The
idea of looking for retroviruses in the blood of AIDS patients was in a
way logical, because it is indeed in the blood of mice and chickens
that zillions of retroviruses (RNA tumor viruses) were readily isolated
and purified 40 years ago...
BUT:In all the old
work (1960s) on experimental animals, the INITIAL step was the
isolation of RETROVIRAL PARTICLES, either by sucrose density
centrifugation, or (as in my work on the Friend virus) by two steps of
Millipore ultrafiltration. This was leading, by a final, high speed
centrifugation to a minuscule pellet that could readily be prepared for
electron microscopy (transmission EM, plastic embedding, and thin
sectioning), pellets in which thousands of packed retroviral particles
could be easily demonstrated (see my 1997-78, vol 5 n°2, paper in
Continuum, page 24), and pellets that could be then used for biological
experiments (transmission of the disease to receptive experimental
animals), and/or biochemical analysis (characterization of proteins and
nucleic acids). The retroviral origin of these proteins and nucleic
acids was unquestionable, because of the extremely high level of
purity, demonstrated by EM, of the viral pellets. In all such
experiments, all erythrocytes and leucocytes were first completely
eliminated, by low speed centrifugation.
In today's so-called "viral load" studies this logical approach to retroviral isolation is completely ignored.
Simply because
NOTHING IS DONE to first isolate retroviral particles!
Instead: the PCR "Viral load" method starts of by first collecting LEUCOCYTES! Not viral particles!
Leucocytes
are indeed collected, their nuclei extracted, their nuclear envelopes
dissolved with detergent, and their CHROMATIN prepared for nucleic
acid amplification by PCR !!! In any chromatin samples their is
little surprise to find nucleic acid!
BUT: 6% or more of
the human genome has striking homology with retroviral genome, a fact
that is well documented for more than a decade. So, PCR has no
difficulty to recognize short retroviral-like sequences in these human
chromatin samples (never twice the same, but never mind: it keeps
mutating !!), and to amplify it 1000 or million times! Bingo: this is
HIV !!!!!! NO: it is the amplification of endogenous retroviral
sequences that are present in ALL OF US! It has NOTHING to do with the
hypothetical presence of circulating retroviral particles! It has
nothing to do with any "measurement" of the "viral load". By that
method, WE ALL have some level of ..."viral load"!!! Really? Yes, but
to save the establishment from too much embarrassment NO CONTROL, on
you and me, was ever made nor published! Do you know the reference of
one single paper in which a large group of "normal" individuals would
have been studied for HIV "viral load" by PCR measurement? I don't.
Add to this:
- That at Mbeki's conference, Pretoria May 2000, I formally stated
that not one single retroviral particle has ever been visualized by
electron microscopy in the blood of any patient with a so-called high
viral load, and that that statement has never been refuted;
- That at the European Parliament debate, Brussels Dec 2003, I
directly asked Luc Montagnier to give us his definition of the "viral
load" and received an extremely ambiguous answer (page 196 of the
proceedings), a fact that Prof. Gordon Stewart, who participated in
that debate in Brussels, can most probably confirm.
In conclusion: the so-called measurements of HIV "viral load" by PCR methodology are completely missing any scientific relevance.
— Etienne de Harven, June 19, 2008