Comrades Peter and Christopher, just do EVERYONE a favour and ignore
> this shit. Giving these rascals attention only encourages them, as
> the saying goes. (My personal view, anyway.)
Comrade Patrick,
But I am one of those rascals! I do not doubt that there are some evil confluences between opportunistic politicians and bureacrats in South Africa and dissent activists and theorist but that does not make dissent from the mainstream AIDS line inherently wrong. There are caring, concerned people within the AIDS dissent community whose writing on AIDS I have found just as subtle, insightful and powerful as your writings on finance and South African politics. Please don't lump them all into the category of mischevous evil doers.
> I've lost so many Southern African friends--clean-living
> folk, activists, people who are middle-class and who are poor,
Yes, I appreciate your anger. When I was living in the Bay Area, I lost a good number of friends and associates to what is called AIDS, too. But you've got to ask yourself, WHY are clean living middle-class South Africans dying while clean living, middle-class Americans are not at any statistical appreciable rate? Are middle-class Africans less careful in the sack than middle-class folks of European extraction? Are Middle-class Africans somehow more biochemically vulnerable to AIDS than the European or American counterparts?
and
> who, universally, could not afford the cocktails needed to stay alive
> because of fucking patents and profiteering multinational drug
> companies--
It is worth noting that the majority of drugs on the market, and the vast majority of those introduced since the mid '90's, are a biochemical shot in the dark. All of the evidence shows that AIDS drugs, generally speaking, are not effective for very long--when they are effective at all. Claims to the contrary are based on a very narrow reading of the evidence--that is, a refusal to take into account that many, many people do not do well on these drugs, never mind the fact that they undermine the ability of major organs, particularly the liver, to function properly. That said, it certainly is an evil that people are not able to easily access or afford what are claimed to be cures for a serious disease. I despise profiteering pharmaceuticals copanies and drug patents as much as you do. Still, I do not think they (pharmaceutical companies) are producing much worth paying attention to. I certaiinly don't see any evidence that they are producing a cure. And frankly, as an instituti! on, I don't believe they give a flying fuck about dying Africans, or anybody else who is dying for that matter.
that it sickens me to run into AIDS-denialists.
> (Especially in Pretoria, in the president's office, where it's
> merely a front for fiscal constraints to a humane AIDS policy.)
> Pretending there's a science worth debating here, after all we've
> been through, in the middle of a Black Plague pandemic, simply
> distracts us from the essential tasks at hand.
I simply disagree, Patrick. There is plenty of science to debate here. AIDS Research is shot through with profiteering, opportunism, the assumptions of mainstream medecine, and naivite.
Don't you think it's a little bizarre, Patrick, that despite the obvious fact that a sick body needs more of the essentials--oxygen, water, enzymes, minerals, vitamins, phytochemicals and neutraceuticals in general--these needs are ignored by the mainstream media, mainstreeam medecine, large number of "progressives", etc? Don't you think the simple solutions should be tried first before we go into the hereoic--and usually frustratingly unproductive--" find the mirical drug" mode? Despite, for example, extraordinarily exciting research done by very smart, committed scientist about the healing power of large amounts of ascorbic acid for a large varitey of illnesses, this research is ignored (or denounced as foolishness) by doctors and medical scientist who either studied nothing or little about nutrition in med school. Same thing for vitamin E and numerous other health promoting phytonutrients. Should we be surprised when fringe types pick up on ideas pushed to the fringe by mai! nstream types, who can then quite conveniently denounce those ideas as fringe ideas when they become most fervently espoused by those fringe types?
Chris