The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #115854   Message #2673303
Posted By: Don Firth
06-Jul-09 - 06:23 PM
Thread Name: BS: Californians Oppose 'Prop 8' Gay Marriage Ban
Subject: RE: BS: Californians Oppose 'Prop 8' Gay Marriage Ban
Ake seems to be trying to convince others—and he may possibly even it believe himself—that AIDS springs up between two or more previously uninfected homosexuals. In other words, he appears to be claiming that HIV/AIDS is generated by homosexual activity. He has posted this contention several times.

This is the medieval belief in "spontaneous generation."
Spontaneous generation refers to both the supposed process by which life would systematically emerge from sources other than seeds, eggs or parents and to the theories which explained the apparent phenomenon. The first form is abiogenesis, in which life emerges from non-living matter. This should not be confused for the modern hypothesis of abiogenesis, in which life emerged once and diversified. The second version is heterogenesis (sometimes called xenogenesis), in which one form of life emerges from a different form.
Modern epidemiologists, bacteriologists, and virologists consider the idea of spontaneous generation to be as rational as the idea that ships sailing too far offshore may fall off the edge of the earth. Both of these ideas were believed at one time, but modern science has long since shown them to be false.

Viruses are transmitted from one infected individual to another uninfected individual by various means. HIV seems to be transmitted in body fluids. And it can be transmitted regardless of the gender(s) of the individuals involved. A particular virus can mutate into a different form, in the same way that any living organism can (and viruses are particularly adept at this:   the wide variety of flu viruses, with a new variation almost every year).

But homosexual activity does not spontaneously generate HIV, nor does it cause some other virus to mutate into HIV.

Don Firth