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Scientific literature on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) show studies and individual patient reports that AIDS drugs have extremely debilitating side effects. This is not surprising. AIDS drugs interfere with basic cellular processes like cell division. In an attempt to find out how serious the problem was I wrote to Glaxo Wellcome (the world's leading manufacturer of AIDS drugs) asking for a summary of adverse drug reactions.

"Unfortunately, such data is confidential for the company," was the surprising reply.
I decided that asking the fox to count chicken deaths and then allowing the fox to keep the number of dead chickens confidential was dangerous.

In April 2000 I wrote to Allan Rock, Canada's minister of health, asking if he considered this situation to be acceptable. In September he responded with an assurance that it was the legal duty of drug manufacturers to report adverse drug reactions. He did not address the apparent absurdity of allowing drug companies to keep information from the public when they have a legal duty to supply it to the government, nor did he indicate how the ministry of health verifies the reporting of adverse drug reactions by drug companies.

By the time I heard back from Allan Rock I had already received a list of adverse drug reactions to AIDS drugs in Canada, collected by bureaucrats within Health Canada. Every page of this report warns that only a small fraction of adverse reactions is ever reported, a fact emphasized by Minister Rock.

It should concern every Canadian that not only are the number of adverse reactions to AIDS drugs unknown but, according to Rock, "Health Canada does not make the data of national HIV anti-retroviral use available to the public."

Consequently, it's unknown to Canadians whether one per cent or 100 per cent of people taking AIDS drugs suffer debilitating or fatal consequences!

Misleading Statistics

Canadian government publications on HIV/AIDS are designed to mislead rather than inform.

A May 1998 "Epi/Update" from Health Canada includes a graph that shows an increase in AIDS cases among women. This directly contradicts another Health Canada publication, its annual surveillance report, that shows new AIDS cases among women peaking at 131 in 1994 and declining to 89 by 1997. A closer look at the graphs shows that cases are being reported as a percentage of total cases, rather than as actual numbers. Since AIDS cases among gay men are dropping at a faster rate than in other groups, the slower decline among women (and IV drug users) can, by a clever sleight of hand, be shown to the unsuspecting public as an increase!

In response to a letter noting my concerns, Allan Rock claimed that reporting trends in percentages rather than absolute numbers is a "scientifically pertinent observation."

The use of percentages when discussing trends in AIDS has become an popular method used by governments, the media and AIDS organizations around the world. Even with the annual number of AIDS cases dropping dramatically in most Western countries, the use of percentages can maintain the illusion of a worsening epidemic.

Most Canadians would be surprised to find out that the peak annual number of AIDS cases was only 1,746 in 1993 and that this steadily dropped to 252 cases in 1999.

Questionable Health Guidelines

HIV/AIDS has opened up a renewed assault on breast-feeding. For years baby-formula companies have been on the defensive, trying to avoid codes of practice that restrict their marketing activities since breastfeeding has been proven to be beneficial to mothers and babies.

Although they are masters at avoiding these rules, HIV/AIDS has come as manna from heaven. Even pro-breastfeeding organizations such as the La Leche League have been seduced by the notion of a fatal virus that can be transmitted through breast-milk. They are paralyzed to act against the marketing of baby formula to a large percentage of Third World mothers who are HIV positive.

In Canada, provincial health departments have fallen in line and strongly recommend that HIV-positive women should not breastfeed. In the Alberta recommendations for HIV-positive mothers, "Do not breastfeed" are the only words in bold type. Knowing that there is considerable dissension among scientists over whether HIV can be transmitted through breastmilk and also knowing that there is little or no evidence that formula fed babies of HIV-positive mothers are healthier than corresponding breastfed babies, I asked Halvar Jonson, Alberta's minister of health at the time, for justification for such a strong statement. He responded with two references.

The first was an anecdotal report of three healthy HIV-positive mothers, only one of whom had a child that was confirmed to be HIV-positive. The paper acknowledged the weakness of the evidence that it provided.

The second described a much more extensive survey of the breast milk of HIV-positive African mothers. It showed that HIV RNA (an indication of the presence of viral particles) was found in a minority of mothers and HIV DNA (an indication that HIV is embedded within the genome of cells within the breastmilk) in a small majority. This research suffered from a lack of a control group (HIV-negative mothers), as well as a lack of correlation between the presence of HIV DNA and RNA. Since the tests used look for only a small fraction of the presumed HIV genome and the technique used is so ultra-sensitive that false positive reactions are common, it's quite possible that something other than HIV was being detected. Somehow, such weak evidence got translated into the command "Do not breastfeed."

I have concluded that most information on HIV and AIDS from AIDS researchers, organizations and governments is disinformation.

David Crowe is president of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS society.

Source: alive #218, December 2000