On February 14 2011 13:30 Azzur wrote: Nope, I don't have experience in molecular biology research but I can see the conflict of interest in the research of pharmaceutical drugs. This automatically raises alarm bells since there is a lot of money involved in the industry. Then there are scientists in the field claiming things contrary to the generally accepted opinion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_denialism).
Whether these scientists are right or wrong, this raises questions on why research is stifled on the topic? Why have so many people come here using strong words to debunk these people? This is because we have been conditioned to believe in the established theories.
I thank you for linking me to that wikipedia article.
When I first read that article, my initial reaction was "wow, this is really biased against aids denialism". So I checked out what was going on in the talk page, and apparently one of the reason why the article was so harsh against aids denialism is that multiple pages on aids were sabotaged by members of the site questioningaids.com and as a result, aids denialists were labeled a fringe group by wikipedia editors. In wiki policy this means two things - one, proponents of fringe science are routinely banned from editing wikipedia (scientologists and dianetics is the most famous example of this) - two, what you'd expect NPOV to look like essentially goes out the window, because the NPOV on a fringe group is "these guys are insane".
First I would like to introduce myself. I am a third year student in an Oriental Medicine program. I have been a “dissident” for 5-6 years. What began as a pre-med Biochemistry major’s academic pursuit of studying two opposing sides of a scientific theory ended up with the complete and utter questioning of science in general and all medical paradigm. This culminated in me finding Oriental Medicine and a physiological/healing system that did make sense.
Then it suddenly hit me - AcuWill stands for Acupuncture Will. This guy has been running through this thread claiming to have done substantial medical research on HIV when in reality his medical research is on traditional chinese medicine. At any rate, AcuWill has made it quite clear that he doesn't believe HIV is the cause of AIDS. So, what does Acuwill believe is the real cause of AIDS?
This phenomenon transpires because there is a similarity in the stressors, and subsequently the terrain, that cause AIDS. This will lead to many of the same underlying patterns. For example, symptoms associated with Yin deficiency (I’m using this example to be consistent) include: night sweats, afternoon sensations of fever, anorexia, dry, deformed and brittle nails, black floaters in the eye (or symptoms associated with CMV-retinitis), constipation, dry and persistent cough, dry eyes, dry mouth with desire to drink in small sips throughout day, thirst that is not satisfied with drinking, grasshopper mind, difficulty falling asleep, agitation, restlessness, etc. What can cause this pattern? Worry, fear, over thinking, over work, the “gay party scene”, lack of sleep, drugs like meth, cocaine, smoking, smoking marijuana, lack of proper nourishment, excessive cleansing, diarrhea, alcohol, medications, etc. Proceeding further with the example above, when one has a profound Yin deficiency, the body’s Yang (Yin being the moist, cooling, physical substance of the body, and Yang being the metabolic force, heat and capacity of the body to perform its physiological duties) can separate, causing chaos. When one takes drugs that suppress the body’s motive force, like chemotherapy, then the negative physiological expression of the chaos will temporarily cease. This is one example as to why the drugs can be effective to alleviate some of the symptoms associated with AIDS.
In plain English, the cause of AIDS isn't a retrovirus, but rather, is caused by Yin deficiency.
Now, I don't have anything against traditional chinese medicine at all (some of it has been proven to have scientific value, although most of it hasn't), but when you reread his posts in this thread knowing this information, suddenly there's some underlying logic to his train of thought. The reason why he doesn't believe that AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, is because he doesn't believe any disease is caused by a virus.
At first I thought it was quite ironic that a person who's profession is dealing with needles doesn't believe that a virus in which one of its primary methods of transfer from person to person is contaminated needles doesn't believe this virus causes any harm, then I realized how incredibly disturbing this is. If he is sincerely attempting to cure AIDS with acupuncture, I sincerely hope that he properly sterilizes his equipment.
On February 13 2011 13:21 AcuWill wrote: The fact that a large number of the posts replying to me attack me and basically accuse me of being a religious zealot is telling. It is difficult to discuss things in a rational manner which give rise to a lot of emotion. Paradigms fall under this tenant and HIV/AIDS discussions especially get the blood boiling.
I would like to apologize for this on behalf of the TL community. We originally had you figured as some sort of christian religious zealot, when in reality we had the wrong religion all along.
On February 15 2011 01:27 LunarC wrote: You know, AcuWill, you argue that the mechanism is unknown. But he's not arguing anything about the mechanism. He's arguing that the act of infection exists. Last time I checked, when a virus can gain access to a cell, it will typically proceed to destroy it and use it to replicate itself. Fuck HOW it does it.
It's not that it cannot be shown how it does it, rather that it does it at all. That is what is the point. Further, only 1-500 CD4+ lymphocytes are infected, with no evidence that HIV causes cell death.
Once again, that is not evidence that HIV is the causative factor in AIDS either way.
Actually had to laugh several times while reading that table. Not only are you linking to an article published by a scientist who has been widely discredited and had published articles retracted due to inaccuracy and ethics concerns, but 8 of the citations for that specific table are to his own work. The quality of that paper as scientific evidence could be seen as dodgy at best, and after reading the figure i wouldnt cite the article as a source for fear of being laughed at. I find it funny how you are ignoring the massive amount of reliable research that clearly indicates HIV is the main cause of AIDS (no im not going to link to any, its been done many times already in this thread and you are clearly intent on ignoring the evidence) and cite a source not worth the paper its printed on as all the evidence you need that AIDS is not caused by HIV. Conclusion: (and im fully prepared to accept a band/warning for this) AcuWill your a fucking retard mate.
Duesberg and his work with the former southafrican president Mbeki killed thousands of people. And Kary Mullis believes in aliens... (you dont need to respond to this)
This thread reminds me of a german Doctor that said cancer can 100% be cured if you only take vitamins. Chemotherapy or normal cancer threadment would kill people and it all would be a big consipracy by the pharma-industrie. Many actually believed him and there was a big wave of people denying normal threadment because of his theories. Many of them died that could have been helped with a normal threadment. (bevor ppl debate this, the main-stream medicine sure knows that certain effects with vitamins can influence a cancer development, but it is in no way a 100% alternative to normal medicine yet)
I have over the last 13 pages of thread tried to understand your viewpoints and read some of the material presented by you (linked videos and websites). And while i think it is a remarkable effort by you, and that you use some form of valid arguing at some points in time, i think you need to rethink your position in this debate.
First off i would like to call out your argument, that the people claiming that HIV is causative for AIDS, must prove that to you and that there is no such proof. This is a clever use of an argument, but invalid nonetheless. You see, while clinicians and scientist have a hard time elaborating on how HIV in fact causes our immune system to deteriorate and cause a syndrome described as being unable to efficiently protect the human body against certain life threating diseases ( Also called AIDS), it is hard to argue with the fact that every single person who suffers or have suffered (they are now dead) from AIDS have in cases when tested or otherwise been observed all been affected by HIV.
Whether or not a person have AIDS and hasn't previously been tested for HIV is irrelevant to the point of discussion of whether or not they then might not have had HIV before being diagnosed with full-blown AIDS, because in all cases of the opposite it has always proven to be true (because, as we will come to later, that AIDS is in fact a syndrome "caused" by a virus - not a virus that then evolves into a illness - its all cause and effect).
So to use argument repellent in this situation i will ask you in the same way, 'If AcuWill HIV is not the causative of AIDS, give me proof in an example, that untreated HIV has not later let to AIDS (this is kind of a trick) - and you may not use an example of a person still living and having untreated HIV (because these may later develop AIDS - *wink wink*) At the same time you must proof through example a case of AIDS where the person previously have been tested for HIV numerously times, all resulting negative in all cases (this is also a trick) - this person must have been proven unaffected by HIV'.
You see the reason why i used your own argument against you is because it will be hard for you to comply and find an answer to my "challenge".
Now back to the discussion about HIV and AIDS. First lets talk about what they stand for (verbally). HIV is Human Immunodeficiency Virus - What this means is that (and yes it does) the body has been affected with a virus that starts to deteriorate our immune system to a point where it gets hard /impossible to avoid certain infections (this is the short explanation - please lets keep this simple) - Then at some point (this varies greatly depending on a lot of things) we get to a stage of infection where we are then affected by certain other infections that can prove to be live threatening, this stage is where we call it AIDS or "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" - We call it that because we have in fact gotten a infection as a direct cause of deficiency in our immune-system. We could get tuberculoses if exposed to it and we might not be able to recover from it, thus we are not dying because of "AIDS" we are dying because of an infection has entered our body and our immune-system is unable to recover, thus we have a syndrome. What HIV actually does is, that the virus need to multiply in order to survive, but unfortunately for us, it needs our already existing cells to do so. So what this ugly bugger does is that it finds the "director" in our immune-system the so called CD4 cell, it then inhabits this (yes i know, but lets keep it simple for everyone) cell and the cell dies /is replaced by the infectious virus, thus multiplying. The problem with this is, that every time it does this, we have less directors of our immune-system, meaning less capacity to deal with infections.
The funny thing is ( i know its not really funny) that you seem to completely forgo this process in your logic making, seemingly thinking that AIDS is a illness in itself (it is, as it is a syndrome), and that lots of things can cause this. You are right in thinking that a lot of different things can cause AIDS (meaning being classified with the syndrome AIDS which is due to a infection caused by HIV) - in that to have the "syndrome" AIDS you must be infected with a disease or illness as a result of a destroyed immune-system. The two things i am afraid goes hand in hand - HIV is a virus that leads to SERIOUS LACK OF CAPACITY TO DEAL WITH HARMFUL INFECTIONS THAT IN TURN LEADS TO HAVING A SYNDROME OF THIS EFFECT!
Its is important for me that everyone understands that HIV and AIDS are not explicitly two separate things, but merely words used to describe the process that happens when you are affected by the virus HIV and what happens after that to the point of illness as a direct consequence of HIV - diagnosed as the syndrome AIDS - You are treated for the infection that leads to AIDS (cancer for example - though a rare example) and HIV until your immune-system recovers (which it rarely does at this point because you are so ill that you cant be treated for HIV fully).
so please AcuWill while i understand wanting to "change" peoples view - at this point it is a harmful and directly wrong way to view these matters, and if you indeed are educated on this area - i strongly recommend you coming up with solid way of presenting your views and convincing people otherwise. Yin-deficiency............ You know, i do not even want to comment your ideas regarding this, but please trying to convince people that HIV is not the cause of AIDS is not only stupid and mis-informed but directly harmful. Debating the workings of HIV virus and how it behaves in different environments is a completely different and interesting matter - one with many unanswered questions - BUT it is important that you try to understand what you are talking about.
TLDR - to everyone else "AIDS is explanatory degree of the HIV virus - or stage if you will" -
On February 14 2011 21:07 Igakusei wrote: Wow, nice.
I'm posting this video in response to why people get so angry at AIDS denialists. It's not that we're suppressing science and forcing AIDS research down specific pathways, it's because of people like this:
Sup, AcuWill. Yeah, the video's heavily biased, but it sure highlights all the scapegoating your denialists like to do.
You should have reconsidered leaving your medical career for Oriental Medicine.
@AcuWill It is one thing to be sceptical and wanting more evidence and another to claim there is "no probable cause of AIDS". For being such an educated person you seem to have a lack of scientific understanding.
@AcuWill It is one thing to be sceptical and wanting more evidence and another to claim there is "no probable cause of AIDS". For being such an educated person you seem to have a lack of scientific understanding.
Well he DID forsake standard medical training for... Oriental medicine. Seems like he's one of the types that are more prone to taking an argumentative approach rather than an unbiased, scientific one.
I'd like to point out that from a scientific standpoint, causation can never be proven by experiment, only correlation. Correlation does not prove causation, meaning that we can only work with correlations.
AcuWill demands scientific proof of causation. That is an impossible request.
I think it's great that people out there do question what's going on, and that nobody should personally attack someone just for disagreeing with the norms, as long as they have evidence to back up their claims somewhat.
I do disagree, however, with the standpoint that HIV is not a causative factor of AIDS, for reasons that have already been posted in this thread.
@AcuWill It is one thing to be sceptical and wanting more evidence and another to claim there is "no probable cause of AIDS". For being such an educated person you seem to have a lack of scientific understanding.
Well he DID forsake standard medical training for... Oriental medicine. Seems like he's one of the types that are more prone to taking an argumentative approach rather than an unbiased, scientific one.
I'd like to point out that from a scientific standpoint, causation can never be proven by experiment, only correlation. Correlation does not prove causation, meaning that we can only work with correlations.
AcuWill demands scientific proof of causation. That is an impossible request.
I would argue that you can "prove" causation if you describe the mechanism and support that with evidence. Of course I use "prove" loosely not in the mathematical sense. Basically in the beginning we had correlation between people having AIDS and those infected with HIV. But we are getting closer to have comprehensive mechanism for how HIV causes AIDS and mechanism is reasonable "proof" of causation.
On February 15 2011 01:20 AcuWill wrote: I do not agree with your third statement, and have questions about your second.
For point 2: Multiple studies have been done. Knockouts of CCR5 or CXCR4 result in little to no infection of CD4+ cells with HIV in vitro. Antibodies specific to these cell surface receptors also result in reduced infection of CD4+ cells with HIV.
Also a quote from your last source, "Despite more than 20 years of study, the mechanism by which HIV so effectively depletes CD4 T cells in untreated, infected subjects remains a mystery." That is hardly proof that HIV infects CD4+ lymphocytes and causes them to die. In fact, your source indicates that how it occurs is a mystery, ie. there is no evidence.
What he's saying is that previous research has been unable to figure out how HIV kills so many CD4+ cells while seemingly only infecting a few. What his research is showing is that many cells successfully fight off an HIV infection but apoptose suggesting an explanation for why CD4+ depletion happens when only 1% of CD4+ cells seem like they are infected.
Asides from the actual mechanism of CD4+ depletion, time course studies have been done on subjects infected with HIV as well as studies on primates infected with HIV showing a marked decrease in CD4+ cell count. Similarly, treatment with antiretrovirals shows an increase in CD4+ count. The logical explanation is that HIV depletes CD4+ cell count and that ARV's, by preventing HIV from multiplying prevent that depletion. Just because there is a gap in understanding does not mean that it is suddenly false.
You have resorted to arguing other points, leading further and further from the crux of the argument, that there is no proof that HIV is the causative factor of AIDS. You are in fact supporting my argument by doing so.
Apparently trying to discuss the mechanism of HIV is "detracting from the crux of the argument".
@AcuWill It is one thing to be sceptical and wanting more evidence and another to claim there is "no probable cause of AIDS". For being such an educated person you seem to have a lack of scientific understanding.
Well he DID forsake standard medical training for... Oriental medicine. Seems like he's one of the types that are more prone to taking an argumentative approach rather than an unbiased, scientific one.
I'd like to point out that from a scientific standpoint, causation can never be proven by experiment, only correlation. Correlation does not prove causation, meaning that we can only work with correlations.
AcuWill demands scientific proof of causation. That is an impossible request.
i think he switched to oriental medicine because he bombed the mcat and couldn't get into med school. or he did well on the mcat and didn't pass any interviews and still couldn't get into med school.
On February 15 2011 04:37 LeoTheLion wrote: i think he switched to oriental medicine because he bombed the mcat and couldn't get into med school. or he did well on the mcat and didn't pass any interviews and still couldn't get into med school.
I'm not sure that's fair. In my experience intelligence doesn't seem to correlate very strongly with decreased belief in pseudoscience. I wouldn't be surprised if it did, but the host of highly intelligent people who believe in various fairy tales certainly makes your inference that anyone this deluded must also be stupid seem rather empty.
http://www.drday.com/ for instance. Total and complete crackpot, but she apparently managed to have a successful career for years before she finally went over the edge.
Here's an excerpt:
You see, these supposed "infective agents" such as bacteria, viruses, fungi, and now Prions, are NOT the CAUSE of the diseases, they are the RESULT of a diseased body caused by the wrong diet and lifestyle. These bacteria, viruses, fungi and prions are actually the "clean-up crew", formed by the body, to get rid of the mess and clean out the body.
We have been taught that germs CAUSE disease. But germs DON'T cause disease anymore than flies cause garbage! This is explained in detail on my video "Drugs NEVER Cure Disease."
On February 15 2011 02:43 LunarC wrote: I honestly couldn't give two fucks about what AcuWill thinks and nobody should else either, because he is not in any sort of position to cause a major shift in medical thought or pharmaceutical practice.
No they shouldn't, but sadly many will. If people like this, who are well spoken and relatively convincing, don't have anyone who stands up to them and point out the errors they are making they would most likely be able to convince a fair bunch of people. In the best case this is simply luring people into believing things that are blatantly false and undermining most of what science has tried to accomplish. In the worst cases, like this I might add, it's not only dangerous but potentially lethal.
People who actually stand up to these phonies and pseudo-scientists, be it creationists, aids denialists or holocaust denialists, and take the seemingly pointless debate get far too little credit. Hats off to all people who actually keep arguing the truth in this thread. I for one appreciate it a lot.
On February 15 2011 01:53 AcuWill wrote: I have to go now and do some real life, but I would like to point out that HIV causes AIDS theory came about in the mid 1980s. So, posting articles proving the causative factor of AIDS is HIV that are recent is a bit of an issue
Am I missing something here or is this really as stupid as it seems to me? However I try to wrap my head around it this is one of the more stupid things I've read in a long time.
On February 15 2011 05:10 Badboyrune wrote: Am I missing something here or is this really as stupid as it seems to me? However I try to wrap my head around it this is one of the more stupid things I've read in a long time.
Acuwill has posted a few articles that call into question the consistency of testing for HIV in patients and a few other bits that attack the methodology of specific parts of AIDS research. He hasn't actually shown anything that disproves that HIV causes AIDS.
Whether or not he recognizes that he presents a logical fallacy as fact is another thing. Seeing as he's a proponent of alternative medicine, I'm inclined to think he actually believes what he says.
ok i just read the 2010 review paper by chigwedere and essex (http://www.springerlink.com/content/108174nr1788q73w/fulltext.pdf) and it provides pretty clear and strong evidence that HIV infection is the causative agent of AIDS. acuwill you sure you read this? essex also quotes a bunch of primary literature sources which you can look at and sift through the primary data.
On February 15 2011 03:49 TWIX_Heaven wrote: sigh............
/end of thread
Actually people have a tremendous capacity for ignoring things they don't like.
On February 13 2011 12:35 Space Invader wrote: How is there even an argument about this? I've been working with women and children with HIV/AIDS for years, HIV isn't exactly the same thing as AIDS, obviously. You can live with HIV your whole life and be healthy. But HIV becomes AIDS once you have multiple infectious diseases.
EPT
