Jim, I know I haven't participated in the most recent discussion, but consider what Chris seems to be asserting: not that there's debate over the cause and course of AIDS, but that HIV emphatically doesn't cause AIDS. That is unreasonable.
You can reasonably advocate the null hypothesis, which is that there remain questions about the cause of AIDS. However, advocating the null hypothesis is not the same as advocating the opposite - even if there isn't sufficient proof to answer all questions about HIV causing AIDS, it does not follow that HIV is not the cause of AIDS.
That there are dissenters does not mean that their view is necessarily correct, nor is it enough to have dissenters to even establish doubt. Some people will always believe the opposite. There are people who believe that Elvis is still alive and that the earth is flat and that the US government (which can't successfully conceal a blowjob) is concealing the existence of aliens. This doesn't make any of their assertions credible.
Even the most eminent dissenters can be wrong. Lord Kelvin occupied the last decade of his life advocating that the earth was a meager 600 million years old. Newton believed in alchemy. I could go on and on, but I shouldn't have to. The proof is in the pudding; do approaches to attack HIV show positive or negative results?
That anti-HIV drugs are toxic shouldn't be surprising. Many medical approaches are toxic. We used to use arsenic to treat syphillis. It was preferable when compared to a slow and painful death. Chemotherapy is incredibly toxic, but I don't see any anti-chemotherapy demonstrations.
> Aids so fragile that it cannot be questioned? Is nobody going to offer
> an explanation as to why the projections of Aids infection so
> spectacularly deviated from the actual patterns? Or is that just
Everyone, but everyone, on LBO-Talk has made this observation at least once. When a trend (that is, a non-random indicator) on the stock market is noted and used, it then becomes useless. When someone makes a projection and then fights to change it, why are you surprised that the deviation is spectacular?
If I take my current rate of smoking, project how many cigarettes I'll smoke over my lifetime, and then quit, I'll spectacularly deviate from the estimate - but that doesn't make the estimate incorrect or invalid or somehow suspect.
Anyhow. I'm rather unimpressed by the return of the AIDS thread to LBO-talk. You and Chris have gone over almost everything at least twice and been debunked at least three times. Thank god I'm slightly stoned from pain medication (for a badly broken leg, which has kept me away from my computer and off LBO-talk) - otherwise I'd be really cranky.
Marco
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> Marco Anglesio | To do good is noble. To tell <
> mpa at the-wire.com | others to be good is nobler <
> http://www.the-wire.com/~mpa | still, and no trouble. <
> | --Mark Twain <
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