Antiretrovirals - how do they work?

- ANTIRETROVIRAL DRUGS EXPLAINED -

by Janine Roberts - from "HIVGATE"

Surely the very fact that antiretorvial drugs stave off death from AIDS proves that AIDS is caused by a retrovirus,namely HIV?

This argument is totally founded on the assumption that people prescribed these drugs are about to get AIDS. But, what if this is ill-founded?

Doctors decide when to prescribe these drugs, not by symptoms of illness, but by monitoring all who are 'HIV positive' every few months to discover if they have less than 200 CD4 T-Cells in an extremely minuscule 1000th of a millilitre blood sample. It is deduced that if such low numbers are found, then HIV must have been killing them.

At this point antiretroviral drugs are promptly prescribed to delay the predicted arrival of AIDS.

But there is a real problem with this. People naturally have a wide range of numbers of CD4 cells in their blood, as most such cells reside elsewhere in the body. Also, ohter factos than HIV are reported by scientists to cause such low numbers.

But there is a still bigger problem. Many healthy people have such low numbers - at least healthy to all apperances. The CDC reported that some 61% of people with this number of CD4 T-Cells in 1997 ( the last time they published this statistic) to have no visible symptoms of AIDS illness! The CDC also estimated in 1993 that up to 190,000 untreated Americans had levels this low without being ill.25.

Thus most go on these drugs while still looking healthy. They are however worried sick by being told that the drugs can only delay AIDS, that their life expectancy on the drugs may not be more than three to five years, although more is hoped for. Such fear and anxiety can by itself suppress their immune system. Some now live on these chemotherapy-type drugs, if their dosage is carefully monitored, for over a decade.

But what happens if antiretrovirus drugs are not administered? Extraordinarily, there are practically no studies published on this, as it has been considered unethical to delay drug giving, or to have a control group on placebos, from when the drugs were first released as an emergency response to the AIDS crisis.

But a recent study of 'HIV postive' people who refused these drugs revealed that many have remained 'free of illnesses and of AIDS for at least three years after their CD4 counts fell below 200'.

Such low numbers are not necessarily associated with illness. A study of patients in intensive care in hospitals found they could have very low numbers of CD4 T-cells without being infected by HIV, and such low numbers had nothing to do with the severity of the illness! 'Our results demonstrate that acute illness alone, in the absence of HIV infection, can be associated with profoundly depressed lymphocyte concentrations... [but contrary to expectations] the T-cell depression we observed was unpredictable and did not correlate with severity of illness, predicted mortality rate or survival rate.'26

These drugs are the major Western answer to the AIDS epidemics - but none are claimed to be cures. Dr Anthony Fauci, Head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, confessed in 2000. 'There is no hope for a cure for AIDS with the current drugs.' 19. Attacking HIV had failed to stop AIDS.

Antiretrovirals are commonly administered alongside other drugs so it is difficult to say which drug is doing what. If a patient has TB and is HIV positive, drugs against TB are given precedence over antiretrovirals as the latter inhibit the action of the anti-TB drugs. The same goes for drugs for fungal pneumonia, for decades the main killer of 'AIDS patients'. One study concluded that the anti fungal drugs were solely responsible for increasing the life expectancy of AIDS patients.20 In Botswana quite sensibly it has been laid down that clean water supplies have to be provided to potential AIDS victims, not just antiretrovirals - and that nutrition should also be cared for. Such measures can undoubtedly help- but what about the antiretrovirals themselves? What do they do exactly?

These drugs do not target HIV itself - they are not designed to do so; and, despite their name, they do not directly target retroviruses. They target instead the parents of retroviruses; that is, the cells of our body that give birth to them! This is not an undesirable side effect - it is the way they are designed to work. It is hoped that by stopping our cells from producing retroviruses, and even from dividing to make new cells, this will stop the birth of HIV. They are thus said to eliminate the production of all retroviruses - including the vast number of harmless ones our cells naturally produce without any need to be infected. These are thought by some to possibly help repair damaged DNA, but they are not valued it seems, because their role is not well understood.

The drugs target our cells in a manner equivalent to dropping a 2000 kg bomb on a house to kill a mouse, by attacking the most basic processes of cellular life, the production of our DNA; the very process by which our bodies grow, are healed and our cells replaced, in the near suicidal hope that, by stopping this most vital process, the cells may be prevented from giving birth to 'HIV'!

At least 4 AIDS antiretrovirals are also marketed for chemotherapy against cancer - but for cancer they are only administered for a short period, to minimalise their well-known damaging side effects, while AIDS patients are told to keep on taking them until they die.

Since the drugs work by blocking the synthesis of DNA, the first cells eliminated are those that reproduce most often, and thus need new DNA most often - such as bacteria. Thus these drugs may seem initially beneficial, as they can clear up many opportunistic infections.

But this stage usually does not last more than a few months, at most. The drugs must soon start to seriously damage the cells of our immune system, since these also reproduce quickly - thus doing the very damage blamed on HIV. As they interfere with DNA, they can also produce cancer. A medical study found; 'opportunistic infections, AIDS-associated malignant conditions and other non-infectious diseases ... often appeared shortly after the introduction of HAART."21

'HAART' stands for 'Highly Active Anti Retrovirus Therapy' - the kind normally given against AIDS. It can also produce heart attacks. A study found 'The incidence of MI (heart attack) in HIV infected patients increased in our cohort after the introduction of HAART.'22 Anther major study concluded of HAART: 'the treatment benefit is temporary and confers no long term survival advantage.'23

HAART involves normally a combination of three antiretroviral drugs, thus its alternative euphemistic name of 'Cocktails.' The British HIV Association's (BHIVA) guidelines for HAART, written by a committee dominated by doctors funded by major Anti-Retrovirus drug manufacturers, 24 currently advises 'HIV positive' patients without symptoms of AIDS, but with a CD-4 count between 200-350, to start on a HAART consisting of two Nucleoside RT Inhibitors, and one other kind of anti-retroviral.

The major types of antiretrovirals are as follows:

Nucleoside RT Inhibitors (NRTIs). These include the first anti-retrovirus drug, AZT (marketed as 'Retrovir' or 'Zidovudine'). It is a product of failed cancer research. When first invented it was set aside as too dangerous to use for cancer, but in 1987, after a three month controversial safety trial that became 'unblinded,' or seriously flawed, it was the first anti-retroviral marketed for long-term use for AIDS by the company we know as GlaxoSmithKline. Since AIDS is seen as an emergency, it has become common to release these drugs without long-term studies. A study in Lancet in 2000 reported; 'the severity of the HIV epidemic led to accelerated licensing of many antiretroviral agents, often with very little known about long-term safety'. 2

This drug uses a synthetic look-alike of thymine, one of the four basic building blocks ('nucleosides') of our DNA. The typical daily dose provides every cell within us with some 10,000 of these artificial particles. 28 Our cells then try to use these to build DNA, as if they were the real thing. But they are not - so our DNA production is blocked. These drugs are aptly also grimly known as 'Terminators.'

By stopping DNA synthesis, it must eventually severely limit the production of T-Cells, thus suppressing our immune system exactly as HIV is supposed to do. Inevitably the drugs then start to impede the production of the slower cells within our bodies, including those of our livers, kidneys and other organs. Such damage would be totally unacceptable - if it were not presumed that all patients found 'HIV positive' were already doomed.

The damage over years can be enormous, despite the best efforts of the monitoring doctors. It so impedes cell replacement that patients may start to look skeletal, an effect increased by the severe malnutrition caused by the drug killing stomach and intestinal flora. Consequentially GlaxoSmithKline sells the drug with a warning that 'prolonged use of Retrovir [AZT] has been associated with systematic myopathy [body wasting] similar to that produced by HIV'. In other words, AZT produces a disease clinically just like AIDS.

When first introduced, many died on doses up to five times as large as given nowadays, but these deaths were said to be due to HIV cleverly mutating. Every death while on these drugs is blamed on the virus. Today 'AIDS" deaths are avoided or delayed by the practice of taking patients off the antiretrovirals whenever they become critically ill, on the grounds that the virus 'has gained resistance' to the drugs, rather than the drugs have created the critical state. Some weeks later, when the patients have recovered some strength, they are mostly put back onto a different 'cocktail'- to repeat the process again and again.

The drugs damage the DNA of the mitochondria that provide our cells with their essential energy. They 'inhibit mitochondrial DNA synthesis,'29 thus vitally weakening our immune systems, doing the same kind of damage as produced by nitrite inhalants, thought by some to be one of the most toxic long-term recreational drugs known - an irony, as this drug is also suspected of causing AIDS.

These drugs are known to cause severe brain damage in, or even to kill, human embryos and young children. All our cells generate their vital energy with what is called their mitochondria. These drugs poison this. This is like smart bombing our cells vital power stations. Worse still, they do this to the cells of the unborn human child.

A recent study reported; 'Mitochondrial toxicity of some nucleoside analogues, when used alone or in association, is now well established. These molecules can cross the placenta, such that the foetus is often exposed for several months.'

If an expectant mother takes these drugs, there is a risk that her unborn child will suffer brain damage - as this is what happened in animal trials.30 There is even a cancer risk. In September 2005 the CDC admitted; 'Data regarding the potential effects of antiretroviral drugs on the developing fetus or neonate are limited. Carcinogenicity and mutagenicity are evident in ... tests for all FDA-licensed NRTIs.' (Yet they are licensed !)

This is not mere theory. It is acknowledged that giving these drugs to expectant mothers has both brain damaged and killed their unborn children. This paper goes on to say that mitochondrial toxicity has led to 'neurological disease and deaths among uninfected children whose mothers took antiretroviral drugs to prevent perinatal HIV transmission.' Despite these horrific findings, these drugs are still given to pregnant mothers - in order to prevent their embryos getting 'HIV'!

A medical reference work Drug Information for the Health Care Professional (1996) reported;' it is often difficult to differentiate between the manifestations of HIV infection and the manifestations of Zidovudine (AZT). In addition, very little placebo controlled data is available to assess this difference.' Thus a doctor would find it very hard to distinguish a death caused by these drugs from a death from AIDS. The lack of placebo data also means that there is minimal evidence for the claims that these drugs are keeping people alive for longer.

GlaxoSmithKline made in 2003 over $317 million from AZT sales. The drug has now brought the company over $2.5 billion in total. Several hundred thousand people are now on AZT, according to the New York Times.

'Trizivir,' a 'cocktail' of three Nucleoside RT Inhibitors including AZT made by GlaxoSmithKline, comes with the warning; 'Does not cure or prevent HIV infection or AIDS'. When it was launched, several deaths occurred within a year. These were blamed on 'hyper-sensitive reactions.' The company told the Financial Times: 'clinical trials have indeed shown that it has a potential for side effects ... patients have died from using it.'31 In its first two years of use, this cocktail brought the company around $350 million in revenue. Its current US price is $1,170 for a month's pills, making it one of the most expensive.

Non-Nucleoside RT Inhibitors

These drugs attach to the enzyme RT, thus disabling it, in order to prevent it from incorporating HIV's genetic code into our DNA. But what these drugs do is to stop a normal and fundamental cellular process. Every one of our cells naturally possess RT, and uses it to manipulate its DNA. It has been judged by AIDS experts that retaining this fundamental process, is less important than stopping HIV.

In fact this interference has already caused severe damage. Take for example one such drug, Nevirapine, recommended for use by pregnant women. In 2002 President Bush made it the centrepiece of US aid to Africa.. But the CDC had warned earlier, on the 5th January 2001, that 'healthy health care workers stuck by needles' should not be given this drug as 'Nevirapine can produce liver damage severe enough to require liver transplants and has caused death.'32

Nevertheless, this drug is still strongly recommended by US and international agencies for giving to pregnant mothers in Africa, but not to American Moms.

Protease Inhibitors

These antiretrovirals target another vital enzyme in our cells, protease. This is used by our cells to divide, enabling the creation of more cells - again an absolutely essential part of life.

Dr David Rasnick, a protease specialist, reported these antiretrovirals 'cause a massive cholesterol increase which frequently leads to heart attacks.... 34 they do most damage to the liver. 35 As a result liver failure is now the number one killer of AIDS patients.'36 He adds that they also 'cause lipodstropy - a deformation of fat. [It] moves out of the face, arms and legs, which become veiny sticks, the face become skeletal. The fat collects into a 'buffalo hump' on your upper back. The belly becomes extended and bloated.'

Another study noted that ' Hyperlipidaemia [unnatural fat distribution] at degrees associated with cardiovascular morbidity occurred in 74% of protease-inhibitor recipients.' 37

A new type of anti-retroviral drug is a Fusion Inhibitor. This attaches itself to the outside of our T-cells, thus hopefully preventing HIV connecting to them and infecting them. But it also blocks the access to our T-cells of many other particles, thus preventing T-cells from protecting us. Its very use is thus a council of despair.

A recent study concluded; 'It is safe to conclude that a cure is extremely unlikely with the current approach to treatment...There is growing concern about the long-term toxicity and adverse effects of therapy, including liver damage and mitochondrial toxicity caused by nucleosides, the most studied anti-HIV drugs. After drugs are approved, fewer organized efforts are made to monitor them for long-term toxicities...the quest for HIV treatment is fuelled by the expensive, technologically oriented approach used in wealthy countries.'38

Health professionals put on antiretrovirals to prevent infection did not show, even for a month, the trust in these drugs expected of their patients. In September 2005, the CDC reported; 'as a result of toxicity and side effects among health care professionals, a substantial proportion have been unable to complete a full 4-week course.'[3]

But today many of their patients feel so hopeless about what they understand to be an incurable epidemic, that they will embrace, and feel safer, with anything that modern medicine and their doctors endorse.

Most who take these drugs constantly eventually die on them, usually after three courses of cocktails have failed, and after a final desperate cocktail course of up to six antiretrovirals at once, called officially 'Salvage Therapy.' But their doctor will assure them, and may well believe, that they have lived longer by taking the drugs - even though evidence for this is non-existent.

ANTI-RETROVIRALS FOR THE HIV NEGATIVE.

From 2005, you need not be found HIV positive, or even to feel ill, to be put on these drugs. The CDC in January 2005 recommended that immediately a person suspects that they may have been exposed to HIV though 'unsafe sex', that they go on a 'cocktail' of these drugs for 28 days. To have a chance of 'stopping HIV infection' they recommend starting these drugs within 72 hours of the incident so the drugs can get to the virus before it fully infects.39

The CDC recommends for this a short intense courses of triple cocktails including AZT on the 'assumption that the maximal suppression of viral replication ... will provide the best chances of preventing infection.'40 This, it tentatively suggests, 'might reduce the risk of infection.' (In all there were 65 'mights' and 22 'possibles' in its statement authorising this treatment.)

Lisa Grohskopf of the CDC explained; 'The new guidelines are designed for use in specific situations, such as an occasional lapse in safer sex methods, a broken condom, rape or one-time sharing of needles.' Ronald O. Valdiserri of the CDC added, in language reminiscent of the moral push of the Bush Administration, 'the drugs are not a substitute for abstinence [and] mutual monogamy.'41

This statement means in future the manufacturers of these drugs will be able to drive up demand simply by building on our fear and paranoia. 42 Although the CDC says seek guidance from your doctor if you are not sure about the risk, a broken condom suffices in its judgement. This is likely to lead to a vast increase in the use of these drugs.

ADMITTED SIDE EFFECTS

It is supposed to take HIV 10 years to destroy the immune system. The antiretroviral drugs can do the job much faster.

Dr. David Rasnick reported, 'In an attempt to hide the fact that antiretroviral drugs are causing AIDS-defining diseases and death, the AIDS orthodoxy has come up with a new syndrome for those [ill] on these drugs with the oxymoronic name Immune Reconstitution Syndrome or IRS. The diseases of IRS are identical with the list of AIDS-defining diseases. It seems IRS is nothing other than AIDS caused by the antiretroviral drugs.'[ii]

IRS = Anti-retroviral drugs + one or more of these diseases

Kaposi Sarcoma

MAC

Cryptococcus

Fungal Pneumonia PCP

Cytomegalovirus

Histoplasmosis

Herpes

Leukoencephalopathy

Leprosy

Meningitis

Lymphoma

S. A. Shelburne, et al.,

Medicine 81: 213-27, 2002

AIDS = one or more of these diseases with or without a positive HIV test.

Kaposi Sarcoma

MAC

Cryptococcus

Fungal Pneumonia PCP

Cytomegalovirus

Histoplasmosis

Herpes

Leukoencephalopathy

Leprosy

Meningitis

Lymphoma

CDC HIV/AIDS Surveillance

Report, year end edition, 1997

When pressed, doctors will grudgingly admit most of this but will say the benefits outweigh the harm. Yet they cannot point to a single controlled clinical trial that reveals adults or children on these antiretrovirals live longer lives than do a similar group of HIV-positive people not taking the drugs.

This is remarkably easy to prove. The FDA requires that the package inserts provided with all antiretrovirals state clearly that these have not been proved to increase survival. The disclaimers accompanying four of the leading antiretroviral drugs are typical.

The insert for Glaxo's Ziagen says: "At this time there is no evidence that Ziagen will help you live longer or have fewer of the medical problems associated with HIV or AIDS."

Merck's protease inhibitor is no more encouraging: "It is not yet known whether Crixivan will extend your life or reduce your chances of getting other illnesses associated with HIV."

The disclaimer for Boehringer Ingelheim's Viramune (also known as Nevirapine) reads: "At present, there are no results from controlled clinical trials evaluating the effects of Viramune [on] the incidence of opportunistic infections or survival."

Glaxo's combination of two nucleoside analogs called Combivir is the most disturbing of all: "There have been no clinical trials conducted with Combivir."

In 2002, at the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Dr. Amy Justice of Pittsburgh University, produced one of the first surveys of the main cause of death in AIDS victims. She had studied the records of nearly 6,000 AIDS patients in the US and found today 'the most common cause of death among HIV positive people is liver failure'. These patients were all on antiviral medicines. When asked if she felt these drugs were involved in their deaths, she replied she did. 'It is the dark side of these drugs.' 43

Another study reported; "A comprehensive retrospective review of more than 10,000 adult AIDS patients participating in 21 different AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) studies [confirms]... that antiretroviral therapy is associated with a high rate of severe hepatotoxicity [liver damage], regardless of drug class or combination.'44 Another report stated; "Liver disease has become the leading cause of death among HIV patients at a Massachusetts hospital.'45

Yet liver disease is not officially listed as an 'AIDS-linked' disease. It began to kill hundreds of AIDS patients only after the introduction of antiretrovirals.

Many of these drugs are today 'safety tested' by major drug companies on a ready supply of uninsured American children taken without a court order from HIV positive parents for refusing to put their children on these drugs. They are placed in institutions where the drugs can be administered forcibly in order to 'save' the children. This was documented in a film called 'Guinea-Pig Kids' transmitted on the BBC in December 2004. This was based on the work of investigative journalist Liam Scheff. He discovered nine children's homes used for such trials around New York. 46

Today only 1% of the $6.5 billion spent annually in the US on AIDS research goes on vaccine research. Nearly all is spent on expanding medical establishments and on developing the vastly more profitable antiretrovirals. By 2003 the annual US market for these was worth around $15 billion.

I will finish with the testimony of a person who believes these drugs gave him AIDS, since he recovered much of his health since stopping taking them.

'I was 'diagnosed' in 1989. I was prompted to test after my partner at the time decided to get the test and it came back positive. Mine was positive also - CD4 count 462... 'I had no symptoms, but was told; 'Unfortunately, the virus is already destroying your immune system. You must start AZT immediately... Later, I was told I would start to get sick in about 18 months, and then I would get very sick within 2 years - and die.

'All I remember for the first several months or so is sleeping, throwing up, an unimaginable nausea, and an unending headache. I got weaker by the day. I lost a lot of my hair.'

'After a year I thought "Well, if I only have another year, I'm not spending it like this." So I stopped the pills.

'I slowly got better over the years - I may have made a full recovery that time, I don't know. I started living again, though, for sure. Oh...my CD4 count NEVER went above 500 during the whole experience.

But he remained HIV positive. 'In '97, I started 'the cocktail'. Sounded nice enough. It consisted of Crixivan, Epivir, and Zerit (instead of AZT because according to my Doc I had had a 'bad' reaction to AZT.)

d moderate/severe lipoatrophy (fat loss) and myopathy (muscle loss). My arms had stretch marks at the bicep area and looked like shrivelled balloons. I remember my arms always being tired because I held my body up with them when I sat down due to the fact that I sat on bone.

'My face was the worst: hollow cheeks and temples and no fat anywhere. When I smiled, the skin looked like someone pulling back curtains on a stage. I looked extremely shrivelled up and old for my age. My eye sockets were hollow, my eyes looked sunken in. I always looked kind of scared, like an animal caught in a car light. Eventually, I knew it was the 'meds', but was terrified to stop.

'After three and a half years I had had enough. I figured I was the living dead already, so what the hell - again I threw out the meds. By now it was Crixivan and combivir (which is AZT and something else, maybe Epivir - yeah back to AZT because unfortunately I had a worse reaction to Zerit than I had to AZT).

'Then - nothing. I held my breath - waiting for IT. Oddly, I began to feel better. I got stronger - and calmer. Around a year and a half after stopping, I was rubbing my eyes and realized the skin on my face was thicker. I thought about it and realized I had been sitting down without the use of my arms for a while without realizing it.

'It's been 3 years since I stopped the meds. I can still see scars from that time - my body is not the body I used to have. But it's better. I'm back at the gym.'47

footnotes are in the HIVGATE pdf (acrobat) file on this site.)

END