Hepatitis C epidemic - where is the virus?
CategoriesOn Friday, 13 June 2003, The Age in Australia reported that according to a secret Health Department report, hepatitis C has become "an epidemic". The report has been kept under wraps by Health Minister Kay Patterson since she received it in November last year.
The epidemic However does not seem to be confined to Australia only. According to an article in The Toronto Star the Canadian Liver Foundation estimates that "up to 240,000 Canadians are infected with the hepatitis C virus". Clean needles for intravenous drug users are suggested to avoid infection with hepatitis C.
Yet, it appears that for hepatitis C, just as for AIDS, no virus has been isolated, at least not one that could plausibly be the cause of the disease. Some say the virus does not exist - hepatitis C has other causes.
October 2003
Actress Pamela Andersen prefers natural cure
Excerpt from
Discussion of hepatitis C "virus" on Heal Toronto's website
A third type of hepatitis was found in the 1970s, again restricted to heroin addicts, alcoholics, and patients who have received blood transfusions. Most scientists assumed these cases were either hepatitis A or B, until widespread testing revealed neither virus in the victims. Roughly thirty-five thousand Americans die each year of any type of the disease, a fraction of those from this "non-A, non-B hepatitis," as it was known for years. Today it is called hepatitis C. This form of hepatitis does not behave as an infectious disease, for it rigidly confines itself to people in well- defined risk groups rather than spreading to larger populations or even to the doctors treating hepatitis patients. Yet virologists have been eyeing the disease from the beginning, hoping one day to find a virus causing it.
That day arrived in 1987. The laboratory for the job was no less than the research facility of the Chiron Corporation, a biotechnology company located directly across the bay from San Francisco. Equipped with the most advanced techniques, a research team started its search in 1982 by injecting blood from patients into chimpanzees. None of the monkeys contracted hepatitis, although subtle signs vaguely resembling infection or reddening did appear. For the next step, the scientists probed liver tissue for a virus. None could be found. Growing desperate, the team fished even for the smallest print of a virus, finally coming across and greatly amplifying a small piece of genetic information, encoded in a molecule known as ribonucleic acid (RNA), that did not seem to belong in the host's genetic code. This fragment of presumably foreign RNA, the researchers assumed, must be the genetic information of some undetected virus. Whatever it was, liver tissue contains it only in barely detectable amounts. Only about half of all hepatitis C patients contain the rare foreign RNA. And in those who contain it, there is only one RNA molecule for every ten liver cells - hardly a plausible cause for disease.
The Chiron team used newly available technology to reconstruct pieces of the mystery virus. Now they could test patients for antibodies against this hypothetical virus and soon discovered that only a slight majority of hepatitis C patients had any evidence of these antibodies in their blood. Koch's first postulate, of course, demands that a truly harmful virus be found in huge quantities in every single patient. His second postulate requires that the virus particles be isolated and grown, although this supposed hepatitis virus has never been found intact. And the third postulate insists that newly infected animals, such as chimpanzees, should get the disease when injected with the virus. This hypothetical microbe fails all three tests. But Koch's standards were the furthest thing from the minds of the Chiron scientists when they announced in 1987 that they had finally found the "hepatitis C" virus.
Now more paradoxes are confronting the viral hypothesis. Huge numbers of people testing positive for the hypothetical hepatitis C virus never develop any symptoms of the disease, even though the "virus" is no less active in their bodies than in hepatitis patients. And according to a recent large-scale study of people watched for eighteen years, those with signs of "infection" live just as long as those without. Despite these facts, scientists defend their still-elusive virus by giving it an undefined latent period extending into decades.
Paradoxes like these no longer faze the virus-hunting research establishment. Indeed, rewards are generally showered upon any new virus hypothesis, no matter how bizarre. Chiron did not spend five years creating its own virus for nothing. Having patented the test for the virus, the company put it into production and began a publicity campaign to win powerful allies. The first step was a paper published in Science, the world's most popular science magazine, edited by Dan Koshland, Jr., professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley. Edward Penhoet, chief executive officer for Chiron, also holds a position as professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley. The NIH-supported virology establishment soon lent the full weight of its credibility to the hepatitis C virus camp. As Chiron's CEO boasted, "We have a blockbuster product." A regulatory order from the Food and Drug Admin-istration (FDA) to test the blood supply would reap enormous sales for Chiron.
Their big chance presented itself in late 1988 as a special request from Japanese Emperor Hirohito's doctors. The monarch was dying and constantly needed blood transfusions; could Chiron provide a test to make sure he received no blood tainted with hepatitis C? The biotech company jumped at the opportunity, making for itself such a name in Japan that the Tokyo government gave the product its approval within one year. The emperor died in the meantime, but excitement over Chiron's test was fueled when the Japanese government placed hepatitis C high on its medical priority list. Chiron's test kit now earns some $60 million annually in that country alone. By the middle of 1990, the United States followed suit. The FDA not only approved the test, but even recommended the universal testing of donated blood. The American Association of Blood Banks followed suit by mandating the $5 test for all 12 million blood donations made each year in this country - raking in another $60 million annually for Chiron while raising the nation's medical costs that much more. And all this testing is being done for a virus that has never been isolated.
Profits from the test kit have generated another all-too-common part of virus hunting. With Chiron's new income from the hepatitis C test, Penhoet's company bought out Cetus, another biotech company, founded by Donald Glaser, who, like Penhoet, also holds a position as professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California at Berkeley. And Chiron made an unrestricted donation of about 12 million to the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley that generates $100,000 in interest each year.
Unfortunately for Peter Duesberg, who belongs to the same department, his supervisor is yet another professor who consults for Chiron Corporation - and displays little sympathy for Duesberg for challenging modern virus hunting by restricting his academic duties to undergraduate student teaching and by not appointing him to decision-making committees. Such conflicts of interest have become standard fixtures in university biology departments.
The modern biomedical research establishment differs radically from any previous scientific program in history. Driven by vast infusions of federal and commercial money, it has grown into an enormous and powerful bureaucracy that greatly amplifies its successes and mistakes all the while stifling dissent. Such a process can no longer be called science, which by definition depends on self-correction by internal challenge and debate.
Despite their popularity among scientists and their companies, "latent," "slow," and "defective" viruses have achieved only little prominence as hypothetical causes of degenerative diseases before the AIDS era. Their hypothetical role in degenerative diseases, which result from the loss of large numbers of cells, remained confined to rare, exclusive illnesses like kuru and hepatitis C.
However, because latent, slow, and defective viruses cannot kill cells, such "viruses" eventually achieved prominence as hypothetical causes of cancer and thus entered the courts of health care and medical research. The next chapter describes the terms under which these viruses were promoted as causes of cancer and how some of these terms were eventually used to promote latent, slow, and defective viruses as causes of degenerative diseases including, above all, AIDS.
HEAL
TORONTOtel/fax:(416) 406-HEAL
Related articles:Speakeasy.org (see the Response by Dr. Ruhland)
Is it Hepatitis C or Iron Toxicity?
TRIUMPH OVER HEPATITIS C AN ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE SOLUTION
A critical view of hepatitis C - Endogenous Viruses and Chronic Disease
HEPATITIS C VIRUS ACTION NOW
This is the page of a man suffering from Hepatitis C who can't get the drugs for a treatment he already started because the FDA and US customs are not letting them through. While I think that natural treatment options are superior in this case, I don't think the FDA has any business telling people what drugs they can or cannot get for their own personal use, even if they are not officially available in the US.An e-mail exchange on the subject:
From: "Jon Campbell"
To: "Josef Hasslberger"
Subject: Re: Hepatitis C "virus"
Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2003 13:43:03 -0400
This is what is called a "paradigm shift", a shift in how the world works, and will mean major modifications in and a shift in the way that I describe and talk about the health manuals that I have authored. Thanks so much for these articles.
I believe there is something going on here with regard to viruses and the immune system in general, but have not been able to state it eloquently and backed by scientific evidence yet. It goes something like this: when the immune system is totally compromised, many viruses which the human body normally fights off easily can combine and multiply to produce enough toxins that are truly debilitating or deadly. Furthermore, the protease inhibiting therapies (natural and synthetic) appear to sustain patients and extend their lives, sometimes indefinitely, indicating that viral replication has something to do with their infirmity. The viruses may not be "hep C" or "HIV" but they are debilitating.*********************************
To: "Jon Campbell"
From: Josef Hasslberger
Subject: Re: Hepatitis C "virus"
Date: 1 July 2003thanks for your reply on this. Yes, it's a real shift and there is quite a lot of data if you look for it. One concept that may be useful is that virusses are ALWAYS present in the body. We live in symbiosis with them. We keep them in check easily as a part of living. Only when there is a cause - such as an illness - virusses activate to do the cleanup work. That's why they all of a sudden replicate in great numbers. And that's also why some people seem n
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