April 23^rd is Rethinking AIDS Day (RAD)
A Call to Action

Rethinking AIDS, an international group of scientists, doctors, writers, health advocates, and others, has named April 23, 2008 the first Rethinking AIDS Day, a day for people all over the world to join with us and question the official dogma regarding HIV and AIDS, to learn the truth about the HIV tests and medications, and to act to re-establish honesty and integrity into our local community, regional, and national medical and health advocacy agencies and organizations, wherever we live.

At an international press conference on April 23, 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo, a federally funded cancer researcher, announced that he had discovered "the probable cause of AIDS," a new virus which would later be given the name HIV. The world media accepted the discovery of HIV as the cause of AIDS as a matter of fact although no proof was presented that day or anytime thereafter. Now, twenty four years and $500 billion later, there is still no scientific evidence that Gallo ever isolated HIV from any of the AIDS patients he had studied, and there is still no published paper from any other scientist anywhere in the world demonstrating the direct purification of HIV from any human being.

For a list of April 23^rd events and actions, click HERE.

To this day, there is no HIV test that actually looks for or finds HIV itself. All tests, such as the “HIV antibody blood test” patented by Dr. Gallo himself, detect the presence of substitutes or stand-ins for HIV, such as antibodies or genetic material thought to be associated with the virus. These non-specific tests can register positive due to the presence of antibodies produced in response to dozens of common illnesses, such as tuberculosis, herpes, colds, influenza, and liver disease, as well as those produced by vaccines for flu or tetanus, and even pregnancy. Furthermore, there is no universal standard for determining whether a test is positive or negative--the results of all "hiv tests" are interpreted based on criteria that vary depending on the test, the country, the health agency and the lab where you were tested.

Survey information you give also affects interpretation of tests. For example, if you identify yourself as a monogamous heterosexual caucasian, your same test may be interpreted differently from that of someone perceived as "high risk" such as a person of color, a former drug user, or a gay man. Medical articles about the tests make reference to "false positives" and "false negatives."

In industrialized countries, the definition of AIDS is circular: it is defined as a set of symptoms that can be the result of the mild or serious illnesses described above, or by the myriad side effects of the AIDS drugs, combined with a positive HIV test that may have, in fact, been triggered by one or more of those very illnesses.

If you are African, AIDS has a completely different definition that does not require an HIV test. Called the Bangui Definition, named after a WHO AIDS conference, the various symptoms of sometimes-deadly diseases and malnutrition that have plagued Africa for decades are now redefined as AIDS. Thus the many curable afflictions that are usually associated with substandard diets and non-existent sanitation or clean water and ordinary public health measures are now identified as a single, sexually-carried death-certificate disease. This label automatically stigmatizes, isolates, and marginalizes people, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The victims are then offered toxic drugs rather than medications and nutrition appropriate for their real illness.

There has been no official progress for 24 years in producing a cure, vaccine, or safe effective treatment for AIDS, while many thousands of people have died, and while people who believe they are infected have lived in fear of having a death certificate disease, despite the vain attempts by a huge medical research establishment. Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence mounts that HIV positive people who pursue ordinary dietary supplementation and healthy lifestyles, and even some people with full-blown AIDS who pursue intensive, therapeutic supplementation regimens and intravenous vitamin C therapy, stay or become healthy and live normal lives. Although usually ignored by the medical establishment, researchers have created a name for them – Long Term Non-Progressors (LTNPs). AIDS researchers are not interested in finding out how many people there are like this.

The health status measurement of people who are “HIV positive” is a blood test which measures something these researchers call Viral Load. If you are “HIV negative,” and you have the flu, a high viral load is OK, because it is an indication that your immune system is working properly. If you are HIV positive, a high viral load is considered to be a sign of AIDS progression. If your AIDS medications are working “properly,” you will have an undetectable viral load, because your immunity has been completely suppressed.

The primary development during these 24 years has been a series toxic chemotherapy drugs (called nucleosides or DNA terminators), which destroy the immune system, and amino acid analogs (synthetic protease inhibitors), which cause gross tissue malformation and autoimmune disease. These extremely toxic substances are promoted as medications that will extend your life and keep you from getting sick, and keep your babies safe from mother-to-child transmission of AIDS. Yet their documented side effects are the very symptoms of AIDS progression.

If you are a well-fed child with middle-class white parents, doctors don't really worry about you too much. However, if you are an African American orphan or child with incarcerated parents, it is assumed that you are HIV positive (even though you may not even have a developed immune system) so it is assumed that you need AIDS drugs. This was the excuse given for the unethical use of orphans for testing new AIDS drugs at the Incarnate Children’s Center in New York City.

We have been told for 24 years that AIDS is caused by a virus that can't be directly measured, cultured, or isolated. Despite billions of dollars in research, the HIV virus has still not been purified.

Once the medical establishment decided that HIV caused AIDS and that the only treatment was toxic drugs, it became dangerous to your career if you were a writer or an academic or doctor or other medical or health professional who questioned the HIV AIDS paradigm. Prominent, even prize-winning researchers suddenly lost all funding for their research and found themselves ostracized or even terminated from their academic jobs. A group of self-appointed “true believers” in the paradigm have waged a worldwide campaign to publicly ridicule, threaten, silence, and marginalize anyone who publicly questions any aspects of the paradigm.

Most people do not know the truth about the HIV test. If you are “HIV positive,” you are told that you have a communicable death-certificate disease. Legally, your body is a deadly weapon. You can be imprisoned for having intimate relations without telling your partner that you are “HIV Positive.” Your friends – if they stay your friends – may view you as a different person. You may lose your job and/or your health insurance. Whether you live in an industrialized country or a developing country in Africa or Asia, you are marginalized from society; you live in its shadows. Like the Pink Triangle that gay men were required to wear on their clothing in Nazi Germany, you wear a Pink Triangle on your psyche.

For years we have been told that more than 250,000 young adults in the US are HIV positive but are unaware of it. If this were true, we would see tens of thousands of people dying from the severe opportunistic infections that do often plague those who are taking AIDS drugs. Yet we see no such gruesome statistics.

For years we have been treated to the spectacle of World AIDS Day, in which governments and prominent celebrities tell us all about the “epidemic” of the death certificate disease, without telling us the truth.

April 23, 2008 is the first Rethinking AIDS Day. On this day and every day thereafter we ask that people all over the world begin questioning the HIV-AIDS paradigm – whether this diagnosis of a supposed death certificate disease, using faulty tests, for a virus that cannot be cultured, and then being prescribed expensive toxic drugs that destroy the immune system, makes any sense.

Here is a link to activities, new videos, and places – both virtual and real – where you can learn more about what you have not been told. We encourage you to become an AIDS Rethinker, and join us in commemorating Rethinking AIDS Day!

Commemorate Rethinking AIDS Day - Act Now!