Origin of the AIDS virus

Evidence that HIV causes AIDS: (*Stine. AIDS Update 1997. New Jersey: Prentice, 1996, p. 35.)

1. AIDS has been identified in over 90% of individuals who are HIV-positive and have symptoms of HIV disease or are HIV-positive but appear to be healthy.

2. Studies by Bruce Patterson and Steven Wolinsky have shown that the generic material of HIV (HIV-DNA) can be found in as many as 1 in 10 blood lymphocytes of persons with HIV disease.

3. There is a chronological association of HIV-positive who progress to AIDS. People who test HIV-negative, do not demonstrate HIV antibodies and never demonstrate AIDS. However, individuals with HIV-positive develop AIDS. In 1985, 75% to 90% of hemophiliacs in the Unites States tested HIV-positive and over half of them died from AIDS.

4. An HIV-positive identical twin born to an HIV-positive mother developed AIDS, but the HIV-negative twin did not.

5. Finally, there have been several reports in the literature on HIV-infected people transmitting the virus to their sexual partners, both eventually dying of AIDS.

Does everyone believes HIV is the cause of AIDS?

Although there is evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV, other scientists such as Peter Duesberg, a molecular biologist at the University of California at Berkeley, states that HIV does not cause AIDS. Duesberg suggests that there is no single causative agent, that the disease is due to one's "life style" (Stine 33). He defines AIDS as a collection of non-infectious deficiences predominantly associated with drug use, mal nutrition, parasitic infections, and other factors. For Duesberg, there is no published data that clearly answers the question that HIV causes AIDS. Duesberg arguments that no one has yet shown that hemophiliacs infected with HIV progress to AIDS. However, the data on matched groups of homosexual males and hemophiliacs has shown that only those infected with HIV develop AIDS (Stine 33).