Dean's World

Question:

If Duesberg's theory is: HIV is a harmless retrovirus that is just a marker for people in AIDS high-risk groups,kindly explain how 5 of Dr. Acer's
became patients became infected with the HIV virus some of whom died of AIDS (Kimberly Bergalis).

In addition, how is it that there are no other cases of aids/hiv transmission in dental offices from 1987 thru 2001 ? The obvious explanation favors Duesberg's theories, unless of course, Dr. Acer deliberately inoculated his patients or his sterilization procedures were grossly faulty.

I'll send links if you wish.

My question for Duesberg is simple: If recreational drug use is to blame for AIDS (his theory), why is it that there is no correlation between total drug consumption and development of AIDS? If drug use decreases immune function, it stands to reason that the heaviest users would be the sickest, yet this is clearly not the case. Can he explain the discrepancy?

Also, what research does his lab do, exactly? I mean currently. He can be as specific as he wishes, I read the journals.

One more, if HIV doesn't cause AIDS, how come we now have a small animal model of AIDS after HIV infection? It's not perfect, as you would expect since HIV is a primate virus, but infection of Cotton Rats does replicate some symptoms of AIDS. The reference is:
Petr G. Rytik, et al. Journal of Clinical Virology 31S (2004) S83–S87

Along the same lines, can he explain why animals that have SIV transgenically inserted into their DNA (as HIV would do to host cells) display a wide range of symptoms that replicate AIDS if HIV (and SIV, its "cousin") has nothing to do with AIDS? The reference is:
MC Simard, et al. Expression of simian immunodeficiency virus nef in immune cells
of transgenic mice leads to a severe AIDS-like disease. J Virol
2002;76:3981–95.

That doesn't answer the question directly, though, does it? Nor does it address the other cases where AZT helped patients into remisssion who were already in full-blown AIDS before starting the drug or the patients who have never been on AZT who still die of AIDS. How does he explain those?

One more thought along the same lines. What is his explanation of the fact that viral load generally increases as the patient's condition worsens?

That doesn't answer the question directly, though, does it? Nor does it address the other cases where AZT helped patients into remisssion who were already in full-blown AIDS before starting the drug or the patients who have never been on AZT who still die of AIDS. How does he explain those?

Well, Duesberg et. al. would suggest that in the late '80s and early '90s at least, it was common to simply put patients on AZT prophylactically as soon as they were found to be HIV+, and that their symptoms were triggered by the AZT and not the virus.

The problem being that you cannot prove this, but it's suspicious that none of Dr. Acer's patients, and none of the hemophiliacs, ever developed Kaposi's or most of the other problems that the gay men did. Which Duesberg et. al. would suggest means that what killed those gay men was completely different from what killed, say, Ryan White or Dr. Acer's patients.

But this is where we get to the Catch-22 of the debate. Those who accept that HIV causes AIDS accept that HIV destroys the immune system and that therefore practically any infectious disease in someone who's HIV+ qualifies as AIDS. Duesberg et. al. say this is tautological, and that what we are really talking about is separate phenomena: what killed the gay men in the 1980s is not the same thing as what killed the hemophiliacs and is not the same as what's killing people in Africa, that they are all discreet phenomena.

The whole debate centers on that in fact. If you posit that HIV does not cause AIDS, then all of a sudden all these phenomena that we are calling AIDS break apart and start to look like radically different conditions. If you posit that HIV does cause AIDS, then you accept that all of these different-seeming conditions have the same underlying cause.

I really don't know how you break out and test which is correct. The consensus view is that it's all a result of HIV. The dissenters say HIV can't do all that and that these should all be treated separately.

How to test? How to falsify?

Dean: the link you gave me to read I did not see in your earlier post. I don't really know if what follows does Duesberg damage, but I'm trying to think about it, so here's some of it is, and thanks for the work out.

I asked about double blind studies because you had referred to them not having been done. So I wondered what they would be.

In the link you gave me Duesberg did not propose any double blind studies, certainly none along the lines of isolating the hiv virus, infecting some people and not others, they not knowing if they had been infected, and the evaluators not knowing either, then being treated or not, etc.. [I'm still having a hard time imagining what double blind study it would be, partly because I don't know much, but Duesberg's suggestion that a study should follow hiv positive and negative recruits is probably what you were talking about. Certainly women should not be left out of that one. Ha. And good luck getting voluteers at this point, and people to do the study itself. Ethics and the specter of law suits will probably prevail, unless some really slick lawyers will volunteer to do the study.]

I am not really familiar with the hiv-aids arguments, but the link you gave me did not raise any serious concerns for me regarding the hiv model, except if it is true that people dying from hiv-aids are found not to harbor the virus in significant titers or %'s of people dying. This would have to be explained pretty convincingly, imho, if true.

I have heard that the hiv virus in hiv positive people is found in the blood, though in nowhere near the concentrations of people with active hepatitis B, or even only the carriers. Otherwise the medical profession must be very paranoid. But I have heard of a case where a needle stuck medical worker apparently got hiv-aids from the stick. There are probably other cases which Duesberg does not know of. [I got stuck several times and did not worry about it, but others went crazy and still are. My daughter does tons of immunizations and std exams and worries, but she's new. I have to talk her out of it, sometimes.]

The predicted vs fact alignment did not impress me very much, since the predictions were in some cases dubious and Duesberg's analysis was sometimes irrelevant. For example, there is no reason why viral epidemics must follow a bell shaped curve or be randomly distributed, unless an epidemic is defined this way, in which case the aids epidemic is not a "true" epidemic, but so what? Given the mechanism of hiv transmission, and the alleged course of the disease,it would not be expected to be "randomly" distributed or follow an incidence vs time bell shape. I think the argument that the aids epidemic is not a true epidemic is not too relevant. The hiv persists and is indolent, which makes it not usual, as does the proposed mechanism of transmission, and its iffyness.

I'm likewise not impressed by the argument that there is an immune response to the hiv, so it must be actually controlled adequately, or should have done its thing earlier, like another virus would have. Herpes persists but not in the T-cells, rather in the peripheral nerves where it waxes and wanes. Herpes Zoster erupts strikingly when other conditions occur, or sometimes for no apparent reason. Who really knows what's going on in the T-cells? And,likewise, the fact that T-cells can be immortal in culture does not mean this is what is going on in the body. Also hepatitis B and C, etc., can grind away at the liver for years, before creating a crisis, so why not the hiv in the more crucial immune system, requiring less virus to do more damage to the whole body in terms of its ability to ward off a host of different diseases?

Epidemics are usually time limited by definition. The plague pandemic curve showed the classic form because practically everyone got it within a certain geographic area, they either lived or died, their defenses then eliminating the bacterial organism pretty much from the human population. No one was left to try it out on. Influenza does the same thing, I think, due to the ease of its spread and the success of the immune system in eliminating the virus totally after the virus has given its best shot.

Most viral epidemics or brief local outbreaks involve the virus actually attacking a certain organ, or producing a certain acute disease syndrome, or generally debilitating a previously weakened person. I don't know of any which attack the immune system per se, then causing a classic disease picture on this particular basis. Hiv is not your average virus, according to the hiv-aids model. It does not operate on its target quickly, but Duesberg thinks it must. Why? Viruses are allowed to do what they want.

Duesberg makes claims in the article that are sometimes false or else not relevant. For example he claims that TB only occurs in immune weakened people, which is false. TB is a great example of a disease where the immunity is found but not the organism, and everyone who tests positive is treated for a year, because we know it can activate to produce all kinds of afflictions much after the initial infection. Why can't the aids virus do this?

It seems irrelevant that a somewhat large number of cases [4100 or so] have been found involving aids related diseases in people who are not hiv positive. They would not be diagnosed with aids. Hiv is not the sole cause of aids defining diseases, contrary to what Duesberg states as a prediction of the hiv-aids model. I don't know why he even states this as a prediction!

And I wonder how many of these 4100 got well, or died from cancer, diabetes, etc. which could explain their also aids-related diseases.

Duesberg states that spouses of hemophiliacs do not get hiv or aids, which is false, and he said they did in another article, which is why I'm saying it's false. He made some strange argument about why these spouses of hemophiliacs did not get aids from their spouses, and also apparently misanalyzed the Acer case, which seemed to prove the opposite of what Duesberg claimed it did.

He argued that there should be more babies born with hiv relative to the total load of hiv positive people, but I still don't see why.

He states that animals studies have not been done regarding anti-hiv drugs, and this is false, unless he fudges out by using words such as "adequately controlled". The drugs have been tested on animals in order to get approved, although who knows what the FDA is up to, I agree. Still this is flimsy.

His argument that hiv should cause disease quicker is simply not valid, although he thinks it is. I have no idea why he thinks this, except from the "classic" concept. No organism has to folow our rules, or the rules of other organisms.

His arguments regarding hiv spread and aids incidences don't make any immediate sense to me. If people have stopped getting hiv-infected at previous rates, or have contracted it at varying rates, the incidence could level off, while the aids syndromes peaked, never to peak at that level again, or with lesser peaks, or none revealed by graphs. Prevention could cause some leveling and treatment could modulate aids manifestation.

His argument that aids is caused only by malnutrition, recreational drugs, or anti-hiv drugs seems manifestly false, although it is probably true that each of these can "cause" diseases or signs that are otherwise associated with aids. Protein malnutrition is common, but again, so what? No one should diagnose aids in a non-hiv positive, starved kid, nor treat any aids defining disease with anti-hiv drugs if the hiv test is not positive.

Duesberg's reference to aids being caused by malnutrition and lack of "drinkable water" is strange, since if you do not have drinkable water you die quickly, or perhaps more slowly due to diarrhea, but still before you could get aids. At least Duesberg is now bringing up intermittent dehydration plus or minus recurrent viral or bacterial enteritis infections as causative of aids, which he does not mention exactly, and can probably be shown to be not related to aids. There should be a large number of children with aids in Africa and elsewhere who are not hiv positive, or if they are hiv positive he might be prone to explain away hiv effect by invoking chronic recurrent enteritis apart from aids. I don't think this will pan out, and he is possibly begging the question.

Micklos' malaria argument mystifies me also because malaria is not noted to be a part of the aids complex. Certainly an hiv positive malaria victim would be treated for malaria first, I would think, not labeled as having aids. Dry promiscuous sex is claimed to be a big factor in hiv-aids spread in Africa, which makes sense according to the hiv model. But these people are probably taking recreational drugs too, which we nevertheless don't know for sure, or what exactly they are taking if they are taking anything.

The cervical cancer case was probably associated with some other aids defining disease. No one should diagnose aids on the basis of cervical cancer and hiv positiveness alone.

The reference to recreational drug use as being implicated is vague as far as I can tell, and offhand I wouldn't think it would be that difficult to test, at least to get some idea of whether a correlation is present compared to those who don't take them and to those who take them without getting hiv-aids. That 1/3 - 1/2 of people with aids have a history of drug use seems to argue against the drug use etiology, which itself is never explained except to show that it is possible by virtue of a few cases. It would seem that far more people should have aids diseases without being hiv positive simply on the basis of taking recreational drugs.

That some meth addict had "dementia" is not surprising in itself, and he also should have been malnourished, but possibly totally coincidental with his aids or abetted by it, if he had aids. But was he even hiv positive? And the reference to "some opportunistic infections" is also vague, especially since people who are inactive, malnourished, and on some drug can have opportunistic infections, Eveything stops working in a severe addicts, which occurs also in alcoholics. We know this, so it would be surprising if someone else had not thought of it long ago if there was any semblance of a relationship to aids diseases apart from hiv positiveness in addicts.

That gay amphetamine users have twice the risk of aids draws a big zero, since they would be more prone to getting the hiv if only from iv use, which would then have a better chance of doing damage due to amphetamine effects, including vessel problems and malnutrition.

In short, I think Duesberg shows some signs of grasping at straws regarding his reasoning. Or maybe I'm not yet able to see his points.

Gah. It just goes on and on and on. Monomer: there is a large and growing population of people who are HIV+ and are refusing medication. So to state that you can't find volunteers for a study on people who forego medication is incorrect. There are are a whole lot of people now who are doing exactly that.

By the way, I do need to revise something I said above: it wasn't just the late '80s and early '90s when people were being put on AIDS chemotherapy prophylactically. It actually accelerated during the late 1990s with the release of the protease inhibitors, and so far as I know it's still going on--see the story I linked this morning about HIV+ kids in New York.

So let me ask you, Monomer (and anybody else): Do you think this is a justifiable practice? Do you think patients should be told that there are people who've been HIV+ for decades without medication who are alive and healthy? Do you think patients have a right to be told this?

You're long on assertion, short on questions or references. This is frustrating.

Monomer, you say, "I got my questions from your link to Duesberg article in J. Bioscience." But I see very, very few questions from you. Just a lot of generalizations and vague assertions.

Do you have any specific questions?

Ah. Actual questions. Some of them are already answered, but some look useful, thanks.

AZT was the only drug used to treat AIDS until the protease inhibitors came out in the mid-90s.

Well, they would use some antibiotics and anti-fungals but they weren't considered efficacious. AZT was the only thing widely used for a very long time.

But I really want hard evidence that there is more ICR4 than AIDS.

That's ICL4. Minor quibble, but it was called an idiopathic cytopathic lymphoma--i.e. Kaposi's combined with all the other AIDS symptoms butno HIV.

And your request for hard evidence comes far too late, I'm afraid. Because even though the CDC knew these people existed, no significant study was done on them---and no systematic effort was made to prove that everybody dying of AIDS was HIV+ either.

In other words, they acknowledged from the beginning that such people existed but everyone was scrambling so quickly to find "the cure" that they simply ignored patients who were unusual. Then, they began to assume anyone dying of the classic AIDS symptoms was HIV+ and didn't bother tetsing them.

This is all stuff that should have been done, but wasn't. And in the last two decades, anyone who's applied for funding to do further study on this question has been rejected. Shouldn't that disturb you? Here are these people saying, "we want to study this," and the NIH and all the other major funding organizations won't fund it.

Will you join me in agreeing that it needs to be done? And that it's shameful that 100% of the funding is going toward study of HIV? Even though these basic steps haven't been taken?

How about we set aside just 5% of the current AIDS research money to look at these questions. Would that be a good start in your eyes? It would be in mine.

Right now, here's how it works Maor: You test HIV+. You are typically told that you will develop AIDS within a few years and you will likely have it recommended that you go on a cocktail to kill the virus before you get sick. But a lot of people on the cocktails get very sick. If they die it's often assumed the AIDS killed them.

No conspiracies required. Just a lot of people making well-meaning assumptions.

Man, seriously, you need to read more on this.

There should be a constant supply of them if there is a non-HIV cause of these symptoms.

In the '80s it was declared that if you were HIV+ you would have AIDS and by the early 1990s it was standardized diagnostics: If you have any of a list of dozens of symptoms and are HIV+ you have AIDS. If you have any of those symptoms and are HIV- you don't have AIDS.

It's a vicious circle and now doctors routinely accept this reasoning because they believe that the proof that HIV causes AIDS has been validated--and it hasn't been.

The numbers you're asking for don't exist because no one who's proposed a study to find them has been able to get funding. That bug you at all?

Read Duesberg's latest paper. There's a lot in there about all of this. Hey may be wrong but his history is correct: HIV was accepted as the cause of AIDS before it was proven to be so, and now the definition of AIDS is so broad as to be mind-boggling. Most AIDS patients look nothing like those men who were dying of it in the early to mid 1990s.

I noticed that articles about ICL describe the condition as "rare". Thus, it seems that it is rare for people with AIDS-like symptoms to test HIV-.

Please describe what "AIDS-like symptoms" are.

ICL4 is rare because no one diagnosed a case of it past about 1985 or 1986. The standing diagnosis: If you have HIV you have AIDS or will get it and need to get on chemo for it. If you don't have HIV you have something else.

ICL is low T-cell levels and no HIV.
Therefore AIDS-like symptoms means low T-cell levels.

Dude. I give up.

Show me where any standard diagnostic guidelines for physicians says that.

And note that "ICL4" means "idiopathic cytopathic LYMPHOMA" -- i.e. CANCER. At the time they were referring to Kaposi's sarcoma.

Today almost no one with an AIDS diagnosis has KS.