Darin BrownHIV “INFECTION” DISAPPEARS SPONTANEOUSLY
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2008/01/22
HIV/AIDS dogma has it that there’s no cure; once infected by HIV—as demonstrated for example by confirmed positive HIV-antibody tests—there’s no possibility of reversion to uninfected, not even by antiretroviral treatment. The long-term healthy “non-progressors” or “elite controllers” still remain infected, they just have some mysterious physiological knack that stops illness from developing.
Dissidents know different. The epidemiology of HIV in the United States shows that testing HIV-positive is not the mark of an infection, it’s a quite non-specific reaction (The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory); according to the Perth Group, a sign of oxidative stress.
The latter view explains why HIV-positive people can and sometimes do spontaneously revert to HIV-negative, illustrations of which are cited at p. 96 ff., “HIV-positive may be only temporary”, in The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory.
The orthodoxy has ignored this evidence that HIV-positive may be temporary, so it’s something of a surprise to see published in a mainstream journal the report of “Spontaneous HIV-1 seroreversion in an adult male” (Coyne et al., Sexually Transmitted Diseases, 34 [2007] 627-30). That article is well worth having in one’s files, for several reasons:
— The man in question is in a high-risk group, he is a young gay man.
— The meticulous series of tests carried out by Coyne et al. gave results precisely in accord with what the orthodoxy postulates for a newly infected person: negative HIV tests, risky behavior, an episode of “gastro-intestinal symptoms, sweats, rash, and lymphadenopathy”, followed by inconclusive tests, followed finally by positive tests. “This man was at high risk of HIV acquisition and had symptoms consistent with HIV seroconversion. His HIV antibody response evolved from negative to equivocal to a combination of reactions considered to be positive, and the interpretation was that he had developed HIV infection.”
— The researchers used a stunning array of tests from a variety of manufacturers. The implicit inference from the use of so many tests is that any given test kit is unreliable; and the data support that inference. For example (their Table 1), on the same day one test is negative, p24 antigen also negative, yet another test is positive. A few weeks later, again one positive and another negative.
— Positive antibody tests are supposed to run parallel with appreciable viral load. “However, persistently undetectable viral loads prompted repeat antibody tests 10 months later, which were negative. P24 antigen and proviral DNA could not be detected. . . . Our patient did not have immunosuppression or antiretroviral drugs to account for his seroreversion. Nor did he have detectable proviral DNA to indicate he was infected with HIV. His results are therefore intriguing.”
The authors mention the possibilities of non-specific reactions and false positives, but in so dismissive a manner as to effectively discount them—“These findings appear to be exceptionally rare”.
They would have liked to study this case further “if the patient had consented to further investigations”. I’m inclined to be on his side in refusing. Having been told of being infected by a fatal, incurable, disease, he was subjected to innumerable tests; then, after months of undoubted mental anguish, he was told by obviously puzzled doctors that they really didn’t understand what was going on, but that apparently he might not be incurably ill after all, they had possibly frightened him for no good reason—but of course they couldn’t be sure, they’d love to keep on doing tests (maybe in the hope that he’d turn out to be fatally ill after all?).
* * * * * *
Coyne et al. sum up their paper with “These findings appear to be exceptionally rare”. That displays a highly selective point of view, for the literature is replete with data showing that the tests are unreliable, that seroreversions occur quite often, that CD4 counts do not jibe with viral load, and that neither viral load nor CD4 counts jibe with patient health.
This paper has five authors, who are associated with organizations in the United Kingdom specializing in HIV, infections in general, and virology. It reveals something about contemporary medical science that the flood of HIV-related publications persistently ignore even mainstream publications that fail to support the prevailing dogma, for example, that babies spontaneously revert from HIV-positive to HIV-negative (Clinical and Experimental Immunology 102: 476, Lancet 347: 213, New England Journal of Medicine 332: 833) and that drug abusers also revert spontaneously if they kick the habit and that needle-sharing is NOT associated with higher “infection rates” (American Journal of Epidemiology 146: 994); that HAART doesn’t work (Lancet 368: 451), that “viral isolates” are mixtures (Virology 230: 134), that sexual transmission cannot explain the African “AIDS epidemic” (AIDS 4: 11, International Journal of STD & AIDS 14: 144); and much more.
HIV/AIDS Skepticism 
Frank said
There seems to be absolutely no end to the logical lunacies prompted by mainstream HIV beliefs. Commenting on the Coyne paper, a certain Charles Hicks, MD, begins by assuring his readers that “EIA followed by confirmatory Western blot (WB) has proven to be a nearly unerring strategy for detecting HIV infection.” He then proceeds to explain how perfectly obvious it is that, in this case, this “unerring strategy” was dead wrong. The error, clearly, was caused by “the presence of nonspecific reactivity.” The good doctor closes by reverting to his original point concerning the inerrancy of HIV testing: “The very unusual nature of this case reinforces the excellence of the diagnostic approach that has evolved for HIV infection.” This squaring of the circle can be found here.
Martin Kessler said
The results you reported are of course not surprising to dissidents. What’s sad is that these “scientists” are really not interested in searching out similar subjects – in fact, I’d be willing to bet that these so-called scientists are desperate to have this subject not only test “positive” but die of “AIDS” just to sustain their myth.
hhbauer said
Frank: That “squaring of the circle” link is a lovely illustration of the contortions of logic, and ingenuity in concocting farfetched notions, that people are led to when they have come to believe unshakably in something that just isn’t so.
heja said
So this case, and this has not been stated very clearly, involved both initially positive and then negative antibody and “viral load” testing. Hicks states “Clues to the correct status were the repeatedly negative viral load and the normal CD4-cell count.” which is simply incorrect as he himself reports a positive initial viral load result. Note that this was published in ” AIDS Clinical Care” shortly after the original article. Unbelivably crude attempt at twisting the case no matter what so that it conforms to the dogma… it is things like this that prove the dissidents’ case!
Tony said
One possibility that good Dr. Hicks proposes to explain away the seroreversion of this young man is that he was “transiently infected.” This convenient idea seems to have arisen to provide a way to account for just such cases. But does transient infection really occur? Researchers attempting to document this phenomenon studied 42 infants [link to article below] born to HIV-infected mothers who appeared to be positive when initially tested but were later found to be free of the virus. They failed to verify a single case of transient infection in these children. They then arrived at the extraordinary conclusion that the switch from positive to negative in these kids—and in most other cases—was likely the result of laboratory errors!
http://uwnews.washington.edu/ni/article.asp?articleID=2731
hhbauer said
Tony: You must have a marvelous indexing and filing system to come up with such a pertinent piece from ten years ago. Thanks!
It seems that they were using PCR to look for matching HIV genes in mother and baby. Perhaps these results are consistent with a Perth-Group-type of explanation:
What’s taken to be “HIV” is a motley mixture of stuff banding at 1.16 in the ultracentrifuge (De Harven, HIV HAS NEVER BEEN ISOLATED FROM AIDS PATIENTS, 15 January 2008; PURIFY? WHO NEEDS THAT? (SO SAYS ROBERT GALLO), 17 January 2008). Owing to the physiological sress of birth, all sorts of bits and pieces of protein and RNA and DNA are characteristically present in that “HIV”, but the components are not the same in the mother’s blood as in the baby’s.
Tony said
Henry,
I wish I was as organized as you imagine me to be, but I’m afraid I’m not. It just happened that I’d recently been reading a bit about “transient infection” and that article was fresh on my mind when I read Frank’s comment and checked out Dr. HIcks’ piece. And I have to admit that this whole notion of “transient infection” is mind-boggling to me. Perhaps you can address the seeming absurdity of it in a future post.
For example, the article referenced in my previous comment says “Frenkel explains the genesis for the current research: A few years ago, she and colleagues were studying the resistance of HIV to the AIDS drug, AZT. In their research, they encountered the case of a mother who had had two positive cultures for HIV, and her baby, who had tested positive three times. During later testing, HIV could not be found in their blood specimens.”
They explain this away by saying these positive results were due to laboratory contamination. Come again? It’s likely that all, or almost all, of these tests were done at different times—the mother’s before or during delivery; the baby’s within its first year—so we’re expected to believe that FIVE tests performed separately were ALL botched because of contamination? I find that hard to believe.
The Frenkel study from 1998 has been cited by many as evidence that transient infection with HIV does not occur or, if it does, is extremely rare.
So what is one to make of this 2005 study? It says “Evidence of transient HIV infections was found in 8 subjects at high-risk for HIV infection among 47 longitudinally studied over 2–5 (average ∼3.5) years, whereas only two subjects developed progressive infection. All of these subjects developed serum antibodies (Ab) to conformational epitopes of HIV gp41 (termed “early HIV Ab”), but the 8 transiently infected subjects lost this Ab within 4–18 months, and did not seroconvert to positivity in denatured antigen EIA or Western Blot (WB). However, the two progressively infected subjects eventually seroconverted in the EIA and WB tests within one to two months after the appearance of “early HIV Ab”.”
The authors go on to say “This provides further evidence that transient or occult infection with HIV does occur, and perhaps at a greater frequency than do progressive infections.”
What?!
Martin Kessler said
That was very funny, Tony. These so-called scientists offering a very tortured complex explanation to what could be explained in a straightforward way. That would be that the tests are not only unreliable but invalid as well.
One of the quotes from above : “…During later testing, HIV could not be found in their blood specimens” was curious. What did they mean by that statement? To me, if I take them literally, it means that they tried to perform virus isolation and put the results under an electron microscope. But I don’t think so. The only evidence they use is a positive antibody result because they either assume that the presence of antibodies indicates presence of HIV (probably somewhere else in the body) or they’re realistic and know that HIV can’t be isolated in vivo. But really their statement is inaccurate and should have read: What we believe to be antibodies to HIV could not be found in their blood specimens. But we cannot expect this kind of candor from these medacitologists.
hhbauer said
Martin: I love new words, but nowhere could I find a meaning for “medacitologists”? I guess something related to “mendacity”?
Martin Kessler said
Thanks for the compliment, yes, it is related to mendacity. Dr. Thomas Szasz, one of the great skeptics and my favorite author (I have just about all his books), created that term in reference to psychiatry and its practitioners, psychiatry referred to as the practice of mendacitology. Szasz and Duesberg are like twin pillars against the prevailing pseudo-medical hegemony, i.e. psychiatry and AIDS. Both of them have had their graduate students “taken” away because of the “damage” they would do to them and have been subjected to Tod Schweigen – death by silence – much of Szasz’s works are almost never referenced by current psychiatric critics, even though much about what they were writing, Szasz had said before and better. His writing has an almost mathematical consistency to it. Duesberg’s writing does not have that kind of mathematical consistency but the good deed he did (showing that the emperor had no clothes) may not be forgiven for a long time.
Tony said
Martin,
Yes, the tortured, improbable and often elaborate explanations offered by HIV/AIDS researchers to account for all that casts doubt on the prevailing hypothesis should arouse suspicion in the mind of anyone able to spell HIV.
David Crowe said
The interesting thing about Frenkel is that if false positive results are really that easy, doesn’t it call into question all positive tests? If lab contamination, for which no evidence was presented, is accepted when it’s convenient for the AID$ dogmatists, what about when it’s inconvenient?
hhbauer said
David:
The answer to your rhetorical questions is that none are so blind as those who refuse to look.
Frank said
David:
Excellent, logical, perfectly obvious point. I hadn’t thought of it, but isn’t Hicks’ “nonspecific reactivity” essentially the same as “lab contamination”, a handy phantasm, conjured when needed to confuse the rubes?
Here’s Hicks: “A more likely explanation is the presence of nonspecific reactivity, which is always possible with any serologic testing.”
cytotalker said
Laboratory error does seem to be a preferred explanation whenever dogma crashes against reality. One can only regret the consequences on people’s lives and the costs to society.
http://www.thebody.com/Forums/AIDS/TreatExp/Archive/Switch/Q183391.html
hhbauer said
The link is a query from a woman who has been on Combivir for 12 years and now wonders whether to have a baby. She must have started on the stuff at quite an early age. Combivir = zidovudine (- AZT) + lamivudine. No doubt her youth helped her stave off the “disadvantages” of Combivir listed in the NIH Guidelines, namely, “Bone marrow suppression with zidovudine; Gastrointestinal intolerance”; also “lactic acidosis with hepatic steatosis (rare but potentially lifethreatening toxicity…)”; “Zidovudine can be associated with hematologic toxicities, including granulocytopenia and severe anemia…. Prolonged zidovudine use has been associated with symptomatic myopathy”.
I wonder whether this was perhaps not a genuine enquiry, rather something made up for the purpose of this advice-giving.
cytotalker said
The Fauci dogma states that anything less than three drugs will lead to drug resistance and the patient will get AIDS within ten years. Since this woman has been taking a cocktail of merely two drugs and her surrogate markers are normal, the advice-giver expresses skepticism over the validity of her positive diagnosis. Even if she was lucky enough to be spared the more acute toxicities, it very much appears, even to the advice-giver, that over the years she may have exposed herself to them due to a false positive resulting from a possible “mistake”, as he puts it. This is the only interpretation the dogma will allow. He does not congratulate her for her non-progression and neither does he consider seroconversion.
As a consequence of the “hit fast, hit hard” attitude of the nineties, people exposed themselves to toxicities because of the results from a test that is based on deceitful and all-out bad science. Epidemiological studies show that a majority of people in her case would have succumbed to toxicities. This woman appears to be fortunate in this respect, but neglects herself the opportunity to have children.
All this, of course, granted the case is legit.
Frank said
Perhaps inexplicable anomalies are “laboratory errors” when they are one-off or transient, and graduate to “nonspecific reactivity” when they are persistent. I wonder if there is a style manual, a guide to forging canonical judgments?
hhbauer said
Frank: Intended or not, I like the double entendre of “forging”.