We don't know what the truth is yet. That's my position. When you have a large number of scientists who are vociferously objecting to the theory that HIV=AIDS, I think that says something. I think it's also important to understand that nothing in science is ever proven. Professor Duesberg has some very reasonable objections to the research that was done to establish the link between HIV and AIDS. With all of the millions being put into HIV research every year, it would be nice to see him get enough to do the research and prove for once and for all if HIV alone does cause AIDS or if HIV requires a co-factor (A large number of scientists feel that HIV requires co-factors to be deadly) or if HIV isn't involved in AIDS at all.

Will any of your posts cover this?





You can't do a legitimate study, if the patients who are HIV positive are given AZT, which causes all of the symptoms associated with AIDS.

The article continues but the above was all I needed to confirm why I was unable to find Duesberg in the current peer review literature.

It's not all that uncommon to find conflicting views supported by conflicting research about new hypothesis or ideas. Since I do see that occuring, I have no reason to think Duesberg's research, or ideas would not be included if they passed the review process.

Fifteen years is a long time to go without publishing anything new through the peer review process. To suddenly have an article appear, in one of the least prestigious journals, only to find adverse action after publication, suggests that the good Dr. Duesberg has nothing new to offer and the old stuff has been proven invalid by more current research.

We don't know what the truth is yet. That's my position. When you have a large number of scientists who are vociferously objecting to the theory that HIV=AIDS, I think that says something. I think it's also important to understand that nothing in science is ever proven. Professor Duesberg has some very reasonable objections to the research that was done to establish the link between HIV and AIDS. With all of the millions being put into HIV research every year, it would be nice to see him get enough to do the research and prove for once and for all if HIV alone does cause AIDS or if HIV requires a co-factor (A large number of scientists feel that HIV requires co-factors to be deadly) or if HIV isn't involved in AIDS at all.

"WARNING: RETROVIR (ZIDOVUDINE) [=AZT] MAY BE ASSOCIATED WITH HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE ANEMIA PARTICULARLY IN PATIENTS WITH ADVANCED HIV DISEASE (SEE WARNINGS).
PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR [=AZT] HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS. RARE OCCURRENCES OF LACTIC ACIDOSIS IN THE ABSENCE OF HYPOXEMIA, AND SEVERE HEPATOMEGALY WITH STEATOSIS HAVE BEEN REPORTED WITH THE USE OF ANTIRETROVIRAL NUCLEOSIDE ANALOGUES, INCLUDING RETROVIR AND ZALCITABINE, AND ARE POTENTIALLY FATAL (SEE WARNINGS)."

Douchberg

So your position is that the actual label that comes on packages of AZT is a AIDS denialist lie, correct?

No I am claiming you do not understand the warning nor the use of the drug, nor the actual infectious disease that the drugs are used to combat.

You also do not understand science, or research, or statistics, nor how to fairly argue, and you are also very irrational.

These are the reasons I try very hard to ignore you, however when a person decides to prop up dangerous misbelief, I have no option but to fight it with logic, reason, science and evidence.

Explain how when a person is on the combination drugs, that this one is included with some of the time, that the viral load goes down, and the symptoms fade with a direct correlation with the viral load?

EXPLAIN THAT if HIV does not cause AIDS. This is the same thing Duesberg needs to explain to be taken seriously.

Antiretroviral therapy for HIV infection in adults and adolescents

All adolescents and adults including pregnant women with HIV
infection and CD4 counts of ≤350 cells/mm3, should start ART,
regardless of the presence or absence of clinical symptoms.
Those with severe or advanced clinical disease (WHO clinical
stage 3 or 4) should start ART irrespective of their CD4 cell count.

These are the reasons I try very hard to ignore you

This is a tacit admission that CD4 count does not correlate with AIDS.

Imagine a person who is both HIV positive and is an undiagnosed sufferer of celiac disease. This person would be put onto ART, not because of AIDS, but because wheat gives her diarrhea. Her doctors would be trying to treat and manage a disease, which she didn't even have.

Oh, that's right, there has never been a study on the long term effects of AZT.

New research finds no evidence of increased risk of all-cause and non-AIDS death with long-term ARV use

18 January 2012
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An important study has been published in AIDS that provides further evidence debunking one of the main claims of AIDS denialists, namely that ARVs do more harm than good (or even cause AIDS).

AIDS. 2012 Jan 28;26(3):315-323.
Long-term exposure to combination antiretroviral therapy and risk of death from specific causes: no evidence for any previously unidentified increased risk due to antiretroviral therapy.

Kowalska JD, Reekie J, Mocroft A, Reiss P, Ledergerber B, Gatell J, d'Arminio Monforte A, Phillips A, Lundgren JD, Kirk O; for the EuroSIDA study group.
Abstract

BACKGROUND:
Despite the known substantial benefits of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART), cumulative adverse effects could still limit the overall long-term treatment benefit. Therefore we investigated changes in the rate of death with increasing exposure to cART.

METHODS:
A total of 12 069 patients were followed from baseline, which was defined as the time of starting cART or enrolment into EuroSIDA whichever occurred later, until death or 6 months after last follow-up visit. Incidence rates of death were calculated per 1000 person-years of follow-up (PYFU) and stratified by time of exposure to cART (≥3 antiretrovirals): less than 2, 2-3.99, 4-5.99, 6-7.99 and more than 8 years. Duration of cART exposure was the cumulative time actually receiving cART. Poisson regression models were fitted for each cause of death separately.

RESULTS:
A total of 1297 patients died during 70 613 PYFU [incidence rate 18.3 per 1000 PYFU, 95% confidence interval (CI) 17.4-19.4], 413 due to AIDS (5.85, 95% CI 5.28-6.41) and 884 due to non-AIDS-related cause (12.5, 95% CI 11.7-13.3). After adjustment for confounding variables, including baseline CD4 cell count and HIV RNA, there was a significant decrease in the rate of all-cause and AIDS-related death between 2 and 3.99 years and longer exposure time. In the first 2 years on cART the risk of non-AIDS death was significantly lower, but no significant difference in the rate of non-AIDS-related deaths between 2 and 3.99 years and longer exposure to cART was observed.

CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, we found no evidence of an increased risk of both all-cause and non-AIDS-related deaths with long-term cumulative cART exposure.

Myth #9: The Concorde trial showed that AZT causes AIDS, or at least that AZT's risks outweigh its benefits
Fact: The Concorde trial showed no such thing.

This misunderstanding of the Concorde trial is a popular myth amongst AIDS denialists. Nowadays, AZT treatment is not given by itself to people with HIV/AIDS. Three (or sometimes four) drugs are used, and AZT is often a component of the cocktail due to its efficacy. But in the late 1980s, AZT monotherapy was the only HIV medication available. AZT alone was not a very good drug; it was given in large doses (much larger than today) and resulted in numerous side-effects. Nevertheless clinical trials demonstrated unequivocally that it was much better than placebo for people with symptoms of AIDS and CD4 counts less than 500. In the first AZT trial on people with AIDS symptoms, known as BW 002, 19 patients out of 137 on placebo died and 1 patient out of 145 on AZT died. The AZT patients did better on a range of scores including quality of life.

In another randomized placebo-controlled study known as ACTG 016, the efficacy of AZT in reducing disease progression in symptomatic people with CD4 counts of 200 to 500 was again demonstrated. No benefit was found for people with CD4 counts above 500.

AIDS Denialists refer to the Concorde study as evidence for their belief that AZT's risks outweigh its benefits. But the Concorde study did not show this.

The Concorde trial was the biggest AZT monotherapy study over the longest period of time. Its results actually show that AZT cannot be the cause of AIDS. Concorde only examined people with HIV without symptoms of AIDS. It compared two strategies: Approximately half the trial participants took AZT immediately and the other half took placebo until they developed AIDS.

Once patients progressed to AIDS, they were unblinded from the trial and given AZT. The participants taking AZT immediately had slower disease progression in the first year, but this dissipated with time resulting in no statistical difference in progression to AIDS. Since a large, approximately equal, number of participants in both arms progressed to AIDS, the trial demonstrated that AZT was no more harmful than placebo and therefore cannot be the cause of AIDS. (This was not the purpose of the trial incidentally, but it follows from its results.)

The denialists misunderstand the following about the Concorde trial: In a long-term follow up of the Concorde patients, those who deferred AZT treatment until they got AIDS were less likely (slightly, but statistically significantly) to die than those who took it immediately. But --and this is the critical-- at this point the researchers were no longer comparing placebo against AZT.

As Brian Gazzard, one of the scientists involved in the Concorde trial, explained in an affidavit refuting an AIDS denialist initiated court case (the case was dismissed), Concorde was not testing whether AZT was better than placebo; this was already known. It was only trying to determine whether AZT should be taken before one developed AIDS symptoms. It concluded that one should not.

If the patients in the placebo arm stayed on placebo and never took AZT when they got AIDS, then a comparison would have been possible (and we can conclude from the trials described above that such hypothetical patients would have done very badly). But this is not what happened: patients on placebo indeed started AZT treatment when they developed AIDS because AZT had previously been shown to be beneficial for people with AIDS. If the patients who took AZT immediately had progressed to AIDS faster than the placebo group then one could conclude that AZT in patients without AIDS symptoms is dangerous. But the study simply did not show this. Read Brian Gazzard's affidavit for a detailed explanation.

>>>>>>We now know why taking AZT as a monotherapy before developing symptoms of AIDS was an unsuccessful strategy. Patients taking one antiretroviral develop a strain of HIV resistant to the drug in a very short time (a few months on average). Consequently the drug stops destroying HIV and patients then experience the side-effects without the benefits. Then when they do eventually get AIDS, the drug no longer has a useful effect. <<<<<<<<<

With today's standard of triple-drug therapy, resistance takes, on average, several years to develop. When this happens, patients have to switch to a new antiretroviral cocktail. The current medical consensus is that treatment should still be deferred until a CD4 count of less than 350 or an AIDS-defining illnesses.

The Concorde trial was the biggest AZT monotherapy study over the longest period of time. Its results actually show that AZT cannot be the cause of AIDS. Concorde only examined people with HIV without symptoms of AIDS. It compared two strategies: Approximately half the trial participants took AZT immediately and the other half took placebo until they developed AIDS.

* Moderate unexplained weight loss (under 10% of presumed or measured body weight)
* Recurrent respiratory tract infections (sinusitis, tonsillitis, otitis media, pharyngitis) John Wayne had this symptom
* Herpes zoster
* Angular cheilitis This can be caused by drooling while sleeping
* Recurrent oral ulcerations This can be caused by nutritional deficiencies or allergies
* Papular pruritic eruptions
* Seborrhoeic dermatitis
* Fungal nail infections

Myth #13: HIV tests are unreliable and frequently produce false positives
Fact: HIV tests for antibodies or the virus itself are highly reliable (both in terms of sensitivity and specificity).

There are two important measures when considering the accuracy of an HIV test or any screening or diagnostic test: sensitivity and specificity.

HIV Rapid TestHIV Rapid Test

Sensitivity is a measure of how likely it is that the test will return positive results if the person being tested has HIV. A highly sensitive test is calibrated to capture every positive sample, but will probably produce some false positives because it is so sensitive that may react to other substances as well.

Specificity is a measure of how likely it is that the test will return negative results if the person being tested does not have HIV. A highly specific test will only react to the substance being tested for and exclude all true negatives, but it will also produce false negatives.

All medical screening and testing procedures—not just for those HIV but for cancers, for pregnancy, for diabetes, for Lyme disease, for everything—must balance sensitivity and specificity: it is inherent in the nature of testing. Ideally a test should have both high sensitivity and specificity. However, using two tests, one with high sensitivity and another with high specificity, is also fine and this is usually what is done with HIV.

HIV tests are calibrated to be extremely sensitive, in order not to miss any positive cases. This is because these tests are used to ensure that the blood supply is safe, and because it is important that people who are HIV-positive not be misdiagnosed as negative, because they will then not seek medical monitoring and treatment, and they may inadvertently spread the virus.

There are two categories of HIV tests: those that detect antibodies [ELISA and Western Blot tests) and those that detect the virus itself (viral load or PCR tests). It is the antibody tests that are usually used when people older than infants are first tested.

In the United States, the first step in HIV testing is usually the inexpensive ELISA screening test. The ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) can be used with blood or oral fluid (not saliva), and determines, with over 99.5% accuracy, if there are antibodies to HIV present. A rapid test produces results in less than half an hour; other test types require from several days to two weeks to get results. These tests are considered screening tests, not diagnostic tests: additional confirmatory testing is considered necessary to determine that an individual is HIV-infected. This is because the tests are so sensitive, they may in rare cases produce false positive or indeterminate results. Antibody tests are not accurate in people who have been infected with HIV very recently, because it typically takes 6 to 12 weeks, and can take as long as 6 months, to develop the antibodies to HIV that the test reacts to. People recently exposed to HIV should seek a PCR test to determine if they are in the stage known as “active infection.”

Most people in sub-Saharan Africa and other resource-poor settings are tested using rapid antibody tests that give results in 20 to 30 minutes. Occasionally these tests give indeterminate results. In those situations a blood sample from the person being tested is sent to a laboratory where a different test is carried out.. Different testing, screening and diagnostic protocols reflect the reality of economic and health services inequality, not ambiguity about the existence of HIV and its causative role in AIDS.

The following is a typical way in which HIV infection is identified in people older than infants in South Africa:

* First the Abbott Rapid Determine antibody test is performed. It has been evaluated as 100% sensitive and 99.4% specific. In other words it is not expected to give a false negative (except for in the window period of course), and it gives a false positive 6 in every 1,000 tests. (Assuming a person has a 50-50 chance of being HIV-positive.)

* If the Abbott test is negative, the patient is assumed to be negative. If it is positive, then a PMC First Response confirmatory test is done. This is also 100% sensitive, but 98.8% specific.

* If either of the above tests are indeterminate or contradict each other, then an ELISA test is performed in a laboratory. [1]

A list of common rapid HIV tests (as of 2003) and their accuracies is available on this page of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC).

The Western Blot test is considered the gold standard against which other HIV tests are evaluated. But it is important to understand that a person is not diagnosed HIV-positive on the basis of one test alone, even the Western Blot. Instead, a testing algorithm, involving at least two tests, is used to make a positive HIV diagnosis.

Infants born to women known to be HIV-positive are tested directly for the virus itself, not antibodies, because all newborns of HIV+ women carry their mothers’ antibodies. Women who do not know their HIV status may choose to have their babies tested for antibodies—if the results are positive, a follow-up PCR test can determine if the child is actually infected. Mothers of HIV antibody-positive children should seek additional testing and, if necessary, treatment. Even without treatment, about 2/3 of children born to HIV-positive mothers are not infected and will clear their mothers’ antibodies in 6 to 18 months; the other 1/3 will be infected, and will therefore develop antibodies of their own in response, just as adults do. Antiretroviral treatment and other interventions can reduce the HIV infection rate in babies of HIV-positive womenfrom about 25-30% to below 2%.

We know HIV testing is a valid, reliable procedure because AIDS almost never occurs in people who do not test positive for HIV antibodies or the virus itself. The sensitivities and specificities of the HIV tests on the CDC page linked above were determined by independent evaluations against multiple HIV-1 and HIV-2 subtypes.

To see how unusual it is for AIDS to be diagnosed in someone found to be HIV-negative, consider this 1993 study of US AIDS patients (which has a simpler explanation here). Of 230,179 people clinically diagnosed with AIDS, only 299 were HIV-negative. 172 of the 299 were then re-evaluated. Of these 299, 131 were actually found to be HIV-positive, and 34 died before their status could be verified. That leaves 168 unexplained cases, fewer than one in a thousand. So already more than 15 years ago, HIV tests were very accurate. [2]

HIV tests have become even better since then. This is from a 2005 review of HIV testing in the United States:

The use of repeatedly reactive enzyme immunoassay followed by confirmatory Western blot or immunofluorescent assay remains the standard method for diagnosing HIV-1 infection (44, 45). A large study of HIV testing in 752 U.S. laboratories reported a sensitivity of 99.7% and specificity of 98.5% for enzyme immunoassay (45), and studies in U.S. blood donors reported specificities of 99.8% and greater than 99.99% (46, 47). With confirmatory Western blot, the chance of a false-positive identification in a low-prevalence setting is about 1 in 250 000 (95% CI, 1 in 173 000 to 1 in 379 000) (48).

For more information about HIV testing and diagnosis, and responses to the misrepresentations of HIV testing made by HIV denialists, see AIDStruth’s critique of “The AIDS Trap.” [Coming soon]
Notes

1. Assuming this procedure is carried out correctly, the probability of a false positive diagnosis is 0.0006. In other words, only 6 in 10,000 people who are HIV-negative will be incorrectly diagnosed as HIV-positive. This is based on the estimate that 10.8% of South Africans over the age of two are HIV-positive, determined by the HSRC's 2005 Household Survey and confirmed by the recently released 2008 one. In practice, people at risk of HIV are more likely to be tested and the risk of a false positive is even smaller than calculated here. By the standards of medical accuracy this is extremely high, much better than a pregnancy test for example. ^back^

2. In these rare cases of idiopathic CD4 lymphocytopenia (ICL), patients have reduced numbers of CD4+ T-lymphocytes, and some of the opportunistic infections associated with AIDS, including ICL cryptococcosis, molluscum and histoplasmosis. People with ICL usually have a good prognosis and stable, not falling, CD-4 counts. ^back^

Myth #19: HIV is a harmless passenger virus
Fact: Studies in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo all support HIV's ability to deplete CD4+ T-cells.

There are some denialists that argue that HIV does exist but that it is merely a harmless passenger virus and that no evidence exists to claim otherwise. In fact, there are thousands of studies that support the cytopathic properties of HIV. While some aspects of how HIV destroys cells that are not fully understood, that it does so it beyond doubt. This is not unique to HIV, of course, as the effects of many diseases are known despite the mechanisms not being completely elucidated. Some of what is known (and supporting evidence will be cited) is the documented here. Since there are literally thousands upon thousands of papers on HIV, a representative few are cited here. This is by no means an exhaustive list.

Evidence shows us that AIDS the CD4+ T-cell depletion is due to HIV. This can be observed 1) in vitro (in cell cultures), 2) ex vivo (in tissues removed from animal models or patients), and 3) in vivo both in animal models and in infected individuals.

Bushidobillyclub,

We get it, you have one source and you are going to post dozens of links to it. Very convincing. I know of no source more reliable than a blog.

However what IS true, is that the "research" conducted that counters the HIV/AIDS connection does have a single source, duesberg, and none are peer reviewed.

What research would that be? Professor Duesberg has been denied the right to study HIV by the CDC. The CDC decides who can or can not study infectious diseases. So "research" is correct, since the medical establishment has done everything they can to prevent this line of research. That doesn't concern you at all, does it? And you claim to love science! You don't care for science, you love orthodoxy.

Is it a conspiracy?

What research would that be? Professor Duesberg has been denied the right to study HIV by the CDC. The CDC decides who can or can not study infectious diseases. So "research" is correct, since the medical establishment has done everything they can to prevent this line of research. That doesn't concern you at all, does it? And you claim to love science! You don't care for science, you love orthodoxy.

one of which happens to have research creds in cancer.

BTW Retro Virus do cause some kinds of cancers. Your ignorance is nearly as great as your amazing ability to believe the unbelievable. It takes so little to verify these things before spouting off at the mouth.

Even Duesbergs ideas on cancer are outdated, and often times ignore evidence in order to support his wounded need to be fringe.

When Theories Collide: Experts Develop Different Models for Carcinogenesis
"Most people believe that aneuploidy is important for cancer development,” said Lengauer, who supports Duesberg’s work. “But [Duesberg] goes a little too far in his belief that cancer can occur independent of gene mutations.” Lengauer agrees that carcinogens may be able to induce aneuploidy in the absence of gene mutations, but he does not believe that this by itself can cause cancer.