Editing Duesberg hypothesis (section)

===Effectiveness of antiretroviral medication===
The vast majority of people with AIDS have never received antiretroviral drugs, including those in developed countries prior to the licensure of AZT ([[zidovudine]]) in 1987, and people in developing countries today where very few individuals have access to these medications.<ref>[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=14 June 2007 }}.</ref>

The NIAID reports that {{Blockquote|in the mid-1980s, clinical trials enrolling patients with AIDS found that AZT given as single-drug therapy conferred a modest survival advantage compared [with] placebo. Among HIV-infected patients who had not yet developed AIDS, placebo-controlled trials found that AZT given as single-drug therapy delayed, for a year or two, the onset of AIDS-related illnesses. Significantly, long-term follow-up of these trials did not show a prolonged benefit of AZT, but also did not indicate that the drug increased disease progression or mortality. The lack of excess AIDS cases and death in the AZT arms of these placebo-controlled trials in effect counters the argument that AZT causes AIDS. Subsequent clinical trials found that patients receiving two-drug combinations had up to 50 percent improvements in time to progression to AIDS and in survival when compared with people receiving single-drug therapy. In more recent years, three-drug combination therapies have produced another 50 to 80 percent improvement in progression to AIDS and in survival when compared with two-drug regimens in clinical trials.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.hivatis.org/guidelines/adult/AA_040705.pdf |title=HHS, 2005 |access-date=24 August 2005 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171004135919/http://www.hivatis.org/guidelines/adult/AA_040705.pdf |archive-date=4 October 2017 |url-status=dead }}</ref>}}{{Blockquote|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 clearly would not be seen if antiretroviral drugs caused AIDS.<ref name="niaid"/>}}