AIDS debate - Most Controversial Story You've Never Heard

[JasmineTea]

I thought this was fascinating and wondered if anyone here had read it?

http://www.rawfoodinfo.com/articles/art_aidsdebate.html

Here is an excerpt:

Prologue

In 1984, Robert Gallo, a government cancer-virologist, called an international press conference to announce that he'd found the probable cause of AIDS. He claimed that a retrovirus called HIV was destroying the immune systems of young gay men and IV drug abusers, leaving them open to a variety of both viral diseases and cancer.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, AIDS is not a single disease, but rather a category of 29 unrelated, previously-known conditions including herpes, yeast infections, salmonella, diarrhea, fever, flus, TB, pelvic cancer in women, pneumonia and bacterial infections. The CDC also designates HIV- positive people who aren't sick, but have a T-cell count below 200, as AIDS patients (T-cells are a subset of white blood cells). The only thing that separates an AIDS diagnosis from any of these conditions is a positive HIV test, which itself is based on Robert Gallo's research.

Gallo's HIV theory, however, was not the only AIDS theory, and according to a growing number of concerned scientists, researchers and activists, it wasn't the best. For 70 years before Gallo, retroviruses were known to be a non-toxic part of the cell, and no single virus could simultaneously cause a viral disease like pneumonia, in which cells are destroyed, and a cancer like Kaposi's Sarcoma, in which cells multiply rapidly.

These scientists argue that Gallo's unified HIV/AIDS theory is flawed and that treating 29 unrelated diseases with extremely toxic AIDS drugs like AZT and protease inhibitors is at best irresponsible and at worse medical genocide.

They may have a point. Ninety-four percent of all AIDS-related deaths in the US occurred after the introduction of AZT, according to CDC statistics through the year 2000. And according to the University of Pittsburgh, the No. 1 cause of death in US AIDS patients today is liver failure, a side-effect of the new protease inhibitors.

The questions arise: Did Gallo truly solve the AIDS riddle, and are we treating AIDS humanely and effectively?

To answer these questions, I spoke with three prominent AIDS researchers.

Dr. Peter Duesberg is a chemist and retroviral expert. Duesberg discovered the Oncogene (cancer gene) and isolated the retroviral genome (of which HIV is one) in 1970. He is professor of molecular biology at UC Berkeley.

Dr. David Rasnick is a protease specialist and has been in AIDS research for 20 years. He and Duesberg work in collaboration on cancer and AIDS research. Rasnick was an advisor on President Mbeki's South African AIDS panel.

Dr. Rodney Richards is a chemist who worked with Amgen and Abbot labs, designing the first HIV tests from Robert Gallo's HIV cell line.

[EricTAMUCC-BSN, BSN, RN]

Excellent article.

[EricTAMUCC-BSN, BSN, RN]

Rasnick: It's the same story, even worse. Fifty percent of Africans have no sewage systems. Their drinking water mixes with animal and human waste. They have constant TB and malaria infections, the symptoms of which are diarrhea and weight loss, the very same criteria UNAIDS and the World Health Organization use to diagnose AIDS in Africa.

These people need clean drinking water and treated mosquito nets [mosquitoes carry malaria], not condoms and lectures and deadly pharmaceuticals forced on pregnant mothers.

We've put 20 years and $118 billion into HIV. We've got no cure, no vaccine and no progress. Instead we have thousands of people made sick and even killed by toxic AIDS drugs. But we can't just treat them for the diseases we know they have because if we do, we're called "AIDS denialists." Treating them for the diseases they actually have would be more humane and effective than forcing toxic drugs down their throats, and it would also save billions of tax dollars. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. There are 100,000 professional AIDS researchers in this country. It's as hard to challenge as big tobacco at this point.

[moosicle]

Although interesting, there is one major inaccuracy in this article.

...the FDA has not approved a single test for diagnosing HIV-infection.

Go to fda website; apparently, the fda is convinced that they have!

[Nurse GOODNIGHT]

Looks like the article was written in 2003. Maybe a (new) test has been approved?

[moosicle]

Well, the first test yourself at home HIV test was FDA approved in 1996.

[fergus51]

Rasnick: It's the same story, even worse. Fifty percent of Africans have no sewage systems. Their drinking water mixes with animal and human waste. They have constant TB and malaria infections, the symptoms of which are diarrhea and weight loss, the very same criteria UNAIDS and the World Health Organization use to diagnose AIDS in Africa.

These people need clean drinking water and treated mosquito nets [mosquitoes carry malaria], not condoms and lectures and deadly pharmaceuticals forced on pregnant mothers.

We've put 20 years and $118 billion into HIV. We've got no cure, no vaccine and no progress. Instead we have thousands of people made sick and even killed by toxic AIDS drugs. But we can't just treat them for the diseases we know they have because if we do, we're called "AIDS denialists." Treating them for the diseases they actually have would be more humane and effective than forcing toxic drugs down their throats, and it would also save billions of tax dollars. It's a multi-billion dollar industry. There are 100,000 professional AIDS researchers in this country. It's as hard to challenge as big tobacco at this point.

The part that ignores is that all those terrible health conditions have always been present there. It wasn't until after HIV made its appearance that we saw the number of deaths that we now see there. Give one village with a number of people diagnosed with HIV clean drinking water, anti-malarials and treatment for TB. Then see if it works. If it doesn't, then it has to be obvious to anyone that something more is at play.

[papawjohn]

Hey Y'all

The belief that HIV does not cause AIDS is fairly widespread for some reason and of course is stupid and completely wrong.

oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/11/more-rebuttals-of-hivaids-skeptics.html

Papaw John

[nuberianne_RN]

My father has a book by Peter Duesberg about the origin of "AIDS". I only had the chance to glance through the first few chapters and I was intrigued. Fast forward a few years and I came across his website. I read some of the info and was completely blown away.

According to Duesberg, there never has been any research that supports the notion that HIV causes AIDS or that AIDS is even a disease. The epidemic in Africa is explained as malnutrition. Now before you call Duesdorff or me a quack I urge you to look into this further. He was actually a very highly respected scientist before he was blackballed kinda sorta for blowing the whistle. His books go into every detail of who, what, why, where, when, and how of the supposed AIDS crises.

[mandana]

So, this article (I read the whole thing) sounds really intelligent and above board, but there is so much wrong.

I'm too sleepy at the moment to go point by point through it, but it talks about how the virus has never been identified in the blood? What the heck is viral load testing testing for if this were true?

http://www.sfaf.org/aids101/viral_testing.html

Amanda

[ZASHAGALKA, RN]

Actually, I have heard it before.

It's not enough to simply throw credibilty bombs at established research by using official and important sounding dissidents.

You have to offer some coherent explanation of why the research isn't valid.

Whether you feel there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS or not, you have to explain the high correlation between the two if you're going to have any credibility making that claim.

Unisanitary conditions makes a convincing argument that a lowered immune system make it easier to contract HIV in the first place, but it still doesn't explain the correlation between HIV, once contracted, and AIDS, if untreated. That same argument could easily apply to IV drug abusers or the drug culture of the gay community circa 1980 - that both served to lower immune systems, thereby making the contractibility of the virus easier.

There is no proof that smoking cause cancer. But the correlation is astounding.

You'd sound like an idiot - or someone w/ an agenda - if you tried to suggest smoking doesn't cause cancer without something concrete to back that up.

Let me humbly suggest that the same applies to this article.

~faith,

Timothy.

[fergus51]

There is a documentary today on tv called "The Origin of AIDS" which hypothesizes that HIV was first introduced to humans by polio vaccines that were made using Chimpanzee tissues in the Belgian Congo in the late 50s. Interesting show...