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By Christine Johnson
Rethinking AIDS
Jan. 2001
https://www.virusmyth.com/aids/hiv/chjtests4.htm

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Last summer's events at the 13th International AIDS conference in Durban, and South African President Thabo Mbeki's refusal to adhere to the "conventional wisdom" on AIDS, have made it more crucial to reevaluate all aspects of AIDS in Africa.

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To make matters worse, individual countries have felt free to develop their own clinical case definitions. Thus, there is no consistency between countries as to exactly what constitutes an AIDS case, and some of these clinical case definitions are extremely broad, making it easy to classify almost anything as AIDS.[34] Often new cases are registered which don't fulfill even these extremely lax criteria.[34]

Antigen/antibody reactions are nonspecific

My search of the scientific literature on HIV antibody testing produced references to approximately 70 diseases or conditions that can possibly cause false-positive reactions on HIV ELISAs and/or Western Blots[28] Many of the conditions are quite prevalent in Africa. These include tuberculosis, malaria, leprosy, Q-fever, tapeworms or other parasites, and leishmaniasis.

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Confounding this is the widely-acknowledged propensity of antibodies to one retrovirus to cross-react with the antigens of another retroviruses. [12,13] Gallo and his colleagues have repeatedly stated that the p24 of HIV and of two other human retroviruses, HTLV-I and HTLV-II, which Gallo claims to have isolated from humans, immunologically cross-react.[14] Since HTLV-1 is endemic in sub-Saharan Africa,[1] many people infected with HTLV-1 may be mis-diagnosed as being HIV infected.

Are the new "third generation" test kits any better?

The World Health Organization (WHO) addressed this problem by providing local clinics test kits that use genetically engineered HIV antigens called recombinent antigens (as opposed to the usual whole viral lysate antigens which contained many cross-reacting contaminants). Local lab technicians were trained to use these tests properly. Gordon Stewart, a British epidemiologist (and member of RA's editorial board) who had visited Kenya, described such a clinic to me. However, several years ago Panafrica News Agency correspondent Eliezer Wangulu described another part of Kenya where "most health facilities have dysfunctional laboratories that have also run out of reagents."

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Yet another study demonstrated cross-reactions between the sera of people with autoimmune disorders (for example, systemic lupus erythematosus and Sjogren's syndrome) and HIV synthetic peptides or recombinant gp120, gp41, and p24 proteins.[17] The purity of the antigens is really not the issue. Regardless of the source of antigens, all serological tests are subject to nonspecific and unpredictable reactivity.[15] It does not matter whether the HIV antigens are "natural or engineered, or even derived from HIV itself (e.g., a serological test for infectious mononucleosis employs sheep red blood cells)." [20] What does matter is whether the reactions of patients' sera with these antigens are shown to be specific for the presence of HIV in vivo. A fundamental principle of antibody testing is that "for a test to be valid, regardless of time of development, generation, or appellation, its specificity must be authenticated by the use of an independent gold standard."[20]

Mycobacteria can cause false-positive HIV antibody tests

In 1994, Essex found significant levels of false-positive reactions on both ELISA and Western Blot in people with leprosy, a disease associated with Mycobacterium leprae infection.[5] Antibodies to the carbohydrate structures found in the mycobacterial cell wall, lipoara-binomannan (LAM) and phenolic glycolipid (PGL), were noted to "[yield] significant cross-reactivities with the HIV-1 pol [p31] and gag [p24] proteins." Essex stated that the "data suggest that mycobacterial cell wall antigens may share common epitopes with HIV" and warned that "ELISA and Western Blot may not be sufficient for HIV diagnosis in AIDS-endemic areas of Central Africa where the prevalence of mycobacterial diseases is quite high."

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The presumption is that HIV infection leads to tuberculosis as an AIDS indicator disease. But from the above data it is more reasonable to conclude the opposite -- that tuberculosis causes false-positive HIV seropositivity, without HIV infection being present.

Anti-carbohydrate antibodies cross-react with HIV proteins

It has been recognized since 1980 that naturally-occurring anti-carbohydrate antibodies cross-react with retroviral proteins.[23] Healy speculated that false-positive HIV Western blot gp41 bands were actually due to anti-carbohydrate antibodies, since gp41 and non-viral proteins share similar antigenic structures.[24] Tomiyama stated that "normal human serum contains antibodies capable of recognizing the carbohydrate moiety of the HIV envelope glycoproteins (gp41, gp120 and gp160)."[25] This is of particular significance when one realizes that African criteria for reading HIV Western blots allow a positive diagnosis based on two envelope bands alone.

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The vast majority of opportunistic infections experienced by AIDS patients in the West are due to PCP, candidiasis, cryptococco-sis, coccidioidomycosis, histoplasmosis, tuberculosis or Mycobacterium avium-intracellulare disease (88% of AIDS cases diagnosed between 1988 and 1992 had one or more fungal or mycobacterial infections).[17] At the very least tuberculosis and histoplasmosis[26] are endemic in many parts of Africa, and if AIDS in Africa and AIDS in the West are the same disease, it can be presumed that many African AIDS patients will be infected with the above organ-isms.[26]

Estimates of HIV infections in Africa have no scientific basis

In spite of the facts, the myth persists that Africa is suffering a catastrophic AIDS epidemic. Last year Newsweek joined the incessant proclamations that Africa is being ravaged by AIDS, citing "2.2 million [AIDS deaths] in 1998 alone."[27] One should be astounded at this figure, given that only 876,009 actual cases have been reported in 19 years. However, Newsweek was merely doing its duty by repeating the estimates promulgated by WHO.[33]

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Christian Fiala, an Austrian doctor who has extensively researched the global epidemiological data on HIV and AIDS, states that WHO produces its estimates by multiplying reported cases by a certain factor (on the reasonable assumption that actual cases are more than reported cases). However, this multiplication factor arbitrarily increases every year. In 1996 it was 12; only a year and a half later it had increased to 38![33] Fiala states: "The well-known horror scenarios about an epidemic of a new infectious disease exist exclusively in the heads of the statisticians through untenable and escalating multiplications." [33]

Conclusion

The huge, alleged AIDS epidemic in Africa is based on several factors which have no scientific basis: 1) WHO's faulty estimates, 2) the nonspecific clinical case definition of AIDS, and 3) grossly inaccurate HIV antibody tests which are not applicable in Africa.

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Johnson is an independent free-lance journalist who lives in the Los Angeles area and can be reached at cjohnson@rethinkingaids.com

References

1. Hunsmann, G 1985. HTLV positivity in Africans. Lancet. October 26:952-53.

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