Why I Quit HIV

[Guest guest]

I find this quite unsettling. What is AIDS then? And what are people

curing and not curing and treating etc.? I understand that HIV is a virus;

but what exactly does this virus cause and do? " Medical mysteries " make me

uneasy.

blessings

Shan

 

Why I Quit HIV

by Rebecca V. Culshaw

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/culshaw1.html

 

 

As I write this, in the late winter of 2006, we are more than twenty years

into the AIDS era. Like many, a large part of my life has been irreversibly

affected by AIDS. My entire adolescence and adult life – as well as the lives

of

many of my peers – has been overshadowed by the belief in a deadly, sexually

transmittable pathogen and the attendant fear of intimacy and lack of trust that

belief engenders.

 

To add to this impact, my chosen career has developed around the HIV model of

AIDS. I received my Ph.D. in 2002 for my work constructing mathematical

models of HIV infection, a field of study I entered in 1996. Just ten years

later,

it might seem early for me to be looking back on and seriously reconsidering

my chosen field, yet here I am.

 

My work as a mathematical biologist has been built in large part on the

paradigm that HIV causes AIDS, and I have since come to realize that there is

good

evidence that the entire basis for this theory is wrong. AIDS, it seems, is

not a disease so much as a sociopolitical construct that few people understand

and even fewer question. The issue of causation, in particular, has become

beyond question – even to bring it up is deemed irresponsible.

 

Why have we as a society been so quick to accept a theory for which so little

solid evidence exists? Why do we take proclamations by government

institutions like the NIH and the CDC, via newscasters and talk show hosts,

entirely on

faith? The average citizen has no idea how weak the connection really is

between HIV and AIDS, and this is the manner in which scientifically

insupportable

phrases like " the AIDS virus " or " an AIDS test " have become part of the common

vernacular despite no evidence for their accuracy.

 

When it was announced in 1984 that the cause of AIDS had been found in a

retrovirus that came to be known as HIV, there was a palpable panic. My own

family

was immediately affected by this panic, since my mother had had several blood

transfusions in the early 1980s as a result of three late miscarriages she

had experienced. In the early days, we feared mosquito bites, kissing, and

public toilet seats. I can still recall the panic I felt after looking up in a

public restroom and seeing some graffiti that read " Do you have AIDS yet? If

not,

sit on this toilet seat. "

 

But I was only ten years old then, and over time the panic subsided to more

of a dull roar as it became clear that AIDS was not as easy to " catch " as we

had initially believed. Fear of going to the bathroom or the dentist was

replaced with a more realistic wariness of having sex with anyone we didn’t

know

really, really well. As a teenager who was in no way promiscuous, I didn’t

have

much to worry about.

 

That all changed – or so I thought – when I was twenty-one. Due to

circumstances in my personal life and a bit of paranoia that (as it turned out,

falsely

and completely groundlessly) led me to believe I had somehow contracted

" AIDS, " I got an HIV test. I spent two weeks waiting for the results, convinced

that I would soon die, and that it would be " all my fault. " This was despite the

fact that I was perfectly healthy, didn’t use drugs, and wasn’t promiscuous

–

low-risk by any definition. As it happened, the test was negative, and,

having felt I had been granted a reprieve, I vowed not to take more risks, and

to

quit worrying so much.

 

Over the past ten years, my attitude toward HIV and AIDS has undergone a

dramatic shift. This shift was catalyzed by the work I did as a graduate

student,

analyzing mathematical models of HIV and the immune system. As a

mathematician, I found virtually every model I studied to be unrealistic. The

biological

assumptions on which the models were based varied from author to author, and

this made no sense to me. It was around this time, too, that I became

increasingly perplexed by the stories I heard about long-term survivors. From my

admittedly inexpert viewpoint, the major thing they all had in common – other

than HIV

– was that they lived extremely healthy lifestyles. Part of me was becoming

suspicious that being HIV-positive didn’t necessarily mean you would ever get

AIDS.

 

By a rather curious twist of fate, it was on my way to a conference to

present the results of a model of HIV that I had proposed together with my

advisor,

that I came across an article by Dr. David Rasnick about AIDS and the

corruption of modern science. As I sat on the airplane reading this story, in

which he

said " the more I examined HIV, the less it made sense that this largely

inactive, barely detectable virus could cause such devastation, " everything he

wrote started making sense to me in a way that the currently accepted model did

not. I didn’t have anywhere near all the information, but my instincts told me

that what he said seemed to fit.

 

Over the past ten years, I nevertheless continued my research into

mathematical models of HIV infection, all the while keeping an ear open for

dissenting

voices. By now, I have read hundreds of articles on HIV and AIDS, many from the

dissident point of view but far, far more from that of the establishment,

which unequivocally promotes the idea that HIV causes AIDS and that the case is

closed. In that time, I even published four papers on HIV (from a modeling

perspective). I justified my contributions to a theory I wasn’t convinced of

by

telling myself these were purely theoretical, mathematical constructs, never to

be applied in the real world. I suppose, in some sense also, I wanted to keep

an open mind.

 

So why is it that only now have I decided that enough is enough, and I can no

longer in any capacity continue to support the paradigm on which my entire

career has been built?

 

As a mathematician, I was taught early on about the importance of clear

definitions. AIDS, if you consider its definition, is far from clear, and is in

fact not even a consistent entity. The classification " AIDS " was introduced in

the early 1980s not as a disease but as a surveillance tool to help doctors and

public health officials understand and control a strange " new " syndrome

affecting mostly young gay men. In the two decades intervening, it has evolved

into

something quite different. AIDS today bears little or no resemblance to the

syndrome for which it was named. For one thing, the definition has actually been

changed by the CDC several times, continually expanding to include ever more

diseases (all of which existed for decades prior to AIDS), and sometimes, no

disease whatsoever. More than half of all AIDS diagnoses in the past several

years in the United States have been made on the basis of a T-cell count and a

" confirmed " positive antibody test – in other words, a deadly disease has been

diagnosed over and over again on the basis of no clinical disease at all. And

the leading cause of death in HIV-positives in the last few years has been

liver failure, not an AIDS-defining disease in any way, but rather an

acknowledged side effect of protease inhibitors, which asymptomatic individuals

take in

massive daily doses, for years.

 

The epidemiology of HIV and AIDS is puzzling and unclear as well. In spite of

the fact that AIDS cases increased rapidly from their initial observation in

the early 1980s and reached a peak in 1993 before declining rapidly, the

number of HIV-positive individuals in the U.S. has remained constant at one

million

since the advent of widespread HIV antibody testing. This cannot be due to

anti-HIV therapy, since the annual mortality rate of North American

HIV-positives who are treated with anti-HIV drugs is much higher – between 6.7

and 8.8% –

than would be the approximately 1–2% global mortality rate of HIV-positives

if all AIDS cases were fatal in a given year.

 

Even more strangely, HIV has been present everywhere in the U.S., in every

population tested including repeat blood donors and military recruits, at a

virtually constant rate since testing began in 1985. It is deeply confusing that

a

virus thought to have been brought to the AIDS epicenters of New York, San

Francisco and Los Angeles in the early 1970s could possibly have spread so

rapidly at first, yet have stopped spreading completely as soon as testing

began.

 

Returning for a moment to the mathematical modeling, one aspect that had

always puzzled me was the lack of agreement on how to accurately represent the

actual biological mechanism of immune impairment. AIDS is said to be caused by a

dramatic loss of the immune system’s T-cells, said loss being presumably

caused by HIV. Why then could no one agree on how to mathematically model the

dynamics of the fundamental disease process – that is, how are T-cells

actually

killed by HIV? Early models assumed that HIV killed T-cells directly, by what is

referred to as lysis. An infected cell lyses, or bursts, when the internal

viral burden is so high that it can no longer be contained, just like your

grocery bag breaks when it’s too full. This is in fact the accepted mechanism

of

pathogenesis for virtually all other viruses. But it became clear that HIV did

not in fact kill T-cells in this manner, and this concept was abandoned, to be

replaced by various other ones, each of which resulted in very different models

and, therefore, different predictions. Which model was " correct " never was

clear.

 

As it turns out, the reason there was no consensus mathematically as to how

HIV killed T-cells was because there was no biological consensus. There still

isn’t. HIV is possibly the most studied microbe in history – certainly it is

the best-funded – yet there is still no agreed-upon mechanism of pathogenesis.

Worse than that, there are no data to support the hypothesis that HIV kills

T-cells at all. It doesn’t in the test tube. It mostly just sits there, as it

does in people – if it can be found at all. In Robert Gallo's seminal 1984

paper

in which he claims " proof " that HIV causes AIDS, actual HIV could be found in

only 26 out of 72 AIDS patients. To date, actual HIV remains an elusive

target in those with AIDS or simply HIV-positive.

 

This is starkly illustrated by the continued use of antibody tests to

diagnose HIV infection. Antibody tests are fairly standard to test for certain

microbes, but for anything other than HIV, the main reason they are used in

place of

direct tests (that is, actually looking for the bacteria or virus itself) is

because they are generally much easier and cheaper than direct testing. Most

importantly, such antibody tests have been rigorously verified against the gold

standard of microbial isolation. This stands in vivid contrast to HIV, for

which antibody tests are used because there exists no test for the actual virus.

As to so-called " viral load, " most people are not aware that tests for viral

load are neither licensed nor recommended by the FDA to diagnose HIV

infection. This is why an " AIDS test " is still an antibody test. Viral load,

however,

is used to estimate the health status of those already diagnosed HIV-positive.

But there are very good reasons to believe it does not work at all. Viral load

uses either PCR or a technique called branched-chained DNA amplification

(bDNA). PCR is the same technique used for " DNA fingerprinting " at crime scenes

where only trace amounts of materials can be found. PCR essentially

mass-produces DNA or RNA so that it can be seen. If something has to be

mass-produced to

even be seen, and the result of that mass-production is used to estimate how

much of a pathogen there is, it might lead a person to wonder how relevant the

pathogen was in the first place. Specifically, how could something so hard to

find, even using the most sensitive and sophisticated technology, completely

decimate the immune system? bDNA, while not magnifying anything directly,

nevertheless looks only for fragments of DNA believed, but not proven, to be

components of the genome of HIV – but there is no evidence to say that these

fragments don’t exist in other genetic sequences unrelated to HIV or to any

virus. It

is worth noting at this point that viral load, like antibody tests, has never

been verified against the gold standard of HIV isolation. bDNA uses PCR as a

gold standard, PCR uses antibody tests as a gold standard, and antibody tests

use each other. None use HIV itself.

 

There is good reason to believe the antibody tests are flawed as well. The

two types of tests routinely used are the ELISA and the Western Blot (WB). The

current testing protocol is to " verify " a positive ELISA with the " more

specific " WB (which has actually been banned from diagnostic use in the UK

because it

is so unreliable). But few people know that the criteria for a positive WB

vary from country to country and even from lab to lab. Put bluntly, a person’s

HIV status could well change depending on the testing venue. It is also

possible to test " WB indeterminate, " which translates to any one of

" uninfected, "

" possibly infected, " or even, absurdly, " partly infected " under the current

interpretation. This conundrum is confounded by the fact that the proteins

comprising the different reactive " bands " on the WB test are all claimed to be

specific to HIV, raising the question of how a truly uninfected individual could

possess antibodies to even one " HIV-specific " protein.

 

I have come to sincerely believe that these HIV tests do immeasurably more

harm than good, due to their astounding lack of specificity and standardization.

I can buy the idea that anonymous screening of the blood supply for some

nonspecific marker of ill health (which, due to cross reactivity with many known

pathogens, a positive HIV antibody test often seems to be) is useful. I cannot

buy the idea that any individual needs to have a diagnostic HIV test. A

negative test may not be accurate (whatever that means), but a positive one can

create utter havoc and destruction in a person’s life – all for a virus that

most

likely does absolutely nothing. I do not feel it is going too far to say that

these tests ought to be banned for diagnostic purposes.

 

The real victims in this mess are those whose lives are turned upside-down by

the stigma of an HIV diagnosis. These people, most of whom are perfectly

healthy, are encouraged to avoid intimacy and are further branded with the

implication that they were somehow dreadfully foolish and careless. Worse, they

are

encouraged to take massive daily doses of some of the most toxic drugs ever

manufactured. HIV, for many years, has fulfilled the role of a microscopic

terrorist. People have lost their jobs, been denied entry into the Armed Forces,

been refused residency in and even entry into some countries, even been charged

with assault or murder for having consensual sex; babies have been taken from

their mothers and had toxic medications forced down their throats. There is no

precedent for this type of behavior, as it is all in the name of a completely

unproven, fundamentally flawed hypothesis, on the basis of highly suspect,

indirect tests for supposed infection with an allegedly deadly virus – a virus

that has never been observed to do much of anything.

 

As to the question of what does cause AIDS, if it is not HIV, there are many

plausible explanations given by people known to be experts. Before the

discovery of HIV, AIDS was assumed to be a lifestyle syndrome caused mostly by

indiscriminate use of recreational drugs. Immunosuppression has multiple causes,

from an overload of microbes to malnutrition. Probably all of these are true

causes of AIDS. Immune deficiency has many manifestations, and a syndrome with

many manifestations is likely multicausal as well. Suffice it to say that the

HIV

hypothesis of AIDS has offered nothing but predictions – of its spread, of

the availability of a vaccine, of a forthcoming animal model, and so on – that

have not materialized, and it has not saved a single life.

 

After ten years involved in the academic side of HIV research, as well as in

the academic world at large, I truly believe that the blame for the universal,

unconditional, faith-based acceptance of such a flawed theory falls squarely

on the shoulders of those among us who have actively endorsed a completely

unproven hypothesis in the interests of furthering our careers. Of course,

hypotheses in science deserve to be studied, but no hypothesis should be

accepted as

fact before it is proven, particularly one whose blind acceptance has such

dire consequences.

 

For over twenty years, the general public has been greatly misled and

ill-informed. As someone who has been raised by parents who taught me from a

young

age never to believe anything just because " everyone else accepts it to be

true, " I can no longer just sit by and do nothing, thereby contributing to this

craziness. And the craziness has gone on long enough. As humans – as honest

academics and scientists – the only thing we can do is allow the truth to come

to

light.

 

 

 

March 3, 2006

 

Rebecca V. Culshaw, Ph.D., is a mathematical biologist who has been working

on mathematical models of HIV infection for the past ten years. She received

her Ph.D. (mathematics with a specialization in mathematical biology) from

Dalhousie University in Canada in 2002 and is currently employed as an Assistant

Professor of Mathematics at a university in Texas.

 

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

On 3 May 2006 at 0:47, surpriseshan2 wrote:

 

>

> I find this quite unsettling. What is AIDS then? And what are people

> curing and not curing and treating etc.? I understand that HIV is a

> virus; but what exactly does this virus cause and do? " Medical

> mysteries " make me uneasy.

> blessings

> Shan

>

 

I've been researching this stuff for some time. Begin with

Peter Duesberg's " Inventing the AIDS Virus " and partner

that with " The Nazi Doctors " by Robert Jay Lifton. It will

open your eyes to why people don't appear sick at all until

they are " in treatment " and then why so many of them

rapidly die.

 

When you've read those two, I can give you another list

pages long.

 

For an intro, I highly recommend perusing

 

http://www.virusmyth.com/

 

Read all of the articles carefully. Life will never again be the

same.

 

....geminiwalker

[Guest guest]

HIV is a virus. HIV may or may not cause AIDS. They who

claim AIDS causes HIV have never actually proved it, according to

Koch's postulates. Koch's postulates is the gold standard.

 

> The agent must be present in every case of the disease;

 

> The agent must be isolated from the host and grown in a lab dish;

 

> The disease must be reproduced when a pure culture of the agent is inoculated

into a healthy susceptible host; and

 

> The same agent must be recovered again from the experimentally infected host.

 

(Koch's Postulate quote above from http://whyfiles.org/012mad_cow/7.html)

 

In the past, when Koch's posulates have been ignored, as in

the case of Pellegra. Quote below about Pellegra is from

http://www.think-aboutit.com/health/VitaminB17.htm

 

> There was another disease that is a metabolic or chronic nature and

> this is Pellagra. At one time it was so endemic in certain parts of

> the world, particularly the American southwest, that there were entire

> hospitals given to the treatment of Pellagrans.

 

> The great Sir William Osler in his " Principles and Practices of

> Medicine " written at the turn of this century said of Pellagra, " I was

> at Lenoir, North Carolina during one winter and this winter I visited

> the Lenoir home for the colored insane and there 75 percent of the

> imnates died from the disease. It ran rampant through this institution

> and convinced me beyond any doubt that pellagra is a virus that is

> infectious. "

 

> And then came the fine works of the United States Public Health Service

> Surgeon, Dr. Goldberger, who showed conclusively that the occurrence

> of Pellagra was related with a deficiency of fresh green material in

> the diet. So Dr. Goldberger approached this problem first by the use

> of Brewer's Yeast, which would completely prevent and cure pellagra.

> Further studies then showed that the factor in Brewer's yeast that was

> most determinate of this effect was niacin, Vitamin B3.

 

HIV could be an opportunistic infection which sometimes

sets in when the immune system is screwed up by AIDS. AIDS could be

caused by HIV, and/or a number of other factors as well, and maybe HIV

does not cause AIDS at all. The government and pharmeceutical

industry are NOT spending money looking at causes of AIDS becauuse

they claim HIV causes AIDS, and they do so without substantial proof.

The fact that HIV cannot be found in some AIDS patients, and that HIV

is found in some people who never come down with AIDS indicate that

HIV causes AIDS is a rather simplistic assumption.

 

AIDS is a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms,

which could well have different causes, rather than a disease with a

single causative agent.

 

Alobar

 

On 5/2/06, surpriseshan2 <surpriseshan2 wrote:

> I find this quite unsettling. What is AIDS then? And what are people

> curing and not curing and treating etc.? I understand that HIV is a virus;

> but what exactly does this virus cause and do? " Medical mysteries " make me

> uneasy.

> blessings

> Shan

>

> Why I Quit HIV

> by Rebecca V. Culshaw

> http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/culshaw1.html

>

[Guest guest]

Thanks Alobar. But that is why now AIDS makes me so uneasy. It looks

like it could be caused by almost anything. How can anyone try to prevent

something when no one has any idea what is causing it?

blessings

Shan

 

> " Alobar " Alobar

> Wed May 3, 2006 8:55am(PDT)

> Re: Why I Quit HIV

>

> HIV is a virus. HIV may or may not cause AIDS. They who

> claim AIDS causes HIV have never actually proved it, according to

> Koch's postulates. Koch's postulates is the gold standard.

>

> >The agent must be present in every case of the disease;

>

> >The agent must be isolated from the host and grown in a lab dish;

>

> >The disease must be reproduced when a pure culture of the agent is

> inoculated into a healthy susceptible host; and

>

> >The same agent must be recovered again from the experimentally infected

> host.

>

> (Koch's Postulate quote above from http://whyfiles.org/012mad_cow/7.html)

>

> In the past, when Koch's posulates have been ignored, as in

> the case of Pellegra. Quote below about Pellegra is from

> http://www.think-aboutit.com/health/VitaminB17.htm

>

> >There was another disease that is a metabolic or chronic nature and

> >this is Pellagra. At one time it was so endemic in certain parts of

> >the world, particularly the American southwest, that there were entire

> >hospitals given to the treatment of Pellagrans.

>

> >The great Sir William Osler in his " Principles and Practices of

> >Medicine " written at the turn of this century said of Pellagra, " I was

> >at Lenoir, North Carolina during one winter and this winter I visited

> >the Lenoir home for the colored insane and there 75 percent of the

> >imnates died from the disease. It ran rampant through this institution

> >and convinced me beyond any doubt that pellagra is a virus that is

> >infectious. "

>

> >And then came the fine works of the United States Public Health Service

> >Surgeon, Dr. Goldberger, who showed conclusively that the occurrence

> >of Pellagra was related with a deficiency of fresh green material in

> >the diet. So Dr. Goldberger approached this problem first by the use

> >of Brewer's Yeast, which would completely prevent and cure pellagra.

> >Further studies then showed that the factor in Brewer's yeast that was

> >most determinate of this effect was niacin, Vitamin B3.

>

> HIV could be an opportunistic infection which sometimes

> sets in when the immune system is screwed up by AIDS. AIDS could be

> caused by HIV, and/or a number of other factors as well, and maybe HIV

> does not cause AIDS at all. The government and pharmeceutical

> industry are NOT spending money looking at causes of AIDS becauuse

> they claim HIV causes AIDS, and they do so without substantial proof.

> The fact that HIV cannot be found in some AIDS patients, and that HIV

> is found in some people who never come down with AIDS indicate that

> HIV causes AIDS is a rather simplistic assumption.

>

> AIDS is a syndrome, meaning a collection of symptoms,

> which could well have different causes, rather than a disease with a

> single causative agent.

>

> Alobar

>

> On 5/2/06, surpriseshan2 <surpriseshan2 wrote:

> > I find this quite unsettling. What is AIDS then? And what are people

> >curing and not curing and treating etc.? I understand that HIV is a virus;

> >but what exactly does this virus cause and do? " Medical mysteries " make me

> >uneasy.

> > blessings

> > Shan

> >

> >Why I Quit HIV

> >by Rebecca V. Culshaw

> >http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/culshaw1.html