Montréal, April 3, 2000
http://www.goodshare.org/doghair.htm
"JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, November 2, 1999 (AP) [1] -- President Thabo Mbeki's claim that a widely used AIDS drug is dangerous has set off an uproar, producing bafflement and shock among physicians and advocates who say AZT is safe.
The drug is the mainstay of efforts around the world to prevent HIV-infected mothers from passing the AIDS virus to their babies during birth.
"I think if the president doesn't want to provide AZT, he should find an excuse based on fact," said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, head of AIDS research at the Medical Research Council, which is similar to the U.S. National Institute of Health.
"It's the standard of care in many countries," he said. "
* * *
This press clipping raises a sizeable question --- how can it be that the president of such a large country which has good access to global scientific and medical advice can find himself at such extreme odds with the accepted views on HIV-AIDS?
In fact, Mbeki's follow-on remarks just a few days ago [2], seemed to further escalate this difference of view, i.e. ;
"President Thabo Mbeki's office on Monday bitterly accused Western drug companies of enriching themselves from the AIDS epidemic and compared them to warmongers "who propagate fear to increase their profits."
The blistering comments, carried in a newspaper column, come as Mbeki's administration finds itself on the defensive for its controversial policies, including the withholding of anti-AIDS drugs to infected pregnant women, which could help save thousands of newborns' lives. Mbeki also recently declared that the drug AZT, a mainstay in the battle against AIDS, was dangerous - remarks that baffled and shocked AIDS experts. "
* * *
It is indeed interesting to observe how Mbeki's non-'normal' view of the world 'comes across' in this 'impartial' press report. Could there be some 'yin-doctoring' going on here?.
The article goes on to say;
"Monday's broadside made some experts wonder about the Mbeki administration's ability to deal with the worst calamity to hit sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 2 million people died from the virus in 1998 and 1.7 million more became infected in 1999.
In South Africa alone, 4 million people - 10 percent of the population - are believed to have HIV or AIDS. There is no known cure. "
* * *
Now, as Ivan Illich and McLuhan both said, ... the 'commons of silence', which is getting pretty heavily loaded with a somewhat suspect balance of commentary, is the place where we go for information which we can interpret so as to orchestrate our lives through our individual actions and through our empowerment of the appointed stewards of our interests; i.e. business and government. Clearly, 'those who have access to the microphone' have a responsibility to ensure that the commons is not usurped by special interests but continues to provide a balanced access. McLuhan warned that such a balance was critical to our well-being and also that it was being threatened;
"Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly." ('Understanding Media', 1967)."
Now, there is nothing wrong with the associated press statements above, .... which mentions 'HIV or AIDS' as implicit equivalents and then following this implied piece of information with the 'factual' observation that 'there is no known cure', ... that is, there is nothing wrong when such statements are referenced to the worldwide 'norms' of press reporting.
But there are also the voices of those whom the media suppresses their access to the microphone, such as the following voices on the issue of HIV - AIDS which can be heard if one browses the web;
* * *
Peter Duesberg, retrovirologist, [Professor of molecular biology at Univ. of California at Berkeley] member of National Academy of Sciences: "HIV is just a latent, and perfectly harmless, retrovirus that most but not all AIDS patients happen to carry. To say that HIV is the cause of AIDS is to cast aside everything we know about retroviruses... The HIV theory is inconsistent, paradoxical, and absurd..."
Duesberg has been much maligned by the establishment for his position, and his research funds (originally emanating from drug companies) cut off. He is far from alone, however;
Walter Gilbert, Nobel Prize for chemistry 1980 & professor of molecular biology Harvard: [says of Peter Duesberg] "is absolutely correct in saying that no one has proven that AIDS is caused by the AIDS virus. And it is absolutely correct that the virus cultured in the laboratory may not be the cause of AIDS... I would not be surprised if there were another cause of AIDS and even that HIV is not involved."
Professor Serge Lang, Yale University: "There does not even exist a single proper definition of AIDS on which discourse or statistics can reliably be based... CDC calls these diseases AIDS only when antibodies against HIV are confirmed or presumed to be present. If a person tests HIV negative, then the diseases are given another name."
Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR test, Nobel Prize Chemistry 1993: "They got some big numbers for HIV-positive people [in Africa] before they realized that antibodies to malaria -- which everyone in Africa has -- show up as 'HIV-positive' on tests."
* * *
Ok, .... now let's play back the statement in the press and the statements not in the press (found by browsing the Internet) once again;
"Monday's broadside made some experts wonder about the Mbeki administration's ability to deal with the worst calamity to hit sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 2 million people died from the virus in 1998 and 1.7 million more became infected in 1999.
In South Africa alone, 4 million people - 10 percent of the population - are believed to have HIV or AIDS. There is no known cure. "
(1) .... 2 million people died from the HIV virus for which there is no known cure . . .
(-1) .... it is absurd to say that HIV is the cause of AIDS since HIV is just a latent, and perfectly harmless, retrovirus . . .
(-1) .... 2 million people died from the HIV virus for which there is no known cure . . .
(1) .... it is absurd to say that HIV is the cause of AIDS since HIV is just a latent, and perfectly harmless, retrovirus . . .
(1) .... 2 million people died from the HIV virus for which there is no known cure . . .
(-1) .... it is absurd to say that HIV is the cause of AIDS since HIV is just a latent, and perfectly harmless, retrovirus . . .
What is going on here?
If you wish to take a closer look, you will see two views in reciprocal conflict here, ... the former is the 'ontological' or 'existential' or 'euclidian' view, ... the view of 'the way the world IS', and the latter is the 'ontogenic' or 'evolutionary' or 'non-euclidian' view, ... the view of 'the way the world WORKS', ... and if you wish to look at the general theory of relativity, ... it will tell you that the former 'ontological view' is innately incomplete, and that not only is the 'ontogenic' view 'more complete', but it contains the 'ontologic view' as a special case in the same way that a broad landscape contains a small explicit feature as a part within the unity of the whole.
Relativity sees 'the way the world works' in terms of a container- constituency- codynamic. There can be no such thing as 'stasis' in the relativistic view, ... as there is in Newtonian physics, because if one thing is in motion in the cosmos, ... relativistically, ... everything is in motion.
The 'stability' of a healthy system, then, does not stand on the ground of 'stasis', ... but instead stands on the ground of a balanced codynamic with the containing environment within which it is immersed. The inner, constituency space, ... let's call it (-1) since it pushes off from its outer containing space, which we can call (+1), together add up to (0). The overall outer and inner space, then, adds up to 'zero' in ontogenic rather than ontologic terms, ... it represents balance in an oppositional (reciprocal container- constituent pull-push) evolutionary relationship sense rather than a material, 'all-in-step', 'coordinated cause-and-effect' sense.
Perceptions make a difference. The number 'zero', it was argued by Aristotle, should be outlawed since "it interrupted the consistency of the other number", ... but in the east, the seventh century scholar Brahmagupta saw 'zero' in terms of 'wholeness', ... where the inner and outer are in balance, ... and in modern mathematics, ... zero is seen as the 'reciprocal' or 'identity element' in the set of all real numbers from minus infinity to plus infinity (i.e. not just the positive real numbers, for which the reciprocal identity element is '1').
In other words, ... this is not just a question of balanced press coverage which is triggering conflict in Africa, ... it is an essential conflict of worldview, ... the purificationist view of the 'One' versus the harmony-of-the-whole view of the 'Zero', ... and this choice of perceptual base governs whether people see dissonant phenomena in the community in the ontologic terms of 'problems which must be eliminated' or whether they see dissonant phenomena in the ontogenic terms of 'outer-inner equilibria' which must be restored.
You can probably see how the nature of 'purpose' associated with these two reciprocal views of 'proper functioning' versus 'dissonant functioning' differ depending on the choice of space-time convention; i.e. 'the One' associating with euclidian space and real positive numbers and with seeing 'purpose' in terms of the coordinated unity of tangible actions [visualized in terms of everything marching together in 'time'] and 'the Zero' associating with non-euclidian space and real positive and negative numbers (a space-time, inner-outer continuum) and with seeing 'purpose' in terms of co-relational, outer-inner codynamical harmony. In the former space convention (euclidian), there exists only the capability for explicit material 'things' and their causal interaction and thus there can be no sense of a reciprocal 'space-matter' codynamical balancing [3]. In the latter space convention (non-euclidian), ... and here you can visualize this space in terms of billiard balls rolling around on the outer surface of a sphere or people living on the outer surface of a sphere such as the earth, ... each 'move' of a member of the constituency, seen in a relativistic sense, simultaneously induces codynamical transformation of the configuration, ... and it is the configuration and its relational interference patterns which determines which explicit material-causal transactions will have the opportunity to take place or to come into 'ontological' existence. You can also see how a nested 'clustering' will occur in this ontogenic possibility space, wherein it would be naturally important for overall system harmony, because of the self-referentiality of the overall system (a space-time continuum), for the maintaining of codynamical equilibria amongst the nesting subsystems.
In other words, in the former case of 'the One', dissonance will be seen in the purificationist terms of a 'problem which must be eliminated', ... a malfunctioning part, ... a subgroup of marchers who are out of step with the overall system, ... the 'viral platoon' which is marching to war against the regime in power which headquarters the defensive immune system which ensures the dynamical health of the system. Coming from this euclidian perspective, which starts and stops with a given system ontology, the notion of 'healing' or 'cure' is to destroy, remove or suppress the rebel platoon.
However, in the latter case of 'the Zero', dissonance will be seen in terms of a departure from whole-and-part harmony ('outer-inner harmony' in spherical space or 'ecological' terms), ... the detuning of a subconstituency with its containing supraconstituency which dissipates the outer-inner co-resonance characterizing healthy system behavior. Coming from this non-euclidian perception, the notion of 'healing' or 'cure' will be one of perturbing the system so as to induce the restoration of the codynamical inner-outer equilibrium. You can also see how the notion of 'immune system', ... a notion in which 'the kingdom of the One' must maintain an army of agents to 'fight off' antagonistic aliens, .... gives way to the reciprocal notion of a containing space-time based harmony inducing 'field' source; i.e. where the so-called 'immune system' is instead, reciprocally conceived of as a space-based harmony-inducing field.
So the issue with Thabo Mbeki and his critics is not simply one of 'judging' which view on AIDS is correct, ... there is a basic 'mode of perception' issue underpinning this clash of views, .... whether to view health and illness (at whatever level of 'community' from atoms through cells, to organisms and nations and species) in (a) the eastern, indigenous peoples and relativity-compliant non-euclidian terms of a whole-and-part outer-inner-nesting co-dynamics, ... or in (b) the western euclidian terms of a coordinated whole-and-part marching together in step.
Returning to the specifics of AIDS, what is contained in many of the technical arguments which argue against HIV as being the 'CAUSE' of AIDS, is the relativistic view of 'relational interference', as suggested in a book by Robert Root-Bernstein (a professor of physiology at Michigan State University), 'Rethinking AIDS; The tragic cost of premature consensus' (1993). The overleaf to Root-Bernsteins book says;
"Since 1983 it has been considered an established fact that the presence of HIV is the sole and sufficient cause of the disease known as AIDS. A closely related assumption has also been that AIDS is something new and unprecedented in medical history. These assumptions underlie our whole approach to tracking and containing the spread of AIDS, treating the disease itself, and determining new avenues for medical research. But now, in a pathbreaking book, Robert Root-Bernstein shatters these assumptions and reopens fundamental questions concerning what we really know about AIDS.
Explaining in detail the working of the human autoimmune system and effectively deconstructing the conventional wisdom about AIDS, Root-Bernstein then presents alternative "multifactorial" models of AIDS, which view the disease as resulting from numerous synergistic insults to the immune system, including HIV, and autoimmune models, in which these insults initiate a civil war within the immune system itself. In this view, a person must already have some impaired immunity - whether from illicit and prescription drug use, promiscuity, anal exposure to semen, transfusion, malnutrition, other microbial infections - in order to contract HIV in the first place. Root-Bernstein thus refocuses attention on specific controllable factors that may determine, rather than increase, our risk of AIDS. He also offers hope to those with HIV that they may yet survive infection by eliminating exposure to these controllable factors."
Similarly, the field of homeopathy operates on this same relativistic principle of multifactorial interference, ... wherein an out-of-balance system must be perturbed in such a manner as to restore it to its whole-and-part harmony in a spheres- within- spheres 'outer-inner' codynamical sense. This cannot be achieved by direct 'CORRECTIVE CAUSAL ACTION' since it is the reciprocal, relational space of system co-dynamics, wherein the rootsource of the dissonance dwells, which must be treated, and it will only be through a wise choice of perturbational approaches which induce the needed relational transformation, which brings the system back into its natural codynamical equilibrium. In other words, the source of codynamical harmony of multifactorial systems 'lives' within the unbounded, self-referential space-time continuum aka 'field', aka 'aither'. The orchestrating field is itself 'set up' by the codynamics of the contained constituency, ... or, more appropriately, since the 'field' endures while the material constituency is in a continual transformation (upwelling and subduction), ... the codynamical equilibrium precipitates the material dynamics (see note [3] on the general theory of relativity which shows that the interacting relational features of the coevolving system of container-constituency; i.e. the 'causal agent' and the 'object' which it acts upon, must be seen as abstractions or 'thought-props in support of relativistic view of 'circular cause' which emanates from the unbounded space-time which lies between and which contains the abstracted notions of 'subject' and 'object'). That is, in visualizing the relativistic, self-referentiality of an ecology such as a rainforest, where we say 'the rainforest creates its own climate', ... it is more consistent with the space-over matter primacy of relativity, to say 'the rainforest climate precipitates its own ontological floral, faunal and geological landscape'
From the relativistic point of view where living systems function 'ecologically'; i.e. by virtue of co-dynamically nesting outer-inner equilbria, ... one does not want to eliminate those 'parts' or those 'behaviors of parts' which are deemed guilty by virtue of their role in 'channelling' the relational dissonance up to a surficial manifestation, ... any more than than one would want to eliminate the codynamics of horse-riding if one falls off one's horse, ... or eliminating the codynamics of sexual relations if dissonance-based hiatus develops, ... or eliminating one's evenings at the pub if one experiences strong dissonance and 'in-toxification' in the form of a hangover. The solution is not elimination but restoration of the co-dynamical equilibrium and one way to do this is by partaking of what is often termed 'the hair of the dog', ... to re-prime the co-dynamical pump by partaking of the same co-dynamic in a much more dilute form so that the system can 're-tune in' to the codynamic which 'went ballistic' (i.e. where dissonance resulted from the co-dynamical agents getting 'ahead of the beat' or going 'plus vite que le violon'), ... getting back on the horse and going for a gentle ride, a trot instead of a gallop, ... having a drink and allowing the body to regain its alcohol-handling 'sea-legs' once again, ... re-experiencing the sexual excitement in the codynamic of sensitive touching etc.
While the homeopathic approach can be questioned in terms how well the interference pattern representing the codynamical dissonance is interpreted and how effective the 'remedy' is in terms of inducing the needed system transformation for restoring the natural codynamics, ... one cannot question its basic premise of container- constituency- codynamics as an appropriate model for system behavior unless one wants to 'take on' the general theory of relativity and quantum theory as well.
On the other hand, the modern ontogenic theories of 'the way the world works' (relativity and quantum theory) lead to fundamental conflict relative to the euclidian 'ontologic' view in how we interpret the nature of system dissonance and system 'healing'. For example, 'Attention Deficit Disorder', can be seen, as can any dissonant system dynamic, in either the relativistic terms of 'outer-inner-codynamical balance' (environment-constituent-codynamical balance) or in the euclidian (newtonian) terms of 'material cause' and 'effect' (e.g. chemical imbalance). The administering of Ritalin for 'Attention Deficit Disorder' follows directly from the 'euclidian' view, seeking a 'material causal source and solution and ignoring the environment-constituent codynamics which relativity would identify as both the root-source of dissonance and the phenomenal aspect to be 'treated'. As Dr. Peter Breggin says (see www.breggin.com);
"
Ritalin "works" by producing malfunctions in the brain rather than by improving brain function. This is the only way it works.
Ritalin and amphetamine have almost identical adverse effects on the brain, mind and behavior, including the production of drug-induced behavioral disorders, psychosis, mania, drug abuse, and addiction."
"Our society has institutionalized drug abuse among our children. Worse yet, we abuse our children with drugs rather than making the effort to find better ways to meet their needs. In the long run, we are giving our children a very bad lesson--that drugs are the answer to emotional problems. We are encouraging a generation of youngsters to grow up relying on psychiatric drugs rather than on themselves and other human resources."
Our choice of geometry of 'problems and their elimination', which is being made everyday in our many spheres of activity, .... education, business management, government, regulation, ... the choice of euclidian space and material cause versus non-euclidian space and 'container-constituency-codynamics, ... corresponds to the perceptual choices associated with quantum duality in nature, .... the 'particulate view' versus the 'wave view'. As modern physics shows, this is not a peer-to-peer 'either/or' choice, for if one chooses the 'wave view' or 'container- constituency- codynamical view', this view includes the 'particulate view' or 'material- cause- in-its-own- right view' as the special case where we discard the relational interference information and ignore the en-echelon nesting of codynamics between 'system' and containing 'suprasystem'.
For example, this choice of geometrical view differentiates those interested in community-business dynamics, wiith (a) the non-euclidian relativistic view of sphere-within-sphere, outer-inner-codynamics precipitating local currency initiatives such as 'LETS', ... and (b) the euclidian view of clockworks- coordinated marching along together precipitating the Merger, Acquisition, Downsizing (MAD) trend in transnational business where co-dynamical equilibria are ignored and human resources are strip-mined on the basis of mechanical purification policies.
Our western 'dominator' civilization, by taking the euclidian assumption to excess, is moving into an advanced stage of toxification, wherein its constituents are being 'thrown from their horses', ... and how rough a landing we may experience will determine whether or not 'the hair of the dog' approach in restoring co-dynamical harmony and balance is even feasible.
Africa has fallen from its horse and as it moves towards renaissance and restoration, it's leaders Mandela and Mbeki have been looking to Africa's relativistic traditions, .... to the spirit of 'Ubuntu' to provide the guiding principles for the restoration. Ubuntu is decidedly of the relativistic space-time geometries, Ubuntu being, ... "an age-old African term for humanness - for caring and for sharing. Ubuntu as an 'ideal' means the opposite of being selfish and self-centered. It promotes co-operation between individuals, cultures and nations. Ubuntu thus empowers all to be valued: to reach their full potential in accord with all around them. ... Ubuntu puts implicit understanding in the primacy over knowledge, ... 'Tell me and I will forget, show me and I might not remember, involve me and I will understand'"
Ubuntu is essentially about ecologically nesting, sphere- within- sphere container- constituency- codynamical whole-and-part harmony and balance.
Mbeki's view of AIDS is not, therefore, of a 'problem to be eliminated', ... but instead, of some kind of container-constituent-codynamical dissonance and imbalance, brought on by western scientific thinking, ... such as the scientific thinking involved in global commerce which has cultivated vampire-like drug companies which circle their victims in the manner of vultures circling an injured prey.
That is, ... Mbeki accuses Western drug companies of enriching themselves from the 'AIDS epidemic' and compares them to warmongers "who propagate fear to increase their profits."
And the drug companies respond with accusations of ignorance and weak-will amongst African leaders as well as with politically divisive offers of price -cuts. "The real barriers to access to treatment are lack of education, medical infrastructure and political will," Cochran said. He pointed out that Glaxo Wellcome supplied anti-AIDS drugs at reduced prices to Uganda and Ivory Coast and offered anti-AIDS drugs at a 75 percent price reduction to South Africa for HIV-positive pregnant women - an offer which he said South Africa spurned."
Mbeki has chosen to address this out-of-balance codynamic by backing off from full-blown intercourse with the western euclidian way and reverting to hand-holding. From my vantage point, his 'hair of the dog' choice enjoys the support and validation of both indigenous wisdom and the most comprehensive of modern scientific theories.
* * *
[1] Mbeki's AZT Claims Set Off Debate, The Associated Press - Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1999
Daniel J. Wakin, Associated Press Writer (http://ww2.aegis.com/news/ap/1999/)
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- President Thabo Mbeki's claim that a widely used AIDS drug is dangerous has set off an uproar, producing bafflement and shock among physicians and advocates who say AZT is safe.
The drug is the mainstay of efforts around the world to prevent HIV-infected mothers from passing the AIDS virus to their babies during birth.
Mbeki said in Parliament last week that AZT is toxic and was being challenged by court cases in the United States, Britain and South Africa û a claim the manufacturer, Glaxo Wellcome PLC, has hotly denied.
The issue is critical in a nation with one of the world's worst AIDS problems, where 3.6 million people, or 8 percent of the population, are estimated to be HIV positive. The controversy threatens to set back efforts to fight the disease.
In his speech Thursday, Mbeki spoke of a "large volume of scientific evidence alleging that, among other things, the toxicity of this drug is such that it is in fact a danger to health."
Mbeki said that it would be "irresponsible" not to heed the "dire warnings" of researchers about the safety of AZT, which is one of the world's oldest and best-known AIDS drugs. Reputable scientists have issued no such warnings, and it was unclear what he was referring to.
On Tuesday, the government promised to investigate the safety of AZT. Mbeki said he has asked the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, to oversee the inquiry.
Tshabalala-Msimang told the South African Broadcasting Corp. that AZT would not be barred from the market but she was deciding how to investigate the matter "so that we really have concrete information in our hands."
The drug has been approved by regulators in South Africa and around the world, and is commonly used in combination with other drugs to control the AIDS virus or prevent infection among health care workers exposed to it. Many studies have shown that AZT cuts in half the risk that women will infect their babies during delivery.
AZT, also known as zidovudine, is "perfectly acceptable" in those three areas, said Dr. Joseph Perriens, head of the care and support division of the U.N. AIDS program in Geneva. It causes slight side effects like nausea or anemia, but, he noted, so do many medicines.
Worries about AZT's safety surfaced in the early 1990s but have long faded, Perriens said. French researchers reported in February that two babies who had received AZT in a study had died, but no link between the deaths and the drug was established.
Perriens suggested Mbeki "inform himself better about the toxicity of (the drug), which is not really as serious as he thinks, and he should probably recast the debate in terms of cost. It's not doing his people a service."
With an average of 1,500 South Africans infected with HIV each day, the government has come under increasing pressure to provide drugs like AZT to infected pregnant mothers and rape victims. The government has said before that it cannot afford to do so, but this is the first time in the public debate than an official has so forcefully said a health danger is the reason.
Mbeki's comments are "very distressing because it sets back the whole agenda once again" after previous controversies, such as a scandal-plagued anti-AIDS musical, which paralyzed the government AIDS program, said Dr. Saul Johnson, a pediatrician and researcher at Chris Hani-Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, where AZT has been studied as a way to prevent mother-child transmission.
"It raises the issue of where he gets advice," he said. A presidential spokeswoman was quoted over the weekend as saying Mbeki received his information from the Internet.
"I think if the president doesn't want to provide AZT, he should find an excuse based on fact," said Dr. Salim Abdool Karim, head of AIDS research at the Medical Research Council, which is similar to the U.S. National Institute of Health.
"It's the standard of care in many countries," he said.
When asked why Mbeki would make such a statement, he said: "I can only assume that he has been given this information and accepted it in good faith. I don't think the president would deliberately try to mislead us."
[2] S. Africa Lashes At Drug Companies, The Associated Press - Monday, March 20, 2000 Andrew Selsky, Associated Press Writer
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- President Thabo Mbeki's office on Monday bitterly accused Western drug companies of enriching themselves from the AIDS epidemic and compared them to warmongers "who propagate fear to increase their profits."
The blistering comments, carried in a newspaper column, come as Mbeki's administration finds itself on the defensive for its controversial policies, including the withholding of anti-AIDS drugs to infected pregnant women, which could help save thousands of newborns' lives. Mbeki also recently declared that the drug AZT, a mainstay in the battle against AIDS, was dangerous - remarks that baffled and shocked AIDS experts.
Monday's broadside made some experts wonder about the Mbeki administration's ability to deal with the worst calamity to hit sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 2 million people died from the virus in 1998 and 1.7 million more became infected in 1999.
In South Africa alone, 4 million people - 10 percent of the population - are believed to have HIV or AIDS. There is no known cure.
"It's unfortunate that we are going backward instead of dealing with the serious issues," said Dr. Ashraf Grimwood, who chairs the National AIDS Convention of South Africa.
The column in the influential Johannesburg newspaper Business Day also defended the government's decision to convene a panel to investigate whether HIV leads to AIDS and whether the virus is sexually transmitted - matters the world medical community has long taken for granted.
In the column, Mbeki's spokesman Parks Mankahlana wrote that the panel should try to unearth information about the virus - information he hinted was being kept secret.
"This international panel must ... attempt to unravel the 'mysteries' of the HIV/AIDS virus, including, and more especially, what the profit-takers cannot tell us," Mankahlana wrote.
The panel is separate from the World AIDS Conference, a biannual event which brings together the world's most respected AIDS experts. South Africa will play host to that conference in July in the port city of Durban.
South Africa has previously complained that pharmaceutical companies charge more for anti-AIDS drugs than the vast majority of Africans can afford. But Monday's column was the most vociferous attack.
"Like the marauders of the military industrial complex who propagate fear to increase profits, the profit-takers who are benefiting from the scourge of HIV/AIDS will disappear to the affluent beaches of the world to enjoy wealth accumulated from a humankind ravaged by a dreaded disease," Mankahlana wrote.
The piece singled out the shareholders of Glaxo Wellcome, which manufactures AZT, and said they are concerned about the values of stocks but not people's lives.
Glaxo Wellcome said it would respond in its own column to Business Day this week. And James Cochran, the British-based company's executive director for Africa, said recently that "blaming the pharmaceutical industry for failure to arrest the current AIDS epidemic in Africa is convenient but simplistic."
"The real barriers to access to treatment are lack of education, medical infrastructure and political will," Cochran said. He pointed out that Glaxo Wellcome supplied anti-AIDS drugs at reduced prices to Uganda and Ivory Coast and offered anti-AIDS drugs at a 75 percent price reduction to South Africa for HIV-positive pregnant women - an offer which he said South Africa spurned.
South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang last Thursday ruled out giving anti-retroviral drugs to infected pregnant women, saying the government could not afford them and that the safety of the drugs was not proven.
[3] Comment on space-matter symmetry, assymmetry and meta-symmetry excerpted from 'Instructor's Key to Physics & Curved Space 101 Entrance Exam' at http://www.goodshare.org/twinkle.htm which gives an evolutionary view (by Gerhard Grössing) of how science from Aristotle to the present has shaped our mode of perception, inquiry and response;
"Gerhard Grössing (Austrian Institute for Nonlinear Studies, ... a group of three independent researchers) gives an evolutionary view of the development of the general theory of relativity in this same context of material-independent percept as Einstein is speaking to, ... benefitting from our considerable experience since 1938 (when Einstein and Infeld published the above paragraph). He incorporates this evolutionary view in his paper 'Die Information der Physik: Subjektal und Objektal' as http://web.telekabel.at/ains/gg2.htm), and suggests, as Einstein also did, that there can be no path to general theory of relativity effects from models formulated in euclidian space terms. In fact, this same inference also follows from Schroedinger's earlier cited comments on the interpretation of 'transmitter-receiver reciprocity', in that there is no place in euclidian space for the 'observer to sit' if he does not sit on a material object; i.e. on a material 'subject' or 'object', since space is seen in the simple terms of material dynamics within a non-participating void in the euclidian space convention. Grössing puts this into perspective as follows;
"Mach and Einstein pointed out the assymmetry in Newton's physics: while space and time effected matter, ... the reverse was not true. The special theory of relativity succeeded in taking the first step towards integration of this reversal in the description of natural phenonemena: measurements for space and time are no longer absolute, but dependent upon the 'point of view' of the observer, and therefore on [dependent upon] a reference system bound to the presence of matter.
In the general theory of relativity, this [material] presence at last becomes the central theme. The logic of evolution (i.e.; symmetry - asymmetry - integration = meta-symmetry, and so on) also characterizes the development of our understanding of nature (i) subjective schema in Aristotelian physics and alchemy [the view of Protagorus]; (ii) asymmetry between space and time on the one hand, and matter on the other in Newtonian physics; (iii) Integration by means of RECIPROCAL influencing of space-time and matter in the general theory of relativity.
The way is opened, with the development of the causality concept in describing natural phenomena, which leads to the notion of integrative, circular co-dependency, not only in the general theory of relativity but also in the quantum theory; (i) subjective 'explanation' through the personification of nature (mother, spirits, god etc.); (ii) 'linear' objective description of nature (for example, observer-independent planetary orbits in Newtonian physics); (iii) circular, 'wholenesslike' causality (for example the connection between space-time and matter in the general theory of relativity)
Only with circular causality does an essential characteristic of quantum theory become understandable: now we can no longer (in the metaphorically extended sense of 'linear') describe an 'object', unless we put the hermeneutical circle between 'object' and 'observational instrument' in the center of our awareness (whereby the detached independence of these two components shall be understood merely as a thought-prop).
What is 'bottlenecking' us of the western philosophical outlook from pulling out of the dive into discord and getting back 'in the Tao' [the 'Zero' of wholeness], ... the way from which a harmonious future emerges, is our insistence on putting the manifest in a primacy over the mystery (i.e. putting our quantitative observation of kinetic energy into a primacy over our implicit observation of potential energy patterns.). While the eastern and indigenous philosophy opts for the 'simultaneous' rather than 'sequential' unity and plurality in its relativistic declaration; "there is no path to harmony, ... harmony is the path.", we in the west persist in our discounting of the 'ordering power' of potential energies. In other words, one has to 'live' this possibility space of co-resonance and coevolution, rather than developing strategic plans to 'get to it'. The linear euclidian evocation of 'history, plans and progress', which are fine and dandy if relegated to a supportive role, ... when put into the primacy, ...doom all chance of coming into a coresonant, coevolutionary (with the potential energies) 'transmitter-receiver-medium' mode (i.e. container-constituent-coevolution) mode."