one time my friend was telling me that back in the day the goverment or other people were injecting black and gay people with the aids virus to try and kill them all off or somthing. does anyone know what this was called? or anything even close to th is? no im not racist or anything i just find this completly terrible that the goverment would do this. does anyone know what im talking about.
2007-12-23 03:19:26 · 8 answers · asked by Miss [!] at the disco. 1 in Politics & Government ➔ Other - Politics & Government
That never happened. It was/is a myth that got started back in the 1980s. Here's where it came from:
Shortly after AIDS was discovered, some of the extremists on the religious right started claiming that it was "the judgement of God" on gays (and blacks) and tried to block funding of research to find treatments. Also, at that time the cause of AIDS wasn't clear--and the origins of the virus was not known.
Given the lack of knowledge about a very scary disease--and the bigotry emanating from the religious right, some people in the gay and in the African-American communities speculated that maybe it ws some sort of vicious plot on the part of these racists/bigots. That's how the myth got started.
Now--we know the cause of AIDS--its a mutated "retrovirus." And we know the origin--it occurs naturally in a species of monkey native to Africa. The virus got transmitted to humans at some point (probably by a by someone bitten by a monkey in the 1950s) and spread from there..
There never was any truth to the rumors about injecting people with AIDS, hhowever.
One thing that made this myth seem credible is tha tthe whole thing occured just a few years after the "Tuskeegee syphilis studies" were exposed. This was an "experiment" starting in the 1930s in rural Alabama in which black people were denied treatment for syphilis (supposedly to study the long-term effects of the disease). The racists who did this--resulting in many deaths--took advantage of the lack of education of the black people in the area to deceive them into thinking they were doing all that coudbe done to treat the disease.
Given that history--and the rhetoric of the so-called "Christians" claiming AIDS was a judgement from God (plus their efforts to prevent research for a cure) you can see why some people at the time got a little paranoid and came up with this myth.
For an excellant and readable history ofthe Tuskeegee experiments see Jones, james-"Bad Blood: the Tuskeegee Syphilis Experiments"
2007-12-23 03:54:54 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Of course it's true. Why would your friend lie to you? I suppose you also heard that the World Trade Center buildings collapse was an inside job done by the CIA and President Bush? That JFK was shot by the Mafia from the grassy knoll? That John Wayne was gay?
It's not like people just make this stuff up. It all REALLY happened.
I don't think you are dumb. I looked up the word gullible in the dictionary and it had your picture under it. The next time someone tells you an incredibly stupid story don't just take their word for it, find out the facts and decide for yourself.
2007-12-23 16:30:10 · answer #2 · answered by bill j 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
I believe it is a distinct possibility. It would have been incredibly easy for a hyper confident Ronald Reagan presidency to covertly inject homosexual and minority young males with an AIDS virus, allowing it to spread from there as a tool to suppress gay and minority population. I also believe it would have been in-check with the political agenda of the time (and even perhaps, today) but as to the actual facts of what DID happen, I am not sure.
2007-12-23 11:54:01 · answer #3 · answered by Mashimoto 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
No - I do not think it's true. The way the reporters are, it would not be long before the story got out.
HIV has been around for 30 + years. Even the government wouldn't be so stupid as to do something like that (and they have done some pretty stupid things over the years)
2007-12-23 11:25:46 · answer #4 · answered by Paul L 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There has been much speculation in the media about how HIV & AIDS are diseases that don't act & react like "normal" diseases, giving rise to speculation that they were man-made. It is well known that disease oganisms, whether bacterial or viral, mutate, especially after surviving attempts to eradicate them by use of medication. There have been many disease organisms that have similar effects on other animals, it would not be improbable that any of those could have mutated to become HIV or AIDS & thus affect humans.
2007-12-23 11:40:49 · answer #5 · answered by Graham C 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
YES IT'S CALLED FALSE ACCUSATIONS BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO.
2007-12-23 11:22:57 · answer #6 · answered by Ditka 7 · 1⤊ 1⤋
ethnic cleansing.
2007-12-23 16:04:18 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
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2007-12-23 11:30:22 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋