London Sunday Times Science Editor Investigates HIV=AIDS

[Guest guest]

AIDS: Scientific or Viral Catastrophe?

 

 

 

By NEVILLE HODGKINSON

 

 

Neville Hodgkinson reported on AIDS as medical correspondent of the

Sunday London Times. From 1991, as the London newspaper's science

correspondent, he wrote a series of highly controversial investigative

reports questioning the alleged viral pathogenesis and progression of

HIV and AIDS. His extensive bibliography is produced below this most

recent and comprehensive paper.

 

 

Nuneham Park, Nuneham Courtenay,

Oxford OX44 9PG, UK

neville@b...

 

 

 

Journal of Scientific Exploration

vol. 17, no. 1, pp 87-120

 

April 2003

 

 

Abstract - Despite more than $100 billion spent on AIDS by US

taxpayers alone, scientists have not been able to ascertain how HIV

causes the AIDS syndrome. Predictions about the course of the

epidemic have proved inaccurate. While millions are said to be

infected and dying in Africa, AIDS deaths have fallen in Europe and

the USA and now total fewer than 250 a year in the UK, which has a

population of nearly 60 million. Claims that cocktails of antiviral

drugs are responsible for a decline in Western AIDS are unsupported

by clear evidence. On the contrary, the US Government has reversed a

policy of " hit hard, hit early " in HIV-positive people,

citing " unexpected toxicities " from the drugs. The HIV theory of

AIDS causation has fulfilled certain social and public health needs,

but the scientific community has not acknowledged or addressed

serious flaws in AIDS theory and medical practice, in particular a

failure to validate " HIV " diagnostic tests against isolation of

virus. Genetic and chemical signals produced by disordered immune

cells may have been misinterpreted as evidence of the presence of a

lethal virus. There is vast over-diagnosis of AIDS and " HIV disease "

in Africa and other countries where malnutrition and grossly

impoverished living circumstances, with associated infections, are

the real killers. The harmful consequences of these mistakes and

omissions are increasing now that the World Health Organisation and

UNAIDS, convinced of an African pandemic, are urging finance

ministers of African countries to devote more domestic funds to

HIV/AIDS activities. On the other hand, if debt relief and other

emergency aid for which UNAIDS is also campaigning are used

appropriately, enormous relief of human suffering will be possible.

A reasoned response from the scientific community to the full range

of evidence challenging the HIV theory is overdue.

 

 

 

Keywords: HIV---AIDS---HIV test---poverty---Africa---virus isolation

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

 

An African girl stands beneath a tall, makeshift wooden cross planted

in a freshly dug grave. Her sad face, eyes accusingly upturned,

dominates the black-and-white cover of a special issue of the British

Medical Journal, " Global Voices on the AIDS Catastrophe " . Inside,

we read that without access to retroviral drugs, " most of the 40

million people currently living with HIV will die " ; that more than

600,000 infants are infected with HIV from their mothers every year;

that the epidemic will kill 55 million people by 2010; that HIV drugs

should be made available free to poor countries; and that our

generation will be judged by its success or failure in developing an

HIV vaccine and ensuring equitable access to it. Such declarations

have become a kind of litany, recited regularly in news media as well

as professional journals. The intention is to sustain awareness of

the suffering HIV is held to cause and of the need to remain vigilant

against its further spread, and to encourage provision of remedial

help.

This article is about a world-wide body of informed opinion that

dissents from the beliefs, assumptions and interpretations of

evidence underlying and arising from the HIV theory of AIDS. For

those who to this dissenting view, the statements in the

above paragraph have a very different meaning. They signify a

tragedy of errors. The " dissidents " do not dispute that suffering

caused by immune deficiencies exists on a large scale in poor

countries, and that the need for help is real and urgent. They have

varying ideas about what actually does cause AIDS. But they are

united in questioning the bleak picture painted by mainstream AIDS

scientists, considering it an unfounded assault on the minds and

hearts of millions. The dissidents are also agreed in challenging

the belief that AIDS is caused by a single virus, in opposing use of

the HIV test to diagnose " HIV disease " , and in arguing that there are

more appropriate and compassionate ways to counter AIDS than use of

anti-viral drugs and the search for a vaccine.

To many scientists, especially those steeped in AIDS work, it is no

longer a theory but a fact that HIV is the cause of AIDS. My own

view, after studying the issue now for more than 10 years, is that

this is not because of an overwhelming weight of evidence in favour

of the HIV hypothesis, as is often believed and claimed. On the

contrary, there is powerful evidence that the science underlying the

oft-quoted statistics and the paradigm that gives rise to them has

missed the mark in several crucial aspects. There is even a strong

question mark over the very existence of the virus as a unique

infectious entity. The signals that have been interpreted as

indicating its presence may instead arise as a result of heightened

cell decay in a compromised immune system. Most people do not know

about this evidence, because HIV became an article of faith for

modern medicine almost as soon as the theory was proposed, and

questioning it a heresy. Feelings around AIDS ran so high, and the

drive to promote the idea that all were at risk was so strong, that

contrary views were marginalized and suppressed from the beginning

and remain for the most part unheard. Dissidents who challenge the

theory have often been ridiculed as " flat-earthers " by colleagues

privileged to enjoy the mainstream of AIDS beliefs. The result has

been a persistent failure to acknowledge or explore shortcomings in

the science surrounding the virus explanation.

When AIDS was first medically recognised in the early 1980s, the

drive to defeat it brought out qualities and aspirations among many

of those involved that went beyond the call of professional duty.

These efforts have brought profound social and political benefits.

Sympathy for homosexual men, hardest hit by Western AIDS, grew

steadily and the social status of the gay community has been

transformed. In more recent years, awareness of the millions who die

prematurely in Africa has increased the sense that AIDS is one of the

most urgent challenges facing humanity and has triggered a

substantial response in human and financial resources. In the USA

alone, where taxpayers have spent more than $100 billion on HIV/AIDS

research, treatment, and other programs over the past two decades

[ii], the Bush administration budgeted $780million in 2002 to help

foreign nations grapple with the disease. To the surprise of the New

York Times, both Republicans and Democrats pressed for more. " With

Convert's Zeal, Congress Awakens to AIDS " was the headline on a Times

report that the eventual US contribution to the global fight would

probably approach $1.3 billion. The recently-formed Global Fund to

Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria quickly obtained pledges of more

than $2 billion, with $700 million available for immediate

disbursement (though the BMJ argued that these figures are still

hugely disproportionate to what is needed). The World Bank, which

has earmarked more than $2 billion for HIV/AIDS since 1986, including

loans, is also intensifying its efforts.

Paradoxically, however, the scale of these endeavours, along with the

HIV theory's value as a catalyst for aid, has made it increasingly

difficult for dissenting voices to be heard. Most people, now firmly

believing that the world faces an " AIDS catastrophe " , respond to

escalating claims about the extent of the epidemic not just with

concern, but with gratitude that despite the immensity of the

problem, science, medicine and politics have the virus in their

sights and that huge resources have been mobilised in support of

their efforts. It then seems churlish, irresponsible and even

dangerous for anyone to write or say anything that could be perceived

as weakening resolve to fight the spread of HIV.

Scientists and non-scientists alike question the hypothesis at their

peril. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa is still struggling to

cope with the political fall-out over his suggestion that poverty,

not HIV, is responsible for much of African AIDS. When Mbeki

questioned the value of anti-viral drugs in preventing mother-to-

child transmission of AIDS, he was portrayed by the UK media as a

monster (e.g. " Mbeki 'lets Aids babies die in pain' " , The Observer,

20 August 2000; Mbeki " Enemy of the people " , Sunday Times, 27 August

2000). Across the world, newspapers and broadcast media, doctors

and scientists, charities, UN agencies, financial institutions and

politicians even up to the level of the White House joined in the

criticism. " Under pressure to spend millions to prescribe AZT,

President Mbeki indulges AIDS flat-earthers, " said Time magazine in

April 2000, in response to news that Mbeki was defending his right to

include about a dozen " dissident " scientists on a 40-strong advisory

panel on AIDS. The disease was threatening to wipe out a quarter of

South Africa's population by the year 2010, said Time's medical

correspondent, yet the government was backing away from its treatment

responsibilities by refusing to make available the antiviral drugs

AZT or nevirapine to rape victims and pregnant women. Hundreds of

thousands, if not millions, of people would suffer because of

Mbeki's " misplaced distrust of medical authority " . The latest

(August 2002) attack on Mbeki is a CD remake of famous songs of the

anti-apartheid era in which he and his health minister Manto

Tshabalala-Msimang are portrayed as the new oppressors.

This state of affairs is indeed dangerous, but not because Mbeki is

wrong. For if one thing is certain it is that both AZT and

nevirapine are very dangerous drugs, and that neither of them has

been demonstrated to benefit babies. As we shall see, the benefit is

entirely speculative, based on an effect on certain surrogate markers

believed to indicate HIV infection. Studies in terms of actual

outcome on the babies' health show that those exposed to the drugs do

worse than those who remain drug-free. This is contrary to

expectations based on AIDS orthodoxy and may prove to be the spur for

a long-overdue re-examination of many of the claims of AIDS experts.

How the Theory Took Hold

Deep social, psychological and political currents were involved in

the construction and almost immediate acceptance of the HIV

hypothesis, but a convenient place to begin the story is April 23,

1984. That was the day when Margaret Heckler, the then US Health

Secretary, announced at a press conference that the " probable " cause

of AIDS had been found. It was a virus, later to become known as the

Human Immunodeficiency Virus. A process had been developed to mass-

produce this virus, Heckler said, resulting in a " blood test for AIDS

which we hope can be widely available within about six months…we have

applied for the patent on this process today " .

Robert Gallo, the US Government researcher who led the team

responsible for the apparent breakthrough, confirmed at the press

conference that in his mind the cause of AIDS was unequivocally a new

retrovirus, that it was probably the same as one found by Luc

Montagnier's group at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and that a

reliable blood test " that could quickly save lives " had been

developed.[ii] The blood test had been made possible because " we

have the problem of mass production solved " , Gallo told

reporters. " That's one of the significances of what we're telling

you today. " [iii]

In staking his claim to have been the first to truly characterise

" the AIDS virus " , Gallo had previously sought to play down the

significance of the Pasteur group's work. " No one has been able to

work with their particles, " he wrote to the editor of The Lancet

earlier that year. " Because of the lack of permanent production and

characterisation it is hard to say they are really 'isolated' in the

sense that virologists use this term. " [iv] Gallo's " initial disbelief

of Montagnier's claim to have isolated a virus from AIDS patients,

which he has since acknowledged to have been unfortunate " , as Nature

put it,[v] included doubts over electron micrographs published by the

French. Gallo also originally dismissed as " ridiculous " the French

team's claims that they had identified a retrovirus specific to AIDS

on the grounds that their culture reacted with antibodies in blood

samples from AIDS patients. " That's bad virology, " Gallo had

said. " Patient sera, especially in AIDS patients, has antibodies to

a lot of different things. " [vi]

Gallo's scepticism gave way to a different attitude after his own

earlier candidate as the AIDS virus, HTLV-1, failed to convince, not

least because it had been linked with uncontrolled white blood cell

growth, rather than the loss of cells seen in AIDS. The April 1984

press conference concerned his second candidate, a retrovirus

purportedly related to HTLV-1, that he called HTLV-3. The following

month, Gallo's group published four articles in Science in which he

sought to demonstrate that HTLV-3 was the primary cause of AIDS.[vii]

These Science papers, along with Montagnier's claims, soon became the

almost unchallenged basis of the scientific community's belief in the

theory that AIDS was indeed caused by a new virus. Between 1984 and

1987 it was accepted that between them, Gallo and Montagnier had

succeeded in isolating the virus and producing a diagnostic test to

detect its presence in patients and in blood supplies. Screening

surveys using these new tests gave rise to the idea that HIV was

spreading rapidly via sexual intercourse, mother-to-baby transmission,

blood transfusions, and needles shared by drug addicts. The anti-

viral drug AZT soon followed, initially developed and promoted by US

Government scientists although with a drug company, Burroughs Wellcome

(now subsumed in the giant GlaxoSmithKline group) reaping most of the

rewards. The world was assured that a vaccine would not be far

behind.

Three core propositions soon became established as a firm belief

system, essentially unchanged to this day. These hold that:

HIV is a lethal viral infection, probably originating in Africa, that

gradually and inexorably destroys cells of the immune system, so that

the victim eventually dies from an inability to resist a variety of

previously known disease conditions.

The virus's presence can be reliably detected with the HIV test. AZT

and similar drugs can save lives by quelling the virus, blocking its

growth and transmission. Consequently, the best way to fight the

epidemic is with anti-viral drugs and the hunt for a vaccine,

alongside prevention work including condom distribution and

discouragement of breast-feeding by HIV-positive mothers.

The world was ready to hear this story. It was as if a huge,

collective sigh of relief went up, that the complex and frightening

collapse of the immune system seen in AIDS could be attributed to a

single microbe. Leaders of the gay community were particularly

relieved. They had fought for years through the Gay Liberation

movement for more humane attitudes towards homosexuality. Those

advances had come under threat during the first years of AIDS, when

the " gay plague " stigma had been used by a right-wing administration

as an excuse for inaction. Doctors and scientists who had seen the

devastation the new illness was causing to young lives were also

relieved. A deadly new virus meant an enemy that could be fought

cleanly, without prejudice, using scientific tools they were familiar

with. The media, too, love killer virus stories. As the idea

developed that the virus itself was not prejudiced either, and would

in time prove a threat to just about everyone, big money started to

roll for AIDS research and treatment.

These and other social, political and even religious factors gathered

behind the HIV hypothesis and swiftly turned it, in most people's

minds, into a creed. Gay men who suggested there could be a link

between AIDS and the drug-driven, multiple-partner promiscuity of the

early Gay Lib years - not with feelings of blame or guilt, but

rather, of trying to understand and prevent the disease - were

quickly denied a voice. One of these, the late Michael Callen,

whose " conservative " estimate was that he had had sex with more than

3,000 partners by the age of 27, once commented: " HIV breeds a form

of scientific nationalism: you're either for it or against it. And

like America, one must apparently love it or leave the AIDS

debate. " [viii]

Not long after the launch of Gallo's virus as the cause of AIDS, a

fierce scientific dispute arose surrounding it which, paradoxically,

also had the effect of fixing the viral theory all the more securely

in most people's minds. HTLV-3 was found to be identical to the

particles obtained by the Pasteur team, which they had named LAV; and

a sample of LAV had been sent to Gallo's laboratory. Had there been

a laboratory mix-up? Did Gallo " steal " the French group's virus? A

prolonged and bitter argument began over who should be credited with

its discovery.

Gallo claimed that even if it was the same virus, his team had made a

significant advance on the French work by getting it to grow (in a

highly abnormal, leukemic cell line) in sufficient quantity to do the

laboratory work from which the first antibody test kits could be

manufactured.

Years later, an investigation by the US National Institutes of Health

Office of Scientific Integrity led to a report listing 20 instances

of " knowledgeable misreporting or errors " in the first and main

Science paper. Eight of these errors, the report said, were serious

enough to constitute scientific misconduct.[ix] Gallo, whilst

maintaining innocence of deliberate misconduct, has acknowledged that

the four papers were written during what he called the " passionate "

stage of his group's work, when they were under a variety of

pressures to publish quickly, including political pressure from

Heckler's department.[x]

Robin Weiss, the leading British AIDS scientist, also initially

discounted the French group's claims and rejected a key Montagnier

paper in 1983.[xi] In 1985 Weiss also independently claimed

isolation of an AIDS virus, from which he patented the British blood

test, after Montagnier had sent him, too, samples of " LAV " . An

investigation revealed in early 1991 that his virus also appeared to

be identical to the French virus, and Weiss publicly agreed that he

might have accidentally contaminated his cultures with LAV.[xii]

With Gallo and Montagnier fighting each other from the start over who

should receive the credit for discovering the virus, the possibility

that neither might have done so was overlooked by the world

scientific community. Acceptance of the term " Human Immunodeficiency

Virus " as a supposed compromise between HTLV-3 and LAV set in stone

the assumption that a new virus was the cause of AIDS. Yet in

retrospect, it was certainly remarkable that not just Montagnier and

Gallo but Weiss too, the three prime movers of the HIV story, all

seem to have based their claims on work with identical particles from

a single source.

Anger and Disbelief Greet the Early Challenges

During the second half of the 1980s, while working as medical

correspondent of the London Sunday Times, I shared and reported on

the rapidly-established belief that HIV was a contagious, sexually

transmitted microbe, silently imperilling the world because of a time

lag of years between infection and immune system breakdown. There

was a contagious element to this belief itself, to which I remember

being first fully exposed at the international AIDS congress in

Washington in 1987. A lot of emotion was present. There was anger,

as gay men, already stricken by terrible losses, lobbied for faster

release of anti-HIV drugs; but there was also a shared sense of

excitement, as speaker after speaker emphasised the peril that HIV

presented, while also offering the assurance that science and

medicine were mobilising against this microbe and that given the

right social and financial support, would sooner or later defeat it.

After living and working with this idea over the next few years, I

was incredulous when in June 1990 a British television documentary

questioned this belief. Made by Meditel, a film-making company in

London, and transmitted as part of Channel 4's Dispatches series, it

highlighted a challenge to the HIV theory by Professor Peter

Duesberg, a US molecular biologist. Previously considered at the

forefront of his profession, Duesberg had become ostracised after

arguing that HIV was a harmless bystander in AIDS. The real

causes, he believed, were drug abuse, heavy exposure to blood and

blood products, and, as panic over HIV took hold, toxic medical

treatments directed against the virus.[ii]

The main plank in Duesberg's argument against HIV was (and is) that

there is so little active virus in patients, even those with full-

blown AIDS, that it cannot be doing the damage attributed to it. At

one time it was thought AIDS resulted from the virus running over the

immune system " like a truck " (in Gallo's words), destroying a

particular class of cell, known for short as T4 cells, crucial in co-

ordinating the body's response against infections. That theory has

not stood up. According to a recent review in Nature, " much remains

left to the imagination " as to how HIV causes immune deficiency.

[iii] After nearly two decades of work, AIDS scientists still do not

know how or why HIV is pathogenic. This fact in itself lends strong

support to Duesberg's position.

About 18 months after the Meditel film was shown, I met its director,

Joan Shenton, who urged me to look more deeply into Duesberg's

critique. By this time, he had the backing of about 40 scientists

and other AIDS analysts, called the Group for the Reappraisal of the

HIV/AIDS Hypothesis[iv] (the group's membership later ran into

hundreds). In May 1992 an " alternative " AIDS conference featuring

Duesberg and other " AIDS dissidents " took place in Amsterdam,

Holland, providing me with an opportunity to describe their arguments

for the first time to a national newspaper audience anywhere in the

world.[v]

The article brought a furious response from AIDS scientists, who said

it would endanger lives by weakening the public health response to the

epidemic. Robin Weiss invited me to his laboratory to see the

" harmless " virus I had written about. He never actually showed it to

me, but berated me for two hours over my work.

Further anger greeted a Sunday Times article[vi] heralding the

appearance on Channel 4 in March 1993 of another Meditel documentary,

this one challenging the idea that Africa was in the grip of an AIDS

epidemic. Under the headline " Epidemic of AIDS in Africa 'a tragic

myth' " , I wrote that the film would outrage much Western medical

opinion, because of the belief that " heterosexual AIDS " in Africa was

a warning of what could happen elsewhere. Nevertheless, a growing

body of expert opinion believed that false claims of devastation by

HIV were leading to a tragic diversion of resources from areas of

genuine medical need such as malaria, tuberculosis and malnutrition.

Some of the " heretics " were even saying there was no evidence of a

new sexually transmitted disease in Africa, but that instead, death

rates had increased in some countries because of civil war, and

because of poverty and malnutrition linked to economic decline.

Predictions by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and other agencies

that millions would die because of HIV were based not on scientific

evidence, but on unfounded assumptions about the extent of HIV

infection in Africa and its links with AIDS.

The documentary was based on a two-month investigation in Uganda and

the Ivory Coast, thought to be epicentres of what agencies were

calling a " pandemic " of AIDS. It argued that because international

funds were available for AIDS and HIV work, politicians and health

workers had an incentive to classify people as AIDS sufferers who

previously would have been diagnosed as having other illnesses. The

Ugandan government could afford to spend less than $1 a head on

health care from its funds, but the previous year it received $6

million for AIDS research and prevention from foreign agencies.

Part of the problem was that HIV testing was frequently misleading in

Africa, as the tests reacted to antibodies to other diseases,

producing high rates of false positives. Furthermore, most AIDS

diagnoses in Africa did not involve an HIV test, but were based on a

WHO definition that relied on clinical signs including weight loss,

chronic diarrhoea and prolonged fever. The scope for

misclassification was enormous. According to Dr Harvey Bialy, an

American scientist who worked as a tropical disease expert in Africa

for many years and who accompanied the television crew, there

was " absolutely no believable, persuasive evidence that Africa is in

the midst of a new epidemic of infectious immunodeficiency " .

Bialy, whom I interviewed for the article, told me that the

only " utterly new " phenomenon he had seen was in drug-abusing

prostitutes in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. The girls were being

destroyed by viciously adulterated smokable heroin and cocaine.

Otherwise, he had seen malaria, tuberculosis, and diarrhoeal

diseases, which arguably had become more severe, but reason told him

that this was because of general economic decline, a decline in

health care, and the development of drug-resistant strains. Those

factors, he felt, could explain what was going on much more

efficiently and persuasively, and to much greater good for the public

health, than saying the diseases were being made worse by HIV.

HIV Test Never Validated Against Isolation of Virusfficeffice " />

Bialy was working as scientific editor for Bio/Technology magazine,

which includes among its specialities the detailed examination of

diagnostic tests. He had in press a paper on HIV that did more than

highlight a problem with false positives: it challenged the very

basis of the test as indicating the presence of a specific virus,

HIV, arguing that it had never been validated against the accepted

gold standard for such a test, isolation of the virus itself. The

article concluded that positive test results, whether using the Elisa

or Western blot (WB) testing methods, might represent nothing more

than cross-reactivity with non-HIV antibodies present in AIDS

patients and those at risk, and that use of the test as a diagnostic

and epidemiological tool for HIV infection should be reappraised.

Published in June 1993, the review article, which carried 161

references, showed that the data presented by Gallo and Montagnier

did not prove that a retrovirus had been isolated from the tissues of

AIDS patients.

Traditionally, in determining whether a virus is the specific cause

of an illness, microbiologists first purify it from a patient with

the disease so that they know what it looks like under the electron

microscope and precisely what they are working with. They then grow

the purified virus in the laboratory; show it is present in all cases

of the disease, that there is a lot of it, and that it is active in

the body in a way that accounts for the disease; and demonstrate that

it reproduces the original disease when introduced into a susceptible

animal.

In the case of " HIV " , none of these requirements has been met,

according to Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, a medical physicist and

cell biology expert at the Royal Perth Hospital, Western Australia,

and the main author of the Bio/Technology paper. She and consultant

physician Val Turner, her prime collaborator in what has come to be

known as the Perth group of AIDS scientists, have been working

tirelessly for nearly 20 years to demonstrate their conviction that

HIV has not even been proved to exist.

They acknowledge that particles presumed to be the virus can appear

after intensive co-culturing procedures, using abnormal (leukemic and

fetal cord) cell lines; but those particles might be endogenous

products of the stimulated cells. Furthermore, it has never proved

possible to obtain a concentration of HIV particles, through

centrifugation, at the sucrose density gradient considered

characteristic for retroviruses, 1.16gm/ml.[ii] Thus, HIV has never

been properly isolated, in the sense of being separated from other

constituents of disrupted cells, including nucleic acids, and

characterised as a unique set of retrovirus particles. Because of

this, it has also proved impossible to photograph purified virus with

the electron microscope. Claims of " virus isolation " in the AIDS

literature usually refer to a variety of indirect signals presumed to

indicate HIV activity, but such presumptions may be false; the

signals have not been proved to relate to a specific, invasive,

virus.

This interpretation is strongly supported by another remarkable fact

about " HIV " : no two of its genomes are the same, even from the same

person, a phenomenon that has caused some commentators to consider it

a " quasispecies " of virus.[iii] In any one patient, there are more

than 100 million genetically distinct variants, according to one

estimate.[iv] The variations led another researcher to

conclude, " The data imply that there is no such thing as an [AIDS

virus] isolate. " [v] Howard Temin, who shared the 1975 Nobel Prize

for Medicine for his discovery of an enzyme characteristic of

retroviruses, makes a similar point in a chapter contributed to

Emerging Viruses (ed. Stephen Morse, Oxford University Press, 1993,

p.221): " The data indicate that in any one AIDS patient, at any one

time, there are many different virus genomes. " These observations do

not support the concept of a unique, invasive viral entity. They are

more consistent with the idea that we are looking at chaotic genetic

activity from within disordered cells.

The genetic material that Gallo, Montagnier and Weiss obtained from

their cell cultures - all probably from the same source, as it turned

out - and now called the HIV genome has never been purified directly

from patient tissues and properly characterised.[vi] Particles

containing active genetic material are released after some weeks of

the laborious co-culturing procedures, and this material can be

passed from one cell to another and its genetic composition

determined. But it has never been shown to have the properties of a

unique, self-replicating, disease-inducing virus.

None of 150 chimpanzees inoculated with " HIV " has developed AIDS.

According to HIV theory, the " virus " crossed into humans from

chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys; but these animals do not get AIDS

naturally, despite carrying " essentially the same virus " .[vii] In an

attempt to explain these findings, Dutch researchers, working with

University of California statisticians, recently postulated that an

AIDS-like epidemic wiped out huge numbers of chimpanzees two million

years ago, leaving modern chimps – who share more than 98 % of their

DNA with humans – largely resistant to HIV.[viii] Such theorising is

seen by the " dissidents " as indicating the desperate lengths to which

HIV protagonists will go to defend the virus construct.

The Perth group maintain that the failure to purify meant none of the

originators of the HIV hypothesis knew what they were working with,

and that this problem continues to this day. They have shown that

the antibodies the HIV test detects can all be put into the

circulation because of a variety of other, non-HIV challenges to the

immune system. This is a particularly significant addition to the

Duesberg critique, because it offers a non-HIV explanation for the

close correlation between raised levels of " HIV " antibodies and risk

of illness - a correlation that has been the main plank in the case

that HIV causes AIDS.

Furthermore, the Perth group accept that some of these non-HIV immune

challenges are transmissible through blood and other body fluid

abnormalities, and that the " HIV " blood test screens for these

abnormalities. " From the public health point of view we are in total

agreement with HIV experts, " Eleopulos says. " If anything, we would

go further. Certainly it is good to test all blood, not only blood

from risk groups, because the test shows when blood is abnormal and

should not be given. We also advocate safe sex, especially in

passive anal intercourse, irrespective of whether the active partner

is or is not HIV-positive, though there is even more risk if they are

positive. Semen itself is oxidising, and if it comes from a person

who is diseased it can be even more toxic. Clean needles are

obviously better than dirty needles for drug users but we also say no

needles at all, because the contents of the syringe cause the problem

too. " [ix]

It is the use of the test to diagnose " HIV disease " with which the

Perth group take issue. There are two main categories of the test,

using methods known as Western blot (WB) and Elisa. The WB is held

to be the more specific, because it detects activity by individual

protein antibodies rather than looking for their presence as a group,

as with the Elisa. However, the Bio/Technology paper showed that

none of the proteins used in the WB test had been demonstrated to be

specific to a unique retrovirus. There were other potential sources

for all of them. It also cited studies showing false-positive

results with the " HIV " test in people with many different sources of

immune system activation, including tuberculosis and malaria.

Patients with AIDS, and promiscuous homosexual men or drug addicts

leading lives likely to expose them to multiple immunological

challenge, were certainly much more likely to test positive than

healthy Americans, a finding that was used as the basis for claiming

the test did have diagnostic validity. But another reason for this

association could be that antibodies looked for by the test were to

normal cellular proteins such as actin, released under conditions of

immune system stress.

Other studies have confirmed that the " HIV " test does indeed detect

such antibodies. Patients with the autoimmune condition lupus

erythematosus, for example, test positive for " HIV " because they have

antibodies with anti-actin activity.[x] Chronically recurrent

disease due to hepatitis viruses also often causes autoimmune

reactions, in which antibodies to actin and other cell proteins

predominate. Hepatitis viruses are extremely common in the main

AIDS risk groups (with hepatitis C almost universal in them), and

this has led researchers to suggest that the autoantibodies

frequently seen in patients with hepatitis could be responsible for

positive " HIV " test results.[xi]

The Bio/Technology paper demonstrated that as well as being non-

specific, the various " HIV " tests were non-standardised. When

stringent criteria for a positive result were imposed by the US Food

and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1987, for example, it was found that

fewer than 50 % of AIDS patients tested positive. That compared with

80% according to criteria required by the Consortium for Retrovirus

Serology Standardisation.

Dr Roberto Giraldo, an infectious diseases specialist working at a

laboratory of clinical immunology in New York City, has expressed

surprise at finding that to run the Elisa test, an individual's serum

has to be diluted to a ratio of 1:400 with a special specimen

diluent. He says this dilution ratio is at least 20 times greater

than in most other serologic tests that look for the presence of

microbial antibodies, suggesting that normal blood samples contain a

lot of material reactive with the " HIV " test.[xii] Other reviews of

the scientific literature have documented as many as 70 different

reasons for getting a positive reaction unrelated to HIV infection.

[xiii] These conditions, Giraldo says, have in common a history of

polyantigenic stimulation, evidence that leads him to suggest that a

reactive Elisa test at any serum concentration means no more than the

presence of nonspecific or polyspecific antibodies, which could be

present in all blood samples, but at different levels. " They are

most likely a result of the stress response, having no relation to

any retrovirus, let alone HIV…a reactive test could be a measure of

the degree of one's exposure to stressor or oxidising agents. "

Abbott Laboratories, one of the main producers of Elisa " HIV " kits,

is well aware of the specificity problems with the test, Giraldo

adds. The company's literature states that there is no recognised

standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV antibody in

blood, and therefore Elisa testing alone cannot be used to diagnose

AIDS.

Regulatory authorities have known about these problems from the

beginning but like Pontius Pilate, they washed their hands of the

problem. As far back as 1986, an FDA official told participants at a

WHO meeting that the primary use of the test was for screening blood

donations, and that " it is inappropriate to use this test as a screen

for AIDS or as a screen for members of groups at increased risk for

AIDS in the general population. " He added however that enforcing

this intention " would be analogous to enforcing the Volstead Act

which prohibited alcoholic beverages sales in the United States in

the 1920s – simply not practical. "

In correspondence, Robin Weiss has told me that there were early

problems of cross-reactivity with the test, but that these were

overcome in later versions. He has presented no evidence for that

claim. In contrast, Eleopulos et al say the test is intrinsically

defective as a diagnostic tool, because of the inability to validate

it by showing the unequivocal presence of the virus in any patients.

Instead, the test kits are calibrated - with the enormous dilution

factors - to ensure that most healthy people test negative, whereas

many AIDS patients, and people at risk for AIDS, test positive.

Giraldo drives this point home by quoting the Abbott Laboratories'

literature (emphasis is Giraldo's):[ii]

The Abbott studies show that: Sensitivity based on an assumed 100 %

prevalence of HIV-1 antibody in AIDS patients is estimated to be 100

% (144 patients tested).

Specificity based on an assumed zero prevalence of HIV-1 in random

donors is estimated to be 99.9 % (477 random donors tested).

At present there is no recognised standard for establishing the

presence and absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood. Therefore

sensitivity was computed based on the clinical diagnosis of AIDS and

specificity based on random donors.

There is much evidence that the tests are as beset with problems

today as ever.[iii] In the USA, an " HIV " diagnosis will not be given

on the basis of the Elisa test alone; " confirmation " with WB is

required. In the UK, by contrast, diagnosis relies on repeat tests

with various types of Elisa. The WB test is regarded by British

experts as too unreliable to be used other than as a research tool.

This is a tragic state of affairs, considering the life-and-death

consequences of a positive test result.

Use of recombinant and peptide antigens has overcome an earlier

problem with the Elisa of not knowing precisely what antigens are

present in it, but it is not much use knowing what has gone into the

test kits if you still do not know whether or not those antigens are

specific to a new virus. This criticism applies as much to the WB as

to Elisa. If Elisa and WB are not sufficient for " HIV " diagnosis,

then what is? According to the Perth group - nothing. Eleopulos

says: " We have to question all types of the antibody test, especially

in AIDS patients, who have all types of infectious agents in them…If

the test is no good, you can repeat it a thousand times and it still

won't be any good. When the principle of the test, the basis of it,

has not been established, it doesn't matter how many times you repeat

it, you still won't prove anything. "

The same criticism applies to so-called viral loads, in which small

genetic segments attributed to HIV are amplified millions of times

using the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique in order to reach

detectable levels. These tests have found an extensive market in

supposedly monitoring " HIV disease " . Like the antibody test, they

probably do indicate immune system disturbance, but the segments of

genetic material these tests detect have not been shown to be

specific to HIV. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry

in 1993 for inventing PCR, says inappropriate conclusions are being

drawn from PCR's use in these tests. In a foreword to Peter

Duesberg's 1996 book Inventing the AIDS Virus (Regnery Publishing,

Washington, D.C.), Mullis goes further, writing that he does not

think Duesberg " knows necessarily what causes AIDS; we have

disagreements about that. But we're both certain about what doesn't

cause AIDS. We have not been able to discover any good reasons why

most of the people on earth believe that AIDS is a disease caused by

a virus called HIV. There is simply no scientific evidence

demonstrating that this is true. "

The root of the problem with testing " viral load " is the same as with

the antibodies: the research community's inability to purify and

unequivocally demonstrate the existence of HIV directly from

patients. Thus, when experts claim to see a rise in drug-resistant

strains of HIV, what they are actually reporting is a decrease in the

ability of the drugs to suppress production of certain genetic

segments believed to belong to HIV, but never proved to be such.

The resistance is not necessarily microbial at all. It may be an

immune cell response to the drugs, and the heightened genetic

activity a consequence of immune disorder rather than a cause.[iv]

Similarly, claims that different subtypes or " clades " of HIV have

been identified across the world are not based on isolation of

virus. They are based on analysis of segments of HIV's purported

genome. The segments usually looked at are the so-called viral

envelope sequences, but we do not know that these sequences belong to

a virus. The broad differences between them may simply reflect

genetic variability of different population groups.

" They have not proven that they have actually detected a unique,

exogenous retrovirus, " says Perth group member John Papadimitriou, of

the University of Western Australia, a professor of pathology

renowned for his work on electron microscopy. " The critical data to

support that idea have not been presented. You have to be absolutely

certain that what you have detected is unique and exogenous, and a

single molecular species. They haven't got conclusively to that

first step. Just to see particles in the tissues, and fail to look

for evidence that it is an infective virus, is wrong. Are these

particles that cause disease? The proper controls have never been

done. " [v] Val Turner goes even further. " HIV is a metaphor for a

lot of quasi-related phenomena, " he says. " No one has ever proved

its existence as a virus. We don't believe it exists. " [vi]

A similar view is offered by another experienced pathologist, Etienne

de Harven, emeritus professor of the University of Toronto. De

Harven worked for 25 years at the Sloan-Kettering Institute in New

York, where he pioneered a method of purifying viruses. In 1960 he

coined the now familiar word " budding " to describe steps of virus

assembly on cell surfaces. " I am very familiar with the many reports

and electron microscope pictures of 'HIV particles,' " he

says. " Indeed, they show particles which could very well be taken as

retroviruses on the basis of their ultrastructure alone. " [vii] But

all those particles had been found in complex cell cultures, the

result of intensive laboratory stimulation. Recent attempts to

purify and demonstrate the presence of such particles directly from

the serum of AIDS patients - with studies that " should have been done

years ago " – produced results disastrous for the HIV theory, de

Harven says, suggesting " billions of research dollars gone up in

smoke. " [viii]

A further demonstration of the non-specificity of phenomena

interpreted as meaning the presence of HIV surrounds a finding

of " virus-like " particles in the lymph nodes of AIDS patients with

lymph node enlargement.[ix] Such particles have often been assumed

to be HIV. However, a control study using electron microscopy – the

only one in which suitable comparisons and procedures were used,

according to the Perth group – showed particles that looked just the

same in non-AIDS patients who had swollen lymph glands for other

reasons, leading the authors to conclude that " such particles do not,

by themselves, indicate infection with HIV " .[x]

The Perth scientists declare that whatever the condition, AIDS or

otherwise, a positive test result does not indicate HIV infection but

is a nonspecific marker for a variety of conditions. " Consequently

the general belief that almost all individuals, healthy or otherwise,

who are HIV antibody positive are infected with a lethal retrovirus,

has not been scientifically substantiated. " [xi]

Why " HIV " -Positivity is Correlated with Risk of Illness

The group believes that in Western AIDS, the close correlation seen

between testing positive and risk of illness arises because of heavy

burdens on the immune system present in all the main risk groups,

with oxidative stress on the immune cells the common mechanism of

disease. A similar interpretation is offered by a Swiss-based

organisation, the Study Group for AIDS Therapy, which draws

particularly on the work of two German scientists, Heinrich Kremer, a

physician and clinical researcher, and Stefan Lanka, a virologist.

The Gay Liberation years of the 1970s brought unprecedented

opportunities for men to have sex with one another, and all the early

gay victims of AIDS were leading the fast-track sex-and-drugs

lifestyle. Exposure to sperm and seminal fluid from many different

partners, as well repeated bouts of sexually transmitted diseases,

[ii] chronic use of antibiotics,[iii] and the debilitating effects of

heavy exposure to recreational drugs[iv] [v] may have combined to put

such men at risk.

Drug addicts, another group at risk of AIDS, suffer immune

deficiencies because of directly damaging effects of opiates on T-

cells, for which they have an enormous affinity, as well as because

of malnutrition and infections caused by sharing needles. This

group's risk of developing AIDS is much higher when they continue to

inject drugs than when they stop.[vi]

People with the blood-clotting disorder hemophilia, also at risk,

were known to suffer immune disorders, signalled by a decline in

their blood T4 cell count, resulting directly from their treatment.

During the 1970s and 1980s, such treatment involved repeated

intravenous infusion of concentrates made from the blood of thousands

of people. It was estimated that a typical patient receiving 40 to

60 treatments a year could be exposed to blood from up to two million

donors.[vii] The greater the amount of clotting factor they

received, and the longer they received it, the greater their risk of

immune deficiency.

In the late 1980s, when HIV-positive hemophiliacs were switched to an

extremely pure version of the clotting factor (made using genetic

engineering techniques) their T4 cell counts ceased to decline and in

some instances did a U-turn.[viii] All too conveniently, a 1995

British study showing a big increase in death rates in HIV-positive

hemophiliacs as compared with those who remained HIV-negative, only

covered deaths to 1991, stopping short of the point (1992) where use

of pure Factor VIII became widespread.[ix] The study was hailed as

proving the validity of the theory that HIV causes AIDS.[x] It did

no such thing. It gave no evidence that the increased deaths were

from AIDS, merely describing a proportion of them as from " AIDS, HIV

etc " which as Eleopulos pointed out[xi] was meaningless. It also

took no account of the fact that patients diagnosed as HIV-positive

were in most cases receiving high doses of the toxic anti-viral drug

AZT. In addition, several previous studies had shown that the

patients who became " HIV-positive " were older and had received Factor

VIII for longer and in bigger doses than those who did not.

Another contribution to the increased death rate may have been the

terrifying and debilitating " HIV " diagnosis itself. The contribution

of mental and emotional stress to the physiological phenomena

surrounding AIDS was demonstrated recently with a finding that

intensive grief therapy significantly reduces " HIV viral load " , as

well as maintaining a healthy immune cell profile, in gay men who

have lost a partner or close friend to AIDS.[xii]

Duesberg has argued that blood transfusion recipients were also a

very high-risk group and did not need HIV to become sick. In one US

study, about half the recipients of non-infected blood transfusions

died within one year after receiving the transfusion.[xiii]

The biggest confusion of all has arisen in Africa. When the " HIV

test " was first marketed in the mid-1980s, Western scientists looking

for an origin for the virus went to several central African countries

with their diagnostic kits and found high percentages of people

testing positive — more than 50 % in some areas. As the Meditel

documentary found, and I later also reported after a six-week

investigation in Africa for The Sunday Times, this created a climate

of doom about HIV/AIDS in which those suffering from traditional

diseases of poverty and malnutrition including tuberculosis,

pneumonia, chronic intestinal infections, and malaria were liable to

be diagnosed as AIDS patients by virtue of their HIV antibody status.

Convinced that a terrible epidemic was unfolding, the World Health

Organization added to the confusion by allowing doctors to diagnose

AIDS in Africa even without the use of the HIV test, on the basis of

a combination of persistent symptoms such as fever, cough, diarrhea,

or weight loss - the so-called Bangui clinical case

definition. " Dressed up as HIV/AIDS, a variety of old sicknesses

have been reclassified, " says Charles Geshekter, professor of African

history at California State University, Chico. After a recent trip

to Africa--his fifteenth--Geshekter concluded that it was impossible

to distinguish these common symptoms from those of malaria,

tuberculosis, or other indigenous diseases of impoverished lands. He

adds that it is " well understood that many endemic infections will

trigger the same antibodies that cause positive reactions on the HIV

antibody tests…The problem is that dysentery and malaria do not

inspire headlines or fatten public health budgets.

Infectious 'plagues' do. " [xiv]

Millions Wrongly Diagnosed as Victims of " HIV " Disease

There is strong evidence that the nonspecific nature of the HIV test

is causing millions to be wrongly diagnosed as victims of " HIV

disease " . Sufferers and carriers of the microbes responsible for

leprosy and tuberculosis are particularly at risk. A 1994 study from

Zaire[xv] in which 65 % of leprosy patients and 23 % of their

contacts tested positive with Elisa, and even higher percentages were

reactive with WB analysis, concluded after more detailed testing that

in all but two of the patients, antibodies induced by Mycobacterium

leprae were causing misleading results (on the basis of Eleopulos's

work, those two could not be said to be HIV-infected either). Cross-

reactivity occurred with all the supposed " HIV " antibodies. M.

leprae might have this potential " since the disease it causes is

associated with an immunodeficiency that resembles HIV-1 in several

respects, " the researchers said. " In addition, the immune

dysregulation induced by M. leprae is often accompanied by the

production of autoantibodies to numerous cellular proteins. "

The authors, who included Harvard retrovirologist Max Essex, concluded

that leprosy patients and their contacts " show an unexpectedly high

rate of false-positive reactivity of HIV-1 proteins on both WB and

Elisa. " Since M. leprae shared several antigens with other members

of the mycobacterial family, including M. tuberculosis, " our

observations of cross-reactivity…suggest that HIV-1 Elisa and WB

results should be interpreted with caution when screening individuals

infected with M. tuberculosis or other mycobacterial species. Elisa

and WB may not be sufficient for HIV diagnosis in AIDS-endemic areas

of central Africa where the prevalence of mycobacterial diseases is

quite high. "

" Quite high " is an understatement. According to the WHO, M.

tuberculosis infects a third of the world's population and has an

estimated annual death toll of three million people, of whom about a

third reside in Africa.[xvi] Malnutrition, drug resistance, and bad

medical practice are likely causes of a spiralling epidemic. As far

back as September 1992 a WorldAIDS briefing paper published by the

Panos Institute stated that at any one time between 9 and 11 million

people are suffering from the active infection – 95 % of them in

Asia, Africa and Latin America. " In Africa TB has already become the

prime cause of death in adults with HIV " , the paper said. According

to Panos, " the established epidemic of TB and the new epidemic of HIV

have shown a disturbing tendency to coalesce and to co-infect

individuals. It is a dangerous liaison both for those who are co-

infected and for those communities in the developing world at risk of

TB. " Yet it seems clear from the Zaire study that this " epidemic of

TB/HIV co-infection " , as the WHO calls it, is a tragic error created

by the non-specificity of the " HIV " test. People with active TB

infection are at greatly increased risk of testing positive because

of M. tuberculosis, not HIV.

Claims that " HIV infection " increases susceptibility to HIV are not

supported by evidence that TB responds to treatment just as well

in " HIV-infected " people as in those who test negative for " HIV "

antibodies. Studies conducted in Nairobi, Kenya and Kinshasa, Zaire,

cited in 1992 by Dr Paul Nunn of the London School of Hygiene and

Tropical Medicine, measured the concentration of TB bacilli before

and after drug treatment. Nunn reported that " surprisingly, the

rate of decline of the concentration is faster in HIV-positive than

negative patients. So the early bactericidal effect of anti-

tuberculous therapy is not adversely affected by HIV and possibly the

reverse. Nor is the rate of persistently positive cultures at six

months of therapy increased by HIV. " Deaths were clearly greater

among the HIV-positive group, but the research suggested this

was " partly due to tuberculosis itself, but more important are non-

tuberculous, non-AIDS- defining, bacterial infections…the main

contribution to this excess mortality is from curable infections. "

The study most frequently quoted in the UK as offering support for

the idea that HIV is devastating parts of Africa was conducted in

rural Masaka, southern Uganda, funded by Britain's Medical Research

Council. It involved 15 villages - about 10,000 people in all,

mainly subsistence farmers and their families. Over a two-year

period, five deaths were diagnosed as from AIDS. However, 23% of HIV-

positive adults died. This was a much higher death rate than that

found among non-HIV-positive adults, and it was concluded that the

excess, which resulted in a doubling of the overall death rate, was

attributable to HIV. Deaths in the 13-44 age group totalled 51 among

those who were HIV-positive, and 18 among those who were HIV-

negative. On the basis of those figures (and because there were far

more HIV-negative than HIV-positive villagers), young HIV-positive

adults were calculated to have a 60-fold greater risk of dying than

the " non-infected " (96/1000 against 1.4/1000 man-years). The

position looked even worse for the 13-24 age group, among whom 14

people died who tested HIV-positive, and only three out of a much

larger group who tested HIV-negative, producing a relative mortality

ratio of 87.

This study, which eventually appeared in The Lancet[ii], was

repeatedly publicised beforehand by medical authorities in Britain

and elsewhere, attracting newspaper headlines such as " HIV is

Africa's big killer " [iii] and " Africa study shows HIV victims 60

times likelier to die in two years " [iv]. Readers were told that

this " latest and most comprehensive study of AIDS in Africa "

provided " conclusive evidence that HIV has become a major killer on

the continent " , and that it showed " young adults with HIV were 87

times more likely to die prematurely than their uninfected

contemporaries " .[v] The newspapers did not mention that this

horrific-sounding statistic was based on 14 deaths. Nor were they

told that in the entire study, the number of AIDS diagnoses was

five.

More importantly, the study authors did not consider the non-

specificity problems with the HIV test. Their interpretation of the

findings rested entirely on an assumption of " unequivocal HIV-1

serology " , which in view of the evidence cited above is a

contradiction in terms. They gave no details of the actual causes of

death, nor of treatments offered. They acknowledged however that

with a substantial proportion of the patients progressing to death

within six months, on average, from having had either no symptoms or

only mild illness, it was plausible to consider that lack of medical

care was a contributory factor.

A reanalysis of the MRC study has shown that far from demonstrating

that " HIV is Africa's big killer " , the data seriously conflict with

that view.[vi] Instead, the data support the argument that " HIV " -

positivity is a consequence of deteriorated health, rather than a

cause. The proof was offered by Vladimir Koliadin, of the Kharkov

Aviation Institute, Ukraine, in correspondence with the Royal

Statistical Society. His letter was not published.

Koliadin complained that " the basic tenet of inductive statistical

inference - that correlation cannot prove causation - seems to have

been completely ignored " . He reasoned that if HIV was a new

pathogen, causing deaths independently of other illnesses typical to

the region, then deaths in the group who tested HIV-negative would

stay the same as usual. On the other hand, " if HIV-positivity is

only a marker of infectious diseases (the main causes of deaths among

young adults in that region), mortality in HIV-negatives would be

lower than normal. " That was simply because a big proportion

of " normal " deaths would be linked with HIV-positivity, and thus

would be eliminated from the HIV-negative group.

So, the crucial question was whether the annual death rate of

1.4/1000 seen in the HIV-negative group of young adults was " normal "

for the region. The answer was, definitely not. A death rate of

1.4/1000 was even lower than mortality in the US population of the

same age range (1.5/1000). Yet, mortality in Africa is notoriously

high, compared with developed countries. High proportions of the

population die from infectious diseases relatively young. It was

reasonable to assume that the usual mortality rate in young adults in

Uganda would be at least several times higher than in the USA.

Assuming a rate of between 5/1000 and 9.3/1000 person-years (the

overall death rate observed in this study), the actual distribution

of deaths between the HIV-positive and HIV-negative subjects was 30-

70 times higher than that predicted by the HIV-causes-AIDS theory.

Predicted Heterosexual Epidemics Never Happened

Long-term trends in Uganda's population numbers are consistent with

Koliadin's analysis, as well as with the Perth group's insistence on

the non-specificity of the HIV test. In 1985 Robert Gallo and his

colleagues reported testing stored sera collected in 1972/1973 from

the West Nile district of Uganda. The samples had come from healthy

children, mean age 6.4 years, randomly selected as controls for a

study of Burkitt's lymphoma. Both Elisa and WB tests were used.

Fifty of the 75 children were found to be HIV-positive (67 %).[vii]

As the Perth group comment, " According to HIV experts these positive

results are explicable by virtue of mothers infecting their

children. Thus Gallo and his colleagues expected to find at least an

equal percentage of infected adults. Mortimer et al assert

that `Very few HIV-infected children are surviving into adulthood in

good health' and, given the fact that neither these children nor

adults had treatment for HIV or AIDS, and the incubation period for

AIDS in Africa is claimed to be four years and HIV heterosexually

transmitted, then if the tests are HIV specific and HIV causes AIDS,

by now few, if any, Ugandans should be alive. " [viii] In fact,

Uganda's population is currently growing by a healthy 2½ % per

annum. This phenomenon is explained by protagonists of the HIV

theory as demonstrating the effectiveness of condom campaigns!

In prosperous countries, the predictions of spread of the virus that

was said not to discriminate have proved wildly wrong. Wherever AIDS

deaths can be properly tracked, they remain linked to the original

risk groups. In cases where none of those risks are apparent, the

ill-effects of long-term use of antibiotics[ix] as well as antiviral

drugs, and the intensely damaging effect of an HIV diagnosis may have

been to blame.[x]

In 1992, when AIDS cases were already falling in the US and Europe,

experts agreed on an arbitrary widening of the range of disorders

eligible for registration as AIDS, including, for the first time, HIV-

positive people with no illness but with T4 cell counts below 200, as

well as women with cervical cancer. In the US, this produced an

artificial doubling in the number of AIDS cases reported, but despite

further expansions in classification, registrations have been

declining ever since. About 650,000 cases of AIDS were registered in

the USA from 1982 to mid-1998, and three quarters of those were

clearly identified as occurring within high-risk groups.

More significantly, of 1,789 babies registered cumulatively as AIDS

cases over the same period, 1,774 (99%) were born to mothers in high-

risk groups.[xi] An analysis of data from the AIDS epicentres of New

York City and California by Gordon Stewart, emeritus professor of

public health, University of Glasgow, Scotland, a former WHO adviser

on AIDS, shows that " perinatal and neonatal AIDS are minimal except

where mothers and infants are exposed to risks in ethnic, drug-using

and bisexual situations. After 20 years of intensive surveillance in

a country where AIDS is as prevalent as in some third world

countries, this in itself excludes any appreciable spread of AIDS by

heterosexual transmission of HIV in the huge majority of the general

population. " [xii] This is a far cry from the heady days of the

Washington AIDS conference in 1987, when a computer model prepared at

the Los Alamos National Laboratory contemplated the possibility of

one adult in 10 becoming infected by 1994, and when Oprah Winfrey

reflected the current perception by opening her show with the

words: " Hello everybody. AIDS has both sexes running scared.

Research studies now project that one in five – listen to me, hard to

believe – one in five heterosexuals could be dead of AIDS in the next

three years. "

In Europe, despite continuing efforts by public health officials to

talk up AIDS so as to prevent complacency over unsafe sex, time has

killed the idea that millions could be affected. Whereas in 1985 the

UK's Royal College of Nursing had predicted that one million people

in Britain " will have AIDS in six years unless the killer disease is

checked " , 15 years later (in 2000) AIDS deaths totalled 263 – " less

than the number of people who died from falling down stairs " . The

disease has remained almost exclusively confined to the original risk

groups. Around 25,000 people are currently diagnosed as HIV-positive

in the UK - half to a quarter of the estimated totals made in the mid-

to late- 1980s. The picture is similar across the European

continent, with deaths now at double and single figures in many

countries. Cases have increased in some eastern European countries

but mainly among drug users, and where poverty has increased

vulnerability to TB.

Professor Stewart comments that " disastrous epidemics due to

heterosexual transmission of HIV were confidently predicted in

general populations of developed countries but they never happened.

AIDS has diminished in incidence and severity though it is continuing

in female partners of bisexual men and some other communities

engaging in or subjected to behaviours which carry high risks of

infections, various assaults and misuse of drugs. " [ii] He has been

trying for years to persuade scientific and medical colleagues that

the statistics do not support the theory that AIDS is caused by an

unselectively infectious agent. Despite a lifetime's work in

epidemiology and preventive medicine, and despite his predictions for

the development of the epidemic having proved to be much closer to

reality than those based on the orthodox view, his carefully argued

papers have been consistently rejected by leading journals. He says

that by 1987 there was no evidence whatsoever that AIDS was being

transmitted heterosexually in general populations. When he submitted

the relevant data and interpretations in a report to the WHO, they

received attention internally, but were barred from

publication. " Meanwhile, medical literature exploded, with worldwide

coverage in all media, to accommodate the consensus view that AIDS

was becoming a global pandemic. Alarming figures accepted at face

value by WHO from some third-world countries were used to support

this assertion. " [iii] Stewart adds that since 1990, Nature, Science,

the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal and

other mainline, peer-reviewed journals " have preferred to reject

papers by others besides my colleagues and myself containing

verifiable data that throw doubt on the claim that AIDS is capable of

causing epidemics in general populations of developed countries by

heterosexual transmission of HIV, and also falsify the hypothesis

that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS. "

Disillusionment Over Antiviral Drug Treatments

To escape embarrassment over the failed predictions, AIDS experts

have argued that anti-viral drug treatments are responsible for the

decline in AIDS. This is hard to reconcile with the fact that the

decline started well before the more recent drug treatments were

introduced; or with the unsatisfactory record of these treatments.

AZT, the early " gold standard " of treatment, is now widely understood

to have killed more patients than it helped (that is putting it

kindly - there has been minimal evidence of help, beyond a broad,

temporary, anti-microbial effect). The longest and most thorough

trial of the drug, the Anglo-French Concorde trial, found 25% more

deaths among those treated early than in those for whom treatment was

deferred. The difference would almost certainly have been larger if

the deferred treatment group had been a genuine control and had been

kept AZT-free. The drug made no difference in terms of progression

to AIDS or Aids-related illnesses. In a separate analysis of data

from the first year there was a slight advantage to being in the

immediate-treatment group; this lost statistical significance by 18

months.[iv] Despite intense efforts by the drug's manufacturers to

minimise the significance of these results, AZT is now known to have

caused much harm, and possibly many thousands of deaths.

Similar high hopes, followed by disillusionment, accompanied a " hit

hard, hit early " policy introduced in 1996 – a policy of attacking

the virus with cocktails of several antiviral drugs, including a

group called protease inhibitors. Stories abounded of AIDS patients

rising from their sickbeds like Lazarus, and there were proud boasts

that HIV was on the run at last. But as with AZT, this was more

wishful thinking than sound science. People with AIDS suffer many

viral and other infections, and the drug cocktails gave relief to

some of these, but giving the drugs to people simply on the basis of

their " HIV " positivity was to prove another disaster. For several

years it was left to the dissident network to report unexpected

deaths on the drugs, but eventually the " hit hard, hit early " policy

was reversed in February 2001 US Government guidelines

acknowledging " unanticipated toxicities " .[v] Drug companies were

also ordered to stop advertising their antiviral drugs with images

that imply they cure AIDS (such as photographs of " robust individuals

engaged in strenuous physical activity " ) or reduce its transmission.

This reversal came a year after an article by American journalist

Celia Farber that began, " In 1996 a scientist claimed he'd found a

way to defeat AIDS. In the wave of euphoria that followed, a batch

of new drugs flooded the market. Four years later, those drugs are

wreaking unimaginable horror on the patients who dared to hope. What

went wrong? " [vi] The article was reluctantly accepted as accurate by

veteran AIDS activist Larry Kramer, previously a strong advocate of

the anti-viral drug approach as a means of tackling AIDS.

Treatment guidelines published in the Journal of the American Medical

Association in July 2002[vii] acknowledge that " The future of

antiretroviral therapy rests with the development of new drugs that

will result in simpler, more effective, and less toxic regimens along

with development of an improved understanding of innate immune system

responses. " The authors assert in the first paragraph of this

document that " potent antiretroviral therapy has resulted in dramatic

reductions in morbidity and mortality, and health care utilization " ,

and offer three references to this claim. But according to Dr David

Rasnick, an organic chemist who worked in the US pharmaceutical

industry for more than 20 years, all three references are to

observational studies and not to actual clinical trials. " This is

crucial, " he writes. " Only clinical trials can show whether or not

drugs actually work. To date, there are no drug clinical trials that

show people taking the anti-HIV drugs live longer or at least better

lives than a similar group of HIV-positive people not taking the

drugs. " [viii]

Some of the most experienced mainstream AIDS researcher/clinicians,

as well as dissidents such as Rasnick, had long predicted

that " hoopla " over antiviral drugs could lead to disappointment and

danger. Jay Levy, M.D., a professor in the department of medicine at

the University of California, San Francisco, commented in 1996: " …get

any virologist aside and they'll say this is not how we are going to

win, it's high time we look at the immune system " .[ix] Two years

later he wrote: " These drugs can be toxic and can be directly

detrimental to a natural immune response to HIV. This effective

antiviral immune response is characteristic of long-term survivors

who have not been on any therapy. " [x] Donald Abrams, professor of

medicine at San Francisco General Hospital, revealed in a 1996

interview: " In contrast with many of my colleagues, I am not

necessarily a cheer-leader for anti-retroviral therapy. I have been

one of the people who's questioned, from the beginning, whether or

not we're really making an impact with HIV drugs and, if we are

making an impact, if it's going in the right direction…I have a large

population of people who have chosen not to take any

antiretrovirals. They've watched all of their friends go on the

antiviral bandwagon and die, so they've chosen to remain naïve [to

therapy]. More and more, however, are now succumbing to pressure

that protease inhibitors are `it'. We are in the middle of the

honeymoon period, and whether or not this is going to be an enduring

marriage is unclear to me at this time. " [xi] The marriage should by

now have been annulled but it is immensely hard for physicians to

acknowledge that they could have been harming their patients, and it

is also difficult for " HIV " experts to lose such an important plank

in their defence of the beleaguered virus theory of AIDS.

Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives is a support and research organisation

founded in the US by a group of people diagnosed HIV-positive " who

live in health without AIDS drugs and without fear of illness " .[xii]

Christine Maggiore, the founder, a former awareness educator for

prominent AIDS groups, began to scrutinize AIDS science after a

series of tests she took fluctuated between HIV-positive, negative,

and indeterminate. In line with Abrams's observation, she had also

noticed that her ill and dying colleagues were the ones following

doctor's orders. She says that carefully considered choices " keep me

and hundreds of other unmedicated HIV positives defiantly alive and

well " .[xiii] The organisation supports a growing network of groups

and affiliates in America, Brazil, Canada, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria,

Mexico, South Africa and Zambia.

A face-saving shred of benefit for the HIV belief system seemed to

have been found when it was shown that use of AZT in pregnancy could

cause fewer children to be born testing positive. However, since we

do not know the meaning of " HIV " antibodies, we do not know what this

means in terms of the babies' health. Rasnick, who for several

years has been the most active of the US AIDS " dissidents " , told

President Mbeki's inquiry into AIDS science in South Africa in July

2000 that he had " scoured the literature " for evidence of tangible

benefit, with zero results. Several studies have shown harm,

including a major Italian survey which found that children born to

mothers treated with AZT in pregnancy were more likely to get

severely sick and die by the age of three than those whose mothers

were left untreated.[ii] AZT's proven toxicities include severe

muscle pain, weakness, and atrophy; heart muscle changes and

malfunction; bone marrow suppression, with consequent anemia and loss

of all types of blood cells; liver failure; and broad-ranging and

sometimes irreversible loss and poisoning of mitochondria, the energy

factories within our cells. The drug also leads to permanent DNA

damage, and studies in mice and monkeys have raised concerns that

babies exposed to AZT will face an increased risk of cancer later in

life.[iii]

Nevirapine, the other antiviral drug heavily promoted by AIDS

activists in Africa as essential in curbing mother-to-child

transmission of HIV (and by others who sought to batter President

Mbeki when he questioned orthodox thinking on HIV and AIDS) has

similarly not been shown to have any clinical benefits, and has been

shown to carry a high risk of toxicity.[iv]

Triumph or Tragedy? Scientifically, the HIV Theory Has Failed to

Deliver

In scientific terms, the HIV hypothesis has failed to deliver. The

predictions of spread to which it gave rise have not materialized,

and the drug treatments it spawned have disappointed, despite

billions spent on research. It is not known how HIV harms the immune

system, and there is uncertainty over its very existence. The blood

test is non-specific (although serendipitously, its very non-

specificity has helped protect blood supplies against the broad range

of pathogens that can cause " HIV " antibodies to become elevated), as

are the " viral load " tests. The search for a vaccine is never-ending

despite (or possibly because of) a commitment of hundreds of millions

of dollars in US federal monies. Over the past 15 years, worldwide,

more than 30 candidate vaccines have been tested in early-phase

trials involving about 10,000 people. Out of these, only two are

proceeding to phase III trials, and these are beset with

difficulties. According to the WHO, the main stumbling blocks are

lack of information about how best to measure protective immunity,

the variability of HIV strains and lack of a good animal model.[v]

According to Eleopulos, " a vaccine is never going to happen. It

can't, because without HIV isolation, you do not know what you are

dealing with. " [vi]

In social terms, the HIV theory has produced some real benefits. The

democratising of the threat of AIDS brought the world together in a

way that has been profoundly beneficial for gay men, now considerably

more accepted and valued in society than they were 20 years ago.

Along with the red ribbon, " HIV/AIDS " has also become a symbol of

unity and compassion. Perhaps it even served the West by providing a

diffuse " enemy " against which to focus hostile energies released

following the fall of the Soviet Union.

As Eleopulos acknowledges, the condom and clean needle campaigns will

also have had value. Lifestyle changes implemented within a certain

section of the gay community, previously at great risk, probably lie

behind the huge diminution in AIDS in most of Europe, along with

greatly reduced dosages and increased awareness of the toxicity of

AZT. Whatever the cause of AIDS, many studies have demonstrated

clear risks attached to anal intercourse and needle sharing. Animal

studies show that transmissible AIDS-like diseases can be induced -

without any exogenous infection - when the immune system is thrown

into confusion through certain immunisation procedures (these have

involved injecting female mice, previously mated with genetically

distinct males, with lymphocytes from those males).[vii] There may

be a genetic mechanism in AIDS akin to the " jumping genes "

phenomenon, but involving transfer of genetic information out of the

cell and in exceptional circumstances, from person to person.

To Rudolf Werner, professor of biochemistry at the University of

Miami Medical School, such studies support the idea that AIDS is

essentially an autoimmune disease.

" We still know very little about autoimmunity and how it works, " he

says. " Introduction of foreign protein into someone else's system

quite clearly upsets that person's immune system. We need to learn

much more about immunological tolerance and autoimmunity. " [viii]

Anti-lymphocyte autoantibodies are present in 87% of HIV-positive

patients and their levels correlate with clinical status.[ix] Werner

agrees that although AIDS drugs have been credited for the reduction

in AIDS deaths, " there is no scientific evidence that these toxic

drugs prolong life. " In a letter published by The Miami Herald (July

18, 2002) headed " Does the HIV virus really cause AIDS? " , he points

to a study showing that the time between becoming HIV-positive and

the time of death was identical in a Uganda group who received no

AIDS drugs and a US group who did. " Since most people in the Uganda

study were malnourished and multiply infected, doesn't that suggest

that antiretroviral drugs reduce life expectancy? … Unfortunately,

the government suppresses alternative explanations of AIDS. This

dogmatic approach certainly will lead to a medical disaster. "

The exclusion of research into other possible causes of AIDS that

accompanied the establishment of the HIV paradigm may already have

cost many lives, through failure to provide more effective advice on

prevention and treatment. The efforts of those calling for a

scientific reappraisal of the " HIV " hypothesis have usually been met

with indifference and on occasions, abuse. In common with Duesberg,

I have been called a " pariah of my profession " for broadcasting flaws

in AIDS science to the public, bypassing the silence on this subject

maintained by most mainstream scientific and medical journals and

their supporters in the mainstream media. When Duesberg persisted in

challenging the HIV theory he was derided by former colleagues,

refused renewal of a $350,000 " outstanding investigator " award from

the National Institutes of Health and " all but exiled from American

science " , as Rasnick puts it. Rasnick, who is perhaps the most

persistent as well as articulate of the US dissidents, wrote in

1997: " As a scientist who has studied AIDS for 16 years, I have

determined that AIDS has little to do with science and is not even

primarily a medical issue. AIDS is a sociological phenomenon held

together by fear, creating a kind of medical McCarthyism that has

transgressed and collapsed all the rules of science, and imposed a

brew of belief and pseudoscience on a vulnerable public. " [x]

The Perth group has also suffered pervasive censorship, in which the

AIDS mainstream has simply refused to enter into any discussion of

their work. They were given satellite symposium time to present

their case at the 1998 International AIDS Conference, in Geneva, as a

result of intense lobbying by patient advocates, and against the

wishes of the scientific committee; out of about 12,000 delegates,

some 15 attended. That was at least an advance on the behaviour of

organisers of the Berlin conference four years

previously. " Dissidents " who persisted in setting out their

literature on an unused table were ejected from the conference, and

told that they would be arrested and deported from Germany if they

returned.

However, the biggest tragedy arising from the HIV paradigm has been

the marketing and acceptance worldwide of an unvalidated diagnostic

test, represented as demonstrating infection with a lethal virus.

Millions are suffering the stigma and fear associated with this " HIV

disease " diagnosis. Continents and sub-continents are being

encouraged to switch scarce resources into fighting what may be a

mythical enemy. As Papadimitriou remarked to me, of AIDS in

Africa, " Why condemn a continent to death because of HIV when you

have other explanations for why people are falling sick? "

WHO experts are so convinced of a pandemic that they multiply the

AIDS cases registered with them many times over to reach an estimate

of the " actual " level. Furthermore, the multiplication factor has

been regularly increased, as discovered by Christian Fiala, an

Austrian physician who has spent years researching AIDS epidemiology,

including a fact-finding mission to Uganda and Tanzania. In 1996,

reported cases in Africa were multiplied by WHO statisticians by 12

to reach estimated totals; in 1997, by 17; and over an 18-month

period in 1997/1998, by 47.

UNAIDS, which brings together seven United Nations agencies,

including WHO, in a joint programme on AIDS, is doing work with huge

potential for helping Africa by campaigning for debt relief and other

forms of emergency aid. But it risks destroying the value of its

efforts by tying them exclusively to the HIV/AIDS paradigm,

increasingly questioned within Africa itself. By urging African

finance ministers to devote more domestic funds to AIDS

activities, " notwithstanding the weak fiscal situations in many of

the worst affected countries in Africa " ,[ii] it may exacerbate the

real problems, which as South Africa's Thabo Mbeki has indicated are

mostly related to poverty. UNAIDS has actually spelled out that it

wants resources programmed for welfare, education, rural development

and other health purposes to be redirected into HIV/AIDS care and

prevention.

In the South African context, this would be particularly disastrous.

Dr Sam Mhlongo, professor of primary health care and family medicine

and chief family practitioner at the Medical University of Southern

Africa, Pretoria, a member of Mbeki's Advisory Panel on AIDS, points

out that 50 years of apartheid have left half the population of South

Africa with no access to sanitation and clean drinking water. Sub-

standard housing, shacks and overcrowding favour the risk of massive

infection and re-infection with tuberculosis (added to AIDS-defining

criteria in 1993). Starving and malnourished children are

particularly susceptible to respiratory and gastro-intestinal

infections and septicaemia. " Long before Luc Montagnier's

HIV/AIDS 'discovery', Professor John Reid of the Durban Medical

School noted that 50% of black children in rural areas of South

Africa died before the age of five, " Mhlongo writes.[iii] " The

commonest causes of death amongst these black infants were recorded

as bronchopneumonia, dehydration and diarrhoea. "

" Apartheid conditioned people not to see; when it comes to AIDS many

still will not open their eyes, " he says.[iv] What Mhlongo sees, in

eastern and southern Africa, is chronic protein deficiency, a

breakdown in civilian services, rising incidence of TB and malaria,

declining prices for agricultural output, high inflation and

unemployment, displacement by civil violence, and cutbacks in

government services due to economic adjustments mandated by the

International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. " There is no need to

conjecture the mysterious antics of some retrovirus from the

rainforest that supposedly jumped from monkeys to humans. "

In the earlier years of AIDS, after US, British and French scientists

successfully marketed the " deadly new virus " concept and the tests

and treatments that went with it, the perception that there was a

public health emergency made it hard for dissenting views to be

expressed. Today, the silence may owe as much to the power of

commercial interests, along with embarrassment over the failures of

AIDS science, as to any altruistic motives. Perhaps also it is

easier on the West's conscience to keep blaming an epidemic of a

deadly new virus for an increase in immune deficiency in less-

developed countries than it is to acknowledge the effects of

worsening poverty consequent on economic restructuring,[v] crippling

debt, and the after-effects of decades of socially destructive

policies towards black people such as under the apartheid regime.

A reasoned response from the scientific community to the full range

of evidence that has mounted against the HIV theory is overdue.

Neville Hodgkinson

Notes: [copious and not included in this reposting]

BIBLIOGRAPHY NEVILLE HODGKINSON

AIDS Book:

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science', Fourth

Estate Publishers U.K. 1996. 420 pages, ISBN 1-85702-337-4.

AIDS Articles:

N. Hodgkinson, 'Experts mount startling challenge to AIDS orthodoxy /

AIDS; Can we be positive?' The Sunday Times (London) 26 April 1992.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Government to back rebels in AIDS research' The

Sunday Times (London) 3 May 1992.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS rebel blames scientists for deaths' The Sunday

Times (London) 17 May 1992.

N. Hodgkinson, 'The truth is, we don't know what causes this disease'

The Sunday Times (London) 26 July 1992.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Factor 8 hope in HIV battle' The Sunday Times

(London) 22 Feb. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS truth falls victim to virus of ignorance' The

Sunday Times (London) 14 March 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Epidemic of AIDS in Africa; A tragic myth' The Sunday

Times (London) 21 March 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'The cure that failed' The Sunday Times (London) 4

April 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Experts confounded on AIDS as grim reaper fails to

strike' The Sunday Times (London) 18 April 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'New realism puts the brake on HIV bandwagon' The

Sunday Times (London) 9 May 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'How giant drug firm funds the AIDS lobby' The Sunday

Times (London) 30 May 1993.

N. Hodgkinson & L. Rogers, 'Babies treated with contested AIDS drug'

The Sunday Times (London) 6 June 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'New doubts over AIDS infection as HIV test declared

invalid' The Sunday Times (London) 1 Aug. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Babies give lie to African AIDS' The Sunday Times

(London) 29 Aug. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'African AIDS; true or false?' The Sunday Times

(London) 5 Sept. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'The plague that never was' The Sunday Times (London)

3 Oct. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Nobel chemist attacks HIV theory of AIDS' The Sunday

Times (London) 28 Nov. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Court battle launched over anti-AIDS drug' The Sunday

Times (London) 30 Jan. 1994.

N. Hodgkinson, 'New evidence links gay sex drug to AIDS' The Sunday

Times (London) 10 April 1994.

T. Rayment & N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS hopes dashed by terrible truth on

AZT' The Sunday Times (London) 10 May 1994.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Research disputes epidemic of AIDS' The Sunday Times

(London) 22 May 1994.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Cry, Beloved Country; How Africa became the victim of

a non-existent epidemic of HIV/AIDS' AIDS: Virus or Drug Induced?

Contemporary Issues in Genetics and Evolution 1996.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS: Is Anyone Positive?' The European 22 June 1998.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Some Observers Are Critical of HIV Theory' The Sunday

Independent (Johannesburg) 9 July 2000

N. Hodgkinson, 'Viewpoint' New African Dec. 2000

The Lancet vs. Sunday Times:

M. Dean, 'AIDS and the Murdoch press' The Lancet 23 May 1992, vol.339

p.1286.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS and the Murdoch press' (letter) The Lancet 6

June 1992, vol.339 p.1418.

Daily Telegraph vs. Sunday Times:

P. Eddy & S. Walden, 'Does this man know something we don't?' Daily

Telegraph magazine 20 Nov. 1993.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS; The emperor's clothes' The Sunday Times

(London) 28 Nov. 1993.

Nature vs. Sunday Times:

Anonymous, 'New style abuse of press freedom' Nature 9 Dec. 1993,

vol.366 pp.493,494.

N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS; Why we won't be silenced' The Sunday Times

(London) 12 Dec. 1993.

M. Clarcke, 'Newspaper ducks criticism of AIDS coverage' Nature 16

Dec. 1993, vol.366 pp.599,600.

A. Tucker; D. Parke; J. Moore; M.Verney-Elliott; K. Sabbagh; R.

Milton, 'Censorship: The world's leading scientific journal is

playing in a sinister game' (letters) The Sunday Times (London) 19

Dec. 1993

M. Clarke, 'Old AIDS news dressed up as new' Nature 23/30 Dec. 1993,

vol.366 p.714.

G. Garnett & R. Anderson, 'AIDS, HIV and the Sunday Times' (letter)

Nature 23/30 Dec. 1993, vol.366 p.716.

M. Clarke, 'Anti-HIV claims were grossly distorted' Nature 13 Jan.

1994, vol.367 p.103.

R. James; D. Blow; J.C. Neil; R. Russell Jones, 'AIDS and the Sunday

Times' (letters) Nature 13 Jan. 1994, vol.367 pp.109,110.

B. Griffin; R.D. Adams; K. Ghattas; S.J. Holt, 'AIDS debate

continues' (letters) Nature 20 Jan. 1994, vol.367 p.212.

J. Shenton & V. Gildemeister; P. Dixon, L.R. Murmu, 'Still more about

AIDS' (letters) Nature 27 Jan. 1994, vol.367 p.311.

M. Clarcke, 'UK newspaper goes quiet on challenge to HIV/AIDS link'

Nature 10 Feb. 1994, vol.367 p.500.

G. Garnett & R. Anderson, 'AIDS in Africa: is it a myth?' (letter)

Nature 10 Feb. 1994, vol.367 p.504.

A. Karpas/N. Hodgkinson, 'AIDS plagued by journalists' Nature 31

March 1994, vol.368 p.387.

N. Hodgkinson, 'Conspiracy of silence' The Sunday Times (London) 3

April 1994.

Anonymous, 'Newspaper revives anti HIV-claims' Nature 14 April 1994.