Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Page 117

The drug-AIDS hypothesis *
ued after a short traumatic, but reversible experience.
Independent scientists document that in addition to
abstaining from antiviral drugs long-term survivors are
those who have given up or never taken recreational
drugs 253'255. Timothy Hand, from the Ogelthorpe
University in Atlanta GA, adds rnuch weight to this
view:
While healthy, ‘non-progressing’ HIV carriers are
considered rare (and doomed), they may in fact vastly
outnumber the sick and dying. This is certainly
implied by the ubiquitous estimate of HIV prevalence
in America of one million. Long-term AIDS survival
is now a hot topic in the literature, and anecdotal
reports 256’257 as well as numerous scientific studies 101,
25i, 258-264 suggest that most long-term survivors have
shunned antiviral drugs. This point is often understat-
ed in these studies, and is not made in the titles or
abstracts. In David Baltimore’s editorial on 2 of these
studies, avoidance of antivirals was not mentioned at
all 265. Needless to say, none of these studies was fund-
ed by a pharmaceutical firm.
Interestingly, nearly all of these studies suggest a pro-
tective role of cytotoxic CD8+ T-cells and/or natural
killer cells in healthy survivors. Many focus on the
importance of maintaining cell-mediated immunity,
rather than on “killing HIV”. Thus HIV infection per
se seems to entail little danger, unless it is followed by
antiviral therapy. 266.
Similar observations have been made by the late
homosexual AIDS activist Michael Callen:
[I]n researching his 1990 book Surviving AIDS,
Callen interviewed nearly fifty people who had lived
for many years not just after being pronounced HIV-
positive, but after an AIDS diagnosis. He found that
only four had ever used AZT; three of those had since
died, and one was dying of AZT-induced lymphoma.
But the overwhelming majority of long-term survivors
had somehow managed to resist the enormous pressure
to take AZT.
The pressure did not just come from doctors, Callen
told the Amsterdam meeting 7'267, but from a certain
segment of AIDS activism that seemed driven by a
‘drugs-into-bodies’ mentality. ‘I feel many AIDS
activist friends who are in the forefront of this frenzy
are very misleading to people with AIDS, who are
frightened and desperate. They only seem to talk
about two possible outcomes of taking experimental
drugs: one is that it works and one that it does not
worlc. There is a third, apparently much more com-
mon possibility, which is that you will be worse off
than if you did nothing at all. And nobody likes to talk
about that because it is so unpleasant’. He had seen the
devastation wreaked by AZT, watching with horror as
friends with AIDS ‘turn the colour of boiled ham from
AZT poisoning, endure the melting away of their mus-
cles, become transfusion dependent, and experience
drug-induced psychosis’. Yet his perception of a person
diagnosed with AIDS in 1992 was that ‘they would sell
their grandmother into slavery to get a slot in the latest
drug-of-the-month clinical trial’.
Another feature of the long-term survivors was that
they rejected the predominant scientific view that
HlV-positivity meant inevitable decline of the immune
system towards an early death 1.
In December 1995 The Advocate, the largest nation-
al gay magazine, published the story of Dennis
Leoutsakas, a man who is HlV-positive “for at least 17
years [but] doesn’t have AIDS — and no one knows
why” 268. According to the article, “most HIV
researchers have insisted that HIV infection will, in
almost every case, eventually lead to AIDS” — a belief
underscored by their preferred term for nonprogres-
sors: slow progressors.
Wearing his HIV blinkers the author of the article
fails to see the formula for Leoutsakas’ “slow progres-
sion”: “ Leoutsakas, 47: A former IV-drug user who
last shared a needle in 1978 ... first tested positive in
1987. He has aT-cell count ... between 650 and 950.
In addition, Leoutsakas has had none of the oppor-
tunistic infections that define AIDS - no pneumonia,
no Kaposi’s sarcoma, no fungal infections, nada.
Leoutsakas says doctors have attempted to explain his
case by theorizing that, like the Australians 249, he is
infected with a weakened form of HIV - but it’s really
just speculation.” ... “Leoutsakas has no theory of his
own - and no special formula for his well-being. He’s
never taken AZT or any other antiretroviral drugs.”
No more IV-drugs, no antiretroviral drugs — but “no
formula for his well-being”!
And in October 1996 even an orthodox professor of
medicine at the University of California at San
Francisco taught his medical students the secret of
long-term survival with HIV (see 4.): “I have a Iarge
population of people who have chosen not to take any
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