Medicines developed over the last 15 years help to keep the virus at bay, but these come with a number of unpleasant side effects. If the medicines fail, HIV progresses to AIDS, a diagnosis that if left untreated can mean death.
This is the story of HIV. Yet there are some who think everything I just told you is a lie, fabricated to line the pockets of drug manufacturers and researchers. Enter the HIV denialist.
What is a HIV Denialist?
Simply put, an HIV denialist refuses to believe what most scientists accept as fact regarding HIV. The denialist does not accept the conventional theory of HIV, the damage it does to the human immune system, or how it is transmitted from person to person.Some denialists want nothing more than for researchers to consider the possibility that the working definition of HIV may not be correct. They ask that research dollars be allocated to find other causes that may be responsible for the conditions most scientists attribute HIV. They merely want conventional theory to be examined and scrutinized more closely.
For others, their denialist cause is much more. They speculate about conspiracies surrounding HIV. Some believe it is a man-made virus developed to be used as a weapon against specific populations. To this type of denialist, HIV tests are not specific for anything and in fact this denialist insists that HIV has never actually been isolated and observed under a microscope.
As for AIDS, these denialists believe it is the HIV drugs themselves that cause the symptoms and illnesses we call "AIDS defining." Many refuse to believe that this “make believe” virus is spread through unprotected anal, vaginal, or oral sex. Others deny HIV is a virus at all. The most staunch denialist even believes that condoms can be harmful themselves, causing cancer, genital warts or sterility.
How Does The Denialist Make His or Her Case?
The science of HIV is a dynamic, ever-changing field of immunology, virology, and medicine, resulting from decades of research, clinical trials and clinical practice. What most consider to be HIV fact, the denialist refutes as being “impossible”, “immoral” or just plain wrong. They make their case based on articles, research and interviews from a small group of scientists that question the HIV theory. Let’s take a look at their case:There is No Evidence HIV Causes AIDS – the denialist believes that there is really no proof that HIV causes AIDS - if HIV even exists at all. In 1993, Dr. Kary Mullis, a biochemist who shared the 1993 Nobel Prize in Chemistry contended that if HIV causes AIDS there should be scientific documents that demonstrate that fact. According to Mullis there is no such document. Ironically, he was awarded his Nobel Prize for his work with the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) method, a test that today is commonly used to identify HIV in blood specimens.
Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., a researcher in the fields of molecular and cell biology, believes the “HIV causes AIDS” theory fails to meet the “cardinal rules of virology [the science of viruses] and therefore the theory is flawed and untrue.
Conventional theory is, however, able to prove a connection between HIV and AIDS. The denialist contention that HIV does not cause AIDS is flawed from the very start. The denialist questions a direct cause-and-effect relationship, meaning if you have HIV, the virus will cause those illnesses that are AIDS defining.
In fact, conventional HIV theory doesn't contend that at all. Conventional theory says that HIV damages the immune system that in turn puts the body at risk for AIDS defining illnesses. Some may say that this is a game of semantics, but it is that misinterpretation of HIV conventional theory that denialists use as one of the foundations of their cause.
The Science Used to Prove the HIV Theory is Flawed - Many denialists, such as virologist Dr. Heinz Ludwig Sanger, believe that the scientific techniques used to determine the existence of HIV and its connection to AIDS is at least flawed and most likely irresponsible. Denialists such as Sanger contend there is no convincing evidence that HIV has ever been isolated and identified using established techniques of research.
Others, like Dr. Serge Lang, feel the statistics used to “prove” the conventional HIV theory are “highly improper” and are a product of media hype being passed off as science.
But some estimates report that over 100,000 research papers were published proving the HIV conventional theory by the year 2000. Hundreds of scientists devote thousands of hours proving and refining HIV science, yet denialist say all of them are wrong. There are electron micrographs of HIV particles available across the Internet.
As for statistical evidence, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and every state in the U.S. has surveillance numbers that have been collected from clinics, hospitals and treatment programs. How could all of these independent treatment programs be "in on the conspiracy"?
Page two explores more of the HIV denialist's case against the HIV scientific community.
