Channel Button

There are 25 articles on this title. You are reading the article ranked and rated #1 by Helium's members.

Health & Fitness   >

HIV / AIDS

Get a Widget for this title

The facts about AIDS (HIV)

AIDS - Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. Thought by many to be the scourge of the millennium, in the last decade AIDS has become a household word and, for many, a terrifying end to a troubled life.

During the second Reagan presidential campaign in 1983, then Secretary of Health and Human Services, Margaret Heckler, and Robert Gallo from National Institutes of Health, made a startling announcement: AIDS, that strange and terrifying disease that was sweeping through the ranks of San Francisco homosexuals and was popping up in pockets around most of the civilized world, was caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). President Reagan then announced a large-scale government effort to find a cure for AIDS, and went on to another four years in office with an overwhelming mandate to carry out his programs, which included an unprecedented government funded effort to conquer AIDS.

Since that announcement a decade ago, the U.S. government has spent a staggering $22 billion, and private research has spent billions more chasing the illusive HIV-AIDS connection. And yet all this money, all this research, all this effort has produced no vaccine, no effective prevention, and no cure.

What could possibly be wrong? When we attacked polio, we found a prevention. When we attacked measles we prevailed. We have even made significant progress in the fight to control cancer and heart disease. Why is AIDS so different?

When we examine the HIV-AIDS hypothesis more closely, we will discover that the relationship is purely circumstantial rather than cause-and-effect. Even the nature of this circumstantial evidence is a bit of a stretch, since the correlation actually is between AIDS and the antibody against HIV. Reduced to its simplest form, AIDS is now defined as one or more of about thirty previously known diseases if they occur in the presence of the HIV antibody. In other words, AIDS is not a disease in and of itself; but when - for example - tuberculosis occurs in the presence of the HIV antibody, the disease is defined as AIDS, whereas when tuberculosis occurs by itself, it is simply tuberculosis.

Typically, when an hypothesis is put to scientific test, its primary hurdle (after offering a plausible explanation of the facts) is its ability to predict accurately future related events. With this in mind, let us compare nine specific predictions that have been made since the initial announcement of the HIV-AIDS connection with what actually happened.

Prediction 1. AIDS would explode


Below are the top articles rated and ranked by Helium members on:

The facts about AIDS (HIV)

  • 1 of 25

    by Robert Williscroft

    AIDS - Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome. Thought by many to be the scourge of the millennium, in the last decade AIDS

    read more

  • 2 of 25

    by Kat Derrig

    As a testing technician and counselor at one of the major AIDS clinics in Alabama, I am concerned about the number of myths

    read more

  • 3 of 25

    by R Kola.

    In 2007, a reported 33.0 Million people in the world had HIV or AIDS, with the majority of these people living in Sub-Saharan

    read more

  • 4 of 25

    by Vijaya

    The irony is not lost on us. We live in a world where our ideals grow larger, our scientific progress expands everyday, and

    read more

  • 5 of 25

    by Alicia M Prater PhD

    AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, a syndrome of opportunistic and rare diseases caused by the eradication

    read more

View All Articles on:
The facts about AIDS (HIV)

Add your voice

Know something about The facts about AIDS (HIV)?
We want to hear your view. Write_penWrite now!

Helium Debate

Cast your vote!

Is Lyme disease becoming an epidemic in North America?

Click for your side.

87038

Featured Partner

Per Scholas

Per Scholas is a non-profit organization dedicated to using technology to improve the lives of people in low-income c...more

What is Helium? | Buy Web Content | Contact Us | Privacy | User agreement | DMCA | User Tools | Help | Community | Helium’s Official Blog | Link to Helium

Helium, Inc.
200 Brickstone Square Andover, MA 01810 USA