To prove the existence of a new retrovirus (HIV or other) is mandatory to satisfy some necessary conditions or rules. These have been written several times, by the Perth Group and former dissident magazine Continuum, and can be read HERE. With all that I deduced the next rules:
1) Culture of putatively infected tissue.
2) Purification of specimens.
3) Electron micrographs of particles exhibiting the dimensions and morphological characteristics of retroviral particles, that is:
- a) a diameter of 100-120 nm;
- b) condensed inner cores;
- c) surfaces studded with spikes.
4) The particles contain RNA and not DNA.
5) The RNA consistently has the same length (number of bases) and composition with different putatively infected tissues, or vary no more than the RNAs from other RNA viruses.
6) The particles contain the reverse transcriptase enzyme, that copies RNA into DNA.
7) When the particles are introduced into secondary uninfected cultures:
- a) the particles are taken up by the cells;
- b) the entire RNA is reverse transcribed into cDNA;
- c) the entire cDNA is inserted into cellular DNA;
- d) the DNA is transcribed into RNA, which is translated into proteins.
8) The cells in the secondary cultures release particles into the culture medium. This particles have exactly the same characteristics as the original particles, that is, they must have identical morphology, purify the same way and contain the same RNA and proteins.
9) All the previous steps are a property of only putatively infected tissues, and can not be induced in control cultures. These are identical cultures, that is, obtained from tissues of unhealthy individuals (for example, individuals with autoimmune diseases or those treated with chemotherapeutic agents) and cultured under identical conditions, differing only in that they are not putatively infected with a retrovirus. More concretely:
- a) the physiological state of the cells used in the control cultures should be as close as possible to those of putatively infected cells;
- b) if test cultures are exposed to mitogens, mutagens, chemical carcinogens or radiation, or employ such agents, so should the controls;
- c) when cells are cultured with supernatant or purified material from putatively infected cultures, controls should be cultured with similar material from cell cultures originating from sick individuals with illnesses similar to AIDS;
- d) blind examination of putatively infected cultures and control cultures should be performed.
