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IN SEARCH OF A COMPREHENSIVE RESPONSE TO AIDS
By David Keane, July/2003
Why is it that a generation after the discovery of HIV/AIDS, and the expenditure by orthodox medicine of many billions of dollars in research, that AIDS is now a devastating pandemic in Africa, increasing at over 10% annually and about to devastate also India and China? It is as though orthodox science is impotent to find a solution.
To find a comprehensive response to the AIDS pandemic, we must ever start with causes and gradually develop right relationships based upon fundamental principles. So it is that a small band of men and women, calling themselves Compassion Response Network, starting with scant resources but much faith and perseverance have invoked a solution. This is their story.
A few of us from affluent nations began networking with our friends in Africa, and we asked them, how can dreams for helping humanity be transformed into actuality? What most needs to be done? The answers we received were two-fold. Firstly, provision in basic education in goodwill, meditation, right relations and true values, for the many who do not receive such teachings. And secondly, provision of free basic health care to the poorest of the poor. Most people in Africa who have infectious diseases like malaria are too poor to see a doctor or purchase simple prescription drugs. And so they wait out the disease, hoping that death or severe disability evades them.
We were aware of two devices that treated infectious diseases for virtually no expense, and reports coming from alternative medical circles were promising. These devices were a zapper, running off a simple 9-volt battery and originally designed by Dr Hulda Clark, and adapted to African conditions by fitting a rechargeable battery that can easily be recharged from mains electricity, and a colloidal silver maker, which requires simply a power supply and distilled water to make the solution. Basically from the savings of two pensioners, and the goodwill support of some electricians, we constructed very cheap healing kits including a zapper and colloidal silver maker in each kit, and in early 1999 gifted them to needy groups in Africa.
Over 30 service groups received these kits, and these devices could then be used in Africa virtually for no cost. Some of these groups responded by offering the treatment service on a free goodwill basis to the sick and needy in the community. The reports that came back were impressive. People would come in with high fever. Some, unable even to walk, would be visited in their homes. And for some within hours and many others overnight, the fever would completely subside and not return. Hundreds of such cases were reported, and people were queuing up for treatment. But survival in Africa is difficult, and it is difficult to find the dedicated goodwill servers willing to sacrifice their precious time in such activity. Those few dedicated servers who persevered became our trusted co-workers.
Healing treatment was also provided to AIDS patients, particularly in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo where Albert Mananga and Fikiri Shabani provided the treatments. Those AIDS patients who received treatment reported rapid improvement in health, and asked for the treatment to be continued. There were few hands to respond to the need. And though a few doctors expressed interest, they remained cautious because alternative treatments were frowned upon by orthodox medicine.
And so in early 2001, we few supporters in affluent countries gathered together what we could and on a shoe-string budget, sponsored PCR blood tests (which had to be privately couriered to Europe) before and after a month of daily treatment with zapper and colloidal silver, of three advanced HIV/AIDS patients. The results were that, on average, HIV viral load decreased to 54% of the reading a month earlier. As impressive as the results were, they were only partial, and no doctors would adopt the practice. Our private funds were used up, and no-one else was interested in funding bigger trials.
Our group was scattered in many countries and many continents. We would communicate by email. We decided to next time do the trials properly. We had no money to start with, so we would have to register as a public company and charitable organisation, so to be able to request funds from the public. We agreed on our main charitable objective as;
"To identify with the millions in the world with AIDS and facilitate a compassionate response through direct action until their suffering is transmuted to hope. To facilitate AIDS treatment and testing projects of sufficient scientific-medical quality to attract the interest and commitment of major aid and charitable groups. To co-operate with major aid and charitable groups to provide effective long-term responses to the AIDS pandemic."
And so on 23/December/2002, Compassion Response Network became registered in Australia as a public company, with charitable objectives. By this time we had developed strong links with a service group called PNI Empowerment Trust in Harare, Zimbabwe, coordinated by Geraldene Cockcroft. PNI Empowerment Trust focuses on personal empowerment and psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI). A large focus of the work is with HIV/AIDS and the possibility of long term survival using PNI, nutrition etc. A lot of their work is with the poor, and they had developed an impressive and popular outreach throughout Zimbabwe, though with the collapsing Zimbabwe economy over the past two years, PNI as with most charities in Zimbabwe, is now finding it very difficult to survive.
Compassion Response Network developed action projects in both Kinshasa and Harare. In all, once adequately funded, the projects would treat 43 advanced AIDS patients over six months, each patient being on one of nine alternative treatments for HIV/AIDS;
Zapper + colloidal silver + ozonated water,
Dr Bob Beck treatment,
Tetrasil/Imusil,
Essiac formula,
Flor Essence,
Aurea Cento Spice Oils,
Glyco-nutritional supplements,
Absolutely pure colloidal silver + Oxyrich,
Sutherlandia herb.
Each of these treatments has impressive claims for treating HIV/AIDS, but we remain impartial and detached from those claims. Our task is to provide an independent comparative assessment of many alternative treatments for HIV/AIDS, something we believe had never been done before. A daily nutritious meal would be provided to each of the patients (for otherwise many were so poor that once they were half better they would need to go and look for work simply to eat.) The treatments were donated or provided for free, and the networking facilitators within Compassion Response Network serve on a voluntary basis. However conditions in Africa are difficult and to do things properly various expenses would arise, food, transport, wages for cooks and staff to provide treatments, comprehensive blood testing every two months of treatment and miscellaneous costs. Blood tests would involve state of the art medical tests; bDNA viral load, CD4 immunity tests, full blood count and several other tests pre-treatment and at every 2-month stage of the 6 months of treatment.
Compassion Response Network has set up its own website, at http://www.compassion-response.net where details and costings for the projects and many other subjects are explained in much detail.
We wanted to develop a truly comprehensive response that would step by step expand, responding eventually and unconditionally to the millions in the world with HIV/AIDS. We knew of several other groups that provided free treatments for AIDS patients, but these were always on a small scale and they never seemed to lead towards a massive response for the millions. We believe that the only way to provide a comprehensive compassion response to the AIDS pandemic is to lift up 4 fundamental pillars. Any other approach, whether by providing cheap life-extension drugs, education in protection from HIV infection, hospice care of AIDS patients while they die, adoption of AIDS orphans, nutrition or poverty support, respond to only part of the problem, and do not fully address the really basic causes. Those causes can only be comprehensively addressed through lifting up the four pillars.
The first pillar, provision of free goodwill care for basic health needs is theoretically obvious and simple, and most of the treatments in our project are cheap and would be easy to sponsor. However the will to provide such free care on a massive scale is lacking. To cultivate the will we need to return to spiritual basics, and develop our overall program from spiritual fundamentals. We need to establish right relations in so many aspects of need.
We therefore need to demonstrate the effectiveness of the alternative treatments. And so the second pillar is program for a comparative survey of many alternative treatments with optimum blood testing and open publication of the results. Individual providers of treatments have done much testing of their own treatments, but orthodox medicine rejects their results, many of them impressive, claiming them to be "unproven". It will cost vast fortunes to test such treatments to orthodox medical standards. And in the meantime the general public remains confused and cautious when treatment providers make claims for their own products. And so it is really surprising that a similar comparative treatment and testing project has never been tried before. It is the only way to get public confidence. Orthodox medicine vigorously opposes any thing to do with alternative treatments. The only way forward is to bring the proofs of a comparative survey through an independent body, to the general public. If orthodox medicine will not consider these proofs, we will take the results to the people where businessmen, politicians and compassion workers will consider the results with an open mind. For not to reverse the AIDS pandemic will inevitably lead to the destruction of many a business and national economy. All treatments for the Compassion Response Network projects are on site and the projects are awaiting funding before commencing.
Geraldene who facilitates the Harare project, discussed the very real problem of developing dependency. In the Congo and Zimbabwe the people are extremely poor and there is massive unemployment. The people of Zimbabwe are besides on the verge of famine. They are really suffering, and food is in great shortage. Hunger and starvation is a looming threat in Zimbabwe. But on our programs we provide our patients a highly nutritious meal daily, and so for these 6 months they are much better off than most of the general population. How can we break the cycle of dependency and fear that going off the treatment will mean further unemployment and hunger?
This is why the third pillar, direct involvement by the AIDS patients in future planning, evaluation and production is so vital. By production, we will be inviting former AIDS patients into work growing healing herbs, making healing devices, providing cheap alternative treatments etc. To our knowledge, this third pillar has never really been tried before. When the patients have had a few months treatment, we will invite them into discussion circles where they can participate in the discussions on the treatments, the house conditions, and other things that affect them. We will bring them into the centre of the planning process. And when the two monthly blood test results are back, we will show the results of all treatments to the patients, and ask the patients themselves which treatments they would like to see continued considering the costs involved, how to develop local healing industries, and how they themselves can become employed in these industries. But most importantly, we will ask them to consider what needs to be done in the next comparative assessment trials. We will ask them what needs to be done to facilitate a truly comprehensive response to the very many diverse aspects of the problem of AIDS in Africa. And any intelligent proposals coming forth we will embrace with our whole heart. The work must ever expand, for the need is great. We will facilitate and integrate the contributions from the patients, the service groups, and the coordinators of Compassion Response Network through a methodology called sociocracy, which empowers people to participate in the decisions that affect their own lives and creatively integrates the contributions from many groups.
Even so, it is only through adopting the fourth pillar that we will be able to initiate a truly comprehensive response to the AIDS pandemic. We must develop an international and independent Alternative Treatments Movement, inviting participation from all interested parties seeking a comprehensive solution to AIDS and other major illnesses. We must invite a global conference, similar to the Rio Earth Summit, but addressing the problem of AIDS and other major illnesses from the alternative treatments perspective. And among the many activities at such a conference, we must design and agree upon an international Alternative Treatments Comparative Testing Charter. We will no longer be dictated by the orthodox medical dogma which seek to impose a First World "solution" of life extension through expensive drugs, upon the peoples of the Third World. Surely an independent body to comparatively assess alternative treatments along scientific/medical lines, with primary regard to the benefits that would flow to millions dying from AIDS, is preferable to the rigid First World orthodox formulas for medical approval of treatments. The Charter must embrace guidelines for safety, quality control and efficacy for testing programs for all alternative treatments.
It will make no difference then if various groups continue to oppose us with a vengeance. For the Alternative Treatments Movement will then lift up the Charter on high for all to see. We will take it to the politicians, the businessmen, the compassion workers, the men and women of goodwill throughout the AIDS affected nations. And they will listen despite the vigorous opposition from the American Food and Drug Administration and the insurance companies. They will have no choice, for together we will steadily build a body of evidence that they must listen to if they choose to survive economically. Survival of businesses and governments alike will demand that they consider the common sense approach. Once we are united in an international Alternative Treatments Organisation, with our Charter to provide direction, then the people themselves will lift us up.