Aetiology

They like Gallo because they can truthfully assert that Gallo was discredited. Of course they tend to gloss over the fact that Gallo's conclusions weren't discredited just Gallo's claim to have isolated HIV in his own laboratory.

Posted by: Dale | June 6, 2006 8:58 AM

"I've always wondered about the fascination of the AIDS deniers [and the deniers that deny they are deniers, even though they don't know what a denier is (like our Hank Barnes)] with Gallo."

This personalisation is a common thing among anti-science types - creationists are obsessed with Darwin and Haeckel, and assume that evolutionary biologists are too. Presumably it's because it's a lot easier to just say "You worship Gallo" than it is to actually address the evidence. Also, for people whose objections are religiously motivated, their epistemology is based on authority, which comes from priests and texts, rather than evidence.

Posted by: Ginger Yellow | June 6, 2006 12:58 PM

Addendum:

There is also a huge problem in the medical industry of "making up" diseases.

The newest example is Intermittent Explosior Disorder.

New diseases = new drugs = new tests = new research $$.

Gallo, for example, patented the test for HIV anti-body -- based on his fraudulent research --which made him a wealthy man.

His science was compromised by financial gain.

Hank Barnes

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 6, 2006 2:13 PM

I did see the data. It supports exactly what I said. The number of AIDs events was lower because HAART treatment prevents AIDS events. Without HAART treament those 675 patients would have died from AIDs long before any of the reported grade 4 events.

I await you detailed response to the papers (that contain data) to which I provided links. I especially await your detailed response to the data from the NIAID site(http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm).

I do agree with your comment.

"There is also a huge problem in the medical industry of "making up" diseases." But, I don't think it applies to AIDs. It is not a made up disease.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 6, 2006 2:33 PM

Hank since you're so fond of questions,

1) Since AIDS pre-dates the drugs used to cause AIDS, how can they cause AIDS?

2) Why does the condition of AIDS patients dramatically improve when they start taking HAART tratment?

3) Why did all of those hemopheliacs develop AIDS? Why did the number of hemopheliacs getting AIDS drop dramatically after we started screening blood for HIV?

4) Why do you ignore most of the available data and continue to spout off mischaracterizations of a few hand picked studies?

Posted by: tonyl | June 6, 2006 2:43 PM

Bean-Counter Alert!!!!

Tonyl, your first question is 3-dimensional babble:

Since AIDS pre-dates the drugs used to cause AIDS, how can they cause AIDS?

I've read is slowly 3 times -- it still makes no sense.

First, AZT was developed in 1964. So, AIDS (1981)doesn't pre-date AZT (1964).

Second, your first "cause" is gibberish. Do you mean "treat"?

Third, strawmen. Show me where I said that AIDS drugs "cause" AIDS.

According to the Riesler paper:

The most common grade 4 events were: liver related (148 patients; rate = 2.6 per 100 person-years); neutropenia (89; 1.5/100 person-year); anemia (64; 1.1/100 person-year); cardiovascular (51; 0.89/100 person-year); pancreatitis (50; 0.85/100 person-year); psychiatric (44; 0.75/100 person-year); kidney-related (34; 0.58/100 person-year); thrombocytopenia (32; 0.54/100 person-year); and hemorrhage (25; 0.42/100 person-year)

Some of these illnesses may or may not overlap with AIDS-defining diseases, but ......WHO CARES?

Hank B

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 6, 2006 3:00 PM

DDS,

The site isn't anonymous. It clearly states that it is an NIH website

Who is the scientist who wrote it?

You are always asking Tara for citations and yet you do not provide any.

A lie. I cited the Riesler paper above. I've cited Padian numerous times.

As for your proposed experiment with HAART the comparison has been done

That's funny. My friend, Dale, above just wrote:

If there were an appropriate animal model for HIV/AIDS you would see such a controlled study. But since there isn't and since the available evidence (comparing pre HAART with HAART mortality rates) indicates that HAART is better than nothing it would be unethical to refuse to treat HIV+ individuals with HAART if they request it.

So, has the study been done or not -- due to ethical concerns?

HB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 6, 2006 3:07 PM

Hank,
If you would look at the paper you would see that it is a prospective study. That is they compared people who didn't have HAART treatment (for whatever reason) with a matched control group who did. Read the paper then respond. Dale is correct, it is unethical to do the experiment now because we know that HAART works. When that study was done we didn't know that.

I didn't lie, you don't read. I said you didn't cite any work to support your statement "But it's multi-factoral, not caused solely a virus, unknown prior to 1983. Clinically, AIDS is merely a collection of old diseases". Niether of the papers in your last post address this hypothesis. I want to see the citations to back up what you say.

If you want some names attached to the data go here: http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/focuson/hiv/resources/macs_and_wihs.htm

You ask for a lot but provide nothing in return.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 6, 2006 3:26 PM

What does mentioning Tara have to do with it sounding like a lie? I see we have a problem with the English language here.

I said "On what do you base your hypothesis that AIDS is simply a compendium of other diseases? You are always asking Tara for citations and yet you do not provide any." Clearly, the word "any" was referring to the sentence that immediately preceded it. That is what I meant by read the post.

And, you still haven't refuted any of the citations I mentioned in my previous posts.

I am waiting...or maybe you can't? I know, just call me a liar and ignore everything else in the post. I cited a study that shows that HAART works and yet you say nothing. Why not?

In any case I don't believe that I will ever change your mind. I post mostly to provide an accurate couterpoint.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 6, 2006 4:06 PM

Hank, Duesberg is not an appropriate citation for evidence of anything pertaining to HIV or AIDS as Duesberg has published no clinical or laboratory studies that contain original data.

Posted by: Dale | June 6, 2006 4:23 PM

Hahaha, Hank, you're ridiculous. You cite only selective few references that seemingly support your views, yet clearly these papers are just argumentative papers with little technical data or just information that can be broadly interpreted; yet when the nice folks around here present well studied clinical papers or even technical papers indicating views that deviate from your own, you clearly don't read them, and try to deflect them by indicating language flaws in their response? just ridiculous

If you like to believe that HIV is not the causal agent of AIDS, until some sort of detailed study is done to compare HIV VS. HAART contribution to AIDS (which I think is a waste of time and resources), you seem to be immensely curious or the outcome, and very doubtful of HIV causing AIDS, why not you volunteer to take in a dose of HIV as a experimental model, you'll serve well to clear up the questions about HIV causing AIDS or not.

I've got plenty of concentrated HIV aliquots stored away in the lab, from M strains to O strains, all genetically and positively identified and classified. Care to inject a dose of these and see if you ever acquire full blown AIDS? I'm happy to donate one aliquot or two.

P.S. Don't mind my language, English is not my first language. this response is probably pock marked with plenty of grammatical errors and mannerisms misused

Viji

Posted by: Viji | June 6, 2006 8:15 PM

Hank, I presume this would be your response. QUOTE "3. Well, since hundreds of chimpanzees have been injected with HIV and not one has died, I doubt anything will happen to me. By the way, you do understand that it is nearly impossible to find and culture any infectious HIV from an AIDS patient, don't you? Hence, the controversy." END QUOTE

Hahaha, you clearly have absolutely no idea about research on HIV or even the biology of HIV, if i may add

Indeed, chimpanzees can be infected by HIV, and HIV can replicate and persist in chimpanzees, but chimpanzees do not develop the human equivalent of AIDS, current research have yet to assign all the broad mechanisms behind this phenomenon (As studying HIV pathogenesis in humans are the priority of research funds, rather than in chimpanzees), but we do have some observations that can explain some part of it, here is one example http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/70/9/6502

"I doubt anything will happen to me." Thats wishful thinking. Hey Hank, I'm offering you a free trial, no strings attached. Whats more, you will become famous for offering yourself for the understanding/ or in your case refuting that HIV is the causal agent of AIDS. Its your dream come true. Of course you will have to shy away from HAART at anytime after you've injected yourself with HIV

As for the last part of your response regarding the difficulty of culturing HIV from patients, I think many of the above comments have adequately address this issue, if you care to look. And if you're still no convinced, fly over to Australia and I'll show you how to detect low levels of HIV replication in AIDS patients using the HIV-1 RNA detection technique

Viji

Posted by: Viji | June 7, 2006 12:09 AM

The same pseudoscientific pattern of attacking a scientist rather than the science is also seen with anti-vaccination kooks.

If you read the internet you'll find out that Louis Pasteur was a fraud and therefore the entire germ theory of disease is flawed.

You don't have to read any of the science that was done after Pasteur's death because Pasteur was a fraud, fraud, fraud!

A Faulty Medical Model: The Germ Theory

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 7, 2006 5:16 AM

As for Gallo. He did unethical things to achieve a laudable scientific end. Gallo's ethics though don't invalidate the scientific end.

HIV causes AIDS. HAART saves lives. Condoms can help prevent spread.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 7, 2006 8:12 AM

2. His data didn't support his conclusions: He only found the virus in about 36% of AIDS patients. So, what accounted for the other 64%?

A number of reasons. Low viral load at the time. Poorly preserved samples. etc. etc. etc. That's why the antibody test was used--it was a more reliable indicator of infection.

Please provide evidence that this is true.

Posted by: simon s | June 7, 2006 4:33 PM

Hank,
why are you spending your time here, "debating" these wolves?

You, myself and anybody else that questions the holy house of "AIDS" becomes their whipping boys. Why? Because they don't want to look inward, and see what they're doing. Otherwise they might feel extremely bad about it, possibly even responsible. So they need to beat up others to rid themselves of their psychic pain. It's pretty simple stuff. They know they're wrong, but this is what they need to do until they can begin the healing process. Don't be their whipping boy, Hank.

Hi, Chris!

Posted by: Dan | June 7, 2006 6:12 PM

Hank,
we've mucked through Gallo with these folks over and over...

He's quite the sore spot for them. Without Gallo's pronouncement (much less "research") we wouldn't have HIV as the cause of AIDS. But with his finding of "HIV" in roughly one-third of his patients, it's looking like some pretty weak science. So you can see why they like to toss him off of the boat. He's a major embarassment.

Here are the basics...
Gallo claims to have found the cause of AIDS...HIV.
Gallo's research proves anything but HIV as the cause of AIDS. Ooops.
Rather than admit grave error, Dr. Tara and her friends abandon Gallo and furiously attack those who question Gallo's involvement in laying claim to HIV as the cause of AIDS...and of course all the science thereafter resulting from that basic premise (established by Gallo).
Dr. Tara and company should try out for the Olympics in the event of mental gymnastics. They're attempts to somehow make Gallo a less than primary player in the AIDS paradigm are impressive!

Posted by: Dan | June 7, 2006 7:04 PM

,,, and company should try out for the Olympics in the event of mental gymnastics.
What is it they say Dan? If the shoe fits ... Gallo seems to be a sore spot for you and Hank, not Tara or any of the other supporters of the HIV causes AIDS hypothesis. The latter recognize that the science (which has been validated over and over) is more important than the scientist (who was found guilty of scientific misconduct).

Posted by: Dale | June 7, 2006 8:44 PM

Here's another irony.

"Dissidents" go on and on about the various tests for being completely unreliable. They do this by citing studies that show that false positives do occur and extrapolate this to "totally unreliable". A false dichotomy.

Now they insist that Gallo's first antibody tests had to be %100 reliable. The first tests were relatively crude. The specificity and sensitivity of these early tests were not high. Why expect the first tests to be perfect?

Like all other tests specificity and sensitivity have improved over time.

Why does Hank neglect later work such as.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 Detected in All Seropositive Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Individuals

Even if we assume (falsely) that Gallo's earliest tests were %100 accurate why were 36% of AIDS patients infected with a virus that is present in only very low levels in the general population? Coincidence?

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 8, 2006 5:51 AM

The first tests were relatively crude. The specificity and sensitivity of these early tests were not high. Why expect the first tests to be perfect?

So, what's the real story then, Chris? If those tests weren't so crude, might Gallo have scored 100%? Should we just assume that? Let me know, is this how science works?

Or do we go with your other line of reasoning?
...why were 36% of AIDS patients infected with a virus that is present in only very low levels in the general population? Coincidence?

Posted by: Dan | June 8, 2006 8:28 PM

How nice to find all of you gathered here again! I feel as happy as a dog who sees a fire hydrant. It's good to be among all the pharma phlunkies again. Sure, I know most of you claim not to get paid a penny by the pharma industry. And you know, I believe you. But... how about that scholarship that made it possible for you to study?

But let me greet some of you personally:

Tara:
How does this kind of thought-resistant religiosity differ in the slightest from the twenty year adherence of believers in HIV to their favored dogma in the face of similar overwhelming evidence against the belief?

You are baiting us, aint-cha? Well, happy to oblige. But please don't close the thread abruptly when things get hairy.

Dave S.
The idea seems to be that if you can discredit the "source" of the knowledge, then everything afterwards is irrelevant since it depends on those initial papers being absolutely correct.

A paper doesn't have to be 100% correct, but if the central theme is wrong, the paper is useless. The problem with Gallo's (and also Montagnier's) papers is that the conclusions were not even plausible. Let me explain this in a form even you can understand:
If Euclid had written a paper saying "The shortest distance between two points is a parabola", then any subsequent paper based on this assumption would have been suspect.
Neither Montagnier nor Gallo found any virus particles. So on what grounds do later investigators base their assumption that there is a virus?

Dale:
Of course they tend to gloss over the fact that Gallo's conclusions weren't discredited

The story about Santa Claus traveling in a flying sleigh pulled by reindeer has never been discredited either.
There was nothing to discredit, because Gallo (among others) never backed up his conclusions with evidence.
And now you expect us to prove a negative?

DDS
But, HAART is a toxic drug regimen. There are side effects. The side effect of not taking the drugs is death
What "side effects"? The toxicity is the main effect. Only, they don't call the effect of HAART "death". They call it a "grade 4 event". How nice of them.

tony
Why does the condition of AIDS patients dramatically improve when they start taking HAART tratment?

Because these people are sick with something. The HAART drugs are also toxic to bacteria. So they have some effect on whatever disease the patient really has. The problem comes with the long term: The patient kicks the bucket from liver failure. Well, at least he doesn't die from AIDS, because liver failure is not an AIDS-defining disease.

DDS
On what do you base your hypothesis that AIDS is simply a compendium of other diseases?

On the CDC, of course. (Jeez, these questions are getting dumber and dumber)

Dale
...indicates that HAART is better than nothing it would be unethical to refuse to treat HIV+ individuals with HAART if they request it.

I know people (personally) who find that "nothing" is better than HAART. But don't read that sentence wrong (LOL). They were on HAART, but quit, and are now taking nothing and feeling a lot healthier.
I agree that individuals who request HAART, should get it. But in this country we have no problem with euthanasia.

Viji
why not you volunteer to take in a dose of HIV as a experimental model, you'll serve well to clear up the questions about HIV causing AIDS or not.

Oh, there he goes again! Sooner or later somebody comes up with this ridiculous proposal. You are bluffing, mate. You have no idea what's in those preparations you have in the lab. Nobody does. So why should anybody agree to take a dose of that crap? The only thing we know for sure it's NOT is "HIV". And by the way: It has been done. By Dr. Robert Willner.

Viji
Here's a quote from that abstract you cited:
Chimpanzees infected with HIV-1 show viral replication resembling early infection in humans but do not show T-cell depletion or progression towards AIDS.

I have the perfect explanation: Today's clinical virologists are incompetent, and their viral replication methods in heavily stimulated co-cultures are not worth a damn. They would get the same results if they inoculated their cell cultures with juice squeezed from a teddy bear.
And of course chimpanzees do not show T-cell depletion or progress to AIDS. The poor animals wouldn't even know how to use poppers or inject heroin.

Chris Noble
I have cited this article several times already.

Yes, you did. And it's the S.O.S. I dissected this paper already in my previous post.

DDS
Let me just say that I have read Duesberg's AIDs work but none of it has been backed up by significant data.
First of all, Duesberg's funding was cut off abruptly, because he is branded as an infidel. He has advanced a hypothesis that is infinitely more plausible than the fairy tales about a retrovirus causing this whole package of diseases. And about retroviruses Duesberg knows a thing or two. He is the world's major expert on them. The crap that the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy is peddling to the mass media is so off the wall, virologically speaking, that any undergraduate student can see straight through it. But shucks... if Glaxo-Smith-Kline offers to pay for your graduate studies...

The Science of AIDs and HIV has moved forward and provided treatments that extend life and prevent infection.

Now that's a bald-faced lie, plain and simple. You money wasters have been at it for 25 years, and you can't even come up with one unequivocal isolation of the virus you have dreamed up, and a cure for the disease you have invented.
Yes, you have provided treatments, and all the patients are raving... R.I.P.

Dale
The latter recognize that the science (which has been validated over and over) is more important than the scientist (who was found guilty of scientific misconduct).

Eh... What science exactly, Dale? I've read a lot of papers on the subject, but I find precious little science in them. What Gallo claimed was highly improbable, and almost certainly wrong. He never backed it up with evidence. And all the other prophets after him just repeat the same noncense without any of them ever proving it. Really, we don't just indulge in Gallo-bashing. The ones who came later (Fauci, Ho, Wainberg, Tramont, and countless others, are at least as bad.

Viji
its a waste of time trying to explain science and testable facts to Hank and his lot of friends, clearly they do not understand the scientific approach, do not appreciate empirical esearch, and seemingly base all their "facts" on mere speculation, one or two disproved papers, or some dodgy website written by equally deluded individuals

Why don't you stop crying on Dale' shoulder, Viji. Show some spunk and come out with some real scientific facts. But all you're doing is running with the herd, because you're uncapable of doing anything else. So if you understand scientific methods so well, please come up with something more convincing than an attitude. I've been doing science when you were still in short pants, chasing wallabies. The people who are looking for HIV in AIDS patients are mostly the same who wasted many years and billions of dollars searching for viruses that cause cancer. Some people are just not cut out for science. They should learn a useful profession instead, such as carpentry or bartending.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 8, 2006 9:31 PM

Dale
Ah, the mocking. Much easier, albeit more intellectually sloppy, than actually critiquing a paper.

Are you talking to me, Dale? I took that paper apart, shred by shred. It sucks. Unfortunately, it's typical for what's being written about HIV/AIDS these days. I recently saw one written by 20 (!) authors. You would think that the contents would be earth-shattering. (Hahahahahahahaaaa!)
Yes, the mocking. That's the only thing that gets me through an experience like that. Otherwise I might become hostile, and we don't want that.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 8, 2006 9:51 PM

Ah, that's the way I know you again, Chris:

Not content with his own ignorance Wilhelm has the gall to insist that everbody else must be as clueless as himself. Brilliant!

Yes, they are clueless. They make up their mixtures, because everybody does it that way. I've known lots of them. Completely devoid of originality, but well-trained, like a circus elephant.

Wilhelm neglects to even attempt to explain why it is that HIV DNA is found in the cells of people that have antibodies to HIV but not in antibody-negative patients.

Why should I attempt to explain something that is simply not true? Sure, there may be something different in people who are seropositive (for what, by the way?). So if they find some piece of DNA that they can't find in seronegative people, does it follow automatically that it must be HIV-related DNA? A little far-fetched, I think.

So they have sequenced that DNA, and placed it in the gene bank. Fantastic! They sequence everything they can get their hands on. Because that's what they have learned in grad school. Like the butcher's apprentice who learns how to operate the sausage machine.

Hey! Wanna hear a real conspiracy theory? You know why the stores give you those S&H Green Stamps? After you lick them, put them in the boolet, and cash them in, they go to the FBI, so they have your DNA on file.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 8, 2006 10:13 PM

No, you simply demonstrated that you cannot even understand the paper. Not only that you are actually proud of it.

Eh... do you mean only the true believers can understand a paper like that? Would it help to put on a beanie with a propellor while reading it?

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 8, 2006 10:18 PM

I've noticed one difference between creationists and HIV deniars; the latter have yet to motorize the wheels on their goalposts.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | June 8, 2006 11:47 PM

" I've been doing science when you were still in short pants" by Wilhelm Godschalk

hahaha I seriously doubt that and I do agree on the bartender part, as I think you're the bartender trying to pass off like a scientist.

Simply, a person that touts to have so much experience as a scientist would never speak in such an boorish manner, more so belittling your peers

and you clearly have little idea what cell culture is at all

"15 ml of RPMI 1640 medium-20% fetal calf serum-5% interleukin-2-Polybrene,(5 lig/ml)-penicillin, (200 U/ml)-streptomycin (200 ,ug/ml) and cocultured with 5 x 10'phytohemagglutinin-stimulated PBMC from an HIV-1 antibody-negative blood donor."

witches brew you said, hmmm I'm curious, I've never heard of any science referrals to witches before, you aren't a scientist, are you?

look closely at these ingredients, its closely modelled after the very human equivalents you have in yourself, silly, apart from the antimicrobials of course, but you take antibiotics too, does that make you less natural?

Posted by: Viji | June 9, 2006 4:21 AM

I guess I should respond to Mr. Godschalk's responses to my statements.

"First of all, Duesberg's funding was cut off abruptly, because he is branded as an infidel."

Duesberg lost his funding because his science was bad...His hypothesis wasn't even that original (see Duesberg's own FAQ). It was proposed by several scientists early in the epidemic. The difference is that they realized that the hypothesis was wrong and moved on. Duesberg didn't.

"He has advanced a hypothesis that is infinitely more plausible than the fairy tales about a retrovirus causing this whole package of diseases."

Exactly how is his hypothesis infinitely more plausible? The HIV hypothesis is very simple. It destroys part of your immune system and therefore you get sick from other bugs and die. That is simple. According to Duesberg's own work retroviruses can cause cancer so why not an immunodeficeincy type disease.

"And about retroviruses Duesberg knows a thing or two. He is the world's major expert on them." The first part is true, although I would give him more credit and say he knows at least 10 or 12 things about retroviruses. Unfortunately, most of what he knows is from the 80s and there are thousands of things to know about retrovirsues. I think few experts consider Duesberg an expert in retrovirology anymore.

"The crap that the HIV/AIDS orthodoxy is peddling to the mass media is so off the wall, virologically speaking, that any undergraduate student can see straight through it. " Explain this to me exactly. I am not familiar with your version of virology. Perhaps it is from the 1980s?
It is very clear and simple. HIV destroys an important part your immune system. You get sick easier and die. For evidence check out the links I gave to Hank in the posts above.

"But shucks if Glaxo-Smith-Kline offers to pay for your graduate studies..." I have never received money from any drug company.

"Now that's a bald-faced lie, plain and simple. You money wasters have been at it for 25 years, and you can't even come up with one unequivocal isolation of the virus you have dreamed up, and a cure for the disease you have invented.
Yes, you have provided treatments, and all the patients are raving... R.I.P."

How did you know that I shave (i.e., Bald Face)? In any case, your statement is clearly wrong. The virus has been unequivocally isolated and grown in culture hundreds of times. We do not have a cure but we do have very effective treatments. Where ever HAART treatment has been started the death rate of AIDs declines. That is a simple fact. (For evidence check out the links I gave to Hank in the posts above.) You might not want to believe it but it is true nonetheless.

You wouldn't happen to be this person?
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49180

D

Posted by: DDS | June 9, 2006 8:55 AM

I find all of this offensive. I find it offensive that a little bitch like blondie up there thinks she knows anything about people who have HIV, becuse she studies epiedemiology! Have you ever worked in a hospice? Have you ever gotten your hadns dirty changing a diaper? I doubt it very much, you're so smarmy, and you give the denilists so much to work with. You are a disgrace. This blog should be shut down.

I can't read all of wilhelm's writing so maybe I just dont get it, but if you think that HIV doesn't cause AIDS then you haven't watched thirty people drop like flies around you in three years. But if Tara and Chris Noble think that the drugs are easy!!! Stupid!!!!!! Don't fucking kid yorselves, morons. If you think so, youve never taken them, or watched friends try to swallow the cocktail day to day. Wrong!

I aske dabout the tests, because Tara you wrote that everybody in teh beginning had low viral loads, but that is so stupid. They didn't even have VIRAL LOAD THEN TARA! You are so dumb. You give these assholes so much room to fire at you. They didn't have fucking viral load TARA! Maybe some of them were not infected and some were, why can't you be more honest?

This is the most offensive blog I have ever read about AIDS and I think yuou should all be ashamed of yourselves, especially the doctors here who should fucking know better.

I can't even begin to tell you how embarassing this is to watch. This is not how to solve the problem. AIDS is real TARA, its not a gam,e and if you don't think that Gall and his henchmen have profiteered from this, you are a dumb bitch. We did die-ins at Glaxo and at city hall (inphiladephia) in 92 because AZT was killing us. What the fuck do you know about it? The cocktail is better, but what you should be really doing is figuring out how to help people who are infected and figouring what it is in our genes that keeps some of us (ME!) from getting sick for 20 years but kills other people in 3 years.

Thats the question, you stupid bitch. not fucking Robert Gallo.

Posted by: simon s. | June 9, 2006 3:11 PM

So Hank, how exactly are you working on your hypothesis?

D

Posted by: DDS | June 9, 2006 4:15 PM

So Hank, how exactly are you working on your hypothesis?

A few years -- hard to dig thru the original papers from Gallo and Montagnier. The Journal of Irreprodicible Results.

As an aside, Dr. Bialy is mixing it up with Dr. Moore.

HB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 9, 2006 7:35 PM

I see that the Willner link did not come through. here is another try:

Willner

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 9, 2006 9:49 PM

PS I'm sorry if you think I'm so rude. I tried to be polite at first and I asked a question as politely as I could that nobody answered, and then it was just ignored. When you don't know stuff , you lie, that's the way its always been with this and it is insane and it makes me fucking insane and angry. Tara you lie when you don't know stuff like with that answer about v.l. You don't know and you dont know why some of those men had HIV and some didn't, you dont know and you just make up an answer like Viral load!!!!!! YOU DIDN"T KNOW and you just make stuff up, instead of being honest, which we all would REALLY APPREICIATE INSTEAD because WE ARE TIRED OF THE LIES. IF you dont know something then tell the truth, just tell the fucking truth and give us a chance to know ahead of time what we dont know, because most people WOULD NOT HAVE TAKEN AZT IF YOU HAD TOLD THE TRUTH and we could have tried SOMETHING ELSE THAT WORKDED BETTER at least we could have SAVEd TEN Years!!!!!!!! until the P.I.s came, and maybe they would have come FASTER if you people would have been MORE HONEST. You are not honest and I'm sorry if you think I'm rude but it's been a long time and a lot of years. I'm sorry if you think Im rude here but I have to be honest because after awhile you just cant take the BULLSHIT anymore. I'm sorry I called you a name Tara, but you have to be more honest all of you do AND GIVE US A BETTER CHANCE TO FIGURE THIS OUT

Posted by: simon s | June 10, 2006 2:50 AM

To Wilhelm Godschalk,

I do not understand your rationale that a paper or a study that is conducted/collaborated between a panel of experts from their respective fields of expertise, is a sign of inferiority or weakness. Care to enlighten me on this

And to think that the complexity today's scientific questions and pursuits are as simple as screw in a lightbulb, you're sadly mistaken.

Perhaps during your time, it was all quick and dirty, but the scope of studies undertaken almost everywhere nowadays are multifactorial. For example, my current study of resistance in MDR bacteria already take me to various technical expertise, from simple microbiology, developing HPLC methods, MALDI-TOF, AFM to classic molecular biology methods like mutagenesis, all the way up to animal PKs PDs and clinical phases of developing optimal dosage regimens, yet I can/and will never profess to be an expert in all of these fields of study. I take on talented individuals who are experts in these fields and work in collaboration with them, thus having their names on publications as an appreciation of their contributions. May I ask you what is so inferior about that?

In fact, such inter-discipline mingling and cooperation facilitates the exchange or ideas and further innovations, which serve well to discourage unilateral preoccupation with certain theories and techniques or static/stubborn interpretation of results.

In this day and age, the information age, we can never aspire to be a jack of all trades, thats just silly, as you'll just spend too much time learning the many techniques available and the new ones being introduced constantly, in the end being an expert of none, and contributing little to the advancement of knowledge.

As for Hank Barnes, I am eagerly waiting for the publication of your study and critical review of the HIV research, your "working hypothesis" if you may, to hear what you have to say about this rather than shorts comments than seem to look like little more than rantings and lacklustre conspiracy allegations (probably due to the lack of content, a result of keeping comments concise). If you're so disastified with our current understanding of HIV-AIDS, stop something, and do something to contribute to knowledge, rather than ranting and complaining. At least we are spending all our effort 24/7 doing the research required to understand HIV-AIDS (even if you think our research is misdirected, at least we are trying to solve the problem, while you're not even lifting a finger)

Posted by: Viji | June 10, 2006 4:51 AM

I am new here and new to this discussion. What I see here so far is two sides equally unimpressed with each other's arguments and equally unwilling to listen. I cannot make heads or tails of the argument based on what I've read so far, so am keeping an open mind. I have no problem believing that mistakes are made in institutions; on the other hand, I'm not a conspiracy theorist so I'll continue to read until something convinces me overwhelmingly of one side's veracity. If you wouldn't mind, however, I would like to pose a question that may help me understand the issue from a different perspective: Are you more Left-leaning (liberal) or Right-leaning (conservative)? (I am Liberal, though open-minded to ideas from both sides)

Posted by: Frodo | June 10, 2006 9:38 AM

P.S. to Simon,

did you notice that one of the categories Dr. Tara chose to place this post under is HUMOR?

Posted by: Dan | June 10, 2006 10:31 AM

Frodo, I am an old Democrat fighting for the party. (and damn, I hope that's not your real name). I am not a scientist, but I do read and I do use the thing on top of my neck, eyes, ears, brain and all, you AIDS mechanics will have to forgive me for that.

Dale you wrote

Wilhelm, no matter what you want to think those 'sequences' represent, people get them through exposure to people or the blood products of people who already have them, and the people who get them are far more likely to get sick than the people who don't get them. Those 'sequences' behave in every way like an infectious pathogen.

Now what are you thinking about? A strand of something is not infectious. I've been bumping up against AIDS and every other kind of patient for all my life and I've never gotten an infectious strand of DNA lodged in me. I have followed this argument (where it was cogent) and Wilhelm has given good answers to this about strands and the PCR tests, and you just ride roughshod over them without pausing to even look down. You have got to unmake your mind for one moment and look at it without the smirk and judgement.

viji and Noble
It is very clear and simple. HIV destroys an important part your immune system. You get sick easier and die.

Well say it again, Swami. I never had any idea why doctors would say this. When Simon says that thirty fellows dropped dead in 3 years, I'll say yes that happened, but the men I knew who passed were almost to the man the poppers slaves and sex slaves, and that meant that they were always pumping something in themselves that did not belong there, whether it be drugs by the nose and mouthful, or benzene in the colon and rectum (I have long since passed on that and found other materials for that purpose, though it's not usually me but my partner, who is fine as well).

But to say this, I can only think of what they always say on tv shows about medicine, that line they got from that old Greek, First Do No Harm. And it seems to me an abrogation of duty to inflict the death sentence before the patient has a chance to get better. Now I have seen people die and the doctors like to say AIDS when its a gay man, but I also watched those patients demoralized and beaten down by the very doctors they went to for salvation and I have seen their veins run dry on bactrim and pentamadine, and on radiation, which is what they used to do for those poor souls who went in with the sarcoma. I have not looked for the medical establishment to fix one of my ills and ailments for the last 30 years, and I'm all the better for it. I pity the boys who didn't learn this lesson early or didn't grow up having to fend for themselves and learn the healing arts of the body and of herbs and of good old common sense.

Frodo, I don't know if that will help you, and I don't think it will help Simon, I've seen his type and it is heartbreaking. I hope God can ease his burden and lighten his soul.

Viji you wrote
Simply, a person that touts to have so much experience as a scientist would never speak in such an boorish manner, more so belittling your peers

That is pure horseshit. This whole blog line is based on bashing your peers who are trying to inject some sensible thought into this death cult of yours. Tara posts blog after blog bashing and provoking her peers, who she calls denialists, because they have a separate hypothesis. Try opening your mind and honoring honoring your profession.

Wilhelm, you fight that good fight for the rest of us. I stay away, but I just wanted to make it plain once, because most of the time I stay out of this madness. We all tried in the begining to make some sense and to work with the doctors, but then the AIDS mafia (that's what I call it and that's what it is) and Larry the K and all those boys took it over and layed down right in front of those bulldozers and let it run right over them. I'd never seen such a thing in my life. We were finally a little bit freer in a sense, and then it was all over. You doctors who really believe you are fighting for my "gay rights" or my "human rights" by fighting this AIDS war can rest assured that I would prefer you figured out how to keep the hormones out of my food, the mercury out of my tuna and salmon, or how to get us out of oil, and not worry about making sure that we all get our heads full of this nonsense.

Posted by: Thom | June 10, 2006 2:41 PM

Hank,
I would post a link to dozens of papers where HIV has been isolated. I would even post links to EM pictures of the virus. But, it would do no good. Every time I have posted a paper in support of what I say you ignore it and start another rant. Just look over the papers I have linked to in the first few posts of this thread. You are wrong. HIV causes AIDs. Your working hypothesis is wrong. HAART saves lives. The data is unequivocal.

As for the angry mob that attacks those you are actually helping. I feel pity for your pain. Whether you want me to or not I still do. No matter what vile words and screaming anger you post, I'll just feel more pity. I hope you spend as much time screaming at your uninfected friends to wear condoms and stop this epidemic in its tracks.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 10, 2006 4:00 PM

Hank,
The last paragraph of my post was for Simon et al not you. Sorry, I should have been more explicit.

I'll post some links to pics and papers to support the HIV has been isolated assertion, although I am sure you can find them yourself. But, if I do you have to promise to look them over and give a reasonable critique not just a "these are a bunch of crap papers" comment. Deal?

I'll have to post them later tonight or tomorrow. I am otherwise occupied for the next several hours.

D

Posted by: DDS | June 10, 2006 4:26 PM

Simon:
aske dabout the tests, because Tara you wrote that everybody in teh beginning had low viral loads, but that is so stupid. They didn't even have VIRAL LOAD THEN TARA! You are so dumb. You give these assholes so much room to fire at you. They didn't have fucking viral load TARA! Maybe some of them were not infected and some were, why can't you be more honest?

Tara:
You mean they didn't have the tests to measure "viral load" at that point? I certainly agree--that's why viral *isolation* was being discussed, which is more difficult to detect.

Hank:
His data didn't support his conclusions: He only found the virus in about 36% of AIDS patients. So, what accounted for the other 64%?

Tara:
A number of reasons. Low viral load at the time. Poorly preserved samples. etc. etc. etc. That's why the antibody test was used--it was a more reliable indicator of infection.

It looks like Dr. Tara has done what Simon is accusing her of, lying...or at least stretching the truth to the breaking point.
Hank made a reasonable point about Gallo, for which Dr. Tara makes excuses for her esteemed colleague. I especially like the excuses called etc., etc. etc.
So, Dr. Tara, do other scientists make excuses for Gallo finding HIV in only 36% of his patients as well? Like I asked Chris (who seems to have vanished), is this how science works? When the evidence is less than convincing, we make excuses? Let me know.

Posted by: Dan | June 10, 2006 7:38 PM

... do other scientists make excuses for Gallo finding HIV in only 36% of his patients as well? Like I asked Chris (who seems to have vanished), is this how science works? When the evidence is less than convincing, we make excuses?

You call them 'excuses', many people consider them reasonable explanations. They are considered reasonable because compared with isolating other pathogens there's nothing either suspicious or unusual about Gallo's findings. Initial tests for the presence of pathogens are often far less sensitive than later tests. And as anyone with any experience with detecting things in human blood can tell you, sample quality is often a problem.

Posted by: Dale | June 11, 2006 12:55 PM

Here's one of the problems I'm having with this 36% issue...maybe Chris can clarify these statments of his on the issue that are at odds with each other.

First, he says:
The first tests were relatively crude. The specificity and sensitivity of these early tests were not high. Why expect the first tests to be perfect?

Simple enough. He's saying the tests are crude and imperfect.

Then, he says:
...why were 36% of AIDS patients infected with a virus that is present in only very low levels in the general population? Coincidence?

This would imply that the tests AREN'T crude and imperfect.

Which is it, Chris? Help us out here.

And after that, I'd like to hear more about this scientific standard where a pathogen need only be found in 36% of people with the disease to be proclaimed as the cause of this disease. That sounds very interesting.

Posted by: Dan | June 11, 2006 2:27 PM

McKiernan:

The only hard facts that we really have are the gay men who started getting sick and dying, even during the seventies. Only in 1981, Michael Gottlieb gathered up 5 of those cases, and found a common factor: Low T4 lymphocytes. So these 5 men became the first epidemiological cluster. But as there had already been many others dying in the years before that, the choice was somewhat arbitrary and opportunistic.
Nobody paid much attention at the time; certainly not the government. Gays were not the Reagan administration's favorite citizens.
Of course, the gay community in the big cities was keenly aware of the problem, especially those who had lost friends and lovers. But cries for help fell upon deaf ears. Nobody outside the gay world had any interest in solving the problem. There was no money in it. It's a callous world.
At that time, Gallo was not in the picture yet. He was still searching frantically for viruses that cause leukemia.
There were several hypotheses as to what could cause these deaths. The idea that it might be a virus was not even the most popular one. Retroviruses have been known since 1911, and they are always benign.
But in 1984 it all changed. I don't think it was Gallo who set it all up. Rather, it was the government that started to realize that there was money to be made and power to be gained if people could be made to believe that this was an epidemic that could hit anybody, not just a bunch of gays in S.F. Like many others, Gallo was just about at the end of his rope with his cancer virus research. He was a crook, but also an opportunist, and they needed him. So he switched effortlessly from cancer viruses to an AIDS virus.
Peter Duesberg was a staunch opponent of the AIDS-virus theory from the start. He knew all there is to know about retroviruses, and he didn't buy the paradigm. But the famous press conference of April 23rd, 1984 had been well prepared. The press had been primed, and came out in force. With all the press coverage that followed, alternate theories didn't stand a chance anymore.
But Duesberg stood his ground. As he was an authority in the retrovirus field, they tried to discredit him. A special presidential committte was set up especially for this purpose. You can read a report of the hearing where Duesberg was giving his testimony:

Katie Leishman

Duesberg stood his ground, and you know what happened to him. David Rasnick, the expert on protease inhibitors, has been with Duesberg almost from the start.

I think that the packed press conference was instrumental in the repression of all other ideas except the virus hypothesis. A free press doesn't exist; that has been convincingly demonstrated. Most journalists are spineless cowards who just write what the orthodoxy wants them to write.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 11, 2006 9:41 PM

Hey Frodo,

Check out this thread today by Dean Esmay, if you wanna get a feel for the issue. It gets wild!

Hank Barnes

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 12, 2006 12:33 PM

Tara, Thank you, I will definitely read the link that you posted!

Hank, I will also read "Dean's World," which is what appears when I click the link. That site looks more Right-wing to me, which won't stop me from reading it, I promise, but it goes back to my question. I tend to be interested in most issues, but especially issues of science debate, from a Left-Right perspective.

I have been told that this can be a false dichotomy, and so I am careful to look for details. But I would still like to know, Tara seems more popular Left in some of her posts, but it is not possible to know just from that. Hank, how would you describe yourself? Dan, how would you describe yourself in a political sense?

I promise that I will not make my assesment of the science based on these answers, I am more interested in knowing about which groups are active in the sciences and on which issues.

For example, when you look at the stem-cell issue, you find that the research is not as promising as is sometimes claimed by the Left, though not so useless as some groups on the Right counter-claim. Both groups have made reasonable claims about the research however. The Left is often reported as being more truthful in media, but the Right often seems to have more control of the research (ie in the limiting of research).

I am now wondering if the same is true about AIDS? That is, are many issues about AIDS reported from the Left agenda, but the research is limited by the Right? Or is it the reverse?

Tara, I will read your links but it will take me a long time to absorb it all, so don't expect much commenting from me on the technical aspects! Hank, I will also read your links, but again, I'm primarily interested in the social agendas that promote research and limit research. Thank you for your responses in advance!

Posted by: Frodo | June 12, 2006 1:36 PM

Frodo,

I am now wondering if the same is true about AIDS? That is, are many issues about AIDS reported from the Left agenda, but the research is limited by the Right? Or is it the reverse?

It's a strange political amalgation:

The Pro-AIDS side is part right-wing (Pharmaceutical $$) and part left-wing (gay activism)

The Dissident side is mostly left-wing, but a few libertarians, contrarians, non-conformists.

Me, I'm slightly left of center -- but I don't know much about politics. Dean Esmay is a little more right wing. Pro gay marriage, pro-Iraq war. It's hard to pigeon hole him.

All the money and power is on the AIDS side, though.

HankB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 12, 2006 1:42 PM

Hank continues to try and use the Padian paper as some kind of evidence for his views, when I showed it doesn't support his claims at all.

YOU showed?! Well, Dr. Tara is a little short in the humility department. How about what Padian showed? Hank's right for continuing to point out this study.

I also love the characterization of scientists as folks who don't think for themselves

I find it interesting that you should say this.

Who among us non-scientists have accused you of not thinking for yourself?

Posted by: Dan | June 12, 2006 4:19 PM

Dale,

With all due respect, I've given you a large free pass on this thread, even though you've uttered several falsehoods. But, really, enough is enough. You write:

That's what happens when you try to pin your analysis of a scientific hypothesis on a single piece of cherry picked data - you end up getting the wrong end of the stick

1. Padian is not a "single piece of cherry picked data." Padian is and remains the largest epidemiological study of heterosexual transmission of HIV in the United States. As you know, it found "NO SEROCONVERSIONS."

2. Moreover, Padian is not the ONLY support for the hypothesis that HIV is not a pathogenic virus. There's hundreds of other papers. Padian, however, is a clear expression on this one relevant issue.

You wrote earlier:

Hank, Duesberg is not an appropriate citation for evidence of anything pertaining to HIV or AIDS as Duesberg has published no clinical or laboratory studies that contain original data.

What a joke.

1. He's a member of the National Academy of Science. Are you?

2. He's published about AIDS in Science, Cancer Research, Proceedings of National Academy of Science, and 200 other scientific journals. Where are your publications in these journals?

I will gladly and proudly cite Duesberg, you can cite the fradulent Bob "Scientific Misconduct" Gallo all you want.

Hank B

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 12, 2006 4:34 PM

Queen of Straw,

These "fatal flaws," as you call them, apply not only to HIV research, but to every type of infectious disease. Luckily, most people realize how absurd it would be to throw the whole germ theory of disease out the window, but somehow HIV is the exception.

You can refute the HIV theory, without refuting the entire germ theory, duh.

Some viruses do kill -- see small pox, see polio, see flu.

Hank Barnes

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 12, 2006 5:04 PM

Hank,

Padian IS a single paper. From which you selectively cite a single piece of data, the prospective study. You persist in ignoring the retrospective study that supports the heterosexual transmission of HIV. You also ignore all the other data including cohort studies that I've pointed out to you that demonstrate heterosexual transmission of HIV.

So I stand by my statement.

What I said about Dr. Duesberg was not meant to slight the man or his scientific accomplishments. He has plenty. But none of them involve original research on HIV or AIDS. What his papers on these subjects are, are opinion pieces; his interpretations of other investigators' published data.

Posted by: Dale | June 12, 2006 5:26 PM

Hi Hank, they're never going to listen to you, you might as well give up. Who cares, nobody believes them anyway, all they do is shoot the messenger all the time. Nobody believes this shouting anymore about sex killing everybody. Nobody gives a you know what about the A word because it only happens once your old and on the drugs, so who cares? I know who Christne Maggiore is. We read her book in critical thinking class. Aids is over.

Posted by: cary stanger | June 12, 2006 8:01 PM

So why is AIDS in America still restricted to the original high-risk groups, gay men and drug users?
Tara, help! You're an epidemiologist. Can you explain this fact with your "stone in the water causing ripples" theory?

Brilliant, Wilhelm.

I look forward to that explanation as well. I have a feeling it's going to be one of the more tortured explanations we've heard in recent memory.

Posted by: Dan | June 12, 2006 10:03 PM

This is why no one cares, because you don't read. Youre just talking about estimates in AFrica but you already know that testing isnt accurate and has over 60 false positives, and you also know that the estimates are based on samples taken from pregnant women in poor countries and then spread to the rest of the people in the country. Everybody Already Knows That Tara, that's why nobody cares and nobody believes it. Youre tired.

Thanks Wilhelm, it was a math class in logic principles and arguments and the teacher told us we could do a project and recommended me the book because I'm out and loud about it.

Posted by: cary stranger | June 12, 2006 11:49 PM

Wilhelm: So why is AIDS in America still restricted to the original high-risk groups, gay men and drug users? Tara, help! You're an epidemiologist. Can you explain this fact with your "stone in the water causing ripples" theory?

Tara: First, of course, AIDS isn't "restricted" to these groups. Heterosexually-transmitted HIV is well documented, though certainly less common than homosexual spread. And is it really that surprising to you that homosexual people generally have sex with other homosexuals, and heterosexuals with other heterosexuals, and that diseases that appear in one group may not be equally distributed in another? Seems rather common-sensical to me.

I think it's time for us to introduce you to a new concept, Tara. It's called bisexuality. You may want to work this one into your equations.

Posted by: Dan | June 12, 2006 11:54 PM

McK was commenting the other day on another blog :

The Padian study demonstrated non-seroconversion in 175 discordant heterosexual, monogamous couples. The study started out with infected bi-sexual men and their female partners. They couldn't find enough so they "expanded recruitment criteria" regardless of risk group or gender. Then, the Padian papers are published and lo and behold, of the 884 people (442 pairs) only 350 (175 pairs) were left to put on the results page 545. The result represents 39.5 % of the study group. And the study found: "Because of deaths as well as the break-up of couples, attrition was severe.."

Posted by: McKiernan | June 13, 2006 12:44 AM

Frodo,

It's heartening to know of your interest in this topic. But, really, it has little, or nothing, to do with "Left" or "Right". Really.

Posted by: Darin Brown | June 13, 2006 3:50 AM

Is HIV "restricted" to gay men and drug users? That will come as a big surprise to the CDC who keep and publish the statistics on such things! According to the latest HIV surveillance report available online, heterosexual transmitted cases represent over half of all new cases among female Americans over the past few years and about 20% of new cases among black male Americans.

Posted by: Dale | June 13, 2006 8:55 AM

whoops! error!!

that should have been "do the dissenters think that the mainstream is totally incorrect" from the heading "two questions".

I won't have time to look back for a couple of days at which point I will collect the answers I receive (thanks to all who participate). I'm a little brain-drained so please forgive the errors. I appreciate your help, thanks Tara and Hank, and Darin for those links which I will definetely read (but next week!)

peace,
Neil

Posted by: Frodo | June 13, 2006 9:18 AM

Typical straw girl:

I'll remind lurkers here that not only does Wilhelm deny that HIV causes AIDS, he aruges that HIV doesn't even exist--something even Duesberg acknowledges (but he argues that it's merely a non-pathogenic "passenger" virus). Even the anti-HIV groups can't get their stories straight.

Why not address the claims that Wilhelm makes? Also, since you regularly trash Duesberg (200 peer reviewed papers to your 3), you are not permitted to use him as a foil to DODGE Wilhelm.

Both Wilhelm and Duesberg have demonstrated the lack of evidence that HIV causes of AIDS. They have differing reasons for so concluding.

But, your buddies, Montagnier (co-factor) and Gallo (sole cause) have differing explanations as to causation as well.

Hank B

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 13, 2006 11:59 AM

Let me help you out here, Tara. A neutral term you could use is "questioners", or "HIV questioners". Quite neutral, and much closer to the truth than the blunt-instrument, overly-simplistic and emotionally-loaded "denialist".

If you're sincere about using a neutral term, then I look forward to you replacing "denialist" with "questioner". Thanks, Tara.

Posted by: Dan | June 13, 2006 1:18 PM

"You can see for yourself that even for these rapid tests alone, the sensitivity and specificity is very high (Table 1). Coupled with a confirmatory Western, the chances of a false-positive or negative result are very, very low."

Huh, Tara. You know, a lurker might be forgiven for coming to the conclusion that you the WB as a "gold standard".

"It's only the fringe element of the anti-HIV groups that makes the claim that HIV's never been isolated."

Delighted to see you implicitly acknowledge that we're significant enough to have a "fringe"!!

Posted by: Darin Brown | June 13, 2006 6:48 PM

Darin Brown,

That entry you have for Professor Serge Lang (Yale) has some incredible documentation. Well done.

I had the pleasure of meeting him once for dinner. Great man, and a sad loss.

Hank Barnes

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 13, 2006 7:19 PM

Tara:
Why do you think, Neil, that these people publish on the internet instead of in scientific journals?

I can answer that question for you, Neil. The scientific journals, as well as the daily press are part of the corrupt scheme. Even Peter Duesberg cannot get his papers published anymore. Fortunately, he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, so he can always publish in the Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
The rest of us dissident scientists don't have this outlet. Besides, we are still in the stage of questioning the paradigms of the orthodoxy (and they are weird!). Even if it were possible to do our own research on HIV/AIDS (it isn't; no money), I for one would be too ashamed to show my face on the streets if I had to confess working on "HIV". And there are plenty others who think the same way. Why waste your profesional life on something that doesn't exist?
And please don't let anybody get away with the lie that Duesberg claims to have isolated HIV. In his paper in Continuum Magazine he mentions "molecular cloning" (!) I suspect that he was joking, because this is exactly the kind of crap the orthodoxy wants to sell us. "Molecular cloning" has to do with transcription of DNA. Now would that qualify as isolation of an RNA-containing virus? Who could take that seriously? So we publish on the internet; that way we can reach people. Meanwhile, the once distinguished journal "Science" has sunk to the level of the "National Enquirer".

Frodo
There seems to be a power issue in this statement in that one side could argue that they do not need permission to discuss an issue from the institutions that are in the habit of managing the issue.
Well, of course there is a power issue. Have you read John Moore's answer to Harvey Bialy's invitation to a debate? I haven't seen anything that arrogant since Hermann Goering.
John Moore is a fraud and a bully (and you can tell him I said so). One would think that nobody can claim to be a scientist without his permission. Every time I read about an idiot like that (Mark Wainberg is another one), I'm looking more forward to Hatchet Day.

Oh, and eh, Neil... watch this spiel by Tara:

"...and while they hate it when I compare them to creationists,..."

That's a typical strawman argument. HIV/AIDS dissidents have absolutely nothing to do with creationists. The issues are totally unrelated. I don't even know any dissident who is also a creationist. But when you snuffle around on discussion fora and blogs, you'll find this tactic very often. It's not just Tara who does this; it's very common in fairytale-virus land.
Now if I were to compare the HIV-apologists with the nazis, I would be much closer to the truth. But I'm not going to do that, of course ;-)

Tara:
I didn't say Scheff denied the existence of H5N1.

Well, I do (deny the existence of H5N1, I mean).

It's only the fringe element of the anti-HIV groups that makes the claim that HIV's never been isolated. See micrographs of the virus yourself here.

[groann!!] Did everybody take a good look at what Tara pointed to in the Big Virus Picture Book? cartoons, for catsake! In living color! And that's supposed to convince us? Just one paper on isolation please, Tara. Complete with a "Materials and Methods" section.
And no hanky panky with PCR, stimulation with PHA, and co-cultures.
Once more for the lurkers: HIV has never been isolated, so its existence is at least doubtful.

Dale
Given that John Moore is an author on more than two dozen papers containing HIV/AIDS research while Harvey Bialy has only authored opinion pieces on the subject, I can see why Moore might feel it would be a waste of his time to discuss the science with Bialy.

Well, I've already given my evaluation of John Moore above. He is a total fraud. Why should a scientist like Bialy waste his time writing papers on a subject that is completely science fiction? (supposing he would get them published at all). I really wonder how the scientific community will react, once they realize 25 years of published work can be thrown away, because it has no bearing on the real world.

Oh, and before I forget, Tara...
The problem with the "HIV tests" is not just that they're not reproducible or inaccurate: they are completely based upon wrong thinking. Antibodies don't always signal an active infection. They signal a former infection that has been beaten back. It's like a sign "Kilroy was here".
The antibodies that are found in the Western Blot react with proteins from a kit (with a package insert that says the kit should not be used for this purpose) that are assumed to come from HIV. But as nobody has ever even seen an HIV particle, we have to take Gallo's word for it (because he's the patent holder and makes money off these kits.
So we shouldn't just talk about sensitivity or specificity (or the lack thereof) but about applicability. The whole concept sucks.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 13, 2006 9:33 PM

You know why Wilhelm doesn't believe in AIDS?

He never saw Dale's behind.

Posted by: funkyfrank | June 13, 2006 9:37 PM

For those people calling for John Moore or others to debate Harvey Bialy.

Who is going to judge the outcome of such a debate? Scientists that have experience and have worked with HIV or people like Hank Barnes who are proud of their own ignorance?

If the "dissidents" judge at the end that Harvey Bialy won the debate and at the same time everybody else thinks that John Moore won the debate what would have been achieved?

The way that any such "debate" proposed by "dissidents" is formulated is such that everybody else has to prove to the "dissidents" that HIV exists and causes AIDS. This is fundamentally assymetric. It allows the "dissidents" to just repeat "that's not proof" when any evidence is presented. The "dissidents" want to set themselves up as the ultimate arbiters of science. This is not the way that science works. If it was then we would still be sitting in a cold dark cave while the "fire dissident" was holding up progress.

Science is about competing ideas. Theories are overthrown if somebody can successfully argue that an alternative hypothesis better explains all available data. "AIDS dissidents" on the other hand focus on negative science - on denying. This is similar to the various varieties of creationists/IDers that focus on denying the evidence for evolution.

A few "AIDS dissidents" have put forward alternative theories for the causation of AIDS. They are mutually exclusive and rely on a selective analysis of the available data. They each claim that the available evidence supports their own theory. They can't all be right. However, instead of debating each other they form strategic alliances to fight the common "enemy". In South Africa David Rasnick who apparently believes that HIV exists but does not cause AIDS is working for Matthias Rath who believes that HIV exists and causes AIDS but that his vitamins are better at suppressing HIV than ARVs while Rath's spokeperson Anthony Brink denies the whole "germ theory of disease". This is exactly the same as YECs, OECs and IDers joining together to fight against evilution.

In calling for a public debate the AIDS "dissidents" imply that they are capable of a rational debate. For 20 years the various flavours of AIDS "dissidence" have put forward mutually exclusive theories about the causation of AIDS. In that time they have not been able to convince each other that their ideas are better. If they were capable of rational debate and their hypotheses were based on an honest and complete interpretation of the available evidence then they should have come to a consensus by now. They haven't.

If "AIDS dissidents" are serious and honest about debating then they can debate each other. Why don't they? There is no scientific reason. There are political reasons. Their strategic alliance is purely political

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 13, 2006 9:51 PM

Just a note, Hank Barnes working hypothesis and his quote referencing of an an editorial in 1981 is misleading

HANK BARNES WROTE
"1. Initially, the scientific establishment had the right answer on AIDS. Here's an editorial in 1981 in New England Journal of Medicine:

Perhaps one or more of these recreational drugs is an immunosuppresive agent. The leading candidates are the nitrites, which are now commonly inhaled to intensify orgasm. Users of amyl nitrates are more likely than non-users to have had hundreds of sexual partners and to contract venereal disease.

Let us postulate that the combined effects of persistent viral infection plus an adjuvant drug cause immunosuppression in some genetically predisposed men.
(Durack, NEJM vol 305, 1465-66 (1981)."

That was an early hypothesis (they postulate) when there is little or no available data or information. They certainly got the first part right "persistent viral infection" since its been found to be reproducibly true. While the part where they postulate that adjuvant drug may contribute to immunosuppression may be off the mark, since there are many available observations that poor communities across Africa and Asia afflicted with the HIV virus, with no access to the "recreational drugs" or HAART, still progress to AIDS, by that I mean depletion of T-cells and subsequent immunodeficiency.

Hank, you've always try to sidestep this important observation by blaming this to be caused by underlying disease, tropical afflictions, and malnutrition. Its dishonest to say so. As a matter of fact many of these diseases you've put your blame on, i.e. like malaria or even malnutrition, does not cause the drastic T-cell depletion and imumunodeficiency reminiscent of AIDS.

Although I concede that HAART is one of the most toxic regimens available to combat HIV infection, but it is also the only effective measure to delay or halt the progression towards AIDS for some individuals. HAART can reduce HIV load to very low levels, , and every ID physician knows that once you remove HAART, the HIV virus relapse to pre-HAART levels, and progression to AIDS is imminent. So your claims that HAART somehow causes AIDS is plain wrong.

HAART is linked to significant morbidity like liver failure, and it is a true risk that some individuals who are not at the best of health can succumb to the treatment, but it is also rightly observed that HAART helped prolonged the lives of other individuals, persons who would otherwise progress to AIDS and expire. Its the choice of people afflicted with HIV-AIDS to accept HAART knowing the risk to be able to buy some time, and for some, suffering from the serious side affects, or not take HAART and taking a chance on the time they take to progress to AIDS.

This is analogous to the treatment of cancer decades ago, when toxic chemotherapy and harsh radiotherapy are used. And even with the availibility of less harsh treatment option we have today, some equally toxic regimens are still retained to kill the most recalcitrant cancer cells. There is also no certainty a cancer patient can avoid a relapse, but it is choice to make whether to take the treament or not, undersatnding the risks. So I hope that we will spend less time and energy bickering while contributing little to the advancement of treatment and spend more time trying to tackle the problem.

Posted by: Viji | June 13, 2006 11:24 PM

Wilhelm Godschalk, I'll add some comments on parts of your | June 13, 2006 09:33 PM entry, In am not an expert or familair with John Moore or Harvey Bialy, I'm only going to stick to your comments about detection of HIV and your belief that HIV is a fiction of imagination

You described yourself in previous posts as bioscience researcher and so you also profess to be a person familiar with the operation of many biological, molecular, instrumental techniques under the sun ,

thus you love to trumpet the "assertion" of being an expert in the current research developments to critique the basic laboratory techniques used in diverse fields ranging from stem cell research, microbiology to HIV research.

Alas, when I read your comments, you present doubts to such claims, as you seem to have a penchant of bemoaning even the most basic of bioscience techniques. For example, the use of PHA stimulated-PBMCs, co-cultures, or PCR when bioscience scientist know that these are the tried and tested protocols used in all related research fields, such as stem cell culture or basic molecular biology, HIV research not being the exception. You either have only slight experience in cell culture or worse you are just critiqing research on a pretense of being an expert.

Since PBMCs are not the only cell types capable of allowing HIV replication, I'm going to give you an example of that does not utilise PHA-PMBCs, co-cultures, or penicillin, ingredients that you seems to think are "witches brew"

For my work previously, I had cultured HIV from sero-positive blood in monocytes and macrophages isolated from sero-negative blood donors. These primary human macrophages cultivated in RPMI medium, with no added penicillin, antibiotics, PHA, or co-cultures you seem to be so particular about,

The RPMI is only supplemented with human serum - natural in your case.

The presence of HIV can be determined with mnay methods or a combination of all of them:

-Reverse Transcriptase activity assay (specificity for detecting only HIV RT enzymes ensured by the stringent magnesium-dependance of this enzyme as opposed to other retrovirus utilising manganese),
-p24 antigen production, immunoblotting for HIV specific proteins,
-intracellular flow cytometic analysis for HIV specific proteins (HIV core antigens),
-and/or detection of HIV DNA using PCR (HIV LTR, gag, LTR-gag sequences found only in HIV).

These are technically sound, reproducible, and specific methods. Just in case you start trying a ridiculous deriding of RPMI being a witches brew (was it Hank or you who introduce this terminology - Can't recall), RPMI is the Roswell Park Memorial Institute medium, the basic growth medium tested and optimised for the primary culture of human cells from a human donor, a nutrient rich medium not unlike the ingredients you find in your blood, containing much phosphate and is formulated for 5% CO2 - also optimised to mimic human blood CO2 and energy source conditions)

I am not sure what is your basis of ridiculing the various standard methods used in almost all of biological research other than as your dishonest attempt to slander and discredit HIV research.

If you are doubtful of such established and tested techniques, that you might as well call every little thing that bioscience research has provided and contributed to the human health a bluff.

The aforementioned methods can be referenced from section 12 of the Current Protocols in Immunology, developed by my former mentor Suzanne Crowe and Katherine Kedzierska at the Macfarlane Burnet Institute of Medical Research and Public Health, Australia in 2001.

And if you want to find out the methods and materials of how to get micrographs and visualisation of HIV, you can try to contact this person mak@burnet.edu.au, Burnet's a non-profit organisation, although Johnson can be difficult at times, I think he'll try his best to help if you try not to ask rudely.

Cheers

Posted by: Viji | June 14, 2006 4:26 AM

Here's a brilliant quote from our resident expert in molecular biology:

There are only 4 bases. That doesn't allow for all that many variations (compared to the amino acids in proteins).

Godschalk seems to be unaware that it takes 3 nucleotides to code for 1 amino acid. There are 4^3 = 64 possible combinations that code for only 20 amino acids (and start and stop codons).

The genetic code is degenerate. The possible variation in the genome is greater than in the proteome.

Somebody that makes simple mistakes like this has to be extremely arrogant to pretend to be an expert.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 14, 2006 6:02 AM

Tara and Hank (and everyone who responded),

Thanks for your responses. this will be my last entry, mostly because this is taking up an insane amount of time just to keep up with the reading, but I really appreciate your responses. Again, I am a little overwhelmed by the research. I'll try to keep this short, here are a couple of things that caught my attention.

I note that there are more similarities between the groups than I would infer if I were only to read Tara's blog's headlines. For example, you both agree that the tests are imperfect, it seems to be a matter of degree. I think an argument can be made that if the assumption of prevalance is falsified, than the test results for that population would be incorrect. (And I should correct this, my bad, it was Gerd Gigerenzer, (not gigenheizer) who wrote the book "Calculated Risks" (not calculating risks),

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerd_Gigerenzer
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743205561/103-8954556-7311033?v=glance&n=283155

Also, I think it can be argued that both sides consider many factors to be important in the development of AIDS, but when polarized, each side goes to a corner (the AIDS centrists say it's HIV only, the dissenters say it's many things). This is also surprising, because it looks like there is more common ground than is being explored. The method of the centrists is to downgrade the relevance of what the dissenters say, so that probably helps keep this fight going. I think if you wanted to you could create a cooperative quorum to work out more common ground.

On persuasion,First, Tara, you made some comments in your notes that went to persuasion, and analysis of, essentially, why I should not trust the dissenters, giving the impression that you were trying to persuade me that the dissenters were the bad guys among the two camps. You offered a lot of research too, but the personal slant was or is perhaps damaging from a political point of view to your message (ie negative campaigning). The dissenters tended to offer information accompanied by a plea to give it a fair review. I saw a lot of personal commentary in the remarks from both camps. There was a lot of animosity between the two groups so I'm going to guess that you guys really don't like each other even if you are trying to be civil.

Hank gave me reading and said that it was too much to assimilate in a short reading. That was probably the most realistic thing I heard. It is way,way too much to fully 'get' in a couple of days. My head is pounding from trying to do half of the reading everybody sent.

To summarize, I appreciate everybody's time, I am a little surprised because I can't find the obvious 'flat earth' argument on either side, both seem to be making points. But maybe it should be moderated by an impartial judge, if there is such a thing, because there is a lot of emotion in the comments, from both sides, which also surprised me on a purely medical issue. (abortion comes to mind, but I think that is qualitatively different, and stem cell issues, but that arises from within the abortion issue, though it is a much weaker argument).

I don't see any hard Right ethical statements in this, which makes it a very odd fight, I'd say that the centrists would be center or party Left and the dissenters radical Left or Libertarian, so is it Left versus Left?

Peace,

Neil (aka Frodo)

Posted by: Frodo | June 14, 2006 2:27 PM

Chris Noble
If the "dissidents" judge at the end that Harvey Bialy won the debate and at the same time everybody else thinks that John Moore won the debate what would have been achieved?

Ah! Its good you are back. Now I don't have to look for you in every nook and cranny.
Yes, finally I agree with you on something! This would probably happen. But it wouldn't be a problem, of course. The main goal of the debate would have been reached. I'm sure Bialy could never convince Moore, and vice versa. But all the lurkers in the background, having heard the arguments from both sides, then could start to think for themselves, and make up their own minds. And that's all we want; not grey masses being intimidated by pathetic little bullies, as is the case now.

The way that any such "debate" proposed by "dissidents" is formulated is such that everybody else has to prove to the "dissidents" that HIV exists and causes AIDS. This is fundamentally assymetric.

Whawazzat? Are you implying that we (the sane people) have to prove that HIV does not exist? Proving a negative, just to be "symmetrical"? After all the ridiculous claims that have been (and will undoubtedly be) made about the mythical "HIV" we would have cut out our work for us for centuries to come. If I claim the planet Pluto is made of cheese, is it upon you to prove that it is not? Ever heard of "burden of proof"?

It allows the "dissidents" to just repeat "that's not proof" when any evidence is presented.

Yeah. Whenever they look at a table, they say "It's a cow". When asked for evidence, they proudly announce: "It has 4 legs." And we shouldn't even criticize this "evidence"?

This is not the way that science works. If it was then we would still be sitting in a cold dark cave while the "fire dissident" was holding up progress.

Aw, it would be easy enough to prove the reality and the power of fire. There will be no "fire dissidents" after I light a fire under your rear end... Or would you agree that this is not such a good example?

Science is about competing ideas. Theories are overthrown if somebody can successfully argue that an alternative hypothesis better explains all available data.

No, that's not the only way to overthrow theories. A theory also gets discarded if it consistently leads to wrong predictions. But if you wish to call that "negative science" or "denial", you probably would not have thought much of Lavoisier's work, when he disproved the phlogiston etheory of oxidation. (The orthodoxy of that time tried to explain the weight gain upon oxidation of metals by assigning a negative mass to phlogistone (!) And you would have fitted right in with them).

This is similar to the various varieties of creationists/IDers that focus on denying the evidence for evolution.

All you lurkers: See the strawman again? Creationism and evolution have nothing to do with this discussion. Besides, I don't know any AIDS-dissident who is a creationist.

A few "AIDS dissidents" have put forward alternative theories for the causation of AIDS. They are mutually exclusive and rely on a selective analysis of the available data.

Yes indeed. Pity that the "available data" all come from the orthodoxy. Wouldn't it be nice if they could collect their own data? But who would fund their research?

However, instead of debating each other they form strategic alliances to fight the common "enemy".

Naturally. "The enemy of your enemy is your friend". I would rather associate with a witch doctor than with the unsavory characters who try to bully us into believing the totally ridiculous HIV-causes-AIDS theory. And the "common enemy" - make no mistake about it - is you (and the people who funded your study).
Oh... and don't think dissidents don't debate each other. There has been a discussion between Duesberg and the Perth Group. And on www.AIDSMythExposed.com and numerous fora in a multitude of languages, we do debate each other.
But first, we have to fight our common enemy, of course. We'll settle our internal discussions after Hatchet Day.

For 20 years the various flavours of AIDS "dissidence" have put forward mutually exclusive theories about the causation of AIDS. In that time they have not been able to convince each other that their ideas are better.

Well, I'll be... You goons have repressed us for 25 years, and in all those years you have not come up with anything that's even halfway plausible, let alone backed up by evidence. "HIV Science" reads like it has been written by the brothers Grimm. Time to let go of all that research money, Klutzes United! I have a constructive proposal: Why not put this "AIDS research" in the hands of the toxicologists from now on? I'm sure they will come up with better things that your far-fetched virus theory. And if you behave, maybe the toxicologists can use somebody who has experience with aerosols...

Don't go away. I'm not yet finished with you.

Godschalk seems to be unaware that it takes 3 nucleotides to code for 1 amino acid. There are 4^3 = 64 possible combinations that code for only 20 amino acids (and start and stop codons).

That's what I mean. Not a very efficient coding system, is it? Considering that the replacement of just one amino acid can have a profound effect on the activity of a protein, it takes 3 nucleotides to code for the change. In cryptography this would mean that the encrypted text would be 3 times as voluminous as the plain text.

I've seen how it all began, and it wasn't a pretty sight. A group of my colleagues was working on protein biosynthesis. They had a witches' brew (yes I coined the phrase), and they claimed they could put in a polynucleotide, and produce a polypeptide chain based on these codons. Well, these guys really blew their horn about it, but their results were dismal. I suggested that, if they would throw an old shoe into the mix, they would also get the same result. (You see, I haven't changed through the years) This "old shoe theory" did not do anything for my popularity, but it was right on target. Since that time, they had to come up with all kinds of magical but undetermined "elongation factors", "prime factor" and "factor XYZ489". And I must say, the model they came up with (ribosomes that come rolling down a molecule of messenger RNA, picking up amino acids in the process) was in every way as laughable as the HIV/AIDS story. But I guess that's how these molecular geneticists are: A strong preoccupation with the bizarre.

Although I concede that HAART is one of the most toxic regimens available to combat HIV infection, but it is also the only effective measure to delay or halt the progression towards AIDS for some individuals.

Oh, sure. It stops them right in their tracks. They die of liver failure, and that's very effective in keeping them from getting full-blown AIDS.

What about undiagnosed syphilis? Too much semen? Benzene in lubricants? HHV-6? They want debate? Why don't they debate? What are they waiting for?

If you would read the dissident's boards more often, you would know that these debates are already taking place. So youn kep your money in your pocket. But of course, this attempt at "divide and conquer" won't keep us from our first task in life: Debunking the apologists.

Viji, Godschalk's claim to fame is to have published a few papers on Turnip Yellow Mosaic Virus in the 60s and 70s.

Is that all you could find?

Any paper on viruses that doesn't have a Spinco model E ultracentrifuge in the methods section is obviously wrong. If PCR or other newfangled molecular biology stuff is used it must be bullshit.

I used every technique I needed for my projects. I didn't need 20 other guys to help me. I'm sure you wouldn't recognize a Spinco Model E if it fell on your head, but one run of these famous "HIV-preparations" in this centrifuge would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all these claims to "HIV isolation" are indeed bullshit.
Today's molecular bioklutzes may know ambiguous techniques such as PCR, but the only physical method they know is counting bands on a polyacrylamide gel.

...and attacks anyone that thinks that there is overwhelming evidence that HIV exists and causes AIDS.

I've been hearing about this "overwhelming evidence" for 22 years now. So where are you hiding it? It's not in the scientific literature. The only thing I can find there is hundreds of thousands of papers based on the assumption that HIV exists, and that it causes AIDS.

And then... the Gelderblom paper again. As I explained to you before, the work itself is excellent. They have produced nice pictures of eh... something. My question was: "Nice particles, but what are they?" And it still is.

Not only does this paper show excellent electronmicrographs of HIV showing a conical core and knobs it also uses immunoelectronmicroscopy to identify the proteins in the viral particles. Quite a coincidence that antibodies to viral proteins coded by viral RNA just happen to bind to specific parts of the virus!

Not elementary at all, my dear Watson! How do they know it's HIV? By decree? The conical core should already raise suspicions, but nothing seems to faze these one-track minds.
How do you know that these are "antibodies to viral proteins coded by viral RNA"? By circular reasoning of the same caliber that brought us those wonderful serological tests for HIV?
Yes, all this stuff comes from cell cultures. But the connection with a human retrovirus exists only in the mind of the real believer.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 14, 2006 9:46 PM

Chris,
you've got your sights trained on Wilhelm at the moment, but could you take a break and answer a couple of questions I've had waiting for you?

Here's one of the problems I'm having with this 36% issue...maybe Chris can clarify these statments of his on the issue that are at odds with each other.

First, he says:
The first tests were relatively crude. The specificity and sensitivity of these early tests were not high. Why expect the first tests to be perfect?

Simple enough. He's saying the tests are crude and imperfect.

Then, he says:
...why were 36% of AIDS patients infected with a virus that is present in only very low levels in the general population? Coincidence?

This would imply that the tests AREN'T crude and imperfect.

Which is it, Chris? Help us out here.

And after that, I'd like to hear more about this scientific standard where a pathogen need only be found in 36% of people with the disease to be proclaimed as the cause of this disease. That sounds very interesting.

Posted by: Dan | June 15, 2006 12:03 AM

Whawazzat? Are you implying that we (the sane people) have to prove that HIV does not exist?

No, I am saying that people like Duesberg and the Perth Group who claim that they have valid alternative theories should concentrate on providing evidence for these theories or at least demonstrating that their theories are a) consistent with all available evidence and b) better explain the evidence compared to the theory that HIV causes AIDS.

The fact that "dissidents" focus on negative science puts them in the same class as creationists/IDers. And no I am not claiming that HIV "dissidents" are all creationists (some like Phillip Johnson are). I am saying they use the same pseudoscientific arguments. They both demand public debates for instance.

Your argument about Lavoisier is wrong. The "phlogiston theory" was not overthrown by armchair "phlogiston" dissidents. It was overthrown because Lavoisier demonstrated that another theory "oxygen theory" better explained the available evidence.

If you would read the dissident's boards more often, you would know that these debates are already taking place.

No, they are not taking place. Can you provide any evidence that Duesberg and the Perth Group have been having any serious debates since 1996?

They gave up trying to convince each other. Why?

Can you provide any valid reason why Duesberg and the Perth Group do not debate each other? Each of them claim to be rational and both say they want to debate the subject.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 15, 2006 4:10 AM

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=3887&IssueNum=157

Let's see...
Toxic reaction to a drug that kills a thousand people a year OR
Politically correct diagnosis with no evidence...

Shame on you, Tara.

Posted by: Scott Kirwin | June 15, 2006 9:56 AM

Did you read the coroner's report Scott? There was plenty of evidence for EJ's diagnosis (PCP in her lungs, p24 in her brain and an HIV+ mother) and no evidence of a toxic reaction to an antibiotic.

Posted by: Dale | June 15, 2006 10:10 AM

Dale
Four months after EJ's death the cause was listed as
"unknown". If AIDS is so obvious, why wasn't it blamed for her death?

That's right? The coroner didn't know Christine was HIV+ and therefore didn't have the right bias in place to make the decision.

We'll also just ignore the lymphocyte count of 10,800. No need to allow pesky counter-evidence to get in the way of our a priori decision.

Do I sound snide? Yes - because I BELIEVED YOU. EJ's death convinced me that the Denialists were wrong. Shame on me for being so easily convinced.

You'll have to do better next time.

Posted by: Scott Kirwin | June 15, 2006 12:20 PM

"It makes no sense to treat a depletion of subset of white blood cells, with a drug that kills all types of white blood cells."

I'm confused as to how depletion of leukocytes and neutrophils is considedered all types of white blood cells when you still have lymphocytes, monocytes, basophils, and eosinophils.

Posted by: Zach | June 15, 2006 3:12 PM

It makes no sense to treat a depletion of subset of white blood cells, with a drug that kills all types of white blood cells.

AIDS is never going to end with that kind of thinking. That's just crazy talk.

I'm sure some of our medical/science authorities can show you the errors of your thinking on this one, Hank.

Posted by: Dan | June 15, 2006 5:39 PM

It makes no sense to treat a depletion of subset of white blood cells, with a drug that kills all types of white blood cells.

Well actually it does in theory, but only if killing all types of white blood cells completely erradicated the virus. Neither AZT nor any other current treatment for HIV does that.

Posted by: Dale | June 15, 2006 6:02 PM

So, to fight a few infected T4-cells, you randmomly kill all leukocytes with AZT. That 's like trying to save your house from termite damage, by machine gunning those little critters!

Sounds like something Homer Simpson would do.

Posted by: Dan | June 15, 2006 6:09 PM

Homer Simpson could probably provide better care than some of these AIDS experts:)

HB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 15, 2006 6:13 PM

Well, please forgive my rudeness. As Bruce Springsteen used to sing, "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City."

Hank Barnes

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 15, 2006 6:43 PM

Chris Noble:
Pseudoscientists never admit to a mistake.
Now we've reached the point where it's implied that I'm a pseudoscientist by a guy who set his first toddling steps in the field of science just a few short years ago, and is now making more noise than anybody else. Oh well, I shouldn't be surprised. Piglets squeal a lot louder than grown pigs too.

HIV sequences are obviously retroviral because they code for proteins Gag, Pol and Env that are homologous with all other retroviruses.

This statement contains a lie at every two or three words.
1. How do you know they are "HIV sequences" without having isolated the pure virus?
2. "obviously retroviral"? Why?
3. "Gag, Pol and Env that are homologous with all other retroviruses" Pray tell me what other retroviruses. Most of our knowledge about retroviruses comes from chickens and mice. All this hogwash about human retroviruses didn't come into play until the Gallo era. Do they exist at all?
And by the way, there are many human proteins that are homologous with proteins found in other species. Does that mean past "infections"??? ...Or just the efficiency of nature?

Here Godschalk compares the 4 nucleotides with the 20 amino acids. In reality there are 64 possible codons for 20 amino acids. There is more variation in the codons than in the amino acids. Godschalk is just plain wrong.

I see it, but I can't fathom it yet: You're actually comparing the number of amino acids with the sequences of 3 nucleotides?? (Apples and oranges?) That's gross! Do you realize how many possible sequences of 3 amino acids there are, compared to those measly 64 for nucleotides? And add to this the various conformations a protein with a certain primary structure can assume, with a profound effect on its biological functioning. Then you may begin to realize the enormous complexity of the protein world. And in addition to proteins, there are polysaccharides, lipoproteins, spingolipids, and RNA. But you and your ilk are doing nothing but putter around in the simple-minded realm of DNA, a dull macromolecule with very limited configurations and functions. All the while pretending that you hold the code to all living processes. But in reality it's the world view of a goldfish in a round glass bowl. And remember: you heard it here first.

How his "argument" was supposed to be a refutation of the homology of HIV proteins with other retroviruses is a mystery.
I wouldn't be surprised if it will remain a mystery to you forever. I'm getting tired of repeating the questions: How do you know they are "HIV proteins"? And what other retroviruses do you mean? The old familiar ones, in mice and chickens, or Gallo's creations?

No, I am saying that people like Duesberg and the Perth Group who claim that they have valid alternative theories should concentrate on providing evidence for these theories

Oh, I agree... but who will pay for these studies, while all the money goes to the HIV-hustlers?

The "phlogiston theory" was not overthrown by armchair "phlogiston" dissidents. It was overthrown because Lavoisier demonstrated that another theory "oxygen theory" better explained the available evidence.

Yes, he did. But not until after it was shown (by "negative" scientists?) that metals gain weight upon rusting or calcification, so that the phlogiston orthodoxy had to come up with a "negative weight" to explain it.
Well, at least Lavoisier still had a chance to prove his point. He had enough money of his own to pay for his research. And he had the time... before he was executed.

No, they are not taking place. Can you provide any evidence that Duesberg and the Perth Group have been having any serious debates since 1996?
They gave up trying to convince each other. Why?

I have given the reason several times already: No funding. So there's little sense in keeping up the debate of you don't have the means to look for evidence to prove your point. I don't agree on all points with Duesberg (I don't believe HIV exists). Nor with the Perth Group's emphasis on oxidative stress (I think mitochondrial damage, leading to a decreased energy production is the cause of the trouble) I could think of a few simple experiments to bear out my view, but it's not going to happen.

Dale:
Damn! I had given you more credit than considering you as someone who dances on the grave of an innocent child. Did you have to bring this up?

Did you read the coroner's report Scott? There was plenty of evidence for EJ's diagnosis (PCP in her lungs, p24 in her brain and an HIV+ mother) and no evidence of a toxic reaction to an antibiotic.

Well, you may honestly believe that, but it's a pack of lies. This coroner, James Ribe, is a totally corrupt thug, who has on previous occasions changed his original testimony, just to please the district attorney.
The first autopsy revealed nothing special, and the body would be released for burial. Until the bloodhounds learned who the mother of this child was. That's when Ribe got involved, and from that moment on, the cause of death changed from "inconclusive" to "AIDS"
A later autopsy by Mohammad al-Bayati showed that there was no PCP in the lungs. p24 in the brain? Maybe. So what? I've been trying in vain to explain to several pharma phlunkies that the p24 proteins are omnipresent. They are proteins used in the transport of cellular materials through membranes. So finding p24 in the brain is like finding sand on the beach. But they hold on to the silly dogma that this p24 is special, because it has been coded for by HIV-related DNA. Sorry if that makes anybody die laughing, but you know how they are: Never a direct argument, but always playing the ball back to DNA, because that's the only thing they know.
Yes, the girl's mother is "HIV+". But her husband is not. Neither is her son. (Padian anyone?)

...lesions in the brain that were typical of HIV induced lesions

Oh were they, really? Who was it originally, pointing at brain lesions, declaring ex cathedra: "These be HIV-induced!"? How the hell would anybody know that? By just looking at them? Histology must have made great strides since I last looked. Now they can look at a tissue sample and see what caused the injury...
Tell me, Dale, are you always this gullible? I thought... maybe we could do some business in the near future.

Tara:
You're conflating several tests. One can isolate virus; can test for antibodies (using several different tests, I might add), or use RT-PCR to look for viral RNA.

Eh... we've been trying to tell you this: One cannot isolate virus. What is done is inoculate a co-culture with a sample of the patient's blood plasma, and then claim that it's HIV that's growing there. It works the same as the magician's trick where he pulls a rabbit out of a hat. Once you kno how that tick works, you also know what co-culturing is all about.
Yes, you can test for antibodies. But the question remains: Antibodies against what?
RT-PCR? Great. So you find a "viral load". But how do we know it's viral RNA we are finding?

Viji"
Alas, when I read your comments, you present doubts to such claims, as you seem to have a penchant of bemoaning even the most basic of bioscience techniques.
Sorry Viji, that I didn't get around to your comments before.
I actually bemoan the absence of physical methods in contemporary bioscience. These methods have the advantage that there is solid theoretical knowledge behind them; you know what's happening. With the biological methods that's not so. Too many unknowns, too many basic assumptions (that may or may not be true), and too much room for interpretation.

The presence of HIV can be determined with mnay methods or a combination of all of them:

-Reverse Transcriptase activity assay (specificity for detecting only HIV RT enzymes ensured by the stringent magnesium-dependance of this enzyme as opposed to other retrovirus utilising manganese),
-p24 antigen production, immunoblotting for HIV specific proteins,
-intracellular flow cytometic analysis for HIV specific proteins (HIV core antigens),
-and/or detection of HIV DNA using PCR (HIV LTR, gag, LTR-gag sequences found only in HIV).

I came up with the qualification "witches brew" because years ago, colleagues of mine worked on protein biosynthesis where they tried to make specific peptide sequences by coding with synthetic polynucleotides. They also used the most elaborate mixtures (containing puromycin, etc.) They never got the results they expected, so they had to invent all kinds of cofactors to explain those failures.
But let's look at the methods you advocate for the determination of HIV. They are all markers, by the way.
1. Reverse Transcriptase activity assay. Well, you obviously know that reverse transcriptase is a common enzyme, presnt everywhere. But you single one out specifically, as belonging to HIV, on the basis of its Mg++ dependency. Now that's something you have to be careful with. This, too, reminds me of the bad old days when one group of researchers found a stimulation of protein synthesis, while others found an inhibition. Dependence of biological systems on metals such as magnesium or manganese can vary greatly. Even different versions of the same enzyme may be different in that respect, as you know. But I find it's going a little too far to assume that one enzyme is viral, just because it has a greater dependence on Mg++.
2.p24 antigen production. Same story. p24 proteins are common transport proteins that occur in every cell. To single one out and declare it to be of HIV-origin, just because someone has sequenced a piece of DNA that codes for it, is an unwarrented conclusion.
3. intracellular flow cytometic analysis for HIV specific proteins How come everybody is so sure about "HIV-specific" proteins? They have no standard to compare it to. (Namely the pure virus itself).
4. and/or detection of HIV DNA using PCR I don't doubt for a moment that you can find even the tiniest amounts of DNA with PCR. Forensic chemists do it all the time. But how could anybody know if that DNA was put there by HIV? I know they have sequenced lots of material. But in order to know where it came from, you must have a standard of comparison (HIV itself).
LTR-gag sequences found only in HIV ? How do they know? It was thought originally that Reverse Trascriptase was specific for retroviruses. Now we know that's not so. A human body is a complicated machine. Lots of things can originate from it. Maybe also all those markers that are considered specific for HIV.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 15, 2006 10:01 PM

What justified AZT was data like this "The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) received reports of 593 cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) in the US between June 1, 1981, and September 15, 1982. Death occurred in 243 (41%) of these cases. The incidence of AIDS by date of diagnosis has roughly doubled every 6 months since late-1979, and an average of 1-2 cases are now diagnosed per day. The mortality rate for cases diagnosed over 1 year ago exceeds 60%." (from MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 31, 507 (1982).

Ok, well all this info is from before "HIV" was deemed the cause of AIDS. So, if we take this information as presented, there would be no reason on earth to take AZT, being that "HIV" (or any other single microbe causative agent) had been found during this time to be the cause of AIDS, unless people just enjoy ingesting poison, that is.

Second, back to Hank's point. It makes no sense to treat a depletion of subset of white blood cells, with a drug that kills all types of white blood cells.

Posted by: Dan | June 15, 2006 11:09 PM

It makes sense Dan because immune cells are constantly being formed and destroyed within the human body. Kill the cells off with drugs and the patient will be very prone to infection for a period of time but the immune system will regenerate within a few weeks. But that only works if the initial treatment kills all the infected cells or enough to allow a reconstituted immune system to clear the virus on its own and apparently neither AZT monotherapy nor HAART are capable of doing that. Still, the early clinical trials showed that on a short term basis AZT helped AIDS patients. And as I recall there was a huge political push from gay activists to make AZT available as soon as possible.

Posted by: Dale | June 15, 2006 11:32 PM

The immune system won't regenerate if you're bombarding it constantly. What I said was if you could treat for a limited period of time and totally eliminate the virus (which was the hope with AZT or HAART), then upon stopping treatment the immune system could regenerate.

As far as how the early trials showed AZT helped patients, I suggest you go to the National Library of Medicine online and read the papers or at least the abstracts for yourself.

Posted by: Dale | June 16, 2006 12:31 AM

Basically literature says that markers of immune function, various disease symptoms and mortality rates all temporarily improved. But like I said, read it for yourself and decide for yourself.

Posted by: Dale | June 16, 2006 1:03 AM

Viji,

I refrain from commenting on AZT because I have limited experience in the development and use of AZT to make a critical comment.

Which means, despite your excessive verbosity, you are missing the primary element of the dispute.

So, now who's half-baked?:)

Hank B

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 16, 2006 11:49 AM

Hi Tara,

Nice blog you've got going here. A lot of fun for us denialists looking for a life.

Comments while taking a break from perusing this absolutely fascinating thread:

Surely reason and science is something we can all hang on to. No argument. As far as some rote responses I'm already detecting as I proceed thru this wondrous thread; are they, strictly speaking, rational?

Since you know NAR, what about it? The substantive point; did Gallo in fact falsify himself? He certainly DID succeed in the production of reverse transcriptase far beyond Montagnier. (Let's give credit where credit is due.)

Oh yeah, the rote responses: misinterpret the paper, poorly preserved samples, contamination etc., etc. to results or conclusions you don't like.

But let's proceed to the substantive points in your response to Hank of June 6. Go to Gallo/fasify thread at NAR and, at the bottom you'll see my citation of the Gallo et al cDNA HYBRIDIZATION experiments where the hit ratio is even lower. Remember, this has nothing at all to do with viral load; it's a measure of PRIMARY HIV infection, the GOLD STANDARD, (and I'm not talking about Perth Group).

Antibodies non-specific.

I doubt if bad samples or my misinterpreting apply here so we're looking for your best counter-argument.

Cheers

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 16, 2006 1:13 PM

Hey Gene,

Here's your quote re Gallo's "follow-up" work.

Shaw, Hahn, Arya, Groopman, Gallo, Wong-Staal; Science, V226, 1165-1171, 12/7/84

"HTLV-III (pro)viral DNA can be detected in low levels in fresh (primary) lymhoid tissue of a minority of patients with AIDS or ARC but appears not to be present in Kaposi's Sarcoma tissue." (from Abstract)

"We have described here the molecular cloning and analysis of the full-length HTLV-III proviral genome from the cell line H9/HTLV-III."

"In most of the patients in which HTLV-III DNA sequences were detected in fresh tissue, the signal intensities were weak".

"In all, HTLV-III sequences were detected in only 9 out of 65 (AIDS) patients evaluated (Table 1). . . None of the five Kaposi's sarcoma tissue specimens was positive for HTLV-III DNA sequences."

Table 1 shows for "clinical diagnosis" of "AIDS (tissue) : 15 (peripheral blood mononuclear cells) samples tested, 1 positive; 19 (lymph node cells) samples tested, 4 positive; 8 (bone marrow mononuclear cells) samples tested, 0 positive; 11 (spleen) samples tested, 2 positive; 5 (Kaposi's sarcoma) samples tested, 0 positive." (Note: KS was original "signal" disease)

" . . . (A)s shown herein, HTLV-III DNA is usually not detected by standard Southern hybridization of these same tissues (from most patients with AIDS or ARC) and, when it is, the bands are often faint. . . (T)hus, the lymph node enlargement commonly found in ARC or AIDS patients cannot be due directly to the proliferation of HTLV-III infected cells."

Three questions, Gene:

1. Why did Gallo find HIV (HTLV-III) sequences in ONLY 9 of 65 AIDS patients?

2. What was causing AIDS in the OTHER 56 patients?

3. Do these paltry findings support or undermine the hypothesis that AIDS is solely caused by HIV?

HankB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 16, 2006 2:08 PM

A sex and blood pandemic, caused and transmitted by an AIDS virus, has never been demonstrated, any time, anywhere. All epidemiological "data", and statistics derived therefrom are educated and not so educated guesses. In Africa and India, never validated mathematical models produce computerized hallucinations. In USA, better guesses show flat human retroviral prevalence contrasted with AIDS bell-shaped curves, which falsify HIV=>AIDS epidemiological claims. (3)

To maintain the model of a pathogenic retrovirus, ad hoc multiple behavioral possibilities have been postulated and attributed to it; then described to laypersons as a wily, insidious virus with 9 heads and a Star Wars shield to boot. These many elaborations to explain ongoing observed subgenomic transcriptions and variations of the HIV genome arise from $150 billion of creative enthusiasm but can hardly be said to represent a scientific theory. In Scientific American, March, 2006, pg 76, Gregory Chaitin describes Leibniz: "(I)f the only law that describes some data is an extremely complicated one, then the data are actually lawless." (2)

Measuring 140 or so bp of the gag gene, as in a set of major PCR papers, is certainly sensitive, but for what? (1)

We need to rethink AIDS in the light of peer-reviewed science that looks at malnutrition, poor infrastructure (e.g. the WHO declared pure water crisis) and chronic environmental diseases caused by pollution. (see chronicillnet.org, Howard Urnovitz, PhD). Retroviral transcription ("HIV") is a method used by the cell to deal with excess stress - effect not cause. AID is a broad phenomenon, a symptom of environmental disease. S is severe redox imbalance caused by oxidosis (too many free radicals)/dysoxygenation (deranged cellular metabolic machinery) - serious energy deficiency: AED.

Cheers

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 16, 2006 5:03 PM

Interesting indeed, thank you Gene for providing some fresh highlights into some issues

But I'll need the references to substantiate the points you draw from in your comments to look further into them

For example, you've commented on epedimiological studies, and labelled Indian and African studies to be weak (your interpretations, or you have a epidemiologist actually commenting and studying the African Indian data?), and presented guesses to interpret the US data (source? Your guesses and interpretations?)

Certainly the current model of HIV-AIDS is based on a non-endogenous pathogenic retrovirus, an infectious agent that are blood borne. Such a description can change with further insights and inroads into our understanding of the aetiology of AIDS, but current research findings do indicate the presence of a non-endogenous pathogenic retrovirus in which we named HIV

Similarly you've brought up the concept of "Retroviral transcription ("HIV") is a method used by the cell to deal with excess stress - effect not cause." and your references to studies pioneered by Howard Urnovitz may point to AIDS as a human physiological response to stress by producing a endogenous retrovirus or something akin to HERV-K, BUT still it shows the existance of a pathogenic infectious agent that can be transmitted, doesn't it? The only difference is that this endogenous infectious agent is human derived.

A simple observation that "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" positive blood when used in blood transfusion to a person who is other wise healthy or "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" negative, would soon become "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" positive, and go on to develop "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" "associated" AIDS

It doesn't seem to me very different from the aetiology of AIDS with HIV. Perhaps if that line of research shows promising results, we could rename HIV as "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" HPSDEIA

And what we are certain is that current HAART treatment regimen, although not a cure for AIDS, and can often be associated with morbidity, suffering, and mortality not associated with AIDS, can reduce drastically the "human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent" loads (even when administered when the loads are high pre-treament), and prevent or delay a progression to AIDS.

You were right to identify that AIDS is a chronic disease, chronic in the sense that HIV can evade clearance from the body. HAART can be sufficient to reduce HIV loads to near undetectable levels, but once HAART is removed, we see a rebound to pre-treatment levels as observed clinically. One possible reason for this "chronic" or "persistent" HIV infection is that HIV can remain dormant in the human genome (part of tis life cycle) very much like endogenous retrosequences, and the other is that HIV evades HAART in HAART inaccessible body sites, such as tissue macrophages, and beyond the blood brain barrier. I was part of the group pioneering this line of research, studying the human cellular splicing factors that is hijacked by HIV to be able to undergo chronic low level of replication in macrophages.

Although HAART is just a band aid measure when what we need is an effective vaccine and total clearance of HIV, alot of the HIV research groups are pioneering work in these areas trying to improve the situation. If you insist on the HIV-AIDS phenomenon being stress derived, you may also embark on this line of research, it will certainly help to alleviate the problem, and contribute to our understanding of AIDS aetiology, BUT do not chide the efforts of others trying to solve the problem with available the available infromation at hand

Posted by: Viji | June 16, 2006 8:47 PM

Dale:
al-Bayati never performed an autopsy - he couldn't have as he's not a medical doctor and thus no qualified to perform autopsies.

You're mostly right about that. Although I would replace "not qualified" by "not authorized". After all, he's a pathologist. But that happens when a professional group appropriates the sole right to certain activities.

And we know it's retrovirus because the DNA sequences purified away from all cellular and proteins can be introduced into uninfected cells and will lead to the production of infectious virus. According to Peter Duesberg that's about the most stringent test for a virus that anyone's ever come up with.

That's exactly the part I can't possibly agree with. How can you determine the presence an RNA-containing virus if you start out with DNA that is supposedly produced by this virus, and let this DNA replicate in a cell culture that contains who knows how many kinds of DNA on its own? Besides, there is no production of infectious virus, because from the supernatant of the cell culture nobody has isolated complete virus particles. "Virus-like particles" at best. vesicles probably). Sure, there may be something infectious, but that's not unusual with DNA. Even when insects sting a plant, bacterial DNA may cause tumors at that spot.
This whole "molecular cloning" business has never appealed to me. There are too many holes in that theory. I don't know why Duesberg said that. Maybe he was joking; maybe it wasn't his day.

As far as how the early trials showed AZT helped patients...

Well, of course it did. The early patients were also seriously ill. AZT has a strong cytotoxic action. It kills cells indiscriminately, including bacteria and fungi. So the short-term effect looks beneficial, because humans are more durable than bacteria. But in the long run, the patient succumbs, and the undertaker takes over.
AZT is a remarkable drug: The less you take of it, the better it works.

Viji:
OK mate, you asked for it. Lucky for you, your present work has to do with bacterial systems. Your virus work on "HIV" was probably a youthful delinquency. I'll forgive you for that; you're safe now for the outraged mob, carrying axes and torches, when they come knocking at doors on Hatchet Day.
They'll probably pass your door now. Nevertheless, your last post was totally off the wall:

Moreover, in the face of these hard research, you, Wilhelm Godschalk, and your clique of persons that does not believe in HIV, attempts to undermine the validity of these research by spreading misinformation with bizarre and false accusations like your statement that
(1) "every study after Gallo is based on the assumption that HIV causes AIDS"

It's just too pathetic for words that scientists are working so hard on a line of inquiry that is so obviously wrong.
Just take a paper at random, written jointly by 7 or more of these hard-working people. Read the Introduction, Materials and Methods, and Results. Stop there. At that point, remove all the references to "HIV". Try not to even think about it. Then write your own Discussion section, based on what you have read. You'll see that there is no need for "HIV" or any virus to explain the data. After you've done this, read the conclusions of the 7 dwarfs. You'll laugh your ass off, guaranteed!

HIV can be cultured from AIDS and HIV positive persons, but not found in healthy individuals

No, it cannot! That's what I'm trying to tell you all this time, but you're so dense. Isolating HIV from AIDS patients or HIV+ persons has never been done. Sure, you can commit PCR on blood plasma, and amplify any genetic material in there, but calling this "viral load" is about as scientific as collecting signals from outer space, amplifying them, and claiming that it's rock music from the Andromeda galaxy.
You can only culture "HIV" (or whatever) in your witches' brew (on which you're probbly an expert). And who knows what's in those cells to begin with?
If you would take a few drops of the supernatant of the culture and put it in an analytical ultracentrifuge, it would become immediately obvious what kind of heterogenious crap you have there. Virus particles would produce one sharp peak. But I predict you would see a broad bell-shaped gaussian curve. But I'm dreaming. There probably isn't even one analytical ultracentrifuge at the institute where you work. Not even anybody who knows what it is. Physical methods are not "in" anymore.

similarly, definitive HIV markers such as RT activity, p24 antigen, HIV specific sequences has also been unfailingly shown to be present in AIDS HIV positive patients

That's what worries me. Lots of markers, no virus. In order to know for sure that these markers ar specific for HIV, you have to show at least once that they originate with the virus and nothing else. But if you don't even have the pure virus...

Wilhelm Godschalk's reasoning in his attempt to disagree with "all research that does not agree with him" is even more bizarre, starting with his obsession that nothing is true until you can physically visualise or isolate the virus to the finest of details.

Well, I would feel very uneasy (actually, I would feel like a fool) working on a "virus" I cannot isolate, and only exists in the tales I've heard from others. That's plain old scientific skepsis. What's bizarre about it?

but did he tell anyone the fact this virus like the closely related TMV are atypically large viruses relative to retroviruses, which are so much harder to even isolate?

I don't think any plant virologist would call TYMV and TMV "closely related". TMV is tubular, TYMV is icosahedral in shape. The hosts are different too. But maybe I'm nitpicking. But the second statement just plain wrong. TYMV is not "atypically large" There was at one time a discussion about its particle weight, but our group at Jesse Beams'lab at UVa. published the definitive paper on it: It's 5.45 million Daltons. A typical retrovirus has a particle weight of about twice that. True, retroviruses are enveloped, and that doesn't make isolation any easier. But if they could do it with mouse viruses. they should be able to do it for a human retrovirus, if such a beast exists. Good grief, they've had 22 years to do it!

...we use the ultracentrifuge to extract HIV particles in the sample of a AIDS patient, and this fraction can be used to infect cell cultures and grow up more HIV particles.

Yes, of course. But if you examine this fraction by electron microscopy before infecting your cell culture with it, you don't find any virus particles! Neither did Montagnier or Gallo, but now, 22 years later you should be able to do better. And if you're stubbornly insisting that there are virus particles in that 1.16 fraction, show me. No culturing, please, or other hanky panky.
We really don't base our criticism on faults in Gallo's work only, but mainly on the failure of the other klojo's that came after him, and not only were unable to do the isolation experiment right, but were even too pigheaded to recognize that the most plausible reason for not finding virus particles is simply that there are no virus particles.

In addition, he seems to love propagating the false idea that all viruses can be isolated and viewed physically. Some of the more common viruses that afflict us such as the Human Papillomavirus and Epstein-Barr virus have also never been "physically isolated and visualised" to Wilhelm's standards and whims.

Whims? If I can't see the Emperor's clothes, then he's naked. If they can't isolate a virus, then it doesn't exist. And you can take your Human Papillomavirus and... Well, sorry about that. But it wouldn't even hurt, if it doesn't exist anyway.

When he is shown micrographs of HIV, a few groups in the world that has successfully done so, he laughs it off as cartoons

Only when they are cartoons, in living color. There are a few real EM's around. Most of them show more crappola than "viruslike particles". I have seen a few picture that looked real. In the famous Gelderblom paper, for example. Hans Gelderlom knows his stuff, and he delivers fine work. But my suspicions are aroused when I look in the Materials and Methods section. Somehow the guys who handed him the sample don't impress me. They don't seem either too bright or too honest to me. So I look at the pictures and say: "Nice particles. What are they?"

Yet Wilhelm has little idea what PCR is except "forensic chemist does it"

[groann!!] Let me try to explain this one more time, slowly:
When forensic chemists find a minuscule amount of DNA, too small to be analyzed, they use PCR to amplify stretches of it. When they have turned enough PCR cycles to get a quantity that can be analyzed, they compare it with a bank of known DNA profiles. If the perpetrator is in this collection, his goose is cooked. If he is not, the investigators have a problem.
Now compare this to an HIV-hack, searching for proviral DNA in a vict... I mean patient. PCR does the job, and the resulting DNA is analyzed. And then... eh... well... harrumph!... The results have to be compared to "known proviral DNA originating from HIV" Do you see the problem appearing on the horizon already?

In fact, Wilhelm should be proud of his friends, they're the pioneers of in vitro protein synthesis, which is another technically massive hurdle,

Our biochemistry lab was meeting place of chemists and biologists. Both groups had totally different methods, but they learned from each other. I would have been more proud of them if they had believed my "old shoe theory", rather than that ridiculous script of ribosomes "rolling" along a molecule of messenger-RNA.

A simple fact that these sequences, LTR, gag, tat, etc. can ONLY be isolated from AIDS HIV positive patients, those on HAART or "illicit drugs" if you may, and also those AIDS HIV positive persons who have no exposure to these drugs in Africa, Asia and the Oceanic island nations

Summarizing: ONLY from sick people. Not so surprising.
And please don't compare the undernourished and malaria-ridden people of the third-world countries with the drug users of the developed nations. AIDS in Africa is something entirely different from AIDS in San Francisco.
But now that we're on the subject: When did they prove that LTR, gag, tat, etc are viral? Or is it just folklore, being carried down from generation to generation?

I am not going to waste my time explaining p24, if you're interested seek out this review, suitable for lay persons

Holy shit! You're so far off on p24 that I'm breaking out in hives. You're quoting an abstract that only looks at p24 through tunnel vision, as a diagnostic for HIV. And their conclusion is even that they're not sure if it's any good.
It's hardly possible,but... don't you REALLY know that the p24 protein family has a function in cargo selection for vesicle transport across membranes? I know people in "HIV science" wold rather not hear about vesicles. But jut in case you want to be a real scientist, read all about it:
This is a paper from MIT.

Thinking about p24 proteins

Human reverse transcriptase? You must be joking. Even if we speculate that there might be a human reverse transcriptase yet to be described, a thorough look at human physiological processes discounts the need of a reverse transcriptase

Well, Gene Semon already washed your ears on this booboo. You couldn't have put your foot in your mouth any further.
Reverse transcriptase is omnipresent in human cells. Not needed? Well, perhaps as a repair mechanism for DNA strands?

In conclusion:
Gallo's work was lousy, that's true. But it has been downhill from there ever since.
Face it Viji, when you worked on HIV, maybe you were still young and foolish. Not anymore now... ;-)
You were instructed by charlatans who made you believe you were doing useful work. In reality you were unwittingly contributing to their scheme of genocide.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 16, 2006 10:47 PM

Viji:

You asked Gene for a reference on human reverse transcriptase.
Here is one:

Telomerase

Posted by: Wi;helm Godschalk | June 16, 2006 11:04 PM

O dear.... Wilhelm has just shown me that he thinks telomerase are reverse transciptase!!!!

All along I was thought you were mentioning viral reverse transcriptase or a human equivalent of the viral form

The two, telomerase and viral reverse transcriptase may share a similar kind of end function generating a DNA strand from an RNA template

BUT they are totally different both in crystallographic structure and function mechanism

In anyway you try you won;t be able to even make a "HIV" DNA strand from a "HIV" RNA template using telomerases

I am putting "HIV" in brackets as I am refering to LTR-gag sequences that you don't believe to be from HIV per se but are of human origin (still telomerase can;t do anything on LTR-gag)

And Certainly the RT-assay for HIV shows no positives if you throw in telomerases, it may only detect HIV derived reverse transciptases.

Silly

Posted by: Viji | June 17, 2006 12:15 AM

Bialy rocks LIBRadio:

http://bialystocker.net/files/keidi.mp3

Check it out; you might learn something.

Posted by: Darin Brown | June 17, 2006 1:53 AM

Fine, Viji, but you were the one who said "...a thorough look at human physiological processes..." which presumably includes the human genome - (haha).

Here's one I've entitled: The Plot Thickens; Adam Pavlíek,1,2 Jan Paes,1,3 Daniel Elleder,1 and Jií Hejnar1,4. Processed Pseudogenes of Human Endogenous Retroviruses Generated by LINEs: Their Integration, Stability, and Distribution. Genome Research, Vol. 12, Issue 3, 391-399, March 2002 (www.genome.org)

Abstract:We report here the presence of numerous processed pseudogenes derived from the W family of endogenous retroviruses in the human genome. These pseudogenes are structurally colinear with the retroviral mRNA followed by a poly(A) tail. Our analysis of insertion sites of HERV-W processed pseudogenes shows a strong preference for the insertion motif of long interspersed nuclear element (LINE) retrotransposons. The genomic distribution, stability during evolution, and frequent truncations at the 5' end resemble those of the pseudogenes generated by LINEs. We therefore suggest that HERV-W processed pseudogenes arose by multiple and independent LINE-mediated retrotransposition of retroviral mRNA. These data document that the majority of HERV-W copies are actually nontranscribed promoterless pseudogenes. The current search for HERV-Ws associated with several human diseases should concentrate on a small subset of transcriptionally competent elements.

Excerpts:

LINEs, retrotransposons lacking LTRs and containing poly(A) tails, are the most active autonomous transposable elements in the human genome (Kazazian and Moran 1998; Prak and Kazazian 2000). They are estimated to be present in >500,000 copies, comprising 17% of the genome (Smit 1996a, 1999; International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium 2001). However, due to 5' truncations and deleterious mutations, only 30-60 LINEs per haploid genome are ACTIVE* and transpose along the genome (Sassaman et al 1997; Kazazian 1999; The database of Retrotransposon Insertion into the Human Genome (*Emphasis Added)

Later, this endogenous reverse transcriptase activity was shown to generate processed pseudogenes also from nonviral (non-LTR) constructs in somatic HeLa cells (Maestre et al. 1995).

LINEs are the master mobile elements in the human genome.

END EXCERPTS

(This last the idea that Gould signed onto in collaboration with a specialist in this field, Jurgen Brosius)

BTW, pursue the Brosius line: Retroposition - A Persistent and Pervasive Force in Genome Evolution, (http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/meetings/bits2000/abstracts/brosius.shtml)

As far as telomerase, it equals reverse transcriptase (RNA=>DNA transcription function) + RNA template. It has been phylogenetically traced by Eikbush et al from LTR retrotransposons.

Sorry about the "fool" comment. It kind of burst out of me when I first landed here, before I had a chance to read your post. No doubt, you would eat me alive in discussion of infectious bacteria.

Best regards,
Gene

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 17, 2006 12:45 PM

Stay tuned for more on telomerase, LTR retrotransposons and DNA repair! Are the blasphemers and scoffers actually going to dare to bring up such verboten subjects as oxidative stress and telomeres? Does the cell have an emergency repair system involving reverse transcription? We mere mortals tremble and shake at the very thoughts.

While you nerds duke it out, the rest of us will attempt to simply live.

Although, if the "HIV"-protagonists continue with their medical eugenics campaign, less and less of us are not allowed the luxury of simply living.

Posted by: Dan | June 17, 2006 1:49 PM

Hello Gene, Thanks for providing the informative links, and indeed this is the most constructive way to communicate ideas and perspectives as opposed to the ruffian ways of using accusations and false stereotyping as evident in Dans latests post June 17, 2006 01:49 PM AND June 17, 2006 02:00 PM; useless mutterings at the only people trying to help. Eugenics Dan says, what does it have to do with Eugenics, he clearly have no idea that what Gene highlighted above is only about what we are beginning to understand about complex cell biology. Pls. refrain from commenting unless you've made an effort to understand the science. You're making a fool of yourself.

Anyway Gene, I am aware of the presence of retrotransposons*, i.e. LINES and SINES, in the human genome, and have read about how some of these active autonomous transposable elements* can show endogenous* reverse transcriptase activity* to activate some of the pseudogenes* I am a Molecular Biology and Biotechnology major during my university days, these were in the dreaded exams.

Anyway, I am certainly new to the HERV-W processed pseudogenes showing strong preference for the insertion motif of LINEs, and thanks for the reference.

In any case, I was originally implying that we currently DO NOT KNOW OF any human reverse transcriptase (in that I mean the viral RT enzyme not retrotransposons) EQUIVALENT to viral reverse transciptase. Certainly you know the distinct structural and mechanical difference between the viral RT and retrotransoposons such as LINE, although the functional end point is reverse transcription.

(certainly not HIV reverse transcriptase enzyme that has a magnesium preference for its activity, unique from the usual manganese preference for other "free-living" retroviruses, which are not retrotransposons or retroelements found in genomes, indeed retroviruses insert their DNA into the human genome during their life cycle, very much akin retrotransposons (hence the namesake of retrotransposons), HIV does this in order to hijack human physiological processes for its own replication, this insertion is transient, and at the end of the life cycle there is a free-standing virus particle, as opposed to retrotransposons being inserted in the genome)

In fact you have correctly pointed out that, I QUOTE

LINEs, retrotransposons lacking LTRs and containing poly(A) tails, are the most active autonomous transposable elements in the human genome (Kazazian and Moran 1998; Prak and Kazazian 2000).

Later, this endogenous reverse transcriptase activity was shown to generate processed pseudogenes also from nonviral (non-LTR) constructs in somatic HeLa cells (Maestre et al. 1995).

These pseudogenes are structurally colinear with the retroviral mRNA followed by a poly(A) tail.

Some fundamental differences between viral RT and retrotransposons, for example,

Retroviral RT enzyme recognises the LTR (Long Tandem Repeat) sequence as the marker or starting point to begin reverse transcription activity. HIV for example hijacks human splicing factors to splice out a subset of different viral DNA to give a subset of different viral products.

While I think retrotranposons recognises the poly-A tail of the HERV-W pseudogene family, or the nonviral (non-LTR) constructs in somatic HeLa cells, to initiate reverse transciption activity, very much like the telomerase recognises the poly-A tail and initiate reverse transcription activity (as Wilhelm has kindly referenced us to earlier)

I am sorry for not clearly pointing out what I meant when there are no human equivalents of viral reverse transcriptase enzyme.

Lay man terms**
Reverse transcriptase activity: Able to read RNA and translate into DNA; usual gene expression processes read DNA to mRNA to proteins to expressed phenotype
Endogenous: Naturally occuring in the human body
Retrotranposons-active autonomous transposable elements: bits of sequences that are part of the human genome that has the ability to move around autonomously and insert itself in positions of its choice along the near vicinity of the genome it was originally located
Pseudogenes: Silent or not expressed genes, genes that are usually not part of the human physiological processes programs, some speculate that these pseudogenes are ancient genes inactivated sometime along our climb in evolution, error expression of some pseudogenes have been suggested to cause some forms of cancer

Posted by: viji | June 17, 2006 10:24 PM

refrain from commenting unless you've made an effort to understand the science. You're making a fool of yourself

I'll comment as I please, Viji...especially around HIV protagonists such as yourself. I've had to fight for my right to simply live against the likes of "scientists" like you. I'll continue to fight you bastards. Go to hell, fuckwad.

Posted by: Dan | June 17, 2006 11:18 PM

What is f-wads?

Posted by: viji | June 18, 2006 5:51 AM

I give up, if Dan intends to act like a bad-mouth ruffian, an impossible child, a fool, a rabble, and a paranoid conspiracy theorist, its Dan's right to be slanderous too. it's Dan's choice.

Completely no appreciation of science, manners, goodwill, or reason. Just rabble and babble. That's Dan's choice. Not mine.

Have a good one, live in your own Dan's world, you've earned it
viji

Posted by: viji | June 18, 2006 6:17 AM

Ruffians? Rabble? Oh Veejeee, you so gay.

Tuffin up little muffin. Dan the "ruffian" won't stop you from killing gay men, just from killing him? Get it? F-wad?

*SIGH* *YAWN* Pointy-head "Rabble!"

Posted by: Sigh-bomb | June 18, 2006 2:31 PM

Viji:
Summise to say, he is like a judge or jury that needs to see the murder taking place in his own eyes to prove a murderer, anything else is conspiracy or fallacy.

It may seem strange to you, but things are (or at last should be) like that in science. After a researcher has passed peer review and published a paper about something that may be hard to believe by others, soon there are letters and phone calls arriving with requests for more information. The original researcher then sends out instructions to colleagues as to how they can do the same experiments themselves. And those who are not equipped for it, get an invitation to come to the researcher's lab. to see the experiments carried out right before their eyes. That's how you build up credibility.

what can we say when its an obligate blood borne, human immune cell dependant retrovirus like HIV, that goes "poof" literally if exposed to the open environment without a protective medium like blood

OK, I grant you that it's difficult. But that leads us to the question: How can a virus that goes "poof" when exposed to an open environment possibly be an exogenous infectious agent? HIV is supposed to be a contagion leading to a real epidemic, remember?

He mocks and ridicules such a breakthrough by looping/replaying his contentions that everything is witches brew, when I've already clearly summarised before that everything in the special "cell culture mediums" are found in us humans, nothing dodgy.

Yes, they can culture in cancerous T4 cells called Jurkats (I've never used them, but Nick Bennett told me about them). According to what I was told, these Jurkats don't need stimulation with PHA; that's old hat. Nevertheless, I just read some very recent papers, and they were still using PHA for stimulation. Now everyone who reads this will ask: Why doesn't HIV destroy these cell cultures, as T4 cells are said to be the natural point of attack by the virus? Doesn't that raise any doubts in your mind? (Oh well, it doesn't of course. You have been told by your sponsors never to have any doubts).
Let's not forget that in cell cultures you are working with live cells. They have their own metabolism and reproduction machinery. So they can spring some surprises on you. With an isolated virus preparation it's possible to have far more control over your experiments.

Clear Wilhelm has little or no idea of cell culture, just his obsession with his work on centrifuge physical methods thats applicable to some plant viruses like TYMV, which in actual fact is totally different with the characteristics of blood borne viruses like HIV

Not only Ultracentrifugation. I also used Polarography, Potentiometric titrations, UV Spectrophotometry, Fluorimetry, and other physical methods.
It doesn't make any difference in the centrifuge if you have TYMV or a virus like HIV. Ultracentrifugation only sees particles that have a certain sedimentation coefficient and partial specific volume.

And I do not know where Wilhelm gets the bizarre idea that African HIV and their US cousins are different.

Bizarre? I think it's a very logical conclusion. The first AIDS cases were clustered in the gay community. And after 25 years, the syndrome is still mainly concentrated in the "high risk groups". At first, the "HIV-test" was not even used in Africa. All they needed was sick people. Well, they are easy to find, because there are many endemic diseases among the poor people of Africa. You only have to get diarrhea and/or fever for several days (very common), and you're already branded as an AIDS patient.
Sure, the toxic meds seem to help at first. They kill off all the bacterial and fungal infections. And... When these people are treated, they also feed them. Now is it so surprising that the patients react positively to that?
But in the long run, these poor sould are simply bumped off by the toxic drugs. Why? Because they're black, maybe?

I should add that I could have isolated HIV from AIDS or HIV postitive individuals,

Why didn't you? It would have made you world-famous.
But you used only markers. They may occur in sick people, but they are not specific for "HIV".

Fine if you're being so recalcitrant, how about the case of a healthy sportsman or a child who contracted HIV from HIV-tainted blood?

Are you referring to Magic Johnson? He announced many years ago with much drum-beating that he was seropositive. Nothing bad has happened to him since. If he had used the antiretrovirals, he would be dead by now. He probably never used them, but gets paid to say he does. He's not a very reliable character.
And a child? Never heard of such a case. Only about children in Africa being murdered with Nevirapine.

That is why p24 is used as a HIV marker, SO what if p24 can be found in healthy non AIDS humans, during HIV infection it is elevated, thats how we detemine the presence of HIV, silly Wilhelm.

I'm flabbergasted. This is meant to be a scientific argument? I invite everybody to read this statement closely, and judge for him/herself who's being silly here.

At least the scientist studying HIV is working their asses off, with little renumeration I may add, to pursue a solution to the HIV problem, using the available empirical research results at hand, we may someday be proven to be working on the wrong line of inquiry, but at least we are trying our best with the available data,

Yes. To the tune of... how many billions of dollars? Oh, I know you're not getting any of the big money, but the funding for "AIDS" is an outrage, compared to what's spent on real diseases. Even if "AIDS" existed as a separate disease,it would be still completely insignificant compared to Heart Disease and Cancer.
I don't mind scientists working on the wrong line of enquiry, but I bemoan the fact that other directions are not funded at all.

If HIV denialists hope to contribute, they have better avenues to advance public health by supporting research contrary to the mainstream views and coming up with workable preliminary experimental data that can be build upon,

No, they don't. I pointed out already that there is absolutely no funding for No-HIV AIDS research. Even Peter Duesberg, a member of the National Academy, cannot get any research money for AIDS. But the people who should definitely get funded to come up with fresh and unadulterated ideas are the toxicologists and the pharmacologists.

...and a lot of times profiteering from books and publicity rather tahn putting the money and effort into hard research.

Again: Who will pay for it? Even the janitor who sweeps up the lab, won't work for nothing.
Until the day the whole HIV/AIDS paradigm collapses, or I win 100 million euros in the lottery (whichever comes first), there won't be a chance to do serious research
So until that day, all I can do is complaining. I'm sorry if you find my arguments rude. But, you know, sometimes people run out of patience and blow up. That obviously happened to Dan. He was there when it all started to happen. And he is not joking when he is saying he's fighting for his right to live. On the basis of those wacky "HIV tests" some of his friends were talked into taking the medicines. They're dead now. Dan is not a scientist, but we shouldn't blame him for getting fed up with scientists once in a while. He just senses they're bullshitting. I, on the other hand, know it. And I also know why.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 18, 2006 8:35 PM

Wilhelm, another person living in his own narrow defined world

(1) All scientific findings are peer reviewed, HIV research inclusive, you are the subset of persons who remains recalcitrant even when most of the recent HIV research has been tested, appraised, and validated. When I described you as the impossible judge and jury, I am implying that in your stubborn mind, only methods that you understand are valid, others that you have not make an effort to understand are fairy tales and witches brew, you are living in your own "molecular techniques is wizardry" world when the same techniques have been applied and accepted in almost all science disciplines. You can aptly be described as the anti-molecular biology dinosaur

(2) What part of obligate blood borne virus do you not understand? "poof" when exposed to an open environment possibly be an exogenous infectious agent Obligate: A must, Blood-borne: Must only be in blood, or bodily fluid containing blood origin immune cells. Exogenous infectious agent? Your TYMV is one of the easy ones, its a plant virus, which usually has to spread via open environment; therefore when subjected to the harsh preparation procedures of centrifugation isolation and even harsher preparation procedures of electron microscopy, you were lucky enough to find some, and the fact TYMV is many times larger than any retrovirus, does that ring a bell in your ancient head? IF you want to try, go ahead, I'm pretty confident with the current HIV identification methods that utilises the whole range of HIV-specific protein, DNA, enzyme, protein, and antigen-detecting methods. Of course dinosaurs like you beg to differ. I for one won't waste too much time and money being bogged down by "physical methods are obligatory in describing everything - akin persons have AIDS, its because of AZT, lets physically spin down AZT, AZT is the cause of AIDS

(3) As I mentioned earlier, HIV containing fractions can be spin down using ultracentrifugation, we already know its approximate size, and such fractions can be invaribly used to infect cells or people. If you can;t believe it is HIV, then its still an infectious agent related to AIDS, but it is definitely tested not to be AZT or HAART, as it can replicate. And understandably, if we subject these fractions to harsh microscopy procedures, most of time we would not be successful, people have tried and gotten micrographs of HIV, but Wilheim just laugh off these breakthroughs as cartoons. Wilheim is living in his world of denial

(4) Sure, we culture HIV in cancerous Jurkat T4 cells, PHA is added to stimulate the presentation of CCR5 and C4 sirface receptors, the very entry point of HIV, can you understand that. And its plain false that you mention Jurkat T4 cells won;t get affected by HIV, they die too, not as drastically, because Jurkat cells double their numbers quickly, enough to replenish tthe ones killed off, its cancerous, understand? We use them because they are fast growing, hardy models to work with. Granted, its very obvious you have never worked with Jurket cells.

Moreover, I've already described to you HIV infection of human macrophages harvested from human blood donors, that does not need PHA stimulation - they already express CCR5 and CD4, perfectly natural - Wilheim's deviously sidestep this example I gave in order to promote his propaganda/misconception that cell cultures are wizardry

(5) Isee, your justification that African HIV is not USA HIV is because "the first AIDS cases were clustered in the gay community" and later "African AIDS cases were described" Horseshit-misdirection. Obviously, people already know that the earliest ever sample that is HIV positive originates from Africa. And whole genome sequencing has clearly identified as the same HIV-1 or HIV-2. Second, do you knwo why "the first AIDS cases were clustered in the gay community", because American institutions are selfish, they won;t study anything unless it afflicts them as well, so the gay cluster acquired AIDS, they begin to study HIV-AIDS, and tracked it back to its origin in Africa. Undertsand? If gay AIDS clusters never occured in the USA, the USA instituions would probably still be attributing sick-drop-dead-AIDS victims in Africa to endemic diseases or malnutrition, as arrogantly as you, Wilheim, just did.

(6) There are already well documented clinical case reports of otherwise healthy athletes or babies or trauma patients becoming HIV-positive after receiving HIV tainted blood. Enough said, don't you resort to sad speculations about Magic Johnson, Wilheim, that will just let us look at you with disdain

(7) I've addressed my opinions about p24 antigen tests in the immediate post before to Gene Sermon, I think Wilheim didn't even care to read it properly, Its a good guess that his intent is just to create trouble and misinformation

(8)Yeah, no one cared to look at malaria before, because the USA deemed it not their problem. Now with global temperatures rising, and mosquito malaria vectors venturing further north into pristine USA, and malaria developing resistance to the only available treetments, they are seriously starting to give the "Third World Tropical Disease" a look. Good observaton Wilheim. HIV is just another that the USA has put on its priority list, simple as that. Heart diseases and the problem of obesity too.

(9)Ironically, any funding we receive goes all out into the research to solve diseases such as HIV, we get peanuts and of course a lot of us will develop disease from the noxious reagents and radiation we risk in our experiments. SO therein lies our dedication and sometimes sacrifice.

But certainly the likes or Wilheim and Dan likes to stereotype us as devils profiteering. They can think what they like, at least we're spending our lives working on the problem, they don;t appreciate trying to solve a problem, they just sit around idly on their misconceptions, resisting knowledge contrary to thier perceptions, embracing and spreading misinformation, spit profanities, complaining, shrieking, yet spending and doing little to work on the science, some individuals even profit from the selling of misinformative/dissentive bestsellers books, alternative "vitamins" therapy and by the hour $ charge personal apperances (and yet to accuse us of profiteering)

wasting my time in the process

I do not think you want to do research, you prob wish to profit from the whole denial issue, or at least try to get your name out after decades of scientific drought

We all know that to start a meaningful preliminary experiment, you need less than 500,000 dollars, I'm sure you can get the authors of bestsellers to finance you if the official fundings are not forthcoming. These authors seem genuine enough to to cause against AIDS. Don;t complain to us of not having the cash to do research, we all know that research starts cheap and small, its promising preliminary experiments that wins us more funding.

Yeah I only work for AUD2K per month thats only USD1472, and I'm not complaining about backbreaking 24/7 in the lab. So, is your back aching, Wilheim, from sitting to long in front of the computer?

Posted by: viji | June 18, 2006 11:11 PM

Godschalk and other "dissidents" are deliberately conflating HIV p24 with other proteins also having a molecular weight of approximately 24 kDaltons.

The fact that two proteins may have the same approxiamte molecular weight does not make them identical or even necessarily related. Oranges and apples can have the same weight. That does not make them identical.

HIV has been sequenced. The part of the genome coding for HIV p24 has been identified. It is not endogenous.

Recombinant HIV p24 is availble from AIDS reagent programs. Monoclonal antibodies directed towards conserved epitopes of the HIV-p24 protein. Tests using these monoclonal antibodies have been tested against recombinant HIV p24.

The fact that "dissidents" continue to conflate HIV p24 with other unrelated proteins with approximately the same molecular weight only demonstrates their intention to deceive.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 18, 2006 11:55 PM

The Perth Group have recently written:

Item 40, Does HIV Fulfil Koch's Postulates for AIDS? If one accepts that "HIV" and "HIV" antibodies exist, then one has no choice but to also accept that Koch's postulates have been fulfilled which means that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

On the other hand Duesberg is adamant that HIV exists and is a normal retrovirus that cannot cause AIDS.

The two views are diammetrically opposed.

Why don't these two opposing groups hold a debate?

They both express their willingness to publicly debate the issue. Why not debate each other? It's not lack of funds.

I've even offered to donate money for the cause.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 19, 2006 1:00 AM

Piss,

why is it that a dude who got mostly everything right, like Peepee Duesberg, is a 'denialist' -

mostly everything - AZT croaks folks, to know infection is no infection, dormant DNA don't infectious pathogenesis make...

And F-bombs like Gallo, Ho and yoself, who get almost everything wrong, are not?

Everything wrong - the tests, the drugs, the attitude of ungratitude? The devil eats details like you for breakfast, and sh*ts them out at midnight, and you feel born-again, doncha?

And here you are, everyday, ready to poop on 'denialism', like Dan's, Dan who lives despite your good wishes that he, like other ungrateful Gay men, would just get the message and die (I mean, go get his death sentence through official channels, so you can pretend to wrench your back stuffing the bone-marrow evacuating pills into his gut)?

And you war-ry that the 'denialists' don't debate each other? Hey f-wad, go read a little about yo project and see what yous find in terms of general agreement among the death-cultists. Apoptosis, Absentee infection, non-pathogenic naked DNA kills people? HIV is truck, HIV needs co-drivers, HIV needs a break?

Hey s-head, here's a hypo-thesis: Go find the toilet where your mother conceived you and say a little prayer that you get to look at sunsets without the gay police rounding you up for testing.

Good work, Piss. You're beloved to us all. Piss, you really are a hero to millions (of uninformed, terrified people). What I wouldn't give to see the future history of this religion of yo's.

F-y'all! Happy f-mas!

*Sigh*

Posted by: Piss Knowsbull | June 19, 2006 2:09 AM

Piss Knowsbull wrote:

And you war-ry that the 'denialists' don't debate each other? Hey f-wad, go read a little about yo project and see what yous find in terms of general agreement among the death-cultists. Apoptosis, Absentee infection, non-pathogenic naked DNA kills people? HIV is truck, HIV needs co-drivers, HIV needs a break?

"Rethinkers" love to point to differences between different "orthodox" AIDS researchers. This is supposedly a weakness whereas the vast differences between various "alternative" AIDS theories are somehow a sign of strength. The "big tent" approach.

The has been and still is strong debate within AIDS researchers about various aspects of this disease. This occurs through peer-reviewed journals and at scientific conferences. This debate is a fundamental part of science.

The difference between this and "rethinkers" such as Duesberg and the Perth Group is that progress is made. AIDS researchers do more experiments, present new evidence and manage to convince their colleagues that their ideas are better. Eventually a consensus develops. There still remain many contentious issues but progress is being made.

In contrast Duesberg and the Perth Group are still stuck in their own pet theories. They can't manage to convince each other about anything. There is no progress in "rethinker" AIDS science because they aren't rethinking. They just keep on repeating the same stuff over and over again.

Duesberg will never agree with the Perth Group that if, as he claims, HIV exists it also fulfils Koch's postulates and causes AIDS.

The Perth Group will never agree with Duesberg that HIV exists.

They are stuck eternally in their own dogma.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 19, 2006 2:45 AM

The Perth Group have recently written: If one accepts that "HIV" and "HIV" antibodies exist, then one has no choice but to also accept that Koch's postulates have been fulfilled which means that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

In other words it would appear that the Perth Group is saying that Peter Duesberg must either recant his belief in the existence of HIV or accept that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

Love it!!

Posted by: Dale | June 19, 2006 10:30 AM

Even with the first tests and with poor samples they still found 36% of people with AIDS had detectable antibodies (within the detection limits of the test) to HIV. Controls from the general population do not. Why is this so?

Ok, it looks like you're attempting to answer my question, Chris, which was: I'd like to hear more about this scientific standard where a pathogen need only be found in 36% of people with the disease to be proclaimed as the cause of this disease. That sounds very interesting

You seem to be saying that 36% is good enough. My next question is how low can it go? 20%? 10%?

Poor samples, crude tests, the dog ate the samples, that's why I found "HIV" in only 36%. I swear all those fags have "HIV", there's just a lot of factors (excuses) beyond my control, ok? Please...just let me have this one, OK? When the hell do I get my Nobel prize?

Posted by: Dan | June 19, 2006 10:56 AM

How about this , Viji?

Let A = "unrooted HIV star phylogeny", recombinants of recombinants, a "continuum of genetic variants". Let SBHIVs = starburst HI virions "with different biological functions" and "no single virion structure". Let RT = reverse transcriptases with different isoforms. Then A => SBHIVs => RT deductive chain presents a frame for previous points and reconciles Wilhelm and Duesberg. And, since we're playing symbolic logic, factor the chain into the African and Indian models. Consider also the lower bound heterosexual transmission rate from the PROSPECTIVE part of the Padian study, i.e. zero, and it comes to a great doubt that we need an epidemiologist to tell us that GIGO still holds. (BTW, do you know who and where I'm quoting? I guarantee, not denialist propaganda.)

"A simple observation that 'human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent' positive blood when used in blood transfusion to a person who is other wise healthy or 'human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent' negative, would soon become 'human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent' positive, and go on to develop 'human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent' 'associated' AIDS

It doesn't seem to me very different from the aetiology of AIDS with HIV. Perhaps if that line of research shows promising results, we could rename HIV as 'human physiological stress derived endogenous infectious agent' HPSDEIA"

Nice try, Viji, but I stand by EFFECT, not cause. I think you're trapped in circular reasoning, boxed into a positivist corner, so to speak, by the inventors of the AIDS virus. Wilhelm, Hank and I are trying to free you from this prison of their making. Let's recapitulate the theoretical points scattered all over the table.

Which model better meets Leibniz' test - a theory has to be simpler than the data it explains, otherwise it does not explain anything - your or ours? Incremental inductivism is also a belief system; your facts are theory laden. Example: HIV hijacks cellular proteins. Really, Viji, you actually said that! (Presumably using its 9 heads and Star Wars shield?) Nor does DNA "direct" anything; very important for our form of life, but a template nonetheless. Nor am I saying that we can "socially construct" any old theory we want or that inductivism isn't the appropriate move in the right situation. Clearly Kuhn's historical assessment is valid in describing what constitutes scientific progress.

Given your concession on HIV associated proteins, you now have to seriously confront Wilhelm's challenge. These are not "whims" he's conveying but a distillation of classical theorizing in virology (another one of those damned competing heresies). One of the "old salts" has republished his 40 yr old purification proof where his retroviruses didn't go "poof" and using 20 ml, far from bleeding anyone dry.

I would say, given cDNA clones as proof of isolation (HIVs as "living fossils"), the "moving principle", hence the way forward is in the polymerases, RNPs and regulatory/enzymatic mRNAs. Then it starts to make sense that the cell, although it may be out of sync with the rest of the organism, is still in charge. This is the point of Urnovitz' informational focus on the dynamic genome and chronic disease. He defines HIV as a set of cellular signals. He's also said to NIH types: stop putting square pegs in round holes.

Like dogs chasing their tails, your gang throws around words like "pathogenic transmission", "replication", "infectious", "epidemiological data", etc. which you hurl like lightning bolts at opponents. But it all adds up to assuming your own conclusions.

It's over, Viji. HIV cytopathism is dead, dead, dead! Duesberg killed it a long time ago and the rest of you have to catch up. Your "disciplinary matrix' is heading off a cliff, so please stop smearing US as a threat to the public health. The body count, as you conceded re AZT, is on your side.

Speaking of denialism, dishing out advice and threats to the public health, why not focus your talents on the iatrogenic problem?

POP QUIZ

a) Which kills more in the good old USA per year, iatrogenic medicine or AIDS?

b) How many dogs can waste taxpayer money while chasing their tails on the head of a pin?

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 19, 2006 11:46 AM

"I should have double checked the references Gene provided, it seems now that the only relevant paper pertaining to the statement of p24 protein family involved in cargo selection for vesicle transport across membranes" came from
66. Francis DP. The search for the cause. (1983). p. 137-150 In: The AIDS epidemic Cahill KM, ed 1st ed
Odd. An old paper, that certainly did not include the latest genetic studies on HIV p24 (?)"

Here are the corrected Perth p24 references; an original error in transcription!

63. Vincent F, Belec L, Glotz D, Menoyo-Calonge V, Dubost A, Bariety J (1993). False-positive neutralizable HIV antigens detected in organ transplant recipients. AIDS 7: 741-742

64. Agbalika F, Ferchal F, Garnier JP, Eugene M, Bedrossian J, Lagrange PH. (1992). False-positive HIV antigens related to emergence of 25-30kD proteins detected in organ recipients. AIDS 6: 959-962

65. Stricker RB, Abrams D, Corash L. (1985). Target platelet antigen in homosexual men with immune thrombocytopenia. New England Journal of Medicine 313: 1375-1380.

66. Faulk WP, Labarrere CA. (1991). HIV proteins in normal human placenta. American Journal of Reproductive Immunology 25: 99-104

67. Schupbach J, Jendis JB, Bron C, Boni J, Tomasik Z. (1992). False-positive HIV-1 virus cultures using whole blood. AIDS 6: 1545-6

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 19, 2006 1:39 PM

Viji,

Here's another qote from the notorious Perth Group, (who like to make trouble for all sides), which connects to the HeLa statement I excerpted from the LINE 1 paper, (Both this and p24 quotes are from their MTCT Monograph),(Before everyone gets all excited, notice its mostly the authors of ref 71, NOT more of that denialist blasphemy):

In 1989, discussing their studies on human retroviruses, researchers from the University of New York wrote, "Irrespective of the origin of human retroviruses, their presence leads to both practical and theoretical concerns. Presently, the major practical concern is that effective use of PCR as a screening procedure for HTLV-I, HTLV-II and HIV infections must always include appropriate controls to ensure that no endogenous sequences contribute to positive signals. As previously noted, HIV unique primers corresponding to the highly conserved reverse transcriptase region...function well in the PCR amplification of HeLa DNA [a non-HIV-infected neoplastic laboratory cell line] even at annealing temperatures around 60ºC. Another practical concern is that the use of PCR for determining the possible retroviral etiology of a variety of human diseases may be complicated by endogenous retroviruses. Even if cDNAs are used for PCR templates,
the transcriptional activities of endogenous sequences must be considered" (71)(Interesting, wrong one here too!)

71.Shih A, Misra R, Rush MG (1989) Detection of multiple novel reverse transcriptase coding sequences in human nucleic acids: relation to primate retroviruses. Journal of Virology 63: 64-75 (correct ref)

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 19, 2006 2:13 PM

Gene you said,

(1) Let A = "unrooted HIV star phylogeny", recombinants of recombinants, a "continuum of genetic variants". Let SBHIVs = starburst HI virions "with different biological functions" and "no single virion structure". Let RT = reverse transcriptases with different isoforms. Then A => SBHIVs => RT deductive chain presents a frame for previous points and reconciles Wilhelm and Duesberg. And, since we're playing symbolic logic, factor the chain into the African and Indian models. Consider also the lower bound heterosexual transmission rate from the PROSPECTIVE part of the Padian study, i.e. zero, and it comes to a great doubt that we need an epidemiologist to tell us that GIGO still holds. (BTW, do you know who and where I'm quoting? I guarantee, not denialist propaganda.)

You're being incomprehensive to yourself and other people. Keep it simple, my understanding from what you;re saying is that (A) a "viral infectious agent" (in your case you would never agree it to be HIV, and which we've in the 2000s onwards clearly identified as two major variants HIV-1 and HIV-2, what are you trying to say with "recombinants of recombinants""continuum of genetic variants"?), (B) and the infectious agent have been observed and linked with a host of biological functions in "infected" persons i.e. AIDS, dramatic T-cell depletion, specific viral proteins, DNA etc.(phenomenons only exclusive to persons in whom this infectious agent is detected), and (C) this "viral infectious agent" uses non-endogenous (not found in uninfected persons) reverse transcriptase enzyme in its replicative life cycle. (i) How does this reconcile with Wilhelm and Duesberg? you mentioned "no single virion structure", I've explained before its not as easy as you think to resolve the structure of everything, especially no blood-borne retroviruses, BUT a few things we have to date that pin points an infectious agent (which we call HIV, and you not HIV), we have the crystal structure of HIV-RT which shows that it is not endogenous retrotransposons, and definitely not telomerases. We also have micrographs which Wilhelm ignore. We also have identified proteins specific and DNA sequences specific to HIV, what more do you need? you want us to create the HIV from scratch and show you the "9 heads and Star Wars shield"? (ii) Everytime we put forth the most recent by the year observation of HIV aetiology of AIDS in Africa and South Asia, you run and hide under you almost two decades old Pandian, which the above posts have already discussed the prospective studies' inherent weaknesses and low coverage. The study was done when out understanding of HIV is still slight, and when the tools to detect HIV was crude and flawed, and when there was social stigma of AIDS that may skew the study, and when a clear picture of HIV genetic and molecular studies were still absent, (iii) What is GIGO? I thought Tara is the epidemiologist, I am not, as her, or some other epidemiologist, don;t push funny questions to me when you know I can;t critically appraise it, I only know what I see from my hands on approach in the lab. And what about you? are you an epidemiologist yourself to peddle your own interpretations? And it does not seem you are actively involved in any research yourself, from the previous post where you mix and mince and mislead, even the statement above from you since to point that you are one of those mathematicians that what to model everything, when you know that the quality of a model depends on the information input, your's is solely based a certain 2 decade old prospective study

(2) Like dogs chasing their tails, your gang throws around words like "pathogenic transmission", "replication", "infectious", "epidemiological data", etc. which you hurl like lightning bolts at opponents. But it all adds up to assuming your own conclusions.

reflect this statement on yourself and your friends. I was wrong, you're just as incoherent and rude as your friends, the statement can equally read "Like dogs chasing their tails, your gang throws around words like "Gallo's a fraud, don;t trust anything else after Gallo", "molecular biology is wizardry, we need a witch-hunt, burn em all", "scientist are bad bad people, they exploit us poor souls", "what HIV-specific? lies, everything wrong with our body with is endogenous", "Pandian paper is truth, everything contrary to it is false conspiracy", which you hurl like lightning bolts at opponents, coupled with the most hideous profanities, and evil slanders. But it all adds up to assuming your own denials and conclusions.

(3)Nice try, Viji, but I stand by EFFECT, not cause. I think you're trapped in circular reasoning, boxed into a positivist corner, so to speak, by the inventors of the AIDS virus. Wilhelm, Hank and I are trying to free you from this prison of their making. Let's recapitulate the theoretical points scattered all over the table.

Am I? the effect is AIDS, many times reproduced and validated studies have provided strong correlations with HIV, or HIV markers. If you don't agree with a HIV virus, you can still see that its an infectious agent. And in which the most recent HAART regimens that targets the life cycle of this infectious agent that prolong the lifespan and halt the progression to AIDS in most cases. Wilhelm, Hank and you are just spreading your own gospel, with little hard data, apart from the monotonous Pandian and Gallo's a fraud party line. What you fail to realise is the notority and irresponsible impact of your misleading statements on AIDS prevention. And of course your're robbing away my time in the lab, Each of your cryptic comment takes at least an hour to understand and reply.

(4) It's over, Viji. HIV cytopathism is dead, dead, dead! Duesberg killed it a long time ago and the rest of you have to catch up. Your "disciplinary matrix' is heading off a cliff, so please stop smearing US as a threat to the public health. The body count, as you conceded re AZT, is on your side.(/i>

HIV cytopathism is still being observed in the lab and in the human body. Duesberg has his opinions, but he has yet to show a stich of clinical or laboratory data that points to his opinion. And his collegues have found him as stubborn as you, one-mindedly promoting his view and disregarding anything else contrary to that dead set view. I can say that Duesberg might just be having the same faults that all great intellects have, i.e. Stephen Hawking, doggedly holding on to his conceptions, whent he rest fo the world of intellects have moved forward on recent developments

(5) Given your concession on HIV associated proteins, you now have to seriously confront Wilhelm's challenge. These are not "whims" he's conveying but a distillation of classical theorizing in virology (another one of those damned competing heresies). One of the "old salts" has republished his 40 yr old purification proof where his retroviruses didn't go "poof" and using 20 ml, far from bleeding anyone dry.

I have adequately explained to Wilhelm about the differences between techniques that can be applied to different organisms. His is the classical theorizing in virology, he is still doggedly holding on to his "golden years". And a simple look at his comments will tell you how far removed from current research he is by his incessant chide of cell culture and molecualr biology. He has never worked on retrovirus Gene, he worked on a distinctly different and hardier plant virus. He failed to appreciate and comprehend the technical difficulties in studying animal viruses, more so blood borne retroviruses. To conform to Wilhelm's "classical" views in virology, is analogous to putting 18th century coal fired electric generation to 21st century nuclear power. Gene, if you wish to buy into what Wilheim professes, its your right, but I'm sure you don;t agree to his contentions of molecular biology being wizardry

(6)Which model better meets Leibniz' test - a theory has to be simpler than the data it explains, otherwise it does not explain anything - your or ours? Incremental inductivism is also a belief system; your facts are theory laden.

How much better is your working hypothesis, referenced only on Pandian and a motley of unaccredited and unvalidated "I don't believe in HIV-AIDS" websites. At least mine theories and real observations are still being challenged by the scientific process and reproduced in countless experiments and clinical observations. You don;t even have a conform working hypothesis, much less any preliminary data or experimental observation to back it up.

Stop goofing yourself. You're distracting me from my work. If you choose to buy in to Wilheim, who have done nothing in part of research in 40 years, and not even bothering to look at recent findings, just keep on arguing with yourself.

Posted by: viji | June 19, 2006 9:21 PM

Everytime we put forth the most recent by the year observation of HIV aetiology of AIDS in Africa and South Asia, you run and hide under you almost two decades old Pandian, which the above posts have already discussed the prospective studies' (1)inherent weaknesses and (2)low coverage. (3)The study was done when out understanding of HIV is still slight, and when the tools to detect HIV was (4)crude and (5)flawed, and when there was (6)social stigma of AIDS that may skew the study, and when a (7)clear picture of HIV genetic and molecular studies were still absent

I'm seeing a pattern here. It's called the litany of excuses. I numbered them for you. In bold, is the newest addition to the family, I'm betting you're going to try and get some mileage out of that one.

Posted by: Dan | June 20, 2006 12:56 AM

If you want to find out about viral LTRs, the difference between entities that show reverse transcription activity, i.e. telomerases, retrotransposons, retrovirus reverse transcriptase.

seek out this good, concise review, with references

Science 15 August 1997:
Vol. 277. no. 5328, pp. 911 - 912
DOI: 10.1126/science.277.5328.911
Perspectives
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY:
Telomerase and Retrotransposons: Which Came First?

Posted by: viji | June 20, 2006 2:54 AM

More on differences in LTRs found exclusively in retroviruses and LTRs found in some endogenous retrotransposons like HERV

Seek out.
Science 12 March 2004:
Vol. 303. no. 5664, pp. 1626 - 1632
DOI: 10.1126/science.1089670

Review
Mobile Elements: Drivers of Genome Evolution
Haig H. Kazazian, Jr.*

Posted by: viji | June 20, 2006 3:04 AM

They find that a certain protein reacts with antibodies from a seropositive individual. So this protein (p24) must be from HIV (do you get the logic?)

Wilhelm, you make it sound as though the HIV p24 sequence was just plucked randomly out of the human genome, which I know you know is not the case. HIV p24 sequences aren't found in healthy seronegative individuals nor even in all cells of seropositive individuals as any human gene or endogenous retroviral derived sequence would be. You also forgot to mention that seropositive individuals don't only make antibodies against p24 but make p24 itself. You further ignore that HIV p24 sequences are found in cells as part of a viral genome and that if the entire viral genome is amplified and purified away from other cellular DNA and proteins, that DNA can be put into uninfected cells which will then go on to make more infectious virus.

Posted by: Dale | June 20, 2006 2:47 PM

Buried in the mounds of random thoughts and concepts, Viji wrote:

Hank, I've read enough publications about AZT to know about its toxic side effects, and know that the toxic side affects are significant enough to suggests a reappraisal of its use in HIV therapy

Reappraise, Baby!

HB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 20, 2006 5:16 PM

The Pope speaks!

Just found this over at NAR. I think it speaks for itself:

For Dr Fauci has remarkably suggested that the best antidote to AIDS may be HIV itself.

But this great man deserves to speak in his own words, as found in his review paper in 2003 in the textbook "Fundamental Immunology" which was edited by William E. and published by Paul Lippincott Williams and Wilkins:

"Several investigators have demonstrated that there is an increase in CD4+ T cell proliferation in both HIV and SIV infection. In certain studies, the enhanced T cell proliferation that was observed during active disease was significantly decreased following the initiation of anti-retroviral therapy, and proliferation increased again in parallel with plasma viremia following the cessation of treatment in these individuals."

In other words, adding HIV to the bloodstream increases T cell count, ARV drug therapy decreases it, and the withdrawal of ARVs increases it again.

At one stroke, this kind of intervention - Fauci's brilliant implied suggestion here to replace antiretroviral drugs with a dose of HIV - will restore 61% of AIDS patients in this country to health overnight.

Posted by: Gene Semon | June 20, 2006 5:58 PM

Gene, and Anthony Liversidge who he is quoting, clearly do not understand the difference between antigen-driven T cell proliferation and homeostastic T cell proliferation. Which is remarkably ignorant given that we're supposed to believe that their wisdom on this particular subject trumps that of the world's working immunologists.

Posted by: Richard Jefferys | June 20, 2006 6:39 PM

Viji:
My previous (elaborate) answer to you was censured away, so I don't know how this one will fare. Strange, because there was nothing objectionable in it. Just a few snide remarks, that's all. But let's move on:

Don;t waste everyone's time by arguing for the sake of arguing, for example Wilheim's incessant prespective that there is no HIV p24, but some endogenous p24 family when there is no studies that indicate so, Wilheims just so boldly state his misconceptions without even a reference.

You know that's pretty shabby, dont-cha? because it was I who quoted that MIT paper on the p24 family, in my post of Jun 16, 10:47 It's still there, so you can check it out.
And in case nobody has hammered it through your thick skull yet: There is no HIV p24, just a fraudulent entry in the protein bank.
And indeed, if you would sequence all the p24 proteins involved in cargo loading of membrane vesicles, they are all different. But none belong to a virus.

ignoring any new studies that are contrary to Pandian views

What? You mean there are new long-term studies on discordant couples living together, without the negative partner getting "infected"? Show me quick; I must have missed something important. Actually I personally know several discordant couples (one pos., one neg.) They are too smart to let antiretrovirals come between them, and they're in the process of living happily ever after.

Am I? the effect is AIDS, many times reproduced and validated studies have provided strong correlations with HIV, or HIV markers.

Oh, that's it, right? Correlations. Well, there's a strong positive correlation between the number of traffic accidents and the price of beans in Boston. Does that mean that one is the cause of the other? I dont think so, and if you don't believe me, ask Tara; that's within her field.

His is the classical theorizing in virology, he is still doggedly holding on to his "golden years". And a simple look at his comments will tell you how far removed from current research he is by his incessant chide of cell culture and molecualr biology

Theorizing? In my "golden years" we studied objects that we could isolate and perform measurements on. Molecular Biology was fine until you guys made a mess of it.
Look, I have nothing against cell or tissue culture. I've used it myself. But it's only useful for culturing viruses. Over-ambitious young investigators tend to forget they are dealing with live cells, where still a lot goes on that we don't even know yet. If you actually try to perform measurements in a cell culture, it's like looking at a specimen under a microscope in the middle of a cesspool.
For valid mesurements, you have to take a virus out of its growth medium; in other word: Isolation.

What is GIGO?
That's an easy one, fortunately. It's a computer term meaning "Garbage In - Garbage Out". And it applies prefectly to most of "HIV science".

Your struggle will just confuse the masses, if you want to show that your views are correct, and redirect research efforts to the right path, then come up with preliminary experiments that can be looked upon and a working hypothesis that can be worked upon

Eh... In case you've heard of Marie Antoinette (European history), this is a "Let them eat cake" argument.
You know that's not a valid option, so why be hypocritical about it. So if we confuse the masses, it's because we want to. It's our only chance to break the corrupt system wide open.

Worse, Wilheim just attributes techniques that he clearly does not understand as heresy or wizardry. Where does he base his misconception that sequencing cannot differentiate between endogenous and exogenous sources?

Well now, then this is your perfect opportunity to enlighten me (and the other bedazzled souls) about the subject.
So let's say, I give somebody who does sequencing for a living a sample. I'm pretty sure he will come up with a sequence. But how does he determine whether the sample was from endogenous or exogenous origin? For all he knows, I scraped the sample out of the cat's litterbox.

All of these techniques which have been separately developed by different groups and involved almost all disciplines known to science. So how can a case where all these are tested positive in a sample gathered from a AIDS patient be confounding. What else do you want?

We just want to be shown the link to a retrovirus they call HIV. Nothing more, nothing less.

Yet they have the nerve tp shriek at us that have already outlived the Gallo finding to develop ever more accurate and testable findings on HIV-AIDS

I think we agree that Gallo's work was sloppy. So why don't you show us who, in the next generation, has done the work that Gallo claimed he had done: Discovering HIV. (or inventing it, or whatever).

He has never worked on retrovirus Gene, he worked on a distinctly different and hardier plant virus. He failed to appreciate and comprehend the technical difficulties in studying animal viruses, more so blood borne retroviruses.

Virology owes a big debt to the plant virologists. The advantage of plant viruses is that they can be obtained in a higher yield, when cultured in living green plants. They are not necessarily hardier. TYMV, for example is very similar to Polio virus. If an animal virus is so unstable that it says "poof" when you try to isolate it, I get very suspicious of the research. A virus that can't even keep itself together outside the host, has no basis to exist as an exogenous infectious agent. So it may only exist in the minds of callous money grabbers and gullible young scientists.
And don't you dare calling "HIV" a "blood borne retrovirus". They've never found it in blood, for catsake! All they've got is "Viral Load". And that can be any nucleic acid crap the human body can produce.

No, I don't believe you and your colleagues are devils, Viji. But... Do you know who that guy was, with the black hat, and the goat's feet sticking out from under his long coat, Viji? I mean the guy who offered you that scholarship.

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 20, 2006 7:23 PM

Dale:
Good to hear a serious argument again, for a change.
But you know, I'm the guy who asks the right questions, not the guy who has all the answers.

HIV p24 sequences aren't found in healthy seronegative individuals nor even in all cells of seropositive individuals as any human gene or endogenous retroviral derived sequence would be.

If we discount the possibility that they didn't look hard enough (after all, most of the HIV snufflers look at the problem through tunnel vision), then the only conclusion we may draw from this fact is that there is something special going on in seropositive individuals. Looking in the list of sixty-some conditions (including pregnancy) that can cause a positive test, I get a little discouraged. It will take a major effort to find out why this sequence suddenly shows up. One explanation could be, that it's easier to find something if you're seriously looking for it.
The molecular geneticists are generally too big for their britches. They tend to explain every cellular phenomenon in terms of "switched on" or "switched off" genes. Even when a
simple explanation, based on the laws of physical chemistry would suffice. The original Watson & Crick model is certainly too simplistic; there is far more going on.

You also forgot to mention that seropositive individuals don't only make antibodies against p24 but make p24 itself.

Of course they do. And I honestly think that seronegative individuals also make p24 (in fact, the whole p24 family).
What about the antibodies against p24? Well, a living organism is not just a bag of genes and enzymes. Our body, and its individual cells, are compartmentalized, so that the separate sections can each perform their functions. Now if our p24 protein (the one the HIV-hustlers claim as their own) is sitting at a cell membrane, doing its job of loading up lipid vesicles with the right cargo, it normally stays there, and never takes an excursion into the blood stream or the lymph system. So the immune system has never encountered it, and there are no antibodies against it. But an illness or a pathological condition may result in p24 being leaked into the bloodstream. And then the immune system will strike against it. It is seen as "foreign", although it is an endogenous protein.
This is not a far-fetched fantasy of mine: There are known examples: A diseased heart or liver will leak enzymes (such as Lactic Dehydrogenase) into the bloodstream. And these enzymes are used for diagnostic purposes.
The LDH enzymes from the heart and the liver are different, by the way. What does this mean for the genome inside heart- or liver cells? Is the human genome really as uniform throughout the whole body as they say?

Lots of open questions. But nobody is working on them, because the conclusion has been fixed beforehand: This particular p24 must come from an outside virus (HIV), and anybody who doesn't believe that gets no more money, and his ass is grass. But it's just this point that is lacking proof. DNA has a way of reproducing, if you put it in a cell (just like rabbits). But just because it is separated from human proteins and other DNA does not convince me that it is viral. They never show real viral particles, just like the poker player who never shows his hole card, after all the other players fold.

Very funny. But increasing proliferation of T cells doesn't necessarily increase T cell count. T cell count is a measure of the difference between cell proliferation and cell death.

Very funny indeed. But, eh... You're not going to feed us the faucet/drain theory of Ho again, are you Dale? Please!
Maybe we should go into the T-cell counting technique itself. Maybe that would tell us something. If there are T-cells, and they are not counted... Does that mean they're not there? Very much like the famous question aboutthe falling tree in the woods. don't you think?

Posted by: Wilhelm Godschalk | June 20, 2006 8:57 PM

Gene Semon and other "rethinkers" keep on attempting to conflate HIV p24 with totally unrelated proteins with the only justification that they have the same molecular weight.

HIV p24 shares homology with nucleocapsid proteins from other retroviruses such as equine infectious anemia virus, HTLV-I, mouse mammary tumor virus, feline immunodeficiency virus.

It is unrelated to the emp24/gp25L/p24 family

The only thing in common is that they have approximately the same molecular weight.

Also immunoelectronmicroscopy shows that antibodies directed to HIV GAGp24 bind to the nucleocapsid in HIV.

Fine structure of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and immunolocalization of structural proteins.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 20, 2006 11:31 PM

Gene, you haven't yet looked at the most recent reviews I posted above on the differences between entities that has reverse transcription activity, namely endogenous retrotransposons, endogenous telomerases, and exogenous viral reverse transcriptase (the enzyme associated with exogenous retrovirus) have you? or are you ignoring these latest 2004-2006 reviews, in favour of the earlier pioneering observations you reference? The studies you reference were the early landmark studies in those respective areas of research, i.e. first time look at the comparisons between endogenous ERVs and exogenous HIVs

More research have been done in these respective study areas, we have discovered so much more so much since those early studies, and much more observations were gathered since that time to give us a better picture of it. Read the reviews I've posted before and understand the differences between endogenous retrotransposons, telomerases, and viral reverse transcriptase before you start barking the same old arguments

This whole line of discussion started with the HIV tests involving the use of HIV RT activity levels as an indicator. As I have clearly explained in posts before, we already know sufficiently that HIV RT works in very different ways and is structurally different than endogenous retrotransposons, and although both does reverse transcription, each reverse transcribes only their exclusive targets, i.e. retrotransposons recognises poly A sequences, while HIV RT recognises viral LTR. Read the reviews and you will understand their ultimate function and function mechanism is mutually exclusive.

And again i stress, we do not only look at one particular HIV test or marker to determine HIV infections, but a multitude of techniques involving totally distinct disciplines of science, so the chances of a false determination of infection is very low. Don;t get yourself deluded by the early studies which utilises only the one available methods, those methods were crude and sometimes inaccurate, but other much stringent methods have already been developed and routinely used

Harking on the pittfalls of crude tests developed and used 2 decades ago is analogous to trying to run your latest RPG with extreme graphics on a DOS run PC.

And your accusations are just equally annoying, to my knowledge I have yet in any case avoided any of your arguments, trying my best to post your latests and relevant developments in the areas, while you have been avoiding all the same questions I have on your working hypotheses. Refelct this on yourself, and stop barking accusations.

the HIV RT activity test issue : already given you adequate references to let you scrutinise the difference between HERVs and HIV RTs

the p24 tests, I was mislead by you before on you and Wilhiems branding of a certain "human p24 protein family" which I recently found is a fantasy spun by Wilheim with no references, or I've missed it, in any case, I believe Chris has already clarify the p24 antigen issue, with the lates references posted to validate his comments.

Wilheim, in the MIT paper you referenced, there is no mention of the p24 family of vesicle proteins as equivalent to the HIV p24. Chris has earlier posted links that let you see the distictive difference in between HIV p24 and emp24/gp25L/p24 family of vesicle proteins. Look it up first before you start replaying your misconceptions like a broken old recrod. Look for his comments June 19, 2006 02:19 AM

Comments on the weaknesses of the old Pandain paper has been highlighted in very early comments of this blog post. Read them. If you don't appreciate the inaccuracy of early tests to detemine HIV infection and the difficulties in such a study, i.e. social stigmata on AIDS, unclear concepts on AIDS, then go on hiding behind your old Pandian paper and ignoring laboratory observations that can are reproducible.

Wilhiem, despite you touting your "missing and now republished" comments as scientific, anyone can look carefully and find that there is not even a stich of science in his post of June 20, 2006 07:23 PM, like I said arguing for the sake of arguing, analogous to:

There was a time when people thought the Earth was flat, there were no space ships to take us to the heavens (space) above to see our great blur green globe, or landmark voyages to circumvent oir globe. Thus people settled to the misconception that the Earth was flat, because that seems most logic
As the science of astrology and geometry developed, some people began to question this explanations, the cutting edge astrological and geometrical calculations seems to point of a spherical globe. But people who did not understand these new techniques cried heresy! A lad who clearly lacks the trainign and understanding of such new techniques, Wilheim the ancient, argued vehemently that the Earth can't be round, because he contends that everyone who tries standing on a round surface upside down will surely fall flat on his face. There goes his logic, arguing for the sake of arguing, despite so many reproducible astrological observations and accurate geometric calculations. But the intellectuals knew better, they worked on top of this preliminary observations, they stake and took risks, and finally people successfully circumvent the globe.... and what does Ancient Wilhiem do? he was quite a showman, he gathered the uninfarmed masses in the city square, tried to stand upside down on a sphere and fell falt on his face.... He shrieked to the masses,.. YOU SEE!!! THE EARTH CAN'T BE ROUND, ELSE WE WILL BE FALLING OFF, I DON'T KNOW WHAT THOSE ASTRONOMY, GEOMETRY, VOYAGES ARE, THEY MUST BE WIZARDS AND WITCHES ART!

Until Wilhiem studies the techniques and perform the experiments, or read the recent findings, he'll just be another dinosaur shrieking his ill informed judegements! Arguing for the sake of arguing.

Sums it up

Posted by: viji | June 21, 2006 1:35 AM

For anyone that cites "mainstream" papers as evidence for "alternative" theories: write to the authors and ask them whether they agree with your theories.

If they don't agree with your interpretation - why?

It is a common "rethinker" tactic to cite authors like Howard Temin and pretend that his work supports "rethinker" views. Write to Temin and ask him.

The title of this paper should provide some clues - HIV causes AIDS

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 21, 2006 2:10 AM

PS. Viji:

The paper that people like Hank Barnes keep on misrepresenting is by Nancy Padian not Pandian.

TYMV is smaller than HIV.

That isn't the point.

TYMV was one of the workhorses of early virology precisely because it was extremely easy to obtain ver high yields of virus. It even forms crystalline arrays in infected cells.

It is nonsense to insist that all other viruses that have been found subsequently must behave like TYMV.

Posted by: Chris Noble | June 21, 2006 2:46 AM

To follow up on Chris's point about cites, the attempt by the "Rethinking AIDS" group to defend Celia Farber's article cites excellent immunology papers by Zvi Grossman, Guido Silvestri, Guy Gorochov, Mario Roederer, Marc Hellestein etc. But these researchers all understand that HIV causes AIDS because their work - which details the pathogenic effects of HIV on the T cell immune system - tells them as much. So, in fact, the denialists are not arguing with the science (since they're citing it!), they're arguing with their own ignorant obsession with the ideas of Robert Gallo and David Ho, which are irrelevant for immunologists working on HIV pathogenesis.

It really just highlights the fact that this is not an issue that has "sides" - this notion is a false construct used for rhetorical purposes by denialists. And it works well for some people, since it creates a nice "us and them," anti-establishment kind of thing. But in the terms of this construct, researchers like Zvi Grossman are on the other "side" from Rethinking AIDS - so why are they citing his work? They also cite Marc Hellerstein's excellent research, which exquisitely details the immunological perturbations caused by HIV, and documents how those peturbations resolve as a result of effective antiretroviral therapy. I cannot imagine the cognitive contortions that are involved in this kind of thinking (or should that be "rethinking").

Hellerstein's most recent paper is in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, one of the few remaining journals that offer completely free online access, so it can be read in full here:

http://www.jci.org/cgi/content/full/112/6/956

Can the denialists here share their interpretation of these data? Perhaps they can explain why they think the depletion of long-lived naive and central memory CD4 and CD8 T cells occurs in HIV infection if HIV is benign? Or maybe they think such a loss is clinically unimportant? I'd be interested in finding out.

Posted by: Richard Jefferys | June 21, 2006 9:26 AM

Noble writes:

It is a common "rethinker" tactic to cite authors like Howard Temin and pretend that his work supports "rethinker" views. Write to Temin and ask him.

Umm, Temin is dead.

Good cite to the Blatter, Gallo, Temin debate though.

But, is there a reason you omitted Duesberg's initial piece and his response thereto? The entire exchange is here.

Another debate is festering at Lew Rockwell's site.

HankB

Posted by: Hank Barnes | June 21, 2006 12:53 PM