The Relationship Between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome: Executive Summary (Draft)

DRAFT

the benefits of improved PCP prophylaxis and treatment, if AZT were
contributing to or causing disease, one would expect a decrease in survival
figures, rather than an increase that coincides with the use of AZT.
Placebo-controlled trials have found that AZT and related drugs can benefit
patients by prolonging, for a year or two, the onset of new AIDS-related
illnesses in HIV-infected individuals. Significantly, long-term follow-up of these
trials, although not showing prolonged benefit of AZT, has never indicated that
the drug increases disease progression or mortality. The lack of excess AIDS
cases and death in the AZT arms of these trials effectively rebuts the argument
that AZT causes AIDS.
In addition, uncontrolled studies have found increased survival and reduced
frequency of opportunistic infections in AIDS patients who were treated with
AZT.
4. The distribution of AIDS cases casts doubt on HIV as the cause. Viruses are
not gender-specific, yet fewer than 10 percent of people with AIDS are women.
The distribution of AIDS cases, whether in the United States or elsewhere in
the world, invariably mirrors the prevalence of HIV in a population. In the United
States, HIV first appeared in populations of homosexual men and drug users.
Because HIV is spread primarily through sex or by the exchange of HIVcontaminated needles during injection drug use, it is not surprising that a
majority of U.S. AIDS cases have occurred in men.
Increasingly, however, women are becoming HIV-infected, usually through the
exchange of HIV-contaminated needles or sex with an HIV-infected male. As
the number of HIV infected women has risen, so too have the number of female
AIDS cases in the United States. AIDS is now the leading cause of death
among women aged 25 to 44 in nine U.S. cities.
In Africa, HIV was first recognized in sexually active heterosexuals, and AIDS
cases in Africa have occurred at least as frequently in women as in men.
5. HIV cannot be the cause of AIDS because the body develops a vigorous antibody response to the virus.
This reasoning ignores numerous examples of viruses other than HIV that can
be pathogenic after evidence of immunity appears. Primary poliovirus infection
is a classic example of a disease in which high titers of antibodies develop in
all infected individuals, yet a small percentage of individuals subsequently
develop paralysis. Measles virus may persist for years in brain cells, eventually
causing a chronic neurologic disease despite the presence of antibodies. Viruses such as cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex and varicella zoster may be
activated after years of latency even in the presence of abundant antibodies. In

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