HIV is cured by Methylation

[starsludge]

Hi BFN

I expanded on "Why Retroviruses Appear in AIDS and Cancer" at a mainstream science forum if curious.

HIV is cured by Methylation
http://forum.physorg.com/index.php?show ... ntry145631

CU's Cal

[Fintan]

Too Good to Leave in Physorg.
Gotta have a copy here.
I pulled this from your posts.
Awesome.

I want to introduce the idea that HIV is based merely on a test that picks up antigens associated with diseases such as cancer and autoimmunity and other retroviruses such as Bovine Leukemia Virus which 75% of people have antibodies to.
In particular the so called P24 or HIV core antigen also part of BLV.

That retroviruses are genomic and controlled by a nutritional process called Methylation and drugs such as AZT only appear to work because they hypermethylate the Genome.

"Thus, the HIV LTR appears to be susceptible to transcriptional inactivation by methylation, a process that is proposed to play a modulatory role in viral latency."
Methylation as a modulator of expression of human immunodeficiency virus.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

Methylation Therapy
http://www.cumc.columbia.edu/news/front ... 5.html#top

I've written about it here and I have a lot more fine details to add if you want to talk about it?

Why Retroviruses Appear in AIDS, Cancer and Autoimmune Diseases
https://www1.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/06/342295.html

Cal Crilly 26th May 2006.

Or the original here with Fintan's comment...

"Cal Crilly's devastating analysis of AIDS, below, highlights the outdated science behind current treatments and shows the true causes and cure.

He takes us on a densely referenced tour through the largely unknown mechanisms underlying viruses, reteroviruses, cancer and autoimmune diseases. So this has implications far beyond AIDS.

Cal's treatise is based on existing mainstream scientific and medical research. The kind of research the vendors of medicine's magic pills simply ignore in hope it will just go away. Crilly makes it impossible to ignore. An eye opener!"

Why Retroviruses Appear in AIDS, Cancer and Autoimmune Diseases
http://www.mylonglife.com/articles/Retr ... seases.htm

I do hope you will talk about it, I'll be polite...CU's Cal

I'm a musician...
http://www.myspace.com/starsludge

OK…I’m precisely going through the flaws in the HIV tests.

REVERSE TRANSCRIPTASE
The first is the Reverse Transcriptase test or viral load test.

“Reverse Transcriptase from HIV-1 is of tremendous medical interest as it is the target enzyme for the best known of anti-AIDS drugs, AZT, which acts by causing chain termination of the polymerase reaction.”
HIV-1 Reverse Transcriptase
http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/bsm/xtal/t ... pl/rt.html

The problem is that our genome contains 8% retrovirus in our DNA and these endogenous retroviruses also use Reverse Transcriptase, so how do we tell if it’s our own HERV’s or HIV.
It all depends on the HIV antibody test to confirm if it is ‘HIV’ Reverse Transcriptase.

Identification of an Active Reverse Transcriptase Enzyme Encoded by a Human Endogenous HERV-K Retrovirus
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/73/3/2365

“Phylogenetic analyses of retroviral elements, including endogenous retroviruses, have relied essentially on the retroviral pol gene expressing the highly conserved reverse transcriptase. This enzyme is essential for the life cycle of all retroid elements, but other genes are also endowed with conserved essential functions. Among them, the transmembrane ™ subunit of the envelope gene is involved in virus entry through membrane fusion.”
Identification, Phylogeny, and Evolution of Retroviral Elements Based on Their Envelope Genes
http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/75/ ... d=11689652

P24
The next flaw is the p24 antigen of ‘HIV’ which is claimed to be specific to ‘HIV’…

“A major core protein of the human immunodeficiency virus encoded by the HIV gag gene. HIV-seropositive individuals mount a significant immune response to p24 and thus detection of antibodies to p24 is one basis for determining HIV infection by ELISA and Western blot assays.
HIV Core Protein
http://medical.webends.com/kw/HIV%20Cor ... tein%20p24

But everyone who consumes milk products or eats cattle will be exposed to the p24 of the Bovine Leukemia Virus and also can test positive to the test.

“Using immunoblotting to test the sera of 257 humans for antibodies of four isotypes (IgG1, IgM, IgA, and IgG4) to the BLV capsid antigen (p24), we detected at least one antibody isotype reactive with BLV in 74% of the human sera tested.”
Humans Have Antibodies Reactive with Bovine Leukemia Virus 2003
http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10 ... 3771881202

And anyone with lupus or hyperthyroid autoimmune diseases can also test positive to p24.
These diseases also have the similar symptoms to so called ‘HIV’ infection.

“We have previously demonstrated that about one-third of patients with either Sjögren's syndrome (SS) or systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) react to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) p24 core protein antigen without any evidence of exposure to, or infection with, HIV itself.”
Reactivity of Sera from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Sjögren's Syndrome Patients with Peptides Derived from Human Immunodeficiency Virus p24 Capsid Antigen
http://cvi.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/181

This is where it gets terrifying, I have in the last month swapped emails with a pregnant lady diagnosed with HIV, she was given all sorts of medication and also put under great pressure to take abortion pills which she did. She then re-tested and came up negative.
The reason for the positive cross-reaction with the test is due to the endogenous retrovirus HERV-W which is involved in attaching the fetus to the placenta, within the HERV-W is a gp24 transmembrane subunit.
GP stands for glycoprotein and is shortened to protein when called P24, they are the same and react to an antigen test.

“Syncytin is a fusogenic protein involved in the formation of the placental syncytiotrophoblast layer. This protein is encoded by the envelope gene of the ERVWE1 proviral locus belonging to the human endogenous retrovirus W (HERV-W) family. The HERV-W infectious ancestor entered the primate lineage 25 to 40 million years ago. Although the syncytin fusion property has been clearly demonstrated, little is known about this cellular protein maturation process with respect to classical infectious retrovirus envelope proteins. Here we show that the cellular syncytin protein is synthesized as a glycosylated gPr73 precursor cleaved into two mature proteins, a gp50 surface subunit (SU) and a gp24 transmembrane subunit ™.”
Synthesis, Assembly, and Processing of the Env ERVWE1/Syncytin Human Endogenous Retroviral Envelope 2005
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=1082723

At the beginning of pregnancy a wave of de-methylation occurs and this is a normal part of pregnancy, this is also why the retroviruses come out of the genome and get active.
They are not a disease though, they have function.
Of course a drug like AZT which they give to pregnant women worldwide completely wrecks this process.

T-CELL TESTS

Hypomethylation affects T-cells as well as makes retroviruses come out of our DNA.

The T-cell test is really picking up changes in T-cell counts attributed to other real infections and problems with Methylation due to a lack of nutrients needed to Methylate.

It is not ‘HIV’ causing the lowered count.

“Procainamide and hydralazine inhibit T cell DNA methylation and induce autoreactivity in cloned CD4+ T cells. These drugs also induce an autoimmune syndrome, suggesting a possible relationship between DNA hypomethylation, T cell autoreactivity, and certain autoimmune diseases. To test this relationship, DNA methylation was studied in T cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis and patients with systemic lupus erythematosus, and was found to be impaired. These results support a relationship between DNA hypomethylation and some forms of autoimmune disease.”
Evidence for impaired T cell DNA methylation in systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

“DNA methylation plays an essential role in maintaining T-cell function. A growing body of literature indicates that failure to maintain DNA methylation levels and patterns in mature T cells can result in T-cell autoreactivity in vitro and autoimmunity in vivo. Defective maintenance of DNA methylation may be caused by drugs such as procainamide or hydralazine, or failure to activate the genes encoding maintenance DNA methyltransferases during mitosis, resulting in the development of a lupus-like disease or perhaps other autoimmune disorders. This paper reviews the evidence supporting a role for abnormal T-cell DNA methylation in causing autoimmunity in an animal model of drug-induced lupus, and discusses some of the mechanisms involved. T cells from patients with active lupus have evidence for most if not all of the same methylation abnormalities, suggesting that abnormal DNA methylation plays a role in idiopathic human lupus as well.”
DNA methylation and autoimmune disease.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=14585278

The main nutrient needed for Methylation is Selenium and this is probably why low Glutathione (a Selenium compound) is an indicator of AIDS progression.

Harold Foster is using it in Selenium trials in Africa
http://www.hdfoster.com/

And Tine Van Der Maas is teaching Africans to treat themselves by using Lemons and Garlic (a food containing Selenium)
http://www.powertothepeople.co.za/

Nothing changed in the early ‘80’s, the tests picked up retroviruses that came out when gays using Amyl Nitrate had depleted their bodies of Methylation Nutrients.
The HIV tests themselves have been the source of the epidemic.

It’s up to the scientists now to go back to the drawing board and find a way out of this without massive litigation crippling the biomedical industry.

I'd love some thoughtful feedback.
Have a good day all.

AZT is used on women and children that are unfortunate enough to test come up positive in the HIV test.
This is standard treatment here in Australia.

"Much more is known about AZT. Treatment using AZT is started between twelve and thirty four weeks of pregnancy and stopped six weeks after the baby is born."
Women & HIV Fact Sheet 5 - Pregnancy
http://www.fpahealth.org.au/sex-matters ... ts/22.html

The reason AZT appears to work is of because it is a drug that hypermethylates DNA.

"Genome-wide DNA hypermethylation induced by 3'-azido-3'-deoxythymidine (AZT) has been suggested to be involved in the development of AZT resistance."
AZT-induced hypermethylation of human thymidine kinase gene in the absence of total DNA hypermethylation.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

"hypermethylation azt"
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q ... +azt&meta=

This is why it was banned as a cancer drug in the 1960's because uncontrolled hypermethylation of all DNA is not desirable.
AZT causes cancer.

Transplacental effects of 3'-azido-2',3'-dideoxythymidine (AZT): tumorigenicity in mice and genotoxicity in mice and monkeys.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

Cancer is characterised by global hypomethylation of DNA with some island hypermethylation of genes that often turn into cancer.
It's all about balance and diet can control these things.

AZT is toxic and is not the way to methylate, Selenium in the diet is much safer.

“Eight children had mitochondrial dysfunction. Five, of whom two died, presented with delayed neurological symptoms and three were symptom-free but had severe biological or neurological abnormalities. Four of these children had been exposed to combined zidovudine and lamivudine, and four to zidovudine alone. No child was infected with HIV-1.”
Persistent Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Perinatal Exposure to Antiretroviral Nucleoside Analogues
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Citation

Poisoning Our Babies -- The Lethal Dangers of AZT
http://www.whatisaids.com/mothering/azt ... bies.htm#5

Whether you believe HIV causes AIDS or not, the treatments offered are terrible and women get in trouble with authorities to avoid them.

Children, Pediatric AIDS (PAIDS), AZT Fugitives
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/index/kids.htm

"An Ontario mother has been convicted for hiding her HIV status, which denied doctors the chance to treat her baby and possibly prevent her newborn son from being infected — a case considered the first of its kind in Canada.

The mother of two pleaded guilty to failing to provide the necessaries of life. On April 6, Mr. Justice Anton Zuraw sentenced her to a six-month conditional sentence, followed by three years of probation, Hamilton-based assistant Crown attorney Karen Shea has confirmed."
Mother convicted of hiding HIV status for son's birth
Mothers Avoiding AZT
http://www.aras.ab.ca/articles/200608-Crowe-AZT.html

Things to think about.

[Fintan]

I’d like to thank Physorg for being open minded and allowing this discussion.

I’ve been banned from another forum for talking about methylation, go on, have a chuckle.

On AZT, the lawyer Anthony Brink has documented a lot of awful information on the drug.
Treatment Information Group
http://www.tig.org.za/

This interview is well worth a look.

The story told to Advocate Brink by Professor Richard Beltz, the scientist who first synthesized AZT in 1961
http://www.tig.org.za/pdf-files/inventing_azt.pdf

The pregnant lady who unfortunately got caught up in the HIV net and chose to abort was told by me to eat Brazil Nuts to lower her viral load, this is because they are a food and a cheap way of getting Selenium in the form of Methionine.
She’s OK, shocked of course and trying to fix her liver up after being given a lot of drugs

“The proteins found in Brazil nuts are very high in sulfur-containing amino acids like cysteine (8%) and methionine (18%) and are also extremely rich in glutamine, glutamic acid, and arginine.”
A hard nut cracked: Brazil nuts’ selenium compounds identified
http://www.speciation.net/Public/News/2 ... ESSID=363d

Methylation depends on a chemical called S-Adenosylmethionine
S-Adenosylmethionine and methylation
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

It stops hypomethylation and this can then control our retrotransposons or retroviruses and this also affects diseases like cancer.
This is why methylation is relevant to more than just controlling HIV.
The nutrients below are the main ones needed for methylation, not too much of course because as I said before some cells also hypermethylate in cancer. Balance again.

"When rats are chronically fed a diet devoid of a methyl-donor source (choline, methionine, folic acid, and vitamin B12), they spontaneously develop hepatocellular carcinomas (HCCs). This is a unique carcinogenesis model in which no known carcinogen is involved. After the initial discovery of this model, many questions were raised concerning its validity including the possibility of carcinogenic contaminants in the diet. Later, it was definitively demonstrated that diets lacking in methionine and choline and containing no detectable level of carcinogens acted as a complete carcinogen"
LINE-1 Hypomethylation in a Choline-Deficiency-Induced Liver Cancer in Rats
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... id=1479888

“Hypomethylation of the repetitive sequences, such as L1, subtelomeric repeats, alphoid repeats and Alu, seem to constitute the major part of the ‘global hypomethylation’ of the genome in tumors. “
Hypomethylation of LINE1 Retrotransposon in Human Hepatocellular Carcinomas, but Not in Surrounding Liver Cirrhosis
http://jjco.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/cont ... l/30/7/306

And here a lack of methylation affects Line-1 and our retroviruses go up.
So it seems ridiculous but Brazil nuts can in theory keep our retroviruses in check.

“Consistent with these results, we find that relative L1 and HERV-W expression levels are elevated in representative samples of malignant vs. non-malignant ovarian tissues.”
L1 and HERV-W retrotransposons are hypomethylated in human ovarian carcinomas
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=411053

“L1 (LINE-1) elements constitute a large family of mammalian retrotransposons that have been replicating and evolving in mammals for more than 100 Myr and now compose 20% or more of the DNA of some mammals.”
L1 (LINE-1) Retrotransposon Evolution and Amplification in Recent Human History
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conte ... t/17/6/915

Since the Viral load or HIV RT PCR test picks up reverse transcriptase (an enzyme used by our own retroviruses as well) then choline, methionine, folic acid, and vitamin B12 should make the viral load go down.

“L1 elements are highly repeated mammalian DNA sequences whose structure suggests dispersal by retrotransposition. A consensus L1 element encodes a protein with sequence similarity to known reverse transcriptases.”
Reverse transcriptase encoded by a human transposable element
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... /5039/1808

This is all circular because exposure to toxins can deplete these nutrients and the retroviruses go up because of hypomethylation.

Activation of Human Long Interspersed Nuclear Element 1 Retrotransposition by Benzo(a)pyrene, an Ubiquitous Environmental Carcinogen
http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/c ... /66/5/2616

I guess I have experience, I was exposed for 3 years at work to Phenol, a Benzene chemical plus Amine glues, they are a form of Nitrates and became quite ill, I’m not a big fan of Benzene as a result.
This was an interview I did with Dr. Mohammed Al Bayati who blames overuse of Corticosteroids on immune failure and causing AIDS.
This includes my take on the subject, I may be biased.

Benzene, Corticosteroids and AIDS
http://southafrica.indymedia.org/news/2006/08/10876.php

But he’s right, Hemophiliacs use Corticosteroids because they get allergic to Factor VIII blood clotting agent.

“Inhibitor antibodies directed against factor VIII or factor IX present challenges to the clinician. Fortunately, several management options are available, although each has disadvantages as well as advantages. Alloantibodies against factor VIII (which develop in 25 to 50% of children with severe hemophilia A, as well as in a small percentage of children with mild or moderate hemophilia A) may be low titer and transient or may be high titer.”
“Although some factor VIII autoantibodies disappear spontaneously, most require immunosuppression. Corticosteroids and cyclophosphamide are generally recommended.”
Inhibitor antibodies to factor VIII and factor IX : Management
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1444604

Hemophiliacs were already in trouble before HIV was discovered.

How about the Sexual Lubricants used by gays?
And everyone else....
They still have Benzene compounds in them.

“Parabens are the most widely used preservatives in cosmetic products, including personal lubricants. The most common parabens used are methylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben. Typically, more than one paraben is used in a product.”
Safety of Parabens in Personal Lubricants
http://sexuality.about.com/od/sextoybuy ... lubric.htm

And because of the estrogenic effect, parabens are a potential cause of cancer.

Parabens: evidence of estrogenicity and endocrine disruption
http://envirocancer.cornell.edu/Bibliog ... rabens.cfm

The gay men are still also using Nitrates and no one is telling them they could be a danger.
This study was 1982, no one seems to have been interested in looking into their affects anymore after HIV was blamed for causing AIDS.

“The data suggest that nitrites may be immunosuppressive in the setting of repeated viral antigenic stimulation and may contribute to the high frequency of DS and opportunistic infections in homosexual men.”
Amyl nitrite may alter T lymphocytes in homosexual men.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

And a mice study, so many mice give their lives to science so I’ll make sure it wasn’t in vain.

“Most changes in measured indices occurred in mice exposed at 300 ppm IBN and included decreased thymus weight (females); decreased liver weight (males); decreased white blood cell counts (males); mild focal hyperplasia and vacuolization of the epithelium lining bronchi and bronchioles of the lungs (males and females).”
Subchronic inhalation toxicity of isobutyl nitrite in BALB/c mice.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ds=4057284

People using poppers would be breathing in more than 300ppm.
“included decreased thymus weight” can’t be good for T-cells can it?

I do this while I send off international freight, I’m sure many doctors and scientists in the biomedical industry want to raise contradictions with HIV science but I know they could lose jobs, careers and reputations.
So I’ll do it for them and hope someone notices.

I’m off for the weekend and can’t post until Monday so have a lovely weekend to everybody.

And how about the weather?

This time yesterday in Brisbane it was 31 with 70% humidity, today it’s 22 degrees centigrade and 22% humidity.

Strange world.

It was snowing in Stanthorpe just south of Brisbane a couple of hours after my last post.
(:
The funny thing was that Al Gore was on Australian TV the night before talking up Global Warming.
My problem with Global Warming is that we should forget Carbon Dioxide for a minute and think about all the toxins we are choking on, Benzene, Sulphur Dioxide, Diesel particulates etc.
I just want some fresh air.

I should have also said in my last post “my friend ‘chose’ to abort because she was bullied to while she was worried about what the many drugs given may have done to her fetus”.

This piece of science was also printed in Nature a week and a half ago where French scientists digging around in Gorilla droppings in Africa decided to add two and two together and create the illusion that eating Gorillas is the reason for HIV spreading into humans.

“ONE more reason not to eat our close living relatives. Of the three strains of HIV known to infect humans, we know that two - the one causing the global AIDS epidemic and another that has infected a small number of people in Cameroon - came from a chimpanzee virus called SIV. The source of the third strain, which infects people in western central Africa, was a mystery. Now we know it came from gorillas.
Martine Peeters and colleagues at the University of Montpelier in France have discovered the virus in the droppings of gorillas living in remote forests in Cameroon (Nature, vol 444, p 164). The infected gorillas lived up to 400 kilometres apart, so the researchers think it must be a normal or endemic virus in the animals, as SIV is in chimps.”
Gorillas missing link in HIV mystery
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... stery.html

Now someone pointed out to me that this might stop the munching of Gorillas and I hope they are right.
But we’ve seen what panic over Bird Flu has done to millions of chickens so I’m not sure and knowing cows are rampant with Bovine Leukemia Virus doesn’t stop us getting hungry and ordering a burger.
This is the problem with this mode of retroviral thinking.
Are they really infectious or are we just picking up the normal retroviruses that were always in the genome of these animals and only have noticed now because we have some fancy new testing gear?
This is the same retrovirus SIV but here it’s turning up in Baboon placentas, go figure?

“Electron microscopic studies have revealed the presence of endogenous retroviral (ERV) particles in normal primate placental tissues. These particles have ultrastructural similarities to type C retroviral particles and are mainly associated with the trophoblast. In normal human placental tissues, they have antigenic similarity with exogenous retroviruses, such as the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and may have a role to play in the regulation of cellular gene expression, syncytiotrophoblast formation or pregnancy-related immunosuppression.”
“The results of this study confirm the specific expression of retroviral cross-reactive antigens in normal baboon placental tissues and suggest placental cellular proteins may have antigenic similarity with those recognized by anti-HIV/SIV antibodies. The role of these retroviral-related proteins expressed at the maternal-fetal interface remain unclear.”
Characterization of antigens expressed in normal baboon trophoblast and cross-reactive with HIV/SIV antibodies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

And then if you look in the related studies beside that Pubmed study you find this one.

“We previously reported that monoclonal antibodies directed against HIV-1 envelope and gag proteins react with normal human villous trophoblast. The nature and/or potential function of these particles/proteins has not yet been fully defined. We previously reported that monoclonal antibodies directed against HIV-1 envelope and gag proteins react with normal human villous trophoblast. In this study, we report that extravillous trophoblast (EVT) from second- and third-trimester tissue are also cross-reactive with anti-HIV-1 gp120/160 and p17/18 antibodies.”
Expression of endogenous HIV-1 crossreactive antigens within normal human extravillous trophoblast cells.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ds=7473433

So I may be wrong about the gp24 Transmembrane Unit in the HERV-W retrovirus cross-reacting with the P24 antigen of the HIV test but here we have in black and white other ‘HIV’ antigens in women’s placentas.

HERV-K
This is one of our most common retroviruses and this is the question I keep asking that puts the whole HIV paradigm into a spin.
How on earth do we know ‘HIV’ was ever transmitted and wasn’t one of our own retroviruses all the time?
This stuff is quite new and Robert Gallo who discovered ‘HIV’ didn’t have the best equipment to answer that question.
I think he eagerly jumped the gun.

Ideas and belief systems can change as rapidly as fashion.
I’m not sure about the Big Bang Theory after reading ‘The Cosmic Ecosystem’ by Alan Johnson, he just pointed out that red shift could due to light traveling a long way and not the stars moving away from us.
“I runno?”…..as Scooby Doo would say.
In 3 decades psych drugs went from Barbiturates to Tricyclics to SSRI’s.
Al Gore talks up Global Warming, in the ‘70’s an Ice Age was coming, I switch on the TV and see shows on Global Dimming….aaaagh, I’m confused, I just know I’ve got a doonah and blanket on my bed in mid November in here in Queensland, Australia when there would normally be only a sheet, mosquito net and sweating at night.
This global warming is pretty cool at the moment until the end of the week and I’ll be panting.

500 years ago witches and demons were blamed for most of our problems and it was also Theology Faculties in the Universities of the time that rubber-stamped ‘The Malleus Maleficarum’ for approval as a legal document to convict these ‘witches’ with.
It should be used as an example of how mad our scientists can become, it’s really ridiculous, a very long piece of woffle and caused a lot of suffering.
If we go back to the early ‘80’s and think about our belief systems they weren’t really fun.
I was a teenager in England expecting a 4minute warning and a nuclear war with Russia and I never expected to be writing this.
Many of my friends also didn’t expect to and I have a list of about six who ‘partied’ too much and died from Narcotics and another four who died rather violently from Alcohol abuse, who needs HIV/AIDS?
Gays had come out in force and with that coming out began a party with probably too much indulgence and all the dangers that go with it.
I’ve never written about sex when talking about HIV/AIDS, I’ve mentioned preservatives in sexual lubricants because they can be poisonous and get absorbed at higher doses when used internally.
There’s a difference between skin and the rectal lining.
Amyl Nitrate is toxic and it’s a sex aid.
But back in the ‘80’s it was a big party, now we have ‘Ice’ to keep the party going even longer.
There was a fundamentalist Christian government in power in America as there is now.
‘HIV’ fitted into their “told you so, too much sex is bad” way of thinking.
I’m brutally scientific about it and say “Yes, sex with drugs and dodgy lubricants can get too toxic”.
We are in my opinion highly evolved apes that are stressed out, often quite unhappy and could do with a lot of loving.
No sex becomes pathological at times.
And the reality is that everyone is potentially Bi.
Just messing with your heads, big smiles.
‘HIV’ just left my paradigm once I had discovered AZT and it’s effects.

So let’s mention HERV-K and ask could ‘HIV’ be just another strain of HERV that is barely different to HERV-K.
Here is an example that shows HERV-K RNA sequences in the blood of HIV-1 patients at a rate of 95%.

“Approximately 8% of the human genome sequence is composed by human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), most of which are defective. HERV-K(HML-2) is the youngest and most active family and has maintained some proviruses with intact open reading frames (ORFs) that code for viral proteins that may assemble into viral particles. Many HERV-K(HML-2) sequences are polymorphic in humans (present in some individuals but not in others) and probably many others may be unfixed (not inserted permanently in a specific chromosomal location of the human genome). In the present study HIV-1 and HCV-1-positive plasma samples were screened for the presence of HERV-K(HML-2) RNA in an RT-PCR using HERV-K pol specific primers. HERV-K(HML-2) viral RNA sequences were found almost universally in HIV-1(+) plasma samples (95.33%) but were rarely detected in HCV-1 patients (5.2%) or control subjects (7.69%). Other HERV-K(HML-2) viral segments of the RNA genome including gag, prt, and both env regions, surface (su), and transmembrane ™ were amplified from HERV-K pol-positive plasma of HIV-1 patients. Type 1 and type 2 HERV-K(HML- 2) viral RNA genomes were found to coexist in the same plasma of HIV-1 patients. These results suggest the HERV-K(HML-2) viral particles are induced in HIV-1-infected individuals.
Detection of HERV-K(HML-2) viral RNA in plasma of HIV type 1-infected individuals.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=17067267

We could then also blame HERV-K for AIDS and Cancer but why would HERV-K also turn up in skin, thyroid gland, placenta, and tissues of reproductive organs?

“Most active members of HERV families were found in mRNA prepared from skin, thyroid gland, placenta, and tissues of reproductive organs. In contrast, only few active HERVs were detectable in muscle cells. Human tissues that lack HERV transcription could not be found, confirming that human endogenous retroviruses are permanent components of the human transcriptome.”
“For example, some members of the HERV-K family encode retroviral enzymes with specific activities, such as protease, reverse transcriptase (RT), integrase, and nonstructural proteins with functional similarities to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and human T-cell lymphotropic virus (HTLV) Rev and Rex proteins. Recently, a novel accessory gene, np9, that is located within the HERV-K env reading frame was found to be expressed in various human tumor tissues and transformed cell lines”
Comprehensive Analysis of Human Endogenous Retrovirus Transcriptional Activity in Human Tissues with a Retrovirus-Specific Microarray 2005
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=538696

When we medicate with protease inhibitors are we trying to stop HIV or HERV-K?
AZT and other anti-retrovirals are meant to stop Reverse Transcriptase, again are we trying to stop HIV or HERV-K?
And what do these drugs do to our skin, thyroid glands, placentas, and tissues of reproductive organs?

Reverse transcriptase activity from human embryonal carcinoma cells NTera2D1.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... ds=1698616

When we did the Human Genome Project I’m sure many in the genetic field with their penchant for a bit of genome purity and Eugenics thought the ‘crime’ genes and ‘gay’ genes would turn up and we could tidy up the genome and make society safe from the ‘undesirables’.
It’s not really like that though, sure there’s the possibility that some folk have the ‘testosterone’ gene and are a bit angrier than the other apes.
But a lot of crime is learnt, neglected and abused kids have realized if they are naughty they will get more attention, this is why you often see rich children grow into psychopaths.
They were in fact neglected and money didn’t stop that neglect.
The Human Genome Project opened a can of worms though and that was the fact that 40% of our genome is made of retrotransposons and 8% of that is our retroviruses.
So now there is a scramble to work out what this ‘Junk DNA’ does and how we can cash in on the new discovery?
I’m hoping it sends us in the right direction and I’m trying to steer a change in the course of history just by writing this.
And why not?

My ideas on the subject are like this.
If HERV-K turns up in AIDS, Cancer and all the autoimmune diseases then why?

“These data suggest that different HERV-K proviruses are transcribed in human teratocarcinoma cell lines.”
Phenotypic heterogeneity of human endogenous retrovirus particles produced by teratocarcinoma cell lines.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=11172100

“Compared with controls, HERV-W and HERV-K expression was increased in brain tissue from patients with multiple sclerosis or human immunodeficiency virus infection or AIDS”
Monocyte activation and differentiation augment human endogenous retrovirus expression: implications for inflammatory brain diseases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

Why are HERV-W, HERV-K and HIV all turning up in inflammatory brain diseases?

HERV-W is also called Syncytin and they found it was involved in attaching the fetus to the placenta.

“Syncytin is a membrane protein derived from the envelope gene of an endogenous retrovirus of the HERV-W family. The gene appears to be almost exclusively expressed in placenta; the protein was found in particular in syncytiotrophoblast. After transfection into various cell types it has proven to be a very fusogenic protein, inducing the formation of syncytia. Therefore, the question rises as to whether syncytin is responsible for the fusion process of villous cytotrophoblast into syncytiotrophoblast in vivo. If so, how is this fusion process regulated if syncytin is found all over the syncytiotrophoblast?”
Syncytin: the major regulator of trophoblast fusion?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... s=15333590

So our HERV’s also can’t be deadly if they turn up skin, thyroid glands, placentas, and tissues of reproductive organs.

Something else is going on, this is not an infection and I think Pasteur’s disciples have a bit to answer for here.
There’s more to ‘infection’ than just a bug that jumps on you and starts replicating.
You need to be prone to going down, this is why some get flu for a day and others can die.
So I believe if HERV’s are in normal tissue they are probably involved in cell division, mainly because they turn up in our Cancer cells too, I could be wrong, I don’t have a lab to check.

“These data suggest that HERV-W elements are actively expressed in human tissues and cancer cells. These active HERV-W elements deserve further investigation as potential causative agents of various human diseases including cancers.”
Expression of the human endogenous retrovirus HERV-W family in various human tissues and cancer cells
http://vir.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/85/5/1203

The other possibility is they come out with cell breakdown.
You look at Cancer and Autoimmune diseases and there’s a common denominator.
Cancer cells release Metalloproteinase, an enzyme our cells use to dissolve collagen and also make new arteries, a bit like ripping up tarmac and putting new stuff down.
When you get Arthritis, Multiple Sclerosis, Psoriasis, Lupus and other Autoimmune diseases our white blood cells rush to areas of our body which our inflammatory cytokines or T-cells have tagged to be a battle zone.
They are the exactly the same disease but in different organs, my opinion.
Then the white blood cells release Nitric Oxide to burn the zone that has been tagged.
They are trying to dissolve something that shouldn’t be there, be it viral, bacterial, chemical or just a bit of pollen.
The enzyme Metalloproteinase also turns up in the data of Autoimmune diseases and of course our collagen is getting cooked.
Collagen is the stuff that holds us together.
Nerds should know of Linus Pauling, the double Nobel winner who’s chemistry Watson and Crick used to work out the DNA helix.
The story I describe is helical.
Most people still won’t know that in the early ‘90’s before Linus died he came up with a simple regimen of Lysine and Vitamin C to cure Heart Disease, which he saw as a Collagen deficiency problem.
http://www.paulingtherapy.com
The rascally Dr. Rath, his co-inventor of the idea, uses it to inhibit Metalloproteinase for keeping Cancer cells in check.
Natural Eradication of Cancer
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/NHC/ ... utions.htm

Metalloproteinase inhibitors in drug forms are used for Cancer and there has been a lot of interest and a gold rush to make new ones in recent years.

Lysine and some lemon juice are cheaper.

Before 2001 my skin was fine, now I can watch in real time live action my immune system go into overdrive if it doesn’t like something and release these enzymes that can dissolve my skin so I use Linus Pauling’s therapy, it doesn’t hurt and I think it works.

Bouncers have asked me for ID twice this year and a bus driver asked if I wanted an adult fare, I didn’t know whether to be insulted or if that could be a complement? (I don’t look that young)

I’ll be 42 soon, of course all my chemical exposure and stress of discovering this could stuff me up in the years ahead but I think I’m on the road to healing.

These were the symptoms after working like a maniac with Phenol and Amine glues for 3 to 4 years, I found out only this year that the Solder Flux I used for the 4 years after escaping the glues also creates Phenol when heated.

They were rapid weight loss, night sweats, severe insomnia, lymph swelling, nausea, shakes and headaches.

This later led to my white blood cells rushing to my skin where thousands of pores filled with pus, my skin fell off, I had lesions, fevers, chills and was later told I could have gone into a coma.

It was really a massive allergy attack because Prednilisone didn’t work but another Cortisone did later and I was at least stabilized in less that a week.

The hospital staff wanted to give me a bed for 3 days, this doesn’t happen here in Queensland unless you’re really sick, I just went home and put on the cream with a big thank you.

It was diagnosed Pustular Psoriasis but photos I had of myself at the time showed I had googly eyes as in possible Grave’s disease, an autoimmune hyperthyroid drama, the doctors didn’t notice, nether did I until later.
So I can’t help but ask questions like “what are all these HERV’s doing in my skin?”.

“METHODS: HERV expression was analysed at the mRNA level after degenerated reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of retroviral pol sequences followed by sequencing. Screening for a specific variant was performed by RT-PCR on lesional and nonlesional psoriatic skin and compared with normal and atopic dermatitis skin. RESULTS: We report the expression of three HERV families in psoriatic lesions, namely HERV-W, K and E.”
A new endogenous retroviral sequence is expressed in skin of patients with psoriasis
http://skinrashes.researchtoday.net/archive/2/7/468.htm

I found out from this website that Copper deficiency can cause hyperthyroid and because Brazil nuts have a fair bit of Copper they went into my diet.

“Thyroid and immune system health are crucially dependent upon copper. As far as I can see now, copper deficiency is the most important factor in the development of hyperthyroidism. Virtually all hypers in the hyperthyroidism group have found that copper supplementation reduced their symptoms, usually within hours or a few days at most.”
Copper and Hyperthyroidism
http://www.ithyroid.com/copper.htm

So I munch 4 or 5 Brazil nuts in my muesli each day to patch up damage, eat cashews in stirfrys, etc.

Brazil nuts also have a lot of Selenium so I don’t know if it was the Copper or Selenium that helped?

I did get better though and symptoms that went were immediate cessation of rashes coming out near my lower neck, night sweats were no more, I now don’t have asthma.

My skin was and still is a bit damaged and doesn’t like the modern world.
This is about Selenium and DNA damage.

“In human tissues, it has been estimated that each cell sustains approximately 10 000 potentially mutagenic (if not repaired) lesions per day due to endogenous DNA damage. Almost no studies have addressed the potential for selenium compounds to induce DNA repair, a potential mechanism for their cancer-preventive actions. We show that selenium in the form of selenomethionine induces a DNA repair response in normal human fibroblasts in vitro, and protects cells from DNA damage.”
Selenomethionine induction of DNA repair response in human fibroblasts.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

The googly eyes got my brain ticking over about the possibility I had Hyperthyroid Autoimmune dramas, I use past tense because I the symptoms were gone by the time I thought about it.

All the other symptoms were similar to Grave’s Hyperthyroid Disease, they are also very similar to Lupus, an Autoimmune liver disease some alcoholics and drug addicts can get.

Remember I believe all the Autoimmune diseases have the same cause but they just occur in different organs, my skin went because it was saturated with Phenol.

And Autoimmune disease and Allergies coincide, my opinion.
So Selenium is also vital for Thyroid function.

“Several minerals and trace elements are essential for normal thyroid hormone metabolism, e.g., iodine, iron, selenium, and zinc. Coexisting deficiencies of these elements can impair thyroid function. Iron deficiency impairs thyroid hormone synthesis by reducing activity of heme-dependent thyroid peroxidase. Iron-deficiency anemia blunts and iron supplementation improves the efficacy of iodine supplementation. Combined selenium and iodine deficiency leads to myxedematous cretinism. The normal thyroid gland retains high selenium concentrations even under conditions of inadequate selenium supply and expresses many of the known selenocysteine-containing proteins. Among these selenoproteins are the glutathione peroxidase, deiodinase, and thioredoxine reductase families of enzymes. Adequate selenium nutrition supports efficient thyroid hormone synthesis and metabolism and protects the thyroid gland from damage by excessive iodide exposure. In regions of combined severe iodine and selenium deficiency, normalization of iodine supply is mandatory before initiation of selenium supplementation in order to prevent hypothyroidism. Selenium deficiency and disturbed thyroid hormone economy may develop under conditions of special dietary regimens such as long-term total parenteral nutrition, phenylketonuria diet, cystic fibrosis, or may be the result of imbalanced nutrition in children, elderly people, or sick patients.”
The impact of iron and selenium deficiencies on iodine and thyroid metabolism: biochemistry and relevance to public health.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

AIDS IN AFRICA AND IODIZED SALT

To start with there’s TB and Malaria that can kill you in six months or less, then there are all the infections associated with dirty water, no sewage, no refrigerators and old and moldy food.

Add in starvation with pollution and that’s enough trouble.
The responsible pregnant African mums are also lining up at the HIV testing centers where the test could very likely pick up those evil retroviruses going rampant in their placentas.

Well I have another take on AIDS in Africa and that’s the introduction of Iodized salt.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this, there’s one lone nutritionist in India called Ashok Jaisinghani that I found on the net one day, at a first look he looks crazy but he may be quite right.

“Ever since iodized salt has been introduced for consumption in food in India, the cases of AIDS have increased by leaps and bounds in our country. Excessive intake of IODINE is one of the main causes of AIDS in human beings. Iodized salt has caused AIDS in millions of susceptible people in India, and elsewhere, leading to their early deaths.”
Iodized Salt Causes AIDS (hang it’s fascist promoters)
http://wonder-cures.com/art2.htm

I’m chuckling at the “hang it’s fascist promoters”.

I’ll quote this again.

“Adequate selenium nutrition supports efficient thyroid hormone synthesis and metabolism and protects the thyroid gland from damage by excessive iodide exposure.”

It’s not that Iodine is bad, we do need it to stop Goiter and Cretinism but if we are selling Iodized salt to people who don’t eat much and have low Selenium in the diet we’re causing a new disease.

So here are a couple of studies that shows what can happen, one from China and one from Africa.

“The average annual incidence of hyperthyroidism after iodine supplementation was 36.87 per 100,000, a three-time increase as compared with that before iodine supplementation. The incidence of hyperthyroidism began to show a significant rise in 1996. The year with highest annual incidence was 1997, remaining at high level after supplying iodized salt. Since then the annual relative risk for hyperthyroidism had been increasing. CONCLUSION: The number of patients with thyroid diseases showed a significant increase after mass iodine supplement.”
Study on the effects of increased iodized salt intake on the incidence of thyroid diseases
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

“Biochemical signs of hyperthyroidism, or even overt and possibly lethal clinical hyperthyroidism were reported in 2 severely iodine-deficient African countries (Zimbabwe and Democratic Republic of Congo, RDC) soon after the introduction of iodized salt.”

Risks of iodine-induced hyperthyroidism after correction of iodine deficiency by iodized salt.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

Hyperthyroid Autoimmune Diseases have a quite a high probability of cross-reaction with the HIV antibody test and the HERV’s will go up and the viral load test will pick that up.

I’d better show some studies again to prove this, Sjogren's syndrome and Grave’s disease are different forms of Hyperthyroid Autoimmune Disease.

“The first set of experiments performed on four patients with Sjogren's syndrome (SjS) and four patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) revealed a significant anti-gp120 antibody reactivity in autoimmune patients when compared to healthy HIV-negative controls.”
“A significant anti-p24 reactivity was observed in 18 of 29 sera from SjS patients and in 13 of 25 sera from SLE patients”
Epitope specificity of anti-HIV antibodies in human and murine autoimmune diseases.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

“RESULTS: Sera from five of 15 patients with Sjogren's syndrome (33%) reacted against p24 group specific antigen (gag) of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Labial salivary gland biopsy specimens from seven of the 15 patients with Sjogren's syndrome (47%) contained an epithelial cytoplasmic protein reactive with a monoclonal antibody to p24 of HIV.”
Retrovirus in salivary glands from patients with Sjogren's syndrome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

“We previously reported that 30% of SS patients and 36% of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients have serum antibodies to the p24 gag protein of HIV-1.”
“The p24 gag protein shares a proline-rich epitope with the Sm nucleoprotein to which many SLE patients have antibodies.”
Are endogenous retroviruses involved in human autoimmune disease?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

“On Southern blotting of DNA extracted from thyroid glands of five patients with Graves' disease, two probes (720 bp and 942 bp) for gag human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) gave a positive hybridisation signal in all samples tested.”

Retrovirus-like sequences in Graves' disease: implications for human autoimmunity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

Or there can be Grave’s disease in AIDS patients.

Sequential Occurrence of Thyroid Autoantibodies and Graves’ Disease after Immune Restoration in Severely Immunocompromised Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1-Infected Patients
http://jcem.endojournals.org/cgi/conten ... 85/11/4254

So here’s a list of hyperthyroid symptoms.

“Symptoms of hyperthyroidism, regardless of the cause, reflect the speeding up of body functions: increased heart rate and blood pressure, abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias), excessive sweating, hand tremors (shakiness), nervousness and anxiety, difficulty sleeping (insomnia), weight loss despite increased appetite, increased activity level despite fatigue and weakness, and frequent bowel movements, occasionally with diarrhea.”

Hyperthyroidism
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec13/ch163/ch163b.html

And these are a list of HIV/AIDS symptoms.

“However, fever, rashes, swollen lymph nodes, fatigue, and a variety of less common symptoms may develop within a few weeks of HIV infection and last a few weeks.”

Fever, rashes and swollen lymph nodes can be just autoimmune symptoms because the immune system is in overdrive.
I even called it an ‘autoimmune flu’ and people just turn up to a clinic when they have symptoms and hence take a HIV test.

“These symptoms include swollen lymph nodes, weight loss, fatigue, recurring fever or diarrhea, anemia, and thrush (a fungal infection of the mouth).”

Anemia can be copper deficiency and copper deficiency lowers white blood cells and encourages bacterial infection because bacteria live off excess iron in the gut, a lack of copper can cause diarrhea.

“HIV can also directly infect the brain, causing memory loss, weakness, difficulty walking, and difficulty in thinking and concentrating (dementia).”
The problem with these symptoms is they are the same as MS and you can get encephalitis just from Herpes.

“In some people, HIV is probably directly responsible for AIDS wasting, which is a significant loss of weight with or without an obvious cause.”
These are hyperthyroid symptoms.

“Kaposi's sarcoma, a cancer that appears as painless, red to purple, raised patches on the skin, affects many people with AIDS, especially homosexual men.”
Kaposi’s seems to occur in Nitrate users and coincides with Herpes infections that can then degrade collagen and allow cancers to happen.

“Cancers of the immune system (lymphomas, typically non-Hodgkin's lymphoma) may develop, sometimes first appearing in the brain, where they can cause confusion, personality changes, and memory loss. Women are prone to developing cancer of the cervix. Homosexual men are prone to developing cancer of the rectum.”
AZT and other AIDS drugs, Sexual Lubricants and the Wart Virus can cause these cancers.

Symptoms
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection
http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec17/ch199/c ... ch199a-952

“Night sweats occur very frequently in people living with HIV.”
Night Sweats...Facts and Solutions
http://aids.about.com/od/othercondition ... sweats.htm
Night sweats are another Hyperthyroid symptom.

So do we really know what causes AIDS or not?
And do we know what sort of retrovirus HIV really is?

On top of that there is the possibility of Selenium deficiency exacerbating other real viral infections.

“In April, the scientists reported discovering that inadequate intake of selenium boosts damage caused by influenza viruses.
"We believe our latest findings are both important and potentially disturbing because they suggest nutritional deficiencies can promote epidemics in a way not appreciated before," Beck said. "Here we looked at flu virus because it hospitalizes more than 100,000 people each year in the United States alone. But what we found conceivably could be true for any RNA virus -- cold virus, AIDS virus and Ebola virus."
She and Nelson worked with colleagues at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Nestle Research Center in Switzerland. They fed groups of mice either selenium-deficient or normal diets. Later, they exposed both groups to a mild strain of human influenza virus known as Influenza A Bangkok. Rodents consuming too little selenium developed significantly more harmful lung inflammation, which also lasted considerably longer, than animals that developed the flu but whose diets were normal. The difference between the mice's illnesses was the difference between mild pneumonia and severe pneumonia, which can be life-threatening, they said.”

Selenium Deficiency Causes Flu Virus To Mutate
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 081506.htm

This is all helical, I’ve been circling and circling outside the square every else’s heads reside in.

I’ve watched ‘HIV’ tagged people in despair tell me their woes via my email box, I became sick as well (in fact the HIV positives emailing me are often not sick) and I had become ill while trying to study microbiology part-time at university.

So I wondered what was happening to me while the new studies appeared in my Google search.

By censoring so called ‘AIDS dissidents’ we sent ourselves paddling up the wrong creek.

The retro-virologist Peter Duesberg should have had his right of reply in Nature, the debate he could have started may have prevented all of this muddle.

As for me this became quite a burden when I realized I could type in ‘AIDS Methylation’ and come up a few times on the front page.
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q ... arch&meta=

I’m the one suggesting ‘The AIDS Retrovirus Expression Is Regulated by Methylation’ and The Free Information Society banned me for talking about it and they give me the message “You have been banned from this forum.”

This Physorg.com link comes up, so you folk are cool.
I so want everyone else to pick up on this and talk about it.
I don’t get paid for this and thinking about it by myself is a bit tiring, I mostly want some good sleep and to sing some songs and forget about how I got here.

So if you can help me out then just show your friends this link and pass it on because it is important.

And thanks again to Physorg.

[Fintan]

I just want to do the last nerdy stuff here to make us all think?

This study looks confusing at first.
Why were the brains of these poor dead HIV folk methylated?

&#8220;Experimental models of vitamin B[12] deficient-neuropathy are characterized by central nervous system protein hypomethylation. The encephalitis/vacuolar myelopathy complicating HIV infection and subacute combined degeneration of the cord due to vitamin B[12] deficiency share similar biochemical and pathological abnormalities. Altered central nervous system methylation may be important in the pathogenesis of HIV encephalitis. To test this hypothesis we compared brain protein methylation of HIV-positive, and control, subjects. Materials and methods - Carboxymethyltransferase activity was assayed in postmortem cortical brain samples obtained from 16 control patients (9 males); mean age (59 ± 5.1 years, range 21-87 years), 9 HIV-positive patients (7 males, 6 IVDA, 3 homosexual, 4 with HIV encephalitis, mean age 37, range 23-45), and 3 patients with Alzheimer's disease (mean age 78 years). Results - The amount of radiolabelled SAM (S-adenosylmethionine) incorporated into carboxymethyl, and N-methylation sites within brain proteins from cortical white matter in vitro was significantly lower (P<0.05) in the HIV + group vs controls. Carboxymethyltransferase activity was similar in the HIV-infected brains irrespective of the presence or absence of HIV encephalitis. Mean cortical methyl group incorporation was also lower in the Alzheimer's disease group compared to controls. Conclusion - The observation of reduced in vitro methylation of brain proteins from patients with HIV infection and Alzheimer's disease suggests that fewer unmethylated sites exist due to relative protein hypermethylation in vivo. The absence of hypomethylation in the brains of patients with HIV encephalitis suggests that hypomethylation is not necessary for the development of HIV encephalitis.&#8221;
Methylation of cortical brain proteins from patients with HIV infection
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1951751

Does this make sense?
If there is lower SAM (S-adenosylmethionine) then there should be hypomethylation.

&#8220;The amount of radiolabelled SAM (S-adenosylmethionine) incorporated into carboxymethyl, and N-methylation sites within brain proteins from cortical white matter in vitro was significantly lower (P<0.05) in the HIV + group vs controls.&#8221;

But if the AIDS patients were on AZT (very likely) their brain matter would be methylated.
&#8220;azt hypermethylation&#8221;
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&s ... on&spell=1

Which makes sense of this&#8230;..

&#8220;The absence of hypomethylation in the brains of patients with HIV encephalitis suggests that hypomethylation is not necessary for the development of HIV encephalitis.&#8221;

So on another subject&#8230;.the other diseases and hypomethylation.

&#8220;The vitamins folic acid, B12 and B6 and B2 are the source of coenzymes which participate in one carbon metabolism. In this metabolism, a carbon unit from serine or glycine is transferred to tetrahydrofolate (THF) to form methylene-THF. This is either used as such for the synthesis of thymidine, which is incorporated into DNA, oxidized to formyl-THF which is used for the synthesis of purines, which are building blocks of RNA and DNA, or it is reduced to methyl-THF which used to methylate homocysteine to form methionine, a reaction which is catalyzed by a B12-containing methyltransferase. Much of the methionine which is formed is converted to S-adenosylmethionine (SAM), a universal donor of methyl groups, including DNA, RNA, hormones, neurotransmitters, membrane lipids, proteins and others. Because of these functions, interest in recent years has been growing particularly in the area of aging and the possibility that certain diseases that afflict the aging population, loss of cognitive function, Alzheimer's disease, cardiovascular disease, cancer and others, may be in part explained by inadequate intake or inadequate status of these vitamins. Homocysteine, a product of methionine metabolism as well as a precursor of methionine synthesis, was shown recently to be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, stroke and thrombosis when its concentration in plasma is slightly elevated. There are now data which show association between elevated plasma homocysteine levels and loss of neurocognitive function and Alzheimer's disease. These associations could be due to a neurotoxic effect of homocysteine or to decreased availability of SAM which results in hypomethylation in the brain tissue. Hypomethylation is also thought to exacerbate depressive tendency in people, and for (colorectal) cancer DNA hypomethylation is thought to be the link between the observed relationship between inadequate folate status and cancer.&#8221;
Folate, vitamin B12 and vitamin B6 and one carbon metabolism
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=13462840

So my question is how many diseases will be helped by the vitamins folic acid, B12, and B6 and B2 plus Glutathione, a Selenium compound?

&#8220;One of the most consistent findings in cancer cells is an overall decrease of 5-methylcytosine content in DNA. The causes that lead to this alteration are not known. We have shown in a recent study that the methyl-donor, methionine (Met), can easily be depleted and that 0- and S-methylation can be impaired in response to glutathione (GSH) depletion. This is because mammalian cells are capable of resynthesizing GSH after GSH is depleted, and GSH turnover occurs at the expense of Met. An extensive utilization of Met for the resynthesis of GSH causes Met depletion and impairment in methylation. In the present study we now demonstrate that GSH depletion has a significant impact on DNA methylation.&#8221;
&#8220;The results provide strong evidence that GSH-depleting agents significantly impair cytosine methylation. Thus, alterations in gene expression could result from a high dose and/or prolonged exposure to GSH-depleting agents, e.g. medications, chemotherapeutic agents and environmental toxins.&#8221;
Alterations of DNA methylation by glutathione depletion
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=2268579

&#8220;Glutathione (GSH), a cysteine-containing tripeptide, is essential for the viability and function of virtually all cells. In vitro studies showing that low GSH levels both promote HIV expression and impair T cell function suggested a link between GSH depletion and HIV disease progression.&#8221;
Glutathione deficiency is associated with impaired survival in HIV disease
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/94/5/1967

Back to the HIV patients with nervous system damage.

&#8220;The methylation and transsulfuration pathways are intimately linked and have been implicated in the progression of neurologic damage and immune cell depletion caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. We studied the following metabolites related to these pathways : S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe), homocysteine, cysteine, cysteinyl-glycine, and glutathione (GSH) in blood and CSF of 16 HIV-infected patients with neurologic complications and 20 HIV-negative control patients undergoing lumbar punctures for other medical reasons. We confirmed recent studies of decreased CSF SAMe concentrations in HIV infection and demonstrated that diastereomers of SAMe are present in CSF but not in plasma or erythrocytes from both HIV-infected and HIV-negative patients. In HIV-infected patients, CSF GSH and cysteinyl-glycine, but not homocysteine or cysteine, were significantly reduced. This is the first report of decreased CSF GSH induced by HIV infection. GSH has a regulatory effect on the synthesis of SAMe in hepatic tissue, and the same mechanism may also apply in the CNS. Administration of SAMe-butanedisulphonate, 800 mg/d intravenously for 14 days, was associated with significant increases in CSF SAMe and GSH. These findings have potentially important therapeutic implications for the use of SAMe in protecting against SAMe and GSH deficiency in the CNS of HIV-infected patients.&#8221;
Cerebrospinal fluid S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) and glutathione concentrations in HIV infection : effect of parenteral treatment with SAMe
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=3671134

And this is why Dr. Harold Foster&#8217;s treatment for AIDS will work.

&#8220;Selenium, a mineral typically only needed in very small amounts for maintaining good health, is found in foods like Brazil nuts, shrimp, and whole wheat, among others. The RDA of selenium is fifty-five micrograms, but, because plasma selenium concentrations are very low, some researchers contend that it is essential to replenish selenium with high doses, particularly in people with advanced HIV infections.
According to Foster, people with advanced AIDS have both highly depleted selenium and plasma stores, and reduced CD4 cell counts. Foster says a reduction in selenium levels triggers a reduction in CD4 cells, which then causes a worsening reduction of serum selenium&#8212;&#8220;the selenium CD4 T-cell tailspin.&#8221; The codiscoverer of HIV, Professor Luc Montagnier also points out that AIDS is characterized by persistent oxidative imbalance and decrease of glutathione. Changes in biochemistry cause oxidative stress and damage to cells and tissues, and antioxidants (like selenium) are believed to be useful in inhibiting viral replication in HIV/AIDS.

We also know that selenium is used by the body after it is incorporated into proteins, called selenoproteins. Not only is selenium known to have excellent antioxidant properties, but it is also known to help regulate thyroid function and promote a healthy immune system. Disease and outright selenium deficiency has been linked for some time, but now some researchers are suggesting that even people without this overt deficiency may still be deficient enough to cause greater susceptibility to disease.

Foods (as well as humans) get their selenium from the soil, and people who live in areas with higher selenium-containing soil also have higher levels of selenium. In fact, the high plains of northern Nebraska and the Dakotas are known to generally have very high selenium levels and, supposedly because of this, people in those regions have the highest selenium intakes in the U.S. This phenomenon has been noticed in China, where selenium-deficient regions are known as the &#8220;disease belt,&#8221; as well as around the globe. With a daily intake of less than ten micrograms of selenium, viral diseases in these areas such as coxsackie B3, hepatitis B and C, and HIV/AIDS are all increasing. This geographical link has been noticed between areas of selenium-deficient soils and peak incidences of HIV/AIDS infection across the world. In Africa, the lowest numbers of AIDS prevalence was found in Senegal, which also happens to be a country with high levels of selenium-enriched soil. Senegal also has one of the lowest levels of cancer on the African continent.

In a field trial in Botswana, Foster claims that the supplementation of selenium and amino acids is causing the reversal of AIDS in ninety-nine percent of patients, usually within three weeks. Foster uses a protocol of four nutrients&#8212;selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan&#8212;and claims that this treatment of HIV/AIDS is similar to &#8220;curing&#8221; type-1 diabetes with insulin. Much more research is needed before selenium becomes a widespread and recognized clinical treatment, but in the meantime keep your eye on the mounting clinical trials that are showing promise.
Researchers Study the Positive Effects of Selenium on Those Living with HIV/AIDS
http://www.aumag.org/lifeguide/WWJuly06.html

Take care of yourselves.
CU&#8217;s Cal

[maverick]

We are more than blessed with all of this information and research gathering..........kudos to Fintan and Cal

Thanks for all you guys do.............

[Fintan]

Is the mainstream catching up with
Cal Crilly's Selenium research?

Not really. there's no mention of methylation
of DNA -the important aspect of Selenium use.

Selenium may help lower HIV levels

By Karla Gale, January 22, 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Selenium supplements can slow the rise in virus levels in HIV-positive patients, which allows the number of beneficial CD4 immune cell to increase, according to results of a clinical trial supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health.

Low blood levels of selenium have been linked to high HIV virulence and more opportunistic infections, Dr. Barry E. Hurwitz and associates at the University of Miami in Florida report in the Archives of Internal Medicine. In lab experiments, the element suppresses HIV-1 replication.

Even when antiretroviral therapy (ART) is widely available, failure to keep the virus suppressed "is relatively common, due to the complexity and toxicity of the drugs," Hurwitz told Reuters Health. "Something like selenium is stable in the blood stream and may prevent 'viral escape'."

In their study, Hurwitz's team randomly assigned some 260 HIV-infected adults with no other major diagnosis to take 200-milligram capsules of inactive yeast (placebo) daily or 200-milligram capsules of high-selenium yeast. The researchers used selenium-enriched yeast (Selenomax, Nutrition 21 Inc.) because it contains high concentrations of organic, bioavailable forms of selenium.

After 9 months, viral load had increased by 10,000 to 20,000 copies/milliliter in the placebo group. Viral load was unchanged in the group on selenium supplementation, Hurwitz said, and CD4 cell counts increased.

The researchers identified 50 "selenium responders," whose blood levels of selenium rose significantly more than the average.

These responders tended to have greater adherence as determined by computerized electronic medication-monitoring caps compared with nonresponders, although some subjects with excellent compliance failed to absorb selenium.

Considering just the 50 selenium responders, their viral load actually decreased on average by 10,000 copies/milliliters, Hurwitz noted. Levels among nonresponders did not differ significantly from those in the plain yeast group.

The investigators conclude that selenium supplementation may represent "a simple, inexpensive, and safe adjunct therapy" to antiretroviral medications for HIV.

Hurwitz added that some stores sell the selenium-enriched yeast, with a 2-month supply costing about $15. However, consumers must be careful, he added, because many forms of selenium that are sold are not absorbed into the blood stream.

He also remarked on the potential impact that selenium supplementation could have in parts of world where soil is deficient in selenium, and people generally can't get enough from their food. "Selenium supplements could have very rapid and beneficial effects on HIV-infected individuals in those circumstances," he said.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, January 22, 2007.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID ... D0C9E18540

[Fintan]

AIDS dissidents: blinded by pseudoscience
or asking the right questions?

by Pat Sherman - Thursday, 07-Jun-2007
http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9919

It&#8217;s seemingly as implausible as if the moon landing had been faked on a Hollywood soundstage. It&#8217;s the conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. Yet a group of highly accredited scientists contends it&#8217;s true: that HIV is not the cause of AIDS and that pharmaceutical companies, the World Health Organization, governments and AIDS researchers are all in collusion to suppress the truth and keep the multi-billion-dollar HIV/AIDS gravy train rolling.

These &#8220;AIDS Denialists,&#8221; as the scientific establishment pejoratively refers to the group, include Nobel Prize recipients, Africa historians, chemists, statisticians and virologists.

They say that the first U.S. AIDS cases were caused, not by HIV infection spread through unprotected sex, but by illicit drug use, amyl nitrate sniffing and exposure to antibiotics used to combat venereal diseases rampant in the 1970s &#8211; a hypothesis that gained some traction in the late &#8217;80s and early &#8217;90s, but that AIDS researchers thought had subsided.
&#8220;[The AIDS dissident movement] basically says that every scientist, every physician and every clinician out of the hundreds of thousands of professionals working worldwide on this is either some kind of malicious scumbag who will do anything for money, or we&#8217;re all stupid,&#8221; said AIDS researcher John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell University, the recipient of AIDS drug manufacturer Bristol-Myers Squibb&#8217;s $500,000 &#8220;Freedom To Discover&#8221; grant and the man HIV dissidents refer to as the most &#8220;unashamed&#8221; spokesperson for the AIDS establishment.

Despite the dissident scientists&#8217; credentials, each has, more or less, been discredited, excommunicated or labeled a &#8220;crackpot&#8221; or purveyor of pseudoscience for disputing a correlation between HIV and AIDS.

However, a March 2006 article in Harper&#8217;s magazine gave the theory serious attention. Although it was published 22 years after then President Reagan&#8217;s secretary of health and human services, Margaret Heckler, and virologist, Robert Gallo, announced the discovery of HIV, and one might have expected the response from the HIV/AIDS establishment to have been a collective yawn, the article instead sounded universal alarm among those in the HIV/AIDS field.

HIV educators and researchers swiftly mobilized to counter the arguments put forth in the article, &#8220;Out of Control: AIDS and the Corruption of Medical Science,&#8221; by longtime AIDS dissident Celia Farber. And media from The Nation to the New York Times denounced the story, even while conceding that the first half of the article, which exposed gross mishandling of HIV drug trials in Africa and the United States, was a solid piece of investigative journalism. The Columbia Journalism Review, while deriding Harper&#8217;s for racing &#8220;right over the edge of a cliff,&#8221; offered temperate praise for the first half of Farber&#8217;s article, stating: &#8220;Her argument is that AIDS has become an industry and a certain kind of sloppiness has entered the search for new anti-retroviral drugs. So far, so good, and if this were the only story Farber hoped to tell, we might well be tipping our hat to her.&#8221;

But it was not the only story the former Spin magazine reporter had to tell. Citing the man considered to be the founding father of AIDS dissidents, University of California, Berkeley molecular and cell biologist, Peter Duesberg, Farber painted a grim picture of a profit-hungry pharmaceutical industry, one knowingly promoting the &#8220;false&#8221; notion that HIV causes AIDS in order to peddle its toxic drugs &#8211; drugs Farber, Duesberg and other AIDS dissidents point to as the current cause of AIDS in the U.S. and Europe.

Moore and a group of researchers and AIDS activists promptly fired back at Harper&#8217;s. Demanding a retraction with at least 50 corrections and clarifications, the team launched its own Web site, aidstruth.org, to refute the claims Farber put forth. Far from being merely an objective refutation of the dissidents&#8217; argument, the site includes speculation about Duesberg&#8217;s presumed homophobia and a &#8220;humor&#8221; section with an entry titled, &#8220;Crank How to &#8211; a definitive step by step guide&#8221; (i.e. &#8220;Step one: Develop a wacky idea&#8221;).

&#8220;The reason we take these people on is because they kill people,&#8221; Moore said. &#8220;If you persuade someone that HIV is harmless and then that person engages in unsafe sex or doesn&#8217;t take effective therapies, you&#8217;re killing that person. We didn&#8217;t want to see any resurgence of this nonsense in the mainstream American media.&#8221;

While Moore and others have taken on the dissidents with fervor, the majority of those in the HIV/AIDS field refuse to debate the dissidents or address their questions about the mysterious nature of HIV.

Asked for a response to the dissidents&#8217; claims, a spokesperson for the UCSD Antiviral Research Center issued the following statement, in part: &#8220;A number of investigators at UCSD Medical Center &#8230; [and] School of Medicine all agree that knowledgeable people no longer engage in debate with HIV deniers because of the overwhelming scientific evidence that HIV causes AIDS and the lack of willingness of these HIV deniers to accept this overwhelming evidence.&#8221;

One San Diego-based HIV researcher who has worked on HIV drug trials agreed to comment on the dissidents&#8217; views only on the condition that his anonymity be protected.

&#8220;I can totally understand how someone would want to deny the presence of this horrible thing, especially if someone had it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Denial is a basic, human psychological protective mechanism. However, you can&#8217;t usually reason somebody out of denial, ever &#8211; and the more exposure they get and the more people put it up as a legitimate theory, the more play it gets and the more harm it does in the community.&#8221;

Certainly, it would seem scientists such as Duesberg, a tenured professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, the recipient of the Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Institutes of Health and a once-revered expert in the field of retroviruses, would have everything to gain from jumping off the denial bandwagon.

&#8220;I could easily conform,&#8221; Duesberg told the Gay & Lesbian Times. &#8220;I would be right there up on top again.&#8221;

Since he began questioning the accepted model of HIV in 1987, Duesberg hasn&#8217;t received a dime in government funding.

&#8220;Since I questioned HIV/AIDS, I&#8217;m only teaching the lab course,&#8221; he said.

&#8220;I haven&#8217;t had a graduate student in 15 years.

&#8220;Some of [the students], under the condition of anonymity, tell me that this is what they were told. &#8216;You spent a lot of time and paid a high price to get into Berkeley. Duesberg is not the way to go&#8230;. This will kill your career.&#8217; They have done a fairly good job excommunicating me.&#8221;
However, not all Duesberg&#8217;s work has been dismissed. Known for isolating the first cancer gene in 1970, his theory that cancer is caused by irregularities in the chromosomes, not the genes, was published this year in Scientific American. While lauding his ideas, however, the journal carefully covered its tracks in regard to Duesberg&#8217;s unpopular HIV theories, via an editorial labeling him &#8220;a pariah with good ideas.&#8221;

When questioned as to why AIDS, if not caused by a virus spread through anal intercourse, was first only found in gay men &#8211; bypassing Liza Minnelli and other heterosexual denizens of the Studio 54 drug scene &#8211; Duesberg&#8217;s answer hinted more at his alleged conservative views than any solid ideas about science.

&#8220;You don&#8217;t see it in the entire gay population,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You&#8217;re looking at a very small minority of the gay population who come to San Francisco or New York from the Midwest and so forth and they try to make it there as gay guys. There&#8217;s peer pressure among them to have 20 or 30 dates in a weekend and wear a leather jacket &#8211; God knows what it is.&#8221;

In order to have this much sex, Duesberg contends, gay men acquired a ravenous appetite for toxic drugs.

&#8220;Heterosexuals tend to get married or tend to go steady, so then the fun is over in this regard,&#8221; Duesberg said. &#8220;What we call the 10-year latent period of HIV is a euphemism for the time it takes to cause irreversible damage by drug use. It&#8217;s the same with alcohol; it&#8217;s the same with smoking.&#8221;

Lingering questions
Dissenters also contend that HIV has yet to be isolated.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know whether HIV exists or not,&#8221; said retired Virginia Tech professor of electrochemistry, Henry Bauer, author of The Origins, Persistence and Failings of HIV/AIDS Theory. &#8220;What&#8217;s clear is that HIV tests do not detect viral particles &#8211; only antibodies &#8211; and it&#8217;s clear that they&#8217;ve never been isolated.&#8221;

Duesberg said the problem with HIV is that it behaves markedly differently than typical viruses, which reproduce rapidly. The average 10-year period it takes from the time someone is infected with HIV to the time they receive an AIDS diagnosis is circumspect, he said.
&#8220;There cannot be a slow virus,&#8221; Duesberg maintained. &#8220;If there is one, whoever proves it deserves the Nobel Prize in virology and in biochemistry&#8230;. A virus replicates like a biological chain reaction. It doubles its template every 20 minutes. This is not a process you can slow down or stop&#8230;. There&#8217;s no way this thing could be delayed for 10 years&#8230;. They keep dancing around [the issue], with guys like [Pawel] Liberski inventing &#8216;slow viruses,&#8217; but it&#8217;s a term for not knowing what happened.&#8221;
Moore attributed Duesberg&#8217;s statement to &#8220;pure ignorance.&#8221;

&#8220;It just demonstrates he doesn&#8217;t read or understand HIV literature,&#8221; Moore said. &#8220;It&#8217;s just a silly statement based on how he thinks a virus should behave. He has no &#8230; right to claim that he knows everything about how every virus interacts with every human or animal immune system&#8230;. Where is the law of virology that says a virus can only interact with an organism in one particular way? &#8230; It&#8217;s like saying that all mammals are the same or all plants are the same. They&#8217;re not.&#8221;

Bauer is part of a group of scientists with an interest in questioning scientific orthodoxies. He said he recently pored over what he believes to be the most comprehensive collection of HIV test data analyzed to date, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) files and medical journals at Virginia Tech.

Bauer believes it is not sexual transmission that makes one susceptible to HIV infection, but racially determined genetic factors.

&#8220;The HIV test data do not look like what you get for a sexually transmitted agent,&#8221; Bauer said. &#8220;Any group that you look at, child-bearing women, Marines, blood donors, whatever, the variation of the likelihood of a positive-HIV test with AIDS is the same&#8230;.

&#8220;Overall,&#8221; Bauer said, &#8220;it&#8217;s roughly that African-Americans test HIV-positive five times or more than white Americans; Asian-Americans test positive about two-thirds as often as white Americans&#8230;. Amongst homosexuals, you find these racial disparities in the same order &#8211; [though] they&#8217;re not as great.&#8221;

Bauer conceded, however, that the high rate of HIV-positive [test results] among gay men is something that needs to be studied.
&#8220;[The AIDS dissident movement] basically says that every scientist, every physician and every clinician out of the hundreds of thousands of professionals working worldwide on this is either some kind of malicious scumbag who will do anything for money, or we&#8217;re all stupid.

&#8220;There are plenty of gay men who have been HIV-positive for 20 years without becoming ill and without having antiretroviral treatment,&#8221; he said.

Time will tell
Bauer points to numerous cases throughout history in which long-held scientific theories have been proven incorrect.

For example, in 2005, two Australians won the Nobel Prize in physiology for proving that it is bacteria, not stress, that causes ulcers &#8211; a previously discredited theory. In 1976, a Nobel Prize was awarded to researchers who proved that Kuru, a brain disease found among New Guinea natives, was not caused by a lentivirus, which is what HIV is believed to be, but by prions, the source of Mad Cow Disease.

AIDS in Africa: Same name, different disease?
Charles Geshekter, an economist and Africa specialist in the history department at California State University, Chico, has long criticized the definition of AIDS in Africa, claiming that it is &#8220;not a microbial problem to be controlled through sexual abstinence, behavior modification, condoms and drugs (the so-called &#8220;ABCs&#8221; of AIDS interventions),&#8221; but a misnomer for a set of pre-existing conditions such as diarrhea, high fever, weight loss and a dry cough.

Geshekter said he formed his view based on his travels in the Great Horn region of Africa, which includes Ethiopia and Somalia, in the 1970s and 1980s. He questions how the AIDS establishment was able to collect such firm statistics on Africa.

&#8220;I was always aware of how hard it was to get good, reliable statistics on those things in Somalia,&#8221; Geshekter said. &#8220;I started to wonder: &#8216;Where did they get these numbers from? How are they so reliable and accurate about AIDS cases in Congo or Uganda or Rwanda or Tanzania?&#8217; I knew that statistical record-keeping in Africa was a very chancy, very irregular matter&#8230;. Africa has the lowest record of reliable statistics for epidemiology, for death and illness because of the shortage of practitioners and the shortage of infrastructure for collecting that kind of data.&#8221;

After looking into the matter, Geshekter said he began to question the definition of AIDS in Africa as put forth during a World Health Organization conference in 1985.

&#8220;In 1985, testing for HIV antibodies was hardly ever done in Africa, so they came up with a clinical symptoms definition, a working definition of AIDS. When I saw what those symptoms were, I realized that I got those symptoms any time I worked in the Bush in Somalia: high fever, persistent cough, chronic diarrhea for 14 days, and a 10-percent loss of your body weight over eight weeks&#8230;. There&#8217;s never been a time that I hadn&#8217;t worked in the Bush in Somalia, drinking camels&#8217; milk, on a very sketchy diet, under a tropical sun, that I didn&#8217;t suffer from all of those symptoms. Yet not being an African, I could get on an airplane and fly &#8230; [back to] Chico and I was cured of &#8216;AIDS.&#8217; So, there was something illogical, inconsistent and very screwy about the whole definition.&#8221;

However, Moore and others explain that the symptoms of AIDS in Africa are consistent with existing diseases because of the way AIDS works.

&#8220;What the individual with a damaged immune system suffers from depends on the prevalent infections that are around at the time and the place that he or she lives &#8211; opportunistic infections that generally won&#8217;t kill people,&#8221; Moore said. &#8220;In Africa, a very common cause of death from AIDS is tuberculosis infection because it&#8217;s far more prevalent in Africa than it is in Europe and North America, and many of the people who die in Africa now die of the multi-drug resistant forms of tuberculosis.&#8221;

Geshekter further questions how AIDS is being spread in Africa. He said the view of Africa as a sexually promiscuous society doesn&#8217;t mesh with his observations in the country.

&#8220;It was completely at variance with everything I&#8217;d ever seen or heard or read about regarding sexual activity, generally, in Africa, &#8230; [that] Africans are wildly promiscuous people for whom disloyalty to one&#8217;s spouse and sex on a regular loose basis is just part of their culture. It was a perfect piece of fiction created from a whole cloth from people who had spent very little time in Africa themselves.&#8221;

Science or religious crusade?
Earlier this year, Geshekter was invited to discuss his views with other dissidents and AIDS researchers in Mexico City, in anticipation of the upcoming International AIDS Conference, to be held in Mexico City in August 2008.

Ricardo Rocha, a veteran journalist with TV Azteca, had scheduled a televised debate between dissidents and AIDS researchers as part of a three-hour series questioning established HIV/AIDS science.

The researchers agreed to the debate on the condition that they first be granted one hour of airtime alone to explain the prevailing AIDS theory and refute the dissidents&#8217; claims. When their segment was over, the Mexican researchers declined to stay for the televised debate.

&#8220;We were watching this live in another room,&#8221; Geshekter recalled. &#8220;When Ricardo said, &#8216;We&#8217;ll have a chance to debate later the efficacy and the toxicity of Nevarapine and AZT and any number of these other chemicals that are given to people to fight HIV,&#8217; they said, &#8216;We&#8217;re not going to be here for the second segment.&#8217; Ricardo tried to shame them. He told them, &#8216;If you&#8217;re not here, I&#8217;m going to have your four seats with your names on them vacant on the set and I&#8217;m going to explain to the audience why you&#8217;re not there.&#8217; When that program was over, they scurried out the back door.&#8221;

Geshekter said he also suspects that too much is at stake to have even one stone lodged at what he views as a scientific glass house.

&#8220;If I come along and I say that [current AIDS theory] is a fruitless, lost, counterproductive and barren hypothesis, I&#8217;m basically saying that 25 years of an enormous amount of energy and advertising and money has been sent down a rat hole,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That absolutely cannot be accepted&#8230;. This is not about science any longer. This is a religious crusade, and anyone who challenges the religious crusade must be punished, because that&#8217;s a heresy.&#8221;

Chemical or virus?
Duesberg and others question why there has been no AIDS vaccine after nearly two decades as Heckler promised would be forthcoming within two years during her April 1984 HIV press conference.

&#8220;Tying [HIV] to a virus doesn&#8217;t do it,&#8221; Duesberg said. &#8220;Every year it&#8217;s not going to work. That&#8217;s how it&#8217;s going to be. With these billions of dollars [spent], I consider that as proof of my hypothesis that it&#8217;s chemical and isn&#8217;t a virus.&#8221;

However, Moore said the search for a vaccine is far more complex.
&#8220;It&#8217;s an extraordinarily difficult scientific problem that is defeating the finest scientists working in the field. It&#8217;s because HIV is different than other viruses that interact with the human organism in much simpler ways&#8230;. If it were as easy to deal with as yellow fever virus or poliovirus it would have been done years ago&#8230;.

&#8220;HIV is a member of the lentivirus family of retroviruses,&#8221; Moore said.

&#8220;It&#8217;s been very difficult to make vaccines in animals against other lentiviruses with similar properties.&#8221;

To a degree, inconsistencies also exist in what mainstream researchers hold to be true about the nature of the AIDS virus.

For example, another reason it has been so difficult to produce a vaccine, Moore believes, is the &#8220;incredible variation in the HIV genome.&#8221;

&#8220;It&#8217;s a very, very variable virus because it mutates so rapidly,&#8221; Moore said.

However, Dr. Davey Smith, an assistant adjunct professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases at UCSD, said it has been his experience that the virus hasn&#8217;t been mutating.

&#8220;There&#8217;s been a bunch of papers around about that,&#8221; said Smith, who agreed to answer some specific questions about HIV, so long as they were removed from the issue of the AIDS dissidents. &#8220;I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s really much difference between the virus that is circulating now and the virus that was circulating 20 years ago.&#8221;

Finding a vaccine has been difficult, Smith said, because of the way the virus works itself into DNA.

&#8220;Once it gets into the bloodstream and it integrates into the person&#8217;s own DNA, it lives there &#8230; and we can&#8217;t get it out,&#8221; Smith said. &#8220;Even though we can start someone on therapy and we can keep the virus from producing copies of itself, we can&#8217;t get it out of the DNA form. Once we stop the therapy, it just makes more copies of itself.&#8221;

Keeping an open mind
&#8220;There are plenty of gay men who have been HIV-positive for 20 years without becoming ill and without having antiretroviral treatment.&#8221;

Wading through the science on both sides of the issue is so complex it can be a crazy-making endeavor for the average person seeking health information.

One former medical journalist, who also requested anonymity due to a conflict with his current position, said that, despite his outspoken criticism of the dissidents&#8217; view, he feels it is not helpful for the AIDS establishment to ignore the dissidents altogether. The ongoing cycle of investigation, debate and analysis of the facts, after all, remains the crux of science.

&#8220;I have never thought that it&#8217;s helpful,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Certainly in science, like all human activity, there is a tendency [toward] institutional discouragement against rocking the boat, so whatever the orthodoxy is, those tend to be self-perpetuating. That is a legitimate criticism. On the other hand, there is a point at which it&#8217;s reasonable to say, this has been answered already. The reason you&#8217;re still raising the question is because you&#8217;re not listening.&#8221;

http://www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9919