Black Plague Essays (3039 words) - HIVAIDS, Duesberg Hypothesis

Black Plague As a young adult I must endure many scary realities of this world. Everyday a new challenge, obstacle, fear stares me right in the eye. The sugarcoated, innocent, ?never ?never? land is quickly shedding from my reality and I am faced with the truths of this cynical world. Truth. Do I know the meaning of this word? What if all I have trusted had been false, what if those endless nights I lied awake worried over the latest medical news, or any news for that matter, was all just a waste of potentially productive time? What if the world as we know it was all just a hoax and a set up to make the men in the white coats rich? According to Dr. Peter Duesberg, HIV as we know it is not the cause of AIDS or death, but rather the habitual use of hard drugs and or the treatments used for HIV, AZT a very harsh medication first developed for the treatment of cancer, that is causing the immune deficiency. Before I even understood completely what sexual intercourse or intravenous drug-use was, I was told what HIV was. The ?black plague? of the 80's and 90's, killing off people by the thousands spread by unprotected sex and dirty needles. But what if this scare was purposely inflicted as an experiment on the American people or what if was all just a human error. Dr. Peter Duesberg is a professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has pioneered the studies in the phenomenon that HIV is not the cause of AIDS. Dr. Duesberg is the first to isolate the cancer gene through his work on retroviruses and mapped the genetic structure of these viruses. He is an outstanding investigator recognized by the National Institutes of Health, making him more than creditable for his claim. Dr. Duesberg has challenged the virus-AIDS hypothesis claiming that the public has been misinformed. The believers in this claim feel that HIV was invented for an explanation for AIDS, and equally the treatments used were even causing the AIDS illness. Let's begin by defining HIV/AIDS according to the World Health Organization (WHO), modern science and medicine and what is being taught in classrooms and clinics all over the world. HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus and like any other virus can only replicate inside cells. In short, it attacks the ?T-cells? which make up our immune system. In the final course of the virus the infected person ?becomes particularly vulnerable to the opportunistic infections and cancers that typify AIDS?(pg. 1 www.charweb.com). HIV is shown to be the cause of AIDS. AIDS stands for auto immune deficiency syndrome and is defined by a severe depletion of t-cells and over 20 controversial degenerative and neoplastic diseases, and is 100% fatal. But believers in the phenomenon claim that this information is misleading and incorrect. Dr. Duesberg has proposed the hypothesis that the various AIDS diseases are brought on by the long term consumption of recreational drugs and AZT, which is prescribed to prevent or treat AIDS. In the studies and research conducted the in the correlation between HIV and AIDS many cases of AIDS show no sign of HIV. ?In the United States and Europe AIDS correlates to 95% with risk factors, such as about 8 years of promiscuous male homosexuality, intravenous drug use, or hemophilia. Since AIDS also correlates with antibody to a retrovirus, confirmed in about 40% of American cases, it has been hypothesized that this virus causes AIDS by killing T-cells. Consequently, the virus was termed human immunodefieciency (HIV) and antibody to HIV became part in the definition of AIDS.?(pg1www.duesberg.com) In other words scientist pinned HIV on this virus because HIV kills t-cells and AIDS kills T-cells so they must be one in the same? When we exam the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS we must look at classical conditions for viral pathology, in which HIV violates. A virus replicates inside cells very rapidly and the body fights the virus through the immune system. Supposedly HIV infects the T-cells and kills them, but about 5% of all T-cells are regenerated during the 2 days that it takes the virus to infect

Ethics Paper

Ethics Paper Ethics Paper Running Head: Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 1 Tiffany Harris Ethics- Professor Christina Post University Thesis Statement: Considering American ethics and values, death is morally wrong. Therefore, the killing of unborn fetuses is morally wrong as well. Abortions, this unethical practice of terminated unborn fetuses should be outlawed because it can harm women, violates civil rights, and takes innocent lives. Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 2 Real life stories demonstrate again and again that abortion harms women. Harm comes in a variety of forms; mental, emotional, relational, and physical. In some cases women lose their lives through abortion. Women can also experience the loss of their fertility or an increase in miscarriages after an abortion. The violation of civil rights is another unethical issue when involving abortion. Women who have had abortions suffer an increased risk on anxiety, depression, and suicide. A study published in an edition of the Journal of Anxiety Disorders found women who aborted their unintended pregnancies were 30 percent more likely to subsequently report all the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder than those women who had carried their baby to term. The rate of mental health claims for women who aborted was 17 percent higher than those who had carried their children to term. The risk of death by suicide is two to six times higher for women who had had abortions when compared again, wi th women who had given birth. (American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1994) The link between abortion and breast cancer has attracted much media attention. It is important to understand that there are two different mechanisms by which abortion can increase breast cancer- one is beyond dispute and the other hotly contested. Through abortion, a women artificially terminates her pregnancy at a time when her breast cells have been exposed to high levels of cancer-initiating estrogen but before those cells have matured into cancer-resistant cells( as they ultimately do in a full-m term pregnancy. Women Having Abortions Viewed to be Morally Unethical 3 Furthermore, an article wrote in 1994 in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology revealed that abortions performed at more than 16 weeks gestation have 15 times the risk of maternal mortality as those performed during the first trimester. More than forty years ago, the United States Supreme Court decided Roe Vs Wade, the landmark case that secured a women’s right to abortion. Since then, radical politicians have been trying to take that decision out of a women’s hand. In some stares politicians are pushing through laws that ban most abortions. In others, they are doing everything they can to shut down the health centers that many women rely on for basic reproductive health services, including abortion care. Some politicians are even trying to end programs that provide birth control, putting women at a high risk for pregnancy. The Roe majority ruling of 1973 holds that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting potential human life, but that this does not become a compelling state interest overriding women’s Fourteenth Amendment right to privacy and her subsequent right to terminate her pregnancy until the point of viability, then assessed at 24 weeks. The court did not state the viability is or is not when a fetus becomes a person; this is the earliest point at which it can be proven that the fetus has the capacity to have a meaningful life as a person. Most philosophies of natural rights would hold that fetuses have rights when they become sentient or self-aware, which presumes a neurophysiological definition personhood. Self- awareness as we generally understand it would require substantial neocortical