HIV, AIDS, & Gallo's Egg (bumped)

By Clark Baker

Last June, I posted this report about US hospitals and how many rely on fraud, preventable injuries and infections to patients to compensate for losses due to our government’s insistence that private hospitals treat and care for uninsured and underinsured citizens, indigents, and illegal aliens.

[Photo: Dr. Robert Gallo]

I learned how hospitals destroy good physicians and how predatory hospital chains like Tenet, Kaiser Permanente, and Adventist pressure local physicians already in successful private practice to join their groups. Those who refuse are targeted for sham peer review by corporate administrators and MDs who accuse non-compliant physicians as dangerous, incompetent, or disruptive. While a few tenacious victims expend their life savings to preserve their clinical privileges, others aren’t so lucky. Faced with the malicious and devastating loss of their medical careers, many take their own lives; which is what the health care corporations prefer anyway. To them, it’s only business – nothing personal.

I was never impressed by concerns about “the evils of big pharma.” I assumed that drugs are expensive because of the R & D that goes into finding cures for disease. Until now, I never imagined that some of those same drug companies would support junk science to fund researchers who would then produce expensive drugs that cause illness and disease around the world; or support junk legislation that would force healthy mothers and their children to take drugs that kill (under the threatened loss of child custody), and then use their subsequent sickness and mortality as evidence that a non-existent disease actually exists.

Such a scheme would have made Machiavelli weep with joy.

A New Investigation

I was not concerned about "big pharma" until my visit to Washington DC last May. I was there to meet with members of Semmelweis Society International (SSI). This is an impressive group of medical professionals – physicians, nurses, surgeons, medical and law school professors, and former CEOs of health care corporations. Because of my own experience with retaliation and my ongoing interest in US healthcare and sham peer review, I was interested to hear their stories directly from them.

I accompanied Gil Mileikowsky, MD, the OB/GYN who first explained sham peer to me in 2006. I spent five days with the members – all dedicated men and women who care deeply about the political corruption of healthcare and who risked their own careers to report fraud or abuse within the healthcare system. I recorded and edited their testimony, and posted this video after members testified before the US Congress and Senate. I was also honored to testify regarding my experience as an LAPD whistleblower.

Two recipients of the Semmelweis “Clean Hands Award” were reporter Celia Farber and molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, PhD. I had not heard of them before and knew nothing of their relationship to a little known controversy about HIV and AIDS.

After 28 years as an investigator, I consider myself pretty skeptical about things until I see proof. Most of my work today is pro bono, so I can pick and choose who I assist. Witnesses are expected to lie, but if I discover that a client has misrepresented facts or lied to me, I will usually drop the case. I’m fortunate to have the time, energy, and resources to help good people get out of undeservedly bad predicaments. Not all lawyers are like Mike Nifong or David Sotelo, and not all private investigators work like Anthony Pellicano. Without unbiased credibility, investigators are nothing more than a liability to their clients.

As various members interacted with Farber and Duesberg, I learned that the HIV/AIDS issue had not been entirely resolved. Like Dr. Mileikowsky’s story about sham peer review, this sounded equally unbelievable.

When I returned to Los Angeles, several former members began to question the wisdom of presenting the awards to Farber and Duesberg. In response, SSI President (and neurosurgeon) Roland Chalifoux issued this press release to explain the rationale of the awards. But when two dissenters persisted, Dr. Chalifoux asked me to conduct an independent investigation of Ms. Farber and Prof. Duesberg, citing my investigative experience, independence, and almost complete lack of knowledge about HIV and AIDS.

I accepted the case.

Although I didn’t expect it at first, I was warned that I should expect attacks from the “other side.” I wasn’t sure what they meant but kept it in the back of my mind. It didn’t take me long to find out for myself.

When word got out that I had begun my investigation, several ex-SSI members told me that Duesberg and Farber were dangerous and "not worth my time" to investigate. Having met both in Washington, I found nothing dangerous about the reporter or microbiologist.

Two dissenters, James Murtagh, MD and Kevin Kuritzky, were friendly to me at first and “appealed to my better judgment.” Their friendly pressure intrigued me and I began my investigation by checking into their allegations.

Both essentially charged that Duesberg and Farber were liars and that both were responsible for millions of HIV deaths in Africa. I wasn’t as troubled by their allegations as I was by their insistence that I stop my investigation. It seemed incongruous that the individuals who alleged genocide would also pressure me to not investigate their own allegations.

As both Murtagh and Kuritzky increased their hostility, the more interesting the case became.

From: Kevin Kuritzky [mailto:kevink4@mac.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 9:50 PM
To: Celia Farber
Cc: SSI Membership
Subject: Re: Official Nominations

Celia - why don't you take your parasitic, attention-whore behavior elsewhere, to a place where people actually care.

You have been exposed to most of Semmelweis, and South Africa doesn't want your uneducated "faux-journalistic" crap opinions either. The entire world have basically discredited you countless times, and all the attachments I have sent verifies this. Go back to doing what you appear to know best, which is to .

Your anecdotal stinking pile of bullshit is only trumped by the real science of people who are actually qualified to talk about this, not someone like you who .

Your false, damaging, and absurd views on HIV are not welcome in the medical community. Now I suggest you exit before you are exposed even further into the pit that you continue to dig.

It was hard to imagine that Kuritzky had once been accepted to the Emory School of Medicine and even more bizarre that his collaborator, Dr. Murtagh, would permit such an attack. Fifteen minutes later, Murtagh replied to Kuritzky:

From: Jim Murtagh [mailto:jmurtag@mindspring.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 10:05 PM
To: celiafarber; kevink4@mac.com
Subject:Fwd: Official Nominations

Dear Kevin,

I asked you to be kind to Ms. Farber because she is obviously ill. Her has distorted her judgment. We are dealing with very sad pathology in the AIDS denialists. What I really want to know is who wrote the SSI press releases? Who put Gil up to this? Obviously, Gil and Roland did not cook this up themselves.

It is sad that Farber did not respond to a single one of your well-documented points. I believe the entire SSI (and ex-SSI members) should be proud of the factual manner in which Kevin has investigated this affair.

Ms. Farber again resorts to made up facts, and ignores the 5,000 scientists who demonstrated that Koch's postulates have been fulfilled.

Kevin, you documented 12 double blind studies. Your research puts any doubt to rest. HIV causes AIDS. This is as certain as the earth is round, and that the moon is not made of green cheese.

At the time, I did not know that Murtagh and Kuritzky were being supported by pharmaceutically funded operatives from South Africa, Cornell University, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

It got worse.

On June 19th, I became a victim of their attacks just as I had been warned. Kuritzky initiated a “spam attack” against my name and professional email account and phones, generating thousands of unwanted spam messages and phone calls that offered everything from gay porn to paid vacations. Because I was prepared, I was able to positively identify the source of the attack by matching Kuritzky’s IP address used before and after the attacks as the same address used to generate the attack. I eventually filed a crime report with the LAPD and continue to prepare a criminal and civil case against both.

As of last week, I completed and delivered my report to SSI and will now post it in its entirety below. If you want to understand what I now accept as the most significant criminal conspiracy I have ever imagined, get your coffee and strap on your seatbelt.

The investigation I call Gallo’s Egg took me from America’s “War on Cancer” (1971-1981) to the early history of HIV and AIDS. It reaches from the cities of West Hollywood and San Francisco to the continents of Africa, Asia, and Australia. It led me to the steps of the National Institutes of Health, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and some of America’s most prestigious universities and research centers. It involves hundreds of billions of dollars of misdirected tax-supported funding and some of the most financially successful pharmaceutical companies in the world.

I have never written about anything more important. This story changed my life, and if you have the time and patience to understand what I have written, it may change yours as well.

If Americans, our courts, and our legislature permit the continued corruption of science and medicine by our pharmaceutical industry, I fear that the 232-year experiment we call “The United States of America” will have failed.

CB


And now, please read my full investigation report:

The Semmelweis Investigation: "AIDS Denialism” vs. “Dr. Gallo’s Egg"