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positives on Elisa tests: antibodies to nuclear antigens, human leukocyte antigens and
human T-cell antigens. Apparently, the Alabama lady had antibodies to her own
mitochondria. They'd wreaked havoc with her test results.
In the December 1986 American Journal of Medicine, Dr. Rahmat Afrasiabi
reports on just the opposite sort of occurrence. Three male homosexual AIDS patients
with Kaposi sarcoma (a supposed AIDS symptom) turned out not to have any antibodies
to the HIV virus at all. In other words, their AIDS tests were negative.
Between May of 1983 and June of 1985, blood samples were collected from these
men. Using two different Elisa test kits and the Western blot, "testing of serum from
these patients (was) negative for (HIV) antibodies," Afrasiabi reports.Have you been
reading about such findings in your local papers? No. British researcher L.J. Oldham,
writing in the Journal of Medical Virology (January 1987), concludes after running tests
of blood which was weakly positive for HIV antibodies, "Our findings suggest that
Western blot cannot be depended upon as the sole confirmatory test for (HIV)."
Later in the same paper, Oldham states: "As has been shown, Western blot... lacks
full sensitivity and specificity."
And finally: "... confirmatory procedures are at present beyond the scope of most
screening laboratories."
There is more.
Evelyn Lennette, in the February 1987 Journal of Clinical Microbiology, indicates
that "both of these assays (Elisa and Western blot) have drawbacks... (there are) reports
of both false-positive and false-negative results with the Elisa, necessitating the use of a
second confirmatory test... The immunoblot (Western blot) is also not free from false
results." Lennette and her co-authors suggest using a different confirmatory test,
the IFA procedure. But, in other journal literature, the IFA has been compared
unfavorably with the Elisa-Western blot one-two sequence.
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AIDS INC.
Copyright 1988 Jon Rappoport
On top of these journal statements, several sources indicated to me that from
testing-lab to lab, results may vary according to technicians - particularly with the
Western blot. How does a layperson choose a "good" testing lab? No one I spoke with
could answer that other than by saying, "Find a doctor whose judgment you trust."
An interesting ploy some researchers attempt in defending testing is the
invocation of risk-groups (such as gay males and IV drug users). In the September 15,
1986, issue of Post Graduate Medicine, a magazine sent out to educate primary-care
physicians, Dr. Francis D. Pien asserts: "The predictive value of a positive (Elisa) result
depends on the incidence of (HIV) disease in the population group represented."
(emphasis added) Pien then says that in certain high-risk groups, "the incidence of (HIV)
antibodies approaches 70%."
Translation: If you're already very probably carrying the AIDS virus, the
unreliability of the tests will be offset by the fact that you're probably positive. This
approaches nonsense.
In fact, in the FDA document, Summary and Explanation of the Test which was
sent to me, there is a cautionary note on just this subject: "Although... both the degree of
risk for HIV infection... and the degree of reactivity of the serum (test results) may be of
value in interpreting the test, these correlations are imperfect."
Let me stack a few more logs on the pyre. In the July-August 1985 issue of the
journal Transfusion, Paul Holland considers the case of 1280 blood donors whose blood
was tested by the Elisa test kits of two different manufacturers. The Abbott Elisa located
20 positive tests on first reading. On repeat-examination, 5 stayed positive. Then the Elisa
of a company called ENI was used on this same group of 1280 specimens. The ENI Elisa
kit found 25 samples positive on first reading. On retest, 14 samples stayed positive.
And only three donors, as it turned out, were positive on both Elisa kits from both
companies. Finally... none of the Elisas were confirmed positive by a Western blot.
In some ways, the most disturbing analysis of both the Elisa and the Western blot
tests comes from Dr. Harvey Fineberg, Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.
Fineberg published a statistical study on AIDS testing in the spring of 1987, in Law,
Medicine and Health Care.
"To begin with," Fineberg told me on the phone, "in the study, we accepted the
advertised accuracy ratings of the Elisa test. It's reportedly able to find true positives at a
rate of 93.4%, and it supposedly can detect true negatives correctly 99.78% of the time.
"So let's say that 3 out of 10,000 people in the U.S. are really infected with the
HIV virus. If we consider a sample of 100,000 people, that means 30 will actually be
infected with HIV. The Elisa test will be able to pinpoint 93.4%, or 28 of those people.
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AIDS INC.
Copyright 1988 Jon Rappoport
"On the other side of the ledger, that leaves 99,970 out of 100,000 who are truly
not infected with the AIDS virus.
"If the Elisa is 99.78% capable of finding these real negatives, it will locate
99,750 of these people without fail. That leaves 220 negatives it missed (the difference
between 99,970 and 99,750). How did it miss? By calling those 220 people positive when
they weren't.
"So now you have, out of every 100,000 people, 28 truly positive and 220 falsely
positive test results. That means the statistical chances are about 90% that a positive-
reading Elisa is wrongly positive."
Fineberg continued: "A second Elisa won't change that either. If you do a Western
blot, the odds might, at best, be lowered to 25%. In other words, a fourth of the time, a
positive AIDS test would be falsely positive."
A test that's wrong 25% of the time. Not very comforting odds.
"If I had a patient who was really engaging in high-risk behavior," Fineberg said,
"I wouldn't rely on test results. I'd simply sit down with this person and try to make him
see he needed to change his lifestyle."
Michael Marmor, associate professor at NYU's Medical Center, partially agrees
with Dr. Fineberg. In a letter to the New York Times (May 16, 1987), Marmor states that
only 36% of those in lowrisk groups who test positive on an Elisa "would be infected
(with HIV). A positive result, thus, could not be given much credence."
However, Marmor then goes on to say that using the Western blot as a backup,
"almost all false-positive results are eliminated while true-positives are retained."
He is obviously at odds with some of the researchers whose critical remarks about
the Western blot I've quoted here. Such fundamental disagreement in the professional
ranks is not a recommendation for taking AIDS testing seriously. Or to put it another
way, government promotion of AIDS testing as nearly flawless is scandalous.
At this point, I was faced with odd prospects. I queried several physicians about
what I'd dug up in the medical literature. They weren't familiar with the above studies,
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