Posted on 12/16/2007 6:00:09 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
I agree with the never seen part.
But it is equivalent to YEC vs science.
==But it is equivalent to YEC vs science.
Evidence? Feel free to cite your usual left-wing sources.
I just look at the list of YEC posters at FR and the list of AIDS deniers. I just wonder how many Freepers want to take medical advice from someone who believes the earth is 6000 years old.
It’s a simple matter of judgement.
First, the vast majority of scientists and medical doctors who challenge the HIV-AIDS hypothesis are not in any way associated with the Creation Science movement. Moreover, the scientists who challenge the failed HIV-AIDS hypothesis are not “AIDS deniers,” they maintain that AIDS is caused by something other than HIV. So I can only conclude that your statements are crafted to be deliberately misleading, or you simply don’t understand Duesberg’s risk-AIDS hypothesis. I’m inclined to think your posts stem from a combination of both.
Finally, your attempts to link Duesberg with Creationists is not only disingenuous, it can only help Duesberg. Due to censorship and intimidation within scientific ranks, the campaign to expose the HIV-AIDS scandal has been taken to the general public. Seeing how the majority of the American public supports either Creation Science or ID, linking the HIV-AIDS scandal will only cause more of them to start paying attention to this debate. So by all means, keep up the good work!
==It’s a simple matter of judgement.
You’re getting ahead of yourself. The judgement phase of the HIV-AIDS scandal comes after conservaves wake up to how they were deliberately deceived by the Public Health Movement. Once this has been accomplished, and the perpetrators of this fraud of been properly identified, then, and only then, will it become a simple matter of meting out HARSH JUDGEMENT.
Seems to be working out for Magic Johnson.
==Seems to be working out for Magic Johnson
Who, by the way, given his appearance and weight, decided to quietly pass on taking AIDS chemotherapy drugs.
LOL!
Exactly....
LOL!
Don’t laugh. Two-thirds read the horoscopes.
By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY
Call it the Magic Paradox. Fifteen years ago, L.A. Laker legend Magic Johnson announced he had AIDS and would retire from basketball. Today, Johnson, 47, looks so healthy some may question whether AIDS is the menace it was made out to be.
That’s one of the myths Johnson says he will have to dispel if he’s going to succeed in perhaps his most ambitious venture of all, a $60 million partnership with the drug firm Abbott that aims to cut AIDS rates among African-Americans by 50% in the next five years.
“You can’t take that attitude that you’re going to be like Magic,” says Johnson, who will launch the I Stand with Magic partnership at a World AIDS Day briefing in Los Angeles on Friday.
“Since I announced 15 years ago, hundreds of thousands of people have died of HIV/AIDS,” he says. “There will be more people dying. The virus acts different in all of us. There’s no certainty that if you get the virus, you’re going to be OK.”
In fact, if you’re young and black, odds are that you won’t be, statistics show. For the past six years, HIV has been the leading cause of death for blacks 25 to 44 years of age, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
For whites, HIV is the fifth-leading cause of death; for Hispanics, HIV ranks fourth. Although blacks make up about 15% of the U.S. population, they account for about 50% of all people in the United States who live with HIV.
Blacks account for almost half of new HIV diagnoses, a tide that is rising. Two-thirds of new infections among women occur in black women. “We’ve got to drive these numbers down,” Johnson says.
Magic strategy
To reach that goal, Johnson and his I Stand with Magic partners will hold an HIV testing drive in 10 to 13 cities each year, sponsor educational programs and advertising, back grass-roots advocacy programs and provide scholarships for doctors willing to staff HIV/AIDS programs in the black community. Getting across the message isn’t going to be easy. Despite his best intentions, Johnson can be part of the problem.
“Just last night, I did a seminar with a group of high school girls,” Myisha Patterson, 25, national health coordinator for the NAACP, said Thursday. “I had them write down three things they knew about HIV/AIDS. Somebody wrote, ‘There’s a cure for AIDS. Look at Magic Johnson.’ “
Johnson says he’s anything but cured. He says he owes his well-being — and quite possibly his life — to the multidrug cocktail he takes everyday.
The drugs, GlaxoSmithKline’s Trizivir and Abbott’s Kaletra, are standard treatments used by many thousands of others infected with the AIDS virus, HIV.
Johnson can also credit luck and possibly the conditioning that comes from playing up to 100 heart-pounding NBA games a year.
He's taking AZT and he's not dead yet? Quick, tell Duesberg.
Even worse, he’s going to promote the evil stuff in the black community.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to become infected with HIV, and if you ask for it, you won’t get it. So who’s the stunt man here?
This is a man who claims to be the discoverer of HIV, and he can’t prepare a culture to infect himself with? Give me a break.
There seems to be much speculation as to whether Magic is taking his toxic AIDS drugs. And for good reason, every time you turn around Magic or his wife lets it slip out that he’s not taking the drugs. This, by the way, probably explains his good health—GG
Time Magazine, 2001
Citing doctor-patient confidentiality, Mellman will not discuss Johnson’s treatment or current condition. But in an interview with TIME last week, Johnson acknowledged that he has in the past taken AZT, the antiviral drug typically administered when a person’s helper T-cell count drops to 500. (See following story.) Johnson said that he is no longer taking AZT and that his T-cell count is above 500, “but I don’t tell exactly what it is because then I’ll have everybody talking about it.” His health, he says, “has been wonderful. My doctor told me to watch out for things like deteriorating skills. Nothing so far.” Johnson’s added weight is due not to drug treatments, as some have speculated, but to a healthier diet and to muscle mass from his regular exercise sessions.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,135465,00.html
"Lesley Stahl had no qualms about invading the beloved sports figure’s private life when she interviewed him in May on “60 Minutes.” After Johnson’s wife, Cookie, fatuously declared her husband “cured” in an Ebony magazine article, Stahl said Johnson stopped taking the drugs that had restored his immune system. Cut to Dr. David Ho, Magic’s doctor and the man most responsible for bringing protease inhibitors to the forefront in the fight against AIDS. There on prime time was Time magazine’s Man of the Year apparently divulging privileged information about his patient. Ho: “Previously he had not followed his meds as religiously as he ought to, and we’ve seen the virus pop up a year ago.” Stahl suggested Johnson was running some “sort of test” to see if he had been cured, to use his wife’s term.'"
http://www.salon.com/media/1998/06/08media.html
So he is now promoting the treatment for what reason? Money? Desire to kill black people?
Why not ask him?
Millions of dollars poured into research and prevention efforts have reduced the number of diagnoses and deaths in the United States over the years. But that success hasn't touched African Americans, many of whom have remained reluctant to acknowledge the disease's impact in their community.
From the epidemic's start, black people have been disproportionately likely to test positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. African American men, women and children now account for 51 percent of new HIV diagnoses -- up from 25 percent in 1985 -- and 55 percent of people dying nationally of AIDS, although they make up 13 percent of the U.S. population.
The black community's high poverty rate contributes to this disparity, because poor people have less access to medical information, preventive health care and treatment, researchers say. Higher rates of sexually transmitted diseases also contribute because a person with genital lesions, for example, is more likely to contract HIV and a person carrying another disease in addition to HIV is more likely to transmit the HIV.
But AIDS activists, researchers and people with HIV say a much bigger factor has been the ongoing reluctance by many African Americans to address the disease at all.
More than 2 percent of all African Americans are HIV-positive, a higher incidence rate than in any other group, according to a federal analysis of cases between 1999 and 2002 cited by the nonprofit Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Black women make up two-thirds of new HIV diagnoses among women, and black teens make up 66 percent of cases among youth.
African Americans are the only group experiencing a continuous rise in HIV infections, even though there is little difference from the rest of the population in how black people contract it.
The decades-long lag in identifying AIDS as a black health crisis results from both the disease's initial label as a white epidemic and its association with homosexuality, which carries a heavy stigma in the black community. Influential black people and black secular and religious institutions have been slow to embrace black AIDS victims, demand government aid or speak out.
"AIDS wasn't thought of as a black disease for a very long time," said Jennifer Kates, director of HIV policy for the Kaiser Foundation. "The initial response was led by the white gay community, and that defined what people thought of the AIDS epidemic."
Many thought that would change when basketball legend Magic Johnson announced he had HIV in 1991. He created a foundation that put millions of dollars into treatment centers and free testing, and he continues to promote education and prevention.
But his was a lonely voice.
It wasn't until 1999 that the first national conference explored AIDS as a black issue, even though it was the leading killer of African Americans ages 25 to 44 from 1990 through 2000.
However, the community may be on the cusp of a new approach this year, the 25th since the epidemic began. Several "Call to Action" events are planned this month locally and nationally. For example, the NAACP, Urban League, Black Entertainment Television and celebrities plan to gather in New York today to "sound an alarm" about the epidemic.
"People with AIDS have paid their tithes, and the pastor still beats them over the head," said Sherry Thomas, coordinator at the Walker House, an Oakland facility for the chronically ill that is funded by the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco. "It is like if they keep them in a box, they feel safe."
Slowly, Thomas said, the box has started to open.
"People are leaving to find inclusive churches, and the dollars are falling off, so it is starting to get attention," she said.
Still, many churches have been quiet about their AIDS ministries, and the help centers they run can be hard to find. At funerals, the cause of death for blacks who die of AIDS complications often is presented as something else, which perpetuates the belief that AIDS is not a black epidemic.
Oakland resident Paulette Hogan knows this paradox firsthand. When she started developing persistent flu symptoms five years ago, the last thing on her mind was HIV. She didn't see a doctor regularly and didn't think of getting tested until she got a job in a center for gay youths and someone suggested HIV might be the cause of her ongoing illness.
"I took the test because it was clear to me that I didn't fit the profile," said Hogan, 43, who picked up the virus through sex. "In my mind, it was gay men. I was losing friends, but unless they were gay men, it wasn't HIV, it was pneumonia or kidney failure. No one was talking about it happening to people like me."
"People under 30 have no idea that this is the No. 1 killer and still tend to think they are invincible," said Terrance Hodges, a 43-year-old Oakland resident who was diagnosed with HIV three years ago. "They don't have a sense of fatalism and don't think anything can stop them. I know because I was like that. And I practiced unsafe sex.
"Violence is much more of a reality among people of African descent than HIV."
Robert Scott, an East Oakland doctor who specializes in HIV care and treatment and sees patients ranging from 17 to 78, said even the high death rate isn't enough.
"Whether it is a teen or a senior, folks don't take the disease seriously," he said. "The taboos associated with it -- promiscuity, drug usage and gay sex -- make people embarrassed to admit they may be affected."
However, the higher African American HIV infection rate is not driven by intravenous drug use or risky sexual behavior, according to medical experts.
"There is not a significant difference between African Americans and other ethnic groups with regard to risky behaviors," said George Lemp, an epidemiologist in Oakland who directs the University of California's AIDS Research Program. "The riddle is why there is such a rate when the risk behaviors appear to be similar."
Poverty plays a significant role by reducing access to health care and adding challenges to all aspects of a person's life.
"When you are focused on basic needs like paying the rent, buying food and the electric bill, the last thing you are thinking about is HIV," said Lisha Wilson, medical director of the Magic Johnson AIDS Clinic in Oakland. "There are so many other issues. Poverty can lead people to do things they wouldn't normally do, and that can involve unsafe sex."
"We can't continue to try and use programs that were piloted and developed for white gay men," said Roosevelt Mosby, a founding member of the State of Emergency African American Task Force in Alameda County. "The methods do not transfer to black people.
"We have to develop different methodologies. You can't use the same forms of treatment and prevention for young people, men, women, black or white. If the black community can't even admit that AIDS is an issue, how are we going to talk about preventing it?"
Phill Wilson, who founded the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles in 1999, has been pushing for influential African Americans to take a major role in starting the community's conversation about AIDS.
"My sole purpose is to get black folks involved, faith leaders, business leaders, celebrities and elected officials," said Wilson, who has been living with AIDS for 15 years. "AIDS in black America has never benefited from the power of celebrity in the way other communities have.
"It has taken 25 years, but we now have the first mobilization of any magnitude, the first collective coordinated effort," Wilson said of today's gathering in New York. "I think black America is ready to respond and take ownership."
Many of this country's black leaders -- including NAACP President Bruce Gordon, Urban League President Marc Morial, BET Vice President Kelli Richardson Lawson, actor Danny Glover and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-New York -- plan to announce an alliance committed to stopping the spread of HIV and AIDS.
The information must come from trusted organizations in the African American community, said Myisha Patterson, the NAACP's new national health coordinator, who is making HIV a priority for the organization.
"If we have learned anything over the last 25 years, it is that the black community doesn't respond to government reports," she said. "Unless your eyes are open and you are looking for information, you are not going to see it."
Some black clergy, celebrities and media have pushed for change in past years. The Rev. Al Sharpton and San Francisco's Bishop Yvette Flunder gathered with church leaders in Atlanta in January to promote acceptance of gays. Before she died this spring, Coretta Scott King -- the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s widow -- condemned homophobia as an obstacle to AIDS prevention.
"We can't even get to AIDS without talking about homophobia first," said Sylvia Rhue, director of religious affairs for the National Black Justice Coalition, which organized the Atlanta meeting.
Even the legacy of 31-year-old N.W.A. rapper Eric "Eazy-E" Wright, who died of AIDS in 1995, centers more on "gangster rap" than AIDS.
Alameda County was the first in the nation to address the disproportionate impact on the black community. County supervisors declared a state of emergency regarding AIDS in 1998. Emergency task force members keep politicians updated on the demographics of the disease, and work with the California HIV Prevention and Education Project and the AIDS Project of the East Bay in Oakland. However, members say they still are not reaching enough black residents, who account for 41 percent of the county's AIDS cases but are only 18 percent of the population.
Wilson hopes today's meeting will change that.
"In 2006, AIDS is a black disease, full stock, through all lenses," he said. "Black people bear the burden, and people are now going to realize that the only way to stop it in America is to stop it in black America."
-- Magic Johnson Foundation in Los Angeles: (310) 246-4400, www.magicjohnson.org -- runs four clinics with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation. Oakland clinic: 411 30th St., Suite 200, (510) 628-0949. San Francisco clinic: 1025 Howard St., (415) 552-2814.
-- Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles: (213) 353-3610, www.blackaids.org -- offers resources, including news articles, links to data and an HIV test center locator.
-- AIDS Project of the East Bay: (510) 663-7979, www.apeb.org -- offers testing, prevention education and a wellness center, 499 Fifth St., Oakland.
-- City of Refuge United Church of Christ: (415) 861-6130, 1025 Howard St., San Francisco, www.sfrefuge.org -- provides housing, medical services, prevention, youth programs and other services through its Ark of Refuge, www.arkofrefuge.org/resources.html
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