** You may also see NIAID/NIH "Evidence": Rebuttal
http://www.healtoronto.com/nih/main.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Durban Declaration Rebuttal
http://www.healtoronto.com/durban/koch.html
A rebuttal to the "Durban Declaration" published in Nature on July 6
2000.
Compiled by Robert Johnston1, Matthew Irwin2 and David Crowe3
1: Co-founder of HEAL Toronto, 2: Co-founder of HEAL Washington DC, 3:
President of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society.
Appendix A: HIV Fails Koch's Postulates
David Rasnick has specialized in protease inhibitor research for over
twenty years, and was past president of the Group for the Scientific
Reappraisal of AIDS. He responded to statements posted by the NIH that
HIV fulfilled Koch's postulates (NIAID/NIH, 1995) with the following
comments:
Dr. Rasnick:
The PCR test cannot be used to confirm the presence of HIV because it
has not been demonstrated that it can do the job. PCR does not detect
viable, infectious HIV, the only virus that would matter. It is widely
known that 99.9% of the proviral DNA of HIV present in cells is
defective and cannot lead to infectious, viable virus (Piatak, M., et
al., Science 259: 1749-1754, 1993; Sheppard, H. W., et al., Nature 364:
291-292, 1993). However, the PCR test cannot distinguish between the
trace amount of non-infectious viral debris that overwhelms the even
smaller level of proviral DNA that could lead to the production of
viral particles under the special laboratory conditions of coculture.
Even coculturing techniques failed to find infectious HIV in 53% of
samples that have PCR viral load numbers in the hundreds of thousands
(Piatak, M., et al., Science 259: 1749-1754, 1993). The PCR viral load
test is equivalent to counting bumpers in a junk yard.
The problem with the PCR test is that it looks for traces of 3% of the
genome of HIV, then makes millions to trillions of "photocopies" of
what is found so that it can then be detected by other sensitive
methods. PCR is the world's most powerful microscope. If you have to
use PCR to find something, that automatically means that what you find
has no pathological relevance. If there were lethal substances that
could only be detected by PCR, then life on earth would be impossible.
It's not a single molecule of cyanide that is toxic, but a lethal does
that kills. As Paracelsus said in 1567, it's the dose that makes the
poison.
References to unreliability of the PCR viral load test
1. From the Viral Load instructions for Roche's Amplicor HIV-PCR test,
#US:83088-- "The AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR test is not intended to be used
as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the
presence of HIV infection."
2. Defer, C., et al. Multicenter quality control of polymerase chain
reaction for detection of HIV DNA, AIDS. 6: 659-663, 1992.
3. de Mendoza, C., Holquin, A., and Soriano, V. False positives for HIV
using commercial viral load quantification assays, AIDS. 12: 2076-2077,
1998.
4. Rich, J. D., et al. Misdiagnosis of HIV infection by HIV-1 plasma
viral load testing: a case study, Annals of Internal Medicine. 130:
37-39, 1999.
5. Schwartz, D. H. and et al. Extensive evaluation of seronegative
participant in an HIV-1 vaccine trial as a result of false-positive
PCR, The Lancet. 350: 256-259, 1997.
6. Sheppard, H. W., Ascher, M. S., and Krowka, J. F. Viral burden and
HIV disease, Nature. 364: 291-292, 1993.
7. Kleinman, S., Busch, M. P., Hall, L., Thomson, R., Glynn, S.,
Gallahan, D., Ownby, H. E., and Williams, A. E. False-positive HIV-1
test results in a low-risk screening setting of voluntary blood
donation, Journal of the American Medical Association. 280: 1080-1085,
1998.
NIH:
2) Improvements in co-culture techniques have allowed the isolation of
HIV in virtually all AIDS patients, as well as in almost all
seropositive individuals with both early- and late-stage disease
(Coombs et al., 1989; Schnittman et al., 1989; Ho et al., 1989; Jackson
et al., 1990).
Dr. Rasnick:
Co-culture techniques are required to generate HIV since there is no
free, infectious HIV to be found in people. See Duesberg's numerous
publications for details. The co-culture required fresh T cells from a
healthy donor because researchers cannot propogate HIV in the T cells
from HIV positive individuals because they are immune to HIV. That also
means that HIV cannot propogate itself in the same HIV positive people.
Hence, HIV cannot harm HIV positive people because they are vaccinated
against HIV.
The only way to get HIV is to co-culture it since no one has every
obtained it directly from humans or even animals. The presence of HIV
in culture is purely a laboratory artifact, which has no clinical
significance.
NIH:
1-4) All four postulates have been fulfilled in three laboratory
workers with no other risk factors who have developed AIDS or severe
immunosuppression after accidental exposure to concentrated HIVIIIB in
the laboratory (Blattner et al., 1993; Reitz et al., 1994; Cohen,
1994c). Two patients were infected in 1985 and one in 1991. All three
have shown marked CD4+ T cell depletion, and two have CD4+ T cell
counts that have dropped below 200/mm3 of blood. One of these latter
individuals developed PCP, an AIDS indicator disease, 68 months after
showing evidence of infection and did not receive antiretroviral drugs
until 83 months after the infection. In all three cases, HIVIIIB was
isolated from the infected individual, sequenced, and shown to be the
original infecting strain of virus.
In addition, as of Dec. 31, 1994, CDC had received reports of 42 health
care workers in the United States with documented, occupationally
acquired HIV infection, of whom 17 have developed AIDS in the absence
of other risk factors (CDC, 1995a). These individuals all had evidence
of HIV seroconversion following a discrete percutaneous or
mucocutaneous exposure to blood, body fluids or other clinical
laboratory specimens containing HIV.
The development of AIDS following known HIV seroconversion also has
been repeatedly observed in pediatric and adult blood transfusion cases
(Ward et al., 1989; Ashton et al., 1994), in mother-to-child
transmission (European Collaborative Study, 1991, 1992; Turner et al.,
1993; Blanche et al., 1994), and in studies of hemophilia, injection
drug use, and sexual transmission in which the time of seroconversion
can be documented using serial blood samples (Goedert et al., 1989;
Rezza et al., 1989; Biggar, 1990; Alcabes et al., 1993a,b; Giesecke et
al., 1990; Buchbinder et al., 1994; Sabin et al., 1993).
In many such cases, infection is followed by an acute retroviral
syndrome, which further strengthens the chronological association
between HIV and AIDS (Pedersen et al., 1989, 1993; Schechter et al.,
1990; Tindall and Cooper, 1991; Keet et al., 1993; Sinicco et al.,
1993; Bachmeyer et al., 1993; Lindback et al., 1994).
Dr. Rasnick:
AIDS is not contagious. For example, not even one healthcare worker has
been documented in the scientific literature to have contracted AIDS
from over 800,000 AIDS patients in the USA and Europe. The CDC reports
in a footnote in the latest HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report year end
edition (1998) that there has been a total of 25 healthcare workers in
the USA who have contracted AIDS on the job over the 18 years of AIDS.
However, this claim is not referenced as to where the CDC got this
information or what other risk factors those 25 individuals may have
had.
Even if the CDC's 25 occupationally acquired AIDS cases over the past
18 years is true, how does that constitute a raging health hazard to
healthcare workers? The 1 million needle-stick injuries among
healthcare workers in the USA each year results in about 1000 cases of
hepatitis among healthcare workers annually (Holding, R. and Carlsen,
W. Epidemic ravages caregivers. San Francisco Chronicle, pp. 1,A6-A8.
San Francisco, 1998). That means that in the 18 years of AIDS,
healthcare workers contracted 18,000 cases of hepatitis and 25 cases of
AIDS.
Of the approximately 5000 married, HIV positive hemophiliacs, not one
of their spouses has been documented to have contracted AIDS sexually
(Duesberg, Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1996).
Where is the raging epidemic of AIDS among female prostitutes? Do you
recall articles in the New York Times or reports on CNN of the AIDS
epidemic among female prostitutes? There are also no reports in the
scientific literature of an AIDS epidemic among female prostitutes.
In fact, 18 years into AIDS, nearly 9 out of 10 AIDS cases are men, 60%
of whom are gay, yet the Army and the Jobs Corps for over 10 years have
repeatedly shown that antibodies to HIV are equally distributed between
the sexes (Burke, D. S., et al., J. Am. Med. Assoc. 263 (1990):
2074-2077; St. Louis, M. E., et al., J. Am. Med. Assoc. 266 (1991):
2387-2391).
Three studies, the most recent in 1997 (Padian, N. S., et al., Am. J.
Epidemiol. 146 (1997): 350-357), consistently report that it takes
thousands of sexual contacts for heterosexuals to develop antibodies to
HIV. Specifically, on average, a woman must have 1000 unprotected
sexual contacts with an HIV positive man to develop antibodies to HIV.
For a man, the number is 8000-9000 sexual contacts with an HIV positive
woman to develop antibodies to HIV. By comparison, to contract
gonorrhea or syphilis requires 2-3 sexual contacts.
The CDC has estimated that from 1985-1995 a constant 1 million
Americans were HIV positive. In 1996 the CDC lowered that estimate
retrospectively back to 1992. The current estimate that has now been
constant since 1992 is that between 650,000-900,000 Americans are
HIV-positive. In other words, during a period when AIDS cases
increased, reached a peak in 1992-93, and have since declined steadily,
the number of Americans estimated to be HIV positive has never gone up;
in fact the number has stayed flat, or gone down and stayed flat at a
new level. That is very bizarre for a supposedly contagious disease
that is raging out of control, while the supposed infectious agent has
never spread through the population, not even among the purported risk
groups.
Using the CDC's estimate of 1 million HIV positive Americans in a
population of 270 million and the 1000 sexual contacts needed to become
antibody positive to HIV means that a woman would have to have 270,000
random sexual contacts to become antibody positive to HIV. A man would
need 8 to 9 times that many.
Dr. David Rasnick, 1999.
Reference:
NIAID/NIH (1995). The Relationship Between the Human Immunodeficiency
Virus and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Koch's Postulates
Fulfilled. [recently revised]
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publication...ds/hivaids.htm
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/publications/hivaids/12.htm
from: http://aids-forum.hypermart.net/USA%20NIH.htm
