Say what? Somehow I doubt in this 'expert's' opinion. Do you think HIV is a hoax, or that it's NOT transmitted sexually?
[hr style="width: 100%; height: 2px;"]Accused denies existence of HIV
[cite class="byline"]Jeremy Roberts[/cite] [cite class="author"][/cite] [div class="pub-date"]October 26, 2006[/div] [h4]AN HIV-positive man convicted of endangering the lives of three girlfriends is attempting to turn conventional science on its head by denying the existence of the virus that leads to AIDS.[/h4][p class="encompass"] Andre Chad Parenzee was convicted in February of endangering the lives of three women and faces 15 years in prison. One of the women now has HIV. [/p]This week, he enlisted the expert evidence of two self-styled researchers - both members of the so-called Perth Group - who have used the witness stand to attack the "HIV myth". [/p] In what is believed to be an international legal and medical first, South Australian Supreme Court judge John Sulan has set aside two weeks effectively to put HIV on trial. [/p] Prosecutors have prepared several expert witnesses to shore up more than two decades of global research - which underpins public health and safe sex campaigns - that HIV causes AIDS and is contracted through unprotected sex. [/p] Prosecutors objected in this week's leave-to-appeal hearing to Parenzee's witnesses' status as "experts" but Justice Sulan said he would address the objection after their evidence was heard. [/p] The court heard argument from Parenzee's counsel, Kevin Borick, who is working pro bono, that his client's conviction cannot stand if HIV is based on flimsy science. [/p] His expert witnesses received no money for their appearance this week, but their airfares from Perth were paid for by Parenzee's mother. [/p] Perth-based medical physicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, who has a Bachelor of Science and works as a medical engineer at Royal Perth Hospital, told the court that HIV was mistakenly identified by a French scientific team in 1983, which was headed by Luc Montagnier. [/p] In a 50-page Powerpoint presentation, Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos said AIDS had nothing to do with HIV, which - if it existed at all - was not a retrovirus and not transmitted between people by sexual intercourse. [/p] Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos argued that HIV had never been isolated, and was only identified in 1983 by a process called "reverse transcription", which is said to create retroviruses. [/p] She said the reverse transcription observed by Dr Montagnier in 1983, the so-called "discovery of HIV", was not specific to HIV. [/p] She said the main risk factors for getting AIDS remained the passive role in anal intercourse, and intravenous drug use. [/p] Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos claimed AIDS was caused by prolonged exposure to semen, which oxidised cells, degrading them and led to numerous other serious illnesses - the AIDS-related illnesses - which end in death. [/p] Secondly, she cited numerous scientific papers that concluded that vaginal sex did not transmit HIV. [/p] Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos cited a 1997 published paper by University of California researcher Nancy Padian that calculated the risk of a male transmitting HIV to a female at 0.0009 per cent, for each act of vaginal intercourse. [/p] According to the Padian paper, a man would have to have sex with his wife three times a week for 27.4 years to expose her to a 95 per cent risk of passing on HIV. [/p] Ms Papadopulos-Eleopulos's colleague at the Perth Group, Val Turner, testified that the testing of HIV was "indirect" - it measured the presence of proteins and antibodies in blood assumed to be triggered by HIV. [/p] Mr Turner said there was no test to directly detect HIV.[/p][a href="vny!://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20646408-2702,00.html"]vny!://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20646408-2702,00.html[/a]
