With people like Prof Sam and Paul King attempting to suggest that AIDS can be caused by recreational drug use and malnutrition, here is my question:
Can you find any reports of CMV retinitis in HIV-negative people being caused by recreational drug use or malnutrition?
CMV retinitis is a serious opportunistic infections that occur as a result of the severe compromise of T cell immunity that occurs in progressive HIV infection. Pre-1986, prior to the advent of any AIDS drugs - which denialists also claim can cause AIDS - CMV retinitis was seen in around 1/3 or people with AIDS. So if recreational drug use or malnutrition was the cause, then there must be examples of CMV retinitis being caused by recreational drugs or malnutrition in HIV-negative people, right?
Let's see if the AIDS denialists can provide some examples. pk_dag: The question is: has CMV retinitis ever been caused by malnutrition or recreational drug use? Can you provide an example?
If CMV was the cause of immunosuppression, then everyone infected with CMV would get CMV retinitis (an eye infection which causes blindness). They do not. Do you know of any examples of CMV retinitis being caused by malnutrition or recreational drug use? Can you explain why 1/3 of untreated people with AIDS came down with CMV retinitis before AZT or any other AIDS drug was available? First, I'm curious why we are referred to as 'AIDS denialists' when we have repeatedly stated that people indeed are or have been sick from diseases classified as 'AIDS defining'?
You would be more accurate in calling us ***HIV*** SKEPTICS.
You are aware that 'HIV' and AIDS are not the same thing I assume.
The person asking the question makes a rather glaring error in phrasing the question. He (I assume) wrote, 'attempting to suggest that AIDS can be caused by recreational drug use and malnutrition'.
I would ask whether what is called AIDS is the same thing around the world? Given the many degrees of freedom of diagnosis and variations in diagnostic criteria, just about anything can be classified as AIDS, even in the absence of laboratory evidence for 'HIV' infection.
In Africa, 'AIDS' is most often diagnosed based on clinical symptoms (actual illness, unlike in the United States which doesn't require illness to classify someone as having AIDS).
The fact that 'AIDS' is a non-specific illness in parts of the world, yet highly localized in others (the West with gay men and IV drug abusers), is best examplified by research done on the African version of 'AIDS'.
In the October 17, 1992 issue of Lancet [vol. 340, p971], A team of Japanese researchers examined 227 Ghanaians diagnosed as having AIDS based on clinical symptoms, without benefit of HIV tests. When they performed "multiple laboratory diagnostic tests"on each patient 鈥╰hey found 59% were negative for both HIV-1 and HIV-2!
"All the patients had three major signs: weight loss, prolonged diarrhea, and chronic fever," the report stated. "Many of them also had other AIDS-associated signs, such as lymphodenopathy, tuberculosis, dermatological diseases, and neurological disorders, though CD4 cells were not counted because of insufficient facilities."
And a second report in a 1994 issue of the Journal of AIDS [7:8, p876]The authors examined frozen blood samples from 913 "suspected AIDS/HIV-infected patients" from "towns [with] the highest number of reported cases in Kenya." No explanation was offered for what was meant by "suspected AIDS/HIV-infected patients." Apparently the patients all qualified as AIDS based on clinical symptoms, like the Ghanaian patients, or else they would not have been "suspected" of having AIDS or being HIV-positive. When investigators subjected the blood samples to rigorous HIV testing (the scientists were from the World Health Organization Reference Laboratory for AIDS) they found that 71% were HIV-negative.
In a 1993 study of 122 tuberculosis (suspected AIDS) patients in Nairobi, Kenya similar results were found. Sixty-nine percent of the patients were HIV-negative. The authors observed that "the differences that exist between HIV-positive and HIV-negative patients are minor" [American Review of Respiratory Disease 147, p958]. This is significant because TB is considered an 'AIDS' defining illness.
When the person asking the question said, 'attempting to suggest that AIDS can be caused by... malnutrition' must concede then that something other than 'HIV' cause the majority of these non-'HIV' caused AIDS causes listed above. That this is ENTIRELY plausible is based on the widely known fact that protein energy malnutrition is a leading cause of immune deficiency around the world. [1]
The question about CMV retinitis brings up other interesting questions. CMV retinitis is greatly increased in 'HIV positive' individuals in the West. Yet ironically in places like Africa it's either absent or at levels much lower than in the West. [2,3,4] This despite nearly 100% of Africans having evidence for CMV infection which is higher than in the West.
It was stated that 'around 1/3' of people with AIDS (in the West) develop CMV-r, pre-HAART that is. Researchers try and postulate why CMV-r would be substantially lower in African AIDS by posulating that these individuals die before CMV-r is manifest, yet why then would about 30% of Western AIDS patients have this manifestation pre-HAART (which is given ALL credit and glory for reducing deaths in this population).
Ironically, this is not the only anomaly.
Kaposi's Sarcoma was one of two pre-eminent conditions noted in 'classical AIDS' (1980 - ~1987). KS was claimed to be a direct consequence of 'HIV' infection. When it was found that KS tissue didn't contain 'HIV', it was postulated that another infectious agent was involved in its pathogensis. In this case another herpes virus as 'found' and nominated for this role, KSHV.
One could argue in a likewise fashion that KS is ONLY or at least primarily found in 'HIV' patients.
Yet in places like Thailand which are also said to have large problem with 'HIV'/AIDS, KS is relatively unknown. YET, KSHV (HHV-8) has a much higher prevalence rate than in the West, both in 'infected' and uninfected people.
"RESULTS: The antibody prevalence was 24.2% in the total population. The prevalence was higher among HIV-negative men (13.0%) but was similar among HIV-positive women (27.9%) and HIV-negative women (23.8%). The HHV-8 seroprevalence among wives whose husbands were HIV-1 positive did not differ according to their husband's HHV-8 status. There was no association between HHV-8 seroprevalence and reported sexual behavior or STD history. CONCLUSION: Despite the rarity of KS among patients with AIDS in Thailand, HHV-8 infections are common and do not appear to be frequently transmitted sexually in these populations." [5]
It may be true that 'HIV positives', that is, people who develop any antibodies that react on the 'HIV' antibody tests, are at increased risk of developing various illnesses above an otherwise healthy population. But this doesn't prove that it was 'HIV' causing the antibody reactivity, which in turn doesn't prove 'HIV' causes AIDS. This is a fact very difficult for people to grasp. But antibodies, EVEN monoclonal antibodies, are polyspecific. The very populations that are said to be at risk for 'HIV infection' are known to have antibodies to many things, all of which predispose this person to have non-specific antibody reactions, something that has been known as far back in the 1970s when it was known that IV drug users had 'biologic false positives' on syphillis antibody tests. It's also significant that as far back as 1985 it was known that
"reactivity in both ELISA and Western Blot analysis may be nonspecific in Africans..." [6]
So why would gay men who have a history of antigenic stimulation and exposure to multiple STDs (as well as Western IV drug abusers) not also be considered to have nonspecific reactions yet still be at increased risk for illnesses that are otherwise rare in a healthy population?
While you may consider antibody reactivity to prove 'HIV' is causing immune dysregulation, I consider immune dysregulation to lead to a positive antibody test. In fact, it's not so much immune decline so much as immune over-activitation that is now being acknowledged as the hallmark of AIDS, that is, AIDS is a result of extensive hyper-activation. [7] Gay men who began getting sick in the early 80's had histories of immune activition from; extensive drug abuse, extensive nitrite inhalant use (a potent immune supressor and oxidizer), repeated STD's, repeated treatments for STDs (herpes, CMV, syphillis, gonorhea, parasitic infections, and some infections only found in cattle), repeated exposure to rectally absorbed semen (allogenic stimulation); benzene exposure from lubricants, and extensive alcohol use. Add to this AZT in 1986/87 and you see sudden increases in death during it's introduction and use.
It's not the least bit surprising that these people would develop a host of antibodies some of which are quite likely to react on the non-specific 'HIV' antibody tests and also be at dramatically increased risk for all manner of infections (OI's).
What is now know is that AIDS is about glutathione deficiency, that is, a profound redox imballance. The bodies antioxidant defenses are dramatically lowered as a result of high levels of oxidants (all listed above) coupled with the chronic immune activiation. Even Luc Montagnier, credited with discovering HIV, has written extensively on Oxidation as it relates cancer and AIDS. [8]
Other researchers have shown a direct link between levels of the body's master antioxidant, glutathione and survival and development of AIDS. In fact, levels of glutathione also predict CD4 levels (less GSH, less CD4). [9] It's known that those with AIDS and generally 'HIV positives' are oxidized relative to health individuals.
In the end, it needs to be shown that 'HIV' equally affects everyone without respect to ethnicity, location, financial status, or sexual orientation. Unfortunately, this is not the case. For instance, 'HIV/AIDS' does not affect middle-class white women who don't do drugs and don't live in poverty. Nor does it affect American teenagers who have one of the highest teen-birth rates of any developed nation.
Finally, one word about the vaunted CD4 depeletion as cause of AIDS.
It was recently reported that wild felines (lions, pumas) are infected with 'FIV' (endemic infection rates), which like 'SIV' is said to be a host equivelent to 'HIV' and thus responsible for 'Feline AIDS'. Yet lions and pumas don't develop 'AIDS' (PCP, KS, CMV retinitis, you name it) DESPITE the fact that these animals develop immunological abnormalities similar to humans (significantly depressed CD4 counts, inverted CD4/CD8 ratios). [10]
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"What is the cause of these individuals becoming so severely immunosuppressed that they develop CMV retinitis?"
Did you read the data on 'HIV' negative AIDS I gave you? How can people possibly be getting these 'AIDS' defining illnesses in the absense of 'HIV'?
Please note, since they weren't specifically looking for CMV-r in these people we don't know how often it occurs in the 'HIV'-negative AIDS cases, which by the way outnumbered 'HIV positive' AIDS cases.
Like PCP, CMV-r is likely underdiagnosed or overdiagnosed in negative and positive populations respectively. PCP produces a 'clinical picture' like other pnemonias and even a 'definitive' diagnosis can be problematic or wrong. PCP became the 'expected' diagnosis for pnemonia in AIDS patients and therefore that is what's given. Likewise, because PCP is not expected in 'HIV negative' individuals it's not likely to be diagnosed in them. Before 1980, the primary way PCP was given a 'definitive' diagnosis was by open lung biopsy which is very invasive and therefore not likely used.
Likewise, CMV-r and other such diseases were only taken notice of when 'AIDS' became a diagnostic criteria.
And I notice you don't seem to be bothered by how 'HIV' can cause KS in the West yet not in Thailand.
Nor how animals can develop immune suppression and not develop AIDS.
Nor how 'HIV' with all its 9 genes can distinguish between black Africans and white middle-class women. Why hasn't the straign porn industry been decimated?
How can 'HIV/AIDS' be so prominent in Thailand yet leave Japan pretty much alone?
Also, researchers have reported either no, or little CMV-r cases in Africa. One would expect similar or greater rates of CMV-r in Africa as to those in 'pre-HAART'.
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Clearly AIDS is not something to simply 'play games with'. Had Joyce Ann Hafford known some of the alternative information she might still be alive. Instead she died as a result of Navirapine poisoning and now her child is without its mother. But of course she was saved from having gotten CMV retinitis.
How many other people exposed to AZT are going to end up with cancer as a result of abysmal scientific standards [see AZT Phase II trials].
[ http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200... ]
The question of CMV retinitis being present in a group of people for whom illnesses and disease is heightened is not surprising. But it's being used to prove that 'HIV' is the cause. All it shows is that in a group of people that are 1) highly oxidized relative to healthy people; and 2) have many antibodies to many things have much greater rates of otherwise uncommon illnesses.
If 1/3 of gay men develop CMV retinitis, then why aren't Africans developing similar rates. You may think that CMV-retinitis would have been written up in the medical literature had it been seen in Africa prior to 1980, but who would have noticed? ELISA tests often can't even be afforded much less complex diagnostic procedures necessary to diagnose CMV retinitis. Africa has had problems with blindness for a long time and in fact they've had problems with immune suppression for a long time.
But CMV retinitis, like KS in Thailand, is rare or absent despite a nearly 100% prevalence rate (for CMV).
Ocular disease in patients with tuberculosis and HIV presenting with fever in Africa.
Of 307 patients "...one (0.5%) had signs of active cytomegalovirus (CMV) retinitis."
Retinal findings in Malawian patients with AIDS.
of 99 AIDS patients '...1 patient (1.0%) was found to have necrotizing retinitis' although they don't specify that it's CMV retinitis.
Retinal manifestations of HIV-1 and HIV-2 infections among hospital patients in The Gambia, west Africa
"The CD4% was < 14 in 40 patients and < 7 in 17 patients. Thirty-six patients were male. No cases of CMV retinitis were found."
Natural history and spectrum of disease in adults with HIV/AIDS in Africa.
"Pneumocystis carinii are rare, as is CMV retinitis"
It's put forward that CMV retinitis isn't prevalent in Africa because 'HIV' infected people die before they reach a threshold that retinitis show up in. Yet in
"Profound immunosuppression across the spectrum of opportunistic disease among hospitalized HIV-infected adults in Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire." 39% of 250 patients had CD4 counts of less than 50 as an example.
Given the number of people that are said to be 'HIV' positive (that is, have antibodies that react non-specifically) South Africa is said to have about a 16% 'prevalence' rate. Other countries have greater 'prevalence' rates. CMV retinitis is said to cause blindness in 2 to 6 months. Given the 'prevalence' rates one should see a great many 'untreated' African AIDS patients developing this illness.
What IS causing blindness in Africa are things like malnutrition.
"Prevalence rates of childhood blindness and infant and childhood mortality in Africa are the highest in the world. Major factors contributing to these high rates are similar for both blindness and mortality: MALNUTRITION, measles and other acute febrile infections, malnutrition with xerophthalmia, and limited or poor access to preventive and curative health services."
Ophthalmic Surg. 1989 Feb;20(2):128-31.
One must wonder why gay men develop CMV retinitis at much higher rates than African AIDS patients. In fact one must wonder why gay men develop it at almost 4x the rate as IV drug users. Since 'HIV' is said to be the sole cause of immune suppression in both groups, they should develop CMV retinitis in parity.
Perhaps there is something specific to gay mens' behaviors that have led to their immune suppression that also manifests in differing disease profiles. This would explain why Thaiwanese 'HIV positives' don't develop KS despite high prevalence rates of antibody to HHV-8.
If anything CMV retinitis shows that something else is going on besides 'HIV' given that 'HIV doesn't descriminate'.
What doesn't seem to descriminate is malnutrition.
Nutrition and immunology: from the clinic to cellular biology and back again. Proc Nutr Soc. 1999 Aug;58(3):681-3
"Diet and immunity have been known to be linked to each other for centuries."
Nutritional regulation of immunity and risk of illness. Indian J Pediatr. 1989 Sep-Oct;56(5):607-11.
"The most consistent abnormalities [in malnutrition] are seen in cell-mediated immunity... It is now established that deficiencies of single nutrients also impair immune responses. The best studied are zinc, iron vitamin B6, vitamin A, copper and selenium."
In other words, profound oxidative stress links malnutrition and AIDS.
"The results presented, (i.e., the increase of MDA concentration in HIV seropositive infants and children, and the decrease in serum total antioxidants in HIV seropositive children) confirm the involvement of oxidative stress in the pathophysiology of this infection also in childhood... adjuvant therapy with antioxidants should be considered; an adequate candidate for it could be N-acetyl-cysteine."
Free Radic Biol Med. 1998 Feb;24(3):503-6.
Instead for malnutrition the West ships antiretroviral drugs to Africa.
Significantly, one group of researchers found near equal rates of illness and disease between malnourished 'HIV positive and 'negative' children in Kampala.
"Severe malnutrition with and without HIV-1 infection in hospitalised children in Kampala, Uganda: differences in clinical features, haematological findings and CD4+ cell counts"
Nutr J. 2006; 5: 27.
Published online 2006 October 16. doi: 10.1186/1475-2891-5-27.
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article...
"The children showed a high prevalence of infections: pneumonia (68%), diarrhoea (38%), urinary tract infection (26%) and bacteraemia (18%), with no significant difference with regard to the HIV status"
Look at table 2. Note there are only minor differences in disease/illness rates.
Considering a clinical diagnosis for AIDS in Africa can't distinguish between 'HIV' AIDS and non-'HIV' AIDS, it's a wonder (as I pointed out earlier) we're so desperate to send ARV's over when malnutrition and clean water is what is so needed.
So you go right on calling us denialist if that makes you feel superior, but this is serious business. People are dying from real things like malnutrition and high disease burden, not mere laboratory artifacts. In the West, people with AIDS have died from high burden of toxic exposure to drugs (both recreational and prescribed), extensive nitrite inhalant abuse, repeated and extensive STD acquisition, repeated treatments with antibiotics and then drugs like AZT.
The idea that AIDS would hit gay men in the major metropolitan areas in 1980-81 is no great mystery. Dr. Joseph Sonnebend was there treating them all.
He write, 'In the mid-seventies, Sonnabend's office was crowded with people suffering from syphilis and gonorrhea of the penis, the mouth, the anus. Chlamydia was also rampant in the gay community. But there was a lot more than the clap walking through Sonnabend's door. Hepatitis B was almost epidemic, and even tuberculosis was making a comeback. Oral and anal herpes were so common they barely were worth a mention to those infected. Sonnabend thought the gay population, at least the slice of it he was seeing in the Village, was clearly sicker, with stranger diseases, than the populace at large.In the late seventies, a new wave of disease hit his community parasites. Amebiasis, giardia lamblia, shigellosis, and cryptosporidium, a parasite that usually inhabits the bowels of sheep.' The question was: Can you find any reports of CMV retinitis in HIV-negative people being caused by recreational drug use or malnutrition?
And in a very long-winded way, Chris provided the answer:
No
http://groups.msn.com/aidsmyth... Report It
Wonder if some are still mad over the inability to answer the questions put forth by the Perth Group in the BMJ debate. Report It
or inability to answer why his "holly grail of cancer" research "hhv-8" model of Kaposi's Sarcoma doesnt prove "hhv-8" causes KS, when there are two other animal models that didnt contain "hhv-8" and the best model, provided by the Perth Group in the BMJ didnt contain either "hiv" or "hhv-8". Report It
You forgot to mention by the way that drugs used to prevent rejection in organ transpants also oxidize and deplete GSH. like steriods active CMV very well known. Report It
I'm not a denialist. I can't vote on this one. But the hypothesis that AIDS can be caused by fun drugs and malnutrition is ridiculous and sounds desperate. pk-dag,
You have to realize that statements like "the hypothesis that AIDS can be caused by fun drugs and malnutrition is ridiculous and sounds desperate" are coming from ignorance and lack of education. I'm a relatively new member to Yahoo answers, so I'm not yet beyond a level 1, but it's pretty obvious most of the posters on this board are teenagers. Unfortunately, our American public schools these days do not really teach critical thinking skills, or the value of questioning authority, so what they learn, they learn by rote.
For the other posters here, keep in mind that a lot of things that science verifies as fact sounds counterintuitive or "ridiculous". Just think of the idea from cosmology that space-time is "curved". How can empty space be curved? Yet certain modern experiments have already verified a curvature of sorts when testing Einstein's theories. Contemporary quantum physics, for instance, is chock full of counterintuitive ideas which have nevertheless been verified by testing.
You have to remember that AIDS is a "syndrome" of diseases and not any one single disease, all which are supposedly brought on by that little bugger known as HIV. Since HIV's modus operandi is a kind of generalized immune suppression, up to 29 different diseases can develop, all with their own set of symptoms. In other words, "AIDS" has no particular set of symptoms--unlike food poisoning or flus which give their own diagnoses away with specific symptoms.
The above statement is agreed upon by both mainstream supporters of the HIV=AIDS theory and so-called "denialists." However, the denialists go a step further and say, if AIDS is a syndrome of generalize immune suppression, and many things cause immune suppression--from blood transfusions to "fun drugs"--why blame it all on a miniscule little virus that can barely be found in any given patient? Advocates of the HIV=AIDS theory would argue there is evidence of perfectly healthy people being infected with HIV and then getting sick, but this evidence is extremely weak. What HIV advocates consistently fail to do, in my humble opinion, is seriously deconstruct this evidence, as well as the evidence of thousands of HIV positive people living a disease free existence.
So I'll have to agree with pk_dag that the HIV=AIDS crowd are the real "denialists." They refuse to look at the evidence right in front of them. ZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. |
