Blame for AIDS Placed on Use of Toxic Substances

The Public Square
Calgary Herald
August 19, 1997

HIV does not cause AIDS.

AIDS is a disease caused in people who inject, inhale or ingest toxic substances for pleasure or by prescription. The purported cause of AIDS, HIV, may not even exist.

There have been increasing signs of trouble with AIDS research and treatment since HIV was announced as its cause in 1984.

Why are the vast majority of victims of AIDS still from the major risk groups (gay men, intravenous drug users and hemophiliacs)? Why do health-care and emergency workers (outside of the known risk groups) almost never catch AIDS?

Why does the virus infect men and women equally but progress to AIDS four times more often in men?

Why has the percentage of the population infected with HIV remained stable while the epidemic has raged and recently waned?

Why is tuberculosis blamed on HIV among HIV-positive intravenous drug abusers but blamed on the the TB bacteria among those who are HIV negative?

How does immune suppression by a virus cause cancers? How does a tiny fragment of genetic material manage to hide where drugs cannot find it or mutate if drugs do find it?

In the early days of AIDS, before HIV was announced as its cause at a press conference, before any scientific papers had been published, some scientists studied non-infectious causes, such as drug use.

Since that time, research into these areas has been impossible. Funding is almost never awarded because HIV has been “proven” to cause AIDS.

Yet, ask an AIDS “expert” for a scientific paper that proves that HIV causes AIDS (and is not just associated with disease) and he will not be able to provide one.

Alternative, non-infectious causes for AIDS can be found for each risk group. Intravenous drug users inject drugs that damage the immune system, often do not eat enough and live in unsanitary conditions. Hemophiliacs regularly inject Factor VIII to allow their blood to clot. This blood product was much more contaminated with immune-system damaging proteins in the early days of AIDS than today.

But what about promiscuous gay men, still by far the largest risk group? Apart from sex, what risk factor do they have? The answer lies in the close association of drug abuse with this lifestyle.

Most notably, promiscuous gay men are almost the only users of nitrite inhalants (poppers), which are known to be cancer-causing and immune-suppressive. Notably the cancer Kaposi’s sarcoma is found almost exclusively among gays. Not only that, but before AIDS, this cancer was found in older men on their lower e xtremities. Among young gay men, it is more often found in the chest, facial and lung areas – places most in contact with the fumes of an inhalant drug.

Since 1987, another risk group has emerged, those that use so-called anti-viral drugs. The first generation of these drugs (most notably AZT) were “nucleoside analogues”. These drugs stop DNA synthesis, randomly killing cells in the body that are dividing. This includes cells that create hair and those that manufacture blood cells and the immune system. Since these drugs destroy the immune system, it is not possible to known whether people who take them are dying from AIDS or prescription-drug poisoning.

The only reason they are believed to be useful is because the health of people who take them is not considered the primary sign of success.

A so-called surrogate marker, such as “viral load” or CD4 cell counts is used. The problem is that none of the surrogate markers are well correlated with the actual amount of infectious virus.

The reason that surrogate markers (and also HIV tests) have never been correlated with the actual quantity of virus in the body is because the virus called HIV has never been isolated.

No electron microscope photograph of a number of isolated, identical virus particles exists. Either HIV has been isolated, but no scientist has bothered to take a picture of the isolated virus particles or HIV has never been isolated.

Because of this, the HIV tests is also worthless, as it may be measuring something other than a virus (such as a hyperactive immune system).

AIDS science is a mess. Billions of dollars are being spent on research, drugs and care for patients, but no cure is in sight.

Researchers, apart from a few hundred dissidents, need to look behind themselves, not ahead, and re-examine their fundamental assumption that AIDS is caused by an infectious agent.

Response by A.D.M. and S.Rachel Mason

Letter to the Editor
Calgary Herald
August 23, 1997

While initially appearing to be easily dismissed as a disjointed diatribe by someone with an anti-HIV axe to grind, on further reading there are some queries and points raised that perhaps deserve more than casual ignoring.

Firstly, the questions he asks may very well have answers published in journals that Crowe has not read; these might be supplied [by scientists].

[AIDS] is not a full-blown disease in its own right, but a “syndrome” that allows the numerous individual diseases associated with AIDS to take hold of the carrier when HIV levels reach a critical point. Perhaps we've missed some documentation that Crowe doesn’t present in his abbreviated column.

Secondly, Crowe tends to deny the existence of HIV (the Human Immunodeficiency Virus), and attributes “AIDS” to “toxic substances.” One is tempted to ask what the toxic substance(s) in the blood transfusion given to tennis great Arthur Ashe might have been beyond the HIV which was detected afterwards [the answer is AZT], followed by a combination of nasty diseases which led to his eventual death from the catch-all “AIDS”.

Lastly, Crowe’s arguments have our support, but only because they are questioning the bugaboo of “conventional wisdom.” We can and do support the dictum that “Every idea at its inception is precisely in the minority of one.”

However, we’d point out that Crowe does not present any evidence to support his position, which probably deserves a 50-page, fully documented and referenced technical paper published in a reputable journal.

Copyright © David Crowe & Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society, Thursday, March 29, 2007.