Didn't say KS didn't exist in Africa. Oh, and please: Apparently you call the nitrite inhalants theory "discredited", care to show some material on that?
We have covered this already. One of the reasons that poppers were dismissed as a cause of Kaposi was because the epidemiology made no sense. It failed to explain why in the 1980s the African continent was being swept with an epidemic of the aggressive disseminating form of Kaposi on the back of HIV-induced immune deficiency.
You have failed to explain why this epidemic occured (and this is the 4th time of asking - ETA, actually the 5th - I see Taffer asked you also!).
Your hypothesis (that poppers cause KS) has failed on multiple criteria. A true scientist would accept the hypothesis is incorrect, and move on to a better model. This is exactly what the orthodox scientific community did in the 1980s with Kaposi and the popper theory. It is now 20 years later - they moved on, and found the real cause. Can't you accept this?
Re AZT doses:
That's 2400mg / day. I remember seeing other sources which talked about 7.5mg/kg per 4 hours, which would make the 4-hour-dose 562mg, and thus the daily dose >3300mg. You can send the 1000$ to the "Dabljuh plasma TV and dope fund", wire transfer data is followed up later.
Close, but no cigar. You said 2500mg, remember? Aside from dose ranging studies, have you any evidence (eg Drug SPCs, studies or published papers where these doses were specifically documented) that AZT was used in this way and in this dose?
Re the Concorde study:
This study compared 2 strategies - early AZT high dose monotherapy versus delayed introduction of AZT (when it was clinically needed). The hypothesis was that AZT might help delay progression to clinical illness if given very early in the course of HIV infection. This strategy showed early (6-12 month) benefits, but this benefit faded as viral resistance for AZT was selected. By 3 years (not 14 months as you claim) there was no statistical difference between the 2 groups.
Read again. Over the course of the 14 month experiment, 8% of the Imm (immediate AZT treatment) group died, but only 6% of the Def (deferred AZT in favour of a Placebo)
The study calls the difference "not statistically difference with a confidence interval of 95%", but with a CI of 90%, it is statistically significant.
Thank you for demonstrating how denialists do objective science, and how easy it is for denialists to do wishful thinking.
The results were
not significant at the 95% CI. So you say, "Ah, but they
might have been significant at the 90% level"!!
Why not go the whole hog, and say absolutely anything you like might be significant, if only it were tested at the 50% CI interval!!
The Concorde study provides unambiguous evidence that AZT does not in itself cause AIDS or do significant harm. People on high dose "toxic doses" of AZT fared just as well (or badly if you prefer) as those on placebo.
Denialists like to claim this study shows HIV drugs are useless. In fact the study shows that monotherapy AZT (which is of proven benefit when given to AIDS patients) provides no specific additional benefit to patients if taken early in the course of HIV infection. AZT caused CD4 counts to rise significantly (again, contrary to your claim) although this benefit was lost once resistance to AZT developed.
Remember this study was financed by the patent holders of AZT and was set up with the goal to market AZT to HIV patients who did not have AIDS symptoms yet, so their interpretation with the result is expected to be... lenient.
Completely wrong again. This study was set up by the Medical Research Council in the UK and its counterpart in France, Inserm. It was run totally independently from Glaxo-Wellcome (or GSK as it is now).
Where do you get your information from ? Is it totally derived from HIV denialist web sites (the usual purveyors of this nonsense)?
I suggest you read a little about AZT monotherapy trials.
This is a good starting point, and explains Concorde and the other trials.
Among asymptomatic HIV-infected individuals, several placebo-controlled clinical trials suggest that AZT can delay disease progression for 12 to 24 months but ultimately does not increase survival. Significantly, long-term follow-up of persons participating in these trials, although not showing prolonged benefit of AZT, has never indicated that the drug increases disease progression or mortality (reviewed in McLeod and Hammer, 1992; Sande et al., 1993; Volberding and Graham, 1994). The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of these large trials effectively rebuts the argument that AZT causes AIDS.
