HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

HIV AND AIDS

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The article, by John Lauritsen, stated among other things:
Meeting participants were divided into those whose primary
interest is in studying nitrite inhalants as an important risk
factor for AIDS, because their use encourages transmission of HIV
via unsafe sex, and into those who think that the mutagenic and
carcinogenic nitrites function more directly, either causing AIDS
alone or acting as cofactors of HIV. Both sides were supported by
strong epidemiological correlations between nitrite use by male
homosexuals and AIDS. For example, according to Jay Paul of the
University of California at San Francisco, the highest risk for
AIDS involves the use of poppers and four other drugs. And Lisa
Jacobson of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore, MD) reported
that 60-70 percent of the several thousand gay men.at risk for
AIDS who participate in the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study
(MACS) have used nitrites.
In addition, those favoring a more direct role of nitrites in
AIDS pointed to data from the MACS showing that HIVnegatives had, on average, 25 months of nitrite use, HIVpositives had 60 months of nitrite use, and AIDS patients had
over 65 months of nitrite use -- an apparent dose-response
relation. When asked whether there was even one gay AIDS
case in the cohort who had not used drugs, a somewhat-surprised
Jacobson replied, "I have never looked at the data in this way."
Jacobson's answer documents the extent to which researchers have
shut-out questions which did not fit into the establishment dogma
about HIV being the virus that causes AIDS, to the exclusion of other
hypotheses in general, and the drug hypothesis in particular.
Lauritsen's article in Biotechnology also reported several other
studies linking nitrites to AIDS, notably:
Harry Haverkos, acting director for clinical research at NIDA
and chairman of the meeting, extended his original observations
on the role of poppers in gay AIDS and reported an essentially
exclusive correlation between nitrite use and gay KS [Kaposi's
Sarcoma]. The hypothesis of Harold Jaffe of the CDCP [Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention] that an "unknown infectious
agent" is the cause of KS could not be reconciled with Haverkos'
evidence that there was not a single confirmed case of KS from
blood transfusions, which often contain infectious agents.