VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE
AN OPEN LETTER TO AN AIDS RESEARCHER
By Phillip Johnson
Rethinking AIDS April 1993
Editor's note: Prof: Warren Winkelstein was one of the authors of
a cohort study (Ascher et al.) published in Nature, March 11. The
following is Phillip Johnson's response to his UC Berkeley colleague:
A. The cohort studies claim a perfect correlation between HIV positivity
and Kaposi's sarcoma. But at least 36 cases of KS are acknowledged to have
occurred in gay men free of HIV infection. Moreover, this AIDS indicator
disease occurs very frequently in homosexuals but only rarely in the other
risk groups. The pattern of KS therefore suggests a cause independent of
HIV-but highly correlated with it in homosexuals. Even Weiss and Jaffe
admitted this in their 1989 response to Duesberg in Nature.
B. Studies from Europe report that "AIDS symptoms" in hemophiliacs
do not appear when they are given highly purified substitutes for Factor
VIII. This suggests that what has been diagnosed as "AIDS" in
hemophiliacs may be due to impurities in the clotting factor or transfusions
rather than HIV. Duesberg has already pointed out that about 15,000 of
the 20,000 U.S. hemophiliacs have been HIV-positive since some time before
1985, when testing began. The majority of these ought to be dead or dying
of AIDS, but far fewer AIDS cases have resulted than anticipated and hemophiliacs
are living longer than before.
For these reasons there is good cause to believe that properly controlled
studies of both hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients may show no HIV
causal link. This prospect is important in itself, especially as indicating
that AZT treatment is inappropriate for these groups. It also would cast
doubt on the HIV theory overall, since the transfusion and hemophiliac
connection was significant in establishing the HIV theory, back in the
days when it was also wrongly supposed that HIV directly attacks and kills
T-cells.
C. The picture of the AIDS "epidemic" given in the latest
report of the National Research Council is totally inconsistent with the
"AIDS is breaking out wildly all over the planet" scare campaign
of the World Health Organization. One point to be taken from this is that
the record of the HIV establishment for accuracy and candor is not impressive.
Another is that predictions based upon the HIV theory are being falsified
by events. The notion that AIDS would spread out of the risk groups and
infect the general population, especially prostitutes, was a logical prediction
based on the assumption that AIDS is caused by a new pathogen that would
be expected to spread rapidly through a susceptible population. Now similar
predictions of catastrophe are being made about AIDS in Africa and Asia,
on the same theoretical basis. We know that such predictions have proved
false with respect to the United States and Western Europe. Although there
has been plenty of unsafe sex and resulting venereal disease, the predicted
"pandemic" has not occurred.
All indications are that the incidence of HIV infection in the population
at large has been fairly constant at a total of I million persons since
HIV testing began. The official theory now has to attribute the limitation
of AIDS in the U.S.A. to the main risk groups, and even its virtual confinement
to certain neighborhoods, to the fact that HIV is hard to transmit. A pathogen
that is invariably fatal to its hosts but extremely hard to transmit to
new hosts is a biological curiosity indeed.
D. There are many cases of AIDS without HIV, and the claim that these
cases are "not really AIDS" is special pleading, considering
that they would definitely be diagnosed as AIDS if HIV were not proved
to be absent. That the CDC manipulates the definition of the disease to
protect the causation theory (and to satisfy political demands) is another
reason for the growing credibility gap. Besides the 100+ cases labeled
as ILC, there are undoubtedly many more that have been classified as AIDS.
As your own paper notes, the CDC's criteria for defining AIDS do not require
HIV positivity-even subjects testing negative will in certain cases be
diagnosed as "AIDS caused by HIV."
After long being reluctant to provide the figures, the CDC now says
that it has identified 89 U.S. AIDS cases that tested negative, 593 with
inconclusive or missing results, and 43,606 that were not tested. These
figures do not tell us how many that tested positive for antibodies have
no active replicating HIV, or so little HIV that it can be found only by
strenuous use of the PCR technique. Such cases are also effectively "AIDS
without HIV" by any realistic standard.
E. Other findings or predictions based upon the HIV theory have also
failed. When the HIV theory was officially proclaimed authorities predicted
a vaccine or cure in two years, but nine years later there is no vaccine
or cure in sight. Treatment with anti viral drugs seems to be ineffective,
and the drugs have severe harmful side effects. The mystery of how HIV
causes depletion of the immune system remains unsolved. There is no satisfactory
animal model. Chimps become infected with HIV but they do not develop AIDS,
and so-called "simian AIDS" is neither the same virus nor the
same disease. When the HIV theory was established, its partisans thought
they had a causation mechanism and confidently expected the chimps to develop
AIDS. In fact, many people think the chimps did get AIDS, because
they became infected with HIV. Unremitting propaganda has given people
the impression that HIV and AIDS are virtually the same thing.
My point is not that it is impossible for HIV to be wholly or partly
responsible for AIDS, but that there is a strong case for an unbiased reconsideration
of the theory. The short of the matter is that correlation is the whole
basis of the theory, and the correlation is far from perfect. The only
way to put the causation issue to rest is to publish genuinely controlled
studies of similar HIV+ and HIV- subjects in the other risk groups, especially
hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients. We have reason to think that satisfactory
data may already exist, and in any event the research funding needed to
complete the picture would be minuscule compared to what is being spent
on learning unhelpful details about HIV.
The authors of the Nature paper urged Peter Duesberg to abandon
the drug theory, embrace the HIV theory, and join them in trying to find
out how HIV can be causing such damage to the immune system. On behalf
of the Group for the Scientific Reappraisal of the HIV/AIDS Hypothesis,
I have a counter-proposal.
I invite all persons interested in unraveling the mystery of AIDS to
join us in calling for a more open approach to AIDS research. Specifically,
controlled studies should be performed and published for all risk groups
studying matched groups of HIV+ and HIV- subjects. If such studies show
the same correlation between HIV and AIDS as the published cohort studies
(with "AIDS" defined independently of HIV status), HIV causation
will rest on a firm epidemiological basis. If not, it will be time to acknowledge
that Dr. Gallo's notorious 1984 press conference set AIDS research on a
disastrously mistaken course.
There is an excellent chance that historians a decade or two from now
will be describing the great worldwide AIDS pandemic as a fiasco. If that
happens, the historians won't be gentle with those who resisted an unbiased
review of all the evidence when the cracks in the official story were already
evident.
Phillip Johnson
Professor of Law, UC Berkeley
VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE