Originally Posted by robinson View Post
To clarify, HIV is the retrovirus. AIDS is a label for a set of diseases combined with HIV being detected. Neither HIV nor AIDS kills you, it is some disease that kills you, not HIV. Semantics. HIV leads to AIDS leads to some disease, or combination of diseases, which leads to death, which means you don't breath anymore, and your body starts to decompose. Does that help?
Damn you troll. Damn you to hell!

Robinson has learned sooo much since this was discussed in detail last. I have to say I'm quite proud of the way you worded that.
Yeah, if you have no immune system left to fight diseases (because HIV took over your T cells), then your body can't fight the diseases we all come into contact with every day. This inability to fight disease because of the HIV infection is called AIDS (acquired immune deficiency). You acquire immune deficiency by acquiring HIV. You will quite readily be killed or weakened by things that your body needs its Tcells to fight off. Your body gets weakened by the infections, then you can even get killed off by even simpler infections (opportunistic).
That is the general idea. That's what I basically was tought in Sex Ed.
But, the CDC definition of AIDS is the following:
You have been tested HIV+, and
- You have one of over 20 diseases, some of them actually common
*OR*
- A CD4 cell count of below 200/ml
Essentially, if we remove the HIV+ requirement, we have a pretty basic definition of "Immune deficiency" that says "If you are sick, get one of those diseases, you have a weakened immune system". And the CD4 cell count has never been proven to show anything about the state of the immune system, in fact, before the CDC's AIDS definition was enhanced by this criterion in 1993, a paper was published that said that there was no correlation between someone's "state of the immune system" and their CD4 cell count.
Basically the problem is there is no way to test for a "immune deficiency" - so to make up for that, the CDC's definition for this immune deficiency is that you get sick while you are HIV+.
That's a circular definition right there. If you, based on this definition, try to find empirical evidence that HIV "causes" AIDS, then you will find it. You will not find a single AIDS case without HIV, and you will find that all (or nearly all) HIV cases eventually develop AIDS.
But the definition is circular! Thus, the "empirical evidence" to that effect is worthless.
What is your argument exactly? HIV exists, and it infects T-cells. No argument needed.
Hundreds of viruses exist that infect hundreds of different, human cells, which do not cause any harm or problems. Yes, there are viruses that cause disease, but these are the minority - they are simply not adapted to the human being yet. But if you claim a specific virus causes a disease, you will have to offer proof for that. This proof was never offered for HIV. Only empirical evidence that "HIV causes AIDS" using CDC's definition of AIDS was proven, which, due to it being circular, doesn't prove anything.
Using the CDC definition of "AIDS" without the HIV requirement, calling it "Immune deficiency" instead of "AIDS", I can make the following statements, which are all true:
- There is "Immune Deficiency" without HIV
- There is HIV without "Immune deficiency"
- There is no causal link proven between HIV and "Immune Deficiency"
How do you know someone who has the flu and is HIV+, does not just have the flu? Why do you insist they have AIDS now and are going to die within months?