Organization: Queen's University at Kingston
Date: Sunday, 30 Aug 1992 17:40:04 EDT
From: <BROEKHVN@QUCDN.QueensU.CA>
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Cause of AIDS
 <3671@execu.execu.com> <1992Aug28.202620.28464@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>


In article<GERRY.92Aug24100703@onion.cmu.edu>gerry@cmu.edu(Gerry Roston)
writes:

>Okay,
>Is there some one out there who knows what's going on?  If Deusberg is
>legitimate, why is he alone in his view?  Also, why does this article
>seemingly present a one-sided view of the story?

Deusberg is not alone in his view.   A 1988?  1989? BBC documentary I saw
interviewed a number of researchers who agreed with Duesberg that HIV did
not cause AIDS.  The one who sticks in my mind is the French co-discoverer
of the HIV virus who stated that he no longer believed that HIV caused AIDS,
he believed it was "at best a co-travellor".  He states that his research
grants were cut off when he announced that HIV did not cause AIDS, and proposed
searching for another cause.

/* -------- */

In article <1992Aug28.025231.3103@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>, lfoard@Turing.ORG
(Lawrence C. Foard) says:

>
>The only effective means [of disease control -knb] in the past
>has been vacines.
>

This "fact" just ain't so.  Effective public health and hygiene practices
and codes predate the development of vaccines and the germ theory of
disease by several millennia.

  o  control of communicable diseases like leprosy by quarantine
     are recorded in the bible, and used extensively all throughout
     European history.  Canada only dropped quarantine of TB+ immigrants
     about two decades ago.

  o  directions for preparing kosher food were an effective public
     hygiene code that spared Jews from the ravages of food poisoning
     of many kinds.

  o  Biblical prohibitions of sodomy were effectively a public health
     code that blocked the transmission of disease.

  o  Christian missionaries' tireless campaign to stamp out cannibalism
     in  newly discovered territories was effectively a public health
     measure that wiped out all kinds weirdo diseases previously unknown
     to Europeans.  Particularly harmful it seems, was eating other
     people's brains.

  o  Typhus, yellow fever, and many other diseases were wiped out by
     innovative European sewage systems (like having the city sewage
     pipes _down_ stream of the water inlet pipes), and the boiling
     of drinking water before consumption.  (British "tea-time" was
     not an effette practice at all -- it normalized the practice of
     drinking non-contaminated water.)

  o  The practice of using soap & water on a regular basis has wiped
     out the human flea and a whole suite of diseases that were carried
     by this pest.

  o  WHO efforts in what is now Zambia, Mozambique, etc. to alter the
     design of sleeping quarters of the natives has sufficiently
     disturbed the life-cycle of disease carrying ticks, that a whole
     slew of tick-borne diseases  have been almost eradicated.

   o Quarantine, and the practice of washing one's hands after going
     to the wash-room are credited as the public health measures which
     wiped out polio in the forties and fifties before vacines were
     available.  Polio was wiped out so conclusively, that its
     anti-bodies were undetectable in most of the population.

   o Americans declared a war on syphilis in the 30's and 40's which
     was devastatingly effective.  Prime weapon?  Contact tracing.
     No vaccine.

   o In the latest triumph of public hygiene, dental hygienists are
     wiping out bacterial borne gum disease.  Ours may be the last
     generation to know this affliction.  Again, no vaccine,
     just regular hygiene practised by health professionals.

In short, effective public health and hygiene measures have been
available and practised for millennia.  It is ironic that in the last
decade of the twentieth century, when allegedly, most of the scientists
who have ever lived, are alive, that public health authorities are
running around like chickens with their heads cut off, saying there
are no public health measures available to cope with this scourge.

Oddly, instead of taking common sense steps to combat HIV/ARC,
(like contact tracing, or closing the infamous "bath houses"
authorities have taken steps to further the spread of disease.  e.g.
"anti-discrimination" laws which give the right of HIV+/ARC individuals
the right to work anywhere, in any capacity, even in health-care, or
with young children.

While HIV may or may not cause AIDS, and may be
difficult to transmit, unfortunates with ARC may be host to a large
number of dangerous diseases which _are_ contagious.  e.g. hepatitis, TB,
the myriad types of VD, "gay bowel syndrome" (a witch's brew of
diseases of the lower bowel which should have been wiped out centuries
ago with proper sewage facilities, and personal hygiene),  and  MDT -- a VD
which causes birth defects, and sterility in women.

Common sense would dictate that persons with AIDS should at least be isolated
from women of child-bearing age, and children whose immune systems
are not yet mature.

To say that there are no public health measures we can take until a vaccine
is discovered, is categorically incorrect.

Kevin Broekhoven                       Applications Programmer
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Newsgroups: sci.skeptic