VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE
YOU CAN TEST HIV-POSTIVE AND NOT END UP SUFFERING FROM AIDS
The Star (SA) 1 March 2001
Current tests are distinctly dodgy, as is the whole HIV theory, writes
Dr Val Turner
South Africans are bombarded daily with scare stories, quoting confusing
and contradictory facts about HIV/AIDS and promoting "anti-HIV" drugs. One
of these is The New York Times article ("At least the babies will have a
chance" The Star 20 February) on nevirapine and pregnant HIV positive
women.
For a start, these African women (and their husbands) are held up to the
world as proof of heterosexual transmission (HST) of a retrovirus HIV.
However the HIV theory of AIDS has failed in its prediction of HST in
the promiscuous West. The few decent studies of HST fail to support such
spread. One such study was announced this last month by scientists at the 8th
Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Chicago. They
concluded that the probability of HIV transmission per sex act in Uganda
is, in comparison to other parts of the world, about 1 in 1000, which is
vanishingly small.
Where then do HIV antibodies come from? Are they really due to a
retrovirus or is there some other agency at work and common in
African countries?
The crux of the matter is, and has always been, HIV. All the laboratory
phenomena said to prove its existence are non-specific. These Facts are
not disputed by virologists or HIV/AIDS experts. Even if they were specific
and could be put together as a retrovirus, to date no scientist has managed
to purify any of the many different sized and shaped objects all said at
various times to be the one and only HIV.
A pregnant African woman in the nevirapine trials will not be given
confirmatory tests. She will have her finger pricked and the nurse may
discover antibodies that react with some proteins in a rapid assay "HIV"
test kit.
Are these antibodies explained only by means of a putative HIV? For
example, antibodies which form in response to infection with the
mycobacterial and fungal agents that result in 90% of AIDS diagnoses
react with proteins in the HIV antibody tests. According to the WHO,
half of South Africa's population has come into contact with at least
one mycobacterium - that causing TB
Undoubtedly the best example that "HIV antibodies" aren't HIV antibodies
comes from Africa. In 1985 Dr Robert Gallo and his colleagues tested
stored blood collected in 1972/73 from 75 healthy, six-year-old children living
in the West Nile district of Uganda. Two thirds were found to be HIV
antibody positive on the most "specific" test, the Western blot. The only way
these children could have picked up HIV was from their mothers who, in turn,
were infected by their husbands. However, in 1972 Uganda was HIV and AIDS
free and, since few HIV-positive children are supposed to survive into
adulthood, especially without treatment, one must conclude that whatever
"HIV" antibodies are, they are not caused by a lethal, AIDS causing
retrovirus. To argue differently one must explain why anyone is left alive in
Uganda.
Twenty years down the HIV/AIDS era track it is understandably difficult
to accept that the existence of a retrovirus HIV is problematic. However,
there are two historical precedents worth mentioning.
Firstly, Africa has one of the highest prevalence rates of antibodies to
a human retrovirus HTLV-I reaching 15-35% in some areas. HTLV-I is
said to cause leukaemia but Africa is not suffering a galloping rate of
leukaemia.
Secondly, the world's first human retrovirus, HL23V, was isolated by
Gallo in 1975 and also proposed as a cause of human leukaemia. The
evidence for its existence surpasses that of HIV. But in 1980
researchers from the Sloan-Kettering and National Cancer Institutes
in the US proved that antibodies that reacted with the presumed
HL23V proteins arose as a response to a variety of common
non-infectious factors and are present in far more humans than
would be expected to develop leukaemia. Thus, from initially
signifying that an "infectious mode of transmission [of leukaemia]
remains a real possibility in humans" and "infection with an oncovirus
[retrovirus] may be extremely widespread", the first human retrovirus
abruptly disappeared from the annals of science. At present no one,
not even its discoverer, believes it exists.
The history of HL23V is grounds for predicting that when the scientific
community is ready to accept that antibodies to the HIV proteins also
arise for reasons which are non-retroviral - for which there is already
ample evidence especially in Africa - a similar fate will befall HIV.
Dr Val Turner is a member of the Presidential Aids Advisory Panel
VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE