Discourse(s) On AIDS

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Thu Dec 7 06:59:31 PST 2000



> > Right above -- "professionally trained scientific community"
> > and all that. The _scientific_ response to a theoretical
> > challenge is to point out the evidence, not to denounce the
> > personality of the challenger or profess faith in
> > established institutions.

Christopher B. Hajib-Niles:
> i don't nkow where you stand on this matters but bravo.

That depends which matter we're talking about. If it's the infectious-agent theory of AIDS, I believe in it. If (as I suggested earlier) one reads Randy Shilts's account of the epidemic (_And_The_Band_Played_On_), one can go back in time to the point when people knew something was happening but didn't know what it was, and why they came, generally, to believe that HIV infection was the cause, for example the pattern of incidence distribution and the way it changed over time.

On the other hand, if the matter is concern about ritualistic denunciations of those who don't believe in the HIV theory, or any other theory, I deplore them, as well as ad-hominem arguments derived from the ritual, e.g. your race theories must be wrong because your AIDS theory is wrong, which we know because people in white coats with impressive degrees have told us so.



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