Problems Associated With AIDS
HOUSE OF COMMONS
Third Report from the
SOCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE
Session 1986-87
PROBLEMS ASSOCIATED WITH AIDS
Minutes of Evidence (8 April-13 may 1987) and Memoranda
Ordered by The House of Commons to be printed 13 May 1987
60. Memorandum by Dr. John Seale, Royal Society of Medicine
INTRODUCTION
No politician can make rational decisions to deal with Aids without
a clear understanding of the nature and severity of the epidemic, the
means of transmission of the virus, and the prospects for a cure or
preventive vaccine. The key scientific facts underlying the epidemic are
quite simple though Aids is perceived to be unusually complex and full of
scientific uncertainties. These perceptions have been produced by a few
scientists and others who have recklessly minimised the seriousness of
the epidemic and have fostered confusion and dangerous misconceptions.
The most important and urgent task for politicians, both in
Government and Parliament, is to force scientists to speak clearly,
precisely and honestly about the Aids epidemic. Half-truths, wishful
thinking, flawed scientific hypotheses and deceptions have been
perpetrated by scientists and allowed to flourish as conventional wisdom
aided and abetted by editors of scientific and medical journals. The
deceptions must be exposed with maximum publicity.
The public must be fully informed of the true nature of the threat
from the virus which faces us all. Once this is done the mass of the
population will accept measures essential to halt the spread of the
virus, even though they will inevitably require severe curtailment of the
liberty and civil rights of everybody, just as happens in war-time. The
longer the truth is obscured from the public, and the greater the
multitude of innocent people who die most horribly as a result, the more
ferocious will be the explosion of hatred and revenge against those
guilty of perpetrating the deceptions.
The virus has the properties of a skilled, devious, hidden and
implacable invader with the capacity and willingness to kill every man,
woman and child in our country. It may now be spreading amongst us
precisely because it has this capacity. It is unwise to assume that such
a force can be vanquished without taking actions which the people of
Britain accepted as entirely appropriate to fight two world wars;
particularly as dissemination of the virus is being actively encouraged
by some who wish to destroy our society.
A. THE NATURE OF THE DISEASE
1. Aids is a contagious, infectious, communicable disease caused by
a lentivirus (slow virus), a member of the family of retroviruses.
2. No lentivirus has been known to affect humans before the advent
of Aids.
3. Aids is a typical slow virus disease with a prolonged, silent
incubation period of great variability, but usually lasting several
years, followed by slowly progressive disease always ending in death.
4. An epidemic of a new slow virus disease spreading unchecked is
the ultimate virological nightmare, yet in none of the major scientific
or medical journals has this been spelled out clearly and the
implications discussed.
5. Death is caused by the Aids virus infecting, and slowly
destroying, cells in the brain, lungs, intestine, and the immune system.
B. MORTALITY FOLLOWING INFECTION
1. Within five years of infection with the virus, 25 per cent of
people have developed full-blown Aids and all of them die. This is the
official conclusion of the US Public Health Service recently endorsed by
leading scientists from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington.
2. The ultimate mortality within twenty years of infection is
unknown as the virus has been spreading for only ten years. The
optimistic view held by a decreaseing number of virologists is that only
50 per cent of those infected will die. Many virologists now accept the
pessimistic view, that all people infected with the virus will eventually
be killed by it.
3. All virologists are agreed that once infected with the Aids
virus, people are potentially infectious to others for life.
C. FALURE OF ANTIBODIES OR VACCINES TO PROTECT
1. In all people with anitbodies to the Aids virus, some virus
persists in brain and other cells from which it cannot be removed. In
contrast to most virus infections, antibodies to a lentivirus do not
provide protective immunity; they fail to neutralise or eliminate it.
Although many people infected with the Aids virus look and feel well for
several years, destruction of cells of the brain and immune system is
progressing slowly
2. The outlook for a successful vaccine is bleak. None is available
for the lentivirus diseases of animals. Search for a vaccine against
infectious anaemia of horses for eighty years, and against maedi-visna in
sheep for forty years, has proved futile. Indeed, when antibodies to a
lentivirus are produced artificially by vaccination, the vaccinated
animals die after subsequent infection more rapidly that those which are
not. In spite of many successful vaccines, it should be realised that
for the majority of viral and bacterial diseases vaccines do not work.
D. BLEEK OUTLOOK FOR A CURE
1. No simple, effective, curative drug, like penicillin, will be
available for Aids in the forseeable future because once a person is
infected, the viral genetic code is pernamently inserted into the human
genetic code of cells in the brain and other tissues. Any drug which
blocks replication of the virus, thereby halting the progress of the
disease, will have to be taken continuously for life. All drugs used so
far are highly toxic and expensive. If a cheap, apparently effective,
drug becomes available it will take several decades to be certain that it
is both effective and safe. Nevertheless, many companies will announce
"promising" new drugs and "breakthroughs" in the treatment of Aids for
simple commerercial motives.
2. The handling of the recent AZT clinical trials by the US
Government was particularly important. The US Public Health Service
insisted the trials cease long before any long-term benefit of the drug
had been shown, and before the manufacturing company suggested it,
thereby misleading the public into believing a "cure" for Aids was
already in the pipeline. Such disinformation weakens the political will
to implement the tough control measures required to halt the spread of
the virus.
E. TRANSMISSION OF AIDS - SEXUAL INTERCOURSE
1. Scientists and doctors have repeatedly stated as fact that the
Aids virus is fundamentally transmitted during sexual intercourse but is,
unfortunately, sometimes transmitted in blood. This is highly
misleading, though published laboratory and epidemiological evidence, and
editorials in scientific and medical journals, have been heavily slanted
to support this "fact".
2. In reality Aids is characteristically a blood transmitted
infection, which is only transmitted with difficulty during sexual
intercourse compared with the genuine sexually transmitted diseases
gonorrhoea and trichomoniasis. All the experimental and epidemiological
evidence is consistent with this view.
3. Obviously Aids is transmissible during sexual intercourse, but so
is influenza, glandular fever and scabies. Sexual intercourse is only
one of many ways by which the virus can be transmitted, and is by no
means the most efficient.
4. The illusion that Aids is essentially a sexually transmitted
disease arose from the first observations that Aids appeared to affect
only sodomites with numerous partners. However sodomy is not sexual
intercourse in the biological sense of the words. As we are dealing with
a very important biological event, the transmission of a lethal parasite
from one human host to another, it is essential that scientists use words
describing the transmission with the utmost precision.
5. In biological terms sexual intercourse means the union between
male and female which may result in reproduction of the species. In
mammals this invariably requires contact between male and female
genitalia. Consequently sexual intercourse between two men in the
biological sense is impossible.
6. Scientist who state, or imply, sodomy is sexual intercourse
without some qualification are being imprecise and misleading, whether
intentionally or not.
7. Homosexual men engaged in homosexual activities frequently insert
their fingers, fist, penis or tongue into the lower intestinal tract of
their partners. These manoeuvres transmit any virus which persists in
the blood for months or years with devastating efficiency, even though no
virus is present in either semen or saliva. This has been shown very
clearly with hepatatis B virus which, in prosperous communities, infects
the majority of homosexual men within three years of becoming sexually
active; whereas hepatitis B infection remains rare amongst heterosexual
men and women, even though they frequently change partners.
F. DISINFORMATION FROM SCIENTISTS
1. The Aids virus persists in an infectious state (ie as cell-free
virions) in blood and semen at levels up to 25,000 virions per
millilitre, according to the only published paper giving this critically
important information. Cell-free virions were detected easily in saliva
over two years ago, but quantitative studies have still not been
published.
2. No infectious virion has been detected in semen according to the
only two detailed published studies on the subject, which between them
included a grand total of merely three men examined. In 10 per cent of
50 infected men, according to another report sent to me personally but
which gave few details, cell-associated virus has been detected in a few
white blood cells in semen, but never in spermatazoa.
3. Virions have been detected in the vaginal secretions in only
trivial quantities - about one per millitre - indicating that their
infectivity is minimal.
4. The scale of the deceptions and misinformation perpetrated by
virologists, clinicians and editors of scientific and medical journals
about the infectivity of genital secretions, compared with that of blood,
serum and saliva, has been astonishing. In the presence of a new, lethal
virus spreading amongst people, for which no vaccine or cure is in sight,
every sane person would assume that scientists have been working flat out
to verify precisely how it is transmitted.
5. On the contrary, having assumed for a variety of motives that
Aids is a sexually transmitted disease, like syphilis or gonorrhoea, a
negligible research effort has gone into the critical matter of
transmission. A few preliminary papers were published and their findings
have been repeatedly quoted as showing the opposite to what they actually
showed. When this was pointed out in letters to the editors of major
medical and scientific journals, publication has been refused. No
attempt has been made to check, double-check, and recheck the findings in
other laboratories, and in other countries, or to rectify published
errors.
6. As far as it goes, the tiny research effort into infectivity of
bodily fluids indicates that saliva is more infectious than genital
secretions, but that blood and serum is vastly more infectious than
either. Consequently the idea that condoms can have any significant
effect on the spread of Aids in a nation is utterly preposterous.
7. Governments all over the world are spending millions of pounds
advising their citizens to prevent Aids by using condoms on the basis of
manifestly fraudulent misrepresentation of scientific evidence presented
by scientists themselves.
8. The Aids virus is unusually stable outside the human body. It
retains almost all its infectivity after seven days in water at room
temperature and some after being kept dry for a week. A virus with this
degree of stability, which persists in the blood and is shed in saliva,
cannot possibly fail to be transmitted in many ways apart from sexual
intercourse.
G. VARIABLE EFFICIENCY IN MEANS OF TRANSMISSION
1. A virus which persists in moderate quantities in the blood for
years and is shed in small quantities in saliva will be transmitted with
greater ease by some means than by others.
2. Injection of the virus through the skin in hypodermic needles is
the most certain method of transmission. This happens when blood-
contaminated hypodermics are re-used without sterilisation, as is common
amongst drug addicts in the West and in health care facilities in less
prosperous countries. It also occurs when virus-contaminated blood
tranfusions and clotting factor are administered.
3. Male homosexual contact of the finger, penis or tongue with the
rectal wall of another man transmits the virus very easily. 70 per cent
of the male homosexual population of San Franciso were infected within
six years of the arrival of the virus in the city, and nearly 30 per cent
of London homosexuals are already infected. The percentages are rising
remorselessly in large cities throughout the western world, unaffected by
the highly acclaimed "safe sex" propaganda.
4. Well over 50 per cent of new-born babies of infected mothers are
infected
5. Moderately efficient means of transmission include mouth-to-mouth
and genital contact before and during normal sexual intercourse, oral
salivary contact between small children, needle-stick injuries to nursing
staff, and chance contact of sores or abrasions with blood, serum, saliva
or sputum.
6. Inefficient means of transmission include social kissing,
inhalation or respiratory aerosols caused by coughing or sneezing, and
blood-sucking insects.
7. Transmission by inhalation is only inefficient because of the
relatively small number of virions shed in saliva and bronchial
secretions. However if an Aids virion is inhaled into the lung it is
engulfed by an amoeba-like macrophage on the lining of the alveoli (air
sacs). It has been shown repeatedly in the laboratory that the Aids
virus readily infects macrophages, and the virus replicates within them,
thereby enabling infection of people to be iniated by this route.
8. Understandably, and wisely, the DHSS has officially advised all
British dental surgeons always to wear masks to avoid Aids virus
infection when using high speed drill. These drills make aerosols of
saliva similar to those produced by sneezing.
9. Chronic lymphoid interstitial pneumonitis is a well recognised
variety of pneumonia caused directly by infection of the lungs with the
Aids virus. It is similar to the pneumonia of maedi-visna in sheep and
is particularly common in children with Aids. When associated with
pulmonary tuberculosis, a very common complication of Aids, it is
inevitable that coughing will produce some aerosols containing tubercle
bacilli and the Aids virus. After the fluid in the aerosols evaporates
the minute dry flakes containing tubercle bacilli and Aids virus float in
the air indefinitely and both remain infectious for days.
10. The normal route of transmission of the maedi-visna lentivirus
between adult sheep is by respiratory aerosols when they are crowded
closely together in Winter shelters. Maedi-visna is not a sexually
transmitted disease of sheep.
11. The efficiency of the transmission of the Aids virus by biting
insects will depend upon the quantity of virions in the blood of the
bitten person, the anatomical structure of the biting parts of the
insects, their feeding habits and other factors.
12. Infectious anaemia of horses, a lentivirus disease, is
characteristically transmitted by large biting insects, particularly
stable flies and horse flies. It is not a sexually transmitted disease
of horses.
13. The Aids virus has been shown to remain infectious in the stomach
of bed bugs for at least two hours. It has been shown that it can infect
the cells of insects, including mosquitoes and cockroaches, both in
laboratory cell culture and in intact insects. Replication of the virus
in insect cells has not yet been demonstrated.
H. SATURATION OF THE BRITISH POPULATION WITH THE VIRUS
1. There is a key to estimating how long it will take for the people
of Britain to be saturated with the Aids virus, if its spread is allowed
to continue unchecked as at present. This is the application of
probability theory to the known facts about the virus, its pathogenesis,
the frequency of "contact", and the efficiency with which different
"contacts" transmit the virus.
2. The basic facts are that the entire population is susceptible to
infection, and once people are infected they remain potentially
infectious to others for life.
3. As the number of people infected rises the probability of
transmission during any particular "contact" between individuals also
rises.
4. Initially the virus was introduced into Britain from the United
States by homosexual men who soon infected others by having frequent,
efficient, "contacts" -sodomy with strangers. As the number of infected
homosexuals rises the probability of infection being transmitted during
one "contact" rises at first exponentially, but then at a slower doubling
rate as saturation with the virus of the homosexual population is
approached.
5. Once some intravenous drug addicts were infected, a further,
frequent, efficient "contact", self-injection with shared needles,
rapidly spread the virus amongst addicts.
6. As numbers of infected homosexuals and addicts increased,
efficient "contacts" rarely performed - such as receiving a blood
transfusion, or clotting factor, or having a baby - infected more and
more people.
7. Once a critical mass of infected people has been created by
highly efficient "contacts", then "contacts" which are only moderately
efficient but occur very frequently - such as normal sexual intercourse
or small children playing together - will spread the virus in ever
widening circles throughout the population.
8. Finally, highly inefficient "contacts" which occur very
frequently indeed, such as coughing and sneezing in public, and being
bitten by insects, will infect many people as millions of infected
persons interact with the non-infected, and saturation of the entgire
British population becomes unstoppable.
I. GROUPS MISINFORMING THE PUBLIC AND THEIR MOTIVES
a.
Homosexual men
1. Homosexual men have been the most determined and effective in
distorting the truth about Aids.
2. They have been so effective because there is a scattering of
homosexuals amongst all the key professional groups involved -
scientists, doctors, medical editors, journalists, lawyers, politicians
and priests.
3. The initial impact of Aids on homosexuals in the West inevitably
resulted in an unusually high proportion of them becoming involved with
the disease since it first surfaced. Many of the men who are
particularly knowledgeable about and dedicated to, Aids research,
treatment, legislation, publication and education are homosexuals.
4. Most in the professions are only identifiable as homosexuals to
other men with similar tastes - few have "come out" and even the wives of
those who are married are usually unaware of their habits. Hence they
automatically form a type of secret society without even trying, with
wide ramifications across professional, institutional and national
boundaries.
5. Homosexual men have been vectors of the virus throughout the
western world and if it had not been for their activities very few poeple
in prosperous countries would now be infected. Their oft-repeated
statement that they are the major victims of the virus is true, but it is
also true that they have spread the virus to each other by their
practices and then onward to the rest of the population.
6. Many do not wish to face reality because of guilt, most do not
wish to change their ways, and a few seeing death and destruction facing
themselves and their friends are dedicated to destroying the rest of
society with them.
7. All wish to deny the reality that restricting the freedom of
homosexuals to infect each other and other people, is essential if our
society is not to be destroyed by the virus.
b.
Scientists
1. Every biological scientist who has dispassionately studied the
virus and the epidemic knows that the origins of the virus could lie in
the developments of modern biology, just as the origins of the nuclear
bomb was modern physics.
2. Most biological scientists have not yet come to terms with the
terrible truth and have devoloped various neurotic reactions to cope with
it.
3. Many have developed a selective denial of reality and genuinely
cannot see what is happening. Most who see it keep quiet, but increasing
numbers are talking privately though they still lack the moral courage to
speak out in public. They still hope it is a nightmare which will vanish
with tomorrow's dawn.
4. Some who know perfectly well what has happened are deliberately
fudging scientific data to keep the heat off them and fellow members of
their molecular biological "club".
c.
Editors of Scientific and Medical Journals.
1. Medical and scientific editors have misled their professional
colleagues about the nature and severity of the Aids epidemic for five
years. By selective acceptance or rejection of original papers and
letters, and by selection authors to write "safe" editorials and review
articles, they have perpetuated dangerous misconceptions.
2. As the harsh reality of what is happening becomes ever more
obvious editors have developed a range of neurotic reactions similar to
those of the scientists.
d.
Doctors
1. Most doctors are incapable of conceiving the scale of the
problems as only three hundred people have died from Aids in Britain in
the last five years, but 40,000 die each year of cancer of the lung. How
can Aids be so important?
2. An epidemic slow virus disease is new to medical science and its
significance largely incomprehensible to doctors because it is outside
both their practical experience and theoretical training.
3. Epidemics were supposed to have been abolished, along with the
old fever hospitals and TB sanatoria twenty-five years ago. It is
difficult to change cherished beliefs. It is assumed that scientists
will soon have a vaccine and the Aids epidemic will disappear like a bad
flu epidemic.
4. Doctors who have treated many patients with Aids are profoundly
shocked at their own, and modern medicine's inability to restore the
health of so many young patients. Although death be delayed, remissions
are temporary. Deterioration is so protracted, often lasting years, that
many Aids patients kill themselves as a means of escape.
5. Many young doctors working only with Aids patients soon become
depressed themselves. The term "Aids burn-out" is now widely used in
America - it has similarities with war-time battle exhaustion.
6. Many senior doctors in charge of numerous Aids patients develop
profoundly neurotic attitudes which enable them to cope with their job by
selective denial of reality. In support of their patients for whom they
can do so little medically, they fiercely defend their rights of
confidentiality, and freedom of association, totally ignoring public
health responsibilities to ensure that others are now infected. They are
regularly consulted by Government and the Media and other doctors on how
to control the epidemic.
e.
Journalists
1. In the face of a lethal disease, journalists and media editors
have been frightened to contradict the conventional wisdom being put
across by the scientists. There has been no serious attemp at
investigative journalism into the wealth of scientific scandals
surrounding Aids.
2. They have often given way to the tremendous pressure put upon
them by scientists and homosexuals to understate the seriousness of the
epidemic and, in the last two years, have capitulated to demands that
Aids is portrayed as an "ordinary" veneral disease.
3. Understandably, as in a war that is going badly, all news of
break throughs with cures and vaccines are given lavish cover. These
lull politicians and public intal fatal inaction.
f.
Politicians
1. Leading politicians from all parties in all nations have, till
very recently, hardly mentioned Aids in public. Accepting the earlier
views of scientists that it was just a homosexual disease, and the
revised view that it is only a veneral disease, they know that taking
Aids seriously would have gained them few votes.
2. No prominent politician has thought there was reason to doubt the
much publicised opinions of scientists and public health doctors
concerning the facts about Aids.
J. VARIETIES OF MISINFORMATION
1. People with Aids are categorised as belonging to a small number
of "risk groups" giving the false impression that the vast majority of
people cannot get Aids.
2. Aids is portrayed as only a behavioural disease caused by sexual
and narcotic misdemeanors. This implies that if anybody gets Aids it is
their own fault.
3. Emphasis on transmission of the virus during sexual intercourse,
and education as a solution to the epidemic, implies that the disease
will disappear with modified behaviour. This misses the point that as
the epidemic explodes infection by chance, non-sexual, contact becomes
ever more common.
4. By equating sodomy with sexual intercourse the impression is
given that homosexuals have just been unlucky to get infected before
heterosexuals. In reality homosexual activity has spread the virus
through the population at a vastly greater speed that normal sexual
intercourse could achieve.
5. The value of blood tests for diagnosis of Aids virus infection is
repeatedly denigrated by those who do not want them introduced
compulsorily. In fact the blood test is an unusually reliable diagnostic
tool.
6. The suffering of those with Aids is highlighted while ignoring
the suffering of those who will get Aids in the future if appropriate
steps are not taken to stop its spread.
7. The rights of those infected with the virus are stressed, while
the rights of the uninfected to be protected from infection with a lethal
virus are ignored and glossed over. Protection of the life of its
citizens is one of the major obligations of the State.
8. Misinformation is perpetuated by homosexuals actively obstructing
the publication, in the scientific or general press, of facts and
conclusions which they want suppressed.
K. METHODS OF CONTROL
1. The most urgent step to be taken is to break the pervasive grip
by homosexuals on the information and disinformation which has emanated
for so long from the journals of science and medicine, and from much of
the media. Once this has been done other scientists, doctors and
politicians can stress accurately the reality of the situation.
2. Once the truth is known and publicised the steps required to halt
the epidemic become more obvious and less controversial.
3. Speed is of the essence because every day that is lost will
increase the human misery which, in any event, will be vast.
4. We are facing a national catastrophe equal to any in the history
of the nation. The life of every citizen is at stake. Death from Aids
is a protracted horror unequalled by other diseases.
5. The only way to halt the spread of the virus is to indentify all
those who are infected by compulsory testing. Government must then take
whatever steps are required to ensure that those infected do not pass the
virus on to anyone else.
6. The longer this action is delayed the greater will be the task
when it is finally undertaken, and the greater the danger that the spread
of the virus will then be unstoppable.
7. The actions required by Government are comparable to those taken
in waging a war of survival.
8. The war against Aids is a war of survival. If we lose Britain
and all her people will perish.
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