Skepticism about HIV and AIDS

Everything about HIV/AIDS depends on one central point: Do HIV tests detect infection by a deadly retrovirus?

There is no published proof of it.

Indeed, manufacturers’ pamphlets point out that their tests have never been approved for diagnosis of HIV infection. “HIV tests” detect either antibodies said (but not proven) to be specific to HIV antigens, or they look for pieces of RNA or DNA said (but not proven) to be specific for HIV. However, since whole particles of “live”, infectious HIV have never been isolated from AIDS patients or from HIV-positive people, these “HIV tests” have never been validated, never been proven to detect the human immunedeficiency virus, HIV.

Anyone who can produce a peer-reviewed scientific publication which proves that HIV-positive means active infection can win $25,000:

Alive & Well will present a cash award of $25,000 to the first person to locate a study that provides us with missing evidence about the accuracy of HIV tests, and in celebration of this important finding, will donate an additional $25,000 to Heifer International, a unique charity working to end hunger in the developing world using a holistic approach to building sustainable communities.
The missing evidence we’re looking for is a study published in a peer reviewed medical journal that shows the validation of any HIV test by the direct isolation of HIV from the fresh, uncultured fluids or tissues of positive testing persons.
[E-mail announcement dated 5 May 2007; http://www.AliveandWell.org; Tel 877-411-AIDS, 818-7801875]

By contrast, a large body of well documented literature reports the fallibility of HIV tests: one may test HIV-positive for dozens of reasons, ranging from trivial, such as a vaccination, to more serious actual illnesses–see the list with specific literature citations given at http://virusmyth.net/aids/data/cjtestfp.htm.

Testing HIV-positive signifies about what having a fever signifies: something is going on that is out of the ordinary, and it may be something trivial and temporary or something more serious. It signifies a non-specific reaction by the immune system, or–what amounts to the same thing–a certain degree of physiological stress (perhaps, as the Perth Group insist, specifically oxidative stress).

My summary and analysis of the data are available in the book published in 2007: The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory; for details (including reviews) go to http://www.failingsofhivaidstheory.homestead.com. The chief points supporting my interpretation and contradicting the mainstream view are these:

• HIV and AIDS numbers and rates are not correlated chronologically, geographically, or in their relative impacts on men and women, or in their relative impacts on members of the several ethnic and racial groups recognized officially in the United States.

• The number of HIV-positive Americans has not changed during the two decades since testing began; so this is not an epidemic of any sort.

• The distribution of HIV geographically has not changed in the two decades since testing began. That is not true for venereal diseases–syphilis, gonorrhea, etc. “HIV tests” do not detect a sexually transmitted agent.

• Testing HIV-positive varies in a predictable way with age, sex, and race, which no sexually transmitted infection does.

I had read a number of books by HIV/AIDS skeptics–people who do not believe that HIV is the proven cause of AIDS–when Harvey Bialy’s scientific biography of Peter Duesberg prodded me to look at the literature that reports the results of HIV tests. This became the most astonishing intellectual episode of my life, as it turned out that the accumulated data from two decades of testing in the United States demonstrates beyond doubt that whatever HIV tests detect is not the cause of AIDS.

Then I made another discovery: People who did not already doubt that HIV = AIDS were not prepared to look at my data collection and analysis. That was old news, of course, to those who had understood for some time that the conventional wisdom about HIV/AIDS is wrong. Those “HIV/AIDS Rethinkers” or “HIV/AIDS skeptics” have been called by various names: doubters, dissidents, deniers. Their views and writings are in articles and books listed at http://virusmyth.net/aids/, which was last updated in July 2003. For more recent material, visit the Alberta Reappraising AIDS site which is kept up to date regularly with news of current interest, much archived material, and links to blogs, informational and personal websites, discussion groups, organizations, and pertinent audio and video archives. An AIDS Wiki has also been established.

I’m starting this blog in order to comment on research reports and news items in a relatively timely way. My Google Alert for “HIV” often turns up something that illustrates how wrong is the conventional wisdom, and how everything about HIV can be explained by realizing that “HIV-positive” is a non-specific indication rather like running a fever.

If HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, then what does? What is “AIDS”?

I have no definite answer. It’s a much more complex question than what HIV tests detect. for one thing, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have changed the definition of “AIDS” several times since AIDS was first named in the early 1980s. Many matters having to do with AIDS need focused research that has not yet been done because of the preoccupation with retrovirology. AIDS patients manifest a large range of conditions, including cervical cancer, tuberculosis, opportunistic infections, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and much else; there is a crying need for research that examines in detail what may be common among those suffering from those various conditions–because, as shown in many works by HIV/AIDS skeptics, “HIV” is not the common denominator. There may in fact be no common denominator other than being ill.

Research is needed also to clarify why injecting drug abusers are at high risk of AIDS as well as of testing HIV-positive. Gay men seem also to be a high-risk category, but is that true of the whole category “gay men”, or only of those groups of gay men who are most visible and readily identifiable? Extant data don’t offer convincing answers to those questions.

Much else, too, awaits clarifying further work. But such studies are unlikely to be funded and carried out until the conventional wisdom accepts the basic fact that “HIV” does not cause “AIDS”. This blog will therefore concentrate on reiterating and underscoring that fact.