VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

SMOKE AND MIRRORS
the great illusionist numbers called AIDS statistics

By Jens Jerndal

July 2001

The official AIDS diagnosis (distinct from just being HIV-positive) is a construct that has been changed several times since the documentation of the first AIDS cases.

Statistics is supposedly the rock solid foundation of modern science, a science exclusively concerned with quantities, measurements and numbers. Unfortunately, it is easy to produce erroneous or biassed results unintentionally by just overlooking certain complicated and specific rules for sampling or weighting the data.

But the most fascinating thing about statistics is that a clever statistician can work magics with the numbers and quite intentionally create the illusion of proving or disproving almost anything.

AIDS statistics is a showcase of illusionists at work. It is clearly manufactured to order, using several illusionist tricks to inflate the numbers to where they will inspire sufficient terror or panic in the population at large, to enable those in power to introduce exceptional measures of control over the population by means of force, such as mandatory "medical" interventions, and constraints in the freedom of movement and behaviour. Somewhat like a curfew to control a situation of political upheaval or war.

For the moment, let´s ignore the possible reasons for such a power play, and just look into the way AIDS statistics are de facto manipulated intentionally in order to convey a grossly distorted impression of the underlying reality, with unfounded alarmist projections for the future.

What are the illusionist tricks I am talking about? - First of all, a cumulative technique of reporting is used, which is never used for other illnesses, and which has no other rationale or utility than to give the impression that the numbers are much greater than they really are, and growing. So rather than reporting how many new AIDS cases have been registered in a particular year, you are likely ot be fed the total accumulated number since the beginning of reporting. This gives more impact, and perhaps it makes you think that it is an annual figure.

A second technique liberally used in AIDS reporting, is to now and then change the basis for the numbers included, especially when the figures do not conform to expectations. This has been done in various ways, the most important probably being the widening of the definitions of what is diagnosed as AIDS. For instance, new so called AIDS-defining illnesses have been added, so that now at least 29 different illnesses – all existing on their own before AIDS entered on the stage – are considered as AIDS, when they are accompanied by a positive so called HIV test (actually only a non-specific antibody test that may react to more than 60 different conditions that have nothing to do with either AIDS or HIV).

It is easy to understand that the more illnesses are included, the greater the number of people affected by any of them. That is one of the ways by which AIDS can be shown to increase in numbers, when the dry, clean facts are showing the opposite.

The number of new AIDS cases in the USA peaked in 1992, and has steadily decreased since then. Not the impression you get from media, US authorities or UN agencies, is it?

It is important to be aware of the fact that in Africa no HIV test is required for an AIDS diagnosis. Any illness that lasts more than a month and has certain symptoms will automatically be diagnosed as AIDS. All those illnesses have existed always, and were common long before there was any such thing as AIDS. That is one of many reasons for the inflated number of AIDS cases in Africa. But even with this liberal definition, the real numbers fall far short of the numbers you see in the newspapers.

The reason for this is that the figures you keep seeing are not based on facts, but on generously creative "estimates", liberally spiced up with imaginative but unfounded "projections" for the future. Obviously, it is preferable to use "estimates" whenever possible, since these can be inflated at will, rather than sticking to the less glamorous numbers of existing records. Besides, when one wants to publish the number of "HIV-infected", estimates is the only option, since there is no way of knowing that figure. Only a very small percentage is ever submitted to the antibody test, falsely claimed to be an "HIV test", so it´s a free for all to estimate the numbers. If only the number of correctly diagnosed "full-blown AIDS" cases were reported, the figures would certainly not cause much of a stir, let alone panic.

In a recent report from the USA it was claimed that at least a third of all HIV-positive people don´t even know it themselves! If they do not know it themselves, and have never taken a test, then how could the reporter, or whatever source he used, know that these people are HIV-positive? AIDS statistics is full of this kind of absurd and nonsensical assertions, but nobody seems to notice, let alone react.

One of the few factual sources of African AIDS statistics, is antibody (so called HIV) tests in pregnant women at a few public maternity centres. The test results reportedly show that a very high percentage are "HIV positive". Why? Because there are more than 60 different medical conditions that may give a false positive test result, and among these is pregnancy itself! Others are vaccinations and recent infections, such as hepatitis, malaria, tuberculosis, and influenza.

Considering that the test is performed on pregnant women, when pregnancy is one of the acknowledged causes for a false positive outcome, and considering that the mostly poor and often undernourished women who come to these centres are likely to have been exposed to several of the other conditions as well, it is predictable that a high percentage of them should test positive. However, this does not mean that they are actually HIV-positive, and it certainly does not mean that they will ever have to develop AIDS.

Yet, these evidently inaccurate and essentially meaningless test results are computed and applied to the entire African population, men as well as women, old and young, rich and poor. As if they would apply equally to all, and as if they were proof of the incidence of AIDS. Neither of these is the case, and anyone with rudimentary knowledge of the tests, and of statistics, must be aware of it. Yet this is how statistics on AIDS in Africa is manufactured and publicized.

Incidentally, apart from the more than 60 common causes for a false positive test result, it has been proved that test results for one and the same person may vary from one occasion to another, even at the same laboratory, and even more so from one laboratory to another, and from one country to another. The reason is that there is no "gold standard" for the test, meaning that it is arbitrary exactly from where on a scale a positive result is registered. And this kind of test is used to tell people that they will die of AIDS, and that they have to take obscenely expensive medicines that make them desperately ill and even kill them, but can never cure them.

This is the background for South African President Mbeki´s reluctance to offer these not only ineffective but fatally harmful drugs at the Government´s expense to pregnant women and newborn children, and indeed to anyone. And very good reason he has for it too.

One study showed that a group of young men who tested HIV-positive had a higher death rate than a group that did not test positive for HIV, and anybody reading this would automatically assume that all those HIV-positive men died of AIDS. However, the study did not show what actually caused the deaths in the HIV-positive group. When this was investigated, it turned out that there may in this case have been a correlation between an HIV-positive test and a slightly higher death rate, but there was no correlation between the higher death rate and AIDS disease. Most of those deaths had nothing to do with AIDS at all! Statistical smoke and mirrors!

In Africa, the reporting of AIDS cases is furthermore based on widely differing criteria in different areas, or by different agencies. The fact that for AIDS cases there seems to be financial support, while this is not the case for old illnesses, also prompts those involved to report any illness as AIDS, when in fact they are classic cases of tuberculosis, malaria or other endemic African illnesses.

Interestingly, tuberculosis and malaria, both very common in Africa, have – among many others - been included in the so called AIDS-defining illnesses, and all of them can give a false positive result in the so called HIV test. Smart, isn´t it? See the smoke and mirrors?

I have seen estimates in the newspapers that some 38 million people world-wide are "infected" and live with HIV, which in media is often equal to having AIDS. How does anyone know? AIDS can be diagnosed, but "HIV infection" cannot, at least not without testing.

The American TV-network CNN has the following figures for sub-Saharan Africa for 1999:

24.5 million are said to live with HIV/AIDS. Typically, no distinction is made between just being HIV-positive while healthy, and actually being ill with "full-blown" AIDS! This is another of the many smoke screens.

The estimated (!) number of new infections in 1999 is reported to be 3.8 million.

The estimated (!) number of total deaths from AIDS (observe the cumulative reporting) is said to be 14.8 million.

Since we happen to know that extremely few HIV tests are being performed in Africa due to the high cost, we cannot help asking what the basis is for these estimates. And this even more so against the background of the number of registered deaths from AIDS, that according to certain official sources only add up to some 700,000, altogether, since the beginning of the "epidemic" nearly twenty years ago. And this in spite of all the described reasons for inflating AIDS statistics in Africa.

One argument offered by the statistical inflationists to explain this discrepancy is that most AIDS deaths are reported as something else, either because people do not want to admit that their relatives died of such a shameful disease, or even that they did not know it was AIDS! But those who do the estimates apparently know. Without any HIV-testing. One wonders how. Purely on hunch? Some statistics! Something does not add up here.

So what else can we do to conjure up the impression that AIDS is a fast spreading pandemic threatening to wipe out the entire world population unless we anticipate and frustrate it by forcing people to choke on high-priced, lethal chemotherapy deceptively called "antivirals"?

One thing is to pick out the age group that has the lowest death rate of all, say young people between 20 and 30, and find that AIDS (or more likely the "antivirals" prescribed for it) is "the leading cause of death" for this group. Be sure not to disclose the actual percentage, as it is so small it would take the effect away. But since few people in this age group die from natural causes, AIDS can be construed to be "the leading cause" or at least "a leading cause" of death in this group, along with suicide and accidents.

Publishing this with enough fanfare, the public will easily draw the false conclusion that AIDS is a leading cause of death, period. Or that at least a very high percentage of the age group in question is dying of AIDS. When the true death rate in AIDS even in this age group may be as low as a fraction of a percent. Now you see it - now you don´t! This is one way the illusionists perform their statistical magic without actually lying.

Finally, we can play the effectful orphan card, again estimating (!) all the millions of orphans to AIDS. Without mentioning that the definition of orphan is any child that has lost one (!) or both parents in any way at all, and there is no reliable documentation to say how many of those missing parents actually died of AIDS, or even died at all. By far the most common reason for missing parents in Africa is the wars that have been raging on the continent for decades.

A recent example from India gives an illustration of what is going on. Official statistics to be presented to the UN said India had 560,000 AIDS orphans – with only 17,000 AIDS deaths. During a press conference, a journalist asked Dr. David Miller, the Country Representative of UNAIDS where they got these figures of AIDS orphans from. He had no answer.

The Indian Health Minister referred the matter to the person who handles data collection on HIV/AIDS figures for the Government. He said there were no estimates on the number of AIDS orphans in India. When Dr. Miller was asked what his source of the estimate was, he said, "I cannot disclose the source. I will have to speak to my colleagues in Geneva about it."

Another thing that has never stopped fascinating me, is how supposedly professional and responsible public agencies like the WHO can know that e.g. the incidence of HIV (often interpreted as equal to AIDS) in African teenage girls has increased by 26 % (or whatever percentage reported) from one year to the next. What is their source for this kind of figures? – Is it from one school where they tested a few girls last year and test another few this year? This year perhaps just after they were vaccinated, or had their annual bout of flue? How many girls were tested? How was it done? When? Where? Can we see the studies, please!

Most people don´t realize that often when a percentage is given for a country or group of people, only a small number of people has actually been investigated. The percentage found in that small sample is then accepted as applying to the whole country, or the whole group, however great the risk is that those investigated are not representative of the whole country or group. A knowledgeable statistician who wants to cheat, can usually do his sampling in such a way as to favor a certain outcome, without manipulating the numbers as such.

To round off this exposure of the statistical illusionists, I will give a dramatic example of what can hide behind statistically expressed reliability of the test for HIV.

A test for HIV is reported to be 98% accurate. Let´s for the sake of the argument assume that this is a correct assessment. Since in our culture we are hypnotized by numbers and quantities, percentages and majorities, this will sound very reassuring to most people. But what can that statistical truth mean for individual people in real life? Let´s have a look.

In a sample of the average American population, the estimate for HIV prevalence is in the order of 0.04%, or 4 per 10,000 people. Assuming we test 100,000 Americans, we would then expect to find 40 true HIV positive persons. This means that the remaining 99,960 persons are HIV negative. However, since the test is only 98% accurate, it may falsely identify 2% of these 99,960 people as HIV positive. That is 1,999 persons! So in this example, out of 2,039 people who test positive, only 40 are actually positive. That means 98% of those identified by the test as "HIV positive" are not positive at all. In other words, the test, that is said to be 98% accurate and thus approved for commercial use, is in fact 98% inaccurate, looked at from the point of view of those who tested positive.

Imagine the fate of those 1,999 healthy people, told they will soon get AIDS, and bullied, intimidated or seduced by the medical establishment into taking AZT to "delay the onset of AIDS". Quite apart from the enormous cost of this treatment (and profit to the pharmaceutical business), how many of them do you think will survive the ordeal?

Such is the diabolic scenario the US medical authorities have set in motion: The whole population is scared into taking the test, and all who test positive are hard-sold AZT or equally toxic drug treatment, leading to certain death. (If you still believe the media propaganda that AZT is a "life-saving drug", go dig up some easily verifiable facts at the website www.virusmyth.com – click first on FIND, then on AZT for a wide choice of information, and finally on Anthony Brink for the background of a pending court case).

We just assumed that the test really is 98% accurate. It seems nobody has thought of asking how this figure can be established, since there are no reliable controls. As the rest of the ruling AIDS dogma, and most of "HIV science", it is simply an article of faith. Actually, on the basis of what we have uncovered in this article, we know that the margin of error can be far, far greater. But we also know that testing positive in a non-specific antibody test for a hypothetical HIV is meaningless, since by itself it has no predictive value for the development of AIDS.

So is all of it just smoke and mirrors to lure trusting people "at risk" into a morass of profit-able tests and treatments, openly confessed to lead nowhere but to obliteration and death?

An even more sinister interpretation is that the panic and terror intentionally generated by the high-hype publicity campaign, is designed to pave the way for a global state of emergency, justifying far-reaching restrictions in civil rights and freedoms, and even military interventions.

Sinister indeed was the note sounded by the US Presidency in 2000 when AIDS was being declared a matter of national security. Not AIDS in the US, mind you, but AIDS in the world, and especially in Africa. Can we trace a hidden political agenda behind this, perhaps even a power plot for global control? - If so, where do we find the master mind behind it? - At the White House? (regardless of which party or which president is in power?) - At the Pentagon? – In the multinational Pharmaceutical and Petrochemical industry? - Perhaps all three together in a secret alliance? – And would the purpose just be to generate astronomical profits and financial power for the stage directors of this tragedy, or would it aim at taking effective control of the world?

It may not have been the coldly planned beginning of a consistent political scenario, but perhaps we should, after all, recall how it all started. It was the Reagan administration in an election year - and not publicly debated scientific consensus - that declared a new retrovirus the cause of AIDS, without any scientific proof, and promising a vaccine for it within a two-year period. That is now 17 years ago. From that moment the US federal government took full dictatorial control of the AIDS "epidemic", with its health authorities deciding what research to fund, what treatment (= drugs) to approve, what to publish in professional journals, and what to tell the public via media. The rest of the institutional world, with just a few exceptions, has ever since been sheepishly dancing, as in a trance, a Dance of Death to Uncle Sam´s AIDS pipe.

Against this background, you may find it hard to believe that the the presence of the new retrovirus named HIV has only been inferred from certain non-specific "markers". Some superbly credentialed researchers say these constitute no proof of HIV-infection, and claim that the vilified HIV may not even exist at all! HIV has to date never been isolated from a patient. Believe it or not, these are the facts, and anyone who wants to take the trouble can verify them.

Seeing how the world has been sold the unproven HIV-causes-AIDS dogma, and especially the fatal drug regime that goes with it, I cannot help thinking of Nazi Germany´s crushingly efficient propaganda machine with its use of mass psychosis, brilliantly masterminded by a certain Mr. Goebbels. History does repeat itself, only in new forms and with new labels.

To a fast growing number of keen professional observers, it is increasingly obvious that AIDS is not caused by any virus, that it is not sexually transmitted and not even contagious at all. Instead, AIDS is a multifactorial syndrome, with its most important cause being poisonous chemicals and drugs, among them insecticides, pesticides, benzene-linked anal lubricants used by some homosexuals, recreational drugs, multiple parasitical, viral and bacterial infections, and not least prescription drugs of many kinds and most particularly so the extremely toxic chemotherapy routinely prescribed for AIDS and "HIV infection".

There is no lack of effective non-toxic treatments for AIDS, and it is perfectly possible to cure it. We just have to acknowledge the true causes, and stop poisoning people to death.

How do we address the situation? – By raising our awareness level and questioning all information we get from media and government agencies. By not letting ourselves be used, bullied or sacrificed on the altars of corrupt science and ruthless drug business profiteering. And above all: By using our common sense to think for ourselves!

Jens Jerndal is a Doctor of Holistic Medicine, who practised holistic medicine for 16 years, and a former Professor of the Philosophy and Principles of Holistic Medicine at the Open International University for Complementary Medicines in Sri Lanka. E-mail: paradocs@canaldirecto.com, website: www.life-expansion.com

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE