Subject: Science and State
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 16:11:53 EDT

Science and State
by James Jerome

You've just given birth to a healthy boy. A joyous occasion, right? Except 
that hours later, you're detained by three police officers. Your crime? 
Insisting on your biological right to breast-feed your newborn son. 

Kathleen Tyson, who lives in Eugene, Oregon with her husband of twelve years 
and their young daughter, tested HIV positive following a state-mandated 
prenatal screening during her pregnancy. Her newborn son Felix tested HIV 
negative. A social worker, alarmed by Kathleen's intention to nurse him, 
alerted authorities who took legal custody of the baby, allowing Kathleen and 
David physical custody of Felix until the case went to court "on the 
condition that we  treat him with 0.65 milliliters of AZT every six hours and 
did not breast-feed him," said David. The April trial, covered by CNN, pitted 
experts on both sides of the HIV debate that continues to unfold within the 
international scientific community. The Tysons lost, and now a state 
caseworker visits their house once a week to confirm that Felix is not being 
breast-fed and is spoon-fed AZT. 

Last year, an almost identical trial took place across the nation in Maine, 
one with a far different - and some would say happier - outcome for the 
mother and child involved. In that trial and subsequent appeal, a judge ruled 
that the state could not force Valerie Emerson to give her antibody-positive 
son Nikolas the drug AZT, which she insists contributed to her daughter Tia's 
earlier death. 

The doctors and social workers who brought charges in both cases are salaried 
care providers who have a vested interest in HIV and AIDS science as they 
understand it. But Valerie Emerson and the Tysons have a similar vested 
interest as parents in the loving care of their children. If these parents 
were Christian Scientists whose belief in the healing power of God alone were 
the issue, would the state have taken a similar prosecutorial interest in 
what the parents in both cases regard as informed decisions based on *all* 
the scientific data currently available from all sides of the issue?

Both cases dramatize a fifteen-year scientific schism in HIV and AIDS 
research. The issue of family rights shifts the traditional Constitutional 
delineation between church and state to the uncharted territory of science 
and state. To understand the specific issues addressed by both sides in the 
two court cases, it is best to review the course of AIDS research with a 
fresh perspective of hope. 

a brief history of AIDS

In the early 80s, uncommon clusters of diseases began appearing in the United 
States among a few dozen urban gay men. Doctors and researchers who had 
experience with the growing gay community conjectured that lifestyle factors 
contributed to the sudden appearance of "gay cancer" as it was initially 
identified. Government scientists with careers in virology and epidemiology, 
but no background in the urban gay culture of the times, theorized that a new 
or mutant microbe was responsible for "GRID" -- Gay Related Immune Disorder. 

In 1984, US government researcher Robert Gallo, who had devoted his career to 
the discovery of a disease-causing retrovirus, announced at a press 
conference that he and his laboratory had identified a retrovirus that was 
"the probable cause of AIDS." Normally such hypotheses are published in 
scientific journals so tests can be independently duplicated and the results 
confirmed through impartial analysis. This did not occur, the first of many 
unorthodox forks in the road for what had been until then traditional 
empirical science. Years earlier, Gallo claimed to have discovered a 
retrovirus that was the cause of leukemia, which could not be verified 
outside of his laboratory and was subsequently discredited.

In Gallo's original 1984 study, the retrovirus now known as HIV had not been 
isolated and purified in a gradient solution and then photographed as 
stipulated by the 1973 Pasteur Institute protocol, nor detected in more than 
half of the men whose blood and tissue samples were used for research. Gallo 
theorized that HIV destroyed immune cells, even though studies had shown 
during his years as a government cancer researcher that retroviruses do not 
kill cells, which is why they had been investigated as possible agents for 
the runaway cell growth that distinguishes cancer (such as the proliferation 
of white blood cells in leukemia). 

Subsequently, international research has focused on resolving this 
fundamental contradiction, among others. The nascent research technologies of 
human retroviruses, retroviral antigens and T cells developed simultaneously 
with the first cases of AIDS, and soon defined that disorder. HIV has been 
said to destroy T4 cells, but that does not describe what actually takes 
place, which is a fluctuating inversion of the T4/T8 ratio, with no overall T 
cell loss. To this day, despite more than 100,000 scientific papers on AIDS, 
not one has appeared that proves HIV as the definitive cause. HIV has yet to 
be independently isolated, photographed or proven to destroy human immune 
cells, nor has its pathogenesis been clinically explained and confirmed. 

Instead, doctors and scientists largely rely on the antibody test that was 
first developed to test the blood supply -- and not to be used for human 
diagnosis. Because HIV has never been isolated, unlike other pathogens, it is 
impossible to determine whether the selection of proteins used in the 
antibody test (which has never been standardized) is specific to a particular 
microbe, in this case a retrovirus. There is an apparent correlation between 
antibody reaction and potential disease progression in certain cases, but not 
nearly enough to imply causation by any single pathogen. 

In his early retroviral research, Gallo had discovered a process using a 
defective T-cell line from a leukemia patient in order to perpetuate 
retroviral growth for laboratory study. He had taken a keen interest in 
leukemia for almost a decade, and in the early 80s his team had detected what 
they considered to be a retrovirus called HTLV-1 associated with a type of 
T-cell leukemia in clusters of Japanese people. What distinguished this 
leukemia and had led to the detection of this retrovirus was a particular 
antigen called p24. An antigen is a protein that the immune system interprets 
as a foreign invader.

When French researchers around that same time had detected what they thought 
to be a retrovirus somehow responsible for the handful of AIDS cases among 
urban gay men in a few Western cities, Gallo borrowed samples and grew it in 
his leukemia T-cell line. At first, he had thought that AIDS was caused by 
HTLV-1, and suspected that was what the French had found. When he announced 
his own discovery, which was later judged by an international tribunal to be 
identical to the French discovery, he named it HTLV-3 (though it was later 
judged to be unassociated with that retroviral group and renamed HIV in 
1986). In the confusion, the antigen p24 became the core antibody protein 
that identified this retrovirus in human blood, laboratory research and 
eventual drug testing, even though p24 could only be directly detected 
roughly 50% of the time in the blood and tissue of AIDS patients.

An antibody is created as a reaction to an antigen. Throughout the history of 
modern science, the appearance of antibodies has been regarded as the immune 
system's identification and neutralization of a foreign invader. However, in 
the unfolding unorthodoxy of AIDS science, the presence of selected antibody 
proteins (said to indicate the presence of HIV) became interpreted as a 
portent of immunological failure from a pathogen the body had unsuccessfully 
inoculated itself against, contradicting the traditional role and function of 
antibodies. As a result, AIDS science has dedicated itself to a 
multibillion-dollar effort to reconcile contradictions based on hypotheses 
that have bred more theories to explain them -- and also to search for a 
cure. 

I lived in San Francisco from 1975-1986 and in Manhattan from 1986-1990 (two 
AIDS epicenters), and followed the course of scientific conjecture that 
mutated with the puzzling retrovirus. To what degree can a primitive microbe 
be said to mutate before it is no longer truly recognizable as that microbe? 
The concerted effort on various fronts to resolve the growing discrepancies 
has been much like the tale of the blind brothers describing the disparate 
parts of an elephant, trying to make sense of the whole beast. The 
terminology and technology soon became so vast and complex that reporters 
felt unequipped to grapple with independent journalistic investigation, and 
relied on government and laboratory press releases, favoring the alarmist 
scenarios and statistics that underscored the growing urgency. 

The turning point was the involvement of the pharmaceutical companies in the 
mid 80s with the introduction of AZT, a cancer drug that had been shelved 
since its development in the 60s because of its overwhelming toxicity. It was 
theorized that AZT blocked retroviral replication, when actually it 
indiscriminately halts cellular activity (the reason it had been tested to 
reverse cancer metastasis) - targeting  the bone marrow where immune cells 
are  generated -- by terminating DNA synthesis. 

People with an AIDS diagnosis, and some with merely a positive antibody test 
reaction, continued dying in increasing numbers until the early 90s, when CDC 
statistics show that mortality rates were in gradual decline. The CDC 
expanded the official government definition of AIDS to include new diseases 
-- and for the first time a T4-cell count of 200 or lower. This change 
increased AZT prescriptions for those previously excluded from the older 
definition. CDC statistics show a subsequent universal spike in mortality 
rates, despite length of diagnosis or degree of illness among monitored 
cohorts. However, overall AIDS mortality continued to decline through the 
90s. 

That was not the public or media perception, which was shaped by 80s 
mortality projections, and despair in the medical and scientific communities 
that an effective therapy or cure for HIV infection would ever be found. 
Meanwhile, the company now known as GlaxoWellcome earned hundreds of millions 
of dollars on AZT, as new pharmaceuticals to block or destroy the retrovirus 
continued to be tested and developed with quick FDA approval. Drug therapies 
had become the primary focus of HIV research. 

Ever since Gallo's original announcement, the retrovirus he had identified as 
the probable cause of AIDS could never be detected in human blood or cells in 
significant amounts to cause degenerative illnesses through destruction of 
the immune system, as had been posited. To explain the enigmatic perception 
of T4-cell death, it was conjectured that HIV was a slow pathogen that subtly 
wore away the immune system for a decade or longer at nearly undetectable 
levels -- even though in the early years AIDS patients died quickly. It was 
further theorized that the retrovirus lodged invisibly in tissue instead of 
the blood, where it otherwise should have easily been detected, as with any 
other lethal pathogen. Either HIV broke all the rules, or all the rules had 
been broken to explain HIV. 

Toward the mid 90s a new hypothesis emerged: HIV waged immediate total war by 
the billions on immune cells that over years were eventually overwhelmed by 
the onslaught, exhausting the immune system. This scenario was based on the 
application of a recent technological innovation called PCR that 
exponentially copies DNA fragments in sufficient numbers for coherent 
analysis. Copies of what were said to be bits of RNA segments of HIV 
particles, which heretofore had been almost undetectable, now could be 
counted in the thousands and millions. Along with this development, 
pharmaceutical laboratories developed experimental drug combinations (still 
utilizing AZT) popularly called "cocktails" that tended to reduce the number 
of fragmentary copies ("viral load") as a quantifiable expression of what was 
interpreted to be actual retroviral presence, though counts differ wildly 
according to the three principle methods used. 

Science and the media heralded the results as a breakthrough in research and 
treatment for "HIV disease." However, typical of the disclaimers for these 
drugs is one for recently approved Ziagen by GlaxoWellcome: "Ziagen does not 
cure HIV infection or AIDS. At this time, there is no evidence that Ziagen 
will help you live longer or have fewer of the medical problems that are 
associated with HIV infection or AIDS." Also published is this warning, 
reproduced as it appears: "IF YOU HAVE SKIN RASH OR TWO OR MORE OF THE 
FOLLOWING SETS OF SYMPTOMS, STOP TAKING ZIAGEN AND CALL YOUR DOCTOR 
IMMEDIATELY: fever, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or abdominal pain, severe 
tiredness, achiness, or generally ill feeling...If you must stop treatment 
with ZIAGEN because you have had this serious reaction, NEVER TAKE ZIAGEN 
AGAIN. If you take ZIAGEN again after you have had this serious reaction, 
WITHIN HOURS you may experience LIFE-THREATENING symptoms that may include 
LOWERING OF YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE OR DEATH." What it does claim to do is "drive 
down viral load." The danger of these drugs is underscored by the sober 
admission of an AIDS doctor on the evening news show 20/20 a few months ago 
that his patients no longer die from HIV, but from the drugs he prescribes to 
prevent the resurgence of copies of fragmentary particles in viral load tests.

Fortunately, the story does not end here.

a fork in the road

In the mid 80s, medical science divided into two factions. The side that 
pursued paradoxical theories and pharmaceutical solutions for what came to be 
known as "HIV disease" was government and UN supported, received almost 
exclusive media coverage, and was generously funded, employing tens of 
thousands of administrators, educators, caretakers and viral researchers in 
sophisticated laboratories around the globe. However, a parallel group of 
international scientists, adhering to traditional empirical research, 
challenged the prevailing yet unproven beliefs by proposing other plausible 
explanations for a spreading immune disorder, and methods for its remission. 

These scientists first noted that the syndrome that came to be known as AIDS 
had a diagnosis that varied according to the affected populations and 
subgroups on different continents. This was not indicative of a virus, which 
like the example of influenza indiscriminately infects people regardless of 
sex or country. In Africa, AIDS was said to spread generally among 
heterosexuals while in the US it was mostly restricted to intravenous drug 
users and a subset of gay males. The original collection of diseases 
identified as AIDS had already existed previously in these groups due to 
distinct combinations of factors such as repeat untreated bacterial and 
fungal infections and systemic weakness from poor or irregular nutrition. 
However, the initial cases of gay male AIDS tended to also have in common 
multiple parasitic and amoebic infections (as with African AIDS), overuse of 
recreational drugs (especially amyl nitrate -- a carcinogen), and regular 
antibiotic use to prevent and treat persistent and sometimes multiple 
venereal disease infections.

At the same time that AIDS became identified by science and the media, a 
group of researchers in Perth, Australia proposed that chronic illness in 
general resulted from unrelieved oxidative cell stress, which could be 
alleviated by eliminating such factors as infection and malnutrition while 
fortifying the diet with cell-nourishing green foods. Along with German and 
Swiss scientists working concurrently on human immunology, they further 
determined that certain antibody proteins first identified by Robert Gallo in 
his original cohort as indicative of retroviral infection (and used for 
detection in antibody tests) were actually autoimmune proteins generated by 
an overstimulated immune system. 

Parallel researchers in New York and Toronto posited that some part of 
chronic immune dysfunction could be explained by tertiary syphilitic 
infection, and perhaps even multiple infections, when the treponeme is no 
longer detectable in the blood, having migrated intercellularly, inducing the 
immune system to attack the host tissue. Compelling similarities were cited 
between primary diseases associated with late-stage syphilis and AIDS, as 
well as the decade-long prognosis for each, and the populations affected, 
particularly in the West, which was mostly male. Also questioned was the 
rapid disappearance of syphilis with the simultaneous rise of AIDS. In this 
view, AIDS is indeed infectious, but it is actually syphilis, known through 
the centuries as the Great Masquerader.  

German scientist Stefan Lanka incorporates most perspectives in his 
historical overview of the shifting epidemic, trying to make sense of the 
elephant that the blind brothers could not recognize in the popular Eastern 
tale. In his assessment, AIDS began in the late 70s as immunological 
deterioration scattered among gay men in urban areas resulting from 
behavioral excesses. The protracted administration of sulphate-based 
antibiotics further destroyed vital internal flora that held yeast, fungus 
and bacteria in balance, while oxidizing the blood and cells, analogous to 
rusting the body. With such aggressive prophylactic (preventative) 
treatments, AIDS shifted to an iatrogenic disease -- its symptoms and 
disorders increasing in degree and complexity with DNA-terminating drugs like 
AZT, which was prescribed round the clock in megadoses when first introduced. 
As the doses diminished or ceased in following years, patients died more 
slowly and in fewer numbers. It is estimated that over 100,000 people die 
each year in the US from pharmaceutical toxicity, though the numbers do not 
currently recognize iatrogenic deaths among those annually attributed to 
AIDS, nor the hundreds of thousands who perish from other chemotherapies. 

The discovery in this decade that over 5,000 polyphenol compounds found in 
plants (and especially herbs, such as green tea) are vital to cellular health 
is a major scientific breakthrough in the field of nutrition. Lanka and Swiss 
researchers are developing immune restoration therapies, focusing on plant 
nutrients that refortify and oxygenate the cells. In his words: 

"...a positive anti-HIV test is an indication of an augmented formation of 
autoantibodies against cytoskeletal proteins, i.e. actin. This condition is 
pathognomonic for chronically active hepatitis. AIDS, as a serious 
immuno-deficiency-syndrome, is the expression of a persistent hypercatabolic 
state of metabolism along with a stress-induced whole body inflammation. A 
successful treatment of such conditions consists of the nutritional supply of 
a sufficient quantity of antioxidative and antiproteolytic phyto-phenolic 
mixtures, consisting of flavonoids and tannins. As neither the animal nor the 
human body is able to synthesize aromatic compounds, they are fully dependent 
on a sufficient supply of anabolic effective phyto-polyphenolic mixtures in 
order to adjust catabolic states of metabolism. These mixtures are present in 
drugs made of teas and spices. Padma 28 proved to be the most effective one." 

Though available in Switzerland for decades, the Tibetan formula Padma 28 has 
been banned by the FDA under that name, but it is available in this country 
as Adaptrin by Pacific BioLogic, which has also developed the immune boosters 
Resist and Resist 2 based on ancient Chinese formulas. When organic food is 
not regularly available, Lanka also recommends daily consumption of the sea 
vegetable agar agar, which can be easily prepared as a delicious gelatin when 
boiled with fruit juice and is available in most health food stores. 
Additionally, there is widespread research into the effect of glutathione and 
its amino acid precursor NAC (N-acetylcysteine) in bolstering immunological 
resistance while relieving oxidative cellular stress.

Kary Mullis is the 1993 Nobel Laureate who developed the PCR technique that 
he insists has been inappropriately adapted for HIV diagnosis to count "viral 
load." He writes and lectures to call attention to the unorthodox digression 
of HIV conjectural research from traditional empirical science, which was 
established in England centuries ago to separate independently and 
objectively confirmed fact from the presumed yet untestable subjective 
beliefs of religion. To truly serve the greatest good, science depends on 
vigorous open debate so that it should not be influenced by money, fame, 
prestige, power or personal bias and assumption. 

Remaining true to scientific principle, Mullis feels that it is his 
responsibility as a scientist and a citizen to contribute whatever he can to 
a society that has bestowed so much upon him for his talent and labor. 
"Science is not war -- the Catholic Church against the world," he says, a 
reference to HIV proponents who angrily dismiss him and others as 
"dissidents" for pointing out that the central HIV/AIDS hypothesis remains 
unproven. In health as in science, Mullis challenges us to simply follow the 
rules: "Tradition is not just a habit, but the rules we need to survive." 
We'd be wise to heed his advice. 
_______________________________________________________________
James Jerome is a freelance writer who can be reached at [email-masked].

"We are still very confused about the mechanisms that lead to CD4 depletion, 
but at least now we are confused at a higher	level of understanding."  
(Paul Johnson, professor of immunology at Harvard Medical School, Science, 
1997, p 1400)

references

AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science by Neville Hodgkinson, who was 
chief medical and science correspondent for the London Times during the 80s 
and 90s

Inventing the AIDS Virus by Dr. Peter Duesberg, a pioneer of retrovirology 
lauded by his colleague Robert Gallo until he challenged the HIV hypothesis 
in the late 80s, jeopardizing his once stellar career and reputation

"Retroviruses as Carcinogens and Pathogens: Expectations and Reality" 
by Peter H. Duesberg, Cancer Research 47, 1199-1220, March 1, 1987 
(http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/pdcancer.htm)

"A Critical Analysis of the HIV-T4-Cell-AIDS Hypothesis" by 
Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al, Genetica 95: 5-24, 1995
(http://www.duesberg.com/ept4cells.html)

"A Critical Analysis of the Pharmacology of AZT and its Use in AIDS" by
E. Papadopulos-Eleopulos et al, Current Medical Research and Opinion 
(http://www.librapharm.co.uk/cmro/vol_15/supplement/main.htm)

"15 Years of AIDS" by A. Hässig, H. Kremer, S. Lanka, W-X Liang, K. Stampfli, 
May 1998 (http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/ah15years.htm)

"Lab Rat -- What AIDS Researcher Dr. Robert Gallo Did in Pursuit of the Nobel 
Prize" by Seth Roberts, Spy July 1990
(http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/srlabrat.htm)

What if everything you thought you knew about AIDS was wrong? by Christine 
Maggiore, founder of the Los Angeles chapter of HEAL (Health Education AIDS 
Liaison), a growing international organization promoting open information, 
awareness and choice in health matters

Gary Null is a nutritionist who has promoted a green diet free of food and 
chemical toxins for decades in his books, radio shows, television appearances 
and on his Web site (www.garynull.com), which also explores in depth the 
parallel science movement in AIDS and immunological research. His articles 
can be found along with a wealth of other information, resources, support and 
contacts at the Rethinking AIDS Web site (www.virusmyth.com). 

Pacific BioLogic can be contacted at 1-800-869-8783, or at its Web site 
(www.pacificbiologic.com)

"HPD: N-Acetyl-L-Cysteine Abstracts" [NAC and Glutathione]
http://www.integratedhealth.com/infoabstract/nacab.html

"Extended follow-up of patients in one trial, the Concorde study, has shown a 
significantly increased risk of death among the patients treated early. The 
trials mainly involve monotherapy with zidovudine [AZT]. The suggestion is 
that the situation is different for combination therapy." (Andrew Phillips 
and George Smith, letter in The New England Journal of Medicine, March 1997)

The information on AZT and the universal rise in AIDS mortality rates is 
taken from the article "Some Facts Behind the Expansion of the Definition of 
AIDS in 1993" by Vladimir L. Koliadin, who based his statistical analysis on 
the CDC AIDS Public Information Data Set from 1995. The article is available 
at the following URL: http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/vknewdef.htm

"Syphilis and AIDS: Lessons from history" 
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/ideas/Aids/

Transcript excerpt from the January 8, 1999 broadcast of "LaGena's Story" on 
the ABC News show 20/20:
SYLVIA CHASE [ABC News]: And another problem - protease inhibitors seem to 
stop working after a couple of years. And in addition, the drugs themselves 
could kill her by damaging her heart, liver, her pancreas.
DR. JOSEPH JEMSEK [AIDS Specialist treating LaGena]: The drugs aren't 
perfect. They cause side effects, which are cumulative and inexorable. Now 
I'm starting to see people die again.
SYLVIA CHASE: So people are actually dying of the side effects of these...
DR. JOSEPH JEMSEK: Yes, you're...
SYLVIA CHASE: ...anti-viral drugs?
DR. JOSEPH JEMSEK: Yes, you're starting to see that.