HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

HIV AND AIDS

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Kary Mullis has also been quoted about HIV-positivity in the context
of "African AIDS": "...They got some big numbers for HIV-positive
people [in Africa] before they realized that antibodies to malaria --
which everyone in Africa has -- show up as 'HIV-positive' on tests."
(Interview in the California Monthly, September 1994, p. 21)3
4. HIV-negatives with AIDS-defining diseases. There exist
thousands of Americans who have AIDS-defining diseases but are HIV
negative. It is quasi impossible to give proper statistics about how
many thousands, partly because of the multiplicity of diseases used to
define "AIDS", and also because of the lack of studies which would
systematically report overall figures, either for individual diseases or
all of them as a group.
5. HIV-positives without diseases. Conversely, there are hundreds
of thousands who test HIV positive but have not developed AIDSdefining diseases. As noted by the magazine SPY (February 1993, p. 19),
since 1985, the CDC has stated each year that there are approximately
one million Americans who are HIV positive. The CDC figure remained
constant from 1985 to 1993. But most of these people have not gotten sick
with one of the diseases listed by CDC in defining AIDS. Responding to
Duesberg's letter dated 11 February 1993, Harold Jaffe replied on 5
March 1993 that, of these one million, "approximately 900,000 have
not developed one of the clinical conditions included in the 1987 AIDS
case surveillance definition." So in 1993, the CDC was asserting that
about 90% among HIV positives have not developed an AIDS-defining
disease.
Jaffe's percentage figure is quite different from the figure attributed
by the New York Times to the World Health Organization. The
3Duesberg provided me with the following references for antibodies against
malaria registering as false-positive for HIV:
Biggar, R.J., "Possible nonspecific associations between malaria and HTLVIII/LAV, N. Engl. J. Med. 315 (1986) p. 457
Biggar, R. J., Gigase, P. L., Melbye, M., Kestens, L., Sarin, P. S., Bodner, A. J.,
Demedts, P., Stevens, W. J., Paluku, L., C., D.H. et al., "ELISA HTLV retrovirus
antibody reactivity associated with malaria and immune complexes in healthy
Africans, Lancet 2 (1985) pp. 520-523
Volsky, D. J., Wu, Y. T., Stevenson, M., Dewhurst, S., Sinangil, F., Merino, F. L.
R. and Godoy, G., "Antibodies to HTLV-III/LAV in Venezuelan patients with
acute malarial infections (letter), N. Engl. J. Med. 10 (1986) pp. 647-648