HIV Dissent

Via a mailing list and three degrees of separation, I came across this recent article: Questioning HIV/AIDS by Henry H. Bauer, in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Winter 2007). It gives an overview of the history of HIV theory and its discontents:

For more than two decades, dissenters from the assertion that HIV = AIDS have published books and articles and maintained a presence on the Internet, but major media have paid little if any attention; thus most people seem unaware that there are any serious doubts about the matter. The media silence was breached briefly in 2000 when President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa convened a group comprising both HIV/AIDS believers and HIV/AIDS skeptics to advise him on the scientific status of the issue. However, the media coverage gave short shrift to the doubters’ views by comparison to the believers’ Durban Declaration with its 5,000 signatures, which asserted: “The evidence that AIDS is caused by HIV-1 or HIV-2 is clear-cut, exhaustive and unambiguous, meeting the highest standards of science.... It is unfortunate that a few vocal people deny the evidence. This position will cost countless lives.”

The author goes on to point out, as so many HIV dissenters have, that science is backed up with citations, not signatures, and that no such "clear-cut, exhaustive, and unambiguous" connection between HIV and AIDS has been established. You can read much more about it in his blog.

Nosocomial Hepatitis C

Via ProMED-mail: everybody is reporting on the multi-incident iatrogenic transmission of hepatitis C at a clinic in Nevada. (Here, for example, is the report from Fox5 News, Las Vegas.) The Southern Nevada Health District site has a FAQ with graphics of the smoking syringe:

Following a joint investigation with the Nevada State Bureau of Licensure and Certification (BLC) and with consultation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the health district determined that unsafe injection practices related to the administration of anesthesia medication might have exposed patients to the blood of other patients.

Nosocomial HIV Transmission in Africa

Via Gates of Vienna: Medilinks has an October 2002 article from the International Journal of STD & AIDS on HIV infections in sub-Sahara Africa not explained by sexual or vertical transmission.

An expanding body of evidence challenges the conventional hypothesis that sexual transmission is responsible for more than 90% of adult HIV infections in Africa. Differences in epidemic trajectories across Africa do not correspond to differences in sexual behavior. Studies among African couples find low rates of heterosexual transmission, as in developed countries. Many studies report HIV infections in African adults with no sexual exposure to HIV and in children with HIV-negative mothers. Unexplained high rates of HIV incidence have been observed in African women during antenatal and postpartum periods. Many studies show 20%-40% of HIV infections in African adults associated with injections (though direction of causation is unknown). These and other findings that challenge the conventional hypothesis point to the possibility that HIV transmission through unsafe medical care may be an important factor in Africa's HIV epidemic.

Although the authors of the article dance around the issue, the primary cause of the HIV epidemic in Africa appears to be the reuse of hypodermic needles. Both Marburg and Ebola have been spread nosocomially in Africa, but in that case the evidence is so immediate and bloody that no one questions it.

PlagueBlog recommends against seeking medical care in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hepatitis C Outbreak in Maryland

Via ProMED-mail: The Baltimore Sun reports a nosocomial outbreak of hepatitis C caused, strangely enough, by a contaminated batch of technetium-99m, a radioactive isotope used in diagnostic procedures.

The one fatality so far is a healthy 79-year-old man who went to a cardiology clinic in October and died at Christmas. Health officials are unsure how the isotope became so contaminated that all patients who received it have tested positive for hepatitis C, but they do believe the contamination took place at the pharmacy that prepared the isotope, rather than the cardiology clinic.