Sam, Thanks for your reply.

Rephrasing my question:

Where is the toxicology of AIDS?  Toxicology should be a primary area of study for an emerging disease.  Otherwise, characterizations of a causal virus could be severely biased.

Jim

================
Jim,

I am afraid that I do not understand what your question is.
Please re-word it and send it to me again.

One important point here is to remember the realities of the 1980s and early 1990s:  New epidemic breaks out, large and increasing numbers of AIDS cases and AIDS deaths, fierce battles to get government attention and funding for much of anything.  This led to powerful and militant movements of gays and lesbians and their allies; and of harm reductionists.  All were battling for research money to discover medicines, vaccines, to allow and fund needle exchanges, and for basic biological research.  In this respect, it was very definitely a people's movement, and they were demanding science for the people--and got a lot of it.

The "anti-HIV as causal" theory is also an argument that a people-demanded set of scientific and medical advances was fraudulent and deceived by the pharmaceutical companies, and that the really terrific doctors and virologists and immunologists and activists were somehow bamboozled and misled. And that nonetheless the AIDS cases and deaths fell.

I know the intellectual and personal quality of many of the people who would have had to be bamboozled or corrupted for this to work.  They were in many ways a movement of sorts.

I think the AIDS saga is on of a giant victory, though with some serious weaknesses, for science of and for the people.  In this case, at least, I think those who take contrarian positions are seriously mistaken.

But this may not have been relevant to your question at all--so please re-phrase it.

thanks and best,
sam


-----Original Message-----
From: Jim West <[log in to unmask]>
To: SCIENCE-FOR-THE-PEOPLE <[log in to unmask]>; Sam Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: Jim West <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sat, Nov 9, 2013 9:43 am
Subject: Re: HIV AIDS and all that

Sam, 

Where was the toxicology of AIDS causation discounted before HIV theory began to 
be aggressively pursued, so well funded?

======
Sam wrote, "This seems to me (together with the various trials) to be 
extraordinarily strong evidence for HIV as an essential causal agent in AIDS.  
What do you see as being weak in that argument? "