As I begin the second year of my investigation into the AIDS scam, I am still amazed by each day’s revelations. Unlike the predators I’ve driven from the street, Robert Gallo and his cohorts at the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) now behave as if they want to get caught. After decades of acquiescent oversight, NIAID Director Tony Fauci looks more like Tony Soprano than a medical doctor.

Last week I reported that the HIV drug Sustiva is not only being smoked like crack cocaine by thousands, but that abstinence from the drug compromises immune function in the same way that clinicians identify the onset of AIDS. Marketed as a “non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor,” Bristol-Myers Squibb provides no warning of the drug’s highly addictive hypnotic properties or it’s terrifying and potentially deadly affects of withdrawal.

As if that wasn’t enough, the book Dissecting a Discovery, promoted internationally by Gallo and his goons since December 2007 as the most “important reference book to read for the history of AIDS,” is as fraudulent as Gallo and his goons at IHV. With experience allegedly “sought after by Heads of State, Foreign & Political Dignitaries,” the author is in truth an unarmed security guard who also sells filters from his garage.

Based upon information from the Orange County Sheriff and Culver City Police departments, it appears that Nikolas Kontaratos is not licensed to investigate anything and is probably not even qualified to apply for the exam. After I spoke with Kontaratos last week, IHV’s goons quickly distanced themselves from Kontaratos and his book, although it is still being pushed in three languages around the world.

While most Americans would not risk the embarrassment of such an indiscretion, I attribute Gallo’s diminished inhibitions to:

• CONFUSION – Most Americans, including those in Congress, local, state, and federal law enforcement, don’t know (or don’t want to know) anything about microbiology, the scientific process, or how Congress spends billions of our taxes each year. When mobsters like Fauci report that millions of Americans will die unless taxpayers spend billions of dollars to produce a vaccine (protection racket), we respond as irrationally as Bernie Madoff’s once-ambitious investors. The problem with Madoff and Fauci is not that conmen exist, but that agencies like that SEC and Justice Department are too lazy, incompetent, or corrupt to investigate.
• VANITY – Most Americans prefer not having these goons tell them that they’re not as smart as highly paid AIDS researchers or clinicians. So rather than question the biotechnical community’s incoherent gibberish, we politely accept what they say to avoid the scathing condescension that is characteristic of defensive conmen who can’t answer important questions.
• APATHY – People ignore AIDS because AIDS doesn’t affect them and has never been a leading cause of death in the United States or Africa.
• TRUST – Most Americans trust that researchers and clinicians will not turn science into a criminal theology or squander billions of dollars pushing fake research and addictive toxins to enrich themselves. 
• CONFIDENCE – Most Americans have an irrational faith that scientists and the oversight agencies they fund can police themselves and that, wherever fraud exists, Gallo’s friends within the CDC, FDA, and NIH will report the criminal activities that fund their own mortgages, cars, and ballet lessons.

Under the pretext of “public safety,” these mobsters achieve what common racketeers accomplish with extortion, fraud, intimidation, and terrorism. Nevertheless, after nearly three decades and $1 trillion in wasted research, thousands of real scientists are still asking the same embarrassing questions.

Even before Science published his four unproven assumptions (1, 2, 3, 4), Gallo was hounded by reports of incompetence:

In 1975, Gallo and Weiss stated that they had isolated a human leukemia virus, HL23 virus, but this was shown later to have resulted from laboratory contamination by three primate retroviruses. In 1980 Gallo claimed to have isolated a human T-cell leukemia virus (HTLV), but did not present positive evidence that this was a human virus. During 1983-4, Gallo and his associates published several papers asserting that the human leukemia virus, HTLV-1, was the agent involved in the development of AIDS. This was eventually disproven but meanwhile the attention of many scientists was misdirected, wasting time and resources that could have been put to far better use… (Karpas)

When I began my investigation in June 2008, Gallo’s goons sent dozens of reports to me that they said “proved the existence of HIV and AIDS.” But like Gallo’s original reports, none explained who, when, where, and exactly how HIV was proven to attack cells or cause AIDS. At best, the reports that I subsequently reviewed were either entirely unreadable or they assumed Gallo’s unproven speculation. The final paragraphs of Gallo’s own chatty gibberish illustrate the weightlessness of his reports:

The transient expression… and the previous lack of a cell system… represent a major obstacle in the detection, isolation, and elucidation of the precise causative agent of AIDS (e.g., we can’t prove it yet.) [1]

… These studies… provide strong evidence of a causative involvement of the virus in AIDS. (e.g. Inconclusive) [2]

… these immunological and nucleic data clearly indicate that HTLV-III is a true member of the HTLV-II family and that it is more closely related to HTLV-II than to HTLV-I. (e.g., This looks more like this than that.) [3]

The data presented here and in the accompanying reports suggest that HTLV-III is the primary cause of AIDS. (e.h., Inconclusive) [4]

Despite millions of pages of incomprehensibly cross-referenced incoherence, these reports (and those stacked upon them) provide no specific information that disinterested and unbiased third parties can use to reproduce experiments used to actually prove or replicate those experiments.

NOTE: Readers can confirm this for themselves by contacting Tony Fauci, Robert Gallo or his staff. Request from them links to documents that “specifically indicate how independent researchers can duplicate the experiments that were performed to prove that HIV attacks cells and causes AIDS.” Don’t get distracted when they call you a denialist or start yammering about protease inhibitors, viral loads, T-cells, or Nobel Prizes. While you’re waiting (you’ll wait a long time), you might see how MIT graduate students built this PDF engine to generate gibberish-filled scientific reports and how easily they were accepted into nationally-accredited journals around the world (more here). I published this fake report in two minutes with my own name. If you eventually do receive links or files from the mobsters or goons that look somewhat legitimate, please send them to me.

Saving Gallo’s Legacy

To put an end to decades of accusations, embarrassment, charges, and scandal, mobsters like Gallo and Fauci needed someone to stop the questions once and for all.

But who could they get?

Gallo’s goons routinely sign each other’s reports and nominate each other for prestigious awards, so assigning one of them to write a book about IHV’s sloppy research might have looked somewhat incestuous. Even if a real scientist suffered ridicule, he couldn’t risk exposure.

Gallo and the goons at IHV needed someone truly independent – someone with not only a reputation of unimpeachable credibility but who would also not notice if something was amiss. They needed someone who was reasonably cooperative and open to gentle guidance and redirection so that the book would deliver the expected conclusions. The book also required the same integrity and intellectual weight that was expected in all of Gallo’s AIDS-related research.

Policeman and private investigators were problematic. If caught faking evidence or lying to a court, a perjury beef would result in the loss of the investigator’s license, badge, and career. Unlike some judges and lawyers who think that impartiality is something to aspire to, credibility is an intrinsic part of professional cops and investigators.

Robert Gallo needed someone like Warren Christopher – someone whose experience was sought by heads of state, dignitaries, A-list celebrities, county agencies, as well as the United States Government; someone whose expertise has benefitted U.S. presidents and prime ministers but also possesses the necessary wisdom and servility to reach the appropriate conclusion.

Unfortunately, such men are hard to find. Christopher was visiting his taxidermist, William Bratton was juking stats for the Vignali boys, Bernard Kerik was under investigation, Tony Pellicano was in jail, Arthur Anderson was under new management, Jessie Jackson wanted too much money, and Johnny Cochran was dead.

Despite the overwhelming odds, Gallo found his man after a recommendation by IHV researcher Dr. Tony Kontaratos.

The Candidate

According to the website, Nikolas Kontaratos was a retired police officer whose:

… experience was sought after by Heads of State, Foreign & Political Dignitaries, A-list celebrities, County Agencies, as well as the United States Government. His strength in security planning has benefited separately a former U.S. President, a Prime Minister, and top level Olympic organizing for the 2004 Summer Games in Athens…

Kontaratos didn’t say who, but it “was over dinner one night that he was asked to investigate the international scandal.” After “three years of interviews, persistent document collection, and reading the many accounts and records…” Kontaratos claims to have uncovered and exposed shameful secrets by drawing on his formidable investigative credentials:

(Kontaratos) “… documented with incontrovertible evidence what really happened between scientists, politicians, and countries when AIDS made itself known onto the world stage. Exposing the harsh realities of an unforgiving society and the battles that took place behind the scenes as scientists raced to understand the coming epidemic the disease would bring to our world.”

A Masterwork!

(Kontaratos’ book is) “…

The website further describes the book as an ironclad exposure of the truth… (that) stands alone as a timeless, important, historical reference loaded with many new shocking revelations proved true… Congress has asked Dr. Gallo for materials to be donated to them to preserve forever his part in this drama of discovery. This book is to be included in that collection of materials…

Gallo, Kontaratos, and the Mayor met in Rome for the book’s “grand unveiling” at World AIDS Day 2007. Translated into Italian and Spanish, it was heralded by four icons of the AIDS industry:

“Congratulations – This book is the best,” said Barbara Culliton.

If anyone can recognize rigorous investigative work, Ms. Culliton is that person. As the Deputy Editor of Health Affairs, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Investigative Medicine, Editor-in-Chief (and Founder) of the Genome News Network, Correspondent-at-Large for Science, Deputy Editor and Washington Bureau Chief for Nature and paid consultant to Gallo’s Institute of Human Virology, her respect for the literary works of security guards and part-time filter salesmen is no different from the complicit journalism that helped mobsters like Fauci and Gallo become the icons of medicine they are today. It also explains why the editors of Science refused to respond to the demand by these cretinous doctors and scientists to depublish Gallo’s four original 1984 reports and how Gallo got his revised version of AIDS history published Nature.

Coincidentally, Culliton’s published works include titles like A Conundrum of Ethics, Politics and Genes, Clinical Investigation: An Endangered Science, and NIH needs clear definition of fraud.

“You have done a great service to science history,” said Dr. MG Sarngadharan.

As a co-author of three (1, 2, 3) of Gallo’s four original reports and “co-inventor of the AIDS test,” few people in the world understand the importance of scientific integrity better than Dr. Sarngadharan. Anyone who is impressed by Robert Gallo’s miraculous discoveries will appreciate Mr. Kontaratos’ comparative incandescence.

“With this book you have performed a tour de force on behalf of the scientific truth,” said Dr. Daniel Zagury.

As one of Gallo’s accessories since the beginning of AIDS and author of similar works, Zagury knows what an investigative tour de force looks like. He is also the Founder of the French biotechnology company Neovacs.

Coincidentally, Barbara Culliton defended Zagury in this article (1992) after he was accused of, among other things, conducting medical experiments on African orphans. It is unclear if Kontaratos or another security guard conducted that investigation.

Having spent his entire career with the same mobsters at Cornell and U. of Maryland’s School of Medicine, one can also sees how this co-founder of Gallo’s Institute of Human Virology is so energized by the page-turning craft of Gallo’s security guard.Sarcasm aside, the fact that Gallo specifically chose Kontaratos to author a book that chronicles his ostensible life and the work of his collaborators offers the first clue, from Gallo himself, that the foundation of all AIDS research, science, and policy is nothing more than a lie.

An Offer of Proof

Having conducted thousands of criminal investigations since 1980, it’s hard not to recognize the fundamental behavioral differences between the innocent and the guilty.

When falsely accused, the innocent will intuitively seek the most ethical, competent, and unbiased investigator available to dig up as much evidence as possible and to prove their innocence before an unbiased judge and jury. The guilty, however, are less enthusiastic about such investigators. Ideally, the guilty prefer less-skilled investigators who are less likely to find damning evidence and more likely to make mistakes. If given the opportunity, they will pay for someone to contrive a plausible alibi.

Although technically a “retired police officer,” Kontaratos spent no more than three months in a police academy, fifteen months in an Orange County jail, and nine months as a trainee with the Culver City Police before retiring with a complained-of knee injury in 1994. His experience is far different from the majority of retirees who spend twenty or thirty years responding to calls, interviewing victims, witnesses and suspects; collecting evidence, and putting cases together so that a competent jury can decide the reasonable guilt or innocence of a defendant. Although hundreds of thousands of highly qualified and ethically unchallenged investigators are licensed throughout the United States, the fact that Gallo singled out someone who had nothing more than the right credentials is as damning as it gets. In return, Gallo (or his goons) flew Kontaratos first class to Europe to meet the Mayor of Rome.

Investigators & Rats

While almost genetically identical to rats and primates, it is our intellectual curiosity that sets humans apart. While we are all genetically coded to be curious, some of us are more deeply driven by a desire to understand the world around us than others.

When it comes to intellectual curiosity, there little difference between incorruptible cops and incorruptible scientists. After one spends a few years working with peers of equal integrity, our ability to recognize imposters becomes as easy as one’s sense of smell. Proving what our senses tell us depends upon the acuity of our senses and whether the odor is masked or unmasked.

In the case of Gallo, his decades of misconduct are masked by a core group of scientists and journalists (~ 100) who are motivated by something other than intellectual curiosity. Based upon what I’ve found during this past year, Gallo appears to be a charismatic man who was, at best, intellectually lazy. Instead of pursuing excellence that sometimes leads to greatness, Gallo appears to have sought greatness and a pretext to make it plausible.

He didn’t have much time. Because of sloppy research and fraud related to the so-called War on Cancer, Congress was preparing to withdraw all funding from scientists like Gallo. At the same time, a small group of promiscuous, addicted, nitrite-huffing, gonorrheal and syphilitic bath house veterans began to get sick.

Faced with the imminent loss of funding, Gallo and his goons needed a new virus that they could frighten Americans with. At the same time, gay activists wanted the world to believe that their lifestyle had nothing to do with their symptoms. If lifestyle was blamed, individuals would be responsible. But if Gallo blamed a harmless retrovirus, President Reagan would be politically responsible if he didn’t support an unmerited fight against it. As a result, billions of taxpayer dollars were diverted from real diseases while Gallo and his goons enriched themselves and those who supported their theology: leaving only a handful of incorruptible journalists, scientists, and skeptics to ask questions. (More here)

By choosing Kontaratos to author “the world’s most important historical account of the history of AIDS,” Gallo’s effort to rewrite history provides the best evidence that all AIDS research was built on nothing more than a fraud.

This investigation is no longer about one isolated fraudster. The fact that none of Gallo’s goons within the IHV, the University of Maryland, the journals Science and Nature, Cornell University, the CDC, NIH or any other university or law enforcement agency ever bothered to check allegations against Gallo, Blattner, Culliton, Sarngadharan, or Zagury, shows that the fraud is systemic throughout the pharmaceutical industry and university research centers. The fact that the federal government relies on Tony Fauci’s advise and guidance is a problem.

Gallo’s goons include Nicolas Bennett, Jeanne Bergman, James Murtagh, Brian Foley, Nathan Geffen, Gregg Gonsalves, Bette Korber, Kevin Kuritzky, Nicoli Nattrass, Jeanne Bergman, Ken Witwer, Richard Jeffreys, Seth Kalichman, Todd DeShong, Eduard Grebe, Bob Funkhouser, and John Moore. While some are PhDs and MDs employed by universities like Syracuse, Cape Town, Johns Hopkins, Weill Medical School and Yale, others operate from the Los Alamos National Laboratory and advocacy groups like the ASRU, ITPC, Project Inform, and TAG. Some write books about their targets. Some are unemployed or expelled medical students. Some are simply not firing on all pistons. All are directly or indirectly supported or directed by the makers of HIV drugs under the nose of NIAID Director Tony Fauci, MD.

Their exclusive role is to isolate, attack, libel, stigmatize, destroy, complicate, or make miserable the lives of anyone who questions Gallo – or what they call “the consensus.”

Because real proof is as easy to produce as the hyperlinks I’ve posted in this blog, Gallo’s goons are hard pressed to explain why they’ve spent years attacking and writing books when they need do nothing more than email a PDF or post proof on a website. Their IS TOO! – IS NOT! arguments are tedious.

Conclusion

As evidence mounts, I believe that there is probable cause to believe that Robert Gallo and the employees within IHV are engaged in an ongoing criminal enterprise that has helped universities and drug companies defraud taxpayers of hundreds of billions of dollars since at least June 1981.

The fact that I, a retired cop and private investigator, could identify a fraud that the world’s top AIDS researchers and the editors of the most prestigious scientific journals could not (or refused to) identify makes these revelations even more disturbing. It also explains why the mainstream media is so intimidated when considering a story that challenges the “scientific consensus.” If I were a New York Times reporter, the last thing I’d want is someone like Barbara Culliton telling the owner that I’m a lousy investigator.

When I sent this sarcastic note to Gallo last year, I never expected his cheerful reply; nor could I stop the uncomfortable feeling of having insulted someone so out of step with reality.

The uniform enthusiasm for Dissecting a Discovery by Gallo, Culliton, Sarngadharan, Zagury, Blattner and the goons’ mindless devotion to AIDS theology is as soulless as the Borg.

The whole thing would be a farce except that healthy young women like Krizs are ordered to give their babies AZT under threat of having them taken away to be poisoned. This happens every day to women throughout Africa, Europe, and even in the United States. One Bay Area mother was threatened this year by Child Protective Services. After a tough fight, she was allowed to keep her children.

There is much at stake. Thousands, if not millions of people, are being poisoned and killed each year in the US and around the world because of mindless clinicians, Gallo’s goons, and Fauci’s acquiescence. In Texas last week, a man was sentenced to 45 years in prison after allegedly infecting six women with HIV. While he may be guilty of promiscuity, how does a jury convict someone of spreading HIV when the laws are built entirely upon Gallo’s unproven research? If the women begin taking AZT and Sustiva, the drugs and the stigma of Gallo’s benign virus will harm them much more than an evening of casual sex.

As for Kontaratos, I have no desire to attack him personally. At the same time, he should have recognized his role in covering up what has become a multi-billion dollar fraud that has sickened and killed millions and stained millions more with the stigma of nothing more than a harmless retrovirus.

Real scientists would answer these questions and would acknowledge their past mistakes – which is exactly why Gallo, Fauci, and their goons hate the so-called denialists.

Until last year, I was a strong supporter of the pharmaceutical industry. When Merck was sued (Vioxx), I blamed the lawyers for filing frivolous lawsuits against drug makers who, I then believed, were the innovative champions in Humanity’s fight against disease.

I dismissed stories about “big pharma” as fast as I heard them. The notion that scientists would deliberately poison patients for profit, or that the US Government would fund medical doctors like Robert Gallo after he violated his Hippocratic Oath was preposterous. As much as I like Ralph Fiennes, I refused to see a movie as unbelievable as The Constant Gardener.

So when the physicians and nurses at Semmelweis Society International (SSI) asked me to investigate allegations that UC Professor Peter Duesberg had killed millions in Africa, I expected to complete my task within days. With almost thirty years of investigative experience, I figured that a few Google searches would resolve the questions, one way or the other.

Little did I know that the allegations issued by James Murtagh MD, Kevin Kuritzky, and Richard Jefferys would consume thousands of hours of my time or expose me to the ugly underbelly of the pharmaceutical industry and its chicken-ranch relationship with America’s most prestigious universities.

While the evidence I discovered now suggests that millions may have been poisoned and murdered, I’ve found that Dr. Duesberg more closely resembles Moshe the Beadle than his pharmaceutically-funded accusers – who now appear to have far more in common with Phillip Morris than Louis Pasteur.

Since the release of my preliminary report (PDF) in July 2008, filmmaker Brent Leung completed his documentary and investigative reporter Celia Farber, who was also targeted, has filed suit against her accusers in the New York Supreme Court.

My report established the two sides of the dispute:

• One side, (commonly referred to as truthers, goons, and troofers) is comprised of the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in pharmaceutical funding. Truthers insist that HIV attacks cells and causes AIDS.
• The other side, (called rethinkers, denialists, and skeptics) question whether anyone has ever proved that HIV attacks cells and causes AIDS. These individuals rely mostly on private donations and represent a tiny fraction of what truthers receive from the pharmaceutical industry.

After examining both sides, the evidence now indicates that:

1. All HIV/AIDS research is based upon Dr. Gallo’s unproven assumption that HIV attacks cells and causes AIDS;
2. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spends $206,906 per AIDS death (compared to $13,365 per Diabetes death, $12,000 per prostate disease, $9,000 for Parkinson’s disease and $9,000 for Alzheimer’s disease), even though AIDS has never been a leading cause of death in the United States or Africa;
3. Except for rare individuals like US Senator Charles Grassley and Rep. John Dingell, the US Congress, Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) appear to share many of the same organizational flaws that the SEC, FBI, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Treasury exhibited before the 2008 financial.

New Evidence

Although the toxic effects of HIV treatments are well documented, I was still confused by HIV+ patients who reported that, after years of treatment, many became ill within two weeks of discontinuing their medication. If HIV didn’t kill cells or cause AIDS, why were patients getting sick when they interrupted their drug regimen?

Although patients like Karri Stokely attributed her four-month post-drug illness to “the shock of no longer being on toxic drugs,” I didn’t accept it. Toxins don’t ordinarily make someone sicker when stopped – addictive drugs do that. If someone takes regular doses of arsenic for six months, there is no evidence that their sudden abstinence would cause anything but a recovery. Conversely, addicts (and those who know them) understand the distress that comes with abstinence from coffee, tobacco, and harder drugs like alcohol, cannabis, opiates, meth or cocaine. The degree of withdrawal depends upon factors that include the addict’s health, dosage, resistance, the intoxicant, and how the drugs are metabolized.

But while post-HIV drug symptoms sounded suspiciously like addiction withdrawal, I found little more than a mild warning (404) of the “potential for additive central nervous system effects when SUSTIVA is used concomitantly with alcohol or psychoactive drugs.” Nothing alluded to intoxicating properties of the drug itself.

When I met Karri Stokely last week, she explained her medical history, her two-month recovery from a post-operative infection, and various tests that eventually led to her HIV+ diagnosis in June 1996 when she began her treatment. (more)

Karri reported that she was initially prescribed Combivir and Crixivan until 2001, when her doctor detected signs of liver damage and switched from Crixivan to Sustiva. After that, Karri took Combivir and Sustiva as prescribed until April 2007, when she discovered Dr. Duesberg’s questions about AIDS research. After studying the information on Rethinking AIDS and Virus Myth, she abruptly stopped her medication.

At first, Karri detected no adverse symptoms. During the second week, however, she noticed increasing symptoms of fatigue, exhaustion, depression, insomnia, body aches, and a significant loss of appetite. During the next month, she developed an extreme sensitivity to pain when touched, even when lying in bed or eating. Visits to the toilet and tub were difficult and, as the weeks passed, her weight dropped from her normal 135 to 114 (she’s 5-8). Karri also experienced night sweats and often noticed a thin green/yellow coating on her tongue. Most notably, her throat was sore and she possessed an almost continuous and unquenchable thirst.

“I felt as if my system was shutting down,” she said.

Karri’s decline continued from April through August 2007, when her symptoms began to subside. She returned to her clinic for another blood test in August and, when the lab results returned a week later, the nurse called Karri in a panic: “Your lab tests are way off! You didn’t stop taking your drugs, did you?”

The nurse became more alarmed when Karri admitted that she’d been off the drugs for four months.

Nurse Nancy asked, “Why would you do such a thing? Do you know what happened to your lab work?

“No.”

“Do you even want to know what your lab work says?”

“Yes.”

“Your T-Cell count dropped to 97 (from 200s) and viral load to 135,000! Are you coming in?”

A week later, Dr. Van Hook crossed his arms and scowled at Karri. “Why would you do this?”

Karri asked him, “Did you know there is another view of HIV, that it might not cause AIDS?”

“No,” said the doctor.

“Do you want to know?”

“No, Karri, I don’t want to know. You’ve done a very stupid thing and you will be dead very soon.”

Karri Stokely didn’t die and, during the next two years, her symptoms disappeared entirely.

After listening to Karri’s story and comparing notes with other reports, I noted similarities between Karri’s symptoms and known withdrawal syndromes, including those of antidepressants. I also found reports that HIV drugs were being crushed and smoked by addicts in Africa:

The children do not know where they are and they stop making sense.

The research, production, and distribution of this class of drugs is not without controversy. Japanese researchers recently reported antidepressant (SSRI) users “who developed increased feelings of hostility or anxiety, and have even committed sudden acts of violence against others.” (Other SSRI stories indexed here.) Texas psychiatrist Karen Wagner MD was recently exposed for failing to disclose a $160,000 payment from GlaxoSmithKline while understating the dangers of Paxil for children.

Many of these known SSRI withdrawal reactions are consistent with Karri’s post-Sustiva experience.

As for Nurse Nancy’s report of Karri’s erratic T-Cell counts and viral loads, numerous clinical studies show a direct connection between the stress of withdrawal (cocaine and heroin) and decreases in immune function for up to two years. Those reports show a direct correlation between addiction, withdrawal, and the human immune system (white blood cells, T-cells, and viral loads) regardless of whether HIV is present or not. But because AIDS experts and testing rely on T-cells and viral loads to establish HIV infection, it’s hard to understand how the experts know the difference between HIV infections and physiological changes due to illicit drug use. This would also explain why active and former drug addicts are frequently identified as HIV carriers.

The revelation that Sustiva is not reported to be an extremely addictive psychotropic drug is disturbing. After speaking with patients like Karri who interrupted their prescriptions, it now appears that abstinence from so-called “ARVs” like Sustiva results not in an increased risk of AIDS but, instead, precipitates the onset of a painful and violent withdrawal syndrome not dissimilar to withdrawal from cocaine, heroin, methamphetamines, and alcohol. Unfortunately for patients like Karri, AIDS clinicians typically mischaracterize the withdrawal syndrome as a manifestation of AIDS that will soon kill them. Unless given further information, care, and nurturing, most patients are physically and emotionally unprepared to contradict their white-coated physicians. Once the drug is re-administered, however, the “AIDS symptoms” disappear in ways not unlike junkies who inject a long-awaited dose of heroin.

Conclusion

It is not known how many AIDS medications are addictive or why; nor have I established whether the pharmaceutical industry unintentionally or deliberately marketed addictive drugs for the purpose of misleading otherwise uninfected individuals. But if a retired cop can identify Sustiva’s addictive properties, it’s hard to understand how the GlaxoSmithKline’s PhDs could have missed so much evidence.

Intentional or not, by marketing this class of drugs (MAOIs and SSRIs) as “AIDS medications,” the pharmaceutical industry has built into its HIV cocktails a mechanism that punishes HIV patients when they interrupt their drug use.

Karri’s cocktail contained two drugs – a deadly poison (AZT) that kills and a highly addictive drug that makes patients feel cheerful, more optimistic, and more physically active.

At $419/mo, a patient (or taxpayers) would pay $5,028 a year for Sustiva alone. Multiplied by the alleged HIV+ US population of 1,185,000, receipts could total $6 billion/year. Multiplied by the estimated global HIV+ population, GlaxoSmithKline could generate $100 billion in sales and tax deductions annually.

Despite these facts, no one can seriously believe that a pharmaceutical company would deliberately poison and addict millions of homosexuals, drug users, and illiterate Africans for $100 billion dollars a year. No, that’s out of the question. Of course they wouldn’t.

But if the pharmaceutical industry knows that Sustiva and/or other HIV drugs are addictive, it would also explain the hysterical attacks by so-called AIDS researchers who, instead of delivering proof that HIV attacks cells and causes AIDS, attack individuals like Karri Stokely who have the temerity to ignore the results of HIV tests that prove nothing.

While the Harrison Act of 1914 prohibits the distribution of addictive drugs to perpetuate addiction, the evidence suggests that GlaxoSmithKline has circumvented the spirit of this law by delivering intoxicants, other than opiates and coca, to millions by classifying them as HIV treatments.

Karri Stokely is one of many former HIV patients who have kicked the habit and now live a happy, healthy and drug-free life. I look forward to the day when politicians jump start the agencies that are supposed to be looking out for the most vulnerable in the US, Europe, and Africa.

Smoking the pills has a hallucinogenic and relaxing effect.

SACRAMENTO 6 Apr 09 – The California Supreme Court issued a major victory to Dr. Gil Mileikowsky and healthcare professionals throughout the US today, issuing a decision regarding the conduct of his medical peer review hearing in 2003.  The Court wrote:

We conclude the hearing officer lacks authority to prevent a reviewing panel from reviewing the case by dismissing it on his or her own initiative before the hearing has been convened, and also lacks authority to terminate the hearing after it has been convened without first securing the approval of the reviewing panel. We therefore will affirm the judgment of the Court of Appeal. 

Dr. Mileikowsky (“Dr. Gil”) is a champion and advocate in the nationwide effort to end “sham peer review” (SPR) – a corrupt practice in which hospitals retaliate against physicians and nurses who report dangerous physicians, hospital conditions, or who successfully compete against hospitals by delivering superior service. By rigging a medical peer review board that cherry picks ordinarily insignificant mistakes, hospitals use SPR to intimidate and silence physicians who are sworn to improve healthcare and protect patients. Those targeted face a financially crippling fight to retain their clinical privileges. Sadly, many physicians endure financial ruin and the loss of their medical careers. Some lose hope and end their lives in suicide.

Hospitals accused of SPR have included Kaiser, Tenet, and non-profits like Adventist. Because hospitals have profited from harming patients, the Supreme Court’s decision could have a positive impact on patient safety throughout the US healthcare industry.

Dr. Mileikowsky is the President and founder of the Alliance for Patient Safety and a member of Semmelweis Society International (SSI), which supported Mileikowsky throughout his appeal.  Attorneys Jeffrey White and Georgetown Law Professor Alan Ullberg assisted SSI in the preparation of its amicus brief.

Health Leaders Media recently named Dr. Mileikowsky as one of America’s top healthcare leaders.

For more information, see the California Supreme Court opinion.

I recently received this message from a friend. I’ll call him Bill (not his real name):

My computer crashes have caused me to lose all my stored information.

When I called to assist him, I learned that he had purchased and plugged in his computer years earlier but had never properly installed a firewall, router, or anti-virus software.  Unknown to Bill, this left him completely vulnerable to Internet viruses, trojans, and worms that not only rendered his computer and bank accounts vulnerable to professional Internet hackers, but it also enabled his computer to attack his friends’ computers.

Since joining SSI and its Board last year, I’ve discovered that a large percentage of our highly-educated members are dumber than a box of dirt when it comes to Internet security.  (This will change as new doctors replace older ones).  Additionally, many of SSI’s members have been targeted by corrupted hospitals and medical boards.  SSI members should be aware that they have no “expectation of privacy” when it comes to university and HMO/PPO Internet connections, and multi-billion dollar healthcare or pharmaceutical companies aren’t above playing dirty if they suspect a disloyal, disgruntled, or disruptive employee.

If you’re being targeted for attack or dismissal, your Internet and email connections are a private investigator’s FIRST target and represent a significant vulnerability.  If you want to use a secure method for sending messages from a questionably-secure facility, Skype offers free encrypted voice, chat, and digital transfer capabilities that are difficult for employers to monitor.  In any case, it’s best to generate a private email service like Hushmail and communicate offsite.

I’ve posted my email to “Bill” so that our members can consider the information and protect themselves.

Dear “Dr. Bill”

I feel your pain. My first computer crashed in 1989 – I had stuff on that from 1982 when I bought my first computer. I’m still sick about that. I now use Acronis to back up my three computer drives onto a one-terabyte back-up drive. Although still painful, a crash will lose, at most, six days of data. There are also some good online backup services that work pretty good.

Unless you have a few years to develop computer security expertise, it’s best to find a reliable “computer guy” who you can trust. I live in Los Angeles and pay my computer guy $50/hour when I have problems. He lives nearby and he is efficient and knowledgeable. If you live in Portland, Springfield, or New York, you should not need to spend more than $50/hr. Pay him immediately and don’t give him trouble. If you’re rude and don’t pay immediately, he’ll either raise his rates or stop assisting you. Many high school and college kids know more than enough to set up your system safely. If you use CraigsList, ask for and call references first. When you find the right guy/or gal, treat him like family. He’s worth his weight in gold.

Once you’ve found your computer guy, tell him what you want.

As much as you use email and Google, your computer guy needs to install Spybot, Norton Antivirus, and Outlook: 

1. Spybot is free and effective in protecting your registry and blocking hostile websites, but you’ll need to check it regularly for updates.
2. Norton’s updates are automatic but require an annual $40 subscription. For 11 cents a day, Norton is a worthwhile investment.
3. DON”T upgrade to Vista – it’s got a bad (and well-deserved) reputation. A new operating system is expected this fall that is basically Vista without the bugs.  I’m told that the beta-release works very well.

Some hard-core Mac users insist that they’re computers are invulnerable, but this is false. Although not susceptible to PC hacks, they also get hacked and phished when left unprotected.

Outlook will manage all of your email address in one place. Have your computer guy set up those things for you.

I also use Avant Browser. Firefox and others are just as good with powerful shortcuts and macros. Avant’s companion service, Roboform generates, saves, and manages all of your passwords. Many people make the mistake of using one username (Bob) and password (1234) for ALL of their computing needs. The problem with that is that if you get phished with your one name and password, that information will be used to attack your other hundred accounts – including Amazon, eBay, and your email. A hacker in Canada, Africa, or China could spend a lot of your money that way. Imagine the fun some kid would have logging into your email account and sending kiddy porn or viruses to all your friends and associates with YOUR NAME. But if you use Roboform to generate, save, and manage your names and passwords, getting phished once won’t clean out all of your other accounts.

This won’t protect you from all Internet-based threats, but like fences, doors, dogs, windows, and locks, it will greatly improve your defenses and computing ease.

Clark Baker is a licensed private investigator and SSI Board member. 

On the Massachusetts border that joins with Connecticut and Rhode Island, the green woods and blue waters of Lake Chaubunagungamaug shimmer in the summer breeze. Turning northeast along Sutton Road, it’s easy to see why America’s first colonists settled in these gently rolling hills and tilled its fields. In the fall, the thick green forests turn into a kaleidoscope of rusty yellows, reds, and browns before the first snow falls. At Nipmuck Pond, you won’t notice that Sutton Road has become Cliff Road until it changes again to Joe Jenny Road.

Five generations of the Whittier Family have farmed in this part of America. Their prized Holsteins have grown to a herd of 350, and their milk is driven daily a few miles north to their processing plant in Shrewsbury, where it is bottled and sold fresh at their milk store. From cow to cup, the process takes two days, which means “farm fresh milk” to their loyal customers. The fruits, berries, and vegetables from the farm are used to make jams, jellies, and relishes that they sell during the summer months. Todd, Wayne, and Janice Whittier have good reason to be proud. What could be more American?

Last September, Boston doctors found listeria in a woman who arrived to deliver her baby. They notified the state health department, which added her name to a list of four area residents who had also been sickened. Of those listed, two died in June and October and a third died in November. Another pregnant woman miscarried but survived, as did the mother and her new baby.

Once investigators identified Whittier Farms as the source, the health department closed their Shrewsbury operation until investigators could find and remove the source of contamination.

If not for the independence of government funded health departments, it’s not hard to imagine the dangers we would face without them. One can also imagine the risks posed if businesses like these (and their lawyers) policed themselves.

In the case of hospitals, there is no such independent oversight. And unlike Whittier Farms, hospitals actually profit when they injure or kill patients.

In 2005, Harvard Professor Lucian L. Leape, M.D reported:

“In most industries, defects cost money and generate warrantee claims. In healthcare, perversely… physicians and hospitals can bill for the additional services that are needed when patients are injured by their mistakes.”

Harming patients isn’t the only way hospitals profit. The National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that Medicare and Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers $33 billion annually. In 2005, the Florida Attorney General filed civil racketeering charges against Tenet Healthcare to recover $1 billion. Although some individuals have been convicted, legislators are primarily responsible for forcing hospitals to treat indigent, uninsured, and illegal alien patients for votes. And when those hospitals compensate with alternative revenue streams, politicians feign disdain (if they show any interest at all).

In this video, the corporate director of this Florida hospital explains why hospitals must rely on creative ways to keep their hospitals open:

In 2001, we had an illegal alien as a patient in our hospital. He was there from 2001 through 2003. He had over $1.5 million in healthcare services. We forcibly returned him to his home country of Guatemala at our own cost of $30,000… That case is not over. We have spent…$250,000 in legal fees because his family here in the United States is suing us because they think it was inappropriate for us to return this illegal patient to his home country.

(We) have a patient from Mexico who has been in my hospital for 760 days. He has severe brain damage. He has no family, no friends… His charges to date for almost two years is $1.5 million… we have contacted the Mexican Consulate four times, we have contacted immigration and nobody will help us return this patient to Mexico. We’re even willing to spend our own $30,000 to return this patient…

In 2007, the Florida Hospital Association estimates that there was $100 million in costs for illegal patient care… right now I have six patients, illegal, undocumented patients, that we are seeing every three days for renal dialysis, for all of this… we have received no reimbursement… our healthcare costs are severely affected by this… A large percentage of the babies born at our facility are from illegal parents… we have tried repeatedly (to report illegal aliens to the authorities) and have been told they are only interested if a crime has been committed.

While fraud leaves a paper trail, it’s much more difficult to prove that physicians deliberately or recklessly harmed patients.

For example, if Dr. Smith successfully treats you for a small cut, he might legitimately charge your insurance company $500. But if Dr. Smith uses improperly sterilized equipment (like those routinely used at this Tenant hospital), the subsequent infections, IV antibiotics, intensive care, and related costs permit hospitals to charge much more whether the patient survives or not. Essentially, the sicker a well-insured patient gets, the more hospitals can charge.

Tenet Healthcare’s Garden Grove Hospital knowingly used defective sterilizers for many months. “Flash” sterilizers are used to clean surgical instruments soiled during operations. These had repeatedly failed to kill resilient spores during repeated routine test runs. When hospital administrators instructed surgeon Charles Rosen how to explain the situation to federal inspectors, Rosen resigned and went straight to federal authorities.

“This information was being withheld from the very surgeons entrusted with care of the surgical patients,” Rosen complained in a 2000 resignation letter to then-hospital-CEO Mark Meyers. “Such behavior is beyond belief. I feel it is a deliberate attempt at cover-up for financial reasons.”

When LA’s Cedar Sinai Medical Center almost killed Dennis Quaid’s children last year, the hospital’s chief medical officer admitted the “preventable error.” The unprecedented admission had more to do with Quaid’s celebrity than the spokesman’s candor. Had Dennis Smith’s children been injured, the medical records would have likely disappeared into a lawyer’s briefcase until a settlement (with a solid non-disclosure statement attached) had been signed.

Although he has sued the drug company, Quaid has not yet sued Cedars. Whether he sues or not, malpractice lawsuits in California are capped too low to worry most California hospitals. The California Department of Public Health fined Cedars $25,000 which is, coincidentally, what the hospital typically charges insurance companies for two babies who spend one day in intensive care – a pittance designed to make Californians believe the agency performs any oversight.

Quaid has since created The Quaid Foundation to give patients a place to report medical errors. Unfortunately, non-disclosure statements prevent many disclosures. If Quaid partnered with physicians of Semmelweis Society International or the Alliance for Patient Safety, he would team with physicians who aren’t afraid of protecting patient rights.

After reviewing 37 million Medicare patients’ medical records, (e.g. patients over 65), Healthgrades reported that medical errors in hospitals kill 200,000 patients each year. They did not report what happened to patients younger than 65.

When restaurants poison diners, the local or state health department closes the business until the problems are fixed. But when hospitals harm patients, they close ranks, investigate themselves, and destroy physicians and nurses who talk.

This isn’t a new problem. When patients sued for unnecessary errors and complications before 1986, many assumed that former patients and their lawyers were maliciously shaking down hospitals for millions of dollars.

To protect healthcare managers, their own lawyers drafted legislation called the Health Care Quality Improvement Act (HCQIA) in 1986. HCQIA’s flaw (pronounced Hick-Wa) stems from the fundamental conflict of interest between the bill’s co-authors, corporate hospital attorneys Horty & Springer, and the patients they ostensibly protect. Predictably, the same lawyers rendered HCQIA unenforceable by inserting this subsection:

42 U.S.C. §11112 (b) (3): A professional review body’s failure to meet the conditions described in this subsection shall not, in itself, constitute failure to meet the standards of subsection (a) (3) of this section. (See page 20)

This section indemnifies hospitals and their own peer review boards from being liable for their own rules. So, for example, when Dr. Gil Mileikowsky agreed to assist a patient whose healthy fallopian tubes were removed by another physician without her consent, the hospital staged what many physicians call a “sham peer review.” By characterizing Dr. Mileikowsky as disruptive, the hospital suspended his clinical privileges and reported their decision to the National Practitioners Data Bank (NPDB), which effectively prevents physicians whose licenses have been suspended in one state from practicing in others.

Regrettably, the Act is ineffective because it relies on corporate hospital executives to report errors and complications that they profit from.

For example, two physicians in one small Tenet facility generated $40 million/year in revenues from patients they subjected to unnecessary cardiac procedures. As in all cases, the protections that patients relied on depended upon; 1) the hospital executives who profit financially from unnecessary procedures, errors and complications, and 2) the physicians who were responsible for such misconduct.

Examples of failures to fulfill HCQIA’s intent by corporate hospital executives have been reported by CBS News, The Street, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and AMA Voice.

Examples of failures to fulfill the HCQIA’s intent by physicians are found in Medical Economics, the Pittsburg Post Gazette, Time, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Although small businesses and entrepreneurs have been the driving force behind the growth of the US economy, the US healthcare system has regressed into one that does not permit competition.

Because competition tends to reduce consumer costs, Dr. Mileikowsky reports that hospital law firms consider staff physicians who compete as “problem physicians.” Horty Springer’s hostility toward independent private physicians is demonstrated throughout their seminars, courses, and audiotapes that can be purchased on their website.

Hospital lawyers have developed a methodology and vernacular for controlling physicians, patients, and other advocates who report incidents to outside agencies or agree to testify on behalf of patients/victims of medical negligence. Their preferred strategy is to destroy the physician by discrediting him or her as disruptive, crazy, impaired, incompetent, or an imminent danger. Horty Springer also trains hospital administrators how to protect themselves from physicians who report dangerous conditions or patients who are killed or injured by recklessness or incompetence (whistleblowers).

Harvard economist Kip Viscusi estimates that the value of one human life is somewhere between four- and nine million dollars. If multiplied by Healthgrade’s “200,000 patients who die each year”, the loss to the US economy can be estimated somewhere between $800 billion and $1.8 trillion, annually.

Based on 152 published peer review articles, the Nutrition Institute of America, concludes that medical mistakes kill 784,000 people annually.

In 2006, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons unanimously passed resolutions to correct these issues. The time for US legislators to correct these mistakes is long overdue.

If you do not want your hospital to harm you or your loved ones for profit, call your local representatives and demand their support of the Whistleblower Protection Act.

You can also sign this petition to modify HCQIA.

(More info here, here, and here)

The author, Clark Baker, is a licensed private investigator in Los Angeles and Board Member of Semmelweis Society International.