4 of 8 - What's in a Word? Dissidence, 'Denial,' and Health on a Poly Planet - Part Four - From The G Tales

You call me ‘promiscuous,’ I call you ‘dishonest,’ a poly person tells the average person who believes that monogamy is the only natural way to love.

You call me ‘denialist,’ I call you ‘believer,’ a dissident person tells the average person who believes that HIV is the only cause of AIDS.

When you call AIDS Dissidents by their own name you exercise leadership in the sexual freedom movement.

Alternative lovestyle communities ignore AIDS Dissidence at their own peril.

From private conversations

Part Four

 “What about the scientific verification,” I asked G as we continued the conversation.  I was curious about whether or not the initial experiments about HIV as cause of AIDS had been repeated in other laboratories.  “There was none, you said.  What did other scientists say?”

“Many said nothing--continued the rat race in their cubbyholes.  But that’s where ‘renegade’ Duesberg comes into play.  He insisted on repeating the experiments, applied for grants to do so and was turned down over and over.  He has all possible qualifications.”

“Ouch!  That must have hurt him a lot.  And what did he do then?”

“He went public about being denied the money to do the verifying research.  He denounced this as a political plot.  And he became a dissenter.  Why?”

“I guess I can tell, G, but tell me . . . “

“Because of course,” she continued, now in a more passionate tone, “if you’re an honest scientist you cannot accept as true a hypothesis that you’ve proposed to verify over and over--only to find out that an a priori decision has been made that there will be no such multilateral verification by laboratory experiment.”

“Got it.  But let’s go back to Montagnier.  Why do you think he became interested in oxidation?”

“Because over the years he realized that alone HIV does not debilitate the immune system to the point of causing what manifests as the syndrome of AIDS.  There has to be a prior debilitation of the immune function for an infection to become chronic and therefore cause AIDS.  And oxidation often has this debilitating effect.”

“Ok.  So to go back to your process, what did you do when you found out what Montagnier had been doing?”

“I was overjoyed.  Now I knew how much hostility there was in my ‘home’ community to dissident views of AIDS.  Greensocks had been the unexpected lesson.  I have been told I was naïve on that occasion.  I cannot disagree with that.  You have to consider that as an American I am really from the West Coast, a place where people tend to take the Washington Consensus and other East Coast mentalities with a grain of salt.  I could never have imagined that in a city as cosmopolitan as New York people would be so ignorant of the AIDS Dissidence Movement.  I had known about it for years, while I still practiced various forms of safer sex because I believe in sparing one’s immune system any unnecessary, excessive work.  Yet major poly leaders ignored the whole scientific problem and asked for ‘evidence’ only after the fact.”

“Which fact, G,” I interrupted, “if I may?”

“The fact of publicly humiliating me for bringing it up at a bookstore reading where I’d been invited to read from Eros.”

“Ok,” I said faintly, waiting for more.

“So” G continued, “by virtue of the Nobel Prize, Montagnier was now back in the game.  And this gave me a good reason to integrate his view point, as it had evolved over the decades, into my discussion in the book Gaia.”

“Which was going to press right there and then.”

“Yes,” G confirmed.

“Let me ask you this: Did you feel that the American public, and polys in particular, were aware of Montagnier’s perspective?”

“Unfortunately, the mainstream press only spoke of the decision of the Swedish Academy in terms of national pride.  Why had Gallo not been included?  Was this fair?  Hadn’t they been in it together?  There was no mention of scientific differences between the two researchers.”

“So you did your revisions.  Did the press welcome them?”

“Yes,” G replied, “they were very accommodating.  I kept telling them that I was aware of resistance to dissident ideas in the ‘niche’ audience, and this required fairness and a carefully crafted argumentation.  I remember asking for one extra week to make sure I did a good job.”

“So then, when the book was released, did you present it in New York?  Did you consider the release a good occasion to open up the topic for discussion again?  To offer clarification and a more articulate perspective on your position and what motivated you to engage in this kind of science-studies, systems-theory research?”

“Yes, that was my first thought.”  

End of Part Four, G Tale # 5

Disclaimer:  This Tale does not constitute medical advice in any way.  Readers are invited to consult their own healers and health care providers. 

References: For scholarly and scientific references to contents and theories referred to in this dialog, refer to Gaia & the New Politics of Love, whose bibliography lists all sources involved.