How to identify AIDS fraud

January 2007     View PDF     En español

AIDS, like cancer, is a disease that is seen as having no cure, with standard treatments that are viewed as having many side effects. In response to these uncertainties in cancer, a thriving underground has evolved offering “cures” and treatments based on unproven (often disproven) and conflicting theories. They all promise miraculous improvements beyond the power of standard treatments and usually promise few or no side effects.

In AIDS, at least two types of underground have evolved. One is the familiar buyer’s club—community-based groups which strive to improve access to legitimate treatments. But a second underground has emerged. It’s quite similar to the one found in cancer, offering the same sort of things—and sometimes the exact same things from the exact same practitioners.

Project Inform’s National HIV/AIDS Treatment Infoline receives a steady stream of calls about mysterious treatments that don’t have Food and Drug (FDA) Administration evaluation or approval. Nonetheless, they’re being sold to the public with claims of being effective. Our generic name for these treatments is “cures-of-the-week.” Over the years, Project Inform has looked at hundreds of these claims and products, ranging from interesting medicines to formulas purportedly delivered from the flight decks of flying saucers.

Assessing such magical cures—separating the truly crazy from the plausible—is more difficult than it may sound. Most offer some evidence of satisfied users, typically AIDS patients who feel they have benefited. We hear claims from sincere people who saw their CD4+ cell counts rise, who “felt much better,” or who “recovered miraculously” from some infection or condition.

These people are hard to argue with, as they truly believe that their treatment discovery is responsible for their newfound well-being. The last thing they want to hear is someone questioning their experiences. Project Inform respectfully sees these individuals as “true believers.” Sincere “true believers” help support almost every kind of treatment, reporting similar kinds of improvements. However, our long-term experience with hundreds of products is that few if any of these experiences ever predict the real value of the treatments.

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