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Biotech / Medical : Ionis Pharmaceuticals (IONS) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jackie who wrote (2345)	11/6/1998 11:01:00 AM
From: David Bogdanoff	Respond to of 4676

J: Thanks for the detailed information on Duesberg and his book. I heard him interviewed some time ago on the radio and must have repressed much of what I knew about him. It would be a kindness to say that he came across as full of fatuous pseudo-scientific rhetoric. I say this as one who fully appreciates the role of the gadfly in society and belong to the generation that coined the phrase "question authority". And I don't say that his ideas are invalid, just that he has little support in the scientific community at present. Again, that doesn't mean that his ideas will not ultimately prove correct, at least in part; we all know the case of Galileo(although to be accurate, his nay-sayers were not scientists). A point of clarification on my first memo; it does not assert that correlation establishes a cause and effect relationship. It carefully avoids this all too common error. However, I have observed that few scientists will pursue a line of research to establish a cause and effect relationship unless they at least see a correlation first. David

To: jackie who wrote (2345)	11/6/1998 11:46:00 AM
From: RCMac	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 4676

[off-topic] Jack: You quote Peter Duesberg: " . . . the HIV-AIDS hypothesis has failed to produce any public health benefits, no vaccine, no effective drug, no prevention, no cure, not a single life saved." But isn't this (several years old) quote now clearly wrong, wholly undercutting Duesberg's argument that something other than HIV causes AIDS? The multi-drug cocktails that have become standard treatments since protease inhibitors were developed about three years ago are surely effective drug treatments, have saved many lives, and have produced many public health benefits. Moreover, from my position as a nonscientist with some scientific literacy, I have been inferring that Duesberg's argument was pretty fully refuted by the fact that the protease inhibitors, the reverse transcriptase inhibitors, etc. were developed based on a detailed knowledge of the structure and properties of the HIV virus. If the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS is wrong, how can these things work so well? Is there an answer to this? While I share your concern with the way scientific orthodoxy sometimes stifles renegades ("premature genius"), particularly Dr. McCully's case, and greatly value the bigger-picture perspectives you generously bring to this and other SI threads, isn't Peter Duesberg in this case probably just wrong, his ideas justly rejected? BTW, on the stifling power of scientific orthodoxy you may be interested in Richard Rhodes' book Deadly Feasts, which explores the lively controversy whether mad cow disease, scrapie and their human analogues Creutzfeld-Jakob Disease (CJD), "new variant" CJD (NVCJD), etc. are caused by prions or by some as yet unidentified virus or other cause. In that case, the Nobel Prize was awarded a year ago to the prion side of the argument, putting a very heavy weight of orthodoxy against the (I think, fairly persuasive) viral argument. Particularly interesting is the new last chapter in the paperback edition, added since the Nobel Prize. -- Bob

To: jackie who wrote (2345)	11/7/1998 12:33:00 AM
From: Scott H. Davis	Respond to of 4676

Unfortunately, aspects of medicine fall pray to being driven by policy, rather than by analysis. Vaccination is such an area. I'm not challenging the benefits of these, but rather the lack of viable safty studies, administering live virus vaccines where not indicated (flu shots to health 20 year olds not in health care settings), subjecting toddlers to an increasing # of vaccinations, often in combinations in formulations that contain mercury or aluminum based not so much on need, but scheduling convenience (a 6 month checkup) - and child care mandates. Dr. Wakefield's article last Feb in Lancet, with findings duplicated At Georgtown of substantial GI track "trashing" following live virus MMR innoculatioons, leading to intestional permiability, leading to late onset autism will be a factor in the re-assessment of treatment by policy that will ultimately happen. Scott BTW I'm encouraged with ISIP finally participating in the biotech rally.