Archive for December, 2008
Is AIDS a New Disease?
Contrary to popular belief, AIDS is not new and is not a disease. AIDS is a new name given by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to a collection of 29 familiar illnesses and conditions including yeast infection, herpes, diarrhea, some pneumonias, certain cancers, salmonella, and tuberculosis. (1) These illnesses are called AIDS only when they occur in a person who also has protective disease fighting proteins or antibodies that are thought to be associated with HIV.
A person is diagnosed with AIDS if they have one or more of the 29 official AIDS-defining conditions and if they also 
testpositive for antibodies associated with HIV. In other words, pneumonia in a person who tests HIV positive is AIDS, while the same pneumonia in a person testing HIV negative is pneumonia. The clinical manifestations and symptoms of the pneumonia may be identical, but one is called AIDS while the other is just called pneumonia.
None of the 29 AIDS illnesses are new, none appear exclusively in people who test positive for HIV antibodies, and all have documented causes and treatments that are unrelated to HIV. Prior to the CDC’s creation of the AIDS category, these 29 old diseases and conditions were not thought to have a single, common cause.
Although most of us associate AIDS with severe illness, on January 1, 1993, the CDC expanded the definition of AIDS to include people with a T cell count of 200 or less who have no illness or symptoms. (2) This new definition caused the number of AIDS cases in America to double overnight. (3) Since 1993, more than half of all new AIDS cases diagnosed each year have been among people who have no clinical symptoms or disease. (4)
It is only through expansions of the AIDS definition that the number of new AIDS cases has grown. The definition of AIDS in America has been expanded three times since 1981. Although each addition to the definition has caused significant increases in the number of new AIDS cases, AIDS had leveled off in all risk groups by 1992 and has been declining steadily since the second quarter of 1993.
If the CDC had continued to use the first three definitions of AIDS, new American AIDS cases for 1997 would have totaled just over 10,000, making AIDS a relatively insignificant health problem. Using the 1993 definition, 21,000 new cases of AIDS were added to the year’s total, and of these, more than 20,000 cases were counted among people with no symptoms or illness. (5)
In 1998, the CDC ceased providing information on what AIDS diseases or definitions qualify people for an AIDS diagnosis each year. This means that the public will no longer know how many new AIDS cases are diagnosed in people who are not ill. (6)
Another surprising fact is that you can receive a diagnosis of AIDS without ever having an HIV test. This is referred to as a “presumptive diagnosis.” According to CDC records, more than 62,000 American AIDS cases have been diagnosed with no HIV test. (7) Even though the only difference between “pneumonia” and “AIDS” is a positive HIV test, the test is not required for a diagnosis of AIDS.
Since AIDS is not a disease, and there is no single, universally accepted definition for AIDS, the conditions that are called AIDS vary from country to country. For example, Canada’s Laboratory Centre for Disease Control (LCDC) does not recognize the American T cell count criteria for AIDS. (8) This means that 182,200 American AIDS patients — more than 25% of all people in the US ever diagnosed with AIDS — would not have AIDS if they were in Canada.
The World Health Organization (WHO) employs two distinctly different definitions for AIDS in Africa, neither of which conform to the criteria for American AIDS or Canadian AIDS. The diagnostic definition most commonly used in Africa does not require an HIV test, only that a patient have at least one of three major clinical symptoms (weight loss, fever and/or cough), plus one “minor sign” such as generalized itching or swollen glands. (10)
Before bringing us AIDS, the CDC attempted to sound similar alarms over relatively insignificant health matters. In 1976, after five soldiers stationed at a military base in New Jersey contracted the flu, CDC officials announced an imminent influenza epidemic. Their news releases predicted an outbreak that could wipe out as many as 500,000 Americans within a year. Congress responded to the CDC warnings by diverting millions of federal dollars into an emergency vaccine program, and following appeals from US President Gerald Ford, multitudes of concerned Americans received Swine Flu shots. However, no epidemic ever materialized and no substantiation for the notion of a life-threatening pig virus was ever found. Instead, more than 600 people were left paralyzed by the vaccine which also caused nearly 100 deaths. (11)
The CDC raised public concern again the next year with harrowing predictions for Legionnaire’s Disease. Following massive government research efforts and relentless media reports of a new contagious disease, the form of common pneumonia dubbed “Legionnaire’s” ended up taking the lives of less than 30 people nationwide. It was later discovered that 20 to 30 percent of Americans are positive for the Legionella bacteria, a common microbe found in water systems throughout the country. (12) The CDC’s preoccupation with contagious illness contrasts with the fact that all infectious diseases combined take the lives of less than 1% of modern day Americans. (13)
Defined Terms
AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
Antibodies: Proteins that are manufactured by lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) to neutralize an antigen (foreign protein) in the body. Bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms commonly contain many antigens; antibodies formed against these antigens help the body neutralize or destroy the invading microbe. Antibodies may also be formed in response to vaccines.
HIV: Human Immunodeficiency Virus; the alleged cause of AIDS.
T cell: One of the two main classes of lymphocytes. T cells play an important role in the body’s immune system.
Virus: An organism comprised mainly of genetic material within a protein coat. Depending on the type of virus, the nucleic acid may be either DNA or RNA; in retroviruses, the nucleic acid is RNA. Viruses are incapable of activities typical of life such as growth, respiration and metabolism. Outside living cells, viruses are wholly inert.
Microbe: A minute form of life; a microorganism, especially one that causes disease.
forward to A Closer Look at HIV
Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?
There is no proof that HIV causes AIDS. In fact, all the epidemiological and microbiological evidence taken together conclusively demonstrates that HIV cannot cause AIDS or any other illness. The concept that AIDS is caused by a virus is not a fact, but a belief that was introduced at a 1984 press conference by Dr. Robert Gallo, a researcher employed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (14)
HIV is a retrovirus, a type of virus studied meticulously during two decades of federal health programs that centered around the search for a cancer virus. The idea of contagious cancer was a popular notion in the 1960s and 70s. Since retroviruses have no cell-killing mechanisms, and cancer is a condition marked by rapid cell growth, this type of virus was considered a viable candidate for the cause of cancer. However, healthy people live in harmony with an uncountable number of harmless retroviruses; some are infectious while others are endogenous, produced by our own DNA. (15) Few, if any, retroviruses have been shown to cause disease in humans.
In the 1980s when the CDC began to direct its attention to AIDS, Gallo and other cancer researchers switched their focus from cancer to the newly identified dilemma called AIDS, and the same government scientists who led the quest for a cancer virus began to search for a virus that could cause AIDS.
On April 23, 1984, Gallo called an international press conference in conjunction with the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). He used this forum to announce his discovery of a new retrovirus described as “the probable cause of AIDS.” Although Gallo presented no evidence to support his tentative assumption, the HHS immediately characterized it as “another miracle of American medicine…the triumph of science over a dreaded disease.” (16)
Later that same day, Gallo filed a patent for the antibody test now known as the “AIDS test.” By the following day, The New York Times had turned Gallo’s proposal into a certainty with front page news of “the virus that causes AIDS,” and all funding for research into other possible causes of AIDS came to an abrupt halt. (17)
By announcing his hypothesis to the media without providing substantiating data, Gallo violated a fundamental rule of the scientific process. Researchers must first publish evidence for a hypothesis in a medical or scientific journal, and document the research or experiments that were used to construct it. Experts then examine and debate the hypothesis, and attempt to duplicate the original experiments to confirm or refute the original findings. Any new hypothesis must stand up to the scrutiny of peer review and must be verified by successful experiments before it can be considered a reasonable theory.
In the case of HIV, Gallo announced an unconfirmed hypothesis to the media who reported his idea as if it were an established fact, inciting government officials to launch new public health policies based on the unsubstantiated notion of an AIDS virus. Some attribute these violations of the scientific process to the atmosphere of terror and desperation that surrounded the notion of an infectious epidemic.
The data Gallo used to construct his HIV/AIDS hypothesis were published several days after his announcement. Rather than supporting his hypothesis, this paper revealed that Gallo was unable to find HIV (actual virus) in more than half of the AIDS patients in his study. (18) While he was able to detect antibodies in most, antibodies alone are not an indication of current infection and are actually an indication of immunity from infection.
His paper also failed to provide a credible explanation as to how a retrovirus could cause AIDS. Gallo suggested that HIV worked by destroying immune cells, but 70 years of medical research had shown that retroviruses are unable to kill cells, and he offered no proof that HIV differed from other harmless retroviruses. In fact, all evidence to date conclusively demonstrates that HIV — like all retroviruses — is not cytotoxic.
The focus of questions about HIV quickly shifted from how it could cause AIDS to who found the now valuable viral commodity after Dr. Luc Montagnier 
of the Pasteur Institute in France accused Gallo of stealing his HIV sample. A congressional investigation determined that Gallo had presented fraudulent data in his original paper on HIV, and that the virus he claimed to have discovered had been sent to him by Montagnier. (19) Negotiations were conducted between the French and American governments to establish discovery and patent rights. (20) These ended in a compromise, with Montagnier and Gallo sharing credit as the codiscoverers of HIV and ownership rights to the HIV test. Montagnier has since stated that he does not believe HIV alone is capable of causing AIDS. (21)
Since 1984, more than 100,000 papers have been published on HIV. None of these papers, singly or collectively, has been able to reasonably demonstrate or effectively prove that HIV causes AIDS. Although Gallo claimed that HIV caused AIDS by destroying the T cells of the immune system, 20 years of cancer research confirmed that retroviruses are not cytotoxic. In fact, there is still no evidence in the scientific literature demonstrating that HIV is able to destroy T cells, directly or indirectly.
Comparing HIV to Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV), the known cause of chicken pox, highlights some of the ways in which HIV defies rules of science and logic.
HIV is the only virus that is said to cause a group of diseases caused by other viruses and bacteria rather than causing its own disease. AIDS experts also say that HIV is able to cause cell depletion — loss of immune cells — at the same time it causes cell proliferation or cancer.
Although more research money has been spent on HIV than on the combined total of all other viruses studied in medical history, there is no scientific evidence validating the hypothesis that HIV is the cause of AIDS, or that AIDS has a viral cause. A good hypothesis is defined by its ability to solve problems and mysteries, make accurate predictions and produce results. The HIV hypothesis has failed to meet any of these criteria.
Hundreds of scientists around the world are now requesting an official reevaluation of the HIV hypothesis. For more information on their efforts visit the web of Professor Peter Duesberg.
Defined Terms
Endogenous: Produced from within; originating within an organ or part.
DNA: The commonly used abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid, the principle carrier of genetic information in almost all organisms. DNA controls a cell’s activities by specifying and regulating the synthesis of enzymes and other proteins in the cell.
Hypothesis: An unproven assumption tentatively accepted as a basis for further investigation and argument.
Cytotoxic: Able to kill or damage cells.
Is the Rate of HIV Increasing?
HIV is not on the rise. According to the most recent CDC estimates, the number of HIV positive Americans has not 
increased once since the HIV test was introduced into general use in 1985.
In 1986, the CDC began promoting the estimate that 1 million to 1.5 million Americans were HIV positive. (33) Media and AIDS organizations employed this figure to make the disturbing claim that one in every 250 people in the nation was infected with HIV. Four years later, official estimates were lowered to between 800,000 and 1.2 million, and in 1995, following an investigation by NBC Nightly News, the CDC again decreased their official estimate to between 650,000 and 900,000, a figure still promoted today. (33, 34)
While the number of HIV positives has failed to grow, it is important to note that rates of venereal diseases such as chlamydia, genital herpes, gonorrhea and syphilis have increased throughout most of the AIDS epidemic and far surpass cases of AIDS. These numbers contradict the idea that “safe sex” has prevented HIV from spreading.
Does HIV Take Years to Cause AIDS?
For more than a decade, scientists throughout the world agreed that HIV had a latency period, a time during which it remained inactive before becoming active and causing immune destruction. The notion of a latency period was used to explain why HIV did not behave like all other infectious, disease-causing microbes that cause illness soon after infection, and why significant quantities of active HIV could not be found in people who test HIV positive.
At first, HIV’s latency period was thought to be a few months long. (82) It was then revised to one year, then two, then three and five years. (83) As greater numbers of people who tested HIV positive did not develop AIDS as predicted, the latency period was extended to ten or fifteen years, and more recently, even to entire lifetimes. (84)
Just when HIV’s growing latency period became the focus of mounting scrutiny, it was replaced with the concept of constantly active HIV that replicates and destroys cells at spectacular rates, a hypothesis known as “viral load.” The media, government health agencies, AIDS organizations, and most AIDS doctors have uncritically accepted the viral load concept as fact. Proponents of viral load assert that HIV is rampant and destructive from the very moment of infection, and that the immune system of a person who tests positive is engaged in a perpetual struggle to keep the virus under control. They claim that HIV, after five, ten or fifteen years, eventually wins the battle by wearing out the immune system.
Viral load relies entirely on conclusions drawn from polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, and is based on the erroneous notion that the fragments of genetic material PCR finds correspond to counts of actual virus. In fact, PCR is unable to detect actual virus; it only amplifies genetic material associated with HIV (RNA or DNA) and the “load” produced by the test is a mathematical calculation, not a count of infectious virus. When standard methods of virus counting are applied, a viral load of 100,000 has been shown to correspond to less than ten infectious units of HIV, an amount that is far too small to induce illness. (85)
Contrary to popular belief, PCR cannot determine what portion, if any, of the genetic material it detects represents infectious virus. In fact more than 99% of what PCR measures is noninfectious. (86) Dr. Kary Mullis, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize for inventing PCR is a member of The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis and refutes those who claim that HIV is the causative agent of AIDS. (87)
Viral loads have been measured in people who are HIV negative and in AIDS patients who test HIV antibody positive but have no HIV. (88) Low levels of viral load have not been correlated with good health, with absence of illness or high T cell counts while high viral loads do not correspond with low T cells or sickness. (89) For more information, please see What’s Up with Viral Load? on page 36.
Defined Terms
Polymerase chain reaction (PCR): A technique used to detect the presence of minute quantities of genetic material in the blood through replication of DNA or RNA.
Is the “AIDS Test” Accurate?
Many people are surprised to learn that there is no such thing as a test for AIDS. The tests popularly referred to as “AIDS tests” do not identify or diagnose AIDS and cannot detect HIV, the virus claimed to cause AIDS. The ELISA and Western Blot tests commonly used to diagnose HIV infection detect only interactions between proteins and antibodies thought to be specific for HIV — they do not detect HIV itself. And contrary to popular belief, newer “viral load” tests do not measure levels of actual virus in the blood.
All HIV antibody tests are highly inaccurate. One reason for the tests’ tremendous inaccuracy is that a variety of viruses, bacteria and other antigens can cause the immune system to make antibodies that also react with HIV. When the antibodies produced in response to these other infections and antigens react with HIV proteins, a positive result is registered. Many antibodies found in normal, healthy, HIV-free people can cause a positive reading on HIV antibody tests. (23) Since the antibody production generated by a number of common viral infections can continue for years after the immune system has defeated a virus — and even for an entire lifetime — people never exposed to HIV can have consistent false positive reactions on HIV tests for years or for their entire lives.
The accuracy of an antibody test can be established only by verifying that positive results are found in people who actually have the virus. This standard for determining accuracy was not met in 1984 when the HIV antibody test was first created. Instead, to this day, positive ELISAs are verified by a second antibody test of unknown accuracy, the HIV Western Blot. Since the accuracy for HIV antibody tests has never been properly established, it is not possible to claim that a positive test indicates a current, active HIV infection or even to know what it may indicate. (24) In one study that investigated positive results confirmed by Western Blot, 80 people with two positive ELISAs that were “verified” by a positive Western Blot tested negative on their next Western Blot. (25)
Antibodies produced in response to simple infections like a cold or the flu can cause a positive reaction on an HIV antibody test. A flu shot and other immunizations can also create positive HIV ELISA and Western Blot results. Having or having had herpes or hepatitis may produce a positive test, as can vaccination for hepatitis B. Exposure to microbes such as those that cause tuberculosis and malaria commonly cause false positive results, as do the presence of tapeworms and other parasites. Conditions such as alcoholism or liver disease and blood that is altered through drug use may elicit the production of antibodies that react on HIV antibody tests. Pregnancy and prior pregnancy can also cause a positive response. The antibodies produced to act against infection with mycobacterium and yeast, infections which are found in 90% of AIDS patients, cause false positive HIV test results. (26) In one study, 13% of Amazonian Indians who do not have AIDS and who have no contact with people outside their own tribe tested HIV positive. (26) In another report, 50% of blood samples from healthy dogs reacted positively on HIV antibody tests. (27)
Prior to the notion that HIV causes AIDS, viral antibodies were considered a normal, healthy response to infection and an indication of immunity. Antibodies alone were not used to diagnose disease or predict illness. Before HIV, only ELISA and Western Blot tests that had been shown to correspond with the finding of actual virus were used to diagnose viral infections. There is no credible scientific evidence to suggest that these rules should be disregarded to accommodate HIV.
In addition to being inaccurate, HIV antibody tests are not standardized. This means that there is no nationally or internationally accepted criteria for what constitutes a positive result. Standards also vary from lab to lab within the same country or state, and can even differ from day to day at the same lab. (28) As HIV test kit manufacturers acknowledge, “At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of antibodies to HIV-1 and HIV-2 in human blood.” (29)
The following chart illustrates just some of the varying criteria for what is considered a positive HIV Western Blot, and shows how someone could actually switch from positive to negative simply by changing countries. The differing standards for positive HIV tests are not limited to the locations and agencies mentioned here — criteria vary from lab to lab and results are open to interpretation. An inconclusive test can become positive or negative based on an individual’s sexual preference, health history, zip code or other survey data.
The various proteins used in HIV Western Blot tests are arranged into bands that are divided into three sections. These three sections are represented by the abbreviations ENV, POL and GAG. Proteins in the ENV section correspond to the outer membrane or “envelope” of a virus; POL refers to proteins common to all retroviruses which include polymerase and other enzymes; GAG stands for “group specific antigen” and includes proteins that form the inner core of a virus. The protein bands in each section are indicated by the letter “p” and are followed by a number which describes the molecular weight of that protein measured in daltons. For example, p160 is an ENV protein that weighs 160 daltons.
It is important to note that none of the proteins used in HIV antibody tests are particular to HIV, and none of the antigens said to be specific to HIV are found only in persons who test HIV positive. In fact, many people diagnosed HIV positive do not have these “HIV antigens” in their blood.
As mentioned previously, newer HIV “viral load” tests do not isolate or measure actual virus. The tests’ manufacturers clearly state that viral load “is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection.” (31) In fact, viral load tests have not been approved by the FDA for diagnostic purposes and have not been verified by virus isolation. For more information on viral load tests, please see What’s Up With Viral Load? on page 36. Of course, the most outstanding problem with any HIV test is that HIV has never been demonstrated to cause AIDS.
Defined Terms
Antigen: A substance that can trigger an immune response, resulting in the production of antibodies as part of the body’s defense system against infection and disease. Many antigens are foreign proteins (those not found naturally in the body); they include microorganisms, toxins, and tissues from another person used in organ transplantation. Antigen stands for ANTIbody GENerating.
False Positive: Indicates infection where none exists.
Should You Bet Your Life on an HIV Test?
“The only way to distinguish between real reactions and cross-reactions is to use HIV isolation. All claims of HIV isolation are based on a set of phenomena detected in tissue culture, none of which are isolation and none of which are even specific for retroviruses…We don’t know how many positive tests occur in the absence of HIV infection. There is no specificity of the HIV antibody tests for HIV infection.”
Bio/Technology Journal, 11:696-707, 1993
“The HIV antibody tests do not detect a virus. They test for any antibodies that react with an assortment of proteins experts claim are specific to HIV. The fact is that an antibody test, even if repeated and found positive a thousand times, does not prove the presence of viral infection.”Val Turner, MD, Continuum magazine, Vol 3 No 5, 1996
“HIV tests are notoriously unreliable in Africa. A 1994 study published in the Journal of Infectious Diseases concluded that HIV tests were useless in central Africa, where the microbes responsible for tuberculosis, malaria and leprosy were so prevalent that they registered over 70% false positive.”
Sacramento Bee, October 30, 1994
“With public health officials and politicians thrashing out who should be tested for HIV, the accuracy of the test itself has been nearly ignored. A study last month by Congress’ Office of Technology Assessment found that HIV tests can be very inaccurate indeed. For groups at very low risk — people who don’t use IV drugs or have sex with gay or bisexual men — 9 in 10 positive findings are called false positives, indicating infection where none exists.”
US News & World Report, November 23, 1987
“People who receive gamma globulin shots for chicken pox, measles and hepatitis could test positive for HIV even if they’ve never been infected. The Food and Drug Administration says that a positive test could be caused by antibodies found in most of America’s supply of gamma globulin. Gamma globulin is made from blood collected from thousands of donors and is routinely given to millions of people each year as temporary protection against many infectious diseases. Dr. Thomas Zuck of the FDA’s Blood and Blood Products Division says the government didn’t release the information because ‘we thought it would do more harm than good.’”
USA Today, October 2, 1987
“Two weeks ago, a 3-year-old child in Winston Salem, North Carolina, was struck by a car and rushed to a nearby hospital. Because the child’s skull had been broken and there was a blood spill, the hospital performed an HIV test. As the traumatized mother was sitting at her child’s bedside, a doctor came in and told her the child was HIV-positive. Both parents are negative. The doctor told the mother that she needed to launch an investigation into her entire family and circle of friends because this child had been sexually abused. There was no other way, the doctor said, that the child could be positive. A few days later, the mother demanded a second test. It came back negative. The hospital held a press conference where a remarkable admission was made. In her effort to clear the hospital of any wrongdoing, a hospital spokesperson announced that ‘these HIV tests are not reliable; a lot of factors can skew the tests, like fever or pregnancy. Everybody knows that.’”
Celia Farber, Impression Magazine, June 21, 1999
“A Vancouver woman is suing St. Paul’s Hospital and several doctors because she was diagnosed as carrying the AIDS virus, when in fact she wasn’t. In a BC Supreme Court writ, Lisa Lebed claims when she was admitted to the hospital in late 1995 to give birth to a daughter, a blood sample was taken without her consent. It revealed she was HIV positive, so she gave up the baby girl for adoption and decided to have a tubal ligation. A year and a half later, while undergoing AIDS treatment, she found out she was not HIV positive. The explanation she was given was a lab error. She says because of the negligence of the hospital, she’s now sterile and has lost a daughter.”
Woman Sues St. Paul’s, CKNW Radio 98, June 10, 1999
forward to Viral Load and T Cell
What’s Up with Viral Load?
One glaring problem with the HIV/AIDS hypothesis is that researchers have been unable to find enough HIV (actual virus) in people who test positive to explain compromised health. Even among patients suffering from the most severe AIDS-defining illnesses, HIV is never detected in quantities that could cause depletion of immune cells.135
In order to cause harm, a virus needs to infect at least one-third of all target cells, which in the case of AIDS are the T cells of the immune system, and kill these cells faster than they can be replaced. For example, with hepatitis or a common cold or flu, the responsible virus is readily found in quantities measuring millions or billions per milliliter (mL) of blood, and nothing can stop the virus from infecting all susceptible cells in the body except antiviral immunity. With AIDS, an average of only ten HIVs are found per mL of blood, and the normal sign of antiviral immunity, antibodies, are said to indicate illness.136
Another inconsistency with the idea that HIV causes AIDS is that HIV is non-cytotoxic. This means that when HIV replicates, it does not kill the host cell. Other viruses that cause disease are cytotoxic; they destroy the cell they infect when they reproduce, and rapidly claim 30% to 60% of target cells. Since the acceptance of HIV as the cause of AIDS in 1984, AIDS researchers have proposed a multitude of hypotheses about HIV’s ability to provoke cell destruction through elaborate and as yet unproven indirect mechanisms while searching in vain for ways to explain how a non-cytotoxic virus can eliminate T cells and cause AIDS.
For almost a decade, the latency notion was used to justify some of the paradoxical qualities attributed to HIV. Experts claimed that HIV was a slow virus that remained inactive or latent for a period of time before becoming active and destroying immune cells. This idea gained universal acceptance despite the fact that significant quantities of HIV were not found when HIV should have been at its most active when AIDS patients are acutely ill.137
The loose ends of the HIV hypothesis were finally thought to have been tied in 1995 with two papers by a team of AIDS researchers led by Dr. David Ho of the Aaron Diamond Research Center and Dr. George Shaw of the University of Alabama. Ho and Shaw offered what they characterized as indisputable evidence that HIV is active from the moment of infection, and present in quantities sufficient to cause massive T cell destruction.138 They claimed to find an average of over 100,000 HIVs per mL of blood in AIDS patients by using a virus counting method based on the new technology of polymerase chain reaction (PCR).
Their papers asserted that HIV has always been present and active in enormous quantities, but that its presence and activity could not be measured by standard means, and that scientists were looking for the wrong thing to measure. Until 1995, the method for finding and quantifying a virus was by isolation of the virus. This simple, direct method has been successfully applied to every virus except HIV. Instead, proponents of viral load assert that scientists must look for fragments of genetic materials rather than isolating the virus.
PCR is an innovative technique that enables scientists to take a sample of blood containing an otherwise undetectable number of DNA or RNA molecules and produce detectable quantities of fragments from these few original molecules. Forbes magazine described PCR as “biotechnology’s version of the Xerox machine.” Dr. Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel Prize for this revolutionary creation, explains that “PCR makes it possible to identify a needle in a haystack by turning the needle into a haystack.”139 While PCR has provided many realms of science and industry with an effective new tool, its application to AIDS research has been far more misleading than useful.
Ho and other researchers employed PCR to find, not HIV, but fragments of RNA, the genetic material in the viral core. Using the logic that each HIV virus particle contains two HIV RNAs, they assumed that every two RNA pieces indicated by PCR must correspond to one HIV viral particle, and they called the sum of what is copied, multiplied, counted, and divided, “viral load.”
Viral load has been celebrated in the press as an astounding breakthrough in AIDS research, and has won Dr. David Ho numerous awards including Time magazine’s 1996 Man of the Year. Viral load is also the measure by which new AIDS drugs are deemed effective. Protease inhibitors were approved for use based solely on their alleged ability to reduce “viral load.” The media, AIDS organizations and most AIDS doctors have uncritically accepted the viral load hypothesis as fact.
According to the viral load hypothesis, billions of HIV are busy infecting CD4 T cells every day from the moment a person is exposed, and killer immune cells (CD8 T cells) continuously destroy billions of CD4 cells that host active HIV infection, while new, uninfected CD4s quickly replace the billions destroyed by the killer cells.140 Eventually, after one to 15 years of this microscopic battle, the virus wears out the immune system allowing AIDS-defining illnesses to develop. Proponents of viral load claim that the reason this incredible activity was never noticed before is that the CD4s replicate so quickly, few HIV infected T cells ever make it into the blood where they can be measured.140
However, the viral load hypothesis fails to answer two important and unsettling questions: If billions of HIV are present, why is PCR necessary to find them? And if PCR is the only way HIV can be detected, how is it possible for scientists to verify the results of PCR?
Another problem with viral load is that PCR detects and multiplies single genes, not virus, and most often only fragments of genes. When it detects two or three genetic fragments out of a possible dozen complete genes, this is not proof that all the genes or the complete genome are present, or that a complete HIV viral particle is present.141 Further, a person can carry a whole retroviral genome in their cells for an entire lifetime without ever producing a single virus.
The FDA has not approved PCR viral load for HIV screening or for diagnostic purposes. The CDC acknowledges that the specificity and sensitivity of PCR are “unknown” and that “PCR is not recommended and is not licensed for routine diagnostic purposes.”142 The viral load test manufacturers’ literature warn “the test is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV…”143
Although no research has specifically studied PCR tests on HIV negative subjects, the medical literature records many incidents of detectable levels of viral load found in persons who are HIV negative.144
A group of AIDS researchers from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health
recently lamented the inaccuracies of PCR viral load, describing the test as unreliable and expensive when several attempts to verify PCR produced conflicting results.145 A recent paper by AIDS reappraiser Dr. David Rasnick published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry demonstrates that at least 99.8% of what viral load tests measure are noninfectious virus particles, and notes that PCR should be replaced by a test that measures actual HIV in blood plasma.146
Although PCR viral load tests are unable to distinguish infectious virus from bits of noninfectious genetic fragments, are incapable of measuring actual virus, and are not approved for diagnostic use, the tests are being used by AIDS doctors every day to diagnose infection with HIV and as a basis for prescribing long-term treatment with protease inhibitors, chemotherapy compounds like AZT, powerful antibiotics and other drugs. PCR is routinely used to diagnose HIV infection in newborns, and as justification to treat infants with AZT, Bactrim and other potent chemicals.
PCR measurements do not correlate with amounts of T cells, with clinical symptoms of AIDS, or with levels of co-culturable HIV.147 In the only published study that compares viral load results with the detection of HIV by co-culture, a method of detection that is less precise than actual isolation, 53% of HIV positive AIDS patients with detectable levels of viral load, many with loads topping 200,000 and 300,000, had zero co-culturable HIV.147
A number of mainstream AIDS experts refute Ho’s portrait of wildly multiplying and abundant HIV. Their objections have been published in Nature, Lancet and other science journals. Some, like former government AIDS researcher Dr. Cecil Fox dismiss Ho’s ideas as “unconfirmed mathematical speculation.”148 According to orthodox AIDS expert Dr. Michael Asher, “the numbers [of the viral load theory] just don’t add up.”148 Another prominent AIDS specialist, Dr. Mario Roderer, considers the viral load model of HIV pathogenesis a dead issue since “several well-designed and informative studies provide the final nails in the coffin for…the two Nature papers,” while noted AIDS researcher Dr. Jay Levy warns that “medicine suffers when one is misled by numbers that are not relevant to the clinical problem involved…”149 Other critics have been more blunt, characterizing this new hypothesis of HIV as “a viral load of crap.”150
Defined Terms
Pathogenesis: The process by which a disease or disorder originates and develops. Pathogenesis applies particularly to the cellular and physiological events involved in the process.
Co-culture: Detection of a virus in an artificial laboratory environment that contains replicating microorganisms or cells mixed with plasma or immune cells.
Genome: A Biochemical map or blueprint; the complete set of hereditary factors as contained in a set of chromosomes.
Where’s the HIV?
In accepting Gallo’s AIDS virus hypothesis, researchers and physicians took for granted that Gallo had isolated a unique retrovirus, HIV, and that the proteins he used to construct the HIV antibody tests came from pure isolates of the virus. Since the announcement of Gallo’s discovery of HIV however, a number of scientists have raised serious questions about what have been accepted as HIV isolates.
According to their claims, HIV, unlike other viruses, has never been isolated as an independent stable particle.151 These scientists assert that electron microscope pictures or micrographs of all HIV isolates originally produced by Gallo and by other AIDS researchers since show some objects that look like retroviruses along with a number of other microbial objects that clearly are not viruses, and that among these, the retrovirus-like objects called HIV are only observed in cell cultures that have been stimulated by certain chemicals.152
Isolation is the only direct and unambiguous evidence of a virus, and isolation of a virus from the uncultured plasma of a patient is the only proof that a person has an active viral infection.153 Cultures are artificial laboratory environments that contain replicating microorganisms or cells.
Normally, true isolation can be achieved without difficulty as people with an active viral infection will have lots of viruses in their plasma. This is not the case with HIV. In fact, there is no evidence that anyone has ever found what is called HIV in fresh plasma. Instead, AIDS researchers are only able to find what they call HIV when plasma or immune cells (co-cultures) and stimulating chemicals are added to cultures. Since artificially stimulated cultures can induce viral DNA to produce viruses even when the patient’s plasma contains no virus, finding virus under these circumstances does not constitute evidence that patient plasma contains virus. True virus isolation requires using fresh, uncultured plasma.
When virus can be isolated from the fresh plasma of 99% of people who test positive in validation studies, the test can be considered 99% accurate. When claims of co-culture isolation are used to evaluate positive HIV test results, the accuracy is 0 to 10% for patients with no AIDS symptoms, and about 40% for patients who have symptoms of AIDS-defining illness. 154
The true accuracy of HIV antibody tests has never been established by determining what percentage of people who test positive on HIV antibody tests have actual HIV that can be isolated from their fresh, uncultured plasma. This, along with the fact that what is called HIV has been observed only in artificial laboratory growths stimulated by chemical agents, has led some scientists to conclude that HIV has never been isolated and that all HIV tests are invalid.
(Readers interested in further information on the isolation of HIV are encouraged to examine articles referenced at www.virusmyth.com.)
Defined Terms
Plasma: The natural solution that remains when white blood cells are removed from the blood.
forward to Risk Realities
Are We All at Risk for AIDS?
It is often said that everyone is at risk for AIDS, but the actual numbers suggest otherwise. After nearly two decades, AIDS cases in this country have remained 94% confined to the originally identified risk groups. (46)
The CDC places 88% of American AIDS patients in two categories: men who have sex with men or injection drug users. Just 10% of Americans diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual contact as their only risk and of these, close to half (4%) mention sexual relations with users of injection drugs.
The classification of AIDS cases by risk group relies entirely on voluntary responses to CDC survey questions, a method of gathering information that is well-documented to be a source of distortion and invalidity. (47) In fact, a number of public health studies show that upon further investigation, 65% to 99% of people with AIDS who initially claim heterosexual contact as their only risk or who claim no risk at all, later acknowledge using injection drugs and/or having male homosexual relations. (48)
Although men who have sex with men is the leading risk group for an AIDS diagnosis, this information is not intended to suggest that gay male sex is a cause of AIDS, or that all men who have sex with men are at risk. There are specific health-compromising factors associated with, but that are not unique to, men who have sex with men that are known to cause acquired immune deficiency. Please see If It’s Not HIV, What Can Cause AIDS? on page 51 for further information and clarification. It is also important to note that AIDS risk groups are limited to the six categories defined by the CDC and that the CDC accepts all survey responses regarding risks as accurate.
The risk of AIDS is also disproportionately divided among men and women in America, with 85% of cumulative AIDS cases confined to males.
(50) In contrast to this fact, HIV testing conducted by the US military since 1985 reports near equal numbers of HIV positive results among male and female new recruits.51 If HIV were the cause of AIDS, we should expect a near equal number of AIDS cases among men and women. Instead, women have never represented more than 15% of all AIDS cases nationwide.
In a contagious epidemic, healthcare professionals working among the ill usually run the highest risk of contracting a disease. During the entire AIDS epidemic however, only 25 cases of AIDS have been reported among healthcare workers who claim occupational exposure as their only risk, and none of these 25 cases have been described in the medical literature. (52) Although the CDC reports that 75% of healthcare workers are women, 23 of these 25 AIDS cases (92%) are men.54 Also of interest is the fact that there are no emergency medical technicians, paramedics, surgeons or dentists among the 25 occupational AIDS cases reported by the CDC. (53) In comparison to AIDS, 1,000 cases of hepatitis infection are reported each year among healthcare workers who attribute their illness to occupational exposure. (54)
Questioning AIDS
Why are 88% of Americans confined to two risk groups?
Why are 85% of AIDS cases in the U.S. found among males?
If AIDS is a widespread health risk, why has it not spread into the general population?
Since health care workers are at high risk in any epidemic, why are there only 25 claimed cases of occupational AIDS among health care workers after nearly two decades of AIDS?
If AIDS is a sexually transmitted disease (STD), why do cases of syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea far outnumber AIDS?
Since female prostitutes are at high risk for all STDs, why are they not a risk group for AIDS?
While AIDS is often cited as the primary health risk for America’s 26 million teens, according to the CDC, new AIDS cases among US teenagers in 1998 totaled 293 — a drop from the previous year’s total of 403. (55) The sum total for AIDS among Americans age 13 to 19 for the entire period known as the AIDS epidemic is 3,432 cases. In Canada, just two new cases of teenage AIDS were reported in 1997 while that same year Canadian teenagers accounted for half of all 4,442 new infections of gonorrhea. (56)
Pediatric AIDS is a popular topic in national news and is the focus of many multimillion dollar fund-raising efforts even though there are fewer than 400 cases of AIDS among children age five and under for each year of the AIDS epidemic. (57) Studies have shown that as many as 85% of pediatric AIDS cases in the US and Europe occur among children born to mothers who admit to using IV drugs during pregnancy. (58) New cases of pediatric AIDS — along with AIDS cases in all categories — have been decreasing steadily since 1993, and in 1998, only 10 states reported more than 10 new diagnoses of pediatric AIDS.
All AIDS cases among children age 12 and under during the AIDS epidemic total less than 8,500. Compare this to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) which during the same period of time has taken the lives of more than 80,000 children, all under one year of age. (59)
Actuarial calculations demonstrate that the chance of testing HIV positive following a single act of unprotected vaginal intercourse with a person outside a high risk group is one in seven million, which is less than the chance of being struck by lightning, less than the chance of dying of food poisoning at a fast-food restaurant, less than being injured in an elevator ride, and about the same odds as being killed in a traffic accident while traveling a distance of 10 miles. (60)
Is AIDS Our Biggest Health Threat?
In 1998, deaths in Americans with AIDS reached 410,800. This is the total for the entire time known as the AIDS epidemic, a period which spans nearly two decades. (36) Included in this total are deaths from any cause at all — accidents, noncontagious illnesses, drug side effects, etc. — in people diagnosed with AIDS. (37)
Without dismissing AIDS deaths or the profound suffering of AIDS patients and their loved ones, it is important to give this total some comparative perspective: Over 400,000 Americans die each year of cancer, and there are more than 700,000 annual deaths in this country from cardiovascular disease. (38)
During the period known as the AIDS epidemic, 14 million people died of heart disease — 13.5 million more than have ever died of AIDS — while 9 million succumbed to cancer, which is 8.5 million more than those counted for AIDS. >From 1981 to 1998, car accidents killed over 800,000 Americans — almost twice as many as have ever died of AIDS. Suicides during the AIDS epidemic surpass AIDS fatalities by more than 100,000. (38) Loss of life from adverse reactions to properly prescribed and correctly taken pharmaceuticals outnumber AIDS deaths in America by more than 1.3 million. (39)
Although most people associate the word “epidemic” with AIDS, one of the last truly devastating outbreaks in history, the flu of 1918, took the lives of 20 million people worldwide in a single year. (40) After almost 20 years, diagnosed cases of AIDS throughout the world total less than 2 million, and included among these are many people who remain alive and well. (41)
So why do we think of enormous numbers whenever we think of AIDS? Unlike cancer and most other conditions, AIDS reports typically use cumulative totals. In other words, a current year’s cases or fatalities are added to the sum total of all AIDS diagnoses or deaths that have ever occurred, automatically creating a larger figure and the impression that AIDS constantly rises.
Also, estimates and projections are frequently used in place of actual AIDS numbers. For example, the 1999 United Nations AIDS Report estimates that 2.5 million people throughout the world died of AIDS in 1998 while the November 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) Weekly Epidemiological Record reports that only 2.2 million people worldwide have ever received a diagnosis of AIDS. (42) The UN estimate is widely promoted while the actual WHO case count is rarely publicized.
A little reported fact is that AIDS is not among the ten leading causes of deaths for Americans. In annual death rates, AIDS lags behind motor vehicle accidents, non-vehicular accidents and adverse events, flu and pneumonia, diabetes, septicemia, Alzheimer’s disease, and homicide. (43) It is often reported that AIDS is the leading cause of death among Americans aged 25 to 44. This statement inspires great fear and concern until carefully examined.
Only two-tenths of one percent (0.2%) of persons in this age group die of any cause each year, and among these, deaths from AIDS represent about three 
one-hundredths of one percent (0.03%). However, since AIDS constitutes the leading category for fatalities at about 15% (85% of people within this age range die of other causes), it is possible to call AIDS the leading killer. (44) For more information on the use of AIDS statistics, see Public Health, Public Relations and AIDS on page 45.
Portraying AIDS as our biggest health threat gives AIDS funding priority over problems that affect far greater numbers of Americans. According to findings by the Institute of Medicine, NIH research expenditures in 1996 averaged $1,160 for every American who died of heart disease, $4,700 for each one who died of cancer, and more than $43,000 for every death in a person diagnosed with AIDS. (45)
forward to Africa in Perspective