Document:What is PEM
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"You Bet Your Life"
17 November 2006
Last week, a curious article appeared from the Associated Press entitled "Hunger Seen as Big Enemy in War on AIDS", from which I excerpt the following gem:
Starvation and malnutrition are fast becoming the twin perils of the AIDS fight, and doctors and health experts say millions of infected people in the developing world are rapidly approaching a tipping point where food will replace drugs as the biggest need.
To AIDS rethinkers, this will certainly not come as revelation. Malnutrition – or more precisely, under-nutrition – has long been recognized as the major cause of immune deficiency in the world. This fact is known, yet minimized or ignored, by the most prominent proponents of the HIV hypothesis. For example, Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, edited by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, states:
...Protein energy malnutrition (PEM) occurs primarily under two circumstances: in developing nations it may be present in endemic form, and under famine conditions the prevalence may approach 25 percent... the magnitude of the malnutrition problem worldwide is immense. In 1983 the World Health Organization estimated that 300 million children had growth retardation secondary to malnutrition. Gastrointestinal infections frequently precipate clinical PEM because of the associated diarrhea, associated anorexia, vomiting, increased metabolic needs, and decreased intestinal absorption. Parasitic infections play a major role in many parts of the world. Cell-mediated immunity is impaired as indicated by all standard tests. [italics mine]
However, the following excerpt from the Merck Manual indicates that nutritional deficiency may well be a more significant causative agent for cellular immune deficiency than the AIDS apologists would like us to think:
Total lymphocyte count, which often decreases as undernutrition progresses, may be determined. Undernutrition produces a marked decline in CD4+ T lymphocytes, so this count is more useful in patients who do not have AIDS.
When looking through the distorted lens of HIV and AIDS, however, doctors and scientists seldom consider malnutrition an independent cause of immune suppression. Rather, malnutrition is swept under the rug of the “mysterious” mechanisms of HIV. The following 
, which appeared recently on ScienceBlogs, is typical of orthodox reductionism:
Clean water and adequate nutrition may not help much in stopping the spread of HIV, but they certainly would help fend off the secondary infections that result in clinical AIDS. While I strongly disagree with the idea put forth by Bethell et al. that the root cause of AIDS in Africa is really malnutrition, I don't think anyone disagrees that having good nutrition keeps one generally healthier and increases their ability to fend off a variety of diseases... Improved health care structures would also help immensely.
Essentially, the mainstream considers malnutrition a "co-factor" for "HIV disease". But is there any real evidence for that HIV is involved at all? The mechanisms by which protein malnutrition causes immune suppression are intuitive and well-understood, whereas understanding the pathogenesis of HIV "remains elusive" despite 25 years and a billion research dollars. Furthermore, the lack of adequate sanitation and water are clearly a major cause of many of the continent's medical emergencies.
It's way past time for the world, that's us, as well as the politicians and chronically misled talk-show hosts, to wake up to reality – the notion of a sexually-transmitted retrovirus causing an epidemic of immune deficiency in Africa is a racist construct. It has no basis in reality, and is causing a medical disaster in the call for the mass administration of "antiretrovirals" to the Third World – a form of iatrogenic genocide masquerading as philanthropy.
© 2006 by Rebecca Culshaw
Originally published at "You Bet Your Life"
