One advantage she was likely to have over many native Africans though that may have assisted her recovery is that as well as access to the most expensive medical care, is that she at least had access to adequate nutrition on a long term basis. Whether she has actually been partaking of that opportunity sufficiently is not entirely known.

However, even when she is fully recovered the Malaria will leave behind a hidden legacy she would be well to pay heed as within there lurks a hidden danger.

Why would the notion of AZT being in drinking water be a concern? How would it get there? The problem is that when a person takes any drug, quite often not all of it is broken down and utilised within the body, and some is passed out by the body in its original state. AZT even accumulates in semen, according to a Norwegian study, for instance.

This almost inevitably finds its way into the waste water supply which in an increasing number of places, ultimately gets processed into drinking water to some extent. The problem there is that the kind of processes used by water companies that were originally intended to deal with bacteria and other unclean elements, are not necessarily going to be effective against the increasing variety and quantity of pharmaceutical drugs that either get pissed, washed, or flushed into the waste water system.

The first candidate for the annual ‘science stating the bleeding obvious' prize of 2009 is a study just published that shows that quality and length of sleep can affect your immune system. Specifically, getting less sleep and / or poorer quality sleep makes your immune system less able to fight off infections. This should surely not be a big surprise to most people who have at some point in their lives been run down to some extent and have had less than adequate quantity and quality of sleep. But clearly, scientists felt it was important enough to get some quantitative measure of effect.

The article was understandably edited, and in particular some technical details were left out. Below is the original article as submitted.

There have been one or two serious lapses of judgement on the part of the Nobel Prize committee over the years but this year takes the biscuit so far. To award a prize for the discovery of HIV is to overlook some serious deficiencies in that claim. For instance:

Rodney Richards and Andrew Maniotis reveal a few of the substantial - and shocking - fundamental flaws in testing for HIV and other diseases and their ramifications for both individuals and publich health policy.

By a very large margin, the most frequent complaint HEAL London receives is about arrogant doctors who don’t listen to their patients. While many people seem to have had that experience at some time or other in their lives, it is particularly prevalent when it comes to patients who have at some time been diagnosed HIV+. In those circumstances many ordinary medical practitioners seem to become extra arrogant, extra bullying, and extra determined to pay no attention to the concerns the patient expresses.

What's interesting about this is that Tommy Morrison is challenging the shibboleth that HIV tests are reliable, by virtue of having had several positive diagnoses previously and has now had several repeated negative diagnoses. This contradicts the presuppositions in the popular belief and mainstay of the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy that once you've 'got' HIV, you've got it for life. His results can only mean that either: ]]> mike@heallondon.org (Mike Hersee) frontpage Fri, 23 May 2008 09:17:14 +0000 http://www.heallondon.org/health-and-well-being/54-gay-men-10-points-for-survival.html http://www.heallondon.org/health-and-well-being/54-gay-men-10-points-for-survival.html The most group of people that AIDS has been most prominently associated with is gay men. This is not very surprising when you look into the whole sociology of AIDS with a good realistic knowledge of the flaws in AIDS science. Of course, this is claimed by many to be because anal sex is more prone to transmitting the AIDS virus. That notion fails to withstand scrutiny on so many levels it's too big to go into here.

It fails to take into account, for instance, the experience of a medical officer in a South African men's jail who said that with typically 30 men to a cell, and that "sex is rampant, and condom use virtually non-existent", the jail has a rate of HIV+ diagnoses dramatically lower than that claimed for the general population of South Africa and virtually no deaths classified as AIDS in a seven year period. That does rather challenge the notion that it's men having rampant sex that is inherently the cause of AIDS - perhaps there has been some other difference in men having sex between groups of men in an African Jail, and groups of men on the gay scene in LA, SF, NY and London?

So what does the ribbon mean? And why can't re-thinkers about AIDS support it?