From: lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard)
Subject: Re: Anti-religious fanatics (Was Re: School Choice )
Organization: The Turing Project, Charlottesville Virginia.
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 03:52:50 GMT

In article <1992Sep2.130051.2455@dg-rtp.dg.com> gross@eric10.rtp.dg.com (Gene Gross) writes:
>In article <1992Aug28.205043.28773@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> lfoard@Turing.ORG (Lawrence C. Foard) writes:
>>People like to say this, however they ignore the fact that Gay groups
>>with no government assistance (Helms Admendment) have managed to slow
>>the spread of AIDS among homosexuals, while it continues to rise in
>>virtually all other segments of the population.
>
>The drop in HIV cases among homosexual males has more to do with the
>fact that the population is dying off than a change in behavior
>patterns.  

I was refering to the rate of new infections. Even keeping infection
rates constant required a major change.

>Several homosexual authors (whose names escape me at the
>moment but I will look them up) also have taken the Gay and AIDS Lobbies
>to task over this same issue.  Further, they point out that when the
>public bathhouses were finally closed, the homosexual community turned
>right around and opened private bathhouses continuing a major source of
>transmission.

How can you ascribe something to the "homosexual" community when most
homosexuals have never seen a bath house? 

>The Gay Lobby has incredible funding from within its own community and
>from those who are sympathetic to their cause.  

What we would do for even 1/10th the money the far-right lobby has...

>I know for a fact that
>the former mayor of Durham, NC, provided funding as did the State
>legislature to the Gay cause.

This is meaningless without saying which cause and how much. There is no
single "gay cause".

>Much of the rise in other parts of the population at large has to do
>with other variables.  Chief among them is Blood transfusions.  

1) Homosexuals are part of the population at large, just because you
   choose to ignore us does not mean we all live in another world.

2) Blood tranfusions are one of the least causes of new infections.

>We still
>do not have a safe blood supply.  Saying that a person only has a risk
>of 1 in 250 chances of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion is
>ludicrous at best.  There should be no chance of contracting HIV through
>a blood transfusion.

1) If you know how to do this I'm sure the red cross would love to hear your
   plan.

2) 1 in 250 chance is blatantly false, 1 million people in the US are
   estimated to have HIV, the US has >300 million people. With no screening
   at all your chances would not be 1 in 250!

>>For example? What "special rights" do AIDS patients have that these
>>others don't? 
>
>The right to refuse to be tested.  

Who doesn't have the right to refuse blood testing?

>The right to have medical insurance
>when they know that they are infected 

So you would rather have hospitals going bankrupt from having to treat
HIV+ people at there own expense? Or would you rather step over people
dying in the street? 

>-- the insurance companies are not
>allowed to know the HIV status of those seeking insurance coverage.
>However, insurance companies are permitted to know if you have, or have
>had, any of the other communicable diseases.

If I remember right there are a number of things that insurance companies
are not permitted to reject people because of.

>You do not have the right to know if your medical or dental provider has
>HIV, or if any of the staff that will be working with you has HIV.  

1) The risk of catching HIV from a doctor is infintismal, its much less
   than the odds of you dying while reading this letter.

2) You have the right to ask a doctor if they are HIV+ and if they refuse
   to answer go to another. 

>Nor
>do they have the right to know if you have HIV.  However, routine
>testing is done to determine your status for any number of other
>communicable diseases -- VDRL, check it out the next time your committed
>to the hospital.

I can't remember any testing being done at any time I visited a hospital
(having blood drawn is rather noticeable).

>HIV will transmit through blood splashes on skin, and this has happened
>more than once.  

And blood eats right through those latex gloves :-)

>I can transmit through needle sticks, again, this has
>happened more than once.  

This is one reason for the development of safety needles.

>There is now evidence that the HIV virus can
>be aerosolized through certain surgical procedures and the coughing
>done by AIDS patients.  The research was done by qualified medical
>researchers in California using their own funds because the CDC refused
>to fund it (their comment was, "It simply can't be transmitted that way
>or we are all in serious trouble.")

Perhaps you should post the reference to sci.med.aids.

So far these has never been any evidence for transmission via saliva.

>We now know that the HIV retrovirus is not nearly as fragile as once
>stated.  It can survive in dry conditions outside the body for at least
>seven days and still be highly infectious.  

Guess what happens when they inject monkeys with the pure virus....

Nothing.

The virus seems to only infect when carried in a living cell, the real
question is how long infected cells survive outside the body.

>It can survive longer under
>wet conditions.  And buried among some of the CDC's original work is the
>little tidbit that the HIV retrovirus can survive and be infectious up
>to 48 hours later inside a mosquitoe!!

Oh boy it survives being digested :-)
You better post this reference to sci.med.aids...

>This is not scare tactics, and I'm not saying that we will get it from
>mosquitoes (something for which there is not research -- CDC cut off
>funding shortly after discovering that the virus could remain alive
>inside the bug).  The fact remains that this is a disease with political
>and legal clout.

Your starting to sound like a UFO conspiracy theorist. Please post these
"supressed" facts and references to sci.med.aids.

>Routine testing and contact tracing works, and we know this because it
>has been used time and again to stem the outbreaks of other infectious
>and communicable diseases.  The evidence is in the Public Health
>records, if you would care to take a look.  If not, then merely doubting
>it only buries your head deeper in the sand.

Remove penicillin from the picture and ask how effective it would have
been.

>HIV is, as far as we know now, 100 percent lethal. 

At last count 10% or more of the people who first tested HIV+ where still
alive, we know that its 90% fatal. Thanks to genetic diversity if HIV does
infect the entire human race its almost certain that some small percentage
will be able to live with it indefinitly.

>As the T4 helper
>cells are taken over, and the immune system compromised, more and more
>opportunistic diseases overwhelm the infected person's immune system.
>Eventually, all major organs come under attack, this includes the brain.
>Some evidence now exists that the brain may be one of the earliest
>organs affected by the HIV virus.  I'm still working on gathering that
>information.
>
>The point is this, since I am a Christian, and I am working my buns off
>trying to help find a means to control this bugger, what proof positive
>is there that Christians are responsible for the lack of effort and the
>spread of this fatal disease.  Sounds like Nero's charges that we set
>Rome ablaze!

Sounds like the reverse to me. Rome burns and Nero decides to withhold
water because fighting fires encourages people to build houses.

>Fact is that I'm not the only Christian thus involved.  There are those
>on the front lines working with and helping AIDS patients, working in
>labs around the world to try to find a cure (or at least some means of
>prolonging life).  And then there are others like me, a writer, who are
>researching this disease and the available information so that we can
>present it to the public.  At ever turn I have bumped into those who do
>not want some of the information released.  

Again place this "forbidden" information on sci.med.aids. 

>Invariably they are part of
>the Gay Lobby, the AIDS Lobby, the ACLU, or the CDC.  The party line is
>we need education and condoms with virucides.  Sorry, but this tact has
>not proven effective in the least.  Next!!

Safer sex is working, you cannot explain away the results of safer sex
education as simply people dying off the numbers just don't add up.


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