Sorry but he's wrong...and it is killing people.
I'm usually the first to TP the pharmaceutical industry and the government's house but in this case this book is way off track. The first way he's wrong is in his assessment of how we diagnose HIV. We have to search for anti-bodies because viruses are too small. 100 times smaller than bacteria. They can only be seen through an electron microscope. Think of searching something the size of Lake Erie one cubic yard at a time small. Viruses are so small that scientists still argue on whether or not they can be classified as living. So we search for the body's immune response to it. It's faster and doesn't cost 1 million dollars per test. Anti-bodies are created in response to an invader, not the successful eradication of an invader. He was wrong again. That happens when you don't actually talk to an immunologist when you write his part. Also AZT was originally a viral inhibitor. They experimented with it back when a working hypothesis was that cancer was caused by viruses. It was never like modern chemo drugs that depend on controlled doses of poison that weaken the body. Yes there are side effects and they are bad, but not the ones your thinking of. Further more retro viruses are unstable. Not really a problem for it when it can invade a cell and produce 1 trillion copies a pop. This is a problem for us because if one accidental mistake produces drug resistance, it can produce a few more million copies that promote that resistance. Even if it makes a lot of mistakes along the way. Because there was only one drug at the time they prescribed it at a higher dose because it was the only thing there was. Now we have a cocktail that can nail the virus multiple ways even if evolves resistance to one. Talk to your doctor, go to web md look at Wikipedia even. Grab a book about viruses and read yourself. South Africa adopted this policy of AIDS denialism and it killed thousands of people.
Oh yeah, the writing. Fair writing skill really he knows how to write about characters, but the whole thing is so David vs. Goliath cliched it's not funny. His character is a Mary Sue trope. He's writing with a political agenda and character development is riding in the backseat.
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