Vultures in...
THE GLOBAL FUND
Sightings from The Catbird Seat
~ o ~
THE SPIN
November 30, 2007
Bush urges additional
AIDS money
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
MOUNT AIRY, Md. - President Bush urged Congress on Friday to approve an additional $30 billion for the global fight against AIDS over the next five years, and announced he would visit Africa early next year to further highlight the need and his administration's efforts.
"We dedicate ourselves to a great purpose: We will turn the tide against HIV/AIDS — once and for all," Bush said. "I look forward to seeing the results of America's generosity."
Bush chose the gymnasium at Calvary United Methodist Church in this tiny western Maryland town to make his remarks. The church supports a Christian group home and school in Namibia for children orphaned by the disease. Before speaking, he met with representatives from churches and other religious groups that have been fighting AIDS, part of his attempt to highlight his belief that faith-based organizations are the best vehicles for such work.
Evangelical Christians, who make up a large and influential portion of Bush's political support, have been key to his policies increasing U.S. involvement in the fight against AIDS, particularly in Africa. Bush has been said to believe that the United States, and his administration, do not get enough credit for the work being done on the issue.
"Every year American taxpayers send billions of their hard-earned dollars overseas to save the lives of people they have never met," he said.
But "in return for this extraordinary generosity, Americans expect results," the president said, adding that his program demands measurable progress, accountability and the involvement of local partners. The result: The number of people in sub-Saharan Africa receiving treatment for AIDS has gone from 50,000 five years ago to nearly 1.4 million now, he said.
"We have pioneered a new model for public health," Bush said. "So far, the results have been striking."
In May, the last time he devoted a speech to the topic, Bush asked Congress to double the $15 billion that the U.S. committed over the program's first five years to therapy, testing and counseling through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. The program is active in 120 countries, with a concentrated focus on 15, including Namibia, in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
As of the end of September, 1.36 million people in those focus countries had received antiretroviral treatment through the program, with a focus on averting infant infections by treating pregnant women. Others receive testing and counseling.
"Some call this remarkable success. I call it a good start," Bush said.
Doubling the funding for PEPFAR would provide treatment for 2.5 million people, the White House said.
In honor of Saturday's World AIDS Day, the White House hung a red ribbon — 28 feet tall and 8 feet wide — in the North Portico of the mansion to symbolize the fight against AIDS....
The White House also said Friday that the Department of Homeland Security will publish a final rule this winter aiming to help reduce discrimination against those living with the virus that causes AIDS. The new rule would establish a categorical waiver for HIV-positive people seeking to enter the United States on short-term visas.
A 1993 law prohibits HIV-positive people from receiving visas to visit the United States without a waiver. A categorical waiver will enable HIV-positive people to enter the United States for short visits through a streamlined process.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_aids
THE REALITY
November 1, 2007
A rethink of AIDS policies
after string of failures
Some experts are reemphasizing proven,
low-tech prevention methods
By Craig Timberg, Washington Post
DURBAN, South Africa - Few cases of AIDS have been as closely scrutinized as that of a former South African prostitute named Beauty. Scientists know when this 40-year-old woman became infected, how her body responded and what happened as her immune system collapsed.
But when the subject turns to how Beauty might have been protected from the AIDS virus in the first place, scientists have few good leads. This fall, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. halted study of one of the most promising possibilities, a genetically engineered vaccine being tested on four continents, because it simply did not work.
After this latest setback, and with billions of dollars spent on research over more than two decades, scientists say they do not know when -- if ever -- a vaccine will be available in the fight against one of the world's most devastating epidemics. The news has been nearly as bad for other technological solutions, including vaginal microbicides, one-a-day prevention pills and diaphragms.
"We are really groping in the dark," said Salim S. Abdool Karim, director of the Center for the AIDS Program of Research in South Africa, in the seaside city of Durban.
The recent string of failures has sent scientists back to the lab, where, by studying the first months of infection in subjects such as Beauty, they hope to unlock some of the most enduring mysteries of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
But as they do, pressure is building from other experts -- some epidemiologists, physicians and scientists -- to shift attention away from technological fixes. They favor devoting more of the world's $10 billion annual AIDS spending to proven, lower-tech strategies against HIV, such as circumcising men, promoting sexual monogamy and making birth control more easily available to infected women.
"It's criminal not to put money into the things that work, and the things that work are relatively inexpensive," said Malcolm Potts, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley and former head of Family Health International, a research group with extensive experience in fighting AIDS. "We're spending money in the wrong places."
A difficult target
Scientists first identified AIDS in 1981. Despite more than 150 trials and steady flows of cash from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other major donors, there are few promising vaccine candidates, scientists say. The most anticipated, developed by NIH scientists, somewhat resembles the Merck vaccine and is due to enter trials soon.
HIV has proved a difficult target in part because it hijacks the immune system, turning the body's own defense mechanisms against it. Then the virus mutates so quickly that a tactic that works one week might be obsolete the next. Because nobody has ever been able to rid their body entirely of the virus, scientists say they do not know what a successful immune response would even look like -- making it harder to know how to provoke one with a vaccine.
Vaccines for polio, flu and measles are made from dead or weakened viruses. They generally do not cause disease, instead producing immunities that help vaccinated people battle the pathogens if encountered later at full strength.
Because scientists feared that even a dead or weakened version of the AIDS virus might cause a lethal infection, the Merck vaccine attempted to stimulate an immune response by altering a common, but much less dangerous, virus to include genetic elements of HIV. Though researchers did not expect the vaccine to prevent someone from contracting HIV, they thought it might prepare the immune system to battle a later infection, helping delay its progress to full-blown AIDS.
It didn't. The safety monitoring board for the trial called for it to be stopped Sept. 21 because the vaccine was ineffective.
Here in Durban, one of the most heavily infected cities in the world, researchers at Abdool Karim's center called each of their 53 vaccine trial participants with the grim news.
Bonga Mkhize, 24, who had received a shot in his upper arm over the past few months, said glumly, "I was expecting it to work."
Among a group of nearly 700 subjects worldwide who received two doses of the vaccine, 19 became infected with HIV, compared with 11 for a similarly sized group that received placebos. The finding alarmed some scientists and underscored the tricky ethics of using human subjects to test potential remedies for incurable diseases.
South African researchers last week began warning hundreds of volunteer test subjects that the vaccine might actually have increased their risk of contracting HIV.
Two trials for microbicides -- gels that women insert into their vaginas to prevent infections -- also ended when more women using the experimental substance became infected with HIV than those using placebos. Scientists theorize that vaginal irritation caused by these products may have made it easier, not harder, for the virus to infect women. A study of whether diaphragms might inhibit HIV found that they were also ineffective.
"It's been an appalling year for the biologists," said Francois Venter, president of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society.
Technology vs. reality
A technology that has worked in highly controlled settings often fails in the context of actual sexual behavior.
Hospitals routinely use antiretroviral drugs, for example, to prevent infections in doctors and nurses stuck by HIV-infected needles. But when researchers asked healthy West African women to take such medicine every day, the difference in infection rates was so small that scientists could not determine whether the medicine worked.
Condoms, meanwhile, can block HIV but are not used routinely enough to reverse the widespread epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa.
Researchers have struggled to prove the effectiveness of other popular and heavily funded strategies. For example, many scientists believe that treating sexually transmitted infections should slow HIV by healing the ulcers that encourage infection. But five of six large studies so far have ended in failure.
Theories about the ability of HIV testing and counseling to encourage safer sexual behavior also remain unproved. In some studies, those who learned they had the virus reported altering their behavior; those who discovered they were not yet infected did not. But most studies have found that making HIV testing more available does not slow the spread of the virus, and a rigorous new one published recently in the publication JAIDS found the virus spread most swiftly among those with the greatest access to testing and counseling.
For a study of people at high risk for HIV, Beauty came each month to a clinic that had muffins and hot tea at the ready. Researchers tested her for HIV and gave her free condoms, extensive AIDS counseling and a modest stipend.
Yet when one of her regular customers -- a truck driver who paid about $35 per visit, four times the going rate -- insisted on not using condoms, she chose to risk contracting a lethal disease.
"I heard about it, but I didn't think it would happen," she said. "Your heart just tells you, you won't get it."
The unpredictable nature of human behavior helps explain the enduring allure of a vaccine. If one could be found, a single needle stick -- or maybe two or three -- would confer a degree of lifetime protection.
"Without a biomedical instrument to prevent HIV, basically the world will never be able to control HIV because people will never stop having sex," said Glenda Gray, the lead South African researcher on the Merck vaccine trial.
New push in old direction
As efforts to find a vaccine or other new technological tool against AIDS have faltered, the science behind several existing but lower-tech approaches has grown stronger.
Three studies in three African countries have found that circumcising men lowers their chance of contracting HIV by about 60 percent. And like a vaccine, circumcision offers lifelong protection.
Research shows that public campaigns encouraging monogamy also helped reduce the pace of new infections in Uganda, Kenya and perhaps Zimbabwe. In each nation, falling rates of multiple sexual relationships led to declines in HIV infection rates.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that making birth control easily available to women with HIV gives them the power to keep from having babies who might contract the virus. Providing antiretroviral drugs to pregnant women also limits transmission to babies, but the medicine now reaches only one in 10 African women who need it.
These approaches do not attract the money or attention enjoyed by potential technological fixes such as vaccines or microbicides.
A recent U.N. report calling for massive new spending on AIDS projected only about 1 percent of the money funding either circumcision or efforts to change sexual behavior. There was no line item for expanding access to contraception.
Potts, the Berkeley professor, said the time has come to shift priorities toward existing strategies, however imperfect.
"If we're defeated in one area, we pull our troops back and attack somewhere else. That's what we're failing to do," he said. "We need a military response, and we have a bureaucratic response."
© 2007 The Washington Post Company
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21571977/
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February 10, 2003
The truth about George Bush's
anti-AIDS push
The President is returning a favour from the big
US drug companies, writes Kenneth Davidson.
From The Age
Those who pay the piper, call the tune. In campaigning for the 2002 US Congressional elections, the Republicans spent $US527 million (compared with $US343 million for the Democrats) and $US145 million of the total was raised personally by President George Bush.
According to Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan group campaigning for electoral reform in the US, many of Bush's State of the Union messages to Congress last month were designed to satisfy the desires of his largest campaign contributors.
Thus, more than half the benefits of the $US3350 billion income tax cuts will go to Americans earning more than $US104,000 a year. And they make the bulk of personal contributions of $US1000 or more, which have totalled $US1.8 billion since 1999.
Bush said in his address that social security funds for younger workers are to be shifted into "retirement accounts that they will control and they will own", which will generate billions in new commissions for Wall Street, whether the market goes up or down.
He proposes $US33 billion in tax breaks to resource-extraction industries; to shield utilities from mandatory steps to reduce air pollution; and to open more federal land to logging.
These concessions, all of which have dubious economic or social benefits, provide a handsome return on donations to federal parties and candidates since 1989 which, according to Public Campaign, total: $US81 million from securities and investment firms; $US319 million from extraction industries; $US71 million from utilities; and $US31 million from the timber industry.
Missing from the list of rewards was the $US15 billion AIDS relief program for Africa, which seems to have received a good press, even from Bush's traditional opponents.
The proposal caught everyone by surprise. According to the Planned Parent Federation of America, on his first day in office, Bush restored the Reagan-era "global gag rule" on international family planning assistance.
In May 2002, Bush Administration representatives at the UN Children's Summit opposed the use of condoms for HIV/AIDS prevention.
In July, Bush withheld from the UN Population Fund $US34 million in funding for birth control, maternal and child care and HIV/AIDS prevention. In August, he withheld more than $US200 million in funding programs to support women and tackle HIV/AIDS in Afghanistan.
Last month, the US killed a deal agreed to by 143 World Trade Organisation members to allow developing countries without the ability to produce cheaper generic drugs for HIV/AIDS and other diseases to import generic drugs at lower prices from countries such as India, rather than the more expensive patented drugs from the US and Europe.
The US pharmaceutical manufacturing industry is one of the top 10 industry contributors to federal US political campaigns. Prescription drugs cost twice as much in the US as in other developed countries, and the industry makes three times the profit of other industries.
The question is, will the money proposed for the AIDS relief program benefit Africa by being used to buy the drugs from the cheapest source - or, as is more likely, will the money be used to subsidise production by the American pharmaceutical manufacturers, to protect their markets in developing countries?
Bush could do far more to minimise the AIDS epidemic now sweeping the Third World by reversing the infamous "global gag rule", which promotes needless deaths by discouraging safe sex, and unwanted pregnancies, which lead to unsafe abortions.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation calls the policy "Bush's secret war" and says his actions "are a testament to the Bush Administration's war against women and his overall contempt for their fundamental civil and human rights".
Bush's war against women has regional as well as global security implications, implications that the Clinton administration recognised.
At a UN Population Fund meeting in Auckland last week, the New Zealand Health Minister said 40 per cent of the Pacific Islands' contraceptives previously came from donors such as the fund, but that by 2000, partly because of the success of the safe-sex awareness programs, donors met only 27 per cent of the region's estimated needs.
US bullying in international forums and its effort to gut international reproductive health programs was in evidence yet again at the UN Asian and Pacific Regional Population Conference, held last December in Bangkok (and at which the US was represented because of its ownership of the island of Guam).
According to Dr Martha Campbell from the Berkeley School of Public Health, "the Bush delegation was young, pro-life, bright, well trained, legally savvy, deceptive and threatening . . . In the corridor we witnessed the US delegation threatening at least one high-level Asian delegate with his country's loss of US foreign aid and the loss of his own career".
In the wash-up, every country represented at the meeting defied the US, but all their time was taken up, according to Campbell, in "preventing damage by a 500-pound gorilla from Guam".
The US delegation demanded the deletion of a recommendation for "consistent condom use" to fight AIDS, even though a Berkeley study found condom distribution to be astonishingly cost-effective, at $US3.50 a year of life saved. In contrast, antiretroviral therapy costs more than $US1000.
This expensive option is obviously more acceptable to the religious fundamentalists who give the Bush Administration its moral dimension, and to the pharmaceutical manufacturers who want an even bigger return on their political investment in Washington.
Kenneth Davidson is a staff columnist.
Email: dissentmagazine@ozemail.com.au
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/02/09/1044725671018.html
August 25, 2008
I was given a copy of AIDS in Nigeria; A Nation on the Threshold (Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 2006) some time ago by a student friend who happened to have been employed with others in the editing and design of this large, expensively produced anthology of twenty-four commissioned HIV/AIDS/antiretroviral drug articles. The book was funded by the Gates Foundation and includes many beautifully reproduced color photographs of dying children.
The Preface announces the book’s purpose as: to help guide the HIV response for Nigeria, a nation of 130 (now 140) million, at a “threshold” that may see “52 million living with HIV.”
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has been the most serious natural disaster to hit the world in recent centuries. In the worst affected regions, notably sub-Saharan Africa, this steadily progressing catastrophe threatens to become a calamity of cataclysmic proportions. [Hence, “stakeholders” need this book], a single, authoritative source on HIV/AIDS in Nigeria. [Foreword]
I read through the book in part because it lacks an index but mainly because it was my first exposure to a voluminous, colorful coffee-table book on a health topic. Here is a fair summary of the book’s main emphasis:
“Although data suggests that Nigeria’s nationwide prevalence has not dramatically increased since 1999” and currently only “one million Nigerians would be considered eligible to receive antiretroviral therapy,” yet “the need remains great to scale these activities up significantly.”
Public health efforts in Nigeria “should be primarily directed against HIV/AIDS.” This is because “HIV/AIDS will diminish any positive effects that might have occurred as a result of other improvements in life standards and health care,” because the epidemic has impacted not only the health sector but the economic and development sectors, and for other reasons by similar logic.
Some chapters are surveys of how the Nigerian health professions and international health organizations have responded to the AIDS epidemic (advances in monitoring, the role of civil society organizations, behavior change programs under George Bush’s PEPFAR initiative). Two other chapters are on epidemic virology and molecular epidemiology. In the main, the argument is to scale up HIV/AIDS industry activities in Nigeria even at the cost of overall public health.
There are two or three brief statements—quoted from health workers low in the health hierarchy—on the harm to Nigerian public health caused by drawing people from the limited pool of trained people into AIDS/HIV/antiretroviral projects because of the Foundation-supported salary opportunities and on the social cost of diverting funds and attention from much-needed rural health (clean water, prevention, out-back clinics, pre-natal care, etc.) toward urban, high-technology, Western-dependent directions. However reasonable these few statements, contributing Nigerian doctors, PhD’s, and health official stick to their guns advocating scaling up antiretroviral clinical trials, vaccine research, and programs using existing antiretroviral drugs, especially when directed at “mother-to-child transmission.”
I wanted to ask “transmission of what?” The simple God’s truth answer is “transmission of poverty.”
NIGERIA – THE COUNTRY
At about 140 million in the standard demographic yearbooks, Nigeria is the eighth most populous country and accounts for 20 percent of the world’s Black people. It is predominantly rural but with some of Africa’s largest cities, huge urban conglomerations marked by the same lack of clean water, sanitation, and infrastructure as the countryside. Nigerians joke that their children are strong because nowhere else in Africa do they have to walk so far to the store and to fetch clean water.*
The U.S. has at least one million people of direct Nigerian ancestry (not counting our slave ancestry population), only the UK and Nigeria itself have larger populations. In the U.S., Nigerians have a significantly higher than average educational level; many serve in the U.S. military—some for accelerated citizenship advantages—and all of them experience some of the disadvantage and exclusion common to all Black people in the U.S. (differential imprisonment, poorer health care and housing, lower salaries).
Nigeria was giving its independence from the UK in 1960 under the influence of the wave of African independence movements. A typical condition of that transition was consolidating—not seeking to limit—divisions in the country. There are regions (Southern, Western and Northern, now in 36 federal states), peoples (Yoruba, Igbo, and others) and religions (Muslim and Christian). Thus disequilibrium, along with continued commercial dominance by the colonizing world, direct military and political interference in Nigerian internal affairs, and the usual corrupt elections and internal conflicts kept Nigeria in turmoil. In that context—called “fishing in troubled waters”—the U.S. and European private corporations continued to control Nigeria’s natural resource wealth (principally oil and gas) and the underpaid labor of its growing population, bringing it firmly into the sphere of influence of these corporations and their committees of government.
The country has remained predominantly rural and in need of clean water, sanitation, sustained national campaigns against malaria and TB, and infrastructure development. Nigeria also needs medical training institutions, city clinics and rural medical services. However, Nigeria is also the sixth largest OPEC oil producer —that is, by January 2007 levels of production, which are set by U.S./Saudi influence to sustain high per barrel prices—and is soon expected to supply a quarter of all U.S. petroleum. In spite of this wealth, none of Nigeria’s health needs are being met. Zero. Nada.
Nigeria also has been made into one of the U.S. government’s sources of men-at-arms (sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Darfur, Yugoslavia, East-Timor, DR Congo), a U.S. ally in the “War on Terror,” and its “policeman in Africa.”
Although the IMF literature records a nine percent economic growth (2006), no realistic Nigerian expects even its most rudimentary health needs to be met in the foreseeable future. And yet the facts of life create a considerable pressure for change. We can expect to hear of “conflict,” to see unfavorable press coverage, and to sense dangers ahead for Nigeria.
If you want a foretaste of the dangers you can read a bit about Nigeria’s “Civil War” from 1967-1970 (Biafra) or current detail from the Niger Delta, or look into Cabinda in Angola, or Doba in Chad. These are oil enclaves, all of considerable importance to the world’s private billionaires.
http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=333
May 31, 2007
Ex-CIA Doctor:
AIDS Is Man-Made Pentagon Conspiracy
by DR. ALAN CANTWELL & DR. SUE ARRIGO
To all persons interested in the man-made origin of AIDS...
I am a physician and AIDS researcher who has authored two books on the man-made origin of HIV/AIDS ("AIDS & THE DOCTORS OF DEATH: AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF THE AIDS EPIDEMIC" and "QUEER BLOOD: THE SECRET AIDS GENOCIDE PLOT.").
On the eve of the Blue Moon of May 31, 2007, I was sent the most explosive email I have ever received concerning possible insider evidence pertaining to the man-made epidemic of AIDS.
The communication was sent by Sue Arrigo, M.D., who claimed she was a physician licensed in California (G50197). Because her email (attached below) was so mind-blowing, I immediately googled Arrigo and found several entries including a note on one website in which Arrigo claimed to have been kidnapped, raped and threatened with death in 2004 (this was NOT mentioned in her email to me).
In addition, I checked online and verified that she was indeed a licensed CA physician, although her license expired in December, 2006, and her current residence is in Canada.
In her email Dr. Arrigo asked if I would help her get the word out to interested persons. I would ask that anyone who receives this communication to do all they can to spread the word regarding her accusations that AIDS is a man-made disease.
Over the past two decades there have been only a handful of other physicians and health professionals who have had the courage to alert the public to evidence that AIDS is man-made, namely Robert Strecker MD, William Campbell Douglass MD, Eva Snead MD, and Leonard G Horowitz DDS.
In general, their research (books, videos, internet communications) have been ignored by the CDC, the NIH, the AIDS establishment, the major media, etc. -- and merely passed over as "conspiracy theory" and "paranoia."
Dr. Arrigo has a long association with the CIA as an expert on biological warfare, and also has apparent ties to the highest powers (and presidents) in the U.S. government.
Thus, her insider status makes her an extremely valuable witness to the truth about AIDS and its man-made origin.
Please do all you can to confirm or deny the truth of Dr. Arrigo's accusations -- and to publicize her plight -- and to air her plea on behalf of the abominations of secret biological warfare experimentation and use against human beings.
I have attached the google references to "sue arrigo", her email to me in it's entirety, proof of her CA medical credentials, and a website note of her rape and torture.
In truth and justice,
Alan Cantwell M.D.
On May 31, 2007, at 8:32 PM, Sue Arrigo wrote:
Dear Dr. Cantwell,
Thank you for your courage and integrity in speaking the truth.
As an ex- CIA physician with high level access, I wrote a report for DCI Webster in about 1991 arguing for closure of all the US Bio-Warfare Labs. I did that after reviewing the Ft. Detrick and the CIA's Langley Bio-Warfare Labs's research, looking at their own documents.
That review was authorized because Bush, Sr. had sold dangerous Bio-Warfare agents to Hussein, which I ended up having to recover from Iraq. Webster, as a former judge, willing to evaluate the evidence, allowed me to research the field and write a report for him of close to 100 pages and 1000 pages of supporting documents.
Although the focus of my report was why the Bio-Warfare Labs should be closed, the issue of the HIV virus developed by the Ft. Detrick lab formed about 18 pages of my report.
At the time I wrote that report, the vaccine for HIV that had been developed in 6 months of work, had already been used by the Cabal since 1983.
It was a crime against humanity that the virus was unleashed on the world, and it continues to be a crime that the vaccine has been kept secret and for private use only. Meanwhile, the outer research to get to a vaccine is an exercise in how not to arrive at a solution before millions more die.
The initial "hopes" for HIV per its designers was to be able to walk into Africa and take the resources from a ghost continent. They had hyped it as killing everyone there within a year, in their pre-release reports.
The research at the Labs addressed the fastest way to make vaccines to Bio-warfare agents, both in labs, at a front, and impromptu on a battlefield. That was a pressing concern and one that was researched using millions and millions of dollars.
Briefly, the consensus at the time was that
1) Any agent from a sick soldier left in a Waring Blender for 8 hours would be broken down well enough to not be infective in small doses ( ie. less than a 100 germs).
The Labs had made an IgM set of antibodies to sediment out the human HLA antigens by centrifuging it. That allowed the supernatant to be used as a vaccine with little serum sickness problems.
A physician in a war zone equipped with a Waring Blender, a blood specimen centrifuge, and a vial of the IgM could make a fast "fresh" vaccine and start inoculating soldiers.
The labs tested that using a variety of agents and common cold agents. It was only if one wanted to store the vaccine in vials that one got into the problem of denaturing the proteins of the agent due to heat, chemicals,etc. That was where most of the problems of loss of effectiveness crop up.
2) The Labs found that causing a 1cm by 1cm abrasion until one got lymph and applying a drop of the "fresh vaccine" and a band aid, worked almost as well as an injection. The abrasion could be caused by three fast firm strokes of very fine sand paper over a template with a square of skin bulging through it.
This method had much less serum sickness problem. The major problem was occasion keloid and scar formation and superficial infections.
3) The Labs also showed that it was possible to make a crude live vaccine as an emergency directly on the battlefield. The principle was that infection occurs when the body's defenses are overwhelmed but that the body can usually fend off 10 to 50 organisms even of Bio-warfare agents. It was a simple dilution to get the agent into the right ballpark, starting with a secretion of a sick person.
Then a drop of that dilute live agent would be placed on an abrasion. That was also tested during war games with colds etc. The diluted material can't be stored for longer than an hour due to the risk of multiplying the agent.
It was assumed that in the field it would not be known whether the agent was a virus or a bacteria. A bacteria that divided every 20 minutes could be 8 fold in quantity after an hour and risk causing the infection one was attempting to prevent. Of course, such a live agent could be extremely dangerous and except in an extreme emergency would not be used.
4) The issue of how to quickly sterilize a make-shift vaccine was also addressed in the research. The best method was to dry the agent, if time permitted. Second best was to preserve the agent in Vodka (40%), not gin, etc., and then to dilute it down to less than 2% alcohol before applying it to the abrasion.
That means that a simple vaccine for HIV can be made by virtually anyone in the world in a short period of time, though it would likely need to be repeated periodically to get and keep the titers up. But repeating it is a good idea anyway as that helps address the mutation problem. So, suppose one took 1 cc of secretions from each of 10 HIV patients in an area (without fungal infections preferably) and mixed them together to have a range of HIV agents. Then one could add 250 cc of Vodka and let it sit a week. Then one could remove a cc of that and add 20 cc of clean water to get a less than 2% alcohol solution. A drop of that could be applied to an abrasion. That, I believe, would give you about 60% protection.
Repeating that at intervals of about 2 weeks to a month for 6 months and using new HIV secretions every 6 to 12 months, I think would give one fairly good protection in a person with a normal immune system to start with. Of course, that is a crude method and should be tested for efficacy etc. But it is simple enough to test on sex workers, if they were willing to volunteer.
They are at such high risk that the likely benefits almost certainly outweigh the risks. The chief risk would still be sensitization with human HLA proteins. The beauty of using abrasions is that one can wash the vaccine off as soon as any untoward reaction is noticed.
If you know of people doing HIV research who are not controlled by the US govt, could you please pass this information on to them?
It would be good to get it out to those who could investigate this information with the intention of saving lives with it. Bio- warfare research is immoral and illegal. Unfortunately the US govt is accelerating that research and production of secret private vaccines.
Sincerely, Sue Arrigo, MD
(the below is from: http://www.alternet.org/rights/27771/ )
An American Already Tortured By Cheney's Team in the US
Posted by: kunzangwangmo on Nov 11, 2005 10:16 PM
As a coerced CIA asset, I was asked by Cheney in Aug. 2004 to frame Iran as developing nuclear weapons. Because Cheney was afraid of CIA leaks, he gave me the assignment at a Chinese restaurant in DC after hours. It was not the first meeting that I have ever had privately with him as I acted as a negotiator between him and Tenet.
Within the CIA I had been an outspoken critic of US wars of aggression, its nuclear first strike plans, and its breaking of nuclear arms control treaties. I spent most of my life as an operative risking my life as a remote viewing spy monitoring and recovering lost WMD.
I am a doctor and the assignment Cheney gave me was to go to Iran as a physician. Once in Iran, a camera crew would be filming when an Iranian agent would rush in to say that he knew a secret bunker where the Iranian govt. was developing nuclear weapons.
Cheney admitted that the rest of the filming would occur in Hollywood with a mock up of said lab. Clearly, this was an immoral assignment. There was no way that I was going to have the blood of innocent Iranian women and children on my hands, so I refused. When I did so, Cheney threatened the life of my mother. Since my mother had recently told me she would rather die than have me be emotionally blackmailed in this way, I held to my no.
During the course of our about 40 minute talk, one of his secret service officers interrupted us twice. The next week when I was kidnapped in Virginia, raped and tortured for 4 days, I recognized the voice of that officer as one of the rapists.
It is an outrage that Cheney is advocating torture. He has already shown by his actions, that he will stop at nothing, not even the torture of American born CIA personnel in order to get his way. He has a clear conflict of interest in making money off these wars.
Are we, as Americans, going to torture people just so that corrupt officials can line their pockets with oil and war profiteering revenues?
Please write your congresspersons to prevent others being tortured as I was. Cheney and Bush should be impeached for lying to force us into war. We are not winning the war on terrorism, torture is terrorism as anyone who had been through it knows. I was raped and subjected to three mock executions, when will this US reign of terror end?
Sincerely,
California medical license G 50197
~ ~ ~
http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/radio/ckln-hm.htm
http://www.usafa.af.mil/jscope/JSCOPE01/Arrigo01.html
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?ChannelID=34
http://www.comspiracyplanet.com
See also: Nests in The Pentagon; Of Vampires and Daisies; The Kissinger of Death; The Secret Nests: The CIA; Uncle Sam’s Guinea Pigs; AIDS in Nigeria: The Book http://nightingaleatlarge.com/?p=333#more-333
March 26, 2007
AMERICAN IDOL GIVES BACK
"Idol Gives Back" is a two-night special to benefit children and young people in need in American and Africa airing Tuesday, April 24 and Wednesday, April 25 on FOX.
Gwen Stefani, Josh Groban, Pink, Michael Bublé, Annie Lennox, Il Divo and Borat Sagdiyev among many world-renowned artists are scheduled to appear and the Ford Motor Company leads corporate sponsors.
During tonight’s live broadcast of AMERICAN IDOL, it will be announced that FOX, AMERICAN IDOL and the Charity Projects Entertainment Fund (CPEF) have partnered on an historic television event – IDOL GIVES BACK – a two-night special raising awareness and funds for organizations that provide relief programs to help children and young people in extreme poverty in America and Africa....
In keeping with the IDOL GIVES BACK theme, all the songs performed will be about compassion and hope. After the performance show, viewers will vote for their favorite contestants via toll-free numbers and text messages, as usual. On this special night, however, viewers will also help change the lives of the truly needy. For every vote cast, AMERICAN IDOL sponsors Coca-Cola and AT&T, along with a range of additional partners, will donate money to the charity....
During the Wednesday event, adding to the corporate contributions, viewers will be able to make their own donations via toll-free lines and the Internet.
The money raised by the two shows will equally benefit the U.S. and Africa. In the U.S., the money will be distributed via CPEF to Save the Children and other U.S. organizations working to deliver programs to children living in extreme conditions in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. To find out more about poverty here in America, please visit http://www.savethechildren.org .
In Africa, the money will be dedicated to delivering health and education programs and will be distributed via CPEF to a number of organizations, including U.S. Fund for UNICEF, The Global Fund, Save the Children, Nothing but Nets and Malaria No More....
April 27, 2007
Senior Official Linked to
Escort Service Resigns
ABC NEWS
Brian Ross and Justin Rood Report:
Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.
Tobias, 65, director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), had previously served as the ambassador for the President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief.
A State Department press release late Friday afternoon said only he was leaving for "personal reasons."
On Thursday, Tobias told ABC News he had several times called the "Pamela Martin and Associates" escort service "to have gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." Tobias, who is married, said there had been "no sex," [ala Bill Clinton’s definition???] and that recently he had been using another service "with Central Americans" to provide massages.
Tobias' private cell number was among thousands of numbers listed in the telephone records provided to ABC News by Jeane Palfrey, the woman dubbed the "D.C. Madam," who is facing the federal charges. In an interview to be broadcast on "20/20" next Friday, Palfrey says she intends to call Tobias and a number of her other prominent D.C. clients to testify at her trial.
"I'm sure as heck not going to be going to federal prison for one day, let alone, four to eight years, because I'm shy about bringing in the deputy secretary of whatever," Palfrey told ABC News.
Palfrey maintains she ran a sexual fantasy business that was legal and that if any of the women who were working for her had sex, they did so in violation of her rules and without her knowledge. She says there are a number of other prominent Washington, D.C. men who will be on her witness list. "I'll bring every last one of them in if necessary," Palfrey said.
As the Bush administration's so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized by some for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS.
In a 2004 interview, Tobias explained his approach as "A and B and C. . . Abstinence works. 'Be faithful' works. Condoms work. They all have a role. But it's not a multiple choice, where there is only one answer."
As a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries, Tobias was responsible for enforcing a U.S. policy, enacted during the Bush administration, that requires recipients to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. USAID adopted a similar policy in 2004.
At an April 18 speech, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Tobias' work. "Randy Tobias has indeed had many roles in his life, but none more important than the roles he's played in government, where he has been someone who has been most involved in organizing America's compassion to the world."
A biography of Tobias was removed from the USAID Web site, but an archived version shows that before joining the State Department, Tobias had been CEO of drug manufacturer Eli Lilly Co. and AT&T Communications, and served on the board of trustees for Duke University, including three years as its chair.
In 2003, he co-wrote a book on leadership lessons with his son, Todd, entitled, "Put the Moose on the Table." Indiana University, whose publishing arm produced the volume, is also home to the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence.
Along with his wife, Marianne, Tobias donated over $100,000 to Republican candidates and political committees, according to the campaign finance Web site http://www.opensecrets.org.
Tobias is the second prominent man to be identified as a customer of the Palfrey’s "sexual fantasy service." Two weeks ago, Palfrey alleged that military strategist Harlan K. Ullman, creator of the "shock and awe" combat theory and now a scholar with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was also a customer. Ullman has said that the claim was "beneath the dignity of comment."
Palfrey is expected to appear in court on Monday, to request permission to replace her criminal defense attorney, currently a federal public defender.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/senior_official.html
< < < FLASHBACKS < < <
For Immediate Release:
29 September 2003
AIDS ORGANIZATIONS RAISE GRAVE CONCERNS IN ANTICIPATION OF EX-PHARMA CEO'S CONFIRMATION AS HEAD OF BUSH AIDS PLAN
A coalition of AIDS advocacy organizations including Health GAP, Global AIDS Alliance, Africa Action, Student Global AIDS Campaign and the Washington Office on Africa, demanded answers today to critical questions regarding the confirmation of Randall ("Randy") Tobias as head of the Bush global AIDS program. Tobias, who will begin confirmation hearings September 30 in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is the recently retired CEO of U.S. pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and influential Republican campaign donor.
Recent battles at the World Trade Organization (WTO) over providing access to affordable generic medicines make clear that such access is not in the interest of the pharmaceutical industry--an industry that held the allegiance of Tobias for many years.
"It would be one thing if Tobias could boast experience in the field of AIDS or public health," said Rene Shen of Student global AIDS Campaign. "But being poorly qualified and having questionable priorities on access to affordable life-saving drugs is bad medicine for people living with AIDS," continued Shen. "Bush is already breaking his promise to uphold the Doha Declaration by continuing to obstruct poor countries' access to affordable generics. Will Tobias break that promise too?"
Announcements of the president's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (EPAR) have indicated that the plan calls for use of affordable generic medicines, utilizing triple combinations of antiviral drugs available at $300 or less per person per year. This price is currently only available through generic manufacturers. Even with the price reductions offered by branded pharmaceuticals to some sectors of some developing countries, no combinations of brand name antiretrovirals approach the $300 target.
The coalition of advocates closely scrutinizing Tobias's confirmation is reluctant to believe that the retired drug company executive will make good on this promise. "The 40 million people with AIDS facing death without access to affordable treatment need experienced public health leadership to direct this program," said Salih Booker of Africa Action. "Tobias has some tough questions to answer," continued Booker.
"It is highly problematic that the person chosen by Bush to lead the fight against AIDS on behalf of the U.S. brings up concerns of experience and independence before even being put into the position, and it is perfectly reasonable to object to this nomination. There must be an adequate firewall between important public health policy decisions like this one, and the conflicting commercial interests of political appointees."
The coalition also criticized the fact that the White House has not released clinical or programmatic details about the Bush AIDS Plan, which is already nearly one year old. "More than one and a half million people have died of AIDS since Bush's announcement," said Brook Baker of Health GAP. "The clock is ticking--a detailed plan setting out how the White House expects to achieve the clinical goals of its AIDS program is long overdue."
Bush's five-year AIDS plan has also come under attack for sidestepping the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), a multilateral program that is already operating and functional. The Global Fund is facing an immediate fiscal shortfall of $3 billion, because the U.S. and other donors have not committed their fair share.
"The lack of genuine leadership by Bush in stating AIDS as an 'emergency,' but then refusing to adequately fund the sole existing mechanism that could save millions of lives is indefensible," said Paul Zeitz of Global AIDS Alliance. "Bush's White House argues that poor countries cannot absorb the $3 billion promised in the global AIDS bill he signed. That is simply a lie. To show good faith, Bush and the head of his AIDS program should express their will by fully funding the U.S. share for the Global Fund at not less than $1 billion for 2004."
Despite a recent agreement made at the WTO, Bush's bilateral trade agenda has focused on increasing patent rights for drug companies, even in poor countries, where patent monopolies result in higher cost and decreased access. The emerging free trade agreement between the U.S. and the Southern African Customs Union, for example, would inhibit access to low cost generic versions of important patented medicines.
In Nigeria and Uganda the U.S. has pressured local officials to enact national patent policies that exceed the strict rules of the WTO and would restrict countries' rights to break patent monopolies to reduce medicines cost. Upcoming talks in Miami in November around the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) represents another example of the ongoing trade interests of Bush and the pharmaceutical industry....
http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/politics/ngos09292003.html
December 2, 2006
Number of poor on AIDS treatment up
Figures: Spending has extended lives of 1 million people
By John Donnelly, Boston Globe
LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- The number of poor people on AIDS treatment around the world has roughly doubled in the la