Talk:AIDS alternative origin theories/rewrite
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While the accepted causative agent of AIDS is HIV, there are numerous AIDS alternative origin theories. Some maintain that the accepted origin of HIV itself is incorrect, postulating an alternative etiology of the virus. Many of these theories are conspiracy theories. There are also, however, a number of theories that postulate causative agents instead of, or in addition to, HIV infection.
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[edit] Conspiracy Theories
- Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa, along with other prominent members of the ruling African National Congress party, has argued that AIDS is the result of poverty, chronic disease, malnutrition and other environmental factors. Mbeki drew on the ideas of AIDS dissidents, such as Peter Duesberg, who have argued that HIV does not cause AIDS.
- Jakob Segal, a biology professor at Humboldt University in the former East Germany, proposes that HIV was engineered at a U.S. military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland by splicing together two other viruses, Visna and HTLV-1. According to his theory, the new virus, created between 1977 and 1978, was tested on prison inmates who had volunteered for the experiment in exchange for early release. It was through these prisoners that the virus was spread to the population at large, starting with the gay community. Segal was accused of being a Soviet disinformation agent by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin.
- Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai reportedly believes that the biological agent causing AIDS is not natural. ""In fact it (the HIV virus) is created by a scientist for biological warfare." [1].
- Cold War Propaganda: Some theorists argue the Soviet Union planted disinformation suggesting the CIA or other agencies created AIDS, in a plot to destabilize the Western world. They believe this claim was originally disseminated in the West by KGB agents seeking to undermine the faith of citizens in their own government (see: propaganda, black propaganda, disinformation). According to KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin, the KGB originated the claim through an East German physicist, Jakob Segal, in the mid 1980s (see the Mitrokhin Archive, 1999 page 319). Mikhail Gorbachev once purportedly stated his regrets that the KGB had planted and actively supported such stories in the Western world.
- Some African-Americans in the U.S. believe that HIV was invented by Jews as a way to destroy the black race. Such theories have been propagated for years, first by Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, and by the New Black Panther Party, as well as by a number of professors in various small colleges. Conspiracy theorist Steve Cokely has made allegations that Jewish doctors have injected black babies with HIV.
- Dr. Alan Cantwell, author of AIDS and the Doctors of Death: An Inquiry into the Origin of the AIDS Epidemic and Queer Blood: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot, believes that HIV is a genetically modified organism developed by U.S. Government scientists; that it was introduced into the population through Hepatitis B experiments performed on gay and bisexual men between 1978-1981 in Manhattan, Los Angeles, San Francisco, St. Louis, Denver, and Chicago. Cantwell claims these experiments were directed by Dr. Wolf Szmuness; and that there is an ongoing government and media cover-up regarding the origin of the AIDS epidemic. Similar theories have been advanced by Dr. Robert B. Strecker, Matilde Krim and by Milton William Cooper, author of Behold A Pale Horse
- Matilde Krim, a cancer virologist, AIDS expert, and the co-chairperson of the American Foundation for AIDS Research, has also suggested that Dr. Wolf Szmuness' hepatitis B vaccination experiments of the late 70's caused the AIDS epidemic. Unlike Cantwell, however, she attributes this to accident rather than conspiracy.
- Dr. William C. Douglas, among others, believes that the World Health Organization created the AIDS epidemic by administering contaminated smallpox vaccines to people in third world countries--including African locations--between 1966 and 1977. Dr. Robert Gallo, famous for isolating HIV, lent conditional credence to this theory when he said, "the link between the World Health Organization vaccination program and the [AIDS] epidemic in Africa is an interesting and important hypothesis. I cannot say that it actually happened, but I have been saying for some years that the use of live vaccines such as that used for smallpox can activate a dormant infection such as HIV".
- Dr. Boyd E. Graves postulates that AIDS was the culmination of biowarfare research conducted by the U.S. Government (and later, by the Soviet government) throughout the 20th century. He believes AIDS was developed and proliferated for the primary purpose of wiping out blacks, homosexuals, and other social groups considered to be "excess population." Dr. Graves has also suggested that Gulf War syndrome may be related to AIDS which was spread by contaminating soldiers with vaccines, and that an effective cure for AIDS has already been developed and patented but is being withheld. The evidence Graves cites that AIDS was developed in U.S. was based on a 1971 Special Virus Cancer Flow Chart that he obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Graves claims to have contracted AIDS, but was cured by a single injection of Tetrasilver Tetroxide (Ag404) - NOT colloidal silver (see U.S. Patent #5,676,977 "Method of curing AIDS with tetrasilver tetroxide molecular crystal devices" held by Marantech - see www.marantech.com/testdata.htm for results of in vitro testing). Graves, however, admits his diagnosis may have been a false positive. However, the claims made in the patent have not been investigated by any mainstream scientific body.
- Dr. Gary Glum claims in his book Full Disclosure, that he received top secret information that AIDS was made in the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor, New York. The virus was spread by putting the AIDS viruses into the smallpox eradication program by the World Health Organization, and that AIDS did not exist before 1978. AIDS, he claims, was created for population control--especially of Blacks, Asians, and other colored people. The people who control the project were people known as the Olympians (another name for the Illuminati), who are also supporting eugenics. Organizations such as Red Cross are, according to Glum, complicit in the conspiracy by not testing blood properly. Glum reports that AIDS can be transmitted through kissing, mosquito bites and casual contact.
- Glum claims a number of substances are valuable in preventing or treating aids: (1) Licorice extract taken in large amounts; (2) a lecithin mixture called AL 271 or x-plaque;(3) Essiac Tea, an Indian folk medicine Glum claims can also treat cancer; (4) an olive leaf extract (5) oleuropein; (6) allantoin.
- Glum reports that Upjohn Pharmaceuticals tested a number of substances that can treat AIDS, but that the results have been suppressed. Much of Glum's evidence is based upon anecdotal claims, and critics have reported a complete absence of medical evidence to support his claims.
- Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz, author of Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola. Nature, Accident or Intentional? and Death in the Air: Globalism, Terrorism and Toxic Warfare, has advanced the theory that the AIDS virus was engineered by such U.S. Government defense contractors as Litton Bionetics for the purposes of bio-warfare and "population control." Dr. Horowitz believes that Jews, blacks, and Hispanics are prime targets in these attempts at "population control." He cites the historical preoccupation with eugenics on the part of the American medical establishment as evidence of a greater conspiracy to commit genocide.
- Other conspiracy theorists claim that the U.S. Government has an established history of performing experiments on its own citizens without their knowledge or consent. They argue that the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male and MKULTRA demonstrate a willingness and capability to mount a large scale, covert biowarfare campaign. Conspiracy theorists of this persuasion sometimes attempt to bolster their cases for one conspiracy theory by appeals to the existence of other conspiracies, such as chemtrail theory.
[edit] Non-conspiracy Theories
The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis supports research into reappraising the evidence (and generating new evidence) regarding the link between HIV and AIDS.
Since 1984, various scientists, researchers, and doctors had expressed a range of opinons such as:
- HIV has not been found in people with AIDS
- HIV is a harmless retrovirus (Peter Duesberg)
- HIV does exist, but does not cause AIDS: AIDS is not a contagious disease (Peter Duesberg)
- HIV does exist, and may cause AIDS, but only in combination with other cofactors. (This was the public position in 1991 of Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo the co-discoverers of HIV, who were both active in the search for cofactors.)
Some people have claimed that continued discussion of some of these opinions is irresponsible and poses a dangerous threat to public health. The debate and controversy regarding AIDS from the early 1980s to the present has provoked heated emotions and passions.
The disagreement over the cause of AIDS is ultimately a conflict between scientific theories, which will be resolved by publication of scientific evidence. Meanwhile supporters of various perspectives seek to influence politicians and others who are under public pressure to make decisions on the best available information.
[edit] Is AIDS infectious?
[edit] Unusually-long latency period
AIDS has not behaved like a typical infectious disease. Typically, infectious diseases spread rapidly, even exponentially, and the latency period of many infectious diseases is usually measured in weeks whereas AIDS progresses slowly in comparison, with some cases of latency periods up to 11 years.
There are infectious diseases which develop slowly and spread slowly, such as Hepatitis-C, caused by the Hepatitis-C virus which can have a latency period of 10-30 years, as well as the prion-induced Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease whose latency period can be as long as 30 years; the slow rate of development of AIDS does not imply that it is not infectious. The relatively slow spread of AIDS may be due to HIV's long latency period and to new treatments and prevention campaigns which have slowed the spread of AIDS.
[edit] Koch's postulates
For HIV to satisfy Koch's postulates as the cause of AIDS,
- It must be found in all individuals with AIDS (and not in those without AIDS)
- It must be possible to isolate HIV from someone with AIDS
- The isolated HIV should cause AIDS when introduced into a healthy person
- It should be possible to isolate HIV from the newly infected individual
HIV can be found in the blood of people with AIDS. There is also a range of antibody, antigen, RNA tests and cell culture techniques that provide indirect evidence of HIV activity. These tests, when performed on healthy people, may also provide similar evidence, clouding the issue somewhat, especially as even if HIV may cause some people to develop AIDS, some people have been identified as "long-term non-progressors", however, these people do indeed progress to an AIDS-defining illness, albeit in a longer time period. Indirect "evidence" aside, HIV has been isolated directly from symptomatic and asymptomatic infected individuals.
[edit] Infection pattern
In North America and Western Europe, AIDS affects specific groups of people, and is fragmented into distinct sub-epidemics with different AIDS-defining diseases. According to the definition from WHO and the US health authority CDC, AIDS in Africa looks completely different from the corresponding syndrome in North America and Western Europe; one example that has been cited is that in Africa AIDS affects roughly equal numbers of men and women, while in North America and Western Europe it affects more men than women. Another statistic that is sometimes cited is that AIDS is highly correlated with drug use in Western countries, while it is associated with malnutrition and poor living conditions in Africa.
A question being raised is therefore: how can an infective disease, often associated with our sexual practices, such as AIDS, be so selective in targeting only specific groups of people. The question risen is why, instead of considering the main common factor of the first discovered AIDS affected persons to be the fact of them being addicted to drugs popular in the gay community of the early '80s (such as poppers) notably capable of violent effects on the human body defensive mechanism, their homosexuality was chosen to be explanatory of their desease (then expanded to various groups of people as years went by).
[edit] Is HIV harmless?
There are many people who are HIV-positive and remain healthy 15 or 20 years after testing positive for HIV. Conversely, some HIV-seronegative people develop what would have been considered AIDS-defining diseases had they tested positive.
The long period of HIV infection preceding AIDS manifestations is to be expected; if HIV can take years to cause the immunosuppression necessary to permit opportunistic disease to occur.
Measured HIV infection rates have remained relatively constant in the United States population over the past 20 years, suggesting to dissidents that it has existed long before the outbreak of AIDS in the early 1980s. This could also mean, however, that the number of new infections were approximately equal to the number of deaths; and thus, the level of infection remained consistent.
The steady rates of HIV suggest more a typical behaviour of the end of an epidemic rather than the beginning of it. The curve of all epidemics in the past follows the bell-curve pattern of a normal distribution, which is what would have been expected for the expansion of AIDS. This of course generates an apparent inconsistency in the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, the first infecting a steady percentage of the population and the latter being supposedly in exponential expansion. One explanation is that HIV is not a particularly infectious agent and cannot be transmitted via casual contact. Thus the infection rates are directly related to specific behaviours which can be regulated via public health education. This added factor makes AIDS infection rates in developed countries follow an atypical pattern. In places such as Africa, where public health education efforts are often hampered by a variety of causes, infection rates are exponential, following the course of a typical epidemic.
[edit] Is AIDS inconsistently defined?
Some of the approximately 30 AIDS-defining diseases, including Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), are considered diagnostic of AIDS only when HIV antibodies are present. In the absence of such evidence, these diseases are thought to be related to other immune problems, and are not diagnosed as AIDS. The definition of AIDS is an example of circular logic: because diagnosis with AIDS requires the presence of HIV antibodies, there can be no AIDS without HIV, by definition. Moreover, many of the AIDS-defining diseases, such as cervical cancer, have nothing to do with immune deficiency, and should not be considered part of the definition of AIDS.
AIDS was originally defined without reference to HIV—by necessity, since AIDS was defined as a syndrome before HIV was discovered. The first definition of AIDS by the CDC in September 1982 listed 13 diseases, "at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease." Supporters of the HIV theory claim that it is not uncommon in medical science for a disease to first be described in terms of its physical manifestations, and to later have its definition altered as its causes become more evident.
HIV was discovered in 1984, and a year later, after discussion with epidemiologists, the CDC changed its operational definition of AIDS to add a small additional number of conditions which would be considered AIDS-defining if (and only if) they occurred in conjunction with a positive HIV test. The original list of conditions continued to trigger an AIDS diagnosis with or without a positive HIV test. Once the idea that HIV causes AIDS had become widely accepted, it was added to the definition of the syndrome.
As experience with the disease continued, it became clear that it was associated with a broader array of illnesses than those initially identified. In 1987 the CDC added some of these to the case definition, including encephalopathy and wasting syndrome. These had not been in the initial definition because they are not conditions that are recorded during epidemiological surveillance.
It became apparent, however, that the operational case definition did not adequately reflect clinical experience. There were patients who were HIV infected but who did not have AIDS-defining illnesses who were doing poorly, and others who had AIDS-defining illnesses (such as one Kaposi's sarcoma lesion) yet were doing well. In January, 1993, the definition was again changed, to trigger an AIDS diagnosis on the basis of a CD4 cell count below 200 or a CD4 percentage below 14, and adding additional indicator diseases based on epidemiological observation: invasive cervical cancer, pulmonary tuberculosis and recurrent pneumonia. The core list of diseases identified in the original definition of the disease in 1982 continue to be AIDS-defining, even if an HIV test is not performed.
It is for these reasons that the changing AIDS definition is merely a reflection of a broadened understanding of the disease, rather than a "circular" definition requiring a specific etiology. There is a strong correlation between HIV and AIDS, and thus it is perfectly natural for the presence of HIV antibodies to be a defining characteristic of AIDS.
There is no consistent definition of AIDS across political or international boundaries. In Africa, a laboratory test is not required for a diagnosis of AIDS—this is because impoverished nations consider the test too expensive for routine use. This leaves global AIDS epidemiology without clear standards or norms.
[edit] Is HIV testing unreliable?
False positive test results incorrectly identify as HIV positive people who are not infected with HIV. The most commonly cited study ("Measurement of the false positive rate in a screening program for human immunodeficiency virus infections.", New Eng. J. Med. 319, 961-964, 1988) showed a false positive rate of 1 per 135,187 persons tested, and concluded that a screening program for HIV infection in a low-prevalence population can have an acceptably low false positive rate. However, since there were only 15 reported positives in this study, the positive predictive value was 14/15 = 93%. For a discussion of the distinction between specificity, sensitivity, and predictive values of binary tests, see Sensitivity and Specificity. Also, some dissidents have questioned the above study by claiming that the Western Blot test (used to confirm positives) is itself flawed and unreliable -- see "Is a Positive Western Blot Proof of HIV Infection?" by Eleni Papadopoulos- Eleopulos et al., was published in Bio/Technology, Vol. 11:696, 11 June 1993.
All tests have false positives and false negatives. Scientists work with aggregate data, not individual data, so that a few false results do not unduly skew aggregate results.
[edit] Does HIV exist?
The Perth Group argue that the HIV/AIDS experts have not proven:
- The existence of a unique, exogenously acquired retrovirus, HIV.
- The "HIV" antibody tests are specific for "HIV" infection.
- The "HIV genome", (RNA or DNA) originates in a unique, exogenously acquired infectious retroviral particle.
[edit] Defining AIDS
Although immune deficiency has long existed in humans, the current epidemic of immune deficiency is a new phenomenon that has only existed since the onset of the AIDS epidemic. If HIV is not a plausible cause, there other possible causes (e.g., drug use) which temporally fit the onset of the AIDS epidemic and have a more immediate biological mechanism. The recent drug epidemic has been quantitatively different from previous human drug use, and a particular class of nitrite drugs ("poppers") that became popular just before the initial outbreak, also many cases of AIDS closely resemble chronic nitrite poisoning.
In 1987, Peter Duesberg was invited to publish Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality. The paper was published at the time that major public health campaigns were being launched and AZT was being promoted as a treatment. A major publication, Confronting AIDS, had been published in 1986, and this book set out an agenda for the public health sector in dealing with new epidemic. Many accused Duesberg of jeopardising public health by raising questions. During the same year, Lauritsen interviewed Duesberg, and his interview was published in the New York Native.
In 1990, Lauritsen published Poison By Prescription: The AZT Story, a book that was highly critical of the studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of AZT in the treatment of AIDS. In 1992, Duesberg published a lengthy paper promoting his own alternative causation theory of AIDS -- the "drug-AIDS hypothesis". He claimed that the majority of AIDS cases in North America and Western Europe were the result of recreational and pharmaceutical drug abuse. His arguments mirrored many that had been put forward by Lauritsen earlier. In 1993, Lauritsen published, The AIDS War, a collection of his writings on AIDS from 1985 to 1992. Robert Root-Bernstein, an associate professor of physiology at Michigan State University and previously a MacArthur prize recipient, professed his own doubts about the HIV theory in his 1993 book Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus. In 1994, Neville Hodgikson and the London Sunday Times published a headline story , which attracted much media attention itself.
In 1996, Duesberg published, Inventing the AIDS Virus, in which he put forward his arguments and positions to the general reader. A collection of scientific papers by dissidents was published by the journal Genetica the same year (AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced?), including articles and papers by Duesberg, mathematician Mark Craddock, NIDA researcher Harry Haverkos, Lauritsen, Nobel prize winner Kary Mullis, Yale math professor Serge Lang, public health professor Gordon Stewart, and journalist Celia Farber. Neville Hodgkinson wrote a book detailing his journalistic efforts, entitled AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science. A major internet website was launched during this time, currently at www.virusmyth.net.
In 1997, Lauritsen and Ian Young co-published a collection of articles on the psychological aspects of AIDS, entitled The AIDS Cult: Essays on the Gay Health Crisis. In this book, they posit a sociopsychological aspect of the epidemic based on hysteria, fear, and forced conformity. One article which appears was written by the doctor Casper Schmidt in 1984 in the Journal of Psychohistory, entitled "The Group-Fantasy Origins of AIDS" ( www.virusmyth.net/aids/data/csfantasy.htm ). In this essay, Schmidt posits that AIDS is an example of "epidemic hysteria" in which groups of people are subconsciously acting out social conflicts, and he compares it to documented cases of epidemic hysteria in the past, which were mistakenly thought to be infectious. Other essays in the collection condemn the psychological aspects of AIDS education which equate sex and an HIV diagnosis with death.
Thabo Mbeki, president of South Africa has openly questioned the HIV theory, and invited Duesberg and David Rasnick to South Africa to debate the nature of AIDS.
[edit] Quotations
- "If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document." -- Kary Mullis, inventor of PCR, 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Sunday Times (London) 28 Nov 1993)
- "Epidemiology is like a bikini: what is revealed is interesting; what is concealed is crucial." -- Peter Duesberg (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Feb 1991)
- "If ever there was a rush to judgment with its predictable disastrous results, it has been the HIV-AIDS hypothesis and its aftermath." -- Dr. Richard Strohman, emeritus professor of molecular and cell biology, UC Berkeley (preface to Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1995)
- "If I saw a man get hit by a truck and run over, and you asked, "Did you get the proof? Did the truck do it?" OK, it comes to something like that. Silly." -- Robert Gallo (Spin, Feb 1988)
- "Last century there was a sharp difference of opinion between those, such as Koch and Pasteur, who proposed that disease could be caused by invisible microbes, and others who held that epidemics are the result of evil vapours (malaria). Arguments that AIDS does not have an infectious basis are as quaint as those of the miasmalists." -- Weiss and Jaffe (Nature, June 1990)