[Leica] AIDS and STD's: [WAS: Chernobyl Legacy]

[abridge at gmail.com (Adam Bridge)]

These are all good points, Marc. Well said and I'm sorry for your loss.

Terror weapons, however, do not have to have the same characteristics
as military weapons - we've seen that with whoever was playing games
with anthrax after 9/11.

Adam

On 4/25/06, Marc James Small <msmall@aya.yale.edu> wrote:
> At 09:01 PM 4/25/06 -0700, Adam Bridge wrote:
>
> >For a long time I worried that AIDS was a test vector for a biological
> >weapon gone astray. I guess they have proved it isn't.
>
> While this is an interesting point, it does bring to mind that the panic
> over any given development of technology or mishap of nature does not
> necessarily mean the end of humanity.
>
> Almost all of us are naturally immune to sexually transmitted diseases,
> including AIDS.  I am NOT suggesting that engaging in the sort of wild sex
> you guys seem to enjoy without protection is wise, as who wants to push the
> envelope of risk?  But, in the end, epidemiology has concluded that most of
> us are not at risk to contract such diseases as, if the reverse were true,
> then the human race would have had close to a 100% rate for syphilis and
> the like centuries ago, and the same for AIDS.  In other words, the average
> human seems to bear some immunity to these diseases and the immunity to
> these increases with time.  Those liable to contract it die off, and those
> resistant to it survive.  Darwin, and all of that evolution stuff.
>
> The idea that AIDS is a biological weapon run amok is an interesting one
> but not likely as it has no ready antidote, and that is the entire idea of
> a real biolgoical weapon:  you need something to make the enemy IMMEDIATELY
> ill and yet of a nature allowing a ready cure once you have occupied their
> country.  An ideal such weapon would be a virus which would afflict the
> populace of an enemy state with a heavy stomach flu which results in
> retching and cramps and the outhouse-scoots and the like, then the nation
> is occupied, and the antidote is applied.  AIDS takes years after infection
> to develop, and so is a most unlikely weapon and its transmission vector is
> also rather unwieldy.  (Does anyone else on the LUG recall Zappa's
> THINGFISH?  Galoot Cologne, indeed!)
>
> Of course, the Christers jumped on the initial syphilis epidemic in France
> in the 1600's as a sign of God's wrath on wordly intempereance, precisely
> as their successors today swear that AIDS is proof that God condemns
> homosexuality.  The logical proof for this escapes me, but, then, I am a
> theological amatuer at the best of it.  I spent too many years studying
> ancient philosophy and reading the Bible in the original to understand some
> of the interpretations given it over the years as these interpretations
> both defy logic and offend the text to satisfy me.  But, again, what do I
> know?
>
> A cousin of mine died in 1981 of a then-undiagnosed illness which we now
> know to be AIDS.  He was not the first, but he was toward the first of the
> line to die from AIDS in this nation.  And my sister died of Hodgkin's in
> 1975.  Had either contracted their illnesses three or four or five years
> later than they did, they both would probably be around today, given the
> progress in treatment.  As it is, they are among the very few in my family
> tree to have reached adulthood and to have died young:  most of us linger
> on into our 80's with bad habits such as smoking and drinking and die in a
> fit of pique at watching the news.  I might end up as yet another Eternal
> Photographer as is Ted Grant.
>
> Marc
>
> msmall@aya.yale.edu
> Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!
>
>
>
>
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