Well, abusive ad hominem attacks are hardly unknown here, eh? Even if I'm indulging in such PCT, is that relevant to the issue at hand? No? Then why bring it up?
Code: Select all
All of us are familiar with the claim that HIV causes AIDS. This is the message we hear everyday, everywhere, to the level that I consider it propaganda(persuasion).
I oppose this claim.
AIDS stands for “Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome”. The first three words, “Acquired Immune Deficiency”, refers to the general decrease in a body’s T-cell count, or more specifically, the CD4 T-Cells. “Syndrome”, refers to the clinical symptoms that result from that decrease in the CD4 T-cell count, which in turn leads to opportunistic infections by what we term as “AIDS” diseases like Karposi’s sarcoma(now removed from the list), pneumonia, and meningitis.
The Center of Disease Control in America, after Robert Gallo’s announcement of his discovery of HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, as the causal agent of AIDS, amended the definition after his discovery.
CDC's definition of AIDS includes all HIV-infected people who have fewer than 200 CD4 positive T cells per cubic millimeter of blood. (Healthy adults usually have CD4 positive T-cell counts of 1,000 or more.) In addition, the definition includes 26 clinical conditions that affect people with advanced HIV disease. Most of these conditions are opportunistic infections that generally do not affect healthy people. In people with AIDS, these infections are often severe and sometimes fatal because the immune system is so ravaged by HIV that the body cannot fight off bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and other microbes.
HIV, meanwhile, is defined as the virus that causes AIDS. It was ‘discovered’ by Robert Gallo and Luc Montaigner, two virologists. Strangely enough, Gallo’s report was [i]never [/i]reviewed by his peers, and his scientific discovery was announced without going through the prescribed steps for checking the veracity of the research.
On one hand, we have the CDC definition of AIDS, which needs HIV as part of its criteria, while HIV is described as the virus that causes AIDS.
That if A(HIV) causes B(AIDS), then is B(AIDS) necessarily a result of A(HIV)? According to the definition, that is exactly what they had laid out, with the problem that the definition are interdependent as well! That A(HIV) is defined as something that causes B(AIDS), while B(AIDS) is defined as something caused by A(HIV)! Circular logic is being used here, and it should be setting off warning alarms right about now!
Worse, HIV has never been isolated and purified according to the standards laid out for all retroviruses with the reverse transcriptase gene back in oh, 1973. It consist of a series of steps involving centrifugation and electron microscopy.
A group did try to do it according to the standards, but their results were, uh… less than spectacular. Suffice to say, nobody still knows exactly what HIV looks like. All those images we see on TV, the papers, etc are just artist impressions, and not backed by any electron microscope photograph of a HIV culture. Unlike many other retrovirus samples, I might add.
So… no photograph, isolation not done, and we are supposed to believe this virus exists?
Okay then, how about the HIV being an infectious agent? Again, problems aplenty.
In biology and medicine, there’s a specific set of criteria, called Koch’s Postulates, an agent must fulfill before it can be classed as an infectious agent. While these postulates were devised way back in the 19th century, before we had such fun with viruses and prions, they are still an important pillar of microbiology, and are found still to apply to viruses and prions.
These four postulates are
1. The specific organism should be shown to be present in all cases of animals suffering from a specific disease but should not be found in healthy animals.
2. The specific microorganism should be isolated from the diseased animal and grown in pure culture on artificial laboratory media.
3. This freshly isolated microorganism, when inoculated into a healthy laboratory animal, should cause the same disease seen in the original animal.
4. The microorganism should be reisolated in pure culture from the experimental infection.
HIV, as accepted in its unpurified and insufficiently isolated cultures, has not fulfilled Koch’s postulates. So how did we accept it as [i]the[/i] causal agent of AIDS? Hmmm…
The really strange part is when scientists tried to find the exact mechanism for determining how HIV kills the CD4 T-cells. HIV, or rather the HIV that they claim to have, grows quite happily in vitro with those T-cells. No problem. Except one.
They aren’t killing the T-cells. Even in patients with terminal(death stage) AIDS, the amount of HIV found is almost inconsequential, too small a number to have caused such massive depletion of the T-cells.
To sum it up, the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS cannot be accepted under any scientific criteria. Without clear evidence, we cannot continue believing that HIV exists, that it causes AIDS.My basic premises are simple.
P1: Definition of AIDS as a disease.
P2: If agent fulfills Koch's postulates, agent is cause of disease.
P3: To fulfill the postulates, the virus must first be isolated.
P4: HIV has not been isolated according to the accepted methodology.
You can argue with P1, that my definition is wrong. However, the alternative definition which includes HIV as part of its definition uses circular logic, which is unacceptable. Unless somebody has a better idea, hmm?
To argue with P2 would be... well, tough.
P3 is one of the postulates, and crucial to the rest of the postulates.
P4 is the most debatable part. Has HIV been isolated using the retroviral technique? I'm not talking about a scanty particles here and there, like the one I've shown you before. I want a proper EM photo with dozens, hundreds of identical viri particles all identified as HIV. The onus of proof is on the HIV=AIDS proponents.
It's entirely possible that tomorrow somebody might manage to isolate HIV, thereby debunking my 4th premise, and thereby proving the rest of the premises. But...
That won't happen. Because there's no HIV in the first place.
The Nice Guy
) by the proliferation of the viri. In other words, only a large amount of viri attacking the system cells(causing the cells to die etc) could result in failure of said system.
