HIV & AIDS - AIDS Acquired by Drug Consumption and Other Noncontagious Risk Factors (Part V)

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

Pharmac. & Ther. Vol. 55: 201-277, 1992

AIDS ACQUIRED BY DRUG CONSUMPTION AND OTHER NONCONTAGIOUS RISK FACTORS

PETER H. DUESBERG
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, 229 Stanley Hall, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, U.S.A.

5. Drugs and Other Noncontagious Risk Factors Resolve All Paradoxes of the Virus-AIDS Hypothesis

A direct application of the hypothesis that drugs and other noncontagious risk factors cause AIDS proves that it can resolve all paradoxes of the virus-AIDS hypothesis:

(1) It is paradoxical to assume that AIDS is new because HIV is new. HIV is a long-established, perinatally transmitted retrovirus. It just appears new because, being a chronically latent virus, it only became detectable with recently developed technology (Section 3.5.1). Instead drugs are the only new health risks in this era of ever improving health parameters. Thus AIDS is new because the drug epidemic is new.

(2) According to the virus-AIDS hypothesis it is paradoxical that AIDS did not "explode" into the general population as predicted (Institute of Medicine, 1986; Shorter, 1987; Fineberg, 1988; Heyward and Curran, 1988; Blattner, 1991; Mann and the Global AIDS Policy Coalition, 1992). AIDS has remained restricted for over 10 years to only 15,000 annual cases (0.015%) of the over 100 million sexually active heterosexual Americans, and to only 25,000 (0.3%) of the 8 million homosexuals (Centers for Disease Control, 1992b), although venereal diseases (Aral and Holmes, 1991), unwanted pregnancies and births (Hoffman, 1992; The Software Toolworks World Atlas™, 1992) are on the increase in America. (The homosexuals represent about 10% of the adult male population (Turner et al., 1989; Lesbian and Gay Substance Abuse Planning Group, 1991a).) This is because psychoactive drugs and AZT, not HIV, are the causes of AIDS.

(3) The paradox of a virus causing risk group-specific and country-specific AIDS diseases is resolved by distinct nonviral AIDS causes including drugs and other noncontagious pathogens like long-term transfusions and malnutrition (Sections 2.1.3 and 3.4.5, Tables 1 and 2).

(4) The paradox of a male-specific AIDS virus (i.e. 90% of all American and 86% of all European AIDS cases are males), although no AIDS disease is male-specific, is resolved by male-specific behavior and by male genetic disorders. In America and Europe males consume over 75% of all "hard" injected psychoactive drugs (Section 4.3.1), homosexual males are almost exclusive users of oral aphrodisiacs like nitrites (Section 4.3.2) and nearly all hemophiliacs are males.

(5) The paradox of a 10-year-slow AIDS virus, i.e. AIDS occurs only after "latent (!) periods" of HIV that average 10 years in adults and 2 years in babies (Section 2.2), is resolved by the cumulative toxicity of long-term drug use. According to the CDC the "lifetime use" of drugs determines the AIDS risk (Jaffe et al., 1983b). On average 5-10 years elapse in adult drug addicts between the first use of drugs and "acquiring" drug-induced AIDS diseases (Layon et al., 1984; Schuster, 1984; Savona et al., 1985; Donahoe et al., 1987; Espinoza et al., 1987; Weber et al., 1990). The time lag from a nitrite habit to Kaposi's sarcoma has been determined to be 7-10 years (Newell et al., 1985b). Severe T-cell depletion and immunodeficiency is also "acquired" by hemophiliacs on average only after 14-15 years of treatment with blood concentrates (Section 3.4.4.5).

In babies of drug-addicted mothers AIDS appears much sooner than in adults because of a much lower threshold of the fetus for drug-pathogenicity. This also resolves the secondary paradox of a discrepancy of 8 years between the "latent periods" of HIV in babies and in adults.

(6) It is paradoxical that American teenagers do not get AIDS, although over 70% are sexually active and about 50% are promiscuous (Turner et al., 1989; Burke et al., 1990; Congressional Panel, 1992) and 0.03% to 0.3% carry HIV (Section 3.5.2). The paradox that a sexually transmitted "AIDS virus" would spare American and European teenagers is resolved by the fact that only years of drug consumption, and years of transfusions for hemophilia (Section 3.4.4.5) will cause AIDS-by which time these teenagers are in their twenties.

(7) The apparent paradox that the same virus would at the same time cause two entirely different AIDS epidemics, one in Africa and the other in America and Europe is an artifact of the AIDS definition. Because of the HIV-based AIDS definition, a new drug epidemic in America and Europe and an epidemic of old Africa-specific diseases like fever, diarrhea and tuberculosis (Section 3.4.4.4) were both called AIDS when HIV became detectable. Since HIV is endemic in over 10% of Central Africans, over 10% of their AIDS-defining diseases are now called AIDS (Section 2.2).

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