Is AIDS really caused by a virus?

University of Liverpool, Liverpool, England, 1988 The results were disquieting. Researchers at the University of Liverpool, England, led by A.M. al-Sumidaie in 1988, had found a retrovirus in 97% of the women they tested for breast cancer (1). Did this finding mean that breast cancer was also caused by a retrovirus? Certainly not. Al-Sumidaie knew very well as a viral researcher that he could take cells from a patient’s body and coax out a lot of harmless retroviruses to which a patient had been exposed. When in the retroviral business, you detected retroviruses and over the years it had been done in multiple sclerosis, sarcomas and leukemias. Yet little more evidence than Al-Sumidaie now had in front of him was available when the HIV retrovirus was called the probable cause of AIDS.