The AIDS Debate: An Alternative View
By Rupa Chinai
As a journalist writing on public health issues for the past six years, I have closely followed issues related to AIDS, both within India and internationally, prompting a number of questions.
The evidence does not conform to what we are being told about how this "epidemic" behaves. But when questions are raised, they either encounter a wall of silence, or the questioner is lampooned.
At a time when there is still no known cure for AIDS; when there is no certainty that the "cocktail therapy" does more good than harm; when many patients dubbed "HIV positive" are driven to suicide because of the social stigma, and enormous public funds are being poured into AIDS programmes, the need for an informed public debate is urgently required.
Preventing it is the fact that too many AIDS groups perpetuate their existence through AIDS funds, too many careers are being built on AIDS, too many governments in Asia and Africa are finding an easy fix in condom promotion and sex education, and too many pharmaceutical companies sell HIV tests and drug cocktails.
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At last year's international AIDS conference in South Africa, one saw the South African President lambasted by Western scientists from within the AIDS lobby and the media who dismissed him as a heretic because he chose to raise questions, and also listen to those who held another point of view. Those who hold this other view are eminent scientists and professionals, including Nobel prize winners.
Many from the Indian media present at the Durban conference followed the official line of the Indian government to slam the "AIDS dissidents" without once explaining their stand. Their main question is what is the cause of AIDS? Is infection by a virus called HIV solely responsible for AIDS? If not, what are the other factors assaulting the immune system and is their impact irreversible?
The dissidents believe AIDS is the consequence of a suppressed immune system that has been subjected to repeated onslaughts of toxins and deficiency due to malnourishment. If HIV exists, it is the marker of a suppressed immune system. Like the witness at an accident, it marks the site of the accident, but did not cause it. Viruses and bacteria don't cause ill-health and disease-- a weak immune system does, they say.
The most well explained presentation of this alternate thinking comes from a group of Australian scientists at the Royal Perth Hospital. For the past decade they have reviewed published international research and conclude there is no proof that HIV causes AIDS, that HIV has never been isolated and the HIV antibody test cannot prove the presence of HIV infection, and they raise questions about false positive results due to cross-reactivity with other microbes.
According to the British journal, Continuum, scientific data has documented that the HIV tests, ELISA and Western Blot, can show false results when there is cross-reactivity with a host of viral and bacterial species-- at least 70 different conditions can show false positive results, it claimed. These conditions include influenza, herpes simplex, hepatitis, all mycobacterium bacterial species (including leprosy and tuberculosis) malaria, and even the condition of pregnancy and malnutrition.
The fact that the HIV test is not specific for the detection of the virus is evident in the literature accompanying the ELISA test kits. This clarifies that the presence of antibodies does not necessarily confirm the presence of the virus.
Having attempted to understand the dissident scientific community in the West, this reporter then looked at what is happening in India, letting AIDS patients and those working to support them speak from their experience of reality. Two clear trends have emerged
HIV does not equal death for many within Indiašs general population. There is however, a rapid progression into AIDS for many within the homosexual community and those who indulge in drug abuse.
In Mumbai, the "AIDS capital of India," counseling groups such as Salvation Army and CASA (Counseling and Allied Services) who see HIV positive people from within the general population, say there is strong evidence to show that the damage caused to the immune system can be reversed through nutrition, a changed lifestyle, a supportive family, good counseling and stress reduction. The Salvation Army counselors can recall only 15 deaths amongst the 900 patients they have been following over the past decade. These deaths are attributed to factors of malnutrition and TB.
These counseling groups, along with several other sources, also see a sizeable number of persons in Mumbai receiving false HIV positive results. Counselors and doctors in Mumbai are realising that a positive test result is fraught with uncertainties when it shows up in a person who does not have the clinical symptoms of AIDS.
Mumbai's government run Sion Hospital no longer insists on an HIV test on admission. It is prescribed only when a patient shows symptoms such as repeated bouts of diarrhea, fever, loss of body weight, or TB. Evidence shows that many private laboratories in the city lack technical expertise to assure standardized testing and are doling out false positive HIV results.
Meanwhile, at a recent workshop in Delhi, health officials from the North-East states spoke of the devastating impact recreational drug abuse is having on the lives of the tribal people, and the visible presence of AIDS in this region. Unfortunately, the entire focus of their effort is in promoting clean needle exchange programmes while mere lip service is paid to detoxification and rehabilitation.
Prevention programmes make no attempt to address problems of widespread alcoholism in communities. Drug addicts are not being given the clear message that drugs lead to immune suppression and AIDS.
Meanwhile, a dangerous falsehood is being perpetuated in the projections of HIV incidence and AIDS deaths and skewing priorities in health policy. International agencies have sought to influence the hype surrounding HIV/AIDS by making epidemiological estimations based on mathematical calculations. Two decades into the "AIDS epidemic," India's Death Register should be recording the "millions of deaths" predicted, even if they are not attributed to AIDS. There is no such unusual spurt in deaths from TB or diarrhea, the main AIDS associated illnesses, says biostatician Padam Singh, Additional Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research.
The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare says that cumulatively, there are only 11,000 reported deaths from AIDS in India while UNAIDS claimed that 3.1 million people died of AIDS in India in 1999 alone. Meanwhile, India's National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), a body deciding policy and monitoring data, has drastically scaled down its figures on HIV/AIDS in the country. This is evident from its earlier published reports compared with figures put out on NACO's website today.
Considerable evidence now points to the false premise on which these HIV/AIDS estimates are made. For instance, data on HIV prevalence is entirely drawn from blood banks, STD clinics and ante-natal clinics situated in government run centres, frequented by the poorer segment of the population. This segment is under-nourished and vulnerable to a host of infections that could lead to cross-reactivity and a false HIV positive test. The AIDS establishment needs to produce comparative data on HIV/AIDS from the country's private sector which caters to a better nourished class of patients who are presumably no less sexually active than the poor. Such data has never been sought by the health authorities.
So what is all this information amounting to? While only the scientific community is in a position to thrash out the issue of whether HIV exists and whether it is the sole cause of AIDS, the debate has immediate implications for the government and public.
Research studies from the fields of AIDS, cancer and heart disease repeatedly emphasise the dramatic impact of proper nutrition and recreational exercise in maintaining the health of the immune system.
AIDS needs to be treated just like any other chronic disease. Health and prevention of disease need holistic support. To limit our interventions to sex education, condoms and multi-drug therapy may amount to perpetuating the greatest hoax of the century on poor and innocent people in the developing world.
