>From: James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>To: revo-readers at egroups.com, lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>Subject: Damilola case, Aids
>Date: Sun, 3 Dec 2000 10:37:38 +0000
>
>However, the threat that Aids will spread from the high-risk categories
>of gay men, intravenous drug users, and Africans has not happened.
Mr Hearfield, What is a high risk category? Are these categories specified in terms of causally relevant knowledge to the explanandum fact of Aids? Is a risk factor simply a subwhole within which a random event (Aids) is more likely than it is for "most people"? You seem to be claiming that the information from creating classes of equivalence constituted by risk factors provides us with information useful for action. What action follows then from the putatively useful information that simply being gay (rather than a practioner of unprotected anal sex) or a IV drug user (rather than one who shares dirty needles) or African (rather than a poor woman who finds herself powerless to demand the use of condoms) makes the random event of Aids more likely than for "most people"? Is this useful information or an invidious distinction? Does one find that one *is* gay only once gay has been created in and through the official and common sense enumeration of high risk categories? Does one find onself not Ibo or Xhosa or Kenyan but African only once African itself has become officially enumerated as the risk factor most relevant for the creation of equivalence classes? Are you identifying risks in a probabilistic manner, specifying causally relevant information or invidiously categorizing people? Or all three?
Warm regards, Jan
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