Posted on 06/01/2006 3:32:03 PM PDT by LouAvul
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Clasping purple irises, calling out names and clapping to a gospel beat, San Francisco paid tribute Thursday to the thousands of residents who died from AIDS in the last 25 years and honored the thousands more still living with the HIV virus. About 200 people gathered in a performing arts center to hear elected officials, AIDS activists and long-term survivors of the disease reflect on the epidemic that was formally identified on June 5, 1981.
That was the date the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a paper about a mysterious illness that had been diagnosed in five gay men in Los Angeles. But few U.S. cities were as closely associated with the epidemic's worst years as San Francisco, which, as of last month, reported 17,988 AIDS deaths, or 22 percent of California's total.
........
The event's tone, though, was mostly celebratory. Before inviting the audience to stand up and shout out "a welcome" to the spirits of the dead, the Rev. Yvette A. Flunder of City of Refuge United Church of Christ reminded the audience to take pride in the model treatment services and prevention programs the city provided.
"This is a praise party," Flunder said. "This is a thank you celebration and a thank God celebration."
(Excerpt) Read more at modbee.com ...
Are people "touched" by cancer? Or "touched" by heart disease?
Those subject to the ravages of cancer, heart disease, etc. are much too boring to leftists, since we are not predominantly those who have screwed everything that walks (mainly male), ignored the most basic precepts of rational and moral behavior, etc. etc.
You just cannot make this stuff up.
Yeah, in today's liberal world, having a lethal venereal disease is truly the pinnacle of accomplishments.
Did they pay their respects to Artur Ashe?
Arthur
Something to keep in mind if anyone ever says that gay men should be allowed to seduce teen boys
I'm pretty sure there's more to it than just touching.
I wonder if San Franfreako thought to honor our more than 1 million war dead on Memorial Day?
This is really disgusting. How could they forget to honor those with the old fashioned diseases like syphillis and gonorrhea?
The chemical-AIDS hypothesis proposes that the AIDS
epidemics of the US and Europe are caused by recreational
drugs, alias lifestyle, and anti-HIV drugs (Duesberg
J. Biosci. | Vol. 28 | No. 4 | June 2003
Peter Duesberg, Claus Koehnlein and David Rasnick
390
Table 4. The HIV-AIDS hypothesis*: 17 predictions versus the facts.
No. Prediction Fact
1. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, it must be abundant
in AIDS patients based on “exactly the same criteria as for
other viral diseases.”
But, only antibodies against HIV are found in most
patients (1–7)**. Therefore, “HIV infection is identified in
blood by detecting antibodies, gene sequences, or viral
isolation.” But, HIV can only be “isolated” from rare, latently
infected lymphocytes that have been cultured for
weeks in vitro – away from the antibodies of the human
host (8). Thus HIV behaves like a latent passenger virus.
2. Since HIV is “the sole cause of AIDS”, there is no AIDS in
HIV-free people.
But, the AIDS literature has described at least 4621 HIVfree
AIDS cases according to one survey – irrespective of,
or in agreement with allowances made by the CDC for
HIV-free AIDS cases (55).
3. The retrovirus HIV causes immunodeficiency by killing
T-cells (1–3).
But, retroviruses do not kill cells because they depend on
viable cells for the replication of their RNA from viral
DNA integrated into cellular DNA (4, 25). Thus, T-cells
infected in vitro thrive, and those patented to mass-produce
HIV for the detection of HIV antibodies and diag nosis
of AIDS are immortal (9–15)!
4. Following “exactly the same criteria as for other viral diseases”,
HIV causes AIDS by killing more T-cells than the body
can replace. Thus T-cells or “CD4 lymphocytes . . . become
depleted in people with AIDS”.
But, even in patients dying from AIDS less than 1 in 500
of the T-cells “that become depleted” are ever infected by
HIV (16–20, 54). This rate of infection is the hallmark of
a latent passenger virus (21).
5. With an RNA of 9 kilobases, just like polio virus, HIV
should be able to cause one specific disease, or no disease if
it is a passenger (22).
But, HIV is said to be “the sole cause of AIDS”, or of 26
different immunodeficiency and non-immunodeficiency
diseases, all of which also occur without HIV (table 2).
Thus there is not one HIV-specific disease, which is the
definition of a passenger virus!
6. All viruses are most pathogenic prior to anti-viral immunity.
Therefore, preemptive immunization with Jennerian vaccines is
used to protect against all viral diseases since 1798.
But, AIDS is observed – by definition – only after anti-
HIV immunity is established, a positive HIV/AIDS test
(23). Thus HIV cannot cause AIDS by “the same criteria”
as conventional viruses.
7. HIV needs “5–10 years” from establishing antiviral immunity
to cause AIDS.
But, HIV replicates in 1 day, generating over 100 new HIVs
per cell (24, 25). Accordingly, HIV is immunogenic, i.e. biochemically
most active, within weeks after infection (26, 27).
Thus, based on conventional criteria “for other viral disea ses”,
HIV should also cause AIDS within weeks – if it could.
8. “Most people with HIV infection show signs of AIDS within
5–10 years” – the justification for prophylaxis of AIDS with
the DNA chain terminator AZT (§ 4).
But, of “34×3 million . . . with HIV worldwide” only 1×4%
[= 471,457 (obtained by substracting the WHO’s cumulative
total of 1999 from that of 2000)] developed AIDS in 2000,
and similarly low percentages prevailed in all previous years
(28). Likewise, in 1985, only 1×2% of the 1 million US citizens
with HIV developed AIDS (29, 30). Since an annual incidence
of 1×2–1×4% of all 26 AIDS defining diseases combined is no
more than the normal mortality in the US and Europe (life ex pectancy
of 75 years), HIV must be a passenger virus.
9. A vaccine against HIV should (“is hoped” to) prevent
AIDS – the reason why AIDS researchers try to develop an
AIDS vaccine since 1984 (31).
But, despite enormous efforts there is no such vaccine to
this day (31). Moreover, since AIDS occurs by definition
only in the presence of natural antibodies against HIV
(§ 3), and since natural antibodies are so effective that no
HIV is detectable in AIDS patients (see No. 1), even the
hopes for a vaccine are irrational.
10. HIV, like other viruses, survives by transmission from host
to host, which is said to be mediated “through sexual contact”.
But, only 1 in 1000 unprotected sexual contacts transmits
HIV (32–34), and only 1 of 275 US citizens is HIV-infected
(29, 30), (figure 1b). Therefore, an average un-infected
US citizen needs 275,000 random “sexual contacts” to get
infected and spread HIV – an unlikely basis for an epidemic!
(Table 4. Cond.)
J. Biosci. | Vol. 28 | No. 4 | June 2003
The chemical bases of the various AIDS epidemics
391
Table 4.
No. Prediction Fact
11. “AIDS spreads by infection” of HIV. But, contrary to the spread of AIDS, there is no “spread”
of HIV in the US. In the US HIV infections have remained
constant at 1 million from 1985 (29) until now (30), (see
also The Durban Declaration and figure 1b). By contrast,
AIDS has increased from 1981 until 1992 and has declined
ever since (figure 1a).
12. Many of the 3 million people who annually receive blood transfusions
in the US for life-threatening diseases (51), should have
developed AIDS from HIV-infected blood donors prior to the
elimination of HIV from the blood supply in 1985.
But there was no increase in AIDS-defining diseases in
HIV-positive transfusion recipients in the AIDS era (52),
and no AIDS-defining Kaposi’s sarcoma has ever been
observed in millions of transfusion recipients (53).
13. Doctors are at high risk to contract AIDS from patients, HIV
researchers from virus preparations, wives of HIV-positive
hemophiliacs from husbands, and prostitutes from clients –
particularly since there is no HIV vaccine.
But, in the peer-reviewed literature there is not one doctor or
nurse who has ever contracted AIDS (not just HIV) from the
over 816,000 AIDS patients recorded in the US in 22 years
(30). Not one of over ten thousand HIV researchers has contracted
AIDS. Wives of hemophiliacs do not get AIDS (35).
And there is no AIDS-epidemic in prostitutes (36–38). Thus
AIDS is not contagious (39, 40).
14. Viral AIDS – like all viral/microbial epidemics in the past
(41–43) – should spread randomly in a population.
But, in the US and Europe AIDS is restricted since 1981
to two main risk groups, intravenous drug users and male
homosexual drug users (§ 1 and 4).
15. A viral AIDS epidemic should form a classical, bell-shaped
chronological curve (41–43), rising exponentially via virus
spread and declining exponentially via natural immunity,
within months (see figure 3a).
But, AIDS has been increasing slowly since 1981 for 12
years and is now declining since 1993 (figure 1a), just like
a lifestyle epidemic, as for example lung cancer from
smoking (figure 3b).
16. AIDS should be a pediatric epidemic now, because HIV is
transmitted “from mother to infant” at rates of 25–50% (44–
49), and because “34×3 million people worldwide” were already
infected in 2000. To reduce the high maternal transmission
rate HIV-antibody-positive pregnant mothers are
treated with AZT for up to 6 months prior to birth (§ 4).
But, less than 1% of AIDS in the US and Europe is pediatric
(30, 50). Thus HIV must be a passenger virus in newborns.
17. “HIV recognizes no social, political or geographic borders”
– just like all other viruses.
But, the presumably HIV-caused AIDS epidemics of
Africa and of the US and Europe differ both clinically and
epidemiologically (§ 1, table 2). The US/European epidemic
is highly nonrandom, 80% male and restricted to
abnormal risk groups, whereas the African epidemic is
random.
So if a person leads a risky lifestyle, contracts a deadly disease, then dies from that disease they get honored? When is the day to honor those who died from suicide? Not a lot of difference.
They have attained the hightest form of martyrdom and have become demigods.
To these people, AIDS sufferers are the most precious form of life.
They are martyrs to The Cause, martyrs of Reagan, martyrs of the Christian Right, martyrs of the USA. And they are worthy of worship.
Heroic? No. Beyond the call of duty? Well, I'd say taking it in the poop chute is way WAYYYYYY beyond the call of duty!
We don't have many people with AIDS here so we're honoring folks with crabs and the clap.
Hey, do you have any idea where there would be verifiable statistics to back up that claim? I was just reading an overblown, exaggerated-sounding, HIV/AIDS story on the 25th anniversary, talking about how it's the deadliest epidemic in the history of mankind, etc., etc., and it got me to thinking that the author was probably going over the top. But I don't know where to look to find statistics on deaths due to other diseases to counter the claim.
Yeah, my buddy who lives up in san fran (poor bastard) told me how the slang term for it is "getting the bug" or something like that. He told me about these russian roulette gay sex parties, where one invitee is infected, but nobody knows who. Yeah, sounds like a real fun time.
Malaria remains one of the globe's leading infectious killers. Estimates of annual deaths caused by malaria range between 700,000 and 2.7 million. More than 75 percent of these deaths occur in children in sub-Saharan Africa.
After reading the pages I don't think I really believe that HIV/AIDS is that big a killer especially since the test for AIDS in Africa is classifications of symptoms.
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