HIV and the Cause of AIDS

[ScottXSI]

http://ourcivilisation.com/aids/cause/index.htm
http://ourcivilisation.com/aids/hivexist/index.htm
http://ourcivilisation.com/aids/chap1.htm
http://ourcivilisation.com/aids/stop/index.htm

I've been reading through these article's and they seem to me like utter ********, but then again I dont know much about the disease.

Anyone with more medical knowledge care to chime in? :)

[Cavemonster]

All he needs to do is publish a peer reviewed study showing a significant number of patients with AIDS who are HOV negative. If the HIV deniers are correct, this should be a snap.
We're waiting...

[Skeptic Ginger]

Don't confuse Scott, Cavemonster. That isn't even true. If someone were to discover there was a separate cause for AIDS, it would in no way disprove the known cause of HIV.

There have been nutjob HIV deniers since the causative agent for AIDS was discovered. Some of them are people who are in denial that they are infected. One famous case of that of Christine Maggiore (http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=449) who recently died of AIDS. She refused to have her children tested or treated despite the fact treatment would have saved her life and was critical if the kids were infected.

There's also Dr Douchebag (http://www.aidstruth.org/documents/Malignant-Narcissism.pdf) who, like a number of other scientists who suffer from the mental disorder of bizarre thinking, has been claiming drug use causes AIDS, not the HIV virus.


This site (http://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/AIDS/) has a wealth of evidence about HIV-AIDS and an extensive debunking of the HIV denialists.

[ScottXSI]

Well after reading a few pages on HIV denialism, it seems another case of un-proven theories tied to underlying politcal bias and big pharma conspiracy.
These people appear to be working to shoe-horn evidence into a conclusion they have already made. Much like creationists really

Fantastic :p


Skeptigirl - thanks for the links, I had actually just read that article about Christine Maggiore just before I found your post.
I'll have to get stuck into that last link about pseudo science. :)

[Brian-M]

It's very simple...

HIV is a virus that attacks the immune system.
AIDS is a disorder of the immune system.

We know from medical research that...


Almost everyone with HIV later develops AIDS.
Few people without HIV ever develop AIDS.

Now, I know that this isn't proper scientific procedure... but I'm sensing some kind of connection between the two... I think it's something called cause and effect. :)

Looking at the first link on the OP....

6. AIDS in Africa results from malnutrition, the consequent release of endogenous cortisol, and opportunistic diseases. Atrophy in the thymus and lymphoid tissue in people suffering from malnutrition has been known since 1925; malnutrition also impairs T cells functions. Feeding an adequate diet reverses these changes. It cures AIDS! Thymus size in malnourished children increased from 20% of normal to 107% of normal, after nine weeks of feeding.

9. Damage to the immune system is rapidly reversible after removal of the true insulting agent or treatment of the factual causes. Examples:

a) The CD4+ T cells of 1,075 HIV-positive pregnant women increased from 426/uL to 596/uL in six months on a balanced diet. This also improved the outcome of their pregnancies; and


With all the millions of dollars spent on trying to cure AIDS, do you really think that researchers in poorer countries have never bothered to feed their patients properly?

ETA

But I'm not a doctor, so what could I know?

[shadron]

But I'm not a doctor, so what could I know?

Ah, but if you were a doctor, you'd be a member in good standing of the medical establishment. No good going there.

[Delvo]

Few people without HIV ever develop AIDS.Why not none?

[kellyb]

Why not none?

It actually is none.

[ScottXSI]

^ KellyB - this is something I have been wondering for a while, if there have been any cases of AIDs were there has been no trace of HIV.
You say no, got any relevant links?

[Travis]

There are other conditions that can cause catastrophic immunocomprisation that are very similar to AIDS. That doesn't mean HIV isn't the cause of what is classically termed AIDS though.

[Skeptic Ginger]

^ KellyB - this is something I have been wondering for a while, if there have been any cases of AIDs were there has been no trace of HIV.
You say no, got any relevant links?

There are a couple other immune deficiency syndromes. We don't call them AIDS, however.


With HIV the research is at the intricate level of the genome and the molecular actions that cause AIDS. It's not some trial and error study that confirmed the viral cause of AIDS. We study HIV including the specific mechanisms by which it enters the cells, replicates, and causes cell death. That's why there has been such progress in anti-HIV drugs. And it is sad that HIV deniers have no clue how clearly we understand this virus.

[ScottXSI]

^ Thanks for clarifying that. :)

[ponderingturtle]

Why not none?

Depends on how you define aids. There are people with compromised immune systems for all kinds of reasons.

[drkitten]

Depends on how you define aids. There are people with compromised immune systems for all kinds of reasons.

There are also test mistakes. It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere, someone, got an incompetent tech who used the wrong reagent and got a false negative.

[ponderingturtle]

There are also test mistakes. It wouldn't surprise me if somewhere, someone, got an incompetent tech who used the wrong reagent and got a false negative.

Sure. But if you go by a rigid definition of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. By those words any environmental cause of a destroyed immune system could count.

[Travis]

I think the "Acquired" part pretty much necessitates a pathogen induced immune system deficiency.

[Vic Vega]

Depends on how you define aids. There are people with compromised immune systems for all kinds of reasons.

Could you please provide us an example where a disease of the immune system is called AIDS when is not caused by HIV?

Personally, I've never seen it.

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think the "Acquired" part pretty much necessitates a pathogen induced immune system deficiency.Toxins and unknown etiologies are also possible. But currently, I don't know of any medical providers who would refer to any acquired immunodeficiency that wasn't caused by HIV as AIDS. Prior to the HIV-AIDS pandemic, yes, but not now.

When AIDS was first recognized, it was called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome because it presented as numerous different opportunistic infections. The immune system deficiency was recognized but it wasn't clearly defined. Then, just having a low white blood cell count really wasn't a clear description of how the immune system was failing. Now we have a clear picture of exactly what in the immune system is going wrong.

My point is, AIDS was a descriptive label, but not really a disease name. Now it is the disease name. So we aren't likely now to use the descriptive label for non-HIV diseases. You would likely see a label of secondary immunodeficiency as opposed to primary (not acquired), or just immunodeficiency from 'X' such as malnutrition or chemotherapy for example.

[Dr. Tobias Fünke]

Also, the immune deficiency caused by HIV often manifests itself through rather (for want of a better word) specific infections.
People who suffer a breakdown of their immune system due to chemotherapy, for example, do not regularly get P.carinii-pneumonia or Herpes-encephalitis.

[ponderingturtle]

Could you please provide us an example where a disease of the immune system is called AIDS when is not caused by HIV?

Personally, I've never seen it.

Sure, but it is a matter of semantics. The words that make up AIDS do not specify HIV, just aquired in some fashion. Now sure it is not used in general in this fashion, but it would not really be wrong to do so.

[JJM]

I cut/pasted and lost all control over formatting. The NIH (probably CDC, too) have online information such as:

The Evidence That HIV Causes AIDS

http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm

[Brian-M]

Why not none?


I was tempted to say that, but I decided on more cautious wording. On a site like this, if I claimed that no-one ever develops AIDS without first being infected by HIV, someone would ask me to back up that claim... and I can't. :)

As you can see, people on this thread are already arguing about the exact definition of AIDS, and without a clear definition specific claims can be hard to substantiate.

[Eos of the Eons]

Also, the immune deficiency caused by HIV often manifests itself through rather (for want of a better word) specific infections.
People who suffer a breakdown of their immune system due to chemotherapy, for example, do not regularly get P.carinii-pneumonia or Herpes-encephalitis.
And how long is the breakdown of the immune system due to chemo? It's not as prolonged compared to the way actively reproducing HIV taking down your T-cells is.