Funding conflicts and AIDS denial

Interestingly enough (considering the recent NEJM editorial discussing serious financial conflicts of interest involving recombinant activated human protein C use in sepsis management) Christine Maggiore's team is trying to discredit my Al-Bayati rebuttal on the grounds that I recieved pharmaceutical funding for my PhD.

This is true, but it’s cleverly worded to avoid the embarrassing fact (that he admitted to me [David Crowe] in an email in December, 2005) that “I was funded, on paper, by Astrazeneca for my PhD”.

Also interesting is that clearly the writer is the same person who posted my 'private' emails with Casey Cohen online, as I've only been asked to clarify my financial-interest statement by one person. David, how disappointing.

But it's crazy. The truth (which is naturally omitted from my quotes at the EJ site) is that AstraZeneca paid money to the medical school, along with a dozen or more other sponsors, and the medical school allocated the funds equally and at random.

The true quote, which I hope David corrects for Ms Maggiore is:

"It's a matter of public record (ie. Google!) that I was funded, on paper, by Astrazeneca for my PhD. Technically they simply gave the money to the clinical school and they allocated it amongst the students - Astrazeneca didn't know me from Adam."

As I state here, I have freely admitted to this non-conflict of interest funding for years in my debates on misc.health.aids. There is no secret. It's sad that I even have to write this entry to inform the people who are lied to by the dissidents. It's also sad that I have to keep records of all my dissident correspondance in case issues like this ever come up.

But that is the real reason to post this comment - to point out, yet again, how the dissidents will lie by omission, spin the truth, and also resort to personal misrepresentation to make their point. Why would the dissidents even need to delete key statements from their quotes if their arguments stood on their own merits. If they are lying to their audience about short email correspondance, what on Earth do you think they are doing with the scientific literature!!?

I get paid now over four-times as much, in terms of purchasing power, as I got in funding from my PhD stipend. I fail to see how an annual stipend of 10k (my sole source of income) which ran out about three years ago can possibly affect my judgement today.

It's also amusing to see in the same entry that Al-Bayati has known about my report for over 6 months but has yet to make any attempt to rebut or correct my statements. His latest feeble attempt (brought to my attention by Ms Cohen) doesn't reference my own report, and on that basis alone means it isn't worth replying to. My comments still stand - his analysis is flawed.

He can of course also lie to rebut it, but that's all he could do. If I was wrong in saying that PCP is a difficult diagnosis to make clinically, that EJ's autopsy report doesn't mention evidence of inflammation and consolidation, that the brain lesions are characteristic of HIV encephalitis even without p24 staining, and that the lung lesions are diagnostic of PCP and not just pneumocystis carriage, then he is free to lie to contradict me.

Dissidents stoop to new lows

A recent person claiming to be called "Casey Cohen" has been spending some considerable time recently trying to get me more deeply involved in the sad case of Eliza-Jane Scoville's death. Aside from trying to organise a live radio debate with Christine Maggiore herself, pick my brains about my personal thoughts on Al-Bayati's case, and even meet up for lunch (!) she has been diligently sending our correspondance to other dissidents for online publication.

Now, this was sadly expected and I wrote my emails back to her accordingly. Still, it is upsetting to be proven right. "Casey" of course screwed it up from the beginning by writing to me from Christine Maggiore's email account. Woops. And the syncophantic babbling was getting to be a little too amusing to take over my afternoon coffee without spraying it over the computer keyboard.

Of course, whatever the outcome the dissidents 'win'. If the orthodoxy debates then we legitimize their argument. We run the (obviously) very real risk of being quoted and misquoted online behind our backs. If we refuse to debate then they tout this as the orthodoxy being closed-minded. The sickening thing to me is that "Casey" is clearly either someone very close to Maggiore if not Maggiore herself, and yet says in her emails to me that Maggiore would be "lucky to get out of the building alive by the end of the discussion" and we would "annihilate them!!". I find it extremely saddening that the orthodoxy has never once used the tragedy of EJ's death to attack Christine Maggiore, and yet we're accused of it all the time, and here are the dissidents playing on the very same topic. Frankly speaking, it's f*&king disgusting.

And note please that this person, apparently one of the "People who question the theory that HIV causes AIDS causes Death" makes repeated claims that she is on "our" side in a transparent attempt to dupe me into getting involved.

This webpage should be held up as yet another example of how low the dissidents stoop in their tactics, when basic logic and irrefutable facts stand in their way.

Of course the real test will be if they remove the website out of embarrassment (but don't worry, I made copies ;-)