This is excerpted from the following document:

Durban Declaration Rebuttal

A rebuttal to the "Durban Declaration"
published in Nature on July 6 2000.

Revised September 28, 2001

Compiled by Robert Johnston¹, Matthew Irwin² and David Crowe³

1: Co-founder of HEAL Toronto, 2: Co-founder of HEAL Washington DC, 3: President of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society.

THE RELIABILITY OF HIV ANTIBODY TESTS

We are often reminded by HIV researchers that HIV has a relationship to AIDS. Certainly there is a loose correlation between HIV-positive antibody results and AIDS, but it is not enough to fulfill Koch's first postulate. Perhaps the reason the HIV antibody tests tend to identify AIDS patients is that it functions like the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) test and other non-specific antibody tests like rheumatoid factor (RF), and anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) tests (Turner, 1997). After all, no one has ever established a gold standard, such as purification of HIV from fresh patient plasma or even cell culture, as Luc Montaignier admits (Tahi, 1997). Therefore, any of 70 conditions already identified could be the cause of "HIV positivity" in any or all cases (Johnson, 1998). The erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) is a blood test that is frequently ordered in internal-medicine and infectious-disease offices. The test measures the rate that red blood cells (erythrocytes) fall to the bottom of a test tube under controlled conditions. An increased rate, usually defined as greater than 10 in a young adult, generally reflects an inflammatory process somewhere in the body. The ESR can be elevated in a multitude of disorders, from a mild infection, to a severe infection, malignancy or even kidney failure. A normal ESR can virtually exclude some disorders, but it is never diagnostic of any one particular disease.

Other very non-specific antibody tests like the Rheumatoid Factor (RF) and the Anti-nuclear Antibody (ANA) tests, are positive mostly in people with certain autoimmune diseases, but are also often positive in healthy adults. These tests use diluted serum, because otherwise most people would test positive. They are not as nearly diluted as the 400-fold dilution of the HIV ELISA test, however. When the ELISA is run on straight serum, as is done for the majority of antibody tests like hepatitis B antibodies, 100 out of 100 HIV-negative blood samples became positive! (Giraldo, 1998/1999) The Western Blot also uses diluted serum, but no studies could be found by these authors in which it was tested on straight serum. This would be an essential test of the Western blot's specificity, especially given that even when diluted, indeterminate readings are quite common. An article in a leading journal presents this issue:

Problems may be encountered when an HIV Western Blot is done on someone at no identifiable risk of infection. For example, recent studies of blood donors in whom no risk of HIV infection could be ascertained, who were nonreactive on the ELISA, and for whom all other tests for HIV were negative, revealed that 20% to 40% might have an indeterminate Western Blot... (Proffitt 1993, page 209)

Amazingly, the authors of the above study do not even mention that this extremely high "indeterminate" reading might raise questions about the specificity of the Western blot, which is currently relied on heavily to diagnose AIDS.

* see Mark Craddock's comments on Piatak et al infectious virus and QC-PCR numbers.

    * If not treated, most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within 5-10 years^6,7. HIV infection is identified in blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences or viral isolation. These tests are as reliable as any used for detecting other virus infections.

COMMENT: Studies of long-term survivors or non-progressors show that the majority do not take AIDS drugs and that many of them refuse viral load tests as well as other surrogate marker tests and lead normal lives - some of them since 1984 when HIV was first targeted as "the probable cause of AIDS". (Buchbinder 1994, Cao 1995, Garbuglia 1996, Harrer 1996, Hogervorst 1995, Hoover 1995, Montefiori 1996, Pantaleo 1995, Root-Bernstein 1995).

Is the "HIV Test" Valid? The test kit manufacturer's own literature admits:

"ELISA testing alone cannot be used to diagnose AIDS, even if the recommended investigation of reactive specimens suggests a high probability that the antibody to HIV 1 is present"
  - Abbott Laboratories, 1994, 66-2333/R4.

The insert for one of the kits for administering the Western Blot warns: "Do not use this kit as the sole basis of diagnosis of HIV-1 infection"
  - Epitope/Organon Teknika Corporation, PN201-3039 Revision # 6.

"Sensitivity and Specificity: At present there is no recognized standard for establishing the presence and absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood. Therefore, sensitivity was computed based on the clinical diagnosis of AIDS and specificity based on random donors. The ABBOT studies show that: Sensitivity based on an assumed 100% prevalence of HIV-1 antibody in AIDS patients is estimated to be 100% (144 patients tested). Specificity based on an assumed zero prevalence of HIV-1 antibody in random donors is estimated to be 99.9% (4777 random donors tested)."
  - Abbott Laboratories HIVAB^tm HIV-1 EIA

Assumed because it is not possible to isolate HIV from fresh patient plasma. Thus it has never been proven that any "HIV" antibody positive patient has an active "HIV" infection.

The insert that comes with a popular kit to run viral load warns:

"The Amplicor HIV-1 Monitor test is not intended to be used as a screening test for HIV or as a diagnostic test to confirm the presence of HIV infection"
  - Roche Diagnostic Systems, 06/96, 13-08-83088-001.

HIV test results vary depending on where you live. In the U.S., Canada, most of Europe but not in England or Wales, the Western Blot test confirms ELISA tests. Dr. Valendar Turner explains how HIV antibody test results can be interpreted very differently by nine different international standards. For instance it is possible for any person to be any of the following on a single test result: positive in Australia, but not in France; positive in France, but not in Australia (for different reasons); positive in Africa and not positive everywhere else in the world. A Martian might be forgiven for wondering whether wine tasting was less subjective (Turner, 1995).