I JUST WANT ANYONE READING THIS to EXPAND THE TRUTH OF http://www.aliveandwell.org / http://WWW.ROBERTOGIRALDO.COM / http://www.theperthgroup.com WEBSITES (and other ones exposing THE REAL TRUTH: that HIV does not even exist, etc, etc!!!).
Thanks in advance. Sorry for ou English.

D.

I want to thank you for posting this thoughtful article on your Web site, and also to set the record straight on a few points.

(1) The Duesberg definition of AIDS as caused by recreational drugs and toxic drugs is only partially right — and Duesberg himself might actually make the distinction — because the definition of AIDS has shifted since the early ’80s, when the “syndrome” among gay men was caused by a fast-track lifestyle. AIDS now includes, for instance, yeast infections in women. Think about it. You don’t have to do drugs, legal or illegal, to get that. But for it to be called “AIDS,” you have to test HIV-positive beforehand. Same yeast infection, different label (which Duesberg has also asserted). The Duesberg definition you cite is based in a point in time when AIDS was just a few things, and confined to certain people. It should not be used to discredit Dr. Duesberg for its being out of date.

(2) No one I know who questions AIDS “believes” anything about HIV — we all look for the facts, and so far, the facts are pretty thin. The logic of the matter is, of course “HIV” causes the label “AIDS.” 100%. You don’t get “AIDS” without being called “HIV-positive” first. The problem with this logic is, it’s just a circular reasoning. AIDS is defined by the test result, so the test result equals AIDS. Whether or not it causes any physical condition, it causes the label.

(2) The basic problem is not to ask if “HIV causes AIDS” but “What is AIDS?” Because of the shifting definitions, with some diseases included and others not, and the recent abandonment of the theory that HIV destroys T-cells, AIDS is anything we wish it to be — hence it could be many conditions, with many causes. So when you talk about this thing as a disease or a “scourge,” with all due respect, you have not defined that term. “AIDS” could be anything from malaria in Africa to cancer in America.

(3) Dr. Roberto Geraldo is a specialist in Tropical Medicine, an M.D. Dr. David Rasnick is, I believe, a biochemist (if not a microbiologist). He has a Ph.D. and has worked at UC-Berkeley with Dr. Duesberg. Christine Maggiore campaigns not against antivirals but for full information about them and the freedom of mothers to choose. Believe it or not, mothers do not currently have this right. These people are not merely a medical technologist, a vitamin salesman, and a Californian.

(4) Finally, I would like to assure anyone reading this that people like me are not “denying” the Holocaust, or the death of your friends, or the existence of serious diseases. We are terribly concerned about the injustices being done around the world, the needless deaths and illnesses (of our friends too), and the lack of access to information. It does NOT take a lot of time, checking out the literature, to understand “AIDS” — you just have to know some basic facts and apply logic to them. Most importantly, though, you have to deprogram yourself from all the fears and illogic. No one has the right to indoctrinate you and keep you from inquiring about this, not even in the name of noble concepts such as tolerance, freedom and gay rights. If Silence=Death, then listen to all points of view.

Hi Elizabeth–

Thanks for the thoughtful comment.

Best–

MRE 

Hi Dr. de Harven–

I’ll email you directly.  Would love to see the presentation.

Cheers–

MRE 

I haven’t followed the literature since and it sounds from the comments posted as if we’re a lot closer to meeting Koch’s postulates by now and this strengthens the HIV-contingent’s position considerably.

It’s nice to see it being strengthened by research rather than by ridicule.

Thanks for the original post and the comments; it’s interesting to know what has happened.

What is your take on the Gerson Method?

Kurt

Hi Kurt–

I don’t really know much about the Gerson Method, but what I do know does not impress me. Were I to develop cancer, I certainly wouldn’t undertake such a therapy.

Best–

MRE

More closer to our own field, aren’t there still people who talk about obesity as a disease? If that is so, where’s the causative agent? Maybe that should be the next million dollar price huh!!!

Gabe–

I agree with you completely, especially about the global warming. There have been more than a few careers cratered of academics who had the temerity to have other conflicting ideas.

There is some evidence for and a number of proponents of the hypothesis that both viruses and bacteria could be the causative agents of obesity. Who knows how that will shake out in the long run? With the huge increases in the problem over the past couple of decades, it almost acts like an infectious disease.

Best–

Mike

I need to address your comment in different parts. First, it’s true that monkeys (or more specifically chimpanzees) are not humans, and I would be the first one taking that position if our immune systems wouldn’t be more similar than we would like to accept. Just as it happens with mice, for example, mice are not humans when murine data from metabolic experiments are extrapolated to the ‘human model’. However, as you well explained and blogged in the past, mice are very similar to humans as far as their brains and responses to stress is concern (remember those studies on stress and comfort food done in mice?). Since obviously humans can’t use in the laboratory, the data from primates, specifically from chimpanzees has shed a lot of useful information with respect to HIV and the development of HIV therapy. I don’t think we can dismiss that so easily.

Now, I can see your point about the origin of the infective strain of HIV used to infect animals for study. True, a number of articles only mention HIV-1 XXXX-YY-Z and add “laboratory strain” in parenthesis and probably that’s what disturb some people. One could argue that the “laboratory strain” is nothing but an artifact that just happens to behave like the real virus in humans. Therefore, it’s granted that the infective material should come from humans. So, if HIV is found in humans (let’s not get into if they have AIDS or not, at least not yet), then that infective material should be the one passed to the animals and observe if the disease develops. The only caveat is that the viruses are not free-living but hide inside various types of cells, including immune cells, mainly T-helper cells (specifically CD4+ cells and according to recent and not so recent studies, the virus also hides and replicates in cytotoxic T-cells or CD8+ cells). So the next best step is to isolate the virus from infected individuals, which indeed has been done. The isolation, although time consuming is not conceptually difficult to understand. Briefly, infective material from infected individuals (viral isolates that are generated from patients? peripheral blood mononuclear cells by short-term coculturing with uninfected peripheral blood mononuclear cells or CD4+ T cells) -there is an actual registry of such individuals that have been studied over the years- is obtained and used to infect CD4+ (or CD8+) cells from healthy donors. After a few days, if the virus is present in the cells from the infected individuals, then infection of the cells from the healthy donor should occur followed by replication. If that happens, then one takes the mix of cells and sorts them. There are a number of ways to make sure that there is HIV DNA and mRNA there. Such techniques were probably not available to Montagnier when he discovered the virus, otherwise, chances are he could’ve isolated it as well.

The paper of Zerhouni et al (JOURNAL OF VIROLOGY, Feb. 2004, p. 1243-1255) explains in more detail how all this is done and looking at their results, I would say that the 6 points mentioned in the VirusMyth Award website are pretty much met, except that nowadays there are other faster and more reliable techniques to isolate viruses other than ultracentrifugation. That paper, however, is not the first showing that viral particles can be isolated from infected cells (‘Culture of putatively infected tissue’ in this case, CD4+ cells). PCR and RT-PCR are now done to make sure there is both HIV DNA and mRNA present in the cultures and sequence analysis is done to make sure it is truly HIV and not something coming from the cells.

Before continuing with the argument, I just want to make clear that I’m probably playing devil’s advocate here… if anything, it’s good food for thought isn’t it? As I wrote before, this is not my expertise and I doubt I’ll will make another change in my field to pursue this issue and take a side in the debate. My point is that what it’s been called a myth may not really be so and there is more to it than just taking sides without really reviewing the evidence available distancing ourselves from a sometimes emotional rather than objective point of view.

So… where were we? Oh yes, it seems that it’s possible to isolate viral particles from infected tissues (in this case CD4+ and CD8+ cells). One could still argue that the viruses isolated from cells that were once ‘healthy’ until they came in contact (co-culture) with viral material from infected individuals are not really the original infective particles and something ‘magic’ happened during culture and what is isolated is nothing but something generated during the culture process. At least in the reference I provided, they were able to show that the sequence of the newly isolated particles is identical of the ‘parent’ material, so it’s not something that just happens during culture; is not an artifact, and it doesn’t come from healthy donors either.

So, it would seem that it is not only possible to culture the putatively infected tissues but also infect healthy cells with a ‘bulk viral material’ from those putatively infected tissues. Moreover, it would seem possible to obtain new viral particles and by using amplification techniques, it would seem possible to generate enough material to be use to infect animals in the laboratory. Put into context, one can only imagine where we would be if these techniques were available 25 years ago.

Or course, now people can use their own frames of mind and argue that the prize is still available because the newly isolated viral parts were obtained through newer, more effective techniques and not following the beauty of the hard-work-school but that is sand from another sac isn’t it?

Now let’s hope this message won’t end up in the spam pile and let’s hope the spelling or grammar ‘horrors’ were kept at minimum!

As always, thanks for the great discussion Mike!

Gabe–

Thanks for the informative comment. I’m sorry I took you to task for going into the junk pile when it was really a screw up in the program that, so far, we have tried to fix without much success.

As far as all the viral stuff goes, you are obviously much, much more up to date on it than I, so I will defer to your judgement. I don’t really have a dog in the HIV-isn’t-the-cause-of-AIDS fight, so I don’t spend much time on it. I just got my hackles up over the slant of the NY Times editorial that implied that basically only half-brained nitwits could possibly believe differently than the editorialists when some pretty smart people (all of whom they failed to mention) are lined up on the other side.

Thanks again for commenting.

MRE

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/harris061206.htm

How are we supposed to tackle any problem these days when our (current) major sources of information dissemination are, for whatever reason, so entrenched in viewpoints tied to political ideologies? While my political views tend to lean towards the “right”, I can’t stand reading obviously slanted articles in either direction. It makes me feel like I’ve wasted my time, as I am unable to believe enough of what I read to feel like I was properly informed on the topic. Judging by the dropping circulation numbers of most major newpapers nationwide, lots of other people may be feeling the same way. What a shame.

Hi Rick–

I have rescued your comment from the Junk Comments file, where it landed because you didn’t type the code word ‘lowcarb’ in at the bottom. Any comments that don’t have ‘lowcarb’ typed in go directly to the Junk file. I’ve got to do that due to the huge amount of spam I get through the comment portal.

I agree completely.

Thanks for the link.

Best–

MRE

I think Michael Crichton would agree.

http://www.michaelcrichton.com/speeches/speeches_quote04.html

Hi Walt–

Thanks for commenting. Interesting site.

Best–

MRE

Hi Victoria–

That is precisely Dr. Duesberg’s point. The HIV virus can be transmitted through blood transfusions, needles, and unprotected sex. But he doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS. Have either one of the people you mentioned every developed full-blown AIDS?

MRE