Why I Quit Hiv

[Zach]

Your understanding is correct- AIDS is an acquired state wherein a state of immunodeficiency is acheived. In this state, a person is susceptible to a wide array of pathogens that would not typically be lethal- thrush, for example.

 

If it is the case that HIV is not the etiological cause of AIDS, then there should be no problem epidemiologically finding huge populations of people who are HIV-negative and yet dying of AIDS. For example, if drug use is the cause, then there should be thousands of drug users turning up with the same kinds of weird fungus infections and bizzare cancers that we see in AIDS patients. This should be something fairly obvious to test for, all it would really take is checking medical records for transients, crackheads, etc. at county hospitals to see if their immune systems are completely gone. Where are these studies?

 

There are, without a doubt, a number of people walking around quite healthy who are HIV-positive. There are also a number of people walking around who are positive for herpes who have no sores on their genitals. Does this mean that there is no link between herpes and those sores? From what we know about many viruses, the infection course can be delayed for months or even years. Viruses are notorious for their ability to lay dormant, mostly because of the fact that they're not technically alive. It's also been discovered that there are certain people who have a mutant form of a chemokine receptor which is needed for effective HIV infection of the CD4 lymphocyte. These people are genetically "immune" to HIV without medicine.

 

Ultimately, you're right- the best way to falsify the HIV hypothesis is to take two populations of age-matched, healthy people, inject half of them with a high-titer preparation of HIV, and the other half with saline. Give them both no antiviral medication, and see how many of each group die. If this sounds completely unethical to you, congratulations, you've just realized why this experiment can never be performed, and why it'll always remain the last objection of anyone who wants to criticize the HIV hypothesis.

[Amethyst]

That's a perfectly logical and respectable place to be. We both are in that same place. You seem to be tentatively on the "HIV causes AIDS as far as I know, prove me wrong" side of the fence, and I'm more on the "just prove a cause" side of the fence.

 

Yes, that is pretty much where I am right now.

[spamandham]

If it is the case that HIV is not the etiological cause of AIDS, then there should be no problem epidemiologically finding huge populations of people who are HIV-negative and yet dying of AIDS.

 

Maybe, maybe not. People who smoke tend to develop yellow fingers. They also develop lung cancer. Shall we conclude that yellow fingers cause lung cancer, and start a drug therapy program to de-yellow the fingers of people with yellow fingers?

 

It is not sufficient to assess correlation to determine causation. This is a common objection against practitioners of psuedo-science.

 

For example, if drug use is the cause, then there should be thousands of drug users turning up with the same kinds of weird fungus infections and bizzare cancers that we see in AIDS patients.

This should be something fairly obvious to test for, all it would really take is checking medical records for transients, crackheads, etc. at county hospitals to see if their immune systems are completely gone. Where are these studies?

 

I think that's the whole point of those who are skeptical of the HIV-AIDS causal link. The claim is that no real studies have been done to attempt to falsify the hypothesis. As a result, the link is not supported by science - which has at it's core the goal of trying to falsify rather than confirm a hypothesis.

 

For the record, my position is that of skeptic for the sole reason that AIDS is not wide spread even though HPV (a sexually transmitted retro-virus) infects about half the adult population. The arguments as to why this is the case are on par with the hand waving arguments of creationists.

 

There are, without a doubt, a number of people walking around quite healthy who are HIV-positive. There are also a number of people walking around who are positive for herpes who have no sores on their genitals. Does this mean that there is no link between herpes and those sores?

 

Now we are moving from "cause" to "link". Sure, HIV might be a contributing factor to AIDS, or even the cause of it. But I can certainly appreciate the argument that this causal link has not been scientificaly established.

 

Ultimately, you're right- the best way to falsify the HIV hypothesis is to take two populations of age-matched, healthy people, inject half of them with a high-titer preparation of HIV, and the other half with saline.

 

We don't need to resort to such an unethical experiment. These populations basically already exist in the third world. I'm willing to conceed on placebo effect for AIDS, as I'm unaware of people actually dying from placebo effects.

[redneck22]

Wow. One could just trade the word Christianity with HIV in several places in this article and you would quickly notice some similiarities to another unprovable fallacy we deal with on a daily basis...

 

Good read Nivek. Tanky.

 

or evolution

[spamandham]

Wow. One could just trade the word Christianity with HIV in several places in this article and you would quickly notice some similiarities to another unprovable fallacy we deal with on a daily basis...

 

Good read Nivek. Tanky.

 

or evolution

 

Take it to another thread please.

[Queer Texan]

There are actually many people who have HIV and have had it for a long time, who do not have AIDS. Not everyone who gets HIV gets AIDS.

 

Maybe I'm too old -- being all of 35, but I can remember a day (pre-cocktail) when not only the number, but the names and addresses of people with HIV/AIDS who had lived beyond 10 years or so without dying where known to scientists, and it was a very small number of people. I can remember it being a death penalty.

 

I can remember when the cocktails came out, and suddenly, people weren't automatically dying anymore. I can remember there being a change from "less than a decade" to "indefinite" life.

 

As a front-line healthcare worker (nurse), I've taken care of people with the most notorious AIDS-related diseases, and they're so particular to AIDS (not 100%, but vastly more likely than not) that when they pop up out of the blue, I've never seen the HIV test come up negative. Never. Nill. Nada.

 

I don't pretend to be a scientist, and can only speak on the issue anecdotally, but there are a few things that just don't "ring true" about the mathematician's article. What about all the AIDS babies, the Ryan Whites? Are we to believe that they were sexually promiscious drug users? The doctor seems to suggest that there is simply no correlation between HIV infection and AIDS-related death, despite the fact that people dying with pretty specific AIDS-related diseases are all HIV positive.

 

Sure, some of her criticisms are quite valid. I'm sure a great deal of people are dying from the mega-doses of the anti-virals . . . hell, I've seen people go into liver failure from Tylenol, a recent case comes to mind where a man died of multiple organ failure from popping ibuprofen like it was candy. I'm sure there are a lot of contributing factors, and there's probably some validity to the suggestion that HIV isn't always the main (or indirect) cause of death, but to suggest that HIV is a harmless virus that wouldn't kill an additional person if the whole world were infected tomorrow . . . that's bullshit.

[Zach]

Maybe, maybe not. People who smoke tend to develop yellow fingers. They also develop lung cancer. Shall we conclude that yellow fingers cause lung cancer, and start a drug therapy program to de-yellow the fingers of people with yellow fingers?

 

It is not sufficient to assess correlation to determine causation. This is a common objection against practitioners of psuedo-science.

That's an excellent point. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, a classic fallacy. But that doesn't mean that all correlations are meaningless- it just means that you have to propose a mechanism by which correlation can be causation. The example that you mentioned, yellow fingers, is an excellent correlative starting point, because if people who have yellow fingers are statistically more likely to develop lung cancer, then we can conclude that there is some other factor that is related to the yellow fingers that may be causing the disease.

 

However, the instance that I mentioned, HIV negative people with AIDS, is not a positive correlation- it is a negative correlation, designed to test the HIV hypothesis. If the HIV hypothesis is false, then there should be as many- if not more AIDS patients without HIV than with it. Likewise, if the cigarette hypothesis of lung cancer is false, there should be as many- if not more lung cancer patients who have never smoked.

 

I think that's the whole point of those who are skeptical of the HIV-AIDS causal link. The claim is that no real studies have been done to attempt to falsify the hypothesis. As a result, the link is not supported by science - which has at it's core the goal of trying to falsify rather than confirm a hypothesis.

I'm not sure what you mean here. All scientific studies have two hypotheses- the experimental and the null hypothesis. The goal of any study is to falsify one of the hypotheses and accept the other. The two hypothesis are designed so that both cannot be true concurrently. If a study accepts the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, then you can be sure that the null hypothesis was falsified.

 

For the record, my position is that of skeptic for the sole reason that AIDS is not wide spread even though HPV (a sexually transmitted retro-virus) infects about half the adult population. The arguments as to why this is the case are on par with the hand waving arguments of creationists.,

It's interesting that you mention creationist arguments, because I can't help but notice the similarities between creationists attacking evolutionary theory and people attacking the HIV hypothesis. Both don't really contain much more than critiques of current research and discussions of the limitations of science. Neither have offered anything in the way of positive evidence for their own hypotheses.

 

As to the disparity in HIV and HPV infections, I know that HIV was introduced in this country within a very specific and exclusive population. HPV was likely introduced in a less specific and inclusive population. Infection efficiency also varies between different viruses, although I don't know the specific comparison between HIV and HPV.

 

Now we are moving from "cause" to "link". Sure, HIV might be a contributing factor to AIDS, or even the cause of it. But I can certainly appreciate the argument that this causal link has not been scientificaly established.

"Causal link" is the concept I meant to get across. But what is your qualification for something to be "scientifically established?" Does 20 years of supporting research not carry any weight?

 

We don't need to resort to such an unethical experiment. These populations basically already exist in the third world. I'm willing to conceed on placebo effect for AIDS, as I'm unaware of people actually dying from placebo effects.

Now you've lost me. The "placebo effect" refers to the psychosomatic tendency of people to feel better if they think they've been given a potent medicine. I'm not aware of that term being used to refer to people who psychosomatically manifest with Kaposi's sarcoma or non-Hodgkins lymphoma. And what part do third-world people play in this? Are you proposing to use them as an experimental population to receive infection with HIV while you wait to see if they manifest with AIDS? How is this any more ethical than the experiment I already outlined?

[spamandham]

Post hoc ergo propter hoc, a classic fallacy. But that doesn't mean that all correlations are meaningless- it just means that you have to propose a mechanism by which correlation can be causation. The example that you mentioned, yellow fingers, is an excellent correlative starting point, because if people who have yellow fingers are statistically more likely to develop lung cancer, then we can conclude that there is some other factor that is related to the yellow fingers that may be causing the disease.

 

The fallacy would be to conclude that yellow fingers cause lung cancer, rather than, smoking causes both yellow fingers and lung cancer. The analogy would be that something causes AIDS, which allows HIV to infect. How do we know that HIV causes AIDS rather than early onset of AIDS causes susceptibility to HIV? That's the contention I think. The correlation between HIV and AIDS has been established, but not the causation - this is the claim of the skeptical perspective. The fact that there are HIV+ people without AIDS, as well as people with immune disorders without HIV, supports the skepticism. I'll clarify again that the skeptical camp is not claiming HIV does not cause AIDS, they are claiming that the causal link has not been established.

 

However, the instance that I mentioned, HIV negative people with AIDS, is not a positive correlation- it is a negative correlation, designed to test the HIV hypothesis. If the HIV hypothesis is false, then there should be as many- if not more AIDS patients without HIV than with it.

 

Not necessarily. If immune deficiencies either make you susceptible to HIV, or make you likely to be tested for it, then no conclusion can be drawn. We are right bakc at the correlation vs. causation problem.

 

Likewise, if the cigarette hypothesis of lung cancer is false, there should be as many- if not more lung cancer patients who have never smoked.

 

If lung cancer could cause smoking, this would be a better analogy. AIDS, being a reduction of the immune system, could very well be the cause of HIV infection rather than the other way around. How do we know that HIV causes a diminished immune system rather than a diminished immune system becoming susceptible to HIV? A weakening immune system might become susceptible to HIV long before the immunity collapses outright, just as HIV might infect the immune system long before it causes it to collapse. Which is it, if either? How do we know?

 

I'm not sure what you mean here. All scientific studies have two hypotheses- the experimental and the null hypothesis. The goal of any study is to falsify one of the hypotheses and accept the other.

 

No. The purpose of the scientific method is to attempt to prove your hypothesis false. Those that pass such a test over and over come to be accepted as true. If it fails, the hypothesis is rejected. Real science is a process of ellimination, not a process of confirmation.

 

Let's apply this process right now. The hypothesis is that HIV causes AIDS. The negation of that is !(HIV causes AIDS). The implication is that if HIV does not cause AIDS, there should be cases of people with HIV who do not have AIDS, and people with immune deficiencies who do not test positive for HIV.

 

Indeed there are many such cases! The AIDS camp has modified the hypothesis to make it untestable. They say "oh well, it takes 10, 15, 20, 100 years for HIV to turn into AIDS". While this is posssible, it starts to sound more like quackery than science. It sounds like an apologetic response to the clear and obvious refutations.

 

Perhaps such a response made sense 10, 15, 20 years ago, but now, we have a full 50% of the population who has HPV, an STD just like HIV, who should have been exposed to HIV by now, yet only a tiny fraction of the population has any sign of AIDS, or have even been tested for HIV! This should be a mass pandemic by now if what those who claim a causal link between HIV and AIDS were telling the truth. Who gives a fuck if HIV causes AIDS 200 years later, we'd all be dead anyway. If >10 years must pass to establish a causal link, it sounds to me like bullshit designed to be untestable rather than supported by real science.

 

It's interesting that you mention creationist arguments, because I can't help but notice the similarities between creationists attacking evolutionary theory and people attacking the HIV hypothesis. Both don't really contain much more than critiques of current research and discussions of the limitations of science. Neither have offered anything in the way of positive evidence for their own hypotheses.

 

The beauty of being a skeptic is that you are not obligated to provide an alternative. You get to just sit back and pop off potshots. In the case of evolutionists, they do in fact offer an alternative, but it's crap. The AIDS skeptics are not claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS. They are merely claiming that the causal link has not been established. No-one has really explained why AIDS does not follow the same statistical occurence of other STDs. The 10-15 year lag has not panned out statistically. The arguments sound like hand waving bullshit with no substance to support them. They sound link explanations in search of evidence rather than the other way around.

 

As to the disparity in HIV and HPV infections, I know that HIV was introduced in this country within a very specific and exclusive population. HPV was likely introduced in a less specific and inclusive population. Infection efficiency also varies between different viruses, although I don't know the specific comparison between HIV and HPV.

 

We don't know when HIV was introduced. Immunodeficiencies have been recorded for much longer than HIV. Were all the previous known cases also caused by HIV? HIV has been known since the mid 80s. We are now 20 years later. A full generation of sexually promiscuous and unprotected adults has passed (based on HPV rates), yet the rate of AIDS has not changed. "Oh AIDS takes 10+ years to deveop" doesn't cut the mustard anymore since 20+ years have passed since it was discovered.

 

Does 20 years of supporting research not carry any weight?

 

No. Only 20 years worth of attempts to falisfy would carry weight. We have such an experiment being carried out. The percentage of the adult population suffering from AIDS is small, yet at least 50% of the adult population has been exposed to risky sex based on HPV infection rates. No-one has explained how this is possible. There are several viral STDs; HPV, clamydia, herpes, etc. Each of these has a much much higher rate of incidence than AIDS. Why?

 

Where are the studies that show that the rate of immune deficiencies has significantly increased since HIV was discovered?

 

Now you've lost me. The "placebo effect" refers to the psychosomatic tendency of people to feel better if they think they've been given a potent medicine.

 

The point was that controlled studies attempt to account for placebo effect. I don't think this is possible when you are examining populations after the fact. That's all.

[Zach]

Too many quotes. I'm just going to go paragraph by paragraph.

 

Do you know the mechanism of HIV infection? HIV has been shown to infect and kill CD4+ lymphocytes, which are the cells responsible for immunity against diseases like cancer, or fungal infections. There is a clear correlation between viral titer and CD4+ cell count. I get what you're saying about correlation, but if a correlation exists between two phenomena for which we can explain a causal mechanism, then it's not fallacious. The mechanism of HIV infection explains the manifestation of AIDS without any other factors- adding them unnecessarily would violate Ockham's Razor.

 

Cancer patients undergoing treatment are equally as immunosuppressed as patients with AIDS. If HIV was prevalent in that population, you would have support for your position, but no study has shown this.

 

Again, HIV is known to infect and kill a crucial component of the immune system. If a person was already CD4+ lymphocyte-deficient, it's unlikely that they could be infected.

 

The NULL hypothesis is rejected or accepted, depending on the data. If it is rejected, then the alternative EXPERIMENTAL hypothesis is accepted. For example, let's have two hypotheses: the null hypothesis is that cigarettes do not increase the risk of lung cancer. The experimental hypothesis is that cigarettes do increase the risk of lung cancer. We look at the data, and find that people who smoke are more likely to have lung cancer then people who do not smoke (with the assumption of stastistical significance). Thus, the null hypothesis is rejected and the experimental hypothesis is accepted.

 

Okay, and I'm sure you're aware of people who smoke but do not have lung cancer? Individual cases do not negate a conclusion when you're dealing with large numbers of people. To reject the HIV hypothesis, you would have to show that there is no statistical correlation between HIV infection and AIDS manifestation.

 

100 years? Seriously. From what I understand, it's an average of 10 years.

 

By that logic, half of the population should be infected with every venereal disease in existence. Do half the people you know have hepatitis?

 

This is why I'm not a skeptic, I'm a scientist- we're allowed to question others' findings, but we're required to put up findings of our own. The causal link HAS been established- HIV kills CD4 cells causing immunosuppression. CD4 cells fight blood cancers and fungal infections, which is exactly what you see in AIDS patients. What more of a link do you need?

 

And the antiviral drugs developed in that period...?

 

Are all of these at 50%? If not, why not?

 

Aside from AIDS, you mean? HIV was discovered about 2 years after the disease first manifested itself in America. Drugs to combat it were made soon afterward.

 

What placebo effect? You can't get Kaposi's sarcoma from a placebo effect.

[spamandham]

HIV has been shown to infect and kill CD4+ lymphocytes, which are the cells responsible for immunity against diseases like cancer, or fungal infections.

 

It would be interesting indeed to see what the HIV doesn't cause AIDS camp has to say about this. I admit I'm a skeptic, but that doesn't mean I reject the premise. It just means there seem to be some valid objections. But I've been wrong before - once.

[jjacksonRIAB]

I'd have to agree with Nivek on this one.

 

It's not like he's making a false appeal to authority, and it's a perfectly valid construct but it's fair to say you have the option to argue against it by submitting opinions of other professionals in the field -- that's just one way, and there is no specific requirement saying you have to have credentials of your own.

 

I read about this a couple of years ago; the version I had read came from a credentialed male scientist and the basis for his thesis was that AIDS was a class of diseases and had not been locked down to a single disease. He seemed to point towards a political motivation for AIDS, but by that point he had departed from his area of expertise into emotional appeals.

 

This is essentially the same argument. She conjures images of people being tried for murder and being forced to take medication (obvious emotional appeals; who wants these things to happen? It conjures images of ruthlessly evil hench-nurses drugging good, upstanding, "persecuted" citizens), builds up other illogical constructs, and her aim is ultimately political in nature. This is where she departs from her base as a scientist.

 

I'm not saying she's right or wrong, but it appears to me as if her method of argument is more rhetorical than scientific.

 

Also I found the guy I was just talking about in a link she included: Rodney Richards, Ph.D. It seems the two have found each other ;-)

 

I'm gonna jump on the moralist podium here:

 

There is one way in which this idea could be dangerous. In my book if you don't tell your partner you are HIV positive according to tests because an expert thinks those tests are faulty -- whether or not those tests are, in fact, faulty -- you should be punished at the very least because you forced a decision on your partner that is not yours to make.

 

One area I can say I am an expert in is my own life, and no one has the right to override that by making decisions that could have a profound impact on my quality of life behind my back.

 

Jumping off, shutting up, and reading Zach's post that just caught my eye.

[KT45]

Here is a website full of studies and articles from people who don't believe in the myths about AIDS. http://www.aliveandwell.org/

Mostly it says in order to really get the disease is that you must be doing drugs and that you are either having anal sex (not bashing gay men since homosexual and heterosexual men do it) or that there must be an STD already present. All these factors must be present. Here are some quotes

 

“A disease-free man who has unprotected sex with a drug-free woman stands a one in 5 million chance of contracting HIV."

 

By Kevin Gray

“Health officials have known this for years, but the politically incorrect truth is rarely spoken out loud: The dreaded heterosexual epidemic never happened. The result is a conspiracy of silence. And it’s not in anybody’s interest to clear this up.”

 

According to Mr. Brody, most scientific evidence shows that HIV is spread almost exclusively through intravenous drug use (IVDU) and receptive anal sexual intercourse (excluding infants infected in the womb, transfusion patients and hemophiliacs). In particular, women who are not drug users are generally infected through receptive anal sexual intercourse with bisexual men or males who inject drugs.

 

 

I'm African American and I can't just willingly believe this information being that I'm supposed to be more likely to contract AIDS. I'll study more for myself before I reach a real conclusion.

[chefranden]

Interesting http://www.fumento.com/disease/aids2005.html

[LadyFeline]

From article authors vitae:

 

Rebecca V. Culshaw, Ph.D. [rebeccavculshaw@yahoo.com], is a mathematical biologist who has been working on mathematical models of HIV infection for the past ten years. She received her Ph.D. (mathematics with a specialization in mathematical biology) from Dalhousie University in Canada in 2002 and is currently employed as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at a university in Texas.

To be fair, Nivek, it doesn't mean much, if anything, when one professional in such a huge field says something.

 

When her words are backed up by her peers in a peer-reviewed journal, they'll carry more weight. Until then, though, it's no different than the people who speculate that AIDS was genetically engineered by the US government to kill off blacks and homosexuals - pure speculation, and a little, ah, arrogant-sounding, at that.

 

That, and mathematical models in any field tend to be somewhat-shaky speculation at best, because things in the real world don't happen according to mathematical theories and formulas. They're unreliable when used to calculate animal populations, and they're unreliable in predicting the spread of disease (simply because it would result in an unimaginably high number of potential results, due to the sheer number of factors involved). You'd probably be better off trying to prove the existence of God, than predicting the spread of a disease through a population of billions using controlled mathematical formulas.

 

Currently, the accepted fact of the matter is that the HIV virus causes AIDS. It doesn't always, just like contracting a rhinovirus doesn't mean you'll always get a cold, or that being bitten by a sick dog will always result in you contracting rabies. That fact cannot and will not change until empirical evidence is introduced to, and supported by, the scientific community. One woman's words, and the words of crackpot conspiracy theorists (not you! Please don't take that the wrong way ) cannot change that.

[KT45]

Interesting http://www.fumento.com/disease/aids2005.html

yeah I looked at his stuff but he isn't an expert in the medical field. In fact he's just an attorney and journalist. So I can't really believe his word.

[KT45]

Here is a website full of studies and articles from people who don't believe in the myths about AIDS. http://www.aliveandwell.org/

Mostly it says in order to really get the disease is that you must be doing drugs and that you are either having anal sex (not bashing gay men since homosexual and heterosexual men do it) or that there must be an STD already present. All these factors must be present. Here are some quotes

Ha, I debunked myself. This article is about the lady that created the aliveandwell.org site. She was told she had HIV and didn't believe she was in trouble at all. She felt that the HIV wasn't the cause of AIDS or that HIV wasn't real or some shit. Well her three year old daughter died of AIDS. Sad irony really. Even worse she still denies that AIDS is real. I'll keep studying HIV more but for now the condoms stay on.

 

CLICK HERE

[Bobo]

Folks, I think we should remember an important truth from all of our dealings with Christianity. A doctorate is not a guarantee of rational thinking or credible evidence. Keep in mind too that the good doctor's essay was published on the oh-so-prestigious INTERNET.

 

Consider some others who have earned doctoral hoods:

 

Gary Habermas, Ph.D.

Bill Bright, D.Div., L.L.D., D.Litt.

Michael Behe, Ph.D.

William Dembski, Ph.D.

Jerry Falwell, D.Div., L.L.D., D.Litt. (all honorary)

Josh McDowell, L.L.D. (honorary)

William Lane Craig, Ph.D.

 

 

Let's consider a far more reliable source of information: Science, the most credible, prestigious, peer-reviewed publication on the planet.

 

http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/cohen/cohen.dtl

 

All told, the jury really is out on the issue.