Is AIDS a myth?

Great Debates
1

I just discovered one of my good friends is an ‘AIDS dissident’ (aka AIDS denier). As a Friend of Science and an open minded fellow, I’ve decided to look into the issues, and present either a cogent rebuttal or information to further support her efforts.

That being said, I’m running into quite a few roadblocks on this here Information Superhighway, not the least of which is that once someone publishes a well-spoken piece on the less-popular side of a hot button topic, a thousand websites pop up overnight, merely reprinting whatever is there verbaitm. A single search, then, gives the same pages, over and over. It’s worthwhile to point out that Unca Cecil touched on the topic here http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a3_371.html

But that was in 1993, and since then the dissidents have only picked up speed. As is the case in so many debates of this sort, the two sides pick the ground most advantageous for their side of the argument, and almost completely ignore the best arguments of the other side, leaving much confusion in the middle.

First, I’m not swayed by the whole ‘science can’t definitively prove that HIV causes AIDS’ argument. I’m a big boy. I know science is a journey, and not a destination. It’s a good thing that we can’t prove it, because it indicates that we’re still keeping an open mind about the whole thing.

Still, there’s some points that the dissidents bring up that no one else touches on. Foremost is the dubious Bangui definition, which created criteria for evaluating the presence of AIDS in a patient where an HIV test was unavailable. According to most sites (and by most sites, I mean hundreds of sites which copy the same damn articles over and over), all you need to have AIDS in Africa is a persistent cough, weight loss, and diarrhea, symptoms of a hundred other diseases. This, according to the dissidents, grossly inflates the AIDS problems in Africa. There has to be more to the Bangui definition than that, but I just don’t see it amidst all the dissident pages. What’s the dillio?

2

Moon-Landing deniers, and now AIDS-deniers?

What’s next, people who claim that air doesn’t exist? Or maybe that reality doesn’t exist? “I think, therefore I’m not”?

3

Here is a link to an article I wrote about the recent situation of the AIDS deniers in South Africa. It contains some quoted material from the journals Science and Nature about the various claims.

The main point to make is that these guys simply have not provided the evidence to back their claims. They are like creationists, in that they attack and attack and whine about being suppressed, but never actually back their own claims up.

4

It occurs to me, now that you mentioned it, that I read those articles that appeared in the Chicago Tribune last May. At the time, I shook my head, wondering how anyone could buy into that line of thinking. Actually knowing someone now, I now find myself challenged to present the information to her and her well-meaning friends. It’s true that most of what they offer is at best anecdotal evidence, and does not fulfill the requirements of rigorous scientific scrutiny. It’s good that you point out that the Durban Declaration was signed by 5000 scientists NOT beholden to drug companies, since that’s a major point of contention.

I’ve also come across several good pages which present articles that deconstruct the dissident’s theories,

http://www.caps.ucsf.edu/publications/mirken.html
http://www.aegis.org/topics/aids_debate.html
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/spotlight/hiv00/default.htm

but I’m still at a loss over the Bangui definition. Could someone explain to me what happens after a patient is diagnosed with this criteria? When HIV testing is eventually performed, how well does the definition hold up?

5

In other words, they’re Denying for the sake of Denial?

Oh, boy, that’s gotta be fun to be around… TimToner, you have my sympathies, pal.

6

They’re not so much denying for the sake of denial, but they are, like creationists and Holocaust deniers, denying because of their beliefs rather than due to the evidence.

7

Well, apart from those who deny AIDS, there are also those who go against the scientific findings about AIDS, summed up (I think) in a book called What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong? by Christine Maggiore, Kary Mullis. I remember a big to-do about this last year, with the CDC and other likewise organizations desperately printing information against these people who are a threat to lives…

8

Don’t want to come across as an “AIDS denier” (I certainly believe AIDS is tragic, and that HIV causes AIDS), but I haven’t heard this one before:

I’m sure I can find a bit on the Internet, and I will look, but where do the numbers for AIDS cases in Africa actually come from? Are there medical folks actually administering HIV tests to random samples? Or is it possible the “test” for HIV is considerably weaker?

9

It was my understanding that the symptons of AIDS are really just the symptons of other diseases you get because AIDS makes the body immune system weaker… and aside from weakening the immune system, AIDS doesn’t “cause” (not directly, anyway) fever or weight loss or anything.

Am I off-base with this? It’s been a while since I’ve done any major reading on the down-and-dirty and lesser-known aspects of the disease.

10

As mentioned earlier, VERY few scientists with any credibility doubt that HIV is the cause of AIDS.

What IS in question is whether all the Africans asserted to have AIDS really have it.

I am not a conspiracy theorist, but I DO note that there are dozens of tropical diseases that can and often HAVE caused AIDS-like symptoms. So, the question arises (I repeat, a QUESTION, not an accusation): have all the Africans who are said to be HIV really been tested for the virus? Or do doctors merely make note of symptoms, and toss all such cases into the “AIDS” file?

11

And here’s the sci.med.aids FAQ’s entry on this topic:

http://www.aids.wustl.edu/aids/HIVaids.html

12

I seem to recall some reports (sorry, no cites… I think I was 8 or 9 at the time) of “AIDS panic”, in which someone would develop the sniffles and some people would overreact, thinking the person had AIDS.

Could this be happening? I have no doubt. In fact, given the panicky nature of humanity, I would assert that this is a certainty. I would think, however, that the percentage of people who are mistaken about their affliction is pretty low, given the numbers of positively-identified AIDS cases and deaths (as opposed to merely suspected AIDS cases).

Does anyone have any exact numbers? I would think that such stats would be hard to acquire, but does anyone know?

13

The AIDS virus is genetically and antigenically variable in a way similiar to the influenza virus, occording to p. 279 of McCance, Pathophysiology. AIDS doesn’t manifest in everyone in an identical ways. Differentiating Karposi’s sacrcoma from other lesions requires biopsy. Without a Western Blot test, how do you know for sure exactally what you’re looking at? It’s all ugly, and some of it is AIDS. The global community and John Q. Public can’t afford to pretend otherwise, no matter how comforting the thought that it was all a bad dream.

14

I have some frontline observations here which may be relevant to the Q of stats.

On one hand, frankly speaking, my experience in re all statistics from the developing world and above all from Afria where states are very weak is that they should be understood as representative. That is, even more so than stats in the first world, there is a lot of poor data collection, unevenness etc. However, one can get a rough picture, but it is best not to obsess about preciseness. The infrastructure is just not there, not from the government not from NGOs for real data collection. Call it fairly accurate guestimates.

On the other hand, in re diagnosis of AIDS. While I have often seen the claim of over diagnosis, whenever I have seen articles with real documentation, its run in the opposite direction. I make no claims to be well-read in the subject, so take this with a grain of salt, but I believe far more frequently NGOs document underreporting as doctors are under social pressures from families not to diagnos AIDS. Given what I have seen --from casual observation and convo as I am quite clearly not in health care-- social pressure against AIDS reporting is intense. Balance this against the somewhat theoretical ‘Bangui’ claims and make your own judgements.

15

What is an “NGO”?

16

NGO = non-governmental organisation