Why do some think that HIV do NOT cause AIDS?

Answer 1

It can be wishful thinking on the part of people that want to feel that they can have unprotected sex without worrying about it (understandable, for sure). There is also a creepy aspect to this where some denialists appear to actually be most interested in preying on young people and targeting their propaganda toward them specifically.

It can be bigotry on the part of people who hate gay men and want to blame them for the disease (Harvey Bialy and Claus Jensen, two friends of Peter Duesberg and leading proponents of AIDS denial, have both recently called a gay man who ostensibly shares their beliefs a "******" in public emails). Duesberg celebrated a gay man called Raphael Lombardo in his book "Inventing the AIDS Virus," including in the book a long letter Lombardo sent to him explaining that he never used recreational or antiviral drugs and was not sick despite being HIV positive.

When Duesberg was later told that Lombardo had died of AIDS less than a year after the book was published, he simply said that Lombardo must have been lying and had used recreational drugs after all. Even when Lombardo's sister wrote to Duesberg and told him she knew for a fact Lombardo had never used drugs, he wrote back to her saying that she must be wrong, too.

It can be bigotry on the part of people that hate the populations most affected by AIDS and simply want them to die and not receive treatment.

It can be denial on the part of infected individuals who want to believe that HIV is harmless (understandable, too). Jack Levine was someone like this, when he got sick and began to doubt AIDS denial his fellow denialists viciously turned on him . This all happened on the virusmyth message board, if you visit the website you'll notice they don't have a messageboard anymore - it was taken down by the website owner because he didn't want anybody to be able to see how Jack Levine was treated. You can read Jack's story here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060221022949/http://www.virusscience.org/hiv/aids/jack_levine.htm

It can be a misguided mix of ignorance - particular of immunology, which is a complex science - and an understandable distrust of the Government and big corporations. Weirdly though, people who specialize in the study of immunology actually generally don't make the big bucks (compared to virologists, pharmacologists, biochemists, etc. who work more specifically on drug therapies). Only a few big pharma companies still maintain vaccine programs because mostly they'd prefer to sell a drug someone has to take every day than a preventive or therapeutic vaccine.

So the vast majority immunologists aren't in - or anywhere near, really - the pocket of big pharma, yet how many working immunologists do you know of that argue HIV doesn't cause AIDS? I don't know of any. They understand how compromising what's called immunological "memory" leads to the diseases that people with AIDS are at risk for - these are pathogens that we're almost all infected with that our immune system keeps in check. When HIV compromises immunological memory, these pathogens can escape the control of the immune system and cause disease. If you're tempted to believe the lies told by AIDS denialists, find an immunologist and ask them about it. Better yet, see if you can find one active T cell immunologist who thinks HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

Added note:

That list someone just posted is an unfunny joke. Let me take just two examples:

Walter Gilbert - a Nobel prize winner, he briefly expressed skepticism in the late 80s (although his company was working on a candidate HIV treatment called soluble CD4 at the same time). He now believes HIV causes AIDS. In his own words:

"I am afraid that those comments go back to the late 80's. At that time I was a skeptic--the argument based on Koch's postulates to try to distinguish between cause and association. However, even during that time we had several AIDS projects going within Biogen--one to try to stimulate T-independent B-cell activation (a pet approach of mine), another to develop soluble CD4--to use as an antiviral agent. That second project got to clinical trials (and failed because the virus in patients didn't have the high affinity for CD4 that the lab-grown virus had.)

Today I would regard the success of the many antiviral agents which lower the virus titers (to be expected) and also resolve the failure of the immune system (only expected if the virus is the cause of the failure) as a reasonable proof of the causation argument.

yours truly

Walter Gilbert"

And Joe Sonnabend, MD. Here is a recent interview with him about his experience of treating people with HIV and AIDS:

http://www.gmhc.org/health/treatment/ti/ti1911.html#3

- That should give you a clue about the credibility of that list.

Answer 2

it incredibly is in simple terms through expansions of the AIDS definition that the variety of latest AIDS situations has grown. The definition of AIDS in u . s . has been extra effective thrice because of the fact that 1981. whether each and every addition to the definition has brought about significant will advance interior the variety of latest AIDS situations, AIDS had leveled off in all hazard communities through 1992 and has been declining gradually because of the fact the 2nd quarter of 1993.

Answer 3

THE AIDS INDUSTRY AND MEDIA WANT YOU TO THINK THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF SCIENTISTS WHO DOUBT THE HIV–AIDS THEORY.
HERE’S THE REALITY.

http://www.rethinkingaids.com/quotes/rethinkers.htm

Answer 4

Primarily because there is no proof that HIV exists. We've had photographic evidence since the March 1997 issue of Virology- the density gradient photos from Bess et. al. and from the U.S. Cancer institute.

Answer 5

Well, obviously it's because the HIV denialists are a bunch of self-deluded, pseuodoscientific, half-witted conspiracy theorists who believe anything they read just because it shows up somewhere in a half intelligent, half legible corner of the Internet. Surely none of the people who think HIV isn't responsible for AIDS can have anything worthwhile to say, can they?

Seriously, isn't this the underlying implication in your question?

Regrettably, there is a lot of misinformation, pseudoscience and just plain half-baked ideas floating around the Internet from people who think the moon landings were hoaxed to those who believe our alien space brothers are going to bail us out just before annihilate ourselves with nuclear weapons, biological warfare or greenhouse gases. However, the ASSUMPTION that someone is a conspiracy theorist, pseudoscientist, or gullible half-wit because they disagree with "consensus science" is just that--an ASSUMPTION.

In reality, consensus science has been WRONG again and again and again throughout the history of scientifc inquiry. If I'm not mistaken, the diet regimen of Phen-Fen was considered "safe and effective" before being summarily approved by the FDA, then later banned for killing people. This is just one of scores of examples from manned flight (the Wright Brothers were assumed to be hoaxers for about five years in this country before a public demonstration) to the notion that meteorites were a figment of eyewitnesses' imaginations.

Well guess what? As a former pre-med student and freelance science writer, I decided to actually study the writings of the so-called "HIV denialists" and see if they had anything of merit to say. Actually LOOKING at the fringe point of view instead of ASSUMING it's nuts is, unfortunately, mandatory if one is a REAL scientist--and not a pretender like many so-called AIDS scientists. Real science involves looking at challenges to the prevailing theories and considering if they have any merit or not, otherwise you are just like the Catholic Church during the days of Galileo when its members refused to look through Galileo's telescope.

What I found in my researches shocked me, but ultimately didn't surprise me. Just as Big Pharma has controlled the popular image of chemotherapy being effective weapon against cancer (it isn't; it only helps less than 5% of all cancers); just as the dairy industry has controlled the public's perception of milk and cheese being "nature's most perfect food" (perhaps for a calf; definitely not for a human being); just as the American Dental Association has convinced most of the American public that water fluoridation is "safe and effective" (no, statistics prove it's pretty ineffective in preventing cavities); so too has the Medical establishment convinced everyone that AIDS is caused by HIV.

I realize the above paragraph sounds like the ravings of yet another conspiracy theorist (although, sorry, I don't believe the moon landings were hoaxed; nor that world governments are secretly being controlled by a cabal of Skull and Bones gradutates), yet this is an inevitable assumption when one refuses to actually LOOK at that statements of any given fringe group. Some will be revealed as pseudoscientists invested in shaky logic, and some will not. This is simply a given in scientific progress. The bottom line is there are two fringes of science: the Lunatic Fringe and the Frontier Fringe. Until one studies both fringes closely, it's impossible to tell which camp belongs to which side.

I won't post any links here to read because I doubt the questioner will actually look at them. I just leave this post as it is as food for thought and reply with another question, Socrates style: Will you the questioner actually THINK about what I've just said?

Answer 6

For many reasons. Here's a partial list.

1. There is not nearly enough infected cells to account for any kind of broad effect on immune system. For instance there are from 1 to 700 to 1 in 83,000 HIV-infected leukocytes (immune cells) in healthy 'HIV postives'; and from 1 in 900 to 1 in 30,000 in AIDS patients. [1] In many AIDS patients no 'HIV' can be found [2,3].

2. The vast majority of 'HIV' positive people in the United States don't develop AIDS. The CDC estimates that there are just about 1.1 million 'infected' people in the United States. The CDC says there were about 17,000 deaths from AIDS in 2005 while there were about 45,000 AIDS cases in the same year. That is 1.5 and 4% respectively from a pool of 1.1 million. Note that the CDC considers one to have AIDS if they are healthy but have a 1 time T-cell count of 200 or less which means from that group of 45,000 newly diagnosed AIDS patients many may have no illness at all.

It's assumed or at least put forward that this small number of cases and deaths is a result of the various antiretroviral drugs. Yet the CDC also admits that about 25% of this 1.1 million 'infected' people don't know their status. [4] In 2003, a group of researchers wanted to ascertain the number of people on ARV's who actually 'needed' to be on them. They defined needing ARV's by having T-cell count of 350 or less. They estimated that only 55% of those 'in need' actually were receiving ARV's. [5] This means a large majority of 'HIV positive' people are alive despite not being on these 'life-saving' medications.

3. The assumption is that people develop AIDS not as a direct result of 'HIV' but because of its supposed effects on the destruction of key immune system cells. Yet wild animals (lions, pumas) with these same 'immunological abnormalities' who are said to be infected with their animal equivalent of 'HIV' (FIV) don't develop AIDS. [6]

These are just a couple of things that should make people stop and ask why a virus that is barely or not at all present can destroy an entire immune system; they should ask why a small fraction of 'infected' people develop or die from AIDS in the presence or absence of ARVs; and they should ask why low T-cell counts can cause AIDS in humans but not in wild animals (whom one could are subjected to much greater immunologic assualts than a comfortable American) .

These are but a few of the anomalies that make the 'HIV' theory of AIDS untenable. Some people may find this data 'underwhelming' but I guess they also feel that Robert Gallo only finding 'HIV' in 36% of people with AIDS or at risk in his seminal papers from 1984 dramatic evidence that in fact it does cause AIDS.

Now that's impressive.

Answer 7

"The AIDS reappraisal movement or AIDS dissident movement, is a loosely connected group of activists, journalists, scientists, and HIV-positive persons who dispute the scientific consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is the cause of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Dissidents argue that the consensus that HIV causes AIDS has resulted in inaccurate diagnoses, psychological terror, toxic treatments, and a squandering of public funds, as well as an unprecedented deviation from scientific method and standards.

The majority of the scientific community considers the causative role of HIV to be proven; dissident arguments are felt to be the result of cherry-picking of predominantly outdated scientific data, with the potential to endanger public health by dissuading people from utilizing proven treatments" -wikipedia.com

Quite frankly the evidence that HIV doesn't cause AIDS is extremely underwhelming. Most of these people believe that HIV treatments, poverty, etc. are the cause of "AID$". They say "AID$" because they think the treament is bogus, or that its all a sham to make money.

Answer 8

it does not cause AIDS. AIDS is a result of HIV.