Tomorrow is International AIDS Memorial Day. It is a day for us to remember those we have lost to AIDS while re-affirming our resolve to keep fighting not just the virus but also the stigma and discrimination which have caused so many people to die.There are many programmes being organised to commemorate the occasion. Today I attended a multifaith gathering at PT Foundation's premises in Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman. Members of the marginalised communities that are served by PTF such as sex workers, drug users, transexuals and MSM, came together to show solidarity with one another. The event was officiated by Deputy Minister for Women, Community and Family Development, Datin Paduka Chew Mei Fun and supported by the UN agencies in Malaysia. The highlight was prayers by each religion for the members of each religious community, held on different floors of the venue. I have to commend Ustaz Rohaily from JAWI who came to do the tahlil for the community.
On Sunday night, there will be another event at Masjid Wilayah at Jalan Duta organised by JAKIM. I think this is the first time ever that JAKIM has done something special to mark the day, which is fantastic. Again there will be special prayers and tahlil for those who have gone. We are expecting both the PM and DPM to attend. That would mean a lot to the many Malaysians living with HIV.
So if any of you are free Sunday, do come to Masjid Wilayah for maghrib prayers onwards. It would be a great show of solidarity with Malaysian Muslims living with HIV, who are the majority of the 80,000+ Malaysians who have been infected since 1986. Your support and your compassion will be much appreciated.
For more information on International AIDS Memorial Day events in Malaysia, and HIV in general, please see the Malaysian AIDS Council website here.
5 comments:
Has HIV been identified, isolated and proven... please read on:
‘The most shameful instance of an unreliable lab test used for diagnostic purposes is the Aids test. The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (Elisa) test is most frequently used to test your HIV status, and is usually considered proof-positive that you are infected with HIV. A test called Western Blot is often used as a confirmation. For the Elisa test, a sample of the patient's blood is added to a mixture of proteins. It is assumed that if HIV antibodies are present in the blood, they will react to the HIV proteins in the test.
The proof that HIV causes Aids hinges entirely on the idea that detection of an antibody response to the virus is proof of its actual presence. Doctors assume that if your body has made antibodies specific to HIV, it must mean that a protein of the virus - and so the virus itself - is present. In other words, the so-called Aids tests cannot test for the presence of HIV, just the presence of antibodies to it - the usual sign that the body has fought infection and won.
With the Western Blot, these HIV proteins are isolated in bands; when mixed with a blood sample, each protein band will show up if it has bound to an antibody. Besides being unable to detect HIV, these tests are notoriously unreliable; in Russia, in 1990, out of 20,000 positive Elisa tests, only 112 could be confirmed using the Western Blot, according to Australian biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, who has studied both tests in depth.
The French government considers these tests so unreliable that it withdrew nine of the 30 HIV tests that was once available.
The other problem is that neither test is specific to HIV; both react to many other proteins caused by other diseases. For example, the protein p24, generally accepted to be proof of the existence of HIV, is found in all retroviruses that live in the body and do no harm. This means that p24 is not unique to HIV, as Dr Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, has stated repeatedly. Hepatitis B and C, malaria, papillomavirus warts, glandular fever, tuberculosis, syphilis and leprosy are just a few of the conditions that are capable of producing biological false-positives in Elisa tests.
In one study, antibodies to p24 were detected in 13 per cent of patients with generalised papilloma virus warts, 24 per cent of patients with skin cancer and 41 per cent of patients with multiple sclerosis. In one study, half the patients with a positive p24 test later tested negatively.
The Western Blot test, supposed to be the more accurate of the two, has proven no better than Elisa. Dr Max Essex of Harvard University's School of Public Health, a highly respected Aids expert, found that the Western Blot gave a positive result to some 85 percent of African patients later found to be HIV-negative. Eventually, he and his researchers discovered that proteins from the leprosy germ - which infects millions of Africans - can show up as a false-positive on both Elisa and Western Blot, as can malaria. In one study of Venezuelan malaria patients, the rate of false-positives with Western Blot was 25 to 41 percent.
This poor track record is disturbing when you consider that the main Aids 'risk' groups - gay-men, drug-users and haemophiliacs - are exposed to many foreign substances such as semen, drugs, blood transfusions and blood components, hepatitis, Epstein Barr virus and many other factors or diseases known to cause false-positives in HIV tests.
Other populations exposed to a greater than normal amount of disease - such as Africans and drug -users - also make many more antibodies than the rest of us and therefore are likely to end up with a false reading.
Blood transfusions can also produce a false- positive HIV test result. In one study, the amount of HIV antibody detected in Elisa tests was greatest immediately after blood transfusion, and thereafter decreased. One volunteer was given six injections of donated HIV-negative blood at four-day intervals. After the first injection, his HIV test was negative but the HIV-positive antibody response increased with each subsequent transfusion.
Of course, the greatest problem with a HIV test is that a positive test labels you HIV positive for life. Being HIV positive can bar you from insurance, employment, marriage or even entry into another country. The HIV test can also launch many healthy patients on the inexorable road to 'just-in-case' Aids treatment with drugs whose considerable, even life-threatening side-effects bear uncanny resemblance to the list of symptoms doctors describe in HIV infection or full-blown AIDS.’- (McTaggart, Lynne, What doctors don't tell you, Revised Edition (2005), Thorsons, London, pp39-41).
AIDS the testing faith
Of people of various belief
Come together to share
What our fellow beings get inflicted
Maybe of wrong choices
Maybe of carelessness
Maybe of not learning
The causes and effects
Of forgetting religion
This is God's warning
Learn the pitfalls from them
We can't ridicule their choices
Now they live with sorrow and regret
Every human tragedy
There is a lesson to learn and relearn
We tend to forget after a time
And start doing the ways before
International AIDS Day
A timely remembrance of those gone away
A day to acknowledge AIDS in our lives
When we forget to protect ourselves
Forgetting the values we learn
I had seen the inflictions
On two of my former employees
They didn't listen to advice
Finally AIDS got them
They didnt think of tomorrow
They only thought of today
One I visited because he was living nearby
The other had to be hospitalized back in Klang Valley
He managed to recover came to say goodbye to me
The next few days he was gone in his home
I still hold the belief
It is our own doing
Living it without the rules
It is the warning
People must learn
Im all for freedom of speech, but villifying AIDS patients is just pure cruel. There are many ways people get infected. Even if someone got aids through sleeping with many partners and one of them was infected. Its not fair. We are all human. Lets cherish each of our brothers and sisters without prejudice.
kumara, hiv virus has been isolated and peter druesberg has been proven wrong.
and marina, why are you allowing Hiv denialism comment? do you know thousands of people, mainly south africans die because of these HIV denialism nonsense?
please remove it
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