From: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine
Subject: Re: AIDS risk/Duesberg
Date: 5 Jan 93 22:04:01 GMT
Reply-To: weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu (Matthew P Wiener)
Organization: The Wistar Institute of Anatomy and Biology
In-reply-to: bhjelle@hydra.unm.edu

In article <3kxrwnm@lynx.unm.edu>, bhjelle@hydra writes:
>>I want to disagree, but first a diversion.  We find here an interesting

>Your disagreement doesn't help. [...]

We are mostly in vehement agreement, and I'm deliberately taking a more
philosophical view than the mainstream.  Responding with reports from
the mainstream is missing the point.

>Of course this is true. I repeat, however, that the vast majority
>of biologists and physicians were convinced by Gallo's 1984 papers
>beyond any reasonable doubt. As with evolution, higher levels of
>conviction occur as study after study support the underlying
>premise in innumerable large and small ways.

Exactly.  On philosophical grounds, it seemed possible--if silly and
maximally unlikely--to hold onto a variety of clumsy multiple causation
theories in 1984.  In 1992, it's just not possible.

>>					   As does the ability of AZT, a
>>reverse transcriptase inhibitor, to delay the onset of AIDS.

>Pharmacologic data are very soft indicators of etiology, especially
>given AZT's less-than-overwhelming efficacy.

Of course they are soft, but the low key amounts of interference with AIDS
progression that AZT has been observed to cause, along with the modifications
related to HIV resistance, focuses the causative mechanisms squarely on HIV.
It would be nice to have treatments that successfully interfere with other
parts of the HIV lifecycle.  There's never a guarantee that what looks good
in the test tube is going to work out in the body (witness the failure of
sCD4), but every time something like that *does* work out, we have yet
another proof that HIV causes AIDS.  We need more of these proofs!

In the long run, if say a HIV nef- vaccine were to work out, and risky
behavior no longer transmitted AIDS to the vaccinated, I bet even Duesberg
would concede.  Not that it would matter anymore.

>I regard the most convincing evidence that HIV causes AIDS to be
>the following:

>1. Minimal innoculations such as needlesticks, in people with
>no "drug lifestyle" or other risk behaviors, cause AIDS  *only*
>when HIV is transmitted.

A typical Duesbergian reply is to assert that such people--and there are
very few--are lying about their other risky behavior.  Pathetic.

>>>>The gauntlet has been thrown!

>>No, just your brain has been hurled against a wall too many times.

>Your argument appears to be letting Rand off the hook. 
>Rather than hurl pointless insults at him while allowing him
>to avoid a refutation of his challenge, it would be better to
>demand that he show us why Gallo's 1984 papers do  *not*  prove
>that HIV causes AIDS.

Of course, Rand's pseudophilosophy has no relevance whatsoever to any
issues anywhere, beyond the obvious self-referential ones.  As it is,
our Randroid's response is, as I pointed out, stuck on echoing his cult
gibberish much like a creationist is stuck on echoing his religious
beliefs as a substitute for thought.  I don't consider insults in the
general direction of his or any other cult to be pointless.

I've had extensive experience with USENET Randroids, so the idea of
getting him to deal with the actual facts regarding HIV and AIDS,
instead of raving on, is quite laughable.  So is the idea of treating
him with any intellectual respect.
-- 
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba@sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)