The Benefits Of Dissent

Ral Ehrichs de Palma

May 10th 2011 Abstract: It is curious to note how easy it is to build a dogma and how difficult it is to deconstruct it. This not only occurs in what we call orthodox or official science, but also within the AIDS dissident, an issue that concerns me a lot, considering how close a person who has begun to question can be of getting rid from the shackles of historical and current scientific dogmas, and also considering the benefits that can be obtained once we are free of that. Once we open the door of questioning the dogma we have to do it all the way long, because if we don't we will start losing credibility. We cannot be a radical dissident in a certain aspect of a particular issue in science, and be at the same time an orthodox defender on another aspect of the same issue, nor even on a different one. In this matter, I can see that, what we call the orthodox scientist, are doing it quite well, because they stand on an orthodox point of view all the time, and that gives them more credibility. Another approach is to question the value and specific weight of a scientific observation and an unscientific observation, especially considering that the phenomenon of AIDS and more importantly, the possible solutions seems not to be in the field of science anymore. In this way, we can see how conditioned and limited the scientist are by academic training and scientific knowledge, and how there is no such limitation and conditioning when it comes to a non-expert. The non-expert observer doesn't have to fit what he or she observes to a preestablished knowledge, they don't even have a specific way of looking at things through the knowledge, they are free of that, so, when things that are observed don't make sense they can start questioning everything that supports what it doesn't make sense. Nowadays that we are already revising a lot of big scientific dogmas of the last two centuries, that curiously enough some are still in use and are still been taught at schools, we shouldn't cite anymore the Koch's postulates, for example, or anything that is based on the theory of the specific etiology, or Pasteur's germ theory, as a matter of pacific or noncontroversial issues, because what we have found is that they really are quite controversial, especially in light of the new discoveries in Biology and Genetics concerning the definition of life or the role of viruses in the evolution of cellular organism, which I take very wisely, but that helps me to keep questioning. On the other hand, we should have by now enough knowledge to understand our body functioning and see how to facilitate its operation and reconciled with it, and how to live a life avoiding self-aggressions to our body or mind, and live an integrative life in the whole of nature that was our original aim as a species, we could say , even if all this sounds very far and non-viable, we should keep in mind that it's not only possible but very easy

and simple instead, but we have to take a big step, to face a big challenge, in the field of questioning. As we would not expect any substantial change in the field of science, and on the other hand we recognize the importance of living a healthy life, and we already know or we should know how to live a healthy life, it is far more convenient for the HIV+ diagnosed people to focus on how to live a healthy life, because even if we find at the end that all scientists were wrong on both sides, we will all have had already a substantial improvement in our life meanwhile, and that will be a fact. So the point is not so much to give the correct technical explanation of what is happening in someone else's life, but to make a real change in the way of living life to avoid present or future health imbalances, this at least for me is the only thing that gives us guarantees to get rid not only of disease but also of medicines and doctors, especially in these days that we are seeing how contaminated the medical care systems and scientific research is, by the global market. Today it is more necessary than ever before to find a way to stay healthy, or to find a way to reestablish our health, not depending on what is offered by the market or the politicians, simply because they don't pursue our genuine interests, they look for their own. My propose is to invite the audience to keep questioning and do not be too quick to come to a statement, or if we do it, be aware of the danger that is involved in it, a statement can enslave us and narrow our field of vision, so we don't have to be too tight to our own particular viewpoint, particularly when we now know how limited science and knowledge is. I strongly suggest to go one step beyond, and if there is no sign at all indicating that the AIDS phenomenon can be changed at least by now in the field of science and politics, let accept things as they are, even if they are terrible and diabolic, and let us stop complaining for something that cannot be changed, it's better to admit that things are so ugly as they currently are, and start moving from there to some issue that we can handle, to a big change that can be done now by all of us: to change our lives and our way of living I can share my biography with the audience as a proof of the benefits of dissent: how I came from being a drug addict with a completely broken body very close to death to a completely healthy person and continuing to improve despite of the HIV infection diagnosis; and I can also share my experience in this journey that still continues through all the official scientific dogmas, the alternative scientific dogmas and dissent, that lead me to discover not only the myth of AIDS but also the myth of medicine.

Ral Ehrichs de Palma ARIS coordinator