VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

DEBATING AZT
Appendix II

A reply to my invitation to Dr Desmond Martin to respond to AZT and Heavenly Remedies

31 March 2000

Dear Mr Brink,

I am a colleague of Des Martin and got to read the recent E-mail you sent to him.

There really is not much to say (please do not for one second misinterpret this again as debate) but I feel that there may be one or two issues of importance to your personal development. It was very strongly suggestive at the time of the Citizen article (especially your emotional and personalized attack in the windy rebuttal to Dr Martin’s reply) that you have suffered a loss or exposure to a bereavement or life event of some sort in the recent past. If that is the case, then I am sorry. But whilst anger may be a part of the recognized reaction sequence, it is not useful to displace and translate it into a word salad and slime innocent bystanders. The Citizen is really to blame, but the option to surf on a wave of sensationalism and misinformation and peddle some copy would have overcome any editorial misgivings - it would not be the first time. A more productive route would have been to seek some professional counseling (or are you hostile towards the entire medical and allied professions?) and perhaps it is still not too late.

Unfortunately it is easy to formulate and vocalize views without adequate background - in fact it is especially easy when not constrained by the burden of insight and perspective in synthesizing and reviewing the value of publications and the role they play in the evolution of paradigms. Debating AZT - questions of safety and utility - remember that it is the source of the answers (or perhaps your questions) that must be judged critically. Your list of reviewers gives the game away.

If you believe that you were responsible for evoking the wave of quackery that has influenced the State President, then perhaps you have a delusional component - there is a readily available and continual barrage of media trash which will provide bona fide evidence of anything from alien abductions to stealth viruses. If, however, it is true, then I am sure that you would also wish to share culpability for the hundreds of children recently infected with HIV-1 who do not have access to your “debate” and your resources but are the real victims of yet another huge governmental AIDS blunder. You will no doubt be aware that the minister of health has intervened more than once in recent months in thwarting the long-awaited recommendation by our Medicines Regulatory Authority (a detoothed MCC) to use AZT in mother to child transmission. How would the legal profession react to ministerial intervention in Supreme Court action or opinion?

I think that your debate is still to come - windmills, flat earth and a plethora of other useful antiretrovirals must be beckoning. And more’s the pity because one senses from your writing considerable ability and I think compassion.

Yours sincerely,

John Sim

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VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE