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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyFebruary 4th, 2012
TODAY’S AGENDA:
Pride Celebrations This Weekend: Melbourne, VIC.
Also This Weekend: Belgian LGBT Film Festival: Brussels, Belgium; Whistler Ski Week, Whistler, BC.
TODAY IN HISTORY:
AIDS Cases Discovered from 1976: 1988. Common wisdom today, even with all that we know about the history of the epidemic, still often sets the start of AIDS with the June 1981 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describing five gay men who had died of a mysterious disease in Los Angeles. When the HIV virus was isolated in 1984 and a test for the virus became available in 1985, several avenues of research opened up to try to figure out where this virus came from. Doctors in Paris and Brussels, who had long been treating wealthy African patients from their former colonies bearing all of the hallmarks of the new disease, pointed to Africa as a possible source for the virus. On February 4, 1988, the New England Journal of Medicine published a report by Dr. Nzila Nzilambi from Kinshasa, Zaire and other doctors from Belgium and the CDC which strongly suggested an African source of the virus, and revealed that AIDS had been a persistent health problem in rural Zaire as early as the mid 1970s.
In 1976, there had been an outbreak of Ebola in the northeastern Zaire province of Équateur along the Congo river. In the course of the medical investigations, hundreds of serum samples were collected from people throughout the area. Those samples remained preserved Zaire and were flown to Atlanta for testing. Investigators then went back out to Équateur in 1986 and collected more samples from as many people as possible, 388 in all. Ninety of them had also been among the 659 samples collected in 1976. Five of the samples from 1976 tested positive for HIV. Two were still alive; one was healthy, but the other was already showing signs of a suppressed immune system. Three were dead. One woman tested positive in 1976 was confirmed dead, “after a prolonged illness characterized by weight loss, fever, cough, and diarrhea” — all common symptoms of diseases associated with AIDS. Another woman “died in 1981 after a long illness associated with fever, weight loss, skin rash, and oral lesions.” Again an apparent death from AIDS. The third was a child who was seven years old in 1976, who in 1981 “died of pneumonia and weight loss at the age of 16.”
The doctors concluded: “The results of our study showed that HIV infection was already present in an isolated area of the Equateur province of Zaire in 1976 and that the prevalence of infection in the general population there did not change significantly over the 10-year observation period.”
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TwirlyGirly
February 4th, 2012
Wow….sorta blows the whole “HIV was caused by gay men in Africa having sex with monkeys” nonsense out of the water, doesn’t it? (Who said that recently? Was it that Pastor Wooden?)
Jim…what was your source for the gender of those original five who died of AIDS associated diseases? It doesn’t mention that in the abstract, and if you have an another source of information on this, I’d like to add it to my files.
Jim Burroway
February 4th, 2012
I have a copy of the actual report. The gender of the child is not given.
FYI, whenever I report on a research paper, it’s always because I have a copy of the paper. I never work off of abstracts alone.
TwirlyGirly
February 4th, 2012
Because I don’t have access to the complete study, I was *really* hoping you were going to tell me you had a secondary source as well!
Thanks for the info –
TG
ebohlman
February 4th, 2012
Twirly: The monkey business came from TN state Senator Stacey Campfield, the one who recently got kicked out of a restaurant. He’s back in the news for claiming that abortion causes breast cancer.
TwirlyGirly
February 5th, 2012
ebohlman: “He’s back in the news for claiming that abortion causes breast cancer.”
Which, it just so happens, is another subject I’m debating with some twit in a Yahoo group at this very moment…
It’s difficult to keep up with all the lies and who is telling them at any given moment…there are just so many of them to refute (and only 24 hours in a day to do it)!
Thanks for the heads up, ebohlman!
Hue-Man
February 5th, 2012
CBC French announced last week that Dr. Jacques Pépin was selected as their scientist of the year for 2011 for his research leading to his book “The Origins of AIDS”. He was in Zaire in 1980 then 1982-5 studying sleeping sickness but linked its treatment using unsterilized needles to the spread of AIDS. The 10 minute segment (in French) is at http://www.radio-canada.ca/emissions/decouverte/2011-2012/Reportage.asp?idDoc=198333
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