Talk:Robert Root-Bernstein

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Untitled[edit]

Is there a fuller quote - "when I check the studies...". The way it is presented I am not sure if he is talking about pro or con studies. It sounds like he doesn't agree with the deniers intrepretation of the studies but he isn't able to find the studies himself to critique. Is he accusing the deniers of hiding or fabricating the studies? The qoute, both here and in the cited article, is not clear.159.105.80.141 (talk) 19:38, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It seems pretty clear, particularly in the cited source, that he is suggesting that AIDS denialists misuse or fabricate medical literature. If you're skeptical of his "conversion", you may want to see his recent publications. In PMID 15862587, he writes "It is well-known that HIV-1 infection results in a gradual decline of the CD4+ T-lymphocytes." In 2006, he coauthored a review of therapeutic AIDS vaccines (PMID 16787245) - needless to say, these vaccines are directed at HIV. Without being able to read his mind, it would seem that he is proceeding from the assumption that HIV is a necessary cause of AIDS. MastCell ^Talk 20:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Reading the above citations, however, leads to a very different conclusion - namely his - ie that vaccinating for HIV doesn't seem to have any impact on AIDS ( therefore his willingness to review studies does not mean he believes in the whole project. (PS - is there a problem with the "Save Page" function in wiki, I seem to be having trouble?159.105.80.141 (talk) 12:30, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No. Given your long-standing abuse of talk pages, comments which seek to use talk pages as general discussion forums rather than for specific improvements of the article in question are being removed. His conclusion is that current vaccination strategies for HIV are ineffective; he reviews the reasons why that might be, and suggests new approaches to vaccinating against HIV. Inherent in all of this is the belief that HIV is a necessary factor in the development of AIDS, and that vaccination against it is an appropriate, if elusive, goal. MastCell ^Talk 19:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the citation says that he states that the vaccination is effective on HIVS but that killing HIV seems to not be effective on AIDS. Maybe I am misreading his statement but I hope everyone who reads this article will check the citations for themselves - I think the article says one thing and the citation says something quite different. 159.105.80.141 (talk) 12:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That's why the footnotes are there. For what it's worth, you are incorrectly reading Root-Bernstein's review article, which states in the first sentence of its abstract: "Therapeutic HIV vaccines represent promising strategy as an adjunct or alternative to current antiretroviral treatment options for HIV." However, since it's not in any case cited in our Wikipedia article, it's moot at this point. MastCell ^Talk 18:30, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"Unfortunately, the results have consistently shown that while HIV-specific immune responses were evident as a result of vaccination, the clinical improvement has been seldom observed. The instances of the apparent clinical benefit were invariably associated with unconventional vaccines that acted in accord with the principles of alloimmunization and/or autologous vaccination." - this is the next sentence in the footnoted article - It would be nice if scientists put a user friendly summary. This sentence would be good in the article - as a fuller understanding of his wavering support. I don't believe that quoting his belief that vaccines that create immune responsives have seldom observed clinical improvement would be abusive in a talk page or article. 159.105.80.141 (talk) 15:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The fact that current vaccine techniques are ineffective against HIV is in absolutely no way, shape, or form suggestive that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Certainly the article in question makes no such ridiculous claim. We've been unable to come up with successful vaccines against malaria or hepatitis C thus far, for example, yet no one in their right mind would claim that as evidence that Plasmodium or hep C virus are harmless. The import of his paper, here, is that it makes clear that he now signs off on the idea that HIV is necessary for the development of AIDS. It is unclear to me whether that should appear in article-space or whether it constitutes original synthesis, but it is what it is and there's no real way to spin it. MastCell ^Talk 19:36, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If we came up with a vaccination against the "germ", say hep C "germ", and it showed that it worked against the hepC "germ" but it didn't affect hepC, we would then reconsider if the hepC "germ" was really the hepC "germ". Ditto the above - I believe he is saying the vaccine works on HIV but the AIDS is unaffected. Voila - from hence comes his cofactor gibberish. 159.105.80.141 (talk) 21:06, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As it turns out, we have developed vaccines against Hep C which generate an immune response, but fail to clear the virus. Does this mean you're a Hep C denialist as well? Actually, strike that. Let's let this go - we're just arguing, and this is not the place. MastCell ^Talk 23:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

What is/was R-B's position on AIDS denialism?[edit]

Having read some of R-B's work, it's not obvious to me that he's ever explicitly denied a role for HIV in AIDS, even in his 1993 book. There are articles (e.g. Michael Fumento) and internet claims that he finds HIV is "neither necessary nor sufficient" for AIDS, but I don't get that from his own writings. No one is going to argue with the idea that patients who are already sick might progress more quickly to AIDS, which is largely what Root-Bernstein claims. It seems that Root-Bernstein and AIDS denialists alike have tried to portray his ideas as iconoclastic when they are actually out of the mainstream only by virtue of the bold, some might say confrontational, way they're stated. Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 18:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

LMAO. It's been over ten years since this comment was left, and apparently nobody has managed to find any example of R-B actually "denying AIDS", yet he's still branded an AIDS denialist. 49.230.242.191 (talk) 06:34, 8 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Root-Bernstein quote[edit]

The denialists make claims that are clearly inconsistent with existing studies. When I check the existing studies, I don’t agree with the interpretation of the data, or, worse, I can’t find the studies [at all].

The above statement in the article is secondarily-sourced to POZ, but that article itself, while repeating the quote, gives no earlier source nor date for it, and no source or date is available through Google that I can find. Having read R-B's book, I find it difficult to believe that the quote's full context -- if a full context even exists -- would support what the out-of-context quote implies: that R-B is no longer a dissident. I did a search of R-B's book (through Google books) for the phrase "denial" and came up with one usage, on page 313, regarding Magic Johnson's "implied denial" that he never engaged in homosexual activity or used intravenous drugs. Searches for "denialist[s]" and "dissident[s]" come up zero and those two words do not appear in the book's index.

R-B is himself surely a "denialist", if by that term we mean someone who denies that HIV is the sole sufficient and necessary cause of AIDS. That happens to be the entire point of his book, so I'm puzzled (to be polite about it) by KeepCalmandCarryOn's comment [above] that "There are articles (e.g. Michael Fumento) and internet claims that [Root-Bernstein] finds HIV is 'neither necessary nor sufficient' for AIDS, but I don't get that from his own writings." I suggest that KCCO give the book another look, for that was indeed R-B's position and I am unaware that he has publicly retracted or changed it since. In short, the quote given in the article, if not a literary urban legend, is shorn of its context and R-B did not mean to imply or express a change of view on his part. If the quote were true, it would have made headline news in the world of HIV/AIDS and the fact that R-B has not contested it merely signals his determination to put the entire HIV/AIDS catastrophe behind him. I think that determination will prove unfortunate for his own future reputation, but his book -- which contains plenty of referenced studies -- is fortunately still being sold on Amazon.

NurseGotcha (talk) 18:58, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]