Blots On The Landscape - HIV Test Criteria Compared
himself
[Continuum Magazine, Vol3No4 p20]
HIV Positive? - It depends where you live. [see table below]
Take a look at the criteria that determine a positive HIV test
result.
The HIV antibody tests do not detect a virus. They test for any
antibodies that react with an assortment of 'virus-proteins'
that experts assure us are unique to HIV.
According to AIDS-experts, the ELISA test is not very specific
and may react in the absence of HIV infection, and thus if
positive is repeated, and if still positive warrants a third,
but different, test called the Western Blot. In the Western
Blot the 'virus-proteins', about ten of them, are located at
discrete spots in a paper strip. Serum is added and whenever
there is a reaction with some antibodies a colour change occurs
which shows up as a dark band. The test is read by noting which
bands show up, in other words, which proteins are reacting.
Certain combinations of bands are defined as a positive test.
It is most peculiar that the location and number of bands
required for a positive Western Blot VARY around the world,
and may even vary between laboratories within the same city.
In Australia at least four bands are required, in Canada and
much of the USA three or more. And in Africa, two will do. If
each indicates HIV infection then HIV must cause different
populations of antibodies to appear in different places. Does
that not sound very odd? Can HIV navigate? But at least it
gives some Africans a way out: all an African has to do is
retest in Australia because two bands would not be considered
positive there.
Nevertheless, in spite of the lack of standardisation and other
problems such as reproducibility, the Western Blot is promoted
as greater than 99.9% specific, and if positive is regarded as
synonymous with HIV infection.
A Martian might be forgiven for wondering whether wine-tasting
was less subjective.
________________________________________________________________
Western Blot | | | | | |
"virus | | Aust- | U.S. | U.S. | |
proteins" | Africa | ralia | FDA |Red Cross| CDC(1) |
_______________|_________|_________|_________|_________|________|
| | | | | p120/ |
p160 | ANY | 1 | 1 | 1 | p160 |
ENV p120 | | OR | OR | OR | AND |
gene p41 | 2 | > | > | > | p41 |
_______________|_________|_________|_________|_________|________|
| | | | | |
p68 | O | | | | |
POL p53 | P | | p32 | ANY | |
gene p32 | T | ANY | | 1 | |
_______________| I | |_________|_________|________|
p55 | O | 3 | | | | |
GAG p40 | N | | | | | |
gene p24 | A | | p24 | ANY | | |
p18 | L | | | 1 | | |
_______________|_________|_________|_________|_________|________|\|/
/continued/
________________________________________________________
Western Blot | | | | |
"virus | | | | |
proteins" | CDC(2) | CON [1] | MACS [2]| U.K. |
_______________|_________|_________|_________|_________|
| p120/ | p120/ | | |
p160 | p160 | p160 | | 1 |
ENV p120 | OR | OR | | OR |
gene p41 | p41 | p41 | | > |
_______________|_________|_________| |_________|
| | | see | |
p68 | | | | |
POL p53 | | p32 | note[a] | p31 |
gene p32 | | | | (sic) |
_______________|_________| | below |_________|
p55 | | OR | | |
GAG p40 | | | | |
gene p24 | p24 | p24 | | p24 |
p18 | | | | |
_______________|_________|_________|_________|_________|
[a] ANY 1 STRONG -OR- 3 WEAK bands from: p15, p24, p32,
p41, p45, p53, p55, p64 & p120.
Score '1' for each WEAK band, and '3' for each STRONG
band - total of '3' or greater is positive.
[1] Consortium for Retrovirus Serology Standardisation
[2] Multi-Centre AIDS Cohort Study (USA)
HIV + Western Blot Test Criteria in various centres around the
world. With thanks to Dr Val Turner.
Brian Foley
jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk wrote:
>
> [Continuum Magazine, Vol3No4 p20]
>
> HIV Positive? - It depends where you live. [see table below]
>
> Take a look at the criteria that determine a positive HIV test
> result.
A person is either infectied with the Human
Immunodeficiency Virus, or not infected. Being labelled
HIV positive by medical professionals corelates very
well with true infection, but not perfectly. If the
criteria for being labelled HIV+ in one country is
less stringent than another, then more false-positives
will be found in the less stringent country.
Each country must decide for itself how
stingent the tests should be, depending on the financial
resources available for testing, the precent of the
population infected, and other things. Each individual
should decide for him or herself whether to go for
furhter tests if they believe they have received a
false positive result.
>
> The HIV antibody tests do not detect a virus. They test for any
> antibodies that react with an assortment of 'virus-proteins'
> that experts assure us are unique to HIV.
> ...
> It is most peculiar that the location and number of bands
> required for a positive Western Blot VARY around the world,
> and may even vary between laboratories within the same city.
> ...
It is only labelled "peculiar" by those who don't
believe that HIV exists, or those who believe it is
a harmless endogenous retrovirus. The simple and inexpensive
ELISA test has a low false positive rate, and a very
low false negative rate. The Western Blot is even better.
The chances of having antibodies that react in the ELISA
test and that react to several bands in the Western Blot
test, and not being truly infected with HIV are quite slim:
-----------------
MacDonald KL; Jackson JB; Bowman RJ; Polesky HF;
Rhame FS; Balfour HH Jr; Osterholm MT.
Performance characteristics of serologic tests
for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) antibody
among Minnesota blood donors. Public health and clinical
implications [see comments].
Annals of Internal Medicine, 1989 Apr 15, 110(8):617-21.
(UI: 89191857)
Abstract: STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate performance
characteristics of sequential enzyme immunoassay (EIA)
and Western blot human immunodeficiency virus type 1
(HIV-1) antibody testing in a low-risk population.
DESIGN: Three-year prospective study of a selected
sample from a community-based population.
SETTING: Two blood collection facilities in Minnesota.
POPULATION: Minnesota blood donors.
RESULTS: During the study period, 630,190 units of blood
(donations) from an estimated 290,110 Minnesota-resident
donors were screened for HIV-1 antibody. Seventeen
Minnesota-resident donors were identified as positive for
HIV-1 antibody. Sixteen donors were available for
follow-up HIV-1 culture: all were culture positive. The
other donor, who was not available for follow-up culture,
was likely infected with HIV-1 based on a history of
high-risk behavior and positive serologic findings for
hepatitis B surface antigen. Using 95% binomial confidence
intervals, performance characteristics for sequential
EIA and Western blot HIV-1 antibody serology were as follows:
false-positive rate by number of donations, 0% to 0.0006%;
specificity by number of donations, 99.9994% to 100%;
predictive value of a positive test, 81% to 100%.
CONCLUSIONS: In this low-risk population, the false-positive
rate of serologic tests for HIV-1 antibody, using HIV-1
culture as the definitive standard for infection status,
was extremely low and test specificity was extremely high.
---------------------
But reaction to just one or two bands (an
indeterminate result) is possible in a few HIV negative
people:
---------------------
N Engl J Med 322: 217-22 (1990)[90098048]
Absence of HIV infection in blood donors with indeterminate
western blot tests for antibody to HIV-1.
J. B. Jackson, K. L. MacDonald, J. Cadwell, C. Sullivan,
W. E. Kline, M. Hanson, K. J. Sannerud, S. L.Stramer,
N. J. Fildes, S. Y. Kwok & et al.
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis.
To determine whether apparently healthy persons who have had
repeatedly reactive enzyme immunoassays and an indeterminate
Western blot assay for antibody to the human immunodeficiency
virus type 1 (HIV-1) are infected with HIV-1 or HIV-2, we
studied 99 such volunteer blood donors in a low-risk area
of the country. The subjects were interviewed about HIV risk
factors. Coded blood specimens were tested again for HIV-1
antibody (by two different enzyme immunoassays, a Western
blot assay and a radioimmunoprecipitation assay) and for
HIV-2 antibody by enzyme immunoassay, for HIV-1 by the serum
antigen test, for HIV-1 by culture, for human T-cell leukemia
virus Type I or II antibody by enzyme immunoassay, and for
sequences of HIV DNA by the polymerase chain reaction.
Of the 99 blood donors, 98 reported no risk factors for HIV-1
infection; 1 donor had used intravenous drugs. After a
median of 14 months (range, 1 to 30) from the time of the
initial test, 65 subjects (66 percent) were still repeatedly
reactive for HIV-1 antibody on at least one immunoassay.
In 91 subjects (92 percent) the Western blot results were
still indeterminate, whereas in 8 they were negative. No
donor met the criteria for a positive Western blot assay for
HIV-1, and none had evidence of HIV-1 or HIV-2 infection on
culture or by any other test. We conclude that persons at low
risk for HIV infection who have persistent indeterminate HIV-1
Western blots are rarely if ever infected with HIV-1 or HIV-2.
--
____________________________________________________________________
|Brian T. Foley b...@t10.lanl.gov |
|HIV Database (505) 665-1970 |
|Los Alamos National Lab http://hiv-web.lanl.gov/index.html |
|Los Alamos, NM 87544 U.S.A. http://retro.lanl.gov/~btf/home.html |
|____________________________________________________________________|
John Mercer
(crossposted to talk.politics.animals)
himself <jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> [Continuum Magazine, Vol3No4 p20]
> HIV Positive? - It depends where you live. [see table below]
>
> Take a look at the criteria that determine a positive HIV test
> result.
>
> The HIV antibody tests do not detect a virus.
A very good thing, because depending on the phase of the infection, HIV
itself may be virtually impossible to detect or isolate (not to mention
expensive), while the antibodies remain.
> They test for any
> antibodies that react with an assortment of 'virus-proteins'
Yes, viruses code for viral proteins. Why the ''?
> that experts assure us are unique to HIV.
You don't need to rely on any experts. You are welcome to examine the
published data yourself. Why haven't you done so?
> According to AIDS-experts, the ELISA test is not very specific
> and may react in the absence of HIV infection, and thus if
> positive is repeated, and if still positive warrants a third,
> but different, test called the Western Blot.
This is known as being as thorough as possible, given the limitations of
the techniques involved and their cost.
> In the Western
> Blot the 'virus-proteins', about ten of them, are located at
> discrete spots in a paper strip.
No, not paper. Do you know *why* they are in discrete spots? Anyway...
> Serum is added and whenever
> there is a reaction with some antibodies a colour change occurs
Huh? How could a person's serum *itself* cause a color change?
Actually, what is done is after antibodies from the serum have bound, is
that antibodies against human antibodies (made by immunizing an
*animal*) are bound to the human antibodies. These animal antibodies
have been conjugated with an enzyme that changes the color of a specific
substrate (added last).
The same type of animal secondary antibody is used in the ELISA.
Doesn't it seem strange to you that PeTA would lie about this, in
addition to the requirement of fetal calf serum for isolation of HIV in
cell culture?
I quote from one of their "fact" sheets:
"*Non-animal* clinical, epidemiological,
and in vitro studies successfully isolated the virus that causes AIDS
and demonstrated how the virus is transmitted in people."
Why do PeTA drones choose to lie and/or equivocate about these things
instead of protesting in front of AIDS clinics or blood banks, where HIV
ELISA tests are done tens of millions of times per year?
> which shows up as a dark band. The test is read by noting which
> bands show up, in other words, which proteins are reacting.
Makes sense, doesn't it?
> Certain combinations of bands are defined as a positive test.
If you disagree with the (purely operational) definitions of "positive"
given below, do you propose any alternatives?
> It is most peculiar that the location and number of bands
> required for a positive Western Blot VARY around the world,
> and may even vary between laboratories within the same city.
No, it isn't, since no medical test is 100% accurate and perfect. Can
you provide an example of one that is?
> In Australia at least four bands are required, in Canada and
> much of the USA three or more. And in Africa, two will do. If
> each indicates HIV infection then HIV must cause different
> populations of antibodies to appear in different places. Does
> that not sound very odd? Can HIV navigate? But at least it
> gives some Africans a way out: all an African has to do is
> retest in Australia because two bands would not be considered
> positive there.
Thus the operational term "HIV-positive" is 99.9%, not 100%, equivalent
to the biological reality of "HIV-infected".
This statement is true whether or not you believe that HIV is necessary
for AIDS.
> Nevertheless, in spite of the lack of standardisation and other
> problems such as reproducibility, the Western Blot is promoted
> as greater than 99.9% specific,
What part of the data supporting that conclusion do you disagree with?
> and if positive is regarded as
> synonymous with HIV infection.
No, it is regarded as *nearly always* synonymous with having had an
active HIV infection at a *previous time*.
Even lay people are aware of this distinction, and regularly use the
term "HIV-positive" instead of "HIV-infected".
Most lay people further realize that one becomes "HIV-positive" only
some period of time AFTER one becomes "HIV-infected".
Why do you (and Continuum magazine) have so much trouble understanding
these terms, when the public understands them very well?
Are things clearer now?
> A Martian might be forgiven for wondering whether wine-tasting
> was less subjective.
A Martian might be forgiven for thinking that humans were
pseudoscientific, illogical idiots who are unable to understand
well-defined terms on the basis of reading this article from Continuum
magazine.
---snip---
--
John Mercer
Scientist
McLaughlin Research Institute
himself
b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> A person is either infectied with the Human
> Immunodeficiency Virus, or not infected. Being labelled
> HIV positive by medical professionals corelates very
> well with true infection, but not perfectly. If the
> criteria for being labelled HIV+ in one country is
> less stringent than another, then more false-positives
> will be found in the less stringent country.
You seem to have misunderstood the meaning of the table. It
is not the degree of stringency of the so-called "HIV tests"
that is noteworthy, but the amazing lack of consistency
between various testing regimes, and the apparently
contradictory nature of the criteria employed.
The fact that a person could test both negative and positive
from the same blood sample in different locations is hardly
an indication of 99.9% accuracy. Rather, it suggests that
these tests lack something in the way of validity. To put it
mildly.
John
--
"The Western Blot is a non-standardized, expensive, laborious
technique of subjective interpretation which provides an
appreciable number of undetermined results."
V. Soriano, et al. Medicina Clinica, Vol 100, Num 15, 1993.
himself
um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
> (crossposted to talk.politics.animals)
Why? But in that case, let them read the entire article, not
just the prologue. Here it is, below.
I note that in a long, waffling response you have completely
failed to address the problem of the inconsistencies and
contradictions inherent in Western Blot tests for "HIV"
antibiodies (still not demonstrated even to exist), nor
to offer any explanation for how a person can be positive
in one location, negative in another, and that this state
of affairs is considered to be "scientifically accurate".
If you have any *relevant* comment to make, please feel free
to post it. Knee-jerk sniping hardly warrants the bandwidth.
John
====================================================================
Continuum Magazine, Vol3No4 p20
HIV Positive - It depends where you live. [see table below]
====================================================================
Steven B. Harris
In <856945...@blackdog.demon.co.uk> jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk
(himself) writes:
>
>The fact that a person could test both negative and positive
>from the same blood sample in different locations is hardly
>an indication of 99.9% accuracy.
On the contrary, it says nothing about accuracy. It's quite possible
(and indeed is the case here) that if you test positive by certain
criteria in one country, you're more than 99.9% likely to test positive
also by other criteria in another.
> Rather, it suggests that these tests lack something in the way of
>validity. To put it mildly.
To put it stupidly. There is no disease known which has exactly the
same criteria for diagnosis everywhere the planet, and in fact I doubt
there is another viral disease of mankind whose lab diagnosis is
standardized so well worldwide, as that for HIV. All of this does not
mean that viral diseases, or indeed diseases in general, are not real
things. We only begin to doubt the objective reality as entities of
diseases, where different criteria in different places are known to
result in wildly different probabilities of diagnosis in the same
subjects. Which would be the case for a few "diseases" (multiple
personality disorder, for instance), but is not the case for infection
with HIV.
Steve Harris, M.D.
John Lauritsen
In article <3313A8...@t10.lanl.gov>, Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> wrote:
[..]
> A person is either infectied with the Human
>Immunodeficiency Virus, or not infected. Being labelled
>HIV positive by medical professionals corelates very
>well with true infection, but not perfectly.
Comment: In order to judge whether or not an "HIV-positive" result
correlates "very well with true infection", it is necessary to have a
definition of "true infection".
What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
John Lauritsen, author: The AIDS War (1993)
co-editor: The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (1997)
John Lauritsen
In article <5f23h3$q...@dfw-ixnews10.ix.netcom.com>, sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) wrote:
[...]
>To put it stupidly. There is no disease known which has exactly the
>same criteria for diagnosis everywhere the planet, and in fact I doubt
>there is another viral disease of mankind whose lab diagnosis is
>standardized so well worldwide, as that for HIV.
Fascinating assertion. Could someone explain, calmly and concisely,
exactly what the worldwide-standardized "lab diagnosis" is for "AIDS"?
Brian Foley
John Lauritsen wrote:
> What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
patients' blood.
Brian Foley
John Lauritsen wrote:
> Could someone explain, calmly and concisely,
> exactly what the worldwide-standardized "lab diagnosis" is for "AIDS"?
In increasing orders of specificity:
1) Serological methods that identify antibodies against the
human immunodeficiency virus:
A) ELISA which tests for antibodies but does not
differentiate which viral protiens they
are directed against.
B) Western Blot, which not only detects antibodies,
but also determines which viral protein they
are reacting to.
2) Tissue culture isolation of human immunodeficiency virus
A) Determined by development of syncytia in the cells
B) Determined by production of reverse transcriptase
C) Determined by production of p24 or other HIV proteins
3) Amplification of human immunodeficiency virus nucleic acid
sequences.
A) PCR amplification from PBMC proviral DNA
B) RT-PCR amplification from serum viral RNA
C) Actually sequencing the PCR products to prove
that the PCR product was not the result
of some sort of lab contamination.
James Scutero
In article <3313A8...@t10.lanl.gov> Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> writes:
>jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk wrote:
>>[...]
>> required for a positive Western Blot VARY around the world,
>> and may even vary between laboratories within the same city.
>> ...
>
> It is only labelled "peculiar" by those who don't believe that
>HIV exists, or those who believe it is a harmless endogenous retrovirus.
I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1 quasi-species that
would preclude it from being an endogenous retrovirus. Furthermore, I
think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this point;
it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can remain
latent. Whether it started in the human genome is very possible. And,
it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
>The simple and inexpensive ELISA test has a low false positive rate, and
>a very low false negative rate. The Western Blot is even better. The
>chances of having antibodies that react in the ELISA test and that react
>to several bands in the Western Blot test, and not being truly infected
>with HIV are quite slim:
>-----------------
The cites you give are only for apparently "healthy" people or
people who are at "low risk" for certain diseases. The problem
is that people who are suffering with certain illnesses, in the absence of
HIV, can produce antibodies that cross-react with HIV proteins, which have
caused false-positive reactions on HIV tests. This situation was at its
worst in 1985. All that was required then was a positive reaction to
either p24 or p41, which can be fairly common. It was only until a few
years ago that recombinant proteins were used instead of whole cell
lysates in HIV tests.
Tests in people who are ill, or who are more vulnerable to illness,
produce a higher rate of false-positives. Cites to studies of this kind
are more telling of the real situation.
> MacDonald KL; Jackson JB; Bowman RJ; Polesky HF;
>Rhame FS; Balfour HH Jr; Osterholm MT.
> Performance characteristics of serologic tests
>for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) antibody
>among Minnesota blood donors. Public health and clinical
>implications [see comments].
> Annals of Internal Medicine, 1989 Apr 15, 110(8):617-21.
> (UI: 89191857)
>
>Abstract: STUDY OBJECTIVE: To evaluate performance
>characteristics of sequential enzyme immunoassay (EIA)
>and Western blot human immunodeficiency virus type 1
>(HIV-1) antibody testing in a low-risk population.
||||||||
>[...]
> But reaction to just one or two bands (an
>indeterminate result) is possible in a few HIV negative
>people:
>---------------------
>N Engl J Med 322: 217-22 (1990)[90098048]
>
>Absence of HIV infection in blood donors with indeterminate
>western blot tests for antibody to HIV-1.
>
>J. B. Jackson, K. L. MacDonald, J. Cadwell, C. Sullivan,
>W. E. Kline, M. Hanson, K. J. Sannerud, S. L.Stramer,
>N. J. Fildes, S. Y. Kwok & et al.
>
>Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of
>Minnesota, Minneapolis.
>
>To determine whether apparently healthy persons who have had
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
>repeatedly reactive enzyme immunoassays and an indeterminate
>Western blot assay for antibody to the human immunodeficiency
>virus type 1 (HIV-1) are infected with HIV-1 or HIV-2, we
>studied 99 such volunteer blood donors in a low-risk area
||||||||
>of the country.
David L Evens
himself (jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
: > (crossposted to talk.politics.animals)
: Why? But in that case, let them read the entire article, not
: just the prologue. Here it is, below.
: I note that in a long, waffling response you have completely
: failed to address the problem of the inconsistencies and
: contradictions inherent in Western Blot tests for "HIV"
: antibiodies (still not demonstrated even to exist),
Well, since you're lieing about this, it isn't surprising that you're
lieing about Western Blots, is it?
: nor
: to offer any explanation for how a person can be positive
: in one location, negative in another, and that this state
: of affairs is considered to be "scientifically accurate".
What ARE you dribbling about now?
: If you have any *relevant* comment to make, please feel free
: to post it. Knee-jerk sniping hardly warrants the bandwidth.
Then why are you unable to do anything else?
: John
[Intentionally misleading extract deleted.]
--
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
A pocket full of positrons,| But he certainly took us by surprise!"
A fission, a fusion, +--------------------------------------------------
We all fall down! | "Was anybody in the Maquis working for me?"
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
"I'd cut down ever Law in England to get at the Devil!"
"And what man could stand up in the wind that would blow once you'd cut
down all the laws?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message may not be carried on any server which places restrictions
on content.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail will be posted as I see fit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven B. Harris
In <5f5eo7$l...@panix.com> jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
>
> I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1 quasi-species that
>would preclude it from being an endogenous retrovirus. Furthermore, I
>think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this
point;
>it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can remain
>latent. Whether it started in the human genome is very possible. And,
>it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
Sorry, but there's no evidence whatsoever that HIV has incorporated
itself into the human genome, if by that you mean the human germ line.
HIV inserts itself into the DNA of lymphocytes and macrophages--
nobody's ever found it in nature doing that trick in sperm and egg
cells. Other retroviruses, yes. HIV, no.
Steve Harris, M.D.
George M. Carter
jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) wrote:
> I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1 quasi-species that
>would preclude it from being an endogenous retrovirus. Furthermore, I
>think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this point;
>it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can remain
>latent. Whether it started in the human genome is very possible. And,
>it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
I don't believe the evidence is there that HIV is a naturally arising
endogenous retrovirus. I think this is just wishful thinking on your
part, James. Do gay men have some natural proclivity for producing a
suddenly pathogenic endogenous retrovirus not shared by lesbians in
the Western countries? The shape of the epidemic simply doesn't
support this view, in my opinion.
The cross-reaction problems you point out are also inadequate. It
would be true if there were no prospective studies following people
with HIV who are healthy but then progressively lose CD4 cells,
develop other serious immune dysregulation, opportunistic infections
and far too often die over a period of years. Most of these people
were healthy at the time of diagnosis and did not have any particular
infections that would result in cross-reactivity.
HIV is the cause of AIDS. The more important question in terms of
rational interventions that go beyond toxic antiretrovirals is HOW
does HIV cause AIDS. Investigating this question yields a variety of
potential interventions that, at the least, may slow progression and
be far less toxic or costly. It is CRIMINAL that such approaches are
not studied given that many people with HIV worldwide will never see
the benefits, such as they are, from the combinations of drugs due to
their prohibitive cost. Discovering cheaper, safer alternatives is
essential and the lack of such research is a capitulation to the greed
of pharmaceutical interests and, sometimes, the arrogance of (some)
medical practitioners and policy makers.
George M. Carter
himself
sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven "Steven B. Harris" writes:
> In <856945...@blackdog.demon.co.uk> jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk
> (himself) writes:
> >
> >The fact that a person could test both negative and positive
> >from the same blood sample in different locations is hardly
> >an indication of 99.9% accuracy.
>
> On the contrary, it says nothing about accuracy.
Right. So it is 99.9% accurate when it says the subject is "positive
for HIV", and also 99.9% accurate when it says the same subject is
"negative for HIV".
> [...] There is no disease known which has exactly the
> same criteria for diagnosis everywhere the planet, [..blather..]
The "HIV test" is claimed to identify the presence of antibodies
to "HIV". They are either present or they aren't. It is one of
those funny little quirks of the physical world that an object
cannot be both present and absent at the same time, which is what
these tests imply.
John
--
"They have not proven that they have actually detected a unique
exogenous retrovirus. The critical data to support that idea have
not been presented."
Prof. J Papadimitriou, Univ of W.Australia
himself
dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
> : nor
> : to offer any explanation for how a person can be positive
> : in one location, negative in another, and that this state
> : of affairs is considered to be "scientifically accurate".
>
> What ARE you dribbling about now?
If you read the article in question you will be better prepared
to participate in this thread.
Advertising stupidity is counter-productive.
John
--
"`HIV' is not a virus, but a collection of gene products that can appear
when immune cells are chronically stimulated in the body or drastically
manipulated in the laboratory. No two identical `HIV's have been isolated,
even from the same individual."
"AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
himself
b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> John Lauritsen wrote:
>
> > What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
>
> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
> patients' blood.
"Usually determined"? How many victims of the "HIV" delusion
had their "infection" determined like this?
(Not, of course, that PCR identifies "HIV", or any part of
it, reliably. Unless "HIV" is fully isolated, none of these
claims can hope to have the least validity.)
John
--
"In going back to the origins of HIV virology and telling the HIV
story, a view will be presented which will make clear that HIV itself,
the very object of this Manhattan Project of modern medicine, does not
exist." Dr. Stefan Lanka, virologist.
himself
b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> John Lauritsen wrote:
> > Could someone explain, calmly and concisely,
> > exactly what the worldwide-standardized "lab diagnosis" is for "AIDS"?
>
> In increasing orders of specificity:
> 1) Serological methods that identify antibodies against the
> [...]
I suspect Mr Foley suffers from that common disability that holds
that the world ends at the political borders of the United States.
It certainly would be illuminating to see comparative international
definitions of "Aids" assembled, in the same way tests for so-called
"HIV proteins" have been presented. And perhaps we would see equally
devastating incongruities and contradictions there too.
James Scutero
In article <857158...@blackdog.demon.co.uk>
>b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
>
>> John Lauritsen wrote:
>>
>>
>> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
>> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
>> patients' blood.
>
>"Usually determined"? How many victims of the "HIV" delusion
>had their "infection" determined like this?
>
I was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and I never had those tests done.
All I had were antibody tests and CBCs sans the PCR and culturing.
-Giacomo
Giacomo's Cabaret, http://www.panix.com/~jscutero
James Scutero
In article <5f6hrp$8...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>
>In <5f5eo7$l...@panix.com> jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
>>
>>would preclude it from being an endogenous retrovirus. Furthermore, I
>>think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this
>>point; it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can
>>remain latent. Whether it started in the human genome is very possible.
>>And, it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
>
>itself into the human genome, if by that you mean the human germ line.
>HIV inserts itself into the DNA of lymphocytes and macrophages--
>nobody's ever found it in nature doing that trick in sperm and egg
>cells. Other retroviruses, yes. HIV, no.
>
>
> Steve Harris, M.D.
>
Have you checked everyone?
On Date: 6 Jan 1997 07:09:50 GMT,
in Message-ID: <5aq8fu$s...@dfw-ixnews2.ix.netcom.com>,
sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) writes:
>In <5apd2r$8...@panix.com> jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
>>[...]
>>
>>Subject: Re: magnesium dosage???
>>From: sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
>>Date: 1997/01/01
>>Message-Id: <5ad7sd$o...@dfw-ixnews9.ix.netcom.com>
>>X-Netcom-Date: Wed Jan 01 2:39:41 AM CST 1997
>>Newsgroups: misc.health.alternative
>>
>>>[...]That RT enzyme in lentiviruses like HIV is a lot more like the
>>>normal cell polymerases in this regard (which need Mg+2), than those
>>>of other retroviruses.
>>>[...]
>>> Steve Harris, M.D.
>>
>> If HIV-RT is like normal cell polymerases, why can't it be part
>>of a human endogenous retrovirus? Many animals have their own kind of
>>lentiviruses, why not humans?
>>
>>-Giacomo
>
> No reason why we couldn't. It's just that the retroviruses found in
>all human cell lines up to now have been C-types which use Mn2+. I
>have no idea why this is, but it's the same in animals also: endogenous
>retroviruses use Mn2+ RTs. Lentiviruses all use Mg2+, and so far as I
>can tell, there are no endogenous lentiviruses in any animal (by which
>I mean viruses found in every nucleated cell in every animal, passed
>though the germ line).
>[...]
>
> Steve Harris, M.D.
>
Here is a B-type-like human endogenous retrovirus-like particle
that uses Mg2+ RT. It is not a lentivirus. Notice the isolation technique.
This virus is said to be related to MMTV, an endogenous virus which can
produce an exogenous virus. It's not the same type of particle as has been
described for HIV, but the concept of an endogenous virus that uses
Mg2+ RT, which may later produce an exogenous virus, is not so far-fetched.
The MMTV abstracts tell how viruses can be both exogenous and endogenous.
HIV could have started in an unstudied human genome. Later, it could
have become an exogenous virus that is now trying to becoming an endogenous
virus in a new hosts. Just a thought.
HealthGate Document
_________________________________________________________________
Title
Retrovirus-like particles from the human T47D cell line are
related to mouse mammary tumour virus and are of human
endogenous origin.
Author
Faff O; Murray AB; Schmidt J; Leib-MÂosch C; Erfle V; Hehlmann
R
Address
Medizinische Poliklinik, UniversitÂat MÂunchen, Germany.
Source
J Gen Virol, 1992 May, 73 ( Pt 5):, 1087-97
Abstract
Retrovirus-like particles were secreted in a steroid-dependent
manner by the human mammary carcinoma cell line T47D. The
particles exhibited typical retroviral properties such as their
electron microscopic appearance (95 nm in diameter) and
occasional budding, sedimentation at 1.14 g/ml, reverse
transcriptase activity and genomic RNA. The T47D particles were
related to mouse mammary tumour virus (MMTV) as shown by their
ultrastructural appearance (B type-like eccentric dense cores
and budding), Mg2+ dependence of the reverse transcriptase
activity; immunological reactivity with MMTV-directed
antibodies (revealing proteins of 63K, 52K, 26K and 18K), and
hybridization of particle RNA with MMTV DNA under stringent
conditions. Purified particles were able to incorporate
deoxynucleoside triphosphates in the absence of an exogenous
primer and template, thus indicating the existence of a
complete and biochemically functional reverse transcription
apparatus (reverse transcriptase, RNA and primer) and the
ability to direct endogenous cDNA synthesis. Labelled particle
cDNA hybridized strongly to human genomic DNA but not to mouse
and cat DNA, thus indicating the human origin of the T47D
particles. Furthermore all human DNAs, hybridized with the
labelled particle cDNA, showed a uniform hybridization pattern
of restriction fragments, indicating the endogenous origin and
distribution of the proviral particle DNA in the human genome.
Language of Publication
LA=ENG
Unique Identifier
92268866
--> Copyright ©1996 HealthGate Data Corp., All rights reserved.
HealthGate Document
_________________________________________________________________
Title
A novel V beta 2-specific endogenous mouse mammary tumor virus
which is capable of producing a milk-borne exogenous virus.
Author
Niimi N; Wajjwalku W; Ando Y; Nakamura N; Ueda M; Yoshikai Y
Address
Department of Oral Surgery, Nagoya University School of
Medicine, Japan.
Source
J Virol, 1995 Nov, 69:11, 7269-73
Abstract
We have previously reported new Mtv loci, Mtv-48 and -51, in
the Japanese laboratory mouse strains CS and NC. Here we show
by backcross analysis that both Mtv-48 and -51 cosegregate with
very slow deletion of T cells bearing V beta 2. The nucleotide
sequences of the open reading frames in the 3' long terminal
repeats of Mtv-48 and -51 were very similar to those of
Mtv-DDO, mouse mammary tumor virus C4 [MMTV(C4)], and
MMTV(BALB/cV), which encode V beta 2-specific superantigens.
Furthermore, backcross female mice carrying Mtv-48 but not
Mtv-51 were found to be able to produce milk-borne MMTV(CS),
which can vigorously stimulate V beta 2-expressing T cells
after local injection in vivo in an I-E-dependent manner. On
the other hand, mice carrying Mtv-51 but not Mtv-48 could not
produce such an MMTV in milk. The nucleotide sequences of
MMTV(CS) open reading frame were completely matched with those
of Mtv-48. These results indicate that the provirus Mtv-48 but
not Mtv-51 is capable of producing a milk-borne virus of which
the superantigen stimulates V beta 2-expressing T cells.
Language of Publication
LA=ENG
Unique Identifier
96013834
--> Copyright ©1996 HealthGate Data Corp., All rights reserved.
_________________________________________________________________
Title
A novel endogenous mouse mammary tumor virus locus in Asian
wild mice and its evolutionary divergency.
Author
Naruse M; Tsukada M; Koizumi A
Address
Department of Hygiene, Akita University School of Medicine,
Japan.
Source
Zoolog Sci, 1996 Apr, 13:2, 299-302
Abstract
The divergency of endogenous mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV)
in European mouse strains indicates acquisition of exogenous
MMTV into their genomes during evolution. In the present study,
we selected two strains of Asian wild mice, Cas-Hmi (Mus
musculus castaneus) and Sub-Kjr (M. m. subspecies) to
investigate a possible divergency of endogenous MMTVs among
Asian mouse strains. Southern blot analysis and polymerase
chain reaction (PCR) demonstrated that Cas-Hmi and Sub-Kjr have
the full structure of integrated endogenous MMTVs, suggesting
that these mice were diverged during evolution after MMTV
endemics.
Language of Publication
LA=ENG
Unique Identifier
96304269
--> Copyright ©1996 HealthGate Data Corp., All rights reserved.
* * *
James Scutero
In article <5f6hrp$8...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com>
sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris) writes:
>In <5f5eo7$l...@panix.com> jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
>>
>> I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1 quasi-species that
>>would preclude it from being an endogenous retrovirus. Furthermore, I
>>think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this
>>point; it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can
>>remain latent. Whether it started in the human genome is very possible.
>>And, it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
>
> Sorry, but there's no evidence whatsoever that HIV has incorporated
>itself into the human genome, if by that you mean the human germ line.
>HIV inserts itself into the DNA of lymphocytes and macrophages--
>nobody's ever found it in nature doing that trick in sperm and egg
>cells. Other retroviruses, yes. HIV, no.
>
>
> Steve Harris, M.D.
>
On Date: 6 Jan 1997 07:09:50 GMT,
HealthGate Document
James Scutero
In article <857158...@blackdog.demon.co.uk>
jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk writes:
>b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
>
>> John Lauritsen wrote:
>>
>> > What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
>>
>> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
>> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
>> patients' blood.
>
>"Usually determined"? How many victims of the "HIV" delusion
>had their "infection" determined like this?
>[...]
>
Brian Foley
James Scutero wrote:
> I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1
> quasi-species that would preclude it from being an
> endogenous retrovirus.
You either must not have looked very hard,
or not understood what you found:
1) The term "quasi-species" does not refer to
HIV-1 or to HIV-2. It is a term used to describe
the closely related virions present in a single person's
body.
2) Endogenous retrovirus is a term used to
describe a provirus which has been captured in the
germ-line DNA, and thus passed on (to every cell
in the body) from both mother and father (unless it
was in the X or Y chromosome) to infant. HIV is
not found in every cell of even the most infected
people. It has never been shown to have entered
the germ line.
> Furthermore, I think it would
> be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this point;
> it has incorporated itself into the human genome where
> it can remain.
It has indeed incorporated into the chromosomal
DNA of white blood cells (CD4+ T-cells mostly) and
perhaps brain tissue (but more likely just in
macrophages which then invade the brain) and some
other cell types. It has never yet been found
in the germ line. Nor has any child been found with
HIV in every cell, indicating that it was in the
germ line.
> Whether it started in the human genome is very
> possible. And, it has been reported to be harmless
> in some people.
It is much more likely to have arisen in
another mammal. There are thousands of mammals
carrying perhaps tens of thousands or millions of
different lentiviruses (SIV, FIV, BIV, EIAV, etc...)
thus the chances that it arose in humans are something
like 1 in 10,000. We know it is most closely related to
several of the primate lentiviruses which have been
lumped together under the name SIV. HIV-1 is very
close to one type of SIV, while HIV-2 is very
close to another. It is thus almost certain that
HIV-1 and HIV-2 come from a primate reservoir.
> The cites you give are only for apparently
> "healthy" people or people who are at "low risk" for
> certain diseases. The problem is that people who are
> suffering with certain illnesses, in the absence of
> HIV, can produce antibodies that cross-react with HIV
> proteins, which have caused false-positive reactions
> on HIV tests. This situation was at its
> worst in 1985. All that was required then was a
> positive reaction to either p24 or p41, which can be
> fairly common. It was only until a few years ago that
> recombinant proteins were used instead of whole cell
> lysates in HIV tests.
> Tests in people who are ill, or who are more
> vulnerable to illness, produce a higher rate of
> false-positives. Cites to studies of this kind
> are more telling of the real situation.
That would depend on if the "real situation"
is a healthy person with no risk factors worrying
about receiving a false-positive test, perhaps when
he or she donates blood to the Red Cross, or if
the "real situation" is a person who has been injecting
drugs and sharing needles to do so, and has had
many infections such as tuberculosis, before deciding
to get a HIV test.
If a person strongly believes they have recieved
a false-positive, there should be further tests done.
Unfortunately, the people in the second category, are
less likely to obtain the best medical care, and also
the least likely to obtain and understand sound advice
about follow-up testing.
Yes, the tests were a bit less accurate in
1985 than they are today. Perhaps some people who
tested positive between 1985 and 1989 were false
positive, maybe some of them are now falsely
labeled as "long-term survivors". I have not seen
any data on follow-up testing of such people that
has shown a significant number of such false positives.
If you know of some, please fill me in.
Brian Foley
James Scutero wrote:
> >> > What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
> >>
> >> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
> >> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
> >> patients' blood.
> >
> >"Usually determined"? How many victims of the "HIV" delusion
> >had their "infection" determined like this?
> >[...]
> >
> those tests done. All I had were antibody tests and CBCs
> sans the PCR and culturing.
>
> Giacomo's Cabaret, http://www.panix.com/~jscutero
So you can be about 99% confident that the
antibody tests were correct, because a large number
of people (not a large percentage, but still a
large number) were tested by all available methods, and
it was found that serology was usually confirmed by
the other tests.
If you have no risk factors, never had a night
sweat or any symptom, and truly think you could be
one of the less than 1% who recieve a false-positive
by serology, by all means you should seek further tests.
Steven B. Harris
Very interesting post and educational post about endogenous
retroviruses which use magnesium dependent reverse transcriptases! Of
course, I had no idea such things existed. The line is not as sharp
as I'd thought, and I agree that this weaken the case that we won't
eventually find an endogenous lentivirus, even though we haven't yet.
I shall henceforth have to confine myself merely to saying merely that
I know of no *C-type* retroviruses (C-types have the elongated core)
which use Mg2+, save the lentiviruses.
Steve Harris, M.D.
JReitor
>b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
>
>> John Lauritsen wrote:
>>
>> > What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
>>
>> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
>> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
>> patients' blood.
Are you sure? is it the *entire* RNA and DNA, or just part of it? If
it's entire, then it's really a true infection.
JR
JReitor
From: Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov>
Message-ID: <331775...@t10.lanl.gov>
> Yes, the tests were a bit less accurate in
> 1985 than they are today. Perhaps some people who
> tested positive between 1985 and 1989 were false
> positive, maybe some of them are now falsely
> labeled as "long-term survivors". I have not seen
> any data on follow-up testing of such people that
> has shown a significant number of such false positives.
> If you know of some, please fill me in.
Are they immunologically normal? and are they RNA negative? I
remember what I've read about those long term non-progressors or survivors
in those NIH or Ho studies is that the proviral DNA can be found in them,
although RNA levels may be low.
JR
David L Evens
himself (jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
: > : nor
: > : to offer any explanation for how a person can be positive
: > : in one location, negative in another, and that this state
: > : of affairs is considered to be "scientifically accurate".
: >
: > What ARE you dribbling about now?
: If you read the article in question you will be better prepared
: to participate in this thread.
I did. Fiction is not really appropriate in this NG.
: Advertising stupidity is counter-productive.
So why do you do it with this bad piece of fantasy writing in your .Sig?
: John
: --
: "`HIV' is not a virus,
Stupid lie #1: HIV has all the physical, chemical, and functional
characteristics of a virus.
: but a collection of gene products that can appear
: when immune cells are chronically stimulated in the body or drastically
: manipulated in the laboratory.
And your explanation for the total abscence of genes for many of the
components of HIV from the normal human genome is...?
: No two identical `HIV's have been isolated,
: even from the same individual."
Of course, no two genetically identicle CELLS have ever been isolated,
even from the same individual, and we have a far higher fidelity to our
re[plication machinery than HIV does in its reverse transcription machinery.
: "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
James Scutero
In article <331775...@t10.lanl.gov>
Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> writes:
>James Scutero wrote:
>
>> I have found nothing unique about the HIV-1
>> quasi-species that would preclude it from being an
>> endogenous retrovirus.
>
> You either must not have looked very hard,
>or not understood what you found:
> 1) The term "quasi-species" does not refer to
>HIV-1 or to HIV-2. It is a term used to describe
>the closely related virions present in a single person's
>body.
>[...]
I know how the term is used in the scientific literature, but I
think it is rather odd to use it that way. I have read that two virions in
a host can be less closely related to eachother than either one is to
virions in other hosts. I always thought that "quasi" meant "related to,"
so if what I read is true, then I would think that the term "quasi-species"
(or "quasispecies") could be applied to any similar grouping of detection
of HIV. For instance, everyone who only tested positive for antibodies to
HIV p24 back in the mid-80s, without virus isolation, could conceivably be
said to have had the same "HIV" quasispecies.
"Viral Quasispecies"
Scientific American (07/93) Vol. 269, No. 1, P. 42
by Eigen, Manfred
_________________________________________________________________
Abstract:
Using a combination of mathematics, chemistry, and biology, Manfred
Eigen has classified the nature of viruses, including HIV, as a
"quasispecies." He defines quasispecies as a group where all members
help to continue the stable population. Fitness of the whole matters
more than fitness of the individual. Eigen notes that viruses are
listed in three different ways--a single strand of ribonucleic acid
(RNA), encoders of their messages as minus strands of RNA, and
retroviruses. The primary function of viruses is self-preservation
through mutagenesis, reproduction, proliferation, and adaptation to a
steadily changing environments. HIV, for example, has 10,000
nucleotides, but each nucleotide has one of four possible
bases--adenine, uracil, guanine, or cytosine. Because the quasispecies
functions as a whole, it relies on its error rate, or the probability
that an error will occur when one nucleotide is duplicated, to set its
size and integrity. Eigen's group determined the incidence of
constant, variable, and hypervariable sites in HIV and several other
viruses. About 20 percent of the positions are constant and 70 percent
of the positions are variable with a lifespan of about 1,000 years,
suggesting the virus has survived for 600 to 1,200 years.
Copyright © 1993 - Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD. This information
is provided by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC),
National AIDS Clearinghouse as a public service. Non-profit
reproduction is encouraged.
* * *
The HIV-quasispecies: a necessary description.
Int Conf AIDS. 1989 Jun 4-9;5:524 (abstract no. W.C.O.4). Unique
Identifier : AIDSLINE ICA5/00270989
by Wain-Hobson S; Laboratoire de Biologie et Immunologie Moleculaires
des; Retrovirus, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France
_________________________________________________________________
Abstract:
The HIV genome is extremely plastic. Genetic variation is greatest in
the region corresponding to the surface glycoprotein, gp120. It
appears so far that every isolate studied is quite distinct. Due to
its life cycle, HIV strains are accumulated and not eliminated in a
sequential manner. The HIV reverse transcriptase is not unduly error
prone. However an error rate of greater than one misincorporation per
replicative cycle ensures that every genome is unique. Necessarily HIV
isolates must be described in terms of populations of viral genomes or
quasispecies. Such studies have shown that one viral isolate was in
fact a mixture of two distinct strains. Many isolates harbour high
frequencies of defective genomes to the point that cultured virus
probably emerged by genome complementation. Quasispecies are sensitive
to selection pressures, in vitro culture being particularly selective.
Thus there are striking differences between quasispecies in vivo and
in vitro such that an isolate does not correctly described the in vivo
situation. Given such data it will be very difficult to describe
correctly the characteristics of HIV viruses using single molecular
clones. That the molecular biologist will be able to provide a
molecular description of HIV induced disease seems remote, at least
for the moment.
_________________________________________________________________
Keywords: *Genes, Viral *HIV Species Specificity ABSTRACT
SOURCE: National Library of Medicine. NOTICE: This material may be
protected by Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.Code).
DT 9009
DOCN M9093520
* * *
> 2) Endogenous retrovirus is a term used to
>describe a provirus which has been captured in the
>germ-line DNA, and thus passed on (to every cell
>in the body) from both mother and father (unless it
>was in the X or Y chromosome) to infant. HIV is
>not found in every cell of even the most infected
>people. It has never been shown to have entered
>the germ line.
>
That is how the term "endogenous" is used for retroviruses, but I
find that usage to be inconsistent with how it is used with other microbes
that are found in the human body. Bacterial flora are called "endogenous"
but their DNA is not found in the human germ line. And, unlike retroviruses,
they can be cultured in the absence of cells. To me, that makes retroviruses
more endogenous than endogenous bacterial flora.
>> Furthermore, I think it would
>> be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this point;
>> it has incorporated itself into the human genome where
>> it can remain.
>
> It has indeed incorporated into the chromosomal
>DNA of white blood cells (CD4+ T-cells mostly) and
>perhaps brain tissue (but more likely just in
>macrophages which then invade the brain) and some
>other cell types. It has never yet been found
>in the germ line. Nor has any child been found with
>HIV in every cell, indicating that it was in the
>germ line.
>
HIV incorporates itself into the DNA of human cells, alongside human
genes, and can only be reproduced in the body by a human cell. Sounds
pretty endogenous to me. I don't know how many people were checked to see
if it made it to the germ line, but it has been reported that there are
billions of people on earth. Better get cracking.
>> Whether it started in the human genome is very
>> possible. And, it has been reported to be harmless
>> in some people.
>
> It is much more likely to have arisen in
>another mammal. There are thousands of mammals
>carrying perhaps tens of thousands or millions of
>different lentiviruses (SIV, FIV, BIV, EIAV, etc...)
>thus the chances that it arose in humans are something
>like 1 in 10,000.
>
Where did the lentiviruses in those mammals come from, smaller
mammals?
>We know it is most closely related to
>several of the primate lentiviruses which have been
>lumped together under the name SIV. HIV-1 is very
>close to one type of SIV, while HIV-2 is very
>close to another. It is thus almost certain that
>HIV-1 and HIV-2 come from a primate reservoir.
>
And how would that happen? A contaminated vaccine, perhaps?
>[...]
> Yes, the tests were a bit less accurate in
>1985 than they are today.
The tests weren't accurate at all in 1985. Keep your day job.
JReitor
>think it would be foolish to say that it isn't endogenous at this
point;
>it has incorporated itself into the human genome where it can remain
>it has been reported to be harmless in some people.
If HIV is endogenous, then why is PCR almost always positive in HIV+
and negative in HIV- people? I would attribute the HIV-PCR+ AND HIV+PCR-
cases to the inherent problems of PCR itself that it sometimes provides
false positives or negatives.
The criteria for a positive Western Blot vary, but it's the minimal
pattern to be called positive. I bet most people who are WB positive
would have more bands than that. I looked at some literture which they
showed WB strips of people who seroconverted. There's not just 1 or 2
bands, but all those 17, 24, 41, 55, 64, 120, 160..... you can see them
all.
Dr Val Turner and such claim that HIV doesn't exist. I wonder why
Peter Duesberg would have turned around and said HIV had been isolated.
By the way, all those people have been quiet lately. Haven't seen them
attacking the PI results and their web site hasn't been updated since last
October. When was the last time Mullis say something? or where is
Duesberg standing in the argument right now?
JR
himself
dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
> : "`HIV' is not a virus,
>
> Stupid lie #1: HIV has all the physical, chemical, and functional
> characteristics of a virus.
If you think it has been isolated, and can say where, there is a
cash prize waiting for you. A scientific paper describing the failure
to do so was posted here recently.
Until that problem is addressed, waffle about PCR fragments if just
that, waffle.
> : "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
You could start on the long path to knowledge by reading this book,
and, if you can understand it, Professor Duesberg's research.
I was amused to note you criticizing my sig. I gather you must be some
kind of class clown:
> Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
>
> [Vast unending idiotic sig flushed ]
John
--
'Economists argue that because Aids has not been on the scale predicted,
funds allocated since the 80s have been wasted. Economist Robert Whelan,
of The Institute of Economic Affairs said, "There has never been a great
Epidemic or Pandemic. Aids is very difficult to transmit; it affects
very small numbers of people."'
ITV London Today, "The Epidemic That Never Was".
himself
In article <5f7ka2$p...@panix.com> jscu...@panix.com "James Scutero" writes:
> jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk writes:
> >b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> >> John Lauritsen wrote:
> >>
> >> > What is "true [HIV} infection"? How is it determined?
> >>
> >> It is usually determined by culturing the virus and/or
> >> PCR-amplifying either viral RNA or proviral DNA from the
> >> patients' blood.
> >
> > "Usually determined"? How many victims of the "HIV" delusion
> > had their "infection" determined like this?
> >
> I was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and I never had those tests done.
> All I had were antibody tests and CBCs sans the PCR and culturing.
I would be surprised if they could find even a handful of people
answering Foley's description. The rubbish these people talk!
John
--
"I can't find a single virologist who will give me references
which show that HIV is the probable cause of Aids... If you ask
a virologist for that information, you don't get an answer, you
get fury." Kary Mullis, Nobel laureate, chemist.
himself
jre...@aol.com "JReitor" writes:
> The criteria for a positive Western Blot vary, but it's the minimal
> pattern to be called positive. I bet most people who are WB positive
> would have more bands than that. I looked at some literture which they
> showed WB strips of people who seroconverted. There's not just 1 or 2
> bands, but all those 17, 24, 41, 55, 64, 120, 160..... you can see them
> all.
Other points that could have been made in the article are that none
of the so-called "HIV proteins" are unique to "HIV", and there is
a controversy about p160 (and maybe other proteins), where they are
thought merely to be aggregations of p41.
There certainly seem to be far too many internal contradictions and
discrepancies for these tests to be considered good. It is not very
surprising that the "HIV positive" label has turned out to be so
useless as a diagnostic or predictive tool.
John
--
"HIV infection _per se_ seems to entail little danger unless it is
addressed with antiviral therapy."
Prof. Tim Hand, Reappraising AIDS, Sept.1996
Brian Foley
himself wrote:
> If you think it has been isolated, and can say where, there is a
> cash prize waiting for you. A scientific paper describing the failure
> to do so was posted here recently.
In Virology 186: 783-787 (1992) six biologically
active clones were created. This is just onw of many
such cases, where cloned HIV or SIV DNA has been used
to re-generate live, infectious virus.
We have over 50 complete genomes of HIV-1, HIV-2
and SIV cloned. You can purigy the lambda DNA of these
coles from E. coli, transfect it into cells, and get
back infectious virus which can then infect other
cells and cause disease in primates.
> Until that problem is addressed, waffle about PCR fragments if just
> that, waffle.
>
> > : "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
>
The fact that Peter Duesberg, John Lauritson and
a few other people cannot or will not comprehend that
a retrovirus can cause disease, does not mean that a
retrovirus cannot cause disease.
> You could start on the long path to knowledge by reading this book,
> and, if you can understand it, Professor Duesberg's research.
Professor Duesberg has not done any research. He has
only written down a lot of mis-information and half-truths.
Brian Foley
James Scutero wrote:
> > 1) The term "quasi-species" does not refer to
> >HIV-1 or to HIV-2. It is a term used to describe
> >the closely related virions present in a single person's
> >body.
> >[...]
>
> I know how the term is used in the scientific
> literature, but I think it is rather odd to use it that
> way. I have read that two virions in a host can be less
> closely related to each other than either one is to
> virions in other hosts.
Then you have either heard wrong, or you are
mistaking the relatively rare cases of dual infection,
in which a person can be infected with both HIV-1
and HIV-2, or two different subtypes of HIV-1,
for the more common case in which all virions in
a person are very closely related.
> I always thought that "quasi" meant "related to,"
> so if what I read is true, then I would think that the
> term "quasi-species" (or "quasispecies") could be applied
> to any similar grouping of detection of HIV. For instance,
> everyone who only tested positive for antibodies to
> HIV p24 back in the mid-80s, without virus isolation,
> could conceivably be said to have had the same "HIV"
> quasispecies.
We already have concepts such as species, type,
serotype, clade, subtype, and group used to describe
viral lineages. I'm not sure why mis-use of the
term "quasispecies" would decrease the confusion.
> "Viral Quasispecies"
>
> Scientific American (07/93) Vol. 269, No. 1, P. 42
> by Eigen, Manfred
> _________________________________________________________________
>
> Abstract:
> Using a combination of mathematics, chemistry, and biology, Manfred
> Eigen has classified the nature of viruses, including HIV, as a
> "quasispecies."
> He defines quasispecies as a group where all members
> help to continue the stable population. Fitness of the
> whole matters more than fitness of the individual.
I'm not sure what this is all about, I'd have to
go get the full article and read it, but I suspect he
is missing something. I'm not sure how "fitness" is
defined in his paper, nor how the "whole population"
is defined. Are we talking about what happens in
one individual body infected with many virions, or
one country, or one species or primate host or what?
> > 2) Endogenous retrovirus is a term used to
> >describe a provirus which has been captured in the
> >germ-line DNA, and thus passed on (to every cell
> >in the body) from both mother and father (unless it
> >was in the X or Y chromosome) to infant. HIV is
> >not found in every cell of even the most infected
> >people. It has never been shown to have entered
> >the germ line.
> >
> That is how the term "endogenous" is used for
> retroviruses, but I find that usage to be inconsistent
> with how it is used with other microbes that are found
> in the human body. Bacterial flora are called "endogenous"
> but their DNA is not found in the human germ line. And,
> unlike retroviruses, they can be cultured in the absence
> of cells. To me, that makes retroviruses
> more endogenous than endogenous bacterial flora.
I was not aware of this other use of the term
"endogenous". However, even using that definition,
HIV is not endogenous or endemic. If you look for
HIV is blood samples stored from the 1960's or early
1970's it is not there. HIV suddenly began infecting
humans in the United States in the late 1970s.
The AIDS epidemic followed a few years later.
> HIV incorporates itself into the DNA of human
> cells, alongside human genes, and can only be reproduced
> in the body by a human cell. Sounds pretty endogenous to me.
So all retroviruses are endogenous by your
definition.
> I don't know how many people were checked to see
> if it made it to the germ line, but it has been reported
> that there are billions of people on earth. Better get
> cracking.
We know that people seroconvert from HIV-negative
to HIV-positive, they are not all born with the
virus. We know it does not pass from person to
person through the air, like influenza or Rhinovirus.
We know it could in theory enter the human germ-line
but we know that it is not passed this way in any
of the cases so far studied.
> Where did the lentiviruses in those mammals come
> from, smaller mammals?
Your guess is as good as mine. Science does not
have an answer for everything. Lentiviruses might have
evolved in insects for all we know.
>
> >We know it is most closely related to
> >several of the primate lentiviruses which have been
> >lumped together under the name SIV. HIV-1 is very
> >close to one type of SIV, while HIV-2 is very
> >close to another. It is thus almost certain that
> >HIV-1 and HIV-2 come from a primate reservoir.
> >
> And how would that happen? A contaminated vaccine,
> perhaps?
That is one theory. Vaccines have been produced
by growing viruses such as poliovirus in African green
monkey kidney cells. Other viruses such as HTLV-I have
also been postulated to have been spread via vaccine,
when smallpox vaccine (vaccinia virus, cowpox) was in
some poor areas of the world passed from one person to the
next by scraping puss from one person into the arm of
the next.
There are many other ways for humans to come in
contact with primate blood. Many people capture wild
primates to sell as pets or experimental animals. One
of these people could have been scratched or bitten.
A person hunting primates for food could cut his finger
when butchering a primate.
Todd Miller
>>
> The fact that Peter Duesberg, John Lauritson and
>a few other people cannot or will not comprehend that
>a retrovirus can cause disease, does not mean that a
>retrovirus cannot cause disease.
Dr Foley can be very misleading with his use of non-scientific
terms like, "few", "many", "often", and "some". Readers should
be very careful when interpreting such words, and one would think
that a scientist could do better. Nevertheless, just in an attempt
to clarify what Dr Foley means by "a few other people", I am once
again presenting the list of the first 30 or so names (now well over
500) who have signed the 4 sentence statement from The Group for the
Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis.
To the editor:
It is widely believed by the general public that a retrovirus
called HIV causes the group diseases called AIDS. Many biochemical
scientists now question this hypothesis. We propose that a thorough
reappraisal of the existing evidence for and against this hypothesis
be conducted by a suitable independent group. We further propose
that critical epidemiological studies be devised and undertaken.
Signatories:
Charles A. Thomas, Jr. Ph.D. (Mol. Biologist, Pres. Helicon Fnd.,
San Diego, CA)
Harvey Bialy, Ph.D. (Editor Bio/Technology, New York, NY)
Harry Rubin, D.V.M. (Prof. Cell Biology, Univ. Cal. Berkeley, CA)
Richard C. Strohman, Ph.D. (Prof. Cell Biology, Univ. Cal.
Berkeley, CA)
Phillip E. Johnson (Prof. Law, Univ. Cal. Berkeley, CA)
Gordon J. Edlin, Ph.D. (Prof. Biochem. & Physics, Univ. Hawaii, HI)
Beverly E. Griffin, Ph.D. (Dir. Dept. Virology, Royal Postgrad. Med.
School, London, UK)
Robert S. Root-Bernstein (Prof. Physiology, Michigan State Univ.,
East Lansing, MI)
Gordon Stewart, M.D. (Emeritus Prof. Public Health, Epidemiologist,
Isle of Wight, UK)
Carlos Sonnenschein, M.D. (Tufts Univ., Medicine, Boston, MA)
Richard L. Pitter, Ph.D. (Dessert Research Inst., Univ. Nevada
System, Reno NV)
Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D. (Psychiatrist, Roslyn, NY)
John Lauritsen (Author 'Poison by Prescription', New York, NY)
William Holub, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Live Sciences Inst. New York, NY)
Claudia Holub, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Live Sciences Inst. New York, NY)
Frank R. Buianouckas Ph.D. (Prof. Mathematics, Cuny, Bronx, NY)
Philip Rosen, Ph.D. (Prof. Physics, Univ. Mass. Amherst, MA)
Steven Jonas, M.D. (Prof. Preventive Medicine, Suny Stony Brook, NY)
Bernard K. Forscher, Ph.D (Ret. Editor Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci., Santa
Fe, NM)
Kary B. Mullis, Ph.D. (Biochemist, PCR inventor, Consultant, La
Jolla, CA.)
Jeffrey A. Fisher, M.D. (Pathologist, Mendham, NJ)
Hansueli Albonico, M.D. (General Practitioner, Langnau, Switzerland)
Robert Hoffman, Ph.D. (Prof. Dept. Pediatrics Univ. Cal. Med. School,
San Diego, CA)
Timothy H. Hand, Ph.D. (Dept. Psychology, Oglethorpe Univ. Atlanta,
GA)
Eleni Eleopulos, M.D. (Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, West Australia)
Robert W. Maver, F.S.A., M.A.A. (Dir. Research, Mutual Benefit Life,
Kansas City, MO)
Ken N. Matsumura, M.D. (Chairman Alin Foundation & Research Inst.,
Berkeley, CA.)
David T. Berner, M.D. (Condon, MT)
Theodor Wieland, Ph.D. (Max Planck Institut, Heidelberg, Germany)
Joan Shenton, M.A. (Meditel, London, UK)
John Anthony Morris, Ph.D. (Biochemist, Bell of Atari College Park,
MD)
Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. (Prof. Pharmacology & Toxicology, Rutgers Univ.,
Piscataway, NJ)
>
>> You could start on the long path to knowledge by reading this book,
>> and, if you can understand it, Professor Duesberg's research.
>
> Professor Duesberg has not done any research. He has
>only written down a lot of mis-information and half-truths.
>
Did Albert Einstein ever do any research in developing his theory
of relativity? What experiments/clinical trials did he do?
As a scientist, has it not occurred to you that very often the
big breakthroughs happen when people reanalyze old data? This
kind of activity is absolutely required in science. It is NOT
a reason to dismiss the work of others.
Todd Miller, PhD
John Lauritsen
In article <331B16...@t10.lanl.gov>, Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> wrote:
[...]
> The fact that Peter Duesberg, John Lauritson and
>a few other people cannot or will not comprehend that
>a retrovirus can cause disease, does not mean that a
>retrovirus cannot cause disease.
You may not agree with me, but please at least spell my name
correctly. It's *Lauritsen*.
I have never said categorically that no retrovirus can ever cause
disease. What I have said is that a) "AIDS" does not exist as a coherent
disease entity, and b) HIV is not pathogenic.
With regard to the latter -- Does Brian Foley maintain that HIV is
biochemically active to a sufficient degree to cause illness? Does he endorse
the studies of Ho and Wei claiming to show great biochemical activity on the
part of HIV? Does he consider the "viral load" tests to be valid, and does he
endorse their use for guaging the efficacy of the protease inhibitor
"cocktails"? These are not rhetorical questions? I sincerely would like
answers.
John Lauritsen, author: The AIDS War (1993)
co-editor: The AIDS Cult: Essays on the gay health crisis (1997)
JReitor
Date: Sun, 02 Mar 97 20:53:38 GMT
Message-ID: <857336...@blackdog.demon.co.uk>
> jre...@aol.com "JReitor" writes:
>
>> The criteria for a positive Western Blot vary, but it's the minimal
>> pattern to be called positive. I bet most people who are WB positive
>> would have more bands than that. I looked at some literture which they
>> showed WB strips of people who seroconverted. There's not just 1 or 2
>> bands, but all those 17, 24, 41, 55, 64, 120, 160..... you can see
them
>> all.
>
> Other points that could have been made in the article are that none
> of the so-called "HIV proteins" are unique to "HIV", and there is
> a controversy about p160 (and maybe other proteins), where they are
> thought merely to be aggregations of p41.
Is gp41 unique to HIV? Does the about 7kb HIV genome code for a gp41??
Look at the sequence. Sure you can't find it because the sugar part is
added by the host, but you can find the peptide part. I'm still waiting
for your response to what Peter Duesberg has said HIV had been isolated.
And it doesn't matter if gp160 is a polymer of gp41. What is the function
of gp160 that you know of? 4Xgp41 => gp160 could in theory create a new
structure that has a different function and a new epitope for other
antibodies to recognize. One jun by itself doesn't have any function, and
one fos doesn't either, but a jun-fos dimer does. So will you be saying
the whole field of transcription is controversial or something? Viral
genomes always have different transcription start sites within a certain
sequence so that they can make more different proteins from a minimal
genetic material. That doesn't seem unreasonable if that could go to the
protein level.
Therefore, when you look at the WB strips of seroconverters, where did all
those bands come from? Remember it's not just a p24 or a p55, but 6 or 7
of those 'so-called' HIV bands.
JR
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
In article <331B1E...@t10.lanl.gov>,
>> >describe a provirus which has been captured in the
>> >germ-line DNA, and thus passed on (to every cell
>> >in the body) from both mother and father (unless it
>> >was in the X or Y chromosome) to infant. HIV is
>> >not found in every cell of even the most infected
>> >people. It has never been shown to have entered
>> >the germ line.
>> >
>> That is how the term "endogenous" is used for
>> retroviruses, but I find that usage to be inconsistent
>> with how it is used with other microbes that are found
>> in the human body. Bacterial flora are called "endogenous"
>> but their DNA is not found in the human germ line. And,
>> unlike retroviruses, they can be cultured in the absence
>> of cells. To me, that makes retroviruses
>> more endogenous than endogenous bacterial flora.
>
> I was not aware of this other use of the term
> "endogenous". However, even using that definition,
> HIV is not endogenous or endemic.
Although I try to avoid posting in this group I think I should comment. The
terms endogenous and exogenous are properly applied to most pathogens
themselves only as regards their source and to the infections that result.
Thus chicken pox is an exogenous infection and E. coli pyelonephritis from
colonic flora colonizing the vagina is endogenous. E. coli pyelonephritis from
an E. coli introduced by contaimination of an indwelling catheter from the
hands of a care giver would be an exogenous infection. The infecting E. coli
is endogenous in the first example and exogenous in the second. In other
contexts a strain of intestinal E. coli, not causing disease, would preferably
be called a commensal and not an endogenous bacterium. Not everone is so pure
in their usage (myself included :-) ).
The useage of endogenous as applied to retroviruses is a quite different
concept. Jame's confusion is understandable; hope this clears things up.
End of lecture.
Brian Foley
John Lauritsen wrote:
> It's *Lauritsen*.
Sorry.
> I have never said categorically that no retrovirus
> can ever cause disease. What I have said is that a) "AIDS"
> does not exist as a coherent disease entity, and b) HIV is
> not pathogenic.
>
> With regard to the latter -- Does Brian Foley maintain
> that HIV is biochemically active to a sufficient degree to
> cause illness?
Yes. It is a virus. It replicates and infects
cells. It evolves over time. It causes immune dysfunction
in humans and other primates.
> Does he endorse the studies of Ho and Wei claiming to show
> great biochemical activity on the part of HIV?
I think Dr. Ho and Dr. Wei have done some
good studies. I don't think anyone yet knows all
the details of virus turnover rates nor T-cell
turnover rates. New studies are being done in animal
models, where T-cells and virus can be radioactively
labelled to track turnover rates. In humans we cannot
use radioactively labelled cells. Without label,
it is difficult to say exactly how many new T-cells
are produced, vs how many are trapped in lymph nodes
or spleen, then released to the bloodstream.
> Does he consider the "viral load" tests to be valid, and
> does he endorse their use for guaging the efficacy of the
> protease inhibitor "cocktails"?
Yes, viral load tests should be valid if they are
done correctly. I cannot say that all labs in the
world can do them correctly. I would not use viral load as
the sole test for determining a treatment protocol.
I would not use viral load as the sole measure of the
efficacy of any treatment. Viral load should be
considered in combination with other indicators, such as
T-cell counts, overall patient health, and remission of
opportunistic infections.
I think in future years we will be able to say more
about the accuracy of viral load tests. Both how accurate
they are in determining the true viral load, and how
much knowing the true viral load helps us to predict the
future health of the individual. I suspect that knowing
the number of virions per ml of blood will only be one
of many factors that influences a treatment decision.
Ideally we would like to know not only how many virions
per ml there are, but how diverse those virions are,
how many of them are drug resistant, how many of them
are of syncytium-inducing phenotype, how many of them
are macrophage tropic, etc... We'd also like to know
the level of nuetralizing antibodies in the patients'
blood, the CD8:CD4 cell ratio, and other things.
> These are not rhetorical questions? I sincerely would like
> answers.
There they are. But they are just my opinions.
I'm sure the whole world would like to know the true answers,
not just what Dr. Foley's opinions about the answers are.
I am mostly familiar with retroviral DNA sequence analysis
and the molecular evolution of HIVs and SIVs. I am not
a clinical doctor who treats AIDS patients. I read a lot
of HIV/AIDS literature and I have read Dr. Duesberg's
book and other "HIV dissident" literature.
David L Evens
himself (jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk) wrote:
: dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
: > : "`HIV' is not a virus,
: >
: > Stupid lie #1: HIV has all the physical, chemical, and functional
: > characteristics of a virus.
: If you think it has been isolated, and can say where, there is a
: cash prize waiting for you. A scientific paper describing the failure
: to do so was posted here recently.
How odd that there are papers detailing the sequence of the genes in HIV,
since you demand that HIV has not been isolated and identified.
: Until that problem is addressed, waffle about PCR fragments if just
: that, waffle.
No, science is not like AR theology.
: > : "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
: You could start on the long path to knowledge by reading this book,
: and, if you can understand it, Professor Duesberg's research.
: I was amused to note you criticizing my sig. I gather you must be some
: kind of class clown:
: > Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
: >
: > [Vast unending idiotic sig flushed ]
No, you left your .Sig in.
--
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
Anders Jelmert
Fri, 28 Feb 97 19:30:04 GMT
himself :
(Another Duesberg epigon) wrote:
>
> dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
>
> > : nor
> > : to offer any explanation for how a person can be positive
> > : in one location, negative in another, and that this state
> > : of affairs is considered to be "scientifically accurate".
> >
> > What ARE you dribbling about now?
>
> If you read the article in question you will be better prepared
> to participate in this thread.
>
> Advertising stupidity is counter-productive.
>
> John
> --
> "`HIV' is not a virus, but a collection of gene products that can appear
> when immune cells are chronically stimulated in the body or drastically
> manipulated in the laboratory. No two identical `HIV's have been isolated,
> even from the same individual."
> "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
And yet another Duesberg epigon. :-) :-)
Don't worry about sound epidemiology or Koch's postulate.
Hey himself (and Hodgkinson if you can hear me), you forgot the
polio vaccine conspiracy as well, "Published" in the Rolling
Stone by one Tom Curtis, a couple of years ago.
Don't be shy, give it a "shot".
--
Cassanders
"An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good
deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem"
John Tukey
Brian Foley
James Scutero wrote:
> Wrong on all three counts, Foley, but you get
> a "10" for that spin. What I'm referring to are the
> reports that some virions in a host can mutate wildly
> while other virions in a host remain more stable. In
> fact, it has been reported that some virions can mutate
> themselves right out of existance.
Yes, I have heard of hypermutation, which produces
defective virus particles (defective viral RNA packaged in
viral proteins). Such particles could potentially
infect a cell and possibly integrate into the genome,
but from there they go nowhere. They cannot go on
to give rise to virions with further mutations. I
guess this is what you mean by "mutated out of
existance"?
> If two hosts were
> infected with similar virions from a third host, and
> all three hosts harbored both rapidly mutating virions
> and more stable virions, I think it would be safe to
> say that the more stable virions in all three hosts were
> more closely related than they were to the virions that
> are mutating rapidly out of existance.
That is potentially true, although I am not
aware of any cases where it has been shown.
> I would consider
> all of the more stable virions in all three hosts to be
> grouped together as a quasispecies. You can think what
> you like.
Yes, the more similar viruses would form a
clade. They would not properly be referrred to as
a quasi-species, but if you want to use the term that
way, I still understand what you mean.
> Well, we already had the terms "trafficking,"
> "recirculation," "homing," and "migration" to describe
> lymphocyte movements. This being the case, why did a
> handful of AIDS scientists feel it necessary to come
> up with the word "re-trafficking"? It really didn't help
> matters at all.
I have no idea.
> I'm curious, which word would you use
> to label the virions that were found in Dr. Acer and his
> dental patients? Dr. Acer was the Florida dentist who
> was wrongly accused of infecting Kimberley Bergalis with
> HIV.
I would call the virions found in Dr. Acer and
some of his patients closely related (like 97% to
99% identical to each other). Such near identity,
can be used to implicate epidemiological relationships.
Other data is needed to indicate which way the
virus travelled (i.e. patient to dentist;
dentist to patient; or patient to patient).
From the combination of molecular phylogenetic
analysis, signature pattern analysis, and epidemiological
analysis, I would say that Dr. Acer was correctly
accused of infecting six of his patients.
I would say that the virions in Dr. Acer and
six of his patients form a clade. I would not call
them a "quasi-species" because once they have moved
from one person to another, there is no longer a
chance of recombination between them. They all shared
a common ancestor in Dr. Acer, but the virions in
Kimberly (patient A) were no longer able to recombine
with virions in patients B-I. It is similar to
geographic isolation of two subspecies of mammal, which
are no longer able to mate with each other.
> All naturally-occuring exogenous retroviruses
> are reproduced endogenously. And, HIV may be considered
> endemic in parts of the world other than the United States.
> (See: Antibodies to HTLV-III/LAV Among Aboriginal Amazonian
> Indians in Venezuela. Rodriquez, L. et al. The
> Lancet, November 16, 1985, pp. 1098-1099).
That sounds interesting! I've never heard of HIV
or SIV thought to be present on this side of the Atlantic
prior to 1970 or so. I wonder if this has been confirmed?
> All of the naturally-occuring retroviruses to
> date are either called endogenous or are reproduced
> endogenously, yes.
OK. Then since HIV is a natrually-occuring
retrovirus then it is endogenous by that definition.
> > We know that people seroconvert from HIV-negative
> >to HIV-positive, they are not all born with the
> >virus. We know it does not pass from person to
> >person through the air, like influenza or Rhinovirus.
> >We know it could in theory enter the human germ-line
> >but we know that it is not passed this way in any
> >of the cases so far studied.
> >
> How many cases have you studied which are from remote
> regions outside of the U.S.?
A few thousand. I am now looking at the evolution
of HIV-2 and SIV. It seems that these groups of viruses
have evolved a bit differently than HIV-1 groups M and O.
It appears that there may have been several cross-species
transfers from non-human primates to humans (or possibly
the other way around).
> >> Where did the lentiviruses in those mammals come
> >> from, smaller mammals?
> >
> > Your guess is as good as mine. Science does not
> >have an answer for everything. Lentiviruses might have
> >evolved in insects for all we know.
> >[...]
>
> Since when do you represent Science?
I am a scientist. I know that science does not
have answers for everything. I'm not sure I "represent"
science.
James Scutero
In article <331B1E...@t10.lanl.gov> Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> writes:
>James Scutero wrote:
>
>> > 1) The term "quasi-species" does not refer to
>> >HIV-1 or to HIV-2. It is a term used to describe
>> >the closely related virions present in a single person's
>> >body.
>> >[...]
>> I know how the term is used in the scientific
>> literature, but I think it is rather odd to use it that
>> way. I have read that two virions in a host can be less
>> closely related to each other than either one is to
>> virions in other hosts.
>
> Then you have either heard wrong, or you are
>mistaking the relatively rare cases of dual infection,
>in which a person can be infected with both HIV-1
>and HIV-2, or two different subtypes of HIV-1,
>for the more common case in which all virions in
>a person are very closely related.
>
can mutate wildly while other virions in a host remain more stable. In
fact, it has been reported that some virions can mutate themselves right
third host, and all three hosts harbored both rapidly mutating virions and
more stable virions, I think it would be safe to say that the more stable
virions in all three hosts were more closely related than they were to
all of the more stable virions in all three hosts to be grouped together
as a quasispecies. You can think what you like.
>> I always thought that "quasi" meant "related to,"
>> so if what I read is true, then I would think that the
>> term "quasi-species" (or "quasispecies") could be applied
>> to any similar grouping of detection of HIV. For instance,
>> everyone who only tested positive for antibodies to
>> HIV p24 back in the mid-80s, without virus isolation,
>> could conceivably be said to have had the same "HIV"
>> quasispecies.
>
> We already have concepts such as species, type,
>serotype, clade, subtype, and group used to describe
>viral lineages. I'm not sure why mis-use of the
>term "quasispecies" would decrease the confusion.
>
Well, we already had the terms "trafficking," "recirculation,"
"homing," and "migration" to describe lymphocyte movements. This being
the case, why did a handful of AIDS scientists feel it necessary to come
up with the word "re-trafficking"? It really didn't help matters at all.
I'm curious, which word would you use to label the virions that were found
in Dr. Acer and his dental patients? Dr. Acer was the Florida dentist who
was wrongly accused of infecting Kimberley Bergalis with HIV.
>
>> > 2) Endogenous retrovirus is a term used to
>> >describe a provirus which has been captured in the
>> >germ-line DNA, and thus passed on (to every cell
>> >in the body) from both mother and father (unless it
>> >was in the X or Y chromosome) to infant. HIV is
>> >not found in every cell of even the most infected
>> >people. It has never been shown to have entered
>> >the germ line.
>> >
>> That is how the term "endogenous" is used for
>> retroviruses, but I find that usage to be inconsistent
>> with how it is used with other microbes that are found
>> in the human body. Bacterial flora are called "endogenous"
>> but their DNA is not found in the human germ line. And,
>> unlike retroviruses, they can be cultured in the absence
>> of cells. To me, that makes retroviruses
>> more endogenous than endogenous bacterial flora.
>
> I was not aware of this other use of the term
>"endogenous". However, even using that definition,
>HIV is not endogenous or endemic. If you look for
>HIV is blood samples stored from the 1960's or early
>1970's it is not there. HIV suddenly began infecting
>humans in the United States in the late 1970s.
>The AIDS epidemic followed a few years later.
>
All naturally-occuring exogenous retroviruses are reproduced
endogenously. And, HIV may be considered endemic in parts of the world
other than the United States. (See: Antibodies to HTLV-III/LAV Among
Aboriginal Amazonian Indians in Venezuela. Rodriquez, L. et al. The
Lancet, November 16, 1985, pp. 1098-1099).
>> HIV incorporates itself into the DNA of human
>> cells, alongside human genes, and can only be reproduced
>> in the body by a human cell. Sounds pretty endogenous to me.
>
> So all retroviruses are endogenous by your
>definition.
>
All of the naturally-occuring retroviruses to date are either
called endogenous or are reproduced endogenously, yes.
>> I don't know how many people were checked to see
>> if it made it to the germ line, but it has been reported
>> that there are billions of people on earth. Better get
>> cracking.
>
> We know that people seroconvert from HIV-negative
>to HIV-positive, they are not all born with the
>virus. We know it does not pass from person to
>person through the air, like influenza or Rhinovirus.
>We know it could in theory enter the human germ-line
>but we know that it is not passed this way in any
>of the cases so far studied.
>
How many cases have you studied which are from remote regions
outside of the U.S.?
>
>> Where did the lentiviruses in those mammals come
>> from, smaller mammals?
>
> Your guess is as good as mine. Science does not
>have an answer for everything. Lentiviruses might have
>evolved in insects for all we know.
>[...]
Since when do you represent Science?
-Giacomo
George M. Carter
Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> wrote:
>> All of the naturally-occuring retroviruses to
>> date are either called endogenous or are reproduced
>> endogenously, yes.
> OK. Then since HIV is a natrually-occuring
>retrovirus then it is endogenous by that definition.
I think the definition is misleading, though. I had understood the
debate to be about the *source* of HIV, as raised by issues like the
HERVs. Is HIV an endogenous retrovirus that, through some stimuli,
becomes pathogenic in certain hosts? That is a more specific
definition of an endogenous retrovirus. In contrast to the question,
is HIV an infectious agent that is acquired exogenously? I believe the
data indicate the answers are no and yes, respectively.
George M. Carter
himself
b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> himself wrote:
>
> > If you think it has been isolated, and can say where, there is a
> > cash prize waiting for you. A scientific paper describing the failure
> > to do so was posted here recently.
>
> In Virology 186: 783-787 (1992) six biologically
> active clones were created. This is just onw of many
> such cases, where cloned HIV or SIV DNA has been used
> to re-generate live, infectious virus.
>
> [ other irrelevant gibberish snipped ]
If anyone is interested in reading a copy of the scientific paper
describing the problems surrounding the question of the isolation
of "HIV", and cannot read it on the websites, I shall be pleased
to e-mail it to them. It may also be obtained from archives of the
bionet.molbio.hiv newsgroup.
John
--
"To me, the presently available evidence does not prove even that
it is an endogenous retrovirus, because what we see, the phenomena
collectively known as HIV, are non-specific. RT is non-specific;
virus-like particles are non-specific; the antigen-antibody reactions
are non-specific; PCR is non-specific. You can't even say you have
a retrovirus there."
Eleni Eleopulos, Dept. of Medical Physics, Royal Perth Hospital
himself
b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
> James Scutero wrote:
> > I was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and I never had
> > those tests done. All I had were antibody tests and CBCs
> > sans the PCR and culturing.
>
> So you can be about 99% confident that the
> antibody tests were correct, because a large number
Does this mean that your claim that diagnoses of "HIV" are
"usually determined" by PCR, etc, was a lie?
Just so we all understand the personal calibre of scientists
who specialise in the "Aids" superstition. Frauds, crooks,
morons. And now apparently blatant liars, even here in this
newsgroup.
John
--
"Taxpayers, and HIV positives and their relatives, potentially
constitute the most explosive opposition to the AIDS establishment.
As the failures of the war on AIDS mount up, the size of the imminent
backlash grows; the longer AIDS officials resist the inevitable, the
harder they will fall. Time, therefore, has become our most valuable
ally." Prof. Peter Duesberg, "Inventing the AIDS Virus"
Todd Miller
In <5fjvbr$p...@sjx-ixn7.ix.netcom.com> gm...@ix.netcom.com (George M.
Carter) writes:
>Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> wrote:
>
>
>>> All of the naturally-occuring retroviruses to
>>> date are either called endogenous or are reproduced
>>> endogenously, yes.
>
>> OK. Then since HIV is a natrually-occuring
>>retrovirus then it is endogenous by that definition.
>
>debate to be about the *source* of HIV, as raised by issues like the
>HERVs. Is HIV an endogenous retrovirus that, through some stimuli,
>becomes pathogenic in certain hosts? That is a more specific
>definition of an endogenous retrovirus. In contrast to the question,
>is HIV an infectious agent that is acquired exogenously? I believe the
>data indicate the answers are no and yes, respectively.
In science, all we can do is eliminate possibilities. WRT the
possibility that "HIV" (meaning all the various sequences, and
all the non-specific assays that are routinely used) is endogenous,
it is also important to remember that these retroviral sequences
could be generated from endogenous sequences that are not necessarily
contiguous in the genome (read the following whole article, not just
the abstract--J Virology 71(2): 859-865, 1997; "On Viruses, Sex, and
Motherhood" by LP Villareal). Unfortunately, it would be difficult
to show that "HIV" (as referred to above) is absolutely NOT the
product of splicing/transposition/recombination of endogenous
sequences. Considering too, that PCR itself can recombine molecules
(IOW, the product may not actually have a contiguous counterpart
in the template), our tools of the trade are tricky to use to
address these questions. But there is some suggestive data--
several investigators have found HIV-like sequences in normal human
DNA (recently, an HIV-like LTR, Molecular and Cellular Probes
10: 443-451, 1996). So it would seem like some fundamentals
could be in place for the generation of "HIV" from endogenous
sources, perhaps in response to certain physiological stress,
or whatever.
Consistent with this would be the known differences in "HIV"
depending on population, which would then be part of the expected
genetic differences throughout the genome between inbreeding
populations. These sequences have a built in ability to be
mobile and recombine within and between cells--considering that
they are found in various forms in thousands of copies in the
genome, it seems to me that it becomes very hard to say with
any certainty that a given retrovirus is exogenous--there is
just too much background to rule out endogenous sources (which
MUST be done to claim the exogenous nature).
Todd Miller, PhD
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Anders Jelmert
Sun, 02 Mar 97 18:03:11 GMT
himself wrote:
Probably all by himself
>
> dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
>
> > : "`HIV' is not a virus,
> >
> > Stupid lie #1: HIV has all the physical, chemical, and functional
> > characteristics of a virus.
>
> If you think it has been isolated, and can say where, there is a
> cash prize waiting for you. A scientific paper describing the failure
> to do so was posted here recently.
A Scientific Paper??? Could you please share the specifics with us?
While musing around, making yourself familiar with this strange
planet, you might also try to look up some more information.
You might even find the recent research news by Jon Cohen:
"Exploiting the HIV-Chemokine Nexus"
Science vol 275, 28 feb. 1997 p 1261-1264.
http:www.sciencemag.org
In this fascinating paper, the intricate mechanisms by which the
VIRAL particles infects the T lymphycytes via the CCR5 chemokine
receptors is explained in quite some detail.
There are also some interesting hints to the usefulness of
primate research (For you AR -regulars out there).
Have fun!
> Until that problem is addressed, waffle about PCR fragments if just
> that, waffle.
>
> > : "AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science" by Neville Hodgkinson
> You could start on the long path to knowledge by reading this book,
> and, if you can understand it, Professor Duesberg's research.
Ah Duesberg, I knew it :-)
[...] snip
> John
> --
> 'Economists argue that because Aids has not been on the scale predicted,
> funds allocated since the 80s have been wasted. Economist Robert Whelan,
> of The Institute of Economic Affairs said, "There has never been a great
> Epidemic or Pandemic. Aids is very difficult to transmit; it affects
> very small numbers of people."'
> ITV London Today, "The Epidemic That Never Was".
For Britain and rest of Europe, fair enough. I don't think this
would be a very precice description on what's going on in central
african countries. How many black africans should die before _you_
consider it an epidemic?
I would expect AIDS to have major impact on the mortalities in the
population aged 30-50 years in USA. And it's on a rise in several
south-east Asian countries.
Anyone with recent statistice on this?
Bernie
Anders Jelmert wrote:
> You might even find the recent research news by Jon Cohen:
> "Exploiting the HIV-Chemokine Nexus"
> VIRAL particles infects the T lymphycytes via the CCR5 chemokine
> receptors is explained in quite some detail.
> There are also some interesting hints to the usefulness of
> primate research (For you AR -regulars out there).
>
Most AIDS critics, such as myself, do not disagree with that. Yet the
paper does not explain how HIV kills the T-cells in the presence of
HIV-antibodies, or does any harm after infection. Thousands of papers
have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
"no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
> Ah Duesberg, I knew it :-)
Obviously you don't know it very well. Read some more.
> I don't think this
> would be a very precice description on what's going on in central
> african countries. How many black africans should die before _you_
> consider it an epidemic?
>
It is very unfortunate that people are dying in Africa and other third
world countries, because AIDS science has screwed up. The people in
Africa are dying of malnutrition, malaria, TB, leprosy, and other
disease endemic in Africa---HIV-positive and negative. No stupid AZT
pill, or condom is going to help these people. Nothing has so far...we
must abandon this fruitless virus hunt, and return back to practical
science.
A.B.T.
Brian Foley
himself wrote:
>
> b...@t10.lanl.gov "Brian Foley" writes:
>
> > James Scutero wrote:
> > > I was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and I never had
> > > those tests done. All I had were antibody tests and CBCs
> > > sans the PCR and culturing.
> >
> > So you can be about 99% confident that the
> > antibody tests were correct, because a large number
>
> Does this mean that your claim that diagnoses of "HIV" are
> "usually determined" by PCR, etc, was a lie?
I never said that diagnoses of HIV infection
are usually determined by PCR. I said that the usual
method of proving that serology results truly reflect
HIV infection is PCR amplification, viral culture, and
other non-serological methods.
> Just so we all understand the personal calibre of scientists
> who specialise in the "Aids" superstition. Frauds, crooks,
> morons. And now apparently blatant liars, even here in this
> newsgroup.
I hope not too many people think this newsgroup
is a reflection of "science". There are a few scientists
who post here, but the majority of these discussions
are worthless.
Bernie
James Scutero wrote:
>
> > I'm curious, which word would you use
> > to label the virions that were found in Dr. Acer and his
> > dental patients? Dr. Acer was the Florida dentist who
> > was wrongly accused of infecting Kimberley Bergalis with
> > HIV.
Wasn't it all pseudo confirmed that Kimberley did contract HIV from her
mother at birth. Therefore, since she was 22 (all that time living
healthy and HIV-positive), and only developed AIDS when she started
taking AZT, doesn't the heavily dent the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. 22 years,
healthy and HIV positive. Quite a case.
A.B.T.
Brian Foley
Todd Miller wrote:
> In science, all we can do is eliminate possibilities. WRT the
> possibility that "HIV" (meaning all the various sequences, and
> all the non-specific assays that are routinely used) is endogenous,
> it is also important to remember that these retroviral sequences
> could be generated from endogenous sequences that are not necessarily
> contiguous in the genome (read the following whole article, not just
> the abstract--J Virology 71(2): 859-865, 1997; "On Viruses, Sex, and
> Motherhood" by LP Villareal).
It begins by stating "In contrast to HIV-1, an extremely
close congruence exists between the genetic identities of various
endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) and their mammalian hosts." and
goes on to discuss how endogenous retroviruses might in theory
be involved in immune supression to allow the embryo of placental
mammals to escape the mother's immune system.
The article has nothing to do with the possiblility that
HIV could be endogenous.
> Unfortunately, it would be difficult
> to show that "HIV" (as referred to above) is absolutely NOT the
> product of splicing/transposition/recombination of endogenous
> sequences.
I would consider it equally likely that the human
genome does not really exist, and is only made up of
DNA from bacteria that colonize our bodies.
> Considering too, that PCR itself can recombine molecules
> (IOW, the product may not actually have a contiguous counterpart
> in the template), our tools of the trade are tricky to use to
> address these questions.
They are standard tools, used to study all sorts of
genetic systems, not just viruses. They can and are used
daily to produce accurate data. They can be mis-used to
produce garbage, just as a computer or typewriter can be
used to write either science or science fiction.
There is no logical explanation for how any
endogenous retroviral sequences could mimic an infectious
exogenous virus down to the details of showing molecular
phylogenetic patterns that exactly parallel the cases
of known transmission (See Leither,T. Proc Nat Acad Sci
93: 10864-10869 1996 for one good example).
> But there is some suggestive data--
> several investigators have found HIV-like sequences in normal human
> DNA (recently, an HIV-like LTR, Molecular and Cellular Probes
> 10: 443-451, 1996). So it would seem like some fundamentals
> could be in place for the generation of "HIV" from endogenous
> sources, perhaps in response to certain physiological stress,
> or whatever.
Yes, it might "seem like" a few things might
be in place. But there is no evidence to support
it, and plenty of evidence against it.
> Consistent with this would be the known differences in "HIV"
> depending on population, which would then be part of the expected
> genetic differences throughout the genome between inbreeding
> populations.
It is exactly the differences in HIV DNA sequences
which argue most strongly AGAINST it being endogenous.
If it were endogenous, the sequences from related groups
of people would be related. Instead we find that the
virus of a german woman is nearly identical to her
Senegalese husband, we find Swedish people who had contact
with a Haitian man all having similar virus. We find
groups of IV drug users who share needles have similar
sequences.
> These sequences have a built in ability to be
> mobile and recombine within and between cells--considering that
> they are found in various forms in thousands of copies in the
> genome,
HIV is not found in any copies in the genome. That
is why it makes big news when someone finds an LTR-like
sequence remotely related to HIV in the genome.
> it seems to me that it becomes very hard to say with
> any certainty that a given retrovirus is exogenous--there is
> just too much background to rule out endogenous sources (which
> MUST be done to claim the exogenous nature).
Sure, and you must rule out the possibility that
you were flown here from Mars in order to claim that
you originated on earth.
>
> Todd Miller, PhD
> Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
I'm really curious what school would grant
a PhD to someone with your inability to understand
genetics and molecular biology.
James Scutero
In article <331E13...@t10.lanl.gov> Brian Foley <b...@t10.lanl.gov> writes:
>Todd Miller wrote:
>> In science, all we can do is eliminate possibilities. WRT the
>> possibility that "HIV" (meaning all the various sequences, and
>> all the non-specific assays that are routinely used) is endogenous,
>> it is also important to remember that these retroviral sequences
>> could be generated from endogenous sequences that are not necessarily
>> contiguous in the genome (read the following whole article, not just
>> the abstract--J Virology 71(2): 859-865, 1997; "On Viruses, Sex, and
>> Motherhood" by LP Villareal).
>
> The article has nothing to do with the possiblility that
>HIV could be endogenous.
Foley is still in his spin mode. Here are some endogenous antigens
that produce cross-reactions on HIV-1 antibody tests. More to come...
HealthGate Document
Title
Expression of endogenous HIV-1 crossreactive antigens within
normal human extravillous trophoblast cells.
Author
Lyden TW; Johnson PM; Mwenda JM; Rote NS
Address
Department of Microbiology/Immunology, Wright State University
School of Medicine, Dayton, Ohio 45435, USA.
Source
J Reprod Immunol, 1995 Mar, 28:3, 233-45
Abstract
Expression of intact endogenous retroviruses by normal
placental villous trophoblast and immuno-crossreactivity of
villous trophoblast with anti-retroviral antisera have been
documented. The nature and/or potential function of these
particles/proteins has not yet been fully defined. We
previously reported that monoclonal antibodies directed against
HIV-1 envelope and gag proteins react with normal human villous
trophoblast. In this study, we report that extravillous
trophoblast (EVT) from second- and third-trimester tissue are
also cross-reactive with anti-HIV-1 gp120/160 and p17/18
antibodies. We document a differential expression of such
cross-reactive epitopes between mononuclear EVT and placental
bed giant cells. Mononuclear EVT principally displayed
reactivity throughout the cytoplasm with little or no
difference between cells, whereas placental bed giant cells
displayed distinct localization of labeling to limited areas of
cytoplasm. This pattern of reactivity apparently correlates
with trophoblast morphological differentiation and with our
earlier observations concerning villous trophoblast. These data
illustrate that retrovirus-associated epitopes are expressed by
trophoblast throughout the normal human placenta and that this
distribution is related to morphologic differentiation of these
cells.
Language of Publication
LA=ENG
Unique Identifier
96070219
Country of Publication
IRELAND
--> Copyright ©1996 HealthGate Data Corp., All rights reserved.
Brian Foley
Bernie wrote:
> Wasn't it all pseudo confirmed that Kimberley did contract
> HIV from her mother at birth.
I guess pseudo would cover it. Dr. Duesberg claims
that HIV is an endogenous harmless retrovirus so all
of us get HIV from our mother and father at birth.
This leaves us wondering why Kimberly's HIV
sequences were more closely related to Dr. Acer's than
to any other HIV sequence yet determined. Perhaps
Dr. Acer and the other patients he is implicated in
infecting are all the illigitimate children of Mrs.
Bergalis???
These HIV sequences were confirmed by another
group, independent of the CDC, who sought to prove
Dr. Acer innocent. See GenBank entries with accession
numbers U06872-U06919, by Dr. Debry.
James Scutero
In article <331E3C...@t10.lanl.gov>
>Bernie wrote:
>
>> Wasn't it all pseudo confirmed that Kimberley did contract
>> HIV from her mother at birth.
>
> I guess pseudo would cover it. Dr. Duesberg claims
>that HIV is an endogenous harmless retrovirus so all
>of us get HIV from our mother and father at birth.
> This leaves us wondering why Kimberly's HIV
>sequences were more closely related to Dr. Acer's than
>to any other HIV sequence yet determined. Perhaps
>Dr. Acer and the other patients he is implicated in
>infecting are all the illigitimate children of Mrs.
>Bergalis???
> These HIV sequences were confirmed by another
>group, independent of the CDC, who sought to prove
>Dr. Acer innocent. See GenBank entries with accession
>numbers U06872-U06919, by Dr. Debry.
>
> ____________________________________________________________________
>|Brian T. Foley b...@t10.lanl.gov |
>|HIV Database (505) 665-1970 |
>|Los Alamos National Lab http://hiv-web.lanl.gov/index.html |
>|Los Alamos, NM 87544 U.S.A. http://retro.lanl.gov/~btf/home.html |
>|____________________________________________________________________|
What ever happened to Resnick's study? It looks like he was
investigated after he appeared on '60 minutes'.
"Study Casts Doubt on Dentist-AIDS Link"
USA Today (06/20/94) P. 8A
_________________________________________________________________
Abstract:
A new scientific study challenges the claims of Kimberly Bergalis and
five others who claim they contracted HIV from their dentist, Dr.
David Acer. The new study says the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention vastly overstated DNA test results. Similar strains of the
virus were identified in the community, raising the possibility that
someone other than Acer infected the patients. The CDC stands by its
conclusion that the Stuart, Fla., dentist did, in fact, infect his
patients. Related Story: Philadelphia Inquirer (06/18) P. A2; Boston
Globe (06/18) P. 1
Copyright © 1994 - Information, Inc., Bethesda, MD. This information is
provided by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC),
National AIDS Clearinghouse as a public service. Noncommercial
reproduction encouraged.
* * *
The Cutting Edge - Two Similar Cases of Dentists, AIDS.
The Washington Post, December 06, 1994, FINAL Edition Section: HEALTH,
p. z05 Story Type: News National Line Count: 50 Word Count: 560
by Sandra G. Boodman
_________________________________________________________________
Did two Florida dentists who died of AIDS within months of each other
infect their patients, and if so, how? In both cases, the central
questions were the same.
In the first case, investigators from the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention concluded that David Acer, a dentist in Jensen Beach,
Fla., somehow transmitted the virus to six of his patients during
dental procedures.
In the second case, reported last week in the Annals of Internal
Medicine, the CDC concluded that a dentist who practiced in an
impoverished Miami neighborhood and sometimes reused disposable
equipment did not infect 28 of his patients who contracted the
disease. Most had sex or drug habits that put them at high risk for
contracting HIV, a team of investigators concluded.
In both cases, the CDC based its findings in large part on the
similarity of DNA viral sequences. In the Acer case, tests showed that
the dentist and his patients were infected with very similar strains.
In the second case, the unnamed Miami dentist and his patients were
infected with different viral strains indicating multiple sources of
infection, the agency said.
The most famous victim in the Acer case was Kimberly Bergalis, 23, a
self-described virgin who, in gripping testimony delivered months
before her death, blamed Acer for killing her and urged Congress to
enact legislation requiring that health care workers be tested for
HIV.
After extensive investigation, CDC officials said they do not know how
Acer infected his patients. It remains the only documented example of
HIV transmission from an infected health care worker to patients, and
questions about the case and its conclusions remain. In the past year,
three media reports have suggested that, in the words of Mike Wallace
of the CBS news program "60 Minutes," maybe "the dentist didn't do
it."
Wallace suggested that each of the six patients the CDC concluded had
been infected by Acer had other risk factors for AIDS that the CDC
either disregarded or never unearthed. Bergalis, in a videotaped
deposition, told investigators for Acer's insurance company that she
had had oral sex with a boyfriend. A doctor hired by Acer's insurer
said that a physical exam found that Bergalis was infected with the
human papilloma virus, a venereal wart.
The "60 Minutes" report also raised questions about CDC's reliance on
DNA viral sequencing, a technique a virologist challenged as
inconclusive.
CDC's AIDS chief, Harold Jaffe, wrote a letter of protest to CBS News
officials. Last week he and other CDC officials took the unusual step
of denouncing "60 Minutes" in a medical journal.
In a companion piece to the agency's report on the Miami dentist,
Jaffe and others accused "60 Minutes" of omitting information that
contradicted the program's conclusions. They also denied that CDC had
not conducted a thorough epidemiological investigation and defended
viral sequencing as a reliable technique. That view is supported in an
editorial about DNA sequencing of HIV, written by Gerald Myers of the
Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the DNA tests were performed.
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
In the Bergalis case, for example, the CDC team said that it knew
about the sexual activities Bergalis described in the videotaped
deposition. However, they noted, "60 Minutes" failed to disclose that
Bergalis's two boyfriends had tested negative for HIV.
Producer Josh Howard denied that the program failed to disclose
relevant details. "Who knows how many boyfriends she had?" he said.
NAMED PERSONS: ACER, DAVID; BERGALIS, KIMBERLY ORGANIZATION NAME:
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION
_________________________________________________________________
Keywords: Dentists; Acquired immune deficiency syndrome
Copyright © 1994 - The Washington Post. Reproduced with permission.
Reproduction of this article, other than one copy for personal
reference, must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The
Washington Post, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, DC 20071.
* * *
Report: AIDS Doctor Suspected
The Associated Press - Fri, 3 Feb 95
_________________________________________________________________
MIAMI (AP) -- A prominent AIDS researcher is suspected of setting up a
phony laboratory and siphoning at least $250,000 in federal grant
money, The Miami Herald reported Friday.
Dr. Lionel Resnick is suspected of doing virus tests at Mount Sinai
Medical Center, using the hospital's staff and equipment, for his
private company, the newspaper said.
Invoices submitted to the hospital claimed the work was done by Vironc
Inc., which operated out of Resnick's house, where checks for tens of
thousands of dollars were mailed, the paper reported.
Resnick resigned as chief of retrovirology and research at Mount Sinai
on Oct. 19 after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
began investigating him.
Resnick denied wrongdoing. His lawyer, Richard Sharpstein, told The
Associated Press that his client believed he had authority to use
Mount Sinai equipment.
"Vironc was set up to separate Dr. Resnick's private work from his
Mount Sinai work," Sharpstein said. "He felt the Mount Sinai lab was
his because it was set up with a $1 million grant he got from the
state."
Resnick was conducting research for Dr. Margaret Fischl of the
University of Miami, looking for drugs to combat the AIDS virus. A
university panel now is investigating the scientific validity of the
work Fischl and Resnick did together. Fischl has been active in AIDS
research since the early 1980s.
Resnick also is well known. He appeared on "60 Minutes" last year to
dispute claims by the Centers For Disease Control that linked the HIV
strain carried by a dentist to his patients, including the late
Kimberly Bergalis.
Questions about Resnick began in April when a purchasing agent at the
university noticed two bills from Vironc inadvertently clipped
together. A closer look showed Vironc's billing address was Resnick's
home.
Copyright © 1995 - The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission.
Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal
reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The
Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.
* * *
Steven B. Harris
In <331E0F...@prodigy.net> Bernie <Ki...@prodigy.net> writes:
>James Scutero wrote:
>
>>
>> > I'm curious, which word would you use
>> > to label the virions that were found in Dr. Acer and his
>> > dental patients? Dr. Acer was the Florida dentist who
>> > was wrongly accused of infecting Kimberley Bergalis with
>> > HIV.
>
her
>healthy and HIV-positive), and only developed AIDS when she started
>taking AZT, doesn't the heavily dent the HIV/AIDS hypothesis. 22
years,
>healthy and HIV positive. Quite a case.
>
>A.B.T.
I have no information that Bergalis' mother is HIV-positive. What
makes you think she is?
Kim Bergalis got a full medical work up because she wound up in a
Florida hospital with a CD4 count of 41 and Pneumocystis carinii
pneumonia--- very odd for a formerly healthy college student with no
particular risk factors (as even Duesberg admits). At that point she
had AIDS by definition, no HIV test needed. But it is true that at
that point "out of the blue" (Duesberg's phrase) her doctors did think
to test her for HIV, and (shocking surprise) she tested positive.
THEN she got AZT. But by definition she had AIDS before either getting
tested for HIV, or before getting AZT. Those are the facts. It is
also a fact that she lived for 2 more years, which is comfortably
longer than the average person similarly diagnosed with AIDS in the era
before AZT was available.
And please don't quote Duesberg back at me. I get my info from a
recently published entire book on the Bergalis case called _AIDS in the
Dentist's Office_ (R.R. Runnells, IC Publications, 1993). If Duesberg
knows the case in more detail than a book-length treatise, he'll have
to explain how he does. Runnells spent time in Florida interviewing
Bergalis' family, her doctors, etc, etc. I hardly think Duesberg has.
Steve Harris, M.D.
Todd Miller
In <5flnvm$h...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven
B. Harris) writes:
>
> I have no information that Bergalis' mother is HIV-positive. What
>makes you think she is?
HIV, if it is a retrovirus, would be EXPECTED to be transmitted
vertically. From its point of view, it has about a 1 in 4 chance
in going from mother to child (depending a bit on which country
it is in), and only about a 1 in 1000 chance of being transmitted
horizontally (again, depending on which country it is in). Look
at HTLV-I. Essentially EXCLUSIVELY transmitted vertically, and
then it has that whopping 50+ year latent period before it
allegedly causes problems in 1 in 500 to 1000 of those infected.
Again, scientists proceed by ruling possiblilities out. What
retrovirologist would just rule out vertical transmission without
even collecting the data?
Todd Miller
>
> Wallace suggested that each of the six patients the CDC concluded
> had been infected by Acer had other risk factors for AIDS that the
> CDC either disregarded or never unearthed. Bergalis, in a
> videotaped deposition, told investigators for Acer's insurance
> company that she had had oral sex with a boyfriend. A doctor hired
> by Acer's insurer said that a physical exam found that Bergalis was
> infected with the human papilloma virus, a venereal wart.
Uh oh, but Dr Foley and Dr Harris tell us that she had no other
risk factors. Who is lying? Mike Wallace or Foley and Harris?
Did those venereal warts exist on this "virgin" or not? How did
Harris and Foley rule out the possibility that she had no other
risk factors? Sure, Acer's insurance company has a vested
interest, but don't Harris and Foley have one too? They've put
all their eggs into "HIV causes AIDS", and certainly have non-
scientific reasons for not thinking otherwise.
Todd Miller, PhD
Brian Foley
> > had been infected by Acer had other risk factors for AIDS that the
> > CDC either disregarded or never unearthed. Bergalis, in a
> > videotaped deposition, told investigators for Acer's insurance
> > company that she had had oral sex with a boyfriend. A doctor
> > hired by Acer's insurer said that a physical exam found that
> > Bergalis was infected with the human papilloma virus, a
> > venereal wart.
>
> risk factors. Who is lying? Mike Wallace or Foley and Harris?
I never said anything about her risk factors, and
I don't recall Harris saying anything. But, for the record,
sexual intercourse or oral sex is not a "risk factor" in the
United States yet. Neither is infection with human papilloma
virus.
All I said, was that the virus sequences from Dr. Acer
and six of the nine HIV+ patients tested were closely related.
I said that this close relationship alone cannot prove
epidemiological linkage, but taken together with other
information, can indicate such linkage.
> Did those venereal warts exist on this "virgin" or not? How did
> Harris and Foley rule out the possibility that she had no other
> risk factors? Sure, Acer's insurance company has a vested
> interest, but don't Harris and Foley have one too?
I'm just trying to stop the spread of mis-information
put out by people such as Dr. Duesberg (who claims Kimberly
got the virus from her mother, based on claims that Joe Palca
said that someone else said that Kimberly's virus was more
closely related to other isolates of HIV than it was to
Dr. Acer's). It is quite simple to take one of Kimberly's
(patient A in GenBank records) sequences, and mail it
to bl...@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, and see that Dr. Acer and the
six patients are more closely related to each other than to
any other sequence in GenBank.
> They've put
> all their eggs into "HIV causes AIDS", and certainly have non-
> scientific reasons for not thinking otherwise.
I have both scientific and non-scientific reasons
for believing that HIV causes immunodeficiency.
>
> Todd Miller, PhD
M. Taylor
Brian,
Todd Miller went to school at the University of Miami.
>
> I'm really curious what school would grant
> a PhD to someone with your inability to understand
> genetics and molecular biology.
>
Brian Foley
Todd Miller wrote:
> HIV, if it is a retrovirus, would be EXPECTED to be transmitted
> vertically. From its point of view, it has about a 1 in 4 chance
> in going from mother to child (depending a bit on which country
> it is in), and only about a 1 in 1000 chance of being transmitted
> horizontally (again, depending on which country it is in).
This is true for HIV-infected people. That is, a
child born to a HIV-infected mother has a 10% to 30% chance
of being infected with HIV, depending upon what precautions
the mother and her obstetrician take. A baby born to a HIV
negative mother, on the other had, has a zero percent
probability of beinbg infected with virus from the virus-free
mother. In the United States 25 years ago (when Kimberley
Bergalis was born) the percentage of women in the United
States who were HIV-infected was very, very low. It
still is.
> Look
> at HTLV-I. Essentially EXCLUSIVELY transmitted vertically, and
> then it has that whopping 50+ year latent period before it
> allegedly causes problems in 1 in 500 to 1000 of those infected.
>
> Again, scientists proceed by ruling possiblilities out. What
> retrovirologist would just rule out vertical transmission without
> even collecting the data?
Some things are just so obvious, they do not need
to be ruled out. I suppose that after we rule out the
possiblility that Mrs. Bergalis was HIV-infected at the time
of Kimberly's birth, we will have to go on to rule out
the possiblility that she was infected by an uncle, or
by being bitten by a monkey? If a large percentage of
women in the United States were HIV+, or if Mrs. Bergalis
had moved to the US from Tanzania, it would be quite
reasonable to test her for HIV infection.
I am not sure if even the team of researchers working
for the defense insurance company thought it was reasonable
to question the HIV status of Mrs. Bergalis. But I doubt
that even they thought so.
>
> Todd Miller, PhD
> Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
--
Bernie
Anders Jelmert wrote:
>
> The paper I pointed to have no intention to explain how the vira
> kills lymphocytes. That mechanism would be quite trivial, by
> the way. Like most other vira and also bacteriophages, the viral
> DNA or RNA "hijack" host cell DNA/RNA and forces it to produce
> the nucleotides and structural molecules neccessary to produce
> replicates of itself.
> Whether the host cells die by apoptosis, oxidative stress, or a
> combination of these or other reasons, should not be considered
> very important. Both in the animal and plant kingdoms, cells infected
> by virulent vira will eventually die.
How can a virus (HIV) which depends on cell division to survive possibly
kill that same cell? If that was true, HIV would be suicidal...since it
is difficult to transmit. Plus, HTLV (human T-cell leukemia virus) is
blamed to cause leukemia, which is uncontrolled T-cell division. How
could two almost identical retroviruses, HIV and HTLV, both kill, and
induce uncontrolled growing of T-cells?
>
> > Thousands of papers
> > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
>
> How old is this particualer statement?
1996 actually. But I was making the point that when the CDC HIV/AIDS
definition was invented, no one had showed how HIV causes AIDS. Hard
core AIDS scientists are still dappling in theories. Don't you at least
agree that they should have waited until evidence "beyond a reasonable
doubt" was presented?
A.B.T.
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
In article <5fm7m8$p...@dfw-ixnews4.ix.netcom.com>,
> In <5flnvm$h...@dfw-ixnews3.ix.netcom.com> sbha...@ix.netcom.com(Steven
> B. Harris) writes:
>
>>
>> I have no information that Bergalis' mother is HIV-positive. What
>>makes you think she is?
>
> vertically.
If it *were* an endogenous retorvirus it would be expected to be transmitted
veritically 100% of the time, but it has not been shown to be endogenous and it
doesn't behave as an endogenous one. Indeed, the data on maternal
fetal transmission are rather against the possiblity. So I add my voice in
asking "Bernie" how he knows that Bergalis got the virus from her mother.
I he as sure about that as he is that her disease only showed up after she took
AZT? He is, of course wrong on the second point just as he is wrong on the
first.
Anders Jelmert
Wed, 05 Mar 1997 19:21:24 -0500
Bernie wrote:
>
> Anders Jelmert wrote:
> > You might even find the recent research news by Jon Cohen:
> > "Exploiting the HIV-Chemokine Nexus"
> In this fascinating paper, the intricate mechanisms by which the
> > VIRAL particles infects the T lymphycytes via the CCR5 chemokine
> > receptors is explained in quite some detail.
> > There are also some interesting hints to the usefulness of
> > primate research (For you AR -regulars out there).
> >
> Indeed the paper is a terrific example of how HIV infects a T-cell.
> Most AIDS critics, such as myself, do not disagree with that. Yet the
> paper does not explain how HIV kills the T-cells in the presence of
> HIV-antibodies, or does any harm after infection.
Ah, so this makes "himself" an atypical AIDS- critic, he
apparently don't even believe there is Virus in the HIV.
The paper I pointed to have no intention to explain how the vira
kills lymphocytes. That mechanism would be quite trivial, by
the way. Like most other vira and also bacteriophages, the viral
DNA or RNA "hijack" host cell DNA/RNA and forces it to produce
the nucleotides and structural molecules neccessary to produce
replicates of itself.
Whether the host cells die by apoptosis, oxidative stress, or a
combination of these or other reasons, should not be considered
very important. Both in the animal and plant kingdoms, cells infected
by virulent vira will eventually die.
> Thousands of papers
> have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
How old is this particualer statement?
In a terapeutical context it would be much more important to block
access to organism, access to cells, or to block transcription
and /or translation.
For some years it has been difficult to explain the low titre of viral
particles in HIV-positive people, and if I recall also in people with
earlier stages of AIDS. However, the mechanism of a high production,
AND concurrent killing of viral particles in the population of
lympocytes was elucidated a couple(?) of years ago. Sorry, the paper
are lost somewhere in my "Curiosa" files, but I suppose someone
else could fill in?
> > Ah Duesberg, I knew it :-)
> Obviously you don't know it very well. Read some more.
I think Duesberg had a fair chance to become a "Gallileian" hero some
5-6 years ago. Today, I would think his chances are quite low.
But time will show, time will show.
> > I don't think this
> > would be a very precice description on what's going on in central
> > african countries. How many black africans should die before _you_
> > consider it an epidemic?
> >
> It is very unfortunate that people are dying in Africa and other third
> world countries, because AIDS science has screwed up. The people in
> Africa are dying of malnutrition, malaria, TB, leprosy, and other
> disease endemic in Africa---HIV-positive and negative.
This is cheap rethoric. Humane Immunodeficiency Virus which leads
to AIDS cannot kill people. When vital parts of the immune system
have been knocked out, it is finally the plethora of other diseases
which kills people. You have a varitey of genetical diseases where
also the immune systems are impaired. The affected people finally
dies of other trivial or serious diseases they encounter in
their life. You would not suggest that the genetic diseases are
not to blame, would you?
> No stupid AZT
AZT and the other more modern chemoterapeutica used in combination
with it, would of course not be of any help. They are vastly too
expensive.
> pill,
THE PILL!!!????.
> or condom is going to help these people.
Of course use of condomes will help. You are correct that HIV is
not an easily transmittable viral particle. Unprotected sex is
one of the few ways it is transferred.
>Nothing has so far...we
> must abandon this fruitless virus hunt, and return back to practical
> science.
If you cared to study the epimediology in USA and Europe in the
gay population, you should be able to understand this connection.
> A.B.T.
Rob Miller
Bernie wrote:
>
> It is very unfortunate that people are dying in Africa and other third
> world countries, because AIDS science has screwed up. The people in
> Africa are dying of malnutrition, malaria, TB, leprosy, and other
> disease endemic in Africa---HIV-positive and negative.
Have lots of personal experience to back that up eh ? It's true
that people here are dying of those diseases - in *fact*, many more than
usual due to an Immune Deficiency which they seem to have Acquired
through some sort of body-fluid contact.
No stupid AZT
> pill, or condom is going to help these people. Nothing has so far...we
> must abandon this fruitless virus hunt, and return back to practical
> science.
Wow Bernie, you are so insightful -- it would be so cool if you could
come visit and help sort us out ! Just a few months ago I was hearing
about a study (in Kenya, I *think*) which demonstrated reduction in
HIV prevalence following aggressive treatment of other STDs. The
poor misguided authors seem to think that HIV is transmitted more
easily in the presence of ulcerative STDs. If only I had your wealth
of background and knowledge, I would have been able to set them
straight.
rob.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert T. Miller, Ph.D.
rmi...@house.med.und.ac.za
Manager - Durban Satellite - South African National Bioinformatics
Institute
Faculty of Medicine / Dept of Virology / University of Natal
Private Bag 7 / Congella 4013 / Durban / South Africa
phone +27 (031) 3603743 fax +27 (031) 3603744 or
2604441
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
JReitor
Barnie wrote:
>> > Thousands of papers
>> > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
>> > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
>> > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
>>
>> How old is this particualer statement?
When and where? Let me know where I can find a printed copy with when he
said it. I'm interested.
JR
JReitor
From: jre...@aol.com (JReitor)
Date: 3 Mar 1997 23:09:07 GMT
> I'm still waiting
> for your response to what Peter Duesberg has said HIV had been isolated.
From: jre...@aol.com (JReitor)
Date: 2 Mar 1997 13:07 GMT
> Dr Val Turner and such claim that HIV doesn't exist. I wonder why
> Peter Duesberg would have turned around and said HIV had been isolated.
> By the way, all those people have been quiet lately. Haven't seen them
> attacking the PI results and their web site hasn't been updated since
last
> October. When was the last time Mullis say something? or where is
> Duesberg standing in the argument right now?
Where are you, 'himself'? I've been waiting for your answers.
JR
JReitor
Barnie wrote:
> How can a virus (HIV) which depends on cell division to survive possibly
> kill that same cell? If that was true, HIV would be suicidal...since it
> is difficult to transmit. Plus, HTLV (human T-cell leukemia virus) is
> blamed to cause leukemia, which is uncontrolled T-cell division. How
> could two almost identical retroviruses, HIV and HTLV, both kill, and
> induce uncontrolled growing of T-cells?
I thought it was Peter Duesberg replying.... but it's Barnie.
Why can't HIV kill cells? It doesn't have to, but why it can't? What
does that have to do with whether it's difficult to transmit or not?
Right, HIV and HTLV are closely related, but not identical. The genes in
HIV absent in HTLV would answer your question.
JR
Wayne Bolton
Todd Miller wrote:
>
> In science, all we can do is eliminate possibilities. WRT the
> possibility that "HIV" (meaning all the various sequences, and
> all the non-specific assays that are routinely used) is endogenous,
> it is also important to remember that these retroviral sequences
> could be generated from endogenous sequences that are not necessarily
> contiguous in the genome (read the following whole article, not just
> the abstract--J Virology 71(2): 859-865, 1997; "On Viruses, Sex, and
> to show that "HIV" (as referred to above) is absolutely NOT the
> product of splicing/transposition/recombination of endogenous
> (IOW, the product may not actually have a contiguous counterpart
> in the template), our tools of the trade are tricky to use to
> several investigators have found HIV-like sequences in normal human
> DNA (recently, an HIV-like LTR, Molecular and Cellular Probes
> 10: 443-451, 1996). So it would seem like some fundamentals
> could be in place for the generation of "HIV" from endogenous
> sources, perhaps in response to certain physiological stress,
> or whatever.
>
> depending on population, which would then be part of the expected
> genetic differences throughout the genome between inbreeding
> mobile and recombine within and between cells--considering that
> they are found in various forms in thousands of copies in the
> any certainty that a given retrovirus is exogenous--there is
> just too much background to rule out endogenous sources (which
> MUST be done to claim the exogenous nature).
>
> Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
>
There are published reports of LTR and pol and even gag like sequences
presumably endogenous retroviral sequences, in the human genome, but if
your hypothesis is correct there should also be env, vpr, vpu, tat, rev,
nef, and vpx sequences, as well as the simian homologues in simian
species. There have been no such reports of which I am aware
In addition, if these sequences were not in the proper context in an
endogenous form it would be then the generation of infectious virus
would not be possible to "generate "HIV"", as you put it.
Todd Miller
In <1997Mar6.170028@mcrcr6> holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S.
HOLZMAN) writes:
>If it *were* an endogenous retorvirus it would be expected to be
>transmitted veritically 100% of the time, but it has not been shown
>to be endogenous and it doesn't behave as an endogenous one.
The original evolutionary source was undoubtedly endogenous. The
question is, how fast can "it" (meaning antibodies, PCR tests,
RTase assays, p24 assays, etc-- all used to infer the presence of
a viral particle that has never been purified as a discrete entity)
evolve? Do we know all the ways a cell or a body has of recombining
and applying selective pressure on these endogenous sequences?
How do you know that what you call "HIV" is not the product of
activation of normal endogenous sequences, which then retrotranspose,
splice, recombine, etc and go through selection to result in the
gigantic genetic diversity you call "HIV"? IOW, evolution in this
case could be very rapid. From J Virology 71: 859-865, 1997:
"the presence of a functional (but not necessarily contiguous)
ERV genome in the germ line and its need to suppress immunity
can also allow for the selection of various genetic derivatives,
recombinants, variants which can yield new autonomous infectious
lymphotropic viruses"
"Mammalian genomes are therefore expected to be able to yield
autonomous retroviruses that otherwise might not be efficient
agents of horizontal transmission (such as MMTV or HTLV-2).
The original evolutionary source of most of these autonomous and
defective retroviral parasites is therefore a required ingredient
of the host genome."
I suspect the author could have easily included HIV in the
parenthetical examples, but had pressure from reviewers to
NOT include "it". WRT "HIV", the author's comments are a
VERY soft version of the party line (ie, "HIV causes AIDS"):
"It does appear that the more phylogenetically recent class
of retrovirus, such as the HIV lentivirus, is associated with
disease, encodes additional regulatory genes, has complex
RNA splicing, and has hypervariable env genes, but has no
proviral counterpart, suggesting that these agents are a
recent evolutionary occurrence."
Again, do we understand the speed of evolution of these retroviral
sequences completely enough to say that this huge cornucopia
of sequences we call "HIV" (and associated non-specific assays
that have no gold standard) is in every case NOT the product
of endogenous activity? After all, that is what is meant by
calling "HIV" exogenous.
>Indeed, the data on maternal fetal transmission are rather
>against the possiblity. So I add my voice in asking "Bernie"
>how he knows that Bergalis got the virus from her mother.
I can tell you this--he knows it on the same grounds that you
know that she didn't because the "experts" investigating the
case didn't bother to collect the data.
>I he as sure about that as he is that her disease only showed up after
>she took AZT? He is, of course wrong on the second point just as he
>is wrong on the first.
Tell me Dr Holzman, if you gave AZT to a healthy person, would
you EXPECT them to remain as healthy as another person whom you
didn't give AZT to? What would be the reason for your expectations?
In this case, how important are the diagnostic tools used to
identify "it"? Would you sleep well knowing you had prescribed
AZT to someone you thought had "it", but maybe didn't? Or if
perhaps in this person, "it" was not likely to cause problems,
how would you feel about giving such a person AZT? At any
rate, to say flat out that Bergalis' AZT had NOTHING to do with
her death is ignorant, especially coming from a physician...
What about all these long term non-progressors, who oddly enough
have one thing in common--they never took any of your drugs!
Todd Miller, PhD
Anders Jelmert
Thu, 06 Mar 1997 19:25:56 -0500
Bernie wrote:
>
> Anders Jelmert wrote:
> >
> > The paper I pointed to have no intention to explain how the vira
> > kills lymphocytes. That mechanism would be quite trivial, by
> > the way. Like most other vira and also bacteriophages, the viral
> > DNA or RNA "hijack" host cell DNA/RNA and forces it to produce
> > the nucleotides and structural molecules neccessary to produce
> > replicates of itself.
> > Whether the host cells die by apoptosis, oxidative stress, or a
> > combination of these or other reasons, should not be considered
> > very important. Both in the animal and plant kingdoms, cells infected
> > by virulent vira will eventually die.
>
> kill that same cell? If that was true, HIV would be suicidal...since it
> is difficult to transmit.
So what makes you think a retrovirus is dependent of host cell
replication to "reproduce"?
------------------------------------------begin quote
Retrovirus. Single stranded RNA virus which is replicated
and expressed _via_ a double-stranded DNA intermediate.
Virus coats contain a special RNA-dependent DNA polymerase,
so-called reverse transcriptase for this purpose.
------------------------------------------end quote
From: Winnacker, E.-L., 1987 From Genes to Clones, Introduction to
Gene Technology. VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, D-6940 Weinheim, Federal
Republic of Germany. ISBN 3-527-26644-5
Plus, HTLV (human T-cell leukemia virus) is
> blamed to cause leukemia, which is uncontrolled T-cell division. How
> could two almost identical retroviruses, HIV and HTLV, both kill, and
> induce uncontrolled growing of T-cells?
See above
> > > Thousands of papers
> > > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> > > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> > > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
> >
> > How old is this particualer statement?
> 1996 actually. But I was making the point that when the CDC HIV/AIDS
> definition was invented, no one had showed how HIV causes AIDS. Hard
> core AIDS scientists are still dappling in theories. Don't you at least
> agree that they should have waited until evidence "beyond a reasonable
> doubt" was presented?
NO!
Finally, I can agree that it has been spent large amounts of money
on AIDS/HIV research, perhaps too much compared to other serious
diseases like malaria etc.
However, as the new results (see ref. in previous post) has
promises also for development of vaccines, I would think the
massive basic research efforts will prove to give useful payoff
in the long run.
'Nuff said.
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
In article <5foune$9...@dfw-ixnews8.ix.netcom.com>, tod...@ix.netcom.com(Todd Miller) writes:
> In <1997Mar6.170028@mcrcr6> holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S.
> HOLZMAN) writes:
>
>>If it *were* an endogenous retorvirus it would be expected to be
>>transmitted veritically 100% of the time, but it has not been shown
>>to be endogenous and it doesn't behave as an endogenous one.
>
> The original evolutionary source was undoubtedly endogenous.
I might agree with you in theory on this but for the fact that no one has identified
HIV yet in any person as an endogenous retrovirus. You may have to go back so far
in evolutionary time that the "person" involved wasn't a person as we mean it.
The
> question is, how fast can "it" (meaning antibodies, PCR tests,
> RTase assays, p24 assays, etc-- all used to infer the presence of
> a viral particle that has never been purified as a discrete entity)
You are wrong about this and you know it but you persist in saying it.
> evolve? Do we know all the ways a cell or a body has of recombining
> and applying selective pressure on these endogenous sequences?
> How do you know that what you call "HIV" is not the product of
> activation of normal endogenous sequences, which then retrotranspose,
> splice, recombine, etc and go through selection to result in the
> gigantic genetic diversity you call "HIV"?
Very simply. The virus behaves as an infectious agent. The epidemiology of
transmission tells us.
>
> Tell me Dr Holzman, if you gave AZT to a healthy person, would
> you EXPECT them to remain as healthy as another person whom you
> didn't give AZT to?
If I gave it to a *group* of healthy people I would expect them to have the same
side effects as was seen in the trials involving asymptomatic hiv infected people.
What would be the reason for your expectations?
Extrapolation from the differences in toxicity seen in those with advanced and mild
immune deficiency (who have fewer side effects) and direct experience with those
who are healthy and take azt and other antivirals after being stuck with an infected
needle.
> In this case, how important are the diagnostic tools used to
> identify "it"? Would you sleep well knowing you had prescribed
> AZT to someone you thought had "it", but maybe didn't?
I think the diagnostic tools are quite good and sleep well thank you.
> Or if
> perhaps in this person, "it" was not likely to cause problems,
> how would you feel about giving such a person AZT? At any
> rate, to say flat out that Bergalis' AZT had NOTHING to do with
> her death is ignorant, especially coming from a physician...
I never said any such thing. I know only what has been posted in misc.health.aids
and that is sufficient to say that azt played no role in her getting an aids
diagnosis. What is appalling to me as a physician is your downright nasty comments
about her sexual history and your willingness to take journalistic inuendo as fact.
> What about all these long term non-progressors, who oddly enough
> have one thing in common--they never took any of your drugs!
>
Show me a piece of evidence that the fact that they didn't take medications had
anything to do with their being nonprogressors.
M. Taylor
On 7 Mar 1997, Todd Miller wrote:
> ...a viral particle that has never been purified as a discrete entity..
Please describe you mean by "purified as a discrete entity". In other
words, what protocol do you feel is proper for purification of HIV and
what method do you feel is proper to detect the purified virus. Perhaps
you can cite viruses which you feel have been "purified as discrete
entities".
Matt Taylor
Bernie
JReitor wrote:
>
> Bernie wrote:
> >> > Thousands of papers
> >> > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> >> > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> >> > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
> >>
> >> How old is this particualer statement?
> > 1996 actually.
>
> said it. I'm interested.
Check out Dr. Peter Duesberg's "Inventing the AIDS Virus," published in
1996 by Regnery Publishing, Inc. Dr. Kary Mullis wrote the forward. He
explains there, how people reacted when he asked Montagnier, etc., where
was the proof that HIV caused AIDS? They just got up and walked away.
While you're at it, take a look at the entire book.
A.B.T.
Bernie
> >against the possiblity. So I add my voice in asking "Bernie"
> >how he knows that Bergalis got the virus from her mother.
The fact that she possibly got it from her dentist would be, in "real"
science, ridiculous. The chance of someone getting a molar pulled, and
saying that a deadly virus just happened to pass from one to another,
because the dentist "possibly" had a cut on his hand . . . etc. It's
ridiculous. Why doesn't someone just test Bergalis' mother? By the
way, before the error of rec. drugs and AIDS medications, did people die
from PCP, inevidably? And there people that get PCP, in the absence of
rec. drugs or HIV, or other risk factors. Why can't Bergalis just be
one of them. Connecting a dentist's case of KS, to a PCP patient of
his, by none other than a benign retrovirus seems like a bit of a
stretch.
A.B.T.
James Scutero
In article <1997Mar7.155835@mcrcr6>
>> sequences completely enough to say that this huge cornucopia
>> of sequences we call "HIV" (and associated non-specific assays
>> that have no gold standard) is in every case NOT the product
>> of endogenous activity? After all, that is what is meant by
>> calling "HIV" exogenous.
>>
>>>against the possiblity. So I add my voice in asking "Bernie"
>>>how he knows that Bergalis got the virus from her mother.
>>
>> know that she didn't because the "experts" investigating the
>> case didn't bother to collect the data.
>>
>I do know that it was genotypically related to other isolates in an
>epidemic cluster and therefore I deem it unlikely (very unlikely!) that
>she got it from her monther.
>
How many isolates were taken from that part of Florida and where
are they now for examination? An exact number would be nice. I would also
like to know how "closely related" an HIV genome would have to be to
qualify it as being part of an epidemic cluster and if that "closely
related" genome was also "closely related" to other isolates of a
quasi-species. Foley seems to like using "closely related" to describe
isolates in both epidemic clusters and quasispecies. He is very vague.
>I also know quite a bit about the mothers of HIV infected children and
>the lifespans of both mother and child. What I know adds to the
>improbability of congential transmission.
>
Dr. Acer's patients seemed to have died pretty quick after their
alleged infections. I know Bergalis and Webb were on high dose AZT. I
don't know what happened to the drifter or the other patients that were
allegedly infected. I do know that their loved ones got a nice fat check
from Acer's insurance company.
>In contrast to what I consider to be a reasoned judgement
>on my part, "Bernie" jumps in with great certainty that the virus was
>congenitally transmitted. What I am attacking is his smug certainty about
>the truth of the hypothesis that you express in much more tentative
>fashion... e.g. your paragraph above "do we understand...."
>
If anyone is smug it is you, Dr. Holzman. There are billions of
people on this planet, Foley says he has only looked for HIV in the germ
line of "several thousand," and you go around stating that HIV does not
act like an endogenous retrovirus. There are billions of stars with
several billion more planets. To me, the odds of there being life on one
of those planets, or HIV being in the germ line of one human on this
planet, is very good. The study of HERVs, and retroviruses in general, is
very new. To go around proclaiming that you know how HERVs are supposed to
act and that HIV does not act like one is the height of smugness.
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
In article <332083...@prodigy.net>, Bernie <Ki...@prodigy.net> writes:
>> In <1997Mar6.170028@mcrcr6> holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S.
>> HOLZMAN) writes:
>> > >Indeed, the data on maternal fetal transmission are rather
>> >against the possiblity. So I add my voice in asking "Bernie"
>> >how he knows that Bergalis got the virus from her mother.
>
> science, ridiculous. The chance of someone getting a molar pulled, and
> saying that a deadly virus just happened to pass from one to another,
> because the dentist "possibly" had a cut on his hand . . . etc. It's
> ridiculous.
Considering that such things happen routinely with other viruses, why do you
say it is rediculous? What experience do you have that lets you make such a
judgement?
> Why doesn't someone just test Bergalis' mother? By the
> way, before the error of rec. drugs and AIDS medications, did people die
> from PCP, inevidably?
Yes, so far as I am aware, when PCP complicated immune deficiency recovery was
unprecedented. PCP infection of healthy children, though rarely described,
is believed to be common, and not fatal.
> And there people that get PCP, in the absence of
> rec. drugs or HIV, or other risk factors.
No, the evidence suggests that after asymptomatic childhood infection disease
only occurs in immunodeficient indivdiuals.
> Why can't Bergalis just be
> one of them.
No identifiable immunosupression. The absence of such factors is what led to
the recognition of aids in the first place.
> Connecting a dentist's case of KS, to a PCP patient of
> his, by none other than a benign retrovirus seems like a bit of a
> stretch.
Not at all a stretch if you understand the data and don't characterize a virus
as benign when you have no basis for making such a statement.
himself
jre...@aol.com "JReitor" writes:
> From: jre...@aol.com (JReitor)
> Date: 3 Mar 1997 23:09:07 GMT
>
> > I'm still waiting
> > for your response to what Peter Duesberg has said HIV had been
> > isolated.
The controversy over the isolation of "HIV" was reported in
detail in Continuum Vol 4 Nos 2 & 3, Jul/Aug and Sep/Oct 1996.
Prof. Duesberg's claim for the Continuum prize was rejected on
the grounds that he was only able to offer "molecular cloning"
as proof of isolation, which did not satisfy the published
criteria.
Articles on the controversy were contributed by virologist Dr
Stefan Lanka, journalist and author Neville Hodgkinson, and most
recently the Perth team of "Aids" specialists who advanced a
detailed description of the problem in their scientific paper
'The Isolation of HIV: Has It Really Been Achieved? The Case
Against' which was published as a supplement to the Sep/Oct
issue and is also available in e-mail. Further contributions
are expected as the controversy deepens. I believe a response
from Prof. Duesberg is scheduled in the next issue, due now.
Other scientists have expressed consierable interest in the
Continuum Prize.
> From: jre...@aol.com (JReitor)
> Date: 2 Mar 1997 13:07 GMT
>
> > Dr Val Turner and such claim that HIV doesn't exist. I wonder why
> > Peter Duesberg would have turned around and said HIV had been isolated.
> > By the way, all those people have been quiet lately. Haven't seen them
> > attacking the PI results and their web site hasn't been updated since last
> > October.
Which web site? There is no web site yet for either Continuum or
the Perth specialists. Other dissident websites are springing up
everywhere, as the superstition collapses.
> > When was the last time Mullis say something? or where is
> > Duesberg standing in the argument right now?
Why not check out the very new website at www.duesberg.com, where
the last time I checked Mullis had contributed an introduction?
> Where are you, 'himself'? I've been waiting for your answers.
Busy. Remember that "Aids" realists do not have their noses in the
trough. We are not paid to promote our personal interests, in the
way orthodox "Aids" boosters do. We expose the scandal at our own
expense, in our own time.
Also, you need to remember that here in the UK the "Aids" delusion
is falling apart as we look at it. The exposure is reaching far
more people than before, through more channels. Even mainstream
media now realise the extent to which they have been made monkeys
of, and the disturbing ease with which this has happened. There is
now a willingness to listen to the unanswerable case that realists
present, and the solid evidence, from over a decade, vindicating
those views.
The first stage of educating the media has been achieved. There are
now increasing calls for examination of the dishonesty behind the
"Aids" myth, and investigation of the millions of pounds wasted in
supporting scientific and medical errors. The next stage is to
begin asking how and why those errors occurred, and the answers are
all too plain to see.
If only journalists (or "Aids" scientists) had evolved the mental
technique of using the result of one thought as the basis of the
next we would have been rid of this superstition a decade ago. It
is true that, because of the lack of this ability, thinking is a
slow and difficult process in all communication media, but we are
now starting to see results. I like to devote a little time and
effort to helping them along.
John
--
'Economists argue that because Aids has not been on the scale predicted,
funds allocated since the 80s have been wasted. Economist Robert Whelan,
of The Institute of Economic Affairs said, "There has never been a great
Epidemic or Pandemic. Aids is very difficult to transmit; it affects
very small numbers of people."'
ITV London Today, "The Epidemic That Never Was".
himself
Anders....@imr.no "Anders Jelmert" writes:
> Bernie wrote:
> >
> > Indeed the paper is a terrific example of how HIV infects a T-cell.
> > Most AIDS critics, such as myself, do not disagree with that. Yet the
> > paper does not explain how HIV kills the T-cells in the presence of
> > HIV-antibodies, or does any harm after infection.
>
> Ah, so this makes "himself" an atypical AIDS- critic, he
> apparently don't even believe there is Virus in the HIV.
I certainly would like to hear of unambiguous evidence that it has
been isolated. Whether this attitude is atypical or not I couldn't
say. That it might not exist at all now appears the most likely
explanation to fit all the known data. There may be others, but so
far non-existence is the most likely.
As we search for explanations for the spectacular failure of the
"HIV" myth, and the vast, unnecessary waste of resources and lives
it has been responsible for, it only seems reasonable to start from
first principles, and to eliminate the most obvious possible
blunders first. Unfortunately, as you will have discovered if you
read this group, even the most elementary proof has never been
achieved for "HIV". Need we look any further?
Without evidence that this virus exists, speculation about what it
might or might not be doing is plain stupid, and it is not in the
least surprising that these flights of fancy have so conspicuously
failed to translate into "science" (i.e. knowledge).
> > Thousands of papers
> > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
>
> How old is this particualer statement?
He has made it again, in more detail, recently and you may read it
as a forward to the excellent new Duesberg website: www.duesberg.com.
More dissident (realist would be a better term) sites come on line
almost every week, as the "Aids" superstition collapses worldwide. It
might prove difficult for you to remain as ignorant as you are now.
> > > [ Jelmert:] Ah Duesberg, I knew it :-)
> >
> > Obviously you don't know it very well. Read some more.
>
> I think Duesberg had a fair chance to become a "Gallileian" hero some
> 5-6 years ago. Today, I would think his chances are quite low.
> But time will show, time will show.
Time has shown. The very revealing epidemiological data from the UK
incontravertibly refute notions of "infectious Aids". There is no
possible explanation for the weird and wonderful progress of the
UK "Aids" phenomenon save in dissident research and theory. Defunct
delusions about "Aids", such as yours, are the stuff of ridicule.
(But before long, I expect and hope, the stuff of litigation.)
John
--
"Meanwhile, let us hope that the country is not confronted with a real
epidemic in the near future: after the disinformation the government
has told us about Aids, who would believe it?"
Andrew Neil, editor, The Sunday Times, 23 June 1996.
himself
rmi...@house.med.und.ac.za "Rob Miller" writes:
> Bernie wrote:
> >
> > It is very unfortunate that people are dying in Africa and other third
> > world countries, because AIDS science has screwed up. The people in
> > Africa are dying of malnutrition, malaria, TB, leprosy, and other
> > disease endemic in Africa---HIV-positive and negative.
>
> Have lots of personal experience to back that up eh ? It's true
> that people here are dying of those diseases - in *fact*, many more than
> usual due to an Immune Deficiency which they seem to have Acquired
> through some sort of body-fluid contact.
We only have your word to go on for this claim; whenever "African
Aids" is investigated by independent researchers they discover what
African doctors have been saying for years: diagnoses of "Aids" are
unjustified. Time you stopped telling this lie, however personally
disadvantageous that will be for you.
John
--
"The Ugandan population should by now be drastically reduced - perhaps
decimated. This is not the case, and it would seem prudent to accept that
the majority, if not all, of the positive tests, were false positives
induced by other diseases endemic in the area of study."
Eleni Eleopulos, medical physicist, Royal Perth Hospital, W.Australia
himself
jre...@aol.com "JReitor" writes:
> Barnie wrote:
> >> > Thousands of papers
> >> > have been written on the molecular biology of the retrovirus HIV, but
> >> > "no one has ever proved that HIV causes AIDS," confirms Nobel prize
> >> > winning chemist, Dr. Kary Mullis.
> >>
> >> How old is this particualer statement?
> > 1996 actually.
>
> When and where? Let me know where I can find a printed copy with when he
> said it. I'm interested.
http://www.duesberg.com (last time I looked).
John
--
"They seem to have learned like the mad hatter to believe six impossible
things before breakfast and so one more makes no difference. One gets a
remarkable sense of being disassociated from the real world when entering
the realm of Aids research."
Dr Mark Craddock, mathematician, on QC-PCR use by Ho & Shaw.
JReitor
jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk (himself) wrote:
>jre...@aol.com "JReitor" writes:
>> From: jre...@aol.com (JReitor)
>> Date: 3 Mar 1997 23:09:07 GMT
>>
>> > I'm still waiting
>> > for your response to what Peter Duesberg has said HIV had been
>> > isolated.
>The controversy over the isolation of "HIV" was reported in
>detail in Continuum Vol 4 Nos 2 & 3, Jul/Aug and Sep/Oct 1996.
>Prof. Duesberg's claim for the Continuum prize was rejected on
>the grounds that he was only able to offer "molecular cloning"
>as proof of isolation, which did not satisfy the published
>criteria.
>Articles on the controversy were contributed by virologist Dr
>Stefan Lanka, journalist and author Neville Hodgkinson, and most
>recently the Perth team of "Aids" specialists who advanced a
>detailed description of the problem in their scientific paper
>'The Isolation of HIV: Has It Really Been Achieved? The Case
>Against' which was published as a supplement to the Sep/Oct
>issue and is also available in e-mail. Further contributions
>are expected as the controversy deepens. I believe a response
>from Prof. Duesberg is scheduled in the next issue, due now.
>Other scientists have expressed consierable interest in the
>Continuum Prize.
When would that be out? Who are the creditable scientists in the
Continuum panel? Or are they just doing a play???
>> Date: 2 Mar 1997 13:07 GMT
>>
>> > Dr Val Turner and such claim that HIV doesn't exist. I wonder why
>> > Peter Duesberg would have turned around and said HIV had been isolated.
>> > By the way, all those people have been quiet lately. Haven't seen them
>> > attacking the PI results and their web site hasn't been updated since last
>> > October.
>Which web site? There is no web site yet for either Continuum or
>the Perth specialists. Other dissident websites are springing up
>everywhere, as the superstition collapses.
THE GROUP FOR THE SCIENTIFIC REAPPRAISAL OF THE HIV-AIDS HYPOTHESIS
http://www.xs4all.nl/~raido/group.htm
>> > When was the last time Mullis say something? or where is
>> > Duesberg standing in the argument right now?
>Why not check out the very new website at www.duesberg.com, where
>the last time I checked Mullis had contributed an introduction?
I have checked many times. All the arguments he has been able to make
are on the data before PI's. He hasn't commented on PI's and the
decline of AIDS death as what he did to the AZT story. Tell me where
I can find those hardcore and relevant articles? Anything new (or
hardly any) from Gilbert? or Rubin? on the new or even old data??
>> Where are you, 'himself'? I've been waiting for your answers.
>Busy. Remember that "Aids" realists do not have their noses in the
>trough. We are not paid to promote our personal interests, in the
>way orthodox "Aids" boosters do. We expose the scandal at our own
>expense, in our own time.
Or you're just taking time to resolve your confusion, and when you
can't defend you'll simply be busy?
>Also, you need to remember that here in the UK the "Aids" delusion
>is falling apart as we look at it. The exposure is reaching far
>more people than before, through more channels. Even mainstream
>media now realise the extent to which they have been made monkeys
>of, and the disturbing ease with which this has happened. There is
>now a willingness to listen to the unanswerable case that realists
>present, and the solid evidence, from over a decade, vindicating
>those views.
Ok, if that is so, why don't you go get an UK government official to
announce such a claim? He/she would have to say you're right in the
public.
JR
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
In article <5fqk3l$a...@panix.com>, jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
[with respect to the study of the acer "cluster" of cases...]
> How many isolates were taken from that part of Florida and where
> are they now for examination? An exact number would be nice. I would also
> like to know how "closely related" an HIV genome would have to be to
> qualify it as being part of an epidemic cluster and if that "closely
> related" genome was also "closely related" to other isolates of a
> quasi-species. Foley seems to like using "closely related" to describe
> isolates in both epidemic clusters and quasispecies. He is very vague.
>
The data are presented in Science 1992;256:1165-71. Critiqued in Nature
1993; 361:691, and defended in Nature, 1993;369:24-5.
I only have access to the science abstract which I include below. I assume you
have read the articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine 1996;124:250ff as
well.
Authors
Ou CY. Ciesielski CA. Myers G. Bandea CI. Luo CC. Korber BT. Mullins
JI. Schochetman G. Berkelman RL. Economou AN. et al.
Institution
Division of HIV/AIDS, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333.
Title
Molecular epidemiology of HIV transmission in a dental practice [see
comments].
Sourc
Science. 256(5060):1165-71, 1992 May 22.
Abstract
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmission from infected
patients to health-care workers has been well documented, but transmission
from an infected health-care worker to a patient has not been reported.
After identification of an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
patient who had no known risk factors for HIV infection but who had
undergone an invasive procedure performed by a dentist with AIDS, six
other patients of this dentist were found to be HIV-infected. Molecular
biologic studies were conducted to complement the epidemiologic
investigation. Portions of the HIV proviral envelope gene from each of the
seven patients, the dentist, and 35 HIV-infected persons from the local
geographic area were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced.
Three separate comparative genetic analyses--genetic distance
measurements, phylogenetic tree analysis, and amino acid signature pattern
analysis--showed that the viruses from the dentist and five dental
patients were closely related. These data, together with the epidemiologic
investigation, indicated that these patients became infected with HIV
while receiving care from a dentist with AIDS.
[holzman....]
>
>
>>In contrast to what I consider to be a reasoned judgement
>>on my part, "Bernie" jumps in with great certainty that the virus was
>>congenitally transmitted. What I am attacking is his smug certainty about
>>the truth of the hypothesis that you express in much more tentative
>>fashion... e.g. your paragraph above "do we understand...."
>>
[scutero... ]
> If anyone is smug it is you, Dr. Holzman. There are billions of
> people on this planet, Foley says he has only looked for HIV in the germ
> line of "several thousand," and you go around stating that HIV does not
> act like an endogenous retrovirus.
Perhaps I am although I would call it confident rather than smug (which my
dictionary says is the feeling of self righteousness or great self
satisfaction with one's situation). As I think you will recall, I never took
the position that HIV was never -- ever -- endogenous. Nor that there might be
someone here on earth such as Bergalis' mother, in whom it might be endogenous
now. What I am confident of is that activation of endogenous virus is not the
explanation of the epidemiology of aids in general nor the Acer cluster in
particular. That it might be the explanation is the position that Todd has
carefully set out for his own, (although he prefers sexual transmisison for
Bergalis) and the one that Bernie, in a way I *would*
characterize as smug, as adopted without suggesting the is a shadow of a doubt
about its correctness.
himself
um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
>
> No, because <drum roll> HIV can go on to infect *other* cells!
Not so far in the history of the phenomenon. Why do you believe
this, given that no evidence for it exists?
> Is Dr. Mullis a virologist?
Dr Stefan Lanka is:
"No particle of HIV has ever been obtained pure, free of contaminants;
nor has a complete piece of of HIV RNA (or the transcribed DNA) ever
been proved to exist."
What are you?
> Scientist
Don't make me laugh!
John
--
"In going back to the origins of HIV virology and telling the HIV
story, a view will be presented which will make clear that HIV itself,
the very object of this Manhattan Project of modern medicine, does not
exist." Dr. Stefan Lanka, virologist.
James Scutero
In article <1997Mar8.130838@mcrcr6>
>[...]
>
>The data are presented in Science 1992;256:1165-71. Critiqued in Nature
>1993; 361:691, and defended in Nature, 1993;369:24-5.
>
>I only have access to the science abstract which I include below. I assume you
>have read the articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine 1996;124:250ff as
>well.
>
>Authors
> Ou CY. Ciesielski CA. Myers G. Bandea CI. Luo CC. Korber BT. Mullins
> JI. Schochetman G. Berkelman RL. Economou AN. et al.
>Institution
> Division of HIV/AIDS, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333.
>Title
> Molecular epidemiology of HIV transmission in a dental practice [see
> comments].
>Sourc
> Science. 256(5060):1165-71, 1992 May 22.
>Abstract
> Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) transmission from infected
> patients to health-care workers has been well documented, but transmission
> from an infected health-care worker to a patient has not been reported.
> After identification of an acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)
> patient who had no known risk factors for HIV infection but who had
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Here's the first blot on your theory, Holzman: Bergalis was no
virgin.
> undergone an invasive procedure performed by a dentist with AIDS, six
> other patients of this dentist were found to be HIV-infected.
He had over 1,000 patients.
> Molecular biologic studies were conducted to complement the
> epidemiologic investigation.
The epidemiologic investigation was wrong. All of his infected
patients engaged in what was considered prior "risk behavior."
> Portions of the HIV proviral envelope gene from each of the
> seven patients, the dentist, and 35 HIV-infected persons from the local
> geographic area were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced.
>
They cherry-picked 35 people from the area and compared pieces
of gp160, not the whole virus. The CDC must have assumed that Acer's
patients never travelled out of the area: another mistake.
> Three separate comparative genetic analyses--genetic distance
> measurements, phylogenetic tree analysis, and amino acid signature pattern
> analysis--showed that the viruses from the dentist and five dental
> patients were closely related.
>
How many times was this procedure done prior to this
investigation? It seems that "closely related" meant that a subjective
interpretation was used. Do they still use this procedure? I hope not.
> These data, together with the epidemiologic investigation, indicated
> that these patients became infected with HIV while receiving care from
> a dentist with AIDS.
>
Not.
>[...]
>
The Dr. Acer case was a government-supported shakedown of an
insurance company perpetrated to appease reactionaries in Congress, IMHO.
Robert S. Holzman
I don't know the facts of the case with respect to her sexual
experience.
Generally being a non virgin means that one has had an opportunity to
aquire HIV, not that one is at particularly high risk of having done
so. Her sexual history is only of interest if she slept with Acer, in
view of the genetic data.
>
> > undergone an invasive procedure performed by a dentist with AIDS, six
> > other patients of this dentist were found to be HIV-infected.
>
> He had over 1,000 patients.
>
And those who could be reached, and agreed, were tested.
> > Molecular biologic studies were conducted to complement the
> > epidemiologic investigation.
>
> The epidemiologic investigation was wrong. All of his infected
> patients engaged in what was considered prior "risk behavior."
>
You ignore the evidence of relatedness.
> > Portions of the HIV proviral envelope gene from each of the
> > seven patients, the dentist, and 35 HIV-infected persons from the local
> > geographic area were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced.
> >
> They cherry-picked 35 people from the area and compared pieces
> of gp160, not the whole virus. The CDC must have assumed that Acer's
> patients never travelled out of the area: another mistake.
>
How do you know how the 35 were picked? Is it mentioned in the Science
article?
> > Three separate comparative genetic analyses--genetic distance
> > measurements, phylogenetic tree analysis, and amino acid signature pattern
> > analysis--showed that the viruses from the dentist and five dental
> > patients were closely related.
> >
> How many times was this procedure done prior to this
> investigation?
I think that foley answered this. These are all standard techniques.
It seems that "closely related" meant that a subjective
> interpretation was used. Do they still use this procedure? I hope not.
>
Don't think it is subjective but I haven't got the paper.
> > These data, together with the epidemiologic investigation, indicated
> > that these patients became infected with HIV while receiving care from
> > a dentist with AIDS.
> >
> Not.
>
Your entitled to your opinion, but you are making premature judgements
if you haven't read the paper.
> >[...]
> >
> The Dr. Acer case was a government-supported shakedown of an
> insurance company perpetrated to appease reactionaries in Congress, IMHO.
>
I can assure you that the repercussions for medical workers were much
more in the minds of the investigators than shaking down any insurance
company. This study raised all sorts of hell and fears of transmission
to patients. The investigators were motivated, if anything, to find no
relationship among the cases.
Anders Jelmert
Sat, 08 Mar 97 02:17:16 GMT
himself used his phalanges to utter:
>
> Anders....@imr.no "Anders Jelmert" writes:
>
> > Bernie wrote:
> > >
> > > Indeed the paper is a terrific example of how HIV infects a T-cell.
> > > Most AIDS critics, such as myself, do not disagree with that. Yet the
> > > paper does not explain how HIV kills the T-cells in the presence of
> > > HIV-antibodies, or does any harm after infection.
> >
> > Ah, so this makes "himself" an atypical AIDS- critic, he
> > apparently don't even believe there is Virus in the HIV.
>
> I certainly would like to hear of unambiguous evidence that it has
> been isolated. Whether this attitude is atypical or not I couldn't
> say. That it might not exist at all now appears the most likely
> explanation to fit all the known data. There may be others, but so
> far non-existence is the most likely.
If you have read Wei _et al_, 1995, and Ho _et al_ 1995,
and still are singing Duesberg's drug use/"chemoterapeutica"
-no virus mantras, I assume there's not much more to discuss.
I responded because your original massaged spilled into t.p.a.
Just go on and maintain whatever virological mayhems you want
at the various AIDS n.groups.
[..........] snip-o-rama
Wei, X., Ghosh, S.K., Taylor, M.E. ............. 1995.
"Viral dynamics in human imunodeficiency virus type 1 infection"
Nature Vol 273. 12. january 1995 117-122
Ho, D.D., Neumann, A.U., Chen, W., ............... 1995.
"Rapid turnover of plasma virions and CD4 lymphocytes in HIV-1
infection"
Nature Vol 273. 12. january 1995 123-126
Brian Foley
James Scutero wrote:
> How many isolates were taken from that part of
> Florida and where are they now for examination?
35, GenBank entries with accession numbers
M90847-M92149 and U06872-U06919. These sets also include
the dentist, a sexual partner of the dentist, six patients
whose sequences are greater than 96% identical to the
dentist's sequences, three patients whose sequences are
not greater than 96% identical to the dentist's, and
the 35 local controls. In addition, we have since obtained
a number of other Florida HIV sequences, such as those from
the Liberty City case (U11454-U11490).
> An exact
> number would be nice. I would also
> like to know how "closely related" an HIV genome would have to be to
> qualify it as being part of an epidemic cluster
A) They would have to be statistically significantly
more closely related than they are to HIV sequences which are
not suspected of being related. If we know the date of
transmission and the date the blood samples were taken, we
can be more specific, because we know that HIV env genes diverge
from one another at close to 1% per year.
If the transmission event ocurred 7 to 10 years prior
to sample collection, the divergence between case sequences
becomes close to the overall divergence of subtype B, and
transmission is then difficult (but not always impossible) to
detect.
B) Even when the total divergence between two
sequences approaches that of the average for unrelated
sequences, it is sometimes possible to detect unusual
insertions or deletions that hint at epidemiological linkage.
C) In no case can sequence similarity alone "prove"
that one patient got HIV from another. For one thing
we cannot tell the direction of transfer (A to B, or
B to A). For another thing, we cannot tell how many
transfers took place in between (A to X to Y to B, or
A to S to T to U to V to B).
D) Sequences can be used to prove that one
person did not infect another. Again it depends upon the
alledged circumstances, dates, etc. But if person A claims
that person B infected them 1 year ago, the sequences
can be used to show that that is not true.
> and if that "closely
> related" genome was also "closely related" to other isolates of a
> quasi-species. Foley seems to like using "closely related" to describe
> isolates in both epidemic clusters and quasispecies. He is very vague.
I am as specific as I can be. The virus evolves at a
rate which can only be measured "on average". We know that
there is a possibility for single person to carry a HIV
genome in a latent proviral state, even while other virions in
that person are not latent. So some HIV sequences today
have mutated less from a common ancestor than others.
> If anyone is smug it is you, Dr. Holzman. There are billions of
> people on this planet, Foley says he has only looked for HIV in the germ
> line of "several thousand," and you go around stating that HIV does not
> act like an endogenous retrovirus. There are billions of stars with
> several billion more planets. To me, the odds of there being life on one
> of those planets, or HIV being in the germ line of one human on this
> planet, is very good.
There are not billions of HIV-infected people.
> The study of HERVs, and retroviruses in general, is
> very new.
The use of Southern blots to detect similar sequences
in a genome is quite old, in comparison to other molecular
biology techniques. Nobody has found a sequence in the human
genome which could be considered an endogenous source of HIV.
> To go around proclaiming that you know how HERVs are supposed to
> act and that HIV does not act like one is the height of smugness.
The E in HERV stands for endogenous, meaning that
it is found in the human germ-line DNA. HIV is not found
in human germ-line DNA, not in HIV-infected people, and
not in HIV-free humans. To date, nobody has even found an
endogenous SIV in a non-human primate.
--
____________________________________________________________________
|Brian T. Foley b...@t10.lanl.gov |
|HIV Database (505) 665-1970 |
|Los Alamos National Lab http://hiv-web.lanl.gov/index.html |
|Los Alamos, NM 87544 U.S.A. http://retro.lanl.gov/~btf/home.html |
|____________________________________________________________________|
JReitor
Bernie <Ki...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>Anders Jelmert wrote:
>> You might even find the recent research news by Jon Cohen:
>> "Exploiting the HIV-Chemokine Nexus"
>In this fascinating paper, the intricate mechanisms by which the
>> VIRAL particles infects the T lymphycytes via the CCR5 chemokine
>> receptors is explained in quite some detail.
>> There are also some interesting hints to the usefulness of
>> primate research (For you AR -regulars out there).
>>
>Indeed the paper is a terrific example of how HIV infects a T-cell.
>Most AIDS critics, such as myself, do not disagree with that.
Hell. what are you? what qualification do you have? From everything
you have been posting on this newsgroup shows that you don't even know
science, but just quoting other people's nonsense without knowing
what's really going on.
>> Ah Duesberg, I knew it :-)
>Obviously you don't know it very well. Read some more.
But you don't either, Bernie. You have added nothing to his theory
but just being a stupid parrot. Get Duesberg into this newsgroup and
have him defend. He might be talking with a lot of sense even he
might still be wrong. You scientific idiot have no sense at all, and
are making distored and wrong statements. Many times I didn't even
bother to post a follow-up on your post. I simply laughed and sighed!
JR
John Mercer
himself <jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
>
> >
> > No, because <drum roll> HIV can go on to infect *other* cells!
>
> Not so far in the history of the phenomenon. Why do you believe
> this, given that no evidence for it exists?
Duesberg believes that HIV exists. He also understands that retroviral
infections can kill a cell and infect neighboring cells.
> > Is Dr. Mullis a virologist?
>
> Dr Stefan Lanka is:
What kinds of viruses does he study?
>
> "No particle of HIV has ever been obtained pure, free of contaminants;
> nor has a complete piece of of HIV RNA (or the transcribed DNA) ever
> been proved to exist."
Where is the proof for that negative statement, John? The second part
has been proven false repeatedly, by the isolation of infectious genomic
clones.
> What are you?
I'm a mouse geneticist now, but I was trained as a virologist (murine
CMV, MuLV).
Who has more (and more relevant) publications: Dr. Lanka or me, John?
> > Scientist
>
> Don't make me laugh!
Don't you mean "don't make me READ"?
>
> John
> --
> "In going back to the origins of HIV virology and telling the HIV
> story, a view will be presented which will make clear that HIV itself,
> the very object of this Manhattan Project of modern medicine, does not
> exist." Dr. Stefan Lanka, virologist.
How many manuscripts has Dr. Lanka published on anything, John?
Who's right--Lanka or Duesberg (who admits the existence of HIV)? Or
don't you care about points that are so fundamental to your philosophy?
--
John Mercer
Scientist
McLaughlin Research Institute
surfhound
JR, Bernie is a high school student, read below, from this newsgroup:
(This is who you are arguing with)
> W. Fred Shaw wrote:
> >
> > Get Well wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > THE DRUGS COULD NOT HAVE CAUSED THE AIDS SINCE I WAS
> > > NOT ON ANY DRUGS.
> >
> > You are trying to lump me together with the Duesberg school
> > of thought and it doesn't work. This is another cheap Carter
> > tactic and again, you cite no evidence to support your
> > erroneous implication.
> >
> > I never said that drugs cause AIDS. However, drugs CAN be
> > immunosuppressive and CAN cause wasting and as a result they
> > CAN cause what looks like AIDS.
>
> First of all Fred, when "Get Well" said drugs in that quote above, he
> was speaking of AIDS medications, not rec. drugs. Second of all, why
> has the name Duesberg become a curse word in this group?
> Retrovirologist, Dr. Peter H. Duesberg has given more evidence to
> support his findings than anyone here has, and if you people had read
> his work, you would know that. Second of all, if HIV was truly the
> cause of AIDS, there would not be such a big debate over it. Was there
> any debate about polio? Were there any nobel prize winning scientists
> saying polio was not caused by a virus? No. The whole HIV/AIDS theory
> goes back to the stupid "slow virus" theory, invented by a man who's now
> up on charges for child molesting. Give me a break. I've been hit with
> this HIV/AIDS propaganda since 5th grade, because I was in school when
> the whole thing started up. So if anything, I should be the one most
> likely believe HIV/AIDS brainwashing. Condoms, STDs, AIDS, teaching
> masturbation...I hear this stuff in school every day. People are sick
> of it, and so am I. I'm in a very influential position right now; not
> because I'm some well known scientist, or a senior fellow at the CDC,
> but because I'm a senior in high school. No one has ever seen such
> contradicting research, and to my unbiased peers, contradiction is the
> beginning of the failure of a hypothesis. I've been making oral
> presentations about the project, and when shown the research, people
> agree with me.
>
> Regards,
>
> A.B.T.
Surfhound
David L Evens
: >
: > No, because <drum roll> HIV can go on to infect *other* cells!
: Not so far in the history of the phenomenon. Why do you believe
: this, given that no evidence for it exists?
Probably because we can trace the exact method by which we observe HIV
infecting, and then killing, cells in the lab.
: > Is Dr. Mullis a virologist?
: Dr Stefan Lanka is:
: "No particle of HIV has ever been obtained pure, free of contaminants;
: nor has a complete piece of of HIV RNA (or the transcribed DNA) ever
: been proved to exist."
Let's see, 1985 vintage on that quote, perchance?
: What are you?
: > Scientist
: Don't make me laugh!
You're still quoting a faker in your .Sig.
--
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
Ring around the neutron, | "OK, so he's not terribly fearsome.
A pocket full of positrons,| But he certainly took us by surprise!"
A fission, a fusion, +--------------------------------------------------
We all fall down! | "Was anybody in the Maquis working for me?"
---------------------------+--------------------------------------------------
"I'd cut down ever Law in England to get at the Devil!"
"And what man could stand up in the wind that would blow once you'd cut
down all the laws?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This message may not be carried on any server which places restrictions
on content.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
e-mail will be posted as I see fit.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JReitor
surfhound <surf...@geocities.com> wrote:
>JReitor wrote:
>> ....
>JR, Bernie is a high school student, read below, from this newsgroup:
>(This is who you are arguing with)
I read that today. Really shocked. Like he's someone who knows so
much and with so much authority. What a tragedy of an innocence from
brain washing.
I'm really unhappy with Duesberg. I bet he has been following the
threads but never said a word. Seeing his advocates defending for him
but striked back so badly. Poor guy. Silence admits defeat? If
Bernie is so interested in science, try Berkeley, and talk to
Duesberg. He should be able to get in.
JR
himself
Anders....@imr.no "Anders Jelmert" writes:
> If you have read Wei _et al_, 1995, and Ho _et al_ 1995,
> and still are singing Duesberg's drug use/"chemoterapeutica"
> -no virus mantras, I assume there's not much more to discuss.
> I responded because your original massaged spilled into t.p.a.
> Just go on and maintain whatever virological mayhems you want
> at the various AIDS n.groups.
You are right there is nothing to discuss. This absurd piece
of junk science has been categoricaly refuted by several real
scientists and mathematicians. Even deeply deluded "HIV"
believers refuse to play ball with this one, as Dr Holzman
has shown:
"Ho's calculations of cd4 turnover were always dependent on
assumptions which were unproven and as to whether or not they
are correct I am continuing to reserve judgement."
himself
dev...@uoguelph.ca "David L Evens" writes:
> Probably because we can trace the exact method by which we observe HIV
> infecting, and then killing, cells in the lab.
I suppose it is charitable to assume you are insane. "HIV" has
never been used in any lab. The artefacts to which you refer
bear no resemblence to the mythic "HIV", which has yet to be
convincingly isolated, never mind used in lab experients!
John
--
"We have not been able to discover any good reasons why most
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." Kary B. Mullis, Nobel Laureate, chemist.
himself
um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
> himself <jo...@blackdog.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > um...@gemini.oscs.montana.edu "John Mercer" writes:
> >
> > > No, because <drum roll> HIV can go on to infect *other* cells!
> >
> > Not so far in the history of the phenomenon. Why do you believe
> > this, given that no evidence for it exists?
>
> Duesberg believes that HIV exists. He also understands that retroviral
> infections can kill a cell and infect neighboring cells.
But could you answer my question? Why do you believe "HIV" goes on
to infect other cells? People "with HIV" remain perfectly healthy,
unless they poison themselves with wildly inappropriate prescribed
toxins, so your claim is nonsense. Why do you believe these idiotic
suggestions?
> [ Lanka: ]
> > "No particle of HIV has ever been obtained pure, free of contaminants;
> > nor has a complete piece of of HIV RNA (or the transcribed DNA) ever
> > been proved to exist."
>
> Where is the proof for that negative statement, John? The second part
> has been proven false repeatedly, by the isolation of infectious genomic
> clones.
And you believe these artefacts relate in some way to the mythic
"HIV"? Are we not right to be concerned about the replacement of
scientific rationality with unsupported belief? How can such people
call themselves scientists! No wonder this vicious superstition has
been so difficult to eradicate before now.
> Don't you mean "don't make me READ"?
Sounds like high time you did some reading.
> How many manuscripts has Dr. Lanka published on anything, John?
"Never mind the science - count the pages." As I have mentioned
before, there is a huge body of literature recording the existence
of witches and the power of witchcraft. Even the fact that those
authors may have been rather more rational than "Aids scientists"
has not prevented their errors from being exposed. They probably
killed less people too, come to think about it.
You are on shaky ground calling yourself a scientist, whatever
you happen to be doing during the daytime.
John
--
"To me, the presently available evidence does not prove even that
it is an endogenous retrovirus, because what we see, the phenomena
collectively known as HIV, are non-specific. RT is non-specific;
virus-like particles are non-specific; the antigen-antibody reactions
are non-specific; PCR is non-specific. You can't even say you have
a retrovirus there."
Eleni Eleopulos, Dept. of Medical Physics, Royal Perth Hospital
Anders Jelmert
Tue, 11 Mar 97 06:56:24 GMT
himself used his phalanges to utter:
>
> Anders....@imr.no "Anders Jelmert" writes:
>
> > If you have read Wei _et al_, 1995, and Ho _et al_ 1995,
> > and still are singing Duesberg's drug use/"chemoterapeutica"
> > -no virus mantras, I assume there's not much more to discuss.
> > I responded because your original massaged spilled into t.p.a.
> > Just go on and maintain whatever virological mayhems you want
> > at the various AIDS n.groups.
>
> You are right there is nothing to discuss. This absurd piece
> of junk science has been categoricaly refuted by several real
> scientists and mathematicians. Even deeply deluded "HIV"
> believers refuse to play ball with this one, as Dr Holzman
> has shown:
>
> "Ho's calculations of cd4 turnover were always dependent on
> assumptions which were unproven and as to whether or not they
> are correct I am continuing to reserve judgement."
Dr. Holzman is of course free to ponder these issues
for any period of time he would need.
> John
> --
> "They seem to have learned like the mad hatter to believe six impossible
> things before breakfast and so one more makes no difference. One gets a
> remarkable sense of being disassociated from the real world when entering
> the realm of Aids research."
> Dr Mark Craddock, mathematician, on QC-PCR use by Ho & Shaw.
So this is perhaps what you call debunking?!!!!
...of the QC-PCR :-)
How profound.
M. Taylor
> I wrote:
> >Please describe you mean by "purified as a discrete entity". In other
> >words, what protocol do you feel is proper for purification of HIV and
> >what method do you feel is proper to detect the purified virus.
> Perhaps
> >you can cite viruses which you feel have been "purified as discrete
> >entities".
> >
> >Matt Taylor
> >
Todd Miller responded:
> I mean the standards that were set forth by the Pasteur institute.
> Or perhaps you would care to tell me why there is no EM of purified
> HIV in the literature. Can you tell me why this should be so,
> assuming you take issue with the claim about "purified as a discrete
> entity"? If it HAD been purified, wouldn't you think there would
> be an EM showing this?
I have noticed that you consistently avoid questions and lack specifics.
Please detail the "standards set forth by the Pasteur institute".
I asked you for what you believe to be an acceptable method of "purifiying
a virus". If you claim that HIV-1 has never been purified, you must be
able to state why none of the numerous purifications/methods of
detection of HIV-1 that are present in the literature are not acceptable
to you.
In terms of an EM, a simple one-minute medline search turned up dozens of
papers which contain EMs of HIV-1. Do you truly believe that an EM of
HIV-1 is some earth-shattering event that has not yet occured? EMs of
HIV-1 have been around for YEARS! Are you such a poor scientist that you
can't find this information by searching the literature? Here is one
example:
Layne, S.P. , et al.
Virology, Aug. 1992. 189(2) p. 695-714.
"Factors underlying spontaneous inactivation and susceptibility to
neutralization of human immunodeficiency virus."
Now that your criteria for showing that HIV-1 exists have been met,
perhaps you need to look deeply at the philosophy which you espouse and
re-evaluate you stance. Maybe you should stay out of a field with which
you are wholly unfamiliar; perhaps you should return to pharmacology.
Matt Taylor
James Scutero
In article <332377...@mcrcr.med.nyu.edu> holz...@mcrcr.med.nyu.edu writes:
>James Scutero wrote:
>>
>> In article <1997Mar8.130838@mcrcr6>
>> holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S. HOLZMAN) writes:
>> >
>> >In article <5fqk3l$a...@panix.com>,
jscu...@panix.com (James Scutero) writes:
>> >[...]
>> >
>> >The data are presented in Science 1992;256:1165-71. Critiqued in Nature
>> >1993; 361:691, and defended in Nature, 1993;369:24-5.
||||||||||||||||||||||
Nature, 1994;369:24-25
>> >
>> >I only have access to the science abstract which I include below.
>> >I assume you have read the articles in the Annals of Internal Medicine
>> >1996;124:250ff as well.
>> >
I have read all of your cites and I have have copies of them in
front of me.
>> >Authors
>> > Ou CY. Ciesielski CA. Myers G. Bandea CI. Luo CC. Korber BT. Mullins
>> > JI. Schochetman G. Berkelman RL. Economou AN. et al.
>> >Institution
>> > Division of HIV/AIDS, Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA 30333.
>> >Title
>> > Molecular epidemiology of HIV transmission in a dental practice [see
>> > comments].
>> >Sourc
>> > Science. 256(5060):1165-71, 1992 May 22.
>> >Abstract
>> >[...]
>> > Portions of the HIV proviral envelope gene from each of the
>> > seven patients, the dentist, and 35 HIV-infected persons from the local
>> > geographic area were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced.
>> >
>> They cherry-picked 35 people from the area and compared pieces
>> of gp160, not the whole virus. The CDC must have assumed that Acer's
>> patients never travelled out of the area: another mistake.
>>
>
>How do you know how the 35 were picked? Is it mentioned in the Science
>article?
>
Yes it is, actually. I would like to make a correction first. The
authors did not compare sections of the gp160 HIV proviral envelope gene
as I mentioned above. I assumed incorrectly that the authors were writing
about that HIV proviral envelope gene, basing my guess soley on the
abstract that you provided. After I obtained a copy of the actual paper, I
learned that the authors were writing about comparing sections of
the gp120 HIV proviral envelope gene:
"...The distribution of genetic diversity in env is not uniform as
evidenced by the presence of interspersed conserved (C) and variable (V)
domains in the external glycoprotein gp120. We focused most of our
analyses on the C2 and V3 domains..." p. 1166
"...DNA fragments of approximately 680 base pairs containing the C2, V3,
V4, C3, and V5 domains of the gp120 gene were amplified by a two-step
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) procedure on DNA from peripheral blood
mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of the dentist and the seven patients..."
p. 1166.
They did not look at the whole virus. They only looked at a small
section of its genome. This is how the authors of the above paper describe
how they collected the controls:
"...Blood specimens from the dentist, patients A through G, and 35 local
HIV-seropositive persons (local controls or LCs) were collected between
March 1990 and April 1991. Local control specimens were collected from two
HIV clinics located within 90 miles of the dental practice. Of the 35 LCs,
7 did not have symptoms related to their HIV infection, 11 were
symptomatic but had not developed AIDS, and 17 had AIDS..." p. 1166
It does not appear that these controls were infected on the same
dates claimed by Dr. Acer's seropositive patients.