i was listening to the radio and heard about this website Alive And Well . From reading it, it seems to make pretty decent arguments without going all nutjob-like. what do you guys think of it?
Nicholas Regush’s Virus Within: The Coming Epidemic had some interesting things to say. I did not get to finish it as I left it on a plane, but it seems to make a strong case that HHV-6 may be the villain.
This might be a little bit preemptive, but I’m gonna kick this over to Great Debates. There’s more fodder in this subject for that forum than just a casual conversation over here.
- SkipMagic
I have a hard time buying the idea that there’s this giant conspiracy to pretend that AIDS is caused by HIV. The website seems to be saying that there is no such thing as AIDS. Well haven’t a disproportionate number of gay males and I.V. drug users died? If there’s no common cause, why did they die? The website suggests lack of nutrition as a possible cause for AIDS. Do gay men eat less than straight men? I don’t get it. Am I missing something?
Such claims are, to put it mildly, outrageous. The amount of evidential support for HIV as the causative agent in the development of AIDS would fill libraries if printed out and collected together. There is NO other true commonality between all the sundry victims of AIDS worldwide except they are human, and they have HIV. Not malnutrition, not recreational drug use, not other viruses, not sexual orientation, nothing. Probably the only thing we haven’t done yet to prove HIV gives people AIDS is deliberately infect healthy people with it under controlled conditions. However, we’ve done that sort of work with HIV’s closest relative, SIV (from which it is descended), and those animals get AIDS.
There’s really nothing more to say on the subject, Dr. Duesberg notwithstanding. You can read this nice summary if you feel like it, but this issue is as settled as any issue can be in epidemiology. It’s probably the most extensively studied virus ever in the catalog of human afflictions, and yet people don’t carry on with this nonsense when we talk about colds, flu, hepatitis, rabies, whatever. I simply cannot understand this phenomenon, this movement of AIDS dissenters. It’s beyond insane, and it’s pernicious in the extreme when one considers how thoroughly disastrous spreading such disinformation around can be, should the credulous decide to listen. People want to disbelieve the HIV “hypothesis”, but what could possibly be motivating them, I simply cannot fathom. In my more vengeful moments…well, I’m just going to leave it at that.
I should know better: Before the inevitable naysayers leap in, I admit to oversimplifying HIV phylogeny above, but not by much. Of course present strains of SIV and HIV are derived from a common ancestor, but it was an SIV with close sequence homology to present strains. Using well-established sequence analysis techniques, the notion that HIV rather jumped to primates from humans (IOW, HIV gave rise to SIV) is untenable. Here is a good paper on the subject of dating the split (with a nice HIV family tree, otherwise known as a cladagram), essentially using HIV as model for implementing a theoretical tool for molecular evolutionary biology. The reason this is a good model is because the evidence supporting the current picture of HIV phylogenetics is so robust as to be virtually beyond reasonable challenge. This paper, among any others (the authors are polite to a fault) helps put to bed the notion HIV is product of polio vaccination gone awry. Unless most of what we know about molecular biology and its applications to evolutionary biology are wrong, that’s just not possible. Given the wild successes of molecular evolutionary bio., by far the simplest explanation is the polio-vaccine-hypothesis is completely spurious.
I should have read all of the link myself: Chimps infected with HIV get AIDS. If that isn’t a good enough ethical surrogate for deliberate demonstration that all of Koch’s postulates are met, nothing is.
who mentioned polio vaccine gone awry? 
did you even check out the link i provided or just saw the title and gave out your answer? i was asking for opinions on the site as it makes some very valid points (at least to me).
This “debate” has much in common with the evolution/creation “debate.” On one side, you have mountains of scientific evidence, conducted with scrutiny and published only after peer-review. On the other side, you have naysayers with maybe a few pieces of real evidence, more pieces of misinterpreted and downright false evidence, base speculation, misplaced sincerity, and martyr complexes.
There is really no argument. We’ve done this thread before around here (though not recently that I have seen). I have critically read the HIV-denial literature (which amounts to one peer reviewed paper, IIRC, in an Indian medical journal). It is filled with things like correlation of cigarette-smoking and amyl-nitrate abuse curves with HIV carriage rates. Which implies exactly nothing about the pathogenesis of AIDS.
The easiest argument for the HIV/AIDS correlation is this: In 1996, HIV protease inhibitors were introduced. These were among the first drugs designed to inhibit a specific target, one that has no equal in the uninfected human cell – the HIV protease. Yes, there may be some minor cross-reactions. But the fact is that the HIV protease is a rather unusual protein and the drugs themselves are relatively benign if given to an uninfected person.
This was one of the singular medical breakthroughs of humanity. When Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (a cocktail of three drugs including protease inhibitors) was first given in 1996, people got up out of their deathbeds and went back to work. The HIV deniers cannot argue this: reversing the pathology of AIDS is directly tied to specific inhibition of HIV. They can hand wave and clutch at straws, but just keep this fact near at hand. Treating the virus reverses the disease.
edwino can the claims on the website be verified as false. i am talking about the ones on the aids drugs and facts link. claims such as the drug trials being too short and the drugs themselves stating that they do not really do much:
“At this time there is no evidence that Ziagen will help you live longer or have fewer of the medical problems associated with HIV or AIDS.”
“It is not yet known whether Crixivan will extend your life or reduce your chances of getting other illnesses associated with HIV.”
“At present, there are no results from controlled clinical trials evaluating the effects of Viramune [on] the incidence of opportunistic infections or survival.”
“There have been no clinical trials conducted with Combivir.” (76)
Oh, about the OP cite/site:
Long term nonprogressors are a well-researched group of HIV+ patients. We know quite a few reasons why one may be HIV+ and never convert to AIDS. It is rare, but it happens.
I’ll even do the work for you. That dubious cite, published in J Biosci (formerly the Indian J Bio Sci) is here:
The link to the paper doesn’t work, but it is available free here:
http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/jun2003/383.pdf
(669 kb PDF, download speed is very slow)
The statements about the polio vaccine are simply preemptive. In these sorts of debates, even if it had nothing to do with your OP, you just know it’s coming. It’s part of that Vast Conspiracy to deceive, I guess, a component of the idea that HIV is some scourge of the West unleashed upon Africa (quite aside from the other tinfoil hat notions about HIV infection being some sort of “mark of Cain” used to discriminate against people).
As to your link: I must confess, I lasted all of probably twenty seconds before I had to close the window. Any site that wishes to promote the notion that “There is no proof that HIV causes AIDS. In fact, all the epidemiological and microbiological evidence taken together conclusively demonstrates that HIV cannot cause AIDS or any other illness.” is simply not worthy of scrutiny. I’m sorry, but this whole thing is garbage. Look:
-Wherever AIDS is, HIV is. No other correlation holds.
-You can isolate HIV, replicate it in culture, transfer it (by accident) to humans or (on purpose) to chimps, and they get AIDS.
-In the same fashion, HIV’s closest relative, SIV, causes the same sort of syndrome in
our closest relatives. Unless you want to deny evolution and the relevance of model disease systems, this is another direct proof along the lines of satisfying Koch’s postulates.
-A large family of viruses, of which HIV is a member, called the lentiviruses, infect a variety of organisms, and all cause similar disorders to AIDS in humans.
-The cells in your body that are destroyed by HIV are the same sorts that the virus infects in vitro, most notably CD4+ T lymphocytes.
-Antiretroviral drugs (like AZT or the proteinase inhibitors edwino mentioned) cause HIV titers to decrease by inhibiting HIV replication, and, concommitantly, remission of symptoms.
-Despite the fact they’ve never done drugs, never been promiscuous, aren’t malnurished, show no signs of other chronic pathogens prior to exposure, and so on, infants and young children can contract HIV and develop AIDS after one incidence of rape.
-Maybe Bob Gallo is Satan, but he isn’t lying about HIV as the cause of AIDS.
-Peter Duesberg has lost his effing mind.
So on , so forth, until we die of frustration, I guess…
Well, yes they can. Some of the drug studies were famously cut short, but that was because it was no longer moral to withhold therapy from the placebo/untreated group once it became clear how effective the treatment actually was. So in practice, some of what they say is in orbit around a nugget of truth, and their mistatements are either deliberate or extremely sloppy. These people can cite, but they just either lie or don’t factcheck. Or don’t understand context.
A PubMed search for Combivir + clinical trial[publication type] gives back 10 articles. And Combivir is just a brand name for a single pill combining 2 other drugs. Doing the search with the two other drugs (Epivir and Retrovir clinical trials) gives a few more thousand hits. And those are with the brand names of the drugs, forgetting the ones with the generic names of the drugs.
Mmm, how about this (selected out of dozens)?
Here’s an NEJM study comparing a few. It has survival data.
and so forth.
hey thanks for the links guys. got some reading to do. 
I approached this by picking out one statement from the OP’s link and seeing if it could be verified. The statement I chose was:
So I googled on “Anthony Fauci aids malnutrition” and right away came up with this page which is a “Statement of Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. Director National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health” on the occasion of World Health Day December 1, 2002. The opening paragraph says,
Italics mine.
So whatever Dr. Fauci thought about AIDS in 1985, by 2002 he was unambiguous about the connection between HIV and AIDS.
Another way this is similar to evolution/creation. They love to use quotes, often taken out of context, from real and purported authority figures. Who cares what Fauci said in 1985? He has always been a staunch supporter of HIV and AIDS. And malnutrition does cause some immune deficiencies, particularly in the third world – nobody disputes this. These are nearly unheard of in the USA, and AIDS is not found in peak numbers at places where malnutrition is the highest (famine areas, for instance).
They want to take your eyes off the prize by distraction and fallacious or confusing arguments. They will never come up with a satisfactory answer to 1) What causes AIDS if not HIV (especially when the epidemiology of the disease does not support various causes like amyl nitrate/cocaine/hallucinogen abuse or malnutrition or antiretrovirals all leading to specific reductions of CD4+ T-cells) and 2) Why does reducing the viral load with specific antiretrovirals nearly exactly correspond to improvement of symptoms of immune deficiency (and CD4+ cell count)?
You just gotta ask, though: WHY? What the hell is the problem with accepting a veritable mountain of evidence over an anthill of absurdity? What on Earth makes the notion that HIV is not responsible for AIDS pandemic so beguiling? Creationism I can almost see. God is important to people. If you believe God’s incontrovertible word is writ in scripture, clearly contradictory statements about the nature of Man are going to strike at the core of those beliefs and make you uncomfortable.
But I can think of no compelling reason to resist the notion that a virus cause AIDS. I mean, what is the problem? What are we missing out on if HIV does cause AIDS? I can see people wanting there to be aliens. I can sorta get my head around Bigfoot, and Nessie. But “malnutrition causes AIDS” as a faith-based belief system? Whisky Tango Foxtrot!
I wondered that while writing my last post. I can come up with a few reasons.
The first is that two of the bigger names associated with the movement (Duesberg and Cary Mullis) enjoy being contrarian and get off on the ego trip that it is with them against the rest of the scientific establishment. They can convince themselves that they are just doing it for the good science (the ridiculous Koch Postulates argument), but at some point (now well in the past), if the evidence already out there didn’t convince them, nothing will. At some point, when they are convincing the government of South Africa not to provide AZT at a few-cents-per-dose to pregnant women to prevent perinatal transmission of HIV, if they are doing it for the ego trip than they are possibly the biggest dickheads on the planet.
The second is that the alternative-health/quackery field is huge. People really believe in crap like homeopathy and really distrust Western medicine. They want to go get their coffee enemas or antineoplaston injections for metastatic pancreatic cancer. This is just an opportunity to get their claws on this, preaching diet counselling, crazy herbal/vitamin regimens, and other assorted unorthodox therapies. HIV a big fish, like cancer, obesity, heart disease, and aging, and thus attracts its share of quacks looking to skim some health care dollars off the top.
The last is that in some circles, HIV, found in higher levels in men who have sex with men and IV drug abusers, is thought of as a disease of morality. I’m sure you’ve heard those who have called it a “gay plague” or whatever. Directly attributing the symptoms to the “moral failings” underneath is a convenient way to close a circle. Reforming your life, kicking drugs and getting healthy and “converting” to heterosexuality will let you beat the disease. Since they need to correlate this with African AIDS, a mostly heterosexual disease, they throw up lots of confusing flak, including claiming that it really isn’t the same disease and that malnutrition is the big cause.
All very plausible. Thanks!
I am just a biology major but let me take a crack at this . . .
When a cell is infected with a virus it basically sets up a flag on the cell’s surface that says, “Look at me, I’m infected.” NK Cells (Natural Killer Cells), which are patrolling in the blood, contribute by binding to MHC class receptors. If the receptor is “clean” then the NK Cell goes on its merry way. If the receptor is not present or contains a viral peptide, the cell is immediately destroyed by this nonspecific immune response. In summary: HIV doesn’t need to destroy the CD4 cells because the body will automatically destroy virally infected cells through apoptosis.
- Honesty