Before we can start looking for a cause, we need first to clarify exactly what kind of disease we are talking about.

In early 1981, several physicians in New York and California began to report some strange new disease outbreaks.

In both places, previously healthy young men appeared with rare diseases including Kaposi’s sarcoma (a type of tumor) and PCP (a type of pneumonia), something hitherto unprecedented in this type of people.

Within months, dozens of similar cases were reported in 23 states across the U.S. and the UK, representing the beginning of a massive and unprecedented epidemic. 5

Doctors quickly discovered a distinctive feature of these cases. More than anything, these men lacked a particular type of white blood cells essential to a healthy immune system.

Normally, people have between 600 and 1500 “CD4 + T cells (also called helper T cells) in each cubic millimeter of blood. But men with the strange new disease typically had much lower levels. This immune deficiency is explained why they were so susceptible to disease.

The cases were clearly related in time and by population group (initially homosexual men and intravenous drug users). Could not find any cause of AIDS, but it was clear that was not inherited.

The researchers then grouped all these new and rare cases under the heading “Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS.

The most recent definition of AIDS in the United States was founded in 1993. Under this definition, someone has AIDS if they have a 26 specific diseases (28 in children) but no known cause of immunodeficiency other than HIV (some diseases, it requires a positive HIV test), or if they have a number of T CD4 + minor 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood, or less than 14% of total lymphocytes, plus an HIV test positive.9

The definition of AIDS usually requires a positive HIV test. This means that any connection between HIV and AIDS is artificially strengthened since any case of “AIDS without HIV” is discarded.

In other words, the definition and assumed that HIV causes AIDS and therefore can not be used to test this theory. However it is possible to redefine AIDS without reference to HIV or any other disease.