of HIV, just the presence of antibodies to it – the usual sign that the body has fought off infection and won.
With the Western Blot, these HIV proteins are isolated in bands; when mixed with a blood sample, each protein band will show up if it has bound to an antibody.
Besides being unable actually to detect HIV, these tests are notoriously unreliable; in Russia, in 1990, out of 20,000 positive ELISA tests, only 112 could be confirmed using the Western Blot, according to Australian biophysicist Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, who has studied both tests in depth.118 The French government considers these tests so unreliable that it withdrew nine of the 30 HIV tests that were once available.
The other problem is that neither test is specific to HIV; both react to many other proteins caused by other diseases. For example, the protein p24, generally accepted to be proof of the existence of HIV, is found in all retroviruses that live in the body and do no harm. This means that p24 is not unique to HIV, as Dr Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the HIV virus, has stated repeatedly. Hepatitis B and C, malaria, papillomavirus warts, glandular fever, tuberculosis, syphilis and leprosy are just a few of the conditions that are capable of producing biological false-positives in ELISA tests.119
In one study, antibodies to p24 were detected in 13 per cent of patients with generalized papilloma virus warts, 24 per cent of patients with skin cancer and 41 per cent of patients with multiple sclerosis.120 In one study, half the patients with a positive p24 test later tested negatively.121
Western Blot, supposed to be the more accurate of the two, has proven no better than ELISA. Dr Max Essex of Harvard University’s School of Public Health, a highly respected AIDS expert, found that the Western Blot gave a positive result to some 85 per cent of African patients later found to be HIV-negative. Eventually, he and his researchers discovered that proteins from the leprosy germ – which infects millions of Africans – can show up as a false-positive on both ELISA and Western Blot, as can malaria.122 In one study of Venezuelan malaria patients, the rate of false-positives with Western Blot was 25–41 per cent.123
This poor track record is disturbing when you consider that the main AIDS ‘risk’ groups – gay men, drug-users and haemophiliacs – are exposed to many foreign substances such as semen, drugs, blood transfusions and blood components, hepatitis, Epstein Barr virus and many other factors or diseases known to cause false-positives in HIV tests. Other populations exposed to a greater than normal amount of disease – such as Africans and drug-users – also make many more antibodies than the rest of us and therefore are likely to end up with a false reading.
Blood transfusions can also produce a false-positive HIV test result. In one study, the amount of HIV antibody detected in ELISA tests was greatest immediately after blood transfusion, and thereafter decreased.124 One volunteer was given six injections of donated HIV-negative blood at four-day intervals. After the first injection his HIV test was negative, but the HIV-positive antibody response increased with each subsequent transfusion.125
Of course, the greatest problem with an HIV test is that a positive test labels you HIV positive for life. Being HIV positive can bar you from insurance, employment, marriage or even entry into another country. The HIV test can also launch many healthy patients on the inexorable road to ‘just-in-case’ AIDS treatment with drugs whose considerable, even life-threatening side-effects bear uncanny resemblance to the list of symptoms doctors describe in HIV infection or full-blown AIDS.
‘OSCOPY’ TESTS
Most other tests you’re likely to encounter are more invasive, requiring that your doctor inject or penetrate your body with something. These can include ‘oscopy’ tests, where an optic tube or ‘scope’ is passed through a bodily orifice in order to inspect the inside of the appropriate body cavity – the stomach (endoscopy), abdomen and pelvis (laparoscopy), lungs (bronchoscopy), colon (colonoscopy), cervix (colposcopy), rectum and lower colon (flexible sigmoidoscopy, or even the knee joint (arthroscopy).
Although doctors consider the common endoscopy routine, there are enormous risks, including perforation of the wall of the oesophagus, stomach or duodenum (the small intestine), infections and adverse reactions to anaesthetic – even death. Up to one in 36 patients ends up with a perforation, and nearly one in 100 patients will suffer one so serious that it proves fatal.126 Overall, it’s estimated that endoscopy is killing one in 2,000 patients. This poor batting average only came to light because a special audit of UK hospitals was carried out to look into the long-term effects of the technique.127 The study discovered that patients were dying up to 30 days after having the test, usually from heart or respiratory complications. Complications are occurring because the test requires the patient to be sedated, which means the patient can still respond but cannot feel any pain. Nevertheless, sedated patients must be carefully monitored; inadequate monitoring is the cause of 20 per cent of all deaths related to anaesthesia.
Another recurrent problem with ‘oscopy’ tests, such as endoscopes and bronchoscopes, are outbreaks of infection occurring in American hospitals caused by inadequately sterilized flexible fibre-optic endoscopes and bronchoscopes. According to the US Food and Drug Administration, up to one-quarter of all endoscopes, even those that are sterilized, contain 100,000 or more different types of bacteria, a fertile ground for cross-contamination. Although there are no known cases of HIV infection due to endoscopy, there is evidence of the transmission of hepatitis B and C, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.128
The devices are cleaned and disinfected either manually, which is time-consuming for a busy hospital, or, increasingly, by automated machines. After investigating an outbreak of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, causing infection of the gall bladder, which occurred in one American hospital, the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the culprit to be a thick film of P.aeruginosa which had formed in the detergent-holding tank, water hose and air vents of the automated disinfecting machine. Attempts to disinfect the machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions using commercial preparations of glutaraldehyde were unsuccessful.
After the second outbreak, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requested that one of the manufacturers send out a safety alert to all hospitals with its products, recommending that a stringent rinsing programme be adopted for the cleaning of the machines. The FDA has also suspended the further sale of any of the machines until the contamination problem is resolved. In the meantime, even disinfectant has caused side-effects such as bloody diarrhoea among patients and hospital staff alike.129
As for laparoscopy, three out of every 1,000 of these procedures cause complications, and even death. Between 1995 and 1997, more than 500 patients suffered nearly 600 injuries, and 65 died.130 A goodly number have to do with doctors being unable to use the equipment properly. In a survey of gynaecologists, one in every 25 had injured a major vessel during laparoscopy at some point in their career.131
One of the main culprits is the common use of the trocar (a sharp implement which withdraws fluids by puncturing the abdominal wall), which frequently injures major blood vessels and major organs, sometimes causing death due to vascular injuries.132
Arthroscopy, another ‘oscopy’ used to examine the knee, can cause deep vein thrombosis. Nearly a fifth of patients undergoing the procedure develop the condition.