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.