Dies HIV cause AIDS? - Prove it - leave opinion at home

Great Debates
41

OliverH,
I think you need to review your biology. First, I am not suggesting that hepatitis B causes AIDS. I am merely pointing out that there is a good correlation between the two yet proves nothing. Hepatitis B is NOT the cause of AIDS (get it now?)

“I am not sure how you want to claim that HIV does not cripple the immune system when, in fact, it proliferates in immune cells.”

HIV does proliferate in immune cells, but it doesn’t kill them in vitro. I’ve passaged H9 cells infected with HIV for months and don’t see any significant decrease in proliferation (also, remember, HIV is supposed to simultaneously cause t-cell depletion as well as lymphoma (cancer…overproliferation of t-cells)
“No, it is not circular. They have the symptoms, and as such they have the syndrome. If they had a different immune deficiency, they would have SIMILAR but distinct symptoms. For them to have a different form of AIDS not caused by HIV, they would have to have an agent in their body capable of causing such a set of symptoms.”

Again, you miss my point. The syndrome is already very different in different populations. Homosexual males present with KS while IVDU’s present with TB and pneumonia, while Africans present with high fever and slim disease. Are you suggesting that these are all different syndromes caused by different agents? Also, the definition is circular no matter how you look at it: Immune dysfunction + HIV = AIDS, and nothing else equals AIDS.
“Sorry, but your entire assumption is wrong. If his immune system IS already crippled, he would have a hard time contracting HIV, let alone, testing positive for it. That would require a)the cells being present for HIV to proliferate in and b)his antibody production being intact.”

Actually, people with a crippled immune system have no problem catching HIV. Are you assuming that there are zero t-cells left?!? Also, people in advanced stages of AIDS can still produce antibodies just fine…in fact, that’s part of how they are tested for HIV! Not to mention, on their deathbed AIDS patients seldom show infection in more that 1 in 500 t-cells.
"One needs to be a scientist to understand what is standard practice and what isn’t. As such, I suggest you acquire a basic understanding of the tools you discuss before dismissing a test. In a western blot, antibodies are used that reconize a sequence of the target protein. They will frequently, not ideally, of course, recognize other similar sequences as well, leading to unspecific bands on the western blot. If you have a lot of protein, you will see little more than a bunch of garbage, or several thick bands that might overlap. If you’re lucky. If not, you will just see a smear. When you dilute it, separate bands become much more discernible. You don’t just check for the presence of a protein in a western blot, you check whether it has the right SIZE, too. Seeing something in a western is one thing. It by no means is an indication of the presence of the protein you are looking for. Seeing something of the right SIZE, and something that is reproducible, even when you dilute the sample, is something entirely different as having a dark spot on a film.

Sorry, man, but you can’t dismiss tests if you don’t know how they work. I’d be glad if westerns were as binary as you make them out to be. If they were, I wouldn’t have been trying the same experiment over and over again over the past two months trying to make sense of the results."
It is not standard practice to dilute serum 400X for any other antibody test in the clinical sciences. Nonspecific binding is not the reason for this dilution. The bands of the correct SIZE are where they belong on the gel in everyone that is tested but only show up in HIV infected people at high dilution. Nonspecific binding of antibody can be a problem in Westerns but it should not overwhelm the protein that you are looking for. If you have that much nonspecific binding then your assay is useless. If you are wasting this much time on your assay, I would definitely look into using a different antibody. And you can use all the extra time you save to bone up on your biology (I would suggest cell and molecular biology)

42

I’m guessing that no one bothered to follow my link. Therefore, allow me to duplicate what was written there:
In 1993, the mechanism whereby HIV caused infection was discovered. See here. Here you can see actual images of the infection occuring. Now, since AIDS is an immune deficiency syndrome, and HIV attacks lymphocytes (again, see images), and since lymphocytes are a major component of a functioning immune system, it follows that if the bulk of one’s lymphocytes are non-functioning as a result of HIV infection, that any immune deficiency thus resulting is directly attrributable to HIV. Thus, HIV causes AIDS.

Further links:

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publications/hivaids/11.htm

Note, also, that while HIV is “strongly believed” to cause AIDS, it is also possible that it is not the sole causitive agent: see here.

43 
There are tons of materials that discusses just that (rethinking aids.com, a place to get some published acccounting). I want the same answer as you, and I want that answer to come from the lips of the man representing the US Goverment that is operating a massive policy based on the assumption that HIV causes AIDS.

I want Anthony Fauci to provide a list of published materials, his Top Ten best, that proves beyond any scientific doubt that HIV casues AIDS. This is not an unreasonable request because this is how strong the scientific proof is, says the Director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases of the NIH, when speaking in public. He is dynamically convincing that he is convined that HIV cause AIDS and trhere is no BS about that.
He says that he knows all about the scentific proof, So prove it. Where is it?

This is the person who can point the way:Scientific proof that HIV causes AIDS.

What do I belive caused or causes AIDS is pure speculation and could not be presented in a scientifically coherent form.
I’m checking on it.

44

I spent loads of time on the previous thread linked above by tomndebb. I have done the reading and I am familiar with all of the techniques. Like nearly all scientists, I have no doubt that HIV causes AIDS. Note that I am not saying that there aren’t other causes out there, for instance other rare retroviruses in the HIV family. Just HIV infection leads to AIDS.

I will take the same position as I took in the last thread. If you want to debate this, show me the scientific literature. As I say, I have done the reading, and there is just no science to support the disputation of the HIV/AIDS link. I’ve been through Rasnick’s and Duesberg’s papers. They are sloppy, filled with leaps of logic not supported by the data, unsupported conclusions, and obvious “spinning” of the data. A clear example was found in a post I made in that last thread, on a J Biosci paper of theirs from June 2003. They claimed to have a cohort of patients HIV+ who were never treated with anti-retrovirals and had never developed AIDS. In fact, looking at the list showed that a good fraction had developed AIDS or had died from AIDS, and another good fraction was well on their way there.

HIV, a human retrovirus, infects and kills CD4+ T cells. This CD4+ lymphocytopenia has a specific clinical presentation which differs from the very rare isolated idiopathic CD4+ lymphocytopenia, which is often responsive to steroid therapy. When the CD4+ drops below a certain level, opportunistic infections arise, hence the clinical definition of AIDS.

Infection with HIV (not just introduction into the blood, not just seroconversion, actual infection), left untreated will lead to AIDS within an amount of time which is largely dependent on host factors. Anomalies like long-term nonresponders have been well described in the scientific literature. It is about as clear cut as epidemiology and molecular virology get.

I ask those who dispute it to answer one thing. Protease inhbitors like indinavir were specifically designed against the HIV protease. These were introduced to the market in 1996. When administered as a part of triple therapy Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART), they stimulate a dramatic reduction in viral load and an increase in CD4+ cells. Opportunistic infections disappear, and patients with AIDS will get up and go back to work. Please explain how a therapy specifically designed against HIV will alleviate all of the symptoms of AIDS without causation.

If you want to debate this, I ask for scientific citations. Debunking every virusmyth page or every list of quotations is tiresome and unnecessary, when it means little compared to the vast codex of AIDS literature which directly contradicts it.

45

MHernan
Anthony Fauci does not need to go through the 130,000 papers written on HIV, pick ten or so, and point and then say “There! It is causation.”

There is a huge library written. It all functions somewhat together, and through many, many, scientists and experiments, a picture emerges. This picture squarely points to the fact that HIV causes AIDS.

What you need to do is to pick out some data and show us that HIV does not cause AIDS. If you don’t relish finding reports of negative data, give us some data that points to an alternate cause of AIDS, and let’s debate it. The vast majority of the scientific establishment has established a working hypothesis, designed experiments based on that, and upheld the hypothesis time and time again. The burden of proof is on you.

46

I think you need to review your english. I was pointing out that for arguing something does, or does not, cause a given disease, you need to have a mechanism. The mechanism exists for HIV, not for Hepatitis. Thus, your claim there was only correlation is bogus.

Look, I really am not responsible for your lack of reading comprehension. I described IN DETAIL why the SPECIFIC symptoms can differ before. They are members of a PANEL of POTENTIAL symptoms. Homosexual males are more likely to encounter one set of pathogens, IVDUs more likely to encounter another set of pathogens and so on. They will show the symptoms of those pathogens, but had a homosexual an infected needle, he’d be just as likely to present the same symptoms as an IVDU, or those on top of the homosexual symptoms.

yawn I am really a bit tired of your inability to read very simple sentences. You were talking about having OTHER immune deficiencies first, and then contracting HIV. As such, assuming HIV to be contracted on top of the hallmarks of an already present HIV infection is silly. Yes, AIDS patients are tested by antobody detection. But someone with a deficiency in producing antibodies, for example, would have a hard time being detected HIV positive if he contracted it.

I would suggest doing a few more westerns, so you have some actual real world experience. I hold several graduate degrees in cell and molecular biology and have worked at top institutions in the US and Germany. Your comment completely ignores the abundance of proteins and its relation to band strength. Given that you have no idea what antibodies I am using and what my experiment is supposed to do, recommending I use a different antibody (Why “a”? From what do you conclude I am using only one? What makes you think that using a different antibody would solve the problem?) is merely a demonstration of your lack of care for the actual data available to you and your willingness to fit the data to your opinion rather than vice versa.

47

He’s provided it. We’ve provided it. You have at least 10 links in this thread alone, and others in the other thread. Almost all of them providing “scientific proof” that HIV causes AIDS. Yet, rather than refuting any of the links or the studies, you continue in your denial. I can’t force you to read the links, or look at the research, so we’re kinda at an impasse until you decide to actually educate yourself.

48

The nay-sayers to the HIV --> AIDS hypothesy seem to claim that HIV does not itself destroy the immune system sufficiently to allow the pathogen that kills the victim to establish itself.

Are there people with HIV and no other immune system debilitating diseases whose immune system has been debilitated?

Are there people without HIV virus with immune systems debilitated in a way similar to that seen in AIDS patients?

What is the proportion of people with immune defficiency of a type similar to AIDS patients, with and without HIV infection?

What is the proportion of people with long term HIV infection, without significantly damaged immune systems compared to with significantly damaged immune systems?

If HIV is not a major factor in causing AIDS like fatalities, then it would be expected that a significant proportion of people dieing from AIDS like fatalities would not be HIV effected. So how many Africans are dieing of immune defficiency ‘enhanced’ pathogens, don’t suffer from HIV infection?

49

At this point, I’m starting to think syllogisms cause AIDS.

50 
   Athony Fauci, “Tony”, has stated with the utmost sincerity and conviction that the HIV question regarding the disease was a slam-dunk certainty. I ask for only ten published materials that are so conclusive. This is not an academic exercise. I am not filling a personal curiosity gap.

Tony does not have to look through any journals not with his PhD scientist tag, that has been on this for years.

He has to have reference lists on the tip of his tongue, a few moments to tell the tale, moments

I want an official statement, “ here is the proof”. I want to know what they are using to justify their HIV/AIDS policy,

     If you are suggesting this process  being some lumbering machine, carefully scrutinizing all for the truth, you missed the scurrying rats racing to our common Uncle overstuffed pants (when the HIV and AIDS money  began spewing out greenbacks).

When the “picture squarely points” to the published scientific literature, and that ‘pointing’ is Tony’s finger, then we will have another chat.
The majority of the scientific establishment believes the HIV/AIDS assumption and some are engaged with propaganda machinery to maintain the assumption. How many medical doctors schooled since 1981 have reviewed, looked at, or attempted to look at, or give a rat’s ass about HIV causing AIDS?

 The majority of the majority MDs believe what they believe because somebody told them what to believe. Medical professor tell their students the story that their medical professors told them. I claim this  a righteous convolution.

  Edwino , science is not a political discipline, unless I have been missing something?

OK, Edwino. If you insist, though custom tis h Tony’s honmor, for the burden I mean.

I ’l start with you. Your familiarity of the system, determination, resolve and your good information makes you my first choice. Get the message through to Tony. There is the story learned in t he 8th grade, when, “The Message to Garcia”, was stuffed in my little brain.

Why do I get the feeling you want to enagage in debate?

51

While I think Duesberg is something of a crackpot on many subjects (if you read his book Dancing in the Mindfields, you’ll also come across his rock solid defense of astrology, the belief that aliens talked to him through a glowing racoon, and the idea that a woman astrally met him before meeting him in person, and all of this right after he talks about all the LSD and other drugs he’s done all his life), I do agree with him that the initial declarations about AIDS were NOT GOOD SCIENCE. Gallo was playing politics with his initial announcements and pronouncements, and he DID engage in sophistry with the “all people with HIV and active immune deficiency have AIDS, everyone who doesn’t has something else.” His data was not given the kind of scrutiny that should be demanded. The fact that he turned out to be right does not retroactively make what took place an example of good medical science. The good medical science came later (and Darwin’s Finch has posted some of it). However, unlike Duesberg seems to imply, it doesn’t mean that the conclusion was wrong either.

The science was bad at the beginning. People like Duesberg got pissed at it, and rightly so. But the science has gotten better, and some people can’t let go of old grudges to admit it.

52

“I think you need to review your english. I was pointing out that for arguing something does, or does not, cause a given disease, you need to have a mechanism. The mechanism exists for HIV, not for Hepatitis. Thus, your claim there was only correlation is bogus.”

We do have a mechanism for t-cell infection and hypotheses for how HIV kills t-cell…no mechanism at present

"Look, I really am not responsible for your lack of reading comprehension. I described IN DETAIL why the SPECIFIC symptoms can differ before. They are members of a PANEL of POTENTIAL symptoms. Homosexual males are more likely to encounter one set of pathogens, IVDUs more likely to encounter another set of pathogens and so on. They will show the symptoms of those pathogens, but had a homosexual an infected needle, he’d be just as likely to present the same symptoms as an IVDU, or those on top of the homosexual symptoms. "

I agree with you on this (minus the reading comprehension part, of course). Your original argument was that if something other than HIV was causing immune suppression in individuals then the symptoms would be similar but distinct (am I confused about what you are saying? Maybe an english lesson would do you some good). I pointed out that the only thing similar in these groups is immune suppression…the symptoms are completely different. And, before you attempt to twist my words around, I don’t believe that these different symptoms in different cohorts explains away the HIV theory. I am merely pointing out (put your thinking cap on) that you are wrong on this point.

“yawn I am really a bit tired of your inability to read very simple sentences. You were talking about having OTHER immune deficiencies first, and then contracting HIV. As such, assuming HIV to be contracted on top of the hallmarks of an already present HIV infection is silly. Yes, AIDS patients are tested by antobody detection. But someone with a deficiency in producing antibodies, for example, would have a hard time being detected HIV positive if he contracted it.”

Simple minded sentences is a better way to put it. You still don’t get it. I was merely trying to make a point by using an unlikely example. But, people with full blown AIDS are still quite capable of producing antibodies to the virus so this is not as silly as you might think.

I would suggest doing a few more westerns, so you have some actual real world experience. I hold several graduate degrees in cell and molecular biology and have worked at top institutions in the US and Germany. Your comment completely ignores the abundance of proteins and its relation to band strength. Given that you have no idea what antibodies I am using and what my experiment is supposed to do, recommending I use a different antibody (Why “a”? From what do you conclude I am using only one? What makes you think that using a different antibody would solve the problem?) is merely a demonstration of your lack of care for the actual data available to you and your willingness to fit the data to your opinion rather than vice versa. **
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Several graduate degrees? Maybe, but not in cell and molecular biology. I do Westerns on a regular basis and, although there is some nonspecific binding, that still does not apply here. Serum is diluted because, if it is not, everybody tests positive (on both ELISA and Western) which means the bands that light up are the correct size as those used to test for HIV infection. Here, this has absolutely nothing to do with band strength…except that HIV postitives have stronger bands (thus still showing up after significant dilution) Most ELISAs and WBs are performed on neat (undiluted) serum or a slight dilution. This can only mean that the nonspecific binding only occurs with a protein that is the EXACT size of what we are looking for, or that the proteins are not an indication of HIV infection.

Also, the comment I made about your antibodies was sarcasm (bone up on your english). Did you really think I was trying to help you out? From the brief discussion here I’m sure any research you do is worthless (unless you have a biologist looking over your shoulder

53

Apos,
I think you’re thinking of Kerry Mullis when you mention LSD, astrology and talking racoons

54

I’m sorry, I have no idea what you mean. Could you rephrase this? Fauci just restates the consensus of 130,000 papers on HIV. It is not his job to pick the top 10 of them. It is your job, as you state that all 130,000 are either garbage or founded on garbage.

There isn’t only one paper describing infection of HIV leading to the clinical picture of AIDS. There isn’t only ten. There are thousands. It is a consensus picture. This is how modern science works.

yorick73
It really sounds like you don’t have much of an idea of how messy protein work really is. Nonspecific binding, false positives, and decreased sensitivity are all a way of life in lab protein work. Any two proteins will stick together if you try hard enough. Some antibodies are great and clean because some proteins are highly antigenic. Many are not, and we jump through tons of hoops trying to get reasonably clean Westerns or ELISAs, and we have many ways of doing this. Serum dilution is a regular part of this – in fact clinical tests of influenza use a 1:100 serum dilution, many autoantibodies are only positive if titers are below a certain dilution.

This is one reason why Western blotting is only one of the criteria for lab determination of HIV status. The Western is highly sensitive, but not specific at all – so, we follow up Western positivity with another very specific tests. A clinician that makes a clinical decision only based on an HIV Western is negligent. One follows up with an rtPCR based assay for viral particles. Unless you are going to claim that the PCR assay is flawed (as Mullis does, against mounds and mounds of science showing that it works very well), then picking at the Western really is not going to advance your argument.

55

I don’t know anything about this subject. But AIDS treatments are based on the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, and treatments have improved steadily in recent years. Patients are living with AIDS who would have died not too long ago. Could AIDS treatments succeed if they were based on a false premise?

56

Lets start from the beginning.

  1. Science does not “proof,” it merely provides evidence for or against some theory or idea.

  2. It is absolutely unreasonable to demand any “proof” to be “beyond any scientific doubt.” The only thing in science that are beyond any doubt are facts (or rather, data). Theories are never ever 100% - it cannot be, since all theories must be falsifible.

57

Ugh, you’re right. But in my defense, wasn’t he the one who invented some big name test? Now I remember: his chapter was ON his support for Mr. D, he wasn’t Mr. D himself.

58

Fear Irtself. Try, try rethinking.com for starters Be your own guide to the truth There is more data than you can chew, tons more.

And, Mr. Early Out I, sense a bit of tension in the tenor of your your question’s tone. Is the request for infromation something you find is threatening or insulting?

Sometimes, I am the blocks’s big bully, but if my request makes you cower, in utter fear itself, methinks you’re over-reacting. The other choice: your daft man.

I can’t prove one thing or the other, but demand from those responsible to tell the truth by directing me to the published scientific literature they used and have been using since 1982 or so, in driving and stearing AIDS Policy.

But don’t be alarmed, for you see fear itself, is that it’s just another planned and contrived Policy, yeah, only a worst case scenario.

59

Forgive me if it has already been mentioned, but
this column by Cecil may be of interest.

60

Kerry Mullis discovered the polymerase chain reaction process that allows a scientist to make billions of copies of genetic fragments that massively increases the number of copies available for scrutiny, especially when starting with only a single copy.

The ‘old swipe with back of the hand distraction’. These practiced stand ins have seen their better days. They do get involve and that is what count, but just for petty distractions?

Alert: Two more political targets.

  NowThe 'LSD and astrology connection trick', while dated, it is marvelously passe.

Warning, this is a propaganda blip brought to you by alas its, Yorrick73 and his side kick in the butt, Apos at lass But I shudder to consider, the fate of the racoon, in this a sad tale to deliver, by the light of the silver moon, I want to… well, enough sung said about that. I’ll just put aside my musical career for I must along.

Consider, Yorrck 73, and you , the side kick, the faithless Apos man, dealing with the racoon dream charging you with a lying scam.