AIDS Dissidents and Denialists
by Laura Jones
Something went wrong in South
Africa this spring. Apparently President Thabo Mbeki, being
a responsible political leader in the new 21st century, did
what we might expect a responsible 21st century political
leader to do: he went online to learn as much as possible
about the horrible epidemic that’s currently wiping out
large portions of South Africa’s population. And apparently
he found some information that disputed the widely-accepted
causal link between HIV and AIDS, as well as some scary information
about the toxicity of AZT, an expensive medication he’s
been urged to supply. The information he found led him to
contact Western scientists such as Dr. Peter Duesberg and
Dr. David Rasnick, longtime opponents of the commonly accepted
theory that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS. Contacting
“dissident” Western scientists, and eventually including
them in panel discussions concerning the cause of AIDS, caused
many other Western scientists to cry foul—what is he
doing? doesn’t he know better?—and even propose
boycotts of the World AIDS Conference being held in July in
South Africa.
I’ve never questioned
the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and didn’t even
know that anyone still did. So, asked to write an article
on the scuffle and knowing very little about Dr. Peter Duesberg
and Dr. David Rasnick, I did exactly what good President Mbeki
did—I hopped on the ol’ Internet to see what I could
find.
What I found made me very,
very glad that I am not responsible for coordinating health
services and AIDS prevention strategies in South Africa.
There’s more Internet
malarkey surrounding HIV, AIDS, recreational drugs and sex,
Koch’s Postulates, polio vaccines, and genocidal government
conspiracies than I ever thought possible. Some of it is blatant
sex-and-drug phobic nonsense, like the “AIDSGate”
website run by a thoroughly whacked-out Oregonian who spouts
“scientific” data like, “Every single homosexual
diagnosed with AIDS has also been a drug user…”
and “clean” homosexuals do not get AIDS.” (He
also helped start the horrible “Up With People”
group back in the ’60s—a hanging crime itself, in
my opinion).
But some of it…well,
it sure does read well. Gee, I didn’t know there was
a dispute as to whether HIV was ever actually isolated and
grown in the lab. I didn’t know polio vaccine was made
from monkey kidneys. AZT was originally a potential cancer
treatment that proved too toxic for common use? Are NIAID
and the CDC, my reliable Hotline sources of HIV and AIDS information,
really in league with the CIA? I mean, they are government
agencies. The U.S. government does have a pretty checkered
foreign policy record.
Ahhh! It’s getting deep!
Drag me out now, before I’m covered!
Given disparate information,
cultural differences in policy-making, and perhaps a healthy
dose of mistrust for pharmaceutical companies, I don’t
blame President Mbeki for his cautions. Open debate among
disagreeing scientists makes a lot of sense in a country that
has recently fought bitter battles for democratic self-rule,
freedom of speech, and an end to decades of apartheid. I’m
also not going to fault him for seeking second opinions before
giving South Africa’s pregnant women potentially toxic
drugs they can’t afford. However, we can take a hard
look at the most frequently debated “dissident”
arguments, and see why the majority of the scientific world
believes that the HIV-causes-AIDS theory holds water.
Argument 1. In the U.S. and
Europe, AIDS is caused by multiple sex partners and heavy
use of recreational drugs. In Africa, malnutrition and diseases
that have always existed in Africa cause AIDS. HIV is a harmless
“passenger” virus and doesn’t cause AIDS.
We all know this one’s
ridiculous, but let’s take it right from the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID):
“…in a prospectively
studied cohort in Vancouver, 715 homosexual men were followed
for a median of 8.6 years. Among 365 HIV positive individuals,
136 developed AIDS. No AIDS-defining illnesses occurred among
350 seronegative [HIV negative] men despite the fact that
these men reported appreciable use of inhalable nitrites (“poppers”)
and other recreational drugs, and frequent receptive anal
intercourse.”
As for Africa:
“The diseases that have
come to be associated with AIDS in Africa—such as wasting
syndrome, diarrheal diseases and TB [tuberculosis]—have
long been severe burdens there. However high rates of mortality,
formerly confined to the elderly and malnourished, are now
common among HIV-infected young and middle-aged people.
“In a recent study in
rural Uganda, adolescents and young adults testing positive
for HIV antibodies were 60 times more likely to die during
the subsequent two-year observation period than otherwise
similar persons who tested negative. In a study in Zaire,
infants with HIV infection had an 11-fold increased risk of
death from diarrhea compared with uninfected children. Elsewhere
in Africa findings are similar.”
Argument 2. The toxic effects
of AZT and other anti-HIV medications cause AIDS, not the
harmless “passenger” virus HIV.
Theories that AZT and other
anti-HIV medications themselves cause AIDS are easily dismissed
when one recalls all the nice people who died of AIDS before
AZT became available in the U.S. and Western Europe in 1987,
and all the nice people who are dying globally right now because
they will never be able to afford expensive drugs like AZT.
However, let’s consult the NIAID Fact Sheet:
“Placebo-controlled trials
have found that AZT and related anti-HIV drugs can benefit
patients by prolonging, for up to a year or two, the onset
of new AIDS-related illnesses in HIV-infected individuals.
Significantly, long-term follow-up of these trials, although
not showing prolonged benefit of AZT, has never indicated
that the drug increases disease progression or mortality.
The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of
these trials effectively rebuts the argument that AZT causes
AIDS.
“In addition, many individuals
who have never taken AZT or related drugs have developed AIDS,
including people in the United States prior to the availability
of AZT, and in Africa today where very few people receive
AZT.”
Argument 3. There are people
with AIDS who don’t have HIV, so HIV can’t be the
cause of AIDS.
Nicely summarized by Dr. Steven
B. Harris, author of “The AIDS Heresies: A Case Study
in Skepticism Taken Too Far”:
“Previous to the epidemic
of AIDS, of course, people did die of immune failure with
low T-lymphocyte counts (including low CD4+ counts) for other
reasons, and they continue to do so now…cancer, malnutrition,
tuberculosis, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. These people do
not have AIDS, because the historical epidemic of AIDS consisted
of people with no T-lymphocytes, and yet no known reason for
it.
“So let us simply collect
all the people we can find with CD4+ counts remaining below
200 (for a few months) without known reason, and test them
for HIV. When we do, we find that essentially all are HIV
infected, and any who are not do not look at all like typical
AIDS patients…Thus, at this point we have no evidence
yet to directly contradict the simple theory that HIV causes
100% of our conservatively defined “AIDS.” AIDS
skeptics will need different definitions in order to find
HIV-free AIDS.”
(I sure do like Dr. Steven
B. Harris. I also sure do like the fact that I found his terrific
document via the previously cited nutty Oregonian’s “AIDSGate”
website, located at www.aliveandwell-eugene.dreamhost.com/aidsgate.
The nutty one swears he’s never received a single piece
of e-mail disagreeing with any of his statements. Feel free
to drop him a line—after all, he is “Up With People”!).
Argument 4. There are people
with HIV who don’t have AIDS, so HIV can’t be the
cause of AIDS.
It can take years, friends.
Longer than we originally thought. And hey, maybe one day
we will discover that some people with HIV never develop AIDS—happy
news. Until that point, however, we need to realize that 20
years is not a very long time in the life of a complicated
disease. We don’t have all the answers yet, but we do
have to use what we know.
Argument 5. If AIDS was caused
by just one thing, everyone with AIDS would get sick in the
same way, in the same amount of time. AIDS behaves differently
in different populations, so AIDS must be caused by lots of
different things instead of by HIV.
HIV doesn’t cause the
diseases associated with AIDS. People with AIDS get funky
illnesses because their immune systems are mortally compromised,
and people with compromised immune systems will get sick with
whatever is floating around them. Different pathogens (disease-causing
agents) lurk in different regions and communities, which explains
why PWAs in Thailand may become ill with diseases not found
in Sturgis, South Dakota, and vice versa. Opportunistic infections
vary even by gender and age, due to differences in exposure
to various pathogens.
Argument 6. HIV doesn’t
fulfill Koch’s Postulates for an infectious disease,
so it can’t cause AIDS.
Duesberg’s favorite,
refuted several times over the course of AIDS history. Robert
Koch discovered anthrax bacillus late in the 19th century
and developed the standard determinants for the cause of any
epidemic infectious disease.
Postulate #1: Epidemiological
Association—Suspected cause of disease must be strongly
associated with the disease.
HIV Fulfills Postulate: Antibodies
to our RNA from HIV is found in the vast majority of persons
with AIDS. Lack of HIV antibodies in less than 5% of cases
fulfilling other criteria for AIDS (no other reason for immune
system collapse) has been largely attributed to the insensitivity
of early tests.
Postulate #2: Isolation—Suspected
pathogen must be isolated and propagated outside the host
organism.
HIV Fulfills Postulate: HIV
has been cultivated in human T-lymphocytes, and cultured cell
lines have been grown. (Dr. Duesberg himself agrees!)
Postulate #3: Transmission—Transferring
suspected disease agent to uninfected host causes disease
in new host.
HIV Fulfills Postulate: Most
easily illustrated via the case of three lab technicians accidentally
infected with HIV-1 through needle sticks. All three developed
antibodies to HIV and experienced marked CD4+ cell depletion
and/or opportunistic PCP (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia)
within five years.
There will always be people
who will argue over the exact phrasing of Koch’s Postulates,
which have been modified over the years due to new technology
and knowledge of infectious diseases. Defenders of HIV will
continue to argue that other diseases—typhoid fever,
leprosy, and tuberculosis—fail to meet strict Koch causality
tests. In the meantime, however, HIV does a fine job arguing
its case as the causative agent of AIDS.
Laura Jones is a
sexual health activist and teacher, and is also a counselor
for the Illinois HIV/AIDS and STD Hotline, operated by Test
Positive Aware Network
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