They claimed to have isolated a retrovirus, lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV), from a homosexual patient code name BRU who was at risk of AIDS and had a pre-AIDS prodrome. The first report of an “AIDS virus” was in a May 20th 1983 paper published in Science by scientists at the Pasteur Institute led by Luc Montagnier. Further information on immune deficiency HERE The virus, now known as the human immunodeficiency virus, was said to be transmitted principally via sexual intercourse, blood and blood products. 7 In other words, viral infection T4 cell destruction the clinical syndrome (AIDS). Hence, it was proposed that viral-induced destruction of T4 cells (acquired immune deficiency), the "hallmark" of HIV infection, inevitably led to the appearance of KS and the opportunistic infections. It was accepted that no single infectious agent could directly cause the heterogeneous group of AIDS “indicator” diseases. Subsequently the theory was also claimed to explain opportunistic infections and T4 cell decrease in intravenous drug users and haemophiliacs. The observations the viral theory was intended to explain were threefold: the high frequency of KS a few opportunistic infections, principally PCP and a decrease in a cell type, the T4 (CD4) lymphocyte, in the peripheral blood of the homosexual patients. 6 Since KS is a malignancy, retrovirologists, in particular Robert Gallo from the US National Institutes of Health, proposed a viral theory of AIDS. 5 During the 1970s the Retrovirology Club tried to prove, albeit unsuccessfully, that cancer is caused by viruses. 3 Subsequently more diseases were added under the umbrella term “AIDS indicator diseases” which currently number 29, including PCP, KS, tuberculosis, 4 candida (yeast) infections, lymphoma and cervical cancer.Īmong the first to put forward a theory to account for the high frequency of KS and PCP in homosexual men were researchers belonging to what Luc Montagnier, from the Pasteur Institute in Paris, calls the “Retrovirology Club”. What was new was the exponentially escalating incidence of what were two formerly rare diseases and their proclivity for a minor subset of young, sexually promiscuous, drug using homosexual men. 1, 2 Neither PCP nor KS were new diseases. What is now known as the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first reported in 1981 as two diseases – a chronic pneumonia (PCP) caused by the fungal organism Pneumocystis carinii and Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), a malignancy of uncertain histogenesis that principally involves the skin but may also occur in the gastrointestinal and respiratory tracts.
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