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A New Approach to AIDS: Upstaging HIV

From the archives of The Memory Hole

HIV=AIDS Controversy: Upstaging HIV

This is the byline provided with the following article from the 12 January 1997 Sunday Times: “AIDS educator Kriben Pillay tells Rowan Philip why he believes HIV is not the villain behind the AIDS epidemic. A drama lecturer at the University of Durban-Westville, Kriben�s views are based on personal opinions, rather than conclusive scientific study.”


A New Approach to AIDS

Kriben Pillay is more a philosopher than a scientist, but — as a drama lecturer at the University of Durban-Westville — it would be fair to call him an expert on farce.

And he believes he has found a farce of truly theatrical proportions in the way modern medical science has gone about finding a cure for AIDS, as well as other immune dysfunction diseases.

An AIDS educator since 1992, Kriben says he only began his own education on the subject before he lost his wife Shamala to the auto-immune disease lupus in 1995.

“We have what I sense to be this century’s major scientific debacle,” says the 40-year-old.

“We are so fixated with HIV as the enemy that we have lost sight of the processes at work which might offer a genuine solution to the AIDS problem.”

All too aware of the awesome credibility enjoyed by the “AZT community”, Kriben doesn’t expect people in KwaZulu-Natal to accept his beliefs overnight — nor does he blame the researchers who he claims are “on the wrong track”.

Instead he has joined the growing body of scientists — led by leading molecular biologist Dr Peter Duesberg — who maintain that hysteria and a fallacious approach have blinded the world to the true cause of AIDS.

“There is simply no proof that HIV causes AIDS — at most, it seems to play only an opportunistic role,” he says. “The only thing scientists have to call HIV are protein and gene strands — they haven’t even isolated a virus at all. It’s like the squatters who are blamed for a building’s decay after thieves have already ransacked it.

“The erosion of the competency of our immune systems has much more to do with it, through multifactorial causes like toxins, stress and poor nutrition.”

The dissident AIDS lobby contends that the $22 billion “holy war” waged unsuccessfully against the retrovirus was mistaken from the beginning, and points to the fact that medical science has failed to cure any pathogenic disease with its antibiotic approach.

“Medicine, has been hugely successful with illnesses which tolerate cause and effect treatments, but is thrown into a state of confusion when the illness is systemic,” he says.

“I know of one very healthy HIV-positive person who has refused all drug therapies. He tells me all he did was fire his doctor — that was six years ago. Significantly though, he lives a healthy life style including exercise and good. diet which boosts his immune system”.

Kriben lives in Westville North with his three-year-old daughter Siddharthiya, who appears to have beaten the odds, he says, about contracting lupus.

The amiable academic says he has come to terms with Shamala’s death, despite a conviction that she could have recovered with a more holistic understanding of auto-immune disorders.

“We discovered that lupus sufferers are helped by a low sodium, high potassium diet, but too late — she was already on haemodialysis by then,” he says.

However, Kriben stresses that “preventative” practices like safe sex and sterilised needles remain important as sensible hygiene techniques.

“I do not see only bad in allopathic medicine and only good in whatever alternative treatment you might chance upon,” he says.

“Different things work for different people — we must be flexible and keep an open mind, rather than focus our energies on a single theory. The bottom line is that people are dying of AIDS because we are refusing to wake up.”

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