"Gos", continued:

I am noticing a disturbing pattern here: You appear to be responding off the top of your head, without really thinking about the arguments you are attempting to refute, or for that matter, even reading them in full before replying. This is evidenced by several repetitive errors that you have made, such as:

1) Repeatedly asserting an inference of "accuracy", in apparent ignorance of the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity", and in defiance of Bayesian laws of conditional probability, after I have already defined these concepts, using generally-accepted definitions, and used them to show where your logic is specious.

2) Repeatedly asserting a high degree of specificity for PCR, and demanding to see "non-anecdotal" evidence to the contrary, after I have already supplied it.

Might I make a suggestion? Take a couple of days off from this debate, and gather your thoughts. Then come back, read my emails, and subject them to a rigorous critical review, along with the references I have provided, (as I have already shown you the respect of doing, by critically examining references you have provided for me.)

Until such time as you have done so, this debate will continue to devolve into a pissing contest, and I don't think either of us honestly wants that to happen.

--- Gos

--- gos@nerosopeningact.com

"Nobody here but us heretics..."

"BioLad" replied:

Gos,

As I said before, I have been rather busy this week and sometimes have to write out parts of my replies when I have the time to do so. If you have sent "non-anecdotal" evidence for the lack of specificity in PCR or a peer-reviewed journal where PCR was shown to give false positives on the HIV test I must have missed it. Please send it or the link again so that I may look it over. As for accuracy, I mean it as taking into account both the specificity and sensitivity together, using the general terms and values used in the papers I have cited. However, as I stated in my reply, you need to be aware that the serum samples used in this experiment were deemed seropositive not by one method, but with two prior to their use. It did not appear that you took this into account when formulating your objection and thus the beginning assumptions you had made as to the expected accuracy would not be correct.

Cheers,
-BioLad

"Gos" replied:

Jean-Marc wrote: "As for accuracy, I mean it as taking into account both the specificity and sensitivity together, using the general terms and values used in the papers I have cited."

Arrgh! Do you not get the fact that sensitivity and specificity cannot be combined, and that the term "accuracy" is a meaningless term in this context, used only by laymen? Trying to combine sensitivity and specificity into a single term is like trying to combine apples and bananas into a single fruit. Given that you are a degreed professional, it is inexcusable that you don't understand these concepts.

I'm going to explain this a third time, but this time, I'm going to use "accuracy", to project the specificity that would be required for a positive test to be 99.5% "accurate." (We will not deal this time with sensitivity or false-negatives, as a 99.5% "accuracy" in terms of sensitivity would mean that false-negatives would outnumber the total number of positives, which is a physical impossibility. This illustrates the folly of even using the layman's term "accuracy" to define these concepts, but I digress.)

Now, let's say, once again, that we have 100,000 randomly-selected Americans, with a seroprevalence equal to the national average of 1:250. This would mean that 400 of them test positive, using our 99.5% "accurate" test, and that 99,600 would be HIV-negative.

Of the 400, 2 would be false-positives, and the other 398 would be true-positives.

Now, let's calculate specificity:

The total number of persons in the sample who are actually HIV-negative would be 99,602 (99,600 true-negatives + 2 false positives).

99,600 true negatives / 99,602 actual negatives = 0.99997992, or 99.997992% specificity.

What was the highest specificity you claimed earlier? 99.92%? Is that anywhere near 99.997992%? No? Then the highest specificity you're claiming isn't even remotely enough to claim that a positive result is 99.5% accurate. Period.

You'll have to forgive my frustration, but I simply cannot believe I'm having this conversation (for a third time, no less) with a degreed professional. No, wait, I can believe it, because a wise old man once told me, "There's no bigger idiot than a degreed idiot, because an uneducated idiot can be taught, while a degreed idiot is convinced there's nothing more he needs to learn."

Sorry if that seemed insulting, but I'm starting to get frustrated with the apparent inability to get through to you, because rather than investigating these concepts and doing the math for yourself, so that you can properly critique what I'm saying, you persist in a layman's folly unbecoming of a degreed professional who should damn well know these concepts like the backs of your hands, given your line of work. Do yourself a favor and stop to learn these basic concepts and their application and implications, before you further embarrass yourself.

Click here to learn about sensitivity

Click here to learn about specificity

Click here to learn about Baye's theorem of conditional probability, as it applies in binary testing (example given is drug tests.)

Whatever you do, do NOT write me back with another fallacious statement about "accuracy" until you can use the concepts of sensitivity and specificity in the context of Bayesian mathematics, to compute the number of true-positives, false-positives, true-negatives, and false-negatives that would result, if a given test were used with X sensitivity and Y specificity, in a sample population of Z prevalence rate. I can't believe you were never made to do this exercise in college -- time to do your homework; better late than never.

--- Gos

--- gos@nerosopeningact.com

"Nobody here but us heretics..."

"Gos", continued:

Jean-Marc,

I must apologize for my earlier remarks, which were the product of frustration.

I have no formal education. Everything I've learned about HIV and AIDS, I was forced to learn, literally to save my own life, when my doctors nearly killed me about 7 years ago (in a couple of weeks it will be exactly 7 years,) by misdiagosing an illness caused by exceptionally severe mold and cat allergies as "HIV infection". Because of the misdiagnosis, not only did I not get proper medical care for my real illness, but I was also given highly toxic AIDS cocktail drugs that severely damaged my liver in only a year's time. Two years after my misdiagnosis, I nearly died of pneumonia, from ongoing exposure to toxic mold in the apartment I was living in, which had never been properly repaired, 5 years after having been submerged under about 5 feet of water.

Am I bitter? Resentful? Guilty as charged. But put yourself in my shoes: I was born with a 98th percentile IQ, too poor for my parents to send me to college, too sickly to get an athletic scholarship, too white for a minority scholarship, and my grades were too poor for an academic scholarship (mostly because the curriculum in the public schools I attended didn't challenge me. I had more than one high school teacher tell me, "You should be teaching this class rather than sleeping through it.")

So the years that I should have spent at a university were instead spent scrubbing toilets, delivering pizza, and working my way up in the world the hard way, while my intellectual inferiors attended universities on football scholarships or on their daddies' dime, only to get their degrees and come back to damn near murder me with their incompetence, on the basis of ridiculously unvalidated antibody and PCR tests, and then turn around and try to blame it on a nonexistent virus with properties and abilities straight out of a bad dime-store sci-fi novel that no one would even believe in if not for vested social, political, economic, and/or religious interest. Yeah, I'm a little pissed about that.

But I shouldn't have taken it out on you, and for that, I apologize.

Given that your background is in biology rather than mathematics, that Wikipedia article on Bayesian mathematics may be a bit beyond your grasp. To tell the truth, it confuses the hell out of me just looking at it, and I'm so proficient with Bayesian math that I could compute it in my sleep.

Allow me to help you to understand the concepts of sensitivity, specificity, and Bayesian conditional probability as it applies to HIV and other binary tests.

First, let's define the terms:

Sensitivity: The ability of the test to correctly identify a positive condition, vs a false negative.

Specificity: The ability of the test to correctly identify a negative condition, vs a false positive.

For the purpose of this discussion, we shall also use the concept of sensitivity/specificity gap, which is defined here as 100% - sensitivity or specificity. (ie, a test with 99.5% specificity would have a specificity gap of 0.5%)

Example:

Let's say we have an HIV test (or algorithm) whose sensitivity is 99.9%, and whose specificity is 99.5%. (This time, I'm using two different numbers, to make it easier to differentiate the concepts.)

In the US, HIV seroprevalence is 1:250. This means that if we had a sample of 100,000 people, we would expect about 400 of them to be HIV-positive. (100,000 * 1 / 250 = 400) The other 99,600 would be HIV-negative.

To compute the number of true negatives, we would multiply the specificity by the total number of HIV-negatives in the sample:

99,600 * 99.5% = 99,102 true negatives.

To compute the number of true positives, we would multiply the sensitivity by the total number of HIV-positives in the sample:

400 * 99.9% = 399.6 true positives

To compute the number of false negatives, we would multiply the sensitivity gap by the total number of HIV-positives in the sample:

400 * 0.1% = 0.4 false negatives

To compute the number of false positives, we would multiply the specificity gap by the total number of HIV-negatives in the sample:

99,600 * 0.5% = 498 false positives

Checking the math:

99,102 true negatives

+399.6 true positives

+0.4 false negatives

+498 false positives

________________

100,000 total sample size

Now, for one more example, let's reverse the sensitivity and specificity, and say that sensitivity is 99.5%, and the specificity is 99.9%:

99,600 * 99.9% = 99,500.4 true negatives

+400 * 99.5% = 398 true positives

+400 * 0.5% = 2 false negatives

+99,600 * 0.1% = 99.6 false positives

_______________________________

Total sample size = 100,000

Exercises (yes, I'm giving you homework. I don't know about you, but I learn best by doing.)

Exercise 1) Assuming a sample size of 100,000 and a seroprevalence of 1:250, compute the number of true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives of a test whose sensitivity is 99.92% and whose specificity is 99.46%.

Exercise 2) Assuming the same sample size and seroprevalence as in Exercise 1, compute the number of true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives of a test whose sensitivity is 99.67% and whose specificity is 99.85%.

Exercise 3) Assuming a sample size of 10,000 and a seroprevalence of 1:50, compute the number of true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives of a test whose sensitivity and specificity are 99.5%.

Exercise 4) Assuming a sample size of 1,000,000 and a seroprevalence of 1:250, compute the number of true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives of a test whose sensitivity is 100% and whose specificity is 99.6%.

Exercise 5) Assuming a sample size of 1,000,000 and a seroprevalence of 1:1000, compute the number of true-positives, true-negatives, false-positives, and false-negatives of a test whose sensitivity and specificity are 99.5%.

End of exercises

Are you starting to see why 99.5% specificity is not nearly as impressive as it sounds?

Now, getting back to the Jackson et al study:

Given the seroprevalence in the US at the time (1:250) and the fact that 409 is reasonably close to 400, it is not unreasonable to expect that this group of HIV-positives could be extrapolated to a group of approximately 100,000 randomly-selected Americans.

Thus, using Bayesian mathematics and a specificity of 99.92% (based on the highest estimate you quoted in your earlier email, from the 1995 Silvester study,) we would expect there to be approximately 80 false-positives. (99,600 * .0008 = 79.68)

Now, my mistake earlier was in dividing that number by 10. I did so to make my figures extremely conservative, so that you could not accuse me of fudging the figures in my favor. Instead, all I accomplished was to give you an opening to say that just because we might expect an average of 8 false-positives doesn't mean that there MUST be 8 false-positives. Which is true, but what you forgot is that that figure was deliberately skewed in your favor by a factor of 10, for generosity's sake.

In reality, if the tests available in the mid-1980s were as accurate as the 99.92% you quoted from the 1995 Silvester study, we'd expect to see 80 false-positives, not 8. And since the claim is made that HIV tests have gotten more accurate over the years, the tests in the mid-1980s could not possibly have been as accurate as they supposedly were in 1995, and therefore it would not be unreasonable to expect there to be 100 or more false positives in the Jackson study.

Thus, while you are certainly within your rights to argue that it's perfectly reasonable for 8 false-positives to fail to appear in the Jackson study due to a statistical fluke, I'd like to see you argue how a statistical fluke could possibly explain why there were no false-positives when there should have been at least 80 and probably more. What kind of dumb luck could possibly explain that?

Given that the specificity of HIV tests is low enough to have caused the inclusion of at least 80 or more false-positives out of 409 HIV-antibody positives, I would not have batted an eyelash if the culture had failed in 20% of the cases, as these could be dismissed as false-positives who didn't have HIV to begin with, and therefore it would be no surprise that HIV couldn't be cultured from them. However, the study claimed 98.3% success with co-culture, and 100% success with co-culture or PCR. This can only mean that the researchers were successfully able to culture HIV from a rather large number of people who didn't have HIV to begin with, and this shouts out loud that it couldn't possibly be HIV that was being cultured to begin with, because you can't culture a virus from someone who doesn't have it. The only other possible explanation is that the study was invalid to begin with, and given how perfect the results claimed were, and considering that the very first and last paragraphs identify the researchers' intent to discredit challenges to the HIV/AIDS hypothesis (ie Duesberg, who is directly cited in the paper,) it is not unreasonable at all to suggest that the study was intentionally invalid; ie corrupt.

--- Gos

--- gos@nerosopeningact.com

"Nobody here but us heretics..."

"BioLad" replied:
Gos,
"What was the highest specificity you claimed earlier? 99.92%? Is that anywhere near 99.997992%? No? Then the highest specificity you're claiming isn't even remotely enough to claim that a positive result is 99.5% accurate. Period."

I would like to point out, yet again, that you are incorrectly making one huge assumption. Whether it be 99.5% or 99.92%, those numbers were reflections of ELISA tests alone. The sera used here in this experiment were not screened by ELISA alone. I have mentioned this twice now and yet you still seemed focused on the figures used only for that particular test. The sera used were deemed positive PRIOR to acceptance into the experiment first by ELISA and then, only when a positive result was found, rescreened again by WB with any false ELISA positives rejected from the sample group. This is not referring to what the researchers did in this paper but rather to the selection process for HIV+ sera to be considered in the first place. If you insist on using the figures given for ELISA then you are incorrectly leaving out the secondary selection of said sera by WB. If you wish to include those into your calculations, a review of the tests relevant to the time this paper was written can be found here.
That said, you seem to be to be resorting to two of the tried and true methods by which AIDS denialists try to argue when they realize their view is not sustained by evidence; either try to nit-pick technical details irrelevant to the case, or go into personal attacks.
You have asked for evidence that HIV is infectious. I have given you that in many papers (I don't know if you read them yet/at all). You asked for evidence it has been isolated. Again I have presented this to you many times over. That these isolates can be used to re-infect? Done! You wanted evidence that HIV was in fact a retrovirus. Again, I have sent you this. You asked for proof that it can cause immune system collapse and I think the SCID mouse model papers (if you have had the time to read them yet) among many others speak quite well to this fact. Rather than address the larger issues, you are choosing to nit-pick tiny details based on false assumptions. You are, of course, welcome to do this but it will not be very productive. As for personal attacks, you are welcome to continue but at that point the debate will be over as it will be non-productive. I believed from our initial correspondences that you were the kind of person who would be able to admit error in light of evidence. If I was incorrect about this then we can cease this debate as well. Sadly many denialists are this way. They will shift focus to avoid admitting the evidence speaks against their view. If I was wrong in my initial assumption that you would be capable admitting error then please let me know so I do not waste my time or yours.

Cheers,
BioLad

"Gos" replied:

Jean-Marc wrote: "The sera used here in this experiment were not screened by ELISA alone. I have mentioned this twice now and yet you still seemed focused on the figures used only for that particular test. ... If you insist on using the figures given for ELISA then you are incorrectly leaving out the secondary selection of said sera by WB. If you wish to include those into your calculations, a review of the tests relevant to the time this paper was written can be found here."

Okay, you know what? Since you refuse to read my emails (as evidenced by the fact that I have already repeatedly sent you proof that WB is even less specific than ELISA, and yet you still insist that the "confirmatory" WB seals the case for the Jackson study,) and you refuse to examine even one of the studies I have sent you (which at least I am reading the studies you're sending as fast as I can get through them,) I'm going to use the very study you just cited, to show you that WB is far less specific than ELISA.

QUOTES from the study you just sent:

"...analytic specificity was 91.6%..."

NOTE: That's substantially less than even the lowest specificity you've claimed for ELISA, from the 1995 Silvester study.

How much lower? Let's do the math:

Once again, we'll be using a hypothetical random sampling of 100,00 Americans, with a 1:250 seroprevalence. Thus, 99,600 would be HIV-negative, and 400 would be HIV-positive, on average.

With a sensitivity of 99.3% and a specificity of 91.6%...

99,600 negatives * 91.6% specificity = 91233.6 true negatives

400 positives * 99.3% sensitivity = 397.2 true positives

400 positives * 0.7% sensitivity gap = 2.8 false negatives

99,600 negatives * 8.4% specificity gap = 8,366.4 false positives

Thus, false positives outnumber true positives by a factor of more than 20:1

But wait, it gets better...

Quoting again from your study:

"For WBs performed in 1988, laboratory type-specific analytic sensitivity among the major laboratory types ranged from 98.7% to 100.0%; analytic specificity, from 85.0% to 98.7%."

Since the figures given are ranges, we'll do the number twice, once using the high end figures, and then using the low end figures:

99,600 negatives * 98.7% specificity = 93805.2 true negatives

400 positives * 100% sensitivity = 400 true positives

400 positives * 0% sensitivity gap = 0 false negatives

99,600 negatives * 1.3% specificity gap = 1294.8 false positives

Thus, the high-end figures show more than 3 false positives for every 1 true positive

Now, the low-end figures:

99,600 negatives * 85% specificity = 84660 true negatives

400 positives * 98.7% sensitivity = 394.8 true positives

400 positives * 1.3% sensitivity gap = 5.2 false negatives

99,600 positives * 15% specificity gap = 14,940 false positives (!!!!!!!!!!!)

Thus, false positives outnumber true positives by nearly 40 to 1.

Look, Jean-Marc, I have sent you dozens of studies to support my arguments (even though the burden of proof is on you, not me.) I've sent you a study demonstrating that 50% of dogs test positive on WB. I've sent you studies demonstrating that WB is even more inaccurate than the ELISA. I've sent you studies showing that neither the ELISA, WB, or even PCR (nor any combination of the above) is even remotely specific enough to support your claim of 99.5% "accuracy". I've repeatedly sent you studies demonstrating over 60 different conditions documented in the medical literature to calse false-positives on ELISA, WB, and/or PCR. You have refused to examine a single one of them, so that you can properly refute me, and instead persist in simple denial using demonstrably specious logic unbecoming of a layman, much less a degreed professional. Now I've used your own evidence against you, to show that false-positives outnumber true positives on the Western Blot by up to 40:1. If you refuse to even examine the evidence that's right under your own nose, which one of us is the denialist here?

Think I've used "fuzzy math" here? Then learn to do Bayesian computations for yourself and demonstrate the errors in my math. I've sent you not only a Wikipedia article demonstrating Bayesian principles, I've even been so kind as to take the time to write a primer on the subject, just for you, complete with exercises designed to help you familiarize yourself with the concepts involved. You have not read it, you have not completed the exercises, and yet you persist in asserting an inference of "accuracy" that is in no way supported by the sensitivity and specificity figures in the published literature -- not even the literature that you yourself have cited in this debate.

You're right; this debate is over, and I've won it fair and square, not because I engaged in any "denialist" tactics, but because you refuse to examine the evidence I've presented from the medical literature, or for that matter even read my emails through before replying off the top of your head; meanwhile I'm using the very studies you cite to whup your ass like you stole something, plus providing citations of my own to dozens of studies that directly refute the claims you're making (not a single one of which you've actually bothered to read.) Your mind is made up, and you'll be goddamned if anyone is going to confuse you with the facts.

I'm done attempting to have a debate with a degreed idiot. It would be more productive for me to waste my time arguing with a brick wall. You are living proof of the statement below my signature, and not worth another minute of my precious time.

--- Gos

--- gos@nerosopeningact.com

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on him not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair

"Gos", continued:

Jean-Marc,

I have asked you to take the time to gather your thoughts and respond with thoughtful rebuttals, rather than simply responding off the top of your head, without even having read my emails thoroughly, much less taking the time to examine the proofs I have offered. It is apparent that you have not done so, or you would not continue to demand to see evidence that has already been submitted for your examination, (multiple times in some instances.)

I feel that I have extended several courtesies in the course of this debate, that you have not returned:

1) I am reading your emails through, before replying to them. You obviously have not done so with my emails, as exemplified by your recent assertions concerning whether the ELISA/Western Blot combination validates the Jackson study, when I have already shown where the Western Blot is even less specific than the ELISA. Despite the fact that I have done so repeatedly, you have not acknowledged this, nor taken the time to rebut it, before making the assumption that I am ignoring the fact that all diagnoses in the Jackson study were "confirmed" by the Western Blot. You seem to have entered this debate so convinced that I must be wrong, that you aren't even bothering to do more than skim my emails, much less read even one of the studies I'm citing.

2) I am following the list of proofs, item-by-item, while you seem so eager to prove your case that you are leapfrogging ahead on the list, past items for which you have not yet borne your burden of proof. Example: In your most recent email, you said, "You asked for proof that [HIV] can cause immune system collapse and I think the SCID mouse model papers ... among many others speak quite well to this fact." We haven't yet gotten past item 1 on the list of proofs (proving that HIV exists in the first place), therefore it is irrelevant at this early stage whether your mouse studies suggest what HIV might or might not do. Once you've proven that HIV exists, then we can move on to discussing what it does, (including the mouse studies) but we haven't reached that stage yet. And yet, when I insist on rigorously following a logical chain of evidence, you choose to dismiss this as "nit-picking" and "denialist tactics".

3) I am taking the time to familiarize myself with concepts that I wasn't familiar with before we entered this debate (such as syncitia). Meanwhile, you have not taken the time to familiarize yourself with the fundamentals of sensitivity, specificity, and Bayesian mathematics (which you should have already known backward and forward to begin with, given your line of work.)

4) While I admittedly have not read each and every study you have cited, there not being enough time in a day to do so, I have at least thoroughly read and re-read those with a direct relevance to the current stage of our debate (simple proof that HIV exists,) eg the Jackson study, and have offered thoughtful refutation, while you persist in offering poorly-thought-out replies, based on a cursory reading of my emails and no reading at all of the the articles I have cited. As a result, you keep ignoring, over and over again, proofs that I have offered, repeatedly in some cases.

I feel that your behavior in these matters has been discourteous in the extreme, and particularly insulting in that you are merely being dismissive of my positions, without taking the time to give them a proper examination, much less a proper rebuttal.

If you wish to continue this debate, then kindly show me the courtesy and respect of a proper examination and rebuttal of my arguments, rather than dismissive and condescending replies which show that you clearly have not read more than every tenth word of my emails. When I spend hours doing research to compose a thoughtful argument supported by citations from published literature, only to have you skim it and reply in less than three minutes with the first thing that pops into your head, it is not only insulting and frustrating, it shouts out loud that I am wasting my time debating with someone who plainly is not interested in a sincere and genuine re-examination of the relevant issues.

--- Gos

--- gos@nerosopeningact.com

"Nobody here but us heretics..."

Gos,
As I said before I was unusually busy this past week and have tried to answer as much as I could when I could. I will try to answer a whole e-mail at once from now on but it may take quite a bit longer to get any response if I do so.

On another note, I will concede I was in error with the the accuracy/specificity for the ELISA. I misread a paper talking about it as accuracy as a whole. This is my bad and I apologize for this. I have no problem admitting when I am wrong.

Before I go back and re-read your e-mail I would like you to clarify a few things to make sure I am understanding you correctly.

1) I was under the impression that we were in agreement over the existence of HIV as a virus. The paper we were discussing was more to demonstrate that is was present in the blood of AIDS and HIV+ patients than to demonstrate its existence. I also figured that since even Deusburg has long ago admitted to its existence that you were in agreement with him. If this is not the case then I apologize for the misunderstanding.

2) Just for my own benefit, are you claiming that the possibility of the authors of the Jackson paper to truly obtain 409 HIV+ sera through screening with first ELISA and then Western Blot is statistically impossible? (just a simple answer to get me started before I re-read your e-mail would be fine)

3) Not that this has bearing on the topic of this debate but please let us keep personal-based attacks to zero. Not just towards each other but also towards the authors. To call them greedy or corrupt is unnecessary and also inappropriate. I have yet to say a negative thing about Duesberg despite his comments on others. Lets just keep it civil.

Cheers,
-BioLad

Jean-Marc wrote: "I will try to answer a whole e-mail at once from now on but it may take quite a bit longer to get any response if I do so."

That's perfectly OK -- this isn't a race, it's a debate. Neither of us is being judged for speed, but for logic, evidence, and cohesion of argument. Take your time -- not only will it put this debate back on track, but it will give me time to catch up on some of the studies you've cited, and give them the thoughtful consideration they deserve. Given the speed at which this debate has progressed thus far, I sorely need time to catch up to it.

Jean-Marc wrote: "On another note, I will concede I was in error with the the accuracy/specificity for the ELISA. I misread a paper talking about it as accuracy as a whole. This is my bad and I apologize for this."

Instead of you apologizing to me, I should be offering you my sincere thanks. My primary reason for debating is to learn, and you have taught me something I'd never considered before about the way the term "accuracy" is used in this context.

Previously, I'd simply assumed that "accuracy" was a term used to confuse laymen, and thus I'd never truly examined it. Now that I have examined it (thanks to you,) I realize that it is also used to fool even degreed professionals who fail to think critically about the prevailing paradigm. (More in a moment on the importance of thinking critically.)

Because the term "accuracy", as it is used in this context, is nothing more than a gross abuse of the law of averages to provide a specious pretext for an otherwise indefensible claim that positive HIV tests are accurate, it can be demonstrated mathematically how this works, and I shall do so now.

Since we have already become quite familiar with the mathematical outcome of using a test or algorithm with 99.5% sensitivity and specificity, I shall use that as an example, and rather than doing the math over again, I shall merely recall the final tally: 398 true positives, 99,102 true negatives, 498 false positives, 2 false negatives.

Now, when we add it up, we get a total of 99,500 accurate results, and 500 inaccurate results. Extrapolating that to an average percentage of accuracy, that means that 99.5% of the test results are accurate, and the other 5% are either false positive or false negative, with the vast majority of accurate results (99.6%) being true negatives, and a similar percentage (also 99.6% in this case) of inaccurate results being false positives.

Thus, it is left to the layman or uncritical professional to infer incorrectly that this 99.5% "accuracy" can be applied to the total number of positive test results (896 in this case), and infer that 891.52 of them, on average, are true positives. In reality, this is specious logic, in that an accuracy average which is based almost entirely on true negatives is being applied to that segment of the sample (positive results) which contains the most inaccuracies (60% in this case.)

At this point I would like to point out that this is an honest mistake on the part of the vast majority of professionals like yourself, but I would contend that there is that segment of AIDS researchers who are dishonest (there are such people in any industry, and AIDS research is no different), who use this trick cynically to fool the uncritical.

Jean-Marc wrote: "I was under the impression that we were in agreement over the existence of HIV as a virus. ... I also figured that since even Deusburg has long ago admitted to its existence that you were in agreement with him."

I agree with no one, not Duesberg, not the Perth Group, not my fellow dissidents, and not the orthodoxy. I am a maverick among dissidents in that regard, and this is why I had a recent falling out with my fellow dissidents at AIDSMythExposed and resigned from that group, because I feel that as a group they are losing their critical faculties and becoming an orthodoxy unto themselves. (Hell, you saw their behavior for yourself, so I need not belabor this point.) Though I am not a Buddhist, I try to live according to the words of Buddha, when he said, "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it; not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

Ironically, in fact, it was Duesberg who convinced me that HIV probably doesn't exist, even though he himself contends that it does. (But that's a long story and not directly relevant to our current discussion.)

Allow me to clarify my position: My position on HIV is similar to my position on God. I do not pretend to know for sure whether it exists, and if it does exist, I do not pretend to know its true nature. For all I know it may exist in the Duesbergian sense of a harmless endogenous passenger virus, (or alternately as an exogenous opportunistic infection), or it may exist as a "soup" of many different retroviruses (hence the illusion that it mutates rapidly,) or it may be nothing more than a reproducible lab artefact, or non-infectious particles that just happen to be present in the blood of AIDS patients, not as the cause, but as a symptom of the disease.

And this is why I was so excited at first when I read that Jackson study, because it appeared on the surface that it just might be the paper I'd been looking for for years, which demonstrated the existence of HIV by culture, thus answering a question that I've been trying to answer for years.

Having said that, I am about 75% convinced that HIV doesn't exist as any infectious agent, whether a single virus or a stew of many viruses, and the other 25% is based entirely on the fact that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. If I saw conclusive evidence for its existence tomorrow that stood up to critical examination, I would change my mind in a New York minute.

When I first started on this journey in 2001, I was extremely skeptical of the dissidents. I considered myself to be very knowledgeable about HIV and AIDS, not only from research but also from personal experience. I'd taken AIDS-cocktail drugs and seen my CD4 counts go up and my viral load go down. I'd done extensive research on the disease for the previous two years, trying to unravel its mysteries, literally to save my own life. While I acknowledged that there had been obvious exaggerations on the part of the orthodoxy (such as the claim in 1987 that by 1990, one in five heterosexuals would be dead from AIDS,) and that these exaggerated claims had been made in order to panic the public into supporting funding for research, I did not extrapolate from this that the whole thing was a gigantic lie, and I was skeptical of dissident claims to that effect.

As I further researched the subject, however, I began to realize that if I was going to be so skeptical of dissident claims (as I remain to this day,) I would also have to be equally skeptical of orthodox claims, or the whole exercise would be pointless.

And it was when I subjected the orthodox claims to a healthy dose of skepticism that I began to realize the truth of dissident arguments, for the orthodox model of AIDS falls like a house of cards under skeptical scrutiny. It was like taking the "red pill" (that's a Matrix reference, if you've ever seen the movie, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.)

And having had this experience, I would recommend to you that you should similarly be skeptical of orthodox claims. By all means, maintain your skepticism of dissidents -- force us to prove our claims and support our arguments, for it is only in this manner that you will find the truth. However, you should be equally skeptical of orthodox claims, for it is only through skepticism that scientific truth can be separated from quasi-religious dogma, and thus without skepticism, science becomes nothing more than a religion unto itself.

Jean-Marc wrote: "Just for my own benefit, are you claiming that the possibility of the authors of the Jackson paper to truly obtain 409 HIV+ sera through screening with first ELISA and then Western Blot is statistically impossible?"

There's no simple answer, because I don't like to use the word "impossible". However, the simplest answer I can give is that it's so statistically improbable as to be for all practical intents and purposes impossible, for there not to have been dozens if not hundreds of false-positives in the group, thus negating any claim to have cultured HIV from these people, since many of them were surely false positive (ie HIV-negative) to begin with.

Jean-Marc wrote: "Not that this has bearing on the topic of this debate but please let us keep personal-based attacks to zero. Not just towards each other but also towards the authors. To call them greedy or corrupt is unnecessary and also inappropriate. I have yet to say a negative thing about Duesberg despite his comments on others. Lets just keep it civil."

Civility is a high ideal, and one I respect. However, we live in a world populated by humans, not angels, and humans are fallible and far too often corrupt. Therefore, there comes a point where civility ends and gullibility begins. Sometimes you have to call a liar a liar and a thief a thief, and there's nothing at all uncivil about it.

In my opinion, Dr. Robert Gallo is both a liar and a thief, but I would encourage you to dismiss that as merely my opinion until you see proof that satisfies you. Thus far, I have not offered you any such proof, because it's a long story and not directly relevant to our discussion. (However, I have offered proof of his perjury in a criminal case in Australia, and the evidence of this is a matter of public record. The transcript of his testimony can be found here: www.nerosopeningact.com/AIDSDebate/Gallo.pdf, and the article which proves he perjured himself can be found here: http://www.aidstruth.org/ErrorsInFarberArticle.pdf)

In the case of certain individuals, credibility (or lack thereof) can be established, and where it is possible to do so, we would be remiss not to consider the credibility (or not) of a given source.

One thing that must be considered in any such discussion is conflict of interest. And when I say this, I don't mean just in the conventional sense (ie someone who speaks in their own interest,) but in the far-more-relevant and far-too-often-ignored sense of individuals who speak against their own vested interest. Just because someone has a vested interest in what they're claiming doesn't necessarily mean that they're being dishonest, but when someone speaks against their own vested interest, you cannot ignore the strong probability that they are being exceptionally honest.

Now, while it is true to say that no one on the orthodox side speaks against their own vested interest, it would be hardly fair to consider that proof that they are lying, and I will not attempt to make such a claim. However, I would like to point out a number of AIDS dissidents who are speaking out against their own vested interests.

Peter Duesberg, PhD - Duesberg has more than once spoken out against his own interests. In 1960, he is said to have been the first to map a retroviral genome, and to have discovered the retroviral oncogene in the Rous Sarcoma Virus (the Holy Grail of retroviral cancer research.) For this discovery, he was nominated for a Nobel Prize. However, Duesberg later recanted his "discovery", saying that all he'd discovered was a reproducible lab artefact.

Now, what kind of man turns away the coveted Nobel Prize by recanting a discovery for which the rest of the world credits him, unless it is a man of exceptional integrity and extraordinary devotion to scientific truth?

Because Duesberg was considered one of the world's foremost retrovirologists, he could easily have jumped on the HIV bandwagon in the 1980s, and his stardom in that field would have been assured. Yet, instead, he chose to speak out against the HIV hypothesis, virtually ruining his career.

David Rasnick PhD - Dr. Rasnick was a pioneer in the development of protease inhibitors, and could easily have stayed in that field, developing anti-HIV drugs, with all the attendant money, prestige, and career success that any man might dream of. Yet instead, he left that field, and now is a board member at Rethinking AIDS, and spends much of his time and effort distributing vitamins to African AIDS patients free of charge alongside Matthias Rath.

Kary Mullis PhD - Dr Mullis won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993 for his invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification technique. If you'll check out his website, you'll find that he extolls the many uses of the technique, from criminal forensics to anthropology, but makes no mention of its most common uses: Measuring "viral load" in AIDS patients, and detecting other viruses such as West Nile, SARS, HPV, and HCV. This is because Dr. Mullis doesn't consider these to be valid uses for the PCR technique. About AIDS in particular, Dr. Mullis is quite an outspoken dissident, when he could just as easily keep his mouth shut, not rock the boat, and his fame and immortality in the annals of scientific research would be assured.

Rebecca V. Culshaw PhD - Dr. Culshaw is a personal friend of mine, and holds a PhD in mathematical biology. After spending 10 years as a mainstream AIDS researcher, working in mathematical modeling of HIV infection, Culshaw began to have her doubts about the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, due to the fact that the numbers, quite literally, didn't add up. After a long time spent soul-searching and doing extensive research, she felt she had no choice but to abandon the field of AIDS research, and has since authored a book called Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?.

Luc Montagnier MD - Dr Montagnier is best known as the discoverer of HIV. However, in 1990, Montagnier began to publicly question HIV's role in AIDS. In an article in the March 1990 issue of Research in Virology, he demonstrated HIV's inability to kill T-cells. At the 6th International AIDS Conference, June 24, 1990, Montagnier declared "There are too many shortcomings in the theory that HIV causes all signs of AIDS�We are seeing people HIV infected for 9,10 years or more, 12 years, and they are still in good shape; their immune system is still good, and it is unlikely that those people will come down with AIDS later ... HIV is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AIDS." In an interview for an article in the Miami Herald, Montagnier reiterated this position. Today, Montagnier no longer publicly criticizes the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, though it is unclear whether he has changed his mind or merely changed his tune.

With the exception of Montagnier, all of the above people stand accused of being "denialists". But what are they in denial of? None of them are HIV-positive, nor does any one of them stand to lose if HIV is the cause of AIDS. Quite the contrary, eachhas incurred real lossesby the stand he or she has taken, where each would have profited greatly simply by going along with the crowd. The accusation of being in denial might fly against persons such as myself, but in the cases of Drs Duesberg, Rasnick, Mullis, and Culshaw, it is plainly not denial to look Chicken Little right in his beady little eyes and say, "That was an acorn, you dufus." Either these people are all insane and/or professionally suicidal, or they are extraordinarily honest, evento the point of being willing to throw away their entire careers for the sake of what they perceive to be an objective truth.

In Duesberg's case, you have leveled the charge that he has impugned the reputations of others, and the implication you seem to be making is that he has committed slander. However, in order for somethingto be slander, it has to be a lie, and considering Duesberg's history of speaking the truthas he sees it,even when it hurts his own career, it seems unlikely that he would lie in orderto hurt the careers of others.

"Nobody here but us heretics..."

Jean-Marc wrote: "I have no doubt that he did indeed take a culture of HIV from the other lab and claim it as his own. This was something we learned in our Biology of AIDS course in college. I also know that a professor who was researching HIV in our university had to rush patent something that he and Gallo had collaborated on because Gallo was trying to 'steal' the patent by getting it first."

I'll go one better: Gallo has never legitimately discovered a retrovirus in his entire career. HL-23V proved to be a "soup" of previously-documented monkey viruses (hence my demand of proof that HIV is actually a single virus.) HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 were both stolen from Japanese researchers, and the proof is in the fact that in both cases, Gallo's gene sequences, when published, duplicated errors made by the Japanese researchers who'd made the discoveries in the first place. In the case of HTLV-2, the error had been deliberately planted, for the purpose of catching thieves. Now, you know far more than I about documenting retroviral gene sequences, so you tell me, what are the odds of this being mere coincidence?

The significance of this is that the entire premise that HIV causes AIDS hinges entirely on Gallo's claim to that effect; a claim which was accepted as fact even before his "discovery" had been published for peer review. HIV's real discoverer (referred to as its "co-discoverer",) started claiming in 1990 that HIV is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause AIDS, but he has since quit rocking the boat. Beyond the point where AIDS causation was decided at a press conference, there is no reason not to believe that the "proof" that HIV causes AIDS since that time consists of nothing more than the most monumental case of confirmation bias in the history of science.

...But I really shouldn't go there at this point, because we're in danger of getting ahead of ourselves again.

"Nobody here but us heretics..."