HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular Reasoning

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23 May 2006 14:06:22 -0000

Health Supreme Update: HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular

Reasoning

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Health Supreme Update: HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular Reasoning

 

 

2006.05.23 16:06:21

 

 

 

 

HIV Test Bogus - Based on Circular Reasoning

 

 

HIV tests are are not only unreliable - they have been tweaked to

respond to protein fractions found most often in those people that are

part of AIDS " risk groups " , says Neville Hodgkinson, author of AIDS:

The Failure of Contemporary Science in his latest article published

last Sunday (21 May 2006) in The Business.

 

One story Hodgkinson relates in his thoughtful article is how the

symbol of HIV infection - and certain AIDS death - was rejected in

India and a national campaign abandoned, when " in front of television

cameras, a six-foot red ribbon was cut into pieces as a protest

against the 'oppressive and patronising' symbol. " Veena Dhari, the

first woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said that when

HIV-positive people see the ribbon " we feel like committing suicide " .

 

 

Red-ribbon-cut.gif

 

Red ribbon - (Unesco) Young Digital Creators

 

Quite apart from the personal tragedies of people being labeled 'HIV

positive' and effectively receiving a death sentence, the

unreliability of the test, which makes such labeling a cruel if not

criminal act, is becoming a major issue. Hodgkinson is not the only

journalist saying that the retrovirus which supposedly causes AIDS is

not being detected by tests, and indeed has never been properly

identified as the cause of the syndrome.

 

Liam Scheff has contested more than a year ago, that no gold standard

exists for the AIDS test, that is, the test cannot be validated

against an actual virus isolated from patients that have the disease.

 

And Rebecca Culshaw, a mathematical biologist and assistant professor

of mathematics says she quit her AIDS related work because of the

substantial impossibility to model the spread of the disease and the

effectiveness of preventive and curative efforts: " The biological

assumptions on which the models were based varied from author to

author, and this made no sense to me. "

 

As if a bogus test was not enough, the treatment recommended after the

verdict of " positive " virtually guarantees debilitating illness and

eventual death. The " side effects " of the retroviral drugs which are

the treatment 'of choice' include the very symptoms we describe as AIDS.

 

Not that there were any serious lack of natural treatment options

without the deadly side effects, but they cost much less than the

chemical drugs and can't be patented...

 

- - -

 

The circular reasoning scandal of HIV testing

 

By Neville Hodgkinson

21 May 2006

 

(See original in The Business on line)

 

IT WAS an icon of compassion, a sign you cared. To wear the red ribbon

meant to express solidarity with HIV/Aids victims everywhere. It

signified you knew the importance of antiviral drugs and HIV testing,

Aids awareness and condoms – and of the urgent need for a vaccine.

 

Red-ribbons.gif

 

Red ribbons Image Unesco: Young Digital Creators

 

In contrast, if you cast doubt on the ever-burgeoning and massaged

HIV/Aids statistics; or suggested the billions raised for HIV research

and treatment might be better spent on established medicines and in

fighting poverty; or – perish the thought – if you questioned the

theory that Aids is caused by a sexually transmitted virus, you lost

your right to be considered a sensible and decent member of the human

race. You were a " denialist " , a " pariah " , a " flat-earther " , a

" crackpot " . Even if you were a leading scientist, your funds would

disappear and your ability to publish in mainstream journals reduced

to zero.

 

Today, whether it is frightening the residents of a Cornish town with

a cluster of purported infections, or causing the former head of South

Africa's National Aids Council to apologise for having unprotected sex

with an HIV-positive Aids activist, or enabling U2 front-man Bono to

edit an issue of the Independent newspaper dominated by impassioned

accounts of Africa's HIV/Aids plight, the virus that has held such

sway in the popular mind for more than 20 years is still never long

out of the news. It is now very big business: American Express,

Motorola, Gap, Converse and Armani are among the corporate giants

supporting Bono's RED campaign promoting special products to raise

funds for Aids in Africa.

 

But unreported in Bono's Independent (or in any other edition of the

paper, which for years has followed an unquestioning line on Aids)

there are signs that the power of the red ribbon is in serious

decline. In the United States, where respectable opinion has long held

the HIV theory of Aids to be immune to questioning, a controversial

15-page critique in the influential Harper's Magazine has caused

culture shock. As well as detailing a cover-up by government

scientists regarding Aids medication trials, the article approvingly

quotes scientists who have argued for years that HIV is not the cause

of Aids.

 

Meanwhile the Washington Post last month published an investigation

headlined " How Aids in Africa was overstated " , arguing that

" increasingly dire " and inaccurate assessments of HIV infection by

UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/Aids) had " skewed

years of policy judgments and decisions on where to spend precious

healthcare dollars " .

 

In India, a proposed Red Ribbon Campaign through the national rail

network has been abandoned, following a national convention on HIV in

Bangalore last October attended by more than 1,500 HIV-positive people

where the once-fashionable symbol of Aids awareness was ceremoniously

rejected. In front of television cameras, a six-foot red ribbon was

cut into pieces as a protest against the " oppressive and patronising "

symbol.

 

Speakers said there were no similar icons of solidarity for people

suffering from other diseases. The ribbon's connotations that

" HIV=Aids=Death " – the scientific orthodoxy d to by UN

agencies, pharmaceutical interests and thousands of activists around

the world – was said to further the isolation, discrimination and

sense of doom suffered as a result of an HIV diagnosis. Veena Dhari,

the first woman in India to declare herself HIV-positive, said that

when HIV-positive people see the ribbon " we feel like committing

suicide " . She called on all Aids organisations to stop using it.

 

The story appeared on the front pages of newspapers as well as

national television in India, where media have proved more resistant

than in most African countries to huge pressures to conform to

international opinion on HIV/Aids.

 

Two years ago Richard Holbrooke, former US Ambassador to the United

Nations and now president of the Global Business Coalition on

HIV/Aids, an alliance of 200 international companies promoting Aids

testing, treatment and support, said in Washington that a major

impediment in dealing with Aids globally was that many governments –

and people – were still in " a denial phase – they believe they have no

Aids problem. "

 

Citing India as an example, he said that if it did not change its

policies, it would soon have the highest HIV/Aids tally in the world.

By last year that had already happened, according to Richard Feacham,

head of the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and

Malaria, the main beneficiary of the Product RED initiative.

 

" The epidemic is growing very rapidly. It is out of control, " Feachem

said in Paris. " There is nothing happening in India today that is big

or serious enough to prevent it. " India had to wake up, because

without action, " millions and millions and millions are going to die. "

 

That is not the view of Anju Singh, of JACKINDIA, a Delhi-based Aids

policy study group. Singh, chief guest at the Bangalore convention,

told The Business last week that " there are no reports – not even

anecdotal ones – that reflect visible proof of an epidemic in this

country. " The official estimate for HIV infections is around 5m; but a

dearth of Aids cases – averaging 10,000 a year over the past 10 years

- suggests that is grossly wrong.

 

Nor has there been any abnormal increase in death rates, even in

suspected " high risk groups " such as red light areas. The Indian

government does not publish data for Aids deaths; but " questions we

got asked in Parliament have elicited a cumulative figure of 1,100. "

When UNAIDS published a figure of 310,000 Aids deaths in India in 1999

alone, and a cumulative total of 558,000 Aids orphans, JACKINDIA

challenged them publicly. In late 2001 the figures were withdrawn –

but only after being used earlier that year to project the state of

the epidemic in India at the UN General Assembly Special Session on

HIV/Aids in New York.

 

" For years now, agencies like the CIA, World Bank, UNDP, UNAIDS, a

plethora of NGOs as well as articles published in respected science

journals have been talking of an exploding epidemic in India, and

Africa-like conditions, " Singh said. " We have consistently challenged

the agencies that claim India is underplaying figures and is in

denial; none of them has been able to provide any alternative data or

evidence to substantiate their claims. "

 

The iconoclastic Harper's article, entitled " Out of Control: Aids and

the corruption of medical science " , has sparked intense debate.

Greeted by a chorus of condemnation and calls for the resignation of

Harper's editor, it has nevertheless found many defenders. It was

written by Celia Farber, a journalist and long-standing critic of the

science surrounding the HIV theory.

 

In an editorial, the Columbia Journalism Review accused the magazine

of " racing right over a cliff " in publishing Farber. A blog called New

Aids Review responded that the editorial was " a poor specimen of what

journalism students are learning at one of the great universities " ,

adding that the author would do better to write a thesis on " The Media

in Aids: How Journalists Failed the American Public " .

 

But even some long-standing HIV/Aids activists have admitted

themselves shaken by the facts Farber set out about the lethal

potential of some antiviral drugs; and the controversy has also taken

the lid off a claim made repeatedly in response to attempts to reopen

debate on the causes of Aids, that only a handful of scientists

question the orthodox view.

Thanks to the internet, an association started 14 years ago to press

for a scientific reappraisal of the HIV/Aids hypothesis now lists more

than 2,300 public dissenters, including Nobel Laureates in chemistry

and medicine on its website

(http://rethinkaids.info/quotes/rethinkers.htm). Many have advanced

degrees in the sciences and medicine as well as direct experience of

working in the public health sector in Africa and other supposedly

HIV-ravaged parts of the world.

 

One of these is Dr Rebecca Culshaw, assistant professor of mathematics

at the University of Texas, a mathematical biologist who for 10 years

studied and published models of HIV disease and treatment. In an

internet posting entitled " Why I Quit HIV " , Culshaw calls for a ban on

HIV tests. She says they do " immeasurably more harm than good " because

of an " astounding " lack of specificity and standardisation; she adds

that many people are being treated with drugs on the basis of an

insupportable theory. " My work … has been built in large part on the

paradigm that HIV causes Aids and I have since come to realise that

there is good evidence that the entire basis for this theory is wrong. "

 

In Australia, the idea that anyone can be diagnosed as infected with

HIV is to face a court challenge. In a hearing set down for July, the

lawyer for a man found guilty of endangering the lives of three women

through having unprotected sex (one woman has tested positive, while

the other two are negative) is to call evidence from a Perth-based

group of scientists who during nearly 25 years researching the

scientific literature on Aids have come to an even more radical

conclusion than the American dissenters quoted in Harper's. The group

(www.theperthgroup.com) will testify that " HIV " has never been

isolated from the tissues of Aids patients; and that in consequence

the HIV test has never been validated and there is no proof HIV is

transmitted sexually.

 

Dr Robert Gallo, the American government researcher whose team

developed and marketed the first test kits, says in a letter in this

month's Harper's that " no test in medicine is perfect, but done

correctly and with a confirmatory second test, the HIV blood test

developed in our laboratory comes close. " Gallo and others, including

activists promoting anti-viral drugs in South Africa, make similar

assertions in their rebuttal of Farber's article stating that: " HIV

tests were highly accurate from the time they were developed in 1984

and have become much more accurate over time as the underlying

technology has evolved. HIV tests are amongst the most accurate

available in medical science. "

 

In fact, as demonstrated in a two-part investigation published in The

Business in May 2004 (see panel), experts have known since the early

years of Aids that " HIV " test kits could not be used to diagnose Aids.

Delegates at a World Health Organisation meeting in Geneva in 1986

heard that the kits were licensed to protect blood and plasma

donations, not as a screen for Aids or people at risk of Aids. But,

dictated by public health needs, usage had expanded and " it was simply

not practical " to stop this, as Dr Thomas Zuck, of the US Food and

Drug Administration, put it.

 

The 100 experts from 34 countries heard that, though the tests were

useful in safeguarding blood supplies, something more was needed to

distinguish genuine infection with HIV. Dr James Allen, of the US

Centres for Disease Control Aids programme, said studies suggested

some people were reacting to components of the cell line used to grow

HIV for many of the test kits licensed in America. Other reactions

occurred because of antibodies to normal cell proteins, naturally

occurring in the body. Allen warned that the problems could be

magnified in areas of the world that did not have the sophisticated

facilities of America.

 

The meeting was told that a so-called " confirmatory test " , called

western blot, relied on the same principle as the test kits it was

supposed to be checking and so was liable to the same kind of

false-positive reactions. Subsequent research has repeatedly confirmed

this problem: more than 60 conditions that cause such false-positives

have been documented. One is tuberculosis, which produces symptoms of

Aids as defined in Africa and is immensely widespread among

impoverished people.

 

As the HIV/Aids paradigm won worldwide acceptance, increasingly

complex procedures for trying to make a reliable diagnosis came into

being. But the basic problem – not being able to validate any of these

procedures against pure virus taken from patients – still remains.

 

Harper's has published pages of letters in the latest (May) issue in

response to Farber's article, which appeared in March. Roughly half

are supportive, half against. The first letter is from Culshaw, who

writes: " This debate should have happened long ago, before an unproven

hypothesis of an immune-destroying retrovirus was thrust upon a

vulnerable public, and without being thoroughly critiqued in the

scientific literature. Despite the promises made in 1984, there is

still no cure and no vaccine. Instead, there has been a fundamental

erosion in scientific and clinical-trial standards, with implications

reaching far beyond HIV.

 

" To do the best we can for those affected by Aids – including those in

Africa, where Aids presents a clinical picture quite different from

that in the developed world – there urgently needs to be an honest

scientific debate. "

 

There is an association between testing HIV-positive and risk of

developing Aids. This is the main reason why scientists believe HIV is

the cause of Aids. But the link is artificial, a consequence of the

way the test kits were made.

 

It never proved possible to validate the tests by culturing, purifying

and analysing particles of the purported virus from patients who test

positive, then demonstrating that these are not present in patients

who test negative. This was despite heroic efforts to make the virus

reveal itself in patients with Aids or at risk of Aids, in which their

immune cells were stimulated for weeks in laboratory cultures using a

variety of agents.

 

After the cells had been activated in this way, HIV pioneers found

some 30 proteins in filtered material that gathered at a density

characteristic of retroviruses. They attributed some of these to

various parts of the virus. But they never demonstrated that these

so-called " HIV antigens " belonged to a new retrovirus.

 

So, out of the 30 proteins, how did they select the ones to be defined

as being from HIV? The answer is shocking, and goes to the root of

what is probably the biggest scandal in medical history. They selected

those that were most reactive with antibodies in blood samples from

Aids patients and those at risk of Aids.

 

This means that " HIV " antigens are defined as such not on the basis of

being shown to belong to HIV, but on the basis that they react with

antibodies in Aids patients. Aids patients are then diagnosed as being

infected with HIV on the basis that they have antibodies which react

with those same antigens. The reasoning is circular.

 

Gay men leading " fast-track " sex lives, drug addicts, blood product

recipients and others whose immune systems are exposed to multiple

challenges and who are at risk of Aids are much more likely to have

raised levels of the antibodies looked for by the tests than healthy

people – because the antigens in the tests were chosen on the basis

that they react with antibodies in Aids patients. But this association

does not prove the presence of a lethal new virus.

 

The tests do discriminate between healthy blood and the blood of

patients with Aids or Aids-like conditions, because Aids patients

suffer a range of active infections and other blood abnormalities,

some of which are transmissible. This is why the tests are useful as a

screen for the safety of blood supplies.

 

But to tell even one person that they are HIV-infected on the grounds

that they have antibodies that react with the proteins in these tests

is an unwarranted assault.

 

Neville Hodgkinson is a UK-based journalist who has been writing about

Aids for 20 years. He is the author of AIDS: The Failure of

Contemporary Science (Fourth Estate, 1996).

 

 

 

posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Tuesday May 23 2006