Item #40: Does HIV Fulfil Koch’s Postulates for AIDS?

The classical tests of whether or not a microorganism is the cause of infectious disease are known as Koch's postulates. They state: 1) the microorganism must be found in all cases of the disease; 2) it must be isolated from the host and grown in pure culture; 3) it must reproduce the original disease when introduced into a susceptible host; and 4) it must be found present in the experimental host so infected. Although claims to the contrary have been made, Duesberg maintains that it has never been demonstrated that HIV satisfies all of Koch's postulates.

Farber cites Duesberg that HIV has not fulfilled Koch's postulates. No argument or references are provided to back this up.

HIV as the cause of AIDS meets all four of Koch's postulates.65

(Postulate one) Studies have found HIV in almost every case where a person has been diagnosed with AIDS. Obviously there will be occasional misdiagnoses, as with any disease. (See our explanation of Farber's next error as well.)

(Postulate two) HIV can be isolated from AIDS patients and grown in laboratories. PCR tests can count the amount of HIV in blood. The virus is easily, and has been on numerous occasions, photographed using electron microscopes.

(Postulate three) Most people with HIV experience immune system decline, eventually leading to AIDS66 Postulate three does not require every, or even most, hosts to reproduce the disease. But in the case of HIV, the vast majority of people progress to AIDS. Furthermore, there are well-documented cases of workers developing AIDS after being being infected with HIV in their laboratories. Likewise a case of a US dentist who infected six of his patients with HIV has been documented. Three died of AIDS. One developed AIDS. Five of the patients had no other proposed risk factors for AIDS. In both these examples, tests were done which confirmed the origins of their infections. These two examples not only meet postulate three but all four postulates.

(Postulate four) PCR tests show the presence of HIV in infected people.

That HIV is the cause of AIDS has arguably been demonstrated more thoroughly than is the norm for any disease with a viral causation.

HIV does not meet any of Koch's four postulates for the following reasons:

• (Postulate one) Most people are diagnosed HIV-positive based solely on antibody tests. Since antibodies persist long after a pathogen has gone, they cannot be accepted as evidence of the presence of HIV. Furthermore, antibody tests are prone to false positive reactions. Many people are now subjected to ‘Viral Load’ tests, but these do not amplify the entire HIV genome, but only a tiny fraction of it. They are even more prone to false positive results due to the extremely high sensitivity. Problems with all forms of HIV testing are well documented at rethinkaids.com/quotes/test.html.
• (Postulate two) The process of HIV culturing is not isolation or purification. Impure materials are added to a cancerous cell culture along with various stimulating chemicals. After incubation for several days the culture is examined for non-specific signs that are interpreted as the presence of one particular virus. HIV is never isolated in the sense of being purified. No electron micrographs of purified HIV exist.
• (Postulate three) Many healthy, HIV-positive people exist, but they are always subject to pressure to consume immunosuppressive medications. HIV-positive people who succumb to this pressure are more likely to be followed by doctors and have their immune decline documented. No group of initially healthy HIV-positive people who are not taking AIDS drugs, and who do not have any immune system risk factors (such as blood product injections, drug use or malnutrition) have ever been followed for a lengthy period.

  Contrary to Gallo et all, cases of occupational transmission have not been well documented. According to the CDC’s last report of these statistics in 2000, there have only been 56 documented cases of occupational HIV transmission and 25 of AIDS (although for most the documentation is not available to the public). Not one of these cases was in a paramedic or surgeon [1]. And this is out of a total of almost one million cumulative AIDS cases [2]. According to NIOSH (CDC’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health) there are an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 needlestick and other percutaneous injuries every year of which, according to another branch of the CDC, only an average of two result in a case of HIV transmission and one in a case of AIDS [3].

• (Postulate four) PCR tests do not necessarily indicate the presence of HIV for a variety of reasons. The tests use only a tiny portion of the consensus HIV genome as primers, they are prone to false positives, and they cannot distinguish non-infectious RNA from an infectious virus particle. According to one paper “Circulating levels of plasma virus determined by QC-PCR also correlated with, but exceeded by an average of nearly 60,000-fold…titers of infectious HIV-1 determined by quantitative endpoint dilution culture of identical portions of plasma.” In other words, they found that only one out of 60,000 particles measured by the ‘Viral Load ’ test corresponded with an infectious virus particle. [4].

1. HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report; U.S. HIV and AIDS cases reported through December 1999. CDC. 2000; 11(2)
2. HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report: Cases of HIV infections and AIDS in the United States, 2004. CDC. 2005; 15
3. NIOSH Alert: preventing needlestick injuries in health care settings. DHHS (NIOSH). 1999 Nov; 2000-108
4. Piatak M Jr et al. High levels of HIV-1 in plasma during all stages of infection determined by competitive PCR. Science. 1993 Mar 19; 259: 1749-54