JUDGE PUSHES AIDS DRUGS (DEC. '01)

Pretoria High Court judge Chris Botha ruled that the South African government was obliged to provide the toxic and experimental AIDS drug nevirapine to pregnant women and newborns. See this Reuters report, this AP release, and this SAPA report. See also this article from Health-e, this article from The Economist, and this article from The Guardian.

The ANC was not happy with the trial, see this SAPA report. The government did not worry about the court ruling, according to this Reuters release. The opposition was delighted, says this article from SAPA.

The South African government is going to appeal the High Court ruling. See this Reuters report, this article from the Mail & Guardian, and the statement by the Minister of Health.

See also this letter published in The Independent.

TREATMENT FAILURES (CONT.) (DEC. '01)

"Symptom-free HIV patients can safely hold off taking AIDS drugs longer than previously thought, two new studies suggest." See this AP report, and this article from The Globe and Mail.

"Letting patients with HIV take their medicines on a one-week-on, one-week-off schedule might save some money and might help reduce side-effects," says this Reuters report.

"A disturbing new study found that at least half of all Americans under care for HIV infection carry viruses that are resistant to some of the standard AIDS drugs." See this AP release, and this article from the Boston Globe.

"HIV-infected women who take certain combinations of medications in their first trimester of pregnancy may increase the risk of having a child with birth defects, a small study suggests." See this Reuters article.

AIDS ACTIVISTS JAILED (NOV. '01)

San Francisco gay and AIDS activists David Pasquarelli and Michael Petrelis are jailed for a million dollars bail. The activists face a number of felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from a series of allegedly harassing and threatening phone calls. See this press release, this article from the Los Angeles Times, this article from the San Francisco Examiner, and this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

FBI officials were even asked to take action against the activists for domestic terrorism.

Pasquarelli and Petrelis deny the charges, stating that, while some calls were made, they never threatened anyone, spoke to children, or placed bomb threats. Indeed, there is no evidence or declarations supporting the most serious felony charges. An legal expert expects the felony counts will be reduced to diversion or to misdemeanors. See this article from The San Francisco Examiner.

Charged with more felonies the bail for Pasquarelli was increased. See this press release.

You can support a newly formed bail fund The Direct Action Civil Liberties Fund. It collects the necessary money to ensure their release as quickly as possible. See this open letter of concern too.

See also this article by Clinton Fein, this article by Doug Ireland, and this article from the New York Times.

ROLLING STONE (NOV. '01)

"22 million Africans infected, with 14 million more already dead from it. These frightening numbers were all that mattered, it seemed to me. Once they were shown to be accurate, further debate would be rendered obscene, and Thabo Mbeki would be guilty as charged, a fool who'd allowed himself to be swayed by a tiny band of heretics universally dismissed as wackos, fringe lunatics and scientific psychopaths. So I set out to confirm the death toll. Just that. I thought it would be easy - a call or two, maybe a brief interview. I picked up the phone. It was my first mistake."

Journalist Rian Malan has spent most of the past year researching African AIDS statistics for an article in Rolling Stone magazine. See also his article for South Africa's Business Day.

Read this article from the New York Post, and this column by Nicholas Regush too.

FINAL ISSUE CONTINUUM (NOV. '01)

The last issue of Continuum magazine has been published online.

PROF. HEINZ SPRANGER (OCT. '01)

Professor Heinz Spranger is a German Nosologist and Semiotist, and a Practitioner in Periodontology and Oral Medicine. He is also a member of The Group, and a member of South Africa's Presidential AIDS panel. Read this interview, and see this article by him.

MONOGRAPH PERTH GROUP (OCT. '01)

The Perth Group published a monograph about the transmission of HIV from pregnant women to their children, and the use of drugs as AZT and nevirapine to prevent such transmission.

NEVIRAPINE (OCT. '01)

Dr. Roberto Giraldo wrote an article to help the lawyers of the South African Ministry of Health in a court trial against the government for not providing nevirapine to HIV positive pregnant woman and their babies.

See also this Reuters report, this article, and this report.

TREATMENT FAILURES (CONT.) (OCT. '01)

"As many as two-thirds of patients on HIV drug combinations may suffer a medication side effect that could affect their adherence to therapy, new study results suggest." Read this Reuters report for more.

"The longer HIV-infected patients are on the drug regimen called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), the more likely they are to develop abnormalities in fat distribution, according to researchers in France." See this Reuters report.

"Only about half of HIV-infected patients in a study published were found to be taking their antiretroviral drugs according to directions", another Reuters report says.

SOUTH AFRICAN STUDY (OCT. '01)

"AIDS has become the biggest single killer of South Africans, the South African Medical Research Council reports in a study". See this article from SA's Daily Mail and Guardian, and this article from SA's Business Day.

"The ANC has dismissed as "not credible" the Medical Research Council's findings that AIDS is the leading killer in South Africa." See this article from The Star, this government statement, and this statement by Stats SA. "Stats SA launched the attack on the MRC report, questioning the scientific methodology and demographic modelling of the report and criticising its alleged lack of empirical evidence", says this article from SA's Business Day:

See also this Reuters report, and this report.

President Thabo Mbeki had to answer some questions from Parliament. See this report.

Update: The MRC report. (.pdf file)

THE BAND PLAYS ON (SEPT. '01)

The American Spectator published an article by Michael Fumento: 'The Band Plays On; Good News on AIDS Why the Silence?'. Fumento is the author of 'The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS', and wrote a series of articles about some of the AIDS myths.

ARTICLE AL-BAYATI (SEPT. '01)

Toxicologist Dr. Mohammed Al-Bayati tried to find out if the AIDS illnesses existed prior to HIV, or whether some of these diseases are rare or never occur in HIV negative persons. Read his new article.

MBEKI IN THE NEWS (SEPT. '01)

"President Thabo Mbeki has ordered a re-examination of SA's social policy spending priorities in the light of 1995 "cause of death" statistics he has extracted from the internet." See this article from South Africa's Business Day, and the letter from Mbeki. See also this article from AFP, this Reuters report, and this article from SAPA.

THE AIDS DENIERS (SEPT. '01)

Jim Nelson wrote an article for GQ magazine about ACT UP SF's "AIDS deniers".

MOTHERING MAGAZINE (SEPT. '01)

Mothering magazine published a series of articles on AIDS. See this article by Susan Gerhard about HIV-positive women birthing outside the system, and her article about breastfeeding. And this article by Neville Hodgkinson about HIV, and his article about the lethal dangers of AZT.

20/20 INTERVIEW MAGGIORE (AUG. '01)

"Disbeliever" Christine Maggiore was interviewed by Connie Chung for abc news 20/20. Read the transcript. See also this article.

MBEKI IN THE NEWS (AUG '01)

"South African President Thabo Mbeki, who has attracted a storm of controversy for questioning the link between HIV and AIDS, said violence and not AIDS was the biggest killer in the country." See this Reuters report, and the BBC interview.

TRIBUTE HUW CHRISTIE (AUG. '01)

A tribute to Huw Christie, former publisher of Continuum, who died on August 17th. See also the obituary by Michael Baumgartner.

EMERSON CASE UPDATE (AUG. '01)

"When Nik was born, doctors told me he wouldn't live past 3. They told me he'd never write his own name, he'd never sing the alphabet and he'd never read," Emerson said."He's done all those things". Read the story from AP.

Read more about AZT fugitives.

UNDUE INFLUENCE (AUG. '01)

"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has long been the target of both industry and ideological forces seeking to scale back regulation." Read this interesting article about the FDA from the American Prospect.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN (AUG. '01)

"Challenging the HIV theory got virologist Peter H. Duesberg all but excommunicated from the scientific orthodoxy. Now he claims that science has got cancer all wrong." Read the article from Scientific American.

TREATMENT FAILURES (CONT.) (JULY '01)

"A controversial treatment in which patients infected with the virus that causes AIDS are allowed to only take medications on alternate weeks appears to hold the deadly virus at bay -- and after a year has not resulted in the creation of a drug resistant virus." Read the UPI article.

See also this AP article about two more studies questioning basic principles upon which AIDS therapy is based, and this release from Reuters.

"HIV-infected men with abnormal body fat distribution, a side effect of treatment with antiretroviral drugs, face another risk: thinning of the bones." See this Reuters report.

HAYMAN VS. GLAXO (JULY '01)

"A South African woman is citing President Mbekis controversial views on AIDS in a 100,000 legal action against the British manufacturer of the drugs she claims killed her husband." See this article from the U.K. Times, this article from SA's Sunday Independent, this article from the Sunday Times (SA), and this SAPA report.

See also the particulars of the claim.

CONDOMS UNPROVEN (JULY '01)

"Condoms effectively prevent HIV transmission but data is lacking on whether they work to block most sexually transmitted diseases, according to a report released by federal health officials." See this Reuters report.

"Even now the CDC is using an unproven, theoretical model and laboratory tests to claim condom effectiveness... The CDC just refuses to acknowledge the loud voice of clinical, empirical and epidemiological research. It is looking for every possible excuse to avoid admitting that its 'safe-sex' public health policy has failed." See this press release by The Physicians Consortium.