that this [virus] and this alone was the cause of AIDS".(62) A minimum requirement for making such a claim should be presentation of the following evidence: 1. That all AIDS patients are infected with HTLV-III; 2. Infection with HTLV-III leads to T4-cell depletion, given the assumption that HTLV-III leads to the clinical syndrome by its T4 cytotoxicity. The evidence for the existence of HTLV-III was "viral isolation" and ELISA antibody tests. Even if one assumes that the data presented represents "true isolation", the virus was isolated from less that half (10/21) of AIDS patients with opportunistic infections, and in less than one third (13/43) with Kaposi's sarcoma, then and now the two most characteristic AIDS diseases. Even if the virus could have been isolated from all patients, given the nature of retroviruses and the method used for HTLV-III isolation (cultures, mitogenic stimulation, co- cultivation) the possibility cannot be excluded that the virus did not exist in vivo (in AIDS patients), and that it was a provirus whose expression was facilitated by the culture conditions. The only method used to prove HIV infection in vivo was the antibody tests. Such a test can only be used only after its specificity has been proven by use of the only possible gold standard, the virus itself. This has not been done. Furthermore, the antibody test used by Gallo was ELISA, at present known to be non-reproducible and non-specific. In a study of 1.2 million healthy military applicants conducted by Colonel Donald Burke and his colleagues,(63) it was found that although approximately 1% of all individuals had an initial positive HIV ELISA, only 50% of repeat ELISAs were positive. Of the latter, only approximately one third were associated with two subsequent positive WBs. In Russia, in 1990, out of 20,000 positive ELISAs "only 112 were confirmed" using the WB as a gold standard. In 1991, of approximately 30,000 positive ELISAs, only 66 were conf...
