David Crowe
December, 2010

Fox News claims that “ Claim HIV-Positive Man Cured by Stem Cell Transplant”. But cured of what? The pharmaceutically-funded thebody.com goes further claiming, “The First Man to Be Cured of AIDS: An Update on the Amazing Story”. That will be a surprise to all the people who cured themselves of AIDS by stopping AIDS drugs. But the journal that published the paper that startled the world claimed much less, “Evidence for the cure of HIV infection by CCR5{Delta}32/{Delta}32 stem cell transplantation”.

The scientists are not claiming a cure, just evidence for one. And, more importantly, they are claiming a cure for “HIV infection”, not AIDS.

That is a big distinction because AIDS is the disease (well, except for the majority of US AIDS cases where people are diagnosed based solely on a positive HIV test and low CD4 cell count without any disease, and except that AIDS is a syndrome, not a disease). Let’ just say that AIDS is what you die of whereas HIV is what is claimed to cause the condition. Curing AIDS would mean making a person healthy again. Curing HIV would just mean reversing the tests that resulted in you being declared HIV-infected – an exciting piece of paper for those who get turned on by paper, nothing more.

It is not surprising, however, that the major media and the pharmaceutical prostitute organizations (like “The Body”) would be unable to distinguish between HIV and AIDS. After all, the HIV=AIDS establishment has been working for years to establish that equation as a fact using terms like “HIV disease” and “People Living with HIV/AIDS”. HIV might technically be a virus and AIDS a syndrome but just think of them both as a disease and the thought police will stop harassing you.

This means that the average person, watching Fox News or going on the internet for information from approved information from establishment sources would likely conclude from these news reports that a person had been raised Lazarus–like from their bed into a new healthy and vigorous state (just as was claimed in the 1990s when high dose AZT was substituted by less toxic combinations). If the next news headline was, “Man Cured of AIDS Climbs Mt. Everest without Oxygen and without Clothes” they would only be mildly surprised. But the reality is that the “Man Cured of HIV is Unlikely to Get Out of his Wheelchair”.

If the stem cell transplants had brought one person back to health there might be reason to celebrate but that’s hardly the case. First of all the doctor’s guinea pig was a cancer patient and received stem cell transplants because of a relapse of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Perhaps the relapse was due to the anti–retroviral therapy he was taking, because they stopped that right away, and substituted it for a perhaps equally toxic cocktail of cancer drugs.

We know the patient was suffering because colonoscopies and biopsies were taken 5, 24 and 29 months after the first stem cell transplant (actions you wouldn’t take on anyone close to good health) and repeated spinal taps (painful, dangerous and relatively rare interventions with no therapeutic value). 12 months after his transplant graft–versus–host disease was diagnosed and immunosuppressive therapy was increased. 17 months after transplant this (later to be called “cured”) patient showed up at the hospital with neurological disorders which were blamed on his experiences with chemotherapy and full body radiation.

By “cure”, the doctors meant that his stem cell transplants produced enough CD4 cells to be within the “normal” range. Also, HIV RNA and DNA were now undetectable (but they are also undetectable in many people believed to be HIV–infected). At the time the article was written the man still had antibodies to HIV, but only against the putative envelope proteins and in lower amounts than before. But I thought HIV antibodies proved infection – here is a man who supposedly is no longer infected and he has antibodies. Does this not mean that antibodies are an unreliable marker?

What is this man’s life like? One can only imagine that he is barely alive. Probably grateful that he is alive at all, but almost certainly not in a state that any of us would call “healthy” suffering from the after–effects of multiple bouts of cancer chemotherapy, AIDS chemotherapy, immunosuppressive therapy and full-body radiation to destroy his immune system before transplantation. Yet, according to the mainstream he is “cured”, “cured of HIV” or “cured of AIDS”.

aidsmap.com confirms this with a report on an interview with the patient in the German language magazine Stern. “The neurological problem led to temporary blindness and memory problems. Brown is still undergoing physiotherapy to help restore his coordination and gait, as well as speech therapy. Friends have noticed a personality change too: he is much more blunt, possibly a disinhibition that is related to the neurological problems.” Timothy Ray Brown is himself somewhat less than enthusiastic about his ‘cure’. “On being asked if it would have been better to live with HIV than to have beaten it in this way he says ‘Perhaps. Perhaps it would have been better, but I donÕt ask those sorts of questions anymore.’” One of his doctors is a whole lot more enthusiastic stating that, “Something like this is the greatest thing one can achieve in medical research.”

What this really shows is that the concept of “health” held by many doctors is diametrically opposed to what most of us would call health. Everyone has a different definition and no real definitions of health can be quantified. Mine is, for example, that I can go hiking with my A–Type daughter, keep up with her even if it means crawling up some of the mountain passes, and return alive, albeit with blisters and sore muscles for a week. When I cannot do that any longer I will worry. Alternatively, I could go to the doctor and have him tell me that my numbers are bad. No thank–you.

These doctors are as ethical as someone who keeps Grandpa in a vegetative state on life support in a hospital bed because his insurance policy makes them worth more alive than dead – while telling anyone who cares to ask that, “Grandpa is doing really well in the new hospital, his condition has stabilized, his cholesterol is down along with his blood pressure, and he is now eating regularly (albeit through a tube)”.

For another viewpoint see this April, 2011 article in The Vienna Review by David Reali.