VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

IS THIS AIDS GROUP MORE HARM THAN GOOD?
HEAL says toxic drugs and fear - not a virus - cause AIDS

By Colman Jones

Now 9-15 April 1998

A new AIDS patient advocacy group that's not the least bit interested in those much-lauded combination therapies has sprouted up in the city.

The most recently formed chapter of an international "AIDS dissident" organization called HEAL (Health AIDS Education Liaison), is encouraging people with HIV to question not only the safety and effectiveness of the drug "cocktails" but also whether the virus is really what's making them sick.

Having spent a decade covering scientific controversies surrounding AIDS, I find it refreshing to see new voices enter this critical debate over causes and treatments.

Tired arguments

But the group's rehashing of old, tired arguments about how AIDS itself isn't sexually transmitted but simply the result of too much drug use of one sort or another -- coupled with more recent quibbling over the existence of HIV itself --has me wondering how much constructive dialogue this new arrival will really foster.

The truth is that AIDS dissidence, once so fruitful, has become a scientific free-for-all in which the entire accumulated knowledge about the syndrome -- even the germ theory itself -- is being turned upside down.

As part of HEAL's debut, it's bringing controversial U.S. writer Christine Maggiore to Toronto this week.

A Los Angeles AIDS activist and recent mother who has become the latest recruit into the AIDS dissenters' movement, Maggiore was going to business school in 1992 when she discovered she was HIV-positive, after which she volunteered at AIDS service organizations, seeking to educate others about the disease.

But to her dismay, she discovered,"There was no mention among any of the instructors or in any of the literature that there were unanswered questions as to whether HIV was in fact the cause of AIDS."

Maggiore -- speaking Saturday (April 11) at the George Ignatieff Theatre -- has written a small book entitled What If Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong? Laid out in large, bold type, it brings together most of the main dissident arguments, albeit in rather simplistic fashion.

AIDS dissidents who follow Maggiore aren't impressed with the new protease inhibitor drugs, even though they've been credited with drastically reducing levels of the virus in people with HIV, parallelled by a sharp decrease in deaths from AIDS -- at least so far. It's been the kind of treatment success that's made most AIDS activists reluctant to consider alternative theories about the syndrome's ultimate cause.

Local force

Carl Strygg, on the other hand, one of the main local forces behind HEAL, maintains that "the current enthusiasm over the combination therapy drugs is premature." He says the recent drop in AIDS deaths preceded the introduction of the new drugs.

Strygg, a former restaurant owner and internationally acclaimed countertenor, isn't worried that his or Maggiore's lack of scientific credentials will get in the way.

His main aim, he says, is to provoke dialogue.

To people like Strygg, every part of the HIV/AIDS equation remains open to question. Strygg says he started the HEAL chapter because he felt the dissident viewpoint was underrepresented here.

Among his chief aims is to spread the word that an HIV-plus test result "is not a death sentence." The group's Web site says it wants "to reassure people that simply testing HIV-positive is far from being a health problem that needs to be treated."

HEAL's entry onto the AIDS scene here in Toronto is only the latest twist in a long series of challenges to the ruling HIV-equals-AIDS paradigm. Those challenges were kick-started over 10 years ago by renegade California professor Peter Duesberg.

Nobel questioners

Duesberg, a renowned expert on retroviruses -- the family of viruses to which HIV belongs -- couldn't understand how a virus that infects so few cells in the body could cause so much damage. The initial questions he raised have been asked by increasing numbers of scientists around the world, including two Nobel laureates.

But Duesberg has since gone on to argue that AIDS itself is not sexually transmitted but is instead simply caused by drug use -- both recreational and pharmaceutical -- along with malnutrition and other unspecified "prior health risks."

Strygg says HEAL takes no firm position on what causes AIDS, given the paucity of hard evidence. But he maintains, "The lack of truly objective research in the AIDS establishment is a huge problem. If HEAL had research money, we would instigate studies to look at what other commonalities AIDS patients have outside of HIV, and I think we would find them to be many."

But despite HEAL's insistence that they are only encouraging debate, their Web site repeats oft-quoted dissident pronouncements like, "Prior health risks, toxic medications and intense fear cause AIDS," and, "HIV/AIDS researchers and health officials are herewith called upon to... recognize the mistake that immune deficiency was acquired by an infectious agent."

The view that AIDS is largely a disease of drugs and lifestyle and is not due to any infectious agents is one that most media coverage of the debate paints as the only alternative to the HIV model, effectively obscuring other theorists who suggest that other viruses and bacteria may be among the real culprits.

For example, many studies show a strong link between HIV and syphilis, a disease that not only makes it easier for HIV to spread through genital sores but also has just been shown to stimulate virus replication in the test tube and may itself contribute to the breakdown of the immune system.

To some patient advocates, among them Martin Delaney of the San Francisco-based advocacy group Project Inform, conjecturing that sexual activity poses no risk of AIDS whatsoever is dangerous, and Delaney has actually sought to bar Duesberg from speaking in public.

Furthermore, some of the more arcane debates over whether HIV really exists offer little to people struggling with day-to-day choices about their health. Paul McPhee, co-chair of AIDS Action NOW (AAN), makes no bones about his belief in HIV -- and the drugs used to treat it. "If it weren't for these anti-HIV drugs, I would not be here right now," he tells me with certainty.

Other frontline workers aren't so sure that HIV is the only player in AIDS. Mark Freamo, another longtime AIDS activist, admits, "There's an underlying suspicion. I think it exists in almost every thinking person who has HIV, especially if you're stuck on these drugs that cause you to be sick a lot of the time, that something's not there, that the missing pieces of the puzzle are still out there somewhere."

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE