> then market a highly toxic--and very expensive--drug to people who
> have been led to believe that this drug has been developed to counter
> the effects of the virus?
That's a rather grand conspiracy, involving thousands if not hundreds of thousands of researchers, clinicians, and (for that matter) patients. I tend to be skeptical of any hypothesis that requires that much conspiracy. People are in general bad at conspiracy. Perhaps the HIV hypothesis is untrue, and that's a matter of incompetence or wishful thinking, but conspiracy?
> is it not a little strange that the HIV test tested not for the virus
> itself but for the anti-bodies?
As far as I know, most tests tend to test for antibodies rather than the pathogen proper. You can count on antibodies to react in a predictable way when exposed to virus protein. This makes them good candidates for testing. Not so with pathogens proper.
> but if the virus has been isolated,
> why not test for the virus itself,
You can "test" for the virus itself by isolating it, if you feel like it. It would be hugely expensive, but YMMV. Being residents of first-world nations gives us the ability to adopt that kind of conceit.
> well, my "doubts" are still robust but thank you for recognizing a
> basic legitmacy for those doubts.
Doubts are legitimate, but you should concentrate on showing up the weak, not the strong, points of the HIV theory. So what if the particular HIV retrovirus is not the cause of AIDS; anti-retroviral therapy can stall the progress of HIV and that of AIDS. Like Galileo said, it still moves.
> from AIDS" it will kill you as there is no cure for AIDS yet. if it is
> a function of poverty, then you may still die, not because of a virus
> but because of, say, no medical intervention. in one case, you are
You could always say that AIDS is a function of poverty. It has spread because of massive displacements of people from poverty, sickness, and war. That doesn't mean that poverty causes AIDS, merely that those who are poor, homeless, displaced, and almost certainly hopeless provide a fertile terrain for infection to take root. This has been so with every epidemic; why should AIDS be any different?
> conclusions that could unnecessarily terrorize the patient into
> profound hopelessness?
Hopelessness perhaps, although supposing that bad news results in the death of countless Africans is perhaps a bit much and a bit patronizing.
Marco
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> Marco Anglesio | Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, <
> mpa at the-wire.com | strychnine are weak dilutions. <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | The surest poison is time. <
> | --Ralph Waldo Emerson <
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