The Continuing Crisis
T H E C O N T I N U I N G C R I S I...
...What we know about the transmission of the Aids virus reflects the commonest methods...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986 9...
...Yes, its modes of transmission make an excellent case for monogamy...
...RET...
...Vladimir Horowitz ended his triumphal tour of the USSR much to the relief of Soviet police, who were repeatedly faced with the prospect of having to arrest his irritable wife for one outburst after another...
...Guwahati, India remained unseasonably dry despite frog marriages of amazing cogency and charm...
...Hopefully this will be the last time we see LaRouchian doctrine in the pages of The American Spectator, except, perhaps, in the "Current Wisdom" section...
...what we do not know is how many particles are usually needed for infection by each possible route...
...The flight of a $700,000 pterosaur replica ended prematurely when it lost its head high above Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and crashed...
...Similar hypotheses were entertained about other viruses before their nucleic acids were isolated...
...Hinckley will be commissioned to do a piece for the New Republic...
...That will be added to the $476 billion that the federal government now spends on "human resources...
...Gorbachev was under the impression that the Chernobyl explosion had resulted from a NATO attack, which, if that were Mr...
...It was an...
...As more in the heterosexual population become infected, more heterosexual transmission will occur...
...I find it extremely difficult to understand why the authors failed to make this crucial distinction...
...As an example, consider the genus of viruses called Alphaherpes viruses...
...May 10 was the first day of Ramadan and the day on which Mr...
...Now that it is known that the proteins are translated from nucleic acids found in all host cells, not just in those infected with Kuru or the other diseases, most people doing research in this field would say, as does the discoverer of Kuru, that "prions .. . should be replaced by a term that .. . avoid[s] the increasingly unlikely contention that the protein itself is infectious" (New England Journal of Medicine, February 27, 1986, page 550...
...LaRouche...
...For ex-ample, it might be almost impossible to be infected by being in a room with one AIDS victim coughing, but quite likely with twenty—we simply do not know...
...Surjit Singh Barnala, the state's top official, who was seeking atonement for the mess his soldiers made when they recently fell upon the Sikhs' Golden Temple in Amritsar...
...The authors are also guilty of equating exposure to the virus and productive infection (i.e., actually having a case of AIDS...
...While they are correct in stating that the fatality rates are too conservative, the evidence hardly indicates that the fatality rate will come anywhere near 100 percent...
...In short, it is clear that AIDS is a very serious threat...
...While it is true that LAV is a lentivirus and that correlations on its behavior can be made from other lentiviruses, certain distinctions must also be made...
...In the case in England, the woman who caught AIDS gave similar care to a Ghanian man whom she denied having any sexual contact with...
...Gorbachev's assumption, suggests that the Soviet Union is even more peace-loving than Western sages such as the esteemed Mr...
...Research on these diseases has resulted in most scientists calling the agents of these infections "prions" (protein infectious particles...
...Writing in the New Republic, Mr...
...one that produces a permanently infectious carrier state should not be allowed to spread under any circumstances, even if it cannot be passed by casual contact, whatever that is...
...Jackie Presser, president of the Teamsters' Union, was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of embezzlement and racketeering...
...Corazon Aquino announced the names of fifty savants who will devise a new Philippine constitution, and in Prague, Czechoslovakia, all candidates supported by the ruling Communist party were elected to parliament, with rights abuses...
...Gore Vidal's cause picked up a new defender...
...Anthony Lewis have been asseverating...
...On May 23 Mr...
...In this attempt, they cite the apparent transmission of AIDS to members of households in England and Italy...
...and four days later he was carried into the ballroom of Caesar's Palace on a golden sedan chair borne by four men clad as Roman centurions...
...CORRESPONDENCE...
...John J. Cunniff Microbiology Program Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana James F Grutsch, Jr...
...After all, neither syphilis nor leprosy is passed by casual contact, and both are generally curable, yet we do not hesitate to restrict the freedoms of those infected with either...
...Because preparations containing these proteins are infectious it has been suggested that a new kind of disease carried by Prions—protein infectious particles—might exist...
...Similar fibrils are found in other diseases, including scrapie and the other infections producing "spongiform encephalopathies" in mammals including man...
...Look for more of this young man's elocutions in TNR...
...homosexual men usually transmit the virus by sodomy because they indulge in it, just as surgeons have transmitted it by organ transplant...
...In Ironton, Ohio, the Rev...
...Taher Yahya, the former Iraqi prime minister, died of natural causes, as did the lovable Theodore H. White...
...The substandard scientific descriptions that are present throughout the article begin with Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease being called "slow viruses" by the authors...
...She recalled having small cuts on her hands in addition to chronic eczema...
...In Washington, D.C...
...Cunniff agrees here with both us and Mr...
...The Aids virus, we know, is spread in protein preparations (Factor VIII), by needles, possibly in general surgery, and definitely in organ transplants, so the parallel is instructive rather than far-fetched...
...Since the virus is found in respiratory secretions we know that infection in this way is theoretically possible...
...The purpose of our article was to stimulate public debate before we reach the stage at which so many people are infected with the Aids virus that, if it is possible at all—and, as Mr...
...In the U.S...
...The crisis goes on and this time stupidity has been enthroned...
...Ed" television show abounds with satanic messages when the song is reversed, and promptly led seventy head of the faithful in a recordalbum burning...
...Grutsch and Robertson correctly state that LAV can be transmitted through heterosexual as well as homosexual inter-course...
...And on May 26 approximately 4,924,000 Americans held hands along a 4,125-mile route from sea to shining sea to raise $50 million to "assault hunger and homelessness...
...To take an example from another disease again, does an individual who gives a positive skin test for tuberculosis actually have the disease...
...All that giving a positive immunological result shows is that one has been exposed to the disease (or in some cases, has been immunized against it...
...We do not understand Mr...
...LaRouche coincide with ours to the extent that we all think it sensible to stop the spread of infection with the Aids virus...
...Male students at Harvard's Science Center have had to get the hang of moving their bowels in public now that doors have been removed from the toilet stalls in the male comfort station...
...The Senate Finance Committee unanimously passed a tax-reform bill that dramatically simplifies tax forms and gives taxpayers supply-side tax relief, a wholesome voter turnout of 99...
...The viruses causing venereal herpes can be transmitted in many ways, including kissing and possibly sneezing, just like the chicken-pox virus...
...What each of these cases has in common is the fact that AIDS was transmitted by close and prolonged contact with body secretions and excretions during intensive nursing care without so much as the use of gloves...
...On May 16 Mr...
...Finally, as far as we can discover (from the denizens of a booth at Logan Airport), the views of Mr...
...Jimmy Car-ter, who was once our President, announced plans to organize an international foundation to combat human THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1986 nearly halving the present top rate and dropping the only other rate to 15 per-cent...
...Some hansdoodle at the Soviets' ultra-modern Chernobyl nuclear reactor blew the hell out of the thing, destroying a large number of government-owned ox carts and setting fire to the reactor's thatched roof...
...The inclusion of these diseases in a discussion concerning AIDS (which is known to be caused by a virus) is questionable...
...Even though two viruses can be classified together in the same subfamily or genus, their modes of transmission can be drastically different...
...While it may be entirely appropriate to isolate those who develop secondary diseases that can be transmitted by casual contact, quarantine of all AIDS patients would be unwarranted (since AIDS cannot be transmitted through casual contact) and would ultimately fail to stop the spread of AIDS...
...All the evidence to date is that infection with it is permanent and that production of antibodies implies infection, not merely exposure...
...or perhaps Mr...
...As to the overall fatality rate, this of course is not yet known...
...In the oldest cohorts studied the attack rate of AIDS itself has been found to reach 40 percent, without any sign of diminution...
...At the very least, Grutsch and Robertson overstate their case in comparing other lentiviruses to HTLV III/LAV (the AIDS virus...
...clearly Mr...
...Cunniff's statements "Grutsch and Robertson overstate their case in comparing other lentiviruses to the . . . Aids virus" and "it is true that the Aids virus is a lentivirus," which seem to us mutually contradictory...
...Yet the authors lead the reader to believe that this could be the case with AIDS and other lentiviruses...
...To call this hypothesis ludicrous would be an understatement...
...these figures, of course, do not include those for morbidity and mortality not included in the surveillance definition of AIDS...
...Justice has been served in Woodbury, New Jersey where Judge Elliott G. Heard, Jr...
...Shortly thereafter the three-hundred pounder was elected to another five-year term...
...Carter was vague as to his foundation's projects, though a commendable project did present itself early in the month when New Society, a British weekly concerned with social issues, reported that the technology now exists for men to have babies...
...Robert-son reply: Kuru and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (C-J) are generally referred to as slow viral diseases because they show an etiology of infection by a filterable particle but a symptom-free period of many years...
...Robertson complain of confusion concerning AIDS being "compounded by ill-informed reporting in which laymen, often from special-interest groups with their own furrows to plow, express opinions about scientific matters...
...and A.D.J...
...we just don't know, yet, how likely it is and no epidemiological study to date is sufficiently sensitive to tell us...
...No, he may or may not have it...
...We know from experiments that one virus particle can infect a cell...
...Gilbert's efforts to re-duce the cemetery's worm population...
...T H E C O N T I N U I N G C R I S I S...
...In 1964 the government spent $35 billion...
...The most de-tailed studies show unequivocally that over 90 percent of those infected have a measurable immune dysfunction and over 50 per-cent have at least one serious symptom...
...Ac-cording to the magazine, heretofore nulliparous homosexuals, transsexuals, and men whose wives are infertile will be able to know the joy of motherhood by having an embryo implanted into the bowel or large intestine, once a donated egg has been duly fertilized with the requisite sperm...
...unusually somber May Day in the socialist motherland...
...It seems, however, that this was not satisfactory for them and they set out to make the spread of AIDS to the entire population seem even more likely...
...Carter doubtless will have access to all the details when the operation is included in his local grammar school's sex education curriculum...
...Apparently Mr...
...The opinions of Gore Vidal and myself are just as valid as yours, and just because we disagree with you does not mean we are crazy...
...The project will be complicated, but Mr...
...C-J in fact is spread not only in preparations of human growth hormone, but also by surgical instruments, the stereotaxic equipment used in neurosurgery, and tissue used in grafts...
...defends Mr...
...Cunniff agrees, we know it is—contagion by frequent contact becomes likely...
...We mentioned them to illustrate the points that there are already recognized diseases, with long latencies, causing neural damage leading to death in people, and that they may be spread by unusual behavior and by medical technology...
...It was the Teamsters' national convention, and the throng shouted "Hail Caesar...
...While the authors may not be laymen, neither are they virologists...
...In particular, they do not include death due to brain damage caused directly by the virus...
...In fact it was eighteen days before the Kremlin's Great Communicator publicly addressed himself to the mishap, and even then he seemed to be in a state of uncustomary confusion, calling upon the West to renew efforts at nuclear disarmament...
...This possibility flies in the face of our understanding of molecular biology...
...Aids Science In their article on AIDS ("The Coming of AIDS," TAS, March 1986) James F. Grutsch, Jr...
...Miss Valerie Terrigno, the first professed lesbian mayor of an American city, was sentenced to sixty days in custody and ordered to repay nearly $7,000 in embezzled poverty funds...
...The Senate passed a $1 trillion budget resolution...
...Within this genus are the viruses that cause both chicken pox and venereal herpes, but no serious scientist would claim that venereal herpes is transmitted in the same way that chicken pox is transmitted...
...Grutsch and Robertson fail to mention these important facts in an apparent attempt to lend credibility to their completely unsubstantiated claim that it is possible for AIDS to be spread by coughing, insect vectors, and even through cow's milk...
...After reading their article it seems that they are guilty either of what they accuse others, or of a more serious offense: deliberately deceptive reporting in order to further their own self-interests at the expense of the reputation of The American Spectator...
...The Aids virus cannot be compared to the bacillus which causes tuberculosis...
...Vidal against those who charge him with anti-Semitism, and the promising young neoliberal concludes that "The easiest way to defame some-one and his opinions is to label him as `looney' and `ready for the funny farm.' It happens to me all the time...
...In the north Indian state of Punjab fifty Sikhs got pro bono shoeshines from Mr...
...this was true, for example, of Tobacco Mosaic Virus, which is quite large, but has a very tough protein coat...
...Harry Kostic, 32, must be imprisoned for allegedly beating his estranged girl-friend, Miss Beverly Swain, with her 18-inch pet iguana and then coercing her into eating parts of the unhappy reptile...
...in particular all the ways in which the Aids virus is known to be transmitted have been found in the other lentiviruses, which makes it only prudent to be alert for transmission in ways known for lentiviruses in general, but not for the Aids virus in particular...
...Albuquerque, New Mexico continues to be haunted by bizarre violence, and now a boy has been charged with killing his father with a bow and arrow in response to his father's confiscation of items that the boy used in Satan worship, possibly at a nearby Unitarian church...
...Maria Di Meglio filed suit against Soviet President Andrei Gromyko, claiming that the Chernobyl accident was responsible for the destruction of her vegetable patch...
...John Hinckley, Jr...
...attack on Libya by passing an extradition treaty that would prevent IRA terrorists from achieving sanctuary here...
...Linda Gilbert, the "Worm Lady" of greater Roosevelt, Utah, may no longer extract nightcrawlers from the local cemetery, even though a local orator of great gifts argued that relatives of the interred all appreciated Mrs...
...The highest AIDS incidences found so far are approximately 11 percent per year within three to four years of infection...
...Beyond establishing an annual award honoring a "human rights hero" Mr...
...In fact, no virus particles have ever been isolated from tissues infected • by these diseases...
...Anatoly B. Shcharansky paid his respects to President Reagan in the White House, while at Harvard University 45 of an estimated 550 people in attendance at an Institute of Politics public forum vamoosed when Attorney General Ed-win Meese III was introduced...
...Jim Brown notified a seminar at the First Church of the Nazarene that the theme song to the "Mr...
...Given the long latency of the disease, even if all those who were found to be immunopositive for AIDS (again, not necessarily having AIDS) were isolated from those who gave a negative ELISA test, you could never completely eliminate the disease...
...In Ischia, Italy, famed horticulturist Mrs...
...Any lethal venereal disease is bad enough in itself...
...The confusion here perhaps lies inthe concept of transmission...
...declared that Mr...
...At the same time, however, it seems that an even more contagious disease in our society is one whose symptoms arise whenever AIDS is discussed, and it mimics hyperthyroidism rather closely...
...Mikhail Gorbachev, the amiable Soviet leader...
...and A.D.J...
...This is not the fault of the epidemiology, but of the fact that too few people have been infected long enough to reveal effects of this kind...
...Local communications were disrupted, and radioactive effluvium drizzled all over Europe before officials reopened the telegraph line to inform Mr...
...Miss Annette Williams, 22, was charged with the second-degree murder of her sister after a quarrel over an allegedly miscooked potato, or pomme de terre as the gastronome might say...
...the magazine is leaping from strength to strength...
...Finally, Grutsch and Robertson make an appeal for quarantine of all AIDS patients...
...The more we know about the Aids virus, the more useful the comparison has become...
...And in Rome a French entrepreneur was charged with fraud when it was discovered that what he had sold to Italian television, NBC, and ABC was not the film of Chernobyl's burning reactor but of Trieste's Cattinara Hospital, a local eyesore...
...case, the woman who caught the virus from her child often failed to wash her hands after giving such care...
...for this reason its author himself advised great skepticism...
...An additional case has been recently cited here in the United States...
...It seems that seeing their names in print was too much of a temptation for the authors to resist, and they capitalized on the fear of the unknown on the part of the public in order to attain this goal...
...In their venereal manifestation they are usually (not always) transmitted in the ways we call venereal, but venereal herpes is not a separate disease...
...Local homosexuals had turned the comfort station into a lovers' lane, and university officials feared that within the closed toilet stalls bodily fluids might be exchanged...
...And President Reagan asked Congress to demonstrate its gratitude for Prime Minister Thatcher's azygous support of the U.S...
...Furthermore, the authors' statement that the overall fatality rate may approach 100 percent is also completely unsubstantiated...
...George L. Belair, an unsuccessful city council candidate in Minneapolis, was charged with violating a state campaign law by distributing Tivinkies to opsomaniacal senior citizens...
...It is true that no virus has been isolated from the tissue of Kuru or C-J victims and the protein fibrils are found in characteristic patterns in the brains of those infected...
Vol. 19 • July 1986 • No. 7
