"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document."
Dr. Kary Mullis, Biochemist, 1993 Nobel Prize for chemistry
HIV
HIV stands for "Human Immune Deficiency Virus." However, contemporary scientists widely classify HIV as a retrovirus. Some advanced researchers even regard it as a harmless viral particle.
The history of medicine reflects the progress in microscopy. With each advancement in microscopes, new discoveries are made. Subsequently, doctors and pharmaceutical companies often attribute the newly found entities as the "probable cause" of certain conditions that lack lucrative treatments. They then develop methods to eliminate or at least quantify these new findings.
Retroviruses were identified more recently than viruses under the label of "HIV." Unlike viruses, which can survive outside the body, retroviruses are not complete organisms and can only exist within another complete organism. If retroviruses were to fatally harm their human hosts, they would quickly become extinct. Therefore, while our understanding of the HIV retrovirus is limited, we do know that it does not directly cause death in humans.
HIV has never been proven to cause AIDS.
The HIV/AIDS hypothesis states that HIV is a unique human retrovirus that causes disease by destroying CD4 T-cells of the immune system faster than the body can replenish them. This states two assumptions that have never been proven. First, HIV has never been isolated according to the standards for retroviral isolation established in 1973 at the Pasteur Institute. For this reason, the validity of the "HIV tests" is highly questionable. The test detects antibodies to proteins that are claimed to be specific to HIV, but the test cannot be checked against a "gold standard": purified HIV. Secondly, as Dr. Kary Mullis points out, there is no scientific evidence that proves how HIV causes AIDS. 15 years of HIV research, over 50 billion dollars spent, and more than 100,000 scientific papers written and we are still without this basic piece of evidence for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis.
Serious controversy over what causes AIDS began over 12 years ago with Dr. Peter Duesberg's publication in the 1987 March 1st edition of Cancer Research. From the beginning, public health authorities have clung desperately to the HIV=AIDS hypothesis for political reasons and to avoid embarrassment:
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES
Office of the Secretary
Washington D.C. 20201
MEDIA ALERT
An NCI grantee scientist, Dr. Peter Duesberg of California / Berkeley, has published a paper in a scientific journal which concludes that the HTLV-III / HIV virus identified by Dr. Gallo and Dr. Montagnier is not the cause of AIDS and that the disease is caused by "a still unidentified agent" which may not even be a virus.
Inexplicably, the paper was published in the March 1 edition of Cancer Research, and gives a non-specific credit to Dr. Robert Gallo and others, but nobody within the Department or the news media seems to have been aware of it until it was disclosed Monday, 4 / 27, by a gay publication in New York City.
Dr. Duesberg has been an NCI grantee doing research in retroviruses and oncogenes for 17 years and is highly regarded. He is the recipient of an "outstanding researcher" award from the Department. The article apparently went through the normal pre-publication process and should have been flagged at NIH. Failing that, it should have caused a splash on publication nearly two months ago.
Playwright, gay activist and Department critic Larry Kramer is currently bringing it to the attention of the media, but it really hasn't taken off yet. I know for instance he has talked to Tom Brokaw about it. There has been one call to CDC from Newsday and none to the press office so far.
This obviously has the potential to raise a lot of controversy ( if this isn't the virus, how do we know the blood supply is safe? How do we know anything about transmission? How could you all be so stupid and why should we ever believe you again? ) and we need to be prepared to respond. I have already asked NIH public affairs to start digging in to this.
Chuck Kline
Cc:
The Secretary
The Under Secretary
Chief of Staff
Assistant Secretary of Health
Surgeon General
Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs
The White House
The defensive and censorious attitude and complete lack of concern for free scientific inquiry expressed in this letter is now the standard response to any questioning of the idea that HIV=AIDS. It helps explain why so few people have even heard that there is a controversy about what causes AIDS.
Rise of Contradictory Evidence
For 25 years, thinking people have been reevaluating the HIV=AIDS hypothesis. The number of biomedical scientists saying that the cause of AIDS is still unknown has been growing by leaps and bounds since the initial HIV discovery announcement in April 1984. Either scientists do not see evidence for a lethal virus called HIV -- saying that it has never really been isolated -- or they assert that the virus is harmless.
In April 1984, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced to the world at a press conference that an American government scientist had discovered the probable cause of AIDS. This claim, made in the absence of the usual scrutiny and debate that is provided by refereed publication, was nonetheless received as fact by the general scientific community, and without further investigation a vast research program was launched. Based on the proposition that the newly identified retrovirus, termed HIV, is responsible for the apparently irreversible destruction of T-helper cells characteristic of AIDS patients, this program has until now been unsuccessful at providing either a vaccine or a cure, and has resulted in public health policies that are of questionable value in preventing the spread of AIDS.
Since 1987, data contradicting a single-virus etiology of AIDS have been accumulating. As a result, a loosely affiliated worldwide network of scientists - The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis - was formed in an attempt to bring about an impartial investigation of the question that was inadequately considered in 1984:
Is HIV really the cause of AIDS?
As an explanation for the origin of AIDS, the HIV hypothesis is implausible because it contradicts a number of established principles of virology and immunology. It is also at variance with a growing body of empirical observations.
Some Examples:
Retroviruses do not typically kill their host cells. On the contrary, they depend on continued replication of the host for their own survival.
Viruses typically cause disease shortly after infection, before the immune system of their host can respond. There is no other example of a viral pathogen which causes primary disease only after long and unpredictable latent periods, only in the presence of neutralizing antibodies, and in the virtual absence of gene expression, as HIV is said to do.
The number of HIV carriers in the U.S. has remained constant at one million since 1985, when widespread antibody testing was introduced, yet new viruses spread exponentially in a susceptible population.
AIDS has remained confined to the same risk groups since it was first identified as a new disease syndrome, and there are many fewer cases than predicted.
Approximately 75% of American hemophiliacs have been infected with HIV for more than 10 years. According to the HIV hypothesis at least 50% should have died of AIDS by now, yet mortality among hemophiliacs has not increased and only 2% of HIV-positive hemophiliacs develop AIDS indicator-diseases annually.
The same diseases are found in similar frequencies in HIV positive and HIV negative intravenous drug users, and the overall mortality in the two groups is the same.
The HIV antibody tests are not standardised. No gold standard has been used and may not even exist to determine specificity. The tests are also not reproducible. The proteins which are considered to be specific to HIV may in fact represent normal cellular proteins. A positive test may represent nothing more than cross-reactivity with the many non-HIV antibodies present in AIDS patients and those at risk.
Despite these and many other inconsistencies, the HIV-AIDS hypothesis remains the sole basis for the public health policies that are aimed at controlling the spread of AIDS by advocating (1) "safe-sex" practices, (2) the use of "clean" needles to inject toxic, unsterile drugs, and (3) the long-term administration of potent metabolic poisons, like AZT, which are claimed to prolong the lives of HIV-infected persons; and for research programs directed almost exclusively at developing pharmaceuticals designed to interfere with HIV replication.
Why question HIV?
The idea that HIV causes AIDS is widely accepted, but there are serious problems with this theory. In 1984, Dr. Robert Gallo filed a patent application for an antibody test, now referred to as the "AIDS test". However, less than half of the AIDS patients in his study had any sign of HIV infection. In 1993, the Perth Group published an exhaustive review of the scientific literature about HIV testing.
Whistle Blowers
Controversial views in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Some of the dissident scientists have published their controversial views in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Here you will find more info about these whistle-blowers and many of their publications.
Censorship
Journalists covering the debate and many articles. The media are ignoring the AIDS debate, do not take it seriously, and even use censorship to keep the public ignorant. There are very few exceptions. Here you find some of the journalists covering the debate and many articles.
Quotes from Scientists and Activists
List of statements made by eminent scientists concerning the AIDS controversy
Quotes from Scientists and Activists
Increasing Doubts
Is “HIV” really the cause of AIDS? Are there really only “A FEW” scientists who doubt this? Over 2,000 scientists, medical professionals, authors, and academics are on record that the “HIV=AIDS” theories, routinely reported to the public as if they were facts, are dubious, to say the least.
Missing Virus
Just find the scientific evidence for the isolation of HIV and earn £ 1000 cash.