|
Jun 26 2006
from
TheUnhivedMind Website
Contrary to popular belief, HIV is not necessary to explain acquired
immune deficiency and the illnesses associated with AIDS. To
understand why this is so, it is first necessary to understand what
AIDS is. AIDS is not a new disease or illness; it is a new name or
designation for 29 previously known diseases and conditions.
As the NIH states in its comprehensive
report on AIDS, "the designation 'AIDS' is a surveillance tool."
Since 1981, the surveillance tool AIDS has been used to track and
record familiar diseases when they appear in people who have tested
positive for antibodies associated with HIV.
The AIDS virus hypothesis supposes that the health problems renamed
AIDS develop as a result of infection with HIV; that the virus
somehow disables the body's defense system that protects against
opportunistic illness, allowing the development of one or more of 29
diseases, such as yeast infection, certain cancers, pneumonia,
salmonella, diarrhea, or tuberculosis, which are then diagnosed as
AIDS. However, every AIDS indicator disease occurs among people who
test HIV negative, none are exclusive to those who test positive and
all AIDS diseases existed before the adoption of the name "AIDS."
Prior to the designation AIDS, these 29 diseases were not thought to
have a single, common cause. In fact, all have recognized causes and
treatments that are unrelated to HIV. For example, yeast infection
is a widespread problem due to an imbalance of natural bacteria. The
yeast infections that occur in people who test HIV positive and in
people who test HIV negative are caused by the same imbalance of
natural bacteria. All the opportunistic illnesses called AIDS have
various, medically proven causes that do not involve HIV.
Immune deficiency can be acquired by several risk factors that are
not infectious or transmitted through blood or blood products. The
following factors are widely recognized causes of immune
suppression, compromised health, and opportunistic infections, as
documented in the medical literature for more than 70 years.
Chronic, habitual and multiple exposures to these risks can cause
the group of symptoms called AIDS.
In fact, there is no case of AIDS
described in the medical literature without one or more of these
health risk factors.
Physical Risk
Factors
These risks include malnutrition and chronic lack of sleep. In 1985,
orthodox AIDS researcher and director of NIAID, Dr. Anthony Fauci
declared that malnutrition was the most prevalent cause of immune
deficiency diseases throughout the world, particularly in developing
regions such as Africa where common illnesses like measles run
rampant and take millions of lives.
The medical literature notes that malnutrition and infection are
invariably linked, as one condition aggravates the other. Hunger and
endemic disease are familiar problems in those countries around the
globe thought to be under siege from AIDS. Intrauterine malnutrition
occurs when expectant mothers are improperly nourished, and can
result in prolonged, sometimes lifelong, immune suppression.
Poverty, crowded living conditions and unclean water promote endemic
disease and compromised health. The populations in many developing
regions of the world are devastated by rampant infections with
common microbes that pose little or no health threat to people in
industrialized nations.
Infections due to malnutrition immunodeficiency are the world's
leading causes of infant and child death.195 Among citizens of
industrialized nations, subclinical malnutrition, rather than
starvation leads to compromised immune function, especially when
combined with chronic lack of sleep.
People who make habitual and prolonged
use of certain drugs like methamphetamines, heroin and crack cocaine
often suffer from malnutrition and chronic lack of sleep.
Chemical Risk
Factors
Immune-compromising chemicals include pharmaceutical drugs such as
AZT and other cancer chemotherapy compounds, protease inhibitors,
antibiotics and steroids, and recreational drugs such as cocaine,
crack, heroin, nitrites (poppers), and methamphetamines (crystal,
speed).
Chemotherapy targets and destroys the bone marrow cells from which
all immune cells derive. They also kill fully formed immune cells in
addition to killing B cells and red blood cells.196,197
Chemotherapy destroys the digestive
system by killing the cells that compose the inner lining of the
digestive tract which interferes with the body's ability to absorb
and digest nutrients, causing malnutrition. Even when used very
briefly, chemotherapy suppresses normal immune function, increases
susceptibility to a variety of opportunistic infections, and can
cause life-threatening anemia and diarrhea. AZT, ddI, ddC, D4T and
3TC are all chemotherapy compounds used as antiviral AIDS
treatments.
There are many pharmaceutical drugs known to suppress the immune
system, particularly when used for prolonged periods of time.
Protease inhibitors cause impaired liver function and liver failure
(the liver removes disease-causing toxins from the body) in addition
to kidney failure, dangerously high cholesterol levels, diarrhea and
other health-compromising effects. Steroids are a known cause of
immune deficiency often prescribed to AIDS patients to counteract
the muscle wasting caused by AZT.
Antibiotics, especially when used
habitually, can cause yeast infection and diarrhea, two conditions
that can lead to malnutrition. Septra and Bactrim are
sulfonamide antibiotics commonly prescribed for continuous,
prophylactic or preventative use by HIV positives. These drugs are
leftover from the days before penicillin; they do not target
invading microbes as narrowly as modern antibiotics and are
notorious for their side effects. Both cause nausea, diarrhea,
vomiting, anorexia, bone marrow destruction, rashes, fever,
hepatitis, and anemia by interfering with the production of red
blood cells.
The immunosuppressive effects of recreational drug abuse are
well-documented in medical literature dating back to the turn of the
century. They include pneumonias, mouth sores, fevers, endocarditis,
bacterial infections and night sweats, all conditions now associated
with AIDS. Amphetamine drugs suppress the appetite, causing
chronic users to suffer from malnutrition. Many habitual users of
heroin and crack do not provide themselves with adequate food,
sleep, shelter and healthcare.
Prolonged exposure to common chemical toxins such as insecticides
and herbicides can also impair immune function.
Biological
Risk Factors
These risks include multiple exposures to and/or chronic infections
with syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and other venereal diseases,
hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, fungal diseases, amoebas and
parasites such as giardia, bacterial infections such as staph and E
coli, chronic bowel infections, blood transfusions, and the use of
blood products. In addition to the damaging effects of recurrent
infections, many of the pharmaceuticals used as treatment have
adverse effects on immune function.
Factor VIII (the blood clotting agent used by hemophiliacs) and
blood transfusions are immune suppressive and leave patients
vulnerable to infection.
Due to the serious conditions for which
transfusions are necessary and the deleterious effects they have on
the immune system, half of all HIV negative transfusion recipients
die within a year of receiving a transfusion.
Psychological
Risk Factors
Chronic anxiety, panic, stress and depression have been shown to
compromise health, damage immune function, and result in symptoms
identical to AIDS. Mental stress provokes production of the
hormone cortisol; excessive cortisol causes rapid and dramatic
reductions in T cells, a condition known as lymphocytopenia. Within
minutes, stress induces cortisol levels to increase as much as
20-fold. High levels of cortisol can eventually cause what medical
texts describe as "significant atrophy of all the lymphoid tissue
throughout the body" which may lead to "fulminating infection and
death from diseases that would otherwise not be lethal."
A profound fear of AIDS is enough to cause even people who
repeatedly test HIV negative to develop physical symptoms of AIDS. Termed "AIDS-phobia," this condition is characterized by
weight loss, wasting, reduced T cell counts and other signs
considered indicative of AIDS, and typically follows intimate
contact with people who sufferers believe may be HIV positive.
Beliefs and expectations are well-known to manifest in the physical
body. The life-altering influence of beliefs was detailed
dramatically in 1942 by Dr. Walter B. Cannon in his accounts
of a phenomenon he called "voodoo death," a form of capital
punishment practiced among certain Aboriginal tribes. Cannon
reported that shaman, tribal medical authorities thought to possess
special powers, were able to kill errant tribe members by simply
pointing at them with a bone. Convinced of the shaman's ability to
invoke a lethal curse, the people pointed at died within a matter of
hours or days.
In modern medicine, the power of expectation is a commonly accepted
fact known as the "placebo effect." Placebos are inert chemical
substances disguised as active preparations and given to patients in
place of drugs. The health benefits gained from a placebo occur
because the person taking it expects a positive effect. Since the
benefits of any drug may be due in part to this placebo effect, most
new drugs are tested against a placebo preparation.
A recent study conducted at the University of Toronto demonstrated
the profound physiological effects of expectation with regard to
placebos. Researchers found that cardiac patients who strictly
adhered to a placebo treatment regimen lived longer than patients
who did not take their placebo regularly.
In summarizing the study, lead
researcher Dr. Paul Dorian noted,
"What you believe has an
important influence on your outcome."
How These Risk
Factors Apply to All AIDS Groups
There is not one case of AIDS described in the medical literature
that does not include one or more immune-destroying health risk
factors. There is no case of AIDS documented in a person whose sole
risk is exposure to HIV.
Every case of AIDS involves factors
known to damage the immune system and leave a person vulnerable to
debilitating infection and deadly illness.
Men Who Have
Sex With Men
Well-documented causes of immune dysfunction can explain AIDS
illnesses among men who have sex with men although none of these
causes are unique to this risk group or can be generalized to
include all gay men. In fact, focusing attention on certain sexual
practices rather than recognized health risks obscures our
understanding of immune suppression and limits approaches to
preventing and resolving AIDS.
Nitrites, more commonly known as poppers, are
immune-suppressive, carcinogenic drugs chronically used by some gay
men. At one time, 95% of gay men in major urban areas like Los
Angeles, New York and San Francisco reported using poppers. Nitrite use correlates with Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS) and
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, two AIDS-defining cancers found almost
exclusively in this risk group.
There are several studies that further
strengthen the correlation between poppers and KS by documenting KS
in HIV negative gay men who use poppers.213 KS is hardly ever found
among members of any other CDC risk group or among women with AIDS,
and is never diagnosed in children or infants with AIDS. In 1981
when AIDS was first identified, half of all AIDS diagnoses were for
KS. As popper use has diminished, so has KS which since 1993 has
accounted for less than 5% of all new AIDS cases.
In the only studies that asked gay men with AIDS about recreational
drugs, 93% to 100% of participants acknowledged using cocaine, crack
cocaine, poppers, heroin, ecstasy, methamphetamines like speed and
crystal, and/or Special K (an animal tranquilizer).
Combinations of parasitic infections that include amebiasis
and giardiasis along with rectal infections, syphilis, and
gonorrhea can result in acute diarrhea which in turn causes
malabsorption and malnutrition, or wasting. This collection of
infections and resultant problems was commonly known as Gay Bowel
Syndrome in the years before AIDS.
The CDC reports that 20% to 50% of all
gay men in major US cities have been treated, often repeatedly, for
intestinal parasites using immune suppressive pharmaceutical
drugs.
Antibiotic treatments for recurrent
venereal infections are immune suppressive, as is the practice of
using these antibiotics on a regular basis as a prevention. Steroids
are another immune damaging drug frequently prescribed to offset the
wasting caused by diarrhea and malabsorption.
Campaigns that encourage HIV testing, the consuming of toxic AIDS
drugs, and living in fear of AIDS are primarily directed at the gay
community. Many gay magazines may have up to half of their
commercial advertising devoted to AIDS-related promotions. Such
constant emphasis on AIDS gives rise to the notion of the
inevitability of AIDS, a belief which can evoke chronic terror,
despair and hopelessness, psychological risk factors known to impair
immunity and compromise health.
The chance of registering false positive on an HIV test is greater
for people with high levels of non-HIV antibodies and microbes in
their blood. Antibodies produced in response to the particular
microbial and viral infections frequently found in some gay men are
documented causes of false positive HIV test results.
For people who test HIV positive, the drugs prescribed as
preventative treatments for opportunistic AIDS-defining infections
become harmful and even deadly when used on a daily, continuous
basis. Bactrim and Septra, for example, are powerful
sulfonamide antibiotics that kill digestive flora and cause anemia
and bone marrow destruction. The anti-HIV drugs AZT, ddI, D4T, ddC
and 3TC are all highly toxic chemotherapies that destroy the immune
and digestive systems, in addition to causing five of the 29
official AIDS-defining illnesses. Two 1993 studies conducted in the
US and Canada found that every one of several hundred gay men with
AIDS had a history of significant recreational drug and/or AIDS drug
use.
Identifying this risk group as people who engage in habitual,
prolonged use of recreational and/or pharmaceutical drugs, have
chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes, who suffer
from chronic malnourishment and/or chronic fear of HIV and AIDS
provides a more appropriate and comprehensive explanation of immune
suppression that invites many possibilities for prevention and
resolution.
Injection Drug
Users
Members of this risk group account for 35% of all diagnosed AIDS
cases, while another 4% of people diagnosed with AIDS cite
heterosexual contact with injection drug users as their sole risk.
However, the majority of people who initially claim intimate contact
with IV drug users as their only risk later acknowledge taking drugs
themselves.
Considering only injection drug use as a high risk activity for AIDS
disregards the immune suppressive effects brought about by habitual
use of non-injected street drugs as well as the many
health-compromising factors that can accompany the regular,
long-term use of illicit chemicals. The emphasis on sharing needles
over the damaging effects of the narcotics injected with the needles
distorts our view of immune dysfunction and prevents application of
practical solutions to the health problems common to this risk
group.
Prolonged, habitual consumption of drugs such as heroin, crack,
speed, and cocaine, whether taken by injection or other means, is
well-known to disable immune function. Chronic use of these drugs is
documented to bring about many conditions synonymous with AIDS
including pneumonias, tuberculosis, mouth sores, fevers, night
sweats, bacterial infections, and endocarditis. Malnutrition,
the number one cause of immune deficiency diseases worldwide, and
multiple infections are frequent side effects of habitual injection
drug use, and are factors that suppress immunity.
Antibodies generated in response to the multiple infections and
chemical toxins typical of chronic drug use can cause false positive
readings on HIV tests. Positive test results most frequently lead to
ongoing treatment with various immune suppressive antibiotics and
chemotherapy drugs, and to a sense of hopelessness and profound
despair.
A more compassionate and inclusive way to portray this diverse group
is as people who engage in habitual, prolonged use of recreational
drugs, have chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes
and toxins through septic syringes or septic living conditions; who
suffer from chronic malnourishment, lack of adequate sleep, the
immune suppressive effects of AIDS drugs, and/or the chronic despair
that follows an HIV positive or AIDS diagnosis.
The immune deficiency diseases caused by
these multiple and variant factors can be resolved with treatments
that do not involve toxic anti-HIV drugs and long-term use of
powerful antibiotics.
Transfusion
Recipients and Hemophiliacs
Hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients together make up 2% of
adult AIDS cases in the US. As noted previously, Factor VIII, the
blood clotting treatment used by hemophiliacs, is itself immune
suppressive. Hemophilia is a life-threatening condition in people
with or without an HIV positive diagnosis. Ryan White, the young HIV
positive hemophiliac who became famous as an AIDS victim, actually
died of common complications attributed to hemophilia
(internal bleeding and liver failure), not of illnesses that define
AIDS.
Blood transfusions suppress the immune system. Medical experts note
that higher amounts of blood transfusions among hospitalized
patients correlate with higher death rates. The authors of one
recent study on transfusions specifically mention that the immune
suppressive effects of transfusions leave recipients vulnerable to
deadly opportunistic infection.
Factor VIII and blood transfusions can cause positive results on HIV
antibody tests in persons never exposed to HIV by triggering the
production of antibodies that react with the nonspecific proteins
used in the HIV antibody test. Once a person has tested positive,
they are subject to immune suppressive drug treatment regimens, and
the terror of developing AIDS.
Members of these risk groups can be more accurately described as
people with serious preexisting health challenges, critical or
chronic exposure to immune suppressive blood products and toxic AIDS
drugs, and/or who are affected by the chronic despair of a fatal
diagnosis.
Based on this view, immune compromising
anti-HIV chemotherapy and continuous antibiotic treatments would
compound preexisting health problems, rather than resolve them.
Heterosexual
Contact
Six percent of Americans diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual
contact as their sole AIDS risk. However, upon further
investigation, 60% to 99% of these people are reclassified as
injection drug users and/or men who have sex with men, groups with
identifiable health risks documented to cause immune dysfunction. As previously noted, people diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily select a
risk group from among six categories determined by the CDC which
limits health risks to possible exposure to HIV through sex or
blood.
The damage caused by AIDS chemotherapy and the acceptance of a fatal
diagnosis are sufficient to bring about serious illness and even
death in people with no other risk factors.
Members of this group may be better described as people with no
health risk factors acknowledged by the CDC who, because of their
positive HIV status, regularly consume chemotherapy and/or engage in
continuous treatment with antibiotics and other immune suppressive
pharmaceutical drugs, and/or suffer from the chronic panic and
hopelessness of a fatal diagnosis.
Adolescents,
Children and Infants
Although teenagers and children are not a specific AIDS risk group,
cases of AIDS among young people, however rare, are a matter of
great concern. The fact that babies are diagnosed with AIDS has been
used as an argument against non-HIV explanations for AIDS illnesses.
Despite widely held beliefs, the majority of AIDS cases that occur
among children and adolescents can be explained by the same causes
of immune suppression prevalent in adults with AIDS.
In 1998, new AIDS cases among this country's 26 million teens
totaled 293; of these, 229 offered information which placed them in
the two primary CDC defined AIDS risk groups for adults.
Over 80% of the mothers of babies diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily
acknowledge using injection drugs during pregnancy, a practice which
almost universally results in intrauterine malnutrition. The
remaining cases of AIDS in infants and children may be due to the
immune suppressive medical treatments given in response to an HIV
positive test result, or to the same factors that cause HIV negative
babies to suffer from pneumonia, bacterial infections, and immune
disorders. In 1998, new AIDS cases in children age 13 and under
totaled 382.
Residents of
Developing Nations
In stark contrast to the US and Europe, AIDS cases in developing
areas of the world are found almost exclusively among non-drug using
heterosexuals. Mainstream AIDS experts offer no plausible reason
why AIDS would spread primarily through drug-free heterosexual
contact only outside the US and Europe.
A coherent explanation for AIDS cases in developing areas of the
world is the well-known health risks shared by these countries,
widespread poverty and malnutrition; lack of clean water, a regular
food supply, and sanitary living conditions; limited access to
medical care; endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and
parasitic infections that manifest in conditions identical to AIDS;
and the practice of diagnosing AIDS based on a nonspecific set of
clinical symptoms.
Although HIV tests are not required for an AIDS diagnosis in many
parts of the world, widespread exposure to hepatitis, tuberculosis,
leprosy, malaria and other conditions are more than sufficient to
account for positive results on the nonspecific HIV antibody tests.
Resolving the immune suppressive conditions caused by poverty and
malnutrition provides a means to alleviate the suffering of many
people in developing nations who are currently counted and treated
as victims of AIDS.
When considering non-HIV explanations for AIDS, consider that:
-
AIDS is a collection of familiar
illnesses, not a disease.
-
Since 1993, more than half of all
new AIDS diagnoses in the US are given to people who are not
ill. In 1997, two-thirds of Americans diagnosed with AIDS had no
symptoms or illness.*
-
Acquired immune deficiency predates
the creation of the category "AIDS" and has numerous,
well-documented causes.
-
There are no AIDS cases noted in the
medical literature in which exposure to HIV has proved to be the
sole health risk factor.
-
There are well-documented causes for
every AIDS disease that do not involve HIV, and all illnesses
now called AIDS occur in the absence of HIV.
-
HIV tests do not test for the actual
virus, but for antiviral proteins or genetic material that are
not specific to HIV.
-
The chance of a positive reaction on
a nonspecific HIV antibody test increases proportionately with
the level of other antibodies and microbes found in the blood.
-
Five of the six AIDS risk groups
defined by the CDC have health risk factors that involve
multiple, chronic exposure to viruses, bacteria and other
antigens known to produce antibodies identical to those
associated with HIV.
-
Once a person has tested HIV
antibody positive, chemotherapy and other immune suppressing
chemicals are almost always prescribed for treatment or
prevention of AIDS.
-
Alternative explanations for AIDS
provide opportunities for effective AIDS prevention and for
using practical, nontoxic approaches to resolving AIDS.
-
1997 was the last year that the CDC
provided information on how many AIDS cases were diagnosed in
people who are not sick.
Defined Terms
-
Endemic: A medical term
applied to a disease or disorder that is constantly present in a
particular region or in a specific group of people.
-
Cancer Chemotherapy: Drugs
used to treat cancer. Most anticancer drugs are cytotoxic (kill
or damage cells). Others are synthetic forms of hormones. All
anticancer drugs prevent cells from growing and dividing. Some
work by damaging the cell's DNA; others block the chemical
processes in the cell necessary for growth. Side effects of
treatment include nausea, vomiting, and life-threatening
diarrhea. By altering the rate at which cells grow and divide,
anticancer drugs reduce the number of blood cells produced by
the bone marrow, causing anemia and increased susceptibility to
infection.
-
Endocarditis: Inflammation of
the internal lining of the heart.
Incorrect
Information about HIV and AIDS Costs Lives
Can you imagine receiving a fatal diagnosis without being told the
diagnosis is based on an unproven idea and an uncertain test? Being
instructed to take powerful, experimental drugs without being told
these drugs compromise health, destroy functions necessary to
sustain life, and were approved for use without adequate testing?
Being informed that you have, or should expect, deadly illnesses
without being told that these same illnesses are not considered
fatal when they occur in "normal" people?
For anyone who tests HIV positive, getting all the facts is a matter
of life and death. The important decisions a person makes should be
based on thorough, verifiable data. All of us need and have the
right to receive honest and complete information about HIV and AIDS.
Almost every AIDS organization in the country offers free
instruction for people who test HIV positive. Standard information
includes how to prepare a will, how to collect disability, health
insurance, and public benefits, what drugs and tests to take, and
which diseases to anticipate, all based on the assumption that HIV
positives are or will be ill and do not have long to live.
Information on AIDS that is free from bias, that accurately
describes tests and drugs, and offers facts that support a will to
live, participate in society, and cultivate a healthy future are
rarely, if ever mentioned. Some AIDS groups even lobby to limit
public access to data that undermine their dire presentations of HIV
and AIDS.
For many people handed an HIV positive diagnosis, these brief pages
provide their first awareness that a normal, healthy life is not
something they can only hope for, but something they can choose to
achieve. Unfortunately for most people who test positive, the AIDS
education they receive portrays their choices as being limited to
toxic drug therapy or devastating illness, and encourages chronic
fear, sadness, and resignation to an early death.
There are thousands of HIV positives who lead healthy lives without
toxic AIDS drugs. What they have in common is not some unique,
mysterious gene or a weakened strain of the virus, but an
open-minded approach to information, an understanding of basic
principles of medicine and science, and the knowledge that the
responsibility for their well-being is ultimately their own. For
more information on their lives, please see The Other Side of
AIDS on page 94.
This book examines only a portion of the growing body of scientific,
medical and epidemiological evidence that refutes popularly accepted
ideas about HIV and AIDS. Readers are strongly encouraged to conduct
further research and use the resources offered here.
To the degree that we allow unfounded ideas about HIV and AIDS to
determine our actions, influence our choices, dictate our public
policies, or define our world view, we are all victims of AIDS.
Since the 1984 announcement that HIV causes AIDS, all AIDS
research has been based on the hypothesis that HIV, an
inexplicably lethal new virus, is responsible for a group of
previously known, disconnected diseases renamed AIDS. Setting the
focus of all AIDS efforts on HIV, a virus that strains the rules of
biology, epidemiology and logic, has rendered humankind few, if any,
beneficial results.
The lives of over 400,000 Americans have been given to the notion
that HIV is the only possible cause of AIDS, and that
toxic drugs offer the only possible prevention, treatment, or
hope for a cure. Many more lives have been forever altered by a
positive result on a non-standardized test for harmless antibodies
that may or may not be associated with HIV.
More than $50 billion in federal AIDS funding has provided no
significant understanding of HIV, has produced no safe and effective
therapies, and has not brought us any closer to ending AIDS.
Instead, we have constructed a powerful AIDS establishment that
regulates our news, limits our access to information, and demands an
ever greater allocation of our resources and support.
Rather than
helping to resolve AIDS, we have funded the growth of multi-billion
dollar industries, institutions and organizations that depend on
AIDS and on our continued devotion to the narrow and unproductive
HIV hypothesis.
Objective
Examination of HIV and AIDS is Fundamental to Progress
To understand and solve AIDS, it is necessary to investigate all
legitimate scientific data, even when such information challenges
our present understanding and perceptions. Progress in any area
depends on the ability to engage in an unbiased evaluation of facts,
to raise critical questions and to conduct an objective search for
meaningful answers.
Silence = Death... Of People, Ideas and
Progress
"There is classical science, the
way it's supposed to work, and then there's religion. I regained
my sanity when I realized that AIDS science was a religious
discourse. The one thing I will go to my grave not understanding
is why everyone was so quick to accept everything the government
said as truth. Especially the central myth: The cause of AIDS is
known. What in the world made activists accept that, on the
basis of a press conference, no less?
"My only theory is that AIDS requires the daily management of
massive amounts of uncertainty, and people cling to any
certainty they can find. Even if it's false."
Michael Callen,
author, AIDS activist (deceased),
Genre magazine, February/March, 1994
"Most HIV trials are useless rubbish. Research scientists
[outside AIDS research] laugh at us. To them a good sample size
is 30,000 people. We do studies with 1,500 people and think
that's wonderful when the actual number of relevant patients is
sometimes so small, you cannot rule out chance as the reason for
the results you get. It is also unethical to run trials of drugs
in places like Malaysia with only 30 people involved and then
try to justify these flawed trials because some people got
access to drugs who otherwise would have had nothing."
Kevin Frost,
Manager of Research Programs for
the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), Positive
Nation, September 1998
"The story of AIDS is deeply connected with the vicissitudes of
the theory that viruses cause cancer and the failure of the
cancer research program. Michael Verney-Elliot put it most
acidly when he said: 'From the people who didn't bring you the
virus that causes cancer, it's the virus that doesn't cause
AIDS.'"
Jad Adams,
Author, The HIV Myth, 1989
"AIDS is not another disease, it is the most metaphorical
disease in history. It is the ultimate triumph of politics over
science."
Michael Fumento,
Author, The Myth of Heterosexual
AIDS, 1990
"Perhaps I'd feel different about it if I thought people were
dying from AIDS. But I don't. I think they're dying from bad
medicine, bad drugs, bad attitudes. There is nothing I want from
'Big Daddy' I don't want his medicines, his laws, his approval."
Gavin Dillard,
Author, In the Flesh, HIV
positive since 1985, San Francisco Frontiers, May 20, 1999
"In the September 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical
Association, the CDC announced that a diagnosis of AIDS no
longer requires an HIV test. The government now considers you an
AIDS carrier if you suffer from any of the maladies on its new
list of diseases indicative of AIDS, including such relatively
common infections as herpes simplex, tuberculosis, Salmonellosis
and the shockingly broad category 'other bacterial infections.'
This broad definition will lead to countless new AIDS diagnoses,
whether or not the person actually has AIDS.
A major problem with the new AIDS
definition is that it ignores the many environmental causes of
immune suppression. Exposure to toxins, alcoholism, heavy drug
use or heavy antibiotic use all can cause onset of the list of
'diseases' indicative of AIDS. The CDC itself conceded in a
stunning remark near the end of the JAMA article that the new
AIDS ground rules are highly suspect. 'The diagnostic criteria
accepted by the AIDS surveillance case definition should not be
interpreted as the standard of good medical practice,' warned
the CDC."
Los Angeles Weekly,
December 18, 1987
"The real trick is to get off the medication. I felt I was
losing quality of life..."
Greg Louganis,
HIV positive Olympic Gold
Medalist,
The State, April 15, 1997
"It's not even probable, let alone scientifically proven, that
HIV causes AIDS. 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 are no such documents."
Dr. Kary Mullis,
Nobel Laureate, HIV not Guilty,
October 5, 1996
" If you think a virus is the cause of AIDS, do a control
without it. To do a control is the first thing you teach
undergraduates. But it hasn't been done. The epidemiology of
AIDS is a pile of anecdotal stories selected to the virus-AIDS
hypothesis. People don't bother to check the details of popular
dogma or consensus views."
Dr. Peter Duesberg,
Do You Think HIV Causes AIDS?,
Scientists for Legitimacy in Science, 1995
"Beware the scientist who believes that mainstream research
thinking on any public health issue is equivalent to truth. Or
the scientist who bullies or ridicules other scientists because
they oppose the prevailing view. This is a person who has become
what I would call a propagandist and should not be trusted.
"I have worked as a medical science reporter for 30 years. I've
interviewed thousands of scientists for newspaper and magazine
stories, radio and television productions, and books. I've met
scientists who at least try to keep an open and fair mind on
scientific issues. I have also met many propagandists who think
they're scientists. In all the time I've worked as a journalist,
I've never come across a nastier group of people to interview
than those propagandists who work in HIV research."
Nicholas Regush,
Medical Science Reporter, Second
Opinion, ABCNews.com, September 29, 1999
"As a scientist who has studied AIDS for 16 years, I have
determined that AIDS has little to do with science and is not
even primarily a medical issue. AIDS is a sociological
phenomenon held together by fear, creating a kind of medical
McCarthyism that has transgressed and collapsed all the rules of
science, and has imposed a brew of belief and pseudoscience on a
vulnerable public."
Dr. David Rasnick,
Designer of Protease Inhibitors,
SPIN magazine, June 1997
"Considering there is little scientific proof of the exact
linkage of HIV and AIDS, is it ethical to prescribe AZT, a toxic
chain terminator of DNA developed 30 years ago as cancer
chemotherapy, to 150,000 Americans, among them pregnant women
and newborn babies, as an anti-HIV drug?"
Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN),
US House of Representatives,
Letter to NIAID Director Dr.
Anthony Fauci, March 14, 1995
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