I was thinking tonight of an interesting phenomenon I’ve noticed among even some more skeptical individuals and that is the following: when prescribed a medication for the express purpose of alleviating particular symptoms (which may include laboratory test results), it is human nature to NOT want to know too much about how the drug works or doesn’t work, so long as it provides that immediate positive feedback.
I've done a lot of thinking about this. Why do some of us question and so many don't? A lot of guys take these drugs because they believe it frees them to have a kind of sex they were denied prior to PrEP. It's a powerful motivation to stay hooked in the paradigm that people believe keeps them safe.
I've mentioned this before, but for me the fact that I had to break away from heavy religious indoctrination gave me some experience with this process. We are social creatures, we need to belong to the dominant paradigm which is sort of the modern expression of needing to belong to the tribe. For gay men this means embracing the Left, given the historical prejudice of conservatism (which I totally get). That's exactly why I was so Left leaning for such a long time, I went from a hyper-conservative religious environment and made a b-line right over to the Left because it was the one place that carved out a place for me. But the price in that meant accepting the religion of the Left which is science. And most guys taking these drugs believe the Left is the party of science. As long as they adhere to its tenets, they're good, they're kept safe and it blinds them to any potential negatives.
Getting tested frequently is so similar to how we had to have bishops interviews frequently as teenagers, in order to be found worthy (or not). Getting frequently tested and having negative test results is like a ritual that reaffirms a guys 'worthiness' I think. It's interesting when you think about this from a linguistic standpoint, where negative equals good and positive equals bad. In order to 'atone' for the bad thing of being 'positive' you have to take the holy pills to keep you in good standing.
Ultimately though, most people are just going to flow with what they know and have been told, and that means trusting authority figures who tell them what the truth is. It takes a lot of internal fortitude to break away from authority figures. 'Here, take this drug, it's good for you, it'll keep you safe'. It's like going to church each week, and taking the sacrament and renewing your committments to the church/god and those will keeps you spiritually safe from the boogyman (Satan). To me that's the biggest parallel between my experience with religion and HIV/AIDS. Be obedient to what you're told and you'll be safe. If you don't, you'll become spiritually sick. Follow the science, if you don't you'll become sick. But the price to pay for this putative safety is compliance to religious standards that are actually toxic to a gay person's emotional and mental health. We say 'retained in care' for the medical system, but in the religion the equivalent term was 'enduring to the end'.
Am I correct in inferring you were raised Mormon? I’m almost certain you’ve mentioned this, and I don’t know of other religions in which adherents must be interviewed by the bishop. I agree that there’s a cultish, religious aspect to all of this. Kary Mullis once said something to that effect about “public health authorities”—“it’s a good thing they wear priestly white garments; it makes them easier to spot.”
Relatedly—you might be interested in this interview with an ex-Mormon listing the parallels with the trans cult.
In the video I linked, the guest says she thinks that missions are abusive and a form of trafficking. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I was raised Roman Catholic, so very different experience.
Yes, mormonism has this missionary thing and I have a lot to say about that. Mormon guys are EXPECTED to go on missions when they're 19 (18 now). It's a full on expectation and we're taught about this from a young age. And fun fact, many closeted mormon guys go believing their extra crispy righteousness of missionary service will make them straight.
I knew from about 12 that I didn't want to go, the idea of having to go 'spread the gospel' was NOT something I wanted to do and it was a significant source of stress for me. It was military like in its expectations and what a missionary is supposed to do. So for two years a mormon missionary goes out into the world and has a long list of rules of behavior to adhere to, and go out trying to convert people to the church. AND, and this is a big and, they are expected to mostly pay for this themselves. The mormon church is known to have greater than 100 billion dollars in the bank (some estimate double that) and they have missionaries pay to be salesman for the church. It's a huge racket.
When I had teenager jobs, I was saving money and my parents would always refer to the money I was saving as my 'missionary fund', without ever asking me what I was going to do with the money. This really bugged me to no end, and finally one night when I was maybe 17 my mom or dad once again referred to that money as my 'missionary fund' and I just exploded like teenagers can and I YELLED back at them that it wasn't my 'missionary fund, it's my SAVINGS account', and I stormed out of the house.
During my teen years (3 of them), my dad was 'called' as a missionary president, where he was sent to a region to manage and preside over missionaries. We went to San Antonio, TX. So I lived in Texas for 3 years as a teenager where my dad managed the missionary 'effort' for a big chunk of Texas.
By the time I got to 18 I was pretty stressed because I had this looming decision to make about my life, whether I was going to go with the flow and just get put on a plane and become a church salesman, or whether I would tell them no. I went the second route, but more through a passive aggressive route by just not making any effort to get ready. I finally got trapped into a bishop's interview where he kept pressing why I wasn't making efforts to go. I finally broke down and told him I had 'SSA' (same sex attraction, the clinical term the church uses). He ended up sending me to a church counseling system called LDS Social Services who had clueless therapist.
I'm so glad I didn't go, I know I would have been miserable.
If you want a really good rundown of what a mormon mission is like, here's a great link by a woman who went.
My wild guess: people assume that if they behave and take the drugs they can get cookies as a reward for being obedient and uncritical citizens. And by cookies I mean money or perks or status.
Mostly unrelated to this, when I started taking SSRIs 25 years go, I didn't do it because of economic/social nudges. I did it for two reasons: one, I didn't know the risks (for that matter, I think my psychiatrist didn't know either; plausible deniability is a lifestyle as valid as any other lifestyles ;-D ) and the second reason is that I really believed that the antidepressant drug would improve my situation. It didn't. Those drugs only caused troubles, some of which I think last to this day.
By the way, there was some speculation years ago (now kept tightly under wraps) that SSRIs perhaps cause colon cancer, even years after stopping the treatment. «Fooling around with neurotransmitters ain't so swell as we previously thought» will be the laconic headline in some News website of the year 2035 or so.
But, going back to the so called "medication" for AIDS, the first lines of my comment may be very cynical, but I think I can do even a more cynical comment.
Perhaps psychiatric patients believe more intensely that they are ill, because they actually feel badly, but AIDS patients who feel fine just want to "feel bad" because they think that's what they are supposed to do to make doctors and activists happy, and so their particular degree of belief may be zero.
The non-empty intersection of the two subsets is interesting: the young people who feel bad in the soul but not too bad in the body and don't know what else to do but obey the propaganda, like any other young person trapped by psychiatry.
The Science(TM) has turned out to be worse than "conversion therapy."
I laugh but I think this is all a great injustice.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I had severe antenatal anxiety about his safety. My doctor suggested Zoloft. I still can’t believe that she wanted to treat what was, in retrospect, a perfectly normal maternal reaction to pregnancy, with a drug that had the potential to harm my child—which was exactly what I was worried about.
Dr. Norton M. Hadler, addressed this question in his two early-2000's books, The Last Well Person, and Worried Sick. He calls it the Methusaleh Complex, the idea pushed on the public by the medical establishment that perfect health is achievable through regular testing, surgeries, and medications. Thus, the medical establishment built a base of permanent lifelong "patients." Most of Dr. Hadler's books document longitudinal studies which confirm the inability of nearly all medical tests, procedures, surgeries, and medications to improve health outcomes over simple (profitless) diet and lifestyle changes. Thank you, Miss Rebecca.
ignorance, indoctrination, tech nudging, advertising, social media influencers, culture of victimhood ... all come to mind. When one lie is told, i.e. the AIDS narrative, and then new ones are piled on top it becomes a tangled mess. For those not in the industry of medicine or science, we are bred to haver higher expectations in our own fields. It is mind-boggling to see the corruption especially when all citizens are patients at one time or another. I had a colleague once who had a brother die of AIDS in the 80s. Now I know he likely died from protocols but I had no reason ever to believe otherwise until recent years when it was so clear something was afoot. I would add education system to the above list. From gradeschool to post-doc, how many learn the truth?
Thank you for all your good work, which I’ve been following for years. Can I ask for a reference for where you said that “HIV” “viral load” is “not infrequently “ found in “HIV” antibody negative persons ?
I would love to interview you if you’d be willing! Please email me—you can just reply to the post you got in your email, or write me at walkerpercyfan at gmail. Thanks!
That's fascinating. I'm guessing you just tested positive during one of your regular STI checks we're expected to do. Did you have any presenting illness or did the test just come back positive? Did your doc know you came off the pills or did you just walk away from the 'managed care'?
That's fascinating. I think your experience mirrors what a lot of others have been through. Dr. Sam's videos have been waking a lot of people up. I suspect that if you'd stayed on these drugs for decades they surely caused permanent damage. I'm glad you got off.
Regarding the mystery STI, have you seen Dr. Sams videos on all the common ones out there? I had questioned 'HIV' for 20 years, but never thought to question anything else. I was stunned when began watching her presentations. I've 'had' a couple run of the mill STI's in my life too and I never had any symptoms, just the reactive tests, but now that I've seen her videos I understand. Also, antibiotics often have anti-inflammatory properties apart from their supposed anti-bacterial functions that can account for any benefit seen.
I've also followed the carnivore diet but never did it fully. Meat is a big part of my diet, but I just didn't feel good on full carnivore so I eat a lot of meat with some carbs. Works for me.
I'm can't imagine you're alone in your experience. I think one of the challenges is there don't seem to be forums for guys who got off ARVs, it's like it's outside the system and so there's just a black hole of support and visibility.
RE the syphilis, have you left any comments on Sam's Substack page for that video to get anyone's feedback?
I've done a lot of thinking about this. Why do some of us question and so many don't? A lot of guys take these drugs because they believe it frees them to have a kind of sex they were denied prior to PrEP. It's a powerful motivation to stay hooked in the paradigm that people believe keeps them safe.
I've mentioned this before, but for me the fact that I had to break away from heavy religious indoctrination gave me some experience with this process. We are social creatures, we need to belong to the dominant paradigm which is sort of the modern expression of needing to belong to the tribe. For gay men this means embracing the Left, given the historical prejudice of conservatism (which I totally get). That's exactly why I was so Left leaning for such a long time, I went from a hyper-conservative religious environment and made a b-line right over to the Left because it was the one place that carved out a place for me. But the price in that meant accepting the religion of the Left which is science. And most guys taking these drugs believe the Left is the party of science. As long as they adhere to its tenets, they're good, they're kept safe and it blinds them to any potential negatives.
Getting tested frequently is so similar to how we had to have bishops interviews frequently as teenagers, in order to be found worthy (or not). Getting frequently tested and having negative test results is like a ritual that reaffirms a guys 'worthiness' I think. It's interesting when you think about this from a linguistic standpoint, where negative equals good and positive equals bad. In order to 'atone' for the bad thing of being 'positive' you have to take the holy pills to keep you in good standing.
Ultimately though, most people are just going to flow with what they know and have been told, and that means trusting authority figures who tell them what the truth is. It takes a lot of internal fortitude to break away from authority figures. 'Here, take this drug, it's good for you, it'll keep you safe'. It's like going to church each week, and taking the sacrament and renewing your committments to the church/god and those will keeps you spiritually safe from the boogyman (Satan). To me that's the biggest parallel between my experience with religion and HIV/AIDS. Be obedient to what you're told and you'll be safe. If you don't, you'll become spiritually sick. Follow the science, if you don't you'll become sick. But the price to pay for this putative safety is compliance to religious standards that are actually toxic to a gay person's emotional and mental health. We say 'retained in care' for the medical system, but in the religion the equivalent term was 'enduring to the end'.
Am I correct in inferring you were raised Mormon? I’m almost certain you’ve mentioned this, and I don’t know of other religions in which adherents must be interviewed by the bishop. I agree that there’s a cultish, religious aspect to all of this. Kary Mullis once said something to that effect about “public health authorities”—“it’s a good thing they wear priestly white garments; it makes them easier to spot.”
Relatedly—you might be interested in this interview with an ex-Mormon listing the parallels with the trans cult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZMNstceocE
Yep, mormon it is. Most of my family are still in the church. I would call mormonism 'cult-adjacent'.
In the video I linked, the guest says she thinks that missions are abusive and a form of trafficking. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this. I was raised Roman Catholic, so very different experience.
Yes, mormonism has this missionary thing and I have a lot to say about that. Mormon guys are EXPECTED to go on missions when they're 19 (18 now). It's a full on expectation and we're taught about this from a young age. And fun fact, many closeted mormon guys go believing their extra crispy righteousness of missionary service will make them straight.
I knew from about 12 that I didn't want to go, the idea of having to go 'spread the gospel' was NOT something I wanted to do and it was a significant source of stress for me. It was military like in its expectations and what a missionary is supposed to do. So for two years a mormon missionary goes out into the world and has a long list of rules of behavior to adhere to, and go out trying to convert people to the church. AND, and this is a big and, they are expected to mostly pay for this themselves. The mormon church is known to have greater than 100 billion dollars in the bank (some estimate double that) and they have missionaries pay to be salesman for the church. It's a huge racket.
When I had teenager jobs, I was saving money and my parents would always refer to the money I was saving as my 'missionary fund', without ever asking me what I was going to do with the money. This really bugged me to no end, and finally one night when I was maybe 17 my mom or dad once again referred to that money as my 'missionary fund' and I just exploded like teenagers can and I YELLED back at them that it wasn't my 'missionary fund, it's my SAVINGS account', and I stormed out of the house.
During my teen years (3 of them), my dad was 'called' as a missionary president, where he was sent to a region to manage and preside over missionaries. We went to San Antonio, TX. So I lived in Texas for 3 years as a teenager where my dad managed the missionary 'effort' for a big chunk of Texas.
By the time I got to 18 I was pretty stressed because I had this looming decision to make about my life, whether I was going to go with the flow and just get put on a plane and become a church salesman, or whether I would tell them no. I went the second route, but more through a passive aggressive route by just not making any effort to get ready. I finally got trapped into a bishop's interview where he kept pressing why I wasn't making efforts to go. I finally broke down and told him I had 'SSA' (same sex attraction, the clinical term the church uses). He ended up sending me to a church counseling system called LDS Social Services who had clueless therapist.
I'm so glad I didn't go, I know I would have been miserable.
If you want a really good rundown of what a mormon mission is like, here's a great link by a woman who went.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uicAn4l9z4
Thank you. I’ll definitely check it out.
My wild guess: people assume that if they behave and take the drugs they can get cookies as a reward for being obedient and uncritical citizens. And by cookies I mean money or perks or status.
Mostly unrelated to this, when I started taking SSRIs 25 years go, I didn't do it because of economic/social nudges. I did it for two reasons: one, I didn't know the risks (for that matter, I think my psychiatrist didn't know either; plausible deniability is a lifestyle as valid as any other lifestyles ;-D ) and the second reason is that I really believed that the antidepressant drug would improve my situation. It didn't. Those drugs only caused troubles, some of which I think last to this day.
By the way, there was some speculation years ago (now kept tightly under wraps) that SSRIs perhaps cause colon cancer, even years after stopping the treatment. «Fooling around with neurotransmitters ain't so swell as we previously thought» will be the laconic headline in some News website of the year 2035 or so.
But, going back to the so called "medication" for AIDS, the first lines of my comment may be very cynical, but I think I can do even a more cynical comment.
Perhaps psychiatric patients believe more intensely that they are ill, because they actually feel badly, but AIDS patients who feel fine just want to "feel bad" because they think that's what they are supposed to do to make doctors and activists happy, and so their particular degree of belief may be zero.
The non-empty intersection of the two subsets is interesting: the young people who feel bad in the soul but not too bad in the body and don't know what else to do but obey the propaganda, like any other young person trapped by psychiatry.
The Science(TM) has turned out to be worse than "conversion therapy."
I laugh but I think this is all a great injustice.
When I was pregnant with my first child, I had severe antenatal anxiety about his safety. My doctor suggested Zoloft. I still can’t believe that she wanted to treat what was, in retrospect, a perfectly normal maternal reaction to pregnancy, with a drug that had the potential to harm my child—which was exactly what I was worried about.
Dr. Norton M. Hadler, addressed this question in his two early-2000's books, The Last Well Person, and Worried Sick. He calls it the Methusaleh Complex, the idea pushed on the public by the medical establishment that perfect health is achievable through regular testing, surgeries, and medications. Thus, the medical establishment built a base of permanent lifelong "patients." Most of Dr. Hadler's books document longitudinal studies which confirm the inability of nearly all medical tests, procedures, surgeries, and medications to improve health outcomes over simple (profitless) diet and lifestyle changes. Thank you, Miss Rebecca.
Oh I know, what healthy person needs their blood drawn every six months? It’s ridiculous.
ignorance, indoctrination, tech nudging, advertising, social media influencers, culture of victimhood ... all come to mind. When one lie is told, i.e. the AIDS narrative, and then new ones are piled on top it becomes a tangled mess. For those not in the industry of medicine or science, we are bred to haver higher expectations in our own fields. It is mind-boggling to see the corruption especially when all citizens are patients at one time or another. I had a colleague once who had a brother die of AIDS in the 80s. Now I know he likely died from protocols but I had no reason ever to believe otherwise until recent years when it was so clear something was afoot. I would add education system to the above list. From gradeschool to post-doc, how many learn the truth?
I know of folks on the UK that will take the drugs so they don't lose certain social security payments. Naff all wrong with them.
Thank you for all your good work, which I’ve been following for years. Can I ask for a reference for where you said that “HIV” “viral load” is “not infrequently “ found in “HIV” antibody negative persons ?
I would love to interview you if you’d be willing! Please email me—you can just reply to the post you got in your email, or write me at walkerpercyfan at gmail. Thanks!
That's fascinating. I'm guessing you just tested positive during one of your regular STI checks we're expected to do. Did you have any presenting illness or did the test just come back positive? Did your doc know you came off the pills or did you just walk away from the 'managed care'?
That's fascinating. I think your experience mirrors what a lot of others have been through. Dr. Sam's videos have been waking a lot of people up. I suspect that if you'd stayed on these drugs for decades they surely caused permanent damage. I'm glad you got off.
Regarding the mystery STI, have you seen Dr. Sams videos on all the common ones out there? I had questioned 'HIV' for 20 years, but never thought to question anything else. I was stunned when began watching her presentations. I've 'had' a couple run of the mill STI's in my life too and I never had any symptoms, just the reactive tests, but now that I've seen her videos I understand. Also, antibiotics often have anti-inflammatory properties apart from their supposed anti-bacterial functions that can account for any benefit seen.
I've also followed the carnivore diet but never did it fully. Meat is a big part of my diet, but I just didn't feel good on full carnivore so I eat a lot of meat with some carbs. Works for me.
There are peer reviewed studies showing that intense exercise like marathon training can cause transient very low T cell counts.
I'm can't imagine you're alone in your experience. I think one of the challenges is there don't seem to be forums for guys who got off ARVs, it's like it's outside the system and so there's just a black hole of support and visibility.
RE the syphilis, have you left any comments on Sam's Substack page for that video to get anyone's feedback?