Reflectorites
On Tue, 08 Feb 2000 09:49:47 -0600, Susan Brassfield wrote:
[...]
>SJ>[That HIV is not a reliable indicator of AIDS seems like
>>more evidence of a weak causal link between the two. The fact that after
>>10-15 years and billions of dollars spent on HIV/AIDS, researchers
>>overlooked such an obvious factor as "women...are biologically
>>different...`Dingding!'", does not inspire confidence that they know what
>>they are doing, to put it mildly!]
SB>I have personal knowledge of a man who contracted HIV which developed into
>AIDS and who subsequently died. It is trivially true that people who die
>of AIDS are always HIV positive for some time before that.
That there is a connection betweem HIV and AIDS is not disputed. That it
is the *sole* cause of AIDS is disputed by Duesberg, et. al. It is not
disputed by me because I don't know enough about the issue. I do think
that the AIDS drugs cocktail approach is unfalsifiable.
I explained my position is "one of a `devil's advocate' who is "not yet
convinced of the Duesberg claim that HIV does not cause AIDS":
"I should also explain that I am not yet convinced of the Duesberg claim
that HIV does not cause AIDS. ...So my attitude is one of a `devil's
advocate'. I am looking at the HIV/AIDS issue as a sceptic would, without
necessarily being one. I must admit it does start to look shaky when one
adjusts one's mental spectacles and starts to consider whether the central
assumption of the HIV/AIDS industry is flawed and that money and
politics has created a pseudoscientific juggernaut which no one has the
courage to stop....If it is true that millions of lives have been lost
prematurely and miserably, and billions of dollars has been wasted which
could have been put to better health use, then this will be the greatest
scandal of science - *ever*! That is why I consider this issue on-topic."
If they have got it wrong and HIV is not the sole cause of AIDS, then
Susan's friend may not have died so soon or so miserably.
SB>So my question
>is this: what is the advantage to your co-religionists to try to persuade
>people there is no link between HIV and AIDS?
The leader in this is Duesberg who is not a "co-religionist".
And no one is saying that "there is no link between HIV and AIDS".
The question is whether HIV is the *sole* cause of AIDS or even *a*
cause of AIDS. A second question is whether anti-HIV drug cocktails
are worse than the disease.
My interest in this is both from the scientific method point of view and
from the fact that I am an employee of the Health Department of WA
and one of my degrees is in Health Administration which included a
unit in Epidemiology.
I am aware from my Epidemiology unit above how easy it is to get
causal factors wrong in disease.
SB>I have to admit this one
>stumps me. I mean the evolution thing contraducts the first couple of
>chapters of the Bible (or seems to).
Strangely enough "the evolution thing" does not "contradict the first
couple of chapters of the Bible". I personally was a type of theistic
evolutionist for 20 years or so, and had no problem believing in both.
Derek Kidner is a theistic evolutionist and he has written what is probably
the leading conservative evangelical commentary on Genesis.
Why I am opposed to evolution is because I don't think its *true*.
SB>Most fundmentalists/inerrantists are
>anti-modernist, and I can understand that. But *this* I find hard to
>understand. Why don't you want HIV to be related to AIDS?
See above. It would help if Susan saved wasting all our time by finding out
what her opponents *actually* believe, rather than what she *wants* them
to believe.
Steve
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"Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually
supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection
is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when
the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual
reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to
work, even in the limited degree to be discussed .... This presents an
insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological
organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A
primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like
the fidelity of present-day systems .... With only poor copying fidelity, a
primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the
mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system
could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with
crossover beggars the imagination." (Hoyle F., "Mathematics of
Evolution", [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, p20)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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