HIV and AIDS: Questions of Scientific and Journalistic Responsibility

HIV AND AIDS

but implying that AIDS (whatever it is) will come in some unspecified
time and cause the death of the persons involved.
Example: A New York Times editorial. Most New York Times "news"
articles that I have seen do not make the distinction between HIV and
AIDS clear. These news articles are written as if "AIDS" had a welldefined universal meaning, which it does not, as I have pointed out. In
any case, these articles assume that "HIV is the cause of AIDS"
(whatever AIDS is), as in the editorial "Unyielding Aids", 13 August
1994, which stated: "The latest estimates from the World Health
Organization suggest that some 17 million people have been infected so
far with the AIDS virus and around 4 million have developed the
disease." However, this sentence is defective in several ways.
First, use of the definite article ("the" disease) is misleading,
because there is no single disease involved, according to the CDC.
Second, reporting world-wide 4 out of 17 million who have developed
"the disease" lumps together so many factors and is subject to so many
objections (see ~3 below), as to cause serious misrepresentations.
Third, Richard Strohman wrote to the Times (13 August 1994) about
their editorial referring to "the AIDS virus":
But this is a misdefinition...We all need to recognize that there
is no AIDS virus; there is only HIV. To date the scientific
community is agreed that there is still no proven mechanism of
causality linking HIV and AIDS. The NY Times' responsibility
is to report accurately; it has not, and until it does its readers
remain unprepared to support alternative approaches to AIDS
causality, prevention and cure...
You also refer to the analogy in the fight against cancer. It is
apt. The war on cancer initiated by President Nixon was declared
as a war pretty much against viruses as a main cause. The war
was declared lost years ago by most thoughtful biologists.
Especially with the powerful evidence proving that cigarette
smoking causes lung cancer, scientists turned to research seeking
further environmental linkages...If we could fully extend the
analogy of cancer to AIDS we would create research possibilities
far beyond the narrow view of virus-only causality which by
itself has spent billions and saved not a single life. Accurate
reporting on the current state of AIDS can do no harm and could