Hi!
    Here is another forward. Enjoy.
                                                                                            Buharry.
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HIV: Passenger Virus or Cause of an Infectious Disease?

Duesberg and his supporters claim that AIDS can not be considered an infectious disease. They believe that HIV is simply a harmless passenger virus, rather than a virus which causes AIDS or any other disease. Some of the reasons for these claims are discussed briefly as follows : 
 Duesberg claims that HIV-free AIDS cases show that the presence of HIV is irrelevent for disease. Acquired immunodeficiency may occur as a result of a number of factors. These factors include : 


  a.. - protein-calorie malnutrition 
  b.. - HIV 
  c.. - other infections 
  d.. - drug therapy 
  e.. - radiation 
  f.. - malignancy 
  g.. - other chronic diseases 

That is, there are rare cases of diseases in adults similar to AIDS but negative for the evidence of HIV, that is, "HIV-free AIDS", and these were recognised prior to the AIDS epidemic. Their incidence has not increased during the AIDS epidemic and, because of the other factors which may cause immunodeficiency, these cases should be considered separately from HIV / AIDS. 
It simply does not follow to say that because one retrovirus, or other infectious disease, behaves in a particular manner, HIV must also behave in the same manner. It may be the case that HIV does, but HIV's being a retrovirus should not be used as proof of particular behaviour without further evidence. Hence, claims by Duesberg and his supporters such as :


  a.. - retroviruses do not kill cells, therefore HIV does not kill cells 
  b.. - in all other viral diseases, the viral titers are maximally high when they cause the disease, therefore HIV does not cause AIDS 
  c.. - all other infectious viruses are pathogenic prior to immunity and typically cause disease within weeks, therefore HIV does not cause AIDS since HIV is only a passenger virus 
  d.. - all other infectious viruses infect more cells than the host can spare or regenerate when they cause disease, therefore HIV does not cause AIDS since HIV is only a passenger virus

do not logically follow. That is, observations of the first parts of the claims does not entail the conclusions given about HIV and should not be used as proofs for such. 


 


 Duesberg claims that AIDS being unequally distributed among the sexes, with the majority of individuals affected being males, excludes it from the category of infectious diseases.This, however, is not the case. Consider, for example, puerpera fever and mastitis, which are considered to be infectious diseases, yet are largely limited to women. Similarly, the lethal form of Epstein-Barr virus infection is limited to men. That is, the physiological, biochemical, immunological, hormonal and behavioural differences between males and females are great enough to allow for the existence of pathogens better adapted, for their transmission or pathogenesis, to one set of conditions than to the other.Also, HIV is not uniformly expressed in all individuals as a result of "clinical promotion factors", which include variables such as the host's age and genetic differences, level of virulence of the HIV strain and coinfection.Gender could be a "clinical illness promotion factor". 



 Duesberg claims that, since clinical symptoms of AIDS or HIV infection do not appear within days or weeks following HIV infection, HIV can not be considered an infectious disease.However, primary infection with HIV is frequently signalled by clinical symptoms. That these symptoms are often missed or remain subclinical is nothing unusual for an infectious disease, where atypical, or subclinical forms are almost invariably at one end of a spectrum of clinical manifestations of varying severity. Also, the clinical manifestations of primary infection may be limited entirely to the immune system which is not visible. However, serological tests for antibodies against HIV and for HIV antigens and cell counts have shown that primary HIV infection is associated with a burst of HIV viremia, appearance of antibodies against HIV and often a concomitant abrupt decline of CD4+ T cells in the peripheral blood as a result of cell killing and retrafficking of cells to the lymphoid tissues and other organs. On average, 10 years after HIV infection, the virus is postulated to cause AIDS diseases. This latency period could be the result of a number of factors, including :


  a.. - HIV pro-viral DNA may integrate its genes into the chromosome of the host. However, these genes may remain unexpressed for some period of time. 
  b.. - HIV may be produced by CD4+ T cells, killing the cells upon release of the viral particles, however, during this latency period, destruction of these CD4+ T cells and production of new CD4+ T cells may balance. That is, it could appear that the virus is not causing immunosuppression via depletion of CD4+ T cells. 
  c.. - retrafficking of cells to the lymph nodes may reduce the apparent numbers of infected CD4+ T cells, as measured in the blood. That is, HIV has been shown to be abundant in the lymph nodes of AIDS patients, despite appearing latent by observing various factors, such as numbers of infected cells in the blood.


 Duesberg claims that HIV has never been shown to kill T cells in a laboratory. A probable reason why early researchers had a hard time isolating HIV was not because there was no virus in the cells, but because the virus killed the cells too quickly. It was not until a cell wall which could survive HIV was constructed that the virus could be reproduced in great numbers for study. This appears to imply that there is at least one mechanism of CD4+ T cell killing by HIV, that being disruption of the cell membrane as HIV particles bud from the surface. Evidence also suggests that intracellular complexing of CD4 and viral envelope products can result in cell killing. A number of other direct and indirect mechanisms of CD4+ T cell depletion are possible. 

AIDS appears to fit nicely within the framework of recognised infectious diseases and HIV does not appear, by these claims, to be simply a harmless passenger virus. Even if Duesberg's idea that HIV does not cause AIDS is later proved to be correct - would not it be better to be on the safe side in the mean time? 

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