HIV; REALITY OR ARTEFACT?

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HIV; REALITY OR ARTEFACT?

By Stefan Lanka

Continuum April/May 1995

An error can never become true however many times you repeat it.

The truth can never be wrong, even if no one ever hears about it.

Mahatma Gandhi

For the past 10 years or so it has been the accepted wisdom that the human

immuno-deficiency virus, HIV, causes AIDS. It supposedly occurs in many

body fluids, and its transmission especially in semen and blood to a new

host, triggers a slow but inexorable progression to AIDS and ultimately

death. To infect another cell, HIV must at some stage in its life cycle

exist as a separate and identifiable entity.

What has been ignored and kept from public awareness is, that there has

never been a workable HIV test and that the definition of 'positive' has

always changed according to the views of different organisations dealing

with it, changed also according to the kind of tests used and changed from

laboratory to laboratory performing the tests:

" .. Its techniques have not been standardised, and the magnitude and

consequences of interlaboratory variations have not been measured. Its

results require interpretation, and the criteria for this interpretation

vary not only from laboratory to laboratory but also from month to month

... " (1)

The dispute over who discovered HIV (2), was a distraction from the

question of whether the virus actually exists at all. The public was

impressed that if a President and a Prime Minister (3) had to meet to

resolve attribution, then the thing they were negotiating about must be real.

In 1993 a research group from Perth, Australia succeeded in publishing a

paper on the HIV test.(4) Since then anybody could have read for him or

herself that no AIDS test could ever work, because HIV has never been

isolated nor even shown to exist. Since AIDS research and the media have

largely ignored any critique of HIV=AIDS, especially the essential question

of whether HIV really does exist, it is time to call again for a

reappraisal of the whole HIV/AIDS hypothesis. In going back to the origins

of HIV virology and telling the HIV story, a view will be presented which

will make clear that HIV itself, the very object of this Manhattan Project

of modern medicine, AIDS research, does not exist.(5)

A little virology

Viruses are essentially just packages of genetic information enclosed in a

coat which consists of proteins. They can reproduce themselves only by

infecting a suitable host cell and appropriating the chemical machinery

they find there. The proteins making up the viruses are characteristic for

each species of virus. Apart from enveloping and transporting the genetic

information intact, the composition of proteins for a given virus results

in a specific shape for the virus particle.

This much is generally known. Less well-known is the existence of other

particles which look like viruses but aren't, and are nonchalantly referred

to as " virus-like " particles. Such particles are far from rare, found, for

example, always in placentas, and very frequently in the artificial

environment of laboratory cell cultures. They have served to muddy the

waters considerably as far as AIDS research is concerned, because particles

just like these have been called HIV. To date, none of these has been

characterised and shown to exist as an entity which one may justifiably

call a virus.

One root of the belief in the AIDS virus

In classical theory DNA encodes the genetic material of heredity, which is

then transcribed into messenger RNA which in turn specifies the assembly of

amino-acids to construct the proteins of all living beings. In 1970 an

enzyme (biological catalyst) was discovered in extracts of certain cells

which was capable of converting a molecule of RNA into DNA. This was a

revolutionary discovery, because it overturned a fundamental tenet of

molecular genetics, namely, that the flow of information was strictly

one-way and never reversed. It had hitherto always been thought that DNA

was transcribed (converted) into messenger RNA and that the reverse process

from RNA to DNA was impossible. The enzyme responsible became known as

reverse transcriptase (6) and a lot of new myths arose.

An error of the past: cancer caused by viruses.

It was believed that the new enzyme was a marker for a virus, because the

cells in which it was detected, and which were used to study cancer (7),

were thought to have become cancerous through being infected by a virus.

New to the idea of cancer viruses (8) was that nucleic acid, when in the

form of RNA could be converted into DNA by the enzyme, thus providing a

mechanism for viral nucleic acid to be inserted anywhere in the chromosome

of the cells.(9) These " new " viruses became known as retroviruses.(10) The

insertion of certain retroviral genes was thought to trigger cancer.

The idea that these postulated viruses caused cancer quickly became " hot

news " the world over, but did not survive investigation (11) and other

explanations were sought.(12) The theory did not predict or explain the

dramatic increase in cancer cases, cancer could not be shown to be

transmissible, nor could it suggest any remedy in the form of a

vaccine.(13) Interestingly, the spread of cancer viruses was blamed on

homosexuals, prostitutes and black people, just as AIDS came to be 13 years

later.(14)

Whenever and wherever reverse transcriptase activity was detected it was

rashly assumed that retroviruses were at work. This turned out to be a

grave error, because it was later found that the enzyme occurred in all

living matter, proving that reverse transcriptase activity had nothing to

do with retroviruses per se.(15)

Repetitive elements

Further research showed that at least 10% of mammalian DNA was composed of

repetitive sequences which were referred to as " nonsense genes " , parts of

which, nonetheless, were described as " retroviral genes " . They exist in

their hundreds if not thousands. Some of them can even replicate

independently and jump within and between chromosomes, and for this reason

became known as retrotransposons.

In the laboratory they can be made to migrate, and when this happens

reverse transcriptase is invariably detected, which underlines the fact

that reverse transcriptase activity has nothing to do with retroviruses as

such.(16)

LAV, HTLV-III, HIV and all that

Because all this was already well known in 1983 it is incomprehensible that

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi, a member of Montagnier's group, as well as

Gallo's group itself in 1984, claimed to have discovered a new virus, when

all they did was to demonstrate reverse transcriptase activity, and to

publish photographs of cellular particles without proof that they were

viruses. They could neither isolate them nor show that they were

responsible for creating the observed reverse transcriptase activity nor

the tissue abnormalities from which they were obtained.(17) They concluded:

" the role of the virus in the aetiology of AIDS remains to be

determined " .(18)

What makes a virus new?

The isolation and purification of a real virus is a straightforward matter,

because unlike cells, viruses of one species are always of the same size

and shape, and can be readily separated from other cell components by

standard techniques. A control experiment is to try an isolation with

putative non-infected material in exactly the same way as the supposedly

infected material. Nothing should be isolated in this case.

To identify a virus definitively, a first and simple step is to photograph

isolated particles of it in an electron microscope, and they must look like

the viral particles observed in cells, body fluids or cell cultures to

distinguish them from other cellular particles which look like viruses, but

are not. Proteins making up the viral coat must then be separated from each

other and photographed. This produces a pattern which is characteristic of

the species of virus. A similar separation and identification procedure

must be gone through for the DNA or RNA of the virus. Only after the viral

proteins and nucleic acid components have been properly identified, is it

legitimate to speak of a new virus.

No evidence for the existence of HIV

Such evidence has up till now never been produced for HIV. No photograph of

an isolated HIV particle has ever been published nor of any of its proteins

or nucleic acids. No control experiments as mentioned above have been

published to date. What has been shown are photographs of virus-like

particles in cell cultures, but none of isolated viruses, let alone of a

structure within the human body having the shape ascribed to HIV. What the

whole world has seen are models representing HIV with dish aerials, said to

be receptors with which the virus attaches itself to cells.

The existence of HIV is inferred from an antibody test, but how this is

supposed to work, when the virus has never been shown to exist and obtained

free of contaminants, remains a mystery.

The AIDS Test

Let us recall that the AIDS test is supposed to detect antibodies produced

by the immune system in response to infection by the virus. This is

routinely done by layering proteins ostensibly from the virus in the wells

of a plastic rack and adding blood serum to be tested to each. If

antibodies are present, they bind to the proteins, and when this happens

sophisticated staining procedures can make this visible. But, because no

proteins which are viral and free from contaminants, have ever been

obtained, one cannot be sure what the antibodies are that bind to the

proteins.

This is the crux of the problem facing all HIV (AIDS) tests. The inability

to isolate a viral entity, and to characterise its constituent proteins

unambiguously means that the evidence for the existence of HIV using

antibodies is just arguing in a circle. Antibodies that are detected, are

due to other causes.

Why no HIV test is ever able to work

It is consequently quite illogical to claim that a positive test results

from prior contact with the virus.(19) Because various ill-characterised

proteins are involved, every test kit manufacturer applies his own

arbitrary criteria, and no two kits ever give the same result. It makes no

difference that learned committees set standards to decide which tests

should be regarded as " positive " and which not, because this merely skirts

round the problem, namely, to what are antibodies actually being detected

in the AIDS test? It is of no help that nowadays " second " and " third "

generation tests exist using synthetic proteins which give greater

consistency and comparability, because only by an unscientific stretch of

the imagination are they viral proteins!

Neither fudging the true identity of the proteins, nor advocating two kinds

of test - reassuringly but mistakenly described as " search " and

" confirmatory " tests - resolves this difficulty.

The ELISA test is used to screen for antibodies, which is " confirmed " by

the more specific Western Blot. The dilemma cannot be stated more

poignantly than by quoting from the leaflet accompanying one such test kit:

" The test for the existence of antibodies against AIDS-associated virus is

not diagnostic for AIDS and AIDS-like diseases. Negative test results do

not exclude the possibility of contact or infection with the

AIDS-associated virus. Positive test results do not prove that someone has

an AIDS or pre-AIDS disease status nor that he will acquire it " .(20) Quite.

The direct proof of HIV

Some HIV researchers have tried to circumvent the problem by pointing to

something called " direct " evidence for the virus. All that this meant,

though, was arbitrarily selecting a protein of a certain size which

happened to coincide with that shown in HIV models. The delusion of such

" evidence " was illustrated when the protein later turned out to be of human

origin! (21)

How the genetic information of HIV was manufactured through ...

Despite this deplorable state of affairs the majority of AIDS researchers

still cling to the authenticity of HIV, because a genetic sequence for it

has been published. Moreover, genetic procedures now exist, which, unlike

antibody tests, attempt to identify the presence of HIV more or less

immediately, instead of only weeks later when antibodies are formed. The

fact that the genetic tests (PCR)(22) do not give the same results as the

antibody tests is simply ignored.

Since no virus has been isolated, it follows that no nucleic acid has been

isolated from it either. Complicated procedures are even so described in

the literature, at the end of which something is produced which is called

the nucleic acid of HIV.(23)

....a test tube

HIV and its DNA can allegedly be made by the " bucketful " (24), but under

very surprising conditions which, inter alia, entail the use of extracts

from plants and other oxidising chemicals, which could not possibly exist

in vivo. Immortalised cell lines devised (and later patented) by the

Montagnier and Gallo groups are co-cultured with extracts from human cells

or the cells themselves. At the end of it all HIV itself is not actually

obtained - only reverse transcriptase activity is shown to occur - which is

taken to imply that the DNA that is found, must have been viral in origin.

The real explanation of what happens is as follows. In the mixture of cell

cultures and stressed human cells, RNA and reverse transcriptase come to be

produced in large amounts, because the cells have been specially selected

and treated to do this. The RNA is transcribed into DNA by reverse

transcriptase, and long pieces of DNA are produced which are said to be

viral DNA. In fact they are composed of unrelated pieces of expressed

cellular RNA, transcribed into DNA and linked together by a process of

" template switching " (a well-characterised property of reverse

transcriptase).(25) This misleads ordinary researchers into believing that

they have actually produced viral DNA.

It is said that this linear DNA is the free or the non-integrated form of

HIV, which furthermore is said to be a unique feature of HIV, because a lot

of detectable free linear DNA has not been suggested in any other models of

retroviruses.

....and a selecting process

The resulting pieces of DNA too, are necessarily both shorter and longer

than the " correct " length of HIV. Pieces corresponding to the " correct "

length of HIV must be selected for size, because otherwise the purported

DNA preparation would be a mixture of various lengths, which would violate

a cardinal rule of virology that all nucleic acid of a particular virus be

identical in size.

....and a detecting process

Having artificially prepared DNA pieces of uniform length, they are still

not ready for presentation, because they consist of a mixture of all kinds

of RNA fragments transcribed into DNA and thus cannot be shown to represent

unique viral DNA. Accordingly, the mixture is subjected to a kind of

lock-and-key detection process called hybridisation, whereby pieces of DNA

are detected which complement more or less a probe of that which it is

desired to be shown to have been prepared.

....and choosing a desired probe

Since no DNA from HIV existed to hybridise with the prepared DNA, Gallo and

Montagnier simply used stretches of DNA from what they said was specific to

HTLV-I, a retrovirus Gallo had earlier claimed to have discovered, and

which they deemed suitable for this purpose. The DNA detected in this way

was replicated and certain stretches of it cloned and declared to be the

DNA of HTLV-III (later to be called HIV).

To summarise, the purpose of the exercise is to grow HIV, but it actually

produces a mixture of different lengths of DNA, contrary to theory which

says they should all be identical, and no virus at all. It is then claimed

that the " correct " DNA has been prepared by finding certain strands in this

heterogeneous mix by hybridising them with an HTLV-I DNA probe whose

sequence is known and defined to be similar to HIV. However,

non-hybridising strands of DNA should not be there at all, and the fact

that they are, proves that a complete rag-bag of DNA has been prepared,

without any indication of what it is made up of.

It follows that " HIV " DNA must just be a laboratory artefact constructed to

a preconceived idea of what retroviral DNA should be, and this assessment

does not even raise the question why no virus can be obtained, whatever the

experimental conditions.

Gallo and Montagnier's cloned HIV DNA

One cannot help asking why no-one had not long ago spotted the flaw in the

techniques employed by the Gallo and Montagnier groups. After defining some

segments of DNA to be " HIV " -specific, every researcher in the field worked

exclusively with short, cloned sequences (never the whole strand) on the

reasonable assumption that the original characterisation had been correctly

performed. From the isolation and identification procedure described above,

it follows that the resultant sequences vary widely from one preparation to

the next, which sequence analysts misinterpreted as the legendary capacity

of HIV to mutate. A computer simulated phylogenetic tree was constructed,

which established precisely what its designer sought to prove.(26)

Some history

(I) Perhaps one reason for this calamitous state of affairs is that

HTLV-III was presented to the world as the cause of AIDS at a historic

press conference on April 23, 1984 (a patent for an antibody test was

applied for on the same day!), instead of making the evidence for it

available beforehand, as correct science demands. The undue haste may be

explained by the fact that both the National Cancer Institute and the

Centers for Disease Control (CDC) had actually one day earlier in a lengthy

front page article in The New York Times on April 22 come out in favour of

the French claim for priority.(27)

(II) Even so, one must admire Gallo's audacity, because using the same

technique he claimed in 1975 to have discovered the first human retrovirus

(HL23), but which turned out to be nothing more than pieces of DNA from

three different sources of contamination.(28) Nowadays, even an

undergraduate would know that if you added DNA to a cell culture, part of

the DNA would be incorporated into the cells without any virus being

involved.

What does the AIDS test actually test for?

Since " HIV " has been shown to be a laboratory artefact it must be assumed

that, when not just cross-reacting with other known antibodies, the " AIDS "

test detects antibodies against proteins produced in the procedure itself.

They must be of human origin because the cells used originated from

leukaemic patients. Test positivity, logically, results from immunological

contact with them. However, since positivity actually correlates with

otherwise unrelated factors such as rheumatism and sun bathing, no

specificity can be ascribed to the test.(29) Whether antibody positivity

really correlates with disease as is commonly supposed, remains to be

determined by a critical re-evaluation of the data. Condoms, therefore,

serve only to protect against venereal diseases and as contraceptives, and

worse lull the user into a false sense of security by ignoring real dangers

he may be exposing himself to.

Re-direction of AIDS research

AIDS research is therefore back at square one and not at Basic Science as

suggested elsewhere.(30) The main players have since 1993 begun to slink

off, arguing that the virus having mutated so much is now no longer

detectable. AIDS has therefore to be explained " in the absence of further

whole virus " .(31) Apart from the shortcomings of the antibody test, other

misconceptions such as T-cell counting exist, which mean that the whole

concept of AIDS needs to be completely revised.(32) It must be shown that

there is any point in renaming a collection of known diseases as AIDS, just

because someone is positive in the antibody or genetic (PCR) tests. Leaving

HIV out of the picture explains why the epidemiological projections, which

years ago had forecast a world-wide epidemic, have been a complete failure.

Africa in 1986 was held up as a dire warning of what would befall the

Western world. There, AIDS was diagnosed by a combination of clinical

conditions (33) such as chronic fevers, diarrhoeas, coughs and weight loss,

all symptoms of the diseases of poverty, without testing for HIV

antibodies.(34) It should hardly come as a surprise that an entirely

different definition produced a different outcome.

Finally, the effect of a positive test result on mental and physical health

needs to be considered and investigated.(35)

Anti-virals

Whatever happens, the use of AZT and other " anti-virals " which are supposed

to target HIV replication, but actually kill cells indiscriminately (and

ultimately the whole body), must be stopped immediately. It is especially

distressing to note that AZT and its analogues preferentially attack those

cells which divide most rapidly, namely, cells in the intestines causing

diarrhoea and malabsorption of food, and in bone marrow, ironically, the

primary production site for cells of the immune system.(36)

The people who need enlightenment

The most important and delicate task is to convince HIV positives that

their test result is not a death sentence, to be generally supportive of

them, to assuage their anxiety, and to help them understand that with

appropriate treatment of any specific disease, they have a good chance to

retain or regain their health. The large number of long-term positives,

whose condition cannot be explained by conventional AIDS theory, as well as

the phenomenon of sero-reversion (return to negative test status), provide

eloquent testimony to this. HIV/AIDS researchers and health officials are

herewith called upon to debate the whole subject of HIV/AIDS openly and

humanely, and to recognise the mistake that immune deficiency was acquired

by an infectious agent.

The future

To be able to live a fuller life we have first to regain and then retain

autonomy over our bodies and health from self-appointed experts, who have

dispossessed us of it.(37)

If we refuse to learn from what has happened in AIDS research and related

medical policies, then worse is on the way, some of it is, indeed, here

already.(38) The genetics agenda begun in the 1860's (39) and a primitive

genetic determinism have become established through the availability of

genetic sequences and the ability to manipulate them easily, which are, in

fact, pure fantasy.(40) Furthermore, all models of genetics and associated

technologies, e.g. genome therapy, are based on a one-dimensional, static

model of genetics which is a crass oversimplification, not defensible even

when Mendel first proposed it.(41) *

Health as a Virtue (Ivan Illich):

Health designates a process of adaptation. It is not the result of

instinct, but of an autonomous yet culturally shaped reaction to socially

created reality. It designates the ability to adapt to changing

environments, to growing up and to ageing, to healing when damaged, to

suffering, and to the peaceful expectation of death. Health embraces the

future as well, and therefore includes anguish and the inner resources to

live with it.

Health designates a process by which each person is responsible, but only

in part responsible to others. To be responsible may mean two things. A man

is responsible for what he has done, and responsible to another person or

group. Only when he feels subjectively responsible or answerable to another

person will the consequences of his failure be not criticism, censure, or

punishment but regret, remorse, and true repentance. The consequent states

of grief and distress are marks of recovery and healing, and are

phenomenologically something entirely different from guilt feelings. Health

is a task, and as such is not comparable to the physiological balance of

beasts. Success in this personal task is in large part the result of the

self-awareness, self-discipline, and inner resources by which each person

regulates his own daily rhythm and actions, his diet, and his sexual

activity. Knowledge encompassing desirable activities, competent

performance, the commitment to enhance health in others - these are all

learned from the example of peers or elders. These personal activities are

shaped and conditioned by the culture in which the individual grows up:

patterns of work and leisure, of celebration and sleep, of production and

preparation of food and drink, of family relations and politics.

Long-tested health patterns that fit a geographic area and a certain

technical situation depend to a large extent on long-lasting political

autonomy. They depend on the spread of responsibility for health habits and

for the socio-biological environment. That is, they depend on the dynamic

stability of a culture. The level of public health corresponds to the

degree to which the means andresponsibility for coping with illness are

distributed among the total population. This ability to cope can be

enhanced but never replaced by medical intervention or by the hygienic

characterisitcs of the environment. That society which can reduce

professional intervention to the minimum will provide the best conditions

for health. The greater the potential for autonomous adaptation to self, to

others, and to the environment, the less management of adaptation will be

needed or tolerated.

A world of optimal and widespread health is obviously a world of minimal

and only occasional medical intervention. Healthy people are those who live

in healthy homes on a healthy diet in an environment equally fit for birth,

growth, work, healing, and dying; they are sustained by a culture that

enhances the conscious acceptance of limits to population, of ageing, of

incomplete recovery and ever-imminent death. Healthy people need minimal

bureaucratic interference to mate, give birth, share the human condition,

and die. Man's consciously lived fragility, individuality, and relatedness

make the experience of pain, of sickness, and of death an integral part of

his life. The ability to cope with this trio autonomously is fundamental to

his health. As he becomes dependent on the management of his intimacy, he

renounces his autonomy and his health must decline. The true miracle of

modern medicine is diabolical. It consists in making not only individuals

but whole populations survive on inhumanly low levels of personal health.

Medical nemesis is the negative feedback of a social organization that set

out to improve and equalize the opportunity for each man to cope in

autonomy and ended by destroying it.

Acknowledgements:

This article is dedicated to Ivan Illich and McKeown: had their

writings been taken more seriously the world would have been spared the

AIDS panic as well as other perversions. I would also like to thank Volker

Gildemeister (Meditel, London) for translation and constructive criticism,

and of course, my family, Hans-Walter Wiegand and other friends too

numerous to list, for all their support.

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19 see ref 4

20 Bio-Rad, 1989.

21 see ref 4

22 Just how little confidence is placed in the validity of such tests is

revealed by the caveats in the leaflet accompanying one of them: " The

Amplicor HIV-1 PCR test has been tested using whole blood specimens only.

Performance with other specimens has not been evaluated and may result in

false negative or false positive results... Detection of HIV-1 may be

dependent on the amount of proviral DNA in the specimen. This may be

affected by specimen collection methods and patient factors such as age,

disease status and risk factors etc. As in any diagnostic test, results

from Amplicor HIV-1 test should be interpreted with consideration of

clinical and laboratory findings. " It will become clear later why whole

blood rather than serum is used for this test, all the more so as the

purpose of the test is to detect transmissible virus particles which should

not have anything to do with the presence or absence of blood cells. This

all the more significant, since a major form of HIV transmission is

supposed to be via Factor 8 given to haemophiliacs, where blood cells are

absent. The implication is that without blood cells no " viral " DNA would be

detected!

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Sheri Nakken, R.N., MA, Classical Homeopath

http://www.nccn.net/~wwithin/vaccine.htm