AIDS DEBATE
An alternate viewpoint

By Rupa Chinai

One India one people July 2001

As a journalist writing on public health issues for the past six years, I have closely followed issues related to AIDS, both within India and internationally. This exposure is forcing a number of questions. The evidence at ground reality does not conform to what we are being told about how this 'epidemic' is projected to behave. But when questions are raised, they either encounter a stone wall of silence, or the questioner is lampooned.

At a time when there is still no known cure for AIDS; when there is no certainty that the 'cocktail therapy' does more good than harm; when many patients dubbed as 'HIV positive' are driven to suicide because of the social stigma, and enormous public funds are being poured into an AIDS programme, -- the need for an informed public debate is urgently required.

Preventing it is the fact that too many AIDS NGOs have to perpetuate their existence through AIDS funds; too many careers are being built as 'international AIDS consultants'; too many governments in Asia and Africa are finding an 'easy fix' in condom promotion and sex education and too many pharmaceutical majors have to sell HIV kits and drug cocktails.

At last year's international AIDS conference held in South Africa, one saw the remarkable spectacle of the South African President, being lambasted by Western scientists from within the AIDS lobby, and the media, who dismissed him as a heretic, because he chose to raise questions, and also listen to those who held 'another point of view'.

Those who hold this other point of view are eminent scientists and professionals, including Nobel prize winners. Many from the Indian media, present at the Durban conference, followed the official line of the Indian government, to slam the "dissidents'', without once explaining their stand.

The "alternative viewpoint'', as I have understood it, accepts that there is a disease called AIDS. The main question however, focusses on what is the causation of AIDS. Is infection by a virus called HIV solely responsible for the progression into AIDS? If it is not the virus, what are the other factors assaulting the immune system and is their impact irreversible?

The 'dissident view' challenge the germ theory of disease. They believe that AIDS is the consequence of a suppressed immune system that has been subjected to repeated onslaught of toxins and deficiency due to under-nourishment. If at all HIV exists, it is the marker of a suppressed immune system. Like the witness at the accident spot, it marks the site of the accident, but did not cause it. Viruses and bacteria don't cause ill-health and disease - a weak immune system does, they say.

The most well explained presentation of this "alternate thinking'' comes from a group of Australian scientists at the Royal Perth Hospital. For the past decade they have reviewed published international research to conclude that there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS.

The Australian team's conclusion that HIV has never been isolated and therefore the HIV antibody test cannot prove the presence of HIV infection raises questions about false positive results due to cross-reactivity with other microbes.

According to the British journal, Continuum, scientific data has documented studies showing that the HIV tests, Elisa and Western Blot, can show false results when there is cross-reactivity with a host of viral and bacterial species. Thus the presence of at least 70 different conditions in a person being tested for HIV can show false positive results, it claimed. These conditions include influenza, herpes simplex, hepatitis, all mycobacterium bacterial species (including leprosy and tuberculosis) malaria, and even the condition of pregnancy and malnutrition.

The fact that the HIV test is not specific for the detection of the virus is evident in the literature accompanying the Eliza test kits (from Abbott Laboratories, for instance). This amply clarifies that the presence of antibodies does not necessarily confirm the presence of the virus.

The WHO now concedes that reliance on a single HIV test is not acceptable in labelling a person as 'HIV positive'. At least three confirmatory tests are required to elimenate the possibility of picking up other infection markers, they say.

Evidence from disparate international scientific sources meanwhile concur on four factors that are contributing to repeated assaults on the body's immune system, and leading to its suppression. These factors are rampant antibiotic abuse; recreational drug abuse; anal sex penetration; nutritional and other forms of stress.

All of these are factors of toxicity and deficiency in the body, are public health problems that need to be addressed in themselves. While drugs and anal sex has been practised over centuries, the new factor could be the combination of these four factors since the 1960's which could explain the emergence of AIDS.

Having attempted to understand this thinking of the "dissident scientific community'' in the West, this reporter then tried to look at what is happening in India, letting AIDS patients and those working to support them, speak from their experience of ground reality. Two clear trends have emerged: HIV does not equal death for many within the general population. There is however, a rapid progression into AIDS for many within the homosexual community, and those who indulge in drug abuse.

In Mumbai, the "AIDS capital of India'', counselling groups such as Salvation Army and CASA (Counselling and Allied Services) who see HIV positive people from within the general population, say there is strong evidence to show that the damage caused to the immune system can be reversed. This is happening with right nutrition, a changed lifestyle, a supportive family, good counselling and stress reduction. Experts concede that this is "an accepted medical phenomenon''.

Unfortunately, this experience of patients is being drowned in the cacophony over condoms, sex education and multi-drug therapy. The Salvation Army counsellors can recall only 15 deaths amongst the 900 patients they have been following over the past decade. These deaths are attributed to factors of malnutrition and TB.

These counselling groups, along with several other sources, are also seeing a sizeable number of persons in Mumbai are receiving false HIV positive results.

Counsellors and doctors in Mumbai are realising that an HIV positive test result is fraught with uncertainties when it shows up in an asymptomatic person who does not have the clinical symptoms of AIDS. Mumbai's government run Sion Hospital no longer insists on an HIV test on admission. It is prescribed only when a patient shows symptoms such as repeated bouts of diarrhoea, fever, loss of body weight, or TB. Most private hospitals in the city insist on an HIV test before admission.

Evidence shows that many private laboratories in the city lack acceditation and technical expertise to assure standardised testing, and are doling out false postive HIV results.

Meanwhile, at a recent workshop in Delhi, health officials from the North-East states spoke of the devastating impact recreational drug abuse is having on the lives of the tribal people, and the visible presence of AIDS in this region. Unfortunately the entire focus of their effort is in promoting the 'clean needle exchange programme', while there is mere lip service paid to detoxification and rehabilitation.

Prevention programmes make no attempt to address problems of widespread alcoholism in communities when repeatedly studies point to this as the most serious underlying factor for high risk behaviour. Drug addicts and 'pill poppers' are not being given the clear message that use of chemical drugs is leading to immune suppression and AIDS.

Meanwhile a dangerous falsehood is being perpetuated in the projections of HIV incidence and AIDS deaths and skewing priorities in health policy. International agencies have sought to influence the 'larger than life' hype surrounding HIV/AIDS by making epidemiological estimations based on mathematical calculations, which find no backing in the field.

Two decades into the 'AIDS epidemic', India's Death Register should be recording the unusual rise in "millions of deaths'', even if they are not attributed to AIDS. There is no such unusual spurt in deaths from TB or diarrhoea, the main AIDS associated illnesses, says biostatician Padam Singh, Additional Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research.

The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says that totally there are only 11,000 "reported deaths'' of AIDS, while UNAIDS claimed that 3.1 million people died of AIDS in India in 1999 alone.

Meanwhile, India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), the apex body deciding policy and monitoring data, has itself drastically scaled down its figures on HIV/AIDS in the country. This is evident from its earlier published reports and their comparison with figures put out on NACO's website today.

Considerable evidence now points to the false premise on which these HIV/AIDS estimations are being made. For instance, data on HIV prevalence is entirely drawn from blood banks, STD clinics and ante-natal clinics situated in government run centres, frequented by the poorer segment of the population. This segment is under-nourished, vulnerable to a host of infections that could lead to cross-reactivity and a false HIV positive test.

If this premise is to be challenged as false, then the AIDS establishment which only believes that the virus causes AIDS, would need to produce comparative data on HIV/AIDS from the country's private sector. This sector caters to the better nourished class of patients, who are presumably, no less sexually active than the poor. Such data has never been sought by the health authorities.

So what is all this information amounting to? While only the scientific community is ultimately in a position to thrash out the issue of whether HIV exists and whether it is the sole cause of AIDS or not, the debate has immediate implications for the government and public.

Research studies from the fields of AIDS, cancer and heart disease repeatedly emphasise the dramatic impact right nutrition and recreational exercise has in maintaining the health of the body's immune system. Evidence on the foetal origins of disease further point to the role right nutrition plays in safeguarding the health of future generations, preventing blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease in adulthood.

AIDS needs to be treated just like any other chronic disease. Health and prevention of disease needs holistic support. To limit our interventions to sex education, condoms and multi-drug therapy may amount to perpetuating the greatest hoax of the century on poor and innocent people in the developing world.