HIV/AIDS denialism: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 01:35, 14 April 2006

Revision as of 04:15, 24 April 2006

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Skeptics of the HIV theory of AIDS claim that the process of testing individuals for the presence of HIV is flawed. One commonly cited example is the possibility of encountering a [[false positive]], which would falsely identify someone as HIV positive when in fact they were HIV negative, e.g. because of cross-reactions with [[malaria]] antibodies. Dissidents also claim that the presence of antibodies to HIV should be taken as an indicator that the HIV within the body are being neutralized by the body's immune system, rather than as an indicator of active HIV.

Orthodox scientists recognize that all tests have false positives and false negatives, and strive to develop tests with lower rates of each. In any case, scientists work with aggregate data, not individual data, so that any given false result does not unduly skew results. Indeed, [[diagnosis]] of [[infection]] using [[antibody]] testing is one of the best-established concepts in [[medicine]]. Though theThe orthodoxy claims HIV antibody tests exceed the performance of most other infectious disease tests in both sensitivity (the ability of the screening test to give a positive finding when the person tested truly has the disease ) and specificity (the ability of the test to give a negative finding when the subjects tested are free of the disease under study), the reality is very different. All current government-approved HIV antibody tests have sensitivity and specificity in excess of 96% (except the HIV-TEK G by Sorin Biomedica) and are therefore claimed to be reliable ([http://www.who.int/diagnostics_laboratory/publications/en/HIV_Report15.pdf WHO, 2004]). And ALL approved tests have the disclaimer that there is no recognized standard for establishing the absence or presence of HIV in human blood.

===AIDS treatment toxicity===