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HIV & AIDS - Is HIV Guilty?
If HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS, then the effort to fight the disease is in chaos. In fact, we wouldn't even know what disease-or how many different diseases-we are fighting. HIV is the glue that holds together an amorphous syndrome of usually common and nonlethal ailments that are hitting uncommon groups of people or becoming strangely lethal.
If HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS, then five years of desperate searching for a way to kill a virus in already infected people-a feat that has never been accomplished with any virus-might have been spent more productively on another course of research.
For scientists, the idea at this late date that HIV is not a lone assassin is the worst possible news. In the bars outside medical conferences and in off-the-record conversations, dozens of AIDS researchers admit they are disturbed by the persistent failure of the most monumental medical research effort in the nation's history to yield clear proof that HIV is a lone assassin.
Yet in public, and on-the-record, few will express those doubts. "I'd bet my professional reputation that something more than HIV is involved in this disease," said one federally funded AIDS researcher. "But I wouldn't bet my grants, my ability to work."
If there is fear about questioning the established line of thought, it is not because there is any conspiracy against skeptics: It is the intuitive understanding that the last thing anybody wants to hear is what the skeptics are saying. It is just too scary.
"What epidemiologist or federal official wants to admit that the entire thrust of research and education might be misguided?" asks Robin Haueter, an AIDS activist in New York City. "What person with AIDS wants to consider the horrendous thought that we have wasted five years of research, that the end might not be anywhere in sight?
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