Why There is Still an HIV Controversy

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consider the possibility that these critics have been right
about some other things as well. Perhaps what we are
witnessing is not the first step towards the discovery of an
indirect means of causation, but the beginning of the
eventual abandonment of the HIV theory itself.
HIV skeptics like ourselves agree with Drs. Gallo and
Fauci about what happens in the early stages of HV
infection. The virus multiplies rapidly as with other viral
infections, and it sometimes causes a mild flu-like illness
[1]. At this stage, while the virus is present in high
titres and is causing mild illness in the ordinary way, it
does no observable damage to the immune system. On the
contrary, the immune system rallies as it is supposed to do
and speedily reduces the virus to negligible levels. Once
this happens. the primary infection is over.
That is where the HIV believers and skeptics part
company. As we see it, there is no proof that HIV causes
any further damage to the immune system or anything else.
How could a virus that is practically harmless in full
infection develop' a mysterious ability to destroy an immune
system only after it has been reduced to negligible levels
by antibodies? The virus typically remains at very low
levels even in persons with severe AIDS-defining diseases,
so that it can be detected if at all only with strenuous use
of the polymerase chain reaction technique [2-4]. In the
final stages of immune system collapse this virus, along
with many other microbes present in the body, may
multiplyagain to high levels [53. This appears to be a
consequence rather than a cause of immune deficiency.
If that is what the skeptics say, then what is the
Gallo/Fauci position? Until recently, HIV believers were
determined to show that HIV could be infecting and killing
T-cells directly 168]. Hence they tried to demonstrate
that active, replicating HIV is present somewhere in the
body in sufficient quantity to accomplish this feat. Early
on, it became clear that HIV infected only a very small
traction of the T.cells, which in any case are constantly
being replenished [9,10]. In consequence, NmE-funded
research aimed to show that the virus could be found in
sufficient quantities somewhere else in the body if not in
the T-cells --first in the macrophages, and then in the
lymph nodes [3, 4]. Because the AIDS epidemic coincided
with the invention of the PCR technique, BIN researchers
were able to find what they wanted to find. The virtue and
the vice of the PCR is that it can find the biochemical
equivalent of a needle in a haystack. Viral fragments that.
are present only in minute quantities can be amplified and

identified, but this tells us nothing about whether
replicating virus is present in sufficient quantities to do
harm.