Conspiracy Theorist
I've been doing some background reading in preparation for Africa (yeah, I know, I'm a big nerd) and I came across two items of interest.
1) I just read about an official U.S. government statement about their motive for getting involved in the area. With big entitities like our government, it's hard to really believe that their motive is purely charitable at the root of it. They say that an HIV/AIDS pandemic could be a destabilizing force in the African neighborhood. This makes more sense to me. Almost a third of South Africa is estimated to be infected now, noticeably lowering that country's productivity. From what I've read, this area has recently undergone quite a bit of unrest, even without a health problem. Can't you hear the U.S. thinktanks churning? If we don't help them, the terroists will.... Anyway, nothing is so simple as I initially expect. Go watch "The Constant Gardener." It got an Oscar nod, but I guess it wasn't really a good choice to watch it with my family in terms of putting their hearts at ease with my assignment.
What's my motive for being in Africa? I had to field that question several times from relatives during my family trip to Taiwan. Still working on articulating it. In Chinese. It's a couple of things, really, but more on this some other time. One thing though-- I want to help but I don't want to be a fool.
2) Peter H. Duesberg. This guy was once a rising star in the academic community as a molecular biologist or something like that - very bright, NIH-funded, had his own big lab, et cetera, et cetera. Then he came out with this viewpoint that AIDS isn't caused by HIV and this is the reason it's taking so long to find a cure. Now, as a reward for speaking up with his proposal, he is labeled as an "AIDS dissident," has not received government funding for many, many years. He's not even allowed to post editorials in Nature anymore.
He notes that there are several different types of HIV strains, and that while the African mode of transmission is different from the U.S. form. He proposes that it's due to drug abuse and "other non-contagious risk factors." I'm going to try to get through his scientific publications tomorrow to see what the fuss is about. Is he just some sort of crackpot? Is that why the government and the scientific community don't respect him? I can kind of see that with all the money poured into research and government initiatives for the "HIV causes AIDS" theory, it would be hard to all of a sudden come out to the citizens and say, hey, maybe we were wrong about this AIDS thing. Science gets proved wrong all the time, that's how the system works. But it is also a system that is far from perfect, and politics within the system do play a part. It could just be that Duesberg is wrong. But why won't mainstream science even acknowledge this theory and address his points? I need to read his papers and get a feel on this.
First, I need to get some sleep. Good night.
1) I just read about an official U.S. government statement about their motive for getting involved in the area. With big entitities like our government, it's hard to really believe that their motive is purely charitable at the root of it. They say that an HIV/AIDS pandemic could be a destabilizing force in the African neighborhood. This makes more sense to me. Almost a third of South Africa is estimated to be infected now, noticeably lowering that country's productivity. From what I've read, this area has recently undergone quite a bit of unrest, even without a health problem. Can't you hear the U.S. thinktanks churning? If we don't help them, the terroists will.... Anyway, nothing is so simple as I initially expect. Go watch "The Constant Gardener." It got an Oscar nod, but I guess it wasn't really a good choice to watch it with my family in terms of putting their hearts at ease with my assignment.
What's my motive for being in Africa? I had to field that question several times from relatives during my family trip to Taiwan. Still working on articulating it. In Chinese. It's a couple of things, really, but more on this some other time. One thing though-- I want to help but I don't want to be a fool.
2) Peter H. Duesberg. This guy was once a rising star in the academic community as a molecular biologist or something like that - very bright, NIH-funded, had his own big lab, et cetera, et cetera. Then he came out with this viewpoint that AIDS isn't caused by HIV and this is the reason it's taking so long to find a cure. Now, as a reward for speaking up with his proposal, he is labeled as an "AIDS dissident," has not received government funding for many, many years. He's not even allowed to post editorials in Nature anymore.
He notes that there are several different types of HIV strains, and that while the African mode of transmission is different from the U.S. form. He proposes that it's due to drug abuse and "other non-contagious risk factors." I'm going to try to get through his scientific publications tomorrow to see what the fuss is about. Is he just some sort of crackpot? Is that why the government and the scientific community don't respect him? I can kind of see that with all the money poured into research and government initiatives for the "HIV causes AIDS" theory, it would be hard to all of a sudden come out to the citizens and say, hey, maybe we were wrong about this AIDS thing. Science gets proved wrong all the time, that's how the system works. But it is also a system that is far from perfect, and politics within the system do play a part. It could just be that Duesberg is wrong. But why won't mainstream science even acknowledge this theory and address his points? I need to read his papers and get a feel on this.
First, I need to get some sleep. Good night.
posted by Mark at 3:52 AM
1 Comments:
you know Mark, you write great entries. i know it's a bit late to read a past-post, but i enjoyed this one. Good Luck where you are!
-Hel :)
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