Mod+ 273. DR. HENRY BAUER, DOGMATIC SCIENCE WRONG ABOUT HIV-AIDS CONNECTION

Alex

Administrator
Why are African-American women are 20 times more likely to contract AIDS? And other modern scientific blunders.
273. You won't believe the explanation scientists offer.

POSTED ON APR 28 IN SKEPTICISM |

Distinguished professor, Dr. Henry Bauer, is perhaps the only person brave enough to tackle controversial subjects like the connection between HIV and AIDS.

Alex Tsakiris of Skeptiko interviews Dr. Henry Bauer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry & Science and author of Dogmatism in Science and Medicine, about scientific research and its dogmatic assertions.

Click here to listen on YouTube

 
Last edited by a moderator:
I enjoyed the interview, thanks Alex. Science as all human endeavor is a work in progress. The problem arises because people tend to put blind faith in science instead of taking things with a grain of salt. However this too is changing as people are becoming somewhat more skeptical of scientific studies which is a good thing.

I am a long term optimist. Things will change in science but not as fast as I would like to see them change and perhaps not in my life time to a significant degree. I think to maintain sanity it's best not to concentrate too much on changing the world but rather changing yourself. Do your thing by letting your light shine and let the chips fall where they may.
 
How bad is the problem with science?

About as bad as the problem with the communist system was leading up to its fall. The scientific establishment is under fire and it might appear that nothing is ever going to change. But I'm an optimist and it's possible that one or two of the big issues (such as anthropogenic global warming, HIV as the cause of AIDS, neo-Darwinism, etc.) will be definitively challenged, and more importantly, be accepted to have been so. It's not the lack of counter-evidence, or the courage of dissenters in trying to disseminate it, but in getting the matter accepted, especially by the mainstream media. I don't think you can suppress the truth indefinitely; sooner or later, the dam is going to break in a highly visible way.

I accept, like Dr. Brauer, that for the most part people on the wrong side of what will one day be history aren't out-and-out scoundrels (though some probably are). They genuinely believe the stance they take, and somehow manage to quell the cognitive dissonance. But from time to time, a few of them eventually break ranks, and it's a question of when critical mass will be reached. I think there are signs that that's a process that has already started, and that the Internet will have a part to play in it.

Brauer is right that one doesn't have to be an expert oneself to detect when an "expert" isn't actually addressing objections, and would dearly love to see contrarian views given their day in court; to see that orthodoxists don't have answers to substantive issues. We've got to be able to actually discuss such issues without fear or favour, and a world in which that could happen--let the chips fall as they may--would be a much healthier one.

It needs to become respectable again within academia to hold views that gainsay orthodoxy: in actual practice rather than in theoretical terms where it will doubtless be insisted that it's okay to follow the data wherever it leads (until, strangely, you begin to threaten a knowledge monopoly's source of funding, in which case not even a Nobel prize will be sufficient to protect you).
 
How bad is the problem with science?

About as bad as the problem with the communist system was leading up to its fall. The scientific establishment is under fire and it might appear that nothing is ever going to change. But I'm an optimist and it's possible that one or two of the big issues (such as anthropogenic global warming, HIV as the cause of AIDS, neo-Darwinism, etc.) will be definitively challenged, and more importantly, be accepted to have been so. It's not the lack of counter-evidence, or the courage of dissenters in trying to disseminate it, but in getting the matter accepted, especially by the mainstream media. I don't think you can suppress the truth indefinitely; sooner or later, the dam is going to break in a highly visible way.

I accept, like Dr. Brauer, that for the most part people on the wrong side of what will one day be history aren't out-and-out scoundrels (though some probably are). They genuinely believe the stance they take, and somehow manage to quell the cognitive dissonance. But from time to time, a few of them eventually break ranks, and it's a question of when critical mass will be reached. I think there are signs that that's a process that has already started, and that the Internet will have a part to play in it.

Brauer is right that one doesn't have to be an expert oneself to detect when an "expert" isn't actually addressing objections, and would dearly love to see contrarian views given their day in court; to see that orthodoxists don't have answers to substantive issues. We've got to be able to actually discuss such issues without fear or favour, and a world in which that could happen--let the chips fall as they may--would be a much healthier one.

It needs to become respectable again within academia to hold views that gainsay orthodoxy: in actual practice rather than in theoretical terms where it will doubtless be insisted that it's okay to follow the data wherever it leads (until, strangely, you begin to threaten a knowledge monopoly's source of funding, in which case not even a Nobel prize will be sufficient to protect you).

You make a good point... I mean, maybe the damn will break and there will be a come-to-Jesus moment for science-as-we-know-it.
 
People might find this video relevant:


(subsequent parts available at the end of part 1)

In the latter part, Sheldrake says it'll be a bit like the gay revolution--more and more people will begin to come out until at a critical point, it will be okay to question orthodoxy.
 
Last edited:
"How bad is it?"

I thnk the situation is pretty bad. As I've been saying, the problems are:

Naturalism
They way science is funded creates an incentive for fraud
The politicization of science
Science journalism
Misuse and abuse of statistical methods.

I'm sure there will be scientific crisis in the US and we will solve it as effectively as we have solved this country's other problems in the past. For example as effectively as we solved the problem of illegal immigration in 1986, as effectively as we solved the banking crises 1929, and 1989, as effectively as we dealt with the crises in Iraq in 1990, 2003. The fact that we had another banking crisis 2007, that illegal immigration is still a huge issue today, and Iraq is in chaos is why I have very little hope that the problems of science will be fixed anytime soon. It is not just science that is broken, politics is broken too.



References:

...
Most published research findings are false:
http://www.economist.com/news/scien...w-institute-has-you-its-sights-metaphysicians

Scientists have to lie and cheat to compete for research funding.
Retraction watch.
http://retractionwatch.com/

Science is so hoplessly politicized that you can't trust any scientific finding (see below).
...

Video on the politicization of science.
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/video-on-the-politicization-of-science.2072/
...
Appointmentt of Scientific Ideologues
...
Stretching The Scientific Data
...
Coercive Utopianism
School lunch program that doesn't consider the needs of student atheletes or expectant mothers.
Secret Science
EPA refusal to release data to .. people they don't like.
Enlisting Science in the Culture War
...
The Rise of Totalarian Science

Ecology
Coercive measures to control population. "The life of a newborn baby is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog or a chimpanzee." Peter Singer

Medicine and Biotethics
NBC (tv network): "It's pro-science to abort children with genetic defects" when such abortions are a question of ethics not science.

Faith & Science
...
Free Speech

Abuse of forensic science:
http://www.skeptiko-forum.com/threads/video-on-the-politicization-of-science.2072/page-2#post-65901

http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/der-spiegel-discovers-the-truth-from-science/

Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading news magazine, organized an interview with three university professors last week: Dr. Ernst Peter Fischer, professor for the History of Science at the University of Heidelberg, Dr. Holger Wormer, professor for Journalism at the University of Dortmund (who also studied Chemistry), and Dr. Corinna Lüthje, professor for Communications at the Technical University of Dresden. Though not necessarily intended, the discussion gave a good counter, from scientists, to those people (atheist and otherwise), who have been asserting for years that science, not religion has the truth.
...
Because of increased pressure to justify research, Dr. Wormer noted, we now have scientific advertising. And the media are altogether too credulous. In one particular instance, Dr. Lüthje tells us, one Austrian science journalist said to her, “Please understand me, I just can’t criticize a professor.”
...
“We need more journalists who will pose critical questions to Nobel Prize winners,” he said.
...
Der Spiegel protested all of this discussion with the statement, that what they hear is that “journalists want to earn money, whereas scientists are only seeking the truth.” This brought loud guffaws from all three. “Scientists,” answered Dr. Fischer, “want success; they want a wife, a hotel room, an invitation, or perhaps a car!"
...
Here are people in the scientific world, specializing in communication of science to the public, who are urgently calling for more critical thinking and questioning in their area of endeavor. No one in the interview would say that there is no truth to science. But these people also tell us that truth is not the domain of science
....
http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/...ech-mit-wormer-fischer-luethje-a-1014716.html

“journalists want to earn money, whereas scientists are only seeking the truth.” This brought loud guffaws from all three [professors]. “Scientists,” answered Dr. Fischer, “want success; they want a wife, a hotel room, an invitation, or perhaps a car!"

Rupert Sheldrake:

http://www.thebestschools.org/features/rupert-sheldrake-interview/
...
Over the course of the twentieth century, the atmosphere within biology became increasingly intolerant,
...
In the nineteenth century, many of the most creative scientists were not professionals. For example, Charles Darwin was an amateur naturalist living on a private income, with no academic post or government grant. He was much freer as a result.
...
Now, the vast majority of scientists rely on salaries and are far more aware of peer-group pressure. In fact, the peer-review system for jobs, grant applications, and publication of papers in journals means that peer pressure dominates their lives.
...​
Overall, I would say that due to the way science is funded, public money being is misspent on shoddy unreplicable research and because of the materialist paradigm, important areas for research are being ignored.

"Everything Science tells us about the physical universe is ultimately wrong if it fails to recognize the fundamental nature of consciousness and the underlying role of consciousness in every physical phenomenon that occurs."

I don't see how Science can be right about anything as long as the consciousnesses of scientists don't understand themselves and their own role in the existence of the physical universe. The materialist, naturalist world view of most scientists ignores the fact that consciousness is fundamental and all matter is dependent on consciousness for its existence. Everything Science tells us about the physical universe is ultimately wrong if it fails to recognize the fundamental nature of consciousness and the underlying role of consciousness in every physical phenomenon that occurs. Double slit experiments, quantum entanglement, and the quantum Zeno effect demonstrate this role yet scientists refuse to accept it along with the many other independent forms of evidence demonstrating that consciousness is not produced by the brain. Consciousness cannot be produced by any physical process. How could the changing concentration of ions across the membranes of brain cells produce what the color blue looks like to you? The brain might store data about the wavelength of light falling on the retina, or it might perform calculations on that data, but how could a computational device produce the subjective experience of what a color looks like? Consciousness is fundamentally different from any physical property or process and therefore cannot be produced by the brain. What could be more important to Science than the huge gaps this reveals in the scientific world view? What could be more important to humanity? Science has failed at its most basic and fundamental duty. When Science adopted naturalism it ironically left religion as the best source of information about consciousness and the origin of matter. Until science gives up naturalism and corrects its mistakes, Science will never be the what it claims to be: an objective search for truth.
 
Last edited:
I really enjoyed the interview and Dr. Bauer . . . Of course I agree with so many of the ideas . . . The only aspect brought up in the interview that I'm uncertain of is the HIV issue itself. I partially, but not fully, follow the implications of what was discussed. At any rate, I'd like to hear others' thoughts on the HIV aspect . . .
 
I really enjoyed the interview and Dr. Bauer . . . Of course I agree with so many of the ideas . . . The only aspect brought up in the interview that I'm uncertain of is the HIV issue itself. I partially, but not fully, follow the implications of what was discussed. At any rate, I'd like to hear others' thoughts on the HIV aspect . . .

I hadn't heard about the studies showing significant numbers of women were HIV positive when most AIDS sufferers were gay men. That would seem to suggest HIV does not cause AIDS. I would like to see some references on that. Could it be explained by the delay between contracting the virus and showing AIDS symptoms? Or a problem with the test for HIV? Or have something to do with the way AIDS is diagnosed?

One of the problems in proving HIV causes AIDS is that part of the protocol for proving a virus causes a disease is to infect a healthy organism with the purified virus and then observe the organism contract the disease. You can't do that on humans so how else can you prove a virus causes AIDS.

http://forum.mind-energy.net/forum/...8-the-fls-medicine-thread?p=130070#post130070
http://pathmicro.med.sc.edu/lecture/hiv13a.htm (Read the whole thing.)

Postulate 3: After isolation and culture, the infectious agent can induce the disease in another individual. The infectious agent can then be isolated from the newly infected host.

In the case of HIV which only causes disease in humans, this is difficult to do as there is, naturally, a lack of volunteers. However, this postulate has been satisfied by the following evidence:


Cloned simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) causes an AIDS-like disease within a year in macaques. Characteristics of the disease are low CD4+ T4 cell count and opportunistic infections such as pneumocystis pneumonia.



HIV2, which is closely related to HIV1 and cause AIDS in western Africa, can cause AIDS in some moneys such as baboons. Again specific CD4+ cell loss was observed.



The best evidence comes from a laboratory accident that occurred in the late 1980's. Three laboratory workers who worked with the virus became infected with purified cloned HIV1. After 5 to 7 years, all three had low CD4+ T4 cell counts and one had developed pneumocystis pneumonia and died. They were serologically positive for HIV. The HIV from all three patients was sequenced and found to be the same as the virus with which they appeared to be infected. One got the virus by a puncture wound when handling a centrifuge used for HIV concentration, one through mucous membrane and facial exposure and the other had direct contact with the virus though the actual route of infection was not known.

None of the three had lifestyles that would predict the possibility of AIDS. The report of the accident was published in 1993 and so the infections clearly occurred several years before that. The laboratory worker who developed pneumocystis pneumonia had not received AZT (which Duesberg has implicated as a possible cause of AIDS).

Thus, all three exposed patients had severe immunodeficiency (as a result of specific CD4 cell loss) after being infected with HIV.
In 1994, Jon Cohen (Science vol 266, p 1647) asked Duesberg about his position on HIV as a result of the reports of the three lab workers. Duesberg did not agree that Koch's postulates had been satisfied. He pointed out that as of December 1994, 2 of the 3 lab workers did not have opportunistic infections but did not address the one person who did.

The HIV skeptics act like it's a conspiracy or incompetence, but how are you going to test a lethal virus that only causes disease humans?
 
Last edited:
I'm sure there will be scientific crisis in the US and we will solve it as effectively as we have solved this country's other problems in the past. For example as effectively as we solved the problem of illegal immigration in 1986, as effectively as we solved the banking crises 1929, and 1989, as effectively as we dealt with the crises in Iraq in 1990, 2003. The fact that we had another banking crisis 2007, that illegal immigration is still a huge issue today, and Iraq is in chaos is why I have very little hope that the problems of science will be fixed anytime soon. It is not just science that is broken, politics is broken too.

Luckily, America and even the West in general ain't the whole world, and the rest of it is developing. In the East, they're more open to certain areas of dispute such as in medicine, global warming and energy research. Western contrarians like Luc Montagnier have the opportunity to up sticks and take their research to China, where journals are more inclined to publish their work. Imagine what might happen should the Chinese come across some great discovery--such as finding a new source of energy--that depended on holding a different world view. If the West's economic dominance is challenged on account of being tied to outdated paradigms, there's a chance that it will change, provided it isn't by then too late.
 
Luckily, America and even the West in general ain't the whole world, and the rest of it is developing. In the East, they're more open to certain areas of dispute such as in medicine, global warming and energy research. Western contrarians like Luc Montagnier have the opportunity to up sticks and take their research to China, where journals are more inclined to publish their work. Imagine what might happen should the Chinese come across some great discovery--such as finding a new source of energy--that depended on holding a different world view. If the West's economic dominance is challenged on account of being tied to outdated paradigms, there's a chance that it will change, provided it isn't by then too late.
great point... BRIC could easily spark a breakthru.
 
This interview absolutely hit the nail on the head!

How bad is the problem with science?

I think I am starting to agree with Alex - that modern science is really running off the rails - it just lives on the glories of the past. Only areas that are pinned down by the need to produce a working product can be trusted! That doesn't include medical products.

If anyone is interested in the medical side of this, here is a great book, written by a medical practitioner:

http://www.doctoringdata.co.uk/

It shows how medical researchers treat evidence, and some of the ways that medicine ends up causing damage - my brush with statins has me very wary of doctors unless I go in with a definite problem!

In the area of particle physics (not mentioned on the podcast), I'd recommend:

http://www.alexander-unzicker.com/

There are loads of books on Global Warming.

If HIV != AIDS the worldwide consequences have been horrendous. People (including babies) have been fed highly poisonous drugs that have killed and injured individuals who just happened to be tested for HIV (vaguely analogous to being tested for cholesterol levels and being fed statins). These people have also been hugely stigmatised. Vast sums of money have also been wasted chasing a red herring. Henry Bauer goes into a lot of detail as to why he thinks HIV != AIDS, and as he said in the podcast - why don't people who hold the orthodox view debate the matter in open with him.

David
 
I hadn't heard about the studies showing significant numbers of women were HIV positive when most AIDS sufferers were gay men. That would seem to suggest HIV does not cause AIDS. I would like to see some references on that. Could it be explained by the delay between contracting the virus and showing AIDS symptoms? Or a problem with the test for HIV? Or have something to do with the way AIDS is diagnosed?

Henry Bauer's site contains lots of articles (distinct from his blog) that are fully referenced. Another strange feature of HIV tests, is that you are more likely to test positive while pregnant or while suffering from flu.

David
 
Henry Bauer scares me. I believe he thinks that HIV is targeting black people and is supernatural in origin.
What he actually believes, is that HIV does not cause AIDS, but that what AIDS really is, is less clear. It is well worth looking at his site to understand what he is saying - which is most certainly not supernatural.

He has a lot of evidence regarding the epidemiology of AIDS. At a very superficial level, I am sure that many of us (above a certain age!) thought that AIDS would be catastrophic. A fatal sexually transmitted disease with a 10 year incubation period, is just about as bad as it gets - yet 30 years on,that just has not happened - except perhaps in Africa. His ideas include the following:

Gay men were falling ill from something to do with their version of anal sex - one theory is that AIDS is a severe disturbance to the gut flora.

The definition of AIDS has morphed over the years, and now has symptoms that look suspiciously like the (very unpleasant) side effects of the drugs used to treat it.

The HIV test is non-specific - it reacts to things that are nothing to do with AIDS. See this instance where these ideas were tested in court:

https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/20...-likely-to-be-spread-through-unprotected-sex/

In Africa, he thinks AIDS gets confused with many other diseases such as TB. This is because many people who get diseases such as TB are assumed to have AIDS, that reduced their immunity. Very few such people are ever given a proper autopsy.

He thinks that perfectly well black people often come up positive to the test - for some obscure biological reason. Since you are more likely to show positive if you are pregnant, we are obviously dealing with a pretty strange sort of test!

I don't know enough to begin to defend or attack his theory, but there is no point in just inventing a straw man.

David
 
It scares me that people seem to be queueing up to endorse this kind of nonsense.
 
What he actually believes, is that HIV does not cause AIDS, but that what AIDS really is, is less clear. It is well worth looking at his site to understand what he is saying - which is most certainly not supernatural.

He has a lot of evidence regarding the epidemiology of AIDS. At a very superficial level, I am sure that many of us (above a certain age!) thought that AIDS would be catastrophic. A fatal sexually transmitted disease with a 10 year incubation period, is just about as bad as it gets - yet 30 years on,that just has not happened - except perhaps in Africa. His ideas include the following:

Gay men were falling ill from something to do with their version of anal sex - one theory is that AIDS is a severe disturbance to the gut flora.

The definition of AIDS has morphed over the years, and now has symptoms that look suspiciously like the (very unpleasant) side effects of the drugs used to treat it.

The HIV test is non-specific - it reacts to things that are nothing to do with AIDS. See this instance where these ideas were tested in court:

https://hivskeptic.wordpress.com/20...-likely-to-be-spread-through-unprotected-sex/

In Africa, he thinks AIDS gets confused with many other diseases such as TB. This is because many people who get diseases such as TB are assumed to have AIDS, that reduced their immunity. Very few such people are ever given a proper autopsy.

He thinks that perfectly well black people often come up positive to the test - for some obscure biological reason. Since you are more likely to show positive if you are pregnant, we are obviously dealing with a pretty strange sort of test!

I don't know enough to begin to defend or attack his theory, but there is no point in just inventing a straw man.

David

If one wants to learn about Bauer's views on HIV-AIDS connection in the most precise detail, one should look at his masterpiece - "The Case against HIV" compendium. This is the sum of argumentation against HIV-AIDS theory, with 900+ links to original sources (or to Bauer's blogposts which, in turn, contain links to original sources). It's hard to imagine what kind of work was needed to bring these masses of data together - this is essentially a result of many years of Bauer's inquiry into the topic.

BTW, an important correction - according to Bauer, the cause for the first, gay men's AIDS was not anal sex in particular, but "fast-lane" lifestyle, which included wild and excessive overuse of recreational psychoactive drugs (as well as many other drugs, such as antibiotics). He mentions anal sex version as hypothetical, but not strongly supported - drug-based destruction of one's immune system is much more important for him.
 
What he actually believes, is that HIV does not cause AIDS, but that what AIDS really is, is less clear. It is well worth looking at his site to understand what he is saying - which is most certainly not supernatural.

No, he is suggesting that it is supernatural, which makes me question him as an authority on anything. Here are some of his direct quotes.
-The properties of HIV are so unusual, indeed actually unique, that one has been tempted at times to consider them supernatural.
-It is quite politically incorrect, choosing to infect black people at rates 7-20 times greater than it infects white people
-It is difficult not to see in this a number of clues, signs, omens, that something supernatural is at work......Something or someone somewhere is somehow sending us a message.
 
Back
Top