Absolutely. As I said, it's a behavioral disease in the US.
Incidentally, while looking up my archives and others to make my points in the long screed on AIDS, I found the contact number for catching AIDS is not 500, but 1,000. This compares with two contacts for syphilis and gonorrhea. Don't know about herpes and suchlike.
I originally thought that the amyl nitrites that young homosexuals take to maintain their abilities through the night were enough to make them unwell and less able to fight off invasive disease.
Duesberg suggests all "recreational" drugs press hard on the immune system.
I am beginning to feel he is on the right track.
I've also mentioned that some diseases attack the immune system, though I haven't a listing for them.
You also believe in the connection between HIV and AIDS. In the US, there are thousands of patients with AIDS but not HIV, and a million with HIV who don't have AIDS.
Yet, the definition has become circular. If you have HIV and one of the now 30 diseases - you have AIDS.
I suppose we must wait for the findings of researchers who are beginning to have second doubts about this too easily accepted relationship. Unfortunately, people like Duesberg are kept out of the circle - simply because he doesn't follow the party line.
As honest (and acceptable) researchers begin to publish findings separating HIV from AIDS things may change. If Montagnier - who first discovered HIV/AIDS - is changing his mind on this, perhaps we will find common sense returning to the subject.
Maybe Duesberg will even get a grant again!
In Africa, the problem doesn't need to be drugs. It's just plain lack of nutrition. This is what UNAIDS Program Development Advisor Elesani Njobvu said:
"Families lacking sufficient nutritious food are more vulnerable, as poor nutrition is closely linked with poor health. This in turn makes a person more vulnerable to HIV infection and can shorten the incubation period of HIV, meaning that symptoms appear sooner. The situation is [the] worst for the poor who have the least access to medical care." Njobvu added that people struggling with daily survival are less likely to take preventative measures and are "inclined to resort to any means to get food".
Which remark, I suppose is directed to prostitution.
Those poor bloody people.
I pointed out that South Africans don't test for HIV. It's a privacy issue. But in the rest of Africa, testing is diminishing even in the best areas. What testing there may be is apparently not very good and cannot be trusted.
In the poorest - and hardest hit areas - apparently there is no HIV testing. HIV is assumed. People who once died from TB now die from AIDS. I fear that the disease is the same - only the acronym has changed. It would be interesting to find out if anyone now dies from the common diseases they used to die from. (I have a feeling that this is something I will have to look into.)
Another figure I would find interesting is the number of white South Africans (less homosexuals and hemophiliacs) who die from AIDS. AIDS problems in South Africa are in the rural areas and the townships. How many well-fed South Africans are dying? That would be an interesting statistic. But a quick look around hasn't come up with much.
Meantime, rather than AIDS drugs, it might be more helpful to send broccoli to Africa.Incidentally, Most African countries are coping. Four are basket cases - including Joe's Kenya. Kenya has some of the best agricultural land in Africa in the Central Highlands. Plenty of water is available for irrigation of the arid areas.
Yet there is widespread starvation - even to able bodied men being unable to bring in the food - though there is apparently plenty of corn. It just doesn't get to those who need it.
It may be that governmental corruption and incompetence is a greater problem in parts of Africa than AIDS. Kenya once had a magnificent future that has been sunk by the malfeasance and misfeasance of those office.
Pete complained because I was critical of Clinton's: "a quarter of southern Africa's population is likely to die of AIDS ..."
Pete thought this was a useful attempt to engage our compassion. Maybe, but it was an outright lie. The sub-Saharan population of Africa rose:
1950 - 227 million
1970 - 361 million
1990 - 626 million
2000 - 803 million
Is compassion the fruit of lying? Maybe - politicians love to have something to take them off the hook. What better than a terrifying disease to blame for their ineptness and venality? "It isn't our fault that things are such a mess. It's this horrible disease."
All I suggest is some rethinking if we are to save the next generation - or the one after that..
Harry
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Keith wrote:
Harry, Aids can only spread by direct entry into the blood stream -- hence via injuries or through severely abraded skin. A nurse would normally have no risk of becoming a victim but if, say, you were a bricklayer then you'd be very unwise to look after an Aids sufferer unless you wore surgical gloves while at home.Aids is not very catchable. It needs a considerable local concentration of sufferers before it gets a start. But given this *and* a great frequency of practices that causes skin abrasion then it can then spread -- after it did after Haight-Ashbury -- and keep on spreading because its symptoms are not obvious for years in some cases. Keith At 23:11 12/01/03 -0800, you wrote: >Arthur, > >AIDS is not contagious, and doesn't appear to be infectious. Shown by the >apparent absence of harm to any of the care-givers of the hundreds of >thousands of aids victims. > >Now, ain't that a funny virus? Think of a flu virus and compare. > >There was a period I remember when someone started a rumor that you can get >AIDS from mosquitos. > >Harry
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