Has anyone heard about the connection between syphilis and HIV?

Question

My college professor mentioned a doctor from Georgia was apologizing for him and his colleagues because the origin of HIV was caused by the Tuskegee experiment...

Answer 1

On July 23, 1973, Fred Gray, a prominent civil rights lawyer, brought a $1.8 billion class action civil suit against many of those institutions and individuals involved in the study. Gray demanded $ 3 million in damages for each living participant and the heirs of the deceased. The case never came to trial. In December, 1974, the government agreed to a $10 million out of court settlement. The living participants each received $ 37,500 in damages, the heirs of the deceased, $15,000. Gray received nearly $ 1 million in legal fees. Had the subjects of The Tuskegee Study been taken advantage of ? Although the survivors and the families of the deceased received compensation, no PHS officer who had been directly involved in the study felt contrition. No apologies were ever tendered; no one ever admitted any wrong doing. On the contrary, the PHS officers made it clear that they felt they were acting in good conscience. They felt betrayed by the government's failure to defend the study they commissioned. But as one survivor said "...I don't know what they used us for. I ain't never understood the study." In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone.

Answer 2

Not sure about the Tuskegee experiment,

however, some research suggests that the "AIDS" maybe the result of untreated syphilis (just like Tuskegee)

This idea was briefly popular in the mid-eighties. In the 1970s, British scientists warned American doctors that there would be a syphilis epidemic in gay men. Surprisingly, syphilis virtually disappeared from the American scene coincident with the coming of the AIDS crisis.

Some claim that the opportunistic diseases associated with AIDS (wasting, tuberculosis, cancers, pneumonia and dementia) are typical of latent syphilis -- a stage that doctors cannot easily diagnose.

Dr. Peter Duesberg is a distinguished Nobel Prize winning virologist who theorized as early as 1987 that AIDS could be the result of the misuse of both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical drugs. Duesberg, who's been ostracized by mainstream medicine for his stance, claims that the early AIDS patients were gay men who were taking street drugs (speed/meth and cocaine for instance) that wore down their immune system. Duesberg also claims that many gay men in that more promiscuous age (late 70's/early 80s San Fran and NYC - where the alleged "epidemic" occurred) were popping antibiotics like candy, to prevent frequent bouts of venereal disease (i.e., syphilis).

Dont think that doctors had the technology back then to manufacture such a disease. Anyway, why would they create a virus to kill that does it so slowly and ineffectively.

I am editing because I just found this: wow, some of the most honest reporting by the CDC and mainstream media regarding homosexuals engaging in drug use and the link to AIDS.



Homosexual men boost increase in syphilis rate

By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 17, 2006

The syphilis rate among U.S. men soared 81 percent between 2000 and 2004, primarily as a result of increases in reported cases among homosexual males, federal health officials reported yesterday.

While the rate among men nearly doubled during that time -- from 2.6 per 100,000 to 4.7 -- the syphilis rate among women fell from 1.7 to 0.8 per 100,000 from 2000 to 2003. It remained stable in 2004, marking the end of a 13-year decline.

"The vast majority of the increase is attributable to a resurgence of syphilis among men who have sex with men ... syphilis rates continue to increase among [this group]," said Dr. J.F. Beltrami and other authors of a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention.

They also pointed out that sexually active bisexual men "likely contribute to syphilis among women."

Of the nearly 8,000 cases reported in 2004, "approximately 84 percent occurred among men," they wrote, and the CDC estimates that nearly 65 percent of those cases resulted from men having sex with other men. [slick50 says: wow, 2/3 of all male cases were gay and gays are only supposed to be 10% of the population!!!!!!]

The authors also said reported increases in incidence of syphilis among homosexual behavior have been characterized "by high rates of HIV co-infection, high-risk sexual behavior and use of drugs such as methamphetamines." [slick50 says I wish that there was a statistic in this article regarding use of drugs among HIV homosexuals].

"Syphilis increases have occurred among [homosexual and bisexual men] who have met sex partners in Internet chat rooms," the researchers said. They stressed the need for more study of how the Internet affects the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and how it might be used as an STD prevention tool.

A separate analysis in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that use of methamphetamines is also an HIV risk factor among heterosexual men. Using data from a large population-based study of heterosexuals aged 18 to 35 living in five northern California counties, researchers found that those who had recently used meth were more likely to "practice high-risk sex" than nonusers. [slick50 says meth suppresses immune system by itself]

High-risk sex included having casual or anonymous sex partners, multiple sex partners and partners who used injectable drugs. While 15.5 percent of meth users said they had received drugs or money in exchange for sex, only 3.5 percent of nonusers said they had ever done so.

In the syphilis study, CDC investigators said that from 2001 to 2004, disease rates were higher among blacks and Hispanics than among whites. In 2003, the rate among blacks was 5.1 times higher than whites and was 5.6 times higher in 2004.

"But substantial increases occurred only among black men," not black women, the authors wrote. [slick50 says - maybe the DL?]

By region, the South saw the highest increase in syphilis rates between 2003 and 2004: 16 percent. That marked the first time since 1991 that syphilis rates increased in that region of the country.

"In each region, [primary and secondary] syphilis rates among black men and women exceeded those of whites and Hispanics," they concluded.

The national rate of primary and secondary syphilis climbed 8 percent -- from 2.5 per 100,000 population to 2.7 -- between 2003 and 2004, marking the fourth consecutive annual rise in this sexually transmitted disease, which health officers are focused on eliminating.