Bobert, my friend, as much as I like you and enjoy your posts and generally agree with your positions, I'm afraid you're developing a bad case of rectocephaly on this one.

Yes, malnutrition is a terrible problem in Africa, and yes, it is one that is largely ignored by "western" society. And yes, people infected with the AIDS virus are much more likely to die if they start out malnourished. But that does NOT mean that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. It is.

Look at tuberculosis. Most people who are infected with the tuberculosis bacillus, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, do not develop active TB, or even get sick at all.   People who are malnourished, however, are much more likely to develop active TB when they are exposed to the TB bacillus. Does that mean "the TB bacillus does not cause TB, malnutrition does"? Not on your life. It means that tuberculosis, like nearly every infection we know, is caused by an interaction between the infecting organism and the host. Whether that interaction causes illness depends on many factors, of which nutritional status is just one.

Think of how many times you cut your finger while working outside and didn't bother to wash the cut right away. How many of those times did the bacteria that entered your body cause an infection? Not many, I'll bet...your host defenses were strong enough to prevent it.

So, yes, people who are malnourished are more likely to die of AIDS if they are infected with the HIV virus. And, quite likely, people who are well-nourished may be able to fight off the virus if it enters their bodies, and never become infected at all. But the friends I knew in Seattle in the 80s who had, and died of, AIDS were generally in excellent physical condition and not malnourished...at least, not until they became sick.

Yes, it would be good if corrupt government officials worldwide made efforts to feed their people instead of lining their own pockets and encouraging mass murder. Yes, if that happened, the death rate from AIDS -- among other problems -- would likely go down.

But if the virus never enters your body, your chance of dying of AIDS is zero, because your chance of getting AIDS is zero. And there are ways of preventing the virus from entering people's bodies. There are successful efforts underway to decrease the spread of HIV, for example, through sex education and wide distribution of condoms. People who spread the rumor that "AIDS is not caused by HIV" tend to undermine those efforts.

Bobert, you are correct that many people in western countries have strong prejudices against Africa and Africans. But for heaven's sake, don't aid their cause by what amounts to speaking out against a major public health campaign being waged by Africans for Africans against this terrible scourge. Also, according to the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS/HIV, AIDS is a growing problem in Eastern Europe and Asia, not just in Africa. And let's not forget congenital AIDS: it's hard to blame the victim on that one.

Oh, and another point, regarding so-called false positive AIDS tests:    The fact that you can find people who test positive for HIV but do not have symptoms of AIDS does NOT mean those people have "false positive" results due to some other medical condition they happen to have.

Let me repeat that, because it's very important. If you test positive for HIV, but you don't have symptoms of AIDS, that is NOT automatically a false positive test. All it means is that you have probably been exposed to the virus. As I mentioned above, whether you become infected, and then whether you become ill, depends on the result of a long and complex process. That long list of "causes" of false positive AIDS tests is worthless unless you know more about the individuals who were included in the list, especially about what happened to their lymphocytes, and their general health, over the following months and years. In other words, how many of them eventually went on to develop AIDS, despite having no symptoms at the time the test was done?

Harpgirl, I don't have time or space to discuss those two statements you linked to, but both of them have some glaring weaknesses, despite the credentials of the authors.

By the way, Bobert, I'm not a member of the AMA. And my credentials include a B.A. from an Ivy League University, an M.D. from a school that is a little less prestigious than the Ivy League (but has a hell of a football team, with a legendary coach!), and a strong belief that corporations are fixing to take over the world--which belief dates back to before George W. Bush stole his first election.

Aloha,
Mark