Posted on 01/09/2005 12:52:56 PM PST by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
There's been a predictable wave of outrage (perhaps real; one can never tell) at a recent column on this page by economist Thomas Sowell of the Hoover Institution at Stanford, in which he asked whether the legal institution of marriage is really a "right" that can be bestowed on gay couples, or whether it isn't in fact a set of commonly accepted restrictions on the rights of the partners, adopted to facilitate support of the children resulting from (hetero) sexual unions.
I won't endeavor to defend Sowell's economic analysis, because he's better able and qualified than I to do that job.
But I found it interesting to again hear the old shrieks about how AIDS is not a "gay disease," since it's spreading out among females and heterosexuals as a sexually transmitted disease.
Since it's not.
We've been waiting a decade, now, for this prediction to come true. Remember, back in the '90s, hearing that "heterosexual women are the fastest growing group of AIDS victims"? Yeah: In a statistical stutter typical among small numbers, they were at one point up from half of one percent to a full percent -- most of those women turning out to be folks who shared needles with other intravenous recreational drug users.
Mind you, the fact that most of those dying of diseases that opportunistically strike those with impaired immune symptoms turn out to be gay men (and the rest, pretty much, injectable drug users) is no reason not to feel compassion for the victims, and to seek more scientifically accurate information to help prevent those outcomes. But the key word there is "information" -- myths that make people believe an "HIV-positive diagnosis" is a death sentence, justifying the immediate application of therapies which are in and of themselves highly toxic, hardly seem an appropriate way to support our gay and drug-using friends and brothers in their right to live as they see fit.
The last line of defense for those who persist in bruiting about many long-disproved AIDS myths seems to be the claim that "AIDS in Africa proves everything we've been saying."
But at http://www.sumeria.net/aids/aidsafrica.html , we find Eleni Papadopulos-Eleopulos, Department of Medical Physics, Royal Perth Hospital, Western Australia, and Valendar F. Turner, Department of Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, writing:
"According to the World Health Organization, some 2.5 million sub-Saharan Africans have AIDS -- Africa is apparently in the grip of an AIDS pandemic. (In the USA 300,000 people have AIDS). AIDS in Africa is portrayed as providing two important lessons for the West. The first is an example of the potential devastation that AIDS can unleash, the second is that by heterosexual spread, AIDS will eventually overtake the West. However, there is no convincing evidence that millions of Africans are infected with HIV, the putative cause of AIDS, or that African AIDS is heterosexually spread.
"The only evidence that some Africans are 'infected' with a virus called HIV is indirect, the random testing of Africans' blood for the presence of antibodies that react with a collection of so-called HIV proteins," these medical professionals continue.
"If the 'HIV proteins' (present in the test kits) only reacted with HIV antibodies there would be no problem. Unfortunately this is not the case. Antibodies produced in response to the presence of one foreign agent may also react with another different foreign agent and the more infectious agents that a person has been exposed to, the greater is the likelihood that such cross-reacting antibodies will be present. ...
"Thus in Africa, no one knows whether the antibody tests are specific for HIV, that is, whether a positive test actually means HIV infection. ... In Africa there is no certainty that Africans are actually infected with a putative new agent, HIV. ...
"Unlike the West, in Africa AIDS is diagnosed without any laboratory tests, patients are classified as AIDS cases without laboratory proof that they have either immunodeficiency or HIV infection. ...
"Dr. Konotey-Ahulu from the Cromwell Hospital in London expresses a similar view: 'Today, because of AIDS, it seems that Africans are not allowed to die from these conditions [from which they used to die before the AIDS era] any longer. If tens of thousands are dying from AIDS (and Africans do not cremate their dead) where are the graves?'
"According to him, the uppermost question in the minds of intelligent Africans and Europeans in that continent is: 'Why do the world's media appear to have conspired with some scientists to become so gratuitously extravagant with the untruth?' "
The entire article is well worth a read, as are the excellent, well-researched, profusely footnoted books "Inventing the AIDS Virus," by Dr. Peter Duesberg, Ph.D., member of the National Academy of Sciences and professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the slimmer "What If Everything You Thought You Knew about AIDS Was Wrong?" (available through www.aliveandwell.org), by Christine Maggiore, who tested "HIV positive" in 1992, initially accepted and spouted all the same guff the mainstream "AIDS activists" still peddle, but eventually began to ask how on earth toxic therapies could make people well, decided to simply take care of her health, and has since remained perfectly healthy, marrying and bearing "two beautiful, healthy children, ages 6 and 2, who have never had so much as an ear infection."
More upbeat news -- along with more on "AIDS in Africa" -- from Ms. Maggiore next week.
I understand the governments do not do much to change the public perception that sex with pre-teen girls prevents HIV transmission. I would like to know which UN bonehead thought that one up. Kofi?
AIDS will remain an evermore fearsome pandemic in Africa wiping out 150% of the population every year so long as it sucks Western, primarily American, money into the dictators' and UNocrats' pockets.
This is BS, and the reason for that is that the guy is trying to push his opinion through any means necessary (including lies and outright deception). He asks where the graves are? Well, in many areas (for example in Uganda during the early to mid 90s and Southern Africa from the mid-90s to current) whole areas have been depopulated by AIDS. In Uganda the situation was exceedingly dire, because the parents would be killed and the children would be raised by the grandparents. A whole generation virtually disappeared in some places, and there were entire villages that had children being raised by the elderly.
Oh, and there were graves to boot!
Fortunately Uganda undertook serious steps to proliferate health awareness, and they did this by mixing both religious exhortations (eg be a good Christian and stop promiscuous sex) plus one of the most extensive safe-sex programs in the world, and that country literally saved itself! Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the Southern African nations (eg Namibia, South Africa etc). There AIDS is still chugging along at terminal speed.
As for the affliction not being caused by HIV that is also nonsense. Not all of Africa is bushland! Test kits do exist, and many people do get tested. The major difference between AIDS in Africa and the West is the disease that actually kills the person. In Africa it is usually stuff like tuberculosis and malaria that ravage the weakened body. In the west things like malaria are not to be found commonly, and tuberculosis (though present) is not even near the killer it is in the tropics.
Now, ONE THING i will agree with the good doctor on is that AIDS is used as a rallying call for external funds by many of the afflicted nations. Through it they can have the West send billions of dollars, a good portion of which 'disappears' in a manner that would make even Copperfield envious!
But saying that it has not killed many because there are 'no graves' is just plain stupid. And it means that the good doctor has seen what the heck has happened in some of those countries there.
the "fact" is that IV drug users no longer die from the drugs they inject or from the diseases their damaged immune systems allow the opportunity to attack. -- now it's aids.
in africa, the 20 mil dying each year of cancer, TB, etc., have been cured or they have been grouped under the umbrella of aids.
amazingly, too, gays have no damage to their immune systems as a result of amyl and butyl nitrate and methamphetamine -- what they need to relax sphincter muscles and prolong activity, although Kaposi's markings appear on their thumbs, fingertips and nostrils.
everything is aids. yet not a single proof of HIV destroying immune systems.
because that's where the money's at.
meanwhile kids with leukemia go wanting for research because aids has sucked up every penny of gov't aid and private charity.
bttt
BTTT
This article is complete BS and disinformation. Not up to your usual standards. I actually like reading most of the articles you post.
Well I'm not the author of this article, so I won't be offended if you detail the points where you disagree.
Whoever wrote this is either insane, delusional or simply a liar.
According to estimates from UNAIDS, an umbrella group for five U.N. agencies, the World Bank and the World Health Organization, 34.3 million people in the world have AIDS -- 24.5 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly 19 million have died from AIDS, 3.8 million of them children under the age of 15.
Among the other statistics:
5.4 million new AIDS infections in 1999, 4 million of them in Africa.
2.8 million dead of AIDS in 1999, 85 percent of them in Africa.
13.2 million children orphaned by AIDS, 12.1 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Reduced life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa from 59 years to 45 between 2005 and 2010, and in Zimbabwe from 61 to 33.
More than 500,000 babies infected in 1999 by their mothers -- most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
(AIDS in Africa: Dying by the numbers)
There is a very small cohort of scientists including the ones quoted in this article who are "AIDS dissidents". There have been times in the past when scientific orthodoxy was overthrown and once-ridiculed scientists were accepted as farsighted. But in my judgement, this is not going to be one of those cases. There has just been too much research on HIV for it to be a hoax. Unfortunately, the ideas of the AIDS dissidents are actually killing people.
The medicines that people with AIDS take to help them live longer seem to be very effective. These medicines are designed to reduce the amount of HIV virus in the body. They are designed on the basis of the HIV/AIDS model. What effective medicines have the AIDS dissidents come up with?
Speaking of HIV and Africa: It has been found that AIDS was less prevalent in certain areas of Africa and that these areas corresponded with places where tribal custom included circumcision. Research has shown that the inner surface of the foreskin contains receptors that allow HIV to more easily penetrate into the body.
There is no doubt that AIDS is widespread in Africa despite the fact that there is little tolerance for homosexuality in most African countries.
I was surprised to see that one of the AIDS dissidents is a mathematician whom I once met. He really knows his mathematics but how does that make him an expert in biology or medicine? At the time I met him, before the discovery of AIDS, he already had a reputation as someone who was somewhat difficult to deal with.
Kary Mullis received a Nobel Prize for PCR and he has certainly got a lot of mileage out of that. It's an extremely useful idea that is also fairly simple, but he did come up with it first. He was lined up to testify for the defense in the OJ trial but he was never brought into court, probably because the prosecution could have made him look bad on various grounds. He also believes in astrology and claims to have been abducted by aliens. "Belief in astrology is the infallible sign of ignorance." - Voltaire
(I'll grant that the book by Mullis might be an interesting read, for other reasons.)
During the time that the AIDS dissidents have been making the same points repeatedly, there has been a revolution in biotechnology. Why don't these people use some of the new techniques to search for the real cause of AIDS since they claim it has not been correctly identified? They will do this about the time OJ starts searching for the real killer.
Hey Xenalyte... I will PAY to WATCH while you beat the tar out of THIS one...
I will whale on that hyphenated monstrosity for absolutely free. Unnngh!
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