Chimp Virus Is Linked to H.I.V.

By studying chimpanzee droppings in remote African jungles, scientists reported yesterday, they have found direct evidence of a missing link between a chimpanzee virus and the one that causes human AIDS.

Scientists have long suspected that chimpanzees are the source of the human AIDS pandemic because at least one subspecies carries a simian immune deficiency virus closely related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

But because the simian virus, known as S.I.V.cpz, was identified in chimpanzees in captivity, researchers could not be sure that the same simian virus existed among these apes in the wild.

It does, the team of American, European and Cameroonian scientists reported in the journal Science. They found it by testing hundreds of chimpanzee droppings collected in Cameroon.

The genetic and immunologic tests were developed in stages over the past seven years to help trace the evolution of H.I.V. and solve the mysterious origins of AIDS, said Dr. Beatrice H. Hahn, a virologist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Dr. Hahn led the international team that conducted the study, which combined genetics and epidemiology.

The new findings, she said in a telephone interview, do not explain the entire chain of events that led from the first human H.I.V. infection to the infection of 65 million people around the world.

But, Dr. Hahn reported, her team's findings show "for the first time a clear picture of the origin of H.I.V.-1 and the seeds of the AIDS pandemic." H.I.V.-1 is the virus that causes the vast majority of AIDS cases in the world. The first cases of AIDS were detected in the United States in 1981.

Studies estimate that the human AIDS virus jumped species 50 to 75 years ago. But no one knows who the first infected person was or how that person acquired H.I.V...

http://www.nature.com/nature/links/010426/010426-4.html

Origins of HIV: Polio vaccine cleared

New evidence from three separate laboratories pours cold water on claims that contaminated polio vaccines may have introduced the AIDS virus into humans.

It was suggested that chimpanzee kidney cultures allegedly used in the preparation of oral polio vaccine stocks used in Africa during the late 1950s could have introduced a precursor of HIV-1 into humans.

But now PCR amplification of frozen samples of the suspect vaccine has failed to reveal any HIV-1-related nucleic acids or chimpanzee mitochondrial DNA.

In addition the evidence points to the use of macaque monkey cells, rather than chimpanzee in the vaccines in question.

And finally, a phylogenetic study of modern HIV-1 strains identifies the last common ancestor of HIV-1 group M as a virus present in a human host, rather than as a single transfer from another primate.

Polio vaccine samples not linked to AIDS
PHILIPPE BLANCOU, JEAN-PIERRE VARTANIAN, CINDY CHRISTOPHERSON, NICOLE CHENCINER, CLAUDIO BASILICO, SHIRLEY KWOK & SIMON WAIN-HOBSON

Vaccine safety: Analysis of oral polio vaccine CHAT stocks
N. BERRY, C. DAVIS, A. JENKINS, D. WOOD, P. MINOR, G. SCHILD, M. BOTTIGER, H. HOLMES & N. ALMOND

Human immunodeficiency virus: Phylogeny and the origin of HIV-1
ANDREW RAMBAUT, DAVID L. ROBERTSON, OLIVER G. PYBUS, MARTINE PEETERS & EDWARD C. HOLMES

The generally accepted view among scientists is that a chimpanzee virus jumped species when a human was bitten by a chimpanzee or when people ate contaminated chimpanzee flesh.

Edward Hooper's book, "The River", has slowly moved from the realm of epidemiological gospel to urban myth.

MA

Good for you Mr Valentine. People just don't want to hear about this, but you are sticking to your guns.

The HIV Hypothesis - that there exists a virus, HIV, that causes the disease/diseases we call AIDs - must, if it is a true hypothesis - correctly predict certain observable facts.

One of these predictions is that "viral" AIDs should spread like a virus. Let's examine this prediction.

When looking at what causes a disease there are a number of "usual suspects". Pathogens (bacteria or viruses) are a likely cause. Toxin exposure is also a likely cause. Deficiency (not enough vitamins, not enough food) is a third.

To tell which one we are dealing with (pathogen or toxin/deficiency) we look at the epidemiology of the disease (epidemiology - how a disease spreads).

AIDs has stayed within the defined at-risk sectors of the population (e.g. drug users, homosexual men) and hasn't expanded exponentially into the general population. Despite Oprah's dire warnings (remember those?), heterosexual non-drug users (at any rate, those who eat properly and who have no significant toxin exposure) have not in fact been ravaged by AIDs. Prostitutes who don't do drugs and have no other catabolic stresses haven't been ravaged by AIDs.

But viruses just do not behave like this. They are little bits of nucleic clockwork. They are obligatory parasites - they infect, and they have to infect. They expand exponentially into populations and then die off as the population achieves resistance. The epidemiology of AIDs is non-infectious, and so AIDs must be non-viral.

The epidemiology of AIDs is instead similar to that of toxin exposure or nutrition-deprivation. A good analogy is with long-term smokers or heavy drinkers: people with heavy exposure to toxins for a long period tend to develop diseases: those who aren't exposed, don't. You don't catch lung cancer or cirrhosis of the liver by touch, you get them from toxin exposure.

In the early cases of AIDs (GRID = Gay Related Immune Disease/Disorder) there was an obvious toxic cause: the inhaling of amyl nitrite to assist anal intercourse. Inhaling of amyl nitrite is a lethal habit, and a demarcated homosexual phenomenum. Therefore this form of AIDs appeared amongst gay men only, and stayed in the gay population.

But the vast majority of AIDs deaths were not and are not caused by nitrite poppers. Hardly. Poppers merely began the AIDs furore. Nowadays the classic popper-induced disease (Kaposi's Sarcoma, a dangerous cancerous lesion in the lungs) is no even longer defined as an AIDs disease - as the gay community drastically cut back on popper consumption in the early AIDs era.

The real killer in AIDs (the real toxic cause) was and is iatrogenic poisoning: by which I mean the treatment for HIV infection itself causes the disease. AZT - the old wonder drug for AIDS - is an extremely toxic chemotherapy drug: 1000 mg of AZT a day for months or years would kill anyone. 90% of all those thousands of AIDs deaths in the AZT days were caused by toxic liver failure, NOT by one of the CDC’s AIDs-defining diseases. Go figure.

These days doctors don't use AZT, or use less of it. They use cathepsin inhibitors. These aren't as poisonous as AZT, though they're still poisonous. Hence less patients are dropping dead, and so the HAART cocktail treatments have been hailed as miracle cures.

But my point would be - a cure for what? The only reason someone is given these sublethal AIDs “cures” is that they have reacted positively on a HIV test. They are assumed to be infected, even if they are symptomless, and therefore they come under a lot of pressure, both legal & moral, to comply with treatment. The treatment is poisonous (in the case of pure AZT extremely so) and so the patient tends to get worse. Result - you have an epidemic-by-diagnosis. You get diagnosed with the virus, and some time later you get sick.

But surely if an HIV test says you're infected, you're infected?

Well, no. The HIV tests (ELISA, Western Blot) have not been calibrated against the isolated virus itself. This is known as "gold standard calibration" - without such calibration, a serological test for viral antibodies has no business being used in medical practice. Without calibration you don’t know if your test is giving you a false-positive result or not.

There are over fifty conditions that have been documented to cause false positives in HIV tests. Some are probably statistically irrelevant (e.g. leprosy). But most are highly relevant. Tuberculosis, flu vaccination, recent tetanus vaccination, herpes, renal failure, pregnancy (second or later pregnancies particularly), rheumatoid arthritis, "sticky" blood (in Africans), "sickle cell" (in Africans), being African, organ transplants, malaria, hepatitis, haemophilia and antibodies to sperm have all known to create false-positives in HIV tests. Without calibration we don't know that anybody who's ever shown up positive on an HIV test actually had the virus - it could have been a false positive.

I repeat: without calibrating an HIV test against the virus itself it is impossible to use that test to indicate presence of the virus. The HIV tests react to proteins in the blood. To prove that they’re interacting with HIV proteins, you must have an isolate of HIV and be able to determine what the HIV proteins are.

So why not calibrate the tests already? Answer: you need an isolate of the virus to do this, and ... the HIV virus has not yet been isolated. There is a Nobel prize waiting for the first person who can isolate HIV. No-one has done it. After twenty years we are entitled to ask if the virus is actually there to be isolated.

Without an isolate of the HIV virus there's no proof that HIV actually exists. There’s no proof of sexual transmission, no proof of pathology. The epidemiology is non-viral.

So - why are we sticking with the HIV hypothesis? Does it have any predictive value? Has use of the HIV theory allowed us to cure anybody, as opposed to the thousands of people doctors have - inadvetently - killed with AZT?

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