The Virus Within: A Coming Epidemic [Hardcover]

Nicholas Regush (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 6, 2000

A nonfiction medical thriller about the little-known public enemy that is quickly becoming a hidden threat to health around the world.

The Virus Within is the product of Nicholas Regush's pioneering investigation into Human Herpes Virus 6 (HHV-6): the mysterious new epidemic that has already done serious damage to public health. The first medical reporter to take a comprehensive look at this horrifying and pervasive disease, Regush presents his findings in the form of a medical thriller, following the trail of the research detectives who have crossed disciplines to piece the story together. How can HHV-6, a common virus which purportedly goes to sleep harmlessly in the body after initial infection in almost everyone, awaken to trigger or contribute to serious illness or even death? How can this chameleon suddenly begin to attack nerves, resulting in a variety of brain and nervous system diseases, including multiple sclerosis? Why is HHV-6 the key to understanding AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome? In The Virus Within, Regush offers cutting-edge scientific information in an accessible, stimulating format-stunning research with profound health implications for everyone.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you were told there was a killer in your basement, you'd be legitimately concerned. Scientists have uncovered a virus living peacefully inside us that may strike out at us when our guard is down, but nobody seems to be listening. Potentially linked to such poorly understood diseases as multiple sclerosis, chronic fatigue syndrome, and AIDS, this member of the herpes family (HHV-6) is thoroughly examined in science journalist Nicholas Regush's The Virus Within. Unfortunately, little is known at present, in part because of the personality-driven nature of research funding; struggling scientists must compete with big names like Robert Gallo for attention and dollars. Regush follows the careers of Donald Carrigan and Konnie Knox, medical virologists trying to learn more about HHV-6 while at the same time informing their unconcerned colleagues about its threat.

While the book is a bit too easy on the Peter Duesberg-led charge against the HIV hypothesis of AIDS, it makes the point well that the scientific community, spurred on by clueless funders, is too quick to crystallize around one way of thinking about disease. This may be more a important issue than the threat of HHV-6--even if we do expand our research focus to include this likely killer, we haven't reached the root of the problem. How long will it take these voices in the wilderness to find sympathetic ears, and how long will it take the next scientific prophets to make themselves heard? Perhaps, if enough of us read The Virus Within, we can heed their warnings while there's still time to act. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly

A virus called HHV-6 (a form of the human herpes virus) is at the heart of a controversy brewing in the scientific community; here Regush (The Breaking Point: Understanding Your Potential for Violence), a science and medical reporter for ABC News, presents an investigation into the subject. HHV-6 lies dormant in most people, but some scientists are uncovering evidence that it may play a role in serious illnesses such as AIDS and multiple sclerosis (MS). Most AIDS research in the last two decades has focused on HIV as the primary cause, but Regush presents work that appears to contradict this theory--work that he says has been discounted or marginalized by the scientific establishment--such as that of researcher Peter Duesberg of UC-Berkeley, who considers HIV to be a harmless passenger virus, and that of a team of Australian scientists who also attribute AIDS to causes other than HIV. Then Regush focuses on Dan Carrigan and Konnie Knox, scientists who found active HHV-6 present in patients who had died of AIDS. The two colleagues, operating in obscurity on a shoestring, have conducted further studies that seem to indicate that the reactivated virus is also present in MS patients. The author also details research that seems to imply a connection between the herpes viruses and chronic fatigue syndrome as well as some forms of mental illness. Regush stops short of drawing any conclusions about the role of HHV-6 in AIDS and MS, but he does make a strong case that further research should be supported. Regush, who displays a gift for taking complex medical material and making it accessible to the lay reader, has written a page-turning medical mystery. Agent, Denise Bukowski.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dutton Adult (March 6, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0525945342
• ISBN-13: 978-0525945345
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,392,563 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another polio in disguise?, April 14, 2000

By 

Dr Jon Wilcox - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Virus Within: A Coming Epidemic (Hardcover)

The peripatetic Nicholas Regush demonstrates the courage of someone with little to lose - as a medical journalist he has no funding grants to protect and no academic prestige to gain or protect. Accordingly and with superb timing he has dropped a `bombshell' not just on the public but also on a section of the powerful academic medical research establishment in the US.

In attempting to re-focus almost two decades of research into the nebulous human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), he rightly comments on the inconsistencies in research findings on HIV. For example the fact that measurements of active HIV `viral loads' (measured by sophisticated and sensitive DNA `footprint' techniques) do not seem to correlate with disease in patients with progressive or severe HIV-associated disease.

He follows the demanding and dedicated early careers of two `non-establishment' neuropathology researchers Konnie Knox and Donald Carrigan - the former who had presented for her PhD thesis the role of a ubiquitous and particularly small herpes group virus (herpes hominis type 6 or HHV-6) as a co-factor in the pathogenesis of AIDS. Indeed some of the arguments suggested that HHV-6 may be the dominant virus which by damaging a wide range of T-lymphocytes (including CD4, CD8 and CD56 or natural killer/NK cells) actually induces the progression towards terminal disease in these patients and not the `hard to find' HIV virus. Indeed they have wondered - quite publicly - if the HIV virus was an artefact created as a `retrovirus' by the body's own ability to create RNA sequences which resembled and behaved as rather innocuous viral organisms. It had been suggested that perhaps the retrovirus fragments had a co-factor role in reactivating the ubiquitous, mostly dormant HHV-6 virus.

Being the smallest in the herpes virus group and now having been shown resident in small quantities in otherwise `normal brains' also, the likelihood of a powerful role of the HHV-6 virus in non-HIV diseases is also very strong. Indeed in the final chapter Knox and Carrigan are being courted into the broad-based research program of microbiologist Howard Urnovitz.

Urnovitz is said to believe that the dormant role of HHV-6 and the complex interaction of the human immune system over a lifetime are likely to have associations with a number of other non-HIV related diseases apart from multiple sclerosis, especially chronic diseases. Indeed he believes, and quite rightly in my personal opinion that they have been researching a time bomb. It is of some interest that a large amount of the HHV-6 research in the last few years has come from places other than the US - which is I suspect a commentary on the academic conservatism of the AIDS-research institutions in North America.

If there is any other criticism of this book it would be that Regush has concentrated largely (and perhaps unavoidably) on the qualities and imperfections of individuals - and not just Knox and Carrigan. This is done at the expense of exploring in more detail the abundance of other work by other researchers on HHV-6, HHV-7 and HHV-8 over the last 5 years. These largely dormant or 'slow viruses' have been suspected of permanently turning on abnormal cellular neuro-immune functions (including cell destruction) in ways which have yet to be fully elucidated, but which in likelihood come, rather than primarily through the bloodstream, through the antigenically-primed and virus-laden lymphocyte cascade which re-penetrates the central nervous system at times of reactivation, following the primary viral infection in childhood through the nasal passages and saliva. That first journey from the respiratory and salivary reservoirs to the brainstem (via the cranial nerves) is presumably a formality; thence in a trans-synaptic semi-random military like attack the virus may move through the vast mass of peripheral nerve and plexiform conduits to potentially every nook and cranny of the body - including the bone marrow. With the executive control of the imprinted host genome, the ultimate disease we as individuals may experience might in many other respects depend on both neurotropic randomness and our inherent immunological integrity, at least some of which will be inheritable.

Regush comments on the substantial `patch protection' between specialities - for example the treatment of multiple sclerosis could, and indeed probably will be usurped eventually by the infectious disease physicians over the neurologists. Neurologists may well be wondering if they will continue to have a broad-ranging speciality in the future. Others would argue that the impact of the control of the human body through its central nervous system, the ubiquity of nerve supply to every organ and vessel in the body and the complexity and bio-variability of the neuro-immune response to `innate' centrally disposed infectious agents such as HHV-6 and the general deterioration in the immune response as we get older are in a holistic sense the real basis of most if not all degenerative disease.

While the HHV-6 virus, discovered in just the last decade, has in all likelihood been around since pre-historic times talk of a coming epidemic is perhaps unconvincing. But what has changed in modern times is the nature of human existence - marriage breakdowns, multiple and changing sexual relationships, more liberal immigration policies, urban living and frequent international jet travel. These are perhaps the real source of concern - the creation of a Darwinian-like environment for an accelerated passage of a wide range of neurotropic viruses throughout the globe.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth will out!, March 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Virus Within: A Coming Epidemic (Hardcover)

As somebody who has multiple sclerosis and active HHV6, finally a book that shows the truth about HHV6 and its implications in disease, present and future. For too long research into our disease has veered in the wrong direction, concentrating on a rodent model that serves us the SUFFERERS of MS, no good at all. Regush finally gives the lowdown on the the findings of a group of researchers brave enough to seek the truth and not afraid to say it! This book to me answered many questions and made me somewhat sceptical of the agendas of the organizations meant to serve us as they are more willing to fund the rodent than human disease. Public awareness of HHV6 needs to be increased, Regush has written an excellent book which I hope will do just that. Sometimes it takes an honest man, and in Drs Knox and Carrigan we find just that - people who seek the truth. Regush has written a compelling account of a virus that threatens us all, whose implications in human disease is brutal yet we are better for the knowledge of that brutality. Let us hope that with this book and the knowledge the public gain from it, finally the truth will out about HHV6 and finally us with MS, CFS and other related conditions will see our donations to our so called charities finally reach genuine research for a cure and not administrative costs. Terrific book! For ME the millenium started here!

36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, May 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Virus Within: A Coming Epidemic (Hardcover)

The subtitle of the book is The Coming Epidemic, but based on the tale told within, the epidemic is here -- the symptoms merely haven't appeared in all of us yet. This is not a detailed medical/scientific book, but a human story about people with integrity who are making their best effort, despite resistance from the biased traditional medical community, to uncover the source of such diseases as AIDS, Chronic Fatigue, MS, and some bizarre neurological diseases. Little is said in the book about a powerful issue: how latent but deadly infections are the legacy of a sloppy vaccination program, one where animal viruses (e.g., SIV) infected vaccines that were still released into the market, despite the manufacturer's foreknowledge of the possibly epidemic implications. I would like to have read more of an expose of this matter, since it is floating around in the news right now with the accompanying stern denials from pharmaceutical companies (rather like the recent denials from the tobacco industry? ) and suppression from the obsessed but trivial media. The Virus Within also details the struggle of several medical researchers to find the source of certain plaguing illnesses, and their conclusion is increasingly based on the HHV-6 virus. Regush presents data that is nearly overwhelming, but he also gives us a good account of the supression of this data by the medical powers who, as Regush implies, are more interested in profits and protecting reputations/egos than they are in finding the truth about disease. In the end, as Regush lets us know, people suffer the ignorance of their personal physicians and the belligerent censorship of the American medical industry through tragic illness and death. It is a moral story, really, one where the reputation of the famous must be preserved even at the cost of one or more human lives, as if that were a fair trade for pat-on-the-back old-boyism. And one gets the message that, if HHV-6 is not recognized as a culprit in many fatal or debilitating diseases, our chances of living healthy, productive, pleasurable lives will be very small. This is a very real, sympathetic story. It is also revealing. Regush explores the activities of a number of research scientists, from the big names (big egos) to the dedicated few who work despite failing funding, political or academic censure, and refusal of the journals or media to grant publication/public attention. Further, as a medical thriller, it is well-written, compelling, and fascinating.