A Virus That Causes An "Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome" in Pigs May Be The Real Cause Of CFS And AIDS

From Neenyah Ostrom's book, America's Biggest Cover-up available on Amazon.

 

It may seem silly to look at a pig illness to identify the cause of CFS, but it really isn't. Pigs and humans pass viruses back and forth all the time; in fact, flu viruses change from year to year because they pass from people to pigs and back again and in so doing, mutate, or change, considerably.

 

There is an illness of pigs, African Swine Fever, that an expert in the field has called "an acquired immune deficiency syndrome of pigs," because it produces symptoms that are so similar to those of AIDS. African Swine Fever is caused by a virus, African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV).

 

Like AIDS, there is no treatment for African Swine Fever, and no vaccine to prevent ASFV infection. When African Swine Fever is suspected in a herd of pigs, the entire herd is slaughtered to prevent the spread of the very contagious, deadly virus. Because of the vast economic implications such slaughters of pig herds would have on U.S. agriculture, it is against the law to study ASFV on mainland U.S.A. The only place where the virus can be studied, by law, is the Plum Island Animal Disease Center on Plum Island, off the shore of Long Island, New York.

 

Similarities between the symptoms of ASF and AIDS -- as well as the fact that Haiti, one of the areas in which AIDS appeared earliest, had recently had an ASFV epidemic -- caught the attention of a young scientist in 1983. Dr. Jane Teas, who was working as a researcher at Harvard, began collaborating with Boston University scientist Dr. John Beldekas to try to figure out if ASFV could be causing AIDS.

 

In 1986, Drs. Teas and Beldekas published a report in the British medical journal The Lancet showing that they had found evidence of ASFV infection in AIDS patients. But after that, the trail was stopped cold, when a group of scientists gathered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (on Long Island) issued a memorandum that no further research should be performed to test the ASFV hypothesis. Usually, when a line of research proves not to be fruitful, scientists naturally stop pursuing it; it was, however, unprecedented for a group of scientists gathered by the government to declare that a line of research should no longer be pursued. That is, however, exactly what the scientists gathered by the USDA at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory did.

 

Shortly thereafter, however, two research groups to whom Dr. Teas and Dr. Beldekas had provided information and scientific materials announced almost simultaneous discoveries of a "new" human virus, found in AIDS patients: HHV-6.

 

HHV-6 and ASFV are very similar viruses; they are the same size, and they infect and kill the same kinds of cells. They both cause bleeding problems (they are "hemorrhagic" viruses), and both attack the immune system, allowing secondary (or "opportunistic") infections to become fatal. They both cause neurological disease. Both viruses mutate (change) easily.

 

Furthermore, both HHV-6 and ASFV are characterized by having many strains, or types, of virus. ASFV, it has been known for dec ades, can cause a whole range of illness, from extremely acute (in which 100 percent of infected animals die within days) to chronic (in which animals develop immune system and neurological symptoms, but generally survive).

 

HHV-6, also, has many strains that can cause different levels of disease, from an illness with mild fever and rash, to a fatal, hemorrhagic disease in which the patient rapidly bleeds to death. HHV-6 can cause a collapse of the immune system, and is associated with many kinds of neurological phenomena, including the development of brain lesions. Like ASFV, HHV-6 is found in people with acute illness -- that is, AIDS -- and chronic illness, CFS.

 

Where did this new human virus come from?

 

Is it a zoonosis, an animal virus that has mutated and become capable of infecting humans?

 

When Dr. Teas and Dr. Beldekas were trying to determine if ASFV could be involved in causing AIDS, a major objection to the theory was that pigs in the U.S. were not sick. If a pig virus were causing AIDS, some experts argued, then shouldn't the pigs be sick?

 

There is, in fact, a worldwide epidemic among domesticated pigs that bears a great resemblance to African Swine Fever; it has been called "Mystery Swine Disease." Although a "new" virus (called "Lelystadt virus" for the city in which it was isolated) is thought to be causing "Mystery Swine Disease," the new virus has not yet been compared to all the strains of the old virus, ASFV.

 

Lelystad virus also has not been compared to the new human virus, HHV-6.

 

One reason that there has been very little progress in fighting both AIDS and CFS may be because HHV-6 is actually the virus that is causing most, if not all, of the damage to the immune system in both syndromes.

 

If HHV-6 is causing the immune system damage in AIDS and CFS and if HHV-6 is really a strain of ASFV, there is the very real possibility that some scientists have deliberately misled the public.

 

If government scientists are afraid to admit what HHV-6 really is and how widespread the immunological damage it causes is, then the problem of ending the CFS epidemic may be as political as it is scientific.