Why There is Still an HIV Controversy

10 '93 01: 45PM ADARC F. 4
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Why there is still an HIV controversy
Charles A. Thomas, Jr,*, Kary B. Mullis*,
Bryan J. Ellison**, and Phillip E. Johnson***
October 20, 1993
Most scientists and the general public have the
impression that the cause of AIDS is known: AIDS is caused
by a retrovirus called HIV, which infects and kills T-cells,
and thus leads to an inevitably fatal immune deficiency
after an asymptomatic period that averages more than 10
years.
Reports from the summer 1993 AIDS Conference at the
U.S. National Institutes of Health suggest that a strategic
retreat from this simple position is in progress, however.
In place of the simple theory that HIV destroys the immune
system by infectihg and destroying its cells, researchers
are now speculating that HIV somehow signals the immune
system to self-destruct at some indeterminate time in the
future, possibly even after the virus itself has departed
from the body. As Dr. Anthony Fauci explained the new
direction of research, "It's clear you need the virus at
some point to kick off the pathological events, but even if
you knocked off the virus early you could still have damage
to the immune system [24]." Dr. Robert Gallo was quoted to
the same effect: "The molecular mimicry in which HIV
imitates components of the immune system sets events into
motion that may be able to proceed in the absence of further
whole virus [24]." In this formulation the HIV theory
becomes virtually unfalsifiable, since even the total
absence of HIV from the body no longer disproves the
possibility that the virus may once have been present to
program the immune system invisibly for destruction,
If Drs. Gallo and Fauci and their followers can
discover an indirect means by which [HIV causes not only
immune system collapse with resultant opportunistic
infections, but also a diverse collection of unrelated
conditions like dementia and Kaposi's sarcoma, then they
will deserve our congratulations. On the other hand, this
retreat from the direct cell-killing theory comes almost ten
years after the discovery of "the cause of AIDS" was
announced to the world at a press conference with promises
of an imminent vaccine. The critics have said all along
that [HIV does not kill the cells it infects. Indeed, [HIV

itself is cultured in vitro in the type of T-cells that it
is said to kill, even though there is no immune system in
the petri dish. In any case, HIV infects too few cells in
the body to cause immune system collapse. It is time to
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