Caroline, they are underground. There is much that is displayed on the internet that is underground. When it was first discovered that nambla existed, hacker's detroyed their websites. I promise you if a member of nambla were to walk down any street, with the exception of San Francisco, wearing a teeshirt saying "I like having sex with young boys", he would never make it home alive. IMO.

That's why I say there is no freedom of speech. Nambla couldnt support itself on it's speech if it had to. That's why it has a hired gun (in this case "pro bono") of the ACLU to do their speaking for them as they are extremely clever at manipulating "speech" and the first amendment. The first amendment has been raped and pillaged by the ACLU. In no way was the first amendment meant to condone how the ACLU has interpreted it. It is the insanity of our legal system that has allowed it's misinterpretation. You see once a ruling is made, it is next to impossible through the court system to change it. You know all those law books you see in a lawyers office, they are precisely for that purpose;to seek erroneous rulings by the court. and there are tons of them.

William

Is this a discussion of ethics or the mechanics of sexually transmitted disease?

Hello RD, Ha, that's what you get for starting at the back of the book. But you have to admit getting a sexually transmitted disease has everything to do with ethics, don't you think?
William

---------- Post added at 06:44 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:20 PM ----------



Are you sure that is accurate. "Produced by". Could "responsible for" be more appropriate. Is it not possible that HIV could produce other diseases as well? By saying "produced by" you are implying HIV causes AIDS "only" and will lead to AIDS, which has been determined not to be true. At least to my understanding that is the case.

William

Aedes, I did take that into consideration, though I decided not to bring it up as I wanted to try to make further attempts to bring us all back on topic. I think that that can easily bring us to a new subtopic that I was trying to avoid at Justin's urging. I will not further elaborate unless the sub-discussion develops on its own.

William:

HIV or Human immunodeficiency virus is the sole cause of AIDS. Essentially HIV destroys your immune system, AIDS is a result of this.

Also, in Africa, the AIDS epidemic has absolutely nothing to do with homosexuality. A pregnant woman with HIV can pass it to her child during child birth. There is a superstition in some areas of sub Saharan Africa that claims that sex with a virgin cures aids(not a good way to slow down the spread) and many of the people are uneducated and this makes it all the more difficult to get them to take treatment.

Also know that there is a very small sub section of the gay community that actively seeks HIV. Those people are mentally ill, but they do exist. They are not representative of the gay community as a whole by any means, and are probably partly responsible for the spread of AIDS in the US.

Note:I would accept Aedes information when it comes to Virology or medicine in general, as his credentials on the subject (as far as I know) far outweigh anyone's on this forum.

Your point is taken, but I wouldn't dwell on that choice of words -- it's good enough for me and I am an HIV specialist. HIV produces illnesses other than AIDS, including HIV dementia and acute retroviral syndrome, but it doesn't matter -- the final common pathway of HIV infection is always AIDS in the absence of antiretroviral therapy (or the extremely rare case of nonprogressors).

I don't admit that. I think the behaviors that spread STDs, i.e. sex, are a lot more natural than the ones that produce coalminer's lung, motor vehicle trauma, radiation poisoning, etc.

But maybe it's my proximity to this subject that makes me more forgiving. I treat STDs fairly routinely (HIV all the time, and I treated someone for syphilis last week). People don't deserve an STD because of careless behavior. That's a wholly unproductive way of thinking of it. People deserve to understand a priori what puts them at risk, and every time someone comes into your clinic with an STD, that affords you an opportunity to help change their behavior.

Aedes,
My question concerning vaccines. Now please this is a system of dot connecting for I do know my academic knowledge is lacking. Now in considering the all ellusive virus. IMO it can only attack weak immune systems. No doubt AIDS is a monster virus. Unlike the the common cold, where is can not survive because for whatever reasons is becomes somewhat benign but it and goes to sleep. It's not dead, it's just asleep. Now in the research we have done that created the polio vaccine we put that virus to sleep but we did not eliminate the cause. Because of that when we ingested fecal material woke the virus up and it mutated because the vaccine weaken the bodie natural immune system and it had to mutate to overcome the affects of the vaccine. Now had we solved the problem that caused the virus to become active in the first place, which is to put together a world wide campaign to eliminate squaller and the ingestion of fecal matter, plus the vaccine, it would have remained asleep. But we didn't do that. Now that we had the vaccine, we didn't have to. And the squaller remains. Now when we ingest fecal matter we don't get polio, we get HIV, the much stronger mutated rendition of the polio virus. it's pissed now. We woke a sleeping giant. Now the ingestion of the fecal matter plus the affect the vaccine had on our natural immune system make it much more difficult to put back to sleep. Once we have HIV and we still ingest fecal matter it develops into AIDS. It is my opinion when we take medicine we harm the bodies own immune system to a degree which is why we have more and more stronger versions of the common cold. The Flu.

In the case of the AIDS virus squaller still exists in africa as well as other countries and it is safe to assume to the behavior of the gay male in that anal activity is primary focus of their sexualtiy is what has gotten AIDS out of control. That's why I say the behavior must stop. Just as in africa and other poverty stricken countries, squaller must end. If this is not done and we do come up with a miracle vaccine that puts that virus to sleep it will again mutate, any continuation of the root cause will will awaken it and then there is no telling what damage it will cause.

The reason why there are so many more AIDS cases in africa is because squaller in rampant. We have all but eliminated it here but it does exist. What does still exist her is the gay male contracting HIV as they do not ingest squaller but there is one hell of a lot of anal activity in which condoms are not used.

The reason why we have not made the fecal ingestion as a cause is because of it's mutation due to the effects of the vaccine. That little bastard we call the virus is a sharp little cookie. IMO.

I know this is strained and poorly written, but I think you will get my meaning. I am somewhat tired, it's been a very busy day.

I look forward to your comments.
William

I think someone needs to start a new thread on HIV/AIDS, because we have gone way off the topic that Bonaventurian started for us. If someone else doesn't get around to it, I will take care of it later, or in the morning when I have time to sift through the posts, and pull out all of the HIV/AIDS related posts.

What would you base this assumption on? I take care of people with TRULY weak immune systems -- people on chemotherapy, people with bone marrow transplants and organ transplants, people on high dose steroids, babies and children with severe congenital immunodeficiencies... HIV, the common cold, the flu virus, etc, can easily infect totally normal, healthy people. The natural history of the infection may be different in different hosts, but we're ALL vulnerable to viruses.

Polio is SO contagious, and with such tiny inocula of virus, that no amount of hygiene could prevent its transmission. Polio is a kind of enterovirus, and we have enteroviruses running rampant even in the cleanest of settings. It happens that polio is probably the worst of them, and we therefore prioritized that vaccine. But it also happens that polio would have never been controlled to the extent it had without an extremely high level of immunity, specifically that induced by the vaccine. (And don't forget that we no longer use the attenuated live vaccine in the US, we only use the killed vaccine).

This is not true. First, there is ZERO evidence that vaccines "weaken the natural immune system", and secondly the ONLY places in the world where polio remains endemic are places with low vaccine coverage -- esp northern Nigeria, Niger. The live attenuated vaccines have resulted in rare cases of vaccine-derived polio (in 1 / 1,000,000 vaccinees), not because the vaccine weakens the immune system, but rather because that vaccine is sufficiently virulent to cause disease unto itself. The chickenpox vaccine has the same problem, though vaccine-derived chickenpox is nearly always very mild.

William, I find it hard to respond to this -- it's so bereft of any truth or evidence that I'm not sure I'm going to convince you of anything at all. You're so filled with ideas that are plainly wrong, that my efforts here (in this area of my professional specialization) will only be worthwhile if you let go these preconceptions.

Yet your opinion is not supported by evidence. And opinions even of the most illustrious experts are useless if they contradict evidence. Sure, methotrexate or cyclophosphamide or infliximab will harm the immune system -- that's their job. But other medications do not.

Again, completely untrue, and it flies in the face of THOUSANDS of articles studying the epidemiology of AIDS in Africa -- incidentally a continent on which I've actually done HIV/AIDS care. I mean there are a boatload of articles looking at HIV-incongruous married couples in Africa that examine risk factors for female to male and male to female transmission.

William -- you don't like gays. There is something you find abominable about them. It's a shame that you would resort to these untruths to advance that argument.

Ironic, then, that the highest rates of HIV in Africa are in the MOST economically stable and developed countries on the continent, South Africa and Botswana. These are relatively wealthy countries with a good standard of living compared with the rest of the continent, and being at the southern extreme they tend to have less tropical disease.

The most squalid countries in Africa are typically the ones that have recently been at war, and some among them, like Angola, DRC, Sierra Leone, Chad, and Somalia have lower rates of HIV than their less squalid neighbors.

William, please be genuine here, as a favor to yourself. Many of your misconceptions could be easily corrected if you are interested in making the effort. But you haven't done so, and instead you've put forth a litany of falsehoods to advance a fairly hateful argument, falsehoods that would be easily disabused if you made an honest attempt to investigate.

Indeed.

While I like this topic better than the original, the thread has twisted and turned in all directions. And while I appreciate the calm discourse of William's style, I DO want to end this thread with the last word in the hopes that he (and the rest of us) can take a breather, and do our diligence to make sure we're not advancing a discriminatory argument with ugly untruths.