Rethinking AIDS by Robert Root-Bernstein, an Associate Professor of Physiology at Michigan State University, is a heady and disturbing dose of rational discourse that shakes to its core the establishment AIDS industry of scientists, government, activists and the mass media. Root-Bernstein tries to demonstrate that our current scientific and public health approach to AIDS is fatally flawed; that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), commonly understood to be the cause of the range of diseases that we call AIDS, may in fact be no more than a co-factor, if that.
Root-Bernstein is not alone in making such a claim. First and most famous of the AIDS heretics is Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg, who first challenged the notion that HIV causes AIDS in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Cancer Research in March 1987. As a result Duesberg ended up being informed by the National Institute of Health in October 1990 that his "Outstanding Investigator Grant" would not be renewed after it runs out in 1993. (The committee that made this decision had as members the mother of one of the children of Robert Gallo, alleged discoverer of HIV and someone who holds a patent on an HIV antibody test.) Duesberg has become Gallo's bete noire; Gallo recently walked off the set while being interviewed by ABC TV's Day One "news-magazine" when they brought up Duesberg and he vowed he'd do everything in his power to prevent them from giving Duesberg's ideas any publicity. But joining the anti-establishment cause was Charles A. Thomas–a former Harvard biochemistry professor–and a society he founded in 1991, the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis, which counts among its over 40 members retrovirologists, epidemiologists and immunologists, all of whom question the HIV dogma.
AIDS epidemiology also casts doubt on its status as a sexually transmitted single-cause microbe. In addition to anecdotal cases such as Marc Christian, Rock Hudson's lover who survived an estimated 600 unprotected sexual encounters with the dying Hudson without contracting either HIV or any illness, there is the simple fact that, despite a decade of activist and right-wing scare tactics, AIDS has never turned into the predicted plague breaking out of the initial risk groups of homosexuals, hemophiliacs and drug abusers. The official Centers for Disease Control estimate that the prevalence of HIV in the U.S. population has remained steady since 1985; around one million. (And only about 3 percent a year of these on average go on to develop symptoms of AIDS.) The much-hyped epidemic didn't happen. For a supposedly infectious virus, HIV shows an almost human preference for certain types of people and for males over females. For example, over 90 percent of AIDS cases in the U.S. are male, though in Africa the sexual distribution is almost even. What is in the nature of this microbe to make it sexually selective depending on what continent it is on? According To Root-Bernstein it is not the microbe but the nature of the differing immunosuppressive hazards in the two continents' populations that makes the difference.
The lack of massive heterosexual spread through prostitutes is crucial in showing that AIDS is not a standard sexually transmittable disease. Root-Bernstein cites many studies showing that no significant increase in HIV seropositivity (showing antibodies for HIV) among non-drug abusing prostitutes can be found in any major Western city. A study in the American Journal of Public Health concluded that "HIV infection in non-drug using prostitutes tends to be low or absent, implying that sexual activity alone does not place them at high risk, while prostitutes who use intravenous drugs are far more likely to be infected with HIV." Prostitutes in this study do evince the normal range of known sexually transmitted diseases.
As one of a small but growing group of AIDS heretics, I was very pleased to see that the recent National Research Council report on AIDS challenged the orthodoxy. It said that HIV infection and AIDS will remain limited to specific geographic areas and risk groups identified at the beginning of the epidemic: gay men and more particularly an ever-growing population of urban, drug-addicted, poverty-ridden, malnourished, hopeless and medically deprived people.
The political and social implications of the National Research Council report have received massive press coverage over the past few weeks. But it is the scientific and medical implications, unaddressed in the report, that are truly revolutionary. As the World Health Organization's working group on AIDS pointed out in 1984, if everyone is not equally susceptible to AIDS, factors other than HIV alone must govern who becomes infected and whether infection results in disease. This basic medical principle is as old as the germ theory of disease itself.
There is absolutely no doubt that some people are much more susceptible to HIV and AIDS than are others. Perhaps the most striking data concern female prostitutes in Western nations. Early in the epidemic, it was assumed that female prostitutes would become the vectors by which HIV and AIDS would be spread to the heterosexual community. A single, HIV-infected female prostitute might, it was thought, infect dozens of heterosexual men, and equal numbers of women through these men.
In fact, between 5% and 10% of female prostitutes are HIV-infected in major U. S. cities such as Los Angeles and New York. But there are two striking facts about these prostitutes. First, HIV-infected prostitutes, with only a few exceptions, are intravenous drug abusers. Cases of sexually acquired HIV among drug-free prostitutes are almost unknown. Second, in literally only a handful of cases are female prostitutes thought to have transmitted HIV to a client, and drug abuse by both the prostitute and the client has been documented in almost all of those cases.
Easton Wright
Rethinking AIDS by Robert Root-Bernstein, an Associate Professor of Physiology at Michigan State University, is a heady and disturbing dose of rational discourse that shakes to its core the establishment AIDS industry of scientists, government, activists and the mass media. Root-Bernstein tries to demonstrate that our current scientific and public health approach to AIDS is fatally flawed; that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), commonly understood to be the cause of the range of diseases that we call AIDS, may in fact be no more than a co-factor, if that.
Peter H. Duesberg (born December 2, 1936) is a German American molecular biologist and a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is known for his early research into genetic aspects of cancer. He played a pivotal role in the AIDS denialism controversy as a proponent of the belief that HIV does not cause AIDS.
Duesberg received acclaim early in his career for research on oncogenes and cancer. With Peter K. Vogt, he reported in 1970 that a cancer-causing virus of birds had extra genetic material compared with non-cancer-causing viruses, hypothesizing that this material contributed to cancer.[1][2] At the age of 36, Duesberg was awarded tenure at the University of California, Berkeley, and at 49, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He received an Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health in 1986, and from 1986 to 1987 was a Fogarty scholar-in-residence at the NIH laboratories in Bethesda, Maryland.
Hudson Robinson
You are spouting retarded shit which makes us lose credibility. He says after uttering vivid descriptions of fags and their disgusting depraved lifestyles.
Now come back here and tell my why we shouldn't listen to these two prestigious scientists and why I should be subjected to your foul mouthed abuse for simply stating a legitimate scientific line of enquiry.
Julian Brooks
You really are just too emotionally tied up in this subject buddy. Your hysterical temper tantrum on me is not a normal reaction. Think about it.
Matthew Foster
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Julian Martinez
So you have not rational reply to it all except "JOOOZ".
You demand I base my arguments on legitimate scientific papers. I have.
Let's see what you've got…oh wait, all you've got is vicious foul mouthed ad hominems on me for even daring to suggest this point of view.
Parker Young
I have asked you for a citation for your unsubstantiated bullshit 3 hours ago. You failed to deliver. I am simply writing you off as a low IQ retard now, which has somehow decided this would be a good thread to derail the discussion into his obsession with fags and aids.
