June 6, 2001 - Issue 226
Buying Drug
Endorsements - To create the newest blockbuster drug, there's one thing
worth more than all the ads money can buy: a single positive mention in a
respected medical journal. Now, many drug companies are actually writing those
articles, then paying doctors to sign their names to them.
More On
Low Fat Nonsense - 50 years of mainstream nutritional research and hundreds
of millions of research dollars have NOT proved that if you eat a low-fat diet
you will live longer.
Germs Right at Home in
Dishwashing Sponges - Dishwashing sponges are full of concavities, millions
of them--it's a foam--and these concavities, all of them, can host lots of
different bacteria.
Hepatitis
Vaccine Data Faked - A visiting Japanese scientist working at the National
Cancer Institute has admitted that he rigged part of a vaccine research project
and fabricated data, his coauthors say in a printed retraction of a report on
the project.
Jet Lag Affects Your Brain
- Hopping the Concorde in New York and heading to Paris for lunch may sound
glamorous, but making a habit of this kind of trip may take a toll on your
brain.
Dust Mites Common in
U.S. Beds - The beds in nearly one in four homes in the United States
contain high levels of dust mite allergen, allergy-inducing proteins produced
by the microscopic dust mite.
Mad Cow Disease
(BSE)/AIDS/Hepatitis C Infectious or Intoxication Diseases? - First AIDS,
then Hepatitis C, now Mad Cow Disease (BSE). These new plagues differ from the
plagues of the past in one respect: The number of affected people is relatively
small. A great article from AidsPanelReport.com.
Toxicity and
Phototoxicity of Chemical Sun Filters - Using sunscreens is NOT the best
way to limit your sun exposure. Early in the season it is wise to limit your
exposure until your system adjusts by increasing melanin pigmentation in your
skin is.
Breast Implants:
America's Silent Epidemic - More and more women are starting to learn the
hidden truth - their cherished breast implants may cost them their insurance,
their health, their beauty, their vitality, their families, their careers, and
too often, even their lives.
AOL Users: Toss the Training
Wheels and Save Money! - THERE IS NO DOUBT that AOL is responsible for much
of the Internet's explosive growth. But there is likewise no doubt that using
AOL is more like using the Internet with training wheels than connecting to the
Net itself.
Finally The Answer to What Am
I Going To Eat? - Following the food choice program is a
challenge for most of us. You can now use our updated 257 page electronic
cookbook to help you design your personal program. It is only $15 with a full
money back RISK FREE guarantee and there is no shipping fee.
Help Me to Improve the Website Without Even Spending An Extra
Penny - Now you can help to offset some of the costs associated with
producing this newsletter and maintaining this website, without reaching into
your own pocket. Read to find out more.
Neurostructural
Therapy (NST) -October may seem a long
way off, but I would encourage any health care practitioner to consider a trip
to Chicago this fall to learn the most effective form of manual healing I know
of. It is an essential part of the care I provide for most of our patients.
VACCINES - An
Educational Seminar - Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is one of the leading physicians
with the National Vaccine Information Center and she is so compelled to help
children she has taken time off of her very busy alternative medicine practice
in Cleveland to lecture around the country and educate physicians and health
care professionals about this topic. Highly Recommended.
University
of Illinois School of Public Health, Chicago Symposium on Food Irradiation
- If you live in northern Illinois please consider attending the FREE symposium
on food irradiation that will be held at the University of Illinois. Samuel Epstein, MD, Chairman of the Cancer Prevention Coalition will be one
of the panelists.
Beyond Biodevastation - The
5th Grassroots Gathering to Celebrate Biodiversity and Question Genetic
Engineering.
Need to Find Health Information on the Site? Don't
forget that all web site pages have a search
engine feature in the green bar at the top. Many of my patients have told me
more than 90% of their health questions are answered by using it.
Having Trouble With the Links? We
will be switching email servers soon, but in the meantime you can go to www.mercola.com and
click on "Current Issue" to obtain
the Web version of this email.
Records of all of
the back issues of the Newsletters can be viewed by clicking http://www.mercola.com/2001/index.
©Copyright Dr. Joseph Mercola, 2001. All
Rights Reserved. This content may be copied in full, as long as copyright,
contact, and creation information is given, only if used only in a
not-for-profit format. If possible, I would also appreciate an endorsement and
encouragement to subscribe to the newsletter. If any other use is desired,
written permission is required.
Amidst the billion-dollar
competition to create the newest blockbuster drug, there's one thing worth more
than all the ads money can buy: a single positive mention in a respected
medical journal. Doctors rely so heavily on what's printed in journals, it
directly affects a drug's success or failure.
Now, many
drug companies are actually writing those articles, then paying doctors to sign
their names to them.
It's called ghostwriting,
reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl
Attkisson.
"The articles are
written by drug company researchers, given to an outside doctor to review and
sign his or her name to and then submitted to a journal. In effect, it's like
washing dirty money," explained Douglas Peters, a medical malpractice
attorney.
It's not
illegal, but it can be misleading.
Critics say that's just
what happened when Wyeth-Ayerst wanted to create a market demand for its
"fen-phen" diet drug, Redux.
Wyeth hired a middleman, a
company called Excerpta Medica, to write and get published nine medical journal
articles on Redux. Excerpta paid doctors to review and sign the articles, then
submitted them to journals with no mention of Wyeth. Excerpta claims it told
the doctors that Wyeth was behind all of it.
But Dr. Richard Atkinson, a
professor of Medicine and Nutritional Sciences and the director of the
Beers-Murphy Clinical Nutrition Center, Univ of Wisconsin Madison Medical
School, says he wasn't told. He reviewed and signed one of those Redux papers,
thinking Excerpta was an independent researcher.
"If I knew that a drug
company had some role, whatever role, in sponsoring a talk, an article, a
symposium whatever, I think I would be more on my guard to make sure that there
was not any bias introduced."
Biased
literature can make a drug sound better or safer than it really is.
And unbeknownst to most
doctors, it's even finding its way into the most respected medical journals.
Dr. Marcia Angell, former
editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, says she was getting more and
more ghostwritten papers from medical school doctors.
In a deposition on January
15, 1999, former Wyeth executive Jo Alene Dolan said all drug companies
ghostwrite.
When questioned about Dr.
Atkinson's article, she said, "Apparently we wrote this article for
him." She was then asked if it was bought and paid for by Wyeth-Ayerst and
replied, "I'm not sure that's the way I would characterize it. It was
funded by Wyeth-Ayerst."
Yet Wyeth's middleman,
Excerpta Medica, claims it doesn't ghostwrite; it "facilitates," that
doctors always know about drug industry involvement and "the author has
final editing authority."
Dr. Atkinson did tell Excerpta
that article may make Redux "sound better than it really is" and
suggested some changes. But before the article could be published, Redux was
linked to heart and lung problems and pulled from the market.
CBS Evening News April 5, 2001
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
This is one of the worst
offenses of conflict of interests in medicine. The drug companies are writing
the studies and having medical doctors sign their names on it and then having
the study published in a prestigious journal. It is an incredibly sweet deal
for the drug company, as it is only a small fraction of the over one billion
they spent on marketing
to consumers last year, yet produces enormous benefits, as the endorsements
in the journals frequently convince many physicians to prescribe their
products.
Related Articles:
Drug-Company
Influence on Medical Education in the USA
Drug Industry
Stalks the US Corridors of Power
Conflicts
of Interest and Ethics in Healthcare
By Lionel Tiger
50 years of
mainstream nutritional research and hundreds of millions of research dollars
have not proved that if you eat a low-fat diet you will live longer.
Certainly your cholesterol
levels will be lower. But the link between diet and longevity remains
undemonstrated.
The individual steps of
what happens in your body when you have cheese or a steak are well known. Your
cholesterol levels will elevate. This increases the likelihood that the
cholesterol will congeal and attach itself to your arteries and hence clog
them-a malady called atherosclerosis. In turn, this will increase the risk of
heart disease and heart attacks, which will diminish your expectancy of life.
This is now the utterly
accepted medical and nutritional orthodoxy. It has gripped the society, in
practice and symbolically, in a form of brain-and-mouth disease.
Countless people are
embarked on more or less strict diets in which consumption of a tablespoon of
olive oil or pat of butter or hunk of lambchop is the sign not only of a kind
of moral depravity but also a reckless disregard for personal survival.
Fat has
become the devil's weapon.
And people who pursue a
monogamous relationship with low-fat carbs and steamed vegetables will regard a
date with a steak as equivalent to an act of flamboyant multi-partner adultery.
However, while the
individual steps of the effect of fat have been demonstrated, the whole chain
of events and their impact has not been. Among people not already at risk for
heart disease (like enthusiastic smokers with high blood pressure), according
to Taubes and the research of which he is the accountant, the evidence is weak that
sharply reduced consumption of saturated fats will increase longevity more than
a few weeks, perhaps as much as three months.
As long ago as 1969, the
National Heart Institute stated plainly, "It is not known whether dietary
manipulation has any effect whatsoever on coronary heart disease."
In fact, the authors of the
report in which this was the conclusive sentence were concerned that, because
fat is so important to cell membranes and the brain (which is 70 percent fat), too little fat could be a
more serious medical deficit than too much.
There is some evidence that
very low cholesterol levels are associated with increased risk for auto
accidents and aggressive interaction. Japanese physicians have found that low levels
were associated with hemorrhagic stroke, and may counsel their patients to
raise their levels.
Since the beginning of the
70s Americans have dropped their consumption of fat to about 34 percent of
their calories, down from more than 40 percent beforehand. The incidence of
heart disease does not seem to have declined, according to a 10-year study
reported in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1998.
Nonetheless, the treatment
of heart disease has improved enormously-with more than 5.4 million heart-related
procedures compared with 1.2 million in 1979.
This may
provide the questionable impression that it is dietary change that is
responsible for improved coronary experience.
Furthermore, the
replacement of fat-containing foods by carbohydrates may have contributed to an
epidemic of obesity and then diabetes among Americans. The term
"fat-free" on a product appears to provide permission to consume
large portions of it, producing an intake well beyond what seems to be
necessary to balance energy consumed and energy used.
Taubes describes how the
principal political supporter of the low-fat push in the public arena was Sen.
George McGovern, who had himself gone through the severely low-fat Pritikin
diet program. McGovern then held two days of committee testimony in 1976 on the
subject, and followed up by commissioning a former labor reporter for the
Providence Journal, who had no scientific background, to produce the first
"Dietary Goals for the United States."
In 1977 two government
agencies took up the fat/death drama, but only one, Agriculture, had public
impact when it reiterated the McGovern findings, though ample contrary evidence
was available and ignored. The National Academy of Sciences report on the same
subject was far less media-worthy, because all it said was that Americans
should eat carefully, modestly and less. But it did not emphasize killer fat as
the main mealtime Mephistopheles.
The issue became even more
complex when the differences became clearer between HDL-good cholesterol-and
the bad, LDL.
Some foods increase both at
the same time, and some, such as fats like olive oil, stimulate the good flavor
of cholesterol.
Little of this is reflected
in current government recommendations about what is good to eat. Taubes
provides what is in effect an almost hilarious deconstruction of the
nutritional effect of a porterhouse steak. After broiling, the meat is about
half fat, half protein. Some 51 percent of the fat turns out to be
monounsaturated, and 90 percent of that is the kind of benign fat, as in olive
oil.
Some 45 percent of the fat
is indeed saturated-bad-but one-third of that is stearic acid-neither good or
bad. The remaining 4 percent is polyunsaturated-good. In sum, as much as 70
percent of porterhouse fat will improve cholesterol levels compared with an
alternative dose of bread, rice, pasta or potatoes.
I've argued here before
that human
beings did not evolve to eat the carbohydrate foods to which peasants had to turn when
they could no longer hunt and gather-mainly rice and the grains. A Rutgers
graduate student, Matt Sponheimer, published a convincing report in Science
several years ago on his analysis of our ancestral teeth, which revealed clear
evidence of meat-eating.
But it is important to be
prudent about the material I've described here-there will undoubtedly be a
major controversy about it, as there should be. I remain very wary of
uncritical consumption of high-fat meats such as prime beef, which may indeed
in large quantities be difficult for the evolved human system to process (wild
game has about 3 percent animal fat, and prime beef closer to 36 percent). And
it seems to me that the Atkins-type diets that replace carbohydrates with foods
such as bacon double cheeseburgers may be seriously ill-advised.
Nevertheless, humans
evolved as omnivores, and we seem well-equipped to eat well-balanced and
moderate diets of the foods that were in our environment as we evolved-animals,
fish, legumes, fruits, vegetables, nuts, berries and honey when we could get
it.
Ample fruits, vegetables
and nuts may deliver protective impacts, and are obviously one sign of the
current good gastronomic fortune of North Americans-our temperate climate
provides us with a good cross-section of an ideal grocery store. And it would
be irresponsible to avoid stressing exercise as a factor in healthy
nutrition-we were born to run for our dinner.
It appears that people who
are committed to low-fat diets almost invariably turn to high-carbohydrate
regimes, many components of which provide physiological stimuli to increased
hunger. Perhaps a dab of fat will do you, to provide a satisfying experience
with food and transform it from battle rations into a calmly sensible aspect of
the pursuit of pleasure.
New York Press
Volume
14 Issue 18
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
If you haven't figured
out by now that grains are not the best choice for your long term health, you
might want to consider reviewing the links below.
Related Articles:
Scientific
Evidence To Support Low Grain Diets
Lower
Your Grains & Lower Your Insulin Levels! A Novel Way To Treat Hypoglycemia
Lower
Your Grains and Increase Your Health
Grains
and carboyhydrates - lower them
Bacteria are anything but
washed up when it comes to living inside the sponges we use to clean our dishes
every day. Dishwashing sponges are full of concavities, millions of them--it's
a foam--and these concavities, all
of them can host lots of different bacteria.
Since the humble dishwashing sponge is found in kitchens worldwide,
investigators were curious to determine just how hygienic it might be. They
tested 50 sponges, each used for 3 weeks by a different housekeeper, for levels
of coliform or fecal coliform bacteria (found in either soil, water or the
intestinal tract) or Staphylococcus aureus, commonly found on the skin. All of
these organisms can cause illness in humans.
86% of the samples showed a
degree of contamination of a hundred million to one billion microorganisms of
any kind per sponge.'' Fully 70% of the sponges sampled showed high levels of
coliform bacteria, and 38% showed high concentrations of fecal coliform
bacteria.
Before you
wash your dishes, do you wash your hands?
Because sometimes people go
to the bathroom and forget to wash their hands, or they change the baby's
diaper and forget to wash their hands.
Most of the
bacteria nestled inside sponges comes from an unsurprising source--food left on dirty dishes, especially raw foods, like meat or
poultry and vegetables.
There are things each of us
can do to make kitchen sponges less attractive real estate for bugs, however.
Cutting boards can be full
of crevices, and if you wash it with the sponge that's full of bacteria, you
may think you are cleaning your board but you're not. You're just pushing
bacteria deep into the board. And with that comes a risk for food poisoning or
infection.
Annual
meeting of the American Society for Microbiology Orlando, FL May 21, 2001
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
This one is a no
brainer. Why wouldn't you want to follow the above recommendations? Most of us
just are not aware of how important these issues can be in contributing to
illness. Nearly half of us in the US are infected by the food we eat every year
and many thousands die from the infection. This is a tragedy, as many times it
is so easy to prevent.
One can put the sponges
in the dishwasher with the dishes. It cleans them and the hot water hopefully
kills the bugs. However, there are two more effective solutions.
Related Articles:
Disinfecting
Kitchen Cuts Disease Risk
76 Million Food
Poisonings A Year
By Richard Saltus
A visiting Japanese
scientist working at the National Cancer Institute has admitted that he rigged part of a vaccine
research project and fabricated data, his coauthors say in a printed retraction of a report on the
project.
The coauthors said they
were unaware that the lead author, Tatsumi Arichi, had rigged the experiment by
''spiking'' a cell fluid with quantities of a
virus to make it seem that the virus had grown in the cells. His coauthors
called it a ''serious problem.
''The original paper
describing the vaccine work appeared in the Jan. 4, 2000, issue of the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That paper said that a DNA
vaccine being tested in mice in the experiment was a ''potential candidate''
for a vaccine to prevent hepatitis C, which affects about 4 million Americans.
In the wake
of that paper, scientists tried repeatedly to duplicate the results, but were
unable to do so.
The retraction appeared
this week on the journal's Web site, and will be published in the May 8 edition
of the publication. Such retractions are occurring more frequently, said an
official of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Boston
Globe Newspaper 5/3/2001 page 4
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
The sad tragedy is that
when we read published research, we assume that the scientists, doctors, or
others involved with the research have integrity.
As this article shows,
this is not always the case. Just how frequently this happens is anyone's
guess, but it is probable that it occurs far more often than we would care to
believe.
If you have time you
might want to review the link page below that does an outstanding job of
documenting the many conflicts of interests that are common in the health
field.
Related Articles:
Conflicts of
Interest and Ethics in Healthcare
Hopping the Concorde in New
York and heading to Paris for lunch may sound glamorous, but making a habit of
this kind of trip may take a toll on your brain.
The right temporal lobe, a part of the brain involved in
memory, is smaller in airline crew members who cross multiple time zones and
have only 5 days of rest before crossing time zones again.
The crew members were
compared with workers who crossed multiple time zones but had 14 days of
recovery--generally working flights that did not cross time zones in that
time--before taking another flight around the world.
The findings are based on
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 20 female flight attendants who
spent at least 5 years crossing multiple time zones and who logged a similar
number of hours in the sky.
What's more, the
researchers observed an association between reduced volume of the right
temporal lobe and high levels of the stress hormone cortisol in airline crew
members.
And when the women in the
study were given tests to check their reaction times, the short-recovery crew
performed worse,
taking an average of 823 milliseconds to respond versus 741 milliseconds for
the long-recovery crew.
A previous study by the
investigators found that airline workers subjected to repeated jet lag had
higher levels of cortisol, as well as impaired memory.
Adjusting to different time
zones can disrupt the circadian rhythm--the internal clock that regulates when
we sleep--causing the groggy feeling known as jet lag.
The findings of the present
study suggest that jet lag recovery period may be a potential way to eliminate the
temporal lobe atrophy
associated with repeated jet lag.
Past studies of people with
depression or post-traumatic stress disorder have shown that high levels of
cortisol are associated with a reduction in temporal lobe volume, as well as
memory impairment.
Nature
Neuroscience May 2001;4:567-568
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
Flying frequently can be
hazardous to your health. This is especially true for those who do it for a
living, of course. Flight attendants and pilots are at high risk and, if they
suffer from chronic health problems, would be best advised considering an
alternate, perhaps related, occupation.
However, many of us fly
frequently on business and are also exposed to this risk, although at a much
lower level. Hopefully, modern technological advances such as the internet and
teleconferencing can reduce the need for some of these business trips.
If you fly frequently,
it would be wise to consider some type of neutralization. Total Body
Modification is a system of muscle testing that has a set of vials that one can
wear that energetically neutralizes this radiation. If you are a patient in our
office you can contact our office for a set of these inexpensive vials. If you
are not you can contact TBM at 801-571-2411 for a practitioner in your area who
might be able to provide them for you.
Related Articles:
Frequent Flying May
Cause Chromosome Damage and Cancer
Misscarriage
Rates Excessive Among Working Flight Attendants
Increased
Breast Cancer Risk With Sleep Pattern Disruptions
The beds in nearly one in four homes in the United States contain high
levels of dust mite allergen, allergy-inducing proteins produced by the
microscopic dust mite.
About 23% of homes have high levels of dust mite allergen in
bedding and 6% of
homes have bedding that contain high levels of cockroach allergen, another
allergy-inducing irritant.
Older homes, those that are
damp or musty and low-income households are at greatest risk for having high
levels of the allergens, according to a survey from the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences.
The researchers estimate
that dust mite allergen at levels associated with asthma and allergy are
present in 23.2 million homes in the United States.
The researchers collected
vacuumed dust samples, environmental and demographic data, and health
information from surveyed homes and their residents.
Annual
American Thoracic Society Meeting San Francisco, CA May 22, 2001
DR. MERCOLA'S COMMENT:
Allergies are a common
problem. Many choose to use drugs to counteract this. However, this is nothing
more than a potentially dangerous band-aid. In addition to the potential
drowsiness issue, even in so-called non-drowsy antihistamines, nearly all of
the antihistamines tend to cause weight gain if used for long periods of time.
With half of our country overweight already, this is not a good thing. I find
that the food choice program
intervention is helpful in reducing allergies in most everyone.
As this article
suggests, simply minimizing dust exposure on your mattress can have some very
beneficial effects. This is usually done with the aid of a special dust mite barrier
cloth.
If you do get a new
mattress be sure and order one with NO fire protection. The antimony in the
mattress is a potent poison and will not help your health. The best solution to
protect yourself against fire are the smoke detectors
that also check for carbon monoxide. Photoelectric smoke detectors are
preferable to ionization units, as the latter contain radioactive material.
If one has mild
allergies that are only a problem for a few weeks of the year, allergy
supplements containing quercitin are particularly helpful. I use an effective
preparation from Ortho Molecular called D'Hist that has high levels of
quercitin. However, if the allergies are severe, I find that an advanced form
of muscle
testing (kinesiology) work called TBM (Total Body Modification) to be
particularly helpful in permanently improving, if not eliminating the allergy
completely.
Related Articles:
Bacteria
In House Dust May Help Prevent Allergies
Air
Duct Cleaning Unnecessary for Preventing Allergies
Synthetic
Pillows Worse for Allergies
By Claus Köhnlein, AidsPanelReport.com
Member of the AIDS
Advisory Panel of Thabo Mbeki, President of South Africa
Translation and English
edit by Jurgen Faas, Kathy McMahon and Fintan Dunne
|
|
If you are willing to believe the medical
as well as the general press, the world today is again and again beset by new
big epidemics. First AIDS, then hepatitis C, now BSE (Mad Cow). These new plagues differ from the plagues of the
past in one respect: The number of affected people is relatively small. While the old plagues annihilated whole
towns, the number of people who actually fall ill with the "new big
plagues" is very low. |
In the case of AIDS there
are about 2000 "new infections" (HIV antibody positive) every year,
and 600 deaths [in Germany], hepatitis C hasn't led to a significant increase
of liver cirrhosis, and regarding BSE, we still don't have even one clinical
case in our country, while the press has been talking about BSE crisis or epidemics
for weeks.
The epidemic-like character
of these diseases is generated by a molecular biological phenomenon, namely
so-called test explosions. Today molecular biology is capable of detecting the
smallest quantities of DNA or RNA with the PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) and
able to produce antibodies against it.
The connection between what
has been isolated in humans or animals, and the presence of clinical symptoms,
is a mere hypothesis. This is perfectly illustrated in
Mad Cow Disease (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy BSE), where a testing
epidemic has also taken place now, and still not one clinical symptom (a mad cow) has
appeared [in Germany].
Because the symptoms are
often missing, they must proclaim endless latency periods, up to 55 years
(between infection with the "BSE pathogen" and developing the new
variant of Creutzfeld-Jakob-Disease). But let's start with AIDS, the first of
the big new plagues.
AIDS
AIDS manifested itself in
the early 80s in San Francisco and affected only homosexuals, who at the age of
[about] 30 developed PCP (Pneumocystis Carinii Pneumonia) and in part died of
it. These first patients, whose cases were published by Dr. Gottlieb, had one
thing in common [actually two]; they were homosexual and they were heavy drug
addicts (cocaine, amphetamines, Amyl nitrites).
Amyl nitrite is a sex drug,
that is almost exclusively used in homosexual communities and which is induced
in large quantities via inhalation. Nitrates are, testable in animal research
and in lymphocyte cultures, immunotoxic and cytotoxic as well as cancerogen
(Source: NIDA, National Institute of Drugabuse). Before the acronym
"AIDS" was born, the same thing had the name GRID (Gay Related
ImmuneDeficiency).
During the first years science
assumed a lifestyle disease, because it was obvious that AIDS only occurred in
certain communities (homosexuals who lived the
"fast-lane-lifestyle"). In 1983 the US health minister proclaimed on
a press conference that a US researcher had discovered a retrovirus which was
the probable cause of AIDS. The next day all papers wrote that a US researcher
had discovered the cause of AIDS.
They had
forgotten the word "probable"... since then all research and therapy has taken place
only from the view of the virus hypothesis. In other words, for the past 17
years the question has been researched: how HIV does cause AIDS; the question
IF HIV does cause AIDS must not be asked anymore.
Years later, Kary Mullis,
Nobel laureate in chemistry 1993 and inventor of the polymerase chain reaction,
needed a reference for "the generally known fact" that HIV was the
cause of AIDS. While working on a project he became aware that he didn´t know a
scientific reference for the statement he had just written down: HIV is the
probable cause of AIDS. So he asked the next virologist at the table after that
basic paper.
The virologist told Mullis,
he wouldn´t need a reference in this case; after all, everyone knows that HIV
leads to AIDS. Kary Mullis disagreed and thought such an important discovery
should be published in some paper. He learnt soon that it was impossible to
find such a paper. Instead, he was pointed to the press conference of 1983 over
and over again.
One day, he got the opportunity
to talk to Luc Montagnier from the Pasteur Institute, the [claimed] discoverer
of the virus, during an event in San Diego. HE should know the answer.
Confronted with Mullis´question, Montagnier said: "Why don't you cite the
report of the CDC (Centers of Disease Control)?" Mullis answered:
"This report doesn't address the question whether or not HIV is the cause
of AIDS" - "Right", Montagnier admitted, "but maybe you
could cite the SIV study (Simian Immunedeficiency Virus, which is very similar
to HIV)."
That paper didn't convince
Mullis either, because the monkeys developed different diseases, also because
the virus wasn't the same one, and thirdly, because the paper had been
published only a few months before. He looked for the original paper that
should demonstrate in whatever form that HIV was the cause of AIDS. At that
point, Montagnier's answer consisted of running away, to greet a group on the
other side of the room.
I had a similar experience
this year [2000] in South Africa on the AIDS Advisory Panel, which had been
initiated by president Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki had invited 33 scientists from all
over the world in order to shed light on the AIDS problem in his country. Among
them were 22 scientists who believed in the virus hypothesis, and 11 so-called
dissidents (which I belong to), who cast doubt on the virus hypothesis and
rather assume that AIDS in Africa is the result of increasing poverty, while
AIDS in the developed countries is the result of drugs, and above all the
result of the therapy against AIDS (AZT).
I asked Montagnier what
convinced him that AIDS is caused by a virus. Montagnier answered that over the
years apparently an effective treatment has been developed, and this was proof
enough for HIV leading to AIDS. In other words, the virologists have no
virological arguments for the theory that HIV leads to AIDS. Instead, they get
the proof for their hypotheses from physicians, who give a positive feedback by
saying "Of course AIDS is a viral disease that responds to antiviral treatment."
However, we doctors treat
HIV-positive patients basically differently from if they were HIV-negative.
From shingles to apoplexy, HIV-pos. Patients are given a lifelong antiviral
treatment, or we treat them usually without any clinical illness, only on the
basis of surrogate markers like CD4-cells and viral load, which (latter) can be
measured via PCR (the method invented by Kary Mullis). Mullis on his method:
"It is nonsense to amplify something that is detectable only by PCR and
which is practically zero; it will still be close to zero."
Now in Africa, on the
panel, it also became obvious that the initial dose of 1500 mg AZT (1987) was
much too high. In other words, it became clear that the situation of the
patients then wasn't improved by this high dosed therapy -but worsened. We too
had our own bad experiences at that time in the II. Medizinische Klinik in
Kiel. The high mortality of the AIDS patients at that time was not too striking
though, because it was the general expectation that AIDS patients will die fast
and young.
The problem
of the therapy was and is that it is extremely immunosuppressive itself.
AZT is a nucleoside
analogue that was developed in the 60s specifically as a chemotherapy against
cancer, but which wasn't used then due to severe side effects and high
toxicity. However, a few pre-studies had been carried out, so that the
substance could be used in the 80s.
Then AZT was tested in a
placebo controlled study in 1987. This study was canceled after four months,
because at that time it looked like the patients in the verum group would
derive benefit from the therapy.
The publication in NEJM led
to the worldwide use of 1500 mg AZT for AIDS patients and HIV-positive people.
Rudolph Nurejev was one of the most prominent AZT victims. Being perfectly
healthy, he sent his personal physician to get him the wonder drug. The reason
for the early canceling of the study was the unbelievable pressure for the
participants who hoped to have found a cure. But afterwards mortality in both
groups jumped up and reached levels of 80 - 90% after four years of AZT
therapy. In other words, after four years most AIDS patients had died.
This extreme mortality
eventually got noticed though, and accordingly the AZT doses were lowered
around 1990,
because it also became obvious that the bone marrow couldn't stand the
chemotherapy. Still, any antiviral therapy has been and still is a lifelong
therapy. Only this year, after numerous problems with side effects were
reported also for the newer drugs (protease inhibitors), they publicly consider
drug holidays (Nature, Lancet, 2000). Now they state everywhere (see
Montagnier) that the new therapy works, because mortality of AIDS patients has
clearly declined. This, however, is nothing but a euphemism for lower toxicity
by dose reduction.
An increasingly critical
attitude by patients themselves, who have witnessed the AZT disaster of the
early 90s and extensive literature on the AZT problem have generated a more
critical atmosphere toward the therapy. And yet, declining mortality of AIDS is
still attributed to the better therapy, and declining mortality correlating
with increased use of protease inhibitors is demonstrated in a time frame
(Palella et al. NEJM).
What you can't see in that
time frame is the fact that mortality had already been distinctly declining
since 1990/91, the time when therapists noticed that AZT in 1500 mg doses were
not tolerable for their patients (bone marrow suppression). At that time,
however, we had already treated a whole generation of AIDS patients into
irreversible immunosuppression.
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