From: CurtAdams@aol.com
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 18:26:47 MST
In a message dated 3/8/02 14:27:30, sentience@pobox.com writes:
>CurtAdams@aol.com wrote:
>>
>> I think we've long past the point where reasonable people can doubt
>> HIV -> AIDS. If somebody disagrees to the point that they'll
>> claim otherwise in a public forum, they should put up or shut up:
>> inject themselves with a high titer of infectious cultured HIV. That's
>> a traditional approach to show an infectious agent isn't relevant.
>> That they haven't IMO just points them out as frauds. Even
>> they don't believe their own nonsense.
>
>I realize that it's a tempting debating tactic to get your opponents to kill
>themselves, but in this case (a) they will linger around before dying,
>arguing the while and (b) they may thereby infect others as well as
>themselves. There are also minor ethical questions as to the propriety of
>exploiting the stupidity of others so as to cause them to commit suicide in
>order to accomplish the short-term objective of winning an argument on
>the Extropians list.
I have no particular desire for the various anti-HIV advocates to be
dead, just discredited. Some non-medical people do listen to them,
and end up infected or sick as a result (misestimating risk of sex with
HIV-positive people, avoiding anti-HIV treatment). I don't think they're
actually stupid enough to inject themselves - Duesenberg talked about
it but after 15 years he still hasn't. Putting this demand on the table
is intended to discredit. If somebody's actually dumb enough to do it,
well, they'll save a lot of other people's lives in the process.
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