Natural Cures For HIV

Archive for the ‘What you really need to know about HIV/AIDS’ Category

Is AIDS Devastating Africa?

According to the 1999 World Health Organization (WHO) report, the total number of actual diagnosed AIDS cases on the African continent is about equal to the total for AIDS in America even though Africa, with its 650 million people, has more than two times the population of the USA. (61) Africa is often cited as a worst case example of what could happen in America despite figures that demonstrate that 99.5% of Africans do not have AIDS, and among Africans who test HIV positive, 97% do not have AIDS. (62)

Unlike in the United States, AIDS in Africa may be diagnosed based on four clinical symptoms — fever, involuntary loss of 10% of normal body weight, persistent cough, and diarrhea — and HIV tests are not required. (63) The four clinical AIDS symptoms are identical to those associated with conditions that run rampant on the African continent such as malaria, tuberculosis, parasitic infections, the effects of malnutrition, and unsanitary drinking and bathing water. These symptoms are the result of poverty and other problems that have troubled Africa and other developing areas of the world for many decades.

The idea that AIDS originated in Africa remains popular although there has never been scientific or epidemiological evidence to substantiate this notion. News reports suggesting that HIV began in Africa as Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) are based on elaborate speculation about species-jumping viruses rather than reliable evidence.

SIV induces only flu like symptoms in some experimental laboratory monkeys and does not cause any of the 29 official AIDS-defining illnesses. Unlike HIV infection which is said to cause illness only years after exposure and despite the presence of protective antibodies, SIV will cause illness within days of infection or not at all, and wild monkeys retain SIV antibodies throughout their lives without ever becoming ill. Only monkeys in unnatural circumstances — lab animals with undeveloped immune systems who are injected with large quantities of SIV — become ill. (65)

In a recent attempt to advance the hypothesis of an SIV/HIV connection, researchers used the results of nonspecific antibody tests to claim that three chimpanzees captured in West Africa had been infected with HIV/SIV through sexual transmission. Efforts to isolate actual virus from the animals revealed that two of the three chimps had no virus, while the researchers admitted that the virus found in the one was not even closely related to HIV. Their report also failed to explain why the “infected” animals did not transmit HIV/SIV to any of the 150 other chimps living in the colony where they were kept, or why their mates and offspring did not test positive. (66)

While Africa is the frequent subject of dramatic media reports, actual numbers of diagnosed AIDS cases on the continent are relatively unremarkable. For example, 1981 through 1999 cumulative AIDS cases for South Africa, the new epicenter of AIDS, total just 12,825. (67)

Wednesday November 25, 1998

Kenya Slow to Face Up to AIDS Scourge

by Rosalind Russell

NAIROBI, KENYA (Reuters) – According to U.N. estimates, a Kenyan dies of AIDS every three minutes…

Unfounded estimates, rather than unprotected sex, are responsible for the alarming number of AIDS cases said to occur in Africa. United Nations’ AIDS estimates were cited as the inspiration for a recent news report claiming “a Kenyan dies of AIDS every three minutes.” (68) If Kenyans were dying at this rate, there would be more than twice as many dead Kenyans in just one year than have ever been actually diagnosed with AIDS in the entire period of time known as the AIDS epidemic.

In 1987, the WHO estimated there were 1 million HIV positives in Uganda, the nation then considered the epicenter of AIDS. Ten years later, WHO estimates for Uganda remained unchanged at 1 million HIV positives while the total of actual AIDS cases through 1999 are less than 55,000 in this country of more than 20 million people. (69)

AIDS is not, as many believe, Africa’s primary health threat; several million cases of tuberculosis and malaria are reported each year in Africa while total AIDS cases on the continent for the entire AIDS epidemic hover just above one-half million. For example, in 1996 there were 170,000 cases of tuberculosis reported in Ethiopia and less than 850 cases of AIDS; South Africa’s tuberculosis cases topped 91,000 compared to 729 diagnosed cases of AIDS. In fact, AIDS is not the leading cause of illness or death in any African country. (70)

Because of the high incidence of exposure to malaria, tuberculosis and other diseases that produce false positive results on HIV tests, many mainstream scientists question the validity of HIV testing in Africa. (71)

forward to Mothers, Babies & AIDS

Do Pregnant Women Who Test HIV Positive Give Their Babies AIDS?

At least 75% of babies born to HIV positive mothers will test HIV negative without medical intervention. (90) Studies have shown that for properly nourished HIV positive expectant mothers receiving regular prenatal care, over 90% of their children test negative with no drug therapy. (91) Mainstream medical experts acknowledge that children need up to 18 months to develop their own immune response and discard the antibodies passed on to them from their mothers, and note that HIV testing before 18 months of age does not yield conclusive results. (92) Despite this widely accepted fact, several states require mandatory HIV antibody testing for newborns in public hospitals. (93)

As explained previously, HIV antibody tests do not indicate the presence of actual virus and are unable to determine if the antibodies it detects are even HIV antibodies. Newer “viral load” tests do not detect actual virus and are not approved for diagnostic use. Even when administered after 18 months of age, neither test can determine if a child is actually infected with HIV. Despite these facts, the tests are routinely used to diagnose HIV infection in newborns and children. The results of these inaccurate and improperly applied tests are the basis for all claims regarding transmission rates of HIV from mother to child, and for declaring that a baby “has HIV.”

Expectant mothers who test HIV positive are commonly advised to abort or to take AZT, a highly toxic chemical compound originally created for use as a cancer treatment. AZT works by blocking the formation of DNA — a process essential to sustaining life — and destroying all growing cells, particularly new cells produced in the bone marrow where the immune system is generated. AZT is a known carcinogen, mutagen, and teratogen, and until recently it was contraindicated for use during pregnancy. (94)

AZT was approved for expectant mothers based on the conclusions of a single trial, ACTG076, a trial sponsored by AZT’s manufacturer. According to this study, transmission rates of HIV were 25.5% for infants of untreated mothers and 8.3% for children born to the AZT-treated women.

The results of ACTG076 have proved impossible to duplicate in further studies on pregnant women treated with AZT. In fact, other reports have shown that expectant mothers using prenatal multivitamins experienced lower rates of transmission than the lowest rate of those treated with AZT. One study determined that use of vitamin A correlates with a transmission rate of 7.2%. (95)

The effects of AZT on expectant mothers include muscle deterioration, severe anemia, nerve damage, liver damage, muscle wasting, lymphoma, acute nausea, diarrhea and dementia. The effects of AZT on developing infants include misshapen heads, extra fingers, triangular faces, albinism, misplaced ears, cavities in the chest, webbed fingers, anemia, spontaneous abortion, chromosomal damage, and can result in the need for therapeutic abortions of severely deformed fetuses. (96)

Routine HIV antibody testing for pregnant women raises particular concerns as pregnancy itself can cause positive HIV test results. (97) Although cross-reactions due to pregnancy are documented in the medical literature and acknowledged by test manufacturers, HIV antibody tests have become part of standard prenatal screening, and are even mandatory in some states.

A fundamental problem of routine screening using even the most accurate test is that low risk groups will have the highest rates of false positives. This occurs because the accuracy of a test deteriorates when administered to populations among which the microbe being tested for is rarely found. Since the incidence of HIV positivity among American women who describe themselves as risk-free is 0.01%, a consequence of routine HIV screening of all expectant women is widespread false positive results. (98) One study of premarital HIV screening reported that HIV antibody tests with an alleged specificity of 99.8% and sensitivity of 98.3% had an accuracy of less than 15% when administered to this low risk group. (99) And these figures are based on invalid and/or loose definitions of specificity, sensitivity, and accuracy that do not involve tests validated by identifying actual HIV infections.

Another troubling consequence of requiring HIV tests for pregnant women is the emerging issue of obligatory drug treatment. While CDC guidelines state that “discussion of treatment options should be non-coercive, and the final decision to accept or reject AZT for herself and her child is the right and responsibility of the woman,” such discussions rarely include objective data on the toxic effects of AIDS drugs or any information that would support a decision to reject them. (100) Most health practitioners promote the notion that a positive test indicates infection with a lethal virus, and portray AIDS medication as particularly urgent and necessary for expectant women.

Although the CDC says that “a [mother's] decision not to accept treatment should not result in punitive action,” suggested standards of care have been legally mandated in some instances and children have been taken from parents who choose not to accept treatment. (100) In one recent case, public health officials in Eugene, Oregon intervened when an HIV positive mother declined AZT therapy for her HIV negative infant son. (101) As a result of her decision, both parents were charged with neglect, and the state took legal custody of their healthy newborn boy who was given six weeks of AZT treatment. (102)

Another HIV positive mother in Bangor, Maine faced charges of “serious parental neglect” for declining to provide her son with AIDS drugs that had previously caused him harm. (103) Her four-year-old boy, HIV positive since birth, had become so anemic during 10 weeks of AIDS treatment as to require blood transfusions, and experienced a host of adverse effects that left him unable to walk and in almost continual pain. (104) His mother discontinued treatment after noting that his health returned when she stopped giving him the drugs. After a District Court found in her favor, an appeal was brought before the State Supreme Court challenging the decision. In this case, the mother was granted the right to keep her son off AIDS medications and in her custody. (105)

As this book went to press, authorities in Montreal, Canada seized the children of a woman who has been HIV positive, healthy and unmedicated for 13 years after she declined HIV treatment for her two boys. The Quebec Superior Court agreed to delay administration of drugs to her sons, ages three and seven, pending the determination of a custody hearing. The mother told the court that HIV treatments are experimental and highly toxic, and that her family has been healthy without using drugs. (106)

Whose Benefits Outweigh the Risks?
Documented effects of AZT, also known as Zidovudine, Retrovir-Zidovudine,
and ZDV. AZT is also one of the two active ingredients in Combivir.

“HIV-1 infected children with mothers who were treated with zidovudine had a ‘higher probability of developing severe disease’ compared with untreated children. These children also had a higher probability of severe immune suppression and lower survival.”

Reuters Health, June 2, 1999 on a report in the
May 28, 1999 issue of AIDS 13:927-933

“Concerns are being fueled by a study from a team at the National Cancer Institute near Washington, DC. In the journal AIDS (Vol 13 p 919), the researchers report that AZT is incorporated into the DNA of white blood cells in people treated with the drug-including pregnant women and their babies. This is because AZT mimics thymidine, one of the four nucleosides that make up the genetic code. Olivero and her colleagues warn that the changes may increase the chance of developing cancer.”

Michael Day, New Scientist, June 26, 1999

“In reviewing the frequency of birth defects in this population [of HIV positive women taking AZT during pregnancy] we noted eight birth defects (10%) out of 80 live births.”

Kumar et al, Zidovudine Use in Pregnancy: A Report on 104 Cases and the
Occurrence of Birth Defects, Journal of AIDS, Vol. 4, 1994

“Concerns stem from a study led by StÅ1?2phane Blanche of the Necker Hospital in Paris. He has examined the cases of around a thousand pregnant women with HIV and found that eight gave birth to babies who, though HIV-negative, suffered from a neurodegenerative condition that kills its victims in infancy. The condition highlighted by Blanche is thought to be caused by abnormalities in mitochondria, the energy ‘factories’ within our cells. The babies’ mothers had all taken a combination of the drugs AZT and 3TC from week 32 of their pregnancy. This condition is an extraordinarily rare mitochondrial disorder that you might expect to see in only 1 in 10,000 or 1 in 100,000 births.”

Michael Day, New Scientist, June 26, 1999

“At present, data regarding the effects of ZDV use on vertical [mother to child] transmission rates are inconclusive and incomplete. In addition, the long-term effects of ZDV use during pregnancy and after birth on the woman and any resulting child are yet to be discovered. The possibility has not yet been ruled out that this ‘risk-reducing’ measure may not be effective and may prove detrimental to the health of both mother and child.”

Bennett, Mandatory Testing of Pregnant Women and Newborns:
A Necessary Evil? AIDS/STD Health Promotion Exchange, 1998

“A total of 172 participants died [169 while taking AZT, 3 while on placebo]…The results of Concorde do not encourage the early use of zidovudine in symptom-free HIV-infected adults…Representatives of the Wellcome Foundation who were also members of the Coordinating Committee have declined to endorse this report.”

Concorde Coordinating Committee, Concorde: MRC/ANRS Randomised Double-blind
Controlled Trial of Immediate and Deferred Zidovudine in Symptom-free
HIV Infection, The Lancet, Vol 343, April 9, 1994

“Following combination antiretroviral therapy administered during pregnancy, most HIV positive mothers and their children developed one or more adverse events, according to the results of an observational study.

“Dr. Lorenzi’s group evaluated 37 pregnant women with HIV infection and the 30 infants who had been born at the time of the study. All of the women received two reverse transcriptase inhibitors, and 16 women were also given a protease inhibitor. Among the infants, the most common adverse event was prematurity (10 infants), followed by profound anemia (8 infants). The investigators also noted two cases of cutaneous angioma, two cases of cryptorchidism, and one case of transient hepatitis. Two infants whose mothers were on triple therapy with a protease inhibitor developed non-life-threatening intracerebral hemorrhage. One infant, also exposed to triple therapy, developed extrahepatic biliary atresia.”

Reuters, January 1, 1999

“New York researchers report a case of severe anemia in a newborn infant that was probably caused by treatment of the HIV positive mother with the antiretroviral combination of zidovudine, lamivudine and zalcitabine. The male infant, who was pale and developed respiratory distress soon after birth, ‘…was diagnosed with high output congestive heart failure secondary to profound anemia.’

“Dr. Wendy J. Watson of the University of Rochester Medical Center and colleagues ruled out infection, nutritional deficiencies, congenital leukemia and congenital red blood cell aplasia in the child. ‘The cause of the life-threatening anemia in our infant is presumed to be utero bone marrow suppression by one or more of the antiretroviral agents administered to the mother,’ they report in the May issue of The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal.”

Reuters, June 8, 1998

“…the estimated probability of developing [Non-Hodgkin's] lymphoma [in patients taking AZT alone, or in combination] by 30 months of therapy was 28.6%…and by 36 months, 46.4%.”

Pluda et al, Development of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in a Cohort of
Patients with Severe Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
Infection on Long-Term Antiretroviral Therapy, Annals of
Internal Medicine, 1990; 113(4): 276-282

“The long-term consequences of in-utero and infant exposure to zidovudine are unknown. The long-term effects of early or short-term use of zidovudine in pregnant women are also unknown.”

Retrovir, Canadian Pharmaceutical Association Compendium
of Pharmaceuticals, 1997; 1357-1361

“A long-term federal government study of AZT begun in August 1991 involving 839 children at 62 hospitals was halted. An independent committee monitoring the trial recommended it be halted because ‘the children receiving AZT had more rapid rates of disease progression, AIDS-related infections, impaired neurological development and death.’”

The New York Times, February 14, 1995

“Proven Power For HIV: Because of her baby, because she vows to be there for her family, because her kids remind her to take her combination of anti-HIV medicines everyday…There are no adequate and well-controlled studies of Combivir [lamivudine/zidovudine tablets] in pregnant women. Combivir should be used in pregnancy only if the potential benefits outweigh the risks.”

Glaxo-Wellcome ad for Combivir, April 1999

AZT’s manufacturer Glaxo-Wellcome reported $2.35 billion in annual
sales of AZT and their other antiviral drugs for 1997. (107)

Defind Terms

Carcinogen: Any agent capable of causing cancer such as asbestos fibers and high-energy radiation. Chemicals form the largest group of carcinogens.

Mutagen: Any physical or chemical agent that, when applied to a group of living cells, increases the rate of mutation in those cells. Mutation is a change in the genetic material within a cell which can give rise to cancer or a hereditary disease.

Teratogen: An agent that causes physical abnormalities in a developing embryo or fetus. The drug thalidomide is an example of a teratogen. Drug regulating agencies usually refuse to license drugs for use during pregnancy if they have been found to be teratogenic for any species.

Contraindicated: A line of medical treatment, such as drug therapy or surgery, that is inadvisable or unwise due to any factor in a patient’s condition.

Are New Drug Treatments Responsible for Declines in AIDS?

Government officials, AIDS organizations and the media unanimously agree that the recent decline in AIDS cases and deaths is an unprecedented occurrence due to a new combination of drugs that include protease inhibitors, chemicals said to block the replication of HIV. However, a careful look behind the headlines reveals that there is no medical evidence to support these popular claims about the protease inhibitor “combo cocktails.”

The declines in AIDS deaths attributed to combination therapies actually began several years before protease inhibitor drugs became available for general use. (72) Since the first protease inhibitor received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in December of 1995, a more likely explanation for decreased deaths would be the change in the official AIDS definition adopted in 1993 which allows HIV positives with no symptoms or illness to be diagnosed with AIDS. Since 1993, more than half of all newly diagnosed AIDS cases are counted among people who are not sick. (73)

CDC data also show that decreases in AIDS cases commonly ascribed to “AIDS cocktails” preceded the introduction of the new drug treatments by three full years. According to the CDC’s HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, AIDS diagnoses peaked in the third quarter of 1991, increased once in the first quarter of 1993 as a result of the 1993 expanded AIDS definition, and have dropped each year since. (75)

News stories of AIDS patients who rise from their death beds to run marathons after taking the drug cocktails, are just that — stories. In science, such unverified accounts are dismissed as anecdotal, a term that comes from the Greek word anekdotos, meaning unpublished. None of the anecdotal tales of recoveries attributed to new drug combinations have been substantiated by controlled studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals, a fact acknowledged in the fine print of pharmaceutical advertisements:

“At this time there is no evidence that Ziagen will help you live longer or have fewer of the medical problems associated with HIV or AIDS.”

“It is not yet known whether Crixivan will extend your life or reduce your chances of getting other illnesses associated with HIV.”

“At present, there are no results from controlled clinical trials evaluating the effects of Viramune [on] the incidence of opportunistic infections or survival.”

“There have been no clinical trials conducted with Combivir.” (76)

Incomplete and inconclusive data from one 1997 study are used to claim that mortality rates are lower among HIV positives treated with protease inhibitors. (77) This particular trial was prematurely terminated before statistically significant results could be obtained, and no placebo control comparing unmedicated HIV positives was used, no recurrent AIDS-defining illnesses that appeared among participants were recorded (except recurrent pneumonia), and the results mentioned in the final report are for only a small fraction of the patients enrolled in the study. (78) Current pharmaceutical ads use this study to declare that their new drugs are “proven to help people with HIV live longer, healthier lives” while simultaneously admitting that “because the study ended early, there was insufficient data to determine [the drug's] statistical impact on survival.” (79)

While there is no evidence that cocktail therapies produce clinical health benefits, well-documented side effects include headache, fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, oral lesions, abdominal pain, severe fatigue, sexual dysfunction, general ill feeling, skin rashes, a hypersensitivity reaction that can result in sudden death, nervous system damage, enlarged liver, liver failure, kidney stones, kidney sludge, physical deformities including hunchbacks, sunken cheeks, and “stick-like limbs,” diabetes, heart disease, “unmasking” of various opportunistic infections including CMV retinitis (a viral infection which can lead to blindness), and spontaneous bleeding in hemophiliacs. (80)

Media reports attributing declines in AIDS to protease inhibitor cocktails often neglect to mention the high rate of drug failure or the considerable number of HIV positives who either quit the new combinations because of intolerable side effects or have never taken them at all. Recent studies place drug failure rates at 50% while others note that as many as 40% of participants drop out of protease inhibitor drug trials due to adverse effects, and as AIDS expert Dr. James Curran laments, “fewer than 10% of US AIDS patients have access to and are on the new wonder drugs.” (81) For more information on the chemotherapy/protease inhibitor drug combinations known as HAART, please see A Sobering Report on AIDS Cocktails and What’s Up with Viral Load? on pages 32 and 36.

AZT: A Drug in Search of a Disease

AZT is not a new drug. It was not created for the treatment of AIDS and is not an antiviral. AZT is a chemical compound that was developed — and abandoned — over 30 years ago as a potential chemotherapy treatment for cancer. (108) Prior to the first AIDS drug trials in 1986, AZT had never been administered to human beings.

Chemotherapy works by killing all growing cells in the body. Many cancer patients do not survive chemotherapy due to its destructive effects on the immune system and intestines. Because of the damage it causes, chemotherapy is never used as a prevention for cancer, and is only administered for very limited amounts of time.

This label has appeared on bottles containing as little as 25 milligrams, a small fraction (1/20 to 1/60) of a patient’s daily prescribed dose of 500 to 1,500 mg. (109)

Since cancer is a condition of persistently growing cells, AZT was designed to prevent the formation of new cells by blocking development of DNA chains. In 1964, experiments with AZT on mice with cancer showed that AZT was so effective in destroying healthy growing cells that the mice died of extreme toxicity. (110) As a result, AZT was shelved and no patent was ever filed. Twenty years later, the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome (now Glaxo-Wellcome) began a campaign to remarket AZT as an anti-HIV drug based on the idea that AZT would block the formation of HIV DNA chains. Glaxo-Wellcome won FDA approval for AZT as an AIDS treatment after one highly flawed study of only four months duration. (111)

Approval of this extremely toxic chemotherapy for use by AIDS patients was based on information that suggested AZT raised levels of T cells and therefore delayed the onset of AIDS indicator diseases. The rise noted in T cells was interpreted as evidence that AZT eradicated HIV in T cells, a concept for which there is no scientific proof. Although the study was halted before any long-term effects of AZT were known, proponents established that standard treatment with AZT should be continuous and lifelong.

A multitude of independent studies conducted before and after FDA approval, including the Concorde study — the largest (1,749 subjects) and longest (three years in duration) study on AZT — determined that AZT increases T cell counts only moderately and briefly without improving health and that it does not delay onset of AIDS indicator diseases. (112)

The brief rise in T cells noted when AZT use is initiated is due to the toxic nature of the drug and to the blood system’s response to the destruction of bone marrow. (113) As AZT destroys bone marrow, the blood system attempts to correct this depletion by overproducing T cells, often creating more new T cells than the number found in a patient’s blood prior to beginning treatment. But as the source of these new T cells — the bone marrow — is killed off by AZT, the level of T cells drops lower, ultimately causing complete destruction of the immune system. Individual tolerance to, and absorption of AZT determine length of survival on this toxic compound.

Following recommendations for “early intervention,” one-third to one-half of HIV positives who develop AIDS do so only after taking AZT. Independent studies have shown that AZT actually accelerates clinical decline and decreases quality of life, at times even causing death before any AIDS-defining illnesses appear — an occurrence officially described as “death without any preceding AIDS-defining event.” (114)

The concept of “HIV mutation” has become a popular explanation for the fall in T cells observed in patients treated with AZT. Promoters of the mutation hypothesis assert that the positive effects of AZT are diminished by mutant strains of HIV that become resistant to the drug. There is, however, no scientific evidence to substantiate their claim.

In addition to destroying T cells, B cells and the red blood cells that carry oxygen throughout the body, AZT and other nucleoside analog drugs destroy the kidneys, liver, intestines, muscle tissue, and the central nervous system. Nucleoside analog drugs also interfere with the activities of mitochondria, the subcellular particles that are the energy factories of every living cell in the body. Mitochondria contain their own DNA which makes them vulnerable to the effects of nucleoside analogs.

Epivir (3TC), Zerit (D4T), Hivid (ddC) and Videx (ddI) are all nucleoside analog drugs prescribed to HIV positives as “antivirals.” All are modeled after AZT, and all work in the same manner.

Defined Terms

Granulocytopenia: Loss or reduction of the number of granulocytes, a group of white blood cells that fight infection. These white blood cells contain a variety of enzymes used to destroy infectious agents.

Pancytopenia: Generalized loss or reduction of white blood cells.

B cells: One of two principle types of lymphocytes (white blood cells). B cells are transformed into plasma cells that secrete immunoglobulins or antibodies that destroy invading microorganisms. The protective effect of immunoglobulins is called humoral immunity.

Nucleoside analog: A synthetic compound similar to one of the components of DNA or RNA. Nucleoside analogs such as AZT act as artificial caps to DNA chains which prevent real DNA units from being added. For this reason these drugs are often referred to as DNA chain terminators.

A Sobering Report on Protease Inhibitors and “Combo Cocktails”

Protease inhibitors are a new class of AIDS drugs used in conjunction with older chemotherapy compounds such as AZT and ddI. The mixture of these treatments is called a “combination cocktail” or “highly active antiretroviral therapy” (HAART). The formula is usually two parts nucleoside analog to one part protease inhibitor. According to popular belief, this mix brings new power to the old chemotherapies, and achieves what press reports and AIDS groups characterize as unprecedented and amazing results.

Approved after the fastest and most lenient review process in FDA history and immediately hailed as miraculous by mainstream media, the clinical benefits of protease inhibitor drugs remain unproved. More than four years after being released for use, there are still no reports in scientific journals that provide evidence of health improvement in patients taking these powerful drugs.

Claims of victory for protease inhibitors are based entirely on changes in surrogate markers, laboratory measurements of unsubstantiated accuracy and value in assessing actual health. In the only published report alleging higher survival rates for patients treated with protease inhibitors, the study used no unmedicated placebo controls, did not allow reporting of any recurrent AIDS-defining events except pneumonia, included no patient data, cited outcomes for less than 10% of overall participants, and was prematurely terminated after an average follow-up of 38 weeks when emerging mortality statistics favored the protease inhibitor treated patients.115 The survival outcomes between the two groups1.4% mortality among those on the new drugs, 3.1% for the old drugs have no statistical significance, a fact that forces the drug advertisements to admit “because the study was ended early, there was insufficient data to determine the statistical impact of Crixivan on survival.”117

One National Institutes of Health study of protease inhibitors, ACTG315, is portrayed as a success even though its conclusions are drawn from a trial of only 12 weeks.118 Dr. Michael Lederman, protocol chairman and author of ACTG 315 acknowledged that the study was never designed to consider a patient’s health. Instead, results were determined by changes in the surrogate marker of “viral load,” a test that does not diagnose illness, quantify active virus or measure health.

The absence of data on long-term effects of protease inhibitors has not prevented orthodox AIDS organizations who promote or provide the drugs from becoming uncritical advocates. Following the lead of the media, their focus has been on securing widespread access to the treatments rather than on examining evidence to insure they are safe and effective. AIDS doctors have also overlooked the remarkable lack of documentation in favor of the options for treatment offered by protease inhibitors. And while boldface headlines continue to assign lifesaving properties to these drugs, the tiny type in pharmaceutical ads, the ever-growing list of side effects, and the increasing number of unsuccessful experiences ranging from physical deformities to sudden death tell an entirely different story.

Protease inhibitors are assumed to work by disrupting an enzymatic link in the reproduction of HIV. Enzymes are proteins that join together or cut apart other molecules. Like all retroviruses, HIV has three enzymes: reverse transcriptase, integrase, and protease which cut proteins apart, an essential step in the reproductive process of a retrovirus. Protease inhibitors block proteases by acting as dysfunctional molecules that take the place of functional ones and inhibit the cutting apart of proteins. All retroviral enzymes are similar to various human enzymes and there are numerous human proteases, including ones required for digestion of food.

Protease inhibitors are like nucleoside analog drugs such as AZT in that they produce dysfunctional substitutes that interrupt or prevent normal processes of enzymes. While manufacturers of protease inhibitors claim that the drugs specifically target HIV protease, the growing list of side effects contradicts their assertions. Nucleoside analogs such as AZT, once promoted as specifically targeting HIV, have been shown to block the construction of vital human DNA as effectively as they block the formation of HIV DNA. It is now known that AZT, ddI and other nucleoside analogs block the DNA inside mitochondria, the subcellar particles that produce the energy required for the life of all cells.

The necessity for lifelong therapy with protease inhibitor cocktails is described as absolute, although drug manufacturers clearly state that “the long-term effects of protease inhibitors are unknown.” The need for rigorous compliance with combo therapy is a popular subject of news reports and AIDS organization seminars. Patients are required to pop as many as 30 pills a day on a 24 hour schedule some taken with food, others on an empty stomach, many that cannot be taken together and warned that without strict adherence to the dosages and times, their virus will mutate into new, drug resistant strains.

According to Dr. David Rasnick, a protease expert working outside the AIDS system, the theory of resistant HIV protease is completely unfounded. Rasnick, a pioneer in the development of protease inhibitors points out, “no one has ever published data on a resistant HIV protease found in any patient. The only inhibitor-resistant HIV proteases ever examined have been produced in the lab using genetic engineering.”119

Nevertheless, warnings about drug-resistant HIV proteases are emphasized in media reports that also speculate about new epidemics that will arise when unstoppable forms of HIV are introduced into the population. As announced by AIDS researcher Dr. Bruce Walker on a recent segment of ABC News’ Nightline, “That’s going to be the next epidemic that we’re dealing with, the transmission of drug resistant HIV viruses.”120 Such reports reinforce the notion that no matter how unbearable the side effects, a patient who quits the drugs becomes a public health menace. This science-fiction scenario has even inspired some health officials and legislators to consider mandatory treatment laws for HIV positives.121

Perhaps the greatest achievement of protease inhibitors is the new life they have given to AIDS advertising campaigns. An epidemic of posters, billboards, and full-page magazine ads urge HIV positives to “be smart about HIV” by “hitting early and hard” with medicines “proven to help people live longer, healthier lives.”122 However, many staunch supporters of AIDS pharmaceuticals are less certain. Top AIDS scientist Dr. Anthony Fauci expressed serious reservations about the use of protease inhibitors by “otherwise healthy people” in a recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “We do not know whether early intervention in asymptomatic individuals will result in a long-term clinical benefit or whether the cumulative toxicity over years of drug administration will outweigh the potential benefits.”123 Even Dr. Robert Gallo has warned that “these drugs are toxic…the longer you take the drugs, the greater the toxicity.”124 Dr. Jay Levy, another mainstream AIDS specialist, maintains that “these drugs can be toxic and can be directly detrimental to a natural immune response to HIV.”125

A careful examination of the small print in protease inhibitor ads puts the promises made by smiling models into perspective: “Since Crixivan has been marketed, other side effects have been reported including rapid breakdown of red blood cells, kidney stones and kidney failure. In some patients with hemophilia, increased bleeding has been associated with protease inhibitor use.”126 Pre-marketing side effects like diarrhea, nausea, fungal infections, bloody urine, weakness, headaches and liver inflammation were all but ignored by AIDS activists who pressured the FDA for fast-track approval.127 The list of post-marketing side effects continues to grow and contradicts earlier reports on the cocktails that proclaimed, “It’s unbelievable. There’s no toxicity. It’s a home run!”128

Documented adverse reactions presently include CMV retinitis (a viral infection that often results in blindness), diabetes, liver failure, physical deformities, renal failure, kidney sludge, skin rashes, severe exhaustion, loss of appetite, pancreatitis, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting, muscle and joint pain, neuropathy, sexual dysfunction, fever, chills, dizziness, abdominal pain, depression, sleep disorders, and sudden death.129

Other than anecdotal tales of miraculous recoveries trumpeted in the press, the lower levels of “viral load” found in some patients taking protease cocktails seem to be the only and highly questionable result of these treatments. But even “undetectable” viral loads are not an unprecedented occurrence in HIV treatment. AZT has lowered those levels for many years without resolving AIDS. A POZ magazine article recalls that “in the European Delta study, fully 40% of participants became ‘undetectable’ [for viral load] on AZT/ddI; another 5% did so on AZT alone. We have been reducing viral load to undetectable levels for a decade. But if becoming ‘undetectable’ on nucleoside combos hasn’t prevented progression to disease and death, why is ‘undetectable’ on protease combinations impervious to failure except for the fact that we haven’t followed patients long enough to see it?”130

Although the media credits “AIDS cocktails” with recent decreases in AIDS cases and deaths, CDC surveillance reports clearly show that AIDS cases and mortalities have been steadily declining since 1993 almost three years before the cocktails were approved for use.131 Some experts like David Rasnick attribute the drop in AIDS deaths that began in 1993 to the fact that over half of all AIDS cases reported since that year are among people who test HIV positive but have no illness or symptoms.132 The same reports show that AIDS cases had leveled off in 1991 and increased only once since, in the first quarter of 1993 when more conditions and illness were added to the definition of AIDS.

For some, the chorus of enthusiastic press reports about protease inhibitors recalls the release of AZT twelve years ago. “Once again, all we have are researchers talking to reporters about incomplete studies that haven’t been scrutinized by the scientific review process,” remarks Dr. Rasnick. “And the researchers involved are funded by the companies that make the drugs in question. There is no justification for the claims coming from these sources, particularly when we’ve seen it all before.”133

Declarations of success and improved survivability for AZT were based on abbreviated trials of less than six months duration that were sponsored by the drug’s manufacturer who selected for publication only those trials with seemingly favorable outcomes. Success was measured by the surrogate marker of that day, increased T cell counts, which have proved to be a temporary phenomenon at best and of questionable clinical value. As with AZT, the elation unleashed over protease inhibitors is based on unpublished manufacturers’ studies so brief they are usually measured in weeks rather than months, and on the surrogate marker of reduced “viral load,” a measurement that has not been correlated with actual health benefits. While the media persists with stories of the miraculous achievements of protease inhibitors making believers out of the concerned public and desperate AIDS patients, only time and independent research will reveal the truth about the latest “great hope” in the war on AIDS.

Defined Terms

Pancreatitis: Inflammation of the pancreas; chronic pancreatitis often causes diabetes.

Neuropathy: Any disease or disorder of the nervous system.

Surrogate Marker: A laboratory test result that takes the place of or substitutes for a clinical indication or diagnosis.

forward to If It’s Not HIV…

If It’s Not HIV, What Can Cause AIDS?

Contrary to popular belief, HIV is not necessary to explain acquired immune deficiency and the illnesses associated with AIDS. To understand why this is so, it is first necessary to understand what AIDS is. AIDS is not a new disease or illness; it is a new name or designation for 29 previously known diseases and conditions. As the NIH states in its comprehensive report on AIDS, “the designation ‘AIDS’ is a surveillance tool.”191 Since 1981, the surveillance tool AIDS has been used to track and record familiar diseases when they appear in people who have tested positive for antibodies associated with HIV.

The AIDS virus hypothesis supposes that the health problems renamed AIDS develop as a result of infection with HIV; that the virus somehow disables the body’s defense system that protects against opportunistic illness, allowing the development of one or more of 29 diseases, such as yeast infection, certain cancers, pneumonia, salmonella, diarrhea, or tuberculosis, which are then diagnosed as AIDS. However, every AIDS indicator disease occurs among people who test HIV negative, none are exclusive to those who test positive and all AIDS diseases existed before the adoption of the name “AIDS.”

Prior to the designation AIDS, these 29 diseases were not thought to have a single, common cause. In fact, all have recognized causes and treatments that are unrelated to HIV. For example, yeast infection is a widespread problem due to an imbalance of natural bacteria. The yeast infections that occur in people who test HIV positive and in people who test HIV negative are caused by the same imbalance of natural bacteria. All the opportunistic illnesses called AIDS have various, medically proven causes that do not involve HIV.

Immune deficiency can be acquired by several risk factors that are not infectious or transmitted through blood or blood products. The following factors are widely recognized causes of immune suppression, compromised health, and opportunistic infections, as documented in the medical literature for more than 70 years. Chronic, habitual and multiple exposures to these risks can cause the group of symptoms called AIDS.192 In fact, there is no case of AIDS described in the medical literature without one or more of these health risk factors.193

Physical Risk Factors

These risks include malnutrition and chronic lack of sleep. In 1985, orthodox AIDS researcher and director of NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci declared that malnutrition was the most prevalent cause of immune deficiency diseases throughout the world, particularly in developing regions such as Africa where common illnesses like measles run rampant and take millions of lives.194

The medical literature notes that malnutrition and infection are invariably linked, as one condition aggravates the other. Hunger and endemic disease are familiar problems in those countries around the globe thought to be under siege from AIDS. Intrauterine malnutrition occurs when expectant mothers are improperly nourished, and can result in prolonged, sometimes lifelong, immune suppression.195

Poverty, crowded living conditions and unclean water promote endemic disease and compromised health. The populations in many developing regions of the world are devastated by rampant infections with common microbes that pose little or no health threat to people in industrialized nations.

Infections due to malnutrition immunodeficiency are the world’s leading causes of infant and child death.195 Among citizens of industrialized nations, subclinical malnutrition, rather than starvation leads to compromised immune function, especially when combined with chronic lack of sleep.196 People who make habitual and prolonged use of certain drugs like methamphetamines, heroin and crack cocaine often suffer from malnutrition and chronic lack of sleep.

Chemical Risk Factors

Immune-compromising chemicals include pharmaceutical drugs such as AZT and other cancer chemotherapy compounds, protease inhibitors, antibiotics and steroids, and recreational drugs such as cocaine, crack, heroin, nitrites (poppers), and methamphetamines (crystal, speed).

Chemotherapy targets and destroys the bone marrow cells from which all immune cells derive. They also kill fully formed immune cells in addition to killing B cells and red blood cells.196,197 Chemotherapy destroys the digestive system by killing the cells that compose the inner lining of the digestive tract which interferes with the body’s ability to absorb and digest nutrients, causing malnutrition. Even when used very briefly, chemotherapy suppresses normal immune function, increases susceptibility to a variety of opportunistic infections, and can cause life-threatening anemia and diarrhea. AZT, ddI, ddC, D4T and 3TC are all chemotherapy compounds used as antiviral AIDS treatments.

There are many pharmaceutical drugs known to suppress the immune system, particularly when used for prolonged periods of time. Protease inhibitors cause impaired liver function and liver failure (the liver removes disease-causing toxins from the body) in addition to kidney failure, dangerously high cholesterol levels, diarrhea and other health-compromising effects. Steroids are a known cause of immune deficiency often prescribed to AIDS patients to counteract the muscle wasting caused by AZT.198 Antibiotics, especially when used habitually, can cause yeast infection and diarrhea, two conditions that can lead to malnutrition.199 Septra and Bactrim are sulfonamide antibiotics commonly prescribed for continuous, prophylactic or preventative use by HIV positives. These drugs are leftover from the days before penicillin; they do not target invading microbes as narrowly as modern antibiotics and are notorious for their side effects.200 Both cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, anorexia, bone marrow destruction, rashes, fever, hepatitis, and anemia by interfering with the production of red blood cells.201

The immunosuppressive effects of recreational drug abuse are well-documented in medical literature dating back to the turn of the century. They include pneumonias, mouth sores, fevers, endocarditis, bacterial infections and night sweats, all conditions now associated with AIDS.202 Amphetamine drugs suppress the appetite, causing chronic users to suffer from malnutrition. Many habitual users of heroin and crack do not provide themselves with adequate food, sleep, shelter and healthcare.

Prolonged exposure to common chemical toxins such as insecticides and herbicides can also impair immune function.203

Biological Risk Factors

These risks include multiple exposures to and/or chronic infections with syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and other venereal diseases, hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, fungal diseases, amoebas and parasites such as giardia, bacterial infections such as staph and E coli, chronic bowel infections, blood transfusions, and the use of blood products. In addition to the damaging effects of recurrent infections, many of the pharmaceuticals used as treatment have adverse effects on immune function.

Factor VIII (the blood clotting agent used by hemophiliacs) and blood transfusions are immune suppressive and leave patients vulnerable to infection.204 Due to the serious conditions for which transfusions are necessary and the deleterious effects they have on the immune system, half of all HIV negative transfusion recipients die within a year of receiving a transfusion.204

Psychological Risk Factors

Chronic anxiety, panic, stress and depression have been shown to compromise health, damage immune function, and result in symptoms identical to AIDS.205 Mental stress provokes production of the hormone cortisol; excessive cortisol causes rapid and dramatic reductions in T cells, a condition known as lymphocytopenia. Within minutes, stress induces cortisol levels to increase as much as 20-fold. High levels of cortisol can eventually cause what medical texts describe as “significant atrophy of all the lymphoid tissue throughout the body” which may lead to “fulminating infection and death from diseases that would otherwise not be lethal.”206

A profound fear of AIDS is enough to cause even people who repeatedly test HIV negative to develop physical symptoms of AIDS.207 Termed “AIDS-phobia,” this condition is characterized by weight loss, wasting, reduced T cell counts and other signs considered indicative of AIDS, and typically follows intimate contact with people who sufferers believe may be HIV positive.

Beliefs and expectations are well-known to manifest in the physical body. The life-altering influence of beliefs was detailed dramatically in 1942 by Dr. Walter B. Cannon in his accounts of a phenomenon he called “voodoo death,” a form of capital punishment practiced among certain Aboriginal tribes. Cannon reported that shaman, tribal medical authorities thought to possess special powers, were able to kill errant tribe members by simply pointing at them with a bone. Convinced of the shaman’s ability to invoke a lethal curse, the people pointed at died within a matter of hours or days.208

In modern medicine, the power of expectation is a commonly accepted fact known as the “placebo effect.” Placebos are inert chemical substances disguised as active preparations and given to patients in place of drugs. The health benefits gained from a placebo occur because the person taking it expects a positive effect. Since the benefits of any drug may be due in part to this placebo effect, most new drugs are tested against a placebo preparation.209

A recent study conducted at the University of Toronto demonstrated the profound physiological effects of expectation with regard to placebos. Researchers found that cardiac patients who strictly adhered to a placebo treatment regimen lived longer than patients who did not take their placebo regularly. In summarizing the study, lead researcher Dr. Paul Dorian noted, “What you believe has an important influence on your outcome.”210

How These Risk Factors Apply to All AIDS Groups

There is not one case of AIDS described in the medical literature that does not include one or more immune-destroying health risk factors. There is no case of AIDS documented in a person whose sole risk is exposure to HIV. Every case of AIDS involves factors known to damage the immune system and leave a person vulnerable to debilitating infection and deadly illness.211

Men Who Have Sex With Men

Well-documented causes of immune dysfunction can explain AIDS illnesses among men who have sex with men although none of these causes are unique to this risk group or can be generalized to include all gay men. In fact, focusing attention on certain sexual practices rather than recognized health risks obscures our understanding of immune suppression and limits approaches to preventing and resolving AIDS.

Nitrites, more commonly known as poppers, are immune-suppressive, carcinogenic drugs chronically used by some gay men. At one time, 95% of gay men in major urban areas like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco reported using poppers.212 Nitrite use correlates with Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, two AIDS-defining cancers found almost exclusively in this risk group.213 There are several studies that further strengthen the correlation between poppers and KS by documenting KS in HIV negative gay men who use poppers.213 KS is hardly ever found among members of any other CDC risk group or among women with AIDS, and is never diagnosed in children or infants with AIDS.213 In 1981 when AIDS was first identified, half of all AIDS diagnoses were for KS. As popper use has diminished, so has KS which since 1993 has accounted for less than 5% of all new AIDS cases.214

In the only studies that asked gay men with AIDS about recreational drugs, 93% to 100% of participants acknowledged using cocaine, crack cocaine, poppers, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines like speed and crystal, and/or Special K (an animal tranquilizer).215

Combinations of parasitic infections that include amebiasis and giardiasis along with rectal infections, syphilis, and gonorrhea can result in acute diarrhea which in turn causes malabsorption and malnutrition, or wasting.216 This collection of infections and resultant problems was commonly known as Gay Bowel Syndrome in the years before AIDS.216 The CDC reports that 20% to 50% of all gay men in major US cities have been treated, often repeatedly, for intestinal parasites using immune suppressive pharmaceutical drugs.217 Antibiotic treatments for recurrent venereal infections are immune suppressive, as is the practice of using these antibiotics on a regular basis as a prevention. Steroids are another immune damaging drug frequently prescribed to offset the wasting caused by diarrhea and malabsorption.217

Campaigns that encourage HIV testing, the consuming of toxic AIDS drugs, and living in fear of AIDS are primarily directed at the gay community. Many gay magazines may have up to half of their commercial advertising devoted to AIDS-related promotions.218 Such constant emphasis on AIDS gives rise to the notion of the inevitability of AIDS, a belief which can evoke chronic terror, despair and hopelessness, psychological risk factors known to impair immunity and compromise health.

The chance of registering false positive on an HIV test is greater for people with high levels of non-HIV antibodies and microbes in their blood. Antibodies produced in response to the particular microbial and viral infections frequently found in some gay men are documented causes of false positive HIV test results.218

For people who test HIV positive, the drugs prescribed as preventative treatments for opportunistic AIDS-defining infections become harmful and even deadly when used on a daily, continuous basis. Bactrim and Septra, for example, are powerful sulfonamide antibiotics that kill digestive flora and cause anemia and bone marrow destruction. The anti-HIV drugs AZT, ddI, D4T, ddC and 3TC are all highly toxic chemotherapies that destroy the immune and digestive systems, in addition to causing five of the 29 official AIDS-defining illnesses.219 Two 1993 studies conducted in the US and Canada found that every one of several hundred gay men with AIDS had a history of significant recreational drug and/or AIDS drug use.220

Identifying this risk group as people who engage in habitual, prolonged use of recreational and/or pharmaceutical drugs, have chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes, who suffer from chronic malnourishment and/or chronic fear of HIV and AIDS provides a more appropriate and comprehensive explanation of immune suppression that invites many possibilities for prevention and resolution.

Injection Drug Users

Members of this risk group account for 35% of all diagnosed AIDS cases, while another 4% of people diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual contact with injection drug users as their sole risk. However, the majority of people who initially claim intimate contact with IV drug users as their only risk later acknowledge taking drugs themselves.221

Considering only injection drug use as a high risk activity for AIDS disregards the immune suppressive effects brought about by habitual use of non-injected street drugs as well as the many health-compromising factors that can accompany the regular, long-term use of illicit chemicals. The emphasis on sharing needles over the damaging effects of the narcotics injected with the needles distorts our view of immune dysfunction and prevents application of practical solutions to the health problems common to this risk group.

Prolonged, habitual consumption of drugs such as heroin, crack, speed, and cocaine, whether taken by injection or other means, is well-known to disable immune function. Chronic use of these drugs is documented to bring about many conditions synonymous with AIDS including pneumonias, tuberculosis, mouth sores, fevers, night sweats, bacterial infections, and endocarditis. Malnutrition, the number one cause of immune deficiency diseases worldwide, and multiple infections are frequent side effects of habitual injection drug use, and are factors that suppress immunity.

Antibodies generated in response to the multiple infections and chemical toxins typical of chronic drug use can cause false positive readings on HIV tests. Positive test results most frequently lead to ongoing treatment with various immune suppressive antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs, and to a sense of hopelessness and profound despair.

A more compassionate and inclusive way to portray this diverse group is as people who engage in habitual, prolonged use of recreational drugs, have chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes and toxins through septic syringes or septic living conditions; who suffer from chronic malnourishment, lack of adequate sleep, the immune suppressive effects of AIDS drugs, and/or the chronic despair that follows an HIV positive or AIDS diagnosis. The immune deficiency diseases caused by these multiple and variant factors can be resolved with treatments that do not involve toxic anti-HIV drugs and long-term use of powerful antibiotics.

Transfusion Recipients and Hemophiliacs

Hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients together make up 2% of adult AIDS cases in the US. As noted previously, Factor VIII, the blood clotting treatment used by hemophiliacs, is itself immune suppressive. Hemophilia is a life-threatening condition in people with or without an HIV positive diagnosis. Ryan White, the young HIV positive hemophiliac who became famous as an AIDS victim, actually died of common complications attributed to hemophilia (internal bleeding and liver failure), not of illnesses that define AIDS.223

Blood transfusions suppress the immune system. Medical experts note that higher amounts of blood transfusions among hospitalized patients correlate with higher death rates. The authors of one recent study on transfusions specifically mention that the immune suppressive effects of transfusions leave recipients vulnerable to deadly opportunistic infection.224

Factor VIII and blood transfusions can cause positive results on HIV antibody tests in persons never exposed to HIV by triggering the production of antibodies that react with the nonspecific proteins used in the HIV antibody test. Once a person has tested positive, they are subject to immune suppressive drug treatment regimens, and the terror of developing AIDS.

Members of these risk groups can be more accurately described as people with serious preexisting health challenges, critical or chronic exposure to immune suppressive blood products and toxic AIDS drugs, and/or who are affected by the chronic despair of a fatal diagnosis. Based on this view, immune compromising anti-HIV chemotherapy and continuous antibiotic treatments would compound preexisting health problems, rather than resolve them.

Heterosexual Contact

Six percent of Americans diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual contact as their sole AIDS risk. However, upon further investigation, 60% to 99% of these people are reclassified as injection drug users and/or men who have sex with men, groups with identifiable health risks documented to cause immune dysfunction.225 As previously noted, people diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily select a risk group from among six categories determined by the CDC which limits health risks to possible exposure to HIV through sex or blood.

The damage caused by AIDS chemotherapy and the acceptance of a fatal diagnosis are sufficient to bring about serious illness and even death in people with no other risk factors.

Members of this group may be better described as people with no health risk factors acknowledged by the CDC who, because of their positive HIV status, regularly consume chemotherapy and/or engage in continuous treatment with antibiotics and other immune suppressive pharmaceutical drugs, and/or suffer from the chronic panic and hopelessness of a fatal diagnosis.

Adolescents, Children and Infants

Although teenagers and children are not a specific AIDS risk group, cases of AIDS among young people, however rare, are a matter of great concern. The fact that babies are diagnosed with AIDS has been used as an argument against non-HIV explanations for AIDS illnesses. Despite widely held beliefs, the majority of AIDS cases that occur among children and adolescents can be explained by the same causes of immune suppression prevalent in adults with AIDS.

In 1998, new AIDS cases among this country’s 26 million teens totaled 293; of these, 229 offered information which placed them in the two primary CDC defined AIDS risk groups for adults.226

Over 80% of the mothers of babies diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily acknowledge using injection drugs during pregnancy, a practice which almost universally results in intrauterine malnutrition. The remaining cases of AIDS in infants and children may be due to the immune suppressive medical treatments given in response to an HIV positive test result, or to the same factors that cause HIV negative babies to suffer from pneumonia, bacterial infections, and immune disorders. In 1998, new AIDS cases in children age 13 and under totaled 382.227

Residents of Developing Nations

In stark contrast to the US and Europe, AIDS cases in developing areas of the world are found almost exclusively among non-drug using heterosexuals.228 Mainstream AIDS experts offer no plausible reason why AIDS would spread primarily through drug-free heterosexual contact only outside the US and Europe.

A coherent explanation for AIDS cases in developing areas of the world is the well-known health risks shared by these countries, widespread poverty and malnutrition; lack of clean water, a regular food supply, and sanitary living conditions; limited access to medical care; endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and parasitic infections that manifest in conditions identical to AIDS; and the practice of diagnosing AIDS based on a nonspecific set of clinical symptoms.

Although HIV tests are not required for an AIDS diagnosis in many parts of the world, widespread exposure to hepatitis, tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria and other conditions are more than sufficient to account for positive results on the nonspecific HIV antibody tests. 229

Resolving the immune suppressive conditions caused by poverty and malnutrition provides a means to alleviate the suffering of many people in developing nations who are currently counted and treated as victims of AIDS.

When considering non-HIV explanations for AIDS, consider that:

AIDS is a collection of familiar illnesses, not a disease.

Since 1993, more than half of all new AIDS diagnoses in the US are given to people who are not ill. In 1997, two-thirds of Americans diagnosed with AIDS had no symptoms or illness.*

Acquired immune deficiency predates the creation of the category “AIDS” and has numerous, well-documented causes.

There are no AIDS cases noted in the medical literature in which exposure to HIV has proved to be the sole health risk factor.

There are well-documented causes for every AIDS disease that do not involve HIV, and all illnesses now called AIDS occur in the absence of HIV.

HIV tests do not test for the actual virus, but for antiviral proteins or genetic material that are not specific to HIV.

The chance of a positive reaction on a nonspecific HIV antibody test increases proportionately with the level of other antibodies and microbes found in the blood.

Five of the six AIDS risk groups defined by the CDC have health risk factors that involve multiple, chronic exposure to viruses, bacteria and other antigens known to produce antibodies identical to those associated with HIV.

Once a person has tested HIV antibody positive, chemotherapy and other immune suppressing chemicals are almost always prescribed for treatment or prevention of AIDS.

Alternative explanations for AIDS provide opportunities for effective AIDS prevention and for using practical, nontoxic approaches to resolving AIDS.

1997 was the last year that the CDC provided information on how many AIDS cases were diagnosed in people who are not sick.

Defined Terms

Endemic: A medical term applied to a disease or disorder that is constantly present in a particular region or in a specific group of people.

Cancer Chemotherapy: Drugs used to treat cancer. Most anticancer drugs are cytotoxic (kill or damage cells). Others are synthetic forms of hormones. All anticancer drugs prevent cells from growing and dividing. Some work by damaging the cell’s DNA; others block the chemical processes in the cell necessary for growth. Side effects of treatment include nausea, vomiting, and life-threatening diarrhea. By altering the rate at which cells grow and divide, anticancer drugs reduce the number of blood cells produced by the bone marrow, causing anemia and increased susceptibility to infection.

Endocarditis: Inflammation of the internal lining of the heart.

Incorrect Information about HIV and AIDS Costs Lives

Can you imagine receiving a fatal diagnosis without being told the diagnosis is based on an unproven idea and an uncertain test? Being instructed to take powerful, experimental drugs without being told these drugs compromise health, destroy functions necessary to sustain life, and were approved for use without adequate testing? Being informed that you have, or should expect, deadly illnesses without being told that these same illnesses are not considered fatal when they occur in “normal” people?

For anyone who tests HIV positive, getting all the facts is a matter of life and death. The important decisions a person makes should be based on thorough, verifiable data. All of us need and have the right to receive honest and complete information about HIV and AIDS.

Almost every AIDS organization in the country offers free instruction for people who test HIV positive. Standard information includes how to prepare a will, how to collect disability, health insurance, and public benefits, what drugs and tests to take, and which diseases to anticipate, all based on the assumption that HIV positives are or will be ill and do not have long to live.

Information on AIDS that is free from bias, that accurately describes tests and drugs, and offers facts that support a will to live, participate in society, and cultivate a healthy future are rarely, if ever mentioned. Some AIDS groups even lobby to limit public access to data that undermine their dire presentations of HIV and AIDS.

For many people handed an HIV positive diagnosis, these brief pages provide their first awareness that a normal, healthy life is not something they can only hope for, but something they can choose to achieve. Unfortunately for most people who test positive, the AIDS education they receive portrays their choices as being limited to toxic drug therapy or devastating illness, and encourages chronic fear, sadness, and resignation to an early death.

There are thousands of HIV positives who lead healthy lives without toxic AIDS drugs. What they have in common is not some unique, mysterious gene or a weakened strain of the virus, but an open-minded approach to information, an understanding of basic principles of medicine and science, and the knowledge that the responsibility for their well-being is ultimately their own. For more information on their lives, please see The Other Side of AIDS on page 94.

This book examines only a portion of the growing body of scientific, medical and epidemiological evidence that refutes popularly accepted ideas about HIV and AIDS. Readers are strongly encouraged to conduct further research and use the resources offered here.

To the degree that we allow unfounded ideas about HIV and AIDS to determine our actions, influence our choices, dictate our public policies, or define our world view, we are all victims of AIDS.

Since the 1984 announcement that HIV causes AIDS, all AIDS research has been based on the hypothesis that HIV, an inexplicably lethal new virus, is responsible for a group of previously known, disconnected diseases renamed AIDS. Setting the focus of all AIDS efforts on HIV, a virus that strains the rules of biology, epidemiology and logic, has rendered humankind few, if any, beneficial results.

The lives of over 400,000 Americans have been given to the notion that HIV is the only possible cause of AIDS, and that toxic drugs offer the only possible prevention, treatment, or hope for a cure. Many more lives have been forever altered by a positive result on a non-standardized test for harmless antibodies that may or may not be associated with HIV.

More than $50 billion in federal AIDS funding has provided no significant understanding of HIV, has produced no safe and effective therapies, and has not brought us any closer to ending AIDS. Instead, we have constructed a powerful AIDS establishment that regulates our news, limits our access to information, and demands an ever greater allocation of our resources and support. Rather than helping to resolve AIDS, we have funded the growth of multi-billion dollar industries, institutions and organizations that depend on AIDS and on our continued devotion to the narrow and unproductive HIV hypothesis.

Objective Examination of HIV and AIDS is Fundamental to Progress.

To understand and solve AIDS, it is necessary to investigate all legitimate scientific data, even when such information challenges our present understanding and perceptions. Progress in any area depends on the ability to engage in an unbiased evaluation of facts, to raise critical questions and to conduct an objective search for meaningful answers. Silence = Death…Of People, Ideas and Progress

” There is classical science, the way it’s supposed to work, and then there’s religion. I regained my sanity when I realized that AIDS science was a religious discourse. The one thing I will go to my grave not understanding is why everyone was so quick to accept everything the government said as truth. Especially the central myth: The cause of AIDS is known. What in the world made activists accept tha, ton the basis of a press conference, no less?

“My only theory is that AIDS requires the daily management of massive amounts of uncertainty, and people cling to any certainty they can find. Even if it’s false.”

Michael Callen, author, AIDS activist (deceased),
Genre magazine, February/March, 1994

“Most HIV trials are useless rubbish. Research scientists [outside AIDS research] laugh at us. To them a good sample size is 30,000 people. We do studies with 1,500 people and think that’s wonderful when the actual number of relevant patients is sometimes so small, you cannot rule out chance as the reason for the results you get. It is also unethical to run trials of drugs in places like Malaysia with only 30 people involved and then try to justify these flawed trials because some people got access to drugs who otherwise would have had nothing.”

Kevin Frost, Manager of Research Programs for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), Positive Nation, September 1998

“The story of AIDS is deeply connected with the vicissitudes of the theory that viruses cause cancer and the failure of the cancer research program. Michael Verney-Elliot put it most acidly when he said: ‘From the people who didn’t bring you the virus that causes cancer, it’s the virus that doesn’t cause AIDS.’”

Jad Adams, Author, The HIV Myth, 1989

“AIDS is not another disease, it is the most metaphorical disease in history. It is the ultimate triumph of politics over science.”

Michael Fumento, Author, The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS, 1990

“Perhaps I’d feel different about it if I thought people were dying from AIDS. But I don’t. I think they’re dying from bad medicine, bad drugs, bad attitudes. There is nothing I want from ‘Big Daddy’ I don’t want his medicines, his laws, his approval.”

Gavin Dillard, Author, In the Flesh, HIV positive since 1985, San Francisco Frontiers, May 20, 1999

“In the September 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the CDC announced that a diagnosis of AIDS no longer requires an HIV test. The government now considers you an AIDS carrier if you suffer from any of the maladies on its new list of diseases indicative of AIDS, including such relatively common infections as herpes simplex, tuberculosis, Salmonellosis and the shockingly broad category ‘other bacterial infections.’ This broad definition will lead to countless new AIDS diagnoses, whether or not the person actually has AIDS. A major problem with the new AIDS definition is that it ignores the many environmental causes of immune suppression. Exposure to toxins, alcoholism, heavy drug use or heavy antibiotic use all can cause onset of the list of ‘diseases’ indicative of AIDS. The CDC itself conceded in a stunning remark near the end of the JAMA article that the new AIDS ground rules are highly suspect. ‘The diagnostic criteria accepted by the AIDS surveillance case definition should not be interpreted as the standard of good medical practice,’ warned the CDC.”

Los Angeles Weekly, December 18, 1987

“The real trick is to get off the medication. I felt I was losing quality of life…”

Greg Louganis, HIV positive Olympic Gold Medalist,
The State, April 15, 1997

“It’s not even probable, let alone scientifically proven, that HIV causes AIDS. If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There are no such documents.”

Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate, HIV not Guilty, October 5, 1996

” If you think a virus is the cause of AIDS, do a control without it. To do a control is the first thing you teach undergraduates. But it hasn’t been done. The epidemiology of AIDS is a pile of anecdotal stories selected to the virus-AIDS hypothesis. People don’t bother to check the details of popular dogma or consensus views.”

Dr. Peter Duesberg, Do You Think HIV Causes AIDS?,
Scientists for Legitimacy in Science, 1995

“Beware the scientist who believes that mainstream research thinking on any public health issue is equivalent to truth. Or the scientist who bullies or ridicules other scientists because they oppose the prevailing view. This is a person who has become what I would call a propagandist and should not be trusted.

“I have worked as a medical science reporter for 30 years. I’ve interviewed thousands of scientists for newspaper and magazine stories, radio and television productions, and books. I’ve met scientists who at least try to keep an open and fair mind on scientific issues. I have also met many propagandists who think they’re scientists. In all the time I’ve worked as a journalist, I’ve never come across a nastier group of people to interview than those propagandists who work in HIV research.”

Nicholas Regush, Medical Science Reporter, Second Opinion, ABCNews.com, September 29, 1999

“As a scientist who has studied AIDS for 16 years, I have determined that AIDS has little to do with science and is not even primarily a medical issue. AIDS is a sociological phenomenon held together by fear, creating a kind of medical McCarthyism that has transgressed and collapsed all the rules of science, and has imposed a brew of belief and pseudoscience on a vulnerable public.”

Dr. David Rasnick, Designer of Protease Inhibitors,
SPIN magazine, June 1997

“Considering there is little scientific proof of the exact linkage of HIV and AIDS, is it ethical to prescribe AZT, a toxic chain terminator of DNA developed 30 years ago as cancer chemotherapy, to 150,000 Americans, among them pregnant women and newborn babies, as an anti-HIV drug?”

Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN), US House of Representatives, Letter to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, March 14, 1995

forward to If You’ve Tested Positive

Are These Facts News to You?

Why are we not getting all the facts about HIV and AIDS? Why do media reports uncritically promote HIV testing and the notion that everyone is at risk for AIDS? Why do the AIDS organizations supported by our tax dollars and donations leave the information addressed in this book out of their education programs and advertising campaigns? Some answers to these questions may be found by examining our current AIDS funding and research systems which offer little incentive for critical review, forthright discussion and innovation, but which are the source of most AIDS news.

Total tax dollars spent on AIDS presently exceeds $50 billion. Annual AIDS funding increases every year and is one of the only areas of the federal budget that has faced no threat of cuts. The high priority given to AIDS is based on the notion that AIDS poses a widespread and ever-growing health threat to all Americans. Since the government institutions responsible for generating official AIDS reports are the recipients of these multi-billions in AIDS dollars, it is understandable that the information they disseminate would support, rather than challenge the idea that AIDS is a large and growing problem. Their official reports are the basis for most AIDS newsreports that are not analyzed or investigated before they are repeated by the media and AIDS groups.

Investigative media reports on AIDS are generally discouraged because of sensitivity to the many social and political issues that surround HIV and AIDS. AIDS awareness, AIDS drugs, safe sex, and HIV testing are among the myriad concepts about AIDS that have been integrated into popular culture. Widespread acceptance of these concepts makes challenges to current views on HIV and AIDS appear highly controversial or even too dangerous to report. As orthodox AIDS expert and Nobel Laureate Dr. David Baltimore has declared, “There is no question HIV is the cause of AIDS. Anyone who gets up publicly and says the opposite is encouraging people to risk their lives.”155

The Los Angeles Times recently acknowledged the factors that can influence AIDS news in “Protest Averted,” an article that recounts the decision by a local TV station to alter a broadcast that mentioned decreases in AIDS: “After being pressured by the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, KCBS-TV Channel 2 has revised a station editorial on AIDS, deleting the line that stated ‘A new report by the CDC indicates that AIDS is down in all categories and is not an epidemic.’”156

Many AIDS activist organizations charge that critical examination of HIV and AIDS is equivalent to promoting unsafe sex and may cause HIV positives to stop or refuse necessary pharmaceutical treatment. One such group, the San Francisco based drug advocacy organization Project Inform, brought their concerns regarding AIDS critics before the National Academy of Sciences. Project Inform’s founder, Martin Delaney, is a nationally recognized AIDS activist and a member of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Council on AIDS. The group’s National Board of Governors includes HIV codiscoverer Dr. Robert Gallo and award-winning AIDS researcher Dr. David Ho. In 1997, Delaney petitioned the Academy asking them to expel members who engage in public challenges to the HIV=AIDS paradigm.157

In his letter to the Academy, Delaney denounces scientists who make information that questions AIDS available to “young and poorly informed people struggling with HIV infection [whose] natural inclination toward denial gives them a seemingly legitimate way to ignore a positive HIV antibody test, to cast aside…safe sex, and to forgo the complex challenge of multi-drug combination therapy.” He suggests that AIDS is an area of public health that should not be examined in public forums, reasoning that “just as the blanket of free speech doesn’t sanction the person who yells ‘fire’ in a crowded theater, neither does academic freedom provide protection for irresponsible behavior by scientists,” and draws a parallel to criminal behavior claiming that “it is difficult to distinguish [the] actions [of scientists who raise questions about AIDS] from those of a mass murderer.”

Attached to Project Inform’s appeal is a list of supporting endorsements. Among the individuals and organizations joining the campaign to curtail critical discussion of AIDS science are AIDS Project Los Angeles; the Center for AIDS Prevention Studies at the University of San Francisco AIDS Research Institute; FAIR (Foundation for AIDS and Immune Research); the Florida AIDS Action Council; the United Foundation for AIDS; the Multicultural AIDS Coalition Inc.; Being Alive; Test Positive Aware Network; Gregory Britt, CEO of AIDS Research Alliance; noted AIDS researcher Dr. Michael Gottlieb; Brenda Freiberg, Chair of Public Policy at AIDS Service Center in Pasadena, California; Mary Lucey, President of Women Alive; and Dr. Martin Markowitz of the renowned Aaron Diamond Research Center in New York.

Project Inform’s stance against information that questions AIDS is not unusual. For example, LA Shanti Foundation, a Los Angeles support network for people diagnosed with life-threatening illness, recently took a position on what many regard as life-affirming information about AIDS: My request to be considered as a speaker for their Positive Living For Us seminar, “a weekend for those who have tested positive for HIV…in which experts provide information about treatments, nutrition, sexuality, peer support, public benefits, insurance, legal matters, and other relevant topics,” was not only rejected, my letter of inquiry was forwarded to the FDA’s California AIDS Fraud Task Force, and to the District Attorney’s AIDS Fraud Unit by the PLUS program manager, Ric Parish.158 When asked by The Valley Advocate newspaper for comments on the growing movement to rethink AIDS, Nancy MacNeill, program coordinator for the Los Angeles AIDS group Women Alive exclaimed, “We hate them. They’re spreading dangerous information.”159 Greg Gonsalves, founder of the New York City AIDS drug advocacy organization Treatment Action Group declared that “SPIN magazine’s AIDS column is a public health menace” for its inclusion of alternative perspectives on AIDS.160 Imposing limits on what AIDS information may be brought before the public limits public awareness of different ideas about HIV and AIDS.

AIDS organizations that object to public questioning of AIDS science may take their lead from mainstream media venues where news that challenges common perceptions about AIDS is rare. Journalists who cover AIDS seldom engage in investigative reporting and many have built successful careers by reiterating official AIDS views. Uncritical AIDS reports are the ones that have earned awards and have afforded many writers celebrity status. Laurie Garrett of Newsday, for example, has received two Pulitzer Prizes for her coverage of AIDS and frequently appears on television alongside prominent AIDS researchers and government health officials. In a recent issue of Esquire magazine, Garrett described the PCR test, a test not indicated or approved for the detection of HIV and unable to measure actual virus, as measuring HIV with “exquisite specificity.”161 Rather than rock the boat propelled by establishment AIDS views, high-level AIDS reporters generally dismiss or ignore challenges to the HIV=AIDS hypothesis.

Since the publications designed to reach HIV positives are funded almost entirely by AIDS drug manufacturers, it is not surprising that critical reporting on AIDS is absent from these venues. To cite just one example, AIDS pharmaceutical promotions filled 17 out of 31 pages allocated for advertisements in a current issue of A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine. Of the remaining 14 pages, nine were purchased by viatical settlement groups offering cash in exchange for the life insurance policies of HIV positives.162

The research labs that produce the studies and reports that are turned into AIDS news all rely on some form of federal AIDS funding. Since the late 1980s, government support for AIDS research has been predicated on adherence to the HIV hypothesis. Institutions that depend on government dollars for support must assume that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and grants are not available to scientists or clinicians whose work may challenge the HIV hypothesis. For example, no funding has been provided for studies that compare the health of medicated and unmedicated HIV positives in matched control groups, for conducting viral load tests and T cell counts on HIV negatives matched to AIDS risk groups, or for verifying the accuracy of HIV antibody tests through isolation of actual virus in people with positive test results.

One well-known casualty of the AIDS funding system is Dr. Peter Duesberg of the University of California at Berkeley. Federal support for his laboratory was not renewed after his 1987 article in Cancer Research that questioned Gallo’s HIV hypothesis and proposed an alternative AIDS hypothesis.163 Before 1987, Duesberg received ongoing funding as a recipient of the NIH’s prestigious Outstanding Investigator Award. He was also a Nobel candidate for his discovery of oncogenes, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Since raising challenges to the HIV hypothesis, Duesberg has had 21 consecutive research grant applications rejected by the NIH and other federal and state funding sources.164

Pharmaceutical company grants are another important source of AIDS research money that make objective circumstances for drug studies almost impossible to achieve. Surprisingly, it is not considered a conflict of interest when AIDS researchers own stock in the companies whose products they test, or when they are hired to run the drug trials they publish in medical journals. In fact, it is common practice for drug companies to pay researchers to author favorable articles about their products.165

Many AIDS scientists previously employed by the US government have gone into private AIDS enterprise, a practice that further blurs the lines between news, public relations, and private interests. For example, the former director of the US Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Donald Francis, used his reputation in government AIDS work and his access to the media to raise $40 million in private investment capital for his AIDS vaccine company VaxGen.166 In a recent CNN report on VaxGen, Francis promoted an AIDS vaccine as “the only way to stop a virus that is essentially 100 percent fatal.”167 In fact, most media stories that incite fear of AIDS and praise AIDS drugs derive from press releases or studies generated by AIDS drug developers. Since the pharmaceutical industry, like any other profit-oriented business, seeks to increase sales and profitability, expand its consumer base, and maintain a favorable public image, it is understandable that their press releases would promote continued success rather than provide critical or unfavorable information. However, their press releases are rarely questioned or scrutinized before being reported as news.

While America’s institutions of higher learning are considered appropriate arenas for exploration of new ideas, open debate and discussion, this is often not the case when it comes to AIDS. To take just one recent example, members of the Graduate Students Council at Einstein College of Medicine in New York were discouraged from having their invited guest, Dr. Peter Duesberg, speak on campus. After being voted the student-selected speaker over orthodox AIDS researcher Dr. David Baltimore, and NIH Director Dr. Harold Varmus, Duesberg was informed that faculty members had pressured students into canceling the event. As student council chairman Robert Glover explained, “The general consensus is that many people would be offended by Duesberg’s visit.”168

As AIDS advocacy and service providers have grown from grassroots groups into multimillion dollar corporations, it has become harder for leaders to consider new ideas and approaches to resolving AIDS. For example, the success formula for the $45 million nonprofit AIDS Health Care Foundation of Los Angeles is providing AIDS drugs to people who test HIV positive.169 Also, much of the money spent by AIDS groups comes from grants by pharmaceutical companies. To take just one example, the Washington, DC based National Association of People with AIDS receives funding from Merck, Glaxo-Wellcome, Roche, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.170 Such situations provide little incentive for challenging popular ideas about HIV and AIDS.

There are an estimated 90,000 AIDS organizations in the US, about one for every six Americans ever given a diagnosis of AIDS.171 Few, if any, of these groups evaluate the news they pass on to us in their education and awareness campaigns. Most repeat unexamined press releases from government agencies, the pharmaceutical industry and government-funded labs to the exclusion of all other information. And most will not participate in public discussion of the questions raised in this book.

Over 100 AIDS groups, AIDS specialists and researchers have declined my invitation to engage in a public dialogue on the validity of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, the accuracy of HIV tests, and the safety and efficacy of AIDS treatment drugs. Their names are posted on the Alive & Well Alternatives website at www.aliveandwell.org.

Can Popular Consensus Be Wrong?

Throughout history, the medical and scientific communities have been in near unanimous agreement on causes and treatments for diseases that turned out to be absolutely wrong. Mass consensus on incorrect theories has often impeded vital research, delayed the development of cures or effective therapies for many conditions, and cost countless lives.

A number of medical protocols once deemed the standard of care have later proved to be harmful, and even deadly. For example, the 1899 edition of the Merck Manual, the prestigious medical text physicians worldwide regard as their bible, officially recommends poisons such as arsenic, ether, chloroform, turpentine oil, mercury, and strychnine as treatment for anemia, constipation, earaches and headaches.183 Before modern-day doctors agreed that exposure to X-rays and other forms of radiation cause genetic damage and cancers, radiation was routinely administered for tonsillitis, acne, ringworm, and enlarged lymph and thymus glands.184

DES (Diethylstilbestrol), a synthetic hormone given in the 1950s to prevent miscarriages in pregnant women was later found to cause cervical cancer and sterility in the daughters of women who used it.185 Thalidomide, a popular sleeping aid prescribed during the same era was banned after it caused limb deformities in many babies born to women taking the drug.186

During the 1960s and 70s, an entire epidemic was caused by Clioquinol, a widely used prescription medicine for diarrhea. For 15 years, doctors and scientists blamed a virus for the sudden outbreak of a new intestinal disorder and gave suffering patients the very drug that was the cause of their illness. By the time a minority view was considered and the drug responsible for the epidemic was finally banned, thousands had died and many victims were left blind or paralyzed.187

The earning power of “annuity medicines”drugs used throughout a lifetime to control symptoms wields great influence over healthcare consensus today. To take just one example, stomach ulcers have been traditionally blamed on stress, diet or excess acid. For fifty years, doctors routinely prescribed antacid drugs for temporary relief, drugs that usually prompt the stomach to produce more acid. Surgery to remove portions of the stomach or to cut sensitive stomach nerves was the state of the art in ulcer treatment until the 1976 arrival of Tagamet, a pharmaceutical that blocks acid secretion.188 By 1980, annual sales of Tagamet had reached $600 million, inspiring Fortune magazine to call it “one of the most stunningly successful products in the history of American business.” In 1981, a similar drug Zantac was approved for use, and since 1988, has been the biggest selling drug in history.189 Neither drug gets rid of ulcers which remain a chronic, but more manageable problem. In fact, profits from treating the ongoing symptoms of ulcers may be preventing access to a simple, inexpensive cure discovered more than 15 years ago: A two-week course of antibiotics that kill the H pylori bacteria responsible for 80% of ulcers. Since doctors rely on drug companies for treatment updates and continuing education, and the drug companies are not promoting the new findings, patients and healthcare practitioners remain unaware of the important breakthrough.190

Conventional Wisdom: Words from the Mainstream

“There is no definitive peer-reviewed scientific literature on the long term efficacy of protease inhibitors, yet it would be criminal not to use them.”

Dr. Charles Carpenter, Director, International Health Institute,
Brown University, Rolling Stone, March 6, 1997

“Important safety information: About 5% (5 in 100) of patients who take ZIAGEN have a serious allergic reaction that may result in death. If you have skin rash or two of the FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS, STOP TAKING ZIAGEN AND CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY: fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea or abdominal pain, severe tiredness, achiness, or generally ill feeling…

“The most common side effects of ZIAGEN are skin rashes, fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, tiredness, muscle and joint pain, generally ill feeling…Most of these side effects do not cause people to stop taking ZIAGEN.”

Glaxo-Wellcome ad for the anti-HIV drug ZIAGEN, March 1999

“If the virus doesn’t get you, the drugs you take will.”

Steve Gendin, Contributing Editor, POZ magazine, January 1999

“One of the major barriers to effectively treating HIV is that most people do not feel sick at the time they are offered anti-HIV medications. In fact, it is only after starting the medications that they begin to feel sick.”

Dr. Lori Swick, The Toronto Star, September 24, 1999

“Here we are, knocking down handfuls of drugs that nobody really knows a lot about…and as research keeps coming up with newer and better medications that we also don’t know very much about, we’ll take them anyway. We’re knocking down chemicals that are totally, completely foreign to almost everyone, including nature…but with a little luck, a positive outlook, and good nutrition, health improvement will happen.”

Jennifer Jensen, RD (deceased), Nutritional advisor for the AIDS organization
Being Alive, Women Alive Newsletter, September 1997

“Some new AIDS drugs are beginning to produce serious toxic conditions in patients: an increased prevalence of premature heart disease, a serious form of obesity known as lipodystrophy, and liver disease. What we have is a tremendous improvement over what we used to have, but we must find ways to reduce life-threatening toxicity. That’s why the search for a cure for AIDS, however unlikely, should not be given up.”

Dr. Joep Lange, AIDS treatment specialist,
The Globe and Mail, May 4, 1999

“Failures are occurring right and left…They aren’t dying of traditionally defined AIDS illnesses. I don’t know what they’re dying of…but they’re just wasting and dying. While we are making good guesses, they are just guesses. We don’t know what we are doing.”

Dr. Michael Saag, AIDS researcher, University of Alabama at
Birmingham,