Re: HIV (Was Re: Coffee Consumption and the Link to Cardiovascular Disease)

From: MattLB (mattlb2_at_FAKEBITlycos.com)
Date: 02/15/05 

Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2005 16:20:11 +0000

montygram wrote:
>
> At least the coolaid you guys are drinking must be very tasty!

Whatever it is.
 
> In fact, MattLB once quoted a study from decades ago that found that
> there were roughly the correct amount of fatty acids to be consistent
> with a "lipid bilayer membrane."

Yes because you kept begging to be told where it was first shown that
there was a bilayer, because you didn't believe it.

> Now, he is telling us that a study
> done in 1995 is unacceptable,

I said it wasn't recent.

> which would be true, if anything
> important had changed since then. Where is the "HIV vaccine" that your
> buddies have been promising since around 1985? He is clearly lacking
> in basic critical thinking skills - for example,

Here we go with another montygram "twisting the discussion away to argue
a point that was never made" manoeuvre.

> nobody I know has ever
> claimed that no fatty acids are present on the outside interface of
> living human cells, so whether a researcher was able to detect some
> amount of fatty acids decades ago is completely irrelevant to the
> issue. What was that lab's margin of error in 1939? Did they even
> try to separate one hypothesis from another in their experiment
> apparatus? The answer is no.

The master of all biochemical knowledge has spoken.

> Dr. Root-Bernstein makes the point
> that AIDS-like conditions have been documented decades before 1980,

AIDS-like conditions, you said it yourself. And of course HIV infection
existed before HIV had been discovered.

> people whose tissues were not infected with HIV, and who were Caucasian
> "Westerners." AIDS means an acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and
> that can happen to anyone. For those who know a little science, the
> question really is, what is happening inside the bodies of these
> people? The answer is that a chronic inflammatory condition has led to
> massive metabolization of PGE2 (from arachidonic acid),

Your theory of course requires there to be massive amounts of
arachidonic acid in the body. Seems unlikely in poverty-stricken African
countries.

> and this is
> about as immunosuppressive a condition as one can imagine.

Having no T-helper cells isn't just immunosuppressive, it's
immunodestructive, irreversible and terminal.

> HIV does
> nothing - if you knew the literature on transposons, for example, you'd
> know that there's plenty of junk DNA, and that's all a retrovirus does
> - it becomes junk DNA. It can reactive to pass itself on - but it does
> no harm unless there is a rare conflict, which occurs in Rous Sarcoma
> Virus (one among thousands of retroviruses per species - an order of
> magnitude that is beyond concern - to anyone who actually can think for
> himself, that is).

There aren't thousands of human retroviruses.

> If a person is about to die, it will reactivate due
> to the incredible biochemcial activity going on in that person - this
> is the signal it uses to make sure it gets passed on and doesn't go
> extinct,

Not a very sound strategy for a sexually transmitted disease, waiting
until the person's dying and there's no chance of sex.

> but it still does not harm. For more a more "recent"
> explanation (as if that somehow confers accuracy, particularly in light
> of the recent revelations of all the egregious conflicts in the FDA,
> NIH, etc.), anyone can go to the various university web sties, for
> exmaple, at Texas Tech's site, you can read:
>
> "Exactly how it [HIV] causes damage is not completely understood.... It
> is apparent that some people who are infected with HIV do not get AIDS
> and it is possible that other mitigating circumstances are necessary
> for AIDS to develop in an HIV infected individual. Since HIV does not
> infect germline cells and is transferred inefficiently, it seem
> unlikely that HIV will spread throughout the human population... [in
> time] HIV would likely become a part of the human genome..."

That looks like extremely disingenuous quoting on your part. If HIV
can't infect germline cells it can't become part of the human genome.
Your ellipses seem to link things which aren't connected - the worst
kind of dishonesty as it makes it appear to be someone else saying it.

> One thing people like you do is to "move the goalposts" when the kicker
> is trying to make the field goal.

That's actually your speciality. Try and post a bit where I moved the
goalposts. You can't, but you do it in this very post.

> MattLB did this with his "lipid
> bilayer" argument. I made the point that textbooks say that this
> "membrane" supplies structural support for the cell,

And I pointed out no textbooks say this, you're reading things that
aren't there due to a narrow definition of what structural means - to
you it means strong, to everyone else it means part of the structure.

> while at the same
> time claiming that the forces holding this "membrane" together are weak
> forces (which has a precise definition in chemistry - that is, they are
> non-covalent bonds),

Weak forces isn't a precise term unless you're talking about sub-atomic
physics. There are a number of weak forces in chemistry.

> and then claiming that the cells must endure
> tremendous shearing forces (among other things, like stomach acid).

What's stomach acid go to do with it?

> This is beyond impossible, but then MattLB tried to backtrack, and now
> I don't know what his position is on this issue.

Well I've seen enough now to know your memory is atrocious. Here's a
quote from back in March 2003:

[Startquote]
> A lipid bilayer has no
> more strength than the rainbow that forms on a puddle of water when a
> microscopic film of oil spreads over its surface. And the rainbow on the
> puddle is something that really exists. "

The microscopic film of oil is a monolayer, not a bilayer and doesn't
have negatively charged head groups. Lipids bilayers spontaneously curl
up to form closed spheres in solution. The strength of biological
membranes comes from the protein networks that underlie them, not the
fat in the membrane - that makes them flexible.
[Endquote]

My position hasn't changed since then (no backtracking), indeed I've
repeated it on many occasions e.g. June 2003....

[Startquote]
> Yes, there is cholesterol and fatty acids at the outskirts of cells, but to
> think that a layer of fat only two molecules thick could withstand the
> stresses that cells endure regularly is ridiculous.

As I've said before there are proteins underlying the bilayer, attached
to it, that provide the mechanical strength.
[Endquote]

...but you just can't seem to remember it.

> How about clarifying
> this, MattLB? What exactly do the fatty acids at the cellular
> interface do that deserves to be called "essential?"

You're asking a completely different question here. Can't you see that?
You go on about precision yet the specific and precise definition of the
word essential in "essential fatty acid" defeats you. In your layman's
use of the term essential what they do is allow lateral diffusion and
conformational changes of integral proteins in the membrane by
preventing the phospholipids packing too closely together. More simply
they make the membrane more fluid and flexible.

> I'm being precise.

You've never been and probably will never be precise. Precision scares
you which is why you never respond to questions that require precise
answers.

> Once again, I ask, where is the evidence? Texas Tech professors cannot
> find it. Even the HIV=AIDS people admit Ho was wrong now (as any
> mathematician who is aware of the implications of the formulae used
> could tell you).

You can stop denouncing Ho any time now, no one else has mentioned him
in support and I don't know what his claims are.

> I do not care about HIV one way or the other. It is
> meaningless to me. I just want to see the evidence. MattLB cites a
> study that alludes to "recent insights." I have plenty of insights
> on a daily basis, but only some of them are scientific, and most are
> not supported by evidence.

That last clause is so true.

> I often tell people to go to the WHO
> database so that they can see the evidence - namely, that people on
> coconut or palm kernel diets have incredibly low levels of cancer,
> compared to Westerners (including those from Mediterranean countries),

Yet you're the one who dismisses HIV on epidemiological grounds.

> even though they have poor health care systems. Mostly, I point out
> that one should not assume that textbooks are correct. In a massive
> nutrition textbook I own

Which you should not assume is correct.

> - considered one of, if not the best of its
> kind - the only reference for the essential fatty acid claim is the
> totally flawed Burr and Burr rat experiment from 1930.

You've said this before, but even after I gave you the citation you
begged for you've yet to point out why it's flawed, even imprecisely.

> If you want to
> go against the WHO database and instead follow those who think the Burr
> experiment actually means one should consume more than trace amounts of
> polyunsaturated fatty acids in particular (unsaturated in general),

You're twisting again (moving the goalposts). The Burr experiment is
about demonstrating lipid bilayers, it makes no claims or
recommendations about what you should eat. You're refuting claims that
haven't been made - a hollow and useless exercise that you seem to thing
stands as critical debate.

> then go ahead, but you must admit what the evidence is if you want to
> possess a shred of intellectual credibility. MattLB, Carter, Hoover,
> and the like do not care about intellectual credibility.

We do, that's why we keep pointing out flaws in your thinking - so
others don't fall for it. It's particularly important when you're making
ireresponsible claims about retroviruses being harmless.

> If one does,
> one must examine critically the evidence that supports and contradicts
> a claim. They are only willing to defend textbook dogma, even when it
> violates basic common sense and appears absurd.

It's your theories that violate basic common sense and appear absurd.

> They are the reason
> why so-called chronic disease is so rampant in Western nations and so
> rare in most third world ones.

So AIDS isn't rampant in the third world then? Since you like WHO
reports, their report on HIV/AIDS has:
Sub-Saharan Africa - 29.4 million people infected
South & South-East Asia - 6 million
Latin America - 1.5 million
North America - 980,000

In terms of prevalence:

8% of adults in Sub-Saharan Africa
0.6% North America

MattLB

Loading