:57 AM 8/5/2008, you wrote:
>Mitchel,
>
>If I and other scientifically trained people on this list patiently
>explained to you what it means to isolate a virus, would you take it
>seriously or would you insist that we didn't know what we were
>talking about and that only you and Jim West had the proper
>definition of virus isolation and that our definition was an evasion
>by the phamaceutical industry that wants to sell drugs to HIV
>infected people? I ask because this is pretty much where we are on
>this "debate," and why I consider continued discussion of it to be
>unfruitful. I have posted material time and time again that does
>just what I suggest above, but it has been pretty much ignored by
>the AIDS denialists here--thus the frustration of many of us that
>the discussion continues to go on.
>
>MB
>
>On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 5:48 PM, Mitchel Cohen
><<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Hi Mandi,
>
>I, too, have witnessed similar problems to those you describe on
>various lists. But there are also long-established lists such as
>SprayNo, where most everyone on it is actively involved in fighting
>against pesticides spraying, and which has generally not been faced
>with the kind of abusive behavior you describe.
>
>I, for one, have raised several items on this list that have turned
>out to be controversial. My intention is NOT to disrupt, and I find
>it hard to see how my own posts, or the relatively few posts by Jim
>West, for example, can cause disruption here, as frustrating as some
>people on this list may find those controversial ideas which --
>please remember -- were writtten as legitimate queries in response
>to assertions that others were making. I write here because on this
>list are scientists of high quality and radical politics. Not being
>involved with a university or research institution myself, this
>listserve is one of the few resources available to me to discuss and
>to come to understand the nature of certain debates. Please
>understand that the controversial issues I raise here concerning
>HIV, Gardasil, 911 Truth, etc. are coming out of and influencing
>social movements with which I am involved (I could throw in
>Palestine and a few other issues as well, but that one I'm pretty
>much able to handle on my own), and for which I seek deeper
>scientific understanding. I have learned a great deal from this
>list, especially in those instances when list members have seriously
>addressed concerns raised. As such, I have refined my views on a
>number of matters. The feedback I've received has helped me in my
>various organizing projects. I've also forwarded items and ideas
>from this list to other bulletin boards I'm on, particularly the
>Green listserves, and those have helped guide us in our work.
>
>Just as much as this list has helped me, I think it is very
>important to keep scientists connected to social and ecological
>movements. While everyone here is, I'm sure, involved in those
>movements -- some more than others -- the danger has always been for
>academics, experts, scientists to become isolated from the nitty
>gritty of those movements. The same is true for many of us
>regardless of profession as we get older. We need to remember the
>import and intensity of those arguments within movements, the often
>wrong interpretations as well as the right ones, and strengthen our
>connections to them, which is especially difficult now that so many
>revolutionary groups that were nourished on grassroots democracy in
>addressing issues have been replaced by Not-for-profit corporations
>prizing the trust-the-expert and top-down approach that feeds the
>individual, with nowhere else to turn, back into the system even as
>we seek to remedy a particular aspect of it.
>
>Dana Bramel and Ron Friend wrote a crucial article back in 1981 on
>"The Theory and Practice of Psychology," printed in Ollman and
>Vernoff, "The Left Academy: Marxist Scholarship on American
>Campuses." (I typed and critiqued that essay for the authors, who
>were also my teachers at Stony Brook, and as part of my job I was to
>run it into the editors in New York City, which is how I first met
>Bertell Ollman -- the beginning of our provocative friendship.)
>Their short review of psychology and Marxism is still fascinating to
>me, and their general conclusion can productively be made to reflect
>on other areas of science, including the Science for the People
>listserve. It is worth posting here:
>
>"Discussion of the organized efforts of left or Marxist
>psychologists brings us full circle in our attempt to answer the
>question: "Psychology for whom?" [We might here ask, "Science for
>whom?"] The primary function of psychology as a bourgeois science in
>North America has been to reduce society's problems to individual
>problems. Psychology is applied at both ideological (images of human
>nature) and practical levels for purposes of social control, but
>always with the individual as the unit of analysis. This handicaps
>psychologists in viewing the world as Marxists do. Therefore, if
>they are to take an anticapitalist role in society, we believe it is
>insufficient to organize as an alternative psychology. In addition
>they should consider joining together with those outside of the
>discipline in Marxist organizations, where their psychological work
>can be put to direct use. This may be the only way to overcome the
>narrowness of the professional's point of view, in its theory and in
>its practice."
>
>I agree with that assessment, still, after all these years. One
>should, in my opinion, take into consideration not only the view or
>question or challenge itself, but from whence it springs. The
>challenges to the official HIV = AIDS paradigm, for example, emerged
>among People With AIDS themselves in ACT UP and HEAL, who may not
>have had every scientific nuance nailed down but who knew (and still
>do) from experience that something was awry and who were being
>killed by the pharmaceuticals they were being told to take, and so
>the quest for information became (and still remains) a desperate and
>immediate need. Others can disagree, they can refine, they can argue
>-- but the exhibition of *contempt* by some on this list for those
>who collectively were (and still are) raising challenges to the
>dominant paradigm further speaks, in my opinion, to Bramel and
>Friend's insights and supports their conclusion -- one that I feel
>many on this list, as elsewhere, have for too long ignored or
>forgotten in our everyday lives.
>
>Mitchel
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>******************************************
>Michael Balter
>Contributing Correspondent, Science
>Adjunct Professor of Journalism,
>Boston University
>
>Email: <mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]
>
>Website: <http://michaelbalter.com>michaelbalter.com
>Balter's Blog: <http://michael-balter.blogspot.com>michael-balter.blogspot.com
>******************************************
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