Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!elroy!ucla-cs!stjhmc!f81.n129.z1.fidonet.org!Rob.Carr@asuvax.asu.edu
From: stjhmc!f81.n129.z1.fidonet.org!Rob.Carr@asuvax.asu.edu (Rob Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: AIDS as genocide
Message-ID: <24760@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Date: 10 Jun 89 14:26:27 GMT
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This rumor has been going around for quite a few years.  Fortunately, it  
doesn't make any more sense now than it did then.  As a biochemist, let me  
point out that we simply don't know enough to create something as all-out nasty  
as AIDS from scratch.  And no one would be stupid enough to modify an existing  
pathogen to create something like AIDS.
 
As a weapon, it stinks.  It isn't discriminatory enough to stop where you want  
it to, it's too obvious, it's too slow (how do you test something that can  
remain dormant for 10+ years, 3+ of which you may or may not show signs of  
infection (including antibodies?).  Furthermore, military people count on blood  
to treat wounded soldiers.  AIDS is a blood-borne pathogen, which means you can  
unknowingly contaminate the blood supply of your troops.  And if there were no  
treatment, you would not dare release it.  If there were a treatment, you  
wouldn't dare release it since you don't know who among your people may  
sympathize with the target population.  If a treatment existed, the story would  
have been broken before this.
 
If I were going to wipe out Africa and the gay population, I woulnd't have  
chosen AIDS.  There are a couple pathogens that would have done the job much  
"cleaner" than AIDS.  There are some genetic modifications that could be easily  
made to make it safer as a weapon.  Even so, you'd need an idiot to even try to  
make it, let alone release it.  Organisms mutate, so biological warfare is  
either limited to small-scale (give the enemy hepatitis  
non-a/non-b/non-c/non-delta (got to come up with a better name for the leftover  
hepatitises)) or suicide (release Ebola Viral Hemmorhagic Fever.)
 
Now there's a frightening thought.  If AIDS hadn't come along and got everyone  
practicing "safe sex," what if Ebola had been the one to hit? Or any of the  
other blood-borne diseases on the fourth level?  We'd be talking mass  
catastrophy far beyond what we've seen with HIV.

--  
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