Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?

Is HIV the Cause of AIDS?

How can we be sure that HIV really is the cause of AIDS? There are likely many cofactors involving the development of AIDS, but surely the presence of HIV is the dominant factor. There are many very convincing reasons for this.

• Before the appearance of HIV, AIDS-like syndromes were very rare, but now they are common in HIV-infected individuals. A 1967 survey of the past medical literature found only 107 cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. Since the outset of the AIDS epidemic, there have been more than one hundred thousand cases reported among HIV-infected individuals.
• AIDS and HIV infection are almost always linked in time, location, and population subgroup.
• The dominant risk factors, sexual contact, sharing needles during intravenous drug use, and blood transfusions have existed for many, many years prior to the outset of the epidemic. Thus they could not possibly be the exclusive cause of the disease.
• The overwhelming preponderance of research indicates that a single factor, the presence of HIV, is the major predictor for developing AIDS.
• Surveys show that AIDS is common in population subgroups where many individuals display the presence of HIV antibodies in their blood. On the other hand, in population subgroups where few individuals have HIV antibodies, AIDS is extremely rare.
• Cohort studies show that severe immunosuppression and AIDS-defining illnesses occur exclusively in HIV-infected individuals.
• A persistently low CD4 T cell count is extraordinarily rare in non-HIV-infected individuals. It is so rare that the condition merits its own name, idiopathic CD4-lymphocytopenia.
• Almost everyone with AIDS shows antibodies to HIV. It has been postulated that those who do not display the antibodies have immune systems that are completely decimated and unable to mount a humoral defense.
• HIV can be detected in almost everyone with AIDS.
• Newborns with no behavioral risk factors can develop AIDS by vertical transmission from an infected mother.
• Twins have been born where one was HIV+ and the other HIV-. Only the HIV+ twin developed AIDS.
• Studies of blood transfusion-acquired AIDS have repeatedly led to the discovery of HIV-infection in the patient as well as in the donor. Additionally, the similarity of the genetic structures of the HIV in both patient and donor is far too high to be due to chance.
• HIV has been shown to infect and destroy CD4+ T cells both in vitro (in the test tube) and in vivo (in the body).
• There is very high correlation between viral load and AIDS-like symptoms in HIV-infected people. The higher the viral load, the more likely one is to develop AIDS-like symptoms.