Via:	From: gwyn@thunder.indstate.edu (Thomas W. Holt Jr.)
Date: Fri, 6 May 94 11:11:05 EDT

The following note was posted to the libernet mailing list. Reason is a
libertarian magazine that, while critical of some aspects of gay politics,
has generally been very supportive.


			 What Causes AIDS?

An article in the June issue of Reason Mag questions whether HIV is
the cause of AIDS and suggests the `HIV establishment' has suppressed
normal scientific inquiry. The article is written by, among others,
K.  Mullis (1993 Nobel Laureate in chemistry for work used in
searching for HIV fragments).

Some of the scientific allegations are:

(1) After 10 years nobody has a clue how HIV could cause AIDS. Any
explanation must deal with the fact that HIV infection appears like a
normal viral infection- the victim forms antibodies and kills all the
viruses in his body. There is no evidence of live virus in AIDS
patients years later.  

(2) Thus the evidence is purely correlational.  But (a) this alleged
correlation is actually a tautology- the *definition* of AIDS in the
official statistics is some symptoms *and* HIV antibodies.  If you
don't have the antibodies, you officially don't have AIDS.  Other
reasons to doubt the correlation are presented in the article.  No
reasonable controlled experiments have ever been done.  The article
suggests several that should be.  (b) There are at least thousands of
people who have AIDS symptoms but no HIV, and thousands of people
who've had HIV antibodies for 10 years and counting without AIDS
symptoms.

(3) An epidimological prediction of HIV as a new disease would be it
spreading throughout the population, and in fact this prediction was
widely touted 10 years ago.  But in fact, HIV is not spreading, 90% of
AIDS cases in US and Europe are still male, confined to original risk
groups. (The article also disputes that there is any AIDS epidemic in
Africa at all, claiming this is also simply faulty statistics.)

The article concludes:
"The HIV theory was established as fact by Robert Gallo's official
press conference in 1984, before any papers were published in American
journals. Thereafter the research agenda was set in concrete,
and skeptics were treated as enemies to be ignored or punished. As
a result the self correcting processes of science have broken down..."