Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?

This book by Rebecca Culshaw is blowing my mind right now.

Her basic premise is the HIV/AIDS connection (a firm causation, in society's minds) is actually bad science and practically a hoax. She presents strong evidence (both sociological/historical and microbiological) that the whole process of essentially figuring out why homosexual men were dying of an unexplained immunological disorder was botched. The scientific community that studies HIV and AIDS jumped to hasty conclusions, held press conferences where they declared without a doubt that HIV caused AIDS even though in the actual peer-reviewed study the retrovirus was only present in less than half of the AIDS cases, and continues to build upon research claims that have since been debunked. We've throw billions of dollars into drugs (AZT, Nevirapine) that perhaps are doing much more harm than good. What kills me the most is that the CDC recommends ALL individuals between 13 and 65 be routinely tested for HIV, regardless of risk factors, but the testing process they use was not even intended for humans, but rather for blood samples. Moreover, the test will yield a false positive 1 in 100 times (the test looks for antibodies to the virus, so if you were ever exposed to the virus and developed antibodies they will show up, even if you don't actually have the virus in your bloodstream), more so if the person is athletic or pregnant. I was routinely tested when I was pregnant in DC even after I did not want to be. I did not even realize how it could have been a false positive, and then I would have been started on toxic drugs for me and baby. Also, in some states it is illegal to breastfeed if you are HIV-positive, you can be denied health and life insurance, you can lose your job. And the test could have been wrong!

Another convincing argument she makes is that the medical community actually created a new syndrome to account for the AIDS cases they were seeing that were not linked to HIV. In other words, you can get something that exactly mimics AIDS but is not considered AIDS because of the absence of the HIV antibodies in your blood. Or, you could test HIV-positive and never develop AIDS (with or without taking ARVs). So, how can the scientific community be firm in their belief that HIV definitely causes AIDS?

After working at an AIDS Clinic in South Africa and doing loads of research on mother-to-child transmission, I am floored by this argument. I want to do more research and read up on different sources she references, but I highly recommend this to everyone out there. It provides a decent argument, if you can semi-understand the technical jargon she uses.

One of the first things Tim and I remarked about was that one of the only good things President Bush did was provide billions for AIDS relief in the world, through the PEPFAR program. But maybe he was actually going along with drug companies that have based their toxic treatments on bad science and are actually killing more people than they are helping. So maybe President Bush really did do nothing of value in office.