I just saw a segment on 20/20 about some moron who after being diagnosed with HIV, refuses to believe she will get AIDS. She has not taken any steps to fight the virus. I wouldn’t mind this, one less moron in the world, afterall. But this bitch had the nerve to go on a FUCKING WORLD TOUR telling people that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. This woman doesn’t even have a goddamned college degree! BITCH SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! Then, she had a fucking baby (note: this invovles unprotected sex) without taking any kind of anti-virals! Her husband said something like “I’ve never believed you can get sick and die from having sex.” DIE YOU MORON!
If you don’t want to believe that HIV causes AIDS, fine. But have the respect to find a corner to crawl in and die. Don’t take your fucking broken logic to South Africa which already suffers from the worst AIDS epidemic in the world, due in (a great) part, to lack of education and tell people that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. You deserve to be drawn and quatered! Or worse.
Ah, free speech is a wonderful thing, isn’t it? HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, and smoking doesn’t cause cancer, and sex doesn’t cause babies either, they’re the result of magical pixie dust, that’s implanted only after a woman’s gateway has been opened.
The amazing degree of wilful and proud ignorance out there makes my head hurt sometimes.
I don’t remember where I read this, or know if it’s true . . . but this is the place to find out.
I read somewhere, some time ago, that there was a tribe (yeah, I know, already it sounds like an UL) that believed the way for a woman to get pregnant was for her and her mate to cook some fish some special way.
Ugh. Good luck doing a google search with such an exquisite description.
I assume that the moron in question is Christine Maggiore? Her website is very scary indeed.
Presumably there are people who don’t believe in bullets, either, but I doubt strongly that would save them from a mugging. Also, if she died of AIDS related complications, any bets that her crowd would claim the drug companies offed her?
I see someone has already provided a link to Cecil’s answer on that. However, I just wanted to point out that this was also a plot on an episode of “Diff’rent Strokes” (Arnold hears that eating salmon will cause pregnancy), and it’s really pathetic that I thought of that immediately when I read your post.
Sorry about the hijack. Carry on…
(Oh, and that woman must be really fucked up or in very serious denial. HIV doesn’t cause AIDS? Someone alert the Center for Disease Control! :rolleyes: )
Hmm, I note that there is a big banner link to Maggiore’s website from the Foo Fighters website.
It’s nice to know that rockers are not just making music these days – they are also about to make revolutionary contributions to peer-reviewed medical journals. Right? Right? Feh. A pox on them.
Unless you can find some evidence, don’t call it a theory! A theory is an explanation backed up by evidence. Gravity is a theory. The scientific term for Maggiore’s shit is a hypothesis, because she has fuck all by way of evidence to back it up.
And if you want to keep my blood pressure from rupturing my aorta, don’t mention the word law. Laws are passed by legislative bodies, and therefore have nothing to do with science (except indirectly), no matter what you were told in ‘science’ classes in school.
This article is dated June 4, 1993, however, and a lot of stuff’s happened since then. Anyone know the current scoop, or the Straight Dope, as it were?
I’m not a virologist, but as i understand things the way you would know for sure that HIV causes AIDS is to (1) isolate HIV; (2) inject HIV into a group of lab animals; and (3) observe the animals come down with AIDS.
If this hasn’t been done yet, then it seems to me that there is a small possibility that something else causes AIDS.
IMHO, AIDS is a serious enough problem that, until we know for sure that HIV causes AIDS, we should seriously consider other possibilities.
At the same time, I agree that there is a good amount of evidence that HIV causes AIDS and that from a public health standpoint, we should try to prevent the spread of HIV.
lucwarm, %100 of AIDS patients have/had HIV in their body. I think thats a pretty conclusive evidence.
Furthermore, although their may be a 1/1.7 x 10 to the 79th power chance HIV doesn’t cause AIDS (I doubt the odds are even that good), that doesn’t mean that you should spread you scientifically unproven beliefs to other people, and tell them that they can get HIV without getting AIDS, thus endangering peoples’ lives. Also, once you have HIV you should NOT GET PREGNANT. Its not fair to the child.
I know, and have known, several HIV+ people, several of whom have succumbed to AIDS. A phenomenon I’ve witnessed in four cases of people I knew well was what my friends and I referred to as denial.
After diagnosis they just wouldn’t alter their lifestyle. Two (a couple) died within two years, and deteriorated rapidly in the last few months. The other two I’ve lost touch with; they reacted similarly though - just wouldn’t do what the doctor said. Something along this line might be operating with the subject of the OP.
People will grasp at straws when confronting a ghastly reality. Remember Laetrile?
Laetrile was an ineffective cancer cure popular in the '70s (before people had a reasonable hope of defeating cancer). It became controversial when the FDA forbid its use as a cancer treatment and a movement arose calling for the dropping of regulation of therapies for the terminally ill. It was available in Mexico, and many people, including a friend of mine’s father, made the trip down there.