Anti-HIV drugs are not specific to HIV

They’re not even specific to retroviral infections

It has been brought to my attention that one of the active ingredients in Paxlovid, the Covid early treatment antiviral, is an HIV protease inhibitor, ritonavir. Do with that information what you will.

The reader is undoubtedly aware of the use of medications “off-label,” that is, the situation in which a medication is prescribed for a condition other than the one it was developed to treat. Antidepressants, for example, are often used off-label as sleep aids; ADHD medications are often abused for weight loss purposes. More recently, the reader is likely aware of the off-label uses of ivermectin—an anti parasitic—and hydroxychloroquine—an anti malarial—to treat Covid infections.

HIV medications are no different. This might come as a surprise, considering the propaganda we have been given that these medications are highly specific to HIV; indeed, they are credited with making HIV-positivity a “chronic, manageable condition,” although even a cursory look at the statistics hints strongly that the version of AIDS that so alarmed the world in the early 1980s had already begun to morph by 1990 to what might be more accurately termed “long haul AIDS”—in other words, it was becoming more of a “chronic, manageable condition” on its own without the help of antiretrovirals. Recall how the “latent period” magically lengthened from six months, to a year, to five years, to ten years or more. Even now, the popular press regarding HIV-positivity only states that HIV-positivity “eventually” leads to AIDS.

Currently, it is common for medical providers to prescribe nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors to treat hepatitis B infection. Our old friend, tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), or the primary active ingredient in Truvada, is frequently used for hepatitis B coinfection. In fact, it seems that TDF is even prescribed as pre-exposure prophylaxis against hepatitis B.

Furthermore, Truvada and similar medications have been prescribed to patients with chronic fatigue syndrome. The cause of C.F.S. remains murky, although there are some researchers that believe it is caused by a retrovirus, although that theory is still considered highly speculative. C.F.S. is interesting because at one point, it was referred to as “AIDS lite,” although its clinical manifestation is often quite severe.

Further digging into the possibility that C.F.S. might well be an obvious manifestation of HIV-negative AIDS raises some interesting questions, and some even more interesting “answers” to these questions. A 2012 article in the popular science magazine Discover discusses how the retroviral theory of C.F.S. has “dramatically fallen apart.” Further, as the Discover article states:

Why do the stories of AIDS and CFS have such different outcomes? One reason is that it has been difficult to reach a consensus on a clinical definition of CFS. At the onset the case definition of AIDS was simple—“Kaposi’s sarcoma or opportunistic infections”—which made it possible to rapidly and accurately identify new cases, especially among different research groups around the country. This led to the establishment of risk factors [emphasis mine], and the epidemiological data obtained from this work made it highly likely that an infectious agent was involved, spurring the search for the causative pathogen. The case definition for CFS has undergone a number of revisions over the years. When different research groups use different definitions of the disease, it becomes difficult to compare findings. Most importantly, there is no indicator or diagnostic test that can be used to identify CFS, and since diagnosing CFS is a long and difficult process, cohorts established by different investigators vary, leading to different findings, confusion, and contention. In contrast, AIDS was readily identifiable and easily diagnosed once a blood test for HIV was developed.

It is illuminating that the author of this piece refers to “difficulty [reaching] a consensus on a clinical definition” of C.F.S. Given that there are currently thirty or so medical conditions that qualify a patient for an AIDS diagnosis (but only in the presence of HIV-antibody-positivity; a classic example of circular reasoning), and that Kaposi’s sarcoma is no longer considered to be caused by HIV at all— and that some of these conditions are dramatically different and often totally unrelated—it is peculiar that one should consider the clinical definition of AIDS to be any less murky than that of C.F.S. The article states that “the case definition for C.F.S. has undergone a number of revisions over the years,” while conveniently neglecting the fact that the definition of AIDS has also undergone a number of revisions over the years. Furthermore, there is and has been plenty of evidence that C.F.S. absolutely is a form of acquired immune deficiency, one that mysteriously only affects patients that are not members of AIDS “risk groups.”

The key to the puzzle might well be found in the pull quote above—AIDS is AIDS because of the risk group designation.

The implications of this are severe and should not be underestimated. They may be, in fact, the key to unraveling the entire HIV mystery.

Furthermore, this denial of the obvious connection between CFS, other non-risk-group-associated conditions, and AIDS is not only harmful to the millions of people discriminated against and fed toxic medication as a result of a bogus HIV diagnosis, but to those victims of non-HIV-related acquired immunodeficiency syndromes such as C.F.S. and autoimmune conditions such as lupus and Lyme disease.

Consider as well the emergence of what is looking more and more like an acquired immunodeficiency, the syndrome of “long Covid” or “long haul Covid.” Interestingly, both AIDS and long Covid are characterized by “severe inflammation.” It should come as no surprise that antiretroviral drugs are also potent anti inflammatory agents.

One of the most troubling mysteries about long COVID, also known as long-haul COVID or post-COVID syndrome, is what occurs in the bodies of patients to drive this persistent and often distressing condition. One theory is that long COVID could be an autoimmune disease (AD).  To illustrate this possibility, studies have noted shared symptoms between long COVID and suspected ADs like chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and fibromyalgia-  including persistent fatigue, widespread muscle pain, memory difficulties, and mood disorders.

—Autoimmunity Institute

Between the provable nonspecificity of “anti-HIV” drugs and the immune abnormalities in conditions that should be, in an honest scientific discourse, be described as “non-HIV AIDS,” it is clear that the HIV paradigm is propped up by the wishful thinking of those that continue to promote it, years after it should have been consigned to the scrap bin of history. It’s past time for a paradigm shift. Start by designating a large portion of funding for AIDS to non-HIV AIDS. Its victims, and those who have been unlucky enough to be labeled HIV-positive, depend upon it.

Preorder my upcoming book, The Real AIDS Epidemic, here.