Letters to the Editor In your July 14 editorial The other global threat, you write ''unless more is done, 70 million people will die of AIDS by 2020.'' Similar predictions have often been made and disproven. It's the pharmaceutical industry that is interested in keeping the AIDS threat alive to sell more drugs. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis remains just that -- a hypothesis. Many experts' predictions turned out to be false. For example, contrary to the prediction that AIDS would rapidly spread into the heterosexual population, the disease in the United States is still restricted to 85 percent males. Yet HIV positives are found with equal frequency in healthy male and female Army recruits. This discrepancy doesn't support the hypothesis that AIDS is caused by HIV. Is AIDS infectious? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the chance of getting infected by HIV is about one in 1,000 encounters. You are more likely to catch the flu from your sex partner, but is the flu considered a sexually transmitted disease? AIDS drugs have been credited for the reduction in AIDS deaths. But there is no scientific evidence that these toxic drugs prolong life. A study in Uganda shows that the time between becoming HIV-positive and the time of death is identical in the United States. The Uganda group received no AIDS drugs, while the U.S. group did. Since most people in the Uganda study were malnourished and multiply infected, doesn't that suggest that antiretroviral drugs reduce life expectancy? Malnutrition is the most common cause of immune deficiency. The HIV virus is often not found in AIDS patients. Instead, an antibody test and a viral load test are used to infer the presence of HIV. Actually, everybody tests positive for HIV unless his serum is diluted. AIDS is any one of 29 different diseases, all of which were known long before the arrival of HIV. If you have tuberculosis and are HIV-negative, then you have TB, but if you have TB and are HIV-positive, then you have AIDS. This kind of definition ensures a correlation between AIDS and HIV. Unfortunately, the government suppresses alternative explanations of AIDS. This dogmatic approach certainly will lead to a medical disaster. Check out the CDC website and the medical literature. RUDOLF WERNER
Professor of Biochemistry
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editorial/letters/3683389.htm Responses: HIV and AIDS are real, not `hypothesis'Re the July 18 letter Does the HIV virus really cause AIDS?: HIV/AIDS isn't a ''hypothesis,'' as described in a letter by Rudolf Werner. It is a fact that has resulted in one of the worst worldwide epidemics of our century. AIDS describes the complications of life-threatening infections and processes as a result of a severely impaired immune system. The human immunodeficiency virus causes, among several things, progressive destruction of the immune system. HIV can be identified by blood tests and cultured from the blood or other body tissues. The genetic code for the virus can be detected in people who are HIV positive. Contrary to Werner's statement, ''everyone'' isn't infected with HIV. Only those individuals infected with HIV test positive for HIV. It remains a critical health-care issue that those at risk for HIV infection continue to be tested. The major risk for HIV worldwide is through heterosexual transmission. The U.S. epidemic is reflected by two major routes of transmission: men having sex with men and the sharing of HIV-contaminated needles among intravenous drug users. However, the epidemic is increasing among women in the United States. HIV isn't transmitted by aerosolized respiratory secretions. It isn't transmitted like the flu and should be clearly distinguished from sexually transmitted diseases. HIV slowly damages the immune system, and persons with HIV infection may not know that they have the virus until enough damage is done that they become sick. This again points to the need for HIV testing. Therapy for HIV targets the virus, blocks its replication and decreases the amount of virus in the body. Suppression of HIV allows the immune system to recover slowly. This is most dramatic among patients whose immune systems have been severely damaged, as in full-blown AIDS. With a healthy immune system, the complications and ravages of AIDS are held at bay. This has had a dramatic impact on the quality of life of patients with HIV/AIDS. It has improved survival, a fact documented throughout medical literature. The progress in understanding HIV/AIDS over the past few decades has been commendable. Early in the epidemic, tens of thousands of patients at our medical center died as we struggled to understand HIV and find treatments. This no longer happens. MARGARET A. FISCHL, M.D.
On behalf of the staff at the UM School of Medicine AIDS Clinical Research Unit
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/3697031.htm Don't be fooled: HIV causes AIDS INRESPONSE Re the July 18 letter, Does the HIV virus really cause AIDS: The letter is full of distortions. Here are some of the more glaring inaccuracies: • That HIV causes AIDS isn't a hypothesis; it's well-proven fact. • The writer states that AIDS drugs don't prolong life. This is untrue. Several studies demonstrate that these drugs prolong and improve life. Has the writer ever spoken to an AIDS patient whose life was saved by those drugs, or a patient near death who came to lead a productive life again? I have. • The writer states that HIV isn't found often in AIDS patients but neglects to mention that the virus disappears only after treatment with AIDS drugs is begun. Even then, it can be found with ultra-sensitive tests. Would you suggest that patients with diabetes stop using insulin, or that smoking three packs of cigarettes a day is good for one's health? Of course not, because these things are untrue. A cursory review of the medical literature, as the author suggests, would reveal how distorted his assertions are. TORY SULLIVAN, M.D. Miami http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/editorial/letters/3698775.htm More from Professor Werner: I might be naïve, but I am not going to give up that quickly and quietly. Here is my letter: Dear Mr. Kushner, I hope you give me a chance to respond to Dr. Fischl's comments which you published in today's Herald. If you give me the go-ahead, I will prepare a short rebuttal. Also, I would really like you to consider to have a reporter come and visit me. I don't know if you have a brave reporter who would stand up against this HIV-AIDS establishment. In my opinion, if this story were to unfold it could lead to a Pullizer prize. Of course, the risks are pretty high because the HIV lobby is so strong. Many people have been burned. You need a really strong person for this. Dr. Sullivan's comments in Saturday's paper are the usual restatement of the HIV-AIDS position without any evidence. As a practicing physician Sullivan is apparently not aware of the scientific method. He talks about detection of virus in every AIDS patient with very sensitive methods. This is the PCR technique which amplify bits and pieces of nucleic acid a billion times or more. As I mentioned in my shortened letter, it cannot be used as a proof for the presence of virus. PCR (or viral load as this technique is now commonly called) has never been approved by the CDC for the diagnosis of HIV infection. Doesn't that make you suspicious? Why is this technique then used almost exclusively to monitor the progression or regression of virus infection in patients treated with toxic drugs? Dr. Fischl's commentary in today's Herald also mainly restates the HIV-AIDS dogma without telling the reader the evidence for her statements. Some of her statements are blatently false. For example, her statement that "the epidemic is increasing among women in the United States" is incorrect. The latest figures available from the CDC report that the number of women diagnosed with "aids" has gone from about 10,900 to 10,700 to 10,400 for '98, '99 and 2000. From July 2000 to June 2001 the number is 10,100. Furthermore, Fischl's statement that "the genetic code for the virus can be detected in people who are HIV positive" is meaningless because up to 8% of the human genome consists of HIV-like sequences. These endogenous human retrovirus sequences sometimes get packaged into viral particles and are released into the blood stream where they cause the production of antibodies against them. I can give you the reference for this. I am surprised that Fischl does not know that. The third incorrect statement by her is that "only those individuals infected with HIV test positive for HIV". I can give you over 70 references on the occurrence of a positive HIV antibody test caused by other conditions, such as pregnancy, infection with various agents, stress, etc. She also misquotes me when she implies that I said that HIV is transmitted like the flu. I just said that if a heterosexual infection rate of 1 in a 1,000 , as is reported by the CDC for HIV, is considered a sexually transmitted infection, then the flu should be considered a sexually transmitted disease. I am convinced that Fischl believes in what she is doing, and I contribute her unscientific approach to the AIDS problem to the fact that as an MD she has never received scientific training. Otherwise she would not say the HIV and AIDS are real and not a hypothesis. In science, everything remains a hypothesis. Even Albert Einstein's relativity theory remains a hypothesis which continues to be challenged. That is what is called scientific method. Fischl probably has never heard of that term. I have received only two letters of disagreement and criticism of my Herald commentary. There were more letters and telephone calls in support of my letter. I don't know if you have the time to go to my website at http://amiga1.med.miami.edu/HIV-AIDS/stories.htm where you will find a collection of stories of people who had been diagnosed with HIV many years ago (some of these people had actually developed full-blown AIDS) and then stopped taking the antiretroviral drugs. All these people are now healthy. I know of a scientific manuscript that is currently being prepared in which the experience of a German doctor with his AIDS patients is described. This doctor has never used antiretroviral drugs and has not lost a single patient. Antiretroviral drugs are extremely toxic. In my opinion, and I am not alone believing that, many of the AIDS deaths were actually caused by the drugs not by the virus. I look forward to hearing from you. I believe that as a scientist I have a responsibility to point out when something does not make scientific sense. The HIV-AIDS dogma doesn't make sense. Some day we scientists are going to be blamed for the horrendous blunder that is being done by the HIV-AIDS establishment. You as a journalist need to listen to all sides. You don't have to be a scientist to be able to decide what is logical and what is not. As I said in my original commentary "this is not a popularity contest. There was a time when most people believed that the earth was flat". Unfortunately, you left that sentence out of the printed commentary. Best regards, Rudolf Werner Here is Kushner's reply to my request for a rebuttal: Dear Prof. Werner, Thanks for your email. I think we're going to call it a wrap on this subject for now. Although we appreciate your letter and the points you make, we feel like we've given this subject enough ink for the time being, and have heard both arguments. Also, please understand our desire to get as many new voices on different subjects onto the page as possible, and printing more material about HIV/AIDS would prevent us from doing that. Finally, we have a 60-day rule, wherein we don't publish an author twice within a 60-day period; it helps diversify the opinions on the page. Thank you for writing and I hope you'll stay in touch. Best regards, Adam B. Kushner Adam B. KushnerEditorial Board, The Miami Herald
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