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'MEDS' not 'HIV' - The real killer
Don't believe what the drugs companies tell you.

WITHOUT HAART 'MEDS"

“These long-term nonprogressors [Hiv+ people who remained healthy] are a heterogeneous group with respect to viral load and HIV-1 responses…none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers

NOT ONE USED HAART

“Subjects: homosexual men in Amsterdam. “None of the LTAs [long-term asymptomatics–people who remained healthy]…received any antiviral drugs during the study [7 years].”

“Ten HIV+ people; 11-15 years infected; non-progressors [i.e., healthy]; maintained stable T-cell counts above 500. “These long-term nonprogressors…all showed the same risk factor (sexual exposure), and all had...virus...and none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers
Journal of Infectious Diseases, 171:811 (1995)
– Hogervorst E, et al, Aids Researchers
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WITH HAART

“…Choosing between many of these [HAART] combinations is, therefore, increasingly dependent upon knowledge of antiretroviral toxicities...[which include] myopathy [gross muscle atrophy] (zidovudine [AZT]), neuropathy (stavudine, didanosine, zalcitabine; hepatic steatosis and lactic acidaemia (didanosine, stavudine, zidovudine); and possible also peripheral lipoatrophy and pancreatitis (didanosine)...drug hypersensitivity... lipodystrophy...[including] peripheral fat loss (Presumed lipoatrophy in the face, limbs and buttocks) and central fat accumulation (within the abdomen, breasts and over the dorsocervical spine [so-called buffalo hump]...[and prevalent in] about 50% [of patients] after 12-18 months of therapy...Metabolic features significantly associated with lipodystrophy and protease-inhibitor therapy include hypertriglyceridaemia, hypercholesterolaemia, insulin resistance...and type 2 ...diabetes mellitus. Dyslipidaemia at concentrations associated with increased cardiovascular disease occurs in about 70% of patients. These metabolic abnormalities are more profound in those receiving protease inhibitors...Most cases of diabetes have been identified in recipients of protease inhibitors...Anemia and granulocytopenia affect about 5-10% of patients who receive zidovudine...Virtually all antiretroviral medications can cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea early in therapy...Diarrhea is probably most common with protease inhibitors...Most antiretroviral agents have been associated with hepatic [liver] toxicity...Most protease inhibitors seem to result in increased rates of spontaneous bleeding (bruising, haemarthrosis, and rarely intracranial haemorrhage) in haemophiliacs... 25-35% of patients cannot tolerate [AZT monotherapy] or triple combination therapy for 4 weeks...”

Lancet. 2000 Oct 21;356:1423-0.
– Carr A, Cooper DA, Aids Researchers

BLINDNESS

“This study was conducted to determine the likelihood of the development of [immune recovery vitritis, IRV], which causes vision loss in AIDS patients with cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, who respond to HAART. We followed 30 HAART-responders…Symptomatic IRV developed in 19 (63%) of 30 patients.”

J Infect Dis. 1999 Mar;179(3):697-700

CASTLEMAN'S DISEASE

“Recently, we observed an unusual cluster of cases of rapidly progressing multicentric Castleman’s disease. Fever, weakness, generalized enlargement of lymph nodes, and marked polyclonal gammopathy developed in three patients with AIDS...Two of these patients died within one week after the diagnosis, with generalized involvement of the lymphatic system, liver, and bone marrow at autopsy. A fourth patient with AIDS who died equally rapidly after the diagnosis of multicentric Castleman’s disease had been seen in our hospital 14 months earlier... symptoms…started after the initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy in these three patients.”

N Engl J Med. 1999 Jun 17;340(24):1923-4
– Zietz C, et al, Aids Researchers
– Karavellas MP, et al, Aids Researchers

DEATH
“…Of the 70 patients studied, 84% were still alive after the 3-month study period...17 surviving patients (24%) had HAART regimens discontinued due to drug intolerance and 11 (16%) expired [died] during the study period...”
J Pain Symptom Manage. 2001 Jan;21(1):41-51

NERVE DAMAGE

“The antiretroviral drugs currently licensed in the United Kingdom [June 1996] are zidovudine (azidothymidine [AZT]), zalcitabine (ddC) and didanosine (ddI). All three are nucleoside analogues...All are very toxic. Suppression of bone marrow elements can occur with any of the three, as can peripheral neuropathy [nerve damage].”

Adverse Drug Reaction Bulletin. 1996 Jun;178:675-8.
– Ellis C.J., Leung D., Aids researchers

“A decrease in mtDNA [DNA of the mitochondria; the energy regulating entities within every cell] content was found in HAART-treated HIV-infected patients with peripheral fat wasting in comparison with subjects in the control cohorts...Lipodystrophy with peripheral fat wasting following treatment with NRTI [Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor]-containing HAART is associated with a decrease in subcutaneous adipose [under the skin fat] tissue.”

AIDS. 2001;15:1801-9
– Shikuma CM, Hu N, Milne C, et al, Aids Researchers

‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’
“7 HIV patients presenting LD [Lipodystrophy, all taking antiretroviral therapy] and 5 HIV non-LD controls participated in the study…Structural muscle abnormalities, mitochondrial respiratory chain dysfunction or mtDNA deletions were detected in all HIV lipodystrophic patients. The mitochondrial abnormalities found suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction could play a role in the development of antiretroviral therapy-related lipodystrophy. ”
AIDS. 2001 Sep 7;15(13):1643-51
– Zaera MG, et al, Aids Researchers

“Combination drug therapy, or the triple-drug ‘cocktail’…often provokes severe side effects… ‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’ warned Dr. James Kahn, UCSF associate professor of medicine…”
– Science Daily, Sep 4, 2001

SEXUAL DIFFICULTIES - Body distortions

“[Chapters in this guide to HIV drugs are entitled Introduction, Appetite loss, Body distortions (lipodystrophy), Bone death and destruction, Cardiac concerns, Diarrhea, Fatigue, Gas and bloating, Hair loss, Headaches, Insulin resistance and diabetes, Kidney stones, Liver toxicity, Muscle aches and pains, Nausea and vomiting, Nightmares, daymares and sleeping difficulties, Pancreatitis, Peripheral neuropathy, Skin problems, Sexual difficulties, The end]”

– A Practical Guide to HIV Drug Side Effects, CATIE, 2002

HEART ATTACKS
“Use of protease inhibitors was strongly associated with the likelihood of having a myocardial infarction [heart attack] and correlated with diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia.”
Lancet. 2002 Nov 30;360(9347)
– Holmberg SD, et al, Aids Researchers

It doesn't matter if there is not a test that proves conclusively that a person has HIV. Other factors are present that contribute to the diagnosis, as with countless other conditions and diseases, even in the western world.

I did do some research on homosexuality in Africa. I still believe the vast majority of HIV transmissions occur through herterosexual contact.
My brother told me that when he was in in Saudi Arabia he heard that the men do each other because the girls can't have sex until marriage. I extrapolated (with a question mark) that to African and other cultures who require virginity of the bride. Also, in American prisons, men do other men but only the recipient (the one on the "down low") is considered gay. I am pasting in some excerpts from an article I found supporting this theory. There are many different cultures in Africa and we can't say the entire continent engages in this behavior.

"Some of the best known work exploring homosexuality in Africa is that of Evans-Pritchard and his studies of the Azande of present day Zaire, beginning in the 1920s. Evans-Pritchard found repeated examples of adolescents prior to the age of 17-18 serving as "boy wives" to older men. They were expected to help their "father-in-law" and "mother-in-laws" to cultivate the fields, build huts and would often sleep with their father-in-laws.

According to Evans-Pritchard, "if a (Azande) man has sexual relations with a boy he is not unclean. The Azande say, 'A boy does not pollute the oracle.'" Moreover, the boy wife and his father-in-law would often refer to each other "my love" and "my lover."
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"Accounts of homosexuality in traditional African cultures often find such practices accepted among adolescents, but discouraged among adults. Tessemann, writing in the 1913 about the Fang people of present day Gabon, states:

In adults such conduct is regarded as something immoral and unnatural, simply unheard of. In reality, however, it is frequently heard of that young people carry on homosexual relations with each other and even older peoples who take boys...readily console them by saying, "we are having fun, playing a game, joking." Adults are excused with the corresponding assertion, "he has (the) heart (that is, the aspirations) of boys," which is, of course, by no means flattering to them."
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"Probably the best documented cases of homosexuality in Africa are among the mine workers of South Africa. Living in all male compounds and separated from girlfriends and wives for months at a time, it is very common for adolescent boys to visit these compounds and provide sexual service to its inhabitants. Such can be thought of as situational homosexuality, based upon the extenuating circumstances of an all male setting.

Yet far less consideration has been given to those miners and their partners who admit to enjoying sexual contact with other men beyond obtaining sexual release in the absence of women. Writing in DEFIANT DESIRE, Linda Ngcobo and Hugh McLean interviewed twenty African men who have sex with other men about gay sexuality in the townships around Johannesburg."
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"A skesana is a boy who likes to get f----," explains Ngcobo, himself one of the first black gay men in South Africa to publicly declare his homosexuality. "An injonga is the one who makes the proposals and does the f------."

Much of the sex between miners and those who service them is "thigh sex", a relatively accepted sexual practice between members of the same sex in many African cultures.

Yet the authors argue that anal sex is far from unknown. Moreover, the definition of what constitues "sex" for African men who have sex with other men, is anal penetration. "Remember that skesanas who 'play with each other' even to the point of orgasm, do not consider this to be sex. Sex happens when amanjonga wa kwabo baba-ayinela, when their injongas penetrates them."

..To much information...