-
- The argument that HIV does not lead to AIDS - put forward
by South African President Thabo Mbeki among others - has no basis in fact,
say scientists.
-
- Tests on monkeys have come "as near as we're ever
going to get" to proving that HIV does cause AIDS, said Ruth Ruprecht
of Harvard Medical School.
-
- "If you look at HIV positive people and HIV negative
people, the positive ones have a hugely increased risk of AIDS-related
illnesses." -- Julian Meldrum, National Aids Trust
-
- The results of the study come as another group of scientists
claims that a lack of understanding about how vaccines work is hampering
efforts to develop ways of preventing AIDS.
-
- More than 11m people have now died of AIDS in Africa,
but President Mbeki is a leading proponent of the view - rejected by most
of the scientific community - that HIV does not cause the disease.
-
- Professor Peter Duesberg, of the University of California
at Berkeley, has argued that it is impossible to confirm HIV leads to AIDS,
and says drugs may be the original cause of the disease.
-
- But Ruprecht set out to prove the link by isolating the
pure DNA form of the SIV virus, HIV's close relative that causes AIDS in
monkeys.
-
- This DNA was then injected into six infant and six adult
macaques. All 12 animals made antibodies to the virus, but three of the
infants and one of the adults died from AIDS, reports New Scientist magazine.
-
- Ruprecht said that short of deliberately injecting purified
HIV into humans, this was "as near as you are ever going to get to
proving HIV causes AIDS".
-
- Further confirm
-
- Julian Meldrum of the National AIDS Trust in the UK said
the Ruprecht study seemed to further confirm that HIV was the cause of
Aids.
-
- "If you look at HIV positive people and HIV negative
people, the positive ones have a hugely increased risk of AIDS-related
illnesses," he said.
-
- Drugs can alleviate the symptoms of AIDS - but there
is no vaccine and no cure.
-
- However, Dr Charles Thomas, of the Helicon Foundation
in San Diego, California, is among scientists who have called for more
evidence that HIV causes AIDS.
-
- He questioned the results of the Ruprecht study, saying:
"SIV is something quite different from HIV - that has never been isolated."
-
- And Harry Rubin, professor of cell biology at the University
of California at Berkeley, who has also signed a demand for more research,
said: "I don't see that this is conclusive evidence.
-
- "I now think there is pretty good evidence that
HIV has something to do with AIDS, but I think it is a multi-factorial
problem.
-
- "The closed-mindedness of both ends of the spectrum
is really not convincing."
-
- The battle to produce an AIDS vaccine continues, whatever
the agent that causes the disease.
-
- But Philippe Kourilsky, director of the Pasteur Institute
in Paris, said not enough work had been done on other vaccines, such as
measles and polio, to establish why they work.
-
- The belief that successful vaccines work by producing
antibodies is almost certainly wrong, added Neal Nathanson, director of
the US Office of Aids Research.
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