The standard view of HIV/AIDS, however, would require an answer of “yes”:
AIDS, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, was first described in the early 1980s in several large cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco): clusters of young gay men were dying of opportunistic infections that ordinarily were very rare, like Pneumocystis carinii, as well as the equally rare Kaposi’s sarcoma.
In 1984, the Secretary of Health and Human Services announced that
Robert Gallo (who was then a lab chief at the National Institutes of Health)
had discovered the cause of AIDS: a retrovirus, at first called HTLV-III or LAV, now universally called HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus.
Supposedly, HIV destroys the immune system and thereby causes AIDS.
Tests were devised to detect antibodies to this virus; the commonly used
“HIV tests” test for antibodies, not for virus.
The currently standard view is that approximately 10 years passes between infection with HIV and the appearance of symptoms of AIDS; that HIV first appeared in the United States around 1970 in the cities where the outbreaks of AIDS came in the early 1980s; and that HIV is transmitted through sexual intercourse and blood transfusions.Dissenting views
Some leading experts have denied, from the beginning, that HIV has been shown to be the cause of AIDS. They were excluded from mainstream publications and funding and are rarely mentioned in the mass media.The dissidents from the standard view have argued chiefly on grounds of retrovirology, immunology, and molecular biology. They have drawn attention
to a variety of puzzling aspects of HIV/AIDS. These intricate technicalities
can be side-stepped by looking strictly at the demography of HIV, at how
POSITIVE HIV tests VARY IN A REGULAR WAY
- among social groups
- geographically
- over time
- with age
- with sex
- with race
This points to "HIV" being something endemic, not a contagious infection.
It also indicates that positive HIV tests measure something quite general about health, not specifically about AIDS. And the data even show that HIV and AIDS are not connected; for example, Black Americans in every tested group are HIV-positive about 5 times more often than White Americans, and that has not changed for twenty years; but the relative proportions of Black and White victims of AIDS has changed by a factor of more than 6 over that time.
