Pat Fallon, pfallon@bigfoot.com, writes:
> In the case of AIDS, I think it is even worse than you suggest. > See http://www.mmsweb.com/eykiw/aids/aids.htm for > some links to papers and articles to decide for yourself.
http://www.skeptic.com/03.2.harris-aids.html is a 1994 article by Dr. Steve Harris, who is active in cryonics circles and a real sharp guy (probably known to many list members), refuting some of the objections of the "AIDS reappraisers". You don't find this kind of analysis very often because most workers in the mainstream just hope the gadflies and conspiracy theorists will go away. It is great that Steve has taken the time to put the controversy into perspective.
Here is an excerpt from the abstract:
: It is concluded that HIV/AIDS skeptics have chosen overly broad
: definitions of AIDS which are not clinically useful, and which would,
: if employed, result in many confusing diagnoses of "AIDS" and "HIV-free
: AIDS" in people with good prognoses. HIV is one of a closely-related
: family of viruses which causes AIDS-like immunodeficiency diseases
: in a number of animals species, and HIV/AIDS skeptics have ignored or
: minimized this research in order to construct needlessly complicated
: alternative hypotheses for the cause of AIDS. These alternative views
: are based on correlations between AIDS and toxin exposure shown by
: epidemiologists to be artificial a decade ago, but which skeptics still
: refuse to abandon. Examination of the HIV/AIDS controversy thus allows
: us to draw some general lessons about how skepticism in science works,
: and the ways in which it can go pathologically awry.
Hal