Michael Goldhaber; You write: "Isolating an bioactive agent merely means being able to culture it from infected tissue, that is grow it in more or less pure form, then detect the agent , say by electron microscopy and then use it to transmit the infection in some way." My response: "More or less pure" ?? That would mean the resulting observations would be "more or less pure". In the case of many viruses, the virus is virtually undetectable in the "pure strain". Inspired by definition of "isolating a bioactive agent", I have looked up a standard definition for "isolate" and it is contradicts you, unless you are accenting your phrase, "less pure". "Isolate: A sample from a defined source." -- Roger Hull, Fred Brown, Chris Payne, Virology: Directory and Dictionary of Animal, Bacterial, and Plant Viruses (1989) Not very precise. That could mean "mud from a pond". Virus "isolation" seems to be a great... semantic achievement. Jim West www.geocities.com/noxot ===== On Wed, 30 Jul 2008 23:26:31 -0700, Michael H Goldhaber <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >1. Isolating an bioactive agent merely means being able to culture it >from infected tissue, that is grow it in more or less pure form, then >detect the agent , say by electron microscopy and then use it to >transmit the infection in some way. For anyone genuinely interested, >I am sure any textbook on infectious diseases would explain this. Such >books can be found in any medical library, and probably in any >hospital library. > >2. Likewise there are books and journals devoted to HIV/AIDs by now >that surely would provide numerous references to the isolation of the >virus in many different laboratories. > >3. If you read further down the reference Michael Balter provided you >will see citations related to isolating HIV from AIDS cases. > >4. Therefore, I think it is pretty clear that the people questioning >the HIV hypothesis do not want to be enlightened on this subject, and >are finding utterly fake reasons to continue to argue. > >5. So please drop the subject. It is phony. > > >Best, > >Michael >------- >Michael H. Goldhaber >SftP list moderator > > >