Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Subject: Re: AIDS and all that jazz
Organization: Oracle Corporation
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 03:29:30 GMT
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In article <1992Nov17.021603.10159@vax.oxford.ac.uk> mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>In article <1992Nov15.060110.26173@oracle.us.oracle.com>, mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman) writes:
>> In article <1992Nov13.162349.10126@vax.oxford.ac.uk> mcbean@vax.oxford.ac.uk writes:
>>>I may just be an ignorant engineering so-and-so, but is it beyond the realm of
>>>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.

>But not impossible?

Oh, certainly not.  It is quite possible that mad Dr. Snipandslice was
gallivanting arround Africa in the early fifties injecting Africans
with blood from evey animal he could get his hands on, including a few
monkeys with the precursors of the AIDS virus.  It is also possible
that some drunk villagers were getting their kicks by raping monkeys.
Which do you think is more likely?

>> 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? 

>Could it be possible that the experiments were part of a learning curve which
>established this? 

No.  McBean, I don't know why you don't seem to be able to understand
this, but back in the fifties no one knew the AIDS virus existed.  No
one was asking "would it be a good biowarfare agent?" because no one
knew it existed.

>I mean not every experiment is a howling success.  I'm just
>curious as to why this aspect has been summarily dismissed.  

Because no one knew AIDS existed back then so how could they
experiment on it?

To put it simply, unless you have mad Dr. Snipandslice involved
experiments are aimed at answering questions.  For example "What are
the long term effects of untreated syphillis on human beings?".  No
what question do you think our "experimenter" was trying to answer
when he infected people with AIDS back in the fifties?

>I learnt about the
>Tuskegee experiment for the first time this year, and so I'm in this cynical
>mode where I feel no depths are too low for some researchers to plumb.

McBean, I don't think you get it.  No one is saying "AIDS wasn't
caused by humans because no one was that nasty."  People are saying
"AIDS wasn't caused by humans because they had no reason to and they
didn't know enough to do it even if they wanted to."  The morals, high
or low, of researchers have no bearing on the validity of this
argument.



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Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american