bennett stealing my research

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file "bennett"
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Yeah, alright.  The human body isn't immune to a virus AFTER it starts producing antibodies to it?  I'll put that in my notebook, right next to bloodletting and trepanning.

> AIDS virus".  I find it funny how all the kids who are taking their meds in our clinic are healthy...and those who aren't have crappy immune systems and get sick...and die, like one did earlier this year, from cryptococcal meningitis...

Funny?  You find that funny?  I'm really just inclined to say there's something else you're missing - namely, that the children who aren't taking these ARVs are reluctant to tell you so, understanding perfectly well how sick it makes them.

There's a professor at SU who was diagnosed HIV+.  He wrote specifically in this article that as soon as he started taking AZT, he became violently ill.  I've collected dozens of patient testimonies that follow the same story.

> My only disappointment is that you really did turn out to be the obnoxious, self-rightous, ignorant AIDS denialist I hoped you wouldn't be.

You make it sound like this is a frequent problem for you.

> I'm sure we will eventually evolve to live with HIV - we have evolved alongside other retroviruses whose genomic skeletons litter our genome.

This is the point that really gets me.  Did you ever stop to think for a second that those viruses played a part in the development of our genome?  You didn't even address my point about viral mutation rate, which makes me think you can't.  Did you ever think that our immune system evolved specifically to keep these viruses in check?

Do you know that if you take antibiotics for too long, you develop a serious dermal yeast infection?  That's a pretty elementary side-effect of the drug, but it reveals something important - that there are organisms in our bodies that, while harmful in excess, are designed to regulate its basic functions, like digestion, or controlling any other chemical imbalances.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hiv-timecourse.png

See that graph?  See how viral load spikes up, and immediately decreases?  It seems like you have a whole complicated theory about how this works, but "HIV" is only one virus.  The only thing it can do is enter a cell, jam in reproductive code, have its protein coat wither away, and have the cell spit out some more viruses.  It can't just mosey around evading the immune system until the response tapers down - these aren't intelligent organisms.  The problem with this graph is that it's based on terrible data - in particular the notion that only some of the viruses within a discrete infection are vulnerable to removal, while others miraculously are not.

> If you move SIV from one species of monkey to another guess what - they get sick.

See, if you're working from scratch, you can at least hypothesize that humans gained HIV because of sudden increases in population, or sexual activity.  You could even assume the same thing with felines, because the feline populations in cities are so large.  But simians?  Simians don't drink city water, eat Kraft Mac and Cheese, and shoot up contaminated heroin - simians have been  promiscuous as long as they've been around.  How is any species supposed to survive if there's an instantaneous vulnerability, transmitted both by sexual contact and pregnancy, for a virus to suddenly take over the immune system?  Did you ever stop to think that maybe the monkeys get sick because they're kept in cages all day, fed awful food and water, and innoculated by people in lab coats?  Or even that somebody can edit the results of a study, and disregard conflicting studies that try to reproduce it?  That seems to be exactly what's happening here.

The detail that HIV produces cytokine responses is no less minor.  Don't you understand that this represents a chemical signaling system?  The activation of CD8+ lymphocytes is contingent upon this cytokine release, at which point the infected cells are removed from the body - while the antibodies, you know, the subject of ELISA and Western Blot, that you test for to determine if somebody is infected - those are what removes live virus from the bloodstream.  So again we look at this chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hiv-timecourse.png

How is it possible for the virus to follow a parabolic curve following infection, and then sit totally flat for a decade?  I'm pretty sure that's totally impossible to reconcile.



On 10/25/2010 05:33 PM, Nick Bennett wrote:
> Yeah, I didn't feel too bad - I went to a lecture on immune deficiencies.
>
> The funny thing is, the "toxic" DNA chain terminators were rejected as anti-cancer drugs because they weren't toxic enough.  See Dr Beltz's letter to the Re-Appraising AIDS list if you don't believe me.  The myth was invented by Duesberg in (ironically enough) his book "Inventing the AIDS virus".  I find it funny how all the kids who are taking their meds in our clinic are healthy...and those who aren't have crappy immune systems and get sick...and die, like one did earlier this year, from cryptococcal meningitis...
>
> When you say "mystical latency" you are clearly someone still confused about the difference between clinical and virologic latency.  Patients are clinically latent...the virus is not, at least not as a population.  One individual cell might have a latent infection, the one next door might not.  Activate the T cell, turn on NF-kappa-B transcription factor and HIV starts replicating all over again.  Same thing for herpes in nerve cells - we know that it is constantly trying to breakout into a new infection, but that the immune system keeps it in check - 'latent', as well as the true virologic latency that has evolved as an immune-evasion technique.
>
> I'm sure we will eventually evolve to live with HIV - we have evolved alongside other retroviruses whose genomic skeletons litter our genome.  Our oral amylase enzyme is a copy of the pancreatic version of the gene that was corrupted by a retroviral infection millions of years ago for example.  HIV in chimps doesn't make them that sick.  But guess what - we're not chimps.  If you move SIV from one species of monkey to another guess what - they get sick.
>
> What do you know?  Apparently jack shit :o)
>
> I hope you're learning more from your classes than you have apparently learned about retrovirology - and your attitude sucks.  Good luck with life - you're going to need it!  You can chose to live in ignorance or you can chose to be educated - I hope for your sake, and for everyone who has to put up with you, that you chose to be educated in life.  There is not a single AIDS denialist argument, point, or 'fact' that stands up to rigourous analysis of the truth.  Sorry - that's the truth.  I know because I've spent a decade looking them all up and finding the holes.  They've messed things up all the way, because, like you, they don't understand what they're talking about.
>
> My only disappointment is that you really did turn out to be the obnoxious, self-rightous, ignorant AIDS denialist I hoped you wouldn't be.
>
> Cheers
>
> Bennett










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file "bennett2"
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>  These cells produce virus without getting killed.

I read your whole message.  I read it three times.  I'm certain you're just hand-waving away my objections.

> It is - just about every time I predict someone will be a denialist I turn out to be right.  I have an inherent faith in human beings and AIDS denialists just keep on chipping away at it...  It's less frequent now I no longer hang out on AIDS denialist email lists and bulletin boards.

So, basically, you got booed out?

> The trouble is that your dozens of testimonies are just that - testimonies, anecdotes.  The studies of hundreds and thousands of people clearly show that, on average, treating with antiretrovirals leads to longer life, fewer infections, better health.  Some people will have side effects - and sometimes we can predict who and sometimes we can't and have to adjust.

Mnhm...I also have collected quite a bit of information about how epidemiological testing in Africa is based on total nonsense.  We're not talking about double-blind clinical trials, of course, because those usually fail like that old Glaxo-Wellcome long-term trial, where it shows dramatic toxicity from the drug, and then the endorsement from the drug company is retracted, right?  Nothing sketchy about that at all...

> You need to broaden your horizons before coming to conclusions on any of the data you're reading from the denilaists, because when you only know half the science you can't see where their logic falls apart.  A good example is: middle school "viruses make you sick", high school "your immune system fights off viruses", college "some viruses can't be fought off", doctoral "this is why this virus can't be fought off", post-doc "why does this virus not get fought off?"

Now there's an interesting statement.  As your career becomes more dependent on flimsy theories, you start to believe them more vehemently.  We could go back for hours and hours about who has high school logic and who doesn't.  The fact of the matter remains, mammals have been around way longer than viruses, and HIV produces cytokine response that signals CD8+ lymphocyte activation and an antibody response.  This is irreconcilable with the theory that HIV can cause a chronic immunodeficiency.





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I'm going to try educating you - on the off chance you have something to
salvage.

-----Original Message-----
From: [email scrubbed]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2010 10:44 PM
To: Nick Bennett
Subject: Re: Meeting

Yeah, alright.  The human body isn't immune to a virus AFTER it starts
producing antibodies to it?  I'll put that in my notebook, right next to
bloodletting and trepanning.

<<<

You should!  An immune response only means that the immune system has seen
the antigen - nothing more.  Sometimes that means the infection is cleared,
sometimes not.  Herpes viruses (of all sorts, including EBV/mono, CMV and
kaposi's sarcoma herpes virus) are the best example, but also things like
bartonella (cat scratch), borrelia (lyme disease) are bacteria that hang
around LONG after the antibodies arrive.  Syphilis too.  Some bugs have ways
to evade the immune response or damage the immune system - HIV does both,
but nothing it does is anything unique or special that another pathogen
hasn't done at some point before.  Immune-suppression leading to secondary
infections has been long-known to occur with measles, varicella and
influenza.

So yes, a human body isn't necessarily immune to a virus after it starts
producing antibodies to it.  Get over it!  What you're saying isn't even
biology 101, it's pre-K biology.  Duesberg created this myth - he, as a
virologist, ought to know better.  I have PERSONALLY tried to educate him on
this, and he ignores the facts.  It's sheer lunacy.

Besides, antibodies are intended to fight bacteria, not viruses.  Cytotoxic
T cells fight viruses.  A small proportion of kids vaccinated against
chicken pox produce no antibodies to it, but they all produce cytotoxic T
cells (which provide the protection).  If the antibodies work against the
virus, that's a bonus.

 > AIDS virus".  I find it funny how all the kids who are taking their
meds in our clinic are healthy...and those who aren't have crappy immune
systems and get sick...and die, like one did earlier this year, from
cryptococcal meningitis...

Funny?  You find that funny?  I'm really just inclined to say there's
something else you're missing - namely, that the children who aren't
taking these ARVs are reluctant to tell you so, understanding perfectly
well how sick it makes them.
<<<<<

Funny-peculiar - you are either being deliberately disingenuous or stupid.

We know when they're not taking them - they tell us, they don't get their
refills etc...  Of course some lie - but we can tell that too (e.g. high
viral loads but no drug-resistance mutations...).  Your armchair medicine
doesn't stand up to real world experience I'm afraid.

>>>> >>>>
There's a professor at SU who was diagnosed HIV+.  He wrote specifically
in this article that as soon as he started taking AZT, he became
violently ill.  I've collected dozens of patient testimonies that follow
the same story.
<<<<

Sure, it makes some people sick.  But AZT is one med - not even dosed as
high as it used to be now we can use combination therapies.  AZT isn't even
the most toxic med, so the fact that the AIDS denialists such as yourself
are fixated on it just goes to show how misinformed you all are!

The trouble is that your dozens of testimonies are just that - testimonies,
anecdotes.  The studies of hundreds and thousands of people clearly show
that, on average, treating with antiretrovirals leads to longer life, fewer
infections, better health.  Some people will have side effects - and
sometimes we can predict who and sometimes we can't and have to adjust.

I can tell you of several people who caught documented flu despite the flu
shots...that doesn't mean that I think flu shots don't work, because I know
that on average they reduce the amount of influenza in a population by 70%.
That means we expect a 30% failure rate.  If you were to collect up all
those 30% failures you could make a pretty 'convincing' set of testimonies
on the failure of flu vaccination to help - which is why we tend to ignore
such evidence in medicine.  It's too biased to believe.

 > My only disappointment is that you really did turn out to be the
obnoxious, self-rightous, ignorant AIDS denialist I hoped you wouldn't be.

You make it sound like this is a frequent problem for you.
<<<<<<<

It is - just about every time I predict someone will be a denialist I turn
out to be right.  I have an inherent faith in human beings and AIDS
denialists just keep on chipping away at it...  It's less frequent now I no
longer hang out on AIDS denialist email lists and bulletin boards.

 > I'm sure we will eventually evolve to live with HIV - we have evolved
alongside other retroviruses whose genomic skeletons litter our genome.

This is the point that really gets me.  Did you ever stop to think for a
second that those viruses played a part in the development of our
genome?  You didn't even address my point about viral mutation rate,
which makes me think you can't.  Did you ever think that our immune
system evolved specifically to keep these viruses in check?

<<<<<<<<

They might sometime in the future, but HIV is so new it hasn't had a chance
to affect our evolution yet.  Viruses can mutate fast, sure (some of them),
but it's irrelevant to the point (and I didn't have the time, which is the
other alternative - you jump to conclusions a lot based on minimal evidence
- you're not a right-winger by any chance are you..?)

Our immune systems haven't had the chance to evolve for these specific
viruses.  I know of only ONE animal which has evolved its immune system to
the point that it can keep specific infections in check - sharks. They have
pre-packaged antibodies that don't need priming or somatic hypermutation
(immune tweaking and optimization), they just switch on the genes.  Sharks
are older than dinosaurs.  It took them that long to get that right - 450
million years (900 times longer than human beings have been around)

http://people.scs.carleton.ca/~soma/biosec/readings/sharkimmu-sciam-Nov1996.
pdf

Page 70 - but the initial section is a reasonable primer to the immune
response too.  Human beings are nowhere near evolving to the point where we
can keep HIV in check - it's too new, only a few generations.  Even within a
single person you can document immune responses to certain sub-populations
of the virus, and as the virus mutates the immune response has to catch up
and start over.

I'm sure OTHER retroviruses have affected our evolution - like the amylase
story - but HIV is a little more complex that most other retroviruses - 6
additional genes for starters, mostly involved in downregulating the immune
response, screwing up the cell cycle and being clever with latency.

>>> >>>
Do you know that if you take antibiotics for too long, you develop a
serious dermal yeast infection?
<<<<

LOL!  Dude, I'm an ID specialist.  Are you seriously asking this question?

>>>> >>>>
  That's a pretty elementary side-effect
of the drug, but it reveals something important - that there are
organisms in our bodies that, while harmful in excess, are designed to
regulate its basic functions, like digestion, or controlling any other
chemical imbalances.
<<<<

Yes, this is why we recommend probiotics to prevent antibiotic associated
diarrhea...but HIV clearly isn't one of them.

>>>>>>>>> >>>>>>>>>
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hiv-timecourse.png

See that graph?  See how viral load spikes up, and immediately
decreases?  It seems like you have a whole complicated theory about how
this works, but "HIV" is only one virus.  The only thing it can do is
enter a cell, jam in reproductive code, have its protein coat wither
away, and have the cell spit out some more viruses.  It can't just mosey
around evading the immune system until the response tapers down - these
aren't intelligent organisms.  The problem with this graph is that it's
based on terrible data - in particular the notion that only some of the
viruses within a discrete infection are vulnerable to removal, while
others miraculously are not.
<<<<<<<<<<<


WTF are you interpreting from that?  It's based on real life measurements
from real people, published in several papers and reviewed by Pantaleo et al
1993.  Some are certainly not vulnerable to removal - those that have outer
membrane proteins that aren't recognized by the immune system yet, those
that are still latent waiting to activate in macrophages or T cells.  It's
exactly the same as a bacterial infection where some may be resistant, or
hidden in an abscess that takes more antibiotics to reach.

This isn't based on some anthropomorphism of the virus - it's basic
observations that we then have to figure out WHY it happens, not WHETHER or
not it happens.  If the data suggests that some discrete population is not
vulnerable to removal, then we have to find where it is (answer: the
proviral reservoir, mostly tucked away in lymph nodes in places like the
gut), not ignore the data because we don't like it!  A provirus is not only
hidden from the immune response, but also from drug attack.  It might not be
a literally cunning virus, but it acts like one!

 > If you move SIV from one species of monkey to another guess what -
they get sick.

See, if you're working from scratch, you can at least hypothesize that
humans gained HIV because of sudden increases in population, or sexual
activity.  You could even assume the same thing with felines, because
the feline populations in cities are so large.  But simians?  Simians
don't drink city water, eat Kraft Mac and Cheese, and shoot up
contaminated heroin - simians have been  promiscuous as long as they've
been around.  How is any species supposed to survive if there's an
instantaneous vulnerability, transmitted both by sexual contact and
pregnancy, for a virus to suddenly take over the immune system?  Did you
ever stop to think that maybe the monkeys get sick because they're kept
in cages all day, fed awful food and water, and innoculated by people in
lab coats?  Or even that somebody can edit the results of a study, and
disregard conflicting studies that try to reproduce it?  That seems to
be exactly what's happening here.
<<<<

You missed the point - if you give them the SIV they evolved with...they
don't get sick.  You need a virus from another simian species, same as
humans get suck if you give them chimp SIV (chimp SIV is basically human
HIV, or near as damn it).

>>>> >>>>
The detail that HIV produces cytokine responses is no less minor.  Don't
you understand that this represents a chemical signaling system?  The
activation of CD8+ lymphocytes is contingent upon this cytokine release,
at which point the infected cells are removed from the body - while the
antibodies, you know, the subject of ELISA and Western Blot, that you
test for to determine if somebody is infected - those are what removes
live virus from the bloodstream.  So again we look at this chart:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Hiv-timecourse.png

How is it possible for the virus to follow a parabolic curve following
infection, and then sit totally flat for a decade?  I'm pretty sure
that's totally impossible to reconcile.
<<<<

That's because you don't understand the biology of HIV or the immune
response to it.

You can start by reading this

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/211316-overview

It is a little complex (aimed at medics) but it explains how HIV leads to
AIDS and why the viral load and CD4 counts do what they do in that graph.  I
wrote it - it includes the graph you linked to.

The short version is this:

HIV infects the body - macrophages and CD4 T cells.
It establishes a large number of infected cells that do not die
(macrophages).  These cells produce virus without getting killed.
The viral load shoots up.  CD4 T cells drop as they are killed off.
The immune response arrives - virus is attacked in the blood stream, and
virus-infected cells that are active are killed off.  This means that the
body is killing off its own immune system (as well as the virus).
HIV screws with cytokine signaling and cell replication.
Somehow (we don't know how yet...) the thymus is also screwed up, so T cell
replacement is lower than it should be.  We know it happens, we know it is
reversed if you treat HIV, but we don't yet know the exact mechanism how HIV
does it - most likely through the cytokine signaling screwups.

SUMMARY - you get a steady-state system where there is ongoing viral
replication, ongoing immune attack, ongoing immune activation BUT incomplete
T cell replication and replacement.  (Ironically AIDS turns out to be due to
an abnormal immune activation, not a deactivation)

RESULT - stead-state viral load and declining CD4 T cell counts.

Eventually, the T cells drop so low they cannot control the virus any more,
or any other infection for that matter.  When that happens viral load starts
rising again, and opportunistic infections break through - including
infections we HAVE evolved to live with, such as CMV or toxoplasmosis, or
PCP.  This is around a CD4 count of 200, which is why the CDC added that as
an AIDS-defining endpoint, so we could say someone had AIDS before they got
sick and died.  Nowadays the treatment recommendations are based on data
that suggests that waiting until 200 is too late - 350 may be better.

You need to broaden your horizons before coming to conclusions on any of the
data you're reading from the denilaists, because when you only know half the
science you can't see where their logic falls apart.  A good example is:
middle school "viruses make you sick", high school "your immune system
fights off viruses", college "some viruses can't be fought off", doctoral
"this is why this virus can't be fought off", post-doc "why does this virus
not get fought off?"

Most AIDS denialist science in based on high-school logic, trying to
interpret post-doc data, in my experience at least.  The trouble comes when
the post-doc science then has to trickle back down to the masses, and
HIV=AIDS becomes the simple message, when it isn't strictly true for
everyone, and when someone points this out suddenly the entire message is
disbelieved.  The trouble is the average reading age is at the 8th-9th grade
level - or the "your immune system fights off viruses" level.  Now go back
and read your first line in this email...

Bennett