If It’s NOT HIV That Causes AIDS Then What Causes AIDS?
To understand why this is so, it is first necessary to understand what AIDS is. AIDS is not a new disease or illness; it is a new name or designation for 29 previously known diseases and conditions. As the NIH states in its comprehensive report on AIDS, “the designation ‘AIDS’ is a surveillance tool.”191 Since 1981, the surveillance tool AIDS has been used to track and record familiar diseases when they appear in people who have tested positive for antibodies associated with HIV.
The AIDS virus hypothesis supposes that the health problems renamed AIDS develop as a result of infection with HIV; that the virus somehow disables the body’s defense system that protects against opportunistic illness, allowing the development of one or more of 29 diseases, such as yeast infection, certain cancers, pneumonia, salmonella, diarrhea, or tuberculosis, which are then diagnosed as AIDS. However, every AIDS indicator disease occurs among people who test HIV negative, none are exclusive to those who test positive and all AIDS diseases existed before the adoption of the name “AIDS.”
Immune deficiency can be acquired by several risk factors that are not infectious or transmitted through blood or blood products. The following factors are widely recognized causes of immune suppression, compromised health, and opportunistic infections, as documented in the medical literature for more than 70 years. Chronic, habitual and multiple exposures to these risks can cause the group of symptoms called AIDS.192 In fact, there is no case of AIDS described in the medical literature without one or more of these health risk factors.193
Poverty, crowded living conditions and unclean water promote endemic disease and compromised health. The populations in many developing regions of the world are devastated by rampant infections with common microbes that pose little or no health threat to people in industrialized nations.
Infections due to malnutrition immunodeficiency are the world’s leading causes of infant and child death.195 Among citizens of industrialized nations, subclinical malnutrition, rather than starvation leads to compromised immune function, especially when combined with chronic lack of sleep.196 People who make habitual and prolonged use of certain drugs like methamphetamines, heroin and crack cocaine often suffer from malnutrition and chronic lack of sleep.
Immune-compromising chemicals include pharmaceutical drugs such as AZT and other cancer chemotherapy compounds, protease inhibitors, antibiotics and steroids, and recreational drugs such as cocaine, crack, heroin, nitrites (poppers), and methamphetamines (crystal, speed). Chemotherapy targets and destroys the bone marrow cells from which all immune cells derive. They also kill fully formed immune cells in addition to killing B cells and red blood cells.196,197 Chemotherapy destroys the digestive system by killing the cells that compose the inner lining of the digestive tract which interferes with the body’s ability to absorb and digest nutrients, causing malnutrition. Even when used very briefly, chemotherapy suppresses normal immune function, increases susceptibility to a variety of opportunistic infections, and can cause life-threatening anemia and diarrhea. AZT, ddI, ddC, D4T and 3TC are all chemotherapy compounds used as antiviral AIDS treatments.
There are many pharmaceutical drugs known to suppress the immune system, particularly when used for prolonged periods of time. Protease inhibitors cause impaired liver function and liver failure (the liver removes disease-causing toxins from the body) in addition to kidney failure, dangerously high cholesterol levels, diarrhea and other health-compromising effects. Steroids are a known cause of immune deficiency often prescribed to AIDS patients to counteract the muscle wasting caused by AZT.198 Antibiotics, especially when used habitually, can cause yeast infection and diarrhea, two conditions that can lead to malnutrition.199 Septra and Bactrim are sulfonamide antibiotics commonly prescribed for continuous, prophylactic or preventative use by HIV positives. These drugs are leftover from the days before penicillin; they do not target invading microbes as narrowly as modern antibiotics and are notorious for their side effects.200 Both cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, anorexia, bone marrow destruction, rashes, fever, hepatitis, and anemia by interfering with the production of red blood cells.201
The immunosuppressive effects of recreational drug abuse are well-documented in medical literature dating back to the turn of the century. They include pneumonias, mouth sores, fevers, endocarditis, bacterial infections and night sweats, all conditions now associated with AIDS.202 Amphetamine drugs suppress the appetite, causing chronic users to suffer from malnutrition. Many habitual users of heroin and crack do not provide themselves with adequate food, sleep, shelter and healthcare.
Prolonged exposure to common chemical toxins such as insecticides and herbicides can also impair immune function.203
These risks include multiple exposures to and/or chronic infections with syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and other venereal diseases, hepatitis, tuberculosis, malaria, fungal diseases, amoebas and parasites such as giardia, bacterial infections such as staph and E coli, chronic bowel infections, blood transfusions, and the use of blood products. In addition to the damaging effects of recurrent infections, many of the pharmaceuticals used as treatment have adverse effects on immune function.
Factor VIII (the blood clotting agent used by hemophiliacs) and blood transfusions are immune suppressive and leave patients vulnerable to infection.204 Due to the serious conditions for which transfusions are necessary and the deleterious effects they have on the immune system, half of all HIV negative transfusion recipients die within a year of receiving a transfusion.204
Chronic anxiety, panic, stress and depression have been shown to compromise health, damage immune function, and result in symptoms identical to AIDS.205 Mental stress provokes production of the hormone cortisol; excessive cortisol causes rapid and dramatic reductions in T cells, a condition known as lymphocytopenia. Within minutes, stress induces cortisol levels to increase as much as 20-fold. High levels of cortisol can eventually cause what medical texts describe as “significant atrophy of all the lymphoid tissue throughout the body” which may lead to “fulminating infection and death from diseases that would otherwise not be lethal.”206 A profound fear of AIDS is enough to cause even people who repeatedly test HIV negative to develop physical symptoms of AIDS.207 Termed “AIDS-phobia,” this condition is characterized by weight loss, wasting, reduced T cell counts and other signs considered indicative of AIDS, and typically follows intimate contact with people who sufferers believe may be HIV positive.
How These Risk Factors Apply to All AIDS Groups
There is not one case of AIDS described in the medical literature that does not include one or more immune-destroying health risk factors. There is no case of AIDS documented in a person whose sole risk is exposure to HIV. Every case of AIDS involves factors known to damage the immune system and leave a person vulnerable to debilitating infection and deadly illness.211
Well-documented causes of immune dysfunction can explain AIDS illnesses among men who have sex with men although none of these causes are unique to this risk group or can be generalized to include all gay men. In fact, focusing attention on certain sexual practices rather than recognized health risks obscures our understanding of immune suppression and limits approaches to preventing and resolving AIDS.
Nitrites, more commonly known as poppers, are immune-suppressive, carcinogenic drugs chronically used by some gay men. At one time, 95% of gay men in major urban areas like Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco reported using poppers.212 Nitrite use correlates with Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS) and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, two AIDS-defining cancers found almost exclusively in this risk group.213 There are several studies that further strengthen the correlation between poppers and KS by documenting KS in HIV negative gay men who use poppers.213 KS is hardly ever found among members of any other CDC risk group or among women with AIDS, and is never diagnosed in children or infants with AIDS.213 In 1981 when AIDS was first identified, half of all AIDS diagnoses were for KS. As popper use has diminished, so has KS which since 1993 has accounted for less than 5% of all new AIDS cases.214
The chance of registering false positive on an HIV test is greater for people with high levels of non-HIV antibodies and microbes in their blood. Antibodies produced in response to the particular microbial and viral infections frequently found in some gay men are documented causes of false positive HIV test results.218
For people who test HIV positive, the drugs prescribed as preventative treatments for opportunistic AIDS-defining infections become harmful and even deadly when used on a daily, continuous basis. Bactrim and Septra, for example, are powerful sulfonamide antibiotics that kill digestive flora and cause anemia and bone marrow destruction. The anti-HIV drugs AZT, ddI, D4T, ddC and 3TC are all highly toxic chemotherapies that destroy the immune and digestive systems, in addition to causing five of the 29 official AIDS-defining illnesses.219 Two 1993 studies conducted in the US and Canada found that every one of several hundred gay men with AIDS had a history of significant recreational drug and/or AIDS drug use.220
Identifying this risk group as people who engage in habitual, prolonged use of recreational and/or pharmaceutical drugs, have chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes, who suffer from chronic malnourishment and/or chronic fear of HIV and AIDS provides a more appropriate and comprehensive explanation of immune suppression that invites many possibilities for prevention and resolution.
Members of this risk group account for 35% of all diagnosed AIDS cases, while another 4% of people diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual contact with injection drug users as their sole risk. However, the majority of people who initially claim intimate contact with IV drug users as their only risk later acknowledge taking drugs themselves.221
Considering only injection drug use as a high risk activity for AIDS disregards the immune suppressive effects brought about by habitual use of non-injected street drugs as well as the many health-compromising factors that can accompany the regular, long-term use of illicit chemicals. The emphasis on sharing needles over the damaging effects of the narcotics injected with the needles distorts our view of immune dysfunction and prevents application of practical solutions to the health problems common to this risk group.
Prolonged, habitual consumption of drugs such as heroin, crack, speed, and cocaine, whether taken by injection or other means, is well-known to disable immune function. Chronic use of these drugs is documented to bring about many conditions synonymous with AIDS including pneumonias, tuberculosis, mouth sores, fevers, night sweats, bacterial infections, and endocarditis. Malnutrition, the number one cause of immune deficiency diseases worldwide, and multiple infections are frequent side effects of habitual injection drug use, and are factors that suppress immunity.
Antibodies generated in response to the multiple infections and chemical toxins typical of chronic drug use can cause false positive readings on HIV tests. Positive test results most frequently lead to ongoing treatment with various immune suppressive antibiotics and chemotherapy drugs, and to a sense of hopelessness and profound despair.
A more compassionate and inclusive way to portray this diverse group is as people who engage in habitual, prolonged use of recreational drugs, have chronic exposure to a multitude of infectious microbes and toxins through septic syringes or septic living conditions; who suffer from chronic malnourishment, lack of adequate sleep, the immune suppressive effects of AIDS drugs, and/or the chronic despair that follows an HIV positive or AIDS diagnosis. The immune deficiency diseases caused by these multiple and variant factors can be resolved with treatments that do not involve toxic anti-HIV drugs and long-term use of powerful antibiotics.
Transfusion Recipients and Hemophiliacs
Hemophiliacs and blood transfusion recipients together make up 2% of adult AIDS cases in the US. As noted previously, Factor VIII, the blood clotting treatment used by hemophiliacs, is itself immune suppressive. Hemophilia is a life-threatening condition in people with or without an HIV positive diagnosis. Ryan White, the young HIV positive hemophiliac who became famous as an AIDS victim, actually died of common complications attributed to hemophilia (internal bleeding and liver failure), not of illnesses that define AIDS.223
Factor VIII and blood transfusions can cause positive results on HIV antibody tests in persons never exposed to HIV by triggering the production of antibodies that react with the nonspecific proteins used in the HIV antibody test. Once a person has tested positive, they are subject to immune suppressive drug treatment regimens, and the terror of developing AIDS. Members of these risk groups can be more accurately described as people with serious preexisting health challenges, critical or chronic exposure to immune suppressive blood products and toxic AIDS drugs, and/or who are affected by the chronic despair of a fatal diagnosis. Based on this view, immune compromising anti-HIV chemotherapy and continuous antibiotic treatments would compound preexisting health problems, rather than resolve them.
Six percent of Americans diagnosed with AIDS cite heterosexual contact as their sole AIDS risk. However, upon further investigation, 60% to 99% of these people are reclassified as injection drug users and/or men who have sex with men, groups with identifiable health risks documented to cause immune dysfunction.225 As previously noted, people diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily select a risk group from among six categories determined by the CDC which limits health risks to possible exposure to HIV through sex or blood.
The damage caused by AIDS chemotherapy and the acceptance of a fatal diagnosis are sufficient to bring about serious illness and even death in people with no other risk factors. Members of this group may be better described as people with no health risk factors acknowledged by the CDC who, because of their positive HIV status, regularly consume chemotherapy and/or engage in continuous treatment with antibiotics and other immune suppressive pharmaceutical drugs, and/or suffer from the chronic panic and hopelessness of a fatal diagnosis.
Adolescents, Children and Infants
Although teenagers and children are not a specific AIDS risk group, cases of AIDS among young people, however rare, are a matter of great concern. The fact that babies are diagnosed with AIDS has been used as an argument against non-HIV explanations for AIDS illnesses. Despite widely held beliefs, the majority of AIDS cases that occur among children and adolescents can be explained by the same causes of immune suppression prevalent in adults with AIDS. In 1998, new AIDS cases among this country’s 26 million teens totaled 293; of these, 229 offered information which placed them in the two primary CDC defined AIDS risk groups for adults.226
Over 80% of the mothers of babies diagnosed with AIDS voluntarily acknowledge using injection drugs during pregnancy, a practice which almost universally results in intrauterine malnutrition. The remaining cases of AIDS in infants and children may be due to the immune suppressive medical treatments given in response to an HIV positive test result, or to the same factors that cause HIV negative babies to suffer from pneumonia, bacterial infections, and immune disorders. In 1998, new AIDS cases in children age 13 and under totaled 382.227
Residents of Developing Nations
In stark contrast to the US and Europe, AIDS cases in developing areas of the world are found almost exclusively among non-drug using heterosexuals.228 Mainstream AIDS experts offer no plausible reason why AIDS would spread primarily through drug-free heterosexual contact only outside the US and Europe.
A coherent explanation for AIDS cases in developing areas of the world is the well-known health risks shared by these countries, widespread poverty and malnutrition; lack of clean water, a regular food supply, and sanitary living conditions; limited access to medical care; endemic diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, and parasitic infections that manifest in conditions identical to AIDS; and the practice of diagnosing AIDS based on a nonspecific set of clinical symptoms.
Although HIV tests are not required for an AIDS diagnosis in many parts of the world, widespread exposure to hepatitis, tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria and other conditions are more than sufficient to account for positive results on the nonspecific HIV antibody tests. 229 Resolving the immune suppressive conditions caused by poverty and malnutrition provides a means to alleviate the suffering of many people in developing nations who are currently counted and treated as victims of AIDS.
When considering non-HIV explanations for AIDS, consider that: AIDS is a collection of familiar illnesses, not a disease.
Since 1993, more than half of all new AIDS diagnoses in the US are given to people who are not ill. In 1997, two-thirds of Americans diagnosed with AIDS had no symptoms or illness.* Acquired immune deficiency predates the creation of the category “AIDS” and has numerous, well-documented causes.
There are no AIDS cases noted in the medical literature in which exposure to HIV has proved to be the sole health risk factor.
There are well-documented causes for every AIDS disease that do not involve HIV, and all illnesses now called AIDS occur in the absence of HIV.
HIV tests do not test for the actual virus, but for antiviral proteins or genetic material that are not specific to HIV.
The chance of a positive reaction on a nonspecific HIV antibody test increases proportionately with the level of other antibodies and microbes found in the blood.
Five of the six AIDS risk groups defined by the CDC have health risk factors that involve multiple, chronic exposure to viruses, bacteria and other antigens known to produce antibodies identical to those associated with HIV.
Once a person has tested HIV antibody positive, chemotherapy and other immune suppressing chemicals are almost always prescribed for treatment or prevention of AIDS.
Alternative explanations for AIDS provide opportunities for effective AIDS prevention and for using practical, nontoxic approaches to resolving AIDS.
1997 was the last year that the CDC provided information on how many AIDS cases were diagnosed in people who are not sick.
Endemic: A medical term applied to a disease or disorder that is constantly present in a particular region or in a specific group of people.
Cancer Chemotherapy: Drugs used to treat cancer. Most anticancer drugs are cytotoxic (kill or damage cells). Others are synthetic forms of hormones. All anticancer drugs prevent cells from growing and dividing. Some work by damaging the cell’s DNA; others block the chemical processes in the cell necessary for growth. Side effects of treatment include nausea, vomiting, and life-threatening diarrhea. By altering the rate at which cells grow and divide, anticancer drugs reduce the number of blood cells produced by the bone marrow, causing anemia and increased susceptibility to infection.
Endocarditis: Inflammation of the internal lining of the heart.
Incorrect Information about HIV and AIDS Costs Lives Can you imagine receiving a fatal diagnosis without being told the diagnosis is based on an unproven idea and an uncertain test? Being instructed to take powerful, experimental drugs without being told these drugs compromise health, destroy functions necessary to sustain life, and were approved for use without adequate testing? Being informed that you have, or should expect, deadly illnesses without being told that these same illnesses are not considered fatal when they occur in “normal” people?
For anyone who tests HIV positive, getting all the facts is a matter of life and death. The important decisions a person makes should be based on thorough, verifiable data. All of us need and have the right to receive honest and complete information about HIV and AIDS.
Almost every AIDS organization in the country offers free instruction for people who test HIV positive. Standard information includes how to prepare a will, how to collect disability, health insurance, and public benefits, what drugs and tests to take, and which diseases to anticipate, all based on the assumption that HIV positives are or will be ill and do not have long to live.
Information on AIDS that is free from bias, that accurately describes tests and drugs, and offers facts that support a will to live, participate in society, and cultivate a healthy future are rarely, if ever mentioned. Some AIDS groups even lobby to limit public access to data that undermine their dire presentations of HIV and AIDS.
For many people handed an HIV positive diagnosis, these brief pages provide their first awareness that a normal, healthy life is not something they can only hope for, but something they can choose to achieve. Unfortunately for most people who test positive, the AIDS education they receive portrays their choices as being limited to toxic drug therapy or devastating illness, and encourages chronic fear, sadness, and resignation to an early death.
There are thousands of HIV positives who lead healthy lives without toxic AIDS drugs. What they have in common is not some unique, mysterious gene or a weakened strain of the virus, but an open-minded approach to information, an understanding of basic principles of medicine and science, and the knowledge that the responsibility for their well-being is ultimately their own. For more information on their lives, please see The Other Side of AIDS on page 94.
To the degree that we allow unfounded ideas about HIV and AIDS to determine our actions, influence our choices, dictate our public policies, or define our world view, we are all victims of AIDS.
The lives of over 400,000 Americans have been given to the notion that HIV is the only possible cause of AIDS, and that toxic drugs offer the only possible prevention, treatment, or hope for a cure. Many more lives have been forever altered by a positive result on a non-standardized test for harmless antibodies that may or may not be associated with HIV.
More than $50 billion in federal AIDS funding has provided no significant understanding of HIV, has produced no safe and effective therapies, and has not brought us any closer to ending AIDS. Instead, we have constructed a powerful AIDS establishment that regulates our news, limits our access to information, and demands an ever greater allocation of our resources and support. Rather than helping to resolve AIDS, we have funded the growth of multi-billion dollar industries, institutions and organizations that depend on AIDS and on our continued devotion to the narrow and unproductive HIV hypothesis.
Objective Examination of HIV and AIDS is Fundamental to Progress.
” There is classical science, the way it’s supposed to work, and then there’s religion. I regained my sanity when I realized that AIDS science was a religious discourse. The one thing I will go to my grave not understanding is why everyone was so quick to accept everything the government said as truth. Especially the central myth: The cause of AIDS is known. What in the world made activists accept tha, ton the basis of a press conference, no less?
“AIDS is not another disease, it is the most metaphorical disease in history. It is the ultimate triumph of politics over science.”
“Perhaps I’d feel different about it if I thought people were dying from AIDS. But I don’t. I think they’re dying from bad medicine, bad drugs, bad attitudes. There is nothing I want from ‘Big Daddy’ I don’t want his medicines, his laws, his approval.”
“In the September 4 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the CDC announced that a diagnosis of AIDS no longer requires an HIV test. The government now considers you an AIDS carrier if you suffer from any of the maladies on its new list of diseases indicative of AIDS, including such relatively common infections as herpes simplex, tuberculosis, Salmonellosis and the shockingly broad category ‘other bacterial infections.’ This broad definition will lead to countless new AIDS diagnoses, whether or not the person actually has AIDS. A major problem with the new AIDS definition is that it ignores the many environmental causes of immune suppression. Exposure to toxins, alcoholism, heavy drug use or heavy antibiotic use all can cause onset of the list of ‘diseases’ indicative of AIDS. The CDC itself conceded in a stunning remark near the end of the JAMA article that the new AIDS ground rules are highly suspect. ‘The diagnostic criteria accepted by the AIDS surveillance case definition should not be interpreted as the standard of good medical practice,’ warned the CDC.” Los Angeles Weekly, December 18, 1987
“The real trick is to get off the medication. I felt I was losing quality of life…”
Greg Louganis, HIV positive Olympic Gold Medalist,The State, April 15, 1997
“It’s not even probable, let alone scientifically proven, that HIV causes AIDS. If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There are no such documents.”
Dr. Kary Mullis, Nobel Laureate, HIV not Guilty, October 5, 1996
” If you think a virus is the cause of AIDS, do a control without it. To do a control is the first thing you teach undergraduates. But it hasn’t been done. The epidemiology of AIDS is a pile of anecdotal stories selected to the virus-AIDS hypothesis. People don’t bother to check the details of popular dogma or consensus views.”
Dr. Peter Duesberg, Do You Think HIV Causes AIDS?,Scientists for Legitimacy in Science, 1995
Nicholas Regush, Medical Science Reporter, Second Opinion, ABCNews.com, September 29, 1999
“As a scientist who has studied AIDS for 16 years, I have determined that AIDS has little to do with science and is not even primarily a medical issue. AIDS is a sociological phenomenon held together by fear, creating a kind of medical McCarthyism that has transgressed and collapsed all the rules of science, and has imposed a brew of belief and pseudoscience on a vulnerable public.”
Dr. David Rasnick, Designer of Protease Inhibitors,SPIN magazine, June 1997
“Considering there is little scientific proof of the exact linkage of HIV and AIDS, is it ethical to prescribe AZT, a toxic chain terminator of DNA developed 30 years ago as cancer chemotherapy, to 150,000 Americans, among them pregnant women and newborn babies, as an anti-HIV drug?”
Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN), US House of Representatives, Letter to NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, March 14, 1995
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