A Blast From The Past: When Perth Group Engaged An HIV Researcher About Montagnier's Most Startling Interview: "I Repeat, We Did Not Purify."

But a "Roman Effort" was made

Fascinating if mind-numbing (can it be both?) correspondence from 1999 between clashing positions: “HIV has not been proven to exist,” (Perth Group) and “You’re obsessed with purification,” Robin Weiss.

1999 was twenty four years ago.

But I publish this for the benefit of those who are new to the Escher-ian quicksand of the Virus Existence Fight.

If you do a search on “HIV” this is the number you get on Google:

”About 1,780,000,000 results” (Can somebody say what this number is? How would you say it?)

Here’s a picture. The only thing to understand about HIV and AIDS is that it all leads nowhere. All the Escher staircases are made of gold coin for the professional parasite class called “AIDS researchers.” It is designed to be trans-calculational, to fail every prediction and threat of death, and to insult true biology to its core.

Liam Scheff called it a “religion of death.” There was no way to defeat its illogical premises, as it was designed never to have to explain any of its wild contradictions. If you doubt HIV’s deadly powers, you’re a danger to society. Those who have enriched themselves in its infinite “mysteries,” are to my mind virus occultists. If you cross them, they will hurt you badly. They do this in the name of “saving lives.” HIV must not be questioned. Sorry, denied.

By their creepy graphics you will know them

Here’s an outtake of said correspondence, with emphasis added by me, in places where the words are either scientifically baffling or even darkly and subtly comical:

Dear Professor Weiss, Wrangham,

In your commentary in Nature New and Views, "From Pan to pandemic", you and your colleague Dr. Wrangham state, "The origin of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), the retrovirus that is the main cause of AIDS, has been a puzzle ever since it was discovered by Barr‚-Sinoussi and her colleagues in 1983".

In an interview published in late 1998 which Montagnier gave to the French journalist Djamel Tahi, Montagnier was asked why he and his colleagues did not publish electron micrographs proving that the 1.16g/ml band (the "purified virus")contained isolated HIV particles. Montagnier answered: No such proof was published, because, even after "Roman effort", at the density of 1.16g/ml they could see no particles with "morphology typical of retroviruses". He gave similar answers to repeated questions, including "I repeat, we did not purify", that is, isolate HIV.

In view of these data how can one claim that "Barr‚-Sinoussi and her colleagues in 1983" discovered a retrovirus?

Yours sincerely,

VF Turner

PS The text of the Montagnier/Tahi interview is at http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/dtinterviewlm.htm

---

Professor Wrangham emailed me the next day:

Thanks for this interesting question. Unfortunately I am the wrong person to ask. Robin Weiss and I shared authorship of the News and Views article, but he alone was the virology expert. If you would like to ask him directly, his email is robinw@icr.ac.uk [Wrangham is an anthropologist].

Yours,

Richard Wrangham

---

Professor Weiss was in the middle of a move from Chester Beaty Laboratories to his new position at University College London. His secretary replied that Weiss was away. On March 3rd Weiss replied:

Dear Dr Turner,

I can't speak for Montagnier. But if you look up the Barre-Sinoussi paper in Science in May 1983, on which he is a co-author, electron micrographs of virions are there. However, these are of HIV budding from cells in thin section, not from sucrose gradients. So he is right to say it was not purified virus. When you have evidence of infection in culture, purification is not particularly important.

Robin A Weiss

My reply was:

Dear Professor Weiss,

Thank you for taking the time to answer my email re the Montagnier interview. So not as to predjudice your reply I read it out to our weekly clinical meeting. My colleagues, who are all emergency physicians practising in a large, busy, teaching hospital, were astonished. We wonder if it is some kind of a joke?? One such colleague has been needlestuck himself, has taken AZT for six weeks and 18 months later developed cancer.

I am not asking you to "speak for Montagnier". I am asking you to substantiate your claim, published in Nature, that B-S and her colleagues discovered a retrovirus, HIV.

You stated: "....he is right to say it was not purified virus". If so:

1. Why, in 1986, did you and your colleagues write: "A so-called AIDS virus isolate was first reported in 1983 by Montagnier and his colleagues in France who named the material "Lymphadenopathy Associated Virus One"". Did or did not Montagnier isolate, purify a retrovirus?

2. If he did not why did you say that he had? If you were aware that he did not do this, and this was the reason for you using the word "material" to describe his finding, why did you not, as a well known and respected retrovirologist, draw the attention of the rest of the scientific community to it, especially if one considers the extremely important consequences?

3. In 1983, when B-S et al published their paper entitled, "Isolation of a T-lymphotrophic retrovirus from a patient at risk for acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)", and called the 1.16g/ml band "pure labelled virus", did they mislead the scientific community?

4. Since it is generally accepted, and makes common sense, that the existence of a new retrovirus can be proven only by isolating it (both B-S and Gallo claimed to have proven the existence of HIV by isolating it) what is the scientific basis for your claims that B-S et al discovered a new retrovirus?

5. You state: "When you have evidence of infection in culture, purification is not particularly important". These researchers did not know that their cultures were infected. This is what they were attempting to establish.

Surely you don't claim that electron micrographs of some budding forms on the cell surface or some cell-free particles in the culture supernatant which do not even have all the morphological characteristics of retroviruses, are proof of infection? Are you further arguing that, without isolation, that is, purification, a scientist can obtain "HIV" proteins and RNA?

6. In your view is it scientifically valid to say on the one hand, as Montagnier did, that the 1.16g/ml "material" did not have even particles with the "morphology typical of retroviruses, while on the other hand, asserting that the proteins and RNA where those of a retrovirus, HIV?

7. What possible justification can there be for (a) using these proteins as antigen in an antibody test to prove infection of millions of people by a deadly virus? (b) for using this RNA to prove not only infection but also to quantify the viral load?

As a clinician working in an Emergency Department, seeing patients with needlestick injuries for example, is almost a daily occurence. These patients' whole lives become focused around antibody tests which you and your many colleagues claim prove infection with a deadly virus. Without a satisfactory scientific answer to the questions arising from the Montagnier interview I find myself deeply troubled by ordering such tests let alone explaining to patients their meaning. As a scientist whose pronouncements directly affect the lives of so many people you are both ethically and morally obliged to resolve this issue. Especially on account of those who carry laboratory research into the world of patients and their relatives.

Yours sincerely,

VF Turner

PS The text of the Montagnier/Tahi interview is at http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/dtinterviewlm.htm

---

Following this I surmise Professor Weiss read the Montagnier interview. In the meantime, believing that Weiss would not reply (mistakenly and I must give Professor Weiss full credit for being the only HIV protagonist who has taken the time to debate us), I emailed Rex Ranieri, a documentarian from TV Channel Nine in Australia. He emailed Weiss on 29th March:

Dear Professor,

I have been observing the HIV/AIDS debate with some interest and I have recently been contacted by Val Turner. He have sent me some questions which he has put to you recently together with the subsequent email discussion .

It appears to me that the argument for the existence of HIV is not sufficiently rigorous.

Is there a bigger story developing here?

I look forward to your reply

Kind regards,

Rex

Rex Ranieri
Channel 9
Perth, Western Australia
rranieri@perthtv9.net.au
+61 8 9449 9999
Fax +61 8 9449 9905
Mobile 0411 258344

Professor Weiss replied immediately:

If HIV does not exist, then neither did smallpox virus (variola), nor does polio virus, tobacco mosaic virus in plants, etc. etc. If you wish to deny the existence of viruses, and virus diseases, go ahead, but leave scientists like me out of the picture.

Robin A Weiss

---

To which Rex Ranieri replied:

Professor,

My understanding is that Dr. Turner and his colleagues have questioned not whether a number of other viruses exist. Only HIV. As far as I am aware, a scientist does not prove that a particular virus exists by pointing to the existence of others.

I am well versed with some of the argument so far (for a lay person) so naturally your response contributes little to my questions.

I appreciate your desire to be left "out of picture" however as you are a world renowned researcher who has spent some time on the question, it is difficult for me to accept that you can bow out of the discussion.

Naturally, It is your perogative not to respond, however I think that this would ultimately be damaging to both sides of the argument. We have seen many examples of media debacle which can result from lack of discussion.

I realise that your time is valuable and I urge you to respond to my questions. Please accept that my intentions are to arrive at the truth, whatever that may turn out to be.

Kind regards,

Rex