Annual Report: 2006

The Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society was formed in February, 1999.

Communication

The society continues to maintain a phone number with voice mail (+1-403-220-0129), a post office box (Box 61037, Kensington Postal Outlet, Calgary, Alberta, T2N 4S6, Canada), a website (aras.ab.ca) and email (aras@aras.ab.ca).

We maintain informal links with AIDS rethinking organizations around the world, notably HEAL and Alive & Well in Los Angeles. We have continued to add links to sites that question the HIV/AIDS dogma. Our home page was significantly revised this year to accommodate the growing number of important links to other sites, an increasing amount of news.

David Crowe, President of the society, continues to write on HIV/AIDS and other health issues. He gave talks this year to a Peace conference at the University of Calgary and a conference on HIV and Breastfeeding at York University in Toronto.

Traffic continues to increase on our website. We appear to be getting about 12000–17000 hits per month, although these are only estimates due to the loss of some statistics by Telus that reduced statistics in several moths and attacks by pornographers that artificially elevated some of our recent month’s counts. In December, 2006 (for which the statistics appear to be reasonably accurate) there were visitors from about 90 different countries. The top 10 were the US, Canada, Australia, Greece, Mexico, Netherlands, Germany, UK, Brazil and Italy.

The most popular pages are our compilations of scientific quotes and our new lists of dissidents and general AIDS quotes. These lists were compiled by Marcel Girodian, with assistance from others.

Also popular are articles that we have hosted. The ten most popular search strings that landed people at our site in December, 2006 were “haart” [Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy], “aids quotes”, “david crowe”, “hiv/aids quotes”, “haart therapy”, “azt”, “aras aids”, “quotes about aids”, “reappraising aids” and “alberta reappraising aids society”.

We continued to mail out books (especially “What if Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?”), copies of articles and other papers upon request. Requests appear to be declining as web access increases. There are few people now who do not have web access, even if it is only through a local library or internet cafe.

S.A.R.A.H. Awards

Membership

We have 206 members, including 156 with active email addresses (a good indicator of continued interest in the society). We have continued our policy of free memberships. 13% are from Alberta, 31% from the rest of Canada and the remaining 56% from other countries.

Financial

The treasurer of the society is Kathleen DeWitt Newell. At the end of this fiscal year (January 31^st 2007), the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society bank account held CDN$1305.86. There was also about $200 in PayPal credits. Some of this money was directed for the Andre Parenzee court case in Australia. The major income was from various donations from individuals and corporations. The major expenses were the Post Office Box (about $75/year), telephone (about $50/month) and website, email and domain name maintenance fees (www.aras.ab.ca), about $350 per year. More details are available in our financial report.

We have started to accept donations via PayPal.

Education

One of our most important roles has been in education, the provision of information to allow people to make up their own minds.

A list of referenced quotations on AZT, the first and perhaps still the most commonly prescribed AIDS drug, describes the awesome toxicity and questionable effectiveness of this ‘therapy’ is available online (www.aras.ab/azt.html). A similar file on HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy) describes concerns about the many drugs that have more recently been used in various combinations (www.aras.ab/haart.html). A third file documents problems with HIV tests, and the use of ‘surrogate markers’, mainly CD4 cell counts and viral load, as a surrogate for actually monitoring health (www.aras.ab/test.html). Other pages provide information the connection between drug abuse and AIDS (www.aras.ab/drug.html) and information about the supposed methods of transmission of HIV (www.aras.ab/transmission.html). These enormous files of quotes are regularly updated.

A recent important addition has been a list of dissidents, currently close to 2,500 names. These are people with some academic credentials who have questioned some or all of the HIV=AIDS=Death dogma. This helps answer the question of whether it is just a few crackpots who ask questions like this.

Similarly, a list of public statements by scientists, doctors and others, sheds new light on the belief that few people are questioning, or that they are not asking intelligent questions.

Throughout the year we continue to receive emails from people, some quite desparate and paralyzed with fear. We can only offer them encouragement to question their death sentence, and information that might counter what their doctors are telling them.

Advocacy

We continue to give advice and assistance to people who are in trouble because of their HIV status. For obvious reasons we cannot talk openly about these cases. Our advice continues to be for people in this situation to pretend to be compliant with doctor’s orders, while following messages from their mind, heart and body in private. Protecting yourself and your family is more important than overturning ‘AIDS Inc.’.

We became very involved in support for a court case in Australia which is representative of the situation facing many HIV-positive people, criminal charges for having consensual sex. This case in Adelaide, South Australia, is unique because the defence is based on the contention that HIV has never been proven to exist, that HIV tests are not accurate, and that HIV has not been proven to be sexually transmitted.

Volunteering

If you are concerned about the effects of the prevalent dogma that HIV causes AIDS, there are ways that you could help out. While financial donations are always welcome, we welcome your time even more. Some of the roles that you could perform are:

• Corresponding Secretary: Monitoring and following up on correspondence. Not surprisingly, we rarely get prompt responses to our (very polite) letters. Someone to follow up until a response is obtained would be very valuable. Even when a response is obtained, they are often evasive, and persistence is required to get any information. This job could also include providing copies of books at no cost, or at reduced cost, as well as our publications.
• Peer Support: Receiving emails from our website, and providing information or non-medical support.
• Public Relations Campaigns: Through advertising or demonstrations, we can raise the profile of this important issue.
• Arranging meetings: Arranging for meetings of HIV-positive people who want to question their current advice, or perhaps arranging for speakers, videos or other forms of information exchange.
• Website Manager: Ensuring that our website is accessible through all the major search engines and enhancing the experience of our visitors.
• Research: We could use assistance with the ongoing task of obtaining copies of important HIV/AIDS papers. This can involve correspondence with the authors or trips to the medical library.
• Fundraising.
• Others: There are many things that we are not doing. Write your own volunteer job description! We would be glad to have you on board.

© Copyright Wednesday, June 27, 2007: Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society

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