Are AIDS, CFS Caused By Oxidative Damage?

Categories

Epidemics

Health

The officially supported theory of AIDS as an illness caused by a continually mutating retrovirus called HIV has not led to progress in controlling the epidemic in over two decades. We are still looking for a vaccine but chances are it will never be found. We are still treating those reacting positively to a non-virus-specific test with toxic medications, but the results are less than brilliant.

The existence of long-term AIDS survivors is unexplained and unexplainable, unless we look for alternative explanations of what might cause the immune weakness observed in AIDS patients. Since the virus has never been properly isolated and since the so-called HIV test does not prove infection, it follows that something else must be wrong with those unfortunate people who have a compromised immune system.

In the following article titled Vaccines, Antibodies and the HIV Riddle, Beldeu Singh introduces a hypothesis of oxidative causation of immune weakness. A similar hypothesis had been published in 1988 by Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos under the title Reappraisal of Aids: Is the Oxidation Induced by the Risk Factors the Primary Cause?. Unfortunately Nature refused to publish the article - perpetuating a situation without hope and progress.

The oxidative hypothesis overcomes problems associated with proving viral causation of the syndrome but it also opens a door to specific treatments that could rapidly reverse the epidemic.

- - -

VACCINES, ANTIBODIES AND THE HIV RIDDLE

The human immune system is a complex and amazing array of response mechanisms to foreign bodies called antigens designed to attack and destroy them and prevent infection and disease condition.

The system is remarkably effective to antigens. An antigen is any substance that elicits an immune response, including a virus and parts of broken protein molecules. Non-living substances such as toxins, chemicals and drugs can be antigens.

Acquired Immunity

The effectiveness of the immune system is based on four very important aspects of its design and operation - firstly, its role in self/non-self recognition; secondly, it ability to produce a wide range of antibodies but each antibody is a specific response to an invading antigen, so it is in fact a polyclonal system that develops monoclonal responses; thirdly, its antibodies bind to specific antigens not only at the initial site of invasion or infection but work in all the fluid part of the body and fourthly, the bodies can stay on after overcoming the infection for months or years and in the case of viral infections they offer live long immunity.

Most invasions by microorganisms do not result in disease. The few microbes that manage to cross the barriers of skin, mucus, cilia, and pH are usually eliminated by the natural or innate immune mechanisms that are triggerred immediately upon pathogen entry. If the pathogen cannot be rapidly eliminated by phagocytosis, inflammation is induced with the synthesis of cytokines and acute phase proteins. This early induced response is not antigen-specific and does not generate immune memory. Only if the inflammatory process is unsuccessful at eliminating pathogen will the adaptive immune system be activated - as in the case of catching a cold and process will require several days to produce armed effector cells.

Parts of the immune system are antigen-specific and have memory. The cells recognize and mount an even stronger attack to the same antigen the next time. The self/non-self recognition is on account of having every cell display a marker based on the major
histocompatibility complex (MHC). Any cell not displaying this marker is treated as non-self and attacked. The process is so effective that undigested proteins in the bloodstream are treated as antigens.

Active artificially acquired immunity refers to any immunization with an antigen. By giving a safe form of the antigen artificially, the body will produce its own antibodies and, more importantly, develop circulating, long-lived B-memory cells with high affinity B-cell receptors on their surface. If at a later date the body is again exposed to that same antigen, the memory cells will cause immediate and rapid production of the appropriate antibodies for protection.

The immune system is a system of specialized cells and organs that protect an organism from invasion and infection from bacteria, viruses and it also destroys cancer cells and foreign bodies and even elicits an immune response to broken protein molecules or those protein molecules that may be broken during the process of ingestion by macrophages and may float in the bloodstream as macrophage debris.

The organs of the immune system, positioned throughout the body, are called lymphoid organs. The lymphoid tissue is distributed in many other locations as small pockets throughout the body, such as the bone marrow and thymus. The tonsils, adenoids, Peyer's patches, and the appendix are also lymphoid tissues.

Antigens and Antibodies

An important organ of the immune system is the spleen. In it are found B cells, T cells, macrophages, dendritic cells, natural killer cells and red blood cells. In addition to capturing foreign bodies (antigens) from the blood passing through it, migratory macrophages and dendritic cells bring antigens to the spleen via the bloodstream. An immune response can be initiated in the spleen when any macrophage or dendritic cells present the antigen to the appropriate B or T cells. The B cells become activated and respond with the production of large amounts of antibody specific to the antigen. The spleen can be visualized as an immunologic filter of the blood.

A healthy immune system, functioning at its optimal levels keeps the body in a healthy state. If the immune system weakens, its ability to defend the body also weakens, allowing pathogens, including viruses that cause common colds and flu, to grow and flourish in the body. The immune system also performs continual surveillance for abnormal or cancer cells. Any form of prolonged immune suppression compromises the healthy functioning of the immune system and allows opportunistic infections, including TB, pneumonia and cancers to occur in the body. Immunosuppression has been reported to increase the risk of certain types of cancer.

The immune system can be made to elicit an immune response artificially. Active artificially acquired immunity refers to any immunization with an antigen. By giving a safe form of the antigen artificially, the body will produce antibodies. Viral vaccines such as for small-pox can cause the immune system to develop circulating, long-lived B-memory cells. If at a later date the body is again exposed to that same antigen, the memory cells will cause immediate and rapid production of the appropriate antibodies for protection.

Most vaccine-preventable diseases are caused by viruses. Vaccines to help prevent these diseases generally contain weakened or killed viruses specific to the disease. There are a series of steps that the body goes through in fighting these diseases: First, a vaccine is given by a shot. Next, over the next few weeks the body makes antibodies and memory cells against the weakened or dead viruses in the vaccine. Then, the antibodies can fight the real disease-causing viruses in the person.The antibodies destroy the viruses and the person will not become ill. We learnt that in school.

We also learnt in school that an antibody is a protein produced by the immune system, in response to invading or foreign bodies introduced into the body, to identify and neutralize these foreign bodies such as bacteria and viruses. Each antibody recognizes a specific antigen unique to its target.

Antibodies are synthesized and secreted by plasma cells which are derived from the B cells of the immune system. The B cells are activated upon binding to their specific antigen and differentiate into plasma cells that will produce the immunoglobulins (which are glycoproteins in the immunoglobulin superfamily) that function as antibodies.

Antibodies are therefore produced in clonal lines that are specific to only one antigen, e.g., a virus hull protein. In binding to such antigens, they can cause agglutination and precipitation of antibody-antigen products ready for phagocytosis by macrophages and other cells or block viral receptors and stimulate other immune responses such as the complement pathway.

Antibodies that bind onto the docking sites of viruses block their docking ability to receptor sites on cell membranes. Being unable to dock to a cell, they cannot infect it. Antibodies can also agglutinate them so the phagocytes can capture them. Antibodies that recognize bacteria mark them for ingestion by macrophages. Activated macrophages are also capable of directly destroying tumor cells. Together with the plasma component complement, antibodies can kill bacteria directly. Antibodies also neutralize toxins by binding with them.

Antibodies are found in the blood and tissue fluids. In some cases they may be aided by T-helper cells to fight foreign bodies. They cannot attack pathogens within cells. Certain viruses "hide" inside cells (as part of the lysogenic cycle) for long periods of time and avoid the binding action of antibodies. The chronic nature of many minor skin diseases (such as cold sores) is due to this "hiding" mechanism. Any further outbreak is quickly suppressed by the immune system, but the infection is never truly eradicated in such cases because some cells retain viruses that may resume their replicating activity later on.

Antibodies and memory cells stay on guard in the body for years after the vaccination to safeguard it from the real disease germs. This protection is called immunity.

In the case of all bacterial vaccines, immunity doesn't last long and thus the vaccine needs frequent repetition to be effective, which means you are exposed to the risk again and again, unlike viral vaccines which provide years, probably a lifetime, of immunity.

Cancer Immunotherapy

Humans and mammals, including dogs, cats and mice have the ability to make antibodies that 'recognize' virtually any antigenic determinant (epitope) and bind to it. Additionally, antibodies are so specific that they discriminate between even similar epitopes. These two characteristics provide the basis for protection against disease organisms and make antibodies attractive candidates to target other types of molecules found in the body, such as: receptors or other proteins present on the surface of normal cells molecules or that may be present uniquely on the surface of cancer cells.

Monoclonal antibodies can be produced in a laboratory. Monoclonal antibodies are made by injecting human cancer cells, or proteins from cancer cells, into mice so that their immune systems develop antibodies against the injected foreign antigens (bodies). These new antibodies will bind to specific proteins on the surface of certain cells and T4 cells can identify them easily and attack them. Once bound, the cancer cells are marked for destruction by macrophages and the binding action activates the immune system to attack and kill the cells to which the monoclonal antibody is bound. It is an interesting approach in immunotherapy.

There are clearly identified processes in immunotherapy that destroy cancer cells. In one process, macrophages and natural killer cells engulf the bound tumor cell. Macrophages destroy cancer cells by ingestion using enzymes while natural killer cells secrete cytokines that lead to cell death. In the second process, when the "complement system" is initiated, also known as the 'complement cascade', the attack is confined to the cell membrane of the