I have a friend who has AIDS (by the CDC definition). I’m trying to be supportive, but it’s hard when she goes off on these alternative medicine rants and wants to stop taking her meds. So I’m asking for help sorting through the facts.
From the SDMB archives: “Peter Duesberg, a respected (until now) virologist at UCal-Berkeley” has some non-mainstream-medicine views about AIDS and HIV.
The Boston “Weekly Dig” published two articles that seem largely based on Dr. Duesberg’s point of view (but they include quotes from other anti-HIV believers):
I simply don’t have the resources to research all his references and I’m hoping the SD know-it-alls do. There are several statements of fact in the articles that could be verified by someone who does that sort of thing for a living. (These are my restatements of the “facts” in the articles–don’t take them as gospel.)
HIV is a retrovirus. Retroviruses don’t cause disease.
HIV has never been isolated.
Current HIV tests do not claim to show HIV (they show the presence of antibodies that might be the result of other infections). The FDA has never approved an HIV test.
No one has ever found HIV in human blood (“the titer was zero”).
A journalist is quoted in the second article as saying that the original AZT/AIDS study was seriously flawed (“based on fraud” is the exact phrase). Is there any way to verify/debunk this claim?
I have questions that are more general as well: What does a “viral load” test really show/do/tell? Are there specific ways one could have a low T-cell count other than an HIV infection?
"Ed Berger and colleagues at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases identified a second receptor, which they named fusin, that appeared to be the second receptor needed for HIV to infect T lymphocytes.
But fusin apparently only binds to strains of HIV that have been grown in the laboratory, not to HIV isolated directly from patients, suggesting to Littman that another molecule might be playing a more important role in the disease
"
So to me that shows that HIV has been isolated both in cell cultures and from people.
According to a press release located at http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2002/NEW00852.html
"HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a new rapid HIV diagnostic test kit that provides results with 99.6 percent accuracy in as little as 20 minutes.
Using less than a drop of blood collected, this new test can quickly and reliably detect antibodies to HIV-1, the HIV virus that causes infection in most cases in the U.S."
So they show antibodies to HIV that knocks down #3
Peter Duesberg has been spouting this crap for over a decade now. He believes that the use of recreational drugs is responsible for the diseases which are linked to AIDS (you don’t die of AIDS, but rather die from one or more opportunistic infections because you have a weakened immune system). On the surface, his arguments sound reasonable, but they tend to be rooted in complete bullshit.
Here is an abstract of the paper where he lays down his view of AIDS:
He lists ten facts, some of which are debatable, and then concludes that AIDS happens to gay men, all gay men do drugs, drugs cause AIDS. It’s simple and completely non-scientific. He refutes counter arguments which similarly bad “science”.
Leaving Ebola aside, this argument is false on its face because it isn’t the AIDS which kills. In other words, HIV/AIDS isn’t a disease in the normal sense, anyway.
Hah!
Hah! Again!
I’m sorry, the Candymn is next door to Jerry Lewis.
This is often true, since its a great way to spread disease. Nevertheless, its not the only way, of course. Unless a certain person I know is actually a gay crippled drug-user. WHich would really shock me.
HIV is a retrovirus. Retroviruses don’t cause disease.
HTLV-1, another retrovirus, is linked with tropical spastic paraparesis.
HTLV-2, also a retro, is linked with hairy cell leukemia.
Just for the sake of accuracy, Ebola isn’t a retro. It belongs in the Filovirus group, which have RNA-based genomes, but do not replicate via a DNA intermediate, as do retroviruses.
HIV has never been isolated.
Current HIV tests do not claim to show HIV (they show the presence of antibodies that might be the result of other infections). The FDA has never approved an HIV test.
No one has ever found HIV in human blood (“the titer was zero”).
Viral culture of HIV is a well established procedure that can be ordered from numerous labs. It’s so common that you can even get it done via mail order: U. Penn will do it for you for $200 http://www.uphs.upenn.edu/aids/coreDE1A.htm
Current HIV tests do not claim to show HIV (they show the presence of antibodies that might be the result of other infections). The FDA has never approved an HIV test.
This statement probably originated several years ago, when this was indeed the case. Older tests detected infection indirectly by looking for antibodies against the virus that were produced by the body in response to infection. Newer tests detect the virus directly. The p24 antigen test detects a protein that makes up part of the virus’s capsid, while the HIV DNA PCR directly detects the virus’s genetic material.
The FDA approval has been handled in a previous post.
No one has ever found HIV in human blood (“the titer was zero”).
Yes, they have, the p24 antigen test detects a protein in the HIV virus particle, and they have been using this test to screen for HIV for some time.
Under HAART it is possible to drive viral loads to undetectable levels (note that it is undetectable, not zero, although that term is sometimes used inappropriately). Two points on this: first, although we may not detect the virus, there is a lower limit of sensitivity associated with all lab tests, so it is possible to have some virus in the blood, but not enough to cause a reaction in the lab. People in this situation, however, are most certainly infected and are able to spread the virus. Secondly, retrovirues have the unfortunate ability to integrate their genetic material into the DNA of the cells they infect. In simplistic terms, it works something like this: HIV penetrates a cell. Reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that is contained within the virus, produces a DNA copy of the virus’s RNA based genome. The host cell’s DNA is then snipped in two, the viral DNA inserted into the gap, and the three pieces are sealed together into one. In this way, the virus can lay dormant until some future time when it becomes reactivated and begins producing new viral particles. So, if a patient on HAART was to stop treatment, the HIV would simply emerge from hiding and begin multiplying.
I am not a doctor, and I don’t even have a site. But I have read a few different articles stating that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Although some of them make a compelling case, the thing that I keep coming back to is this question: If we don’t know what is causing it, how is that we are able to reproduce it in our test animals? In other words, the fact that they can induce AIDS in test animals makes me believe that they DO understand the mechanism for causing it.
HIV/AIDS has been the subject of more research dollars and manhours than any other infectious disease in history. If all that work has resulted in a wildly erroneous conclusion, then there’s not a single bit of medical knowledge that we can trust, because it’s been the result of far less research.
HIV/AIDS has been the subject of more research dollars and manhours than any other infectious disease in history. If all that work has resulted in a wildly erroneous conclusion, then there’s not a single bit of medical knowledge that we can trust, because it’s been the result of far less research.
I’m afraid I can’t give you much more because the assumptions of the doctor in question are completely wrong, empirically speaking. That is, a medical catalogue dealing with that stuff contradicts his statements flat-out. I was more wondering what he smoking than anything else.