Conspiracy or Quack? A Cure For AIDS

I posted yesterday on Pop and Politics Talk Back that researchers in France might have found an effective treatment for AIDS. Shortly thereafter I got a comment about how there actually is a cure for AIDS called IMUSIL. As always when I see something like this I go straight to Google and do some of what I like to call, "lazy research". That is to say, I search a bunch of websites for some kind of confirmation that whatever crazy thing I just learned is actually true. As per usual I got mixed evidence. On the one hand, there are all kinds of crazy explanations and books that basically say AIDS was created in a US lab for the purposes of exterminating Gays and Blacks. Then there's a whole host of other sites that say this theory is a bunch of hooey. Echoes of Bill O'Riley calling me a left-wing Internet whacko, go dancing in my head and I'm left thinking, "Should I actually re-print this thing and damage what little credibility I've earned?" Then I remember I'm a blogger, "...and I say what da heck!"

In all seriousness, in the hour it took me to examine the data relevant to a possible cure for AIDS, I only found one article that I thought was relatively believable, entitled, "A Cure for AIDS/HIV, mysteriously withheld." The article talks about IMUSIL and how it can be used to cure AIDS. However, the company, Marantech, LLC of Rhode Island for some strange reason opted to disallow their invention to be used as said cure.

Towards the bottom of the press release, there's a copy of a patent that was filed with the US Patent Office on October 14, 1997 under the heading "Method of curing AIDS with tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystal devices" with the following information about clinical trials and protocol:

Here is brief excerpt

What is claimed is:

1. A method of treating AIDS-afflicted humans comprising injecting a multitude of tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystals into the bloodstream of the human subject.

2. A method for increasing white blood cell counts in AIDS-afflicted humans comprising injecting a multitude of tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystals into the bloodstream of the human subject.

3. Methods of treating AIDS-afflicted humans according to claims 1-2 where the concentration of said molecular crystals is approximately 40 PPM of the total blood weight of the human subject.

Weird, I know.

There's another person involved in this story. His name is Dr. Boyd E Graves JD. His claim to fame is a flowchart from 1971 that, "makes it perfectly clear, the design, intent and purpose of the U.S. Special Virus program. As Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS says, the HIV/AIDS virus is the result of many steps in the laboratory, it was no accident. The 1971 flowchart provides absolute evidence of the United States' intent to kill its own citizens and others." I looked him up too and again got mixed evidence of his sanity. Some site him as a recipient of the AIDS cure and a legal machine, demanding that justice be served. Others site him as a nut and site IMUSIL as irrelevant in the world of AIDS medicine. The other puzzling thing about this Graves character is that for someone who is attempting to take on the US government, the United Nations, the World Health Organization and world wide pharmaceutical companies, his name doesn't appear in any recent google news searches. The closest thing I can find is an article that says he was forcefully evicted from his home and is currently homeless. There also do not appear to be any new additions to his website.

Part of me wants to believe that this is all crap. I'm not big into conspiracy theories and I'm not one for believing in the purposeful malignance of my government. "To all things there is a logical reason", is a principle I try to apply to the inexplicable events in the world around us. And then I think of The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. I think of "War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race", by Edwin Black. I think about how Blacks and other minorities have actually been hurt more by the creation of public housing, than have been helped by it:

"Frustrated with the housing problems of the poor, many local governments finally decided, "We'll give it to 'em!"  Public housing did just that.  In the hands of upper middle class, white politicians bent on achieving visible results, public housing programs between 1950 and 1968 built 559,000 units--at the cost of demolishing some 1,646,000!  Though nonwhites occupied only a minority percentage of urban substandard housing, over 65% of those turned out of their homes were black, Hispanic, or members of other racial minorities." (p. 6 and p. 8. Cf. William G. Grigsby, Housing Markets and Public Policy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 963), p. 258.)

I find it terribly troubling that my choices are either to believe that my government is purposely trying to kill minorities or go on assuming everything I've been taught about HIV/AIDS is absolutely correct.

Cynical or gullible is no choice indeed.