From: wisp@dcs.warwick.ac.uk (Wisp)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban,soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Re: AIDS and the CIA (was Question)
Date: 9 Nov 92 10:51:26 GMT
Organization: Department of Computer Science, Warwick University, England

In article <stovall.721181535@ficus.cs.ucla.edu> stovall@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Steven Stovall) writes:
>thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Mmmm... Purple) writes:
>
>>I have seen Actual Communist Propaganda posted in New York (no doubt
>>by the New York Method (tm)) blaiming AIDS on the US government,
>>on posters by the same sort of groups that were complaining that the
>>Chinese were being too soft-hearted on the traitors in Tianenmen Square.
>>Don't know how much the Soviets had to do with these posters, but
>>post-Gorbachev they have been found to have funded just about every
>>Communist movement in the US.  But even these folks may have been too
>>fringe for the KGB.
>
>A while ago I reposted in s.c.a.a. some of Billi Goldberg's sci.med.aids
>articles on the Wistar Origin of AIDS Theory, which postulated that early
>polio vaccine innoculations in Zaire may have introduced simian viruses
>into humans which were precursors for HIV. That theory has lost some steam,
>although it is still not clear to me that samples of the 1959 vaccine stock
>(which were said to still exist in the freezers of the Wistar Institute)
>were ever found and tested.
>

Well, this one is definitely bullshit. A merchant seaman died of a
then-inexplicable immune deficiency in the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 1956.
Subsequent analysis of samples retained by the labs demonstrated the presence
of large titres of HIV. (Source, the British Medical Journal, 1988(?) I'll go
dig out the exact reference if anyone wants it...)

>The technology did not exist in the 1950's to genetically engineer HIV,
>but there may have been accidents and/or experiments involving simian immuno-
>suppresant viruses during those years, and such simian viruses may well
>have mutated into what we now call HIV. It certainly is possible that
>the US intelligence community participated in such "accidents" and/or
>"experiments." There definitely is something curious about the epidemiology
>of AIDS so far: in this country, it has been almost exclusively confined
>to homosexuals and people of color, and worldwide it will decimate Africa
>and Asia, apparently leaving Europe relatively untouched.

There's nothing even remotely unusual about the epidemiology of HIV. So far as
the spread in the USA/Europe goes, the spread is via blood-blood or other
bodily fluid contact, almost exactly the same way as Hepatitis B is spread
(and yes, it predominantly affects the same groups).

As far as Africa, Asia and 'people of color' go, several points. First, there
*is* a  genetic difference in the response of different races to different
viruses (Epstein-Barr virus is a good example). Second, vastly different
living conditions affect the outcome/infection rates of all sorts of diseases
(for example, measles has  <0.1% mortality rate in the UK, and in East Africa
the same disease kills about 10% of children who become infected...). Finally,
there is a behavioural component to the spread of AIDS: if you take reasonable
precautions you're extremely unlikely to get it, and unfortunately those most
at risk are also those least likely to take reasonable precautions...

I've always admired Spike Lee's work, but I think he should stick to what
he knows: he's made a real prick of himself with this latest outburst...

The Wisp. [now if it was nailing lawyers and estate agents...]
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban