Customer Reviews

Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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

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.

Yes, the questions Farber raises are important. Yes, she should not be attacked, ostracized or ignored simply for raising these questions. Yes, the subject matter itself is so inherently polarizing that the consequences of exploring any dimension of the story other than the mainstream version inevitably results in a cataract of vitriol and condescenion - when anyone even bothers to acknowledge the existence of alternate dimensions - so far out of proportion to the reportage in question that an objective observer might easily question the sanity of anyone involved in the debate, on either side. Yes, Farber has an agenda: an undeterred desire to dig up a core truth that may in fact be undiscoverable, ever, or for years. To the apparent detriment of her career, in the face of death threats and accusations of "murdering" those who've made the (evidently suicidal) mistake of taking her journalism seriously, she trudges on, bears up, moves forward. Why? No earthly idea. I only know that the writing on display in this book, as writing, is unusually passionate, articulate, and alive in ways that most writing about any subject is not. And that whatever drives Farber to continue in the face of the abuse and hatred she's endured through the twenty years it took for this book to be written - well, it's not money, it's not fame, and it's certainly not common. Facile comparisons to Orwell aside, Celia Farber is one of our most important contemporary writers because of her rare courage, and her still more rare ability to convey the complexities of an impossible issue in human terms. Whatever biases you might diagnose as flaws in this collection of stories are doubtless present, because she makes no attempt to bury her emotions. She writes, in sum, with both head and heart. Agree or disagree, but to ignore her adds only to your own ignorance.

As an author, let me concentrate for the moment, not on the research -- nor on the profound insights -- that Celia Farber presents in Serious Adverse Events. Quite simply I want talk about her writing. Reading this book and everything Celia has written overwhelms me with how on target she is. Celia is so honest, so vulnerable, so profound, and so poetic in the way she presents her ideas, that sometimes I want to cry and shout out "YES!" I highly recommend this book and everything else Celia Farber has written.

It's been a while since any books on the HIV/AIDS dissent have come out, but this one was worth waiting for. Celia Farber puts it all out there in plain English and makes it flow like a good movie. This book not only blows the lid off the greatest hoax of the century, but it shows how such an atrocity could occur in 21st century America. For those who can't believe that all the "experts" could have been wrong about AIDS, read this book. *****

Serious Adverse Events is for the most part a collection of Celia Farber's previous work, with a few updates and some new material. I should say at the outset that, prior to reading this particular collection, I had read much of this material in other publications (Harper's, Spin, etc). But no matter where it first appeared, this is some good stuff---it's that rare piece of science journalism that is a) passionate, b) intelligent and informed, and c) accessible to the lay reader.

It's a safe bet that most folks buying this book will already have at least a passing familiarity with the questions it raises, but if you're new to this subject, it's worth noting that this book addresses (with uncommon insight) questions and doubts surrounding the mainstream account of AIDS, its causes, and its treatments. AIDS skepticism is as old as AIDS science, and Farber has been chronicling AIDS skeptics since nearly the beginning.

Those early skeptics had simple doubts about the epidemiology of AIDS: Even before the 80s were through, it was clear that large numbers of HIV-positive folks simply weren't getting sick. But if the growing numbers of healthy HIV-positives should have been the beginning of the end for the HIV hypothesis, then the discovery of AIDS cases with no HIV should have been the nail in its coffin. But there was no coffin to put the nail in, because, as Farber makes acutely clear in one of the most compelling sections of the book, these damning anomalies were simply defined away. You see, the most common argument for HIV's role in AIDS is the apparently perfect correlation between AIDS and HIV. Critics have long contended that the correlation is an artifact of the disease's definition: HIV is a requirement for a case to be considered AIDS. According to these critics, this produces correlation by fiat, rather than by clinical observation. If the critics are right, then the central tenet of the HIV hypothesis crumbles. Defenders of the HIV hypothesis have of course argued equally long that this is just not the case, that is, that HIV's connection to AIDS is independent of the definition of the disease.

Well, those defenders will likely be embarrassed by the remarks from the CDC, covered by Farber in this book, confirming that AIDS cases without HIV are simply not AIDS, by definition. This means that an IV drug user suffering from AIDS-defining immune collapse, but without a positive HIV antibody test result, doesn't get counted as an AIDS case, thereby artificially preserving the appearance of a perfect connection between AIDS and HIV. This is what happened as HIV-free AIDS cases began to crop up in the late 80s and early 90s: Instead of calling the entire HIV hypothesis into question, they were simply redefined as "not AIDS"; problem solved. The CDC spokeswoman discussing this in the chapter "The Grey Zone" is obviously blissfully unaware of the implications of her remarks on this matter, and Farber's understated treatment of this fact is one of the finest moments in the book.

There are all sorts of understated nuggets like this throughout the book---the UNAIDS official confessing that their AIDS numbers are complete fiction, the water restoration worker eliminating a decade of AIDS-like illness in Kenya simply by providing clean drinking water, the list goes on.

It is this sort of measured understatement that is the strength of most of the early parts of this book. But the gloves come off in later chapters, and rightfully so. Farber's passion is most prominent as she discusses the government-sponsored medical experiments on foster children at the Incarnation Children's Center, as well as the Constant Gardener-esque handling of HIVNET 012 in Africa. And these chapters are among the reasons I say that this is the most important AIDS book in a decade. That's because AIDS skeptics have recently been depicted by the AIDS orthodoxy as irresponsible, murderous psychopaths (one such tirade appears in this book). Some have even gone so far as to suggest criminal prosecution for those who express doubts about the standard depiction of AIDS. This is, of course, patently absurd and grossly unscientific, but in the midst of all this, the AIDS orthodoxy seems to have been granted a free pass: No one besides AIDS skeptics ever seems to ask whether current AIDS science can itself be harmful, even independent of questions of causation. Farber's discussion of the ICC experiments and HIVNET 012 makes it unequivocally clear that yes, current AIDS science is indeed harmful, no matter what you believe to be the actual cause of AIDS.

Feel free to disregard reviews like the one by "HIV Researcher" below. He clearly did not read a single page of Farber's book. For instance, he claims that the author did not interview any actual HIV researchers or frontline AIDS workers. This is plainly false: This book includes portions of dozens of conversations with patients, nurses, doctors, CDC and WHO officials, social workers, advocates and research scientists. The way I see it, whenever a book draws negative reviews from those who have not read it, and positive reviews from those who have, you know there's something worth checking out. When those negative reviewers have to lie about the content of the book to keep you from reading it, it's not hard to figure out whose position is stronger.

This book is an easy read. The issues it addresses are grand and tragic and important. Considering all this, you'd be hard pressed to find a better use of fifteen bucks.

well-researched, written over a twenty-year period; intriguing prose that pulls you on to read the many, many important details that reveal an alternate reality

I first came to this debate after reading an online essay of Farber's that explained the numerous discrepancies surrounding HIV testing practices. After reading that essay, I sought out other writings by her and was pleasantly surprised with the release of this book. Farber writes passionately about this polarizing topic, but never at the expense of her own or the reader's intellectual integrity. She's very astute but never condescending. Particularly notable is Farber's ability to deftly deliver measured passion in the face of an apparently bottomless inhumanity, where corporate interests justify innumerable atrocities (consider the differing clinical trial standards in Africa and the Western world). Such censorship cannot be allowed to go uncountered, any longer. The often brutal treatment failures in HIV's wake should be public knowledge, but it sadly is not even a viable topic of conversation for most since so few are courageous enough to seek out the truth. So, I am as grateful for Celia Farber's courage as much as I am for her eloquence. She's doing her part. Do yours and read this book.

This book is a must read for anyone who wants to know how the medical community and big pharma work to push drugs to patients who want answers. Guess who is NOT looking out for you! Follow the money!

Truly inspiring. Ms. Farber's work will become a testament to the power of the human intelligence and will to overcome lies, ignorance and fear. Whatever your opinions on HIV and AIDS are, this is a work to be reckoned with. Well-written and thoroughly researched and obviously the product of lots of blood, sweat and tears, SERIOUS ADVERSE EVENTS, in the end, is great journalism.