Here are ten facts every person diagnosed as HIV-positive has a right to know

reposted from helpforhiv.com/

Being diagnosed HIV-Positive can be a traumatic experience – emotionally, mentally, and physically.

Following the initial shock, most people are faced with a lot of fears and questions about a number of life-changing issues.

We created this website to help you find your way through these fears by helping you better understand the medical facts about your diagnosis, and to provide information that can help guide you in making some important decisions.

Here are ten facts every person diagnosed as HIV-positive has a right to know (click on the words in green for quick references)…

FACT #1: There is strong evidence that the HIV test you took is very often wrong. We have found over fifty different scientific studies listing seventy non-HIV conditions that can make the test produce false positive results. Depending on which test you took, they have been proven to be wrong as much as 90% of the time. So you might not be HIV-positive at all.

FACT #2: The HIV test you took was not a test for AIDS, or even a test for HIV. Despite what we’ve all been told, it was a simple test to find certain antibodies in your blood — an “HIV-antibody” test. But viral antibodies alone do not indicate a current infection. In fact, in virtually every other antibody test, to be positive for the antibodies means that you had exposure to or a prior virus infection and are now immune from the disease that virus could cause. Antibody protection is the basis for the practice of vaccinations, like gaining immunity against the flu with a flu shot. There are no studies that show why we should think any differently about antibodies to HIV. A growing number of experts now believe that testing HIV-antibody-positive actually means that you have successfully created what your body needs to defeat any HIV infection, not to make you sick!

FACT #3: No HIV test, whether it uses blood, urine or saliva, has ever been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the specific intended purpose of diagnosing infection with HIV.

FACT #4: The HIV test you took has never been “validated,” as was normally done in the past. That means that there has never been a group of people who tested HIV-positive who were then proven to have active HIV (not just the antibodies) in their blood. Conversely, there has also never been a group who tested HIV-negative and were proven not to have active HIV in their blood. This lack of test validation raises serious questions about the validity of your positive diagnosis.

FACT #5: The proteins used in the HIV test kits have never been proven to be unique or specific for HIV. In fact, every one of the proteins used in the test has been found to be associated with conditions that have nothing to do with HIV — and many of these proteins have nothing to do with illness of any kind. In other words, scientific evidence cannot prove that a positive HIV test means that you have HIV or AIDS or any other health problem, and it says so right on every test package. Most doctors giving the test and most people taking the test never see this disclaimer.

FACT #6: Nineteen samples of the same blood were sent to nineteen different laboratories for a Western Blot test, and they all came back with different results. 525 samples of the same blood of an ELISA-Positive test were sent to 525 different laboratories for a Western Blot confirmation, and came back with very different results. One blood sample was sent to the same lab 44 times and came back with different results. This means that your test results could have been different if they had been done in a different laboratory.

FACT #7: There is no established standard for determining the results of your test. In fact, there are at least ten different ways to interpret your HIV test, and each one of those can give a different result. It often depends on where you live in the world, whose standards are used to interpret your test, and what information you give about your life and health history. You might be positive according to one set of standards, but negative using another. Some people have gone from being HIV-positive to being HIV-negative just by moving to a different location, or by changing laboratories or testing sites, or giving different information about their potential “risk factors.”

FACT #8: Many people believe that HIV viral load tests do what antibody tests cannot, by detecting the actual virus. But this is a false belief. According to the disclaimer statementson viral load tests, they are “not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or to confirm HIV infection.” This is because the viral load tests have some of the same problems as the HIV blood tests: they have never been validated, the “probes” and “primers” they use have never been proven to be unique or specific to HIV, they are not standardized from laboratory to laboratory, they produce a high rate of false positives, and more. In fact, most laboratories will not allow you to take an HIV viral load test unless you have already tested HIV-positive, because people who are HIV-negative have had high HIV viral load results. In addition, the most recent scientific study shows that viral load measurements failed in 90% of the cases in predicting the loss of CD4 cells, which HIV is supposed to destroy. In fact, viral load tests were only able to predict “progression to disease” in 4% to 6% of the HIV-Positives studied. This study proves that there must be “nonvirological mechanisms as the predominant cause of CD4 cell loss.” In other words, HIV cannot be the cause of immune deficiency and therefore a viral load test is a totally useless indicator of whether someone will get AIDS. An analysis of this study in the same issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that viral load results alone should not be used to begin antiretroviral therapy (HAART).

FACT #9: A lot of emphasis is also placed on CD4 (or T-cell) counts to diagnose someone with AIDS. However, T-cell counts can fluctuate widely from day to day and hour to hour even in normal healthy people. We’ve known since 1991  that “variance in CD4 from …non-HIV related longitudinal fluctuations needs to be accounted for in analysis of the prognostic power of CD4 in HIV infection.” (reference deleted from the Internet by the National Institutes of Health) And other studies have found perfectly healthy HIV-negativeindividuals with very low T-cell counts. And as recently as May 2007, from the Imperial College of London: “Our new interdisciplinary research has thrown serious doubt on one popular theory of how HIV affects these [CD4] cells.”

FACT #10: Despite what you hear from the mass media, there is no scientific study that proves that HIV is transmitted through heterosexual intercourse. In fact, the opposite is true. The longest and largest study of its kind (called the Padian study) found notransmission of HIV in any of the study couples, regardless of whether they were using condoms or not; and the most recent study from the British Medical Journal found no evidence that abstinence education would prevent HIV infection.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL !

Even if the HIV tests were validated, approved for diagnosing actual HIV infection, and had a universal standard of interpretation, there is still no conclusive medical evidence that proves that testing positive is an indication that you are or will become sick. Despite everything you may have heard over the past twenty years, there is still no scientific study that proves that HIV causes AIDS or shows that it destroys the immune system. In fact, a review of the medical literature reveals that HIV fails every medical and scientific test to be called the cause of AIDS.

Because of these questions about the HIV tests, and HIV itself, you should carefully consider whether or not to take the drugs you will be pressured to take, called anti-retroviral drugs (or HAART). Recent scientific studies show that more people are dying from the side effects of these drugs than from illnesses associated with AIDS, and that the drugs being given today are even worse than the ones offered ten years ago. These statements, and all the other information offered on this website, are not our opinions, but irrefutable facts. If you are told something different by your doctor or the mass media, we urge you to read the scientific studies for yourself and come to your own conclusions.

Although this information is rarely found in the mass media or in presentations by the AIDS establishment, it is supported by more than 2800 medical and scientific researchers, legal experts, doctors, chiropractors, PhD’s, journalists, health care providers, and other professionals – including two Nobel Prize winners in medicine and chemistry and members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

FROM AN EMAIL RECEIVED JULY 14, 2007…

Just an update that confirms everything on your website. I had FOUR rapid tests done within a week, two were negative and two were positive. I had TWO Western Blots done. One showed I was reactive on every band but one (HIV+) and the other showed I was reactive on only one band (HIV-indeterminate). For tests that are supposed to be over 99% accurate they just proved they only have a 50% accuracy. In fact, I took two rapids at the exact same time and one was negative and one was positive. What a scam. ~ Kim

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO NOW?

Before you start (or continue) taking HIV drug treatments, please educate yourself about the facts and come to your own conclusions about what may be best for your own life and health. You can start by using the links to the left to books, podcasts, videos, scientific papers, interviews, articles, blogs and websites, and support and discussion groups where you will find all the information you need to make up your own mind about how you will live with your positive diagnosis.

You need to know that there are thousands of people diagnosed HIV-positive who either stopped, or never started taking the HIV drugs and are living healthy and happy lives today, some of them for more than twenty years.