Is HIV = AIDS? Definitely not, say researchers.

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23 May 2006 14:06:22 -0000Health Supreme Update: HIV Test Bogus - Based on CircularReasoningsepphttp://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2006/05/23/hiv_test_bogus_based_on_circular\_reasoning.htmHealth Supreme Update: HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular Reasoning 2006.05.23 16:06:21HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular ReasoningHIV tests are are not only unreliable - they have been tweaked

torespond to protein fractions found most often in those people that arepart of AIDS "risk groups", says Neville Hodgkinson, author of AIDS:The Failure of Contemporary Science in his latest article publishedlast Sunday (21 May 2006) in The Business.One story Hodgkinson relates in his thoughtful article is how thesymbol of HIV infection - and certain AIDS death - was rejected inIndia and a national campaign abandoned, when "in front of televisioncameras, a six-foot red ribbon was cut into pieces as a protestagainst the 'oppressive and patronising' symbol." Veena Dhari, thefirst woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said that whenHIV-positive people see the ribbon "we feel like committing suicide".Red-ribbon-cut.gifRed ribbon - (Unesco) Young Digital CreatorsQuite apart from the personal tragedies of people being labeled 'HIVpositive' and effectively receiving a death sentence,

theunreliability of the test, which makes such labeling a cruel if notcriminal act, is becoming a major issue. Hodgkinson is not the onlyjournalist saying that the retrovirus which supposedly causes AIDS isnot being detected by tests, and indeed has never been properlyidentified as the cause of the syndrome.Liam Scheff has contested more than a year ago, that no gold standardexists for the AIDS test, that is, the test cannot be validatedagainst an actual virus isolated from patients that have the disease.And Rebecca Culshaw, a mathematical biologist and assistant professorof mathematics says she quit her AIDS related work because of thesubstantial impossibility to model the spread of the disease and theeffectiveness of preventive and curative efforts: "The biologicalassumptions on which the models were based varied from author toauthor, and this made no sense to me."As if a bogus test was not enough,

the treatment recommended after theverdict of "positive" virtually guarantees debilitating illness andeventual death. The "side effects" of the retroviral drugs which arethe treatment 'of choice' include the very symptoms we describe as AIDS.Not that there were any serious lack of natural treatment optionswithout the deadly side effects, but they cost much less than thechemical drugs and can't be patented...- - -The circular reasoning scandal of HIV testingBy Neville Hodgkinson21 May 2006(See original in The Business on line)IT WAS an icon of compassion, a sign you cared. To wear the red ribbonmeant to express solidarity with HIV/Aids victims everywhere. Itsignified you knew the importance of antiviral drugs and HIV testing,Aids awareness and condoms – and of the urgent need for a vaccine.Red-ribbons.gifRed ribbons Image Unesco: Young Digital CreatorsIn contrast, if

you cast doubt on the ever-burgeoning and massagedHIV/Aids statistics; or suggested the billions raised for HIV researchand treatment might be better spent on established medicines and infighting poverty; or – perish the thought – if you questioned thetheory that Aids is caused by a sexually transmitted virus, you lostyour right to be considered a sensible and decent member of the humanrace. You were a "denialist", a "pariah", a "flat-earther", a"crackpot". Even if you were a leading scientist, your funds woulddisappear and your ability to publish in mainstream journals reducedto zero.Today, whether it is frightening the residents of a Cornish town witha cluster of purported infections, or causing the former head of SouthAfrica's National Aids Council to apologise for having unprotected sexwith an HIV-positive Aids activist, or enabling U2 front-man Bono toedit an issue of the Independent newspaper dominated by

impassionedaccounts of Africa's HIV/Aids plight, the virus that has held suchsway in the popular mind for more than 20 years is still never longout of the news. It is now very big business: American Express,Motorola, Gap, Converse and Armani are among the corporate giantssupporting Bono's RED campaign promoting special products to raisefunds for Aids in Africa.But unreported in Bono's Independent (or in any other edition of thepaper, which for years has followed an unquestioning line on Aids)there are signs that the power of the red ribbon is in seriousdecline. In the United States, where respectable opinion has long heldthe HIV theory of Aids to be immune to questioning, a controversial15-page critique in the influential Harper's Magazine has causedculture shock. As well as detailing a cover-up by governmentscientists regarding Aids medication trials, the article approvinglyquotes scientists who have argued

for years that HIV is not the causeof Aids.Meanwhile the Washington Post last month published an investigationheadlined "How Aids in Africa was overstated", arguing that"increasingly dire" and inaccurate assessments of HIV infection byUNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids) had "skewedyears of policy judgments and decisions on where to spend precioushealthcare dollars".In India, a proposed Red Ribbon Campaign through the national railnetwork has been abandoned, following a national convention on HIV inBangalore last October attended by more than 1,500 HIV-positive peoplewhere the once-fashionable symbol of Aids awareness was ceremoniouslyrejected. In front of television cameras, a six-foot red ribbon wascut into pieces as a protest against the "oppressive and patronising"symbol.Speakers said there were no similar icons of solidarity for peoplesuffering from other diseases. The

ribbon's connotations that"HIV=Aids=Death" – the scientific orthodoxy d to by UNagencies, pharmaceutical interests and thousands of activists aroundthe world – was said to further the isolation, discrimination andsense of doom suffered as a result of an HIV diagnosis. Veena Dhari,the first woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said thatwhen HIV-positive people see the ribbon "we feel like committingsuicide". She called on all Aids organisations to stop using it.The story appeared on the front pages of newspapers as well asnational television in India, where media have proved more resistantthan in most African countries to huge pressures to conform tointernational opinion on HIV/Aids.Two years ago Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the UnitedNations and now president of the Global Business Coalition onHIV/Aids, an alliance of 200 international companies promoting Aidstesting,

treatment and support, said in Washington that a majorimpediment in dealing with Aids globally was that many governments –and people – were still in "a denial phase – they believe they have noAids problem."Citing India as an example, he said that if it did not change itspolicies, it would soon have the highest HIV/Aids tally in the world.By last year that had already happened, according to Richard Feacham,head of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis andMalaria, the main beneficiary of the Product RED initiative."The epidemic is growing very rapidly. It is out of control," Feachemsaid in Paris. "There is nothing happening in India today that is bigor serious enough to prevent it." India had to wake up, becausewithout action, "millions and millions and millions are going to die."That is not the view of Anju Singh, of JACKINDIA, a Delhi-based Aidspolicy study group. Singh, chief guest at

the Bangalore convention,told The Business last week that "there are no reports – not evenanecdotal ones – that reflect visible proof of an epidemic in thiscountry." The official estimate for HIV infections is around 5m; but adearth of Aids cases – averaging 10,000 a year over the past 10 years- suggests that is grossly wrong.Nor has there been any abnormal increase in death rates, even insuspected "high risk groups" such as red light areas. The Indiangovernment does not publish data for Aids deaths; but "questions wegot asked in Parliament have elicited a cumulative figure of 1,100."When UNAIDS published a figure of 310,000 Aids deaths in India in 1999alone, and a cumulative total of 558,000 Aids orphans, JACKINDIAchallenged them publicly. In late 2001 the figures were withdrawn –but only after being used earlier that year to project the state ofthe epidemic in India at the UN General Assembly Special Session

onHIV/Aids in New York."For years now, agencies like the CIA, World Bank, UNDP, UNAIDS, aplethora of NGOs as well as articles published in respected sciencejournals have been talking of an exploding epidemic in India, andAfrica-like conditions," Singh said. "We have consistently challengedthe agencies that claim India is underplaying figures and is indenial; none of them has been able to provide any alternative data orevidence to substantiate their claims."The iconoclastic Harper's article, entitled "Out of Control: Aids andthe corruption of medical science", has sparked intense debate.Greeted by a chorus of condemnation and calls for the resignation ofHarper's editor, it has nevertheless found many defenders. It waswritten by Celia Farber, a journalist and long-standing critic of thescience surrounding the HIV theory.In an editorial, the Columbia Journalism Review accused the magazineof "racing

right over a cliff" in publishing Farber. A blog called NewAids Review responded that the editorial was "a poor specimen of whatjournalism students are learning at one of the great universities",adding that the author would do better to write a thesis on "The Mediain Aids: How Journalists Failed the American Public".But even some long-standing HIV/Aids activists have admittedthemselves shaken by the facts Farber set out about the lethalpotential of some antiviral drugs; and the controversy has also takenthe lid off a claim made repeatedly in response to attempts to reopendebate on the causes of Aids, that only a handful of scientistsquestion the orthodox view.Thanks to the internet, an association started 14 years ago to pressfor a scientific reappraisal of the HIV/Aids hypothesis now lists morethan 2,300 public dissenters, including Nobel Laureates in chemistryand medicine on its website(http://rethinkaids.info/quotes/rethinkers.htm). Many have advanceddegrees in the sciences and medicine as well as direct experience ofworking in the public health sector in Africa and other supposedlyHIV-ravaged parts of the world.One of these is Dr Rebecca Culshaw, assistant professor of mathematicsat the University of Texas, a mathematical biologist who for 10 yearsstudied and published models of HIV disease and treatment. In aninternet posting entitled "Why I Quit HIV", Culshaw calls for a ban onHIV tests. She says they do "immeasurably more harm than good" becauseof an "astounding" lack of specificity and standardisation; she addsthat many people are being treated with drugs on the basis of aninsupportable theory. "My work … has been built in large part on theparadigm that HIV causes Aids and I have since come to realise thatthere

is good evidence that the entire basis for this theory is wrong."In Australia, the idea that anyone can be diagnosed as infected withHIV is to face a court challenge. In a hearing set down for July, thelawyer for a man found guilty of endangering the lives of three womenthrough having unprotected sex (one woman has tested positive, whilethe other two are negative) is to call evidence from a Perth-basedgroup of scientists who during nearly 25 years researching thescientific literature on Aids have come to an even more radicalconclusion than the American dissenters quoted in Harper's. The group(www.theperthgroup.com) will testify that "HIV" has never beenisolated from the tissues of Aids patients; and that in consequencethe HIV test has never been validated and there is no proof HIV istransmitted sexually.Dr Robert Gallo, the American government researcher whose teamdeveloped and marketed the first test kits,

says in a letter in thismonth's Harper's that "no test in medicine is perfect, but donecorrectly and with a confirmatory second test, the HIV blood testdeveloped in our laboratory comes close." Gallo and others, includingactivists promoting anti-viral drugs in South Africa, make similarassertions in their rebuttal of Farber's article stating that: "HIVtests were highly accurate from the time they were developed in 1984and have become much more accurate over time as the underlyingtechnology has evolved. HIV tests are amongst the most accurateavailable in medical science."In fact, as demonstrated in a two-part investigation published in TheBusiness in May 2004 (see panel), experts have known since the earlyyears of Aids that "HIV" test kits could not be used to diagnose Aids.Delegates at a World Health Organisation meeting in Geneva in 1986heard that the kits were licensed to protect blood and plasmadonations,

not as a screen for Aids or people at risk of Aids. But,dictated by public health needs, usage had expanded and "it was simplynot practical" to stop this, as Dr Thomas Zuck, of the US Food andDrug Administration, put it.The 100 experts from 34 countries heard that, though the tests wereuseful in safeguarding blood supplies, something more was needed todistinguish genuine infection with HIV. Dr James Allen, of the USCentres for Disease Control Aids programme, said studies suggestedsome people were reacting to components of the cell line used to growHIV for many of the test kits licensed in America. Other reactionsoccurred because of antibodies to normal cell proteins, naturallyoccurring in the body. Allen warned that the problems could bemagnified in areas of the world that did not have the sophisticatedfacilities of America.The meeting was told that a so-called "confirmatory test", calledwestern blot,

relied on the same principle as the test kits it wassupposed to be checking and so was liable to the same kind offalse-positive reactions. Subsequent research has repeatedly confirmedthis problem: more than 60 conditions that cause such false-positiveshave been documented. One is tuberculosis, which produces symptoms ofAids as defined in Africa and is immensely widespread amongimpoverished people.As the HIV/Aids paradigm won worldwide acceptance, increasinglycomplex procedures for trying to make a reliable diagnosis came intobeing. But the basic problem – not being able to validate any of theseprocedures against pure virus taken from patients – still remains.Harper's has published pages of letters in the latest (May) issue inresponse to Farber's article, which appeared in March. Roughly halfare supportive, half against. The first letter is from Culshaw, whowrites: "This debate should have happened long ago,

before an unprovenhypothesis of an immune-destroying retrovirus was thrust upon avulnerable public, and without being thoroughly critiqued in thescientific literature. Despite the promises made in 1984, there isstill no cure and no vaccine. Instead, there has been a fundamentalerosion in scientific and clinical-trial standards, with implicationsreaching far beyond HIV."To do the best we can for those affected by Aids – including those inAfrica, where Aids presents a clinical picture quite different fromthat in the developed world – there urgently needs to be an honestscientific debate."There is an association between testing HIV-positive and risk ofdeveloping Aids. This is the main reason why scientists believe HIV isthe cause of Aids. But the link is artificial, a consequence of theway the test kits were made.It never proved possible to validate the tests by culturing, purifyingand analysing

particles of the purported virus from patients who testpositive, then demonstrating that these are not present in patientswho test negative. This was despite heroic efforts to make the virusreveal itself in patients with Aids or at risk of Aids, in which theirimmune cells were stimulated for weeks in laboratory cultures using avariety of agents.After the cells had been activated in this way, HIV pioneers foundsome 30 proteins in filtered material that gathered at a densitycharacteristic of retroviruses. They attributed some of these tovarious parts of the virus. But they never demonstrated that theseso-called "HIV antigens" belonged to a new retrovirus.So, out of the 30 proteins, how did they select the ones to be definedas being from HIV? The answer is shocking, and goes to the root ofwhat is probably the biggest scandal in medical history. They selectedthose that were most reactive with antibodies in blood

samples fromAids patients and those at risk of Aids.This means that "HIV" antigens are defined as such not on the basis ofbeing shown to belong to HIV, but on the basis that they react withantibodies in Aids patients. Aids patients are then diagnosed as beinginfected with HIV on the basis that they have antibodies which reactwith those same antigens. The reasoning is circular.Gay men leading "fast-track" sex lives, drug addicts, blood productrecipients and others whose immune systems are exposed to multiplechallenges and who are at risk of Aids are much more likely to haveraised levels of the antibodies looked for by the tests than healthypeople – because the antigens in the tests were chosen on the basisthat they react with antibodies in Aids patients. But this associationdoes not prove the presence of a lethal new virus.The tests do discriminate between healthy blood and the blood ofpatients with

Aids or Aids-like conditions, because Aids patientssuffer a range of active infections and other blood abnormalities,some of which are transmissible. This is why the tests are useful as ascreen for the safety of blood supplies.But to tell even one person that they are HIV-infected on the groundsthat they have antibodies that react with the proteins in these testsis an unwarranted assault.Neville Hodgkinson is a UK-based journalist who has been writing aboutAids for 20 years. He is the author of AIDS: The Failure ofContemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996).posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday May 23 2006 "Our ideal is not the spirituality that withdraws from life but the conquest of life by the power of the spirit." - Aurobindo.

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