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Originally Posted by interview
CJ: But Montagnier and Gallo did publish photographs of virus particles.
EPE: No. Montagnier and Gallo published electron micrographs of a few particles which they claimed are a retrovirus and are HIV. But photographs don?t prove particles are a virus and the existence of HIV was not proven using the method presented at the 1973 meeting.
CJ: And what was that method?
EPE: All the steps I have just told you. The only scientific method that exists. Culture cells, find a particle, isolate the particle, take it to pieces, find out what?s inside and then prove those particles are able to make more of the same with the same constituents when they?re added to a culture of uninfected cells.
CJ: So before AIDS came along there was a well tried method for proving the existence of a retrovirus but Montagnier and Gallo did not follow this method?
EPE: They used some of the techniques but they did not undertake every step including proving what particles, if any, are in the 1.16 gm/ml band of the density gradient, the density that defines retroviral particles.
CJ: But what about their pictures?
EPE: Montagnier's and Gallo's electron micrographs and every other electron microscope picture published up until March this year are of unpurified cell cultures. Not the gradient. Before March this year, no one had ever published a picture of a density gradient.
CJ: Which is what we need to do to prove isolation of retroviral particles?
EPE: Yes.
CJ: Can the 1.16 band contain material other than retroviral particles?
EPE: Yes. That?s another reason why you need a photograph. To see everything that?s going on. It was known long before the AIDS era that retroviral-like particles aren't the only material that may find their way into this part of the density gradient. Tiny cellular pieces, some recognisable as internal structures of cells, or just cellular debris, can band at 1.16 gm/ml. And some of this material can enclose nucleic acids and take on the appearances of retrovirus particles.
CJ: What are nucleic acids?
EPE: DNA and RNA.
CJ: Surely though, if retroviral particles are released from cells without disrupting the cells, it must be possible to guard against cellular contamination?
EPE: Well it is and it isn't. Certainly the animal retrovirologists were well aware of this problem and strongly advised handling the cultures gently and regularly topping them up with nutrients to keep the cells alive. So they don?t disintegrate. But in the case of HIV there are additional problems. We are told that HIV is cytopathic meaning it kills cells. So one could hardly claim that putative virus particles are the only things likely to be floating around in culture fluids or at 1.16 gm/ml. The other confounding fact is that in many HIV experiments the cells are deliberately broken up by the experimenter as part of the experiment. Knowing all this, it's a complete mystery why any HIV researcher could have omitted the crucial step of taking an EM of a density gradient.(5)
CJ: Could it be because electron microscopy is highly specialised and expensive?
EPE: It may have been in the early days but not anymore. For the past twenty years at least electron microscopy has been used daily in most hospitals to diagnose all kinds of diseases. Besides, there are plenty of EMs of HIV cultures. It?s just that until this year, for some unknown reason, there haven?t been any of the density gradient.
CJ: All right. Let's talk about the pictures of the density gradient published this year. What do we see there?
EPE: Two groups, one Franco/German (9) and one from the US National Cancer Institute (10), published pictures of density gradients. In the Franco/German study the pictures are from the 1.16 gm/ml band. It is impossible to tell from which density the pictures in the American study are taken but let's assume it's the correct 1.16 density for retroviral particles. The first thing to say is that the authors of these studies concede that their pictures reveal the vast majority of the material in the density gradient is cellular. The authors describe all this material as "non-viral", or as "mock" virus or "microvesicles".
CJ: What are microvesicles?
EPE: Encapsulated cell fragments.
CJ: Are there any viral particles in these pictures?
EPE: There are a few particles which the researchers claim are retroviral particles. In fact, they claim these are the HIV particles but give no evidence why.
CJ: Are there lots of these HIV particles?
EPE: No. The band should contain billions and when you take an electron micrograph they should fill the entire picture.
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