Reappraising AIDS Vol. 2, no. 1

VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1, PAGE 3 REAPPREAISING AIDS NOVEMBER 1994

provide a reference for his claim that accidental
needle-sticks had resulted in AIDS. Nor, faced with
questions from Bialy, could Lowenstein explain why he
had showed a slide with no basis in experimental reality
- nor could he provide support for his claim that HIV
replicates in and destroys T-cells.
The Morning Panel
The morning panel did not include critics of the HIVAIDS hypothesis. First was Jan Kuby, an immunologist
at San Francisco State University. She talked about
autoimmunity, T-cell activation, antigens, apoptosis, SCID
mice, cytokines, Alzheimers, etc. She informed the
audience, "98% of the T-cells are in lymphoid tissues, but
most data is (sic] based on blood", and asserted: "The
virus is infecting cells in the lymph nodes - massive
amounts of virus are being produced there... even
before we can see anything going on in the blood at
all." The above statement is simply not true. The lymph
nodes do collect viruses and viral debris - just as the lint
filter in a clothes dryer collects lint - but if "massive
amounts of virus" were being produced anywhere in the
body, there would also be massive amounts of virus in
the blood. Next came Michael Ascher, of the California
State Department of Health Services, co-author, with
Warren Winkelstein, of an article, "Does drug use cause
AIDS?" (Nature, 11 March 1993). He ridiculed the nitrites
KS connection. He contended that saying AZT causes
AIDS diseases is like saying insulin causes diabetes,
apparently unaware of Duesberg's extensive analysis of
AZT's toxicities. Next came Robert Schmidt, a physician,
who presented a multifactorial approach to diseases
of the elderly. It was a thoughtful and interesting talk,
but irrelevant to the central topic of the symposium.
Peter Plumley
The first afternoon speaker, Peter Plumley, spoke on
"An actuarial analysis of the AIDS epidemic in the United
States." His central thesis was that official AIDS statistics,
and pronouncements of the Public Health Service,
have greatly distorted and exaggerated the epidemic,
resulting in unrealistic perceptions of the relative risk of
various sexual acts. The excessive fear of AIDS has
adversely affected the lives of many people.
Kary Mullis
Kary Mullis, the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry
addressed the enigma: Why is there no monograph
which marshals all of the arguments in favor of the
HIV-AIDS hypothesis? Mullis asked dozens of AIDS
researchers to supply him with a reference for the
assertion that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS. Some
of them became angry, and others said he didn't need
a reference, because "everyone knows that." Some
suggested a totally inadequate CDC report. Finally, Luc
Montagnier came to San Diego, and Mullis thought, "this
guy will know." After the meeting I asked him, and he first
mentioned the CDC report, and I said I had already
looked at it. that it wasn't what I was looking for - that
I wanted a scientific paper that would support the

notion that HIV is the probable cause of AIDS, not the
consensus of a bunch of people who'd already begun
looking at it. He said, "Well, why don't you quote the SIV
work?" And I said to myself, "Oh my god! There really

isn't such a paper, there can't be, or he wouldn't have
to refer... to a virus that might kill a monkey... to illustrate
the probability that HIV is the cause of AIDS!"
Harry Rubin
Harry Rubin, Professor of Molecular Biology at Berkeley,
spoke on "The rush to simplification of complex problems
in biomedical science: Cancer and AIDS." Rubin
described his pioneering work forty years ago on the
Rous sarcoma virus: "The first virus identified and
characterized as a retrovirus - the one that, at least until
AIDS, was the one most studied and worked on." As
viruses of this kind had been associated since 1910 with
several types of leukemia in chickens, they were given
the name, Avian Leukosis Virus. However, Rubin
subsequently found that these leukemias could and
would occur in the absence of the retroviruses. Further,
among the chickens that were infected, whose every
cell was infected and constantly producing virus, only
15% developed the leukosis. "In spite of these findings,
these viruses are still called Leukemia or Leukosis viruses,
as they have been for 85 years." Rubin then discussed
cancer, concluding: "Cancer can only be understood at
the level of the complex dynamics of cellular interaction
with the aging process and other such considerations as
diet, smoking, lifestyle, etc." The same basic process is at
work in AIDS. "If there ever was a case of multifactorial
disease occurrence, in my estimation, AIDS is the case."
Bryan Ellison
Bryan Ellison is a graduate student in molecular and cell
biology in Berkeley. His talk,"Drug use does cause AIDS:
A reappraisal of the San Francisco Men's Health Study,"
was a severe critique of the article by Michael Ascher,
Warren Winkelstein, et al. The Ascher report claimed that
AIDS and T-cell depletion occurred only in the men who
were HIV-antibody-positive, and that drug use had no
effect on either T-cell depletion over time or the
development of AIDS. Ellison and his colleagues
obtained the raw data, and found that Ascher et al.
had seriously misreported the data: By ignoring huge
gaps and striking selection biases in the database,
Ascher et al. reached the unsupportable conclusions
that HIV-positive and HIV-negative men used similar
amounts of drugs and that levels of drug use were not
related to the risk of developing AIDS. In contrast, we
found that HIV-positive men used significantly more
heavy drugs than did HIV-negatives, and that drug use
was more highly correlated with AIDS-related diseases
than was HIV. Ellison characterized the misreporting of
data by Ascher and Winkelstein a "serious breach of
scientific ethics," and called upon them to retract the
paper.
THE REFLECTOR
The Group operates a news reflector on Internet.
Address your e-mail to Professor Phillip E. Johnson at
<[email protected]>
This reflector is a source of relevant press on the HIV/AIDS

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