From: ncostello@vms.eurokom.ie
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: AIDS and all that jazz
Date: 18 Nov 92 09:40:41 CET
Organization: EuroKom Conferencing Service

In article <1992Nov16.031432.24306@oracle.us.oracle.com>, mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
> In article <ISBELL.92Nov15123556@panther.ai.mit.edu> isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:
>>mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>>|>possibility that somebody decided to do a trial on SIV in humans to see the
>>|>effect, without understanding retroviruses; used Africans as guinea pigs, and
>>|>started a chain reaction they never intended?
> 
>>|Yes.
> 
>>|You see, we know AIDS was arorund back in the fifties.
> 
>>|At that time SIV was not a known disease.  It almost certainly
>>|existed, but we didn't know about it.  In addition, the entire class
>>|of viruses it belongs to were unknown.
> 
>>|It is possible that someone decided to inject monkey blood into people
>>|for kicks, or that someone was trying to infect someone with another
>>|monkey disease and got AIDS as an unexpected bonus, but it seems very
>>|unlikely.
> 
>>|If you are going to make this hypothesis you have to ask "Why?"  For
>>|example, why would anyone want to try SIV in humans even if they knew
>>|what it was?  It's pretty pathetic as a bio-warfare agent and it is
>>|easier to experiment with it in monkeys than in humans.  So why
>>|bother? 
> 
>>While I doubt that any of this happened this way, I'm sure that all of
>>us with just a few minutes thought--and taking into account the
>>history of human beings whether in Tuskeegee or Germany--could easily
>>come up with reasons why someone would do this accidently or with
>>intent and forethought.
> 
> I doubt it.  The Tuskeegee experiment had a very simple reason -
> someone said "Let's find out what the long term effects of untreated
> syphilis are."  If this had been done with animals instead of humans
> it would have been just one more study in the medical literature.
> 
> The Nazi experiments can be divided into two groups - the real science
> and the bizarre lunacies of sick people who had others in their power.
> The real science included things like "Let's find out about
> hypothermia and try some experimental treatments so we can understand
> how to treat sailors and pilots who we pull out of the water."
> 
> So what is your hypothetical reason for the supposed experiments in
> Africa?  "Let's find out the effects of injecting monkey blood into
> humans"?  Does that really ring true?
> 
> -- 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> I am not an official Oracle spokesman.  I speak for myself and no one else.

"real science" or "bizarre lunacies of sick people" - sounds like someone's
been watching too much 1950s science-fiction, people with clean-cut male
white scientists in smocks and weird twisted extra-terrestrials,
fighting it out over the future of the galaxy. There isn't a clear
dividing line between the two, neither in "Dr" Mengele's "experiments"
nor in the mind-set that allowed the Tuskeegee experiment designers to
make the choice to use humans rather than animals. (I meant "peopled with"
not "people with" 6 lines back.)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american