>Lifestyle. Remember the swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn? As a young
>man, he charmed audiences as Robin Hood and Captain Blood. But by
>the time the actor had died on his fiftieth birthday, he was so
>burnt out from a fast life of drugs and heavy drinkingthat his
>doctors, upon autopsy, were amazed that he had remained alive for
>the last five years of his life. Triple the speed of Flynn's
>lifestyle, and you speed up the process of self-destruction.
>
>Such is the case with AIDS, which many attribute to a worn down,
>stressed out immune system caused by drug abuse and a super fast
>lifestyle. Initially, AIDS was detected in homosexual men who were
>frequenting bars and bath houses and having multiple sexual partners
>a night. They were taking massive amounts of antibiotics as a
>prophylactic against syphilis, and repeatedly coming down with
>hepatitis and parasitic infections. They drank, smoked, ate poorly,
>and deprived themselves of sleep. Recreational drugs, such as
>cocaine, heroine, Ecstasy, and nitrite inhalants were commonplace.
>Many critics of the HIV theory say that any one of these factors
>alone could contribute to ill health and that so many of them over a
>long period of time are likely to result in diseases found in AIDS.
>
>Dr. Frank Buianouckas, a professor of mathematics at City University
>of New York, and one of the leading forces in the New York HEAL
>program remembers the scenario: "The people who got AIDS were the
>free spirits of the 70's. They went around enjoying the new sexual
>freedoms and picking up microbes for which they had to use
>antibiotics and other medical drugs. Some friends of mine picked up
>syphilis or gonorrhea about 25 times and then went through all of
>the treatments. They also were using antibiotics as prophylactics
>against venereal disease and recreational drugs, all of which did
>damage to their systems. So many of the people I knew, who had these
>HIV-positive diagnoses, fit into that category. 37
>
>[...]
>
>Elliot says the scenario continues and speaks of a phenomenon
>currently going on in the United States, called a circuit party:
>"About 7,000 or so gay men go around to a circuit of towns and throw
>three day raves where everybody gets absolutely bombed out of their
>minds on drugs, and lots of sex goes on. As a result, I suspect a
>lot of these men are going to get very sick. But you cannot say that
>to them. It's judgmental. They'll think you're trying to stop them
>from having a good time. But I can see the dangers where they
>can't." 38
>
>[...]
>
>Dr. Rasnick states that every AIDS-defining disease has been
>documented to be drug-related: "There are 20 million chronic drug
>users in the U.S. The numbers have gone up exponentially from a few
>thousand in the '70's to 20 million right now. Then there are
>another 50 million part-time drug users. AIDS is the tip of the
>iceberg of the drug epidemic. It's analogous to cigarette smoking.
>Everybody in the U.S. who has lung cancer or emphysema smoked
>cigarettes for a couple of decades. Yet the vast majority who smoke
>don't get emphysema or lung cancer. AIDS is pretty much in that same
>category. Peter and I cannot find any documented examples of
>drug-free AIDS cases, although the overwhelming majority of these 20
>million chronic drug users don't have AIDS.