A critical appraisal of the evidence for the isolation of HIV
According to the published work of the leading HIV/AIDS scientists, HIV has been
isolated and is a unique, exogenously acquired retrovirus and the necessary and sufficient cause
of AIDS. However, contrary to the decades old, traditional method of isolating animal
retroviruses, the seminal and explicit evidence for the isolation of HIV is based on a notion of
specific reactivity between presumed viral proteins present in cell cultures/co-cultures containing
tissues derived from AIDS patients and antibodies present in human and animal sera. The utility
of this process is evaluated and it is concluded there are many unresolved problems with such a
paradigm, all of which have a direct bearing on surgical practice. This paper was written in early 1997
and rejected by the editor of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Surgery.