Excerpt from book “AIDS – Origin, Spread and Healing“.
4.1 Centers for Disease Control informed in advance
Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia in Los Angeles – Neoplasma of skin, Kaposi’s sarcoma in New York – Centers for Disease Control name “risk groups” – The “risk groups” in chronological order – The AIDS theory is complete. Contradictory information spread
To date, no epidemic of such major importance has been discovered at such an early stage as the mass disease AIDS. It was already referred to as a catastrophe at a time when it had not reached mass proportions. Within an unparalleled shortness of time as far as medical science is concerned, there not only appeared descriptions on the spread of this hitherto officially unknown disease, but the responsible agents which had not appeared before in human beings were also named.
4.1.1 Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia in Los Angeles
On the 5th June 1981, a report was published in the Centers for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) journal under the heading of “Pneumocystis pneumonia – Los Angeles”[160]. This report was the first publicised starting shot for the mass AIDS diseases that were to follow. The responsible author was a scientist of the University of California in Los Angeles, Michael S. Gottlieb. The paper began with the memorable sentence: “In the period October 1980 – May 1981, 5 young men, all active homosexuals, were treated for biopsy-confirmed Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia at 3 different hospitals in Los Angeles, California”.
Besides suffering from Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia (PCP), the five also suffered from two further infections which had been triggered by the Candida albicans fungus and the Cytomegalo Virus (CMV). The first four were victims of atypical mycobacteria of the Mycobacterium avium complex[161]. These agents were far more rare and much more remarkable than Pneumocystis carinii, Candida and CMV. But these were not at all mentioned until 1982. The significance which is attributed to the Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia disease should be explained. However, this was not done in the paper. The patients’ age was between 29 and 36 years. This age group is referred to as ‘adult’, both in everyday speech and in specialist medical literature. Hitherto nearly exclusively children had fallen ill with PCP. The adjective “young” for the five men is misleading. What was also striking was the description of details of their sexual activities (“all practising homosexuals”). It later transpired that none of the patients knew of one another or had any mutual acquaintances or had any contact with someone suffering from a similar disease. The patients had no comparable history of sexually transmitted diseases. It was reported that two of these patients had “frequent homosexual contact with different partners”. What actually led the authors to research into and describe the sexual inclinations of these five patients? Up to this point in time, there were no reports stating that Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia or immunodeficiency were sexually transmitted. The Centers for Disease Control explanation to the Gottlieb article stated that the cause of impaired cellular resistance function could be due to a “common exposure that predisposes individuals to opportunistic infections”. In cases of “previously healthy homosexual males with dyspnea and pneumonia”, physicians should in future, consider Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia as being the cause. Such a proposal could, at that time, only be made by fortune-tellers or persons with secret imformation.
4.1.2 Neoplasma of skin, Kaposi’s sarcoma in New York
One month later, in July 1981, there appeared another Centers for Disease Control report in the MMWR entitled “Kaposi’s sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia among homosexual men – New York City and California”[162]. This introduced 26 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), the second important symptomatic disease of AIDS. Of the 26 patients, 20 came from New York. The first actual scientific contribution on “Kaposi’s sarcoma in homosexual men” was published on the 19th September 1981 in Lancet[163]. It deals with the case histories of eight men. The authors were trying to justify why Kaposi’s sarcoma which, no doubt was rare but not unknown, was specifically treated as a new disease for these particular patients.
The first argument put forward was, that opposed to previous cases, younger men are now affected. That is quite incorrect: In his description of the clinical picture of six persons, leading to classification of the disease for the first time in 1872 and hence its introduction to medical science, the Austrian physician Moriz Kaposi actually made reference to a 45 year old, a 40 year old and an eight year old patient[164]. The eight New York patients were between 27 and 45 years of age. Furthermore, the Lancet authors believe that the skin symptoms no longer predominantly affect the lower limbs but rather the body as a whole. However, this would not correctly reproduce the observations made by Kaposi. Kaposi named: the feet, hands, chin, cheek, upper lip (patient 1); soles of the feet, hands, arms, eye lids, nose, intestine (patient 2); left sole of the foot or lower leg (patients 3, 4 and 5; Kaposi did not have anything specific to say about the 6th patient). The Lancet thus quoted, for diagnosis purposes: head (patient 1); head, trunk, arms (patient 2); head, trunk, arms (patient 3); trunk, arms, legs (patient 4); chest, arms (patient 5); trunk, arms, legs (patient 6); trunk, arms, legs (patient 7) and also the head and back (patient 8). These minor changes in the Lancet article compared with Kaposi’s observations do not justify the reporting of an allegedly new disease in a scientific journal. Also the observation, that “the disease” (even at that time designated as such in the singular, in only eight patients) was adopting a more aggressive course is wrong. Instead of eight to 13 years, the patients’ duration of survival is generally a period of less than twenty months. Hence even this is not new: Of Kaposi’s six patients, one went home after two months to die, one died after six weeks and one after one year. Kaposi estimated: “the disease ultimately leads to death, within a short period of two to three years.” Of the eight Lancet patients, four were dead after 30 months; four survived of whom two were cured at the time of publication. One of the two, a “34 year old Italian” was included in a study by Friedman-Kien[165] in 1990 as an example of a mild form of Kaposi’s sarcoma without HIV-infection and without any impairment to the relationship between the helper cells and suppressor cells. Neither the number nor the age of the patients, nor the affected parts of the body or the aggressiveness of the diseases, would give an impartial physician cause to talk about a new disease. Let us stick with the homosexuality of the “young” men. Since Kaposi’s sarcoma occurs in men in 95% of cases and since the eight diseases were diagnosed by eight physicians in three special clinics, it is quite striking, that the patients’ sexual orientation was worth mentioning. Noticeable also is the manner in which the “black” patient was described: “The only black patient in our study was born in America and had never been to Africa”. He is characterised by the term “the only” which suggests an under representation, although one of eight US citizens (12%) has dark skin-colouring. The country of birth was only given for the patient with the dark skin colour, and not for the other seven. And exclusively with respect to this patient it is mentioned that he “had never been to Africa”.
The “Task Force on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections”, a specialists group was founded very early by the Centers for Disease Control. The group was first mentioned under this name in August 1981 in the third MMWR paper[166] on cases of Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia and/or Kaposi’s sarcoma.
4.1.3 Centers for Disease Control name “risk groups”
The “risk groups” in chronological order
AIDS has not become a mass infection in many states. For pale-skinned persons, in NATO-states, AIDS remained an illness affecting almost exclusively homosexual men, iv.d.u. persons, haemophilia patients and recipients of blood-transfusions. Persons with dark skin-colouring are however at risk of being affected by AIDS (see below). The Centers for Disease Control justified this obvious spread with the existence of “risk groups”. By August 1981 it was obvious, that not only homosexual men became afflicted by Kaposi’s sarcoma and opportunistic infections (OI). The “Follow-up on Kaposi’s Sarcoma and Pneumocystis pneumonia” names 95 homosexual and six heterosexual men as well as one woman, who suffered from Kaposi’s sarcoma/OI without any obvious cause at that point of time[167]. It was already mentioned in the first report, that one of the five Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia patients was taking drugs intravenously[168]. Drugs were made an issue in the official survey first in June 1982[169]. But the question of a possible consumption of drugs was mentioned and answered at this time only for those 152 patients suffering from Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia and not for others. The description of patients refers “races” for the first time: “Whites”, “Blacks” and “Hispanics”. The “Hispanics” designation was supposed to relate to inhabitants from one of the Latin American states. What is also remarkable is the allocation according to skin colour: Of the Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia homosexual male patients, 68% were “white”, of the heterosexual men only 31% were “white”, and of the women 12.5% were “white”. (The same ratio applies, even when the numbers of diseases are far higher; see chapter 4.2).
One month later – in July 1982 – the Centers for Disease Control published a report depicting Haitians being a “population” particularly afflicted by the new disease[170]. Already one week later haemophilia patients were named as a further “risk group”, after three cases of Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia were registered from among these[171]. This is the first time, the assumption is voiced, that agents could also be possibly transmitted through blood products. On the 15th of September 1982 the categorisation of the spread of AIDS was complete. Under the title “Current Trends: Update on Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-United States”, the Centers for Disease Control for the first time claimed that this was an epidemic with a high growth-rate. It also named the “risk groups” affected and supplied a case definition[172]. Classification into “risk groups” is hierarchical: Whosoever is listed in a higher ranking category, will not be listed in any further group, even if he is ascribed to a further group. At this point in time, the risks lay in the following hierarchical sequence: “homo- or bisexuality” (75%), “intravenous drug users” (13%), “Haitian origin” (6%) and “haemophiliacs” (0.3%). However, 5.7% of patients are not registered in this classification. In December 1982 the first report of an AIDS case due to blood-transfusion was published[173]. This was a newborn baby which was given a blood-transfusion together with red corpuscles and blood platelets. One of the donors had developed AIDS and died in August 1982[174].
At the end of 1982, the Centers for Disease Control published case-histories of four children who were suffering from serious infections and immunodeficiency. Two children had Haitian parents whose condition of health was said to be unknown to the Centers for Disease Control. The mothers of the other two, allegedly consumed drugs and were affected by immunodeficiency[175]. At the beginning of 1983, the Centers for Disease Control finally introduced two women with immunosuppression whose steady partners were AIDS patients[176]. Whilst the AIDS-definition of the Centers for Disease Control proved right for one of the women, the other woman only had swollen lymph nodes and a reversed helper cells/suppressor cells-quotient less than 1. In the “Editorial” “Note” to the report, the Centers for Disease Control emphasised that there must obviously be an infectious agent for AIDS which is transmitted by homosexual or heterosexual intercourse. Four out of the 12 other female patients, who were neither Haitian women nor iv.d.u. persons, were the regular sexual partners of men taking intravenous drugs. This served as a further justification of the thesis[177]. Besides them, reference was also made to six children of whom five were suffering from Pneumocystis carinii-pneumonia and one from Mycobacterium avium intracellulare-infection. A further 12 children known to the Centers for Disease Control were supposed to have suffered from immunodeficiency but not from life-threatening opportunistic infections. Consequently by the end of 1982, there were 22 children in the USA suffering from unexplained immunodeficiency. Ten of these had mothers who were taking drugs intravenously, and two mothers were of Haitian origin. No “risk” was mentioned for the ten others.
AIDS theory is complete. Contradictory information on spread
In March 1983, the Centers for Disease Control stated, that the following were at risk: homosexual men, iv.d.u. persons, Haitians, recipients of blood or blood products, sexual partners of AIDS-infected persons or persons coming under one of the “risk group” categories, as well as children of mothers from the “risk groups”. The distribution of AIDS cases is similar to that of hepatitis-B, which is transmitted either via sexual intercourse, through contaminated syringes or blood products[178]. This statement, however, had to be restricted by the authors themselves, since up to that time no cases of AIDS were established from among hospital staff or laboratory employees. In the case of hepatitis-B these latter represented roughly 1/3rd of patients affected. Up to that time, according to the article no other form of person to person transmission could be recognised to have taken place other than through intimate contact or blood-transfusion[179]. To these “risk groups” named until the beginning of 1983, an addition was made in 1984 to include all persons born in the Caribbean, and the largest “risk group” – all persons born in Africa, South of the Sahara.[180]