The questions about widely divergent symptomology of this mysterious disease only amplify when we consider that WHO maintains twelve different descriptions of AIDS, depending on national boundaries. In 2003, AIDS activist Christine Maggiore told documentarians:
In 1993, in this country, we adopted a definition that caused the number of AIDS cases to double overnight. And part of that reason was for the first time we’d began counting people as AIDS victims who were not ill and who did not have any symptoms. They had a low T-cell count and that’s [all]. And T-cells are something that can fluctuate a 100 percent in a given day. So based on a low T-cell count that year, the number of AIDS cases doubled overnight. And with that definition, there have been 182,000 Americans who are not ill diagnosed with AIDS, who would not have AIDS if they moved to Canada. Because in Canada, they don’t recognize that T-cell definition as a criteria for having an AIDS diagnosis.49
Many US AIDS sufferers can become “cured” by crossing the border into Canada. No other disease is so subject to this sort of nationalism.
Correlation Is Not Causation
In May 1984, a month after his momentous press conference, Robert Gallo finally published his paper claiming to have “discovered” the HIV virus, in Science.50 He also explained in detail his rationale for linking HIV to the AIDS disease by reporting that he had found evidence of the virus in several afflicted gay men. Gallo reported a “frequent detection and isolation” of [HIV] from patients with AIDS and at risk for AIDS.51 Scientists were shocked to learn for the first time that Gallo had found faint traces of HIV in only twenty-six of the seventy-two AIDS patients whose blood he examined. That weak conclusion was Gallo’s only basis for claiming that HIV might cause AIDS. It’s axiomatic that correlation does not prove causation. There were many other viruses, including herpes simplex, cytomegaloviruses, and a range of predatory herpes viruses found with a far higher frequency in AIDS patients upon which Gallo could have just as easily blamed AIDS.
A year earlier, Dr. Luc Montagnier also had only suggested—in his May 1983 paper in Science—that his claimed virus “may be involved in several pathological syndromes, including AIDS.”52 Montagnier, a brilliant scientist known for his integrity, had found evidence of HIV in the lymph nodes of 72 percent of the forty-four AIDS patients he tested. Montagnier always remained tentative about claiming the weak correlation as proof. As early as 1992, Montagnier told Nature that “HIV is a necessary but not, without the cofactor, a sufficient cause of AIDS.”53 As we shall see, Montagnier’s later statements indicate that his doubts about HIV’s role in the etiology of AIDS continued to grow thereafter.54 Based upon Gallo and Montagnier’s slender scientific reeds, these seminal papers introduced the idea that a single, discrete virus was causing the AIDS pandemic.
Dr. Fauci has since routinely claimed that HIV was “proven definitively to be the cause of AIDS by Bob Gallo here when he was at NIH.”55 But critics argue that evidence in Gallo’s article is far too anemic to support Dr. Fauci’s characterization. Neither Gallo nor Dr. Fauci has ever demonstrated, using any of the conventional scientific proofs, that the HIV virus alone actually causes AIDS. Rather than allowing his HIV hypothesis to triumph in the marketplace of ideas, Dr. Fauci sent clear signals to the American press that debate on this theory could no longer be tolerated.
In September 1989, Dr. Fauci broadcast an angry threat about journalists who dared to give a platform to Peter Duesberg. He ended with this warning: “And they should realize that their accuracy is noted by the scientific community. Journalists who have made too many mistakes or who are sloppy are going to find that their access to scientists may diminish.”56
Dr. Fauci Leveraged Uncertain Tests to Paint AIDS as a Widespread Viral Plague
Instead of using traditional methods for diagnosing disease based on symptoms, Dr. Fauci encouraged doctors to perform blood tests on both healthy and unhealthy individuals to diagnose AIDS. Since none of the available tests are particularly accurate, Dr. Fauci must have understood that his reliance on blood tests alone was likely to yield highly dubious results capable of dramatically overstating the spread of HIV.57
In the decade preceding the AIDS crisis, a wave of new technologies, including PCR and super powerful electron microscopes, had opened windows on teeming new worlds containing millions of species of previously unknown viruses to scientists. Molecular genetics not only revolutionized biological science, but also made that science fabulously profitable. The lure of fame and fortune ignited a chaotic revolution in virology as ambitious young PhDs scrambled to inculpate newly discovered microbes as the cause of old malignancies. Making such connections could be a profitable pursuit for enterprising young biologists and pharmaceutical companies.
Under this new rubric, every theoretical breakthrough, every find, became potentially the basis for a new generation of drugs. The opportunity to capitalize on the transfer of information transformed researchers into entrepreneurs and their discoveries into “inventions.” Science became big business.
All this new equipment made science expensive—too expensive to perform without financial support from Big Pharma and Big Government. Researchers increasingly relied on Tony Fauci and drug makers to furnish and support their laboratories. Long-term funding became the first requirement of any new research. The researcher got his financing, and Dr. Fauci and the pharmaceutical company got proprietary rights on new discoveries. The self-interest of the researcher, the research institution, and the biotech company converged.
Finance dictated the direction of research and—too often—warped its conclusions. Armies of scientists fresh from graduate schools joined the gold rush as Dr. Fauci and Big Pharma grub-staked brigades of young PhDs to prospect for novel viruses in the diseased tissues of sick patients.