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ACT UP NORTHERN RIVERS is a diverse, non-partisan group of
united individuals committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. We advise and inform. We demonstrate. ACT UP
NORTHERN RIVERS is a democratic, open group. We have no paid positions and no "president" - just
rotating, elected meeting facilitators, treasurers, etc. All financial
decisions involving more than $100 dollars, the use of the ACT UP NORTHERN
RIVERS name or logo must be authorized by a majority vote of the membership
at one of the open, publicly advertised meetings. Sometimes this means
meetings are fractitious, but a little drama is a good work-out. ACT UP NORTHERN
RIVERS is committed to direct action as a means of ending the AIDS crisis.
There are many activities surrounding AIDS. ACT
UP NORTHERN RIVERS does not do all of them. We are not a service
provider; we do not provide medical treatment to individuals. While we meet
with government and health officials to advocate for people with HIV and AIDS,
we differ from typical lobby groups by our use of direct action, which ranges
from street demos to acts of civil disobedience. AIDS is a medical emergency,
but it is foremost a political crisis. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Life-Threatening Events Becoming More Common
Than AIDS
With the widespread use of
combination anti-HIV therapy, life-threatening "grade 4" events may
now be more common in HIV-infected patients than AIDS-defining illnesses. A
report presented at the conference looked back at over 3,000 patients
enrolled in 5 large clinical trials during December 1996 to August 2001. Of
these patients, 38% had a prior AIDS diagnosis and 45% had never taken
anti-HIV therapy. A total of 642 patients had been studied for at least 2.5
years and in this group 27% had a grade 4 event, 13.4% had an AIDS-defining
illness, and 10.6% died. The grade 4 events included liver problems (6.1%),
low white blood cell counts (3.9%), heart-related or cardiovascular problems
(3.2%), pancreatitis (2.2%), low red blood cell
counts (2.1%), psychiatric problems (2.1%), kidney problems (1.5%), low blood
platelets (1.2%), and internal bleeding or hemorrhage (0.9%). The risk of
death associated with a grade 4 event and the risk of death associated with
an AIDS-defining illness were both high. This study shows a changing profile
of how people with HIV get sick. More studies are needed to look at the
overall rates of such events and to better establish the risks and benefits
of anti-HIV therapy. Sourced from : http://www.thebody.com/cfa/alerts_apr02/conference.html#life_threat NEWS FLASH Glaxo chief : Our Drugs do not work on most
patients By Steve Connor, December 2003 A senior executive with Britain's biggest drugs company
has admitted that most prescription medicines do not work on most people who
take them. Allen Roses, worldwide vice-president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline
(GSK), said fewer than half of the patients prescribed some of the most
expensive drugs actually derived and benefit from them. It is an open secret within the drugs industry that most
of its products are ineffective in most patients but this is the first time
that such a senior drugs boss has gone public. His comments come days
after it has emerged that the NHS drugs bill has soared by nearly 50 per cent
in three years, rising by 2.3bn a year to an annual cost to the taxpayer of
7.2bn. GSK announced last week that it had 20 or more new drugs under
development that could each earn the company up to 600m a year. Dr Roses, an academic geneticist from Duke University in
North Carolina, spoke at a recent scientific meeting in London where he cited
figures on how well different classes of drugs work in real patients. Drugs for Alzheimer's disease work in fewer than one in
three patients, whereas those for cancer are only effective in a quarter of
patients. Drugs for migraines, for osteoporosis, and arthritis work in
about half of the patients, Dr Roses said. Most drugs work in fewer
than one in two patients mainly because the recipients carry genes that
interfere in some way with the medicine, he said. "The vast majority of drugs - more than 90 per cent
- only work in 30 to 50 percent of the people," Dr Roses said. "I
wouldn't say that most drugs don't work. I would say that most drugs
work in 30 to 50 per cent of people. Drugs out there on the market
work, but they don't work in everybody." Some industry analysts said Dr Rose's comments were
reminiscent of the 1991 gaffe by Gerald Ratner, the jewellery boss, who
famously said that his high street shops are successful because they sold
"total crap". But others believe Dr Roses deserves credit for
being honest about a little publicised fact known to the drugs industry for
many years. "Roses is a smart guy and what he is saying will
surprise the public but not his colleagues," said some industry
scientists. "He is a pioneer of a new culture within the drugs business
based on using genes to test for who can benefit from a particular
drug." Dr Roses has a formidable reputation in the field of
"pharmacogenomics" - the application of human genetics to drug
development - and his comments can be seen as an attempt to make the industry
realise that its future rests on being able to target drugs to a smaller
number of patients with specific genes. The idea is to identify "responders" - people
who benefit from the drug - with a simple and cheap genetic test that can be
used to eliminate those non-responders who might benefit from another drug. Dr Roses said doctors treating patients routinely
applied the trial and error approach which says that if one drug does not
work there is always another one. "I think everybody has it in their
experience that multiple drugs have been used for their headache or multiple
drugs have been used for their backache or whatever. "It's in their experience, but they don't quite
understand why. The reason why is because they have different
susceptibilities to the effect of that drug and that's genetic," he
said. "Neither those who pay for medical care nor
patients want drugs to be prescribed that do not benefit the recipient.
Pharmacogenetics has the promise of removing much of the uncertainty."
HOW TO SURVIVE HIV Steve Meyer I have survived almost 20 years with hiv, I
am convinced that by incorporating as many of the following health measures
into your life hiv can be managed with minimal Toxic Retroviral Treatment.
Focus on: Diet, lifestyle, cleansing bowel (mucoidal plaque, mucus,
parasites, toxins, heavy metals pesticides), Dental cleanup (amalgam, nickel,
root fillings, cavitations, bacteria), kidney cleanse (kidney stones), liver
cleanse, gallbladder cleanse (gallstones), massage, Herbal formulas, Parasite
killing herbs, enema, salty water, Supplements (Flaxseed oil, Selenium
Coenzyme Q10 Colloidal minerals
chelated minerals Vitamins B17 Enzymes seaweed kelp shiitake miso), Diet
(Macrobiotic, Max B. Gerson, Dr.Budwig Diet, Blood Type Diet, ...), ( sugar,
aspartame, )...DON’T SMOKE… Personally, I believe that some retroviral
intervention will be required by most people living with hiv in order to
extend life, just how much, for how long, and at what strength is the issue Simple really J |
There are too many
highly respected scientists and quacks to not question the AIDS hype…the band
plays on… ·
Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for Chemistry:
"If there is evidence
that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly
or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document." (Sunday Times (London) 28 nov.
1993) Dr. Heinz Ludwig Sänger, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology and Virology,
Max-Planck-Institutes for Biochemy, München. Robert Koch Award 1978: "Up to today there is
actually no single scientifically really convincing evidence for the
existence of HIV. Not even once such a retrovirus has been isolated and
purified by the methods of classical virology." (Letter to Süddeutsche Zeitung 2000) Dr. Serge Lang, Professor of
Mathematics, Yale University: "I do not regard the causal relationship between
HIV and any disease as settled. I have seen considerable evidence that highly
improper statistics concerning HIV and AIDS have been passed off as science,
and that top members of the scientific establishment have carelessly, if not
irresponsible, joined the media in spreading misinformation about the nature
of AIDS." (Yale Scientific, Fall 1994) Dr. Harry Rubin,
Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California at
Berkeley:
"It is not proven that
AIDS is caused by HIV infection, nor is it proven that it plays no role
whatever in the syndrome." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994) Dr. Richard Strohman,
Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the University of California at
Berkeley: "In the old days it was required that a scientist address
the possibilities of proving his hypothesis wrong as well as right. Now
there's none of that in standard HIV-AIDS program with all its billions of
dollars." (Penthouse April 1994) Dr. Harvey Bialy,
Molecular Biologist, former editor of Bio/Technology and Nature
Biotechnology: "HIV is an ordinary
retrovirus. There is nothing about this virus that is unique. Everything that
is discovered about HIV has an analogue in other retroviruses that don't
cause AIDS. HIV only contains a very small piece of genetic information.
There's no way it can do all these elaborate things they say it does." (Spin June 1992) Dr. Roger Cunningham,
Immunologist, Microbiologist and Director of the Centre for Immunology at the
State University of New York at Buffalo: "Unfortunately, an AIDS
'establishment' seems to have formed that intends to discourage challenges to
the dogma on one side and often insists on following discredited ideas on the
other." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994) Dr. Gordon Stewart,
Emeritus Professor of Public Health, University of Glasgow: "AIDS is a behavioural disease.
It is multifactorial, brought on by several simultaneous strains on the
immune system - drugs, pharmaceutical and recreational, sexually transmitted
diseases, multiple viral infections." (Spin June 1992) Dr. Alfred Hässig,
(1921-1999), former Professor of Immunology at the University of Bern, and
former director Swiss Red Cross blood banks:
"The sentence of death accompanying the medical
diagnosis of AIDS should be abolished." (Sunday Times (London) 3 April 1994) Dr. Charles Thomas, former
Professor of Biochemistry, Harvard and John Hopkins Universities: "The HIV-causes-AIDS
dogma represents the grandest and perhaps the most morally destructive fraud
that has ever been perpetrated on young men and women of the Western
world."
(Sunday Times (London)
3 April 1994) Dr. Joseph Sonnabend,
New York Physician, founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research
(AmFAR):
"The marketing of HIV,
through press releases and statements, as a killer virus causing AIDS without
the need for any other factors, has so distorted research and treatment that
it may have caused thousands of people to suffer and die." (Sunday
times (London) 17 May 1992) Dr. Andrew Herxheimer, Emeritus Professor of Pharmacology, UK Cochrane Centre, Oxford: Reprinted with kind permission from the Australian
resource aidsmyth.net The toxicity and tolerability of HAART…are increasingly
important factors in the decision to prescribe one of the more than 3000
potential regimens, because side-effects are frequent (74% of adults in the
largest survey) and because long-term benefits depend on near perfect
(>95%) and life-long adherence, which in turn are affected by tolerability
(and human factors)…In view of the effect of adverse events on successful
HAART, the fact that their study, analysis, and reporting by academia,
industry, regulators, conference presenters, report writers, and journal
editors has been poor, although not unique to HIV-1, is disappointing…The
only adverse events that have to be studied to gain regulatory approval
relate to essential (central nervous system, cardiovascular, and respiratory)
organs. Blood, liver, and kidneys are invariably studied, although usually
only by chemical analysis rather than by clinical assessment. However, many
organs relevant to HAART toxicity were rarely studied in HAART
trials…Adequate safety data for accelerated regulatory approval are thought
to be generated from 400 to 500 patients who receive treatment for 6 months
in controlled, blinded trials, and from about 100 patients treated for 12
months (500 for traditional approval--ie, 48-week, randomised data, usually
with clinical endpoints), but not necessarily in randomised studies. The
pooled data identify adverse events with 1% and 3% incidence with 3 months'
and 12 months' therapy, respectively. The 23 HAART trials assessed [in this
study] had a median of only 81 patients per group, and so individually had
less power to detect adverse events (those with about 15% incidence)…Despite
the many long-term adverse effects associated with HAART, phase 3
antiretroviral studies are often shorter than they used to be before HAART
became available because of accelerated licensing and because of the emphasis
placed on 24-week virological data as a marker of clinical benefit. Only half
of 60 antiretroviral therapy trials done before 1997 and three of the 23
HAART trials reported post-week 48 data [yet people are expected to take
these drug regimens for life]…Chronic, low-grade events, which are often not
reported by patients and do not lead to immediate change in therapy, rather
than acute, severe events, which are well reported and lead to early change
in therapy, affect adherence to treatment in cohort studies. It is
disappointing, therefore, that only two HAART studies reported adherence, and
that no HAART study reported what adverse events resulted in poor
adherence…Patients prevented from dying or developing AIDS by HAART can be thought
of as having an increased quality of life. The same cannot be said, however,
for asymptomatic patients at low risk of AIDS. And yet, as with adherence,
quality of life was reported in only two of the 23 HAART studies…Additional
weaknesses with respect to the study of adverse events include the absence of
any systematic approach for identification of cause, prevention, and
management of many adverse reactions, especially if unexpected…The number of
individuals treated after approval of a drug is generally more than 1000
times that exposed before approval.2 An adverse reaction with a one in 1000
incidence has about a 50% chance of arising once before approval, but will
arise in hundreds of patients after licensing…Additionally, any incidence
often triples after licensing (and includes more severe events) because
patients excluded from studies for various reasons are treated but studied
less intensively…The aim of post-marketing surveillance, therefore, is to
assess real-world safety, but passive surveillance is spontaneous and
voluntary, with only occasional detailed, long-term monitoring. Passive
surveillance is judged "the most cost-effective approach" (although
this assertion has not been tested), but cannot reliably ascertain prevalence
or risk factors, or compare drugs…The effect of post-marketing surveillance
is further limited in that, for adverse events identified after approval of a
drug, there is no standardised approach for the study of the association
between the implicated drug or drug class and such adverse events…To account
for individuals who withdraw from a study or who stop taking the study drug,
plasma HIV-1 RNA is analysed by intention-to-treat, and missing values
classified as virological failures (ITTM=F). Many HAART studies did not state,
however, whether patients with undetectable HIV-1 RNA at study conclusion and
who switched study drug during the trial were classified as virological
failures. ITTM=F overestimates tolerability and adherence if it does not
account for backbone antiretroviral drug switching for toxicity or if study
drug continues only because another drug is initiated to control toxicity.
Results of one study showed that 10% of patients ceased one backbone drug but
continued to participate in the study with undetectable viral load at week
52. No study reported what proportion of patients required concomitant
therapy to continue HAART…There are clear guidelines with respect to analysis
and reporting of adverse events for regulatory submissions…Most reports do
not, however, provide these data.” Carr A. Improvement
of analysis, and reporting of adverse events associated with antiretroviral
therapy. Lancet. 2002 Jul 6;360:81-5. |
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