AZT: A MEDICINE FROM HELL
fran...@rocketmail.com
AZT: A MEDICINE FROM HELL
By Anthony Brink
The Citizen
17 March 1998
The more ignorant, reckless and thoughtless a doctor is,
the higher his reputation soars, even amongst powerful princes.
Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466-1536), Dutch humanist.
Praise of Folly, ch. 33 (1509).
National Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma has been condemned by just about
everyone recently for her heartless decision not to make a drug called AZT
available at state expense to HIV+ pregnant women. It reduces the risk, so
it's said, of the transmission of HIV from mother to child. Politicians and
journalists from left to right have joined moist-eyed, hand-wringing doctors
pleading for the free provision of AZT to these women, their babies cruelly
deprived and doomed to die, they say.
In all the fuss about the minister's decision on AZT, no-one seems to have
stopped to ask, "So what the hell is this stuff anyway?"
In 1964, a chemist, Jerome Horowitz, synthesized a sophisticated cell poison
for the treatment for leukaemia. He called it Compound S. Its formal title is
3'-Azido-3'-deoxythymidine, or Azidothymidine for short, but everyone knows it
by its nickname, AZT.
It works like this. Thymidine is the fourth nucleotide (building block) of
DNA, the basic molecule of life. AZT is an artificial fake, a dead ringer for
thymidine. As a cell synthesizes new DNA, while preparing to divide in order
to spawn another, AZT either steals in to take the place of the real thing,
or else disrupts the delicate process by interfering with the cell's
regulation of the relative concentrations of nucleotide pools present during
DNA synthesis. That's the end of the cell line. Cell division and
replication, wrecked by the presence of the plastic imposter, comes to a
halt. Chemotherapeutic drugs such as AZT are described as DNA chain
terminators accordingly. Their effect is wholesale cell death of every type,
particularly the rapidly dividing cells of the immune system and those lining
our guts. Horowitz found that the sick immune cells went, but with so many
others, that his poison was plainly useless as a medicine. It was akin to
napalm-bombing a school to kill some roof-rats. AZT was abandoned. It wasn't
even patented. For two decades it collected dust forgotten - until the advent
of the AIDS era.
As soon as Dr Robert Gallo made his famous press-conference announcement on
23 April 1984 that his virus was the probable cause of AIDS, the race was on
to find a pharmaceutical weapon against it. The stratospheric profit
potential (since borne out) of the first to the post was on everybody's mind.
Obviously, if an already synthesized drug could be applied to the malady, it
would short- cut most of the road-race there. AZT was fished off the shelf,
along with countless other abandoned brews, and put to some in vitro tests.
It demonstrated a bright alchemical sparkle. On the basis of a reassuring but
fallacious assertion that AZT was specifically antagonistic to HIV, and a
thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally, the drug
went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into is a tale
too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them fraudulent. At
best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
were useless, save to note that many of its subjects taking AZT needed
repeated blood transfusions to keep going. Small surprise, since AZT was
designed specifically to kill blood cells; the label (bearing skull and
cross-bones) on laboratory supplies cautions, "Toxic by inhalation, in
contact with skin and if swallowed. Target organ(s): Blood, bone marrow…Wear
suitable protective clothing."
Four months after the trial started, it was prematurely called off, on an
interpretation of the provisional results deemed positive for the drug by the
trial overseer. Next, it went before the FDA, to be approved in record time
under huge pressure from gay lobbyists. Strong reservations were expressed at
the hearing about its dreadful toxicity. The chairman's vote against was
defeated. As the most poisonous drug ever licensed by the FDA, and with the
conviction apparently that the terrible new disease needed a terrible
medicine, AZT was approved for use in extreme AIDS cases only - for which you
might want to read, in cases of people very ill with their presenting AIDS
indicator disease, fungal pneumonia or what have you. It wasn't a year later,
in the orgy of stupidity that characterises the AIDS age, that AZT was
officially recommended for administration to entirely healthy people
unfortunate to ring positive to an HIV antibody test. Since the drug destroys
the very immune cells allegedly attacked by HIV, the introduction of AZT as a
treatment regimen for asymptomatic HIV positive people saw the AIDS mortality
rate among the previously well take off like a rocket. Five years and
countless deaths later, and only after the disastrous results of the Concorde
trials in Europe and St Mary trials in the US had come in, was this murderous
treatment recommendation reversed. AZT, it was found, did no good. Of course
not. On any intelligent consideration of its pharmacological action*, AZT
could never in a million years be "anti-viral", any more than arsenic could
have cured the scurvy for which it was administered to sailors, and later, to
troops in the trenches in the First World War.
In Europe and the US, HIV+ "long term survivors" quietly gather to form
groups, having sloughed off the terror of the death sentences passed on them
by their doctors. Here's the strangest thing. Without exception, what they
find they all have in common is that they all eschewed (or quickly gave up)
AZT, related nucleoside analogues like 3TC, and protease inhibitors. Some
have pondered the unthinkable: that nearly all medically managed AIDS cases,
always terminal, represent that balefully familiar phenomenon in the history
of medicine, iatrogenicide - to be killed by the cure. Their reasoning looks
less obscure when one reads the AZT package insert. To do so might tempt one
to wonder impertinently whether AZT wasn't AIDS by prescription. Indeed, such
perverse conjecture is actually confirmed in capitals: AZT use "MAY BE
ASSOCIATED WITH HEMATOLOGIC TOXICITY INCLUDING GRANULOCYTOPENIA AND SEVERE
ANEMIA" (destruction of white and red blood cells respectively), and
"PROLONGED USE OF RETROVIR HAS BEEN ASSOCIATED WITH SYMPTOMATIC MYOPATHY
(gross atrophy of muscle tissue) SIMILAR TO THAT PRODUCED BY HUMAN
IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS". As to the latter alibi, history will judge whether
the thousands of healthy HIV+ people who embarked on their metabolic poison
treatment and wasted away (as the AZT insert predicted) would have died had
they ignored doctor's orders and thrown their pills away. Here the syphilis
story is instructive.
Before the introduction of mercury and arsenic salts as a treatment for this
clap, the organic brain damage and dementia that signaled "tertiary-" or
"neuro- syphilis" was quite unknown to medicine, and then disappeared when
penicillin replaced the older decoctions. The moral is hard to miss.
One sane notion in that otherwise mad dance with death that chemotherapy for
cancer involves is that you stop before you drop. Since healthy cells are
always killed in the crossfire, the idea is to rescue the patient from going
over the cliff along with the target bad cells, by taking him off the drug in
the nick of time. That iron rule is broken in AIDS treatment. You're going to
die, you're told, so better take the bitter medicine to the bitter end, to
stave off the evil day. But as AZT heads like a heat-seeking missile for one's
immune and energy transporting cells ("target organs: blood, bone marrow",
remember?) dying of AIDS on AZT is a racing certainty. No one has ever been
cured by AZT, but it sells like hot cakes all the same, still the most widely
prescribed AIDS drug, and it reaps profits counted in billions of pounds.
Ever irrepressible as a medicine following one failure after another, in 1994
AZT was proposed as a treatment for pregnant women to prevent the
transmission of HIV from mother to child, or so it was touted. Until then, it
had been staunchly contraindicated during pregnancy. Generously underwritten
by the drug's manufacturer, the study, ACTG 076, in which this startlingly
novel use of AZT was tried, epitomises the junk-science that characterises so
much AIDS research. Of 477 babies born to HIV+ mothers in the trial, 13 in
the AZT- treated group were born antibody-positive, against 40 in the placebo
group. Apart from the lunacy of basing a decision on such feeble numbers to
dose HIV+ mothers with a cell-toxin as lethal as AZT, the underlying
assumption that an HIV+ test result predicts inevitable illness and death is
a canard of modern medicine which, surprisingly, wants for evidence. Most
babies "seroconvert" to HIV- in any event, medicated or not. The other
overarching myth is that the mere presence of antibodies in one's bloodstream
signifies an active infection. Isn't it elementary that we carry antibodies
to all sorts of pathogens that we have met and defeated? Isn't this
first-year stuff? AZT advocates confess to being completely in the dark to
account for the vaunted HIV blocking effect they claim. The reason why
vitamin A administered instead works precisely the same magic might be a
pointer to something less interesting: stressed health, thanks to chronic
poor nourishment and living conditions. As for the positive immune signals a
"short course of AZT" can generate, poison ingestion provokes an immune
reaction as the body rises to the insult. This is old hat.
Thrown to the wind have been all the safeguards set up to ensure that the
Diethylstilbestrol and Thalidomide tragedies would never happen again. Before
the hysteria of the AIDS age, women were enjoined even to avoid drinking beer
whilst pregnant. A recently reconfirmed active carcinogen, and teratogen too
- cells not killed outright are nastily maimed - AZT freely crosses the
placental barrier, so the package insert tells us cheerfully. Has anyone here
paused to question whether a growing foetus comprising rapidly dividing cells
should be exposed to a random terminator of DNA chain synthesis? Apparently
not. Certainly not the recipients of Glaxo-Wellcome's largesse from its slush
fund of millions for those who make AIDS their business in this country. Nor
the doctors carrying out bold medical experiments on the foetuses of pregnant
black women - whose unlucky dice gives them a positive registration to the
irredeemably and hopelessly non-specific "HIV antibody" test. Of course
anyone in the game crying foul, and drawing attention to the reams of
literature in the medical journals about the harm AZT causes - especially to
the young, is going to find himself sent off and defunded, for keeps. (Were
it not for the amazing collapse of critical intelligence in the AIDS age,
Glaxo-Wellcome's heart-warming contributions to "the fight against AIDS",
with its research grants and cut-prices - described by the Mail and Guardian
as a "bouquet of assistance"- might have been seen less as philanthropy than
commerce, pure and simple. As it has achieved so successfully abroad, what
better way to fix its local market than by buying off our medical
establishment and "AIDS activist" crowd with lolly aplenty to fund their
risible projects? And by baiting our government with current discounts for
its rancid wares, in order to hook longer- term contractual commitments.)
The AIDS Law Project at Wits currently busies itself with plans to sue the
minister in the High Court for an order compelling her to respect "pregnant
women's rights to AZT", and dole it out on the house. Then again, its "AIDS
activist" lawyers gratefully take junkets to AIDS conferences in holiday
cities overseas at Glaxo-Wellcome's expense. The "human rights" they pursue
might be better served were these legal crusaders to call off their foolish
case and think of ways best to bite the hand that feeds them: several actions
for loss of support have been launched against Glaxo-Wellcome in England and
the USA, arising out of the deaths of family members killed by their doctors'
prescriptions of AZT.
Although she has explained her perplexing decision on AZT on the basis of
financial considerations exclusively, saying she would rather spend her money
on "AIDS education", one day Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma will be praised
for her great prescient wisdom in keeping AZT away from pregnant women and
their foetuses. A bit like much-lauded Dr Francis Kelsey, whom Kennedy
honoured for her wise perspicacity in sparing the USA the European
Thalidomide calamity, when in truth her only notable trait was her
fortuitously inefficient foot- dragging in obstructing the start of the FDA
approval process.
It's high time that all involved in this nightmarish mess go off and do some
basic homework in the subject in which they have so much to say for
themselves.
To a colleague, his widow and his son
The author is an advocate at the Pietermaritzburg bar. For references and
elucidation: arb...@iafrica.com
*An exhaustive literature review of the pharmacology of AZT is in press for
publication in April in a special supplement to the medical journal, Current
Research and Medical Opinion. Having regard to the pharmacokinetics of AZT,
its authors conclude that the drug is incapable of exerting an anti-HIV
effect, and that its well-documented profound toxicity is readily
predictable.
Corresponding author: Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Department of Medical
Physics, Royal Perth Hospital, Wellington Street, Perth 6001, Western
Australia. E-mail: Val.T...@health.wa.gov.au
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pf
> for this clap, the organic brain damage and dementia that signaled
>"tertiary-" or "neuro- syphilis" was quite unknown to medicine, and
> then disappeared when penicillin replaced the older decoctions.
> The moral is hard to miss.
Don't use four-letter words that you don't know the definition of?
PF
Carlton Hogan
>from: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/abazt.htm
>
>AZT: A MEDICINE FROM HELL
>By Anthony Brink
>
>The Citizen
>17 March 1998
This is so wrong, so stupid, so ill-informed, it's not worth responding to.
"Trial overseers"? I think they meant an independent data and safety monitoring
board. AZT has a skull and cross bones on the bottle? So do many compounds
which are essential nutrients in small doses. Further, in ragrds to AZT:
"his poison was plainly useless as a medicine. It was akin to
>napalm-bombing a school to kill some roof-rats" - perhaps this ignoramus
could compare its' cytotoxicity to REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes
AZT look like mother's milk. Here's one of the worst passages:
>fallacious assertion that AZT was specifically antagonistic to HIV, and a
>thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally, the drug
>went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into is a tale
>too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them fraudulent. At
>best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
>were useless
1. does he doubt the peer-reviewed, published data on AZT specificity for RT?
Why? Based on what data?
2. Waving one's hands and saying that the trials were fraudulent but it
"is a tale too long to tell here" is not only not very convincing, it is
patently deceptive. Lauritsen has made these claims, but has never produced
evidence of anything but factors that would REDUCE AZT's apparent benefit -
and his crap is unverified and undocumented.
3. "data was useless"? please defend. The New England Journal of Medicine,
the United States Public health Service, the Office of AIDS research, the
Health Care Financing Administration, the Health Resources and Services
Administration, and the federal trade commission all diasgree. What does
this troll know that these groups missed?
..it goes on and on, like claiming that BW 002 participants had a
"fungal pneumonia"..Sloppy, inaccurate, biased, nonsensical.
A canonical dissident work.
Carlton
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> In article <7f874g$gop$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <fran...@rocketmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>AZT: A MEDICINE FROM HELL
>>By Anthony Brink
>>
>>The Citizen
>>17 March 1998
>
> "Trial overseers"? I think they meant an independent data and safety monitoring
> board. AZT has a skull and cross bones on the bottle? So do many compounds
> which are essential nutrients in small doses. Further, in ragrds to AZT:
> could compare its' cytotoxicity to REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes
> AZT look like mother's milk. Here's one of the worst passages:
>
>>thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally, the drug
>>went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into is a tale
>>too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them fraudulent. At
>>best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
>
> 1. does he doubt the peer-reviewed, published data on AZT specificity for RT?
> Why? Based on what data?
he is quoting claims of duesberg and lauritson, refuted here years ago by
steve harris and others. I can't say how tiresome it is to see the same
points endlessly repeated by new people.
Carlton knows this but others may not.
fran...@rocketmail.com
car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
> ...REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes AZT look like mother's milk.
hmmmm, AZT was shelved as a cancer chemotherapy drug because it was too toxic
and now you say it's like mother's milk when compared to currently used
chemotherapy treatments. your statement seems rather dubious to me unless you
are saying that current treatments are much more toxic than AZT. is that what
you are saying?
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> In article <7flep4$inr$1...@news1.tc.umn.edu>,
> car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
>> ...REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes AZT look like mother's milk.
>
> hmmmm, AZT was shelved as a cancer chemotherapy drug because it was too toxic
> and now you say it's like mother's milk when compared to currently used
> chemotherapy treatments. your statement seems rather dubious to me unless you
> are saying that current treatments are much more toxic than AZT. is that what
> you are saying?
>
Your statement ignores dosage factors. The dose of AZT used for HIV is not
what it would be if it were being used for cancer.
Carlton Hogan
>In article <7flep4$inr$1...@news1.tc.umn.edu>,
> car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
>> ...REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes AZT look like mother's milk.
>
>hmmmm, AZT was shelved as a cancer chemotherapy drug because it was too toxic
>and now you say it's like mother's milk when compared to currently used
>chemotherapy treatments. your statement seems rather dubious to me unless you
>are saying that current treatments are much more toxic than AZT. is that what
>you are saying?
First of all, AZT was shelved for lack of efficacy against cancer - not
because of toxicity (in fact, no humans had ever taken it!). And yes, what I
am saying is that AZT is not incredibly toxic compared to other therapies,
specifically cytotoxic cancer chemotherapy. Comparing AZT to vincristine,
vinblastine, etoposide, adriamycin, or common combos like mBACOD or CHOP
is just silly. Concorde showed clearly that persons can take AZT for
three years with relatively little toxicity. 3 years on CHOP would kill
just about anybody. Dissidents often use deceptive rhetoric that implies
that AZT is so toxic, it is worse than existing cancer chemotherapies
(who, after all, were not allegedly "shelved...because (they) were too toxic")
You guys distort the record, ignore AZT's high specificity for RT, and claim
that AZT is worse than chemo. If you were talking about ganciclovir, I might
agree more. But you guys are just being silly and dishonest.
Carlton
Jennifer Brandon
a cancer treatment.
Bennett
<11914-372...@newsd-224.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
Quite so. It was rejected as too toxic for use as
a cancer treatment.
I'm interested in where you heard that from. The only words I have heard on
it, aside from the paranoia from the AIDS dissidents, are from one of the
AZT developers, Dr Richard Beltz, in an email forwarded to the re-appraising
AIDS mailing list.
>I synthesized AZT in my laboratory as a NIH Senior Research Fellow
>(National Cancer Institute) in the autumn of 1961. The AZT was
>among a group of four thymidine analogs that I prepared at that
>time. AZT proved to be the most biologically active of these
>compounds. My biological tests showed (1) AZT inhibited the growth
>of E. coli and Salmonella potsdam at very low concentrations, and
>(2) cultures of E coli put on agar plates containing AZT showed
>AZT-resistant clones after a few days of incubation. Subcultures of
>these clones were completely resistant to growth inhibition by AZT.
>Further work showed that AZT had no effect on the DNA synthesis of
>T2 bacteriophage propagated in E. coli cultures. Finally, I
>prepared 1 gram of crystalline AZT and sent it to my friend Dr. Alan
>Sartorelli, Professor of Pharmacology at Yale University, for
>testing against animal cancers. It proved to be completely inactive
>in all of the test systems he employed. In my laboratory I found
>AZT incapable of inhibiting the growth of Jensen sarcoma cells in
>vitro at very high concentrations. Thus, AZT showed no activity as
>a potential anticancer drug at that time. What I have written here
>summarizes my work with AZT. I did many other experiments within
>the framework of these findings, but it consisted of filling in the
>details.
<snip>
>Sincerely yours,
>
>Richard E. Beltz, Ph.D.
>Professor of Biochemistry
>School of Medicine
>Loma Linda University,
>Loma Linda, CA 92350
Cheers
Bennett
fran...@rocketmail.com
holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S. HOLZMAN) wrote:
> In article <7fo0n1$53t$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fran...@rocketmail.com writes:
> > In article <7flep4$inr$1...@news1.tc.umn.edu>,
> > car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
> >> ...REAL cancer chemotherapy, which makes AZT look like mother's milk.
> >
> > hmmmm, AZT was shelved as a cancer chemotherapy drug because it was too
toxic
> > and now you say it's like mother's milk when compared to currently used
> > chemotherapy treatments. your statement seems rather dubious to me unless
you
> > are saying that current treatments are much more toxic than AZT. is that
what
> > you are saying?
> >
>
> what it would be if it were being used for cancer.
>
your statement ignores the length of time a person undergoes AZT treatment
for HIV vs. chemotherapy treatment for cancer. the length of time of the
former is quite often much greater than the length of time for the latter.
so, i would not refer to either one of these as 'mother's milk' when compared
to the other.
fran...@rocketmail.com
> >thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally, the drug
> >went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into is a tale
> >too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them fraudulent. At
> >best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
>
> 1. does he doubt the peer-reviewed, published data on AZT specificity for RT?
> Why? Based on what data?
are you saying that AZT is harmful to RT and only to RT?
George DeCarlo
> Jennifer Brandon wrote in message
> <11914-372...@newsd-224.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
> Quite so. It was rejected as too toxic for use as
> a cancer treatment.
>
> I'm interested in where you heard that from. The only words I have heard on
> it, aside from the paranoia from the AIDS dissidents,
AIDS Dissidents are only interested in basic science being carried out
properly. Since you introduce your question in this manner you do not seem
interested in alternative explanations. AZT is a deadly drug. Simply read the
side effects and research the side effects that were omitted from the PDR.
Also, the largest study done using AZT by the French and British clearly
demonstrated its toxicity. The drug was so toxic that controlled studies were
not possible. The study had to end when it was obvious who was getting the drug
and not the placebo. The blinded study was unmasked since only those getting
the drug were getting sicker every day they took the drug. Continuing the study
would have been unethical and murderous. But, once approved of for use in the
US it was reimbursable and not unethical to give a deadly drug.
> are from one of the
> AZT developers, Dr Richard Beltz, in an email forwarded to the re-appraising
> AIDS mailing list.
--
GEORGE DECARLO
ale...@ix.netcom.com
http://www.netcom.com/~alexdn/contents.html
http://www.netcom.com/~alexdn/hate.html
"Although Jack was no Lincoln, he was easily one of the most
charming men I've ever known. He was also, in retrospect,
one of the very worst of our presidents."
JFK from
The American Presidency by Gore Vidal
Marnix L. Bosch
> In article <7flep4$inr$1...@news1.tc.umn.edu>,
> car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
> > In article <7f874g$gop$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <fran...@rocketmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > >fallacious assertion that AZT was specifically antagonistic to HIV, and a
> > >thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally,
the drug
> > >went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into
is a tale
> > >too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them
fraudulent. At
> > >best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
> > >were useless
> >
> > 1. does he doubt the peer-reviewed, published data on AZT specificity
for RT?
> > Why? Based on what data?
>
> are you saying that AZT is harmful to RT and only to RT?
AZT will affect all DNA polymerases to some degree. Actually, it does not
affect or harm the enzyme per se, but rather the products synthesized by
the enzyme. The specificity of AZT stems from two facts: 1) viral RTs are
not 'proofreading enzymes', meaning they cannot correct errors, like
incorporation of AZT. Cellular polymerases can detect these errors and
excise wrongly incorporated bases (like AZT) and 2) all of the proviral
DNA (the product of RT activity) is 'functional', which means that every
AZT that gets incorporated somehow without stopping DNA synthesis, will
result in a mutation that will in most instances result in disruption of
the function of the gene product encoded by the gene in which the AZT
ended up. The human genome contains mostly so-called 'junk DNA', which
does not have any known function. The rare incorporation of AZT in this
'junk-DNA' is less likely to have deleterious consequences.
None of these are absolutes, and consequently there is a window of AZT
concentrations where maximal damage to the virus is coupled with minimal
damage to the cell. This is not unique to AZT.
Marnix Bosch
Marnix L. Bosch
<ale...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> Bennett wrote:
>
> > Jennifer Brandon wrote in message
> > <11914-372...@newsd-224.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
> > Quite so. It was rejected as too toxic for use as
> > a cancer treatment.
> >
> > I'm interested in where you heard that from. The only words I have heard on
> > it, aside from the paranoia from the AIDS dissidents,
>
> AIDS Dissidents are only interested in basic science being carried out
> properly. Since you introduce your question in this manner you do not seem
> interested in alternative explanations. AZT is a deadly drug. Simply
read the
> side effects and research the side effects that were omitted from the PDR.
> Also, the largest study done using AZT by the French and British clearly
> demonstrated its toxicity. The drug was so toxic that controlled studies were
> not possible. The study had to end when it was obvious who was getting
the drug
> and not the placebo. The blinded study was unmasked since only those getting
> the drug were getting sicker every day they took the drug. Continuing
the study
> would have been unethical and murderous.
If you are referring to the Concorde study, you are more confused than I
thought. If not, please inform us what you're talking about.
Marnix Bosch
Bennett
>
>AIDS Dissidents are only interested in basic science being carried out
>properly. Since you introduce your question in this manner you do not seem
>interested in alternative explanations. AZT is a deadly drug. Simply read
the
>side effects and research the side effects that were omitted from the PDR.
>Also, the largest study done using AZT by the French and British clearly
>demonstrated its toxicity.
If you could cite this study it might help.
Here's something interesting in the meantime.
Drug A side FX
Fever
Joint pains
Rashes
Anaphylactic shock
CNS disorders
Haemolytic anaemia
Interstitial nephritis
Neutropenia
Thrombocytopenia
Coagulation disorders
Paraesthesia
Diarrhoea
Drug B side FX
Neutropenia
leucopenia
rash
fever
paraesthesia
thrombocytopenia
CNS disorders
nausea
insomnia
liver disorders
(Source BNF Sept 1998)
Drug A is Penicillin V - perhaps the most commonly prescribed antibiotic for
bacterial throat infections.
Drug B is AZT
Spot the difference.
Cheers
Bennett
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> Jennifer Brandon wrote in message
> <11914-372...@newsd-224.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
> Quite so. It was rejected as too toxic for use as
> a cancer treatment.
>
>
> I'm interested in where you heard that from. The only words I have heard on
> AZT developers, Dr Richard Beltz, in an email forwarded to the re-appraising
> AIDS mailing list.
>
And another canard bites the dust. Thanks bennett, save it for reposting as
I am sure we'll see this "duck" again.
fred
holz...@mcrcr6.med.nyu.edu (ROBERT S. HOLZMAN) wrote:
>In article <373147ad...@news.primenet.com>, fred...@primenet.com (fred) writes:
>>>
>>>First of all, AZT was shelved for lack of efficacy against cancer - not
>>>because of toxicity (in fact, no humans had ever taken it!).
>>
>> AZT was claimed to be ineffective in the archaic cancer
>> assays of the 1960's.
>>
>> AZT belongs to a class of drugs known for their toxicity.
>>
>> When a 'problem' couldn't be found for the AZT 'solution' they
>> hoped to patent, then they shelved it.
>>
>> AZT could not be tested for mutagenicity by the standard
>> Ames test -- the reason: it killed the bacteria. Funny thing
>> is that nobody would have dreamed to call AZT an "antibiotic" !
>>
>
>Glad you agree that franmerk was wrong on the toxicity issue. As you say, it
>was shelved because 1960 assays, archaic or not, demonstrated lack of efficacy.
>
>We all agree azt is toxic, the issue was why it never achieved use as an
>anticancer agent.
Correct -- as far as I know AZT never got far enough
in the evaluation process to have the opportunity for
rejection on the basis of toxicity -- and that would apply
for the time prior to FDA approval. AZT was
approved for political reasons and "compassionate" use
rather than on the basis of efficacy and safety -- the
FDA simply capitulated to the DUMB treatment activist
reactionaries of the late 1980s who substituted screeching
and "storming the FDA" tactics in place of reason.
Thanks to the undiscovered Divas of treatment activism
along with the outrageous fraud in the early pre-approval
trials (e.g. ACTG016), AZT became the ad hoc
"Standard of Care", thus marking the false precedent
against which all further "me too" drugs would be
developed and compared on the basis of politics
and patentability rather than science (science never
had a chance in AIDS OR cancer research, which
are nearly identical in terms of players, treatments,
bribes, hidden agendas, lies and deception).
That's how AIDS Inc. squandered huge financial and human
resources for well over a decade, only to dead-end as
failure -- as predicted by those of us who saw the political
nature of Junque Science early on. The same pattern of
decades of dead-end "schools of thought" in cancer research
were transferred over to HIV "research" along with the
idiot cancer researchers who ended the late 1970s in
failure -- they were the first ones to jump over to research
the emerging AIDS epidemic as many were looking for work.
Paul Volberding is a refugee from the failed War on Cancer
(the Junque scientists never had any problem pulling
the wool over the eyes of the science-ignorant politicians
-- no different than today).
What is noteworthy about Volberding (long time Director of the
San Francisco Hospital AIDS Program) has nothing to
do with his long list of financial conflicts of interest and
pharmaceutical bribe donors (most appeared in obscure
publications of low distribution). What reveals
Volberding's true agenda is obvious from a poster on his
office wall:
The Grateful Dead.
Ironic, isn't it? Volberding played a key role in authoring the
Standard of Care in AIDS"treatment" from day #1 (he
also ran the fraudulent ACTG019 etc. and has been
an editor for a major AIDS journal).
As we all know, Volberding's highly expensive "treatments"
arrived with great fanfare that telegraphed the unambiguous
message of a "possible" cure. Even though these drugs
have yet to save anyone, nearly ALL of his now-dead
patients just LOVED him for it -- even to their very last breath.
Thus they ARE the "grateful dead".
fred
fred
Gary Stein
HAART you frigging moron.
By the way I am on of those PWA's still alive due to HARRT.
Here's what they did for me tell me what caused this if it wasn't HARRT
T-Cell 64-230
Viral Load 1,500,000 to 2,300
Had server wasting have now gained 60 pounds back
Had PCP 3 times, no OI's since starting HARRT 2.5 years ago
Do you need more you jerk.
Gary Stein
fred <fred...@primenet.com> wrote in message
news:372d029...@news.primenet.com...
GMCarter
<ges...@bellatlantic.net> wrote:
>How then do you explain the falling mortality rates for those people on
>HAART you frigging moron.
>By the way I am on of those PWA's still alive due to HARRT.
>Here's what they did for me tell me what caused this if it wasn't HARRT
>T-Cell 64-230
>Viral Load 1,500,000 to 2,300
>Had server wasting have now gained 60 pounds back
>Had PCP 3 times, no OI's since starting HARRT 2.5 years ago
>Do you need more you jerk.
>Gary Stein
Gary--
Fred, a/k/a the Frod Show, is the kind of guy who can believe multiple
things at his convenience and ignore evidence and data contrary to his
closely held beliefs. For example, he doesn't perceive the profound
cognitive dissonance in defending the so-called "dissidents" despite
the fact he believes HIV exists and caues AIDS. He passes himself off
as almost having a brain, but it quickly becomes apparent that it has
many holes in it. In short, he's just an asshole. Pay him no mind.
George Mary Carter
fran...@rocketmail.com
that AZT is specific for it is no problem, right? is RT found in humans always
from a retrovirus?
In article <marnix-3004...@bosch4.pabio.washington.edu>,
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Marnix L. Bosch
> so, as long as RT found in humans is always from a retrovirus, then the fact
> that AZT is specific for it is no problem, right?
Curious turn of phrase. I'm not sure what you mean. Generally, the greater
the specificity of an agent, the less 'problems' (i.e. side effects) one
will see.
> is RT found in humans always
> from a retrovirus?
Supposedly. Could be from an endogenous retrovirus. There is no known RT
encoded in the human genome (except from endogenous retroviruses) and
there is no known function for RT in normal human cells (but there are a
few 'intronless genes', that were supposedly created through a reverse
transcription event in the distant past; if they are functional, you could
come up with a role for reverse transcription in human evolution, but I
doubt whether that's the scale you meant. We're constantly interfering
with evolution anyways. Survival of the fittest has taken on a whole new
meaning in countries with privatized health care and education).
Sorry for the wandering of the mind ..
Marnix Bosch
> In article <marnix-3004...@bosch4.pabio.washington.edu>,
> mar...@u.washington.edu (Marnix L. Bosch) wrote:
> > In article <7gcu4g$88l$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fran...@rocketmail.com wrote:
> >
> > > are you saying that AZT is harmful to RT and only to RT?
> >
> > AZT will affect all DNA polymerases to some degree. Actually, it does not
> > affect or harm the enzyme per se, but rather the products synthesized by
> > the enzyme. The specificity of AZT stems from two facts: 1) viral RTs are
> > not 'proofreading enzymes', meaning they cannot correct errors, like
> > incorporation of AZT. Cellular polymerases can detect these errors and
> > excise wrongly incorporated bases (like AZT) and 2) all of the proviral
> > DNA (the product of RT activity) is 'functional', which means that every
> > AZT that gets incorporated somehow without stopping DNA synthesis, will
> > result in a mutation that will in most instances result in disruption of
> > the function of the gene product encoded by the gene in which the AZT
> > ended up. The human genome contains mostly so-called 'junk DNA', which
> > does not have any known function. The rare incorporation of AZT in this
> > 'junk-DNA' is less likely to have deleterious consequences.
> >
> > None of these are absolutes, and consequently there is a window of AZT
> > concentrations where maximal damage to the virus is coupled with minimal
> > damage to the cell. This is not unique to AZT.
> >
> > Marnix Bosch
>
Carlton Hogan
>> <11914-372...@newsd-224.iap.bryant.webtv.net>...
>> Quite so. It was rejected as too toxic for use as
>> a cancer treatment.
>>
>> I'm interested in where you heard that from. The only words I have heard on
>> it, aside from the paranoia from the AIDS dissidents,
>
>properly. Since you introduce your question in this manner you do not seem
>interested in alternative explanations. AZT is a deadly drug. Simply read the
>side effects and research the side effects that were omitted from the PDR.
>Also, the largest study done using AZT by the French and British clearly
>not possible.
Once again, you prove yourself completely ignorant of the facts, yet oh-so
-willing to embarrass yourself by mis-stating them.
I presume you are talking about Concorde, the very large English,
French, and Irish study of immediate vs. deferred AZT is asymptomatics.
This study is the strongest proof ever that AZT is not remarkably toxic.
Persons taking AZT did exactly as well as those not taking it. Don't
believe me/ read the paper.
The study had to end when it was obvious who was getting the drug
>and not the placebo.
This study was not terminated early. I think you are confusing it
with virusmyth-sponsored distortions of fact in regard to BW 002, a major AZT
trial.
> The blinded study was unmasked since only those getting
>the drug were getting sicker every day they took the drug.
Once again: read the paper. This is not what happened. There isn't even a
question as to whether this happened. It didn't. You are confusing
virusmyth propaganda about various different trials.
>Continuing the study
>would have been unethical and murderous. But, once approved of for use in the
>US it was reimbursable and not unethical to give a deadly drug.
Considering how 100% wrong about Concorde you are, can you give a reason
why anyone should ever take you seriously again?
Carlton
__________________________________________________________________________
| |
| Carlton Hogan (car...@gopher.ccbr.umn.edu) |
| Community Programs for Clinical Research on AIDS Statistical Center |
| Coordinating Center for Biometric Research |
| Division of Biostatistics, School of Public Health |
| University of Minnesota http://www.biostat.umn.edu/~carlton |
| 2221 University Ave SE, Suite 200 Voice: (612) 626 8899 |
| Minneapolis MN 55414 FAX: (612) 626 8892 |
|________________________________________________________________________|
Carlton Hogan
> car...@walleye.ccbr.umn.edu (Carlton Hogan) wrote:
>> In article <7f874g$gop$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, <fran...@rocketmail.com>
>wrote:
>>
>> >thousand times more toxic to the latter than human cells generally, the drug
>> >went to clinical trials. The chaos that the trials degenerated into is a tale
>> >too long to tell here. It wouldn't be extravagant to call them fraudulent. At
>> >best, they were so incompetently staged that the data gathered under them
>>
>> 1. does he doubt the peer-reviewed, published data on AZT specificity for RT?
>> Why? Based on what data?
>
Harmful to RT? No. inhibitory is the word. And no, that's NOT what
specificity means. Specificity means that nucleosides are VERY preferentially
taken up by RT as compared to endogenous enzymes.
Any references refuting this (or containing your new understanding of
the proper definitions of RT, inhibitory, or specificity) will be
welcomed.
Carlton
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> so, as long as RT found in humans is always from a retrovirus, then the fact
> from a retrovirus?
>
pretty much. Some years ago todd miller went on for some time about
endogenous retroviruses and how they could be the soure of RT, confusing
culture test results.
I looked up the papers on their isolation from
placenta. You can get them to grow out and measure the RT but (1) the RT
appears in cultures, not in vivo, and, (2) endogenous retroviral RT is
distinct from HIV RT in its substrate and ion preferences.
Bennett
There is a human encoded RT enzyme. It is part of the telomerase complex of
proteins and RNA's that maintain the telomeres at the end of all our
chromosomes. In most cells they're inactive and the chromosomes degrade
slightly with each division. After ~40-50 divisions they stop. They just
arrest and become senescent. In cells where telomerase is active divisions
occur for longer (spermatocytes, some stem cells I think). The disruption
of the telomerase control of cell division is an ESSENTIAL step for
immortalisation of EVERY human cell culture investigated to date. It's
hypothesised that active telomerase will lead to cancer progression
(supported by some evidence, but not all malignant cancers show mutations
AFAIK) and it's also touted by some as an anti-aging enzyme. Switch it on
and cells never stop replacing themselves. No more skin wrinkles... Of
course we'd all go batty as our neurones don't divide anyway, and die a
dribbling vegetable riddled with cancers. Nice.
The telomerase does not affect and coding regions of the genome. That's the
point of the telomeres - they can degrade slightly without affecting the
fitness of the cell, and generally stop dividing well before genes might get
mangled during replication. You could even argue that if AZT affected
telomerase it would stop cells _early_ and prevent cancerous progression...
;-)
Seriously, the main effects of AZT, well documented, seem to be on
mitochondrial activity, which AFAIK use their own DNA polymerase, AZT finds
itself a slightly better substrate than with the cellular DNA polymerase. I
don't know if any studies have been done comparing it's kinetics with that
of RT, nor whether the telomerase RT is similar to HIV RT. It's possible
since study of RT sequences suggests that they all evolved from a common
gene sometime way back when...
Most interestingly, the placental RV's are immunosuppressive!!!!!! They're
now part of the hypotheses surrounding how the foetus (essentially a
transplanted organ, genetically speaking) survives in utero without
rejection. While they are not as complex as HIV, nor are they even related,
their envelope gp120 proteins affect cell function much like those of HIV.
FWIW the only HIV related sequence in the human genome that I found had real
homology to HIV was a segment (only 142 bases) from the gp41 segment of env.
I picked that up from a BLAST search using HIV against the entire human
database to date, and also digging through pubmed. Since these segments
were detected by low stringency southern genomic blots I think we can rule
out any other HIV-related sequences turning up.
Cheers
Bennett (who's been a busy little beaver of late ;-)
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> ROBERT S. HOLZMAN wrote in message ...
>>In article <7gnfpp$nie$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fran...@rocketmail.com
> writes:
>>> so, as long as RT found in humans is always from a retrovirus, then the
> fact
>>> that AZT is specific for it is no problem, right? is RT found in humans
> always
>>> from a retrovirus?
>>>
>>
>>pretty much. Some years ago todd miller went on for some time about
>>endogenous retroviruses and how they could be the soure of RT, confusing
>>culture test results.
>>
>>I looked up the papers on their isolation from
>>placenta. You can get them to grow out and measure the RT but (1) the RT
>>appears in cultures, not in vivo, and, (2) endogenous retroviral RT is
>>distinct from HIV RT in its substrate and ion preferences.
>>
>
> There is a human encoded RT enzyme. It is part of the telomerase complex of
> proteins and RNA's that maintain the telomeres at the end of all our
> chromosomes.
Interesting, but does measurable RT appear in culture superantants of
immortalized cells?. It doesn't seem to, based on standard HIV culture
controls. Is it identifiable in situ? The issue we are discussing is whether
or not the appearance of RT in culture supernatants can be taken as evidence
of the presence of a retrovirus. I just posted Montagnier's comments in an
interview in which he claimed "yes". So far as I know that is the correct
answer. Did you find anything to contradict it?
Bennett
>
>immortalized cells?. It doesn't seem to, based on standard HIV culture
>controls. Is it identifiable in situ? The issue we are discussing is
whether
>or not the appearance of RT in culture supernatants can be taken as
evidence
>of the presence of a retrovirus. I just posted Montagnier's comments in an
>interview in which he claimed "yes". So far as I know that is the correct
>answer. Did you find anything to contradict it?
>
>
Looking at the early data, and the fact that telomerase was discovered so
recently, it would seem that the RT activity is small, and only detectable
with the most sensitive assays. Even RT in RV cultures can be difficult to
detect - hence the shift away from it's use to that of p24 detection in the
"HIV culture" papers (I've been digging a few up, I think Jackson et al, J
Clin Mole Bio 1988 was the first to find an improvement by using p24 instead
of RT assays - they went up from ~67% detection to 100% detection of HIV in
cultures from AIDS patients, with no false positives).
I have heard some dissidents touting the evidence that RT activity is found
in normal spermatogenesis, which of course it is from the telomerase, so
maybe the earlier methods could detect endogenous RT if it was in sufficient
quantity.
Certainly I was only told that telomerase was an absolute requirement for
culture immortalisation of human cells last year - and I think there was a
paper published to that effect the same year from the university lab up the
road, but I didn't get a ref to follow up. I think they had found mutations
in the telomerase complex (ie the RT and/or it's accompanying proteins) in
EVERY cancer they studied - I'm not sure about that though. Looking through
pubmed got me this, which sums up current opinion fairly well in the
abstract, as well as providing a bit of new data. If the RT activity was
easy to spot we'd have known about it long ago - as it was I was very
surprised to be told that we had an RT enzyme in our genome - I had
previously always thought of RT as RV-specific.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1998 Dec 8;95(25):14723-8
Dissociation among in vitro telomerase activity, telomere maintenance, and
cellular immortalization.
Counter CM, Hahn WC, Wei W, Caddle SD, Beijersbergen RL, Lansdorp PM, Sedivy
JM, Weinberg RA
The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, Department of Biology,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
The immortalization of human cells is a critical step during tumorigenesis.
In vitro, normal human somatic cells must overcome two proliferative
blockades, senescence and crisis, to become immortal. Transformation with
viral oncogenes extends the life span of human cells beyond senescence. Such
transformed cells eventually succumb to crisis, a period of widespread
cellular death that has been proposed to be the result of telomeric
shortening. We now show that ectopic expression of the telomerase catalytic
subunit (human telomerase reverse transcriptase or hTERT) and subsequent
activation of telomerase can allow postsenescent cells to proliferate beyond
crisis, the last known proliferative blockade to cellular immortality.
Moreover, we demonstrate that alteration of the carboxyl terminus of human
telomerase reverse transcriptase does not affect telomerase enzymatic
activity but impedes the ability of this enzyme to maintain telomeres.
Telomerase-positive cells expressing this mutant enzyme fail to undergo
immortalization, further tightening the connection between telomere
maintenance and immortalization.
PMID: 9843956, UI: 99061934
Hope this interesting
Cheers
Bennett
ICQ: 14197406
(swap cam for spam to reply via email)
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> ROBERT S. HOLZMAN wrote in message ...
>>
>>Interesting, but does measurable RT appear in culture superantants of
>>immortalized cells?. It doesn't seem to, based on standard HIV culture
>>controls. Is it identifiable in situ? The issue we are discussing is
> whether
>>or not the appearance of RT in culture supernatants can be taken as
> evidence
>>of the presence of a retrovirus. I just posted Montagnier's comments in an
>>interview in which he claimed "yes". So far as I know that is the correct
>>answer. Did you find anything to contradict it?
>>
>>
>
> Looking at the early data, and the fact that telomerase was discovered so
> recently, it would seem that the RT activity is small, and only detectable
> with the most sensitive assays. Even RT in RV cultures can be difficult to
> detect - hence the shift away from it's use to that of p24 detection in the
> "HIV culture" papers (I've been digging a few up, I think Jackson et al, J
> Clin Mole Bio 1988 was the first to find an improvement by using p24 instead
> of RT assays - they went up from ~67% detection to 100% detection of HIV in
> cultures from AIDS patients, with no false positives).
>
I Think this is a function of when you look at the cultures, early or late.
P24 has often been used to confirm that the RT activity is from HIV. I can't
locate the reference you gave AIDS line doesn't contain "Journal of Clinical
and Molecular...." can you supply more title or Jacksons full name?
Thanks for the followup.
Bennett
>
>I Think this is a function of when you look at the cultures, early or late.
>P24 has often been used to confirm that the RT activity is from HIV. I
can't
>locate the reference you gave AIDS line doesn't contain "Journal of
Clinical
>and Molecular...." can you supply more title or Jacksons full name?
>
Woops. Got the journal _nearly_ right :o)
J Clin Microbiol 1988 Jul;26(7):1416-8
Rapid and sensitive viral culture method for human immunodeficiency virus
type 1.
Jackson JB, Coombs RW, Sannerud K, Rhame FS, Balfour HH Jr
And later in 1990 with more cases and controls
J Clin Microbiol 1990 Jan;28(1):16-9
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 detected in all seropositive symptomatic
and asymptomatic individuals.
Jackson JB, Kwok SY, Sninsky JJ, Hopsicker JS, Sannerud KJ, Rhame FS, Henry
K, Simpson M, Balfour HH Jr
>Thanks for the followup.
Anytime
Cheers
Bennett
ROBERT S. HOLZMAN
> ROBERT S. HOLZMAN wrote in message ...
>
> Rapid and sensitive viral culture method for human immunodeficiency virus
> type 1.
> Jackson JB, Coombs RW, Sannerud K, Rhame FS, Balfour HH Jr
>
Thanks again. cant link to full text on this so I cant verify my belief that
it is time of sampling that makes p24 superior to RT. Abstract does not
contain the info will need to go to
library and who knows when I will get to it?
It is a small, peripheral issue anyway.
the second citation is a gem and I post the abstract below...
Authors |
Jackson JB. Kwok SY. Sninsky JJ. Hopsicker JS. Sannerud KJ. Rhame FS.
Henry K. Simpson M. Balfour HH Jr.
Institution
Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology, University of Minnesota
Medical School, Minneapolis 55455.
Title
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 detected in all seropositive
symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals.
Source
Journal of Clinical Microbiology. 28(1):16-9, 1990 Jan.
Abstract |
Between February 1987 and October 1988, peripheral mononuclear blood cells
(PBMC) from 409 adult individuals antibody positive by Western
(immuno-)blot for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) (56 acquired +
immunodeficiency syndrome [AIDS] patients, 88 patients with AIDS-related
complex, and 265 asymptomatic individuals) were consecutively cultured for
HIV-1 or tested for the presence of HIV-1 DNA sequences by a polymerase
chain reaction assay (PCR). We isolated HIV-1 or detected HIV-1 DNA
sequences from the PBMC of all 409 HIV-1 antibody-positive individuals.
None of 131 healthy HIV-1 antibody-negative individuals were HIV-1 culture
positive, nor were HIV-1 DNA sequences detected by PCR in the blood
specimens of 43 seronegative individuals. In addition, HIV-1 PCR and HIV-1
culture were compared in testing the PBMC of 59 HIV-1 antibody-positive
and 20 HIV-1 antibody-negative hemophiliacs. Both methods were found to
have sensitivities and specificities of at least 97 and 100%,
respectively. In contrast, the sensitivities of serum HIV-1 antigen
testing in AIDS patients and asymptomatic seropositive patients were 42
and 17%, respectively. Our ability to directly demonstrate HIV-1 infection
in all HIV-1 antibody-positive individuals provides definitive support
that HIV-1 antibody positivity is associated with present HIV-1 infection.
Moreover, the sensitivities and specificities of PCR and culture for the
detection of HIV-1 appear to be equivalent, and both methods are superior
to testing for HIV-1 antigen in serum for the direct detection of HIV-1.
(Abstract by: Author)