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By Amy Yannello
Sacramento News and Review 2 Nov. '00
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Disparate voices join chorus that questions veracity of the AIDS virus
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Many of these same groups, most vocally ACT-UP/SF, have challenged HIV-positive people to throw away their drug therapies (or to not begin taking them at all) and openly flout conventional wisdom that says condom use is the only responsible sexual practice to stem the rate of infection, besides abstinence.
Call them the disbelievers
"I think the majority of people are sick of AIDS, says David Pasquarelli, spokesman for ACT-UP/SF. "They've tuned out. They're tired of the terror, tired of the stigmatization and instinctively know that sex cannot lead to death. Sex without condoms cannot equal death."
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It was vocal enough to gain national media attention, most notably in the August 28 issue of Newsweek. And strong enough to gain Christine Maggiore, founder of Alive and Well AIDS Alternatives, an audience with South Africa's Mbeki during the recent World AIDS Conference in that country. And vocal enough to cause some 5,000 doctors and scientists attending that conference to issue a joint letter condemning the dissident views being proffered by Maggiore and others.
Science questioned
While the argument has heated up recently, its history goes back to the discovery of HIV itself. The disbelievers start their argument this way: Going back to Dr. Robert Gallo, the National Cancer Institute's retrovirologist who claimed in April 1984 to have isolated the virus -- then known as HTLV-III -- that causes AIDS. These "AIDS dissidents" maintain that Gallo's discovery was not subject to peer review (meaning it had yet to be published in medical journals at the time of the announcement). Maggiore and others also claim that since Gallo was the same scientist who claimed, in the mid-1970s, to have isolated a virus that causes cancer -- a theory that brought jeers from his peers for a time -- his connection to the discovery of HIV is suspect.
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Pasquarelli goes a step further: "AIDS, statistically, isn't a real risk to heterosexuals ... non-drug using heterosexuals have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than [they do] of contracting AIDS."
Alive and questioning
Steven Keller understands most people's astonishment or outright hostility toward the suggestion that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. It was only four years ago when he began questioning conventional AIDS wisdom. Testing HIV-positive in 1993, Keller's T-4 lymphocyte cells (T-cells) dipped below 200 -- the defining criterion for an AIDS diagnosis in 1995.
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The people who are on protease inhibitors, Keller says, "believe these drugs are saving their lives, so I don't want to be insulting. I really feel for these guys. But I'm convinced the drugs are doing more harm than good."
Beliefs and disbeliefs
Speaking from her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Studio City, Christine Maggiore sounds more like an impassioned neighbor than a spokesperson for a group leading the charge against the "AIDS industry."
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"The problem called AIDS obviously exists," Maggiore says. "We're asking 'Is that the best way to describe what's happened and do the words associated with this undermine our ability to understand and resolve this tragedy called AIDS?' "
Accepted truth
Gary Myerscough shakes his head in frustration as he listens to a reporter tick off a list of concerns and claims made by disbelievers. The 54-year-old Vietnam veteran and former field director for the Republican National Committee doesn't hesitate in his response.
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"It's fine if you want to reject the drug therapies for yourself," he says. "But I wonder, if you're really saying you don't believe that HIV causes AIDS, and you don't believe you're sick, then why are you meddling in other people's lives by putting forth this theory?"
Absolutely incorrect
Having worked as an AIDS oncologist for eight years and having served as president of the Sacramento AIDS Foundation since 1994, Dr. Scott Christensen comes up with more than a few contradictions when reviewing the disbelievers' contentions.
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