Asymmetrical Information

Tuberculosis used to be one of the most dread diseases, because there was no treatment. But in the last fifty years drugs were developed for it. It's a bacterial disease, not a virus, but it's unusual in that it reproduces about every 12 hours, where most disease-causing bacteria reproduce about every half hour.

The drugs interfere with reproduction, so what this means is that it takes a lot longer for treatment to eradicate the disease. With standard antibiotics against something like strep, you take the drug for about a week. But for tuberculosis, you have to take the pills regularly for several months.

It's pretty common for the homeless in the big cities to get tuberculosis; communal charity sleeping quarters are a hotbed of those kinds of germs as you might imagine. A lot of those people would get terribly ill and then go in for charity medical treatment, and they would be diagnosed and given the pills and made to solemnly promise that they'd keep coming back.

Problem is, long before you're actually disease free, you start feeling a lot better. And given that the homeless are not the most responsible people, many of them stop taking the drug, and sometime later would relapse. Sometimes the disease would become drug resistant.

This has happened often enough, so that certain family lines of the bacterium have had the benefit of this in several successive victims, and are now totally immune to the drugs. We again have no drugs to treat at least some forms of bacterial tuberculosis.

Perhaps new drugs will be found, but if that mistake is repeated, the same thing could happen.

I know it's not new, but have you considered the possibility that the causation of AIDS by the HIV virus is unproven?

www.virusmyth.com has much more information.

It is indicative that Ritts reported a sexual encounter. This means to me that he was continuing the behavior that killed him, that is, promiscuous sex and drug abuse. The HIV virus had nothing to do with it, although the antiretrovirals may have contributed by suppressing the immune system and stressing the body. Sending antiretrovirals to the Third World is nothing less than mass murder.

Robert Speirs
Tallahassee, Florida

Here's a quote from virusmyth.com: "Most of [the dissenting scientists] think AIDS is also not sexually transmitted; it probably has toxic causes." Robert, if you're buying this stuff, would you explain how you think AIDS is acquired?

I thought Mbeki was alone in his paranoia.

"AIDS" is not acquired. It doesn't exist as a disease. The HIV virus has no toxic effects. Only anti-retrovirals like AZT do. People don't die from "AIDS". They die from pneumonia, Karposi's sarcoma, infections and other things that have nothing to do with the HIvirus. Read Peter Duesberg's book, "Inventing the AIDS Virus" for much more detail. Or just keep going on the website. I have yet to be presented with any scientific evidence that shows that the HIV virus causes AIDS.

Robert, I have done some reading on the website; they sound a lot like every other marginal group with a bizarre ax to grind. I won't argue the existence of AIDS with you. I'm not particularly well equipped to defend the overwhelming body of scientific evidence for HIV/AIDS, and I've a sneaking suspicion you're trolling just a bit (although forgive me my suspicion if you're not).

What I'd like to understand better is this: why do you want to believe that HIV is harmless and that ARVs are dangerous? I assume you don't deny that some 20 years ago, gay men started dying in droves of the opportunistic infections you mentioned (before AZT, toxic as it is, was a twinkle in Burroughs-Wellcome's eye). So why do you want to believe that everything we've come up with since then to explain and combat AIDS (or GRID, or OIs, or whatever you want to call it) is ineffective and harmful? Is it the thrill of buying into a conspiracy theory, or is it desperation at seeing someone one cares about suffer, or what? I'm not asking for a personal answer. And I'm not interested in arguing over whether HIV causes AIDS; I can find plenty of those arguments on the website. I'm just trying to understand the virusmyth.com mentality.

Robert,

My brother died of AIDS in 1996. He never took any antiretrovirals, because he believed the crap you're spreading. I have no doubt that had he taken them, he would have survived until protease inhibitors became available later that year, and thus would still be alive today.

Before you parrot any more of Duesberg's BS, consider his (and your) responsibility for spreading deadly misinformation.

Jim

It is indicative that Ritts reported a sexual encounter. This means to me that he was continuing the behavior that killed him, that is, promiscuous sex and drug abuse.

I wasn't aware that sex itself killed you.

Jason: If my wife keeps gaining weight and keeps getting on top, someday...

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