AIDS
Related: disease - sex - virus - death
Notable AIDS victims: Jacques Morali - Derek Jarman - Tony Richardson - Arthur Russell - Michel Foucault - Keith Haring - Patrick Cowley - Sylvester
Well, um, what I'm saying is that I'm I'm part of the sexual revolution, um, and I feel that the...in one of my most controversial sentences is "Everybody who preached free love in the 60's is responsible for AIDS." I mean by that the Mama's and the Papa's and all of us, so, the price of that revolution has been paid by gay men, primarily. I think that what we're understanding is the enormous power of nature. Even Larry Kramer is starting to talk like this now: that nature apparently did not want us to be promiscuous and that it puts a thousand obstacles in our paths such as these diseases. OK. I feel that procreation is nature's law, and that's why I defy nature, I resist it, I oppose it. OK. I think that women certainly are in the..um, you know we were the first generation to have the birth control pill, OK, which frustrates nature. -- Camille Paglia [...]
[David Cronenberg's] first feature, Shivers, is a highly effective little movie about a strain of parasitical beasties that look like diseased penises and, after infesting inside someone, give them maniacal and uncontrollable sexual appetites, spreading their disease exponentially (also note the STD-like terrors of Rabid and The Fly). The AIDS parallel is obvious, but Shivers was made in 1975, long before AIDS was the cause célèbre in Hollywood. -- Daniel Kraus, 1999 [1]
Bechamp or Pasteur: A Lost Chapter in the History of Biology (1997) - Douglas E. Hume
[Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]This book claims that virtually every serious and minor ailment known to humanity has been linked to vaccine damage, and there's an "unaccountable" connection between the AIDS epidemic in Central Africa and the massive vaccination campaigns that occured there. -- Mikita Brottman via Headpress Guide to the Counter Culture (2004). See also anti-vaccination.
Current status
By the turn of the 21st century AIDS had become a global epidemic, affecting people in virtually every country, and in many countries it shows no signs of slowing down. It is estimated that by 2003 over 40 million people worldwide were HIV-positive and that about 19 million had died from AIDS-related illnesses. These numbers have led some experts to call AIDS the deadliest pandemic in human history since the Black Death of the 14th century.--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS#Current_status [Aug 2004]Bug chasers
In January 2003, Rolling Stone published a story about bug chasing, a phenomenon in which HIV-negative gay men seek out partners to infect them with HIV. Citing choices made by two chasers, the article postulates a whole world of bug-chasing men out doing the same thing. The article caused a furor, especially after the two experts quoted in the story disavowed words attributed to them. Wikipedia article here.1981
On 5 June 1981, an obscure medical journal reported a mysterious illness that had killed five young gay men in Los Angeles. It was the first mention of what later became known as Aids.
The Body in Revolt
There is one class of diseases particularly intriguing to immunologists because it describes the body in revolt against itself. Autoimmune diseases result when the very cells meant to defend against foreign agents identify the body itself as foreign. Immune responses are mounted, and diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis and insulin-dependent diabetes may develop. Now, HSPH researchers have cloned a protein that plays a key role in immune responses and could prove essential in controlling autoimmune diseases and other conditions. Their research was published in the March 17 issue of Cell. -- http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/ats/Apr7/apr7_02.html