ps418

Oops. In my last post, I was referring to anti-retroviral drugs in general rather than HAART specifically.

Patrick

scigirl

RoddyM

Where are your peer reviewd references? You state over and over that labs have found this, they haven't found that. What labs are you talking about? References please....

scigirl

scigirl

This list of people - they all seem to have one thing in common - a lack of lots of money.

So . . . .if AIDS/HIV is a scam to suck money out of people, why on earth would they pick this one? These patients don't have any money?

Your argument is so unscientific I don't know where to begin. You wouldn't know a sound epidemiological study if it crawled up your leg and bit you on the ass.

I'm sorry but I missed the day in medical school that they taught the physiological connection between "people that roddyM doesn't like" and "CD4 count below 200 and a specific list of opportunistic infections and cancers." Must have been a day I was sick.

scigirl

RoddyM

Scigirl, begin at the beginning, question whether there is such a thing as a virus that is necessary and sufficient to cause the fatal syndrome of immune dysfunction.

scigirl

RoddyM,

I stilll haven't seen one single reference coming from you for any of your anecdotal claims. Not one. If it's so obvious and abundant - that all these tons of labs have been trying to isolate HIV and failed, you'd think there would be something at Pubmed about it.

Ok if your claim now is that HIV all by its lonesome self does not cause AIDS, than yes you are correct. You need competent CD4 cells, and you need the right combo of opportunistic infections to cause AIDS. You also need a human body, and a circulatory system, etc, etc.

I think you are setting up a straw man here, "Scientists are saying that HIV is the only thing that causes AIDS, it's not, therefore HIV doesn't cause AIDS."

Learn some basic physiology, as well as some basic logic.

By your same logic (If I even follow it, which I haven't been since you started spewing nonsense in this thread), smoking doesn't actually cause cancer either all by itself - you need DNA damage, and a bunch of other stuff. Polio doesn't cause paralysis - dead nerves cause paralysis. High cholesterol does not cause atherosclerosis - collections of macrophage foam cells inside the wall of an artery causes it.

However, these factors- smoking, polio- lead to a chain of physiological events whicn in many cases cause the above diseases. No scientist believes that HIV alone causes AIDS. It is the first thing that happens - it lowers your CD4 count, as well as other things. One other thing it does, which I studied for my thesis defense, is cause defects in neutrophils. If HIV didn't cause AIDS, than the fact that the specific neutrophil defects seem to augment the CD4 destruction would be a pretty amazing coincidence, wouldn't you say? Oh and by the way, HIV doesn't just bind to gay and drug addict neutrophils - it binds to all of them. I *do* have the data to prove that one.

Are there populations of people who may be more susceptible to dying more quickly from AIDS? No doubt yes. That's nothing new, for any disease. No disease follows some exact time course published in a journal. If you are poor, have no access to health care, and live in Africa, your chances of dying quickly are good. If you are rich and can afford good drugs - you live longer. If you have certain HLA antigens - your immune system is slightly different and you have different susceptibilities to the oppurtunistic infections.

Lots of viruses and bacteria cause a primary defect, and then that primary defect goes on to cause secondary problems. That's why controlled epidemiological studies are so important. They've been done - please actually read the earlier data I posted. I know it's long, and has big words, but I think even you can handle it.

scigirl

Oh and by the way,

http://catalog.cmsp.com/data2/fx100004.htm



AIDS virus attaches to a healthy CD-4 Receptor Site



A human immunodeficiency viral particle is seen budding from the infected cell surface at the top, with a complete viral particle at bottom in this high magnification electron micrograph.

RoddyM

I've seen photos of things said to be HIV. We need to be able to see such that such photos can be taken routinely from people who have tested +ve. And that such photographic evidence cannot be gotten from people who test negative. The correlation would not have to perfect to satisfy a sensible dubialist.

Epidemiological studies by their nature only study correlations, and correlations are never proof of causation. A good study, or even a not so good study, can be useful in determining a reasonable course of action but does not even attempt to prove anything especially conclusions or scenarios drawn by other people in the past.

A study may be done to compare the reading ability of children who have tested HIV +ve with children who have not tested HIV +ve. The study may be flawless and show a correlation of decreased reading ability with HIV positivity as tested that no-one would deny.

Fundamentalist thinkers (not necessarily religious type fundies),such as medical students would think that the result of the study somehow proved the existence of the virus. Likewise, studies designed to predict the effectiveness of anti-viral meds do not prove the existence of a virus. If their is no virus all the studies are showing is that some poisons kill some people more quickly than others.

HIV/AIDS supporters and apologists often accuse dubialists of using the same argument as the defiant smoker. But smokers aren't being rounded up, labelled, blackmailed and bullied. They aren't being told that they are going to die a painful premature death. They aren't being portrayed as second class citizens, selfish immature people who can't control themseves, people who infect others with their poisons and set a bad example for innocent children. Hang on a minute ... they are aren't they.

Dr Rick

We do not have to routinely see photographs of infected cells to diagnose hepatitis or a cold nor to demonstrate that a specific virus causes a distinct illness; that's not part of Koch's postulates.

You really should try to educate yourself on the subject of HIV before arguing about it; start by reading the links provided on this thread.

That's just bizzare; to do that, we'd have to photograph every one of the billions of cells in a non-infected person; that's never been done for any infection.

What is a sensible dubialist? It looks suspiciously similar to a married bachelor.

You really, really should try to educate yourself on the subject of HIV before arguing about it; start by reading the links provided on this thread.

There are literally hundreds of clinical and laboratory studies that have looked at HIV and AIDs without regard to their epidimiology.

It's readily apparent that you are not familar with the thinking of medical students or doctors; you really shouldn't comment on things that you do not comprehend.

You really, really, really should try to educate yourself on the subject of HIV before arguing about it; start by reading the links provided on this thread.

There are literally hundreds of epidimologic and laboratory studies that have looked at HIV and AIDs without respect to anti-viral thereapy.

...and take a good look at the articles on logic in the Sec Web library, too.

Rick

charlie d

Interestingly enough, those studies actually show that some poisons (because that's what most drugs, not just retroviral inhibitors, are) make HIV+ people who take them live longer than HIV+ people who don't. How peculiar, for a poison. Wonder why...

Valentine Pontifex

I am not sure I want to say that the existence of HIV/AIDS is evidence agant God. The "problem of evil" existed long beore AIDS.

But the fact that such a great many intelligent design advocates are HIV deniers makes me question the intelligence (or at least the competence) of intelligent design advocates.

charlie d

I don't know if this has been posted before in this thread, but here's a link to the NIAID web page devoted to explaining the evidence for the causative role of HIV in AIDS, and to give some answers to the deniers' objections.