AIDS Dissidents and Denialists

by Laura Jones

Something went wrong in South Africa this spring. Apparently President
Thabo Mbeki, being a responsible political leader in the new 21st century,
did what we might expect a responsible 21st century political leader to
do: he went online to learn as much as possible about the horrible
epidemic that’s currently wiping out large portions of South Africa’s
population. And apparently he found some information that disputed the
widely-accepted causal link between HIV and AIDS, as well as some scary
information about the toxicity of AZT, an expensive medication he’s been
urged to supply. The information he found led him to contact Western
scientists such as Dr. Peter Duesberg and Dr. David Rasnick, longtime
opponents of the commonly accepted theory that HIV is the virus that
causes AIDS. Contacting “dissident” Western scientists, and eventually
including them in panel discussions concerning the cause of AIDS, caused
many other Western scientists to cry foul—what is he doing? doesn’t he
know better?—and even propose boycotts of the World AIDS Conference being
held in July in South Africa.

I’ve never questioned the causal link between HIV and AIDS, and didn’t
even know that anyone still did. So, asked to write an article on the
scuffle and knowing very little about Dr. Peter Duesberg and Dr. David
Rasnick, I did exactly what good President Mbeki did—I hopped on the ol’
Internet to see what I could find.

What I found made me very, very glad that I am not responsible for
coordinating health services and AIDS prevention strategies in South
Africa.

There’s more Internet malarkey surrounding HIV, AIDS, recreational drugs
and sex, Koch’s Postulates, polio vaccines, and genocidal government
conspiracies than I ever thought possible. Some of it is blatant
sex-and-drug phobic nonsense, like the “AIDSGate” website run by a
thoroughly whacked-out Oregonian who spouts “scientific” data like, “Every
single homosexual diagnosed with AIDS has also been a drug user…” and
“clean” homosexuals do not get AIDS.” (He also helped start the horrible
“Up With People” group back in the ’60s—a hanging crime itself, in my
opinion).

But some of it…well, it sure does read well. Gee, I didn’t know there was
a dispute as to whether HIV was ever actually isolated and grown in the
lab. I didn’t know polio vaccine was made from monkey kidneys. AZT was
originally a potential cancer treatment that proved too toxic for common
use? Are NIAID and the CDC, my reliable Hotline sources of HIV and AIDS
information, really in league with the CIA? I mean, they are government
agencies. The U.S. government does have a pretty checkered foreign policy
record.

Ahhh! It’s getting deep! Drag me out now, before I’m covered!

Given disparate information, cultural differences in policy-making, and
perhaps a healthy dose of mistrust for pharmaceutical companies, I don’t
blame President Mbeki for his cautions. Open debate among disagreeing
scientists makes a lot of sense in a country that has recently fought
bitter battles for democratic self-rule, freedom of speech, and an end to
decades of apartheid. I’m also not going to fault him for seeking second
opinions before giving South Africa’s pregnant women potentially toxic
drugs they can’t afford. However, we can take a hard look at the most
frequently debated “dissident” arguments, and see why the majority of the
scientific world believes that the HIV-causes-AIDS theory holds water.

Argument 1. In the U.S. and Europe, AIDS is caused by multiple sex
partners and heavy use of recreational drugs. In Africa, malnutrition and
diseases that have always existed in Africa cause AIDS. HIV is a harmless
“passenger” virus and doesn’t cause AIDS.

We all know this one’s ridiculous, but let’s take it right from the
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID):

“…in a prospectively studied cohort in Vancouver, 715 homosexual men were
followed for a median of 8.6 years. Among 365 HIV positive individuals,
136 developed AIDS. No AIDS-defining illnesses occurred among 350
seronegative [HIV negative] men despite the fact that these men reported
appreciable use of inhalable nitrites (“poppers”) and other recreational
drugs, and frequent receptive anal intercourse.”

As for Africa:

“The diseases that have come to be associated with AIDS in Africa—such as
wasting syndrome, diarrheal diseases and TB [tuberculosis]—have long been
severe burdens there. However high rates of mortality, formerly confined
to the elderly and malnourished, are now common among HIV-infected young
and middle-aged people.

“In a recent study in rural Uganda, adolescents and young adults testing
positive for HIV antibodies were 60 times more likely to die during the
subsequent two-year observation period than otherwise similar persons who
tested negative. In a study in Zaire, infants with HIV infection had an
11-fold increased risk of death from diarrhea compared with uninfected
children. Elsewhere in Africa findings are similar.”

Argument 2. The toxic effects of AZT and other anti-HIV medications cause
AIDS, not the harmless “passenger” virus HIV.

Theories that AZT and other anti-HIV medications themselves cause AIDS are
easily dismissed when one recalls all the nice people who died of AIDS
before AZT became available in the U.S. and Western Europe in 1987, and
all the nice people who are dying globally right now because they will
never be able to afford expensive drugs like AZT. However, let’s consult
the NIAID Fact Sheet:

“Placebo-controlled trials have found that AZT and related anti-HIV drugs
can benefit patients by prolonging, for up to a year or two, the onset of
new AIDS-related illnesses in HIV-infected individuals. Significantly,
long-term follow-up of these trials, although not showing prolonged
benefit of AZT, has never indicated that the drug increases disease
progression or mortality. The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the
AZT arms of these trials effectively rebuts the argument that AZT causes
AIDS.

“In addition, many individuals who have never taken AZT or related drugs
have developed AIDS, including people in the United States prior to the
availability of AZT, and in Africa today where very few people receive
AZT.”

Argument 3. There are people with AIDS who don’t have HIV, so HIV can’t be
the cause of AIDS.

Nicely summarized by Dr. Steven B. Harris, author of “The AIDS Heresies: A
Case Study in Skepticism Taken Too Far”:

“Previous to the epidemic of AIDS, of course, people did die of immune
failure with low T-lymphocyte counts (including low CD4+ counts) for other
reasons, and they continue to do so now…cancer, malnutrition,
tuberculosis, radiation, chemotherapy, etc. These people do not have AIDS,
because the historical epidemic of AIDS consisted of people with no
T-lymphocytes, and yet no known reason for it.

“So let us simply collect all the people we can find with CD4+ counts
remaining below 200 (for a few months) without known reason, and test them
for HIV. When we do, we find that essentially all are HIV infected, and
any who are not do not look at all like typical AIDS patients…Thus, at
this point we have no evidence yet to directly contradict the simple
theory that HIV causes 100% of our conservatively defined “AIDS.” AIDS
skeptics will need different definitions in order to find HIV-free AIDS.”

(I sure do like Dr. Steven B. Harris. I also sure do like the fact that I
found his terrific document via the previously cited nutty Oregonian’s
“AIDSGate” website, located at
www.aliveandwell-eugene.dreamhost.com/aidsgate. The nutty one swears he’s
never received a single piece of e-mail disagreeing with any of his
statements. Feel free to drop him a line—after all, he is “Up With
People”!).

Argument 4. There are people with HIV who don’t have AIDS, so HIV can’t be
the cause of AIDS.

It can take years, friends. Longer than we originally thought. And hey,
maybe one day we will discover that some people with HIV never develop
AIDS—happy news. Until that point, however, we need to realize that 20
years is not a very long time in the life of a complicated disease. We
don’t have all the answers yet, but we do have to use what we know.

Argument 5. If AIDS was caused by just one thing, everyone with AIDS would
get sick in the same way, in the same amount of time. AIDS behaves
differently in different populations, so AIDS must be caused by lots of
different things instead of by HIV.

HIV doesn’t cause the diseases associated with AIDS. People with AIDS get
funky illnesses because their immune systems are mortally compromised, and
people with compromised immune systems will get sick with whatever is
floating around them. Different pathogens (disease-causing agents) lurk in
different regions and communities, which explains why PWAs in Thailand may
become ill with diseases not found in Sturgis, South Dakota, and vice
versa. Opportunistic infections vary even by gender and age, due to
differences in exposure to various pathogens.

Argument 6. HIV doesn’t fulfill Koch’s Postulates for an infectious
disease, so it can’t cause AIDS.

Duesberg’s favorite, refuted several times over the course of AIDS
history. Robert Koch discovered anthrax bacillus late in the 19th century
and developed the standard determinants for the cause of any epidemic
infectious disease.

Postulate #1: Epidemiological Association—Suspected cause of disease must
be strongly associated with the disease.

HIV Fulfills Postulate: Antibodies to our RNA from HIV is found in the
vast majority of persons with AIDS. Lack of HIV antibodies in less than 5%
of cases fulfilling other criteria for AIDS (no other reason for immune
system collapse) has been largely attributed to the insensitivity of early
tests.

Postulate #2: Isolation—Suspected pathogen must be isolated and propagated
outside the host organism.

HIV Fulfills Postulate: HIV has been cultivated in human T-lymphocytes,
and cultured cell lines have been grown. (Dr. Duesberg himself agrees!)

Postulate #3: Transmission—Transferring suspected disease agent to
uninfected host causes disease in new host.

HIV Fulfills Postulate: Most easily illustrated via the case of three lab
technicians accidentally infected with HIV-1 through needle sticks. All
three developed antibodies to HIV and experienced marked CD4+ cell
depletion and/or opportunistic PCP (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) within
five years.

There will always be people who will argue over the exact phrasing of
Koch’s Postulates, which have been modified over the years due to new
technology and knowledge of infectious diseases. Defenders of HIV will
continue to argue that other diseases—typhoid fever, leprosy, and
tuberculosis—fail to meet strict Koch causality tests. In the meantime,
however, HIV does a fine job arguing its case as the causative agent of
AIDS.

Laura Jones is a sexual health activist and teacher, and is also a
counselor for the Illinois HIV/AIDS and STD Hotline, operated by Test
Positive Aware Network