Intestinal dysbiosis hypothesis goes mainstream

It seems that the idea of recommending probiotics for “HIV+” people has become downright mainstream now. The following links were sent me by Tony Lance; they mention among other things dysbiosis and microbial translocation, which Tony had pointed to in his essay, cited on this blog nearly a decade ago (What really caused aids: slicing through the Gordian Knot).

“Impact of probiotic Saccharomyces boulardii on the gut microbiome composition in HIV-treated patients: A double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial” by Judit Villar-García et al.

“Microbes & HIV” by Jeannie Wraight

“STUDY: Probiotic could help prevent disorders in people with HIV” by Jeannie Wraight.
This mentions “A new study reported in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences”, presumably “Probiotics differently affect gut-associated lymphoid tissue indolamine-2,3-dioxygenase mRNA and cerebrospinal fluid neopterin levels in antiretroviral-treated HIV-1 infected patients: A pilot study” by Carolina Scagnolari et al. [Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2016, 17(10), 1639; doi:10.3390/ijms17101639] .
This article was in a special issue of IJMS, “Immuno- and Neuropathogenesis of HIV Disease: Mechanisms, Prevention, Treatment, and Cure” which included another pertinent piece:

“Impact of HIV infection and anti-retroviral therapy on the Immune profile of and microbial translocation in HIV-infected children in Vietnam” by Xiuqiong Bi et al. [Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2016, 17(8), 1245; doi:10.3390/ijms17081245] .

Neither of those sources mentions the probiotic Visbiome, referred to in Wraight’s article. However, the Visbiome website  cites “Probiotic supplementation promotes a reduction in T-cell activation, an increase in Th17 frequencies, and a recovery of intestinal epithelium integrity and mitochondrial morphology in ART-treated HIV-1-positive patients” by Gabriella d’Ettorre et al. [Immunity, Inflammation and Disease, 2017; doi: 10.1002/iid3.160]  whose Conclusions are worth quoting:
“These findings highlight the potential beneficial effects of probiotic supplementation for the reconstitution of physical and immunological integrity of the mucosal intestinal barrier in ART-treated HIV-1-positive patients”.

 

More innocent victims of HIV/AIDS witch-hunt mania

It’s been known for more than a couple of decades that a positive “HIV” test can result from dozens of conditions, some of them diseases, others not — section 3.2.2 in The Case against HIV.

At least, it’s been known to people who are familiar with the peer-reviewed literature. That doesn’t include huge swaths of health-care-associated people and institutions. So when someone tests “HIV-positive”, the ignorant conclusion is almost invariably drawn that the unfortunate “HIV-positive” person has been infected in some way; and if sexual intercourse seems impossible, then it must be through dirty needles — even though peer-reviewed studies have shown that using fresh needles conduces to more prevalence of “HIV-positive”, not less (section 3.3.8 in The Case against HIV).

Innumerable absurdities have damaged innumerable individuals and groups because “HIV-positive” is taken as proof of infection: an 18-month-old baby is infected despite the absence of all possible modes of infection (Immaculate infection by HIV). I’ve noted many other absurdities (159 posts are currently in the “HIV absurdities” category on this blog), for example Spontaneously generated HIV; Youngest person sexually infected with HIV? How are pre-teens infected?; World AIDS Day: Black Stars and “life-saving” HAART; Spontaneous generation of “HIV”.

A striking example has just been reported by the Sydney Morning Herald:
“A four-year-old girl is the latest of more than 200 residents of a remote Cambodian village who have tested positive for HIV, baffling health officials. . . .
more than 200 of the 1700 people . . . have tested positive for HIV since testing began early in December. Residents panicked and rushed to be tested after a 74-year-old man inexplicably tested positive . . . . [and] two women aged 81 and 83 . . . .
all possible causes of HIV transmission were being considered
[but of course none of the many possible causes NOT resulting from “transmission”; after all, some quite common infections like flu, tuberculosis, malaria, can conduce to positive “HIV” tests; so can some vaccinations, very pertinent when “HIV” infection via needles is being alleged]
. . . Cambodian officials have pointed the finger at an unlicensed Cambodian doctor who has admitted re-using needles and syringes on patients. . . .
Cambodian authorities have charged the unlicensed doctor Yem Chhrin, 55, who had practised in the commune for 21 years, with committing murder with a ‘cruel act’. He faces a sentence of life imprisonment if convicted.”

Cambodia, and especially Yem Chhrin, badly need a branch of Clark Baker’s Office of Medical and Scientific Justice.

The HIV assault on women and children

“HIV” tests do not detect an infectious agent (section 3.1 in The Case against HIV).

Innumerable conditions cause “false positives” (section 3.2 in The Case against HIV), notably pregnancy.
Transmission of “HIV” from mother to child, dogmatically accepted in mainstream practice, has never been proven actually to occur (section 3.3.4 in The Case against HIV).

Despite these facts, pregnant women are routinely subjected to “HIV” tests, and if “HIV-positive” they and their babies are then forced to take highly toxic antiretroviral drugs whose “side” effects are legion and highly damaging (section 5.3 in The Case against HIV); babies, even if drugged for only a short period, are likely to suffer permanently because antiretroviral drugs cause irreparable damage to mitochondria (section 5.3.3.1 in The Case against HIV).

In most places, laws and social workers and health-care workers make it impossible for women to fend off these damaging assaults on themselves and their children. Sometimes the children are even taken away from their parents if the latter try to resist having their children poisoned.

Graphic personal stories of several such women are presented in the recent documentary, I won’t go quietly. Short  and  long trailers can be viewed on YouTube.

Fanatical ideologies and willful ignorance
are WMDs — weapons of mass destruction
that are politically and socially countenanced and wielded.

HIV/AIDS theory is a fanatical ideology,
and willful ignorance is exemplified
by the dogmatic acceptance of “HIV-positive”
as indicating infection by a fatal retrovirus
and the refusal to recognize healthy pregnancy
as a risk factor for testing “HIV-positive”.

“HIV” testing constitutes a WMD directed at everyone,
but affecting prominently all women and children.

Babies, antiretroviral drugs, heart trouble

“HIV” is held responsible for innumerable ills labeled “HIV-associated” (4.3.4 in The Case against HIV), essentially anything that produces a positive “HIV” test-result. Of such false-positive “HIV” test-results there are scores of examples (3.1.7.3, 3.1.8, 3.2 in The Case against HIV). 

Many of the published articles fail to specify whether or not the described patients were on antiretroviral treatment, making it impossible for discerning readers to test the obvious possibility that the ills were caused by the antiretroviral drugs rather than by the “HIV”: All antiretroviral drugs have notably toxic “side” effects (section 5 and particularly 5.3 in The Case against HIV).

What’s more, prominent pundits like specialist medical correspondents at prominent media fail to understand this elementary point. Here’s a recent illustration brought to my attention by an independent investigative journalist who directs the Washington Center for Politics & Journalism:

“The chief New York Times HIV-AIDS Industry propagandist, Donald G. McNeil, Jr. has struck again, re-writing another Industry press release.
Heart Problems Linked to Those Born With H.I.V.

Donald has really outdone himself this time. Read the first paragraph of his story: ‘Children born with HIV are more likely to have heart problems later in life, even if they are treated early with antiretroviral drugs, a recent study has found’.

Now, read it again and pay extra close attention to these words: ‘…even if they are treated early with antiretroviral drugs.’

Even if !!! How could anybody–even Donald–be so dense as to miss the point that it’s the drugs, stupid, that cause the heart problems!

If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.

Here’s the link to the ‘study’ which does at least allude to the role of the ARV’s….”

In fact, that original article acknowledges quite plainly that at least part of the cardiovascular risk stems from the antiretroviral drugs: “increased aggregate atherosclerotic CVD risk factor burden . . . [was] predicted by HIV disease severity and boosted protease inhibitor use . . . .
prolonged exposure to HIV and highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has been associated with long-term complications. Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors, including hyperlipidemia, lipodystrophy, diabetes, and hypertension have increased in prevalence and severity with the advent of HAART.” [emphases added].
McNeil’s NY Times piece fails to acknowledge this significant aspect of the original article, which even mentions a dose-response effect of the antiretroviral drugs: “risk factor burden . . . . included longer duration of use of a ritonavir-boosted protease inhibitor” [emphasis added].

Failure to emphasize the harm done to babies by antiretroviral drugs is particularly culpable because it seems to be becoming fashionable to believe that “HIV-positive” babies can be “cured” by early intensive antiretroviral treatment (Early treatment is found to clear H.I.V. in a 2nd baby). Yet it has been known for decades that “HIV-positive” babies are most likely just carrying “HIV” antibodies transferred from the mother, and most “HIV-positive” newborns spontaneously revert to “HIV”-negative within a year (pp. 97-9 in The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory).

“Cured” of “HIV” — or not really cured?

Back in March of this year:

“Dr. Hannah Gay and her colleagues became the rock stars of the medical community this week after they announced at a conference last Sunday that they’d cured a 2-year-old of HIV by using an aggressive three-drug treatment that started when the little girl was only 30 hours old”

— although “rock stars of the medical community” might seem inappropriate in an article entitled “Experts question so-called HIV ‘cure’” (Sydney Lupkin, ABCnews.com via World News, 6 March 2013)

The qualms seemed well founded:
“experts question whether this so-called cure is real, and whether high doses of potentially toxic drugs should be administered before an HIV diagnosis can be confirmed”.

Non-experts would find no trouble in stating that “potentially toxic drugs” should definitely not be administered to a baby whose probability of testing “HIV-positive” was about 1 in 4 or 5, according to the official statistics — “babies have a 20 to 25 percent chance of becoming infected with their mother’s HIV”.
Hippocrates, too, would have had no trouble telling the doctors not to do this: “First, do no harm!”

“In the short term, these drugs carry the risk of liver inflammation, allergic reactions, and bone marrow suppression, which can predispose the patient to other infections . . . . They also may have long-term toxicities, but there is little data on the long-term effects of taking these drugs early in life”.
The little data available, however, suffices to be sure that there is long-term harm. Antiretroviral drugs are known to damage mitochondria, and damage to mitochondria is irreversible, so this baby has lifelong damage to the energy centers of all its cells. How much disability this will produce remains unknown, admittedly; but for 18 months this newborn baby received “instead of a standard dose of nevirapine, . . . three antiretroviral drugs — AZT, 3TC and a double dose of nevirapine”.

The decision-making physician was not charged with failure to get proper parental informed consent, rather the Establishment closed ranks: the doctor “had the patient’s interests at heart, and . . . she had the right to deviate from standard of care”.
Yes; but also, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, perhaps especially the good intentions of ignorant people.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, ventured that “it’s fortunate that they made the right call”. He also said, “This was a gutsy call that turned out to be correct . . . . They made the right guess”.
I prefer my doctors not to guess, and to leave it to me or my designated proxy to decide whether or not a gutsy call should be made. After all, a synonym for “gutsy call, right guess” would be “reckless but lucky”. Still, making the call achieved publicity for the doctors as among “Time magazine’s most influential people of 2013”.

The continuing care received by the baby seems a bit questionable too, given that the presiding doctor does not know why “the baby’s mother stopped taking her to clinic appointments, bringing treatment to a halt”. Why doesn’t she know? Did she bother to ask?

Half a year later, the media recycled this story:
“Baby ‘cured’ of HIV: New details offer hope for other patients” (Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times, ScienceNow blog, 23 October 2013).
The doctors’ original conference presentation had become an article in the New England Journal of Medicine: Persaud et al. (9 authors), “Absence of detectable HIV-1 viremia after treatment cessation in an infant”, DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa1302976.
The claim of “cure” no longer appears: “This case suggests that very early ART in infants may alter the establishment and long-term persistence of HIV-1 infection”.
All the evidence of “HIV infection” had been based on laboratory tests, in face of the fact that no tests have been shown to be capable of definitively proving infection (Stanley H. Weiss & Elliot P. Cowan, “Laboratory detection of human retroviral infection”, chapter 8 in Gary P. Wormser (ed.), AIDS and Other Manifestations of HIV Infection, 4th ed., Academic Press, 2004).
Nevertheless, the “standard of care” is to regard such tests as proving infection: “The current standard definition of HIV-1 infection in an infant requires the detection of HIV-1 nucleic acids in at least two separate clinical samples”, citing Panel on Antiretroviral Therapy and Medical Management of HIV-Infected Children. Guidelines for the use of anti-retroviral agents in pediatric HIV infection, AIDSinfo, 2012.

Apparently unaware of all the caveats expressed months earlier, the recent L. A. Times story asserts, “New details about the first person to be cured of HIV through drug therapy alone offer hope that others who are born with the virus may be able to beat it back and avoid a lifetime of treatment. . . . The only other person considered functionally cured of HIV is . . . the ‘Berlin patient’ . . . [whose] cure was brought about by . . . a bone marrow transplant”.

An earlier news story (ABCnews, 3 July), however, had suggested two other “cures” after bone-marrow transplant.

———————————————–
Just as the October recycling of the March “news” story offers no new lessons, so this whole business offers no new lessons about HIV/AIDS beyond those I pointed to earlier (Lessons from the “baby cure”, 2013/03/10).
More generally, it is worth bearing in mind that the latest breakthroughs featured in the mass media are usually wrong in some way and almost always misleading: “Real science isn’t news”.