HIV? What's that?

[xwizard4]

What if everything you've heard about hiv/aids is wrong? Christine Maggiore, an RN, was diagnosed hiv positive and began her own research into the disease, its cause and treatment. She's written a book about her findings.







What if Everything
You Thought You Knew
About AIDS was WRONG!?
by Christine Maggiore

There is no such thing as a test for AIDS. The diagnostic tests popularly referred to as "AIDS tests" do not identify AIDS. Both the E LISA and the Western Blot tests are used to detect only antibodies to HIV, but both of these tests are non-specific for HIV antibodies and are highly inaccurate. Non- specific means that these tests respond to a great number of non-HIV anti- bodies, microbes, bacteria and other conditions that are often found in the blood of normal, healthy people. A reaction to any of these other antibodies and conditions will result in an HIV positive diagnosis. A simple illness like a cold or the flu can cause a positive reading on an HIV test. A flu shot or any other vaccine can also create positive results. Having or having had herpes or hepatitis may produce a positive test, as can a vaccination for hepatitis B. Exposure to diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria commonly cause false positive results, as do the presence of tape worms and other parasites. Conditions such as alcoholism, liver disease and blood that is highly oxidated through drug use may be interpreted as the presence of HIV antibodies. Pregnancy andprior pregnancy can also cause a positive response. The potential for cross-reactivity on HIV tests has been noted in such mainstream publications as USA Today and The Wall Street Journal which recently reported FDA (Food and Drug Administration) recalls of HIV tests for problems with high rates of "false positives."

These cross-reactions occur because the antigens used in HIV test kits react to the antibodies of many microbes, bacteria, viruses and other conditions and report them all as HIV antibodies. Since no antibody is ever specific to any one disease, it is not possible to have a specific antibody test for any one disease. An accurate antibody test can only be constructed and validated by viral isolation. Many doctors and scientists contend that the lack of viral isolation for HIV tests completely invalidatesHIV tests.

Another fundamental problem with the use of HIV antibody tests is that antibodies do not indicate the presence of active infection or disease. Antibodies, in fact, are a normal, healthy response to infection and actually indicate immunity to disease. Before Gallo's HIV hypothesis, antibodies had never been used as an indicator or a predictor of illness. There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest that this rule should now be disregarded to accommodate the HIV hypothesis. The most outstanding problem with any HIV test is that HlV has never been proved to be the cause of AlDS.

HIV does NOT cause Aids. That’s the conclusion of Christine Maggiore’s Outstanding book. Concisely written and devastating to the Aids scam and the Aids industry.
"This short book will change your view of AIDS and the American medical establishment forever. Christine Maggiore deserves the thanks of honest people everywhere because she is doing nothing less than saving lives..." Jon Rappaport, author; "AIDS INC"


ISBN: 1882639170
Mass Market Paperback
64 pages 3 edition (January 15, 1998)
* Message from the Author
* Where ~ How You can Order this Book
* Bridge of Love Publications Menu
* BookEnds Table of Contents

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

What if every stupid article people posted was researched first?

http://www.studentbmj.com/back_issues/1000/reviews/390.html

HIV misinformation

If you telephone the San Francisco office of the HIV campaign group ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, an answer phone message
announces two surprising "facts." Firstly, "HIV cannot possibly cause AIDS." Secondly, "AIDS drugs are poison." The San Francisco group,
joined by branches in west Hollywood, Toronto, and Atlanta, is on a crusade to challenge what its sees as the medical establishment's
intellectual stranglehold over the AIDS community.

The crusade took on a high profile recently with a flurry of media interest in the author Christine Maggiore. Newsweek called her "The HIV
disbeliever." In her book, What if everything you knew about AIDS was wrong?, she explains that HIV tests are unreliable, that pregnant women
who are HIV positive cannot transmit the virus to their babies, and that AIDS is not a global health problem. Maggiore was one of the "HIV
dissenters" invited to meet the South African president Thabo Mbeki at this year's Thirteenth International AIDS Conference in Durban. ACT UP
San Francisco recently took up her cause, inviting her to a public meeting to discuss "the truth" about AIDS in Africa.




This was no ordinary meeting. Outside the hall, activists wandered around in T shirts that declared "WARNING! This area is being patrolled by
ACT UP." They handed out leaflets saying, "Don't Buy the HIV Lie." The group is famous for its direct action activities, and wherever it goes
there is always the feeling that something unsettling is about to happen.

Maggiore proved to be an eloquent and calm spokesperson. While her views may be extreme, and often untenable, she does not come across
as an extremist when she recounts her own experiences. She explained that in 1992 doctors told her that she was HIV positive. She had
another test that was indeterminate, then a negative test, and finally another positive test. This uncertainty led her to question the scientific
knowledge about the virus and the disease, and she went on to set up Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, a non-profit organisation "founded by HIV
positives who have learnt to live in wellness without AIDS drugs and without fear of AIDS." Her personal choice is perhaps understandable, if not
unconventional.

But when she started to talk about Africa, her beliefs began to sound increas- ingly bizarre. HIV disease is not a problem in Africa, she
explained, and the figures for the number of infected people are simply false. The sick and dying people she saw in the hospitals could not have
had AIDS. "Poverty," she said, "malnutrition, and lack of access to basic medical care were causing the devastation and disease."




At this point, Maggiore's partner, a film director, showed the audience a film he made when he accompanied her to Durban. We hear a South
African journalist saying, "I'm scared for Africa and where it might go. The only hope is Thabo Mbeki." We see a young HIV positive man who
has stopped all of his antiretroviral medication. "I don't have fear," he says, "fear is a terrible emotion."

It is hard to make sense of all this HIV disbelief, but these two voices in the film give some clues. AIDS has been a catastrophic illness,
decimating the gay communities in San Francisco and Sydney, and now ravaging the developing world. The United Nations estimates that one
in two teenagers in Africa will go on to develop the disease. How is it possible to deal with this appalling phenomenon? Perhaps by denying that
there is a problem at all. The Boston college psychology professor, Joseph Tecce, who has studied AIDS dissenters, told Newsweek: "The
basis of denial is a need to escape something that is terribly uncomfortable. If something is horrific, I might want to pretend it doesn't exist." At
the end of the meeting, Maggiore took questions from the audience, and the atmosphere turned confrontational. One man screamed at her to
"read Medline" for the wealth of evidence about HIV and its treatment. Another explained that his HIV positive friends had responded well to
combination treatment, and that they had no intention of throwing away their drugs.

The international scientific and medical community has made it clear what it thinks of dissidents like Maggiore. Over 5000 scientists have now
signed the "Durban Declaration" (on www.durbandeclaration.org), which states: "The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear
cut, exhaustive, and unambiguous. This evidence meets the highest standards of science." The signatories say, "It is unfortunate that a few
vocal people continue to deny the evidence. This position will cost countless lives."




Other HIV activists in the United States and the developing world, including the Nobel prize winners Médecins sans Frontières, are similarly
outraged by the dissidents. These activists are campaigning for the fundamental right of people in poor countries to have access to HIV
medicines. When Maggiore says that poverty is killing Africa, this, they believe, is only a half truth. Lack of medicines is equally as deadly. The
activists publicised their anger at a rally in Durban, carrying placards that read, "One dissenter, one bullet."

The four rebel ACT UP groups want people to re-examine the orthodox view of AIDS. But if this leads to people abandoning safe sex, have they
really done the world a service? There has been a recent rise in the number of new HIV cases in San Francisco, so people cannot afford to be
complacent. Maggiore's mantra, spoken over and over at the ACT UP meeting, is that "you have a choice" in whether to take treatment.
Perhaps she should tell that to the 24 million people living with HIV and AIDS in subSaharan Africa.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Did you say more "Cut and Paste?"

http://www.e-skeptic.de/080201.HTM

HERE IS A RATHER POIGNANT BIT OF SATIRE OF DAVID RASNICK'S ORIGINAL LETTER
The Bullet Blunder by Dumbth Rasnick, PhD

The deadly, bullet hypothesis of guns is the biggest scientific, medical blunder of the 20th Century. The evidence is overwhelming that bullets are not
leathal, airborne, or cause death. I have come to realize that embarrassment is the main obstacle to exposing this simple fact.

So why are we barraged, almost daily, by an endless litany of gun horrors and shooting death statistics? Why do virtually all doctors and law
enforcement officials profess their unswerving allegiance to the unproven hypothesis that bullets are lethal and airborne when the evidence is greatly
against it?

There are more than 100 thousand doctors and scientists who have built their careers and reputations by simply accepting the articles of faith about
guns. At this late date, it is simple human embarrassment that is the biggest obstacle to bringing the gun insanity to an end. It is the fear of being so
obviously and hopelessly wrong about guns that keeps lips sealed, the money flowing and gun rhetoric spiraling to stratospheric heights of absurdity.

The physicians who know or suspect the truth are embarrassed or afraid to admit that the ballistics tests are absurd and should be outlawed, and
that bullet-proof vests are injuring and killing people. We are taught to fear bullets, and to believe that bullets are harbingers of injury and death
sometime in the future. When you protest this absurdity and point out to health care workers that bullet wounds are the very essence of anti-bullet
immunity your objections are met with either contempt or embarrassed silence.

The National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the World Health Organization are
terrorizing hundreds of millions of people around the world by their reckless and absurd policy of equating shooting someone with murder. Self
preservation compels these institutions to not only maintain but to actually compound their errors, which adds to the fear, suffering, and misery of
the world-the antithesis of their reason for being.

The only way we can free ourselves from the bullet blunder and bring an end to the tyranny of fear is to have an open international discourse and
debate on all gun issues. Anger will be a natural response to facing the enormity of the scandal of bullets. Anger has its place but it should be put
aside quickly. It is a mistake to focus on villains and on whom to punish. The bullet blunder is a sociological phenomenon in which we all share a
measure of responsibility.

Ultimately, the bullet blunder is not really about guns, nor even about health and injury, nor even about science and medicine. The bullet blunder is
about the health of our democracies. A healthy democracy demands that its citizens keep a skeptical, even suspicious, eye on its institutions in order
to prevent them from becoming the autonomous, authoritarian regimes they are now.

The bullet blunder shows that we need to rethink and restructure our institutions of government, science, health, academe, journalism and media.
We must replace the National Institutes of Health as the primary gatekeeper of research funding with numerous competing sources of funding. We
must restructure the peer review processes of scientific publishing and funding so that they do not promote and protect any particular dogma or
fashion of thought or exclude competing ideas. A robust and mean investigative journalism must be revived, rewarded and cherished.

Finally, as citizens we must take back the authority and responsibility for our own health and well being and that of our democracies.

 

[Oliver Clozoff]

Thank you, Dixon. We need more courageous skeptics like you not willing to be brainwashed by the Public/Private/Media conglomerate.

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Oh there's more...much more...

http://www.libertysoft.com/liberty/reviews/55crow.html

The AIDS Heretic Who Won't Die

by Nathan Crow


What causes AIDS? Almost all scientists and laymen would answer "HIV," the virus that has for the last ten years been the focus of billions of dollars of
government and private research. But the HIV hypothesis has its dissenters. Chief among them is Berkeley's Peter Duesberg, an eminent virologist who believes
the virus is completely harmless. AIDS, he argues, is caused largely by drug abuse and by AZT (azidothymidine), a drug that for years was the main
pharmacological weapon against the disease and that Duesberg views as a lethal poison.

There is no questioning Duesberg's scientific credentials. In the 1970s, he was among the first to discover cancer genes. Before he became the most prominent
AIDS heretic, he was awarded the NIH's prized Outstanding Investigator Grant, which gives a scientist the freedom to pursue his interests for seven years
without having to apply for renewed funding. But since he adopted his stance on HIV, all of Duesberg's 17 grant applications have been rejected, he has been
publicly scorned by such leading AIDS researchers as Robert Gallo and Anthony Fauci, and he has been reassigned to lowly undergrad biology courses.
Deprived of influence in his department, he is now placed in charge of such tasks as organizing the annual picnic. Most of his colleagues seem to regard him as, at
best, a sadly misguided crank -- and at worst, a dangerous lunatic.

Bloody but unbowed, Duesberg has now unleashed Inventing the AIDS Virus, a massive tome that comprehensively argues his views on the disease and lashes
into a government-financed AIDS establishment that, in his view, systematically crushes dissent and -- through its octopus-like hold on research dollars -- makes
it impossible for alternative hypotheses to be tested, or even heard. With an introduction by Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, the book has attracted enormous
attention for a scientific work, attention that is probably partly due to a general sense of frustration and despair about AIDS. The disease consumes billions of
government medical research dollars. It has decimated a generation of gay men, and, with infections rising rapidly among gay teens and college-age kids, seems
set to do in another. Years of headline-making "medical breakthroughs" have (until recently) yielded no effective treatments -- in Duesberg's words, "no vaccine,
no effective drug, no prevention, no cure, not a single life saved." Finally, millions of people of all sexual orientations are tired of using condoms and practicing
"safe sex," and would love to believe it unnecessary.

It is precisely this kind of wishful thinking that has aroused the most passionate Duesberg-bashing. It is hard enough, say AIDS activists, to convince horny young
people with a gut-level delusion of immortality to use a condom. Telling them HIV isn't a problem is a prescription for a renewed epidemic. And to tell
HIV-infected people that they can in good conscience infect others is to abet murder.

Of course, if Duesberg is right, none of that matters. And Inventing the AIDS Virus is probably persuasive enough to convince a lot of people that the HIV
hypothesis is at least doubtful. On closer examination, though, Duesberg's faults become clear. This is, in fact, a very bad book. It excludes inconvenient facts,
employs fallacious and misleading arguments, and ignores social and medical realities that account for much if not all of what Duesberg seems to view as a
self-serving conspiracy of government scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and AIDS activists.

Since it is impossible for me, in the space of a review, to recapitulate all of Duesberg's tangled argument, I will instead focus on the positive evidence that HIV is
the cause of AIDS, showing the critical points where Duesberg goes fatally astray.

The Epidemiological Evidence
Why should we believe HIV causes AIDS? First, because the virus is present in all, or nearly all, cases of the disease. Duesberg disagrees. He defines AIDS
very broadly, as the presence of one of 30 "opportunistic" diseases in combination with an at least slightly suppressed immune system. (An opportunistic disease
takes advantage of the characteristic immune deficiency caused by HIV. An example would be Pneumocystis carinii , a pneumonia often seen in AIDS
patients, but sometimes in other people too. Some so-called opportunistic diseases -- especially Kaposi's sarcoma, or KS, a cancer seen almost exclusively in
male homosexual AIDS patients -- do not seem to be immune deficiency diseases, and their relation to the virus is not understood.) Using his broad definition,
Duesberg points to literally thousands of cases of "AIDS" in which the HIV virus is not present. Where HIV is present, he argues that it is merely a "marker" of
other factors -- e.g., multiple sex partners -- that are themselves associated with the real causes, namely, drug abuse or "foreign proteins."

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) disagrees, of course. People who fit Duesberg's broad description don't have AIDS, they say. Why? For various
reasons, but above all because they don't have HIV, and HIV is necessary for AIDS. This might sound at first like a statement that is true merely by definition,
and that is exactly what Duesberg argues. After all, if there are all these people who would be said to have "AIDS" if they weren't infected with HIV, then the
CDC is assuming what it should have to prove. "So how," Duesberg writes, "can doctors tell the difference between AIDS and other conditions? Only by testing
for antibodies against HIV! Thus, HIV has no connection with disease" (p. 295).

One problem with this argument, as Steven Harris of UCLA [ 1 has pointed out, is that clinical definitions are not chosen merely to satisfy the criteria established
by logicians; they are selected for their predictive value. Patients who are HIV-positive and have an opportunistic ("AIDS-defining") disease have a very poor
prognosis. Those who come down with, say, Pneumocystis but are HIV-negative may very well turn out fine.

Be that as it may, Duesberg has a point. All cases of genuine AIDS should show HIV infection. And, in fact, it is possible to identify a group of people with a
characteristic immune deficiency and show that that they all have HIV (with a handful of exceptions -- according to Harris, about one in 1,000). This is the group
with an opportunistic disease combined with a long-term, low (under 200) count of CD4+ T-lymphocytes, and a CD8+ count that remains normal until the final
stages of AIDS, when it declines rapidly. (A normal healthy person has a CD4 count of around 600 to 1,200 and a CD8 count of about half that.) This pattern
of immune deficiency is characteristic only of AIDS. Why doesn't the CDC use this definition for AIDS? Because regardless of their particular immune status at
the moment, HIV-positive patients who have an opportunistic infection will predictably deteriorate to this level.

It is true that there exists a group of people with a condition that looks like AIDS, but isn't (because there's no HIV infection, among other reasons). Less than a
hundred such people have been identified. Their disease is called "ICL," for idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia. Unlike AIDS patients, they generally don't come
from identifiable risk groups (homosexual men, hemophiliacs, and intravenous drug users); and they have somewhat stronger and more volatile T-cell counts than
AIDS patients. Duesberg erroneously lumps together ICL patients with the several thousand HIV-negative people who suffer from AIDS-defining diseases.

Finally, the development of AIDS shows other patterns characteristic of infectious diseases, including a pattern of multiple cases among people having common
contact with the same carrier. As Harris writes, "of the first 19 cases of AIDS reported in Los Angeles, nine had direct or indirect (one intermediate partner)
sexual contact with a single French-Canadian airline steward."

Satisfying Koch's Postulates
Robert Koch was the nineteenth-century physician who set forth the criteria by which, he argued, we should judge whether a particular microbe was really the
cause of a disease. Duesberg lays great emphasis on HIV's alleged failure to satisfy "Koch's postulates." They are:

(1) The microbe must be present in all cases of the disease.
(2) It must be possible to grow the microbe outside the animal, in a pure culture.
(3) It must be possible to reproduce the disease by introducing it into a healthy host (human or non-human).


We have already seen that the first postulate is very close to satisfied if AIDS is defined according to the modern understanding of its development. However,
even if we admit ICL cases as "AIDS," thereby invalidating HIV according to postulate one, the epidemiological correlation remains overwhelming. Koch's first
postulate is too strict. As Harris comments, "There are many people with sore throats who are not infected with the micro-organism popularly known as 'strep'. .
. [T]he issue is what fraction, if any, of sore throats are caused by strep."

As stated above, Harris admits that "perhaps one out of 1,000" AIDS patients (according to the strict definition) are not HIV-positive, but notes that they
"typically do not have any of the alternative suggested causal factors for AIDS either." [ 2

Since HIV can be and is grown (albeit with difficulty) outside hosts, Duesberg himself admits that the "rule has . . . technically been fulfilled" (178). That leaves
postulate three.

Monkeys, Lab Workers, and AIDS
There are obvious ethical problems involved in infecting healthy people with HIV to see whether it will cause AIDS. To get around this, scientists infected
monkeys with both varieties of the virus: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1, the variety most American and European AIDS patients are infected with, did not cause
AIDS in the monkeys; years after infection, not one monkey has come down with the disease. Duesberg makes much of this surprising development. However,
he completely ignores the fact that the variety of the virus prevalent in Africa, HIV-2, does cause monkey AIDS. And it does so in a way very similar to the
progress of HIV to AIDS in humans: an initial period of rapid viral multiplication, followed by the emergence of antibodies to the virus, then immune collapse,
infection with opportunistic diseases, and eventual death. The HIV-2 virus injected into the monkeys was isolated from West Africans suffering from AIDS.
Finally, HIV-2 is sexually transmitted between primates.

Although Duesberg continues to argue that the amount of virus seen in humans should not, in principle, be capable of wreaking so much harm, the fact is that the
amount seen in monkeys with AIDS is about the same as is found in humans. This contradicts Duesberg's beliefs about the limitations of viruses, but it is
nonetheless true. Duesberg's ideas about what viruses can and cannot do must not be allowed to overturn established facts.

Why does HIV-1 harm only human beings? No one knows; the means by which the virus does its dirty work is still poorly understood. But Koch's second
postulate is confirmed in humans by the development of the immune deficiency characteristic of AIDS in three health workers who were accidentally infected
with "a pure, molecularly cloned strain of HIV." As described by Jon Cohen in Science,

[O]ne of the three lab workers developed Pneumocystis pneumonia, an AIDS-defining disease, 68 months after showing evidence of infection. This lab worker
had not received . . . any anti-HIV drug, until 83 months after infection, when the patient had fewer than 50 CD4 cells, the key immune system cells destroyed by
HIV. . . . [A] second lab worker, who also received no anti-viral drugs, had 250 to 400 CD4s at 83 months. The third lab worker had CD4 counts of 200 to
500 at 25 months and had been given anti-virals. "These people have no other risk factors" for AIDS [according to the researcher who reported the cases]. [ 3

In 1987, Duesberg stated that the major obstacle to his accepting the HIV hypothesis was not the lack of epidemiological evidence, but the dearth of information
as to how the virus could possibly cause AIDS, given its lack of "biochemical activity" and the low amount of the virus present in the blood. [ 4 We still don't
know much about the mechanics of HIV's assault on the immune system (the virus apparently "hides" in the lymphatic tissues, gradually destroying the immune
system). But we do have inarguable proof that HIV is capable of destroying primate immune systems, so
Duesberg's objection is no longer tenable. Suppressing such information (his 722-page book simply pretends that none of the HIV-2 primate data exists) is both
scientifically slipshod and morally reprehensible. And "suppressing" is not too strong a word: rather than just ignore the primate data, Duesberg flatly asserts that
"a dormant, biochemically inactive virus, like HIV, could not cause any disease" (230, my emphasis) and that "no animal becomes sick from HIV" (182).

HIV's Original Sin
Duesberg's unwillingness to examine the primate data is seen even more sharply when he insists that no virus exhibits the "slow," "latent" action attributed to HIV
-- the process by which the virus is suppressed shortly after infection, then appears to enter a "dormant" period of several months or years, re-emerging at the
end to destroy the immune system. This concept he characterizes as "the original sin against the laws of virology" (75), because he believes that the immune
system's initial response should be sufficient to secure the organism's immunity against the disease: "an antibody," he asserts, "is a certain antidote" (189).
Unfortunately for Duesberg and the human race, slow viruses are actually well-documented in other species. Visna, a sheep disease that is caused by the
maedi-visna retrovirus, may be latent for as long as a decade. It is also related to HIV. And according to British researcher Robin Weiss, though "infected
susceptible sheep do not show the severe immunodeficiency characteristic of AIDS, . . . they [do] suffer similar wasting and neural syndromes . . . [A]nd disease
progress is as inexorable as that of HIV in humans." [ 5

Furthermore, we have animal models of retroviruses that act like HIV. One example is simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a retrovirus almost identical to
HIV-2 that causes AIDS in Asian monkeys (although not in the African monkeys that are its natural host). Like HIV, the simian virus may destroy the animal's
immune system despite the presence of antibodies to SIV, and even with low counts of virus in the blood -- counts that Duesberg considers to be proof positive
of the inefficacy of a virus. Also like HIV, SIV destroys the lymphatic tissues (although how it does this remains obscure). The animal then contracts a number of
diseases, several of which are also human AIDS-defining diseases.

Duesberg's description of the means of transmission and effects of SIV in monkeys is further contradicted by other, more recent research. For example, he
writes that monkeys that die of SIV "must be injected with large quantities of the virus while very young " (104, my emphases) -- but researchers at the
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Tulane University have now found that adult macaques can be infected by placing SIV in their mouths. [ 6 And although
Duesberg writes that signs of SIV infection "usually resemble the flu," two of the six (out of seven that were exposed) SIV-positive Farber/Tulane monkeys had
died of AIDS within 214 days after exposure (or rather, were euthanized in the final stages of the disease). Some flu.

Duesberg's talk of a "dormant" virus is also dated. HIV-infected people suffer steady immune-system decline, which appears to be the result of something HIV is
doing in the lymphatic tissue. Thus, although it is not clear how the virus works, it is no longer considered "dormant" during the period between infection with HIV
and the development of AIDS. In fact, it now appears that the virus makes millions of copies of itself each day of what was formerly considered the "dormant"
period.

To prop up his attack on the HIV hypothesis, Duesberg discharges ad hoc assertions and predictions, then makes hay of HIV's failure to satisfy his arbitrary
demands. For example, he argues that the virus should spread randomly (hence, equally) among the sexes. But this claim is unsupportable. HIV-1 has been
spread primarily by anal intercourse, which provides a pathway for the virus by tearing the rectum's relatively delicate mucous membrane. HIV-2 is spread more
readily by vaginal intercourse than is HIV-1. It is no more reasonable to claim that vaginal intercourse must spread HIV-1 just as well as anal intercourse than it
is to claim that oral sex or kissing should spread HIV just as well as anal intercourse.

One aspect of AIDS that does seem puzzling is its tendency to cause different opportunistic infections in different risk groups. Hemophiliac AIDS patients, for
example, rarely suffer from cytomegalovirus (CMV), an infection that is often present in homosexual AIDS patients. But this is not as unusual as it seems. People
suffer from the opportunistic infections that are present in their environments, and CMV probably travels through the same pathways that spread HIV among
sexually promiscuous gay men.

A Drug Connection?
A more troubling case is Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), a cancer that in the early days of AIDS was considered the AIDS-defining disease, but is currently thought by
many researchers to be caused by a herpes virus. Duesberg himself, like many other AIDS heretics, believes KS may well be caused by use of nitrite inhalants
("poppers"). Amyl or butyl nitrite, as these supposedly orgasm-enhancing drugs are properly called, were wildly popular among gays during the '70s and '80s.
Here the epidemiological correlations are quite strong, with the overwhelming majority of KS patients having used poppers. The neglect of the health risks of
poppers by the AIDS establishment (and by AIDS activists) is a scandal in itself, and Duesberg's proposal to test the nitrite-KS connection deserves support.

However, although Duesberg is sharply critical of the kind of statistical evidence that is used to corroborate the HIV hypothesis, he applies rather less stringent
standards to his own hypothesis that AIDS is caused by long-term, chronic drug abuse. He is right that in most studies, the vast majority of AIDS patients are
found to have used nitrite inhalants, with many also using cocaine, amphetamines, marijuana, etc. And during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before HIV
was discovered, the drug hypothesis attracted a great deal of interest from epidemiologists struck by the correlation. As it became clear, however, that the
epidemiological correlations were much stronger for HIV than for drug use, the drug hypothesis was abandoned. Duesberg hangs on to it virtually alone, content
with far weaker correlations than we have for HIV; thus, in support of his drug hypothesis, Duesberg cites a British study that found only 78% of the AIDS
patients studied had used nitrite inhalants in any quantity. In Duesberg's view, virtually any drug is a possible cause of AIDS, and he is careful to note that most of
the patients also used cigarettes and alcohol.

Duesberg never really deals with some obvious objections to his drug hypothesis. For example, if AIDS is caused by heavy use of drugs, why is AIDS confined
to established risk groups? Lots of heterosexuals use the drugs Duesberg cites as likely causes of AIDS: cocaine, valium (!), amphetamines, marijuana, LSD,
MDMA, Quaaludes, etc. But few heterosexuals get AIDS, and those who do usually belong to the established risk groups; that is, are IV-drug users,
hemophiliacs, or transfusion recipients.

Duesberg also seems strangely unaware of the history of drugs. In the 1950s and '60s, many thousands of middle-class Americans used amphetamines daily for
weight loss; prior to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, many popular "soft" drinks (not just Coca-Cola) and dozens of patent medicines contained cocaine,
with total American consumption exceeding ten tons per annum; for centuries, opium has been used by millions of Asians; public health authorities have
concluded that in 1900 there were some 250,000 opiate (mainly morphine) addicts in America alone. [ 7 Drugs, to be sure, can cause a host of mental problems
and often impair the immune system. Heroin and nitrite inhalants in particular appear to be co-factors (but not necessary co-factors) in the development of
AIDS, and the medical establishment has been sadly negligent in educating the population about the role these drugs may play in facilitating immune collapse. (On
the other hand, how many people who shoot up heroin listen to doctors' advice about health?) But the idea that drugs alone can cause the irreversible immune
destruction characteristic of AIDS is implausible. Again, Duesberg is willing to attribute AIDS to any number of different causes -- drugs, foreign proteins, AZT,
inadequate nutrition, etc. -- on the basis of epidemiological evidence that is much weaker than that adduced for HIV, and absolutely without benefit of the kind of
animal experiments that provide such striking evidence for the HIV hypothesis.

Duesberg's thesis has not been completely ignored. But when researchers examined the immune systems of different groups of men, they found that even heavy
drug users who are HIV-negative experienced no decline in their CD4 counts. HIV-positive men, by contrast, show a steady decline in CD4 counts regardless
of their amount of drug use. This difference was established well before AZT became available in 1987. [ 8 Duesberg, incidentally, has accused these
researchers of fabricating data on non-drug-using HIV-positive men, a group he claims does not exist. These charges were rejected by an independent review
panel. But even if they are true, Duesberg's drug hypothesis is disproved by the steady CD4 counts found in heavy drug users who are HIV-negative.

Profitable Nostrums
Since he believes HIV is harmless, Duesberg is hard-pressed to explain the high death rates among non-drug-using, non-hemophiliac AIDS patients (e.g., Arthur
Ashe, who appears to have contracted HIV from a blood transfusion). He believes that such deaths are due to medical use of AZT, a popular but ineffective
AIDS therapy that "works" by inhibiting the replication of DNA. Since viruses reproduce by insinuating themselves in cells and using the cells to make copies of
their genetic material, scientists hoped that AZT could stop viruses from reproducing. But because they inhibit the fundamental processes of life, large doses of
AZT and related "DNA chain terminators" cause very harmful side effects -- some of which, such as muscle wasting, are similar to symptoms of AIDS.

Could AZT, then, be the real cause of AIDS? Duesberg believes this so strongly that he calls AZT "AIDS by prescription." The epithet is a silly exaggeration, but
AZT has indeed been absurdly oversold from the beginning. As is now clear, the drug, at least by itself, does not help patients live significantly longer. Given the
extremely negative effects it has on some patients and the chance that it may produce stronger, drug-resistant varieties of HIV, AZT's long-standing popularity
among doctors is a disgrace. Furthermore, there appears to be a strong correlation between long-term survival with HIV and non -use of AZT, and it now
seems clear that AZT alone should probably not be prescribed until the late stages of the disease, if at all. Duesberg's documentation of the shoddy research that
led to AZT's hysterically optimistic reception is a strong point of the book.

But even here, problems emerge. Duesberg blames AIDS on AZT, but the largest controlled test of the drug, the Concorde trial, showed conclusively that AZT
(now given in much smaller doses) has little effect on subjects' survival rates, for better or worse. Duesberg, to be sure, claims that "the death rate in the AZT
group was 25 percent higher than in the control group" (330 1), but he misinterprets the numbers to reach this conclusion. Concorde compared two groups of
HIV-positive people without AIDS. The "Imm" group (877 people) received AZT immediately, while treatment of the "Def" group (872 people) was deferred.
A total of 10.9% of the Imm group died, compared to 8.7% of the Def group -- a difference that is not statistically significant (i.e., could have been due to
chance). And even this small difference is exaggerated by Duesberg's insistence on counting suicides and accidental deaths.

AZT does have one important medical use: to prevent HIV transmission by pregnant mothers. There is now solid evidence that AZT administered during
pregnancy can save the lives of numerous infants who would otherwise grow up HIV-positive and probably die of AIDS. Considering AZT's benefits for these
children, Duesberg's hysterical inflation of the drug's dangers is reprehensible.

Hemophilia: A Definitive Test
Both homosexual and IV-drug-using AIDS patients present the confounding variable of drug use, but AIDS in hemophiliacs has no such problems. The standard
account of hemophiliac AIDS assumes that it stems from HIV contracted by transfusion. Duesberg, as usual, has an ad hoc hypothesis at hand: hemophiliac
AIDS, he believes, is caused by exposure to foreign proteins in Factor VIII (a natural clotting agent that was made available to hemophiliacs starting in the
1960s) and by treatment with AZT. In support of this hypothesis, he cites various studies demonstrating that HIV-negative hemophiliacs are immune-deficient.
The evidence, as we shall see, does not support his hypothesis.

When pharmaceutical Factor VIII became available, the average
lifespan of hemophiliacs began to rise steadily -- a hopeful trend that was rudely cut off by the entry of HIV into the blood supply. Around 1983 -- not, as
Duesberg states, "[a]fter 1987" (465) -- their average age at death began to decrease, and continues to decrease today, as more and more HIV-positive
hemophiliacs come down with AIDS. Duesberg appears to have chosen 1987 because that is the year AZT treatment was introduced, but such tricks are easily
exposed. Citing research in the American Journal of Hematology , he claims that the death rate of American hemophiliacs "remained almost constant in the
period from 1968 to 1986" (475). What the data actually show is a sharply increasing death rate starting in 1983. [ 9 So much for the AZT argument.

More problematic is the role of Factor VIII. To test the Factor VIII hypothesis, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sponsored a study looking at the death rates
of HIV-positive hemophiliacs with varying doses of Factor VIII (low, medium, and high). If Duesberg was right, death rates should rise with increasing amounts
of Factor VIII. Here is what researcher James Goedert found:

34% of high-dose Factor VIII HIV+ patients died (10 out of 29).
39% of medium-dose Factor VIII HIV+ patients died (103 out of 264).
39% of low-dose Factor VIII HIV+ patients died (40 out of 103).


Goedert also examined a smaller number of HIV-negative hemophiliacs with equivalent Factor VIII doses. Although no HIV-negative high-dose patients were
found, of the 17 moderate-dose patients, not a single one died; of the 49 low-dose patients, only one died. Conclusion: HIV infection enormously increased the
chances of a hemophiliac dying, and, as Goedert commented, Factor VIII "had absolutely nothing whatsoever" to do with it. [ 10

Although Duesberg has insisted that Goedert's data is confused by using averages, another study by Hassett, et al., compared 79 people with little or no Factor
VIII treatment to 53 people with extremely high doses. Although the high-dose group had CD4 counts somewhat lower than the low- or no-dose group, both
had counts within the normal range. Factor VIII treatment again made no practical difference . [ 11

The Future of AIDS
HIV causes AIDS. But what cures it? It is a strange irony that Inventing the AIDS Virus has been published almost simultaneously with the advent of what
appears to be the first effective treatment for the disease. Investigators have now found that a "protease inhibitor cocktail" that includes various drugs (AZT
among them) may virtually clear HIV from the body, at least for some patients. The treatment appears to be most effective if begun very soon after infection with
the virus. But although double-blind controlled trials have yet to be performed, anecdotal accounts of patients recovering from even full-blown AIDS are coming
in from all over the country. The very scientists whom Peter Duesberg damns as greedy charlatans and dogmatic fools may have found a cure for AIDS, or at
any rate an effective treatment for some people. (On the other hand, this may be just the latest hype in a long series of non-existent "breakthroughs.")

A distressing parallel to these hopeful new developments is the discovery of a new subvariety of HIV (type E) that appears to be much more easily transmitted
through vaginal intercourse (and has already infected up to a million Thais). [ 12 Although we should remain skeptical of claims that this will lead to the
long-predicted "heterosexual AIDS epidemic" that never materialized...

Okay, enough

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

Thank you, Dixon. We need more courageous skeptics like you not willing to be brainwashed by the Public/Private/Media conglomerate.

LOL Oh no, not THEM again.

--------------------

It's good to be the Illuminati.

 

[Problem Child]

Between me you and one or two others, if this X-loser-cuatro gets smashed any flatter he'll be in another dimension.

And I thought all the real whack-jobs were safely inside my radio talking to Art Bell late at night.....

 

[sigh]

thoroughly disgusted

i had a dear friend from high school who slept with a man one night who told him in the morning that he had this weird case of pneumonia that just wouldn't clear up

my friend david tested positive for HIV just a few weeks later

he too was swayed by those who believed that all the HIV/AIDS hysteria was simply that...hysteria fueled by gigantic drug firms and a corrupt research industry out to make huge bucks out of people's misfortunes...he was convinced that his symptoms were due to an old case of syphilis that had gone to his joints

he believed that until the day he died

david was a free spirit...a wonderful and fun person to be with...he was one of the very few who accepted this too-young pregnant girl as his friend, and he stood by me until he could stand no longer

then i stood by him, at his bedside, and watched him die

say what you will about the medical community...believe what you will about some huge, lurking conspiracy that overshadows us all...crawl under your bed if you must, if that's what it takes to make you feel safe, but keep your filthy lies to yourself

you're killing people with them

as part of a university group, i once helped oversee anti-viral drug studies in a huge teaching hospital...we were the ones who blinded the studies for the researchers so they wouldn't know who received which regimen...we, in fact, were the only ones to know who got what...all data was sent to the sponsoring institutions in code

i have no doubt that anti-viral meds are saving lives...i've seen it happen over and over again

and if anti-viral meds work, then the causative agent is a virus

or do you think i'm part of the conspiracy too?...but then, of course you do...it's the only thing that could fit your twisted little world view