From: milliken@athena.cs.uga.edu (Brewmeister)
Newsgroups: talk.bizarre,alt.politics.bush,alt.politics.clinton,alt.flame
Subject: Re: AIDS and those damn democrats
Date: 24 Jul 92 21:05:58 GMT
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens

In article <1992Jul22.210125.26087@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> anonymous writes:
>In article <1992Jul22.200716.26223@tc.cornell.edu>, shore@dinah.tc.cornell.edu (Melinda Shore) writes:
>|> In article <1992Jul22.171306.17847@uwm.edu>, markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark William Hopkins) writes:
>|> > In article <1992Jul22.164306.20952@porthos.cc.bellcore.com> wgb3@pyuxf.uucp (25337-buoni) writes:
>|> > >Why blame Bush for the growing AIDS epidemic?
>|>   
>|> > Because no cure exists and never will in the mean spirited political climate
>|> > of 1980's style neo-conversative Republican administration.
>|> 
>|> There's more to it than just the Republican hate-mongering
>|> that we're all so accustomed to.  There's also the active
>|> opposition to research funding, as well as the active opposition
>|> to social programs to slow the spread of the infection.  
>
>Are you seriously telling me that you want me to spend tax dollars
>to teach people how to stop the spread of AIDS. Well first you get
>all the gays to stop XXXXXXX each other in the XXX and then you get
>the needle users to stop shooting up, and then you get the rest of
>the heterosexual community to practice abstainence. Otherwise you
>are safe from contracting unless you have contact with the blood
>or body fluids of an infected person.
>
>If it weren't for the sexual deviants that were attracted to monkeys
>we wouldn't have this problem in the first place!

Yep, this is it! The original, unedited, uncut article that started it all.
Presented here, without commercial inturruption, to remind everyone of where
this started.  How in the hell did this discussion manage to degenerate into a  debate over what should be crossposted where, and who should have followed up
where?
I responded here because the original article appeared here, dammit!  For those
of you who joined us late, I extrapolated the following suggestions from Mr.
Anonymous' post, and requested that he elaborate thereon:

1.  "Get all the gays to stop XXXXXXX each other in the XXX".  I now repeat my
     original question: "How ya gonna do that, Bubba?"

2.  "Get all the needle users to stop shooting up".  Try that out for us, Bubba.     Go find a "needle user" and walk up to him/her and say "Hey you.  Stop 
     shooting up".  I'm quite sure, that he/she will see the error of his/her
     ways, and give up his/her addiction immediately.  If this doesn't work, try     another well known slogan, "just say no".  This one never fails.

3.  "Get all the heterosexuals to practice abstainence [sic]".  I believe my
     response to this was:
     "Wait a minute Bubba!  Just because YOU aren't getting any, don't try and
     spoil it for the rest of us.  Why don't you go back to reading Ann Landers
     or protesting suggestive lyrics in rock music until you get a life."

This response was meant to be semi-humorous, since I found it hard to believe 
that anyone could be this narrow-minded.  Imagine my surprise when I found
the following response in my e-mail yesterday:

"First, I didn't post my return because I don't need 100 letters!  I am 
quite serious in my views.  Why should I spend my tax dollar on a preventable
disease.  Cancer is not preventable.  The only AIDS victims that I have
compassion for are the innoscent children, healthcare workers, rape victims
and transfussion patients.  The rest get what they deserve!"

[ spelling and grammatical errors left intact intentionally ]

Yeah, right.  How many other people on the net got the same idea that I did?

athena% finger noyes@sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov
[sweetpea.jsc.nasa.gov]
Login name: noyes			In real life: tom noyes 283-4177
Directory: /u42/noyes			Shell: /bin/csh
Last login <blah, blah, blah>

In the first place, if you're not ashamed of what you have to say, why even
make a (feeble) attempt to post anonymously?  Annoying fan mail can be deleted
very easily, you know. 

In the second place, the last sentence (of yours) above explains the second.
Even if you insist on clinging to your bigoted, narrow-minded views about
the immorality of various modes of transmission, you admit yourself that there
are "innocent" victims of the AIDS virus, even by your own standards.  YOU 
provided the examples.  Your cancer analogy is not relevant since cancer is
not communicable.  AIDS, on the other hand, is communicable, and has the
potential to spread exponentially if treatments and cures are not found.
Even if you insist on believing that the source of the AIDS virus is "dirty
nasty people" doing "sinful" things, the fact remains that the virus does not
discriminate, unlike yourself.  As you have pointed out, people who are
"innocent", even by your standards, can contract the virus.  This, I hope,
answers your question of why YOUR precious tax dollar should be spent on this
very real problem.  (You aren't the only one who pays taxes, you know).
If this doesn't explain it to you, how 'bout this:
I could not help but notice that you work for NASA.  I have no idea what you
do, but is there a chance, any chance at all, that you could suffer an accident
serious enough to require that you receive a blood transfusion?  (If you say
no, then how do you get to and from work every day?)  Now then, what with AIDS
having a long incubation period and all, could YOU contract AIDS from someone
else's blood?  Someone who donated blood without knowing that they were HIV+?
Yes Tom even you could get AIDS, even though you never have sex or shoot up
drugs.  Does this sufficiently answer your question as to why YOUR tax dollars
should be spent trying to find a cure for this disease?  Good god, I hope so.




-- 
athena% cat .signature
ERROR: cannot find .signature file for milliken@athena.cs.uga.edu
Abort, Retry, Ignore, Explode?
athena% .sig? I don' got to show you no steenkin' .sig!