AidsMyth News Daily Rethinker ePaper

Congratulations to UK Aids Rethinkers,
Steve Ransom, Philip Day and friends, whose relentless activism is transforming
UK perceptions of Aids.
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A Closer look at
alternative
Aids theories
UK South Africa Times,
28.11.2000

While the conventional wisdom
surrounding the killer disease
is widely reported, LARA SMITH
examines the alternative perspective.

President Thabo Mbeki has been widely criticised for expressing views which question the safety of anti-retroviral drugs such as AZT and which challenge the dogma that the Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV) is the sole cause of Aids.

However, few of his critics seem aware of the reasons why some scientists and researchers are sceptical about AZT and the very existence of HIV. "Buried deep within the secretive and well-guarded dogma that Aids is a plague caused by the lethal virus known as HIV, there is a time bomb of potentially explosive contrary information." says Professor Gordon Stewart, Emeritus Professor of Public Health at Glasgow University.

"Almost everything you have been told about Aids and HIV is either a series of half-truths or complete nonsense" write British investigative reporters Steven Ransom and Phillip Day in World Without Aids.[ www.credence.org]

Ransom and Day - among other journalists and scientists - dispute the 1984 claim by virologist Dr Robert Gallo that he had isolated a virus believed to cause Aids, at the time a relatively unknown deadly disease. Gallo was convicted of science fraud by the Office of Research Integrity in 1992 for his claim to have discovered HIV. He also had to retract claims in the 1970s that he had identified the first human retrovirus (the same virus family that HIV allegedly hails from) while researching leukaemia, after independent experiments failed to replicate or verify his discovery.

Aids was first introduced into the public psyche in the early 1980s, when Michael Gottlieb, an immunology researcher at the University of California Los Angeles, discovered a phenomena of immune deficiencies among male homosexuals. All were heavy users of recreational drugs. Further examination by the US Centre for Disease Control found the same low T-cell count and immuno-deficient health disorders among heroin addicts and haemophiliacs.

By late 1982, hundreds of articles were appearing about the new disease - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Aids). Crisis Today some 24 million Africans have been diagnosed with HIV and 20 percent of the South African population is believed to be HIV-positive. According to Lifeworks - an organisation founded by the SA insurance industry to investigate the Aids crisis - by 2005 there will be six million South Africans infected and one South African will die of what is considered an Aids-related disease every minute.

Unlike the US, where 94 percent of Aids cases are still either gay men or intravenous drug users, in Africa infection is indiscriminate. Everyone is at risk - male, female, homosexual, heterosexual, young, old, despite the fact that many African societies are sexually conservative.

The dissident theory is that Aids in Africa is the result of a weakened immune system caused by multiple factors including poor nutrition and lack of hygiene, a lack of medicines to treat common diseases like tuberculosis, malaria and cholera, and sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. This link between poverty and Aids is one that Mbeki has been vocal about and which has raised the ire of the mainstream Aids establishment.

Ransom tells of a community in Tanzania, "who would otherwise be written off by WHO and associate organisations as HIV AIDS candidates just waiting to die", yet is "amazingly alive and well" following the introduction of clean water, nutrition and basic medicines to treat cholera and malaria.

Many conditions such as weight loss, chronic diarrhoea, fever and persistent coughs, the result of malnutrition and poor sanitation, "are now lumped together by the WHO as Aids." says Ransom.

Diagnosis.
There are some 60 medical conditions - unrelated to any virus - that can cause an HIV-positive diagnosis on an Aids test, he adds. And, in the same way that the quality of medical care in the UK is often linked to a patient's survival, so the results of an HIV-test vary from country to country. Much of this has to do with the cost of the tests - the cheaper they are, the less reliable the result will be. In Africa, a lack of resources means that the cheapest, least reliable tests are more likely to be used.

Thus a person testing positive for HIV in South Africa could test negative in a wealthier country like Canada. Also if someone falling into a 'high-risk' category - such as a gay man - visits the doctor with symptoms that could be just flu, there is a greater chance that they will be sent for an Aids test than a 'low-risk' person. Because their immune system may be compromised as a result of the flu virus (or malaria or TB), the person could test HIV-positive.

"I say people across the globe are being misdiagnosed on a daily basis with HIV, and if they are then given conventional treatment . some of them will eventually die." says Ransom.

Which introduces the second argument in the dissident case: that the antiretroviral drugs, and specifically AZT, are responsible for more deaths than the disease itself.

Poison
The drug, say its critics, poisons the immune system, cannot distinguish between healthy and infected cells and does not address the underlying problems of a weakened immune system such as malnutrition, drug abuse or illnesses like malaria. AZT - Azidothymidine - was first developed in the 1960s as a chemotherapy treatment for cancer, but was rejected for human use after laboratory tests found it destroyed the healthy cells of mice, who all died of extreme toxicity.

Critics claim the drug was reintroduced in 1987 when, under pressure to find a cure for the disease that was claiming hundreds of lives, the US Federal Drug Administration ignored conventional scientific procedure and pushed through its approval for use. Figures for the US Centres for Disease Control show that the number of people dying from Aids trebled between 1987 and 1989 after AZT was approved. By 1994 the death toll had risen to 15 times what it was before AZT became available.

Critics point to the Concorde Trial of 1993, one of the few independent trials not funded by AZT's manufacturer Glaxo Wellcome, which found the mortality rate was 25 percent higher for patients taking AZT than those who weren't. The toxicity of AZT brings on the symptoms of Aids: diarrhoea, weight loss, fatigue, vomiting. Although Glaxo vehemently disputes these claims, on its website (www.treathiv.com) it admits: "The most common adverse events associated with AZT are headache, nausea and fatigue ... serious side effects can occur such as muscle damage and a decrease in red and white blood cells."

Critics further point to the harm AZT can do to babies, even though it is being touted as a means of preventing HIV transmission from pregnant mothers to their unborn children. In 1984 the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported that pregnant women treated with AZT in India showed a "shocking number of therapeutic and spontaneous abortions, and ... a number of grotesque birth defects" including holes in the chest, misplaced ears, misshapen faces, and heart defects.

And a recent study by researchers in the US and Finland found that "AZT crosses the human placenta and is rapidly incorporated into the DNA of placental tissue ... even short exposures to this drug might induce fetal genotoxicity."

In South Africa in 1988, rape victim Amy Brown miscarried a week after she was treated with an antiretroviral drug cocktail. Despite treatment, she tested HIV-positive six months later. The anti-AZT lobby believes that babies born to mothers with weakened immune systems - whether due to illness, drug abuse or malnutrition - will inherit this severely compromised immune system, with or without HIV. Giving these infants anti-retroviral drugs is likely to compromise their health, whereas, according to other research following Glaxo Wellcome's trials, without any medical intervention nearly 80 percent will revert to HIV-negative within 18 months.

Interests
Many people believe the debate about HIV and AZT has been distorted by vested interests. According to Noseweek, a South African investigative magazine, worldwide sales of AZT exceeded $2.5 billion in 1997, and the Aids establishment spends about $3bn a year on travel, conferences, research grants and salaries. However, no one can deny the seriousness of the Aids pandemic and the effect it is having on South Africa. Despite challenging conventional theories, Mbeki and his government remain committed to fighting the disease, whatever its underlying causes.

When Copernicus proposed in the 15th century that the sun was at the centre of the solar system, and not the earth, as was widely believed, he was ridiculed. Will future generations ridicule us for ignoring alternative theories because they're contrary to the mainstream scientific beliefs of today? "

Please email
your comments to
sateditorial@compublish.co.uk
They will be greatly encouraged to continue
to expose Aids -by your positive feedback