THE ORIGIN OF THE 'TRANSMISSION' OF AIDS

By Roberto Giraldo

September 2000

The transmission of AIDS from person to person is a myth. The homosexual transmission of AIDS in Western countries, as well as the heterosexual transmission of AIDS in Africa and in other underdeveloped countries- is an assumption without any scientific validation.

There is not logic neither scientific explanation for AIDS to be mostly "transmitted" homosexually in the West and "heterosexually" in poor countries. The sexual transmission of AIDS has been assumed based on the high frequency by which AIDS occurs on drug addicted gay males in the developed world, and by the similar frequency of the syndrome in both sexes within the underdeveloped countries.

Whenever there is an outbreak of new disease, the first question to answer is: What are the new circumstances surrounding the individuals who are getting the new illness.

In the report of the first 5 cases of AIDS to the CDC by Michael Gottlieb in June, 1981, he informed that "Four had serologic evidence of past hepatitis B infection" "Two of the five reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners" "All 5 patients had laboratory-confirmed CMV disease or virus shedding within 5 months of the diagnosis of Pneumocystis pneumonia" "All five reported using inhalant drugs, and one reported parental drug abuse" (Gottlieb et al MMWR 1981; 30:250-252).

There is nothing in this report that could suggest a sexually transmissible germ as the cause for the new condition. Homosexuality has existed forever! The new circumstances around the people who were getting a collapse of their immune systems, was the use of drugs by some members of the gay community in USA and Europe, that began in the late sixties and early seventies. The toxic character of AIDS can be seen since the very first report of the new syndrome. There was not a need for a microbe to be the cause of the new toxic condition.

However, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) decided in the Editorial note to comment Gottlieb's report that "The fact that these patients were all homosexuals suggests an association between some aspect of homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact and Pneumocystis pneumonia in this population" (MMWR 1981; 30:250-252).

Even long before HIV was discovered and proposed as the cause of AIDS, the US Public Health Service decided the contagious character of the new syndrome. On November 5, 1982 the CDC wrote "AIDS: Precautions for Clinical and Laboratory Staffs" (MMWR 1982; 31:577-580). Four months later the CDC, together with the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, regulated the prevention of AIDS as if it were an infectious and transmissible disease (MMWR 1983; 32:101-104). They decided that AIDS was infectious and sexually transmitted without having any scientific proof for it.

In his recent book Luc Montagnier confesses: "It was in 1982 that AIDS began to capture the attention of researchers. By that time we knew, by the number of reported cases among homosexuals, that we were dealing with a communicable disease" (Montagnier L. Virus: The Co-Discoverer of HIV Tracks Its Rampage and Charts the Future; New York: WW Notton & Co., 2000: page42).

Robert Gallo writing upon "The AIDS Virus" in 1987 accuses: "AIDS is probably the result of a new infection of human beings that began in Central Africa, perhaps as recently as the 1950's" "It appears that the virus has had more time to spread in Africa than it has had in any other part of the world" Regarding the so-called T-lymphotropic virus III (STLV-III) of African green monkeys, he said "A plausible hypothesis is that STLV-III somehow entered human beings, initiating a series of mutations that yielded the intermediate viruses before terminating in the fierce pathology of HTLV-III" (Gallo R. Scientific America 1987; 256:47-56).

The above are the supposedly "scientific" basis for the infectious and contagious view upon AIDS.

Researchers and the institutions searching for the cause of AIDS in the early 1980's and that still are the ones that make the policies for AIDS worldwide, seem to ignore that there exist epidemics of toxic diseases, epidemics of nutritional deficiencies, epidemics of high blood pressure, epidemics of cancer, epidemics of mental diseases, epidemics of allergies, etc. They can only think about epidemics of infectious diseases. Also, it seems as if they all ignored that regular diseases can affect gay people.

These researchers and their institutions are impregnated with a microbiologic prejudice, by which all diseases should be caused by germs. Gallo and Montagnier have both spent most of their lives searching for the virus that causes cancer.

It is not necessary to make emphasis in the ethnic and sexual prejudices also expressed by the above statements.

The world was prepared throughout a century of panic to the microbes, and by other prejudices to commit the mistake about the etiology of AIDS. There was no way to avoid it. Similar errors have been committed with pellagra, beriberi, and scurvy, to mention just a few examples. Logically, this time the consequences of the mistake are much more tragic.

All individuals on earth have sexual activity. Similarly all people eat or sleep. The epidemiological correlation of AIDS with sexual life as well as, with eating or sleeping is perfect. Therefore, in the same way that it is said that AIDS is sexually transmitted, it could be said that it is transmitted throughout eating or sleeping.

During the last decades, the new circumstances surrounding gay males who develop AIDS in the West are their exposure throughout their life style to drugs of abuse and other immunological stressors. In the West, AIDS is mostly confined to male homosexuals, because they are more frequently exposed to immunological stressor agents; not because their homosexual preferences. Homosexuality has always existed. However, in the late sixties and early seventies gay male people in the United States and Europe introduced drugs and aphrodisiacs to their life styles.

On the other side, the new circumstances surrounding individuals of both sexes in the poorest countries of Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean, are their involuntary exposure to - the never before seen - high levels of poverty, malnutrition, unsanitary conditions, infections, and parasites. Here both sexes are equally exposed to immunological stressor agents. Therefore, in these countries the risk for AIDS is equal for both genders.

The perinatal transmission of AIDS from mother to child during pregnancy and delivery; as well as the postnatal transmission throughout breast milk are also myths without any scientific validation. Both mothers and infants who react positively on the tests for HIV, or who develop AIDS, do so due to exposures to immunological stressor agents.

Currently, humans, animals, and plants on earth are all suffering from some level of immune suppression due to multiple, repeated, and chronic exposure to the alarming worldwide increment in immunological stressor agents, which can have a chemical, physical, biological, mental, and nutritional origin. Immunodeficiency is pandemic.

Individuals can be exposed to immunological stressors involuntarily through their conditions of life and voluntarily through their life styles.

AIDS is the worst possible immunological human condition: if the course of AIDS is not stopped, it will eventually cause the death of the individual. Besides, AIDS is the tip of an iceberg: bellow AIDS there are many other mild to moderate immunodeficiencies with or without clinical manifestations.

AIDS began in the second half of last century, at a moment when the immune systems of humans are already saturated and cannot tolerate more challenges and aggravations. AIDS is an alarm bell for an endangered species. However, HIV does not permit the real danger to be seen and the proper measures to be taken. The increasing epidemic of AIDS in underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia, is demanding strong measures to be taken before the population of these continents vanish.

In the seventies a new medical science was born: IMMUNOTOXICOLOGY, which studies the effects of toxicants that can poison the immune system. Around thirty years ago immunologists began to be preoccupied by the increasing amount of new immunosuppressive conditions that animals and humans were suffering, due to voluntary or involuntary exposures to a great variety of substances and materials.

Similarly, during the last few decades and due to the alarming worldwide increment in stressor agents affecting the human ecosystem, new medical sciences have had to be created: dermatotoxicology, genotoxicology, neurotoxicology, endocrinotoxicology, cardiotoxicology, hepatotoxicology. We may pay attention to this and take the necessary actions to guaranty the future of our species. We ought to stop panicking about germs. Currently the real problems are toxicants, poverty and malnutrition.

Roberto Giraldo M.D. is a specialist in internal medicine, infectious and tropical diseases, and an independent AIDS researcher. He is living in New York City, and is the president of The Group.

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