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Showing posts with label Dialogs: The G Tales. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dialogs: The G Tales. Show all posts

Monday, April 26, 2010

A Gut Feeling - Part # 7 - From The G Tales


A Gut Feeling:  Anal Pleasure, Holistic Sexual Health, and Interpretations of AIDS
Serena Anderlini-D’Onofrio
Part # 7

“We were talking about the transition between interpretations, correct?” G asked as we connected again.
“We were,” I said.  “Have you thought about it?”
“Yes.  It’s part of switching to the holistic health paradigm.  The allopathic paradigm is based on what’s called patriarchy in feminism.  It’s a way to interpret health as war against disease.  It translates as ‘barrier’ when it comes to sexual health, as in ‘do as much ‘war’ on my body as I am willing to say yes to, and barriers will protect the ecosystem that’s me.’  The holistic paradigm is based on connectedness.  It creates health by respecting life, by treating its ecosystems as part of the feminine divine.  It translates as fluidity when it comes to sexual health.  Understanding the flow of life and using pleasure to enhance it.”
“But how do you navigate the transition in a way that is safe?” I probed.
“Good question.  I guess it depends on where you’re at when you start the journey.  Lance talks about proportion.  He never says that using a condom in a one-night stand will kill you.  In fact, I bet he’d agree that barriers are quite appropriate for those occasions.  But when it comes to healing from AIDS, when it comes to finding one’s own balance between pleasure and health, the emphasis really is on proportion.  Being conscious, feeling connected to one’s body and its ecosystems, practicing that connection in ways that bring together the erotic and the sacred, that minister pleasure to the body as they generate health. “
“Right, but suppose you’re a gay man who is positive and has AIDS.  How do you get from point A to point B without being criminalized or thrown in jail?”
“Good question again my friend.  I guess you’d need a lot of good luck and patience.  But suppose you focus on getting proportion.  Then there is the leaky mucous, remember?  The impurities in your blood that get you to test ‘poz’ in the first place.  Keep looking at it from a holistic perspective.  Suppose you’ve tested positive because you’ve got a mild case of intestinal dysbiosis.  You can practice abstinence or protection with moderate amounts of sex until you get better.   Then you may test again, and maybe it will be negative.  Another option is becoming active in the AIDS dissidence movement, meet others who are healing themselves from intestinal dysbiosis and no longer have AIDS.  Lance was one of them.”
“Right, that’s if you’re lucky and very determined.  It could also happen that you get profiled as a sex offender, lose your job, lose your home, and end up in jail.”
“I know.  And if you’re already, for some reason, subject to being profiled in a negative way, like say as part of a minority that’s considered hyper-sexed, that makes it even worse.”
“Like, for example, if you’re black, or Latino, or bi , or poly, or all of the above?” I asked. 
“Exactly!  But wait a minute, are you implying that this is Tony Lance’s fault?  That the problems you’re describing are a result of his research?”
“No.  But the severity of these problems is, I think, what makes all LGBT institutions react so negatively when they hear about AIDS dissidence.  They’re afraid.”
“I know.  It’s sad.” G reflected, somber.
“Besides, consider this.  Experiencing anal pleasure in moderation, practicing holistic sexual health: those are wonderful ideas.  But who will truly understand them?  The minute some fundamentalist sect hears about them, they’ll be upon us.  They’ll will simply turn the whole concept around and claim that science found out that anal sex is bad, that it’s the true cause of AIDS, and will use this to claim that those who have it only deserve what they got.”
“I have no doubts that some people will hear that, unfortunately.  Not everybody on Earth can be sex-positive.  But consider the situation we have today.  Suppose Tony Lance is right.  Suppose intestinal dysbiosis is really what causes AIDS, not a virus.  Then everyone can heal from it, and continue to practice anal sex proportionally to the time and energy they have for this to happen naturally and in a holistic way.”
“That would be nice,” I offered.
“Right,” G approves.  And she continues: “Then people will understand that love is an art that can be practiced in many different ways, that there are many styles of pleasure and it’s good to learn about all of them.  People will learn to integrate the arts of loving with the arts of healing themselves.  The entire human species will become more holistic, healthier, and happier.  Don’t you think that the hope for such a world is worth the effort of facing the hostility of those who are sex-positive in principle, and cannot see the light of this vision yet?”
“Oh well G,” I responded, “you always get so wrapped up in your utopias.  You’re incorrigible.  I’m not sure all that can happen.  But I’ll admit that if Tony Lance is right, if AIDS turns out to be just a bad case of intestinal dysbiosis that can be cured with proper nutrition and respect for one’s rectum, then the world will be much better off than it is today.”
“Oh, great!  I’m so glad you can see that,” G exclaimed.
“For one thing,” I continued, “people will stop being afraid of one another.  They’ll lose the fear of their own desire for closeness, for intimacy, that now so often turns into repression and hatred.  More people will become proactive about being happy and loving and healthy.  They will overcome their dependence on products that can mechanically generate those states.  This will lower the cost of health care and free us of the twin tyranny of the pharmaceutical industry and medical profession.  It will pave the way for affordable and organic universal health care.  And it may even afford people more free time and vacation to enjoy amorous company, healthy sex, and conscious loving.”
“So, you see how important what Tony Lance did can be?  Doesn’t he deserve a medal?” G asked. 
“He does, especially if he is right,” I observed.
“Yes, and it’s easy to find out, and inexpensive.  All it takes is really an experiment.  Try douching a few rats, giving them wide spectrum antibiotics, having them inhale poppers, and sodomize them daily with plenty of lube and condoms.  I bet their gut would cave in quickly enough to diagnose them with intestinal dysbiosis.”
“But G dear,” I said, “it seems really unfair to take it out on rats.  Don’t we have enough sickness already?”
“It was really just a suggestion,” G responded.  “People tend to trust laboratory experiments.  That’s how allopathic science has operated for the past few centuries.  Personally, I don’t need this kind of evidence.  I find it in those long-time ‘poz’ people who are healthy and have healed themselves.”
 “The experiment you were suggesting could be a shortcut, though.  It could help redress health policies,” I offer.  “For example, those statutes about murder by infection .  .  . “
“Right.  And if you consider the damage that acting on the wrong hypothesis can cause, if you consider all the earthquake devastation that comes from poverty that is often interpreted as AIDS in countries where poor sanitation causes all kinds of intestinal problems, if you consider all the money spent in programs that cannot be effective because they do not bring people what can cure their intestinal dysbiosis, if you consider how this fear of love, fear of expressing the erotic energy of love in natural ways, is transmuting into hatred, war, destruction, and devastation of entire bioregions and their population, if you consider that all the money spent on these futile projects could be used to stop global warming and create the climate stability that can save us all, then, you know, if sacrificing a few rats can to the trick, if it can persuade the powers that be, or at least the honest people in them, that dysbosis is worth considering as a legitimate cause, then so be it, I say.”
“That’s a nice thought.  Now, is Tony Lance alone?”
“No.  He is part of a team, he presented his work at the first edition of the conference Rethinking AIDS, in Oakland last November.”
“What other scientists were there?  Where did they come from?”
“There were vernacular and professional scientists, as well as activists and clinicians, I understand.  Many of the professional scientists are based in the US, but they are of foreign origin.”
“Do you think that’s why they don’t get profiled very favorably?”
“That’s part f it, of curse.  They can be dismissed as Un-American, in a new form of McCarthyism, as some would say.”
“Perhaps they can afford to be more honest because they are less involved with the pharmaceutical companies.  I mean all those marketing  efforts to create the need for a drug by persuading average Americans that they suffer from some under-diagnosed ailment.”[1]
“Yes, pharmaceutical companies pay lavish money to professors of medicine ready to act as consultants who promote their drugs and the medical disorders invented to market them.[2]  Foreign scientists can do that as well.  It’s just that some of them are not game.”
“I get it.  Even though, of course, being a foreigner is not a plus in that role since the public tends to trust your vintage American better.”
“You have a point.  That’s why, also, people like Duesberg, form Germany, and Bauer, from Austria, have trouble getting heard.”[3]
“But again, when you think of Tony Lance, and other American heroes like him, who self-trained as scientists to save their lives, and are now sharing their knowledge to save others at the risk of losing everything, you see that it’s happening.  Dissident science is making inroads.  It’s pushing against the paradigm that generates so much paradox that it almost fall of its own weight, like a giant that can no longer walk because it’s too heavy with its own false consciousness.”
“Are there any other countries where holistic interpretations of AIDs are being researched?”
“At the Oakland conference there was a scientist from the University of Florence, Italy, Marco Ruggiero.[4]  His team focuses on AIDS and body ecology, including the effects of chemicals.”
“Interesting.”
“Yes, and remember that in these countries where health care is universal, the government has to pay for curing all disease outbreaks, including those caused by pharmaceutical companies eager to sell the wrong meds for the wrong diseases.  So that’s an incentive to fund studies that disagree with the main paradigm as well: A way to force integration of allopathic and holistic methods for the common good.”
“Yes.  So there is hope.”
“Being the author of a ‘forbidden book’ that has become controversial on account of my intellectual honesty about AIDS, I can tell only one thing for sure: No one on earth (Nobel laureate or vernacular scientist) knows everything that there is to know about AIDS.  That’s why it is necessary to open up to all avenues of investigation.   The criminalization of knowledge is the crime.  Fear the true enemy.”
 “Let’s hope fear evaporates then.”
 “Let’s,” said G.
“Meanwhile, congrats to Tony Lance and good luck to all of those who are healing themselves from intestinal dysbiosis.”
“Yes, for all those volunteer scientific efforts the world will be absolutely grateful.  Knowledge always evolves by disagreement.  It’s the same data.  But now they make a whole lot of sense.  It’s always a matter of interpretation.”
“Science is an art,” I offer as a way to wrap up the conversation.
“Isn’t it?  I’ve always claimed we need more people trained in critical theory like myself.”
“Stop bragging about your specialties, G,” I giggle.
“Ok, ok,” she giggles back.
“It was great talking with you, G.”
“Same.”
“Keep me posted.”
“Will do.”
“Namaste.”
“Namaste.”





[1] Peterson, Melody. Our daily Meds. New York: Picador, 2009. Our Daily Meds
[2] Lane, Christopher.  Shyness.  Yale University Press, 2008. (A study of the invention of recent mental illnesses in the sociability spectrum.)
[3] Peter Duesberg.  Inventing the AIDS Virus.  New York: Regnery, 2007. (A classic of non-infective AIDS theory.)  Henry Bauer.  The Origin, Persistence, and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.  New York: McFarland, 2007.  (A recapitulation of and reflection about the inconsistencies of mainstream theories.)
[4] First Rethinking AIDS Conference.  Oakland, CA: November 2009.  Online proceedings.  RethinkingAIDS-Program. Prof. Marco Ruggiero, Univ. of  Florence: http://www.marcoruggiero.org/


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

Monday, April 5, 2010

Connecting More Dots: Shutter Island and The Shock Doctrine

A while after the conversations of 'What's in a Name?' G and I resume our calls.  We talk about movies.  'T is the season, after all.
"Teaching film helps," G says as soon as we connect.
"Why is that?" I ask.
"Well, when you go to the movies, you activate a little mechanism in your brain and it helps you to connect the dots . . ."
"Dots? What dots?"
"Dots between movies and books you've read, for example."
"As in?"
"As in, Shutter Island and The Shock Doctrine, for example."
"Shutter Island, Marin Scorsese's latest, and Naomi Klein's book about the Chicago School and it break-the-economy-and-control-the-people-politics?"
"Uhu."
"Tell me more . . . "
"Let me tell you the whole story then."
"Ok."
"So yesterday we were bound to see Crazy Heart in San Juan, and the Fine Arts Theater, when we find out that the program has changed and we need to adjust our plans."
"Who was your company?"
"Melvin, the leader of my Area Oeste LGBT friends group here, a sophisticated speaker, a discussant, a great facilitator.  I'm so happy to have his company, you know, it's ok to go to the movies by oneself, but the company of a sensitive person makes puts the experience on a completely different level."
"Sure."
"So of course we watch the whole film then we try to figure out if Teddy/Lewaddis is really honest and sane or really insane and a criminal."
"Yes . . . "
"It's a story about an asylum on this island off of Massachusetts where apparently some human experiments were going on in the 1950s, on human brains: how to treat them with electroshock therapy and lobotomy, how to persuade sane people that they are not only insane, but also criminals with a shady history of murders whose memory they are trying to push away.  The idea is that these therapies will persuade the patients not only to adopt the life stories and identities that psychiatrists are fabricating for them, but also that they will go along and help those in charge to play the game."

                                           (Leonardo DiCaprio and Ben Kingsley in Shutter Island)

"OMG! And is this based on fact?  Is the film some kind of documentary?  Did anything like this really happen?"
"Well, the film is based on a novel, which of course is likely to be a fictionalization of some historical event or combination of events reconfigured in some recombined way.  The time when lobotomies were a common clinical practice is appropriate. Same goes for electroshock therapy."
"How do you know?"
"Well, I read about Tennessee Williams, the famous American playwright of the mid Twentieth Century, who was also gay--closeted at the time of course.  His sister was lobotomized because as kids she and her brother were playing some innocent games that were at the time considered completely out of bounds.  The family became worried about her.  Lobotomy was recommended for women whose sexuality was unruly."
"Oh, and how did she respond?"
"I don't really know a lot of specifics, but she became a zombie like most people whose pre-frontal cortex has been removed.  That, as we know now, is not a superfluous part of the brain.  It's the seat of creative intelligence, of the imagination, of desire, of ideas, of what makes you capable to think the world in a different way."
"Of genius, you mean . . ."
"Yeah, that's one way to put it."
"And another way?"
"Another way is in what my bi and poly friends typically will say: That one's biggest sexual organ is between one's ears, not one's legs."
"If you lobotomize the imagination, then the desire for pleasure goes away," I comment.
"Exactly!"
"Must have been terrible for her."
"And for him as well, he always felt guilty that his creative intelligence was still alive while hers had been so cruelly excised.  Many of his nostalgic, tender female characters are based on her."
"Like Blanche Dubois, in Streetcar Named Desire?"I ask.
"Like Blanche Dubois."
"So then, going back to Shutter Island, what was the point of practicing lobotomy there?" I continue with my questions.
"The film presents this as part of a model asylum for the rehabilitation of criminals who are mental patients, and are treated humanely.  The place is actually a penitentiary, but it doesn't look like one: It looks more like a manor in the midst of manicured gardens, until you look more closely and find out that food, smokes, water are all drugged with sedatives that make the patients practically incapable to think for themselves.  And then you also find out that the people there are not really criminals, but rather victims of this human experiment in which a team of psychiatrists is trying to figure out how to control human brains."
"Inventing mental illnesses they don't have, as causes of crimes they never committed?" I comment.
"Yes."
"Sounds a bit like Nazi Germany, or Stalin's USSR, for that matter."
"Sure, and indeed the Leonardo di Caprio character is an American who fought in World War II, killed at Dachau, and is horrified at the idea that Nazi methods might have migrated to the US.  He is incensed by some uncertainty he has abut a fire that burned his home and killed his wife.  He is a US Marshall, and gets to be assigned to the job of investigating the disappearance of a patient to figure out what's going on."
"This happens of course when J. Edgar Hoover is head of the CIA, the famous McCarthyite who was a closet gay and instigated the activities of the House of Un-American Activities back then," I add.
"Yes, and Hoover gets mentioned once in the movie," G confirms.
"So what's the connection with The Shock Doctrine?"
"Well, you know that Klein claims that the whole idea of engineering a crisis in order to break people's resistance and then take control started in the medical profession.  In other words, it was psychiatrists who used electroshock and lobotomy that first experimented with these forms of shock therapy to reduce people to patients--and patients to blank slates whose personalities, minds, and memories were now empty and could be filled with whatever content the dominant ideology wanted to implant," G explains, in her typical professorial tone.
"And how does she claim that the practice transfers from psychiatry to the economy?" I ask, a bit shyly.
"Well, the political powers make some shady allies and, say, create an atmosphere of panic where everyone is afraid that a terrorist cell is conspiring next door.  This makes every one feel fearful and out of control.  It crushes the economy because no one wants to invest any more.  Then a new political class takes over and establishes a regime of total control."
"Like what happened in Chile with Pinochet?" I ask?
"Yeah, you got it.  And many other cases. Klein examines the wave of interventions by so-called 'Chicago boys,' economists from the school of Milton Friedman, who precisely promoted the ideology that public assets are a nuisance to be sold away, and privatization will resolve all financial problems. These interventions happened in South America, then the wave moved to East Asia, then to Russia and Eastern Europe, then eventually, with Bush II, to the United States."
"But the character in Shutter Island thinks what happens in the asylum is part of a Nazi plot."
"Well, not exactly: He is aware of how some ideas migrated, as the people who held them managed to smuggle themselves over to the US shores when the Nazi house of cards fell to the floor."
"You mean that after World War II some Nazi ideology made it into the US?"
"Some ideologues made it, and their ideas came with them."
"Did your friend Melvin know about lobotomies?" I asked, curious.
"Surprisingly, he didn't know too much about them.  We talked about it, and I explained about the pre-frontal cortex, the fact that a lobotomized person initially seems to be ok, just a little more tranquil and sedated then before.  Then one realizes that this person has lost the capability to learn new things, ideas, actions, because s/he has lost the power of the imagination, s/he cannot put things together in any new way, s/he can only repeat mechanically things that s/he has done before."
"OMG! And how come the pre-frontal cortex is so important?" I keep pressing on with my questions.
"That's what I learn from Up From Dragons, Dorion Sagan's co-authored study of human intelligence.  In the evolution of the brain, across species, the pre-frontal cortex is the last section that evolved.  Reptilian brains don't have it.  They're reactive brains.  They respond, but do not invent.  Also, in any human person, the pre-frontal cortex is the last one to become completely formed, with the process ending at about 25 years old."
"Got it.  And, had your friend heard about other lobotomies?"
"I don't think so.  I did tell him about Rose Kennedy, the sister of the three beautiful brothers who died for the ideals of American politics. She had been lobotomized as well.  The family was a bit shy and shameful about it.  Of course, when this happened, nobody really knew the consequences.  They were victims of human experiments, those patients."
"How terrible!"
"I agree.  Do you see now the connection?"
"Yes, of course.  Scorsese is trying to send a message.  Perhaps he has read Naomi Klein."
"Perhaps, yet Klein is a lot more adamant than Scorsese ever will be."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, at the end of the story, one finds out that the hero, Edward, really could be Lewaddis, the criminal he is trying to connect with, to ask questions from, the guy who set fire to his house and killed his wife after she had drowned the three children they had."
"How is that?"
"Well, there are all these nightmares, these memories that parse the film, memories of Dachau, of fires, of family, of children crying for help."
"Memories?"
"Yes, it's the Leonardo di Caprio character, he has these nightmares. And in the end, when the new criminal/insane personality has been implanted into his brain by the psychiatrist team, it all jells up together that he is actually the criminal he is seeking--a bit like in Oedipus."
"Oh, the Oedipal syndrome, uh?"
"Yes, of course, we live in an Oedipal world where parents own their children and the nuclear family is the norm.  We still don't know very well how to expand family beyond kinship and biology, do we?" G asks, facetious.
"Some of us try."
"Yes, queer families, poly families--but they're the exception."
"Sure.  Still the exception, unfortunately.  How was the acting, the direction, BTW.  Did you guys enjoy?"
"A Scorsese film is always enjoyable.  Those stylish frames, wide stroke backgrounds, mysterious settings, ominous clouds, ferocious storms, cliffs that require acrobatic performances.  Swagger male characters who walk the fine line between hero and outlaw, cops who turn out allies of criminal gangs.  It's staple.  And all done with Italian bravado and elegance impervious to the situation.  It's impressive.  Suspense that works: it's not sensation per se, it's the right measure of sensation to achieve the desired effect."  
"And what exactly would that effect be?" I interrupt the rhapsodic tone: The Italian stuff always gets G carried away.
"Well, what about instilling the shadow of a doubt that conspiracy is really possible? That it's not just a theory stored in minds of those with psychological problems."
"You mean of those profiled that way."
"Yes. With Scorsese you get the message that laboratories for human experiments to control our minds could be just next door."
"That's the film's political effect, you mean?"
"Yes, the visual version of Naomi Klein's theory."
"Visual, uh?"
"Yes, I have become more and more impressed with cinema's ability to convey ideas in images on a large scale.  As I taught cinema over the years, I have become aware of how, for the new generations, cinema  holds the promise of visual effects that mark the collective consciousness of a culture as objective correlatives of the emotions people have difficulty expressing in other ways."
"A bit like Michael Moore's documentaries?"
"Exactly."
"What about the acting?  How was it?" I asked, to change the subject.
"I hadn't seen Leonardo di Caprio since Titanic.  Had heard bad things about his subsequent movies--lack of environmental respect in the shooting process.  I liked him at the time, though.  He did embody that rugged instinct, that trust in one's good luck I tend to admire in people.  He has matured a lot.  Makes me think of how fast time goes by for us all."
"Yes, as Ronsard puts it," I interject,
"'le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, madame.' (time passes, away, time passes away, my lady)
'le temps non, mais nous nous en allons, et bientot seront sous la lame.' (time doesn't, but we pass away and soon will be under the stone)
How about his looks?"

"Oh, those are much better.  He is not what I'd call a beauty.  Not enough sensual for that, to my taste.  A tad too intense.  But his looks have improved because now he knows what to do with what nature gave him much better than before."
"So, it was a nice evening after all."
"It was great.  We spent time discussing the movie, figuring out the plot, the various hypotheses for interpretation, put our brains together to figure out what we saw."
"Did you miss Crazy Heart?"
"I did. A bit.  I explained my friend why I wanted to see it and we agreed to stay tuned.  Talked about our emotions, what's happening in our lives and what feelings are dominating. I always find movies good for that. We made plans for more movie days next weekend."
"Until that time then," I said as we prepared to end the call.
"Arrivederci."
"Arrivederci, my Italian friend, arrivederci."


Sunday, March 14, 2010

1 of 8 - What's in a Word? Dissidence, 'Denial,' and Health on a Poly Planet - 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 One

It’s the Holiday Season and G’s classes are almost over.  “This is when the exciting part of my work begins,” she tells me on the phone.  “Why?”
“Well, in this case, for example, I have to fend off all the accusations of ‘denialism’ my latest book earned me.  I get to be called ‘radioactive’ by those in my own community, my fluid-bonding tales get mistaken for irresponsible behavior, and the political dissidence I present in relation to health science, immunity, and infection gets mistaken for some kind of generic denial that AIDS ever existed or that it affected our queer communities at all.”
“You got yourself in trouble again, G,” I respond.  “I can’t leave you alone for a minute and you manage to stir up some controversial mess around yourself.”
“This time I really didn’t do it on purpose,” she replies.  “It was upon me before I knew it and I actually got tempered by last year’s events and handled it quite well.”
“Good for you,” I say.  “Are you sure you don’t need any help?”
“I need lots of help, and I’m getting it, many are coming to my rescue.  And you can pitch in as well.”
“Tell me what it’s about first.”
“OK.  Well, you remember last year when Poly Pride invited me to read in Bluewich Village, at Greensocks Bookstore, from my memoir Eros?  I had contacted the store first, then a whole panel of poly writers came together.  And, on the spur of the moment, I decided to read from the chapters where I describe my shock when I first heard that the cause of AIDS was still uncertain, that clouds of doubt were gathering on the official hypothesis, and that when the brunt of this impacted me, I could not get any sleep for two nights and felt a bit like a philistine, wondering when I had stopped asking questions?”
 
“Yeah, I remember how humiliated you felt when you were told that the organization would publicly distance itself from the content of your reading, and then realized it went well beyond that, publicly decrying you and branding your works as dangerous to civil society and public health.”
“Right, and I also felt very bad, because, in the same way that I was shocked when I first heard about the International AIDS Dissidence Movement, several people in the audience were shocked as well--some were speakers that day, and had lost close relatives to AIDS.  And obviously I realized that my choice had ruined their day.  I got a vague sense of how long it would take for the community to even begin to metabolize the content of what I read.  And I was mostly concerned about taking attention away from the keynote speaker of the day--who was especially hurt--with the effect that the mutual admiration we had for each other’s work all of a sudden evaporated as we became positioned on opposite ends of the controversy.”
“You were especially concerned about her.  All right, then what?  Is this all?”
“No, no, of course not, there is a lot more to the story.  Are you interested?  Ready?  Tell me if it’a a good time for us to talk.”
“Sure, now you made me curious--go ahead.”
“Well, a whole profusion of email apologies ensued after that day, including mine.  The main accuser was never heard from in that context though.  I did feel the brunt of public humiliation for a while, until a Poly Leadership Summit was organized and I participated.  The whole episode was not touched upon again directly, even though, I felt, it was an undertow of tension below the surface.”
“Ok.”


End of Part One, G Tale # 5


Oxidation, Water, Food, and AIDS in Africa
Interview with Luc Montagnier
2008 Nobel Laureate in HIV Science

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.  

Friday, March 12, 2010

2 of 8 - What's in a Word? Dissidence, 'Denial,' and Health on a Poly Planet - 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 Two
“Well, at the time of the Poly Summit I was finishing the Gaia book, remember?” G asked.
“Yes G,” I replied, as we continued our long winded conversation.
“I already had a contract, an established text, which went into the ‘dissidence’ versus ‘denialism’ controversy in the context of global ecology and health.  In this book, I explained the whole issue in a lot more detail.  It wasn’t just an autobiographical impression of my shock at the impact of the new ideas on me.  It was really a full fledged discussion of how AIDS and other immunological diseases and syndromes (including cancer for example), are interpreted in very different ways depending on the scientific paradigm and perspective used to examine them.  For example, from an allopathic perspective, where health is viewed as a war against disease, one looks at AIDS as a result of infection, and focuses on the infectious agent believed to be at cause.  From a holistic perspective, health is viewed as a result of systemic balance in one’s inner and outer landscape, and so one looks at AIDS as a result of immunodeficiency caused by air, water, and food pollution, stress, fear, and other factors that affect body ecology.”
“Sure, I remember us talking about that.  Ok.”
“Well, as the book was going to press, the discoverer of HIV, French scientist Luc Montagnier, was awarded the Nobel Prize.”
“Oh really?” I exclaimed.
“Yes, it happened simultaneously,” G confirmed.
“And how did you feel about that?  Didn’t it get you to think that maybe the allopathic hypothesis was right after all?  That the dissenters were really just ‘denialists’ who were up to no good?  That perhaps you had been accused and humiliated with just cause? I know you tend to respect the decisions of the Swedish Academy.”
“I do.  And to be honest with you, some of that feeling was there.  I had no experience of infection or even of partners with infection.  I had a roommate who was HIV+ at one point, perfectly healthy, but then that was just one case I could bear witness to.”
“What did you do?”

“I looked up Montagnier on the web immediately.  I had known about him from day one, because when the whole panic about AIDS broke, I used to hang out with a bunch of French expats who were scientists.  They were my social circle, and, when the American scientist Robert Gallo claimed victory in the discovery of the cause of AIDS, they felt a bit slighted in their national pride, wishing that due credit be given to their compatriot as well.” 

“Right, but that did not mean that Gallo and Montagnier did not agree on the cause or the method?”
“I wasn’t sure then.  The extent of the difference in their philosophy had not been quite apparent to me.  I frantically looked up Montagnier.  Found out he was now working on oxidation, writing books on antioxidants, the remedies that holistic healers recommend to those whose excessive stress damages their body’s system of self-defense.  ‘Woooooooow!’ I thought.  Then I reread Montagnier’s scientific papers: there were two, published at about the same time as those Gallo had published on Science.  Papers that ended up constituting the ONLY scientific evidence of the HIV hypothesis for decades, since all laboratory experiments designed to either refute or corroborate it were banned as ‘dangerous’.”
“Banned as ‘dangerous’?  Why so?” I asked, surprised.
“Good question.  Dissidents suspect that the National Institute of Health was very happy with the ‘solution’ Gallo proposed, which was also good business for pharmaceutical companies who could manufacture medical drugs designed to combat the presumed viral cause, and establish medical protocols that would make these drugs mandatory for anyone with the virus in question--even when perfectly healthy.”
“Ouch . . . . sounds pretty dangerous to me.”
“Sure does.  Gets worse.  That was also the time, remember, when awareness of impending ecological disaster was growing in environmental science circles.  All of a sudden, environmentalism was no longer about local problems: how to keep our good neighborhood neat, how to make sure the landfill ended up located somewhere else.  It was now becoming a global awareness that if the switch to a non-fossil fuel economy wasn’t made on time, we would all go under—that the Earth would turn into a scorching hell.  There was this sense that all research moneys and energies should be invested in figuring out how to replace oil.”
“Aha!  Makes sense.  But . . . how did you know about that?”




Oxidation, Water, Food, and AIDS in Africa: 
Interview with Luc Montagnier
2008 Nobel for HIV Science
Video: courtesy of House of Numbers, by Brent Leung

End of Part Two, G Tale # 6 


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.  

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

3 of 8 - What's in a Word? Dissidence, 'Denial,' and Health on a Poly Planet - 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 Three

“Well, I told you,” G said as we continued the conversation, “I knew about global warming back then in the 1980s. I was a foreign graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, which had the largest Soil and Environmental Science department in the nation at that point, and the crowd I hung out with was a bunch of post-docs who did that kind of research. I used to not want to believe what they told me myself. Do you think it was fun to learn that we were all going to be cooked unless the switch was made quickly and with full resources for that kind of green-tech research. I was the only one with a kid in this whole group. I liked modernity, I liked gadgets, I liked to drive my own car, I liked consuming nice products, and yet . . . ”

“Wait a minute” I replied, “I’m sure you were not the only one to resist the idea that now all research resources and efforts would be devoted to finding ways to eliminate the need for oil.”

“Right, I wasn’t alone--now you’re getting to it. Oil companies, oil tycoons, automobile makers, and all of the elites that got rich from the black gold were also very unhappy at that prospect. If there ever was a way for us to invent an oil-free society and economy, they wanted to make sure nobody found out.”

“Ok now,” I said. I was feeling a bit confused. “And how does that actually relate to AIDS?”

“Well, awareness of impending global disaster was growing in environmental research circles. They had good reasons to demand more funds for their research. What was a better way to divert attention from that necessity than generalized panic about a viral threat, a new killer disease that was caused by a subvisible pathogen--a virus, as it were?”

“Wait a minute, do you mean that the San Francisco outbreaks were engineered on purpose?” I asked, resentfully.

“No, of course not. But the rush to look for infectious agents was--and that’s where the difference between Gallo and Montagnier comes into play.”

“Sounds confusing to me,” I commented, impatient. “Explain!”

“Montagnier never claimed that he found the ‘cause’ of AIDS.”

“He didn’t?” I asked, curious again.

“No. As I answered the deluge of messages that ensued the trauma of Greensocks, I reread Montagnier’s 1983-84 papers and I also posted the Gallo papers online in response to a panicky request for ‘evidence’ by the person in New York who had mercilessly humiliated me. As I reread those papers I realized Montagnier simply said that, if the new syndrome turned out to be infectious, and if the infectious agent turned out to be a virus, then HIV (which he called LAV to avoid misleading labels) would be a likely candidate.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Yes.”

“OMG! But then, why wouldn’t he say more? Wouldn’t it help people to know that there was some certainty?”

“To some extent, of course, it would. At that time so little was known that to have a strong reason to advise people to use condoms was a good thing. However, there was a need to verify the results of the experiments by repeating them in other laboratories, equally competent as Montagner’s at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and Gallo’s at the National Institute of Health, in DC.”

“And didn’t that verification happen?”

“That’s the crux of the problem. It did not.”

“OMG! G, are you sure?”

“Well . . . I’m telling you. I wish it had.”

“And why not?”

“Because Gallo mixed Montagnier’s samples with his own and erased all doubts from the record by declaring to the press that we now knew the cause of AIDS. The pharmaceutical companies and the oil industries colluded to establish the dictum that now any verification experiment would be dangerous because it would instill the seed of the doubt in the public and cause behavior that would result in infection.”

“That doesn’t sound very scientific per se. Nor does it sound trusting that people would behave reasonably,” I commented.

“Of course not. But the reality is that people didn’t know how to behave: you know, sex that is all about turgidity and getting off. No erotic gradation, no tantric energy. Rubbing. Barrier protection as in condoms was the only measure as long as people’s amatory skills were so basic.”

“Right, which is why safer-sex education came along, no?” I offered.

“Yeah, and I jumped right into that back in the early 1990s, with all my bi friends. And that opened up a whole ‘nother realm of erotic expression that was more inclusive and creative, precisely because we now had to invent ways to be ‘safe’.”


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.