Release Date: 09/27/2012
Johns Hopkins study suggests the commonly prescribed anti-retroviral drug efavirenz attacks brain cells
The way the body metabolizes a commonly prescribed anti-retroviral drug that is used long term by patients infected with HIV may contribute to cognitive impairment by damaging nerve cells, a new Johns Hopkins research suggests.
Nearly 50 percent of people infected with HIV will eventually develop some form of brain damage that, while mild, can affect the ability to drive, work or participate in many daily activities. It has long been assumed that the disease was causing the damage, but Hopkins researchers say the drug efavirenz may play a key role.
Nearly 50 percent of people infected with HIV will eventually develop some form of brain damage that, while mild, can affect the ability to drive, work or participate in many daily activities. It has long been assumed that the disease was causing the damage, but Hopkins researchers say the drug efavirenz may play a key role.On occasion, a little bit of truth--like the words above--escapes from the National Institutes of Health "HIV-AIDS" knowledge monopoly, created by Dr. Anthony Fauci in 1984, when he was named head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). Still directing NIAID 28 years later, Fauci's fame as an un-elected bureaucrat is matched only by the late FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
One of the most media-noticed science bureaucrats in modern American history, Dr. Fauci has had virtual control over all policy decisions related to the American government response to the collapse of immune systems in a subset of urban gay males in the early 1980's. In his NIAID position, Fauci has controlled tens of billions of dollars in "HIV-AIDS" research grants from NIH, spread around the country and the world. He has never allowed one dollar of U.S. taxpayer money to be spent on any theory of "AIDS" other than the single retroviral pathogen theory eagerly advanced by his NIH/National Cancer Institute colleague, Dr. Robert Gallo, in a press conference on April 23, 1984--before publication of any scientific papers claiming that an amorphous immune deficiency disorder noticed among urban American gay males was "probably" caused by a mysterious retrovirus.
Fauci has been the U.S. government's chief proponent of "anti-retroviral" (ARV) drugs, now a $17 billion segment of the pharmaceutical industry (as of the end 2011.)
Thus, it is not often that researchers go off script, and admit that the highly toxic ARV chemotherapy is the real cause of ill health in those said to be "infected" with a retrovirus. "AIDS by prescription," as Dr. Peter Duesberg observed many years ago.
When will this iatrogenic illness madness end?
--Terry Michael
People infected with HIV typically take a cocktail of medications to suppress the virus, and many will take the drugs for decades. Efavirenz is known to be very good at controlling the virus and is one of the few that crosses the blood-brain barrier and can target potential reservoirs of virus in the brain. Doctors have long believed that it might be possible to alleviate cognitive impairment associated with HIV by getting more drugs into the brain, but researchers say more caution is needed because there may be long-term effects of these drugs on the brain.