Slashdot Mirror
YouTube Threatens To Remove Scientist's Account Over AIDS Deniers' DMCA Claims
First time accepted submitter EwanPalmer writes "YouTube is threatening to remove the account of a scientist who made a series of videos debunking claims made in an AIDS denialist movie over copyright infringement disagreement. Myles Power is claiming the producers of controversial 2009 documentary House of Numbers are attempting to censor him by submitting bogus DMCA claims against him. He says his movies do not breach copyright laws because his films are educational and therefore fair use. The 'AIDS denialist' documentary makers say they instead amounted to 'propaganda.'"
Otherwise all that leaked Windows source code would be fair use.
Copyright was a good idea, spoiled.
James McCanney is a nut job and deserves to be ignored.
He made a series of videos for educational commentary, containing scenes from the movie in question. It falls under fair use.
From the article;
YouTube said that Power's account, which has more than 20,000 subscribers, will be removed on 18 February unless they receive a counter-notification disputing these claims against him by that date.
All they have to do is follow the law, file a counter-notification and this all goes away. The summary makes it look like YouTube is the bad guy when all they are doing is following the law and acting on the DMCA claims. It is up to the alleged infringer to counter-claim not the service provider.
He says his movies do not breach copyright laws because his films are educational and therefore fair use.
Tell that to YouTube and the story is over.
The guy who was filing the complaints commented on the site. So maybe he's a dick, sure. But if you're willing to give him good faith for his complaint--solely in the capacity that he honestly believes that the video oversteps fair use, and is violating copyright--then he did follow correct procedure.
He tried contacting the guy quite a few times (or so he claims), and after getting no response, he filed the takedown request personally, not through some automated thing. If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury. Strangely enough that's what I would do if I thought someone was violating my copyright.
Claiming fair use for informational purposes is really shaky ground. There's a lot of "I know it when I see it", and people like to stretch the definition on either side. I haven't seen the video so I don't know how long the clips are, but if they are too long then yes it's a violation, and I suspect that (much like with parody) there's a line between "informational purposes" and "openly hostile" that the law says you shouldn't cross. Does it cross the line? Hell if I know, but the guy sounds like he's at least justified in filing a claim. Whether a court would find it reasonable or not is up to them, but jackasses get to protect their own rights too.
He tried contacting the guy quite a few times (or so he claims), and after getting no response, he filed the takedown request personally, not through some automated thing. If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury.
If he actually didn't try to take down any straight copy of those videos on YouTube, and went after one video using pieces of his work as commented-on quotations, it's at least highly suspicious, don't you think?
Ezekiel 23:20
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_denialism
Pretty much one or more of the above - it comes in different varieties. There are some flavors of denialism in Africa that claim the West even artificially created HIV to wipe out all black Africans.
What does this mean exactly? Does it deny that AIDS exists? Does it deny that HIV leads to AIDS? Does it deny that non-gay people or non-Africans can get AIDS? Does it say it's all a government conspiracy and really caused by chemtrails?
One way or another, it doesn't sound like something that warrants debunking, but then again, I'm often surprised at just how stupid people can be.
It's not possible to find a single party line, but these are the most common beliefs AFAIK:
AIDS is caused by chemicals, big pharma, the government, the Bilderberg group, the Illuminati, space lizards, etc.
HIV either does not exist, or exists and is harmless, or exists and is harmful and created by evil men in their evil laboratories but does not cause AIDS.
Chemtrails could totally cause AIDS, but more evidence is needed. In other words some dude on the internet needs to write a speculative blogpost that claims that chemtrails cause AIDS before we can say with certainty that it does.
If you think this is harmless stupidity, think again. IIRC there is at least one case of an HIV positive mother who refused to test her child. The child later died in an illness with symptoms like those of someone who has AIDS. The mother also died, naturally.
this is old news too
Automated perjury with no repercussions? Please.
If he has good reason to honestly believe that his rights were violated, it wasn't even perjury.
The perjury clause only applies when the claimant is not the owner of the original content or a legal representative for them. Whether or not the new content infringes -- in belief or in fact -- has no bearing on the matter. There is no penalty for flagging any and all content, no matter how clear its fair-use.
+0 Meh
So which type of denier is the guy in question?
thx @JustineSacco for TRUE FACT: whites protected from AIDS by skin tone #FuckBeta
$
I'm pretty sure that there is no precedent that makes it clear that claimants DO have to consider fair use, other wise there would be an enormous threat of undermining the first amendment.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
correction: there is NOW precedent
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Not at all. A straight copy simply means an opportunity for more people to see his work, which authors normally want. On the other hand someone taking it apart and cutting it up, 'remixing' it to make the author look bad (and whether you think it's justified or not that is clearly what was done) is not something the author normally wants to see.
So no, not suspicious at all, perfectly normal and expected.
The real question here is whether the hostile piece does fall within fair use or not, and that is unfortunately a very complicated legal question, ultimately based on somewhat subjective criteria, so it's not easy to know for sure. It may well require a court to make that determination, which means a lot of lawyer fees for both of the gentlemen involved.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"Denialist" is the new "Racist"; a meaningless term intended to shut down debate.
What, you expected me to RTFA? Are you new here or something? :P
And Liam Scheff is one of the more virulent practitioners of the art. This is the guy who infamously wrote about the Incarnation Children's Center:
"The drugs given to the children are toxic, known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage and fatal skin disorders. If the children refuse the drugs, they’re held down and force fed. Should they continue to resist, they’re taken to Columbia University Presbyterian hospital, where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs. The drugs are injected directly into their intestines. In 2003, two children, ages 6 and 12, had debilitating strokes due to drug toxicities. The 6-year-old went blind and they both died shortly after. Another 14 year old died later and an 8-year-old boy had two plastic surgeries to remove large, fatty, drug-induced lumps from his neck."
The NY State Department of Health investigated and found nothing to substantiate Scheff's claims.
Scheff is a complete nut-job, and a dangerous one at that. Scheff pointing fingers and crying "propaganda" is chutzpah at a pathological level.
Good luck trying that one. Especially over youtube takedown.
This is clearly an unconstitutional restraint of journalism.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.
Come on man.
...this has nothing to do with the government. Nobody here is "the government" - it's just three private parties arguing over who's shit got posted to youtube.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If you think this is harmless stupidity, think again. IIRC there is at least one case of an HIV positive mother who refused to test her child. The child later died in an illness with symptoms like those of someone who has AIDS. The mother also died, naturally.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. In South Africa, HIV denialists advised by the Duesberg cult were in charge of public health policy for several years, leading to a tragedy of genocidal proportions:
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
Sounds like they're building some kind of religion.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I feel sorry for the child, but at least natural selection (wrt intelligence/gullibility) is getting rid of some of the stupid.
Sometimes I think there needs to be a rudimentary test before allowing parents legal guardianship of their offspring.
If you can find such precedent, I would very much like to see it. Thanks.
+0 Meh
a) That's trademark law, not copyright.
b) Get help. Really.
I recommend the Wikipedia article on Denialism, which starts with a definition:
In human behavior, denialism is exhibited by individuals choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable truth.
Racism has three definitions listed in the Wiktionary entry:
1. The belief that each race has distinct and intrinsic attributes.
2. The belief that one race is superior to all others.
3. Prejudice or discrimination based upon race.
Of course beliefs referenced are predicated on the folk concept of race, which doesn't hold up to biological scrutiny.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Per Lenz v. UMG , the representative of a copyright owner must consider fair use before sending a notice of claimed infringement.
Non-existent priests of something that doesn't exist.
Care to highlight some examples of this behavior?
I see you're tilting at windmills here, never mind.
I certainly do not deny the existence of different breeds of dogs, but these are by no means analogous to the folk scientific concept of human "race".
There are three factors which account for the distinctiveness of dog breeds:
(1) Dogs are domesticated animals and thus less genetically diverse than humans, who are wild animals.
(2) The dog genome produces anomalously high variation in phenotype with slight differences in genotype, in comparison to other mammals.
(3) Dogs reach sexual maturity as early as six months old.
These factors make dogs ideal for developing distinct types that breed true. None of these things are true of humans. Humans do not breed true in the way dogs do; siblings resemble each other much less than dog litter mates.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Drs Duesberg Rasnick and Farmer dont exist in your world, right? And certainly Dr Mullis (the inventor of the PCR test used in AIDS clinics worldwide) never existed, right?
Duesberg...that was the guy who had a role in all those AIDS deaths in South Africa, right? Isn't he also the guy who got pimp-slapped by multiple peer reviewers and investigated for scientific misconduct?
Rasnick...Rasnick...oh yeah, he was the dude who illegally set up clinical trials where he recruited poor black HIV+ individuals and instructed them to forgo antivirals in favor of "VitaCell cures AIDS" vitamin supplements.
Farmer? Never heard of him.
Mullis - the Nobel Prize winning chemist who dropped a boatload of acid in the 60s and claims he's encountered aliens and also believes in astrology.
Yep, nothing low rent about those guys.
Without any opinion at all on which side is right about the disease...
Riiight...
i see nothing wrong with denier labels. it is deliberately ignoring and twisting facts and science to serve a political agenda. i had never heard of aids denier. but another great example is climate change denier.
Sure there are people who have other hypotheses but they have been refuted by research.
Duesberg claims have been refuted..
Rasnick's never actually researched AIDS and has made false claims of University affiliation.
Farmer wrote a book to refute the claim that AIDS came from Haiti.
Mullis has also done no actual research into HIV/AIDS. He is also a molecular biologist and infectious diseases is outside his area of expertise.
Without any opinion at all on which side is right about the disease,
Have you looked at the Durban Declaration?
The declaration has been signed by over 5,000 people, including Nobel prizewinners, directors of leading research institutions, scientific academies and medical societies, notably the US National Academy of Sciences, the US Institute of Medicine, Max Planck institutes, the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Royal Society of London, the AIDS Society of India and the National Institute of Virology in South Africa. In addition, thousands of individual scientists and doctors have signed, including many from the countries bearing the greatest burden of the epidemic. Signatories are of MD, PhD level or equivalent, although scientists working for commercial companies were asked not to sign
That seems to be a fairly strong and widespread opinion.
The HIV deniers are pretty awful. Especially the ones who convince mothers to stop giving their AIDS ridden children medicine. http://whatstheharm.net/hivaid...
You can fuck off with that holocaust comparison though.
And then they deny Darwinism....
Worse because the "cocktails" used - many of which he trialed and rejected in his pioneering cancer research - are toxic and cause great damage in and of themselves.
This is ancient history. The modern anti-HIV cocktails are largely drugs that were invented long after Duesberg's research career fizzled out, and as far as I know were never considered for use against cancer. AZT was indeed very toxic, not unlike chemotherapy - but AZT isn't front-line treatment against AIDS and hasn't been for many years, at least not in the US.
His hypothesis may well be wrong, but simply being wrong would not justify the negative reaction he has received.
No, but being wrong and continuing to say the same thing over and over again for decades is a pretty good way to piss people off. And traveling to South Africa to meet with Mbeki and advocate against trying to cure the millions of South Africans with AIDS, well, that's just sick.
Oh, btw, where is that cure?
For people who can afford to pay for the treatment, AIDS basically is cured - we can't totally eliminate HIV from the system, but patients can survive almost indefinitely with a reasonable quality of life. Those therapies were developed by ignoring lunatics like Duesberg and targeting the molecular mechanisms of HIV. We don't have a cure for the flu either, despite knowing about it for much long than HIV, but that doesn't mean that mainstream science is wrong about the flu virus.
Perhaps you should read things that take Duesberg head on. You will find that people have looked into his theories and found them wanting.
His hypothesis may well be wrong, but simply being wrong would not justify the negative reaction he has received.
That his hypothesis is wrong is not the issue. The fact that he still hold those hypotheses long after that have been scientifically prove wrong is the issue. It is quite possible that he does not want to admit he was wrong because that would mean he was instrumental in the deaths of 330,000 South Africans who died due to the government taking his advice.
A lot of prestige and not just individuals but big institutions, government, media, research funding institutes, had just announced that HIV=AIDS and now that we knew what was causing it the cure was assured.
I doubt anyone said a "cure was assured". That may have said it was a first step to a cure.
Oh, btw, where is that cure?
There are many diseases where the cause is well known and is still incurable. Viruses are are some of the most difficult. Remember, the common cold is yet to be cured.
Using the term denier to compare people to Holocaust deniers trivializes the Holocaust.
About 12 million people died in Nazi death camps, about six million of them Jews. AIDS has resulted in about 30 millions deaths. So far. Thabo Mbeki may be responsible for more deaths than Heinrich Himmler.
On the other hand, the Perth group IIRC actually argues that there is no such thing as HIV at all. They challenge the claim that it's ever been properly isolated, and the best I recall they basically argue that what is being detected as HIV is simply cellular trash of a kind typical of an individual with severely compromised immunities.
This is another good example of being decades behind and/or batshit insane. HIV is one of the best-characterized viruses in history - the genome, structure, and pathology have all been extensively studied for 30 years, and while the human genome does have some elements that are probably leftover retroviral junk, there is nothing that would explain HIV away as an experimental artifact.
It's been a few weeks since I read the DMCA, but as I recall the counter-notice just has to say that you're contesting it. You don't have to go into any legal theory of why. It just shows that a) you're responding and b) don't agree that you've infringed.
It looks like you are right though you do need to make the following statement;
I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
I guess specifics are not necessary.
DMCA means EVERYTHING to YouTube. If they follow the DMCA procedure, they have safe harbor from both copyright holders and from people falsely accused of infringement. That protection is worth billions to YouTube. The procedure they have to follow to get that protection is:
Upon receipt of a complaint, temporarily remove the video and notify the person who posted it.
When the poster responds saying they don't believe it's infringing, put the video back up.
That second part is called "counter notice". You may have noticed in TFA it said YouTube may lock the account if he doesn't send them a counter notice. He simply needs to quit whining for ten minutes, long enough to type up a counter notice email.
"Mullis has also done no actual research into HIV/AIDS. He is also a molecular biologist and infectious diseases is outside his area of expertise."
This is hilarious and typical of the character assassination.
True, he's a molecular biologist. His expertise? He INVENTED the modern PCR test! Go look that up. It's actually a pretty big deal, there's a little something called the Nobel prize he got for that specifically.
Now he may not be a board certified specialist in infectious diseases but he is certainly qualified to comment on how the test he invented works, and that is exactly the context in which he chipped in to support Duesberg!
As I said earlier, dishonest debating tactics make me suspicious. If he were one of your 5,000 Durban signers, no one would question whether he was qualified.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Stupid isn't exactly the right word for all denialists. Kary Mullis, Nobel prize winner and inventor of PCR, is a denialist.
With any conspiracy theory, there's ample room for people to ask questions, and parts that don't on first look seem to support the explanation. The bigger the thing being explained, the more details people bring up that seem inconsistent. 9/11, Obama's citizenship, HIV, the moon landing... people spend enough time looking into something convinced that there's a conspiracy going on, eventually they find facts which make it sound convincing. They're motivated, often unconsciously, for attention.
"Remember, the common cold is yet to be cured."
I am honestly not sure if you think you are putting one past me or if you think this makes sense.
There is no cure for the common cold because the "common cold" is actually a symptom with over 200 different possible causes, and it's a mild nuisance not worth the trouble. If one of them started killing people tomorrow I expect a vaccine at least, if not a full cure, would appear very quickly.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Over the past decade or so I understand there has been a shift away from the ones he was writing about to less toxic drugs
Longer than that; the search for HIV-specific drugs has been going on since the 1980s. The first antiretroviral came out the same year (1987) that Duesberg made his first complaint; new HIV therapies started to hit the market in the mid-1990s. The reason we didn't have anything sooner wasn't because doctors enjoy giving AZT to patients, it's because developing new drugs is not a famously speedy process.
We could keep people alive "almost indefinitely" back in the 80s.
No, the mortality rate for AIDS patients was quite high back in the 80s (and 90s, for that matter; I lost a teacher that way), and the quality of life much lower.
Huge amounts of money have spent searching for it, quite a bit of time has passed, it doesnt seem to be any closer than it was back then, and we still hear the same thing about how HIV is so unique, it does things no other virus can, we still dont really understand it. Maybe it really is the special snowflake. Or maybe there is something fundamentally wrong about the assumptions we are working from.
If that were the case, than there would have been plenty of other evidence pointing to it - in particular, the many therapies developed to stall (rather than prevent) HIV infection would have failed miserably, and many more people would have died. And it really is difficult to trick the immune system into fighting a virus that propagates by also tricking the immune system.
All these years later, and assuming for the sake of argument that HIV does indeed cause AIDS and that Duesberg and the other skeptics were all dead wrong on that - treating them like scientists who are supposed to remain skeptical, rather than priests who are supposed to remain orthodox, would not have hurt and might well have helped.
Why should we waste time on people who selectively ignore evidence (without presenting any of their own) and continue to make the same argument over and over again for years? Duesberg isn't reviled simply because he went against the prevailing scientific opinion - it's because after all those years, and all that counter-evidence, he refused to admit what any reasonable person would have recognized almost immediately. Scientists generally aren't known for their social skills, and we tend to be particularly intolerant of people who make extravagant (and contrarian) claims that most first-year grad students would be embarrassed to say out loud. This is just common sense - if you're going to publicly state that, in essence, "Professor So-and-so is full of shit", you'd better have really solid evidence our you're going to be ripped to shreds.
By the way, Duesberg hasn't only made an ass of himself over AIDS - his theories on cancer are just as controversial. What's really depressing is that he may be half right ("chromosomal abnormalities are a hallmark and possible cause of cancer"), but he's so spectacularly wrong on the other half ("mutations do not cause cancer") that he has trouble getting anyone to listen to him. And as with AIDS, people who would otherwise be dead today are still alive thanks to drugs that were developed based on the hypothesis that Duesberg claims is false.
In other words we havent found it yet.
How are we doing on that war on cancer? How about the flu? Polio is still holding on in a few spots.
HIV is a retrovirus, it writes it into the cell's nucleas, even replicating as the cell replicates, until some event happens to cause the cell to start producing viral bodies again. It's basically a stealth virus.
It turns out that 'curing HIV' is bloody difficult. For that matter, just creating a vaccine for it is very difficult. Best study I remember thus far reduced the chance of infection by 50% - not enough to be viable, it needs to be above 90% to be considered an effective vaccine.
The mechanisions by which HIV causes AIDS(and not all cases of AIDS are caused by HIV) are at this point known, and it's part of the reason our drugs for it are as effective as they are, because we're targeting the virus directly.
I don't read AC A human right
It's not possible to find a single party line, but these are the most common beliefs AFAIK:
AIDS is caused by chemicals, big pharma, the government, the Bilderberg group, the Illuminati, space lizards, etc.
Having just watched the videos in question, one of the people interviewed in the videos they're debunking is Christina Maggiore. She is now dead and, at the time of shooting, her three year old daughter was already dead. Both are dead as a result of AIDs by competent medical accounts. She ran an organization: Alive and Well AIDs Alternatives, which was dedicated to convincing people not to test for AIDs or take antiretrovirals. In the case the death of her daughter (who was born from an AIDs infected mother not taking antiretrovirals and never given them, never tested and also not vaccinated for anything), she took her, for her pneumonia, to one of the board members of her organization, who prescribed her amoxicillin. When Christina herself was dying of pneumonia, she took various alternative medicines and apparently a "holistic cleanse". This is just background.
The weird bit is the causes of her daughter's death according to her and her denialist group and her own death according to the group. Their theory on the daughter's death, despite an autopsy confirming and AIDs related death, was an allergic reaction to Amoxicillin. Their theories on her death included a toxic alternative medication or "holistic cleanse". So... yeah. According to the AIDs-denialist nuts, the causes of death were probably the alternatives they sought out rather than going with proper medicine (not to knock amoxicillin, it might have actually been useful in conjunction with actual AIDS treatment).
There are some tests regarding allowing parents legal guardianship of their offspring. Generally speaking, if you let one die through total, idiotic negligence they take any others from you. Also, if you're too crazy to care for them and one dies due to that insanity, they take any others from you. Christina Maggiore breast-fed her daughter knowing that she (Christina) had been diagnosed as HIV-positive. She also didn't have her children vaccinated or tested for HIV or treated for HIV when seriously ill with the kind of symptoms you would expect from child onset AIDs. Despite being such a dangerous mother, she got to keep her other child who, hopefully, does not have AIDs.
Thanks for looking that up. That is a very specific statement.
Your chronology is wrong though, along with your cause and effect. He was only mildly skeptical and his career was trashed.
He was not sceptical in many of his original statements. He was quite emphatic that HIV did not cause aids and there were many other causes. He argued well enough to cause South Africa to follow his ideas.
We were told we would have a cure and/or a vaccine.
You keep saying that yet I see no evidence of anyone actually uttering or writing those words. There were references to it eventually being cured but 20 years research into a retrovirus is still a pretty short time.
treating them like scientists who are supposed to remain skeptical, rather than priests who are supposed to remain orthodox, would not have hurt and might well have helped.
Tell that to the 330,000 South Africans who died because the Government took the advice of a few scientists over the advice of thousands of others. Duesberg was not harmless. A scientist remains skeptical until proven otherwise. The deniers remain obstinate in the face of overwhelming evidence. The largest piece of evidence being that anti-retrovirus treatments that attack the HIV retrovirus have prolonged the lived of AIDS patients. If there is no HIV/AIDS link the treatment would not work.
The joke of course is just how much content on YT clearly violates copyright but just sits there for years. I mean entire major motion pictures will be posted by some non-rights-holding Joe Shmoe, remain up for years, and get recommended to you by YT's algorithms and have ads run before they show it to you. So you go ahead and post a short clip from, say, The Jackie Gleason Show from 1960, Jackie Gleason Enterprises sends in a DCMA by the next day, it gets taken down, (fair enough) and YT has the absolute gall to send you a "you're a naughty boy!" email and ask you to watch this oh-so-amusing copyright drivers-ed film which declares pretty much anything not 100% original content is a violation of the rules, while pretty much the vast majority of the content on the site does exactly that.
So the poor analogy is this: kids throwing rocks at the old factory windows in full view of the police. If the factory owner calls the police and complains, the kids are promptly arrested. If the owner says nothing the police gather a crowd around inviting people to watch the kids smash the windows, then mills through the crowd selling tickets to the policeman's ball.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
In human behavior, denialism is exhibited by individuals choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid dealing with an uncomfortable truth.
In this case the "uncomfortable truth" being that their advice lead to the deaths of over 330,00 South Africans due to misguided health policy.
For someone to be "authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed", there has to be "an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed" in the first place. The representative of a copyright owner cannot credibly allege infringement and give no thought to the most common ways that a use is "not an infringement of copyright", as 17 USC 107 through 122 put it. If you're referring solely to what is and isn't "under penalty of perjury", material misrepresentation in bad faith still carries potential criminal penalties even if it does not rise to the level of perjury.
The most common view I've heard about is denying that HIV and AIDS are related to each other, without any stated conspiracy theory attached other than that scientists were wrong and jumping to conclusions.
Neither TFS, TFA or GP talks about the holocaust, only you do.
There are plenty other types of deniers, like evolution or global warming.
"Denier" is just a word used to describe somebody who denies what the vast majority accepts as fact.
Denying the use of a word serves nobody except those apposed to discussion.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Stupidity of these people is undeniable, but this is still censorship. And as a ./ story, it should be filled in appropriate cabinet.
First, PCR isn't a test, it's a technique for generating copies of DNA. It's used to amplify a sample of DNA for various reasons. One of those reasons may be to amplify a sample to make it easier to detect HIV RNA or transcripted DNA. As far as I know, it's not typically used in AIDs clinics. The expertise and equipment required is usually found in more sophisticated labs. Most clinics are going to be using simpler tests and sending out blood or referring patients if they need more sophisticated testing.
Dr Mullis is, indeed, widely credited with PCR, although his technique was just a refinement of a much earlier technique. It should be noted that he's quite public about his avid enjoyment of LSD along with his views that anthrogenic climate change isn't real, HIV doesn't cause AIDS, oh, and that the date of your birth can be used in conjunction with the current apparent position of the stars and planets to divine your personality and fate. Aside from making his own LSD, he's apparently invented plenty of his own psychoactive drugs and used himself as a human guinea pig. Now, I know it's usually an invalid assumption to criticize a person's science based on their personal life, but when their personal life involves heavy use of drugs that are known to have permanent mind altering effects, not to mention drugs with completely unknown effects, it might be wise to take extraordinary claims they make with a grain of salt. Especially when they've done no research in the actual field and are just expressing an opinion.
Dr. Duesburg did some interesting work on cancer. Apparently along with disputing that HIV causes AIDS, he also disputes the results of his own work. His most recent work on cancer is neither proven nor disproven. His views on AIDS is that it's a result of drug abuse and he appears to use no true Scotsman logic for every case where anyone who is clearly not a drug abuser (such as three year old girls) has AIDS. Duesburg played no small part in the policy decision by South Africa to withhold AIDS medications in South Africa. The death toll from that policy is approximately 330,000.
Rasnick performed unauthorized experiments in South Africa where he convinced AIDS patients not to take their antiretrovirals and to take vitamins instead. This was working with a business that, surprise, surprise, sells vitamin supplements. At least five died as a result. He's also been shown to have lied or misrepresented his affiliation with UC Berkley.
As for Dr Farmer... I'm not sure what Dr. Farmer you're talking about? Is it Paul Farmer? As far as I can tell, he has no Denialist views with regards to HIV, but does have views that the current drugs aren't enough and that more needs to be done in areas of the world where AIDS is pandemic socially, medically, politically, etc. You might have meant a different Dr. Farmer, however.
The ones from that list who are actual AIDS denialists seem to be in the minority. There are also plenty of scientists who had done a lot of research that these characters don't even bother to address who have come up with different conclusions. There's also plenty of emperical research that shows that HIV causes AIDS. Not to mention all the laboratory research done with non-human primates that shows that infection with the SIV retrovirus produces AIDS-like symptoms and kills the primates. Dr Duesberg insists that all retroviruses, not just HIV and related viruses, _can't_ kill and are completely harmless. The only way he could believe this without doing his own experiments is by covering his ears, closing his eyes and shouting "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"
There are several different alternative hypotheses, for instance Duesberg argues that HIV is harmless, a very weak virus that is found only in the blood of people experiencing immune collapse (for some other reason) because a healthy immune system wipes it out immediately. Just an opportunistic infection that can be used as a diagnostic.
On the other hand, the Perth group IIRC actually argues that there is no such thing as HIV at all. They challenge the claim that it's ever been properly isolated, and the best I recall they basically argue that what is being detected as HIV is simply cellular trash of a kind typical of an individual with severely compromised immunities.
So you believe which of those two contrary hypothoses? They can't both be right. Do you just add them together and say: "Well, they both think that the mainstream science that actually has a good handle on all of this must be wrong so, if both agree on that, then they must be right, even though their basic theories disagree in other respects"? Seriously? "Denialist" may be a slur word, but if it also accurately describes reasoning like that, it would seem to be justified.
"Racist" is not a meaningless term. Yes, it is sometimes misapplied, but calling it meaningless in light of the whole of human history and the present day is a monumental mis-statement (to be kind about it).
I've watched the videos. The problem is that they have lots of reasons to think that they can push a claim through some courts. That's not to say that they have a valid claim, but he modern yardstick is whether they can get some judge to buy it, not whether they're actually in the right. The video content of the first two videos is almost entirely footage from the video they're debunking. A lot of it is the same clips repeated multiple times and there's plenty of extra content in the form of a voice-over critiquing the whole thing, but the majority of the actual video and a decent amount of the audio comes from the other work. This is meant to be protected as the entire work is obviously a valid critical piece, rather than any sort of copy or attempt to plagiarize the original. The problem is, they still might be able to make an argument based on percentages and get a court to buy it. It would be a travesty of justice, but how often do travesties of justice _not_ happen in courts?
'remixing' it to make the author look bad
...is usually called "academic discourse" where I come from. :D
and whether you think it's justified or not that is clearly what was done
Not only is it justified, it's been done for centuries now.
not something the author normally wants to see
Of course, nobody in academia wants people to know that he's wrong, but the interests of the public always win big time in such cases.
Ezekiel 23:20
People do not consider it trivializing because of the numbers, but because of the natures of the two things. There is a big difference between the spread of a disease that impacts a significant but still small percentage of the population and the systematic industrial scale attempt at exterminating a large group of people.
This is why I tell clients not to use them. Because it takes some bogus copyright claim and Google rolls over and plays dead because they do not want to actually invest time and money into a system and training that actually works to weed out these abusive claims.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
LOL, this is the first time Ive ever heard of AIDS deniers. No Shit? Some dumbass shoved a tinfoil hat up his ass and rationalized somehow that AIDS doesnt exist? I was in school in the 70s when a friend of mine figured out he was gay, got a divorce, moved to Frisco, contracted AIDS and died. The Rock Hudson jokes were still warm. I can understand that there are holocost deniers, because I have met enough Nazis and Klan Klowns to understand stupid is; as stupid does.
I wanna see the oxygen deniers, or penis deniers or something amusing. Aids deniers? No shit?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
The 'Reply to This' button is intended to be used for, you know, replies.
You're meant to link to a source, not just whine.
You seem to be right though: regarding totals deaths in Nazi death camps: Wikipedia says over three million. This thread on Answers.com says 6.4 million, not including 'labor camps or executions' of Soviet prisoners, and it notes that Many victims of the Holocaust were not killed in camps. I believe 6.4 million includes both death camps and concentration camps, which might explain the greater number than Wikipedia's 3 million for death camps alone.
well i downloaded the series in case it goes down, it will be a good shot to get many views in my channel once it goes viral :)
Fuck off yuden.
Colossal lunatic detected.
Free speech is far from just about politician debate; it's about every sort of speech, including opinions about 'trivial' matters.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Well, if you're wondering where they are:
Public health researchers have attributed 330,000 to 340,000 AIDS deaths, along with 171,000 other HIV infections and 35,000 infant HIV infections, to the South African government's former embrace of HIV/AIDS denialism
Wait, we have AIDS deniers now? WTF is wrong with people...
"I wanna see the oxygen deniers" We only have gravity deniers so far. Gravity is "just a theory", the earth and the universe itself are held together by the hand of God (Col 1:17). And yes, some people believe such things http://www.chick.com/reading/t... According to Wikipedia, some professor wrote an article on "Intelligent Falling", but the paper has been retracted and hasn't been archived http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
So if you think the material was removed or disabled maliciously and on purpose (rather than due to mistake or misidentification) you're committing perjury by filing the counter-claim?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I'm sure you don't. Most people don't see the problems with their own bias, and think that the labels they put on groups of people who aren't connected by any common characteristics actually makes them into a single group.
Always nice to compare ignorant tribals to Nazis to people who question things that some people don't want questioned. Really makes one feel GOOD and RIGHT, doesn't it?
I think calling somebody a climate change denier minimizes their concerns and makes them sound unreasonable. both of which are true according to science. you know, the thing that says e = mc^2 and f=ma? also, I have no interest in your radical tea party Christian evangelical gun nut viewpoint, regardless of how you dress it up. I think it's shameless how you try to pervert the public discourse to influence politics to your own ends, at the risk of humanity.
Her child, Eliza Jane Scovill died from AIDS-related complications on May 16, 2005. Christina Maggiore died from AIDS-related complications on December 27, 2008. I am wondering, if the idea is dangerous, and the propagandists of that idea literally cause death, can we shut them up for public safety sake? Or sue them into oblivion and charge them with endangering the public?
please explain. Because I'm offended that because of the color of my skin I might not be able to even learn and analyze a historical situation to learn from it and make better decision in the future.
Or is this some comedy rule where one would have to be a black-German to even comment on the subject?
I wasn't aware of any overzealous legislation regarding holocaust denial. Link please.
There is a reason the West is fading. This is a symptom caused by the same disease.
I suspect it's caused by sensitivities regarding the Holocaust...
"So you believe which of those two contrary hypothoses?" [sic]
Neither, of course.
A scientific mind does not function on 'belief.'
If you want me to guess? I'd say both of the groups I mentioned, as well as the orthodox establishment, will probably turn out to have been substantially wrong to one degree or another. But that is no more than an educated guess based on the history of science.
Whether or not there is ultimately any truth to the criticisms and countercriticisms is really secondary to me. What interests me the most is the way that supposedly scientific institutions devolve into exactly the same sort of relationships and behavior that we expect from religious institutions - the way that what should be a scientific theory comes to be viewed more like a religious creed, and scientific skepticism comes to be seen as heresy. It's not a matter of the orthodoxy is right or the heresy is right - they may both be wrong, at least partly. But what the heck does orthodoxy and heresy have to do with science?
Nothing.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Yes, technically PCR is a technique to amplify the signal to allow detection via a test that would otherwise not be sensitive enough. If Mullins believes that it can also amplify noise to create a false signal, that opinion would certainly be well within his professional competence, as well as a statement against his own interest, no?
"Now, I know it's usually an invalid assumption to criticize a person's science based on their personal life"
If you know that then why did you bother wasting an entire paragraph doing just that? I dont care what these people do in their free time, what I care about is the integrity of science.
"Dr. Duesburg did some interesting work on cancer. Apparently along with disputing that HIV causes AIDS, he also disputes the results of his own work"
You say that like it's a bad thing, when in reality it is a mark of a real scientist to remain skeptical even of ones own work.
Really, it's almost like you WANT me to believe you are arguing in bad faith.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
AIDS kills a large group of people. The Nazi death camps impacted a significant but still small percentage of the population in most places. Since your formulation and my reversal are about equally valid, what was your point?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It was not possible to keep AIDS sufferers alive almost indefinitely in the 1980s. Once they started to show symptoms, they tended not to live another three years. Modern treatment isn't an actual cure, but it's the next best thing.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
i see nothing wrong with denier labels. it is deliberately ignoring and twisting facts and science to serve a political agenda. i had never heard of aids denier. but another great example is climate change denier.
He denied it to the day he went to his grave.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Molecular biologist is not a virologist or epidemiologist. Yes he invented PCR which by the way is not a test. It is a way of replicating DNA so that small quantities can be tested. It had nothing to do with disease transmission.
he is certainly qualified to comment on how the test he invented works
Here is the introduction from one of Duesberg's books. The only link to PCR is that he was doing work with PCR when he started asking questions. His issue is that he could not find someone who could point to a smoking gun at that time and became a Duesberg believer after one lecture. Take a look at this page and you see many smoking guns that show HIV needs to be present for AIDS yet neither Duesberg or Mullis have changed their views. In 1988 there may have been lack of proof but today there is plenty of proof.
because the "common cold" is actually a symptom with over 200 different possible causes
Care to cite anything that supports this claim? There are a number of causes but the main one is the Rhinovirus. Why is there no cure for the rhinovirus? The fact it mutates quickly make curing it very difficult. The same goes for HIV with mutates even faster than the rhinovirus.
Your position that "it they were right they would have cured it by now" is baseless speculation considering how difficult it is to cure viruses in general and genetically diverse viruses in particular.
You now add to the mix "one of them started killing people tomorrow I expect a vaccine at least". That too is false as death is not the only driving factor behind research. Rhinovirus is an extremely widespread disease infecting millions of people a year causing the loss of billions of dollars in productivity. The cure for the common cold would make the inventor a billionaire. This much potential for profit should induce lots of research.
I think the statement is framed that way to remove the possibility of libel. The mistake could be the idea that malicious intent is a valid reason for a take down notice. So in effect a take down notice due to malicious intent is a mistake.
"So you believe which of those two contrary hypothoses?" [sic]
Neither, of course.
A scientific mind does not function on 'belief.'
Oh please, spare me the pointless semantic games. 'belief' and 'religious belief' are not the same thing. All minds function on belief, scientific or not. The scientific mind just does its best to have rational beliefs based on emperical evidence where possible. When I talk about believing one theory over another, critical assesment is implicit in my understanding of the term belief. You can pretend that the two theories you mention are somehow valid alternatives to the prevailing theory. Way back in the 80s, you would have had an argument. You could lay out a whole list of experments and observations required before picking one over the other. The simple fact is, since then, those experiments have been done. The evidence says that HIV exists. It's been observed through a number of different imaging methods again and again and again. Its been watched infecting cells, then budding off from those cells in waves of virus particles.The probability of all these observations being wrong is fantastically low. This puts the "Perth Group" you mentioned firmly into "requires extraordinary proof" category.
Duesberg is only marginally better. His theories about the harmlessness of HIV, and retroviruses in general, appear ridiculous in light of all of the animal experiments and observations of human infection over the decades.
Whether or not there is ultimately any truth to the criticisms and countercriticisms is really secondary to me.
Yikes. Why are you even bothering to discuss this then?
What interests me the most is the way that supposedly scientific institutions devolve into exactly the same sort of relationships and behavior that we expect from religious institutions - the way that what should be a scientific theory comes to be viewed more like a religious creed, and scientific skepticism comes to be seen as heresy.
Except that's really, really not what's going on here. The denialists typically either just plain don't have an alternate theory or have a lack of any real evidence for their theory. Scientists don't look at this and say: "These people are heretics and we must shun them!". They look and say: "These people either have little or no experimental evidence or they do have experimental evidence and it completely fails to support their conclusion. Whereas the mainstream theory has lots of expermental evidence that backs it up and makes testable predictions which are successfully saving people's lives." Admittedly many scientists do say "We should shun Duesberg", but that's a natural human reaction to someone who seems to have been instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children.
Yes, technically PCR is a technique to amplify the signal to allow detection via a test that would otherwise not be sensitive enough. If Mullins believes that it can also amplify noise to create a false signal, that opinion would certainly be well within his professional competence, as well as a statement against his own interest, no?
PCR doesn't create DNA that isn't already there. It takes what's there and makes more of it. It won't make viral DNA magically appear if it's not there in the first place.
"Now, I know it's usually an invalid assumption to criticize a person's science based on their personal life"
If you know that then why did you bother wasting an entire paragraph doing just that? I dont care what these people do in their free time, what I care about is the integrity of science.
I answered that question in the very same (admittedly run-on) sentence you quoted. Your apparent confusion sems disingenuous. Basically I said that one exception to the rule is when their personal life involves doing things that can literally drive you insane. If someone is actually insane, that might be a valid reason to take their wild hypotheses with a grain of salt. If they actually present good experimental data then it doesn't matter if, in their spare time, they're drilling holes in their head to let the gods in. When they have no good experimental data and are basically just making sophist proclamations, then it does matter if they're insane.
As for the integrity of science, you have a strange way of showing your concern for it.
"Dr. Duesburg did some interesting work on cancer. Apparently along with disputing that HIV causes AIDS, he also disputes the results of his own work"
You say that like it's a bad thing, when in reality it is a mark of a real scientist to remain skeptical even of ones own work.
_You_ were the one making an argument from authority using these people. It's not unreasonable for me, in light of that, to discuss their actual scientific track record.
Really, it's almost like you WANT me to believe you are arguing in bad faith.
That's just pathetic. You're the one who, just a few paragraphs back, quoted a sentence fragment out of context in order to attack a straw man. After that little piece of rhetorical garbage, you have some nerve.
Some of them might be practicing medicine without a license. Beyond that, it would not be a good thing to make a habit of stifling free speech in that way. Those in direct care of minors such as parents and doctors, however, should face some sort of sanction. Maggiore supposedly got off because she was considered non-negligent because she consulted multiple physicians. The thing is, the reason she consulted multiple physicians was to find one who would echo what she wanted to hear.
Ad hominem is a logical fallacy, friend.
Science is a PROCESS not a "thing". Science doesn't SAY anything. People say things. Sometimes they say things that are the result of the method of thinking that we call the scientific method. Sometimes they say things that are based on religious thinking. Replace "science" with "God" in your post, and you might understand what I am saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One to ten years in Austria.
And no, the Holocaust has nothing to do with the decline of the West. The common core of these problems is government overreach into the lives of its citizens.
There was only where people can get awareness about Aids but we hope they will not..!
It's helpful for creating and protect the company's brand and assets with a choice of effective activist approach.But at the same time you also need to ensure that won't make the company become a bullying, and to avoid alienating some important user base.
If you want to relax, you can go out and enjoy the charm of nature.
"If you believe that latter, you shouldn't have brought up the former. There are quite a few Nobel prize winners that went on to promote demonstratively wrong ideas"
You premise does not support your conclusion, your unstated (and incorrect) missing postulate being that I somehow implied that having a Nobel prize made one infallible. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Need I mention Obamas "Peace Prize?"
But outside of the Peace prize, a Nobel is at least a fairly good indicator of greater than normal skill in the field in which it was won. And again, in this case, it was won for work on the same test he commented on. That doesnt make him infallible but it certainly rebuts the accusation that he was outside of expertise, commenting on something he knew nothing about. There just is no question that he was at the time this happened one of the worlds leading authorities on that test, he was comfortably inside his competence.
It's amazing that anyone could be so dense as to need this spelled out for them in such detail. I don't say that to try to be offensive but out of genuine amazement. He invented the test. He said to paraphrase that yes it could indeed do exactly what Duesberg thought it was doing. Whether or not they were both largely wrong is at this point many many years later entirely besides the point. The question is was their skepticism at the time reasonable and if you have any understanding of what science means I dont see how you can think it wasnt. Science is the product of skepticism, it requires it, it becomes disfunctional when it doesnt get enough, and it cannot be done by men who are afraid to be wrong.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
"Oh please, spare me the pointless semantic games. 'belief' and 'religious belief' are not the same thing. All minds function on belief, scientific or not."
It's no game, and a scientific mind nonetheless is by definition one disciplined and trained to disallow it. It's not that hard if you understand the need and apply yourself. The closest you should come to "beliefs" about scientific questions would be the assumption that sensory data does reflect some sort of existential reality rather than being some sort of elaborate hallucination. Even that is open to question, and in fact questioning it regularly is a good exercise. This has nothing to do with the Matrix btw this was probably an old technique when the skeptics of ancient Greece started teaching it.
There are no beliefs. There are only working hypotheses, confidence estimates; empirical evidence and logic.
"Admittedly many scientists do say "We should shun Duesberg", but that's a natural human reaction to someone who seems to have been instrumental in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, many of them children."
The same rhetorical dodge just keeps getting used over and over again.
We are not and have never been talking about Duesberg later in Africa. We are talking about Duesberg right after the media all lit up with the big official announcement that "HIV=AIDS." He wasnt blacklisted and shunned and treated like a subhuman for what happened in SA years later, he was destroyed right then and his life followed a very different trajectory from that point on as a result of that.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The closest you should come to "beliefs" about scientific questions would be the assumption that sensory data does reflect some sort of existential reality rather than being some sort of elaborate hallucination.
Which is pretty much what I was saying when I said: "All minds function on belief, scientific or not. The scientific mind just does its best to have rational beliefs based on emperical evidence where possible. When I talk about believing one theory over another, critical assesment is implicit in my understanding of the term belief." When you go to sleep in your bed and wake up in your bed, you believe you spent the night sleeping in your bed without other evidence to the contrary. For most people (who aren't known somnambulists and who don't live with hyperactive practical jokers) it's the best hypothesis. Going by the connotation of the term "belief" I use, you "believe" in the overwhelmingly likely hypothesis unless or until something better comes along. You believe that you spent all night in your bed asleep, until you see the video your friends made where they kept you asleep using ether and carried you around town, posing you in inappropriate positions in public places. After that, you should generally believe something different about how you spent your night.
All minds function on belief. Belief that your senses or memory aren't failing you or, sometimes, belief that your senses or memory _are_ failing you. You do the best you can with what you have and re-assess when you believe you have new information. The scientific mind tends to shy away from religious beliefs, irrational beliefs, inflexible beliefs, etc. but it still has beliefs.
You clearly mean something different by "belief". Good for you, but that makes this just a semantic argument. It's like the stupid argument about the word "luck". Some people are "lucky", meaning that they have enjoyed beneficial random circumstances. That doesn't mean that there's a mystical force granting those beneficial circumstances and it doesn't predict the future random circumstances those people may encounter. That doesn't stop some people from arguing that I'm talking about a mystical force when I use the term "luck".
The same rhetorical dodge just keeps getting used over and over again.
We are not and have never been talking about Duesberg later in Africa. We are talking about Duesberg right after the media all lit up with the big official announcement that "HIV=AIDS." He wasnt blacklisted and shunned and treated like a subhuman for what happened in SA years later, he was destroyed right then and his life followed a very different trajectory from that point on as a result of that.
No we're not. Note that I said "we". It's possible that you are, but you neglected to mention that in any of your posts in this thread. Rather you said:
There are several different alternative hypotheses, for instance Duesberg argues that HIV is harmless, a very weak virus that is found only in the blood of people experiencing immune collapse (for some other reason) because a healthy immune system wipes it out immediately
What tense is that written in? Past or present? Ditto to:
..the Perth group IIRC actually argues that there is no such thing as HIV at all.
You're reminding me of the old anecdote about the rifleman who shoots the side of a barn and then paints a target around the bullethole. Except, there's already a target, but you're saying that the really target was actually the spot over to the left and up a bit where your bullet happened to hit.
I'm not aware of anyone treating Duesberg like a subhuman before his self-promotion really started getting fatal results. I am aware of the fact that, although Duesberg is, in fact, a scientist, he isn't really one in the context of AIDS research. The reason being that he isn't actually doing any research. True, analysis of the results