AIDS researcher cleared of misconduct

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100622/full/news.2010.310.html

22 June 2010 | Nature
AIDS researcher cleared of misconduct
Berkeley cites academic freedom and lack of evidence as it wraps up investigation over contentious paper.
Zoë Corbyn

Peter Duesberg has been cleared of wrongdoing.Controversial researcher Peter Duesberg has been cleared of wrongdoing following formal complaints made after he and others published a paper arguing that there is "as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS".

Duesberg, who is well known for denying the link between HIV and AIDS, escaped censure from the University of California, Berkeley, after an investigation upheld his academic freedom and found no clear evidence that he broke faculty rules in publishing the paper.

A letter dated 28 May from Sheldon Zedeck, vice-provost for academic affairs and faculty welfare, to Duesberg effectively clears him of any wrongdoing. It states that there was "insufficient evidence" available to pursue any disciplinary action against him, although it stresses that the investigation was not concerned with the "accuracy or validity of the article".

Duesberg told Nature that he felt "officially exonerated" by the outcome but was disappointed that Berkeley had not dismissed the allegations sooner. "There was no basis for a misconduct charge," he says.

The professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, who won international acclaim for his work on cancer genes in the 1970s before focusing on AIDS, says that his detractors will now find it more difficult to make a case against him. "Now they will have to find something else ... maybe my parking permits," he suggests.

Contentious hypothesis

Berkeley launched an investigation last November, questioning whether Duesberg had violated the university's code of conduct when submitting an article to the journal Medical Hypotheses, which at the time did not peer review its papers.

The article argued that there is "as yet no proof that HIV causes AIDS" and described claims that the virus had killed millions as "unconfirmed". Duesberg had previously submitted the manuscript to the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, where one reviewer warned that he could face misconduct charges were the paper to be published.

The warning concerned the alleged cherry picking of results and the failure to declare a conflict of interest for co-author David Rasnick, previously an employee of Matthias Rath. Rath sells vitamin pills as remedies for AIDS. Rasnick has denied any conflict of interest and says that he has had no connection with Rath since 2006 (see: AIDS contrarian ignored warnings of scientific misconduct).

The paper's publication led to a storm of protest from scientists, and retrospective peer review later led to its being permanently withdrawn. The journal's editor was sacked and publisher Elsevier vowed to make changes to Medical Hypotheses, including introducing peer review.

Two formal complaints were also lodged with Berkeley, between them alleging that Duesberg had made false claims in the paper and accusing him of failing to declare Rasnick's alleged conflict of interest. One complaint came from Nathan Geffen, treasurer of the South Africa-based Treatment Action Campaign — which campaigns for the rights of people with HIV/AIDS. The other complainant has remained anonymous.

Geffen told Nature that he submitted his complaint because he believed Duesberg had behaved unethically. "I would like them to have taken action against him but I understand their position. I am willing to accept that this is a grey area in terms of their code," he says.

He adds that having "insufficient evidence" to proceed is not the same as exoneration. "This is anything but an exoneration."

Berkeley spokesman Robert Sanders confirmed that the investigation into Duesberg had now concluded.

"Academic freedom protects a professor's right to engage in scholarly research, even if it is controversial. The university relies on the scholarly peer-review process, rather than disciplinary procedures, for evaluating the value of scientific work," he says.

Bill Gates’ $10 billion vaccine scam

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5618.shtml
Bill Gates’ $10 billion vaccine scam
By Thomas C. Mountain
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Feb 24, 2010

ASMARA, Eritrea -- The “richest man in the world,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates, recently announced that he was making a $10 billion donation towards finding vaccines to prevent some of the world’s worst diseases.

Malaria is the number one killer in Africa. From what I’m hearing about $1 billion of BIll Gates donation/tax write-off is for research to find a vaccine to prevent malaria.

The African country of Eritrea, where I live, has reduced malaria mortality by 85 percent in the last seven years. How? By using basic public health methods. By distributing pesticide treated mosquito nets and organizing the pesticide retreatment every three months of mosquito nets. By habitat eradication. And by community medical clinics for immediate treatment.

Malaria is a parasite-based disease noted for its variety and quick development of resistance to medication. Any “vaccine,” if even a billion dollars is able to produce such, would have a limited lifetime and new, patented medications would have to be bought by Africa’s poor every few years.

So “donating” a billion dollars to develop a malaria “vaccine” could turn into tens of billions of dollars in drug sales in Africa alone, and Bill Gates, through his drug company investments, will quietly pocket more African blood money.

All the while a very successful malaria mortality reduction program is operating, effectively, safely and affordably, in Eritrea.

Why isn’t this being publicized internationally? Could it be that such a program is not going to put billions into the pockets of the drug lords of Western finance?

Bill Gates and other assorted financial terrorists through their control of the Western media and “aid” organizations are suppressing implementation of a successful malaria mortality program while investing in a malaria drug addiction for Africa’s people.

These financial terrorists are perfectly willing to see millions die in Africa while they search for their next highly profitable “wonder drug” to cure malaria, all the while deliberately ignoring, worse, engineering a white out/cover up of what could prevent millions of deaths, let alone uncounted suffering.

And HIV/AIDS, Africa’s N0.2 killer? Bill Gates is said to be providing over a billion dollars for research into developing an AIDS vaccine. AIDS, a virus based disease, has already shown to have varieties and to have developed resistance to the medications developed to treat it. Like the flu vaccine, a new AIDS vaccine would most likely have to be developed every few years to combat the latest strain of the AIDS virus; another gold mine of new, patented medications for sale to Africa’s sick.

Eritrea has reduced HIV/AIDS infection rates by 40 percent, according to Physicians for Peace, and is the only country in Africa to reduce HIV/AIDS. How? By using public health education promoting condom use everywhere in the country. Over a billion for a “vaccine” that may never work while an effective program that can reduce HIV/AIDS infection by 40 percent, safely and affordably can be immediately implemented?

Remember, Western billionaires didn’t get that way by being out to really help anyone. Millions die in Africa as the Western drug lords and their financial terrorist stockholders reap their billions in blood money. All the while real heroes in the Eritrean public health service struggle to save people’s lives.

So don’t believe that BIll Gates is up to any good when he donates $10 billion to vaccine research, just the opposite. And don’t forget that as far at the USA is concerned in Africa, no good deed goes unpunished, and, once again, Eritrea is subject to UN Security Council sanctions.

Stay tuned to Online Journal for more news from Africa’s Horn that the so called free press in the west refuses to cover.

Thomas C. Mountain was, in a former life, an educator, activist and alternative medicine practitioner in the USA. Email thomascmountain@yahoo.com.

Scientists Allege Fraud in 1984 HIV/AIDS Papers

http://www.naturalnews.com/025787.html

Scientists Allege Fraud in 1984 HIV/AIDS Papers
Friday, March 06, 2009
David Gutierrez, staff writer

(NaturalNews) Thirty-seven legal, medical and research professionals have sent a letter to the journal Science, asking it to officially retract the original four papers making the case for HIV as the cause of AIDS. According to the letter's authors, widespread evidence has now emerged that the studies were not only poorly carried out, but that their results were falsified.

In 1984, Robert Gallo published four articles in Science, claiming that he had isolated the HIV virus and concluding that it was the "probable cause of AIDS." Investigative journalist Janine Roberts has discovered, however, that Gallo made last-minute alterations to the paper and its results.

"I was shocked when I read the original draft of the key scientific paper now widely cited as proving HIV causes AIDS," said Roberts, author of Fear of the Invisible.

"Gallo's handwritten last-minute changes had reversed what the scientists in his lab had originally concluded. This demonstrates a stunning disregard for the scientific process and a very disturbing breach of public trust."

Along with a copy of the handwritten changes, the letter from the 37 experts includes a letter from Gallo himself, admitting to another researcher that HIV could not be isolated from human samples alone; and a letter from an electron microscopy expert saying that there was no HIV virus contained in Gallo's 1984 samples.

Gallo's research has come under fire before, with U.S. government investigations in the 1990s concluding that the lead paper was "fraught with false and erroneous statements" and that "the careless and unacceptable keeping of research records ... reflects irresponsible laboratory management that has permanently impaired the ability to retrace the important steps taken."

"With new findings that undermine the scientific integrity and veracity of Gallo's four papers, the entire basis of the theory that HIV causes AIDS may now be questioned," said David Crowe, president of the international organization Rethinking AIDS.

Sources for this story include: www.rethinkingaids.com.

Aids bottom-feeders line up for a feast on the dead

http://letterstotheempire.com/2009/01/04/aids-bottom-feeders-line-up-for-a-feast-on-the-dead/

Aids bottom-feeders line up for a feast on the dead
January 4, 2009
Photonaut

The LA Times article announcing HIV activist Christine Maggiore’s death said “According to officials at the Los Angeles County coroner’s office, she had been treated for pneumonia in the last six months.” This does not mean she had been suffering from chronic PCP pneumonia for six months; but it was enough for Aids proponents.

Aids drug front-man Seth Kalichman, eager to promote his new book on Aids “denialism” has been quick to capitalize on Christine’s passing. “For my own part, I have stated that when a person who tested HIV positive dies of pneumonia they have, by medical definition, died from complications of AIDS” he trumpets triumphantly on his blog. But is that what she died of? At the end of my previous post is an article by Celia Farber, titled “In Her Own Words, a Dec 19 Email From Christine Maggiore” – in which it is clear that Christine suffered an acute, short-lived episode, a sudden breakdown in health.

“So what?” sneers Seth, repeating the dogma. “When a person who tested HIV positive dies of pneumonia they have, by medical definition, died from complications of AIDS.”

But in the actual medical canon, we read, “If the pneumonia is recurrent and/or of the genus Pneumocystis (carinii) jiroveci (also known as PCP), it is considered an AIDS-defining condition in HIV-infected persons.” See Stringer JR, Beard CB, Miller RF, Wakefield AE. A new name (Pneumocystis jiroveci) for pneumocystis from humans. Emerg Infect Dis [serial online] 2002 Sep;8. Available from:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol8no9/02-0096.htm

Yes, just the same as if they died of 30-odd other diseases, almost all of which have been known to man since the dawn of time. “HIV” is a wonderful catch-all, an umbrella term for linking all sorts of conditions together which otherwise would not be linked together. Pneumona is just pneumonia; but pneumonia + “HIV” = Aids. TB is just TB; but TB + “HIV” = Aids. It’s wonderfully circular, but there you go. So arguing here that Christine Maggiore died of pneumonia, but not an “Aids defining” pneumonia is basically arguing along fictitious lines, as if we all agreed to describe a mathematics with the starting-point, “2 + 2 = 5”.

I would like, again, to bring my reader’s attention to the same passage that I included in my past post, from Matt Irwin’s “Aids & Voodoo Hexing”. Celia Farber wrote, “She always tried to be stronger than any human being could ever be asked to be. I feared for her life, always. I feared the battle would kill her, as I have felt it could kill me, if I couldn’t find enough beauty to offset the malevolence. This is a deeply occult battle, and Christine got caught in its darkest shadows.” Dr Irwin’s essay puts these words in context, and give real pause to thought; while the Aids bandwaggon rolls on, adding this event as one more item to the “mountain of proof” that “HIV = Aids = death”.

“[...] A more recent article by Meador appeared in the Southern Medical Journal in 1992. Dr. Meador gave case histories of two people who received death-hexes from medicine men. The two men had very different outcomes, apparently due to the ability of one of their physicians to alter the belief structure of the patient. One of the most astounding elements of his case histories is that one of the men was a Haitian given a death hex by a medicine man, while the other was an American given a death hex unintentionally because of a false positive liver scan which appeared to indicate widespread metastatic cancer, when in actuality there was none. The “medicine man” who placed this second hex was Dr. Meador, himself, the author of the article.The first patient, a poorly educated man near death after a hex pronounced by a local voodoo priest, rapidly recovered after ingenious words and actions by his family physician. The second, who had a diagnosis of metastatic carcinoma of the esophagus, died believing he was dying of widespread cancer, as did his family and his physicians. At autopsy, only a 2 cm nodule of cancer in his liver was found. (page 244)The actions of the physician whose patient made a dramatic recovery were truly remarkable, and involved something more akin to theatre, rather than medical treatment:The patient had been ill for many weeks and had lost a large amount of weight. He looked wasted and near death. Tuberculosis or widespread cancer was considered the likely diagnosis. The patient refused to eat and continued a downward course depsite a feeding tube.

He soon reached a stage of near stupor, coming in and out of consciosness, and was barely able to talk. Only then did his wife ask to speak with Dr. Daugherty privately… The wife told him that about 4 months before hospitalization, the patient had an argument with a local voodoo priest. The priest summoned him to a local cemetery late one night, and… annonced that he had “voodooed” him, that he would die in the very near future.

Dr. Daugherty spent many hours that evening pondering… what he could do to save this moribund man. The next morning he gathered 10 or more of the patient’s kin at the bedside; they were trembling and frightened to even be associated with this doomed man. Dr. Daugherty announced in his most authoritative voice that he now knew exactly what was wrong. He told them of a harrowing encounter at midnight the night before in the local cemetery where he had lured the voodoo priest. Dr. Daugherty reported that he had… choked the priest against a tree nearly to death until the priest described exactly what he had done. Dr. Daugherty announced to the astonished patient and family “That voodoo priest made some lizard eggs climb down into your stomach and they hatched out some small lizards. All but one of them died leaving a large one which is eating up all of your food and the lining of your body. I will now get that lizard out of your sustem and cure you of this horrible curse.” With that he summoned the nurse, who had, on prearrangement, filled a large syringe with apomorphine (a powerful emetic for inducing vomiting). With great ceremony, Dr. Daugherty squirted the smallest amount of clear liquid into the air and lunged towards the patient, who by now had gathered enough strength to be sitting up wide-eyed in the bed. Although he pressed himself against the headboard trying to withdraw from the injection, Dr. Daugherty delivered the entire dose of apomorphine. With that he wheeled about, said nothing, and dramatically left the ward. Within a few moments the patient began to vomit. When Dr. Daugherty arrived at the bedside the patient was retching, one wave of spasms after another. His head was buried in a metal basin. After several minutes of continued vomiting and at a point judged to be near its end, Dr. Daugherty pulled from his black bag, carefully and secretively, a live green lizard. At the height of the next wave of retching, he slid the lizard into the basin. He called out in a loud voice, “Look what has come out of you. You are now cured. the voodoo curse is lifted.”…

The patient’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open. He looked dazed. he then drifted into a deep sleep within a minute or two, saying nothing. The sleep lasted until the next morning. When he awoke, he was ravenous for food. Within a week the patient was discharged home, and soon regained his weight and strength. he lived another 10, or more, years, and died of an apparent heart attack. No one else in the family was affected…

I reflected on this case for many years. I could make no sense of it until I read Walter Cannon’s classic paper, “Voodoo Death”. (pages 244-245)Dr. Meador goes on to describe Cannon’s paper, and summarizes the aspects necessary to cause a voodoo hex to succeed, including deep belief in the hex by the victim, the family, and the community, as well as initial social isolation followed by expectant preparations for death. Before describing the American man who died after a false liver scan, he asks the following question: Even if such a strongly held belief could cause death, most Westerners think of hexing as a bizarre superstitious practice limited to ignorant people. It has no pertinence to modern Western society… does it? (page 245).This patient died with only a small patch of pneumonia and a small nodule of cancer in his liver. His wasting syndrome was unresponsive to antibiotics, and he died “thinking that he was dying of cancer, a belief shared by his wife, her family, his surgeons, and me, his internist” (page 246). Meador asks yet another question of the reader: “If the first patient was cured of a hex, did the second die of a hex?”.

Some of the descriptions of the first patient’s illness bear remarkable resemblance to AIDS. The patient “had lost a large amount of weight”. He looked “wasted and near death”. Tuberculosis or widespread cancer was considered the likely diagnosis, and tuberculosis is one of the most common “AIDS-defining illnesses”. Several types of cancer are also considered AIDS-defining. The patient “continued a downward course despite a feeding tube”, showing that malnutrition alone did not explain his demise. He also suffered from severe dementia.

Kaada (1989) presents a review of research into the opposite of the placebo effect, dubbed the “nocebo” effect. This is the negative effect on health associated with harmful beliefs and psychological stressors. He comments on voodoo hexing and the ability to resist its power as follows:“In its most extreme, nocebo-stimuli may cause death, as in voodoo-death in primitive societies, an example of the fear-paralysis reflex. Whether the outcome is positive or negative is determined, inter alia, by the subject’s possibility of coping with the situation.”This could explain why some people live for years after an HIV diagnosis with no ill health, while others succumb in much shorter time.”

As Christine lived far longer than expected according to the “HIV” dogma, one wonders if she might not have been dead years ago, had she subscribed dutifully & credulously to a regimen of ”life-saving” ARV’s (”LSARV’s). In any event, I am convinced that self-proclaimed “crusaders” like Kalichman, Wainberg, Moore & the like are only doing the Aids Dissident movement service, by driving into public awareness the knowledge that there is a debate on “HIV” to begin with. This actually represents a failure of nerve on the part of the Aids Establishment as a whole, because for nigh on two decades, the policy of flat-out ignoring dissenting voices worked very well. Now, the establishment of sites dedicated to “negating denialist lies”, like aidstruth & Seth’s own blog, while providing fodder for some, are sowing seeds of doubt elsewhere, where none existed before.

The battle-lines have changed forever; & I am confident that Christine Maggiore’s life & death have, & will further serve the Dissident Cause, & add to the slowly-tipping balances towards Truth.

Christine Maggiore, vocal skeptic of AIDS research

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-me-christine-maggiore30-2008dec30,0,7436635.story

Christine Maggiore, vocal skeptic of AIDS research, dies at 52
Woman and her husband sued Los Angeles County for finding that daughter died of AIDS-related pneumonia.
By Anna Gorman and Alexandra Zavis
December 30, 2008

Until the end, Christine Maggiore remained defiant.

On national television and in a blistering book, she denounced research showing that HIV causes AIDS. She refused to take medications to treat her own virus. She gave birth to two children and breast-fed them, denying any risk to their health. And when her 3-year-old child, Eliza Jane, died of what the coroner determined to be AIDS-related pneumonia, she protested the findings and sued the county.

On Saturday, Maggiore died at her Van Nuys home, leaving a husband, a son and many unanswered questions. She was 52.

According to officials at the Los Angeles County coroner's office, she had been treated for pneumonia in the last six months. Because she had recently been under a doctor's care, no autopsy will be performed unless requested by the family, they said. Her husband, Robin Scovill, could not be reached for comment.

Jay Gordon, a pediatrician whom the family consulted when Eliza Jane was sick, said Monday that Maggiore's death was an "unmitigated tragedy."

"In the event that she died of AIDS-related complications, there are medications to prevent this," said Gordon, who disagrees with Maggiore's views and believes HIV causes AIDS. "There are medications that enable people who are HIV-positive to lead healthy, normal, long lives."

Diagnosed with HIV in 1992, Maggiore plunged into AIDS volunteer work -- at AIDS Project Los Angeles, L.A. Shanti and Women at Risk. Her background commanded attention. A well-spoken, middle-class woman, she was soon being asked to speak about the risks of HIV at local schools and health fairs. "At the time," Maggiore told The Times in 2005, "I felt like I was doing a good thing."

All that changed in 1994, she said, when she spoke to UC Berkeley biology professor Peter Duesberg, whose well-publicized views on AIDS -- including assertions that its symptoms can be caused by recreational drug use and malnutrition -- place him well outside the scientific mainstream.

Intrigued, Maggiore began scouring the literature about the underlying science of HIV. She came to believe that flu shots, pregnancy and common viral infections could lead to a positive test result. She later detailed those claims in her book, "What if Everything You Thought You Knew About AIDS Was Wrong?"

Maggiore started Alive & Well AIDS Alternatives, a nonprofit that challenges "common assumptions" about AIDS. She also had a regular podcast about the topic.

Her supporters expressed shock Monday over her death but were highly skeptical that it was caused by AIDS. And they said it would not stop them from questioning mainstream thinking.

"Why did she remain basically healthy from 1992 until just before her death?" asked David Crowe, who served with Maggiore for a number of years on the board of the nonprofit Rethinking AIDS. "I think it's certain that people who promote the establishment view of AIDS will declare that she died of AIDS and will attempt to use this to bring people back in line. But you can only learn so much from an unfortunate death."

Brian Carter, who facilitated local peer groups with Maggiore, said the movement would remain strong.

"Christine was only part of this. There is an outstanding number of prominent rethinkers, independent thinkers, doctors, scientists, lawyers who question AIDS causation."

Though they run counter to the scientific consensus about AIDS, such beliefs can have a major effect. In South Africa, where about 5.7 million people live with HIV, the government refused until 2005 to fund antiretroviral treatment, citing questions about the effectiveness of the drugs that inhibit the replication of HIV.

Federal health officials and other experts say the link between HIV and AIDS has been shown in hundreds of studies and the prescription of antiretroviral drugs has helped reduce the pandemic to a chronic but manageable disease in the United States. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health calculated earlier this year that the South African government's delay in introducing treatment between 2000 and 2005 cost more than 330,000 lives in that country.

Craig Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles, said Maggiore was an effective and powerful advocate, in part because she was a woman living with HIV. But he said her message discouraging testing and treatment was dangerous.

"It's just really sad that she never could understand and never could trust the medical community, unlike the rest of the world," Thompson said.

Maggiore's friends said she underwent a holistic "cleanse" last month that left her feeling ill.

"She was telling me that she wasn't feeling great," Carter said, adding that he questioned whether the pneumonia was related to AIDS.

As an advocate, Maggiore counseled HIV-positive pregnant women on how to avoid pressure to use the drug AZT as a method to reduce the chances of transmission to their babies. She considered the drug toxic.

Maggoire gave birth to her son, Charlie, and his younger sister, Eliza Jane, at home and breast-fed both, although research indicates that it increases the risk of transmission. Eliza Jane Scovill died in 2005 from what the coroner ruled was AIDS-related pneumonia. Maggiore and Scovill, however, hired a pathologist who concluded that the girl died of an allergic reaction to the antibiotic amoxicillin.

After Eliza Jane's death, Los Angeles police investigated whether Maggiore and Scovill were negligent in not testing the girl for HIV. In 2006, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office decided not to file criminal charges against Maggiore, saying that it would have been difficult to prove criminal negligence because Maggiore had sought medical advice. Friends said that Maggiore never fully recovered after the death of her daughter and that she had trouble even sleeping and eating. Her preteen son, Charlie, has tested HIV negative.

Last year, Maggiore and Scovill sued Los Angeles County and others on behalf of their daughter's estate, charging that the autopsy report lacked proper medical and scientific evidence for the declared cause of death. The case is pending.

anna.gorman@latimes.com
alexandra.zavis@latimes.com

A Cure for AIDS

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2008-11/cure-aids

A Cure for AIDS
While treating a patient for leukemia, doctors inadvertently cured his case of AIDS
By Julia Wallace
11.14.2008

Holy crap. These guys in Germany just cured AIDS!

Of course, the procedure is so expensive, complicated, and risky that it's not replicable as a large-scale public health strategy, but we'll ignore that for a minute. Here's how they did it. Drs. Gero Hutter and Eckhard Thiel are blood cancer experts at the Charite Medical University in Berlin. Their patient, an American ex-pat, was suffering from leukemia as well as a full-blown case of AIDS. His case was so desperate that his doctors decided to get craaazy and give him a bone-marrow transplant--(this isn't the crazy part)--using blood stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV (this is). About 10 years ago, doctors discovered that a few of their gay male patients never developed AIDS, despite engaging in risky sex with hundreds of partners. It turned out that they had a rare mutation called Delta 32 that blocks a molecule in HIV from adhering to the cell surface. Delta 32 must be inherited from both parents; it occurs at a rate of roughly 1 percent in European populations (it's more common in Northern Europe and much much, rarer--basically unheard of--in Africa and Asia), so it was difficult but not impossible for the doctors to find a donor in Germany who fit the bill. The patient was asked to stop taking his antiretroviral AIDS medication for the duration of the procedure with the understanding that he'd have to restart the meds fairly soon after the transplant was complete and the level of the virus in his bloodstream started to rise. But to everyone's surprise, it never rose, not at all. It has now been close to two years since the transplant, and there are still no traces of HIV in the patient's blood or brain tissues. So: success! A cure! For this guy, at least.

Now back to the caveats. A bone marrow transplant is dangerous and painful--it involves wiping out the patient's entire immune system with chemotherapy and radiation and carries a 30 percent mortality rate. The prospect is so daunting that one doctor joked to the New York Times that he'd rather just take antiretrovirals for the rest of his life. It's also not always possible to find a donor who is a good match for the recipient (if the donated cells are not taken from someone with similar human leukocyte antigens, a crucial part of the immune system, they are likely to be rejected or cause severe graft-versus-host disease) and is also happens to be resistant to HIV. This would be particularly tricky in Africa, where the mutation doesn't occur naturally. And carriers of Delta 32 might actually be more susceptible to certain other diseases, like the West Nile virus.

But even though this particular procedure doesn't offer a new standard of care for AIDS patients worldwide, it offers a lot more than just hope (although hope is nice). For one thing, researchers now have a clear path to a cure. If the steps taken by Hutter and Thiel can be refined, simplified, and made less risky, they could become a viable protocol for thousands of other people with AIDS. Eventually, this might entail bone-marrow transplants in which not all of the body's immune cells are killed, or "snipping" the segment of DNA that codes for HIV receptors out out of blood cells and transplanting them into AIDS patients. Eventually, patients' own cells could actually be engineered to resist HIV. These advances are probably decades away, but this breakthrough is confirmation that, once they're made, they could amount to something big.

2 AIDS researchers receive Nobel Prize

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/health/chi-nobel-medicine-07-oct07,0,5388041.story

2 AIDS researchers receive Nobel Prize
3rd scientist wins for finding papilloma virus, cervical cancer tie
By Jeremy Manier
Chicago Tribune reporter
October 7, 2008

Two French researchers who discovered the AIDS virus were awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday, capping a long-running dispute over who should get credit for the historic finding.

The scientists shared the prize with Germany's Harald zur Hausen, who found that certain human papilloma viruses cause cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women worldwide.

Francoise Barre-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier of France were cited for their discovery of HIV in 1983. The award brought historical closure to an HIV controversy in which Tribune reporter John Crewdson played a prominent role starting in the late 1980s.

An American researcher, Dr. Robert Gallo, an expert on retroviruses, also contributed to discovery of the AIDS virus but was not included in Monday's award. Gallo and the French team argued for years over who deserved credit for the discovery, though since the 1980s both sides have largely put aside the old disagreement.

Reached in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, where he is attending an international AIDS conference, Montagnier told the Associated Press he wished Gallo had been included in the prize.

"It is certain that he deserved this as much as us two," he said.

Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, told the AP that it was "a disappointment" not to share the Nobel but that all three winners deserved the honor.

AIDS posed a horrifying mystery when it was first identified in 1981. No one understood exactly what caused the disease, how it spread or all the groups that might be at risk.

Scientific groups raced to isolate the cause of the disease, including the French team and Gallo, then a prominent researcher at the National Cancer Institute. The group led by Montagnier and Barre-Sinoussi announced in 1983 that it had discovered the virus that caused AIDS, followed by Gallo's competing claim the next year.

The two groups squabbled in scientific journals, meetings and in courtrooms over who had been first to isolate the virus. Prestige aside, the question was pivotal because it would decide who got royalties from AIDS tests based on the discovery.

The political debate largely ended in 1987, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac agreed that the two teams should get equal recognition for the discovery and share proceeds from any AIDS tests. But that agreement did not settle the scientific question.

Journalists continued to chronicle the dispute, including writer Randy Shilts in his 1987 book "And the Band Played On." In 1989 the Tribune published a 50,000-word investigative report by Crewdson suggesting that Gallo had not independently discovered the virus at all, and that his lab results were contaminated by samples he received from the French.

Gallo later confirmed that a viral strain from the French lab had contaminated his work, but he said it was an honest mistake. A federal investigation in 1993 exonerated Gallo and concluded: "One might anticipate that from all this evidence, after all the sound and fury, there would be at least a residue of palpable wrongdoing. That is not the case." In 1994 the U.S. government agreed to give France more royalties, acknowledging that Gallo had relied on the French virus.

Many scientists view Gallo as a controversial figure, but few question his significant contribution to the field of virology.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

jmanier@tribune.com