In 1984, two new acronyms were indelibly printed on everybody’s minds after the world was told that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) was responsible for the Auto Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The belief has remained prevalent up until today with more than 100,000 scientific researchers investigating HIV for the last 15 years and publishing over 200,000 articles in science and medical journals on its relationship to AIDS. The media has kept us updated us on their latest findings, while doctors and educators have continually warned us that our very lives may depend upon "safe sex", since the transmission of this infectious virus is certain to cause AIDS.
What most of us fail to realize is that not everyone accepts the mainstream point of view. A growing number of critics, including leading virologists and Nobel Prize winning scientists, doctors, journalists, and other academicians, question HIV’s relationship to the diseases we term AIDS. Some argue that HIV has never been isolated; therefore, we have no proof of its existence. Others believe that HIV does exist, but that it can’t possibly be doing everything that it is purported to do as it is merely one of 3,000 retroviruses, none of which have ever been proven harmful. What these dissenters have in common is a belief in the need to re-evaluate the HIV = AIDS hypothesis.
http://www.garynull.com/Documents/aids.htm
There's some weaknesses in that post. First, HIV it has never been claimed in scientific circles that HIV is certain to cause AIDS. AIDS only occurs in a certain percentage of those infected with the HIV virus. Some people infected with HIV develop natural immunity (not suprising there, that's what antibodies are for) while in others there may be a correalation between HIV and a previously existing state of immune suppression that leads to full blown aids.
Secondly, the argument about HIV not having been isolated is nothing new. That argument relates to most viruses in which applying Koch's postulate to demonstrate that virus is the cause of a disease is problematic. Koch's postulates states that to determine if a microorganism causes a disease first, the microorganism must be found in all persons who exhibit that disease, then the microorganism must be isolated from one of these organisms and then grown in a pure culture. That microorganism must then be reintroduced into another organism and cause that disease. Sounds like a very reasonable broad based approach, right?
Many feel that this is a universal approach to determining if a microorganism causes a disease. However, that's not the case. Koch's postulates works fine in the cases where bacteria and fungi which cause disease can be isolated and replicated but it falls apart where viruses are concerned because a virus must share another living cell with the host animal in order to replicate. It's also problematic with certain "L-forms" of bacteria are very difficult to isolate and grow in pure culture but that does not mean that they don't cause disease.
What I'm saying is that Koch's postulate doesn't always work because and cannot always be fulfilled because there are way to many variables involved in disease expression. A good example of the are mycobacterium leprae and treponema pallidum which are known to cause leprosy and syphilis neither of which can be grown in pure culture and thus cannot fulfill Koch's postulate.
The problem with the argument that HIV has never been isolated (meaning isolated in pure form in culture) is that it doesn't take into account gene transfer in which microorganisms transfer their genetic material to others. This is a direct challenge to Koch's postulate. For example, it's been shown in studies of HIV that the genes of intestinal bacteria of patients with HIV were 90% homologous to the corresponding sequence in HIV. Strong evidence that gene transfer had occurred. This not only would make meeting Koch's postulate impossible because it would be impossible to isolate any virus or bacteria in which gene transfer occurs but for all intents and purposes it invalidates Koch's postulate as a universal principle. So therefore, the fact that HIV has not been isolated, in pure form in a culture medium, is not a valid criticism. The second argument, that HIV can't "Be all that it claims to be" also does not account for gene transfer but when you do evuluate HIV by modeling it through the phenomena of gene transfer, it does indeed become the primary culprit as much of the voluminous body of scientific literature has indicted.
