While all the HIV "dissidents" are milling around....

I suppose Barry that my objection to your wording of your two claims is that it implies a couple of things that I wouldn't agree with. First your wording implies that HIV disease is nothing more than CD4+ decline and that all CD4+ decline is equivalent. CD4+ decline in HIV disease is a measure of immune status. Transient CD4+ decline in, for example, atheletes is a measure of something else altogether. Second, the wording of your second claim implies that a causal relationship between CD4+ decline and factors other than HIV has been established to a greater degree of certainty than the causal relationship between CD4+ decline/immune status and HIV. The only factors for which I'm fairly certain that is true (such as some cancers, chemotherapy or immunosuppressive therapy for autoimmune disorders or to prevent organ transplant rejection), are factors which I expect would play a prominent role in a patient's history and therefore would be taken into consideration before designating HIV as the major or only cause of a particular patient's immune deficiency.

I disagree with you about the Culshaw piece. Although I found the introduction a reasonable summary of the current state of HIV modeling, I was disappointed to see that Dr. Culshaw didn't do anything more than make a suggestion. Does her suggestion enable HIV disease progression to be modeled more accurately than current models? Who knows? Perhaps her suggestion has already been tried and rejected. I would note that human immunology has, in the past decade or so, moved away from thinking of matureT-cells as being either Th1 or Th2, primarily because it has become clear that human T cells are far more complicated than that.

Thanks, Dale.

Please feel free to offer alternative claims, worded in a way you think is more fair.

Competing claims: 1. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency.
2. HIV is neither infectious nor causes AIDS.

Claim 2 could be divided into (i) HIV is infectious but non pathogenic. The clinical symptoms labeled AIDS are the result of a combination of non-infectious factors including lifestyle, malnutrition and ARVs. AIDS in Africa at least is not a single entity but a new name for a collection of previously described diseases. (Duesberg) (iii) HIV is not infectious because it is not a virus. The various phenomena ascribed to HIV (DNA sequences, antibodies, antigens) are the result of cellular processes that are the cause of immune deficiency. (Perth group)

Dale,

In your rewording above, are you currently disavowing the orthodox position that HIV attacks CD4 T cells?

You left out any mention of such in both of your rewordings on both sides of the issue.

I should say, Dale, that you seem to be currently, in your rewordings, disavowing that CD4 cells attack, suppress, or have anything at all to do with HIV or AIDS. Is this so?

Dale wrote:Competing claims: 1. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency.
2. HIV is neither infectious nor causes AIDS.

It is a mistake framing the "debate" in this manner. Claim 2 is just "not 1". It isn't really a competing explanation. It is a mon-explanation.

What are the competing explanations for the causation of AIDS?

1. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency.
2. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency by inducing selenium deficiency.
3. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency but vitamin c is a more effective treatment
4. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency but intravenous ozone is a more effective treatment.
5. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency only when other cofactors are present.
6. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency but iatrogenic spread via dirty needles is the dominant means of transmission in Africa.
7. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency but was created in a conspiracy to wipe out gays and blacks.
8. HIV is a harmless passenger virus that just happens by remarkable coincidence to infect the same risk groups that get AIDS.
9. HIV does not exist. AIDS is caused by oxidative stress that just happens by a remarkable coincidence to produce proteins and RNA/DNA that have an uncanny resemblance to other lentiviruses.
10. AIDS is caused by antibiotics.
11. AIDS is caused by corticosteroids.
12. AIDS is caused by AZT.
13. AIDS is caused by Factor VIII.
14. AIDS is caused by stress.
15. AIDS is caused by malnutrition.
16. AIDS is caused by undiagnosed Treponema pallidum.
17. AIDS is caused by HHV6
18. AIDS is caused by benzene in lubricants.
19. AIDS is caused by alcohol
20. AIDS is caused by nitrites
21. AIDS is caused by heroin.
22. AIDS is caused by semen.
23. AIDS is caused by cocaine
24. AIDS doesn't exist
25. Not only does HIV not exist but neither do any human disease causing viruses.
26. The whole "germ theory of disease" is false.

Other people can add to the list. Not all of the above claims are mutually exclusive but many of them are.

It is not unreasonable to expect "rethinkers" to select one claim (or a small number of consistent claims consistent with Occam's razor) and attempt to provide evidence to support the claims. To just argue "not 1" is just a sign that you have no valid credible alternative.

Competing claims: 1. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency.
2. HIV is neither infectious nor causes AIDS.

Wow, Dale. Your "new and improved" statements sure are simple. Why, what's one to do if he is not born into the belief that the world revolves around HIV? Praise, Jesus. I'll tell ya what...one might entertain a completely counter belief system as accurate. Picture it: an otherwise healthy twenty-something male suffering severe immune dysfunction, yet not a trace of HIV. What's a doc to do?

Please Dale, DO tell us all how a case such as mine fits into your new and improved worldview? And try not to be so simple this time. Here's a hint: you'll need to offer an explanation that captures the intrinsic difference in the PCP that I endured and the PCP that afflicts the "real" AIDS patients. If you choose to invoke the powers of HIV, I'd appreciate it if you could explain the causal mechanism in your explanation. That's not too much to ask, is it?

Kevin

(Btw, I wouldn't look to Chris Noble for inspiration, for his last post demonstrates that he is clearly overwhelmed by such complexities.)

Chris.

As soon as you take Occam's razor to the multitude of AIDS defining diseases that HIV is somehow responsible for, and show us just ONE SINGLE SOLITARY THING that HIV does FOR SURE, we will be glad to trim down the 101 multifactorial causes as well.

Kevin,
The hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS does not and never has implied that all immunodeficiency must be caused by HIV. Therefore your particular case is not relevant to the question of whether HIV causes immunodeficiency.

Chris,
I agree that claim 2 is in essence a negation of claim 1.

lincoln, you know the one thing that HIV predominantly does is infect CD4 cells and cause CD4 cell depletion (HIV dementia is another manifestation of HIV disease).

The list of AIDS defining conditions are to differing degrees all directly related to CD4 depletion.

Hi Chris.

Chris, you said:

"lincoln, you know the one thing that HIV predominantly does is infect CD4 cells and cause CD4 cell depletion"

I do? I don't think so. I know that you and lots of other people believe it does, but I am not to be counted among the faithful in this belief

Are you sure about this infection of CD4 T cell stuff Chris? Cause I can't find any cites on something that was isolated and proven to be HIV ever being isolated from a human CD4 T cell, and strangely enough, Bobby Gallo admitted down there in your neck of the woods just a couple of weeks ago that he had not ever isolated HIV from human T Cells that was infectious to other T Cells.

Can you show me a cite where anyone has proven that HIV has actually been isolated from any human T cell or that any human T cell has actually been killed by HIV? Just because the count is low does not mean they are dead or killed off. They may simply be turned off or something.

And by the way, Chris, speaking of HIV dementia, can you show me the cite where HIV has actually been proven to be causing any type of cellular damage whatsoever in any brain cells? I am talking about cellular level damage here Chris. Not just evidence of RT or scrambles of proteins thought to be HIV found in various brain tissues. I am talking about a whole HIV retrovirus that is contagious to other cells here buddy.

And no computer animated stuff, OK Chris? I know how difficult it can be for you to separate your computer animation work from reality sometimes, but please give it your best.

You attack the dissidents but almost daily their predictions, one by one, are proven right.

Magic Johnson now test negative, Tommy Morrison is alive and well, the hetero epidemic never happened, HAART is now known to account for 48.2% of 'AIDS' deaths.

You may call it 'luck'. I call it science.

(I doubt you will allow this to post - censorship is the tool of the 'AIDS' establishment).

First I had to explain to Dr. Noble what 'HIV' actually means, now it seems I have to do the same with AIDS.

If Dr. Noble wants to be taken seriously, he would do well to understand that 'AIDS' is just a name a convention; it doesn't necessarily correspond to a real object out there. Hence when we're discussing whether there is such a thing as AIDS (HIV + defining disease) one cannot just assume its existence in all one's formulations. Dr. Noble's inability to think outside this question begging circle is the first casualty of belief in HIV/AIDS - and there's a good reason for this.

So to proceed without the word 'AIDS', rethinkers say it is implausible to maintain that only one pathogen (HIV) is responsible for all cases of profound immuno-deficiency. Dr. Noble responds by saying to prove the HIV hypothesis wrong come up with a single other pathogen that's responsible for all cases of profound immuno-deficiency. Would Dr. Noble also demand of a polytheist or an atheist that if he wishes to prove the Christian God didn't create the universe, he should come up with an argument to support that Allah or jehova can explain the phenomena currently attributed to God?

In the meantime, I'm becoming increasingly educated. First I was taught how HIV defines opportunistic diseases for us, while teaching us that what we call the 'immune system' is in fact completely unrelated bodily responses to various stimuli, and that HIV does not ravage the 'immune system', only one component of it. Now Dr. Noble has proceeded to the next lesson on how HIV disease is related to the isolated component of the immune system it doesn't ravage after all.

"[What] HIV predominantly does is infect CD4 cells and cause CD4 cell depletion (HIV dementia is another manifestation of HIV disease). The list of AIDS defining conditions are to differing degrees all directly related to CD4 depletion." (Chris Noble)

One wonders what these "different degrees" are supposed to mean. Is it like the viral load - CD4 count - progression to AIDS and death correlation, sometimes weak, sometimes strong, sometimes there sometimes not there? Or is it an invisible correlation in individual cases that manifests itself when we apply certain statistical trickery? And what about Dementia being "another manifestation of HIV disease"? Is that "another" as in a non-CD4 related manifestation that, let me guess, 'we don't quite understand yet'?

I wondered if a bit of "tit for tat" quote mining might annoy the rethinkers. I see it did. I won't lose any sleep over it.

I should now take things a step further and, rethinker-style, plaster the news all over the web (with added invented extras) saying Dr Culshaw now supports the orthodox position on HIV/AIDS.

She will then specifically reject my claim and give a detailed explanation of exactly what she said and how it cannot possibly support the orthodox position on HIV/AIDS.

I will then, rethinker-style, completely ignore this and continue to misquote her liberally for ever more, proclaiming her as a champion of the orthodox view.

I will also go even further, and start to attribute to Dr Culshaw several other unprovenanced statements that suggest she supports the orthodox position.

I do however have a bit more integrity than this, so I won't do any of those things. Which is a lot more than I could say for the "rethinkers" who constantly refer to people like Padian, Rodriguez, Montagnier etc.

Thanks, Dale.

You proposed as competing claims:

1. HIV is an infectious agent that causes acquired immune deficiency.

2. HIV is neither infectious nor causes AIDS.

These have the benefit of conciseness (which I love). Before I read Dr. Culshaw's book, I would have accepted them in full. I still think they are pretty good.

But, the problems are with the terms "immune deficiency" in the first, and "AIDS" in the second. Both are too vague and capable of being misunderstood.

If HIV infected all or most of the different types of white blood cells and caused a generalized immune deficiency, I would agree fully with the wordings of your claims.

But, here is the CDC definition, which I don't think has been changed since 1993 (Feel free, anybody, to cite a more updated version, if I am incorrect).

In it, it states:

The CD4+ T-lymphocyte is the primary target for HIV infection because of the affinity of the virus for the CD4 surface marker.

So, in a nutshell, any claim to evaluate the evidence for and against the viral hypothesis must make specific mention of CD4 cell counts. CD4 cell depletion is the sine qua non of the disease called, AIDS. We all agree that opportunistic infections are unhealthy and should be treated accordingly. (e.g, Bactrim for PCP). But what differentiates the opportunistic infections from "AIDS" is the virus=>CD4 decline mechanism (and potentially the body's immune response)

But, stripping away of the CD4 cell counts and causation thereof, ignores a critical component of the science.

I'm sure all of us can agree that the viral theory of AIDS must be falsifiable and most likely is falsifiable. But, in my mind there is a 3-step definition of AIDS: Roughly, (1)Presence of HIV =>(2) CD4 decline (~200 cells/mm3) => (3) 1 or more of several opportunistic infections.

There may even be a 4th internal link (HIV causes an immune response which leads to depletion of CD4 cells and other immune problems).

But, to evaluate this claim, I have begun by focusing on the 2nd link: (1) What causes CD4 cell decline?

As detailed above, there are several items, independent of HIV, that do cause CD4 cells to decline.

This, of course, doesn't mean that HIV doesn't cause CD4 cell decline. (Sorry for double negative). This, though, logically, would be the next inquiry.

But, anyway, I think my original wordings of the competing claims are sufficiently clear, reasonable and fair to each side, so I'm gonna proceed with the claims as I outlined above.

Scientific Claim 1:

A retrovirus, named HIV, transmitted primarily through blood or semen, attacks and destroys CD4 cells, by an unexplained mechanism. This disabling of a critical component of the immune system leads to opportunistic infections and death, if untreated.

and...

Scientific Claim 2:

The causal link between the retrovirus => CD4 cell decline => opportunistic infections => death is unproven. Many different things cause CD4 cell decline; many different things cause opportunistic infections. Focusing narrowly on the retrovirus, to the exclusion of other possible factors of pathogenesis, is a mistake.

DT, You said: "I wondered if a bit of "tit for tat" might annoy the rethinkers".

I am a rethinker and I was not at all annoyed.

I was just wondering if you really have a tat on your tit or are simply offering your tit for a tat?

If so, could you describe it? I am referring to describing your tat, not describing your tit. Although you are welcome to do that as well, if you like, provided it is from a scientific perspective.

I personally, as a rethinker, don't have any tats on my tits, and don't know any rethinkers that do, but I often enjoy them on others.

Getting tits tatted seems to be a very in thing these days.

A friend of mine, again, not a rethinker, just got an interesting tat on his A.S.S., and I am not referring to his Aquired Stress Syndome.

Barry, I was trying to be concise. Should you prefer, I'll modify claim 1 as follows: HIV is an infectious agent that leads to a progressive decline in CD4+ T cells, inversion of the normal CD4+: CD8+ ratio, chronic immune activation and other perturbations in immune function that result in an eventual state of immune deficiency which is associated with a many fold higher than normal incidence of certain opportunistic infections and viral associated cancers. Focusing money and effort on the study of HIV is justified from a public health perspective by its infectious nature and its association with significant morbidity and mortality.

As far as claim 2 goes, it may not be appropriate to redirect the focus of study to CD4+ T cell alterations in peripheral blood in the absence of HIV infection for several reasons. Although CD4+ Tcells are a major target of HIV infection, they aren't the only target. HIV has been shown to infect other cell types (such as macrophages and microglia cells) that also express the proteins that serve as virus receptors on their cell membranes. The contribution of non T-cell, HIV infected cells to different aspects of HIV disease doesn't seem to be completely clear at least in the literature I've read but I don't think they can be ignored. Moreover, functional measures of immune status also suggest that not all immune system changes that occur during HIV disease progression are reflected in declines in peripheral blood CD4+ T cell counts. Thirdly, recent studies have suggested that a massive loss of CD4+ T cells that occurs in the gut immediately following HIV infection may play an important role in the pathology. It isn't clear that any of the other factors associated with T cell declines in the blood are also associated with T cell declines in the gut. So while CD4+ T cell decline in peripheral blood is a convenient marker of HIV disease progression, it clearly isn't the whole story. Which is why I think that while studying other factors that can cause CD4+ T cell decline may be useful, it will be important to distinguish between factors that cause transient cell declines and those that cause chronic declines and between factors causing declines with no apparent clinical consequences and those causing declines associated with increased sensitivity to oppportunistic infections. The major problem that I see with trying to look at non HIV causes of clinically relevant CD4+ T cell declines is that for the most part, patients suffering such declines are only identified after they are already immune deficient.

Dale.

Are you capable of picking a simple claim and sticking to it, or do you prefer us to jump through hoops and barrels and rings of fire in an attempt to understand what it is that you believe HIV actually does?

You missed your true calling. You really should have been a politician! You would have made an excellent president in defining what the definition of "is" is, or you could have been a secretary of state explaining to the press why we need to be in Iraq.

Your simplifications and clarifications of Barry's quite to the point and understandable competing claims are getting more and more complicated and less and less clear and more and more obscure, and less and less specific in every word you wrote for your Claim Number 1.

And I completely missed any point you were trying to make in your addressing of Claim Number 2. There must be a point there somewhere, but God only knows what it is.

Chris was unable to do so, but perhaps you Dale, will show us just ONE SINGLE SOLITARY THING that HIV does FOR SURE, instead of the use of obscure wordings such as "leads to" and "associated with" and all of your other maybe could be's.

You are also welcome to declare and proclaim to us that HIV is absolutely the cause of AIDS simply because you say so, as the fairly elected president of the HIV/AIDS fan club. That perhaps would be the simplest and most honest and truthful of your own claims for Claim Number 1.

Dale,

I don't agree with lincoln's comments or tone, but I do think the claims that you have modified are too convoluted. How could someone falsify Claim 1? It has numerous internecine, overlapping, causal links.

In any event, I will, however, modify my claim 1 to read, as follows:

Scientific Claim 1:

A retrovirus, named HIV, transmitted primarily through blood or semen, causes CD4 cell depletion through an unexplained mechanism. This disabling of a critical component of the immune system causes opportunistic infections and death, if untreated.

and...

Scientific Claim 2:

The causal link between the retrovirus => CD4 cell decline => opportunistic infections => death is unproven. Many different things cause CD4 cell decline; many different things cause opportunistic infections. Focusing narrowly on the retrovirus, to the exclusion of other possible factors of pathogenesis, is a mistake.

Ok, after 500+ comments(!), I think it's time to look at the evidence for and against these 2 claims, as stated. No more quibbling.

How could someone falsify Claim 1?

Cure HIV infection or reduce its incidence by preventing perinatal transmission and show that it has no effect on the incidence of AIDS-defining diseases.

Hit the post button before I was finished. I might similarly ask you Barry - how do you test claim 2, let alone falsify it?

how do you test claim 2, let alone falsify it?

Well I'm just evaluating the claims, I'm not testing them yet or falsifying them. My rudimentary thoughts are as follows:

1. Epidemiologically: Large cohort study with patients with "AIDS-defining diseases." See if there are excess rates of HIV infection.

The early definitions of AIDS seemed to be mostly concerned with 2 "AIDS-defining" diseases, Kaposi Sarcoma and PCP. But, then the list expanded to include 29 or so. I'm wondering what was the scientific basis to include, say, cervical cancer, as an AIDS-defining disease, but not, say breast cancer? Did they find excess rates of HIV in women with cervical cancer?

2. Biochemically: Show in AIDS patients that CD4 cell decline is only caused by HIV, and that "AIDS-defining" diseases are only caused by CD4 cell depletion.

This is harder, because I understand that according to the Rodriquez et al paper, people have claimed that the "non-viral mechanism" is an immune response that targets CD4 cells and other components of the immune system, for which it would very difficult (at least beyond my skills) to control.

Barry writes:Well I'm just evaluating the claims, I'm not testing them yet or falsifying them. My rudimentary thoughts are as follows:

How can you evaluate claims without testing them?

Both of the points you make are about testing you "Scientific claim 1".

1. Epidemiologically: Large cohort study with patients with "AIDS-defining diseases." See if there are excess rates of HIV infection.

The sort of analysis you are talking about has been done. For example Kaposi's Sarcoma was found to be 30,000 times more common in people infected with HIV than uninfected people.

The early definitions of AIDS seemed to be mostly concerned with 2 "AIDS-defining" diseases, Kaposi Sarcoma and PCP. But, then the list expanded to include 29 or so. I'm wondering what was the scientific basis to include, say, cervical cancer, as an AIDS-defining disease, but not, say breast cancer? Did they find excess rates of HIV in women with cervical cancer?

Why are you asking questions like this? A simple literature search would provide you with the answer.

2. Biochemically: Show in AIDS patients that CD4 cell decline is only caused by HIV, and that "AIDS-defining" diseases are only caused by CD4 cell depletion.

Both of these points do not follow from the standard model of HIV/AIDS. There is nothing that says that the only cause of CD4 loss is HIV. That's a bit like insisting that human CO2 emissions must be the only cuase of accelerated global warming.

What can and has been done is to demonstrate that HIV infection is the single factor that accounts for the majority of CD4 depletion in AIDS patients.

A study by Ascher et al Does drug use cause AIDS? compared the predictive power of drug use and HIV infection as determinants for AIDS.

The cohort included HIV+ and HIV- and light/no drug use and heavy drug use categories. If drug use was a significant factor in determining who got AIDS then you would expect a does response ie. more AIDS cases in the heavy drug use category than in the light/none category. In fact no difference was seen. This rules out drug use as a significant cause of CD4 loss and AIDS. The only factor that was predictive was HIV status. There was no AIDS in the HIV- group (AIDS diagnosis was made without consideration of HIV status).

Each of the "alternative" causes of AIDS can be tested. What is necessary is that "rethinkers" should pick one or at minimum a few of these causes and attempt to demonstrate that they can account for the AIDS cases that are observed. Instead "rethinkers" go for the easy and lazy approach of attempting to pick holes in the relationship between HIV and AIDS.

There is also no reason why it is necessary that all AIDS defining illnesses are seen only in the presence of CD4 depletion. Low CD4 counts are a strong risk factor for all of the AIDS defining illnesses (minus HIV dementia). With some the relationship is very tight. PCP is almost exclusively seen in people with severe CD4 depletion.

High blood pressure is a risk factor for heart disease. There is no reason to insist that all heart disease has to occur in people with high blood pressure.

Chris,

I could swear that you have been told this about a dozen times before, but perhaps just one more time and you will understand its meaning:

Correlation is not proof of causation.

Fungus that grows mostly on dead trees is not proof that the fungus ever killed a tree.

Bits of protein sequences believed to be HIV or RT activity in some sick people or in some people with low CD4 counts is not proof that HIV causes illness or low CD4 counts.

As I said before, as soon as you trim down your list of 29 causes and/or cd4 counts and/or viral load counts, so that we may know which AIDS group you are referring to, ie: Africans or Western gays, we will be happy to oblige with a simpler list of obvious causations.

How about picking Africans with TB, as that encapsulates 80 percent of the African Cases? We would be glad to offer poor nutrition-hygiene-water, perhaps combined with apathy and high stress.

If you do not like that one, then how about picking American gays with KS? We would be glad to offer poppers use, combined with high stress and internalized shame.

If you do not like that one, then how about picking American Gays with recurrent Thrush/yeast infections. We would be glad to offer drug abuse and antibiotics overuse, and lives of stress and internalized shame.

Or we can just go along with Barry's HIV positive diagnosis along with low CD4 counts, and Barry and others would be glad to again share with you the number of effectors of CD4 counts that are proven to effect HIV negatives CD4 counts as well.

These choices together should cover about 90 percent or more of your so-called HIV/AIDS cases.

As an aside, I dusted off an old Immunology book from 1991 by Benjamini (UC Davis) and Leskowitz (Tufts).

A few interesting quotes:

1. "It is now firmly established that AIDS is caused by HIV." (Page 224.)

2. "While cell death can result from HIV infection, asymptomatic newly infected individuals exhibit a depletion of CD4 cells in spite of the finding that only 1 in [1,000] or 1 in [10,000] CD4 cells carries the virus." (Page 225)

Hmm. There's no citation for this assertion, but this seems like extremely low viral titer.

Here's my favorite 2 quotes, though:

3. "By far the most common cause of immunodeficiency disorders in developed countries is secondary to the use of chemotherapeutic agents in cancer therapy. Many of these agents are toxic to bone marrow cells and to T and B lymphocytes." (Page 223)

"The first promising drug against AIDS is azidothymidine (AZT), which was originally developed as an anti-cancer drug. AZT, an inhibitor of reverse transcriptase, is highly toxic, especially to bone marrow cells." (Page 230).

Is a "chemotherapeutic agent" somehow different from an "anti-cancer" drug?

Aside from the human drama and tragedy involved (never want to lose sight of the AIDS patients like Noreen, Mark, and Kevin, to some extent), this is like peeling back the layers of an onion.

As I said before, as soon as you trim down your list of 29 causes and/or cd4 counts and/or viral load counts, so that we may know which AIDS group you are referring to, ie: Africans or Western gays, we will be happy to oblige with a simpler list of obvious causations.

I'm getting tired of your continuous misrepresentations lincoln.

You know exactly what the standard model of HIV/AIDS is and yet you continue to build strawmen.

HIV causes CD4 depletion. This is the single common factor in all cases of HIV/AIDS. There is no 29 different causes.
CD4 depletion dramatically increases the risk of a number of opportunistic infections.
The particular opportunistic infection will depend on the prevalence of each of these pathogens in the particular risk group.

How about picking Africans with TB, as that encapsulates 80 percent of the African Cases? We would be glad to offer poor nutrition-hygiene-water, perhaps combined with apathy and high stress.

There are numerous studies that demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt that people coinfected with HIV and TB have much, much worse outcomes than those with just TB.

If you do not like that one, then how about picking American gays with KS? We would be glad to offer poppers use, combined with high stress and internalized shame.

You haven't read the Ascher et al study I posted. The idea that poppers cause KS has been investigated. Out of the the heavy popper users that were HIV- none got KS. Only the HIV+ patients got KS.

You can keep on going with your extended list of alternative causes of AIDS but you end up with a model that predicts everything and nothing. There is barely a person alive that does not have at least one of the factors that you list. However the vast majority do not develop AIDS.

Compare this with HIV. The vast majority, close to 100%, of people infected with HIV go on to develop AIDS. The vast majority, close to 100%, of people diagnosed with AIDS (irrespective of HIV status) have HIV.

You can repeat the mantra that correlation does not equal causation as much as you want but as long as you only provide your own correlations that are much weaker than those for HIV you are not proving anything except wishful thinking.

Add to this the fact that HIV just coincidentally happens to infect the very same subclass of cells that are depleted in AIDS. The level of immune activation caused by HIV infection also predicts the progression to AIDS. The SHIV/macaque model and the HIV/SCIDhu mouse model demonstrate that HIV cause CD4 depletion in vivo.

It is rather revealing that not one of the rethinkers wishes to pick up the challenge of primate lentiviruses such as SIV or SHIV.

Very good models exist for these as Chris has stated, clearly showing causality, with experimental infection inducing profound CD4 changes, rises in viral titre and clinical immune deficiency equivalent to AIDS. Antiretroviral therapy can reduce viral load and correct CD4 depletion. Mouse models have confirmed these laboratory outcomes for HIV.

It is a simple step to translate these findings to their direct human equivalent.

Causation has been proven for HIV, despite the chorus of wails from deniers who refuse to accept evidence.

Can any of the denialists explain the immunopathogenesis of macaque AIDS (forgetting Lincoln's extremely lame effort suggesting that the monkeys were sad and lonely)?

And apart from the Asher paper, here is another study showing that poppers have absolutely nothing to do with Kaposi's...

"Men with and without Kaposi's sarcoma did not significantly differ with respect to number of sexual partners, history of certain sexually transmitted or enteric diseases, use of certain recreational drugs (including nitrite inhalants), or participation in certain specific sexual practices. "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?holding=npg&cmd=Retrieve&…

Hey Chris and DDT,

Just because HIV negatives who used poppers once in a while and in lesser amounts did not all get AIDS does not mean that poppers are not a causative factor in those that did use poppers regularly and in high dosage!

Your Ascher paper is a piece of propaganda and trash instigated by and paid for by Tony Fauci of the NIH to trash Peter Duesberg, because Peter Duesberg's claims that drug abuse was a leading cofactor in AIDS were gaining ground. Fauci and all of HIV/AIDS funding was completely threatened by this!

Furthermore, Ascher certainly did not make any distinctions in dosages of poppers or in dosages taken of any illicit drugs between the groups in those that did or did not get KS. Don't you think this would be crucial to know? Dohhhhhh!

Don't you think dosages taken, and how long or often they were taken are absolutely important variables in a study of drug effects on the immune system? Will either of you tell me why this crucial aspect of Ascher's supposed study was not taken into "high" account? (no pun intended)

He also did not take into account any stress factors. Obviously those diagnosed as having HIV would have been far more stressed?

Next of all, how truthful were any of his study volunteers regarding their own drug use?

Please explain the reasoning of why dosage, stress, and honesty of the volunteers was unimportant to the outcome of the results, dear Doctor Chris and DDT!

I detect in both of you, what must be either your affinity for, or your approval of inhaling poppers, otherwise known as video head cleaner, leather cleaner, carb cleaner, amyl or butyl nitrite.

Or perhaps you both think that sniffing and snorting chemical solvents such as poppers, or even perhaps sniffing gasoline or maybe even sniffing glue is somehow beneficial to ones immune system?

If you think so, then by all means go snort all the poppers and gasoline and glue that you like!

I am sure the many drug addicts that continue to snort this stuff will all appreciate both of your endorsements of such.

And, Chris and DDT,

if you both believe that this stuff is so nontoxic and healthy, then, Dr. Noble and DT, please do both enjoy yourselves and go for it your own selves. Perhaps DDT could even get approval to represent and sell nitrite inhalants, gasoline, and glue to doctors as some type of health improving medication and get all doctors to dispense it.

Either way, you are both welcome to snort as much poppers as you want personally. Don't let me steer either of you away from your desires. By all means, do not take my connection of poppers sniffing to AIDS as any sign that I am urging either of you away from doing this. Please do enjoy sniffing it, encouraging the use of it, or encouraging the sales of it all you like. You both certainly have everything it takes to decide what is right for you.

But I would hope you are not advocating the use of this to others in the general public, or reading these threads, though I realize Doctor Chris Noble's approval of, and DDT's well known affinity for all types of drug use, whether it is proven deadly toxic, mutagenic, or not.

Will you both explain to us how come even popper snorting HIV negative guys get KS?

18. Friedman-Kein AE,Saltzman BR,Cao Y,Mirabile M,Li JJ,Peterman TA. Kaposi's sarcoma in HIV negative homosexual men. Lancet 1:168,1990.

Butyl nitrites were officially banned by the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1988 (Public Law 100Â690), but manufacturers responded by selling chemical variants as 'room odorizers' and marketing them under such names as 'Rush', 'Ram', and 'Locker Room'. Then, in the 1990 Omnibus Crime Control Act, mainly in response to the concerns of Rep. Mel Levine of California, Congress outlawed the manufacture and sale of all alkyl nitrites. Once again the chemistry was reconfigured, and by 1992 nitrites were back on the market, sold as video head cleaner, polish remover ('Just like the old daze!' ad copy in a gay magazine trumpeted), carburetor cleaner ('The good stuff') and leather stripper ('Not an overpriced 'headache in a bottle' like those other brands') (Wilson. 1994b).

'The use of poppers is increasing across the board in the big cities', the antiÂpoppers activist Hank Wilson claimed, in an interview in the summer of 1994. 'It's in the air in the San Francisco clubs. I personally stopped going to the sex clubs about 18 months ago because the air got so bad' (Wilson, 1994c).

Wilson's boyfriend, who always used poppers with sex and had KS, died last year of AIDS. Wilson himself was diagnosed with AIDS in 1987, but looks to be in good health (he steers clear of AZT).

Dr. Noble and DDT, I am not telling you what to do, but you might want to look at the toxicological effects of nitrite inhalants before you go running off to sell them to doctors or recommend them to patients:

Mirvish, S., J. Williamson, D. Babcook & S. Chen, 1993. Mutagenicity of IsoÂButyl Nitrite Vapor in the Ames Test and Some Relevant Chemical Properties. Environmental and MolecuLu Mutagenesis 21: 247Â252.

Or, if you can put Dr. Asher, the Duesberg Trasher's stuff down long enough to read on some of the obvious connectedness of Poppers to KS:

http://www.ehponline.org/members/1994/102-10/haverkos-full.html

But either way, a love for, or appreciation of snorting poppers and doing other drugs would certainly explain both of your wacky viewpoints that you have both espoused on these threads!

Chris wrote to me:

"There is barely a person alive that does not have at least one of the factors that you list".

So Chris is now of the opinion that almost every person alive is a drug addict or overusing antibiotics or suffering the stress of a diagnosis from a terminal disease, or is suffering from malnutrition-poor hygiene-contaminated water supplies, or suffering from internalized shame of homosexuality?

Keep sniffing that stuff Chris.

Obviously, you are getting brighter and more coherent all of the time with each and every snort you take and word you write!

You know, Chris, and DT, as there is very little that either of you are adding to the discussion that I find to be enlightening to anyone, I doubt that I will have any further inclination to respond any further to what I see as your posts of ignorance and insincerity and non-integrity.

Although, don't let my lack of further desire to interact with either of you keep you from posting further, as you are both more than welcome to babble away all you like and you are both free to think and say and do and believe whatever you want.

Yours, Lincoln!

Just because HIV negatives who used poppers once in a while and in lesser amounts did not all get AIDS does not mean that poppers are not a causative factor in those that did use poppers regularly and in high dosage!
Your Ascher paper is a piece of propaganda and trash instigated by and paid for by Tony Fauci of the NIH to trash Peter Duesberg, because Peter Duesberg's claims that drug abuse was a leading cofactor in AIDS were gaining ground. Fauci and all of HIV/AIDS funding was completely threatened by this!
Furthermore, Ascher certainly did not make any distinctions in dosages of poppers or in dosages taken of any illicit drugs between the groups in those that did or did not get KS. Don't you think this would be crucial to know? Dohhhhhh!

Have you read the paper that you are attempting to dismiss?
Ascher reported a relative risk factor of 1.83 for KS in the heavy popper usage vs the light/none popper group. However thiis is a confounding variable. None of the HIV- patients developed KS.

Will you both explain to us how come even popper snorting HIV negative guys get KS?
18. Friedman-Kein AE,Saltzman BR,Cao Y,Mirabile M,Li JJ,Peterman TA. Kaposi's sarcoma in HIV negative homosexual men. Lancet 1:168,1990.

Have you read this letter?
Friedman-Kien describes a rise in the prevalence of a benign form of KS in HIV- homosexual men compared to the dramatic rise in aggressive KS in HIV+ homosexual men. Since the publication of this letter the pathogen responsible for KS, HHV-8, has been discovered.

The prevalence of HHV-8 was and still is to a lesser degree much higher in homosexual men in the US. A higher incidence of KS is expected. In addition HIV infection dramatically increases the risk of developing KS. HAART is also an effective treatment for KS.

If you bothered to do a literature search under Friedman-Kien's name you would find a number of articles that he has published since this time.

Even Harry Haverkos has accepted the role of HHV-8 and HIV in the causation of KS although he still appears to believe that popppers might play some role.

Have you read any of the literature on KS that hass come out in the last two decades? You appear to be stuck in the "rethinker" time warp in 1987.

Will you both explain to us how come even popper snorting HIV negative guys get KS?
18. Friedman-Kein AE,Saltzman BR,Cao Y,Mirabile M,Li JJ,Peterman TA. Kaposi's sarcoma in HIV negative homosexual men. Lancet 1:168,1990.

When lincoln was perusing this edition of the Lancet he would have presumable read this article.

Kaposi's sarcoma among persons with AIDS: a sexually transmitted infection?

Table 2 shows a number of cases of KS in AIDS patients in different risk groups including heterosexuals, IV drug users, transfusion recipients and haemophiliacs. This refutes the "rethinker" myth that these risk groups do not get KS.

Here's a quote: Thuse the overall risk of Kaposi's sarcoma in patients with AIDS is at least 20 000 times greater than that in the general population and 300 times greater than that in other immunosuppressed populations

And another: The occurence of Kaposi's sarcom iin children and eledrly people with aprenterally transmitted HIV and in one-tenth of AIDS patients in Africa, where poppers are not used, suggests that poppers cannot account for the pattern of occurrence of Kaposi's sarcoma in AIDS patients.

Sifting through the plethora of back and forth, I find these 2 claims by Mr. Noble to be good and clear:

1. HIV causes CD4 depletion. This is the single common factor in all cases of HIV/AIDS

2. There is nothing that says that the only cause of CD4 loss is HIV.

The first is perfect and needs no modification. A great, crystal clear claim. The second could probably be re-worded as:

2. CD4 cell loss has many causes, other than HIV.

Not wanting to stray too far, but the logical, scientific deduction from these two sentences is this:

If a patient tests HIV antibdy positive, and has a low CD4 cell count (~200-500/mm3), then one would need to rule out the other causes of CD4 cell decline, before stating that the HIV was the cause in fact of the CD4 decline in question, right?

Medically speaking, this would be a "differential diagnosis."

Barry, differential diagnosis is for one person. This is different to establishing the cause of a sudden appearance of a specific syndrome of severe immune suppression.

Researchers evaluated a number of possible causes for this immune suppression. Known causes of immune suppresion including, chemotherapy, anti-rejection drugs etc were already excluded by this stage. A number of other factors such as drug use were considered and rejected because there was not a consistent relationship. The one factor that can explain all AIDS cases is HIV.

In addition to the tight correlation between HIV and AIDS there is direct evidence from animal models that SHIV and HIV can and do produce the exact type of immune suppression seen in AIDS.

I really fail to see where you are going with your insistence that all CD4 depeltion in each individual AIDS patient has to be proven to be due to HIV.

Do you apply the same levels of proof to other pathogens?

Barry, differential diagnosis is for one person.

Yes. We've had Kevin, Noreen, and Mark tell us about their individual stories. Lincoln has discussed some his friends/lovers. People are what matter, not abstractions.

This is different to establishing the cause of a sudden appearance of a specific syndrome of severe immune suppression.

Severe immune suppression is broader than CD4 cell decline, which, on average, remains asymptomatic for 10 years.

Known causes of immune suppresion including, chemotherapy, anti-rejection drugs etc were already excluded by this stage.

True, the first part. But "excluded"? By whom?

The one factor that can explain all AIDS cases is HIV.

False statement. I noted numerous cites above that show "clinical" AIDS without HIV.

1. Alterations in lymphocyte cell surface markers during various human infections.
--Williams et al, Am J Med. 1983 Nov;75(5):807-16.

2. CD4+ lymphocytopenia without HIV in patient with cryptococcal disease. Seligmann et al., Lancet, 1991,Jan 5;337(8732):57-8

3. Reduced CD4+ T cells and severe oral candidiasis in absence of HIV infection. Pankhurst et al., Lancet. 1989 Mar 25;1(8639):672.

4. CD4 lymphocytopenia without HIV in patient with cryptococcal infection. Jowitt et al., Lancet. 1991 Feb 23;337(8739):500-1

5. Acquired immunodeficiency without evidence of infection with human immunodeficiency virus types 1 -- Laurence et al. Lancet. 1992 Aug 1;340(8814):273-4

6. Reduced CD4+ T cells and candidiasis in absence of HIV infection. Gatenby et al., Lancet. 1989 May 6;1(8645):1027-

7. Profound CD4+ lymphocytopenia in the absence of HIV infection in a patient with visceral leishmaniasis, Cozon et al. N Engl J Med. 1990 Jan 11;322(2):132.

In addition to the tight correlation between HIV and AIDS

Tight correlation is not causation.

I really fail to see where you are going with your insistence that all CD4 depeltion in each individual AIDS patient has to be proven to be due to HIV..

Because of the consequences of the treatment are so severe.

Do you apply the same levels of proof to other pathogens?

Yes.

Barry,
profound CD4 lymphocytopenia in the absence of HIV infection is extremely rare. It is so rare that if you do find a case that you can get it published. We are talking about 100s of cases in 20 years compared to the millions seen with HIV infection. Obviously to the individuals with ICL4 it is important but on the global scale it is insignificant.

Unexplained opportunistic infections and CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia without HIV infection. An investigation of cases in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control Idiopathic CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia Task Force.

This study yielded just 47 possible HIV- cases out of over 200,000!

"Despite intensive surveillance efforts, few persons with opportunistic infections or unexplained lymphocytopenia without HIV infection have been identified over the past decade."

In most of these cases the nature of immune suppression can be distinguished from that caused by HIV. CD4 depletion in ICL4 is typically transient while a steady decline is seen in HIV/AIDS.

I am sorry, but to dismiss the role of HIV in AIDS because a fraction of a fraction of a percent of all cases of profound CD4 lymphocytopenia do not involve HIV is just plain silly.

Not all cases of hepatitis involve Hepatitis B or C. That doesn't mean that it is not possible to say that Hepatitis B and C cause hepatitis.

Because of the consequences of the treatment are so severe.

Denying that HIV can and does cause AIDS does not help. Your concerns can be better addressed by attempting to establish why a small minority of people with HIV infection do not develop AIDS, when the best time if at all to start HAART and to find better less toxic therapies.

Yes.

I am sorry, but I don't believe you. If you applied the same pathological level of "proof" to other pathogens then you would also be denying the whole "germ theory of disease".

Barry,

I'm afraid You won't get any further along this path, unless you're simply studying the mind of Dr. Noble and his denialist opponents, among whom you've now been placed and will continue to be placed no matter how neutral you attempt to be. The reason for this name caling should be clear to you by now: the HIV/AIDS edifice is so fragile that its defenders don't feel they can afford to give even the "fraction of a fraction of a percent" of an inch Dr. Noble talks about. If you pull out just one HIV-free AIDS case from their untold thousands you're pulling out the cornerstone from under the entire construction. Merely getting it into your gead to look for such a case makes you a denialist.

You must make up your own mind whether there exists a "fraction of a fraction of a percent" of HIV-free AIDS cases, because you will, for very good reasons, never get an admission that it's even possible.

You won't get much further trading studies either. There's been an army of researchers labouring unceasingly to produce the kind of studies Dr. Noble and others will throw at you ever since the mid-eighties when it became the first Commandment of research funding that HIV causes AIDS.

As I've said previously, the correlation between so-called HIV and so-called AIDS has been manufactured for decades. It IS, therefore a strong correlation. Studying how the correlation came about and how it is maintained is what's interesting at this point.

Pope gets one thing right.
I'm afraid You won't get any further along this path
But he gets the reason wrong.
You must make up your own mind whether there exists a "fraction of a fraction of a percent" of HIV-free AIDS cases, because you will, for very good reasons, never get an admission that it's even possible.
The denialist insistence on "HIV-free AIDS" is unfortunate since AIDS by definition involves HIV. Why not just say HIV-free immune suppression?

Noble makes many good points that are grounded in the literature. His opponents including Barry dispute almost all of them. Even something as innocent as his claim that hepatitis B and C cause hepatitis is disputed by many denialists. They deliberately misquote one study from Justice et al at Pittsburgh to say protease inhibitors cause liver disease in HIV positive patients. Denialist is not a hate word, it is an accurate description of this mindset.

"The denialist insistence on "HIV-free AIDS" is unfortunate since AIDS by definition involves HIV. Why not just say HIV-free immune suppression?"

So HIV/AIDS is by "definition" a perfect corrolation.

"Denialist is not a hate word, it is an accurate description of this mindset."

using words such as "denialist" is unworthy of scientists (and Ladies and gentlemen in general) since their vocation is the search for the truth. It should not be hard for intellectuals such as yourself to admitt that the truth behind HIV is indeed still evading us. The mechanism of this disease is still, TO THIS DAY unresolved and the only thing which points to HIV being the culprit is its corrolation, which by your own admission is perfect corrolation by definition. The only thing that seperates AIDS from general immune-suppression is the definition. An honest scientist would perhaps say that we are "pretty damn sure" about HIV/AIDS but would certainly refrain from taking cock-sure positions seeing they haven't figured the thing out and by extention would also refrain from piling into character assassination of those who honestly disagree. No one should be allowed to get away with calling people such as Duesberg a "denialist". This man happens simply to be in scientific disagreement with most of his collegues. He is by definition IN DISAGREEMENT, not IN DENIAL. I am afraid that you and many others are perhaps the "denialist" because you deny your own doubts, which you should have, as scientists...at least until you have SEEN what this bug actually does. "Denialist" is passive agressive and thus, by its usage in the context of any discussion about HIV/AIDS, is indeed a hate word. It is dishonest and distracting from the subject of the disagreement as it turns the discussion away from the message and makes it about the character of the messenger. Some of you might have heard the one about not shooting the messenger but it is certainly not practiced much in this particular circle of "savants". I do direct my tirades at science because it is scientists I am supposed to trust and not the average joe-blogger but unfortunately for me a lot of that trust gets destroyed everytime scientists take absolutist positions when their own science tells them they can not. Take Rodrigez for example (with apologies to Wic. Oh, and if Wic should choose to take a position on this perhaps he will make it about the content of my post and not about me) He writes in his conclusion this sentence:
"Other factors, as yet undefined, likely drive CD4 cell losses in HIV infection" Here he is expressing scientific doubt about the actual effect of HIV on CD 4 loss. One must always keep questioning ones own convictions lest one looses sight of the road and this is for all, not only scientists. I strongly urge you to brush up Socrates and the Oracle of Delphi. Socrates concludes he is the wisest only insofar as:
"that what I don't know, I don't think I know."
We don't KNOW that HIV causes AIDS, we THINK it does...which leaves lots of room for doubt and most importantly agreeable disagreement.

Barry, differential diagnosis is for one person. This is different to establishing the cause of a sudden appearance of a specific syndrome of severe immune suppression. -- Chris igNoble

It's only different for those foolish caregivers who have already made up there minds about a "diagnosis". Barry's point is spot-on, and I, like many others, would have been spared a lot of pain and suffering had my bumbling doctors used the logic of differential diagnosis to address each of my health problems as they occurred. As is the case with most AIDS cases, there may be a sudden noticeable decline in health, but the diagnosis of a "syndrome", as you put it, is a bit premature and should only be made after several immune episodes occur, which usually requires years, or in the least, months. Therefore, your wording is typically self-serving, i.e. "establishing the cause of a sudden appearance of a specific syndrome of severe immune suppression" is an incongruous, if not meaningless, statement since the method by which HIV "causes" a "sudden" "syndrome" has not been proven.

Once again, Chris, you happily distort the clinical reality and affirm your predisposition to assign blame to HIV without first demonstrating the method of causation -- all of this in lieu of actually treating the acute symptoms. It's criminal. As someone who suffered so because of such ignorance, I am completely nauseated.

Kevin

A number of other factors such as drug use were considered and rejected because there was not a consistent relationship. The one factor that can explain all AIDS cases is HIV.

All AIDS cases, Chris? Are you sure that you stand by that statement?

For the jury to consider, I offer:

I had "AIDS" and the only consistent relationship that I had, with any of the factors under consideration including HIV, was frequent use of antibiotics. You may be satisfied with the notion that such factors were properly considered and properly rejected, but I am living proof that there may be more to consider. I am now in excellent health and I've gotten to this point, only after eliminating the "drug use", along with improving my nutrition, etc, essentially, by following all of the recommendations made by rethinkers.

Your "one factor" to explain "all AIDS" cases is laughably incomplete.

Kevin

I'm not wedded to the term denialist, shall we call you intellectual superheroes instead? From now on I will. It doesn't change the fact that whatever valid points you have derive entirely from the work of actual skeptical scientists all but one or two of whom are convinced that HIV causes AIDS. Denying this as Duesberg does means that you are in denial.

Duesberg is probably the best equipped intellectual superhero and so he should see his errors. He has to ignore or distort data to preserve his viral world view and he does that on multiple occasions. Maybe he does it unconsciously but it doesn't look like it to me. It's really sad for the whole intellectual superhero movement.

Yes, HIV/AIDS is a perfect correlation. So is Hepatitis B-induced hepatitis, Pneumocystis-induced PCP, etc.
HIV is NOT found in all cases of immune suppression, but is found in AIDS.
Heptatitis B is NOT found in all cases of hepatitis, but is found in those caused by Hep B.
Pneumocystis organisms are NOT found in all cases of pneumonia, but is found in PCP. There is no such thing as Pneumocystis-free PCP or HIV-free AIDS.

Yes, HIV/AIDS is a perfect correlation. -- Adele

Is that right, Adele? Then you should have no trouble answering the following:

How perfect do you think HIV's correlation to AIDS would be if the cause of death listed for HIV-positives was recorded based on the acute illness from which they actually died, and not simply listed as the nebulous "complications fue to AIDS"?

What does that say about your perfect correlation, Adele? Can you not see the problem here? If I had died from PCP, my cause of death would have been listed as "PCP", but if I had been HIV-positive and died when I had that pneumonia, my death would most certainly have been recorded as "from complications due to AIDS" or the even more nebulous, "from complications due to advanced HIV disease."

It's real easy to maintain such a perfect correlation employing duplicitous techniques. I think Pope was right when he said, "Studying how the correlation came about and how it is maintained is what's interesting at this point."
__________________________

"Denialist" is passive agressive... It is dishonest and distracting from the subject of the disagreement as it turns the discussion away from the message and makes it about the character of the messenger.

Nice post, Pat.

At first, I thought I just had imcompentent doctors, but after reasearching and learning about the details of the rethinker position, I came to realize just how thoroughly bankrupt, both scientifically and morally, the apologist position really is. The constant character assassinations are evidence to that effect and completely out-of-line with the practice of good science, as you've well-described, Pat.

Kevin

There have been some good points made by the rethinkers above. I have a pinced nerve causing me great pain and yet the attending physician is concerned about my CD4's. What does that have to do with the price of rice in China? It's all part of the problem. Anytime a HIV+ or AIDS person has anything, it is immediately blamed on the "virus". And whether one believes in HIV or not, there are certainly better treatment options than the anti-virals. I would encourage anyone who wants to know about them to purchase my book at iuniverse entitled, Surviving AIDS & Cancer. Incidentally, my blood reports are remarkedly better after stopping the anti-virals than being on them.

"The denialist insistence on "HIV-free AIDS" is unfortunate since AIDS by definition involves HIV. Why not just say HIV-free immune suppression?" (Adele)

So HIV/AIDS is by "definition" a perfect correlation?
(Pat)

Haha... Yes why not indeed say HIV-free immuno-suppression and get it over with?

There you all have it in plain sight, the meme. With defenders like Adele who needs rethinker superheroes to prove that HIV/AIDS is an unscientific construct.

HIV causes AIDS because HIV causes AIDS per definition. Not even a tortured macaque can argue with that.

But although Adele has already given the whole game away for all to see, my point was, as Kevin notes, that I think it's well worth the effort to study the many ways the correlation between HIV and AIDS has been manufactured apart from the semantics.

I've already linked the article by Rodney Richards regarding the HIV tests on 'You Bet Your Life'. Another excellent article showing how the science goes hand in hand with the semantics is Neville Hodgkinson's "The Circular Reasoning Scandal Of HIV"

http://www.immunity.org.uk/nh_circular.htm

More papal bullThe reason for this name caling should be clear to you by now: the HIV/AIDS edifice is so fragile that its defenders don't feel they can afford to give even the "fraction of a fraction of a percent" of an inch Dr. Noble talks about. If you pull out just one HIV-free AIDS case from their untold thousands you're pulling out the cornerstone from under the entire construction. Merely getting it into your gead to look for such a case makes you a denialist.

It has been the "orthodox" scientists that have gone out of their way to attempt to find cases of CD4 lymphocytopenia without HIV infection what you describe as "HIV-free AIDS" cases. After an extensive search only a few cases that bear a resemblance to the disease seen in HIV/AIDS have been found. This should tell you something. They are the exceptions that prove the rule. Yes, there are a few cases of immune suppression that looks like AIDS without HIV infection bbut they are no more proof that HIV does not cause AIDS than a few people surviving a jump from an airplane without a parachute are proof that the theory of gravity is false.

The basic "rethinker" argument boils down to the assertion that if there is less that a 100% correlation between a pattern of acquired immune suppression resembling AIDS and HIV infection that this casts the whole theory into doubt. This is simply stupid.

The relationship is extremely close to 100%. There are a very few cases of immune suppression that resemble HIV/AIDS where the cause is not known.

Many of the "rethinkers" here keep on repeating the calim that the only evidence for HIV causing AIDS is correlation. This is bullshit.

If you can manage to forget the near 100% correlation between HIV infection and the particular pattern of immune suppression seen in AIDS then you still have to explain the amazing coincidence that HIV infects the very subset of T-cells that are depleted in AIDS.

You can be as skeptical as you want but you aslo have to come up with plausible explanations for the correlation and the coincidence that HIV infects CD4 cells.

We also have animal models. SCIDhu mice are mice with a human immune system. They have human CD4 cells. Infect them with HIV and lo and behold CD4 cell depletion is observed. Amazing coincidence? SHIV is basically HIV with some of the proteins responsible for the tropism of the virus changed so that they will infect macaques. If you infect macaques with SHIV then lo and behold you see CD4 depletion. Amazaing coincidence?

So far none of the "rethinkers" here or elsewhere have managed to come up with plausible explanations for these amazing coincidences. So far all we have are pathetic ad hoc excuses like claiming that the scientist who do these experiments are stupid, ignorant or just lying. Lincoln invents scenarios where stress causes the macaques to get SAIDS and ignores the controls not infected with SIV or SHIV that do not get SAIDS.

The important aspect is that "rethinkers" do not provide viable alternative theories. All they do is attempt to dismiss or deny the evidence that HIV causes AIDS. In this respsect they are not skeptics or rethinkers. They aren't rethinking anything. The only thing that they do is deny.

Barry, Chris asked you whether you applied the same levels of proof to other pathogens as you do to HIV. You said "Yes".

So how do you "prove" the following (since when the disease is present the correlating infective agent is clearly not the only possible cause)?

Pneumococcus -> pneumonia?
Meningococcus -> meningitis?
E. coli -> UTI?
Rhinovirus -> URTI?
Hepatitis A, or B, or C, or D, or E, or F, or G -> hepatitis?
Coxsackie -> myocarditis?
Herpes simplex -> encephalitis?
Haemophilus -> otitis?
(I could go on....)

Perhaps you could pick just one single example above and demonstrate for us why you think the pathogen does not cause the disease.

Barry, you say:
"False statement. I noted numerous cites above that show "clinical" AIDS without HIV."

You then give a very short list of a few published cases of AIDS-defining illnesses occuring in people with low CD4 counts who are HIV-negative.

Please give this a moment's thought....

Why do you think a single case report of, say, Cryptococcus in an HIV negative individual gets published in a medical journal?

Is it because:
(a) It is so unusual as to merit publication as a clinical rarity? or
(b) It is so common the authors couldn't be bothered writing up a series of all 2000 cases they have seen to demonstrate how common it is, and hoped the journal would accept that a single case would be quite sufficient (which their peer reviewers fortunately did)?

Please answer truthfully now...

More papal bull:HIV causes AIDS because HIV causes AIDS per definition. Not even a tortured macaque can argue with that.

Either you haven't read the Ascher paper I cited or you are simply being disingenuous.

The AIDS diagnosis in that study was made without respect to HIV status. There is no circular reasoning. Nevertheless, none of the HIV- subjects got AIDS whether they were heavy popper/drug users or light/none drug users. Only HIV positive subjects got AIDS (diagnosed without respect to HIV status).

The review aricle on ICL that I cited intensively examined all cases of immune suppression resembling HIV/AIDS and could only find a handful that were not infected with HIV out of more than 200,000.

The correlation exists whether you like it or not. It won't go away if you use specious arguments about circular reasoning. It demands an explanation which "rethinkers" fail to provide. Even the Perth Group agree that there is a correlation between testing HIV+ and getting AIDS. They go on to say that if they accept the existence of HIV then they are forced to admit that HIV causes AIDS.

The only alternative explanation that they give is that somehow oxidative stress that supposedly causes AIDS also causes the human genome to spontaneously rearrange to from sequences that resemble lentivirus genes which then produce lentivirus proteins and generate antibodies. This is simply an ad hoc, implausible theory saving manoeveur.

To me, as a gay man, whom has been deeply affected by the HIV or NOT HIV issue, I could not care less what many of you think. I know what I have experienced with so many people that I have known and loved.

It seems to me, that this issue takes us right to the edge of the mind/body connection. My experiences in the gay community with those so diagnosed or those who suffered death by what is called AIDS was a major wake-up call to instigating my own search for highest truth.

The mainstream does not seem to me to have very solid science on it being as simple as acquiring a virus that somehow, yet unknown, causes ones immune system to fail to function.

What I have seen, is the emotional toll on the HIV diagnosed, leading to extreme stress from apathy and constant nagging fear, that seems to take the largest toll on gay mens health. Add to that the effects of some of the most toxic drugs such as AZT, and you have the disaster we saw 10 years ago wherein those given high dosages of AZT lasted for 8 months to a year and a half on average.

What is the physical effect of believing that one's self has a virus that will slowly take your life? What effect does the belief itself have? In my experience, the effect of the belief is far greater than the effect of any viral challenge! The constant fear, and feeling like a leper that can never love or have sex again can drive one mad, and leave one so rattled that ones immune system is failing to thrive.

Add to that the fact that gays were and sometimes still are loathed by their family and churches. All of this takes a great toll on ones desire to live and ones will to live. Without a desire or will to live, how long will one last?

Oftentimes, finding oneself to be gay, can be so traumatizing and devastating, that many gays often have deep rooted death wishes wherein they themselves simply wish to die to escape from the often emotionally devastating feelings that can often be a major part of many gay mens lives. What part in illness does a personal death wish play?

Add to that the self destructive behaviors of drug and alcohol abuse and often sex addiction that many in such a stressed population succumbs to, and add to that the overuse of antibiotics for all of the std that ones sexual addiction can lead to.

The antibiotics leave ones system wide open to fungal takeover once the gut flora are so disturbed or decimated by antibiotics.

And add to that the very medications that destroy cellular reproduction, which is crucial in many parts of the body such as in the gut.

It is obvious to me, that the issue of AIDS in gay men is not a simple virus, but far more complex and involving emotional and seemingly even spiritual factors as well, as gay men are most definitely cutoff from spiritual well being or spiritual relief, as they are so often rejected by religions.

And in Africa and many poor parts of the stressed and overpopulated world, without hygience, clean water, and good nutrition, it does not take a rocket scientist to understand why disease and illness flourish in such conditions. Without addressing these basic conditions necessary to support life, what good will toxic pills do?

Not a simple issue at all. Perhaps this is why no simple medication has ever worked either. Especially when the pills offered are well known for toxicity to the liver, kidneys, heart, as well as the cause of lipodystrophy, neuralgia, and many other intense and often deadly side effects.

I do not know or care what others take on all of this is, but to me it is most assuredly not just a simple issue of a simple virus that is at the crux of this issue.

I'll reproduce the central point in Neville Hodgkinson's piece, so we all know what we're talking about

"There is an association between testing HIV-positive and risk of developing Aids. This is the main reason why scientists believe HIV is the cause of Aids. But the link is artificial, a consequence of the way the test kits were made.

It never proved possible to validate the tests by culturing, purifying and analysing particles of the purported virus from patients who test positive, then demonstrating that these are not present in patients who test negative. This was despite heroic efforts to make the virus reveal itself in patients with Aids or at risk of Aids, in which their immune cells were stimulated for weeks in laboratory cultures using a variety of agents.

After the cells had been activated in this way, HIV pioneers found some 30 proteins in filtered material that gathered at a density characteristic of retroviruses. They attributed some of these to various parts of the virus. But they never demonstrated that these so-called "HIV antigens" belonged to a new retrovirus.

So, out of the 30 proteins, how did they select the ones to be defined as being from HIV? The answer is shocking, and goes to the root of what is probably the biggest scandal in medical history. They selected those that were most reactive with antibodies in blood samples from Aids patients and those at risk of Aids.

This means that "HIV" antigens are defined as such not on the basis of being shown to belong to HIV, but on the basis that they react with antibodies in Aids patients. Aids patients are then diagnosed as being infected with HIV on the basis that they have antibodies which react with those same antigens. The reasoning is circular." (Hodgkinson)

Since this illustrious beginning it has just been a matter of the 'natural evolution' of the tests. The PCR viral load tests that are said to confirm the antibody tests are being 'refined' in much the same way. That is, one tests the PCR kits against people one has decided have AIDS. If it comes up negative, the manufacturer sets about'improving' the test to make it more sensitive (inclusive). Through this constant improvement using the target group AIDS patients or the antibody tests as the gold standard, one will necessarily achieve better and better correlation regardles of the ontological status of the putative virus or the real causes of AIDS.

There's been some talk about animal models here lately. This is also a circular argument. One looks around for a virus in any animal that seems to produce the goods using the same standards of isolation and purification that was introduced for HIV. If none is found, one resorts to cross species infections in the lab with different viral fomulae until one succeeds in making the animals sick. That virus is then called an 'Immuno-deficiency Virus', its effects are called 'AIDS' and voila! you have an animal model.

This feat is supposed to prove HIV and nothing else causes AIDS in humans.

Firstly we see it is argument by analogy. Secondly we see the conclusion is yet again part of the premise, since these animal models never set out to challenge the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. One has simply decided in advance that if one manages to make the animals sick by infection with one's virus of choice those animals have AIDS per definition. If the animals get sick from something non-viral, it is not AIDS regardless of symptoms. if they don't get sick, one changes either the formula or the host.

There's been some talk about animal models here lately. This is also a circular argument. One looks around for a virus in any animal that seems to produce the goods using the same standards of isolation and purification that was introduced for HIV. If none is found, one resorts to cross species infections in the lab with different viral fomulae until one succeeds in making the animals sick. That virus is then called an 'Immuno-deficiency Virus', its effects are called 'AIDS' and voila! you have an animal model.

Who are you trying to convince with this tripe?
Certainly not people that have read the literature that you are trying to dismiss.

I will concede that some of the "rethinkers" are sincere in their believes however mistaken they may be but it is difficult to believe that you are anything else than a troll.

[This is also a circular argument.]

And yours is merely a straw-man argument.

Thank you Adele for your honesty and divulging that you actually mean to be disparaging. You fully believe that Duesberg KNOWS he is wrong but for some dishonest reason insists he is right (perhaps to sell books?)

"If you can manage to forget the near 100% correlation between HIV infection and the particular pattern of immune suppression seen in AIDS then you still have to explain the amazing coincidence that HIV infects the very subset of T-cells that are depleted in AIDS."-Chris

It does appear that your are the last person on this planet to believe HIV infects and directly kills CD4 cells. Apart from you perhaps, no one can explain how a retrovirus that only infects between 1 in 500 to 1 in 10'000 cells kills them all. You seem to not care at all that: "Other factors, as yet undefined, likely drive CD4 cell losses in HIV infection" To you this means HIV infects and kills CD4.

"You can be as skeptical as you want but you aslo have to come up with plausible explanations for the correlation and the coincidence that HIV infects CD4 cells."-Chris

"We also have animal models. SCIDhu mice are mice with a human immune system. They have human CD4 cells. Infect them with HIV and lo and behold CD4 cell depletion is observed. Amazing coincidence? SHIV is basically HIV with some of the proteins responsible for the tropism of the virus changed so that they will infect macaques. If you infect macaques with SHIV then lo and behold you see CD4 depletion. Amazaing coincidence?"

Just by reading what you wrote I would propose that this coincidence is, as you say, manufactured: "SHIV is basically HIV with some of the proteins responsible for the tropism of the virus changed so that they will infect macaques"

That is like pouring cyanide into beer to prove that alcohol kills.

Just for the record:
"In people, HIV leads to Aids but chimps have a version called simian immune deficiency virus that causes them no harm. Humans are the only animals naturally susceptible to HIV."- http://www.iolhivaids.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=1598&fArticleId=3264521

So of all the Immune Deficiency viruses out there only HIV is harmfull to its natural hosts; all others need to be re-engineered to cause illness. This is like rivers flowing uphill and taking the path of greatest resistance. Re-engineering foreign viruses to prove the deadliness of another instead of wondering WHY all these "cousins" are harmless in the first place. Perhaps because you can't sell ARV's to creatures who don't naturally have bank accounts.

Re-engineering foreign viruses to prove the deadliness of another instead of wondering WHY all these "cousins" are harmless in the first place. Perhaps because you can't sell ARV's to creatures who don't naturally have bank accounts.

... or perhaps because the chimp population has co-evolved with SIV for a sufficient period of time that genes associated with resistance are now predominant. Chimps are mostly LTNPs.

Pat, I don't mean to disparage anyone. I'm just saying you can't selectively quote from the literature like Duesberg without knowing what you're doing. You can't understand basic chemistry and say a mouse study with AZT uses concentrations comparable to what AIDS patients got in the late 80s, when the mouse actually got as much PER KILOGRAM of body weight as the entire dose given to the humans. You don't truncate a sentence from some study you're quoting so it has a completely different meaning, and then claim you just didn't see the last part of that sentence. You can't meticulously misrepresent data, leaving out the details that screw your point, without doing it on purpose. Duesberg has done all of this. If you want chapter and verse I'll give it to you eventually but I'm busy and this isn't worth my time.

Lincoln:
The antibiotics leave ones system wide open to fungal takeover once the gut flora are so disturbed or decimated by antibiotics.
It's interesting. Recent work on gut associated lymphoid tissues where most t-cells are shows it gets wiped out w/in days of HIV infection. A big finding. When someone's on antibiotics before getting infected it seems the immune system activation isn't as drastic so the person's peripheral T-cell decline isn't as sharp. Maybe antibiotics aren't so bad after all.

I will concede that some of the "rethinkers" are sincere in their believes however mistaken they may be but it is difficult to believe that you are anything else than a troll.

To the contrary, Chris, I certainly don't think our Pope is a troll. If anyone is a troll, it is you. You've been trolling every online forum that deals with this issue for years and when someone exposes your weak arguments you resort to name-calling. Although one can find numerous examples in this thread, you've left quite a trail of evidence on various sites which support that fact.

On the other hand, Pope's analysis is usually straight-forward and free from character attacks. That's because his contributions are based on truth. You, however, can not make such a claim for you don't appear to care about the truth, so long as HIV's status is assured. Once again, you've left quite a trail of evidence in support of this character flaw, too. You constantly refer to "the literature" as though it were the 'holy word' of god, even though it has been sufficiently demonstrated that much of "the literature" is based on circular reasoning and therefore, of suspect value.

With that in mind, I found the following from Pope's quote to be of particular signifigance:

Through this constant improvement using the target group AIDS patients or the antibody tests as the gold standard, one will necessarily achieve better and better correlation regardles of the ontological status of the putative virus or the real causes of AIDS.

Without a gold standard, even the correlation that many rethinkers are willing to afford to HIV is of suspect value. After all, it is very important to have a clear understanding of each individual correlative when trying to establish a mutual relationship -- to say nothing of the infinitely higher standards for establishing causation. Consequently, the charge of circular reasoning, levied by Hodgkinson, is not a singular charge, it can be levied justifiably against the "science" supporting HIV at nearly every juncture.

Btw, if Adele is a typical representative of the scientists manufacturing and/or studying SIV, I think one can justifiably question the import of that research, prima facie. Of course, there are many other reasons to reject manufactured diseases like SIV and the following from Pope provides insight into at least one such reason:

Secondly we see the conclusion is yet again part of the premise, since these animal models never set out to challenge the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

Once again, it is very difficult to conduct "good science" when an outcome is so conspicuously predetermined.

Kevin

Pat, you mentioned T-cells. About 60% of T-cells maybe more, in the gut are infected and 80% die.
Back to Duesberg: at least you get the peripheral blood numbers approximately right--1 in 100 to 1 in 10,000 infected. See, Duesberg always picks the end of the estimate he likes the best. So he just says 1 in 10,000, then it becomes fewer than 1 in 10,000, then other people take it and run.

The correlation between HI-virus (by culture) and patients has never been strong. In Gallo's initial study HIV could be cultured from 36% of the AIDS patients and 86% of 'pre-AIDS' individuals.

It was therefore decided that antibodies, identified the way described by Neville Hodgkinson, were proof of current infection. This guaranteed a much better correlation between AIDS patients and HIV than the virus itself (by culture) could deliver. The correlation was never between HIV and patient, but between antibodies and patient.

But in the early years this produced a far too high correlation between antibodies and healthy individuals, also known as false-positives.

A strictly interpreted WB helped minimizing this problem. Unfortunately the opposite problem then arose; a poor correlation between positive antibody test and patients diagnosed with clinical AIDS, also known as false-negatives.

This problem was solved by adopting less strict antibody test criteria for patients already symptomatic with AIDS defining conditions than those applied to asymptomatic individuals. In other words, one simply applied different test standards to different groups of people to achieve the desired correlation.

By 1993 it seems some kind of equilibrium had been established between scoring the maximum number of patients with clinical AIDS positive on the antibody test while not having a unacceptably high number of healthy false-positives. This delicate balancing act of course means that the interpretive criteria for a positive antibody test differ between countries and labs around the world. Small price to pay for a strong correlation between antibody and AIDS in the marked absence of the virus itself.

Those remaining false-positives individuals, as defined by the antibody-clinical AIDS correlation, who don't succumb to Lincoln's Acquired Stress Syndrome, are now pronounced 'elite controllers', 'genetic deviants', or held forth as proof of the miraculous effects of the new ARV cocktails

For the false-negatives, necessarily a much smaller group, since antibody tests aim at inclusiveness, there's ICL.

And if none of this satisfies, there's always the circular logic of the definition which makes HIV part of AIDS to fall back on.

There's Dr. Noble's perfect correlation between HIV and AIDS for you.

[I have not bothered referencing, since most of this info is found in Hodgkinson's and Rodney Richard's articles, which I have already referenced above]

The defenders of HIV causing AIDS, seem to all have gone to the same school of scientific research as Robert Gallo.

This school is of the belief that by simply writing or shouting something often enough somehow makes it true.

Well, as Robert Gallo is finding out, it does not make it true.

Perhaps some of weaker minds and intimidated spirits can be led into believing anything. But not all of the people in the world have such weak minds, although I would tender it to be the majority.

It had long ago been said that All of the people can be fooled some of the time, and some of the people can be fooled all of the time, but

All of the people can NOT be fooled all of the time.

Amazing, you intellectual superheroes! That's the best you can do? Going back 25 years to a paper before HIV was even named, the only good way of looking for it was coculture, and (shock!) less than 100% of patients had virus culturable under the imperfect conditions used at the time?
Speaking of "writing or shouting something often enough." The intellectual superhero movement needs a database of all their quotes and a random generator. That way, you guys could comment without effort and use your time for something else. Like maybe reading a virology textbook.

I love Dr. Rebecca Culshaw's quote, "The rate of CD4 decline is not a predictor of AIDS. See why I quit HIV?"
Everyone knows that I have AIDS, maybe Chris Noble or others from the mainstream point of view can explain how I am extremely healthy with CD4's at 86?

Adele wrote:Speaking of "writing or shouting something often enough." The intellectual superhero movement needs a database of all their quotes and a random generator. That way, you guys could comment without effort and use your time for something else. Like maybe reading a virology textbook.

They have actually done some of this. The random generator bit is still at the manual stage although it is difficult to tell with some of them.

AIDS quotes

I have found a lot of instances where the "rethinker" has simply copied and pasted from these out of context quotes without actually reading the articles from which they are taken.

Noreen, with all due respect your personal example is hardly support for the "rethinker" position.

According to your own testimony your CD4 counts have been steadily falling over time. The rate of CD4 depletion appears to be doing a very good job of predicting future loss so I would not attempt to get consolation from Culshaw's soundbite.

On average low CD4 counst are extremely good predictors for risk of opportunistic infections. The lower the CD4 count the higher the risk. Having low CD4 counts does not mean that you currently have an opportunistic infection anymore than high blood pressure means you have heart disease.

High blood pressure has no symptoms. You feel perfectly healthy. It is ridiculous however to deny that high blood pressure is the strongest risk factor for heart disease. Likewise there are no direct symptoms from low CD4 counts just a higher risk of opportunistic infections.

I sincerely hope that you remain well for many, many years however denial is not the best solution. I hope that if you do come down with opportunistic infections in the future that you rethink all of your options. It is certainly your choice to do whatever you think is best.

My options are working just fine and that is LDN which would be a better drug of choice for all immune deficient persons. It is a wonderful drug which is keeping me and many others alive and healthy but unfortunately it will only bring the drug companies $20.00/month vs. 1,200/month from anti-virals. Is it any wonder that this drug is not being pushed. Oh, by the way, it does not have any side effects unlike the AIDS meds. So, you tell me who is in denial!

Random quote generator "ON".

It's not even probable, let alone scientifically proven, that HIV causes AIDS. If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There are no such documents."

The HIV-causes-AIDS theory is one hell of a mistake.

Years from now, people will find our acceptance of the HIV theory of AIDS as silly as we find those who excommunicated Galileo.

Where is the research that says HIV is the cause of AIDS? There are 10,000 people in the world now who specialize in HIV. None has any interest in the possibility HIV doesn't cause AIDS because if it doesn't, their expertise is useless.

People keep asking me, 'You mean you don't believe that HIV causes AIDS?' And I say, 'Whether I believe it or not is irrelevant! I have no scientific evidence for it.' I might believe in God, and He could have told me in a dream that HIV causes AIDS. But I wouldn't stand up in front of scientists and say, 'I believe HIV causes AIDS because God told me.' I'd say, 'I have papers here in hand and experiments that have been done that can be demonstrated to others.' It's not what somebody believes, it's experimental proof that counts. And those guys don't have that.

If you think a virus is the cause of AIDS, do a control without it. To do a control is the first thing you teach undergraduates. But it hasn't been done. The epidemiology of AIDS is a pile of anecdotal stories selected to the virus-AIDS hypothesis. People don't bother to check the details of popular dogma or consensus views.

I find the irony of Lincoln's most recent post,... delicious!

"People don't bother to check the details of popular dogma or consensus views.

"Years from now, people will find our acceptance of the HIV theory of AIDS as silly as we find those who excommunicated Galileo."
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/science.html

One day lincoln you really should dig into the fundamentals of what you 'know'.

Galileo, huh?

The old denialist canard - Galileo was right and people disbelieved him. because people ridicule the denialists' ridiculous concepts about HIV, they must therefore be correct - logical fallacy at it's best.

I find the irony of quoting Lyn Margulis' late husband on the topic equally delicious:

"The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the clown."

Lincoln, you guys are the Bozos.

Chris tells us
I have found a lot of instances where the "rethinker" has simply copied and pasted from these out of context quotes without actually reading the articles from which they are taken.
They should be more careful, or they'll look like Bozo.
Since Noreen quoted Superheroine Culshaw, it's only fair to look at erv's site: endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com
for another taxpayer-funded knee-slapper from the University of Texas at Tyler.

They should be more careful, or they'll look like Bozo.
Since Noreen quoted Superheroine Culshaw, it's only fair to look at erv's site: endogenousretrovirus.blogspot.com
for another taxpayer-funded knee-slapper from the University of Texas at Tyler.

To be fair, I should say something about having a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent...

;) Thanks for noticing!

Yo Abby this is off topic a bit here but YOU of all of the "Dogmatists" here at Tara Smiths blog spot realize that Galileo was a D I S S I D E N T?

and..............that the "Flat Earthers" were the Scientific/Religious Bozoz like yourselves?

cmon Help me out here Abb we got give Chris Noble the News Flash!

Tara Smith! I am so disappointed in you.

Associating "Witch doctors" and Voodoo with Denialism shame on you! are you into witch craft?

Allow me first to say I am very ignorant on this subject. I have several questions but after reading the above statements I feel more than aprehensive. It's easy to pick apart what a person says and frame them a fool. Everyone needs to feel smart, everyone needs to feel heard, and saddly everyone at times needs a kicking dog. It seems to me that even the best of us at times kicks each other to be heard and the smarter the dog we kick the smarter we feel afterward. In some cases as I've read your emotions overcome your judgement. Try hard in your debates to leave your emotions at the proverbial door.

I tattoo for a living and lately I have tattooed friends who have HIV and were too afraid to enter the usual studio. I am honored they trust me and my cleanliness. I never put much thought into HIV or AIDS until recently and ofcourse the more I ponder the more questions I have. They do not seem intersted in maintaining a conversation with me on the subject so out of politeness I keep my questions to myself. Especially since these seem like dumb questions to ask.

Is it true that a French pharmacutical company introduced HIV into African villigers during the great Polio vacsination by using the kidneys of chimpanzees which were infected with SIV? Have they made any headway in curing SIV in chimps? Have any lawsuits been brought against said French company?
Is it true they have identified the DNA sequence that keeps people who have HIV from developing AIDS? If so, why can't they duplicate this sequence and administer it to those who have been infected with HIV? (this is part of a rumor that the wealthy can afford this "cure" - for a lack of a better word.)

Alright pick it apart. With out any help I'm sure I sound foolish enough though. If I have offended anyone I am trully sorry and I apologize.

You should see the film hiv fact or fraud on google to see a good summary of the dissident scientists like Duesbergs views.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5064591712431946916

There are other microbes out there that are probably a lot more dangerous, like mycoplasma incognitus, Dr shyh ching Lo, a brilliant scientist who is the cheif of infectious pathology at the armed forces discovered it and it sickened/ killed every animal he injected, this doesnt happen with hiv, its found by PCR in AIDS, CFS etc and was part probably part of the bioweapons program. This book is riveting on the subject.
http://www.projectdaylily.com/

Hello Pete, and welcome to the "healthy scepticism required to understand HIV or AIDS".

There have been so many conspiracy theories about HIV, and none of them are provable. It is usually useless to even consider them, when simple human error in mistaken beliefs and the foibles of human ego go so much farther as explanations in explaining why people get ill with what is called AIDS.

For a beginner lesson on the dissident side of the issue, I would recommend you read a short and simple book that was recently released called "Science Sold Out" by Rebecca Culshaw, available on Amazon. You can read it in an hour and a half.

In the book, she explains the reasons for strongly suspecting that the theory that HIV causes AIDS is considered highly flawed.

As a member of the gay community for 30 years who has seen the "AIDS Epidemic" close up, my own sincere beliefs are that of mass hysteria combined with high stress, such as the stress of an HIV diagnosis, contribute greatly to Psychosomatic Stress that induces a lowering of functioning of the thymus gland, which therefore depresses immune function, leaving one vulnerable to whatever opportunistic infctions are common in the individuals environment.

Drug addiction, sex addiction with its associated std's and followed by lots of antibiotic use, and the toxicity of the AIDS drugs are highly contributory to health problems of those diagnosed as HIV. But the greatest contributor seems to me to be stress. The diagnosis can give one a deadly amount of stress all by itself.

Primary AIDS opportunistic infections vary completely from group to group. None of the susceptible groups get anywhere near the same infections or illnesses.

HIV tests have been proven to be highly flawed. There is much money at stake both pharmaceutically, and research wise.

Many many billions of dollars, which can influence thinking and science greatly when following only a certain path of belief is required if one is to make their living in the field.

But again, these are simply my own views after researching this myself for many years and with my own extensive experiences with those affected, including my lovers and many friends.

Certainly the orthodoxy is not doing anything intentionally to harm, but the fear and paranoia that go hand in hand with the subject of HIV/AIDS can cloud the thinking and judgement of the most level headed thinkers or researchers.

But this does not necessarily make them wrong, so see what all sides have to say, and think for yourself.

Educate yourself on all sides of the issue. You can do a search for "AIDS dissidents" on the internet and find enough to keep you occupied for 3 lifetimes on both sides of the issue.

Again, think for yourself, doubt ALL you read and hear on all sides, avoid judgement and your own bias, and later, with more information to guide you, then decide for yourself what your own truth is, as that is all that really matters for you!

hi
i am intererest be on sundays services hop me back
for any thing in around durban.
i leave in cato crest around there i thought you should be able to offer any help i requier from you about to get through in worship.

orthodox

Wow, all this talk about HIV really makes me happy that I am in a faithful relationship with one woman and don't use drugs. Also, that Lincoln guy is crazy...

well im happy they are working on aids and those people desever the grat efter wat the u.s. is doing

and kyle is rigth dont use drugs they will make it worst