Darin BrownAIDS AS INTESTINAL DYSBIOSIS
Posted by Henry Bauer on 2008/02/23
The article by Tony Lance posted in WHAT REALLY CAUSED AIDS . . . [20 February 2008] is powerfully persuasive that the outbreaks of “AIDS” in the 1980s were really outbreaks of intestinal dysbiosis among people whose lifestyle was conducive to such dysbiosis. It is further support for Lance’s thesis that some doctors have been successfully treating “AIDS” patients for intestinal dysbiosis, or something very like it, from the very beginning of the “epidemic”.
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Dissenters from orthodox HIV/AIDS theory differ among themselves over what really caused AIDS. John Scythes, for example, believes that undiagnosed syphilis played and perhaps continues to play a significant role (for details, see the website maintained by his colleague Colman Jones ). But Scythes doesn’t claim to have all the answers, and he was an outstandingly objective and helpful reader of drafts of my book. He has met a number of people in various parts of the world who are involved in HIV/AIDS in one way or another, and recently he mentioned to me Dr. Juliane Sacher in Germany as someone who has successfully treated “AIDS” patients without resort to antiretrovirals. I asked Dr. Sacher for published accounts of her work, and she sent me 3 articles published in 2006 in the German periodical Raum & Zeit (141: 34-38: AIDS—Chronology of the mistakes; 142: 18-23: II. AIDS—The virus that doesn’t exist; III. 143: 60-62: “AIDS”—How alternative therapies can help [titles translated by Henry Bauer]). It turns out that Dr. Sacher’s practical clinical experience with AIDS patients and with HIV-positive people affords convincing support for Tony Lance’s hypothesis of intestinal dysbiosis.
Sacher had served as a physician with Lufthansa and had noted already in the 1970s that male flight-crews often had reduced lymphocyte counts, were often homosexual, and indeed were among the first AIDS cases in Germany. In the 1980s, Sacher was in a medical group in Frankfurt that treated many AIDS patients, and she noted their high, sometimes extreme levels of immunoglobulins and antibodies: from 35 to 40 or 45% as against the normal 18%. But T4-cells, which HIV supposedly destroys, are instrumental in the production by B-cells of these globulins; so how could patients supposedly low in T4-cells be producing excess globulins? The answer, shown by research in the early 1990s, is that the low counts of T4-cells in the blood, characteristic of AIDS, does not mark destruction of those cells but rather reflects that they move elsewhere—in particular, into the lymph system. They act against inflammation of the lymph nodes, and return into the blood once the inflammation subsides.
Sacher also notes that the balance between two types of T4 cells is shifted in AIDS patients: typically they display a relative dearth of Th1 and an excess of Th2 cells.
In 1987, Germany funded research to asses the efficacy of antiretroviral treatment of AIDS patients. Dr. Sacher had the largest or second-largest group of HIV/AIDS patients in Germany enrolled in the study. Results after one year showed that in patients treated with AZT the T4-cell counts had decreased by 70%, whereas in those treated by Sacher using alternative treatments–80-90% of all her patients–the decrease had been an average of only 7.5%! Most of these patients had had full-blown AIDS, though a few were HIV-positive but asymptomatic. This result was described in the Ärzte-Zeitung (Physicians Newsletter), 6/7 October 1989, #189, page 15: some 50 patients treated by alternative means did better than 56 patients treated with AZT (Sacher’s Raum & Zeit article no. I includes a photocopy of that publication in the Ärzte-Zeitung).
Sacher’s “alternative” approach to treatment of AIDS patients is informed by the views of Dr. Heinrich Kremer; his 2005 book, “Die stille Revolution von Krebs- und AIDS-Medizin” (The quiet revolution in cancer and AIDS medicine), Ehlers Verlag, Wolfratshausen, is to appear in English translation in the near future. The key is recognition that glutathione is a most important antioxidant which also regulates the Th1/Th2 balance: deficiency of glutathione shifts the balance in the direction of Th2. HIV-positive patients invariably have a glutathione deficiency, and their health improves when this is rectified. In addition, Dr. Sacher monitors carefully and corrects deficiencies in vitamins and minerals; she encourages a healthy lifestyle—exercise, minimizing stress—and uses a number of dietary supplements as indicated in individual cases.
In Part III of her articles in Raum & Zeit, Sacher offers more details of how she treats specific conditions that AIDS patients often experience—diarrhea, bronchitis, bladder and kidney problems. She also recommends preventive measures including specific laboratory tests. A brief professional biography of Dr. Sacher is included in these articles:
Dr. Sacher has been in private medical practice since 1983. She worked with the German Federal HIV Study between 1987 and 1993; served in 1988 on the Parliamentary HIV/AIDS Commission; and was co-recipient in 1990 of a prize of 100,000 Deutschmark for her work with HIV/AIDS patients. Between 1975 and 1993 she served under contract with Lufthansa. From 2000 to 2002 she worked part-time in the biostatistics unit of Wuppertal University. She takes a special interest in all aspects of chronic illnesses, and in complementary as well as mainstream medicine.
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I’ve often been struck by how frequently I come across, “by chance” or from unexpected quarters, material relevant to what I’m thinking about at some given moment. Here it is again. Dr. Sacher’s clinical experience with “AIDS” patients is fully in line with Tony Lance’s intestinal-dysbiosis theory, in particular the role of glutathione and of Th1-Th2 shifts. Dr. Sacher’s work shows the salience of those factors; Lance’s theory explains why so notable a proportion of gay men display glutathione deficiency and Th1/Th2 imbalance and therefore benefit from Dr. Sacher’s approach to medical care.
This entry was posted on 2008/02/23 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Alternative AIDS treatments, antiretroviral drugs, clinical trials, HIV does not cause AIDS, HIV in children. Tagged: AIDS and intestinal dysbiosis, AIDS and intestinal flora, HIV and intestinal dysbiosis, HIV and intestinal flora. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
HIV/AIDS Skepticism 
CathyVM said
Obviously the German establishment has been far more tolerant than those in other developed countries. Just the fact that she could conduct controlled trials comparing drug vs non-drug regimens and then have them published is nothing short of amazing! Is it possible to get English translations put on the websites? It would certainly help with the court case here.
hhbauer said
Cathy:
I’ll post relevant bits of Sacher’s articles. But I suspect that the only actual publication of her work, apart from the three non-technical articles I mentioned, may be that (also non-technical) piece in the Physicians Newsletter, because the German authorities appear to have wanted to disown the study. Here’s a free translation of that part of Sacher’s articles:
“Though the Project had been funded and re-funded through 1996, it was discontinued at the beginning of 1994 without explanation. There was no further publication of results, and some of the data have disappeared. Federal sources deny knowledge of the Project and of Dr. Sacher, though she has a letter from the President querying her invoice for the expense of preparing a report to him about the Project.”
I’ll post shortly a translation of that Physicians’ Newsletter item.
heja said
This is fascinating evidence, and the sort of stories that really are telling; but I wonder how much we gain from focusing on [the proposition of] intestinal dysbiosis [as a cause] rather than on the more general theory of oxidation and Th1/Th2 balance along the lines of Kremer’s contributions (I base it only on reading of his English language papers and summaries, not on the book in German). From the evidence we have already, it follows that that intestinal problems are just but one way of disturbing the balance…
If that is correct, then promoting the ‘theory’ rather than a [specific] ‘proposition’ that follows from it is a more sensible thing to do scientifically and ‘marketing-wise’. Or is an implicit idea in the two most recent posts that intestinal dysbiosis is a common denominator in most ‘AIDS’ cases and the best thing to focus on therapy-wise?
hhbauer said
Heja:
The theory of oxidative stress and the proposition that intestinal dysbiosis is a cause are complementary and mutually supporting . Any number of things can produce varying degrees of oxidative stress, with a variety of consequences. But this in itself does not suffice to explain why unusual numbers of gay men in the 1980s suffered from specific fungal diseases like PCP and candidiasis; the intestinal dysbiosis theory does explain that.
Intestinal dysbiosis also explains a great deal more (for instance, why do antiretroviral drugs sometimes or often yield almost immediate benefit but typically long-term damage).
However, since HIV became proclaimed the cause of “AIDS”, “AIDS” has become a “grab-all” category that encompasses all sorts of not-necessarily-related illnesses and conditions. To disentangle all that will take a very major effort. What seems clear is that “HIV+” in low-risk groups is — in most but not necessarily all cases — a sign of oxidative stress arising from one or more of a large number of possible causes, including intestinal dysbiosis. In the specific group of gay men, intestinal dysbiosis is plausibly a major cause, since certain practices of some gay men are obvious causes of intestinal dysbiosis.
cytotalker said
It is established that eighty percent of the immune system resides in the gut, and intestinal lymphocytes are modulated by intestinal flora via cytokine stimulation. Intestinal dysbiosis implies dysregulation of the behavior of eighty percent of the body’s lymphocytes, especially in the context of lymphocyte dysfunction in the absence of healthy intestinal flora and also in the context of lymphocyte and other cellular atrophy during the infections which also arise in the absence of beneficial flora, in many cases as a result of antibiotic overuse.
There is mounting evidence that restoration of intestinal flora significantly reverses immunosenescence in the elderly, leads to exuberant lymphocyte count increases in so-called HIV-positive children and significantly improves the health and lymphocyte profiles of sub-Saharan African women not treated with ARTs. There is increasing evidence that without our flora, the gut and hence the immune system collapses and that probiotics help to restore it. The restoration is considerable, although the score of probiotic strains available in the market is a mere small subset of rich ecosystem which is lost in the gut due to antibiotics.
Cytotalker said
I also wish to point out the study , Early Impairment of Gut Function and Gut Flora Supporting a Role for Alteration of Gastrointestinal Mucosa in Human Immunodeficiency Virus Pathogenesis, for the record. My excuses if a reference to it has already been made. As much of the research which sheds any new light, it conveys its findings while carefully avoiding any rocking of the boat.
Tony Lance said
Cytotalker,
I found out about this study only within the last two weeks. To say I was stunned when I read it would be an understatement! The most interesting part, to me, was the measurements the researchers made of both beneficial and potentially pathogenic microbes in the intestinal tract of “HIV+” and “HIV-” people. They found that:
—92% of the “HIV+” individuals had Pseudomonas aeruginosa in their gut compared to only 20% of the general population. What’s more, the levels of P. aeruginosa was 10 times higher in the “HIV+” people.
—100% of the “HIV+” subjects had C. albicans in their fecal samples. This compares to 40% of the general population. Most remarkable, the levels of C. albicans was nearly 10,000 times higher in the “HIV+” individuals than in “HIV negatives”.
—The comparisons of beneficial bacteria such as Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli were equally illuminating. The amount of Bifidobacteria in the “HIV+” group was between 25% and 50% of the general population. Astonishingly, the levels of Lactobacilli were “nearly undetectable” in the “HIV+” subjects.
These findings offer pretty strong evidence that what’s going on in “HIV/AIDS” has its origin in the gut. And the proliferation of unchecked microbes, particularly fungi such as C. albicans, plays a primary role.
Alexander said
TH1 induce CD8 ad TH2 induce B-lymphocytes. Since most HIV+ people have very high amounts of CD8, can we really speak of a TH2-switch?
Henry Bauer said
Alexander:
I don’t know. Have you read Culshaw’s work on this?
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons Volume 11 Number 4 Winter 2006, 101-5
and there are many articles by mainstream researchers about TH1-TH2 balance in HIV/AIDS