Proselytizing is an excellent word choice. Thank you for revealing the knife within the silk glove. OS members are generally intelligent, progressive thinkers but with this sort of open mindedness can sometimes come a reluctance to think critically and question the motivation behind a point of view. Authors such as Dr. Amy are very obvious, sometimes painfully so, in their taunting and rendered relatively harmless. Someone such as RIF is dangerous in that his agenda is carefully cloaked in a mixture of fun loving frivolity and psuedo-science.

"Everyone should be free to make choices about their own healthcare, but resistanceisfruitful is proselytizing lies and misinformation about HIV in an attempt to persuade people that his choices are right for everyone. "

Your final paragraph echos my thoughts verbatim and neatly sums up your motivation for posting here.

Who is MG18? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Ablonde: "knife within the silk glove!?" OMG.... LMAFAO! Ideas and opinions are now "dangerous"?

(sigh) The attacks have begun.

mg18, are you living with hiv?

it seems that whatever RIF is doing has worked pretty well for him so far.

i am also aware that whatever the person "reaching out for more information" is doing is not working. if i were in his shoes, i'd be looking for an alternative treatment too. the myriad of pills and their interactions are impossible to understand in their their interactions.

so tell me, mg18, who are you and what is your interest in the subject? at least we know where RIF is coming from.

ablonde, where did you get your expertise on the subject?

i'm actually pretty good at "think(ing) critically and question(ing) the motivation behind a point of view.

so i ask both of you, what is your motivation?

Jeez...leave him alone. Free speech and all that, huh...
Ablonde. "Knife within the silk glove" ...equating words and opinions with weapons? Sorry, no thanks.

Consider the source R.I.F.. One thing I've found in my many months on here. Those who hide behind a blank avatar and blank bio are cowards. Learn to ignore them and they wither and die.

Alternative treatment for what? The citations he is giving are to the writings of people like Henry Bauer and Celia Farber who distort, and lie about, the facts in order to promote their false claim that HIV does not exist/cause AIDS.

Does no one think that it's possible to just discuss the factual basis of those claims? For anyone posting anonymously - as I am - on a subject where you think a conflict-of-interest is possible, I think it's wise to assume the worst. Assume I work for PhRMA. Read what I wrote about Peter Duesberg and Celia Farber's lies and misrepresentations and tell me if what I have written is untrue, and if so, how. Read the refutations of Henry Bauer's bunk here:

http://snoutworld.blogspot.com/

And tell me if they're biased in some way, and if so how. It is also instructive to notice that Henry Bauer has utterly failed to respond to any of it. Given the grotesque, indefensible magnitude of his errors and distortions, it's perhaps not surprising.

Discussing individual approaches to HIV treatment - including alternative treatment - is one thing, advocating an approach based on fictions about HIV not causing AIDS is something else entirely. It amazes me that people seem so willing to be patronized and deliberately misled.

This is one of the things RIF wrote that I responded to, in a comment that got deleted:

" The media jumps all over bizarre reports, such single individual with bone marrow transplant, while ignoring thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of so-called "long term non-progressors" who remain healthy and never take the drugs.
If it doesn't involve a luctrative new drug patent, or expensive technology or surgery, there is no interest in research.
One would think that's where government funded basic research would step up to the plate, but it doesn't work that way."

This is not only completely false, it's insulting to thousands of LTNP who have given their time, blood and tissues to research, and the many researchers that are working to understand the phenomenon. These studies have provided profound insights into the mechanisms by which the virus is controlled, e.g.

http://esciencenews.com/articles/2008/12/04/extraordinary.immune.cells.may.hold.key.managing.hiv

This research was not only government funded, it was conducted at NIH. So are many of the hundreds of other studies of LTNPs that have been published (you can find them here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi)

So why isn't RIF telling the truth?

One of the things I like about Open Salon is the ability to engage in open debate.

I'll admit I don't have any personal experience in HIV or AIDS. I'm not certain what choices I would make should this happen to me but I cannot fault someone who has stayed alive this long who is telling people of what choices he has made and informing them of other opinions.

This isn't saying that I necessarily would come to the same conclusion he has but I respect his right to say it as well as his opinion. My own battles with a chronic, life-threatening illness has taught me that the way western medicine handles it often causes more problems than it solves. I have been amazed at others with the same illness who have come to the same conclusion while we are all sickened by the numbers of people who die directly due to those meds. There is good medicine and there is big Pharma. The two aren't always in the same camp, much to my sorrow.

I think there's maybe a philosophical impasse here. I am totally for free speech but if someone is freely speaking lies about a potentially life threatening health condition I think well-referenced, fact-based challenges to those lies are appropriate. I guess it can be someone's opinion that HIV does not cause AIDS, but it's problematic when that opinion isn't true and people believe it and get sick and die as a consequence. AIDS has taken my friends, destroyed the culture and city that I loved the most. AIDS denial - particularly AIDS denial coming from rancid homophobes like the people at AAPS - is salt rubbed into a still-open wound.

Ahh... "snout", is it? I thought that was a possibility.

JL - If this is "snout", then the answer to your question is: Yes. Google "snout aids denialist" and see just how active he is. I'm honored to be in his cross hairs. That means I'm a True Denialist™.

Thanks for the input JL. Is there also a list of people that speak on behalf of the OS membership?

These AIDS/HIV denialists remind me of Flat Earthers. They just don't get that scientific consensus is just that, a majority consensus. It doesn't mean the majority are unwilling to change the consensus if enough evidence or a new theory comes along. It means that so far evidence has been lacking or the new theory doesn't pan out.
The denialists conveniently ignore not just what you say to them, but all the vast amount of work going on based on the prevailing theory, in favor of their anecdotal or statistically insignificant "evidence". Of course if they can throw in a bogeyman like "big Pharma" to bolster their case, so much the better as far as they are concerned.

Yes. OS readers are liberal and educated. In my case it means that I am open to a multiplicity of perspectives on a multiplicity of topics. To me that is the definition of "liberal and educated".

Resistance has not "converted" me. I am not that gullible. Most liberal and educated people are not. I have not rejected that HIV causes AIDS or that there are drugs that have drastically improved people's lives. And frankly I think what is happening--I am thinking specifically of South Africa--with denial is pretty appalling. It is causing people to die.

Nevertheless, as an educated liberal reader, I am also extremely skeptical of Big Pharma. I am NOT convinced that their primary aim is to help people. I am convinced that their primamry aim is to make as much money as possible.

That is why I remain open to perspectives such as Resistances.

Will rate this post, because, as I said, I am liberal and educated and appreciate a variety of perspectives.

The people whose views RIF is here to promote - and promote specifically to other people with HIV, as he has stated - are the same people responsible for the appalling debacle in South Africa. David Rasnick, one of the co-authors on the Peter Duesberg paper mentioned in the prior post, worked in South Africa for Matthias Rath, who conducted a well-financed campaign to persuade people to take his proprietary vitamin concoctions instead of HIV treatments. Both Rasnick and Rath were sanctioned by the South African courts for conducting an illegal clinical trial in which people were told to stop antiretrovirals and start Rath products instead. Several deaths were documented in the trial, and recent news suggests that it is possible that criminal charges will be filed. Both Rasnick and Rath have long since left the country, though. The new South African administration has made it clear that the disastrous era of AIDS denial there is over.

I shudder at the thought of herbal remedies to treat such powerful diseases. It's one thing to choose herbal remedies when you are living in a democratic, first world country. Quite another when they are forced upon you by official health policy...as well as by Big Pharma making it so difficult to get cheap drugs to those who need them.

I respect the choices RIF makes for himself, and that he is stirring up some shit when it comes to hegemonic ways of thinking, but it is hard to altogether refute science and the consequences this lack of nuance may have on those in the world who are most vulnerable.

Thanks For All Your Concern Now Piss Off is a response to MG15's war against Resistanceisfutile, a war that I got mixed up in when I asked RIF for more information on his belief about the relation between HIV and AIDS. I suggest that you check out their posts if you want to know more about their points of view. As for my own it is one of simple curiosity and should lead none of you to make assumptions one way or another about my beliefs, my health or any other matter other than the one below which I hope will be clear to you after reading.

It is nice to know that so many out there are concerned with my welfare. It wasn't until I became the unnamed party in MG's war on RIF that I knew how much I meant to all of you. Now piss off.

First let me be the millionth person to remind you all that this is OPEN SALON. It is this OPENESS that draws me here. I WANT to find unconventional ideas. I want my mind to be stretched when I come here. I read and take part in all of the light hearted posts here by posters like Trig, Catamite when he's being silly and others. BUT it is those posts that take me somewhere that I haven't been before that interest me most. I asked Resistance for more information not because I am some slack jawed ninny sitting spongelike at the foot of a latterday AIDS Buddah but because it is an unusual point of view, one that I would like to see fleshed out before I choose to reject or accept. Although an atheist I continue to read posts made by christians and buddhists and others who I consider to be superstitious because despite my decision to believe differently I find illumination in their words. Although I am moderately liberal I have found some profound wisdom in the words of conservatives.

As a gay man I have had my voice marginalized, my choices have been quashed, people who are on this sight right now would prefer that I and my kind did not exist. I am deeply disturbed there are those here that want to further limit my conversations. I am NOT saying that those who want to limit my conversations are anti-gay. I do not believe that that is the case. What I do believe is that this topic makes you uncomfortable and that you are therefore trying to suppress it. It IS the choice to suppress that scares me however. I grew up in a small town in the middle of no-where, I had no positive gay role models. None. I didn't really understand what gay was because there was no counter-influencing voice to explain why people might actually have pride in their gayness. Because it wasn't acceptable to speak of those positive images I spent years myself repressing who I was and what I could be. Because of that repression I wasn't there when my friend, tangled up in the barbed wire of christianity and self loathing killed himself. (Read my post Birthday Requiem for more) Because of that repression I missed out on being fully present in my own life for many years. It scares me when I hear you folks rabblerousing to silence another gay mans voice or anyones for that matter. When you, despite all good intentions, push down another's voice on here you oppress not only that voice but the voice of others who would hear it and respond.

Let me be clear I am not arguing with your right to disagree with RIF just your right to limit another's POV just because you disagree with it. I would hope that instead you would present a well reasoned response and trust in your own ability to persuade. This is theoretically a forum with a little more depth and intelligence than most: you should come here and feel challenged, you should occasionally be outraged, your eye muscles should strain from regular bouts of rolling. You should then put fingers to keyboard and present a reasoned argument that lets us all know what you believe. AND THEN you should trust us, the rest of us, to make our own decisions. We might even weigh in on the subject ourselves.

I don't know what I will believe at the end of all these fascinating conversations. I do know that if my beliefs aren't tested, If my mind isn't enlarged then all of you and your pretty words are''t
worth a shit. So Piss Off.

cc'd from my own post page please feel free to comment me there.