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October 27, 2005

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sea spider

Amy Maxmen, a Harvard graduate student, found that species like Nymphon stormi have claws attached to and operated by the front of their brains. (Photo by Amy Maxmen)

A tale of a venomous dispute

How the spider got a head

By William J. Cromie

Harvard News Office

Living creatures have been found with claws growing out of the front of their brains. They are sea spiders netted off Hawaii by researchers from Harvard and the University of Hawaii.

The discovery adds to the lore of this obscure but bizarre and fascinating group of buglike beasts. They creep around shallow and deep parts of the oceans from warm tropical waters to frigid polar seas. They have bodies so slender that their stomach, intestines, and gonads must be squeezed into their thin legs. Males brood the eggs of their young in specialized arms.

Maxmen with specimens

Maxmen with some of the sea spiders she studies and a land-loving tarantula (second from right). (Staff photo Jon Chase/Harvard News Office)

Sea spiders as large as a foot across have been seen crawling along the deep ocean floor from the windows of submersible research vessels. Most of them, however, including those in this study, are a scant millimeter (.04 inch) in size. But big or small, they boast long snouts, on either side of which grow pincerlike claws.

Zoologists classify them as arthropods, a group that includes all the insects, land-loving spiders, and crustaceans from flea-size shrimp to lobsters. Together they make up the largest class of animals on Earth.

“In all other arthropods, the front section of the brain bears only eyes,” notes Amy Maxmen, 27, a Harvard graduate student who studies sea spiders for her Ph.D. thesis. “Our observation is the first ever of a clawlike appendage arising from that part of the brain. The finding supports assumptions by others that some ancestors of living arthropods once had a pair of pincers or antennae, along with their eyes, extending from the forward parts of their brains.”

“At first sight, this is a rather esoteric finding,” according to two scientists who commented on the discovery as it is reported in the Oct. 20 issue of the science journal Nature. “But if it is correct, it will shake up the field of arthropod evolution.”

“The evolutionary status of the front part of the brain has been a point of contention for a long time,” Maxmen notes. Prior to her study, no living arthropods had anything but eyes growing out of this part of the head. However, it appeared that some extinct arthropods did. Thus, sea spiders, rather than being odd, water-living relatives of ordinary house spiders, may be the only surviving relatives of arthropods who walked the oceans’ floors some 500 million years ago with appendages attached to the front of their heads. Fossils of such beasts reveal that many of them carried large, grasping or branched pincers that have become known as the “great appendage.”

sea spider

This is Anoplodactylus, the spider raised and studied by Amy Maxmen. It may be a previously undiscovered species. (Photo by Amy Maxmen)

According to the commentators, the exciting implication is that sea spiders “are extraordinary living fossils retaining an organization of their heads that all other living arthropods lost hundreds of millions of years ago.”

Headgear

Ordinary spiders, including those who decorate houses with their gossamer webs, also boast pincerlike fangs protruding from their heads, as do scorpions. Flies and other insects wave antennae from their heads. Crustaceans like horseshoe crabs and lobsters display a wide variety of clawed headdresses. But these arise from further back in the brain.

All arthropods are characterized by their segments, jointed parts extending up or down from tail to head. Lobsters, for example, boast segments with slender legs, powerful claws, and antennae. Even arthropod brains are segmented. All the dizzying variety of head antennae, claws, fangs, and pincers come from the second segment of the head. They are operated by nerves in that part of the brain. Only their eyes are innervated by the first segment. Sea spiders are the grand exception.

To zoologists, the segments and their attachments define the biology and evolution of this dominating group of creatures. “Scientists use information about the structure of segments and appendages, combined with an animal’s relationship to its near relatives, to try to understand what went on during evolution,” Maxmen explains. “We are confident that the antennae of flies, fangs of spiders, and claws of horseshoe crabs evolved from the same structure in a common ancestor. But sea spiders are unique; their closest relatives remain unknown. Are they primitive members of a group that includes horseshoe crabs and true spiders, or do they belong in a class of their own?”

That’s the question Maxmen and her collaborators tried to answer by looking at the brains of sea spiders and comparing them with other arthropods. To do so, she worked with Gonzalo Giribet, an associate professor in Harvard’s Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. She did fieldwork at the University of Hawaii with William Browne and Mark Martindale. Browne says that he once saw large congregations of big, fleshy sea spiders, each nearly a foot long, crawling along the deep ocean floor.

Maxmen collected tiny male sea spiders, about one-twenty-fifth of an inch long, living in Kewalo Basin on Oahu. She took eggs from their arms and waited for them to hatch. Such larvae are a mere two thousandths of an inch in size.

After that, came the hard work. Maxmen had to find and trace the development of the nerves that operate their claws. With the help of molecule-size tags and a powerful laser microscope, she found that the nerves came from the first head segment, further forward than nerves that move the claws of true spiders and the appendages of their insect and crustacean cousins. This finding makes it doubtful that land and sea spiders are true sisters.

But the case is not closed. “Our research presents an important difference between sea spiders and land spiders,” Maxmen points out. “Now, additional studies comparing sea spiders to other arthropods are needed before the debate can be put to rest.”

The controversy is by no means a minor dispute waged in a gentle manner in the quiet halls of zoological museums. The two scientists mentioned earlier who commented on Maxmen’s report in Nature, Graham Budd of the University of Uppsala in Sweden and Maximilian Telford of University College London, put it this way: “The conclusions of Maxmen (and her collaborators) overturn entrenched ideas about the body plan of sea spiders, and, furthermore, lend support to some controversial theories of arthropod evolution. Unlike [true spiders], sea spiders lack a poisonous bite, but this paper is bound to inject venom into what is already one of the most controversial of zoological topics.”

Maxmen, who is bound to be at the center of the dispute, says, “Hopefully, criticism will be in the form of new research that our paper has helped to spark.”

Copyright 2005 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Hit & Run

Continuous news, views, and abuse by the Reason staff

October 03, 2005

Does a Mother’s Denial = a Daughter’s Death?

On September 24, the LA Times ran a story titled “A Mother’s Denial, a Daughter’s Death,” which detailed a controversy surrounding the death this spring of the daughter of the prominent “AIDS dissident” Christine Maggiore. (AIDS dissidents question the link between HIV and AIDS, arguing that the former is not necessarily the cause–and certainly not the sole cause–of the latter.)

Despite its news format, the Times’ story essentially argued that three-year-old child, Eliza Jane Scovill, not only died of “AIDS-related pneumonia” but that Maggiore acted negligently as a parent. She had not had the child tested for HIV, reported the Times, and various doctors had not been as conscientious as they should have been in treating the girl; the LAPD is investigating Maggiore and her husband for “possible child endangerment.” However, some new information from the mother raises questions about the Times’ account.

From the Times’ story:

Mainstream AIDS organizations, medical experts and ethicists, long confounded and distressed by this small but outspoken dissident movement, say Eliza Jane’s death crystallizes their fears. The dissenters’ message, they say, is not just wrong, it’s deadly.

“This was a preventable death,” said Dr. James Oleske, a New Jersey physician who never examined Eliza Jane but has treated hundreds of HIV-positive children. “I can tell you without any doubt that, at the outset of her illness, if she was appropriately evaluated, she would have been appropriately treated. She would not have died.

“You can’t write a more sad and tragic story,” Oleske said.

Whole thing here.

Maggiore, who has been HIV positive since 1992, is the founder of Alive and Well, a dissident group. She famously has refused to take any sort of anti-HIV drugs; both her husband, Robin Scovill, and her other child (a 7-year-old boy) have consistently tested negative for HIV. The daughter’s HIV status is apparently unknown. Maggiore never had her tested and the LA Times doesn’t mention it (though one would assume it would be part of the coroner’s special report, which was released on September 15 and was the newshook for the story).

At the science blog Dean’s World, Maggiore has posted two letters. The first is a short letter to the Times (conforming to the paper’s limit of 150 words); the second is a longer version. According to Maggiore, her daughter did not have pneumonia and an autopsy performed in May resulted in a finding of “no apparent cause of death.” From one of the letters:

On her last doctor visit, Eliza-Jane had no cough or respiratory congestion. After collapsing the next day following antibiotic administration, ER doctors performed a series of chest Xrays that revealed nothing. After careful examination of her lungs during a May autopsy, the coroner found no apparent cause of death.

One month and no cause later, the coroner’s office called her pediatrician demanding to know if he knew about my book and HIV status. Despite their discovery, it took three more months for the coroner to decide my daughter died of AIDS-pneumonia.

Is Eliza-Jane’s a diagnosis by association? Unlike her father and brother, did she actually test HIV positive?…

More here. Given the way the Times’ story is framed, you would have thought that’d be one of the first things the paper reported. Maggiore is apparently pursuing an independent pathology report, which should at least settle that very basic question. And, depending on the results, may create more interest in the debate over whether HIV causes AIDS.

Two recent books of interest on this general topic: When AIDS Began: San Francisco and the Making of an Epidemic, by Michelle Cochrane. It’s a cultural studies examination of the very first cases of what became known as AIDS and is a fascinating account of how medicine and politics interact in the codification of new diseases. And Oncogenes, Aneuploidy, and AIDS: A Scientific Life and Times of Peter H. Duesberg, by Harvey Bialy. Bialy, founder of the journal Nature Biotechnology and a well-known researcher in his own right, is one of the leading AIDS dissidents and he has written a strange but interesting book about the cancer researcher Duesberg, whose research career pretty much flatlined after he began arguing that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. The interesting thing is that Duesberg’s rep is making a comeback in cancer research.

Back in 1994, in an article cowritten by, among others, a Nobel Prize winning chemist (Kary Mullis) and an Intelligent Design-promoting law prof (Phillip Johnson), Reason asked “What Causes AIDS?” That story is online here; and voluminous responses to it are here.

Posted by Nick Gillespie at October 3, 2005 11:04 AM

Back to Hit & Run Main Page

Comments

AIDS dissidents? WTF.

That’s it, I’m starting a Radiation Dissidents movement. Radiation doesn’t cause cancer!

Comment by: Xmas at October 3, 2005 12:03 PM

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Part of the controversy is that Maggiore apparently breastfed her daughter. I don’t know if that would increase the risk of passing Aids to her or not though.

Comment by: Todd Fletcher at October 3, 2005 12:04 PM

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We all should cross our fingers and hope Al Gore invented AIDS.

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 12:07 PM

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At the science blog Dean’s World

WTF? Are you being sarcastic? Dean Esmay knows as much about science as I do how to speak Yanomamo, and the only thing he’s well known for amongst real scientific and medical bloggers is HIV-AIDS denial crankery.

You ought to be ashamed of yourself for putting Esmay and Maggiore’s nonsense up as if there were a shred of substance to it - what next, reports from the Institute of Historical Review? This woman pretty much murdered her daughter, as surely as piping carbon monoxide into a sleeping person’s room counts as homicide, yet here you are trying to defend it out of some delusional libertarian ideological leanings? Where does the right of a child to live regardless of her mother’s rank stupidity factor into any of this? Few things do as much to discredit libertarianism as an ideology for fools with heads in their clouds as posts like this one which seek to grant credibility to people who are, quite bluntly, extremely dangerous morons.

Comment by: Abiola Lapite at October 3, 2005 12:20 PM

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there are so many things that discredit libertarianism in the eyes of many; this is quite low on the totem pole.

Comment by: dhex at October 3, 2005 12:29 PM

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“Science blog?” Since when? On his front page, the posts are about:

–Ralph Reed

–Harriet Miers

– Intelligent Design

– Ramadan

– Rudy Giuliani

– the linked story

–Iraq

– RINOs

. . . science blog, my ass.

Also, Dean Esmay is a drunk, so, you know.

Comment by: Phil at October 3, 2005 12:37 PM

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Though there are many reasons to be extremely skeptical of anything this woman has to say, this line from “the medical establishment” deserves just as much scoffing:

She would not have died.

Huh? If they are so certain she died of AIDS, it’s dangerously misleading to imply that any sort of treatment could be GUARANTEED to extend her life, let alone “keep her from dying”. For how long? I hadn’t realized no one was dying of AIDS anymore! Problem solved, let’s all go home.

Comment by: linguist at October 3, 2005 12:43 PM

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I wish Reason could get the authors (Mullis et al.) to do a follow up. I had no idea about most of that stuf, but want to know how things have gone in the last 10 years on the causation question.

Comment by: Dave W. at October 3, 2005 12:53 PM

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XMAS

It’s worth noting that there is a great deal of controversy over the link between radiation and cancer. Some have offered evidence that low level exposure may even prevent cancer. Here’s one story:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/091905D.html

This is not to suggest that radiation can’t cause cancer, only that the issue is more complicated than most people believe. With HIV, the question isn’t simply one of if HIV causes AIDS but one of what other factors should be considered…why do some people live for decades with no symptoms while some die in a couple of years?

Comment by: Eryk Boston at October 3, 2005 01:16 PM

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Dave W. (and others like you),

How difficult is it for you to go to PubMed and look up the voluminous literature yourselves, rather than relying on axe-grinding cranks like Kary Mullis to do your filtering for you?

Mullis’ nobel prize for his discovery of PCR no more entitles him to speak with authority on the nature of the causal relationship between HIV and AIDS than Albert Einstein’s prize made him an eminence in the field of cancer research, and amongst researchers active in the field of AIDS research - which explicitly excludes people like Peter Duesberg, who’s never actually done any research on the topic - there simply is no “controversy” whatsoever: HIV is the cause of AIDS, period, and any supposedly knowledgeable person who denies it at this point is either an idiot or a lunatic of the sort which populate the Institute for Historical Review and the Discovery Institute.

Comment by: Abiola Lapite at October 3, 2005 01:17 PM

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XMAS

It’s worth noting that there is a great deal of controversy over the link between radiation and cancer. Some have offered evidence that low level exposure may even prevent cancer. Here’s one story:

http://www.techcentralstation.com/091905D.html

This is not to suggest that radiation can’t cause cancer, only that the issue is more complicated than most people believe. With HIV, the question isn’t simply one of if HIV causes AIDS but one of what other factors should be considered…why do some people live for decades with no symptoms while some die in a couple of years?

Comment by: Eryk Boston at October 3, 2005 01:20 PM

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Can the state prove that she acted negligently? When does the state have the right to over rule parental decisions about a child’s treatment? Do these same rules apply to other groups such as devout Christian Scientists?

Tragic as this case is, it raises troubling questions such as these about individual parental choices versus government controls. As wrong headed as I think Maggiore’s decisions were, she has the right to make those decisions without interference of the state unless they can prove incompetence.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 01:28 PM

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Mr. Lapite,

It is you who should be ashamed of yourself.

What kind of libertarian is incapable of examining facts, or would condemn another for posting facts as they emerge in a developing story? All you have done is to create a new embarassing low for your ilk, and demonstrate that your mind shuts down when you are confronted by facts that mitigate your blind hatred of HIV skeptics. Instead you wave a pitchfork at Nick Gillespie for acting as a journalist should.

Mr. Gillspie’s relayed Ms. Maggiore’s first hand information about the facts that are known and those that are not known about her daughter’s cause of death. To wit: ELIZA JANE SCOVILL WHO COLLAPSED FOLLOWING ANTIBIOTIC ADMINSITRATION, SHOWED CLEAR LUNGS THROUGHOUT HER EXAMINATIONS BY THREE DOCTORS AND THE CORONOER OF THE FIRST AUTOPSY FOUND “NO APPARENT CAUSE OF DEATH.”

Four months later, a second coroner puts “AIDS related pneumonia,” as the cause of death, which is an impossibility with clear lungs. If he meant PCP pneumonia, that is a disease that takes a long time to manifest and cannot occur in the presence of clear lungs.

On May 29, Robin Scovill was told that the “common,” and “obvious” had been ruled out as causes of death and that they would now have to turn to investigations of chemical, toxins, or poisons. The symptoms of “AIDS,” Scovill was told, would absolutely have fallen under “obvious,” because they “are so obvious.”

Robin and Charlie (Eliza Jane’s brother) are HIV negative. There is no evidence as yet suggesting that Eliza Jane was HIV positive. This information has not been revealed. Maggiore’s letter asks: “Unlike her father and brother, did she actually test HIV positive?” and alluded to having to “wait for the conclusion of an independent investigation.”

If you don’t think all of this merits journalistic scrutiny of any kind than you are an ideological blind man.

Nick Gillespie is a journalist and editor. In this country we don’t tend to attack journalists and editors for doing their job–probing stories.

He said nothing about what the “truth” might be but only REPORTED a recent development in which the mother spoke, having already been tried and sentenced by the LA Times. The mother speaking apparently was too much for you. That you have no empathy or decency is clear. That you know nothing about the word “liberty” is also clear. And what you think a good “libertarian” might be is something too frightening to contemplate.

“Better to carve suns and moons on the joints of crosses,” as the Czeslaw Milosz poem says, “…to implore protection against the mute and treacherous might, than to proclaim, as you did, an inhuman thing.”

Comment by: Leo at October 3, 2005 01:31 PM

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B.D., children are not simply the chattel of their parents. They are citizens who deserve the same protection of their lives and liberties as anyone else does, and when their parents’ decisions endanger those lives and liberties, it is the responsibility of the state to interceded to protect them.

Comment by: Phil at October 3, 2005 01:45 PM

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What Leo said. Especially the poetry.

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 01:48 PM

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Phil,

I disagree. I never, ever want the state interceding.

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 01:55 PM

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Up next, Nick gives his “thumbs up” review of Kevin Trudeau’s “Natural Cures THEY Don’t Want You To Know About.” Then he’ll hold a round table discussion on Intelligent Design, followed up by an essay on why the world is flat.

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at October 3, 2005 02:07 PM

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With regards to “clear lungs,” I don’t know exactly what that means, but end stage AIDS with PCP is notorious for presenting without pulmonary findings on x-ray or auscultation. The fluid that you would see on x-ray or hear on exam comes from the body’s immune response, and in the end stages, this can be absent. AIDS is a notorious confounder in this sense - that the normal hallmark of infection - inflammation - can be absent. The standard of care for patients with AIDS who present with shortness of breath is presumptive pneumonia, even without objective findings.

Whoever said that AIDS related pneuomia is impossible with clear lungs should go back to medical school. Or at least remember that whenever the multiple choice question says “impossible” or “never,” it’s wrong.

Three months is not a long time for autopsy results to come back, either. Actually, that’s a pretty good autopsy turn-around. The antibody test results should prove illuminating.

Comment by: AML at October 3, 2005 02:20 PM

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I disagree. I never, ever want the state interceding.

If it were just this loopy woman, I would agree. She’s an adult. She is free to make her own decision on her health. If she wants to ignore medical science and die a horrible death, that’s her call.

Her daughter, on the other hand, didn’t have the capacity to make her own descisions. How “libertarian” is it to leave her to the mercy of her mother’s choices?

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at October 3, 2005 02:45 PM

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On a lighter and tangentially related note, I can’t believe nobody’s channeled the Onion yet:

U.S. Launches AIDS-Awareness Campaign In Botswana: ‘You All Have AIDS,’ Says U.S.

Comment by: Loli at October 3, 2005 02:59 PM

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Ruthless-

So when kids are beaten or raped by their parents, you still think the state should stay out of it? Was South Carolina wrong to imprison Susan Smith after she drowned her two boys?

I’m with Phil and Akira on this one–your parental rights end once they start endangering your child’s life.

Comment by: Jennifer at October 3, 2005 03:08 PM

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I disagree. I never, ever want the state interceding.

So you don’t agree that children in the U.S. are rights-bearing individuals deserving of the full protection of their government’s protection of the rights to life and liberty against force or fraud? Just so we’re clear. At what age do people gain the expectation of recognition of their rights?

Comment by: Phil at October 3, 2005 03:13 PM

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No, the daughter didn’t have the capacity to make her own decisions. That decision is widely recognized as being in the hands of the parent and we provide parents with wide leeway in this process. Unless the parent can be proven to intentionally causing harm or neglect or is incompetent, the state generally steps aside and lets the guardian make these medical decisions.

Maggiore honestly believed she was doing the right thing. I disagree. Still, I very much doubt that she was mentally incompetent or intentionally causing harm. She may have made what I consider unwise, ignorant, and stupid decisions (just as I feel certain religious sects do when they make medical decisions based on some reading of their revered texts), however in this case I do not think the state should have stepped in to do anything. I, for one, do not want the state stepping in to play nanny and second guessing such decisions without proving mental incompetance or intentional harm.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 03:17 PM

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No, the daughter didn’t have the capacity to make her own decisions. That decision is widely recognized as being in the hands of the parent and we provide parents with wide leeway in this process. Unless the parent can be proven to intentionally causing harm or neglect or is incompetent, the state generally steps aside and lets the guardian make these medical decisions.

Maggiore honestly believed she was doing the right thing. I disagree. Still, I very much doubt that she was mentally incompetent or intentionally causing harm. She may have made what I consider unwise, ignorant, and stupid decisions (just as I feel certain religious sects do when they make medical decisions based on some reading of their revered texts), however in this case I do not think the state should have stepped in to do anything. I, for one, do not want the state stepping in to play nanny and second guessing such decisions without proving mental incompetence or intentional harm.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 03:20 PM

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No, the daughter didn’t have the capacity to make her own decisions. That decision is widely recognized as being in the hands of the parent and we provide parents with wide leeway in this process. Unless the parent can be proven to intentionally causing harm or neglect or is incompetent, the state generally steps aside and lets the guardian make these medical decisions.

Maggiore honestly believed she was doing the right thing. I disagree. Still, I very much doubt that she was mentally incompetent or intentionally causing harm. She may have made what I consider unwise, ignorant, and stupid decisions (just as I feel certain religious sects do when they make medical decisions based on some reading of their revered texts), however in this case I do not think the state should have stepped in to do anything. I, for one, do not want the state stepping in to play nanny and second guessing such decisions without proving mental incompetence or intentional harm.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 03:22 PM

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No, the daughter didn’t have the capacity to make her own decisions. That decision is widely recognized as being in the hands of the parent and we provide parents with wide leeway in this process. Unless the parent can be proven to intentionally causing harm or neglect or is incompetent, the state generally steps aside and lets the guardian make these medical decisions.

Maggiore honestly believed she was doing the right thing. I disagree. Still, I very much doubt that she was mentally incompetent or intentionally causing harm. She may have made what I consider unwise, ignorant, and stupid decisions (just as I feel certain religious sects do when they make medical decisions based on some reading of their revered texts), however in this case I do not think the state should have stepped in to do anything. I, for one, do not want the state stepping in to play nanny and second guessing such decisions without proving mental incompetence or intentional harm.

I think that there are times when the government can and should step in, but I think that the bar must be set intentionally high and well defined.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 03:25 PM

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Ugh, sorry for the cross posting…I didn’t realize that it was happening. Label me embarrassed.

Comment by: B.D. at October 3, 2005 03:34 PM

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Dean’s World is a “science blog” in the sense that we discuss issues of science several times a week, but we cover lots of other things too.

As for my being a “drunk” — character assassination is such a logical argument, isn’t it? I had some problems with alcohol that I went public with a couple of years ago, so now it’s a free for all on my character eh? Well, f**k you too.

Anyway: The HIV skeptics (other than Maggiore) I’ve dealt with are PhD level biologists with numerous peer-reviewed publications to their name, and a couple of journalists who’ve been covering the issue for over 20 years. That they are so often personally vilified, and often outright lied about, ought to tell you something about those doing the vilifying.

If you cannot respect the right of fully credentialed and qualified scientists to disagree with their peers, what is it you think science really is all about?

Comment by: Dean Esmay at October 3, 2005 03:52 PM

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“How “libertarian” is it to leave her to the mercy of her mother’s choices?”

Akira,

I’m an anarchist with faith that somebody–other than government–would intercede.

Even as a libertarian, the more extreme the circumstance, the less able the government is to handle it, eh? Duh.

I love kids, really.

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 03:58 PM

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Dave W

I agree. I actually remember reading the article when it came out–it was one of the first copies of reason I ever saw. Since then, nothing. Maybe the editors have been, ahem…silenced?

Comment by: JMoore at October 3, 2005 04:13 PM

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Hahahaha. Dean Esmay is suddenly opposed to character assassination. That’s cute. This is the same guy who recently called about a dozen other bloggers ‘racists’ on his site, right?

Comment by: Anonymush at October 3, 2005 04:13 PM

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Are we going to discuss the facts here or is this all just a jihad on me for talking to biologists who disagree with their peers?

Comment by: Dean Esmay at October 3, 2005 04:43 PM

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DEAR AML:

It is true that xrays can be deceptive with PCP but the illness is virtually always diagnosably with lung biopsy. More germaine here is the fact that PCP is symptomatic and not asymptomatic. It has clear signs. The text below is cut and pasted from none other than GMHC’s website:

Who is at risk for PCP?

Although PCP is largely preventable and treatable, it remains one of the leading causes of illness and death in people with HIV. Because some people with HIV are more at risk of developing PCP than others, it is strongly recommended that the following people with HIV take medication to prevent PCP:

People who have T-cell counts below 200;

People who have oral thrush or unexplained fevers lasting more than two weeks, whether or not their T-cell counts below 200;

People who have had PCP before, no matter their current T-cell count.

What are the signs and symptoms of PCP?

In people with HIV, it is common for the symptoms of PCP to develop slowly, so that you may not realize something is wrong until you are quite sick. Also, many of the symptoms of PCP can be mistaken for many other infections.

Fever, chest tightness, shortness of breath, lack of energy, dry cough and weight loss are all possible signs of PCP. Weakness may be the only symptom if you are taking medication to prevent PCP. Talk to your doctor right away if you have any of these symptoms.

(Note: Eliza Jane apparently had none of these symptoms, but rather, a runny nose, and an ear infection. Nor did she have the blue lips always associated with pneumonia.)

Back to GMHC text:

How does a doctor tell if I have PCP?

The doctor will usually order a chest x-ray if she suspects that you have PCP. However, it is common for people with HIV to have PCP but not have it show up on their chest x-ray, especially when the illness is caught early.

In order to make a definitive diagnosis of PCP, your doctor needs to find P. carinii in the lungs and examine it under a microscope. This can be done by (1) taking a sputum sample (thick fluid from deep in the lungs); (2) doing a procedure called a bronchoscopy that looks at the lung area with a lens attached to a tube; or (3) doing a procedure called a lung biopsy which takes a sample of the tissue in the lungs to test for infection.

–

According to her mother, Eliza Jane showed no clear signs of pneumonia and certainly not advanced pneumonia. I don’t know what she died of and neither do you. The LA Times omitted the crystal of questions and mysteries around her death and presented it as fact that she died of “AIDS related pneumonia,” when in fact the original coroner’s report found nothing of the kind. Does the ghost manifestation of AIDS related pneumonia extend its invisibility to include no damage to the lungs at autopsy?

I repeat here a line from Maggiore’s letter:

“After being transported to a nearby hospital by ambulance, emergency room doctors took a series of chest x-rays that revealed nothing to account for her dire condition. …During an autopsy performed on May 18, my daughters lungs were carefully examined, weighed and measured. The coroner released her body to a mortuary the following day having found no apparent cause of death.”

The point is that questions remain. Is it your contention that there are no legitimate questions here?

Comment by: Leo at October 3, 2005 05:04 PM

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Ruthless: Let me pose the following hypo. You have a child with a partner. Sometime later, you break up, and your partner gets custody. Your partner then tells you that s/he has become a Christian Scientist, and under no circumstances will s/he take the child to a hospital, preferring to rely on prayer to cure the child.

Still think the state has no role?

Comment by: brett at October 3, 2005 05:53 PM

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Certainly there are legitimate questions. That’s what makes autopsy so interesting. I was merely taking issue with your mistaken commentary about her lungs being “clear” as ruling out pneumonia, something that is certainly not the case.

With pneumocystis, one would expect some degree of respiratory distress that would bring the patient to the physician in the first place. Diagnosis could be made from sputum samples, which in AIDS-associated pneumocystis are usually packed with the organisms. Bronchoscopy, etc. can be done as well. Having a high index of suspicion helps.

I don’t know what happened to the little girl, but it’s certainly abnormal for healthy children to just drop dead. My point was simply that a clear chest does not rule out PCP, and that a seemingly extended time to result the autopsy was in no way suspicious.

Comment by: AML at October 3, 2005 06:24 PM

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If I were parent who considered himself a “Nutrition dissident”, would that give me the right to starve my children to death? Pretty sure the law says no.

Comment by: Dave at October 3, 2005 07:27 PM

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My favorite part of the “AIDS is fake” argument is the total blank out on Africa. Remind me again what it was that really killed all those millions of Africans with AIDS. Was it all the poppers they did in gay discos back in the 70’s, or was it the anti-HIV drugs they never got a chance to take?

Comment by: Dave at October 3, 2005 07:29 PM

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Nick,

Thank you very much for your kind words about my biography of Peter.

I must, however, correct two misconceptions you have about my professional accomplishments.

I was the founding scientific editor of Nature Biotechnology, and am much better known as a researcher into artistic spaces than biological ones as can be seen here (http://bialystocker.net)

Harvey

Comment by: Harvey Bialy at October 3, 2005 07:47 PM

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There is no argument that “AIDS is fake,” Dave, but rather that is is grossly mis-characterized and the statistical projections for it hallucinatory.

The trouble is that dozens of clinical symptoms of illness and/or immune suppression were assigned to “AIDS” (post 1984) in the presence of proteins said to be strictly associated with a novel retrovirus. (HIV positive)

On the land continent of Africa, the population has grown by 164 million since the mid 1980s.

There have continued to be mass deaths also on the continent of Africa. Many of the diseases formerly called by other names have been called “AIDS” in Africa since the phenomenon of post-modern AIDS epidemiology. No HIV test is required for a diagnosis of AIDS in Africa but rather a defintion that is indistinguishable from most tropical disease definitions, such as malaria, TB etc. The defintion for “AIDS” in Africa, established in Bangui in the 1980s, is merely this: Diarrhea, fever, vomiting, weight loss, abdominal pain.

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that proper death statistics are non existent or scant in most African countries. It is then further compounded by the fact that most African nations are ruled by despotic governments, prone to corruption and all too willing to open their coffers to “AIDS” and pharmaceutical funding, and to render their people subject to the exploding market of human experimentation.

If you wish to abide by the racist, unfounded and even preposterous idea that African sex somehow (via “dry sex” etc) produces an epidemic spread of HIV, which has not been seen in any industrialized nation, you are welcome to it.

Western data (Padian and others) states that it takes on average 1000 unprotected sexual encounters for a single transmission of HIV to occur–this despite the fact that in Padian’s famous study, in fact, NO transmission occurred, despite unprotected sex over a period of 10 years, in 175 discordant couples.

Since you seem to feel you know so much about Africa, can you shed light on how such a discrepancy is possible?

South African writer Rian Malan began his inquiry standing firmly in your ill informed spot, and spent a year investigating the many questions raised by Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS panel. His story in Rolling Stone, in 2001, wound up incredulously, nervously, but firmly on the side of the “skeptics.” He is a very good and very honest reporter. He found death and he found old diseases but he found no NEW inexplicable rise in death in South Africa due to “AIDS.” Among other revelations, coffin makers were complaining of having no business.

If I were you I would steer clear of Africa, because you are likely to get blown out of the water by people who have actually investigated the matter.

Comment by: Leo at October 3, 2005 07:52 PM

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Isn’t it rich that Gillespie or whoever is moderating this board allowed the so-called AIDS “dissidents” who are always claiming to be “suppressed” by the “scientific establishment” to continue spreading their falsehoods at will on here even as my own comments are disappeared down a “moderation” cue?

That’s it - my respect for this site as an oasis of actual reason on the web has just gone down the drain: consider me one reader lost permanently to your efforts. I’m not going to waste my time on a forum on which HIV-AIDS deniers are given free rein while those who object to the murderous consequences of their advocacy are muzzled.

Comment by: Abiola Lapite at October 3, 2005 07:53 PM

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Is There Evidence AIDS is Sexually Transmitted?

David Rasnick, Visiting Scientist, UC Berkeley

rasnick@mindspring.com

January 20, 2003

I challenge [doctors] to come up with the names, even one will do, of the persons documented to have shown that AIDS or HIV is sexually transmitted. I know of no such study.

In fact, the scientific, medical literature is full of evidence that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted. It is only assumed that they are.

The results of the world’s best scientific study that attempted to measure the efficiency of heterosexual transmission of antibodies to HIV was conducted by Nancy Padian and her colleagues (Padian NS, et al. 1997: Heterosexual transmission of human immunodeficiency virus in northern California: results from a ten-year study. Am J Epidemiol 146: 350-7).

The most striking result of the ten-year study is that Padian et al. did not observe any HIV-negative sex partners becoming

HIV-positive from years of unprotected sexual intercourse with their HIV-positive partners. I repeat?NOT ONE HIV-negative sex partner became positive during the 10- year study. Therefore, the observed transmission efficiency was ZERO.

However, to avoid reporting a zero efficiency for the sexual transmission of HIV, Padian and colleagues assumed that the

HIV-positive sex partners in their study must have become positive through sexual intercourse before entering the study. Using that assumption, they estimated that an HIV-negative woman would have to have sexual intercourse 1,000

times with HIV-positive men before becoming HIV-positive herself. Even more astounding, HIV-negative men would have to have 8000 sexual contacts before becoming HIV-positive.

Virtually identical figures have been reported by others (Gisselquist, D., et al., HIV infections in sub- Saharan Africa not explained by sexual or vertical transmission. Int J STD AIDS, 2002. 13: p. 657-666; Jacquez, J.A., et al., Role of the primary infection in epidemics of HIV infection in gay cohorts. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr, 1994. 7: p.1169-1184).

Given these figures and that the US Centers for Disease Control estimates that one million Americans have antibodies to HIV raises an enormous problem for sexually transmitted HIV. Since there are around 280 million men and women in the USA, that means that on average an HIV-negative woman would have to have random sexual intercourse 140,000 times?and a man eight times that number?in order to become HIV-positive (assuming equal distribution of HIV between the sexes).

Below are additional examples in the literature that neither AIDS nor HIV is sexually transmitted.

- None of the husbands of HIV positive women became antibody positive to HIV over a three-year period. (Lancet ii: 581 (1985), Stewart et al.}

- No transmission of HIV was observed between couples in which all of the women were HIV positive and in which at least 100 sexual contacts occurred. (JAMA 259: 3037 (1988), Padian et al.)

- After a mean of 3-1/2 years of unprotected intercourse, with an average of 50 sexual encounters per year, only one hemophiliac wife became HIV positive. (American Journal of Medicine 85: 472 (1988), Kim et al.)

- No transmission of T-cell abnormalities from hemophiliacs with AIDS to their spouses. (JAMA 251: 1450 (1984), Kreiss et al.)

- “The number of American and European heterosexuals who have had sexual relations with a prostitute, who have no other

admitted risk factors (such as drug abuse), and who have subsequently developed antibody to HIV can be

counted on the fingers of one hand. Sex with a prostitute is not even listed as a risk category by the American CDC.” (Rethinking AIDS, Root-Bernstein, 1993)

- “Non-drug abusing prostitutes have no higher risk of AIDS than other women.” (AIDS: the second decade, report from the

National Academy of Sciences USA, 1990)

The same is true for prostitutes in Germany, Zurich, Vienna, London, Paris, Pardenone (Italy), and Athens. (Klinische

Wochenschrift 65: 287 (1987), Luthy et al.; Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 98: 697 (1986), Kopp & Dangl-Erlach; Lancet ii: 1424 (1985), Brenky-Fandeux & Fribourg-Blanc; British Medical Journal 297: 1585 (1988), Day et al.; Scand J Infect Dis 21: 353 (1988), Hyams et al.)

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Recommend Message 3 of 19 in Discussion

From: Paul King Sent: 3/24/2004 8:37 PM

If AIDS is sexually transmitted how can one explain these figures: -

AIDS CASES IN 2001

http://www.avert.org/eurosum.htm

France 1528

Holland (legal prostitution) 45

Sweden (legal prostitution/very sexually liberated) 42

Denmark (as above) 74

These current statistics hardly suggest a link between AIDS and sexual activity.

….so does that mean that people in France are less likely to use condoms than in Holland, Denmark and Sweden?

Actually the EXACT REVERSE IS TRUE.

Durex study: -

[url]http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/10198/96961[/url]

“The number 2 country in the Durex survey (amount of sexual activity) is the Netherlands, where people say they have sex 158 times a year, followed by Denmark at 152. The average among all the countries is 139, with the USA falling just short at 138.

While people are still underprotecting themselves from sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and unwanted pregnancies, according to the Durex Global Sex Survey, the French are the least likely to have had unprotected sex. Just 22 percent said they have not used protection, compared to 61 percent in Sweden who did not…(and so on and so forth)

Comment by: Paul at October 3, 2005 08:05 PM

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“Ruthless: Let me pose the following hypo. You have a child with a partner. Sometime later, you break up, and your partner gets custody. Your partner then tells you that s/he has become a Christian Scientist, and under no circumstances will s/he take the child to a hospital, preferring to rely on prayer to cure the child.

Still think the state has no role?”

Brett,

I feel guilty distracting from the real issue here, but your hypothetical proves my point that the state always has its metaphysical head up its metaphysical ass: my partner shouldn’t get custody on a break-up.

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 09:50 PM

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Abiola Lapite,

We can arrange for you to meet Mona.

Happy now?

Comment by: Ruthless at October 3, 2005 09:53 PM

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I’m sure the alternative medicine woo-woos who have flocked on this blog to will disregard this link because it comes from the evil medical “establishment” and their wicked scientific method. But…

http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/hiv-aids.html

By the way: Nick, my subscription just expired. If you’ve made this pseudo-scientific bullshit your editorial stand, then I’m not going to renew. I encourage that all current Reason subscribers who still believe in real science and the integrity of modern medicine to exercise their economic liberty and either cancel their subscriptions, or decline to renew.

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at October 3, 2005 10:26 PM

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I encourage that all current Reason

Sigh… It’s hard to make a heroic last stand when you can’t fix your typos.

Comment by: Akira MacKenzie at October 3, 2005 10:57 PM

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Nick, you really let us down this time.

Comment by: shecky at October 3, 2005 11:47 PM

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The following review of Bialy’s book, Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg, appears on Amazon. I believe it is worth a wider audience.

——————————————-

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

Duesberg’s Huxley, September 10, 2004

Reviewer: William Breeze (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Bialy does for Duesberg what T.H. Huxley did for Darwin, by taking up the cudgels for a fellow scientist and his thinking. Employing deft characterizations and a mordant wit (to which he occasionally gives free rein with delightful effect), he provides an incisive understanding of the scientific and social issues behind cancer genetics and AIDS research. Written from the unique vantages of a longtime friend and colleague, and from within the hallowed precincts of the world’s oldest continually published scientific periodical, Nature, the book gives a real “inside analysis” of biomedical science since the advent of the modern biotechnologies. The book is elegantly composed and has an overall sonata allegro form, with the first and last chapters developing the various themes of cancer genetics and the middle three featuring the story of HIV and its relationship to AIDS. The first person style, and the clear but rigorous scientific history that it relates, make it both accessible and enjoyable to the general reader. It is guaranteed to provoke a few smiles and many grimaces from the stalwarts of HIV and oncogene (cancer gene) theory.

Bialy is a molecular biologist who was involved in the genesis of biotechnology as the founding scientific editor of the most prominent journal in the field (Nature Biotechnology). His literary talent allows him to guide the reader through a gradual exposition of the scientific issues while telling the cautionary tale of Duesberg’s courageous struggle to restore objectivity, fairness and intellectual integrity to cancer and AIDS research. It shows just how vulnerable the great tradition of hypothesis, experiment, proof, peer review and publication can be to manipulation by vested interests, media, and government institutions with public health party lines. When these close ranks they wield a formidable, monolithic power that can dictate the way science is allowed to proceed. Pit against this a scientist at the top of his field who commits the unforgivable ’sin’ of challenging an orthodoxy he himself was critical in establishing, and the predictable outcome is marginalization, ridicule and out-of-hand dismissal. Duesberg suffered all of this. Yet he continued, in an amazingly dogged way as the reader learns, to apply the high standards of scientific proof that had made him so famous, feared and respected in the intellectual salad days of molecular biology. These are the elements of a classic heroic tale, but rather than portray Duesberg as a white knight, Bialy more interestingly and accurately doesn’t portray him at all. Instead he presents the unadulterated thinking of this immensely reasonable, patient and persistent scientist, who is if anything an anti-hero. The plot, accordingly, is not that of an epic but of a dark mystery — the central one, left unsolved and for the astonished reader to ponder, being “why?” The book reveals “how,” “what” and “who” in a way that I found irresistible.

Whilst Peter Duesberg’s rethinking of AIDS dogma has not as yet become even semi-respectable (although this book could help change that if enough people actually read it), the book’s final chapters show how his two decades of criticism of qualitative oncogene theory led him to his now well-recognized quantitative aneuploidy (numerical chromosomal abnormalities) theory of cancer causation.

Comment by: George Quasha at October 3, 2005 11:51 PM

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Wow, the nutcases (aka Paul and Leo) are out in force tonight. Certainly I had thought that the transmission of the HIV virus through sexual contact was as well established as, say, evolutionary theory.

But it seems that there are nuts in every tree, evolutionary or otherwise. I was a little surprised to see Nancy Padian of UCSF in Rasnick’s above list of quoted papers, considering how much work she’s done in the field of male/female transmission of HIV and the prevention thereof. Obviously, if she’d read her own work, she would realize that she was wasting her time.

Looking more closely at the reference, though, I found no mention of her name on the paper. Rather, it was by JA Levy and called “The transmission of AIDS: the case of the infected cell.” That’s Jay A Levy. The man who in a a recent interview called the cervix a “hot spot” for HIV infection, and initially proposed the idea of using diaphragmns to prevent infection in women back in 1989. Obviously, he, too, needs a refresher on his own work. Or, at least, on the art of selective quotation.

I don’t have access to the medical library from home, but so far, his references aren’t looking very well-cited or convincing.

Then there’s all this schtick about how HIV is defined differently in Africa, can’t prove it’s actually HIV, could just be diarrhea from eating a bad oyster, blah blah blah.

Of course diseases are diagnosed differently in different circumstances. HIV antibody testing and CD4 counts aren’t commonly available or affordable in many places, so a syndrome with a high probability of being HIV is diagnosded instead. This is an acceptable practice here in the US as well. If I see a seven year old kid with dew-drop on a rose-petal lesions on his skin than began on his trunk and spread to his extremities, I don’t need to check his serum for Varicella Zoster to diagnose the chicken pox.

Likewise, a young man with unexplained weight loss, night sweats, shortness of breath, rectal condyloma, diarrhea and a rash on his foot that looks like a peach soaked onto brown paper has AIDS. The CD4 counts simply confirms the finding.

I’m certain that there are misdiagnoses in Africa. Hodgkin’s lymphoma, for example, might be a mimic, as might other infections. But properly applied, a syndromic diagnosis is extremely effective, and in the case of Africa, is well-supported by serological evidence.

Not that I’m going to convince anyone determined to deny our modern viral holocaust, or fixated with the religion of the Almighty Conspiracy, but there are certain absurdities that must be challenged. Lives, quite literally, depend on them.

So, back under your rocks, mon cher wackos. This is, after all, _Reason_.

Comment by: CML at October 3, 2005 11:51 PM

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And this review by the well respected scientist George Miklos, who was instrumental in the sequencing of the human genome, appeared in Bialy’s, former journal Nature Biotechnology

Oncogenes, Aneuploidy and AIDS: A Scientific Life & Times of Peter H. Duesberg.

By: Harvey Bialy

Published by The Institute of Biotechnology, National University of M