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p AIDS: Popularly referred to as a disease, AIDS is actually a new name for 29 previously known and relatively common health conditions when these conditions appear in someone who has tested HIV positive. For example, a person who tests HIV positive and has herpes is classified as having AIDS, while a person with herpes who tests HIV negative has herpes, not AIDS. All 29 health conditions categorized as AIDS occur in people who test HIV negative, and none are exclusive to those who test HIV positive. “AIDS” is not a disease, just as “hardware” is not a tool—both are categories that are used to group certain items.

p AIDS Education/AIDS Awareness: Presentation of popular beliefs, unsubstantiated claims and unfounded projections regarding HIV and AIDS which excludes all or most of the factual information contained in this book.

p AIDS Epidemic: An epidemic is generally defined as an outbreak of a contagious disease that spreads rapidly, grows quickly and is widely prevalent. Since 1981, AIDS has remained almost exclusively confined to the original risk groups, has not spread rapidly among risk group members, and is not widely prevalent anywhere in the world. For example, 99.5% of people living on the African continent, an area often described as being devastated by AIDS, do not have AIDS.

p AIDS Infected: A misleading, incongruous phrase popularized by the media to describe people with a positive result on a nonspecific test for antibodies thought to be associated with HIV There is no such thing as an “AIDS infection.”

p AIDS-Related: Any troublesome health condition that is not included in the official definition of AIDS, yet is attributed to AIDS, but only in a person who has tested HIV positive. For example, Arthur Ashe is reported to have died of “AIDS-related pneumonia,” a pneumonia that is not an AIDS-defming illness.^^243^^ Most AIDS-related conditions are caused by AIDS treatments, as in AIDS-related anemia, and are treated with other AIDS drugs. Some, like AIDS-related gum disease, or gingivitis, are problems commonly found in the general population.

p AIDS Test: What is popularly known as an “AIDS test" is actually a test for antibodies generated to act against HIV yet HIV tests are not able to specifically identify antibodies to HIV Viral antibodies alone cannot cause and do not predict illness. HIV antibody tests are nonspecific, highly cross-reactive and do not detect HIV (actual virus). There is no test to diagnose AIDS.

p AIDS Vaccine Program: A multi-billion dollar research effort to create a vaccine against AIDS that will cause a person to produce antibodies to HIV All vaccines work by artificially stimulating production of antibodies which then serve as protection from a specific disease. Researchers say that the antibodies to HIV elicited by a vaccine will protect people from AIDS even though naturally 80 occurring HIV antibodies are considered an indicator of current or impending illness. As participants in AIDS vaccine trials become HIV positive after vaccination, researchers have discovered that there is no way of distinguishing the HIV antibodies induced by the vaccine from naturally occurring HIV antibodies. A recent article in the journal Lancet reported on this dilemma: Researchers attempting to determine who was HIV positive due to vaccination found that viral load tests commonly used by AIDS doctors to diagnose HIV infection were “unsuitable for diagnostic screening" when positive samples from one lab were found to be negative at another.^^244^^ The problem of distinguishing people who have been immunized against HIV from those with naturally acquired HIV antibodies is described in the report as “increasingly complicated, raising critical questions for the conduct of all HIV vaccine trials.”

p AIDS Virus: A popular name for HIV, a retrovirus with no cell-killing mechanisms that has not been found in the fresh, uncultured plasma of AIDS patients or in persons diagnosed as HIV positive.

p Antivirals/Antiretrovirals: Chemotherapy drug compounds designed to terminate forming DNA chains. None of the many drugs commonly referred to as antivirals or antiretrovirals possess any direct or specific mechanisms for targeting virus. Actual antiviral drugs do not exist, as medical science has never produced a drug that can cure a viral infection.

p At Risk: According to AIDS organizations, the media and government advertising campaigns, everyone is at risk for AIDS although for nearly two decades, over 90% of American AIDS cases are confined to groups with wellknown risk factors not shared by the general American population. As early as 1987, the CDC acknowledged that “most people are at zilcho or very low risk" and that the chance of acquiring HIV from a one-time unprotected heterosexual encounter with someone not in a high risk group is one in seven million, which is smaller than the risk of ever being struck by lightning.^^245^^ As reported in The Wall Street journal, government health officials decided in 1988 to portray AIDS as an “equal opportunity scourge" because market research indicated that such a claim would “mobilize support for public funding" and “generate compassion for victims.”

p Chronic and Manageable: The new goal of conventional AIDS science, as in “the new drugs could make AIDS a chronic and manageable condition.”

p Compassionate Use/Expanded Access: Making experimental, unproven, or previously banned drugs available for use outside of experimental trials. For example, thalidomide, a drug banned in the 1960s for causing severe birth defects was recently released for compassionate use as a treatment for AIDS wasting, a condition known to be caused by other AIDS drugs.

p Compliance: Strictly adhering to an intricate and complex program of AIDS drugs as if one’s life depended on it.

p Early Intervention: Pharmaceutical treatment of illness before illness occurs, also known as prophylaxis. Presumption of illness and prediction of future illness in persons who test HIV positive are based on highly biased statistical data and surrogate markers rather than on individual clinical health status. Early intervention often produces the dire health consequences it is used to 81 prevent. Synonymous with “aggressive treatment,” “hitting early and hard" and “being smart about HIV"

p Early Intervention Specialists/Treatment Advisors/Treatment Advocates: Functionaries of AIDS organizations who promote Pharmaceuticals, often to the exclusion of alternative treatments and approaches to living. Many AIDS organizations do not allow people serving in this capacity to mention information on healthful living without drug intervention.

p Failing Drug Therapy: Describes a person who is unable to tolerate the side effects of AIDS drugs, or for whom the drugs produce no beneficial results; as in “John failed Crixivan.” According to this cruel paradigm, drugs do not fail, people do.

p Fast-Tracking/Fast-Track Approval: Releasing pharmaceutical treatments for general and lifelong use before long-term results are known and before safety and efficacy have been established. Many adverse effects of protease inhibitors—sexual dysfunction, diabetes, physical deformities, liver failure, and death—were discovered only after fast-track release. Fast-tracking is regarded as one of the major accomplishments of AIDS activism.

p Fatal: Describes conditions, circumstances or events that have produced death or are destined inevitably to cause death.^^246^^ According to the World Health Organization, 95% of people worldwide described as “having HIV" actually live in health despite promotions of HIV as a 100% fatal virus.^^247^^

p Fighting AIDS: Funding AIDS.

p Full-Blown AIDS: Testing HIV positive and meeting the criteria for an AIDS diagnosis by having any official AIDS-defining condition ranging from a simple yeast infection to terminal cancer, as in “Mary has full-blown AIDS.” Since January of 1993, a diagnosis of full-blown AIDS does not require that a person have any illness.

p HIV Positive: Used to describe someone who has tested positive for antibodies presumed to have been produced in response to HIV A diagnosis of HIV positive does not refer to actual infection with HIV and may vary depending on where one lives. Popularly considered synonymous with a death sentence. People who test positive may be charged with felony offenses for having sexual relations, and may lose custody of their children for their healthcare choices.

p In Denial: Anyone who questions the HIV hypothesis. Most often applied to HIV positives who refuse pharmaceutical treatment and choose to live.

p Infected: See HIV Positive.

p Informed Choices: What people who test HIV positive are said to make after being provided with information through AIDS organizations and drug company-sponsored seminars that exclude the facts found in this book.

p Inhumane/Unethical: The use of unmedicated placebo controls in studies that test proposed AIDS treatment drugs. Until recently, the placebo control was regarded as a necessary procedure that provided a scientific basis for evaluation of drug treatments and enabled more accurate assessments of drug efficacy.

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p Long-Term Survivor: A person who tests HIV positive and remains alive for more than three to five years. Differs from a long-term non-progressor in that a long-term survivor need only be alive and not necessarily in good health. Many long-term survivors live with drug side effects such as chronic diarrhea and nausea, wasting, anemia or neuropathy.

p Mutation: A popular notion used to explain why the effects of AIDS drugs are nonexistent or short-lived. This idea presumes that HIV develops into mutant strains that resist drug therapy although there is no scientific evidence to substantiate such a notion, and evidence for drug-resistant HIV viruses has not been published in the medical literature.

p 99% Accuracy: Alleged accuracy of HIV antibody tests which do not specifically identify antibodies to HIV, that cross-react with many non-HIV antibodies, that are not standardized and have not been verified against virus isolation in people who test positive.

p Non-Progressors: People who test HIV positive, take no AIDS treatments and enjoy good health. Many scientists hypothesize that such people are infected with a less virulent strain of HIV, or imagine that they possess a unique gene that protects them from developing AIDS. Scientists have speculated that African-Americans do not possess this unidentified gene.^^248^^ A portion of the multi-billion dollar AIDS research effort is directed to a search for the presumed gene.

p Otherwise Healthy: Most commonly used to describe chronic users of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, people chronically exposed to numerous infectious microbes, the malnourished, hemophiliacs and transfusion recipients, and impoverished residents of developing nations who develop symptoms of immune deficiency diseases, but only if they also test HIV positive. Also used to describe people who test HIV positive and have no health problems. See Non-Progressors.

p Resistance: What AIDS patients are said to develop when AIDS drugs fail to produce benefits or when temporary effects cease entirely. Benefits of drug treatments generally have no relation to actual health and are instead determined by certain blood test results known as surrogate markers. See Mutation.

p Side Effects: The direct unwanted or unintended results of treatment with Pharmaceuticals or other substances.

p Surrogate Markers: In AIDS, the laboratory tests that measure T cells or purport to quantify “viral load.” Surrogate markers have replaced actual health as measures of actual health. The efficacy of AIDS drugs is determined by changes in surrogate markers that do not correlate with actual health.

p Viral Load: A hypothetical notion that HIV reproduces as many as one billion times daily, and that the quantities of HIV produced every day kill off the enormous number of T cells produced every day, causing the immune destruction associated with AIDS. The concept of viral load does not explain how HIV actually kills T cells, why the billions of “virus” it finds are not detectable by any means normally used to detect virus, or why significant quantities of HIV cannot be isolated from the fresh, uncultured plasma of people who test HIV positive or who have illnesses defined as AIDS.

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p Viral Load Test: The name given to a laboratory test which does not measure or identify HIV (actual virus) and is prohibited for use by the FDA for confirming the presence of HIV or diagnosing viral infection. This test is commonly used to diagnose HIV infection and serves as a basis for prescribing medication that includes toxic, experimental chemicals to symptomless HIV positives, pregnant women, infants and children.

Wasting Syndrome: An AIDS condition that is characterized by atrophy of body mass and involuntary weight loss. Almost every AIDS drug from Bactrim to protease inhibitors causes chronic diarrhea resulting in weight loss; AZT and other nucleoside analogs known as antivirals are acknowledged to cause deterioration of muscle mass. Many persons with an HIV positive diagnosis take combinations of such drugs on a regular, ongoing basis.