October 11, 2004

• "Why has there been so much secrecy about AIDS? When you ask where did the virus come from, it raises a lot of flags. That makes me suspicious," she said. Well, I'm convinced. All hail the scientific method! In all seriousness, she can't just say that and expect it to be accepted. Is there any more to this?
• Actually, I was going to post about Wangari Maathai, before I saw this, because I thought she and her organisation were a wonderful choice for the award. And I don't know if I care what she does or does not say about Aids - she's a planted a lot of trees, and helped a lot of people. That's good enough for me.
• Well she won the " Peace " prize, not the " Medicine " prize.
• Whether or not AIDs is a manufactured virus, it has been allowed to decimate a lot of cultures.
• I have heard that before. I am certainly no scientist and have no way to form an opinion on the matter. However, it does seem somewhat plausible that such an unusual and serious disease would just appear out of nowhere. As I understand it, what it does is extremely unusual. I suppose that I would be interested in the opinions of some scientists who could say whether they thought it would be possible to create it.
• As if Thabo Mbeki's moral cowardice were not enough, now the African tinfoil hat brigade get another august spokesperson. Adherence to this obstinate myth makes good post-colonial political sense, but it is bad medicine. Where these people could be using their platforms to speak out vocally for cheaper (or S. Asian generic) anti-retroviral therapies and aggressive funding for public health, they are instead building shallow pan-africanism on the backs of the dead and dying. The Nobel Committee should revoke her prize.
• This article in Wikipedia has information about AIDS and its origin in SIV, an autoimmune disease of African simians. The increasing number of monkeys being killed for market as bushmeat is thought to have been the bridge/crossover for introducing it or a mutation of it among human beings. A similar process may be seen happening in the current emergence of cases among human beings of what has been formerly restricted to birds and is now being called Asian bird flu when humans fall ill with it.
• Whenever humans and animals live together in close quarters, there is potential for diseases to jump species. They say that Guangdong province in China (near Hong Kong) is one of the places in the world that has the densest human and animal populations, and a number of new diseases have emerged from there, possibly because of this.
• I can't really see the similarity to bird flu. If bird flu was transmitted only through sexual contact or needle swapping, then maybe, but...
• Let's not forget wass'isname (J. S. Mill), who said falsity should be reproved. So far, I haven't seen any expert answer wass'ername (Wangari Maathai), only express regret that she is so far out of touch with the real world. Now, how did HIV appear simultaneously on two continents? Oh, and the Norwegian Nobel committee has said that it has awarded the peace prize on the grounds of what she has done; her views on other topics are irrelevant.
• Considering that at least one case has been confirmed from the 1950s (in GB IIRC), the odds of HIV having been deliberately engineered seem remote, to say the least. HIV didn't have a fast vector for spreading until modern, fast—and cheap—travel became possible. Jets seem a far more likely candidate for the blame of it spreading than a deliberately engineered virus, at least to me. Additionally, those who wish to blame HIV on some black-ops government plot routinely seem to forget that HIV makes a piss-poor biological warfare agent. It takes far too long, and it is far too easy for it to spread throughout more than just a target population. My two cents. Take 'em or leave 'em as you wish. But I second jb: planting trees in areas prone to desertification is a good thing™. I couldn't care less if she thinks AIDs is deliberately induced, as long as she keeps helping on the ecological front.
• Whether or not AIDs is a manufactured virus, it has been allowed to decimate a lot of cultures. Amen. And it's not even a covert conspiracy, just pure callous disregard for human life.
• My Knickerbocker, some information on influenzas from China here.
• I'm sorry, but nowhere in that link does it say transmission of Asian bird flu only occurs through sexual contact or blood transfusion, if that's why you offered it. If not, then thanks, it's interesting, but I don't see why you'd bring it up.
• I think, were I African, I'd be a hell of a lot more paranoid about AIDS than I am as a Canadian, where the rate of infection is so much lower, and access to AIDS drugs a given. She may not be factually correct about AIDS, but I can't really sit here and condemn the woman, particularily given the quantifiable good she has done in a very difficult part of the world.
• If you're interested, there's an interesting view at http://www.halexandria.org/dward053.htm (any site with 'chronicles of Earth', 'daath' (??) and 'extraterrestial life' as menu items needs to be taken with a ton of salt, but...). They basically say that various vaccines spread the hitherto-unknown SIV across species. Follow the 'latrogenic' link near the end of the text, too. Tinfoil hats on! I think the lesson is that there is much we don't know.. ;)
• Mr. Knickerbocker, AIDS gets spread by blood; you don't have to specifically inject it. So you can catch HIV from sombody if you eat them. This is what beeswacky was referring to by 'bushmeat'. The idea is that people ate monkeys with SIV, got the virus, and had it mutate into HIV.
• Sorry I wasn't clear earlier, Mr Knickerbocker. Making meat marketable is a messy business. Any cuts or scrapes or insect bites or even hangnails on a person butchering an animal provide a potential doorway for fluids from a dead critter to enter. So hunters and any people who actually handle butchered items fall under suspicion, and where unhygenic conditions prevail, this bridging of disease between species can happen sooner or later. /darts off to wash hands compulsively, now
• A doctor in the city I live in claimed in the newspaper that AIDS spread to man though homosexuals having sex with monkeys. He was forced to retract, but not necessarily forced to change his mind. The solution to the nonsense is education, otherwise there's no point getting upset, no matter what mechanism people dream up.
• moneyjane - I understand your point, but I disagree. It doesn't matter who the babypuke* approach to issue airing comes from, we shouldn't treat it with respect. And there is nothing about a Nobel prize that stops a person from being....misguided, shall we say? (The poster child for this is Linus Pauling, double Nobel laureate and, in later years, totally batshit crazy misguided.) *babypuke- it takes 5 seconds to vomit everywhere, but quite a bit longer to clean it up.
• A doctor in the city I live in claimed in the newspaper that AIDS spread to man though homosexuals having sex with monkeys. Oh dear. I find I get on with stupid people fairly well in the main (generally harmless), but intelligent stupid is a disaster. I am, of course, by most metrics smarterer than anyone reading this page, although I haev occasionel fits of obdruraccy.
• OT: I think the batshit crazy concept of "Communist peace offensive" drove Pauling batshit crazy. Crazy people all around.
• She may not be factually correct about AIDS, but I can't really sit here and condemn the woman, particularily given the quantifiable good she has done in a very difficult part of the world. I can condemn her. She's an idiot. I don't care how much good she's done, she's doing great evil spreading this very bad and stupid idea. I don't care how good a poet Ezra Pound was, he was an idiot to be a fascist. Talent and good intentions don't excuse a person from spreading bad ideas that cause harm. The Nobel Peace Prize committee should have vetted her a little more diligently, and awarded the prize to someone who isn't a loon. no offense to loons, which are really very nice birds
• polychrome: dead right. An opinion or belief should only be respected if it is worthy of respect. And a person having qualification/abilities/knowledge in one area does not preclude the possibility that they may make a complete arse of themselves in other areas. And they should be called out on it if they do. Respect has to be earned, not assumed.
• Yes, respect has to be earned and not assumed, but that limits us to saying that this was a stupid thing to say. She deserves respect for her actions that earned her the prize, no matter what stupid shit she says otherwise. Just like Pound deserves respect for his poetry, not his politics.
• Why don't we write to her, care of the Green Belt Movement - congratulating her on the prize and putting forward our views, etc? It would be fun. Anyone like to suggest a text ... ?
• moneyjane: To emphasise what others have said, she's an idiot for pushing this idea, which is based on a vitcim mentality that everything wrong in Africa is the white man's fault. The problems behind the spread of AIDS in Africa relate entirely to factors such as: a) Lack of women's freedom. Women in many African cultures hardest hit by AIDS do not have the freedom to refuse sex or demand the use of condoms. Wifes are infected by husbands who have sex with infected women and then demand their "marital rights". b) Religious groups, predominantly Islamic and Christian, taking an aggressive stance against condoms. c) Rejection of known-effective measures in favour of folklore. So we see men raping virgin children for a cure instead of considering medical treatment. If you don't think advocating for the policies that have caused AIDS to become an epidemic in Africa can be condemned, I'm not sure what you would condemn.
• whoa rodgerd - I don't think that's entirely fair. I kinda started the pile on, so let me say that I think that moneyjane was trying to be sympathetic - AIDS in Africa is so horrific that there may be extenuating circumstances for indulging in conspiracy theories. A Nobel laureate (of all people) should know better, but anyway.... It's quite a leap, and so far as I know unsupported, for suggesting that Wangari Maathai (let alone moneyjane) is {quote}advocating for the policies that have caused AIDS to become an epidemic in Africa{/quote}.
• What js said, about both Wangari Maathai and Pound.
• Languagehat agreed with me! That means the rest of you are WRONG! heh.
• I won't go to reunions too much wind blows through empty spaces I would fill the holes in the broken ranks with the young undaunted faces of those who've gone life and the living must keep on though new buds swell spring brings a raw regret to us who can't or won't forget
• New research into the genetic history of HIV suggests that the virus that causes AIDS stopped in Haiti during the middle of the last century, prior to reaching the United States. ...researchers came to believe that the AIDS strain moved from Africa to Haiti at some time during the mid-1960s. They think it circulated in Haiti for perhaps a few years before moving on to the United States in about 1969. moneyjane... bees... *sigh*