So a professor of mine has decided to turn a Logic class into a class, more or less, about AIDS. We're using a lot of studies on AIDS and HIV to dissect and analyze.
One of the articles we've been delegated to Analyze is Peter Gallo 1984, which is supposed to be the original article proving that the HIV (then called HTLV-III) virus causes AIDS. The article itself doesn't seem to provide strong evidence at all....and it's rather baffling how it because so widely accepted in such a short about of time. One of the main problems that isn't apparent is that that article he wrote based on his data was not submitted for peer review, which seems to be a scientific no-no. Also the article itself showed only about a 50% correlation with having HTLV-III and having AIDS, which doesn't suggest a strong correlation at all, even less a cause.
Aside from our class exercise, we're watching a video about a man who we also read about, Peter Duesberg, who has consistently disputed the evidence the fact that HIV causes AIDS since Gallo's article was published. He points out many things, like the fact that HIV doesn't kill enough T-Cells to account for the drop in T-Cell count which results in AIDS, and also the way the HIV virus acts, which isn't consistent with the way that retrovirus' are known to act. He also points out the infection rate of this so called "Epidemic" is not like any epidemic we've ever seen, and the numbers do not correspond. The infection rate has been more or less growing at a consistent, slow rate, whereas "epidemics" are erratic, and cause high amount of infection in a short period of time, then die off. Also Duesberg believes that the medication cocktails such as AZT actually cause AIDS.
ANYWAYS. Aside from everything we've learned, I'm curious to know if anyone here studies this type of thing, or knows a lot about AIDS. The evidence against the idea that HIV causes AIDS seems pretty strong.... and I'm wondering if this is just something that has been disputed in the past, or if it's still something that's going on. We have plenty of dormant virus', and HIV seems to be no different. I'm curious!!