HIV and AIDS. What Are They, Really?

This seems to be one of those subjects that - with the very mention - inspires an emotional reaction in people. I've seen otherwise sensible medical professionals' eyes gloss over with fear when this subject is brought up. Why? Perhaps because of the lack of understanding, and misinformation, and outright superstition connected to these conditions.

Like Cancer, this subject inspires dread - primarily because of its dire consequences. It stands to reason that if it is such a subject surrounded by mystery and fear, that something yet remains unknown about it. But, let's proceed on the basis that I like to approach all things - namely, that something can always be done about any undesirable condition in life. Regardless of how bad it seems, something can always be done about it.

With that said, here I dive in to what must be the most “controversial” medical topic on Earth. Why, you might ask, should any matter of science and medicine become controversial? I think the answer is that it becomes that way when politics enters the field of science.

Back in the day, when most people considered that the Earth was flat, and a fringe group of explorers and scientists were proposing that it was, in fact, a sphere, it was practically treason for anyone to believe the latter. We all know how that has worked out.

Similarly, it was a man by the name of Harvey, in England, who discovered that the blood circulates thru the body. Up till that point, it was believed to have flowed in tides in the body. Harvey was ridiculed, but he was ultimately correct.

When a certain idea becomes very entrenched, and salaries or positions of authority depend on maintaining the status quo, politics starts to enter into science.

OK, so what about HIV and AIDS?

Well, let’s define a few terms. First, AIDS, since that is the condition that first was observed or defined. AIDS means, as most of us know, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. It isn’t a disease, but a collection of diseases or conditions, all of which existed before AIDS, and all of which have known causes and treatments. Nothing new, there.

So, what is new? Well, that leads to HIV. In the process of trying to link several disrelated diseases together, that were appearing in gay men back in the early 80’s, someone came up with the idea that it was a single virus that was causing all of these conditions.

This wasn’t the only hypothesis, nor was it the first one. When the first cases appeared in a small population of gay men, mainly pneumonia and a rare form of cancer called Kaposi’s Sarcoma, it was postulated that these men were doing something in their lives that compromised their immune systems… the so-called “life-style hypothesis.”

In fact, the studies done at that time showed heavy recreational drug use in the gay community and in those appearing with these diseases. One drug that was in very frequent use was a nitrite inhalant called “poppers.” One survey showed that gay men appearing with some health conditions had used poppers as much as 300 times in the past year… or nearly daily!

Nitrite substances are known carcinogens, and immune suppressors, and because they were being inhaled, they were suspect in the cases of lung conditions, including pneumonias.

http://www.duesberg.com/media/jlpoppers-3.html

That subject is still hotly debated, but poppers became highly regulated in the 80s and soon dropped largely into disuse. Along with that, the incidence of Kaposi’s Sarcoma has largely disappeared.

It can be seen, then, that from the earliest days of so-called AIDS (the name came along some time after the first cases appeared) – the initial belief was that the observed diseases were occurring in groups of men who had similar lifestyles – that lifestyle being a very fast-lane, drug-using one.

Enter Dr. Robert Gallo, a researcher who worked in cancer research for much of his career, and who had been looking into retroviruses, a type of virus which was considered a plausible candidate for the cause of some types of cancer. One of the things which made it a candidate, was that retroviruses in general were not cell-killing viruses, and since cancer is a disease where cells grow out of control – a type of virus which wasn’t killing cells that it inhabited seemed like a plausible cause of cancer.

Gallo, in culturing the lymph material of some gay men with the symptoms of “AIDS,” found what he thought to be one of the retroviruses he had been working with. He didn’t find it in all of the men, in fact, and his work was later criticized by other scientists, but he nonetheless announced to the media that he had found the probable cause of AIDS.

That assertion, by Gallo, has been the cause of much debate ever since. At last count, over 2,500 doctors (MDs and PhDs) have signed a letter calling for a reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

http://www.rethinkingaids.com/quotes/rethinkers.htm

Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner for invention of one of the key diagnostic HIV tests, called the “PCR,” tells a very detailed story about trying to find the actual paper that showed that HIV was the probable cause of AIDS, and that he has never been able to find it – because it does not exist! In other words, the published evidence of how Gallo came to his conclusion, is missing.

http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/kmdancing.htm


Peter Duesberg, a UC Berkeley professor and researcher, and a man considered one of the most knowledgeable men in the world where retroviruses are concerned, doesn't consider that HIV is the cause of AIDS. Just because it is there, doesn't mean it is the causative factor, as he points out in his book AIDS: The Good News is HIV Doesn't Cause It. The virus, according to Duesberg, is a "passenger virus," and like all other retroviruses, is not a cell-killing virus but is, in fact, harmless.

What does all of this mean?

Well, we have become very attached to this idea that HIV and AIDS are synonymous… in fact, many people do not know that there is a difference, at all.

HIV is a retrovirus that isn’t easily found in anyone with so-called AIDS. Antibodies that are thought to be produced in response to this virus can be found, using several methods. (Actually, specific proteins thought to be associated with antibodies that are thought to be associated with the virus - can be found. Yes, it is that far removed!) The virus itself, cannot. It “hides,” it lays dormant only to emerge years later, it can sometimes be cultured out of the blood of people using an elaborate methodology. But, it cannot be readily viewed or isolated in the uncultured blood of people with AIDS diseases. This is a departure from past scientific protocol - normally a disease-causing agent can be isolated in every case of, say, strep throat. That is one of the premises necessary for a diagnosis.

To further complicate matters, some people test positive and never get sick, other people develop symptoms of AIDS yet never test positive! And some people test positive, negative, and indeterminate on the very same test, when repeated for verification purposes.

Clearly, there are problems with the HIV test, itself. While presumed by many people to be very accurate, a list of over 60 factors that can cause a “false positive” reaction is widely known in the medical profession. One of these is flu vaccination. The antibodies to HIV are “non-specific,” meaning that they can appear in response to other infectious conditions in the body. The tests themselves are open to interpretation and are, in fact, interpreted differently from one country to another, and one agency to another. Which means – a positive test in the U.S. might not be positive if one flew to the U.K., or Canada.

A life-threatening diagnosis in one country, turns into “you’re fine” in another.

If this is all news to you, and a bit shocking – it isn’t really a new phenomenon in the world of medicine. That is to say, there are plenty of times in history when a disease was widely “known” to be caused by some contagious factor – but, that turned out to not be the case!

A famous example is the case of scurvy, a disease that was often seen in sailors who spent much time at sea. It was thought to be contagious, and sailors with the condition (spots on the skin, bleeding gums, and bleeding sores) were sometimes thrown overboard! Yet in 1753, a surgeon in the Royal Navy proved it could be cured with consumption of citrus fruit. In fact, it was a vitamin C deficiency. The British navy took to bringing limes on sailing expeditions, which was the source of the slang name “Limies” in referring to Brits.

This is but one example.

The medical literature is also full of evidence of the immuno-suppressive effects of drugs, recreational or otherwise. So, why wasn’t this hypothesis – the lifestyle hypothesis – more strenuously pursued back in the early days of AIDS?

The answer would seem to be finance. The discoverers of HIV have made huge fortunes developing and marketing tests, and the big pharmaceutical companies have made fortunes in the selling of highly toxic drugs that are supposed to kill viruses, or keep them from replicating.

Even though those drugs have been implicated in immune suppression themselves, they continue to be marketed to people testing HIV positive.

For additional information, I suggest the reader go to http://www.rethinkingaids.com and read the articles and links on those sites, and keep an open mind!