You're not crazy, dangerous, etc. (at least not in a bad way)
Happy?
"Is it not true that there have in the past been people who came down down with the entire classic list of AIDS symtoms: Kaposi's Sarcoma, diarrhea and vomiting, drop in t-cell count, rapid weight loss, and eventual death by a specific type of pneumonia, but were HIV negative and therefore merely diagnosed as having an "idiopathic" condition?"
Numbers! I want numbers!
If the idiopathic condition is more common than "AIDS", well there's obviously a problem with the current theory. If the idiopathic condition is a rather small minority of cases, that argument isn't very convincing.
So far as I know no one's collected the numbers. The CDC labeled them as having "ICL4" and promptly began ignoring them. So far as I know no one's looked at the condition since the mid-1980s.
Duesberg documents this in his book. I suggest you read it.
My brother has been HIV+ for many years and he no longer takes any meds and is in very good health.
Most of his friends and ex-lovers are dead from AIDs. He lives in the Portsmouth NH area and that area appeared to be pretty hard hit. I lived there in the mid-80s and, except for my brother and a friend named Phil, every gay man (10-15)I knew from there is dead. Phil and my brother were the biggest sluts I knew. They both cruised to Boston's bath-houses regularly. My brother's partner also was with a guy who died from AIDs and he never got it.
It surely is a confusing disease and it's made worse because you can't question orthodoxy or you are attacked.
No, you're not wrong, crazy, a danger to public health, etc. You may be a danger to the Prevailing Paradigm. :)
The whole sorry story of AIDS/HIV science, along with global warming and much environmental science, has been a disgrace for the scientific community. Much like the MSM, a significant number of their members have lied and cheated for political/personal reasons. Worse, young people entering the field have been indoctrinated to believe that this is ok, even necessary, and those already in the field have remained mostly silent while this went on.
Other examples abound, such as the non-subjects that have become whole university departments, and the ability of people like Noam Chomsky to retain employment.
If the public knew how bad it was, and just how unbalanced and unscientific so much of this work is, they would have about as much faith in science as they do in Dan Rather.
And that is a terrible, horrible thing. I can hardly think of anything more corrosive in the long term to Western society than having a major truth deficit within science. So no, Dean, imo you're not a danger. To the contrary, you're the canary in the coal mine. Your comments here are in the very best tradition of the Enlightenment. Keep up the good work. :)
I feel that it's simply good science to look at all the possibilities. Science shouldn't be concerned with public policy. Simply put, a cure hasn't been found in 20 years despite the hundreds of millions of dollars dumped into following the traditional course of action. How much more needs to be spent (or how many more years need to pass) before an alternate research course is considered? As said in the film version of 'And The Band Played On,' "Give us a number!"
I'm not not anti-gay or anti-science for saying this, nor is Dean. Just look and how little progress has really been made. Doesn't it make sense to at least start looking at the other possibilities? Stop following the rhetoric of the scientists who have built their career upon the status quo. Science is all about getting results and we're not getting them.
As Michael Crichton noted, the great scientists we all know of are so because they broke from the concessus... they broke from the pack. Most were considered heretic for doing so but results speak for themself.
Veeshir: There are large online communities of people like your brother: HIV+, once medicated for it, now many years medication free and quite well.
Some of them would say your brother is alive only because he had the foresight to stop taking his meds. They may be wrong, but tell me: doesn't it seem as if it would be prudent if someone were doing research on people like this?
Probably someone is doing research on people like that, and saying "Huh. He must have a natural immunity to the virus." Not necessarily the reaction you might be hoping for.
Any doctor who gets a lot of ICL4 patients and few classical AIDS patients can write an important paper about how a mysterious disease exists in his community and god knows what it will lead to. That's how AIDS was discovered. It's not the CDC who discovers these thing.
No, no "danger." But saying "a certain number of scientists believe XXX" sounds suspiciously like reasoning by democracy.
By that method: considering the number of professional journalists who agreed with the underlying topic, Bush really was a chickenhawk draft-dodger.
Sagan once said: "They laughed at Galileo; they laughed at Columbus; they also laughed at Bozo the clown." In other words, someetimes the whacky-sounding minority is just that.
If the data are as definitive and clear-cut as your correspondent claims, then why are they in the minority?
What impresses me are not claims, but research that has been critiqued, then reliably reproduced many times over in order to eliminate reasonable doubt. And yes, scientists are human; and yes, there have been examples of scientists branded as "crazy" or "whacky" but who later turned out to be correct (or substantially so).
But that's only because the research backed them up.
Now, either these guys are off their meds, or the mainstream model really doesn't reflect the HIV/AIDS relationship properly. So let's see the research.
Actually this is starting to remind me of the global warming thread; we still don't know what's going on there, either.
The history of science is rife with controversies where hypotheses that go against the prevailing thinking are shouted down despite the data.
Read about the history of the development of quantum mechanics for a fairly recent example. It is interesting and very illuminating.
Many forget that science is work done by people, with all their human failings. Despite the common perception that "science is about the data and coming to conclusions without bias", it is impossible to eliminate bias even in this seemingly sterile arena. The same data can be looked at by two different experts and they can come to completely different interpretations and conclusions.
Eventually, the "truth" wins out, because humanity for all its failings does prefer what works over what doesn't. However, as with all births, the birth of scientific facts is rarely painless.
Medicine is not a "yes, no" kind of thing - there is a lot of probability and uncertainty involved. HIV "causes" AIDS, in that HIV does something which compromises the immune system, causing a vulnerability to a set of other bugs which cause cancers, etc. By the same token, smoking causes lung cancer by damaging lung cells, leading later by some process to cancer. Not all lung cancer is caused by smoking, and by the same token, not all compromises of the immune system in the manner of AIDS need be caused by HIV - there may be other causes. Further, not all HIV+ types need develop AIDS, just like not all smokers with similar lung damage get cancer.
Saying "HIV doesn't cause AIDS", I believe, doesn't accurately describe the situation. Saying "HIV doesn't cause all AIDS" or something similar, might well, though.
AZT is a separate issue - it is a massively dangerous chemical which probably shouldn't be used as a maintenance drug. Standard treatment is to quit chemo when cancer is in remission, it should probably be to quit AZT when AIDS is in remission(asymptomatic). Same with AZT for pregnant women - asymptomatic women may be better served by vitamin regimens for keeping transmission down than by AZT.
It isn't irrational to say that HIV=AIDS is not the whole story. It would be irrational to claim that nothing happened in the early '80s. Suddenly, people started dying in a way no one, or at least very few, had died before, without an obvious proximate cause. It was found that many-most people with a certain antibody were dying in that way, and that people without it weren't dying in that way. Very suggestive, no? We start treating the disease with a certain set of drugs (AZT + others) and just as suddenly, the antibody positive people start dying in far smaller numbers - though often from side effects of the treatment in substitution for some of the deaths from the new disease itself. Very suggestive, no? A few antibody negative people are dying - maybe those folks have immune systems which can't "see" the virus and thus can't produce antibodies at all, or maybe they have something else, or just maybe, indeed, they are harbingers of an alternate theory, as yet unexpressed - more research is needed.
Some of the researchers who challenge HIV as AIDS cause have valid points - they should be encouraged to pursue their theories. Some are missing the point - medicine is not a field where we can claim full knowledge of causal mechanisms for most disease - even how colds work is a fairly arcane area. Researchers can only go by correlations and theories most of the time. They may be wrong, but HIV is the most promising theory they have. Until one of the challengers shows that his theory or method is better, MDs have to go with "best practices".
Some are in denial - people always deny that what they have is dangerous, and so they will seize on anything to say nothing is wrong. "I'm HIV positive, but so is Magic, and he is healthy, so it isn't a problem unless I actually have symptoms." "No, I don't eat, but see this website - it says anorexia and bulimia is a myth and food is addiction." "My drinking is under control." "Yeah, I feel horrible and have no energy, but I'm just getting older." (weeks before dying of massively metasticized cancer - a relative of mine). This isn't Dean, of course, but it drives some of the popularization of anti-HIV ideas.
If HIV researchers have been lying or demonstrating more certainty than they have, and demonizing dissidents, it is because patients will seize on those uncertainties as a reason to avoid the treatment that the doctors know are their best hope of survival. They view the dissidents as killing people, because they know that the dissent will cause patients to avoid treatment they need. Whether HIV causes AIDS or not, AZT and other drugs in cocktail HAVE taken obviously dying people and caused them not to die. This is clinically observed and uncontestable. All of the uncertainty - which really exists in all science - isn't good cause to say "no" to the best treatment available, any more than the vagaries of evolution theory being sufficient to justify teaching creationist religion as science.
Dean - I'm not saying I'm 100% sold on anything here, but I'll give you huge kudos for making a very strong case for an alternative view point. I was not aware of this counter position regarding HIV/AIDS and at a minimum, you have educated me. I thank you for this. Excellent work and thanks for giving me a kick in the ass to see and consider a very intriguing alternative viewpoint.
My personal take on it is that HIV destroys the immune system, and this is what causes the symptoms we call AIDS. I think there are a lot of other things that can also bring about these symptoms, and that the CDC and others take a a very simplistic view of the condition we call AIDS. I guess the easiest way for me to explain my view is to say that AIDS is a complete failure of certain immune functions (those mediated by T cells), and HIV kills T cells, but so do a lot of other things, including other viruses, some genetic conditions, and even some medications. That is, HIV is only responsible for a subset of AIDS cases(probably a large subset). There is no doubt in my mind that AIDS has an etiology as complex as Schizophrenia, which I study, but that the reason no one recognizes the complexity is that it's easy to blame all of the illnesses on HIV. Another confounding factor is that many of the other conditions etc. that can lead to total immune breakdown are easier to treat than the HIV virus and symptoms can be reversed before you ever get to full-blown AIDS status.
As far as Duesberg is concerned, I think he's right to question the scientific evidence, but his own pet theory doesn't stand up to the rigor that he subjects the theories of others to.
There is no doubt in my mind that AIDS has an etiology as complex as Schizophrenia, which I study, but that the reason no one recognizes the complexity is that it's easy to blame all of the illnesses on HIV. Another confounding factor is that many of the other conditions etc. that can lead to total immune breakdown are easier to treat than the HIV virus and symptoms can be reversed before you ever get to full-blown AIDS status.
This, to me, is the dangerous part. I accept that there is a correlation between HIV and AIDS, and even that it plays some part in the process. What that leaves us is that rather than
HIV = AIDS
what we are more likely to be looking at is
HIV + X = AIDS
Where does that leave us? Right now, we are fighting a losing battle trying to break the equasion by taking out HIV, and ignoring the X factor. What if X is something simple like an alergic reaction to peanuts? (This isn't my hypothesis, but a thought exercise.) If it is a simple alergy and HIV acts as a catalyst to turn that alergy in HIV, then why don't we treat the X Factor and stop worrying about fighting a losing battle against HIV?
Since talking about anything past the HIV=AIDS equasion is verboten, we aren't getting anywhere on treatment. Crushing dissent against a hypothesis isn't science -- it is religion. Wrapping religion up in a veneer of reason doesn't make it science.
It was Dani who said that Dean was dangerous and should be ashamed of himself in the last thread. I even asked her to clarify and she did.
"Dani" would be Dr. Danielle Emery, M.D., and someone I would consider a friend. If she thinks she hurt my feelings she is utterly mistaken. I appreciate her hard-nosed skepticism and in no way condemn her for focusing her skepticism upon me like a laser. Well, her disappointment with me might have hurt my feelings just a touch, but I understand it. If scientific enquiry were entirely about not hurting people's feelings it would be a sorry thing indeed. And I promise that whatever comes of this, Dani, Caltechgirl, and also Catch 22 are all owed a beer from me having the respect for me to point their mercilessly reasoned guns in my direction.
I continue to urge people read the materials linked. And I continue to suspect that HIV may not cause AIDS an that a lot of cocktail medications are quite possibly more dangerous than the disease and that patients need to know that there are dissenters out there who are not merely shamen.
Yes, AZT is a nasty drug. There's lots of nasty drugs out there, and it's up to physicians and their patients to figure out if and what to take, as you were saying in a post a few days ago. Are you saying you think it should be taken off the market because it's so evil? ;)
The problem with fighting viruses is that they are parasites. They have very few genes and proteins of their own to attack. It's nice if you can find one of their proteins to knock out, it lets you kill them without hurting the host. However, those aren't easy to do. It's far easier to screw up the host's systems and count on the fact that they're likely to out-live the parasite. AZT does target HIV 999 out of 1000 times. But that 1 out of a thousand times it's incorporated into the host's DNA does make a mess. So yes, it's yucky. It screws up your DNA. It also kills HIV.
HIV mutates *fast*. It makes a lot of itself and tends to be sloppier at making copies than most other organisms. It makes more mistakes on it's own genetic code -- but it makes a lot of itself, so it can afford to. The drugs that target it's genes tend to generate resistance extremely quickly, because it mutates so fast. So we're stuck with our best bets being targeting the host genes, but efforts are still aimed at making less toxic drugs (anti-sense RNA seems like a good bet to me if they can find a way to deliver it).
Some other viruses also mutate fast -- most don't mutate as fast as HIV, which is why they're easier to knock out.
Anyway, just like the ID debate, I don't care if you want to take on some "fact" of science. I'm all for it. Have a party! It's good for science. My problem is that your supporting evidence just isn't persuasive, such as anecdotal evidence of people living for decades with HIV. That's not evidence against it. People live for decades with chicken pox virus and never get shingles. I just want you to dig deeper and get better evidence. :) Saying AZT is yucky isn't evidence. Saying that you can get pneumonia without having HIV isn't evidence. So far, the majority of your arguments (no, I haven't read every article or book you've posted, because I have a job :D, so I have to say majority) are common things that occur in other well-documented diseases.
Forgive me for making this simpler than it appears to be, but having sat at far too many death beds BEFORE AZT or the other cocktail drugs were available, the only common link (known) was HIV.
It's quite clearcut: If your T-Cell count is dropping HIV is doing something to you. If your T-Cell count is normal or stable, then it isn't (yet).
The point at which the count starts dropping is the point at which you would consider doing something.
In the early 80s the only measurement was a low T-Cell count to gauge the progress. Below 300 meant a year left to live. When AZT came along that meant 2 or more years. Trust me. That extra year matters.
It's all fine to say what you'd do, but the fact is you don't know what you'd do. If the situation changes, if your immune system began to be compromised, you'd change your attitude (or die very quickly).
Of course it's your call. It is always up to the individual to determine what if any treatment they want to receive.
The doctors treating patients and consulting with family are doing the best they can. They aren't giving advice in some sort of paranoid vacuum. No one but the family and the patient know what they're recommending. Suggesting a conspiracy among these doctors, who've sat and cried with us, is a wee bit of a stretch.
Sure. Do more research. Find out what other contributing factors there might be that trigger a decline or find out why some haven't yet declined.
The only issue here that is dangerous, is potentially encouraging people that they can deny they are slowly heading off the side of a mountain. Denial is the first stage of of everyone who has been told they have a life threatening disease. Knowing that, we need to be careful. Exercising caution, not censorship, in giving advice that might delay them taking a more realistic approach, is always called for.
Regarding "If so, are there any rigorously defined standards for an AIDS diagnosis besides "patient is HIV+ and has any one of the following long list of conditions?", well, I addressed that (very late) in the last thread.
To re-iterate: AIDS is, as its name implies, a syndrome; a set of symptoms presumed for purposes of investigation to have a common cause.
Rigorously defined standards? Well, I'm not sure how rigorous you can get with a syndromic diagnosis (but I'm not a doctor!); it sure seems to me like the hazy nature of a syndrome makes it difficult to be thoroughly rigorous.
(Heck, even thoroughly well-defined diseases with a proven cause vary in symptoms, and doctors rarely seem to go for a rigorous diagnosis. I had pneumonia earlier this year, and I'm que sure there are other diseases of varying rareness that could display the symptoms the doctor observed to make his diagnosis (temperature, pulse, lung noise)... but I'm also quite sure he was right to not order a blood test, and simply prescribe some antibiotics.)
The relationship between AIDS and HIV could certainly bear more investigation, but a (hypothetical - I don't think anyone here's made it, though others in other places have) claim that they're utterly unrelated would be more than a little stretch.
Well, lots of people are dying from AIDS, and something must be the cause of AIDS - why not HIV? It's all well and good to call the research sloppy, but the critics of the HIV=AIDS theories have also been a bit remiss in that I've never seen an alternative explanation for why hundreds of thousands of people should suddenly lose their immune system and die slow, painful deaths.
Perhaps I've missed some reports, so if anyone has got such alternative explanations I'd be happy to read them. Of course, it is also odd that there are a large number of people with HIV for decades who aren't dead - of course, they might just be from the "deep end of the gene pool" and are highly resistent to the affects of HIV; it seems to be that virus' are never fatal enough to kill off all of their potential hosts (they are not suicide mechanisms, as it were) - so our long-term survivors just might be genetically pre-disposed to not die of AIDS. I've got personal experience of this as I've apparently got an inborn immunity to smallpox (been innoculated several times, it never took; ergo, according to some Docs, I don't need it - born immune).
Of course, we do have to be highly suspicious of the confluence of politicians who have to "do something", drug makers out to make a buck, activists with an axe to grind and grant-dependent scientists who'll tweak the data to please the grantors; all in all, there does seem to be a high BS quotient in the entire AIDS debate.
All in all, Dean, you've outdone yourself here - submit this to magazines for publication online and on dead tree; an article everyone should read.
I don't know who is right or wrong or whatever on this scientific question, but I do know that Dean is a hero for thinking for himself and speaking his mind. He looks squarely at the facts and asks tough questions, whatever the answers may be.
Perhaps the missing factor in the equation is the lack of proper nutritional inputs. Instead of HIV=AIDS, it might be HIV+(lack of certain nutrients depleted by HIV)=AIDS. Eliminate this lack through proper diet or supplements and you can have HIV and not AIDS. Similarly, reduce effectiveness of the virus (through meds) and you can also prevent getting to full-blown AIDS. Here's the abstract from a review article on this particular hypothesis:
How HIV-1 causes AIDS: implications for prevention and treatment
Foster HD
Med Hypotheses. 2004;62(4):549-53
HIV-1 encodes for one of the human glutathione peroxidases. As a consequence, as it is replicated, its genetic needs cause it to deprive HIV-1 seropositive individuals not only of glutathione peroxidase, but also of the four basic components of this selenoenzyme, namely selenium, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan. Eventually this depletion process causes severe deficiencies of all these substances. These, in turn, are responsible for the major symptoms of AIDS which include immune system collapse, greater susceptibility to cancer and myocardial infarction, muscle wasting, depression, diarrhea, psychosis and dementia. As the immune system fails, associated pathogenic cofactors become responsible for a variety of their own unique symptoms. Any treatment for HIV/AIDS must, therefore, include normalization of body levels of glutathione, glutathione peroxidase, selenium, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan. Although various clinical trials have improved the health of AIDS patients by correcting one or more of these nutritional deficiencies, they have not, until the present, been addressed together. Physicians involved in a selenium and amino-acid field trial in Botswana, however, are reporting that this nutritional protocol reverses AIDS in 99% of patients receiving it, usually within three weeks.
The last line is most interesting, and I'll try and find this particular study (the above is a review paper written oddly enough from a guy in a geography dept.).
Nonetheless, it's an interesting subject you've raised here Dean and as all science, it can't hurt to get it under the microscope and increase the magnification.
The doctors who went from childbed to childbed without washing their hands in Victorian England were very sorry when their patients died of childbed fever. Many cried at night in despair, no doubt. Some surely went mad or lost their own health or destroyed their marriages as they wondered *why* so many died. They cannot be faulted for their concern. What they *can* be faulted for is drumming the young doctor out of the corp for suggesting that there were "invisible" agents on their *hands* and they should just TRY washing them between patients and see what happened. They called him dangerous and unbalanced.
Caring is no guarentee that they are doing the right thing at all.
The problem with your comment, Meezer, is the idea that medicine (or any human interaction) can ever be an exact science.
We know from understanding a little about Medical history was that doctors stopped cauterizing wounds on the battle field in boiling hot oil, because when they ran out they noticed that the patients who didn't get the treatment did better than those who did.
Medicine, despite all the platitudes, recent advancements, or animal substitutes is primarily a discipline acquired through apprenticeship and OBSERVATION--repeating what works, and fine tuning the approach. No one in their right mind can suggest that the recent treatments for HIV/AIDS haven't been beneficial to most. It may not be beneficial to all, which is why it isn't an exact science. It is no better than trial and error--with errors costing people their lives.
Certainly there are numerous professions besides medicine where people can earn big $$$. Nowadays medicine doesn't pay as much as a CFO at a medium sized company, with 1/10th the student loans. There are always exceptions, but people choose medicine as a calling more than a profession.
There is no money in treating AIDS patients. A lot more can be earned performing liposuctions. Choosing to work in a teaching hospital (where most of the AIDS care is provided) treating AIDS patients is not done for prestige or any monetary rewards.
No, there is no guarantee that they are doing the right thing. And, despite asking the question which doesn't have any impact on the person asking the question because they aren't having to take the life and death actions for anyone, there is no guarantee they're doing the wrong thing either. Until they know with certainty there is a better way, they have to do the best they can with the information available. As I've read from Dean's post and other commenters, no one here or in the field has any better guess than "It could be something else. What that might be or what is causing it will require reseach and more money, but I think my theory is right before I've done it."
That's irresponsible thinking. You can talk about a conspiracy of researchers all after the same limited resource pot, but don't bring the doctors and nurses into this who are reading everything they can get their hands on, to do the best they can for their patients.
IANAD. My friend the pediatric oncologist says that medicine is an art, not a science, maybe because everyone's biochemistry is a little different. It's why I like copy-cat drugs: they all produce different side effects in different people, so hopefully you can find one that doesn't make you miserable.
Gee, here's a bit of reasoning that covers all the data presented: Low T-cell counts cause auto-immune deficiencies, leading to death by many different diseases. HIV causes low T-cell counts in the 90% of folks who aren't naturally immune to it. Other ideopathic diseases also cause low T-cell counts.
Oddly, this is the prevailing medical paradigm. Perhaps Duesberg could get some funding if he developed some numbers showing a substantial number of ideopathic AIDS mimicing deaths and said he was looking for other diseases with a similar pathology to AIDS. No toes stepped on and no new paradigm needed. Maybe he'd find out the true cause of AIDS, or maybe he'd find another disease and we can start treating it too.
Bunch of uselessly large egos if you ask me, grumble, grumble, pointedly ignoring own large ego, grumble, grumble.
"My personal take on it is that HIV destroys the immune system, and this is what causes the symptoms we call AIDS. I think there are a lot of other things that can also bring about these symptoms, and that the CDC and others take a a very simplistic view of the condition we call AIDS. I guess the easiest way for me to explain my view is to say that AIDS is a complete failure of certain immune functions (those mediated by T cells), and HIV kills T cells, but so do a lot of other things, including other viruses, some genetic conditions, and even some medications. That is, HIV is only responsible for a subset of AIDS cases(probably a large subset). There is no doubt in my mind that AIDS has an etiology as complex as Schizophrenia, which I study, but that the reason no one recognizes the complexity is that it's easy to blame all of the illnesses on HIV. Another confounding factor is that many of the other conditions etc. that can lead to total immune breakdown are easier to treat than the HIV virus and symptoms can be reversed before you ever get to full-blown AIDS status.
As far as Duesberg is concerned, I think he's right to question the scientific evidence, but his own pet theory doesn't stand up to the rigor that he subjects the theories of others to." (CTG)
There are no words I have to express what caltechgirl has already expressed very simply and eloquently. She merits a very large green border.
I cannot answer everybody here but to a certain extent many of the comments are deeply frustrating because some of you have clearly not read much of any of the literature from the HIV dissenters and are merely pronouncing ex cathedra.
I'll try to answer a few people:
Maor: You seem mighty confident that these studies are being done. Would you care to point me to one of them?
Mrs. du Toit: Would it shock you to learn that in the 1980s, most gay men showing the classic AIDS symptoms were never tested for HIV and were merely assumed to be HIV+ because they were already sick? Or that there were gay men with all those symptoms, all of whom died, who tested HIV- but were never properly studied?
So far as AZT goes, none of the studies showing that AZT extended AIDS patients' lives were properly double-blinded and all appear to have been polluted. Randy Shilts documented that in his book, and obviously he had nothing to gain from saying that--he was dying of AIDS himself and he utterly believed the HIV hypothesis.
That being the case, it's hazardous to believe that AZT actually extended anyone's life. Someone already deeply in the throes of the disease can say he "feels better" taking the AZT, but what does that mean? Give him a sugar pill and tell him it'll help him and he's just as likely to say he "feels better." Of course, AZT causes acute nasuea, but those in the throes of the disease already have acute nausea--and are probably using pot to alleviate that. Which is another uncontrolled factor by the way--practically everybody on AZT uses pot, which everyone who's not either stupid or willfully blind knows. So you give him a drug that makes him even more nauseous, he ups his pot intake a bit to compensate and then says he feels better. What does any of that prove? He dies anyway, and you take it on faith that he lived longer as a result of the AZT, all the while never being told that none of those studies on AZT's efficacy were ever properly controlled or double blinded because the patients conspired to share their medications and the soft-hearted nurses admitted off the record that they sometimes gave AZT to the control group because they thought it would help them and it seemed cruel to give them sugar pills (and the sugar pills looked completely different from the AZT, so everybody could tell).
Polluted science is no better than voodoo. I highly recommend reading Duesberg's book if you're genuinely interested in this subject.
Casey: The HIV dissidents are on your side, and say most AIDS research is based on consensus and not rigorous testing or logic.
rvman: AZT causes acute nausea, diarrhea, and reduced t-cells. It is also a potent carcinogen. The average person taking it dies within a year or two. The FDA BANNED it in the 1970s because it was considered too toxic even for advanced cancer patients. It was released entirely as an emergency measure due to huge political pressure from the gay community. So at what point would you pronounce an AIDS patient taking it "in remission," given that most of its effects mimick the symptoms of AIDS itself and that pretty much everybody who takes it dies?
For the rest of you: If you've "never seen" an alternative explanation for AIDS, this means you haven't read any of the HIV dissidents' material. You may pronounce your beliefs if you wish, but until you ask specific questions about what the dissidents are saying or how they explain their reasoning, you're merely pronouncing your beliefs. It would save time if you just said "these people are full of it" and moved on. The effect would be the same.
People will get green borders from me when the ask pointed questions that demonstrate that they actually understand Duesberg's reasoning and the data it's based on. Caltechgirl is so far the only person to do that.
Dean, sorry, but you're full of shit. They DO have the data but it is conveniently not included in the books authored by these skeptics. Don't be so quick to assume that because some folks have dismissed their theories for what they choose to omit, that people are missing the bigger points.
It was 1 year from T-Cell count of 300 to death. That was the average. After AZT someone could hold steady at 3+ years. With the AZT cocktails later, it was 5+ years.
I'd be happy to talk to you privately and give you the names of the families that buried the people who didn't have the increased lifespan that the rest of had with family members and had 5-10 years longer with our loves ones.
You talk about these theories as if the rest of us lived in a vacuum. Maybe you might want to consider that some of us were around PRE AZT, pre tests of any sort, and pre any of the existing treatments--when people died VERY quickly.
You might want to start asking some other questions such as why, when HIV was identified as the source for development of full blown AIDS, those who tested positive were forbidden to donate blood, why the hemophiliacs and recipients of blood by product medicines stopped developing AIDS, when before that they were dropped like flies.
It was COMMON for T-Cell counts to go from the high 800s to death (below counts of 100) in one year. From the time people first began noticing that they felt bad (T-Cell about 800) to death was ONE YEAR. You're suggesting that some switch-o-chango happened with HIV that it suddenly stopped progressing that quickly, and the fact that AZT and other drug cocktails are extending life for 10+ years is a happy coincidence.
Get over it, Dean. You've read medical articles from a few skeptics and you now think you're qualified to give medical advice and know more about this than all of the rest of us, who have read what most of the morons have written and DISMISSED IT. Stop thinking this is an issue of us not being as well informed as you. We ARE as well informed we view the data DIFFERENTLY. Consider it an issue where we must agree to disagree but discounting that anyone but yourself has all the information is actually quite insulting.
Connie: It's clear that you're angry, and I'm sorry if I've made you angry, but these conversations are frustrating when so many people obviously have not read the materials under discussion. Just because you have does not mean you can speak for everybody else. And I would appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth.
Just so you know, I have asked all the questions you say I should ask. Don't assume I haven't.
My thoughts on physicians who treat AIDS, and physicians in general, are <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1104484638.shtml#17178" target="_new">here</a>. Just FYI.
"Maor: You seem mighty confident that these studies are being done. Would you care to point me to one of them?"
No, I'm confident that any doctor whose experience tells him that a study would show that most people who seem to have AIDS have no HIV, would have a good motive to do the study.
If no such study has been done, it implies that doctors' experience tells them that most such patients do have HIV. Or it implies that there is a conspiracy of silence that stretches to every corner of the medical establishment. I consider the first explanation far more likely.
"You're suggesting that some switch-o-chango happened with HIV that it suddenly stopped progressing that quickly, and the fact that AZT and other drug cocktails are extending life for 10+ years is a happy coincidence."
Actually, such a switch-o-chango was predicted for the normal evolution of the virus. It's bad for the virus when the person dies.
Of course, that would support the virus theory, though not AZT.
Maor: If I seem grumpy it's because a lot of these questions have already been answered by the dissidents and it's easily looked up.
Look: NO CONSPIRACY REQUIRED. Just as there was no conspiracy required for doctors 150 years ago to assume that cauterizing wounds with boiling oil was a bad practice until someone finally did the research that indicated that this wasn't really a very good idea.
Read what the dissenters say carefully: In the '80s everyone was in a panic and grabbing any tool at their disposal that might help. When HIV became assumed to be the cause, and everything began to be devoted to fighting the HIV. All else that follows requires no conspiracy, just sloppy work by researchers and well-meaning assumptions by physicians that the research was solid.
You're right that a conspiracy is not required to explain what happened in the 80's.
However, I think (for reasons I've just explained) that only a conspiracy could stop someone from noticing in later years phenomena which are completely incompatible with the HIV hypothesis (very large percentages of HIV- patients). And even Duesberg mentions only problems such as absence of proof and minor (IMHO) quibbles.
"Maor: If I seem grumpy it's because a lot of these questions have already been answered by the dissidents and it's easily looked up."
I was kidding! I never thought you were grumpy. I thought you were questioning your own sanity, asking if such skeptics are flakes, dangerous, etc. Do you mean to say you are feeling a little grumpy?
;)
However, I think (for reasons I've just explained) that only a conspiracy could stop someone from noticing in later years phenomena which are completely incompatible with the HIV hypothesis (very large percentages of HIV- patients).
All right. Let me flip it around.
By the early 1990s, the list of AIDS symptoms was vast, and it's still vast. Doctors are taught that the presence of HIV in a patient plus any of those symptoms = AIDS. Any of those symptoms absent HIV = Not-AIDS.
So tell me: what is there for them to notice? Explain it to me.
Some symptoms are known to be found mainly among HIV+ patients. Very low T-cell counts, primarily. Kaposi sarcoma among young people, I think (not sure though). Ditto that particular type of pneumonia (forget spelling). If doctors see that HIV- patients of this sort are very common, they'll notice it.
Sure, some symptoms have always been common among HIV- people (i.e. pneumonia in general), and nothing can be proved from them without complex and contraversial analysis. I'm not talking about those symptoms.
By the early 1990s, the list of AIDS symptoms was vast, and it's still vast. Doctors are taught that the presence of HIV in a patient plus any of those symptoms = AIDS. Any of those symptoms absent HIV = Not-AIDS.
Most or all the diseases that affect people with weakened immune systems existed before, and had already been identified, right? So, if someone in Iowa in 1974 had been diagnosed with Kaposi's Sarcoma, then they would have Kaposi's Sarcoma, right?
If someone has Kaposi's Sarcoma and a strong immune system in the absence of HIV, isn't it safe to assume that they were just like that 1974 person, just an unfortunate victim of a rare disease?
If someone has Kaposi's Sarcoma and a strong immune system in the absence of HIV, isn't it safe to assume that they were just like that 1974 person, just an unfortunate victim of a rare disease?
Safe? I don't know. I do know that KS + HIV would get you on the cocktails.
Although the point is moot: almost no one who's diagnosed with AIDS has KS now. All the gay men in the early '80s did, but none of the hemophiliacs did, and hardly any the straight people, or the Africans, or well, anyone else but the gay men and the IV drug users in the early '80s. No KS for Arthur Ashe, none for Kim Bergalis, none for Ryan White, none Magic Johnson (who mysteriously got better after he started getting sick, ever wonder why?)... the theory is that well, HIV is always changing you see. So apparently it can discriminate. It doesn't like the gay men so it gives them the ugly purple lesions. Everyone else doesn't get the lesions, so I conclude that HIV is homophobic...
Happy?
"Is it not true that there have in the past been people who came down down with the entire classic list of AIDS symtoms: Kaposi's Sarcoma, diarrhea and vomiting, drop in t-cell count, rapid weight loss, and eventual death by a specific type of pneumonia, but were HIV negative and therefore merely diagnosed as having an "idiopathic" condition?"
Numbers! I want numbers!
If the idiopathic condition is more common than "AIDS", well there's obviously a problem with the current theory. If the idiopathic condition is a rather small minority of cases, that argument isn't very convincing.
Duesberg documents this in his book. I suggest you read it.
Most of his friends and ex-lovers are dead from AIDs. He lives in the Portsmouth NH area and that area appeared to be pretty hard hit. I lived there in the mid-80s and, except for my brother and a friend named Phil, every gay man (10-15)I knew from there is dead. Phil and my brother were the biggest sluts I knew. They both cruised to Boston's bath-houses regularly. My brother's partner also was with a guy who died from AIDs and he never got it.
It surely is a confusing disease and it's made worse because you can't question orthodoxy or you are attacked.
The whole sorry story of AIDS/HIV science, along with global warming and much environmental science, has been a disgrace for the scientific community. Much like the MSM, a significant number of their members have lied and cheated for political/personal reasons. Worse, young people entering the field have been indoctrinated to believe that this is ok, even necessary, and those already in the field have remained mostly silent while this went on.
Other examples abound, such as the non-subjects that have become whole university departments, and the ability of people like Noam Chomsky to retain employment.
If the public knew how bad it was, and just how unbalanced and unscientific so much of this work is, they would have about as much faith in science as they do in Dan Rather.
And that is a terrible, horrible thing. I can hardly think of anything more corrosive in the long term to Western society than having a major truth deficit within science. So no, Dean, imo you're not a danger. To the contrary, you're the canary in the coal mine. Your comments here are in the very best tradition of the Enlightenment. Keep up the good work. :)
I'm not not anti-gay or anti-science for saying this, nor is Dean. Just look and how little progress has really been made. Doesn't it make sense to at least start looking at the other possibilities? Stop following the rhetoric of the scientists who have built their career upon the status quo. Science is all about getting results and we're not getting them.
As Michael Crichton noted, the great scientists we all know of are so because they broke from the concessus... they broke from the pack. Most were considered heretic for doing so but results speak for themself.
Some of them would say your brother is alive only because he had the foresight to stop taking his meds. They may be wrong, but tell me: doesn't it seem as if it would be prudent if someone were doing research on people like this?
Any doctor who gets a lot of ICL4 patients and few classical AIDS patients can write an important paper about how a mysterious disease exists in his community and god knows what it will lead to. That's how AIDS was discovered. It's not the CDC who discovers these thing.
By that method: considering the number of professional journalists who agreed with the underlying topic, Bush really was a chickenhawk draft-dodger.
Sagan once said: "They laughed at Galileo; they laughed at Columbus; they also laughed at Bozo the clown." In other words, someetimes the whacky-sounding minority is just that.
If the data are as definitive and clear-cut as your correspondent claims, then why are they in the minority?
What impresses me are not claims, but research that has been critiqued, then reliably reproduced many times over in order to eliminate reasonable doubt. And yes, scientists are human; and yes, there have been examples of scientists branded as "crazy" or "whacky" but who later turned out to be correct (or substantially so).
But that's only because the research backed them up.
Now, either these guys are off their meds, or the mainstream model really doesn't reflect the HIV/AIDS relationship properly. So let's see the research.
Actually this is starting to remind me of the global warming thread; we still don't know what's going on there, either.
Read about the history of the development of quantum mechanics for a fairly recent example. It is interesting and very illuminating.
Many forget that science is work done by people, with all their human failings. Despite the common perception that "science is about the data and coming to conclusions without bias", it is impossible to eliminate bias even in this seemingly sterile arena. The same data can be looked at by two different experts and they can come to completely different interpretations and conclusions.
Eventually, the "truth" wins out, because humanity for all its failings does prefer what works over what doesn't. However, as with all births, the birth of scientific facts is rarely painless.
Saying "HIV doesn't cause AIDS", I believe, doesn't accurately describe the situation. Saying "HIV doesn't cause all AIDS" or something similar, might well, though.
AZT is a separate issue - it is a massively dangerous chemical which probably shouldn't be used as a maintenance drug. Standard treatment is to quit chemo when cancer is in remission, it should probably be to quit AZT when AIDS is in remission(asymptomatic). Same with AZT for pregnant women - asymptomatic women may be better served by vitamin regimens for keeping transmission down than by AZT.
It isn't irrational to say that HIV=AIDS is not the whole story. It would be irrational to claim that nothing happened in the early '80s. Suddenly, people started dying in a way no one, or at least very few, had died before, without an obvious proximate cause. It was found that many-most people with a certain antibody were dying in that way, and that people without it weren't dying in that way. Very suggestive, no? We start treating the disease with a certain set of drugs (AZT + others) and just as suddenly, the antibody positive people start dying in far smaller numbers - though often from side effects of the treatment in substitution for some of the deaths from the new disease itself. Very suggestive, no? A few antibody negative people are dying - maybe those folks have immune systems which can't "see" the virus and thus can't produce antibodies at all, or maybe they have something else, or just maybe, indeed, they are harbingers of an alternate theory, as yet unexpressed - more research is needed.
Some of the researchers who challenge HIV as AIDS cause have valid points - they should be encouraged to pursue their theories. Some are missing the point - medicine is not a field where we can claim full knowledge of causal mechanisms for most disease - even how colds work is a fairly arcane area. Researchers can only go by correlations and theories most of the time. They may be wrong, but HIV is the most promising theory they have. Until one of the challengers shows that his theory or method is better, MDs have to go with "best practices".
Some are in denial - people always deny that what they have is dangerous, and so they will seize on anything to say nothing is wrong. "I'm HIV positive, but so is Magic, and he is healthy, so it isn't a problem unless I actually have symptoms." "No, I don't eat, but see this website - it says anorexia and bulimia is a myth and food is addiction." "My drinking is under control." "Yeah, I feel horrible and have no energy, but I'm just getting older." (weeks before dying of massively metasticized cancer - a relative of mine). This isn't Dean, of course, but it drives some of the popularization of anti-HIV ideas.
If HIV researchers have been lying or demonstrating more certainty than they have, and demonizing dissidents, it is because patients will seize on those uncertainties as a reason to avoid the treatment that the doctors know are their best hope of survival. They view the dissidents as killing people, because they know that the dissent will cause patients to avoid treatment they need. Whether HIV causes AIDS or not, AZT and other drugs in cocktail HAVE taken obviously dying people and caused them not to die. This is clinically observed and uncontestable. All of the uncertainty - which really exists in all science - isn't good cause to say "no" to the best treatment available, any more than the vagaries of evolution theory being sufficient to justify teaching creationist religion as science.
As far as Duesberg is concerned, I think he's right to question the scientific evidence, but his own pet theory doesn't stand up to the rigor that he subjects the theories of others to.
It was Dani who said that Dean was dangerous and should be ashamed of himself in the last thread. I even asked her to clarify and she did.
This, to me, is the dangerous part. I accept that there is a correlation between HIV and AIDS, and even that it plays some part in the process. What that leaves us is that rather than
HIV = AIDS
what we are more likely to be looking at is
HIV + X = AIDS
Where does that leave us? Right now, we are fighting a losing battle trying to break the equasion by taking out HIV, and ignoring the X factor. What if X is something simple like an alergic reaction to peanuts? (This isn't my hypothesis, but a thought exercise.) If it is a simple alergy and HIV acts as a catalyst to turn that alergy in HIV, then why don't we treat the X Factor and stop worrying about fighting a losing battle against HIV?
Since talking about anything past the HIV=AIDS equasion is verboten, we aren't getting anywhere on treatment. Crushing dissent against a hypothesis isn't science -- it is religion. Wrapping religion up in a veneer of reason doesn't make it science.
"Dani" would be Dr. Danielle Emery, M.D., and someone I would consider a friend. If she thinks she hurt my feelings she is utterly mistaken. I appreciate her hard-nosed skepticism and in no way condemn her for focusing her skepticism upon me like a laser. Well, her disappointment with me might have hurt my feelings just a touch, but I understand it. If scientific enquiry were entirely about not hurting people's feelings it would be a sorry thing indeed. And I promise that whatever comes of this, Dani, Caltechgirl, and also Catch 22 are all owed a beer from me having the respect for me to point their mercilessly reasoned guns in my direction.
I continue to urge people read the materials linked. And I continue to suspect that HIV may not cause AIDS an that a lot of cocktail medications are quite possibly more dangerous than the disease and that patients need to know that there are dissenters out there who are not merely shamen.
The problem with fighting viruses is that they are parasites. They have very few genes and proteins of their own to attack. It's nice if you can find one of their proteins to knock out, it lets you kill them without hurting the host. However, those aren't easy to do. It's far easier to screw up the host's systems and count on the fact that they're likely to out-live the parasite. AZT does target HIV 999 out of 1000 times. But that 1 out of a thousand times it's incorporated into the host's DNA does make a mess. So yes, it's yucky. It screws up your DNA. It also kills HIV.
HIV mutates *fast*. It makes a lot of itself and tends to be sloppier at making copies than most other organisms. It makes more mistakes on it's own genetic code -- but it makes a lot of itself, so it can afford to. The drugs that target it's genes tend to generate resistance extremely quickly, because it mutates so fast. So we're stuck with our best bets being targeting the host genes, but efforts are still aimed at making less toxic drugs (anti-sense RNA seems like a good bet to me if they can find a way to deliver it).
Some other viruses also mutate fast -- most don't mutate as fast as HIV, which is why they're easier to knock out.
Anyway, just like the ID debate, I don't care if you want to take on some "fact" of science. I'm all for it. Have a party! It's good for science. My problem is that your supporting evidence just isn't persuasive, such as anecdotal evidence of people living for decades with HIV. That's not evidence against it. People live for decades with chicken pox virus and never get shingles. I just want you to dig deeper and get better evidence. :) Saying AZT is yucky isn't evidence. Saying that you can get pneumonia without having HIV isn't evidence. So far, the majority of your arguments (no, I haven't read every article or book you've posted, because I have a job :D, so I have to say majority) are common things that occur in other well-documented diseases.
It's quite clearcut: If your T-Cell count is dropping HIV is doing something to you. If your T-Cell count is normal or stable, then it isn't (yet).
The point at which the count starts dropping is the point at which you would consider doing something.
In the early 80s the only measurement was a low T-Cell count to gauge the progress. Below 300 meant a year left to live. When AZT came along that meant 2 or more years. Trust me. That extra year matters.
It's all fine to say what you'd do, but the fact is you don't know what you'd do. If the situation changes, if your immune system began to be compromised, you'd change your attitude (or die very quickly).
Of course it's your call. It is always up to the individual to determine what if any treatment they want to receive.
The doctors treating patients and consulting with family are doing the best they can. They aren't giving advice in some sort of paranoid vacuum. No one but the family and the patient know what they're recommending. Suggesting a conspiracy among these doctors, who've sat and cried with us, is a wee bit of a stretch.
Sure. Do more research. Find out what other contributing factors there might be that trigger a decline or find out why some haven't yet declined.
The only issue here that is dangerous, is potentially encouraging people that they can deny they are slowly heading off the side of a mountain. Denial is the first stage of of everyone who has been told they have a life threatening disease. Knowing that, we need to be careful. Exercising caution, not censorship, in giving advice that might delay them taking a more realistic approach, is always called for.
Regarding "If so, are there any rigorously defined standards for an AIDS diagnosis besides "patient is HIV+ and has any one of the following long list of conditions?", well, I addressed that (very late) in the last thread.
To re-iterate: AIDS is, as its name implies, a syndrome; a set of symptoms presumed for purposes of investigation to have a common cause.
Rigorously defined standards? Well, I'm not sure how rigorous you can get with a syndromic diagnosis (but I'm not a doctor!); it sure seems to me like the hazy nature of a syndrome makes it difficult to be thoroughly rigorous.
(Heck, even thoroughly well-defined diseases with a proven cause vary in symptoms, and doctors rarely seem to go for a rigorous diagnosis. I had pneumonia earlier this year, and I'm que sure there are other diseases of varying rareness that could display the symptoms the doctor observed to make his diagnosis (temperature, pulse, lung noise)... but I'm also quite sure he was right to not order a blood test, and simply prescribe some antibiotics.)
The relationship between AIDS and HIV could certainly bear more investigation, but a (hypothetical - I don't think anyone here's made it, though others in other places have) claim that they're utterly unrelated would be more than a little stretch.
Perhaps I've missed some reports, so if anyone has got such alternative explanations I'd be happy to read them. Of course, it is also odd that there are a large number of people with HIV for decades who aren't dead - of course, they might just be from the "deep end of the gene pool" and are highly resistent to the affects of HIV; it seems to be that virus' are never fatal enough to kill off all of their potential hosts (they are not suicide mechanisms, as it were) - so our long-term survivors just might be genetically pre-disposed to not die of AIDS. I've got personal experience of this as I've apparently got an inborn immunity to smallpox (been innoculated several times, it never took; ergo, according to some Docs, I don't need it - born immune).
Of course, we do have to be highly suspicious of the confluence of politicians who have to "do something", drug makers out to make a buck, activists with an axe to grind and grant-dependent scientists who'll tweak the data to please the grantors; all in all, there does seem to be a high BS quotient in the entire AIDS debate.
All in all, Dean, you've outdone yourself here - submit this to magazines for publication online and on dead tree; an article everyone should read.
The last line is most interesting, and I'll try and find this particular study (the above is a review paper written oddly enough from a guy in a geography dept.).
Nonetheless, it's an interesting subject you've raised here Dean and as all science, it can't hurt to get it under the microscope and increase the magnification.
Caring is no guarentee that they are doing the right thing at all.
We know from understanding a little about Medical history was that doctors stopped cauterizing wounds on the battle field in boiling hot oil, because when they ran out they noticed that the patients who didn't get the treatment did better than those who did.
Medicine, despite all the platitudes, recent advancements, or animal substitutes is primarily a discipline acquired through apprenticeship and OBSERVATION--repeating what works, and fine tuning the approach. No one in their right mind can suggest that the recent treatments for HIV/AIDS haven't been beneficial to most. It may not be beneficial to all, which is why it isn't an exact science. It is no better than trial and error--with errors costing people their lives.
Certainly there are numerous professions besides medicine where people can earn big $$$. Nowadays medicine doesn't pay as much as a CFO at a medium sized company, with 1/10th the student loans. There are always exceptions, but people choose medicine as a calling more than a profession.
There is no money in treating AIDS patients. A lot more can be earned performing liposuctions. Choosing to work in a teaching hospital (where most of the AIDS care is provided) treating AIDS patients is not done for prestige or any monetary rewards.
No, there is no guarantee that they are doing the right thing. And, despite asking the question which doesn't have any impact on the person asking the question because they aren't having to take the life and death actions for anyone, there is no guarantee they're doing the wrong thing either. Until they know with certainty there is a better way, they have to do the best they can with the information available. As I've read from Dean's post and other commenters, no one here or in the field has any better guess than "It could be something else. What that might be or what is causing it will require reseach and more money, but I think my theory is right before I've done it."
That's irresponsible thinking. You can talk about a conspiracy of researchers all after the same limited resource pot, but don't bring the doctors and nurses into this who are reading everything they can get their hands on, to do the best they can for their patients.
Gee, here's a bit of reasoning that covers all the data presented: Low T-cell counts cause auto-immune deficiencies, leading to death by many different diseases. HIV causes low T-cell counts in the 90% of folks who aren't naturally immune to it. Other ideopathic diseases also cause low T-cell counts.
Oddly, this is the prevailing medical paradigm. Perhaps Duesberg could get some funding if he developed some numbers showing a substantial number of ideopathic AIDS mimicing deaths and said he was looking for other diseases with a similar pathology to AIDS. No toes stepped on and no new paradigm needed. Maybe he'd find out the true cause of AIDS, or maybe he'd find another disease and we can start treating it too.
Bunch of uselessly large egos if you ask me, grumble, grumble, pointedly ignoring own large ego, grumble, grumble.
Yours,
Wince
As far as Duesberg is concerned, I think he's right to question the scientific evidence, but his own pet theory doesn't stand up to the rigor that he subjects the theories of others to." (CTG)
There are no words I have to express what caltechgirl has already expressed very simply and eloquently. She merits a very large green border.
And perhaps, Dani does as well.
I'll try to answer a few people:
Maor: You seem mighty confident that these studies are being done. Would you care to point me to one of them?
Mrs. du Toit: Would it shock you to learn that in the 1980s, most gay men showing the classic AIDS symptoms were never tested for HIV and were merely assumed to be HIV+ because they were already sick? Or that there were gay men with all those symptoms, all of whom died, who tested HIV- but were never properly studied?
So far as AZT goes, none of the studies showing that AZT extended AIDS patients' lives were properly double-blinded and all appear to have been polluted. Randy Shilts documented that in his book, and obviously he had nothing to gain from saying that--he was dying of AIDS himself and he utterly believed the HIV hypothesis.
That being the case, it's hazardous to believe that AZT actually extended anyone's life. Someone already deeply in the throes of the disease can say he "feels better" taking the AZT, but what does that mean? Give him a sugar pill and tell him it'll help him and he's just as likely to say he "feels better." Of course, AZT causes acute nasuea, but those in the throes of the disease already have acute nausea--and are probably using pot to alleviate that. Which is another uncontrolled factor by the way--practically everybody on AZT uses pot, which everyone who's not either stupid or willfully blind knows. So you give him a drug that makes him even more nauseous, he ups his pot intake a bit to compensate and then says he feels better. What does any of that prove? He dies anyway, and you take it on faith that he lived longer as a result of the AZT, all the while never being told that none of those studies on AZT's efficacy were ever properly controlled or double blinded because the patients conspired to share their medications and the soft-hearted nurses admitted off the record that they sometimes gave AZT to the control group because they thought it would help them and it seemed cruel to give them sugar pills (and the sugar pills looked completely different from the AZT, so everybody could tell).
Polluted science is no better than voodoo. I highly recommend reading Duesberg's book if you're genuinely interested in this subject.
Casey: The HIV dissidents are on your side, and say most AIDS research is based on consensus and not rigorous testing or logic.
rvman: AZT causes acute nausea, diarrhea, and reduced t-cells. It is also a potent carcinogen. The average person taking it dies within a year or two. The FDA BANNED it in the 1970s because it was considered too toxic even for advanced cancer patients. It was released entirely as an emergency measure due to huge political pressure from the gay community. So at what point would you pronounce an AIDS patient taking it "in remission," given that most of its effects mimick the symptoms of AIDS itself and that pretty much everybody who takes it dies?
For the rest of you: If you've "never seen" an alternative explanation for AIDS, this means you haven't read any of the HIV dissidents' material. You may pronounce your beliefs if you wish, but until you ask specific questions about what the dissidents are saying or how they explain their reasoning, you're merely pronouncing your beliefs. It would save time if you just said "these people are full of it" and moved on. The effect would be the same.
People will get green borders from me when the ask pointed questions that demonstrate that they actually understand Duesberg's reasoning and the data it's based on. Caltechgirl is so far the only person to do that.
It was 1 year from T-Cell count of 300 to death. That was the average. After AZT someone could hold steady at 3+ years. With the AZT cocktails later, it was 5+ years.
I'd be happy to talk to you privately and give you the names of the families that buried the people who didn't have the increased lifespan that the rest of had with family members and had 5-10 years longer with our loves ones.
You talk about these theories as if the rest of us lived in a vacuum. Maybe you might want to consider that some of us were around PRE AZT, pre tests of any sort, and pre any of the existing treatments--when people died VERY quickly.
You might want to start asking some other questions such as why, when HIV was identified as the source for development of full blown AIDS, those who tested positive were forbidden to donate blood, why the hemophiliacs and recipients of blood by product medicines stopped developing AIDS, when before that they were dropped like flies.
It was COMMON for T-Cell counts to go from the high 800s to death (below counts of 100) in one year. From the time people first began noticing that they felt bad (T-Cell about 800) to death was ONE YEAR. You're suggesting that some switch-o-chango happened with HIV that it suddenly stopped progressing that quickly, and the fact that AZT and other drug cocktails are extending life for 10+ years is a happy coincidence.
Get over it, Dean. You've read medical articles from a few skeptics and you now think you're qualified to give medical advice and know more about this than all of the rest of us, who have read what most of the morons have written and DISMISSED IT. Stop thinking this is an issue of us not being as well informed as you. We ARE as well informed we view the data DIFFERENTLY. Consider it an issue where we must agree to disagree but discounting that anyone but yourself has all the information is actually quite insulting.
Just so you know, I have asked all the questions you say I should ask. Don't assume I haven't.
That's a huge allegation. If it's true, it's important. I'd invite you to document it if you've the time.
No, I'm confident that any doctor whose experience tells him that a study would show that most people who seem to have AIDS have no HIV, would have a good motive to do the study.
If no such study has been done, it implies that doctors' experience tells them that most such patients do have HIV. Or it implies that there is a conspiracy of silence that stretches to every corner of the medical establishment. I consider the first explanation far more likely.
Actually, such a switch-o-chango was predicted for the normal evolution of the virus. It's bad for the virus when the person dies.
Of course, that would support the virus theory, though not AZT.
Look: NO CONSPIRACY REQUIRED. Just as there was no conspiracy required for doctors 150 years ago to assume that cauterizing wounds with boiling oil was a bad practice until someone finally did the research that indicated that this wasn't really a very good idea.
Read what the dissenters say carefully: In the '80s everyone was in a panic and grabbing any tool at their disposal that might help. When HIV became assumed to be the cause, and everything began to be devoted to fighting the HIV. All else that follows requires no conspiracy, just sloppy work by researchers and well-meaning assumptions by physicians that the research was solid.
However, I think (for reasons I've just explained) that only a conspiracy could stop someone from noticing in later years phenomena which are completely incompatible with the HIV hypothesis (very large percentages of HIV- patients). And even Duesberg mentions only problems such as absence of proof and minor (IMHO) quibbles.
"Maor: If I seem grumpy it's because a lot of these questions have already been answered by the dissidents and it's easily looked up."
I was kidding! I never thought you were grumpy. I thought you were questioning your own sanity, asking if such skeptics are flakes, dangerous, etc. Do you mean to say you are feeling a little grumpy?
;)
All right. Let me flip it around.
By the early 1990s, the list of AIDS symptoms was vast, and it's still vast. Doctors are taught that the presence of HIV in a patient plus any of those symptoms = AIDS. Any of those symptoms absent HIV = Not-AIDS.
So tell me: what is there for them to notice? Explain it to me.
Sure, some symptoms have always been common among HIV- people (i.e. pneumonia in general), and nothing can be proved from them without complex and contraversial analysis. I'm not talking about those symptoms.
http://www.wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,66198,00.html
Most or all the diseases that affect people with weakened immune systems existed before, and had already been identified, right? So, if someone in Iowa in 1974 had been diagnosed with Kaposi's Sarcoma, then they would have Kaposi's Sarcoma, right?
If someone has Kaposi's Sarcoma and a strong immune system in the absence of HIV, isn't it safe to assume that they were just like that 1974 person, just an unfortunate victim of a rare disease?
Safe? I don't know. I do know that KS + HIV would get you on the cocktails.
Although the point is moot: almost no one who's diagnosed with AIDS has KS now. All the gay men in the early '80s did, but none of the hemophiliacs did, and hardly any the straight people, or the Africans, or well, anyone else but the gay men and the IV drug users in the early '80s. No KS for Arthur Ashe, none for Kim Bergalis, none for Ryan White, none Magic Johnson (who mysteriously got better after he started getting sick, ever wonder why?)... the theory is that well, HIV is always changing you see. So apparently it can discriminate. It doesn't like the gay men so it gives them the ugly purple lesions. Everyone else doesn't get the lesions, so I conclude that HIV is homophobic...