Editing Misconceptions about HIV/AIDS (section)

====AZT and other antiretroviral drugs, not HIV, cause AIDS====
{{Main|Duesberg hypothesis}}
The vast majority of people with AIDS never received antiretroviral drugs, including those in developed countries prior to the licensure of [[Zidovudine|AZT]] in 1987. Even today, very few individuals in developing countries have access to these medications.<ref name="UNAIDS, 2003">[http://www.unaids.org/html/pub/publications/fact-sheets04/fs_treatment_en_pdf.pdf UNAIDS, 2003] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070614103019/http://www.unaids.org/html/pub/publications/fact-sheets04/fs_treatment_en_pdf.pdf |date=2007-06-14 }}</ref>

In the 1980s, [[clinical trial]]s enrolling patients with AIDS found that AZT given as single-drug therapy conferred a survival advantage compared to [[placebo]], albeit modest and short-lived. Among HIV-infected patients who had not yet developed AIDS, placebo-controlled trials found that AZT given as a single-drug therapy delayed, for a year or two, the onset of AIDS-related illnesses. The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of these placebo-controlled trials effectively counters the argument that AZT causes AIDS.<ref name="NIAID, 1995"/>

Subsequent clinical trials found that patients receiving two-drug combinations had up to 50% increases in time to progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to people receiving single-drug therapy. In more recent years, three-drug combination therapies have produced another 50–80% improvements in progression to AIDS and in survival when compared to two-drug regimens in clinical trials.<ref name="HHS, 2005">{{Cite web |url=http://www.hivatis.org/guidelines/adult/AA_040705.pdf |title=HHS, 2005 |access-date=2005-08-23 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171004135919/http://www.hivatis.org/guidelines/adult/AA_040705.pdf |archive-date=2017-10-04 |url-status=dead }}</ref> Use of potent anti-HIV combination therapies has contributed to dramatic reductions in the incidence of AIDS and AIDS-related deaths in populations where these drugs are widely available, an effect which would be unlikely if antiretroviral drugs ''caused'' AIDS.<ref name="Palella, 1998">{{cite journal | doi = 10.1056/NEJM199803263381301 | last1 = Palella | first1 = F.J. 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