"So, I believe human herpesvirus-6 is a factor in AIDS progression." --Robert Gallo http://history.nih.gov/NIHInOwnWords/docs/gallo3_01.html
"As far as immunologic damage? Oh, HHV-6A does it much more efficiently than HIV." --Konnie Knox http://www.chronicillnet.org/online/Knox.html
"It seems wherever HHV-6 is going, you're bound to bump into HIV. It's like a cohabitation." --Robert Gallo http://www.aegis.com/news/newsday/1992/ND920206.html
Although Dr. Anthony Fauci, the man in charge of AIDS research in the United States, attended the conference and presented the work his research group had performed on the lymph nodes of AIDS patients, neither he nor any other government scientist chose to comment about the parallel finding about T4 cells in the lymph nodes of AIDS and CFS patients. --Neenyah Ostrom http://www.chronicillnet.org/CFS/Ostrom/forward.html
"HHV-6 has been shown to infect endothelial cells and can establish chronic infection in these cells. . . . The infection of the cells can likely alter function of the endothelial cell and the cell surface, thus leading to activation of the coagulation pathways." --Dr. Joseph Brewer http://www.plazamedicine.com/hhv6/hhv6_1.html
"In an article in the Journal of Clinical Virology (in press), Dr. Dharam Ablashi, one of the world's leading experts on HHV6, concludes that CFS (ME/CFIDS) patients are acquiring HHV-6A as a primary infection as adults and not reactivating it from childhood as many have hypothesized." http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/ablashi.html
"Until the denial among medical professionals about the relationship between the AIDS and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome epidemics is overcome, however, it is difficult to imagine how either epidemic can be ended." --Neenyah Ostrom America's Biggest Cover-up http://www.chronicillnet.org/CFS/Ostrom/book_ToC.html
"Carrigan and Knox, meanwhile, were pursuing a theory that had been considered, and rejected, by researchers earlier - that HHV-6 might be a "co-factor" in AIDS, aiding and abetting HIV in the destruction of victims' immune functions. Soon, Regush relates, Knox was wondering, "was HIV doing any killing, or was HHV-6 the lone assassin?" But in 1997, after Carrigan and Knox found evidence suggesting HHV-6 might be killing alone, the British medical journal The Lancet rejected their paper for publication."
--Mark Nichols
Maclean's http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0012164
"ICL is 'non-HIV AIDS' or AIDS patients in whom HIV is not present. ICL is almost certainly 'HHV-6 AIDS.' The fact that non-HIV AIDS even exists and is acknowledged should be a major media event, a major medical discovery, and a cause for more research dollars. If the general public knew that non-HIV AIDS existed, much doubt would be cast on medical, governmental, and pharmaceutical company dollars spent on AIDS research. But money does play a role in healthcare that is frightening." --Dennis Gersten, M.D. http://www.lightconnectiononline.com/Archive/nov04_colums.htm
"But Dr. Cheney also has CFS patients with very low CD4 cells counts; so low, in fact, that they can be diagnosed as being "non-HIV AIDS," or ICL, cases." --Neenyah Ostrom, America's Biggest Cover-up
"While most researchers have been concerned with HHV-6’s effects on the CNS, recent studies suggest HHV-6 may able to profoundly alter the functioning of the immune system. Rather startlingly it may be able to do so simply by binding to a protein found on the outer membranes of cells." --Cort Johnson http://www.phoenix-cfs.org/HHV-6.htm
Dr. Dharam Ablashi, co-discoverer of the virus and scientific director of the HHV-6 Foundation said, "There is good reason that it has taken a long time to build a case for this virus playing a role in chronic fatigue -- it's very difficult to find. The virus is 'neurotropic' meaning it prefers to live in the brain tissue. It is quite possible to find a significant infection in the brain tissue, but no virus in the serum by DNA testing." Dr. Daniel Peterson, a leading CFS clinician from Sierra Internal Medicine in Nevada, supported this finding. He performed spinal taps on patients with abnormal MRI or severe problems with cognitive functioning and found active HHV-6A virus in the spinal fluid of 20% of those patients. Twenty nine percent of these patients were positive at least once in the serum, and he found many patients who were positive in the spinal fluid but not the blood. Warned Peterson, "Just because you can't find it in the blood doesn't mean it isn't there." http://www.immunesupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm/id/6291
"It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize some very important implications here. Major targets of HHV-6 infection are T-cells, neuronal cells of the brain, central, and peripheral nervous systems, and the bone-marrow. Doctors listen up here! Any virus capable of directly infecting and thus altering the function of these types of cells cannot be good for you! Is it any wonder why many of us are so very ill and we are so dysfunctional. It is about time that doctor's take note and find out these critical facts for themselves by checking on the published literature via Medline since the CDC and the NIH certainly aren't going to tell the whole story yet!"
--Alan Cochetto
http://www.ncf-net.org/forum/infections.html
Thus, AIDS-associated cancers may represent examples of a process of immunosuppression allowing other oncogenic viruses such as EBV or the more recently discovered human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) to be expressed as cancer (Cohen, 1991). --William A. Blattner, M.D. http://rex.nci.nih.gov/NCI_Pub_Interface/raterisk/risks107.html
Two new studies provide evidence that human herpes virus 6 (HHV-6) plays a role in AIDS-associated retinitis, and may even be a cofactor with HIV in the pathogenesis of AIDS. Anne -Marie Fillet and her colleagues in Paris suspected the presence of "an etiological link between HHV-6 and AIDS- associated retinitis" because of the "ubiquitous nature of HHV -6 and its genomic relationship with cytomegalovirus." They report in the Journal of Medical Virology that HHV-6 was found to be present in three cases of AIDS-associated retinitis, but not in a control group and concluded that "HHV-6 infects the retina but ... does not have an exclusive causative role in AIDS-associated retinitis. Meanwhile, another group of researchers, led by Donald R. Carrigan, report in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes and Human Retrovirology that their research shows that "at the time of autopsy every patient with AIDS has an active infection with HHV-6 in essentially every tissue." The researchers conclude, therefore, that HHV-6A, a particular strain of the virus, is a necessary, but not sufficient, component in the pathogenesis of AIDS. Aegis.com http://www.aegis.com/news/ads/1996/AD961882.html
Why have we as a society been so quick to accept a theory for which so little solid evidence exists? Why do we take proclamations by government institutions like the NIH and the CDC, via newscasters and talk show hosts, entirely on faith? The average citizen has no idea how weak the connection really is between HIV and AIDS, and this is the manner in which scientifically insupportable phrases like "the AIDS virus" or "an AIDS test" have become part of the common vernacular despite no evidence for their accuracy. --Rebecca Culshaw "Why I Quit HIV" http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/culshaw1.html