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Even Luc Montagnier, 'Co-discoverer' now says that HIV is insufficient without 'co-factors'[or co-causes] and that we should be concentrating more on these other causes of immune dysfunction. Dissidents and Alternative Health Consumer Advocates believe this is putting all our eggs in one basket, in going after a putative or alleged virus, which Montagnier admits he nor Gallo ever isolated, and effectively ignoring all other co-causes.

On July 17th 1997, the French investigative journalist Djamel Tahi interviewed Professor Luc Montagnier in camera at the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Montagnier was asked, "Why do the EM (electron microscope) photographs published by you [in 1983] come from the culture and not the purification?". His reply was, "There was so little production of virus it was impossible to see what might be in a concentrate of the virus from the gradient ["pure virus"]. There was not enough virus to do that. Of course one looked for it, one looked for it in the tissues at the start, likewise the biopsy. We saw some particles but they did not have the morphology typical of retroviruses. They were very different. Relatively different. So with the [unpurified] cultures it took many hours to find the first pictures. It was a Roman effort!."

Djamel Tahi: When one looks at the published electron microscope photographs, for you as a retrovirologist is it clear it's a retrovirus, a new retrovirus?
Luc Montagnier: No, at that point one cannot say. With the first budding pictures it could be a type C virus. One cannot distinguish.
DT: Could it be anything else than a retrovirus?
LM: No... well, after all, yes ... it could be another budding virus. But there's a ... we have an atlas. One knows a little bit from familiarity what is a retrovirus and what is not. With the morphology one can distinguish but it takes a certain familiarity.
DT: Why no purification?
LM: I repeat we did not purify. ...
DT: But there comes a point when one must do the characterization of the virus. This means: what are the proteins* of which it's composed?
LM: That's it. So then, analysis of the proteins* of the virus demands mass production and purification. It is necessary to do that. ...
[*These should be the proteins used in the HIV antibody test. So, what proteins are they using??]
DT: Gallo did it?
LM: Gallo? I don't know if he really purified. I don't believe so.
DT: Do EM pictures of HIV from the purification exist?
LM: Yes. Of course.
DT: Have they been published?
LM: I couldn't tell you ... we have some somewhere ... but it is not of interest, not of any interest.
-----------
Tahi, D. Did Luc Montagnier Discover HIV? Continuum vol.5, no2, Winter 1997/8 http://www.virusmyth.com/aids/data/dtinterviewlm.htm

About a 100% Correlation Between HIV and AIDS?

Many people who believe that HIV is the cause of AIDS claim that there
is a 100% correlation between HIV infection and the development of AIDS
and cite this as proof HIV = AIDS. Here is an excerpt from a recent
discussion I had with someone who asked about that claim:

With regard to HIV being present in 100% of AIDS cases, there are a
number of ways to argue this assertion:

- HIV "co-discoverer" Robert Gallo's orginal published paper commonly
believed to establish HIV as the cause of AIDS, showed that he found
positive antibody test response in 88% of AIDS patients, not 100%, and
what he called HIV was found in only 36% of AIDS patients he studied.
While this is old news, it's important.

First, I say Gallo found "what he called HIV" in 36% of AIDS cases
because Gallo was not able to actually isolate virus from any of his
AIDS patients. This inability to isolate HIV is what led Gallo to
appropriate a culture taken from the lymph node of a French patient--a
gay man without AIDS--that Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasture
Institute in Paris had previously sent Gallo. This swiped culture was
the basis for Gallo's infamous 1984 press conference in which the US
Department of Health and Human Services announced that "the probable
cause of AIDS has been found."

Gallo claimed Montagnier's culture was his and used proteins that he
took from it as the basis for his HIV antibody test kit patent. As you
may know, Gallos's announcement and patent filing ended up becoming
an international incident settled by the US and French governments by
giving Gallo and Montagnier co-discovery credit.

This is important because Montagnier has admited as recently as a 1997
interview, that he has never produced a purified sample of HIV.
This means that the tests used today to diagnose "HIV infection" rely on
verification against the standard of Gallo's original test which uses
proteins from Montagnier's unpurified culture as markers for HIV. Since
the test proteins derive from an unpurified cellular soup, none of the proteins
in the test can be considered unique or specific to HIV. Gallo's test, subsequent
tests, and none of the tests used today--urine, saliva, PCR, P-24 antigen--have
ever been verified against anything other than Gallo's non-specific test or each
other, and none have ever been validated by the finding of actual virus in the
uncultured blood of anyone who tests positive or who has AIDS.Contrary to
popular belief, current "viral load" tests aren't detecting or measuring actual
virus either. Even the test kits state that they are "not intended to be used as
screening tests for HIV or as diagnostic tests to confirm the presence of HIV infection."

So by the standards of the tests alone, it is not possible to claim that
HIV is present in 100%--or any percent--of AIDS cases. The idea that HIV
has been shown to be present at all is not based on accurate, reliable or specific
medical evidence.

- There were over 4,000 AIDS cases noted by the US Centers for Disease
Control found among HIV negative persons in the US prior to 1994. In 1994,
the CDC stopped keeping track of these, but persons with AIDS defining
illnesses appear in the medical literature prior to the advent of HIV and AIDS,
as do people currently who are HIV negative.

- The 100% correlation between HIV and AIDS is an artefact of the
definition of AIDS. AIDS is not a disease but a categorization of
previously known diseases and conditions all of which have well established
causes that have nothing to do with HIV. For example, tuberculosis is
caused by the tubercule bacillus, Mycobacteria tuberculosis. TB is a serious
health threat to impoverished people and nations and takes the lives of
millions of people worldwide every year. TB existed prior to its inclusion as an
AIDS-defining illness in 1987 and prior to the 1900s.

Since 1987, people with TB who test positive on an "HIV test" will
recieve a diagnosis of AIDS, while people with TB who test negative will
receive a diagnosis of TB. This same criteria for AIDS applies to the other
27 AIDS-defining illnesses.

To further clarify, cervical cancer and candida are AIDS-defining illnesses
that are commonly found among people in various non-AIDS risk groups.
I'm not sure of cervical cancer stats, but about 30% of all Americans are
thought to suffer from chronic candida (John Hightower, MD "The Yeast
Connection"). Yeast infections in HIV-negative labeled persons are called
yeast infections, while the same infection caused by the same condition --
a bacterial imbalance--is called AIDS in a person who tests positive. Cervical
cancer in a woman who tests positive is AIDS, while the same cancer in a
negative-testing woman is cervical cancer.

Since the 29 AIDS-defining illlnesses are only defined as AIDS when they
happen to people who test HIV positive, it's clear why there's a 100%
correlation between HIV and AIDS. Diseases called AIDS can only be
called AIDS when they happen in someone labeled positive although they
can and do occur in people who test negative. This circular logic renders
the argument "HIV causes AIDS because it's present in 100% of AIDS cases"
meaningless. Also, correlation is the weakest form of scientific evidence; it's
like circumstantial evidence in a criminal trial.

Again, I think it's important to note that the belief that a positive reaction on
a non-specific HIV test indicates the presence of HIV is a leap of faith. And
even if you could find actual HIV in all AIDS patients, this finding alone by
any standard of proper science would not be enough to establish HIV as the
cause of AIDS.

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