30 Years In, We Are Still Learning From AIDS

Bad link=NY Times Health...interesting observation.

They feel that way because they don't understand the science - see my response to Jubal below.

Uh, excuse me, but I spent the last seven years of my life working at an institute that specializes in, and has been awarded millions of dollars in government funding to study retroviruses. Before you go stating that people don't understand the science behind something, I suggest you understand that "It is now generally accepted" proves nothing.

It was also once generally accepted that the world was flat. We STILL don't have the FACTS on HIV-AIDS, and there is no guarantee we ever will. People do not feel the way they do about something simply because they do not understand the science. Jubal clearly stated that he "feels" that way because of his experience dealing with and living with this disease. Often, clinical observation contradicts what we think laboratory results are telling us...tis the nature of the beast.

Sorry, I didn't realize that you are a whole lot of people. Just how many people are you?

I'm not going to reply to childishness. I appreciate your post, but I know enough about how science is done to know that "generally accepted" is often used as a placeholder until we either figure it out or find a way to cover it up.

I agree with you jubal, and HIV is not the only man-made disease out there, and sadly, what we are doing to the environment is only making things worse. Lyme disease as well has been shrouded in political/pharmaceutical collusion and corruption.

Great post V, thanks for putting this up.

The time from the moment of infection until the HIV can be detected in the blood (HIV positive) is relatively short - 3 to 6 months or less. The incubation period is the time between the time HIV entered the body until AIDS is "declared", i.e. until the symptoms of AIDS appear. So, you basically still are in your incubation period, unless of course you developed the symptoms a long time ago and the drugs are keeping you alive.

Since the earliest known cases of AIDS date from the fifties when there was absolutely no technology capable of creating or altering viruses, you can be sure that HIV is most certainly not man-made.

A useful, detailed and highly informative website: http://www.avert.org/origin-aids-hiv.htm

HIV most definitely was not man-made - see my response to Jubal above, and here is a link to an excellent website on the subject: http://www.avert.org/origin-aids-hiv.htm

No such thing as "most definitely" in the world of viruses V. See my response above.

Some conspiracy theories allege that HIV was created in a bioweapons laboratory, perhaps as an agent of genocide or an accident. These hypotheses have been rejected by scientific consensus, especially as there was no technology capable of doing this in the fifties.

I think my definition of man-made is probably more broader than what you see me saying. I suspect we are more in agreement than non-agreement, and I am fine with that, although I will say that the general public is rarely aware of what technology we really possess and at what time we possessed it.

According to a 2008 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study, a team led by Robert Shafer at Stanford University School of Medicine has discovered that the Gray Mouse Lemur has an endogenous lentivirus (the genus to which HIV belongs) in its genetic makeup. This suggests that lentiviruses have existed for at least 14 million years, much longer than the currently known existence of HIV. In addition, the time frame falls into place when Madagascar was still yet connected to what is now the African continent; the said lemurs later developed immunity to the virus strain and survived an era when the lentivirus was widespread among other mammalia. The study is being hailed as crucial, because it fills the blanks in the origin of the virus, as well as in its evolution, and may be important in the development of new antiviral drugs.

In 2010, researchers reported that SIV had infected monkeys in Bioko for at least 32,000 years. Previously it was thought that SIV infection in monkeys had happened over the past few hundred years. Scientists estimated that it would take a similar amount of time before humans adapted naturally to HIV infection in the way monkeys in Africa have adapted to SIV and not suffer any harm from the infection.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_AIDS#Genetic_studies

I read the SIV study, and read the conclusions drawn from it. It is one piece of a very large puzzle, and still theory, not fact. Again, I am not completely disagreeing, per se, I am just saying that neither health nor disease are reducible to one factor, and how someone feels about their disease is as important a factor as what research claims to know. Our health care SYSTEM plays a significant role in defining disease and then creating solutions that require ongoing dependency to maintain health. Read all the studies and literature you want, we live in a world where everything is done for profit, and disease is the new black. I think jubal is feeling that, and rightly so.

too bad that not all mothers were as wise. Many needless deaths might have been prevented. I also believe that more progress might have been made quicker had the general population a more enlightened attitudes about sex in general But in a society which is still puritanical in many respects, that might have been too much to expect. In any case, as your actions with regard to your son were both wise and effective, enlightened attitudes might have addressed the problem at large much sooner.

If condoms would have been taught in Catholic schools when I was a kid in the sixties, I would probably never have gotten HIV to begin with.