HIV/AIDS Rethinkers

“The FPPV [False Positive Predictive Value]…can reach 99.697% in the blood donation population group. In other words, 99.697% of the HIV-Ab[Antibody] positive results may be false-positives in this group. Our surveys also show that, in 1,195,286 sera specimens from the blood donors, 2439 specimens were HIV-Ab positive by third ELISA, and 11 HIV cases were confirmed by WB [Western Blot]. [i.e. a FPPV of 99.5%, assuming that the Western Blot is valid]”

“In Oregon, it is estimated that 30% of women in labor have not had HIV testing and are candidates for rapid testing. The prevalence of HIV in Oregon is approximately 0.4 out of 1000 women. The sensitivity and specificity of one rapid test are estimated to be 100% and 99.9%, respectively. If all eligible women were screened, the number of false-positive results would be 2.5 times the number of true-positive results, and the positive predictive value would be 29%. The absolute number of false-positive results will increase dramatically if specificity decreases, prevalence is lower, or the number screened increases. Decreasing the specificity to 99.6% would result in the number of false-positive results being 10 times higher than the number of true-positive results, with positive predictive value only 9%. The overall number of positive tests would be low, with the majority being false-positive.”

“In Oregon, it is estimated that 30% of women in labor have not hadHIV testing and are candidates for rapid testing.5 The prevalence of HIV in Oregon is approximately 0.4 out of 1000 women.6 The sensitivity and specificity of 1 rapid test are estimated to be 100% and 99.9%, respectively.2 If all eligible women were screened, the number of false-positive results would be 2.5 times the number of true-positive results, and the positive predictive value would be 29%. The absolute number of false-positive results will increase dramatically if specificity decreases, prevalence is lower, or the number screened increases. Decreasing the specificity to 99.6% would result in the number of false-positive results being 10 times higher than the number of true-positive results, with positive predictive value only 9%. The overall number of positive tests would be low, with the majority being false-positive.”

“Any screening tests may give rise to some weak reactions. In low-risk populations many of these will not be true HIV-positive results.”

“Even with tests as accurate (>99% sensitive and >99% specific) as the current third-generation HIV enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) coupled with Western blot or other confirmatory tests, an increasing number of false-positive results may be anticipated when large numbers of persons at low risk are tested.”

“Screening tests perform best when the prevalence of disease is intermediate, between 40% and 60% [a situation which never arises in practice, screening is usually for relatively rare conditions where the Positive Predictive Value is similarly low]”

“Screening tests are ubiquitous in contemporary practice, yet the principles of screening are widely misunderstood. Screening is the testing of apparently well people to find those at increased risk of having a disease or disorder. Although an earlier diagnosis generally has intuitive appeal, earlier might not always be better, or worth the cost. Four terms describe the validity of a screening test: sensitivity, specificity, and predictive value of positive and negative results. For tests with continuous variables--eg, blood glucose--sensitivity and specificity are inversely related; where the cutoff for abnormal is placed should indicate the clinical effect of wrong results. The prevalence of disease in a population affects screening test performance: in low-prevalence settings, even very good tests have poor predictive value positives…inappropriate application or interpretation of screening tests can rob people of their perceived health, initiate harmful diagnostic testing, and squander health-care resources.”

“The positive predictive value of a single [rapid HIV] test (i.e., the probability that a positive test represents true infection) will be low among populations with low prevalence. Therefore, a reactive rapid test must be confirmed by a supplemental test (e.g., Western blot). However, necessary peripartum [at around the time of birth] interventions to reduce the risk for perinatal transmission might need to be based on the preliminary results of rapid testing at labor and delivery [i.e. it’s okay to give toxic antiviral drugs to babies that are uninfected]”

“The incidence of AIDS-defining events and deaths (14%) in the group of patients with immunologic responses in the absence of a virologic response was higher than that in full-responder patients (2%); yet, the incidence in this group was lower than that in patients with no immunologic response, despite a virologic response (21%), and was lower than that in patients without an immunologic or virologic response. Differences in outcome were significant when factors for progression were compared with those of responder patients. The results support the relevance of the CD4 cell marker over plasma HIV load for predicting clinical outcome in patients who do not achieve full immunologic and virologic responses”

Piketty C et al. Long-term clinical outcome of human immunodeficiency virus-infected patients with discordant immunologic and virologic responses to a protease inhibitor-containing regimen. J Infect Dis. 2001 Jun 1;183(9):1328-35.

“During the next phase of testing (pools of 16 and inclusion of seroreactives), the initial reactive rate (through April 23, 2000) increased to 0.24% (646 reactive pools); the number of individual donations that were NAT reactive was 193 (0.07%). Of those, 178 have been NAT false-positive results (1:24,000) or a positive predictive value of 7.8%.”

“As the number of women being screened has increased, the proportion of false-positive and ambiguous (indeterminate) test results has increased and the positive predictive value (PPV) of the standard HIV test has decreased”

“Consider the first and second [ELISA] tests listed; the first test picks up a few more TPs [True Positives] than the second (from .92 to .95) at the expense of issuing three times as many FPs [False Positives] – 17 per hundred versus 5 per hundred. It is difficult to imagine a good reason for both tests to be approved for use in the same settings with their diverse thresholds…Consider another instance of screening low-probability populations, namely a company’s employees, for whom the prior probability of HIV is about .003. Ordinarily in such settings, a positive outcome on a typical screening test is followed by a more conclusive (and expensive) confirmatory test to reduce the number of false-positives. The College of American Pathologists’ estimates of P(TP) and P(FP) for the best screening and confirmatory tests lead to the result that after a positive result on both tests, the probability of HIV is .13 [13%]. Hence, six of seven individuals diagnosed as positive in this manner would be told they have the HIV when in fact they do not.”

“In patients (like ours) with a low prior probability of disease, almost all positive [viral load] test results are false positive.”

“using the CDC estimate that 0.6% of Americans are HIV-positive, in a population of 10,000 [with a 99% accurate HIV test combination] 60 Americans would test positive! This 60 must include all the false positives, 30, leaving only 30 people actually infected. This leads to the following conclusion: using a 99% accuracy, one finds as many false positives as true positives.”

“Former Senator Lawton Chiles of Florida reported at an AIDS conference in 1987 that of 22 blood donors in Florida who were notified that they tested HIV-positive with the ELISA test, seven committed suicide. In the same medical text that reported this tragedy, the reader is informed that 'even if the results of both AIDS tests, the ELISA and WB (Western blot), are positive, the chances are only 50:50 that the individual is infected'…An estimated PPV [Positive Predictive Value, the probability that a positive test is a true positive] of about 50% for heterosexual men who do not engage in risky behaviour is consistent with the report of the Enquete Committee of the German Bundestag, which estimated the PPV for low-risk people as `less than 50%’”

“The predictive value of a positive test is strongly influenced by the prevalence of HIV-1 infection in the population tested. For example, in low prevalence populations the predictive value was 11.1% (1/9) while in populations with known HIV-1 infection, the predictive value was 97.1% (395/407).”

“Positive predictive value is the proportion of patients with positive test results who are correctly diagnosed…If the prevalence of the disease is very low [virtually always the case in screening tests], the positive predictive value will not be close to 1 [i.e. 100%] even if both the sensitivity and specificity are high [it is actually unrelated to specificity, the likelihood that a test will react when the condition is present]. Thus in screening the general population it is inevitable that many people with positive test results will be false positives.”

“criteria were not reconsidered as the EIA tests were applied to different populations varying drastically in the prevalence (or prior probability) of AIDS.”

“In low risk populations, where the rate of HIV-1 infection may not exceed 0.1%, the rate of antigen positivity could be as low as 0.01%. Assuming a test sensitivity of 100%, the positive predictive value of a repeatedly reactive test would be only 5.9%, i.e. only 6 tests per 100 would be true positives.”

“the predictive value of the ELISA screening test is dependent on the prevalence of infection in the population test. Given the low prevalence of HIV infection in the United States, it is estimated that approximately one in 200 persons is infected; a specificity of 99% will yield ~100 false results per 10,000 individuals tested, for every 25 infected individuals identified.”

“Most patients (68 to 89%) from low risk groups (prevalence of 0.1% or less) who show reactivity on screening tests will have false-positive results…The predictive value of a positive ELISA varies from 2% to 99%”

“Although confirmatory testing greatly increases specificity, there may still be false-positive findings when screening populations with a low prevalence of HIV infection”

“the likelihood that a reactive test means previous exposure to HTLV-III [HIV] is low in the blood donor population. It has been estimated, for example, that for a test with 95% sensitivity and specificity, the predictive value ...of a positive test will be only 2%”

“when the EIA is used to screen populations in which the prevalence of infection with HIV-1 is low (e.g., blood donors), nonspecific reactions may be more common…AIDS and AIDS-related conditions are clinical syndromes and their diagnosis can only be established clinically. Testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS even if the recommended investigation of reactive specimens suggests a high probability that antibodies to HIV-1 are present…The risk of an asymptomatic person with a repeatedly reactive serum developing AIDS or an AIDS-related condition is not known”

“nonspecific results [on antibody tests] are found commonly when screening tests are used in large populations…the psychosocial and medical implications of a positive antibody test may be devastating”

There you have it. No “handful of wild-eyed conspiracy theorists.” No “right-wing racists,” as the Aids industry’s spinmeisters would have you believe. Just 19 very serious, concerned, highly educated people from every corner of the globe who sense that an enormous tragedy is unfolding due to the medical establishment’s unwillingness to face the evidence that the Hiv-Aids theory is a mistake.

The people on this page were intellectually curious enough to have sought out and studied the arguments that discredit the Hiv-Aids theory. Since the mass media and professional journals censor these arguments, the vast majority of doctors and scientists, although decent people who want to do the right thing, have never been exposed to them, and so accept the biased conclusions of politicized bureaucracies like the CDC and WHO, whose coziness with the drug industry is legendary and whose recommendations always seems to dovetail perfectly with drug industry marketing plans.

Were it not for the massive media blackout of information that contradicts the Hiv theory, many more people would be asking tough questions.

The next time you hear the media say, “only a handful of scientists doubt Hiv’s role in Aids,” refer them to this page. Explain to them that it is wrong to misrepresent the fact that there is enormous dissent to the Hiv-Aids paradigm.

The next time you hear the media drone, “Hiv, the virus that causes Aids,” remind them that journalists are supposed to distinguish between what is a theory and what is a fact. That Hiv-Aids is only a theory and has never been proven, is admitted by top scientists even in the Aids establishment.

The next time the media announce that tens of millions of people are dying from Hiv in Africa, ask them how they know that. Remind them that journalists are supposed to question dubious assertions from powerful, drug-industry funded agencies like the WHO, not parrot them as if they were indisputable. Ask them why they report these numbers as if they were actual Aids cases, when in fact they are projections made by WHO’s computer programs, based on very questionable statistical methodologies and contradicted by many facts including the continual large population increases experienced in the countries supposedly worst affected.

Request that the media stop twisting the truth in support of a politicized, entrenched Aids establishment that profits financially by terrorizing people, pokes its nose shamelessly into people’s private sex lives, compels people to submit to inaccurate tests and literally forces mothers and babies to swallow toxic, unproven chemotherapy drugs with horrific, often-fatal side effects.

Explain to them that this is irresponsible, and that such actions cause needless anxiety, shatter people’s lives, tear families apart, destroy hope and trigger countless suicides. And that while we realize that sensational headlines about “killer viruses” sell newspapers, the social cost of these profits is unacceptable.

Make the media understand that keeping people in the dark about the large number of credentialed dissenters to the Hiv-Aids dogmas, and the financial conflicts of interest that are rampant among Hiv-Aids scientists and NGOs, is a violation of everyone’s human right to informed consent and freedom of information.

Note: Affiliation with an organization does not imply that the organization supports the individual HIV/AIDS skeptic’s position.

THE AIDS INDUSTRY AND MEDIA WANT YOU TO THINK THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF SCIENTISTS WHO DOUBT THE HIV–AIDS THEORY.HERE’S THE REALITY.

THE AIDS INDUSTRY AND MEDIA WANT YOU TO THINK THERE ARE ONLY A HANDFUL OF SCIENTISTS WHO DOUBT THE HIV–AIDS THEORY.
HERE’S THE REALITY.