You want to explain how that reasoning fits in with the fact that the vast majority worldwide of AIDS cases are among heterosexuals? It’s only in the US that the disease took hold in the gay community first, and therefore impacted it the most visibly.
Are you familiar with the Hippocratic Oath?
That’s why research continues constantly. The fact remains, however, that the research linking HIV with AIDS is overwhelming.
Then listen to those who are. The sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s, combined with the Stonewall Riots in 1969 (which marked the beginning of the modern gay rights movement), empowered the gay community for the first time to start making itself known en masse, while at the same time that community was trying to figure out its own identity. Part of that identity was eschewing “buying into” the “heterosexual way of life” and reveling in an anti-establishment, sexually liberal social culture. Back rooms to have anonymous sex in were de rigeur for every gay bar, and tricking for sex was considered the norm. Certainly there were exceptions, but this pretty much defined the gay community of the 70’s.
Since it seems likely AIDS was introduced in the U.S. through the gay community first, and given the “free sex” culture, the virus made its way - unchecked - virulently through the community. That’s why when it was first diagnosed it was referred to as GRID, because only gay men were getting it. It was only a matter of time before it made its way into the heterosexual and IV drug communities.
However, you straights lucked out - because of pressure from groups like ACT-UP, plus a lot of media coverage, research pretty quickly found out how the disease was transmitted and how to prevent it (despite the fact that Ronald Reagan never even said the word “AIDS” until 1986, well into the epidemic). That, combined with the fact that a lot of heterosexuals already practiced condom use to prevent pregnancy, and it made far less of an impact in the straight community.
Here’s a few things that you can see from that data:
First, it shows that new tests are constantly being devised, and old ones improved.
Second, whatever has been isolated (if you want to believe it is not the HIV virus) correlates in its reaction to an assay with the blood of AIDS patients. That shows what is being detected is in both fractions. Its activity also correlates with the RNA titer, suggesting that the RNA is indeed from the entity being detected by the assay.
Third, using antiretroviral agents reduces the RNA titer, suggesting that antiretroviral agents are active against the source of the RNA, which in turn suggests the RNA is from a retrovirus. Which is to be expected, given that it is encoded in a viral genome that is clearly from a retrovirus.
All in all, both modern protein and RNA/DNA based tests are capable of determining titer of the isolated entity, and it pretty clearly is a retrovirus. It is present in the HIV patients tested, but not in controls which, by less sensitive tests, seem to be HIV-free. As such, your claim that practically anyone can be shown to be positive is untenable.
Division of HIV/AIDS (G29), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333.
OBJECTIVE: To determine whether dentist-to-patient or patient-to-patient transmission of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)
occurred in the practice of a dentist who had the acquired
immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). DESIGN: Retrospective epidemiologic investigation supported by molecular virology studies.
SETTING: The practice of a dentist with AIDS in an area with a high
AIDS prevalence. PARTICIPANTS: A dentist with AIDS, his former
employees, and his former patients, including 28 patients with HIV
infection. MEASUREMENTS: Identification of potential risks for
acquisition of HIV infection, genetic relatedness among HIV strains, and infection-control practices. RESULTS: A dentist with known behavioral risks for HIV infection, who was practicing in an area of Miami, Florida, that had a high rate of reported AIDS cases, disclosed that he frequently did invasive procedures and did not always follow recommended infection-control procedures. Of 6474 patients who had records of receiving care from the dentist during his last 5 years of practice, 1279(19.8%) were known to have been tested for HIV infection and 24 of those (1.9%) were seropositive. Four other patients with HIV infection were identified through additional case-finding activities. Of these 28 patients with HIV infection, all but 4 had potential behavioral risk factors for infection. Phylogenetic tree analysis of HIV genetic sequences from the dentist and 24 of the patients with HIV infection showed an absence of strong bootstrap support for any grouping and therefore did not indicate that the virus strains were linked. CONCLUSIONS: Despite identifying numerous patients with HIV infection, we found no evidence of dentist-to-patient or patient-to-patient transmission of HIV during dental care. Our findings are consistent with those of all previous studies in this area, with the exception of one that did identify such transmission.
I am not sure what you think this paper proves, but it doesn’t support a single one of your claims. what it shows has never been disputed by anyone, namely that casual contact bears an insignificant risk of infection.
quoth Trueskeptic in response to the question " would you be willing to have yourself innoculated with live HIV virus?"
ok. I take full responsibility for asking a question which anyone with a spark of intelligence could wiggle out of. I should have asked “Will you be willing to have yourself innoculated?” Again, an easy question to dodge, since no one with a shred of ethics would consent to dosing you, so you could answer in the affirmative, secure in the knowledge that you would never have to face the test of your convictions.
However, the more I think about it, the more obvious it seems that this whole question could be answered in a very quick, unambiguous manner. Forget about arguing the merits of Southern vs Western, vs Northern blot, vs Elissa, vs PCR, etc …blah, blah, blah…yadda, yadda, yadda…
It seems to me (Note to all mods, concerned citizens, and shadowy governmental agencies which may be monitoring these boards and may or may not be beaming microwaves into my rumpus room: I do not advocate the following experiment) that those who claim that the HIV virus is not responsible by and of itself for causing AIDS can put the nail in the coffin of their detractors by simply having themselves innoculated with a well-characterized, refereed sample of purified HIV virus (and nothing else ;)). We can get ** Trueskeptic, Roger_Mexico, Tambo Mbeki** and David Rasnick to step up to the plate and put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.
Of course I jest, and ** in no way condone such a reckless experiment**
And yet…The fact that no one has done so speaks volumes, n’est ce pas?
I would just as soon as this mini discussion in this thread between us doesn’t get too snarky ala
Because I COULD point out that if all that was necessary to be certain of someones veracity is their taking of an oath there wouldn’t be a need for penalties for perjury would there?
Or I could ask if it is your contention that medical professionals are immune to the same weaknesses of character that plague every other man and woman alive?
But all that would do is lessen any chance I have of understanding certain parts of your point of view and you of understanding mine
Anyway on to YOUR points
First I’d say in many countries any suggestion of someone being gay might have repercussions that a gay person might not face here and therefore they might in fact be reluctant to tell an official that they got the disease through gay sex in the first place…that could boost the numbers of so-called straight infections
Added to that many countries downplay the numbers of their gay populations for various reasons(I remember Russia in particular used to do so…I THINK China did as well but I’m not as certain of them)
Plus as I mentioned before birth control is not always as easy to get in a third world country and people might to avoid getting pregnant go anal or frequent prostitutes as a work around…this could account for a significant number of heterosexuals as well
Maybe…though just in THIS thread there seems to be a difference of opinion of how overwhelming it in fact it is
It’s not like for instance the Measles or Chicken Pox…no argument there we know what causes it and what to do to treat it but AIDS seems to be different…you’re probably correct but I still wonder
As to the last part of your post…you have me there I in fact know virtually nothing about the culture of the time among the gay community however even if EVERY single gay person did what you in fact claim and were ALL at potential risk down to the last man…the numbers still do not jibe
It would take just a couple of percentage points of heterosexuals doing the same thing(free and easy unprotected sex with many partners) to equal the gays infections if that’s all there was to it
I was alive and sexually active in the late 70s and in my experience it was extremely rare to find a girl who was on the pill and also insisted on the guy using a condom…same with all of my friends back then so it wasn’t just the gays who had a lock on unsafe sexual behavior
Remember my original point? That anal sex is inherently riskier than vaginal?
Now I could be wrong but it does if you take THAT in account with everything else explain the numbers(gay VS straight infections)
Astro wrote:
“Your [true skeptic’s] insanely silly arguments predicated on obsolete research are being dis-assembled like tinker toys by thread respondents llike edwino and OliverH who have the scientific background to deconstruct the asininity of flogging decade+ old studies”
Edwino has the scientific background to disassemble research like tinker toys? I think not. He gave this cite:
and wrote:
" A cohort study of African children, with the only difference being the HIV status. Guess what they found? More infective diseases, more health problems, wasting, and other signs of immune deficiency."
But I pointed out that the researchers would only put a child with only one positive PCR in the “HIV-infected” group if that child also showed clinical symptoms of HIV infection. You can see this here in the definition from the paper:
"Definitions
HIV-infected children were those who were seropositive by ELISA and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive on
at least two occasions, or were PCR positive on one occasion and had clinical features of AIDS as defined by the revised
World Health Organization (WHO) clinical case definition for pediatric AIDS with the modification of persistent or severe
lower respiratory tract infection as a major sign (11). However, for the purposes of comparing clinical features in the
HIV-infected and uninfected groups, the 1986 WHO definition was used (12). Uninfected children were HIV
seronegative with at least one PCR negative test, or HIV seropositive with at least two negative PCR tests, or those who
subsequently seroreverted (on two different blood samples) and had at least one negative PCR. Indeterminate cases were
HIV seropositive with only one PCR negative test and had no symptoms of AIDS."
This biased the “HIV-infected” group towards being unhealthy. To see how the bias is introduced, consider the following hypothetical example. Suppose 10 kids are in the HIV-infected group and the researchers didn’t feel it necessary to check their clinical symptoms because each had 2 positive PCRs. Suppose 8 of them are healthy and 2 of them are unhealthy. Then suppose there are 20 kids who have only one positive PCR and 5 have clinical symptoms of HIV and 15 do not. Then the researchers would only add the 5 with symptoms to the “HIV-infected” group. So we would have 7 unhealthy kids and 8 healthy kids in the “HIV-infected” group, whereas if we didn’t go by clinical symptoms at all (as we should if we want to support edwino’s claims) we would have 23 healthy kids and 7 unhealthy. That’s a proportion of 7/15 unhealthy in thie biased “HIV-infected” group and 7/30 unhealthy in the unbiased “HIV-infected” group.
Edwino responded when I first made this point by asking:
“Please explain how someone could be PCR positive for HIV and uninfected.”
I didn’t make the definition, the researchers Edwino cited to support his arguments did!
So I don’t think “Edwino has the scientific background to disassemble research like tinker toys” is the appropriate metaphor. Mataphorically, Edwino is trying to put square research into a round hole.
You would think that Edwino, or others in this thread, being so astute at science that they disassemble research articles like tinker toys, would have read an article sometime during their extensive scientific training that demonstrates that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS. Yet when pressed to give a cite, Edwino comes up with the above, which I have disassembled like a heap of already disassembled Legos.
Read here how Nobel Prize winning chemist Kary Mullis discusses the fact that despite extensive efforts on his part, he could not find a scientific publication demonstrating HIV is the probable cause of AIDS: http://www.duesberg.com/viewpoints/kintro.html
Note that he asks Montagnier, co-discoverer of HIV-1 and HIV-2 and here is what happened:
"… I was going to a lot of meetings and conferences as part of my job. I got in the habit of approaching anyone who gave a talk about AIDS and asking him or her what reference I should quote for that increasingly problematic statement, “HIV is the probable cause of AIDS.”
After ten or fifteen meetings over a couple years, I was getting pretty upset when no one could cite the reference. I didn’t like the ugly conclusion that was forming in my mind: The entire campaign against a disease increasingly regarded as a twentieth century Black Plague was based on a hypothesis whose origins no one could recall. That defied both scientific and common sense.
Finally, I had an opportunity to question one of the giants in HIV and AIDS research, DL Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute, when he gave a talk in San Diego. It would be the last time I would be able to ask my little question without showing anger, and I figured Montagnier would know the answer. So I asked him.
With a look of condescending puzzlement, Montagnier said, "Why don’t you quote the report from the Centers for Disease Control? "
I replied, “It doesn’t really address the issue of whether or not HIV is the probable cause of AIDS, does it?”
“No,” he admitted, no doubt wondering when I would just go away. He looked for support to the little circle of people around him, but they were all awaiting a more definitive response, like I was.
“Why don’t you quote the work on SIV [Simian Immunodeficiency Virus]?” the good doctor offered.
“I read that too, DL Montagnier,” I responded. "What happened to those monkeys didn’t remind me of AIDS. Besides, that paper was just published only a couple of months ago. I’m looking for the original paper where somebody showed that HIV caused AIDS.
This time, DL Montagnier’s response was to walk quickly away to greet an acquaintance across the room… "
That paper wasn’t a cite showing HIV causes AIDS, rather it was a cohort study similar to what Duesberg and pals have requested. That is just one of hundreds of studies.
One of their classes of HIV+ was PCR positive with clinical signs. You seem to think that there is something wrong with defining HIV+ in this fashion.
So I have asked you, repeatedly, what else could a PCR positive result mean. You have not answered. I will ask one more time, this time with small words.
Out of a group of septic patients, one set were HIV PCR+. These were grouped as HIV+. What else could it mean? Do you deny the 20 or 30 references in the medical literature showing that PCR is a sensitive and specific assay for HIV infection?
If you don’t like their PCR assay, find a citation that shows that their PCR assay is crap. If you don’t like their clinical categorizations, find a cite of people who are PCR+ and HIV-.
To all the undecided lurkers out there, watch how sealamp falls into the same patterns as every dissenter out there. All I have asked for is a citation from the 100,000+ papers of HIV literature. I want to debate science. What do I get instead? An account of a question and answer session from an HIV dissenter from duesberg.com, an HIV dissent site. Kary Mullis’s drug addled brain is not held up to the standards of peer-reviewed literature. Which is why we see a helluva lot of it coming from the dissenters.
Debate me with some frikkin science here. Not secondhand conversations or the like.
Also, looking for one cite that HIV causes AIDS is chasing windmills. As we have all stated, determining causation is a long and complicated process. It will never all be shown in one cite. It will be shown in a body of literature, which all points to the same conclusion. And that is what we have.
(emphasis mine) you already made it kind of snarky, didn’t you? Since my boyfriend and several other friends are medical professionals, I take umbrage at the insinuation that doctors put money over responsible healthcare.
The rest of your post - lower reportings of gay patients, - is supposition, conjecture and flat-out guesses. There is a lot of research out there, both historical and medical,
You seem determined to turn this back into a “gay disease,” or at least blame the gay community for its prevalence. Why?
DISREGARD ABOVE POST, READ THIS ONE INSTEAD (pushed “submit” too soon!)
Well by saying
(emphasis mine) you already made it kind of snarky, didn’t you? Since my boyfriend and several other friends are medical professionals, I take umbrage at the insinuation that doctors put money over responsible healthcare.
The rest of your post is supposition, conjecture and flat-out guesses. There is a lot of research out there, both historical and medical, that explains fairly adequately why the disease spread as it did, and what the risk is to both the gay and straight communities, both then and now. Rather than going off of your interesting theories, I’d just as soon listen to what those who have studied the disease for many years have to say.
That said, it seems to me you are determined to turn this back into a “gay disease,” or at least blame the gay community for its prevalence. Why?
"They’re embarrassing me – they’re embarrassing America! They turned the Navy into a floating joke! They ruined all our best names like Bruce and Lance and Julian! Those were the toughest names we had. Now they’re just, uh… "
In conclusion,
“Hang onto that hat, toyboy , you might need it when it starts raining naked ladies!”
Argh argh…first “argh” is because I had written a long response to your post Esprix and it disappeared and the second was for you saying
I never in any of my posts said any such thing…if you recall ONE of the many points I made in my first post was that anal sex was inherently riskier than vaginal sex and gave my reasons for thinking so…you fixated on that ONE point…I’m thinking now because you saw this as an indictment of gays in general and you in particular I guess given how tenaciously you’ve been chewing on that point
I promise you…I had not then nor do I now have some underlying agenda to to blame gays for this disease in any way
I made a hypothesis(anal sex is riskier) and supported it with my reasoning to explain why the numbers of who is more likely to get infected…nothing you have provided as YOUR reasons for saying my hypothesis is full of beans have explained the documented numbers of who became infected and why
You have said it was the culture in the gay community back then that made them more vulnerable and I said that could partially be true but the numbers still even given that was correct did not add up and I provided once again a way to make some kind of sense of those numbers since as I said the gay community even back then accounted for such a small percentage of the population that it would take just a relatively small amount of straights to practice unsafe sex to equal or even surpass the numbers of infected people who were gay
And the fact that this never happened makes me think that there must be something other than JUST practicing unsafe sex that accounts for the numbers this explains my postulating that anal sex must be riskier than vaginal sex to make the numbers add up
As for your second point
I do not know you…I do not know your friends nor in all likelihood anyone you know who may be a medical professional
This was not meant to be a personal attack on you OR any of your friends
Remember my bringing up the ulcer guy…the one who was almost run out of town on a rail because he said some ulcers were caused by an easily treated bacteria by MEDICALLY professionals who for the most part had very good FINANCIAL reasons NOT medical reasons for attempting to stop what he was saying?
This happened and there is no denying it and there is no way to put a GOOD spin on it…if it can happen once it can happen again especially given the amounts of money we are talking to treat people for AIDS…amounts of money that are magnitudes greater than is even now spent on ulcer research
I even admitted you COULD very well be correct in this point but given the amounts of money involved and given the so many unknowns that seems to plague AIDS research even now you shouldn’t blame people like me for be at least a LITTLE suspicious of those who have financial reasons for saying what they say
Just telling me they take an oath not to let those considerations matter doesn’t cut it and trying to imply my arguments are a PERSONAL attack is more than a little disingenuous on your part
How about that? I return after a prolonged absence, to find that the Junior Galileo League of the Oppressed is still ranting about the Conspiracy of the HIV Scientists.
Not that I expect that further facts flung against the brick wall of ignorance will have any effect, but I did want to answer this:
The genuine, gold-embossed, official inflatable PubMed, overseen by the NCI cabal. :).
You do realize that none of the “8 papers by Moretti ML” that you found are on the subject of HIV/AIDS? They’re all in the area of obstetrics and perinatology - so I strongly suspect that you’ve been researching the wrong Moretti.
Ol’ Maurizio Moretti is still a mystery, as is the InterAmerican Medical and Health organization/journal that supposedly published his paper.
Edwino writes:
“One of their classes of HIV+ was PCR positive with clinical signs. You seem to think that there is something wrong with defining HIV+ in this fashion.”
Edwino, did you read my entire post? For the THIRD time. One of their classes was “HIV-infected”. They DEFINED this group in the following manner. I WANT YOU TO READ THIS DEFINITION. DON’T SKIP IT BECAUSE IT IS A QUOTE:
“HIV-infected children were those who were seropositive by ELISA and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) positive on
at least two occasions, or were PCR positive on one occasion and had clinical features of AIDS as defined by the revised
World Health Organization (WHO) clinical case definition for pediatric AIDS with the modification of persistent or severe
lower respiratory tract infection as a major sign (11). However, for the purposes of comparing clinical features in the
HIV-infected and uninfected groups, the 1986 WHO definition was used (12). Uninfected children were HIV
seronegative with at least one PCR negative test, or HIV seropositive with at least two negative PCR tests, or those who
subsequently seroreverted (on two different blood samples) and had at least one negative PCR. Indeterminate cases were
HIV seropositive with only one PCR negative test and had no symptoms of AIDS.”
Edwino writes:
“So I have asked you, repeatedly, what else could a PCR positive result mean. You have not answered. I will ask one more time, this time with small words.
Out of a group of septic patients, one set were HIV PCR+. These were grouped as HIV+. What else could it mean? Do you deny the 20 or 30 references in the medical literature showing that PCR is a sensitive and specific assay for HIV infection?”
Look, right there you demonstrate you don’t understand the definition. You say “one set were HIV PCR+. These were grouped as HIV+.” WRONG!! There were MULTIPLE PCR tests on individual kids. It is not as simple as PCR+ or PCR-. Look at the definition again. There is “PCR+ on at least two occasions”, “PCR+ only once”, etc. And kids with only one PCR+ but no symptoms of AIDS were NOT grouped as HIV+!!!
Why don’t you ask this to the researchers? They were basically saying if we had a seropositive ELISA AND TWO (2) PCR positives for a child, then we stick the kid in the “HIV-Infected” group with no further evidence of the kid being HIV+. BUT if we have a seropositive ELISA BUT ONLY ONE (1) PCR positive for a child, we need the ADDITIONAL evidence of CLINICAL SIGNS of AIDS by a WHO definition. From Table 3 of the article we see the WHO clinical signs include: “failure to thrive”, “prolonged diahrrea”, “prolonged fever”, “persistent cough”, etc. These are measures of poor health. Evidently the researchers felt it necessary to have CLINICAL evidence of AIDS before putting the kid in the “HIV-infected” group when there was a seropositive ELISA BUT ONLY ONE (1) PCR+. Apparently a seropositive ELISA AND TWO (2) PCR positives was enough evidence to declare the kid HIV+ without looking for clinical signs. BUT ONLY ONE PCR+ and a seropositive ELISA was NOT ENOUGH EVIDENCE ALONE. Such a child with no clinical signs WOULD NOT be put in the “HIV-positive group”!!! By your standards the kid should be. SO YOU HAVE A DISAGREEMENT WITH THE RESEARCHERS YOU CITE TO SUPPORT YOUR ARGUMENTS.
And I argued before that such a definition biases the “HIV-infected” group towards being unhealthy:
“To see how the bias is introduced, consider the following hypothetical example. Suppose 10 kids are in the HIV-infected group and the researchers didn’t feel it necessary to check their clinical symptoms because each had 2 positive PCRs. Suppose 8 of them are healthy and 2 of them are unhealthy. Then suppose there are 20 kids who have only one positive PCR and 5 have clinical symptoms of HIV [I should have written AIDS the first time] and 15 do not. Then the researchers would only add the 5 with symptoms to the “HIV-infected” group. So we would have 7 unhealthy kids and 8 healthy kids in the “HIV-infected” group, whereas if we didn’t go by clinical symptoms at all (as we should if we want to support edwino’s claims) we would have 23 healthy kids and 7 unhealthy. That’s a proportion of 7/15 unhealthy in thie biased “HIV-infected” group and 7/30 unhealthy in the unbiased “HIV-infected” group.”
Edwino writes:
“If you don’t like their PCR assay, find a citation that shows that their PCR assay is crap. If you don’t like their clinical categorizations, find a cite of people who are PCR+ and HIV-.”
It is the RESEARCHERS YOU CITE who are doing MULTIPLE PCR TESTS and requiring clinical signs of AIDS IN ADDITION TO a single positive PCR to declare a kid HIV+. They apparently think a kid could have a PCR+ but be HIV-.
I’m not arguing anything about the quality of the PCR test!! All I am saying is that if you define the “HIV-infected” group using in some cases WHO clinical measures of AIDS (which as you can see from Table 3 in the article are measures of bad health), you aren’t justified in pointing to bad health in the “HIV-infected” group and saying HIV is the cause, since the sample is biased towards that conclusion.
Edwino:
I think this may be the source of much of your confusion:
The abstract says:
“708 children admitted with sepsis and clinical features suggestive of HIV infection were screened…”
but the “clinical features suggestive of HIV infection” mentioned here are not the same as the WHO clinical features of AIDS used in the definition of “HIV-infected” in the paper. So although all the kids had “clinical features suggestive of HIV infection”, not all of the kids had WHO clinical features of AIDS.
I understand your point now, but I think you are misreading it. Or at least it seems that their classification system is a bit muddled – not everyone got the same tests walking in the door, and their classification system had to bin people into one of three categories using a variety of tests. You conclude from the phrasing “at least one PCR negative test” that there was a class that was PCR+ and classified as HIV-. They never say that. They are not careful in saying that it isn’t the case. But I don’t think you can conclude that there were PCR+ patients who were classified as HIV-. That is where we got our wires crossed – I never assumed that there were patients who were PCR+ and HIV-, and their phrasing leads me to think that it is a toss-up. I saw that they used the 1986 WHO classification + lower respiratory infection as “HIV suggestive symptoms” but classified according to 1989 WHO standards. This makes the classification non-circular. Perhaps elliptical, but non-circular.
Anyway, as I said above. This paper is just one of thousands. Debating the classification scheme in one J AIDS paper is not going to miraculously prove that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Picking at the protocol of one paper does not automatically mean that every single piece of HIV science out there is a sham.
Present me with a hypothesis. Duesberg’s will work fine. Then show me primary scientific literature that supports that hypothesis. Not Mullis or Rasnick’s questions at a conference. Not an article from a slanted web site. Primary literature which has been peer-reviewed.
There are many non-standard theories in science out there which are actively debated. Off of the top of my head, I can think of the multiregionalist origin of Homo sapiens (see labmonkey’s thread from last week), the Matzinger “Danger Model” of immune function, punctuated equilibrium versus gradualism, and the bacterial theory of artherosclerosis. The difference is that these fields are debated not on websites and books, but in the primary literature.
No matter how bizarre the hypothesis is on the surface, if it is supported by data, it is accepted. Somebody mentioned prions earlier in this thread. That, on the surface, is a much more bizarre hypothesis than HIV not causing AIDS. Prusiner proposed that certain neurodegenerative diseases are caused by misfolded proteins, acting as a pseudo-infectious agent without genetic material. He was right, though – his data showed it quite nicely. There was debate, there were nonbelievers. But his data won out, because there were no other reasonable explanations for his findings. The bizarre hypothesis has now become a fundamental part of protein biology, and in 1997 Stan Prusiner was awarded the Nobel for it.
"Having announced **in 1982 **that a novel life form, containing mostly protein but no RNA or DNA, was responsible for several rare human and animal brain diseases, Prusiner became something of a pariah. Rather than abandon his radical notion for something more acceptable, Prusiner instead set out to provide irrefutable evidence to substantiate it. …
"The irony is that Professor Prusiner **did go against the grain, and he endured decades of ridicule for persisting in his notions. **Dr Zachary Hall of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke said: “It’s a very, very well deserved prize. The ideas were bold and the hypothesis was heretical. But he pushed unrelentingly and was unfazed.” Dr David Baltimore, himself a Nobel laureate and former director of the Whitehead Institute and Rockefeller University, said, “These are the mythological stories of science - people who have really kept their own faith for so many years and lived through a period of opprobrium and finally are discovered to be right.”
In an interview after learning he had won the prize, Professor Prusiner said that scientists were right to doubt him: “I think that scientists should be very reticent to accept new ideas - 99% of new ideas are wrong. We have to be very tough on our colleagues.” [the question is, does ridicule have to enter into it?]
BMJ No 7114 Volume 315, News Saturday 18 October 1997
"Lipkin said he was inspired by the discoverer of prions, Stanley Prusiner, a professor at UC San Francisco, who “pursued an iconoclastic hypothesis in the face of public ridicule.”
Sunday, September 30, 2001 By Jeff Gottlieb LOS ANGELES TIMES
"Prusiner’s heretical hypothesis-that a protein could infect an organism and replicate without nucleic acids-was met with ridicule. No known life form can replicate without nucleic acids-not even viruses. …
“Although the question of whether rogue prions are the sole
cause of human TSEs is not yet settled, the “protein only” prion hypothesis has won over the majority of scientists working in this field. In contrast to the ridicule Dr. Prusiner received in
the early 80s, the importance of his work on prions was acknowledged in 1997 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for his work on prions.”
“Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D., winner of the 1992 Dana Award in Health, had been awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of a new infectious agent, which he called a “prion.” His report in 1982 was met with profound scepticism, and even ridicule, because he argued that prions reproduced with no genetic material of their own. Over more than 15 years, experiments worldwide confirmed his hypothesis.” [much like the AIDS dissenters]
"But science has high standards for acceptance. Professor Stanley Prusiner, having received the 1997 Nobel Prize for Medicine after enduring decades of ridicule for suggesting that there might be a class of non-nucleic acid containing infectious agents - Prions - said that scientists had been right to doubt him.
“I think that scientists should be very reticent to accept new ideas” he said, “99% of new ideas are wrong. We have to be very tough on our colleagues.”
“On the other hand, John Kenneth Galbraith once remarked, “Faced with the choice between changing one’s mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.” And I quoted Stephen Hawking a moment or two ago saying something very similar. So there is a resistance to new ideas that has nothing to do with science, but is merely a common feature of human behaviour. Science should constantly examine new ideas, the more bizarre the better.”
The critical difference between Prusiner’s example and the contrarian AIDS genesis hypotheses, as Edwino explicitly noted, is that despite nay Sayers and doubters, Prusiner’s research and data were solid and eventually won the day, as they should in the classic march of better and more powerful theories and paradigms replacing less powerful theories. The contrarian AIDS genesis claims are based on older studies that have largely been eclipsed or rendered irrelevant by new research using more powerful and sensitive methods.
If the contrarian claims are going to be taken seriously as science, there needs to be solid, current data using the same powerful methods and hardware the HIV-AIDS link researchers use to back up the contrarian claims. In real world practical terms this contrarian data simply does not exist, and contrarian advocates are practically reduced to quoting themselves on message boards or combing the data from thousands and thousands and thousands of extant papers to try to assemble enough anomalies to cobble together support for the off chance that the HIV-AIDS Link is incorrect.
Science (like any human endeavor) is political and personal on some level, and there will always be people who will be invested enough in the current paradigm model to dismiss competing theories. Where modern science differs from an X-files episode, is that despite personal differences between researchers physical and biological science is not based on personal opinions, but is a slow and methodical process where the best data and most powerful models will ultimately win the day.
The contrarian model is not based primarily on current data or research directly supporting it’s hypotheses, but instead mainly buttresses itself by pointing to the fact that the HIV-AIDS model is not yet absolutely, perfectly explanatory in all instances of the epidemiology of AIDS. I think many AIDS researchers would readily accede to this fine point, but would point the reason for this as being the complexity of the organism and the disease process being unraveled, and the need for refinements to the current model vs. the probability that current model is wholly incorrect despite oceans of data supporting it.
The onus here is not on the HIV-AIDS link proponents to defend the powerful linkage their paradigm successfully predicts between HIV and AIDS, but on the contrarians to come up reasonably powerful and explanatory research results that directly support their contentions vs. message board musings over 10 year old largely dis-credited research and throwing up immunologically nonsensical speculation.
It might fun to play the Agent Mulder of immunology, but this is the real world and you’ve got the bring something to the table other than tattered old research speculations if you expect your claims to be taken seriously. Your research is old. Your data is missing. You’ve got to attend to these practical issues or real scientists are going to regard you as clueless idiots for making large claims based on evidence that has little to no current relevance.