VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE

INTERVIEW MOHAMMED ALI AL-BAYATI
Are Steroids the Real Cause of AIDS?

By Mark Gabrish Conlan

Zengers Jan. 2000

As the mainstream AIDS researchers continue to focus on the so-called “Human Immunodeficiency Virus,” or HIV, with the dogged persistence of Captain Ahab chasing Moby Dick — and with the same lack of any positive outcome — a small but growing number of scientists worldwide continue the search for better, more rational explanations of the true causes, treatments and preventions of the 29 previously known diseases that constitute the “AIDS” syndrome. Some of their names will be familiar to long-term Zenger’s readers, who have already been exposed to interviews with Peter Duesberg, David Rasnick, Stefan Lanka and others who have taken fresh looks at AIDS and, whatever their differences with each other, have all come to the conclusion that HIV either doesn’t do anything or doesn’t exist at all.

In June 1999 a new name was added to the list of alternative AIDS researchers who have critiqued the established scientific literature, rejected the belief that HIV causes AIDS and come up with a different explanation and the evidence to back it up. Dr. Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati, an immigrant from Iraq who was educated in the U.S. and Egypt in pathology and toxicology, self-published a 183-page large-format book on AIDS that directly attacked the HIV/AIDS model. Much of it endorsed the arguments of Duesberg and others that recreational drug use and repeated exposures to common infections and antibiotics used to treat them cause the immune system to break down and open the body to diseases which are called “AIDS.”

But Dr. Al-Bayati’s book also fingered a new culprit, previously undiscussed in either mainstream or alternative AIDS literature: steroids. These aren’t the anabolic steroids widely used by athletes, including bodybuilders and baseball players like Mark McGwire, but an even more commonly prescribed class of drugs known as corticosteroids or glucocorticoids. It shouldn’t be surprising that these drugs, which include azathioprine and prednisone, suppress the immune system, since they were originally developed in the 1960’s and 1970’s to do just that; they were given to transplant patients to keep their immune systems from rejecting the transplanted organs.

In today’s medical practice, however, corticosteroids are far more widely used than ever before. These drugs are given to hemophiliacs to treat the joint disorders often associated with hemophilia and prevent them from developing antibodies to the Factor VIII and IX treatments they get to allow their blood to clot. Corticosteroids are also given to infants and children to treat their chronic illnesses, to Gay men to treat bowel and other gastrointestinal problems associated with anal sex and anal-oral contact, and to “recreational” drug users to treat the respiratory illnesses caused by the drugs they take. Dr. Al-Bayati argues that virtually every person with AIDS has a far higher than normal level of these chemicals in their bodies, either from taking corticosteroids as pharmaceutical drugs or from having naturally elevated corticosteroid levels as a side effect of malnutrition and starvation, which he suggests is the real cause of so-called “AIDS” in Africa.

In his book, Get All the Facts: HIV Does Not Cause AIDS, Dr. Al-Bayati also explores some of the other misconceptions behind the HIV/AIDS model. He notes that standard textbooks like Harrison’s Principles of Internal Medicine, whose current edition is co-edited by “HIV/AIDS” guru Dr. Anthony Fauci, actually offers all the information needed to treat people with so-called “HIV/AIDS” correctly — yet Dr. Fauci and his co-authors of the current Harrison’s ignore the time-tested knowledge of infectious diseases stated elsewhere in the book to attribute all the problems of people with AIDS to HIV. Dr. Al-Bayati also makes the striking claim that 77 percent of the people in the original 1986-92 trials that approved the first AIDS chemotherapy, AZT, never had HIV infections at all.

Get All the Facts: HIV Does Not Cause AIDS is available for $35 from Dr. Al-Bayati’s company, Toxi-Health International, 150 Bloom Street, Dixon, CA 95620. Dr. Al-Bayati can also be contacted by phone at (707) 678-4484 or by e-mail at maalbayati@toxi-health.com, and he has a Web site at http://www.toxi-health.com

Zenger’s: I’d like to begin just by getting an account of your experience, background and training.

Dr. Mohammed Ali Al-Bayati: O.K., I’ll tell you, because it’s all there. I graduated from veterinary medical school in 1975 at the University of Baghdad, Iraq. I studied veterinary pathology at the University of Cairo in Egypt and graduated with a Masters’ in veterinary pathology in 1978. I came to the United States in 1978 and started to do research in toxicology, using animal models to study the effects of pollution in general and fuel by-products in particular on biology. Then I studied comparative pathology, which includes human pathology, along with toxicology, biochemistry and immunology at the University of California, Davis. I graduated with a Ph.D. in 1989.

I was certified by the American Board of Toxicology in 1994 and by the American Board of Veterinary Toxicology in 1996. My experience in pathology and toxicology includes human pathology and toxicology, veterinary pathology and toxicology, experimental pathology and toxicology, and environmental toxicology.

Zenger’s: How did you get interested in AIDS?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: In 1997 I started my consulting firm, Toxi-Health International. My main goal was to evaluate cases of people exposed to chemicals in their workplace and to find out the short-term and long-term effects of these chemicals. I would report to the physician and to the victim’s attorney, and work as an expert witness in these cases. Since that time I’ve got involved not only in occupational exposure but people who have side effects to chemicals. In 1997 I got a case of a 60-year-old man who was exposed to jet fuel. I looked at the pathology and the toxicology of his case. I saw he had severe lymphocytopenia, which means the number of lymphocytes was very low [CD4 T-cell count of 255 and CD-4/CD-8 ratio of 0.6]. I contacted the physician and submitted a report which asked him to stop giving this patient immunosuppressive drugs. That’s when I found out was this individual had had “AIDS.” His immunosuppression had come from the use of corticosteroids, azathioprine and prednisone, which I described in the report.

That case alerted me, because until then my understanding had been that AIDS was caused by the virus HIV As a toxicologist I had not been interested in AIDS before, and I’d trusted the virologists who have experience in infectious agents. But that case alerted me, and I started to do complete differential diagnoses, including drugs, chemicals and infectious agents — and my understanding in the field of biochemistry and immunology told me how to understand the literature. I did a very wide evaluation of the medical literature on HIV and AIDS, and I was really very surprised to see the link between them is an assumption. The conclusion that HIV causes AIDS is based only on a misreading of the epidemiology, which really indicates the AIDS in the risk groups has resulted from the exposure to illicit drugs and corticosteroid treatments. So I explained that.

Zenger’s: I’ve interviewed a number of scientists who question the link between HIV and AIDS. What makes your work different from that of most of the people I’ve talked to is your particular focus on the role of steroids. Could you tell me a little about which steroids suppress the immune system, how they suppress the immune system and why you regard that as a major factor in what is called AIDS?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: Steroids are a family of medications. I refer specifically to corticosteroids, steroids released from the adrenal cortex. These agents can reduce the number of T-cells and B-cells, and the function of the entire immune system. Use of the steroids can cause all the clinical symptoms that show in people with AIDS.

Zenger’s: How do you know the use of these steroids actually depresses T-cell levels?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: From the clinical evidence. If somebody is healthy now and is given prednisone, 60 mg. per day for about two to three months, that will reduce the T-cell counts and the B-cell counts. Let’s say the normal CD-4 count is about 900 of CD4 per microliter of blood. That will reduce it to about 250 in most cases.

Zenger’s: So you’re saying that this is what had happened to your first patient in 1997.

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: Yes, yes. In Table 14 on page 62 of my book, I list 32 illnesses and health conditions which are caused by drugs — illicit drugs, alcohol and therapeutic drugs. All these chronic illnesses are treated by high doses of therapeutic steroids. The dose I mentioned earlier, 60 mg. per day, is really a normal dose of steroid. Some of them, they use a higher dose than that but for a shorter period of time.

Zenger’s: So what you’re saying is that in some cases people get AIDS because they do alcohol or recreational drugs, and they get sick — and then, in order to treat these diseases, they’re given these corticosteroids, and they get sicker.

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: Yes, because these are anti-inflammatories, to reduce the inflammation often caused by drug use. In the mid-1970’s inhaling drugs, including cocaine and heroin, became far more common than it had been earlier. Inhaling cocaine produces a lot of problems in the lungs and nasal cavity, because cocaine produces asthma and lung fibrosis. Because it also decreases the blood supply to the nasal septum and the nasal cavity, heavy cocaine users get perforation of the nasal cavity and a lot of other problems. Now to treat these problems, the FDA approved the use of corticosteroids by inhalation in 1976. That’s really what started the AIDS problem. When this product became approved and widely used, it took about three to four years to show, and then the AIDS cases started to appear.

Homosexuals are at special risk for AIDS because they use the steroids more than any other group. They use the steroids to deal with the respiratory problems because they are inhaling drugs. Peter Duesberg’s work provided scientific information on homosexual use of drugs. They also use steroids rectally to deal with rectal infections. Also, the use of alcohol and the use of aspirin and the use of other drugs produce lymphocytopenia, which is a reduced platelet count. And the standard treatment for all these conditions is the long-term use of corticosteroids. So homosexuals get steroids to deal with respiratory illness, bone-marrow depression and rectal infections.

Zenger’s: What is your answer to the question that is always being thrown at Peter Duesberg and the other people who question the HIV/AIDS model — “Well, if recreational drug use is the cause of AIDS, how come many people use these drugs for some time and don’t get AIDS?”

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: My answer would be that whether you use corticosteroids, and how much you use corticosteroids, depends on how much infection you get. And that could be explained very well by hyperplasia in the lymph nodes. In Table 3, on page 13 of my book, I described the pathology in the lymph nodes in the “HIV-positives,” which is similar to the “HIV-negatives.” You get the three stages of changes in the lymph nodes. The first stage is the hyperplasia [higher than normal CD-4 counts and CD-4/CD-8 ratios], the second one we call “mixed stage” and the third one is the atrophy [lower than normal CD-4 counts and CD-4/CD-8 ratios]. Now, people using “recreational” drugs by inhalation, which produces effects in the whole respiratory system, first get a lot of inflammation. That is marked by the hyperplasia in the lymph nodes. Then, when they go to their physicians, they are given corticosteroids as the standard treatment. Just using heroin and other drugs will not suppress the immune system. Quite the opposite: it causes hyperplasia and increases the level of the CD-4 and the CD-8. The hyperplasia in the thymus and lymphoid organs of the drug users explains the result of Mary Jane Kreek’s 1989 study, which observed increases in the CD-4 T-cells of heroin addicts. Kreek reported that 11 long-term heroin users had a mean of 1,500 CD-4 T-cells/microliter, which is a significant elevation from normal (600 to 1,200) and the opposite of what is seen in AIDS. “Heroin is a blessedly untoxic drug,” Kreek concluded.

Jon Cohen, in the December 4, 1994 Science, cited the result of Kreek’s study as an argument against Peter Duesberg’s hypothesis that the use of illicit drugs, not HIV, is responsible for AIDS. The observations of Kreek and Duesberg are both correct. The true problem is that the leaders of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis do not understand the sequence of events that leads to AIDS in patients in each risk group. They have been ignoring important medical facts related to this subject, including the information presented in their own publications, and are blindly attributing AIDS to HIV.

Zenger’s: In your book, you make the claim that 77 percent of the people in the four original AZT trials [Fischl/Richman, 1987; Fischl/Corette, 1990; Volberding, 1990; Hamilton, 1992], who were supposedly suffering from “HIV/AIDS,” were actually “HIV-negative.” I got the impression that what you were actually saying is that they were HIV antibody-positive but they were p24 antigen-negative. Is that correct?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: What they are measuring is just the p24 [one of the nine proteins that supposedly make up HIV]. They use it as the indicator for the HIV infection. And they used the baseline mark, which is 20 p24’s per microliter. So even with that very small concentration, 77 percent of the people were negative. They did not have any.

Zenger’s: So the 77 percent were p24 negative under that standard. But they did test positive for HIV antibodies, or they wouldn’t have been let into the trials.

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: No, they didn’t. In all those papers except one [Fischl/Richman, 1987], they based their study on what they called “isolation.” In about 50 percent of these people they did not have HIV. In the other three studies, they based their work on the p24. So they did not have any isolation of HIV. They did not measure any other antibodies. And this amount as a baseline is very, very low. Twenty p24’s per microliter is a very small amount. Even based on that, they have huge numbers where they are not showing anything. No antibody, no nothing.

Zenger’s: So if these people were antibody-negative and p24-negative, how did they get into a clinical trial that was ostensibly designed to prove the utility of AZT in people who were “HIV-positive”?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: That was my question. The sponsors of the study did not ask questions. The scientists did not ask questions. The FDA did not ask questions. What is going on? That is the question I am asking, based just on the symptoms. I reviewed all these studies, and I reviewed about 50 clinical trials, which are the subjects of other books. They really did not look at the indicators of AIDS like adrenal insufficiency, which I have listed in my book.

In the 1987 Fischl study, they looked only at CD4’s. When they started the people on the clinical trial, they had the CD4 counts were about 100-110 per microliter. That was the starting point. By the end of the study, they were about 45 CD4’s per microliter. AZT depressed the CD4 count. And they didn’t really describe the shape of the lymph nodes, or the adrenal insufficiency — which manifests as Kaposi’s sarcoma — or atrophy in the lymphoid system, or all these other symptoms AIDS people have, which are also associated with corticosteroids. That study, which was the first one on AZT, published two reports, one on what was supposed to be the benefit of AZT and the other on the toxicity of AZT. All the literature on AZT agrees that AZT depresses the bone marrow. All the people in this clinical trial who were on AZT were also getting blood transfusions. As I recall, about 30 people in the AZT group got blood transfusions, versus about four from the control. So while the researchers said that AZT increased survival, the survival benefit actually came from the blood transfusions. As, you know, when you get a blood transfusion, it is helpful for many things, including helping the oxygen levels and the immune levels. But they didn’t adjust for that. In fact, the first study was cut short. It did not last more than about six months.

Zenger’s: In fact, it was my understanding that the longer-term studies on AZT — the John Hamilton/VA study and the Concorde trial — showed essentially the same pattern that you’ve been talking about with steroids: an initial increase in CD4 T-cells, which is where that first trial was stopped; and then a quick decline, until they ended up at levels below the levels at which they started.

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: Yes. Both AZT and the protease inhibitors cause inflammation. I listed in my book cases of patients who were “HIV-negative” and given AZT, and it increased their CD-4’s short-term. So CD-4’s are an indication of an inflammation, and inhaling cocaine and heroin also increases the CD-4’s and CD-8’s by causing inflammation in the lymph nodes or other tissues. Why, if HIV is killing the CD-4 cells, would all these people I mentioned in Table 3 have hyperplasia? Robert Gallo called AIDS as “a CD-4 disease.” It is not a CD-4 disease. There is no lymph-node disease in the entire literature that affects only CD-4’s. You have the three stages. The changes are always in all lymph node structures, including the stroma; in the hyperplasia stage, and then in the atrophy, all lymph nodes shrink. That’s characteristic of the steroids. Now the people in Africa, when they starve, starvation produces the corticosteroids, and these corticosteroids shrink the immune system along with the thymus, lymph nodes and all the peripheral tissues.

Zenger’s: That was a point that confused me in the book. Since people who propose non-infectious causes for AIDS are always being asked, “Well, what about Africa?,” what you’re saying is that in Africa they’re not taking corticosteroids, but somehow the natural chemical changes your body goes through when it’s malnourished produce the same kinds of chemicals that are in these drugs.

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: That’s right. We learned about corticosteroids in 1947. The first time that corticosteroids were approved in the United States in 1947. We learned about the benefits of steroids based on the naturally occurring steroids. When people starve, they release corticosteroids, which are emergency hormones released when people under stress conditions — infections or starvations — release this hormone to take proteins and nutrients, send them to the liver to make glucose, and then send it to the brain.

If you look at the AIDS in Africa in terms of Kaposi’s sarcoma, lymphoma and muscle mass, this is similar to homosexuals. Homosexuals have AIDS because they are heavy users of corticosteroids; and the people in Africa have corticosteroids because they are naturally released. I presented information on how the thymus shrinks when a person is starved. It goes to 90 percent in nine weeks, and after nine weeks of normal feeding the thymus goes up to 107 percent. The corticosteroids have the ability not only to affect the numbers of CD4’s and CD8’s, but also their functions. They get slowed down. These are the biomarkers of AIDS which the HIV hypothesis does not explain. All these can be explained by the use of steroids, or the release of steroids. The HIV [hypothesis] does not explain anything. As a source, I cited a 1985 study from San Francisco. They incubated HIV with T-cells for four months, and the cell went on producing the virus. It did not kill any cells.

Zenger’s: What should people who are told they’re “HIV-positive” or they have AIDS do about this?

Dr. Ali Al-Bayati: It depends on what their risks are. For people with hemophilia, because they have to use immunosuppressive drugs, their physicians have to pay attention to their CD-4 and CD-8 counts, and they have to be willing to give the treatment a period of rest so the immune system can go back to a normal level, because if you keep giving corticosteroids without paying attention to that, then you get people with AIDS.

Healthy people who just have the “HIV-positive” antibody do not need to take anything because the body will take care of it in five weeks and it’s gone. It just becomes an antibody, like a three-year-old child infected with chickenpox will carry the antibody all their life, long after they’ve stopped having the disease. If you look at the history of all infectious agents — bacteria or viruses — if somebody gets infected and shows antibodies, this is considered immunity — except for the people who are said to have “HIV/AIDS.” When they show the HIV antibody they’re told they have a risk of dying. I don’t understand what the scientific basis for that is, and I’ve never met or read anybody who could explain it.

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