Nelson Mandela's son dies of AIDS

[emad]

Reuters
Posted online: Thursday, January 06, 2005 at 2018 hours IST
Updated: Thursday, January 06, 2005 at 2029 hours IST

Johannesburg, January 6: South Africa's Nelson Mandela, one of Africa's most committed campaigners in the battle against AIDS, announced that his only surviving son had succumbed to the disease on Thursday.

Makgatho Mandela, 54, died in a Johannesburg clinic where he had been receiving treatment for more than a month. His wife Zondi died in 2003 from pneumonia.

"I announce that my son has died of AIDS," the 86-year-old Nobel Peace laureate told a news conference, urging a redoubled fight against the disease.

"Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because the only way to make it appear like a normal illness like TB, like cancer, is always to come out and to say somebody has died because of HIV/AIDS. And people will stop regarding it as something extraordinary," said a frail-looking Mandela, surrounded by his grandchildren and other family members.

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=40456

[AFSCME girl]

1. Nelson Mandela is a true hero

and leader. I am so sorry for his loss :cry:

[Vidar]

2. What a man to have lived through so much tragedy & done so much for others

[puddycat]

3. No parent should ever have to bury their child. How truly sad. n/t

[FredScuttle]

4. typical compassionate conservatism from FreepWorld

I wonder if the NYT will bother checking out these posts:

To: twigs
The Mandela family refused to reveal the cause of Makgatho's illness, saying it was a private matter.
Lie down with dogs, get up with a hidious wasting disease that destroys you, your family, and leaves a hole in the memories of everyone who cares about you.

Seriously, it could have been contaminated blood. Why not release the information? I mean, does this guy have Arafat's doctor? What's the big secret? Is that an elephant in your living room, Mr. Mandela?


7 posted on 01/06/2005 6:44:58 AM PST by 50sDad ( ST3d - Star Trek Tri-D Chess! http://my.oh.voyager.net/~abartmes)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: COUNTrecount
I wonder if his mom Winnie will cremate him by draping a burning tire around his neck?



8 posted on 01/06/2005 6:45:42 AM PST by Kenton ("Life is tough, and it's really tough when you're stupid" - Damon Runyon)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: COUNTrecount
Maybe I have compasion fatigue, but it's kind of hard to feel sorry for someone dumb enough to become an AIDS Monkey in this day and age. His parents are monsters so it's difficult to feel for them as well.

Owl_Eagle


"You know, I'm going to start thanking
the woman who cleans the restroom in
the building I work in. I'm going to start
thinking of her as a human being"


-Hillary Clinton
(Yes, she really said that
Peggy Noonan
The Case Against Hillary Clinton, pg 55)


16 posted on 01/06/2005 6:52:48 AM PST by Owl_Eagle (Fly Eagles Fly, On the Road to Victory! Fly Eagles Fly, Score a Touchdown One Two Three!)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: Tribune7
I respect what he's been through as well but he's more then a lefty. He's a full fledged communist.



18 posted on 01/06/2005 6:54:13 AM PST by Borges
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: COUNTrecount
"We have called you today to announce that my son has died of AIDS," Mandela told reporters...
And I and the rest of the sane world should care because...?


22 posted on 01/06/2005 6:57:49 AM PST by OldSmaj (Islam is a false religion. It's adherents and followers are doomed to hell.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: COUNTrecount
Um... OK? So you it was too private/personal while the son was still breathing but now that he's DEAD, let's use him as a political talking point.
What a creep Mandela is.


30 posted on 01/06/2005 7:13:51 AM PST by newzjunkey (Demand Mexico Turnover Fugitive Murderers: http://www.escapingjustice.com)
----------------------------------------------------------------------

To: COUNTrecount
All he had to do was have sex to a virgin, and everything would have been ok.



31 posted on 01/06/2005 7:15:28 AM PST by hoosierboy
----------------------------------------------------------------------

(you can see the rest of the lovely humanity at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1315232/posts)

[eleonora]

6. Callous

I hope their cheating husbands and wives get HIV+ to give it to them zealot idiots. :nuke: them all.

[TyeDye75]

46. Monsters you say

Maybe I have compasion fatigue, but it's kind of hard to feel sorry for someone dumb enough to become an AIDS Monkey in this day and age. His parents are monsters so it's difficult to feel for them as well.

*sarcasm on*

Monsters you say

So I suppose this is God punishing said monster for freeing the people of South Africa from Apartheid and working tirlessly well into old age to improve the lot of people allover Africa.

Yes that Monster Mandella will surely Burn in hell.

*sarcasm off*

[American Tragedy]

5. Furthermore, let us make it clear that HIV is NOT a fucking "hoax"

as some have chosen to claim.

My condolences to Mandela and his family.

[Maraya1969]

7. Whatever you say:

http://groups.msn.com/HAARTisHeartless

The man died AFTER being treated. Doesn't that make you question the treatment?

Besides, when are you going to show me a REAL EM photograph of "HIV" and not one of particles and cellular debris?

[barb162]

10. I am losing you here. Do you think HIV doesn't exist? Lots of people

die after being treated for heart disease. I don't think I question the treatments for heart disease, even after the person dies as treatment is often started late into the disease and the condition has become severe and life-threatening

[KenCarson]

16. i think an issue is that the disease is politicized in a way that cancer

is not.

[Maraya1969]

22. There are certain standards that are used to prove the existence

of a virus and other standards used to prove that that virus is harmful. None of these standards were used when "HIV" was "discovered". It is not all the medical community's fault - remember how many people were going nuts back when AIDS was first diagnoses? Because of the hysteria a lot of steps were omitted. Basically 'HIV" has never been proven to cause AIDS and it has never been isolated, (found as a complete entity - all those photos that someone posted to contain "particles" - it is as if you are looking at a lung and declaring it is the lung of a cat. The point is you really do not know where that lung came from).

Unfortunately AIDS has become big business since then and the pharmaceutical companies exert tremendous efforts in attempts to stop any information that does not fit into their marketing strategies. If you think that these companies would never do such a thing just look at the Viox scandal that recently happened. They knew this drug was dangerous and they suppressed the evidence.

I am not into telling anyone to stop taking their medicines. I just believe in informed consent. And I think it is reprehensible for doctors to tell people they are going to "die". It is akin to a Voodoo hex of death. I have seen studies where people actually die after given these hexes. Do they die from the Hex or do they and everyone around them stress them to death? I think it is the latter.

[Jesus H. Christ]

25. Your "science" is bogus.

The "earthquake was man-made" conspiracy theory has more grounding in the crap idea that "HIV doesn't cause AIDS.

[Liberal Veteran]

32. Yet not one person has stepped up to the plate to inject themselves w/HIV

Why is that?

Oh, yes, there was the 61 year man who did it in the early 90's. A pity he died a year later of heart failure.

Are you willing to bet your life on your theory? I am sure there are many people who would be more than willing to donate some contaminated blood products for you to test your theory once and for all.

[Maraya1969]

37. That is a moot point

It is dumb to directly insert anyone’s blood, “HIV”+ or not, directly into your veins. That is why blood is prepared before infusions. There are plenty of microbes, viruses and other bugs in the blood. I wouldn’t want the healthiest person on the planet’s blood injected into my veins. However there was another doctor in Germany(?) who injected himself with a person who had tested “HIV” and is fine.

That is one of the reasons it is not a good idea to have unprotected anal sex as you are taking another person’s fluids directly into your blood through tears in the colon. Semen itself has an immunosuppressant in it to help a fertilized egg to not be rejected from the womb of the woman. The body naturally wants to get rid of foreign objects. And if you do this with numerous people as the early AIDS patients did, (they all admitted to over 1,000 partners in one year), you are just stressing your immune system beyond repair. I think that is one of the reasons they got sick, besides all of the drug use.


Besides that, who would want to inject someone's blood that is filled with antiviral drugs?


If you want to read about the problems associated with receiving foreign blood check out this site on hemophilia:

http://www.medceu.com/tests/hemophilia.htm

A few paragraphs down it talks about several viruses that can be transferred by receiving another person’s blood.

Also here are some conclusions from scientific studies of hemophiliacs that show they suffer from immune problems unrelated to “HIV”.


Impaired immune function in hemophilia patients treated exclusively with cryoprecipitate: relation to duration of treatment.
Pollack, S., D. Arias, G. Yoffe, R. Katz, Y. Shechter & I. Tatarsky
"Derangement of immune function in hemophiliacs results from transfusion of foreign proteins or a ubiquitious virus rather than contracting AIDS infectious agent". In 1985 HIV was extremely rare in blood concentrates outside the U.S., but immunodeficiency was observed in Israeli, Scottish, and American hemophiliacs.
Am. J. Hematol. 20: 1-6, 1985 1985

HTLV-III/LAV antibody and immune status of household contacts and sexual partners of persons with hemophilia.
Jason, J.M., J.S. McDougal, G. Dixon, D.N. Lawrence, M.S. Kennedy, M. Hilganner, L. Aledort & B.L. Evatt
Jason et al. from the CDC observed that, "Hemophiliacs with immune abnormalities may not necessarily be infected with HTLV-III/LAV, since factor concentrate itself may be immune suppressive even when produced from a population of donors not at risk for AIDS".

Hemophiliac immunodeficiency: influence of exposure to factor VIII concentrate, LAV/HTLV-III, and herpesviruses.
Sullivan, J.L., E.E. Brewster, D.B. Brettler, A.D. Forsberg, S.H. Cheeseman, K.S. Byron, S.M. Baker, D.L. Willitts, R.A. Lew & E.H. Levine,
Sullivan et al. deduced from a comprehensive study of hemophiliacs that "hemophiliacs receiving commercial factor VIII concentrate experience several stepwise incremental insults to the immune system: alloantigens in factor VIII concentrate ... Seropositivity to LAV/HTLV-III (HIV) was 70% for the hemophiliac population and ... varied directly with the amount of factor VIII received".

[Liberal Veteran]

40. Yeah, I remember that guy....he died a year later of a heart attack!

Bummer that.

Duh. Virii can be transmitted by blood? Who'd a thunk?

Hey, here's a crazy idea! I bet you could even transmit virii through other fluids like semem or vaginal secretions.

I can't wait until you get to my post with pictures of HIV and my post about phenotyping and genotyping. I'm breathlessly awaiting your explanation for how the non-existant virus can be genotyped and phenotyped for mutations to determine what drugs the virus is no longer sensitive to.

Sorry to be so blunt, but I sincerely believe that HIV denialists are dangerous to public health.

[Liberal Veteran]

43. Wow...I just read your post again and was appalled.

Over 1000 partners per yer on average. One wonders where these guys found time to work having sex with an average 3 different people per day? Hell, most guys I know would die of exhaustion if they had that much sex a day.

You don't really believe that shit, do you?

I probably was reading these theories a long time before you even thought about it. I was reading about Deusberg from Celia Farber's articles in SPIN back in the 87 while watching so many of my friends get sick and die.

I contracted HIV in 85 so I am pretty early too. Number of sexual partners at the time = 1. Drug use = none.

Funny thing is that none of your little theories pan out, and are you guys ever gonna come up with something new? You guys haven't been coming up with anything new since 1995. Doncha think in a decade you might have something new to offer than the same old tired stuff that has been debunked over and over ad nauseum?

In the meantime, study after study has shown the correlation between viral load and t-cell depletion. Three new classes of drugs have come to the market. Genotyping and phenotyping testing was invented which can actually tell you which drugs your particular drugs your HIV might be resistant to based on the mutations detected.

I know there is no getting through to those who cling denialist nonsense. I've watched them turn on their own when one of their members has the bad taste to die from something that looks amazing like AIDS (but according to denialists, is not). You remember poor Huw Christie? From heroic challenger of the status quo to drug abusing workaholic in less than a day. Sad stuff that.

Michael Callen....dead.
Peter Mobaka...dead.
Ronnie Burk....dead.
David Pasquarelli...dead.

Those last two are really interesting considering how they worked so hard together in San Francisco disrupting meetings and preaching the gospel on AIDS being a myth. Shouting "AIDS IS OVER!" at every opportunity.

Such a tragic loss for the denialists within a year. Poor Ronnie. Health declined terribly in the last year. Lost a lot of weight, was eventually bedridden due to "stress". Official cause of death: Stroke. At the ripe old age of 47. And David? Poor David. His official cause of death was CMV, which oddly tends to kills people with suppressed immune systems. He died at the ripe old age of 36.

To an extent I even understand it the appeal of such groups, especially throughout the 90's. I mean, for most people, the first decade of having HIV you feel perfectly fine. It's so easy to get suckered into believing that maybe you aren't really gonna die even though you have tested positive for HIV. Maybe there is something to their arguments. And they are oh-so compelling, using old data and old studies and half-truths and have a couple of scientists on board to explain away all those deaths in the 80's (like the 1000's of partners a year and heavy drug use and repeated STD infection).

Unfortunately, HIV has a way of winning that argument most of the time. It's so subtle and gradual you'd hardly notice it. Then one day you find yourself in the hospital with Pneumocystis or MAC or a yeast infection that is so severe in your esophogasus it's hard to even eat or a KS lesion pops up.

Fortunately, most people have sense enough to re-examine the notion at the point. Look at Sean Current. He bought the denialist party line hook line and sinker and even helped evangelize like you are doing. Then he got sick. Strangely, so did his boyfriend not long after. Diagnosis, Kaposis Sarcoma. Both eventually moved to conventional HIV treatment and got better.

You can read about his story and a couple of other ex-dissidents here: http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/17/hiv.html

The article is from 2000, but hey, the movement hasn't really changed all much in the last decade or so anyway except of course for the revolving door of people who either die or come to their senses and a couple of people who may actually be long term non-progressors and of course those not even infected with HIV at all.

As you may have noted, this isn't my first time at this particular rodeo.

I don't think you were here the last time a denialist and I butted heads as it were. Eventually, the guy got so flustered he called in his friends from the AIDS MYTH MSN group. He got Paul King which is a psuedonym of a particularly active dissident who even went so far as to suggest that I was plant from the pharmaceutical industry.

[Maraya1969]

47. Read this

http://www.sumeria.net/aids/john-l/poppers-ks.html

Even Robert Gallo admitted 10 years ago that HIV could not, by itself, cause KS.

And the latest is KS is caused by HHV8 - some type of Herpes Virus.

[Liberal Veteran]

48. Read this....

20 years later, Gallo looks at AIDS, future

http://www.ihv.org/news/sun111204.html

or this from 1998.
http://www.aids.org/atn/a-299-03.html

III. Antibodies against tat and alpha interferon. Dr. Gallo believes (as do most HIV researchers) that HIV kills some T-cells directly--but that the larger loss is because even the uninfected T-cells do not proliferate properly. Dr. Gallo believes that part of the problem with the uninfected cells is caused by overproduction of alpha interferon (a natural inhibitor of cell proliferation) in HIV disease. Another cause of the abnormal lack of proliferation of uninfected cells may be the tat protein, which is produced by HIV and may have various harmful effects; Dr. Gallo cited recent evidence that high levels of antibodies against tat correlate with patients doing better. Also, in laboratory tests, removing tat and excessive alpha interferon from cell cultures can restore T-cell proliferation to normal.

Or in 1999 he gave a seminar entitled: How HIV Functions, Multiplies, and Causes Disease: Possible New Approaches to Therapy


Checkmate!

See how you take a half quote out of context to support your agenda? As I said, those who for whatever reason still cling to the HIV denialist school of thought will play copy and paste from virusmyth constantly which is totally out of date and ignore the incredible advances of the last decade because it really doesn't fit what is more a belief system than real science.

It's like creationists. They aren't really versed in really science which admittedly hasn't filled in every single detail of evolutionary theory. The creationists use the gaps in our knowledge to throw out the entire evolutionary theory.

Same thing here. We've gone from "there's no picture of HIV" which seems to indicate you believe that HIV doesn't exist, to trying to rationalize your way into my good graces by throwing out an old quote of Gallo's. Bet you won't even admit he appears to fully support HIV/AIDS theory now. Not to mention, no response to post 33 where I asked what genotyping and phenotypic of HIV viral mutations, a science which has been in clinical use for some time now, is actually able to detect which mutations of the virus actually exist and how that might affect which drugs are effective for you.

What do you suppose they are measuring? Nothing?

[Maraya1969]

50. My point was......

that YOUR link to Bruce Mirken's articles sites two men who were dx'd with AIDS because they had KS. And KS was recognized years ago as a condition that was not directly associated with HIV.

And as far as the genotyping I don't know what they are "typing". It could be a ham sandwich for all I know. I did ask Brian Foley, an orthodox AIDS researcher on the online British Medical Journal to stop printing out all the CCCCC's and EEEEE's and show me a photo of what he was actually talking about and he couldn't. Neither could any other researcher. However one brilliant guy posted an EM photo of something he knew I would not recognize. Thankfully it was pointed out by another research team to be an oncovirus.

An AIDS researcher posting a photo of an oncovirus and "implying", (he said something to the effect of, "Is this good enough for you?") it to be "HIV"?

No, the orthodoxy is not deceitful at all! I mean, the only thing they have to lose is - THEIR JOBS!

[Liberal Veteran]

51. Pitiful.

Just pitiful.

The fact is that ALL diseases associated with HIV were identified long before AIDS.

Let's look at the incidence of these diseases before and after the AIDS crisis of the 80's.

Kaposi's Sarcoma: Originally a disease that affected most men of mediterranean origin who were elderly or had undergone immunosuppressive therapy. There were about 2 to 6 cases of KS for every ten million people in the United States. Average age of person who had diagnosed KS 61. From 1973-1979, researchers could not find a single reported case of KS in young men. By 1994, over 36,000 cases of young men with KS were reported.

Kinda odd, eh?

Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia: Caused by a common pathogen that all of us have been exposed to. A study in 1967 found only 107 documented cases of this extremely rare form of pneumonia and virtually ALL of these cases were documented in people with an underlying immunosuppressive condition or undergoing immunosuppressive therapy. Indeed there was only one case there was no underlying cause documented. By 1994, there were over 127,000 documented cases of cases of this extremely rare pneumonia.

That's quite a coincidence.

Mycobacterium avium complex: Prior to 1981, there were only 32 documented cases of disseminated MAC in ALL medical literature. By 1994, there were around 29,000 cases of this diagnosed.

Kinda bizarre, huh?

Those are three big causes of death in AIDS. It's just coincidental that the incidence of these diseases among HIV-seronegative individuals with similar lifestyles to those who are HIV-seropositive is practically non-existant.

For example, in one cohort in Vancouver, investigators followed 715 homosexual men for a median of 8.6 years. Every case of AIDS in this cohort occurred in individuals who were positive for HIV antibodies. No AIDS-defining illnesses occurred in men who remained negative for HIV antibodies, despite the fact that these men had appreciable patterns of illicit drug use and receptive anal intercourse.

So you continue to cling to your fringe beliefs.

Your beliefs propose NOTHING in my sight. I've got AIDS. I got AIDS despite having a very low number of sexual partners and no history of drug use.

I've been taking the drugs you think are poison for 5 years this month and I haven't gotten WORSE. I got better.

Still a shame that two very public members of the denialist movement in SF died of "not-AIDS yet suspiciously AIDS-like" illnesses last year after declaring that "AIDS is over". That must be quite troubling, but hey, people die all the time right....

....it's all big conspiracy and a series of unfortunate coincidences.

[Maraya1969]

53. This is going nowhere

I'm happy that the medications are helping you. We can debate for months but where is it going to get us?

I would like to give you a link where immune stimulating treatments are explained and referenced. I certainly believe that the immune system can become depressed. There are plenty of situations where this can happen, (even cases like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome).

What many people have found is there is a lack of glutatione in an immune suppressed person. There are ways to increase the levels using supplements.

http://www.altheal.org/treatments/oxidative.htm

[NickB79]

13. Question the treatment? Yes, to a degree

There are plenty of people out there who die of cancer after being treated with chemotherapy, yet we don't claim chemo isn't beneficial. You are trying to make the claim that HIV treatment is somehow a cure for HIV, when no one has ever said it was. It is widely known that HIV treatments simply extend the life of an infected individual; eventually the HIV virus develops an immunity to the drugs and overcomes them. Could we develop better and cheaper drug regiments to combat the virus? Yes. Does that mean treatment with what we have now is pointless? No.

Quite a wealth of HIV photos here: http://www.virology.net/Big_Virology/BVretro.html

[Liberal Veteran]

14. Yeah, magically, the antivirals I have been taking for 5 years...

...that freaks who don't believe in HIV also call POISON and responsible for HIV have brought me from 22 t-cells to over 200 and I haven't had an illness since that day or any of the poisonous side effects (and one of my drugs is AZT).

I don't mind saying that people who people that HIV is not responsible for AIDS are dangerous and delusional.

I didn't drink, ate right, exercised, didn't do any drugs, didn't have any other STD's and magically my immune system collapsed about 14 years after being infected with HIV from a person who died of AIDS in 1990.

I never took an antiviral until after I got sick with full blown aids (pneumonia, esophageal candiasis, and weighing 110lbs).

According to the AIDS denialists, I shouldn't have gotten BETTER when I started taking the poisons they call anti-virals....I should have gotten worse and died.

But somehow I am healthier than I have been in the better part of a decade.

Your conspiracy theory proposes NOTHING in my eyes.

[girl gone mad]

15. This seems like thread hijacking,

but I agree that there are still questions about HIV which need to be answered.

Fortunately, I'm not faced with the choice, but I don't think I would ever take AZT. It's a very toxic drug that was approved for treating AIDS without ever having to go through phase III trials, because of activism (some experts point to this event as the start of the downfall of the FDA). There was a long term study in France several years ago that showed the drug to have no benefit, at the very least.

The good news is that some researchers are starting to move away from drug treatment models of HIV and are looking into promising new modes of therapy that won't cause the kind of cell death and extreme side effects today's drugs do.

I think it's well past time to go in a new direction, since after two decades and billions of dollars, we still don't have a cure, and it probably isn't asafe to stay on chemotherapy agents for 10+ years.

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Let me clear up a couple of things for you on that.

The study you are referring to is known as the Concorde study and it was done at a time when AZT was being using in MUCH HIGHER doses and as monotherapy. The finding were that the benefits of monotherapy with AZT were transient at best.

AZT as part of a combination therapy is much different. It is taken in much lower doses and it has been PROVEN to be effective in much longer studies to be an effective and beneficial antiviral in combination with other drugs (as well as preventing perinatal transmission of HIV in pregnant women).

No antiviral is without side effects of some sort and not all people respond equally.

From my own experiences. I have taken AZT in combination with efavirenz and 3TC for 5 years now, with NO side effects and my viral load has been undetectable since 3 months after starting the therapy.

AZT got a bad rap early on because of how it was originally used in high doses and as monotherapy (as opposed to effective therapy which requires 3 or more antivirals). In monotherapy, the virus mutates quickly and becomes resistant to the effects of AZT. The same is true for dual-therapy as well. What triple therapy does is if a single viral mutation to say AZT allows the virus to ignore the drugs ability to stop replication, then one of the other two drugs prevents it, thus keeping that single virus from multiplying and leaving the ones that are still affected by AZT (or any of the other drugs).

AZT in and of itself is not a bad drug. I was scared to death of it when I first started taking it, but it has been very effective as part of my regimen.

[Maraya1969]

19. The problem is what they are using a a measuring tool for "effectiveness"

"AZT as part of a combination therapy is much different. It is taken in much lower doses and it has been PROVEN to be effective in much longer studies to be an effective and beneficial antiviral in combination with other drugs (as well as preventing perinatal transmission of HIV in pregnant women)."



A quantitative PCR viral load is, as Dr. Kerry Mullis, its inventor puts is, an OXYMORON. These drugs kills lots of things so it would make sense that, in the short run, this type of inappropriate use of PCR technique would show "effective" results.

And T cells were never even bothered with before it was stated, "We think we have isolated the virus that causes AIDS". Even now, only people who have been diagnosed with "HIV" are subject to having their T cells counted. Complete Blood Cell counts or CBC's do not include T cells. So that might give you an insight as to how important they are in the general scheme of things.

Until you prove that "HIV" exists as a whole entity unto itself and that it causes illness these numbers mean nothing. And bringing up the point that AZT and other antiviral drugs stop transmission from mother to child just makes my blood boil. Look at the horrible side effects of these drugs and then tell me you think they should be given to tiny embryos when "HIV" has not even been isolated.

Check this important link out but beware - there are graphic photos.

http://groups.msn.com/GlaxoWellcomeKleineexposed/evilhome.msnw?&pps=k

[girl gone mad]

23. Using the PCR to test viral load is flawed, as you noted.

Anyone who is interested in learning why can seek out the comments of Dr. Mullis and other exoerts for themselves.

That's just one of many problems I have with current HIV theory. There wasn't any peer review done on the initial discovery of HIV virus, and the discoverer quickly developed and marketed the HIV test which has made him very wealthy (he's far from the only player with a financial conflict of interest). Competing theories were abandoned almost instantly.

I don't think we should necessarily throw out the baby with the bathwater, though. Good things are coming about now as the research community has started to focus more on ways to repair the immune system rather than simply on ways to kill the virus. Those efforts could potentially benefit patients with many different illnesses.

I had a friend who was getting very sick on the drugs, but the doctor would tell him each visit "You're viral load is going down, you're getting better" even as my friend was wasting away to nothing.

[Liberal Veteran]

30. Kerry Mullis however is wrong...

He is wrong about the use of viral load testing and wrong about his theory that global warming is hype.

Study after stufy after study has determined that the overwhelming majority of people who achieve an undetectable viral load do not suffer a progression of t-cell depletion while majority of those who do not have their viral load under control, continue to lose t-cell until they start to experience opportunistic infections.



That's pretty damn empirical. Sorry to say, we've been using the viral load/cd4 count as the diagnostic tests for almost a decade a now and the bottom line is the correlation is a bit to strong to dismiss.

Beginning in 1995 John Mellors and colleagues published a series of articles detailing MACS cohort data showing a strong correlation between baseline viral load and subsequent disease progression. Using stored blood samples from patients' early study visits, Mellors examined the rates of AIDS-defining events and deaths in relation to viral load levels measured using bDNA. In a 1604-patient sample, only 0.9 percent of those whose baseline viral load was 500 copies or lower died of AIDS within six years, while 69.5 percent of those whose viral load was greater than 30,000 copies died. "Plasma viral load was the single best predictor of outcome," Mellors wrote, "followed by CD4+ lymphocyte counts and neopterin levels, B2-microglobulin levels, and thrush or fever. We observed a strong association between viral load and the subsequent rate of decline in CD4+ lymphocyte counts."

Similarly strong associations between viral load levels and clinical outcome have been reported in numerous other cohort studies, including the 1170-patient EuroSIDA cohort23 and the Multicenter Hemophilia Cohort Study, among others. In the hemophilia cohort, "each log(10) increase in baseline viral load was associated with a five-fold increase in risk for AIDS-related illness during the first six months of follow-up." The predictive value of viral load was independent of that of CD4 count.

One particularly interesting study looked at viral load in gay men in the Baltimore MACS cohort and injection drug users in the Baltimore "AIDS Link to Intravenous Experiences" (ALIVE) cohort. Rather than measuring plasma HIV-RNA in the usual way, using PCR or bDNA, this study looked at cell-associated infectious viral load using the quantitative microculture assay. This method "quantifies the biologically functional and infectious cell-associated HIV-1 by measuring the amount of HIV infected cells capable of infecting donor cells from an uninfected person in culture." Looking at the risk of AIDS-defining infections, non-AIDS-defining bacterial infections, and death, the researchers found that "higher levels of infectious viral load were significantly related to increased hazards for all three outcomes," with little difference between the gay men and the intravenous drug users. After adjusting for CD4 level and numerous other factors, viral load was strongly predictive of risk of progression to AIDS.

The association between viral load (measured using bDNA or PCR) and clinical progression has been seen consistently in HIV treatment trials, including the meta-analysis of seven studies discussed above, in which "each 10-fold decrease in HIV-1 RNA was associated with a 51 percent reduction in progression risk." In both the pivotal trial of ritonavir and ACTG 320,11 patients randomly assigned to the protease inhibitor arm showed significantly better suppression of viral load and significantly reduced AIDS-defining events.

After reviewing the available data, including numerous studies not listed here, the expert panel convened by the Department of Health and Human Services to determine HIV treatment guidelines recommended using both CD4 and viral load in conjunction with the clinical condition of the patient to guide therapeutic decision-making. The panel noted, "Multiple analyses in over 5,000 patients who participated in approximately 18 trials with viral load monitoring showed a statistically significant dose-response type association between decreases in plasma viremia and improved clinical outcome."

[Jesus H. Christ]

31. Disgusting, isn't it?

I miss the good old days, with manmade earthquakes.

[NickB79]

42. Look at the horrible side-effect of being born with HIV

Death.

[Maraya1969]

20. May I just point out that 3TC has antioxidant properties

which probably corrects the harmful side effects of AZT and other antivirals.

I am glad you are doing well and I am glad you are taking 3TC.

[Maat]

24. Thanks for the information and your story.

I appreciate it.

[girl gone mad]

27. I hope that you continue to have success on your meds,

Everyone has to make the choices that they feel are best for themselves. I agree that the lower doses are much safer than what was first given.

My hope for you and for every HIV patient is that safer and more effective (and affordable) treatments will be available soon. Six years ago many in the medical community were saying that a cure for HIV would never be possible because of the mutability of the virus. Today, there is more reason than ever to believe that the immune system of HIV patients could be permanently restored, if not completely cured of the virus.

[slutticus]

34. WTF?

There are many electron micrograph images of HIV.

I'm curious, what is your scientific background?

[Liberal Veteran]

35. I wonder what these are pictures of.....

http://www1.omi.tulane.edu/departments/pathology/fermin/HIVFIGSTable.html

[Maraya1969]

45. They are particles

It is like showing a photo of part of the Lock Ness Monster. Upon closer inspection you realize that the photo is of a duck.


Here is a website with photos of truly isolated viruses. Click on "Electron Micrograph" and you will see how different they look. Also note that they do not have a photo of HIV.

http://biology.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2FICTVdb%2FImages%2F

[Jesus H. Christ]

38. That's why she said EM photograph.

Implying that electron micrographs aren't "real" (her word).

Obviously she's been debunked before and knows how to dodge.

[Maraya1969]

44. NO I did not say EM'S were not real!

I said that there was no EM photograph of HIV. Every EM photograph of HIV is of "Particles" or contains so much cellular debris that you can't tell what you are looking at.

But the Orthodox AIDS industry puts them out and tells people, "Look! this is the AIDS virus" and most people do not know what a virus looks like and what an isolated EM photograph of a virus looks like so they are easily fooled into believing that "HIV" has actually been FOUND when it has not.

[slutticus]

52. So how qualified are you at differentiating between HIV capsids...

...and cellular "particles"? I noticed you dodged my question before.

What is your scientific background?

And EMs are not "photographs" for chrissakes.

[Maraya1969]

8. An Anonymous first hand account of the AIDS drugs

Both of us used HAART for an extended period of time, and both of us have been off for a while. 3 years for myself – a little less for him, I think. We have been sharing our “recovery” experiences for about a year now.

What I am sending is hard for me to write about, it makes me feel very vulnerable, especially in a looks-driven culture like ours. I am only able to do it because a lot of it is behind me now.

I was ’diagnosed’ in 1989. I was prompted to test after my partner at the time decided to get the test and it came back positive. Mine was positive also – CD4 count 462, no VL’s back then. I had no symptoms, but was told “…unfortunately, the virus is already destroying your immune system. You must start AZT immediately.”

Later I was told I would start to get sick in about 18 months, and then I would get very sick within 2 years – and die. I won’t go into the psychological ramifications of all that since you asked about the drugs. It was high dose AZT all the way back then – every 4 hours – night and day. I started sometime around Christmas.

All I remember for the first several months or so is sleeping, throwing up, an unimaginable nausea (I actually had to get rid of a puppy I got as a present that year because I couldn’t stand his smell), and an unending headache.

I got weaker by the day. I remember a walk to a convenience store less than 2 blocks away in which I was so fatigued and confused that I collapsed in the street. I couldn’t sleep.

I lost a lot of my hair. I lost my ass. I got sicker. Remember, I didn’t have ANY symptoms before starting the drug. After a year I thought “Well, if I only have another year, I’m not spending it like this.” So I stopped the pills. I was living in the city and had been scared to put the empty bottles outside for the garbage men (someone might have seen my name on a label).

I remember collecting them all in a big bag and just freaking over how many pills I must have taken – and I didn’t even know what I know now.


Now, as plain as day, I remember the prancing unicorn with Wellcome underneath it on that damned pill. It was a strangely pretty ‘medicine’. Anyway,I slowly got better over the years – I may have made a full recovery that time, I don’t know. I started living again, though, for sure. .Oh...my CD4 count NEVER went above 500 during the whole experience.

In ’97, I started ‘the cocktail’. Sounded nice enough. It consisted of Crixivan, Epivir, and Zerit (instead of AZT because according to my Doc I had had a ‘bad’ reaction to AZT). I got the same symptoms as before, but they got a little better after several months. I didn’t know about lipo at the time, but boy, I thought I was really aging fast. I was 34. Before I knew it I had moderate/severe lipoatrophy (fat loss) and myopathy (muscle loss).

My arms had stretch marks at the bicep area and looked like shriveled balloons. My biceps had always drawn a lot of attention before this. My legs started looking like a road map (protruding veins) and I lost my ass completely. I remember my arms always being tired because I held my body up with them when I sat down due to the fact that I sat on bone.

My ass chaffed a lot from my cheek skin rubbing while I sat on it. My face was the worst. Hollow cheeks and temples and no fat anywhere. When I smiled, the skin looked like someone pulling back curtains on a stage. I looked extremely shriveled up and old for my age. My eye sockets were hollow, my eyes looked sunken in. I always looked kind of scared, like an animal caught in a car light.

My skin became very thin in all those areas. It felt like the skin you tear off when eating baked chicken. I wanted to have fat transplanted from my body to my face at one point. When I went for the procedure, they couldn't get any fat out of my body to put in my face. They gave up. The cosmetic surgeon said he had never seen anything so “fibrous” as the fat he was trying to get out of my hip. I had been handsome, muscular, fun – now, when I went out, people looked past me.

Or worse…AT ME! I had never experienced that before. It really got to me – especially when I came to know it was the ‘meds’ causing it and not age/AIDS. I felt awful too. More and more I could do less and less. I couldn’t go to the gym anymore. I couldn’t walk very far.

I had aches in my joints all the time and I began have panic attacks for the first time in my life. I was eventually put on an anti-seizure drug for them as nothing else would help. I am convinced these were caused by damage to my nervous system.

In addition to lipoatrophy, I also developed lipohypertrophy (fat accumulation) in my ab area and my upper back. This was bad too. I couldn't breathe well as the fat was literally pressing my lungs closed.

My abs were rock hard but pushing way out because they were stretched from the inside out. They were always sore – like after a good workout, but I hadn’t done anything. I always felt like I was falling forward when I walked and pulled my back out a lot. I also ripped ligaments in my leg several times and developed sleep apnea from fat accumulating in my throat. I had a lot of fat accumulated on my back too. I had a really hard time holding up my head.

It felt like I was in a constant struggle with someone who was pushing my head down from behind. It was on my neck AND shoulders. It never looked like the pictures I've seen, but I was really big on top. People thought I played football. I couldn’t button the top button on my shirts either. I won’t even tell you the psychological hell I was going through when all this was happening.

Eventually, I knew it was the ‘meds’, but was terrified to stop. My highest CD4 count during this whole time was 550 – but they weren’t declining and my VL was undetectable – and that’s all ol’ Doc cared about. Not the disfigurement, not the skyrocketing cholesterol, not the constant sprains, torn ligaments, back and breathing problems. After 3 1⁄2 years I had had enough. I figured I was the living dead already so what the hell – again I threw out the meds. By now it was Crixivan and combivir (which is AZT and something else, maybe Epivir – yeah back to AZT because unfortunately I had a worse reaction to Zerit than I had to AZT LOL).

Then…nothing. I held my breath – waiting for IT. Oddly, I began to feel better. I got stronger – and calmer. Around a year and a half after stopping, I was rubbing my eyes and realized the skin on my face was thicker.

I thought about it and realized I had been sitting down without the use of my arms for a while w/o realizing it – my ass was coming back. Slowly – ever so slowly, I began to see improvements in all areas. I went back out to a bar and yes – there was that look in guys’ eyes again. They were looking at me … in a good way. By this time, I didn’t really care much about that, it was the fact that I was looking normal again that thrilled me.
It’s been 3 years since I stopped the meds. I can still see scars from that time – my body is not the body I used to have.

But it’s better. I’m back at the gym, feeling good, no panic attacks. I do fear, however, what might be brewing on the inside – the long term effects of having taken that stuff. I’ve had several friends killed by these meds and one put in a wheelchair by them. I also know people who were ‘pos’ around the time I tested, have never taken the drugs, and they are fine as far as I can tell.

I’ve yet to have any health problems (other than med induced) even though I became “full blown” about 10 years ago – due to a CD4 count of 125. I haven’t seen an ID Doc in about 1 1⁄2 years. I do see Matt Irwin for preventative measures. If you all have question, just ask.

[barb162]

9. do you think you are one of the people who can be normal without

meds. I saw a person on TV similar to you (better or normal without the meds) a few years ago. I think there are a lot of allergic reactions,including death, to medications that MDs and drug companies don't like to talk about for obvious reasons.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bridget Burke]

12. Glad you're back in the gym.

My friends who were diagnosed as HIV+ were "too early" for the drugs that hurt you so much.

They're all dead.

[Maraya1969]

18. So are all the ones that took AZT back then n/t

[Liberal Veteran]

33. Not a fact at all.

There are a number of people who originally took AZT back then that are still alive.

Unfortunately as monotherapy, it's use was extremely limited.

It wasn't until about 1996 that people started taking combination therapy involving three or more drugs.

And strangely, it was about that time, that people stopped dying in such large numbers. Odd isn't it, how the number of people dying from AIDS started to taper off at about the same time that HAART became the standard for treatment and viral load testing to monitor the effectiveness of the meds came into being.

That's quite a coincidence.

One thing I never have asked an AIDS denialist. If HIV doesn't really exist, then how DO they manage to do genotyping and phenotyping of the virus to determine what mutations the virus currently exists and what meds it might be resistant to?

How do they determine this particular table on virus that doesn't exist?

The table gives tells which mutations are confer resistance to a particular drug.


* AZT: M41L, D67N, K70R, T215 Y/F, K219Q/E
* ddI: K65R, L74V, V75T, M184V
* ddC: K65R, T69D, L74V, V75T, M184V
* d4T: V75T
* 3TC: M184 V/T/I
* abacavir: K65R, L74V, M184V
* nevirapine: V106A, Y181 C/I, Y188C
* multidrug resistance: F77L, F116Y, Q151M, M184V, G333E

Is that all bogus too? Was Kerry Mullis involved?

[Stuckinthebush]

49. Jesus H. Christ!

There are actually people on this board who don't believe that HIV exists!!???

My god. Let them meet the families that I have worked with who have lost children and spouses and friends because of this "hoax". Let them talk to the doctors I work with who research this disease. Let them talk to the HIV nurse practitioners I know who have seen time and time and time again the benefits of anti-viral therapy.

Jeez. I'm really floored by this.

[Just Me]

21. OMG!!! I am so sorry for your losses Mr. Mandela.

So, sorry :cry:

[Maat]

26. God bless him.

I just pray his energy will be able to live with his son's in an enlightened place one day.

[David Zephyr]

28. Sorry to Hear This. Mandela is My Hero.

This man has suffered enough his whole life and always on behalf of others. I am sorry to see him have even more grief to bear.

[Cheswick2.0]

41. Some people fall apart from suffering in life. Some people

become saints. Mandela is a saint.

[quiet.american]

29. What a painful loss. My heart goes out to him & his family. n/t

[Tight_rope]

36. My deepest condolences to Mr. Mandela and his family!

[AlbizuX]

39. my condolences Nelson

may your soul and the soul of your son find peace wherever you find yourselves....

your place in heaven is assured, my brother...