Other things being equal . . . .
“Hundreds of private e-mail messages and documents hacked from a computer server at a British university are causing a stir among global warming skeptics, who say they show that climate scientists conspired to overstate the case for a human influence on climate change” (New York Times, 20 November 2009; “Hacked e-mail is new fodder for climate dispute”, by Andrew C. Revkin). Mutatis mutandis, the same story could be written about HIV/AIDS: “The e-mail messages, attributed to prominent American and British climate HIV/AID

RA2009 PowerPoint presentations posted
Many of the talks presented at the conference are now available as PowerPoints at the conference website.

The Family of Rethinking AIDS
RA2009, the conference held by Rethinking AIDS (RA) in Oakland, 6-8 November, was an extraordinary success in every possible way. It exceeded wildly any reasonable expectations. That’s not just my opinion. The RA Board meeting on Sunday evening, the later get-together for speakers at the Duesberg’s, various “au revoir”s on Sunday, all assured me that my own feelings were fully shared by many others. In the last few days, e-mails and Facebook threads and the like have further underscored how many of us remain incredulous over the blessing of having participated in this unforgettable bit of human history. RA2009 was a success not just from a scientific or intellec

Circumcision and condom idiocies
When children are taught to use calculators, the importance is well recognized of teaching them to THINK about what the result should be, by doing a rough mental or manual calculation, so that they don’t accept a silly order of magnitude through mistaking an exponential or use a stupid number of decimal places as “significant figures”. So too, people who use statistical analyses of possible correlations should THINK about the implied meaning of suspected associations. That could hardly have been the case with those who wrote “The protective effect of MC [male circumcision] on HIV infe

Drug peddlers’ ads ignore FDA
Advertising of prescription drugs direct to consumers is permitted, in the developed world, only in the United States and New Zealand (Marcia Angell, The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It, Random House, 2004, p. 125). Anyone who watches TV or reads magazines knows how attractive these ads can make their medications seem: radiantly satisfied users are shown, and the “side” effects are hidden in the finest print in magazine ads while on TV or radio they are described in cheery, lighthearted tones and words intended to make them seem ignorable, mild inconveniences at worst. My favorite illustration of that is in the ads for s