A HISTORY OF RETHINKING AIDS

(Not to be confused with

the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis)

PART ONE

 

The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis Group is formed in 1991 at the instance of Charles Thomas.

Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos is a founder member, one of thirty-two signatories to an open letter to the scientific community.

In June 1992 the first issue of a newsletter called Rethinking AIDS explains:

RETHINKING AIDS is an occasional publication of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis

The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis came into existence as a result of our efforts to get the following four sentence letter published in a number of prominent scientific journals. All have refused to do so.

‘It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus called HIV causes the group of diseases called AIDS. Many biomedical scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken.’

The letter is sufficiently broadly framed to accommodate the fundamental error of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis that Papadopulos-Eleopulos has already identified: Montagnier hadn’t isolated any retrovirus as he’d claimed, and nor had Gallo or anyone else.

The ‘Editorial Board’ of Rethinking AIDS is gathered and constituted informally: it is not elected by the thirty-two founder members of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, or by subsequent signatories. Papadopulos-Eleopulos is not invited to join the board.

Harvey Bialy, a partisan of Peter Duesberg’s harmless passenger virus line, is editor. James Trabulse, a businessman, is publisher. Duesberg is on the Editorial Board.

Unsurprisingly the debut article in Rethinking AIDS entitled ‘It’s time to re-evaluate the HIV-AIDS hypothesis’ is straight out of Duesberg’s book and is solidly premised on his uncritical acceptance that ‘HIV’ exists and can infect cells, only it’s harmless.

In the second half of 1994, around the time Duesberg and Ellison broke up over their co-authored book dispute, Trabulse sides with Ellison, falls out with the Editorial Board, and uses the RA mailing list to advertise Ellison’s edition of the book and mail out unauthorized Rethinking AIDS newsletters.

In October 1994 Phillip Johnson issues a disclaimer dissociating from Trabulse, Ellison and Rethinking AIDS, and announces the intention to recommence publication of the newsletter under the title Reappraising AIDS.

In November 1994 Issue ‘Number 1’ of ‘Volume 2’ of the newsletter is published under the new name.

In January 1995, without the authority of the Editorial Board, Trabulse uses the Rethinking AIDS newsletter to publish ‘PHILLIP JOHNSON ON TRIAL: The Attempt to Censor the Ellison/Duesberg Book by Joel A. Schwartz and Bryan J. Ellison’.

The January 1995 issue of Reappraising AIDS publishes ‘AIDS in Africa?’ by Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her Perth Group.

On 17 February 1995 the Editorial Board gets a letter published in Science. It’s coarsely drafted, and from the style and content apparently by Bialy. The Perth Group are not consulted about the letter.

The letter is undersigned by the members of the Reappraising AIDS newsletter Editorial Board, all named, purporting to represent the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.

But this letter submitted by the Editorial Board for publication in Science differs radically from the original four sentence letter to which Papadopulos-Eleopulos and the other AIDS dissident scientists subscribed under the collective name for the particular purpose – and no other – The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.

The letter in Science propounds Duesberg’s HIV is harmless position, and it implicitly contradicts Papadopulos-Eleopulos’s scientifically correct observation that Montagnier and Gallo never demonstrated the existence of ‘HIV’.

The letter stupidly stabilizes the orthodox HIV-AIDS model to the extent that it affirms that HIV does exist, questioning only whether it lives up to its name as the cause of AIDS.

In 1991, we, the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, became dissatisfied with the state of the evidence that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) did, in fact, cause AIDS.

Specifically, we have proposed that researchers independent of the HIV establishment should audit the Centers for Disease Control's records of AIDS cases, bearing in mind that the correlation of HIV with AIDS, upon which the case for HIV causation rests, is itself an artefact of the definition of AIDS. Since 1985, exactly the same diseases or conditions have been defined as ‘AIDS’ when antibodies are present, and as ‘non-AIDS’ when HIV and antibodies are absent. Independent professional groups such as the Society of Actuaries should be invited to nominate members for an independent commission to investigate the following question: How frequently do AIDS-defining diseases (or low T cell counts) occur in the absence of HIV? Until we have a definition of AIDS that is independent of HIV, the supposed correlation of HIV and AIDS is mere tautology.

Other independent researchers should examine the validity of the so-called ‘AIDS tests,’ especially when these tests are used in Africa and Southern Asia, to see if they reliably record the presence of antibodies, let alone live and replicating virus.

The bottom line is this: the skeptics are eager to see the results of independent scientific testing. Those who uphold the HIV ‘party line’ have so far refused. We object.

Eleen Baumann
Tom Bethell
Harvey Bialy
Peter H. Duesberg
Celia Farber
Charles L. Geshekter
Phillip E. Johnson
Robert W. Maver
Russell Schoch
Gordon T. Stewart
Richard C. Strohman
Charles A. Thomas Jr.

For the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.

The first issue of Reappraising AIDS soliciting tax-deductible donations is in July 1996. This means that what commenced as a group of signatories has been registered with the IRS as a tax exempt organization: a private foundation or a public charity. Papadopulos-Eleopulos is not consulted, nor presumably are the other signatories, other than those on the Editorial Board.

In the February 1997 issue of Continuum Duesberg deplores as ‘tragic’ that AIDS dissidents should be debating whether ‘HIV’ exists or not:

‘… I hope to liberate the minds of HIV dissidents from HIV for the cause that unites us all – the solution of AIDS. It seems tragic that over 99% of AIDS researchers study a virus that does not cause AIDS and that the few who don’t are now engaged in a debate over the existence of a virus that doesn’t cause AIDS.’ 

In January 1997 Rasnick is listed as a member of the Editorial Board.

The June 1997 issue of Reappraising AIDS includes ‘About the Australians’ and the Perth Group’s article ‘The Isolation Question’.

In September 1997 the ‘New! Reappraising Web Site’ is announced.

In July 1998 the ‘Editorial Board’ becomes the ‘Board of Directors’.

In August 1998 Rasnick is cited as ‘President’ of the ‘Board of Directors’.

In April 1999 the ‘Board of Directors’ is cited as the ‘Reappraising AIDS Board of Directors’.

In May 1999 the ‘Group’s Board of Directors’ is cited, plus a statement ‘About the Group’, asserting: ‘We have found solid scientific reasons to conclude that: HIV may be entirely harmless’ [etc]. In several further points it talks about ‘HIV infections’. The statement represents Duesberg’s HIV is harmless line as the sort and the quality of science propounded by the original Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis of which Papadopulos-Eleopulos was a founding member in 1991, contradicting her correct observation that the virus Duesberg and his allies all believe in hasn’t been shown to exist – elucidated in the Perth Group’s article ‘The Isolation Question’ in the June 1997 newsletter. Apparently Duesberg and his allies didn't have the brains to understand it.

In the second half of 1999, reappraisingaids.org goes up on the internet, changing a few months later to rethinkingaids.com.

The December 1999 issue of Reappraising AIDS publishes ‘About the Perth Group’ and their article ‘THE FINAL ACT: Should HIV-AIDS Critics Question the Existence of HIV?’ 

The Australian HIV-AIDS research team led by biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos answer their fellow AIDS reappraisers who wish to ignore their doubts about HIV’s very existence. They have scoured the scientific data in search of reasons to believe that HIV exists.

Nonetheless, when in January 2000 then South African President Thabo Mbeki telephones Rasnick as president of the Reappraising AIDS Board of Directors to discuss AIDS and then sends him a list of questions, Rasnick doesn’t consult the Perth Group before answering. Instead he consults a historian, fellow board member Charles Geshekter, to assist him. The answers they return to the South African government are cringingly inept and error-ridden, and assume and affirm the existence of ‘HIV’. In a submission of their own in mid-March the Perth Group fix Rasnick and Geshekter’s mess.

In February 2000 Giraldo succeeds Rasnick as president. The newsletter of that month announces:

THE RA GROUP has elected to modify its name and the name of this publication. Effective May, 2000, the RA Group will be known as ‘The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of AIDS,’ and the name of this publication will return to its original title, ‘Rethinking AIDS.’ Board members decided that the new names are less unwieldy than the current ones. 

A statement ‘About the Rethinking AIDS Group’ lays down the Duesberg line: ‘We have identified solid scientific reasons to conclude that: 1 HIV may be entirely harmless [etc]’.

If you’re surprised to find Rethinking AIDS and not Reappraising AIDS on the masthead of PDF copies of the newsletter even before May 2000 – such as the February 2000 issue itself – that’s because they were changed to look nice for the internet archive. The PDF version of the hardcopy February 2000 newsletter also omits the new president announcement and the scientific statement under ‘About the Rethinking AIDS Group’, which the PDF version explains is ‘the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of AIDS, also known as the Rethinking AIDS Group’.

The newsletter name change back to Rethinking AIDS actually occurs in April 2000.

In conformity with the objective of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, set out in its open letter in 1991 that ‘a thorough reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis be conducted’, Mbeki convenes a two-meeting colloquium of orthodox and dissident AIDS expert scientists, clinicians and others in April and July 2000.

Effect is given to the Group’s suggestion in 1991, ‘We further propose that critical … studies be devised and undertaken’, in that the conduct of pre-adsorption and purification experiments are agreed to test the HIV theory of AIDS at its fundamentals.

Bialy, a member of Mbeki’s AIDS Advisory Panel and the Rethinking AIDS Group board of directors, hijacks and buggers the pre-adsorption experiment, turning in worthless results; and he collaborates (in the betrayal sense) with orthodox South African scientist Professor William Makgoba and South African officials to make sure that the second experiment proposed by the Perth Group, namely that an attempt be made to isolate ‘HIV’ by purification, is never performed.

Rasnick, a fellow member of both the AIDS Panel and the Rethinking AIDS Group board of directors, and like Bialy a close Duesberg ally, involves himself in Bialy’s incompetent scheming to wreck the most important upshot of the AIDS Panel meetings – the ‘critical … studies’ – to the extent that he flies in to discuss the pre-adsorption experiment with Bialy and his collaborator Dr Roberto Stock at a meeting in Johannesburg on 28 October 2001 behind the Perth Group’s backs.

In July 2001 the Rethinking AIDS Group publishes its final Rethinking AIDS newsletter.

The last time any content is uploaded to the Rethinking AIDS Group’s rethinkingaids.com website is November 2002.

In about August 2003 the Rethinking AIDS Group loses it website domain to a commercial domain name reseller, who puts up a page with links to orthodox AIDS sites.

The Rethinking AIDS Group is dead.

 

………………………………

 

PART TWO

The formation of the Rethinking AIDS organization and its active obstruction and frustration of the Perth Group

(to follow)