HIV tests are antibody tests, they do not test for the presence of viruses.  Contrary to what people are told about antibodies, antibodies are not always specific.  For example let's say you want to produce a monoclonal antibody for disease research.  First you would take a blood sample and separate the serum.  You then take an antigen test target and place it in the serum sample so antibodies attach to this antigen target.  Though these antibodies are not all specific.  They are a mixture of high affinity (specific) and low affinity (non-specific) antibodies.  Of course all of these antibodies cannot be used to make monoclonals.  So the antigen test target is placed in a weak solution of sodium sulfate solution to strip off the less specific antibodies.  The target is then placed in a slightly stronger solution to remove the slightly more specific antibodies.  This process is repeated until only high affinity antibodies, with an extremely high level of specificity are left.  These are then used to make monoclonals.  The reason this is so important is because this same principle is used in HIV antibody testing.  Though in this case the antibodies  are not  differentiated.  So low affinity antibodies reacting on HIV test targets yield false positives.  This is the primary reason HIV antibody tests are known to have over 65 known causes for false positives!  Examples in these cases would be false positives due to pregnancy, flu vaccines, typhoid vaccines, polio vaccines, malaria vaccines, gamma globulin, BLV antibodies from cow's milk or beef, and viral hepatitis.  Autoimmune disorders, especially lupus, are also known to yield false positives.  The risk of false positives increases with autoimmune conditions because the immune system shifts from producing predominately high affinity antibodies to predominately low affinity antibodies.  The higher level of low affinity antibodies increases the risk of false positives on antibody tests.  To further compound the problem the primary test for HIV is the ELISA, which is supposed to be confirmed by the Western blot.  Though Western blot is less accurate than ELISA.  The only reason it is done this way is because ELISA is less expensive than Western blot.  But to use a less accurate test as a confirmation is just totally ludicrous!

Another problem with antibody tests is they do not prove the presence of a virus for another reason. Let’s say for an example that I had the flu from a influenza virus 2 weeks ago.  So I am no over the flu. If I get tested for influenza antibodies am I going to test positive or negative?  I am going to test positive of course, because my immune system has successfully fought off the virus, yielding anti-influenza antibodies in the process.  So I would be influenza antibody positive, but virus negative. The same applies to HIV testing.  If you are exposed to the HIV virus but your immune system is strong enough to fight it off you will have the antibodies temporarily, yielding a false positive HIV test, but you are still virus negative.  It was proven a long time ago that the HIV virus cannot infect healthy immune systems.

Then there is the question of what really causes AIDS.  HIV was stated as the cause by Robert Gallo after he got busted for scientific fraud.  He tried to reclaim his credibility by claiming before a world wide AIDS symposium that he had found the cause of AIDS, which he claimed was HIV.  The problems with this claim?  Well, first of all he made it up!  And secondly he was wrong!  He had absolutely no solid research to back his claim.  But the world was scared and had no answers.  So when Gallo lied again the media did not stop to question the fact that there was no evidence of the claim.  So they ran with the claim and it has been a part of AIDS history since.  As far as Gallo being wrong, you need to understand what AIDS is to understand why he was wrong.  AIDS is not a disease, it is a syndrome, acquired immune deficiency syndrome.   A syndrome is not a disease, it is a group of symptoms.  So if you develop certain symptoms you are given an AIDS diagnosis.  Well under the original definition of AIDS, which was only opportunistic infections, HIV could not cause AIDS!  So the government was really in a pickle.  Here one of their top scientists had lied and was busted for scientific fraud making the US international fools.  Now one of the governments top researchers, Robert Gallo, had lied again, which was highly embarrassing to the government if they could not cover the lie before it was widely publicized. So they came up with a solution, they changed the definition of AIDS to fit the HIV virus, so they could honestly claim that HIV could cause AIDS.  Since HIV could not cause any disease in man, that ruled out using any opportunistic infections.  So they went with the only thing the HIV virus could do, which was to drop the CD4 count.  So the definition of AIDS was changed to include a drop in CD4 cells below 200.  Thus a second international embarrassment by Gallo’s lies was averted!

Now for the rest of the story.  Gallo had to lie because he had more than his credibility at stake.  Gallo also held the patent rights to the HIV tests.  So as long as people could be fooled in to believing that HIV caused AIDS he would continue to make a fortune off of royalties to his HIV tests!

So under the new definition HIV can cause AIDS, but not under the original definition.  The only things that are known to cause AIDS under the original definition are the virus Human Herpes Virus Type 6 variant A (HHV6-A) and the drug AZT (zidovudine), which destroys the bone marrow leading to a drop of stem cells.  This in turn leads to a drop of all immune cells, including CD4 cells.  The drop in CD4 cells leads to an AIDS diagnosis as does the opportunistic infections created by AZT collapsing the immune system.  But that is a whole other story, along with how AIDS came about, etc.