alzee
10-04-2009, 03:44 PM
I've always assumed that the diagnosis of HIV and AIDS were done along very specific medical guidelines, and they are, just not quite how I expected.
I found a forum where Janine Roberts posted exceprts from her book discussing this. It makes for very interesting reading. Especially the bits about AIDS diagnosis in Africa (the Bangui definition) and how much the way AIDS is diagnosed in the West has changed to include a wealth of diseases which have been around for many years prior to HIV or AIDS.
Hi, `lots seems to have happened since I last looked at this forum!
This perhaps should be listed as a new topic - but as I am being challenged here..
But first, I really want to say - please do read the book if you have many questions - for I develop the arguments in it with great care over some 20 chapters, Giving snippets of the book is necessarily taking some things out of context. The book actually finishes off optimistically, drawing from new cellular biology - but you will not know that from my posts so far!
HIV is looked at in the second half of my book - for, when investigating vaccine contamination I learnt that the polio vaccine might have contained HIV along with other monkey viruses... it was only screened for it from about 1997... at that time I thought this would be my next film - so I started to research it rigorously - only to find that there were major difficulties with HIV theory.
I am being asked on this forum why are AIDS Victims living longer - for, if antiretroviral drugs are prolonging lives, surely this is firm evidence that AIDS is caused by a retrovirus?
I used to think so - but this is what I have since learnt...
There have been very major changes to the official definition of AIDS since the illness was first described - with Africa given its own extraordinary and unique diagnostic rules - under which, if an African suffers from diarrhea for a month, has a persistent itch (dermatitis ) and intermittent fever (or a ten percent weight loss) - then they will be told that they have HIV and will soon die of AIDs if they cannot get antiretrovirals. They need not be tested for HIV although this is now recommended. This is called the Bangui Definition of AIDS and is on the World Health Organisation Website. These diagnostic rules are being widely used by African governments. The utter tragedy is that, under this vague clinical definition, the effects of impure water supplies (affecting 70% of Africans south of the Sahara) and of other illnesses are being diagnosed as AIDS.
In the West, before antiretroviral drugs became available (powerful drugs some of which are also marketed as chemotherapy against cancer )- people were rapidly dying of AIDS - but this is because in the West there was at that time a totally different clinical definition of AIDS.
AIDS was at first diagnosed like most diseases - by the evident symptoms of illness. In 1981-2 it was described as a condition in which two illnesses, fungal pneumonia (PCP) and severe Thrush, appeared together, often accompanied by a skin cancer, Kaposi Sarcoma. These 3 illnesses became known as the ‘AIDS Indicating'. The principal cause of death was PCP, caused by a fungus that is normally harmlessly in nearly all of us, but which had suddenly become a killer. Once diagnosed, death was usually less than eleven months away.
A few hundred such cases were diagnosed in the UK and USA in the early 1980s. The patients were mostly in an urban partying gay scene in which a great deal of anal sex was fuelled by intensive and multiple drug taking.
At that time many toxicologists working for the FDA thought they knew what was causing this - over a hundred scientific papers were published in the early 1980s linking such cases to inhaled recreational drugs that caused the fungal infections of the throat and lungs. Surveys in UK, Canadian and USA cities found a 90% correlation with certain inhaled drugs. Some also blamed steroids heavily prescribed for STDs.
Then in 1984 came the discovery of what we now call HIV. There was an immediate change to diagnostic rules. HIV antibodies found with the HIV test became the key diagnostic symptom for AIDS. Antibodies are normally said to protect us. But with HIV - antibodies were said not to protect.
If antibodies against an HIV protein were found, it was predicted confidently in 1984 that within 10 years one of the above AIDS-defining and death-producing illnesses would follow. As many were now found to be HIV [antibody] positive a panic rapidly spread. It was soon predicted that 1.5 million Americans were already infected and on the way to soon dying of AIDS.
But the HIV positive did not die in such numbers - so in 1987 the CDC rewrote the official definition of AIDS to put up the numbers. In future, HIV would no longer necessary for an AIDS diagnosis.
The CDC had in 1987 run into trouble when it lobbied the White House for greatly increased funding for AIDS research, on the basis that AIDS was now a major epidemic among heterosexuals. When the White House demanded the evidence, the CDC was forced to slash its estimate of the number of Americans infected from 1.76 million to 600,000 (a cut some have since mistakenly attributed to the just-introduced antiretrovirals).
The Chicago Times reported on May 31, 1987 that ‘the nation has become transfixed by a fear of deadly disease not seen since the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s' but this fear, it said, was ill-founded for ‘AIDS still ranks as one of the rarest of diseases.' ‘Deaths from AIDS are far less frequent than the various forms of heart disease that kill more than a million Americans every year, rarer even than deaths from alcohol-related liver disease, diabetes, atherosclerosis, influenza and pneumonia, motor-vehicle accidents, homicide, suicide or accidental falls in the home.'
At the same time, statistics from San Francisco indicated the AIDS epidemic might be ending. Professor Andrew Moss, an epidemiologist at the University of California, reported in 1987: ‘the serioconversion rate [numbers testing HIV antibody positive} in gay men crashed quite a few years ago. San Francisco's doing new estimates and they're a lot lower than any previous estimates' - in fact down from 21% in 1982 to just 1% in 1983 and continuing downwards for the next four years.
Remarkably, some who previously tested positive were now testing negative, as was reported by John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Professor Susanna Cunningham-Rundles of Cornell said: ‘I believe there are people who have encountered the virus and successfully fought it off.'
But within months the CDC regained the epidemic it was beginning to lose by the most extraordinary of tactics. It issued new diagnostic rules for AIDS. It did so by quietly instructing doctors that they should now diagnose AIDS even in the HIV negative if they suffer from any one of a very extended long list of ‘AIDS-indicating illnesses.'
The CDC and UK health authorities produced a list of some 17 illnesses that should be diagnosed as AIDS without laboratory evidence of HIV infection. It stated that ‘with laboratory evidence against HIV infection', (that is, with a negative HIV test) ‘any of the provided list of diseases could be diagnosed as AIDS,' (This is called the ‘Section 1 B' list) Remarkably this list includes the three original AIDS diseases, PCP fungal pneumonia, severe Candida (Thrush) of the throat or lungs, and Kaposi Sarcoma. These were in future to be called AIDS even after a negative HIV test. Since these original AIDS diseases were diagnosed in some 63% of all AIDS cases in the UK in 2006, a positive HIV test is now almost redundant for an AIDS diagnosis.
Onto this list, as not requiring a positive HIV test for an AIDS diagnosis but a CD4 count below 400, in 1987 went a further 14 new ‘AIDS indicating illnesses,' including bronchitis ‘of any duration' and a herpes ulcer suffered for more than a month. This is despite these illnesses having existed for centuries before AIDS arrived and having their own bacteria, viruses or fungi, that have to be present for the illness to be diagnosed.
This redefinition also allowed that, after a positive HIV test, a person could be diagnosed with AIDS if he or she was diagnosed with just one of a different and longer list of illnesses provided by the CDC, including septicaemia, pneumonia, meningitis, bone or joint infection, an abscess in an internal organ caused by streptococcus or other bacteria. Why such illnesses need HIV was not explained. For children, ‘multiple bacterial infections' would henceforth be sufficient for an AIDS diagnosis! Thus despite the apparent absence of HIV, a child might be put on powerful antiviral drugs.
Finally, and even more surprisingly, the CDC ruled that people who ‘have either a negative HIV antibody test' or ‘an opportunistic disease not listed in the definition as an indicator of AIDS', may be diagnosed with AIDS ‘on consideration of ... a history of exposure to HIV.' This totally astonished me. Under this, even a person with flu could be diagnosed as having AIDS despite a negative HIV test, if a friend had a positive HIV test.
By redefinition, AIDS thus became an illness that can have the most incredible range of symptoms. No wonder this redefinition caused an immediate panic! In Italy the new definition immediately put up the AIDS figures by 188%. In the US it went up by 280%! AIDS thus became by definition a collective name for a legion of old diseases, without even the need for HIV to be present. But critically this also meant that any specialist working on just one of these disorders would now be able to tap into the growing AIDS budget.
Also most importantly, with this redefinition came a great watering down of the risk factor attached to an AIDS diagnosis. With so many people now diagnosed with AIDS in the absence of the original deadly ‘AIDS Indicating diseases’, the average life expectancy after diagnosis now went up greatly without any need for medication.
in 1993 the definition of AIDS was modified once more. From this year, feeling ill no longer a necessity for an AIDS diagnosis.
In addition to the above, in future AID could be diagnosed in people who had none of the ‘AIDS Indicating’ illnesses – and did not feel ill! The CDC predicted that this redefinition would more than double the number of official AIDS cases.
The new provision added was that a person without evident symptoms of illness could be diagnosed with AIDS if they had less than 200 CD4 white blood cells in a micro-litre (#956;L) of blood The CDC estimated that there were at that time 120,000 to 190,000’ Americans who did not know they had AIDS since they were not ill, had no AIDS symptoms but who did have a CD4 Count of below 200.
This was despite low number of CD3 white blood cells being found in hospitals to have no link to poor health or poor prognosis!
This time the redefinition vastly increased the numbers of people who would immediately be prescribed the expensive chemotherapy drugs commonly known as ‘antiretrovirals’. The CDC said all American citizens with a 200 CD4 below 200 had to be warned that they already had AIDS – and instructed to start immediately on these drugs, even if they did not feel ill and were otherwise quite robust. This also meant in practice that many now put on these drugs were more able to withstand their severe side effects.
If these people were not ill beforehand, they were likely soon to be, as they now faced a lifetime on powerful chemotherapy.
The very fact they were diagnosed with HIV was enough to make many to start to feel ill. Such a diagnosis will be a major source of stress all on its own.
The new definition also added 3 diseases to the list of 23 ‘AIDS-indicating illnesses. Onto the list came TB, bacterial pneumonia and invasive cervical cancer. The addition of TB alone would greatly swell the numbers of the poor diagnosed with AIDS – especially as TB could now be diagnosed as AIDS even in the absence of HIV.
Cervical cancer was added as an Aids Indicating Disease as a result of lobbying by lesbian women who were acting in solidarity with their gay brothers. Until then very few women were diagnosed with AIDS, but this could not last, or so thought Maxine Wolfe in 1993. She logically explained that, as a virus caused AIDS, it must be an illusion that women were not getting AIDS. ‘We don’t know if women were really asymptomatic. They simply did not have male-defined symptoms.’ Cervical cancer was thus added. The result was; ‘In the half-year following, over 9,000 cases in women were reported. The number of women said to have AIDS in the US went up by 300%.’
How this is reconcilable with the vaccine announced in 2007 against a different virus said to cause cervical cancer I just cannot guess. It is another mystery of government diagnostic rules.
By 1997 according to the CDC, 61% of all new AIDS patients in the US were, at the time of their diagnosis, not suffering from any of the AIDS defining illness– and yet were put on antiretrovirals for the rest of their lives.
But, a major new killer in AIDS cases has now emerged – kidney failure, a known side effect of antiretroviral drugs. It is now a major killer in AIDS cases in the West – yet is still not listed as an ‘AIDS indicating’ illness. Other known side effects of these drugs are cancers and heart disease – and again these are now major killers in AIDS cases.
AIDS patients in the West are indeed surviving longer than they did in 1984 – the redefinitions have ensured this by including those who were in a far better state of health overall at the time of diagnosis - they are thus able to survive antiretrovirals much better.
Jan
PS - this chapter in my book is after several chapters looking at the key experiments on HIV - including the one cited today as proving HIV
causes AIDS. I show that it proved nothing of the sort - the scientist who did the work made no such claim - he did not even try to prove the virus pathogenic.
I also look at other key issues relating to AIDS - including how the HIV test works or does not work and the sexual transmission of HIV - I am happy to answer questions - as I am aware that many here may not have heard of the scientific debate over AIDS - as it is rarely reported. It seems the BBC will not put up any posts questioning HIV theory.
I also give a long list of senior professors and doctors with good university positions who are questioning if HIV causes AIDS (many coming under quite nasty attacks for doing so.)
This you can find on my website www.fearoftheinvisible.com
Janine Roberts
author of 'Fear of the Invisible'
How scared should you be of Viruses and Vaccines...
The post came from a thread over at Jabs.org.uk, a forum devoted to the support of families and sufferers of vaccine damage. The whole thread is well worth a read.
http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2854
I found a forum where Janine Roberts posted exceprts from her book discussing this. It makes for very interesting reading. Especially the bits about AIDS diagnosis in Africa (the Bangui definition) and how much the way AIDS is diagnosed in the West has changed to include a wealth of diseases which have been around for many years prior to HIV or AIDS.
Hi, `lots seems to have happened since I last looked at this forum!
This perhaps should be listed as a new topic - but as I am being challenged here..
But first, I really want to say - please do read the book if you have many questions - for I develop the arguments in it with great care over some 20 chapters, Giving snippets of the book is necessarily taking some things out of context. The book actually finishes off optimistically, drawing from new cellular biology - but you will not know that from my posts so far!
HIV is looked at in the second half of my book - for, when investigating vaccine contamination I learnt that the polio vaccine might have contained HIV along with other monkey viruses... it was only screened for it from about 1997... at that time I thought this would be my next film - so I started to research it rigorously - only to find that there were major difficulties with HIV theory.
I am being asked on this forum why are AIDS Victims living longer - for, if antiretroviral drugs are prolonging lives, surely this is firm evidence that AIDS is caused by a retrovirus?
I used to think so - but this is what I have since learnt...
There have been very major changes to the official definition of AIDS since the illness was first described - with Africa given its own extraordinary and unique diagnostic rules - under which, if an African suffers from diarrhea for a month, has a persistent itch (dermatitis ) and intermittent fever (or a ten percent weight loss) - then they will be told that they have HIV and will soon die of AIDs if they cannot get antiretrovirals. They need not be tested for HIV although this is now recommended. This is called the Bangui Definition of AIDS and is on the World Health Organisation Website. These diagnostic rules are being widely used by African governments. The utter tragedy is that, under this vague clinical definition, the effects of impure water supplies (affecting 70% of Africans south of the Sahara) and of other illnesses are being diagnosed as AIDS.
In the West, before antiretroviral drugs became available (powerful drugs some of which are also marketed as chemotherapy against cancer )- people were rapidly dying of AIDS - but this is because in the West there was at that time a totally different clinical definition of AIDS.
AIDS was at first diagnosed like most diseases - by the evident symptoms of illness. In 1981-2 it was described as a condition in which two illnesses, fungal pneumonia (PCP) and severe Thrush, appeared together, often accompanied by a skin cancer, Kaposi Sarcoma. These 3 illnesses became known as the ‘AIDS Indicating'. The principal cause of death was PCP, caused by a fungus that is normally harmlessly in nearly all of us, but which had suddenly become a killer. Once diagnosed, death was usually less than eleven months away.
A few hundred such cases were diagnosed in the UK and USA in the early 1980s. The patients were mostly in an urban partying gay scene in which a great deal of anal sex was fuelled by intensive and multiple drug taking.
At that time many toxicologists working for the FDA thought they knew what was causing this - over a hundred scientific papers were published in the early 1980s linking such cases to inhaled recreational drugs that caused the fungal infections of the throat and lungs. Surveys in UK, Canadian and USA cities found a 90% correlation with certain inhaled drugs. Some also blamed steroids heavily prescribed for STDs.
Then in 1984 came the discovery of what we now call HIV. There was an immediate change to diagnostic rules. HIV antibodies found with the HIV test became the key diagnostic symptom for AIDS. Antibodies are normally said to protect us. But with HIV - antibodies were said not to protect.
If antibodies against an HIV protein were found, it was predicted confidently in 1984 that within 10 years one of the above AIDS-defining and death-producing illnesses would follow. As many were now found to be HIV [antibody] positive a panic rapidly spread. It was soon predicted that 1.5 million Americans were already infected and on the way to soon dying of AIDS.
But the HIV positive did not die in such numbers - so in 1987 the CDC rewrote the official definition of AIDS to put up the numbers. In future, HIV would no longer necessary for an AIDS diagnosis.
The CDC had in 1987 run into trouble when it lobbied the White House for greatly increased funding for AIDS research, on the basis that AIDS was now a major epidemic among heterosexuals. When the White House demanded the evidence, the CDC was forced to slash its estimate of the number of Americans infected from 1.76 million to 600,000 (a cut some have since mistakenly attributed to the just-introduced antiretrovirals).
The Chicago Times reported on May 31, 1987 that ‘the nation has become transfixed by a fear of deadly disease not seen since the polio epidemics of the 1940s and 1950s' but this fear, it said, was ill-founded for ‘AIDS still ranks as one of the rarest of diseases.' ‘Deaths from AIDS are far less frequent than the various forms of heart disease that kill more than a million Americans every year, rarer even than deaths from alcohol-related liver disease, diabetes, atherosclerosis, influenza and pneumonia, motor-vehicle accidents, homicide, suicide or accidental falls in the home.'
At the same time, statistics from San Francisco indicated the AIDS epidemic might be ending. Professor Andrew Moss, an epidemiologist at the University of California, reported in 1987: ‘the serioconversion rate [numbers testing HIV antibody positive} in gay men crashed quite a few years ago. San Francisco's doing new estimates and they're a lot lower than any previous estimates' - in fact down from 21% in 1982 to just 1% in 1983 and continuing downwards for the next four years.
Remarkably, some who previously tested positive were now testing negative, as was reported by John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Professor Susanna Cunningham-Rundles of Cornell said: ‘I believe there are people who have encountered the virus and successfully fought it off.'
But within months the CDC regained the epidemic it was beginning to lose by the most extraordinary of tactics. It issued new diagnostic rules for AIDS. It did so by quietly instructing doctors that they should now diagnose AIDS even in the HIV negative if they suffer from any one of a very extended long list of ‘AIDS-indicating illnesses.'
The CDC and UK health authorities produced a list of some 17 illnesses that should be diagnosed as AIDS without laboratory evidence of HIV infection. It stated that ‘with laboratory evidence against HIV infection', (that is, with a negative HIV test) ‘any of the provided list of diseases could be diagnosed as AIDS,' (This is called the ‘Section 1 B' list) Remarkably this list includes the three original AIDS diseases, PCP fungal pneumonia, severe Candida (Thrush) of the throat or lungs, and Kaposi Sarcoma. These were in future to be called AIDS even after a negative HIV test. Since these original AIDS diseases were diagnosed in some 63% of all AIDS cases in the UK in 2006, a positive HIV test is now almost redundant for an AIDS diagnosis.
Onto this list, as not requiring a positive HIV test for an AIDS diagnosis but a CD4 count below 400, in 1987 went a further 14 new ‘AIDS indicating illnesses,' including bronchitis ‘of any duration' and a herpes ulcer suffered for more than a month. This is despite these illnesses having existed for centuries before AIDS arrived and having their own bacteria, viruses or fungi, that have to be present for the illness to be diagnosed.
This redefinition also allowed that, after a positive HIV test, a person could be diagnosed with AIDS if he or she was diagnosed with just one of a different and longer list of illnesses provided by the CDC, including septicaemia, pneumonia, meningitis, bone or joint infection, an abscess in an internal organ caused by streptococcus or other bacteria. Why such illnesses need HIV was not explained. For children, ‘multiple bacterial infections' would henceforth be sufficient for an AIDS diagnosis! Thus despite the apparent absence of HIV, a child might be put on powerful antiviral drugs.
Finally, and even more surprisingly, the CDC ruled that people who ‘have either a negative HIV antibody test' or ‘an opportunistic disease not listed in the definition as an indicator of AIDS', may be diagnosed with AIDS ‘on consideration of ... a history of exposure to HIV.' This totally astonished me. Under this, even a person with flu could be diagnosed as having AIDS despite a negative HIV test, if a friend had a positive HIV test.
By redefinition, AIDS thus became an illness that can have the most incredible range of symptoms. No wonder this redefinition caused an immediate panic! In Italy the new definition immediately put up the AIDS figures by 188%. In the US it went up by 280%! AIDS thus became by definition a collective name for a legion of old diseases, without even the need for HIV to be present. But critically this also meant that any specialist working on just one of these disorders would now be able to tap into the growing AIDS budget.
Also most importantly, with this redefinition came a great watering down of the risk factor attached to an AIDS diagnosis. With so many people now diagnosed with AIDS in the absence of the original deadly ‘AIDS Indicating diseases’, the average life expectancy after diagnosis now went up greatly without any need for medication.
in 1993 the definition of AIDS was modified once more. From this year, feeling ill no longer a necessity for an AIDS diagnosis.
In addition to the above, in future AID could be diagnosed in people who had none of the ‘AIDS Indicating’ illnesses – and did not feel ill! The CDC predicted that this redefinition would more than double the number of official AIDS cases.
The new provision added was that a person without evident symptoms of illness could be diagnosed with AIDS if they had less than 200 CD4 white blood cells in a micro-litre (#956;L) of blood The CDC estimated that there were at that time 120,000 to 190,000’ Americans who did not know they had AIDS since they were not ill, had no AIDS symptoms but who did have a CD4 Count of below 200.
This was despite low number of CD3 white blood cells being found in hospitals to have no link to poor health or poor prognosis!
This time the redefinition vastly increased the numbers of people who would immediately be prescribed the expensive chemotherapy drugs commonly known as ‘antiretrovirals’. The CDC said all American citizens with a 200 CD4 below 200 had to be warned that they already had AIDS – and instructed to start immediately on these drugs, even if they did not feel ill and were otherwise quite robust. This also meant in practice that many now put on these drugs were more able to withstand their severe side effects.
If these people were not ill beforehand, they were likely soon to be, as they now faced a lifetime on powerful chemotherapy.
The very fact they were diagnosed with HIV was enough to make many to start to feel ill. Such a diagnosis will be a major source of stress all on its own.
The new definition also added 3 diseases to the list of 23 ‘AIDS-indicating illnesses. Onto the list came TB, bacterial pneumonia and invasive cervical cancer. The addition of TB alone would greatly swell the numbers of the poor diagnosed with AIDS – especially as TB could now be diagnosed as AIDS even in the absence of HIV.
Cervical cancer was added as an Aids Indicating Disease as a result of lobbying by lesbian women who were acting in solidarity with their gay brothers. Until then very few women were diagnosed with AIDS, but this could not last, or so thought Maxine Wolfe in 1993. She logically explained that, as a virus caused AIDS, it must be an illusion that women were not getting AIDS. ‘We don’t know if women were really asymptomatic. They simply did not have male-defined symptoms.’ Cervical cancer was thus added. The result was; ‘In the half-year following, over 9,000 cases in women were reported. The number of women said to have AIDS in the US went up by 300%.’
How this is reconcilable with the vaccine announced in 2007 against a different virus said to cause cervical cancer I just cannot guess. It is another mystery of government diagnostic rules.
By 1997 according to the CDC, 61% of all new AIDS patients in the US were, at the time of their diagnosis, not suffering from any of the AIDS defining illness– and yet were put on antiretrovirals for the rest of their lives.
But, a major new killer in AIDS cases has now emerged – kidney failure, a known side effect of antiretroviral drugs. It is now a major killer in AIDS cases in the West – yet is still not listed as an ‘AIDS indicating’ illness. Other known side effects of these drugs are cancers and heart disease – and again these are now major killers in AIDS cases.
AIDS patients in the West are indeed surviving longer than they did in 1984 – the redefinitions have ensured this by including those who were in a far better state of health overall at the time of diagnosis - they are thus able to survive antiretrovirals much better.
Jan
PS - this chapter in my book is after several chapters looking at the key experiments on HIV - including the one cited today as proving HIV
causes AIDS. I show that it proved nothing of the sort - the scientist who did the work made no such claim - he did not even try to prove the virus pathogenic.
I also look at other key issues relating to AIDS - including how the HIV test works or does not work and the sexual transmission of HIV - I am happy to answer questions - as I am aware that many here may not have heard of the scientific debate over AIDS - as it is rarely reported. It seems the BBC will not put up any posts questioning HIV theory.
I also give a long list of senior professors and doctors with good university positions who are questioning if HIV causes AIDS (many coming under quite nasty attacks for doing so.)
This you can find on my website www.fearoftheinvisible.com
Janine Roberts
author of 'Fear of the Invisible'
How scared should you be of Viruses and Vaccines...
The post came from a thread over at Jabs.org.uk, a forum devoted to the support of families and sufferers of vaccine damage. The whole thread is well worth a read.
http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2854