AIDS Infection Rate in U.S. Higher Than Previously Estimated

Updated federal estimates of the annual number of new HIV infections in the United States, released today, reveal that while the AIDS epidemic here is worse than previously thought, prevention efforts appear to be having some effect.

Even though the number of Americans living with HIV has risen by more than a quarter million people since 1998 -- largely the result of life-extending antiretroviral drugs -- the number of new cases each year has declined slightly over that period. That suggests that a person's likelihood of transmitting the virus to someone else is substantially lower now than it was a decade ago.

The new, if indirect, evidence that prevention programs are paying off was one of the few encouraging findings in an update on the American AIDS epidemic released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the eve of the 17th International AIDS Conference, in Mexico City.

"Over 95 percent of people living with HIV are not transmitting to someone else in a given year," said David R. Holtgrave, an expert on AIDS prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "What that says is the transmission rate has been kept very low by prevention efforts."

Those include targeting public health messages to high-risk groups, promoting widespread AIDS testing, and getting quick medical care for newly diagnosed cases, which in most cases lowers the person's infectiousness.

The epidemic in the black community is distinctly different from the national epidemic.

From 2001 to 2005, 38 percent of the new diagnoses in African Americans were in women, and 46 percent of new infections overall were from heterosexual contact. Among whites during the same period, 16 percent of new infections were in women, and 16 percent were from heterosexual transmission...

Duesberg, Raznick, Ellison and several others have offered to do just that. All they require is that the NIH/CDC properly supervise the experiment, confirm that they have been injected with HIV and test positive for the same, and regularly report on their progress thereafter.

That was a dishonest offer on their part. They know that such an experiment would violate NIH/CDC ethics rules with regards to experiments involving human subjects. If they are so sure that being injected with HIV is harmless, they should just go ahead and do so. They knew that NIH/CDC would refuse to participate in such an experiment, so why bother even making the offer on those conditions if they were actually serious?

In one other instance, Raznick offered to have himself injected without the above caveat, if the scientist he was debating at the time would agree to go on AIDS chemotherapy. At first, the scientist accepted the challenge, but later backed out.

Why would his offer be conditioned on someone else needlessly taking drugs with serious side effects? Nobody claims that the AIDS drugs are without unpleasant side effects. Why would Raznick want someone else to take those drugs as a condition for him being injected with what he considers to be a harmless virus?

These guys should put up or shut up. If they really believe that HIV is a harmless virus, then they should go ahead and inject themselves and we can follow the experiment. They should stop relying on the cop-out that other people won't play along with their lunacy.

After cutting through the clutter I actually found something worthy of a response. One of the interviewed was, from the posting, “Dr. Christian Fiala is a medical doctor and specialist in obstetrics and gynecology in Vienna. He's worked extensively in Uganda and Thailand researching AIDS.”
From that description one would think he would be up to date on what was happening in Uganda as it relates to AIDS. Is he? Dr. Fiala would know, I assume, of the prevalence of KS and it's increase.
Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS) is one of those opportunistic infections listed by WHO as an indicator of HIV infection and AIDS. Note that HIV is not listed as the virus that produces the KS cancer. This paper discusses the incidence of KS before and after HIV became widely spread. “1: Br J Cancer. 1998 Dec;78(11):1521-8.
Related Articles, Links
The geographical distribution of Kaposi's sarcoma and of lymphomas in Africa before the AIDS epidemic.

Cook-Mozaffari P, Newton R, Beral V, Burkitt DP.

CRC Cancer Epidemiology Research Group, Department of Public Health, Radcliffe Infirmary, University of Oxford, UK.

Estimated incidence rates are presented for three human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated cancers [Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), Burkitt’s lymphoma (BL) and other non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHLs)] from across the African continent, based on data collected before the HIV epidemic. Mapping of the rates and comparisons with a range of geographical variables indicate completely different distributions for KS and BL but a degree of similarity in the occurrence of Burkitt’s lymphoma and other NHLs. Comparisons with rates elsewhere in the world suggest, most notably, that KS was as common in some regions of sub-Saharan Africa as was cancer of the colon in much of Western Europe. Comparison with data from the era of AIDS indicates 20-fold increases in the occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma in Uganda and Zimbabwe. The highest rates for BL were three to four times the rates for leukaemia at young ages in Western populations, but the general incidence of other NHL was no higher than in the West and very low rates were indicated for much of southern Africa.
PMID: 9836488 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]”
A twenty fold increase after compared to before. Poverty and poor nutrician didn't increase twenty fold nor does anyone claim drug use did. The culprit was HIV just as it is in the U.S.. The claim is repeated that malnourishment is the cause of AIDS. If so then well nourished, non drug users should not develop AIDS even if they carry the HIV that Duesberg says is harmless. But they do as I've already shown in past posts. They develop diseases consistent with impaired immune systems.
I've also pointed out in other forums how inaccurate the estimates are for HIV infection and AIDS are in Africa and the confusion between typically occurring diseases and those that result from HIV infection .
. Dr. Fiala goes on to say about malaria, one of the chronic diseases of Africa, and the drugs to treat it, “.......the inexpensive, highly efficient drugs that effectively fight the disease”. What those drugs are he doesn't say but here are some ideas,
“Search PLoS Medicine
Home
The Benefits of Artemisinin Combination Therapy for Malaria Extend Beyond the Individual Patient
Paul Garner*, Patricia M. Graves
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Citation: Garner P, Graves PM (2005) The Benefits of Artemisinin Combination Therapy for Malaria Extend Beyond the Individual Patient. PLoS Med 2(4): e105 doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020105
Published: April 26, 2005
Copyright: © 2005 Garner and Graves. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abbreviations: ACT, artemisinin-based combination treatment; CQ, chloroquine; SP, sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: pgarner@liv.ac.uk
Paul Garner is Professor of Community Health, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, United Kingdom. Patricia M. Graves is Guest Researcher, Division of Parasitic Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America.

The traditional, low-cost mainstay drugs for malaria, chloroquine (CQ) and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP), have a very limited lifetime left in terms of their clinical usefulness. These drugs have been relatively ineffective in Asia for two decades, and rising drug resistance levels have now also rendered them ineffective in many sub-Saharan African countries [1]. Artemisinin drugs, such as artesunate and artemether, derived from the Chinese herb Artemisia annua, are rapidly being adopted as standard treatments in Africa, in the hope that effective treatment will assist in reversing the apparently increasing death rates in African children [2].

medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020105 - Similar pages”
Artemisinin treatments are far more expensive the older drugs used to treat malaria even if more effective.
So it would seem Dr. Fiala was not aware that the cheap drugs aren't effective and the effective drugs aren't cheap. I won't even bother with the straw man of one virus causing/not causing multiple diseases. What about tests?
Are they accurate? “Richards: The WHO/UNAIDS tells us that there are currently 30 million HIV-positive Africans, yet less than one in a thousand of these people have ever been tested. In South Africa, the WHO/UNAIDS reports 5 million people are infected with HIV, but this number is based on only 4,000 actual HIV-positive test results from pregnant women.
But even these positive test results are hardly indicative of HIV-infection. The HIV-antibody tests used in these surveys are known to come up positive based on cross-reactions with antibodies produced from malaria, TB and parasitic infection - all common conditions in Africa. The test manufacturers themselves warn that pregnancy is a known cause of false positives.
Fiala: Testing pregnant women for HIV-infection is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but pregnant women are the only people regularly tested for HIV-infection in sub-Saharan Africa..”
Dr. Fiala said the ani-AIDS drug Nevirapine was not FDA approved for use in the United States, etc. But at the time of his speaking it was approved in combination with other drugs and he would have known it. All he had to do was go to a FedGov. web site. (who are these people?)
Are the tests used for HIV/AIDS accurate. While many things MAY give a false positive the question is how often this occurs. Less than 2% as the testing done by NYC showed. Anyone can check the FDA standards for these tests. These are the FDA approved tests the writer/interviewer, Liam Scheff said didn't exist.
So to sum up, HIV tests are accurate, HIV infection is a good predictor of the opportunistic diseases (like KS) of AIDS, and the three people in your post don't seem to be well informed as we'd hope given their backgrounds. As for the experiment you suggested, it's already been performed. But you'll have to wait on that.

You really need to learn how to format your posts. All you have to do is put a paragraph break <p> between your paragraphs, and you will find that a lot more people will read your posts.

==Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS) is one of those opportunistic infections listed by WHO as an indicator of HIV infection and AIDS.

But as I already pointed out, it is common practice in Africa to label patients with any number of AIDS-defining diseases as having AIDS without testing for HIV. Among those who they go back and test for HIV, many turn out to be HIV-negative. Case in point (Dr. Bialy=AID Rethinker scientist; Dr de Cock =director of the WHO Department of HIV/AIDS):

Dr. Harvey Bialy: "There are thousands of documented cases from the Third World, from Africa in particular, of clinically reportable AIDS in which HIV testing has been done and found to be negative. I think it's amongst the strongest arguments that HIV is irrelevant to the development of AIDS in at least some cases if not all cases."

Dr. de Cock maintains that those HIV negative cases may have looked like AIDS but they were simply conditions which were drawn into the net when collecting numbers of patients for research purposes and not for patient care.

Question: "These 2400 cases were called AIDS, for all intents and purposes, in all the literature. And yet you're saying they shouldn't have been called AIDS. But they were identical to AIDS. So, are you saying..."

Dr. Kevin de Cock: "But they were HIV negative."

Question: "So, are you saying there have been 2400 misdiagnoses?"

Dr. Kevin de Cock: "Are you talking about - we're talking about the quality of surveillance data."

Question: "The documented cases of full blown AIDS which, when tested, were HIV negative."

Dr. Kevin de Cock: "Well then they're not AIDS cases. They're not AIDS in the way we talk about HIV disease."

Question: "But they were called AIDS in the documents. They were called clinical case definition Bangui AIDS. Do you see?"

Dr. Kevin de Cock: "Of course I see. Any case definition particularly one which is clinically based is not going to be perfect."

Dr. Harvey Bialy: "When one has clinically identical pictures one with HIV antibodies, one without HIV anti-bodies - to call one AIDS and one not AIDS is patent absurdity. This is irrefutable proof that HIV is not necessary for the presence of AIDS, except by definition."

http://www.duesberg.com/media/jsafrica.html

==Comparison with data from the era of AIDS indicates 20-fold increases in the occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma in Uganda and Zimbabwe...A twenty fold increase after compared to before. Poverty and poor nutrician didn't increase twenty fold nor does anyone claim drug use did. The culprit was HIV just as it is in the U.S.. The claim is repeated that malnourishment is the cause of AIDS.

If you read the scientific literature on KS in Africa, you will repeatedly find them talking about poor nutrition being associated with Kaposi's Sarcoma. For example:

"The role of nutritional factors in the management of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-related, or epidemic, Kaposi's sarcoma (EKS) is complex, since there are known interactions between malnutrition, immunodeficiency, and cancer. Malnutrition is a well-established cause of immune aberrations, which are seen in deficiencies of both protein and energy, as well as specific nutrients, particularly trace metals."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3110957

Plus, let's not forget that Kaposi's was endemic to sub-Saharan Africa long before the advent of AIDS...and still is:

"Endemic African Kaposi's sarcoma is a common neoplastic disorder in the sub-Saharan region of Africa. We present a retrospective analysis of 47 black patients with the endemic African (HIV-negative) variant of Kaposi's sarcoma treated and followed up in the Johannesburg General Hospital between 1980 and 1990."

Finally, has it ever occurred to you that the twenty-fold increase in KS cases might have something to do with the explosion of foreign AID being sent to Africa to "fight" AIDS? How many surveillance troops do you suppose were on the ground scouring Africa for AIDS-related diseases before AIDS? Duesberg reports that African nations get to collect foreign AID in part based on the number of AIDS cases they report. One can only imagine the effect this has had on the accuracy of AIDS surveillance in Africa. Indeed, now that Bush's 50 billion dollar global AIDS bill has passed, I bet there will be an even bigger "explosion" of KS cases.

Bottom line: AIDS Rethinker scientists and medical doctors say AIDS is caused primarily by poverty and malnutrition in Africa. AIDS establishment scientists say that the malnutrition associated with KS is caused by AIDS. You have to ask yourself, given the poverty endemic to Africa, which one is the more likely scenario? All AIDS Rethinkers are asking for is that studies be devised to determine once and for all which side is right--something the AIDS establishment has steadfastly REFUSED to do for two decades now. Given what's at stake, is that really too much to ask for?

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