The Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis (We've been duped!)

I went to the last link--and found an article from 1990...are they all like that?

Yawn, if that's the best you've got, you've lost me.

Looks like Dr. D wore out his welcome everywhere.

Good night.

PS I'm done doing the heavy lifting for you. Given your background, you have a special--indeed, a moral responsibility to EANESTLY look into this matter for yourself--TTS

I'm with you.

My son Charles wrote a very cogent piece on this subject a couple years before he died (not of AIDS). I will try to find it and if I can, I'll give it a thread of its own. It is a very cogent and commonsense presentation of the problems with the HIV-AIDS hypothesis. Putting it up on this forum would honor his memory.

This issue turned Charles conservative.

From 2003:

http://www.duesberg.com/papers/chemical-bases.html

Very sorry for your loss. Do post it and ping me when it's up. Be sure to give it its own thread...and write a proper introduction! Time for bed. Keep up the good work. This issue is far from over!!!

I have NO obligation to Dr. D, or any obligation whatsoever to you.

But since you like cut and paste so well, let me take just ONE of those articles you posted links to, and cut and paste just THREE of the scholarly written responses.

You'll read them, won't you, even though they may not support your agenda?

The epidemiologic, laboratory, and clinical evidence that HIV is the cause of AIDS is overwhelming. This evidence has been used as a basis for national and international prevention programs and clinical and vaccine trials.

Thomas et al. mix fact with fiction to misinform readers. For example, the authors suggest that AIDS cases are an artifact of the CDC's AIDS surveillance case definition, that there are "thousands of cases of AIDS without HIV," and that "such cases tend to disappear from the official statistics."

The AIDS surveillance case definition was not designed to prove the existence of HIV. However, it provides additional evidence to what epidemiologic and laboratory studies have already told researchers- -that HIV causes AIDS. Case definitions of any disease or health condition are basic tools of public health surveillance. They are devised by epidemic investigators in response to clusters or outbreaks of new or unusual health phenomena. The first CDC AIDS surveillance case definition was developed in response to clusters of patients with unexplained opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma in 1981. Patterns identified from early case reports provided convincing evidence that the new syndrome was caused by an infectious agent. This definition has been expanded three times (in 1985, 1987, and 1993) in response to greatly increased knowledge of the immunopathology and health effects of HIV infection; each expansion served to encompass more persons with symptomatic HIV infection. Thus, far from being an artifact, the CDC's AIDS surveillance case definition is what it was intended to be-a tool to track the many persons in the latter stages of HIV infection.

The authors claimed that there are "thousands of cases of AIDS without HIV." A small percentage of cases reported to CDC have been in patients who have never had an HIV antibody test. The majority of these cases were diagnosed and reported before the first HIV antibody test was licensed in 1985. These cases were diagnosed based on the presence of "indicator" diseases (mainly Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma) that are very rare in immunocompetent persons not infected with HIV. In addition, their supposition that these cases were further defined as idiopathic CD4+ T-lymphocytopenia (ICL) is not true. Investigations show that ICL cases and AIDS cases differ epidemiologitally. Thus far, researchers have found that ICL is rare, and that no more than 100 of these cases exist.

AIDS cases do not disappear. Missing or incomplete information that accompanies AIDS cases reported to CDC through state health departments is often updated. Most cases reported without risk information are reclassified as follow-up investigations are completed.

The inevitable conclusions of more than a decade of research are that most people exposed to HIV through sexual contact, injecting drugs, or transfusions are susceptible to HIV infection. Nearly all persons who become infected with HIV will eventually develop AIDS.

Surveillance data have been useful in developing prevention and control programs for persons at risk of HIV infection. AIDS prevention programs continue to be based on our understanding of scientifically defined HIV transmission modes because prevention of AIDS is prevention of HIV. To deviate from or ignore this concept would result in an unconscionable tragedy.

Brenda W. Garza
D. Peter Drotman, M.D., M.P.H.
Harold W. Jaffe, M.D.
Division of HIV/AIDS
National Center for Infectious Disease
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Atlanta, GA

"What Causes AIDS?" contains misleading and incorrect information questioning the contagious nature of HIV infection and its causal role for AIDS. This has serious consequences, as this infection almost invariably results in long, painful, terminal illnesses and death. The authors are distinguished in fields far removed from the epidemiology of HIV and AIDS about which they pontificate. Would any of your readers hire an electrician to repair a faulty toilet?

The authors assert, "The only evidence that HIV does cause AIDS is correlation." Correlation has established the causes of many diseases: smoking and lung cancer, Staphylococcus aureus infection and toxic shock syndrome, and ionizing radiation and leukemia, to name a few. They state, "There are many cases of persons with all the symptoms of AIDS who do not have any HIV infection." This is not surprising as immune suppression, the underlying cause of AIDS, may result from defective genetic mechanisms, toxic chemical exposures, medicinal treatments, and infections other than HIV. They also assert, "There are also many cases of persons who have been infected by HIV . . . and show no signs of illness." About half of all HIV-infected persons develop AIDS within 10 years and of these, 90 percent are dead within two years. In studies observing HIV-infected persons for more than 10 years, over 85 percent have developed AIDS.

The authors claim that the San Francisco Men's Health Study, for which I am "principal investigator," was "designed not to test the HIV theory but to measure the rate at which HIV-positive gay men develop AIDS. They did not compare otherwise similar persons who differ only in HIV status, did not control effectively for drug use, and did not fully report the incidence of AIDS-defining conditions in the HIV- negative men." These assertions are misleading or just plain false.

The San Francisco Men's Health Study is an epidemiological investigation of the cause or causes of AIDS, its transmission, and the natural history of the disease. Participants were a random sample of 1,000 single men living in AIDS-affected areas of San Francisco in 1984. When a serological test for HIV infection became available in late 1984, the participants were tested to determine HIV-infection status. This allowed the investigators to conduct a large number of important analytic studies of causal factors, modes of transmission, and the natural history of HIV infection and AIDS.

An analysis of drug use, AIDS incidence, and progressive immune deficiency, using appropriate statistical techniques and proper controls, was published in 1993. No relationship between drug use and AIDS incidence or immune deficiency progression was found. The advocates of the drug etiology of AIDS have never accepted these findings nor the findings from several other rigorous studies of the drug hypothesis.

Because an AIDS diagnosis is almost invariably followed by death within two years, deaths may be substituted for AIDS diagnoses to evaluate the occurrence of cases among the uninfected. In the San Francisco Men's Health Study, 581 participants, who were uninfected by the HIV on entry, remained uninfected for over eight years. Among them, eight deaths occurred, for a cumulative rate of 1.4 percent. Of the 400 men infected by the HIV, 169 deaths Occurred, for a cumulative rate of 42.3 percent. These data are inconsistent with the contention that there were AIDS cases among the uninfected.

Space precludes a complete refutation of the other misstatements which burden the article. The readers of Reason magazine should not be misled about the consequences of HIV infection. As indicated above, these consequences are very serious. Regardless of whether or not HIV infection causes AIDS, it is a strong predictor of premature death.

Warren Winkelstein Jr., M.D., M.P.H.
Professor of Epidemiology (emeritus)
School of Public Health
University of California
Berkeley, CA

It has now been over three years since I first challenged Peter Duesberg and a co-writer that if they really don't believe HIV causes AIDS they should publicly inject themselves with the virus. It would hardly be the first time a doubter of a pathogen-disease hypothesis has intentionally exposed himself. Nevertheless, Duesberg and fellow have steadfastly refused to do so and neither have any of Duesberg's vocal followers volunteered to take their place. They won't shoot up, but as their article "What Causes AIDS? It's An Open Question," shows, they won' t shut up, either.

To address just a few major points:

They write that "after spending billions of dollars, HIV researchers are still unable to explain how HIV, a conventional retrovirus with very simple genetic organization, damages the immune system, much less how to stop it."

Only three retroviruses have been discovered, the first barely over a decade ago. How does one become "conventional"? The authors want us to believe that because it is "conventional" and simple genetically it should have been cured by now, but all viruses are genetically simple and we have cures for none of them. What will make curing HIV all the harder is that it is so very unconventional in that unlike any other human virus we know about, it attacks the very immune system and to date our disease-fighting tools have always relied on the immune system as an ally.

As to how it damages the immune system, there are numerous medical journal articles on the subject, the latest in the June 2 issue of Nature. This doesn't mean we understand how HIV works in the same way that we understand, say, internal combustion in a piston engine. Human physiology is infinitely more complicated than a motor. Still, we certainly know more about the actions of HIV than we do about most viruses simply because HIV has been so heavily studied. Finally on this point, knowing the cause and knowing the cure may have little or no relationship. For hundreds of years, people knew that cigarette smoking caused lung cancer, yet the cure rate for lung cancer even today is dismal.

The authors state, "In the absence of any agreement about how HIV causes AIDS, the only evidence that HIV does cause AIDS is correlation. " Aside from ignoring the medical literature, they fail to recognize that epidemiology has always been about correlation. Long before there were electron microscopes, cell lines, and the National Institutes of Health, epidemiologists were identifying diseases and saving millions of lives from them based strictly on careful observance of who was getting sick and why. Walter Reed didn't have the least idea of what yellow fever did on a cellular level, but he saw that it was transmitted by mosquitoes and he was thus able to practically eliminate it. Edward Jenner developed the first anti-viral vaccine a century before anyone knew what a virus was.

The conspiracists cavalierly dismiss the San Francisco study, reported on in Nature, along with the Vancouver one, reported on in the Lancet, without providing any detail on them. Here is a brief summary of the San Francisco one. Researchers directly tested the Duesberg thesis that "either drug consumption (frequently associated with malnutrition) by recently established behavioral groups or conventional clinical deficiencies are necessary and sufficient to cause indicator diseases of AIDS." They compared a set of heterosexuals who were heavy drug users and were negative for HIV with homosexuals who were heavy drug users who were both positive and negative for the virus. Reporting their results in the March 11, 1993 issue of Nature, they found that among homosexuals who were sero-positive at the beginning of the study, over half had contracted AIDS and most had died. Among the homosexuals who were negative in the beginning and stayed negative, about 2 percent had died but none had been diagnosed with AIDS even when HIV status was excluded as part of the AIDS definition. Among the heterosexuals, less than 1 percent had died and none had gotten AIDS. In addition to devastating the drug-use-causes-AIDS thesis, this study showed as close a correlation between pathogen and disease as one could ever hope to attain.

All this means nothing to the REASON authors. Forget those studies; they weren't set up to our exact specifications, they say. No, and none ever could be. Besides, they say, "the main point they supposedly prove has already been thoroughly disproved: AIDS does occur in HIV- negative persons." But no, it doesn't, Certainly one can get diseases that resemble AIDS, just as one can get a disease that resembles the flu. (How often do we hear of someone suffering a "flu-like illness" ?) A chronic cough and expectoration of blood can be symptomatic for bronchitis, tuberculosis, or lung cancer. It doesn't mean these are all the same disease. As the authors themselves point out, the definition of AIDS symptoms covers a wide area. Certainly, it's not difficult for other diseases to mimic that which some AIDS patients may be suffering. This doesn't make them AIDS cases any more than a bloody cough makes TB be lung cancer.

Among hundreds of thousands of sufferers of any given disease there will be a tremendous spectrum in manifestation of symptoms and plenty of anomalies, but with HIV there is a strong pattern of disease progression. After a few years of infection persons begin to lose T-helper cells, then begin to develop outward manifestations of immune dysfunction such as oral candidiasis, then begin to suffer life-threatening diseases such as pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Outside of persons given immune-suppressing drugs, PCP is remarkably rare, so much so that prior to the AIDS epidemic the CDC was dispensing fewer than 100 proscriptions of pentamidine (at that time the only treatment for the disease) a year. In 1993, however, there were over 12,000 confirmed PCP diagnoses and another 7,000 suspected cases, all in HIV-positive persons. In other words, if you don't have HIV your odds of getting PCP are one in several millions. If you do have it, your odds before the introduction of aerosolized pentamidine as a preventative treatment were better than 50-50. Even now, they may be better than one in four. What an amazing coincidence.

HIV cohorts have shown that after about 10 years of infection, half of all persons will be dying while almost all of the rest will be suffering severe symptoms. The authors make much of the fact that some HIV carriers remain healthy even after 11 years of infection. As always, they ignore the rule for the exception, making us think the edge of the bell curve is the top. Probably no pathogen known kills with 100 percent efficacy; indeed, about 90 percent of persons carrying the bacteria that causes tuberculosis will never manifest the disease. An even smaller percentage will suffer symptoms from infection with cytomegalovirus. Indeed, the correlation between HIV and manifestation of symptoms, and the correlation between HIV and death, may prove to be stronger than that for any pathogen present in the human population.

Much of what the authors say is unquestionably true, and just as unquestionably doesn't support their case.

Certainly there are co-factors that increase the rate at which HIV decimates the immune system, co-factors that if blocked might greatly increase the length and quality of life for persons with HIV. Co-factors commonly play a role in disease causation. But nobody says that because mycobacterium tuberculosis appears to work with co-factors to manifest as TB that mycobacterium tuberculosis isn't the cause of the disease. The reason? Because you can have those co-factors, but without the mycobacterium, you don't get TB. Just so with HIV and AIDS. Further, quite the opposite of what the Duesberg conspiracists would have us think, scientists have already been devoting a tremendous amount of research to finding HIV co-factors, albeit with precious little to show for the effort.

And yes, certainly the African AIDS epidemic has been overstated, with every fatal disease under the African sun being dubbed AIDS because that seems to be the only disease Westerners care about. But this does nothing to support the conspiracists' hypothesis. Likewise, I was writing about-and staking my reputation on-the exaggeration of the American epidemic, especially with regards to middle-class heterosexuals, long before the authors published word one on the subject. I did so by analyzing patterns of both cases and infections. I noted in 1989 that since stored blood samples indicated that HIV infections appear to have peaked out in American cities around 1981 and 1982 and since it takes on average about 10 years for an AIDS infection to manifest, the epidemic wits probably on the verge of peaking. Indeed, the CDC noted recently (to the deafening silence of the media), that using the pre-1993 definition of the disease, AIDS cases did decline in 1992.

Of course I have now become one of the AIDS conspirators-that group of persons so callous and vicious that we are willing to let hundreds of thousands of Americans alone die of this horrible disease. That or I've just closed my mind like a steel trap, like John Maddox supposedly has. "Like other leaders of the scientific establishment," write the conspiracists, "Nature editor John Maddox is fiercely protective of HIV theory. He indignantly rejected a scientific paper making the same point as this article."

In fact, toward the end of Rethinking AIDS, a Duesberg conspiracy book, author Robert Root-Bernstein crowed: "John Maddox . . . has written that he should have given critics of the HIV theory, such as Peter Duesberg, room to express their concerns." So he did. It was only after the aforementioned 1993 Nature article, along with two other Nature articles discussing how HIV causes AIDS, that Maddox editorialized, "Duesberg, having led many people with AIDS on a seductive path, should now admit the likelihood that he is mistaken."

But like the AIDS alarmists against whom they have rightly aligned themselves, neither Duesberg nor his acolytes are ever going to let a little thing like scientific evidence get in the way.

Michael Fumento
St. Petersburg, FL
(Michael Fumento is the author of "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.)

You can read these letters for yourself at:

http://www.duesberg.com/articles/kmreasonrep.html

As you can see, Duesberg et al are not in the least bit afraid to post the best that their critics have to offer. That's because they eat these guys for lunch both in terms of published research and in debate (I have witnessed these charlatans get creamed in debate over and over...it's gotten so bad that they will no longer even show up). Did you bother reading the authors' response to their critics??? I would imagine not...but who knows, maybe you'll surprise me. Moreover, did you know that NIH officials offered Duesberg a bribe to recant his position on AIDS? Hardly the behavior you would expect from Public Health officials who are confident that they have properly identified the cause of AIDS. Truth is, these guys know that if the truth about AIDS ever gets out, their collective heads will roll (and some know full well that there is a good chance they will go to prison for suppressing scientific debate about the real cause of AIDS).

BTW, Fumento is one of those phonies sent out by the CDC/NIH to dupe conservatives into supporting HIV=AIDS and the so-called "War on AIDS", which involves population control measures typical of those in the AIDS/Public Health Establishment. To see how this worked, see the second link entitled "The Hidden Agenda Behind HIV" in post #2. Better yet, I'll post it here:

The Hidden Agenda Behind HIV

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1395003/posts

As I read these commentaries by Fumento, Winklestein, Garza, Drotman, and Jaffe, I was struck by how their points were either off topic, wrongly characterized, misleading, or irrelevant to the argument presented.

Then I read Fumento's staement: "Much of what the authors say is unquestionably true, and just as unquestionably doesn't support their case." And I wondered if he could possibly be aware of the irony dripping from such a statement. Probably not, I concluded.

I remain convinced that when the apologies are handed round for this entirely avoidable medical and scientific disaster, if the day ever comes, it Peter Duesberg eating crow.

That was meant to read:

I remain convinced that when the apologies are handed round for this entirely avoidable medical and scientific disaster, if the day ever comes, it won't be Peter Duesberg eating crow.

I kinda figured you meant that. BTW, doesn't Fumento acknowledge the CDC/NIH for all their help on his book "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS"? If memory serves, Fumento used to work under contract for NIH. I think Duesberg mentions this in his book "Inventing the AIDS Virus" as well. That would explain how Fumento can concede Duesberg et al's arguments and then turn around and say that's why they are wrong!!!!

BTW, speaking of conservatives, do you know who endorsed Duesberg and Ellison's book?

"This book may well be the most important treatise on the issue of public health in this decade"

--George Grant, author of "Grand Illusions" and "The Family Under Siege."

"The information set forth in this book should be read by anyone interested in the AIDS issue. The governement has evolved an enormous scientific bureaucracy which may be premised on chasing the wrong horse. I suggest a full-scale investigation to dig out the answers."

--Congressman William Dannemeyer

THE INVESTIGATION STILL NEEDS TO HAPPEN!

"Who gains from such a conspiracy?"

The answer is so simple:
The same people who gain from every medical lie that is constantly perpetuated by the MSM, and all the alphabet soup federal 'health' agencies, the pharmaceutical poison manufacturers.

==the pharmaceutical poison manufacturers.

That's just one group who benefits. You will find that the proponants of social engineering, population control and socialized medicine used the AIDS gravey train to advance their agenda further than anything possible before the advent of the "War on AIDS"...even amongst conservatives. Indeed, they should rename this whole campaign the "War on Traditional Values." Here's a link exposing this movement if you're interested...

The Hidden Agenda Behind HIV

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1395003/posts

What about this: http://www.gutenberg.org/cdproject/cd/etext01/wrnpc10.txt

And this: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/bnf/bnf0003.html

What do you think of that?

'MEDS' not 'HIV' - The real killer
Don't believe what the drugs companies tell you.

WITHOUT HAART 'MEDS"

“These long-term nonprogressors [Hiv+ people who remained healthy] are a heterogeneous group with respect to viral load and HIV-1 responses…none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers

NOT ONE USED HAART

“Subjects: homosexual men in Amsterdam. “None of the LTAs [long-term asymptomatics–people who remained healthy]…received any antiviral drugs during the study [7 years].”

“Ten HIV+ people; 11-15 years infected; non-progressors [i.e., healthy]; maintained stable T-cell counts above 500. “These long-term nonprogressors…all showed the same risk factor (sexual exposure), and all had...virus...and none had been treated with antiretroviral agents.”

AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, 12: 585 (1996)
– Harrer, Thomas, et al, Aids Researchers
Journal of Infectious Diseases, 171:811 (1995)
– Hogervorst E, et al, Aids Researchers
_________
__________

WITH HAART

“…Choosing between many of these [HAART] combinations is, therefore, increasingly dependent upon knowledge of antiretroviral toxicities...[which include] myopathy [gross muscle atrophy] (zidovudine [AZT]), neuropathy (stavudine, didanosine, zalcitabine; hepatic steatosis and lactic acidaemia (didanosine, stavudine, zidovudine); and possible also peripheral lipoatrophy and pancreatitis (didanosine)...drug hypersensitivity... lipodystrophy...[including] peripheral fat loss (Presumed lipoatrophy in the face, limbs and buttocks) and central fat accumulation (within the abdomen, breasts and over the dorsocervical spine [so-called buffalo hump]...[and prevalent in] about 50% [of patients] after 12-18 months of therapy...Metabolic features significantly associated with lipodystrophy and protease-inhibitor therapy include hypertriglyceridaemia, hypercholesterolaemia, insulin resistance...and type 2 ...diabetes mellitus. Dyslipidaemia at concentrations associated with increased cardiovascular disease occurs in about 70% of patients. These metabolic abnormalities are more profound in those receiving protease inhibitors...Most cases of diabetes have been identified in recipients of protease inhibitors...Anemia and granulocytopenia affect about 5-10% of patients who receive zidovudine...Virtually all antiretroviral medications can cause nausea, vomiting, or diarrhoea early in therapy...Diarrhea is probably most common with protease inhibitors...Most antiretroviral agents have been associated with hepatic [liver] toxicity...Most protease inhibitors seem to result in increased rates of spontaneous bleeding (bruising, haemarthrosis, and rarely intracranial haemorrhage) in haemophiliacs... 25-35% of patients cannot tolerate [AZT monotherapy] or triple combination therapy for 4 weeks...”

Lancet. 2000 Oct 21;356:1423-0.
– Carr A, Cooper DA, Aids Researchers

BLINDNESS

“This study was conducted to determine the likelihood of the development of [immune recovery vitritis, IRV], which causes vision loss in AIDS patients with cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis, who respond to HAART. We followed 30 HAART-responders…Symptomatic IRV developed in 19 (63%) of 30 patients.”

J Infect Dis. 1999 Mar;179(3):697-700

CASTLEMAN'S DISEASE

“Recently, we observed an unusual cluster of cases of rapidly progressing multicentric Castleman’s disease. Fever, weakness, generalized enlargement of lymph nodes, and marked polyclonal gammopathy developed in three patients with AIDS...Two of these patients died within one week after the diagnosis, with generalized involvement of the lymphatic system, liver, and bone marrow at autopsy. A fourth patient with AIDS who died equally rapidly after the diagnosis of multicentric Castleman’s disease had been seen in our hospital 14 months earlier... symptoms…started after the initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy in these three patients.”

N Engl J Med. 1999 Jun 17;340(24):1923-4
– Zietz C, et al, Aids Researchers
– Karavellas MP, et al, Aids Researchers

DEATH
“…Of the 70 patients studied, 84% were still alive after the 3-month study period...17 surviving patients (24%) had HAART regimens discontinued due to drug intolerance and 11 (16%) expired [died] during the study period...”
J Pain Symptom Manage. 2001 Jan;21(1):41-51

NERVE DAMAGE

“The antiretroviral drugs currently licensed in the United Kingdom [June 1996] are zidovudine (azidothymidine [AZT]), zalcitabine (ddC) and didanosine (ddI). All three are nucleoside analogues...All are very toxic. Suppression of bone marrow elements can occur with any of the three, as can peripheral neuropathy [nerve damage].”

Adverse Drug Reaction Bulletin. 1996 Jun;178:675-8.
– Ellis C.J., Leung D., Aids researchers

“A decrease in mtDNA [DNA of the mitochondria; the energy regulating entities within every cell] content was found in HAART-treated HIV-infected patients with peripheral fat wasting in comparison with subjects in the control cohorts...Lipodystrophy with peripheral fat wasting following treatment with NRTI [Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor]-containing HAART is associated with a decrease in subcutaneous adipose [under the skin fat] tissue.”

AIDS. 2001;15:1801-9
– Shikuma CM, Hu N, Milne C, et al, Aids Researchers

‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’
“7 HIV patients presenting LD [Lipodystrophy, all taking antiretroviral therapy] and 5 HIV non-LD controls participated in the study…Structural muscle abnormalities, mitochondrial respiratory chain dysfunction or mtDNA deletions were detected in all HIV lipodystrophic patients. The mitochondrial abnormalities found suggest that mitochondrial dysfunction could play a role in the development of antiretroviral therapy-related lipodystrophy. ”
AIDS. 2001 Sep 7;15(13):1643-51
– Zaera MG, et al, Aids Researchers

“Combination drug therapy, or the triple-drug ‘cocktail’…often provokes severe side effects… ‘These drugs are as dangerous as chemotherapy,’ warned Dr. James Kahn, UCSF associate professor of medicine…”
– Science Daily, Sep 4, 2001

SEXUAL DIFFICULTIES - Body distortions

“[Chapters in this guide to HIV drugs are entitled Introduction, Appetite loss, Body distortions (lipodystrophy), Bone death and destruction, Cardiac concerns, Diarrhea, Fatigue, Gas and bloating, Hair loss, Headaches, Insulin resistance and diabetes, Kidney stones, Liver toxicity, Muscle aches and pains, Nausea and vomiting, Nightmares, daymares and sleeping difficulties, Pancreatitis, Peripheral neuropathy, Skin problems, Sexual difficulties, The end]”

– A Practical Guide to HIV Drug Side Effects, CATIE, 2002

HEART ATTACKS
“Use of protease inhibitors was strongly associated with the likelihood of having a myocardial infarction [heart attack] and correlated with diabetes mellitus and hyperlipidaemia.”
Lancet. 2002 Nov 30;360(9347)
– Holmberg SD, et al, Aids Researchers