Chandan's Surmise

Sunrise over Kanchenjunga - Cellphone captures

2011-03-01T06:28:00.000-08:00

Conducting a workshop then travelling from Kalimpong to Darjeeling and then working on the report and sleeping late night and then waking up 3 hrs later at 3:30 a.m. on a cold chilly November morning to travel to Tiger hill to catch the sunrise (Oh! and I missed out bathing in the icy water) . It does sound painful ... but it was worth it and I must thank the wonderful Bishop Lepcha for making all the arrangements for the visit! You have to see it to believe why the pain didnt matter once I reached there ...

Finally atop Tiger Hill ! And there's something faintly visible out there

Gradually getting brighter ...

Didnt realize there were so many out there ...

Sunrise happening on the other end ...

Could hardly tell if it was a mountain or just another cloud

All that snow gradually getting brighter with diffused sunrays hitting it

More people gather in ... and hawkers selling coffee

Hands getting numb but have to wait for that view everyone's waiting to catch ...

Now that's pretty ... but that's not it

Now look at what's happening to the skies ...

The sun rises and gold starts flowing from the peak

a bit more gold ...

Quite some gold ....

And my numb fingers can drop off now ... I have had the glimpse of gold that many people staying in Darjeeling haven't

A Heap of Gold for everyone to salivate ...

Not just the 3rd highest peak ... its probably the prettiest one too

Key to happiness ...

2011-02-26T22:43:00.000-08:00

Its been such a long time since I opened this site that I thought they might have declared my page dead and wiped it off by now. Fortunately they haven't !!!

Its been a tough time out there - work, depression and more work - some depression associated with work and some with other events in life and then getting involved in more work to mask the depression. This whole cycle of events had so taken over my life that I forgot about all those small things that kept that smile on my face that everyone associates me with. Small things like humming a song that I love or catching up with a friend or just sitting down to write like I am today to let it all out. I believe I had gone into some cocoon in the last few months dissociating me from the virtual presence of happy moments around me.

The key to happiness, as I believe, is that we deal with the things that make us unhappy taking a concrete decision as early as possible on how to go about it, delivering on the decision taken, accepting the results of the decision and moving forward without any lingering thoughts of all that happened. Increase the amplitude on all those small things that make you happy and life seems like a flowery smooth ride. Its a constant battle between your imagination and the reality but you have to walk that tight rope in between them if you want to stick to that smile even in worrying times. If you fall from the rope towards reality, you have to face it in its crudest form and bear the mangling but if you fall towards imagination, you will land on flowers. The key though is to not walk deeper into the flowery woods unless you want to freak out everyone around you or get called insane or "whacko" or "bonkers" or whatever they call people like that where you stay.

Remember the Jim Carrey movie "Yes Man" that was out a couple of years back? Everything was flowery for him when he staid positive by saying "Yes" to everything and things changed the moment he started saying "No". Saying "Yes" dissociated him from reality and the masking thus made him unpredictable and happy. The problem with masking your unhappiness is that you never deal with what is causing it - you let them linger and just seek for momentary happiness but the thing about unhappy circumstances is that they have a habit of coming back and striking you on your face, jolting you out of your imaginary world. All these days of masking had made me some sort of a freak who was unusually happy sometimes and unusually angry whenever I was getting shaken back to reality. Fortunately, since I stuck to myself and avoided long duration company all these days, no one really noticed it to start saying that I've gone cuckoo. I would've put myself in an asylum had I been staying with the different me in the last few months; all those nervous giggling would have freaked me out. I think I was acting somewhat like Dr. Asthana from Munna Bhai MBBS everytime he would get stressed out. (Oh come on! Its just one bollywood reference in the whole page so dont make a big deal about how crappy my writing skills are. You know I can't do without those references.)

Anyway speaking of bollywood, A. R. Rehman is back in the news with If I rise from 127 hours (I've got to watch that movie !). This one's with Dido (Remember 'Here with me' from the TV series 'Roswell' ? Apparently its from her album 'No Angel') and the song's been nominated for the Oscars. Notice the way they enunciate the lyrics - its hardly understandable. I had to do a search on the lyrics to convince myself that they were speaking english (although the first few words of each stanza are decipherable). But I guess that's exactly what makes the song such a different experience along with the liberal use of the instrument - harpejji.

The song has won the Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Song and Denver Film Critics Society Award for Best Song and has been nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Song, Houston Film Critics Society Award for Best Original Song, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Song, and Satellite Award for Best Original Song

From a Nature Lover's camera

2010-05-21T08:00:00.000-07:00

We have a nice old mango tree in our backyard. While building our house, my father wanted to chop it off since he feared it will damage our building structure. It took a lot of assuring from my side and a dream from his mother to make him comfortable about leaving granpa tree untouched. Once we had the building ready, he once told me that he was glad he gave in to my suggestion of not cutting it as it makes our house more prettier and keeps it cool.

So you can tell from the story that I love nature and call me a tree hugger but there's nothing that brings me more joy than seeing a tree filled with lush green leaves swaying in the wind and nothing that brings me more sorrow than seeing a tree being felled to build more houses or widen roads. Flowers bring joy to everyone and so do birds so my feelings are no exception but animals of the other kind are a different story. I like them in the jungle or in the zoo. Now if I don't stand in front of a snake, a bear or a tiger smiling and enjoying its beauty while it crawls/prowls towards me does that make me strange? If I don't stand and smile enjoying the way a monkey jumps from one place to the other while it slaps me does that make me strange? Hopefully not many will say it does. Nevertheless I like capturing anything from the nature - a pretty flower (or a bunch of them), a rain bathed tree, a colorful fruit, a silent river, thundering clouds or an animal of any kind (not the creepy carnivorous kind - at least not while in direct contact with them) in my camera.

*Please click on them to view larger images

A couple of hours before I was to travel to NJP station from Jalpaiguri to board my train back to Sealdah, all of a sudden the sky turned dark with clouds moving in from nowhere and winds gushing at a speed of at least 100 kmph. As much as I was nervous about not making it to the station on time, I could not help but get hold of my camera to take a few clicks of those amazing clouds.

On our way back from visiting a site in Kalchini, all of a sudden we found ourselves in the midst of a storm. When it stopped there were trees all over the road so we had to find alternative ways to get to the main road from the jungle but while we did so, we could not help admiring the beauty of the lush green jungle drenched wet after the rain glistening in the light of the sunset.

The puddles created by the rain stopped our vehicle at one point and when we got out of the car I realized I was standing in front of this tree - the same tree that I had purposefully stopped in front of in my last visit to take a picture. What a coinicidence? In english "nature calls" means something else (we're not going to talk about that - thankfully) but well, this was another type of a call from nature. The arch of the tree looked even more prettier after the wet shower.

One of the good parts of visiting the various catholic health facilities is that I get to enjoy and take pictures of their well maintained gardens (and orchards in some cases).

It is that time of the year - there're Lychees everywhere - especially in North Bengal. All the Catholic facilities coincidentally have at least one Lychee tree. Those sparkling red lychees looked so pretty (and not to mention mouth watering) on those lush green leaves that it seemed I was looking at a Christmas greeting card filled with all those red on green. So the camera obviously had to come out of the bag ...

10 Strange Ideas that made Someone an Internet Millionaire

2010-05-10T12:03:00.000-07:00

The page of a million dollars.

One million pixels, and charge a dollar per pixel. Perhaps the most foolish idea that could happen to anyone. Still, Alex Tew, 21 years is now a millionaire.

The Million Dollar Homepage (http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/) is a website conceived in 2005 by Alex Tew, a student fromWiltshire, England, to raise money for his university education. The home page consists of a million pixels arranged in a 1000 × 1000 pixel grid; the image-based links on it were sold for $1 per pixel in 10 × 10 blocks. The purchasers of these pixel blocks provided tiny images to be displayed on them, a URL to which the images were linked, and a slogan to be displayed when hovering a cursor over the link. The aim of the website was to sell all of the pixels in the image, thus generating a million dollars of income for the creator.

Email from Santa Claus.

A brilliant idea. Get yourself a postal address in the north and chicken are intended to Santa Claus, charging parents $ 10 by sending a letter to his children.

Byron Reese Started his company, www.SantaMail.org, which sells fully personalized letters from Santa Claus all across North America (they're even postmarked from North Pole, Alaska, to give them an authentic feeling). Reese sold 10,000 letters in 2001, his first year in business. Though holiday sales have increased every subsequent year, he still looked for ways to expand his offering. Now, parents can order birthday cards for their children from Santa as well. The strategy pushed 2005 sales to $1 million.

Lenses for Dogs.

Create lenses for dogs and sell them online (www.doggles.com). How did they manage to have stores all over the world with that idea?

Invented by Ken and Roni di Lullo, Doggles are tinted goggles designed to fit the shape of a dog's head.Doggles are constructed out of a polycarbonate material with elastic straps to secure them to the dog's head. Lenses are tinted and provide protection from ultra violet rays.By 2004, Doggles were being sold in 4,500 shops in 16 countries.Prescription Doggles were launched in 2004 for dogs who are losing their sight. Prior to ordering, the dog's eyes are tested by a veterinary ophthalmologist who issues a prescription for the lenses

Laser Monks

A monastery of eight monks who fill your laser printer cartridges. A monk, Fr. Bernard McCoy, O. Cis, accidentally started the business while in need of a printer cartridge for one of the monastery’s printers and realized how expensive laser print cartridges were. This realization triggered the monk to find a way on how to cut down costs on laser print cartridges and distribute the saved money to various outreach programs.

The monastery of the laser monks is part of the Cistercian Order which has been in existence for 900 years. Given the fact that monasteries are supporting themselves, they needed to generate income from various sources such as growing plants and mushrooms, conference centers for company events and even growing Christmas trees.

The monks thought of the laser print cartridge as a viable business since it is regarded as a necessity especially by business owners. Manufacturing a low-cost printer cartridge helps consumers spend less and the monks generate more income to fund their charitable works.In 2005, www.lasermonks.com sales volume reached 2.5 million dollars.

Balls For Antennas.

You can not sell antenna ball online. No way! But that is exactly what Jason did Wallden and now a millionaire.

Jason Wall is president and CEO of In-Concept Inc., the company behind Antennaballs.com, which manufactures more than 500,000 custom antenna balls per month.Based in Glendale, California, Antennaballs.com owes its success to one “man”: Jack. It all started when Wall saw a Jack In The Box fast-food commercial in mid-1997 that said the company had sold more than 3 million antenna balls. Sensing opportunity, Wall came up with a few designs he thought would penetrate the auto accessory and novelty industries. After selling four million balls through local gas stations and convenience stores, Wall recently landed some major national accounts, including AutoZone, Circle K and Wal-Mart, and he’s negotiating licensing deals with Universal Studios. With sales of $1.15 million for 1999 (one year after he started his business), Wall attributes timeliness to his overnight success. Six years later, Jason Wall is a multimillionaire.

Letters of exercises.

Packs of cards with exercise routines in them..

FitDeck (www.FitDeck.com) is a unique deck of Exercise Playing Cards that makes exercise more simple, convenient, and fun. FitDecks are available in 56-card and 26-card Booster decks. 56-card FitDecks specialize in bodyweight-only exercises (i.e. Bodyweight, Junior, Senior, Yoga, Pilates, Stretch, Prenatal, and Postnatal). 26-card Boosters may require certain equipment (i.e. Exercise Ball, Pull Up bar, Dumbbell, Office, Travel, Kettlebell, etc.)

It may sound like a disaster. But Phil Black, a former Marine and fitness instructor reported $ 4.7 million profit last year

Quotes For Positive.

How would you like to go on a date with an HIV positive person? Paul Graves and Brandon Koechlin thought that someone would, so they created a dating site PositivesDating.Com for HIV positive folks last year. Projected 2006 sales are $110,000, and the two hope to have 50,000 members by their two-year mark.

Designer diaper bags.

Tired of wearing diapers in a cooler? Christie Rein was tired of carrying diapers around in a freezer bag. The 34-year-old mother of three found herself constantly stuffing diapers for her infant son into freezer bags to keep them from getting scrunched up in her purse. Rein wanted something that was compact, sleek and stylish, so in November 2004, she sat down with her husband, Marcus, who helped her design a custom diaper bag that's big enough to hold a travel pack of wipes and two to four diapers. With more than $180,000 in sales for 2005, Christie's company, Diapees & Wipees (www.diapeesandwipees.com), has bags in 22 different styles, available online and in 120 boutiques across the globe for $14.99.

TruGamerz

(www.trugamerz.com)

Faux-suede padded covers for game controllers and gel thumb pads for analog joysticks? No one will buy that. Forget it.

Utilizing patented designs, TruGamerz offers personalized controller accessories that focus on the gamer by supplying products that enhance comfort and control over the gaming experience.

The product proved to be so popular, it got picked up by Target.com and Walmart.com and annual sales now exceed half a million dollars.

Bones of luck.

Fake wishbones. Now, this stupid idea is just destined to flop. Who in the world needs FAKE PLASTIC wishbones? A lot of people, it turns out.

No more fighting at the Thanksgiving table over who gets to break the wishbone; this year, just buy plastic wishbones from Lucky Break Wishbone.

Now producing 30,000 wishbones daily (they retail for 3 bucks a pop) Ken Ahroni, the company founder, expects 2006 sales to reach $1 million.

Raavan: Not exactly what you expect from a Mani-Rahman Combo

2010-05-09T12:19:00.000-07:00

Having come back to writing on my blog after such a long time, you'd think I'd write something more classy than movies to start with - something like health or current hot topics in India like the Maoist scenario or the Ajmal Kasab case or even the poor performance of India in T20 World Cup. But dumb as I am, I will stick to what I am good at discussing - and that's movies and music (especially bollywood). The rest can come in the next few posts.

If you have gone through my previous posts, you probably already know that I am an ardent listener of Rahman's music but what I have never spoken about is that I love watching Mani Rathnam's movies (ever since I have watched Roja) and eagerly wait for each and every movie that he produces/directs. Since Rahman's an usual in Mani's movies, it comes as an icing on the cake or as it we'd like to say it in hindi - "Sone pe Suhaaga". Rahman has always given his best music for Mani Rathnam and so the expectations are always high and why not? Just look at the track record - Roja, Bombay, Thiruda Thiruda (Chor Chor), Iruvar, Dil Se, Alaipayuthey (Saathiya), Yuva and Guru. All of them had awesome music so why wouldn't we expect the upcoming Raavan to enchant us in the very same way?

But, maybe Rahman found a better partner in Danny Boyle post-Slumdog and Mani is no more his favorite producer.It does seem that way because when I heard the Raavan soundtrack for the first time, all I could hear was noise. When the trailer of the song Beera was aired, it acted like an appetizer and everyone was wanting for more but when 'more' finally came, I am not sure I am satisfied. I understand that its characteristic of Rahman's music that it gradually grows on you with time and once it does grow on you, its got an extensive durability and therefore stays with you for a long long time and so I listened to the soundtrack a couple of times and I have to say that a few of them did stand out but not all of them.

Beera Beera for one is definitely one of the better tracks and I think I am gradually liking it a lot. Khili Re portrays the versatility of the composer showcasing a completely Hindustani( the classical style and not the movie) type of music with a bit of fusion - quite lovable. Same goes for Behne De and Ranjha Ranjha - both of them are pretty good compositions but that's just 4 of 6. Thok de khili's got a great picturisation - really loving it but I am not sure that's a good composition or if I'd be listening to it a couple of years from now and Kata Kata is remniscent of a few songs from Thiruda Thiruda and Iruvar which were totally rhythm based and lacked the durability factor.

They say, there were a couple of tracks by Asha Bhonsle and Sonu Nigam that didnt make it to the CD because they did not quite fit to the movie's screenplay. But my take is - who cares if they did not fit to the screenplay? Is it mandatory that all songs on the Audio CD be shown in the movie? Hell, I'd love a movie without any song and dance but the point is - we dont want to see it on the screen; put it on the damn CD so that at least we can listen to it and enjoy the music. I am sure we missed out a couple of good ones which could have made listening to the soundtrack so much more satisfying.

Nevertheless, I'll say the music of Raavan is good but I am a bit disappointed 'cos it's not exactly as good as what you'd expect from a Mani- Rahman combo. It could have been so much better - but alas we'll have to do with what's on the platter.

And no matter how good or bad the music is, Raavan still stays the most awaited movie for me - the trailers just enhance the excitement. For the uninitiated, Raavan is about a Naxalite leader ( so you see I am still sticking to my favorite political topic) who has kidnapped a police officer's wife and how with time, the kidnapped understands the activities of the kidnapper in the community and realizes the gray areas between good and evil. Quite an interesting topic isn't it? And from what we get to see from the trailers, it might turn out to be an amazing viewing experience.

Trailer 1: Beera Beera

The complete song: Beera Beera

Trailer 2: Behne De

The complete song: Behne De

Trailer 3: Thok De Khili

The complete song: Thok de Khili

The other songs in the movie:

Ranjha Ranjha

Khili Re

Kata Kata

HIV AIDS: Debunking the Myth

2010-03-07T21:57:00.000-08:00

Before I started working in Public Health and while I was doing my Masters, I had read numerous articles on the various conspiracy theories that surround the origin of HIV but what I was not aware of was a denial of its existence. With time, I realized that there is as strong a group in the medical and scientific fraternity voicing against the existence of HIV as are those that advocate its existence. It is only when I started working with those living with HIV, felt their agony and provided them treatment as a physician was I able to decide which side of the battle I wanted to be in.

Being a part of the network of physicians and advocates for treatment of HIV, you are usually kept abreast of updates as well as the 'myths' (as we'd like to say it) regarding HIV. Many-a-times in patient-provider meetings and community sensitizations you get asked whether the virus really does exist. The basis of those questions are comments from denialists that there has been NO proper isolation of the virus.

One of the sites holding some very strong scientific evidence against the existence of HIV is www.virusmyth.com. Admirably, the views on the site do make you rethink and reanalyze your own beliefs. The website challenges the isolation of HIV saying that the retrovirus has never been isolated by the conventional standards of viral isolation.

The website has even gone to the extent of offering a cash prize of £ 1000 to those who can isolate/ or provide apt proof of isolation of the virus. (See prize notice below)

T h e J o d y W e l l s M e m o r i a l P r i z e
MISSING VIRUS!£ 1000 Reward

Blind romantics still believe HIV causes AIDS.
But if 'HIV' has never been isolated, what is
AIDS?
Never isolated? You bet! A cash prize of £ 1000
is offered to the first person finding one scien-
tific paper establishing actual isolation of HIV.
If you or a friendly 'AIDS expert' can prove
isolation, £ 1000 is yours. In cash. In public.
Interested? Pledge the money to your favourite
AIDS charity, why not?
We bet you'll be surprised to discover the truth.

c o n t i n u u m
CHANGING THE WAY WE THINK ABOUT AIDS

Another interesting article by Grace Serrano that I had read in one of the email forwards spoke of how Antiretroviral therapy was a sham. When I read through the articles and discussion on virus myth, I found it hard to argue about the isolation of the virus but being a physician and having provided ART to more than 700 people living with HIV AIDS, I have seen the progression of the disease and the positive changes in the health indicators once they are on ARVs. Had it been a placebo effect, at least half of them would have probably died out. I will probably be unable to argue on the isolation of HIV but I have no doubt, just by the virtue of observing their effect, that ARVs really work - they are not a sham.

Please find Grace's article below for your reference -

Aging with AIDS: Bearing the AIDS Sham too long - November 13, 2008 By Grace Serrano

‘29 percent of those infected with HIV are over 50.’ The given medical explanation is that ‘the immune system deteriorates with age, the virus is all the more aggressive in older people.’ The report says that, ‘in 2005, 15 percent of new HIV and AIDS diagnoses were among people over the age of 50, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.’ The phenomenon of AIDS and its phantom menace called HIV, after all, started at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. AIDS was born there, with the dubious paternity of one US biomedical researcher named Robert Gallo, the founder of HIV, and later implicated in a science fraud case regarding the discovery of the AIDS virus. If you’re intrigued about Gallo and the whole AIDS sham, google ‘myth of AIDS’ and you’ll see the counter report 4,000,000 entries in 18 seconds.

AIDS is a myth. It is the biggest, global, and most neatly-structured conspiracy among pharmaceutical multinationals, governments, the World Health Organization, charity institutions, the medical field, and even the United Nations. It is the power of nightmares. It is the single most cruel strategy known to man, to devastate mankind.

If AIDS is as threatening as it’s touted to be, why then is there a phenomenon such as old people with AIDS? If AIDS can kill, how can people aging with AIDS be explained?

AIDS is nothing more than a surveillance tool that has been used to track and record 29 previously known illnesses. AIDS is not a new disease. It is a name or designation for these 29 familiar diseases. So, if AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), why are there more recorded cases of syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea than AIDS? And, if female prostitutes are a proven risk group for STDs, why are they not a risk group for AIDS?

Likewise, AIDS is not devastating Africa as is widely promoted. What’s killing people in the sub-Saharan continent are diseases associated with malnutrition, dirty surroundings, poverty, and poor hygiene and sanitation – illnesses that are also associated with the weakening of the immune system, as much as AIDS is believed to be.

AZT, ddI, ddC, D4T and 3TC are all chemotherapy compounds used as antiviral AIDS treatments. These are also chemotherapy processes that suppress the normal immune function and lead to further vulnerability to infection, anemia, and diarrhea – all life-threatening illnesses. Protease inhibitors, the new AIDS drugs, cause impaired liver function and liver failure.

AIDS has been brought about to come in mind-boggling huge numbers. It is being promoted as a pandemic. The AIDS estimate, however, is quite dubious. Unlike cancer and most other conditions, AIDS reports typically use cumulative totals. This can be understood best this way: for example, the 2007 cases or deaths are added to the grand sum total of all AIDS diagnoses or deaths that have ever occurred, since the phenomenon of AIDS began in the early 1980s. It is no wonder that the figures associated with AIDS are shatteringly colossal. A computation such as this automatically creates an ever ballooning figure. Also, what comes out in the press and official reports are estimates and projections, not actual AIDS numbers. The United Nations estimate is widely promoted while the actual World Health Organization cases summary is rarely publicized.

Aging with AIDS is adding insult to injury.

Now that Grace had asked all the questions, I thought that there needs to be some debunking of her claims and some answering needs to be done. So, here's some myth breakers that our friends at www.aidstruth.org have come up with. I believe that should satisfy Grace and her counterparts and answer all their queries.

Myth #1: HIV does not cause AIDS

Fact: HIV has been shown beyond reasonable doubt to be the cause of AIDS.

There is an abundance of evidence showing HIV is the cause of AIDS. With very few exceptions, the human immunodeficiency virus itself or antibodies to HIV are detected in people with AIDS. Studies of people who are HIV-positive show they are more likely to develop AIDS symptoms and more likely to die at younger ages than people without HIV. Scientists can now describe in great detail how HIV infection occurs and causes AIDS. For detailed explanations see:

NIAID: The Evidence that HIV Causes AIDS
NIAID: The relationship between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome
Avert's succinct and simple explanation of how we know that HIV causes AIDS
TAC's Magazine, Equal Treatment Issue 19, which explains the science of HIV

Also see:

These are two historically important papers that showed that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Seethis paper by Robert Gallo and Luc Montagnier. It describes how the discovery was made in the early 1980s.

Myth #2: AIDS among minorities in the United States and other industrialised countries is caused by recreational drug use

Fact: There is no evidence supporting the myth that AIDS in gay men and other minorities in the United States and other industrialised countries is caused by recreational drug use.

No published peer-reviewed study supports this theory. Alcohol use can disinhibit people so that they increase their risk of HIV infection (e.g. by not using condoms). Excessive alcohol use also increases the risk of people on highly active antiretroviral treatment (HAART) not adhering to their medication thereby leading to disease progression.

M.S. Ascher and team examined the drug use data of several research cohorts and found no correlation between drug use and AIDS. The graph below is from that study, Does drug use cause AIDS?, published in Nature in 1993.

As explained in an NIAID document: Observational studies of HIV-infected individuals have found that drug use does not accelerate progression to AIDS (Kaslow et al., 1989; Coates et al., 1990; Lifson et al., 1990; Robertson et al., 1990). In a Dutch cohort of HIV-seropositive homosexual men, no significant differences in sexual behavior or use of cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, nitrite inhalants, LSD or amphetamines were found between men who remained asymptomatic for long periods and those who progressed to AIDS (Keet et al., 1994). Another study, of five cohorts of homosexual men for whom dates of seroconversion were well-documented, found no association between HIV disease progression and history of sexually transmitted diseases, number of sexual partners, use of AZT, alcohol, tobacco or recreational drugs (Veugelers et al., 1994).

A 2008 study, Recreational drug use and T lymphocyte subpopulations in HIV-uninfected and HIV-infected men, examined this issue in the MACS cohort. The conclusion was that there are "no clinically meaningful associations between use of marijuana, cocaine, poppers, or amphetamines and CD4 and CD8 T cell counts, percentages, or rates of change in either HIV-uninfected or HIV-infected men".

Wild chimpanzees infected with the the immediate precursor to HIV-1 also have disease progression similar to HIV-1 infection in humans. Obviously recreational drug use cannot this. See this article for further explanation.

Also see:

Kaslow RA, Blackwelder WC, Ostrow DG, Yerg D, et al. No evidence for a role of alcohol or other psychoactive drugs in accelerating immunodeficiency in HIV-1-positive individuals. A report from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study. JAMA 1989;261(23):3424-9.
Coates RA, Farewell VT, Raboud J, Read SE, et al. Cofactors of progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome in a cohort of male sexual contacts of men with human immunodeficiency virus disease. Am J Epidemiol 1990;132(4):717-22.

Myth #3: Studies, in particular one conducted by Nancy Padian and her colleagues, show that HIV cannot be transmitted heterosexually

Fact: Studies actually show the opposite, i.e. that HIV can be and is transmitted heterosexually.

Nancy Padian responds to this myth in detail in this article.

Myth #4: AIDS in haemophiliacs is caused by Factor VIII, a clotting agent in donated blood for haemophiliacs, not HIV

Fact: This has been disproved in numerous studies of haemophiliacs.

See Jon Cohen's explanation in Science, written in 1994. The Factor VIII myth is based on the fact that a high proportion of haemophiliacs exposed to Factor VIII developed AIDS in the US. But the explanation is as follows: "[r]etrospective tests of the U.S. blood supply have shown that, in 1978, at least one batch of Factor VIII was contaminated with HIV" (NIAID document). The NIAID document further states:

Among HIV-seronegative patients with hemophilia A enrolled in the Transfusion Safety Study, no significant differences in CD4+ T cell counts were noted between 79 patients with no or minimal factor treatment and 53 patients with the largest amount of lifetime treatments ... ;
In a report from the Multicenter Hemophilia Cohort Study, the mean CD4+ T cell counts among 161 HIV-seronegative hemophiliacs was 784/mm3;
among 715 HIV-seropositive hemophiliacs, the mean CD4+ T cell count was 253/mm3 ...;
In another study, no instances of AIDS-defining illnesses were seen among 402 HIV-seronegative hemophiliacs treated with factor therapy or in 83 hemophiliacs who received no treatment subsequent to 1979 (Aledort et al., 1993; Mosely et al., 1993).;
In addition to the evidence from the cohort studies cited above, it should be noted that 10 to 20 percent of wives and sex partners of male HIV-positive hemophiliacs in the United States are also HIV-infected... [This is, of course, due to heterosexual transmission of HIV from the index cases to their sex partners.]

Myth #5: AIDS in Africa is another name for old diseases caused by poverty

Fact: AIDS in Africa is characterised by recorded increases in the prevalence of a number of illnesses in young adults.

Numerous studies in Africa have shown that HIV infection predicts higher disease and death rates. While poor people have greater exposure to HIV and are more likely to progress to AIDS faster once infected with HIV, there is no evidence that poverty is the cause of AIDS. Here are two examples of the evidence that HIV is the cause of AIDS in Africa: A study in Rakai, Uganda disproves that poverty is the cause of AIDS. The study looked at nearly 20,000 people and found a much higher death rate among HIV+ people. Furthermore, the HIV-related death-rate was higher among better-educated and well-off people. A count of death certificates in South Africa from 1997 to 2002 showed a 57% rise in deaths that cannot be explained by population growth or improved death registration. While in 1997, most adults who died were between the ages of 60 to 79, by 2002 most adults who died were between the ages of 20 to 44 (see Statistics South Africa report on mortality). The report has since beenupdated for 2003 (and part of 2004). The HIV-related mortality trends have become even clearer. This cannot be explained by poverty, because (1) economic conditions in South Africa have not changed drastically enough to explain this sudden rise in adult mortality (on the contrary, the social wage in South Africa has increased during this time) and (2) if it had, we would expect to see a much higher rise in deaths among the elderly. The only plausible explanation of the increase in adult mortality in South Africa is HIV. (Also see South AfricanMedical Research Council report). For many more examples related to Africa see:

Myth #6: There is no serious HIV epidemic in Africa

Fact: The HIV epidemic is extremely serious in many sub-Saharan African countries.

This myth was perpetuated by Rian Malan in articles that appeared in the Spectator andNoseweek (a South African magazine) at the end of December 2003. For a list of studies showing high HIV prevalence in Africa, see the appendix to the Rebuttal of Rian Malan. Read the main text of the rebuttal of Malan for a detailed explanation of why his arguments are wrong. Also see this rebuttal of yet another Malan piece published in Noseweek in February 2007. Much more information confirming the seriousness of the HIV epidemic in many sub-Saharan African countries has been produced since the above rebuttal. Also see thisStatistics South Africa report and this report by the South African Medical Research Council.

Myth #7: AZT causes AIDS

Fact: AZT and other antiretrovirals helps people with AIDS live longer.

In the first AZT trial on people with AIDS symptoms, known as BW 002, 19 patients out of 137 on placebo died and 1 patient out of 145 on AZT died. The AZT patients did better on a range of scores including quality of life (ref). In another randomized placebo-controlled study known as ACTG 016, the efficacy of AZT in reducing disease progression in symptomatic people with CD4 counts of 200 to 500 was again demonstrated. No benefit was found for people with CD4 counts above 500. (ref) Furthermore, numerous observational studies of AZT used in clinical practice have demonstrated its efficacy (ref). The myth that AZT causes AIDS is rebutted here in more detail. The table below shows how HAART (Highly Active Antiretrovial Therapy) has improved the probability of survival for people with HIV.

Source: Survival of Persons with and without HIV Infection in Denmark, 1995–2005

Myth #8: Although antiretrovirals work now, AZT when used as a monotherapy in the late 1980s and early 1990s killed more people than it helped

Fact: Numerous studies have provided evidence that AZT used as a monotherapy in the late 1980s and 1990s prolonged lives.

PLEASE NOTE: OUR EXPLANATION SHOULD NOT BE READ AS AN ENDORSEMENT OF PROVIDING AZT AS A MONOTHERAPY. AZT SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A MONOTHERAPY EXCEPT IN SOME RESOURCE POOR FACILITIES FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE OF MOTHER-TO-CHILD TRANSMISSION PREVENTION AND WHERE SUCH FACILITIES CANNOT AFFORD TO PROVIDE BETTER OPTIONS.

This is a myth that is not only perpetuated by AIDS denialists. It is however unsupported by evidence and its perpetuation makes unnecessary concessions to denialists. In the late 1980s AZT monotherapy was of limited benefit and prescribed in doses that are now known to be too high and associated with more side-effects. Nevertheless, a number of studies demonstrated unequivocally that most patients who took AZT benefited. It is true that many people started AZT monotherapy too early and developed resistance. If they had delayed antiretroviral treatment until 1997 they would have had more treatment options, but this is a different issue that has no bearing on the question of whether people with HIV who took AZT monotherapy in the late 1980s and early 1990s did better or worse at the time than people at the same clinical stage of HIV who took nothing. NIAID's article AZT and AIDS states:

Uncontrolled studies have found increased survival and/or reduced frequency of opportunistic infections in patients with HIV disease and AIDS who were treated with AZT or other anti-retrovirals (Creagh-Kirk et al., 1988; Moore et al., 1991a,b; Ragni et al., 1992; Schinaia et al., 1991; Koblin et al., 1992; Graham et al., 1991, 1992, 1993; Longini, 1993; Vella et al., 1992, 1994; Saah et al., 1994; Bacellar et al., 1994). In the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, for example, HIV-infected individuals treated with AZT had significantly reduced mortality and progression to AIDS for follow-up intervals of six, 12, 18 and 24 months compared to those not taking AZT, even after adjusting for health status, CD4+ T cell counts and PCP prophylaxis (Graham et al., 1991, 1992). In addition, several cohort studies show that life expectancy of individuals with AIDS has increased since the use of AZT became common in 1986-87.

Myth #9: The Concorde trial showed that AZT causes AIDS, or at least that AZT's risks outweigh its benefits

Fact: The Concorde trial showed no such thing.

This misunderstanding of the Concorde trial is a popular myth amongst AIDS denialists. Nowadays, AZT treatment is not given by itself to people with HIV/AIDS. Three (or sometimes four) drugs are used, and AZT is often a component of the cocktail due to its efficacy. But in the late 1980s, AZT monotherapy was the only HIV medication available. AZT alone was not a very good drug; it was given in large doses (much larger than today) and resulted in numerous side-effects. Nevertheless clinical trials demonstrated unequivocally that it was much better than placebo for people with symptoms of AIDS and CD4 counts less than 500. In the first AZT trial on people with AIDS symptoms, known as BW 002, 19 patients out of 137 on placebo died and 1 patient out of 145 on AZT died. The AZT patients did better on a range of scores including quality of life.

In another randomized placebo-controlled study known as ACTG 016, the efficacy of AZT in reducing disease progression in symptomatic people with CD4 counts of 200 to 500 was again demonstrated. No benefit was found for people with CD4 counts above 500.

AIDS Denialists refer to the Concorde study as evidence for their belief that AZT's risks outweigh its benefits. But the Concorde study did not show this.

The Concorde trial was the biggest AZT monotherapy study over the longest period of time. Its results actually show that AZT cannot be the cause of AIDS. Concorde only examined people with HIV without symptoms of AIDS. It compared two strategies: Approximately half the trial participants took AZT immediately and the other half took placebo until they developed AIDS.

Once patients progressed to AIDS, they were unblinded from the trial and given AZT. The participants taking AZT immediately had slower disease progression in the first year, but this dissipated with time resulting in no statistical difference in progression to AIDS. Since a large, approximately equal, number of participants in both arms progressed to AIDS, the trial demonstrated that AZT was no more harmful than placebo and therefore cannot be the cause of AIDS. (This was not the purpose of the trial incidentally, but it follows from its results.)

The denialists misunderstand the following about the Concorde trial: In a long-term follow up of the Concorde patients, those who deferred AZT treatment until they got AIDS were less likely (slightly, but statistically significantly) to die than those who took it immediately. But --and this is the critical-- at this point the researchers were no longer comparing placebo against AZT.

As Brian Gazzard, one of the scientists involved in the Concorde trial, explained in an affidavit refuting an AIDS denialist initiated court case (the case was dismissed), Concorde was not testing whether AZT was better than placebo; this was already known. It was only trying to determine whether AZT should be taken before one developed AIDS symptoms. It concluded that one should not.

If the patients in the placebo arm stayed on placebo and never took AZT when they got AIDS, then a comparison would have been possible (and we can conclude from the trials described above that such hypothetical patients would have done very badly). But this is not what happened: patients on placebo indeed started AZT treatment when they developed AIDS because AZT had previously been shown to be beneficial for people with AIDS. If the patients who took AZT immediately had progressed to AIDS faster than the placebo group then one could conclude that AZT in patients without AIDS symptoms is dangerous. But the study simply did not show this. Read Brian Gazzard's affidavit for a detailed explanation.

We now know why taking AZT as a monotherapy before developing symptoms of AIDS was an unsuccessful strategy. Patients taking one antiretroviral develop a strain of HIV resistant to the virus in a very short time (a few months on average). Consequently the drug stops destroying HIV and patients then experience the side-effects without the benefits. Then when they do eventually get AIDS, the drug no longer has a useful effect.

With today's standard of triple-drug therapy, resistance takes, on average, several years to develop. When this happens, patients have to switch to a new antiretroviral cocktail. The current medical consensus is that treatment should still be deferred until a CD4 count of less than 350 or an AIDS-defining illnesses.

Myth #10: Antiretrovirals have not been tested in clinical trials

Fact: Every antiretroviral registered in South Africa and the United States as of July 2006 had been through a clinical trial which demonstrated its safety and efficacy.

We deal with this myth in detail on our page about the benefits of antiretroviral drugs.

Myth #11: Antiretrovirals taken by pregnant women are harmful to the foetus

Fact: The short-term evidence is unequivocal: Infants born to HIV-positive women who take antiretrovirals during pregnancy are much more likely to survive. While more long-term data is awaited, all the the available evidence shows that the reduced mortality conferred by antiretrovirals is sustained.

Children born to HIV-positive women are at much greater risk of dying than children born to HIV-negative women. The best available evidence shows that without antiretrovirals two or three out of every ten babies of HIV-positive women will contract HIV by the time they are born (i.e. excluding breastfeeding). With the best combination of antiretrovirals, this can be reduced to two or three in every 100 babies. A child who contracts HIV from his or her mother is at a much greater risk of dying than a child without HIV. Therefore it makes sense for a pregnant HIV-positive woman to take an antiretroviral combination to reduce the risk of her unborn infant contracting HIV.

See:

Taha et al., The effect of human immunodeficiency virus infection on birthweight, and infant and child mortality in urban Malawi.
Ryder et al., Mortality in HIV-1 seropositive women, their spouses and their newly born children during 36 months of follow-up in Kinshasa, Zaïre.
Abrams et al., Neonatal predictors of infection status and early death among 332 infants at risk of HIV-1 infection monitored prospectively from birth. New York City Perinatal HIV Transmission Collaborative Study Group.

In 2007, the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed ARVs for pregnant women to reduce the risk of their babies contracting HIV. The review found eighteen high quality clinical trials that included over 14,000 pregnant women. The review states, "The trials compared the use of ARVs versus placebo, longer regimens versus shorter regimens using the same ARVs, and ARV regimens using different drugs and different durations of treatment."

Its conclusion is unequivocal. It "found that short courses of certain ARV drugs are effective in reducing mother-to-child transmission of HIV, and are not associated with any safety concerns in the short term."

So matters are clear for the short-term. What about long-term side-effects? This is a bit more complex. There are long-term concerns. The most serious of these is that there is evidence that ARVs damage the foetus's mitochondria. Exactly what the consequences of this are we do not yet know. Some researchers suspect it might put these babies at higher risk of cancer. This has not been seen yet despite studies that have looked for it. But given that this intervention only started in the 1990s, it is too early to tell. Much more long-term data on children whose mothers took ARVs while they were pregnant are still needed. Nevertheless, the largest and best-conducted follow-ups so far reveal that very few of these children have suffered serious side-effects attributable to the drugs.

See:

El Beitune et al., Antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and early neonatal life.
Benhammou et al., Incidence of cancer in children perinatally exposed to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

Consider that nearly half of all babies born with HIV die by the time they are three years old unless they get HAART. Consider also that even in an excellent health system in which HIV-positive children receive HAART from the day they are diagnosed at least 4% will die at a young age (see the CHER study), maybe much more than that. Finally, consider that so far very few serious clinical side effects have been seen in children born of mothers who took ARVs when they were pregnant. Taken together this makes the case for providing ARVs to pregnant women to reduce the risk of them passing the virus to their babies very compelling. Also, many pregnant HIV-positive women need HAART for their own health.

Myth #12: The Ugandan HIVNET 012 trial that studied the efficacy of single-dose nevirapine for mother-to-child HIV transmission prevention was scientifically and ethically flawed such that its results are unreliable

Fact: The HIVNET 012 trial, albeit imperfect from a book-keeping perspective, was a soundly conducted trial. There is no evidence that its scientific results are incorrect. The criticisms of the ethics of the trial made by AIDS denialists are without foundation.

This myth is extensively debunked elsewhere on the aidstruth.org website. See:

Myth #13: HIV tests are unreliable and frequently produce false positives

Fact: HIV tests for antibodies or the virus itself are highly reliable (both in terms of sensitivity and specificity).

There are two important measures when considering the accuracy of an HIV test or any screening or diagnostic test: sensitivity and specificity.

HIV Rapid Test

Sensitivity is a measure of how likely it is that the test will return positive results if the person being tested has HIV. A highlysensitive test is calibrated to capture every positive sample, but will probably produce some false positives because it is so sensitive that may react to other substances as well.

Specificity is a measure of how likely it is that the test will return negative results if the person being tested does not have HIV. A highly specific test will only react to the substance being tested for and exclude all true negatives, but it will also produce false negatives.

All medical screening and testing procedures—not just for those HIV but for cancers, for pregnancy, for diabetes, for Lyme disease, for everything—must balance sensitivity and specificity: it is inherent in the nature of testing. Ideally a test should have both high sensitivity and specificity. However, using two tests, one with high sensitivity and another with high specificity, is also fine and this is usually what is done with HIV.

HIV tests are calibrated to be extremely sensitive, in order not to miss any positive cases. This is because these tests are used to ensure that the blood supply is safe, and because it is important that people who are HIV-positive not be misdiagnosed as negative, because they will then not seek medical monitoring and treatment, and they may inadvertently spread the virus.

There are two categories of HIV tests: those that detect antibodies [ELISA and Western Blot tests) and those that detect the virus itself (viral load or PCR tests). It is the antibody tests that are usually used when people older than infants are first tested.

In the United States, the first step in HIV testing is usually the inexpensive ELISA screening test. The ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) can be used with blood or oral fluid (not saliva), and determines, with over 99.5% accuracy, if there are antibodies to HIV present. A rapid test produces results in less than half an hour; other test types require from several days to two weeks to get results. These tests are considered screening tests, not diagnostic tests: additional confirmatory testing is considered necessary to determine that an individual is HIV-infected. This is because the tests are so sensitive, they may in rare cases produce false positive or indeterminate results. Antibody tests are not accurate in people who have been infected with HIV very recently, because it typically takes 6 to 12 weeks, and can take as long as 6 months, to develop the antibodies to HIV that the test reacts to. People recently exposed to HIV should seek a PCR test to determine if they are in the stage known as “active infection.”

Most people in sub-Saharan Africa and other resource-poor settings are tested using rapid antibody tests that give results in 20 to 30 minutes. Occasionally these tests give indeterminate results. In those situations a blood sample from the person being tested is sent to a laboratory where a different test is carried out.. Different testing, screening and diagnostic protocols reflect the reality of economic and health services inequality, notambiguity about the existence of HIV and its causative role in AIDS.

The following is a typical way in which HIV infection is identified in people older than infants in South Africa:

First the Abbott Rapid Determine antibody test is performed. It has been evaluated as 100% sensitive and 99.4% specific. In other words it is not expected to give a false negative (except for in the window period of course), and it gives a false positive 6 in every 1,000 tests. (Assuming a person has a 50-50 chance of being HIV-positive.)

If the Abbott test is negative, the patient is assumed to be negative. If it is positive, then a PMC First Response confirmatory test is done. This is also 100% sensitive, but 98.8% specific.

If either of the above tests are indeterminate or contradict each other, then an ELISA test is performed in a laboratory. [1]

A list of common rapid HIV tests (as of 2003) and their accuracies is available on this page of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC).

The Western Blot test is considered the gold standard against which other HIV tests are evaluated. But it is important to understand that a person is not diagnosed HIV-positive on the basis of one test alone, even the Western Blot. Instead, a testing algorithm, involving at least two tests, is used to make a positive HIV diagnosis.

Infants born to women known to be HIV-positive are tested directly for the virus itself, not antibodies, because all newborns of HIV+ women carry their mothers’ antibodies. Women who do not know their HIV status may choose to have their babies tested for antibodies—if the results are positive, a follow-up PCR test can determine if the child is actually infected. Mothers of HIV antibody-positive children should seek additional testing and, if necessary, treatment. Even without treatment, about 2/3 of children born to HIV-positive mothers are not infected and will clear their mothers’ antibodies in 6 to 18 months; the other 1/3 will be infected, and will therefore develop antibodies of their own in response, just as adults do. Antiretroviral treatment and other interventions can reduce the HIV infection rate in babies of HIV-positive womenfrom about 25-30% to below 2%.

We know HIV testing is a valid, reliable procedure because AIDS almost never occurs in people who do not test positive for HIV antibodies or the virus itself. The sensitivities and specificities of the HIV tests on the CDC page linked above were determined by independent evaluations against multiple HIV-1 and HIV-2 subtypes.

To see how unusual it is for AIDS to be diagnosed in someone found to be HIV-negative, consider this 1993 study of US AIDS patients (which has a simpler explanation here). Of 230,179 people clinically diagnosed with AIDS, only 299 were HIV-negative. 172 of the 299 were then re-evaluated. Of these 299, 131 were actually found to be HIV-positive, and 34 died before their status could be verified. That leaves 168 unexplained cases, fewer than one in a thousand. So already more than 15 years ago, HIV tests were very accurate. [2]

HIV tests have become even better since then. This is from a 2005 review of HIV testing in the United States:

The use of repeatedly reactive enzyme immunoassay followed by confirmatory Western blot or immunofluorescent assay remains the standard method for diagnosing HIV-1 infection (44, 45). A large study of HIV testing in 752 U.S. laboratories reported a sensitivity of 99.7% and specificity of 98.5% for enzyme immunoassay (45), and studies in U.S. blood donors reported specificities of 99.8% and greater than 99.99% (46, 47). With confirmatory Western blot, the chance of a false-positive identification in a low-prevalence setting is about 1 in 250 000 (95% CI, 1 in 173 000 to 1 in 379 000) (48).

For more information about HIV testing and diagnosis, and responses to the misrepresentations of HIV testing made by HIV denialists, see AIDStruth’s critique of “The AIDS Trap.” [

Notes

1. Assuming this procedure is carried out correctly, the probability of a false positive diagnosis is 0.0006. In other words, only 6 in 10,000 people who are HIV-negative will be incorrectly diagnosed as HIV-positive. This is based on the estimate that 10.8% of South Africans over the age of two are HIV-positive, determined by the HSRC's 2005 Household Survey and confirmed by the recently released 2008 one. In practice, people at risk of HIV are more likely to be tested and the risk of a false positive is even smaller than calculated here. By the standards of medical accuracy this is extremely high, much better than a pregnancy test for example.

2. In these rare cases of idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia (ICL), patients have reduced numbers of CD4+ T-lymphocytes, and some of the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS, including ICL cryptococcosis, molluscum and histoplasmosis. People with ICL usually have a good prognosis and stable, not falling, CD-4 counts.

Myth #14: False positive HIV test results are likely in pregnant women

Fact: If proper protocol is followed, the risk of a false positive HIV result is extremely small.

Even in low prevalence populations, false positives are rare if proper protocols are followed. The Centre for Disease Control's Revised Recommendations for HIV Screening of Pregnant Women states: False-positive Western blot results (especially those with a majority of bands) are rare. For example, in a study that used a sensitive culture technique to test approximately 290,000 blood donors, no false-positive Western blot results were detected (75). In a study of the frequency of false-positive diagnoses among military applicants from a low-prevalence population (i.e., <1.5 infections/1,000 population), one false-positive result was detected among 135,187 persons tested (76). An HIV test should be considered positive only after screening and confirmatory tests are reactive. A confirmed positive test result indicates that a person has been infected with HIV. False-positive results when both screening and confirmatory tests are reactive are rare. However, the possibility of a mislabeled sample or laboratory error must be considered, especially for a client with no identifiable risk for HIV infection. HIV vaccine-induced antibodies may be detected by current tests and may cause a false-positive result (i.e., there is no HIV infection, only an immune response to the vaccine antigen). Persons whose test results are HIV-positive and who are identified as vaccine trial participants should be encouraged to contact or return to their trial site or an associated trial site for HIV counseling, testing, and referral (CTR) services.

Incorrect HIV test results occur primarily because of specimen-handling errors, laboratory errors, or failure to follow the recommended testing algorithm (76). However, patients might report incorrect test results because they misunderstood previous test results or misperceived that they were infected (77). Although these occurrences are rare, increased testing of pregnant women will result in additional indeterminate, false-positive, and incorrect results. Because of the significance of an HIV-positive test result, its impact on a woman's reproductive decisions, and the resulting need to consider HIV therapeutic drugs for both a pregnant woman and her infant, previous guidelines have emphasized that HIV test results must be obtained and interpreted correctly. In some circumstances, correct interpretation might require consideration of not only additional testing but also the woman's clinical condition and history of possible exposure to HIV. In recent years many HIV rapid tests that deliver results within 45 minutes have been developed. When two of these tests are used to measure HIV status they are very accurate (both sensitive and specific). In high HIV prevalence populations they provide an accurate and affordable means for pregnant women to determine their HIV status. See:

Myth #15: Tests that measure HIV directly are meaningless because they only find dead virus particles

Fact: Viral load tests give an excellent indication of the amount of live virus in a person with HIV.

Studies show that viral load increases in most patients with HIV over time. Also, scientists as a matter of course can routinely take a sample of blood of a person with HIV and culture HIV from it in a laboratory. This would not be possible if the HIV in a person's body was already dead. For a technical explanation, read the NIAID article Course of HIV infection. Thiseditorial in Annals of Internal Medicine reflects on the importance of viral load tests in HIV treatment.

Myth #16: AZT does not triphosphorylate and therefore cannot work

Fact: AZT has been shown to work in clinical trials. There is evidence that AZT triphosphorylates.

This is an obscure myth perpetuated by the Perth Group of AIDS denialists. Triphosphorylation is a chemical process that must take place for AZT to work.

AZT has been proven to work in clinical trials as well as studies of cohorts in real-world settings. Whether the mechanism for how it works is or is not fully understood is therefore secondary. Nevertheless, there is evidence that AZT can indeed be triphosphorylated both from laboratory experiments and from studies of the human body. Triphosphorylation is a chemical process that AZT undergoes in order to stop HIV from reproducing.

A detailed explanation of the evidence that AZT triphosphorylates is contained in David Back's affidavit in a South African court case (case: 1894/2001). Here is a very simple explanation based on Back's affidavit:

HIV reproduces by entering CD4+ T-cells and then using the reproductive machinery of the cell to reproduce itself. When HIV enters the CD4 cell, it must convert its RNA to DNA (see pages 4 and 5 of Equal Treatment Issue 19 or the BBC for a detailed explanation). An enzyme called reverse transcriptase is key to this process. AZT works by interfering with the DNA chain produced by reverse transcriptase and stopping the chain from growing. Once this happens, the virus is unable to continue its reproduction process. AZT must be converted to what is known as its triphosphorylated form inside cells if it is to work. This triphosphorylated form is known as AZTTP. The action of the virus's reverse transcriptase enzyme actually inserts AZTTP into the growing viral DNA being produced from the virus's RNA. Once this happens, the viral DNA can grow no further and the viral reproduction process stops. Besides laboratory experiments that have demonstrated that AZT triphosphorylates, studies such as CHARM have detected triphosphorylated AZT in the human body.

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Myth #17: HIV cannot be detected post-mortem

Fact: HIV can be detected post-mortem with a high degree of accuracy.

This is very important because deceased tissue donors need to be tested to ensure that tissue recipients are not infected with HIV. See:

Preventing disease transmission by deceased tissue donors by testing blood for viral nucleic acid.

Myth #18: HIV is an endogenous retrovirus

Fact: HIV has been shown to be exogenous throughout 20+ years of research.

An endogenous retrovirus is one whose genetic material has been incorporated into that of the host. This happens when the genome of the virus incorporates itself into the chromosome of the host's sex cell (sperm or egg) – or its progenitor – and thus, upon fertilization becomes part of the normal genome found in every cell in the body of the host. Over time, the endogenous retroviral genome usually accumulates deleterious mutations rendering it incapable of productive infection. One myth used by denialists is that HIV is one of these endogenous retroviruses. However, several lines of evidence from the published scientific literature refute this claim, and prove that it is an exogenous virus, found only in CD4+ T-cells and a few other CD4+ cell types (such as macrophages) and not found in most other host cells.

Early evidence:

In the very first publication regarding the identification of HIV, Dr. Luc Montagnier described several experiments showing that HIV was exogenous. The controls used in his co-culture experiments, for example, did not produce a reverse transcriptase signal, only those cells exposed to infected patient lymphocytes. This indicates that the signal did not originate from the genome of the uninfected donor cells. The RT signal (and thus the virus) was able to be passed on to other uninfected lymphocyte cultures and resulted in a similar RT signal pattern. This passing on of the virus is another line of evidence that HIV is unlikely to be endogenous [1].

Southern Blots:

The southern blot is a method for probing for the presence of a specific DNA sequence within a DNA sample. In southern blot hybridization, a small segment of single-stranded DNA is hybridized to genomic DNA. There is nothing in the human genome that hybridizes at reasonable stringency levels (i.e. the specificity of the test) to probes made from HIV-1 or HIV-2 proviral genomes[2]. One study did find two very short sequences (192bp and ~30bp) with some similarity (<60% and 95% respectively) to parts of the HIV genome. However, these two sequences were detected only under very low stringency (low specificity) and no other sequences with similarity to HIV were found [3].

PCR:

In experiments using PCR (another method for detecting specific genetic sequences) in infected patients’ lymphocytes, PCR detects HIV in only a fraction of the infected donor’s T-Cells [4]. This alone is enough to demonstrate that HIV cannot be endogenous. An endogenous virus, by virtue of its past integration in host germ cells, would be detectable in all nucleated cells of the host. In other experiments, HIV DNA was found in the lymphocytes of patients but only very rarely in sperm cells [5]. The absence of HIV DNA from certain cell types in patients again refutes the idea that HIV is endogenous.

The Genome Projects:

The genome projects have been a valuable tool in the field of genetics and also refute the idea that HIV is endogenous. At the time this article was being written, only two examples existed in the scientific literature of endogenous lentiviruses in mammals: one in rabbits and one in lemurs [6][7]. All sequenced primate genomes (including several human genomes) show no endogenous lentiviral genomes.

Common Sense:

Some common sense combined with a brief look at infections would likewise indicate that HIV is not endogenous. If it were endogenous, sequences would be most similar between family members and most different between distantly related individuals. However, this is not the case. Europeans of non-West African descent have been identified with HIV-2 infection, despite HIV-2 being predominantly found in West Africa [8]. Conversely, many Africans have been infected by HIV-1. If one claims that HIV is endogenous, one therefore also claims that West Africans with HIV-2 infections are more closely related to non-West African Europeans with HIV-2 infection than they are to their HIV-1 infected countrymen. This is simply absurd.

Myth #19: HIV is a harmless passenger virus

Fact: Studies in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo all support HIV's ability to deplete CD4+ T-cells.

There are some denialists that argue that HIV does exist but that it is merely a harmless passenger virus and that no evidence exists to claim otherwise. In fact, there are thousands of studies that support the cytopathic properties of HIV. While some aspects of how HIV destroys cells that are not fully understood, that it does so it beyond doubt. This is not unique to HIV, of course, as the effects of many diseases are known despite the mechanisms not being completely elucidated. Some of what is known (and supporting evidence will be cited) is the documented here. Since there are literally thousands upon thousands of papers on HIV, a representative few are cited here. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Evidence shows us that AIDS the CD4+ T-cell depletion is due to HIV. This can be observed 1) in vitro (in cell cultures), 2) ex vivo (in tissues removed from animal models or patients), and 3) in vivo both in animal models and in infected individuals.

Myth #20: The fact that some HIV-positive people live in good health without treatment for many years proves that HIV is harmless

Fact: A small percentage of people infected with HIV do live for many years without developing AIDS. They are often known as long-term non-progressors. But such individuals are rare: without proper medical care, including antiretroviral drugs when needed, most HIV-positive people will eventually develop AIDS.

As putative evidence that HIV is harmless, some HIV/AIDS denialists point to examples of HIV-infected people who survive for many years, even decades, without receiving antiretroviral treatment. HIV denialists often claim that these people survived because they avoided antiretroviral therapy, and that diet, exercise, nutritional supplements or herbal therapies, stress reduction, hypnosis, and other interventions prevent progression to AIDS. These claims are untrue and dangerous.

It is true that a small number of people, often known by doctors and researchers as long-term non-progressors (LTNP), can survive with HIV and without treatment for prolonged periods (over 20 years in exceptional cases). Unfortunately, without careful monitoring and treatment, most HIV-infected people will develop AIDS within ten years of infection. Those who live longer without standard medical care are not always in good health, and some HIV-infected AIDS denialists (e.g., Christine Maggiore) have died of AIDS-related conditions just months after claiming to be healthy. Ignoring HIV infection, avoiding properly qualified doctors, or hoping that a healthy lifestyle will prevent disease indefinitely, will result in the unnecessarily early illness and death of the great majority of HIV-infected people.

Life after death

2010-02-26T10:25:00.001-08:00

Train rides can get extremely boring especially when they are 6 hours long and you have no idea what to do to kill time. There are not too many options so either you end up calling people or listening to music on your ipod/cellphone or typing out entries for your blog. Since you are reading this, you probably know which one of those options I chose. Actually I have been thinking for quite a while to write this one but never quite had time. Things have gotten a bit hectic this month with the World TB Day nearing and a few travel schedules keeping me extremely busy.

I am not an avid reader so not many of my thoughts spring out from recently read literature. My thoughts are limited to those that come in my usual discussions with friends pertaining to news articles, movies, music and interesting topics of discussions that I have had with them or other friends.

I am travelling home to celebrate the death anniversary of my Father – its more of a group huddle time for my mother, sister and I. This is something that we have been doing ritualistically in the last three years. No matter where I and my sister are, we make sure that we are home with our mother on this day to remember my Father. None of the three of us have been able to completely make peace with the fact that he is no more with us. Going by our Hindu beliefs, death is not the end of life and souls move on to various paths one of them being rebirth. If that is so, I sometimes wonder if my Father really is somewhere around looking at us.

Although I haven’t seen or felt anything in my own life which would lead me to believe that there is life after death, there were occurrences and stories in my father’s life which sometimes would spill over to our lives which is why I could never completely deny the presence of departed souls around us. My father could communicate with his parents and his elder brother in ways that were beyond our comprehension.

There are stories of his losing money and then being told of the whereabouts by his elder brother in his dreams. Now that would not be too weird had it not been for the fact that his elder brother had passed away years back. There’s also one story that my mother once narrated and that was of an incident a day or two after her marriage when she dreamt of a couple calling her from a window in the room that she was sleeping in and blessing her. She did not recognize them but since the dream was so vivid, she shared it with my father. My father felt that he was familiar with the description and showed her some pictures and to everyone’s surprise they were the same people from the dream – they were the pictures of my grandparents who had died long before the marriage and there was hardly any way that she could have met them or seen their pictures before.

My tryst with these unnatural occurrences surrounding my father’s life for the first time was during my childhood. We were living in a rented house and our relationship with the land owner was quite amicable. But we were absolutely oblivious of his intention to evict us. One morning my father woke up from a dream which he shared with my mother. He said that he saw his mother asking him to leave the house and look for another place. She said that the owner was evil and that my father must leave the place. That very afternoon, the landowner sent men to paint our house - something that we were not informed of and therefore were not ready for as it would require a lot of shifting, packing and covering of our belongings. An obvious argument between my father and the landowner ensued and he asked us to leave within a week’s time. We later learnt that the argument was premeditated because he had already planned to let out the apartment to someone else at a higher price.

There were many more such incidents but the one that I remember well enough to mention here is probably the last of them that I am aware of. I wasn’t home that often after I joined the medical college so even if there were more incidents, I probably wouldn’t know. Getting through the medical college is a tough task and students in each state take those exams in numbers of hundreds of thousands in India. I was not interested in the Medical entrance because I loved Maths, Physics and Chemistry more than Biology. I wanted to be an Engineer but my father always wanted me to be a Doctor. I didn’t have anything against the profession but I never felt that I could do all that reading; I had seen my sister slog for her MBBS exams and I was not quite up for it. But I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I don’t want to be a Doctor; that would have broken his heart. So, I decided I will study for the entrance and give it my best shot and if I luckily make it through, I’ll probably make it through the rest of the career if not, I can always try for Engineering. That’s exactly what I told my father too – I told him that I will give it my best shot this time, if not, he will have to let me try for the Engineering exams next year. He agreed and asked me to hold a positive attitude about making it through the Medical entrance.

The first day of the exams had Biology and the second day had Physics and Chemistry. While the Biology paper was quite easy for most people, Physics and Chemistry papers were the killer ones. I fared alright in the Biology paper just like everyone else. The Physics and Chemistry papers were combined and so you had to split your time between the two papers. I started with Chemistry and got so engrossed in answering all the questions that I forgot to look at my watch. By the time I was done with Chemistry, I realised that I just have 20 mins to complete 100 marks of Physics. I scrambled through and answered a few here and there and by the time my paper was snatched from me by the invigilator, I probably had left out on around 40 marks worth questions and I wasn’t even sure if the ones that I answered had been done correctly. When I went back home, I told my father about what had happened. He was devastated and almost in tears – it was as if all his dreams were shattered, all his efforts wasted down the drain. I wasn’t sad about the exams, because I had made up my mind about what I would do if that did not work but seeing my father so depressed made me feel guilty. He was sitting in the balcony. I went up to him and told him I was sorry but that did not wipe out the gloominess. He quietly went back to his bed and I staid back in the balcony cursing myself for being so irresponsible.

Moments later, he returned and this time he had a contented smile on his face. I was perturbed by this sight and was unaware how to react. He told me “I know you didn’t do as bad as you tell you did”. I looked at him confusingly and he continued, “I know you are going to make it”. I thought to myself, “God! He is unable to make peace with the fact that I probably won’t be a doctor. Oh I have messed him up so bad, he is going nuts!” He calmly held my hand and said that he spoke with his mother and that she said that I would make it through and my rank would have a 7 in it. Seats for medical colleges in India are allotted based on ranks. There were 210 seats (in general quota) – all three Medical colleges in the state put together. So those holding ranks within 210 only made it through. I didn’t want to believe what my father said but seeing him walk out of the depression was good enough reason for me to celebrate and forget about the whole fiasco.

A month and a half later, the results were out and so my father was all set to check them out but I wasn’t. But, I didn’t want him to see it first so I got ready, picked up my cycle and speeded my way to the centre. My father followed in a bike. By the time I reached there, there were already hundreds flocking in front of the bulletin boards to check their ranks. I pushed my way through the weeping, laughing and shouting lot towards the bulletin board and scanned through the list. 1..2...3…4……..100…..not there. Next page … 101..102………173…174 …175 …176. 176 !!!!!!! Holy Cow! I looked at it in disbelief. It said Nochiketa Mohanty …rank 176. “That’s not possible”, I said to myself. I checked the number a couple of times and checked all other details to match it with my card. I ran out of the crowd and towards the gate of the centre, and my father was already there. Someone had already told him that I have made it through – he grabbed me and gave me a tight hug. On my way back I thought to myself – 176 ! That does have a 7 in it ….

Although I am not fortunate enough to carry those abilities to communicate with my father like he could with his mother, these experiences have allowed me to open my mind to the surreal and acknowledge the presence of the supernatural. Our Hindu beliefs say that those souls which are unable to do away with “Sansarik Moh Maaya”, i.e., earthly attachments even after they are dead, stay around on earth and do not achieve “Moksha”, i.e., freedom from the attachments and path to eternal peace of heaven until they find themselves contented. I know he loved us as much as his mother loved him and so logically he should be somewhere around looking at us. As much as I want his soul to rest in peace, I know he probably is watching us as giving up on the attachments would be so unlike him. I just wish I could connect with him too … just once at least.

Mathias Rath - Entrepreneur or Murderer

2010-02-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

HIV AIDS is one of those diseases that has had one of the most interesting histories amongst all diseases. Accounts of stigma, discrimination and denial still exist after three decades of the discovery of its existence. Sadly though, in the backdrop of the denial stories are stories of exploitation. I accidentally bumped in on the story of Mathias Rath during a discussion in one of the forums regarding curative Homeopathic medicine for HIV AIDS. It has been hard for many to accept that we still do not have a curative medicine in Allopathy for AIDS and so the desperate have been looking for answers in Alternative Medicine. I see nothing wrong in exploring new horizons but exploring should not be the starting point for making yourself prone to exploitation and exploitation it is that many of the vile minds preaching Alternative Medicine have stooped to. The following is anextract from BAD SCIENCE written by Ben Goldacre and Published by Harper Perennial 2009 which speaks of what Mathias Rath did to the poor people living with HIV AIDS in South Africa. (Source: www.badscience.net)

BAD SCIENCE

Matthias Rath

April 9th, 2009 by Ben Goldacre

This is the “missing chapter” about vitamin pill salesman Matthias Rath. Sadly I was unable to write about him at the time that book was initially published, as he was suing me in the High Court. The chapter is now available in the new paperback edition, and I’ve posted it here for free so that nobody loses out.

Although the publishers make a slightly melodramatic fuss about this in the promo material, it is a very serious story about the dangers of pseudoscience, as I hope you’ll see, and it was also a pretty unpleasant episode, not just for me, but also for the many other people he’s tried to sue, including Medecins Sans Frontieres and more. If you’re ever looking for a warning sign that you’re on the wrong side of an argument, suing Medecins Sans Frontieres is probably a pretty good clue.

Anyway, here it is, please steal it, print it, repost it, whatever, it’s free under a Creative Commonslicense, details at the end. If you prefer it is available as a PDF here, or as a word document here. Happy Easter!

This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009.

You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don’t change it – including this bit – so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net

The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don’t own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow. Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents.

On this last point there is, however, one small consolation, and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. This chapter, I should also mention, is available free online for anyone who wishes to see it.

Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained, almost academic distance of this book. For the most part we’ve been interested in the intellectual and cultural consequences of bad science, the made-up facts in national newspapers, dubious academic practices in universities, some foolish pill-peddling, and so on. But what happens if we take these sleights of hand, these pill-marketing techniques, and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where things really matter?

In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment. AIDS is the opposite of anecdote. Twenty-five million people have died from it already, three million in the last year alone, and 500,000 of those deaths were children. In South Africa it kills 300,000 people every year: that’s eight hundred people every day, or one every two minutes. This one country has 6.3 million people who are HIV positive, including 30 per cent of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans under the age of seventeen. Most chillingly of all, this disaster has appeared suddenly, and while we were watching: in 1990, just 1 per cent of adults in South Africa were HIV positive. Ten years
later, the figure had risen to 25 per cent.

It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers, but on one thing I think we would agree. If you were to walk into a situation with that much death, misery and disease, you would be very careful to make sure that you knew what you were talking about. For the reasons you are about to read, I suspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark.

This man, we should be clear, is our responsibility. Born and raised in Germany, Rath was the head of Cardiovascular Research at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto in California, and even then he had a tendency towards grand gestures, publishing a paper in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in 1992 titled “A Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease Leading the Way to the Abolition of this Disease as a Cause for Human Mortality”. The unified theory was high-dose vitamins.

He first developed a power base from sales in Europe, selling his pills with tactics that will be very familiar to you from the rest of this book, albeit slightly more aggressive. In the UK, his adverts claimed that “90 per cent of patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer die within months of starting treatment”, and suggested that three million lives could be saved if cancer patients stopped being treated by conventional medicine. The pharmaceutical industry was deliberately letting people die for financial gain, he explained. Cancer treatments were “poisonous compounds” with “not even one effective treatment”.

The decision to embark on treatment for cancer can be the most difficult that an individual or a family will ever take, representing a close balance between well-documented benefits and equally well-documented side-effects. Adverts like these might play especially strongly on your conscience if your mother has just lost all her hair to chemotherapy, for example, in the hope of staying alive just long enough to see your son speak.

There was some limited regulatory response in Europe, but it was generally as weak as that faced by the other characters in this book. The Advertising Standards Authority criticised one of his adverts in the UK, but that is essentially all they are able to do. Rath was ordered by a Berlin court to stop claiming that his vitamins could cure cancer, or face a €250,000 fine.

But sales were strong, and Matthias Rath still has many supporters in Europe, as you will shortly see. He walked into South Africa with all the acclaim, self-confidence and wealth he had amassed as a successful vitamin-pill entrepreneur in Europe and America, and began to take out full-page adverts in newspapers.

˜The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here,” he proclaimed. Anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and a conspiracy to kill patients and make money. “Stop AIDS Genocide by the Drugs Cartel said one headline. “Why should South Africans continue to be poisoned with AZT? There is a natural answer to AIDS.” The answer came in the form of vitamin pills. “Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug. Multivitamins cut the risk of developing AIDS in half.”

Rath’s company ran clinics reflecting these ideas, and in 2005 he decided to run a trial of his vitamins in a township near Cape Town called Khayelitsha, giving his own formulation, VitaCell, to people with advanced AIDS. In 2008 this trial was declared illegal by the Cape High Court of South Africa. Although Rath says that none of his participants had been on anti-retroviral drugs, some relatives have given statements saying that they were, and were actively told to stop using them.

Tragically,Matthias Rath had taken these ideas to exactly the right place. Thabo Mbeki, the President of South Africa at the time, was well known as an “AIDS dissident”, and to international horror, while people died at the rate of one every two minutes in his country, he gave credence and support to the claims of a small band of campaigners who variously claim that AIDS does not exist, that it is not caused by HIV, that anti-retroviral medication does more harm than good, and so on.

At various times during the peak of the AIDS epidemic in South Africa their government argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS, and that anti-retroviral drugs are not useful for patients. They refused to roll out proper treatment programmes, they refused to accept free donations of drugs, and they refused to accept grant money from the Global Fund to buy drugs. One study estimates that if the South African national government had used anti-retroviral drugs for prevention and treatment at the same rate as the Western Cape province (which defied national policy on the issue), around 171,000 new HIV infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented between 1999 and 2007. Another study estimates that between 2000 and 2005 there were 330,000 unnecessary deaths, 2.2 million person years lost, and 35,000 babies unnecessarily born with HIV because of the failure to implement a cheap and simple mother-to-child-transmission prevention program. Between one and three doses of an ARV drug can reduce transmission dramatically. The cost is negligible. It was not available.

Interestingly, Matthias Rath’s colleague and employee, a South African barrister named Anthony Brink, takes the credit for introducing Thabo Mbeki to many of these ideas. Brink stumbled on the “AIDS dissident” material in the mid-1990s, and after much surfing and reading, became convinced that it must be right. In 1999 he wrote an article about AZT in a Johannesburg newspaper titled “a medicine from hell”. This led to a public exchange with a leading virologist. Brink contacted Mbeki, sending him copies of the debate, and was welcomed as an expert.

This is a chilling testament to the danger of elevating cranks by engaging with them. In his initial letter of motivation for employment to Matthias Rath, Brink described himself as “South Africa’s leading AIDS dissident, best known for my whistle-blowing exposé of the toxicity and inefficacy of AIDS drugs, and for my political activism in this regard, which caused President Mbeki and Health Minister Dr Tshabalala-Msimang to repudiate the drugs in 1999″.

In 2000, the now infamous International AIDS Conference took place in Durban. Mbeki’s presidential advisory panel beforehand was packed with “AIDS dissidents”, including Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick. On the first day, Rasnick suggested that all HIV testing should be banned on principle, and that South Africa should stop screening supplies of blood for HIV. “If I had the power to outlaw the HIV antibody test,” he said, “I would do it across the board.” When African physicians gave testimony about the drastic change AIDS had caused in their clinics and hospitals, Rasnick said he had not seen “any evidence” of an AIDS catastrophe. The media were not allowed in, but one reporter from the Village Voice was present. Peter Duesberg, he said, “gave a presentation so removed from African medical reality that it left several local doctors shaking their heads”. It wasn’t AIDS that was killing babies and children, said the dissidents: it was the anti-retroviral medication.

President Mbeki sent a letter to world leaders comparing the struggle of the “AIDS dissidents” to the struggle against apartheid. The Washington Post described the reaction at the White House: “So stunned were some officials by the letter’s tone and timing during final preparations for July’s conference in Durban that at least two of them, according to diplomatic sources, felt obliged to check whether it was genuine. Hundreds of delegates walked out of Mbeki’s address to the conference in disgust, but many more described themselves as dazed and confused. Over 5,000 researchers and activists around the world signed up to the Durban Declaration, a document that specifically addressed and repudiated the claims and concerns–at least the more moderate ones–of the “AIDS dissidents”. Specifically, it addressed the charge that people were simply dying of poverty:

The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clearcut, exhaustive and unambiguous… As with any other chronic infection, various co-factors play a role in determining the risk of disease. Persons who are malnourished, who already suffer other infections or who are older, tend to be more susceptible to the rapid development of AIDS following HIV infection. However, none of these factors weaken the scientific evidence that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS… Mother-to-child transmission can be reduced by half or more by short courses of antiviral drugs â€¦ What works best in one country may not be appropriate in another. But to tackle the disease, everyone must first understand that HIV is the enemy. Research, not myths, will lead to the development of more effective and cheaper treatments.

It did them no good. Until 2003 the South African government refused, as a matter of principle, to roll out proper antiretroviral medication programmes, and even then the process was half-hearted. This madness was only overturned after a massive campaign by grassroots organisations such as the Treatment Action Campaign, but even after the ANC cabinet voted to allow medication to be given, there was still resistance. In mid-2005, at least 85 per cent of HIV-positive people who needed anti-retroviral drugs were still refused them. That’s around a million people.

This resistance, of course, went deeper than just one man; much of it came from Mbeki’s Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang. An ardent critic of medical drugs for HIV, she would cheerfully go on television to talk up their dangers, talk down their benefits, and became irritable and evasive when asked how many patients were receiving effective treatment. She declared in 2005 that she would not be “pressured” into meeting the target of three million patients on anti-retroviral medication, that people had ignored the importance of nutrition, and that she would continue to warn patients of the sideeffects of anti-retrovirals, saying: “We have been vindicated in
this regard. We are what we eat.”

It’s an eerily familiar catchphrase. Tshabalala-Msimang has also gone on record to praise the work of Matthias Rath, and refused to investigate his activities. Most joyfully of all, she is a staunch advocate of the kind of weekend glossy-magazine-style nutritionism that will by now be very familiar to you. The remedies she advocates for AIDS are beetroot, garlic, lemons and African potatoes. A fairly typical quote, from the Health Minister in a country where eight hundred people die every day from AIDS, is this: “Raw garlic and a skin of the lemon–not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but they also protect you from disease.” South Africa’s stand at the 2006 World AIDS Conference in Toronto was described by delegates as the “salad stall”. It consisted of some garlic, some beetroot, the African potato, and assorted other vegetables. Some boxes of anti-retroviral drugs were added later, but they were reportedly borrowed at the last minute from other conference delegates.

Alternative therapists like to suggest that their treatments and ideas have not been sufficiently researched. As you now know, this is often untrue, and in the case of the Health Minister’s favoured vegetables, research had indeed been done, with results that were far from promising. Interviewed on SABC about this, Tshabalala-Msimang gave the kind of responses you’d expect to hear at any North London dinner-party discussion of alternative therapies.

First she was asked about work from the University of Stellenbosch which suggested that her chosen plant, the African potato, might be actively dangerous for people on AIDS drugs. One study on African potato in HIV had to be terminated prematurely, because the patients who received the plant extract developed severe bone-marrow suppression and a drop in their CD4 cell count–which is a bad thing–after eight weeks. On top of this, when extract from the same vegetable was given to cats with Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, they succumbed to full-blown Feline AIDS faster than their non-treated controls. African potato does not look like a good bet.

Tshabalala-Msimang disagreed: the researchers should go back to the drawing board, and “investigate properly”. Why? Because HIV-positive people who used African potato had shown improvement, and they had said so themselves. If a person says he or she is feeling better, should this be disputed, she demanded to know, merely because it had not been proved scientifically? “When a person says she or he is feeling better, I must say ‘No, I don’t think you are feeling better’? I must rather go and do science on you’?” Asked whether there should be a scientific basis to her views, she replied: “Whose science?”

And there, perhaps, is a clue, if not exoneration. This is a continent that has been brutally exploited by the developed world, first by empire, and then by globalised capital. Conspiracy theories about AIDS and Western medicine are not entirely absurd in this context. The pharmaceutical industry has indeed been caught performing drug trials in Africa which would be impossible anywhere in the developed world. Many find it suspicious that black Africans seem to be the biggest victims of AIDS, and point to the biological warfare programmes set up by the apartheid governments; there have also been suspicions that the scientific discourse of HIV/AIDS might be a device, a Trojan horse for spreading even more exploitative Western political and economic agendas around a problem that is simply one of poverty.

And these are new countries, for which independence and self-rule are recent developments, which are struggling to find their commercial feet and true cultural identity after centuries of colonisation. Traditional medicine represents an important link with an autonomous past; besides which, anti-retroviral medications have been unnecessarily – offensively, absurdly – expensive, and until moves to challenge this became partially successful, many Africans were effectively denied access to medical treatment as a result.

It’s very easy for us to feel smug, and to forget that we all have our own strange cultural idiosyncrasies which prevent us from taking up sensible public-health programmes. For examples, we don’t even have to look as far as MMR. There is a good evidence base, for example, to show that needle-exchange programmes reduce the spread of HIV, but this strategy has been rejected time and again in favour of “Just say no.” Development charities funded by US Christian groups refuse to engage with birth control, and any suggestion of abortion, even in countries where being in control of your own fertility could mean the difference between success and failure in life, is met with a cold, pious stare. These impractical moral principles are so deeply entrenched that Pepfar, the US Presidential Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, has insisted that every recipient of international aid money must sign a declaration expressly promising not to have any involvement with sex workers.

We mustn’t appear insensitive to the Christian value system, but it seems to me that engaging sex workers is almost the cornerstone of any effective AIDS policy: commercial sex is frequently the “vector of transmission”, and sex workers a very high-risk population; but there are also more subtle issues at stake. If you secure the legal rights of prostitutes to be free from violence and discrimination, you empower them to demand universal condom use, and that way you can prevent HIV from being spread into the whole community. This is where science meets culture. But perhaps even to your own friends and neighbours, in whatever suburban idyll has become your home, the moral principle of abstinence from sex and drugs is more important than people dying of AIDS; and perhaps, then, they are no less irrational than Thabo Mbeki.

So this was the situation into which the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath inserted himself, prominently and expensively, with the wealth he had amassed from Europe and America, exploiting anti-colonial anxieties with no sense of irony, although he was a white man offering pills made in a factory abroad. His adverts and clinics were a tremendous success. He began to tout individual patients as evidence of the benefits that could come from vitamin pills – although in reality some of his most famous success stories have died of AIDS. When asked about the deaths of Rath’s star patients, Health Minister Tshabalala-Msimang replied: “It doesn’t necessarily mean that if I am taking antibiotics and I die, that I died of antibiotics.”

She is not alone: South Africa’s politicians have consistently refused to step in, Rath claims the support of the government, and its most senior figures have refused to distance themselves from his operations or to criticise his activities. Tshabalala-Msimang has gone on the record to state that the Rath Foundation “are not undermining the government’s position. If anything, they are supporting it.”

In 2005, exasperated by government inaction, a group of 199 leading medical practitioners in South Africa signed an open letter to the health authorities of the Western Cape, pleading for action on the Rath Foundation. “Our patients are being inundated with propaganda encouraging them to stop life-saving medicine,” it said. “Many of us have had experiences with HIV infected patients who have had their health compromised by stopping their anti-retrovirals due to the activities of this Foundation.” Rath’s adverts continue unabated. He even claimed that his activities were endorsed by huge lists of sponsors and affiliates including the World Health Organization, UNICEF and UNAIDS. All have issued statements flatly denouncing his claims and activities. The man certainly has chutzpah.

His adverts are also rich with detailed scientific claims. It would be wrong of us to neglect the science in this story, so we should follow some through, specifically those which focused on a Harvard study in Tanzania. He described this research in full-page advertisements, some of which have appeared in the New York Times and the Herald Tribune. He refers to these paid adverts, I should mention, as if he had received flattering news coverage in the same papers. Anyway, this research showed that multivitamin supplements can be beneficial in a developing world population with AIDS: there’s no problem with that result, and there are plenty of reasons to think that vitamins might have some benefit for a sick and frequently malnourished population.

The researchers enrolled 1,078 HIV-positive pregnant women and randomly assigned them to have either a vitamin supplement or placebo. Notice once again, if you will, that this is another large, well-conducted, publicly funded trial of vitamins, conducted by mainstream scientists, contrary to the claims of nutritionists that such studies do not exist. The women were followed up for several years, and at the end of the study, 25 per cent of those on vitamins were severely ill or dead, compared with 31 per cent of those on placebo. There was also a statistically significant benefit in CD4 cell count (a measure of HIV activity) and viral loads. These results were in no sense dramatic – and they cannot be compared to the demonstrable life-saving benefits of anti-retrovirals – but they did show that improved diet, or cheap generic vitamin pills, could represent a simple and relatively inexpensive way to marginally delay the need to start HIV medication in some patients.

In the hands of Rath, this study became evidence that vitamin pills are superior to medication in the treatment of HIV/AIDS, that anti-retroviral therapies “severely damage all cells in the body–including white blood cells”, and worse, that they were “thereby not improving but rather worsening immune deficiencies and expanding the AIDS epidemic”. The researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health were so horrified that they put together a press release setting out their support for medication, and stating starkly, with unambiguous clarity, that Matthias Rath had misrepresented their findings.

To outsiders the story is baffling and terrifying. The United Nations has condemned Rath’s adverts as “wrong and misleading”. “This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence,” said Eric Goemaere, head of Médecins sans Frontières SA, a man who pioneered anti-retroviral therapy in South Africa. Rath sued him.

It’s not just MSF who Rath has gone after: he has also brought time-consuming, expensive, stalled or failed cases against a professor of AIDS research, critics in the media and others.

But his most heinous campaign has been against the Treatment Action Campaign. For many years this has been the key organisation campaigning for access to anti-retroviral medication in South Africa, and it has been fighting a war on four fronts. Firstly, TAC campaigns against its own government, trying to compel it to roll out treatment programmes for the population. Secondly, it fights against the pharmaceutical industry, which claims that it needs to charge full price for its products in developing countries in order to pay for research and development of new drugs – although, as we shall see, out of its $550 billion global annual revenue, the pharmaceutical industry spends twice as much on promotion and admin as it does on research and development. Thirdly, it is a grassroots organisation, made up largely of black women from townships who do important prevention and treatment-literacy work on the ground, ensuring that people know what is available, and how to protect themselves. Lastly, it fights against people who promote the type of information peddled by Matthias Rath and his ilk.

Rath has taken it upon himself to launch a massive campaign against this group. He distributes advertising material against them, saying “Treatment Action Campaign medicines are killing you” and “Stop AIDS genocide by the drug cartel”, claiming–as you will guess by now–that there is an international conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies intent on prolonging the AIDS crisis in the interests of their own profits by giving medication that makes people worse. TAC must be a part of this, goes the reasoning, because it criticises Matthias Rath. Just like me writing on Patrick Holford or Gillian McKeith, TAC is perfectly in favour of good diet and nutrition. But in Rath’s promotional literature it is a front for the pharmaceutical industry, a “Trojan horse” and a “running dog”. TAC has made a full disclosure of its funding and activities, showing no such connection: Rath presented no evidence to the contrary, and has even lost a court case over the issue, but will not let it lie. In fact he presents the loss of this court case as if it was a victory.

The founder of TAC is a man called Zackie Achmat, and he is the closest thing I have to a hero. He is South African, and coloured, by the nomenclature of the apartheid system in which he grew up. At the age of fourteen he tried to burn down his school, and you might have done the same in similar circumstances. He has been arrested and imprisoned under South Africa’s violent, brutal white regime, with all that entailed. He is also gay, and HIV-positive, and he refused to take anti-retroviral medication until it was widely available to all on the public health system, even when he was dying of AIDS, even when he was personally implored to save himself by Nelson Mandela, a public supporter of anti-retroviral medication and Achmat’s work.

And now, at last, we come to the lowest point of this whole story, not merely for Matthias Rath’s movement, but for the alternative therapy movement around the world as a whole. In 2007, with a huge public flourish, to great media coverage, Rath’s former employee Anthony Brink filed a formal complaint against Zackie Achmat, the head of the TAC. Bizarrely, he filed this complaint with the International Criminal
Court at The Hague, accusing Achmat of genocide for successfully campaigning to get access to HIV drugs for the people of South Africa.

It’s hard to explain just how influential the “AIDS dissidents” are in South Africa. Brink is a barrister, a man with important friends, and his accusations were reported in the national news media –and in some corners of the Western gay press–as a serious news story. I do not believe that any one of those journalists who reported on it can possibly have read Brink’s indictment to the end.

I have.

The first fifty-seven pages present familiar anti-medication and “AIDS-dissident” material. But then, on page fifty-eight, this “indictment” document suddenly deteriorates into something altogether more vicious and unhinged, as Brink sets out what he believes would be an appropriate punishment for Zackie. Because I do not wish to be accused of selective editing, I will now reproduce for you that entire section, unedited, so you can see and feel it for yourself.

APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION
In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat’s crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for ‘the deaths of thousands of people’, to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it’s raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he’s being treatment compliant, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he’s been restrained on a gurney with cable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa, mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene.
Signed at Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 January 2007
Anthony Brink

The document was described by the Rath Foundation as “entirely valid and long overdue”.

This story isn’t about Matthias Rath, or Anthony Brink, or Zackie Achmat, or even South Africa. It is about the culture of how ideas work, and how that can break down. Doctors criticise other doctors, academics criticise academics, politicians criticise politicians: that’s normal and healthy, it’s how ideas improve. Matthias Rath is an alternative therapist, made in Europe. He is every bit the same as the British operators that we have seen in this book. He is from their world.

Despite the extremes of this case, not one single alternative therapist or nutritionist, anywhere in the world, has stood up to criticise any single aspect of the activities of Matthias Rath and his colleagues. In fact, far from it: he continues to be fêted to this day. I have sat in true astonishment and watched leading figures of the UK’s alternative therapy movement applaud Matthias Rath at a public lecture (I have it on video, just in case there’s any doubt). Natural health organisations continue to defend Rath. Homeopaths’ mailouts continue to promote his work. The British Association of Nutritional Therapists has been invited to comment by bloggers, but declined. Most, when challenged, will dissemble.”Oh,” they say, “I don’t really know much about it.” Not one person will step forward and dissent.

The alternative therapy movement as a whole has demonstrated itself to be so dangerously, systemically incapable of critical self-appraisal that it cannot step up even in a case like that of Rath: in that count I include tens of thousands of practitioners, writers, administrators and more. This is how ideas go badly wrong. In the conclusion to this book, written before I was able to include this chapter, I will argue that the biggest dangers posed by the material we have covered are cultural and intellectual.

I may be mistaken.

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Awareness Ribbons ... how many do you know?

2010-02-09T21:20:00.000-08:00

Many of us working in the health sector (and also those who are not) know of the red ribbon because of the high Prevalence of HIV AIDS in India and the extensive awareness campaigns by various Governmental and Non Governmental organizations. But how many of us know that there is a gray ribbon for Diabetes awareness or a pink ribbon for Breast Cancer awareness? Not many I presume. Sadly though, these are only examples of 2 ribbons of more than 85 ribbons that you are probably unaware of ... blame it on the sheer quantity of the causes and the ribbons or the usage of the same color for the various causes or the inadequate marketing/ awareness generation of each of the diseases/causes.

Here's a list of Awareness Ribbons from across the world (Source: www.wikipedia.org) . I am sure there are more but try figuring out if you can even remember half of them - you must be a genius if you have such a good memory.

Ribbon	Color	Meanings
	White ribbon	Multiple Hereditary Exostoses Gender violence ("men working to end men's violence against women") International End of Violence Against Women
	Yellow ribbon	Deployed soldiers ("support our troops") Suicide awareness and prevention Australian 2009 Victorian Bushfire Campaign* "Help unlock the second prison" Assistance for ex-convicts Spina Bifida Sarcoma and Bone Cancer Awareness Endometriosis awareness
	Puzzle ribbon	Autism Awareness
	Blue ribbon	Tuberous Sclerosis awareness (blue) Sex trafficking and slavery awareness (navy blue) "Bring Home Our Troops" campaign Child abuse awareness Prostate cancer awareness (sky blue) Electronic Frontier Foundation's Online Free Speech Canada's anti-tobacco, anti-second hand smoke Spain's campaign for the release of Basque terrorists' kidnap victims "Responsible use of public lands for the benefit of all recreationists" International No Diet Day Hydranencephaly awareness
	Jade Ribbon	Jade Ribbon Campaign spreads information about hepatitis B and liver cancer in Asian and Pacific Islander (API)communities (and some times in America)
	Purple ribbon	Sarcoidosis Lupus Fibromyalgia Show religious tolerance Promoting remembrance and awareness of violence against women Domestic violence awareness Childhood stroke awareness Cystic fibrosis awareness Alzheimer's disease awareness Pancreatic cancer awareness Workers' Memorial Day Epilepsy awareness (lavender)
	Periwinkle ribbon	Pulmonary hypertension awareness Eating disorder awareness Stomach cancer awareness
	Pink and blue ribbon	Pro-life Genital integrity Inflammatory breast cancer awareness Infertility awareness Infant loss awareness Pregnancy loss awareness
	Orange Ribbon	Leukemia And Lymphoma Awareness Energy awareness in Nigeria Animal protection awareness Self-injury awareness Multiple Sclerosis awareness Anti-racism (Harmony Day in Australia) Symbol of the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 Kidney cancer survivorship and awareness ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) I'm with Coco awareness. The war against NBC and Jay Leno
	Red ribbon	AIDS awareness Substance abuse awareness (Red Ribbon Week is commonly held in American schools) Vasculitis awareness
	Gray ribbon	Diabetes awareness Brain cancer awareness Asthma awareness
	Black ribbon	Anarchist Black Ribbon Campaign Mourning and remembrance of the Virginia Tech massacre Melanoma
	Pink ribbon	Breast cancer awareness
	Green ribbon	Lyme Disease Organ transplantation and donation awareness Environmental protection Mitochondrial disease awareness 2009 Iranian Election Protests
	Teal ribbon	Polycystic Kidney Disease Gynecological cancer including Uterine, Endometrial, Ovarian, Falopian, Cervical and Vulval Cancers Ovarian cancer Sexual assault Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia Batten Disease Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome
	Violet ribbon	Hodgkin's lymphoma
	Gold ribbon	Childhood cancer awareness
	Cloud ribbon	Congenital diaphragmatic hernia
	Silver ribbon	Brain disorders Ovarian cancer (Australia) Congenital cytomegalovirus
	Indigo ribbon	Kooks aka "Targeted Individuals"
	Red and Blue Ribbon	Haiti Recovery and Restoration Awareness Ribbon

Rahman nominated for the 82nd Academy Awards !!!

2010-01-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

The musical maestro has done it again! Check out his compositions in "Couples Retreat" which have won him a nomination in the 82nd Academy Awards.

(Nana is the one for which he has been nominated)

Sajna Re

Nana

Salvadore

Let's hope Rahman continues to bring in glory to India ...more power to him!!!

BMW SIMPLE - bridges the gap between a car and a bike !

2010-01-02T10:50:00.000-08:00

Indian roads are meant for bikes and bikes only ...well ... let's make that two wheelers in general - cars just make them look busier. The only reason we use cars is because it's too hot outside and a car's interior is shielded from the sun and of course there's the 'status symbol' thing that has been the marketing mantra for most car companies in India.

So, BMW's come with a respite for the motorcycle industry in India - the BMW SIMPLE - a bridge between a car and a bike. It's made the average biker's Batmobile fantasy come true. So here's a vehicle which looks like a car but drives like a bike and since it comes from BMW, class comes unquestionably tagged along with it.

Simple combines features and advantages from both automobiles and motorcycles. The concept owes its passenger cell to the car, providing protection from wind and weather as well as shielding the driver from exterior noise and offering occupants a high degree of safety in the event of an accident. The motorcycle inspired the slim design of the Simple (at just 110 centimetres wide) and its configuration for two people sitting one behind the other. Plus it boasts the dynamic driving style typical of a two-wheeler, allowing you to lean right into corners as desired. The designation “simple” is an acronym of the project name “A sustainable and innovative mobility product for low energy consumption”.

The BMW designers initially planned a small vehicle with low weight and minimal aerodynamic drag properties. Following a concept phase of several months, the pooled requirements and ideas gave rise in 2005 to a vehicle based on tilting technology. In contrast to other vehicle concepts in which only the passenger cell tilts during cornering, here all the driver has to do is determine a change in direction for the appropriate tilt to follow automatically. The stand-out feature of the Simple concept is that it activates the hydraulics only in exceptional situations, for example if the vehicle threatens to become unstable during extremely slow driving, when righting the vehicle during standstill or in extreme situations such as drifting. Otherwise, Simple rides like a motorcycle and, beyond natural gravity and gyroscopic forces, requires no energy whatsoever to lean into a corner. The passenger also benefits from this tilting technology as he feels no transverse forces and, particularly during rapid changes of direction, need not compensate for any lateral movements.

All that is needed to power this lightweight vehicle with a kerb weight of approx. 450 kg is a 36 kW combustion engine. Acceleration from 0 to 100 km/h is estimated at under ten seconds and the vehicle has an excellent drag coefficient of 0.18. Using the electric motor and the combustion engine, the Simple would need just 6 kWh (equivalent to 0.7 litres of petrol) or two litres over 100 km.

It might not be the best that BMW has come up with but it definitely is the future for the Indian roads if marketed well and sold at a reasonable price for the Indian market.So, if you were planning for the Nano, then I would suggest you wait for this one ... definitely worth the wait.

Another year has passed ...

2009-12-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to y’all ! What a coincidence that we have reached 2010 and my blog visitor counter installed in September this year says that there have been 201 visitors from around the world since. Just a ‘zero’ away from the number of the year and I hope I reach there by the ‘zero’ hour of the next year. Ah! How valuable is a zero when placed in the right place. (Reminds me of a dialogue in a recent movie that I watched – purportedly the most disastrous box office failure of the year 2009 – Rocket Singh wasn’t really that bad. In fact it was pretty good – but I guess it will take another decade before the regular Bollywood audience starts appreciating movies of this genre.)

Another year has passed and I am yet to understand why we celebrate a ‘New Year’ or a ‘Birthday’ when life continues the very same manner the very next day. Call me a pessimist but look at it in this way - if we would spare all the money and time that we spend in celebrating these events and channelize them to bring some happiness in the lives of the sick, poor or destitute will we not be able to make the world a much better place than it was last year? If you don’t spend that Rs. 3000 to attend that club tonight for the zero hour party and buy a blanket and some rice for one of the homeless would it not bring more satisfaction to you? You have fed your pet dog or cat all these years, why not spend some tonight for that stray dog/ cow? If you cut down on the fire crackers tonight and call in those poor little kid in rags that you saw playing the drum for his sister while she danced and somersaulted to grab your attention while your car stopped by the traffic signal and offer them a scrumptious meal and a few toys would that not make you happier and the world a little lesser polluted?

I am writing this entry on the train back home and I had a very pleasant experience a few moments back. Coincidentally I had an acquaintance from CRS office, Pradeep, on my neighbouring seat. Having rushed from Dr. Sen’s farewell to the station, I hadn’t had my lunch but I already had something in my lunchbox that I had carried to the office. I didn’t feel like having that so I bought myself something on the train instead. Pradeep suggested I give it to one of those kids that keep the floors clean and so when one of them did come to sweep, he asked him if he would like to have some food. It was as if the poor kid was waiting for someone to ask him that – the ‘yes’ came instantly and we emptied the lunch box on a piece of paper for him. The happiness that was so evident on his face filled my heart with glee and I have to thank my friend Pradeep here for arousing the goodness in me and giving me a joy that transcends any other pleasure that I have experienced since a while. Sometimes we need people to bring out the nicer side of us through their goodness – they are like ‘mediators’ of goodness. It’s nice to have mediators around you and its good to be one yourself sometimes.

When the year begins, we all make resolutions, most of which we break but regardless of how they end, they are usually things that we do for our own betterment – like stopping to smoke or going on a healthy diet. Only a few of us tend to think selflessly for others and make resolutions that bring joy or betterment in the lives of a larger population or bring a positive change for the world that we live in. Why not make a resolution this year to plant at least 10 trees this year or use lesser petroleum run vehicles and use your legs for distances that you know are walkable or use lesser paper than usual ( what are computers for after all?) or share your knowledge and educate one illiterate. You have probably been a good person and donated in various organizations but have you been responsible enough to know if every penny that you have donated has been used in the right manner? Why not put your money this year where you can bring a change in someone’s life not just by donating but also by doing things yourself? Wouldn’t that bring a greater pleasure and satisfaction? We all are busy in things that we do and the downturn in the global economy has pinched all our pockets but you don’t need time or money to be a good Samaritan; all you need is a caring heart. Care for someone this year – make that your New Year resolution.

Caring for your family is your duty but caring for the underprivileged would create a better world.

Bombing the city

2009-12-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

We were invited to a Christmas celebration today at one of our partner organization's place. The ambience was joyous and many people from many backgrounds had turned up for the event. There were gifts being shared with the employees and partners (including us at CRS and CBCI) and then there were games to keep everyone on their foot. They had one very interesting game amongst all those with a name that went something like “Bombing the city” – a slight diversion from our conventional Musical Chair. The place had been divided into quadrants and each of them were named as one of the four metros – “Bombay” ( I am not in the city so I believe Raj Thackeray’s men can’t hurt me just because I didn’t call it Mumbai), Kolkata, Delhi, and Chennai respectively. We were supposed to move around in circles when one person rang the bell like Santa and then we were supposed to stop at one of those quadrants when the bell stopped with a siren. Then, they would randomly pick a chit with a name of the city – whatever name it would have would get “Bombed”. So, all in that quadrant will be counted “Out” of the game. The last man standing would be the winner. Interesting, ain’t it? … and scary too.

What an interesting concept for a game? It’s as if we have gradually learnt to find pun in the most horrifying of events. “Bomb blasts” have been so common in the last two decades that it seems we have learnt to live with it as if it were just another event that happens in our daily lives. The game here had people counted out of the game when bombed as if they had been killed during the bombing. Fun as it was to be a part of that game, I could not but help think to myself – how times have changed and how it does not bother us anymore – bombs, deaths and suffering.

It must have been around 4 o’clock in the evening of one of those wonderful Saturdays after a long stressful week in Delhi last year, I had stepped out of the house to visit Nehru Place to get myself a couple of 512 MB RAMs as my desktop had gotten a bit slow. I would have never remembered that day had it not been for the events that would follow. I am forgetful enough to forget what date today is but I still remember it was the 13^th of September. I had initially thought of calling up one of my friends and going to CP (Connaught Place). I could have visited the Planet M there and then walked through the Central Park to the other side and got myself one of those nice “Chococcinos” at CCD ( for the unitiated, that’s what we call Café Cofee Day – a retail coffee café chain in India). But then it crossed my mind that my desktop wasn’t running the way it should since quite a while and the weekend was my only chance to go to Nehru Place to grab those RAMs. By the time I was usually done with my office work it was always around 7:00 PM and that place closes down by that time.

By the time I got dressed up and caught an autorickshaw it was around 5:00. By the time I reached one of my usual stores in Nehru Place and bargained over the RAM, it was almost around 6:00. I made the payment and left for my apartment. I was alone so there was no point staying there. I reached home by 6:30 and immediately switched on the TV like I always did as a habit when I reach home to catch the evening news on CNN-IBN while changing into my casual wear. There was something that was being covered live – you can make that out from the way they were reporting it. I had moved to my bedroom to change my shirt but I walked back to my drawing room where the TV was placed to catch a glimpse of what was going on. When I saw what was playing, my mouth was left agape and I sat down on the chair for a minute. They were reporting a bomb blast in Ghaffar market that had happened at around 6:00 PM and then the news that just came in was that of two more at Connaught place – one at Barakhamba road and the other at Central Park between 6:30 and 6:35. And in minutes there were two more at GK-1. GK-1 was very close to Nehru Place. Five bombings in a span of just 15 – 20 minutes and they were saying Nehru Place could strategically and most probably be the next target. I was glued to the TV for the next hour and fortunately nothing happened. 15 minutes and 30 killed with more than 100 injured. It was surreal – I was just around a kilometre away from the place where the GK-1 blasts occurred just a few minutes back. They kept playing those footages of blood bathed men, women and children lying on the ground, carried on arms of other people, ambulances, police – it was absolute chaos and it was on every news channel - Images that could make the mightiest of hearts sore from watching all that pain and suffering.

That evening, I called Ma like I always did every other evening and she immediately asked where I was and if I was safe. I replied that I was home and safe. I didn’t share that I was not at home when it all happened and that I was just around a kilometre away from where the blasts occurred in GK-1. I knew she would be worried and she would also tell me about how I shouldn’t be outside in Delhi during the weekends – but aren’t weekends meant for going out and having some fun? Anyway, that’s a topic for discussion some other time.

I was restless all night that day thinking what if ... What if I went to CP that day instead of Nehru Place as I had previously planned? Logically I would have been right at the point of bombings calculating this that it takes around 45 minutes to reach CP and after a 15-20 mins in Planet M, I would have landed up at Central Park between 6:10 – 6:30. What if they had planted one in Nehru Place? GK-1 was not too far and Nehru Place is very well known and stays crowded during those hours with absolutely no police for security. Strategically, from a bomber’s point of view, it would have been a perfect place for attack but it didn’t happen. I was lying on my bed thinking all night – are the events in our lives predecided? Should I thank my stars that they didn’t bomb at Nehru Place or that I was reminded of those RAMs and changed my plans of visiting CP thus avoiding a fateful end to my predominantly uneventful (barring events like these) and useless life?

2008 was a year of Bomb Blasts – India had become a terrorist haven. It started with the Jaipur blasts in May followed by Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi and ended with the now infamous 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai. It was as if the complete security system of the country was asleep and there was a need for hard hitting events like these to shake them awake from their slumber. It’s not just the cops or the Border security force or the Government to blame, it’s us – the citizens of this country who are more to blame and so is the media. We crib, pout and grumble when we have to pass through security checks at the airports and malls, we complain when our celebrity is detained and has to go through a bit of frisking for security purposes and we are never alert of what’s going on around us. And to top all of that, we have grown callous to what happens when there are security breaches and bomb blasts and we have grown callous to all those pain and suffering. A year from the bombings, I was enjoying a game on Bombing – should I have found it offensive? No one else did and it was all for fun anyway but still …

Flower Frenzy

2009-12-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

In the last few weeks I went wild with my camera taking pics of flowers anywhere and everywhere I spotted them ... that is, only when they looked beautiful to my eyes. Here are a few picks from the lot -

Now a few more from our roof-top garden -