AIDS denial is immoral

[spuriousmonkey]

There have been several HIV/AIDS threads springing up now in the biology & genetics subforum. Most of them were created with the intent of publicizing the AIDS denial websites.

These websites claim all sorts of things, but most strikingly they claim HIV does not cause AIDS. They call it the controversy.

Ironically you cannot find any controversy in the current scientific literature. There were some waves soon after the first HIV paper led by the efforts of p. Duesberg, but this pretty much died down after 1995. What does this mean? There is no scientific controversy around AIDS.

There I state here the opinion that AIDS denial is immoral to the core. Millions of people are suffering and some people are trying to confuse the situation by claiming there is a controversy.

 

[Baron Max]

There I state here the opinion that AIDS denial is immoral to the core. Millions of people are suffering and some people are trying to confuse the situation by claiming there is a controversy.

Yeah, okay, I guess. So what the fuck is your point?

Surely you're not saying that people shouldn't be permitted to voice their opinions ...even if those opinions suck giant donkey dicks, ...are you?

Baron Max

And not wanting to make another useless philosophical point, but what's "immoral" mean? If we're accused and convicted of it, do we go to jail?

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Yeah, okay, I guess. So what the fuck is your point?

Surely you're not saying that people shouldn't be permitted to voice their opinions ...even if those opinions suck giant donkey dicks, ...are you?

Baron Max

And not wanting to make another useless philosophical point, but what's "immoral" mean? If we're accused and convicted of it, do we go to jail?

Permitted to voice their opinion?

Are you permitted to shout fire in a theatre without repercussions (when there is no fire)?

 

[Baron Max]

Permitted to voice their opinion?

Are you permitted to shout fire in a theatre without repercussions (when there is no fire)?

Yeah, you are free to yell "Fire!" in a theatre ....but like most such crimes, it's only a crime AFTER the fact, not before.

But as to your AIDS post, what are you actually trying to say? That people who make such denial-claims are, somehow, harming anyone?? If so, who?

Baron Max

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Yeah, you are free to yell "Fire!" in a theatre ....but like most such crimes, it's only a crime AFTER the fact, not before.

But as to your AIDS post, what are you actually trying to say? That people who make such denial-claims are, somehow, harming anyone?? If so, who?

Baron Max

Are you claiming that they don't? Where do you think most people get their information? From peer-reviewed journals? Or maybe just from googling on the internet?

Confusion about treatment could work in the denialists' favor, as they try to manipulate vulnerable HIV positive people and claim that everyone has been misled -- and that HIV does not cause AIDS. While not everyone is susceptible to half-truths and outright lies, others might quit taking their medication, stop consulting their health-care providers, and refuse treatment for themselves or for their HIV positive children. And if people start believing that HIV is harmless, it won't be long before they start throwing away their condoms and foregoing the use of clean needles. This is an extreme scenario, but clearly the public health consequences of willful disregard of scientific and epidemiological evidence could be devastating.

Are you, a firm believer in other people's stupidity, going to claim that this is not a possible scenario? That people do not put themselves at risk because it is easier to believe that there is no AIDS than to accept the cold truth you will most likely die from it?

Or maybe you would like to read the following article on AIDS in africa:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0027,schoofs,16189,1.html

But earlier this year, African science got snubbed by a most unlikely source: South African president Thabo Mbeki. Apparently after surfing the Web, Mbeki resurrected the notions of a small group of self-styled "AIDS dissidents," the most prominent of whom is University of California virologist Peter Duesberg. These AIDS deniers—who have conducted almost no original scientific AIDS research, let alone on the African continent—argue that HIV does not cause AIDS and that the disease does not exist at all in Africa. The estimated 12 million African children orphaned by AIDS have simply lost their parents to the old, endemic diseases of poverty and inadequate sanitation. The full quarter of the adult population thought to be infected with HIV in some African countries carry only a harmless "passenger virus."

No harm done you say? People going around trying to convince other people that there is no AIDS?

Mbeki—who along with Nelson Mandela is scheduled to speak at the World AIDS Conference—has seemingly backpedaled. Yet there is no doubt that he seriously entertained the denialist ideas.His office solicited the advice of Duesberg colleague David Rasnick, who responded with a letter coauthored by Charles Geshekter, a professor of African history at California State University, Chico, who often takes the lead in arguing that AIDS in Africa doesn't exist. After their surreal letter to Mbeki was made public, inciting a storm of criticism, the South African president penned his own letter to Bill Clinton, comparing the AIDS deniers to antiapartheid activists and medieval heretics burnt at the stake. U.S. diplomats were reportedly so shocked they checked to make sure the letter wasn't a hoax.

What makes this all so extraordinary is that Mbeki—who constantly speaks of leading an "African renaissance" in economics, culture, and science, and who says he consulted the dissidents to help avert a "superimposition of Western experience on African reality"—apparently chose to slight African science in his search for an African solution. Instead, he gave disproportionate credence to a group of mostly Western theorists who seem especially ignorant—indeed, almost contemptuous—of science conducted in Africa and the clinical experience of African physicians.

Yet African research has provided crucial information to the world's understanding of AIDS, proving, for example, that HIV is not spread by mosquitoes. And now, as the astronomical cost of medication is finally becoming a headline issue, African science is showing that the drugs work every bit as well in African patients as they do in Westerners.

You honestly believe AIDS denialist cannot hurt people? I do not believe you. You are the no1 proponent of exposing the sheep factor in people. To miss the obvious is out of character for you, unless you are playing the 'I automatically disagree' card.

 

[Prince_James]

If you silence alternative theories, you silence the evolution of new means to tackle it.

Whilst we must be careful of pseudo-science, crushing people's desires to figure things out well is a sure fire way to stunt intellectual growth.

 

[Ophiolite]

Hitler had an alternative world view.

 

[Prince_James]

Then Hitler was an okay guy with me.

You know, as I don't give a damn about your "argumentum ad Hitlerum".

 

[Nickelodeon]

Hitler had an alternative world view.

Then Hitler was an okay guy with me.

You should have known better than to pick one of his heros as an example, Ophiolite

 

[spuriousmonkey]

Ophi should have said:

Stalin had an alternative worldview.

 

[Baron Max]

Are you, a firm believer in other people's stupidity, going to claim that this is not a possible scenario? That people do not put themselves at risk because it is easier to believe that there is no AIDS than to accept the cold truth you will most likely die from it?

Stupid people have always been at risk, Spurious, from the time humans stood upright on the African plains. Surely you don't think that we can or should try to protect the stupid people from themselves, do you??

Would you stifle free expression in order to protect the stupid from AIDS? And if so, what else are you willing to do to keep protecting stupid people from their own stupidity? Maybe we should locate 'em all and lock 'em up in padded cells for their own protection? Hmm?

How far are you willing to go, Spurious, to protect stupid people? That's a legitimate question for you ...so please think about it before you respond.

Baron Max

 

[spuriousmonkey]

How far are you willing to go, Spurious, to protect stupid people? That's a legitimate question for you ...so please think about it before you respond.

I'm quite willing to closely moderate HIV threads. Didn't really have to think about that.

You can shove 'free expression' up your ass as far as I am concerned since free expression doesn't exist. Or feel free to show that it does.

 

[MetaKron]

Since he wants to open a discussion here, I have to say to everyone that I know that Spuriousmonkey is one of the people who has made a career of doing everything that it takes to destroy online conversations that involve AIDS dissidence. He has most likely been doing it since at least 1996. He is most likely a sock puppet of Brian Foley.

I don't know how he schmoozed his way into a moderator's position. He should not be in this position because he is using it unethically and the lack of ethics is intentional. Look at his "shove free expression up your ass" statement. He really means that. He lives by that rule. His "authority" to decide who can say what comes from a nasty attitude about free expression and nothing else except maybe a paycheck from who knows who.

The same person who has abused his moderator powers has decided to do something that, if I did it to his forum, he would call trolling. He has brought the argument over to another subforum. This demonstrates that he does not respect the kind of rules that he wants other people to follow.

 

[Bells]

Then Hitler was an okay guy with me.

You know, as I don't give a damn about your "argumentum ad Hitlerum".

You know PJ, I don't think I have said this to or about anyone. But you actually make my teeth hurt.

But as to your AIDS post, what are you actually trying to say? That people who make such denial-claims are, somehow, harming anyone?? If so, who?

The majority of the leaders in Africa were and are also AIDS denialists. And look at the result now.

In a new book Cameron dissects Africa’s AIDS crisis, a public health emergency that the United Nations estimates could infect up to 89 million more Africans by 2025.

It is a disaster he blames in part on African “AIDS Denialism”, the prism that some leaders including South African President Thabo Mbeki have used to downplay or dismiss scientific knowledge on AIDS.

------------------------------------------------------

South Africa in 2003 bowed to domestic and international pressure and launched a public programme of anti-retroviral (ARV) drug treatment, a sign of hope for millions.

But implementation has been slow, thousands are still dying, and AIDS remains both politicised and stigmatised.

------------------------------------------------------

Cameron enjoyed more than a decade of good health despite being HIV-positive, and when he did eventually fall seriously ill in 1997 he was able to afford ARVs to keep himself alive.

Millions of other South Africans were not so lucky and the government dragged its feet on introducing ARVs in the public sector - a delay activists say cost countless lives.

South Africa’s AIDS crisis has been exacerbated by the poverty of much of the population, where the legacy of apartheid has limited the spread of basic nutrition and health care.

But Cameron says the Mbeki government veered wildly off course in the early 2000s under the influence of “denialists” who saw the basic scientific building blocks of the epidemic as a racist conspiracy to promote dangerous drugs.

Mbeki questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and left the impression his government regarded discussion of the AIDS crisis as an attempt by white Westerners to denigrate black Africans by questioning their sexual morality.

“African AIDS denialism remoralised the debate,” Cameron said. “It wrongly ascribes the medical model of HIV virology to some kind of condemnation of Africans.”
Link

African government officials for years dismissed AIDS as a "racist conspiracy plot" invented by the West.

"For a long time we have been in denial. We looked at AIDS as a foreign problem, involving white people, foreign people," said Mary Kanya, Swaziland's ambassador to the United States.

Half-baked attempts were made at public education. Existing AIDS-related laws seldom were enforced. Only two countries made serious efforts to confront the AIDS epidemic.

Senegal managed to hold its infection rate below 2 percent of the adult population. Uganda, through intensive public education, condom distribution, voluntary testing and counseling services, cut its infection rate from 15 percent to below 10 percent in the 1990s.

--------------------------------------------

South Africa, for example, faces the fastest-growing AIDS crisis in Africa: 1,700 people contract HIV every day and within five years more than 6 million of its 40 million people will have the virus.

Morna Cornell of the Johannesburg-based AIDS Consortium, a clearinghouse for organizations fighting the epidemic, estimates that in the next five to 10 years 3.5 million South Africans will die of AIDS.

And this is the country -- of all those in sub-Saharan Africa -- that is best equipped to deal with the AIDS crisis. It is relatively more developed and has the infrastructure and health care delivery systems.

Yet only $13 million has been allocated to AIDS-related education and care programs over five years, Meanwhile the government is spending approximately $6.5 billion on new military hardware, including three German submarines.
Link

Under President Thabo Mbeki, South Africa has one of the most progressive governments on the African continent. But instead of confronting AIDS in his country, President Mbeki has astounded even many of his own supporters by refusing to accept the fact that HIV causes AIDS - a debate that the rest of the world settled years ago. In South Africa, 1,600 people are infected with HIV every day. Ed Bradley reports.


Mbeki's position has frustrated and outraged AIDS experts around the world. The head of South Africa's premiere medical research institute, Dr. William Makgoba, says the president is wasting precious time on a foolish exercise. Makgoba says he has made his views clear to President Mbeki.


While the government in South Africa rehashes old scientific arguments, HIV rates here are increasing as fast as in any country on earth. One in five South African adults is going to die of AIDS. Most of them don't even know they have they have the disease; the ones who do are afraid to talk about it.
Link

Denying reality with something like HIV/AIDS is dangerous and deadly.

No one is saying you should not question, but when you start to deny the existence or consider it to be an invention while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, then you must also be willing to share the blame when things go wrong.

 

[MetaKron]

HIV is a total lie.

 

[Bells]

HIV is a total lie.

Then back it up Meta. Show proof and studies that HIV is a lie. Otherwise we're just going to take you for a crackpot who helps perpetuate the denial that is killing millions of people world wide.

 

[Baron Max]

Then back it up Meta. Show proof and studies that HIV is a lie. Otherwise we're just going to take you for a crackpot who helps perpetuate the denial that is killing millions of people world wide.

So what's the penalty for lying about AIDS? Is that an international law or something? Who does the punishing?

I'm also curious if you hold that same belief/philosophy about anyone or any group who perpetuates other lies about other issues of the world? ...like political lies? ...lies about illegal-drug use? ...lies about abortion? ...lies about ...well, about any other things?

Or is this just one more issue on which you're being hippo-critical?

Baron Max

 

[MetaKron]

Then back it up Meta. Show proof and studies that HIV is a lie. Otherwise we're just going to take you for a crackpot who helps perpetuate the denial that is killing millions of people world wide.

He won't let me.

 

[Bells]

So what's the penalty for lying about AIDS? Is that an international law or something? Who does the punishing?

I'm also curious if you hold that same belief/philosophy about anyone or any group who perpetuates other lies about other issues of the world? ...like political lies? ...lies about illegal-drug use? ...lies about abortion? ...lies about ...well, about any other things?

Or is this just one more issue on which you're being hippo-critical?

Baron Max

Sadly there is no penalty is there. Just the knowledge that lying about it and denying it to such an extent has led to the deaths of millions of people (in the case of African leaders). And personally I think there should be a penalty when the consequences are that great. Don't you? Or do you think our actions should have no consequence even if those actions (or lack of) lead to the deaths of millions?

hippo-critical

Awww you made a 'funny'. It's cute.

He won't let me.

He won't? Hmm interesting. Well since he's bought this discussion over to this forum, where he has no power to moderate, you are quite free to provide links to research stating that HIV does not exist or is a total lie. Because from what I've read in the Biology forum, he has asked you repeatedly to provide proof of your claims, and you have not done so. So either he won't let you by physically restraining you or you just don't have proof and instead just wish to make a claim that it is a lie based on your own imagination.

Because from where I'm sitting, you are whining like a little girl about people not letting you, when you have been given ample opportunities to provide said proof and you have ignored each and every single one. Now either you have proof or you are lying and just wish to stir up trouble. Which is it?

 

[MetaKron]

You have told an outright lie, Bells.