Uh, Bobert...did you read any of my "right wing mantra"? I wrote it just for you, buddy.

LH, you read it, but you missed my point. The AIDS virus doesn't magically appear in someone's body as a "symptom" of malnutrition, or drug poisoning, or evil living. It is introduced into the body, usually by sexual contact, or by a contaminated needle, or by transfer from mother to baby via the placenta or breast milk. There's no question that someone with malnutrition will be more susceptible to the virus, and there's no question that the virus works by damaging the immune system. But all the handwaving in the world won't change the fact that it's the virus that infects and damages the T lymphocytes and causes the severe and often fatal immunodeficiency syndrome called AIDS. No virus, no AIDS.

Bearded Bruce, your statement "You are assuming that it's the virus that kills them" suggests that you may have misunderstood me. If you want to be picky about it, nobody dies of AIDS. People with AIDS die of pneumocystis pneumonia, or cryptococcal meningitis, or disseminated toxoplasmosis, or one of a dozen other opportunistic infections. (Yes, I know about HIV-related encephalopathy and wasting syndrome. Those possible exceptions don't invalidate the fundamental point.)

The AIDS virus does not kill people directly, like plague, or Ebola, or smallpox. (Which, by the way, Harpgirl, is one reason it would be a lousy choice as a biological weapon, despite what your Nobel prizewinner says.) It kills indirectly: by damaging the immune system so that it cannot respond to agents that normally do not affect healthy people.

Sure, malnutrition damages the immune system, too.   But the point some of you are missing is that HIV causes a specific injury to the immune system, which results in susceptibility to specific infections and tumors. Doctors around the world have been taking care of malnourished people for years and years, but they didn't see pneumocystis pneumonia in young people, even malnourished young people, until AIDS. Malnutrition alone does not specifically decrease your CD4+ T-cell population, and does not lead to increased susceptibility to the particular infections seen in such high numbers in patients with AIDS.

Just so you dont' think I'm making all this up, this is from Cecil's Textbook of Medicine (a venerable medical text):

The clinical consequences of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are due to the ability of this retrovirus to disarm the host immune system, a process that occurs by virtue of the fact that the primary target for the virus is the helper-inducer subset of lymphocytes. This lymphocyte subset, defined by its surface expression of the CD4 molecule, acts as the pivotal orchestrator of a myriad of immune functions. HIV-1 infection can therefore be considered a disease of the immune system, characterized by the progressive loss of CD4-positive (CD4+) lymphocytes (Table 407-1) , with ultimately fatal consequences for the infected host.

Despite this immunosuppression induced by HIV, a number of specific immunologic defenses against the virus are generated in infected individuals and may contribute to the long, asymptomatic phase that follows infection by keeping the virus at least partially contained.

My point remains: saying that HIV causes AIDS and that it is spread by sexual contact is not "racist propaganda," but biological fact. Arguing against that fact merely gives ammunition to those who want to put an end to public health efforts to limit this epidemic--including the racists who think it's "God's will" that so many Africans are dying. (Whaddya say to that, Bobert?)

Oh, and LH, there is no question that "alternative" treatments can often produce documented cures of many diseases. That doesn't mean that the diseases have "alternative" causes. It simply (and profoundly) means that there are many ways of helping the body to heal itself. At least, that's the view of this "integrative" MD.

Aloha,
Mark