You call me ‘promiscuous,’ I call you ‘dishonest,’ a poly person tells the average person who believes that monogamy is the only natural way to love.
You call me ‘denialist,’ I call you ‘believer,’ a dissident person tells the average person who believes that HIV is the only cause of AIDS.
When you call AIDS Dissidents by their own name you exercise leadership in the sexual freedom movement.
Alternative lovestyle communities ignore AIDS Dissidence at their own peril.
From private conversations
Part Three
“Well, I told you,” G said as we continued the conversation, “I knew about global warming back then in the 1980s. I was a foreign graduate student at the University of California, Riverside, which had the largest Soil and Environmental Science department in the nation at that point, and the crowd I hung out with was a bunch of post-docs who did that kind of research. I used to not want to believe what they told me myself. Do you think it was fun to learn that we were all going to be cooked unless the switch was made quickly and with full resources for that kind of green-tech research. I was the only one with a kid in this whole group. I liked modernity, I liked gadgets, I liked to drive my own car, I liked consuming nice products, and yet . . . ”
“Wait a minute” I replied, “I’m sure you were not the only one to resist the idea that now all research resources and efforts would be devoted to finding ways to eliminate the need for oil.”
“Right, I wasn’t alone--now you’re getting to it. Oil companies, oil tycoons, automobile makers, and all of the elites that got rich from the black gold were also very unhappy at that prospect. If there ever was a way for us to invent an oil-free society and economy, they wanted to make sure nobody found out.”
“Ok now,” I said. I was feeling a bit confused. “And how does that actually relate to AIDS?”
“Well, awareness of impending global disaster was growing in environmental research circles. They had good reasons to demand more funds for their research. What was a better way to divert attention from that necessity than generalized panic about a viral threat, a new killer disease that was caused by a subvisible pathogen--a virus, as it were?”
“Wait a minute, do you mean that the San Francisco outbreaks were engineered on purpose?” I asked, resentfully.
“No, of course not. But the rush to look for infectious agents was--and that’s where the difference between Gallo and Montagnier comes into play.”
“Sounds confusing to me,” I commented, impatient. “Explain!”
“Montagnier never claimed that he found the ‘cause’ of AIDS.”
“He didn’t?” I asked, curious again.
“No. As I answered the deluge of messages that ensued the trauma of Greensocks, I reread Montagnier’s 1983-84 papers and I also posted the Gallo papers online in response to a panicky request for ‘evidence’ by the person in New York who had mercilessly humiliated me. As I reread those papers I realized Montagnier simply said that, if the new syndrome turned out to be infectious, and if the infectious agent turned out to be a virus, then HIV (which he called LAV to avoid misleading labels) would be a likely candidate.”
“Is that all he said?”
“Yes.”
“OMG! But then, why wouldn’t he say more? Wouldn’t it help people to know that there was some certainty?”
“To some extent, of course, it would. At that time so little was known that to have a strong reason to advise people to use condoms was a good thing. However, there was a need to verify the results of the experiments by repeating them in other laboratories, equally competent as Montagner’s at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, and Gallo’s at the National Institute of Health, in DC.”
“And didn’t that verification happen?”
“That’s the crux of the problem. It did not.”
“OMG! G, are you sure?”
“Well . . . I’m telling you. I wish it had.”
“And why not?”
“Because Gallo mixed Montagnier’s samples with his own and erased all doubts from the record by declaring to the press that we now knew the cause of AIDS. The pharmaceutical companies and the oil industries colluded to establish the dictum that now any verification experiment would be dangerous because it would instill the seed of the doubt in the public and cause behavior that would result in infection.”
“That doesn’t sound very scientific per se. Nor does it sound trusting that people would behave reasonably,” I commented.
“Of course not. But the reality is that people didn’t know how to behave: you know, sex that is all about turgidity and getting off. No erotic gradation, no tantric energy. Rubbing. Barrier protection as in condoms was the only measure as long as people’s amatory skills were so basic.”
“Right, which is why safer-sex education came along, no?” I offered.
“Yeah, and I jumped right into that back in the early 1990s, with all my bi friends. And that opened up a whole ‘nother realm of erotic expression that was more inclusive and creative, precisely because we now had to invent ways to be ‘safe’.”
Disclaimer: This Tale does not constitute medical advice in any way. Readers are invited to consult their own healers and health care providers.
References: For scholarly and scientific references to contents and theories referred to in this dialog, refer to Gaia & the New Politics of Love, whose bibliography lists all sources involved.
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