Apparently, HIV Doesn't Cause AIDS

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


Hemophiliacs and immune-suppressed infants are often identified as an "at risk" group for AIDS. But by definition, these are groups who already suffer from major health problems.

Hemophiliacs receive multiple intravenous transfusions over the course of the years, repeatedly exposing them to foreign blood products, and other powerful medications may be given.

Likewise with immune-suppressed infants, whose mothers were often drug-addicted and malnourished. Not all of these individuals, indeed only a small proportion, may be HIV infected -- indeed, the proportion of HIV infections among hemophiliacs or immune-suppressed infants has never been greater than what exists in the general population at large.

Additionally, it has not been demonstrated that HIV infections occur more frequently among acutely ill hemophiliacs or immune-suppressed infants than among those not so acutely ill, and who recover to a reasonable state of health. Again, the health problems of such acutely ill hemophiliacs and infants has never been demonstrated to be caused by HIV.

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

HIV denialism has taken too many lives - Ken Witwer and Seth Kalichman
14 February 2011


In the wake of HIV-positive boxer Terry Morrison's bid to fight in Quebec, the Montreal Gazette published a highly inaccurate and irresponsible piece by Terry Michael, a well-known AIDS denialist. It is clear that denialists are attempting to exploit Morrison's tragedy for propaganda purposes. While it is usually not a good idea to 'debate' denialists, it was important to counter the misinformation spread in a prominent newspaper. Two articles by scientists set the record straight and warned Gazette readers about the dangers of AIDS denialism:

HIV denial is fatal – Norbert Gilmore (McGill University)
HIV denialism has taken too many lives – Ken Witwer (Johns Hopkins University) and Seth Kalichman (University of Connecticut)
Witwer and Kalichman's piece is embedded below.

HIV denialism has taken too many lives
Beware the medical myth that HIV is harmless or doesn't even exist

BY KEN WITWER AND SETH KALICHMAN, FEBRUARY 11, 2011

"What if most everything you think you know about HIV and AIDS is wrong?" This, according to Terry Michael in his opinion piece "Junk science and AIDS" (Gazette, Feb. 5) is the question that HIV-positive boxer Tommy Morrison is asking Canadian officials in his plea to fight in Quebec on Feb. 25. Morrison has repeatedly tested positive for HIV and refuses to take an HIV test that is mandatory if he is to take part in the fight. The authorities require the test because, fairly or not, they do not want to risk Morrison's infecting his opponent or anyone else who comes into contact with his blood.

Rather than encourage Morrison to take the simple, routine HIV test, ending the speculation about his HIV status and clearing his way into the ring, Michael astonishingly states that HIV tests are not accurate and that HIV, the cause of AIDS, does not even exist.

The science is indisputable. HIV tests are among the most accurate tests for any medical condition. HIV/AIDS has caused tens of millions of deaths: men and women, old and young, gay and straight.

Michael's article raises questions of responsibility and accountability. Is it acceptable when unsound information is printed in the pages of a major newspaper? AIDS denialism -the movement professing that HIV is harmless or nonexistent - has claimed several hundred thousand lives in South Africa alone. Presenting such views as if they were valid alternatives to scientific knowledge has the effect of legitimizing them and ensuring their continued spread.

A poignant illustration of the consequences of AIDS denialism is a woman named Christine Maggiore. Maggiore wrote the book that Michael co-opted in his article: "What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong?" Like Michael, Christine Maggiore was neither a doctor nor a scientist, yet when she discovered that she was HIV-positive, she bet her life on the lie that HIV, if it even exists, is harmless.

Maggiore accepted the unfounded views of fringe biologist Peter Duesberg. She listened to an Internet organization called Rethinking AIDS. As a result, her daughter was infected with HIV and died of AIDS at the age of 3. Unshaken by even this tragedy, Maggiore founded an organization to persuade HIV-positive mothers to do the same things that had led to her own child's death. In 2008, Maggiore herself died of AIDS, but not before ensuring that others would follow.

It is disturbingly ironic that Michael uses the late Maggiore's words in defence of Tommy Morrison. Let us hope that HIV-positive people who have been deceived by AIDS denialism -including Morrison, if he is indeed HIV-positive -will come to their senses and obtain sound medical advice.

We encourage the readers of The Gazette to beware medical myths that masquerade as scientific information.

Ken Witwer researches HIV and related viruses as a fellow at Johns Hopkins University. Seth Kalichman is a professor at the University of Connecticut and author of the book Denying AIDS: Conspiracy Theories, Pseudoscience, and Human Tragedy.

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


Generally, heterosexual promiscuousness has no correlation to AIDS, and itself is not a risk factor. Studies of prostitutes in Nevada brothels, which forbid anal intercourse or the use of drugs, demonstrate the absence of HIV infection or AIDS-like symptoms.

However, street prostitutes in large cities, such as New York, are often found to suffer immune system damage, not from sexual promiscuity, but rather from drug usage, malnutrition, and other factors related to life on the streets.

Drug usage and associated malnutrition is also the mechanism for immune system depletion among groups whose "risk factor" is often, for lack of information, mis-identified as simply "heterosexual HIV transmission". These groups include lower-income inner city populations with higher levels of drug usage, malnutrition, and other immune-damaging correlations.

It would be incorrect to say that race, ethnicity, and immigration status play a role in the risk for AIDS, and likewise incorrect that "heterosexual HIV transmission" is the mechanism by which their immune systems became depleted.

The "risk factors" borne by some racial minorities and immigrant groups are the same as those identified above for the racial majority of non-immigrants: behavioral, lifestyle, dietary and environmental.

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

Kerry Cullinan: Frank Chikane’s whitewash of Mbeki is an ahistorical disgrace
10 November 2010


This opinion piece by Kerry Cullinan appeared on the Health-e News Service:

OPINION: Doctors call them Thabo’s children – the thousands of kids infected with HIV by their mothers at birth who still fill hospital paediatric wards, suffering from a range of debilitating infections.

When many of them were born, they did not get antiretroviral medication that could have prevented their mothers from passing HIV on to them. This was because then-president Thabo Mbeki had decided that ARVs were “toxic” and somehow less desirable than a fatal, incurable virus.

But by 2000, at the height of Mbeki’s AIDS debating society, four independent studies had shown that two ARVs, AZT and nevirapine, could cut HIV transmission from mothers to babies by up to 50%.

Also by 2000, research showed a radical change in the death patterns of South Africans with a peak in young women and men, rather than the elderly, that could only be explained by AIDS.

It is well documented that some 330,000 people died under Mbeki’s watch because his government delayed the introduction of ARVs.

What is less known is that Mbeki’s refusal to accept that AIDS was caused by a viral infection caused his government to under-fund health services at the very time that hospitals were starting to see a surge in AIDS patients. They closed nurses’ training colleges and flat-lined health budgets to save money, hastening the collapse of health services that we see today.

Yet in a series of articles published in Independent newspapers countrywide recently, Mbeki’s loyal director general, Frank Chikane, has tried to portray his former boss as a deep thinker who took a principled stance after thorough research. Chikane’s criticisms of Mbeki are mild – painting his bizarre refusal to accept that HIV causes AIDS as a bit of a public relations blunder requiring some spin-doctoring - rather than a criminally irresponsible academic obsession that caused death, suffering and hardship for hundreds of thousands of South Africa citizens who depended on their president for leadership.

Chikane constructs his defence of Mbeki on three pillars. Firstly, that Mbeki believed that ARVs (especially AZT) were “toxic” and were being foisted on poor countries by evil pharmaceutical companies. Secondly, that he was defending “the historically disadvantaged” from “racism”. Thirdly, he was defending his own right to “think independently” of Europe and the US.

According to Chikane, “there could be no disagreement about AZT’s toxicity”.

However, he fails to spell out that four trials had shown that a four-week course of AZT and a single dose of nevirapine were safe and had been able to cut mother-to-child transmission by up to half – potentially saving 150,000 of the 300,000 babies born HIV positive annually at the time.

The first of these trials was carried out in the US as early as 1994, while two others were in Thailand and the fourth in South Africa in 2000.

In any medical treatment, risk is balanced with the seriousness of the condition. Chemotherapy is not acceptable to treat a cold but it is to treat an almost incurable disease such as cancer. Ditto ARVs: there are side-effects but the side-effect of HIV is death, so the risk is justifiable.

Chikane argues that Mbeki felt South Africa was “being asked to do what no developed countries were no developed country was doing” – namely to use AZT and nevirapine, “as monotherapy rather than as a combination of drugs”.

Chikane adds that Mbeki was disturbed that the World Health Organisation (WHO) approved of the use of single-dose nevirapine to prevent mothers from passing HIV to their babies in developing countries.

He fails to mention that, at a meeting in 1999 between then health minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) two months before Mbeki became president, Dr Zuma said that price of AZT was the major barrier to introducing it to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission.

Chikane also fails to mention that the South African Medicines Control Council (MCC), despite all manner of political contortions to rob the body of its independence from government, found in 2000 that the benefit of using ARVs to prevent mother-to-child transmission outweighed the risks.

Time and again, Chikane raises the bogeyman of big bad Pharma – the all-powerful pharmaceutical companies – as being at the forefront of the “war” against Mbeki in a bid to safeguard their profits.

Yet at a time when Mbeki could have formed a powerful alliance with organizations like the TAC to fight for cheaper ARVs, Mbeki turned on them with viciousness, accusing TAC’s Zackie Achmat of having CIA links and the TAC of being a pawn of the pharmaceutical companies!

In addition, he fails to recall that Boehringer Ingelheim, the manufacturers of nevirapine, offered the drug free to South Africa for five years – an offer spurned by government because its president believed it was poison!

Describing the attacks on Mbeki as “ferocious” and unexpected, Chikane says “we” were forced to ensure that the Cabinet had to make compromises on HIV/AIDS and Mbeki was absolved from taking responsibility. So much for leadership!

In describing Mbeki’s inner circle’s discomfort at having to confront the then-president about his position on AIDS, Chikane inadvertently reveals Mbeki’s dictatorial manner, his narcissism and his inability to accept criticism.

He tells us few “could risk” raising Mbeki’s HIV stance with the president; that Mbeki felt those who wanted him to back down were “cowards” and that “there was no one bold enough to take on this cause” than himself.

It is hard to have sympathy for such a man, let alone such a president. Nowhere is there mention of the impact of Mbeki’s bizarre views of those living with, or affected by, HIV. Nowhere is there sympathy for the current president and health minister, who are trying valiantly to address the irresponsible legacy of the Mbeki regime. Instead, all Chikane offers is puff, paranoia and conspiracy – vintage Mbeki but wholly out of touch with current reality. – Health-e News Service.

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


In the USA, deceptive statistical manipulations have inflated the numbers of HIV infected individuals and AIDS deaths. Firstly, the CDC early got into the habit of classifying HIV-positive individuals according to political, and not scientific criteria.

For example, immigrants testing positive for HIV often would not acknowledge their homosexuality or illegal drug use. Drug use is a deportable offense for immigrants, and many foreign nations have much stricter social taboos about homosexuality.

Therefore, these groups routinely had fewer reported homosexuals and drug users, inflating the "unknown" category. When the general public began to associate this "unknown" factor to specific nationalities, prejudice developed, and for social reasons, entire groups were simply reclassified into the "heterosexual HIV transmission" category.

Revised figures were then released by the CDC, showing an upward spurt in the numbers "infected with HIV through heterosexual contact." The newspapers would then routinely announce "a dramatic surge in the numbers people infected with AIDS by heterosexual transmission", with extrapolations out to the year 2000 suggesting the entire world would be infected: eg, "everyone is at risk".

Only a few journalists would report the real reasons for the "increase".

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

The Cult of HIV Denialism
06 August 2010


By Jeanne Bergman, Ph.D.

Achieve, Spring 2010.*Reprinted with permission from*Achieve.

Introduction

More is known about HIV than about any other virus. Less than three decades ago, doctors were perplexed by the appearance of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP) in young gay men. Since then, scientists and doctors, spurred by the activism of people with AIDS, discovered the virus now called HIV and proved that it causes AIDS by crippling the immune system until the body can no longer resist life-threatening infections.

Scientists around the world have isolated HIV, photographed it with electron microscopes, and sequenced the genomes of its different subtypes. There are now highly accurate tests for HIV antibodies and the virus itself, and increasingly effective and tolerable antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) for its treatment. Science is a gradual process, and there is still much that is not fully understood about HIV, but the evidence that HIV exists, is transmissible by blood, semen, and vaginal fluids -- and that it causes AIDS -- is vast and thorough.

The Denialists and Their Cult

And yet there are thousands of people who persistently reject these facts. They believe that HIV is harmless or doesn't exist. Some argue that AIDS has other underlying causes, such as drugs, depression, "dirty" sex, stress, malnutrition, or conventional medicine. Others say that AIDS is just an artificial clustering of familiar diseases. Those who reject HIV/AIDS science call themselves "AIDS dissidents," but others usually refer them to as "HIV denialists" because they elevate personal denial into an ideology.

Most people are astonished by the existence of HIV denialism. "I had no idea there were 'AIDS deniers,' and I still don't understand why someone would believe such a thing," a blogger wrote upon reading of the deaths of denialist Christine Maggiore and her young daughter, both from AIDS. What is most baffling is the persistence of irrational beliefs, held firmly despite the evidence, despite the terrible deaths, and despite the absence of a coherent alternative theory. How can people ignore both scientific evidence and their own failing health? How could Maggiore do nothing to prevent HIV transmission to her children? How could she allow her child and herself to die needlessly? And how could her admirers, initially frightened, go on to rebuild the wall of denial?

HIV denialism can be understood if we view the movement as a kind of cult. Denialists refer to HIV medicine and science as "the orthodoxy," giving the field a religious framework, and imagine themselves in an oppositional, visionary role.

The persistence of the HIV denialism can be understood if we view the movement as a kind of cult. Denialists refer to HIV medicine and science as "the orthodoxy," giving the field a religious framework, and imagine themselves in an oppositional, visionary role. Many of the features that social scientists find typical of cults characterize the denialists. Most fundamentally, they maintain an intense "us-versus-them" worldview. Those inside belong to an exalted and secretive group -- they feel superior but persecuted for knowing a hidden truth. They believe that the pharmaceutical industry, governments, researchers, clinicians, the United Nations, AIDS activists, foundations, and HIV organizations are united in an elaborate global plot, which ex-traffic cop Clark Baker calls "the most significant criminal conspiracy I have ever imagined" to kill healthy people with toxic drugs for profit.

Doctrine and Indoctrination

Many HIV denialists adopt alternative health and spiritual beliefs, including consciousness-altering practices that are typical of cults. The use of hypnosis by HEAL-New York stands out. Members believe that simply being told that they are HIV-positive makes people sicken and die. HEAL's leader, Michael Ellner, uses hypnosis to extract people from the deadly mental "AIDS Zone" and to make them feel "at peace with testing positive."

Ellner is not alone in thinking that words kill but viruses don't. Cult scholars call this "mystical manipulation." Denialist Matt Irwin developed the theory in AIDS and the Voodoo Hex: "The severe, acute psychological stress of being diagnosed 'HIV Positive' is quickly transformed into a severe, chronic psychological stress of living with a prediction of a horrifying decline that could start at any time. This causes a suppression of the immune system, with selective depletion of CD4 T-cells. ... These factors have been studied in healthy people where they create the very same immunosuppression and immune dysregulation that may later be called 'AIDS.'"

Denialist Michael Geiger is another proponent of "dangerous" thoughts, and even accused another dissident of helping to kill Christine Maggiore by worrying about her. "Have we as yet learned nothing ... of how easy it is to plant projections of sickness and death onto our own selves, as well as our friends, acquaintances or even onto our children and thereby help to create those fears into our realities?" Ironically, Celia Farber regularly "projects" in just this way: "I feared for [Maggiore's] life, always. I feared the battle would kill her, as I have felt it could kill me, if I couldn't find enough beauty to offset the malevolence. This is a deeply occult battle, and Christine got caught in its darkest shadows." Farber also blames the "AIDS orthodoxy" for long-distance mental homicide: "This is voodoo, what they are doing to [South Africa's denialist Health Minister] Manto. It is heartbreaking. I sometimes think they killed [Maggiore's daughter] EJ with their voodoo, too. What did EJ die of? Can anybody explain it and does it look like anything anybody has ever seen?" (EJ died of PCP.)

Cults often manipulate feelings of shame and guilt to control their members. Because both AIDS and the activities associated with HIV transmission are stigmatized, the HIV-negative denialist leadership often degrades those who have HIV, even if they are dissidents themselves. Peter Duesberg has always blamed AIDS in gay men on poppers and promiscuity; he dismisses those who say they didn't engage in either behavior as liars. Clark Baker says that AIDS was invented because "a small group of promiscuous, addicted, nitrite-huffing, gonorrheal and syphilitic bath house veterans began to get sick" and "refused to accept blame for their self-destructive behavior." A poster on a denialist forum attributes AIDS to "premature aging" from "snorting poppers, doing meth, drinking heavily, smoking heavily, eating poorly, not sleeping, having unprotected sex and taking the various pathogens of hundreds of sexual partners into your body."

HIV-positive denialists who get sick are blamed for lacking commitment: "Given a choice between the opposing ideas of dying from the deadly HIV product or living a long healthy life based on the dissident belief that the HIV product is nothing more than a baseless commodity being sold by junk merchants, chosing [sic] the dissident dream is the far better choice. A pseudo dissident ... will use the dissident view as a survival coping device ... When ordinary illness strikes and they run to RX drugs and suffer the very types of health decline that the dissident model predicts, they attack the dissident message."

Denialists who die from AIDS are often posthumously smeared as liars and secret addicts. When Raphael Lombardo died, Peter Duesberg wrote, "In hindsight, I think his letter was almost too good to be true. I am afraid now, he described the man he wanted to be and his Italian family expected him to be, but not the one he really was." (Duesberg meant that Lombardo lied about drug use.) Liam Scheff rolled the reputation of Mark Griffiths down a slippery slope of innuendo into the gutter: "I knew Mark; he was cogent when I worked with him -- never anything but. Almost. Sometimes he was -- once or twice he'd been -- a bit groggy. But he told me that it was alcohol. In fact he told me that he did consume alcohol -- perhaps more than he should." Scheff said drinking, not AIDS, killed Griffiths.

Creating Pariahs

Like those leaving a cult, former denialists are treated with extraordinary hostility. Dr. Joseph Sonnabend was one of the first physicians to treat people with AIDS. He insisted on a very high threshold of evidence that HIV causes AIDS, was cautious in prescribing unproven treatments, and recognized that co-factors, such as drug use and frequent STDs, influence an individual's risk of infection upon exposure and how fast HIV disease progresses. Denialists have often claimed Sonnabend as one of their own. When clips of him were used in the denialist film "House of Numbers" to support the denialist perspective, Sonnabend responded with a scathing blog at Poz.com, repudiating the film's message and affirming that HIV causes AIDS and that ARVs save lives. He wrote: "It is hard to adequately convey the feelings of a physician who was able to finally help his patients in the mid-1990s, having lost hundreds to this disease before that time. By the time these drugs became available about 400 of my patients had succumbed to AIDS, a dreadful rate of mortality. The effect of these drugs was life saving to those with advanced disease whose survival had been limited before. The portrayal of these drugs as in effect only toxic is so unfair."

Sonnabend was immediately savaged by denialists for betraying the cult. In one forum, "Ellis" wrote: "[Y]ou're a disgusting fraud, in my opinion, having once bravely stood apart from the racket, now pointing fingers and calling names of those who still have the decency to not be bought and sold for dollars and popularity contests. Who cares if HIV causes AIDS, or ten thousand things cause AIDS? ... Are you attempting to denigrate the film because of your own outlandish, humiliating lack of composure on camera? Because you sound like the old boozy floozy you really might be, not so deep down? Because you sold out to corporate pseudo-science a long time ago, do you now pour hatred onto those who still aren't satisfied with the one-size-fits-none industrial diagnosis? Shame on you, deep, deep, deep shame. You absurd old sell-out."

Celia Farber similarly attacked Sonnabend on the Spectator's website, accusing him of personal and medical treachery: "I have countless hours of tapes from the ever shifting but consistently indignant Joe Sonnabend dating as far back at 1988 ... through 2001, if not longer. After that, he became impossibly sycophantic to the orthodoxy. ... As for me, like everybody else under Joe's Bus, I forgave him because he seemed so abashed. I even invited him to my wedding. But he is a weak, dishonest man without any integrity, who loves the sensation of throwing everybody under the bus." Sonnabend's sin was to continue to evaluate the evidence, until the proof that HIV causes AIDS and that HAART is an effective treatment was conclusive.

Controlling the Flock

Peter Duesberg has always blamed AIDS in gay men on poppers and promiscuity; he dismisses those who say they didn't engage in either behavior as liars.

Within cults, the milieu is controlled and members are isolated. For denialists, who have no ashram, this happens online and in small groups. People worried about HIV are urged not to take the antibody test, to avoid mainstream information about AIDS, and to "stay as far away from allopathic doctors as possible."

Robert Lifton, a scholar of cults, identified the "principle of doctrine over person" as a characteristic feature. This doctrine "is invoked when cult members sense a conflict between what they are experiencing and what dogma says they should experience. The internalized message ... is that one must negate that personal experience on behalf of the truth of the dogma. Contradictions become associated with guilt: doubt indicates one's own deficiency or evil." Many HIV-positive denialists struggle with the reality of failing immune systems, which undermines their belief that HIV is irrelevant. The long list of denialists who have died from AIDS (posted on AIDStruth.org) contrasts with the fact that not one of the HIV-negative denialist leaders has died young, let alone with multiple strange infections that happen to be AIDS-defining illnesses.

Some HIV-positive denialists defy the prohibition on HIV treatment when they develop AIDS; they start ARVs and experience a rapid return to health. But instead of abandoning denial, many struggle to frame an alternative explanation for the success of the meds. Noreen Martin insists that her AIDS is not viral: "My own experience with AIDS was due to a lifetime of negative health issues. When extremely sick, I took the medicines, ate healthy, took over 50 supplements a day, and had a good attitude. So, within a few months I was as good as new." She stopped ARVs for three years. "During this time," she wrote, "my fatigue slowly came back, my CD4s dipped and my viral load increased to over 3 million. Nevertheless, I never placed much stock in either of these numbers because after extensive research, I realized that neither were [sic] related to health. It was other conditions that caused the problems and the ARVs were powerful enough to keep them at bay. ... Last fall, I became extremely tired again after being anemic for almost a year and fighting lymphedema for months, I took the ARVs, as I could barely get off the couch and could not function in life." Her health again improved.

Another denialist said, "I have seen many friends get better on ARVs, but my understanding has always been that these drugs are broad spectrum in their efficacy -- that they serve to kill virtually all pathogens, but also all the 'good stuff' in our bodies." Another, a thoughtful woman struggling to reconcile her recurrent illness with dogma, wrote: "All I can say is that I'm doing what seems to be working at the time. If it stops working, I'll make a new plan. And just because they call them antiretrovirals doesn't mean that's what they are." The only way they can remain alive and in the dissident camp is to pretend that ARVs, so precisely designed to target the ways that HIV infects T-cells, are a supercharged all-purpose germicide.

Deprogramming

Some denialists with HIV are unable to ignore their own experience, and are pushing back against the cult rhetoric. One weary man, positive since 1996, wrote, "Frankly, I'm sick of the questions at this point. Some of us here are experiencing strangely similar symptoms. Some well known people have died just like the orthodoxy said they would. At what point are dissidents going to start asking the important questions, rather than repeat the words 'AIDS ZONE' over and over? I'm not in any AIDS zone, but something is happening beyond my control. I have never been closer to taking Atripla than I am today. I hate to type that ... but it's true."

The denialist movement is also deeply split by conflicting theories of AIDS causality, different schools of quackery, and the basic question of whether the virus exists or not. Their unity is only maintained by their ritual invocation of long-disproved claims and their refusal to engage with scientific evidence. The most successful denialist propaganda avoids making direct claims and persuades only by innuendo and inference, because clear and specific statements generate hostility within the movement and can be easily disproven by evidence.

Still, it is very difficult for believers to break free of HIV denialism. Dissidents build their worldviews, their sense of themselves as heroic and embattled, their careers in journalism and alternative medicine, and their webs of social relationships around their rejection of HIV science and medicine. They have a lot to lose if they acknowledge that they are simply wrong. But as HIV treatments get better and better, and people with HIV live long and healthy lives using them, the psychological impulse to refuse to accept what was once a terrible diagnosis is diminished. Perhaps soon the only AIDS denialists will be HIV-negative people far removed from the communities most affected by the epidemic, and their cult won't matter at all.

[Sa_artman]

Haiti study shows treating at CD4 of 350 versus 200 saves lives and reduces TB
17 July 2010


New England Journal of Medicine 363(3) July 15, 2010

Early versus Standard Antiretroviral Therapy for HIV-Infected Adults in Haiti
Patrice Severe et al.

Background

For adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection who have CD4+*T-cell counts that are greater than 200 and less than 350 per cubic millimeter and*who live in areas with limited resources, the optimal time to initiate antiretroviral*therapy remains uncertain.

Methods

We conducted a randomized, open-label trial of early initiation of antiretroviral therapy,*as compared with the standard timing for initiation of therapy, among HIV-infected*adults in Haiti who had a confirmed CD4+ T-cell count that was greater*than 200 and less than 350 per cubic millimeter at baseline and no history of an*acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) illness. The primary study end point*was survival. The early-treatment group began taking zidovudine, lamivudine, and*efavirenz therapy within 2 weeks after enrollment. The standard-treatment group*started the same regimen of antiretroviral therapy when their CD4+ T-cell count fell*to 200 per cubic millimeter or less or when clinical AIDS developed. Participants in*both groups underwent monthly follow-up assessments and received isoniazid and*trimethoprim–sulfamethoxaz ole prophylaxis with nutritional support.

Results

Between 2005 and 2008, a total of 816 participants — 408 per group — were enrolled*and were followed for a median of 21 months. The CD4+ T-cell count at enrollment*was approximately 280 per cubic millimeter in both groups. There were 23*deaths in the standard-treatment group, as compared with 6 in the early-treatment*group (hazard ratio with standard treatment, 4.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.6 to*9.8; P = 0.001). There were 36 incident cases of tuberculosis in the standard-treatment*group, as compared with 18 in the early-treatment group (hazard ratio, 2.0;*95% CI, 1.2 to 3.6; P = 0.01).

Conclusions

Early initiation of antiretroviral therapy decreased the rates of death and incident*tuberculosis. Access to antiretroviral therapy should be expanded to include all HIV-infected*adults who have CD4+ T-cell counts of less than 350 per cubic millimeter,*including those who live in areas with limited resources. (ClinicalTrials.gov number,*NCT00120510.)

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


The definition of what constitutes AIDS has been constantly expanding, with more diseases being added to the list with each passing year.

Today, not only are tuberculosis, pneumonia, syphilis, herpes, anemia, dementia, Kaposi's sarcoma, and other long-known diseases often lumped under the banner of AIDS, but problems such as chronic fatigue syndrome and yeast infections are being redefined as having a background in HIV infection.

These latter two problems afflict women in high proportions, and their reclassification as "AIDS indicators" have unscientifically inflated the "heterosexual risk" category.

When such new disease classifications occur, by magic the numbers of "infected AIDS victims" balloons, all without solid epidemiological evidence or proof. The news media, of course, reports these new figures with the usual drama and lack of critical scrutiny.

The correlations between active HIV, HIV antibody and the disease symptoms of the above individuals in the "high risk" groups have never been proven to be more than spurious correlations, lacking in attributable causal characteristics. This is true for all the various "AIDS diseases", wrongly attributed to HIV.

These same diseases appear in the general population both with and without evidence of HIV exposure. Furthermore, HIV antibody is present among large segments of the overall background population, without evidence of any associated disease pathology -- excepting for when these a-symptomatic individuals are scared by the AIDS propaganda machine, into a program of AZT medication.

To prove that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and make HIV=AIDS more than a speculative hypothesis, it would be necessary to show the presence of HIV among patients with AIDS diseases whose personal history did not include: 1) chronic male homosexual activity with associated chronic drug abuse and antibiotic dependency, 2) massive ingestion or injections of legal and illegal drugs, and 3) use of toxic medications, including AZT. Likewise one would have to show that HIV was absent among groups of healthy, a-symptomatic individuals.

In spite of the billions which have been spent on AIDS research, such a study has never been undertaken. Peter Duesberg's arguments have fallen on mostly deaf and stubbornly arrogant ears. And without funding, neither Duesberg nor his supporters could undertake such a controlled study themselves.

Research funds today flow only in the direction of the HIV Fundamentalists.

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

MMR-scare doctor Andrew Wakefield struck from the register
24 May 2010



Andrew Wakefield

The doctor who sparked the "MMR scare" and a hero of the anti-vaccination movement, Andrew Wakefield, has been struck from the medical register in the United Kingdom by the General Medical Council after being found guilty of serious misconduct. The GMC found that he had "abused his position of trust" and "brought the medical profession into disrepute" through "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct". The Guardian reports:

Andrew Wakefield, the doctor at the centre of the MMR scare, has been struck off the medical register after being found guilty of serious professional misconduct.

He was not at the General Medical Council (GMC) hearing to receive the verdict on his role in a public health debacle which saw vaccination of young children against measles, mumps and rubella plummet.

The GMC said he acted in a way that was dishonest, misleading and irresponsible while carrying out research into a possible link between the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine, bowel disease and autism.

He had "abused his position of trust" and "brought the medical profession into disrepute" in studies he carried out on children.

The GMC said there had been "multiple separate instances of serious professional misconduct".

One of Wakefield's colleagues at the time at the Royal Free hospital in London, John Walker-Smith, 73 and now retired, was found guilty of serious professional misconduct and struck off. Another, Simon Murch, was found not guilty. Wakefield had already been discredited after a series of research projects failed to find any link between the triple MMR vaccine and autism, although a number of families continue to support him, even claiming to have been victimised for working with him.

He said today in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme before the verdict that he and colleagues had listened and responded to "concerns of parents about their very sick children" and had acted "appropriately in the children's best interests to determine what the nature of their problem was".

Read the full story.

[Sa_artman]

AIDS Denialism, Medical Hypotheses, and The University of California’s Investigation of Peter Duesberg
29 April 2010


AIDStruth.org, April 2010

AIDS denialist and U.C. Berkeley Professor Peter Duesberg has recently received media coverage following the withdrawal of a paper of his by the publisher, Elsevier, and an investigation into his conduct by the University. [1] Here, we provide some background and a timeline of events in the unfolding drama.

AIDS denialism, which Peter Duesberg has promoted tirelessly for the past quarter century, has claimed many victims from the ranks of HIV-positive people who believe in its tenets: that HIV is harmless or non-existent, antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) cause AIDS, and lifestyle choices and alternative therapies can prevent AIDS-related illness and death. [2] These deaths, caused by the fusion of ignorance and lies, are regrettable and tragic. They are dwarfed in scope, however, by what happened at the end of the millennium in South Africa. There, hundreds of thousands of people died when the apparatus of state was placed in service of Duesberg’s theories on HIV and AIDS.

The South African tragedy began in 2000, when Thabo Mbeki, the president from 1999-2008, was beguiled by denialist disinformation on the Internet and invited a number of denialists, as well as AIDS scientists and clinicians, to participate in a Presidential Advisory Panel on the causes and appropriate response to the AIDS epidemic. The denialists included Duesberg and his business associate David Rasnick, who was later found guilty in South African court of helping to conduct an illegal and fatal human trial to test vitamins as a “cure” for AIDS. [3] *The panel was irretrievably split between the scientists and the denialists, who held that AIDS is caused by poverty and malnutrition, not a virus, and that ARVs are toxic. The denialist position had a veneer of legitimacy because of Duesberg’s position at Berkeley. *Government resistance to the use of antiretrovirals for mother-to-child transmission prevention and for AIDS treatment followed, persisting even when donors were prepared to provide free or discounted drugs for these purposes. [4]

While it is impossible to quantify precisely the deaths and suffering resulting from this state-sponsored AIDS denialism, several scholars have made conservative estimates of the death toll in peer-reviewed, published studies relying on rigorous statistical methods and multiple sources of data. Nicoli Nattrass, a South African social scientist, was the first, in 2007/8. [5] In 2008, a study from Max Essex’s group at Harvard University, first-authored by Pride Chigwedere, was published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes (JAIDS). [6] The researchers had not consulted each other, but the two studies reached remarkably similar conclusions. As a result of Mbeki’s AIDS denialist policies, between 300,000 and 400,000 South Africans died early and avoidable deaths from 2000 to 2005, and many infants were needlessly infected with the virus because their mothers were denied proper and available treatment. In addition, Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign submitted a commentary to JAIDS that discussed the damage the Mbeki administration's policies had caused to the South African people. [7] He called for investigations into the role played by Mbeki’s various external advisors, including Duesberg. That article was peer- reviewed and published in August, 2009.

After the Chigwedere et al. JAIDS article was published in 2008, Duesberg wrote to the editor accusing Max Essex, the senior author, of having an undisclosed financial conflict of interest. In essence, Duesberg charged that Max Essex could personally benefit from promoting the use of ARVs. The complaint was forwarded to the Harvard School of Public Health, which investigated and found the complaint to be factually inaccurate and groundless.

Subsequently, Duesberg submitted a paper to JAIDS that was critical of the Chigwedere paper and that again questioned whether HIV caused AIDS and argued that ARVs were toxic. Duesberg and his co-authors also claimed that there was no statistical evidence that HIV had caused the deaths of South Africans, or even that AIDS deaths had occurred in significant numbers in South Africa. The paper was peer-reviewed and rejected. One of the reviewers warned that Duesberg could face an official investigation by his university or by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research Integrity for two issues. *First, Duesberg failed to disclose that his co-author David Rasnick had conducted illegal clinical trials for vitamin pill manufacturer and distributor Matthias Rath, who is infamous in South Africa for attacking antiretrovirals as toxic and promoting vitamins as an alternative treatment. *The reviewer noted that the connection between Rath and Rasnick should have been declared as a potential conflict of interest. Duesberg was clearly aware of and sensitive to the issue of conflicts of interest, as he had leveled that very charge against Essex—his omission was not the result of ignorance.

The second issue was Duesberg’s selective citation of bits from the scientific literature while ignoring contradictory evidence, his distortion of the incomplete but still formidable knowledge of how HIV affects the immune system into the basis for his claim that it does not harm people, and his blatant misrepresentation of the contents and findings of a 2006 Lancet paper by May et al. [8] The May et al. article reported success rates of ARVs at various points in time. *Duesberg misreported the results, claiming that “hundreds of American and British researchers jointly published a collaborative analysis in The Lancet in 2006 concluding that treatment of AIDS patients with anti-viral drugs has ‘not translated into a decrease in mortality.’” In fact, the article never suggests that people with HIV/AIDS who take ARVs don’t live longer than those who do not. *Rather, the sentence fragment Duesberg quoted is part of a finding that, over a period of 8 years, virological response in the first 6 months after starting ARVs improved markedly, but the number of deaths from all causes within the first year of treatment did not significantly change, decreasing only a little from 2.2% to 1.3% of the participants who started HAART that year. That is, only a small number of people on ARVs died during their first year of treatment, and even that number declined, unevenly, by almost half. *This conclusion in no way can be interpreted to mean that ARV treatment has not resulted in radically reduced rates of AIDS-related mortality. The paper is very clear, and it is most unlikely that Duesberg could have honestly misinterpreted the article as saying otherwise. The JAIDS editor, Bill Blattner, rejected the Duesberg et al. paper on the basis of all the peer reviews he received and his own editorial judgment.

Next, on June 9, 2009, Duesberg resubmitted the paper, addressing none of the key criticisms raised by the JAIDS reviewers, to Medical Hypotheses, where the editor, Bruce Charlton, accepted it two days later. [9] None of the papers MedHyp publishes are peer-reviewed; it is unclear if Charlton even read the Duesberg paper, considering the near-instantaneous acceptance, and even less likely that any fact checking was performed. Charlton has described himself as “agnostic” on HIV as the cause of AIDS, and his magazine had previously published other AIDS denialist articles, in addition to papers attributing chronic fatigue syndrome to aluminum in vaccinations, [10] investigating navel lint, [11] positing high heels as a cause of schizophrenia, [12] and asserting the “very particular twinning between a Down person and Asiatic people” in appearance. [13] The published version of the Duesberg paper contained a statement noting the previous rejection by JAIDS and offering copies of the JAIDS reviews to anyone who requested them. Although several people have since requested the reviews, Duesberg has not kept his promise to release them.

Various AIDS researchers and activists, including John Moore and Francoise Barré-Sinoussi, wrote to Elsevier (the publisher of Medical Hypotheses and some 2,000 other journals) requesting an investigation into why and how the Duesberg paper could have been accepted for publication. In addition, a multi-signatory letter was sent to the United States National Library of Medicine, requesting an assessment of whether Medical Hypothesis should remain listed on PubMed, the Library of Medicine’s database of peer-reviewed and legitimate articles. After an internal enquiry, Elsevier temporarily retracted the Duesberg paper, along with a second AIDS denialist article, pending the outcome of a more thorough investigation. That investigation, conducted by other Elsevier editors, commissioned five peer reviewers. *All five reviewers recommended rejection, and the paper was permanently retracted. In addition, Elsevier elected to reform the publishing policies of the journal, converting it to a peer-reviewed format. The editor, Bruce Charlton, has refused to accept the publisher's instructions to date and says he will serve out his contract without changing the policy; Elsevier has indicated that in that case Charlton will be removed from his position.

Around the same time, in August 2009, two people sent formal letters of complaint to Duesberg’s institution, the University of California, Berkeley, concerning the contents of the Medical Hypotheses paper. They noted the lack of disclosure of Rasnick's potential conflict of interest and the poor quality of scholarship throughout the work. Both letters were signed. One of the writers has since publicly disclosed himself as Nathan Geffen; the other has elected to preserve the right to confidentiality.

U.C. Berkeley began an investigation into Duesberg’s conduct, led by Public Health faculty member Art Reingold, M.D., M.P.H. Duesberg chose to announce the investigation, speaking with a ScienceInsider reporter about it [14] and also probably causing the official letters of complaint to be posted on a public website, despite their being marked as confidential. The investigation is ongoing, press coverage is increasing, and more and more of the facts are becoming known.

Scientists have long known that Duesberg has not done original work with HIV, that his denialist claims have either been falsified or are not supported by evidence, and that his scholarly practices are often slipshod and perhaps even deceitful. Descriptions of Duesberg in the popular press have concentrated on the colorful or offensive aspects of his personality, and many who find his AIDS denialism offensive have nonetheless supported his academic freedom. *But academic freedom is not license to breach the well-established rules of scholarship. *Conflicts of interest must be declared, and deliberate misrepresentation is not acceptable conduct. Duesberg may have finally exhausted the patience of the scientific community and the University of California.

[Sa_artman]

YOU ARE HEREQuackery taken to task

Quackery taken to task
25 March 2010


by Lesley Odendal

First published by health-e. This article is republished by AIDSTruth because it deals with political support for AIDS denialism.

OPINION:Nathan Geffen’s book Debunking Delusions reminds us what can go wrong when AIDS denialists are given the time of day. The book also documents clearly how we can fight denialism in a manner that saves lives and respects science. What is clear given the resurgence of AIDS denialist propaganda is that now is not the time to sit back.

As Geffen argues in his book, underlying the Treatment Action Campaign’s success in fighting denialism and quackery was the almost unsung treatment education programme. Knowledge truly is power in this case.

AIDS denialism reached its peak in the public arena in the late nineties and early 2000s when Thabo Mbeki consulted a number of AIDS denialistson his AIDS panel to advise him on AIDS policy. The public believed that the debate was over when Mbeki ‘withdrew’ from the debate, claiming that he never stated that HIV did not cause AIDS and when in 2003 antiretroviral (ARVs) began to be rolled out at a national scale to HIV-infected people. The struggle between the many players, including Mbeki, then Minister of Health Manto Tshablala-Msimang, the Treatment Action Campaign, clinicians, the international scientific community and the many denialists benefiting from, and supporting, Mbeki’s policies such as Duesberg, Anthony Brink, the Visser family and the numerous quacks in tow, received much media attention and mass mobilization.

In 2010, one may ask, what is the significance of AIDS denialism today? For most lay people, the debate is settled and the evidence is clear: HIV causes AIDS; ARVs are the best and only treatment for HIV; Mbeki’s AIDS policies caused thousands of unnecessary deaths and HIV-infections and thousands of peer-reviewed articles have been written regarding the effects of HIV on the body.

Unfortunately, the denialists are not ready to give up. Despite the numerous rebuttals against their claims and the plethora of evidence that exists against them, there has been a recent surge in denialist material that has been circulating both in the mass media in the form of the documentary House of Numbers and the infamous AIDS denialist Peter Deusberg’s (who was also on Mbeki’s panel) article in the non-peer reviewed journal Medical Hypothesis. Medical Hypothesis as not being peer reviewed and scandals around that

AIDS denialists usually support at least one of the following hypothesis:

HIV does not exist
HIV tests do not in detect the presence of HIV
Following from this, HIV prevalence is highly overestimated
HIV does exist but it is not harmless
HIV is not sexually transmitted
AIDS is caused by other factors such as poverty, malnutrition or ARVs themselves
ARVs are toxic and often fatal and cannot prevent the vertical transmission of HIV
AIDS should be treated by an extensive range of alternative remedies such as herbal concoctions, vegetables, vitamins or bizarre treatments such as ozone rectal therapy
Pride Chigwedere of the Harvard School of Public Health eloquently and passionately refutes many of these claims and the amount of words spent on deconstructing the claims of denialists is unprecedented in academia. However, what is evident and a hallmark of AIDS denialist argument is that despite any proven evidence that is thrown against them, AIDS denialists do not take this into account for developing their arguments and instead sway the debate in another direction. For them, the evidence is incorrect and they are misunderstood as the last renegades of the truth. This makes it very difficult to engage in anti-denialist debates— academics, scientists, activists and clinicians grow tired of arguing with those who do not take reason into account and who do not respect the essential tenant of science— proven evidence—and prefer to focus on their core work which is to create and disseminate more evidence to the benefit of our understanding of HIV. As Nattrass states, “the problem [of not accepting evidence] is far more than intellectual because disregarding evidence not only undermines scientific progress, but it threatens the social basis which makes such progress possible.”

More worrying, is that where the evidence suits them, AIDS denialists misrepresent data or use the incorrect data to support their arguments. In Duesberg’s article for instance, he uses the incorrect epidemiological data that misclassifies causes of death in South Africa to support his thesis that AIDS is not killing as many people as it is widely estimated by scientists across the world. Duesberg uses the Statistics South Africa Findings from Death Notification to argue that AIDS-related deaths are much lower than that postulated by Chigwedere’s 2008 article. However, it is a common fact, that due to AIDS stigma, AIDS is rarely stated as the reason for death. Up to 60% of HIV deaths are misclassified.

Duesberg also refutes the* claim that ARVs are effective at preventing vertical transmission of HIV. He does not quote the numerous randomised control trials that prove that ARVs do decrease the vertical transmission down to between 3 and 5 % when properly administered, but instead examines the history of the production of AZT, one of he drugs used in this prevention strategy.

In the newly aired House of Numbers documentary, denialist views are supported by interviewing respected scientists and distorting their views in a clever concert of manipulation. The public is further shown as erratic sheep who merely carry mainstream HIV because that’s what ‘they’, the scientists said. The definition of HIV and AIDS is painted as unclear with the claim that there is confusion as to what the more than thirty-year old disease, AIDS is. The effectiveness of HIV rapid-tests are questioned in a most irresponsible manner. HIV counsellors in South Africa explain at length what the limitations of rapid testing are and why it is necessary to conduct follow-up testing. At no point is the practical or economic convenience of rapid testing explained, nor is there mention of the gold standard test PCR HIV test which instead of searching for HIV antibodies, identifies HIV DNA* in the person’s blood.

The causes of AIDS are debated at length as if the evidence has not been around for decades— HIV as being caused by ‘lifestyle’ drugs and choices such as Poppers, being homosexual, or by co-factors such as poverty and malnutrition. People living with HIV are depicted as highly-emotional sufferers who do not have an option to take life-saving medication and at no point are any people who are managing their lives well on ARVs interviewed. Instead, a baby who was clearly suffering from a very common ARV side effect, plural neuropathy, is depicted as being cured of the ailment once she is off the drug. Other patients are described as having died of hepatoxicity from Nevirapine. At no point is it explained that these side effects are well known and well documented and that every countries ARV guidelines takes these into account in the prescription of ARVs.

Just as Duesberg does, House of Numbers is another example of selective use of evidence. The consequences of this kind of conspiracy theory manipulation of evidence can be far reaching as can be witnessed in South Africa’s tragic AIDS policy of the past. House of Numbers is currently being screened at film festivals around the world. Like all other AIDS denialism, there are dire consequences to this kind of portrayal of evidence.

AIDS denialism allows for deadly consequences. Firstly, it allows people living with HIV an escape— a far too easy route into personal denial that facilitates a process of withholding treatment from oneself and taking the necessary steps to ensure a healthy future. Stemming from this, AIDS denialism allows for quackery in all forms to persist. This allows for unfounded treatments to be sold to people at high costs to cure them of their HIV, as has been tragically witnessed in so many individuals across the world. This is what resulted in the deaths of an immeasurable amount of people across the world, as ARVs are distrusted, as is the institution of scientific evidence. More than quackery, there is a current wave of religious leaders who are encouraging people to stop taking their ARVs as only their faith can heal them.

AIDS denialism, when lent a powerful policy ear, as was the case with the Mbeki administration, allows for the systematic erosion of the scientific governance of medicine. This has far reaching consequences— for example the Medical Control Council (MCC) is practically defunct due to Mbeki’s consistent disregard for scientific evidence. It can result in delaying life-saving treatment to entire nations.

Most importantly, denialism results in death. Unnecessary, painful death. It can be genocide. And it is for that reason that the activists and scientists should not stop fighting AIDS denialism. This should not only be on blogs and in academic journals—most importantly, it should be in the public. HIV Treatment Literacy (TL) is our most powerful tool in this. It is about making science accessible to the masses— even those who do not have any form of education. There are numerous groups who have shown the success of this approach. At any time one can walk into any clinic in Khayelitsha and hear TAC activists, many with no formal education, educating patients about their disease and its treatment. This is the power of TL and anti-denialists strongest weapon in essence given the fact that the denialists themselves are failing to listen.

At the book launch of Debunking Denialism, Andile Madondile, a TAC TL educator, who had indulged in quack remedies for his HIV when his CD 4 was only 9, spoke honestly of the effect that treatment literacy had on him “The comrades at TAC saved my life. They made me realise that ARVs were the only way that I was going to overcome this disease. It is the reason I am alive and well today.”

The denialists appear to be making a comeback. The sad and worrying truth is that they were never gone. The issue at stake here is that due to their easy access to money, resources, publicity, journals which are not peer reviewed and internet, their message will continue to be heard by the masses, who do not necessarily have an understanding of how science works or the myriad of AIDS data. It is this which needs to be stopped in its tracks. Even if governments are clear on the causes and treatment of HIV, at an individual level there is a different story, and this is where our efforts should be targeted. Nathan Geffen’s book Debunking Delusions comes at a time when we need to fight for truth again.

Lesley Odendal is currently completing her Masters in Public Health. She worked at the Treatment Action Campaign in 2008

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


The Politics of AIDS

The advocates of condom distribution programs have no credible scientific evidence to support the stated goals of their social engineering.

Studies on the safety and efficacy of condoms firstly suggest the inability of condoms to prevent the passage of virus-sized particles. This is particularly true for the thinner-walled varieties. In addition, the failure rate of condoms is a major concern not addressed in these programs.

Thick walled condoms are better in resisting breakage, but thin-walled varieties are more desired, given the more natural feeling during intercourse. However, thin condoms tend to break more readily, and all condoms tend to reduce sexual pleasure. The consequences of these facts are: there is a lot of compromising involved when condoms are used. They may de-excite a man, causing temporary loss of erection and slippage of the condom; or they may break. The effectiveness of condoms even for birth control is not so good -- next to the rhythm method and "withdrawl", condoms are a frequently-cited method of "birth control" employed by women visiting abortion clinics.

Given the absence of evidence to link HIV with AIDS, and the generally poor track record of condoms, a question is raised as to the motivations for the condom propaganda. Two elements come to mind. Firstly, condoms very definitely shift birth control practices away from methods which are under control of the female and therefore are more likely to be workable and successful, such as the pill or diaphragm -- therefore, to the extent they reduce reliance on better methods of birth control, they work to increase unwanted pregnancy.

Condom propaganda and distribution also appear designed to increase sexual anxiety and displeasure. Condom activists rarely address the associated reduction of sexual pleasure, and generally distribute the devices as part of hysterical "safe sex" educational programs.

The safe-sex activists I have come into contact with displayed an arrogant disinterest in any facts or evidence which would conflict with their eagerly-delivered "sex can kill" warnings to schoolchildren.

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

AIDS Denialism and Public Health Practice
Pride*Chigwedere1 and M.*Essex1*

(1)* Harvard School of Public Health AIDS Initiative and Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard School of Public Health, FXB 402, 651 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA*02115, USA

M.*Essex
Email: messex@hsph.harvard.edu
Published online: 8*January*2010

Abstract**
In this paper, we respond to AIDS denialist arguments that HIV does not cause AIDS, that antiretroviral drugs are not useful, and that there is no evidence of large-scale deaths from AIDS, and discuss the key implications of the relationship between AIDS denialism and public health practice. We provide a brief history of how the cause of AIDS was investigated, of how HIV fulfills Koch’s postulates and Sir Bradford Hill’s criteria for causation, and of the inconsistencies in alternatives offered by denialists. We highlight clinical trials as the standard for assessing efficacy of drugs, rather than anecdotal cases or discussions of mechanism of action, and show the unanimous data demonstrating antiretroviral drug efficacy. We then show how statistics on mortality and indices such as crude death rate, life expectancy, child mortality, and population growth are consistent with the high mortality from AIDS, and expose the weakness of statistics from death notification, quoted by denialists. Last we emphasize that when denialism influences public health practice as in South Africa, the consequences are disastrous. We argue for accountability for the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, the need to reform public health practice to include standards and accountability, and the particular need for honesty and peer review in situations that impact public health policy.
Keywords**HIV/AIDS denialism*-*Antiretroviral drugs*-*South Africa*-*Mortality*-*Accountability

Introduction
We recently published a paper estimating the human cost of not using antiretroviral drugs in South Africa [1]. Questioning whether HIV causes AIDS and the safety of using antiretroviral drugs (ARVs), the South African government led by former president Thabo Mbeki withdrew government support from Gauteng clinics that had begun using zidovudine (ZDV or AZT) for preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV (PMTCT) in 1999, restricted the use of nevirapine donated free of charge by Boehringer Ingelheim in 2000, obstructed the acquisition of grants for AIDS treatment from the Global Fund in 2002, and generally delayed implementing a national ARV treatment program until 2004. By considering the decreasing costs of ARVs, the increasing availability of international resources to fight AIDS, and comparing South Africa to neighboring Botswana and Namibia, we conservatively estimated the number of AIDS patients that could have received ARVs for treatment or PMTCT. Factoring in the efficacy of ARVs, we concluded that from 2000 to 2005 at least 330,000 South Africans died prematurely and 35,000 babies were infected with HIV as a result of Mbeki’s policies. Independently and using a different model, Nattrass arrived at similar estimates [2].

Duesberg and colleagues published a critique of the study in the Journal Medical Hypotheses which was subsequently retracted by the publisher pending an investigation of the quality and global health implications of the paper [3]. Peter Duesberg is the most well known AIDS denialist who was part of President Mbeki’s commission tasked to determine whether HIV causes AIDS in 2000, and he has recently received attention from a mainstream magazine [4] and a whistleblower award for his AIDS denialist writings.1 Consistent with earlier writings, Duesberg and colleagues:
1)*
Deny that HIV causes AIDS; that instead, it is a harmless passenger virus;
2)*
Deny that ARV drugs are useful, and therefore Mbeki’s decisions could not have harmed anyone;
3)*
Deny that hundreds of thousands of South Africans have died from AIDS, and thus it does not make sense to attribute 330,000 deaths to Mbeki [3].
We choose to respond to the issues raised above for two reasons: first, some readers may be hoodwinked by Duesberg’s dishonest arguments and think that there is a genuine debate in light of the surge in denialist coverage, and second, to emphasize the grave implications of AIDS denialism for public health practice.

Does HIV Cause AIDS?
Duesberg has been denying that HIV causes AIDS for more than 20*years [5].President Mbeki joined the debate in 1999 initially by questioning whether AZT was safe for use by pregnant women [6], and then joined the denialists by questioning whether HIV was the “real” cause of AIDS as a way of broadening the debate from the usefulness of AZT to the usefulness of all antiretroviral drugs in fighting the AIDS epidemic, since they all target HIV [7, 8]. He then appointed Duesberg and others to a commission to examine whether HIV causes AIDS [9]. Whether HIV causes AIDS is therefore at the very center of the policies implemented by Mbeki.

The evidence that HIV causes AIDS has been available for over 20*years.2[10] Careful epidemiological studies showing that individuals with a new, severe immunosuppressive disease clustered among homosexual men [11–13], intravenous drug users [14], female sexual contacts of drug users [15], hemophiliacs [16, 17], other recipients of blood transfusion products [18, 19], and newborn babies [20] suggested that the cause was an infectious agent transmitted by body fluids [21]. Early suggestions that illicit drugs or immune reactions to sperm were the cause [22, 23] could not explain all the patient groups affected by the immunosuppression. Serological studies then suggested that the causative agent was likely to be a retrovirus [24, 25], and this was confirmed by isolation and culture of the retrovirus from infected patients [26, 27]. Diagnostic assays were developed and much larger studies were then possible to identify HIV-infected persons using the presence of HIV antibodies, antigens, viral nucleic acids and virus, and to compare them to uninfected persons in longitudinal studies to learn the virology, immunology, pathology, and clinical and population features of the disease.

HIV meets several standards of epidemiologic causality [28]. HIV has satisfied Koch’s postulates, the traditional standard of infectious disease causation. To satisfy Koch’s postulates, one has to isolate the infectious agent from diseased animals, culture it in the lab, inoculate the agent into healthy animals which then develop disease, and reisolate the same infectious agent [29]. The difficulty in fulfilling the postulates was because HIV does not cause disease in animals other than humans [30] and it is unethical to infect healthy persons with HIV just to satisfy Koch’s guidelines. However, the postulates were satisfied when the HIV virus was isolated from AIDS patients, cultured in vitro, and upon accidental inoculation into previously uninfected lab workers who subsequently developed AIDS, the exact laboratory HIV clone was re-isolated from the patients [31, 32]. Using a causal model developed for chronic disease, HIV satisfies all of Sir Bradford Hill’s guidelines for assessing causality: [33] numerous studies comparing infected and non-infected persons have shown that AIDS develops only in those infected with HIV (very strong association, consistency and specificity) [34, 35]; follow-up cohorts have shown that the time relationship is that HIV infection always precedes AIDS (temporality) [36, 37]; higher level of virus as measured by viral load correlates with and predicts severity of disease (biological gradient) [38, 39] ;treatment that suppresses virus leads to clinical improvement (experiment) [40, 41]; there is an almost unique pathophysiological mechanism of how HIV leads to AIDS through the loss of CD4 lymphocytes (specificity and plausibility) [42, 43]; and numerous studies on HIV-1, HIV-2, SIV, SHIV and other viruses satisfy the coherence and analogy guidelines [44].

The above data have been presented and debated over the last 25*years. Duesberg’s response has been to ignore or deny the data that does not support his position, and to cherry-pick statements from studies and present them out of context to suggest that the evidence for HIV causation is unconvincing. His early argument was that HIV had not satisfied Koch’s postulates for infectious disease causation, and he also indicated several aspects of the pathogenesis that were not understood then [5]. However, when lab workers accidentally inoculated themselves with the virus and satisfied the postulates, Duesberg refused to accept the data [31] and now conveniently does not discuss the postulates. Similarly, early on, Duesberg agreed that hemophiliacs were the best group to test whether HIV causes AIDS because most of them did not have the drug use exposures that Duesberg considered causes, and both HIV-positive and HIV-negative hemophiliacs had received transfusions, hence foreign-protein contaminants [45]. When Darby and colleagues published mortality data in the complete UK population of 6,278 hemophiliacs showing that those with HIV had 10 times the mortality of those without, with 85% of the deaths attributable to HIV [35], journal editors who had hoped this was an honest debate asked whether Duesberg was going to concede defeat [46]. He did not. He just moved the goal posts and suggested that AZT was the cause of AIDS [47]; the approach that he had agreed to of using “hemophilia as the best test” was no longer relevant. While the other points raised by Duesberg pertain to pathogenesis and not causation [48], most of the mechanisms are understood today. Thus, molecular techniques were developed and it became possible to isolate and quantify free virus in plasma [49, 50]; the dynamics between virus and CD4 cells and how this relates to disease progression were unraveled [39, 51]; highly effective medications that work by suppressing virus were developed and are now in widespread use [52, 53]; and opportunistic infections similar to those in the US were reported from Africa and Asia [54, 55]. Duesberg has moved on from those arguments. One of his remaining arguments is that if there is no AIDS vaccine, which some predicted we would have soon after the discovery of HIV in 1984, then HIV does not cause AIDS [56]. The same reasoning could of course be used to argue that Plasmodium falciparum does not cause malaria, as there is no malaria vaccine.

What therefore causes AIDS, in Duesberg’s opinion? His answers are inconsistent and contradictory. On the one hand, he seems to argue that AIDS (the syndrome) does not exist at all, labeling it “a fabricated epidemic [57],” since all opportunistic infections that define it already existed before AIDS [58]. On the other hand, he also concedes that AIDS exists and offers causes [59], and seems unbothered by posing mutually exclusive arguments at the same time. In his earlier writings, he accepted that there is statistical association between HIV and AIDS (although he argued this was insufficient for causation) [60] and even considered the HIV-antibody test as useful surrogate to identify patients at risk of AIDS; [61] today, he denies that and argues that HIV is a passenger virus with no relationship whatsoever to AIDS [3]. In the same contradictory way, Duesberg has argued that HIV is not the cause of AIDS because “in most individuals suffering from AIDS, no virus particles can be found anywhere in the body” [62]; yet at about the same time that he published this, he was involved in a disagreement with other AIDS denialists who had challenged the very existence of HIV where he defended that “HIV has been isolated by the most rigorous method science has to offer [63].”

Duesberg clings to the early argument that AIDS is caused by use of recreational drugs [64], but as explained above, this hypothesis was discarded when AIDS was seen in patients that had never used drugs including hemophiliacs, transfusion recipients, babies, and some African populations. For hemophiliacs, he suggests that “foreign-protein contamination” through blood products is the cause [65], yet does not explain how AIDS from transfusion has virtually been eliminated just by incorporating the HIV test into blood screening [66]. The strangest cause he proposes is that AIDS is caused by AZT and other antiretroviral drugs [67], even though AZT was only used after 1987 and used primarily on persons already with AIDS rather than healthy persons. To this, Duesberg replies that there was no AIDS in persons other than illicit drug users before 1987.3 In babies, he moves from arguing that there is no AIDS in babies [68] and HIV cannot cause AIDS in babies (as it would otherwise kill itself together with its host) [69], to arguing that there is immunosuppression in babies but it is different and characterized by B cell deficiency [70], then that babies with AIDS are born to drug-addicted mothers [71]. Nevertheless, there are data showing that pediatric AIDS is real and has killed over 250,000 children per year since 1998 [72], that it has the same immunological profile of CD4 deficiency as in adults [20, 73], and that HIV-negative babies born to drug addicts do not get AIDS [74, 75]. What of Africa, the worst affected continent, which has comparatively much less recreational drug use and until this decade did not have ARVs in large supply? [76] Duesberg suggests that the cause is “protein malnutrition, poor sanitation and subsequent parasitic infections [77].” However, AIDS has affected the well-off and over-nourished Africans, not just the undernourished [78], and this raises the question why the same explanation does not apply to other less-developed countries outside Africa that do not have as much AIDS [79], or earlier time periods when poverty and the attendant sanitation and nutritional problems were not any less in Africa (and other places). Moreover, AIDS is a particular type of immunosuppression with selective depletion of CD4 lymphocytes [80], and neither homosexuality [81], illicit drugs [82], ARVs [41], blood transfusions [83], malnutrition [84], nor living in Africa [85] cause this.
In short, any explanation other than that HIV causes AIDS seems better to Duesberg—he therefore moves from the claim that AIDS does not exist to a multiplicity of causes even if it means creating a different cause for different geographies, different time periods, and different demographic groups, and without producing a shred of evidence [28, 86, 87]. This is what is called denialism—“the rejection of objective reality to sustain a flawed, hurtful, and ultimately dangerous belief system” [88].

[Mr. Bill]

HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS
A Summary of Current Research Findings

by James DeMeo, Ph.D.


There is growing suspicion among adolescents towards the "sex-educators" -- increasingly, schoolchildren simply don't believe them, concluding (properly so) that all the talk about AIDS in schools are big lies designed solely to frighten them out of having sex.

A telling fact is that, before AIDS, most of the condom activists had little or no interest in matters of public health or sexual hygiene counseling. Likewise, the overwhelming majority are totally ignorant of, or blatantly hostile towards the findings of the AIDS critics, such as Peter Duesberg.

In the San Francisco area, we routinely see more extreme examples of this "condomania": billboards simultaneously promoting condoms and homosexuality -- naked-to-the-waist homosexual men kissing or embracing, with a short sentence about "safe sex" below.

These public "educational programs", well-funded with tax money or donations from pharmacy companies, studiously avoid any mention of risky immune-depleting behaviors or the effects of poppers or other drugs; they have done little or nothing to slow the incidence of immune-system damage among high-risk groups.

AIDS is actually increasing today among younger gay men in large American cities. Concurrent to this increase, we also observe an increasing number of unwanted teenage pregnancies, as the basics of birth control and sexual hygiene education are being displaced by the distinctly sex-negative propaganda of the condom pushers.

continued...

.

[Sa_artman]

Myth: The fact that some HIV-positive people live in good health without treatment for many years proves that HIV is harmless

Fact: A small percentage of people infected with HIV do live for many years without developing AIDS. They are often known as long-term non-progressors. But such individuals are rare: without proper medical care, including antiretroviral drugs when needed, most HIV-positive people will eventually develop AIDS.

As putative evidence that HIV is harmless, some HIV/AIDS denialists point to examples of HIV-infected people who survive for many years, even decades, without receiving antiretroviral treatment. HIV denialists often claim that these people survived because they avoided antiretroviral therapy, and that diet, exercise, nutritional supplements or herbal therapies, stress reduction, hypnosis, and other interventions prevent progression to AIDS. These claims are untrue and dangerous.

It is true that a small number of people, often known by doctors and researchers as long-term non-progressors (LTNP), can survive with HIV and without treatment for prolonged periods (over 20 years in exceptional cases). Unfortunately, without careful monitoring and treatment, most HIV-infected people will develop AIDS within ten years of infection. Those who live longer without standard medical care are not always in good health, and some HIV-infected AIDS denialists (e.g., Christine Maggiore) have died of AIDS-related conditions just months after claiming to be healthy. Ignoring HIV infection, avoiding properly qualified doctors, or hoping that a healthy lifestyle will prevent disease indefinitely, will result in the unnecessarily early illness and death of the great majority of HIV-infected people.

Who are long-term non-progressors?
A small percentage of people infected with HIV do not experience the profound and sustained CD4+ T-cell depletion characteristic of HIV infection or develop AIDS-related illnesses for many years, even without treatment with antiretroviral drugs (1). Some infants who were infected with HIV before or at the time of their birth have now survived without treatment to become young adults, but again this fortunate outcome is rare.

Because LTNPs may not always know they are infected, their proportion within the total HIV-infected population is uncertain. The formal definition of an LTNP has also varied over the years, and between different research cohorts in different countries. In some cohorts, fewer than 1 or 2% (2) are LTNPs; other estimates, such as the first studies in the 1990s, reported a higher percentage, between 5 and 15% (1). Most LTNPs eventually do develop AIDS (3). For example, Kemal et al. described the case of a man who had normal CD4 counts for over 18 years before he eventually progressed to AIDS (4). Nevertheless, the factors that allow LTNPs to delay progression to AIDS are the subject of intense interest, research, and hope: understanding these factors could guide development of effective new treatments or even a vaccine (5, 6). Far from supporting AIDS denialism, many LTNPs have recognized their personal abilities to aid others with HIV, by making important contributions to research.

Most LTNPs do have a quantifiable and sometimes substantial plasma viral load, but a subset, known as virus controllers, do not. A plasma HIV load (“viremia”) of about 2000 copies per milliliter (mL) is considered to be an important threshold. Below this level, both progression to AIDS and the risk of transmission are greatly reduced (5). An HIV-positive individual who does not take HIV medications and maintains a viral load below the 2000 level for at least a year is considered a “viremic controller”; those who maintain a level under 50 copies per mL, the current limit of detection for most commercial tests, are called “elite controllers” (5). Elite controllers do not eradicate HIV infection—at least, no such cases have been conclusively demonstrated. Low-level viremia is still detectable in the majority of these elite controllers when one uses laboratory tests sensitive to less than one copy per mL of plasma (7). Nor are all elite controllers in perfect immunological health: very low levels of virus do not guarantee non-progression and are associated with slight but measurable declines in CD4+ T-cell levels (7, 8), and even elite controllers can sometimes progress to AIDS.

Why is there variation in disease progression rates in different people?
Virus and host genetics, not healthy living or avoiding antiretrovirals, explain the differences between those with a typical progression to AIDS and those who remain healthy for longer. There are many different strains of HIV. Some LTNPs are infected with poorly replicating or even defective strains of HIV. These variant viruses may be less infectious, less able to evade the immune system, or less harmful to host cells. For example, in the early 1980s, a strain of HIV defective in its Nef accessory gene spread from a single donor to six transfusion recipients in New South Wales, Australia. Nef is a protein that helps HIV both to replicate and to evade the immune system. Without it, the virus is less dangerous within infected people. As of 2008, three of these people were still living without AIDS and without antiviral treatments (“antiviral naïve”). The other three have died, but not of AIDS; in fact, only one person developed AIDS symptoms before death (9). Thus, much like antiretroviral therapy does in typical HIV cases (10), the defective virus has allowed its hosts to live several decades after infection…and to die of non-AIDS causes.

Host genetics are another reason for long-term non-progression. In evolutionary terms, HIV is a newcomer. The genetics-based tricks and techniques of the immune system that evolved over countless generations to force viruses like chicken pox and herpes into latency--and for the most part to keep them there--have not yet had time to develop against HIV and spread through the human gene pool. However, some fairly common gene variants may help to protect against HIV infection and progression to AIDS, whether by chance or because of similarities between HIV and other viruses previously encountered by the human immune system. No single gene variant explains all LTNPs. Instead, scientists think that an ensemble of genes may be responsible, varying from person to person (11, 12). Here are a few examples of the many gene categories that affect innate or adaptive immune system processes and that play a role in progression to AIDS (1, 11):

HIV co-receptors: HIV uses cell-surface proteins in addition to CD4 as “co-receptors” to gain entry to cells. One of these co-receptors, CCR5, exists in a truncated, defective form that HIV cannot use. A person with two copies (or “alleles”) of the mutant gene (a delta32 homozygote) is highly, but not absolutely, resistant to HIV infection, but this protection does not apply to a person with only one allele (a delta32 heterozygote). Delta32 heterozygotes progress more slowly to AIDS and death compared with people who have two normal CCR5 alleles. The high-profile case of an HIV-positive man with leukemia who was reported “functionally cured” of HIV underscores the importance of this CCR5 variant: after he received a bone marrow transplant from a CCR5-delta32 homozygous donor, doctors could no longer find HIV in his blood or in several tissues they examined (13). Although it remains to be seen if this man was truly cured of HIV infection, co-receptor variants clearly affect viral disease (some slow it down, others speed it up). Important alleles of related receptors and other proteins, including CCR2, CX3CR1, and CXCR1, have been reported also to affect disease progression rates (2).

HLA alleles: The human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) are cell-surface proteins that dangle pieces of chewed-up virus for the immune system to recognize. Several specific HLA alleles and genes for proteins that interact with them have been implicated in AIDS progression (1). People with the HLAB*57 or *27 alleles have slower progression; those with HLAB*35 progress faster (2).

Signaling: Signaling proteins known as cytokines/chemokines, for example IL-10, MIP1A, RANTES, CCL2 and SDF-1, are produced by the body to fight viral infection or control inflammation. Genetic variants in their genes or regulatory sequences affect how much of each protein is made and thereby influence disease progression.

Other innate immunity components: APOBEC: Members 3G and F of this protein family may accelerate the naturally high mutation rate of HIV to unsustainable levels. Genes or genetic sequences that affect the amount and activity of APOBEC could influence HIV progression. The antiviral protein TRIM5alpha slows down HIV after it enters the cell, keeping it from shedding its “coat” of capsid protein. Variants of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) 7/8 and 9 have also been reported to have an influence.

Genes that influence production of different antibody types and effectiveness of cellular responses to HIV are also likely to affect disease progression rates.

Conclusion
Disease progression rates are strongly influenced by viral and human genetic factors, and although a healthy lifestyle is very important, HIV-infected people with the best health habits can and do progress to AIDS. Seeing a doctor and getting proper treatment is essential, even for LTNPs. It is important to remember that antiretroviral treatment does not cause AIDS. In fact, most HIV-infected people with access to these medications live longer today than most untreated LTNPs in the past. In the time between infection and CD4+ decline or AIDS illnesses for an LTNP, sometimes ten years or longer, most untreated HIV-infected people would progress to AIDS and die. Prior to the arrival of combined antiretroviral therapy in 1996, median time from infection to death—even with some forms of treatment available and including LTNPs in the calculations—varied from under eight years to over twelve years in high-income countries, depending on age at infection (14). Today, many young HIV-infected people starting treatment can expect another 40 years of life, and treatment strategies are improving with time (10, 15). The lessons learned from the ongoing research collaborations between LTNPs and scientists may further enhance the effects of anti-HIV treatments.