Science, differently.

Sad to be seeing Alaena go. This has been such an extraordinary experience. She is going back for a festival, in rural Somerset. A different world. Michaela and Danielle film me, and I am afraid that I am a disappointment. They would like me, I think, to tell tales of dastardly pharmaceutical companies, of bribery and corruption, of Russian adventurers. But I think the world is complex, that there is much grey in the ways of men. And I think that we are mostly propelled into action by good ideas and intentions. Sometimes those ideas get twisted into bad. I do get angry too, am in essence part passionate slav, my intellect and compassion tempering judgments. For years, I have woken at night with occasional nightmares, worrying about how this treatment isn’t being used. It is easy to see that it works, watching it. Improbably fast. Some tests show how it affects the molecules that have been targeted. Irritatingly, that can’t be clearly seen with HIV - such a tiny virus - but in vitro tests on TB - a big airborne bacteria that survives outside the body - show nicely how it is damaged. It is really hard to explain the physics of the equipment. I am not going to try, here. It is a relief when people accept that it works, as they usually do But I hate it when they accept it because of misplaced faith in “vibration“. I want to defend this technology, to show the extraordinarily complex antennae and windings that create this field of such low power and such exquisite accuracy. That isn’t to decry the effects that other waves can have - sound, light, electromagnetism used in other ways - as pulsed electro therapy for would healing or pain relief, for example. But the specificity and low power of this is different. I want, one day, physicists to explain this widely, in simple English.

The HIVEX machine in action in Durban

Which takes me back, at least in thought, to Russians, and how different their science was. How, at the highest level, they were free to think, and experiment, to work with people of different disciplines, to think, freed from market demands for profit, about real healing, about treatments which might result in the end of a problem. The original HIVEX team had many people on it - physicists and mathematicians, of course, and mechanical engineers, and an economist - even, I fancy, though I may have made this up, a philosopher. Or perhaps they were all philosophers, as Russians often are.

I know the history of anti retroviral coming into Africa very well. It took a very long time. At first, drugs were simply unavailable. Then they were available, but only for the very richest. Prices which were simply unaffordable to Africa. There was a lot of pressure on the manufacturers to reduce their price. Brazil and other countries threatened to manufacture in breach of patents. In South Africa, a few brave people talked, and died quite publically. Zachie Achmet formed the Treatment Action Campaign and, although he could afford drugs refused to take them until they were Available for the whole of Africa. Drugs began to be made available, at lower cost, but sometimes did not make their way into Africa. A client of mine, used to transporting medicines across European borders, inadvertently bought drugs intended for Africa - the seller had siphoned them away from their intended market, no one monitoring whether the drugs reached their intended destination. Generic companies wanted to manufacture, and in my view, that would have been permissible, allowed by legislation which allows patents to be broken where there is national crisis. Eventually, Generic companies, and charities, did sort out a big part of the problem.