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resulting in the syndrome of AIDS. A good reference for more
information on the "mainstream" view of AIDS is:
The Science of AIDS : readings from Scientific American magazine.
New York : W.H. Freeman, c1989.
9.1.2: Strecker's CIA Theory
----------------------------
Strecker's theory is that the CIA made HIV in the 1970's by combining
bovine leukemia virus (BLV) and sheep visna virus (OLV). The evidence for
this theory is that the government was looking at biological warfare around
then, and that there are some structural similarities between HIV and BLV
and visna. The evidence against this theory is:
a: We didn't have the biotechnology back then for the necessary gene
splicing. (But maybe the CIA has secret advanced technology?)
b: The genetic sequences for HIV, SIV, BLV, and OLV are freely
available (e.g. from genbank). You can look at them and compare
them yourself. The HIV sequence is totally different from BLV and
OLV, but is fairly similar to SIV, just as the scientists say.
There used to be a third point here: that the earliest documented
AIDS case dated back to 1959. See question 9.2.
One school of thought holds that the "AIDS was a U.S. biological
warfare experiment" myth was extensively spread as part of a
dezinformatsiya campaign by Department V of the Soviet KGB (their
`active measures' group). They may not have invented the premise
(Soviet disinformation doctrine favored legends originated by third
parties), but they added a number of signature details such as the
name of the supposed development site (usually Fort Meade in Maryland)
which still show up in most retellings.
According to a defector who was once the KGB chief rezident in Great
Britain, the KGB promulgated this legend through controlled sources in
Europe and the Third World. The Third World version (only) included
the claim that HIV was the result of an attempt to build a "race
bomb", a plague that would kill only non-whites.
Also see the question in section 0 about Conspiracy Theories.
9.1.3: Duesberg's Risk-Group Theory
-----------------------------------
Duesberg's theory is: HIV is a harmless retrovirus that may serve as a
marker for people in AIDS high-risk groups. AIDS is not a contagious
syndrome caused by one conventional virus or microbe. AIDS is
probably caused by conventional pathogenic factors: administration of
blood transfusions or drugs, promiscuous male homosexual activity
associated with drugs, acute parasitic infections, and malnutrition.
Drugs such as AZT promote AIDS, rather than fight it. His theory is
explained in detail in "Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired
Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Correlation but not Causation", Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci. USA V86 pp.755-764, (Feb. 1989).
Virtually the entire scientific community considers Duesberg's AIDS
theory to be unsupportable, although he was a respected researcher
before he proposed it. There is no suggestion that his theories are
the result of a political agenda or homophobia.
Details of the debate can be found in published rebuttals to Duesberg, such
as in Nature V345 pp.659-660 (June 21, 1990), and in Duesberg's debate
with Blattner, Gallo, Temin, Science V241 pp.514-517 (1988).
Also see the sci.med.aids FAQ.
9.2: What About the Sailor with AIDS in 1959?
---------------------------------------------
(The following information is from The Independent, 24 March 1995)
There is now good reason to think that the evidence for this case
was fraudulent. The patient was David Carr, a 25 year old man.
Most reports describe him as a sailor, but in fact his only known
trip abroad was during his national service, when he visted Gibralter
aboard HMS Whitby for two weeks. It is possible he visited Tangier
at this time, but there is no evidence either way. There is also
no evidence that he was gay (although firm evidence would have led
to his arrest).
Carr died on 31 August 1959 in Manchester Royal Infirmary, almost
certainly of an immune deficiency. His case was written up in The
Lancet of 29 October 1960 by Trevor Stretton, John Leonard (his
doctors) and George Williams (the pathologist). It was just a
minor medical mystery. Then in the late eighties, Williams sent
samples of tissue from Carr's body to his hospital's virology unit
to be tested for AIDS. They tested positive. The test was repeated
with a blind control. Still positive. The doctors went public with
a short letter in the Lancet on 7 July 1990.
In 1992 Professor David Ho of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Centre
in New York asked for tissue samples from Carr in order to sequence
the viral DNA. He succeeded, but found that the sequence was
identical to strains circulating in 1990. Further checks revealed
that the tissue sample was from a recently deceased person, and that
other samples, alledgedly also from Carr but with no sign of the
virus, were actually from a different person.
At the very least these facts cast serious doubt on the accuracy
of the diagnosis of AIDS in David Carr. They also give strong
reason to suspect a case of scientific fraud.
You Must Remember This
======================
10.1 What is "False Memory Syndrome ?"
---------------------------------------
[Contributed by Todd Stark . Todd
describes this text as a "first pass" at this section. If anyone has
any more authoritative information then please send it to me.]
There is currently no such standard medical diagnosis in the U.S. as
"False Memory Syndrome." "False Memory Syndrome" is a term coined by
a support and advocacy group based in Philadelphia, Pa. in the U.S.,
the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc., to publicize and dramatize
the plight of parents, alleged pedophiles, and other adults who feel
they have been unjustly accused of child abuse. The initial
membership of the FMS consisted of 202 families who had contacted
psychologist Ralph Underwager, a frequent advocate for accused sex
offenders. The current executive director is Pamela Freyd, PhD..
The basic premise of the FMS idea is that :
under conditions of therapy,
a child's (person's) recollection of past events may be
distorted, even radically,
and that convincing evidence of psychological trauma and
detailed false testimony against an innocent person may be
_manufactured_ by the (unwitting) facilitation of a therapist,
who is motivated to find abuse.
Underwager's work has been criticized on the same basis as criticism
of the FMS itself, that he appears biased against children alleging
sexual abuse (Salter). This is of course met by the symmetric claim
from FMS advocates and others, that some percentage of therapists seem
to specialize in finding abuse, and are unfairly biased against the
accused adults. Various examples of popular psychology literature are
often quoted to support (and sometimes symbolize) this contention.
_The_Courage_to_Heal_ is an example of this genre, suggesting that
forgotten abuse is so likely that any woman who has any suspicion at
all of having been abused probably was.
The issue around "False Memory" is then the degree to which the
therapist may have (unwittingly or deliberately) contributed to a
remembrance of serious abuse which did not occur, or may have
exaggerated the incidence or severity of the abusive behavior.
There seems to be sufficient evidence, both from clinical tradition
and from experimental data on human memory, to establish that there is
a possibility for the client of a strongly motivated therapist to be
influenced by the expectations of the therapist, even to the point of
forgetting or distorting important life events, or manufacturing them.
(See examples in Goldstein, 1992; general comments by Loftus, 1993;
and descriptions by Ofshe and Tavris cited in the references).
There is also evidence that people do forget unpleasant incidents
which they could not integrate with the rest of their lives. There is
no context in which to place the experience, and thinking about it is
unpleasant, so it gets "walled off" and forgotten.
The use of hypnosis has been particularly controversial since it
involves an unusually intimate form of both verbal and non-verbal
communication. In hypnosis, the client is highly motivated to respond
with historical reconstructions at the request of the therapist, even
if they do not have sufficient details to reconstruct past events
accurately. This is related to what is called the 'response criterion
problem' in experimental hypnosis research. (Klatzky and Erdely,
1985). Vividly imagined events under hypnosis can be difficult or
impossible to distinguish from real life. It is worth noting that
other memories "recovered" under hypnosis have included past lives and
UFO abductions. While this does not prove that all such memories are
false, it does suggest that they cannot be relied upon.
Some experimental research also appears to confirm the potential for
hypnotic suggestion to radically alter even the ongoing sensory
perception of good hypnotic subjects (Spiegel, 1989). Canadian
Psychiatrist William Sargant (see his work on political and religious
conversion, Sargant, 1959) also did some classic work in which he
demonstrated the therapeutic value of "abreaction," or in this case,
vividly imagined 'false' events, with the help of hypnosis or
sometimes ethyl ether.
It is sometimes claimed that distortions introduced with the help of
hypnotic suggestion can be picked up with standardized tests. A test
for whether cult members had been "brainwashed" was used with some
claimed success (Verdier, 1977). More recently, research into picking
up stable dissociative tendencies has shown some promise.
There is no known reliable way at this time to verify whether a
particular recollection was actually introduced as a so-called "false
memory." The most promising research in this area seems to point to
the possibility that we may someday be able to more reliably pick out
the 'fantasy prone,' at least as a relative number on a scale, but
this still leaves the question open as to cause and effect. Did a
severe early trauma provoke the need for escape into a rich inner
fantasy world, or was the remembrance of a traumatic past solely the
result of a therapist taking advantage of "fantasy proneness ?"
So, one of the more useful functions of an advocacy group such as the
FMS is to educate the public to the possibility that even the most
real seeming and vivid memories could possibly have been fabricated or
exaggerated by interaction with a therapist.
One of the less useful results of a group like the FMS is to cast
aspersions and additional frustrating doubt on the claims of an
already desperate child who is having a difficult time understanding
and recovering from a traumatic experience.
References :
Klatzky and Erdely, 1985, "The response criterion problem in tests of
hypnosis and memory," International Journal of Clinical and
Experimental Hypnosis , 33, 246-257.
Ofshe, Richard, 1992, "Inadvertent Hypnosis During Interrogation,"
International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis ,
11:125-155.
Goldstein, Eleanor, 1992, Confabulations , Boca Raton, Fla:Social
Issues Research Series
Loftus, Elizabeth, June 27,1993, "You Must Remember This ... ... or
do you ? How Real are Repressed Memories ?" Washington Post .
Ofshe, Richard and Ethan Watters, (March, 1993), "Making Monsters,"
Society .
Tavris, Carole, (Jan 3,1993), "Beware the Incest-Survivor Machine,"
N.Y. Times Book Review.
Persinger MA. "Neuropsychological profiles of adults who report
'sudden remembering' of early childhood memories: implications for
claims of sex abuse and alien visitation/abduction experiences."
Perceptual & Motor Skills. 75(1):259-66, 1992 Aug.
Wilson and Barber, "The Fantasy Prone Personality : Implications for
understanding imagery, hypnosis, and parapsychological phenomena," in
Imagery ,Current Theory, Research , and Application , from Wiley
Press, 1983.
Paul A. Verdier, "Brainwashing and the Cults, an expose on capturing
the human mind," 1977, Wilshire Books.
William Sargant, "Battle for the Mind, a physiology of conversion and
brainwashing," 1959, N.Y.: Harper and Row
John Marks, "The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate,' The CIA and
Mind Control," 1979, N.Y.: New York Times Book Co. pp. 190
D. Spiegel et al, 1989, "Hypnotic alteration of somatosensory
perception," American Journal of Psychiatry
"A conversation with Pamela Freyd, Ph.D. Co-founder and executive
director, False Memory Syndrome Foundation, Inc" by David Calof in
Treating Abuse Today, Vol 3(3), 25-39
10.2: How Can I Contact the False Memory Syndrome Foundation?
-------------------------------------------------------------
There is a web page at:
http://iquest.com/~fitz/fmsf/
You may also wish to read the relevant newsgroups, especially
alt.sexual-abuse.recovery.
--
--------------------------------+---------------------------------
Paul Johnson | You are lost in a maze of twisty
Email: Paul@treetop.demon.co.uk | little standards, all different.
paul.johnson@gecm.com |
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