Black Plague Essays (3039 words) - HIVAIDS, Duesberg Hypothesis

Black Plague As a young adult I must endure many scary realities of this world. Everyday a new challenge, obstacle, fear stares me right in the eye. The sugarcoated, innocent, ?never ?never? land is quickly shedding from my reality and I am faced with the truths of this cynical world. Truth. Do I know the meaning of this word? What if all I have trusted had been false, what if those endless nights I lied awake worried over the latest medical news, or any news for that matter, was all just a waste of potentially productive time? What if the world as we know it was all just a hoax and a set up to make the men in the white coats rich? According to Dr. Peter Duesberg, HIV as we know it is not the cause of AIDS or death, but rather the habitual use of hard drugs and or the treatments used for HIV, AZT a very harsh medication first developed for the treatment of cancer, that is causing the immune deficiency. Before I even understood completely what sexual intercourse or intravenous drug-use was, I was told what HIV was. The ?black plague? of the 80's and 90's, killing off people by the thousands spread by unprotected sex and dirty needles. But what if this scare was purposely inflicted as an experiment on the American people or what if was all just a human error. Dr. Peter Duesberg is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has pioneered the studies in the phenomenon that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Dr. Duesberg is the first to isolate the cancer gene through his work on retroviruses and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. He is an outstanding investigator recognized by the National Institutes of Health, making him more than creditable for his claim. Dr. Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis claiming that the public has been misinformed. The believers in this claim feel that HIV was invented for an explanation for AIDS, and equally the treatments used were even causing the AIDS illness. Let's begin by defining HIV/AIDS according to the World Health Organization (WHO), modern science and medicine and what is being taught in classrooms and clinics all over the world. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus and like any other virus can only replicate inside cells. In short, it attacks the ?T-cells? which make up our immune system. In the final course of the virus the infected person ?becomes particularly vulnerable to the opportunistic infections and cancers that typify AIDS?(pg. 1 www.charweb.com). HIV is shown to be the cause of AIDS. AIDS stands for auto immune deficiency syndrome and is defined by a severe depletion of t-cells and over 20 controversial degenerative and neoplastic diseases, and is 100% fatal. But believers in the phenomenon claim that this information is misleading and incorrect. Dr. Duesberg has proposed the hypothesis that the various AIDS diseases are brought on by the long term consumption of recreational drugs and AZT, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS. In the studies and research conducted the in the correlation between HIV and AIDS many cases of AIDS show no sign of HIV. ?In the United States and Europe AIDS correlates to 95% with risk factors, such as about 8 years of promiscuous male homosexuality, intravenous drug use, or hemophilia. Since AIDS also correlates with antibody to a retrovirus, confirmed in about 40% of American cases, it has been hypothesized that this virus causes AIDS by killing T-cells. Consequently, the virus was termed human immunodefieciency (HIV) and antibody to HIV became part in the definition of AIDS.?(pg1www.duesberg.com) In other words scientist pinned HIV on this virus because HIV kills t-cells and AIDS kills T-cells so they must be one in the same? When we exam the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS we must look at classical conditions for viral pathology, in which HIV violates. A virus replicates inside cells very rapidly and the body fights the virus through the immune system. Supposedly HIV infects the T-cells and kills them, but about 5% of all T-cells are regenerated during the 2 days that it takes the virus to infect