House of Numbers: Anatomy of an Epidemic

H.L. Mencken wrote: "What begins as a guess--or, perhaps, not infrequently, as a downright and deliberate lie--ends as a fact and is embalmed in the history books." Interviewing all the major players in the HIV-AIDS debate over the past 25 years--orthodox and dissidents alike--and filmed and edited with superb production values, this first documentary by Brent Leung explores the genesis of a bad guess, and quite possibly a deliberate lie. It reveals anomalies from the single pathogen theory of AIDS, which look more and more like evidence against a rush-to-judgment in 1984 (appropriate year), when the Reagan Administration embraced and politicized junk science in an effort to quiet criticism of its "insensitivity" to gay men. Of course, we gay men immediately embraced the single pathogen theory also, because it made AIDS "everybody's disease," and shoved under the carpet all the questions about the immuno-suppressive nature of: (1) unprecedented exchange of old pathogens in incestuous urban gay enclaves; (2) unprecedented ingestion of toxins in the form of both legal and illegal drugs, which fueled the party lifestyle of the sexual revolution; and (3) the condition in which gay men found ourselves as a hated minority as the religious right reared its ugly head. What Brent Leung's film really does is to scream: "Let's take another look at this junk science theory!" Yes, the orthodox get some of their quotes taken slightly out of context--the limitations of a 90-minute film covering a huge amount of ground--but when you put them in context, they present an even worse case for their conclusion that a mysterious little retroviral bug is the single cause of multi-factorial immune deficiency. (Just take a look at the YouTube full interview with Montagnier, in which he says our own natural immune systems can rid us of the mysterious HIV within just a few weeks--completely undermining the "once-you-get-it-you-always-have-it orthodoxy.) Many of us have researched and written on this subject (my own writing can be found at www.terrymichael.net, "Special Report on HIV-AIDS" linked at my home page), but our words have been confined to the internet. Leung's film brings to a theater near you the serious debate the HIV-AIDS Industrial Complex has denied us for 25 years. See it, and be amazed that most of what you thought about HIV-AIDS is, as Mencken would say, a downright and deliberate lie, by an establishment that increasingly resembles a religious cult, more than it practices rational science.

I'm a journalist who has spent some time investigating AIDS denialism and those who have been affected by it. This film is very dangerous, and will likely lead to many lost lives.

Since it would take too long here to debunk the various outrageous claims made in the film, let me address just two points it conveniently glosses over:

First, Christine Maggiore, the HIV+ activist who has avoided antiretroviral drugs with supposedly no ill consequences, is dead. She died of AIDS-related pneumonia, aged 52. Her daughter Eliza Jane, whose contraction of HIV was undoubtedly helped by Maggiore's refusal of antiretrovirals and breast feeding, also died of AIDS-related pneumonia, aged 3.

Second, Kim Marie Bannon, another of the film's HIV+ activists who have avoided antiretroviral drugs with supposedly no ill consequences, is presently residing in a care home with HIV encephalitis. She is dying of AIDS.

Why are these fairly important facts pushed to one side? Perhaps they got in the way of creating such an "objective" film.

House of Numbers is a documentary that claims to have been made for the purpose of "searching for truth" so to speak. This seems to be a common trope among modern alarmist documentaries. We have ushered in the age of anti-science documentaries being big business, and there seems to be no shortage of people willing to make one to get a whole lot of money, for not a lot of research.

There are many points in the movie where the directing is just awful. Constantly using the same shot to show the "investigator" at the same angle, slow motion moving in. From a cinematographic point of view this movie is vapid. The music was boring, obvious ripoffs of various improvised dramatic keyboard music from reality shows.

Now on to the meat of the subject. Where to begin...

Brent tries to push the point that you can't take a picture of HIV and no one ever has. Pretty sure simple google search could have solved this. Not only that, he dishonestly edited the interview with the man involved in this sequence to push his point. As of the time of my writing, you can watch the full unedited interview on the House of Numbers channel, and find out for yourself it was heavily edited to convey a different message.

His claims about the Padian paper are false, and Dr. Padian herself has said that. Maggie, on camera, falsified the dates in her HIV tests and misinterpreted the results (either on purpose or because she was in denial), and there were obvious graphical manipulations with one of the tests shown to be deceitful, then died before the movie was released, of PNEUMONIA as caused by AIDS. The ending credits make a small note to her passing, and try to say it wasn't AIDS related. But honestly, the official story is she died from Pneumonia as a result of AIDS compromising her immune system.

See it for yourself. I gave it a 2 instead of a one, because I would like to thank Brent for bringing this insidious cult-like AIDS denialism into the internet's skeptical eye. Now we can see that people who think like this do exist, and maybe change their minds. Oh and the film's creators don't find it fit to let anyone criticize what they have created. They have filed false DMCA's against a youtuber that made a 5 part video series over the past couple of months debunking many of the movies insinuations and claims. His videos were not for profit, no ads, and fell under Fair Use guidelines. They used the automatic takedown bot to try and silence someone who disagreed with them.

If your opinions are that backed by the evidence, they should stand up to any and all criticism on their own merits, or you could present an official response. This kind of fascistic takedown tactic disgusts me and many on the internet. Like I said, check it out for yourself, and prepare to yell out loud in disbelief that people could actually be this stupid.

This film can save your life. This film can save you relationships. This film can educate you. This film can make you laugh. This film will make you cry. The best documentary I have ever seen.

I went into this film thinking the notion it investigates were crazy. Now I understand why people are angry about the film. It is not the message, but the danger of the message to the the scientists who have staked their entire career, awards, and grants on an unproved theory.

What is the unproven theory? the existence of HIV. The notion that drugs help when they kill or keep you sick.

WATCH THIS FILM. GET EDUCATED. CHANGE THE WORLD

This entertaining, fascinating and shocking journey is clearly upsetting to many people that like to present a nice, simple, easy-to-understand perspective of HIV/AIDS without complications. The opinions expressed in it are often contradictory and the evidence from authoritative sources is often deeply shocking to people that they've only been presented with a very cut-down picture of what's really going on. Sitting between two people diagnosed HIV+ at one screening, there were moments when they gasped at some of the views expressed and evidence presented. When one acknowledged orthodox expert said in the film, "a person with a healthy immune system can clear the virus", one of them gasped and said, "That's not what we've been told".

This film raises serious and fundamental questions not just about HIV/AIDS but by implication about the robustness of the way medical science works in reality, the appropriateness of having unquestioning faith in experts and the effectiveness of the media as a watchdog on wrongdoing on fields of endeavour that most people don't have time to analyse themselves.