'A lie endlessly repeated often takes on the force of truth. The lie that AIDS is invariably fatal has become part of the mythology that surrounds AIDS.''

AIDS is multi factorial.  It is brought on by several simultaneous strains on the immune system for example, drugs, pharmaceutical and recreational, sexually transmitted diseases, multiple viral infections.'

Sunday Times. London.

'The health crisis in the gay community did not begin with the onset of AIDS in 1981; it was preceded by many years of psychological disturbance and chronic depression, reactions to a homophobia that was endemic and corrosive. In the seventies, the already high instance of alcoholism and venereal disease among gay men was compounded by epidemics of drug abuse, hepatitis and intestinal parasites. By the first notices of what would come to be called AIDS, the immune systems of most gay men living the lifestyle that was promoted to them had already been severely compromised.'

'AIDS and its Seroconverts'

'I don't think there is a concerted effort on the part of most people involved in AIDS to keep the facts from being aired. But I do think a few leaders are reluctant to admit that many mistakes have been made. Those working under and looking up to the AIDS leaders don't have much reason or incentive to question the status quo and there is not widespread awareness of alternative AIDS information. Also, there are few fiscal rewards for resolving the problems associated with AIDS through means other than pharmaceutical. Unfortunately, AIDS has become big business, and keeping the business in operation requires a constant influx of new funding.  Once you have a business in place, it's difficult to diversify, change direction or downsize'

'That the drug companies work to hold the HIV = AIDS hypothesis in place is understandable given that they are businesses, not benevolent entities, and profit tremendously from anti-HIV drugs used in the "war" against AIDS even when they lower prices or "give away" their products.'

As AIDS research has replaced the hope for a cure with the goal of creating more powerful anti HIV treatments, AIDS organisations have directed their efforts to promoting and supplying drugs while public health officials push for widespread testing'

Christine Maggiore: Founder, Alive And Well AIDS Alternatives

'Money changes everything, and the fight against AIDS is no exception. One of the central issues surrounding the fight against AIDS has always been if, how, or to what degree the pharmaceutical industry is pulling the strings of the medical community, AIDS organizations, and even the medical journals that depend on its advertising.'

'When I started writing about AIDS seven years ago, it was a medical, or at least health related condition. Today it is a multinational corporation complete with its own belief system, figure-heads, logos, and even facial expressions -- like a Walt Disney that markets pious morbidity instead of cheer. There are some 16 000 AIDS organisations in the US alone.'

'Would it be overly cynical to propose that we have on our hands an industry that is devoted not so much to the fulfilment of its goal - which would lead to its dissolution - as to its own self-perpetuation' 

'The most insidious characteristic of any righteous  movement is that it maintains its power by employing the twin tactics of terror and guilt. Terror of the "great threat" must first be instilled, upheld by the societal guilt that comes with questioning the validity of the threat. To question the validity of the threat -- in this case to discuss actual AIDS figures rather than hysterical projections -- becomes equated with badness, wrongness, grave irresponsibility, moral collapse -- and in this case, with homophobia, racism, right-wing fanaticism, and ultimately, that catch-all phrase: murder.'

''It is this magnetic field of political correctness and reflexive morality surrounding AIDS that has kept the real science from being conducted, the real articles from being written, the real questions from being asked.  Twenty years and $22 billion have been wasted. Countless thousands have been poisoned, to varying degrees, by AZT, ddI, ddC and other toxic and ineffective AIDS medications. Countless millions worldwide have been terrorised by this vague, ever-expanding, multi-dimensional death sentence called HIV, and those who have tested positive have had to struggle against a merciless tide of cultural messages telling them they're going to die.'

'When I say ''AIDS'' you think of red ribbons and marches and quilts and candles and all kinds of benevolence. All of that stuff is probably well intentioned enough. But the real force driving the AIDS super-structure, what pulses just beneath the patina of do-goodism -- is an industry of awesome, relentless, amoral power -- the pharmaceutical industry'

''I have attended, as a reporter, eight International AIDS Conferences -- in Washington, D.C., Montreal, San Francisco, Stockholm, Florence, Berlin, Vancouver, and this year, Geneva. They are uniformly awful, a total waste of a journalist's time. Mostly I go just to fortify my belief that AIDS -- the entire industry and social machinery of it -- is at its root a totalitarian system. By that, I mean that there is a central ideology that seeks to enforce its domination by methodically obstructing any ideas that run counter to it.'

'In the age of AIDS drug cocktails,  tragedies are seen as an inevitable "side effect" of a drug regimen so punishing that an entire surveillance system has been put in place to ensure that people stick to it. There are computer chips embedded in bottle caps that record the date and time of each opening. There are beepers, support groups, buddy systems and observation centers where patients take the drugs while being watched; they call it "treatment compliance," and it has largely replaced Safe Sex as the core social imperative of the AIDS industry. The goal is to get as many HIV-positive people on the drugs as possible, whether they are sick or healthy, and to keep them on them, through debilitating ill effects, which are dismissed as a small price to pay for the benefit of lowering the amount of virus in the blood'

Celia Farber: AIDS journalist

'The common thread that runs through my AIDS activism is that hopelessness kills. That is why challenging the myth that everyone dies from AIDS has become an obsession. We need to admit hope into the AIDS dialogue.'

'If I believed everything I was told about AIDS I'd be dead by now. If I didn't arm myself with information- facts, statistics and diverse views-I would be unable to defend myself against the madness and gibberish that daily assaults those of us with AIDS.'

  'AIDS activists and government representatives have been strangely united in their uncritical acceptance of the lie that HIV=AIDS=DEATH. Representatives of the AIDS industry receive short term political gains from the promotion of this fatalism, regardless of the impact for the rest of us.'

'Will we ever be able to measure the damage done by the media's refusal to acknowledge long term survival. How many people with HIV and AIDS have obediently fulfilled the doom and gloom prophecy?'

'Survivors express a generally cautious attitude about experimental drugs. The common wisdom is that as long as one is stable, the risks of experimental drugs often outweighs the potential benefits'

Michael Callen: AIDS activist