AIDS reappraisal

From Freepedia

The AIDS reappraisal movement (or AIDS dissident movement) is a loosely-connected group [1]) of activists, journalists, citizens, scientists, researchers, and doctors who deny, challenge, or question, in various ways, the prevailing scientific consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS).

Their challenges often take one or more of the following forms:

  • HIV does not exist
  • HIV is a harmless retrovirus
  • HIV does exist, and might cause AIDS, but it hasn't been proven to cause AIDS
  • HIV does exist, and might cause AIDS, but only in combination with other factors
  • HIV does exist, but does not cause AIDS: other infectious factors cause AIDS
  • HIV does exist, but does not cause AIDS: AIDS is not a contagious disease
  • HIV does exist, but does not cause AIDS: a combination of other infectious and non-infectious factors causes AIDS

These claims are met with resistance by, and often evoke frustration and hostility from most of the scientific community, who accuse the dissidents of ignoring evidence in favor of HIV's role in AIDS, and irresponsibly posing a dangerous threat to public health by their continued activities. Dissidents assert that the current mainstream approach to AIDS, based on HIV causation, has resulted in inaccurate diagnoses, psychological terror, toxic treatments, and a squandering of public funds. The debate and controversy regarding this issue from the early 1980s to the present has provoked heated emotions and passions from both sides.

Contents

Terminology

One component of the debate centers around semantic issues related to labeling supporters of various perspectives, or in referring to various theories and ideas. While the disagreement over the cause of AIDS is ultimately a conflict between scientific theories, and the terminology used in that conflict has no bearing on the evaluation of those theories, a mention of this semantic disagreement must be made.

For example, some HIV researchers and activists have used the term denialist in referring to those who question HIV's role in AIDS, perhaps in analogy to Holocaust denial. Some dissenters have reacted by referring to themselves as "realists", implying that their perspective is more realistic than the prevailing view. In this article, the term "dissident" is used for those who question HIV's role in AIDS.

Similarly, the two camps are often in conflict over terminology with regard to the notion that HIV causes AIDS. This notion is variously called the "HIV hypothesis" or "HIV theory." To dissidents, the notion that HIV causes AIDS is, and remains, merely a hypothesis. To mainstream scientists, it is an established fact. In this article, the term "HIV theory" is used; here, "theory" is meant in its most general scientific sense, and is not synonymous with "hypothesis." The phrase "the HIV theory of AIDS" means "the HIV model for understanding AIDS."

Arguments by dissidents

Although dissidents disagree on many aspects concerning HIV and AIDS, there are some claims that a majority of dissidents support, and these claims form the heart of their arguments. This section describes some of the arguments that are frequently made by dissidents, along with the counter-arguments that are made in response. The following are summarised from some major papers of Peter Duesberg and others.

Claim: HIV does not exist

Studies have found that HIV-1 and HIV-2 are the causes of AIDS in humans. Thousands of isolates of both HIV-1 and HIV-2 have been isolated and genotyped. The dissident claim is usually not that HIV does not exist, but that HIV-1 has not been properly "proven" to exist. This claim is based on two ideas: That there is only one way to "properly isolate" a virus, and that this method has not been used on HIV-1. Both of these claims are false, as there are dozens of ways to isolate retroviruses, and all of them, including the one that the dissidents claim is the only method, have been used to isolate HIV-1. The single method cited by the dissidents is density gradient centifugation (Sinoussi et al., 1973; Toplin, 1973).

While density gradient centrifugation is often employed in preparing HIV-1 and other lentiviruses, superior methods (including the production of infectious molecular clones) have been developed since the early 1970s (Monti-Bragadin et al., 1972; Peebles et al., 1976; Canaai et al., 1980; Grisson et al., 2004; Tebit et al., 2003; Adachi et al., 1986). Sinoussi, for instance, failed to seperate 3 virus types in his sample using the techniques of the 1970s, and it was only through molecular cloning in the 1980s that scientists proved replication-competent "helper viruses" are needed to grow the replication-defective oncoviruses.

Claim: AIDS does not fulfill Koch's postulates for infectious disease

In order for HIV to satisfy Koch's postulates as the cause of AIDS,

  • It must be found in all individuals with AIDS
  • It must be possible to isolate HIV from someone with AIDS
  • The isolated HIV should cause AIDS when introduced into a healthy person
  • It should be possible to isolate HIV from the newly infected individual

Ideally, and within the constraints of ethical experimentation, proof of the fulfillment of these postulates is considered a sufficient demonstration of the causality of a disease. According to dissidents, failure to satisfy these postulates may cast doubt on HIV as the cause of AIDS. Not all individuals diagnosed with HIV infection have quantifiable amounts of HIV in their blood. Dissidents claim that Koch's postulates are not adequately fulfilled, because there are individual cases in which the virus could not be found or reisolated with the technology of the time.

Respondents claim that HIV does fulfill these postulates, and that the exceptions are due to the imperfect sensitivity of HIV testing, or imperfect isolation techniques, rather than the absence of the virus. It must be noted that, unfortunately for the dissidents, cholera, typhoid and Hepatitis C do not fulfill Koch's postulates. Indeed, Koch himself disregarded three postulates for cholera and typhoid (Koch 1884; Koch 1893), yet we know what the etiological agents for these diseases are, despite not fulfilling the postulates.

Specifically, with regard to Koch's postulates #1 and #2 above in respect to HIV-1, modern culture techniques have allowed the isolation of HIV in virtually all AIDS patients, as well as in almost all HIV-seropositive individuals with both early- and late-stage disease. In addition, the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and other sophisticated molecular techniques have enabled researchers to document the presence of HIV genes in virtually all patients with AIDS, as well as in individuals in earlier stages of HIV disease. It is not found in HIV-negative patients that do not go onto seroconvert and progress to AIDS.

Postulates #3 and #4 have been fulfilled in incidents involving three laboratory workers with no other risk factors who have developed AIDS or severe immunosuppression after accidental exposure to concentrated, cloned HIV in the laboratory. In all three cases, HIV was isolated from the infected individual, sequenced and shown to be the infecting strain of virus. In another incident, transmission of HIV from a Florida dentist to six patients has been documented by genetic analyses of virus isolated from both the dentist and the patients. The dentist and three of the patients developed AIDS and died, and at least one of the other patients has developed AIDS. Five of the patients had no HIV risk factors other than multiple visits to the dentist for invasive procedures (O'Brien and Goedert, 1996; O'Brien, 1997; Ciesielski et al. 1994).

In addition, through December 1999, the CDC had received reports of 56 health care workers in the United States with documented, occupationally acquired HIV infection, of whom 25 have developed AIDS in the absence of other risk factors. The development of AIDS following known HIV seroconversion also has been repeatedly observed in pediatric and adult blood transfusion cases, in mother-to-child transmission, and in studies of hemophilia, injection-drug use and sexual transmission in which seroconversion can be documented using serial blood samples (CDC. HIV AIDS Surveillance Report 1999; AIDS Knowledge Base, 1999). For example, in a 10-year study in the Netherlands, researchers followed 11 children who had become infected with HIV as neonates by small aliquots of plasma from a single HIV-infected donor. During the 10-year period, eight of the children died of AIDS. Of the remaining three children, all showed a progressive decline in cellular immunity, and two of the three had symptoms probably related to HIV infection (van den Berg et al., 1994).

Koch's postulates also have been fulfilled in animal models of human AIDS. Chimpanzees experimentally infected with HIV have developed severe immunosuppression and AIDS. In severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice given a human immune system, HIV produces similar patterns of cell killing and pathogenesis as seen in people. HIV-2, a less virulent variant of HIV which causes AIDS in people, also causes an AIDS-like syndrome in baboons. More than a dozen strains of simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), a close cousin of HIV, cause AIDS in Asian macaques. In addition, chimeric viruses known as SHIVs, which contain an SIV backbone with various HIV genes in place of the corresponding SIV genes, cause AIDS in macaques. Further strengthening the association of these viruses with AIDS, researchers have shown that SIV/SHIVs isolated from animals with AIDS cause AIDS when transmitted to uninfected animals (O'Neil et al., 2000; Aldrovandi et al. 1993; Liska et al. 1999; Locher et al. 1998; Hirsch et al. 1994; Joag et al. 1996).

Claim: AIDS does not behave like an infectious disease

Dissidents claim that AIDS has not behaved like a typical infectious disease. Typically, they claim, infectious diseases spread rapidly, even exponentially. AIDS has progressed relatively slowly in comparison with some other known infectious diseases; this is taken by dissidents to be evidence against AIDS being caused by an infectious agent. Dissidents also note that in North America and Western Europe, AIDS spreads non-randomly, affecting specific groups of people, and moreover, that it is fragmented into distinct sub-epidemics with exclusive AIDS-defining diseases. According to dissidents, AIDS in Africa looks completely different from the corresponding syndrome in North America and Western Europe; one example that has been cited is that in Africa AIDS affects roughly equal numbers of men and women, while in North America and Western Europe it affects more men than women. Another statistic that is sometimes cited is that AIDS is highly correlated with drug use in Western countries, while it is associated with malnutrition and poor living conditions in Africa. According to dissidents, these are indicators of a non-infectious cause of AIDS.

The consensus view of mainstream scientists is that the relatively slow spread of AIDS is due to HIV's long latency period, and to new treatments and prevention campaigns which have slowed the spread of AIDS. There are many well-known infectious diseases which develop slowly and spread slowly, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or Hepatitis C. Indeed, the slow rate of development of AIDS does not imply that it is not infectious. Transmission via body fluid contact has been well demonstrated and is typical of infectious disease: HIV behaves exactly like other viruses in terms of its transmission through blood and breast milk. Prevalence and incidence rates enable accurate predictions based on the established notion that AIDS is infectious; the epidemiology is not in any way incompatible with infectious causation.

Also, AIDS spreads within biologically isolated groups such as injection drug users and gay men because it is infectious and is effectively transmitted by sex and shared needles. HIV is said to cause the condition of immune suppresion, which in turn causes specific diseases among specific groups of people, and thus it should be expected that AIDS manifests itself differently among different groups of people. For example, if there are two people with identical immune system suppression, and one has clean water and the other doesn't, one would obviously expect the person drinking contaminated water to be more likely to develop diarrhea despite the similarities in immune function.

There could be many explanations for AIDS' appearance in different groups on different continents, including the simple coincidence of first being introduced into different groups on different continents. Educational campaigns may have had a beneficial effect in Western countries, while those in Africa have not received such educational benefits. Sexual practices in the U.S. may also be different from those in Africa. According to the prevailing perspective, none of this changes the fact that HIV is the underlying cause among all these groups. Historically, the occurrence of AIDS in human populations around the world has closely followed the appearance of HIV. In the United States, the first cases of AIDS were reported in 1981 among homosexual men in New York and California, and retrospective examination of frozen blood samples from a U.S. cohort of gay men showed the presence of HIV antibodies as early as 1978, but not before then. Subsequently, in every region, country and city where AIDS has appeared, evidence of HIV infection has preceded AIDS by just a few years (MMWR 1981a; MMWR 1981b; Jaffe et al. 1985; U.S. Census Bureau). Also, the subtype of HIV which is prevalent in Africa is different to that in North America and Europe. This may also play an important role.

Claim: HIV is harmless

In addition to the claims regarding the variations in AIDS definition between North America, Western Europe, and Africa, another fact cited as supporting evidence that HIV is harmless is the fact that a small number of HIv-positive people remain relatively healthy 15 or 20 years after testing positive for HIV. Conversely, some HIV-seronegative people develop what would have been considered AIDS-defining diseases had they tested positive.

According to the mainstream perspective, the long period of HIV infection preceding AIDS manifestations is to be expected; they claim that HIV can take years to cause the immunosuppression necessary to permit opportunistic disease to occur. Before treatment was available, the mean duration between HIV infection and the development of AIDS was thought to be eight to ten years. This long period before the development of severe consequences does not, according to mainstream scientists, mean that the virus is harmless. By this measurement, Hepatitis C would also be a "harmless" virus, as its latent stage is often runs longer than 20 years.

Regarding the individuals who have developed AIDS-defining diseases in the absence of HIV, mainstream scientists state that such individuals have had their immune system compromised in other ways, and that this fact has no bearing on the ability of HIV to cause immunosuppression. Non-HIV immune suppression can also be caused by chemotherapy drugs, serious genetic defects, leukemia, and severe malnourishment.

Another statistic cited by skeptics is the level of HIV infection over time. HIV has remained prevalent at a relatively constant rate in the United States population the past 20 years, suggesting to dissidents that it has existed long before the outbreak of AIDS there in the early 1980s. Mainstream scientists reply that this suggests only that the number of new infections are approximately equal to the number of deaths; thus, the level of infection remains consistent. What the dissidents fail to realise or accept, is that HIV is a cytopathic virus, but one with a high degree of variability in the cytopathic effect between isolates. This same observation is found and accepted by scientists with other viruses such as the influenza virus. It is possible to correlate the cytopathic effect of HIV and the decline of CD4 T cells with the progression to AIDS. Indeed, there exists a switch in the type of virus (R5 → X4) associated with AIDS progression. R5 is relatively harmless, but when the virus switches to the X4 variant, this is associated with a cytokine imbalance and a decline in CD4 cells leading to AIDS. R5 virus is normally selected naturally in primo-infection, hence the long latency period. However, in some individuals, this does not happen, and the X4 virus is the predominant form. In these cases, we see rapid progression towards AIDS.

A sub-category of this claim is that all retroviruses are harmless. As the association of some T-cell leukemias and lymphomas with the RNA retrovirus Human T-lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-1) has become widely known, this claim has become less frequent.

Claim: AIDS is inconsistently defined

Of substantial concern to AIDS dissidents is the use of HIV antibody or viral testing as part of the definition of AIDS. Some of the approximately 30 AIDS-defining diseases, including Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia (PCP), are considered diagnostic of AIDS only when serologic evidence of HIV is present. In the absence of such evidence, these diseases are thought to be related to other immune problems, and are not diagnosed as AIDS. In other words, according to dissidents, the definition of AIDS is an example of circular logic: because diagnosis with AIDS requires the presence of HIV antibodies, there can be no AIDS without HIV, by definition. Moreover, say dissidents, many of the AIDS-defining diseases, such as cervical cancer, have only indirect connections to immune deficiency, and should not be considered part of the definition of AIDS. Cervical cancer, for example, is caused by the virus HPV, which causes genital warts, but it is usually kept under control by the immune surveillance and is not able to develop into cervical cancer. Its connection to AIDS is only that a compromised immune system is unable to keep the genital warts virus under control.

AIDS stands for 'acquired immunodeficiency syndrome' and describes the collection of symptoms and infections associated with acquired deficiency of the immune system due to infection with HIV. AIDS was originally defined without reference to HIV---by necessity, since AIDS was defined as a syndrome before HIV was discovered. Once the theory that HIV causes AIDS had become established, it was added to the definition of the syndrome. It is not uncommon in medical science for a disease to first be described in terms of its physical manifestations, and to later have its definition altered as its causes become more evident. For example, the syndrome of acute pericarditis was originally described in terms of its symptoms of chest pain, pericardial friction rub, and pericardial effusion; as its etiology was determined, it became possible to classify the syndrome according to etiology---infectious (viral, tubercuarl, fungal), rheumatic, and other non-infectious causes---and a diagnosis of "acute pericarditis" without etiology is now considered incomplete. As with any new syndrome, scientists' understanding of AIDS evolved gradually, with the most obvious and severe manifestations noticed first and rarer or subtler ones recognized later.

The first definition of AIDS by the CDC in September 1982 listed 13 diseases, "at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease."

HIV was discovered in 1984. A year later, after discussion with epidemiologists, the CDC changed its operational definition of AIDS to add a small additional number of conditions which would be considered AIDS-definining if (and only if) they occurred in conjunction with a positive HIV test. The original list of conditions continued to trigger an AIDS diagnosis with or without a positive HIV test.

As experience with the disease continued, it became clear that it was associated with a broader array of illnesses than those initially listed. In 1987 the CDC added some of these to the case definition, including encephalopathy and wasting syndrome. These had not been in the initial definition because they are not conditions that are recorded during epidemiological surveillance.

It became apparent, however, that the operational case definition did not adequately reflect clinical experience. There were patients who were HIV infected but who did not have AIDS-defining illnesses who were doing poorly, and others who had AIDS-defining illnesses (such as one Kaposi's sarcoma lesion) yet were doing well. In January, 1993, the definition in the USA was again changed, to trigger an AIDS diagnosis on the basis of a CD4 cell count below 200 or a CD4 percentage below 14, and adding additional indicator diseases based on epidemiological observation: invasive cervical cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis and recurrent pneumonia.

It is for these reasons that the changing AIDS definition is seen by mainstream scientists as merely a reflection of broadened understanding of the disease, rather than a "circular" definition requiring a specific etiology. They claim that there is, and always has been, a strong correlation between HIV and AIDS, and thus it is perfectly natural for the presence of HIV antibodies to be a defining characteristic of AIDS.

Dissidents claim there is no consistent definition of AIDS across political or international boundaries. One example they give is that in Africa, a laboratory test is not required for a diagnosis of AIDS---this is because impoverished nations consider the test too expensive for routine use. This leaves global AIDS epidemiology without clear standards or norms.

However, mainstream scientists counter by saying that the inconsistencies among the various definitions of AIDS do not detract from the fact that HIV causes AIDS, and that while these inconsistencies represent difficulties in comparing the prevalence and incidence of the disease, they are unrelated to the causation of the disease. Furthermore, this phenomenon is not confined to HIV/AIDS issues; definitions for "high cholesterol" and "anemia" and many other medical conditions vary across political boundaries or cultures.

Two major AIDS defining systems are used today, these are the WHO recommended system for use in resource limited settings, and the CDC system for use in developed countries.

Main article: WHO Disease Staging System for HIV Infection and Disease
Main article: CDC Classification System for HIV Infection

Claim: HIV testing is unreliable

Skeptics of the HIV theory of AIDS claim that the process of testing individuals for the presence of HIV is flawed. One commonly cited example is the possibility of encountering a false positive, which would falsely identify someone as HIV positive when in fact they were HIV negative. Dissidents also claim that the presence of antibodies to HIV should be taken as an indicator that the HIV within the body are being neutralized by the body's immune system, rather than as an indicator of active HIV.

Mainstream scientists recognize that all tests have false positives and false negatives, and strive to develop tests with lower rates of each. In any case, scientists work with aggregate data, not individual data, so that any given false result does not unduly skew results. Indeed, diagnosis of infection using antibody testing is one of the best-established concepts in medicine. Though the orthodoxy claims HIV antibody tests exceed the performance of most other infectious disease tests in both sensitivity (the ability of the screening test to give a positive finding when the person tested truly has the disease ) and specificity (the ability of the test to give a negative finding when the subjects tested are free of the disease under study), the reality is very different. All current government-approved HIV antibody tests have sensitivity and specificity in excess of 96% (except the HIV-TEK G by Sorin Biomedica) and are therefore extremely reliable (WHO, 2004). And ALL approved tests have the disclaimer that there is no recognized standard for establishing the absence or presence of HIV in human blood.

With technology such as the polymerase chain reaction or branched DNA assays, now routinely used in all AIDS patients in developed nations, HIV is detectable in nearly all symptomatic AIDS patients. Testing for actual viral genetic material, antigens and the virus itself in body fluids and cells is far more sensitive and reliable than testing for HIV antibodies. They also know that not all antibodies are neutralizing antibodies, and have elucidated many different antibodies that are elicited by HIV infection. While not widely used for routine testing due to high cost and requirements in laboratory equipment, these direct testing techniques have confirmed the validity of the antibody tests (Jackson et al., 1990; Busch et al., 1991; Silvester et al., 1995; Urassa et al., 1999; Nkengasong et al., 1999; Samdal et al., 1996).

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A brief history of the dissident movement

The dissident movement is often associated with one individual, a German American biochemist, Peter Duesberg, a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Duesberg has contributed more than any other dissident scientist to the debate. However, there were those who questioned the HIV theory before Duesberg. These include researchers in the NIH itself. Before 1984, many hypotheses were put forward to explain the new epidemic. Recreational and pharmaceutical drug abuse, multifactorial environmental models, infection with multiple STDs, behavioral models, and others were all posited by government researchers. As the cases of AIDS in transfusion recipients, hemophiliacs, sex partners of current AIDS cases, and other groups acumulated worldwide, the cause of AIDS was clearly transmissible via blood and sexual contact and the theory that HIV is the underlying cause of AIDS has been proven time and again (Cohen, 1994a; Horton, 1995).

However, one of the first people to question the role of HIV in AIDS was Casper Schmidt. In 1984 he wrote an article in the Journal of Psychohistory entitled "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS" (Schmidt. 1984). In this manuscript, Schmidt posits that AIDS is an example of "epidemic hysteria" in which groups of people are subconsciously acting out social conflicts, and he compares it to documented cases of epidemic hysteria in the past, which were mistakenly thought to be infectious.

John Lauritsen, a former survey researcher and freelance journalist, also began publishing articles in the now defunct weekly, the New York Native, that were critical of the HIV theory and direction of research. He also began to develop his own ideas about recreational drug use as a cause of AIDS. His articles attracted some attention in the gay community, but remained little known among the general public.

It wasn't until 1987 that Peter Duesberg wrote his first major scientific paper questioning HIV in the journal Cancer Research; its title was "Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality" (Duesberg, 1987). It attacked not only the virus-AIDS research program, but also the virus-cancer program. Duesberg's paper caused an immediate furor. The paper was published at just about the same time that major public health campaigns were being launched and AZT was being promoted as a treatment. A major publication, "Confronting AIDS", had been published in 1986, and this book set out an agenda for the public health sector in dealing with new epidemic. Many accused Duesberg of jeopardising public health by raising questions. During the same year, Lauritsen interviewed Duesberg, and his interview was published in the New York Native. Duesberg then followed up with a sequel in the highly respected Science and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Duesberg, 1989). However, from the outstart, there were already obvious flaws in Duesberg’s publicly expressed HIV and AIDS opinion. He stated categorically that HIV is not the cause of AIDS (Duesberg, 1988). This was not possible to do, as on the basis of his analysis, all he could have reasonably claim was that it had not been proven that HIV causes AIDS. There then followed the epistemological problems. One such is what constitutes proof of causation in the biomedical sciences. Over the next several years, Duesberg continued to publish papers questioning HIV, and other scientists began to publicly voice their doubts.

Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, a medical physicist based at Royal Perth Hospital in Australia, and her group have published since 1988, that HIV has never been fully isolated. They also stipulate that HIV has not been proven to exist as a distinct entity (Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al., 2004). Duesberg certainly agrees that HIV does exist, but he believes it is a harmless passenger virus as opposed to the causative agent in AIDS.

HIV dissident scientists used their academic credentials and affiliations to generate interest, sympathy, and allegiances in lay audiences. Indeed, they were not troubled about recruiting lay people—who were clearly unable to evaluate the scientific validity or otherwise of their views—to their cause. Moreover, many dissidents claimed that their views were being "censored" by the establishment, something that was simply not the case. Dissident views and their rebuttals were evaluated with active participation from both sides in mainstream medical journals such as Science, Cancer Research, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, AIDS Forschung and Genetica. For instance, in 1991, twelve scientists, researchers, and doctors under the name Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis submitted a short letter to various journals. It was finally accepted and published by the editor of Science (Baumann et al., 1995). It read:

"In 1991, we, the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, became dissatisfied with the state of the evidence that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) did, in fact, cause AIDS.

Specifically, we have proposed that researchers independent of the HIV establishment should audit the Centers for Disease Control's records of AIDS cases, bearing in mind that the correlation of HIV with AIDS, upon which the case for HIV causation rests, is itself an artefact of the definition of AIDS. Since 1985, exactly the same diseases or conditions have been defined as "AIDS" when antibodies are present, and as "non-AIDS" when HIV and antibodies are absent. Independent professional groups such as the Society of Actuaries should be invited to nominate members for an independent commission to investigate the following question: How frequently do AIDS-defining diseases (or low T cell counts) occur in the absence of HIV? Until we have a definition of AIDS that is independent of HIV, the supposed correlation of HIV and AIDS is mere tautology.

Other independent researchers should examine the validity of the so-called "AIDS tests," especially when these tests are used in Africa and Southern Asia, to see if they reliably record the presence of antibodies, let alone live and replicating virus.

The bottom line is this: the skeptics are eager to see the results of independent scientific testing. Those who uphold the HIV "party line" have so far refused. We object."

In 1990, Lauritsen published "Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story", a book that was highly critical of the studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of AZT in the treatment of AIDS. In 1992, Duesberg published a lengthy paper (76 pages) in Pharmacology and Therapeutics promoting his own alternative causation theory of AIDS -- the "drug-AIDS hypothesis" (Duesberg, 1992). He claimed that the majority of AIDS cases in North America and Western Europe were the result of recreational and pharmaceutical drug abuse. His arguments mirrored many that had been put forward by Lauritsen earlier. In 1993, Lauritsen published his own manifesto, "The AIDS War", a collection of his writings on AIDS from 1985 to 1992. Robert Root-Bernstein, an associate professor of physiology at Michigan State University and former MacArthur prize recipient, professed his own doubts about the HIV theory in his 1993 book "Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus". In 1994, Neville Hodgikson and the London Sunday Times published a headline story on the dissidents, which attracted much media attention itself. On the 28 October of the same year, a medical doctor, Robert Wilner, held a press conference at a North Carolina hotel, during which, he jabbed his finger with a bloody needle he had just stuck into a man who said he was infected with HIV. The same year, the highly respected journal Science undertook a 3-month investigation led by Jon Cohen, in which it interviewed more than 50 supporters and detractors, examined the AIDS literature, including Duesberg’s publications, and carried out correspondence and discussion with Duesberg. It specifically addressed Duesberg's theory point by point (Cohen, 1994b; 1994c; 1994d). It concluded that although the Berkeley virologist raises provocative questions, few researchers find his basic contention that HIV is not the cause of AIDS persuasive. Mainstream AIDS researchers argue that Duesberg’s arguments are constructed by selective reading of the scientific literature, dismissing evidence that contradicts his theses, requiring impossibly definitive proof, and dismissing outright studies marked by inconsequential weaknesses. (Cohen, 1994a).

In 1995, 12 articles were published by dissidents in the journal Genetica. Three were written by Duesberg, two by Papadopulos-Eleopulos and two by Root-Bernstein.

In 1996, Duesberg published his manifesto in a new book, "Inventing the AIDS Virus", in which he put forward his arguments and positions to the general reader (Duesberg, 1996a). The same year "AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced?" was published (Duesberg, 1996b). It included articles and papers by Duesberg, mathematician Mark Craddock, NIDA researcher Harry Haverkos, Lauritsen, Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis, Yale math professor Serge Lang, public health professor Gordon Stewart, and journalist Celia Farber. Neville Hodgkinson wrote his own book detailing his journalistic efforts, entitled "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science". An internet website was also launched during this time, and it immediately became a destination for dissidents around the world to exchange ideas and views.

As dissident scientists continued their questioning, a patient/activist branch of the movement had also begun to develop. Heal Education AIDS Liaison (HEAL) was founded in New York in 1982 and it eventually became the most prominent activist organization in the dissident movement. Other groups have come into being since then, including Alive and Well. These groups have openly challenged the HIV theory.

The misc.health.aids usenet newsgroup was founded by James Scutero, as a place to debate dissident views. Like many other AIDS dissidents, James is no longer alive to continue this debate.

In 1997, Lauritsen and Ian Young co-published a collection of articles on the psychological aspects of AIDS, entitled "The AIDS Cult: Essays on the Gay Health Crisis". In this book, they posit a sociopsychological aspect of the epidemic based on hysteria, fear, and forced conformity. One article which appears was written by the doctor Casper Schmidt in 1984 in the Journal of Psychohistory, entitled "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS" (Schmidt. 1984). In this manuscript, Schmidt posits that AIDS is an example of "epidemic hysteria" in which groups of people are subconsciously acting out social conflicts, and he compares it to documented cases of epidemic hysteria in the past, which were mistakenly thought to be infectious. Other essays in the collection condemn the psychological aspects of AIDS education which equate sex and an HIV diagnosis with death.

Dissidents continue to campaign and publish. They have protested at recent World AIDS Conferences and other international meetings. Quite recently, dissidents attracted their first real endorsement from a major political figure, Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa. Mbeki has openly questioned the HIV theory, and he has invited dissident scientists such as Duesberg and David Rasnick to South Africa to debate the nature of AIDS with mainstream scientists. Mbeki has suffered considerable political fallout over these actions.

The increased visibility has lead to increased response from mainstream scientists and from physicians. For many years most AIDS doctors and scientists had considered the dissidents to be a fringe movement that would disappear if ignored. They are now concerned that refusal to answer is a mistake, as they believe the theories put forth by dissidents have real-world life-and-death patient-care consequences. They believe that the dissident's notions that HIV is harmless or doesn't exist, and that AIDS is not contagious suggests that no sexual or body fluid precautions are necessary, although many dissidents are quick to point out that this does not follow from their conclusions, and they stress that safe sexual practices are important to follow in any case. Concensus medical authorities also deplore the fact that dissidents advocate that individuals not take HIV tests or HIV drugs. They believe the proper response to this behavior is to step up their public educational efforts and thereby prevent the AIDS dissident movement from doing serious damage to worldwide efforts to control the pandemic.

Quotations

  • "If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document." -- Kary Mullis, 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Sunday Times (London) 28 Nov 1993)
  • "Epidemiology is like a bikini: what is revealed is interesting; what is concealed is crucial." -- Peter Duesberg (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 1991)
  • "If ever there was a rush to judgment with its predictable disastrous results, it has been the HIV-AIDS hypothesis and its aftermath." -- Dr. Richard Strohman, emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology, UC Berkeley (preface to Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1995)
  • "It is the rare person who gets up and strips himself of his personal agenda and articulates what we really do not know, because by saying that, they would diminish the impact of their own work, which is their agenda." -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NY Times, 30 Jan 2001)
  • "If I saw a man get hit by a truck and run over, and you asked, "Did you get the proof? Did the truck do it?" OK, it comes to something like that. Silly." -- Robert Gallo (Spin, Feb 1988)
  • "Last century there was a sharp difference of opinion between those, such as Koch and Pasteur, who proposed that disease could be caused by invisible microbes, and others who held that epidemics are the result of evil vapours (mal'aria). Arguments that AIDS does not have an infectious basis are as quaint as those of the miasmalists." -- Weiss and Jaffe (Nature, June 1990)
  • "(Duesberg )...has built a case on what to some looks like possible misinterpretation, misuse of statistics, and highly selective cherry-picking of the data while contrary evidence is ignored." Martin Delaney (Science, p. 314, Vol. 267, No. 5196, Jan. 20, 1995)

See also

Other HIV/AIDS related articles in Wikipedia
HIV | AIDS
WHO Disease Staging System for HIV Infection and Disease | CDC Classification System for HIV Infection
HIV test | Antiretroviral drug | HIV vaccine
AIDS origin | AIDS pandemic | List of countries by HIV/AIDS adult prevalence rate
AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa| | AIDS in the United States
Treatment Action Campaign | International AIDS Conferences | International AIDS Society| UNAIDS
World AIDS Day | List of AIDS-related topics | Timeline of AIDS
Common misconceptions about HIV and AIDS| OPV AIDS hypothesis
Reappraisal of HIV-AIDS Hypothesis | Duesberg hypothesis
NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt | List of HIV-positive individuals
People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement

References

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External links

Dissident

Consensus

General Reference

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