jdach wrote...

This is terrifying and it should be outlawed immediately.  I'm all for
biotechnology, but this involves inserting foreign genes into the
most horrible virus on earth, not only risking that the patient might
suffer disease from the modified virus, but also that the altered virus
might be contagious and contaminate the general population with the
engineered genes.

They show their arrogance by claiming they have built various safety
features into the retrovirus, when if science really understood the
virus that thoroughly it would have found a cure or at least a vaccine
already.  There will be unintended consequences that we can't even
imagine; for example, a virus modified with a corrective gene for
muscular dystrophy might cause the retrovirus to sprout legs and be
able to walk across great distances to find new hosts, rather than
requiring physical contact with body fluids.  At the very least, the
modifications might cause airborne transmission or increased virulence.

Don't worry there is no evidence that HIV exists

http://www.theperthgroup.com/SCIPAPERS/MHMONT.pdf

Chris Noble

"jdach" <drdach@drdach.com> wrote in message

Aids experts demand sacking of S Africa's health minister

JOHANNESBURG - More than 80 international scientists, including a Nobel laureate, have appealed
to South Africa's president to fire his controversial health minister for what they say are
"pseudo-scientific" policies on Aids.

Calls for the dismissal of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang for promoting alternative
treatments have grown since last month's global Aids conference in Toronto.

Experts have criticised President Thabo Mbeki's government for underplaying anti-retroviral
(ARV) drugs and promoting home-grown Aids treatments such as garlic, beetroot and lemon at the
conference.

"To have as health minister a person who now has no international respect is an embarrassment
to the South African government," said the letter, dated September 4.

"We therefore call ... for an end to the disastrous, pseudo-scientific policies that have
characterised the South African government's response to HIV/Aids."

South Africa is the centre of Africa's Aids pandemic with some 5.4 million HIV/Aids cases.

A government Aids plan launched in 2003 promised to treat 380,000 people by now, but it has
only achieved half of the target, said the letter, which appeared on an Aids activists' website
www.aidstruth.org/letter-to-mbeki.php

"Many people are therefore dying unnecessarily," it said.

Among the letter's 82 signatories are David Baltimore, who won the Nobel Prize in medicine in
1975, and Robert Gallo, who co-discovered that the HIV virus was the cause of Aids.

Mbeki's spokesman confirmed the scientists' letter had been received by the president's office,
but said Mbeki may not have read it since he has been busy this week with the visit of Russian
President Vladimir Putin.

The government says it has one of the biggest ARV drug treatment programmes in the world but
also insists nutrition and traditional medicine must be an integral part of the plan to treat
HIV/Aids.

But the scientists said they were worried about unproven remedies for Aids being marketed in
South Africa, some which have the implicit or explicit support of the health minister.

"We condemn all those who profit from this type of quackery, at the expense of the sick and
dying," the letter said.

A new study last month said South Africa faced close to 9 million new HIV cases by 2025 if the
crisis was not contained.

Zachie Achmat of the Treatment Action Campaign, which launched protests against the health
minister last month, welcomed the letter.

"This gives our president the opportunity to unite the whole country (on the Aids crisis) and
deal with the biggest obstacle to that unity, which is the health minister," he said.

- REUTERS