Does HIV really cause AIDS?

Hey, after watching the documentary 'House Of Numbers' this question has been in my mind for a couple of days so I wanted to know what a bunch of intelligent individuals like yourself had to say on this issue.

Before watching this documentary, I was always told that if you had HIV, you were sure to develop AIDS, and certain to die.

Now that I've watched the documentary, I'm not so sure that HIV is the primary cause of AIDS and that these antiretroviral drugs (AZT, etc) aren't the one's doing the damage.

What are your thoughts on the HIV 'virus hypothesis'?

My understanding is old, and largely based on mass-media supplied information,
with my own conclusions drawn from that information. So I could well be wrong.

So my belief is that HIV is the actual virus, and AIDS is a 'potential' symptom of it.
So if you are able to keep the HIV "under control", then you may be able to
prevent it from developing into full-blown AIDS.
HIV itself has few symptoms, but if it progresses to AIDS, then the AIDS symptoms will kill you.

As for the side-effects of the anti-retroviral drugs, who knows?
But if you have full-blown AIDS, what have you got to lose....

Thanks for your reply.

As I understand it, AIDS is defined as symptoms for a group of around 30 diseases when a patient is HIV positive. So by that logic...

Teberculosis + HIV = AIDS
Teberculosis + no HIV = Teberculosis

Even though both scenarios produce the same Teberculosis symptoms such as frequent coughing, blood in sputum; just because the patient is defined as HIV positive, he/she is said to have AIDS.

This doesn't make sense. What role does HIV play? Maybe I'm missing something.

There exist a couple of good documentations about this topic. I guess the problem started right when the connection between HIV and AIDS was done the first time by a university in afaik the USA. They released a paper or something claiming to have found a connection but later on it turned out their results were pretty much wrong. At this point many had jumped on that train though and things still seemed to make sense...

Unfortunately nowadays the entire HIV leads to AIDS thing becomes more and more uncertain and when just caring about the HIV stuff something might be missed. But I'm neither a physician nor up-to-date on that topic so I cannot explain or describe much...

AIDS is a failure in the immune system caused by HIV, which is a virus. HIV doesn't always cause AIDS, but often does. I don't see the problem here.

Afaik it's just a hypothesis that HIV creates AIDS and the postulated reasons for that changed for a couple of times if I'm correct. I also think the reasons as to why your immune system collapses when having AIDS still isn't understood yet...

everyone is certain to die, actually we are all currently dieing. Time kills people.

Radiation will kill us before time is able to.


Depends how deep you want to know it. But it seems to be generally assumed that "disease killing" cells and "disease detecting" cells are the primary target of the virus, the former playing a keyrole in killing diseases, the latter to indentify infected cells. Both are being destroyed by the virus.

AIDS is what happens when you T-cells get destroyed.
The HIVirus uses mainly the T-Cells to multiply, thus detroying the cells.

Without T-Cells your immune system breaks down,
opening the door for a variety of other viruses and bacteria.
Causing the symptoms of AIDS.

--

Its like a virus detroying your PC virus protection and firewall.
The Trojans then entering will cause "PCAIDS"

that's just a silly conspiracy theory. it certainly is proven that hiv causes aids.

...and with current medication hiv can be kept under control in the majority of cases. if you are hiv positive you still have a bit lower life expectancy though since the medication has side effects.





that's also silly. both time it's tuberculosis. there aren't just the same symptoms. you can test for the tuberculosis germ, you know. but with aids (which also is testable and causes that the immune system doesn't work properly anymore) you can get tuberculosis and other diseases much more easily and they are much harder to treat.

HIV/AIDS denialism is not really a theory based on facts.

The former African president Mbeki and his health minister T.-Msimang were such deniers and caused hundred thousends avoidable AIDS deaths. They encouraged useless and ridiculous treatments against AIDS (eating garlic and beetroot for example).

http://www.aidstruth.org

However, is Hilbert's Hotel the right place for discussing conspiracy theories and the like?

Hilberts Hotel is the right place to throw in alternative perceptions. This is one of them. Nevertheless how likely it is that HIV causes AIDS, if any evidence shows that it's not, we might review our theories. This is a process that is beneficial for science. Why would you not discuss it, and risk the chance to see something over the head?

I'm not the classic aids denialist, because it's hard for me to change my mind over something that I've been told all my life. I just have some questions about current beliefs and practises.


HIV is a retrovirus. A retrovirus does NOT kill cells, it would be suicide. This is what first sprouted denialist claims. Dr Peter Duesberg probably knows more about retrovirus' than any other man alive (Robert Gallo's quote), and he was one of the first to question the hypothesis.

There's also alot of question about the HIV test itself. There is no 'gold standard' that is accepted internationally so I could test HIV+ in UK and then possibly HIV- in USA, it's bizzare. A study showed that testing the same sample of blood 40 different times produced different results more than once.

There is also the issue of sexuality defining the outcome of the test. Say you had a HIV test and recieved an indeterminate result. If you are hetrosexual you are presumed HIV- and if you are homosexual you are presumed HIV+. This seems really strange! How does your sexuality change what objective data is found in your blood?

The point I'm trying to get across is not that the whole HIV/AIDS thing is one giant conspiracy, that would be painful for an AIDS sufferer to hear.

What I'm saying is that there are questions that need answering but the medical community won't budge. Any questioning is disputted and rejected immediately.

We have been wrong in many areas of science before and I agree with Joozey that questioning this theory is a process that is beneficial for science and the welfare of humanity.

I remember , I was kid , on television it was announced the death of a famous actor for immunodeficency
My mother said " It happen quite often to those kind of people "
The term AIDS was still unknown at the time
My personal opinion is that AIDS is not a new desease
Also it has been largely exagerated

is it true AIDS was spawned from the unmentionable acts of a man and a monkey?

conspiracy of it being crafted by man in labs is more believable... but probably these are both not true

Our biology teacher told us, some people ate monkey heads(->brains), and because it is "normal" that they can have an illnes which cause AIDS for humans ...

I belive AID's was made in a lab...the orgin of its creation is such a conspiracy, tht it had to have been. XD

http://www.southpark.de/clips/sp_vid_164373/?searchterm=aids

yes made on lab, to extinguish black humans, but .. you know it got out of control.

Anyway there is a cure, outhere, we just dont know.
And i heard HIV is caused by a bacterial , or fungus..
I heard alot of stuff..

^ Why black people? Because Africa is reported to be full of aids patients?

They don't really test blood in africa because they don't have the funds for equipment so they base their diagnosis on visual signs, eg, if you are under weight, have a bad cough, etc.

In reality the people in africa are suffering from malnutrition combined with other diseases such as malaria, not AIDS. The media has blown it out of proportion.

The 3 main risk groups for HIV are homosexuals, haemophilacs and IV drugs users, not black people.

that was sarcasm...