AIDS Again!

SLAM: debunk creationism, pseudoscience, and superstitions. Discuss logic and morality.

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Ravencrow
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Post by Ravencrow »

Nice Guy, I don't think you understand what PCR is used for. Your question reflects your ignorance of how PCR is run and how many kinds of ways to run it, and also that it is only one of the many tools used in molecular biology research. What I am saying is that in diagnostic tests, controls are included so that one can estimate how many copy numbers of the gene is present, to correct what you said about PCR being unquantifiable.
Can you find anything on the net where a piece of HIV isolation research used the method you outlined?
Nobody isolates viruses using PCR.

But here's how retroviruses (HIV is one of them) is generally isolated:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fc ... ection.285
In addition, does the initial copy number indicate exactly the amount of virus present,
The initial copy number in the controls used in diagnostic kits for quantitative PCR is equivalent to the number of virus particles. To further elaborate: You run the standards together with the samples - the computer generates a curve and churns out the numbers from there.

or just the strands of their DNA?
Strands of their DNA? Mate, PCR only amplifies the sequence that you specify. For diagnostics, we would have chosen a unique gene sequence most specific to what we are looking for to amplify. You choose the primers and the probes and then you run it.



I don't know why you "don't believe" that HIV exists. Quite frankly I don't care if you don't. It's there even if you want to call it something else or nothing at all.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/bv.fc ... iggrp.2267

Curr Opin Immunol 1996 Oct;8(5):613-8
HIV causes AIDS: Koch's postulates fulfilled.
O'Brien SJ, Goedert JJ.
Last edited by Ravencrow on 2003-05-01 07:59am, edited 1 time in total.
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

I tell you what, it took me a good four hours doing a 15kb section of E. coli plasmid DNA using PCR and the Southern Blot method, I'd hate to do the whole genome of a large organism.
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NecronLord
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Post by NecronLord »

Unholy crap! Is he still at it?

Now where did I put the rest of those mining charges
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

NecronLord wrote:Unholy crap! Is he still at it?

Now where did I put the rest of those mining charges
Mmm, Dalekanium...
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NecronLord
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Post by NecronLord »

Admiral Valdemar wrote: Mmm, Dalekanium...
Dirt cheap, superdense and Fissile :twisted:
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

NecronLord wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote: Mmm, Dalekanium...
Dirt cheap, superdense and Fissile :twisted:
Also a good description for anything residing in Scooter's cranium.
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NecronLord
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Post by NecronLord »

Admiral Valdemar wrote: Also a good description for anything residing in Scooter's cranium.
Could scooter be a roboman? (mindfucked remote control humans they use as expendable troops and/or infiltrators)

Ahhh the sweetness of the Hijack...
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Admiral Valdemar
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Post by Admiral Valdemar »

NecronLord wrote:
Admiral Valdemar wrote: Also a good description for anything residing in Scooter's cranium.
Could scooter be a roboman? (mindfucked remote control humans they use as expendable troops and/or infiltrators)

Ahhh the sweetness of the Hijack...
Hmm, who knows... who knows...
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Post by Ignorant twit »

First off let me start with shreading Koch's postulates as absolutes.

1. The specific organism should be shown to be present in all cases of animals suffering from a specific disease but shold not be found in healthy animals.

This is, of course, utter BS. The most famous case of this being WRONG would be Typhoid Mary. Salmonella Typhi were found in Typhoid Mary, and she was ASYMPTOMATIC. Real medical literature is replete with violations of this postulate ... we call them carriers.

2. The specific microorganism should be isolated from the diseased animal and grown in pure culture on artificial laboratory media.

This is again known to be violated in the real world. The Russians developed a strain of legionella which the body could fight, repulse, and cure. However in the process of doing so the immune system became "wired" to attack nerve cells. End result? You appear perfectly healthy while the virus is in you, when you appeared diseased (symptomatically it is a MS mimic) you are free of the pathogen.

3. This freshly isolated microorganism, when inoculated into a healthy laboratory animal, should cause the same disease seen in the original animal.

Again numerous real world examples do NOT follow this postulate. Suppose that your microorganism of interest causes the production of a specific molecule. In some people there might be no reaction to this molecule, in others this molecule may trigger an allergic response.

4. The microorganism should be reisolated in pure culture from the experimental infection.


This only means anything if all the other postulates are fulfilled.

Koch's postulates are GUIDELINES, they are not the be all, end all of microbiology.

In any event the only way to say that HIV does not fulfill Koch's postulates is to say that PCR is not a valid detection technique, and that just smacks of stupidity.

If you are serious about this crap, please go read:
Blattner W, Reitz M, Colclough G, Weiss S. HIV/AIDS in laboratory workers infected with HTLV-IIIB. IXth Int Conf on AIDS, (abstract no. PO-B01-0876), June 6-11, 1993.

and

Schechter MT, Craib KJ, Montaner JS, Lee TN, et al. Aetiology of AIDS. Lancet 1993b;341(8854):1222-3.


then come back and tell me why your alternative theory is better than the present, accepted model.

::Edited a glaring error I stupidly made ::
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