Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Well, I was doing a bit of research on global warming and scientific dissent in general, and I happened across this post on this blog. The author, Dean Esmay, has been putting up a series of posts about a scientist by the name of Dr. Peter Duesberg who, among others, is suggesting that HIV is not actually the cause of AIDS.

You heard me.

Now my first thought here was, uh... what? I thought this was a done deal, an answered question. It had not even entered my mind to doubt the connection. So of course, my first reaction was to doubt the doubter. After all, there are all sorts of skeptics out there who doubt all sorts of things or believe other things, all contrary to the available scientific evidence. I felt confident that this guy was one of those people, who take tiny statistical anomalies or minor unanswered questions and blow them all out of proportion to draw an illegitimate conclusion.

So color me surprised when I discover that Doctor Duesburg is the guy who first identified the existence of retroviruses! He's no lone nutjob with a doctorate in paranormal studies from Front Range Community College. He has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Frankfurt in Germany and is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at U of C Berkely. One of his most vocal supporters, Dr. Kary Mullis won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the invention of PCR or Polymerase Chain Reaction, the technique at the base of one of the most common HIV tests.

More on this here, (it's a long post, but it has lots of links in it)

Anyhow, what they are asserting is basically this. Back in the 80s, when the AIDS panic was in full swing, people were desperate (and rightfully so) to find the cause. Two different researchers discovered a virus (which came to be known as HIV) and said that it might be the cause of AIDS. This story, along with others, is detailed in the hallmark AIDS book, And the Band Played On, by Randy Shilts. The thing is, neither of them really had hard data to back up their idea, but people were so desperate for a cause that they seized on it and trumpeted it as a triumph of science. Pretty soon, anyone who was skeptical of the connection was shouted down. (Now there is no doubt that some of the skeptics were really more interested in the politics of the issue, but by no means all of them.) Some studies were done to suggest a correlation between HIV and AIDS, but the reviews of the data since then have showed those experiments to be sloppy and not properly double-blinded. (Note that that does not necessarily make them wrong in their conclusions, it only means that the study results are not as reliable as might be ideal.) There have been almost no new studies on the connection between HIV and AIDS since then. The causal relationship is simply accepted as fact.

Did you know that the diagnostic criteria for AIDS is not the same as it used to be? In the 80s, people, mostly, though not universally homosexuals and drug-users presented with a number of specific symptoms that, collectively, came to be known as AIDS. The studies suggested a very strong correlation that people with AIDS were infected with HIV, healthy people in identified risk groups sometimes had HIV, sometimes did not, and healthy people not in risk groups almost never had it. All that suggests that the two are connected at least. Though these are the tests that were not properly double-blinded, and even many who still strongly defend HIV as the cause of AIDS will concede that these studies were flawed. I did not know any of that.

Did you know the HIV virus has never been isolated in culture? Did you know that the package inserts for pretty much every test used to diagnose HIV have statements like: “

Indicates possible infection by virus. Viremia may be present. Positive results are not diagnostic of AIDS. Biologic false positives still possible in some select cases…Follow up testing may be advised if clinical findings are discordant with test results."

(emphasis mine)This is for the so-called "Western Blot" test, I got the quote from the site of a woman named Kim Bannon has filed a lawsuit alleging that currently available HIV tests are unreliable. I didn't know any of this.

Did you know that modern diagnostic standards for AIDS are very different from those original symptoms presented in the 80s? Basically, there is a whole laundry list of symptoms and conditions that, in the presence of HIV are considered AIDS, but in the absence of HIV are not considered AIDS. These conditions include things like cervical cancer, tuberculosis, and herpes. Basically, if you get tuberculosis, and you are HIV positive, then you have AIDS and the HIV gave it to you. If you are not HIV positive, then you do not have AIDS, you have tuberculosis. Bit of circular reasoning there. (Which again, does not mean it is wrong, only that it requires outside confirmation, which heretofore has only sketchy data from 20 years ago to support it. And even that data refers to a specific set of symptoms that did not include the laundry list used today.) And how to explain the hundreds (if not thousands) of people who have been living HIV positive with no symptoms for going on 23 years, despite never taking any AIDS drugs? Nobody seems to be studying them.

Did you know that with African cases, a HIV test is not even required to test for AIDS? And that the other symptoms required for diagnosis are identical to the symptoms of malaria and malnutrition? Did you know that at the same time as this supposed wildfire outbreak of HIV in Africa, (which again, is not actually being tested for, only estimated,) cases of syphilis and gonorrhea are going down? It could very well be that many of these cases are not actually HIV/AIDS at all, but actually malaria or malnutrition. Few are particularly inclined to dispute that diagnosis, because AIDS brings in far more aid money than does malaria.

I'm sorry for not including direct links or references for all this data, but there's just so much of it. I'll include a longer list of links where I got all this from at the end. I'm really not trying to assert anything just at the moment except that apparently the question is not as satisfactorily resolved as I thought it was. HIV might cause AIDS after all. It just seems that the scientific evidence used to support that conclusion isn't as solid as everyone seems to think it is.

Why is this so important? Well, for starters, all the billions of dollars currently being used on AIDS research might be barking up the wrong tree. Second, HIV might not always lead to AIDS. Maybe it requires some other factor in order to develop into full-blown AIDS. Maybe HIV is actually only another symptom, and not the cause at all. But think of the implications? A lot of AIDS medications have some really nasty side-effects. Some of them are incredibly toxic and may actually doing more harm than good. If HIV is not the cause of AIDS, then these drugs may be doing all the harm without any good at all? Did you know that there are parents who have their HIV positive children taken away from them if they dare to say they don't want their kids to take AZT, a chemotherapy drug that was banned from use on terminal cancer patients because it is too toxic?

Most AIDS drugs are fast-tracked through FDA approval, bypassing many of the studies required to prove efficacy in other drugs. Political pressure forces their hand. "What do you mean it will take five years to approve it? I might be dead by then!" Now I can certainly understand that people are desperate for a cure, but we have to be really careful not to give them snake-oil that may actually make them more sick. The implications of this are HUGE!!!

Let me again state that I'm not trying to make the case that HIV does not cause AIDS. For all I know, it does. It's just that, apparently, there are some legitimate questions that have not been satisfactorily explained, and that anybody who asks them or wants to study them gets ridiculed or even blackballed. Check out some of these links and research it for yourself. I know I will continue to do so.

-The first post I found - This link is to Dean Esmay's blog. There are a number of other posts on the subject, with some really amazing discussions in the comments, and tons of links and scientific detail.

-Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg - A book about Dr Duesberg and his theories, including the history of his consistent suppression by the mainstream scientific community. I haven't read this book, but I'm planning to. By the way, the author of this book, Harvey Bialy, is himself a doctor of molecular biology and the founding scientific editor of Nature Biotechnology, and he also participates in the conversations taking place on Dean Esmay's blog.

-What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong? another book about this controversy

-Inventing the AIDS Virus A book by Duesberg himself.

-The Durban Declaration A document drafted by a number of scientists asserting that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

- The Durban Declaration is not Accepted by All - A response to the declaration by skeptics

- Virus Myth - A website devoted to discussion of the so-called "myth" of HIV causing AIDS.

- Peter Duesberg's Site

- Encyclopedia entry on the Duesberg Hypothesis - A helpful summary with more links.

- National Institute of Health on HIV and AIDS - Also has lots of links, supporting the HIV as the cause of AIDS hypothesis

As I said, I do not have the answer here. I have only just recently been alerted to the existence of the question. I am, however, going to continue researching.