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"If there is evidence that HIV causes AIDS, there should be scientific documents which either singly or collectively demonstrate that fact, at least with a high probability. There is no such document...The HIV theory, the way it is being applied, is unfalsifiable and therefore useless as a medical hypothesis."

Said Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel prize for his invention of the PCR (that make HIV tests possible).

Now if the HIV causes AIDS theory is unfalsifiable and there are no documents that demonstrate that HIV actually causes AIDS, then why is the theory widely considered to be correct?

Related Question: Is HIV a sexually transmitted infection?

Related Question: Koch's postulates for judging if HIV causes AIDS

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    I call to close this question a unconstructive, lack a precise claim or notability for the links provided and most of the paragraphs of the question, also "strawmen" the issue between "HIV->AIDS" and "someone said HIV //applied in a unexplained way// is unfalsifiable, so must be it". also lack of references or even a proper Google search. – Alen Aug 12 '12 at 20:42
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    The guy invented the PCR that made HIV test possible for which he earned the Nobel prize. It's not just someone. –  Aug 12 '12 at 20:53
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    I think this a good question. It's a claim made by a notable scientist - it happens to be very wrong, but it's a notable claim and the question shows research effort. It's not fair to ask the questioner what *he* thinks the cause of AIDS is - that's our job, to rebut the claim that he references. But I hope that the questioner will read the answers with an open mind - judging by his own comments, he seems to have already made his decision, alas. – Mark Beadles Aug 13 '12 at 00:54
  • P.S.: I agree that this question is perfectly fine for Skeptics (I upvoted it). Although I would prefer a link to Kary Mullis' quote. – Oliver_C Aug 13 '12 at 08:33
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    I, too, think the question is good. But, and this may explain some downvotes, the questioner has not worked to demonstrate the key sources making the claim at all, never mind *recent* sources. I will upvote when specific concrete claims are *demonstrated* not just asserted. And I would hope that a comprehensive summary of the key evidence will emerge as it is just the sort of question this site was meant to handle. – matt_black Aug 13 '12 at 20:56
  • Can we specify in the question that Mullis won the Nobel prize for chemistry (he is a chemist and not a virologist or immunologist)? – nico Aug 19 '12 at 07:29
  • The Liberian Daily Observer, which is the largest newspaper in Liberia, just published an article on their front page with the headline, “Ebola, AIDS Manufactured By Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?” The article basically accuses the US of manufacturing this Ebola outbreak in what they call an American Military-Medical-Industry scheme to use Africa as a testing ground for bioweapons. See the [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VCu04-FM8s). – kenorb Sep 25 '14 at 17:58
  • Whoever wrote that doesn't know what "unfalsifiable" means. It means that there is no experiment you could construct to test the assertion's truth or disprove it. While it would obviously be morally indefensible you could test it by injecting someone with HIV and seeing if they got AIDS. I'm not a virologist but I'm sure there are also experiments that don't require exposing someone to a virus to prove it causes a lethal disease – GordonM Jul 27 '15 at 12:40
  • @GordonM Being sure such experiments exist doesn't mean they do. The only real test is to give a bunch of people HIV and see if they get AIDS. That's a Joseph Mengele level experiment, though. Otherwise, all we can note is that those with AIDS have the HIV virus and medicines directed at that virus help with AIDS. – Loren Pechtel Jul 28 '15 at 03:07

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HIV causes AIDS. At this stage, it is dangerous and negligent to suggest otherwise.

The claim that there are no "documents" that show HIV causes AIDS is simply mistaken.

Here are some documents that do demonstrate that, or that, in turn, list the evidence that HIV causes AIDS.

Numerous studies of HIV-infected people have shown that high levels of infectious HIV, viral antigens, and HIV nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) in the body predict immune system deterioration and an increased risk for developing AIDS. Conversely, patients with low levels of virus have a much lower risk of developing AIDS.

It is AVERT's considered opinion that the evidence that HIV causes AIDS is abundant and conclusive. This page outlines some of that evidence, while also mentioning how some dissidents have interpreted things differently.

Other indirect evidence that HIV was the cause of AIDS came from the demonstration, in 1984, of its high degree of tropism for the subgroup of CD4+ T cells, its consistent isolation from patients of different origins who had AIDS, and the isolation of similar viruses that cause AIDS in nonhuman primates (specifically, macaques). Thus, the causative relation between HIV and AIDS was accepted by the scientific and medical community in 1984 and was further verified through the later isolation of HIV type 2 in West African patients with AIDS. The relation was also supported by the clinical efficacy of drugs that specifically inhibit HIV enzymes and the demonstration that mutations in one of the coreceptors for HIV (CCR5) make some persons highly resistant to HIV infection and AIDS.

Although the scientific evidence is overwhelming and compelling that HIV is the cause of AIDS, the disease process is still not completely understood. This incomplete understanding has led some persons to make statements that AIDS is not caused by an infectious agent or is caused by a virus that is not HIV. This is not only misleading, but may have dangerous consequences. Before the discovery of HIV, evidence from epidemiologic studies involving tracing of patients’ sex partners and cases occurring in persons receiving transfusions of blood or blood clotting products had clearly indicated that the underlying cause of the condition was an infectious agent. Infection with HIV has been the sole common factor shared by AIDS cases throughout the world among men who have sex with men, transfusion recipients, persons with hemophilia, sex partners of infected persons, children born to infected women, and occupationally exposed health care workers.

The conclusion after more than 28 years of scientific research is that people, if exposed to HIV through sexual contact or injecting drug use for example, may become infected with HIV. If they become infected, most will eventually develop AIDS.

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Oddthinking
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  • I wonder if answering this question requires references to scientific experiments rather than summaries – user253751 Apr 19 '23 at 12:28
  • @user253751: Unfortunately, link rot has eaten a number of these sources, but there were links from them into the literature. Given the claim is so scientifically ignorant, sticking to sources that were readable at a high-school level seems valuable. – Oddthinking Apr 19 '23 at 23:42