Sign the petition
Durban Declaration Rebuttal
Commentary
Dear Robert,
I was very impressed with your response to the
Durban declaration. I hope it is widely distributed. It certainly
deserves to be.
I have a few observations which I think might strenghten your
response, should you choose to incorporate them.
Firstly, the Darby report on Haemophilia and AIDS. If one analyses
the actual data produced by Darby et al, it becomes clear that
HIV cannot be responsible, at least by itself, for the excess mortality
which they observe in HIV+ Haemophiliacs.
Darby observed 403 deaths in HIV+ Haemophliacs between 1985 and 1992. Based on
the mortality rate in the HIV- group, they assert that 60 deaths would
have been expected. This data they say "suggests that 85% of the deaths
in the seropositives were due to HIV infection." (Darby et al. Nature,
7 September 1995). This claim is clearly false.
If one examines the mortality data of their table 3 (p82) one sees that
of the 403 deaths in HIV + Haemophiliacs, 235 were attributed to "AIDS, HIV,
etc." with no further comment. A total of 168 deaths were from non HIV causes.
For example, 72 died from coagulation disorders, a common way for a
Haemophiliac
to die.
Thus the deaths attributed to "AIDS, HIV, etc." make up 58% of the total,
not 85%!!
Further, the death rate due to non 'HIV causes', was three times what they
predicted, based on the death rate in the HIV- population. Thus HIV does
not explain the excess mortality observed. The HIV orthodoxy proves yet
again that they cannot even count.
Secondly, AIDS in Africa.
It is commonly claimed that the reason why there are so few AIDS cases
actually
reported in Africa is because the disease goes under reported. All diseases
are
under reported in Africa. Yet compare the reported number of cases of
tuberculosis
in South Africa between 1980 and 1997.
Reported cases of Tuberculosis in South Africa 1980-1997.
Source WHO Global TB report, 1999.
1980 : 55310
1981 : 59943
1982 : 64115
1983 : 62556
1984 : 62717
1985 : 59349
1986 : 55013
1987 : 57406
1988 : 61486
1989 : 68075
1990 : 80400
1991 : 77652
1992 : 82539
1993 : 89786
1994 : 90292
1995 : 86294
1996 : 91578
1997 : 105169
These cases are also under reported, yet they dwarf the number of cases of
AIDS
that are reported.
Now here is the data for Malaria . As you can see it is incomplete.
NA = not available. The reason for this is simply that I cannot
find the numbers for that country. This information is from the
WHO's Roll Back Malaria website
http://mosquito.who.int/cgi-bin/rbm/login_rbm.jsp
which is still under construction. The countries marked NA have
not yet had the Malaria numbers posted. For those countries which
have, one can see that the number of Malaria cases reported for a single
year generally dwarfs the number of AIDS cases reported for the entire
epidemic. We come back to the same questions again. Kenya which is
supposed to have suffered greatly from AIDS, reported 9133 AIDS cases
in 1995, and a total 0f 74754 cases since the start of the epidemic.
Yet in 1995 the same Kenyan doctors reported 4343190 cases of Malaria
according to the WHO. They also reported 28142 TB cases in 1995, and 39738
TB cases in 1997. So if they are being swamped by AIDS, why doesn't
this show up in the reports? Why do they report TB and Malaria, but
not AIDS?
Country Year Reported
Malaria cases
Angola 1995 156603
Belize 1997 4014
Benin 1997 670857
Botswana 1995 17599
Burkina Faso 1995 501020
Burundi 1995 932794
Cameroon 1997 645309
Cape Verde 1997 20
Central African
Republic NA NA
Chad 1997 343186
Comoros 1996 15509
Congo 1997 9491
Cote d'Ivoire NA NA
Djibouti 1997 4314
D.R. of Congo NA NA
Equatorial Guinea 1995 12530
Eritrea NA NA
Ethiopia NA NA
Gabon 1995 35842
Gambia NA NA
Ghana 1997 2227762
Guinea 1997 802210
Guinea-Bissau NA NA
Kenya 1995 4343190
Liberia NA NA
Madagascar NA NA
Malawi NA NA
Mali 1997 384907
Mauritania NA NA
Mauritius NA NA
Mozambique NA NA
Namibia 1996 425185
Niger 1997 978855
Nigeria 1997 616466
Rwanda 1997 1210775
Sao Tome and
Principe NA NA
Senegal NA NA
Sierra Leone NA NA
Somalia NA NA
South Africa 1996 29160
Sudan NA NA
Swaziland NA NA
Tanzania 1997 1131655
Togo NA NA
Uganda NA NA
Zambia 1996 3215866
Zimbabwe NA NA
Thirdly, some comments about the well know paper Piatak et al Science
(Vol 259, 19 March 1993), which introduces the Q-PCR measurment for 'viral
load'.
This is the one where they claim to demonstrate large amounts of non
infectious
HIV in plasma using PCR.
You may recall that they make the claim (p1752): "Circulating
levels of of plasma virus determined by QC-PCR also correlated with, but
exceeded by an average of 60000 fold, titers of infectious HIV-1".
This claim has always bothered me, because I could not see from their data
how the infectious virus and QC-PCR numbers could possibly be correlated. A
lot
of other people have been equally disturbed, so I decided to test the claim
statistically.
To do this I loaded all the data into an Excel spread sheet
(which I can send
you) and determined the
actual correlation coefficient, r, between infectious virus and HIV RNA.
Recall that
if two random variables X and Y are linearly related, i.e. Y = aX + b, then
their
correlation coefficient is 1 (one). Consequently, since total infectious
virus is a
fraction of the total virus (a linear relationship if ever there was one),
we would expect that the correlation coefficient between the infectious
virus and plasma RNA would equal 1,
or at least be very close to it. Assuming that is, that the plasma RNA
numbers actually measure the total amount of circulating virus.
It isn't. It is actually = 0.102. Yes, r = 0.102. Consequently
r^2 = 0.01. If
you are not familiar with statistics, let me explain that the square of the
correlation
coefficient is the important number. It tells you what fraction of the
variation in one
quantity is explained by the variation of the other. Since here r^2 = 0.01,
then the variation in the plasma RNA explains only 1% of the variation in
the infectious
virus. The claim that these two quantities are correlated is therefore
incredibly
dubious, and that is being generous. An r^2 value of 0.01 is as close to
genuine
_non correlation_ as you are ever going to get, and suggests strongly that
the HIV RNA by PCR numbers and the infectious virus numbers are independent
random variables. That
is, the RNA numbers determined by Q-PCR, have little or nothing to do with
actual
virus, infectious or otherwise. Of course we already knew this, but it is
nice to see it confirmed statistically.
The same is true for the CD4 data. For HIV RNA and CD4 numbers,
we have
r^2 = 0.017. So variation in HIV RNA explains only 1.7% of the variation in
CD4 count.
The same is true for infectious virus and CD4, there r^2 = 0.03. Again,
these random variables, CD4, RNA and infectious virus, appear to be
essentially independent random variables. I wonder why Piatak and his
colleagues did not discuss this in the paper, along with the implications
for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis?
You might also point out that of the 66 subjects enrolled in the Piatak
study, a total
of 35 had a Tissue Culture Infectious Dose for HIV of 0(zero). 57 had fewer
than 1000 infectious virions. This data confirms yet again that HIV fails
the Koch postulates.
Most HIV seropositive people have no detectable infectious virus. That
ought to be the
end of the matter.
I hope these observations are of use to you.
Keep up the good work.
Kind regards
Mark Craddock PhD
Senior Research Associate
School of Mathematical Sciences
University of Technology Sydney
Australia.
TORONTO
tel/fax:(416) 406-HEAL
Webmaster: Robert Johnston
jaunts@mailcity.com