Q: You're saying that HIV is incapable of killing the cells it's supposed to kill. How do the virus-AIDS thinkers get around this point?

 A: The primary technique is to ignore the point. The other approach is to propose hypotheses about the hypothesis.

The hypothesis is that the virus does it. And since the virus doesn't infect T-cells--and my critics agree that more than 99 percent of T-cells are uninfected--they come up with hypotheses about how the virus could possibly kills cells that are not infected. I could count probably a dozen hypotheses that have been put forward. And billions of dollars in research projects are being spent to find out if any of these hypotheses has a chance to succeed.

 


Q: The January 1990 issue of the Lancet carried reports that Kaposi's sarcoma appears in men who are HIV-negative. How does this square with the virus-AIDS hypothesis?

 A: It doesn't. You see, Kaposi's was one of the most characteristic AIDS diseases for homosexuals in the early 1980s. When you said Kaposi's, that meant AIDS. What I have asked for some time is 'If HIV is the cause of Kaposi's sarcoma, why are only homosexuals getting it?' They were getting it in the lungs, the face, and the chest--the routes along which amyl nitrite inhalants, or 'poppers', are used. Poppers have been directly correlated with the incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma--the only people in the United States to get Kaposi's were the homosexuals who were using poppers as an aphrodisiac. And as the use of poppers declined--when it was pointed out that this was a dangerous practice--the incidence of Kaposi's sarcoma declined.

I had also wondered why there are Kaposi's sarcoma cases that are free of HIV. How can you get exactly the same disease in the same risk group without HIV? That's usually the kiss of death in an etiology study: if you can get the same disease without the agent, the agent can't be the cause.

So, to answer your question, HIV has nothing to do with Kaposi's sarcoma, as the Lancet now agrees, even though this was the original hallmark disease of AIDS.

 

Q: Then what is the connection between HIV and AIDS?

 A: I think that HIV is totally irrelevant as an etiological agent in AIDS. HIV is, by definition, a part of AIDS because AIDS is defined as any of 25 diseases when they occur in the presence of antibody to the virus. But I see no evidence that it could play any role whatsoever in causing AIDS.