Great question Yammer. I to don't expect to the Sun or CBC to admit to the scientific debates on HIV and AIDS, but I do hope that one day the Tyee will pick up on the bigger story behind the pharma propaganda. HIV/AIDS is not a case of a virus killing people, it is people killing people. After readers have read Duesberg linked above, they should go on to read the Perth Group at theperthgroup.com

This story did leave me with yet even more respect for the Downton Eastside Women's Center.

So Yammer are you suggesting that we let "survival of the fittest" choose those individuals who will have HIV resistant offspring who will merrily go through life with an immune system that works despite being HIV infected? Same thing happens in monkeys which are SIV(simian immunodifeciency virus) infected. they live quite happily even though they are SIV infected. In order for this to occur you would have to stop testing for HIV status and let people procreate as they see fit. Has is currently happening in the third world. Here in the west we test people andif poitive encourage them not to procreate. Thereby, limiting the possibilities for a resistant genetic strain to develop. You're going to make some peole very angry.

Unfortunately, an effective vaccine is a very long way off. My degree is in microbiology and I worked with HIV and other viruses for over ten years so I'm not ignorant about this subject.

Every person who has ever died from HIV/AIDS was vaccinated(either through sex or IV drug use or tained blood) and became immune to their particular virus. Their immune system still became comprimised and that ultimately resulted in their death. HIV has a unique part of it's where it incorporates itself into the genome of the infected cell( in this case the T-Helper cell). This is called LATENCY. Every time that infected cell replicates the HIV genome is replicated with it. The host immune system still recognizes these cells as normal because no viral proteins are being manufactured and expressed on the cell surface.
Eventually, that HIV gemoned is "triggered" to replicate and in doing so the infected cell is lysed releasing several thousand new viral particles. these go on to infected other cells and the cycle continues. When enough cells have been lysed(killed) the immune system can no longer function properly and the host dies of other complications.

But what would happen if there were already large amounts of antibodies in a person system before they were infected? IE. they've been vaccinated and are "immune". Unforutnately, the process by which antibodies and antigens(the HIV virus) bind is not irreversible. The biodynamics of the system are such that this binding will dissociate as well. When this happens it is possible for the virus to attach and infect a cell. All it has to do is bind with the proper host cell before an antibody can get to it. The infection cycle is started and immune cells start to die.

The real hope is that if you can significantly lower the number of cells infected when the virus is first introduced (say through sex) that you will be able to reduce the rate of cellular death to the point that the host will die from old age before they die of a comprimised immune system.

HOWEVER, FOR THEIR ENTIRE LIFE SPAN THEY WILL BE INFECTED. THEY WILL STILL BE ABLE TO INFECT OTHER PEOPLE. PEOPLE WILL FALSELY THINK THAT THEY CAN'T GET THE DISEASE BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN "VACCINATED".

This is the real danger of what the drug companies are promoting. By calling this a true vaccine like the others that people get in school when it is not. HIV's life cycle allows it to defeat the immune system anyways. Technically, what has occurred is a vaccination. You introducted a foreign protein that produced a "protective" immune response. BUT IT WON'T STOP THE DISEASE PROCESS UNTIL YOU CAN ELIMINATE LATENCY FROM HIV'S LIFE CYCLE.

Some drugs have been said to promote viral replilcation so that those cells that are latently infected will start to produce virus but they are not 100% effective. Until they are and you can insure that all viral particles can be destroyed you will not have an effective vaccine in the way that the lay person currently understands it to be.

What you will have is a group of people who falsely believe that they are immune running around engaging in dangerous behaviour and putting themselves and others at risk. The drug companies are being very,very irresponsible in what they are doing.

Fascinating post, DenisB. Very important information there. Thank you.

Drug companies in tandem with the HIV/AIDS research & service delivery apparatus (the "AIDS lobby") bear careful watching. There's been a lot of good work done, but there's a global Big Money equation here that observers should always take into sober consideration.

Good one, DenisB, and yet there is apparently a group of sex trade workers in South Africa, who have achieved long-term immunity, at least as dependable as SIV infection. What's your view of that situation? Last I heard it was considered to be a pure anomaly.

I don't believe that hiv negative people should be testing any new hiv vaccines--especially people as marginalized and vulnerable as Vancouver's sex trade workers. Congratulations Downtown Eastside Women's Centre for holding your ground on this issue.

Incidentally, latency will easily defeat any conventional immune response vaccination. I really don't understand why this isn't obvious to researchers. I think it's a huge underestimating of the genomic complexity achieved when the virus first overcame the species inertia by developing from a singularly simian immune virus to one one that can be passed from human to human. Ironically, there's a huge body of evidence that hiv was invented, probably accidentally, by researchers testing the Polio vaccine on hundreds of thousands of Ugandans back in the fifties. They were using simian (chimp and monkey) kidney cells, which are very useful because of the speed at which they replicate. Another possibility is that it mutated from SIV to HIV as a new order of SV40, which was the fortieth rhesus monkey virus to be studied-probably to this date the most studied and manipulated virus of all time. The cat is out of the bag. We just NOT going to train the human immune system to defeat the HIV virus. It's much too clever.

Duesberg's theory has been totally discredited. This is a debate that ended 10 years ago. It is extremely ignorant to bring that topic up in any context.

Should all AIDS vaccine tests be done in Africa? I agree that if the Vancouver high-risk community feels that vaccines should not be tested here, then these vaccine tests cannot be done.

Hi Truman,

The sex trade worker myth was debunked several years ago - bad research. However,several people have been found to lack the main surface protein receptor that HIV binds to when it infects the cell. They seem to be more resistant to infection. Which makes sense. Apparently, a young man in New York may have eliminated the virus but the results are inconclusive. Even so, odds say that out of 6.5 billion people one person might be able to do it.

The earliest known case of HIV infection is 1949 in a British sailor. A doctor remembered a patient early in his career who died of similar circumstances to his patients in the 1980's. when the tests where available they went back and tested tissue samples (histology samples preserved in paraffin) by immunofluorscence. they tested Positive for HIV-1.

How it jumped species is still unknown. Either someone was attacked by a monkey and blood was exchanged or it may have been when the monkey was prepared for dinner. Someone cutting themselves, etc.

Laatency is obvious to researchers. they just choose to ignore it. You can't generate grant monies if you say your research has no chance of success. Everyone out there is searching for their share of the billion dollar prize. And the AIDS lobby is very powerful. they want a cure and pressure people to support the projects that sound like they will succeed.

Sue, my professional opinion is that no vaccine testing should be done at present. You first need to figure out a way to stimulate all infected cells to produce virus so that there is a chance for the antibody response to eliminate all viral particles in the body. Even if you do find this drug you then have to make sure that a person who has been vaccinted takes it on a regular basis so that if they are exposed to the virus they can eliminate the virus. Without a way to defeat latency you cannot successfully defeat the infection.

You may be able to lower the rate of cellular death to the point that the patient will die of old age before they start to suffer from AIDS. but, they will still be infected and more importantly, infectious.

We're not where we need to be to start vaccine trials.

Once again corporate America with its multi national publicly trade companies would love to jump the gun, take risks with peoples lives, all to increase company profits by adding another revenue stream by givng out these vaccines.
It seems they are always jockeying for position to see who can be at the forefront in providing these kind of initiatives without even considering all the risks.
It's all about money and market share.

Thanks for getting back, Denisb. The latency issue still seems very strange to me. I think an astute, independent researcher would take this as a sign that the developement of antibodies is not the way to go. The potential for the developement of a temporary vaccine administered as permanent protection is very great. (this could make the Vioxx problem seem miniscule in comparison) Thanks for highlighting the SIV--HIV link. Does it really seem plausible to you that the species jump was made by Africans eating simians or "spilling blood," as you say, when Africans have been eating chimps and monkeys for thousands of years without this species-jumping occurring? Confronted with this problem the best response by scientists is that the massive migration of Africans to the big urban centres precipitated the species jump. I just don't buy it. My information is that the SIV-HIV jump occurred in Uganda at around the same time researchers administered the experimental polio vaccines (l959). I'm a fan of synchronicity, too, but this really seems a bit much, considering the tens of thousands of years to be taken into consideration. Anyway...I really hope hiv-negative people will resist being used as guinea-pigs for the big pharmaceuticals. At this stage in the game it's just far too dangerous--and probably most people just don't understand that experimental vaccines are made with pieces of the viruses in question--whether alive or dead--and because of the latency issue, these are not run-of-the-mill viruses, like bacteriophages, for instance--but very sophisticated chunks of protein--covered sequencing information. There is, at minimum, a huge potential for accidental infection or permanent changes in the immune systems of recipients. As was pointed out by Danielle Egan, some of the hiv-negative subjects have tested positive for hiv infection. Ditto, Sue Clark. I'd recommend people not wasting their time on the Duesberg stuff.

I'm very glad that our roundtable on this issue has generated discussion and awareness of the issues of vaccine testing as well as awareness about the manufactured financial vulnerability of women's groups to this kind of corporate agenda.

I'd like to point out a couple small mistakes: WISH, is not a women's shelter and the
Downtown Eastside Women's Centre is incorrectly identified as a shelter early in the story.

Vancouver Rape Relief and Women's Shelter applauds the principled response that WISH and the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre made in relation to Merck Frosst.

Yes, the species jump is crediable. After all humans are 99% chimp at the gentic level. the disease Kuru is a form of encephalitis (like Mad Cow) that is prevalent in the women of cannibalistic tribes in the south Pacific. teh women got it more than the men because they were the ones that prepared and cooked the brains of victims. The men ate the cooked brains which were sanatized by the cooking process. Epidimelogy does suggest the the infection occurred in the North East area of Africa. And there are many known viruses that if introduced into a related species (like hamster to mouse for instance) will cause cancer instead of a milder disease.

As for the polio connection I don't know. Monkey tissue cell clutures are used to grow a variety of viruses. And they were probably infected with SIV. Could SIV have made the jump with the vaccine? Yes it is possible since polio is a live attentuated viral vaccine. Ie. it's a type that is living, immunogenic, and incapable of causing disease. The virus doesn't undergo treatment to kill it before it's innoculated into humans. Any such treatment would have killed the SIV since it's not a very hardy virus.

Has a side note; all Rhesus Monkey Kidney cell cultures used for Influenza culture are harvested from a group of monkeys on a small island off the USA. Why you ask? Because wild Rhesus monkeys can be infected with Herpes B virus which is 99% fatal to humans. A sizeable number of researchers/lab techs died of Herpes B until the virus free monkey population was formed.

To understand latency think about cold sores. The Herpes virus that causes cold sores is "latent" in nerve cells. When your body is "stressed" the Herpes virus reactivates and causes a cold sore. Your immune system then fights the infection and the cold sore goes away. It's still latent in the nerve cell so next time your body's stressed - Voila! Chicken Pox comes back to haunt you later in life in the form of Shingles. Same virus (Varicella zoster)two different disease forms.

Hope this helps.

D

Denis B, I was thinking about the herpes virus while I was writing about latency. Simplex type 1, which half the population has seems a devilish little character, as you say, hiding in the ganglia at the base of the spine until a stressful situation arises. I used to get it (Cold Sores) just before a big date when I was a teenager. Simplex 2 is the genital type which APPARENTLY employs the same devilish tricks to torment sufferers. And yes, they are an excellent example of latency.

Correction: The earliest known human fluids containing the hiv virus were discovered in the late fifties in the old Belgian Congo, or Zaire, or as it is presently known, the DRC--Democratic Republic of the Congo--and NOT Uganda as I claimed. Sorry to bother you again, Denisb, but can you please give me some leads to your British sailor? Thanks, in advance.

"Up to today there is actually no single scientifically really convincing evidence for the existence of HIV. Not even once such a retrovirus has been isolated and purified by the methods of classical virology."

Dr. Heinz Ludwig Sänger, Emeritus Professor of Molecular Biology and Virology, Max-Planck-Institutes for Biochemy, München.
(see virusmyth.net/aids for numerous important articles)

To Susan Clark:
Duesberg has NEVER even been answered, let alone refuted.

The various rests for HIV are unreliable. There are around 70 diseases and conditions which will cause a positive reaction. Having had multiple pregnancies or being pregnant, having just had the flu or a flu shot, hepatitis, syphillis, tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, leishmaniasis, injection drug use, multiple sclerosis...the list is breathtaking.

The fraud of it all is immense.

"The medical literature spells it out differently – quite differently. The journals that review HIV tests, drugs and patients, as well as the instructional material from medical schools, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and HIV test manufacturers will agree with the public perception in the large print. But when you get past the titles, they’ll tell you, unabashedly, that HIV tests are not standardized; that they’re arbitrarily interpreted; that HIV is not required for AIDS; and finally, that the term HIV does not describe a single entity, but instead describes a collection of non-specific, cross-reactive cellular material."
Liam Scheff http://www.whale.to/b/scheff_h.html

The "science" of HIV is an enormous make-work project in which billions get poured into dead-end areas of investigation. It started out as "science by press-release" and has remained a giant public relations excercise.See aliveandwell.org for article called "A Closer Look At HIV.' use the links to other sites.

Just the very name "Centre For Excellence in HIV/AIDS" is pure Orwell. Think about it. Think about the amount of turning a blind eye to the fact that a retro-virus has NEVER been shown to cause disease in humans. Gallo, Duesberg and endless others spent 20 years and billions looking into retro-viruses as a possible cause of cancer only to find out that they are passenger viruses which do not have the ability to replicate on their own. They can only divide when the cells they occupy divide. That is not a receipe for disease.
( see Duesberg's original paper published in the journal Cancer Research in 1988 at his site duesberg.com)

Did you realize that AIDS is the ONLY disease for which cumulative numbers rather than yearly numbers are emphasised. "22 million people have died of AIDS in Sub- Saharan Africa over the last 23 years" or what ever numbers are being quoted lately. When one examines the percentage of population this represents on a yearly basis the fraud starts to become apparant. Coupled with the fact that each pregnant woman who tests poitive in Africa, and remember pregnancy will often trigger a poitive reaction, is multiplied by a factor of 32+, hence the wild numbers for the "African Pandemic."

Take a look at the info on http://healtoronto.com/ from which comes the next quote:

"I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled.

"Let's be clear: ...Consensus is the business of politics. Science, ...requires only one investigator who happens to be right... The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

"There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."
~ Michael Crichton ~ Director, Author, Creator of the television series ER and a Harvard Medical School Graduate

It is really time to blow the lid on this fraud.

Nana, is that the same Michael Crichton who's also one of the world's most prominent carbon dioxide-methane-global warming debunkers? Figures!

Yammer and Nana. Apology forthcoming! I just read Duesberg's statement on Aids in Africa and I must admit that I've had a similar nagging suspicion that the African epidemic might be as much a disease of poverty as a disease-causing virus. The case for the recreational-drugs cause of American aids seems a bit strange though. There are two different viruses operating, afterall. Thanks for reminding me to keep an open mind. Mbeki has been widely criticized for his opinion and failure to buy into the conventional medical paradigm, but maybe his view has merit. Thanks.

What two different viruses would that be?

People who do drugs have health problems...what's so strange?

By the way, the whole solar system is warming up...even Pluto. Check it out!

Nana, take a look at the article written by Vancouver's own Martin T Schechter. What you are writting is nutty nonsense.

Nana, there are two major subtypes of HIV known as HIV1 and HIV2. HIV2 is the subtype most commonly found in Africa and HIV1 is the subtype which is thought to have arrived in America via a homosexual airline worker. Much of the possible credibility I would lend to Duesberg is his finding that about 80 percent of the South Africans presumed to have contracted AIDS from HIV2 have not been tested for the presence of the virus in their fluids, which is in accordance with a protocol for assessing Aids in that part of the world. It is also interesting that HIV2 is not as virulent a strain as HIV1 and the illness of HIV2 sufferers takes A LOT LONGER TO PROGRESS TO AIDS. (a pretty good syllogistic support to Duesberg's work regarding African AIDS) A simplified paraphrasing of Duesberb's concept is that poverty-stricken Africans are susceptible to the illnesses which are known to be caused by a weakened immune system, and that most of the dying would have lived, whether or not they were infected, if they had access to clean water, proper nutrition, shelter and medical care. This is basically what President Mbeki has been saying and for which he has been widely ridiculed by Western scientists and even including Nelson Mandela. There seems to be an undeniable logic in this argument, and when considered with statistical information regarding death rates among Africa's 700,000,000 I think his theories are certainly worth studying.

Non are so blind....HIV is a scam both 1&2.

Antibody testing used to mean that the person...or animal had been exposed to the disease and coped with it. HIV supposedly turned all of that upside down and instead became a "death sentence." Now couple that with the fact that 70 diseases or conditions will lead to a positive HIV test and you have no science that would stand upto closer scrutiny if people hadn't been heavily indoctrinated by costly PR. I bet none of you have bothered to read any of the links I posted.

At least read http://www.duesberg.com/articles/kmreason.html

One of the authors is Kary Mullis, Nobel Prize winner who invented the Polymerase Chain Reaction. There would be no HIV to talk about except for this technology. Here's an excerpt:

"Such displays of rage and ridicule are familiar to those who question the HIV theory of AIDS. Ever since 1984, when Gallo announced the discovery of what the newspapers call "HIV, the virus that causes AIDS," at a government press conference, the HIV theory has been the basis of all scientific work on AIDS. If the theory is mistaken, billions of dollars have been wasted-and immense harm has been done to persons who have tested positive for antibodies to HIV and therefore have been told to expect an early and painful death. The furious reactions to the suggestion that a colossal mistake may have been made are not surprising, given that the credibility of the biomedical establishment is at stake. It is time to think about the unthinkable, however, because there are at least three reasons for doubting the official theory that HIV causes AIDS.

"First, after spending billions of dollars, HIV researchers are still unable to explain how HIV, a conventional retrovirus with a very simple genetic organization, damages the immune system, much less how to stop it. The present stalemate contrasts dramatically with the confidence expressed in 1984. At that time Gallo thought the virus killed cells directly by infecting them, and U.S. government officials predicted a vaccine would be available in two years. Ten years later no vaccine is in sight, and the certainty about how the virus destroys the immune system has dissolved in confusion.

"Second, in the absence of any agreement about how HIV causes AIDS, the only evidence that HIV does cause AIDS is correlation. The correlation is imperfect at best, however. There are many cases of persons with all the symptoms of AIDS who do not have any HIV infection. There are also many cases of persons who have been infected by HIV for more than a decade and show no signs of illness."

It's estimated that 3 million Africans die each year of malaria ..which causes a positive result on an HIV test. That is more than 3x the estimated deaths from AIDS. There are cheap drugs to treat people ...do we ever hear about it? Are we ever asked to contribute to help wipe out malaria?

TB or malaria with a positive test is AIDS (or pregnancy or...nameit) without it's not. That's not science....that's a belief system held in place by government and media.

Nana, that's exactly the link and information I read. Certainly, there seems to be some merit regarding African infections, but his theory claiming that use of "recreational drugs and AZT in America" are the prime causes of AIDS seems a wee bit less "scientific."
When you say that that "HIV is a scam" are you saying that these viruses, 1 and 2 are not really making anybody sick?

That's right..."In short, "HIV" is a myth, along with many of the beliefs accompanying the theory. The pictures of the virus that have appeared around the world are artists' impressions and computer simulations, based on indirect observations by molecular biologists, not isolation of the virus itself."

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/nheuropean.htm

Drug use: " 1.The CDC and Fauci have considered peripheral neuropathy and thrombocytopenia as AIDS-indicators illnesses ( 7). They justified their actions by stating that autoimmune diseases induced by HIV cause these illnesses. These patients are usually treated with high doses of glucocorticoids and other immunosuppressant agents that cause AIDS. The CDC and Fauci's assumptions are not valid because alcohol, illicit drugs, and many medications used by individuals in risk groups cause peripheral neuropathy and/or thrombocytopenia. In addition, AIDS and autoimmune disease are mutually exclusive illnesses. Patients with AIDS suffer from a depression in the immune system functions, while patients with autoimmune disease suffer from hyperactive immune system.

The common drugs that cause thrombocytopenia include: chemotherapeutic agents, alcohol, myelosuppressive drugs, thiazide diuretics, estrogens, antibiotics, sedative, hypnotics, anticonvulsants, aspirin, sulfa drug, digitoxin, phenytoin, gold salts, heparin, sulfnamides and trimethoprim (the treatment for Pneumocyst carrinii). Fauci et al. described the treatment for thrombocytopenia as follows: 60 mg of prednisone is administered for 4 to 6 weeks and then decreased slowly for over another a few weeks ( 7). Cyclophosphamide, azathioprine, and AZT are also among the drugs recommended for the treatment of thrombocytopenia."
http://www.ourcivilisation.com/aids/cause/index.htm#Facts

HIV positivity leads to the use of protease inhibitors. Tell me how does the body repair itself when it is given a drug or drugs which are DNA chain disrupters?

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/news/mijama.htm

"Protease inhibitors were introduced on the market in December 1995 with much fanfare, but only two randomized studies were ever done that claimed reduced infections or death from use of protease inhibitors. These studies (Cameron et al and Hammer et al.) were short-term and showed significant toxic side effects. These two studies did not use a true placebo, but instead placed one group on two drugs plus a protease inhibitor and the other group just on the two other drugs. Since the two other drugs had not been shown to reduce morbidity or mortality, this by itself eliminates them from meaningful discourse. One of them (Cameron et al) showed no difference in mortality, which they conceal by lumping mortality stats in with a variety of others. The other (Hammer et al) relied on statistical manipulations which have been heavily criticized. (see http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/drconf.htm for a discussion of the Hammer study as well as some other problems with protease inhibitors)

Nana, now I've got thousands of pages to read to decide what's going on, but I want to thank you and Yammer for introducing this stuff to me. And Denisb, we talked about latency, but I always had a major problem with herpes simplex1, 2 and Zoster. They cause irritable and unpleasant symptoms, but they don't seem to be killing anybody. Could it all be a hoax? Well I plan to find out.

Liam Scheff is a contemporary journalist who first broke the story of experiments on foster children in NYC with AIDS medications, "The House That AIDS Built." It is a horrifying story. His stuff is "must read."

http://www.whale.to/b/scheff_h.htmlhttp://www.whale.to/b/scheff_h.html

Now about latency....Syphilis, which symptoms and progress exactly matched that of AIDS cases among those who died in the 1980s, has three stages . The first two proceed within 2-5 weeks of infection and the third stage after a latency period of at least 7 years.

The late Dr. Stephen Caiazza treated his gay symptomatic AIDS patients first with the then standard treatments and lost all of them (200+-).

After he treated the next group (125) for syphilis with a combination of penicilin and doxycycline he lost one.

Dr. Caiazza came to Vancouver to talk about his experience to other physicians. The whole membership of the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons were invited. Only two showed up.

CBC Almanac cancelled his long scheduled appearance the night before on the flimsy excuse that they couldn't get anyone to appear to discuss his findings. Bill Good at least refused that game and two of the local medical authorities did phone-ins. When they couldn't shoot down his facts, they just got nasty.

I knew a young man who died shortly after. He had asked his physician to treat him as though he had syphilis. He was refused treatment on the grounds that the test was negative. The standard test had been found to be only 38%
reliable in secondary syphilis ant lower than that in tertiary. Even when given that info from a medical journal, the doc refused to budge. Why?

For an interview with Dr. Caiazza go to:

http://www.theconspiracy.us/vol7/cn7-35.html

Thanks guys and gals, this has been very interesting reading and considering all you have written.
I wonder why they are so for prescribing AZT to a person with HIV if they have no proof it causes AIDS. Who would benefit from that?
For me personally, I have had hep C for thirty four years and my enzyme rates were really high and getting higher for years. The medical community told me the only option was a treatment called Pegatron. This includes Interferon and other nasty products. I went to a naturopath and went on a regiment of vitamins and liver detox potions and after a year my liver test results show no evidence of hep C, my enzyme levels are normal.
The point is the medical community is so eager to put people on nasty drugs that in most cases do more harm than good. It appears the doctors have just become salesmen for the big pharmaceutical companies that only care about profits.
Lots of money to be made supplying these dangerous, so called treatment and remedy drugs that really haven't been proven to help those they are geiven to. In fact, they could do a lot more harm than good in most cases.

Thanks for joining in, Barryjo. Nana, I have usually figured out that I could isolate the cardinal question in any controversy. Regarding Aids in Africa I think it might be:
"Is it true that all people who are starving have Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?"

It is hardly surprising that malnutrition leads to immune deficiency.Remember the S in AIDS stands for syndrome. A syndrome is a collection of symptoms. The mistake was to assume and then look for a single causative agent.

How fortuitous for the guys working in a dead-end field like retro-virology that HIV came along and with no peer reviewed paper to prove causation, it was proclaimed the winner of the sweepstakes. No other theory ever got a dime of the billions of government money spent on this boondoggle.

British Medical Journal letters and refs. on AIDS and malnutrition

http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/324/7335/446/a

I must confess, I'm somewhat confused by the turn this thread has taken. I've just left one 'conspiracy thread' only to wind up on another one. To be honest, this flies in the face of my own empirical observations within my community, as well as the first-hand life experience of many friends & acquaintances of mine. There's some very unorthodox statements on this thread.

If, as some have asserted, HIV does not exist and does not cause AIDS, then how do we explain the Western gay male experience of the past two decades?

Unfortunately, I can't wade through a barrage of weblinks, so if someone can clarify the 'hoax' theory for me in succinct layman's terms, it would be very much appreciated.

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/mabcdc.htm

halfway down the page
Malnutrition and AIDS

It has been stated that the finding of atrophy of lymphoid tissue in people suffering from malnutrition was observed as early as 1925. For example, Jackson’s review on this topic in 1925 noted that many investigators had found a pronounced tendency of atrophy of lymphoid tissue in all conditions of malnutrition. Thymus weight was exquisitely sensitive to malnutrition and was earlier designated as the "barometer of nutrition [11].

I have found an extensive literature describing the impact of malnutrition on the function and the structure of the immune system in people in Africa. This information clearly demonstrates that AIDS in Africa is caused by starvation and not by HIV. The functions of the immune system, especially the cellular immunity, are impaired in malnutrition cases. The severity of the impairment is dependent on the degree of malnutrition in both human and animals. Table 1 contains a brief description of studies, including 345 malnourished children and two experimental models that show the impact of food deprivation on the size of the thymus and the lymphoid organs [1]. For example, the size of the thymus of 42 malnourished children was reduced by 90% as compared with a case-match normal controls. In a second study involving 110 malnourished children, the thymic area was found to be 20% of the size in healthy children. In addition, Table 2 contains a brief description of the result of studies that included 493 malnourished children who showed impairment in the function of the immune system; especially the cellular immunity[1].

The reduction in the thymus and the lymphoid tissue size and the reduction in the function of the immune system of malnourished children and animals were reversed after proper feeding as shown in Table 3. For example, the size of the thymus increased from 20% of normal in a malnourished child to 107% of normal following 9 weeks of proper feeding. The reversal of the reduction in CD4+T cell count in HIV+ pregnant women following proper feeding was also reported by Fawzi et al. [12]. Briefly, the influence of diet on T cells counts in peripheral blood in 1,075 HIV-infected pregnant women who had poor nutritional status were studied. The CD4+ T cell counts of the women who received multivitamin increased from 424/µL to 596/µL during six months of proper feeding [1,12 ]. (more at above link)

For Nightbloom:The beginnings of AIDS

The few years leading up to the AIDS era and the discovery of HIV are illuminating. It was a time when a promiscuous minority of young, "liberated", gay men in a few large American cities were increasingly developing previously uncommon diseases such as fatal forms of the malignancy Kaposis' sarcoma and a fungal pneumonia known as PCP. At the time, whilst it was reasonable to implicate an infectious microbe transmitted by rampant, indiscriminant sexual practices interspersed with needle sharing drug taking, the fact that immune suppression had multiple causes was also known in 1981. Some considered the diseases resulted from multiple assaults to bodily functions caused by the many and varied diseases, toxins and treatments that accompanied the gay and drug taking lifestyle that had evolved during the late 1970s.

Just how extensive these multiple assaults were was indicated by the English journalist Neville Hodgkinson documenting the range of infections of just one homosexual, the late Michael Callen in his book "AIDS The failure of contemporary science: How a virus that never was deceived the world".(29) "Non-specific urethritis, hepatitis A, more NSU and gonorrhoea, amoebas [intestinal parasites]-and hepatitis B, more NSU and gonorrhoea, more amoebas, shigella, non-A, non-B hepatitis, giardia, anal fissures, syphilis, more gonorrhoea [penile, anal and oral], gonorrhoea, shigella twice, more amoebas, herpes simplex types I and II; venereal warts, salmonella; chlamydia; cytomegalovirus (CMV); Epstein-Barr virus (EBV); mononucleosis and cryptosporidiosis", ("a disease of cattle!"). Indeed, an early US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) study confirmed that the first 100 men with AIDS had a median lifetime number of 1120 sex partners.(30) As Callen himself put it, "I got some combination of venereal diseases EACH AND EVERY TIME I had sex". Not surprisingly, given the widespread belief of a causal relationship between immunity and the maintenance of health, in 1981 the "new" disease became known as Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID). In fact none of the diseases was new. Some were known to occur in drug addicts and haemophiliacs long before the AIDS era. What was "new" was their exponentially escalating prevalence in gay men.

Pretty shocking, Nana. And perhaps the question for Aids in America is, "Has a healthworker who has been accidently infected with the aids virus, and who had a normal, well nourished, non-high risk lifestyle, ever died from AIDS?"

I can't answer your question definitively, but the early discussions(1986) of the possibility of transference of HIV by needlestick found none. Hep B. can be aquired that way though.

I know of an instance when a young man got a needlestick from emptying the trash can at a fast food restaurant. He was immediately put on AZT. I have no idea what the outcome was, but it is likely he would have been made sick from the drug he was required to take for 4 weeks.

The claim is that PEP or post exposure prophilaxis cuts HIV positivity by 79%( U.S. figure). Yet it is also claimed that in Canada
99.7 needlestick injuries DO NOT result in HIV infection.

So, the answer is you are unlikely to get sick unless it's from the drugs you're conned into taking.

Hi everyone. Truman, you've made me think and rethink a lot over the years, I still owe you.

To be clear, I think that, regardless of whether HIV is the cause, a co-factor, or a harmless passenger virus, there is "AIDS": the wasting, collapse of immune system, organ failure and painful death.

I finally have seen this up close as a very close relative and friend has just died of it.
After spending hours with him in the hospital and in the family circle during and after, the idea that HIV is not the cause is practically unthinkable. You WANT to blame a virus. It explains all, absolves all.

Intellectually I am a skeptic like Kary Mullins, but you can see how, emotionally, the HIV hypothesis is powerful.

Thank you for the clarification, Nana.

If I understand correctly, the argument asserts that the onset of a "full-blown-AIDS" scenario is the result of a series of assaults on the immune system by an array of varied and repeated infections over time. Not simply the result of the virus (do I have that right?)

A couple Questions just to be sure I'm following the reasoning of the argument:

(1) If a person who lived a relatively clean lifestyle (i.e. didn't take risks with drugs, unsafe sex, or exposure to preventably illnesses) were to be injected with a sample of HIV+ blood, would they not undergo a form of acute seroconversion sydrome, as is generally understood, and in time begin to experience a precipitous drop in the relevant cell counts which would eventually lead to immune deficiency syndrome (irrespective of their 'clean' lifestyle)?

(2) Is it correct to say that the argument allows for the existence of the HIV virus, but that it regards the presence of the virus as merely the common denominator in AIDS cases, not its root cause?

I must confess, I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this.

Yammer, was your relative on anti-virals/protease inhibitors/AZT? That's what's killing people! Few people can withstand the pressure to take the drugs and most are terrified not to.

Nightbloom, yes, you have that right, especially if one of the infections is undiagnosed syphilis. Syphilis was known as "The Great Imitator", because the immune suppresion which is one of its characteristics, allowed many other infections to proliferate.

Quest 1; Actually Peter Duesberg offered years ago to be the guinea pig in just such a trial. No one wants to take him up on it. He claims the virus exists, but is a harmless passenger virus.

Quest 2:The Perth Group says the "virus" is a laboratory artifact. Remember the man responsible for the PCR technology has spent years waiting for the definitive paper to be produced which shows HIV causes anything.

The fact remains that with HIV testing such a crap-shoot because the tests are for an antibody and one can test positive if one has 1 or more of 70 diseases or conditions....the whole excercise is meaningless from a truly scientific point of view. The fact remains that this nonsense had driven healthy people to suicide or slow death by toxic drugs.

People who are sick and test positive should be treated for the disease or condition they have like TB, injection drug use, leprosy, malaria or whatever.....not a non-existant virus. Healthy people who test positive...like pregnant women should be left alone.

http://www.aliveandwell.org/ See this site started by a woman who tested positive herself.

There have been many cases of people being diagnosed with and treated for AIDS without testing positive, so it's not even a common denominator.

We have been conned.

The biggest problem for most people is they can not believe that such a massive fraud could be perpetrated by so many for so many years. It would not be the first time.

One has to throw out the entire paradigm.

How do you explain the fact that HIV is transmitted through unprotected sex and tainted blood transfusions? How do you explain that protease inhibitors have dramatically prolonged the lives of those who have tested positive for HIV? Look at the actual results of the drug trials and you will see that Duesberg was totally wrong. Thanks to protease inhibitors, HIV is becoming a chronic disease that people can live with much like insulin to those with Type 1 diabetes.

There is nothing wrong with having an alternate hypothesis, but as I said before Duesberg was proved to be wrong more than 10 years ago. Are you trying to justify the removal of the HIV treatment programs that are being done in places like BC in which all patients are given the drugs that they need to prolong their lives?

In Africa, being HIV+ means a *substantially* shorter life. In BC, it means that your quality of life has diminished, but you will continue to live your life.

Also Nana, in one of your posting above, you complained about not have "placebo" trials. It would be unethical to remove any form of treatment from someone with HIV. To test a protease inhibitor, the standard drug treatment is given to both of two groups and the protease inhibitor is given to one of them. When the protease inhibitor is shown to be effective, everyone with HIV gets the protease inhibitors. When less toxic protease inhibitors come out, they become the new treatment.

This is not a conspiracy. The researchers are not sitting around counting money.

Sue Clark you are a true believer! Belief is not science and neither is advertising and public relations.

http://www.aliveandwell.org/html/aids_drug_fact/aidsdrugfact.html

"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."

"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)"

I'm going away for a week and this will be gone by the time I get back. I've given you a start. The
truth is out there and eventually will be known. In the meantime please inform yourselves and do not be surprised at the scullduggery you will find surrounding the "Medical Industrial Complex".

Big Pharma has been shown over and over again to be corrupt and corrupting. The history of both the Health Protection Branch of Health Canada and the FDA in the US is rife with scandal and revolving doors with the industry.

http://www.duesberg.com/viewpoints/case2.html#sec1

The Case of HIV: We Have Been Misled
By Serge Lang

Yale Scientific
Spring 1999
Volume 72, Nos. 2 & 3, pp. 9-19

Circular official definition.
"First, one must realize that the official definition of AIDS in the United States is not scientifically neutral. It is circular. Since 1992, for instance, the CDC has an official list of 29 diseases. Among these, about 60% have to do with immuno deficiency but 40% do not (for instance diseases of cancer type, such as cervical cancer and Kaposi’s sarcoma). A low T-cell count is mentioned explicitly as only one of the 29 diseases. A person is then defined to have AIDS for surveillance reporting purposes if and only if this person has at least one of these diseases, and simultaneously tests HIV positive.2 With this definition, the correlation between HIV and AIDS is 100% because the definition assumes the correlation.

Thus when two people have the same symptoms of sickness, if one is HIV positive the sickness is called AIDS, and if the other is not, then the sickness is given its ordinary name. In this way, the definition obstructs dealing with the question whether the virus HIV is a cause of any disease. Some medical practitioners or scientists follow the CDC definition and some do not. Usually articles on HIV and AIDS do not specify which definition is used. Under such circumstances, statistics purportedly showing that HIV is the cause of certain diseases are worthless, and misleading."

Thanks again for this, Nana. I've spent the last day going over the science and I now know that what you say is correct--it especially explains all the anomalies surrounding Aids in Africa. To think that the conventional paradigm of HIV-AIDs can be attributed to mythology is a huge, possibly insurmountable shift for many people, but as you say the truth will be known eventually. For me, the tipping point can be found in my two questions regarding whether any starving person can be said to have AIDS and if a healthy, accidentally-infected person has ever died from AIDS (in the absence of AZT and other drugs). Thanks again, and thanks to Tyee for this wonderful forum.

Denisb, you wrote, "the sex-trade worker myth was debunked years ago--bad research." Well I was up half the night trying to confirm your claim on the internet. About three this morning there was a program on KCTS entitled, "Ending Aids--The Search For A Vaccine" in which they discussed the Gp120 vaccine, SIV-derived attenuated vaccines and the Killer T cells which had been found in the African sex trade workers. At the time of making that program there was no claim that the mystery had been solved. I was very upset by this, not being able to determine the age of the documentary, but as synchronicity would have it there's an article on this subject on page A8 of today's Vancouver Sun, entitled, "HIV-resistant Kenyans studied", in which the writer discusses the immune prostitutes in Nairobi and a renewal of attempts to understand the ONGOING mystery. There is no mention here that the mystery has been solved, as you claimed. By now I am suspicious that you purposely supplied false information about this issue when you claimed that the sex trade issue had been debunked due to bad science, and I would hope that, although we are all susceptible to being just plain mistaken in our opinions, (I wrongly placed the sex workers in South Africa and not Kenya) I would hope that we are at least operating in good faith. If this chastisement is unwarranted I apologize in advance. Would you please let me have some references for your claim?