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Do HIV and AIDS exist

Deetee said:
Duesberg has been consistent in his description of AIDS as a chemical disease - always due to drugs of some description (either recreational drugs like poppers, heroin, cocaine etc, or due to the HIV drugs or antibiotics). ...
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When it was pointed-out to Duesberg that people with hemophilia got AIDS without abusing drugs, he said it could also be caused by injection of clotting factors. When it was pointed-out that AIDS in Africa was not due to drug abuse or clotting factors, he said in Africa it was due to malnutrition and endemic infection. That is incoherent.

Duesberg is also irrational. Heroin and cocaine are not new, neither is malnutrition. AIDS is new.
 
Duesberg was once a well respected scientist - how and why he lost his way I don't really know. But once denialists have made their beds, they seem to forever destined lie in them, perpetuating their untruths and wall-eyed perspectives. I guess when one's entire raison d'etre is HIV denial, then cognitive dissonance supervenes and one becomes totally incapable of thinking in any other way, since to do so would mean the total destruction of everything one stands for. This is also the case with Christine Maggiore, whose child died of AIDS (er...I mean "antibiotic reaction").

Duesberg has had his theories comprehensively refuted many times. Yet he constantly pops up with the usual same old discreditied "evidence" to lend himself support. It is as though all principles of scientific rigour and endeavour completely vanished in his case. He wouldn't recognise the scientific method if it leapt up and bit him somewhere nasty. Currently he pursues strange theories about aneuploidy and cancer, which are just as odd as his HIV ideas.

PS - Anyone interested in reading one of the most distorted articles ever written can find it here on duesberg's web site.
 
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My hypothesis, Deetee, is that there is some sort of psychological gain in believing you are the only one who figured something out. You fantasize or are convinced that one day you'll turn out to be right and be the hero. Or something to that effect.

There seems to be a small percentage of previously respected scientists who go off in this direction. When evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming, many of these guys just hold on to their "discovery". Some of them go further like Dues and completely lose sight of common sense. But others like Behe, just never give up on their flawed hypotheses.
 
skeptigirl said:
My hypothesis, Deetee, is that there is some sort of psychological gain in believing you are the only one who figured something out. You fantasize or are convinced that one day you'll turn out to be right and be the hero. Or something to that effect.

There seems to be a small percentage of previously respected scientists who go off in this direction. When evidence to the contrary becomes overwhelming, many of these guys just hold on to their "discovery". Some of them go further like Dues and completely lose sight of common sense. But others like Behe, just never give up on their flawed hypotheses.
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I totally agree. When I read Duesberg's publications (more than 5 years ago) I kept thinking that there must be a psychiatric diagnosis for his insistence on his ideas. I mean that sincerely, not flippantly. I looked at his arguments and thought- "he would not accept that from one of his students."
 
Deetee said:
Duesberg has been consistent in his description of AIDS as a chemical disease - always due to drugs of some description (either recreational drugs like poppers, heroin, cocaine etc, or due to the HIV drugs or antibiotics).
He accepts the existence of HIV and even at one time tried to claim a $10 000 prize that was offered by some denialists for evidence that HIV exists. He just believes it is a harmless passenger, a surrogate of a degenerate lifestyle.
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I mostly agree with your summary, except to say that Duesburg's claims have watered down to a vague claim that there is 'something' other than HIV infecting AIDS victims, be it a virus, prion, or toxin. But yes, he gravitated to "HIV is a marker" in the mid '90s and this has been very convenient. However, he does agree that this particle could be contageous, which is why it 'appears to share vectors with HIV'.

There's a point where such a distinction-without-a-difference is an attempt to resign with dignity. It ain't workin.
 
JJM said:
I totally agree. When I read Duesberg's publications (more than 5 years ago) I kept thinking that there must be a psychiatric diagnosis for his insistence on his ideas. I mean that sincerely, not flippantly. I looked at his arguments and thought- "he would not accept that from one of his students."
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I don't know what he would accept from his students, but science isn't accepting his arguments. They are indeed incoherent.

My belief is that he simply got to that path in the road where he had to either admit he made a mistake and move forward with a normal career, or go for the brass ring and promise all these third world countries whatever they wanted to hear... for a price. He was the face of legitemacy for disastrous political policies.
 
New HIV drug shows 'unprecedented' results

A new category of drug has shown promising results for HIV/AIDS patients who failed to respond to other treatments, a study to be published Saturday shows.

Especially when combined with other medications, raltegravir -- the first in a new class of anti-retroviral drugs called integrase inhibitors -- dramatically reduced the presence of the HIV virus and boosted immunity in clinical-trial patients, according to the study in the British journal The Lancet.

Integrase inhibitors act by targeting and disrupting an enzyme that facilitates the insertion of the HIV virus into the host's cellular genome.
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http://www.physorg.com/news95684552.html
 
There are three types of enzyme needed for HIV to replicate, namely reverse-transcriptase, protease and integrase. Up to now, no drug has successfully inhibited integrase enzymes.
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Has there finally been enough evidence for you Robinson?
 
????????/

Evidence is always a good thing, if it is real evidence.

robinson said:
Show me the evidence.

As for myself, I have always been sure of my beliefs.

I'm 100% sure HIV is a cause of AIDS, and I am 100% sure there is data to show this. So far nobody here has provided any such evidence. I know the evidence exist, because I have viewed it, and this evidence has been around since 1985. Recent evidence confirms this. There is no doubt that HIV is one cause of AIDs.
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You say you have "viewed the evidence"

Then you can provide what you feel is the kind of evidency you are looking for.
 
Antiretroviral drug research is coming along very nicely at the moment. Not only are there now 4 ways to inhibit the 3 main replicating enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease and integrase) but also entry inhibitors that inhibit binding of HIV to the cell membrane's chemokine receptors, anti-CD4 monoclonal antibodies which also do more or less the same thing, and fusion inhibitors that prevent fusion of viral and cell membranes.

Among the currently used drug classes there are several new agents that have been engineered to overcome resistant virus strains, like the one Robinson refers to.

Success with all the agents/methods is also great indirect proof that HIV and its replication are not figments of science's imagination, as HIV-denialists would have us believe.
 
Deetee said:
Antiretroviral drug research is coming along very nicely at the moment. Not only are there now 4 ways to inhibit the 3 main replicating enzymes (reverse transcriptase, protease and integrase) but also entry inhibitors that inhibit binding of HIV to the cell membrane's chemokine receptors, anti-CD4 monoclonal antibodies which also do more or less the same thing, and fusion inhibitors that prevent fusion of viral and cell membranes. ...
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Unless the numeral "4" is a typo, what do you mean by that?

Schneibster: Decimate did mean one in ten. However, my 1980s dictionary also defines it as a large proportion. vbmenu_register("postmenu_2522178", true); vbmenu_register("postmenu_2522178", true);
 
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BuT, but, DRUGS are BAD! Well, that is what sCAM purveyors would have us believe.

If it has an EFFECT, then it will inevitably have a side effect. It's in the dose, and you want an EFFECT. You can't have an effect and have no "side" effects. If it works, it will cause something to happen.

In this case, we've come a long ways in understanding how to stop a truly feisty foe. HIV is ingenious...taking out the very system that would normally fight it. Thing is, killing your host is not the smartest, but it does that nice & slow-giving it a chance to spread around and survive beyond the hapless host.
 
JJM said:
Unless the numeral "4" is a typo, what do you mean by that?
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Reverse transcriptase is one of the 3 enzymes, but can be inhibited by 2 different mechanisms. One way is to terminate DNA chain formation by using a nucleoside analogue (eg thymidine analogues such as AZT are one example). These are quaintly called "nukes"
The other way to inhibit RT is to use a drug specifically designed to jam the molecularly-configured gubbins in the active binding site for the enzyme. These are known as "non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors", or "non-nukes". Drugs like nevirapine and efavirenz are examples.
 
Deetee said:
Reverse transcriptase is one of the 3 enzymes, but can be inhibited by 2 different mechanisms. One way is to terminate DNA chain formation by using a nucleoside analogue (eg thymidine analogues such as AZT are one example). These are quaintly called "nukes"
The other way to inhibit RT is to use a drug specifically designed to jam the molecularly-configured gubbins in the active binding site for the enzyme. These are known as "non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors", or "non-nukes". Drugs like nevirapine and efavirenz are examples.
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I get it, thanks.
 
trvlr2 said:
Just so Eos-exactly what a good,well adapted parasite might do. (Good ,from the parasite's view,not the host.)
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Would be it be horrible if I marvel at how it reproduces and leaves the cell (hiding in a coating of our own cytoplasm)?

It really is quite amazing, from the parasite's view. Retroviruses are pretty amazing, from a parasite's view.
 
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