Item #46: The HIV Latency Period (Time Before AIDS Develops)

Another embarrassment for the HIV hypothesis is the extraordinary latency period between infection and the onset of disease, despite the fact that HIV is biochemically most active within weeks of initial infection. This latency period, which apparently grows with every passing year, enables proponents of the theory to evade Koch's third and fourth postulates.

Farber claims that the latency period of HIV allows evasion of Koch's third and fourth postulates. She gives no reference.

HIV as the cause of AIDS does meets all four of Koch's postulates as has been shown above.

The impression is often given that HIV rapidly leads to AIDS and then death. However, the best evidence is that there is about 10 years, on average, between HIV and AIDS:

• This is the estimate in America: “we estimate that between 21 and 40% (95% confidence interval) [of healthy, HIV+ people not using antiretroviral drugs] will be free from clinical AIDS 12 years from seroconversion and between 10 and 17%…20 years from seroconversion.” [1].
• And also in Africa, where poverty and malnutrition are more common, and medical interventions much rarer: “the median time from seroconversion to AIDS was 9.4 years” [2].

  This means that predictions that HIV is a fatal disease can be hung over the head of HIV-positive people even when they remain healthy for more than a decade. This despite an extensive literature on LTNPs (Long Term Non-Progressors), generally defined as people who are HIV-positive, healthy and not taking anti-retroviral drugs.

1. Muñoz A et al. The incubation period of AIDS. AIDS. 1997; Vol 11 (suppl A): S69-76.
2. Morgan D et al. HIV-1 infection in rural Africa: is there a difference in median time to AIDS and survival compared with that in industrialized countries? AIDS. 2002 Mar 8; 16: 597-603.