Does AIDS actually exist?

Biffa Bacon

contd. from Bush's New war front

Originally posted by daveirl
Well firstly most people dying of AIDS in the world die because they can't afford medication to help. This is a fact. If I were to catch the disease here in the Western world with the medication available I'd stand an excellent chance of living a pretty much full life. People in the third world don't get these drugs and they still die.

The argument is that they do not in fact have AIDS, or at least, not any condition caused by the HIV virus. They are simply dying from existing diseases that have been misdiagnosed.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Biffa Bacon

Originally posted by daveirl
Yep and the Moon landings were faked, Elvis killed Diana, September 11th was a complex CIA conspiracy. AIDS exists. Besides the fact that it would be impossible to have a conspiracy of the size you are alluding to what would anyone have to gain from it.

I don't think that stating "AIDS exists." in a thread entitled "Does AIDS actually exist?" is a particularly useful contribution.

As for what would anyone have to gain? Nothing apart from billions of dollars in royalties from patented medications. Added to the fact that scientists who speak out tend to be villified and ostracised by their peers.

Anyway, I'm not saying there's an actual conspiracy in terms of the whole thing being set-up from the beginning. It's just that too many people are just refusing to question the established wisdom.

mike65

Misdiagnosis? After more than 20 years exposure and billions of dollars, thousands of doctors,scientists researching
HIV/AIDS and others diseases which can be cross-referenced?.

Purleeze. :rolleyes:

Mike.

DeVore

Theres a 1 minute test for the presence of the antibodies in blood.

Biffa, if you have a point make it, but this is the most ludicrous thing I've seen you "proclaim" here. Are you stating that there is no Aids? Or what?

DeV.

Shinji

To be fair, what he's proposing is rather less ludicrous than that; the argument as presented is that AIDS exists (of course it does), but that it's not caused directly by the HIV virus as is currently the common belief.

There's actually a compelling argument for HIV not being the sole cause of AIDS, although it's almost certainly a contributing factor in the condition. Given the abject failure of AIDS cure research to date, quite a few scientists have been saying that perhaps the establishment needs to go back to basics and re-evaluate the causes of the disease. If it turns out that centuries of researcher time have been spent barking up the wrong tree while people die every day from the disease, then that would be a pretty immense human tragedy...

(Of course it's all been posted in traditional Biffa Bacon blatant-troll fashion, so people's reactions are understandable...)

Lemming

This arguement has been had on these boards before (in a slightly different way).

And my answer is (again):

Aids is a classification for an immunal system below a certain level, where any one of 25 listed "opportunistic" virii can easily take hold and run rampant.

So anyone who is "dying from AIDS" is actually dying from another illness spurred on by a weakened immuno-system (courtesy of HIV). When such a diagnosed person gets one of these virii, they are considered AIDS category patients.

So you /can/ argue that AIDS the virus doesn't exist. But the condition AIDS very much exists.

bonkey

Originally posted by Lemming
So you /can/ argue that AIDS the virus doesn't exist. But the condition AIDS very much exists.

Well, you can't really argue that AIDS the virus does exist, because as you point out, AIDS is a condition.

The question, as Shinj and other have clarified, is whether or not HIV (the retro-virus) is the direct / a direct cause of AIDS or not.

In terms of cures, as far as I am aware, mankind has singularly failed to find a cure for any retro-viral infection...and I'm even more sure that we havent even managed to find a cure for any viral infection either.

Thus, to say that our failure to cure HIV/AIDS after billions of dollars and man-centuries of research isnt really significant. If we had a basic template for treating viral and retro-viral infections, then perhaps our failure to treat HIV or AIDS would be more of an indicator.

Yes, we may be barking up the wrong tree, and I think that any credible science which suggests alternate paths of research is worth pursuing. However, this in no way indicates that we should abandon our current research-paths, nor does it suggest that HIV is not inimacably linked to AIDS.

I'm curious though....does this "misdiagnosis" theory actually have real cases where it can show misdiagnosis to any significant degree, or is it simply hypothesizing that our failure to find a solution indicates that we are indeed on the wrong path, and then back-tracks to assume that this is most likely caused by misdiagnosis for reasons X, Y, and Z.

I'm only asking because I have never once seen an article anywhere proclaiming "Man with AIDS, but without presence of HIV, despite previous diagnosis saying he had HIV".....

jc

kaimera

a theory from a mate of mine...

"AIDS is a man made virus used to curb the spiralling sheep population in Austraila."

ozpass

As alluded to elsewhere in this thread, AIDS isn't a disease (by any accepted definition), rather it is a syndrome. Hence:

Anti Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS).

AIDS sufferers die of a secondary (or tertiary- multiple opportunistic infections are extremely common) condition.

A 'cure' isn't really a valid term when discussing a viral threat, either. As I'm sure you're all aware, a virus isn't a 'living organism' like bacteria which can be killed. Rather it is packaged RNA (i.e. a super-complex protein structure) which enters a cell and 'patches' the cell's mitochondrial RNA, so that instead of replicating normal cellular RNA (the mitochondrian's function) it produces loads of fresh viral RNA instead.

The reason it's so hard to find proteins that deactivate given virii is related to the mechanism they use to replicate. Virii are unbelievably ancient- probably about as old as primordial ooze. As such they're kind of 'funky'. Namely the replication method doesn't work that well and frequently produces errors. Each error in encoding viral RNA produces a new 'mutation'.

We're only now getting the kind of computing power needed to model Beta pleated sheet proteins and devise ways of tackling a virus.

AIDS exists, I'm personally confident it is brought about by the HIV virus, and a sheep has never died from the condition to my knowledge.

Ryo Hazuki

"AIDS is a man made virus used to curb the spiralling sheep population in Austraila."

Could Be

Possibly made by the USofA to wipe out the third-world countrys populations, Think about it.

Watch the skys.

Victor

A lot of diseases and conditions have no one identifiable cause. For example to be diagnosed with depression, you need only present with 5 out of 9 symptoms for a continuous period of 2 weeks (including at least one of the two main ones). Hmmm 5 of nine - sounds kinda loose doesn't it?

Likewise, depression doesn't kill people depressed people, suicide (together with cardio-pulmonary disease, stress, malnutrition, accidents) kills people depressed people. In the CSO (www.cso.ie) figures, no one dies from depression, but is anyone saying depression isn't a medical condition.

Biffa is just showing what a trolling (or stupid) gob***** he is.

retneil

aids is a manmade disease there is no doubt about that..

mike65

Should'nt this be moved to the Idiotic Speculation board?

Mike.

DeVore

Yeah.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings/aids/342330.stm

Read. Educate yourselves. Its the cure for stupidity.

DeV.

ozpass

Educate yourselves. Its the cure for stupidity.

Thought I made a half decent attempt at putting my Biology A-level meets New Scientist subscriber comments across........

aids is a manmade disease there is no doubt about that..

For crying out loud......:eek:

DiscoStu

Originally posted by Ryo Hazuki
Watch the skys.

watch the ground its actually the morlocks.

Victor

Originally posted by retneil
aids is a manmade disease there is no doubt about that..

You are making a politicised mistake here. HIV / AIDS is unlikely to be a manmade disease, however it is a manmade crisis. The original source of the infection is unknown.

Biffa Bacon

I guess Shinji and Lemming are essentially right - AIDS does exist if we think of it in terms of being simply a condition of immuno-deficiency. Of course what I'm getting at is that it's not caused by the HIV virus.

It's quite conceivable that the so-called "plague" in Africa is simply a result of misdiagnosis when you consider that:

a. To be diagnosed as having AIDS in Africa you do not have to test positive for HIV. Rather you can be diagnosed as having AIDS as a result of your symptoms, e.g. weight loss, diarrhoea, fever, persistent cough.

b. These AIDS-defining symptoms are impossible to distinguish from those arising as a result of other common African diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria.

c. Figures of 21 million AIDS sufferers in Africa produced by the WHO are simply estimates. Between 1982 and 2000, there have only been 794,444 actual cases of AIDS reported in Africa.

helpmepls

http://www.madstunts.fsnet.co.uk/links/aids.htm

Take a look

rockchick

ok I think I get it but to just too put it in lamens terms (I consider myself a laman)
correst me if I'm wrong but here it go's:
-People don't die of aids as such but of another deseas that wouldn't normally kill them except that theire imune system is wrecked because of aids, so it could be said that the deseas aids that kills millions doesn't exsist!!!

OK i get your point but it's just a trivial argument, they may be officially dieing of sumthing other then aids but really it's the aids that's doin it

I don't even do biology so what I just said might be really ignorant but that's what I get out of it.

ozpass

Yeah- that's about the top and bottom of it.

AIDS sufferers have a seriously depleted immune system, with a virtually non existent supply of antibodies. Hence a horde of invading antigens infect them and they usually die as a result of this. I think this is what BiffaBacon was alluding to: people in the Third World dying from diseases not brought about by AIDS get included in the AIDS statistics- no-one affords the time to test for the presence of the HIV virus.

However, muddying the waters somewhat, a couple of people in this thread have also suggested that the cause of the AIDS condition isn't the HIV virus.

There is no statistical evidence to support this, insomuch as every person classified as having 'died from AIDS' in the Western world had high levels of the HIV virus present in their system.

I'm not a researcher at the cutting edge so I'm not in a position to disagree with the statistics.

seamus

OK, I think what I was going to say has been bettered somewhat, but I'll say it anyway.

AIDS is a syndrome. HIV is a virus.

Nobody is killed by AIDS. Rather they die from diseases contracted due to having the AIDS condition. I think this has been made very clear by others.

The quote that you have at the start there Biffa implies that very few people in the first world die of AIDS because they have access to medicines, which is, of course, bull. The proportion of people who develop AIDS and die is significant enough to declare that almost everyone who develops AIDS will die from diseases contracted due to having the AIDS condition. (There's no such thing as statistical certainty).

As bonkey said, everyone who develops AIDS has the HIV virus present in their system. This is easily significant enough to say that HIV certainly plays a massive part in the development of AIDS. Certainly, without HIV present, AIDS is not developed. I don't think anyone can argue with that.

If your argument is that the figures are incorrect, well figures schmigures. The Japanese are still arguing over how many people died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Estimates are created by sampling and statistical analysis. 21 million may well be too high, it could also be too low. But to come out with zero evidence and proclaim 'everyone isn't dying of AIDS, you're wrong' is just plain stupid. You said yourself, many times people aren't even tested for the presence of AIDS, they just display the symptoms. So they don't get 'declared' as AIDS, resulting in your low figure.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

We've had this discussion before Biffa, and I honestly was tempted to lock this thread.

Let me just state this plainly and simply though- there is an indisputable link between HIV and AIDS. Even before the indisputable biochemical evidence tying an invasion of the CD4 receptor in T-cells by the HIV virus to a deterioration of the immunological system to a stage known as AIDS...we have an old scientific principle to guide us. It has many names, but medicos affectionately call it the SAS, or Straighforward As **** principle. It basically states that all things being equal, the simplest logical explanation is probably the correct one.

The basic vector of pathology is as follows: HIV invades T-lymphocytes through the CD4 receptor (HIV's own binding agonist complex is strikingly similar to this intricate receptor, an amazing evolutionary feat if one thinks about it). Next, standard retroviral replication- copies are made, the cell is lysed, and the process is repeated. Next, the HIV virus attacks lymphocyte centers in deep human tissues. There is often an extensive period of time before the HIV virus is able to infect these deeper lympoid tissues. Then, after lymphocyte counts have been depleted to the stage that the human body can no longer manage even the simplest of secondary responses, you have AIDS- a syndrome of autoimmune deficiency that will result in an opportunistic infection killing off the infected individual sooner or later.

The reason that AIDS is very difficult to treat isn't that it's a retrovirus ironically enough. Most retroviruses are fragile, and lack a significant replication cycle. HIV fits the bill here, but where it diverges is in its size. It's several hundred times larger than most other retroviral infections- it also has a much longer incubation period, and a longer survival strategy. So why is it so hard to treat? Well, its DNA structure is even more unstable than that of rhinoviruses(the common cold). As such, the damn thing mutates so often and so radically, that any specific vaccine is rendered useless often before it's passed through clinical trials. However, given the very limited means of transmission, it's fair to say that like in many issues in health, prevention is more effective than recourse to treatment.

Given that we have indisputable and verifiable evidence of a link between HIV and AIDS, I'm inclined to consider the scientific aspect of the discussion closed. Granted, there are other possibilities, other variants of the HIV virus that vector in different ways. However, these are largely insignificant, the vast majority of HIV complexes vector in the manner described, and it is this variant that ends up killing so many people year after year when its infection pattern progresses to AIDS. One final point. I don't intend this forum to be a place for conspiracy theories to be published, particularly one riddled with masses of holes the size of a garden-variety galactic nebula. Eg- you say that billions of dollars of drug royalties are at stake here. Here's a thought- drug companies have spent trillions of dollars just developing protease inhibitors that mightn't work.

It's a ridiculously impossible gamble to take on such a huge investment, unless you were convinced you were treating a measurable condition that had a risk-free market. Spending trillions on a placebo that mightn't work is the stuff of Crichton and Clancy, not of pharmaceutical business. I could of course, spend hours pointing out every single last hole in this conspiracy theory...but I won't- better things to do with my time. I'd be satisfied if you'd just drop the paranoid and unprovable thesis that "if I believe X to be true, then the only reason I can't prove it is that the entire world is conspiring against me to hide the means to that truth". It's entertaining on the X-files, just pretty damn annoying on a science board.

Biffa Bacon

I had a read of some pro-HIV-AIDS link websites and they seem to refute the denialist claims pretty well.

So I'm going to shut me gob about this from now on.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

Bob the Unlucky Octopus

Biffa has conceded the pro-link side of the argument has made its case well. There's no need for him to admit he's wrong, and he hasn't done it. In a scientific world it's down to us to question findings as often as we can, preferably from a factual basis. Current research is against Biffa's position almost overwhelmingly, yet this doesnt' mean he's necessarily wrong. There are variants of HIV that don't lead to AIDS, some people are genetically predisposed to this type of HIV infection or even a favourable induced mutation. So there's no right or wrong if we want to get anal about things, just a large majority of cases where there is an indisputable link.

Fair play to you for reading and acknowledging an opposite point of view Biffa, it seldom happens on messageboards.

blackadder

reminds me a little bit about other arguments concerning Autism. It has been suggested that Autism is something of a misnomer- an umbrella term to describe a multitude of unquantifiable ailments and illnesses which doctors simply don't understand.

sceptre

Originally posted by Bob the Unlucky Octopus
Fair play to you for reading and acknowledging an opposite point of view Biffa, it seldom happens on messageboards.

I'll happily second all of that. Doesn't happen half enough.


With regard to autism, it's fairly complicated. I suppose it can be best defined imprecisely in precise terms.

http://www.autism.org/ has quite a few pages going through most of the different variants, subgroups and related disorders in nice layman's terms. Well worth a read. Doctors do know quite a bit about autism even if sometimes the causes are difficult to enumerate.