https://web.archive.org/web/20040804020325/http://www.sumeria.net/aids/chat.html
Dr. Stefan Lanka answers critic Steven B. Harris M.D.'s rejoinder to his paper, "HIV: Reality or Artefact".
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Dr. Steven B. Harris will no doubt consider it an impertinence even to respond to his "rebuttal" of the thesis I put forward in my article on HIV in the capacity of a "purported" virologist, striking as it does at the very bedrock of his credo. I console myself that while I make no claims to infallibility, I have no doubt that I am a virologist, moreover, one motivated only by altruism, and untroubled by any worries that I may have dispatched any friend or patient to an entirely unnecessary and painful death, through craven obeisance to an ill-thought out medical theory concocted by a French mediocrity who, right from the start, doubted the validity of a virus-only theory of AIDS causation and only last week unleashed a new wave of doubt; and an American scientific gangster who had committed so many crass, self-aggrandising blunders in the previous decade, that he could not really be relied upon to tell the time correctly.
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Harris then describes some properties of lentiviruses, which are an entirely separate issue. It is true that while these have a recognisable shape (as opposed to being just an amorphous mess), and do indeed have what appear to be knobs (the famous CD4 receptors) which shear off so easily, this to a proper scientist does not suffice to make them viruses. Sorry! Microsomes, perixomes and lysosomes also have recognisable shapes and many have spikes of some kind on them. The important point Harris cannot or will not comprehend is that these lentiviral micrographs are never of the viruses he is so fond of quoting, but are always interspersed with other structures and debris, which is crucial to my case.
Harris goes on:
"HIV-1 and HIV-2, the two viruses isolated from human AIDS patients..."
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He says "these are the same proteins which are coded for by the viral genome, and which co-purify with the infectious virus on sucrose gradients, as noted above. Why does it take a stretch of the imagination to image that they are viral proteins?"
Answer:
Something that co-purifies with something else is of no interest to anyone. Individual proteins should have a density that is entirely different to complete viruses, and should for that reason not band at the same density as viruses! It seems that these researchers have never even learned the ground rules of cell biology and virology. The quality of evidence that convinces Harris is frightening.
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"then why does a positive test give you a 50% chance of dying of immunodeficiency in 10 years? That's a harsh punishment from rheumatology and sunbathing. And why do positive antibody tests correlate so well (both positively and negatively) with viral culture tests (which measure a protein) or with direct PCR (which measures DNA)."
Answer:
I presume Harris means "have a 50% chance of dying of AIDS not immunodeficiency". Or does he not know that they are not synonymous, given some of his silly pat answers, I think he's not sure? Only 39% of AIDS cases have anything to do with immunodeficiency. It appears to be all the same to Harris. HIV kills off T4 cells, therefore 10% of people get Kaposi's Sarcoma, 6% develop dementia, 3% develop lymphomas and 19% waste away.
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By the way, is it another slip-up by Harris saying "have a 50% chance of dying"? Is this now official policy - only half the HIV positives develop AIDS? Since when, and why, or is it really 90% as he states further down? Or don't all people with AIDS ultimately die?
Harris asks:
"if there's no virus to explain all this, how does Lanka explain it? Remember, one must explain not only why people who test positive for "HIV" antibodies almost always test positive for HIV by culture and PCR (which don't test for antibodies), but also why people who test negative for antibodies test negative by culture and PCR (see last set of 4 papers quoted)".
Answer:
Thank you, Dr. Harris, but I do not need lessons on what constitutes a proof in science. That you suddenly let on that you know, too, makes me wonder why you have been so complacent in all your "proofs" up to now.
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Harris's claim that "HIV is the only variable which independently correlates with AIDS risk in all AIDS groups. None other has been found."
Answer:
The first howler is for him to assume that AIDS is the same disease in all groups. It isn't! How many IV-drug addicts have Kaposi's sarcoma? Which gay man has invasive cervical cancer? Is Harris not aware of the 1994 CDC announcement that there cannot have been any HIV in Factor 8 given to hemophiliacs, since drying of blood products reduces the risk of infection to "essentially zero". But enough of such crass question begging answers.
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The other - oh, so hard to quantify, so let's forget all about it - factor is the effect of a psychological death sentence of a positive diagnosis. As a virologist I cannot either, but as a human being I know it to be extant, and I cannot just forget about it as Harris seems to with such insouciance.
Harris:
"There is no evidence that these drugs (AZT and its analogues) produce deficits in the cell-mediated immune system which are important clinically. There is no evidence that they produce AIDS (as Lanka may be trying to suggest here) and a great deal of evidence they don't (the Concorde trials)."
Answer:
If Harris had any understanding of chemistry and were altogether less intellectually dishonest, he would know that AZT was designed to kill cells indiscriminately. He would take the trouble to find out how it does so. He might also have read the book by Nussbaum "Good Intentions" which chronicles in great detail the shenanigans, whereby AZT was resurrected as an "anti-viral" when previously it was cytotoxic. He would also then realise that misguided gay rights agitators were responsible for this horrendous state of affairs, for which they and a whole lot of completely innocent people are now paying the price. He would then realise that AZT cannot by waving a magic wand (serendipitously?) help AIDS patients after all, say, the way a natural product like aspirin, jojoba and primrose oils, just might. If he, further, had any grasp of pharmacology, he would know that different people manifest different degrees of drug absorption and drug metabolism. And just a little thought on his part would tell him that if you reduce the dose of even a toxic drug to a low level, no harmful effects might be manifested. He might also realise that people don't always tell the truth, and flush nasty things down the toilet.
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The correct position is that the evidence which is there is none, and absolutely nothing is known about how it is supposed to do so.
ADDENDUM.
In his impressive SKEPTIC article, in which he satisfies himself that there are no causes of AIDS other than HIV, he nonetheless blows the whole gaffe by reaching the following two conclusions:
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