Current tests are distinctly dodgy, as is the whole HIV theory, writes Dr Val Turner

South Africans are bombarded daily with scare stories, quoting confusing and contradictory facts about HIV/AIDS and promoting "anti-HIV" drugs. One of these is The New York Times article ("At least the babies will have a chance" The Star 20 February) on nevirapine and pregnant HIV positive women.

For a start, these African women (and their husbands) are held up to the world as proof of heterosexual transmission (HST) of a retrovirus HIV. However the HIV theory of AIDS has failed in its prediction of HST in the promiscuous West. The few decent studies of HST fail to support such spread. One such study was announced this last month by scientists at the 8th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Chicago. They concluded that the probability of HIV transmission per sex act in Uganda is, in comparison to other parts of the world, about 1 in 1000, which is vanishingly small.

Where then do HIV antibodies come from? Are they really due to a retrovirus or is there some other agency at work and common in African countries?

The crux of the matter is, and has always been, HIV. All the laboratory phenomena said to prove its existence are non-specific. These Facts are not disputed by virologists or HIV/AIDS experts. Even if they were specific and could be put together as a retrovirus, to date no scientist has managed to purify any of the many different sized and shaped objects all said at various times to be the one and only HIV.

A pregnant African woman in the nevirapine trials will not be given confirmatory tests. She will have her finger pricked and the nurse may discover antibodies that react with some proteins in a rapid assay "HIV" test kit.

Are these antibodies explained only by means of a putative HIV? For example, antibodies which form in response to infection with the mycobacterial and fungal agents that result in 90% of AIDS diagnoses react with proteins in the HIV antibody tests. According to the WHO, half of South Africa's population has come into contact with at least one mycobacterium - that causing TB

Undoubtedly the best example that "HIV antibodies" aren't HIV antibodies comes from Africa. In 1985 Dr Robert Gallo and his colleagues tested stored blood collected in 1972/73 from 75 healthy, six-year-old children living in the West Nile district of Uganda. Two thirds were found to be HIV antibody positive on the most "specific" test, the Western blot. The only way these children could have picked up HIV was from their mothers who, in turn, were infected by their husbands. However, in 1972 Uganda was HIV and AIDS free and, since few HIV-positive children are supposed to survive into adulthood, especially without treatment, one must conclude that whatever "HIV" antibodies are, they are not caused by a lethal, AIDS causing retrovirus. To argue differently one must explain why anyone is left alive in Uganda.

Twenty years down the HIV/AIDS era track it is understandably difficult to accept that the existence of a retrovirus HIV is problematic. However, there are two historical precedents worth mentioning.

Firstly, Africa has one of the highest prevalence rates of antibodies to a human retrovirus HTLV-I reaching 15-35% in some areas. HTLV-I is said to cause leukaemia but Africa is not suffering a galloping rate of leukaemia.

Secondly, the world's first human retrovirus, HL23V, was isolated by Gallo in 1975 and also proposed as a cause of human leukaemia. The evidence for its existence surpasses that of HIV. But in 1980 researchers from the Sloan-Kettering and National Cancer Institutes in the US proved that antibodies that reacted with the presumed HL23V proteins arose as a response to a variety of common non-infectious factors and are present in far more humans than would be expected to develop leukaemia. Thus, from initially signifying that an "infectious mode of transmission [of leukaemia] remains a real possibility in humans" and "infection with an oncovirus [retrovirus] may be extremely widespread", the first human retrovirus abruptly disappeared from the annals of science. At present no one, not even its discoverer, believes it exists.

The history of HL23V is grounds for predicting that when the scientific community is ready to accept that antibodies to the HIV proteins also arise for reasons which are non-retroviral - for which there is already ample evidence especially in Africa - a similar fate will befall HIV.

Dr Val Turner is a member of the Presidential Aids Advisory Panel

• The Yin & Yang of HIV
  By Valendar F. Turner and Andrew McIntyre
  Supporters of the "HIV causes AIDS" hypothesis cannot back up their claims with scientific evidence, yet they continue to reject alternative explanations and promote life-threatening drug treatments. When put to the test, conventional HIV/AIDS theory is at odds with the clinical evidence. Is "purified HIV" no more than a tangle of cellular debris? This "HIV" exposé questions the scientific "proof" at the heart of mainstream AIDS research and discusses the "dissident" viewpoint in terms of politics and public health policy.
• The Perth Group of HIV/AIDS dissidents  was formed in 1981 at the Royal Perth Hospital, teaching hospital for the University of Western Australia. The original members are the leader, biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, emergency physician Valendar (Val) Turner and Professor of Pathology John Papadimitriou.

TORONTO

tel/fax:(416) 406-HEAL

INDEX

Search our web site (400+ pages)

Site search Web search   search tips