Tuesday, September 23, 2025

Kennedy's Citations

 

Kennedy's Citations


 I began my critique of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book on Dr. Fauci with an entry titled "Big Conspiracy." There are those who will wrap their arms over your shoulder and pretend to be your friend, all the while pointing to someone else, saying that "they are the real enemy." As you walk along, they will be robbing you. Usually they will point to an enemy that does have real faults. In Kennedy's case, he targets, at times, Big Pharm. 


These people scratch the itch of paranoia, blur the lines of reality, and make money from selling you their books and making speaking engagements. Sometimes they believe what they sell or at least convince themselves of their con. Robert Preston, as Professor Harold Hill (no relation), said, of believing his phony scheme, "There's always a band."


I cannot count Kennedy among the true believers. His arguments are so dishonest, so insincere and calculating, that I believe he must know he is lying. He will take a reference and claim it says the opposite that it does. He cloaks himself in famous names and quotes marginal sources as authorities.


This is clear in the citations that Kennedy has at the end of chapters. For a book purported to be about science, relatively few citations are from scientific studies. Instead, he quotes conspiracy books and conspiracy news articles. He cites YouTube videos that sell conspiracies. I'm surprised he doesn't cite his own book on Fauci as a source. (He does cite his website as a source of his information.)


For Chapter Six of his book, I decided to tally his citations, 180 in total. 


For his most common source, he cites anti-HIV books 39 times. These books have accusational titles and lengthy subtitles such as Peter Duesberg and the Duesbergians: How a Brave and Brilliant Group of Scientists Challenged the AIDS Establishment and Inadvertently Exposed the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic. The book, Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics Making Billions at our Expense had 24 citations by itself.


The full list of books cited is at the bottom of this page. 


He cites newspaper articles 36 times. This includes 25 of what I would term mainstream media, and others that are niche publications. On top of this, he cites pop magazines, such as Spin, 6 times, and a mainstream magazine, once. One pair of newspaper articles by Elinor Burkitt is cited 18 times.


Actual articles in scientific journals are cited 29 times, or 16.1% of the time. 


YouTube videos are cited 24 times. Blogs are cited 12 times.


The remaining groups of citations are less than five times each (drug insert, website, etc.)


This is not how a reasoned argument is bolstered. This is a person citing books every bit as incompetent as his own as proof of what he is saying. Kennedy never tries to present the other side of the argument, that HIV does cause AIDS, or look at its possible merits. He never cites a book that says such, or a newspaper article. He does cite Duesberg often, in support of Duesberg.


Full List of Books Cited in Chapter Six:


Peter Duesberg and the Duesbergians: How a Brave and Brilliant Group of Scientists Challenged the AIDS Establishment and Inadvertently Exposed the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic


Virus Mania: How the Medical Industry Continually Invents Epidemics Making Billions at our Expense


Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, Rethinking AIDS: the Tragic Cost of Premature Consensus, Inventing the AIDS Virus


The AIDS War: Propaganda, Profiteering, and the Genocide from the Medical-Industrial Complex


Death Rush: Poppers and AIDS


AIDS: The Burden of History


The Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Epidemic Cover-Up: How a Little Newspaper Solved the Scientific and Political Mystery of Our Time


Dancing Naked in the Mind Field (no subtitle!)


Science Sold Out: Does HIV Really Cause AIDS?


A book on conspiracy theories and the damage they cause:


Conspiracies do exist. Probably at a rate of one per thousand conspiracy theories.


Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of pharmacology and author of several novels. 

My new novel, The Missing Floor, is now available from Oliver-Heber books. The first in the series, Floor 24, is newly available in audio book format. The audiobook has quite a complimentary review here.


The Missing Floor


Sunday, September 21, 2025

RFK, Jr. and HIV, Part Three: Kaposi's Sarcoma and AZT


I am continuing my series reviewing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book on Anthony Fauci. In the last two entries (1, 2), I have been critiquing his many pages dealing with his many arguments that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. I continue this here. 


AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma


On page 224, Kennedy begins a subchapter entitled Kaposi's Sarcoma with the statement, "In 1990, four leading scientists at the CDC suggested in the Lancet that Kaposi's sarcoma was common in young gay men who indisputably did not have HIV." (emphasis mine, the reason why, below) 


As is typical, Kennedy can't get anything right. He seems to be referring to this article which was published in the Lancet in 1990, Kaposi's sarcoma in HIV-negative homosexual men.  It had six authors but only one member of the CDC.


They did not find the phenomenon "common." The paper says that in 349 male homosexual or bisexual patients in a dermatology practice who had Kaposi's sarcoma, 6 had no signs of HIV infection. The "young" gay men averaged 45 years old. 


Kennedy goes on to say several times that Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) is the defining disease of AIDS. Pages 224 and 225: "KS—the disease most central to the definition of AIDS," ". . . KS was the initial and defining symptom of AIDS," "The very existence of AIDS was inextricably linked to KS," and "Kaposi's sarcoma was the AIDS-defining illness. 'In the beginning,' says Farber, 'AIDS was Kaposi's sarcoma.'" Kennedy does tend to repeat his points, add nausea. [sic]


Although I will allow that Kaposi's sarcoma's presence was found early on, it wasn't present in the initial report. It certainly wasn't the defining disease of AIDS as pointed out in an actual study by four members of the CDC published in Lancet in 1990. They came to the conclusion that "Among persons with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) reported to Centers for Disease Control by March 31, 1989, 15% (13,616) had Kaposi's sarcoma."


Since one of the authors, Thomas Peterman of the CDC, was in on both studies, I assume that Kennedy confused the two papers, and somehow came to conclusions neither paper said.


Kennedy quotes Gallo in saying, "HIV . . . might only be a catalytic factor in Kaposi's: there must be something else." As I mentioned in a previous post, Gallo went down a rabbit hole looking at the protein "tat" as a cofactor in Kaposi's. 


The cause of Kaposi's sarcoma is now well-understood and involves the virus HHV-8 which becomes active in immunocompromised patients, much the way that HIV-caused immunodeficiency causes complications by cytomegalovirus.


AZT as Culprit


On page 225, RFK, Jr. begins a subchapter titled "AZT as Culprit" with "After 1987, Dr. Duesberg and his followers argue, the vast majority of 'AIDS deaths' were actually caused by AZT—Dr. Fauci's 'antiretroviral' chemotherapy purposefully concocted to kill human cells." The phrase "purposefully concocted to kill human cells" means tested as an antitumor agent (and not even in humans).


He goes on to say, "The FDA, after all, had deemed AZT too toxic to use for even short-term cancer therapy." (Page 226) This is a complete lie. Prior to being tested as an antiviral, AZT had been tested only in mice as an anti-leukemic. The FDA does not make such pronouncements of toxicity on human cancer therapy based on animal trials. Furthermore, as the original reports show, AZT did not fail due to toxicity, it failed due to not having sufficient toxicity against tumor cells. 


Jerome Horwitz was the main researcher who synthesized and tested AZT in the 1960s. To quote the account as presented in the Los Angeles Times, "When Horwitz tested AZT, or azidothymidine, on leukemic mice, nothing happened. He admitted defeat and didn’t think about it again until the mid-1980s, when scientists were randomly testing drugs in a frantic search for one that would combat AIDS."


To quote Horwitz directly in the journal article he wrote about it, "None of the synthetic analogues [including AZT] manifested significant activity when screened against L1210 leukemia in BDF mice," and there was "low cytoxic [sic, correctly cytotoxic] activity observed with these agents as anti-leukemia drugs." Low cytotoxic activity says that they were not toxic to cells.


Like many compounds that fail at one use, AZT became a repurposed drug. Before the outbreak of HIV, AZT was tested as antiviral back in the 1970s against a different virus and failed. 


Kennedy goes on to say, "Cancer patients typically take chemo agents for only two weeks. Thanks to Tony Fauci's Fischl study, doctors were now prescribing AZT for life!" (page 226)


Cancer patients will certainly be surprised to learn that they only take chemotherapy for two weeks. That statement is a slap in the face of chemotherapy patients who are enduring therapy for many months. 


AZT belongs to a class of chemical called nucleoside analogs. These drugs are commonly used for viral illnesses. There are 27 different approved nucleoside analogs and they are used for HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, COVID-19, cytomegalovirus, herpes simplex virus, and varicella-zoster virus infections. These are not weird, highly toxic chemicals although, as with any drug, their toxicities should be kept in mind. 


AZT is not "highly carcinogenic." It is rated 2B in terms of carcinogenicity, "those that have been classified as possibly carcinogenic to humans."


With this as background, AZT has several significant toxicities. It can not only inhibit HIV viral replication but mitochondrial function. Among its chief potential toxicities are lactic acid build-up, fatigue, liver toxicity, and anemia. 


On page 228, in a subchapter titled "Is AZT Mass Murder?", Kennedy says, "The [AIDS] death rate climbed precipitously after the commercial introduction of AZT. In 1987, "AIDS deaths rose by 46 percent." He goes on to provide the numbers of deaths by year: 16,469 dying in 1987, 21,176 in 1988, 31,694 in 1990, and 37,040 in 1991." 


Lets look at the growth in the number of HIV infections. 


The estimated number of those 13 and older infected with HIV in the United States by year infected.
From: Bosh, et al, 2021


The numbers presented in the above graph are only estimates which is why the numbers are rounded off and repeated. (Before 1984, for example, there was no HIV test. Even after 1984, it was not universally applied and estimates have to be made of the number of those untested but positive.) Putting the above graph's figures into table format:


New HIV cases, US, by year.

1981 20,000

1982 60,000

1983 60,000

1984 130,000

1985 130,000

1986-1990 85,000 each year.


The ability to determine whether people were HIV positive and the ability to determine the safety of the blood supply began in the mid-80s and this event curtailed the increase in cases per year. Let's compare the two sets of data. Since HIV takes years to cause AIDS, the HIV line in the graph below represents HIV infection year plus six. The graph is mine.


Orange dots represent new HIV cases (plus six years) and blue dots represent AIDS deaths (Kennedy's figures). HIV cases increased at a much greater rate than death due to AIDS. AZT is certainly not the only reason why the AIDS death rates declined in comparison to the infection numbers. Care for AIDS patients improved over time, among many examples, prophylaxis for PCP pneumonia. Care could start sooner due to the knowledge of patients being HIV positive. It is likely that the early AIDS cases were rapid progressors with a more virulent virus: that is why they were found to have AIDS ahead of others. 


Another major reason for a continuing increase in number of AIDS deaths is due to the fact that AZT, when used a single agent, is a weak drug. 


AZT was never great. From March 1987 to October 1991, it was the only antiretroviral therapy approved in the United States. To address the main problem regarding AZT, I refer to another class of anti-HIV drugs, the NNRTIs. When the NNRTIs were discovered, they were immediately noted as being powerful anti-HIV drugs and relatively safe. However, the virus quickly gained drug resistance being fully resistant in a matter of weeks. On their own, they proved nearly useless. AZT is similar, however, its usefulness, on its own, lasted months, not weeks. 


AZT is still used as are the NNRTIs. In combination, resistant mutations of the virus have a much reduced chance of escape. Multi-drug therapy for HIV allows a patient to live nearly a full life equal to those who are HIV negative.  


Continued in Kennedy's Citations. 


Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of pharmacology and author of several novels. 

My new novel, The Missing Floor, is now available from Oliver-Heber books. The first in the series, Floor 24, is newly available in audio book format. The audiobook has quite a complimentary review here.


The Missing Floor








Tuesday, September 16, 2025

RFK and HIV, Part Two


I am continuing to look at the RFK, Jr.'s presentation about "the doubts that exist" as to whether HIV causes AIDS. In the previous entry, I looked at a number of miscellaneous topics in Chapter Five and focused heavily on RFK's arguments about Koch's postulates from 1890. 


Going through Kennedy's arguments is a frustrating task. He commits a sin that is commonly referred to as a Gish gallop. This is a means of arguing by throwing a hundred things out regardless of quality and expect the debater to waste time disputing minutiae. If the debater doesn't do this, he claims victory by saying that there was so much the debater did not address. 


As I've documented time and again, Kennedy often presents bat-shit crazy or wholly contrived arguments. I have undertaken many hours dissecting Kennedy's lies. There are many more I neglect. This should not be my life's work. He should be responsible for his own honesty. In a just world, he would correct himself. 


As noted in my last entry, Kennedy claims to be agnostic as to whether HIV causes AIDS. He does however, spend 65 pages presenting arguments that it doesn't, and dedicates no space to the arguments that it does. This is typical of his fake evenhandedness. 


In this section I'm going to go briefly over Kennedy's criticism of tests to determine whether someone has an HIV infection and then dive into Duesberg's alternative view of what causes AIDS.


On page 190, Kennedy says, "The most significant diagnostic tools doctors use to determine if someone is infected with HIV, and therefore, whether they have AIDS are:


1. HIV antibody test.

2. PCR viral load tests.

3. Helper cell counts. (CD4 cells)"


This is poorly worded. Infected with HIV does not mean the patient has AIDS as I discussed in the previous post. CD4 counts do not diagnose whether someone has HIV. They correspond to immunological status. And his list doesn't include tools that researchers use such as p24 antigen, culturing, full virus sequencing, or in some instances, electron microscopy. 


General Comment on Diagnostic Tests


First, let's consider a general matter about tests. No test is perfect. The television show "House," devoted whole episodes to trying to diagnose through testing and exam. There are four possible outcomes to any disease test. First is a true positive. That means the test shows someone has the disease and, indeed, that person does have the disease. Then there is the true negative. That means the test shows someone does not have the disease, and, indeed, that person does not. Then there are the unwanted outcomes. False positive. In this case the test shows someone does have the disease when that person doesn't. Finally, there is false negative. In this case, the test says the person does not have they disease when they actually do. 


The obvious idea behind a test is to have the true positives and true negatives vastly predominate. For a specific test for tuberculosis, false positives can range from 1-2% to higher, depending on the patient's circumstance and the study. This doesn't mean that Mycobacterium tuberculosis doesn't cause tuberculosis or that the test is useless. With science, uncertainty in any given approach goes with the territory. That's why the lawyers add provisos with the tests: this is not a definitive diagnosis. They don't want the test manufacturers to get sued.


There have been lawsuits from people falsely diagnosed as having HIV. To avoid these, the diagnostic exam companies add a disclaimer. This disclaimer results in something good (we do have tests) and something bad (the companies have less incentive to better their tests). As I said, no test is perfect.


Kennedy cites such lawyerly provisos to dismiss HIV tests as being useless and meaningless. Page 192, "Do not use this kit as the sole basis for detecting HIV infection." 


HIV Antibody Tests


Kennedy's first complaint is about the HIV antibody test. He throws out head-scratching arguments. "HIV antibody tests were not actually designed to specially to detect HIV." (page 191) Of course not. They detect antibodies. I have already commented on Kennedy's bizarro comment "High antibody level indicated that a person had already successfully battled against infection and was now protected from the disease." Such an argument says that every battle against diseases is successful. 


Kennedy includes this statement on how antibody tests are made which should make researchers laugh. (Page 190) ". . . the inventor must isolate the target virus and expose it to human cells in a petri dish, which then generate the specific antibodies responsive to that virus."


Kennedy says that "Gallo's antibody test also reacts to people with fever, pregnant women, and people who have overcome a tuberculosis infection." (page 190) Why Kennedy is still talking about Gallo's 1980s antibody test is one problem, but the notion of what percent of tests have false reactions is dealt with pretty well in this explanatory article. It depends on how prevalent the true local infection in HIV is. If you almost never have a true HIV infection locally, then many positive reactions are likely to be false. If it is common, then the likelihood of a false positive is diminished. That's the nature of disease testing. The source gives a 94.5% true positive rating for men who have sex with men in the United Kingdom. 


My ongoing frustration with Kennedy is that a mature and interesting discussion of these matters is both possible and informative.


PCR Testing 


On page 185, Kennedy starts a rant on PCR, a general method used to detect all sorts of illnesses and causative agents. He continues this in several spots, including page 190 and 191, with a subchapter titled "PCR Testing Deficiencies." His mind does jump around. 


So, what does PCR do? Every organism has genetic material that is specific to its species. In straightforward PCR (and there are many variants), you use a pair of segments of DNA (called primers) to amplify copies of a region of the genetic material of a specific organism. That genetic region represents a "DNA fingerprint" of the organism. PCR is also used in forensics to provide a sequence of genetic information that is unique to a particular human and which is considered definitive in criminal cases.


On page 191, Kennedy says, "The Polymerase Chain Reaction (sic) PCR technique does not measure the actual, live virus in the body . . ."  No, PCR doesn't measures "live" viruses. No one says viruses are "alive" by the standard definition of life, anyway. Perhaps he means to say "viable virus," or "infectious virus," but I shouldn't have to write his book for him.


Done right, PCR proves the presence of a specific organism's genetic material. 


As I said, PCR can be thought of as genetic fingerprinting much in the same way the genetic fingerprint of a criminal can prove the source of biological material. Blood on a glove. Semen in a rape kit. In the case of HIV, it is the genetic signature of the virus. Can something go wrong? I know of a case where the police mislabeled the blood samples and arrested a man because his voluntary DNA sample matched another tube of blood with his voluntary DNA sample. PCR can't overcome that. Contamination in the lab can screw up results. Otherwise, done right, PCR tests are a standard means for identifying the presence of a wide variety of infectious organisms, and can be used to detect mutations that exist in genetic diseases. PCR is one of the great inventions of the last half-century.


On pages 190-1, Kennedy cites Kary Mullis, the inventor of PCR to say, "Quantitative PCR is an oxymoron. PCR is intended to identify substances qualitatively, but by its very nature is unsuited for estimating numbers." Sorry, Dr. Mullis, yes (duh) PCR can be quantitative. There is an entire field called real-time PCR. It can be used for many diseases and is a standard means of measuring gene expression. Searching the Library of Medicine online, the phrase "real-time PCR" brings in over 100,000 papers. ("Quantitative PCR" as a search term brings in 48,000 results, although many of those are bound to overlap with the previous search.) Quantitative PCR has a very straightforward means of testing amounts in comparison to standardized controls of known quantities. 


There are different varieties of PCR which cover many different diseases including those that quantify gene products, disease organisms, and HIV.


Kennedy repeatedly says that PCR can only amplify viral fragments. While this is usually all that is necessary, this is a review of papers that look at full genome length amplification. 


CD4 Tests


Kennedy devotes only one short paragraph to discussing CD4 tests (page 192). He argues that CD4 counts are merely a surrogate marker and "The problem is the use of a surrogate endpoint, which is notoriously im- precise (sic)." I mostly agree. Surrogates are imprecise. That doesn't make them useless. My own experience with those with very low CD4 counts from patients is that they were at the end stage disease process. This was before 1995 and the arrival of powerful HIV therapy. Much fewer HIV patients have collapsed immune systems. 


Duesberg's Theory About What Causes AIDS and Kennedy's Homophobia.


On page 181, Kennedy writes: "In July 1981, CDC reported a unique outbreak of immune deficiency-related health problems in a group of highly promiscuous gay men in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco."


The above is an example of RFK, Jr.'s book includes a number of anti-gay snide remarks. Homosexuals are highly promiscuous! As he says, cited further below, they are all drug users. 


The July 3, 1981 MMWR publication (actually the second report of the phenomenon which would become known as AIDS) nowhere describes the cohort as "highly promiscuous." They are referred to as homosexual and the degree of their sexual behavior is not mentioned. The actual July 1981 report. 


On page 222, RFK gets around to commenting on the actual first report of what came to be known as AIDS from June of 1981. Kennedy states "The first AIDS cases were five gay men—all unknown to one another—diagnosed with a rare (PCP) pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer that previously only afflicted elderly men." The actual June 1981 report. 


I clench my teeth here. Why can't Kennedy get anything right? None of the first five cases had Kaposi's sarcoma. 


Further down the paragraph on page 222, he references Dr. Michael Gottlieb (co-author of the first report, and, in part, a discoverer of AIDS) and goes on to say, "The men were all promiscuous party enthusiasts in the "fast lane" gay lifestyle" and "They daily had multiple anonymous sexual partners—upward of a thousand per year—and contracted most of the sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, and hepatitis B." 


What does the Gottlieb's MMWR paper say? "The five did not have comparable histories of sexually transmitted diseases" and "Two of the five reported having frequent homosexual contacts with various partners."


While Gottlieb did not say what Kennedy claimed, he did, however, in an interview, trash Duesberg and spoke of his own early work on AZT. (Warning: the link has auto-starting videos of the interview, so you might want to mute your computer if you merely want to read.)


GOTTLIEB: Disinformation and a false narrative did not originate recently. Peter Duesberg and his colleagues were ahead of the time in disseminating misinformation and a false narrative, for unclear motives. Duesburg and the AIDS deniers did a huge amount of damage and undoubtedly cost peoples' lives. [snip] Peter Duesberg is flat wrong. One has only to look at the success of ART in changing HIV from a death sentence to a manageable condition with projected longevity for young people that approximates what their lifespan would have been without HIV. The only thing different is the fact that they are treated with medication that addresses HIV specifically and not any other virus or factor in their lives. [emphasis mine]


GOTTLIEB: My message to them is to stop it.


The full paragraph and context of Kennedy's statement about Gottlieb and the promiscuous gays reads (Page 222). I include a commentary below this.


The first AIDS cases were five gay men--all unknown to one another--diagnosed with a rare (PCP) pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of cancer that had previously afflicted only elderly men. Dr. Michael Gottlieb, a researcher searching California hospitals for new diseases with unusual symptomology, is credited with the initial discovery and its epidemiological context. (the following sentence, with its repeat portion, is presented as it is in the book.) in  Los Angeles in 1981 by Dr. Michael Gottlieb, a researcher searching California hospitals for new diseases with unusual symptomology. The men were all promiscuous party enthusiasts in the "fast lane" gay lifestyle. They were taking many different recreational drugs simultaneously and combining drugs in excess of patterns among straight drug users. They frequented bars, clubs, and bathhouses. They had multiple daily anonymous sexual partners--upward of a thousand per year--and contracted most of the common sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, and hepatitis B. They were, therefore functionally addicted to a pharmacopoeia of antibiotic prescription medications; "all of that created a situation where a handful of gay men," say Mark Gabrish Conlan "were burning the candle at both ends and putting a blowtorch to the middle. It's no wonder that after a while, their immune systems started to collapse and they started getting sick in these unusual ways that previously only been seen in older people whose immune systems had deteriorated with age." 


There is a lot to unpack there. Old people do not get immunodeficiency diseases in any way similar to those with AIDS. Kaposi's sarcoma was not just known in "elderly men." Outside of AIDS, it has a very specific genetic and regional occurrence. Dr. Gottlieb was not "searching California hospitals for new diseases." You would think from the above paragraph that Gottlieb, a respected AIDS researcher, was the one claiming these men were "in the fast lane." The transition to Conlan's words are not clear. Conlan is a journalist. Where Conlan's quote came from is unclear, it is not among Kennedy's citations. 


Why does this matter? Kennedy puts forward the crackpot theory that it was through wild drug use that gay people destroyed their immune systems thus causing AIDS. This drug use was specifically tied to "poppers," which typically refers to amyl nitrite.


Kennedy (page 223) says that poppers "are very powerful oxidizing agents." They are moderately powerful oxidizing agents. They are used clinically for angina. He goes on to say they are "powerfully mutagenic and carcinogenic." They are not. And, "poppers are radically immunosuppressant in rodents." A study in humans show limited effects, reversible within a week. 


If poppers cause AIDS, I wonder what the act of telling whoppers causes? Kennedy offers this one. Page 223, "Prior to 1987, every AIDS patient acknowledged heavy consumption of poppers." 


Through 1987 there were 50,280 US cases of AIDS. That is remarkable that they all confessed to heavy consumption of poppers. Did they interview 5,000? Doubtful. And 100% confessed to using poppers? Including those who got AIDS from transfusions? Hemophiliacs? (My first work studied AIDS in children.) Of course, Kennedy's statement is completely made up. 


AIDS is not a gay disease. In the year 2000, for the US, 41% of those living with AIDS were infected by male-to-male transmission. This number is slightly exaggerated. Bisexual men with AIDS are often pigeonholed as to getting HIV through gay contact. 


More recently, among those newly diagnosed with HIV (2022), 67% were male homosexual or bisexual, 22% were heterosexual, and 7% were IV drug users. That is for the US and AIDS is a worldwide phenomenon. 


Refusal to Debate.


On page 218, Kennedy begins a subchapter on the refusal to debate HIV deniers and Duesberg called Refusal to Debate. I personally have been attacked as someone who has promoted the deaths of hundreds of thousands because of my views which align with those of Fauci. Kennedy himself presents subchapters titled AZT As Culprit and Is AZT Mass Murder? I personally believe that when Duesberg influenced South Africa to deny HIV treatment due to personally pressing his case that HIV does not cause AIDS, he helped cause hundreds of thousands of deaths, a figure presented in this article in the Journal of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. I cannot debate such a person. 


I go on to look at Kennedy's sections on Kaposi's sarcoma and AZT in my next installment


Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of pharmacology and author of several novels. 

My new novel, The Missing Floor, is now available from Oliver-Heber books. The first in the series, Floor 24, is newly available in audio book format. The audiobook has quite a complimentary review here.


The Missing Floor

Thursday, September 4, 2025

RFK Jr. on HIV and AIDS, Part One

 

This is my sixteenth entry into reviewing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s book, The Real Anthony Fauci. Fauci became the head of NIAID, the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, in 1984, at the time that the AIDS crisis was gaining momentum. Kennedy looks at HIV and AIDS and, of course, takes digs at Fauci, claiming Fauci promoted the deaths of millions. The previous entry is here. The first entry to the series is here. This entry continues here. 


HIV and AIDS. Chapter 5, The HIV Heresies and Chapter 6, Burning the HIV Heretics. 


I thought of trying to analyze these two chapters step-by-step and page by page, but I found Kennedy's approach too disorganized. For example, he describes deficiencies in PCR testing on page 185, talks about it in more detail on page 191, then gets back to it in the next chapter. On page 181, Kennedy writes: "In July 1981, CDC reported a unique outbreak of immune deficiency-related health problems in a group of highly promiscuous gay men in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco." He doesn't return to defend that statement until page 222.  


Instead, for this post, I'll first try going through highlights of the chapter five and then focus on Kennedy's arguments centering around Koch's postulates. 


At the beginning of Chapter 5, Kennedy makes the point that "I take no position on the relationship between HIV and AIDS." (page 178) He then spends 65 pages presenting the arguments that HIV does not cause AIDS. He spends zero effort on analyzing the deficiencies of HIV-AIDS deniers' argument or why they are, at times, batshit crazy.


Further down page 178, Kennedy presents his thesis statement for the next two chapters. "Specifically,  the original hypothesis on AIDS is an illustration of how vested interests (in this case, Dr. Anthony Fauci), using money, power, position and influence, can engineer a consensus on incomplete theories, and then ruthlessly suppress dissent."


On page 179, Kennedy introduces Dr. Peter Duesberg as "the world's most accomplished and insightful retrovirologist" going on to say, "Specifically, Dr. Duesberg accuses Dr. Fauci of committing mass murder with AZT, the deadly chemical concoction that according to Duesberg causes and never cures---the constellations of immune suppression that we now call 'AIDS.'" This mass murder amounts to tens of thousands. (page 226)


Dr. Duesberg is the most prominent voice among those who promote the theory that HIV does not cause AIDS. 


According to the index, Duesberg is cited on 25 pages. That only begins to highlight his presence in the book. RFK's book has subchapters titled "Peter Duesberg," "Do Retroviruses Cause Diseases?", "Punishing Duesberg," "Refusal to Debate [Duesberg]", "Duesberg's Theory," along with several more detailing Duesberg's theories. Furthermore, he is cited on several pages not mentioned in the index. 


Duesberg has personal resonance in my life. I began researching HIV in the late 80s. My first exposure to him and his theories came through an article in the magazine Spin. 


Bob Guccione, Senior, founded Penthouse, a popular and brazen (for its time) pornographic magazine. Bob Guccione, Junior, his eldest son, launched Spin, a music and pop culture magazine, in the late 80s. 


For the Spin issue of September 1993, Bob Guccione, Jr. interviewed Peter Duesberg, PhD in chemistry, providing him a platform for denying that HIV causes AIDS. 


At the time, I was a postdoc working in an HIV laboratory. Along with some cutting edge research, I was performing a lot of routine tests, such as growing HIV in culture and measuring how the drug AZT lowered HIV production in these cultures. These experiments were routine. I would fill wells in an array with white blood cells, add media with HIV virus stock, look at how the HIV killed the cells (in comparison to uninfected controls, the cells would naturally die over time), look at how different concentrations of AZT limited that killing, and then sequence the virus to look for changes in the enzyme AZT targeted.


Duesberg claimed that no one had ever performed the studies on HIV that I was performing, and which, as I said, were routine. I thought to myself at the time, "You have to be pretty smart to be that dumb."


Robert Gallo 


Before getting into discussing Duesberg's theories, Kennedy diverts to talking about Gallo and his "den of thieves." 


I have met Gallo (and Fauci and, briefly, Montagnier). In contrast to Fauci and Montagnier, I would characterize Gallo as being a vampire. Well after the world had pegged Gallo as dishonest in the discovery of HIV, I saw him make a fascinating presentation of the role of a protein called "tat" in the promotion of Kaposi's sarcoma. I was impressed. Those conclusions turned out to be an artifact, so even that nod of acclaim that I was giving to Gallo, evaporated. Such egotistical, unethical researchers as Gallo set back research and stain science. 


Kennedy's narrative doesn't do justice to the seedy tale of Gallo's (temporary) stealing of the discovery of HIV, the monetizing of early HIV testing, and the French tragedy in refusing to use the early testing. The French prime minister was charged for crimes in this matter and acquitted. The French health minister was convicted of manslaughter, and the director of France's National Blood Center served four years in prison.


On page 182 Kennedy says, "Before the appearance of AIDS both men [Montagnier and Gallo] had vainly strived to implicate retroviruses as the culprit in leukemia." I take exception to this comment. The retrovirus investigated, HTLV-1, did prove to increase the likelihood of acquiring leukemia. Oncoviruses, viruses that promote cancer, are now understood to be common, with approximately 12 to 20% of cancer cases associated with them. 


Koch's Postulates 


Moving along, perhaps the most significant sign that Kennedy's arguments are desperate can be found in how he cites Koch's postulates as evidence that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. These arguments begin on page 192. 


Koch's postulates were first published in 1890 and represented the primary attempt to provide a guide for demonstrating a particular infectious agent as the cause of a particular disease. 


To prove that an organism causes a disease, Koch put forward four principles.


1) The microorganism must be found in abundance in all [infected] organisms suffering from the disease but should not be found in healthy organisms.

2) The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.

3) The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism.

4) The microorganism must be re-isolated from the inoculated, diseased experimental host and identified as being identical to the original specific causative agent.


Although they represented a landmark in the discourse of the then new field of microbiology, over the course of the last 135 years his postulates have been shown to be incomplete time and time again. Only a charlatan would present them as absolutes. 


The first exception to Koch's postulates presented itself less than 20 years later in a very famous case. Intrepid public health researchers discovered the common link between cases of typhoid: a woman who infected several households in spite of the fact that she, herself, did not present dramatic signs of illness. She became known as Typhoid Mary and her existence violated Koch's hypothesis that "the microorganism . . . should not be found in healthy organisms." The belief that Koch's postulates were absolute slowed down the recognition of Typhoid Mary's role in the outbreaks. Nowadays, the concept of asymptomatic carriers and carriers with modest, overlooked symptoms is well understood in many diseases. A relevant example: "CMV [cytomegalovirus] is a common virus that infects 50 to 80 percent of people at some time during their lives but rarely causes obvious illness." [source] "People with a compromised immune system (such as people with HIV/AIDS or those receiving chemotherapy) may experience more serious illness involving fever, pneumonia and other symptoms." In AIDS patients, CMV can cause blindness.


Postulate #1, argument #1 from Kennedy, page 193. "Koch's first postulate requires that a truly pathogenic virus [comment: Koch's doctrine came out before the discovery of viruses] can be found in large quantities in every patient suffering from the disease. The failure of the HIV/AIDS hypothesis to meet this critical threshold remains one of Dr. Fauci's most exasperating dilemmas. [comment: no it isn't] For starters, Gallo claimed that he found HIV virus in fewer than half of the ailing AIDS patients from whom he drew blood." 


Now, Kennedy cites Gallo's competency? Gallo tried to culture the virus, at that time, a difficult task. Gallo eventually used Montagnier's culture and even stole Montagnier's photo of the virus for the initial publication. I've tried culturing the virus. You need what is called a high titer because initiating the infection has to overcome cellular defenses. That is why researchers typically resort to other means of detecting the virus in infected persons.


"Furthermore," Kennedy says, "every one of the thirty discrete illnesses we call AIDS occurs in persons uninfected by HIV." A poorly written sentence. There are not thirty discrete illnesses called AIDS. As for whether the opportunistic infections that often characterize AIDS can be found in people without HIV infection, of course, they can. These are infections that have always been around and they are called opportunistic infections because they are infections and they take the opportunity of a lowered immune system to appear. This was put forward on day one from the first reports (which Kennedy goes on to cite). Why they were appearing with alarming frequency in a particular cohort was the problem, that was the point of the paper. To cite the first report of what would become known as AIDS: "The occurrence of pneumocystosis in these 5 previously healthy individuals without a clinically apparent underlying immunodeficiency is unusual." Unusual, not exclusive. Pneumocystis pneumonia and other "AIDS-defining" infections were never considered exclusive to AIDS patients. 


Furthermore, Kennedy can't seem to figure it out, even as a possibility, how people can have HIV and not AIDS. 


AIDS is the end-stage illness that comes years after being infected with HIV. HIV destroys the immune system so a variety of common and uncommon infections appear. Why is that hard to understand? Diseases that take years to appear after infections are a very common thing. (I'll talk more about that below and in my next post.) People with HIV and not AIDS is simple and straightforward. Koch, 130 years ago, did not foresee this.


Kennedy claims that the HIV antibody test proves that the person who tests positive could not have HIV. Page 191, "Finally, and most importantly, critics point out that Gallo's HIV antibody tests flipped traditional immunology on its head. Throughout all of medical history, a high antibody level indicated that a person had already successfully battled against diseases, the presence of antibodies signals a welcomed immunity from the disease" and "Dr. Fauci never explained this inexplicable paradox."


No, no, no! This is so basic that I have to ask whether Kennedy knows anything about medical issues. Has Kennedy never heard of neurosyphilis? This is a disease progression that takes place years (decades) after the initial syphilis infection. All the time the person will be positive for syphilis antibodies, which makes sense, his immune system saw the initial infection. It fought the infection and the organism hid out. This gets to another bit of incompleteness in Koch's first postulate. It is possible to have the disease and not have an abundance of organisms found. 


Neurosyphilis is far from the only chronic infectious disease. When I teach viral infections to my medical students, one of my first slides says, some viruses [that infect humans] are fast and mean. Some are slow and mean. Does Kennedy deny all slow viruses? Hepatitis A? Influenzas? Fast viruses. Hepatitis B and C? Slow viruses. You get infected with hepatitis B or C and then 20 to 30 years later you have a deteriorating liver. And, of course, you get antibodies produced early on and forever. (I've had this happen in family.)


Kennedy says that Fauci didn't want answered "why some HIV infected individuals never succumb to AIDS." (page 197) Those who are infected with HIV, and who, even in the absence of antiretroviral therapy, do not progress are termed called long-term non-progressors. Is it a weaker version of the virus (one that replicates just enough to survive but not cause damage)? Is it some aspect of the patient (they have a genetic difference or some other means that prevents the virus from progressing)? Or is it possibly environmental, for example, good health principles of the patient? Searching the National Library of Medicine for HIV non-progressors I received hits for 575 papers. If I tweaked the search terms, there would be many more.


Koch's postulate #2. The microorganism must be isolated from a diseased organism and grown in pure culture.


Kennedy writes (page 197) "Highly respected scientists including Éttienne de Harven argued that HIV has never been isolated or grown in pure culture." I've personally cultured HIV on numerous occasions as part of other research protocols. I've also spoken to many scientists who have discussed the difficulties and what sort of cells to use. Even Kennedy describes the intrigue in which Gallo stole Montagnier's culture (after having difficulty to start his own.) Page 181, "Dr. Gallo stalled the publication to give him time to cultivate and steal Dr. Montagnier's virus." 


Kennedy goes on to Koch's third postulate. "The cultured microorganism should cause disease when introduced into a healthy organism." Kennedy states on page 198, "No one has tried injecting HIV into a healthy human being [he doesn't mention it, but I assume he is conceding to ethical considerations], but scientists have stuck all kinds of mice and rats and monkeys and chimpanzees, and none of them has gotten anything resembling human AIDS." 


There are several problems with Kennedy's conjecture. First, there have been 58 confirmed (and 150 more possible) incidences of accidentally acquiring HIV through working with HIV directly or working with HIV-infected patients, in the latter case, typically through needle stick accidents. Secondly, there are a whole number of animal models that can be infected with HIV. One problem is that in the natural course, humans take 10 years to come down with a disease effect, and several animals such as mice and rats, mentioned by Kennedy above, do not have that kind of a lifespan. Which gets to a point of possible criticism: these animal models that do get used usually have some modification in their genetics, anatomy, or virus to get the virus to function more quickly. These modifications could include, for example, transplanting human thymus tissue into the animal (the organ which helps blood cells to differentiate).


Furthermore, there are naturally-occurring immune deficiency virus that directly target certain animals: cats, monkeys, and horses, for example (feline immunodeficiency virus, simian immunodeficiency virus, and equine immunodeficiency virus, respectively.) Transmission experiments have be done in these species. Beyond the ethics of animal experimentation, one limit to such experiments comes from the fact that larger, longer-lived species are very expensive to test over the course of years.


Kennedy argues that viral load (the number of virus particles) with HIV are low. From page 198, "Traditional viruses such herpes, influenza, smallpox, etc., only cause disease at very high titer---thousands or millions of infectious units per cubic millimeter of infected tissue." This is a poorly written sentence. Which herpes virus? There are eight of them in humans. Smallpox? No one has investigated viral loads in infected tissue for smallpox since it was eliminated as an infectious disease fifty years ago. Influenza viruses do multiply to high titers: as mentioned above, it is a fast and mean virus. Finally, "infected tissue" does not speak to the way HIV is measured except for perhaps in the rare instances of lymphoid biopsies or post-mortem examinations. HIV viral loads are measured as particles per milliliter (not cubic millimeter) of plasma. 


I've read a lot of HIV viral loads in my life. Typically during disease, when the immune system has collapsed, the numbers run in millions. Below is a typical representation. Ten to the sixth power represents 1 million. (Source cited below graph). 


Natural Progression of HIV The viral load is shown in red, and the CD + 4 cell counts in blue. (Figure adapted from Giorgi, 2011)


This is not "infected tissue." This is plasma, which is cell free, and represents only the freely circulating virus, a fraction of the actively virulent virus. 


Kennedy (page 199) states "the onset of AIDS symptoms almost always arrive decades later (an average of twenty years following exposure) when viral loads are at their lowest." I've never seen anyone say "decades," and viral loads at the time of AIDS are their highest as shown in the above graph.


Kennedy goes on to quote John Lauritsen, a journalist and author of The AIDS War, to say "The virus infects very, very few cells---as few as one in 100,000." I don't know where Lauritsen got his numbers, but I have spoken to others who cited the one in 100,000 number. They used the fact that it typically took 100,000 virions to successfully start an infection of cells in culture, an entirely different thing from the fraction of cells infected. It really depends on the moment in the disease course, but typically, the number of infected circulating cells are 1 to 15%


On page 200, Kennedy says "But even the most faithful acolytes no longer believe that HIV kills T-cells in any way." There is a huge body of literature on HIV killing T-cells. I am certain some are written by "faithful acolytes." 


Before Koch.


Not satisfied to to say that HIV violates Koch's postulates, Kennedy goes further back in time to say that HIV infection doesn't have the predictable spread of infection as shown in William Farr's investigation of typhus cases (1849). No, it didn't. There is more than one graph that describes disease spread and the final voice on that didn't come in 1849.


Kennedy says, page 202, that "In Western countries, AIDS has never broken away from its original core pool of homosexual men and drug addicts." AIDS is not a gay disease. In the year 2000, for the US, 41% of those living with AIDS were infected by male-to-male transmission. This number is slightly exaggerated. Bisexual men with AIDS are often pigeonholed as to getting HIV through gay contact. 


Kennedy says, page 202, that "Dr. Fauci's acolytes claim this [HIV] is supposed to be "the most infectious virus that has ever existed." I doubt that anyone sane has claimed that. 


As I tell my students, the reason that sexually transmitted diseases are (primarily) sexually transmitted is because they are wimps. They go from one moist warm place to another for incubation, and do not survive on toilet seats, or in aerosols, or in the guts of mosquitos.  


To be continued


A Note Regarding Kennedy's Use of Citations. 


Kennedy's book makes a lot of citations. Relatively few of them are directed to foundational work. Instead, he tends to cite news articles, YouTube videos, and sometimes tweets from irrelevant sources as though they represent scientific authority. He quite often quotes people who demonstrate no expertise on a subject. He also quotes people who are experts but leaves out the parts where they disagree with him. 


At the end of Chapter 6, he includes 180 citations. For citation number 151, he points to Elinor Burkett, "HIV, Not Guilty?" Tropic Miami Herald (December 23, 1990). For citation 152, he points to Elinor Burkett, "Is HIV Guilty?" Miami Herald (December 23, 1990). Are these even two different articles?


I call out these two because this "pair" of references are repeated, alternating between "HIV, Not Guilty?" and "Is HIV Guilty?" as citations numbering, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 176, 177. That's how you get 180 citations for a chapter.  


At the end of the same chapter he cites "HIV & AIDS, Fauci's First Fraud," a YouTube video, 20 times. A YouTube video is not a legitimate citation. He might as well say "the internet." The content in the YouTube had to come from somewhere, and if that source is legitimate, that would be a legitimate citation. He cited the same video 8 times in the previous chapter.


Martin Hill Ortiz is a professor of pharmacology and author of several novels. 

My new novel, The Missing Floor, is now available from Oliver-Heber books. The first in the series, Floor 24, is newly available in audio book format. The audiobook has quite a complimentary review here.


The Missing Floor