the complaint seems to be that even <gasp!> *scientists* are subject to the law of unintended consequences! oh dear...
only from a really baroquely discombobulated standpoint can one argue that what one wants from 'science' is Nothing But Good: if the consequences of scientists' actions are good, well, that's fine, but if they're bad, then we really have to wonder about the whole project, now, don't we?
> Could doctors testing a polio vaccine in Africa in the late 1950s have
> unintentionally started the AIDS epidemic?
^^^^^^^
proximate cause? adequate cause? screw it--they 'started' it.
> Seven years after this conspiracy-style theory was first floated, the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
now *there's* a carefully crafted category.
> By contrast, Hooper's theory centres on a polio vaccine that was tested on
> about a million people in central Africa between 1957 and 1960. Because the
> vaccine was produced in cultures of kidney cells from various primate
> species, Hooper argues that some of it could have been contaminated with the
> virus that was later identified in humans as HIV-1. All that was needed to
> seed the AIDS epidemic was a few contaminated batches.
that proximate/adequate cause problem again. i think i'll go out now and 'seed an epidemic' of orchids in the middle of my street. what? they didn't grow?! you mean that an epidemic requires cer- tain environmental factors to fluorish? aw...
when the promiscuous queer airline steward 'patient zero' theory was being flogged by rightists, we were treated to a great hue and cry about victim-blaming, demonization of the other, condemnation of 'practices,' &c.; but when it's a *scientist*, where'd that con- founded chorus go? oh, well, scientists aren't bearing the brunt of the epidemic, they're not v_ct_ms, they're just autonomic megaphones in the service of some vague Western Project... such is the inner life of the parochial left--the mirror, i'll add, of the parochial 'science' reactionaries who adamantly rejected 'conspiracy theories' about polio vaccines.
> But if the vaccine theory has become less obviously far-fetched, it still
> has problems. For example, the vaccine was also tested on thousands of
> individuals in Poland but there's no evidence of early HIV infection there.
oh, shit, you mean the environment of social practices in poland might be different from those where AIDS broke out in africa? nah, let's just stick to the race issue, it's much sexier-we can accuse people of cultural insensitivity.
> But even if there is only the tiniest chance that Hooper is right, the
> implications of his theory demand that it should be investigated. The
> obvious next step is to test the remaining frozen stocks of the vaccine for
> the presence of the chimp virus. Of course, negative results will not
> resolve the controversy, because other batches, now used up or lost, might
> have been contaminated. But this is no excuse for doing nothing.
as if to suggest that positive results would 'resolve the controversy.' as if to suggest that the controversy were the problem.
> For this and other reasons, it is now up to the WHO to try to answer
> Hooper's questions as quickly as possible. A refusal to test the leftover
> vaccine stocks will simply fuel conspiracy theories everywhere.
as if to suggest that the comspiracy were the problem.
i really don't care if AIDS came from an incommensurately huge grape- fruit from another dimension that passed by the earth during an eclipse. where it came from isn't the problem--where it's *going* is the problem.
grrrr. t