The Fear of Losing HIV

By Bob Findle
October 1998

What? Is that headline a typo? Shouldn’t it be "Fear of Getting HIV?" No. We do not need another article about the fear of getting HIV. We understand that fear. It has been skillfully and unrelentingly marketed to us by the HIV/AIDS industry until HIV=AIDS=DEATH is accepted without question, without proof, and obvious contradictions brushed aside without regard.

But what is this fear of losing HIV? Before I start, I should explain what losing HIV would be. The end of AIDS can only begin by losing HIV from the equation. All HIV treatments, cures and hysteria have to go. HIV is a dead end. False representations and promotion of HIV have to stop. The AIDS defining diseases must be unlinked and treated as the separate conditions they are. The solution for AIDS will happen when the real (not HIV) multi-factorial causes of immune suppression are allowed to be addressed. Losing HIV would mean seeing that we believe in HIV because that is all we have been taught to believe in, all we are presented with and allowed to see.

Being vocal about my HIV disbelief gives me an opportunity to observe the community’s response to anti-HIV information. Often the emotion is fear being displayed as anger, sarcasm, utter incomprehension, nervousness, etc. I questioned this, not understanding why information clearly showing that HIV is not causing AIDS and that AIDS is nothing more than a medical construct would be feared. Shouldn’t this be good news? Or at least information to be considered? I have come to realize that one of the reasons HIV is still with us as a valid theory, when it should have been dumped a long time ago, is that people fear questioning HIV, fear losing it, and fear even hearing a single word against it. I have come to see just how powerful the HIV mindset is. What does it mean if HIV is taken away? The obvious loss is that there would no longer be a viral theory to blame AIDS on. This causes fear in people because it brings out the question of lifestyle factors. For example, people do not want the very obvious link between drugs and AIDS to be promoted. People fear that if HIV is taken away, AIDS may be seen as being only a gay problem (which it is not) and there will be no more research, concern, or interest. The HIV/AIDS gurus fear their anti-virals, prescription drugs, or other HIV procedures being identified as immune suppressive, life destroying, and causing, not stopping AIDS conditions.

But the fear goes much deeper. Look at gay media. HIV/AIDS has become the major defining piece of our consciousness. Everything is HIV/AIDS industry advertisements, services and support, HIV/AIDS news, HIV/AIDS art, entertainment, fund-raisers and social events. This deluge can not be blamed totally on the media producers since they can only give their audience what that audience believes in. Is it any wonder why average Americans can not see gay men as a separate entity from HIV/AIDS? We surely can not even do it ourselves. HIV/AIDS, overtly or covertly, underscores everything. It pulls us together, gives us a focus, a cause, a commonality. The gay community has designed and lives in a total HIV-based culture, both individually and collectively. To have HIV challenged causes great anxiety since humans fear and resist any challenge to what is accepted as reality, even if that reality can be shown as false, which HIV=AIDS can be. This clinging to an HIV reality/identity goes deep. Psychologists have noted that they are seeing more and more gay men who are disturbed by their HIV negative status. These men feel left out and not quite complete. Is the equation actually GAY=HIV=GAY?

Losing HIV/AIDS would mean experiencing and working through a huge shift in consciousness. Do we stick with HIV because it is what we are comfortable with and it is easier than questioning it and looking at what lies beyond? I believe so. To lose HIV we have to accept some rather unpalatable realities. We have to see that we placed too much faith in the medical and scientific communities, trusting them to look out for us, ultimately to save us. I need to be clear that I am not trying to indict every person working within the HIV/AIDS structure as having ulterior motives. While we do have HIV/AIDS specialists and researchers who are truly incompetents, hiding their mediocrity and mistakes behind HIV, blaming it and not themselves for people’s sickness and death, we have many dedicated, competent people in this field who truly believe HIV is something to be combated and they are giving their all. My issue is with the policy makers at the CDC, the NIH, pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, and huge HIV/AIDS organizations who produce the directives instructing the front-line workers what to believe about AIDS and what to do. We have to acknowledge that their goals and focus are not always in our best interest and there are often severe conflicts of interest stemming from greed and egos. We have to deal with the knowledge that HIV has never been a mistake. An honest mistake we could understand for humans make mistakes. But to lose HIV we must comprehend that we were methodically and purposely deceived and lied to from the very beginning and every attempt to challenge the deception was systematically squelched by the people doing the deceiving. This is not an easy realization. Nobody wants to believe that we could have been so duped, so abused. Just as the abused child, even when presented with the painful truth of their abuse, continues to refuse to believe it was Daddy who hurt them, the gay community must continue to believe in HIV and trust that the HIV/AIDS industry would never be guilty of harming us. For to believe otherwise means the next logical conclusion must be arrived at. And there is the fear. What have we, by our complacency and unquestioning faith, allowed to happen? The tremendous pain and suffering we as a community have dealt with all these years can never be measured. People making radical choices and major changes in their lives due to HIV. Millions upon millions of dollars bled from us, mainly in support of HIV. Horrific drugs and life destroying treatments to battle HIV. The ones we loved and cherished dead, we are told from HIV, when it was actually the treatments. Truly immune compromised people dead because the real cause of their conditions not addressed. To see HIV as the mistake it is, to lose HIV, we must see and somehow manage to accept that all this misery was largely avoidable and unnecessary.

The HIV/AIDS industry has their own valid fear of losing HIV. They know that once the HIV debacle is finally exposed, in addition to the loss of their ill-gotten fame and fortune, they will have to face the tidal wave of anger and rage from the people whose lives have been destroyed. They know they have to keep HIV going at any cost. And they succeed since they control the research, the protocols, the funding.

They have the money and positions to promote whatever they want regardless of truth. they succeed because we give them total control to do so. But they are starting to lose this control. More scientists and doctors are overcoming their own personal fears of being criticized for daring to speak against HIV. The media is slowly letting us see the dissentient movement. More groups are forming to combat the HIV misinformation machines.

I can understand why there is a fear of losing HIV. The aftermath will not be easy on any level for anyone. But we must not let this fear stop us from really looking at what is happening. HIV=AIDS will never be proven and the real evidence shows it should be rejected. The hunt for an HIV cure is a gold mine for the HIV/AIDS industry but a waste of our time, money and lives. To let HIV=AIDS stand without challenge we collectively agree to condemn hundreds of thousands, if not millions, to death. We have to confront our fears, acknowledge the slaughter of the HIV years, and move forward to stop any more HIV genocide. WE have to march on Washington, protest, demand change, free ourselves from HIV, not ask for more of the same. Open your minds people, risk facing your fears, let HIV go, see that the answers to AIDS are already here.