From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net)
Date: Thu Dec 02 1999 - 11:07:28 MST
> Then could you kindly provide the reference to the paper
> that shows the scanning electron micrographs of
> the banded viral isolate. "Show me the money".
Such mote-in-your-brother's-eye arguments are a common tactic of
creationists and other crackpots, including the "HIV is not AIDS"
crowd. Biology (and evolution) is very complex, and there are some
fringes that aren't well understood. Creationists like to point
to these fringes and say "Look--those folks on the evolution side
can't agree about everything, and can't show solid proof of it all,
so you might as well believe in creation." The non-HIV AIDS crowd
has the same level of intellectual integrity when they point out
that the isolation of HIV didn't meet all of Koch's postulates to
100%, that there are outliers in much of the data, and lots of
details not yet understood. They also use the tactic of argument
by definition, redefining some cases of immune deficiency of
unknown cause as "AIDS" so that they can claim that there are AIDS
cases not caused by HIV. The facts are simple: those non-HIV cases
are not AIDS; those patients will not suffer the fatal precipitous
drop of immune function that all AIDS patients (with HIV) will.
The simple facts known to everyone beyond any rational dispute are
that the HIV family of viruses, spread by exchange of bodily fluids,
cause AIDS. If you're not infected, you won't get the disease.
Millions of confirmations of this should not be upset by a few unusual
cases that will be expected in any investigation. Anyone who claims
otherwise has an agenda that they value more than the truth.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lcrocker.html> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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