Link reference: http://aliveandwell.org/html/viral_load_tcell/good_numbers.html

Stefan Lanka, Ph.D. takes the challenge to HIV’s existence even further. A German researcher, Dr. Lanka is usually referred to as a virologist. But that hardly begins to describe his wide-ranging fields of study. Based on experiences in marine biology, biochemistry, evolutionary biology and virology, he’s worked out a whole new view of HIV and AIDS. He believes that all so-called retroviruses are actually the body’s own creations; that hepatitis is an autoimmune disorder (a disease in which the body is attacked by components of its own immune system) rather than a viral disease; that AIDS has nothing to do with immune suppression; and that it should really be called Acquired Energy Deficiency Syndrome — AEDS — because its true cause is a breakdown in the delivery of oxygen to the blood and/or body tissues. Dr. Lanka did a West Coast tour in October and spoke to H.E.A.L.- San Diego on October 20. Zenger’s interviewed him hours before that event.

Zenger’s: I’d like a little about your background, what your training is, when you studied, what you specialized in, and essentially how you came to these ideas about AIDS.

Stefan Lanka, Ph.D.: I started studying molecular biology in 1984, and I soon got bored because I learned that all that you have to learn in order to pass the exams is already old, out-of-date dogmatic thinking. So I went into ecology because I realized, while being abroad in different countries, that you can carry out very important research without big machines or big money. I was looking for an opportunity to do molecular genetics in the field of biology, so I chose to move into marine biology and did a lot of electron microscopic studies.

A marine biology professor was willing to let me work for him, and while doing this I found a stable virus-host relationship by accident. In that very moment, I knew that was it. The best way to do meaningful genetic research is to have a stable virus-host relationship, in which a virus is produced in the host but does not kill the host. So you can really study how they interact, how the genetic material of the virus is produced and how it interacts with the host, without manipulating it. That’s still the only stable virus-host relationship in virology, other than in bacteria.

I was glad to be able to carry out this study, but first I had to convince my professor so he would agree to finance my new studies. He said he was a classical biologist and he could not sponsor me as a researcher in virology. I needed to find another professor who was willing to guide me, and the very day I found one I got a lab of my own. I could buy all the tools and big machines on my own overtime, so I had the best conditions to start my studies. After one year, I had isolated a virus and characterized it.

When I started doing viral research, it was already 1986, 1987, just when the public in Germany and Europe was starting to become aware of AIDS. Because AIDS was supposedly caused by a virus, I was automatically considered a specialist in the AIDS field. In the beginning, this was a nice feeling. I was telling people what I heard from the mass media and the TV, and I was not checking the evidence because everybody was convinced AIDS was a viral disease. Then I heard about the things that Robert Gallo [American cancer researcher who first identified HIV as the cause of AIDS] was doing wrong, and that he was misleading the public about his first retrovirus [HTLV-I, which Gallo claimed to be the cause of AIDS in 1982, before his alleged discovery of HIV] and he had stolen the virus from Montagnier, and all this kind of gossip.

I already had a somewhat critical attitude when I started studying molecular genetics, so I went to the library to look up the literature on HIV. To my big surprise, I found that when they are speaking about HIV they are not speaking about a virus. They are speaking about cellular characteristics and activities of cells under very special conditions. I was so deeply shocked. I was thinking, “Well, I’m not experienced enough. I have overlooked something. On the other side, those people are absolutely sure.” Then I was afraid that speaking about this with my friends, or even my family, they would think is absolutely mad and crazy. So for a long time I studied virology, from the end to the beginning, from the beginning to the end, to be absolutely sure that there was no such thing as HIV. And it was easy for me to be sure about this because I realized that the whole group of viruses to which HIV is said to belong, the retroviruses — as well as other viruses which are claimed to be very dangerous — in fact do not exist at all.

Zenger’s: So it was just on the basis of this reading that you concluded that what is called HIV, what is considered to be the “HIV virus” and is supposed to be infectious like other viruses that are acknowledged pathogens, really represented a phenomenon within the body. How did you figure that out, and why are you so sure about it?

Dr. Lanka: I was wondering what viruses are for in evolution, because they didn’t seem to have any function other than to be very dangerous and killing other cells. So I went into evolutionary biology and found that the first genetic molecule of life was RNA, and only later in evolution did DNA come into existence. Every one of our genomes, and that of higher plants and animals, is the product of so-called reverse transcription: RNA transcribed into DNA.

But I had already realized already by then that the thinking about molecular genetics was very dogmatic. In the early 1960’s they came up with the central dogma of molecular genetics, which try to uphold even today, and which is ridiculous. The dogma says that DNA behaves in a static way; DNA makes RNA; RNA cannot be transcribed back into DNA; RNA comes into existence only on the basis of DNA. That was and is the basis, of the central dogma of molecular genetics.

I found that this kind of thought came from research funded by the seed-producing industry of the United States, and that a whole body of existing knowledge — namely, that of cytogenetics, before World War II — was just suppressed or even slandered as “lazy science” because it had been carried out mostly in Europe. This kind of science well established that the genetic material is not stable. It is subject to change, and this means the genetic material is reverse-transcribed. It goes in both directions.

This earlier research also established that inside the cell we have a huge amount of genetic material other than that of the nucleus. But because molecular genetics and molecular biology were actually founded by physicists, who thought they could explain the whole structure of the atom just by focusing on the nucleus, when they went into biology they carried over that same mistake. They focused only on the nucleus of the cell and claimed it was responsible for all of how life comes into existence, how it’s controlled, etc. This is ridiculous, because they have overlooked the essential of life: the production of energy.

While studying the evolutionary aspects of biology, I quickly realized that reverse transcription is common to all forms of life, and in fact is the basis of all higher living. Later I learned that reverse transcription is a repair mechanism for chromosomal DNA. But the mainstream of molecular genetics is still committed to the central dogma: “There is no such thing as reverse transcription from RNA to DNA.” In 1970, when they detected biochemically that there is a reverse flow of genetic material, they didn’t give up the dogma or even try to change it. Instead, they called it an exception to the central dogma of molecular genetics, and explained it by postulating the existence of retroviruses.

Zenger’s: Excuse me, but I thought that the field of retrovirology had started as far back as 1911, with Peyton Rous and his experiments with chickens. [Rous surgically removed cancerous tumors from chickens in his lab, ground up the tumors, fed them to healthy chickens and observed that the healthy chickens who ate ground-up tumors grew tumors themselves. He concluded that the tumors may have been caused by an infectious agent being transmitted from the sick chickens to the healthy ones.]

Dr. Lanka: No, it was only in retrospect that he was cited as the one who was dealing with retroviruses. What Peyton Rous actually did was he inbred his animals so heavily that the genetic material from the different strains he used to breed became more and more similar. When the animals’ genetic materials become too similar to each other, then even more genetic material is interchanged between the chromosomes than happens normally. Often, in inbred animals or plants, on two places of the chromosomes genetic material in between got lost. Then you will see the characteristic chromosomal damages in inbred animals, plants or human beings, resulting in disabilities which are well studied. So, because Rous’s chickens were so heavily inbred, they had a high rate of spontaneous cancer induction.

The results from this research were not cited for more than 20 years. Later, some people tried to speculate about them. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s they started to think about this because molecular biology took over modern medicine, and argued — against the existing body of knowledge, of facts — that cancer is caused by infectious entities: by viruses, or mutations, or viruses causing mutations. They ignored the fact that cancer has something to do with oxygen deficiencies, which had already been established by Otto Warburg’s research. Warburg had received his first Nobel Prize demonstrating how a cell is able to produce much more energy than in the process of fermentation, using oxidative respiration. And he had received his second Nobel for proving that cancer is characterized by the process of fermentation; that oxidative respiration is not taking place in cancer. And this has been just ignored.

So in 1970, when they proved that reverse transcription does happen and they discovered the enzyme, reverse transcriptase, which does it, they wouldn’t give up the dogma. They changed it slightly and said there is an exception; and that it was associated with the existence of a new class of viruses called retroviruses, which they cannot prove exist in other ways.

When I was absolutely sure about everything I’ve told you so far, I went public. I was invited to a lot of conferences on marine biology and biology, and at every conference I presented my own data. I used every opportunity to speak out against HIV, and I quickly learned that because I was taking away HIV as an explanation for AIDS and was not able to replace it with something else, and not being able to explain what’s going on under the label “HIV,” it forced me to watch out and find those people who were able to explain what’s going on.

In the beginning, of course, some of the publications of Peter Duesberg helped me a lot, because he was an authority who questioned a lot of things, and that helped me. I translated some of this articles into German and published them in a small publishing house. But then, with time, I learned about other specialists, among them Heinrich Kremer, the well-known German medical doctor, former medical director of the Federal German Drug Abuser Clinics, who helped me to understand what was really going on.

Because he was in charge of the introduction of hepatitis B vaccine into Germany, and used it in his patients, Dr. Kremer checked out the hepatitis B vaccines on the market. He found that the American vaccine, hepatitis B vaccine, was produced with the sera donated by men in the Gay scene in New York City between 1978 and 1980. So, as he knew, there was a lot of sex going on in a minority of these men, and therefore they had had a lot of sexually transmitted diseases. So he was afraid of using this vaccine, and instead he used the French vaccine, which was produced from blood donations by the general population in France.

But in 1983 the German government forced him not to use this vaccine anymore. They said the French vaccine is poisoned by the “AIDS virus” — at the time when nobody was positively speaking about an “AIDS virus” — but the American vaccine was O.K. He knew, or he was warned, that this had nothing to do with the science, but it had to do with the fact that the German medical system, in parts of Germany, is virtually a colony of the American system.

Soon after, in 1984, he was told to deliver frozen blood samples of his patients to Berlin, to the newly founded AIDS Center, to be tested for the “AIDS virus.” Before he let his blood out, he checked what’s the evidence for the accuracy and reliability of the HIV antibody test, and he realized that this test is not able to detect the virus. It is not able to say yes or no, you are or are not infected. It is only able to say that you have a higher or lower amount of antibodies. That’s how the HIV antibody test was and is designed.

Zenger’s: It’s my understanding that when you have an antibody test that is actually useful, like the antibody test for syphilis, you get a high or a low antibody reaction, and it’s a certain multiple of how many times you dilute the original sample and still have the reaction. Therefore you know not only that the infection is present, but also how well the immune system is responding to it.

Dr. Lanka: I’m absolutely sure that no antibody test in medicine has any absolute meaning. Especially in HIV antibody testing, it is clear that the antibodies that are detected in the test are present in everybody. Some people have them in higher concentrations, and some in lower concentrations, but only when you reach a very high level of antibodies — much higher than in any other antibody testing — are you considered to be “positive.” This is a contradiction in terms because in other antibody tests, the lower your level of antibodies, the higher your risk for a symptomatic infection. But with HIV they say you are “positive” only when you have reached a very high level of antibodies. Below this level, you are said to be negative.

Zenger’s: So this is what Dr. Roberto Giraldo was talking about when he spoke to H.E.A.L. in San Diego. He said that when they do the HIV antibody test they dilute the sample to 1/400 of its original strength, and if they didn’t do that all the samples would test positive.

Dr. Lanka: That’s it. How ridiculous. Dr. Kremer knew this already by 1984. He was very worried about the fate of his patients, because in 1984 the politicians asked him to put these already stigmatized “HIV-positive” patients into quarantine, which means to separate them from the other ones. He said no, because there’s no infectious entity out there. He knew everybody who went through chronic active hepatitis or had the hepatitis B vaccine would test “HIV-positive.” So he knew that there is no infection in his hospital.

He informed the mass media, who went to his hospital to inform themselves, in great detail. He told them all the evidence. And the very same journalists, in talk shows, in Der Spiegel [one of Germany's largest and most popular magazines] for example, published just the contrary. So he knew that it was intentional from the very beginning. They played war. They all wanted to have a blood and sex plague, contrary to the evidence which he presented to them. So he knew that AIDS was built up on misconceptions. He was dealing at the top political level. They told him, off the record, that they knew, they didn’t care, it was about how to deal with the drug problem and with the homosexuals.

They even tried to kill him, and this didn’t succeed. He had a good intuition and got out of his car before the tire blew out. Then he learned from a minister who had a deep respect for him, because of his work with prisoners and drug abusers, that the German government was carrying out a secret psychological investigation, trying to prove that he was mentally ill and being kept in his job only because they considered him in danger of committing suicide. So when he learned this, he left his very highly-ranked position because he was not able to be silent on this. That would not fit his ethics.

I also met Professor Alfred Hässig of Switzerland. He founded Swiss blood-donation system and was one of the first to take out products from the blood in order to make plasma to treat chronic disease. By becoming a colleague and a very close friend of his by now, I learned a great deal about the whole blood-producing industry and the criminal energy behind it. In March of 1996 in Berne [capital of Switzerland], Hässig, Kremer and I met for the first time.

It became clear, also, what’s happening in the field of hepatitis. They are not dealing with a virus. Of course, there’s a possibility to enrich certain kinds of proteins in blood products, which then cause severe autoimmune reactions, but only in very stressed-out people, never in non-stressed people. When they learned to take out these proteins from the blood products, or dilute them, there are not hepatic problems anymore. I learned this through him.

Zenger’s: Are you saying that all forms of hepatitis are non- infectious, or just some of them?

Dr. Lanka: No, there’s no such thing as infectious hepatitis.

Zenger’s: So there are no hepatitis viruses, either.

Dr. Lanka: Yes. Hässig was always fighting to make sure that blood products were produced only on the basis of a small pool of donors who were young and healthy. The industry started to produce blood products on the basis of commercial blood donations, using a huge amount of blood samples, pooling them all together in a large pool, because then it was much cheaper to get out all the various kinds of products.

Zenger’s: In this country, it gets even worse because blood donations are one of the principal ways homeless people have of staying alive. As a result, we’re taking a lot of our blood supply from people in society who have the least healthy lifestyles.

Dr. Lanka: I know all the details. This what I’m going to tell you. Professor Hässig once met the person responsible for the industry to produce industrial blood products, and once, when this person was drunk while visiting the Fiji Islands after a conference in Australia, this person told Professor Hässig that soon they are going to smash the state-owned blood producing units, based on voluntary blood donations, because they’re much cheaper producing their blood products because they go into the Third World countries, and they are already there in all the prisons of the dictators in South America and elsewhere.

When Hässig heard about this, he rang some of his friends — and, of course, Hässig was the leading person in the blood business — and at this time there were some non-corrupted people in the WHO (World Health Organization). So, in an emergency meeting, on short notice so the industry had not time to corrupt the members who decided on these issues, they decided that the position of the WHO would be that it isn’t allowed to produce plasma in the Third World, because they would bleed them out.

Now they are bleeding out the poorest of the poor, and they are going to Mexico, near where we are sitting right now. In order to help the commercial blood products industry, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] has approved that a single person may give up to 50 units of plasma a year. That means he may drop in two times a week to give blood and liver plasma. And an elephant wouldn’t possibly survive that, right? So that’s the background, and what they did when all that was in place was they changed the way they were treating hemophiliacs. It started in California.

Up to the year 1969 it was forbidden to give the clotting factors to hemophiliacs unless they had internal bleeding. If they would give them prophylactically, antibodies would be produced because these blood products are highly contaminated. In 1969 the industry started to convince some medical doctors — and the first one was a woman doctor in California — to treat hemophiliac patients prophylactically with those clotting factors, and this is how the industry made a lot of money. And, of course, the bodies of these hemophiliacs made a lot of antibodies against those products, which had been foreseen. They’ve had to use higher doses of clotting factors ever since, in order to compete with those antibodies, so that those clotting factors actually work. They gradually have to increase the amount they are injecting.

This has been the biggest business in the blood industry ever since. Nobody’s speaking about this, but that’s why almost all hemophiliacs have come down with hepatitis. If you inject such a high amount of foreign proteins, and all the contaminants, then of course the liver, as the central metabolic organ, is stressed out, resulting in hepatic inflammations. A lot of hemophiliacs died from hepatitis, and it was blames on nonexistent viruses.

Zenger’s: One of the issues that’s raised in groups whenever we’re talking about the theories that HIV doesn’t exist, or that retroviruses don’t exist, or that this or that disease isn’t infectious at all, is we often get people saying they’re having a hard enough time just trying to get people to think that HIV might be harmless. It would be way too much to try to convince them that it doesn’t exist at all, and even more difficult to try to convince them that — if I understand what you’re saying correctly — ever since the end of World War II virtually every scientist working in this field has been absolutely committed to a totally wrong theory and that all of that research is nonsense and has to be thrown out.

Dr. Lanka: That’s not true. Before AIDS, there were a lot of discussions and papers about the role of viruses in evolution. Evolutionary biologists were already arguing about the central dogma of molecular genetics. But this was all silenced, because they all experienced how rapidly that idea came into existence, and how powerful it was. Even when some of my colleagues at the university and everybody I reached was absolutely sure and clear and convinced about what I was saying, they were silent. I never got support from a lot of professors at my university. Some of them, of course, liked me a lot and they tried to warn me when it was too much, when I was in danger of being expelled from the university, etc. But none of them went public on their own.

Zenger’s: When would you date the beginnings of this mistake, what you call the dogma? How long has it been the dominant paradigm?

Dr. Lanka: I think it really started in the 1960’s, when the retrovirologists were being supported by President Nixon in the “War on Cancer.” This was the first time incredible amounts of money were poured into this kind of research. These elite schools of thought came into existence, dominating everything, and of course they had success with the mass media because they were dealing with cancer. When they claimed that retroviruses were the cause of cancer, of course they developed chemotherapy against it. But soon they had to give up the idea of cancer being caused by viruses because they saws that reverse transcriptase and reverse transcription occur everywhere they’re look for it. They found it’s a common characteristic of all forms of life, especially for cancer cells, and in fact it’s a repair mechanism.

So silently, slowly but surely, they stopped speaking about those cancer-causing viruses anymore, but came up with a completely new idea of what is causing cancer, saying it’s a weak immune system. When immunology, as its own biological discipline with is own faculty came into existence, people claimed that they were able to measure the strength of the immune system by measuring lymphocytes in the bloodstream. Of course, thousands of studies had been carried out in the ’70’s saying that the white blood cell count never correlated with any disease or with any age.

But, even so, they claimed that cancers come to existence by accidental mutations everywhere in the body, and the immune system is suppressing cancer. And when the T4 cells are out of order with something else in the immune system, the immune system cannot suppress cancer anymore. And this was the immune surveillance theory of cancer, which was wrong already at the moment they announced it; because they knew already by then that cancer cells have no specific markers on their surface. They have the same protein markers on their surface as embryonic cells.

Zenger’s: One wouldn’t expect the immune system to recognize a cancer cell because it’s self.

Dr. Lanka: That’s it. We have a lot of embryonic cells in our body all over. Those are the stem cells. When the nerve cells have got broken, new nerve cells may regenerate out of the embryonic cells, because those cells cannot be regenerated. So we have embryonic tissues everywhere, and here comes evolutionary biology.

Now I have to tell you the basis of our lives. The fermentation process was not producing enough energy to form multicellular organisms or to enable the cell to differentiate. Bacterial cells are not differentiated, not able to build multicellular organisms because they don’t have enough energy. Only the invention of photosynthesis — using the energy of the sun to split down matter in order to get electrons — allowed life to go on. Life is driven by the force of electrons, and with photosynthesis the electrons came out of the splitting of the water, and the base product was oxygen.

This photosynthesis was so successful that it polluted the whole planet. The water, and eventually the atmosphere, became saturated with oxygen. Only when bacteria began to learn to use oxygen to produce much more energy out of organic material, out of a sugar molecule, did we have the next step in evolution. Life dealt with the oxygen catastrophe, and since then we have had a perfect equilibrium of oxygen-producing bacteria and oxygen-using bacteria, so that they keep the atmosphere at a constant level of 20 percent oxygen. This is exactly the level at which life is able to persist. At a lower level, or a higher level, it is impossible. We are living in the equilibrium. That’s the principle of Gaia, by the way.

Those bacteria which learned to use oxygen were able to produce 20 to 30 times more energy per sugar molecule, because the oxygen at the end was sucking so many electrons that many more electrons could be taken out of the sugar, to produce much more energy than was possible without the potent oxidative substance at the end of the energy-producing chain. This revolution in energy formation was the basis for all higher cells and all higher organisms. Of course, with this excess of energy, cells could eventually differentiate and form multicellular organisms. And these bacteria, which sere using the oxygen, are part of every one of our cells, called mitochondria. So very higher cell is a product of the fusion of several different kinds of bacteria: the spirochetes, which brought mobility into life; and the mitochondria, which produced much more energy than before.

This excess energy is the basis of all higher life, and if you violate it — if you don’t let the oxygen come into the organism; if the blood is oxidized by poppers [nitrites] or sulfinamides [including sulfa drugs like Bactrim and Septra]; or if the transit way between the blood and the cells is poisoned by heavy metals, or the lack of essential fatty acids; or when the mitochondria are destroyed in the cells, due to the lack of nutrition, or antibiotics — the oxygen cannot be transported from the blood to the cells. Then the cell is not able to produce enough energy. It either may die, resulting in inflammation; or when it’s possible for a cell to survive, it will become cancerous. When the cell is producing only fermentation, then that’s cancer, as Otto Warburg already detected in the 1940’s.

They knew from the very beginning that cancer cells have only embryonic markers on their surface. From a biological, evolutionary point of view it makes sense that a cancer cell is a reduction to an embryonic stage. It de-differentiates due to the lack of energy, and it waits until the lack of energy is over in order to differentiate again. Of course, if the lack of energy persists, it loses genetic material; and these were the old criteria to define cancer, when cells lost a lot of genetic material, because then they lost the ability to differentiate again.

Zenger’s: In other words, cancer occurs when the cell is programmed to behave like a cell very early in fetal development and just divide like crazy.

Dr. Lanka: That’s it. An embryonic cell goes into a unicellular state. It behaves like a unicellular organism, like a bacterium. It loses the ability to stop replication when coming into contact with other cells. So knowing about evolutionary biology, you are able to explain everything.

In order to explain failure to find a retrovirus that directly caused cancer, they claimed to be able to measure the immune system. But this is ridiculous. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, August 28, 1981, it was published that it makes no sense to measure lymphocytes in the blood because only a few of them are in the blood. The immune system is carried out, not in the blood, but in the tissues. Only rarely and accidentally do we see some of them in the blood. We’ve already carried out thousands of studies which have proven no correlation between disease or health, in old or young, in T-cells; and even less, of course, in T-cell subsets.

But, even though they knew that these T-cell tests had not meaning, they were selling them to the market. Beginning in 1977, starting in the United States, it was possible to patent biological entities or biological techniques, so people started to make money out of biological ideas.

This is the definite turning point when modern medicine and modern biology lost their ‘Unschuld’, their innocence. That’s it. The immune surveillance theory of cancer — the belief that if you measure the strength of the immune system, then you could see when you are going to develop cancer — was the basis of AIDS, the thinking about AIDS. They said if your immune functions are weak, you are going to develop all viral forms of opportunistic infections and all forms of cancer. And this never happened, as a matter of fact. In AIDS we never have seen opportunistic infections. We have never seen all viral forms of cancer; only one form of cancer, KS [Kaposi's sarcoma].

Zenger’s: When you say, “In AIDS we have never seen any opportunistic infections,” what do you mean by that? Because virtually everything associated with AIDS is considered an “opportunistic infection.”

Dr. Lanka: That’s not true. An opportunistic infection is a bacterial infection which takes over when the immune functions are down, when you have an immune defect or an immune deficiency. This was and is the definition of an immune defect, and an immune deficiency: when bacterial infections are taking over in your body, generalized bacterial infections.

This is the case in those children born with an immune defect, who have to live under a plastic tent; or those people in the intensive- care units, patients dying now like flies because they are having immune deficiency after an operation, accident, transfusion or transplantation, when immune functions are artificially suppressed. Bacterial infections go everywhere in the body, and due to the resistance catastrophe, which is the medical background of why “AIDS” has been invented, definitely, they are dying like flies. But all these internalized bacterial infections never have been part of the definition of AIDS.

Zenger’s: I remember that was a question the AIDS experts got asked at some of the very early meetings, in the early 1980’s: “Well, if it’s a breakdown of the immune system, why don’t you get colds all the time? Why don’t you get flus all the time? Why don’t you get these common infectious diseases all the time? Why is it just these really esoteric things like PCP and KS and CMV and MAI and whatever?

Dr. Lanka: That’s it. The only diseases seen in people with AIDS are the ones tropical disease specialists have specialized in, Those are unicellular organisms which came into existence in evolutionary times when there was not as much oxygen in the atmosphere as there is today. So they can only grow in people who are depleted of oxygen. And that’s it, why they show up there, even when the immune functions are absolutely perfect.

Especially in the case of fungi, their immunology, their immunity is not known. They think they have the same immunity as bacterial cells. But evolutionary biology answers these questions as well. Fungi came into existence after animal beings. The fungi invented enzymes which are even able to produce energy out of oxidizing. They feed on dead organic matter, and that’s their task in evolution, in biology: to recycle. Without fungi, no plants would grow on earth, outside the water.

Zenger’s: Which is why, if you’re growing mushrooms, you put them in a warm, dark place and fill them full of pieces of wood and bits of plants.

Dr. Lanka: That’s it. It was already known by 1965, definitely, that PCP is a fungus. And this was and is the most important AIDS-defining disease. If you look at who comes down with this disease, you see people who are using poppers. What are poppers? Nitrites. And check every dictionary in the bookstore, or the People’s Medical Dictionary: what do nitrites do in the body? They oxidize the blood. That means the blood itself is not able to transport oxygen. So, of course, the first cells to suffer are cells in the lung.

Nitrites are transformed immediately into nitric oxide in the smallest capillars [capillaries?, F.C.] of the body. Nitric oxide is produced by the body in very low concentrations in order to control blood pressure, in order to control development. It has to be detoxified by the body immediately, because in higher concentrations it acts very aggressively, destroying everything. This is why the “eating cells” of the immune system, the macrophages, are releasing nitric oxide in high quantities in inflammation reactions: to destroy and digest the bacterial cells.

So if you take up nitrites regularly, or from time to time — which means huge, excessive amounts of nitric oxide are produced — it means you start the self-destroying process in your own body, especially in the lungs. You are destroying your lung tissue, and fungal infections are growing on this dead organic matter. Even so, immune functions are perfect, because these patients do suppress bacterial infections. All those 60 different kinds of lung disease we know by now, all caused by bacterial infections, do not appear because the immune functions are still well.

So we have a direct toxic effect, which may happen even when your detoxification system is not working on a cellular level, because you will suffer malnutrition. PCP can also happen in people who suffer extreme malnutrition, like we’ve had in Africa. This is the reason why PCP is not part of the AIDS definition in Africa, because we have it in the children who suffer starvation because the detoxification system of the cells is very weak in children. This is why, in the Middle Ages, when the wells had been poisoned by feces or meat from the civil wars or wars, it was the children who suffered, turning blue — this was called “the disease of the blues” — when they drank water, because there were a lot of nitrites and nitrates inside, produced by nitrifying bacteria when the wells had been poisoned, because the detoxification systems of children are very low. This is why the children starving heavily in Africa come down with PCP ever since.

I can foresee, here and now, that people regularly using Viagra will be coming down with KS in two to three years because Viagra acts by blocking the neutralization of nitric oxide. When you take Viagra, nitric oxide accumulates, relaxing the smooth muscles, that blood is flowing in, the penis is being erected, and our muscles are relaxed. Poppers act by the same mode, because the nitrites are transformed into nitric oxide in the smallest vessels, and so the smallest vessels become relaxed. But whereas poppers directly produce nitric oxide, Viagra works by preventing the neutralization of nitric oxide which comes into existence normally in the process of blood pressure regulation. It constantly persists at a very low level, but if it accumulates, you are in a very big danger.

So, if the blood has oxidized itself and the lining of the smallest vessels, the capillars (i.e. capillaries, F.C.] , is destroyed by nitric oxide, what’s going to happen? Those cells will turn into cancer cells. There’s a lack of oxygen, and the first cells to suffer this oxygen deficiency are the lining of the epithelium, the smallest vessels, where the nitrites are transformed into nitric oxide. And this is, as a matter of fact, the definition of Kaposi’ Sarcoma: when the lining — the interior of the smallest vessels — develops into cancerous form, growing bigger and multiplying. This is hyperplasia, no a form of sarcoma, but a real form of cancer, and this is defined as KS. It can also come into existence even if you are not swallowing poppers, but when your cellular detoxification system is not working anymore.

Zenger’s: So that’s your bottom-line answer to the question, “What is AIDS?”

Dr. Lanka: Yes. AIDS is an energy deficiency problem. The “AIDS” term is absolutely misleading because it has nothing to do with an immune defect or immune deficiency. It is clear that se are dealing with an energy deficiency. So the term “AIDS” has to be replaced by the term “AEDS,” “Acquired Energy Deficiency Syndrome,” and we would keep up the term “AIDS” only in the form of acquired intelligence deficiency syndrome. AEDS has a rational basis, and it is treatable. There are very potent treatment options available to reverse those damages caused by intoxification or lack of oxygen, on all various levels.

Here, also, evolutionary biology helps. Animal beings are not able to produce three major classes of substances, because when they came into existence in the water, these substances were available. This is another aspect of evolution, because they have grown up or developed in a constant milieu where all the essential molecules have been available. Animal beings didn’t bother to build up three important groups of molecules on their own, so they have the advantage to use their energy, and in order to develop even more or quicker.

Among these substances animals cannot produce on their own are the polyphenols, which are vitamins. We are aware of 5,000 different kinds of polyphenols produced in herbs — in all plants, but especially in herbs. The higher they grow, the higher they produce polyphenols. You can detect plants in front of radiation. These polyphenols are nature’s own protease inhibitors, by the way. Animals are also not able to produce the long-chain sugar molecules which make up the basic tissues that form up to 80 percent of our body weight. These tissues produce the constant milieu for the cells in the body — and if you don’t have them you are going automatically into disease.

Every cell is surrounded by these basic tissues, long-chain sugar molecules with proteins attached. All nerve cells end there, activating and deactivating. All immunological reactions are carried out there. These basic tissues have a quasi-crystalline structure and they work by breaking, oscillating, very quickly, several thousand times a second, with the speed all biochemical reactions are triggered, etc. etc. If you don’t know how life is working on the cellular level, you’re not able to understand cancer. If you don’t know how life is organized on the tissue level, you cannot understand life either, right?

So if the cell lacks these substances, it cannot maintain its milieu. The surfaces of the cells especially need those long-chain sugar molecules in order to prevent calcium from flowing inside the cell. If those products are not there, calcium is formed inside the cells, killing the cells, resulting in controlled cell death, apoptosis: that means inflammation. Normally you get these substances from plants. In emergency cases, if you are depleted, you get them from bovine cartilage or agar agar, two spoonfuls every morning, With this you can stop all forms of arthritis, by the way, And those molecules are potent protease inhibitors as well.

In any case of inflammation, or catabolic situation — when you lose more cells than the body’s able to reproduce — you go in with this and it’s going to help you. The artificial protease inhibitors only help you for short periods. Then they intoxify the cells, because the artificial protease inhibitors cannot be digested. The body cannot get rid of them. They form crystals, and eventually they intoxify the whole cell and the whole organism on all levels, because they prevent the digestion of all the proteins.

We have reached the end, with the treatments, because not only are we deconstructing AIDS and offering another term, which everybody’s able to handle and be happy with, especially cancer specialists. We are also offering very potent treatment options to replace these very dangerous protease inhibitors. I think that completes the picture of what so-called “AIDS” really is and what you can do about it. 

By Mark Gabrish Conlan

Link reference: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/mcinterviewsl.htm

Dr. Stefan Lanka, virologist and molecular biologist, is internationally mostly known as an “AIDS dissident” (and maybe “gentechnology dissident”) who has been questioning the very existence of “HIV” since 1994. In the past years, however, he stumbled over a breathtaking fact: Not even ONE of the (medically relevant) viruses has ever been isolated; there is no proof of their existence.

Actually, Dr. Lanka has already stated three years ago, in the almost “legendary” Zenger´s interview: “So for a long time I studied virology, from the end to the beginning, from the beginning to the end, to be absolutely sure that there was no such thing as HIV. And it was easy for me to be sure about this because I realized that the whole group of viruses to which HIV is said to belong, the retroviruses –as well as other viruses which are claimed to be very dangerous — in fact do not exist at all.” 

So he was thoroughly reading the literature on those “other viruses” again, and after he could still not find any paper which would provide the evidence, he encouraged people not to BELIEVE him but to ask the institutes and authorities themselves. This has actually taken place, mostly initiated by mothers. The responses were revealing. In September 2001 the German book “Impfen – Völkermord im dritten Jahrtausend?” (Vaccination – Genocide in the third millennium?) by Stefan Lanka and Karl Krafeld was published in which they state that there is still no proof of any (medically relevant) virus.

This movement (klein-klein-aktion ~ many little actions/steps) has a German website: www.klein-klein-aktion.de which I have taken (and translated) all the following texts from.

[The German original of the following text by Stefan Lanka you can find here (temporarily not available for technical reasons, Jan 11, 2003)]

 
All these photos have in common that they, resp. the authors, can´t claim that they present a virus, as long as they do not also provide the original publications which describe how and what from the virus has been isolated. Such original publications are cited nowhere.
Indeed, in the entire scientific literature there´s not even one publication, where for “viruses in the medicine” the fulfillment of Koch´s first postulate is even claimed. That means, that there is no proof that from humans with certain diseases the viruses – which are held responsible for these diseases – have been isolated. Nevertheless, this is precisely what they publicly claim. Now, regarding the photos submitted:

1. Many of the photos are colored. This is proof enough, that they are the (art)work of designers, because electron microscopic photos always appear in black and white.

2. The images of the so called HIV-, measles (Masern)- and smallpox (Pocken) viruses clearly show, as the image descriptions partly already indicate, that these are cells wherein the viruses can allegedly be found. Thus, nothing has been isolated. The photos actually show cells and typical endogenous particles in them. These structures are well known and serve the intra- and intercellular transport. Unlike viruses of the same kind – that are always the same size and same shape (consistency) -, they differ in size and shape (consistency) and therefore can´t be isolated.

3. In the case of the influenza- herpes-, vaccinia-, polio-, adeno- and ebola-viruses each photo shows only a single particle; nobody claims that they´re isolated particles, let alone particles that have been isolated from humans. 

These particles are partially the cellular particles mentioned above (#2) resp. typical artifacts which means: structures that accrue after inappropriate fixing and drying of the probes, while being prepared for the electron microscope.

4. The “isolated” polio viruses are artificial particles, generated by suction of an indifferent mass through a very fine filter into a vacuum. Its structure (no characteristic structures) differ clearly from the ones of the “viruses” in the cells. Here the information is essential that a biochemical characterization of those “isolated” viruses, although “isolation” is claimed, has never been published anywhere nor has anybody even claimed such a characterization. 

5. The photo of the hepatitis B “viruses” does not show isolated structures, but – as the image title already says, an agglutinate. This is the scientific/medical term for proteins from the blood that are clumped together, as is typical for coagulations. Typically, thereby round and also crystal structures accrue – depending on the condition of the blood sample.

In summary, it must be said that these photos are an attempt of fraud committed by the researchers and medical scientists involved, as far as they assert that these structures are viruses or even isolated viruses. To what extent the involved journalists and authors of textbooks have contributed to this fraud knowlingly or only out of gross negligence, I don´t know. Everyone who starts a recherche in the medical literature, will quickly encounter statements and references that Koch´s first postulate can´t be fulfilled (i.e. Großgebauer: Eine kurze Geschichte der Mikroben, 1997 ["a little story of the microbes"]; editor: Verlag für angewandte Wissenschaft). How these authors who claim the existence of viruses could overlook that, remains a riddle.

Could it be that the term “Contagium” = “Gift” (poison/toxin) = “Virus” from the 18th and 19th century was applied in the 20th century to the cell components which were named “viruses” since the electron microscope was introduced in 1931? And in order to hide this, the “disease causing viruses” have often been described but never been isolated? And then they were used as seemingly logical explanation for poisonings and adverse affects of vaccination, as Luhmann (1995) (i.e.) writes about the symptomatic of Hepatitis B, which was observed for the first time in 1985 following smallpox vaccinations, and 1938 following measles vaccinations? The copies in the textbooks show only structures within cells and nothing that looks like isolation and thus homogenous. The biochemical characterization, which is crucial, lacks completely.

Robert Koch and colleagues, Prof. Rush, Prof. Max von Pettenkofer, Prof. Virchow have shown, for instance by experiments and by observation of the Henle-Koch´s rules that by transmission of bacteria, the supposed contagium vivum, it was not possible to cause the same disease. So Robert Koch modified (weakened) the 3rd postulate of his teacher, the German anatomist Henle, in the form that the generation of a similar symptom in animal experiments would be sufficient to prove this hypothesis of disease cause, namely the hypothesis of infectious bacteria. (See Großgebauer: Eine kurze Geschichte der Mikroben).

So it does not surprise me that Prof. Alfred Fischer writes in his book “Vorlesungen über Bakterien” (”[academic] lectures on bacteria”) from 1897 (!): “as is true for any infectious disease – the fact that it does not only take the addition of the bacteria but also the unknown something of individual predisposition, goes without saying.”

Stefan Lanka, Dec 2001
(Translation Juergen Faas, Dec 2001) (minor changes on March 2, 2002)

Link reference: http://www.neue-medizin.com/lanka2.htm

Having a life-threatening illness brings your life into a sharper focus. At least it did for me. Every three months I would wait with dread for a week while they processed my blood work. Would it come back bad? Would this be the time that I would have to go on meds? And then I would hear the news that I was doing well. At that point, I would be relieved, but I would also start the three-month cycle between tests all over again, worrying that things like a cough or feeling tired meant more than they actually did.

The results for my last round of lab work came back the second week of June. My doctor told me I was a ‘long-term non-progressor,’ or a .05 percenter. In laymen’s terms, this means that my body is able to keep the virus in check on its own. My doctors also told me that I would not die of anything related to HIV. Upon hearing all this, I became very confused. I felt like I had entered a permanent eye of the storm. Here I stood, my left foot in one camp, my right in another. My first real awareness was that my life was yet again forever changed. Now I was an oddity and not just a statistic. How would I play this new hand?

I was numbed by the news. Talk about a paradigm shift! I had set myself up to believe that I was either positive or negative. Yet the news came that I was a bit of both. Even today, three months later, I’m still grappling with it. It places me in a very unique position as an HIV-positive person. I am left of nowhere. I say left, because I feel left alone. I say nowhere because no one really understand where I am, they just know where I’m not.

When I was first diagnosed with HIV, I saw all of my long-term plans slowly disappear. My goals shifted from retirement investments to funding medication. Instead of planning my next vacation, I would wonder at which point it would be impossible for me to travel. Thoughts of raising a family left me. Life as I saw it was greatly diminished. There would be no “golden years.” The only dream I hung onto was buying a house. Owning a home, I could create all the dreams I would not be able to accomplish. It would be a house full of joy and laughter. A place no one would want to leave. It would be the center of my world, a legacy of memories to leave behind and where I would cross over from this world.

After this last diagnosis, the luxury to think about long-term plans has returned. I need to map out a different strategy for my life now. I need to figure out a retirement plan. In the future, I will move into a bigger house to allow for a family and go to Paris, Amsterdam and Italy. Now all that I see ahead is an uninterrupted view of endless possibilities. While I may be one of the lucky few, I am still a member of “the club.” I sit in the eye of the storm, the quiet still place surrounded by the raging winds of this epidemic.

I have shared this news with many of my positive friends. All of them have told me this is great news. The first time I heard this I was angry. If it was good news, then it seemed like I was somehow better than they were. For the last six years, I have viewed my status as HIV positive as part of the whole of who I am. I could not accept being treated as a less than that whole. I would not accept from my positive friends that I was better than they are now. One of the few to enjoy such an existence, I’m still trying to accept that.

I think of my brothers and sisters who battle daily with the disease, fighting off nausea and fatigue from meds, wondering when things will take a turn for the worse and when drug failure will hit and leave them with no other options. I think about them wondering if there will be family and friends at their side when they become ill. I feel guilty thinking of finally owning that beach house, traveling to Europe and seeing Paris in the spring. I feel guilty thinking of maybe one day chasing that little head of curly locks around the yard with laughter trailing behind him.

I feel guilty not having to wonder when my HIV status will interrupt my life. It’s called survivor’s guilt, I know. Ever since hearing the news, I have been asking myself, “Why me? Why was I given my life back?” I just lost my partner to this disease. Through all the heartache, stress and grief, I can’t begin to imagine how I would have dealt with this news during that time. Yet I feel he is smiling down on me knowing that I have a mission to accomplish. He will always be a part of the story unfolding.

During the coming days and months, I will be figuring out my next steps. I see a retreat on the horizon, a timeout to asses this new major change in my life and draw up a plan of what to do with this life I’ve been given back. It seems that there is a reason my life is unfolding as it is. I still cling to the one gift given to me after my original diagnosis six years ago: live for today. But today, I also start getting used to having many more tomorrows.

by Brandon Braud

 
Braud is the front office administrator at the Human Rights Campaign.

Link reference: http://www.hrc.org/issues/3890.htm

I had never told my family that I was gay, but I indulged in relationship after relationship, and between them, I played around. I suppose, according to some people’s standards I was promiscuous, but I didn’t think so at the time. My sex life was the norm according to my lifestyle. I believed I had many friends; they and I all lived the same way. If a relationship didn’t satisfy me, I simply moved on to the next man. I didn’t think about my affairs more than superficially. It was all part of being gay; I was merely doing what everyone else was doing and I didn’t see it as a problem. After all, didn’t I have everything? I never thought seriously about my own opinion of myself. It wasn’t an issue. More important was what kind of impression I made on others, and that impression became my opinion of myself.

It was inevitable as I grew older: I realized that the imprint gays made on society was negative. Then I began to question my own standards. My self-imposed secrecy as to my lifestyle fostered a lack of self-love. The guilt, blame and shame grew daily subliminally; I never gave it a conscious thought. At the time I believed I was healthy, and yet I was abusing my body with a junk food diet. My parents ate the same way, so I was the second generation on this deficient, harmful diet. I was as careless about my health as I was about my feelings and the feelings of others. I believe this lifestyle contributed to a weakened immune system and was, in part, the reason that I eventually succumbed to AIDS.

In May of 1983, Dr. John Medved, in private practice in Santa Monica, diagnosed me as having Kaposi’s sarcoma and AIDS. Dr. Medved sent me to UCLA and I was seen by Dr. Run Mitsuyasu. The blood tests showed a lowered immune system. The doctors saw a spot, and did a biopsy on it. It was definite, there was no mistake… I had AIDS.

I turned to my family. The same day I was diagnosed I told my folks: “I am gay, and I have AIDS.” Each member of my family in turn expressed his or her love for me and a desire to support me in all ways. My family has been my best support throughout this crisis. This disease has brought us even closer and my confidence in my family is total. I believe I am most fortunate to have a family willing to accept me and love me unconditionally. The love my family gave me helped me to learn to love myself, and that is the beginning of healing. Throughout this entire experience, my family supported me in every way. I moved in with them. I didn’t have to worry about money.

Dr. Mitsuyasu arranged for me to receive the traditional treatment for AIDS. I was given a choice of chemotherapy or the drug Interferon.

I was encouraged to take part in a government program. Its purpose was to test the effects of the new drug Interferon on AIDS. I was told the drug was very expensive but I could get it free on this program. I thought if I didn’t participate, I would definitely die, and soon. I was told the drug might save my life and that it was the only hope left to me. So gratefully, I agreed to allow the doctors to experiment on me with Interferon.

There was no reference to diet – and I was not given counseling for the terrible emotional stress I endured. I suffered from depression, anger, and fear. I had nightmares. I thought I was dying, and no positive thoughts concerning life came to my mind. For seven months I was hospitalized under the Interferon treatment. I was bedridden, unable to move about. My vision became blurred and got steadily worse. I couldn’t hear well. My sense of touch was numbed. I lost my sense of taste and almost lost my sense of smell. I experienced a loss of coordination and found even walking extremely difficult. My hair fell out. I was taking sixteen to twenty-four Tylenol tablets a day and sleeping twelve to fifteen hours a day. I admit I had thoughts of suicide to avoid the pain and suffering, but I am a Roman Catholic, so suicide was really out of the question for me. My waking moments were spent in pain, fear, anger, and total depression. I was completely demoralized.

After seven months of hospital treatment, the doctors decided to take me off the drug Interferon. It wasn’t working for me. I thought it was the only hope, and when it didn’t work, I believed all hope was lost, that a death sentence had been issued.

The medical doctors advised me to start chemotherapy and radiation and said that possibly other experimental drugs might be helpful. But, they added, the prognosis was not good. It was at this point that I took control of my body. I decided that I didn’t want to die full of drugs, chemicals and radiation. If I were going to die, let my death be natural. I told the doctors I would not submit to the treatment they advised. It was January, 1984, and I have not returned to any of those treatments, to any hospital or drugs.

As with most people facing death, my religion became very important to me. I attended mass daily and was in constant prayer. I guess I hadn’t really given up on myself, because I prayed daily for guidance on how to live each day and find a path to health. My religion has been a source of great comfort and peace. I am grateful.

I was amazed to find that within the first month of freedom from the drug Interferon, I began to feel somewhat better. It was during the second month of freedom from the drug that my body began to wake up. About that time, a friend offered to give me a body massage. He was a very good friend to be willing to massage the body of a person with AIDS. More than that, while he massaged my body, he began to talk to me about letting go of the toxins within. He told me that the seven months I had been in the hospital the toxins had been sitting along my bones and arteries, so to speak. He spoke of meditation and relaxation, positive imagery and the healing of the spirit. I have always been a positive person, and as I heard these things, I began to learn to live one day at a time. I began to be grateful for each day of life I was being given. Positive information was beginning to come to me. Someone brought me a flyer from Louise Hay about her book AIDS: A Positive Approach. It was the first time I had heard that I could get well. It was all I needed to hear..

Louise Hay teaches meditation, relaxation, and healing imagery. She also emphasizes the need for a correct diet. I found a good nutritionist and began to get my diet on the right track. For the first time in my life, I began to eat correctly. I became very conscious of nutrition as a source of health. I believe it was a reflection of my self-love that I began to care, finally, about how I treated my body. The days of alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and quaaludes were over forever. Instead of yielding to death, I began to explore the possibility of life. Each new understanding opened another door. I discovered the benefits of vitamin therapy, acupuncture, colonics, carrot juice, garlic and fasting. I focused on methods of stimulating my immune system.

The healing didn’t happen all at once. I found I had to seek out the sources of health and become my own doctor.

Louise Hay emphasizes the absolute need to rid one’s life of all negative stress, which creates illness. If we are to regain our health it is absolutely necessary to rid our lives of such stress. But how could I live with a supposedly terminal illness and not have stress in my life? That seemed impossible. I took the approach that I would live each day given to me to the fullest. Yes, there were times when I couldn’t sustain the positive attitude; I suffered fear and depression, and the nightmares returned. I worked on emphasizing the positives and working through the negatives by anticipating days of joy and pleasure and the renewed health coming to me.

It was during this time that I found it necessary to free myself from all relationships not supportive and positive. My old friends had reacted predictably to my illness. They were frightened. They had dropped me like a stone, sol did the same with them. I began to surround myself with positive and supportive people who understood my constant efforts to improve my health. To be with positive-thinking people is now absolutely essential to my life. The lifestyle of my “old” friends would have killed me, and I would not die for their sakes.

I began to change-mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I started on the journey to true self-love. Mentally, I try to keep my thoughts under control; I express love and kindness to others as well as to myself.

Physically, I began to do all I could to stimulate my immune system. I worked out at a gym. I took up body building, aerobics, racquetball and swimming. Then I added body surfing and bicycling. When you physically stimulate the immune system, it produces a corresponding mental and spiritual awakening and the endorphins within become activated. Physical exercise for me was essential.

I work hard at loving people. I refuse to indulge in thoughts of criticism, fear, anger, blame, shame, and guilt. I let people know that if they have such thoughts and emotions, they can choose another way to think and feel. It’s not wrong to have negative thoughts, but it is wrong to get stuck in them. It is necessary to work through negative thinking in order to become free from it. People can choose love, joy, pleasure, and health. Both the negative and the positive always exist. It is our individual decision which to choose for our lives. This applies to everyone, not only to people who are facing death. A positive attitude is the foundation of healing spiritually, physically, and mentally.

People hear the word “healing” and they expect to see the lesions or other manifestations disappear immediately. But that isn’t the point. It is not the right goal. A higher quality of life on every level is to be desired-not just saving our lives in order to continue to live destructively. On any particular day, if you feel good, take advantage of it. Give thanks, exercise, see loving friends, exult in the good days in every way you know. People with a death-expectant attitude, people who are unwilling to change their lifestyles, or make any effort–cannot be victorious over AIDS. People who succumb to the threat of death like to say they are “going to die with dignity.” I say live with dignity. Life is for the living.

As to the disease itself: in my case it was sexually transmitted. I believe my immune system was weak to begin with. My lifestyle, eating habits, and mental attitude all contributed to a low level of health. I believed I was a healthy person then, but now I know that my immune system was being weakened in many ways. My uncaring, unfeeling, unknowing lifestyle was one of them.

At the age of twenty-one, I acquired sexually transmitted hepatitis. I was not given any drugs, but merely told to go home and rest. I don’t think I took the illness seriously and did not take time to see it totally healed. I spent two weeks in bed and then returned to my former lifestyle which included cocaine, quaaludes, some marijuana and alcohol. I believe my lifestyle and mental attitude contributed to the disease of AIDS.

I don’t believe that AIDS is a “gay” disease. I believe it has gone through the gay community, but is not limited to nor did it originate in the gay community.

I have heard the rumor that the virus was introduced into society intentionally, directed toward those people the U.S. society feels the most hostility towards-the gay community and the non-white community. I certainly hope it isn’t true. It could be true, but that is the kind of rumor I refuse to dwell on.

Each of us is an individual, mentally, spiritually, and physically. Because the medical community refuses to consider any modality other than drug therapy to heal AIDS, it is necessary for each of us to take control of his own body and seek the methods that work for us. There are those who respond to radiation, chemotherapy, and drugs. I did not. But you may. Realize that if what you are doing isn’t working for you, there are many, many other things you can do to help yourself.

- But it won’t be handed to you. You have to get out there and find out what will work for you. It is essential that you become absolutely honest with yourself. You must consider seriously how far you are willing to go to regain your health. As for me, I will go all the way. I found in myself a strength where I was 100% willing to take whatever steps were necessary to live even one more day.

I was and am willing to change myself and my lifestyle in whatever way good health requires. This means getting rid of the poisons in my life-mental, physical, and emotional poisons. It means a change in priorities-a total change in diet and daily activities. I am willing and I will try – for the sake of living another day. Being willing to do that, gives me a chance to live. That was and is my attitude toward myself.

I believe that there is no help for those with a poor attitude. You must believe in what you are doing-believe that it will work. That belief is of the utmost importance. Everyday, every hour, every minute of my life I am reaching for a quality of life that I did not know existed before AIDS. Quality, not quantity, is the name of this game. The most important thing I could say to a person with AIDS is: if you feel good in the morning, get out there and take advantage of it. Be grateful and live completely today. Stimulate your life, and you will stimulate your mind, body, and your immune system.

When we are young, we usually do not consider dying. Those thoughts are for the old ones whose lives have been lived, and they are ready. When a young person is surprised by the possibility of an early death-when tomorrow becomes a dream-today takes on another dimension.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone on this planet could find out what many people with AIDS have been forced to learn? Why do we have to face death before we learn about the value of life? We must learn to live truly in the moment. We must learn to live for each minute, hour, and day with gratitude and take full advantage of every good feeling and good time the world has to offer. We should wake up each morning grateful for another day, and if we feel good, run to take advantage of all the joys of life. Hurry up and learn to give love and be kind to others and seek the God within us all. I have learned to be grateful for the gift of this disease. Each day I live I feel like a “winner.” I have truly found a great joy in life. This disease has been a gift of life to me. I know that some people find that difficult to believe- but it is true, nevertheless. I have found a new awareness, and how to live on higher levels, with love, joy, and expectancy.

In one month, several friends died of AIDS. I became depressed in my grief. I began to slack off on my diet, and stopped going to the gym to work out. I allowed my thinking to go negative. My whole regimen began to slip, and the disease attacked me again. The symptoms began to return. I had to get hold of myself quickly and return to my health generating activities. I did so, and the disease retreated. I know now that it will be necessary for me to live all my days doing battle against this disease in the sense that I cannot ever return to my former lifestyle. I cannot ever allow depression, fear, blame, shame, and guilt to seep into my heart, mind, and body. I must be ever alert and on guard.

A great thinker has written, “Stand porter at the door of thought.” I am willing to do all I can to support life and I will not willingly succumb again to the negative thoughts and actions that will indeed kill me. If I don’t eat properly and think properly and constantly do all that I can to stimulate my immune system, I will be vulnerable to attack. I am not talking about a cure-I am talking about a new lifestyle.

I hope this disease will cause a change in the medical world’s approach to healing. Dr. Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine & Miracles is a beginning. It shows there are some medical doctors who are beginning to see the light. It seems obvious that drugs do not heal everything. A new method for coping must be developed. It is necessary to take a more complete look at the art of healing and our concepts of man. The body is matter, that’s true-but we are not just bodies – we are also mental, emotional and spiritual beings.

Wouldn’t it be intelligent of the medical community to take a wider look at healing and include in its art the methods now considered “alternative?” At this point it is necessary for persons with AIDS to doctor themselves. The medical world has closed its mind to anything other than drugs. Yet, the natural, “alternative” methods are very old-and it seems to me that if a method is very old – it has lasted because IT WORKS!

Must the medical world be faced with a plague before it can change its beliefs regarding the various ways to heal? Must a human being be confronted with death before he/she can open the mind to a change in lifestyle?

Healing the spirit is the beginning of healing the body. Right thinking can bring about healing.

How can one’s health not be affected by diet? How long must we wait, and how many of us will suffer and die before crack is made in the monolithic establishment-with its current practices of drugs, radiation, and chemotherapy? The responsibility falls on each one of us.

We are in the forefront of this change in healing practices. The burden of responsibility lies with each of us infected individuals or the healthy. We must seek out true healing and insist that it be practiced in all its aspects. AIDS could have a positive effect on the world if the medical complex would open its doors to other healing methods and use drugs only where they really work-in emergency situations to save lives.

Because of my changes in thinking, feeling, and acting, I have discovered I am able to make a total commitment. I have been in a Personal relationship for some time. We are totally honest with each other; my lover is familiar with all aspects of my illness. We practice “safe sex.” Yet I don’t really know what “safe” sex is. I don’t honestly believe condoms are safe. I’m told they are ninety percent safe, but there is that questionable ten percent. We just don’t know. For myself, I take any and all precautions to protect my lover. We enjoy sex, but sex is not the foundation of our relationship – friendship is.

I keep myself active and feel well and strong. But I know that I must be extremely careful. Because I had cancer (K.S. is a form of cancer), I must watch my diet, live an unstressed life, and carry on my entire lifestyle in a way that is not disease inducing but is health promoting. I feel healthy, but some K.S. lesions remain (as of May, I988).

As to my future-I am writing a book, and books as you know, can take years to complete. I refuse to give any urgency or stress to this project, however, and will take my time to do it right. But the book isn’t my only project. I no longer work from eight to five. I spend time learning about this disease and also developing myself spiritually.

The most fulfilling thing for me is to be able to help others–especially Persons With AIDS -with what I have learned. I have always enjoyed teaching and lecturing helping to open doors to the possibilities of life for another person.

There are only a few leaders in the gay community who are able to speak from experience concerning this killing disease. The number will no doubt grow, but in the meantime, I have the feeling this is my path. I feel responsible to my fellows to get as much information as I can to those who still suffer. It is a very rewarding way of life.

Today is all I have and I intend to make the most of it. Tomorrow is still a dream, and it will take care of itself.

Note: Louie Nassaney appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, April 5, I988, and gave his story. He also was featured in “Surviving Is What I Do”, in Time magazine, May 2, I988.

WHAT LOUIE NASSANEY DID

• He found out how healing actually occurs, on all levels: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
• After a near-death experience with immunosuppressive therapies and drugs, he rejected them.
• He learned that a positive attitude is the foundation of healing oneself; he practiced and proved it.
• He learned about health and how to maintain it. He is in excellent health today.
• He started loving himself. (His family had always loved and accepted him unconditionally, and that helped him to learn to love himself.)
• He developed a nourishing sexual, sensual relationship but found it doesn’t always have to end in coitus.
• He maintained a healthful diet and learned how to do this with correct foods and supplements.
• He stopped all toxic input: tobacco, caffeine, sugar, salt, alcohol, drugs, all medication. He avoided negative people and negative emotions which include criticism, anger, guilt, hopelessness, and despair.
• He improved his mind by learning and working with inner strengths.
• He nourished his heart by enhancing personal, loving relationships.
• He improved his spiritual orientation by finding factors such as inspiring people, books, groups, and lifestyles.
• He improved all activity levels: aerobics (oxygenating the body), relaxation, physical exercise, sports. He learned that physical exercise is essential to stimulate the immune system.
• He learned about holistic healing and how to use natural modalities.
• He believed in what he was doing, believed that it would work.
• & Louie Paul Nassaney experienced a rebirth – physical, emotional, and spiritual.

Chapter from “They Conquered Aids! True life adventures. From Self-reliance, thru Inspiration, into Transformation”.
By Scott J. Gregory, O.M.D. and Bianca Leonardo, N.M.D.
Tree of Life publications © 1989

Louie Nassaney published “I Am Not a Victim: One Man’s Triumph over Fear & AIDS”

Link reference: http://www.altheal.org/testimonies/nassaney.htm

I still find it hallucinating that the AIDS system has managed, through fear and non-scientific mumbo-jumbo, to take away our birthrights, which are health, happiness, hope and autonomy. When I hear that someone is staking his life on a non-specific test,T4 cell counts, viral load (of crap) and the most toxic treatments in medical history, I would like to remind them that they have the most powerful & sophisticated self-healing power – within. Those simple things that we can do for ourselves to improve our health are almost never mentioned by orthodox medicine.

This is an extract from an article in Continuum 1997. The original writing was from 1991, the year that AIDS doctors predicted I would be dead by after my diagnosis in 1986.

I hope these lines can help someone to contemplate another reality than the tunnel/materialistic vision of health so brilliantly upheld by Big Pharma.

From CONTINUUM vol. 5, n°1, autumn 1997

Lust for Life

(AIDS = Acquired Inner Developement Source)
by Mark Griffiths

Do not believe in the strength of traditions even if they have been held in honour for many generations and in many places; do not believe anything because many people speak of it; do not believe in the strength of sages of old times; do not believe that which you yourself have imagined, thinking that a god has inspired you. Believe nothing which depends only on the authority of your master or of priests. After investigation, believe that which you yourselves have tested and found reasonable, and which is for your good and that of others.
BOUDDHA

Personal comments in 1997

I received an HIV+ diagnosis from the Pasteur Institute in 1986, six months after the sudden death of my wife, during a heroin detox in Switzerland after years of drug and alcohol abuse during my life as a rock musician. I was lucky enough to be told by some nurses at the time that many Americans had chosen to change their diet, take up sport and learn to meditate or relax in order to reinforce their health – and were living well. The seed of hope was sown, but it was not sufficient to prevent the fear that started to poison my life over the next three years although I learned different relaxation techniques and regularly consulted a psychologist for support.

In 1989 I met Dr. Christian Tal Schaller in Geneva – a pioneer holistic practitioner and health educator, co-founder of a flourishing health education foundation and publisher of many books related to natural health including a translation of Roger’s recovery from Aids by Bob Owen and other testimonies of recovery. This courageous pioneer and two other doctor colleagues had just published a book called Aids Hope which was a synthesis of different holistic techniques used by HIV support groups and health practitioners around the world. There was a small paragraph about Peter Duesberg which did not hit home until a year later… The Swiss and gay press ridiculed this book in subsequent reviews, but its contents provided an excellent basis for the apprenticeship which would change my life for ever.

After one year of meeting many new people and concepts I had learned that I was responsible for my health and discovered the philosophy of “treating the whole man”, searching for the causes and reinforcing natural immunity rather than repressing the separate symptoms of illness. I recovered physical fitness and discovered a real sense of global well-being for the first time in my adult life.

During this period I started to change so many things in my life. I basically learned a lot of new tricks that had been around for a long time but were mostly hidden from general knowledge and were totally absent from the curriculum of my Public School education. Accepting that a strategy of change was essential and possible was perhaps the most difficult thing for my ego to swallow. Healing in its deepest sense is not a nice clean aseptisized process like taking a pill or undergoing surgery behind closed doors. A friend who self-healed from cancer described the healing process as being like putting her life through a washing machine; it is a process where we cannot hide the dirt that comes out and we need courage and humility to create support for ourselves, trust for our carers and develop the love of ourselves and the patience that is vital.

Fear of change and the unknown is always difficult to vanquish but is essential to growth. Are we perfectly formed human beings the day we leave home, school, apprenticeship, university or formal medical training, or is life a continual process of growth and learning – this is a choice that anyone may take. I learned about an holistic approach to health that I used to undertake some serious “work on myself” and below, you can see how I published it in 1991.

Suggestions for a holistic approach to health

Illness is a warning signal that one’s way of life has deviated from a natural balance. Like a car that leaves the main road to join a progressively bumpy, muddy track that may lead to a precipice. This gives the individual the choice of identifying and ceasing the activities that have caused the imbalance. Combining both age-old and modern techniques, one may learn to detoxify, regenerate and rebalance the human organism.

Another key to health is understanding that illness is caused by a breakdown in communication, both interior and exterior – becoming disconnected with our “soul”, our very source. This creates toxicity and deficiency. This is the result of inadequate elimination of excess substances and emotions that the body, mind and spirit have accumulated through a lifetime of ignorance of other alternatives and of the means of nourishing the human being globally. In the light of self-discovery and research into the fundamental similarities in the self-healing approach of many fellow survivors, I discovered a positive holistic approach to restore health which is based on the understanding that the human being is more than just a physical body.

So for example, four basic aspects may be developed and harmonised as follows:

Physical:
learning and experiencing optimum nutrition, fasting, exercise, breathing and adequate elimination.
AMAROLI or auto-urine therapy cuts out the (pharmaceutical) middle-man as our own body creates exactly the right medicine for each individual.
Getting close to nature – long walks in the forest, the mountains, the desert, the sea and the ocean; gardening and learning to grow sprouts at home; contemplating the perfection of the seasons which do not deny natural death during winter.

Emotional:
learning to identify, express and release the pent-up emotion which impedes healthy cohabitation with other human beings and our environment.
These emotions are often stocked from past trauma in both our bodies and our psyche thus diminishing our vital and creative energy. Learning to trust the support of a group, fire-walking, bunjee-jumping and solitary ten day fasts in the French Alps and the Californian desert were some of the means I used to overcome fear and fear of being alone.

Mental:
changing negative thought patterns through conscious positive thinking, creative visualisation and affirmative statements of well-being. Our conscience today is the result of all our accumulated thoughts. Saying “I love you” in the mirror and sticking meditation inspired positive thinking labels all round my flat for a couple of years.

Spiritual:
accepting to relax and meditate in order to find one’s own inner “still small voice” which bears authentic wisdom and guidance for more conscious living. Discovering how to feel “one” with life, and meditating on this rather than feeling separate and isolated. Learning and experiencing the power of prayer. Learning to take the time to discover that time does not exist!

These aspects need to be kept in harmony to create the dynamic we call health. Health is not a certificate or linear state that we earn at some point in life and then forget about: it is a constantly moving evolutionary dynamic; the ability to live fully in the present moment while appreciating the joy of learning incessantly to know oneself more fully.

I believe that the natural state of the human being is health and balance.

After some three hundred years of materialistic development we have simply forgotten that nature provides us with a magnificent self-healing organism with which we transit and learn from the human experience. It is our destiny and birthright to awaken to the beauty of our authentic potential by learning to master our own health and lives and thereby discover our true place in nature.

This is a very basic guide based on my own experience that I hope will be of use to you. Use your imagination to adapt it to your own needs. Read the opening quotation and take responsibility for your own life choices. There is not enough space in these lines to elaborate more fully.

During this earlier period of apprenticeship I observed an interesting phenomenon that I feel is worth sharing with you. From 1986 to 1993 I underwent six-monthly blood tests and check-ups through an Aids doctor in Geneva. By 1990 I was feeling in excellent health after a year of change and effort. But my T4 cells were at 250 – well down from the initial 1250 in 1986. What should I believe ? My own feeling of well-being and a real improvement in physical fitness and endurance – or the medicine which told me that I was advancing towards Aids symptoms because my T4 cells were diminishing? I decided to trust my intuition and my new-found confidence in life.

In 1991, 1992 and 1993 I went to the USA to undergo detoxification by three week living food health education programmes in specialised centres in California and Florida. I used these stays to do blood analysis before and after while still continuing my bi-annual check-ups.

Returning each time I observed the following phenomenon: I felt wonderfully well – lucid, reoxygenated and fully fit. The T4 cells had diminished! The first time a well-intentioned classic doctor friend in Paris tried to frighten me by saying “yes but your T4 cells have gone down – so natural medicine doesn’t work”.

Six months later the T4 cells were higher than the initial count before the cure. The next two years I repeated the same scenario – with the same result. Only that each time the T4 cells were higher than the year before! By 1993 I was up to 850 T4 cells. While meditating in a church in Paris somebody stole a bag containing all my medical papers since 1986. Please excuse my using such a cosmic joke to my own advantage, but I have never undergone “HIV analysis” since. I am quite confident in my own ability to listen to my body’s own messages, although I will occasionally ask a doctor for (non-HIV) advice; this has worked well for me ever since. I believe that Continuum have carried out their own research into the non-specificity of T4 counting.

During the summer of 1990 I discovered an article in Policy Review entitled “Is the Aids virus a science fiction” by Peter Duesberg and Bryan Ellison. This article was the last piece of the puzzle I needed to create a documented synthesis of survivor testimonies, successful therapies and philosophies of health, critical science and the point of view of many wise men such as Ghandi or Illich. The result was named Aids : The Apprenticeship, and this document became the cornerstone for five years of public conferences about the “survivors of Aids”, the apprenticeship of health and the “dissident” science that was being ignored and scorned by the establishment and the media. At the time I was the only HIV+ person in France (and still am in 2004) to stand up and speak in public about the importance of health education for Aids patients and the first to translate the dissident science and point of view into French. Among the “scoops” were Peter Duesberg and Bryan Ellison’s 1990 Policy Review article, Neville Hodgkinson’s “Aids: Can we be Positive?” in the Sunday Times, the translation of Robert Willner’s early 1992 manuscript The Ultimate Deception which we renamed “The Aids Rip-off”, Stefan Lanka’s “HIV– Reality or Artefact” (Continuum, vol. 4, no.1) and a mass of other relevant material.

The work continues today with the translation of certain important dissident articles from many sources, and the $idasanté website has become the only dissident site in French language. All this work has been voluntary and many people have rallied to the cause with their excellent translations and computer work. Only the French natural health press have dared to publish some of the material.

During this period I have also learned to take the time for a private life full of experiences far removed from the crazy world of the Aids dissident, and having the satisfaction of seeing old wounds within my family and my own life beginning to heal. Running round Europe giving conferences and looking after a full-time unpaid research and information network has not stopped me from undertaking many projects and fulfilling many dreams.

Many of the means for detoxifying and regenerating the body are essential to restore lost health, but if they subsequently impede the freedom and adventurousness of the individual, I believe that they may then become a new source of dis-ease. Learn to love yourself, love others, stay loose and stay alive.

Love to you all and long life and success to all those support groups around the world and all those selfless and dedicated beings who give so much to bring an end to a tragic period in the history of medical “science”. My hope is that the Aids shambles will become a motor to create harmony between medicine based on treatment and preventive, education-based medicine. Authentic health education would reduce the amount of intervention due to degenerative disease which is the ultimate result of immune breakdown. Both are complementary and it is mainly financial criteria which are the obstacle – not because of the cost but from the loss of pharmaceutical profits. The war between the two forms of medical practice must cease if we are to survive this incredible period of explosion in human knowledge and consciousness.

Science without conscience is ruin of the soul. Rabelais.
Everything that happens to you is your teacher. The secret is to learn to sit at the feet of your own life and be taught by it. Polly Berien Berends.

Adapted by Mark Griffiths 04/07/04
E-mail : mark@occitan.net

Link reference: http://www.altheal.org/testimonies/lustforlife.htm

AIDS entered my world on the 10th March 1983: The first person I knew with this disease – Michael Shortell – died on that day while the medical staff at the hospital frantically operated on him. In order to get him the experimental treatment from the NIH for what they believed to be PCP pneumonia, a confirmed biopsy was required. My friend died in the operating theatre. Little did I know that at moment of his death, my life would change forever.

Up until that moment, I was all of 21 years old, a fluffy disco bunny and having the time of my life. Nobody knew we were in was the twilight of the sexual revolution and we were living on borrowed time.

Based upon Michael’s symptoms in the months leading up to his hospitalization, I went to a doctor to test my blood. I had been experiencing similar symptoms: Night sweats, diarrhoea, weight loss, thrush, leg pains, and swollen lymph nodes. The immune system results – received on my 22nd birthday, 1983 – confirmed that something was seriously wrong with my body: Helper T-cell count of 362. I was told that I had 6 months to live, and told to go home. I was also told not to return to the doctor’s office. The next day the local newspaper published my home address with the headline “Plague arrives in Las Vegas!” And so it began .

Today, 13th March, marks my 20th anniversary of my diagnosis with HIV/AIDS. It also happens to be my 42nd birthday.

If 20 years seems like a hell of a long time, believe me it is. I for one never thought I would still be here, one of the last original patients still standing.

In the early days, HIV took many different paths and none of them had signposts to guide me. My journey has taken me to the highest levels of joy and the depths of sadness. I have experienced – first hand – stigma and discrimination, ignorance and irrational fear, hatred, religious persecution, governmental deception and blatant lies. I have witnessed the likes Dick Cheaney (USA) – then Secretary of the US Air Force – deliberately try and destroy the lives of HIV positive members of the Air Force, and then go on to become the Vice President of the USA. I waited for Regan and his administration to address the HIV issue but his silence was deafening. Sound familiar?

I’ve watched Mbeki, our esteemed President, set HIV/AIDS back by 20 years with his stubborn, arrogant and irrational behavior. So many politicians with so much blood on their hands.

I was even threatened with deportation by the INS in the States. I’ve lost jobs, been kicked out of homes and been denied medical care by doctors, despite their Hippocratic oath. I had my own family reject me. I’ve had bomb threats, along with threats of other acts of violence, toward myself and those I love, including my pets. I’ve had my name splashed across newspaper headlines, on the evening news and in numerous forms of graffiti in public areas. I have even been labeled a potential threat to national security, as recently as two years ago by the US Government, while applying for a visa to re-enter a country for a conference – a country I called home for 18 years, and where I paid taxes, belonged to numerous research projects at various Universities as well as the NIH and the CDC in order to help them understand this disease better. All of this happened because I am a person living with HIV. I also remember the millions of people who have died because of apathy, indifference and the biggest killer of all, bureaucratic red tape. So yes, I have seen humanity at it’s very worst.

Yet on the flip side, I have witnessed the very best that humanity has to offer. I have seen people rally to support those of us living with HIV, from the most unlikely of places and backgrounds. I have seen the infected caring and supporting one another, as they confronted their own mortality. I have seen complete strangers caring for each other in ways I never dreamt possible. I have seen communities form alliances that probably would never have happened were it not for HIV. I have seen apathy and desperation turn into anger and action as these victims shed that label and become empowered to take on the system and all its injustices. I have seen sales clerks and hair dressers become self-educated immunology experts, lecturing at international medical conferences, leading the way to finding better treatments.

I have seen people struggle with their HIV status, and watched their liberation as they – some privately and some publicly – disclosed their infection, freeing themselves and clearing the path for others to do the same. I have seen people, including myself, cross cultural, religious, political and ethnic boundaries to support each other despite our superficial differences.

I have witnessed people stretching themselves way beyond their perceived limitations, and in that process discovering amazing aspects of themselves that they never knew existed. This all happened simply because they took the risk of caring for their fellow man. And most of all, I have learned and am still learning, many of the lessons HIV is here to teach us.

For me, HIV is a symptom, not a cause. HIV is not the enemy. It only enters when a door has been opened for it: Ignorance, fear, poverty, inequity, social injustice, isolation and greed are the guilty culprits, not the virus. Man’s inhumanity to man is the demon we need to slay, not each other.

I wonder if we will ever learn the lessons HIV is here to teach us? I for one hope that we learn these lesson fast because at the end of the day, hope is all we really have to hold onto right now – a hope for change, a hope for a cure, a hope for treatment for all. Hope is like a giant sheet that blows in the wind and all we can ever really do is hold onto one or maybe two corners of this flapping sheet. We must never let go of the small corner we hold onto so desperately because if we do, we and our dreams are lost. Also, all those people who have died, with their song still in them, unsung, will have died for nothing.

I started out life full of innocence and joy, with only instincts as my guide. As I grew up and life started with it’s lessons, fear entered. So I faced my fears head on and slayed those dragons, one by one. With this, came courage – the courage to dare to be who God intended me to be, to live my truth, be on purpose and embracing the God within me. I am grateful for the lessons HIV has taught me because without it, I would not be the person I am today.

So what have I learned on my journey? I’ve learned that dreams are essential because it is dreams that make the impossible possible. I have also learned that without faith in myself, others and in God, the lessons of HIV are wasted. The most important lesson is about LOVE, for without it, we are nothing. To know and love another is the only way we learn about who we are.

As I look forwards to my future – despite HIV – I am excited at all the possibilities, opportunities and lessons the next 20 years will bring. If HIV were a race between myself and fear, with life as the prize, I can honestly say that I have won.

And here, by the grace of God, go I.

By David Patient

Link reference: http://www.altheal.org/testimonies/dpatient1.htm

I first met David at an international conference for people living with HIV/AIDS about 7 years ago, and he was a breath of fresh air with his frank, no-nonsense approach to his HIV status. In those days we knew little about HIV and spoke even less about it. I was fascinated by this man who had lived a relatively healthy life with HIV for 13 years then, while others were dying within a few years. He was already considered a curiosity, and he spoke of dialoguing with his virus so that he could co-exist with it. 

His thinking about HIV was clearly outside the conventional box. And it still is. Today he has a CD-4 count that falls within the normal range and his viral load is relatively low. He is South Africa’s longest HIV survivor, and one of only a handful in the world who have lived so long. He takes no anti-retrovirals. 

In those early years, while living in the United States, he did take AZT as part of the initial human trials of the drug. ‘But I found that my body didn’t respond well, so I stopped taking the pills,’ he says. ‘This, however, does not mean that I am anti-ART (anti-retroviral treatment). In the event that I ever need to, I will take the medication. I do have a predisposition to lung infections and despite my good immune system, I still get pneumonia a couple of times a year, but like everything else, I deal with it and get over it.’ 

David has been prodded and probed by dozens of researchers trying to discover why he has never progressed to AIDS. ‘At one point I was travelling 280 km, twice a week, for almost 3 years, so that I could give my blood, lymph nodes, spinal fluid, etc. But when I left the USA I made a choice not to carry on giving my body to science’. ‘I gave of myself for almost 11 years and that was my contribution to science. I have been studied by the who’s who of HIV, including all three of the co-discoverers of the virus, so I feel I have done my bit.’ 

David attributes his ongoing health to working on all levels  physical, emotional and spiritual. ‘Firstly, understand the disease and immune function, what you are up against and have as much knowledge, if not more, than the so-called experts. Secondly, do the work. I had many unresolved issues in my life and I took each one, head on, and confronted them, my dragons if you will. Most people are dealing with a complexity of issues before they are diagnosed and their diagnosis exacerbates these pre-existing conditions. I started taking a long hard look at who I had become and then set about doing the work to resolve these issues, one at a time. Am I “all better” now? No, not by a long shot, but I certainly have my shit together more than most people and I am still working my issues and not avoiding them.’ 

David’s daily programme is not exceptional: exercise, good nutrition and adequate sleep. ‘My philosophy is: Empty what is full; fill what is empty and when I have an itch, I scratch. I am just an ordinary person who has been very blessed with an extraordinary life.’ David was diagnosed on his 22nd birthday on March 13 1983, before HIV had been identified, and told he had this new disease and probably had no more than 6 months to live. 

His initial response was relief, strange as that may seem. ‘I had been highly self-destructive for many years, having attempted suicide nine times, so my initial response was that I was finally going to die and all those people who had been ugly to me in my growing up years would now be sorry,’ he says. ‘My response was one of revenge, not directed at the person who infected me, but at all the teachers, students, family and friends who all had their labels for me, like hyperactive and stupid, and who said I would never amount to anything in my life.’ This soon faded and within a month of his diagnosis, several friends died. ‘The reality then kicked in that this death was not a fun one and nor was it “pretty”, so my images of me dying a “lovely young corpse” were shot to hell.’ 

He decided to kill himself as he didn’t want to suffer. And this is where, in his own words, things became strange. ‘I was living in Las Vegas at the time and I went in quest of a cliff. Just as I was preparing to jump I heard a voice say “you’re not going to die” which I promptly ignored. It happened again, only this time it was a bit louder. I tried to ignore it again and again it said, “You’re not going to die”. I stepped back from the edge and just started crying. Was it God? Was I having a psychotic breakdown? Had I done one too many acid trips?’ 

Whatever happened that day, David left the mountain having made the choice to give living a chance. He decided he would spend the next 20 years finding ways to stay healthy. ’My logic was that in any holocaust, war, plague or pandemic, there were always one or two people who lived to tell the story  and why couldn’t one of those people be me? Somebody had to stay alive to tell the story for all those who had died with their song still in them, unsung.’ 

That was a powerful moment for David and today he says he’s grateful to HIV for entering his life. ‘It has been by far my greatest teacher and I would not be the person I am today had it not been for AIDS. HIV has allowed my authentic self to emerge. I am very comfortable with who I am, what I stand for and the course of my life.’ Over the next few years he became an activist, doing his best to put AIDS on the agenda. Then he and his partner Neil Orr, a research psychologist, compiled a booklet, Positive Living, a resource booklet for HIV-positive people, containing thoroughly researched (and highly cost-effective) physical, nutritional, and mental methods for enhancing health and longevity. There’s a wealth of information in it and the booklet is in its second printing. 

David has left the world of activism behind. ‘I just do what I do and don’t really get too caught up in all the politics around HIV/AIDS. Twenty years of being around all HIV’s politics have hardened me somewhat and I have little, if any patience left. We’re coming from “Lead us, follow us or get the hell out of our way”.’ He may no longer be an activist, but he’s very active. He and Neil Orr are working for the National AIDS Council of Mozambique, on a programme called Vida Positiva/Positive Living, a behaviour change model the two have created over the past 10 years, which had been funded by a pool of international donors. The programme is comprehensive, covering every area where AIDS makes itself felt. 

Nutrition is only one component of a much larger process, which includes empowerment (individual and group), the basics of HIV/AIDS, basic immune function, health motivations, behaviour change, nutrition where there are no resources, sustainable farming, the basics of psycho-neuro-immunology, basic counselling skills, basic therapy skills, stigma and discrimination, assessing needs, caregiver issues, orphan care, mobilising one’s community into action, AIDS activism, home-based care where there are no resources, working with the dying, grief therapy and multiple losses. 

AIDS, he believes, is teaching us many things, such as honesty, communication, and valuing others. ‘Perhaps its greatest lesson is about empathy and caring,’ he says. ‘However, I do not recommend that people get infected to learn the lessons I have learned. It has been anything but easy and there have been many periods where I have experienced the “dark night of the soul”. I have buried more people than I can remember, including three of my own partners. I have seen the very worst side of human nature and on the flip side, I have seen the very best side of human nature. I have learned and am still learning, many of the lessons HIV is here to teach us. For me, HIV is a symptom, not a cause. HIV is not the enemy. It only enters when a door has been opened for it: ignorance, fear, poverty, inequity, social injustice, isolation and greed are the guilty culprits, not the virus.’ 

David is ‘not remotely religious’ he says, and has little time for religion. But his belief in God has been his biggest support. ‘For years I turned my back on God blaming and accusing Him/Her/It of punishing me/us with HIV. Then I realised that God has nothing to do with HIV, I brought HIV on myself. I came to know God, not the God of punishment and retribution, but God as my closest friend and my partner who needs me to be nothing other than who and what I am.’ 

Plans for the next 20 years? ‘More courage, more dreams and more wonder. I’ve learned that dreams are essential because it is dreams that make the impossible possible. I have also learned that without faith in myself, others and God, the lessons of HIV are wasted. The most important lesson is about LOVE, for without it, we are nothing. To know and love another is the only way we learn about who we are. As I look forward to my future  despite HIV  I am excited at all the possibilities, opportunities and lessons the next 20 years will bring.’ 

HIV, believes David, is about equity. ‘When men can respect women as more than life support systems for a vagina and women claim their rights, then HIV will start to decline. But with all the cultural beliefs around the role and rights of women, HIV will stay entrenched in our reality.’ His personal lesson, he says, is that people treat him the way he teaches them to treat him. ‘When somebody treats me poorly, it is because I have allowed it to happen and rather than point a finger in blame at them, I have to look at my role in the exchange. The other lesson I have learned is that I am the master of my own destiny. If my life is not working for me, the only person who can change that is me. Looking for blame or having guilt is like trying to solve a complex mathematical problem by chewing bubble gum  useless! Guilt is like a rocking chair, very comfortable, and it takes me nowhere. I use the two-foot principle… if where I am is not working for me, I use my two feet to take me to where things can work for me and I am willing to reinvent my life at a moment’s notice.’ 

For people living with HIV, his message is: ‘Dare to dream! Create a future, despite your HIV infection and put it into action. Hell, what do you have to lose? Use HIV as the tool that gives you the permission to live the life you have always wanted and see your diagnosis as a second chance to get your shit together and live the life God intended you to live. What other people think of you is actually none of your business and you have no control over them and their perceptions of you. So stop wasting your valuable life trying to please everyone. Please yourself. Love all and trust a few.’

By Jeanne Viall

Link reference: http://www.altheal.org/testimonies/dpatient2.htm

His name was Pablo Falcon, a Native American healer living in New Mexico. He was on a show called Human Urine-Elixir for Good Health? airing on the National Geographic Channel, showcasing an ancient healing tradition: the practice of drinking one’s own urine.

Yes, he drank his own urine; a cup a day, usually in the morning, catching the first stream in mid discharge.

He drank it straight, like a shot of whiskey, but sometimes sipped it like a hot toddy on a cold moonless night. It was Pablo Falcon’s preventative medicine-urine therapy, or uropathy.

I was young. That’s disgusting, I thought. Years later, I re-discovered Pablo’s delinquency, but until then I remained ignorant of my body’s golden elixir as though it was an enigma, hidden from the alchemy of health within a toxic world.

To others it’s tradition, but among a modernizing world tradition is perceived as primitive.

At The Mercy Of Sickness

Out in the world, I forgot about Pablo. I forgot about the ways of the warrior, the ways of the body, and its own powerful remedies.

I forgot about these things because I was falling apart. I was in India, and my body was aching, my head spinning, my nose divulging a sinewy greenness, my intestines constricting, my sphincter bleeding.

But I did not forget about Gandhi.

I was participating in the 75th anniversary of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s Salt March, and here I was falling apart, literally bleeding out of multiple orifices.

And what could I do? Whine? Complain? Go to a hospital because I wasn’t feeling well? The Peace Walk wasn’t about me, or about any of the other walkers from nine different nations. The Peace Walk was for those of India, and a universal Peace for Mother Earth and Her inhabitants.

A young Japanese living in Nepal came up to me. He was Morita and he saw through to my pain. The man I hardly knew handed me a plastic cup as we took lunch. “Take this,” he said in a hush. Around us others slept. “Go pee, and drink as much of it as you can.”

I was stunned. I had forgotten Pablo Falcon. I had forgotten my own body and its power. At that time, I was only cursing it. “What?”

“You want to get better?” Morita asked.
I nodded.

“Then pee and drink.”

The First World Conference

In 1996, a group of urine therapists put on the First World Conference of Urine Therapy.

Held in India, the conference on the art of drinking urine brought together doctors, scientists, practitioners and believers into one room to exalt the benefits, seek out the contradictions, and bring awareness, drive and inspiration to a deepened scientific study of this clandestine cure.

They read testimonials of miraculous recoveries. They reviewed the studies of urine and its components. They compared their own experiences, treatments and applications. They found no contradictions.

Found in the ancient Vedic culture of Hinduism, urine therapy holds another name, Shivambu Kalpa Vidhi, or The Waters of Shiva. In the five thousand year-old Damar Tantra text, the writings recall Shiva as he unleashes his secrets of a healthy mind, body and soul to his wife, Parvati.

The text, or sutra, is one of the oldest known documents on healing, one that directly encompasses one’s own body-the ailment and the cure as one. It claims no association with external remedies, but solely describes the power and wisdom of the body under healthy eating habits.

It was Mahatma Gandhi who spoke:

The human body is the best portrayal of the universe in miniature. Whatever does not exist in the human body cannot be found in the universe, and whatever exists in the universe can be found in the human body.

Not only does the Vedic culture find complete truth within one’s own being, but ancient medical scriptures of the Egyptians, Chinese, Aztecs and Christians hint at this secret. In Proverbs 5:15 of the Old Testament, it is He who lets it be known: Drink water from thy own cistern, and the streams of thy own well.

The Workings Of The Body

What comes to mind is shit and piss, two ways of excreting toxins from the body.

The former-yes.
The latter-no.

When it comes to the process of making urine, there is one large misunderstood nomenclature: Urine is dirty. It picks up all your body’s dirty liquids and whizzes them into a smelly bowl. It’s crap. But what you forgot about is this baroque process.

We eat. We drink. We ingest and we digest. Solid matter is sent into the stomach, churned, macerated and spit out from the intestinal tracks after absorbing the good, the bad and the ugly. With liquids, most, if not all, are absorbed into the bloodstream.

From there they flow around, swimming like Chinese fighting fish. Through the limbs, the core, from the spine into the skull, within the tongue and around-the substances of our blood are everywhere before entering its first cleansing phase. This would be the liver.

With health, all things operate accordingly; on time, in rhythm. As the blood enters the liver it becomes the stone within the refinery. The liver is the detoxifier of our blood, removing poisonous products, secreting them or storing waste in the gall bladder, which ends up as bile.

From here, the blood flows to the kidneys. Coen van der Kroon, in his urine therapy guide Golden Fountain, describes how “they remove all superfluous vital substances from the blood, and filter out a surplus of water.”

These leftovers are the diamonds emerging from the refinement. They are the matter that form urine-simply the leftovers from the body’s water and nutrients. And a healthy diet is key.

A Cure For Life’s Ills?

Despite varying ranges of lifestyles, urine at best is an elixir; it is the water of life.

In J.W. Armstrong’s The Water of Life, homeopath and naturopath Ellis Barker quotes that “our body distills the most wonderful medicines and provides the most perfect serums and antibodies.” In fact, the list of vitamins, minerals, enzymes, amino acids and hormones runs long.

One of these powerful byproducts is urea; an organic compound of carbamide containing carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen.

With this knowledge, pharmaceuticals have discreetly capitalized on urine’s power, incorporating urine in anti-cancer prescriptions as well as blood-clot dissolvers, ointments, hand creams, lotions and soaps.

Your very own urine is known to have a significant effect on the following diseases:

Adrenal failure, AIDS/HIV, allergies, cancer, candida, colds & flu symptoms, colitis, dandruff, diabetes, diarrhea, ear & eye troubles, eczema, gangrene, gout, heart disease, hepatitis, herpes, hyperactivity, jaundice, lupus, mononucleosis, multiple sclerosis, pancreatic insufficiency, psoriasis, rashes, rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis, sciatica, warts and more.

Research remains limited, and the guesses as to why are as many as urine’s benefits. If humankind began sipping, fasting, massaging, gargling, douching, eye and ear-dropping, sniffing, injecting, compressing, rubbing, bathing, shampooing and giving oneself an enema all with one’s own urine, doctors would become unneccesary.

The pharmaceutical industry would collapse. Chemicals would be cleansed from peoples’ bodies. Man & woman would be healthy, strong and immune. And the billions of dollars going toward the chemical-dependent world could be spent on more worthwhile causes – like education.

A holy temple. An elixir. The cause and effect in one. The ailment and medicament together.

Your body’s urine is anything but wasteful. It is the gift, sanctified through the internal processes and given to you once more for complete health, detoxification and rejuvenation.

To learn more, visit:

• The Miracles Of Urine Therapy
• Urine Therapy
• Healing With Urine Therapy
• Earth Clinic – Urine Therapy

Cameron Karsten writes a weekly spiritual travel column for Brave New Traveler. He left his formal classroom studies to indulge in dreams of travel at 19 years old, and has been wandering ever since. Visit his personal website.

By Debbie Winn, R.N.

Mikel Galano wakes up in the morning just like the rest of us. When he heads to the restroom for a little relief, he does not flush. No, he’s not just conserving water. Rather, he saves half a glass of urine obtained mid-stream for a morning cocktail. That’s right, Galano drinks his urine with the idea that it will help prevent disease and restore his body to a natural internal balance.

Although many people connect urine therapy with religious practice, Galano views the alternative remedy from a more pragmatic point of view. He believes that the ‘pill-popping’ habit so prevalent in western medicine revels in ignoring our bodies. Taking anti inflammatory drugs to relieve headaches, for example, could be masking the pain rather than solving the root of the problem. Essential to alternative medicine is the premise that we are responsible for our health; remedies come from within, rather than the outside world.

“Urine therapy gives me a higher notion of myself,” says Galano. “I am a self-supporting ecosystem.”

Drinking it in

Contrary to popular belief, urine is not a toxic waste product; it is the excretion of materials that the body cannot use at a particular moment. 95% of urine is water. 2.5% is urea, and the remaining 2.5% is comprised of salt, minerals, hormones and enzymes. Urea is the one component of urine that can be poisonous, but only when there are large amounts in the blood. Urea is not introduced directly into the bloodstream when urine is consumed. Rather, it acts as a purifier.

Practitioners use urine therapy for illness prevention and cure, as well as for cosmetic purposes. Many proponents consider urine to be a panacea; it is believed to cleanse the body of toxins that have already initiated a disease process or have the potential to do so.

The list of uses for urine therapy is extensive, with the most popular being acne, psoriasis, allergies, HIV/AIDS, constipation, cancer, ear infections, varicose veins, toothaches, gout, asthma, stroke, depression, pneumonia, burns, bites, hypertension and obesity. But this natural elixir is not only imbibed, it is also used as a compress, douche, eye and ear drops, enema, nasal douche, shampoo and body wash.

While many traditional medications on the market today treat symptoms of illness, practitioners of urine therapy see these symptoms as valuable indicators of a disease process. The intent of urine therapy is to deal with the cause of the illness. Though there is no proven research regarding if, how and why urine therapy fights disease, there are numerous hypotheses. According to the popular auto-inoculation or self-vaccination hypotheses, urine therapy works because the body heals itself without medical interventions.

A thin yellow line

Indian yogis have been practicing urine therapy for over 5,000 years, and the practice has been a part of Japanese culture for 2,000 years. Among the Greeks and Romans, urine therapy dates back to 500 B.C. In fact, some say the Bible endorses it: “Drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well” Proverbs 5: 15-17.

Coen van der Kroon, the author of The Golden Fountain: The Complete Guide to Urine Therapy and Urine Therapy A to Z, explains that people are often horrified by urine therapy due to emotional and psychological barriers. “We deal with things in our body with fear, shock and disgust.”

According to Kroon, one reminder helps ease this fear. For nine months, we all float in amniotic fluid, which is comprised mostly of urine. The fetus drinks urine and later excretes it; this cycle aids in body and organ formation. From this standpoint, urine can be considered a “life-giving” product, rather than waste.

Urine therapy also served at the front lines in World War II. According to Kroon, urine was used as a disinfectant when nothing else was available in hospitals and on battle fields. At the same time, urine was used for a dysteria epidemic which killed several thousand children. According to Kroon, “all of the children who gargled with urine survived”. This period sparked an explosion around urine therapy.

Kroon suggests learning more about urine therapy from a holistic medicine center. He also acknowledges that urine therapy is definitely not for everybody, and suggests “keeping it in mind if you’re not open to the idea. You always have it with you and it’s free.”

Those with multiple allergies, diabetes or infections are not advised to try urine therapy. Urine therapy by no means cures or slows the progression of diseases such as cancer or HIV/AIDS. Rather, “urine therapy is only really effective for chronic disease if it is part of a comprehensive natural medicine program.”

A half-empty glass

The fact of the matter is, no scientific research has been conducted in the United States to either support or refute the validity of urine therapy. Support in the United States has come from personal testimonies. As of yet, American physicians practicing western medicine are not supporting the use of urine therapy. Steven Lamm, M.D., clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University warns “We seriously caution against the use of drinking urine until more data is accumulated. Instead, stick with other, shall we say, more mainstream, medical treatments.”

Many adversaries of urine therapy attribute any success to a ‘placebo’ effect. If we want to believe it’s true, we will. Even miracle cures are not necessarily attributable to urine therapy. Rather, concurrent traditional medicine practices or unexplained cures are feasibly the true benefactors.

Although urine therapy may not be officially recognized by western medicine, awareness and practice in the world at large is growing. One thing is for sure: this is indeed the ultimate in recycling.

Debbie Winn is a registered nurse and medical research associate for savvyHEALTH.com. If you have any questions or comments, contact her at debbie@savvyhealth.com

Link reference: http://www.savvyhealth.com/disp.asp?doc_id=575