Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics
From: mfriedma@uucp (Michael Friedman)
Subject: Re: aids conference in cuba
Organization: Oracle Corporation
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 06:29:35 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <Bs3rqC.7yw@apollo.hp.com> nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson) writes:
>In article <8101.20503@stratus.SWDC.Stratus.COM> lpb@florida.swdc.stratus.com writes:
>>In article <11394@optilink.UUCP> cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) writes:

>>> We have nothing to worry about, unless some AIDS-tainted blood slips
>>> through the screening system, and we are suddenly in need of blood
>>> for an unplanned operation. 

>  This is not completely correct.  

>  1.)  It can take anywhere from a few months to 4 years (in one study)
>       to seroconvert and the blood tests are still antibody tests
>       so the blood supply is NOT compeletely safe.

Seems like a good reason to use harsher measures to protect the blood
supply.  For example, criminal charges against people who lie about IV
drug use or past sexual history whe giving blood.

>  2.)  A drug resistant form of TB which is 50% fatal with the best
>       current treatment and costs $100K a year to treat, anyway, 
>       is spreading rapidly, due to AIDS, and you CAN catch TB
>       by casual contact.

However the people who are most susceptible are AIDS victims.  That's
why AIDS is making it spread rapidly.  People without AIDS who get it
are typically those who spend lots of time in close quarters with AIDS
victims.  For example, prison guards. 

>  3.)  There is now evidence of a new form of HIV for which there is no
>       test.

And which is incredibly rare and for which there is expected to be a
test within months.

>  4.)  HIV mutates 5 times as fast as influenze and there are 10's of
>       millions of people in the world who already have it.  Simple 
>       natural selection will always select for the most successful
>       versions of a pathogen in terms of virulence and these are the
>       perfect conditions to breed a "super" HIV, and inded this may
>       already be occurring -- strains of HIV in Africa can already
>       infect lung epithelial cells.  If a strain of some immunodeficiency
>       virus that CAN be spread by casual contact develops then we're
>       all in deep doo-doo.   Even if we just get one that's "only"
>       as hard to catch as Hepatitis B (about 10 times easier to catch
>       as HIV 1) we'll have a much bigger public health problem than
>       we do now.   

First off, natural selection also selects for the least lethal
variants of a disease.  After all, dead carriers aren't very good at
transmitting a disease.

Secondly, you seem to be presenting some very good arguments for
following the Cuban model and quarantining all AIDS carriers.



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