I read the article last night, and have to confess to zoning out during much of it. I did notice he seemed to say one study showed 50% of people receiving blood products died. ["The only controlled study of blood transfusions that I have been able to locate indicates that 50 % of patients receiving HIV-tainted blood died within a year, and also that 50 % of "recipients of components from a random selection of donors not known to be infected with HIV, died in the year after transfusion" (Ward et al., 1989)") Really? Half of everyone who received blood products died within a year? I've never heard that that receiving blood products resulted in such a high mortality rate!

He concludes that this suggests"HIV is an insignificant cause of morbìdity and mortality among both HIV-infected and HIV-negative patients.

He's comparing HIV status in the donors to mortality rates in the recipients. What was the HIV positive status of the recipients, and was their mortality rate so high because they were possibly suffering from a terminal disease? One might ask what the HIV status of the recipients was, and what follow-up was done on the the 50% who didn't die in the first year, and whether they expected people who eventually tested positive in the first year (it can take up to 6 months to convert to positive) to die. He says HIV was an insignificant cause of morbidity, but he doesn't even address morbidity.

I saw other problems. Basically, the article seems like it's written with a lot of impressive medical terminology and citations to studies. What seems to be missing is the logic in his explanations. In other words, why do certain statistics support his conclusions. In at least one case ("If HIV were suffiicient to cause AIDS, then AIDS should affect men and women in their mid-twenties (heterosexuals, bisexuals and homosexuals) equally. Clearly, it does not (CDC, 1989a,b).", he doesn't give any statistics.

I may be missing something though, and I'm interested in reading Mark's opinion.