DAVID RASNICK
But—What About
Africa?
Revised September 22, 2006
Visiting Scholar in Peter Duesberg’s lab,
353 Donner Laboratory, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, phone 510-642-6549, fax
510-643-6455, email: drasnick@blueeyes.co.za
Overture
These days, a presentation of the
arguments and evidence against the contagious/HIV hypothesis of AIDS (1, 2) is usually interrupted with
the supposedly show-stopping question: “But—what about Africa?” A variant is: “But—
aren’t people living longer because of the drugs?” Before addressing these two
questions, let’s take a quick look at the 14 unproved assertions and unmet
predictions that invariably lead to: “But—what about Africa?”
Predictions and assertions taken from the Durban
Declaration (3)
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Prediction
|
Fact
|
1 |
HIV is said to be abundant
in AIDS patients. |
But, only antibodies against
HIV are ever found in patients. |
2 |
HIV is said to cause
immuno-deficiency by killing T-cells. |
But, the T-cells that have
been mass-producing HIV for the AIDS test are immortal! |
3 |
Because of the vast majority
of healthy HIV carriers, HIV is said to need 5-10 years to cause AIDS. |
But, HIV replicates in 1
day, generating over 100 new HIVs. At
this rate there would be enough HIV to infect all cells of a human body, and
thus cause AIDS in 1 week. |
4 |
AIDS is said to spread by
infection with HIV. |
But, in the USA, HIV
infections have remained constant at 1 million since 1985, whereas AIDS
increased from 1981 until a peak in 1992 and had been declining until 12 to
18 months after Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART) became widely
available late 1996. |
5 |
HIV is said to spread
through sexual contact. |
But, for an uninfected
American woman (resp. man) to get infected and spread an HIV epidemic there would
need an average of 140,000 (resp. 4.4 million) random heterosexual contacts. |
6 |
All sexually active people
are said to be at risk for AIDS. |
But, since 1981, AIDS in the
USA and Europe has been restricted to intravenous drug users and male
homosexual drug users. |
7 |
Pathogenic viruses cause one
specific disease, for which they are named (e.g. smallpox) |
But, HIV is said to cause 26
diseases, of which none is specific for HIV. |
8 |
All viral diseases are
contagious to un-vaccinated people. |
But, not one nurse or doctor
has ever contracted AIDS from over 816,000 American AIDS patients in 24
years. And, not one of the thousands of HIV researchers has contracted AIDS
from working with the “deadly virus”. |
9 |
Infectious viral epidemics
form a bell-shaped chronological curve:
rising exponentially with virus spread and declining with immunity
within months. |
But, AIDS increased in the
USA slowly over 12 years (1981-1992) followed by a steady decline after a peak
in 1992. The decline in AIDS and deaths abruptly stopped after the widespread
use of HAART in late 1996. |
10 |
Since 1798, researchers have
made vaccines against viruses, e.g. polio. |
But, 19 years of HIV-AIDS
research has failed to come up with a vaccine. |
11 |
Viral diseases result from
the loss of many virus-infected cells. |
But, even in dying AIDS
patients only 1 in 500 T-cells is ever infected by HIV, which is completely
dormant. |
12 |
AIDS should be a pediatric
epidemic, because HIV is transmitted “from mother to infant” at rates of
25-50%, and because “34.3 million”, were said to be infected in 2000. |
But <1% of AIDS in the US
and Europe is pediatric. |
13 |
“HIV is [said to be] the
sole cause of the AIDS pandemic”. |
But, all AIDS diseases were
known long before HIV was discovered, and over 4,621 HIV-free AIDS cases have
been described in the AIDS literature, before the CDC insisted in 1993 that
an AIDS case be HIV-positive. |
14 |
“HIV recognizes no social,
political or geographic borders.” |
But, the American/European
and African epidemics differ both clinically, and epidemiologically. |
I. “Can Africa be saved?”
“Can Africa be saved?” the cover of
Newsweek asked as far back as 1984 (4), reflecting the old Western belief
that Africa is doomed to starvation, terror, disaster and death. This was
repeated two years later in an article in the same journal in a story about
Aids in Africa. The title set the scene: “Africa in the Plague Years” (5). It continued: “Nowhere is the
disease more rampant than in the Rakai region of south-west Uganda, where 30
percent of the people are estimated to be seropositive.” The World Health
Organisation (WHO) confirmed “by mid-1991 an estimated 1.5 million Ugandans, or
about 9% of the general population and 20% of the sexually active population,
had HIV infection” (6). Similar reports were repeatedly
published during the last 15 years, declaring as much as 30% of the population
doomed to premature death, with dire consequences for families and society as a
whole? The predictions announced the practically inevitable collapse of the
country in which the world-wide epidemic supposedly originated.
Today, however, one reads little about
Aids in Uganda because all the prophesies have proved false, as evidenced in
the ten-year census of September 2002 (7). Summing up, the Uganda Bureau of
Statistics says, “Uganda’s Population grew at an average annual rate of 3.4%
between 1991 and 2002. The high rate of population growth is mainly due to the
persistently high fertility levels (about seven children per woman) that have
been observed for the past four decades.
The decline in mortality reflected by a decline in Infant and Childhood
Mortality Rates as revealed by the Uganda Demographic and Health Surveys (UDHS)
of 1995 and 2000-2001, have also contributed to the high population growth
rate.” In other words, the already very high population growth in Uganda has
further increased over the past 10 years and is now among the highest in the
world (8).
Even if Uganda has so far escaped the
apocalypse that was predicted in 1984, the popular media continue to inform us
that the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa has suffered massive devastation and
depopulation as a result of two decades of AIDS. Notwithstanding the claims of
the media, it is extremely difficult to document an Africa AIDS catastrophe
that some have compared to the European plague of the Middle Ages.
A new AIDS epidemic was claimed to have
emerged in Sub-Saharan Africa in 1984 (9-14). In sharp contrast to its
America and European namesakes, the African AIDS epidemic is randomly
distributed between the sexes and not restricted to behavioral risk groups (15-17). The African epidemic is also
a collection of long-established, indigenous diseases, such as chronic fevers,
weight loss (alias “slim disease”), diarrhea and tuberculosis (18-23). In addition, the African
AIDS-defining diseases differ from the American/European AIDS diseases
significantly in their prevalence among AIDS patients. For example, the
predominant American/European AIDS disease, Pneumocystis carinii
pneumonia, is almost never diagnosed in Africans (24, 25).
According to the WHO, the African
epidemic increased from 1984 until the early 1990s, similar to the American/European
epidemics, but has since leveled off to generate about 75,000 cases annually ((26) and back issues) (Fig. 1).
(By way of comparison, the plague epidemic of London in 1665 had eliminated 1/3
of the population with plague-specific symptoms in a few weeks to months (Fig.
2) [29] and the flu epidemic of 1918 eliminated 20 million in one season (27).
By 2001, Africa had reportedly generated
a cumulative total of 1,093,522 AIDS cases (26). But, during this period the
population of Sub-Saharan Africa had grown (at an annual rate of about 2.6% per
year) from 378 million in 1980 to 652 million in 2000 (28). Therefore, a possible,
above-normal loss of 1 million lives to AIDS is statistically hard to verify
for two reasons: 1) the loss would be dwarfed by the overwhelming, simultaneous
gain of 274 million people (the equivalent of the population of the USA), and
2) the African AIDS-defining diseases are indistinguishable from conventional
African morbidity and mortality (2).
Because of the many epidemiological and
clinical differences between African AIDS and its American/European namesake,
and because of the many uncertainties about the statistics on African AIDS (29), both the novelty of African
AIDS and its relationship to American/European AIDS have recently been called
into question (29-37). Indeed, all available data
are compatible with a perennial African epidemic of poverty-associated diseases
under the new name AIDS (19, 22).
Because the WHO decided in 1985 to accept
AIDS diagnoses without an HIV-test, there is no reliable documentation for even
an HIV epidemic in Africa (29, 38). Such presumptive diagnoses
were approved because the cost of the HIV-antibody test is prohibitive for most
Africans. As a result, there are huge discrepancies in African AIDS statistics.
For instance, based on WHO information, the Durban Declaration claimed in 2000
that, “24.5 million...are living with HIV or AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa”.
However, the WHO had reported no more than 81,565 new cases AIDS for the whole
African continent in that year (obtained by subtracting the cumulative total of
794,444 in 1999 from the cumulative total of 876,009 in 2000) (39, 40).
African AIDS is assumed to be sexually
transmitted
The assumptions 1) that HIV is sexually
transmitted, predominantly on an heterosexual basis, and 2) in 2000 there were “24.5 million...living with HIV or AIDS
in Sub-Saharan Africa” (40) produce a sexual paradox. Mainstream HIV researchers
have agreed that for a woman it takes on average 1000 unprotected sexual
contacts with HIV-positive men to transmit HIV, and for a man an average of
8000 unprotected sexual contacts with HIV-positive women (36,41,42);
incidentally, these are very low transmission rates: by way of comparison, it only
takes 2-3 sexual contacts to spread syphilis. Clearly it is not possible to
maintain such a constant 1:1 prevalence rate between the sexes over two decades
with an 8-fold difference in per-contact susceptibility.
Notice that, according to the CDC's HIV/AIDS
surveillance reports (checked for various years), the percent of children
(under 15) in the USA who had AIDS was never over 1% in any given year. In
recent years the number is below 1%. Getting a handle on number of HIV-positive
children is more difficult. A lot of assumptions are involved but for 2004 the
CDC estimated that about 0.2% (no error range is given) of HIV-positive
Americans were under 15 years old. Numbers for Africans are wholly
unreliable. They are all generated by computer models which have error rates of
50-100% and more, based on the frequent changes in the estimates for any given
year among different models.
Based on the official UNAIDS Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic,
published in June 2000, we shall assume that in the Sub-Saharian Africa there
were about a million HIV-positive children. This means that AIDS was spread,
according to official sources, mainly through sexual contacts. But what is the
average frequency of sexual contacts in Africa?
In order to rely
on fact, rather than on groundless fantasies of African sexual activity, notice
that the
figure for South Africa is 29 per year (0.6 per week, or once in 13 days). Now
a survey by Durex, a leading a leading manufacturer of contraceptives,
found the frequency of sexual interaction varies significantly from country to
country and that the global average for frequency of sex is 109 times per year
(2.1 times per week, or once every 3.3 days). The following summary shows how individual
nations compare to the national average of frequency of sexual interaction per
year.
Frequency By Country:
United
States 135
Russia
133
France
128
Germany
127
Britain
124
People
from Thailand had the lowest average sexual frequency at 64 times per year,
half the frequency of Americans (source: 1997 Durex Global Sex Survey). The South
African average, therefore, is less than half this minimum national frequency!
And yet, notwithstanding the much higher frequency in Europe and USA with respect
to Africa, the
promised heterosexual AIDS epidemics never materialized (43).
It strains credulity to accept that poor,
hungry Sub-Saharan Africans are engaging in particularly high levels of sexual activity
and promiscuity. A recent thorough epidemiological study of sexual transmission
of HIV in Africa found the same “low rates of heterosexual transmission [of
HIV], as in developed countries [and] no correlation between the percent of
adults...reporting non-regular sexual partners...and HIV prevalence” (36).
These and other anomalies led Brewer et al. to “propose that existing data can
no longer be reconciled with the received wisdom about the exceptional role of
sex in the African epidemic” (44). Thus, either the assumption of the Durban
Declaration that HIV is sexually transmitted, or its claim that 24.5 million
are HIV-positive, or both are flawed. Nevertheless, we continue to read in
newspapers and hear on television that 25 million people have died of AIDS, and
there are upwards of 40 million people infected with HIV—and most of these are
said to be in Africa.
South Africa is the richest country in
sub-Saharan Africa and has the most reliable statistics on the continent.
Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) reports a constant growth in the population of
South Africa from 38 million in 1994 to 43 million in 2001 (Fig. 3) (46, 47). Furthermore, the rise in the
number of deaths from all causes during the same period was also constant,
growing as the population grows—but no faster (Fig. 3).
The latest antenatal screening survey in
South Africa (48) also failed to support the
hypothesis that HIV is sexually transmitted but instead confirms the conclusion
of Brewer et al. that, “HIV is not transmitted by
‘sex’” (45). The survey included testing
pregnant women for syphilis and antibodies to HIV in order to see how the two
diseases were correlated by geographical location and over time. But, there was
no correlation. On the contrary, KwaZulu-Natal, which is leading when it comes
to HIV, has the lowest rate of syphilis in all provinces (Fig. 4). Western
Cape, on the other hand, had the highest rate of syphilis in 2000 but the
lowest HIV prevalence. Northern Cape had the highest rate of syphilis in 2001
but the third lowest prevalence of HIV antibodies in that year. Paradoxically,
then, there is an inverse geographical correlation between syphilis and HIV
(Fig. 4) although both are said to be transmitted by heterosexual intercourse.
An even more extraordinary result is the divergence over time between an
increasing prevalence of antibodies to HIV and a declining rate of syphilis
(Fig. 5). This is also difficult to understand given the assumption that both
are sexually transmitted.
A recent study in Uganda produced similar
results. The intention of the study had been to reduce HIV incidence by mass
treatment of STDs with conventional antibiotics. The rationale behind the study
was that reducing STDs (which was assumed to be a co-factor in the transmission
of HIV) should reduce the transmission of HIV. However, the result of the study
was paradoxical. While the investigators were very successful in significantly
reducing STDs, their intervention had “no [effect] on incidence of HIV-1
infection...” (49).
The data from Thailand show that these
paradoxical results are not peculiar to Africa. Even though Thailand is said to
be severely hit by a heterosexually transmitted HIV-epidemic, we find yet again
the same scenario presented by South Africa and Uganda. Bangkok has the highest
rate of STDs but low HIV prevalence. Conversely, the so called Golden Triangle
of northern Thailand has the highest rate of HIV but the second lowest STD
morbidity of all regions. And, even within the different provinces of the
Northern Region there is a negative correlation between HIV and syphilis (50). The conclusion from these
observations is obvious: HIV cannot be heterosexually transmitted.
Before 1998, two HIV-antibody tests had
been performed for the South African surveys: one screening test and a
confirmation test on the positive samples. The second test was skipped from
1998 onwards, except in Western Cape, even though generally it is the accepted
standard to do at least two tests. Furthermore, the manufacturer of the
HIV-antibody test that was used in the surveys specifically warns that,
“non-specific reactions may be seen in samples from some people who, for
example, due to prior pregnancy...have antibodies to the human cells or media
in which HIV-1 is grown for manufacture of the EIA” (51). In other words the test, which may
show false positive reactions in women with “prior pregnancy”, is being used in
pregnant women without further confirmation or adjustment. The insert that
comes with the antibody test also warns that, “at present there is no
recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody
in human blood.” This probably explains why “Studies from seven African
countries over the last 15 years show rates of HIV incidence during antenatal
and/or post-partum periods exceeding what could be expected solely from sexual
transmission” (52). Yet, these problematic,
unconfirmed results from pregnant women are then used to estimate the frequency
of HIV in the general population (53) and eventually the whole of
Sub-Saharan Africa.
Thus, there is no evidence that HIV is
spreading through sexual intercourse (or any other way) in Africa or anywhere
else. Combined with the evidence that Africa is not currently being devastated
and depopulated by an AIDS epidemic, the inability to document a sexually
transmitted epidemic of HIV shows that a future HIV-caused AIDS apocalypse in
Africa is unlikely.
AIDS Incorporated at war with South
African President Thabo Mbeki
The inability to document massive
devastation and depopulation of Africa due to AIDS plus the lack of evidence
for a sexually transmitted epidemic of HIV has made Africa—especially South
Africa—the biggest roadblock impeding the expansion of American-dominated AIDS
Incorporated throughout the developing world. The most significant battle to
determine the future of AIDS Inc. is being waged right now in South Africa.
South African President Thabo Mbeki
continues to receive intense personal attacks because he included on his AIDS
Advisory Panel in 2000 a number of scientists and physicians from around the
world who question the mainstream dogma on AIDS. Having failed to silence
Mbeki, the AIDS establishment has orchestrated an international campaign to
undermine his presidency and neutralize his influence because he insists on
getting answers to some very basic questions:
1) Why is AIDS in Africa so completely
different from AIDS in the USA and Europe?
2) How does a virus know to cause
different diseases on different continents?
3) How does a virus know if you are male
or female, gay or straight, white or black, rich or poor, urban or rural?
4) Where is the evidence that AIDS is
devastating and depopulating South Africa?
5) Why treat immune deficiency with
highly immunosuppressive anti-HIV drugs?
Until satisfactory answers to these
questions are provided, Thabo Mbeki’s government is justifiably suspicious of
the rush to get the highly toxic anti-HIV drugs into South African bodies.
AIDS Inc., in collusion with western media, regularly presents a false picture of South Africans pleading with their president to provide antiretroviral drugs. What the western media never discusses, however, is the reluctance of South Africans to take the anti-HIV drugs even when offered freely. As recently as October 15, 2003, Old Mutual Insurance Company disclosed in its Healthcare Survey 2003, that HIV-infected employees were not voluntarily coming forward to participate in the antiretroviral programs offered by South African companies (54). A chronically unreported story is the inability of AIDS researchers to recruit sufficient numbers of South Africans to participate in HIV drug and vaccine clinical trials. The South African government is currently conducting trials in 18 centers across the country to determine the safety and efficacy of administering the anti-HIV drug nevirapine to pregnant women and their babies. The trial was to have been completed in December 2002 but not enough women have volunteered. In any event, AIDS Inc. cannot afford to let this trial go to completion for two reasons: 1) the results may show that the drug is neither safe nor efficacious, and 2) the government of South Africa cannot be permitted to set the example of acting independently of AIDS Inc. when it comes to AIDS.
As the 2004 presidential election in South Africa approached (which Mbeki won with 70% of the vote), the media escalated the attack on Mbeki. During an interview with the Washington Post in September 2003, President Mbeki said that he personally did not know anybody with AIDS. Given the almost daily pronouncements that four million South Africans have “HIV/AIDS”, the media rushed to portray Mbeki as either a buffoon or liar. Rian Malan, a famous South African author, was angered that no journalist bothered to find out the truth behind Mbeki’s statement. Malan had published a lengthy article in 2001 titled “AIDS in Africa: in search of the truth” (33), where he documented the lack of evidence behind claims that AIDS was devastating and depopulating Africa. To address the most recent lapse in mainstream journalism, Malan sent a letter (as yet unpublished) to the Sunday Times of South Africa arguing that it is not only likely that Mbeki does not know anybody with AIDS but is probably true for many South Africans.
Letters to the editor
Sunday Times
Dear Sir:
I am somewhat perplexed by the AIDS debate presently raging in your letters column. As we recall, President Mbeki started it by telling the Washington Post that he personally knew nobody who had AIDS. Pieter Dirk-Uys openly accused the president of lying, whereupon Essop Pahad dismissed the satirist as an irritating gadfly and the whole affair degenerated into yet another orgy of name-calling.
I submit that the real point has been
missed entirely.
Dirk-Uys's position is predicated on the
assumption that Africa's AIDS pandemic has been accurately measured. If it is
true, as Mr. Dirk-Uys believes, that upwards of four million South Africans
carry the virus, and that one in four urban adults is walking dead, it would
indeed seem wildly unlikely that Mr. Mbeki knows no one who is infected.
But what if the AIDS statistics are
wrong? I won't bore you with a disquisition on how AIDS estimates are arrived
at, and there would be little point anyway, because in most of Africa,
statistics are unreliable or non-existent.
They are considerably better here in the RSA, however, and among South
Africa's middle and upper classes, they are very good indeed.
We therefore know that about seven
million South Africans have medical aid. We also know that 450,000 of them are
officially estimated to be HIV-infected. And finally, we know (because the
Sunday Times reported as much on September 24) that only 22,500, or five
percent, of these medically insured individuals have come forth to claim the
free life-saving medications to which they are entitled by virtue of being on
medical aid.
AIDS experts attribute this staggering shortfall to fear of stigmatisation. In other words, they ask us to believe that 19 out of 20 medically insured South Africans are so sensitive about HIV that they would rather die than admit to their doctors that they have this disease. Since this is preposterous, let's assume for the sake of argument that the number of infections in this particular population has been drastically over-estimated.
It seems safe to assert that almost
everyone with whom the president has daily dealings is on medical aid. His wife
and brother are almost certainly thus priviledged. All parliamentarians have
medical aid, as do Mbeki's support staff, the civil servants who do his bidding
and the policemen who guard his various palaces. We know, thanks to the
aforementioned Sunday Times report, that only three in a thousand of these
medically-insured people are receiving anti-HIV treatment. Others may be
infected, but we can be absolutely certain about only three. Is it really
inconceivable that the president doesn't know any of them?
I don't claim to know the answer, but the
accuracy of HIV statistics should be urgently interrogated, preferably by a
presidential commission including at least two specialists whose salaries and
status are not in any way dependent on present assumptions regarding the extent
of the plague.
Rian Malan
Cape Town
On July 30, 2003, the government of South
Africa sent a clear message that the people of South African will determine
their own future, independent from outside pressures. The Medicines Control
Council (MCC) rejected HIVNET012, the Ugandan clinical trial that is the sole
basis for using nevirapine to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to
child. MCC gave Boehringer Ingelheim (the manufacturer of nevirapine) 90 days
to provide “further evidence of nevirapine when used on its own in reducing the
risk of mother-to-child transmission of HIV” (55). Responding to the criticism
of the MCC action, president Mbeki said that, “This announcement illustrated
the challenge we face, to ensure that even on this vexed question...(we refuse)
to allow the never-ending search for scientific truth to be suffocated by
self-serving beliefs. … We must free ourselves of the ‘friends’ who populate
our ranks, originating from the world of the rich, who come to us, perhaps
dressed in jeans and T-shirts, as advisers and consultants, while we end up as
the voice that gives popular legitimacy to decisions we neither made, nor
intended to make, which our ‘friends’ made for us, taking advantage of an
admission that perhaps we are not sufficiently educated” (56).
Realizing that South Africa is crucial to
its expansion, AIDS Inc. drafted former president Jimmy Carter and billionaire
Bill Gates to do battle with Thabo Mbeki in March, 2002. Carter said he and
Gates believed South Africa had not made “adequate progress” in preventing new
cases of Aids, which were increasing “by leaps and bounds every day”.
Jimmy Carter urged President Mbeki to
learn the lessons from poorer African countries that have been much more
effective in fighting AIDS—which translated means those African countries that
have submitted to the hegemony of AIDS Inc. Former president Mandela joined
Carter and the other drugs-into-bodies enthusiasts saying that, “We can’t
afford to be conducting debates while people are dying. We have to ensure that
our people are given the drugs which are going to help them. This is a war.”
War, indeed! President Clinton declared AIDS a national security threat to the
USA in 2000, right before Mbeki’s State visit to the Whitehouse.
On March 10, 2002, the African National
Congress (ANC) lashed out at Jimmy Carter’s attempt to pressure Mbeki’s
government.
“We are also surprised at the
comments made by the [Carter] delegation about anti-retrovirals drugs in
general and Nevirapine in particular.
We do not understand why US
citizens urge this drug upon us when the health authorities in their own
country do not allow its use for mother-to-child transmission [of HIV]. One of
the reasons for this is that these health authorities say that there is
insufficient data about issues of the safety of the drug.
We find it alarming that
President Carter is willing to treat our people as guinea pigs, in the interest
of the pharmaceutical companies, which he would not do in his own country.
The comments he and others
made after meeting with President Mbeki indicate the true purpose of his visit
to our country, which was arranged without the knowledge of the government.
Once more, we would like to
assure President Carter that our government is firmly committed to meet the
health challenges facing our people, including AIDS, STD’s, TB, cholera,
malaria and others.
For this, we do not need the
interference and contemptuous attitude of President Carter or anybody else. As
South Africans, we have the possibility to find solutions to our problems, as
the people of the US have.
We are not arrogant to presume
that we know what the US should do to respond to its many domestic challenges.
Nobody from elsewhere in the world should presume they have a superior right to
tell us what to do with our own challenges.”
George W. Bush’s $15 billion AIDS package
and his recent trip to South Africa (among other stops) was just the latest
attempt to either bribe or pressure Mbeki to toe the US line on AIDS. If AIDS
Inc. can pry open the drugs-into-bodies floodgates in South Africa, then
billions of dollars will pour through Africa, India, and China on their way to
the bank accounts of American and other drug companies. The giant corporations
will get richer beyond measure whether or not giving nevirapine to women and
children (or anybody else for that matter) is a good idea as Jimmy Carter, Bill
Gates, Nelson Mandela, and George Bush claim, or insane and criminal as the
black box warning labels that come with nevirapine, AZT, 3TC, d4T, ddI, etc.
makes clear.
Nelson Mandela used the recent death of
his son Makgatho to embarrass Mbeki on AIDS. According to an article in the
January 6, 2005, issue of the Washington Post (57), “Former South African
president Nelson Mandela announced Thursday that his son, Makgatho Mandela, 54,
had died that morning of illness related to AIDS, and he urged other families
to speak openly about the toll of a disease that has ravaged South Africa but
is still widely regarded as a taboo topic.” However, the article is revealing
about what actually killed former President Nelson Mandela’s son. “A spokesman
for the Mandela family, Isaac Amuah, said in a phone interview that the
immediate cause of Makgatho’s death was complications from a gall-bladder
operation. But he said that Aids was a contributing factor and that Mandela was
determined to portray the death as resulting from Aids to demystify the
disease.”
A gall-bladder operation implies liver
problems. The leading cause of death among HIV-positive people in the US is now
liver failure (see below). Liver failure is not (yet) an Aids-defining disease.
All anti-HIV drugs cause liver toxicity and “Makgatho ... had been receiving
antiretroviral treatment for more than a year”.
II. But—people are living longer because
of the drugs!
When confronted with the fact that the
evidence from Africa actually refutes the predictions of the contagious/HIV
hypothesis of AIDS, the mainstream quickly retorts: “but—people are living
longer because of the drugs”. Speaking for AIDS Inc., Martin Delaney of Project
Inform says that, “the multi-drug combinations have dramatically reduced death
rates and greatly extended the lives of those [HIV-positive people] using such
therapies” (58). This is a very common
assertion made these days about the wonderful life-saving benefits of the
admittedly highly toxic anti-HIV drugs. However, even a quick look at the
evidence shows that Delaney's unrestrained enthusiasm for the anti-HIV drugs is
not justified.
The CDC's HIV/AIDS Surveillance Reports
document how AIDS has changed in the USA over the past two decades. The CDC
data show that AIDS peaked in 1992 and has been going down steadily ever since
(Fig. 6). The mortality from AIDS is dropping because AIDS has been declining
in the USA since 1992, years before the introduction in 1996 of Highly Active
AntiRetroviral multi-drug combinations (HAART) that Delaney touts. The apparent
life-saving benefits of the HIV-protease inhibitor-containing cocktails is a
consequence of the simple fact that these drugs have appeared on the scene long
after AIDS peaked in the USA, during a period when the mortality due to AIDS
was naturally in decline (59).
Another reason for the decline in AIDS
deaths is the CDC's re-definition of what constitutes AIDS in the USA. As of
1993, all you needed to qualify as an AIDS case were results from two lab
tests: be immune to HIV, that is have antibodies to the virus, and have fewer
than 200 CD4 cells per microliter of blood or a CD4 percentage less than 14 (60). The CDC has a rule that an
AIDS case is classified according to the earliest definition that applies.
Consequently, in 1997, 36,634 people (61% of all new AIDS cases) were
classified under this non-disease category (59). Because the majority of new
AIDS cases in the USA are classified according to the non-disease criteria of
the CDC’s 1993 definition change, they do not have any of the colossal list of
AIDS diseases—from diarrhea to dementia, pneumonia to Kaposi’s sarcoma—required
by earlier definitions. Thus, the majority of new AIDS cases since the mid
1990s are disease-free (healthy) people. However, we can no longer follow the
nationwide trend of including healthy people as AIDS cases after 1997 because
the CDC stopped listing the AIDS-indicator diseases and conditions (formerly
Table 12 (59)) in its HIV/AIDS Surveillance
Reports.
Nevertheless, San Francisco continues to
report AIDS cases according to specific AIDS-defining diseases. The San
Francisco Quarterly AIDS Surveillance Report for 2000 shows in Table 10 on page
8 that 47.7 percent of all AIDS cases from 1980 through 2000 were diagnosed
with AIDS according to the two lab tests of the 1993 definition change (61). Since this is a cumulative
number, which combines all AIDS cases under four different definitions of AIDS,
well over half of all people (mostly gay men) in San Francisco that are
currently being labeled as AIDS cases have no AIDS-defining disease. In spite
of the 1993 definition change, with its inclusion of large numbers of healthy
people as AIDS cases, the figure on page one of reference (61) reflects the national picture
showing that the number of new AIDS cases in San Francisco has steadily
declined since a peak of 760 in 1992 to below 50 in 2000, the same low level as
in 1982. The new AIDS cases in San Francisco are now so few you could know them
all by name.
As a consequence of the CDC's 1993
definition of AIDS, over half of the people now being treated with the anti-HIV
drug cocktails since 1996 (the year the HIV protease inhibitor cocktails became
available) were healthy when they started taking the drugs. Delaney, mainstream
AIDS researchers and the AIDS press are crediting HAART with prolonging the
lives of these healthy people. Sadly, these healthy people taking HAART don't
stay healthy long. They eventually get sick from the drugs and die if they stay
on them long enough (1,
62-65). “Hepatoxicity…can occur with
any antiretroviral regimen currently in use. Most remarkably, longitudinal
surveys have not only reported an increased incidence of hepatic injury in
HAART-treated patients but also identified life-threatening hepatotoxic events
and end-stage liver disease in patients on antiretroviral treatment” (66,
67). Indeed, a recent study
”found that end-stage liver disease has become the leading cause of death of
HIV-seropositive patients” in a Boston hospital (68).
Just before Christmas 2004, John Solomon
of the Associated Press broke the story that the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) in 2002 hid the fact that the toxicity of the anti-HIV drug nevirapine
was much more serious than they had led everyone to believe (69). Newly hired Dr. Jonathan
Fishbein was abruptly fired by the NIH after blowing the whistle on the NIH’s
cover-up of nevirapine’s toxicity (http://www.honestdoctor.org/resume.html). Senator
Charles E. Grassley, the Finance Committee chairman and an Iowa Republican, has
asked the Justice Department to investigate NIH's conduct (69).
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Figure 1. The incidence of AIDS cases and HIV
antibody carriers in Africa according to the WHO (39, 40)
Figure 2.
The plague in London of 1665 shows the classical bell-shape time-course
(on the order of weeks) for a contagious epidemic (70).
Figure 3. The increase in the number of deaths in
South Africa parallels and is explained by the growth in the population (46, 47). There was even a slight drop
in the number of deaths for 2000 and 2001. There is clearly no indication that
AIDS (or anything else for that matter) is depopulating South Africa.
Figure 4. No correlation between syphilis &
HIV prevalence among antenatal attendees in South African Provinces. KwaZulu-Natal
(KZN), Mpumalanga (MP), Gauteng (GP), Free State (FS), North West (NW), Eastern
Cape (EC), Limpopo province (LP), Northern Cape (NC), Western Cape (WC) (48).
Figure 5. The divergence over time between an
increasing prevalence of antibodies to HIV and a declining rate of syphilis in
South Africa (48).
Figure 6. The CDC data show that AIDS peaked in
1992 and has been going down steadily ever since (59). The mortality rate from AIDS
is dropping because AIDS has been declining in the USA since 1992, years before
the introduction of Highly Active AntiRetroviral multi-drug combinations
(HAART) in 1996. The apparent life-saving benefits of the HIV-protease
inhibitor cocktails is a consequence of the simple fact that these drugs have
appeared on the scene long after AIDS peaked in the USA, during a period when
the mortality due to AIDS was naturally in decline. Note that US taxpayers
continue to fund AIDS at ever increasing amounts for a total of $118 billion
through 2003 (71,
72).
Posted: September 22,
2006
Scienza e
Democrazia/Science and Democracy