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HIV=AIDS? Truth, myth, medical fraud or conspriacy theory?

  
 
the Fool
01:59 / 24.05.04
I've recently been reading a book called "A World without AIDS" by Steve Ransom and Phillip Day of Credence Publications. In it (though I haven't quite finished yet) the book raises some deeply disturbing and challenging allegations, chiefly among them that the HIV virus does not exist and does not cause AIDS.

Other allegations include,

  • Africa is not being devistated by HIV - the statistics are misreprestation. Malnutrition, bad water supply and rampant disease related to this are being reported as AIDS.

  • AZT, orginally toxic chemotherapy drug, which (the book alleges) is responsible for a large proportion of AIDS related deaths.

  • The scientists who discovered HIV were later convicted of Medical Fraud relating to their research on HIV.

  • HIV tests can give false positives based on a large range factors and do not actually detect presence of the actual virus.

  • The HIV virus has never been photographed, nor isolated.

    The book appears well reference, footnoted. It looks convincing. If even part of its true its really very scary. But I can't really believe it. Deception on this scale would be impossible to maintain surely?

    So I guess I'm asking, what do people know. Where are the counter-arguements to these counter-arguements? Is there difinite proof of HIVs existence? I've just gone and got a HIV test recently and get the results on friday, but I've recently had a flu shot which is apparently one of the things that can throw the test. I'm concerned by the level of uncertainty this book has thrown at me and need some extra voices in the mix.
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    Joetheneophyte
    05:52 / 24.05.04
    I think a guy called Brian Desborough or something wrote something similar

    Do a websearch for James DeMeo


    he is a guy who is very interested in Weather engineering ala Wilhelm Reich. He also produces a booklet very infrequently called Pulse of the Planet, where not only are the theories of Reich discussed but other 'fringe' scientists and theoroticians. The whole 'does HIV = AIDS' argument was discussed in issue 4
    		 
     
    w1rebaby
    15:45 / 24.05.04
    There are various versions of this one that keep going around. I generally consider it PCT along the lines of "vaccines don't work" and "germs don't exist". Off the top of my head here:

    -

    Africa is not being devistated by HIV - the statistics are misreprestation. Malnutrition, bad water supply and rampant disease related to this are being reported as AIDS.

    Malnutrition, water etc haven't suddenly got worse recently, but deaths have. People on the ground have, without being exposed to AIDS propaganda, developed various terms for an unusual syndrome they're observing. This syndrome appears to be sexually transmitted as well as passed from mother to child which is kind of odd behaviour for starvation and bad water.

    Also seems odd that well-fed-and-watered Westerners are getting the same thing.

    AZT, orginally toxic chemotherapy drug, which (the book alleges) is responsible for a large proportion of AIDS related deaths.

    So it's toxic? Most drugs are. Whether it causes more deaths than it prevents is something that should be easy to determine by looking at survival rates - though it would seem odd that all these clinic workers in Africa are crying out for AIDS drugs if they see them killing off their patients on a day to day basis.

    (Incidentally, some other theories on this claim that AZT causes AIDS, and drug companies deliberately designed it to do so. Let me tell you that if drug companies could actually design drugs to do things like that they wouldn't be buggering around giving Africans AIDS, they'd be doing something much more profitable.)

    The scientists who discovered HIV were later convicted of Medical Fraud relating to their research on HIV.

    Can't remember the details on this one, you'd have to give me the names.

    HIV tests can give false positives based on a large range factors

    Not convinced that this "large range" is actually significant.

    and do not actually detect presence of the actual virus.

    Irrelevant; as far as I remember they detect distinct byproducts.

    The HIV virus has never been photographed, nor isolated.

    Pretty sure that's just plain untrue. I've been shown pictures, and papers on the subject.

    -

    Those are a bit fuzzy, I know, but it's been a while since I discussed this. Unfortunately the very mention of the subject (or any number of other PCTs) these days brings me out in hives. I've had too much experience of trying to discuss it with proponents, starting out in a civilised fashion but quickly becoming unbearably frustrated with their avoidance of what I consider to be gaping holes, their repetition of things that simply aren't true, their bizarre faith in any dubious source that agrees with them and their complete dismissal of ones that disagree as "establishment propaganda". So I've forgotten a lot of the research I did.
    		 
     
    Cat Chant
    16:12 / 24.05.04
    I'm also not entirely sure what difference it would make if the HIV virus didn't exist, provided that everything happens as if it did. A lot of these people's arguments against HIV seem to be on this level - like Fridgemagnet says, the test doesn't test for the presence of the HIV virus itself, but for antibodies only produced by the body in response to the virus. So the test doesn't prove the existence of the virus directly, but in practical terms that doesn't actually matter.

    (Wandering off the point rather here.) Possibly the model we have for the causation of AIDS is factually/ontologically wrong on some sort of level* - viz. the HIV virus doesn't exist - but if the syndrome spreads in exactly the same way as a virus, and if the treatments based on the assumption that HIV exists work - if the model we're using for disease prediction/ prevention/ cure works just as well as if the virus existed - then then does it make any difference whether or not the virus really exists? (There's an actual example of something very like this tiggling at my brain, so if anyone knows what I'm ignorantly half-referring to, I'd be grateful...)

    *Though I doubt that very much, for the record.
    		 
     
    grant
    16:18 / 24.05.04
    convicted of Medical Fraud

    Oh. So... where's that a crime? Malpractice, I've heard of. Medical Fraud's a new one on me.
    		 
     
    the Fool
    22:07 / 24.05.04
    The model for AIDS that the book promotes is that is combination long term drug-abuse, poor diet, poor sleeping patterns, repeat STD infection leading to continual antibiotic use eventually destroys the immune system leading to AIDS. Which has some sense to it.

    I'm not here to argue a case either way BTW, just information. I personally can't believe a lot of the book. I don't see how new research is possible on HIV without the virus in some way existing. I read something recently on BBCworld about how new techniques were making it possible to 'slice' up HIVs DNA structure. If it didn't exist how would this research be possible?

    But it does make very persuasive arguements regarding dodgy research and unscientific methodology.

    Also the Africa arguement they make is quite persuasive as well. That there is money in AIDS, Africans can do very well out of the HIV gravy train. Though the book has just gone a bit conspiratorial on me with a whole section of procedual population reduction of the African continent.

    Does anyone know anything about the publisher - Credence Publications? I've googled them and can only get links radiating outward. I'm a bit surprised there don't seem to be any critiques of there work, I'd like to find some, if they exist.
    		 
     
    the Fool
    22:10 / 24.05.04
    Oh. So... where's that a crime? Malpractice, I've heard of. Medical Fraud's a new one on me.

    The book alledges the man who discovered HIV - a doctor Gallo - was later convicted of fraud relating to his HIV research. Is there any truth to that?
    		 
     
    the Fool
    22:44 / 24.05.04
    HIV tests can give false positives based on a large range factors

    Not convinced that this "large range" is actually significant.

    Its significant to me. As I apparently, given my recent flu shot, fall within that range. I get results on friday. A positive result can change a lot of things in your life, it needs to be acurate.
    		 
     
    w1rebaby
    23:04 / 24.05.04
    The model for AIDS that the book promotes is that is combination long term drug-abuse, poor diet, poor sleeping patterns, repeat STD infection leading to continual antibiotic use eventually destroys the immune system leading to AIDS. Which has some sense to it.

    I've not read this book, but I've read an awful lot of similar stuff on the net (virusmyth.net seems to be the main one) and where all the theories fall down for me is on this issue.

    Western and African AIDS patients just do not have a consistent lifestyle that could be said to cause AIDS. It doesn't seem to require drug use, and as far as I know there's been no recent explosion of drug use in Africa anyway - poor diet etc have been around there for millennia without AIDS. Similarly, people have had all those factors in the West without AIDS.

    Even Western AIDS patients don't follow a consistent lifestyle pattern; poor intravenous drug users, rich athletes, there's AIDS patients in all sorts of environments, and people who have the above factors don't necessarily get AIDS at all.

    What they have in common is that they've had some sort of blood contact with other AIDS patients. AIDS is definitely spread by sexual contact, needle-sharing and so on - that's well proven. The environmental factor thing just doesn't seem to make any sense.

    -

    Yeah, there is some controversy surrounding Gallo. I think it's more down to him being seen as grandstanding and being a publicity hound - people have accused him of exaggerating results and drawing undue conclusions. Of course, he has his defenders too.

    Unfortunately I'm not really qualified to judge whether papers like this have any basis, and I'm not familiar enough with the world of AIDS research to know whether this controversy is actually widespread or whether it's just a couple of people causing trouble who nobody believes.

    However, the theory doesn't rest on Gallo, it's moved on since then, so his credibility isn't really the issue. Even if things aren't quite as he claimed it still wouldn't mean that there was no connection between AIDS and virii.

    -

    Incidentally, I wouldn't be surprised about not finding any rebuttals or outside references to Credence - there are loads of these small-press guys in the CT field. Everyone with a website seems to also be selling a book, or a video, or both.
    		 
     
    w1rebaby
    23:08 / 24.05.04
    Its significant to me. As I apparently, given my recent flu shot, fall within that range. I get results on friday. A positive result can change a lot of things in your life, it needs to be acurate.

    I mean that there's actually a significant risk of a real false positive.

    Here's an article about the risk of getting a false positive from the flu vaccine, with a description of the procedure. There's more than one test and an HIV diagnosis is supposed to be based on repeated results.
    		 
     
    Perfect Tommy
    06:55 / 25.05.04
    A lot of false positives don't mean that a test is crap, nor that it's not really testing for anything. Probability argument: Say that you have a disease that 1 in 1000 people have, and that you have a test which is 99% accurate. So the test is 1% inaccurate, right?

    Now, test 10,000 people. 10 people have the disease, and 9,990 don't. This 99% accurate test will correctly diagnose 9 or 10 of the people who do have the disease—but that 1% inaccuracy on the remaining 9,990 people is about 100 false positives.

    Hence the popular phrase, "We need to run more tests" is not an optimistic clutching to hope—it's because false positives are more likely than true positives.
    		 
     
    Z. deScathach
    09:18 / 25.05.04
    There are a mumber of problems with this thesis. On the viewpoint that AZT causes the syndrome of AIDS, it fails to take into account that people were dying of AIDS before AZT came into use. A friend of mine was down in Africa working in areas with heavy HIV infection. When you are actually down there, there is no doubt as to who is dying from what. Their systems are utterly overloaded. Not only tha, but tmhe epidemiology of the other supposed factors that you mention manifest in different ways.

    The Elisa test does give false positives, but the combination of Elisa and Western Blot does not give them to a statistically significant degree.(99+% accuracy)

    What they have in common is that they've had some sort of blood contact with other AIDS patients. AIDS is definitely spread by sexual contact, needle-sharing and so on - that's well proven. The environmental factor thing just doesn't seem to make any sense.

    This is an important point, as health care workers have converted sero-positive after exposure to needle sticks or blood contact. If HIV is not produced by a virus, then what did they "catch"?

    As far as the HIV virus not having been photographed, wrong. It has been photographed with electron microscopy, the link can be found here To me, this photo puts the hammer to the argument, (unless one get's into the "They're all in on it", argument.
    		 
     
    the Fool
    21:57 / 25.05.04
    I actually found many whole pages of photos by googling 'HIV virus images'. If its all fake, there are a hellva lot of gullable/sinister scientists out there.

    So I guess its a bit bunk eh? I don't know if I feel better or worse.
    		 
     
    Z. deScathach
    17:10 / 26.05.04
    IMO feel better. In this instance, misinfo gets people killed. Think about it, if people think that AIDS is not caused by a virus, they won't do the things required to protect themselves from it. To be honest, this sort of thing gets MY conspiratorial hackles up. The misinformation is so blatant that one has to ask oneself what the real motivation is behind it.
    		 
     
    Ex
    19:38 / 26.05.04
    Gallo's possible fraud is discussed in Randy Shilt's And the Band Played On - I believe it boils down to the fact that Gallo had done previous breakthrough research on one type of virus (human leukaemia), and wanted to prove that AIDS was caused by a similar virus.
    French researchers believed it was in fact a human lentivirus (previously seen in horses).
    Gallo (in the US) was sent samples of virus isolate by the French. But he then stated he'd isolated his own, and was working on that, and pressed the idea of it being a leukaemia-like virus.
    After much research, it was later found that the viral isolate Gallo had allegedly produced himself and the viral isolate the French were using only differed (at the level of DNA) by an incredibly small degree - much smaller than you'd expect if you'd isolated the virus from two different patients. In other words, Gallo probably nicked the French virus, and not made the breakthrough himself, but kept insisting that it was connected to his earlier innovative work to maintain his reputation.

    Huge fuss. Because much research in the meantime had been directed to treatments for HLTV-3 (what Gallo called it) in a futile effort, because it was a lentivirus after all. Reagan and the French President had to make a public announcement that the US and France had jointly discovered HIV.

    This is without the book, so if I'm slandering anyone or have the terminology wrong, forgive me.
    Bt yes, there was apparently malpractice. But this was back in the early eighties - we've had twenty years of medical research on HIV since then, someone would have noticed if all the original research was based on fraud.
    		 
     
    Ex
    19:41 / 26.05.04
    Sorry - HIV wasn't seen in horses. Lentiviruses of other varieties were previously seen in horses. Forgive the confusion.
    		 
     
    Ex
    20:10 / 26.05.04
    Credence seem to be heavily into healthy eating - which is excellent and as it should be. However, denying the existence of HIV is a fucked way to get kids to eat their greens.
    		 
     
    the Fool
    22:24 / 26.05.04
    The book seems to be verring wildly into conspiratorial terrain. It wants to prove the human genome project as bunk, and that vaccination campaigns are cleverly disguised sterilisation programs.

    I find that after feeding you a few bits of (possible) truth the book sort of expects you to trust it completely and then begins feeding a lot of whoknowswhat. The shame of it is that whatever true facts it may contain will be lost due to the dubious nature of the whole document.

    Some of it still seems very lucid and to the point. I would still be very wary of using AZT even if diagnosed HIV+. It does sound like a horribly toxic nasty drug.

    Still, at the very least, it has got me to look very closely at one of my central boogeymen.
    		 
     
    Cat Chant
    08:32 / 27.05.04
    I would still be very wary of using AZT even if diagnosed HIV+. It does sound like a horribly toxic nasty drug.

    Is AZT still being widely prescribed/used, even? I thought it had mostly been replaced by combination drugs? This particular part of the Credence argument is certainly not specific to them - I remember seeing a discussion on precisely this issue - whether or not it was worthwhile for a guy with "full-blown AIDS" to go on AZT - in Kushner's Angels in America (performed in 1990, set in 1985). AZT is a horribly toxic nasty drug and a lot of people are very wary of going on it for precisely that reason.
    		 
     
    Z. deScathach
    04:50 / 28.05.04
    Yes it is used, paticularly in prophylactic treatment, (i.e., after a stick with an infected needle). Some of the protease inhibitors are also quite wicked, (so a friend tells me, he went off of them, but was considering going back on).
    		 
      
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