Electron microscope picture showing budding HIV particles
Posted on 01/24/2004 7:35:26 PM PST by Doc Savage
In 1981 I had returned from Alaska having spent two years doing field work on islands in the Bering Straits as a biologist. Then, working for Merck & Co., Inc., in New Jersey, I had the benefit of reading almost every scientific journal available.
I distinctly recall the 1981 NEJM article by Gottlieb et al initially describing an aquired immunodeficiency syndrome in the homosexual community which he, and others, attributed to the use of aphrodisiac nitrite inhalants (poppers) and other so-called "recreational" drugs.
It wasn't until much later that virologists became interested in a possible viral cause of AIDS, an action that eventually led to the "discovery" of a new retrovirus that was closely related to a "hypothetical" human leukemia virus. Human Immunodeficiency Virus was born.
Scientific research and discovery is based upon the principles of the scientific method. Additionally, when a scientific fact or breakthrough emerges in one laboratory, it is the ethical responsibility of other interested scientists to attempt to duplicate the results of the initial experiment. Neither the scientific method, not "peer-review" were followed in the "discovery" of HIV. To this day no original scientific study has ever been published to prove conclusively that HIV is the causative agent in AIDS. And since no such publication ever existed, the "results" could not be "reproduced" by other researchers.
For those of you who were not of sufficient age to either understand or comprehend the "epidemic crisis" that followed this viral hypothesis, it was dramatic, it was swift, and it was worldwide in it's impact. It quickly became evident that such a deadly virus, if easily transmittable, could infect and kill millions of people and ravage our nation's blood supplies.
Since I first visited FR there have been hundreds if not thousands of articles on AIDS posted. Normally questioning adults, the vast majority of Freepers have blindly accepted these articles on faith,...after all, how could so many scientists be wrong??,...how could the homosexual advocates be using AIDS as a propaganda tool in the political war on mainstream society??,...how could the government have spent 93 Billion dollars on AIDS since 1981 and been wrong about the actual cause of AIDS.
I recall the same lessons that every biology and science student has received to this day: Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny,...now proven false. One Gene - One Enzyme,...of course that is not so. Miller & Urey's experiment explains how life formed (not true) and we are the end result of a random evolutionary process,...except that no one can prove the theory and to this day it remains merely that,...a theory.
The point is that many times we blindly accept "truisms" that later turn out not to be so. So many Freepers have invested themselves in the HIV theory that they feel it is socially and scientifically responsible to ridicule anyone who even broaches a dissimilar explanation.
Since the vast majority of Freepers suffer from "The Smartest Guy In The Room" syndrome, I expect many of you will find the following points unsupportive and highly contestable:
Assumption: 1. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, it must be abundant in AIDS patients based on “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases.”
FACT: Only antibodies against HIV are found in most patients. Therefore, “HIV infection is identified in blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences, or viral isolation.” But, HIV can only be “isolated” from rare, latently infected lymphocytes that have been cultured for weeks in vitro – away from the antibodies of the human host. Thus HIV behaves like a latent passenger virus.
Assumption: 2. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, there is no AIDS in HIV-free people.
FACT: The AIDS literature has described at least 4621 HIV-free AIDS cases according to one survey – irrespective of, or in agreement with allowances made by the CDC for HIV-free AIDS cases.
Assumption: 3. The retrovirus HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing T-cells.
FACT: Retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral DNA integrated into cellular DNA. Thus, T-cells infected in vitro thrive, and those patented to mass-produce HIV for the detection of HIV antibodies and diagnosis of AIDS are immortal.
Assumption: 4. Following “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases”, HIV causes AIDS by killing more T-cells than the body can replace. Thus T-cells or “CD4 lymphocytes . . . become depleted in people with AIDS”.
FACT: Even in patients dying from AIDS less than 1 in 500 of the T-cells “that become depleted” are ever infected by HIV. This rate of infection is the hallmark of a latent passenger virus.
Assumption: 5. With an RNA of 9 kilobases, just like polio virus, HIV should be able to cause one specific disease, or no disease if it is a passenger.
FACT: HIV is said to be “the sole cause of AIDS”, or of 26 different immunodeficiency and non-immunodeficiency diseases, all of which also occur without HIV. Thus there is not one HIV-specific disease, which is the definition of a passenger virus.
Assumption: 6. All viruses are most pathogenic prior to anti-viral immunity. Therefore, preemptive immunization with Jennerian vaccines is used to protect against all viral diseases since 1798.
FACT: AIDS is observed – by definition – only after anti- HIV immunity is established, a positive HIV/AIDS test. Thus HIV cannot cause AIDS by “the same criteria” as conventional viruses.
Assumption 7. HIV needs “5–10 years” from establishing antiviral immunity to cause AIDS.
FACT: HIV replicates in 1 day, generating over 100 new HIVs per cell. Accordingly, HIV is immunogenic, i.e. biochemically most active, within weeks after infection. Thus, based on conventional criteria “for other viral diseases”, HIV should also cause AIDS within weeks – if it could.
Assumption: 8. “Most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within 5–10 years” – the justification for prophylaxis of AIDS with the DNA chain terminator AZT.
FACT: Of “34.3 million . . . with HIV worldwide” only 1.4% [= 471,457 (obtained by substracting the WHO’s cumulative total of 1999 from that of 2000)] developed AIDS in 2000, and similarly low percentages prevailed in all previous years. Likewise, in 1985, only 1.2% of the 1 million US citizens with HIV developed AIDS. Since an annual incidence of 1.2–1.4% of all 26 AIDS defining diseases combined is no more than the normal mortality in the US and Europe (life expectancy of 75 years), HIV must be a passenger virus.
Assumption: 9. A vaccine against HIV should (“is hoped” to) prevent AIDS – the reason why AIDS researchers try to develop an AIDS vaccine since 1984.
FACT: Despite enormous efforts there is no such vaccine to this day. Moreover, since AIDS occurs by definition only in the presence of natural antibodies against HIV, and since natural antibodies are so effective that no HIV is detectable in AIDS patients, even the hopes for a vaccine are irrational.
Assumption: 10. HIV, like other viruses, survives by transmission from host to host, which is said to be mediated “through sexual contact”.
FACT: Only 1 in 1000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits HIV, and only 1 of 275 US citizens is HIV-infected. Therefore, an average un-infected US citizen needs 275,000 random “sexual contacts” to get infected and spread HIV – an unlikely basis for an epidemic.
Assumption: 11. “AIDS spreads by infection” of HIV.
FACT: Contrary to the spread of AIDS, there is no “spread” of HIV in the US. In the US HIV infections have remained constant at 1 million from 1985 (29) until now. By contrast, AIDS has increased from 1981 until 1992 and has declined ever since.
Assu,ptions: 12. Many of the 3 million people who annually receive blood transfusions in the US for life-threatening diseases, should have developed AIDS from HIV-infected blood donors prior to the elimination of HIV from the blood supply in 1985.
FACT: There was no increase in AIDS-defining diseases in HIV-positive transfusion recipients in the AIDS era, and no AIDS-defining Kaposi’s sarcoma has ever been observed in millions of transfusion recipients.
Assumptions: 13. Doctors are at high risk to contract AIDS from patients, HIV researchers from virus preparations, wives of HIV-positive hemophiliacs from husbands, and prostitutes from clients – particularly since there is no HIV vaccine.
FACT: In the peer-reviewed literature there is not one doctor or nurse who has ever contracted AIDS (not just HIV) from the over 816,000 AIDS patients recorded in the US in 22 years. Not one of over ten thousand HIV researchers has contracted AIDS. Wives of hemophiliacs do not get AIDS. And there is no AIDS-epidemic in prostitutes. Thus AIDS is not contagious.
Assumptions: 14. Viral AIDS – like all viral/microbial epidemics in the past should spread randomly in a population.
FACT: In the US and Europe AIDS is restricted since 1981 to two main risk groups, intravenous drug users and male homosexual drug users.
Assumption: 15. A viral AIDS epidemic should form a classical, bell-shaped chronological curve, rising exponentially via virus spread and declining exponentially via natural immunity, within months.
FACT: AIDS has been increasing slowly since 1981 for 12 years and is now declining since 1993, just like a lifestyle epidemic, as for example lung cancer from smoking.
Assumption: 16. AIDS should be a pediatric epidemic now, because HIV is transmitted “from mother to infant” at rates of 25–50%, and because “34.3 million people worldwide” were already infected in 2000. To reduce the high maternal transmission rate HIV-antibody-positive pregnant mothers are treated with AZT for up to 6 months prior to birth.
Fact: Less than 1% of AIDS in the US and Europe is pediatric. Thus HIV must be a passenger virus in newborns.
Assumption: 17. “HIV recognizes no social, political or geographic borders” – just like all other viruses.
FACT: The presumably HIV-caused AIDS epidemics of Africa and of the US and Europe differ both clinically and epidemiologically. The US/European epidemic is highly nonrandom, 80% male and restricted to abnormal risk groups, whereas the African epidemic is random.
The cause of AIDS is or are: recreational drugs, anti-viral chemotherapy, and malnutrition. HIV does NOT cause AIDS, and AIDS is NOT a sexually transmitted disease. To believe otherwise in the face of fact and logic is incomprehensible to me.
From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: Viral Isolation: Pasteur Institute Rules Need Revision (fwd)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 1997
Newsgroups: misc.health.aids,misc.health.alternative
In <Pine.BSF.3.95.971010092504.26439C-100000@agora.rdrop.com> Greg Nigh
<gnigh@agora.rdrop.com> writes:
>I would like to pose an open question:
>
>How were the proteins that are considered HIV proteins derived? IOW, how
>was it determined that the HIV proteins *are* HIV proteins? From what
>material were those proteins derived? How was it *confirmed* that they
>were in fact produced by the retrovirus?
The retrovirus has been cloned. You take RNA from the sucrose
gradient and turn it into DNA with reverse transcriptase. You get a
roughly 10 kB piece of DNA. That DNA has pretty much the same sequence
whenever you do the experiment, so it's not some random piece of RNA.
It's a special piece. It has the genes of a retrovirus, with common
sequences found in other lentiviruses. It codes for a number of
proteins. You can clone the DNA into bacteria and they MAKE the
proteins. SDS-PAGE and various immune blot methods tell you that these
are the same proteins that infected cells secrete, and which are in the
sucrose gradient along with the RNA. Thus, they must be viral
proteins. You can raise antibodies to them, label these with gold, and
see with EM what they stick to. Yep, they stick to those particles
that look like retroviruses from the sucrose gradient. Also they stick
to the particles which look like retrovirus which bud from cells WHEN
you infect with the cloned set of DNA genes. What the heck more do
you need?
Steve Harris, M.D.
Search for Google's copy of this article
From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: How Know You Have a Virus in Culture (was Re: Chemo (Ultrastructure of HIV))
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997
Newsgroups: misc.health.aids,misc.health.alternative,sci.med,sci.med.nutrition,sci.med.pharmacy
In <Pine.BSF.3.95.970821191742.11757A-100000@agora.rdrop.com> Greg Nigh
<gnigh@agora.rdrop.com> writes:
>This is not accurate. It is accurate to say that particles have been
>pictured which bud from cells and even that may (or may not) have the
>characteristic features of retroviruses. However, particles budding
>does not necessarily mean that they are what we think they are.
Comment: Let me try again.
There is this family of proteins which are known as "HIV
proteins," but which we can call "X-proteins" for he sake of
discussion, here. There isn't any question of their identificat-
ion or their structure or their "isolation." We know their
sequences exactly, and we produce them routinely by genetic
engineering. For example, in the 3rd generation ELISA tests for
>HIV-antibodies, the proteins for use in the tests are actually
made by recombinant techniques in microbes, using genes for the
"X-proteins." We know what these proteins, are, okay?
We have given these "X proteins" names like HIVp24, HIVp17, and
HIVgp160. This is not misidentification, because these proteins
are called these names by definition. Ultimately the name does not
matter, so long as we can agree as to the nature of these proteins,
and the fact that they aren't a part of normal cells, and must
come from elsewhere.
Do you have any problem with this?
Now, these X proteins are viral proteins, and they are not endogenous
viral proteins. We know this because the genes that code for the
proteins are NOT present in normal cells as those of an endogenous
virus would of course be. There isn't any where they can hide from a
cell DNA digest and Southern blot. Or from PCR techniques targetted to
find them. However, these genes can be transferred to normal cells in
a filtered, cell-free extract, and this transfer causes cultured cells
to suddenly start actively making all these X proteins, which can then
be collected, sequenced, and/or identified by various means (SDS-PAGE,
for instance). So the ability of cells to make these proteins is
infectious, and can be transferred from culture to culture. Moreover,
such cultures secrete the genes to make these proteins, contained in
lipid particles of a characteristic density, just like those secreted
particles that contain the proteins themselves. Addition of a
cell-free extract containing these particles to cells in culture,
causes the cells to incorporate the genes, and to make more of the
particles.
A virus, by definition, is a package of genes and proteins
secreted by cells, which causes other cells to make more of the same
such packages. Our X-proteins and the genes that code for them fit
this definition, and X-proteins are thus viral proteins, and the genes
that code for them are viral genes. Moreover, limiting dilution assay
shows that only one virus type is involved with this protein family,
since dilution of cell-free extracts of X-proteins and their genes
reaches the point where the extract either transforms a culture into
making the whole family of X-proteins and genes, or else does nothing.
If more than one virus was involved, dilution would eventually
reach the point that cultures might be induced to only make some
of the viral X proteins in question, and not others. But all
these X-proteins we're talking about go together, always. They
are the proteins of one virus species, clearly.
That's really all that is necessary. We are talking about a
new virus species, defined by the family of viral proteins it
causes cells to make in culture. Science has given this virus
the name "HIV." That's the end of that story. That's what HIV
is.
You'll notice that I haven't talked about antibodies or
electron microscopes. They are not needed to tell if you have
captured a particular virus in culture. However, we have used
such things to see what "HIV" looks like. The HIV proteins can
be used to make antibodies that react with HIV proteins, but not
other proteins in cells. These antibodies can be stuck to heavy
metal atoms so that they can be seen on electron micrographs.
If they are added to cell in cultures where HIV proteins are not
made, the antibodies don't stick to anything, and we see nothing
special about the cells. However, in cultures where virus has
been added, the cells are budding small particles into the culture
media fluid, and HIV-protein antibodies are seen to stick heavily to
these structures. It is thus eminently reasonable (and to decide
otherwise would be perverse) that these structures are where the
HIV-proteins are, and are thus the HIV virus. It helps that they
look like virus particles.
Now, remember, we have shown that have a virus
(self-propagating collection of proteins and genes) in HIV
cultures, which we call HIV. It's always possible that what we
see on electron microscopy isn't the virus which we know we're
growing, and is some other virus--- but it's rather unlikely.
If it's some other virus, how come it has such an affinity for
antibodies which we carefully made to HIV-proteins, which are the
viral proteins we're interested in? You tell me.
Steve Harris, M.D.
Search for Google's copy of this articleYou won't get an answer.
I've been asking that question for over ten years and all I get is a run around from the HIV=AIDS people. They will laugh at you for asking the question but they will never ever give you a reference to any technical work that proves the connection. They can't give it to you because it doesn't exist - and they know it. Unfortunately there are now too many careers and too much business at stake for them to give up the myth and so it persists.
Now with kids in middle school and high school, I find myself periodically re-educating them about politics and the homosexual agenda. Public schools: sheesh!
Do you have any recommended current reading? Some new references would be useful.
Thanks again for the excellent post--I've saved it for my oldest kid.
--twk
I do have one question however. Even IF HIV was not the transmitting factor, and there is no such thing as heterosexual aids, then how would the rampant infections in Africa and Asia be explained. I know the article alluded to 'poor nutrition' as one of the 'causes' (pardon the quotation marks please), however you cannot tell me all the cases are due to nutrition. Some of the infected cases are among segments of the population that do not fall under the whole 'poor starving African' stereotype. For example one of the hotspots of infection is South Africa, and you cannot say all those cases (some say up to 25%) are due to poor nutrition. S.Africa is not the Gambia.
And anyways, i guess my most important question is this: if not HIV what then?
Read on.
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