Opinion: Origin and treatment of AIDS, pt. 5
By Frides Laméris, Netherlands – Excursus on ‘regular’ treatment of HIV/AIDS : Antiretrovirals – good or bad science?
Click here for previous article – article 3
Click here for previous article – article 4
- Image of AZT bottle
We have taken notice of several ‘alternative’ medicines for AIDS which have been suppressed by the medical (and governmental) agencies. All according to the description and research of dutch animal micro-surgeon Johan van Dongen, as laid down in his 2003 book ‘AIDS, the greatest crime in medical history’. Whistleblower van Dongen lost his job many years ago due to great opposition to his revealing the nasty truth about the real causes of the AIDS epidemics.
In today’s article, we make an excursus by telling something about the officially accepted and promoted AIDS drugs called Antiretrovirals, which derive their name from the fact (or theory) that AIDS is being caused by a retrovirus (HIV). Retrovirals – as do even the firms concede that produce them – do not pretend to be able to cure AIDS, but they may be hoped for to extend the life expectancy of HIV- AIDS patients with a number of years. The fact that antiretrovirals are no real cure for AIDS was confirmed by the director of NIAIDS (US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) Dr. Anthony Fauci in 2007, who was reported to have said at an International AIDS conference: “As for a cure, let’s just stop talking about it. He also said: “So far we have not come even close to truly eradicating it in anyone, and I think we should just stop talking about it “(quoted in: Janine Roberts: Fear of the Invisible, p. 203).
AZT While dealing with antiretrovirals we will concentrate on the most (in)famous antiretroviral drug called AZT, which is also known under its more technical name as Zidovudine or Azidothymidine. It was first commercially sold under the name Retrovir. In our discussion about AZT we like to refer here to the excellent work of South African former high court advocate Mr. Anthony Brink, who has published extensively about AZT. Three of his AZT books, Debating AZT, Introducing AZT and Poisoning our children: AZT in pregnancy, can be downloaded for free from his website. After reading Brink’s first book, South African President Thabo Mbeki ordered an enquiry into the safety of this AIDS drug in October 1999. Adv. Brink is also founder of the South African organization TIG, which stands for Treatment Information Group (http://www.tig.org.za/), in opposition to the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which was founded by Mr. Zackie Achmat in order to promote retroviral treatment with AZT. Brink, through providing Mbeki and his health minister Dr. Tshabalala Msimang with his expert knowledge on AZT, had convinced Mbeki of the dangers of this highly poisonous substance. This aroused considerable controversy in South-Africa over the past decade and although antiretrovirals have been made available in South Africa after legal pressure brought to bear by the TAC, the debate about the utility and the toxicity of antiretroviral drugs is still going on in South Africa (see also Brinks affidavit against TAC in a 2006 lawsuit (http://j.mp/fX7Hue).
Discovery of AZT
AZT was discovered in 1961 by Professor Richard Beltz as a possible chemotherapeutic agent against cancer. It turned out so poisonous and detrimental for the cells in its working that is was rejected as too dangerous for the purpose. It produced “wholesale cell death of every type, particularly the rapidly dividing cells of the immune system and those lining our guts” according to Brink in his first book.
Why then, after abandoning its use in the sixties, AZT was ‘revived’ in the eighties as a drug against HIV we may question? How did it happen that it is now prescribed against HIV, along with other antiretroviral drugs to delay ’inevitable’ deaths?
Brink sees the start for the search for a substance like AZT in a statement Dr. Robert Gallo made in 1984 that his (HLTV) virus was the probable cause of AIDS. This must have caused an increased speed to find a profitable pharmaceutical weapon against it. “Obviously, if an already synthesized drug could be applied to the malady it would short cut most of the road-race there”.
A three- month first safety trial was then organized by the US health authorities, which turned out to result in a scientific flop when those people being in the control group in their state of desperation were so eager to receive the drugs as well, that a proper placebo controlled study could not take place. This fact thereby took away any proper science basis to the subsequent release of the drug for use. Brink concludes in his first book that also in relation to subsequent trials, “ it would not be extravagant to call them fraudulent”.
The great toxicity of the drug was proved when, within two years, one third of the AZT-patients in this trial were dead (full account of this trial in Peter Duesberg’ s Inventing the AIDS-virus, pp. 314-324). Of course, the dose of AZT which is given these days has been strongly cut to prevent the initial disaster, but this can’t take way the impression that the whole AZT undertaking was from the beginning a very unlucky and dangerous undertaking (see for toxicity of AZT the warnings on the label of the bottle.
To be continued.
