AIDS myth

[Re-entry]

Isn't it about time the medical community took a stand and put paid to the drug company induced, media/talk show host supported myth that is AIDS.
The majority of HIV deaths now are due to liver failure caused by the protease inhibitors taken in massive quantities over an extended period.

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/05/03/why_i_quit_hiv_is_aids_myth_falling_apart.htm

Or google AIDS myth for more.

[Flyin'Dutch']

The majority of HIV deaths now are due to liver failure caused by the protease inhibitors taken in massive quantities over an extended period.

You mean as in sub-saharan Africa where no medical treatment is available to those suffering from HIV/AIDS?

:rolleyes:

[Re-entry]

Just all part of the huge lie.
Many Africans participate in perpetuating the myth of an AIDS pandemic in Africa. The huge international funds poured into AIDS and HIV work means that politicians and health workers have a strong incentive to reclassify as AIDS old diseases that have always been endemic in tropical Africa. When African doctors are sent to AIDS conferences around the world, the daily allowance they receive is equal to what they earn in a whole year at home. It has become a joke in Uganda that you are not allowed to die of anything but AIDS. If someone is run over by a truck, doctors have been known to attribute it to AIDS-related suicide!

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dp5/aids.htm

[Flyin'Dutch']

Some useful information on AIDS/HIV and the current state of affairs can be found here on the WHO website (http://www.who.int/hiv/mediacentre/news62/en/index.html)

[matelot]

Is this a plug for a return to marital fidelity?

[Mac the Knife]

I sort of though about answering, and then I realised that anyone who can sustain this belief, in the face of all the evidence to the contrary, is hardly going to be influenced by me (or the WHO for that matter).

Anyway, whyncha come over here and watch 'em dying, sans benefit of protease inhibitors, but well seasoned with garlic and beetroot (thanks to our Health Minister)? :}

Bring a bottle of brandy for Thabo (better make it two!) and the pair of you can misquote Yeats to each other ;)

:ok:

[Jarvy]

I just love a good conspiracy theory anyone got any more?
Jarvy
P.S. But there again my wife does work for a major drug company;)

[QDMQDMQDM]

No, really, Re-entry, is that true?! Thanks for pointing this one out about AIDS and stuff.

I also heard all the Jews working in the Twin Towers were told not to turn up for work that day and that it was Mossad which crashed the planes into them.

It's amazing what you can find out when you really dig.

[Mac the Knife]

No, I'm not going to bite ol' sport

First of all I'm a doctor so I have a vested interest supporting the global conspiracy and secondly (you allege) I'm an inebriated alcoholic incapable of reason, so nothing I could say would be worth hearing anyway ('specially since it contradicts your fantasies).

Controversy by all means, but I'm not going to waste my time and Danny's bandwidth arguing with the latest cuckoo conspiracy theorist. Though there is considerable latitude for peripheral matters, PPRuNE is primarily an aviation website and not a platform for misguided people to parade their delusions.

[Definition: A delusion is an unshakable belief in something untrue. These irrational beliefs defy normal reasoning, and remain firm even when overwhelming proof is presented to dispute them. Delusions are often accompanied by hallucinations and/or feelings of paranoia, which act to strengthen confidence in the delusion. Delusions are distinct from culturally or religiously based beliefs that may be seen as untrue by outsiders.]

Somewhat more interesting is why people believe wierd things, and I would encourage curious PPRuNers to read Michael Shermer's book of that title - http://skepdic.com/refuge/weird.html - and - http://www.amazon.com/People-Believe-Weird-Things-Pseudoscience/dp/0716733870. Michael has a neat summary of the fallacies that lead us to believe wierd things here - http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/sherm3.htm - that is worth a read.

So no, Re-entry - no game, go and peddle your wares on some other website.

Bye!

[Re-entry]

Hey Mac. I was trying to think of a clever response to that. There is none. Best wishes .

[Re-entry]

So here is a non-clever response. How come nobody knows anyone with AIDS. But everyone knows someone with heart disease or cancer?

[2close]

Possibly due to society in general being sympathetic towards coronary disease and cancer but AIDS still carries the 'socially unacceptable' label with it and people being people will still shy away from others they know have AIDS......not many people, even those who have contracted this terrible affliction through no direct actions of their own (and lets not get into an argument about who is and who is not to blame), want to be treated like a leper therefore they would more than likely stay quiet, except to a few very close family members and friends.

Time to get my tin foil hat on.

http://seoblackhat.com/upimage/tinfoilhat.jpg

2close

[zerozero]

The above is the Dialectic Process. It's logical. This thread is not--logical that is.

Actually I feel Re-Entry has a point but he hasn't made it very well.

Last year, Harper's Magazine had a very controversial article that basically asserted that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

Read that carefully.

These people are not suggesting that AIDS does *not* exist but rather that AIDS is *not* caused by the HIV virus.

And I'm not saying I agree with one side or the other but the article did raise my eyebrows.:eek:

The basic idea of the article was that the so-called cures (drugs) were literally poisoning the HIV patients and inducing a sickness that we've come to recognize as AIDS.

I don't have a medical background and as far as I'm aware I know no one with HIV or AIDS.

But I'll say this: I don't trust the friggin' pharmaceutical companies any farther than I can throw them.

That's my thesis. Would anyone care to offer an antithesis?
:8

[paco]

"But I'll say this: I don't trust the friggin' pharmaceutical companies any farther than I can throw them"

Yes! A read up on what Monsanto get up to will confirm that!
As for HIV, check out the works of Dr Robert Beck. As with many scientists who can be more bigoted than religious types (just look at what happened to Eric Braithwaite), you can always find a doctor who will contradict another (no disrespect to members of this forum intended!)

As for conspracy theories, I'm more a subscriber to the cockup theory, although it is quite true we are lied to all the time. I'm sure many cover-ups are there to hide gross incompetence rather than evil intent.

phil

[gingernut]

On the surface, Sepp Hasleburgers article was an interesting read.

Dig a little deeper, and his description of Culshaw's opinion was just that- an opinion.

She fails to deal with the question with any scientific rigor. Her work is not referenced, and she falls into the trap of so many "experts," concentrating on process, and not outcome.

I 'aint no expert on HIV or AIDS. I do know the difference between good and poor science. This is poor science. If Culshaw really is a Professor of Mathematical Mapping, she should realise this, and I am puzzled as to why she hasn't released her work in a format which would stand up to scientific scrutiny.

We deal with facts and evidence. This blogg deals with neither.

What worries me slightly, is such opinions may influence our population, who don't always possess our critical appraisal skills, to act in a away which could put them at risk.

Whilst looking for any excuse to disprove "Mac," unfortunately, although its hurting every sinew in my body to say this, I have to come down on his side, this time.:}

[xraf]

Well its about time this got an airing, although I thought it probably would appear in Jet Blast. However, there is an easy mistake to make. Do not confuse AIDS with HIV.

AIDS seems to exist but no one knows what it is. ( No dont start for a minute)

HIV on the otherhand was a 'virus' which was 'discovered' by the later discredited Dr Robert Gallo in teh USA. He made millions off his 'HIV test' which will give different readings at different times of day or in pregnant women or in various other nonesense situations.

If you want facts try this question on any Doctor or especially an AIDS 'expert':
Excuse me, where is the scientific reference for the proposition that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS ?

The heads-up here is that there isnt one and no one can provide one because the so-called 'virus' isnt a virus.

It doesn't act like a virus (loads of references for this, the most obvious being that people with this die of all sorts of different things! Virology 101 says that they always act the same)

No pictures of the virus exist- Pictures of 'virus-like particles' were published a while ago and various artists impressions have claimed to be something they are not.

Anyway sorry this has become a bit long winded but someone asked for facts. Obviously the average Doctor simply believes what he/she is told and doesnt have the time or inclination to go looking so no slur is intended there.

However, there is ample evidence for the above readily available and the question about the reference will stop all and sundry in their tracks. Usually they say its so well known it doesnt need a reference! Just say OK well what if you had to find it where would you look! Great sport at parties - better than mess games if you get a stroppy one!

Regards all
Xraf:ok:

[BelfastChild]

[quote=xraf;3057452]


It doesn't act like a virus (loads of references for this, the most obvious being that people with this die of all sorts of different things! Virology 101 says that they always act the same)

quote]


What is Virology 101? Is that a course at a university? Which university? I suspect xraf is the author of the course notes for Virology 101. := I eagerly await the notes from second year (Virology 201) which explain how DNA and RNA viruses "act the same"......

[xraf]

Good morning Belfast child! - I'm sorry for using the appalling Americanism '101'. However, when you put '101' after something it refers to the most basic knowledge in that subject. (which I'm sure you knew really!:\ )

Anyway, for those interested in the subject a well known investigative journalist called Phillip Day (which is not me!) wrote a fascinating book called 'World without AIDS' which can be obtained through Amazon or his website. Google will find it for you. Well worth a read between sectors!

Regards
Xraf:ok:

[Mac the Knife]

Why don't we start from first principles? In formal logic you try to falsify a proposition.

Let's suppose that the figures published by UNAIDS/WHO in November 2006 below are complete rubbish.

UNAIDS/WHOstatistics on the world epidemic of AIDS & HIV published November 2006, and referring to the end of 2006.

-----------------------------------------------Estimate--------Range
People living with HIV/AIDS in 2006------------39.5 million----34.1-47.1 million
Adults living with HIV/AIDS in 2006------------37.2 million----32.1-44.5 million
Women living with HIV/AIDS in 2006-------------17.7 million----15.1-20.9 million
Children living with HIV/AIDS in 2006----------2.3 million-----1.7-3.5 million
People newly infected with HIV in 2006---------4.3 million-----3.6-6.6 million
Adults newly infected with HIV in 2006---------3.8 million-----3.2-5.7 million
Children newly infected with HIV in 2006-------0.53 million----0.41-0.66 million
AIDS deaths in 2006----------------------------2.9 million-----2.5-3.5 million
Adult AIDS deaths in 2006----------------------2.6 million-----2.2-3.0 million
Child AIDS deaths in 2006----------------------0.38 million----0.29-0.50 million

More than 25 million people have died of AIDS since 1981.

Global trends: The number of people living with HIV has risen from around 8 million in 1990 to nearly 40 million today, and is still growing. Around 63% of people living with HIV are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Now let's suppose that this is all tosh and concentrate on what we DO know.

Item: Since 1981, 25 million people have suffered a catastrophic collapse of their cellular immune systems and died of a variety of opportunistic infections. About 2.9M people died of whatever this is in 2006. This is different from and in addition to, all the well known, age-old causes of death like cancer, malnutrition, malaria (about 2.7M deaths/year), cholera, TB(about 2.4M deaths/year), schistosomiasis, leishmaniasis and so forth.

Item: About the same number of people are alive, but show signs that their cellular immune system has got something seriously wrong with it (low CD4 counts and bizarre/atypical infections that normally don't cause trouble.

Item: Before the late '70s this sort of picture was very uncommon, and confined to those rare people born with immune system malfunctions, or people whose immune systems had been suppressed by chemotherapy for cancer or transplants.

The evidence for these three items is so massive that if you don't think that they are true then we have a major difficulty. The question then must be why just about every government or health organisation in the world (1st, 2nd and Third world) should simultaneously start fabricating evidence of death and disease on such a gigantic scale.

The difficulties of a massive world-wide coordinated deception are many, many orders of magnitude greater than those that would have been involved in, say, faking the moon landings (already rather more difficult than the moon landings themselves) so the probability is exceedingly remote.

OK, so let's (reluctantly perhaps) accept these death figures are about right (and they're either about right or nonexistent).

What then is causing this holocaust?

[Re-entry]

OK Mac. My original post was mischievous. But it got you to respond. I think this is a genuine Q. Why would such extensive and scientifically 'kosher' websites put out this stuff unless there is some truth involved? Are these scientists deluded or ill-informed? I don't know what's causing the current holocaust, but I bet it ain't HIV.
Over to you.

[xraf]

Excellent post Mac - I couldnt agree with you more! There IS a problem.
What is causing it?

The arguments I have read simply point to an incorrect starting point. Obviously something is happening but from the empirical evidence attested by numerous high ranking Doctors, professors etc worldwide, it is not due to a virus. Virology simply doesnt work like that.

I refer to my first post: Dont confuse AIDS (the problem to which you refer) with HIV ( The non existant virus that made Dr Gallo et al rich)

The single most difficult thing for a layman to overcome is the desire of the medical profession (or indeed any large visible professional body - Government, church etc) not to be proved wrong.

How the hell could they say at this late stage 'oops we were wrong lets start again and find the real problem'. Seriously,how would they survive politically?

Unfortunately a single greedy man started the 'HIV is Virus' nonesense, got rich and left us the legacy of everyone looking in the wrong direction.

Incidentally, I have no axe to grind, I neither know anyone with AIDS nor have any stake in the medical profession, I'm a pilot, but someone got me interested in this and I wasn't prepared to accept his version, so I went looking for myself. I strongly recommend anyone with an interest to do the same, especially if it affects them or their family in someway.

Anyway, enough already! I dont normally go in for the serious stuff conspiracies, UFOs and the like, but this caught my interest and I bothered to check.

Regards to all
Xraf:ok:

[Re-entry]

Gingernut. Your thoughts?

[Mac the Knife]

This next bit depends on whether one accepts the germ theory of disease, i.e., the theory that microorganisms may be the cause of some diseases.

If you don't believe THAT then again we have a major difficulty. Among many others, Anton van Leeuwenhoek(1670s), Ignaz Semmelweis(1840s), Louis Pasteur(1860s)[who worked with viruses but didn't realise what they were], Joseph Lister(1860s), Robert Koch(1870s) and Dmitri Iwanowski(1890s)[who discovered the first virus, tobacco mosaic virus] laid the foundations of what we know today about transmissible diseases.

Again, the evidence today for the germ theory of disease (as opposed to "spontaneous generation" or magic) is as strong today as the evidence for the evolution of species or the laws of thermodynamics or those governing turbulent flow.

There are millions of microorganisms in the world, only a small fraction of which parasitise humans and an even smaller number of which cause human disease. Nevertheless, when you get a boil with staphylococcus aureus, or septicaemia with streptococci, it'll make you very unhappy and maybe dead (lots of people died of blood poisoning from strep infections in the pre-antibiotic days).

But when Pasteur and others started writing about microbes as a cause for disease, many people were incredulous, "how could something so small cause disease?" and they were much mocked with songs about "Microbe, busy microbe!". Poor Semmelweiss was hounded to suicide, even though his introduction of handwashing between patients reduced the death rate among new mothers from 18.27 to 1.27%.

Robert Koch then formulated his postulates, which are four criteria designed to establish a causal relationship between a causative microbe and a disease.

1. The organism must be found in all animals suffering from the disease, but not in healthy animals.
2. The organism must be isolated from a diseased animal and grown in pure culture.
3. The cultured organism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy animal.
4. The organism must be reisolated from the experimentally infected animal.

Koch changed them somewhat later to account for new discoveries, but in all important aspects they still hold true today.

Viruses are a little different. Unlike bacteria, which possess all the machinery needed to reproduce themselves, viruses must "borrow" the host cells transcriptional machinery to reproduce themselves. You can't grow viruses in meat broth, viruses need living cells with intact machinery to reproduce. This makes it harder to culture them, but now almost all viruses can be grown in living culture.

Epidemiology studies how transmissible diseases spread from person to person. Sometimes they can be spread indirectly from person to person like droplet infection with a sneeze. Sometimes they need direct contact with infected material like smallpox (American Indians were once deliberately infected to get rid of them by giving them blankets that had been used by smallpox victims). Sometimes the infective agent has several hosts, like the plague bacillus (flea -> rat -> human) which makes it harder to see the chain.

In a larger sense, epidemiology studies how diseases ebb and flow through a population. Christopher Columbus' men brought back a virulent variant of the spirochaete from America in 1498 and it is possible to trace how travellers spread syphilis across Europe. Tracing the links in the infective chain lead to Typhoid Mary, the asymptomatic carrier of typhoid who infected 47 people during her career as a cook between 1900 and 1907.

In 1977, Grethe Rask, a Danish surgeon who worked in the Congo, went back to Denmark to die after months of illness. She had multiple bizarre infections and died of pneumonia from pneumocystis carinii, a common organism in guinea-pigs that almost never causes illness in people.

As 1981 wore on physicians in the Bay area of San Francisco were used to seeing sexually tranmitted infections - after all, this was the gay centre of America, and in the heady days of gay liberation there were some very promiscuous people around, with dozens of partners a week. But they were all curable, and after taking their pills, plunged back into the fray. But then, strange illnesses started to appear - florid candida, pneumocystis, cryptosporidiosis and more, all unknown in healthy people, and this horde of well-fed, golden, gym-addicted young men were supremely fit. These diseases were normally only ever seen in enfeebled patients who were immunosuppressed by anticancer drugs or for transplants. And they died horribly, eaten up by herpes, unable to eat from the candida that infested their mouths, their lungs strangling on pneumocystis.

Doctors talked about it uneasily, until the trickle of desperately ill men became a stream and the Centre for Disease Control in Atlanta became interested. Now there were cases reported from New York. At first it was thought to be the result of multiple ordinary infections, but that didn't seem to be true. Then it was though to be due to the lubricants used for anal intercourse, but that lucked out. Then the nitrite inhalers used as a recreational drug came under suspicion, but that led to a dead end. The one common factor seemed to be that all the victims were male and gay. And they'd often had sex with someone who'd had sex with another victim.

Finally, in horror, the physicians at CDC had to face the truth - some new transmissible agent was out there that nuked people's immune systems. And the really, really bad news was that it seemed to have a very long incubation time - people were infected and infectious long before they showed any signs of immune deficiency.

So the hunt for the causative agent was on. Bacteria were out, drugs were out, the environment was out, other infections were out, malnutrition was out, so it had to be a virus - but a new virus with very selective behaviour. Selective viruses weren't unknown of course, but this one was special, it targeted the immune system itself. But it was hard to get money for research - not easy to get anyone interested in giving money to look into some wierd faggot disease.

And now there were cases appearing in haemophiliacs, who'd received Factor VIII extracted from many pooled donors. And the gays were socially concious people, who gave blood willingly.

And every day there were more. Cases abroad from foreign gays who'd visited the States and had fun in the bathouses. The first cases in women surfaced. Blood and secretions. Junkies swapping needles. And then the first proven blood transfusion cases, blood given by people who later went down with immune deficiency.

And the band played on.

Eventually of course, after many struggles and false starts and allegations of cheating, the virus was found, by Bob Gallo in America and Luc Montaignier in Paris.

It fulfils Koch's postulates (as Koch himself later modied them) and there is no trace, no scintilla, no smidgen of doubt that once infected with this particular virus (whatever name you want to give it) that the victim's immune system will be gradually eroded over between 2 and 15 years until they develop the opportunistic infections characteristic of the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.

[gingernut]

Gingernut. Your thoughts?

Your hooked up on process boys. Concentrate on outcome.

[cessna_nam]

I can't believe, someone can even start a thread like this. I have lived in Africa quite some time and everyday people are dying because of HIV/AIDS. What do you want to say, that they are just imagining that they are sick? And all the orphans lost there parents because of what? You can easily say those things sitting in the Western world not knowing anyone actually affected, but once your colleagues have to go to a funeral almost every weekend, because someone died of AIDS and they have to take care of the children of their sisters, cousins, sons etc., you wouldn't even think about something that silly.
I really don't know what to say, it's hard to believe that people can be that ignorant. Sorry for the hard words, but I can't keep quiet on someting like that.

[Re-entry]

Sort of proves the point.....

[gingernut]

Well it does sound like there is a lot of information out there, so I'm not against a debate per se.

Of course contributors are passionate about their side of the argument, and views tend to sometimes become polarised. (With the resulting usual personal pprune jibes).

Our job is to seperate the wheat from the chaffe, on behalf of our clients/patients/community. Its not always that easy to critically apraise what's out there- there are aproximately 12,000 (medical) articles published per year alone.

It isn't easy but it is possible to sort out the good from the rubbish, with some degree of scientific rigor.

Epidemiology isn't an exact science. On a scale of 1-10 (1 = exact science, 10 = mumbo jumbo), epidemiology probably rates as 3, the stuff I've seen so far rates as 8.

To suggest that docs/medics are resistant to change, in light of revised evidence, isn't, in my experience, true on the whole. (they do it daily).

And they're usually awkward/assertive/maverick enough to carry it off.

[cessna_nam]

Excuse me? It proves what point??
Why do you reduce the discussion to spell checking instead of concentrating on the topic? If you don't have something meaningful to say you rather criticize someone's spelling?? I guess it rather proves my point of you being ignorant....

[Re-entry]

Good point. Breathalyser attached next post.

[BelfastChild]

Hi xraf. It wasn't really the '101' I objected to but rather the assertion that virus all "act the same". Just wondering where that came from......

[2close]

It's getting beyond a joke when Blue Peter joins in the conspiracy............. I think not!

Are we really to believe that this mainstay of children's television for over 40 years is also in cahoots with the drug companies / media in their apparent attempt to raise funds for the dying children in Malawi, which is really a cynical front for obtaining cash from the masses to buy new cars for BBC producers, whilst the presenters enjoy holidays in the African sunshine?

I don't think so.

Apparently, a child in Malawi dies every 9 minutes of AIDS (a fact I as ashamedly unaware of) and the presenters emotions seem genuine to me.

2close

[gingernut]

It's getting beyond a joke when Blue Peter joins in the conspiracy

Remember the spaghetti tree's?

[2close]

Without wishing to digress from the thread; Ginernut, you have now aroused my curiosity....spaghetti trees????

[gingernut]

Millions of kids up and down the country were fascinated by a BP report, describing the new discovery of spaghetti trees- an unlimited supply of the kids favourite for years to come.

I seem to remember the report was made on ........ April the First.:)





And I was never sure we always got the full facts of John Noakes- his eyes were a bit too close together for my liking.

[Mac the Knife]

Secure in his coughs-and-colds practice, never having seen someone dying of AIDS, Gingernut chooses to trivialise the matter.

Admittedly the medpages of PPRuNe are hardly going to influence world opinion, but it does seem a pity really.

Ah well...

[gingernut]

"Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward."

Kurt Vonnegut circa 1960.

Try it Mac, it's good for the soul:)

[2close]

Yes, Mac, a trifle unnecessary considering all Gingernut was doing was responding directly to a question posed by myself which I admitted was off thread but was in itself related to the subject of conspiracy theories, Blue Peter and AIDS, albeit tongue-in-cheek.

I don't think anyone is trivialising the seriousness of AIDS and HIV, apart from those who would like us to believe that it's a myth perpetuated by the pharmaceutical industry. A friend of mine is a toxicologist in the industry; I'll have to find out what the inside word is.......so if our colleague gets a visit late at night from the MIB, well........


2close

[redsnail]

Re-entry,

You asked if any one knew someone with HIV/AIDS.

I do. One dear friend is living with HIV and has done so since the early 90's. He's fortunate enough to live in a 1st world country with access to first rate medical care and standard of living. 2 other friends haven't been so lucky. They contracted the virus in the early part of the 80's and have died.

[zerozero]

I don't think anyone is trivialising the seriousness of AIDS and HIV, apart from those who would like us to believe that it's a myth perpetuated by the pharmaceutical industry.

Try to discern the finer points of the argument.

No one is saying that AIDS is a myth. The disease exists. The question is: What's causing it? That's the crux of the matter.

[j_robi]

on the topics of AIDS myths, im wondering where a specifc myth about AIDS originated- ie. the myth that having sex with a virgin can cure the virus

can anyone refer me to a quote that has advocated this cruel lie?
i was in Zambia a few months ago and saw the extent of thr devastating pandemic. I was told that a South African president had started the spread of this myth, is this true?
thanks for any help in advance

[Mac the Knife]

I stopped looking at this thread for a few days because I found it too depressing, perhaps, as gingernut suggests, I was suffering a sense-of-humour failure. I was also a bit ashamed of losing my temper with him, for which I'm sorry. Having seen so much AIDS and living in a country where our president's incredulity has caused and is causing so many avoidable deaths tends to make one a bit passionate.

"The disease exists. The question is: What's causing it? That's the crux of the matter."

This is what so exercised the minds of the public health workers in the early '80's when so many people suddenly began suffering from (and expiring from) opportunistic infections secondary to failure of their cellular immune systems. As I tried to explain, because of the devastating implications, many other causes apart from a transmissible agent were explored before this was accepted.

The epidemiology of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome points remorselessly towards a transmissible agent. The victims come from all countries and all different walks of life, they eat different foods, they live in different climates, the degree of environmental pollution around them varies wildly, they are well-fed or malnourished. The one common factor they all have is that they have come into intimate contact, sexually or otherwise, with body fluids from someone who already has, or subsequently goes on to develop this syndrome. These are facts that it is impossible to deny.

So logical deduction would suggest that whatever is causing this illness is a transmissible agent. And if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck and walks like a duck then the chances are good that it IS a duck.

No other hypothesis, be it environmental toxins, food, soil, genetics, Coca-Cola or antibiotics even begins to fit the epidemiology as well as a transmissible agent. Thus most reasonable people would accept that the most likely cause IS a transmissible agent.

Very roughly, transmissible agents can be divided into bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa. Bacteria, fungi and protozoa are easy to find if you know where to look for them and the obvious place to look here would seem to be in body fluids. Despite intensive searches, no such bacterium, fungus or protozoan has been found.

That leaves viruses. So do we know of any viruses that selectively infect white blood cells, as the hepatitis virus infects liver cells? Yes we do, and quite a few. Among others, Mononucleosis (kissing disease, glandular fever)is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)[discovered in 1964], which infects B cells (B-lymphocytes), producing a reactive lymphocytosis and the atypical T cells (T-lymphocytes).

To cut a long story short, eventually, by dint of much searching, a virus WAS identified that was only found in individuals suffering from this mysterious immunodeficiency. Cell-free filtrates from these people were able to infect and kill T-cell cultures in the lab. Cell-free filtrates from these people inadvertently given to previously healthy haemophiliacs by Factor VIII injections resulted in them developing the same immunodeficiency syndrome.

Thus it would seem reasonable to suppose that by killing their T-cells this virus was responsible for the immunodeficiency. By extension, infection with this virus is responsible for human immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and it would therefore seem reasonable to call this variant retrovirus the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

We now have a good explanation as to why people develop these severe immunodeficiency symptoms. OK, some folk don't believe that the virus exists or that if it does, that it is merely a harmless coincidental. Indeed, the thousands of electron-microscope photos from labs all over the world COULD have been faked, but it does sound just a little improbable. Again, presnce of the virus COULD be just a coincidence, but it's a very large coincidence indeed, so one has to ask oneself just how likely it is.

The thing is, that if you say, "OK, it isn't a virus, so what is it then?", it isn't good enough to say, "Uh, I dunno, but I'm sure it isn't a virus!". The evidence that HIV exists, is real and causes AIDS is so overwhelming that in order to discard it you need pretty conclusive evidence that it IS actually caused by whatever else you say it is. As is said, "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proofs" and such proofs (or even half-way believable alternative explanations) are sadly lacking.

An earlier poster very reasonably asked, "Why then, do there seem to be such a number of seemingly reputable scientists who disagree?". Part of the answer is that the numbers are actually quite small and generally their reputability does not survive close scrutiny. Ms. Culshaw is certainly extremely attractive, but her modest CV - http://math.uttyl.edu/rculshaw/vitae.htm - hardly inspires confidence in her ability to speak authoritatively on the matter. Her principal published paper - http://www.jpands.org/vol11no4/culshaw.pdf - makes some bold excursions into immunology/virology (which as a mathematician, is not her field), but overall, merely re-makes the acknowledged point that HIV has a complex and varying relation to it's host that is difficult to model satisfactorily. And stating that she has been involved in HIV research for ten years is a little invidious when she only received her mathematics B.Sc. in 1996.

As to others, it's hard to know why they maintain their positions as the evidence against them mounts year by year. Certainly people like Rasnick (our president's AIDS guru) and Duesberg now make more money from speaking than they ever did in their relatively undistinguished scientific careers. Several, like Root-Bernstein, have now recanted - he now says, "The denialists make claims that are clearly inconsistent with existing studies. When I check the existing studies, I don’t agree with the interpretation of the data, or, worse, I can’t find the studies [at all]."

But there will always be people who believe bizarre things, maintaining their beliefs in the face of all evidence and against all odds.

And finally, as regards the virgin cure myth, as good a short summary as any is here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_and_AIDS_misconceptions#Sexual_intercourse_with_a_virgin _will_cure_AIDS - "Virgin cleansing is a myth that has occurred since at least the sixteenth century, when Europeans believed that they could rid themselves of a sexually transmitted disease by transferring it to a virgin through sexual intercourse. Although the exact prevalence of this is unclear, it is believed to occur worldwide (Meel, 2003; Groce et al., 2004). Doing so does not cure the infected person, but it will expose the victim to HIV infection, potentially spreading the disease further. This myth has gained considerable notoriety as the perceived reason for certain recent sexual abuse and child molestation occurrences (Meel, 2003)".

Our (RSA) current epidemic of child/baby/toddler violations is a pretty nasty consequence of this. I've seen these injuries and they're quite horrific.

Well there you have it, and as Ripley says, "Believe it or not".

:ok:

Mac

[zerozero]

Indeed, the thousands of electron-microscope photos from labs all over the world COULD have been faked, but it does sound just a little improbable. Again, presnce of the virus COULD be just a coincidence, but it's a very large coincidence indeed, so one has to ask oneself just how likely it is.

First, thank you for a very sober statement of your position.

Second, I'm not a conspiracy nut (and I'm not saying that's what you suggested) so I don't necessarily believe that results were FAKED. I'm pretty cynical (and skeptical) but I'm not that bad yet.

However, I do think there is sloppy science and good science.

Once again, I have no position on this issue except that I do think pharmaceutical companies are driven more by profit than any humanitarian motivation--there's that cynicism again.

When you made the list of possible transmissible agents (bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa) you didn't mention the drug itself.

Isn't it possible that these patients are, in fact, infected with HIV and they are, in fact, sick, BUT the drug is making them SICKER?

That's my question.

Is it such a stretch of the imagination to think that the old cliche' has come true in the AIDS battle: The cure is worse than the disease!

Thanks in advance for another sober response.

[Re-entry]

Mac. Another wonderful informative post.
I will soon post regarding the futility of cancer research.
.

[Mac the Knife]

Isn't it possible that these patients are, in fact, infected with HIV and they are, in fact, sick, BUT the drug is making them SICKER?

No.

The vast majority of people dying from AIDS are not receiving, nor have they ever received antiretroviral medication.

See the UNAIDS Report for 2006 on the epidemic - http://www.unaids.org/en/HIV_data/2006GlobalReport/default.asp

Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the world's pharmaceutical companies are deliberately marketing drugs to shorten the lives of AIDS sufferers, they are bought and distributed by governmental health organisations.

Many of these health organisations are not very bright or effective, but that they should not have remarked on the fact that patients given antiretrovirals died sooner than those who did not, rather strains credibility. The other possibility, that these same heath organisations are in league with their own governments to kill a significant portion of their population is even less likely.

That UNAIDS, the World Health Organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, The Red Cross etc. are also, in their entirety, dupes or paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry, strains credulity a little too far.

Many of the population in the worst affected countries are not very sophisticated, but they are not entirely stupid. Their demands for access to antiretrovirals and the large black-market for ARVs is fuelled by their empirical observations that ARVs make people with AIDS live longer and feel better.

Many ARVs have significant side effects, but I can assure you from personal experience that patients are more than willing to put up with them in exchange for fewer and milder opportunistic infections and a greater feeling of wellbeing.

ARVs do not cure AIDS (or HIV infection), but they make the disease a great deal more bearable.

Private doctors also treat AIDS patients and prescribe ARVs to patients who can afford them. They would not do so if they saw that their patients lives were shortened or their quality of life decreased. These patients are not stupid either, and would not long continue taking a drug if they could not see and feel the benefits. Admittedly this is anecdotal, but I have two friends who have been on ARVs for 12 and 10 years respectively - both lead essentially normal lives.

I cannot guess at the motives of people who disseminate such untruths, but they are either misinformed or malicious.

[zerozero]

<<Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the world's pharmaceutical companies are deliberately marketing drugs to shorten the lives of AIDS sufferers, they are bought and distributed by governmental health organisations.>>

--Deliberately shortening lives?

<<...the World Health Organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, The Red Cross etc. are also, in their entirety, dupes or paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry...>>

--Dupes or paid agents?

Like I said, I'm no conspiracy nut so I'm not sure where all this cloak and dagger stuff comes from.

I made two assertions:

1) Pharmaceutical companies are profit-driven.

2) There's sloppy science and there's good science.

I mean, after all, even blood letting worked some of the time.

And on that note, I think I'm just about finished with this topic.