Lew Rockwell – by Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
Modern medicine has spawned great things like open heart surgery and corneal transplants, but it also harms people when its practitioners follow treatment guidelines based on fallacious theories. My grandson became gravely ill when he was 2 months old after his heart and kidneys started to fail. Studies showed that he had an underdeveloped aortic arch that restricted blood flow to most of his body, known as hypoplasia of the transverse aortic arch. A surgeon (a colleague of mine at the University of Washington) operated on him, placing this 10-lb. infant on a heart-lung machine, cooling him to a low temperature and then draining out his blood. With the machine turned off and no blood circulating through the body—for 19 minutes—to obscure what he needed to do, the surgeon enlarged the aortic arch by stitching a (pericardial) patch onto it. Now, three years later, this fortunate child is a healthy, active little boy and is developing normally.
In contrast, the medical outcome will be quite different for a person who tests positive for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), like can happen when a civic-minded, healthy person volunteers to donate blood and is found to be “HIV-positive.” With this test in hand, a health care provider (i.e., physician) will shove this shocked individual down a rabbit hole into an alternate medical world festooned with acronyms like CD4, ART, HIV RNA, HIV Ag/Ab, NRTI, NNRTI, PI, INSTI, PrEP, and P4P4P; one that adheres to treatments set down in a 285-page Guidelines for the Use of Antiretroviral Agents in HIV-1-Infected Adults and Adolescents.[1]
Following these government-issued guidelines, the provider will start this healthy blood donor on antiretroviral therapy (ART), even if his or her CD4 count (the number of CD4 T-cell lymphocytes per cubic millimeter of blood, a measure of immunity) is normal (>500). For the last two decades the standard for treating “HIV infection” is a three-drug protocol—“2 nukes and a third drug.” The “nukes” are nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTI), DNA chain terminators like AZT. The “third drug” is a non-NRTI (NNRTI), a protease inhibitor (PI), or an integrase strand transfer inhibitor (INSTI).[2]
These antiretroviral drugs are toxic. With prolonged use they can cause cardiovascular disease, liver damage, premature aging (due to damage of mitochondria), lactic acidosis, gallstones (especially with protease inhibitors), cognitive impairment, and cancer. The majority of people who take them experience unpleasant side effects, like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. AZT (retrovir), the most powerful “nuke” in the ART arsenal, actually killed some 150,000 “HIV-positive” people when it started being used in 1987 until it was stopped in the mid-1990s.[3] When an “HIV-positive” person on long-term ART gets cardiovascular disease or cancer, doctors blame the virus for helping cause these diseases. Substantial evidence, however, supports the opposite conclusion: it is the antiretroviral treatment itself that causes cancer, liver damage, cardiovascular and other diseases in these patients. In them, these are iatrogenic diseases. (Iatro is the Greek work for physician and iatrogenic is the subtle term the medical profession likes to use when admitting that a physician’s treatment or diagnostic procedure caused the disease in question.)
Medical authorities claim that HIV causes AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), with its constellation of 26 diseases. To cement this truth in the public’s mind, the human immunodeficiency virus is no longer just called “HIV.” It is now called “HIV/AIDS.” If the HIV theory of AIDS is true, then even with their side effects and toxicity, a 3-drug regimen of ART would be the right treatment for an HIV-positive person. Indeed, a new development in HIV care called preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP), promotes universal coverage with antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV infections, based on the tenet that “treatment is prevention.” Given their unpleasant side effects, however, people stop taking their antiretroviral drugs. One answer for that in the HIV care world is addressed by its P4P4P acronym (pay for performance for patients). With P4P4P, now under study, patients are given financial incentives to encourage them to keep taking the drugs.[2]
Stepping outside this world and examining the HIV theory of AIDS with an open mind, one sees that this theory has numerous flaws.
Among them, a key feature in the HIV/AIDS theory is that the virus is sexually transmitted. It turns out, however, that only 1 in 1,000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits HIV. Prostitutes do not become “HIV-positive,” despite their line of work, as long as they stay off drugs. One in 275 Americans is “HIV-positive.” Therefore, with this prevalence of HIV in the population the average uninfected U.S. citizen would need to have 275,000 random unprotected “sexual contacts” to get HIV.
According to this theory, HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing T cell lymphocytes (one kind of white blood cell that plays a key role in cell-mediated immunity). But T cells grown in test tubes infected with HIV do not die. They thrive. And they produce large quantities of the virus that laboratories use to detect antibodies to HIV in a person’s blood. This virus infects less than 1 in every 500 T cells in the body and thus are hard to find. The HIV test detects antibodies to it, not the virus itself. For these and other reasons there is a growing body of evidence that shows the HIV theory of AIDS to be untenable.
A positive HIV test does not necessarily mean one is infected with this virus. Hepatits B vaccine and Flu shots are but two of some 70 non-health-threatening things that can cause a false-positive HIV test. A positive test may simply indicate that one’s immune system has become damaged, for whatever reason, as will occur with malnutrition and heavy recreational drug use.
Henry Bauer, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry and Science Studies and former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Virginia Tech, presents a concisely reasoned refutation of the HIV/AIDS theory in a 28-page, online study, “The Case Against HIV,” with 51 pages of references—896 of them. (He continually updates it.)[3] A classic paper on AIDS is “The Chemical Bases of the Various AIDS Epidemics: Recreational Drugs, Anti-viral Chemotherapy, and Malnutrition” by Peter Duesberg, Claus Koehnlein, and David Rasnick, published in the Journal of Biosciences in 2003.[4] Books that I recommend reading on this subject are listed in the “Reading List” below.
Practicing heart surgery for 40 years and performing some 7,000 open heart operations, I used a lot of bank blood during my career. Recently retired, I have signed up with the Red Cross to donate blood now every two months. In the unlikely event that I should test “HIV-positive,” I would never let anyone push me down the HIV/AIDS rabbit hole. No way. Knowing beyond a reasonable doubt that the HIV theory is fallacious and that HIV does not cause AIDS, I would never consent to “treatment” with antiretroviral drugs.
HIV is a passenger virus. It is a harmless hitchhiker coming along for the ride. Antiretroviral treatment harms people. Adhering to the erroneous theory that HIV causes AIDS, the billions of dollars the U.S. government spends annually on HIV/AIDS programs and research ($29.7 Billion for fiscal year 2014) is a waste of money. It fleeces taxpayers and enriches the drug companies that make antiretroviral drugs and the HIV/AIDS medical establishment. The annual cost of HIV care averages $25,000-$30,000 per patient, of which 67%-70% is spent on antiretroviral drugs.[2]
Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis (1818-1865), described as the “savior of mothers,” sought to reduce the high incidence of maternal mortality, from puerperal sepsis, by getting his colleagues to wash their hands, especially after coming out of the autopsy lab, before delivering babies. He advocated this practice before the importance of antisepsis became known. The medical community of the day felt insulted, rejected his advice, and scorned him. Telling HIV/AIDS doctors that they should stop giving antiretroviral drugs to their “HIV-positive” patients and that this would enable them to lead more healthy lives is like telling doctors in the 19thcentury that if they would only wash their hands before they delivered babies, maternal mortality would drop substantially (from more than 10% without hand-washing to less than 1%).
The Ignaz Semmelweis of HIV/AIDS is Peter Duesberg (b. 1936). In 1970 he was lauded for defining biochemically the first retroviral oncogene (with coworker Peter Vogt), in birds. He was a rising star of Nobel-prize potential in virology research until he published a paper inScience in 1987 titled “HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS.” After that he became a pariah with the HIV/AIDS establishment but nevertheless has continued to do seminal work in both AIDS and cancer research. (For more on Dr. Duesberg see my LRC article on him, titled “A Modern-Day Copernicus: Peter H. Duesberg.”)[6]
At some point the HIV/AIDS establishment will no longer be able to keep a lid on the fact that the HIV theory is wrong. Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the polymerase chain reaction used to measure HIV “viral load,” puts it this way: “Years from now, people will find our acceptance of the HIV theory of AIDS as silly as we find those who excommunicated Galileo.” And the medical profession will look back regretfully for having prescribed toxic antiretroviral drugs to people who were “HIV-positive.”
(More fallacies in modern medicine to follow.)
References
- http://aidsinfo.nih.gov/contentfiles/lvguidelines/adultandadolescentgl.pdf
- “10 Changes in HIV Care That Are Revolutionizing the Field,” John Bartlett (December 2, 2013) http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/814712
- http://thecaseagainsthiv.net/
- Journal of Biosciences. 2003:28;383-412. Available at: http://www.ias.ac.in/jbiosci/jun2003/383.pdf
- http://archive.lewrockwell.com/miller/miller18.html
Reading List
Recommended books on HIV/AIDS (which I keep in my library):
The Origin, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory, Henry H. Bauer (2007).
Dogmatism in Science and Medicine: How Dominant Theories monopolize Research and Stifle the Search for Truth, Henry H. Bauer (2012).
Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?, Rebecca Culshaw (2007).
AIDS: The Failure of Contemporary Science: How a Virus That Never Was Deceived the World, Neville Hodgkinson (1996).
Infectious AIDS: Have We Been Misled? Peter H. Duesberg (1995).
AIDS: The Good News is HIV Doesn’t Cause it. The Bad News is “Recreational Drugs” and Medical Treatments like AZT do., Peter Duesberg and John Yiamouyiannis (1995).
Inventing the AIDS Virus, Peter H. Duesberg (1996).
Poison by Prescription: The AZT Story, John Lauritsen (1990).
The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering and Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex, John Lauritsen (1993).
What if Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?, Christine Maggiore (2007).
Serious Adverse Events: An Uncensored History of AIDS. Celia Farber (2006).
Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg,Harvey Bialy (2004).
Rethinking AIDS: The Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus, Robert S. Root-Bernstein (1993).
The Gravest Show on Earth:America in the Age ofAIDS, Elinor Burkett (1995).
Positively False:Exposing the Myths around HIV andAIDS, Joan Shelton (1998).
The AIDS Indictment: AIDS Epidemic Co-factors, Recreational Chemical Abuse, False Positive HIV Tests, Commercial Greed, Pharmaceutical Genocide, Medical Research Blunders, Government Incompetence; Hundreds of Thousands Dying Needlessly of AIDS; AIDS is Easily Reversible; HIV Does Not Cause AIDS; AIDS is Not Contagious.Marvin R. Kitzerow, Jr. (2000)
Donald Miller (send him mail) is a cardiac surgeon and Emeritus Professor of Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is a member of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness and writes articles on a variety of subjects for LewRockwell.com . His web site is www.donaldmiller.com.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/donald-w-miller-jr-md/hiv-is-harmless/