There are Those Who Believe that HIV is Not the Cause of AIDS

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since resolved. It would not convince most AIDS researchers that we are wasting our
time, because the article says nothing new and we have been over this ground before:
we do read Duesberg's pieces, you know!
Thomas, et al imply that two prominent AIDS researchers, Tony Fauci and Bob Gallo,
have embraced theories of AIDS pathogenesis that negate or minimize the involvement
of HIV. I believe this inference from a few oral comments is both misleading and
mischievous. There is a small, but vocal, minority of AIDS researchers who believe that
AIDS resembles, or actually is, an autoinmune disease. To my knowledge, none of the
proponents of that theory deny that HIV would be the direct cause of any hypothetical
autoimmunity; certainly Fauci and Gallo believe that HIV infection underlies all
manifestations of AIDS pathogenesis, irrespective of the precise mechanism, and their
words have been taken totally out of context.
Fauci often wears two hats (because he has two faces?); scientist and politician. In the
latter role, he has to be nice in public forums to people whose views he does not
wholeheartedly embrace. It's a bit like Bill Clinton saying "I didn't inhale." Nobody
believes him, except those who really want to, as it was obviously a play for the redneck
vote. Gallo's apparent embracing of autoimmunity stems from a bizarre PNAS paper by
his old friend Daniel Zagury; I guess Gallo's heart is ruling his head on this one. The
Zagury study, like so many of the autoimmune papers, is a "read, giggle and bin"
article. Few take it seriously, and Gallo does not drive the intellectual development of
AIDS research anymore.
It is becoming clearer by the day that HIV kills people by direct killing of the CD4* T
cells it infects. It is simply wrong to say (para 3, line 10) that HIV "is cultured in the type
of T-cells it is said to kill." Chronic cultures of HIV are made by adapting HIV to growth
in transformed T cells; this is not the same as adding HIV ex vivo to primary lymphocytes.
This is not semantics; it is fundamental virology. What grows in T-cell lines, though still
HIV, is not the same virus as that found in vivo. If Thomas, et al ever took a look at a
mixture of HIV and primary T cells, the cytopathic effect caused to the cells by the virus
would be quite obvious. Recall that the initial difficulty created to Barr-Sinoussi when
first isolating HV in primary cells was the death of the cultures.
The old canard of "too few cells" infected to cause immune system collapse is trotted
out again. Read the literature; technology and skills have evolved since Mandy Fisher's
initial estimates of 1/10,000 cells infected. Current figures would be up to 1/10 in some
cases. And much lower infection rates can cause overall, slow CD44 cell depletion, as
discussed in the "Scientific Correspondence" section of Nature last month.
It is simply untrue that Hi'! can be detected "only with strenuous use of 2CR" (p 2, para
3). HIV can be cultured from virtually 100% of intected people in any competent

virology lab using modern techniques. We are chided for our use of PCR technology,
ironically by the inventor who deservedly won the Nobel Prize for his discovery. Are
we still to travel to our labs on horseback, or should we use modern techniques? The
best research groups use PCR as an adjunct to complementary methods; we're aware of