From: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU (Stephen Grossman)
Subject: Re: AIDS risk/Duesberg
Reply-To: pmsc13sg@UMASSD.EDU
Organization: UMASS DARTMOUTH, NO. DARTMOUTH, MA.
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 02:48:39 GMT

In article <103405@netnews.upenn.edu>, weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu 
(Matthew P Wiener) writes:

[my query about proving HIV causing AIDS]

>What do you mean _proven_??  You sound like some moronic creationist
>playing stupid philosophical word games.

SG	This is seriously bizarre. An alleged scientist claiming that faith 
leads to proof while science leads to...? As Kant, the leading modern 
intellectual influence said, "I have limited knowledge therefore, to make from 
for faith." Weiner is obviously a student of Kant. Proof is, as defined by 
Objectivist philosopher Leonard Peikoff, "the process of deriving a conclusion 
step by step from the evidence of the senses, each step being taken in 
accordance with the laws of logic." I wonder which part Weiner opposes, his 
senses or logic. I.e, either he's taken leave of his senses or he's lost his 
mind! 

>The ultimate experimental proof--putting people in bubbles and injecting
>them with HIV and waiting for several years--will of course never be done.

SG	Thanks for confirming that there is, as Deusberg claims, NO PROOF that 
HIV causes AIDS. I hope others notice this unwitting (half-witting, actually) 
praise for good science. 


>The closest approximations were the unwitting victims of HIV+ blood and
>blood products--for which there have been numerous peer-reviewed studies
>in the medical journals, and research experiments with HIV and SCID-hu mice,
>for which there are also peer-reviewed papers in the research journals.

SG	Weiner limits "knowledge" to "closest approximations" because logical 
postivists oppose certainty for, as Rand notes, "'percentages of probability,' 
not troubling [themselves] with such questions as how one calculates 
percentages of the unknowable" From false philosophy to false science. Weiner 
may or may not be a trained scientist but he is not an educated person. And 
that's the problem with contemporary culture: monkeys with powerful tools.

>Yes.  There are certain diseases that were well-known before 1980 to be
>associated with the injectables and ultrapromiscuous world.  Only the
>viral ones (eg, hepatitis) showed up in the transfusion community.


SG	The Ctr. for Disease Control, in the early 80s, considered 
non-injectable drugs as causing AIDS.

SG 	There is much more that can be said but Weiner is a scientist, i 
presume, and i am not. The point is that some scientists have mucho govt money 
and mucho publicity while others do not. Yet both groups are composed of 
scientists. Something is rotten. 	
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	"In that world, you'll be able to rise in the morning with the spirit
you had known in your childhood: that spirit of eagerness, adventure and cer-
tainty which comes from dealing with a rational universe."
                                                              AYN RAND
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Stephen Grossman <PMSC13SG@UMASS.EDU>
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Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine