Jon Rappoport reviews documentary film "House of Numbers"

A NEW FILM ABOUT AIDS

JANUARY 20, 2010. Brent Leung, a young Canadian filmmaker, has just released House of Numbers, which explores every basic official fact about AIDS—and finds these facts shot through with doubts and holes.

The accuracy of HIV tests; the competing and unclear definitions of AIDS; whether HIV causes AIDS; overblown case numbers; the safety and efficacy of the medicines; the supposed lethality of HIV; all these issues come up for review.

What’s remarkable is that Leung gained access to major AIDS researchers and bureaucrats and put them on camera for interviews: Robert Gallo; Tony Fauci; Robin Weiss; David Baltimore; Luc Montagnier. You’ll see a gallery of officialdom on display.

Predictably, House of Numbers has ignited controversy. It questions authority.

Among its high points—

In 1985, an African definition of AIDS was framed by Western scientists so that, without any defining test, an eyeball diagnosis could be made. The result? Untold numbers of Africans who have exhibited obvious signs of ordinary immune suppression and lives lived in poverty have been arbitrarily called AIDS victims.

For several reasons, the standard blood tests for HIV (Elisa and Western Blot) are unreliable. Worst-case, a person could submit to a test, and merely depending on what country he lived in, he could be diagnosed positive or negative.

The drugs given for AIDS are highly toxic, and can cause death in the short or long term.

In what is perhaps the most shocking moment of the film, Nobel Laureate Luc Montagnier, the co-discoverer of HIV, states that a person with a strong immune system should be able to throw off the effects of the virus.

Coming from anyone else, this remark would be cast off like some piece of nonsense, especially since it torpedoes the whole billion-dollar pharmaceutical assault on AIDS. But Montagnier is one of the brightest stars in the HIV-research firmament.

When advance clips of the film were released, Montagnier’s statement caused a firestorm, and charges were leveled that Leung had edited that remark to twist its meaning and context. Leung then posted footage (cut out of the final edit of House of Numbers) that showed Montagnier had gone even further in his assessment that HIV was not a lethal virus.

Another Nobel Laureate, Kary Mulllis (1993, Chemistry), appears on camera attacking the HIV=AIDS formulation. He also observes that, before AIDS surfaced in the early 1980s, the CDC was a fading institution, and was in danger of losing most or all of its funding—and desperately needed a new epidemic to bring it back into the spotlight. Mullis implies that the CDC was consciously and desperately casting about for a novel germ it could tie to a health threat, and was proceeding beyond the bounds of rigorous science to get there.

Audiences unfamiliar with AIDS controversies that have been brewing for 20 years under the radar will be thrown back in their chairs. They will come away from the film with a slew of doubts about the pronouncements of official AIDS science.

As for “the AIDS professionals,” who make their living building on shaky foundations, they are, of course, livid about the film—as are some AIDS activists.

However, after reading criticisms of House of Numbers, I see no willingness to take up Leung’s many points through honest and complete debate. Instead, as usual, there is name calling and denial.

This is par for the course. Since 1984, when the so-called cause of AIDS was announced on national television, at a press conference—without strong published confirming studies—the AIDS establishment has been tap dancing their way through history.

The fact that people have been dying, and that a better understanding of the causes could have resulted in saved lives, seems to have made no dent in the establishment’s armor.

But that, too, is par for the course.

House of Numbers illustrates an all-too-familiar pattern of modern science in action: a hypothesis is floated by a few researchers; it gains traction and funding; the wagons are circled and the hypothesis is called indisputable; funding ceases for all other possibilities and alternatives; critics are viciously attacked; the original hypothesis is never confirmed by truly independent research.

In this turgid atmosphere, it’s left to outsiders to examine the flawed science. This is what Leung has done. He’s done his job well. A new generation will now have a chance to consider the explosive issues surrounding AIDS.

For dates and locations of theatrical screenings, video on demand, and DVD sales, visit www.houseofnumbers.com

Jon Rappoport has worked as an independent investigative reporter since 1982. The LA Weekly nominated him for a Pulitzer Prize, for an interview he did with the president of El Salvador University, where the military had taken over the campus and was disappearing students and burning books. He has written for In These Tines, Village Voice, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, CBS Healthwatch, Stern. He is the author of AIDS INC., The Secret Behind Secret Societies, and The Ownership of All Life. His work can be found at www.insolutions.info and www.nomorefakenews.com