Posted on 01/24/2004 7:35:26 PM PST by Doc Savage
In 1981 I had returned from Alaska having spent two years doing field work on islands in the Bering Straits as a biologist. Then, working for Merck & Co., Inc., in New Jersey, I had the benefit of reading almost every scientific journal available.
I distinctly recall the 1981 NEJM article by Gottlieb et al initially describing an aquired immunodeficiency syndrome in the homosexual community which he, and others, attributed to the use of aphrodisiac nitrite inhalants (poppers) and other so-called "recreational" drugs.
It wasn't until much later that virologists became interested in a possible viral cause of AIDS, an action that eventually led to the "discovery" of a new retrovirus that was closely related to a "hypothetical" human leukemia virus. Human Immunodeficiency Virus was born.
Scientific research and discovery is based upon the principles of the scientific method. Additionally, when a scientific fact or breakthrough emerges in one laboratory, it is the ethical responsibility of other interested scientists to attempt to duplicate the results of the initial experiment. Neither the scientific method, not "peer-review" were followed in the "discovery" of HIV. To this day no original scientific study has ever been published to prove conclusively that HIV is the causative agent in AIDS. And since no such publication ever existed, the "results" could not be "reproduced" by other researchers.
For those of you who were not of sufficient age to either understand or comprehend the "epidemic crisis" that followed this viral hypothesis, it was dramatic, it was swift, and it was worldwide in it's impact. It quickly became evident that such a deadly virus, if easily transmittable, could infect and kill millions of people and ravage our nation's blood supplies.
Since I first visited FR there have been hundreds if not thousands of articles on AIDS posted. Normally questioning adults, the vast majority of Freepers have blindly accepted these articles on faith,...after all, how could so many scientists be wrong??,...how could the homosexual advocates be using AIDS as a propaganda tool in the political war on mainstream society??,...how could the government have spent 93 Billion dollars on AIDS since 1981 and been wrong about the actual cause of AIDS.
I recall the same lessons that every biology and science student has received to this day: Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny,...now proven false. One Gene - One Enzyme,...of course that is not so. Miller & Urey's experiment explains how life formed (not true) and we are the end result of a random evolutionary process,...except that no one can prove the theory and to this day it remains merely that,...a theory.
The point is that many times we blindly accept "truisms" that later turn out not to be so. So many Freepers have invested themselves in the HIV theory that they feel it is socially and scientifically responsible to ridicule anyone who even broaches a dissimilar explanation.
Since the vast majority of Freepers suffer from "The Smartest Guy In The Room" syndrome, I expect many of you will find the following points unsupportive and highly contestable:
Assumption: 1. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, it must be abundant in AIDS patients based on “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases.”
FACT: Only antibodies against HIV are found in most patients. Therefore, “HIV infection is identified in blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences, or viral isolation.” But, HIV can only be “isolated” from rare, latently infected lymphocytes that have been cultured for weeks in vitro – away from the antibodies of the human host. Thus HIV behaves like a latent passenger virus.
Assumption: 2. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, there is no AIDS in HIV-free people.
FACT: The AIDS literature has described at least 4621 HIV-free AIDS cases according to one survey – irrespective of, or in agreement with allowances made by the CDC for HIV-free AIDS cases.
Assumption: 3. The retrovirus HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing T-cells.
FACT: Retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA. Thus, T-cells infected in vitro thrive, and those patented to mass-produce HIV for the detection of HIV antibodies and diagnosis of AIDS are immortal.
Assumption: 4. Following “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases”, HIV causes AIDS by killing more T-cells than the body can replace. Thus T-cells or “CD4 lymphocytes . . . become depleted in people with AIDS”.
FACT: Even in patients dying from AIDS less than 1 in 500 of the T-cells “that become depleted” are ever infected by HIV. This rate of infection is the hallmark of a latent passenger virus.
Assumption: 5. With an RNA of 9 kilobases, just like polio virus, HIV should be able to cause one specific disease, or no disease if it is a passenger.
FACT: HIV is said to be “the sole cause of AIDS”, or of 26 different immunodeficiency and non-immunodeficiency diseases, all of which also occur without HIV. Thus there is not one HIV-specific disease, which is the definition of a passenger virus.
Assumption: 6. All viruses are most pathogenic prior to anti-viral immunity. Therefore, preemptive immunization with Jennerian vaccines is used to protect against all viral diseases since 1798.
FACT: AIDS is observed – by definition – only after anti- HIV immunity is established, a positive HIV/AIDS test. Thus HIV cannot cause AIDS by “the same criteria” as conventional viruses.
Assumption 7. HIV needs “5–10 years” from establishing antiviral immunity to cause AIDS.
FACT: HIV replicates in 1 day, generating over 100 new HIVs per cell. Accordingly, HIV is immunogenic, i.e. biochemically most active, within weeks after infection. Thus, based on conventional criteria “for other viral diseases”, HIV should also cause AIDS within weeks – if it could.
Assumption: 8. “Most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within 5–10 years” – the justification for prophylaxis of AIDS with the DNA chain terminator AZT.
FACT: Of “34.3 million . . . with HIV worldwide” only 1.4% [= 471,457 (obtained by substracting the WHO’s cumulative total of 1999 from that of 2000)] developed AIDS in 2000, and similarly low percentages prevailed in all previous years. Likewise, in 1985, only 1.2% of the 1 million US citizens with HIV developed AIDS. Since an annual incidence of 1.2–1.4% of all 26 AIDS defining diseases combined is no more than the normal mortality in the US and Europe (life expectancy of 75 years), HIV must be a passenger virus.
Assumption: 9. A vaccine against HIV should (“is hoped” to) prevent AIDS – the reason why AIDS researchers try to develop an AIDS vaccine since 1984.
FACT: Despite enormous efforts there is no such vaccine to this day. Moreover, since AIDS occurs by definition only in the presence of natural antibodies against HIV, and since natural antibodies are so effective that no HIV is detectable in AIDS patients, even the hopes for a vaccine are irrational.
Assumption: 10. HIV, like other viruses, survives by transmission from host to host, which is said to be mediated “through sexual contact”.
FACT: Only 1 in 1000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits HIV, and only 1 of 275 US citizens is HIV-infected. Therefore, an average un-infected US citizen needs 275,000 random “sexual contacts” to get infected and spread HIV – an unlikely basis for an epidemic.
Assumption: 11. “AIDS spreads by infection” of HIV.
FACT: Contrary to the spread of AIDS, there is no “spread” of HIV in the US. In the US HIV infections have remained constant at 1 million from 1985 (29) until now. By contrast, AIDS has increased from 1981 until 1992 and has declined ever since.
Assu,ptions: 12. Many of the 3 million people who annually receive blood transfusions in the US for life-threatening diseases, should have developed AIDS from HIV-infected blood donors prior to the elimination of HIV from the blood supply in 1985.
FACT: There was no increase in AIDS-defining diseases in HIV-positive transfusion recipients in the AIDS era, and no AIDS-defining Kaposi’s sarcoma has ever been observed in millions of transfusion recipients.
Assumptions: 13. Doctors are at high risk to contract AIDS from patients, HIV researchers from virus preparations, wives of HIV-positive hemophiliacs from husbands, and prostitutes from clients – particularly since there is no HIV vaccine.
FACT: In the peer-reviewed literature there is not one doctor or nurse who has ever contracted AIDS (not just HIV) from the over 816,000 AIDS patients recorded in the US in 22 years. Not one of over ten thousand HIV researchers has contracted AIDS. Wives of hemophiliacs do not get AIDS. And there is no AIDS-epidemic in prostitutes. Thus AIDS is not contagious.
Assumptions: 14. Viral AIDS – like all viral/microbial epidemics in the past should spread randomly in a population.
FACT: In the US and Europe AIDS is restricted since 1981 to two main risk groups, intravenous drug users and male homosexual drug users.
Assumption: 15. A viral AIDS epidemic should form a classical, bell-shaped chronological curve, rising exponentially via virus spread and declining exponentially via natural immunity, within months.
FACT: AIDS has been increasing slowly since 1981 for 12 years and is now declining since 1993, just like a lifestyle epidemic, as for example lung cancer from smoking.
Assumption: 16. AIDS should be a pediatric epidemic now, because HIV is transmitted “from mother to infant” at rates of 25–50%, and because “34.3 million people worldwide” were already infected in 2000. To reduce the high maternal transmission rate HIV-antibody-positive pregnant mothers are treated with AZT for up to 6 months prior to birth.
Fact: Less than 1% of AIDS in the US and Europe is pediatric. Thus HIV must be a passenger virus in newborns.
Assumption: 17. “HIV recognizes no social, political or geographic borders” – just like all other viruses.
FACT: The presumably HIV-caused AIDS epidemics of Africa and of the US and Europe differ both clinically and epidemiologically. The US/European epidemic is highly nonrandom, 80% male and restricted to abnormal risk groups, whereas the African epidemic is random.
The cause of AIDS is or are: recreational drugs, anti-viral chemotherapy, and malnutrition. HIV does NOT cause AIDS, and AIDS is NOT a sexually transmitted disease. To believe otherwise in the face of fact and logic is incomprehensible to me.
Personally, I don't buy the dissenters argument in total-- but I do think they make some good arguments (anti-viral drugs can be as or more toxic than just HIV, HIV in Africa is grossly overestimated for political reasons, etc.).
It's also clear that heterosexual AIDS is largely a myth. My uncle died of AIDS in 1991 after receiving HIV in a 1984 blood transplant. My aunt is alive and still healthy and HIV-free today. Though I really don't care to delve into my relatives sex life, the fact that so few wives of HIV-positive men get HIV suggests how hard it is to transmit vaginally. The stats I've heard are 1-1000 man-woman, and 1-8000 woman-man.
No, just the most incisive molecular knowledge on the pathophysiology. It is simple for you to do this if you are as familiar with the subject as you claim.
I am not interested in evangelism on the subject one way or the other and there is no need for you to get emotional.
Simply, how does the virus kill cells? Not how it binds to and enters and integrates in to the DNA and replicates.
What causes it to differ from every other retrovirus and kill cells to such an extent? How does HIV cause AIDS molecularly?
What's known on the subject?
For example, in this ecellent review article, Charting HIV's remarkable voyage through the cell: Basic science as a passport to future therapy , the authors describe the molecular biology of HIV very well. Much is know on this. But in their summary they write that, essentially, no one has any idea how or why it is killing cells -- not only the host cells but uninfected cells as well.
Besides creating a small animal model that recapitulates HIV pathogenic mechanisms, we need to better understand the mechanisms underlying viral cytopathicity. Such cell death is not only limited to infected targets but also involves uninfected bystander cells91. Proposed mechanisms for HIV killing of T cells include the formation of giant cell syncytia via interactions between gp120 with CD4 and chemokine receptors92, accumulation of unintegrated linear forms of viral DNA, proapoptotic effects of the Tat (ref. 93), Nef (ref. 94) and Vpr (ref. 95) proteins and the adverse effects conferred by the metabolic burden that HIV replication96 places on the infected cell. Notably, expression of Nef alone as a transgene in mice recapitulates many of the clinical features of AIDS including immunodeficiency and loss of CD4+ cells97.
I was hoping you could summarize the current theories for the viral cytopathicity. Maybe you still can.
What's hard to understand is why they continue their behavior in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is harmful to their health.
I agree. We agree.
I thus do not understand your next comment.
Inferred but never stated.
That is the problem. The AIDS industry wants us to believe this but they won't state it outright. Very strange for a business that puts major league athletes in Viagra ads. Why not a Magic Johnson ad for Protease Inhibitors? I think the reason is that Magic Johnson doesn't use Protease Inhibitors. If he does then we should know it for certain. Until then I am going to assume that it is just PR, a fat paycheck for Magic and nothing else. Endorsing a product is different that using that product. Just ask Magic.
I really think this thread deserves a Zot. It is nonsense. It is dangerous nonsense. If it is believed, people will die. It is worse than the dangerous nonsense spewed by a freeper last year about anti-aging.
I thought you were looking for some sort of exhaustive treatise on the virus and all molecular aspects of the dz, which I, as I said before, I will not take time to write out on this forum.
How exactly does HIV (itself - the virus) kill CD4 cells - it's not completely clear. However destruction of CD4 cells leads to a decrease in function of the imuune system as a whole as it is the CD4 cells that regulate the entire immune system through chemokines. It is other infectious diseases of malignancies that get you in AIDS, not the virus. However, a few of the mechanisms leading to CD4 dysfunction and depletion are (1) the accumulation of unintegreated viral DNA (2) RNAi (3)Intracellular gp120-CD4 autofusion events (4) loss of plamamembrane integrety through viral buddings (5) elimination of HIV infected cells through viral specific immune responses (6) abberant intracellular signaling (7) syncytium formation, and subsequent destruction by immune system (8) innocent bystander killing of viral antigen coated CD4 cells (9) direct viral-induction of apoptosis and (finally) (10) direct inhibition of lymphopoesis. All of thse will occur in a person infected with HIV, having an otherwise fine functioning immune system, and will lead to the dstruction of HIV ionfected cells CD4 or otherwise.
All this is in the before mentioned reading. I do know what I'm talking about, but the vast amount of knowledge and data in this area is just too exhaustive for me to give back to you on this forum, and if you want me to link to scientific articles, forget it, you can find the articles yourself. The primary ference I refered to earlier is as good as it gets on this subject.
Thanks.
The viral replicative cycle is well established, so that is not what I was looking for.
I'm interested in #10. Where and how does it directly inhibit lymphoeisis?
Also, most retroviruses have similar replicative cycles and analogous events to your 1 - 9 occur. Why is HIV cytopathic whereas others are not? Is this known?
Is it believed to be mainly CD4 related?
The articles I linked to and their refernces therein address it more. I thought you might have a good comprehensive review you knew of to reccommend.
Yep. I gave up trying to talk the Duesies out of their obsession years ago. It's a little like trying to talk geography with a flat-earther - they have a reasonable-sounding objection to every imaginable piece of evidence. Time wasted, IMHO.
Deusberg is one of the pioneers of retroviral research and his criticisms did not fall on deaf ears and were not consigned away as flat Earth stuff. In fact Science magazine published debates on the subject. Whereas they, I'm sure, felt he is wrong, he was still takn seriously enough to engender the public debate in Science and in other scientific journals. Hardly falt earth stuff. Maybe he is wrong, but not tin foil fringe or flat earth and you do yourself a disservice in trying to end debate in such a manner.
CD4 Tcells are responsible for secreting many different cytokines for regulating cell differentiation in the bone marrow, for instance IL-3, stimulates hematopoiesis, Il-5, stims growth and differentiation of eosinophils as well as B-cell growth, IL-7, stims pre-B and pre-T cell differentiation and production, and this is just a basic list. CD4 T cells CONTROL the immune system through chemical cytokines, and losing the CD4 cells leads to either (1) no immune response or (2) a completely inappropriate immune response, because the CD4 cells regulate the response of other immune cells.
Also, most retroviruses have similar replicative cycles and analogous events to your 1 - 9 occur. Why is HIV cytopathic whereas others are not? Is this known? Is it believed to be mainly CD4 related?
The reason for the "lag" from time of infection to time of aquired immune dz probably has to do with the fact that some cytokines have slightly overlapping functions, and the body, being cleverly made by God, is able to keep up a defense until such a time that the CD4 are sufficiently depleted that it matter not what other cyctokines other immune cells are producing, and yes, HIV is CD4 specific.
I did :-) The section in Harisson's is about as good and comprehensive as you're going to get.
AIDS really is a side-effect of destroying the cells that regulate and control the immune system as a whole. By analogy, without "mission control" it doesn't matter how good the astronauts and their equipment are, they're screwed.
AIDS could indeed be caused by a COMBINATION of HIV and use of poppers or other drugs
Drugs can obviously negatively effect any disease process, for instance certain steroids and anesthetics cause a decrease in immune function
AIDS could be an autoimmune reaction to HIV infection. This could account for the time difference between HIV infection and full blown AIDS -- it may take the body years to react.
The virus causes the immune system to destroy the very cells that regulate it so, yes, in this sense HIV causes AIDS through an indirect autoimmune reaction, which would be perfectly reasonable, excepting that the cells destroyed control the entire immune system.
AIDS could be the result of HIV infection plus some other viral agent.
AIDS is a "deficiency syndrome" caused secondarily to a viral infect, because the control cells are destroyed. So, AIDS is defined by the the "new" infection.
How come HIV infection does not flare up into AIDS? Considering the potency of the virus upon seroconversion, AIDS should quickly appear.
Not when one considers "cytokine overlap" in the immunological system. This would reuire the the controlling cells get to a low enough point that even the "overlap" is no longer helpful and we see the common menifestations of AIDS. Retroviruses can remain quite dormant, precipitating activation is required to get the "ball rolling"
All right. This is not direct, but indirect.
You also know that this is wrong. Completely myeolablated animals are able to be recuse and reonsititute their blood system by stem cell enriched bone marrow extracts. Cytokines are produced that regulated hematopoiesis in the marow stromal cells and also osteo cells.
CD4 cells are not necessary for hematopoiesis.
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