When word first broke last week that Emery Taylor had died, the reaction from many of us who knew him was shock. Few of his friends on Facebook seemed to know what had happened.

Given Emery's public identity as a person living with a positive test result for HIV and with a diagnosis of AIDS based on his CD4 count, it was inevitable thakt people would soon start asking about the cause of his death.

Emery walked a line between two camps in the world of AIDS: that of the Orthodox, or mainstream advocates of the generally accepted theory that HIV is the sole and sufficient cause of AIDS that can be managed by a cocktail of pharmaceutical drugs, and the Dissidents, a diverse and sometimes frustratingly divisive group of people that includes factions who question almost everything about commonly held perceptions about the disease. Orthodox AIDS defenders often dismiss such skeptics outright by referring to us as "denialists".

Emery was known for his very visible and public stance defending his decision to not take antiretrovirals, despite being HIV-positive for twelve years and despite facing declining numbers of t-cells and a rising viral load. On his youtube video entitled UPDATE, posted a year ago, Emery quipped: "My t-cells are so low, pretty soon I'm gonna owe t-cells next time I go. I mean, I have 52. If my t-cells quadrupled, I would still have AIDS. That's just how low my t-cells are right now (laughing). My tcells are so low, they're almost in the negatives."

Emery came to the AIDS dissident community after finding himself feeling out of place, and even rejected by the mainstream support groups and AIDS service organizations. In his first youtube video, posted January 16, 2010, Emery says: "In the clinics, support groups and community organizations, honestly, I did not feel as I belonged because I was not on drugs, because I was not looking for just the next... piece of whatever, to get. I just felt as if I did not belong there. What I really needed was a support group of people who were just like me. You know, I'm not putting them down, because they're in their own situations, and so I'm not putting them down at all, I just felt as if I did not belong."

Emery was also a member and occasional contributor to the forums at Questioning AIDS,an online hangout for AIDS dissidents that I help moderate.  His handle there was etay1207, same as his youtube channel. In one post, he relates his experience at other online forums for PWAs:

I'm constantly meeting and chatting with others who are poz. I posted this concern on poz.com and the response wasn't too friendly. Here's my issue. I see many people with "normal" CD4's and undetectable viral loads getting sick with AIDS defining illnesses and other problems that are attributed to HIV. If their problems are due to HIV, shouldn't I have their conditions so much more? Since my VL is so much higher? I have a good friend now dealing with liver issues. He is UD [has an undetectable viral load] "thanks to the meds" and his t-cells are in the 500 range "thanks to the meds". But HIV is hiding out in his liver and causing problems. Call me stupid! My viral load is 644,000% more than his. Why is my liver healthy and his is not and they are blaming it on HIV?

Emery exercised his right and his responsibility to ask some fair questions that deserve answers, yet as I review the public record he left behind, I also see enigmas. Emery signed every post at QA, for example, with a list of his counts, which showed an overall decline in CD4 cells and a steady increase in viral load over the 12 years he lived with his diagnosis. His video reports reveal an almost flippant response to the significance of what the AIDS mainstream would describe as the chief markers of typical progression of a poz man. "I am not a numbers chaser,” Emery said, “and I never live my life as a numbers chaser, so I'm not afraid of a low t-cell count, or a high viral load.  Actually, I embrace it. That's just the way I live."

Emery's questions are standard fare for people, like me, who are struggling to make sense of what we observe. At the same time, despite what he told us, there is no denying that Emery was not the picture of health he wanted us all to think he was.

"I consider myself healthy," Emery reported in one of his youtube videos. "So far I haven't had any ill effect of the low white blood count. I haven't seen any ill effect of the low t-cell count either."  In another video he simply states:  "I have not been sick."

For those of us who knew Emery from his videos, it should come as no surprise ... click here to read the rest of the story