Alternatives to AZT in Aids Patients
CategoriesAids is a wholly a-typical epidemic. Its preference for intravenous drug users, people living in poor neighborhoods, gay white males and people of African descent of both sexes is an indication that the HIV virus must be a very selective virus indeed. Difficult to imagine how a virus distinguishes its victims in such a highly specific way unless ... yes, unless the epidemic is not virus based at all. To get an idea of how Aids testing selects for specific "risk groups", see Liam Scheff's “Knowing is Beautiful”.
Aids awareness: Condom kiss - Image credit: Duncan's TV AD Land
Abstinence from sex, condoms and anti-retroviral drugs are what's officially advocated to prevent the spread of Aids. Yet there are those who say that the immune deficiency seen in Aids is not of viral origin but is rather a matter of oxidative stress on the body's cells. In fact the elusive virus - its isolation has apparently never been proven in a peer-reviewed scientific paper - is not even present in many of the people who are diagnosed to have Aids.I invite you to read up about the validity of the non-specific tests, the non-infectious nature of the syndrome, and the highly toxic effects of the drugs prescribed to those unfortunate people who have been "diagnosed". To really get into this more deeply, just search "HIV" or "Aids" on this site - there is a google search window at the top of each page - and you will find a host of earlier articles that detail what I found while looking around. Start from there but by all means, please do your own research.
After a lot of suffering, it is time to move on from knowing about Aids and knowing what it isn't to actually doing something effective about it. Beldeu Singh, a writer and researcher in Malaysia, is summarizing those things that are strange in the HIV/Aids paradigm. He also suggests that there are ways to prevent and treat Aids by simple nutritional means. Of course his suggestions presuppose that the basic nutritional and hygienic needs such as a few proper meals a day and clean, drinkable water, have already been taken care of.
"African Aids" is largely due to malnutrition and endemic diseases. Our African brothers and sisters don't need anti-retroviral drugs as much as they need to be allowed to eat properly to start with, and to get clean water to drink. But assuming that those basic necessities are taken care of, what else can be done to prevent the development of Aids related illness? Let's see what Beldeu Singh has to say about that ...
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ALTERNATIVES TO AZT IN AIDS PATIENTS
(this article is part of a book in preparation)
The term AIDS first appeared in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 1982 to describe ". . . a disease, at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease" (CDC, 1982b). The initial CDC list of AIDS-defining conditions, which included Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC) and other conditions, has been updated on several occasions, with significant revisions (CDC, 1985a, 1987a, 1992a). That is how the NIAID, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has defined AIDS (see:The Definition of AIDS, The Relationship Between the Human Immunodeficiency Virus and the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, Sept 1995). Going by this definition - "moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring with no known cause for diminished resistance" does not tie in with the "HIV causes AIDS" dogma and the administration of AZT and other toxic drugs and retrovirals. Those drugs will depress the blood immune cell counts while AIDS, in that definition, is only "moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity."
"A defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease" is totally absurd. Firstly, we know that there is no defect in the immune systems of AIDS patients. It is suppressed in the very early stages and later compromised and finally impaired to the extent that opportunistic infections set in and become established. It is certainly not a defect in cell-mediated immunity. And it is not a condition that occurs with "no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease." Drug toxicities are known to suppress the immune system and oxidative stress has been reported to aid the progresion of AIDS. Immune suppression is a condition, not a disease and certainly not a disease arising from a defect in cell mediated immunity. Suppression and defect are two worlds apart.
The case definition in adults and adolescents was expanded in 1993 to include HIV infection in an individual with a CD4+ T cell count less than 200 cells per cubic millimeter (mm3) of blood (CDC, 1992a). The current surveillance definition replaced criteria published in 1987 that were based on clinical conditions and evidence of HIV infection but not on CD4+ T cell determinations (CDC, 1987a). Surveillance definitions of AIDS have proven useful epidemiologically to track and quantify the recent epidemic of HIV-mediated immunosuppression and its manifestations. However, AIDS represents only the end stage of a continuous, progressive pathogenic process, beginning with primary infection with HIV, continuing with a chronic phase that is usually asymptomatic, leading to progressively severe symptoms and, ultimately, profound immunodeficiency and opportunistic infections and neoplasms (Fauci, 1993a). They remain committed to the pathogenic cause of AIDS, although after 26 years no one has seen the HIV and all that ever comes close to a viral cause may be attributable, in a certain percentage of AIDS patients, is a viral particle as observed by Montagnier, and that my be nothing more than a latency disease of EBV which is triggered by oxidative stress. So, there is still no case for a new whole virus and matters still point to the biochemical cause and oxidative stress in progression of the AIDS condition.
If at all there is also a viral link for AIDS in addition to the oxidative cause, it may be associated with oxidative stress involving the common EBV virus that can hide in cells of the immune system as a part of the viral genome bound to polymer actins that can become reactivated by excess hydrogen peroxide produced by cells during metabolic activity under oxidative stress, wherein the natural antioxidant enzymes (glutathione and catalase) are in low amounts and cannot convert all the hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen as soon as it is formed. And the excess hydrogen peroxide breaks the chemical bonds that bind the polymer actins with the EBV viral genome activating it. Its like getting shingles after getting infected with chicken pox. And the administration of toxic drugs renders the situation more hopeless for the AIDS patient.
In the Journal Of Infectious Diseases (1997; 176;655-64), Montagnier wrote that “in AIDS pathogenesis oxidative stress is proposed as a metabolic alteration that favours disease progression by inducing both viral replication and apoptotic (cell) death. He claims to have “evidence that oxidative stress indeed induces, while antioxidants inhibit, HIV replication and apoptosis suggests the use of these molecules as an antiretroviral therapy to reduce cell death in AIDs patients.” Firstly, note that here we have Montagnier suggesting the use of antioxidants in AIDS patients to reduce apoptosis of T4 cells and as an antiretroviral therapy. The “oxidative stress induces HIV replication” assertion by Montagnier creates another paradox. AZT is toxic and generates severe oxidative stress, especially with prolonged use. AZT is a prescription drug and according to the manufacturer itself it causes symptoms that are indistinguishable from AIDS.
An article in the New England Journal of Medicine describes the muscle wasting caused by AZT and compared it to muscle wasting, called "myopathy", presumed to be caused by HIV. Their comments in the abstract are shocking: "We conclude that long-term therapy with Zidovudine can cause a toxic mitochondrial myopathy, which... is indistinguishable from the myopathy associated with primary HIV infection..."
After AZT had been licensed for human use, several independent studies reported that the drug is about 20 to 1000 times more toxic to human cells in culture than the manufacturer had claimed, i.e. that the half inhibitory doses (ID 50) ranged between 1 and 50 µM. In accordance with these results, life threatening toxicity including anemia, leukopenia, nausea, muscle atrophy, dementia, hepatitis and mortality, has been documented in humans treated with 20 to 60 µM AZT (Mir & Costello, 1988; Duesberg, 1992; Freiman et al., 1993; Tokars et al., 1993; Bacellar et al., 1994; Goodert et al., 1994; Seligmann et al., 1994).
Hence, it is not surprising that a British study found that AZT prophylaxis decreased survival and induced wasting syndrome, cryptosporidiosis, and cytomegalovirus infection, and the American MAC study shows that AZT increases the risk of pneumonia, one of the AIDS defining diseases.
AZT has effects of toxicity in animals and humans. “It produces excruciating headaches; severe nausea; muscular pain; wasting of the muscles; damage to kidneys and nerves; excruciating pains in the legs; encephalitis; severe anemia requiring transfusions to stay alive; lymphoma (cancer); cancer in 49% of cases, versus 2% incidence in non AZT group; liver damage; nail dyschromia (fingernails turn black); insomnia; impotence; dementia; mania; ataxia (failure of muscular coordination); seizures; alopecia (hair falls out). It is a fairly well established fact that AZT was designed to kill the bone marrow. It causes neutropenia or leukopenia
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