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p.m this afternoon " trial if the jury can understand the testimony of his next expert
witness they will undoubtedly find the defendant not guilty when it s all said and done. he
s also aware that the entire aids industry is based on the statements he is about to
challenge; and if he can do this right he can bring down their whole house of cards.
armand knows this too, and although he tried to engage dr. tanner with it this morning in
his cross - examination he knows he didn t do a very good job. search is even aware that
something big is about to happen she can feel it the make-or-break point like that ace of
spades that she thought amand must have up his sleeve last week. funny thing, though; it s
campbell that s going to pull it out. " i d like to call dr. judith burgess. " a young woman
looks like she s in her late twenties with short-cropped blonde hair and a stylish light-blue
pants suit makes her way to the witness stand. when she s settled in, campbell begins his
questions. " dr. burgess your doctorate is a ph.d. and not an m.d.? " " correct. i received
my ph.d through the philosophy department at michigan state university. " " and you are
teaching at the moment? " " yes, i teach logic ethics and science and values at demson
university, just down the wad from here. " campbell grabs some papers from his table. "
dr. burgess, i d like to read you a couple statements being made by various people in the
aids industry. if i could, and then i want to ask you some questions about the logic behind
those statements more so than the science. " " go ahead, mr. campbell. " he looks at his
notes. " here s a quote from one of the leading aids doctors on the internet dr. becky kuhn
that she emailed me one day. it says an error or false positive on one of the hiv tests will
be corrected on one or more of the other tests, making the tests 99% accurate when
combined together. " " okay. " apparently that s all burgess is about to say at this point so
campbell continues. " the other comes from the cdc the centers for disease control and
prevention who say, ...the use of repeatedly reactive eneyme immunoassay followed by
confirmatory western blot or immunofluorescent assay remains the standard method for
diagnosing hiv-1 infection. " " alright " campbell had anticipated a little more of a
response from this witness. did i make a mistake choosing burgess for this job? too late
now. " dr. burgess we ve heard a lot of testimony over the past couple of weeks about a
myriad of problems with the hiv elisa test and the hiv western blot test and there has been
very little if any, dispute about the facts that have been presented. in fact the only real
response anyone in the aids industry seems to have is what i just read you; that any
problems that we have brought up are all solved when the alisa and western blot tests are
combined together that a positive western blot after two positive elisas confirms that a
person is hiv-positive in your expert opinion would that be true? " " that depends mr.
campbell to put this into logical terms their conclusion is that western blot test is able to
confirm the elisa test have i got that right? " " yes i would say so. " " then it depends on
what comes before this statement on which the premise relies. for example has the elisa
test been proven to be accurate by some independent tests other than the western blot? " "
no, it hasn t according to our expert witnesses. " " well has the western blot been proven to
be accurate by some independent tests other than the elisa? " " no, it hasn t again
