HIV Denial Rebuttal

[Guy_in_the_Corner]

Thanks everyone for the replies. I am girding myself for the debate with my friend.

[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]

They showed that antibodies to HIV cross reacted with other viral proteins. QUOTE]

Quick question so that I can accurately defend this. Doesn’t that also mean though that if someone was exposed to some other virus that had some similar antigen that they would test positive for HIV on the ELISA even if they didn’t have it? How do we go about avoiding that from giving false positives?

[Miller]

@Guy in the Corner

I am girding myself for the debate with my friend.

That’s good to hear. Remember, when you debate with someone, you also debate with everyone they’ve ever debated with. Debate safely, folks! It could save your life!

[Fiveyearlurker]

QUOTE]

Quick question so that I can accurately defend this. Doesn’t that also mean though that if someone was exposed to some other virus that had some similar antigen that they would test positive for HIV on the ELISA even if they didn’t have it? How do we go about avoiding that from giving false positives?
[/QUOTE]

Well, there’s a few answers to this.

First, the cross reacitivity was in a western blot, which is notoriously bad for this sort of thing. Rare is the blot I run that doesn’t have “artifact” bands of cross reactivity nomatter how good the antibody. HIV testing is generally done by a sandwich ELISA, which is more specific. Two highly specific antibodies need to bind for a positive signal. Plus, it is more sensitive and quantitative than the western.

If this comes up positive, then they would likely go to the western to confirm the result. The western would give better information about what is actually being recognized in the ELISA because it would look for actual viral antigens rather than just antibodies (which is what the ELISA is often looking for). Regardless, the western would absolutely confirm what is being recognized, and rule out a false positive in the ELISA.

The false positive rate, I don’t know off hand, but must be pretty damn low.

I can’t say for sure, but I would guess that the antibodies used for HIV testing have been vetted against known similar proteins.

[Siam_Sam]

@Guy in the Corner

Thanks everyone for the replies. I am girding myself for the debate with my friend.

Sorry to be pessimistic, but from long experience, I’ve found such people to be completely and totally unwilling to change their beliefs and arguing with them merely an exercise in frustration. Could simply be all the wackos that Thailand attracts, but I ran into a fair share of them stateside, too. I generally just let them jabber on and try to ignore them the best I can; saying anything to them on the subject only gets them riled up.

[dropzone]

@Fiveyearlurker

Rare is the blot I run that doesn’t have “artifact” bands of cross reactivity nomatter how good the antibody.

Is my understanding accurate that all HIV tests are generally accurate when giving negative results but, because the faster and cheaper tests are more likely to give false positives, the slower, better, but more expensive tests are only used to confirm the original results?

[Gfactor]

@dropzone

Is my understanding accurate that all HIV tests are generally accurate when giving negative results but, because the faster and cheaper tests are more likely to give false positives, the slower, better, but more expensive tests are only used to confirm the original results?

That seems to be the case:

In a program screening civilian applicants for U.S. military service for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, we studied the frequency of false positive diagnoses retrospectively among applicants seropositive for HIV in a subpopulation with a very low prevalence of infection. That subpopulation was defined as consisting of all applicants tested between October 16, 1985, and June 30, 1987, who were young (17 or 18 years of age) and resided in a rural county in a state with a low incidence of reported acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (n = 135,187). Serum specimens from 15 applicants positive for HIV in this low-prevalence subpopulation were retrieved from a serum bank and retested by two Western blot methods, radioimmunoprecipitation, and an immunoassay constructed from a molecularly cloned and expressed viral envelope polypeptide. Fourteen of the 15 samples were unequivocally positive on all retest assays, and 1 was negative. Thus, the measured rate of false positive diagnoses in this program was 1 in 135,187 persons tested. Factors important in achieving a low false positive rate were redundant, multistep testing algorithm, conservative criteria for interpreting Western blots, the requirement that a second, newly drawn serum specimen be tested for verification before a diagnosis of HIV was considered established, and tight quality control of laboratory testing procedures. We conclude that a screening program for HIV infection in a low-prevalence population can have an acceptably low false positive rate.

Homepage

The conventional algorithm based on the confirmation of all positive anti-HIV screening reactions by Western blot is expensive and only applicable in areas with a low HIV antibody prevalence.

http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/102193253.html

False Positives From H.I.V. Test (Published 2005)

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1779621

[Noel_Prosequi]

The HIV deniers had a crack at running their arguments in court in South Australia recently. Parenzee was convicted of an offence of transmitting HIV/AIDS. The matter went on appeal, first to a single judge (to rule upon evidence) then to the state’s highest appellate court. Both courts smacked them to the boundary, the higher one as recently as August. See http://www.courts.sa.gov.au/judgments/Judgments2007/0827-SASC-316.htm

Here is the basis of the argument:

The application for permission to appeal was based on an argument not advanced at trial. The notice of appeal states that Mr Parenzee’s legal representatives at trial were unaware of significant matters of fact and significant matters of scientific opinion. As I understand it, those matters may be summarised as follows. First, that the HIV virus has never been isolated and has not been proved to exist. Second, that it could not be demonstrated that the HIV virus was transmitted by sexual intercourse, even if it existed. Third, that there was no evidence that AIDS was “caused by a unique infectious agent”, namely, by the HIV virus. In short, Mr Parenzee now wishes to challenge the factual basis upon which it was said that by engaging in unprotected sexual intercourse he had endangered the life of the women in question.

Here is what the leading judgment, by the Chief Justice, said:

In any event, at the end of the day none of the points made by Mr Borick undermine the conclusion that there is overwhelming expert opinion to support the view that the HIV virus exists, that it is transmissible by sexual intercourse, and that it is the cause or a cause of AIDS.

57 Mr Borick’s approach seemed to be that if he could open up a few chinks in the wall of adverse scientific evidence, that was enough.

58 It is not enough. The material before the Judge, and before this Court, is overwhelming in its force.

(Borick was counsel for the party advancing the HIV denier cause).

Later, this appears:-

Like the single Judge, this Court can do no more than act on the material now before it. That material overwhelmingly supports the conclusion that the HIV virus exists and is identifiable, that the HIV virus can be transmitted by sexual intercourse, and that it causes AIDS…

The judgment of the single judge is more detailed, if you are interested.

[SiXSwordS]

@Noel Prosequi

The HIV deniers had a crack at running their arguments in court in South Australia recently. <snip>
…
The judgment of the single judge is more detailed, if you are interested.

Worth at least the price of admission. Nice post! Thanks.

[Fiveyearlurker]

@dropzone

Is my understanding accurate that all HIV tests are generally accurate when giving negative results but, because the faster and cheaper tests are more likely to give false positives, the slower, better, but more expensive tests are only used to confirm the original results?

With most thing like this, you’ll do a first screen, which has very low false negatives, but potentially give false positives. I’m guessing that a patient would get a positive test, with the caveat that a second test is necessary to confirm.

I believe that ELISA is used first because while very sensitive and accurate, you can’t absolutely say that there isn’t crossreaction; the readout is a color change, so it is very unlikely, but still possible, that your antibodies are recognizing a non-HIV related protein.

Western blot will tell you exactly what is being recognized because you find out the size, in kilodaltons, of the protein being recognized. So, you know that this isn’t cross-reaction, unless the cross reacting protein happens to be exactly the same size as the target HIV protein.

So, in short, yes is the answr to your question.

[human_extinction]

Sorry I have not gotten back to everyone, but I’ve been very swamped and such. I knew this thread would be a pain, especially without the assistance of other deniers.
Since it seems I am the lone denier on this message board, you can help me by consolidating your arguments. I’ll try to get back to the people that I haven’t gotten to yet (2nd page posts).

@Fiveyearlurker

You can doubt all you want, but I know my way around a paper in Cancer Research pretty well.

Those were not “HIV test results”. They were immunoblot results.

They showed that antibodies to HIV cross reacted with other viral proteins. Not that the other dogs tested positive.

The first sentence from their Discussion says “Serological results using the immunoblot technique suggest that dogs may be infected with an agent which is antigenically related to lentiviruses, especially HIV.”

In other words, there is an antigen (a protein, in this case made by a virus) that is similar to an HIV protein present in dogs that causes the HIV antibody to cross react. I have never used an antibody in the lab that didn’t cross react with similar proteins (and sometimes mindbogglingly dissimilar proteins).

In still other words, the very authors of the paper that you cited don’t make the conclusion that you are making from their paper. Were you counting on no one being able to pull up a paper if you only gave the author’s last name?

Because I’ll link the actual paper that you cited, and people can judge for themselves.

Here:
"A total of 144 dog sera were tested on Chiron Western blot
strips. Of these, 72 sera (50%) reacted with one or more HIV
recombinant proteins (Table 1).”
They were, of course, immunoblot results - and they are significant evidence for HIV non-specificity.

[human_extinction]

@Fiveyearlurker

I went to a Duesberg talk once, and that’s almost exactly what he claimed. The use of poppers correlates with being gay and has increased over the same time period as the spread of AIDS.

A virologist pointed out that the use of personal computers has increased over the same time period as well, and no one blames microsoft for AIDS.

Yes, but PCs haven’t been proven to severely suppress the immune system like poppers and other recreational drugs have.

A sequence of events if you will:

1. Free gay sex and drugs for all

2. Life style leads to great immunostresses

3. AIDS (the GRIDS - gay related immune deficiency syndrome) scare comes along

4. Tests ensue

5. The unhealthy ones have high positivity rates (immunostresses - pregnant women test positive more often too). You should find some on this in:
   Pilcher et al… Detection of Acute Infections during HIV Testing in North Carolina. The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 352:1873-1883, 2005.

or

5.1) The ones that died without tests were said to have died from AIDS due to the fact that they are gay and show similar symptoms.

6. The ones that tested positive were given AZT which is toxic and further diminished their health.
7. “Lots of gays died from AIDS”

[Richard_Parker]

@Richard Parker

I'm still waiting for the big reveal where human_extinction explains that so many gay men got AIDS because of their recreational use of antiretroviral meds, or whatever crazy theory he has. 

@human_extinction

1. Free gay sex and drugs for all
2. Life style leads to great immunostresses
3. AIDS (the GRIDS - gay related immune deficiency syndrome) scare comes along
4. Tests ensue

I was close, do I still get the points?

[human_extinction]

@Fiveyearlurker

Who told you this? HIV is routinely isolated and grown in culture. Has been for well over a decade. Here is just one paper (from 15 years ago, mind you) I pubmedded up in a few seconds, but there are literally tens of thousands of papers with in vitro cultured HIV.

Here is the methods section from this paper, in case you’d like to replicate these results:

"Generation of primary isolates of HIV and determination of phenotype

Peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBL) from HIV-infected individuals were prepared from peripheral blood by Ficoll gradient. The CD8+ T cell fraction was removed and the remaining cells cultured with HIV-negative 3 day PHA blasts in RPMI-20 containing 20 U/ml rIL-2. Cultures were monitored at days 10 and 15 for p24 production using p24 ELISA (Organon Teknika, Durham, USA). Viral phenotype was determined by adding 50 μl of viral stock to 1 × 106 MT-2 cells and monitoring for the formation of syncytia."

It’s from a paper (from almost ten years ago) that talks about HIV replication in macrophage cultures in vitro.

I believe that you believe what you are saying. I also believe that someone is lying to you.

Most of this debate seems to be between you and me so far [-_o] - just makes things simpler.

The Leukemia H9’s in that paper resemble the t-lymphs of a normal person, so this paper doesn’t really demonstrate any aids pathogenesis. These “hiv isolation” papers
really do require a slight of hand.

By comparing these two retroviral preparations one could understand what is required to potentially yield pure components for testing versus what are primarily composed of cellular debris

Etienne de Harven’s preparation of MMTV:
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/news/edhlettercont.htm

vs

Gelderblom et al., (1997) and Bess et
al., (1997):
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/eppretoria.htm

This is why I referenced virusmyth.net in the first place - it saves me a lot of work.

[human_extinction]

@Richard Parker

I was close, do I still get the points?

You’ve gotten your points, now leave the serious debating to us.

[Richard_Parker]

@human_extinction

You’ve gotten your points, now leave the serious debating to us.

Thank you. I’ll go exchange them now for a “my political agenda doesn’t control my belief in science” t-shirt.

[human_extinction]

@bouv

See, by saying it’s caused by a virus, and then saying for years and years that there is no vaccine, and then twenty-ish years later, they finally come out with a “vaccine”, they know that not only will everyone who can buy it do so, but that there will be government and “non-profit” organizations that will buy millions and millions of doses to “give” to people in third world countries and places with high rates of AIDS. Of course, everyone knows the vaccine is fake, and they won’t actually give it to anyone in those countries.

And since the drug companies are based in the US, even those with socialized/single-payer health care will have to have their governments buy the fake cure from the US drug companies.

DUH!

See if it was really a conspiracy in the classical sense you’d be partially correct. The sad part is that the drug companies, scientists, and doctors have fooled themselves. This is why the recent AIDS vaccine trial, which might have been most expensive clinical trial in history, fell flat on its face after years of testing.

No need for a vaccine: look into alternative care for the real illnesses of the “AIDS patient”. Whatever you do don’t give them antiretrovirals or their condition will worsen.

It is intruiging as a conspiracy, but I dont view it so much as one. They’ve designed testing system that appear to be coherent and definitive from the surface, but dilute the test sera too little before an HIV test, and everyone tests positive:

http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/rgelisa.htm

[human_extinction]

@Richard Parker

Thank you. I’ll go exchange them now for a “my political agenda doesn’t control my belief in science” t-shirt.

If they made a t-shirt like that, then I would be the first to wear it.

[nameless]

@human_extinction

"A total of 144 dog sera were tested on Chiron Western blot
strips. Of these, 72 sera (50%) reacted with one or more HIV
recombinant proteins (Table 1).”
They were, of course, immunoblot results - and they are significant evidence for HIV non-specificity.

I’m sorry, you referred to this again after Fiveyearlurker already pointed out that another interpretation of that data (which the authors subscribe to) is that the dogs are infected with a non HIV lentivirus that is immunologically similar to HIV and therefore the dog antibodies cross-react with HIV proteins that the dogs had not been exposed to. Are you disputing that conclusion, which the authors made?

[nameless]

human_extinction, how do you explain the results of retrospective studies that show very high decreases in mortality for HIV-positive individuals who begin antiretroviral therapy? Consider Palella et al. 1998 (free with registration or university-mediated e-journal access!) as one example. This study, which was performed on a sample of >1200 of people with very low immune cell counts (and therefore the population most likely to die) doesn’t jibe with your assertion that treating people with antiretrovirals makes them worse.

I find this figure to be extremely convincing, personally.

[KGS]

To answer the OP, it’s pointless to argue with a conspiracy theorist. Instead, it’s more effective to pretend you’re on their side.

So whenever I meet someone who believes that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, or that Avian Flu was created & released by terrorists, or that TWA 800 was shot down by a U.S. missile…I start telling them about The Moon Landing Hoax. And I urge them to tell everyone they know about the Moon Landing Hoax.

Perhaps I’m guilty of spreading ignorance by doing that…but I figure, if they start talking about the Moon Landing Hoax, people will see they’re such retarded idiots that they won’t believe anything else that comes out of that person’s mouth.