VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE
DOES HIV LURK IN YOUR LYMPH NODES?
By Bryan J. Ellison
Rethinking AIDS April 1993
The March 24 issue of the London Times featured a commentary by John
Maddox, editor of Nature, who apparently wanted to vent some steam. He bitterly
attacked Peter Duesberg for "the perverse but seductive theory that the HIV virus
does not cause Aids at all...The truth is the opposite. The real deception is the
alternative theory that HIV has nothing to do with Aids." According to Maddox,
Duesberg has now been solidly refuted by the finding of active HIV replication in
the Lymph nodes of infected patients, even during the ten-year and growing latent
period of AIDS. In ominous tones, Maddox revealed his personal desire to have
science abandon its tradition of skeptical inquiry: "Heterodox opinions in science
are allowable, and sometimes even productive. But it is another question whether
those who use them to offer false [sic] hope to those with HIV infection in the
face of all the evidence can be held to be acting ethically."
Maddox was particularly referring to a set of papers published during the preceding
week. The most oft-cited of these, authored by AIDS mogul Anthony Fauci of the
National Institutes of Health, appeared in the March 25 Nature. Fauci reports
having used the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to count the number of
HIV-infected T cells, as well as checking directly for cell-free virus particles. He
compared the results from circulating blood against those from Lymph node
tissues. What did he find?
In describing the miraculous properties of HIV, Fauci got down to brass tacks: "....a
burst of viremia....a prolonged period....little, if any....very low....extremely
difficult.... active....associated.... may be related....striking differences....
consistently observed....high levels.... increased....clearly lower....striking
dichotomy....high levels....replicates actively.... active and progressive...." But
virtually no numbers! Although trying to imply he found large amounts of the virus,
Fauci inadvertently demonstrated through such colorful language his disappointing
results. Indeed, he hid his only relevant statistics in the caption to figure 1, showing
that HIV infected only about 1/100 to 1/10,000 CD4+ T cells, even in the Lymph
nodes. And this assay did not distinguish between cells containing active or dormant
HIV.
Fauci's only other contribution in this paper was the confirmation of existing
textbook knowledge on the workings of the immune system. He correctly recalled
that "an initially adequate immune response itself also contributes substantially to
the clearance of virus from the circulation. In the late stages of disease [AIDS],
these mechanical mechanisms are altered and an effective immune response against
HIV is lost, leading to an increase in viral burden in [blood cells]." In other words,
HIV is really just an opportunistic infection sometimes unleashed after the immune
system has been suppressed. In order to eliminate any invading virus, the immune
system coats it with antibodies, thereby immobilizing the offending germs; the
neutralized agents are then filtered out in-you guessed it-the Lymph nodes, where
they are destroyed. Fauci also acknowledged this "virus-trapping capability of the
node," and his paper reported that the only virus particles he could find in Lymph
tissues were "coated with proteins," i.e., antibodies. These were viruses caught in
the process of being digested. Furthermore, he does not report the actual numbers
of such neutralized virus particles, presumably meaning he found very few.
Once again Duesberg stands confirmed, although Fauci's own logic seems to be lost
on himself. Fauci gave his data a topsy-turvy interpretation, concluding that HIV
was being produced in the Lymph nodes and released to the blood.
An immensely more competent report appeared in Science on March 19. A
collaborative project between Genelabs Technologies of California and the
University of Alabama, the study provided hard numbers in another attempt to
refute Duesberg. But all that hard work merely proved his point.
This study used quantitative PCR to measure levels of actual HIV expression in the
blood, in which it also examined amounts of p24 antigen (a protein contained in
HIV particles) and even infectious virus itself. The study purported to show high
levels of HIV shortly after infection, followed by its suppression during the latent
period and subsequent reactivation when the patient reaches terminal AIDS. Was
HIV the marauding criminal or a harmless opportunist?
First of all, the PCR and p24 data showed at best a poor correlation with the actual
number of virus particles. Patients registering high on these molecular assays often
had very little HIV, and vice versa. Thus only direct measurements of the virus are
useful, a point well worth remembering for many other papers that have used such
artifact-prone methods to claim high levels of HIV in the body.
Second, this new study revealed a complete absence of HIV while the patient's T
cell counts drop. Of the thirty-two HIV-infected subjects with no symptoms or
early stages of AIDS, having CD4+ T cell counts ranging from 231 to 1080,
twenty-eight had no virus whatsoever, while in the remaining four it was barely
detectable. The virus is simply not around while the immune system undergoes
most of its destruction.
Third, the virus was inconsistently reactivated in patients with full-blown clinical
AIDS or T cell counts below 200. Of these twenty-eight cases, six had no virus at
all. Only six others had greater than one thousand virus particles per milliliter of
blood, and only two of those reached a high of 100,000 particles per milliliter. This
was an incredible spread of values, meaning that the virus could return from
latency only in a percentage of patients whose immune systems had already been
destroyed. Had HIV done the damage, it would have been found all along, in all
individuals, in extremely large amounts. Only the two patients with the highest
levels of the virus might have qualified; the other twenty-six did not. The verdict:
HIV is merely a sporadic opportunistic infection.
The fact that these authors were able to find several patients with detectable HIV,
which contradicts most other studies showing only a tiny fraction of infected people
with infectious particles, strongly implies that this group of patients had been
carefully selected at the start. The report failed to describe what risk group they fall
into, nor how they were chosen. In any case, the established scientific literature
shows that the great majority of AIDS patients have no active virus at all.
This Science paper not only refused to draw the logical conclusions from its own
data, but tragically also tried to reestablish the credibility of AZT therapy. Several
patients were started on this toxic chemotherapy and re-tested for HIV; virus levels
sharply decreased in each person. The authors ignore the probability that the virus
decreased simply because the cells it infects were being killed by the AZT. Their
paper does not provide T cell counts on any patient save one, who experienced "a
subsequent progressive decline to 128 [CD4+ T cells] per cubic millimeter and
clinical progression to CDC stage IVC2 [full-blown AIDS]." Ironically, the authors
only commented that this occurred "despite anti viral therapy."
If Maddox is an honest scientist and re-reads these studies carefully, he will have to
sign on with the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV-AIDS Hypothesis.
We're waiting.*
VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE