Fake HIV Test Kit?

[Joan M.]

Hi

I got an hiv test kit from a company called Ibio Ameritech. It gave a positive result but I got an email saying it was a fraud. I do not know what to do.

Google gives this but I do not know what to think.

Is this test OK or not?

Joan

www.hivrapidselftest.com

What does this mean???

fake aids test and Google spam
Posted by: good samaritan - [anonymous] -  
Email: doug@ceentrum.cz
Date posted: 2005-01-21 11:10


www.hivrapidselftest is a fake test that is illegally sold here in the Czech republic. Look at: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link:T12ss3fvFUwJ:www.hivrapidselftest.com/ and see that expats is doing something fishy with these crooks.
Related URL: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=link:T12ss3fvF...
Comments:  


Socrates - [profile]  Fri Jan 21st 11:16 / #1
What evidence is there to support that it is a fake test and sold illegally?  

mikrez - [profile]  Fri Jan 21st 11:38 / #2
order one online and test yourself...
i mean, one look at the site and you shall see.
then look that if the "manufacturer" is a real company  

Jerry TWJ - [anonymous]  Fri Jan 21st 11:52 / #3
Man, if that's true, that's the most fucked up thing I've ever heard.  

aluminumroof - [anonymous]  Fri Jan 21st 11:58 / #4
yeah, they should proabably just get all their ad revenue from brothels, like some "publications" in this city do...  

mikrez - [profile]  Fri Jan 21st 14:41 / #5
Yeah, but some hooker will get a test that she doesn't have it and in reality she does, and spreads it around to her clientele. Or some poor soul will get a false pozitive reading and kill themselves in desperation.
That's the fucked up part.  

mikrez - [profile]  Fri Jan 21st 16:00 / #6
it is bad  

Jerry TWJ - [anonymous]  Fri Jan 21st 15:01 / #7
Exactly #%. Fake AIDS tests? Anyone who would partake in any part of that scam is not only an idiot and an asshole, but deserves to die of it himself. Dumb Fucks...how do you find people like this to kick their asses?  

mikrez - [profile]  Fri Jan 21st 15:32 / #8
Contact the guy who owns the site and is selling this crap.
geraustin@hotmail.com  

Douglas - [anonymous]  Sat Feb 12th 12:33 / #9
Hi

I just found your site. I got one of these hiv tests, are they fake?
I bought it in Prague but the manufacturer is in Sweden. The package looks OK but inside it is just a plaster and some kind of sealed plastic sachet. I wrote them and got a reply from Dr Thomas Ronson. He said it's cool.

What is the truth???  

Loopy Leo - [anonymous]  Sun Feb 13th 13:08 / #10
Dunno, try geraustin@hotmail.com into seach engines and you get this:

http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/04/sep04/090804/04p-0411-cp00001-vol1.pdf  

Loopy Leo - [anonymous]  Sun Feb 13th 13:35 / #11
Fuck! What a way to make a buck!


Consumers were warned today by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that unapproved Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) test kits can give inaccurate test results. The warning came as the agencies outlined joint law enforcement actions taken to halt the sale of ineffective and unapproved HIV test kits in the United States.


The FTC also announced settlement of charges that a company that advertised on the Internet, Cyberlinx Marketing, Inc., falsely represented that its HIV home test kits accurately detected HIV.


"Cyberlinx's egregious conduct threatened the health of those consumers who relied upon the representation that the kits gave accurate results," said Jodie Bernstein, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection.


The FDA has taken law enforcement actions against manufacturers and distributors of unapproved HIV test kits for the illegal sale of these test kits in the United States.  

Sven - [anonymous]  Tue Feb 15th 12:05 / #12
http://www.sweden.gov.se/

No knowledge of IBIO AMERITECH. Weird?  

[ anonymous ] - [anonymous]  Tue Feb 15th 12:30 / #13
These tests are genuine, but not available everywhere and hard to get "official" approval of. Because the AIDS industry is a giant money machine there is pressure to keep companies like this out of business because they sell for a mere pittance what doctors and labs charge a fortune for. AIDS tests are a good thing - we all agree. But many people don't want to go to a clinic. And the majority of those who do never return for their results. An instant read is in the public's best interest.

Who in their right mind would manufacture a fake aids test? Of all scams to try and pull, that's just evil. But it is very much in the medical industry's best interest to debunk such a test.

There is, however, legitimate concern that tests such as these can be misused if not under medical supervision - for example, employers doing blind tests from blood samples that were given supposedly for drug testing. This is a legitimate concern. But like the morning after pill, this controversial product will find its market. And same as with the morning pill, it's ultimately a good thing.  

[ anonymous ] - [anonymous]  Tue Feb 15th 12:48 / #14
Sure its a good thing if it actually works. if it dosn't, well, the consequences are between life and death, and the people who are pulling this scam should probably face manslaughter charges.  

Sven - [anonymous]  Tue Feb 15th 15:16 / #15
If in doubt about HIV:

Nadace pro zivot
Senovazna 2, 110 00 Praha 1
Czech Republic
Phone: +420 - 2 - 66035360, 24227722

The hiv kit guy is registered to a house near me!!!

I"ll drop by and see.

Registrant:
jerry amster
sezimova 9
14000 prague 4
czech republic
14000
CZ

Domain Name: hivrapidselftest.com

Administrative Contact:
jerry amster (JA00128-TR)
sezimova 9
14000 prague 4
czech republic
14000
CZ
phone: +420.724325090
fax:
geraustin@hotmail.com

Technical Contact:
jerry amster (JA00128-TR)
sezimova 9
14000 prague 4
czech republic
14000
CZ
phone: +420.724325090
fax:
geraustin@hotmail.com

Record updated on 30-Sep-2004
Record expires on 18-Sep-2005
Record created on 18-Sep-2004

Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.ignum.cz 217.31.49.7
ns2.ignum.cz 62.77.127.244  
[ anonymous ] - [anonymous]  Tue Feb 15th 15:55 / #16
LOL! And how is THAT information going to shed light on the topic? Perhaps you could bring someone with you who actually HAS AIDS, and then we'll know for sure. : )  
[ anonymous ] - [anonymous]  Wed Feb 16th 21:10 / #17

i bought 2 kits. they didn't come for over a month. so paypal gave me my money back. however about a week later the kits came. neither of them worked. so i tossed them. but at least paypal got my money back. i knew it was a scam when i saw the charge name, so F these people. i wish i lived near there, i would go find this guy and break his nose.  

Pavel - [anonymous]  Thu Feb 17th 11:52 / #18
>shed light on the topic?

Why not ask Martin at expats.cz? His mothership (www.expats.cz) launched the hiv site to cyberspace. He knows the score fur sure.

Martin?  

[Willy50]

Thanks Joan;  I know that when I was first diagnosed I just knew nothing about HEP and needed some help from people that knew what was going on.  I know that you may not know for sure about the legitimacy of these tests....... but at least you now know to question before spending more money......and you have shared your knowledge.  We have some problems at the other site with spammers and we find that every time they get a response.....it just encourages them to try again.  I agree, it takes real low lifes to try to make a buck off of sick people.  I also agree that a cheap secure test is needed thru the mail.  

Thanks for sharing the information, even if it ends with a question.  If anyone finds out of a reliable and through the mail diagnosis test....... would you mind posting it here?

Thanks ,
Willy

[Colin S]

The guy that sells this kit is a real sleaze bag.  

[Willy50]

Not only do people get stung, here is an article about the state getting "taken." This is one reason to make sure that you get a real one.  Think about going thru life either having it, but knowing it, or the reverse..... not having it but being told by a so called reputable testing lab that you've got it.  Either way....it's bad.
-Willy


http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/Prison-Lab-Testing-Fake6jul00.htm

State Fumbles Prison Lab Testing

Company's fake results may never have been corrected

SABIN RUSSELL / SF Chronicle 6jul00A California laboratory that processed medical tests for thousands of state prisoners in the 1990s was shut down by health inspectors in 1997 for faking results on screens for AIDS, hepatitis and other serious diseases. But more than three years later, there is little evidence of any attempt by the California Department of Corrections to retest inmates or notify them that their test results were faked, a Chronicle investigation has found.

Without retesting, potentially thousands of prison inmates who had lab work done by B.C.L. Clinical Labs could have lacked crucial information about their health and missed beneficial treatments. They also could have infected other inmates or could have been released back into society with diseases they did not know they had.

Prompted by The Chronicle's inquiry in March, Department of Corrections authorities are looking into the matter but have yet to turn up documents describing any retesting plan.

Dr. Donna Wilson, chief of quality programs for the department's Health Care Services Division, said she believes individual prison medical officers took the appropriate steps to retest any prisoners whose health was in question.

"What I hope we will be able to document is that they did undergo an organized approach to appropriately retest," said Wilson, who has worked for the department since 1998.

But a review of the records of more than a dozen female inmates shows only two cases of retesting. One woman was given another HIV test 13 months after her initial test, and another woman was retested for a thyroid condition but not for other possible illnesses.

Prison rights attorneys who learned about the B.C.L. case from The Chronicle said they doubt any retesting was ever undertaken.

"This is really unconscionable," said Donna Willmott, litigation coordinator for Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, a San Francisco law office for low-income women inmates.

SURPRISE VISIT

The closing of B.C.L. Clinical Labs, situated in the Los Angeles suburb of Santa Fe Springs, is described in federal and state documents obtained by The Chronicle through state Public Records Act requests.

They reveal for the first time how a reckless medical testing laboratory --which had been warned by prison officials for late and shoddy work since 1995 -- won low-bid contracts to run thousands of medical tests on state prisoners and faked the results in a scam inspectors call "dry-labbing."

Tipped off by the chief medical officer at Chuckawala Valley State Prison in Imperial County, inspectors paid a surprise visit to B.C.L. labs on Dec. 10, 1996.

They found a jumble of idle equipment. There was evidence that lab operators were simply making up results on vital medical tests for thousands of prisoners -- tests for AIDS, hepatitis and cancer -- and typing them into a computer.

"Basically, we caught them with their hand in the cookie jar," said Tom Barr, an investigator for the Laboratory Field Services branch of the California Department of Health Services.

Under its authority to regulate medical laboratories, the federal Department of Health and Human Services suspended B.C.L.'s license in January 1997 and revoked it on May 1, 1997. The company's owner and manager, Parveena Ahkter, and her brother, Ayazur Rahman, were fined $20,000 but are believed by investigators to have fled the country shortly after the lab was raided.

(continued next post)

[Willy50]

(continued from prior post)

PATIENTS IN `IMMEDIATE JEOPARDY'

Seven state prisons received notices from federal regulators in March 1997 warning that the problems at B.C.L. labs posed "immediate jeopardy" to patients. Lab results "may not represent an accurate diagnosis of your patients' condition and may require immediate follow-up, particularly in the area of Pap smears and HIV testing," the notice said. "This information is being provided to you to enable you to make an informed decision regarding patient retesting and future testing."

Prisons notified were: Northern California Women's Facility, Stockton; Calipatria State Prison, Calipatria; Lancaster State Prison, Los Angeles; Chuckawala Valley State Prison and Ironwood State Prison, Blythe; Central California's Women's Facility, Chowchilla; and Deuel Vocational Institute, Tracy.

The Corrections Department's Wilson said there may be no directives from top department administrators to retest inmates because medical decisions were delegated to each prison. "The contracts were institution-specific," she said. ". . . Any and all problems would been have handled by each institution."

At one facility, Chuckawala Valley State Prison, prison doctors sent some test samples to local hospitals to be reprocessed after the doctors realized they could not rely on B.C.L. test results.

"Everyone, from the doctors and nurses on down, was fully aware of the problem with B.C.L," said Dr. John Culton, Chuckawala's chief medical officer. "We'd gotten to the point where we were looking for errors and were retesting anything that seemed necessary."

Culton said he urged state health inspectors to check out the company. He believes any prisoner whose lab results were suspect was retested at his facility. But he acknowledged that he never put any formal "cleanup" work down in writing.

One thing is clear: Any program to retest would have been large-scale and costly.

One of the prison facilities, Central California Women's Facility, calls itself the nation's largest women's prison, with 2,600 inmates. Records show that from July to November 1996, just before it was closed, B.C.L. labs billed the facility $161,000 for thousands of medical tests, including Pap smears to detect cervical cancer, AIDS tests, biopsies and urinalyses.

NO RECORDS OF RETESTING

Yet Department of Corrections authorities have been unable to produce records showing that the state prison system took any steps to retest those prisoners whose test results were suddenly called into question. At the request of The Chronicle, staff members at Legal Services for Prisoners with Children examined medical records of 100 women inmates at Central California Women's Facility and Valley State Prison, both in Chowchilla.

The records were from an unrelated case brought by the San Francisco group against the Department of Corrections alleging inferior medical care of inmates. The case was settled and resulted in an agreement by the prison systems to adhere to a new set of rules for caring for prisoners.

The review turned up the charts of 13 women who had medical tests conducted by B.C.L. in the six months before it closed. Only two of the charts showed any evidence of retesting -- that of a woman who had a second HIV test nine months after B.C.L was raided and another of a woman who was retested for a thyroid condition but not for other problems.

Dr. Corey Weinstein, a San Francisco physician who consults with advocacy groups on prison medical issues, said that if more women had been retested, it would have been reflected in their files. "If it's not on the charts, it didn't happen," he said. "Medical professionals are taught: You write everything down."

Weinstein said it would not surprise him if no retesting was done anywhere in the system after the warnings. "These medical staffs tend to be very demoralized. They are not involved with the patients in a way that would protect them from this kind of malfeasance by another provider."

LAB'S BAD TRACK RECORD

It is unclear how long B.C.L. had been faking medical test results. But a search of Department of Corrections records shows that B.C.L. was identified as a poor performer as early as July 1995.

Administrators at Robert J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego warned the new lab only 11 days after it started what was to have been a yearlong contract for up to $100,000 in testing services. Among the complaints: A doctor had found 20 spelling errors in a standard form B.C.L. provided to check off tests performed.

"What kind of lab are we dealing with?" scrawled a Donovan staff member in a worried memo to the chief lab technician.

After repeated warnings and complaints, the contract was terminated on Aug. 28, 1995, for failure to provide testing materials as promised and failure to report test results in a timely manner. California State Prison in Sacramento dropped B.C.L. for similar reasons in October 1995. But that did not stop other California prisons from signing up B.C.L., which sometimes bid for the state business at half the price charged by competitors.

The December 10 inspection uncovered shocking conditions at B.C.L. labs. Documents obtained by The Chronicle describe a laboratory in disarray, with testing equipment that didn't work, was out-of-calibration or lacked proper reagents for conducting tests of blood and urine. At one point during the inspection, investigators asked a technician to start one of the machines, a Hitachi blood chemistry analyzer. When the machine was turned on, it began to pour fluid onto the floor. "We were all standing in reagents," said Barr.

The Department of Health Services considered criminal charges against the labs' operators, but no one was ever prosecuted. Indeed, the two-year sanction imposed on B.C.L. labs by federal authorities would, in theory, have permitted the operators to reopen for business in April 1999.

[Willy50]

(here is a breif summary of what goes on in a doctors office. -Willy)

http://www.healthscout.com/ency/68/65/main.html

HIV Testing
     
Definition of HIV Testing
Description of HIV Testing
Questions To Ask Your Doctor About HIV TestingDefinition of HIV Testing

HIV testing is performed to detect antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).


Description of HIV Testing

Many HIV-infected individuals are unaware of their status, since the characteristic symptoms of AIDS usually do not develop until years after HIV infection. Early knowledge of HIV infection may allow infected individuals to seek early treatment, which has been shown to delay onset of AIDS and to help change high-risk behavior.



Serologic studies for the presence of antibodies to HIV-1 are the standard method of screening for HIV infection. A time interval exists between infection with HIV and the development of detectable antibodies to HIV (seroconversion). The interval between infection and seroconversion is called the “window period.” At least 95 percent of all infected persons seroconvert within six months.



Individuals who test negative should remember that they may be infected despite the initial negative test. Physicians therefore recommend that people stop engaging in high-risk behaviors and return for retesting in six months or earlier.



HIV screening must always include pre- and post-test counseling. Specially trained clinicians or counselors can provide accurate, clear and understandable information regarding HIV testing at both pre- and post-test counseling sessions.



To date, HIV testing can be performed on any of three bodily fluids: blood, oral fluid or urine.



The HIV Antibody Blood Test is a sequence of several different tests. The initial test (called the ELISA test) may be repeated several times and may be checked against any one of several confirming tests (the Western Blot, IFA, or RIPA). ELISA stands for "enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay" and is pronounced like the name "Eliza." This test was developed to screen donated blood and eliminate HIV-infected blood from the blood supply. Only later was it used for detecting HIV infection in humans.



A negative (nonreactive) result from the ELISA accurately demonstrates that the blood sample contains no HIV antibodies. However, a reactive (positive) result from the ELISA may sometimes be false. When testing people for HIV infection, an initially reactive ELISA should not immediately be accepted as a true positive. A reactive ELISA should be repeated twice. Consistently reactive ELISAs are then subjected to confirmation with another laboratory test that is even more specific for the HIV antibody, and so has fewer false positives. The Western Blot Test indicates which specific antibodies are present. This additional information can help distinguish samples that are true positives from those that are falsely positive on the ELISA.



Some laboratories confirm ELISA-positive results with tests other than the Western blot. Alternatives include the immunofluorescence assay (IFA) and the radio-immunoprecipitative asay (RIPA). These tests provide confirmation as accurate as the Western Blot Test. The rate of false positives after confirmatory testing is extremely low. If a person receives a confirmed result despite low risk for HIV infection, further laboratory investigations should be sought. Generally, this will involve repeating the entire sequence on a fresh sample of the subject's blood. If available, more sophisticated testing (e.g., polymerase chain reaction, PCR) may provide a conclusive result more quickly. PCR is a process wherein a few molecules of HIV proviral DNA can be amplified into a sufficient mass of DNA to be detected by current testing methods. For example, it can determine if newborns of HIV-infected mothers are truly HIV-positive.



The HIV Oral Fluid Test (Orasure®) was approved in 1994 and is intended for people 13 years of age and older. A newer test, the Orasure test, involves collecting secretions between the cheek and gum and then evaluating them for HIV antibodies.



Orasure is essentially as accurate as blood tests, and because it doesn't involve a needle stick, is favored by many individuals. Orasure is available through physician offices and many public health clinics.



The Urine-based HIV Test was approved in 1996. The test uses urine samples to detect antibodies to HIV-1 using the ELISA method. This test can only be ordered by a physician.



In one study, the urine test was positive as an initial screening test 99.3 percent of the time in persons known to have AIDS. In asymptomatic HIV-1 infected patients, the test would be expected to miss one or two persons out of every 100.



Other studies showed that the urine-based test would give a falsely-positive result in one or two persons out of 100 without HIV-1 antibodies in their blood, compared to 1 in 1,000 with a blood-based ELISA test. A positive screening test must be followed by a blood test to confirm the results.



Test Results

The test can have several results:



Positive result: This suggests that a person has HIV antibodies and was infected with the virus at some time. People with a positive result should assume that they have the virus and could therefore transmit it by sex, sharing needles, donating blood, sperm, body organs, to a newborn by giving birth or by breastfeeding.



Negative result: If it has been over six months since the last possible exposure to HIV, then a negative result suggests that a person is probably not infected with the virus. However, false negatives can occur. At least 95 percent of all infected persons seroconvert within six months.



Inconclusive (indeterminate) result: A small percentage of results are inconclusive. This means that the result is neither positive nor negative. It may be due to a number of factors that have nothing to do with HIV infection, or it can occur early in an infection when there are not enough HIV antibodies present to give a positive result. If this happens, another blood sample will be taken at a later time for a retest.



Accuracy

As with any test, there can be false positives and false negatives. A small percentage of people may be told that they have the HIV antibody when in fact, they do not. A small percentage of people may also be told that they are not HIV-infected when in fact, they are. This can happen when the test is taken too soon after being infected and the body has not had time to produce HIV antibodies (the window period).



As discussed above, individuals who test negative should remember that they may be infected despite the initial negative test. Physicians therefore recommend that people stop engaging in high-risk behaviors and return for retesting in six months or earlier.

Questions To Ask Your Doctor About HIV Testing

Should an HIV test be taken?

What type of counseling will I receive before and after the test?

Which test do you recommend?

How accurate is the test?

If the test positive, when will treatment begin?

Will periodic monitoring be required?

If the test is negative, will re-testing be done?

When?