by Gordon Stewart, MD
I have since 1985 maintained that, independently
of arguments about whether or not HIV exists and irrespectively
of what it may or may not do if it does exist, the epidemiological
trend of registered cases of AIDS in the USA and UK indicates that
no single infectious agent can explain the origin, pathogenesis,
and transmission of AIDS. This view of AIDS is now confirmed by
the passage of time in most other developed countries, where there
is no evidence of spread outside the original risk groups by heterosexual
transmission in general populations. AIDS remains but only as a
diminishing hazard in the original high-risk groups and those who
share their hazards as partners or passive recipients, e.g., infants
born to mothers addicted to mainline drugs.
In clinical terms, AIDS is mainly recognizable as
a variable overload of infections, including STDs, which were, along
with drugs like nitrites, the main reasons for bizarre, unmanageable
symptoms and death among "fast track" gays of the 1980s
and are now much less serious, largely because many responsible
members of homo/bisexual and drug-using communities have recognized
the realities better than the medical profession and health authorities
who are obsessed with the dogma that HIV per se is
the proven cause of AIDS. They therefore insist and persuade the
public that we require a vaccine for prevention and a battery of
toxic drugs for HIV, and pay scant if any regard to life-style and
other determinants.
Meanwhile, repeated revisions of the definition
of AIDS have accommodated paper expansions of registrations of AIDS
enormously. This, together with fallacies in laboratory tests, explains
some but not all of the tragic events attributed to HIV/AIDS in
sub-Saharan and some other third world countries.
The rest of the tragedy urgently awaits independent
investigation by persons with local knowledge of lifestyles and
with matching facilities for comprehensive health care.
Stewart <G.Stewart@gifford.co.uk> is
an emeritus epidemiology professor at Glasgow Univ. and a former
African AIDS epidemiology expert with the United Nations who serves
on the RA Board. He has published extensively on the
topic in such journals as Lancet.