Despite feeling like homemade kefir and homemade yogurt is a really good thing for me (accounting for maybe half of all my food intake recently), I'm a little less enthusiastic than these bloggers that this is going to be any sort of solution by itself.
However, I am interested in the fact that the idea is being floated in the AIDS community that the HIV infection is a result of some underlying immune deficiency, rather than some killer bug from hell.
They suggest that the immune deficiency is different from person to person, which doesn't sound right to me though. Has anyone been reading enough in the AIDS discussion groups to know if there's any specific underlying "cause" being posited?
>In addition to the basic science interest, we were also attracted by the possibility to demonstrate in the laboratory that the famous words of Prof. Montagnieryou will get rid of the virus in a few week if you have a good immune systemwere true. Not that we doubted his words, but we knew that his words were based upon his clinical observations and not on actual experiments performed in the laboratory. The rationale is simple: if GcMAF administration eradicates HIV infection as published by Prof. Yamamoto, since GcMAF is not an antiretroviral and it should do no harm to the virus, this demonstrates that an empowered immune system is able to eliminate HIV and prevent AIDS. This would in turn demonstrate that immunodeficiency is the cause of chronic HIV infection and not vice-versa. In addition, this approach, often referred to as immunotherapy, would shift the focus from the fight against the virus to the effort to re-establish, or empower, an immune system made deficient by a number of different causes, probably different for each individual.
>I often use the following example from my previous experience in lung cancer research. Even though many lung cancer patients are heavy smokers, lung cancer occurs also in non-smokers. Imagine you are an oncologist dealing with lung cancer patients. It makes no sense and it is criminal to abstain from using available anti-cancer therapeutic strategies (surgery, radio- or chemotherapy) and instead have all the lung cancer patients attend courses or counseling to stop smoking. This is what happens with AIDS; instead of focusing on the real disease, immunodeficiency, they try to fight the virus that putatively causes it, paying the high price of severe side effects, among which is drug-induced immunodeficiency, while at the same time ignoring the immune system without trying to reinforce it.
When I read the bit about resetting the gut microbiota (and baby mammals) I was already thinking along those lines.