a lot of people believe that the US created the HIV virus to destroy black people

[TZ]

Therefore it must be TRUE. And its OKAY because you know Tuskegee happened! Fucking illogic. I some tired of the Wright apologists on this board:banghead:

[realisticphish]

1. more candidate worship

this man supports barack? I support barack! Thus, I must support this man!

If the US created HIV to destroy black people, then why did GAY populations get hit first? Did the CIA accidentally reroute a contrail dispenser?

The argument ad populi. The most often used logical fallacy, imho

[TZ]

2. Part of it is Wright is sooo negative on Bush

It reminds me of when we had people PRAISING the head of Iran because he was critical of Bush.
But yeah, I fired back that just becuase "alot of people beleive it", doesn't make it true.

[realisticphish]

3. ditto with Hugo Chavez

just because he hates Bush doesn't make him a good person. Just another person who hates Bush.

[LeftishBrit]

4. Or Ahmadinejad (sp?)

Someone once referred to him as 'compassionate'. Now *where* did I hear of a compassionate conservative before? Oh, and if you don't like him you must want to bomb Iran, which is a bit like saying if you don't like Bush you must support the terrorists.

At one point, there were even a few defenders of Mugabe on DU; though I think it's now obvious to all that he is an evil tyrant.

[onager]

7. Ditto ditto Moqtada al-Sadr

I've seen him depicted on DU as some kind of hero just because he is "standing up to Bush." Couldn't believe I was seeing that from people who call themselves "progressives."

In Basra, Sadr's followers killed women and their small children for "offenses against Islamic morality." (If the children are born out of wedlock.) They threatened women with death for not wearing the headscarf even if they were non-Muslim. All "immoral" music was banned. Etc. Etc.

Of course, reporting this automatically makes you a Bush supporter. And I did get most of my info second-hand, from a wild-eyed "Fundamentalist Atheist" website: Islam Online.

:eyes:

[Orrex]

5. Don't be naive

To quote Eco:

...two weeks later the poor Monsieur Gros, he dies mysteriously. This Boutroux handles poisons..."
"Slander," Bramanti growled. "...Nobody at the trial mentioned the fact that Monsieur Gros was an alcoholic in the last stages of cirrhosis."
"Do not be enfantine! Sorcelery proceeds by natural ways; if one has a cirrhosis, they strike one in the cirrhosis."

---Foucault's Pendulum, pg 279

An attack on black people would have been too obvious, if the intent were to destroy the black people. But if you introduce the virus into gay populations and thereafter allow it to propogate in part via IV drug use (using drugs handily supplied to urban areas by the CIA), then you accomplish the same goal without tipping your hand, and you gain the benefit of traumatizing the homosexual community, as well. Thereby you beat down the two groups that stand to gain the most from that pesky Civil Rights movement.


Oh, :puke:

See how easy it is to lapse in self-convincing conspiracy delusion? No wonder those wacky woo-woos are so passionatly convinced of themselves!

[realisticphish]

6. for a second

i didn't read the user name, and started to get angry, thinking you were being serious. See, it IS easy

[PVnRT]

8. ...and it came from Africa by way of the Caribbean

I'm pretty sure we don't have advanced bioweapon research centers in Burkina Faso.

Now, if you want to start talking about the government's response to AIDS in the 1980's in regards to the gay and black communities...

[trotsky]

9. Those people are idiots.

Because OBVIOUSLY it came from contaminated polio vaccine in the 1950s! :sarcasm:

[madinmaryland]

10. I hadn't heard that one.

Tuskegee was the result of LSD "experimentation" wasn't it? Which if I recall was more or less "Mengele" type experimentation.

[TZ]

11. That wasn't even in GDP or GD

This was in the LOUNGE.

Edit:Tuskegee was deliberate infection of black men with syphilis.

[WoodrowFan]

12. correction?

I didn't think they infected black men with syphillis. I thought they took men who already had it, lied to them that they were being treated, then watched how the disease spread (and allowed their wives and kids to catch it). Still horrific but they didn't give them the infection.

[salvorhardin]

13. You're correct

A lot of people think the men were deliberately infected. That's not the case. They already had syphillis .

Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male<1> also known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Pelkola Syphilis Study, Public Health Service Syphilis Study or the Tuskegee Experiments was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 201 control group without syphilis) poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers were used as subjects to observe the natural progression of syphilis without medicine. ...

In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies. Doctors recruited 399 black men who already had syphilis and studied the progress of the disease for 40 years.

By 1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male

But as you said, and no sensible person would deny, it was a horrific experiment.

[dropkickpa]

14. I get really irritated when

People bring up how we should use prison inmates in biomedical research rather than hurt the widdle meeses and bunnies. I instantly bring up Tuskeegee and Nazi Germany when THAT particular nasty shit pops up. I've never gotten a good answer from anyone when I do that. But it DOES highlight a lot of subtle racism here when the subject comes up, and the perpetrators never even bother to defend themselves, because they refuse to acknowlege how racists their veiwpoints really are.

[salvorhardin]

15. There are people on DU who argue that?

There are people on DU who argue we should use, without their consent, prison inmates for biomed research just to spare the lives of test animals!? Good gawd.

I'd submit that people who argue that aren't necessarily racists though, or hold necessarily racist beliefs. I think it's more likely classism. Not that it matters. Bloody ignorant ideological opinion it is.

[dropkickpa]

16. Oh hell yeah

I got in a huge debate about this at one point, in health. It was pretty sickening.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=222x23040#23090

They may not be out and out racists, but when the racial inequities of their stance are pointed out, they refuse to even address them. Ignoring actions that are racist, especially when they are blatant and easily visible, is just as bad as being racist in my book.

[salvorhardin]

17. Right

Because African-Americans make up roughly 15% of the general population yet over 50% of the prison population, while all racial minorities account for over 70% of the prison population, there is a huge race aspect to the issue.

[lizerdbits]

18. The racial make up of prisons

make it a bad sampling, aside from the extreme immorality. (IIRC the person advocating using prisoners in experiments had some kind of 'gay marriage is a human right' sig line which made it all the more bizarre.) You obviously won't get an average sample of the US population racially. Inmates are more likely to have substance abuse problems, more likely to be poor which often means a long history of poor diet and less access to basic health care and could have unknown underlying health problems. I'm sure the fucknuts who advocate this inhumanity will be sure that they'll have GREAT care in prison and the best nutrition. :eyes:

[TZ]

19. Not just on DU.

One of my sisters has made this argument in the past. She's not even a big animal rights activist...:puke: