AIDS as a disease is fairly new in the human experience; discovered in the 1930s in Democratic Republic of Congo it became a matter of great concern in the last quarter of the 20th century - it had reached the United States by 1968. By the 1980s the medical community was terrified not only at the complete mystery of the disease but by the rate at which it was spreading. One doctor, Ed Piken, told me once at a dinner party at his house in Los Angeles that "it's like an upside down pyramid" and they all very frightened. By April 12, 1982, 248 US gay men had been diagnosed with AIDS (known at that time as GRID, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency). At least 40 of these had sex either with Gaetan Dugas ("patient zero"), or with someone who had.

In 1984 the causative pathogen was identified - the HIV virus, but still no explanation existed for why some people progressed from HIV to AIDS quickly, some more slowly and some not at all; what would explain these differences and the natural immunity some people seemed to have.

By 1994 it was noticed noticed something which on the face of was unusual but it was to be one of most important medical discoveries of the decade if not the century - AIDS patients consistently showed low serum selenium. This was known previously from Keshan disease

This was significant because selenium is implicated in at least 18 chemicals related to the immune system and HIV was known to attack the immune system although how it did that was unclear. Nobody dies of the virus per se, they die of things a working immune system normally takes care of with little trouble. Often this is PCP or pneumocystic pneumonia. Kaposi's sarcoma is another one, a type of cancer the body usually fights off by itself - which is also a significant finding that the body is able to heal cancers by itself.

Since selenium is such a critical component of the immune system researchers began to look at this in great detail. By 2002 it was noticed selenium was not the only critical raw material missing in AIDS patients but also the essential amino acids Cysteine, Glutamine and Tryptophan[1]. In 2007 Harold Foster published a book that summarized the many papers and studies that had led to these conclusions and of the work done at the Mengo clinic in Kampala where his foundation had been treating HIV patients with his protocol with startling success - 99% of patients responded as AIDS turned back to HIV and with the body in turn killing the virus just as it does with influenza or the common cold.

This then us almost certainly responsible for the decline in seroprevalence in HIV in Botswana and not a natural evolution of the virus. Examine the chart from the PNAS paper and notice the disease flatlines and begins to decline in the very late 20th century; the understanding of the role of these nutrients occurred in 1995.

In early december of 2014 a scientific paper was published[2] by a number of virologists that suggested HIV was evolving to be less lethal, which sounds plausible. However it is merely a correlation and fails to show causation. There is another explanation for their observation and an understanding of the causative effects is described herein.

Had they tested blood levels of selenium that would have noticed that instead of the usual low or absent selenium levels seen in AIDS patients the would have noticed serum selenium levels was actually rather high and this error represents a rather frightening misunderstanding of how the disease works and of work done in this area.

Some of this is understandable as the medical journal the vast majority of this work was published in a medical journal that was blocked from National Library of Medicine's Medline at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry. To this day even Facebook seems to block certain URLs with this information.

That HIV was effectively cured by 2007 - this is an extraordinary claim and requires extraordinary proof, which can be found below.

When I was told of this by a prominent biochemical researcher I thought he was nuts, but as he began to explain it great detail answering any question I could ask and as I did my own research (little more than reading a bunch of papers in Google Scholar that does not block the sites Medline and Facebook does it became clear he wasn't nuts, the pharmaceutical industry was, and this insanity is both very profitable and very expensive in terms of human lives at the same time.

Since Fosters book was published in 2007 fourteen million people have died of HIV while the anti retroviral industry takes in $13B a year; that is, two holocausts worth of people have died - for no good reason - while the pharmaceutical industry made extreme profits on treatments that do not cure the disease (which the body can do just fine when it is supplied with the requisite raw materials) but merely maintain the patient. This is like being hit on the toe with a hammer and being given a powerful but short acting painkiller. It does work in that the symptom of pain is gone but it's better to remove the hammer.

[1] "Dr. Will Taylor and colleagues at the University of Athens, Georgia have shown that there is a group of viruses that encode for glutathione peroxidase. This means that as they are replicated, they remove the four key nutrients that lie at the core of this enzyme (selenium, cysteine, glutamine and tryptophan) from the human body. Eventually they can cause severe deficiencies of these nutrients and kill their hosts. Included in this group of viruses are Hepatitis B and C, Coxsackie B and HIV-1 and HIV-2. Anyone infected by one or more of these viruses needs elevated selenium, cysteine, tryptophan and glutamine to remain healthy. Think tapeworm! That is, a parasite-induced functional deficiency." - Harold Foster, 2005 interview

"HIV-1 encodes for one of the human glutathione peroxidases. As a consequence, as it is replicated, its genetic needs cause it to deprive HIV-1 seropositive individuals not only of glutathione peroxidase, but also of the four basic components of this selenoenzyme, namely selenium, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan. Eventually this depletion process causes severe deficiencies of all these substances. These, in turn, are responsible for the major symptoms of AIDS which include immune system collapse, greater susceptibility to cancer and myocardial infarction, muscle wasting, depression, diarrhea, psychosis and dementia. As the immune system fails, associated pathogenic cofactors become responsible for a variety of their own unique symptoms. Any treatment for HIV/AIDS must, therefore, include normalization of body levels of glutathione, glutathione peroxidase, selenium, cysteine, glutamine, and tryptophan. Although various clinical trials have improved the health of AIDS patients by correcting one or more of these nutritional deficiencies, they have not, until the present, been addressed together. Physicians involved in a selenium and amino-acid field trial in Botswana, however, are reporting that this nutritional protocol reverses AIDS in 99% of patients receiving it, usually within three weeks." HD Foster "How HIV-1 causes AIDS: implications for prevention and treatment" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030698770400012X

Other works by Harold Foster:

Foster HD. Host-pathogen evolution: Implications for the prevention and treatment of malaria, myocardial infarction and AIDS. Med Hypotheses, Vol. 70(1), p 21-25, 2008.
http://www.medical-hypotheses.com/article/S0306-9877(07)00346-5/abstract

Foster HD. A role for the antioxidant defense system in preventing the transmission of HIV. Med Hypotheses, Vol. 69(6), p 1277-1280, 2007.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17512122

Foster HD. How HIV-1 causes AIDS: implications for prevention and treatment. Med Hypotheses. 2004;62(4):549-53. Review.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15050105

Foster HD. Why HIV-1 has diffused so much more rapidly in Sub-Saharan Africa than in North America. Med Hypotheses. 2003 Apr;60(4):611-4.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12615534

Foster HD. "Aids and the 'selenium - CD4T cell tailspin': the geography of a pandemic," Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, No. 209, p 94-99, 2000.
http://lymerick.net/selenium-foster.htm

The Successful Orthomolecular Treatment of AIDS: Accummulating Evidence from Africa
http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/jom/2006/pdf/2006-v21n04-p193.pdf

Treating AIDS with nutrition
http://www.doctoryourself.com/aids.html

Foster HD. What really causes AIDS. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2002.
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020186.Foster.AIDS.pdf (400 pages, open access PDF)

How HIV Replication Causes AIDS: An Orthomolecular Model
http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/jom/2007/pdf/2007-v22n03-p123.pdf

The Failure of Medical Science To Prevent and To Adequately Treat HIV/AIDS: An Orthomolecular Opportunity
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/2008/pdf/2008-v23n01-p006.pdf

Nutritional Supplements Can Delay the Progression of AIDS in HIV-Infected Patients: Results from a Double-Blinded, Clinical Trial at Mengo Hospital, Kampala, Uganda
http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/2007/pdf/2007-v22n03-p129.pdf

Nutritional Processes in HIV/AIDS http://www.fosterhealth.ca/nutritional-processes-hivaids

Harold Foster explaining the disease in his own words:
http://www.hdfoster.com/geography-hiv

Interview with Harold Foster:
http://www.doctoryourself.com/fosterinterview.html

[2] Impact of HLA-driven HIV adaptation on virulence in populations of high HIV seroprevalence
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/11/26/1413339111

Further reading:
Selenium Conquers AIDS? http://www.i-sis.org.uk/AidsandSelenium.php A case study:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0sgBR--J2k

Does selenium play a role in aids?
http://aras.ab.ca/articles/rfw-aids-selenium.html

Timeline: HIV and AIDS
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9949-timeline-hiv-and-aids.html

Biograpy of Harold Foster
https://web.archive.org/web/20020220105954/http://www.geocities.com/fosterhd/

AIDS - the Seleno-Enzyme Solution
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/salud/esp_salud02a.htm