Finding Truth in Phoenix

by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD

Last week I went to the 21^st Annual Meeting of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness (DDP), held in Phoenix, Arizona. The "doctors" in this organization include both physicians and scientists. Other people also come to this meeting seeking truth about such things as global warming and AIDS, and how best to protect oneself against chemical, biological, and nuclear terrorism. People I met there attending the meeting included a contractor from California, an elderly woman from North Carolina, and Scott Carpenter, the astronaut.

Jane Orient, MD and Arthur Robinson, PhD organized the meeting, which was titled "21^st Century Threats and Conflicts." (Dr. Orient is the Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons – AAPS – the pro-market, libertarian alternative to the American Medical Association; and Dr. Robinson is the Director of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and editor of the newsletter Access to Energy.)

The first truth told at this meeting was that there is no human-caused global warming, despite what (some) government-funded scientists, anti-technology environmentalists, and the media tell us. Dr. Willie Soon, a physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, in a talk titled "Level with Me: the Sea, the Sun, and Climate Change," refuted claims that the 1990s was the warmest decade of the millennium – or that the 20^th century has been warmer than any other century.

Dr. Soon presented data from his recently published study, coauthored with Sallie Baliunas, titled "Lessons & Limits of Climate History: Was the 20^th Century Climate Unusual?" (April, 2003). The last ice age ended 14,000 years ago. This study shows that since then there has been a Medieval Warm Period, lasting from 800–1,300 C.E., followed by a Little Ice Age, lasting from 1400–1900 C.E. The 20^th century has emerged from this 500-year cold cycle to return to a more typical interglacial temperature. The global warming that occurred during the Medieval Warm Period far surpassed anything that has been seen over the past century. Variations in solar irradiance, volcanism, and other natural phenomena affect the planet’s temperature, not human activity. People who fear global warming can take comfort in the fact that the Antarctic polar ice cap is growing slightly, not receding.

The report, Global Warming: A Guide to the Science, by Drs. Soon, Baliunas, Arthur Robinson, and his son Zachary Robinson, presents the facts on climate change in a clear and unbiased fashion. It is a good antidote to the report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The temperature of the planet’s atmosphere has not changed over the last 25 years, as Dr. Robert Balling, Director of the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University, showed in the next talk, based on data obtained by surface, satellite, and balloon thermometers. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels, however, are another matter. They are rising. Is this something we need to be concerned about? The answer is "No." Dr. Balling presented data that allays fears about greenhouse gases, fears which brought about the Kyoto agreement. His book, The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming, coauthored with Patrick Michaels, addresses this subject.

Sherwood Idso, PhD, President of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, presented data that validates a second truth related to the environment: Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; it is essential to life. Animals cannot live without oxygen, and plants cannot live without carbon dioxide. Indeed, increased atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ have a beneficial effect on plant life. Conducting experiments where he grew plants in atmospheres containing different concentrations of CO₂, Dr. Idso found that a 300 ppm (parts per million) boost in concentration of CO₂ increases the productivity of plants by 30 to 50 percent, as measured by rate of photosynthesis and biomass production. Orange trees, for example, produce twice as many oranges, each containing a 20 percent greater amount of vitamin C when you increase the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere from 300 to 600 ppm (the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere now is 370 ppm). Dr. Idso’s Center publishes the CO2 Science Magazine weekly online, which provides plant growth data, temperature trends, editorials, and journal reviews.

A third truth told at the DDP meeting is this: HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Sounds outrageous? Read "The chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics: recreational drugs, anti-viral chemotherapy and malnutrition" (2003), by Peter Duesberg, Claus Koehnlein, and David Rasnick; and "The AIDS dilemma: drug diseases blamed on a passenger virus" (1998), by Duesberg and Rasnick. Read these studies with an open mind and I think you will agree that this shocking statement will very likely prove to be true. Drs. Duesberg and Rasnick are both professors of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. (Dr. Duesberg isolated the first cancer gene in his work with retroviruses.) Dr. Rasnick gave the talk on this subject at the meeting in Phoenix.

AIDS is a government-identified and defined disease. Twenty-three years ago the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reported that a growing number of male homosexuals and intravenous (IV) drug users were experiencing a mysterious epidemic of diseases, which included several odd types of pneumonia, a rare malignant tumor called Kaposi’s sarcoma, lymphoma, dementia, tuberculosis, weight loss (anorexia), fever, diarrhea, etc. Officials at the CDC called the epidemic "AIDS" (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), which this agency now defines as comprising 26 different diseases. From 1981–2001 AIDS has afflicted 800,000 people in the US, 250,000 in Europe, and (?) 1,000,000 in Africa. In this country, it strikes young male homosexuals (66% of all AIDS cases), male and female IV drug users (32% of all AIDS cases, 75% of them male), hemophiliacs and other transfusion recipients (1%), and children borne to drug-addicted mothers (1%).

In 1984, government researchers proposed that a sexually transmittable virus ("AIDS-virus"), now called HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), is the cause of AIDS. In the US and Europe, a person must have a positive HIV test (antibodies to the virus) to be diagnosed as having AIDS, along with one of the AIDS-defined diseases, or, since 1993, a low T cell count (T cells are one of the types of cells that make up our immune system) in an otherwise healthy person with no diseases. But people in Africa can be diagnosed as having AIDS without needing to have an HIV test, based on a ruling by the World Health Organization. Anyone in Africa who gets pneumonia, for example, is classified as having "AIDS."

Over the last 20 years the US government has carried out a program to eradicate the HIV virus that has engaged the efforts of more than 100,000 government-funded doctors and scientists and has cost the US taxpayer to date more than $100 billion. There is growing evidence, however, that the premise upon which this program is founded is wrong.

The establishment view that "HIV causes AIDS and is sexually transmitted" is flawed. This hypothesis fails to account for 17 important facts about the HIV virus and AIDS, which, as Drs. Duesberg and Rasnick have shown, casts serious doubt on the validity of this hypothesis. One of these 17 facts is this: Only 1 in 1000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits HIV, and since only 1 in 275 US citizens has antibodies to this virus, the average uninfected person would need to have 275,000 random unprotected "sexual contacts" to get HIV. Another fact: According to the HIV-AIDS hypothesis, HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing T cells; but T cells grown in test tubes that are infected with HIV don’t die. They thrive and produce the large quantities of HIV virus that laboratories need to detect antibodies to this virus in a person’s blood. The actual virus (not just antibodies to it) is extremely hard to find inside a person’s body. It infects less than 1 in every 500 T cells. For these and other reasons, there is a growing body of evidence that makes the HIV-AIDS hypothesis untenable. In people with AIDS-defining diseases and HIV, it would appear that the elusive HIV virus just goes along for the ride, seated in some of the body’s T cells. This retrovirus is not the pilot of the AIDS airplane.

If HIV is not the cause of AIDS, then what is? Dr. Rasnick presented strong evidence in support of the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by three things, singly or in combination: 1) long-term recreational drug use (cocaine, heroin, nitrite inhalants, and amphetamines); 2) the anti-viral drugs (DNA chain terminators, like AZT, and protease inhibitors) that doctors prescribe to people who are HIV positive; and 3) especially in Africa, malnutrition (and lack of drinkable water). The noninfectious chemical bases for AIDS is supported by a lot of important data, facts like this one: HIV-positive people treated with anti-viral drugs have an annual mortality rate of 6.6–8.7 %, compared with an annual mortality of 1.4 % in HIV-positive people who refuse treatment with anti-viral drugs.

When asked what the best book to read on this subject was, Dr. Rasnick said it is Inventing the AIDS Virus, by Peter Duesberg, with a Forward by Kary Mullis. (Dr. Mullis won the Nobel Prize in 1993 for his invention of the Polymerase Chain Reaction for copying fragments of DNA.)

There were other talks at this meeting that also held important truths. Some of them were:

The three truths discussed here, on climate change, carbon dioxide, and AIDS, share one thing in common, as do other truths found at this meeting. They all correct flawed hypotheses and models that have resulted from government involvement in science and medicine.

You can order a complete set of audiotapes of this meeting (for $99), when they become available, from the DDP website.

July 21, 2003

Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle and a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. His web site is www.donaldmiller.com.

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