Showing posts with label AIDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AIDS. Show all posts
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
I guess AIDS has failed its mission. What comes next?
Sub-Saharan Africa: The Population Emergency
The prime effect of this exceptional, continuing population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is its role as a major handicap to economic and social development of most of the region's countries. The conclusion from the research is that if the African nations want to take up the double challenge of their demographic transition and reduction of their poverty, development policies must be completely rethought.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the 20th Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region's population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050.
The report of a demographic study, coordinated by the Centre Population et Developpement (CEPED), commissioned by the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), was published recently. The work was performed by a joint team involving scientists from the IRD and specialist academics from Belgium, Cameroon, France and the Ivory Coast (2). They examined the recent and projected future population trends in Sub-Saharan Africa and the relationships between these tendencies and the development of the region.
This review effectively demolished some generally accepted ideas, in particular the one that Sub-Saharan Africa is underpopulated.
Today, two out of three inhabitants of this large region of Africa are under 25 years of age (twice the number prevailing in Europe) and, with 32 inhabitants per km2, Sub-Saharan Africa is more densely populated on average than Latin America (28 inhabitants/km2). And although two-thirds of its population still live in rural areas, massive migration to the towns and cities is under way. Thus, whereas in 1960, just one city, Johannesburg, had a population of over one million, Africa now has about 40 of them.
At the present rate of rural exodus, half Sub-Saharan Africa's population would be urban dwellers by 2030. This transition should be met by huge investments in construction of new infrastructures, wastewater drainage and treatment and refuse reprocessing in the great agglomerations, whose management threatens to become more and more problematic.
Intra-regional migration, another safety valve for relieving the ongoing densification of the rural sphere, is severely disrupted by the conflicts and crises affecting several host countries. The possibilities for emigration to industrialized countries are increasingly subject to control and are more difficult, particularly for the migration candidates with few qualifications.
Moreover, the risks of population decrease linked to Aids appear to be receding. This factor stems especially from more effective prevention campaigns and improved access to health care. The latest UNAIDS assessments made using more reliable data brought the proportion of the African population infected by HIV to a lower figure, now put at about 5%. No country should therefore see its population decrease owing simply to the Aids epidemic.
A parallel factor at work is fecundity, equal to or higher than 5 children per woman. This is two to three times higher as in the rest of the world, an important factor being that four out of five African women live in countries where there is little access to contraception. Indeed less than 20% of women use modern contraceptive methods, as against 60% or more in Latin America and Asia.
The fact that the use of contraception is progressing very slowly contributes to the strong population growth. Yet the control by women and couples over their fecundity remains the essential lever by which Sub-Saharan Africa might achieve its demographic transition. However, campaigns promoting the balanced family such as those successfully run in other developing countries (Bangladesh, Jamaica for instance) have never really been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Thus, whereas the overall demographic trend points towards a stabilization of world population, that of Africa is continuing on a substantial rise. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's least advanced region in terms of the move towards demographic transition. The area is also behind in the development process. In 2004 for example, only six countries out of 48 obtained a growth rate equal to or greater than 7%, the threshold considered essential for achieving the first MDO-in other words the halving of poverty between now and 2015.
The prime effect of this exceptional, continuing population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is its role as a major handicap to economic and social development of most of the region's countries. The conclusion from the research is that if the African nations want to take up the double challenge of their demographic transition and reduction of their poverty, development policies must be completely rethought.
It is by the adoption and implementation of policies hinged on combined actions-involving education, prevention of mortality, equitable access to health care and to family planning-that changes bringing advances and improved living standards could be generated in Sub-Saharan Africa. This perspective makes it imperative to place the population question, one of the crucial issues for the future of most of the countries concerned, at the core of their development policies.
(1) The CEPED is about to become a mixed research unit bringing together researchers from the French Institut national d'etudes demographiques (INED), the IRD and the Universite Paris Descartes.
(2) The Millennium Development Objectives by the United Nations set in 2000 range from the halving of extreme poverty to primary education for all, by way of a halt to the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015.
(3) These studies were conducted jointly with scientists from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the Institut de formation et de recherche demographique (IFORD) of Yaounde (Cameroon), the Ecole nationale superieure de statistique et d'economie appliquee (ENSEA) in Abidjan (Ivory Coast and Universite Paris X Nanterre (France).
Original article posted here.
The prime effect of this exceptional, continuing population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is its role as a major handicap to economic and social development of most of the region's countries. The conclusion from the research is that if the African nations want to take up the double challenge of their demographic transition and reduction of their poverty, development policies must be completely rethought.
Sub-Saharan Africa has been experiencing phenomenal population growth since the beginning of the 20th Century, following several centuries of population stagnation attributable to the slave trade and colonization. The region's population in fact increased from 100 million in 1900 to 770 million in 2005. The latest United Nations projections, published in March 2007, envisaged a figure of 1.5 to 2 billion inhabitants being reached between the present and 2050.
The report of a demographic study, coordinated by the Centre Population et Developpement (CEPED), commissioned by the Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), was published recently. The work was performed by a joint team involving scientists from the IRD and specialist academics from Belgium, Cameroon, France and the Ivory Coast (2). They examined the recent and projected future population trends in Sub-Saharan Africa and the relationships between these tendencies and the development of the region.
This review effectively demolished some generally accepted ideas, in particular the one that Sub-Saharan Africa is underpopulated.
Today, two out of three inhabitants of this large region of Africa are under 25 years of age (twice the number prevailing in Europe) and, with 32 inhabitants per km2, Sub-Saharan Africa is more densely populated on average than Latin America (28 inhabitants/km2). And although two-thirds of its population still live in rural areas, massive migration to the towns and cities is under way. Thus, whereas in 1960, just one city, Johannesburg, had a population of over one million, Africa now has about 40 of them.
At the present rate of rural exodus, half Sub-Saharan Africa's population would be urban dwellers by 2030. This transition should be met by huge investments in construction of new infrastructures, wastewater drainage and treatment and refuse reprocessing in the great agglomerations, whose management threatens to become more and more problematic.
Intra-regional migration, another safety valve for relieving the ongoing densification of the rural sphere, is severely disrupted by the conflicts and crises affecting several host countries. The possibilities for emigration to industrialized countries are increasingly subject to control and are more difficult, particularly for the migration candidates with few qualifications.
Moreover, the risks of population decrease linked to Aids appear to be receding. This factor stems especially from more effective prevention campaigns and improved access to health care. The latest UNAIDS assessments made using more reliable data brought the proportion of the African population infected by HIV to a lower figure, now put at about 5%. No country should therefore see its population decrease owing simply to the Aids epidemic.
A parallel factor at work is fecundity, equal to or higher than 5 children per woman. This is two to three times higher as in the rest of the world, an important factor being that four out of five African women live in countries where there is little access to contraception. Indeed less than 20% of women use modern contraceptive methods, as against 60% or more in Latin America and Asia.
The fact that the use of contraception is progressing very slowly contributes to the strong population growth. Yet the control by women and couples over their fecundity remains the essential lever by which Sub-Saharan Africa might achieve its demographic transition. However, campaigns promoting the balanced family such as those successfully run in other developing countries (Bangladesh, Jamaica for instance) have never really been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Thus, whereas the overall demographic trend points towards a stabilization of world population, that of Africa is continuing on a substantial rise. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the world's least advanced region in terms of the move towards demographic transition. The area is also behind in the development process. In 2004 for example, only six countries out of 48 obtained a growth rate equal to or greater than 7%, the threshold considered essential for achieving the first MDO-in other words the halving of poverty between now and 2015.
The prime effect of this exceptional, continuing population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa is its role as a major handicap to economic and social development of most of the region's countries. The conclusion from the research is that if the African nations want to take up the double challenge of their demographic transition and reduction of their poverty, development policies must be completely rethought.
It is by the adoption and implementation of policies hinged on combined actions-involving education, prevention of mortality, equitable access to health care and to family planning-that changes bringing advances and improved living standards could be generated in Sub-Saharan Africa. This perspective makes it imperative to place the population question, one of the crucial issues for the future of most of the countries concerned, at the core of their development policies.
(1) The CEPED is about to become a mixed research unit bringing together researchers from the French Institut national d'etudes demographiques (INED), the IRD and the Universite Paris Descartes.
(2) The Millennium Development Objectives by the United Nations set in 2000 range from the halving of extreme poverty to primary education for all, by way of a halt to the spread of HIV/Aids by 2015.
(3) These studies were conducted jointly with scientists from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the Institut de formation et de recherche demographique (IFORD) of Yaounde (Cameroon), the Ecole nationale superieure de statistique et d'economie appliquee (ENSEA) in Abidjan (Ivory Coast and Universite Paris X Nanterre (France).
Original article posted here.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Uh oh, looks like Africans might be waking up to the reality of why they have AIDS
Africa: Black Africa Was Bombed With Aids
On the sidelines of the African HIV/AIDS conference which opened yesterday November 29 in Accra, Public Agenda plays back incriminating evidence that HIV (1) was created in a United States laboratory and funded by the U.S. Congress specifically to reduce Black African population.
According to orthodox dogma in the 1980s, AIDS is caused by HIV, a natural virus that, by one account, allegedly crossed over from monkeys into the human population in Africa.
Though that is the view maintained by the governments of the west and by their medical and scientific establishments and disseminated by the western global media, it has not gained universal assent from independent scientists across the world.
Alerted by the many anomalies in the epidemiology of AIDS, a small growing number of scientific researchers began, by the mid 1980s, to put forward the Alternative AIDS Hypothesis: that AIDS is the product of a lab-made virus, a Biological Warfare Weapon, which somehow got deployed on Africans and other deliberately targeted groups.
Here is the evidence. In July 1969, Dr. MacArthur, Director of the U.S. Army Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) appeared before Congress (the Appropriations Committee of the House) and stated: " within a period of 5-10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."
ARPA requested $10 million to develop AIDS, 10 years before the virus was identified in the field. Dr. MacArthur added, "It is a highly controversial issue and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to another method of massive killing of large populations."
From 1961 to 1968 while this artificial biological agent was under discussion in the pentagon, Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense. Clark Clifford (of BCCI notoriety) took over as Secretary in 1969.
On October 2, 1970 just 15 months after Dr. MacArthur requested an appropriation for AIDS development, Robert McNamara, who later became World Bank President, made a speech to international bankers in which he identified population growth as "the gravest issue that the world faces over the years ahead."
In his speech to the bankers, McNamara argued that population growth was leading to instability, that a 10 billion world population would not be "controllable." Said McNamara, "It is not a world that any of us would want to live in. Is such a world inevitable? It is not sure but there are two possible ways by which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly or the current death rates must go up.
There is no other way.". . . In brief, Robert McNamara was justifying the development of AIDS at the very time he was contemplating the idea that "world death rates must go up." THIS IS MORE THAN COINCIDENCE. Our conclusion is that Robert McNamara knowingly encouraged development of AIDS as a means to reduce the worlds' Population. It is difficult to arrive at any other Conclusion. Matching the time frames and the opportunities for decision making there is at least a prima facie case, well worth investigating, that Robert McNamara knowingly and deliberately encouraged development of the AIDS virus.
Phoenix Letter views the McNamara program, continued by Clark Clifford, as genocide. . . . By 1972, the World Health Organization called on scientists to work on such viruses "to see if viruses can in fact exert selective effects on the immune function." (WHO is supposedly devoted to "health" progress and financed in part by the U.S. taxpayer on this supposition. See Bulletin of World Health Organization, 1972, 47:257-63.)
(Phoenix Letter, http://www.apfn.org ; APFN@apfn.org)
Dr. Boyd E. Graves, J.D., a renowned medical researcher spent time and resources trying to prove that HIV (1) was created in the laboratory and financed by the United States government. In his research he developed a 'flow chart' to prove the existence of a coordinated research program to develop a cancer virus that depletes the immune system . . .
According to the evidence, Graves recently presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, the secret virus program spent 15 years and $550 million dollars to create and mass produce a human immune suppressing virus which is known today as HIV/AIDS.
Graves' flow chart has received worldwide praise by other independent researchers who reviewed his work.
In a paper presented at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, Chinweizu, the renowned Nigerian author and Pan Africanist par excellence questioned why the confusion surrounding the origin of AIDS remains supported the 'paper trail' for a prima facie case that AIDS is indeed a bioweapon of mass destruction invented by the US Government, and deployed in Africa for premeditated genocide.
In his view, the creation of bioweapons that target only the black-skinned takes the race war to a new level and further challenges us to look to our survival.
Chinweizu says if a cure exists, and was known to the inventors of AIDS, including Dr Robert Gallo, even before the disease was let loose on humanity, why is that the cure not being aggressively used to end the plague?
"We should note that widespread use of any cures would defeat the genocidal purpose for which the AIDS virus was invented. So the powers that commissioned AIDS have, presumably, worked to prevent general knowledge and use of any cures. Instead they promote the use of ARVs [Anti-Retroviral drugs] that don't cure AIDS, but instead, earn mountains of money for the pharmaceutical companies", he pointed out.
He urged African governments to investigate news that a cure for AIDS has been found and if verified, African governments should team up to compel the western pharmaceutical companies to release the to rid Africa of the AIDS plague.
Original article posted here.
And bad news regarding AIDS lab created cousin, Ebola
Ryu report - Download MP3 (226k) 
Listen to Ryu report
Dr. Zaramba says he was dismayed to learn this week that some of the blood samples sent to the laboratories had tested positive for the virus that causes Ebola.
On the sidelines of the African HIV/AIDS conference which opened yesterday November 29 in Accra, Public Agenda plays back incriminating evidence that HIV (1) was created in a United States laboratory and funded by the U.S. Congress specifically to reduce Black African population.
According to orthodox dogma in the 1980s, AIDS is caused by HIV, a natural virus that, by one account, allegedly crossed over from monkeys into the human population in Africa.
Though that is the view maintained by the governments of the west and by their medical and scientific establishments and disseminated by the western global media, it has not gained universal assent from independent scientists across the world.
Alerted by the many anomalies in the epidemiology of AIDS, a small growing number of scientific researchers began, by the mid 1980s, to put forward the Alternative AIDS Hypothesis: that AIDS is the product of a lab-made virus, a Biological Warfare Weapon, which somehow got deployed on Africans and other deliberately targeted groups.
Here is the evidence. In July 1969, Dr. MacArthur, Director of the U.S. Army Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) appeared before Congress (the Appropriations Committee of the House) and stated: " within a period of 5-10 years it would be possible to produce a synthetic biological agent, an agent that does not naturally exist and for which no natural immunity could have been acquired."
ARPA requested $10 million to develop AIDS, 10 years before the virus was identified in the field. Dr. MacArthur added, "It is a highly controversial issue and there are many who believe such research should not be undertaken lest it lead to another method of massive killing of large populations."
From 1961 to 1968 while this artificial biological agent was under discussion in the pentagon, Robert McNamara was Secretary of Defense. Clark Clifford (of BCCI notoriety) took over as Secretary in 1969.
On October 2, 1970 just 15 months after Dr. MacArthur requested an appropriation for AIDS development, Robert McNamara, who later became World Bank President, made a speech to international bankers in which he identified population growth as "the gravest issue that the world faces over the years ahead."
In his speech to the bankers, McNamara argued that population growth was leading to instability, that a 10 billion world population would not be "controllable." Said McNamara, "It is not a world that any of us would want to live in. Is such a world inevitable? It is not sure but there are two possible ways by which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly or the current death rates must go up.
There is no other way.". . . In brief, Robert McNamara was justifying the development of AIDS at the very time he was contemplating the idea that "world death rates must go up." THIS IS MORE THAN COINCIDENCE. Our conclusion is that Robert McNamara knowingly encouraged development of AIDS as a means to reduce the worlds' Population. It is difficult to arrive at any other Conclusion. Matching the time frames and the opportunities for decision making there is at least a prima facie case, well worth investigating, that Robert McNamara knowingly and deliberately encouraged development of the AIDS virus.
Phoenix Letter views the McNamara program, continued by Clark Clifford, as genocide. . . . By 1972, the World Health Organization called on scientists to work on such viruses "to see if viruses can in fact exert selective effects on the immune function." (WHO is supposedly devoted to "health" progress and financed in part by the U.S. taxpayer on this supposition. See Bulletin of World Health Organization, 1972, 47:257-63.)
(Phoenix Letter, http://www.apfn.org ; APFN@apfn.org)
Dr. Boyd E. Graves, J.D., a renowned medical researcher spent time and resources trying to prove that HIV (1) was created in the laboratory and financed by the United States government. In his research he developed a 'flow chart' to prove the existence of a coordinated research program to develop a cancer virus that depletes the immune system . . .
According to the evidence, Graves recently presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, the secret virus program spent 15 years and $550 million dollars to create and mass produce a human immune suppressing virus which is known today as HIV/AIDS.
Graves' flow chart has received worldwide praise by other independent researchers who reviewed his work.
In a paper presented at the Nigeria Institute of International Affairs, Chinweizu, the renowned Nigerian author and Pan Africanist par excellence questioned why the confusion surrounding the origin of AIDS remains supported the 'paper trail' for a prima facie case that AIDS is indeed a bioweapon of mass destruction invented by the US Government, and deployed in Africa for premeditated genocide.
In his view, the creation of bioweapons that target only the black-skinned takes the race war to a new level and further challenges us to look to our survival.
Chinweizu says if a cure exists, and was known to the inventors of AIDS, including Dr Robert Gallo, even before the disease was let loose on humanity, why is that the cure not being aggressively used to end the plague?
"We should note that widespread use of any cures would defeat the genocidal purpose for which the AIDS virus was invented. So the powers that commissioned AIDS have, presumably, worked to prevent general knowledge and use of any cures. Instead they promote the use of ARVs [Anti-Retroviral drugs] that don't cure AIDS, but instead, earn mountains of money for the pharmaceutical companies", he pointed out.
He urged African governments to investigate news that a cure for AIDS has been found and if verified, African governments should team up to compel the western pharmaceutical companies to release the to rid Africa of the AIDS plague.
Original article posted here.
And bad news regarding AIDS lab created cousin, Ebola
| New Ebola Strain Blamed for Killing 16 in Uganda | |
| |
Listen to Ryu report
Health officials in Uganda say they have identified a strain of the deadly Ebola virus as the likely killer of at least 16 people in the west of the country since late August. But as VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu reports from our East Africa Bureau in Nairobi, officials are baffled and worried by what they believe is a new strain of the hemorrhagic fever.
The director general of Uganda's health services, Dr. Sam Zaramba, tells VOA that scientists in South Africa and the United States conducted numerous laboratory tests to determine the cause of the deaths across 14 villages in the western district of Bundibugyo.
 |
| Electron micrograph of Ebola virus |
"The first three samples of blood that we sent proved negative of hemorrhagic [fever] disease," he said. "But early this week, we sent another 20 samples and out of the 20 samples, eight of them were positive for Ebola."
The disease was first identified more than 30 years ago in Sudan and in Congo Kinshasa. It spreads rapidly and kills between 50 to 90 percent of infected people. There is also no known cure.
Dr. Zaramba says the current outbreak in western Uganda is particularly worrisome because it is a strain of the Ebola virus that scientists have never seen before.
"It is definitely different. Even the symptoms are different," said Dr. Zaramba. "Whereas the other ones are characterized by bleeding from orifices, this particular one, instead of the bleeding, we have a rash, measles-type of rash."
Since 1976, four sub-types of the hemorrhagic fever have been identified, all but one being lethal to humans. Common symptoms include extremely high fever and bleeding from openings in the body.
Dr. Zaramba says he believes the new virus spreads much like the other strains - through close contact with the body fluids of an infected person or someone who has died of the disease.
He says a new team of experts has traveled to Bundibugyo to help isolate existing cases.
Bundibugyo District is 350 kilometers west of the Ugandan capital Kampala and is not linked to another Ebola outbreak in neighboring Congo Kinshasa. The World Health Organization says it believes Ebola has killed 160 people and has infected 352 others for the past four months in the southern Congolese province of Kasai Occidental.
The last Ebola outbreak in Uganda occurred seven years ago in the northern district of Gulu. Of 426 people diagnosed with the disease, more than 170 died.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Attack of the man-made pathogens
World Faces Threat From New Deadly Diseases As Scientists Struggle To Keep Up, Say Experts
Infectious illness spreads at fastest rate in history
Infectious illness spreads at fastest rate in history
by Polly Curtis
The world will face a new deadly threat on the scale of Aids, Sars and Ebola within a decade, the world’s leading authority on health said yesterday, as it warned that diseases were spreading more quickly than at any time in history.New diseases are emerging at an unprecedented rate, of one a year, and are becoming more difficult to treat, says the World Health Organisation’s annual report. It paints a bleak picture of future health threats, with science struggling to keep up as diseases increasingly become drug resistant.
The authors point to passenger flights, now numbering more than 2bn a year, as being a chillingly efficient mechanism for spreading diseases rapidly across continents. New diseases that pose a sudden threat in one part of the world are only “a few hours away” from becoming a threat somewhere else, the WHO says.
“Profound changes have occurred in the way humanity inhabits the planet,” said Margaret Chan, the director general of the WHO. “The disease situation is anything but stable. Population growth, incursion into previously uninhabited areas, rapid urbanisation, intensive farming practices, environmental degradation, and the misuse of anti-microbials, have disrupted the equilibrium of the microbial world. The rate of emergence of new diseases, at one year, was “historically unprecedented”.
The report, A Safer Future, identifies 40 diseases unknown a generation ago, and reveals that during the past five years the WHO has verified more than 1,100 epidemic events worldwide. It says:
· Cholera, yellow fever and epidemic meningococcal diseases made a comeback in the last quarter of the 20th century.
· Severe acute respiratory syndrome and avian influenza in humans still have the potential to wreak havoc globally.
· Viral diseases such as Ebola, Marburg haemorrhagic fever and Nipah virus, pose threats to global public health security.
· The use of smallpox in bioterrorism is a particularly worrying threat. Authorities around the world should work together to combat the kind of bioterrorism that occurred with the letters warning of anthrax after September 11 2001.
· A flu pandemic would affect more than 1.5 billion people, or 25% of the world’s population. Even if the disease were mild in itself the economic and social disruption would be “enormous”.
The WHO report adds: “It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like Aids, another Ebola, or another Sars, sooner or later.”
To prepare for these events will take unprecedented global and political collaboration, it advises. “No single country, however capable, wealthy or technologically advanced, can alone prevent, detect and respond to all public health threats.” The organisation is calling for renewed international efforts to share information.
The UK’s Department of Health said it strongly supported “the approach of managing these risks through cooperation”.
Worries about the effects of international travel were underscored in June when an American national, Andrew Speaker, 31, who had a contagious and deadly strain of tuberculosis, took an international flight. US authorities tracked every passenger who had shared one of two transatlantic flights with Mr Speaker, who had fallen ill with the drug-resistant XDR form of TB while on honeymoon in Europe. He went back home via Montreal to avoid the US authorities, who had ordered him into quarantine, and would not have allowed him to fly, he believed.
In South Africa, the courts have considered forcibly detaining people who have the same form of TB to prevent its spread, amid fears that many more than those officially diagnosed are suffering and have not informed the authorities. The XDR strain of TB is a highly infectious disease spread by airborne droplets and kills 98% of those infected within about two weeks. Experts believe it emerged after inappropriate and overuse of antibiotics to treat TB.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
More proof of governmental role in the spread of AIDS (ever wonder what the connection was between Haitians, gays and Homophiliacs was? Expendibility)
'Used as HIV guinea pigs but no-one even told us we had been infected'
GERRI PEEV POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (gpeev@scotsman.com)
PATIENTS of a leading haemophilia consultant were used for early research into HIV and AIDS without being told they had the condition, it was claimed yesterday.
The UK's first independent inquiry into how blood product contaminated with HIV and hepatitis was given to haemophiliacs heard patients had been used for years in a study without knowing about the research or that they even had HIV.
Click to learn more...
Robert Mackie, a haemophiliac, said he contracted HIV in 1984 but was not told of his condition by his consultant, Professor Christopher Ludlam, until 1987.
The 57-year-old said he and others had been used as part of an experiment and exposed to a virulent strain of HIV.
He accused the consultants involved of "murder" in an emotional evidence session before Lord Archer of Sandwell.
He said: "In the Spring of 1983 they took the decision not to inform them of their HIV status, but to keep an eye on their wives and spouses to see if they became infected. I find that murder of the first degree.
"I believe non-consensual research was conducted by doctors of haemophilia in this country. We were all used as lab rats. There is no other way I can put it - we were all just guinea pigs," he said.
In evidence, some of which was read by his wife, Alice, when he became too weak, Mr Mackie said 16 haemophiliacs had become infected from one batch of blood and Prof Ludlam failed to inform patients of the risk. "Two uncles, one cousin and many haemophiliac friends have all died from AIDS from this one infected batch at a time when their infection could have and should have been avoided," he said.
Now his wife had to watch him suffer the same fate, he said.
Mr Mackie said a series of articles for medical journals and research papers showed how Prof Ludlam, professor of haematology and coagulation medicine, had used the Edinburgh group for research into AIDS, which was only beginning to come into the public spotlight in the early 1980s.
He and other patients were part of a study from March 1983, but he claimed they were tested for up to 15 years before being informed. Citing research papers, he said it was "totally outrageous" a doctor could carry out non-consensual research on patients and not be held to account. He went on: "His research also showed that his Edinburgh haemophilia cohort were infected with an unusually virulent strain of HIV - perhaps this is also a reason why we were kept in the dark about the events which were taking place at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from March 1983."
He said an exchange between his consultant and an American doctor "appears to suggest my consultant was fully aware of the value to scientific endeavour of his Edinburgh patients and that I, along with others, were of value to him".
The patients had been given a batch of infected Factor VIII blood product. He had continually asked if there were any risks from Factor VIII but was told there was nothing to worry about. In 1987, he was told he had been infected with HIV for nearly four years, a delay that he said "put my young wife, family and friends at risk".
"We have since discovered that my consultant was indeed aware of the risk to haemophiliacs from AIDS from early 1983 and had he informed me of the risks, my infection would have been avoided as I would have refused any kind of blood or blood product treatment."
Mr Mackie said a letter from Prof Ludlam showed he appeared to be "offering up" him and other Royal Infirmary patients as a candidate group for research.
Dr Robert Gordon, of the National Institute of Health, had put out an appeal in the Lancet medical journal in 1983, calling for "similarly treated haemophiliacs in a geographical area to which AIDS has not yet been introduced".
It went on: "The resolution of this question by a timely investigation in some country where cases of AIDS have not yet been reported would be an immense help to public health workers worldwide."
In a medical newsletter in 1990, Prof Ludlam described a unique group of patients in Scotland that had formed the basis of several years of important research he had published on AIDS.
Prof Ludlam could not be reached for comment last night. NHS Lothian said it did not want to comment. Bruce Norval, from Fortrose, who was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1990, also gave evidence.
He told The Scotsman: "I have campaigned on this issue for years and I now just want a final response so I can get on with what is left of my life."
Inquiry 20 years after 4,500 given contaminated blood
ABOUT 4,500 haemophilia patients were thought to be infected with contaminated blood 20 years ago.
So far, almost 2,000 haemophiliacs exposed to fatal viruses in contaminated blood or blood products have died and many more are terminally ill.
After years of campaigning, the victims and their relatives have been given the chance to hold an independent inquiry.
The hearings began last month amid claims on the BBC's Newsnight programme that Britain's doctors ignored warnings about using haemophiliacs for testing new blood products.
Successive UK governments have refused to conduct a public inquiry in to the events.
The privately funded inquiry is being chaired by Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former solicitor-general, and has heavyweight backing.
The Haemophilia Society is now calling for the government to make available to the inquiry documents that cover HIV infection since 1985.
Haemophilia is a disorder, usually inherited, in which the blood does not clot properly due to low levels of clotting factors. People with the condition bruise easily and can have spontaneous internal bleeding.
In the 1970s, a new method of producing clotting factors was discovered, for which plasma donations from thousands of donors were pulled together. If any of the sources had a blood-borne virus, the whole batch would be contaminated.
Some blood products during this time came from American suppliers who paid what were revealed as prisoners or "skid row" donors for their blood - people more likely to be infected with HIV and hepatitis C, according to the Haemophilia Society.
Original article posted here.
GERRI PEEV POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (gpeev@scotsman.com)
PATIENTS of a leading haemophilia consultant were used for early research into HIV and AIDS without being told they had the condition, it was claimed yesterday.
The UK's first independent inquiry into how blood product contaminated with HIV and hepatitis was given to haemophiliacs heard patients had been used for years in a study without knowing about the research or that they even had HIV.
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Robert Mackie, a haemophiliac, said he contracted HIV in 1984 but was not told of his condition by his consultant, Professor Christopher Ludlam, until 1987.
The 57-year-old said he and others had been used as part of an experiment and exposed to a virulent strain of HIV.
He accused the consultants involved of "murder" in an emotional evidence session before Lord Archer of Sandwell.
He said: "In the Spring of 1983 they took the decision not to inform them of their HIV status, but to keep an eye on their wives and spouses to see if they became infected. I find that murder of the first degree.
"I believe non-consensual research was conducted by doctors of haemophilia in this country. We were all used as lab rats. There is no other way I can put it - we were all just guinea pigs," he said.
In evidence, some of which was read by his wife, Alice, when he became too weak, Mr Mackie said 16 haemophiliacs had become infected from one batch of blood and Prof Ludlam failed to inform patients of the risk. "Two uncles, one cousin and many haemophiliac friends have all died from AIDS from this one infected batch at a time when their infection could have and should have been avoided," he said.
Now his wife had to watch him suffer the same fate, he said.
Mr Mackie said a series of articles for medical journals and research papers showed how Prof Ludlam, professor of haematology and coagulation medicine, had used the Edinburgh group for research into AIDS, which was only beginning to come into the public spotlight in the early 1980s.
He and other patients were part of a study from March 1983, but he claimed they were tested for up to 15 years before being informed. Citing research papers, he said it was "totally outrageous" a doctor could carry out non-consensual research on patients and not be held to account. He went on: "His research also showed that his Edinburgh haemophilia cohort were infected with an unusually virulent strain of HIV - perhaps this is also a reason why we were kept in the dark about the events which were taking place at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh from March 1983."
He said an exchange between his consultant and an American doctor "appears to suggest my consultant was fully aware of the value to scientific endeavour of his Edinburgh patients and that I, along with others, were of value to him".
The patients had been given a batch of infected Factor VIII blood product. He had continually asked if there were any risks from Factor VIII but was told there was nothing to worry about. In 1987, he was told he had been infected with HIV for nearly four years, a delay that he said "put my young wife, family and friends at risk".
"We have since discovered that my consultant was indeed aware of the risk to haemophiliacs from AIDS from early 1983 and had he informed me of the risks, my infection would have been avoided as I would have refused any kind of blood or blood product treatment."
Mr Mackie said a letter from Prof Ludlam showed he appeared to be "offering up" him and other Royal Infirmary patients as a candidate group for research.
Dr Robert Gordon, of the National Institute of Health, had put out an appeal in the Lancet medical journal in 1983, calling for "similarly treated haemophiliacs in a geographical area to which AIDS has not yet been introduced".
It went on: "The resolution of this question by a timely investigation in some country where cases of AIDS have not yet been reported would be an immense help to public health workers worldwide."
In a medical newsletter in 1990, Prof Ludlam described a unique group of patients in Scotland that had formed the basis of several years of important research he had published on AIDS.
Prof Ludlam could not be reached for comment last night. NHS Lothian said it did not want to comment. Bruce Norval, from Fortrose, who was diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1990, also gave evidence.
He told The Scotsman: "I have campaigned on this issue for years and I now just want a final response so I can get on with what is left of my life."
Inquiry 20 years after 4,500 given contaminated blood
ABOUT 4,500 haemophilia patients were thought to be infected with contaminated blood 20 years ago.
So far, almost 2,000 haemophiliacs exposed to fatal viruses in contaminated blood or blood products have died and many more are terminally ill.
After years of campaigning, the victims and their relatives have been given the chance to hold an independent inquiry.
The hearings began last month amid claims on the BBC's Newsnight programme that Britain's doctors ignored warnings about using haemophiliacs for testing new blood products.
Successive UK governments have refused to conduct a public inquiry in to the events.
The privately funded inquiry is being chaired by Lord Archer of Sandwell, a former solicitor-general, and has heavyweight backing.
The Haemophilia Society is now calling for the government to make available to the inquiry documents that cover HIV infection since 1985.
Haemophilia is a disorder, usually inherited, in which the blood does not clot properly due to low levels of clotting factors. People with the condition bruise easily and can have spontaneous internal bleeding.
In the 1970s, a new method of producing clotting factors was discovered, for which plasma donations from thousands of donors were pulled together. If any of the sources had a blood-borne virus, the whole batch would be contaminated.
Some blood products during this time came from American suppliers who paid what were revealed as prisoners or "skid row" donors for their blood - people more likely to be infected with HIV and hepatitis C, according to the Haemophilia Society.
Original article posted here.
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