From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine,sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: AIDS risk/Duesberg
Date: 29 Dec 92 16:49:10 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Followup-To: talk.politics.medicine
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr)

In article <1992Dec23.064508.12019@genie.slhs.udel.edu>, starr@genie (Tim Starr) writes:
>In article <1992Dec23.005116.29281@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>}Didn't see your post (my site just got t.p.med), but Duesberg's been
>}discussed in sci.skeptic, and I defer to the expertise there.

>What was the general conclusion?

That Duesberg, while he has important points, just doesn't know what
he's talking about.  In short, the initial conclusion when HIV was
found was that HIV kills helper T-cells, causing immune deficiency.
This is now known to be a basically false explanation, but lacking
any other causative explanation, researchers have been slow to admit
they are baffled.  Duesberg's reaction was to erroneously throw out
the baby with the bathwater and simply deny HIV any causative role.

The correct reaction is to understand how HIV causes AIDS.  No one
knows, but numerous theories abound.  To use some combat metaphors,
previous virological etiologies have been rather blunt hand-to-hand
virus hits liver hard, causing noticeable liver defects, causing
liver disease, or ideas to that effect.  HIV seems--according to
these various alternate theories--to be a kung fu immunotrickster
that doesn't do much on its own, but does throw the immune system
off kilter.

Whether there are any cofactors is unknown.  If there are, they seem
to be very common, considering the high proportion of HIV+ people who
come down with AIDS, so searching for them is probably not very useful.

>}Of course this alternative theory doesn't explain why hemophiliacs and
>}infants and blood transfusion recipients get AIDS.  Or why it's so
>}prevalent in Africa.  My first guess would be to reject Duesberg's
>}theory as having less explanatory power than the current theory.

>Blood transfusions in themselves are immunosuppressive, as is malnutrition.

So?  AIDS isn't some generic immunosuppression.  It's a very particular
immunodeficiency.  This very particular immunodeficiency is what shows
up across HIV+ transfusions, but not HIV- transfusions.  It's details
like this that kill Duesberg's challenge.

>}Well, all groups that get exposed to HIV *are* equally at risk.  But some
>}behaviors more likely to spread AIDS are more prevalent in some groups than
>}others.  But between the religious right and the activist left, the
>}educational message conveyed has been less than fully accurate.  

>This hasn't been borne out in the USA.  US military recruits are tested for
>HIV, estimates of people with HIV in the general population based upon those
>figures have held steady at about 1.5 million nationwide since testing began.
>Yet the main risk groups remain those who self-medicate intravenously and
>male homosexuals.  Annual AIDS cases have been in the 30,000 range.

You haven't contradicted Ted Frank.  American non-IV, non-homosexuals
are just not so exposed to HIV.  In central Africa, they are.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine,alt.politics.homosexuality