From: SoBeJames@aol.com Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 16:11:53 EDT Subject: Science and State 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 SoBeJames@aol.com. "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.