Stephen Strauss claims that the reduction in deaths which he describes among hemophiliacs proves conclusively that AIDS is an infection produced by HIV. His statement ignores the nature of hemophilia and the specific causes of its patients' deaths.
Duesberg (Inventing the AIDS Virus, 1996, p. 284 ff) pointed out that blood transfusions have long been recognized as harmful to the immune system. While "half of all blood recipients die within the first year after transfusion," that's because they are "not given to normal, healthy people... Blood itself is foreign material, overloading an (often) already-stressed immune system in proportion to the amount transfused.... No evidence has shown that death rates from blood transfusions ever increased from HIV transmission, nor has anyone demonstrated that death rates declined again once the virus was screened out of the blood supply. One 1989 CDC study reported that among hundreds of transfusion patients, those with HIV died no more often than the uninfected during the first year - the official 'latent period' between HIV infection and AIDS for such patients! In short, no new epidemic of disease has affected transfusion recipients in recent years, nor do their diseases belong under the same heading as AIDS in homosexual men or heroin addicts."
Concerning hemophiliacs, he writes that "as recently as 1972, (they) had a median life expectancy of only eleven years," with bleeding being the major cause of their deaths. "Then an innovative product changed their lives permanently: scientists invented a method of extracting from normal blood the proteins that hemophiliacs are missing. Known as Factor VIII, this blood component can be injected prophylactically on long-term schedules by hemophiliacs and restores most of the clotting ability they lack. Fewer hemorrhages are now occurring, and the median life expectancy has more than doubled, reaching 27 years by 1987."
"The clotting factor brings a price tag, and not just in financial terms. Where hemophiliacs once died from internal bleeding, they now gradually develop immune deficiencies as they get older." (Italics added - NSL) "Commercial Factor VIII itself seems to be part of the problem: with or without HIV infection, hemophiliacs lose immune competence according to the cumulative amount of Factor VIII consumed."
"However, when the clotting fctor is highly purified, the immune system remains healthy. Cost, unfortunately, bars many hemophiliacs from using the purified Factor VIII. Hemophiliacs treated wth commercial Factor VIII consequently develop some opportunistic infectious diseases in the long run, particularly pneumonia and yeast infections." It is the removal of these agents which the purification of Factor VIII accomplishes; whether or not HIV is also removed is of lesser consequence, if any.
"Those with HIV, who are counted as AIDS cases, get these same pneumonias, while they are unaffected by the Kaposi's sarcoma, lymphoma, wasting disease and dementia that afflict homosexuals who have AIDS. As would be expected if these hemophiliac diseases were not caused by HIV, those with hemophilia- AIDS are on average at least ten years older than the rest - ten extra years of clotting factor and blood transfusions."
Duesberg then describes the well-known, and very severe, hemophilia of Ryan White, whose death was caused by internal bleeding, liver failure and the collapse of other physiological systems. "These conditions interestingly happen to match the classical description of hemophilia, none being liststed as peculiar to the AIDS condition... (It was) media hype (which) transformed White's death from a severe case of hemophilia, exacerbated by AZT, into AIDS."
Strauss' supposed refutation of the critics of the AIDS=HIV hypothesis on the basis of hemophilia/AIDS does not hold water.
Nathaniel S. Lehrman, M.D., 10 Nob Hill Gate, Roslyn NY 11576; 516/626-0238; former Clinical Director, Kingsboro Psychiatric Center, Brooklyn NY