David and Christine talk with Dr. Rodney Richards, a diagnostic testing expert and founding scientist of Amgen, one of the largest and most successful biotech firms in the world.Through a conversation about how antibody and genetic (PCR based ‘viral load’) tests work, we actually learn how and why they don’t work and some of the profound implications of using diagnostics that create more questions than answers. This week’s news items include claims from Africa about the age of HIV, an allegedly AIDS-protective gene associated with the Roman Empire, and some of the controversy surrounding the 2008 Nobel prize award for the “discovery of HIV”.

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