Below is a brief extract from that chapter:
“At the Royal Hospital in Perth, Western Australia, biophysicist Eleni Eleopulos was thinking differently. She had been working steadily with her hospital colleague, Valendar Turner and also with her long-term colleagues David Causer, and Professor John Papadimitriou, head of the department of pathology, University of Western Australia. Together, they had become convinced that HIV could not possibly be in factor VIII, let alone actually reproduce itself and go on to infect other cells. They prepared an article for a special edition of the journal Genetica with the following bold and unambiguous abstract:
In this review, the association between the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) and haemophilia has been carefully examined, especially the data that have been interpreted as indicating transmission of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) to the recipients of purportedly contaminated factor VIII preparations. In our view, the published data do not prove the hypothesis that such transmission occurs, and therefore HIV cannot account for AIDS in haemophiliacs.24
This special edition of Genetica had been handed over to Peter Duesberg to edit by its editor-in-chief, John McDonald, Professor of Genetics at University of Georgia, Athens GA. In his foreword McDonald mentions that a claimed:
de facto conspiracy exists within the scientific community to prevent dissenting views and alternative AIDS hypotheses from being presented to the scientific and general public. . . . Ignoring charges of scientific censorship can only work to undermine the public’s confidence not only in the prevailing scientific view but also in the entire scientific establishment. In providing this forum for alternative AIDS hypotheses, Genetica hopes to dispel the notion that a ‘conspiracy of silence’ exists within the scientific community.25
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Then continue to Chapter 14 on page 198:
Does HIV Exist?
This chapter deals with the subject of another groundbreaking article by Eleni and the Perth Group
2 E. Eleopulos, ‘Is a positive Western blot proof of HIV infection?’, Bio/Technology, vol. 11, June 1993.
Here is an extract:
“Meanwhile, as far away as Western Australia, the small group of scientists led by biophysicist Eleni Eleopulos at the Royal Hospital in Perth had continued with its rigorous analysis of the current AIDS orthodoxy – the analysis which had led to the Lanka speech on that Buenos Aires stage. Not only had they produced the important work on haemophilia described in the previous chapter, they had now completed a startling paper challenging the whole basis of the Western blot HIV test.14 The HIV antibody test does not detect a virus. It tests for antibodies that react with an assortment of proteins, which we are told are unique to HIV. The routine procedure worldwide (except for England since 1992) for testing for HIV has been to perform a double ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) test to check the level of allegedly HIV-specific antibodies, and further confirm with a Western blot test (WB).
The ELISA test involves incubating a sample of blood serum with a mixture of the ‘HIV-specific’ proteins. The ELISA is positive if the solution changes colour to a certain density, thereby indicating a reaction between the proteins in the test kit and the patient’s antibodies. Because the ELISA is not specific, and can react to non-HIV-generated antibodies, most testing authorities strive to eliminate ‘false-positives’ by repeating the ELISA test and carrying out a different further test called Western blot.15 The Western blot test is supposed to be able to find which of the HIV proteins are present by identifying antibodies to them. This shows up in a series of bands identifying the presence of a specific set of antibody/protein reactions. The Western blot test has turned out to be so unreliable for HIV diagnosis that PHLS Virus Reference Laboratory in Britain no longer use it and rely only on the ELISA test. Test results are reached, ideally, through a process of multiple sampling which involves running several ELISA tests on one sample and then sending it for confirmation to another laboratory using a different test kit. However, Western blot is still used as a confirmatory test in most countries around the world. Different countries have different criteria for the number of bands on the Western blot test that are required in order to declare a test HIV-positive.
Eleopulos’s paper was the scientific confirmation for that ground-breaking speech of Stefan Lanka’s in Buenos Aires. Not only did she describe why the proteins said to be specific to HIV were not unique to HIV, but also that even if antibodies to these proteins did show up, they could not be assumed to be a sign of HIV infection. Eleopulos criticised both the ELISA and the Western blot tests. The ELISA antibody test, she said, could only be meaningful when it was standardised, that is when a given test result had the same meaning in all patients, in all laboratories and in all countries. But this was not the case and results remained variable because there was no absolute standard.
To illustrate how the Western blot test was not reproducible she described the Transfusion Safety Study conducted in the USA.16 Here four samples of blood were put through a quality control procedure and tested with both ELISA and Western blot. Two were declared HIV-positive and two negative. These were then submitted for Western blot testing over and over again, sometimes up to 70 times to three different reference laboratories. The results showed some remarkable variations, with the same HIV-positive sample coming up positive in one laboratory on three protein bands seven times, and at the same laboratory, on only one band five times. At another laboratory, the same sample produced no bands at all. By the same token, the HIV-negative samples produced positive results several times over. Because the decision as to whether an individual is HIV- positive depends on whether a certain number of required bands are present, this lack of correlation between one laboratory and another is, to say the least, disturbing.
The results of these repeated assays are too detailed to go into in depth, but not only did they vary dramatically within one laboratory and from one laboratory to another, but also the criteria for declaring them positive or negative would have varied from one country to another. Dr Val Turner in Perth made a study of the different criteria.17 In Australia, for example, at least four protein bands are required, in Canada and much of the USA three or more and across Africa two will do. So all an African has to do is be retested in Australia where he or she would be found negative.
In other words, individuals can be HIV-positive or negative depending on which laboratory or test kit or in which country they were tested. Small wonder that Dr Philip Mortimer, head of the PHLS Virus Reference Laboratory in London, has abandoned the use of Western blot testing in the UK. In a quality assessment exercise he found that, ‘participating laboratories had developed 11 different sets of criteria to read Western blots. Confusion of this sort must lead to errors,’ he wrote.18
Eleopulos explained another example of the disturbing anomalies surrounding Western blot in a letter to The Lancet. She reminds us of the four women in Sydney who were found to be HIV-positive after in vitro fertilisation with HIV-positive semen. This was used by the orthodoxy as one of the clearest demonstrations that AIDS could be spread heterosexually by semen. (None of the women’s breastfed babies became positive.) These four women’s diagnosis were based on Western blot tests conducted in 1985 when only one or two bands were required in order to test positive. Under present criteria, for a positive Western blot in Australia none of the four women or even the donor would be considered HIV- positive. ‘Neither would any be positive under the criteria set by the FDA and the American Red Cross. In fact, two of the women would not be positive by any criteria anywhere in the world.’19