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From my journey with the documentary Feature Film "HOUSE OF NUMBERS" 

Ed Asner Narrates New Documentary AIDS film

Nicole Swiren's documentary, Denialism, The Death of AIDS, can now be downloaded in it's entirety, and an accompanying DVD features a full interview with acclaimed actor Ed Asner.

Saturday, November 13th, 3:15 to 5:10 PM Beverly Garland's Theater 4222 Vineland Avenue, North Hollywood, California isffhollywood.org

Woman Sues Brooklyn Doctor For Telling Her She Has HIV

By James Fanelli, DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
"One of them allegedly stopped the woman and tried to hearten her by noting that sometimes another HIV test shows the initial results were wrong."

NEW YORK CITY — A Harlem woman who didn't want to know whether she had contracted HIV is suing her doctor for breaking the news that she tested positive for the deadly virus.

The 31-year-old woman claims Dr. Pavel Yutsis violated state law by testing her without her consent and then delivering the devastating results — even though the revelation likely benefited her health.

"I was tricked. I never signed any paper," the woman, who filed her lawsuit as "Jane Doe" to protect her privacy, told DNAinfo.com last week. "It was a slap in the face."

Jane Doe became a patient of Yutsis during the summer of 2011, according to the lawsuit filed last month in Brooklyn Supreme Court. She had been recovering from recent gastric-bypass surgery when a nutritionist recommended she go to Yutsis's Sheepshead Bay clinic, Lifex Medical Care, for treatment of a Vitamin B12 deficiency.

After a number of visits, the woman still showed a shortage of white blood cells and low levels of B12, which helps in the proper formation of red blood cells. Yutsis suggested she take an HIV test, but she declined, explaining she was only focused on healing from her surgery, the lawsuit says.

"I wasn't really concerned about anything else," she told DNAinfo.com New York, noting she already had a primary care physician.

On Sept. 9, 2011, a Yutsis assistant told Jane Doe that she needed to draw more blood for testing. She assumed it was to see if the treatment had worked and "was unaware that her blood was going to be tested for HIV," the lawsuit says.

"She was never asked to sign a form consenting to the test and was not given counseling to prepare her for the administration of an HIV test," the lawsuit says.

On Sept. 22, during another visit, Jane Doe claims Yutsis told her she tested positive for HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS. The results — and how they were collected — dumbfounded her.

"My body got numb. I was not good after that," the woman said. "I was tricked with something I had no clue about."

As she left Yutsis' office, she also learned the results were not kept confidential, the lawsuit says. A group of employees had allegedly been chatting with her file open. One of them allegedly stopped the woman and tried to hearten her by noting that sometimes another HIV test shows the initial results were wrong.

New York's public health law requires the written consent of a patient before administering an HIV test. A doctor or health-care provider must also offer counseling, explaining to the patient, among other things, how HIV is contracted and how testing can be done anonymously. In revealing the results, the health-care provider must offer more counseling and referrals for emotional support and medical treatment, according to the law.

The law also requires the HIV-infected patient's name be placed on a state Health Department registry. When possible, partners of the infected person are notified, but the infected person's name is not disclosed.

Yutsis did not return a call or email for comment.

Jane Doe's lawyer, Daniel Pepitone, said he understands the health benefit of testing for the infection, but said Yutsis violated his client's right to choose.

"These are personal choices that the law has specifically carved out to make the specific decision," Pepitone said. "We're all aware of the value of finding out, but she has her own reasons. We need to protect her rights under the law."

Dr. Charles Camosy, an ethicist at Fordham University, said Jane Doe had every right to reject the test, noting Western medicine's shift away from "physician paternalism," in which the mindset used to be that the doctor knows best. Now the emphasis is on informed consent, with patients deciding what's best for themselves.

"There are considerations that are important for a patient to weigh that have nothing to do with medicine," Camosy said. He noted that in the Jane Doe case, it's possible "the stress in getting the test would be worse than not knowing."

"Maybe she'll have a nervous breakdown and not be able to function," he added. "That's not something the physician is prepared for."

Camosy acknowledged that the possible transmission of HIV to a partner complicates the situation, but said society doesn't mandate testing.

"If there is no law or regulation that the people already decided," he said, "then I still think the physician has no business doing it."

Jane Doe said she has since gone to another clinic, where she consented to an HIV test that was administered correctly. The test also showed she is HIV positive.

When asked whether Yutsis's disclosure benefited her health, she simply said it wasn't his place to decide.

"That was a low blow," she said. "That was a sucker punch."

The woman was also vague about her current health.

"I'm working on things," she said, noting her gastric-bypass surgery has helped her lose a substantial amount of weight.

"I'm slim and trim and sexy," she said. "If I turn sideways, I'll be marked absent."

Alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers

www.nytimes.com and www.npr.com
Misdeeds, Not Mistakes, Behind Most Scientific Retractions

When there's something really wrong with a published study, the journal can retract it, much like a carmaker recalling a flawed automobile.

But are the errors that lead to retractions honest mistakes or something more problematic?

A newly published analysis finds that more than two-thirds of biomedical papers retracted over the past four decades were the result of misconduct, not error. That's much higher than previous studies of retractions had found.

That comes as no surprise to those of us who have witnessed the corruption of science by the tens of billions of dollars with which Tony Fauci and his friends at the drug companies have bribed "researchers" in The HIV-AIDS Industry over the past 28 years.
--Terry Michael

"We found something that is very disturbing," Dr. Arturo Casadevall, the co-author of a paper looking into this phenomenon that was published Monday by Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, tells Shots. "This kind of stuff has the potential to do damage to science. But we need to expose it to clean our own house."

 

Casadevall, a microbiologist and immunologist, and his partners looked at the more than 2,000 retracted biomedical research papers since 1977. They found that more than 67 percent had to be retracted because of fraud, suspected fraud, duplicate publication or plagiarism. Only 21 percent of the retractions they looked at were the result of error.

Casadevall says the reason his team's findings differ so much from previous retraction studies is that his team independently verified why each paper had been retracted.

He says the previous research had relied on retraction notices — explanations published in journals about why studies are being retracted. But, Casadevall says, "when you retract a paper, most journals allow the authors to write the notice." That gives the authors the chance to spin the message.

For example, the authors of a 1993 study published in Sciencewere found to have falsified and fabricated their data. Their retraction notice makes no mention of this, only stating that "some experiments have not been reproducible."

That might technically be true, but it leaves out the fact that the authors' original findings may not have even been producible in the first place.

Casadevall's team didn't take the authors' words for it. They brought in information from the federal Office of Research Integrity, as well as from independent media reports. Not only did they find that two-thirds of retracted articles involved misconduct, they found that the more highly influential a journal is the more of its retracted articles involved fraud or suspected fraud.

Casadevall's team verified some of their retraction notices with help from the blog Retraction Watch, created two years ago by health journalists Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky.

While the economic pressures of conducting biomedical research will always lead some scientists to cut corners, Oransky says journals need to force those scientists to own up to their mistakes. "These unclear, opaque notices really distort the scientific literature," he says. "They don't allow for a full picture of what's happening in science."

The bloggers behind Retraction Watch have seen, perhaps as well as anyone, how scientists can get things wrong. But Oransky says he's optimistic that Casadevall's study will bring about change.

"It's one thing for bloggers to bang on about something and make the same conclusion every week," he says. "But it's another for the peer-reviewed literature with a carefully done, well-constructed study to do the same thing. It's harder to ignore."

Risk Reduction and HIV Testing Messages Sent Through Social Networking Media Can Be Effective

Sean Young, PhD, MS Department of Family Medicine UCLA

This is part of an internal email mailed to a Gay Youth group:

...The machine is part of a small ‘pilot’ research study being conducted by a UCLA researcher named Sean Young (at the UCLA Center for HIV Intervention, Prevention, and Treatment Services). Pilots are small projects that are designed to establish the feasibility of answering a specific research question. If the results are promising, then the investigator can apply for funding for a full scale study.
 
This particular study is designed to assess whether risk reduction and HIV testing messages sent through social networking media can be effective in motivating someone to obtain an HIV home test kit from a vending machine. So the study is looking at both social network ‘diffusion’ of risk reduction information as well as acceptability of use of vending machines to obtain test kits.

How Accurate is the HIV Confirmation Test?

 
The study has 100 subjects who will receive emails from the investigator asking them to share risk reduction/testing messages with their social network contacts. If they are interested in participating, the contacted individuals will be provided with a phone number to communicate with the investigator. They will then be given the PIN number and information on the location of the machine. The investigator will be able to monitor (through the use of the unique PIN) whether subjects are actually coming to obtain test kits.
 
After the study period (which should last 2 months at most) we will be able to use the machine for other things if we want…..condoms, lube…..candy! No decision on that yet.
 
I want to stress that the distribution of rapid HIV home test kits as part of this study doesn’t reflect the XXX position on HIV home testing, which has been approved by the FDA but remains controversial.

more about Sean Young programs:
http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/facebook_the_next_tool_in_fighting_stds/

Fears over Aids 'miracle pill"

MARIKA HILL at www.stuff.co.nz

Fears are being raised that a ''magic pill'' could spark a new wave of the Aids epidemic in Auckland.

The HIV treatment drug Truvada is being touted as a way to protect against infection in the United States and local AIDs campaigners fear this false promise will lead to complacency about safe sex.

NZ Aids Foundation director Shaun Robinson said men are foolishly thinking they are 'safe' or not infectious if they are taking the drug, something that could reverse all their hard work.

''The idea that condoms is no longer necessary is a very dangerous idea. What we would see is a huge increase in HIV again."

Truvada works by suppressing the symptoms of the HIV virus to minimal levels.

Health professionals worldwide have raised serious concerns gay and bisexual men think it prevents the spread of AIDs and fail to take precautions.

A man who became infected with HIV a few years ago said he has already heard whisperings within the gay community in Auckland that Truvada will protect against HIV.

"People are just going to look at it as something to pop on a Friday night and think they're safe,'' the man, who declined to be named, said.

The Auckland man, aged in his twenties, said although the treatment for HIV has vastly improved the chances of survival, it is still not a disease he'd wish on anyone.

One in five HIV-positive gay or bisexual men in Auckland are unaware they have the disease. Research showed Truvada significantly lowered the risk of  HIV being spread between a heterosexual couple.

New Zealand has some of the highest rates of condom use in the world, with 80 per cent of gay men using condoms for casual sex.

The rate of condom use is as low 40 per cent in parts of United States.

Robinson said he hoped one day New Zealand could be the first country to eradicate new HIV infections.

New Zealand's new infection rate just began reducing in the past 18 months after a surge between 2000 and 2010 as online dating sites made casual sex more accessible.

Truvada has numerous side effects including nausea and diarrhoea.

As a consequence many may be unknowingly spreading the disease, University of Otago research recently found.

- Clarification: An earlier version of this story quoted NZ Aids Foundation chief executive Shaun Robinson as saying, in reference to Truvada preventing the spread of the HIV virus, "there is no evidence it will work for gay men but people are coming to their own conclusions''. 

However, NZ AIDs Foundation has since contacted Fairfax Media with research findings to the contrary.

A trial has shown that Truvada is effective in reducing the risk of HIV infection by 42 per cent in HIV negative men who have sex with men, a NZ AIDs Foundation spokesman said.

- © Fairfax NZ News

POPULAR HIV DRUG MAY CAUSE MEMORY DECLINES

Release Date: 09/27/2012

Johns Hopkins study suggests the commonly prescribed anti-retroviral drug efavirenz attacks brain cells

The way the body metabolizes a commonly prescribed anti-retroviral drug that is used long term by patients infected with HIV may contribute to cognitive impairment by damaging nerve cells, a new Johns Hopkins research suggests.

Nearly 50 percent of people infected with HIV will eventually develop some form of brain damage that, while mild, can affect the ability to drive, work or participate in many daily activities. It has long been assumed that the disease was causing the damage, but Hopkins researchers say the drug efavirenz may play a key role.

Note the second paragraph of the press release from HopkinsMedicine.org, bold italics emphasis added by me:

Nearly 50 percent of people infected with HIV will eventually develop some form of brain damage that, while mild, can affect the ability to drive, work or participate in many daily activities. It has long been assumed that the disease was causing the damage, but Hopkins researchers say the drug efavirenz may play a key role.

On occasion, a little bit of  truth--like the words above--escapes from the National Institutes of Health "HIV-AIDS" knowledge monopoly, created by Dr. Anthony Fauci in 1984, when he was named head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Still directing NIAID 28 years later, Fauci's fame as an un-elected bureaucrat is matched only by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.

One of the most media-noticed science bureaucrats in modern American history, Dr. Fauci has had virtual control over all policy decisions related to the American government response to the collapse of immune systems in a subset of urban gay males in the early 1980's. In his NIAID position, Fauci has controlled tens of billions of dollars in "HIV-AIDS" research grants from NIH, spread around the country and the world. He has never allowed one dollar of U.S. taxpayer money to be spent on any theory of "AIDS" other than the single retroviral pathogen theory eagerly advanced by his NIH/National Cancer Institute colleague, Dr. Robert Gallo, in a press conference on April 23, 1984--before publication of any scientific papers claiming that an amorphous immune deficiency disorder noticed among urban American gay males was "probably" caused by a mysterious retrovirus.

Fauci has been the U.S. government's chief proponent of "anti-retroviral" (ARV) drugs, now a $17 billion segment of the pharmaceutical industry (as of the end 2011.)

Thus, it is not often that researchers go off script, and admit that the highly toxic ARV chemotherapy is the real cause of ill health in those said to be "infected" with a retrovirus. "AIDS by prescription," as Dr. Peter Duesberg observed many years ago.

When will this iatrogenic illness madness end?

--Terry Michael

People infected with HIV typically take a cocktail of medications to suppress the virus, and many will take the drugs for decades. Efavirenz is known to be very good at controlling the virus and is one of the few that crosses the blood-brain barrier and can target potential reservoirs of virus in the brain. Doctors have long believed that it might be possible to alleviate cognitive impairment associated with HIV by getting more drugs into the brain, but researchers say more caution is needed because there may be long-term effects of these drugs on the brain.

“People with HIV infections can’t stop taking anti-retroviral drugs. We know what happens then and it’s not good,” says Norman J. Haughey, Ph.D., an associate professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “But we need to be very careful about the types of anti-retrovirals we prescribe, and take a closer look at their long-term effects. Drug toxicities could be a major contributing factor to cognitive impairment in patients with HIV.”
For the study led by Haughey and described online in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics, researchers obtained samples of blood and cerebrospinal fluid from HIV-infected subjects enrolled in the NorthEastern AIDS Dementia study who were taking efavirenz. Researchers looked for levels of the drug and its various metabolites, which are substances created when efavirenz is broken down by the liver. Performing experiments on neurons cultured in the lab, the investigators examined the effects of 8-hydroxyefavirenz and other metabolites and found major structural changes when using low levels of 8-hydroxyefavirenz, including the loss of the important spines of the cells.
Haughey and his colleagues found that 8-hydroxyefavirenz is 10 times more toxic to brain cells than the drug itself and, even in low concentrations, causes damage to the dendritic spines of neurons. The dendritic spine is the information processing point of a neuron, where synapses — the structures that allow communication among brain cells — are located.
In the case of efavirenz, a minor modification in the drug’s structure may be able block its toxic effects but not alter its ability to suppress the virus. Namandje N. Bumpus, Ph.D., one of the study’s other authors, has found a way to modify the drug to prevent it from metabolizing into 8-hydroxyefavirenz while maintaining its effectiveness as a tool to suppress the HIV virus.
“Finding and stating a problem is one thing, but it’s another to be able to say we have found this problem and here is an easy fix,” Haughey says.
Haughey says studies like his serve as a reminder that while people infected with HIV are living longer than they were 20 years ago, there are significant problems associated with the drugs used to treat the infection.
“Some people do seem to have this attitude that HIV is no longer a death sentence,” he says. “But even with anti-retroviral treatments, people infected with HIV have shortened lifespans and the chance of cognitive decline is high. It’s nothing you should treat lightly.”
The study was supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (AA0017408), the National Institute of Mental Health (MH077543, MH075673 and MH71150), the National Institute on Aging (AG034849) and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NS049465).
Other Hopkins researchers involved in the study include Luis B. Tovar y Romo, Ph.D.; Lindsay B. Avery, Ph.D.; Ned Sacktor, M.D.; and Justin McArthur, M.B.B.S., M.P.H.
For more information:
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/neurology_neurosurgery/research/jhu_nimh/researchers/nhaughey.html