Charlie Sheen's HIV Doc Samir Chachoua Goes On Bill Maher, Proclaims He's 'Cured Countries!'
Never let it be said Bill Maher’s HBO show is lacking for controversial guests.
On Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Maher conducted a ten-minute long interview with Samir Chachoua, an Australian doctor who recently made waves after it came to light that he temporarily treated Charlie Sheen’s HIV after Sheen went off his antiretroviral therapy (ART).
As first reported when Sheen appeared on the Dr. Oz show earlier this January, he sought out Chachoua in Mexico over the past winter, searching for a permanent cure. There, Chachoua injected Sheen with a cocktail of his making, one that supposedly led him to become the “first HIV-negative” person in recorded history. In a phone interview with Dr. Oz, Chachoua further bolstered his case by claiming he knowingly injected Sheen’s blood into himself post-treatment. Alas, it was for naught, since Sheen soon went back on ART after his HIV viral load began climbing back up.
Not that you’d be able to tell that from Maher’s interview, as the host reminds the audience of Sheen’s return to ART exactly once before ceding the floor to Chachoua’s boastful proclamations.
Among the choice winners:
That the research on his treatment, a virus known to cause arthritis in goats, was first sponsored by the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and then buried after it proved to be too effective. Chachoua, not licensed to practice medicine in the States, then sued and reportedly won a $10 million judgement against them. A quick check of public court records, however, reveals the suit was almost immediately overturned on appeal.
That the virus, Caprine Arthritis Encephalitis Virus (CAEV), not only destroys HIV but offers lifelong protection against the virus, provided you either drink CAEV-infected goat milk or take his vaccine. CAEV has received some scientific attention because it partly resembles HIV (both are retroviruses), but that’s about it.
Towards the end of the video, Chachoua, after implying he was the target of Big Pharma assassins, wished that Maher’s (over) four million viewers knew the truth about his treatment. “Why isn’t it available? I’ve used it in countries, I’ve cured countries!” he told Maher. The only specific country referenced by Chachoua was Comoros, a small island nation off the coast of Africa. In 2006, he supposedly cured not only HIV but an outbreak of Chikungunya. There was indeed an outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus around that time, though no public mention of Chachoua’s heroics in stopping it. As for HIV, 2.1 percent of Comoros’ adult residents were living with the virus as of 2012, according to UNICEF (hat tip to Twitter user tangentgirl for the find). So there’s that.
Maher has received plenty of criticism in the past for his arguably anti-science views, which includes a general distrust of vaccines, and he’s getting plenty now. And while Dr. Oz hasn’t always been the most scientifically minded, he (and Charlie Sheen’s doctors) are absolutely right to state that ART remains an essential treatment for HIV, both in prolonging patients’ lives and in reducing the risk of transmission. Goat milk, no matter what you infect it with, isn’t.