Is this true? Do you have a paper on this? I’m not so sure.
Your second point is probably true, but not an argument why anal sex per se is dangerouse.
Anyhow, wasn’t my main point.
Hmmm… I’ll see if I can find a cite, but don’t hold your breath.
I know for a fact that other means of introducing foreign substances into the blood inhibit immune response for that substance; for example, ingested proteins generally don’t provoke immune responses (for obvious reasons).
I distinctly recall studies which suggested that directly introducing substances into the blood tended to weaken the immune system in general; something about being on constant alert and sapping resources, I think.
Not that my recollections are satisfactory citations… [sigh]
I’ll look around, see what I can come up with. Unfortunately, most sites discussing anal sex and immune impairment seem to discuss HIV and AIDS.
TVAA
I’m really interested in this. I’d think introducing foreing ‘whatever’ would provoke some immune response. Sort of like a vaccination. Thus actually strengthenimg the immune system.
A bit off topic: I have a paper here called:
Correlation between oral sex and a low incidence of preeclampsia: a role for soluble HLA in seminal fluid?
from the Journal of Reproductive Immunology. I kind of like to show it to the girls…
Vaccinations don’t “strengthen” anything – they just teach the immune system to respond to a particular substance.
The existing research is somewhat contradictory – on one hand, the lack of exposure to relatively harmless parasites and diseases might prevent the immune system from developing properly, increasing the rates of allergies and autoimmune conditions; on the other hand, introducing some substances into the body seems to impair overall effectiveness.
Lee Spetner argues that normal, detrimental mutations appear randomly; beneficial ones appear through switching on and off already existing information. See “Not By Chance” by Spetner.
So from all Duesberg has written about this, you believe that was his best data?
Wait … you’re saying Microsoft has NOTHING to do with it??? :eek:
trueskeptic
Strange theory. Who decides what is detrimantal and what beneficial beforehand? Can you outline what Spetner claims?
Not exactly … after Gallo announced the current theory not by peer review but press release, patenting the test the same day, all competing theories were dropped from financial consideration. So “under investigation” was cut short. Fortunately some scientist continued to follow the science instead of the money.
Glad you weren’t around to flame Galileo.
Gee…all those scientists…no interest in peer-reviewed research…all wanting to make Gallo rich and famous. Who’da thunk it?
Thanks for reminding me about Galileo. There appears to be an absolute correlation between comparing oneself to Galileo and being a quack.
(Answering the easy ones first) 
First of all, before someone shrieks it at me - yes, Spetner is a physicist who began studying the issue of evolutionary change.
In brief: he argues that nontrivial beneficial changes such as finch-beak-shape are not due to random mutation but due to some kind of genetic switching mechanism influenced by external factors. Some of these changes occur within a generation and are oscillation instead of evolution - expression of already existing information, not new information.
Beneficial bacterial information is actually the result of loss of information in terms of specificity. A bacterium is eminently equipped to use substrate A; the substrate is changed; a mutation enables the bacteria to survive, but through loss of complex information that provided specificity to the substrate, and with deleterious side effects. There is no new information; an inferior pathway is used.
Main point: no new information has been seen to evolve, only oscillation or loss of information.
Wow. Amazing spin! You went from being in the same mindset as one of Galileo’s persecutors to arguing that anyone else who may be in the same position as Galileo is a quack … no, wait, you’re in the same place you were before - one of the herd.:eek:
Hmmm, trueskeptic first thought it was strange the guy writes a book about it (like Duesberg) instead of publishing in a scintific journal. Allways fishy…
But he actually has a nature paper (Natural selection versus gene uniqueness). Trying to get it.
A nice alternative to questioning your beliefs …:rolleyes:
If Master Cecil would bring his smiting stick and resolve this issue we could fight some ignorance here and now.
It appears that some obviously intelligent Dopers have an issue. Each side has what seem to be valid points and reliable cites. (with some exceptions of course)
I am a latecomer to this thread and have not read each post in detail. I admit to being biased in the sense that I have some background in medicine (not much) but have enough info. that until now there was no question about whether AIDS is preceded by HIV.
HIV does not necessarily predict AIDS since it may be dormant for years, perhaps always (ie:carrier). But, to my knowledge HIV is a reliable indicator, all AIDS patients that were previously tested for HIV had positive results.
Since not all AIDS patients were tested for HIV before they developed AIDS, I suppose there is a chance that AIDS can develop from other sources in addition to the HIV.
I am simply not aware of anything beside HIV that has been found to cause AIDS.
Sorry if these have been covered or are of no use here. I will read all & cites later. Gotta go for now.
Prayers to all who suffer this terrible disease. Peace
that … please replace that w/ a 
I assure you there is no joke or sarcasm here.
Think Warwick Collins.
trueskeptic
Please start a new thread to talk about people like Spetner. We have the whole intelligent design/creationism versus evolution thing about once a month here, but the HIV/AIDS thing comes along much less frequently. Don’t spoil this thread with discussions of Spetner.
Incidentally, I do find it interesting that the HIV/AIDS denial increasingly seems to go hand in hand with the other big lot of science conspiracy freaks, the anti-evolutionists. I noticed an article on virusmyth.net by Phillip Johnson, of Darwin on Trial fame.
trueskeptic, one more question for you. AIDS rates have generally plateaued in the US since the mid 1990s. So has HIV infection, in large part due to lots of community education and safe sex initiatives. Do you believe this is true of intravenous drug abuse or amyl nitrite inhalants as well? If not, how do you explain the plateau?
The question is, are these diseases caused by HIV?
BTW, I asked earlier if any pictures of isolated HIV have been taken recently … anyone? And I don’t mean this one. At least then I could know I’m talking about an actual entity.
Al-Bayati:
“Caiaffa et al. examined the risk factors for the first episode of bacterial pneumonia among 40 HIV-seropositive injection drug users (IDUs) and found that the most distinctive behavioral characteristic among these patients associated with an increased odds of bacterial pneumonia was the practice of smoking drugs other than cigarettes (marijuana, cocaine, crack). The association of smoking illicit drugs with bacterial pneumonia was independent of the level of immunosuppression, age, and cigarette smoking.”
Duesberg:
"(5) Different risk groups have risk-group-specific AIDS diseases, e.g., Kaposi sarcoma is observed almost exclusively in homosexuals [79], because homosexuals are the almost-exclusive users of aphrodisiac nitrite inhalants [5, 65]; tuberculosis and weight loss is observed in intravenous drug users, because intravenous drugs cause those symptoms [5]; anemia and lymphocytopenia is observed in recipients of AZT which kills proliferating bone marrow cells [5, 80]; and hemophiliacs get pneumonias and candidiases almost exclusively, because long-term transfusion of foreign proteins is immunosuppressive [5].
The drug-AIDS hypothesis is experimentally and epidemiologically testable and provides a rational basis for AIDS prevention and control. *
This article is the first of two in “Controversy: HIV and AIDS,” sponsored by Georg Wick, editor-in-chief of International Archives of Allergy and Immunology.
R.S. Root-Bernstein, Department of Physiology, Michigan State University:
"Again, as is the case with gay men, the medical literature reflects the growing problem of drug abuse with the recognition of unusual immunologic and infectious complications in abusers. The high mortality and vastly decreased longevity of opiate addicts was studied (Bewley et al., 1968; Louria et al., 1967; Cherubin, 1967). Severe systemic infections with Gram-negative bacteria, Candida and other opportunistic organisms began to be reported (Hussey and Katz, 1950; Briggs et al., 1966; 1967; Cherubin, 1967 ; Cherubin and Brown, 1968; Louria et al., 1967).
A Critical Analysis of the HIV-T4-Cell-AIDS Hypothesis:
“One year later workers from the same institution and three other centres had “identified five other individuals from the New York City area (four who have known risk factors for HIV infection), with profound CD4 depletion and clinical syndromes consistent with definitions of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) or AIDS-related complex. None had evidence of HIV-1, 2 infection, as judged by multiple serologies over several years, standard viral co-cultures for HIV p24 Gag antigen, and proviral DNA amplification by polymerase chain reaction” (Laurence et al., 1992). Similar cases have recently been reported from other institutions including the CDC (Afrasiabi et al., 1986; Pankhurst & Peakman, 1989; Safai et al., 1991; Seligmann et al., 1991; Sirianni et al., 1991; CDC, 1992; Hishida et al., 1992; Tijhuis et al., 1993).”
Interesting question. Whati is the leading indicator among African-Americans? Is it TB? Leukemia? Also, how many cases? There has been … er … finagling with the stats in the past:
“One method is to cite cumulative figures. Although the number of new cases has dropped each year since 1993, the cumulative number keeps growing. HIV/AIDS advocates do not describe the 73,380 new cases in 1995 as a 7% drop from the 78,863 new cases in 1994. Instead, they describe it as a 16% increase of the total number of cases recorded since 1981. The same trick is used to make it appear as though AIDS is “exploding” in specific groups, such as women, blacks, and young adults, even though AIDS is actually declining in those groups.”
Thankfully no one here would stoop so low as accuse any of us of that.
Robert Giraldo:
“1.11. The fact that the defenders of HIV as the cause of AIDS, had to appeal to a genetic trick – the PCR test – is a strong argument against HIV as the cause of AIDS. To have to amplify tiny amounts of genetic material in the blood of the AIDS patients to try to identify HIV, **instead of culturing the entire virus, isolate it and purify it, **violates one of the central rules of infectious diseases: in the climax or maximum state of severity of any infectious disease is when the patient has the higher amount of microbes in his/her tissues. Is in those moments when it is easier to isolate and purify the microbes that are really causing a disease.”
Yes, but Robert Gallo was eminently qualified, but I think was found guilty of scientific misconduct (I may be mistaken here), and did not have his hypothesis peer reviewed, but press-released. If the flaws in the theory cannot be satisfactorily explained away, it matters not to me what the qualifications are of those who believe it. All that matters are the facts. I think you would agree.
Since there no gold standard for HIV testing, these tests are moot; see above.
Note that the [definition was revised by the CDC** to counter the **falling[/B/ number of cases. After the change … presto! An epidemic!
"No one seems to have realized that just seven years earlier, the same three organ transplant recipients could have died of exactly the same opportunistic infections without raising an eyebrow and without being diagnosed as having AIDS. They would have been in a group specifically excluded from being considered for a diagnosis of AIDS: transplant recipients. Their causes of immune suppression were known: the drugs they were treated with in order to prevent their immune systems from rejecting their new organs. " (Root-Bernstein)
Re: low cell counts, see [URL=http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/ept4cells.htm]A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE HIV-T4-CELL-AIDS HYPOTHESIS,](http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/rrbdef.htm)
Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos,1 Valendar F.Turner,2 John M. Papadimitriou,3 David Causer,1 Bruce Hedland- Thomas,1 & Barry Page1(1: Department of Medical Physics, 2: Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Western Australia; 3: Department of Pathology, University of Western Australia.)
[URL=http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/rrbresimmunol90.htm]Root-Bernstein again:**
"I have recently completed a literature review of non-HIV immunosuppressive factors associated with AIDS (Root-Bernstein, 1990b). I found that every AIDS patient has some subset of established immunosuppressive agents at work that include, but are not limited to: immunological contact with semen components (Mathur et al., 1981; Mavligit et al., 1984) ; recreational drugs such as the nitrites (Lotzova et al., 1984 ; Brambilla, 1985) ; addictive drugs such as the opiates and cocaine (Brown et al., 1974; Weber and Pert, 1989); multiple, concurrent infections with viruses, bacteria, amoeba, protozoa and/or fungi (Rouse and Horohov, 1986; Mella, 1967; Smith, 1985; Hartung et al., 1979); malnutrition dueto any of several causes including malabsorption syndrome associated with “gay bowel syndrome” (Yardley and Hendrix, 1980) ; [etc.] …
“While none of these agents are sufficiently immunosuppressive in and of themselves (with the possible exceptions: massive blood transfusion, prolonged i.v. drug use and severe malnutrition) to account for the profound problems associated with AIDS, a combination of several of them acting synergistically would certainly be sufficient. Notably CMV infections (Oill et al., 1977; Carney et al., 1981), EBV infections (Weigle et al., 1983) [etc.]”
Thus, AIDS is a disease of definition.
Wow. So it’s obviously wrong. How could I not have seen it? What about “you steal, you go to jail.” Seems moralistic to me. But by your logic, it’s obviously wrong.