VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

THE AIDS GATE

By Stephen Davis

10 Oct. 1998

Headline, October 8, 1998

"NEW DRUGS CUT AIDS DEATHS BY NEARLY HALF IN U.S. IN '97"

WASHINGTON (Associated Press) - "New drugs helped reduce the number of AIDS deaths in the United States by 47 percent last year...the lowest rate since 1987."

That's good news indeed! But they don't tell us much about WHY such a drastic drop in one year, or WHY all of a sudden the deaths from AIDS dipped below the 1987 levels.

You'll understand if you read the article on this webpage. It has to do with eliminating the drug called AZT from the treatment of AIDS patients - a drug that has been causing AIDS (not curing AIDS) since it was introduced in 1986, literally killing hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting victims.

Yes, it's great that after 11 years of homicide by drugs, something's being done. But many of the basic questions remain, like....

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT SOMETHING OTHER THAN HIV CAUSES AIDS?

The Immune System

To understand AIDS -- Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome -- we must first know a little about the immune system of a human body. Unfortunately, we really don't know exactly how the immune system works; but here's the best guess so far....

The body's second line of defense against disease (the first being the skin) is white blood cells, called lymphocytes. They're produced in the bone marrow and circulate along with the blood and in the lymphatic system. Some of these white blood cells are called "B" cells. Other lymphocytes pass through the Thymus (an endocrine gland located near the heart) and become "T" cells.

There are several different kinds of T-cells, each with its own function. Research has been able to identify these different T-cells with special tests, and then the T-cells have been individually named by the number of the test that finds them. For example,

"T4" cells are also known as "helper" T-cells. They're the watchdogs for the body. They continually scan the body, looking for anything foreign they don't recognize. and then notify the body about the invader. For instance, if you get a splinter in your finger, the T4 cells will sound the alarm against a possible infection. Or if you come in contact with a strange bacterium or virus, or if you receive a new kidney or liver through a transplant, the T4 cells will activate the body's immune system.

What happens next is that the "B" cells immediately go to work to produce "antibodies" -- new "special agents" specifically designed to fight any future invasion by this same intruder. This is the theory behind the smallpox (or any other) vaccine. A very small amount of the disease organism is introduced in the body intentionally; the T4 cells alert the immune system; the B cells create the antibody against the smallpox bacteria; and the body is now ready to defend against any future smallpox invasion.

In the meantime, while the antibody is being produced for future use, Killer T-cells are also released by the immune system to destroy cells in the body which are presently infected by the outside organism. The only problem with Killer T-cells is that they have to be calmed down at some point or the powerful immune system might damage its own body (called "autoimmune disease"). So there is another kind of T-cell -- the T8 "suppressor" cells -- whose job it is to stop the immune response and call off the Killers. In a normal, healthy body, there are about 1,000 T4 cells per microliter of blood, and the ratio of T4 ("helper") cells to T8 ("suppressor") cells is 2:1.

Immune Deficiency Syndrome is a breakdown of this system. Again, not a lot is known for certain about the different kinds of immune deficiency. There are cases where the total number of T cells is so reduced (less than 200 T-cells per microliter of blood) that there are simply not enough to do their job. Or sometimes the ratio of T4 to T8 cells is thrown out of balance so much that the major message getting to the body is to "suppress" the immune system rather than activate it. Or perhaps the T4 "helper" cells remain high enough in numbers, but stop performing their function for some unknown reason. Or something interferes with the orders to send out the Killers.

Immune Deficiency Syndrome is not a new disease. It has been recognized by the medical profession for many years; and its three main causes are also well-known: malnutrition, sleep deprivation, and intentional interference with the immune system through the use of drugs -- for instance, in organ transplants (to force the body to accept foreign cells), and in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. This intentional interference is known as "iatrogenic," meaning "caused by the doctor."

What happens to a human body when the immune system can no longer function properly is quite clear: disease results, either from an outside invader the body can no longer fight off, or from one of the millions of bacteria, viruses, protozoan parasites, or fungi we all carry with us every day of our lives. These are called "opportunistic diseases," since they would not occur unless the opportunity arose due to the malfunction of the normal immune response. Some examples of the most common opportunistic

diseases are: Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, Cryptosporidium, herpes simplex, Candida albicans, cytomegalovirus, Toxoplasma gondii, Aspergillus, Cryptococcus neoformans, Nocardia, Strongyloides, atypical Mycobacterium, and papovavirus.

These are all infections by organisms which would normally not cause serious illness in a healthy body. But no doctor would be surprised to see any of these diseases in a patient who was malnourished, deprived of sleep for extended periods, or already suffering and being treated for another disease with drugs that were known to be "immunosuppressive." The fungus that causes Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, for example, is known to inhabit the lungs of almost every human on planet Earth, but rarely has the disease been seen in anyone but cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy.

What happened in 1981, then, was truly a surprise to one immunologist by the name of Michael Gottlieb.....

The First AIDS Cases

In 1981, in Los Angeles, California, immunologist Michael Gottlieb tested the blood of a patient being treated by a colleague and found a very low number of T4 "helper" cells. An open lung biopsy then performed on the patient disclosed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. The patient soon died.

By May of that year, Gottlieb and his colleagues had treated five similar patients and reported their work in the June 5, 1981, issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published by the Centers for Disease Control (the "CDC"). All of them had Immune Deficiency Syndrome and active opportunistic diseases. The only problem was that there was no known cause for the immune deficiency. None of them was suffering from malnutrition or sleep deprivation, and none was being treated with immunosuppressive drugs prior to coming down with an opportunistic disease. In short, they were suffering from Immune Deficiency Syndrome that had been "acquired" from some unknown cause.

Soon other cases were being reported of opportunistic infections from suppressed immune systems with no known cause. In fact, 87 cases of AIDS were reported in the first six months of 1981; 365 cases in the first six months of 1982; and 1215 cases in the same period in 1983. It was now clear that we had a new phenomenon affecting human beings: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome -- AIDS.

(Some people had died of AIDS before 1981, as proven by reviewing their medical records later. Their deaths had been attributed to other causes, since AIDS had not yet been recognized. It took Michael Gottlieb to put the first pieces of the puzzle together and alert the medical community to a potentially new epidemic.)

SITUATION ALERT: Something unknown is affecting the human immune system by destroying or interfering with the normal T-cell activity, giving rise to various opportunistic diseases, which in turn kill the patient.

QUESTION: What is it?

The search was on. Virtually every research scientist in every field started looking for the cause of AIDS. Bacteriologists sought a bacterial agent (as in Tuberculosis). Virologists looked for a virus (as in Polio). Public health officials searched for an environmental cause (as in Salmonella or Scurvy). And they all had a set of rules to determine whether or not the theories they proposed could be the actual cause of AIDS. These rules had been in effect and accepted by medical/science researchers for over 100 years. They're called Koch's Postulates, after Robert Koch, who first put them in writing.

Koch's Postulate Number One says that the suspected cause of any disease must be found in every case of that disease. For example, the tubercle bacillus can be found in the lung tissue of every case of TB.

Koch's Postulate Number Two says that the causal agent (bacteria, virus, parasite, fungus, etc.) must be able to be isolated from all other microbes and grown independently in a laboratory culture -- proving that it is alive and active, reproducible, and acting independently from anything else.

And Koch's Postulate Number Three says that this microbe must create the same disease when introduced into an otherwise healthy body (usually a test animal).

Research and testing such as this takes time and money and equipment and support. In the early 1980's, the virologists commanded most of the money and attention. The apparent success of Jonas Salk and the polio virus/vaccine in the 1950's and '60's had given the virus hunters the edge over the others in terms of standing in the profession, credence for their theories, and money and laboratory space. Their most recent efforts had been to find a viral cause for cancer, which resulted in the discovery of "retroviruses." (The virus later called "HIV" is a retrovirus.)

In late 1982, a Frenchman was diagnosed with cytomegalovirus -- one of the opportunistic diseases. He had other symptoms of general debility, fatigue, and enlarged lymph nodes, and was almost certainly an AIDS case. Tissues from his body were sent to The Pasteur Institute, where Luc Montagnier began searching for signs of a retrovirus. On January 23, 1983, he found one, and called it LAV (Lymphadenopathy-Associated Virus). But this was just one retrovirus found in the tissues of just one patient, and it had not been tested to find out if it met Koch's Postulates. So Luc Montagnier was not prepared to call it the cause of AIDS. It was only a possibility.

Montagnier published his findings in May of 1983 so that other researchers could test and duplicate and corroborate his results, as is the standard procedure in any medical and scientific research. In July of 1983, the Pasteur Institute also sent a sample of the LAV virus to Robert Gallo, head of the prestigious National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States.

Skipping Koch's Postulate Number One for the moment, Gallo tried to grow the LAV virus in his own lab (Koch's Postulate Number Two), but was originally not able to do so. Another sample had to be sent from France in September; and by December, Gallo's lab was successfully cultivating LAV.

But Gallo was already immersed in his own theory of what caused AIDS. A few years earlier, in his search for the cause of cancer, Gallo had discovered two retroviruses that looked similar, which he called HTLV-1 and HTLV-2 (Human T-cell Leukemia Virus). In December of 1983, he submitted a paper for publication proposing the theory that an HTLV retrovirus was the cause of AIDS.

The logic here is a little hard to follow. Leukemia is a form of cancer. Cancer is widely known and accepted to be an abnormal and uncontrollable multiplication of cells, which then form tumors. This means that a Leukemia virus, such as HTLV-1 or -2, should cause the T-cells to multiply, not decrease, as found in AIDS. However, in his quest to be the new Jonas Salk, Gallo was apparently able to overlook this "minor" inconsistency. And since no one else was coming up with anything better....

Sometime between December 1983 and April 1984, Robert Gallo claims he made another new discovery -- a third retrovirus in the HTLV family, which he called HTLV-3. But rather than submitting and publishing his research for others to verify, he chose another venue.

On April 23, 1984, Margaret Heckler (Secretary of Health and Human Services -- a cabinet member in Ronald Reagan's administration) called a press conference in Washington, D.C. and introduced Robert Gallo, who announced to the world that he had found the cause of AIDS: his new retrovirus, HTLV-3. He even showed pictures of HTLV-1, -2, and -3 to those in attendance. Unfortunately, HTLV-3 didn't look anything like HTLV-1 or HTLV-2, and it was hard to see how they could be of the same family. As it turned out, the picture of HTLV-3 was actually a picture of the LAV virus sent to Gallo by Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute.

But, thank goodness, the cause of AIDS had been discovered. Granted, it was a Leukemia virus that should send the T-cell count out the roof instead of plummeting toward zero. Granted, HTLV-3 had not been found in every AIDS patient -- or even one AIDS patient (Koch's Postulate Number One). Granted, no one else had had the opportunity to isolate and grow it in their own labs (Koch's Postulate Number Two). And granted, no animal testing had been done to see if HTLV-3 would cause AIDS if introduced into a healthy body (Koch's Postulate Number Three).

But the search was over. The cause of AIDS had been found. It was discovered by Robert Gallo. Or was it? The French didn't think so. The picture of Gallo's HTLV-3 was indisputably a picture of Montagnier's LAV virus. And so began a three-year, ultra-high-level, diplomatic negotiation between the U.S. and France that ended in 1987 with an agreement that the cause of AIDS had been jointly discovered by both countries.

Who cares? It should only be important that the cause of AIDS had been found, and now lives could be saved. But that wasn't the issue. You see, on the very same day that Gallo announced at his press conference that he had found the cause of AIDS, he filed a U.S. patent application for the blood test that would detect the HTLV-3 virus. This patent would be worth about $100 million a year in sales and $100,000 personally to Gallo. The French had also filed a patent request in 1983 for the blood test for their LAV virus, but it had never been approved in the U.S. The issue, as usual, was money.

And there was another problem. In Gallo's patent documentation, he stated under oath --as is required -- that the virus could be massed produced for the tests within indefinitely growing, "immortal" T-cells. But isn't the cause of AIDS supposed to kill T-cells?

Despite these glaring inconsistencies, and the lack of any scientific or research evidence, and the absence of any conformity to Koch's Postulates, and the inability of any of his peers to make independent verification of his claims, Robert Gallo was a hero.

He had discovered the cause of AIDS -- the HTLV-3 virus, as he called it....or the LAV virus, as the French called it. To settle this dispute, in early 1987 an international committee came up with a new name for the virus: Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The name itself solidified the relationship of this new retrovirus to the disease called AIDS, although no scientific evidence had yet been presented that there was any relationship at all -- much less a causal one.

What the Evidence Shows

By means of press releases to the public media, it was purported that AIDS was caused by HIV, even though HIV had not been found in every case of AIDS and had not been proven to cause AIDS in test animals. It had also not been proven to have any effect on the T-cells or human immune system, even though AIDS was supposed to be an immune deficient disease. And to add insult to injury, AIDS was declared to be highly contagious (infectious) and transmitted by sexual contact.

In fact, all the evidence is to the contrary. Let's look again at Koch's Postulates....

POSTULATE #1. THE CAUSE OF ANY DISEASE MUST BE FOUND IN EVERY CASE OF THE DISEASE. In all the research that has been done, no particle of the virus called HIV can be found anywhere in the tissues of most AIDS patients. What has been found in a percentage of AIDS patients is the antibody against the virus called HIV. In fact, the famous HIV blood test does not test for the virus itself, but for the HIV antibody. In simple terms, someone who has tested HIV Positive has not been found to have the HIV virus, but to have the antibodies against HIV.

Having the antibody against a virus means that the body's immune system -- at some point in the past -- detected the presence of the virus called HIV by means of its T4 "helper" cells, sent out the Killer T-cells to destroy all traces of the active virus itself (which is why no active HIV virus can be found in most HIV Positive AIDS patients), and developed special agents (antibodies) to combat any future harm from this particular invader. In short, being HIV Positive means that the body's immune system was functioning perfectly at the time, and all threats from whatever the virus called HIV might do had been neutralized within weeks after "infection."

In addition, there have been over 4000 reported cases of AIDS where the patient was HIV Negative -- meaning that not only did they not have the virus called HIV, but they also didn't have the HIV antibodies.

And there may be many more HIV Negative AIDS patients. It's difficult to give exact figures or percentages because only a small portion of diagnosed AIDS cases are tested for HIV. For instance, from 1985 to 1989, only seven percent (7%) of all AIDS cases in New York and San Francisco were tested for HIV, even though these two cities contributed over one-third of all AIDS cases in the U.S. that year.

But the question of how many AIDS cases might have tested HIV Negative is moot. If there is even one case of AIDS without active HIV, then HIV fails Koch's Postulate Number One and cannot be the cause of AIDS.

KOCH'S POSTULATE #2. THE CAUSAL AGENT MUST BE ABLE TO BE ISOLATED FROM ALL OTHER MICROBES AND GROWN INDEPENDENTLY IN A LABORATORY CULTURE. Robert Gallo claims to have done this, along with others. Let's give him this one, although it appears that growing the virus called HIV is not a simple matter and requires very advanced technology. (There is evidence to suggest that Robert Gallo also had to steal the special T-cell culture "HUT78" required to grow HIV in his own lab.)

KOCH'S POSTULATE #3. THE MICROBE MUST CREATE THE SAME DISEASE WHEN INTRODUCED INTO AN OTHERWISE HEALTHY BODY. Many attempts have been made to make the virus called HIV meet this criterion, and all have failed. For example, out of 150 lab chimpanzees who have been injected with purified HIV since 1984, none has yet developed AIDS. Out of 5,000,000 medical professionals and AIDS researchers working with and treating more than 400,000 AIDS patients in the last ten years, there is not one case (other than anecdotal) in the scientific literature of a health care worker who contracted AIDS from a patient. Out of 15,000 hemophiliacs in the U.S. infected with the virus called HIV prior to blood testing in 1984, fewer than two percent (2%) develop AIDS each year, and their wives have not developed AIDS.

But if the virus called HIV doesn't cause AIDS in animals or in whole human bodies, what about in individual human cells?

Robert Gallo, in his patent application, claimed he was growing HIV in healthy T-cells. In fact, the HIV antibody blood test is made from virus that is mass-produced in T-cells which continue to grow, rather than die. According to Gallo himself, the virus called HIV does not kill the very T-cells it must kill in order to cause immune deficiency. Rather, T-cells and HIV seem to grow happily side-by-side.

HIV clearly fails at least Koch's Postulates #1 and #3. To be deemed the cause of a disease, a microbe must meet all three. To solve this little problem, Robert Gallo and his HIV/AIDS team simply respond that Koch's Postulates are out of date and should be ignored. Very convenient.

Is HIV Contagious?

Following in the footsteps of Robert Gallo, let's ignore all the facts and speculate for a minute that the virus called HIV actually does cause AIDS. Is it contagious?

To be called "infectious" or "contagious," a disease must meet criteria similar to Koch's Postulates. For example, Farr's Law says that infectious diseases spread exponentially. In other words, the number of cases of a new epidemic will start small, then ,explode into the population as rapidly as the microbes can be spread from one person to another. The rise and fall of every epidemic can be plotted on a bell curve, increasing drastically in the early stages and decreasing just as rapidly in the later stages.

While the number of cases of AIDS might conform to a Bell curve (depending on which AIDS definition is in vogue at the time), the incidence of the virus called HIV certainly does not. In fact, the number of HIV Positive people in the United States has held steady at approximately 1,000,000 since testing for HIV antibodies first started in 1984. (Medical science normally interprets this kind of statistical behavior to mean that HIV is an old virus, rather than something appearing on the scene in the last couple of decades.) If HIV were contagious, it would have to be multiplying exponentially, which it is not.

In addition, if HIV were contagious, we would see geographical "clusters" of HIV Positives, as the microbe infected those nearby. However, there is no "cluster" pattern for HIV.

If HIV is not contagious, is AIDS? No, it can't be. The first epidemiological law of viral and microbial diseases holds that men and women must be affected equally, because no virus or microbe can discriminate between genders. In the United States and Europe, more than ninety percent (90%) of AIDS cases are male. Granted, the Centers for Disease Control recently added cervical cancer to the list of AIDS diseases (even though it has nothing to do with immune suppression), so the percentages for women may go up a little in the next year or two.

For either HIV or AIDS to be contagious, Farr's Law and epidemiological law must be ignored the same way Koch's Postulates have been ignored to claim HIV as the cause of AIDS.

If AIDS is not contagious, why are the numbers of AIDS cases going up so dramatically, as we're told they are? Contagion is not the only reason for rapidly rising morbidity and mortality statistics. For example, if you took one hundred unprotected people and lay them in the sun on a beach, as time progressed, more and more would develop the same symptoms: excessive body heat, red skin, maybe some blisters, and perhaps even dehydration. Statistics would show that redheads and others with the fairest skin (the highest "risk group") showed the worst symptoms, while those of African-American descent might tolerate the conditions more easily. But no one would suggest that this Sunburn Syndrome ("SS") was the result of an "infectious" or "contagious" agent. True, there was one cause: the sun. However, the statistics only went up and up as each individual responded to the cause directly rather than passing on their "disease" to anyone else.

Is Sex Involved?

If AIDS is not contagious, it can't be transmitted to anybody by any means. Period.

To understand how AIDS became associated with sex, please contact a member of the Moral Majority or visit the Christian Coalition at http://www.cc.org.

What's the Real Story?

Unfortunately, it's very hard to say what the real story is. There have been so many changes in the definition of AIDS and so much manipulation of statistics that it's extremely difficult to separate fact from fiction. For example, the Centers for Disease Control originally defined AIDS as the appearance of one or more opportunistic diseases caused by an underlying immune system defect. Then in 1985, after Robert Gallo announced his miraculous discovery, the CDC revised its AIDS definition to require that the patient be Positive for HIV antibodies. It also required that there must be a low number of T4 "helper" cells or a low ratio of T4 to T8 cells to prove immune deficiency.

This meant a lot of lab work and expensive tests, and doctors in the field were not too happy. So the CDC changed their minds again in 1987. Now you needed no evidence of malfunctioning T-cells. Nor did you need an HIV test. If you had one of the opportunistic diseases, you were considered to have AIDS, and you were simply assumed to be HIV Positive. On the other hand, if you had an opportunistic disease and a laboratory-verified low T-cell count, but tested HIV Negative, you were still classified as an AIDS patient.

To add to the confusion, the CDC began expanding its list of AIDS diseases to include more than just the opportunistic infections. Kaposi's sarcoma, certain kinds of lymphoma (cancer), dementia (mental deterioration), and wasting syndrome (losing weight and body mass) had begun appearing in many of the diagnosed AIDS patients. Even though none of these diseases had anything to do with a suppressed immune system, by 1987 they were all AIDS diseases by definition.

Kaposi's sarcoma quickly became the hallmark disease of AIDS, with its ugly lesions on the chest and face and mouth. This was a little surprising, since Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) had always been defined as cancerous lesions on the lower legs and limited to elderly men of specific Jewish or Italian background. Apparently the AIDS lesions looked so similar to Kaposi's sarcoma that someone just adopted the name. However, recent research has proven that what has been called KS in AIDS patients is not a cancer at all, but in fact disappears totally from the patient just before death (which no cancer does).

And there is great confusion currently whether Kaposi's sarcoma is still considered an AIDS disease by the CDC. Some say it has been removed from the list; others disagree. What is known is that KS has nothing to do with the virus called HIV, that it is directly linked to the use of amylnitrites, and that the chest and facial lesions probably result from skin reactions to the drug as it is inhaled. Amylnitrites, of course, have been proven to destroy the human immune system.

Between 1987 and 1993, the CDC decided to add more non-opportunistic diseases to the list for AIDS, this time including infections like tuberculosis, recurrent pneumonia, and cervical cancer. All in all, the list now contains 30 different diseases.

Let's see if we can get this straight. AIDS is supposed to be the appearance of opportunistic diseases that arise because the body's immune system has ceased functioning properly due to some unknown cause. Then how did Kaposi's sarcoma ever get to be called AIDS in the first place -- much less dementia, lymphoma, or wasting syndrome? Why have non-opportunistic diseases been added? If a disease has not been the result of immune deficiency, how can it be called "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome?"

Picture this. two patients walk into a hospital with identical symptoms of tuberculosis. Neither of them are given T-cell blood tests, but both are given HIV antibody tests. One is HIV Positive, and the other HIV Negative. The HIV Positive patient is diagnosed as "AIDS." The HIV Negative patient is diagnosed as "tuberculosis." Does that make any sense?

By definition, anyone with one or more of the opportunistic diseases on the official CDC list will be diagnosed with AIDS automatically and presumed to be HIV Positive, whether or not an HIV antibody test was done. And anyone with one or more of the non-opportunistic diseases on the official CDC list will be diagnosed with AIDS if they are also HIV Positive. In short, if you are HIV Positive and sick, you have AIDS.

If you are HIV Negative and sick, you either have AIDS if it is an opportunistic disease with a laboratory-verified low T-cell count, or you are diagnosed under the standard name of the disease and not AIDS.

But what if you are HIV Positive and you aren't sick? There are at least 500,000 people in the U.S. who fall into this category -- 1,000,000 HIV Positives minus 400,000 AIDS cases. And that's assuming that all of the 400,000 AIDS cases were HIV Positive, which is not true.

HIV Positive and healthy? Unfortunately, this is the worst possibility of all. As we will see in a minute, if you believe what most doctors will tell you, you will start taking the drug called AZT as a "precaution" against getting AIDS in the future -- and there's a 50-50 chance you'll be dead in about two years.

Who Gets AIDS?

There are 1,000,000 people in the United States who are HIV Positive. We know for a fact that over half of them have not developed AIDS (they aren't sick) in 13 years, despite the warnings from the National Institutes of Health and the CDC in the 1980's that AIDS would "explode" within a year or two. Then it was 5 years before you'd get AIDS. Then 10 years. And now, for every year that goes by without these HIV Positives getting AIDS, the CDC adds another year to the "latency" period of HIV (the time it takes for the virus to cause disease).

So if the HIV Positives in the United States are not developing AIDS in epidemic proportions, who is?

Ninety-seven percent (97%) of all AIDS cases come from three distinct "risk" groups: homosexuals (62%), IV drug users (32%), and blood transfusion recipients and hemophiliacs (3%). Ninety-eight percent (98%) are over 20 years of age. (90%) are male.

Why are homosexuals the highest risk category? Is it because of their sexual preference? Doubtfully. Every single homosexual diagnosed with AIDS has also been a drug user. For example, in various studies...

- 80-100% of homosexual AIDS patients had used nitrite inhalants - 50-84% had used cocaine - 50-65% had used amphetamines

...and the list goes on and on.

In fact, from the very beginning it has been unfair and inaccurate to classify the highest risk group as "homosexuals," since it is only the homosexuals who use extraordinary amounts of all kinds of drugs related to their sexual lifestyle that are placed at risk for AIDS. "Clean" homosexuals do not get AIDS.

Why are IV drug users (the vast majority of whom are male) getting AIDS? Is it because they shoot up with needles contaminated with the virus called HIV? Doubtfully. Like the "homosexual" risk group, the more logical reason is that the drugs they are using (heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, etc.) are all known to destroy the body's immune system over time and give rise to opportunistic diseases.

Why are hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients getting AIDS? Frankly, the question really should be: Why are hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients even included in AIDS, since the cause of their immune deficiency is well known -- immunosuppressive drugs intentionally included in their therapy to force the body to accept foreign blood and clotting agents?

If we want to include everyone with immune deficiencies in the category of "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome," then we have to include anyone with opportunistic diseases from immunosuppression with known causes as well -- such as cancer patients on chemotherapy.

In short, all those who have gotten or are getting AIDS (by current definition) are those with extensive and extended drug histories -- whether it be recreational drugs, or immunosuppressive drugs, or antibiotics to fight normal infections.

What Causes AIDS?

Bottom line? No one knows what causes AIDS. We know it cannot be the virus called HIV. We know it isn't contagious. We know AIDS is not transmitted by sexual contact.

It would be nice to know what causes AIDS -- what has been destroying the immune systems of so many more people since the 1970's. But we can never find out as long as all the money and time and effort and research is spent on the faulty HIV/AIDS hypothesis.

Right now there are only theories. For example, Dr. Peter Duesberg has one: AIDS is caused by long-term recreational drug use. He even explains why, out of an estimated 20,000,000 "druggies" in the U.S., only some 500,000 have developed AIDS over the last 15 years.

But every other past epidemic disease has been isolated down to one specific cause (Polio, Smallpox, TB, Scurvy, SMON in Japan, etc.). So is there one cause of AIDS --one virus, one bacterium, one fungus -- maybe one drug, one antibiotic, or one steroid --that destroys the normal function of the human immune system? It took 15 years and 11,000 victims in Japan in the 1950's and '60's before they found the real cause of their SMON epidemic: a drug called Clioquinol, freely available to treat diarrhea and dysentery.

Is AIDS another iatrogenic (doctor-caused) disease -- the result of some common drug taken by all three of the high-risk groups, with the (unknown?) side-effect of destroying normal immune functions? That generic antibiotic (that goes by different brand names) many IV drug users take to prevent needle infections, and many homosexuals take to prevent STDs and pimples -- is that what's causing AIDS?

There's an age-old principle that says, "Use it or lose it." In the human body, if you don't use your muscles, you lose them. They grow weak. They cease to function properly. Does the same thing work in the immune system? If someone takes antibiotics over many years, will their immune system also grow weak and stop functioning from lack of its normal work (now being performed by some outside, artificial chemical)? Will one dose of antibiotic every day for 10 years to prevent STDs finally result in AIDS ?

Like the Japanese who cheerfully continued to take Clioquinol while their SMON epidemic spread, are many of us taking some unsafe drug -- a lethal drug -- while the vested interests cling to a flawed HIV/AIDS hypothesis worth $7.5 Billion a year in U.S. taxpayer dollars? We need to know. Yes or no?

What Cures AIDS?

Meanwhile, we have gone about trying to "cure" AIDS based on Robert Gallo's 1984 press-conference announcement that it is caused by the virus called HIV.

Drug companies around the world spend millions of dollars each year developing new drugs. Sometimes these new drugs are purely speculative -- their chemical compound works, but they have no specific disease that they cure. These "discoveries" are then relegated to the back shelf of a closet somewhere, waiting for the right disease to show up for which they are the miracle cure. The whole process is a big waste of time and money for the drug company unless a new disease appears somewhere in the world and this new drug can be proven to be effective against it.

In 1964, in an attempt to find a cure for cancer, an English drug company called Burroughs Wellcome invented a chemical compound called azidothymidine, commonly known as AZT. Cancer, remember, is the abnormal and uncontrolled multiplication of cells, which often group together in tumors. The theory was that if we could find a drug that would stop cells from multiplying, we could stop cancer.

Ironically, the easiest way to stop cells from multiplying is to stop them from dividing --from creating new cells. Burroughs Wellcome discovered a way to interfere with the normal DNA reproduction of a cell, called a DNA-inhibitor -- AZT.

Unfortunately, there is no way for a DNA- inhibitor to tell the difference between a useful, healthy cell and a diseased cell. It simply interferes with them all. A cell will die trying to reproduce itself (as virtually all cells want to do), stopped by the DNA-inhibitor.

(This is how most chemotherapy works for cancer patients today. The drugs stop cells from dividing, and the cells die. All the cells. The death of those cells that normally divide most frequently -- like hair cells -- is noticed first; therefore, hair loss. What isn't so noticeable are the normal, healthy cells that are killed in the process, including the T-cells of the immune system. Most cancer patients die of the opportunistic diseases that result from immune suppression rather than from the cancer tumors themselves.)

However, Burroughs Wellcome didn't even try to get AZT approved for manufacture or use. Standard testing of the drug found that it was so powerful in destroying cells -- so toxic -- that it would kill the patient faster than the disease would. When Jerome Horwitz, head of a lab at the Detroit Cancer Foundation in 1964, tested AZT on cancer-ridden mice, it failed to cure the cancer. The mice died all right, but from the extreme toxicity of the drug itself and not from the cancer. AZT was quickly put on the shelf.

Twenty years later, along comes Robert Gallo, announcing to the world that his Human T-cell Leukemia Virus Type III causes AIDS (even though in AIDS, the T-cells are diminished rather than multiplying uncontrollably). Well, if a virus that causes cancer is causing AIDS, then a drug that cures cancer should cure AIDS. Burroughs Wellcome pulled AZT off the shelf in 1985 and submitted it to the Food and Drug Administration of the United States (the FDA) for approval, claiming it would specifically kill only HIV-infected T-cells.

Normally, for a drug to be approved by the FDA, it takes about a year of research and testing -- including carefully monitored double-blind studies -- and then another year of FDA red tape. And while waiting for an FDA approval, the pharmaceutical company usually cannot manufacture or sell the drug. But AZT was a very special drug for a very special disease, backed by very special people. So it got very special attention. (It also helped to have Burroughs Wellcome paying $10,000 per study patient to each clinic involved.)

The short story is that the double-blind studies broke down within weeks. "A move to stop the trial began immediately. The toxicity of AZT was proving to be extremely high," says Bruce Nussbaum in his 1990 book, Good Intentions. "The FDA inspector found multiple deviations from standard protocol procedure," an official later commented. Another FDA official admitted, "Whatever the 'real' data may be, clearly patients in this study...reported many disease symptoms from possible adverse drug experiences." Martin Delaney, founder of Project Inform, added, "The multi-center trials of AZT are perhaps the sloppiest and most poorly conducted trials ever to serve as the basis for an FDA drug licensing approval."

No matter. Burroughs Wellcome responded by requesting special permission to go ahead and sell AZT while the FDA decided whether or not to approve it. Five days later, thanks to some highly-placed political pressure, that permission was granted. The FDA also dropped the normal requirements that AZT be tested on mice. Six months later, AZT had full approval by the FDA. It could now be sold as a treatment for AIDS.

(Later, AZT was also tested as a cure for psoriasis. As one English reporter put it, "Burroughs Wellcome must be commended for creative marketing, producing [AZT] that can kill any rapidly replicating cells in one lot of patients [psoriasis sufferers] and selectively kill only HIV-infected cells in another lot of patients [AIDS]."

Want to know how all this could happen? Listen to Jerry McGuire: SHOW ME THE MONEY!

Of course, Burroughs Wellcome (and other manufacturers, like Sigma) still have to put the correct warnings on the drug labels.

Here's what it says for AZT....

TOXIC

Toxic by inhalation, in contact with skin, and if swallowed.

Target organ(s): Blood Bone Marrow.... Wear suitable protective clothing.

Yes, be careful. Be sure to wear suitable protective clothing while swallowing AZT that is toxic when swallowed.

The skull and crossbones signify an unusual chemical hazard. This label must appear on bottles containing 25 milligrams of AZT -- a small fraction of a patient's recommended daily dose.

What does AZT do that makes it so dangerous? AZT kills dividing cells anywhere in the body, but especially (as the warning label says) in the bone marrow where new red blood cells and white blood cells are made. (Remember that T-cells are white blood cells that form the backbone of the body's immune system.) And it does the best job at killing these cells than any other drug discovered to date.

Apparently at Burroughs Wellcome, the thinking was that AZT would kill HIV-infected T-cells and thus be a cure for AIDS. It does do that. It kills T-cells extremely well, but all T-cells, whether or not they are HIV-infected -- healthy cells as well as sick cells. Repeat: AZT is dramatically effective in killing virus-infected and uninfected T-cells alike. And since only 1 in about 1000 T-cells of an HIV Positive person is ever "infected", AZT must kill 999 good T-cells in the process.

Let's think about this for a moment. We've got a patient with AIDS -- a patient with a T-cell deficiency, suffering from an opportunistic disease. The immune system is already shot. So we're going to cure them by giving them a drug (AZT) that kills all their remaining T-cells faster than anything else in the world. Are we nuts?

Giving AZT to an AIDS patient is the kiss of death. If they don't die from the opportunistic disease they started with, they'll surely die from the other diseases that appear as their immune system is destroyed even further by the drug.

The Tragedy

By 1987, AZT was being given routinely to patients diagnosed with AIDS. Over the next few years, other DNA-inhibitors were similarly approved by the FDA for the treatment of AIDS, like "ddI" and "ddC." (Anthony Fauci, director for AIDS research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted in 1995 that "ddI has never been compared with a placebo in a large study.")

What happens to these patients on AZT? Does AZT actually cure AIDS, or prolong the life of the patient, or increase the quality of the patient's life?

Not according to all the studies. Instead, the patients experience all the usual side-effects of immunosuppressive chemotherapy: hair loss, muscle degeneration, anemia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, impotence, leukopenia, hepatitis, Pneumocystis pneumonia, and cancers such as lymphoma.

The fact is that AZT recipients develop lymphoma 50 times more often, and 25% more patients die if they are taking AZT – and they die 33% faster -- than non-AZT patients. Want proof?

In a French study on hundreds of AIDS patients taking AZT, one-third experienced a worsening of their AIDS conditions, and others developed new AIDS opportunistic diseases. On AZT, one out of every five patients died within nine months.

In England, on a study of thirteen AIDS patients taking AZT, all thirteen developed severe anemia.

In Australia, more than half the patients taking AZT developed a new AIDS opportunistic disease during the first year. Half needed blood transfusions to survive. One-third died within eighteen months.

A Dutch study found that three-quarters of the patients on AZT died within fourteen months.

In the United States, a 1994 study found twice as much dementia in AZT-treated patients. Also in 1994, HIV Positive hemophiliacs taking AZT had a 2.4 times higher mortality rate and a 4.5 times higher AIDS risk rate than HIV Positive hemophiliacs not taking AZT. In 1995, a study found that HIV Positive male homosexuals on AZT treatment had anywhere from two to four times the risk to develop Pneumocystis pneumonia.

Usually, only three percent (3%) of AIDS patients get lymphoma (cancer). But 50% of those patients taking AZT in the original (Phase I) FDA approval trials developed lymphoma three years later.

Even one of the biggest proponents of AZT, Paul Volberding, wrote a report in 1994 that the T-cells of a placebo group in an AZT study had increased gradually over two years, while the T-cells of those taking AZT had decreased. Volberding finally admitted in 1995 that "AZT does not significantly prolong either AIDS-free or overall survival."

In short, we're giving a drug to AIDS patients that not only does them no good, but actually worsens their condition and shortens their life. Why in God's name would we continue to do this?

Someone had a bright idea -- if these DNA-inhibitors are so bad, let's start hiding them in a drink with a "fun" name and call them "new." So as of 1996, HIV Positives are now being given "cocktails" made from an elaborate combination of DNA-inhibitors and protease-inhibitors -- although the long-term consumption of protease-inhibitors alone, or in combination with DNA-inhibitors, has yet to be determined in animals or in humans. (The HIV/AIDS establishment has been unusually silent on the current status of the first group of test patients to try protease-inhibitors in 1995.)

The Plot Sickens

But the tragedy doesn't stop there. With all their "success" with AZT, the HIV/AIDS establishment decided in 1990 to start giving AZT to people who tested positive for the HIV antibody, but had no signs of illness. You read that correctly....in 1990, we started giving a highly toxic drug that destroys the immune system to healthy people because they had the antibodies to the virus called HIV. Repeat: not an active HIV virus running wild in their body, but the antibodies to the virus called HIV. It was called "AIDS Prevention!"

And what happened to these people? The same thing that happens to AIDS patients: hair loss, muscle degeneration, anemia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, impotence, leukopenia, hepatitis, Pneumocystis pneumonia, dementia, and lymphoma. In short, these people develop AIDS!

And rightfully so. AZT kills the body's T-cells. It destroys the immune system. It ruins any chance the body has of fighting off opportunistic diseases. AZT causes AIDS!

Even Burroughs Wellcome agrees. They state in the Physicians' Desk Reference (the drug encyclopedia for doctors): "It was often difficult to distinguish adverse events possibly associated with AZT administration from the underlying signs of HIV disease [AIDS]."

What we've done is to take a large number of people -- friends of ours -- who were perfectly healthy, give them AIDS by giving them AZT, and watch them die.

Only the bravest, the most contrary, the ones who can stand up to the pressure from their doctor and so-called friends -- the ones who have refused to take AZT when told they were HIV Positive -- have survived.

How many have we killed with AZT? It's very difficult to say. The CDC has recorded 220,000 deaths from AIDS (listed as Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection) from 1987 to 1994, with some 40,000 in 1994 itself. If we count on at least another 40,000 again in 1995 and 1996, we're over 300,000 total AIDS deaths since 1987.

Burroughs Wellcome says its total income from the sale of AZT since 1987 is 2.5 Billion dollars -- about $400 million this year alone. The average wholesale cost for one year for one patient is $2,000 ($10,000-12,000 retail). That works out to 1.25 million patient-years of AZT prescription since 1987.

The average patient only takes AZT for about one year -- which is explained by the fact that within one to two years, the average AZT recipient either dies from the toxicity of the drug or their opportunistic disease(s), or stops taking AZT after only a few months because of the unbearable side effects.

This works out to a guess that somewhere around a million people worldwide have taken AZT. Since the United States and Europe are the only places of AIDS concentrations that can afford the drug, and since the U.S. has about twice as many HIV Positives as Europe, the bottom line is....

Probably around 600,000 people in the U.S. have taken AZT since 1987, many of whom had no symptoms of AIDS when they started.

Half of them have died.

The rest have suffered -- are suffering --needlessly.

Not a very good track record for a drug.

In fact, the rise in the number of deaths from AIDS since 1987 directly corresponds to the rise in the use of AZT. And the pressure to take AZT or other DNA-inhibitor/protease-inhibitor cocktails if you are diagnosed with AIDS or found to be HIV Positive (even without symptoms) is virtually overwhelming.

So of the 300,000 deaths attributed to AIDS by the CDC since 1987, the vast majority probably died from taking AZT -- from the extreme toxicity of the drug itself, or from an opportunistic disease that resulted from the destruction of the immune system by AZT, or from developing AIDS by taking AZT,...

...especially since the recovery rate of HIV Positives and AIDS patients is so high when they stop taking AZT and other recreational drugs.

"[I]n researching his 1990 book Surviving AIDS, [Michael] Callen interviewed nearly fifty people who had lived for many years not just after being pronounced HIV-positive, but after an AIDS diagnosis. He found that only four had ever used AZT; three of those had since died, and one was dying of AZT-induced lymphoma. But the overwhelming majority of the long-term survivors had somehow managed to resist the enourmous pressure to take AZT."

We can't do much for the hundreds of thousands that have already died from AZT, but we can certainly do something for the others that are currently taking this deadly drug and those who have escaped its consequences thus far, simply because they don't know they're HIV Positive.

What can we do? Easy. STOP AZT !

A Letter

The following are excerpts from an "open letter" written by Teresa Schmitz of Miami, Florida, dated December 8, 1993....

"In January 1992 we found out my husband was HIV+. I will never forget that morning. I will never forget the first three of four days after that test result. It was surely the most devastating experience I ever had in my entire life. Abruptly, it was all gone. No more future. No more nothing. From that moment on, life would be waiting for death.

"The [worst] part was to face my beautiful and adorable one-year-old girl. She was condemned to die.

"Out of my despair I did anything I could to get an answer about the chances of my baby surviving. The 'trained professionals' at the 800 numbers that I called gave me answers like: "Oh my God," after I said that my husband was HIV+ and I had a baby. They even asked me: 'Is her hair falling out?' 'Is she losing weight?'

"I could not allow my beautiful and precious baby to go through all that suffering. I could not imagine her going from hospital to hospital, having needles stuck in her little arm, seeing her getting skinnier and skinnier. I could not take that....

"The only way out of that despair, of that suffering, was to kill ourselves. There was no other solution for us but this one. It would end the pain and the nightmare right at the beginning....

"Two weeks later my test result came out - I was [HIV] NEGATIVE!

"So, it meant that Louise [my baby girl] was negative too....Now Cesar [my husband] was the only one of us condemned to die....

"Our marriage was falling apart: no sex life for two years. [Cesar] did not want to take any chances of contaminating me. The only sure way was abstinence....

"March 1992 (not even two months after the result) Cesar started with the symptoms of AIDS: diarrhea, nausea, weight loss, and so on. The strange thing was that the symptoms began right after he started taking AZT.

"He was feeling so bad, so sick, he decided, against his doctor's will, to stop taking AZT. All of a sudden, like magic, no more symptoms. He was healthy and normal again and remains so since then. He goes regularly to a clinic for lab tests. The doctor thinks he is doing very well, but insists and pressures him to take AZT or its similar [sic] because 'it's the only way.'"

Questions Remain

There are many unanswered questions about AIDS and the virus called HIV. Here is a Top Ten List....

QUESTION #1: Since we know that the virus called HIV has nothing to do with immune deficiency, WHAT DOES HIV ACTUALLY DO IN THE HUMAN BODY, IF

ANYTHING? Most retroviruses that have been discovered are totally dormant -- called "passenger viruses." This retrovirus deserves a new look and a new name.

QUESTION #2: WHAT IS AIDS, REALLY? The original disease reported in 1981 was defined as a low T-cell count (a disabled immune system) and various resulting opportunistic diseases. This syndrome has almost nothing to do with AIDS as it is currently defined. T-cell counts are hardly ever done on AIDS patients, and since 1994, more than 25% of the list of diseases that qualify as AIDS have nothing to do with being immune deficient. Which brings us to the next question...

QUESTION #3: WHY ARE DISEASES INCLUDED IN THE CDC DEFINITION OF AIDS THAT ARE CLEARLY NOT RELATED TO IMMUNE DEFICIENCY? If we could have a clear, consistent, and logical definition of AIDS, then we would be able to ask...

QUESTION #4: IS THERE REALLY AN EPIDEMIC (OR EVEN A SUBSTANTIAL INCREASE) IN THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ACQUIRING IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROME? If we define AIDS strictly as a disease involving a disabled immune system from some unknown cause, combined with the resulting opportunistic infections, are the numbers of people affected going up dramatically? Do we have a real problem here that is getting lost in the political games, to which we should be devoting our time and money to find the cause? If so....

QUESTION #5: WHAT REALLY CAUSES AIDS? Or better yet, what is causing a malfunction in the human immune system that has apparently taken on epidemic proportions in the last 20-25 years? A virus? Bacteria? Or perhaps, as Dr. Peter Duesberg suggests, recreational drugs that kill the T-cells? Or maybe a specific antibiotic taken in large amounts over extended periods by the high-risk AIDS groups?

QUESTION #6: WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE TO FIND THE CAUSE OF AIDS? What's going to have to happen for the medical research community to give up on the virus called HIV as the cause of AIDS and fund new research? What kind of political or public pressure is necessary to remove the incompetents and glory-seekers from the top of the bureaucracy and start thinking about saving lives?

QUESTION #7: WHEN ARE WE GOING TO STOP KILLING PEOPLE WITH AZT AND OTHER DNA-INHIBITORS? Is it going to take a class-action, wrongful death suit against Robert Gallo, Burroughs Wellcome, the FDA, et al to stop the manufacture and sale of AZT and other immunosuppressive DNA-inhibitors?

QUESTION #8: ARE THERE 5 FAMILIES OF HIV-POSITIVE VICTIMS WHO DIED FROM TAKING AZT WHO ARE WILLING TO BE PART OF SUCH A CLASS-ACTION SUIT?

QUESTION #9: IS THERE A LAWYER WHO WILL GIVE WHAT IT TAKES (AND TAKE WHAT COMES) TO PROSECUTE THIS WRONGFUL-DEATH CASE?

QUESTION #10: DOES ANYBODY CARE?

About the Author

I'm 51 years old -- a baby-boomer. I wish I could say I was a Hippie turned Yuppie. But I was never a Hippie.

In 1965, I left college to help launch "Up With People." I was clean-cut, drug-free, morally right, and on stage internationally for two years. I didn't have time to be a Hippie, nor did I believe that protesting and demonstrating were the answers to our problems. But unlike my associates in "Up With People" at that time, I was against the war in Vietnam.

However, I went to Vietnam anyway -- drafted, then enlisted for advanced medical training in the Army to become a Physician's Assistant. I was lucky. I had to study medicine every day, leaving me no time to go crazy in southeast Asia or escape into the drug scene. But I decided, lying on my bunk outside Saigon one day, that I would go into politics and make sure that kind of thing never happened again.

I used my GI bill to become a commercial pilot, worked my way into the position of Executive Director of the Republican Party in southern Arizona, and was finally elected to the Arizona State Senate from Tucson in 1974. I was 28 years old.

I served one term. I soon discovered I was not a Republican or a Democrat, and dropped my affiliation, losing my bid for re-election. It was a good thing. Government isn't the solution; it's the problem.

Since then, I have written a computer program sold nationally, been a management consultant, spent two years in a cult (The Church of Scientology), learned to break and train horses, written a book, and captained a whale/dolphin research ship based in the Canary Islands.

I was just starting a new business that cleans up the air pollution from automobiles when I read Peter Duesberg's book, Inventing the AIDS Virus. (Regnery Press, 1996 --www.duesberg.com)

By the way, I have never had a homosexual experience, nor have I ever used any recreational drugs.

From the very beginning, I did not believe the press releases that HIV caused AIDS, or that AIDS was contagious, or that it was transmitted by sexual contact. But I was not aware of all the political intrigue, lies, or money-motivated manipulations that have accompanied this medical disaster until I read Duesberg's book.

More importantly, I was not aware of the numbers of people who were -- and are -- dying each year from taking AZT, thinking it would cure or prevent AIDS.

Postscript

I am not a scientist or a medical professional. This paper was not intended to be a definitive scientific presentation. However, everything presented here has been based on factual research evidence. To my knowledge, it is true -- all of it -- and not my personal theory or speculation. I am deeply indebted to a true American hero, Dr. Peter Duesberg, for his extensive list of references in Inventing the AIDS Virus.

If you believe you have evidence to the contrary to anything I have said in this paper, I would like very much to see it. Please send me a copy of the evidence itself (not some reference that I have to go find -- I've wasted enough time doing that already, since there are many bogus claims and dead ends in the HIV/AIDS hypothesis). I will change this paper and website -- and my opinion -- the moment I see clear results from scientifically-conducted research to the contrary.

P.S. It is now a year after I first posted this website, and hundreds of people have visited and read what I had to say. I have received numerous emails -- mostly positive, grateful for the information. What I have NOT received is any email with any information challenging anything I have said. From anyone. Anywhere. The reason is very simple: what you have just read is true.

VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE