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Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

nytimes.com

131–140 of 151 posts

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#132
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between effectively managed by the medical establishment and what Reagan / america did in the 80s. I'm at work and I don't have sources readily available, but my understanding is that many older gay people (those still alive) hate reagan and republicans specifically because they slow rolled the response to hiv. Much of America's response wasn't really pushed until the Clinton administration. So…

"The real Reagan record on AIDS is different. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year from 1983 - when the media started blaring headlines - from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million, and then $1.6 billion in 1988. Reagan's secretary of Health and Human Services in 1983, Margaret Heckler, declared AIDS her department's "number one priority." While the House of…

MRC is hardly an unbiased source of information. Their news group's stated goal is to be the "Leader in Documenting, Exposing and Neutralizing Liberal Media Bias."

From the wikipedia page:

Journalist Brian Montopoli of Columbia Journalism Review in 2005 labeled MRC "just one part of a wider movement by the far right to demonize corporate media" rather than "make the media better." Additionally, Montpoli wrote that "false equivalence is at the very root of MRC’s beliefs."

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#133
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Not saying that HIV==AIDS.) Why make that disclaimer?

Not everyone who is HIV-positive develops AIDS.

Actually, I think the going medical opinion is that, except for new mutated strains (and they'd have to be heavily mutated), anyone who contracts HIV today is never going to develop AIDS if they have access to modern treatment options (for the rest of their life).

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#134
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between effectively managed by the medical establishment and what Reagan / america did in the 80s. I'm at work and I don't have sources readily available, but my understanding is that many older gay people (those still alive) hate reagan and republicans specifically because they slow rolled the response to hiv. Much of America's response wasn't really pushed until the Clinton administration. So…

"The real Reagan record on AIDS is different. AIDS funding skyrocketed in the 1980s, almost doubling each year from 1983 - when the media started blaring headlines - from $44 million to $103 million, $205 million, $508 million, $922 million, and then $1.6 billion in 1988. Reagan's secretary of Health and Human Services in 1983, Margaret Heckler, declared AIDS her department's "number one priority." While the House of…

It's too bad that you're replying to a comment on a deeply researched book (And the Band Played On) with a link to a shallow and slanted retrospective justification for lack of leadership.

The original book criticizes then-president Reagan, but also the media (specifically including the NYT) and elements of the medical establishment.

It also gets into controversies within the gay establishment, such as whether to make a fuss about the problem (which could attract attention and lead to "outing" of people), and whether to close bathhouses as health risks.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#135
post #121
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are also some paranoid people who use encryption because secret services could be spying on them. We have no idea how aids causes hiv, cannot even predict weather for next week, but we are 110% sure some theories are right. No wonder, it is waste of money to get phd today

In case you wonder why you are being downvoted, it’s because you are, yourself, denying recent (and less recent) news regarding federal monitoring; engaging in HIV/AIDS denialism; reversing HIV and AIDS; conflating weather prediction with scientific understanding; and ending with a non-sequitur.

I think his point is that people who believed that government was constantly monitoring everyone a few weeks ago were also seen as paranoid crazy persons who believed in conspiracy theories, and he is sarcastic about that.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#137
post #31
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, got it. At first I thought you were one of those crazy people saying AIDS isn't caused by HIV.

Those people exist ? This world, man ...

Oh yes, they exist. There were even a few gay activist groups that were HIV/AIDS-denialist; they no longer exist due to all the members dying of AIDS.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#138
post #105
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those people exist ? This world, man ...

Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm. Admittedly, this is mostly mid-2000s, and not today, but still. Estimates suggest over 300,000 people died because of delays in introducing anti-retrovirals. ( http://www.irinnews.org/report/73892/south-africa-new-report... ) ( http://www.irinnews.org/report/93411/africa-the-crazy-things... ) EDIT: Anyone interes…

Those people have had positions of power in the South African government and have caused very great harm.

Including the President. Even his press secretary very embarrassingly dying in his mid-30s from AIDS couldn't change his mind at the time.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be suprised if any cancers were completely spontaneous rather than us just not knowing what causes them.

Let's break that down a bit: There are many genetic determinants of whether you will develop a cancer, or a particular type of cancer. People with FAP, or HNPCC, or other proto-oncogene mutations such as BRCA2 will have a very high probability of developing a specific cancer in their lifetime. But the mutation that leads to cancer is a spontaneous event, that is allowed to occur due to a failure of cellular regulatio…

While I appreciate the information and agree that it's pragmatically spontaneous my point was that I was suggesting we'll find that it won't be the case if and when we gain a deeper understanding, which we may never do.

Re: Rare Cancer Seen In 41 Homosexuals (1981)

#140
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: if we call t_0 1981, the Kaposi's Sarcoma article, and t_x 1996, the advent of HAART, and consider (t_x - t_0) "the AIDS epidemic" --- ignoring the ongoing epidemics in Sub-Saharan African and India, which are enormous problems but somewhat orthogonal to the problem described by your book --- what comparably lethal disease in human history was more effectively addressed by the medical establishment? How can…

I don't have the exact citations at hand, but I believe a key difference with AIDS is that professional epidemiologists themselves are of the opinion that the early stages of the AIDS epidemic were mishandled, primarily due to lack of funds and/or power by the Reagan administration.

Didn't the early stages occur in Africa?
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