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28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Corruption of Science, February 1, 2007
Science is facing some serious challenges nowadays. We have people who insist that humans walked alongside dinosaurs or that there is no such thing as time dilation, regardless of the scientific canon, we still have catastrophists and UFOlogists and people who insist that the moon landings were a fraud... It's a frustrating thing, sometimes, to waste precious time on people who have corrupted science out of ignorance or for their non-scientific agendas, and one can be tempted to insist on censoring them and locking them out of the hallowed halls of science.
I have examined various challenges to the established scientific currents and found them wanting. I validated a number of calculations regarding relativity, refuted a computation that arrives at a 6,400 year age for the sun, studied the videos of men on the moon: I invested much precious time examining sundry claims. It's clear to me that there are many Corruptors of science, with the AIDS dissidents seemingly among the worst.
Delving into the complicated world of HIV/AIDS, however, I found that I could not refute the better-laid arguments of the dissidents while the orthodoxy repeatedly fails to substantiate its fundamental tenets. Whereas creationists are almost exclusively religious zealots, AIDS dissidents include Nobel laureates and thousands of Ph.D.s, physicians and scientists. When I would read that there is no study that establishes the necessary presence of HIV in patients, that HIV has never been isolated from any one patient, that no study has established the sexual transmissibility of HIV, that the pathology of HIV has never been demonstrated, that the spike in AIDS deaths corresponds to AZT prescription, etc., I would check these statements from sites such as TheBody, the NIH, the CDC - bastions of the orthodoxy. I would follow the unfortunately very rare discussions (for ex. Foley vs. Rasnick) on the web, and much to my surprise, the orthodoxy has never been able to meet these challenges. The HIV virus seems to have arisen out of a scientific void.
Farber's book gives a good account of the history of the purported virus, the players in the drama, the forces at work, such that the reader will see what is lacking in the science and how such a big lie can come to be. She has been in the trenches from very early on and I perceive no agenda on her part other than to uncover the truth - it is, after all, hardly a good career move to challenge a 170 billion dollar juggernaut. Accusations that the dissidents are doing it for the money are ludicrous. A similar argument goes for Duesberg, who would be far better off financially (and reputation-wise) if he were to renege on his dissidence, but he has adamantly refused: the only motive I can imagine is respect for the truth, a quality that is in perilously short supply.
I give the book three stars because the majority of reviewers here are the choir to which important dissidents such as Farber are preaching. Some of the one-star reviewers also have their minds made up the other way. Though you may find the dissident claims surprising, those of you who realize that you really don't know are the important audience. The book merits five stars as befits its quality and that of its author, but gets three as befits the controversial nature of its contents. But it must be read. There is a battle going on right now to get "life-saving" AZT and nevirapine into Africa, but these are lethally toxic drugs and the several hundred thousand who died needlessly over here from AZT will translate into tens of millions over there, with the deaths being attributed to AIDS and not the drugs. For this reason alone, minds and books such as Farber's are hugely important.
Much of Serious Adverse Events had already been known to me and however hard I may try and have tried to refute the facts it contains, I wind up only strengthening them. How is such a big lie possible, with constant media harping about "HIV/AIDS" and "life-saving anti-retroviral medicine"? Some of the answers are in this book. If, as I am now convinced, the HIV=AIDS paradigm is false, then we are faced with the chilling fact that we can hardly contemplate locking the Corruptors out of the halls of science: they're already barricading themselves in and the Duesbergs out.
Satyagraha
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34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Unbelievable job!, July 23, 2006
I have read about AIDS for a long time and this is the first book that made me change some of my opinions TOTALLY! The author is ivestigating all of the tiny little pieces of the AIDS mosaic - the problems with qualifying and defining the HIV virus and its role (or perhaps no role?) in the disease itself; the cultural aspects of perceiving AIDS; the fierce fight between all of the groups involved in the subject; the drug industry which fights for its income; and most of all, usual ordinary people who have AIDS, who fight it, who die; those who have never been infected, but told to have AIDS; and, finally, those who support the dying people. An unbelievable job by a hyper-professional reporter. A story of life, death, and commitment. I'd like to reccomend it to everone!
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29 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Unanswered Questions, August 15, 2006
Because of its catastrophic impact and the unique time and place it struck, AIDS very quickly became more than a medical story. It took on tremendous political, moral, sexual, religious, intellectual and economic significance as well, and Farber argues that these elements soon came to dominate and distort the medical science. If she's right, pretty much everything we've been told about AIDS--what it is, what causes it, how it spreads, how it may be resisted and cured--is wrong, a collusion of panic, politics and greed. AIDS became a dogma, and anyone who questioned it a heretic. At great cost to her career, Farber has questioned the dogma for 20 years. This book is a fascinating alternate history of AIDS, a chronology of how she and other "heretics" believe it all went wrong. This is not kooky conspiracy theory. Ultimately, it's an Orwellian treatise on intellectual totalitarianism in our time.
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