See, I always thought HIV caused AIDS. But in this thread, the topic of discussion is that some groups don’t believe this, and that the issue has recieved some academic backing.
What kind of academic backing? What proof is there that it does (other than the obvious)? What proof is there that is doesn’t?
We’ve discussed this a number of times here on the SDMB. You might want to do a search and find the other threads. There is very convincing evidence that HIV causes AIDS. The proof gets stronger as specific drugs interfering with actions of the virus allow people who were dying to recover and live well for many more years.
Here is a link that outlines some of the scientific evidence that HIV is responsible for AIDS:
Here is one such thread (as mentioned by JillGat)
There are a number of folks from SA that believe fucking a virgin will cure HIV infection. Sadly, there’s an epidemic of infant rape down there as a result. Yes, you read that right. Infant rape.
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to medical pronouncements from folks like that.
However, these are not the people mentioned in the OP. And this belief is widespread in many parts of Africa, a desperate response to an horrific pandemic in a vaccuum of information or alternatives.
Sadly it is this research that President Mbeki is using as backing for his decision not to provide retro-viral drugs to HIV-positive pregnant mothers, as reported in this news story, in spite of a court order ordering him to do so and an ever increasing HIV epidemic in the country:
Sites like this one and this other one are in support of this viewpoint.
Make of it what you will… me, it saddens 
Gp
This wouldn’t be the same Mbeki who came out in favour of Mugabe after the Zimbabwe “elections” would it?
::sighs:: :mad:
Sometimes I am embarrased to be South African…
Other times it is my spelling that makes me embarrassed…
:o
There is an excellent book, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge by Steve Epstein, that sheds light on this issue. Epstein suggests that HIV-doesn’t cause-AIDS theories attracted support because the media and prominent scientists announced that HIV was the cause of AIDS long before sufficient proof was found for that statement. Epstein documents this by doing a content analysis of New York Times articles and showing how the articles would use HIV and “the AIDS virus.” In other words, the scientists were right in announcing that HIV caused AIDS, but they didn’t have the proof for it when the announcement came out.
The doubts about HIV causing AIDS arose, because of the difficulties of proving that HIV satisfied Koch’s postulates. Koch’s postulates state that a disease causing microorganism must fulfill these four conditions:
Until the development of better genetic tests just recently, there were still some doubts about #1. In addition, we had to wait for doctors, nurses, lab assistants etc. with no confounding risk factors to contract the disease accidentally from on-the-job exposure in order prove #3 and #4. (You can see why it would be unethical to inject HIV into random members of the population just to see what happens.) There’s a good link from the NIH here:
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publications/hivaids/12.htm
The two most prominent scientists that I’m aware of who oppose the consensus that HIV causes AIDS are Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist and oncologist, and Robert Root-Bernstein, a physiologist and philosopher of science. Both seem to argue that AIDS is the result of immune suppression unrelated to HIV, but I am unconvinced.
“Does HIV cause AIDS?”
Well, I thought so. But if someone can show otherwise and wants to find the real culprit, have at it.
In the meantime, since we have a number of drugs that lengthens the lives of AIDS patients, why wouldn’t they be used?
If I saw a headline like “Theory about cause of headaches called into doubt”, I don’t think that I’d say “well I guess I can’t take aspirin anymore… I’ll just have to live with my headache.”
