Inappropriate water kills more than war, Hiv/Aids

Luanda – The director-general of Eduardo dos Santos Foundation (FESA), João de Deus, said Tuesday, in Luanda, that the number of children that dies of intake of inappropriate water in the world is larger than those killed by war’s Hiv-Aids, malaria and road accident. 

João de Deus was addressing in his capacity as host for the 14th FESA events.

He on the occasion cited Maude Barlow, in his book “water-blue covenant” that states that as the ecological crisis deepens, so does human crisis.

Water global crisis, he added, became a powerful symbol of the world’s growing inequality. While the rich drink high quality water, whenever they please, millions of poor people only drink contaminated water, which becomes a true evil of humanity.

To him, in addition to the urgent reflections in the scientific field, there is need for this problem to be addressed, which requires a political public health and ethic approach.

The event comprises four panels and during the four days the participants will tackle such topics as “Water and food for end of poverty”, “Water, sanitation and health for all”.

“Monitoring of indicators associated with the millennium goals”, “Water and climatic changes and natural disasters”, “Water, environmental impact and situation of scarcity” and “The future of water policy and global crisis of environment”, are some of the topics for the event.

Other topics are “Interactive tri-party dialogue between Government, civil society and science, aiming at mitigating and managing disasters”, “Cooperation for adequate management of trans-frontier hydraulic basins” and Preservation of natural ecosystems in the integrated management of water resources”.

“The role of underground waters with strategic water reserves”, “The importance of steering plans on water and sanitation in the success of the implementation of respective projects” and “Water for energy, energy for water” as well as “The financial model for construction of hydrometric monitoring infrastructures, supply of water and sanitation”, are other topics for the meeting.

According to the note, the event will receive addresses from Angolan, Portuguese, Brazilian, Italian, British, American, German, Canadian and Spanish lecturers and will include the topics “Public-private partnership in water management: experiences and opportunities”, “Institutional reform and regularisation as fundamental factor of water and sanitation services”, “Water, juridical reflexes of national and international institutional scope” and the “Role of tariffs in water services”.

To learn more about HIV/AIDS and poverty watch House of Numbers.

Click here to see Luc Montagnier, Nobel Prize Winner for discovering HIV discuss clean water being key for the body and that HIV may be able to be cleared naturally. 

www.houseofnumbers.com


Story source: http://www.portalangop.co.ao/motix/en_us/noticias/sociedade/2010/8/38/Inappropriate-water-kills-more-than-war-Hiv-Aids,e0f9dd10-f390-418e-87af-91a6841231d7.html

	HIV tests a farce? False HIV positives produced by western blot tests

	(NaturalNews) Did you or someone you know test positive for HIV? If so, they probably weren't told that they might test negative if a different test were used... or even if the same test were conducted in another country. HIV tests, as you'll see here, are a wishy-washy, pseudoscientific gimmickry that has unfortunately ensnared many innocent victims into a false AIDS diagnosis. This is now being revealed in some rather shocking video footage released by Brent Leung, creator of the House of Numbers documentary (www.HouseOfNumbers.com) which tears apart the inconsistencies and dogmatic non-science found in the conventional HIV / AIDS industry. Watch the footage yourself right now at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=E9FEA... There, you'll see world-renowned scientists discussing the so-called "western blot," a highly subjective test that is now being used around the world to falsely diagnose people with HIV and, subsequently, AIDS. This western blot, as you'll learn below, is a spectacularly laughable test that seems to have been designed to make "positive" criteria as loose as possible in order to label perfectly healthy people as having AIDS. "I don't think the western blot is a useful diagnostic test. I don't think it's worth doing," argues Dr Robin Weiss in the video clip. Val Turner, an MD from Australia, adds, "It's ludicrous that you can be [HIV] positive in one country and not positive in another." Neville Hodgkinson, the Medical and Science Correspondent for The Sunday Times (London) adds, "Some people argue that we have a confirmatory test in some western countries, and that repeated testing can lead you to a safer diagnosis. But if the very basis of the test is faulty, then nothing works in fact. ...Because of the different criteria that apply in different countries, you can test HIV positive in one country and be given an AIDS diagnosis as a result of that, whereas in another country you won't test HIV positive and you won't be given an AIDS diagnosis." A full-blown AIDS patient will almost always show nine different "bands" on an HIV test. But in the 1980's, only one band was required -- P24 -- to diagnose someone as HIV positive (and subsequently having AIDS). The problem is that perfectly healthy people can also test positive for P24, even if they aren't HIV positive. "In the early days, people developed criteria that were too much like a screening test. So if you had just P24 [band], they might have called it a positive," said Robert Redfield MD, Director, Clinical Care and Research, Institute of Human Virology. Doctor Val Turner adds, "Many people were diagnosed using these criteria, and then it was realized that forty percent of people who are completely healthy have one or more western blot bands, most commonly a P24 band." A few years later, the FDA changed its diagnosis criteria for HIV, upping the requirement beyond a single P24 band. But people who had already been diagnosed as having AIDS were never re-tested! Dr Val Turner explains, "We don't know how many thousand people were testing using that western blot criteria before 1987, but ... shouldn't they all have been tested when the criteria changed in 1987 in case they were no longer positive? So there are probably people out there who would not be positive under the criteria which developed subsequently. Using the FDA criteria which existed before 1993, only 80 percent of AIDS patients had a positive HIV test, which means 20 percent were not positive." HIV tests depend on personal opinion, not rigorous science Even today, HIV tests are conducted in a wishy-washy, non-scientific manner where the results depend largely on the opinion of the lab technician reading the test results! (It's absurd, of course, but this is what's happening right now.) In House of Numbers, Brent Leung visited Claudia Kücherer, MD, a Molecular Biologist at the Robert Kock Institute in Berlin. There, he recorded this conversation: Brent: "When you're looking at this western blot, how do you determine what is a positive [result]?" Claudia: "You need a certain number of bands being present. It depends a little bit on the producer of the test." Brent: "It depends on the manufacturer?" Claudia: "Yes" Brent: "Is there a different criteria for what might be a positive?" Claudia: "Yeah, there are different criteria from the manufacturer." Manufacturers of the HIV test, in other words, differ in how they define a "positive." You might be "HIV positive" on one test, but negative on another. And the decision on which manufacturer's test to use is based on the opinion of the clinic, hospital or doctor ordering the tests. Astonishingly, this House of Numbers footage also includes a scene featuring two different HIV test lab technicians working in the same lab who disagree on the criteria for a positive HIV test result. While one lab workers says two bands are needed for a positive diagnosis, another worker says three are required. And they work in the same lab! Watch this footage yourself right here: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=E9FEA... Western blot HIV test called into question But some scientists feel the western blot is not just a good test, but a great one! Robert C Gallo MD, Director of the Institute of Human Virology, says "This has a margin of error if done properly that's extremely low. In other words, it's one of medicine's better tests." One of medicine's better tests? Really? And yet it can be interpreted in different ways by different lab technicians, different definitions in different countries, different manufacturers and different medical opinions? The HIV tests, it turns out, is more a matter of opinion than scientific fact. And if you or someone you know has tested positive for HIV, maybe they should get a second opinion. Why not make the test more accurate? So why doesn't the industry tighten up its guidelines and require five, six or even all nine bands to show up before diagnosing someone as HIV positive? No one seems to know. I do, though. Isn't it obvious? The AIDS industry is much like the cancer industry in that it's focused on diagnosing as many patients as possible whether or not they actually have the disease. More patients equals more profits and a bigger "scare story" to feed the media propaganda machines. We already know that the AIDS industry fabricated evidence to try to exaggerate the scope of the AIDS scare (http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=D35F0...). So it's not surprising they would be promoting a "loose" test that potentially has already ensnared potentially tens of thousands of innocent people into a false AIDS diagnosis. Once a person is diagnosed with AIDS, you see, they become a profit generating machine for Big Pharma. AIDS pharmaceuticals are extremely expensive, and because they are protected under an FDA-enforced monopoly, they can be sold at practically any asking price. Even better, once innocent "healthy" people start taking AIDS drugs, they begin to show AIDS symptoms such as compromised immune systems. These side effects are caused by the drugs, of course, not by the disease, but in the minds of doctors and patients, the emergence of these scary symptoms proves that "they really had AIDS." It's all just loopy, circular logic with a single purpose: To earn more money for Big Pharma at the expense of human suffering. Now, I'm not saying there's no such thing as a genuine person with immune deficiency. Thanks mostly to our toxic environment, there are certainly people who suffer chronic immune system malfunctions. But it is in the AIDS industry's interests to convince even healthy people that they are ill and need pharmaceutical intervention to survive. And, by sheer coincidence (not!), today's HIV tests are specifically designed in a way that produces a disturbingly high number of false positives. See the complete collection of exclusive clips from House of Numbers at NaturalNews.TV: http://naturalnews.tv/Browse.asp?me...

AIDS Quest to Kill `Sleeping' Virus Enlists Merck Cancer Drug

The 30-year-long search for a cure for AIDS, the world’s deadliest viral infection, may get a renewed boost from an unlikely source: a little-used Merck & Co. cancer drug.

Researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill plan to test Merck’s drug, Zolinza, next year in about 20 people infected with HIV, the AIDS virus. The goal is to determine if Zolinza, or a medicine like it, can force HIV out of cells where it can reside, concealed from attack by potent antiviral treatments, said David Margolis, a professor of medicine who’s leading the research.

While AIDS drug cocktails can eliminate more than 99 percent of virus from an infected person, the treatment isn’t a cure because a remnant of the virus remains hidden in certain cells. For years, scientists have sought a simple way to drive the remaining virus into the bloodstream where the drugs can clear them from the body. Zolinza, approved in 2006 for use against a rare type of blood cancer, may work by blocking an enzyme that helps the virus avoid detection.

“It’s really all about trying to move the field ahead,” Margolis said in a telephone interview. “We don’t expect to cure anybody, but we expect to really show whether it can work the way we think it does in people -- or not.”

Zolinza earned Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based Merck $15 million in 2008, the last year it disclosed sales of the drug, for treating a malignancy of white blood cells that affects the skin. In a laboratory test published last year, Margolis used the medicine to coax HIV out of hiding in cells taken from infected patients. Now he wants to replicate the result inside the body. Success would show he’s on the right track to finding a cure.

Mysterious Illness 

“There is a good chance that it will cause some activation of latently infected cells,” said Robert Siliciano, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who first identified the cells in which HIV hides out, and isn’t involved in the Zolinza trial. “Nobody knows if it will work, but it’s important to try.”

AIDS was first observed as a mysterious illness among gay men in the U.S. in 1981, the same year Margolis started medical school at Harvard University in Boston. Since then it’s killed more than 25 million people, mostly in Africa.

Medicines developed over the past 20 years by companies including GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. control HIV without purging it from the body. Combination regimens can drive virus levels down so low that patients can live healthy lives. But since a small amount of the virus can remain hidden, the infection can re-emerge and endanger patients if treatments are ended.
“We’re never going to cure anybody unless we go for this latent pool,” Siliciano said. In May he received $360,000 from the New York-based Foundation for AIDS Research to identify drugs approved for other diseases that may work against latent HIV, just as Margolis is doing.

Increasing Investments 

The costs of treating HIV rise every year as more people become infected, and because people need to stay on medication to keep HIV at bay. President Barack Obama in February requested $14.1 billion for the treatment and care of AIDS patients in the U.S. next year, 6.8 percent more than the $13.2 billion in the 2010 federal budget, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a Menlo Park, California-based nonprofit health research group.

Governments, companies and foundations are increasing their investments in cure research, spurred by treatment costs, advances in science and the failure of researchers to develop a vaccine. The U.S. National Institutes of Health last month offered $8.5 million a year for five years for research projects aimed at finding a cure. The Foundation for AIDS Research in May gave $1 million to four research groups in Sweden and the U.S. for the same purpose.

‘Hopeless Problem’ 

“It’s gone from being a hopeless problem to one that people think we should devote a big effort to,” Siliciano said. “I used to be very pessimistic about the likelihood of finding a cure. I guess I’m less so.”

Gilead Sciences Inc., the world’s biggest maker of AIDS medicines, started work on finding a cure in 2009 and wants to test an experimental drug in monkeys next year. Johnson & Johnson’s Tibotec unit, which also started looking for a cure last year, is screening thousands of compounds and plans to design experiments in rodents and monkeys that would allow it to test the most promising candidates.
“We should not and cannot continue to accept that HIV is a long-term chronic illness that commits patients to lifelong treatment with associated toxicities,” said Sharon Lewin, head of infectious diseases at the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. “In the absence of an effective vaccine, we must seriously pursue the possibility of cure,” Lewin said in a speech at the International AIDS Conference in Vienna last month.

Scientists are exploring two main ways of clearing viral reservoirs. The first involves reducing them to such low levels they can be corralled by the immune system, allowing patients to go off medications without the virus rebounding. The second strategy involves making patients resistant to HIV infection by giving them a genetic mutation that makes it impossible for the virus to enter cells.

Lasting Damage 

The Zolinza trial is part of the first effort. Margolis said his work was inspired by the failure of a Dutch study a decade ago. The scientists tried to flush out HIV using antibodies, proteins made naturally by the body to fight infection, to activate all the cells that typically host latent virus. The treatment over-stimulated the subjects’ immune systems, causing lasting damage to some patients.
“Pretty much since that time I’ve been looking at selectively purging the virus without activating the cell,” Margolis said.

He published a paper in the journal Lancet in 2005 showing that Depakote, an approved treatment for bipolar disorder made by Abbott Laboratories, reduced the number of infected resting cells by as much as 84 percent when combined with Roche Holding AG’s AIDS drug Fuzeon, in a study involving four patients. Subsequent research by Margolis and others contradicted those findings.

“David deserves a lot of credit for moving the field with those initial studies,” Daria Hazuda, Merck’s worldwide antiviral franchise head, said in a telephone interview.

Viral Kickstart 

Now Margolis is trying again with Zolinza. Like Depakote, Zolinza targets an enzyme called histone deacetylase, or HDAC, that helps HIV go to sleep in cells by interfering with its ability to replicate. By blocking HDAC, Zolinza would reactivate the virus, kickstarting reproduction.

From there, nature would take its course: HIV would exit and kill its host cell, and enter the bloodstream in search of new cells to infect. Anti-AIDS drugs would prevent it from doing so, and with nowhere left to go, the virus would die after several hours.

Margolis and his colleagues plan to give about 20 patients a few doses of Zolinza, then measure whether it’s had any effect on the amount of virus the immune cells are producing. That will tell them whether they’ve succeeded in disturbing the reservoir.

Zolinza, also known as SAHA, may not be suitable as a cure for AIDS because of its potential to cause genetic mutations that lead to cancer, Margolis said. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepts that risk when the drug is being used in patients who already have cancer. It probably won’t tolerate the risk for use in other diseases, Margolis said.

‘Getting a Tan’ 

The FDA has approved the trial “because we will so severely limit the exposure to SAHA that the risk of inducing cancer is felt to be negligible, like getting on a plane and taking a flight to New York, or lying on the beach and getting a tan,” he said.

Margolis plans to apply to the NIH for funding “in the next few weeks.” If the trial succeeds or fails early, it may cost less than $500,000. A longer trial may cost as much as $1.5 million over three years, he said.

Merck supports the study, and is continuing its own research on other drugs that it might be able to combine with HDAC inhibitors, Hazuda said.

“Everybody has now come to the conclusion that it’s going to take a combination of different approaches,” Hazuda said. “Because there are HDAC inhibitors that are already licensed to treat other diseases, they may provide at least an anchor upon which to build a first-generation regimen.

Collateral Damage 

Gilead is also experimenting with about a dozen families of its own HDAC inhibitors, said Romas Geleziunas, the company’s director of biology. The aim is to select one to test in monkeys as early as next year. The challenge is identifying a drug that’s powerful enough to activate HIV and not so powerful it causes collateral damage, he said in a telephone interview.

Geleziunas said he has “no idea” what the research project might mean for Gilead commercially.
“We’re all just trying to get our heads around the science, and trying to prove that in animal models these things have even a slight hope of working,” he said. “I really have no idea where this is going to go.”

Tibotec isn’t limiting itself to HDAC inhibitors, said Bruce Malcolm, the Beerse, Belgium-based company’s senior director of HIV research and early development.

“We’re casting a wide net,” Malcolm said in a telephone interview. “We’ll go about looking for anything and everything that proves useful, especially since we feel in the end it will probably be some combination of compounds that will be put together that will lead to the best efficacy and minimal toxicity.”

Berlin Patient

The second strategy has scientists looking for clues from the only person known to have been cured of HIV. The man, who researchers call “the Berlin patient,” was a leukemia sufferer who received a bone marrow transplant from a donor resistant to HIV in 2006. The donor’s cells lacked a protein on the surface called CCR5 that the virus needs to latch on. Without it, the virus can’t get a grip on the cell and infection is averted.

Sangamo Biosciences Inc., a biotechnology company based in Richmond, California, started two trials last year aimed at achieving the same result in a simpler way. Its approach uses a cold-causing virus as a Trojan horse to smuggle a CCR5-deleting gene into the body. The company said in November that one trial subject who had stopped taking AIDS drugs had undetectable levels of HIV one month later, though the virus was detectable after six weeks.

‘Before I Die’ 

Some scientists are skeptical a cure will be ever achieved, given HIV’s ability to integrate itself into the DNA of cells.

“We’ve never eradicated an integrated virus,” said David Cooper, director of Australia’s National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research. “That doesn’t mean we can’t do it, but it would be the first. At the end of the day, a vaccine is the best approach.”

Margolis is more optimistic.

“I’m 51,” says Margolis. “I’m not doing this because I think that I can’t succeed before I die.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at sbennett9@bloomberg.net

Watch House of Numbers to learn more about AIDS drugs.